A Xeno Boy in Sg

To hope till Hope creates

2009-05-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

The story began when a group of parochialists, under the cloak of noblesse, stole an organisation. Disguised, stealthy, hidden, were hearts of misplaced religious zeal. An ilk of the self righteous. In power, they were proud, arrogant, aloof. With almost casual disregard to the organisation's history, traditions and heritage, they began work by dismantling years of work, building illusory walls, reconstructing the organisation into a prideful image of their narrow religious visions.
'
"Have you come here to play Jesus. To the lepers in your head"

Than the voices spoke. Voices that refused silence. The truly pure and radiant hearts. First, the pioneers who built the organisation from nothing. Then, the marginalised who felt most threatened. Then you. Then me. And finally everybody. Old Guard, LGBT, bloggers, netizens, muslims, buddhists, christians, Singaporeans. The voices rejected the temptation of silence, rejected the opium of de-consciousness. They voices spoke to reclaim a precious space in secular society. To decry this robbery of a common space. An imaginary space undoubtedly, but real, tangible enough to unite all these different voices. To reject an organisation based on principles of exclusion, on a basis of hurt, from creating boundaries in this common space.

"And I can't be holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt."

At the Town Hall meeting, the last chance. One by one by one they stood up. Testimony. Witness. Transmission. One story after another. Different stories but one common line. No. We will not shut up. No. We will not sit down. No. We will not accept injustice. The stories piled up, one after another. I am a teacher .. I am a Muslim .. I am a Christian .. I am gay .. I am a Singaporean .. I am a woman .. all different, but all one.

"We're one but we're not the same, so we get to carry each other, carry other"

How they smashed themselves against the walled stony silence, carrying each other, caring for each other. And the parochialists were stunned. Their legal counsel was stunned. Their crafty ploy to stay in power even in the face of no confidence crumbled. Their arrogant faith shaken, their cowardice exposed, their small hearts revealed to all to see. For all to judge. For all to despise. And ultimately, for all to feel sorry. And for all to forgive them.

"Too late tonight, to drag the past out into the light. We're one, but we're not the same. We get to carry each other, carry each other."

And so the different stories, spoken with truly pure and radiant hearts, put an end to this injustice. Restored the meaning of democracy. Recovered a space common to all, open to all. And so the different stories ended this story which began so iniquitously when a group of parochialists, under the cloak of noblesse, stole an organisation.

But we must not forget. We must continue telling this story as testimony, as witness, as transmission so that another iniquitous story cannot be allowed to begin. This is the debt we are obliged to return, for the stories that ended this iniquitous story today.

"And to hope, till Hope creates, from its wreck the thing it contemplates"

V

Quote of the Day --

'To suffer woes that Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This . . . is to be good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.'

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

Carafa's Eye

2009-04-30T00:45:00.000-07:00

History is rife with examples of how organisations are subverted, hijacked through the surreptitious entry of agents from rival organisations or political entities. Perhaps the first popularly documented use of this tactic is the infamous Trojan Horse used by the Greeks to breach the walls of Troy and destroy this proud militaristic regime.

The most significant refinement of this tactic occurred with the Commmunist United Front strategy formulated by Leon Trotsky and it became formally known as the tactic of "entryism". Whether in Europe, in China or even in Singapore, the Communists recognised that the key to exponentially increase their support base and importantly, also political influence, was to take over organisations and project power from and through them. The take-over of these organisations were to be led by Lenin's Revolutionary Vanguard. The key group of agents-of-influence who would infilitrate targeted organisations, and from within eventually seize control of these organisations to enact the party's political objectives. Entryism became an important force multiplier for the Communists and the tactic itself remains even as the ideology which spawned it lies in the dust of History.

This particular tactic of entryism is relevant to Singapore indeed as the PAP came into power exactly through this. But the brutal irony was that they did it to the Communists who had in turn, done it against the British.

Perhaps History does move around in circles.

As the AWARE controversy escalates and more truths come under the harsh scrutiny of light, there are seemingly disparate pieces of information which are starting to coagulate into a slightly disturbing pattern.

That AWARE was a victim of entryist tactics is now clear as day. By the admission of the New Exco and more revealingly, by the unveiling of the Feminist Mentor, Thio Su Mien, AWARE had been subjected to an orchestrated take-over. Having read through their statements deeper, what they were trying to hide in their come-clean session were not their religious motivations. What appears to be their main defence was that they are not "organised". There is a key difference here. The New Exco since day one and since their revelations have been stressing that what they did was not organised. Even Thio Su Mien insists that she just sent a few random emails, and only mentor the women occasionally. When you deny something so vehemently, it only opens the enquiry in that direction.

Then, the role of Church of Our Savior and its Senior Pastor came to light. Many, probably including myself, started to think that the orchestrated take-over was conducted under the auspices of COOS. That it was a group within COOS attempting to enforce their religious beliefs on the rest of Singapore. If this is the simple picture, than the end-game is near. There is no possibility that COOS will be allowed to function as it had. The government, no matter how slow or clueless, will never allow the church institution to be used for such purposes.

But what if COOS itself was the victim of a steeplejack? That COOS, just like AWARE, has already been overrun and taken over? This hypothesis cannot be rejected. What happened in AWARE cannot be isolated exclusively. We have to examine other possibilities, examine other connections.

There is a church practice not commonly known to the layperson. This practice relates to the notion of "love gifts". Such gifts, usually in cash, are made to the church or to the pastors in recognition of their contribution to God's cause. As in all religious practices, we assume that such love gifts are given with no strings attached. It’s an act of faith. But then, such a practice can easily be misused. Surely, if faith and piety in this practice is corrupted, a situation could arise where particularly wealthy congregants could exert inordinate influence?

It is not in the realm of fantasy that perhaps there could really be a deeper, underground organisation or fellowship at play here. Other than AWARE and COOS, there could be other organisations at risk or already subverted. Perhaps, there could even be other organisations set up ostensibly with a secular agenda but inexorably linked to this underground council to gently extend its tentacles into society.

Perhaps Josie Lau's past actions needs to be re-considered in this light. She drew much flak for her credit card promotion which provided money to Focus on the Family. From its website FOTF appears hardly a Christian organisation. But its links to a notorious US based evangelical network was easily exposed. So is FOTF another steeple-jacked organisation with links to this deeper organisation?

We have to uncover what remains hidden.

