“murder is our national sport”

by Chris Hedges

 

Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. We have carried out blood baths on foreign soil and on our own land for generations in the vain quest of a better world. And the worse it gets, the deeper our empire sinks under the weight of its own decay and depravity, the more we kill.

 

There are parts of the nation where the electorate, or at least the white electorate, routinely and knowingly puts murderers into political office. Murder is a sign of strength. Murder is a symbol of resolve. Murder means law and order. Murder keeps us safe. Strap the criminal into the gurney. Plunge the needles into veins. Haul away the corpse. It is our Christian duty. God Bless America! And one of the next on the list to be murdered in Florida—a state that has decided, under its new and cynically named “Timely Justice Act,” that it needs to accelerate its execution rate—is William Van Poyck. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. June 12 at Florida State Prison. He is a writer who has spent years exposing the cruelty of our system of mass incarceration. On June 12, if Gov. Rick Scott has his way, Van Poyck will write no more. And that is exactly how our political class of murderers wants it.

 

“Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the Timely Justice Act in the Florida House of Representatives, said during the debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.”

 

Van Poyck, 58, knows what is coming. He has seen it many times before. He chronicles existence on death row in his blog, posted by his sister, Lisa Van Poyck, at deathrowdiary.blogspot.com, where there is a petition to Gov. Scott asking for a reprieve.

 

“I wasn’t really surprised when they showed up at my cell door with the chains and shackles,” he wrote his sister May 3. “For the last month or so I’ve had a strong premonition that my warrant was about to be signed, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share with you.”

 

“Sis, you know I’m a straight shooter, I’m not into sugar coating things, so I don’t want you to have any illusions about this,” he wrote. “I do not expect any delays or stays. This is it. In 40 days these folks will take me into the room next door and kill me.”

 

“After 40+ years of living in cages I am ready to leave this dead end existence and move on,” he concluded. “I leave with many regrets over the people I have hurt, and those I’ve disappointed, and over a life squandered away. My spirit will fly away hugging all the life lessons learned over 58 years on Schoolhouse Earth and with an implacable determination not to repeat these mistakes the next time around.”

 

Van Poyck, before the signing of his death warrant and his abrupt transfer to a cell next to the execution chamber, was one of the few inside the system to doggedly bear witness to the abuse and murder of prisoners on death row.

 

“Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00pm this evening,” Van Poyck wrote to his sister in 2012. “In accordance with the established execution protocol he was strapped to the gurney and the needles were inserted into each arm about 45 minutes prior to his appointed time. Just before 6:00, however, he received a 45-minute stay which morphed into an almost 3-hour endurance test as he remained on the gurney as the seconds, minutes and then hours slid by at an excruciatingly slow pace, waiting for someone to tell him if hope was at hand, if he would live or die. Just before 9:00 he received his answer, the plungers were depressed, the syringes emptied and he was summarily killed.”

 

“Here on the row we can discern the approximate time of death when we see the old white Cadillac hearse trundle in through the back sally port gate to pick up the body, the same familiar 1960s era hearse I’ve watched for almost 40 years, coming in to retrieve the bodies of murdered prisoners, which used to happen on a regular basis back when I was in open population,” he went on. “I’ve seen a lot of guys, both friends and foes, carted off in that old hearse. Anyway, pause for a moment to imagine being on that gurney for over three hours, the needles in your arms. You’ve already come to terms with your imminent death, you are reconciled with the reality that this is it, this is how you will die, that there will be no reprieve. Then, at the last moment, a cruel trick, you’re given that slim hope, which you instinctively grasp. Some court, somewhere, has given you a temporary stay. You stare at the ceiling while the clock on the wall ticks away. You are totally alone, not a friendly soul in sight, surrounded by grim-faced men who are determined to kill you. Your heart pounds, your body feels electrified and every second seems like an eternity as a Kaleidoscope of wild thoughts crash around franticly in your compressed mind. After 3 hours you are drained, exhausted, terrorized, and then the phone on the wall rings and you’re told it’s time to die. To me this is cruel and unusual punishment by any definition.”

 

Van Poyck was convicted in the death of a corrections officer in 1987, although he insists he did not pull the trigger. But even if he did, it does not justify murder in the name of justice. Do we rape rapists? Do we sexually abuse pedophiles? Do we beat violent offenders? Do we strike hit-and-run drivers with a moving vehicle? And what if Van Poyck is telling the truth? What if he did not kill the corrections guard? He would not be the first inmate on death row to die for a murder he or she did not commit, especially in Florida. The state has sentenced more people to death than any other in recent decades. It has executed 75 since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida in the 1970s. There have been 24 death row inmates in Florida exonerated—one exoneration for every three executions. Not only might we kill the innocent, we have killed the innocent, as sadly illustrated by contemporary DNA tests that have cleared some of those who were put to death.

 

“When I heard from Bill’s lawyer about the warrant I lost it,” Van Poyck’s sister told me as she was driving Sunday from Richmond, Va., where she lives, to Bradford County, Fla., to see her brother. “I was on my lunch break. I broke down sobbing and crying. Gov. Scott signed warrants for prisoners who had committed heinous crimes, people who murdered children or serial killers. I thought Bill was safe for a long time. I still have visions of him walking out of there. And now he is in the death watch cell.”

 

“While he did commit a crime in trying to break a friend out of a prison transport van where his accomplice, Frank Valdes, shot and killed one of the guards, Bill never intended for anyone to get hurt, much less killed,” Lisa said. “I feel that 26 years on death row with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head has been punishment enough for the crime he did commit. I have received so many letters from people saying that his writings, especially his autobiography ‘A Checkered Past,’ have changed their lives. He is not the man he once was. He underwent a profound spiritual conversion. He is a beautiful soul. He deserves [to live].”

 

In “A Checkered Past” Van Poyck describes his troubled boyhood, including the death of his mother from carbon monoxide poisoning when he was a year old. His father, who worked for Eastern Airlines and had lost a leg in World War II, turned the children over to a series of housekeepers, most of whom were neglectful or abusive. By 11 Van Poyck was in a juvenile home, along with Lisa, who was 12, and a brother, Jeffrey, who was 18. By 17 Van Poyck was in prison for an armed robbery. And then in 1987 he and Valdes attempted to free a friend from a prison transport van in downtown West Palm Beach. A corrections guard was fatally shot, apparently by Valdes, who a dozen years later died after eight prison guards beat him in his cell. Van Poyck’s brother, who is ill with lung cancer, has been in prison since 1992 for a series of bank robberies in Southern California.

 

Van Poyck has written two novels, “The Third Pillar of Wisdom” and “Quietus.” One of his short stories, “The Investigation,” will be included in an anthology of prison writing edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

 

“I started working with Bill [Van Poyck] in 2007 in the PEN prison writing program,” said Elea Carey, a short-story author based in San Francisco who was his writing instructor for two years. “There is a sense of isolation in his writing, as if he grew up alone in nature. He defined his experience without anyone around to help him understand it. He often appears as if he was dropped into a foreign land. His sensitivity to others, his compassion, his awareness and his empathy grew with his writing. He moved from his aloneness to grappling with the basics of human relationships.”

 

“People die every day,” Carey said when we spoke by phone. “I lost my dad in January. I am not afraid of death. I don’t think Bill is afraid of death. I am not shocked that Gov. Scott did this. But I want to do everything possible to stop this from happening. We are asleep as a society. We too do not know what it means to be fully human. This asleepness was once part of Bill’s life. He was asleep, in this way, when he carried out his crimes and committed the wrongs he knows he did. But this unconsciousness is not limited to people like Bill—it is part of all who think it is OK to do this kind of harm to other human beings. I want my government to be above murder.”

 

Van Poyck has an eye for detail, a terse, laconic writing style and a deep compassion for those trapped in the system. He explores the daily degradation of prison life, a Stygian world where some 50,000 people are held in solitary confinement in supermax prisons or special detention units and where hopelessness and despair threaten to overwhelm those inside.

 

“Yesterday the prison was locked down all day for the standard ‘mock execution’, the practice run which occurs a week prior to the actual premeditated killing,” he wrote to his sister in February 2012. “For the mock execution they lock down the joint, bring in an array of big wigs, and go through a dry run to make sure the death machine is in working order, everyone on their toes. The big wigs are just voyeurs, here to vicariously kill someone while allowing themselves the bare moral cover of not actually pushing the knife between the ribs. Their minions do the actual dirty deed while they can go home with technically clean hands. These mock executions are as depressing as the real thing, in the sense that it’s dispiriting to watch an entire organization (a prison, with all its constituent parts) so seriously dedicate their time and energies to practice killing a fellow human being, as if this is a good and natural thing to do. It takes some peculiar mental (not to mention moral) gymnastics to justify this to oneself, but we humans have proven ourselves immensely adept at self-delusion and hypocrisy, especially when we bring religion into the equation. We are really, really good at killing others in the name of God. We are a strange species, aren’t we? To those who argue that the death penalty isn’t killing (or murder, which is merely a legal definition) because it is all done ‘according to the law’, I’d remind them that the Nazis did everything they did ‘according to the law’. The Nazis, for all their terrible deeds, were sticklers for following the law; they found their refuge in the law, meticulously following the letter of the law before they enslaved and/or executed their victims. ‘We were just following the law’ is a lame excuse when you are the one writing the laws in the first instance. …”

 

In prisons, he writes, time merges into a long, seamless monotony broken up by periodic and often explosive acts of tragedy and violence—an execution or death, a stabbing with a “shank,” beatings by the guards, mental breakdowns, rape and suicide.

 

“The search team came and tore up my cell last week,” he wrote in January 2012. “It was a surgical strike (they came for me alone) and I was later told that ‘someone’ wrote a snitch kite on me claiming (falsely) I had a weapon in my cell. I’m fairly certain it was someone trying to get a DR (disciplinary report) dismissed by dropping a dime on me on the hope they’d shake me down and find something, any kind of contraband, and the rat would then get credit for it. But I had no contraband so the snitch struck out. If the administration had any integrity they’d write the rat a DR for ‘lying to staff.’ I spent several hours putting my cell back in order; it looked like a hurricane came through, all my property scattered everywhere. This is the kind of bullshit you have to put up with in prison; it’s the nature of the beast. Hell, it happens on the streets, too, though. Informants are master manipulators and the police routinely play their game even though they know the rats often fabricate stories and evidence to their own ends. …”

 

He wrote earlier this year about the rapid decline of another prisoner, Tom, who “just 4 months ago had a hale and hardy soul and “now [is] a mere envelope of cancer-gnawed flesh and bones.” He “was removed from his cell by wheelchair, too weak to offer anything but meager protest, and transferred to the one place he dreaded going to, our notoriously filthy, blood spattered clinic holding cell, consigned to die in pain-soaked isolation. The image of him, barely able to croak a few words, weakly waving goodbye to me, his sunken, lingering eyes reflecting his recognition that he was going to his death, will forever be imprinted on my memory.”

 

“I confess that it is tiring to be surrounded by so much death—the dead and yet-to-be-dead—these past two decades, a struggle not [to] be drenched in negativity, with precious little to mitigate my disappointments,” he wrote. “Each day requires an act of will to wake up and set myself with a purpose, to believe this mortal life is more than just a play of shadows in a shadow box. …”

 

“My old pal Tom died on Friday, Feb 8th at 4:10 pm, alone in the clinic isolation cell at UCI,” he wrote to his sister a little later. “I hate that he died alone, locked in a tiny cell with no property (no radio, TV or anything to occupy his mind) and nobody to converse with, just laying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his final escape. His loved ones, who were able to travel from Texas and North Carolina to visit him for three hours just two days before he passed away wrote and told me that he was very weak and gaunt, could not keep down any food or liquids, but was lucid enough for a meaningful visit, though just barely so. Although I know his death was inevitable and imminent, I’m surprised at how much it has affected me. I’ve seen an awful lot of death during my many years in prison (way too much death, in all its myriad variations), including some friends, but Tom’s has knocked the wind out of me. I still catch myself starting to call over to him when I read something interesting or see something on TV that would pique his interest, and I sometimes swear I hear his voice calling me. A part of me is happy for him because I know he’s finally free, but I can’t lie; I really miss him.”

(source)

 

*******

embarrassing partisanship

 

“People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.

All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.

Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.”

- Terry Goodkind

 

Well-meaning Singaporean MP Zainudin Nordin posts the above on his Facebook page, only to receive Al-Qaeda-style outrage from many illiterate Singaporean Facebookers who may have failed basic English comprehension in their school days. Obsessed with sex, they ripped the portion about gang rape and gang-banged it out of context. The zombies on Yahoo News Singapore limp along with the ovine crowd to rape the text to death.

 

I am embarrassed for my dotty countrymen.

 

It seems that many feign indignation and anger for the sake of it because Nordin belongs to the ruling regime. For once I wonder if having bird-brained populist leaders – think opposition – instead of the academic crème de la crème - think PAP - is a good thing.

 

First, one does not take a sentence or segment out of its literary context and expect to interpret its meaning accurately. There are three paragraphs to the Goodkind quotation. It does not take an Edwin Thumboo to know that the key to understanding the Goodkind words is the penultimate sentence. One interprets the gang rape motif in that light. And the thrust of the entire message is the final sentence. What Goodkind is trying to say is that democracy must relate to individual human rights. Full stop.

 

Second, because of the last two sentences, one realises Goodkind defines democracy in its lexical form. Demos – people and Kratos – power. In other words, the “rule of the people”. Mob rule. It is fallacious to define terms that way as meanings of words are known through their contemporary usage in society and culture as well as the fields of study in which they might be the jargon. In this case one has to define and explain democracy in the context of political philosophy. Democracy has many variations, and even in its most liberal strand it is not simplistically the rule of the masses.

 

Third, it is irrational to crucify Goodkind for using the word democracy fallaciously. He uses it that way to emphasise and elucidate a point. And Goodkind’s point is individual freedom, individual rights. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what the political opposition in Singapore wants? To have MP Nordin to quote Goodkind is to interpret his sympathies and good intentions on the matter.

 

Fourth and last, it is therefore embarrassingly and shamefully lowbrow and pea-brained for the Facebooking and Yahoo News-ing Singaporeans to shout blasphemy over this one quotation which Nordin happens to post.

 

Please. This sort of partisan fanaticism does no good to the cause of championing human and civil rights in Singapore. It reminds me so much of Yankee politics.

 

Duh.

 

*******

 

 

 

lowbrow fare from taiwan

 

 

Pauline Lan Xin Mei

 

Without mentioning the Sinophone culture, bimbotic vanimal Pauline Lan is one reason among many I spurn Taiwanese television. I would have left Lan and her rabble of vainpots to their neanderthal mumblings about skin-shallow bourgeois piffle if not for her less-than-tasteful pontifications about the Singaporean woman (and man).

 

Pauline Lan in Singapore

 

According to AsiaOne Showbiz, Lan was in Singapore some two weeks ago to promote its version of her Taiwanese “variety” programme on physical beauty, Lady First.

 

Lady First Singapore

 

Its riotous popularity speaks a lot about Taiwanese women and their preoccupations. I do not wish to reiterate this cerebral nightmare of a sexist culture which baptises women deeper into the bovine dung of Barbie objectification.

 

Lan rates the Singaporean woman a three out of ten for dress sense. Her pea brain can’t seem to think beyond the skin-shallow surface. Why aren’t women here making an effort to look pretty? Why no make-up? Why slippers? It is not the way to live if a woman cannot accept herself and is so insecure about her face she has to use fake eyelashes to “enlarge” her eyes and Nippon-paint her face before she exits her house every single time. It is not the way to live if she cannot free herself from the self-imposed fear of sinning against the imaginary fashion gods of TV world.

 

Really. Must women look pretty all the time? Must men dress well every time? Even during brief trips to the pasar malam? Why not flip flops? It is not an excuse Singapore has a very humid and temperamental weather. Sartorial trends are just not our priority.

 

 

Vainpots galore

 

My common tee-shirt-and-jeans sense tells me if the face I see everyday is a mask, fraudulent and void of the real and the genuine, I may suffer a heart attack when I finally witness the ogre beneath the layers of lies and deception. It is not healthy for the relationship. It is also schizophrenic for the woman.

 

I gaze and ogle at Darling everyday. Without the make-up and the fireworks. I enjoy the organic eroticism of inhaling her non-perfumed mustiness and caressing the tenderness of the body which has gifted me three lovely children. She looks radiant au naturale. Why does a family outing to the mall or the cinema require Darling to plaster her face? Why does she have to look bimbotic (see above image), if not as a middle-class hooker, every time we stroll along Orchard Road?

 

The fact is, when Darling does Barbie herself, for some bourgeois Ritz event, it becomes a visual bonus, an unexpected delight. Our sartorial sense fit the occasion, the situation. We do not feel good about ourselves because we “look good” to others. I sure feel good about myself without cosplaying James Bond or some K-pop pussy. I am myself. I don’t pretend to be another. I can hold my own with both the hawker and the statesman, the worker and the CEO. With a tee and bermudas, mind you.

 

And my favourite pair of sandals.

 

*******

internet prudes

 

Unless there are Internet-savvy, smartphone-toting and Stomp-loving baby boomers lurking at every corner in Singapore, I am surprised at how Wahhabi-an some of our young can be. They finger-shake at every candid camera opportunity, stomp their voyeuristic findings and pat themselves on the back at a religious-policing job well done.

 

Some even wish for a Victorian prohibition such as this ridiculous one in Malaysia:

 

(source)

Young and religious Singaporean virgins I assume they must be, as no mentally and sexually healthy adult will see anything morally awry with these public displays of affection (PDAs, as they are affectionately called).

 

(source)

 

Jack (and his friends) had nothing better to occupy their time with than to monkey around and poke their moralising noses at two loving couples. What “proper upbringing” is Jack whining about? What is so wrong about a couple embracing each other on the train? I will be surprised if Jack himself has a girlfriend, let alone a wife.

 

(source)

 

Priyakumari thinks it is inappropriate for adults to kiss each other on a bus. Her reason? Children. She claims the commuters had to endure thirty minutes of this loving scene while I suspect it is only her. I wish Darling and I are as hungry for each other as this possibly new couple.

 

 (source)

 

Two hormonal teenagers minding their own business at a bus stop. More like kids’ play but Elly has the prudish cheek to photograph them for the whole world to see. She thinks her 10-year-old boy can somehow catch the horny virus just by looking.

 

(source)

 

The mother behind the couple doesn’t appear to mind (I can’t see her expression, so…) but Gopal apparently is. Hogging the traffic light button or not, Gopal doesn’t realise the pedestrians on the other side of the road are able to press the button too. Gee.

 

(source)

 

Kiasukiasigegerl must be a partner-less virgin to view a romantic kissing scene like the above as “obscene”. While Darling and I had never kissed for more than a minute in a public area, it was due more to shyness than some misguided sense of dignity. Besides, it can be a bit uncomfortable getting an erection in MacDonald’s.

 

(source)

 

I cannot believe anyone can have a problem with a young couple in lover’s embrace on a pavement. The bloke is probably serving his national service and about to book in to his camp and his girlfriend will miss him for one more week. Or one of them about to go overseas for a short study trip or a family holiday. Etc.

 

(source)

 

An unnamed stomper was disgusted by this couple catching an occasional kiss on the train. The self-righteous prick snorted about not being role models for the next generation. For love’s sake…

 

These Singaporeans are absurd. What is morally at stake when a couple decides to hug each other or catch a kiss on public transport? First, their actions harm no one else. The more mature Singaporeans don’t seem to mind, let alone stare a second time, unless the girl looks like Megan Fox. Second, they do not break any local obscenity laws. Are they tearing each other’s clothes off? No. Are they grinding and humping? No. Are they groping each other’s genitalia? No. Third, the films young children are exposed to these days are already rife with non-sexual hugging and kissing. Think of the Spiderman and Transformers trilogies. Think of the numerous suggestive sex-related scenes in our local chinese-language soap operas. Or the English-language Point of Entry. There are parents who are addicted to such piffle they do not care if their young ones are around.

 

The prohibition of PDAs as those expressed in Singapore is irrational. One cannot defend it by appealing to either utilitarian or deontological ethics. One cannot defend it by appealing to some warped sense of human decency. The only appeal I can think of is monotheistic religion and our local “Asian” patriarchal culture. Times have changed. If you still think your socialising teenage daughter is a virgin, you’re either self-deluded or she is lying. It doesn’t help condemning the younger generation for their perceived “sexual promiscuity”. It doesn’t help to be a puritanical parent. And it doesn’t help to censor any hint of sex from your children’s lives. It makes things worse.

 

Besides, I feel nostalgic every time I see two sweet young things have a go at each other. It reminds me how difficult it was for Darling and I to keep our hands to ourselves when we were twenty-somes and all hot and horny. We didn’t just want to hold hands. We wanted to do things to each other. It was frustrating when I could get an erection just by sitting next to Darling on the bus.

 

A relationship evolves and progresses. A marriage matures. It cannot be honeymoon every day. But we can still be hugs and kisses and cheeks and giggles after the children leave the nest.

 

If that is not a good life, I don’t know what is.

 

*******

 

some singapore may day protest placards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*******

“UN human rights council may act against lgbt discrimination”

by Heather Collister

 

While supporters celebrated France becoming the 14th country to legislate for marriage equality, across the world lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people continue to struggle against violence and discrimination.

 

Just days before the passage of the historic French law, a gay couple were badly beaten in Paris, just one of many homophobic attacks apparently triggered by the bill.

 

Around the same time, 34 students in Ghana were expelled from school on suspicion of being lesbian. Instead of condemning the decision, a mainstream newspaper condemned the students as “bestial and detestable.” Meanwhile in Malaysia, a government sponsored, anti-gay musical aims to “warn young people of the perils” of homosexuality, giving rise to fears of further hatred and harassment among the already persecuted LGBT community.

 

Seventy-six countries continue to criminalise same-sex relations. The Singapore High Court recently upheld an anti-homosexuality law, while the president of Senegal has declared homosexuality to be incompatible with the country’s cultural values.

 

Against this continuing violence and discrimination, states will gather here in Geneva next month for the 23rd session of the UN’s Human Rights Council, the world’s most important human rights body. High on the Council’s agenda is how to respond to violence and discrimination against LGBT people.

 

While many celebrate in France, New Zealand and Uruguay, at the international level marriage equality is far off the agenda. Human rights advocates are pressing a modest agenda that calls for condemnation of homophobic harassment and violence and a prohibition against unfair discrimination.

 

Yet even these modest asks are met with resistance from some Eastern European, African and Islamic states. Russia, for example, continues to insist that there is no foundation in international law for “controversial concepts” such as non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

Given the international politics around this issue, the champion of LGBT rights at the UN has emerged from a perhaps surprising quarter. It was South Africa that led an historic 2011 resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity. However, while South Africa’s progressive domestic policies place it in the vanguard of states on LGBT rights, internationally South Africa’s leadership came at the price of isolating itself from the African group. This is no small thing in a system where bloc politics still by and large prevail.

