When Reason Fails
The mandate has been returned, albeit in a weakened form. Some bloggers are feeling the insecurity as the machine cranks back into efficiency. Gomez has been detained in Singapore and his travel documents impounded.
I thought of writing an analytical piece dissecting the media strategy of the PAP in the GE. The charm offensive of the WP. The strategic failure of the SDP. The campaign analysis of Steve Chia.
But sometimes, reason fails. Instead, I dedicate this entry to all my kind readers, explaining perhaps, my motivations for this blog.
A very thoughtful comment by Gayle in the previous entry gave me some pause. In sum, she calls for a more reasoned, a more logical and analytical understanding of GE 2006, especially its aftermath. It is a slow uphill process for all Singaporeans who wish to see Singapore evolve into a model of governance worthy of democracy. She has reservations and a genuine concern that I propose a V-vendetta like underground movement.
Sometimes, I wish I could propose such a course of action. But I cannot.
When I penned my previous entry, it was with a concern that many of those who felt euphoric during the days of freedom will come crashing down. And when they crash, they succumb to disillusionment, cynicism, apathy. This is what Alfian Saat, poet-activist, means when he mentioned his encounter with the "deep eternal winter". In a meandering way, my message was simple, just do not forget and allow disillusionment, State action and the media to return Singaporeans to a "happy" state.
Why my emphasis on memory and forgetting? It is forgetting that allows injustice to continue. But it is also forgetting that dulls the pain.
Many years ago, I did a study. It was on the Rwandan genocide. If I had relied on sources of fact, media sources, hospital records, then the event would not be a genocide. Sometimes reason fails. Hence, I expanded the source finding to folk songs, rumours, stories, literature -- what can be termed ficciones of History. Fiction about true events. To cut a long story short, the Rwandan dead, silenced by official narratives, official accounts, found expression in the ficciones. And they became represented in History. They did not die in vain. The same process repeats itself in various extreme historical events. Auschwitz is one such more prominent event. The only way for the dead to be represented and for their deaths to be not in vain, to prevent such extremities from re-occurring, is to remember. Even if remembering is painful.
There is a rich theoretical background, not necessarily post-modern, on the notion that "extreme" events, concentration camps, occur in modern society in much more benign ways, supported by reason, logic and most importantly Law.
For some marginalised groups in Singapore society, they perceive the perimeter fence much more clearly. The gays are on such group. Free to move about. Free to do anything and everything except ... You fill in the blanks. I could add civil society activists, film-makers, practitioners of the Arts, academics, the list goes on.
When they try to find representation in Singapore, an identity, they encounter Reason, backed by Law. Which denies them representation. Just ask Royston Tan, possibly Singapore's best film-maker now and his failed battle for the film "15" to be passed uncut.
Sometimes Reason fails. And when Reason fails, we must find expression through other means.
Teetering on the edge, away from logic, away from reason.
If we adhere by Reason, we adhere by Logic. Than James Gomez should be arrested and should be charged in Court. And for that matter, Low Thia Khiang, and Sylvia Lim should be charged and arrested as well. For they stood by Gomez through the campaigning period. If we follow reason and we follow logic, the White Elephants at Buangkok should be charged in Court. If you follow Reason, if you follow Logic.
To uran and Rong, yes, you can decide your own paths in Singapore. It is not oppression. It is not Animal Farm. It is more subtle than that. When you step out of line, more often than not it is not the State that takes you down. It is the silent masses. The invisible Singaporean. Yes, it is in your hands to organise and "make a difference", "form a political party", "set up a website". And when you organise these, you encounter Reason, Logic and Law which stop you again and again and again.
What then?
I ask only one question : what stops Singaporeans from moving out of the linearity defined by the Government which remains tightly entwined with the PAP? A linearity clearly stated by MM Lee in his forum with the "radicals" when he said that the young Singaporeans will grow up, get wise and accept reality. A linearity repeated more obliquely by his son, PM Lee, when he mentioned his son attending the WP rally just for the spectacle and that reason and logic would claim his son back.
Some times Reason and Logic and Law fails.
Just ask Parkaboy, a wounded "quitter" who longs for but fears to claim the hope and community during the 14 days. Because he rejected the linearity and was branded a "quitter". Because it is illogical and irrational to leave Singapore, the land of the free and the happy.