Quote of the Day --

"The new age that You are preparing to inaugurate will have to forget its anonymous architects, the ones who have seen to it that events fitted together in accordance with the plan. The illustrious names of the defeated and the victors remain in the chronicles, available to anyone who wants to reconstruct the intricate events of an era and that which it produced. When those deeds are long gone and those lives have made way for the future, not a trace will remain of that silent army of soldiers of fortune and obscure labyrinth-builders. So it is only a matter of hastening the moment of that disappearance, just enough to allow us to escape the final execution." -- Q, Luther Blissett

The Importance of a Meeting Place

2009-04-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

How long did the new AWARE exco think they could hide the reason for the AWARE EGM venue change before someone draws the link?

Read this.

Speechless.

"ill minded man! Why scourge thy kind
who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taughst the rest to see.
with might unquestion'd, -- power to save, --
Thine only gift hath been the grave
to those that whoshipp'd thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition's less than littleness!"

Byron, Ode to Napoleon

God's Singaporean Son

2009-04-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

This article in TOC instantly brought a wry smile.

"Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles... We are beggars: this is true."

The above words were from the final writings of Martin Luther, a humble unknown German friar, who one fateful night on 1517 nailed 95 theses on the castle church doors of Wittenberg. With this single act of defiance, Martin Luther began a movement which destroyed the edifices of the Roman Catholic Church and irrevocably split Christianity into the various denominations we see today. Despite being the father of what became known as the Protestant movement, Martin Luther's final words were as above. That no one could have indulged the Holy Writers sufficiently. That ultimately we are all beggars, aspiring to achieve just a little understanding of God’s will.

But he is a Protestant after all.

Unlike Senior Pastor Derek Hong from Church of Our Savior, whose reading of the holy writings in the St James Bible has revealed to him God's instructions, indeed God's lines which cannot be crossed, not by his congregation, not even by the nation of Singapore. God's lines no less. Where there are no grades for sin. A pastor from Singapore who professes to know God's will and who acts in His Name based on his reading of the indisputable document known as the Holy Bible. The messiah is here to ensure that the nation does not cross the lines drawn by God?

From the article and the sermon, it is clear that Senior Pastor Hong is blissfully blind and unaware of the anger expressed so vociferously in local cyberspace over the weekend. In his devout vision, this AWARE sage is still a battle between his church and militant gay activists. Hence, his sermon devoted mostly to his insistence of the "sin" of homosexuality and the creeping militant gay movement threatening to turn Gaia into Sodom.

Perhaps Senior Pastor Hong needs to awake from his holy coma. You need not have to understand tongues to read the wave of anger against the new AWARE exco, Thio Su Mien and now, Church of our Savior, expressed over the weekend. Indeed, the anger is no longer just about the anti-gay point. Instead, the anger is clearly on how a church and some members of its wayward flock steeplejacked a secular non-governmental organisation through a premeditated and orchestrated Christian mobilisation of resources. The anger is no longer contained within the LGBT groups, the anger has gone mainstream. Your average Singapore is angry. Because they can see clearly that this action by Thio Su Mien and her puppets, given holy approval by Senior Pastor Hong, is wrong. Wrong from all perspectives. Not only from the LGBT perspective.

That our usual new media blind Ministers fail to see that what has happened in AWARE is more than petty politicking is understandable. They are always slow and headless without Minister Mentor's cloistered guidance. But for a Senior Pastor who seems to have God's prescience and a flock with a Feminist Mentor no less, to fail see this anger is humorous at the very least. Perhaps, they are likely mere mortals after all.

But then which mortal would dare claim to know the lines drawn by God and ensure that the nation does not cross it.

Quote of the Day –

"My hand grasps the killing power in Heaven and earth; To behead the evil ones, spare the just, and ease the people's sorrow." -- Hong Xiu Quan, from God's Chinese Son, Jonathan D Spence

De-legitimising Legality

2009-04-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

Apologists of the new AWARE Exco cite the undisputable fact that they were voted in power legally and constitutionally. This "legality" justifies and legitimises their actions. This constitutionality of their new found status is the constant refrain used to blanket themselves from criticism. Indeed, this constitutionality of their actions gives them an aura of stoicism in the face of the massive critical storm blowing their way.

This constitutionality argument is bullshit. It is a little known fact that when Hitler enacted the Final Solution, he was actually legally empowered to do so. His brilliant legal thinkers had carefully and deliberately solved the legal-juridical problem of sending innocent people into concentration camps. It was not just a dictatorial whim of Hitler; it was a calibrated and constructed legal strategy to empower him to send innocents into concentration camps and from there, into the gas chambers. It was legal then as he saw it, as the German Reich saw it, but do we see it, many years down the road, as legal?

To rely on the constitutionality argument is basically a sign of weakness. It is short-sighted, it is escapism, it is a denial. Self silencing. It provides soothing comfort to justify looking away, stepping aside, denying a horror.

Eventually, it is their motivations which we have to look into. Which we have to examine, dissect, discourse, disagree. The first Government responses are typical. We should embrace tolerance, diversity of views and the usual rigmarole of non-committal opinions. If this is the case, than the new AWARE puppets have already failed because their motivations for assuming power are based on intolerance. Their motivations are based on their own warped, intolerant vision of their religion and what they perceive their God is telling them to do. Their motivations are based on an exclusive rather than inclusive agenda. Their motivations have no place in this space where we term civil society. Their motivations are a betrayal of their own religion.

It is their motivations that matter. Why they did what they did. Its not about whether it was legal or not. Look at NKF. Eventually, most of what Durai did was perfectly legal, perfectly constitutional. Why they did what they did will tell you what they will do in the future. When recipients of AWARE aid and services are excluded because they are different, because they do not believe, because they are sinners.

We should be shocked and we should be ashamed that a group such as this can sit in front of the cameras and tell us that what they did was legal and that what they did was right and what they did was self sacrificing. It was not. From shock, from shame, we should be morally outraged at their audacity, at their presumptiveness that we can stomach their actions and tolerate their galling motivations.

It is legal but it is wrong.

To say it is legal opens up a slippery slope.

Which is why, placing too much emphasis on the EOGM is not necessarily the strategy to adopt. To send this group back into their holes requires a concerted effort. Mr Wang suggests cancelling your DBS credit cards and telling DBS that you do not condone what their employee has done. Akikonomu has a whole list of email addresses which you can send to register your displeasure. Flood the newspapers with your anger. Spread the outrage far and wide and we can uncover new truths like this piece from DogEmperor. if you are in the Church Of Our Saviour or any other church and your wayward pastor stands behind the pulpit calling you to pray for the AWARE puppets, stand up and say no.

Disagree, resist, refuse.

Postscript -- A YouTube leak of the COOS anti gay sermon on their positioned statement.

