Any form of punishment that is effective in maintaining law and order is justified. Do you agree?

I agree that any form of punishment that is effective in maintaining law and order is justified.
Punishments exist in legal systems for 2 main reasons. The first, to help victims of crimes address their grievances. The second, is to deter criminals from committing crimes, hence in a way maintaning law and order.

Many argue that some harsh punishments that are in place such as the death penalty, infringe into human rights. The death penalty as argued is infringing into the criminal's right to live. However, many forget that the death penalty has proven to be useful in many countries. The death penalty had managed to cause the homicide rate in the US to decrease since it was used again. Hence proving that harsh and brutal punishments do act as a deterrent to criminals.

Furthermore, if the crminal still commits the crime with these harsh, supposedly inhumane punishment in place, then the criminal really deserves to be punished. He must be a real fag to commit the crime even though he knew about these hefty consequences waiting for him, thus he deserves to be punished.

Therefore, any punishment is justified if it is effective in maintaining law and order. And if you do not want to receive such torturous punishments, do not commit any crime, especially in Singapore. Don't even think about littering.

Free Speech

Article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1619549,00.html

Recently, the spotlight has been shined on free speech. The issue has indeed receive a high level of scrunity by societies and governments across the globe, especially after last years outrage within the Muslim communities after a cartoon illustrating the Prophet Muhammed was published in a Danish newspaper. While Muslim communities protested, the cartoonist and his supporters claimed it was his right to have freedom of speech. Thus should freedom of speech be abolished in this world to prevent more conflicts in this world? Well, I think it should be the case whereby people can have a freedom of speech only to some extent, while offensive and totally groundless biased opinions be filtered out.

The problem of freedom of speech is especially prevelant in Western countries. People take the notion of freedom of speech or expression especially serious there. They greatly value their rights even when the odds are against them. Take the United States for example, whereby schools are being sued by students and their families over the infringement of their rights to express what they want. Redwood Middle School in Napa, California was recently sued by some parents over rules regarding student dress codes that prohibited the total freedom of expression. Amid claims that the rule were for safety reason, the parents still defended their child's stand and continued to pursue the case. Hence it shows that the westerners take their rights seriously, and can even become unreasonable when they feel that it has been infringed upon. This is all due to the First Amendment in the US which allows the freedom of expression in the US, empowering the average American to sue anyone who had infringed on it.

Therefore, in order to really restrict freedom of speech to non-offensive or groundless biaseness, people should be given less power. By doing so, they would then abid by the rules. Hence, moderately restricting rights is the way to go. Maybe by giving people too many rights, they might unknowingly abuse it.

How to fight racism...

Racism is widespread across the world. Almost all races, less so for Whites (who are usually the antagonists), have been victims of racism. Racism occurs due to the triggering of primal instincts of wanting to be the best, thus any differences between groups of people can be the subject of arguments. And race is the most common one since it is the easiest to observe. Thus how do we fight racism, especially in Singapore? The Singapore government approaches the issue with the weapon of censorship, blocking out any racist views on the TV, books or internet. I for one, beg to differ. I would rather fight fire with fire.

Though racism is a delicate issue with a tendency to spark off racial riots or disunity within Singapore, I feel that only through the use it can we totally eradicate the problem. By allowing people to express racist views openly, it allows individuals of the race being victimized to clear doubts and remove any stereotypic views on their racial group. In the long run, the mass will have a clearer view of individual races and become immune to racism. Thus racism will become just like a dog which can only bark but not bite.

Also by treating racism as a taboo by attempts to avoid it will only make it a more potent force in causing discord among different races. By cringing to racist remarks, we are showing racists people that their views do impact us greatly, thus more racist views will appear. However, by accepting and not shying away from the racist remarks, racists will see that we are not really affected by it, and the thrill in being racist will be gone together with future racist views.

Hence the best way is to fight fire with fire. Censorship would not be as effective as using racism to fight racism. The End.

Reference: http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Racism.asp

Corruption...

Article: "Corruption in China: Not the best way to clean up", The Economist, 21 April 2007

In China, corruption is rampant, but there are little efforts taking place to solve this issue. Hence, along with that fact, the thought of how corruption affects a country and how to solve it will come to mind.

With corruption, a country's economic development would be greatly hampered. There will be few foreign investors since there is little trust in dishonest officials. Investors will not dare to trust these officials as they fear the misuse of their funds. Furthermore, in order to set up businesses in corruption-rampant states, entrepreneurs have to set aside a large sum of money to bribe the officials in order to appease them and not receive too much trouble in the future from the authorities. These will cause foreign investments to fall below the potential of the market.

Corruption also feeds on itself. This means that with corruption more rampant, the problem will worsen. People who were initially honest may turn to this dishonest act due to the frustration that others are not playing by the rules. Therefore, with more corruption around, more people will corrupt too.

Finally, corruption may bring harm to citizens. For example, a dangerous criminal is on the loose. Luckily he is arrested within a short period of time. However, due to corruption, he is acquitted of his crime and released as an 'innocent' man back into society, thus bringing back the risk of him hurting people again.

To fight corruption, leaders of ruling parties need to take certain drastic measures. First, by being as transparent as possible, all information is disseminated to citizens and nothing is left in question. This will leave no room for dishonest officials to conduct corrupt acts.

In addition, governments should adopt the 'zero-tolerance' method. Officials caught being corrupted should be persecuted immediately and thrown heavy sentences to act as a deterrent for other would-be corrupted officials.

These would definitely solve the problem of corruption. Hence, where corruption is rampant, like in China, governments should adopt these approaches to tackling the problem to prevent further harm being brought to their nation.