So for me, it is to find the silenced Singaporeans and the silenced Singapore and give them a place in the sun. and invariably, the silenced in Singapore is linked to politics.
Love thy country. Totally. To love Singapore totally is to accept and hear those parts of Singapore which fall out of the scope of the narrative and discourse as dictated by the State authority. And the only way to un-cover, re-cover, to witness these parts of silent Singapore is to approach them without reason, without logic.
Because sometimes Reason fails.
Quotes of the Day --
"What we see and hear in Hiroshima mon amour, resonates beyond what we can know and understand; but it is in the event of this incomprehension and in our departure from sense and understanding that our own witnessing may indeed begin to take place." -- Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience : Trauma , Narrative and History
posted by xenoboysg at 11:55 AM
19 Comments:
as you would also know , it is forgetting that we remember.
jj
Hello Xenoboy, just a note from a lurker who thinks your post is otherwise spot-on (as your posts usually are) - but should we really be doing the PAP the favour of consigning them to the realm of rationalism ? Because it seems to me that it would be buying into their rhetoric. On the contrary their appeal is to the deeply irrational, the part of Singapore that holds LKY (and PAP with him) to be a sort of totem without whom we cannot prosper - to the part of Singapore that thinks SG will automatically descend into anarchy if the opposition comes into power - to the part of Singapore who believes that, after millions and millions of dollars in payment, we still "owe" LKY and the PAP. Oh, and did I mention Suzhou and all those lovely mainlanders (you know, "our brothers", snicker) just waiting to give us all their lovely, lovely money in their infinite gratitude for our teaching them the ways of capitalism ? ...
(And this is probably vaguely OB, not to mention OT, but the fundy trend in the PAP - aka Dobsonite homophobes - has never surprised me much, given the fundy penchant for unreasonable, credo quia impossibile-type obedience and submissiveness (a trait they ironically have in common with the old-school Confucians, whose irrational servility I have no love for either - yes, to all the people who thought Jamie Han and the reporter who asked LKY a semitough question recently "rude" and part of the "radical English-educated young", I'm talking to you). I swear sometimes if these people would work out their glaringly obvious DS/SM issues with a dominatrix instead of imposing their personal psychodrama on all of us SG would be a much better place ...)
L
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you appear to be saying is that the PAP represents reason, logic, and law. If that's true, allow me to politely disagree.
Law, I give you; because, as Chee Soon Juan has repeatedly pointed out in increasingly desperate tones, our judiciary shows no compelling signs of being an independent force.
But reason! Logic! These are hardly the domains of the PAP. The dogged persecution of James Gomez speaks more of senior Lee's tried-and-tested tactic of character assassination in a case where any reasonable or logical person (read: SM Goh) would have moved on from the matter weeks ago.
And holding voters' money ransom in the form of upgrading blackmail - I fail to see how that appears to be reasonable or logical, both from the point of view of the taxpayers and that of the govt (since, obviously, it bombed spectacularly).
It is with none other than reason that we must approach Singapore politics, because Singaporeans, for all their flaws, are a down-to-earth, reasonable people. And it is only with reason, and logic, that we can fight the subjective and powerful law that the PAP has put in place. Emotion and irrationality won't get us anywhere; concise and sound arguments in favour of greater independence of governmental institutions, on the other hand, just might.
What do we mean by the Law? What do we mean by reason and logic?
Do we mean "secular humanism" - that our rights, rights as expressed in many codes, and an express morality can be found in reason, in logic? Nowhere else is this fallacy more exposed than in my sweet Singapore.
Sweet Singapore. Where the harsh Sun shines brillantly, iradescently, where the wrinkled smile and crooked teeth of the old man drinking his black coffee warms my heart more than the most beautiful postcard of any beach in California.
Even if that same old man will vote the PAP.
Or do we mean a positive conception of the Law, a strict procedural nature of the Law - that which feels metallic cold, that which Hitler's actions could have been justified.
Will we choose to forget? No. It is a universal message, that only in Truth there is peace.
The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes stated that mankind will not succeed in ''building a truly more human world for everyone, everywhere on earth, unless all people are renewed in spirit and converted to the truth of peace'It is the truth of peace. And perhaps what is true is what is logical, what is reasonable.