Quote of the Day --

"Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles... We are beggars: this is true." -- Martin Luther

A Peculiar Irony

2009-04-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

It is a peculiar irony that perhaps the Singapore Government's greatest enemy is not the opposition parties, not our weekend activists, not even our vaunted new media but an age-old ideology birthed when a man split the seas into two and another man got crucified on a cross.

Oh our pure and radiant hearts!

This simmering AWARE controversy has been argued along the lines of homophobia. It is seen as a reaction against the perceived gay-friendly direction of the old guard. That is only one side of the story.

There is the other side of this issue which we Singaporeans have been schooled deeply to avoid. To not touch. To pretend that it does not exist. Religion.

The motivations of the new guard of AWARE stems from religion. There is no doubt in that. Their group cohesion rests on an unwavering martyr-like devotion to their God. To their God as they see it. To their God as they expect others to see it. To their God as they will others to believe in it. To their God. Call them the Elect, call them the Chosen, they are God's warriors.

In every congregation, whichever denomination, whichever sect, whichever religion, whichever ideology, there is always this minority group. The self-styled martyrs. The visionaries. The chosen ones. Like Lenin's Vanguard, those who are closer to Utopia, those who are closer to God, those who are deeper believers, those who understand more. And their self appointed mission is to lead you, to lead me, because they are more right. Because we do not know. Because we are ignorant. We are the flock.

Oh our pure and radiant hearts!

But it is Singapore's peculiar irony that even as we witness this encroachment into a common civil space by this group of believers, we are unable to frame the arguments correctly because of this dirty word: religion.

Instead we revert to PAP-esque frames of reference. The Old Guard and the New Guard. There is even a self-styled Feminist Mentor. A certain Thio Su Mien, related to Thio Li Ann, she who uttered that infamous ultra conservative invective in Parliament that left even the most hardcore PAP MPs squirming uncomfortably in their red leather seats.

A Feminist Mentor no less. Pedestaled like a Minister Mentor. The puppeteer behind the machinations of Government, the puppeteer behind the machinations of these new AWARE guards. Whereas one is schooled in the most extreme sensibility of political expediency and practicality, the other is schooled in the most fanatical sensibility as God's executor. An archangel with the flaming sword of justice.

It is Singapore's peculiar irony that we have in potentiality a movement that can topple the Government with one Word as they toppled AWARE with one Word. That is, sadly, the "choice" we have.

--------------------------

From: smthio@xxxxxxx.sg
To: stjh21@xxxxxx.sg, Undisclosed-Recipient:
Subject: Re Aware
Attachments AWARE_membership_mail-in_application_form.pdf concerned parents.1.do

PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL

Dear All

Please see Attachments on some recent developments in Aware. Aware is a woman's organization which conducts comprehensive sexual programmes for girls and it runs this programme in some of the schools. They encourage girls to express their full sexuality and this includes experimenting with other girls. It would be a good idea to join it and change its focus to other problems of women and families.

..Please ask your like-minded friends to join Aware so that you can give the vote to those who wish to be an agent of change for the Lord. They could also contribute to the activities of the oprganization as there is much to be done for women and families in this dowturn of the economy. Unfortunately, I cannot surface but shall be assisting in the background . I attach the Aware membership application form for your use. The Aware application form has a section as to who ( if any) told you about Aware. You can just leave it blank . Please let me know whether you can join and attend the AGM which will be towards the end of March 2009. The fee is $40/ and should be mailed to the Aware Office ( see application form).

Look forward to hearing from you. Please call me. May I have your phone no?

Blessings,
Su Mien

------------------------

There is a very famous quote from Karl Marx, religion is the opium of the masses. Perhaps, in our historical context, this statement is incomplete. Maybe he would have said, religion is the opium of the masses and an ecstasy pill for some. Like these little self appointed avout archangels running AWARE now, adrenaline pumping Duracell bunnies merrily piping the rest of the opiated masses into this orchestra of power. But all in God's name, God's name.

Oh our pure and radiant hearts!

This post is about religion and the misuse of religion. This post is about arguing an issue as we see, perceive and sense it. This post is about us, the majority waking from our opiated selfs to stare hard at those who think they have a moral right to decide for us when they have nothing but an illusion of God's stamp provided by wayward churches, wayward pastors.

"That was what shocked us most... That it does not shock you, that it does not stun you all and send you reeling with horror, this long death of civilization unrolling before your eyes." -- Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Lydia Millet

This post from a long hiatus was demanded by a close friend who insists that I must be shocked by this and that I must write about this.

Quote of the Day –

"More than any of it, what astounds me is the blindness of you people now. A civilization that is blind to itself. I mean blind. In my day there was ignorance too: ignorance is timeless. But at least we were ashamed of it." – Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Lydia Millet

A Cup of Sg Tea

2009-02-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

"The challenge, said Mr Lee, is to be able to boil down information and present news neutrally out of Singapore." ChannelNewsAsia, 23 Feb

like the dregs that escape the sock. scattered views, words, letters sinking into the bottom of the cup. a cusp of information, its meanings diffused into quivery aromatic wisps, swirling languidly in boiling raging water. the dregs sinking down and down. a settled scatter of stilled dregs.

whats left is a cup of a tea. subtly fragrant. calm, peaceful, soothing, therapeutic even.

the dregs at the bottom severed from the dregs in the sock. the associations dissociated. the answers unquestioned. the meanings unmeant. sensibilities unsensed.

leaving only the watered association, the dissolved answer, the distilled meaning.

nonsense.

and a slightly bitter taste.

Quote of the Day --

"We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe."

Rudyard Kipling

Terminal Loops

2008-08-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Its that rally speech again, littered always with captivating words, moving promises, prelapsarian anxieties. statistical suasion. Not the chest-thumping jingo-jingle of Lee Hoong's Pax Singaporeana, but the calculated sensibilities of practical reason. A rally always of implied shifts, always heralding that slip of change, winds of change. Holding us captive, captivated that perhaps ... just perhaps ...

Inflation? Do the math and you're really not so worse off. ERP? But there is your car, a dream Corolla, gleaming at the parking lot. What wants remain unfulfilled, how far the subsistence line when three billion dollars were pumped out to you and to me? Read the numbers, do your sums, what wants have not been met? The numbers don't lie, your mind tricks you. So the rally goes. Boring deep in our heads. Awaking our rational conscience, changing our minds, seeding change through a reinstatement of status quo, reinstating the state. The stubborn Singaporean, too greedy perhaps? Expectations maybe, just maybe a little too high? Forgetting the benevolence of the king? The ground shifts, the position changes, the angles are re-configured and dreams of a rainbow Singapore re-surface. First class education. Another brick in the wall.

