The following is the text of my Facebook post, in case you're not on the platform or haven't seen it yet. I publish it also as an account of the exchange to be indexed by search engines and people can see for themselves whether the accusations leveled against me are actually true.
It would be good if you first read Bertha's scathing post about me, containing certain logical contradictions. I'm embedding it below and if you can't see it you can simply read it here:
So, Bertha Henson has decided to attack me again, in her usual ignorant style, no doubt attracting much needed social validation from her government-hating followers.
Her diatribe is, as ever, based on little else than a volatile emotional response to her run-ins with me, whenever I pointed out she didn't know basic facts and the only thing she responded to me with were outright insults and blocks.
She has never, not a single time, provided any reply which would contain a fact, a piece of data, any evidence whatsoever. If you don't believe me, just read what she writes on a regular basis.
This is a person who didn't know how to read employment data or how unemployment figures are actually calculated. Someone who tried to lecture SMRT on the procurement process of trains, even after it had been explained in pretty plain English. And someone whose career in the media – what many forgot – dates back to those rather dark days when the quality of journalism in Singapore and, indeed, its impartiality were rightly called into question.
It is pretty rich that someone like this has any following at all, but of course we know the internet is an echo chamber dominated by caterwauling opposition supporters who rarely have anything valuable to say – they just need a place to vent. Ms. Henson provides such a useful corner for them to cry their eyes out about the alleged dictatorship in charge.
However, it also explains why she has been out of a job for quite some time, even though her retirement was (and I think still is) ahead of her. And why her attempt at building an alternative news site failed rather miserably, likely leading to feelings of self-doubt that she now quells seeking validation from Facebook followers.
The many likes she receives must at least help her cope with this rejection by the free market.
Now, please allow me to rebut her accusations about me:
Michael Petraeus is an a-hole.
That's basically what she's saying and I have no doubt thousands more think of me the same. And if you do, then it brings a smile to my face
You can hate me all you want, but what you're really hating is yourself.
Now, I don't know how many countries Ms. Henson has lived in to observe and understand local cultures and local politics up close. I have in seven, for various periods of time over the past 15 years.
One thing I have learned is that in democracies, with the exception of Japan, it doesn't matter how good you have it, there will always be loud whiners with zero qualifications trying to tear down those who pull the nation ahead.
What I have also observed is that it is pointless to try to convince them with evidence – like Ms. Henson herself has exhibited during every single interaction I have had with her.
Whether through intellectual inability or emotional investment in one particular worldview, these people do not respond to facts or figures. They hold fundamentalist beliefs about the world and refuse to have their convictions challenged – and not with someone else's opinion (who cares, everybody has one), but objective proof.
As a result, not only do I have zero respect for these people, but I believe they are a disease, a cancer of humanity. Otherwise healthy cells of mankind who turned rogue against our collective best interest and cannot, by any means, be fixed back again.
They can only be beaten back into submission and marginalisation, while passing readers can examine the facts I present as justification for the treatment.
I have an extremely strong conviction about fundamental, objective justice, that must be extended to people who work day in and day out to make humanity a better place – in Singapore's case, that is the government that all of you owe your extraordinarily abundant lives to.
And nobody without any practical achievement should lecture them about it, unless you are able to use examples of other people who did something better – because you, yourself, are in no position to opine on how things are run, especially if you can barely run your own life.
Have you noticed how all the losers think it's OK for them to bash the government? Or attack the billionaires, entrepreneurs, bankers, or immigrants who came from a long way away and still earned a great living here?
Yeah, I don't feel the need to extend any courtesy to these people frothing about every productive person around them. It's funny, though, how outraged they become when you use the same sort of invectives against them. They can call you pigs or dogs, but if you point out that they're thick whiners dependent on government handouts they get all worked up about it.
Don't like it? Well, it looks like you were the target.
Petraeus picks on the opposition!
My experiences – which not only Ms. Henson but many, many Singaporeans simply can't grasp – also make me extremely wary of Singapore's opposition, which is why I point out the harmful behaviour of the Workers' Party whenever I see it.
Why? Because I have seen such duplicity, manipulation and outright cynical lies bring my own country to the brink of political implosion.
Over the past decade it has devolved from aggressive opposition to the otherwise productive government, into an entrenchment of a group that can only be described as organised crime, and which is today running a presidential candidate who is suspected of being a part of the local mob, a hooligan and an actual pimp (these last two are actual facts).
And this man is inches away from becoming the president of the country I come from, after sustained, unfair, manipulative attacks against the former (and now current) ruling party, which started off as political competition and ended up in bastardisation of the local political and legal systems to the point that the rulings of local courts are de facto illegal and not widely recognised in the European Union.
Singaporeans, including Ms. Henson, appear to have grown so complacent after decades of steady governance by the PAP that they think their country is beyond such catastrophic scenarios.
And we see this ignorance in her parroting the same defensive line of Pritam Singh, who claims President Tharman was once convicted of a crime as well.
Yes, of negligence, after he left some papers out on a desk, not deliberate, conscious breach of oath which, except for outright embezzlement, is the gravest crime any politician can commit.