Injustice continues, because the truth is hidden, concealed. Yes, xenoboy, reason and logic is not the way to approach matters - but only, only because their truth, their truth is not the truth of peace, it is the truth of power.
And there is nothing more.
For who should stand up now?
Am I a coward in my disillusionment?
Yes.
Singapore Classics
I do applaud the emotion in your posts and, more than that, I partake of it as well. I just feel that consigning ourselves to it overly gives leeway to the misconception that we here in Singapore are seeking to overthrow our government and shake the fundaments of our system, which I don't think we are here to do at all. Already the government seeks to brand us as emotional, hotheaded, irrational, unpragmatic, idealistic youths who are jeopardizing our society. I don't think we should allow them too much ammunition with which they could make it seem like they are right. :) Nevertheless, I want to reiterate that you have inspired me in so many ways, and your blog is an invaluable niche in the web community. What you do as a wordsmith is exquisite, and shouldn't be lost. Just maybe tempered?
Strange to be emblematic of the forces of unreason. :) (Though I realise you likely didn't mean it that way.)
To the commentors above: reason and logic really don't fall on either side of the equation. They speak neither for nor against the PAP. I do not know if this is what Xenoboy was saying (probably not, since if that was his meaning he would have save it!), but it is a reason why the appeal to reason alone is not enough. The failings of the PAP regime are not those of reason or logic, though L is correct in his comment that they are not exemplars of either. The PAP's failings are ultimately at least in part, and to a large extent experienced by others as, failings of compassion, inclusion and moral sentiment.
Rationality and rationalism alone tell us nothing. It is perfectly rational to be an axe-wielding murderer, to be racist, to be a fundamentalist, to be homophobic. There is no profit to be made from opposing reason and feeling. Xenoboy is not, as far as I can tell, exhorting us to eschew everything we understand to be reason. But appealing to reason will not suffice to change Singapore of the minds of Singaporeans. Argumentation and pihlosophy rarely tell us things about who to be, about what ends to have, that we do not already know: it is narrative, it is experience, it is encountering the inner lives of others, that does. Vision is not a product of logic.
Of course one should not abandon reason and logic in organising one's thoughts and seeking to persuade. But what Xenoboy does plays another, valuable role. Why ask him to abandon expressions of what you say you also feel? Why be ashamed of it, why call it melodrama, when it is justified and sincere? His contribution to the cause is different from your (beautifully made) cases, Gayle, but it does not detract.
Yes, in the silent chasm between reason and unreason, in the remnant of belief and despair, we must not sleep and cannot but continue to bear witness.
'... to bear witness is to place oneself in one's own language in the position of those who have lost it, to establish oneself in a living language as if it were dead, or in a dead language as if it were living - in any case, outside both the archive and the corpus of what has already been said. ... the poetic word is the one that is always situated in the position of a remnant and that can, therefore, bear witness. Poets - witnesses - found language as what remains, as what actually survives the possibility, or impossibility, of speaking.' Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz
But appealing to reason will not suffice to change Singapore of the minds of Singaporeans.
Well that's for sure, lol. It is after all a place where people mob funerals of people they don't even know in search of the perfect 4D number. (Yes, I will admit to being rather attached to raison :), it being the only way I managed to deal with the massive cognitive dissonance that growing up in SG entails. I'm all for a fair bit of irrationality but I must say that living through 18 years in SG and 5 years of GWB's glorious (sic) "faith-based administration" has rather pushed me to the other side ... Speaking of which I am not entirely sure why it is "rational ... to be fundamentalist" ? Not sure about the other supposedly rational bits either - but "rational fundamentalism" seems especially contradictio in adjecto.)
The only problem as I see it with the emotional-appeal approach is that "the people" (obviously not all, but a fair majority) seem capable only of empathy only towards those above them in the hierarchy. The suffering of a random senior citizen will always be trumped by clips of a soggy LKY. "The people" will rant all they want, but ultimately they will say, sagely shaking their heads, he has after all done a lot for the country. Without him we wouldn't even exist. We must have respect for our leaders, we are an Asian country, how can we be ungrateful ? Meanwhile I'm practically tearing my hair out trying to comprehend why they don't go fetishise ol' Raffles instead (well, Singapore wouldn't exist if he hadn't "discovered" it and figured that it would make a nice little port in the first place, but I guess that smacks too much of "colonial mentality", ahem). Or, for that matter, the other pioneers in the history of Singapore. And I don't see why it is impossible that some other person could have done what LKY did. What is he, divine ? I suppose that's why he gets to tell "the people" that they are just peasants from southern China who are unlikely to ever get a college degree because that's for the genetically superior progeny of college graduates ... and they lap it up like the good little masochists they are, but get all huffy and indignant when, say, Li Ao remarks that they don't appear to be very bright. I don't understand any of this, it isn't logical, but I sure as hell don't understand it emotionally either, which is why I tend to retreat into the admittedly frigid spheres of logic when confronted with this sort of thing.