 

The Council’s 2011 resolution expresses “grave concern” about violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a statement that should be entirely uncontroversial. However, 19 of the 47 members of the Council — almost all African or members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — voted against the text.

 

Similarly, a UN debate held last year on violence and discrimination against LGBT people was boycotted by Islamic states. It is profoundly disappointing that a group of states that stand so strongly against racial and religious discrimination are not prepared to take a principled stand in support of equality for all.

 

South Africa has attempted to steer a path through this thorny political situation and, as an African state, perhaps stands a better chance of success than would a more powerful but possibly more divisive ally such as the US. Now, two years on from the original ground breaking resolution, the Council must act to ensure that issues of sexual orientation and gender identity remain firmly on the international community’s agenda.

 

The most far-reaching option among the possible courses of action for the Council is the appointment of an independent expert or group to monitor and report on instances of homophobic violence and discrimination. The Council has 48 such mechanisms, with briefs to monitor and report on a range of serious country situations and thematic issues. However, on sensitive issues, the creation of these mechanisms requires the expenditure of considerable political capital.

 

Despite the hurdles to establishing such a mechanism, international momentum is gathering. At an historic conference in Oslo earlier this month, 200 delegates from 84 countries heard calls from High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the UN to systematize its response.

 

Sending a signal that it too is ready to consider this option, South Africa, which co-chaired the conference with Norway, and who will again lead the Council’s response at the coming session, endorsed the call in a final statement.

 

The creation of a mechanism charged with devoting attention to LGBT issues would be ground breaking, bringing systemic attention to an issue that has long struggled to find its rightful place on the international agenda.

 

This year, the political composition of the Council is more favourable than ever before to LGBT rights. It is critical that States seize this opportunity to move the UN response past debating whether LGBT rights are human rights, and on to substantive discussion of the violations and discrimination that individuals face.

 

Making her own appeal to the UN, Ms Pillay said LGBT persons “Are looking to the UN for protection. They expect us to live up to our ideals of equal rights for all, no distinctions, no exceptions. We must not betray them.” It is now down to Council members to decide.

 

Dr. Heather Collister is responsible for the LGBT rights program of the International Service for Human Rights in Geneva.

(source)

 

*******

tasteless and mindless

 

Two days ago, four topless women from the radical women’s rights group Femen entered a university in Brussels, Belgium and interrupted a debate on blasphemy by baptising the Belgian catholic archbishop Andre-Josef Leonard with bottles of water. They were protesting against the archbishop’s views on homosexuality.

 

 

 

More like an orgiastic squirting frenzy.

 

 

 

Madness.

 

 

Tasteless.

 

 

 

I disagree with the old man’s views. But I detest the women’s actions even more.

 

 

 

One does not protest against contrary views by attacking elderly men. It may be H2O this time. It can be hydrochloric acid the next.

 

 

 

I cannot and do not respect bad and stupid ideas. I am all for mocking and ridiculing bigoted views and opinions. But disrespecting the individual by harassing him or her physically, violent or not, is uncalled for. This is too much.

 

 

Thank goodness I am not the archbishop. I will press charges and call for their imprisonment. It is one thing to speak out in public. It is one thing to interrupt a lecture or debate to protest verbally or visually. But it is a different level all together to harass and physically touch the person(s) being protested against.

 

For once I support the Church. It did not crucify the women zealots.

 

*******

 

 

anti-muslim?

 

A Hardware Zone Forum member highlighted a so-called racist and anti-muslim Facebook post by a Filipino lady:

 

(source)

 

Let’s amplify the alleged anti-muslim comment:

 

“FT’s could help reduce the number of muslims in Singapore.”

 

I cannot see how the above statement is anything but a one-time suggestion, albeit without elaboration, that foreign talents in Singapore could help reduce the number of muslims. Maribelle Sibungcal did not cuss or swear. She did not call muslims derogatory names. She did not loud-hail for a boycott on muslim businesses or products. She did not suggest killing muslims.

 

Racist? There is no mention of the Malay community. Although the majority of Singaporean Malays are muslim, not every single one of them is. I know of several Malay christians. Many of them are ostracised and discriminated against by their muslim kin and friends. Enough said.

 

Religion and race are two different categories. One is a choice, the other isn’t. Popular ignorance may equate the Middle Eastern ethnicities with Islam, but there are numerous Arabs and Middle Easterners who subscribe to other religions and non-religions like Christianity and Atheism respectively.

 

Still, an insecure and touchy individual apparently lodged a police report:

 

(source)

 

It depresses me to see how far the autocracy of the ruling party has infected our society and culture. When society self-censors and citizens secret-police one another, totalitarianism takes on a new conniving mask. In this case, the self-anointed whistle-blower of righteousness is mistaken.

 

The context of Ms Sibungcal’s Facebook post was the recent Boston Marathon bombings. The message was vigilance amid an influx of foreigners. She mentioned muslims as it was a logical extension of the conversation. The culprits in the Boston case were Internet-radicalised Chechen muslims. She is not suggesting all muslims in Singapore, or for that matter the world, are terrorists or murderers. One needs some imagination to read “anti-muslim” into her statement.

 

The Filipino lady is NOT racist.

 

But Singaporean comments like these are:

 

“Dog Vietnamese. Go home la.”

 

“…cheated by many of these third world trash from India, China, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam…”

 

“…you are from China, not me! I am a 100% pure Singaporean. If you think you are from China, plese go to China eat shit and die.”

(source)

 

There are countless more similar comments on Yahoo News Singapore. Any decent human being is appalled by these cruel and xenophobic remarks. Foreigners in Singapore may behave contrary to our society’s norms and habits. They may be pushy, bossy and nasty. But these character traits have nothing to do with race or nationality. There are many bourgeois Singaporeans who behave the same way. They make life hell for service industry personnel. They expect their domestic workers to serve them like emperors because they pay them. They fiddle on iPads and iPhones in crowded areas, oblivious to the people they unintentionally bump into. Many do not even apologise. They delay the people queuing behind because they are busy watching South Korean piffle and not realising it is their turn at the counter. They gobble burgers and sandwiches on the buses and trains despite our laws prohibiting them to do so. And they become blind when crumbs drop on the ground.

 

Our hooligans beat up taxicab drivers for insisting they pay their fare. Our thugs smoke cigarettes in non-smoking public areas and ignore fellow citizens’ consternation. Our rogue contractors bully and abuse the Bangladeshi workers.

 

Come on. If anything, we should report these ugly Singaporeans to the police. If anything, they should get lost and ship out.

 

Unlike Maribelle Sibungcal who is unjustly picked on by some insecure young punk.

*******

the devil which is AGC

 

Whatever crumb of hope I have in Singapore’s legal system, and for that matter the state of human and civil rights in this country, is swept away by the arrest of local cartoonist Leslie Chew last Friday morning. The Singapore Police Force thought Chew was being seditious.

 

Singapore Cartoonist arrested for Alleged Sedition

 

These are the two cartoon strips which the adolescent Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) found offensive:

 

(source)

 

(source)

 

Unlike mature governments in the U.S. and Western Europe, our prepubescent ruling class behaves like a thug, bullying Singaporeans who publicly criticise them into silence. Last December, it tried to rough-handle Chew into removing the first cartoon from and issuing an apology on his Facebook page. The AGC threatened to sue. Chew stood his ground. It is fiction, it is satire, for Jupiter’s sake.

 

The recent arrest was due to the second cartoon, which the Singapore Police Force interpreted as being racially insensitive. Chew stood his ground. His conscience is clear. Fortunately for Chew, he posted the SGD$10,000 bail and got his arse out. But it was after the autocracy robbed him of his mobile phone, computer and hard drive. The hooligans confiscated his passport too.

 

Are the authorities illiterate? Can’t they accept satire and jest when they see one? It is laughable. Singapore is no first world country. Its democracy is a mockery, a plaything, a farce.

 

This incident is the final straw that breaks my camel’s back. I have enough of this Orwellian abomination.

 

Fuck you, PAP.

 

*******

childish AGC

 

Yawn.

 

Why am I not surprised? Why am I not inflamed with righteous anger at the childish tit-for-tat actions of the Attorney-General’s Chambers?

 

Singapore’s State Prosecution demands Apology for Facebook Comments

Will shutting out criticism create public confidence and trust?

Singapore Judiciary demands apology from Web backlash

 

Sigh. These PAP-smeared bourgeois institutions are just tottering after their old man. The English-speaking Cambridge-educated Ah Seng of Ah Sengs, Harry Lee. Harry Lee Kuan Yew.

 

That once-upon-a-time swagger is now but a molluscan shuffle. Like the late Thatcher, his legacy will be mixed. And when the time comes for the crumpled Hakkan autocrat to decompose and ash back to nature, the public won’t be reading about that in our PAP puppet press. He will have his glorious end.

 

He is eighty-nine, you know.

 

For years Harry’s scrotum-massaging cronies in the People’s Action Party (PAP) have been imitating his holy example. One by one they bully any dissenting citizen into rubbish-binning and withdrawing their criticisms with threats of libel. Thugs. Louts. Hooligans. Primary school back-alley bullies.

 

Times have changed. Singapore has changed. The bourgeoisie can no longer expect the common Singaporean to kowtow to them like an army recruit to a yapping sergeant or insecure schoolboy officer. Soldiers don’t think. Civilians do. And my comrades, our generation, will not respect and will not trust the ruling class that bullies.

 

I am tapping my fingers.

 

*******

MPs first class, citizens second class

 

 

(source)

 

Citizen Andy Zhu photographed the above images at a Multi-Storey Car park at Block 685 of Woodlands Drive 73. The parking lot, officially for the residents of the area, was cordoned off until Mr Vikram Nair, the MP of Sembawang GRC, arrived.

 

Another example of Confucian privilege for the governmental elite.

 

Bah!

 

*******

singapore: LGBT hell

 

 

Justice Quentin Loh yields to Singapore’s prudish public mores when he rules that a law introduced by the British in 1938 which criminalises homosexual activity between men still stands.

 

High Court upholds anti-gay sex law, gay couple’s appeal rejected

 

The colonial statute reads:

 

“Any male person, who in public or private, commits or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.”

 

The prose is clunky and tortuous. I am not surprised the statute based itself on the wording of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 of the United Kingdom.

 

One can read Justice Quentin Loh’s written judgement here.

 

Although the Singapore authorities do not actively crush out the LGBT community like cockroaches, think of Malaysia, think of Iran, Saudi Arabia, etcetera; to allow 377A to stand is to preach a clear message to the 21st century world. If you are gay, Singapore does not welcome you. If you are lesbian, Singapore tolerates you. If you are transgender, kiss your arse goodbye.

 

Singapore appears to be a society garbaged with religious and socially conservative hate-mongers and bigots who masturbate to outdated patterns of thinking. Many erroneously think marriage is defined only as one man plus one woman equal children when no forms of state-sanctioned contract existed in the early foundations of human history. Cave man might have fucked cave woman  but monogamy? Marital fidelity? Come on. Values like marital fidelity did not exist then. Right up to the 19th century, marriage acts were acts of economic and social convenience. Woman love man? No. Man love woman? Never.

 

Homogenital activity is not a Western invention. It existed since homo sapiens learnt to enjoy copulation. Ancient China. Persia. Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome. Certain ancient Southeast Asian communities. In Europe, Richard the Lion-Hearted’s romance with Philip the King of France was well known, even though he continued bedding other women. Monks and nuns wrote love letters and poetry to one another. Laws criminalising homosexual acts were almost non-existent in pre-crusading Europe. Homogenital play also exists in the non-human animal kingdom. Go ask the biologists and naturalists. Ask David Attenborough.

 

Is the “purpose” of marriage procreation? More like companionship. More like mutual love. If the State outlaws same-sex marriage on the fact that these couplings cannot produce offspring, then Big Brother should rule out infertile different-sex couplings too. There is no such thing as a “purpose” and “design” for everything. Marriage and the nuclear family are social constructions. They are not immutable and eternal entities.

 

And for the last time, homosexuality is NOT a choice. One does not choose to be LGBT like one chooses to attend City Harvest Church or New Creation Church or for that matter none of these money-hoarding rackets. Did Charles O. Howard choose to be gay so he could be thrown into the sea and drowned by thugs? Did Matthew Shepard choose to be gay for him to be tortured and murdered by anti-gay Christian bullies? Did Michael Sandy choose to be gay so that he could be run down by a car driven by anti-gay hooligans? Do LGBT Singaporeans choose to be the way they are only to be discriminated against and needlessly demonised? Do LGBT Ugandans choose to be the way they are so that they can be hunt down by the Ugandan Christian bigots and the predominantly Christian government like wild animals?

 

There is a lot of research already done on homosexuality and the conclusion seems clear. People do not choose their sexual orientation. They may be sexually abused by a member of the same sex when they were young. They may have felt unloved by their fathers when they were young. They may have imbibed mixed sexual identity signals when young. They may have several older brothers. They may have several older sisters. Whatever the scenario, whatever the hypothesis, may it be epigenetic, prenatal, biological or environmental, they do not choose to be the way they are. That is why the majority of gay “conversions” fail.

 

It is cruel to forbid the sexual expression of the LGBT community when they do not harm anyone. Laws are meant to protect and not alienate people. The argument that legalising homosexual activity may lead to acceptance of paedophilia and polygamy and all sorts of deviance is ridiculous. Having sex with prepubescent children harms them psychologically and emotionally. Polygamy rolls down the slippery slope of incest, sexual and psychological abuse. Zoophilia is still a debatable issue although I do not see why it is wrong if the act does not harm the animal and if precautions are taken to prevent animal-to-human transmission of disease. Consenting same-sex adults who make love to each other in private harms no one. What is it to Singaporeans that two men happen to enjoy jerking off together? We may be disgusted – as gays will too at the sight of breasts or erect clitorises – but it is none of our business.

 

I cannot understand how legalising homosexual activity will erode Singapore’s “moral values”. Heterosexual people will still be fucking other heterosexual people and if they wish, get married as well. They will not change their sexual orientation because Singapore chooses to treat the LGBT as equal. Besides, what moral values are Singaporeans talking about? The Singaporeans I see and know still avoid donating even peanuts on flag days. The Singaporeans I see and know still jostle and knuckle selfishly for seats on the bus or train during rush-hour, ignoring the pregnant, the elderly and children. The Singaporeans I see and know still put the blame on foreigners for their unemployment woes when they themselves do not wish to take on the jobs the foreigners take. The Singaporeans I see and know still tailgate, horn at and irritate one another on the roads. The Singaporeans I see and know still make life difficult for service industry providers. The Singaporeans I see and know still mishandle public funds for their selfish ends. The heterosexual Singaporeans I see and know still have extramarital sex, divorce one another, molest and rape women and children.

 

Tsk, tsk. Without same-sex marriage, already Singapore has relatively high divorce rates. Without legalising homosexuality, the family unit is already “breaking down”. Please stop accusing the LGBT community for being promiscuous and debauched.

 

For honesty’s sake, what “moral values” are Singaporeans talking about when they piss at their fellow LGBT Singaporeans? There is this ancient story about Jesus scribbling on the sand while a self-righteous mob attempted to stone a woman whom they caught in the act of adultery (one wonders how they manage to catch her in the act – peeping toms and voyeurs they must be). Jesus looked up and calmly request for anyone who has no sin to cast the first stone. No one did.

 

If the comments on Yahoo News Singapore are anything to go by, Singaporeans must be one cruel and vicious rabble of hooligans and thugs. Here are some of the comments:

 

“Now that it is ruled that sexual intercourse between 2 men is illegal (not only immoral) isn’t it proper they should be charged and arrested and put in jail?”

- Richard

 

“Its wont happened in singapore. i be the first one to say NO…SICK PEOPLE PLS GO UNITED STATES IF U SICK PEOPLE WANT it…”

- Ric

 

“Sodomy is wrong! All you sodomite and homosexual, the law had not penalised any of your kind. You are just pushing the limit.”

- Boggeh

 

“What kind of Lawyer is that Choo Zheng Xi? Does he not have any moral? Or maybe he only care about money? This is the kind of lawyers that I look down on. No sense of justice and moral. Just be careful of tribulation… will his kid be straight?…”

- Janeseeit

 

“Repealing Section 377 is like allowing terrorist to operate freely in Singapore. they will destroy the moral fabric , pollute the mind of the young and increase HIV infection. Homosexuality is a disease that need proper medical research to cure. This is not natural as some people think. Only Lady Boys are true because they are born as such. Others re due to their polluted values and mind set. We should not encourage such lifestyle. This are rotten western garbage. look at US and Europe , they are all sliding towards abyss. isn’t that enough?”

- BB See

 

“Knowing that it is something which is not right yet you FORCE the society to accept through legal actions or SANCTIONS is a way and a act of TERRORISM!!!

TERRORISM can be excercise in many forms not just physical attacks or bring harm to others but bringing harm to others by forms of THREATS is TERRORISM!”

- Crusade

 

“they never read sodom & gomorrah”

- Akhirat

 

“cut away their kkj, see they will change or not…I myself, believe gay should be jailed. f u gay.”

- Sanctuary

 

“There are only 2 Genders in this world. 1. Man 2. Woman.
Our body are living proof of GOD existence. The ability to recreate, regenerates, growth cells & reproductivity.
Man has his own reproductivity system so does woman, the shapes & it’s purpose.

Only sick men & women come out with 3rd gender which is Gender X.
The high court in Singapore not only lends out great help to the society but also does what pleases in GOD’s eye.

Everything is in Lord’s almighty creation is only foul humans came out with the Gender X and sickening relationship.
YOU are not born this way but YOU chose to!!!!!!”

- Crusade

 

“Since this couple has openly confessed that they are criminal, I urge the police to act with warrant of arrest and bring conviction in a court of law. That will teach these slef-made heroes a lesson.”

- Joseph

 

“thank God for the ruling. gays belong only within their own imagination… sick people… get help!”

- John, Mohd

 

“Gays are the most disgusting beings on earth. When it comes to holes, women still better – they have 3 holes.”

- Ritchie Gan

 

“Do not forget the lessons from the destruction of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Vice and Homosexualism are some of the prime reasons for their punishment.”

- Simon B

 

“After the judgement was read, these two disgusting homosexuals Gary Lim and kenneth Chee went back home for suk, play back side and whatever these animals do. PCC each other. PUKE”

- Templar

 

“Good move, banned all this freaks… they can do all funny things at home, why wanna make it legalized?”

- Dolphin Tan

 

“If the gays are right, then God must have done wrong when he wiped out the gays in Sodom & Gomorrah. Who are gays in God’s eyes? Read Genesis 18-19 and Romans 1:24-32. Rubbish or repent?”

- Small

 

“What will they ask for next? That they be allowed to marry their favourite pet dog/horse or panda as kindness to animals??”

- Aristotle

 

One can read the rest of the piffle here.

 

I really hope the commentators are not mature adults but teenagers and their hormone-laced minds. Give them time and a good liberal arts education they will soon change their minds. I too was once an anti-LGBT bigot. I have since changed my mind on the subject after reading a significant number of research papers and studies on the issue. As for the religious arguments, they are rubbish. One does not interpret the bible at face value. I do not wish to repeat my arguments about biblical interpretation and theology. Why am I suspecting it is a waste of time reasoning with Singaporeans like the Yahoo News commentators? These folks do not listen to philosophical reasoning, logic and science. They seem to trust ancient texts more than contemporary knowledge.

 

We may lose this one battle. But the war continues. Like racism and slavery, the homosexuality issue will one day be won. Humanism, reason and science will triumph.

 

*******

people first?

 

 

 

 

 

(source)

 

Meritocracy breeds elitism. In a country like Singapore which cheer-leads its brand of militaristic chain-of-command top-down approach, the bourgeoisie gets away with everything. The above image belongs to block 511 in Bishan last Sunday, the 7th of April. The time was 0930 to 1130 hours and grassroots volunteers were chasing residents away from tables reserved for an MP who would be coming for a visit.

 

In Singapore, the cronies of the People’s Action Party (PAP) have very privileged lives. They receive VIP treatment everywhere they go. They get the best seats and the best places. They do not need to wait long hours at the Accident and Emergency (it is not a surprise they claim our hospitals are very efficient). They do not live in public housing. They do not use public transport (but are dissuading citizens from owning cars).

 

And they got the cheek to claim they know the problems of the people. They know nothing at all.

 

*******

“margaret thatcher: we disliked her and we loved it”

by Ian Mcewan

 

“Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!” That chanted demand of the left has been fully and finally met. At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence – a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. “Maggie Thatcher” – two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain’s postwar welfare state. For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. We liked disliking her. She forced us to decide what was truly important.

 

In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s programme was a suspicion that the grocer’s daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society.

 

But if today’s Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow’s TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. Your local electricity “board” could be a very unfriendly place. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of “privatisation” and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted.

 

We have paid for that transformation with a world that is harder-edged, more competitive, and certainly more intently aware of the lure of cash. We might now be taking stock, post credit crunch, of our losses and gains since the 1986 deregulation of the City, but it is doubtful that we will ever undo her legacy.

 

It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher’s time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. Governments can rarely claim to have stimulated the arts but Thatcher, always rather impatient with the examined life, drew writers on to new ground. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias.

 

She mesmerised us. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. Asked to report on the “state of things” in our country, we could barely see past her. Eventually, the Italian contingent, largely existential or postmodern, rose up against us. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers.

 

Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. Take the larger view. Get over her! They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was – so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. Perhaps we suspected that reality had created a character beyond our creative reach.

 

Not all writers were against her. Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him – “Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.” Accounts vary. She may have got it slightly wrong. Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched.

 

We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. But the choice captures her perfectly. For a start, she had a superb memory for a brief, and she would have had no problem memorising quickly any number of lines. Larkin’s evoked the treacherous mind (of an adversary, of a cabinet colleague) helplessly exposed to her steely regard. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark’s diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination.

 

When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. She was right, he was wrong. In front of his journalist colleagues he was told to stand right in front of her so that she could hit him lightly with her order papers. Over the years, and through much re-telling, the story had it that Thatcher told Hitchens to bend over, and that she spanked him with her order papers.

 

The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. From the invention of the term “sado-monetarism” through to the way her powerful ministers seemed to swoon before her, and the constant negative reiteration by her critics of her femininity, or lack of it, she exerted a glacial hold over the (male) nation’s masochistic imagination. This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed.

 

Meryl Streep’s depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. The virtual state funeral will rehearse again our extravagant fixations. Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground.

(source)

 

*******

evangelical christian professor wants to make abortion laws in singapore stricter

 

Legislation should be properly justified in a democracy. If the reasons to back a law are no longer valid, or the social context has changed, a review of the law is in order to see if new reasons support the law as it stands, or if the law should be amended. I argue that our abortion laws should be thoroughly reviewed in Parliament.

