Blog Assignment Term 2 (EL-SS) NOTE to Mrs. Nathan: here's your essay=D

Hi all,
this post is a continuation of the assignment from my previous post. Attached below, is my essay for grading for English. Shout-out to Mrs. Nathan: Here's the essay, and it's not late



**************************Essay start****************************

Democracy is an idealism originating from ancient Greece. The concept is that everyone is equal and should be given equal rights, whether it is human rights, voting rights and so on. In Singapore, the government claims that we practice democracy here. In my opinion, it is a mix of authoritarian capitalism and democracy we practice here, mainly due to a few distinguishing factors.

Authoritarian capitalism is usually practiced by single-party nations. Here, the PAP wins in numbers since the other parties usually have insufficient members to take the majority of the parliament, even if they did garner the support of the public. This form of political control also involves a lot of intervention in the economy and reliance on overseas economies. The main sources of trade in Singapore are controlled by government agencies and usually are more of import/export trade, which mainly relies on international trade. Singapore’s economy is able to survive on this type of free trade only because its geographical location gives it a perfect advantage as a stopover and a ‘middleman’ for trading, even in its early years, where Sir Stanford Raffles used entrepot trade to attract passing ships to stop at Singapore. This trade is mainly dominated by the Port of Singapore Authority nowadays.

Singapore also controls the law, and in doing so, the media. Although we often speak of democracy and equal rights in voting, the laws are often created and put in place by the government, claiming to be for ‘communal good’. Although it is true, it creates the illusion that we are given a choice in the matter when the contrary applies.

However, we cannot call Singapore’s government as complete authoritarianism, mainly because there is no such thing as political murders or disappearances, but in my opinion, there are no needs for such things—the people usually take the government for granted and give them full control.

Furthermore, we cannot completely exclude elements of democracy that have been put in place in Singapore’s political environment. We are given equal rights, regardless of race, language or religion, and the government has made some effort in gathering public opinions before making decisions on some matters, and it is on moral grounds that the judicial system usually metes out punishments, not by public appeal.

Thus, I find there is the importance and need to differentiate between democracy and authoritarian capitalism, and the political system Singapore practices.

************************Essay end*****************************


Signing off,
xXdaSimXx
Frisay, 30 May 2008
2052 hrs

Discussion: Blog Assignment: Social Studies-Democracy

Hi all,
this particular post will be dedicated to my school assignment on Social Studies-a discussion on democracy. In this particular post, I'll be be placing part of the discussion our Chinese scholars in class had earlier this morning. For anonymity purposes, I'll be calling them HJ and YJ.

Our statement of discussion: 'Democracy creates stability in a society'

HJ: I think that first of all, we need to specify what kind of democracy we should be discussing about. What is democracy, and what is stability? In my opinion, our main focus should be about representative democracy, which is most widely used all around the world.

YJ: All right. Since we know that U.S.A. is most renowned for its democracy, let's begin from there first.

HJ: I don't like to talk about specific countries, but I agree with the point that democracy creates stability. Democracy is always associated with elections and so it provides people with chioices to choose their leaders or policies. This gives people more freedom and thus the leaders elected would satisfy more people. Since most people are consented, conflicts will less likely occur.



To my classmates of 3J, please do add on by commenting on this post.
To Mrs. Ong, here's the discussion. Do follow up here when you need to (oh, and you're most certainly welcome to join in the discussion too=D)


Signing off,
xXdaSimXx
Tuesday, May 20 2008
2058 hrs

Daily Digest 15/05/08 (wait hang on was it bimonthly?)

Zzz. With so much CCTs and projects and all that rubbish that follows secondary school life, this *daily digest* has once again become a few and far apart post, but tonight being Thursday of Week 9, I shall take out 10 mins to come up with something interesting for this post.

'You have 2 cows' (you probably have heard of this but its funny so well...)

Code Lyoko

You have 1 cow and a bull. The bull becomes a computer scientist and gets trapped in a virtual world with his daughter, and the bull is kept there by a evil program, but the daughter cow is trying to avoid being captured by the program. There's also 4 cows who are friends and form a team trying to rescue them while reverting the chaos caused by the program

Death Note

You have two cows. One of them suddenly has the ability to kill off the other cows with the exception of the super-intelligent cow that keeps tracking the cow (who is also friends with it). You begin to notice that the cow is spending entire nights cramped up in the barn, and you notice it's the only cow in the barn that is still alive. You kill that cow, and take it's notebook to seek revenge on those who harm you.

Fate/Stay Night

So as I pray, "Unlimited Cow Works."

Fate/Stay Night (2)

You have two cows. One is actually some sexy female King Arthur, and the other cow is Red. The Red cow summons your future self, who is one hot bull, but that doesn't matter. And theres some other random girl, but who the hell cares. All you want is some Saintly Cup so you can get water to your favorite cow. Choose wisely, or else your cow's neighbor becomes evil, forcing you receive a limb donation from your future bull-self. Try explaining that one to your friends.

Fullmetal Alchemist

You have two cows. Cow one dies and you use alchemy to try to bring it back; cow two dies in the process and you lose an arm and a leg. You now have no cows, and are missing two limbs. You manage to reincarnate cow 2 into a cow shaped suit of armour. Then a third cow turns out to be a homunculus, and your mom.

LOL (= =|||) Source: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/You_have_two_cows/2

P.S. another lame piece of crap:

MNB MND MNH MSS MIB
(to the students of 3J i suppose you should know what this means =D)


Well, till my Social Studies and English project next week I guess!!
Note: Three of my classmates will be on this blog talking rubbish, so if you see them remember to ignore anyone by the name of 'WK', 'wkgan2' or 'kiwi' cos' this person loves using expletives.

=D
Signing off,
xXdaSimXx
Thursday, 15 May 2008, 2214hrs