A sensible seduction, a re-dressed opening up. Pushing the infamous "boundaries". Opening up, blooming, hundreds of flowers ... wait, a wrong memory, another rally, another time, the same message. Collapsing memory, collapsed rallies. Push the boundaries, when only You can see it while they remain always invisible, amorphous, sinously sinister to us, the un-productive citizens. Push the boundaries, but where are these spectres, these lines, these conditions, when only You can will their appearance, wield that axe that makes us yield?

Opening up? More freedom in cyberspace! More politics in cyberspace! Freedom during election time! Seductively re-dressed as opening up, as liberalisation. When it is already free. When it is already was. What opening up when it already exists? How to open this space when it was always already open, in spite of, despite of the porous legal barricades erected to ring-fence it?

Engage you. Engage me. Engage ad nauseum. Renege. Engage. Renege. Renege. Renege.

When all you have to do is listen. Forget engage. Listen. Listen to the voices in cyberspace. Listen hard in your facebooks, youtubes, flickrs, blogspots, wordpress. Listen to that sound, vaguely familar? Listen to all that text, all those pixels and you may remember a Singapore that has gone underground. Recall a vibrancy, a hope, a future, a discourse, long extinct in physical Singapore. Listen, forget engage, forget rally, forget speaking. Listen to this raucous slipstream, this digital babel of wired Singapore and you may re-discover the continuities of Singapore past, present and future.

The rally speech, an annual discursive masterpiece, piping us like little children merrily to wonderland. A textual orchestra of sensible cadence, reasonable rhythm, looping and re-looping like that hypnotic techno riff that is re-mastered, re-assembled, re-presented as new music this year, next year and next and the year after next. A rally like last year's rally, like last year, and last year and the year before last and that last year.

Inflation. Babies. Angbaos. FT. Economy. Opening up. New Media. Inspiration. Success story #1, #2 ... Economy, economy.

Our minds, conditioned again. A condition of nervous anticipation. We smell something in the air. Hint of change. Something different. Conditioning our senses, always expectant, always dissonant. Conditioning our anxieties, always compliant, always reliant.

A terminal prelapsarian loop in an event horizon imagined as Pax Singaporeana.

Quote of the Day –

“The Hinkypunk is a strange will-o’-wisp which stands on a single leg and consists of evanescent whorls of smoke. The Hinkypunk supposedly hops around with a lantern, which the creature uses to lure anyone walking nearby to fall in a ditch, stumble into a bog, and so on. While this creature may sound somewhat preposterous, genetic science has come up with a plausible explanation for its existence: The Hinkypunk could be a swarm of bacteria in a puddle of bog water. When this colony grows to a certain size, it can give off a flash of light to confuse any innocent passerby.” – The Science of Harry Potter, Roger Highfield

Remaining Time

2008-08-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

You are born in KK. You go through pre-school. You go through kindergarten. You enrol in a primary school. Tuition classes begin. Extra classes in English, ballet, piano, on top of normal curricular subjects. You sit for your PSLE. You enter the secondary school based on your PSLE results; if you fail you enter the ITEs. You study hard through O'levels, you go to either a polytechnic or JC. Or your education can end here. Or if you are really good, you through-train to A'levels. For the boys, you go to NS. For the rest, it is university or work. After university, you work. You find a mate. Get married. Get a place, probably HDB. Take a loan. Work through 40 plus years. Attend weddings, attend funerals. Probably watch thousands of movies. Go for bbqs or blading at East Coast Park. Make love. Go for holidays. Have children. You retire at 65 plus. Collect your CPF. You get sick. You pass away. Your ashes finally laid to rest at Mandai columbarium.

And along this life process, the Singapore political system, through its institutions and instruments of the state, imbibes you with the proper values, the proper beliefs, the proper behavior. Your outlook is schooled, your life road submitted to the vagaries of the needs of this Singapore system. Engineers, biomedical, life sciences, PPE, MBA. As this system requires, so too the available paths on your life path. As the system requires, so your humanity is gradually leached. As this system requires, so you become that little more de-humanised.

What is there to cherish in Singapore? Its a simple answer. Your life outside the system. Your tranquility in those moments of peace when the system's tentacles cannot reach you. Your secret exercise hang-out at Seletar reservior. Your secret fishing spot at MacRitchie. Your little overgrown garden. Your balcony on a crisp early rain-washed morning. Your session in front of the computer, tapping wildly away at your blog, your discussion forum. Your moments with your children, without the blemish of life's worries planted across their delicate brows. Your favorite zi char stall, with your buddies and a couple of beers after a game of football, basketball. Your moments when you are you. Your humanity. Your existence. Your life.

Why do Singaporeans leave? Not only those leaving to the first world countries. But those Singaporeans who leave for developing countries. In Thailand, Vietnam, Uganda, Mongolia. Why? What is the allure of that foreign land? Is it the suspense of encountering new rules, new cultural continuities, new options, new possibilities? Do they hate Singapore? No, more, they are terrified of Singapore, of its system and what it represents. An epitome of dehumanity. Why do they leave? Not to recover but to rediscover life.

There is little or no suspense in Singapore where the system of rational outcomes, economic needs supersedes all of life's imperatives. It is this need which requires security. It is this need that precludes participatory politics. It is this need that determines existential continuity in Singapore. We cannot question this rule. And without question, questioning, we lose that gram of humanity which accrues through the years we co-mingle with this system. When the time comes to retirement, reflexion and the shock of system withdrawal is too late. We can only remember the moments of life at that secret spot, at that first kiss.

Reader, you asked what is there to cherish in Singapore. There is much and there can be more.

But will the system permit this?

For those who left, they cannot wait for the system's answer.

Because they know, life is lived on remaining time.

Quote of the Day --

"To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright." -- Walter Benjamin

Why They Like Singapore

2008-08-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

There are some Singaporeans who like Singapore.

They belong to that sacred convenant of Singaporeans who have the most freedom in this island state. Well-schooled through the elite schools and recipients of prestigious scholarships to Oxbridge or the Ivy League, this class of Singaporeans are intelligent, articulate, sagely and well ensconced in the civil service, in the national newspapers, in the major GLCs, which run Clockwork Singapore.

These Singaporeans have it good. They can speak, reason and talk about politics in valuable newspaper space with absolute free reign. What authoritarian Singapore? They ask. They have all the freedom to publish commentaries with absolute impunity. They can talk about the Singapore system, on political accountability, freely without the blighting shadow of defamation.

For these Singaporeans, they cannot understand why other Singaporeans cry bloody murder on freedom of expression, freedom of speech, or the lack of human rights in Singapore. They cannot understand why Westerners hate Singapore.