The reasons for liberalisation decades ago had included the population explosion, which is irrelevant today. Then there was the eugenic argument, cited in 1969, to rebut groups that had argued for the sanctity of the unborn: They were told to witness for themselves the care of “mental defectives” at Woodbridge Hospital. The then-Minister of Health said “it (was) an acknowledged social evil to countenance the breeding of defectives in society”.

Another justification for legalising abortion in the past was the harm that might result from backstreet abortions, to which pregnant women would resort if no legal means of abortion were available.

Today, this fear is unfounded. In our social context today, which is vastly different, stricter abortion laws are more likely to lead people to be circumspect about unprotected sex, than to drive them to backstreet abortionists.

In the ’70s when liberal abortion laws were passed, people had to be educated about family planning and had no easy access to common contraceptive methods used today. Where did they have to go to obtain contraception? Did they have anonymity of access?

Today, some methods of contraception are widely available, with even a pharmacy in a university campus making the news recently for selling condoms. Anybody walking up to the cash registers of convenience stores in petrol kiosks and supermarkets can purchase them without hassle.

Moreover, whereas in the past, some might not have had easy access to information about methods of contraception, such information is now readily available on the Internet.

- Tan Seow Hon (source)

 

Tan Seow Hon

 

Tan Seow Hon is an associate law professor at Singapore Management University (SMU). She is also an evangelical christian. Although she marshals her arguments without resorting to antiquated fiction - the bible is fiction – they are somewhat dodgy. Population explosion, eugenics, backstreet abortions and lack of easy access to contraception aside, Assoc. Prof. Tan misses one very fundamental point. Human autonomy.

 

Anyone with her academic credentials should be aware that paramount to the “woman-can-choose-abortion-or-not” camp is the value of the autonomy of the individual. People must have the right to choose. Unless as an “only-Jesus-is-the-true-god” bigot she deliberately omits addressing the argument lest she descend into religious piffling about her imaginary deity having the moral ownership of people’s lives and such. Her mentioning about being “circumspect about unprotected sex” stinks of religious moralising, although I know I cannot prove her intentions in a court of law. Lawyers can be very good at this sort of verbal-linguistic gymnastics. As an anglophone who loves the English language, who values clear and tight prose and has some background in philosophy, my bullshit antenna can be quite sensitive.

 

Irresponsible bunny sex or not, the state has no moral claim over a woman’s body and her inviolable right to make her own decisions. No one is saying abortion is an easy procedure to go through. No one is saying abortion has no negative side effects, bodily or mental. No one is saying a woman will not “feel” torn between keeping and terminating the pregnancy. No one is saying a woman will not suffer from occasional bouts of guilt and remorse.

 

But no one is forcing any woman to do anything she doesn’t want either. It is up to her to choose. It is her body. It is her life.

 

Besides, people like Edmund Leong and Cho Choon seem to think that only women who underwent abortion tend to suffer negative psychological effects. Ever heard of post-natal depression?

 

“It is indeed “Time again to review abortion laws” (April 1), considering the long-term emotional harm on post-abortive women.”

- Edmund Leong (source)

 

“The procedure is fast and simple, but the psychological trauma may last a lifetime.”

- Heng Cho Choon (source)

 

What about the rights of the unborn? some may ask. The zygote has no rights. Yes I am blunt. To say someone has rights is to assume he or she is a sentient individual. The zygote is human in the sense it has human DNA, but it is NOT a person. It is not self-aware or self-conscious. It cannot communicate. It cannot feel pleasure or pain. It doesn’t even know it exists. On the other hand, the woman who has the zygote implanted in her uterus is very self-aware and conscious. She desires things. She dreams. She hopes.

 

And she has the right to decide.

 

Human life biologically begins when the zygote (fertilised egg) implants itself in the uterus. But that life is not a person. It functions like a parasite, leeching on the woman for its survival. A human being is a person with an autonomous centre of consciousness and existence.

 

Anyhow, I am tired of ping-ponging the nature of the foetus and its rights or non-rights. Confirmation bias gets to you at some point in the discourse and both sides will tend to scout for trivia which appear to support their own conclusions. It goes no where. I am not exempt. I have to be careful not to act on faith. The most important issue in Singapore is whether the current law criminalising abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy is adequate to serve and protect its citizens.

 

I think it is.

 

Unlike the Yankee edition, Singapore forbids the killing of any foetus older than 24 weeks. At that age, plus and minus, the foetus begins to have the capacity to feel pain. It becomes inhumane and barbarous then, for a medical practitioner to crush out its life like a cockroach.

 

More recent research suggests that foetuses younger than 24 weeks can feel pain. If that is the case, my personal take is to down the 24 to 22 or 20. That is my most conscionable attempt. To criminalise abortion at an even younger period will be too much.

 

Not everyone is prepared to be a parent. Not everyone wants to be a parent. Some do not have the resources to cope with another child. Others wish to remain unmarried. Some fear parental admonition. Others social and religious discrimination (speaks a lot about the maturity of our society). Not all of us are white-collar bourgeoisie, Assoc. Prof. Tan. There are still others who simply do not care. Adoption can never be the solution to an existential dilemma which only the individual woman knows. Pregnancy itself is not a breezy thing which every woman Kallang-waves for. The woman may get bed-ridden. She may monster into Linda Blair in The Exorcist. She loses haystacks of hair. She gets fat. She may feel unattractive. Her husband may find her unappetising. I can go on and on. Blokes like us just shoot our armies of mini-mes and nod off. Our darlings have to sit out for nine months for just moments of pleasant muscular sensations. It is not a good deal. It is not a wonder I am my wife’s greatest fan. We have three children. And we hope for one more.

 

My wife and I will not terminate an unexpected pregnancy because we love and are open to children in our marriage. We will also not terminate a pregnancy if an ultrasound scan reveals an abnormality. Human life in this universe is too precious and special for even a child with Down’s Syndrome to miss out on. But that is just us. That is just me.

 

I will not pontificate to others what they should or should not do with their lives and their bodies. I choose marriage and children. I find meaning in companionship and children. There are people who do not. They may choose single but sexually active lives. Or cohabitation. Or celibacy. Or monogamous yet multi-player sexuality. There are also the LGBT among us. They have their own sexual culture. A society is mature and inclusive if it allows its people the freedom of conscience and privacy.

 

Honestly, Assoc. Prof. Tan, do you really care about the welfare of humankind and Singapore or simply because your conscience is informed by an evangelical-fundamentalist interpretation of an ancient and outdated Hebrew-Aramaic-Koine Greek text?

*******

“the spark of hope”

by George Monbiot

 

Most of the world’s people are decent, honest and kind. Most of those who dominate us are inveterate bastards. This is the conclusion I’ve reached after many years of journalism. Writing on Black Monday, as the British government’s full-spectrum attack on the lives of the poor commences, the thought keeps returning to me.

 

“With a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness”. This government, whose mismanagement of the economy has forced so many into the arms of the state, blames the sick, the unemployed, the underpaid for a crisis caused by the feral elite, and punishes them accordingly. Most of those affected by the bedroom tax, introduced today, are disabled. Many thousands will be driven from their homes, many more pushed towards destitution. Relief for the poor from council tax will be clipped; legal aid for civil cases cut off. Yet, at the end of this week, those taking more than £150,000 a year will have their income tax cut.

 

Two days later, benefit payments for the poorest will be cut in real terms. A week after that, thousands of families who live in towns and boroughs where property prices are high will be forced out of their homes by the total benefits cap. What we are witnessing is raw economic warfare by the rich against the poor.

 

So the age-old question comes knocking: why does the decent majority allow itself to be governed by a brutal, antisocial minority? Part of the reason is that the minority controls the story. As John Harris explains in the Guardian, large numbers (including many who depend on it) have been persuaded that most recipients of social security are feckless, profligate fraudsters. Despite everything that has happened over the past two years, Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and the other media barons still seem to be running the country. Their relentless propaganda, using exceptional and shocking cases to characterise an entire social class, remains highly effective. Divide and rule is as potent as it has ever been.

 

But I’ve come to believe that there’s also something deeper at work: that most of the world’s people live with the legacy of slavery. Even in a nominal democracy like the United Kingdom, most people were more or less in bondage until little more than a century ago: on near-starvation wages, fired at will, threatened with extreme punishment if they dissented, forbidden to vote. They lived in great and justified fear of authority, and the fear has persisted: passed down across the five or six generations that separate us, and reinforced now by renewed insecurity, snowballing inequality, partisan policing.

 

Any movement which seeks to challenge the power of the elite needs to ask itself what it takes to shake people out of this state. And the answer seems inescapable: hope. Those who govern on behalf of billionaires are threatened only when confronted by the power of a transformative idea.

 

A century and more ago the idea was communism. Even in the form in which Marx and Engels presented it, its problems are evident: the simplistic binary system into which they tried to force society; their brutal dismissal of anyone who did not fit this dialectic (“social scum”, “bribed tool[s] of reactionary intrigue”); their reinvention of Plato’s guardian-philosophers, who would “represent and take care of the future” of the proletariat; the unprecedented power over human life they granted to the state; the millenarian myth of a final resolution to the struggle for power. But their promise of another world electrified people who had, until then, believed that there was no alternative.

 

Seventy years ago, in the United Kingdom, the transformative idea was freedom from want and fear through the creation of a social security system and a National Health Service. It swept a Labour government to power which was able, despite far tougher economic circumstances than today’s, to create a fair society from a smashed, divided nation. This is the achievement which – through a series of sudden, spectacular and unmandated strikes – Cameron’s government is now demolishing.

 

So where do we look for the idea that can make hope more powerful than fear? Not to the Labour party. If Ed Miliband cannot bring himself even to oppose a bill which retrospectively denies compensation to cheated jobseekers, the most we can expect from him is a low-alcohol conservatism of the kind that doused all aspiration under Tony Blair.

 

Last week I ran a small online poll, asking people to nominate inspiring, transfiguring ideas. The two mentioned most often were land value taxation and a basic income. As it happens, both are championed by the Green Party. On this and other measures, its policies are by a long way more progressive than Labour’s.

 

I discussed land value taxation in a recent column. A basic income (also known as a citizen’s income) gives everyone, rich and poor, without means testing or conditions, a guaranteed sum every week. It replaces some but not all benefits (there would, for example, be extra payments for pensioners and people with disabilities). It banishes the fear and insecurity now stalking the poorer half of the population. Economic survival becomes a right, not a privilege.

 

A basic income removes the stigma of benefits while also breaking open what politicians call the welfare trap: because taking work would not reduce your entitlement to social security, there would be no disincentive to find a job: all the money you earn is extra income. The poor are not forced by desperation into the arms of unscrupulous employers: people will work if conditions are good and pay fair, but will refuse to be treated like mules. It redresses the wild imbalance in bargaining power that the current system exacerbates. It could do more than any other measure to dislodge the emotional legacy of serfdom. It would be financed by progressive taxation: in fact it meshes well with land value tax.

 

These ideas require courage: the courage to confront the government, the opposition, the plutocrats, the media, the suspicions of a wary electorate. But without proposals on this scale, progressive politics is dead. They strike that precious spark, so seldom kindled in this age of triangulation and timidity: the spark of hope.

(source)

 

*******

church of england dishonest about survey results

 

The Church of England (CofE) claims:

 

Four out of five British adults believe in the power of prayer, according to a new ICM survey in the run-up to Easter.

(source)

 

The survey has only one question relevant to prayer. Here it is:

 

Irrespective of whether you currently pray or not, if you were to pray for something at the moment, what would it be for?

(source)

 

What sort of question is this?? For the CofE to say that four out of five adults “believe in the power of prayer”, the survey it points to has to have a clear and direct question to its respondents, namely “Do you believe in the power of prayer?”. Otherwise CofE is dishonest in its press release. It is deliberately lying to the public.

 

Besides, the survey question forces the respondent to answer in a certain way. It assumes the belief in the power of prayer regardless of whether it applies to the respondent. It is like asking “Have you stopped beating your wife?” when it should be “Do you beat your wife?”.

 

Religion goes to immoral lengths to promote its causes. Sigh.

 

*******

marx’s revenge

by Michael Schuman

 

Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.

 

Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx wrote.

 

A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the book,” says the playwright.

 

That’s not to say Marx was entirely correct. His “dictatorship of the proletariat” didn’t quite work out as planned. But the consequence of this widening inequality is just what Marx had predicted: class struggle is back. Workers of the world are growing angrier and demanding their fair share of the global economy. From the floor of the U.S. Congress to the streets of Athens to the assembly lines of southern China, political and economic events are being shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labor to a degree unseen since the communist revolutions of the 20th century. How this struggle plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the future of the welfare state, political stability in China, and who governs from Washington to Rome. What would Marx say today? “Some variation of: ‘I told you so,’” says Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist at the New School in New York. “The income gap is producing a level of tension that I have not seen in my lifetime.”

 

Tensions between economic classes in the U.S. are clearly on the rise. Society has been perceived as split between the “99%” (the regular folk, struggling to get by) and the “1%” (the connected and privileged superrich getting richer every day). In a Pew Research Center poll released last year, two-thirds of the respondents believed the U.S. suffered from “strong” or “very strong” conflict between rich and poor, a significant 19-percentage-point increase from 2009, ranking it as the No. 1 division in society.

 

The heightened conflict has dominated American politics. The partisan battle over how to fix the nation’s budget deficit has been, to a great degree, a class struggle. Whenever President Barack Obama talks of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to close the budget gap, conservatives scream he is launching a “class war” against the affluent. Yet the Republicans are engaged in some class struggle of their own. The GOP’s plan for fiscal health effectively hoists the burden of adjustment onto the middle and poorer economic classes through cuts to social services. Obama based a big part of his re-election campaign on characterizing the Republicans as insensitive to the working classes. GOP nominee Mitt Romney, the President charged, had only a “one-point plan” for the U.S. economy — “to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.”

 

Amid the rhetoric, though, there are signs that this new American classism has shifted the debate over the nation’s economic policy. Trickle-down economics, which insists that the success of the 1% will benefit the 99%, has come under heavy scrutiny. David Madland, a director at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, believes that the 2012 presidential campaign has brought about a renewed focus on rebuilding the middle class, and a search for a different economic agenda to achieve that goal. “The whole way of thinking about the economy is being turned on its head,” he says. “I sense a fundamental shift taking place.”

 

The ferocity of the new class struggle is even more pronounced in France. Last May, as the pain of the financial crisis and budget cuts made the rich-poor divide starker to many ordinary citizens, they voted in the Socialist Party’s François Hollande, who had once proclaimed: “I don’t like the rich.” He has proved true to his word. Key to his victory was a campaign pledge to extract more from the wealthy to maintain France’s welfare state. To avoid the drastic spending cuts other policymakers in Europe have instituted to close yawning budget deficits, Hollande planned to hike the income tax rate to as high as 75%. Though that idea got shot down by the country’s Constitutional Council, Hollande is scheming ways to introduce a similar measure. At the same time, Hollande has tilted government back toward the common man. He reversed an unpopular decision by his predecessor to increase France’s retirement age by lowering it back down to the original 60 for some workers. Many in France want Hollande to go even further. “Hollande’s tax proposal has to be the first step in the government acknowledging capitalism in its current form has become so unfair and dysfunctional it risks imploding without deep reform,” says Charlotte Boulanger, a development official for NGOs.

 

His tactics, however, are sparking a backlash from the capitalist class. Mao Zedong might have insisted that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” but in a world where das kapital is more and more mobile, the weapons of class struggle have changed. Rather than paying out to Hollande, some of France’s wealthy are moving out — taking badly needed jobs and investment with them. Jean-Émile Rosenblum, founder of online retailer Pixmania.com, is setting up both his life and new venture in the U.S., where he feels the climate is far more hospitable for businessmen. “Increased class conflict is a normal consequence of any economic crisis, but the political exploitation of that has been demagogic and discriminatory,” Rosenblum says. “Rather than relying on (entrepreneurs) to create the companies and jobs we need, France is hounding them away.”

 

The rich-poor divide is perhaps most volatile in China. Ironically, Obama and the newly installed President of Communist China, Xi Jinping, face the same challenge. Intensifying class struggle is not just a phenomenon of the slow-growth, debt-ridden industrialized world. Even in rapidly expanding emerging markets, tension between rich and poor is becoming a primary concern for policymakers. Contrary to what many disgruntled Americans and Europeans believe, China has not been a workers’ paradise. The “iron rice bowl” — the Mao-era practice of guaranteeing workers jobs for life — faded with Maoism, and during the reform era, workers have had few rights. Even though wage income in China’s cities is growing substantially, the rich-poor gap is extremely wide. Another Pew study revealed that nearly half of the Chinese surveyed consider the rich-poor divide a very big problem, while 8 out of 10 agreed with the proposition that the “rich just get richer while the poor get poorer” in China.

 

Resentment is reaching a boiling point in China’s factory towns. “People from the outside see our lives as very bountiful, but the real life in the factory is very different,” says factory worker Peng Ming in the southern industrial enclave of Shenzhen. Facing long hours, rising costs, indifferent managers and often late pay, workers are beginning to sound like true proletariat. “The way the rich get money is through exploiting the workers,” says Guan Guohau, another Shenzhen factory employee. “Communism is what we are looking forward to.” Unless the government takes greater action to improve their welfare, they say, the laborers will become more and more willing to take action themselves. “Workers will organize more,” Peng predicts. “All the workers should be united.”

 

That may already be happening. Tracking the level of labor unrest in China is difficult, but experts believe it has been on the rise. A new generation of factory workers — better informed than their parents, thanks to the Internet — has become more outspoken in its demands for better wages and working conditions. So far, the government’s response has been mixed. Policymakers have raised minimum wages to boost incomes, toughened up labor laws to give workers more protection, and in some cases, allowed them to strike. But the government still discourages independent worker activism, often with force. Such tactics have left China’s proletariat distrustful of their proletarian dictatorship. “The government thinks more about the companies than us,” says Guan. If Xi doesn’t reform the economy so the ordinary Chinese benefit more from the nation’s growth, he runs the risk of fueling social unrest.

 

Marx would have predicted just such an outcome. As the proletariat woke to their common class interests, they’d overthrow the unjust capitalist system and replace it with a new, socialist wonderland. Communists “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” Marx wrote. “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” There are signs that the world’s laborers are increasingly impatient with their feeble prospects. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets of cities like Madrid and Athens, protesting stratospheric unemployment and the austerity measures that are making matters even worse.

 

So far, though, Marx’s revolution has yet to materialize. Workers may have common problems, but they aren’t banding together to resolve them. Union membership in the U.S., for example, has continued to decline through the economic crisis, while the Occupy Wall Street movement fizzled. Protesters, says Jacques Rancière, an expert in Marxism at the University of Paris, aren’t aiming to replace capitalism, as Marx had forecast, but merely to reform it. “We’re not seeing protesting classes call for an overthrow or destruction of socioeconomic systems in place,” he explains. “What class conflict is producing today are calls to fix systems so they become more viable and sustainable for the long run by redistributing the wealth created.”

 

Despite such calls, however, current economic policy continues to fuel class tensions. In China, senior officials have paid lip service to narrowing the income gap but in practice have dodged the reforms (fighting corruption, liberalizing the finance sector) that could make that happen. Debt-burdened governments in Europe have slashed welfare programs even as joblessness has risen and growth sagged. In most cases, the solution chosen to repair capitalism has been more capitalism. Policymakers in Rome, Madrid and Athens are being pressured by bondholders to dismantle protection for workers and further deregulate domestic markets. Owen Jones, the British author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, calls this “a class war from above.”

 

There are few to stand in the way. The emergence of a global labor market has defanged unions throughout the developed world. The political left, dragged rightward since the free-market onslaught of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has not devised a credible alternative course. “Virtually all progressive or leftist parties contributed at some point to the rise and reach of financial markets, and rolling back of welfare systems in order to prove they were capable of reform,” Rancière notes. “I’d say the prospects of Labor or Socialists parties or governments anywhere significantly reconfiguring — much less turning over — current economic systems to be pretty faint.”

 

That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.

(source)

 

*******

tatchell’s letter to the archbishop of canterbury

by Peter Tatchell

 

Dear Archbishop Justin Welby,

 

Your enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion will be an occasion for rejoicing by your faithful.

 

Like them, I wish you well.

 

I hope you will use your new authority to guide the church to accept equality and human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

 

Just over a decade ago, you expressed harsh homophobic opinions, condemning gay  relationships and the adoption of children by same-sex couples. You may have since revised these views but even now you oppose marriage equality.

 

One of your first public statements, when you were confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury last month, was to declare your support for discrimination against gay people: namely your support for the legal ban on same-sex civil marriage.

 

Moreover, although you have expressed your support for civil partnerships, it is reported that you have not approved civil partnerships taking place in churches or church blessings for same-sex couples.

 

You claim that you are not homophobic but a person who opposes legal equality for LGBT people is homophobic – in the same way that a person who opposes equal rights for black people is racist.

 

Homophobia has come to mean more than an irrational fear for gay people. It includes support for anti-gay discrimination and the denial of equal rights to people who are LGBT. In this sense of the word, you are homophobic because you support discrimination in law against gay people.

 

Discrimination is not a Christian value; regardless of whether this discrimination concerns gender, race, faith, sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

You say that you are listening to the concerns of the LGBT community but you continue to ignore and reject our claim for equal marriage rights. It does not feel like you are listening. Or perhaps you listening but not hearing?

 

You are not without precedent with regard to LGBT equality, in the UK and abroad.

 

Sadly, successive Archbishops of Canterbury have failed to speak out clearly and consistently against LGBT human rights abuses worldwide and against the frequent collusion with these abuses by local Anglicans.  Large swathes of the Anglican global communion actively support the persecution of LGBT people, mostly without rebuke.

 

The Anglican churches of Nigeria and Uganda are supporting draconian new anti-gay bills that are currently before their respective parliaments.

 

Uganda’s Anti Homosexuality Bill intensifies the criminalisation of LGBT people, including life imprisonment for mere sexual touching and the death penalty for repeat gay offenders. It also outlaws same-sex marriage, LGBT organisations and gay human rights advocacy.

 

Similar repression, excluding the death penalty, is enshrined in the Nigerian Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill.

 

I urge you to speak out against these totalitarian homophobic proposals.

 

Such concerns aside, I note with encouragement recent statements by you that may indicate a softening of your stance and a greater openness to LGBT equality.

 

Most commendably, you support strengthening gay relationships and recognise that love between people of the same sex is no less than that of heterosexual couples.

 

You are quoted as saying: “I know I need to listen very attentively to the LGBT communities, and examine my own thinking prayerfully and carefully.”

 

Indeed, you have indicated that you are open to on-going discussion and dialogue with LGBT people, for which we thank you.

 

I urge you to show true moral leadership by standing against homophobic discrimination in favour of LGBT equality.

 

In the name of free speech, I have spoken out against the prosecution of Christian street preachers – even homophobic ones. I have defended persecuted Christians, especially in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

 

I call on you to reciprocate.

 

It would, I believe, be wrong for you to collude – either consciously or by default – with those fellow Anglicans who reject gay equality.