(Mind you, I do appreciate the role of irrationality in creativity (well yes I happen to be what they dismissively call the "artsy" type, which is another reason why I'm not in SG) and empathy ("narrative", "experience" and "vision" as parkaboy said) but it seems to me that there is an awfully dark side to it ... and it is this dark side the PAP is exploiting to the max. Which is my horribly prolix way of saying: it would be great if we could do it but I'm really not sure, in light of that wretched Confucian sentimentality, that we can outdo the PAP on the emotional-appeal front. I suppose it just seems ... easier ... to do the old hoist-on-petard routine to them, given their lofty claims to clear-eyed rationality.)
L
voila Logic:
Don’t vandalize.
Don’t litter.
Don’t spit.
Don’t cut queue.
Don’t speak dialect.
Don’t talk back.
Don’t watch porn.
Don’t chew gum.
Don’t complain.
Don’t make documentaries.
Don’t standout.
Don’t trust foreign media.
Don’t question government.
Don’t trust opposition.
Don’t trust blogs.
Don’t believe your eyes.
Don’t trust your heart.
Don’t think.
Don’t act.
Don’t free yourself.
Don’t exist.
"The problem is, how does a god die without destroying his people? If a god was to commit suicide, his worshippers would commit suicide with him. For a god to fade, so would his people. The only way Leto can die and not take his followers with him is in revolution, so he breeds for the person who will overthrow him"
summary for The God-Emperor of Dune
Not to think is "logical" ? (Wtf ?)
Not to complain when you have a legitimate beef is "logical" ?
Not to believe your eyes (aka empirical observation) is "logical" ?
Not to trust the opposition is inherently "logical" ?
The other stuff (porn and chewing gum and documentaries) is mostly normative stuff anyway aka what the zombie moralists disapprove of (or stuff that might be theoretically beneficial ("logical") for the PAP to advocate in the name of PAP self-interest, but is not always logical from the viewpoint of the people).
You know what is "logical" ? Voting your self-interests is logical. And I'm not talking about stupidities like upgrading, I'm talking about things like, you know, the future of Singapore. You know, like not automatically pulling the lever for the loser fascists whom you regularly bitch about. That's logic for you.
You know what is irrational ? Voting PAP out of cheap sentimentality and "duty" even though you know empirically that your life hasn't improved under them and in fact seems to be going down the gutter - yeah, that's irrational crap.
Words don't mean just what you want them to mean, you know. Or is that too, ah, rational a concept I wonder.
But then this is Singapore we're talking about, where "home ownership" = 99-year lease, where "unions" = govt-run commercial conglomerate (!!) ... So I guess not thinking can be "logical" after all. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, you know, all that jazz ...
L
I don't want to enter a prolonged and detail philosophical debate, but suffice it to say, it seems wrong to me to look to reason and logic to answer questions such as "Why should I care about anyone besides myself?" The overweening desire of the PAP's core members to dominate the entire country and reduce us all to robot serfs is neither rational or irrational. Is it rational or irrational to want to look out only for yourself? To enjoy cruelty? It seems to me that to ask "Is this rational?" is just the wrong question.
If you believe in freedom and fairness and democracy, I doubt that it is ultimately because it is "rational" in any sense. It's because it is respectful, it's because it gives individual human beings a more equal shot at dignity and self-actualisation. It is because it is kind.
The only real way to overcome the desire of people for a craven, masochistic desire to submit to lionising the PAP, or to overcome their sense that life just cannot be better without the PAP, is to show them a vision of something else that they could have. You cannot do this without an appeal to both logic and emotion (insofar as the two can even fruitfully be separated). The fight is not between rationality and emotivism. It is between one vision (the PAP order) and others (numerous as yet).