This qualitative difference appears to vanish when you're hopelessly trying to prop up your warped beliefs. This is the unfairness and dishonesty that winds me up.
You cherry-pick stuff that makes your case, while ignoring everything else. And when I point it out you call me a "cretin" and then block me from your FB page, Ms. Henson.
Minister Faishal's response to my post about Mdm Halimah
Bertha also took issue with my lack of response to Min. Faishal's criticism of my post about Mdm Halimah's hypocrisy in focusing on one particular conflict when there are far greater tragedies around.
She's oh so surprised why I didn't continue the topic, like I often would against the Workers' Party and its members.
Let me tell you why I didn't, so that at least some understand (I don't expect her to).
First of all, Min. Faishal has a legal, democratic mandate that I do not possess.
Let me remind you that neither does the Workers' Party, nor all the demented domestic activists – nor you, for that matter.
And this mandate is very recent. In other words, Singaporeans spoke barely a month ago and the elected Prime Minister delegated the responsibility for Muslim affairs to also elected Prof. Faishal Ibrahim.
I also understand and have always appreciated local social harmony laws, and I'm not going to make his work harder by forcing a tit-for-tat exchange about a conflict that couldn't be fixed even by the interested parties in 80 years time.
I made my point, he made his. People can read and judge for themselves.
What I find interesting is that all of the critics of Singapore government share a common trait - complete disdain for democracy.
People with zero practical experience in anything other than using their own mouths spend years claiming they know better how to run the country, even though Singaporeans have for six decades continued to support the status quo - which, objectively, is one of the best if not the best in the world.
Will you ever learn? Will you ever stop to examine your behaviour and whether it has any basis other than the chip you carry on your shoulder?
Mixing race and religion
Finally, she ends her assault with an accusation that I have repeatedly strayed over the boundaries of race and religion, in the context of local politics.
It's quite funny that Bertha chose to accuse me of that, when I merely pointed to those who did that to win votes in the election.
And if you read Min. Faishal's response to my post, he was careful to point out that the disruptions to social harmony can be local as well.
"We must never allow dismissive or divisive rhetoric — local or foreign — to erode the mutual respect and unity we have worked so hard to build in our multicultural society." (emphasis mine)
Somehow, as is typical of Ms. Henson, she chose to selectively read what she believed made her case, when there was a lot more to it.
I didn't field a candidate who joined politics because of Palestine. I didn't include a foreign nation in my political manifesto. I didn't meet with religious preachers ahead of the General Election.
But I did write about those who did.
And now a "journalist" decided to kill the messenger. It really does show why she's in early retirement, doesn't it?
Bertha Henson has lost all credibility
As if that wasn't enough, a few days earlier she crossed the moral Rubicon and suggested that the government of Singapore to intervene, to prevent a blogger she disagrees with (namely: me) from offering subscriptions to content on his site to willing buyers.
Here we have it – yet another authority on "freedom of expression" has shown her true colours, by openly fantasizing about penalising "wrongthink".
It's such a predictable pattern globally, that it's really quite funny how these people haven't yet noticed it themselves – and how pathetic it makes them look. Though, I guess I'm too generous thinking they could actually understand anything.
It's one thing to disagree with someone, to even curse at them, throw tantrums and all the rest of it. It's something else entirely to want to employ the apparatus of state power to intervene and shut them down or deprive them of ability to exercise their rights in the free market of both ideas and products, just because they dare to have an opinion you disagree with.
If you wanted to know how communism evolved from a demented idea of armchair intellectuals into a totalitarian apparatus of oppression and mass murder, here's your example.
It starts with silencing its critics, standing in the way of righteous progress, lest they manage to achieve public popularity and derail the holy mission of the intellectuals. This simply cannot be allowed!
As this mission keeps failing time and time and time again, more people resist in protest, and more end up silenced, by all means necessary.
These sentiments are not limited to Ms. Henson – it's a global phenomenon, which we have been able to observe for many years now. Mass media and big tech have actively silenced stories damaging to a part of the political spectrum, even if they later turned out to be true.
They suppressed public information on the origins of Covid, they gang up on people who dare to speak up on issues of immigration or crime, often going after them to their employers to break their bread basket, punishing them for something they said.
Cancel culture.
And, lo and behold, even a premature pensioner in Singapore has embraced its toxicity because she can't stand not only that someone like I exists – but that he also has avid readers.
This simply cannot be!
This is doubly painful to her I'm sure, considering that when she tried her hand at building a media outlet she was rejected by the free market. The bloated ego was quickly popped by the economics of the media – a failure that she has clearly never recovered from.
Ms. Henson, if you're reading this (though I doubt that), you have crossed the point of no return. Any bit of credibility that you may have still had to the unbiased eye is now gone. There's no way of excusing or apologising your way out of it.
You can criticise or curse me all you like, I couldn't care less, but to make such a call against someone – anyone – shows how deep your moral rot really is.
You're not an authority on anything in this country anymore – just a hollow entertainer for your followers stuck in an echo chamber, oblivious to how wrong you all are.