 

I ask you: Would you make such compromises on equal rights in the case of ethnic minorities? I expect not. So why should LGBT people be treated differently?

 

My mother is a devout Christian. She believes that homosexuality is, according to The Bible, a sin; albeit not a major one. Equally, she believes homophobic discrimination is wrong. She makes a distinction between her personal beliefs and the law of the land.

 

I would, respectfully, urge you to do the same with regard to marriage equality and other legislation.

 

I understand and appreciate that you want to maintain Anglican unity and prevent a split in the communion. But is sacrificing LGBT equal rights morally justifiable in order to secure this goal? Is it a price worth paying to keep the church united?  Should gay human rights be compromised to appease those in the worldwide communion who endorse homophobic persecution and legal discrimination?

 

I urge you:

 

Be a moral leader for universal human rights, including the human rights of LGBT people.

 

Yours sincerely,

Peter Tatchell

Director of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation

(source)

 

*******

“the crucifixion of tomas young”

by Chris Hedges

 

I flew to Kansas City last week to see Tomas Young. Young was paralyzed in Iraq in 2004. He is now receiving hospice care at his home. I knew him by reputation and the movie documentary “Body of War.” He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war in Iraq. He fought as long and as hard as he could against the war that crippled him, until his physical deterioration caught up with him.

 

“I had been toying with the idea of suicide for a long time because I had become helpless,” he told me in his small house on the Kansas City outskirts where he intends to die. “I couldn’t dress myself. People have to help me with the most rudimentary of things. I decided I did not want to go through life like that anymore. The pain, the frustration. …”

 

He stopped abruptly and called his wife. “Claudia, can I get some water?” She opened a bottle of water, took a swig so it would not spill when he sipped and handed it to him.

 

“I felt at the end of my rope,” the 33-year-old Army veteran went on. “I made the decision to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away. This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and say their goodbyes. I felt this was a fairer way to treat people than to just go out with a note. After the anoxic brain injury in 2008 [a complication that Young suffered] I lost a lot of dexterity and strength in my upper body. So I wouldn’t be able to shoot myself or even open the pill bottle to give myself an overdose. The only way I could think of doing it was to have Claudia open the pill bottle for me, but I didn’t want her implicated.”

 

“After you made that decision how did you feel?” I asked.

 

“I felt relieved,” he answered. “I finally saw an end to this four-and-a-half-year fight. If I were in the same condition I was in during the filming of ‘Body of War,’ in a manual chair, able to feed and dress myself and transfer from my bed to the wheelchair, you and I would not be having this discussion. I can’t even watch the movie anymore because it makes me sad to see how I was, compared to how I am. … Viewing the deterioration, I decided it was best to go out now rather than regress more.”

 

Young will die for our sins. He will die for a war that should never have been fought. He will die for the lies of politicians. He will die for war profiteers. He will die for the careers of generals. He will die for a cheerleader press. He will die for a complacent public that made war possible. He bore all this upon his body. He was crucified. And there are hundreds of thousands of other crucified bodies like his in Baghdad and Kandahar and Peshawar and Walter Reed medical center. Mangled bodies and corpses, broken dreams, unending grief, betrayal, corporate profit, these are the true products of war. Tomas Young is the face of war they do not want you to see.

 

On April 4, 2004, Young was crammed into the back of a two-and-a-half-ton Army truck with 20 other soldiers in Sadr City, Iraq. Insurgents opened fire on the truck from above. “It was like shooting ducks in a barrel,” he said. A bullet from an AK-47 severed his spinal column. A second bullet shattered his knee. At first he did not know he had been shot. He felt woozy. He tried to pick up his M16. He couldn’t lift his rifle from the truck bed. That was when he knew something was terribly wrong.

 

“I tried to say ‘I’m going to be paralyzed, someone shoot me right now,’ but there was only a hoarse whisper that came out because my lungs had collapsed,” he said. “I knew the damage. I wanted to be taken out of my misery.”

 

His squad leader, Staff Sgt. Robert Miltenberger, bent over and told him he would be all right. A few years later Young would see a clip of Miltenberger weeping as he recounted the story of how he had lied to Young.

 

“I tried to contact him,” said Young, whose long red hair and flowing beard make him look like a biblical prophet. “I can’t find him. I want to tell him it is OK.”

 

Young had been in Iraq five days. It was his first deployment. After being wounded he was sent to an Army hospital in Kuwait, and although his legs, now useless, lay straight in front of him he felt as if he was still sitting cross-legged on the floor of the truck. That sensation lasted for about three weeks. It was an odd and painful initiation into his life as a paraplegic. His body, from then on, would play tricks on him.

 

He was transferred from Kuwait to the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, and then to Walter Reed, in Washington, D.C. He asked if he could meet Ralph Nader, and Nader visited him in the hospital with Phil Donahue. Donahue, who had been fired by MSNBC a year earlier for speaking out against the war, would go on, with Ellen Spiro, to make the 2007 film “Body of War,” a brutally honest account of Young’s daily struggle with his physical and emotional scars of war. In the documentary, he suffers dizzy spells that force him to lower his head into his hands. He wears frozen gel inserts in a cooling jacket because he cannot control his body temperature. He struggles to find a solution to his erectile dysfunction. He downs fistfuls of medications—carbamazepine, for nerve pain; coumadin, a blood thinner; tizanidine, an anti-spasm medication; gabapentin, another nerve pain medication, bupropion, an antidepressant; omeprazole, for morning nausea; and morphine. His mother has to insert a catheter into his penis. He joins Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, to protest with Iraq Veterans Against the War. His first wife leaves him.

 

“You know, you see a guy who’s paralyzed and in a wheelchair and you think he’s just in a wheelchair,” he says in “Body of War.” “You don’t think about the, you know, the stuff inside that’s paralyzed. I can’t cough because my stomach muscles are paralyzed, so I can’t work up the full coughing energy. I’m more susceptible to urinary tract infections, and there’s a great big erection sidebar to this whole story.”

 

In early March 2008 a blood clot in his right arm—the arm that bears a color tattoo of a character from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”—caused his arm to swell. He was taken to the Kansas City Veterans Affairs hospital, where he was given the blood thinner coumadin before being released. One month later, the VA took him off coumadin and soon afterward the clot migrated to one of his lungs. He suffered a massive pulmonary embolism and fell into a coma. When he awoke from the coma in the hospital he could barely speak. He had lost most of his upper-body mobility and short-term memory, and his speech was slurred significantly.

 

It was then that he began to experience debilitating pain in his abdomen. The hospital would not give him narcotics because such drugs slow digestion, making it harder for the bowels to function. Young could digest only soup and Jell-O. In November, in a desperate bid to halt the pain, he had his colon removed. He was fitted with a colostomy bag. The pain disappeared for a few days and then came roaring back. He could not hold down food, even pureed food, because his stomach opening had shrunk. The doctors dilated his stomach. He could eat only soup and oatmeal. Three weeks ago he had his stomach stretched again. And that was enough.

 

“I will go off the feeding [tube] after me and my wife’s anniversary,” April 20, the date on which he married Claudia in 2012. “I was married once before. It didn’t end well. It was a non-amicable divorce. At first I thought I would [just] wait for my brother and his wife, my niece and my grandparents to visit me, but the one thing I will miss most in my life is my wife. I want to spend a little more time with her. I want to spend a full year with someone without the problems that plagued my previous [marriage]. I don’t know how long it will take when I stop eating. If it takes too long I may take steps to quicken my departure. I have saved a bottle of liquid morphine. I can down that at one time with all my sleeping medication.”

 

Young’s room is painted a midnight blue and has a large cutout of Batman on one wall. He loved the superhero as a child because “he was a regular person who had a horrible thing happen to him and wanted to save society.”

 

Young joined the Army immediately after 9/11 to go to Afghanistan and hunt down the people behind the attacks. He did not oppose the Afghanistan war. “In fact, if I had been injured in Afghanistan, there would be no ‘Body of War’ movie to begin with,” he said. But he never understood the call to invade Iraq. “When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor we didn’t invade China just because they looked the same,” he said.

 

He became increasingly depressed about his impending deployment to Iraq when he was in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. He asked the battalion doctor for antidepressants. The doctor said he had to meet first with the unit’s chaplain, who told him, “I think you will be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.”

 

“I was dumbstruck by his response,” Young said.

 

He has not decided what will be done with his ashes. He flirted with the idea of having them plowed into ground where marijuana would be planted but then wondered if anyone would want to smoke the crop. He knows there will be no clergy at the memorial service held after his death. “It will just be people reminiscing over my life,” he said.

 

“I spend a lot of time sitting here in my bedroom, watching TV or sleeping,” he said. “I have found—I don’t know if it is the result of my decision or not—[it is] equally hard to be alone or to be around people. This includes my wife. I am rarely happy. Maybe it is because when I am alone all I have with me are my thoughts, and my mind is a very hazardous place to go. When I am around people I feel as if I have to put on a facade of being the happy little soldier.”

 

He listens, when he is well enough, to audio books with Claudia. Among them have been Al Franken’s satirical book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” and Michael Moore’s “The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader.” He was a voracious reader but can no longer turn the pages of a book. He finds some solace in the French film “The Intouchables,” about a paraplegic and his caregiver, and “The Sessions,” a film based on an essay by the paralyzed poet Mark O’Brien.

 

Young, when he was in a wheelchair, found that many people behaved as if he was mentally disabled, or not even there. When he was being fitted for a tuxedo for a friend’s wedding the salesman turned to his mother and asked her in front of him whether he could wear the company’s shoes.

 

“I look at the TV through the lens of his eyes and can see he is invisible,” said Claudia, standing in the living room as her husband rested in the bedroom. An array of books on death, the afterlife and dying are spread out around her. “No one is sick [on television]. No one is disabled. No one faces death. Dying in America is a very lonely business.”

 

“If I had known then what I know now,” Young said, “I would not have gone into the military. But I was 22, working various menial jobs, waiting tables, [working] in the copy department of an Office Max. My life was going nowhere. Sept. 11 happened. I saw us being attacked. I wanted to respond. I signed up two days later. I wanted to be a combat journalist. I thought the military would help me out of my financial rut. I thought I could use the GI Bill to go to school.”

 

Young is not the first young man to be lured into war by the false sirens of glory and honor and then callously discarded by the war makers. His story has been told many times. It is the story of Hector in “The Iliad.” It is the story of Joe Bonham, the protagonist in Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 novel “Johnny Got His Gun,” whose arms, legs and face are blown away by an artillery shell, leaving him trapped in the inert remains of his body.

 

Bonham ruminates in the novel: “Inside me I’m screaming, nobody pays any attention. If I had arms, I could kill myself. If I had legs, I could run away. If I had a voice, I could talk and be some kind of company for myself. I could yell for help, but nobody would help me.”

 

For Young, the war, the wound, the paralysis, the wheelchair, the anti-war demonstrations, the wife who left him and the one who didn’t, the embolism, the loss of motor control, the slurred speech, the colostomy, the IV line for narcotics implanted in his chest, the open bed sores that expose his bones, the despair—the crushing despair—the decision to die, have come down to a girl. Aleksus, his only niece. She will not remember her uncle. But he lies in his dimly lit room, painkillers flowing into his broken body, and he thinks of her. He does not know exactly when he will die. But it must be before her second birthday, in June. He will not mar that day with his death.

 

And though he is an atheist, though he believes that there is nothing after death—that, as he says, “the body is like a toy that runs out of batteries, only there are no replacements”—his final act honors the promise of Aleksus’ life. As he spoke to me softly of this child—it hurts, even now, he said, to know she will grow up without him—I wondered, sitting next to him on his bed, if he saw it, the glory of it, his final bow not before the specter of his death but the sanctity of her life. The resurrection.

(source)

 

*******

“lee kuan yew’s taming of the press”

by Paul Tambyah

 

 

 

From the very first chapter of this book to the last, it is full of detailed and astonishing revelations about the mainstream media in Singapore. It is an incredible resource for those trying to understand the control of the media and Singapore’s brand of self-censorship. Indirectly, Cheong Yip Seng’s My Straits Times Story is invaluable in helping to explain the dominance of one political party through its “symbiotic” relationship to all the mainstream print media in our country.

 

The book begins with an account of how Cheong was appointed to his job as editor-in-chief of the Straits Times in 1986. This was not a private dinner with a publisher or a board meeting or even the result of a secret ballot at a conference of editors.

 

Instead, Cheong describes how he was summoned by Chandra Das, a prominent Singapore politician, on a plane to Burma with the words “The boss wants to see you”. Cheong was given a seat in the first-class cabin next to the then-Deputy Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong. Goh wanted him to take over the editorial leadership of the Straits Times from the previous editor, Peter Lim, who had been found wanting.

 

Apparently Lim’s “sin” was that he (and the ST) had during the regional uproar over the Israeli President Chaim Herzog’s 1986 visit to Singapore “failed to recognize the educational role of the Straits Times” which infuriated then PM Lee Kuan Yew who believed that the ST coverage “did not help Singaporeans fully understand the facts of regional life and what it took to be an independent sovereign nation.”

 
Apparently Lim had relied too much on the Malaysian English-language media in its coverage of the Malaysian outrage without adequately carrying some of the more rabid reactions from the vernacular media from across the causeway. This was the final straw which led to Lim’s firing as the Istana had apparently “reached the point of no return with the Straits Times.”

 

In the months before that, Cheong reveals, the government was planning on a “GTO (government team of officials) moving into Times House” similar to what was done with the bus company. The response by the ST leadership is instructive. Instead of protesting against this attempt at interference in professional journalism, apparently Peter Lim and CEO Nigel Holloway met the PM at the Istana repeatedly to negotiate against the presence of government officials in the newsroom. The solution they negotiated was instead a “monitor at Times House, someone who could watch to see if indeed the newsroom was beyond control”. This person was identified by Cheong as (former Singapore president) S R Nathan.

 
The threat of a GTO together with the presence of a “monitor” made sure that the SPH newspapers toed the party line. This is something that many in civil society in Singapore have suspected for a long time but it is nice to see it confirmed here from the best source possible.

 
There is more evidence of intimidation documented in this book, mainly from Lee Kuan Yew, who actually endorsed the book prominently. For example, after an early event at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Cheong was threatened by Lee with the words, “If you print this, I will break your neck”. Cheong’s response to what appears on the surface to be a brutal threat is interesting was: “I was taken aback by his thunderbolt…It was my first taste of Lee Kuan Yew’s ways with the media…Thankfully not every encounter would be as bruising as (that)…but there were many occasions when the knuckleduster approach was unmistakable.”

 
Such blatant intimidation is presumably rare in Singapore. The title of the book, however, describes the life of a Singaporean journalist constantly trying to negotiate the “OB” or “Out of Bounds” markers. Cheong explains the origin of the term “OB markers”, ascribing it to former minister George Yeo, who described them as “areas of public life that should remain out of bounds to social activism and the media. Otherwise, society paid an unacceptably high price.”

 
Outside of race and religion, the most important OB marker was then PM Lee Kuan Yew’s argument that the press could not be a “fourth estate” or center of power because it was not elected.

 

This is not a valid argument to me as it could be argued that the press are far more accountable than politicians as they have to seek the approval of the newspaper purchasing public every day rather than every four to five years in elections.

 
Instead, Lee’s view of the press was that it was a tool for dissemination and promotion of government policies. One illuminating illustration was a “furious” call from Lee’s office that was received by the (now defunct) New Nation Editor David Kraal. The editors were “flummoxed” to discover that the then PM was provoked by a photograph of a large family to illustrate a story of a happy Singapore family. Apparently, this was perceived by the PM as “subtle but effective criticism” of the “Stop at Two campaign” in which Lee sought to limit families to two children.

 
There are other OB markers which Cheong found “bewildering”. These included stories on Stanley Gibbons, a stamp dealer; carpet auctions; monosodium glutamate or MSG; feng shui; unflattering pictures of politicians, and scoops.

 
I think many Singaporeans too would find it difficult to understand why these “should remain out of bounds to social activism and the media. Otherwise, society paid an unacceptably high price.” These are, however, hallmarks of an authoritarian regime which can install boundaries at whim without having them questioned.

 
Another OB marker was appearing overly critical of local TV programs. George Yeo apparently pointed out that “If the Straits Times created the impression that our TV programs were not worth watching, Singapore would lose an important channel of communications.” As a result, even the TV critics were reined in.

 
The issue of scoops is a recurrent theme. Cheong reports that “Lee Kuan Yew was determined to purge the newsroom of the culture of scoops”. He did not want a situation like the Watergate affair in which a dishonest president was exposed by investigative journalists who became cult heroes. Cheong writes that “The PM took the position that Singapore was not America: he had no skeletons in the closet and challenged the press to find one because he wanted to be the first to know…”

 
But of course, the press could not use investigative journalism to find out – they had to depend on the official version of events. This kind of Alice in Wonderland argument doesn’t seem to trouble Cheong or perhaps by re-stating the argument in this context, he is exposing its hollowness.

 
Cheong actually admits how much of a struggle this was for him as a journalist. He quotes Number 5 Chinese Leader Li Chang chun as urging mainland Chinese journalists to go for scoops and explains his predecessor Peter Lim’s Faustian bargain for Singapore journalists thus: “it was better to produce the best story than the first story…Finding scoops in Singapore with many OB markers carried a real risk”.

 
Indeed, one gets a sense of how difficult life is for journalists who might inadvertently break a story that covered the sensitive subject of MSG or bad local TV programs or some other OB marker and end up being hauled up by the government.

 

Cheong makes it clear that while he had hoped that the “knuckleduster era” belonged to the 1970s, it could reappear any time. For example, he describes how while “recovering” from the 2006 general election, he received a phone call in a hotel in Phuket, from Lee Kuan Yew who was “livid” about a “powerfully argued column by Chua Mui Hoong” in which the deputy political editor had questioned the policy of placing opposition wards at the back of the queue for upgrading works. According to Cheong, Lee was “his old 1970s self. If the Straits Times wanted a fight, he was prepared to do it the old way, with knuckledusters on”. This is depressing but not surprising to any reader of the ST today.

 
The extent of micro-management of the local press Cheong reports is amazing. Apparently, Goh Chok Tong had made a suggestion during the launch of The New Paper: “Why not consider a Page 3 girl”. Cheong quickly clarifies that Goh was not suggesting topless women that had been made famous by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun but rather girls that (as Cheong quotes Goh) “can be scantily dressed”. The character and direction – and not just the OB markers – of the local press are thus apparently suggested by Singapore’s political leadership.

 
Cheong also provides details about the ST personnel’s relationship with the ruling People’s Action Party, the PAP. He writes that “senior PAP leaders had been impressed with (columnist Warren Fernandez’s) work for us. His columns in particular have been generally supportive of PAP policies.” He was about to be selected as a PAP candidate for the 2006 elections.

 
Cheong then emailed the Prime Minister asking to keep Warren at the ST “unless he was earmarked for higher office. But the PM’s response was that he needed Eurasian representation in parliament”. Apparently Cheong’s email had been circulated to the PAP selection panel before the final interview and Kuan Yew agreed to keep Fernandez out of the PAP slate. Of course, now Fernandez is the Editor of the ST.

 
Reporting on the “opposition” politicians was even more of a “minefield”. Cheong recalls the 1984 elections when “Peter Lim, then editor in chief, was under pressure from James Fu, the PM’s press secretary, conveying the PM’s request to publish Chiam (See Tong)’s O-Level results….Peter Lim refused: he was convinced it would backfire against the PAP…The result proved him right”.

 
What intrigues me about the incident was not just that the Prime Minister would intervene to try to persuade the national newspaper to publish such data, but rather that the editor-in-chief refused not because of journalistic integrity but rather because he thought it would “backfire against the PAP”.

 
This is typical of what Cheong describes as the “symbiotic relationship” between the ST and the PAP which is in fact enshrined in the editorial policy that Cheong crafted in response to then PM Goh’s unhappiness with the local mainstream media. The three pillars of that policy are (1) “Accuracy and objectivity” of coverage (2) The nation-building task of advancing and informing the public as Singapore develops and (3) The symbiotic relationship with the government. Some journalists were unhappy about this relationship but it stayed in the ST editorial policy at Cheong’s insistence. This documentation again, is what makes this book valuable to all who read the local press.

 
There are many revelations in Cheong’s book. We learn that the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts kept a dossier on local press articles which they found offensive. These include not giving enough prominence to ministers’ speeches. We also learn that when editors were “called up for meetings” with then PM Lee, they had to send detailed CVs including their O-Level results and their wives’ educational qualifications.

 
Other specific examples of censorship included restrictions on reporting conditions in national service camps in the early days and telling stories of the people who actually lost out through the Housing and Development Board (HDB) construction and resettlement process. The latter is poignant as Cheong describes the contrast between the 30,000 square feet (including a pond and a farm) that a friend living in Kampong Henderson had to give up in exchange for less than $3,000 compensation and a much smaller HDB flat. The ST was not allowed to report on such negative aspects of our “urban renewal” process or the HDB “success story”. The threat of the disapproval of the Times House “monitor” which could cost them their jobs through a GTO ensured compliance.

 
Interestingly, the “foreign investors” whom we religiously try to attract to Singapore are not as keen on press controls as we have been given to believe. According to Cheong, the American Business Council, supported by the US State Department, argued that investors would be deterred without the free flow of information. Cheong reports how the Singapore government stood their ground but paid the price, in his words: “liberal democracies and some members of the Singapore intelligentsia saw it as too intolerant for its own good.”

 
Cheong is dismissive of the online alternative media but he devotes a paragraph to responding to Seelan Palay’s film “One Nation Under Lee” specifically by explaining that the ISD agents hired by the ST were not sent by the government, they were in fact, according to Cheong, willingly brought in by himself.

 
Later on, Cheong describes Lee Kuan Yew’s response to the online question “Who paid for the flying hospital for his wife” as marking the legitimization of online media. Cheong acknowledges that the days of traditional media are numbered worldwide, even in Singapore. He quotes the current PM Lee Hsien Loong as admitting that he cannot persuade his own daughter to read the news pages of the ST.

 
The book is not all about the travails of a court announcer trying to keep the king happy. For me, the most promising section was the one describing the ST’s finest hour – exposing a scandal involving the National Kidney Foundation. Here is where you get a sense of what might have been should the ST have decided to serve the people of Singapore by performing the task of investigative journalists rather than as disseminators of official information.

 
Cheong was aware of “strong pro-NKF sentiments in powerful quarters” including two ministers (Lim Hng Kiang and Khaw Boon Wan) as the NKF had taken a tremendous load off the public healthcare sector by keeping alive and healthy 1,800 Singaporeans through its excellent dialysis centers.

 
He was initially prepared to pay S$20,000 as compensation, publish a statement of clarification about the article by Susan Long, which had the infamous gold taps as part of a “generally laudatory article” and settle the matter out of court. Cheong does not reveal who or what made him change his mind and go against Mrs Goh Chok Tong’s efforts to mediate.