The fundamentalist is inspired by the vision of a certain heaven, a relationship with an all-benign god, the masochistic pleasure of submission and obedience, and the confirmation of his own worth in the uniformity of institutions and people around him. This is a failure of imagination, a failure of compassion for those whose aspirations differ - it is not a failure of logic. If what you seek is that sort of certainty and that sort of uniformity, there is nothing illogical about taking a path designed to achieve it. Just as if someone is interested only in maximising his own wealth and power, there is nothing illogical in stepping on everyone else on the way. Presumably we here would like to see him adopt a different vision not because his vision is illogical but because it is repugnantly self-centred.
Gotcha, parkaboy, re: common good & vision & fundyism, which looks nuts from without but is scarily logical from within.
(I do want to add though that my little hissy fit above wasn't directed at you, it was at the "not thinking = logic" post. I got kind of upset at that for various personal reasons I won't go into here, this not being a forum for my personal traumas, lol. Rather ... emotional on my part I guess. Whoopsie :P.)
L
Ever since I heard James Gomez had his passport and boarding pass impounded, and his sorry ass prevented from leaving for Sweden, I have been staring at the ceiling, the words 'what the fuck' pounding through my brain. And it is Section 506 & 507 of the penal code that had got me near berserk. I had to write this.
I was slapped with 8 email harassment charges back in 2000. Because 8 email harassment charges couldn't have kept me locked up, Investigating Officer Oem Prakash Singh of Clementi Police Division (hereafter referred to as 'the modern singh') slapped an additional charge of criminal intimidation on me so as to raise the bail amount the judge then pegged at $50K (the same amount which, may I remind you, TT Durai is presently running around loose on). Of course the modern singh counted on me not having a bailer with $50K, so I spent 5 months inside awaiting trial.
The excuse for the criminal intimidation charge was a phone call I made to Koh Chong Huat (a cousin of mine) telling him in exact words 'You are 50+, sooner or later, you have to die'. I thought it was a given, nothing being more certain than death and taxes, that reminding somebody, anybody, of his age couldn't possibly constitute a criminal offense, especially since the guy was actually 50+ (I'd admit Lee Kuan Yew may be offended to be reminded of his age, and that death was likely to be knocking on his door anytime, but not enough to constitute a criminal offense, especially when he's going to be continuing to be having birthday parties, and his cronies are going to be showing up not trying to pretend, I hope, that it is something other than birthdays that they are going to be celebrating.)
But not to digress. The reason why I was locked up was because I had finally found something I was looking for on and off since 1995. And I was showing up at all the awkward places, the CPIB, the Law Society of Singapore, and the Legal Aid. They all found excuses of one sort or another. Sooner or later I was going to latch on to a lawyer, yes?
I latched onto the wrong lawyer, however. Someone by the name of Chiam See Tong. He suggested leaving Hoo Sheau Farn out of the lawsuit, and sue principally Koh Thong (Koh Chong Huat's old man), and Lim Swee Ying (my late father's old hag), and he also told me that he didn't want to figure in the case, and therefore would be helping me sue my relatives in my own name. Who's to know Chiam See Tong would be colluding with Yik Tze Kong, the lawyer representing the respondents to the suit.
Time was of essence. If I wasn't latching onto Chaim See Tong, I would've to latch onto some other lawyer pretty quick. The plan was to have this Chiam See Tong set up a case for me, I land in jail, and the case applied to be struck out by the respondents, the lawyers acting for the parties being in collusion.
So Koh Chong Huat made a complaint against me. That made me a 'wanted' person. And I was supposed to know that (not that I did). Then Yik Tze Kong applied to have the case that Chiam See Tong set up for me struck off by the civil court expecting me not to show up to defend.
But I got arrested at Changi cargo complex going through the check-point reporting to my first day of temporary work. And I was held for 5 months awaiting trial. I made calls to Chiam See Tong then at the police lockup, wrote to Chiam See Tong whilst I was remanded, met Chiam See Tong whilst I was at the Subordinate Court, and Chiam See Tong visited me whilst I was held at Buangkok Chalet, but he wouldn't help me with these fresh charges I was up against, and resisted suggestions that the civil case he was helping me with and the criminal case I was facing were connected.