In their sanguine sagacity, they dismiss these complaining Singaporeans as blue-eyed idealists who will grow out of their angst and accept the system; they scoff at the Western detractors as jealous, as cultural bigots who cannot escape the liberal paradigms they were schooled under.

These Singaporeans, so rational and pragmatic, who always have the answers, rooted deep in an ultra-Rankean historical perspective, for every contradiction apparent in Singapore society today.

Ministerial accountability for a terrorist escape? Look through the annals of history, there is no need. Why this fury?

Raising taxes to help the poor? Look at history and you see that the people have to bite the bullet to survive economic crises.

Gerrymandering in elections? Come on, we are a multi-racial society which needs proportional representation for the sake of democracy.

Every contradiction. A perfect, rational answer. Sometimes backed up with the necessary statistics.

These Singaporeans have absolutely no reason to dislike, what more hate Singapore? They reap the fruits of this nation's spectacular economic success. They enjoy great career success and hold positions of influence in the political, social, economic fields. They are the direct beneficiaries of Singapore Inc, the beautiful meritocracy of controlled political diversity.

These Singaporeans, who read the Singapore Story as how the PAP triumphed against the communists (after riding on the Malayan Communist Party to obtain political power and betraying them), went through a painful Merger with Malaysia (and the launch of Operation Cold Store to remove all the political opponents under the war against Communism), fighting the economic struggles of 1970s (enacting the Trade Union Act, the Newspaper Act, forcing the closure of Nantah and Chinese schools to annihilate all the bastions of Communist mass support), rising to the housing challenge with HDB (the forced repatriation of Singaporeans who received no compensation and the enactment of the grassroots RCs who receive favoured distribution of flats) and the birth of a modern economic miracle ( via the systematic de-politicization of society).

Really, for these Singaporeans, what's there to dislike, much less hate about Singapore? For them, the grass is always green. For them, a 10% pay-cut is just a few hundred off their six figure salaries. For them, the ERP is wonderful for removing congestion. For them, raising bus fares is an alien notion because they do not take buses. For them, Singapore is wonderful, they are free to do anything and they are happy citizens.

They just have to sing One song. They just have to believe in One nation. They just have to see One people.

And these Singaporeans are One Singapore.

Waltzing on a glass floor, looking down on the rest of the country, the rest of the world.

While the rest of us lift our heads and watch them dance through the glass ceiling.

Quote of the Day –

“Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.” – Joseph Goebbels, Hochschule für Politik

Singapore Spirit

2008-08-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

It is said that during this month, spirits of the netherworld are given license to roam the physical world. In Singapore, many activities cease during this month, house-moving, renovations, marriages, wedding dinners, for fear that it will bring inauspicious beginnings to new ventures. There cannot be too much joy during this month. Because the spirits are sad, hungry, lonely.

But still, we celebrate National Day in this luckless month. This year's theme, ironically, a celebration of the Singapore Spirit. The spirit of you and me. Our spirits chasing that dangling carrot in front of our eyes. A long, long queue outside the neighborhood betting shops. Hoping for luck in this luckless month. Fifty cent quickpick, dreaming a return eight million over, to lift our spirits, to lift us from our luckless lives.

This year's National Day, a paean to our indomitable Singapore Spirit. A spirit sliced wafer thin by cold political design. A spirit disfigured with mouths sewn shut. A spirit disembodied from our bodies which plod on like beasts of burden keeping Singapore Inc alive. A spirit mostly asleep, awakened every four years to sluggishly ink away emancipation. An emaciated spirit looking always for flight even as hordes rush in to replace his place. The Singapore Spirit, an indomitable Spirit.

The Singapore spirit, standing below the huge garishly lit National Day billboard of our beaming political masters surrounded by our multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-caricatured daguerreotypes. The Singapore spirit looking sadly at the Singaporean with his five dollar offerings of million dollar Hades money, a pair of flickering joss candles, a cluster of smoking joss sticks, praying fervently for blessings, for luck in this luckless month, in their luckless lives.

The Singapore spirit, a fragile wisp of ether, sadly watching a fictional celebration of million-dollar fanfare, elaborately synchronized dance displays, precision marching, streaking sonic jet fighters, muscular anthems and paeans, telling lustrous myths of unity, strength, indomitablity. Outside the stage, the old man collects discarded cardboard boxes and drink-cans from crowded coffee-shops, filled with patrons enraptured by the olympian spectacle in Beijing on the hanging TV screens. The Singapore spirit, so diffuse, so faint, so slight, like a whiff of alchohol in a Sunday choir-boy's breath. The Singapore spirit, united only by a common dream of flight from their luckless lives, from their lifeless lives.

The Singapore Spirit of National Day, a community of meanings, a sovereign display of resemblance and common reflexion, from which emerges the principles of unity and eventually political domination. While the singapore spirit of this Seventh Month, trudges on dispirited, unable to rupture its mythic patina of joyous unity, unable to voice, unable to signal its plea against the illogical political slogans of more taxes and necessary rising costs.

The dispirited Singapore Spirit, accepting the ashes of offerings from little bonfires scattered around the country. Unable to offer anything back but dreams of a better life as insubstantial, as ephemeral as the fireworks we will see this Saturday night.

Quote of the Day --

"These pre-existing forms of continuity, all these syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain in suspense. They must not be rejected definitively of course, but the tranquility with which they are accepted must be disturbed; we must show that they do not come about of themselves, but are always the result of a construction the rules of which must be known, and the justifications of which must be scrutinized: we must define in what conditions and in view of which analyses certain of them are legitimate; and we must indicate which of them can never be accepted in any circumstances." -- The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault

Will You Be Back Tomorrow?

2008-06-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Somehow, this Singapore Dissident, a former Singaporean, got himself arrested in Singapore for contempt against a public servant. Somehow, there was enough reserve of anger left in him, as he witnessed the spectacle of the Lee-Chee courtroom confrontation, to dangle himself as political bait to the Singapore Government. Regardless the fact that he was a former WP member, regardless the often muddied opposition delineations in Singapore. Regardless the fact that he has left Singapore and is living in relative comfort in the US. Regardless, this former Singaporean stood forth and issued another challenge aimed straight at that fragile weave-work known as Singapore’s defamation laws.

Sometime last night, he was arrested. He wanted arrest, he wanted a challenge and our Government, mindful of face to the last iota of political insensibility, reacted accordingly. This is the fatherly political reflex which has remained constant throughout the years of chimerical political development in Singapore. When faced with a political challenge, with a crossing of the political face of the ruling regime, the necessary reflex is a fatherly arrest, detention or lawsuit.