 
T T Durai, then NKF CEO, who was at the centre of the controversy, was incensed and accused the media of trying to be the fourth estate, which Cheong had already established was a role that the Singapore mainstream media had given up – except in this case!

 
Here the ST team excelled themselves – they tracked down the contractor who prepared the gold taps and other witnesses who were prepared to sign affidavits. In other words, good old-fashioned investigative journalism. Like the good journalists that many in the ST are (before they censor themselves), they want their readers to have all the facts, including those below the surface so the readers could make intelligent decisions for themselves.

 
While the stories in the book are exciting to any media watcher (and there are many more), there are many errors such as the misspelling of my uncle David Tambyah’s name and SARS was described incorrectly as occurring in 2002 in one instance (although the proof readers picked out the correct dates for the three subsequent mentions of the outbreak).

 
Cheong himself acknowledges the problem with the quality of English in the newspaper and says that the ST paid the price for the “neglect” of the teaching of grammar in schools. It got so bad that he had to “scour” the world for good copy editors whom he eventually found in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India.

 
For those of us who lament that our education system seems to have switched from teaching life and career skills to teaching what is required to top international standardized tests, that is a statement worth paying attention to.

 
The question on many Singaporean’s minds is: Why did he write this book? Cheong does explicitly reveal this. Near the end, however, he gives a telling account of how journalists found official spokespersons unhelpful as their priority was “reflecting better on the ministers” rather than allowing journalists to do investigative or background work. He describes frustrated journalists recounting their bad experiences in explicit detail – perhaps that is what he is trying to do himself as some kind of catharsis.

 
Perhaps wistfully, he talks about a time when the ST was indeed the “fourth estate” when it did occasionally demonstrate its independence – although he has to reach as far back as 1956 when the ST condemned the takeover of the Suez Canal by British, French and Israelis. British expats in Singapore were incensed and the managing director of the ST, a member of the British establishment was “spat on in the (then British only) Tanglin Club.”

 
When I asked a prominent civil society figure about the reasons for this book, he pointed out that when authoritarian regimes in Latin America or Eastern Europe were crumbling, “everyone claimed to be a reformer.”

 
I am an optimist. I think that Cheong has seen the signs from the recent general, presidential and by-elections and he knows that the people of Singapore are waking up. Establishment voices are raising questions about some fundamental assumptions.

 
The first step, as anyone with a serious problem knows, is acknowledging that you have a serious problem. Perhaps this is Cheong’s first step. Hopefully for the mainstream media, acknowledging the problem of control and domination will be the first step to the recovery of an independent media which can evolve into a free press, a necessity for democracy for the people of Singapore. The book is a worthy read.

(source)

 

*******

 

 

 

evangelicals and their irritating proselytising habit

by Time

 

When Dawa said yes to a party held by American friends in the city of Xining, she expected music, drinks, and a chance to practice her English. But it soon transpired that there would be more to the evening’s activities.

 

“When we arrived one person said loudly: ‘Lord!’ and started to cry,” Dawa, an earnest Tibetan in her late 20s, recalls in a café in Xining, the capital of China’s Qinghai province. “Some people came and touched me and cried. We were so afraid. We thought, Why are they crying?”

 

For Dawa and her friend Tenzin (names have been changed to protect their identities), both Tibetans from nomadic families trying to make it in the big city, the situation was not only potentially dangerous if they had been caught by police but humiliating. “We were upset,” explains Tenzin. “They had told us we could learn English. We felt like fools.

 

The pair had been roped into an evangelical Christian gathering. For missionaries, places like Xining provide rich pickings among so-called unreached peoples. In the city, Hui Muslims sporting white caps live side by side with Tibetans, many wrapped against the cold in colorful robes. An increasing number of the latter have come from the sprawling Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in search of work and education.

 

Tibet is one of the most coveted locations for nondenominational American and Korean Christian groups angling for mass conversion. Most are fundamentalist Christians who prioritize preaching and winning converts over the charitable works traditionally performed by mainstream missionaries. The more radical evangelists believe in the biblical notion of the “Great Commission” — that Jesus can only return when preaching in every tongue and to every tribe and nation on earth is complete.

 

On websites like the U.S.-based Joshua Project, ethnic minorities are seen as “the unfinished task.” Of these, “Tibet has long been one of the greatest challenges,” reads a summary. “In 1892 Hudson Taylor said: ‘To make converts in Tibet is similar to going into a cave and trying to rob a lioness of her cubs.’”

 

Missionary work remains illegal in China and is viewed as a tool of Western infiltration. In 2011, officials issued a secretive 16-page notice ordering universities to counteract foreigners suspected of converting students to Christianity. But in parts of Qinghai proselytizing is being quietly tolerated, according to Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University. He cites estimates that as many as 80% to 90% of the few hundred foreigners living in Xining are fundamentalist Christians.

 

Barnett believes the reason for the government’s tolerant attitude is twofold. First, American missionaries, often funded by their churches, provide a valuable service teaching English for scant pay. Second, by targeting Tibetan Buddhism, missionaries might just help the government erode this integral part of Tibetan identity. Keeping a lid on restive Tibet, which China invaded in 1949–50, is paramount. Under Chinese rule, self-immolations by Tibetans protesting religious and political subjugation have become common in recent years. Tibetan-language schools have been closed down, nomads resettled in towns and cities, and monasteries subject to close police surveillance. Images of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, are banned.

 

“There is a certain underlying commonality of purpose between the evangelizers and the new modernizing Chinese state. It’s just convenient for them to use each other,” explains Barnett. “[Today missionaries] have greater opportunities coming in on the coattails of the Communist Party.”

 

Jason, whose name has been changed at his request, is one such American working clandestinely on a student visa. He knows foreigners who have been kicked out of more politically sensitive areas of Tibetan-populated Qinghai by authorities. But he is thriving in Xining. Leaning forward enthusiastically in the bustling Western-style business he manages, he lays out his reason for coming to China: “When I moved out one of my main agendas was to see if the teachings of Jesus work in an environment where they are not known at all.”

 

Jason compares the Kingdom of God to an outstretched hand available for anyone to “grab.” But for most Tibetans grasping the hand of Jesus is a moot point. Some might adopt him as one of a pantheon of gods; others simply find his story unimpressive. “[Missionaries say,] ‘Well, look at the miracles Jesus is able to perform, to turn water into wine and to heal the sick,’” Elizabeth Reynolds, a Fulbright scholar researching Tibetan culture in Xining, explains. “The Tibetan goes: ‘Is that all he can do?’ It’s believed that such special phenomena [already] occur around high lamas.”

 

To combat such indifference, radical Christians in the past have employed tactics such as tract bombing — undercover distribution of thousands of leaflets in Buddhist areas. In one blog, published in 2006, a young zealot gives a blow-by-blow account of tract bombing among Tibet’s “satanic” monasteries. After his mission is complete, he observes: “Man how blinded these people are.”

 

Many missionaries today are subtler. Many become Tibet scholars in their own right. Most entrench themselves in local life. Much of the informal English instruction in Xining is run by missionaries as are the majority of the foreign cafés. They translate the Bible into Tibetan, distribute flash drives containing their beliefs and rework Tibetan folk songs with Christian lyrics. Some help run orphanages. Targeting the young is key. When a South Korean missionary asked Tenzin which Tibetans needed help, he suggested the elderly. According to Tenzin, the Korean replied: “Not old people — [we want] children.”

 

Aggressive tactics persist, however. In a quiet Tibetan town three hours drive from Xining, one local describes seeing a missionary throw coins into the air. “This comes from Jesus,” he declared to the astonished crowd. The same Tibetan remembers with an incredulous laugh being told that Christianity brings cash. “All Buddhist countries are poor,” the missionary said. “If you believe in Jesus, you will be rich.”

 

If conversions are to be found, it is among those who stand to benefit the most from missionary-led charities and social enterprises. Tibetans in Xining reported knowing at least one convert, an uneducated teenage Tibetan given a job and board by missionaries. According to sources, he hangs around hospitals, spreading the word of God and translating for nomads who do not speak Mandarin.

 

Open conversion, however, remains rare. Few would risk the wrath of family members by abandoning their own faith. Barnett describes hearing about one case in which relatives threatened to kill a missionary who had converted their kin. As such it is impossible to know how many converts there are. Barnett says: “I think we are going to wake up one day and see these people have made serious inroads into a culture already under threat.”

 

For Jason, it is about providing choice. If a Tibetan travelled to America to share Buddha’s teachings, he reasons you “have a right” to hear their views. It is misguided to think that “Tibetans are too stupid to make decisions about their own life,” he says. “Personally, I would like for all people in the world to have access to the teachings of Jesus.” Asked how he envisions Christianity in China, he insists: “I don’t think it is building big gaudy churches and having people wear suits and changing their culture.”

 

Back in the café, Dawa is not so sure. Religion is essential to her Tibetan identity. “I know my way,” she says resolutely. “I believe in Buddhism. They cannot change me.”

(source)

 

*******

shane todd’s “suicide” questionable

by Jerry Seper & Shaun Waterman

 

A 31-year-old U.S. citizen, whose questionable death in June is believed by authorities in Singapore to have been a suicide, had defensive wounds on his body and hands and had tried unsuccessfully to slip his fingers under a garrotte that had been wrapped tightly around his neck to end his life, his family says.

 

Shane Todd, 31, an electrical engineer who worked for the Singapore-based Institute for Microelectronics (IME), was found hanging from a bathroom door in his Singapore apartment in what local police authorities called a suicide, but his mother, Mary, said her son “put up quite a fight.”

 

“His knuckles were bruised. You could see by his fingers that he had tried to slip them under the wire that was around his neck. He had obvious defensive wounds,” Mrs. Todd told The Washington Times on Wednesday, recounting an autopsy review by a U.S. pathologist hired by the family and what the family saw once the body was returned home.

 

Mrs. Todd, who said her son was being threatened and pressured to compromise U.S. security, also had a bruise on his forehead that indicated he had been “head-butted.”

 

Shane Todd reportedly was involved in research for IME and a Chinese partner firm, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., which was aimed at developing a device powered by gallium nitride, a semiconductor material that can improve cellphone and radar technology and has uses in civilian and military technology.

 

“He told us that if we did not contact him every week to immediately email him,” Rick Todd, Shane’s father, told The Times. “If we did not hear from him, we were to contact the U.S. Embassy immediately.”

 

Dr. Edward H. Adelstein, chief of pathology at the Harry S. Truman Veterans Hospital in Missouri, said in his report that marks and bruises on Todd’s throat, forehead, neck and hands indicated that the 6-foot-1-inch, 200-pound man died after a struggle.

 

The Todd family recovered a computer hard drive from their son’s apartment in Singapore when they went there to pack up his belongings. Mr. Todd said an analysis of the hard drive raised more questions about his son’s death, noting that it showed that someone tried to access the computer after his son’s body was discovered. He said the family would turn over the hard drive to investigators if the FBI got fully involved in the investigation

 

Mr. Todd said he had a “brief meeting” Tuesday with Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the United States, and “made it known” that the family wants a full FBI investigation into the death.

 

“We need there to be independent oversight [of the Singaporean police investigation] by an agency that we have confidence in,” he said, adding that police in Singapore “repeatedly lied” to the family about the circumstances of Shane’s death and about the progress of their investigation.

 

“[The ambassador] was very gracious,” he said. “He promised to relay our request to his government.”

 

Shane Todd’s body was found in his apartment on June 24 by his girlfriend, Shirley Sarmiento. He had purchased airline tickets to return to his Marion, Mont., home on July 1.

 

“Shane was an avid athlete, a rugby player, a championship wrestler, a water skier, a snowboarder and a baseball pitcher with quite an arm,” Mrs. Todd said. “He loved life. He was looking to the future. He was coming home. He would never have killed himself.”

 

In a statement, the Singaporean Embassy extended its “deepest condolences to the Todd family,” adding that the investigation that began with the Todd death in June is “still ongoing and the Singapore Police will pursue every lead and examine the different angles thoroughly.”

 

In the meeting with the Todd family, the ambassador “reiterated that a public coroner’s inquiry would be held upon the conclusion of the investigation, and that the coroner would review the investigation findings in an open and transparent manner,” the statement said. “The ambassador told the Todds they will be invited to attend the coroner’s inquiry.”

 

Huawei, a Chinese-based telecommunications company, was identified by congressional investigators in October as one of two firms U.S. companies should avoid doing business with if they wanted to protect themselves and their country. It was accused by a congressional committee of making equipment for the global market that secretly sent data back to China and had flaws that allowed hackers to infiltrate computer and phone networks. The allegations were outlined in an extensive report following a yearlong investigation by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

 

The Todd family believes the young engineer was murdered and have pressed their case with elected officials and law enforcement authorities in Washington. Singaporean police have since asked the FBI to help them in the United States but have not invited them to assist on the ground in Singapore, as the family wants.

 

Shane Todd headed a team at IME involved in the development of gallium nitride, also known as GaN, which has proved to be valuable in military applications, including radar, electronic warfare and high security communication systems.

 

Rick Todd said he did not know what the project involved, but a forensics specialist hired by the family who examined the hard drive found by the family reported that Shane “was quite alarmed at what was being proposed.” An analysis of the hard drive showed that someone tried to access the computer after his son’s death, Mr. Todd said. The hard drive also documented numerous references to a project with Huawei.

 

Huawei, a private company founded by a former high-ranking Chinese military engineer, is among the top global suppliers of telecommunications equipment, and high-speed mobile telephone and Internet hardware. Spokesman Scott Sykes has said the company does not produce military equipment or technology or discuss it with its partners, noting that the development of GaN technology “is commonplace across the entire telecommunications industry.”

 

The company has rejected the intelligence subcommittee’s allegations as “baseless suggestions” and “dangerous political distractions from legitimate public-private initiatives to address what are global and industry-wide cyber challenges.”

 

IME managing director Raj Thampuran told the Straits Times newspaper that there were “discussions but no project ensued between IME and Huawei on amplifiers,” notwithstanding the “unfortunate consequences arising from the speculative media reports.”

 

“Central to this tragic incident is the demise of one of our own. We deeply grieve his loss and will for a long time to come,” he added.

(source)

 

*******

the case of cherian george

by Phil Howard

 

Singapore likes to promote itself as a business-friendly country where the government has a soft touch. But by firing a professor known for criticizing the government’s censorship strategies, ruling elites have demonstrated that they still have a firm hand in controlling political conversation. It should make U.S. universities rethink their research partnerships with universities in Singapore, because such relationships actually help launder the regime’s reputation.

 

As one of Singapore’s most high profile censorship critics, Cherian George is guilty of several things. In his teaching, he is guilty of corrupting several cohorts of young journalism students with ideas about press freedoms. In his role as a public intellectual, he is guilty of helping to organize and inform the country’s growing community of independent bloggers and citizen journalists.

 

Through his research, Cherian George has long demonstrated how subtle and sophisticated censorship strategies by Lee Kwan Yew, the 89-year-old father of modern Singapore who ruled for 30 years and still holds considerable influence, allowed the country become “sustainably authoritarian.” Singapore’s elites, journalists, and democracy advocates have long known about these tricks. But George documented and demonstrated it, with good research and poignant comparisons to Malaysia and other neighbors. And he updated his findings as other figures moved into power within the ruling People’s Action Party. Alas, his home base, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), just decided not to give George the protections of tenure. This means his contract will not be renewed, and he will lose the support that comes with his institutional affiliation.

 

This is actually the second time there has been high level interference with his career trajectory. In 2008, he helped lead a coalition of democracy advocates to lobby for more internet freedoms in Singapore, and helped lead a workshop to teach bloggers about their (lack of) rights. The regime ordered NTU to have nothing to do with the efforts, though that did not stop George from moving ahead on his own energy. The National University of Singapore’s Law School had originally offered to host the blogger workshop, but they too were instructed to stay clear. But George helped pull the event off anyway. The next year, his case for promotion moved smoothly up the ranks within the University, but was quashed with little explanation by the University’s President.

 

George is known for a string of investigative books and articles on how politicians in Singapore and Malaysia use the media as a tool for social control. He is Singaporean, has (had) a job in the Communication Studies department at NTU, and his career track has been derailed by the political elites he has disparaged. In 2009 he was promoted to associate professor without tenure, meaning he could have a bump in pay but not the support of a permanent job at the university.

 

It is difficult to dismiss George on the basis of academic merit. With degrees from Cambridge, Columbia, and Stanford, his pedigree is admirable. He has three books under his belt: the eviscerating “Air Conditioned Nation“, the evocative “Freedom From the Press” and a scholarly tome comparing independent online journalism in Singapore and Malaysia that was actually published at home by Singapore University Press. George has been equally critical of the government and the press, so it is not surprising that the country’s journalists have not rushed to his defense. He’s had positive teaching evaluations. It is unlikely that he does not meet the academic standards of the university.

 

Such protections are important in every country, and a good measure of how open and democratic political life is. In the United States, for example, it was with the protection of tenure that prominent media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan was able to call out the misguided maneuverings of the University of Virginia’s trustees. Indeed, through tenacity and eloquence he demonstrated to the entire country that business leaders could make surprisingly bad management decisions for public universities.

 

Singapore has clearly failed a test. But what should such a failure mean for all the Western universities looking to build research partnerships there? The number of partnerships between universities in North America, Europe, and universities in authoritarian countries are growing. And the internet makes this all the more complex, because universities increasingly form virtual relationships that allow for the exchange of content without requiring investment in physical campuses. But not all universities are created equal, and many universities in authoritarian countries are tasked with serving the government rather than advancing knowledge. Singapore’s universities—including NTU—invest big money research partnerships and in importing foreign academics. Such co-branding might reassure some that the government respects academic freedoms and values ideas and debate. But perhaps we need a kind of international “fair trade” program for academics. No universities with reasonable promotion and labor practices should make deals with universities that don’t have reasonable promotion and labor practices.

 

George’s treatment should raise serious questions for the future of Singapore’s research partnerships. Yale now has a significant project in Singapore. NTU alone claims it has over a dozen partnerships with universities like MIT, Caltech, and the University of Washington. Local academics suspect that both the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technical University have personnel decisions informally vetted by the government. Will the government have veto power over Yale’s hiring decisions as well? Since most Western universities—including Yale—have committed to respecting Singapore’s laws, will Yale’s personnel decisions involve the same informal approval process?

 

Global partnerships can be great things for universities. Researchers learn to approach problems in new ways, and students are presented with ever more opportunities to learn about the world. But it can be tough for academic in one country to understand the rules, norms, and patterns of behavior for academic in other countries. And for even mildly authoritarian regimes, collaborating with Universities in the West can be a way of laundering their reputation.

 

In not giving George tenure, Singapore has demonstrated the obvious—that its universities are not like our universities. When an authoritarian government punishes its critics we need to take note. And when an authoritarian government punishes its scholars at home, Western universities have an opportunity to weigh in. Oddly, the Communication Studies undergraduate program at NTU is now entirely led by non-Singaporeans. We should not assume that Western academics can help erode authoritarian tendencies when they build research partnerships with universities in tough regimes. Instead, bringing in Western scholars and firing any local trouble makers may be the safe bet for tough regimes.

(source)

 

*******

corruption-free singapore: singapore blocks FBI inquiry into American’s death

by Shaun Waterman

 

The parents of a U.S. electronics engineer who was found hanged in Singapore last year say the FBI is “handcuffed” from launching a proper investigation by the police there, but are pressing their case with the island city-state’s ambassador.

 

Shane Todd, 31, was expected to return to the U.S. for a new job before a friend found his body hanging from the bathroom door in his apartment in June.

 

Family and friends said he was not depressed but was increasingly anxious about the implications for U.S. national security of his work with a high-tech government agency in Singapore and its Chinese silent partner.

 

His father, Richard Todd, is in Washington this week to meet with the Singaporean ambassador and to press the family’s case with lawmakers. He told The Washington Times that the FBI could not get involved in the case except at the request of the Singapore Police Force.

 

Last weekend, the police asked the bureau to act, but only to recover two pieces of evidence believed to be in the United States.

 

A State Department official told The Times that Singaporean authorities “have requested FBI assistance regarding the death of Shane Todd,” adding that the request “is focused on issues entirely within the United States.”

 

“To be clear, the investigation into Shane’s death continues to be led by the Singaporean police,” the official said.

 

“That is not good enough,” Mr. Todd said, adding that Singaporean authorities “want a partial investigation; we want a full investigation.”

 

Mr. Todd said both senators from the family’s home state of Montana — Democrats John Tester and Max Baucus — met Tuesday with Singaporean Ambassador to the U.S. Ashok Kumar Mirpuri.

 

“They pressed him pretty hard,” he said.

 

Mr. Todd and his wife, Mary, were scheduled to meet with the ambassador later Tuesday. “I want to look him in the eye,” he said.

 

A spokesman for the Singaporean Embassy in Washington did not return phone calls and an email requesting comment.

 

Mr. Todd believes the Singapore Police Force — at best — botched the investigation into his son’s death. At worst, it is part of a conspiracy that killed him because he learned too much about Singapore’s shady technology transfer deals with China.

 

“They are trying to cover their tracks,” he said of the Singaporean police. “They have lied to us from the beginning.”

 

The Todds said they already were disturbed by discrepancies in the police account of how their son died when they found an external computer hard drive in his apartment, brought it back to the United States and had it examined by a computer forensic analyst.

 

The drive appeared to be a copy of the hard disk from their son’s laptop — the original of which had been retained by the police in Singapore.

 

The drive’s logs show that it had been accessed after Shane’s death and that his Singaporean employer had been using him to obtain “dual-use” technology — with commercial and military applications — from a U.S. firm.

 

Now the Singaporean police want the hard drive they gave to the Todd family and they have asked the FBI to obtain it, along with another piece of evidence, a decade-old psychological evaluation Shane underwent at graduate school after suffering from overwork-related stress.

(source)

Strangely similar to the police abuse of Chinese SMRT drivers case which was investigated by a local filmmaker. The Singapore Police Force seems desperate to destroy evidence…

 

*******

“rising atheism among genocide survivors”

by Irene Nayebare

 

His loving grandparents – who were proud to spent most of their lives within the walls of Kibeho Parish – were burned alive while they knelt in front of the altar hailing the Virgin Mary, but this time for their survival.

 

“I renounced Christianity to become atheist when, after the Genocide, I learned about what happened to them,” says Jacques Musoni, 32, a married man living in Nyamirambo. “I couldn’t possibly bear in mind how priests unleashed killers to exterminate their flocks. It was unimaginably incomprehensible. But also, I was wondering where that so-called omnipresent, omnipotent God was.”

 

For him, there was no way he could keep on praying for a God who seemed to be dead. He said God has never done anything for him. He always asked himself why that God chose to let people be killed in front of him like that. If it’s his decision, he argues, then that’s how he must be defined.

 

“He doesn’t exist. I decided to not waste time any longer. And if he exists, I don’t see any difference between him and genocidaires,” he says sternly. “He’s a God who ruthlessly murdered innocent babies, a God who proudly committed terrible massacres in the history of mankind.”