Topmost in the mind of the modern singh must've been whether I had knowledge of the application by Yik Tze Kong to have the case set up for me by Chiam See Tong struck off. If so, and I apprised the court of the fact, the judge would likely find that I have no case to answer. So was it a coincidence then, that when I was finally released, my laptop and papers pertaining to my civil suit were missing from my rented room, and I had to cough up $50 to get them back, and later, when I thought it wise to ask for a receipt for the $50, was refused, and the $50 returned instead?
Because I was arrested in the wrong sequence, and the all important letter was left undiscovered in my post office mailbox, Yik Tze Kong didn't show up at the civil court to have the civil case set up for me by Chiam See Tong struck out (references to it at my blog).
You may be asking me why the modern singh would have me arrested in the wrong sequence. The modern singh didn't have me arrested. I was arrested by the police division (Bedok) in charge of the Changi cargo complex. I cannot be 'wanted' unless there was an APB out for me. With an APB out on me, it was always possible for me to be arrested in the wrong sequence.
There is a lesson in all this for James Gomez.
Even though I was remanded without having visitors (except for the one-time visit by Chiam See Tong at Buangkok Chalet - now upgraded to Buangkok Recreational Club - where I was also warned by Dr George Fernandez to be careful of what I say in Court or face institutionalization on Christmas Day, 2000 - bloody arse hole showed up just to warn me), and therefore could not otherwise seek representation, had the criminal intimidation charge struck off by the kangaroo of a judge in half a day of deliberation.
The trial was scheduled for a 2 day hearing. There was a lot of shenanigan going on in Remand. I was being threatened (and the irony was that I was in there for Section 506 & 507) such that I was disinclined to drag proceedings beyond the day. All that seemed to be coming out of the mouth of Koh Chong Huat was that he was felt 'very harassed'. For nearly half the morning I was standing in the dock with my hands cuffed behind my back (and who said our legal system was just? and there is no kangaroo jumping around in Court?) until the judge noticed.
The judge was screwing me left and right for everything that was coming out of my mouth until Koh Chong Huat said that he had a pretty good idea who was at the other end of the phone (that being me). The judge made certain he heard right what Koh Chong Huat said, then struck out the criminal intimidation charge. As I'm no lawyer, I don't actually know what the fuck happened. But I will try to figure it out here. Section 506 & 507 cannot be liberally applied or else a Pandora’s Box would be opened, and total anarchy will ensue. There must be a threshold above which genuine fear can reasonably be deemed to be inculcated in the criminally intimidated, such as where the victim doesn't know who is victimizing him. A fear transformed into terror by some unknown quantity.
After that the DPP started to sweat like a pig, and Koh Chong Huat started to need a microphone to be heard, and the judge started turning on me. It was as if a big concession had been made to me, and the kangaroo had begun jumping all over the Court again. The biggest problem going for the trial was Koh Chong Huat needed a microphone, I complained to the judge I couldn't hear him without a microphone, and the judge sitting practically next to Koh Chong Huat couldn't understand what the fuck I was unhappy about (and who said our legal system was just? and there is no kangaroo jumping around in Court?). I was practically forced to abdicate my defense.
The judge offered, before his lunch break, to lynch me on 4 charges of email harassment, if I capitulated, or on all 8, if I continued with my defense. What troubled me was my cousin needing a microphone, the DPP needing a towel, and the kangaroo jumping all over the court room. Something just wasn't right. I wondered what was in my post office box (which had rental renewal coming up), and I didn't want to go back to Remand where I was being threatened. So I capitulated, and the judge fined me $6000, and stretched me for more than 30+ days in lieu (which Dr Chee Soon Juan, may I remind you, got off for just a week).
Out of jail, Chiam See Tong was a little scared to meet me along North Bridge Road outside his law office. Until I had a talk with Chan Fook Meng, I wasn't too clear why. Then there was the 2001 general election. But Chiam See Tong was dragging his feet with the case he was 'helping' me with even after that. So I had to start writing my own letters.