This is the political constant in Singapore. Despite all the rhetoric of opening up, allowing creativity, tolerating dissent. This is the cold basic stark political reality when you cross the invisible, shifting, convenient boundary defined by our political rulers.

The knocking on the door in the dead of night. The plainclothes police, the arrest, a scene replayed endlessly across the world in regimes sharing the cozy bed of tyranny.

For the dewy-eyed who continue to be able to dissect Singapore’s political system and extol or debate the virtues and merits of governance from the safe confines of political permissibility; this episode is but another transgression in an endless litany of political brutalities that will never disappear with this Government, this political party. Remember that. Talk about the relentless rising costs of living to an extent when you tap into the seething discontent of the dis-empowered and all the pretence of political paternalism, light touch, will vanish in that very instant you hear the cold hard slap of the shackles around you hands, your legs and your mouth.

This is our Singapore. When you really stand, you will be cut at your knees. When you really open your mouth, it will be sewn shut. And the hardest, most cruel reality is that no one will know. Or you will be ridiculed as deserving of this cutting, this silencing. You asked for it.

There is nothing in this political system that will protect you from this. And there are no brethren who will stand by your side. Because the system has ensured your total solitude when its existence, its rules, its rule is questioned.

Will any Singaporean stand forth and say nay, this arrest is political irresponsibility? No, because they will say that this Singapore dissident had it coming. He issued a challenge and he was answered. Snigger snigger.

Will any Singaporean stand forth and say nay, this arrest is blatantly political and an act to silence someone who is speaking up against what he perceives as gross injustice in our courts of law? No, instead they will say that this dissident is a quitter, that he has the protection of his US citizenship behind him. Snigger snigger.

We have been conditioned to think like this. Better these snide remarks, better these cynical insinuations, better these rational analyses than real full-blooded anger. Anger that makes you stand forth, makes you speak up to challenge the system to come to you.

This is our Singapore.

Quote of the Day –

Won't you come back tomorrow

Won't you come back tomorrow

Can I sleep tonight

Outside

Somebody's outside

Somebody's knocking at the door

There's a black car parked

At the side of the road

Don't go to the door

I'm going out

I'm going outside mother

I'm going out there

Won't you be back tomorrow

Will you be back tomorrow

U2 Tomorrow

From Godot to Robot

2008-05-30T02:50:00.000-07:00

"The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father"

This was the response of Minister Vivian to a request for governmental help against errant ex-spouses who evade their maintenance liabilities.

There was a time if Vivian was to make this statement, it would have had an absolutely different, almost opposite intended meaning.

The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father. How apt a statement in Sigapore if it contains even the slightest whiff of that dirty ideology, welfarism.

Stand on your own two feet boy. Gather your own feed. Raise your family with your own hands. Do not beg from the state. The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father.

But father we are dying.

Than you will have to go for you have failed. It is not the money. it is the principle. A free quarter for you and the floodgates will open. Our economy will crumble. The state will be destroyed. singapore perishes. So go my son. The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father.

Then I will speak out, my father. Make known my grievances.

Careful with that my son. If you are too inflammatory, if you are too populist than you will be seditious. You will be upsetting the balance and harmony of this state. Then you will have to be silenced. You will face the Penal Code. You will face the ISA.

Then I will protest, my father. I will protest the CPF system, I wish to opt out and take my money.

No you cannot do that. The CPF system is good for you. It ensures that you will be taken care of in your old age. By forcing you to save your own money, the State is helping you prepare for your old age. CPF plus, even, now that you can live beyond 80. And protests in Singapore are illegal. You will break the law. You will have to be arrested.

Then I will write, my father. Make my story known. Talk to my journalist friends, find others like me.

You are being subversive. The national newspapers cannot involve itself in such partisan issues. It can and only report facts. The newspapers are important institutions of the state. It cannot be used for the people by the people. The mainstream newspaper must report accurately, objectively and responsibly. And that they must adopt this model that they are part of this nation-building effort, rather than go out and purvey views that would mislead people, confuse people, which will in fact undermine our national strategy. So if you write seditiously, you will break the law. You will have to be arrested.

Then I will vote, my father. Vote you out.

Yes that is fair, that is politics. But you will find out that you are in an uncontested GRC. And we cannot change that. Its for your own good. The GRC system is so that all races are fairly represented. Its to ensure harmony, equal representation to all. It is not a system to squeeze out political competition. It is for the good of the people.

The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father. Do you see that? Do you understand that? Ours is not a paternalistic system. Ours is not a father-child relationship.

Think. And finally accept. Even if you are dying.

Like me, Godot turned Robot.

Quote of the Day --

"If you broke the law, there was only the one law, which everybody broke again and again ... and there was always the same penalty for any breaking of the law, from jaywalking to treason: the penalty was the death penalty, and there was agitation to have the death penalty removed, but it would not be because then, for like jaywalking, there would be no penalty at all. So it stayed on the books and finally the community burned out entirely and died. No, not burnt out -- they had been that already. They faded out, one by one, as they broke the law, and sort of died." -- A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

A Kilo of Rice from Tua Pek Kong

2008-05-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

While we were whipped into a wild frenzy over the Mas Selamat debacle, this little CNA report quietly slipped past most Singaporeans eyes. According to charities, the queue for free food is getting longer. While this queue grows longer, the Dept of Statistics uses a fairly odd adjective to describe the situation. Inflation was "boosted", it has an uncannily happy, almost positive ring.

Boosted.

----------------
Singapore's March inflation rate at 26-year high of 6.7% ( 23 Apr 2008 1331 hrs)

SINGAPORE: Singapore's annual inflation was 6.7 percent last month, the highest in 26 years, the Department of Statistics said on Wednesday. It said the consumer price index (CPI) was boosted by higher costs of food, transport, communications and housing.

The March CPI was down 0.1 percent from February's figure, the department added. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the index was 0.3 percent higher in March, compared with the previous month. Inflation reached 6.6 percent in the first three months of 2008, compared with the same period last year.

Singapore is not alone in grappling with inflation.

The United Nations food agency on Tuesday said the world faces a "silent tsunami" of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply.

Rising food prices are driving more people in Singapore to join the queue for free meals, charities said.

Crude oil is also trading at near record high prices globally.
----------------------

Such a major boost in inflation should have been printed prominently in our media bastion, the Straits Times. Prominently featured just as when the paper positively glowed and glistened with feel-good mojo during the glorious proclamations of the GST hike.

Boosted, booted, busted, bastard.