 

It’s possible that you might have merely read Exodus 12:29-30 without having had a second thought of what happened in Egypt at that time. If you close your eyes and visualize the catastrophic events, then you’ll understand what Musoni meant by equating God to the genocidaires.

 

Here’s the verse:

 

At midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle…and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

 

To understand the verse well, this is what really happened: There was a funeral in every home in Egypt. Women were crying and every family was forced to bury its own dead because friends were also burying their innocent little ones. If you don’t understand it yet, think of what this tragedy would do if that large scale infanticide was committed in Rwanda – starting from your own family.

 

“Who did that? It’s that man that people call their loving and merciful God. All these children were innocent, and most of the people of Egypt were also innocent,” says Thierry Dusange, a young atheist man who, after finding himself at crossroads, had initially converted to Islam after being disappointed by “Christianity’s role during the Genocide”.

 

“I read what happened in Ntarama, Bugesera. Killers were smashing babies on the walls in the house of God. Why couldn’t that omnipotent God cut off the hands of those genocidaires to rescue the babies who were innocently smiling at the killers? Why? I wouldn’t be surprised when someone reputed to kill infants chose to close his arms.”

 

Like him, many other people converted to Islam en masse after the Genocide. He renounced it during the American invasion in Afghanistan. He said that he was tired of being indoctrinated. They were always asked to pray for the souls of brothers and sisters who lost lives when fighting the enemy in Iraq and Palestine.

 

“I kept on wondering whether those Iraqis and Palestinians prayed for us when the Genocide was happening at our doorsteps. I can’t generalize, but I think they – like most of the world – didn’t care. Maybe they were busy watching the World Cup (USA).”

 

It also turns the pages of history where colonizers came to Africa with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other.

 

“If it was for the love and word of God, they shouldn’t have called us names like hommes singes (umushenzi), or monkey men, and ultimately sold us to slavery in America,” said Dusange. “Why do people keep on believing in this nonsense? If you hate colonization, you should also hate religion. They are the same and one wouldn’t be possible without the other.”

 

They both argue that there’s something hidden in religions but people don’t see that. According to them, if you free yourself from religion’s dogma, the world’s abundances open doors for you.

 

So, what is atheism? “It’s is not a religion. Becoming an atheist is more of a journey than a choice. It is a gradual quest for answers about life and the universe as a whole,” said Kamugisha Ndahiro, a successful businessman. “Curiosity is paramount, and the need to escape all the dogma we were taught back in school.”

 

Having a conversation with an atheist makes you realise how little you know about your own religion.

 

“You do not need religion to know what is wrong and what is right,” says Ndahiro. “In fact, what religious people do practice is not morality. I consider a moral action as that which is free from promises like a heaven or fear of hell.”

 

According to some atheists, people are using religion as an excuse after failing to find solutions to their problems. For instance, you should have seen many genocidaires asking for forgiveness saying they were tempted by the devil.

 

“If we believe that, then we have intentionally made our powerful minds weak,” says Musoni. “That’s what atheism is all about: Using our minds to the utmost to benefit from the fruits of the world.”

(source)

 

*******

a physicist proposes

 

 

(source)

 

the way of jesus

 

On Saturday, 9 February 2013, at a rough 6.55 a.m. at a pedestrian’s traffic-light stop along Tampines Street 81, opposite the heartland market centre, a motorcyclist rammed a woman dead.

 

These are the bare facts. Nothing is known about the motorcyclist. Nothing is known about the incident, how the poor woman was killed. A sign at the corner appealed for witnesses. I saw it yesterday. This means the police still looks for witnesses. I suppose no one turned up.

 

I mentioned it to mama last night. Housewife rumour claimed the woman crossed the street at red light. A motorcycle raced past a van, beat the red, and bulldozed the woman. The rumour’s logic was that both parties were blind-spotted by the van. I cannot be certain. These are hearsay. But if coffee shop talk is rooted in some truth, where are the eyewitnesses? Why aren’t they reporting to the police?

 

Mama expressed it so clearly. And damningly. To her and most of the post-WWII Singapore generation, one better mind one’s business and not invite more “problems” by helping others. The only good thing about witnessing a bloody accident is to divine a lottery number out of it. And nothing good comes out of trying to be a good neighbour. Mama said when Ah Gong handed in an iPhone he found on a public bench to the police, he spent slightly more than an hour to complete the documentation. Mama apparently found it a waste of time. So do many Singaporeans of her generation.

 

I am ashamed I did not reprimand mama. I should have. If one were among the deceased woman’s kin, an hour is nothing to the remaining years trying to make sense of the personal loss. Her husband would beg to know what really happened that morning. It is unconscionable to witness a public accident and not help the police. It is unconscionable to witness a crime in progress and not do anything. Singaporeans can be very skilled at pretending blindness.

 

A follower of the way of Jesus will love his or her neighbour. It is the greatest imperative of the christian ethic. In fact, Jesus encourages and instructs his followers to love even their enemies! A megachurch senior pastor who passes by an injured person to be “on time” for his sermon is no follower of Jesus. A Charismatic conference worship leader who ignores a crime in progress to be “on time” for his session is no follower of Jesus. A Christian who attends regularly church services, cell groups, prayer meetings, bible studies, bible conferences and mission trips but ignores the poor and the needy in his or her own backyard is no follower of Jesus. Such do not obey the greatest commandment.

 

But a transgender person with a live-in homosexual partner who sees an injured person, pities him and decides to stop and help follows Jesus. He follows the Way because he loves his neighbour. This is what the parable of the good Samaritan is all about. Jesus does not compliment the religious folks for their excuses. He rejoices in the marginalised for their social justice.

 

Some evangelicals and fundamentalist christians may be offended by my including a transgender person in the story. How can a queer who is living a “sinful” and “evil” lifestyle be a Jesus follower? 

 

This is precisely Jesus’s point. He offends the Jewish throng when he tells the Samaritan parable. To the Jewish, the Samaritan, like the practising homosexual, cannot and can never be “good”! It just cannot be! The Samaritans are heretics! They worship the wrong god because they worship from the wrong place. They are not “real” followers of Jesus.

 

Oh Rob Bell is not a real christian because he does not believe in an eternal hell. Oh John Shelby Spong is not a real christian because he does not affirm all the traditional dogma of the church. Oh Jay Bakker is not a real christian because he affirms gay rights. Oh Doug Pagitt is not a real christian because he affirms yoga. Oh Rowan Williams is not a real christian because he affirms evolutionary biology. Oh the Episcopal Church in the US is apostate and evil because they encompass all of the above.

 

Oh the Samaritans are evil because…

*******

mendacious rhetoric

“Without religion, without faith in the absolute, because god is the absolute, then we don’t have an objective foundation for moral values. As a result, people are divided, people are fragmented because it is all based on relativism, which simply means to say, it is up to each one to think. How can we build a united society when we don’t have a reference point, a basis for unity?”

- William Goh, the next Archbishop of Singapore (source)

 

There are numerous problems with this off-the-cuff rhetoric by Singapore’s next Catholic Archbishop-elect.

 

First, religion is not defined as or equal to faith in the absolute. Religion is a complicated mix of theology, philosophy and social movement. While Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Islam concoct the idea of a sole absolute god, other religions do not.

 

Second, while the word “god” in everyday language refers to an absolute, and in Goh’s case a source of moral absolutes, it is not the only definition. There are those who use “god” as a metaphor or symbol for transcendence, the meaning of life or the universal principle. Or anything they do not understand.

 

Third, Goh’s rhetoric assumes god’s existence as a no-brainer. But anyone who studies philosophy knows that isn’t the case. So what then? Is he implying societies not built on a faith in god are fragmented? Come on, his very Prime Minister is not a theist.

 

Fourth, since when does an “objective moral foundation” a prerequisite or basis for a united society? Is Goh implying that Theravada Buddhists are not contributing to Singapore’s unity because they do not believe in an absolute deity and thus an absolute for morals? Is Goh accusing Lee Kuan Yew, an atheist, for not contributing towards Singapore’s unity? Is Goh sneaking in the idea that all Singapore residents have to be theists in order for our society to be united? Is Goh espousing a totalitarian mindset?

 

I think not. But that is what one concludes from his rhetoric.

 

Fifth, does morality require an objective foundation? Theists think so, and want the rest of the world to concur. The fact is they do not have a corner on the truth or anything, for that matter. Theists get their knowledge of reality not from careful observation and study of the world but archaic texts written by unschooled ancients. Which source of knowledge is more reliable?

 

Sixth, the idea that morality comes from god is only an assertion, not a fact. I opine it is more plausible to suggest the natural origins of morality. It does not come from a supernatural deity or any “absolute” source. Homo sapiens evolved a moral sense because we are a highly intelligent social species. As our brains grow larger, we think and reason. We rationalise if we are selfish and kill, loot and rape one another, we will not thrive, if not die out. What is now “common” moral sense to us was revolutionary in our evolutionary past. The kill-or-be-killed caveman ideology may be effective in prehistory. But over time we learn that cooperation and compromise is better. We learn that violence only gives birth to more violence. We still revert to our bestial reptilian past at times, maybe many times, but we learn. The part of us which distinguishes us from our primate cousins tells us otherwise.

 

Anyhow, we should do good because we want to, not because god or our religion tells us to. We should not want to rob or rape because they violate the property and bodily rights of another, not because they are some ancient community’s fantasy. Some christian men seem to be proud of the fact that if not for Jesus Christ, they will be pole-vaulting vaginas.

 

Seventh, the basis of societal unity cannot be god. There are so many concepts of god as there are religions and unless every citizen’s idea of god is the same, division will occur! To square the circle of god into the most common denominator is naive. Yes, religious people of all stripes uphold the doing of good. Yes, religious people of all stripes are believe in love and compassion. But not every religion uphold pacifism. Not every religion uphold acceptance of the other. Not every religion holds a pluralistic view. Not every religion is that law-abiding. Not every religion holds a form of universal “salvation”. Not every religion is nationalistic. Not every religion agrees on the nature of human sexuality. Or abortion. Or euthanasia. Or contraception. Or stem-cell research. Or gambling. Blah, blah, blah. Worst of all, unlike free-thinkers and humanists, the religious can get very very touchy on these issues. Some even blow people’s brains out.

 

Faith in the absolute, in god, is NOT the answer to societal cohesion, let alone a fairy tale moral unity. If it is, the Middle East should be one of the most stable and peaceful places to live in.

 

Last, it is precisely the individual freedom to think and reason which contributes to human progress and enlightenment. Societies which prohibit creativity and free-thinking are societies which die. Does Goh really believe that it is harmful for each to think his or her own? I think not.

 

I miss Rowan Williams, not that he is a Catholic. He is not. But he is one christian leader and churchman who does not make philosophically, theologically and sociologically naive comments. He thinks hard before he opines. Then again, it appears Third World Singaporeans love leaders like William Goh. We cannot seem to digest nuances, only childish black-and-whites.

 

*******

“reproductive freedom”

by New Statesman

 

Motherhood: it’s a complicated, difficult, but presumably rewarding journey that propels you head first into public property faster than a stint on the X Factor. Suddenly, it seems everyone knows what’s best for you – what you should (or shouldn’t) be eating, drinking, and, most importantly in K-Middy’s case, wearing (a recent headline asked whether or not she’d be “frumpy like Diana”). For those who carry their offspring in their womb, this first taste of motherhood usually comes from someone in the frozen foods aisle boldly placing his or her hand across their swollen uterus and enquiring about the due date – and repeat, for every other day for the next long few months, until, like a woman of our acquaintance, she explodes, and finds herself yelling “GET OFF ME AND FUCK OFF” at a perfect stranger.

 

Healther Frost, a British mother and her 11 children

 

Others have less irritating initial experiences: epiphanies during ultrasounds or when they first see their newborn’s face, for instance, in the brief period of relief in between the lasting effects of an epidural and the government’s next announcement that they’re raising tuition fees again. Undoubtedly, becoming a parent has the power to change a huge amount on a personal level. But for women, one other thing is also for certain: whether it’s a panel on This Morning discussing whether “breast is best” for the hundredth time, speculation in the latest tabloid over whether Beyoncé was wearing a “false stomach” during her pregnancy (really), or the patronising assumption at a dinner party that you’ll “just grow out of” deciding not to have children, the choices that an individual woman makes about motherhood are almost always assumed to be free topics of public discussion.

 

a British mother and her 15 children

 

Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more than the fall-out from Hilary Mantel’s fairly uncontroversial essay on perceptions of royalty in the media, extensively quoted out of context and then reimagined as a “catfight” between her and Kate Middleton by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. The Mail heavily implied that Mantel’s criticism was in some way connected to her inability to have children: a jealous rant at the demonstrably pregnant Duchess, because women’s words – even in academia – must only be prompted by deep-seated Freudian emotions linked to their biological “destinies”, especially when babies are involved. Like the evil barren stepmother from folklore, Mantel is cast as the older women jealous at the Princess’ youth and fertility. So obvious was the fairytale connection (for what are celebrity stories if not fairy tales?) that these archetypes even manifested themselves in cartoon form, showing the double Booker Prize-winner gazing into a magic mirror too divine the fairest of them all and seeing, of course, Kate.

 

Australian parents of 11 children

 

While it got its teeth firmly set into Mantel and her supposed infertility, it was sharpening its claws for the next victim: Heather Frost, a mother-of-eleven on benefits, who was receiving a six bedroom council house – or, as the right wing press would have it, a “mansion”, as opposed to a fairly economical – two kids per bedroom at least – use of social housing. Frost had piqued the media’s ire by supposedly buying one of her children a horse (although in fairness every mother who has served up Findus lasagne in the last ten years is probably guilty of that crime). Apparently, a mother in receipt of state welfare should expect that the nation scrutinise the nuances of her parenting decisions in return. It’s only fair, after all, since Frost had rudely “chosen” to have eleven children she couldn’t afford, and would probably have had more were it not for the small matter of cervical cancer. And yet, her children, who have presumably already had a fairly tough time of it watching their mum fall prey to a life-threatening disease, are expected to receive punishment for her reproductive choices. Never mind the wee ones and their entitlement to warmth and shelter, it’s more important to the bitter mob in the comments section that the mother learn her lesson for daring to reproduce to such a great extent.

 

British parents of 11 children

 

Of course, little is said of how Frost, might have had a reasonable expectation of some child support from the childrens’ fathers. Fathers, particularly absent ones, are afforded some societal judgement themselves – but all too often, “motherhood” is equated with “parenting”, while “fatherhood” is extracurricular, and women are held to much higher standards in this arena than their male counterparts. Which brings us to the other news story this week – the IVF reforms, including the raising of the upper age limit to 40. Cue much commentating on irresponsible and selfish women leaving it too late to get pregnant, and how the state shouldn’t be expected to fund such an endeavour. Their male counterparts, however, (you can call them “career men” if you like) are never berated for their bachelor lifestyles that delay parenthood. Women dawdle and dilly-dally, while men euphemistically sow their wild oats and enjoy their freedom. Such stereotypes save anyone having to think about things in too much depth – throw a woman who couldn’t care less whether she has kids or not, or isn’t that invested in the whole shebang, and it all gets rather too nuanced and complicated to make simplistic headline-grabbing value judgments.

 

In media land, while middle class women are spunking up £3,000 a cycle on IVF, working class women breed indiscriminately, producing children they can’t afford to keep. In fact, neither “group” has anything approaching true reproductive freedom. While one lot is wrestling with a lack of information regarding contraception, not to mention the expectation that giving birth is all they are good for, the other is trying desperately to assert their independence from all of that, only to find it difficult to conceive later in life. Of course, most women fit into neither group, because they are both, largely, media confections, but the point about reproductive freedom stands. Who, truly, can be said to possess it? You might say the aristocracy, unhindered as they are by financial or career related concerns, but then the Waity Katy/Royal Womb narrative would beg to differ.

 

Having a baby (or not) is a personal choice that is different for every single woman, and one that occurs for a myriad of reasons. It often also involves a man. And yet, there seems to be very little empathy regarding any of those choices viewed as being within the woman’s remit. It’s always a case of doing it wrong. Thus there is no sympathy for the woman devastated by her inability to conceive, nor for she who is unable to cope with her many children. Less so for she who does not desire children at all. She must have a screw loose, or rather, something missing in the biological nuts and bolts make up the various components of “womanhood”.  “Being a mum” is still seen by many as our natural state; so much so that women who choose not to breed (especially feminists) are widely seen as “cutting their nose off to spite their face”. Men are often taught that women will ask for the standard package – marriage and babies – as soon as a certain amount of time has passed. Women’s media feeds us back the idea that that is a woman’s place and natural aspiration: flick through any celebrity magazine and witness a female public figure who has recently popped out a child instantly transformed from human of interest into “yummy mummy” or “tiger mother” or “momtrepreneur” (anything, as long as it’s not “tax-wasting benefit scrounger”). Such archetypes are used to divide us, when what we need most is to have empathy for one another and an understanding that motherhood can be life-changing, but that it does not come to define us. In other words, the true meaning of “reproductive freedom” is being able to define yourself, first and foremost, as a person.

(source)

 

*******

“the myth of the online bypass”

by Cherian George

 

When I started writing about press freedom issues more than 25 years ago, most Singaporeans seemed to believe that independent media might actually cause more harm than good in a country that was already pretty well governed. It wasn’t that they believed that their press was free. They just didn’t care that it wasn’t.

 

Today, most Singaporeans seem equally unconvinced that press freedom is an important issue. However, the reasons have changed. Singaporeans no longer take good governance for granted and they are much more prepared to speak up on national issues. It’s just that they don’t feel they need the press to magnify their voices.

 

Today’s internet-enabled citizens feel empowered to say almost anything, whenever, however and to whomever they wish. Seized by this new sense of efficacy, many critical Singaporeans feel they have outgrown the national media. They opine that if the mainstream press is government-controlled, it can go to hell (netizens not being known for polite euphemisms).

 

This confidence is based on the assumption that if the main arteries feeding information and ideas to the country’s democratic heart are politically clogged, we can still rely on a free-flowing online bypass.

 

This confidence is misplaced. Yes, blogs and online forums add precious diversity to the media landscape in Singapore, just as alternative media do in every society. But alternative media, while necessary, are not sufficient. And mainstream media, while not sufficient, are still necessary.

 

Therefore, Singaporeans who care about our democratic development still need to be concerned about restrictions that handicap traditional news organisations in fulfilling their professional roles.

 

Restrictions

 

Before I explain why, let’s be clear about the extent of those restrictions. Media freedom is not absolute anywhere in the world, either in practice or in principle. So the problem is not that Singapore’s media are regulated as such, but that the manner of regulation is not in keeping with what is currently regarded as international best practice.

 

International human rights law has worked out certain principles for balancing rights and responsibilities. The proper balance will differ from country to country, but there are certain “out of bounds” markers that governments should not cross when they regulate freedom of speech. Courts elsewhere increasingly apply a so-called “three-part test” to judge whether a government is crossing the OB markers.

 

First, any restrictions should be done according to written laws – laws that are precise, clear and predictable. We are certainly not as bad as dictatorships where strongmen rule by edict and impose arbitrary, whimsical punishments. However, Singapore fails this first test by having a number of restrictions that are vaguely worded, and that are effected administratively at the discretion of officials and without judicial review. The executive can, for example, revoke or deny a publishing permit at any time and is under no legal obligation to give any reasons.

 

The second part of the three-part test is that any limitation on freedom of expression must be for a legitimate purpose. In international law, the only legitimate aims are to protect the rights or reputations of others, national security or public order, or public health or morals. What is absolutely rejected as a legitimate aim of censorship is to make the government’s job easier. Singapore crosses this OB marker as well – the government has been quite forthright in claiming the authority to set the national agenda and to govern decisively, even if it means restricting the press.

 

The third part of the test is that any restriction must be necessary and proportionate, and not engage in overkill. The proscription must match the supposed threat to society. Singapore again fails on this score. For example, the preservation of multi-racial, multi-religious peace is the most commonly cited reason why our press needs close supervision – but it has never been adequately explained why, in order to achieve this, it has been necessary for the chairmen of Singapore Press Holdings to be former Cabinet ministers, as if other able Singaporeans lack the instincts to protect national interests.

 

The net effect of the government’s press policy is that when covering controversial issues where there is a significant divergence between government positions and public opinion, newspapers are expected to educate the public at the expense of reflecting ground sentiment – even if journalists themselves are not persuaded. As government policy states unequivocally, press freedom must be “subordinate to the primacy of purpose of an elected government” in such instances.

 

The government wants the space to effect unpopular policies that are beneficial for the country in the long term – not a bad thing – but it may end up protecting itself from the kind of accountability that would keep it honest and responsive to the public. And without open debate, it is too easy to slip from the former to the latter.

 

The online option

 

Many bloggers and online commentators are motivated by the desire to use the relative freedom of the internet to make up for traditional media’s democratic deficiencies. And certainly, alternative online media are a vital complement to mainstream media. As I argued in my 2006 book, Contentious Journalism, they enable access for voices and interests that, for a mix of reasons, are marginalised by professional, commercial and licensed media sector.

 

The question is whether they can not only supplement but also substitute for mainstream journalism.

 

Doubts have been expressed for decades about the power of digital media, some less credible than others. One early question was whether electronic platforms could ever be as practical as ink on paper. Newspapers, it was said, passed the toilet test with flying colours: you can even carry them into the loo with you. IPads and 3G phones have closed that gap, and fewer people make the argument that newspapers are inherently more convenient.

 

What continues to be taken seriously, though, is the argument that newspapers, for all their faults, are still required for gathering the public in a collective dialogue about matters of public interest. This is the so-called “public sphere” function of the press. The internet as a whole may approximate a public sphere, but the problem is that we don’t engage with the internet as a whole. We visit specific websites and forums, most of which are self-selecting and narrower in their constituencies than national newspapers.

 

Democracy requires the right to speak, and this is where the internet has come to the fore. But democracy also expects of citizens that we listen, to hear views different from our own, to negotiate and, if necessary, compromise. We need spaces for such deliberation and social conciliation.

 

The evidence from internet research so far is mixed, with some studies pointing to an echo chamber effect, while others claim that the internet introduces people to a wider range of views than mainstream media do. While there is some evidence that the internet allows people to engage more meaningfully in public life, there are also studies that say that new media equally allow people to distract themselves from public affairs.

 

But, all said and done, it is probably the case that if newspapers were to die tomorrow, it would be fairly easy for one or more internet sites to fill the void as a space for a national conversation.

 

Professional journalism

 

There is, however, a third role that newspapers play that online media show no signs of taking on. As much as our blogs claim to be monitoring the powerful, the reality is that their capacity is extremely limited. One limitation is their lack of training and experience, in making ethical judgment calls and in separating reliable information from gossip. This gap may be overstated. Journalism is not rocket science and I think it is possible for bloggers to develop professional journalism skills.

