Temasek Review Shutdown?

satinGHOST|r!der

Well-Known Member
Legendary 10 Years
I always enjoyed reading that site as it showed and explained alot of insights about the local political situation and unhappiess. I knew that temasek holdings had asked temasek review to change their website name as it was apparently creating confusions.

I wonder know why it has not been up and it seems like it's shutdown. I mean most of those who run that site are all living overseas and stuff like that.

What's your view on this?

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/10/toc-latest-temasek-review-shut-down/

TOC Latest: Temasek Review shut down

Posted by theonlinecitizen on October 12, 2010 166 Comments
Update @ 1445:
A message on TR’s Facebook page now reads:
“TR is in maintenance mode at present due to upgrading of its wordpress platform from 2.8 to 3.0. It will be up and running soon”.
Update 12 October @ 1300:
The error message on TR’s main page remains unchanged since 12 hours ago: “THE TEMASEK REVIEW is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance.
Please try back in 1 hours 18 minutes.”
Posted @ 0030 hrs
Just two days after local tabloid The New Paper (TNP) supposedly exposed the founder of online news website Temasek Review and its’ predecessor, The Wayang Party, the website is no longer viewable by the public. Readers have notified TOC about the unavailability of Temasek Review for a few hours this evening. At the time of this posting, the website is still unavailable.
No explanation for the site’s unavailability have been provided on Temasek Review’s Facebook page.
Photo courtesy of Sammyboyforum

Attempts by TOC to contact Dr Ong at his clinic have so far been unsuccessful.
The TNP article
The TNP article in question was published on Saturday, and claimed that Dr Joseph Ong, a medical doctor practicing as a GP for Healthway Medical Group in Sengkang, is the man behind the Temasek Review.
The TNP report quoted Dr Ong as having admitted to having asked Bangladeshi cleaners to put up posters in May 2009 calling for Member of Parliament Mdm Lee Bee Wah’s resignation as the president of the Singapore Table Tennis Association.
In June that year, the Temasek Review (then known as The Wayang Party Club) paid freelancers to organize a petition drive at the Speaker’s Corner to call for the resignation of Mdm Lee Bee Wah. The website called it the event their “first outreach event organized by this blog and its auxiliaries”.
The TNP report also relied on an unattributed quote to state that Dr Ong “identified himself to police as being the founder of the Wayang Party, and later, Temasek Review”.
Dr Ong was alleged to have been investigated and given a stern warning for putting up the posters, but not for organizing the petition drive.
Temasek Review fights back
The current editors of the Temasek Review are, according to comments by the editorial team, all based overseas. The team is led by Panama based “Molina Han” and four other editors.
Prior to the shut-down, editorial team of Temasek Review vigorously rebutted the TNP report, stating that they have no knowledge of Dr Joseph Ong, and have never worked with Dr Ong.
Just one day before Temasek Review was shut down, the editorial team published an editorial by a self-identified “pioneer contributor” to The Wayang Party called “BK”, denying all knowledge or correspondence with Dr Ong. He wrote:
“I don’t know the doctor in question and never once came across his name in my correspondence with TR and I was writing for TR when it was still Singapore Enquirer and Wayang Party”.
Temasek Review had also been hinting that the TNP article was a sign of a broader crackdown to come. In an article posted on the website just yesterday, a contributor to the Temasek Review called “Atobe” wrote that:
The TNP article about TR yesterday is an ominous sign that reveal the intent is to generate controversy and to ultimately target Temasek Review for being a subversive site – which will lead to the beginning of official efforts towards the demise of TR.”
Temasek Review has also gone on the offensive to query the leak of information about Dr Ong’s anti-Lee Bee Wah postering and his alleged involvement with the website. Two days before the TNP report, Temasek Review published an article stating that “A formal complaint has been lodged with Mr Benny Lim, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs” regarding a complaint by one Mr Ong.
The possible leak of confidential information was also queried by social worker and TOC contributor Mr Ravi Philemon in a letter written to the Singapore Police Force. The Singapore Democratic Party has also raised the issue on their website.
After the story broke, Temasek Review also highlighted the personal phone number of the TNP journalist who wrote the article in question, a move that some interpret as a veiled threat to the mainstream media to stop the smear campaign.
Update @ 0120hrs:
The update on the TR page states that the page is down for scheduled maintennance. We thank our readers for bringing this to our attention.
Until the time of this article’s authourship, the error message for the Temasek Review page read as follows:
Fatal error
: Call to undefined function is_multisite() in /home/wayangpa/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 505
 
Re: Temasek Review Shutdown?

press release

a preliminary agreement has been reached between the editors of temasek review and a non-singaporean businesswoman on the sale of our domain, temasekreview.com on 23rd october 2010.

About a week ago, when our editorial team first heard about the “rumors” of temasek holdings’ interest in our site, we already suspected that temasek holdings would never contact us professionally with their “concerns” and would resort to “underhand” means to “rob” us of our domain name, banking on the fact that our editors will not be willing to reveal ourselves fighting the case. We then immediately contacted our host to discreetly source for a buyer for our domain name, which they did.

This “suspicion” has now been reasonably confirmed by temasek holdings’ constant refusal to contact us directly and the latest “spins” by many local papers.

Although we have been adequately advised by lawyers in panama and the us that we have a strong case before the icann, we are not willing to waste precious time and resources which should be put to good use. We are also not prepared to reveal our identities to contest the “robbing” of our domain name.

We are of the opinion that the domain itself is worthless and temasek review owes it success to not the editorial team or the domain name but to the authors, contributors and readers. Temasek review’s future name, be it named temasek revealed, temasek unrevealed or temasek rejected is irrelevant as long as our readers believes in our dedication and ability to live up to our promise of providing a free and independent platform for singaporeans without a voice.

We are also concerned with the various smear campaign initiated against dr. Joseph ong to “compel” us to surrender our legally registered domain name and the goodwill that comes with it. The fact that dr. Joseph ong is unfortunately caught in the crossfire between temasek holdings and temasek review is also one of the main reasons why we decided to sell off our domain name, we felt that it is unfair to the doctor, a fellow singaporean to have to suffer because of us.

The following are key points agreed upon with our buyer:

1. The purchase price for the domain be agreed at a token sum of us$1.00 and buyer agrees to a further payment for goodwill, the equivalent of 12 months’ dedicated server lease with our present host (paid directly to our host).

2. The buyer agrees to allow us to (unconditionally) continue the use of the domain name for up to 90 days upon the completion of the transfer of the domain name ownership so that we can properly and adequately inform our readers of our new domain name. During the transitioning period of 90 days, the buyer will have no say whatsoever in the running of our site.

3. That both buyer and seller agree to engage the service of our present host to complete the transfer of the domain name ownership, who is also the sponsoring registrar of our domain name. The ownership transfer for the domain is expected to be completed within 7 days.

4. That the identity of both buyer and seller be kept strictly confidential, before and after the sale.

For the record, we have also informed the buyer that there is an extremely high possibility that temasek holdings (or its subsidiaries) may try to “rob” her of her newly acquired domain name and she has assured us that she will defend the “robbing” of the domain name to the best of her ability.

This is also one of the main reasons why we decided to sell her the domain name although we do have other offers, some offering high as us$30,000 for a once-off. (we would like to see temasek holdings argue their case with both parties represented).

We are glad that we can put the issue of site / domain name behind us and move on to concerntrate on the larger and important issues at hand. Temasek review (or whatever it will be called after the sale) will continue to champion the rights of the people at all cost for one and only one reason:

Because we are singaporeans

.

Amanda tan

for temasek review
. .
 
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