The proclamations have become faded echoes. Faded as always with these mass Govt-media campaigns. If we were to replay the jingoistic speeches during 2007’s Budget Debate , they would sound horribly hollow now. Irrelevant, inconsequent, insipid, invalid. Faced with boosting inflation, the Government reverts to its trusted media strategy, another two billion dollar package to help Singaporeans tide over these dire times just like the billion dollar package to tide over the GST hikes. Another screaming headline. Another faded echo to come. Repeating, repetitive, recursive, eventually repulsive. Media mediated visions to re-slave the enslaved, to nurse the sleeping to unconsciousness.

And while the state machinery churns out its movies, its frames to rapture us about our future, to squeeze us in our ennui, its efficient and grotesque political machines continue humming at the local levels, local governance, our little temaseks, masked as town councils, blithe to the cries of our citizens, standing in line for a kilo of rice from Tua Pek Kong, a kilo of rice from Prophet Mohammed, a kilo of rice from Jesus Christ.

There is something fundamentally wrong in Singapore.

There is something fundamentally wrong when our town councils masquerade as little temaseks, squirreling away significant percentages of our conservancy charges into enormous sinking funds. Little temaseks hoarding 30% of what we pay every month and investing them in funds and financial products with only whispers of accountability. Town councils playing little temaseks, while those they bleed from, stand in line for a kilo of rice. Perhaps these little temaseks should occasionally pretend to be town councils and build some covered walkways to all the charities so that citizens can wait for their kilo of rice in condescending shade.

It is perhaps tolerable for the citizen during times of reasonable plenty, to witness political control of local governance, our town councils, our little temaseks through Governmental manipulation of community funding, and turn a blind eye. Political control through fund conditions like the mandatory allocation of surplus funds to sinking funds, which in the case of Hougang means that the town council is forced to charge higher conservancies, or the inequitable distribution of Community Improvement grants by MND to different constituencies, are political luxuries in times of plenty. In times of plenty, all these manipulations at local governance to add gloss to living in a PAP-controlled ward as opposed to an Opposition ward, does not hurt the citizen and he is mostly oblivious to the difference.

In times of need, the burden of such systemic grotesque political mechanisms, like maintaining huge sinking funds, while the needy are trying desperately, simply, just to get food on the table, is a political cruelty. It is cruelty when almost 30% of what you pay in conservancy charges is allocated into town council sinking funds; it is a political cruelty when conservancy charges have to be raised so as to meet the minimum contribution into town council sinking funds.

It is cruelty to forget the impact such political controls, such political mechanisms, have on the lives of citizens at these local governance levels.

Rolling out billion dollar packages are mere stop-gap measures which look good on paper. There is a reason why more people are queuing for free food at the charities. It is not only because they need this aid; it is more the simple fact that aid disbursed by charities comes with much less bureaucratic tangle than the billion dollar packages. With the charities, the needy need not have to crawl through broken glass to get a kilo of rice; they need not have to have their dignity broken.

There is something fundamentally wrong in Singapore if we have to stand in line for a kilo of rice from Tua Pek Kong while 30% of the conservancy charges we pay every month feeds nobody.

Quotes of the Day --

“You are a historian. You know what evils have been perpetrated through the ages to ensure the survival of nations, sects, religions, even individual families. Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that he has been formed by history, that his life-span is brief, uncertain, insubstantial, but that there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe. That hope has finally gone except in the minds of fools and fanatics. Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast … We have plans that will ensure that the last generation fortunate enough to live in the multiracial boarding house we call Britain will have stored food, necessary medicines, light, water and power. Besides these achievements, does the country greatly care that some Sojourners are discontented, that some of the aged choose to die in company, that the Man Penal Colony isn’t pacified?” – Children of Men, PD James

“A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed... When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James

Of Angry Journalists, Anger & the Evil Internet Again

2008-04-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

I remember playing the board game Monopoly once with a group of children comprising my nieces and nephews. Being the only adult and the only person most familar with the game amongst a group of DOTA and Maple Story veterans, wily me started slowly, cornered some utilities and very soon owned the essential parts of Monopoly which squeezed the liquidity from the children. Then, one of my nephews, the youngest, who enjoyed the initial luck of the dice, pushed all the little green houses and little red hotels away from the board and whined that it was not fair. He did not want to play anymore.

Board games like Monopoly live through the ages because it make-believes very human emotions like greed, ability to handle failure, the embarrassment of failure, the fear of defeat/failure and of course, the thrill of winning, the satisfaction of monopoly.

Reading Chua Lee Hoong's latest ST article on the Internet reactions to the Mas Selamat debacle strikes an immediate sense of deja vu. If I am not wrong, not that many years back, her fellow journalist, Sumiko Tan, opened her diatribe against the Internet with exactly the same angry descriptive barrage of the evils in cyberspace, crawling with bad people, filled with nasty brutish demons and poisonous commentaries. Years later, another fellow journalist repeats the same diatribe on this lawless space known as cyberspace.

We have to engage Lee Hoong's article precisely. She has dissected and isolated this Mas Selamat debacle and ends wondering why the reactions of the Net and of the mob are so incommensurate to the issue at hand? Why are Singaporeans over-reacting? Why this much anger? This much hate, this much scorn, this much disdain? To be fair to Lee Hoong, this is not so bad a form of analysis. Isolate the issue, study it, than assess the implications and measure the reaction/response. Incidentally, this is a method of journalism which ST excels in. Isolate, measure, assess and respond. Indeed, the entire article by Lee Hoong has a narrative structure not unlike how PM Lee dissected the Mas Selamat debacle in Parliament. Clinical, efficient, laying bare the facts, laying bare the skeleton with skeletal facts. When Lee Hoong removes her surgical mask, she cries out in boiling anger: What for this anger? Why this anger?

The answer is simple. This anger is not only about Mas Selamat. This anger is inextricably entwined with how the Ministers gave themselves a huge pay rise on the reasoning that they have to benchmark themselves to the private sector. This anger is intertwined with how the Government pursues accountability in every action, every utterance, every behavior of an Opposition politician. This anger is tied deeply with how the Government removed a columnist from his job at the newspaper because of his accountability for one column mocking the rising costs of living. This anger is about the unfairness of political accountability in Singapore. This anger is about the shifting meaning of accountability in the political landscape of Singapore. So Lee Hoong, the answer is simple, this anger, this “hysterical” mob manifesting in the Internet, is precisely the product of the actions of this Government.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the angriest of them all?