 

However, there is a bigger – and so far unbridgeable – gap that we need to take far more seriously. This is the gap between what can be accomplished by large teams of professional, full-time journalists versus small collectives of part-time amateurs. No matter how intelligent, talented and sincere the latter are, there are simply practical limits to what they can accomplish without sufficient time and  organisational back-up.

 

Yes, they may occasionally cover certain issues comprehensively and thoroughly. When certain events are exciting enough, they may be able to crowd-source investigative reports from an army of committed volunteers. But providing sustained, daily, disciplined monitoring of trends and institutions is beyond them.

 

Singapore is not a kampong. We are a thriving metropolis of 5 million people with economic activities on a scale that surpasses most countries. Monitoring the opportunities and threats within our country (and beyond our shores) is a prerequisite for individual, household and corporate survival. We can’t do this ourselves (even in partnership with our Facebook friends). And it is also fanciful to imagine that we can delegate the job entirely to amateur, part-time, unpaid citizen reporters.

 

To reiterate, citizen reporting and alternative media are a vital supplement – but they cannot meet all our democratic needs.

 

Too much of society’s business takes place during office hours, when our bloggers are busy with their day jobs or in school. And a lot of what needs to be kept track of – meetings, press conferences, reports, community events, business deals – is, quite frankly, so boring that no volunteer would be willing to do it for us. We actually need to pay someone to do it – sit through meetings, read reports cover to cover and so on – to find those bits of information that are relevant and important for the public, and then to connect the dots.

 

Often, of course, you can find experts in a given field who know a subject better than the most seasoned beat correspondent in a newspaper. No doubt, there are educationists who know their subject better than the education correspondents of the Straits Times, and law professors who understand their subject better than any legal affairs or crime reporter. When such experts blog, they certainly contribute to our collective enlightenment. And they may make us wonder if we need professional journalists any more to analyse things for us.

 

Again, though, we need to be more circumspect about whether experts turned amateur journalists can actually replace professional journalists entirely. Like other bloggers, these experts tend to be sporadic in their contribution.

 

But, more importantly, they tend to be embedded in professions and organisations and may feel no responsibility to escape their vested interests. In contrast, journalism as a profession accepts as its core mission (even if it doesn’t always achieve this) circulating information that helps citizens make sense of change and take part in democratic life. No other group claims to want to fill this social role and can be held up to that standard.

 

No online business model yet

 

What I’ve been stressing so far is the unique and indispensable function of professional journalism. In theory of course, there is no reason why professional journalism can only take place in newspapers.

 

In practice, though, newspapers have always provided and continue to provide the most hospitable business model for sustaining professional newsrooms.

 

Investigation, fact-checking and sense-making for a large, diverse population in a complex, fast-moving society is a resource intensive enterprise. It just cannot be done solely by small teams of part-timers and volunteers. You need newsrooms of 30 to 300 full-time professional journalists.

 

Can online media sustain such newsrooms? The closest we have to that is Yahoo! News, but although it is the country’s number one online news source, it is obvious that its capacity to generate original content is extremely limited. Regardless of how the ongoing copyright suit filed by SPH against Yahoo! is decided, it is noteworthy that even Yahoo! isn’t claiming that its reporting was original – it is merely claiming that it had a right to crib.

 

As for our amateur socio-political blogs, some have explored possible revenue streams, but I know of no blog that any longer has pretentions of becoming Singapore’s Malaysiakini (which has daily output in four languages produced by a full-time team of 70).

 

If a business model can be found for independent online journalism in Singapore, it would be a huge step forward for democratic communication. It would combine the value of professional journalism with the relative freedom of the internet.

 

But there is no sign that this will arrive soon. Until then, those who believe that greater freedom of expression is necessary for Singapore’s democratic progress should understand that newspapers must be part of the solution. And if Singaporeans feel that the press system is underperforming, they need to reform it – not ignore it.

(source)

 

*******

maritals

 

A group of mothers in Spain modelled for a calendar to help raise funds to save their school bus service so that their children can get to school safely.

 

 

 

It got Spain’s attention.

 

 

 

Who says mothers aren’t sexy? It is sad how young Singaporeans have become so paedophilic in their obsession with the skinny woman as the standard of feminine beauty. As a grown man, what is sexy about a woman who looks like your pre-adolescent sister? Is the contemporary K-pop mania to blame for this delusion? Or Asia’s Next Top Model?

 

It is not surprising that more and more husbands are getting sexually bored with their wives and turning to university-aged prostitutes PR-ing as social escorts, more-than-willing subordinates and co-workers. Yes, what consenting adults do in private is none of my business. Yes, it is not immoral if two single adults wish to copulate in a hotel, the back seat of a car, in the bushes at night, in the public “for the disabled” unisex toilet, in their parents’ house, on the dinner table, in the study, at the back of the last night bus, or even outside one’s flat for goodness’ sake.

 

But don’t tell me there is nothing wrong about betraying and deceiving one’s spouse and children. Don’t tell me it is all right to kiss and hug your children at night after ejaculating in the mouth of someone other than their mother.

 

Yes, this happens all the time. Marriages do turn acrid. And lonesome. But don’t tell me you are giving up and not trying to work it out. Love is not just an emotion. Love is also an avowed commitment to be with, stand alongside and look after someone when the naive romance-and-passion-all-the-time feeling is over. It is not passion or romance that keeps a marriage. It is servant co-partnership and compromise. It is mutual commitment. It is agape love.

 

If you are stubborn in wanting to keep your current lifestyle when you get married, for goodness’ sake don’t marry. If you want to watch EPL football and get drunk at the pub every other night with your mates, don’t marry. If you can’t stop being a boy playing computer games every night, don’t marry. If you can’t give up anything precious to you so that you can be with your kids at their school concerts, school plays, graduation parties, etc, don’t marry.

 

Even if PAP tells you to.

 

*******

the meddlesome evil of evangelical christianity

 

Lawrence Khong and his merry band of self-righteous pastors four days ago met Singapore’s Minister for Law (and foreign affairs), the will-fucking-sue-you-if-you-expose-my-not-so-clean-personal-life K. Shanmugam.

 

They talked about sex.

 

And their very naive brand of “moral” values. They wanted assurance from the immoral Shanmugam that Singapore’s archaic law on homosexuality is here to stay. Evangelical christians, think Mick Huckabee, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, John Macarthur, love to poke their noses into areas constitutionally and politically forbidden to them. They think they can transform modern societies into stone-age autocracies.

 

Anyway, the fuckers got what they wanted.

 

Fellow humanists, let them smile and scratch one another’s back. No prudish community can resist the tide of change in the 21st century unless they amish themselves. PAP along with Singapore’s fundamentalist religions may maintain their Neanderthal mindsets for now. It will not last.

 

Dear LGBT friends, I may be all red-blooded heterosexual, but let me be your comrade. Bigotry is an enemy I cannot love. Neither would Jesus if he lives in Singapore today. We may not live to see the day Singapore wakes up from her coma. We may not live to see Singapore christians genuinely loving their neighbour with NO agenda of proselytisation. But we can dream. We can fight. And for as long as we have the strength to protest, to debate, to speak up; for as long as I have the mind to wield the pen, you and I, comrades, will do battle against the powers that be.

 

Here we stand. We can do no other.

 

Or die trying.

 

*******

strange behaviours

by Lynn Lee

 

I’ve spent the last 15 years telling stories about other people. It’s a little mortifying knowing I’ve become a story myself. I’ve not read all the news reports, but friends have alerted me to various postings on Facebook and last Thursday, there were hundreds of messages expressing concern and alarm over how I was being treated by the police.

 

Thank you. I am touched and humbled by the outpouring of support. I am fine. A little worn out, but generally, okay.

 

I knew when I posted these clips online that the allegations raised by former SMRT drivers, He Jun Ling and Liu Xiangying, were serious. I thought the relevant authorities should look into their claims and had, prior to the posting, written to various departments for a response. They still haven’t officially acknowledged my email.

 

What the Ministry of Home Affairs did though was to announce through a press statement that they would be launching an investigation, and that they would be seeking the assistance of various people, including the producers of the videos.

 

I am still trying to process what happened next.

 

*

 

They showed up at our flat on Tuesday, the 5th of February. It was about 11am. I had pulled a late night and James had just flown in from China, so we were both knackered. But the knocking on our door was incessant and so I opened it.

 

I was still wearing my pajamas when I let them in – two men and a woman at first. They were joined by various other plainclothes police over the course of the morning. Snowy, our Maltese, went a little berserk barking at all the strangers in the house.

 

Superintendent Lim Chan Huat from the Internal Affairs Office introduced himself. He seemed nice enough, told me he was investigating He and Liu’s allegations and said he wanted to take a look at footage of my interviews with the two men. I showed him the clips. He asked a few questions. I answered them. And then, things got a little strange.

 

Superintendent Lim said he had to take away the external hard drive containing all my footage of the ex-drivers. I told him I couldn’t let him do so as there was other material in the drive – information not related to his investigation, contacts and research that as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, I was bound to keep confidential. I offered repeatedly to let him copy the relevant footage off my drive, but he refused, showing me instead a letter from the Attorney General’s Chambers, authorising him to act under Section 16(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).

 

I asked what provision in the CPC allowed him to take my property, especially as I wasn’t the one being investigated. He was unable to give me an answer and had to make a few calls to his office. We spent a good 20 minutes scrolling through the CPC, him pointing out various sections, me reading them and saying, “But that’s not applicable!”

 

Things got even weirder when a Superintendent Goh Tat Boon showed up. He said he was from Bedok Division, not the Internal Affairs Office and that he was going to exercise his ‘power of seizure’.

 

I asked why he had to take the entire drive if all the police were interested in were video clips of the former drivers. He said they needed it to ‘ascertain circumstances’. I asked what kinds of ‘circumstances’. All he would say was that these were ‘circumstances surrounding the case’.

 

And so it went on, this to-and-fro – me trying to find out why they needed the entire drive, them saying they did so because they did so. Me asking them to name the provisions under which they were acting, Superintendent Goh telling me not to discuss ‘technicalities’.

 

I called a lawyer friend who suggested letting them take the drive if they allowed me to back everything up and agreed to only look at the two interviews in question. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but at the time, I felt it was perhaps unreasonable to protest any further. The police were after all, investigating allegations brought to light by my videos. And if they undertook to only look at the two interviews, I should have faith that they would keep their word.

 

We made a copy. They took the drive after getting me to show them where the relevant clips were filed. They repeated their promise not to look at anything else.

 

Superintendent Lim asked to take my statement. “You can either do it here or at my office tomorrow.”

 

I opted for here, thinking it would be easier. But then, he started by asking some pretty strange questions.

 

“What causes do you champion?”

 

“Do you do any volunteer work?”

 

And again:

 

“Do you believe in any causes?”

 

(I believe in numerous causes – saying no to shark fin soup, puppy mills, the death penalty, the genocide in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. I believe in justice, fairness, equality. But how were any of my beliefs relevant to whether He and Liu had been beaten in custody? Did it matter if I volunteered in a dog pound, or homeless shelter, or spent my weekends doing nothing? How was any of this relevant to the investigation? It was bizarre.)

 

James suggested we stop the interview. It was nearly two and we had work to do. I said I would go to the Internal Affairs Office the following day to give a fresh statement, and that I did not want to answer irrelevant questions.

 

*

 

The Internal Affairs Office is located on the 17th floor of Police Headquarters at Irrawady Road. My first visited there lasted about two-and-a-half hours. The interview took place inside a small office. The door was left open at all times, the air conditioning was just nice, Superintendent Lim was civil and polite throughout.

 

I took pages and pages of notes – writing down the questions he posed as well as the answers I gave.

 

He asked if I would like to continue where we left off the day before. I requested a fresh statement.

 

There were more than 90 questions in all, many of them relating to the circumstances leading to my interviews with He and Liu. Lim asked why I wanted to speak to the ex-drivers, who arranged the interviews, and why I didn’t tell He and Liu to file a police report.

 

I said that like many journalists, I was interested in the case and that I had put in a request for interviews with the men via their case worker, S, from the NGO, TWC2.

 

In response to the last question, I told Superintendent Lim it wasn’t my role to give legal advice.

 

He asked if the interviews were recorded in ‘segments’ and if so, why. I explained that this is how the camera we used works – it automatically records in segments. Looking back now, I think what the Superintendent was really interested in was whether a lot of time elapsed between the ‘segments’. What happened when the two men were off camera? Did I say anything ‘extra’ to my interviewees?

 

If he’d asked me, I would have told him that very little time elapsed between the ‘segments’. We were racing to finish four interviews in one day. Each one lasted at least one-and-a-half hours. I couldn’t afford to waste precious minutes.

 

I left Police Headquarters at around lunchtime and headed to a mall in the east to meet a friend. Later that afternoon, as we sat down with another friend (and her baby) for coffee and cake at a café located in the atrium of the mall, I noticed a man in a blue shirt staring at us. He was maybe five foot five. Rotund. Glasses. He circled us, stared, spoke into a handsfree phone headset and walked away. A little later, a taller man in white hovered around our table.

 

“Are we being followed?” I asked my friends. It was hard to tell if I was simply being paranoid. We sat at the café for close to an hour. The two men circled us at least three more times. There was a lot of staring. It didn’t seem as if they were interested in coffee, or cake, or shopping.

 

*

 

9am on Wednesday. James told me that the police were back again. This time, it was two officers from the Internal Affairs Office and Superintendent Goh Tat Boon from Bedok Division. He seemed to be in charge.

 

I let them in and Superintendent Goh got straight to the point. He wanted to seize my laptop, iMac and mobile phone. I asked why these were needed as the police already had the drive containing all the footage of my interviews with He and Liu. All Superintendent Goh would say was that the three devices were ‘necessary and related’ and that while it was ‘unpleasant’ for me, he had to take them.

 

I called my friend, lawyer M Ravi, who came over immediately with his colleague, Claudia Powers. Ravi asked Superintendent Goh to name the provision under which he was acting. He pointed out that I had cooperated fully the day before and that the police seemed to be over zealous, especially given the fact that I was not a suspect in the case and might even be a witness for the State should charges be brought against any officers involved in the alleged assault.

 

Superintendent Goh’s response was that we should let him seize the items first and lodge a complaint with relevant authorities later.

 

Ravi then called the Chief Prosecutor and after a short conversation, it was agreed that I would take my laptop and mobile phone to the Internal Affairs Office that afternoon, where the two objects would be examined in my presence.

 

I am glad I turned to Ravi for help and immeasurably grateful that he put aside his work to come when I called. By the time he arrived, the police had already photographed and tagged everything. Ravi’s intervention meant I was able to keep the three items.

 

A question I’m trying to figure out – if the investigation into the alleged beatings is being conducted by the Internal Affairs Office, which is an independent body within the police force, why was Superintendent Goh from Bedok directing proceedings that morning?

 

Maybe there is a logical, plausible answer to my question, but shouldn’t an independent investigation be conducted at all times by members of the independent body charged to carry out the task?

 

*

 

My second session at Police Headquarters started with an interview, this time, with DSP Sim Ngin Kit. Again, I took notes.

 

There were 62 questions in all. The first few focused once again, on the day we shot the interviews with the drivers. Sim wanted to know how many takes we did for the interviews and who else, besides the cameraman and myself, was involved in the taping.

 

I replied that both interviews were done in one take and that apart from the cameraman, no one else was involved in the taping.

 

DSP Sim: Can I write down that you were the one who made all the arrangements for the taping?

 

Lynn: I was the one who arranged for the equipment and the cameraman.

 

I was also repeatedly asked whether I discussed the drivers’ allegations with anyone else. Sim seemed particularly interested in any communication I might have had with NGOs or the two men’s lawyers. I found his line of questioning puzzling.

 

DSP Sim: Were there any persons you were in contact with after the posting of the video, in respect to the allegations of assault?

 

Lynn: Lots of people contacted me after the posting of the videos.

 

DSP Sim: Were there any NGOs that you can recall?

 

Lynn: After the posting?

 

DSP Sim: And before?

 

Lynn: How is this relevant?

 

DSP Sim: I will just put this in.

 

Lynn: If you explain this to me logically, I might answer you.

 

DSP Sim: Did any NGO contact you before or after the posting of the videos online, regarding the allegations of He and Liu?

 

Lynn: I don’t see why this is relevant. But seriously, why is this relevant?

 

DSP Sim does not answer my question.

 

Later…

 

DSP Sim: You mentioned you posed some questions for your documentary. Why were you interested in posing these questions?

 

Lynn: Because they were interesting questions.

 

DSP Sim: Did you discuss these questions with anyone else beforehand?

 

Lynn: No.

 

Later…

 

DSP Sim: Do you have any record of the questions prepared for the interview?

 

Lynn: No, there is no record.

 

DSP Sim: So how did these questions come about?

 

Lynn: I just asked them on the spot during the interview.

 

DSP Sim: In your previous statement, you said that the men’s allegations were serious and needed to be addressed. Could you tell us how the clips were uploaded and what devices were used to upload the clips?

 

Lynn: Are you going to use that as an excuse to seize my computer again? How is this question relevant? The clips were uploaded onto the video website, Vimeo.

 

DSP Sim: And the device?

 

Lynn: I don’t think that’s relevant.

 

It was during this interview that I started wondering seriously if I, rather than the alleged perpetrators, was the one being investigated. Were they trying to establish if I had somehow manufactured the allegations? Or that I had worked with He and Liu’s lawyers and various NGOs to fabricate things?

 

My suspicions were reinforced when they started examining my computer. Two officers from the Technology Crime Forensic Branch explained that they would start by removing my hard disk before connecting it to something called a ‘write blocker’, to ‘ensure that no data is overwritten or introduced’.

 

I asked what they would look at when they were examining my hard disk and an officer called Florence Koh said that this would be ‘anything related to the case’.

 

Lynn: So what happens if confidential information not relating to the case gets leaked?

 

Koh: We will not leak it out.

 

Lynn: I have your word on this?

 

Koh: Yes.

 

Taking apart my laptop proved problematic for the officers charged with the task. They couldn’t figure out how to remove its casing and at one stage, were googling for answers. I was afraid they might break the machine and asked why they couldn’t just look directly at the computer instead.

 

Connie (the computer expert): So if the IO (Investigating Officer) just accesses the file from your computer, the date stamp of your files will change.

 

Lynn: So how is that material to the case?

 

Connie: It has always been our practice. We want to ensure that a file is not accidentally created.

 

In the end, they managed to remove my hard disk. Once it was hooked up to their own device, I realised that the police would be able to access not only what I currently had on my laptop, but all deleted documents, videos and photos as well. They could also see records of my online activity. This was why they had to take apart my laptop – to run it through forensic software, which would enable them to trawl through my computer’s history. Nice.

 

The examination took a long time, primarily because I think, they were trying to find things that did not exist. An officer called Choo Kwang Meng asked to look at my video clips. There were only four, none connected to their case. I told them everything I had of He and Liu was on the hard drive they confiscated, and that my laptop didn’t have the capacity to hold big video files.

 

But still they looked.

 

They went through all my documents – scripts I had written for previous documentaries, the draft of a book I was working on, notes, research material, random bits and bobs. By this time, I was getting a little impatient.

 

Lynn: Why don’t you tell me what you are looking for? There are no video files (of He and Liu’s interviews) in there. My computer is too small to handle. Your colleagues here can tell you it’s true.

 

Choo: What about a script?

 

Lynn: There is no script.

 

Choo: Questions?

 

Lynn: No pre-prepared questions.

 

And still they looked, and looked and looked. And the night wore on. None of the officers were unpleasant. They treated me well and offered up Milo, instant noodles, biscuits, pau and candy. There was even cappuccino, made, I was told, by Superintendent Lim himself (“Lim’s kopi!” I thought).

 

At 8.02pm, I received a text from my friend, Teo Soh Lung. “I am on my way to get you home”.

 

Other friends and family had also started calling me. I had been sending regular updates to Kirsten and I knew she was posting them on her blog. But I didn’t realise how much the information was getting re-shared until a former CNN colleague rang.

 

At 8.07pm, I messaged Kirsten to tell her that they had started examining the contents of my phone, which had been downloaded a little earlier.

 

The officers also asked me if I used a web-based email. I told them I did. They asked if I could give them my password.

 

Lynn: No.

 

Choo: Why not?

 

Lynn: Would you allow me to look at your emails?

 

There were no videos in my phone and the photos proved pretty uninteresting to Investigating Officer Florence Koh. So in the end, most of her time was spent examining my SMSes – messages from my mother telling me about my Dad’s hospital schedule, silly texts from James, plans for meet ups with a close girlfriend. It was surreal going through every single one of these with a stranger. Koh was particularly interested in any contact I might have had with the men’s lawyers and their case worker. She also flagged a text I had sent James the day before: ‘We’re being followed at I12’.

 

The messages Koh deemed important were then printed. I was asked to verify that these came from my phone and told to sign at the bottom of each page.

 

By then, it was nine. I thought we were done. But DSP Sim emerged and said I had to answer more questions, this time relating to my refusal to disclose the password to my email account. They also wanted the phone number of the cameraman who had helped me film the interview. I didn’t give it to them

 

9.07pm. The techonology experts were told to reassemble my laptop and erase from their system, anything they had downloaded from my phone. Connie assured me that the programme they used would ensure that everything was wiped clean. The process took ages.

 

During this time, I also sensed some kind of a meeting going on further down the corridor. It was hard to tell what exactly was happening, I was getting hungry. My phone kept ringing – friends, relatives and even a reporter from Yahoo were all wondering when I would be done.

 

At about 9.20, Officer Koh informed me that the SMSes extracted from my phone were irrelevant, and that I should witness the shredding of the print-outs they had made me sign.

 

I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel relieved – all that time spent, those questions asked, my home invaded, my property nearly seized, my privacy violated, for irrelevant information? Were the police officers who had allegedly beaten the drivers given the same kind of treatment?

 

*

 

I left Police Headquarters at around 10pm. A group of people had gathered outside the gate. Many of them are my friends, but there were a few I had never met. I am incredibly moved that they cared enough to make the effort to go to Irrawady Road just to make sure I was okay.

 

At home, I saw multiple Facebook postings about my ‘interview’. My inbox was overflowing with messages of support. A few reporters wrote asking for comment. NGOs wanted to know if they could offer me any help.

 

Again, to the people who reached out – thank you so much.

 

I learnt also that my friend, Vincent Wijeysingha, had earlier in the day, put out in his own capacity, an international press release about my situation. He has since pulled the statement because it contained a couple of inaccuracies. I remain grateful to Vince. I know he acted because he was concerned about me. The mistakes were not his fault – he didn’t manage to speak to me before releasing the statement and played no part in the making of the video clips. There were details he would not have known.

 

Some people have asked if my actions were politically motivated – was I perhaps working with or for the SDP?

 

The answer is no. Vincent and Soh Lung (both, SDP members) are friends, but I have never once attended an SDP meeting, volunteered at any of their events or tried to become a member of the party, or of any party for that matter.