A letter I wrote to Standard Chartered Bank caused Ow Koon Thiam to threaten to sue me for defamation through his lawyer Hoh & Partners (now Hoh Law Corp). So I went along to Chiam See Tong to consult (until I had a talk with Chan Fook Meng, I didn't see why not), and he offered to help me with the defamation suit. Even though I hadn't had my talk with Chan Fook Meng yet, I saw a problem. Chiam See Tong was dragging his feet with my civil suit, did not defend me in my criminal case, and now was offering to represent me in this defamation suit.
I told Chiam See Tong I was getting the hang of it with this Court thing, fresh from my victory against the modern singh and his Section 506 & 507 and all that, and since a defamation suit is something somebody else set up for me, and all I have to do is show up and get fucked by the judge, I'd handle it myself, thank you very much. And I was pressing him to carry on with the original civil suit. I wrote to Ow Koon Thiam's lawyer, a Ms Petula Wong, that I would've been most pleased to see them in Court (and you should read the reply I got at my blog). And you can understand why Chiam See Tong decided to be a full time member of parliament after that. And you can understand why I have a price on my head.
Can you understand why Lee Kuan Yew and Wong Kan Seng are such mother fucking idiots? (and those people who voted for them as well?) If you can gerrymander the laws just to keep yourself in power (for whatever honorable or dishonorable intentions), you cannot then call to account those certainly more dishonorable persons from using the same laws to their own personal advantage.
If Lee Kuan Yew is going to be troubled by James Gomez not suing for being called a liar, the mother fucker is going to have a hard time going to sleep every night. The Cantonment Complex, even if it is re-built into the Cantonment Catacomb, is not going to be able to handle half the lying population asked to show up every day justifying themselves. And would he then be going to be going after Ow Koon Thiam because he didn't after all sue me and SOMETHING HERE IS GENUINELY NOT RIGHT.
And worse still, which fucking moron came up with the idea that Section 506 & 507 would stick on James Gomez when it didn't even glue on me for half a day in Court? And me not even being represented? And should Section 506 & 507 be bounced around all over the place from now on when somebody tells a lie such as when a student is late for school and fib to his principal?
Is James Gomez and his 'lie' such a big issue to the MIW that they have to scrape barrel bottom for something as inappropriate as Section 506 & 507. Or is Lee Kuan Yew trying to cover up for his one, ever, and only election strategy gone berserk (which even the UMNO deceased would be sick of by now). From my own personal affront at the wrong end of Section 506 & 507, I can assure you that everybody in the know, including Dr Chee Soon Juan, just have to be uncontrollably laughing their socks off. And the courtroom is caught between a pit bull and a lapping dog. How is the court ever going to placate Lee Kuan Yew and Wong Kan Seng over the James Gomez non-event without losing its dignity?
I do not pretend to not to know that should Lee Kuan Yew, if he were to read all this, whether he'd pin me up together with Dr Chee and his sister. It would've been my privilege, my honor. Go tell him. I need political asylum to live beyond of next month. There is after all a price on my head, whether I keep my trap shut or not. So I'm not worse off by it.
hi Xeno Boy
I'm actually a student from Nanyang Technological University School of Communication and Information, currently on exchange in Taiwan's National Cheng Chi University.
Came across your blog while I was doing some research for my group's term report on "Internet Censorship in Singapore".
We would like to do an email interview with a blogger, who preferably is a Singaporean, & may have some thoughts or comments on the issue of Internet censorship (esp when it comes to political blogging in SG). I sincerely think that you fit our bill in the above description. Hence, we would like to ask you for this favour of answering a set of questions through email, or via MSN.
Please mail me at CHIE0004@ntu.edu.sg if you are interested. I would appreciate your help very much.
Hi Xenoboy,
How may you be contacted? I would like to e-mail you with some concrete suggestions on your site and about blogging in general. It would be wonderful if you could provide an e-mail address.
Thanks.
More importantly, when is your next post coming? :) I visit everyday hoping.
hi jonny,
Thank you. Why not share your concrete suggestions in the comments column? I can even highlight them up in the blog.
ohh L the lurker .. its not doing them a favour at all actually. The primary reason why the ruling regime is reasonable and logical is because they back this with Law. At the same time, they back their emotional apppeal against Hstory.
It is on the two fronts of Law and History that we have to dissect. I can write on and on about this but perhaps i will think about it for my next entry.
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NTU student in taiwan. ur e-mail address bounced. perhaps u can juz list ur questions in the comments and i answer as a blog entry? dat will be interesting research
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