He Who Must Not Be Named:

"i have praised your merits as the owner of the largest private gamebook collection in SE Asia to a lot of people"

HAHAHA


Seems Kairen's intel is wrong. Lu Rui En was actually from Commerce. Oh well.


Gah! My third letter to the forum (on the ridiculousness of current copyright laws) didn't get published. I think I shall desist from further exercises in futility.


Shawn Ban quoting someone else (whom I'm not sure wants to be linked):

Something that struck me quite a while ago, but which I've never really gotten around to recording. Anyone who's read 1984 (the novel of the last century, if BBC is to be believed) may recall that one of the propaganda techniques used by the regime in the book was the perpetual state of war. Constant mobilisation against threat fuels nationalism, encourages people to rally behind the leadership, and makes the general population more receptive to restrictions on their liberties.

While actual military campaigns are obviously effective for this purpose, their financial and political expense (those are our boys out there, after all) do place limits on their use. What you really need is something that will bubble merrily just under the surface of the national consciousness for a protracted period of time. What you want is a sustained sense of urgency, an enemy no one can take issue with fighting, a danger that manages to consistently distort society's sense of normality.

War on terrorism, anyone? Or SARS?