 

Was there some kind of conspiracy between the drivers, their lawyers, political parties NGO workers and myself to fabricate the allegations? The suggestion is ludicrous. The men were not coached. There was no script, not even a list of pre-prepared questions. He and Liu were interviewed separately. Each session consisted of just three people – the relevant driver, the cameraman and me. No one else. There were no retakes.

 

The interviews were not conducted so He and Liu could talk about being beaten. The two men raised the issue themselves. Prior to the taping, I was in fact, more interested in finding out what brought the ex-drivers to Singapore, what caused them to go on strike, and what happened as a result.

 

As for whether He and Liu might have conspired with NGOs and their lawyers to spin a story against the police, all I can say is this: Why would so many people (most of them smart, accomplished and respected) come together to risk their careers, livelihoods, reputations and safety for a scheme so harebrained?

 

So why did I post the video clips? The answer, to me, is blindingly obvious. Isn’t this what journalists do? Talk to people and tell the public what we’ve found out? If the Ministry of Home Affairs, or the Attorney General’s Chambers, or the Prison Service, or Police Force had gotten in touch with me to rebut or respond to the drivers’ claims, I would have posted their interviews too. My invitation remains. I would be more than happy to speak with representatives from any of these departments.

 

Maybe it was necessary for investigators to do everything they could to rule out any wrongdoing on my part, but to borrow Ravi’s words, I think authorities were over zealous. They must think that I am absolutely rubbish at this journalism thing, or believe me dumb enough to throw away my career for a headline.

 

Over the past 15 years, I have worked for some of the world’s biggest news broadcasters and completed multiple stints at two different United Nations missions. James and I have made documentaries in refugee camps and live minefields, in post-conflict zones and inside the world’s most secretive state. We’ve filmed rebel leaders and Maoists soldiers, interviewed political figures, Nobel Prize winners, a murderer, militiamen and ordinary people. We make a good living doing what we love. We’ve even won a few awards here and there. Why on earth would I throw it all away by manufacturing two little soundbites?

 

A few concerned friends have advised me to ‘shut up’, to lay low, to not share my experiences or say anything more about the SMRT saga. “You might get ISD-d,” they joke, half seriously. “Operation Spectrum was not such a long time ago.”

 

But why should the ISD even be interested in me? I believe in transparency, in openness. I would also like to believe that Singapore today is not the Singapore of the 80s. That we have evolved, that the powers-that-be see that draconian methods employed in the past will neither win them love, nor respect, nor entrench their position among a more mature, better-informed people.

 

Members of the Internal Affairs Office assure me they are taking Liu and He’s allegations ‘very seriously’ and that they would get to the bottom of the matter. I hope so and look forward to learning their findings. If the two ex-drivers lied, they should be punished. If they told the truth, then the police officers who beat them deserve to be brought to justice. Either way, I continue to follow the IAO’s investigations with interest. Maybe when they’re ready, they might even grant me an interview about their work – an on-camera one lasting way less than 7 hours.

 

In the meantime, I have my job to do – films to make, more questions to ask, stories to tell. Some of these might even be about former SMRT drivers.

(source)

 

*******

4000 at hong lim park

 

4000-some Singaporeans turned up at this evening’s Hong Lim Park protest.

 

 

Yes. Let’s wait for 2016 to vote PAP out. We may not be able to organise an October Revolution, but we can use the one democratic weapon we have.

 

 

PAP is shameless. Singapore is not a corporation. Singapore is not a private limited. Singapore is US, the people.

 

 

This is the result of Lee Kuan Yew and his Rafflesian cronies, inspired by modern capitalist greed. If they had not ruthlessly eliminated Barisan Sosialis…

 

 

So what if Singapore is among the world’s richest? The majority live in government public housing which they can barely afford and commute to work every day in suffocating buses and train cabins. Almost ALL our PAP MPs are bourgeoisie who do not experience working-class woes. Instead they are paid obscene salaries and live in non-PAP privatised housing while many of us slave to pay off our mortgages, look after our children’s welfare and endure the constant rise in costs of living. It is no wonder young Singaporeans do not want to marry or have children. In stressful Singapore, they will rather use their bloody money to enjoy themselves.

 

 

So if PAP gets off with their plan of inviting more people into Singapore because their fascist attempt at social engineering in the late 1970s fucked up, do we really have to quit Singapore to seek a better life?

 

 

 

A good life is not about making money and more money. Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP has created a Singapore that appears to embody that. It is also not about being the best every time. So what if Singapore boasts one of the world’s “best” airports? So what if our students win maths and science Olympiads? Singaporeans are not a very happy lot.

 

The upcoming generation do not like to live in a surveillance state where we are our own enemy – self-censoring what we can or cannot say on social media. I have boycotted Facebook a long time ago. We dislike reading news written by pussies who kowtow to PAP dogma. We throw up watching local films which are nothing but PAP propaganda. We are disgusted seeing PAP bully ordinary Singaporeans who have different opinions from them.

 

We are a different generation. We have enough of Lee Kuan Yew’s hooligan tactics. We have enough of defamation threat after defamation threat.

 

Maybe we can only dream.

 

 

 

Barisan Sosialis 1962 (PAP crushed them by detaining many of them for decades without trial)

 

We can only wish.

 

 

 

Revolution.

*******

“singapore protest”

by The Guardian

 

Liane Ng is 25 and single, works 60 hours a week, and until recently, shared a bedroom with her grandmother. Like many other Singaporeans, her life revolves around work, family and the stress of making ends meet in a nation that works the longest hours in the world. But lately her life has taken on a more immediate concern: a government initiative to increase Singapore’s population by a third by 2030, a move that would see citizenship granted to more foreigners and squash the native population to just over half the total.

 

“I love my country,” says the advertising executive. “[But] the cost of living is high, the income gap is widening, transport is failing and unfamiliar faces are crowding our land. People are getting increasingly fed up because our daily lives are affected.”

 

Singapore has long been heralded as the success story of south-east Asia, a small island nation less than half the geographical land size of Greater London that in just 50 years has transformed from colonial backwater to one of the world’s most formidable economic powerhouses.

 

But that gain has come at increasing cost. Sky-rocketing housing prices, overcrowding, long working hours, low birth rates and an ageing population – that the government terms Singapore’s “silver tsunami” – are all major contributors to discontent often been focused on the country’s rapid immigration.

 

The city-state currently has a population of 5.3 million, and is now more densely populated than Hong Kong. Under a government white paper – which was approved last week despite widespread public anger – Singapore will aim to increase its population to 6.9 million people over the next 20 years by granting permanent residency to 30,000 people and allowing an inflow of some 25,000 new citizens every year. New social programmes, including marriage and parenthood initiatives, as well as infrastructure schemes, will accommodate the burgeoning population, with immigration calibrated to retain its current ethnic ratios.

 

“We are producing too few babies, our society is ageing, and if we do nothing, our population will soon start shrinking,” said Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong.

 

“Singapore must continue to develop and upgrade to remain a key node in the network of global cities, a vibrant place where jobs and opportunities are created.”

 

It is the government’s focus on Singapore’s economy, rather than its people, that has stirred much of the public’s discontent. Singapore is the third most expensive city in Asia.

 

The ruling People’s Action Party (Pap), in power since independence in 1965, is seemingly on a one-track mission to maintain its own rule, despite having heavily lost a recent by election and potentially standing to lose more, says Singapore expert Michael Barr of Australia’s Flinders University.

 

“Pap has always presented itself as a party above vested interests … [but] that is not washing anymore,” says Barr.

 

“Just like a multinational company’s CEO has bonuses tied to the rise and fall of share prices, ministers and civil servants have bonuses tied to economic growth in Singapore. And we’re talking about million-dollar bonuses here and more, so there’s a lot at stake.”

 

Dissent over the white paper has been huge. Social media, newspapers, blogs and even parliament itself have been rife with commentary, and a rare public protest – with over 3,500 already planning to attend – has been scheduled for Saturday. “There is this fear that foreigners will eventually replace and take over our country,” explains protest organiser Gilbert Goh, who hopes for a referendum. “There is no known employment protection for local workers here – people can be easily replaced at the workplace … [and] workers have been known to be replaced by foreigners, as many employers are now foreigners as well.”

 

Racial tensions already run high, not least between the ethnic Chinese, Malay and Indian Singaporeans who already make up the city-state, but also among new immigrants, says Barr.

 

Some of that tension is due to the country’s focus on economics rather than culture. Local opposition politician Nicole Seah, who ran as the youngest female candidate in the 2011 general elections, recently said that the “Singapore Inc” brand cultivated by the government has created a “transient state where people from all over come, make their fortunes and leave”.

 

She added:

 

“The policies over the past decades have created an erosion of our social roots, widespread resentment, and a loss of who we are as Singaporeans. We have been taught to prioritise money-making practicality over what it means to have a solid culture.”

 

The bubbling discontent in Singapore has recently been compounded by a string of scandals causing some outsiders to wonder if the Asian utopia so carefully crafted by the nation’s so-called founder, Lee Kuan Yew, is finally crumbling. Most young professionals still live at home because they can’t afford to move out, the government has had to subsidise speed-dating schemes to encourage partnerships, and abortion rates among married women now account for over half the total – as many families struggle to stay afloat.

 

“The government does not give allowance for people who are different from them and this is one of the reasons why we are so politically and creatively stunted,” says Ng. “My perspective is, I’m different, I don’t want to toe the line, and that’s why we have to speak up and push through until something happens.”

(source)

 

*******

 

 

it is just crazy…

 

“The idea that only WBC had the right answer seemed crazy. It just seemed impossible.”

- Megan Phelps-Roper

 

Megan Phelps

 

WBC is the Westboro Baptist Church. The infamous independent Baptist congregation in Topeka, Kansas, USA which is known across the world for her racist, anti-semitic, homophobic and anti-American activities. Members believe that only those who subscribe to the same tenets as themselves are “true” christians.

 

 

Megan Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of the founding demagogue, the self-appointed Rev. Fred Phelps. She is also one among a significant many in the world’s most hated family who have since been enlightened and left the brainwashed community. She is only twenty-seven.

 

To realise Westboro Baptist cannot be the one and only “true” church is only the beginning. She will soon know it is equally “crazy” and irrational for only christianity (or for that matter any one religion) to have the right answer in the 21st century where religious pluralism is a fact. Especially so when there is no empirical and historical evidence to justify many of the bible’s claims.

 

Welcome to the club.

 

*******

ah boys to men: not a film review

 

Welcome to Pulau Tekong.

 

I shake my head, and hammer my right foot onto the jetty. Sigh. I sling the haversack, stuffed with books, over my shoulders. My matte-black horn-rims slide down my oily chinese nose. I try to push them up, trip over ball bearings of slime and rock, salsa a few steps and have a beautiful organic facial of grass, roots and mud.

 

A wonderful crystal ball of things to come.

 

Pulau Tekong, or Tekong island, is Singapore’s Alcatrazian resort for army conscripts. The Commanding Officer (CO) of the island must have barked orders to freshen up the place, for us, for our parents, to show how safe the hands in which their boys will be. Peacocked soldiers poked their hairless androgynous faces around every civilian-infested corner, and propagandise the importance and valour of national serfdom. They display their Jack Nicholson smiles, Forrest Gump modesty and all-round boy scout goody goody bullshit.

 

Lunch seems delicious, for an army cook house. A chicken quarter, mashed potatoes, soggy fries and mixed veggies. The days of fellow conscripts playing chefs are over, or so my papa nodded. The food looks good. It’s catered, one poncy sergeant who happens to sashay by busy-bodied.  Catered or not, they don’t call it army food for nothing. No sooner do papa and mama take their steps out of Tekong does the nightmare begin. That is just the army thing – all bunny smiles in front of the press and media, then rabid dogs buggering our behinds. The media are clueless. The parents more so. When prime time news gets wind of some PAP-loving, can’t-wait-to-die-for-Singapore Chief-of-Army crackpot and interviews him boasting about how the Pulau Tekong polls show how satisfied BMT (Basic Military Training) recruits are about the cook house food, the whole of Singapore agrees.

 

They don’t know the duty sergeant who stands at the computerised scanner barks at every recruit to tap the “good” or “very good” button during the regular “food satisfaction” surveys. When a company sergeant major is on duty during those food surveys, he yips in a typical fascist chihuahua style how he will issue detention orders and extra weekend duties to any recruit who taps the “poor” or “very poor” button. Very democratic. Very civilised. Very educated. I am not intimidated. I speak the truth. Defiantly. The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has a bark that is snazzier than her bite.

 

Three weeks of all-cock and no-pussy confinement. Eight to ten spermy recruits sleep together in one 1980′s classroom-looking bunk. Army discipline or not, I am not going to let some ego-tripping, mama’s boy of a second-lieutenant tell me what not to do. Standard Battle Order (SBO) in five minutes? I can’t find my boots, for Jupiter’s sake! The number four smells and I am desperate to replace my holey socks.

 

It is not my habit to perform banal tasks like changing clothes in a frenzied god-is-a-transvestite-cum-pimp manner. I take my zen time. Twenty minutes later, I am whining to my platoon commander how fragile my constitution is and doing push-ups will only aggravate it more.

 

He fucks me. That is precisely the word he uses, and like a chimpanzee jumps up and down about the small corner on the ground floor trying to “talk some sense” into me. I scratch my nose. I cannot understand how someone who is heading to university can behave like this. I think he is trying to intimidate me by belittling my manhood.

 

Hmm…I am not fazed. My being a man has nothing to do with behaving like a mad hatter. Doing things fast and furious only increases my blood pressure. I can stumble to the ground, crumple my face and die because of that. Does the SAF want another dead body?

 

I think not.

 

I am complaining to the bloke in charge of the whole racket. I am psychologically sensitive to chimpanzee language, and all that monkey babble stresses me out. What if I decide to bullet everyone down during the next live-firing session? Does he want that?

 

The parents of that laddish second lieutenant will be more than mildly surprised to hear their son’s unwholesome tongue. The army inculcates such tomfoolery.

 

I hear my fair share of sexist jokes, they aren’t funny for my mother’s sake, from the chubby warrant officers all the way to the Oxbridge-aspiring junior officers. They would have enlisted as angels. They are now more than devils. They cannot seem to wait to have sexual intercourse with the next walking vagina.

 

I am not amused.

 

That is my sentiment when I watched Ah Boys to Men Part One a few nights ago in my brother’s room after the chinese reunion dinner. I woodpecker my head in vigorous approval every time the protagonist’s slacker uncle opens his mouth about feigning illness during his army time. I salute the protagonist’s “childish” protestations about wasting his time if he enlists. I laugh at the sinophilic character of Lobang and his proletarian antics. I crumple my face every time I see the nerd-poser Aloysius in action. I remember those characters. I remember those times.

 

I cringe to know the protagonist morphs into this SAF-butt kisser in Part Two. It is too Damascus-ian a change. It is too clichéd. Worse, director Jack Neo unknowingly becomes chief propagandist for the People’s Action Party’s pretentious pro-military conscription policy. The main thrust of the film appears to be a lame attempt at persuading the horde of reluctant male youths in Singapore to take their military obligations seriously.

 

Really. I am a pacifist and will not bear arms in war. I will not pull the trigger to murder another human being for the sake of conceited nationalism. I will not lower myself to that of “the enemy” by returning violence with violence. 

 

Like the hilarious mother of the protagonist, family comes before country. All the time. Every time.

*******

“not believing in god makes life more precious”

by Esther Addley

 

“I feel sorry for the church next door, waiting for their three people to trickle in,” says Nick Julius, glancing at the small adjacent hall that will shortly be hosting its own gathering.

 

There are still 40 minutes before the Sunday Assembly, an atheist service run by two stand-up comedians, is due to begin, but a queue of eager congregants is already forming outside a grand but crumbling former church in Islington, north London, hands shoved deep into pockets against the cold.

 

Julius arrived an hour early, just to be sure of a place at the service, which is described by its organisers as “a godless congregation that meets … to hear great talks, sing songs and generally celebrate life”. But why? “I came last time and really enjoyed it. It’s got all the good things about church without the terrible dogma. I like the sense of community – and who doesn’t enjoy a singsong?”

 

 

 

 

This is only the second time Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans have hosted the monthly event (motto: live better, help often, wonder more), and they admit to being a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which the event has already been greeted.

 

More than 200 people came to the first event; today there are perhaps 300, with several dozen more carrying on a parallel discussion in a local pub. Inside the nave of the deconsecrated church, volunteers have been bunching chairs closer together, adding extra benches and children’s seats in every scrap of space. It is not a problem most vicars struggle with on a Sunday morning.

 

Jones, a tall, bounding figure with a hairstyle and beard verging on the messianic, says the idea emerged from his comedy, where he encouraged those coming to his gigs to get to know one another, and they in turn pressed him for ways to stay in touch and even build small groups. There was clearly a thirst for community, he decided, and perhaps others felt, as he did, that words such as awe and transcendence shouldn’t be the preserve only of religious people.

 

“I would go to a carol service or a friend’s wedding, and there would be so much about it that I really liked – the togetherness, the rituals – but I just couldn’t get past the God bit.” Atheism has been caricatured as a cold, empty position, he says. “But for me, my not believing in God if anything makes my life more precious, knowing that we are here for such a tiny amount of time.”

 

The Sunday Assembly may be godless, but a churchgoer who stumbled through the wrong door would find much they recognised.

 

The service opens with a song, led by Evans and an enthusiastic band at the front; instead of a hymn, however, it is “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen (“We’ve chosen something that allows hamming it up to the max”). The service features a reading, a moment of reflective silence, even a collection to pay for the rental of the church, during which people are invited to turn in the pews and greet those sitting beside and behind them. The plan in future is to engage members in community-based good works.

 

There is also a sermon, of sorts, on the day’s theme of “wonder”, which sees Dr Harry Cliff, a particle physicist from Cambridge, talking about Dirac’s equation predicting antimatter (“the most amazing theory in history”) and the enormous statistical odds against the universe existing in the first place. The congregation then stands to sing Superstition by Stevie Wonder.

 

Might the early popularity of the Sunday Assembly hint at the start of something that could take off on a large scale? Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, is sceptical, noting that a wave of atheist churches were formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but petered out because people found other forms of social organisation that suited them better.

 

“I think it’s an interesting development but it’s something that’s been tried many times before. What’s probably different is that there’s a strong entertainment element. It’s an entertainment as well as a communal activity. It just happens to be on a Sunday morning.”

 

David Robertson, director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity and a Free Church of Scotland minister in Dundee, is also doubtful. “I can understand why the format of church would be very appealing,” he says, “but I do think it’s going to appeal only to one particular section of the community” – what he calls “a middle-class cultural elite”.

 

“The church is focusing on following Jesus Christ, and that cuts across cultures and across communities,” he adds.

 

Having been startled by the popularity of the event, Jones insists his thinking about expanding the assembly has stretched only so far as adding an additional service next month, to be held in the afternoon. But there are signs that the idea could bear replicating.

 

Neil Denham and a small group of friends have come from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, hoping for inspiration. “We were just looking for ideas, whether something like this could work outside London,” he says. Their verdict? “Some of the things I thought really wouldn’t work, like the singing, were really good. Normally I hate singing.”

 

Churches do a lot of what they do “because it works”, he notes, “Atheists make a mistake to look at church and throw it all out just because they don’t believe in God.”

(source)

 

*******

senseless

 

Two brothers, 7 and 13, lost their lives prematurely when their bicycle collided with a cement-mixer lorry at the junction of Tampines Avenue 9 and Tampines Street 45 on Monday afternoon.

 

the cement-mixer lorry

 

 

the accident site

 

 

They were about 300 metres away from home when it all ended for them.

 

I have a 7-year-old son too. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say. A tragedy like this is senseless. It just happens. It is sudden. It is random. It is arbitrary. And it demonstrates the frailty of our human condition. The parents may eventually find some comfort in their Pentecostal christian faith, but no amount of pastoral spin is able to explain away the one issue that matters to them.

 

the wake

 

Why? Why did god allow their children to die in such horrifying circumstances? Why didn’t god stop the cement-mixer lorry in time? Why didn’t god work his miracles like he did in “miracle” services all across charismatic congregations in the world?

 

As a free-thinking humanist I don’t ask these questions. They are irrelevant to me. But if one thinks there is an all-loving and all-good deity who also intervenes and interferes in human affairs, who answers prayers; then this tragedy and countless others is bad business for him. If christians attribute the safety of their loved ones to god, it is logically pertinent for them to also attribute the non-safety of their loved ones to him. Why does he (or she) protect one family but not the other? Why does he “save” one but discard the other? Oh I see, we do not understand god’s mind – his ways are higher than our ways – if he is so ineffable, then why pretend to know him so well by pontificating every Sunday about him? Evangelicals often seem to know so much about god that they claim other religions are “false”. They say god is good all the time. They say god is loving. They say god is merciful. Yadda yadda. But when senseless tragedies happen, they play the “god-is-mysterious” cop-out.

 

More appalling is the idea that maybe god loves the young children so much that he “promotes” them to heaven sooner than the rest of us. I know well-meaning evangelicals who think it so, but of course, with more spin. Then again, god must be a masochist to bring children home by such violent means. He probably loves torture porn.

 

When god is “in the picture”, all sorts of philosophical and theological conundrums come up. And it becomes the job of the theologian, apologist or pastor to do damage control to the clueless sheep. But why get all screwed up in the first place? I think the agnostic-atheist position is closer to the truth. It is more intellectually satisfying. Events that occur in any human life is amoral. They do not have any innate or inherent god-imposed meaning or significance – good things and bad things just happen all the time. One does not and cannot control such things like drunk and reckless drivers on the roads. One does not and cannot control when tectonic plates shift. One cannot predict when someone might just go nutty and start butchering everyone in the  neighbourhood mall. As humanists, all we can do is to strive to “prevent” these things from occurring regularly by educating people about responsible living, showing compassion and demonstrating kindness. Drinking and driving is irresponsible. Trying to beat the red light all the time is irresponsible. Having a “gun culture” is stupid and irresponsible. Working all day just to make more and more money (when you really have enough) and neglecting one’s family and children is irresponsible. Having lots of children just for the sake of having more children (and populating the earth) when one does not have the resources to provide sufficiently for them is irresponsible.

 

But how do freethinkers cope with tragedy and loss?

 

The same way homo sapiens have been doing since hominids started evolving bigger brains. The same way the religious and non-religious have been doing through history.

 

Human solidarity. Community. That is what family and kin is for. We encourage, console, uphold and love one another. We laugh, we smile, we weep and we cry together. God or not, human beings find consolation in one another.

 

And there is no need to imagine a future life in the clouds when we can see our loved ones again. It may seem like a comfort for the religious. But wishful thinking does not help anyone. It is just delusion. We can find comfort knowing that the deceased will not be hot and bothered any longer. Ever wonder how we feel during the billions of years prior to our births? Of course not. That is death. Oblivion.

 

It is bliss. Really.

 

*******