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Comment by mediumdeviation | Hacker News Reader

Roy Ngerng? He wasn't posting 'questions' to his blog - he was posting cringeworthy conspiracy theories that were provably false. Granted I don't think he should have been sued - that just legitimizes him and made him out to be a martyr, but he's most certainly guilty of the crimes he was charged with.

If you don't trust the official media, even independent blogs whom don't typically side with the government don't report on him favorably - eg. http://mothership.sg/2015/07/this-was-how-senior-counsel-dav...

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What's interesting is that the PM actually got involved with it personally, which had the ironic effect of making Roy seem more important than he should be. Can you imagine Obama, for example, getting upset about a college kid's blog? The idea that many in the West had was that Singapore PM just had nothing better to do than go after a kid's website. You have to admit it is rather strange behavior for a PM of a major country.

I can't imagine Obama suing somebody insignificant for defamation but Trump has a track record of doing just that...

I think you're right that politicians in the West generally refrain from doing so not least because they're concerned about looking ridiculous or overbearing. Legally they can though, and more minor politicians often do if the claim is sufficiently incendiary and well publicised.

Here's a British member of the House of Lords suing a politician's wife simply for implying something over Twitter http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lord-mcalpine-lib... And the UK of course also has a fine tradition of MPs losing their libel lawsuits and sometimes even ending up in jail for perjury as a result of the original claims turning out to be largely true.

I agree with you: a comparison between Lee and Trump makes a lot more sense than comparing the overall Singapore government with most other major democracies.

That Lee did this speaks to the general culture of Singapore why one-family-rule there needs to end and more trust in the citizens is needed to handle journalism independently.

'Who', not 'whom'. 'Who' is subjective or nominative case, 'whom' objective; the parallel is 'they' vs. 'them', or 'he' vs 'him'. You wouldn't say 'them don't typically side with the government'.

In general, if you're not familiar and comfortable with the grammatical rules around pronoun case, don't use 'whom' at all, and stick with the more common pronouns whose correct usage you'll have learned by osmosis.

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