I think the comparison of Singapore vs Isreal does a great injustice. Singapore is just a small dot in South East Asia who thinks it is the leader of the pack , when it is not . It has a tendacy to 'ride with the wind' , hence ephone labelling Singapore as a modern 'gold digger '.
Please point out where in my sentence did I compare Israel to Singapore, its obviously comparing apples and oranges. And unlike many countries blessed with natural resources (probably like yours) Singapore started as a small trading post overrun with corruption, , Gang clans, migrant coolies, hostile neighbors the list is endless. Considering where we are today we are the leader of the pack in South East Asia, Malaysia comes 2nd in the region and if you want to know the difference wear a nice gold watch walk across the causeway to town called Johor Bahru and the you'll find out.
On paper, it has one of the strongest armed forces around , the relality is that their peopleware is extremely weak . Most of the military personel are poorly trained and not effective .
Unless you have attended the training before how can you comment the quality of it? Besides the force is mainly made of white collared workers who have normal day to day jobs not some gung ho Rambos who run around acting hero. Our government is aware of this and thats why we invest in aircrafts, artillery and other armaments which do not require front line combat. The defense line is mainly to deter any immediate aggressive neighbors in the region and not take on the whole world. Unless thats what you really thought for.
When I was in Thailand last year , there was an incident in the Thai papers whereby 2 Singapore army personel on military training were injured after a shootout with local Thai farmers , apparently it was friendly fire in a night exercise....what a joke !
Wrong, boy you are really a joke. Friendly fire??? During night exercises soldiers are never issues live or blank rounds, the Thai farmer thought he heard intruders and fired a shotgun loaded with pellets and injured two of our soldiers who where navigating thru. It was an accident and you're making it sound like they fired on him or something and botched it up.
While many in the Singapore population are Chinese , , they tend to consider themselves 'a grade higher' than those from China. Consequently China does not have an obligation to protect and defend the state of Singapore .
The relationship between China & Sri Lanka tends to run deeper both economically, and politically .
That was the mentality long before just like how people from HK thought that way before 1997, now if anyone from the Big cities in China came down it would be no different from any Chinese here. I've seen people in Shanghai look down on people from the countryside as well but its human nature, and if you deny that then you're just denying yourself.
To Cross1993 & below_freezing.
Thanks for your well regards Cross but I agree with below_freezing, Singapore is our nation and our responsibility to defend it, the Chinese who decided to move to Asean many decades ago made the decision and understood the consequences. Also unknown to some is that Singapore is a safe heaven to overseas Chinese in the region (Malaysia, Indonesia & Philippines). If anything breaks out in the region Singapore will take care of the Chinese who can make it to her shores hence thats why a lot of them keep their funds in Singapore.
