Tuesday, February 12, 2008

An internet offensive - The Online Citizen under seige

Since the demise of the old Sintercom website, there have been a scarcity of websites with decent Singaporean political discourse.

In recent times The Online Citizen have came across to me as a website with in-depth analysis of various government policies / statements. There's a perceptible oppposition slant, but they do try hard to back their criticism with research and I give them props for their efforts.


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In the last few days there have been multiple accusations floating on Singabloodypore, soc.culture.singapore and La Nausee etc that TOC have been compromised with "PAP Moles", and that the website have somehow been hijacked and controlled secretly by the PAP.

Personally, I feel that the accusations are all hogwash.

PAP paying people to criticise itself in a credible matter, with the criticism backed by research than by mindless ranting? Pardon my lack of imagination, but I think that it is far easier to link the accusers to conspiracy than the TOC itself.

My comments on one of the websites linked to the accusers - the Wayang Party :

"Came to this site after reading all the accusations against the TOC at La Nausee.

Like I commented there, why is the editor of wayangparty insisting that the staff of TOC publish complete disclosure on their entire personal history when there is zero disclosure on this website to begin with? Clicking ‘about us’ on this blog gives me zero information about how many people are behind this blog, and who they are and what have they done before.

This wayangparty websites hoists the anti government flag and yet proceeds to attack the strongest opposition party, the Workers Party - even the name of this blog could be interpreted as an attack on the workers party.

If we were to follow the same line of reasoning that was used to attack the TOC, should we not ask for the identities of the owners of this blog, and speculate wildly whether they are in the payroll of the PAP, and what secret agenda this website have in the first place?"

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