Perhaps, to be fair, we also have to measure, assess the reasons why Lee Hoong’s blood is boiling. Why her anger? Is it a commensurate anger? Somewhere along the commentary, she assures Singaporeans that her past articles have shown she has been critical of Government if it warrants. This is her licence to ask the thinking Singaporean why we are behaving irrationally, disproportionately. Perhaps she has to ask herself why, even if she has “rebelled”, inserted subliminal messages of protest, why does it never find resonance with Singaporeans? Perhaps, she and other journalists should reflect whether their exercises in this measured dissent are more to salve, satiate their own egos, soothe that little hidden rebel deep in their consciousness rather than real, sopisticated messages with true resonance among their readers?

Lee Hoong’s anger is ultimately an incommensurate anger. The Net moves on. The world moves on. The people whom Lee Hoong is trying desperately to connect with have moved on. Perhaps, this is the reason for her anger. No one cares what she writes anymore. No one bothers. It is incommensurate anger because the thinking Singaporean now has choice, has the ability to choose, to respond, to voice. Look at Catherine Lim's blog, old school writer, new media advocate. Whereas for Lee Hoong, what recourse is there but incommensurate anger if her choice is staying in an institution like the Straits Times whose excellence is only in its ability to isolate incidents/issues rather than extrapolate from incidents/issues. Her subliminal messages of “protest”, of “change from within” will ultimately remain at best as exercises in intellectual self-gratification, disconnected from the pulse and reflexes of the real world, the connected world as the Mas Selamat episode clearly shows.

Occasionally I still play Monopoly with the children. The nephew who threw the tantrum is fine now because he understands that throwing tantrums is poor behavior indeed because then, no one will play with him anymore. And this is his greatest fear.

Quote of the Day –

“Dr Judson, you were against the Super Collider, were you not?”
“Oh, absolutely”
“And you testified in favor of cutting off its funds?”
“I did indeed”
“Please tell this committee why you did it.”
“Quite simple. I made an idiotic mistake.” …
“Dr Judson, I’m afraid you have to explain that”
“No problem, There’s only so much money for science in the Federal budget. Back in 1993, I thought the Collider was soaking up far too much money … I never anticipated the Chinese would come up with the Higgsie”
“The Higgsie? Do you mean the Higgs boson?”
“Sorry, around the institute we call it the Higgsie and regard it as fairly trivial … Nevertheless, there was a world race on to find the Higgsie … I mean by 1993, the Higgs boson has become a sort of Holy Grail of physics, hadn’t it? So it was politically important. We’re all here today because the Chinese have aced us, aren’t we? …”

– A Hole in Texas, Herman Wouk

Politics, Gladiator, Praetorians and a Missing Fugitive

2008-04-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

While many viewers were enthralled by the epic battle scenes in the Gladiator, hardly any noticed that the plot of the film turned on a single focal point. When the Emperor Commodus was un-sworded by General Maximus in the final fight scene, he turned to his Praetorian Guards and demanded another sword. As the Guard unsheathed their swords to offer their beleaguered Emperor, the Guard Commander, Quintus, overruled the Emperor, ordering the Guard to stay their swords. General Maximus subsequently killed Commodus with the latter's own dagger in front of a shocked Coliseum. It was not the first time that the Praetorian Guards played a pivotal role in the film. In this sense, the film was unerring in historical accuracy, the praetorians were more often than not, the true Caesar-makers of Pax Romana.

The Prime Minister's explanation of the Mas Selamat escape fiasco is a lesson in politics. He perhaps more than any other recognises that the ISD is an intelligence agency, staffed by intelligence officers, whose primary job is the gathering of information of leverage, of value. Running a prison is a routine task beneath such intelligence officers, such tasks delegated to the lowly Gurkha mules. It is precisely this mindset that allowed the Mas Selamat escape to occur and this was probably what the PM meant when he singled out the mindset issue. The element of complacency.

Interestingly, the PM made one slip of tongue which did not really come out in the COI report findings, he uttered something about the unclear lines of command on the security responsibility in the detention centre. This is the nub of the issue. It is apparent that ISD intelligence officers are not prison wardens. More likely, intelligence officers are egotistical bastards who like to kick down toilet doors rather than perform lowly prison escort duties. Hence, the security of Mas Selamat was delegated by these intelligence officers to the two Gurkha mules. They made the critical mistake in thinking that two Gurkhas on one prisoner should be adequate security. But alas, the Gurkhas are good only for parades and are basically gentle savage mules with less initiative than your average Filipino maid. This was the critical failure, window or no window, fence or no fence.

If a cock-up of this scale occurs in a ministry like MICA, the PM will have much less of a headache. Essentially, ministries like MICA are politically dispensable. They have no value to the politicians. But when a cock-up happens in a intelligence agency, in Mindef or even in an elite military unit like the Commandos, especially in a regime like Singapore where institutional checks and balances are only of face value, the political ramifications are much more complex. When a cock-up happens in ISD, which has an organisational history that is promiscously intertwined with the political history of Singapore, think Coldstore, think Marxist conspiracy, it creates a hugely delicate problem for the politicians.

The Prime Minister is sharp and recognises this fact, this conundrum he is faced with. He explains to us citizens that a demoralised ISD will be detrimental to Singapore's security. That is an equivocal statement. It is not the mob reflexively baying for the blood of Ministers and politicians he is wary of. Handling the mob is simple politics, especially the Singaporean mob which has always been fairly one-dimensional.

It is evident from this Mas Selamat escape that political savvy in Singapore remains a rare commodity. Grasping and exploiting political nuances appears to be a lost art or perhaps the monopoly of the cloistered group in the ruling regime. Rather than exploiting the interstices of this ISD cock-up, the Opposition wastes the political opportunity pursuing dead hypotheses or demanding accountability knowing that accountability will always be provided for that group of conservative stoic Singaporeans who are the electoral bedrock of the regime's survival.

In the film, Gladiator, the Roman mob in the Coliseum was silenced when Emperor Commodus slumped dead at the feet of Maximus. They were further silenced when Maximus died of the earlier dagger wound inflicted by Commodus before the fight scene.

Most viewers forget or fail to recognise that it was the Praetorians that allowed this to happen.

Quote of the Day --

"Is Rome worth one good man's life? We believed it once. Make us believe it again. He was a soldier of Rome. Honor him." -- Lucilla, from the film Gladiator

Let Them Eat Cake

2008-04-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

It is not merely the price of rice and it is not nearly so simple a solution as to switch to cheaper rice. Around the world, from Burma, to Nepal and to Haiti, there is a sweeping anger at the ineptitude of the incumbent governments in guaranteeing this simple basic commodity. There is an implicit anger at the governments for failing this most basic convenant of governance, the provision of affordable rice. Nearer to Singapore, our brothers and sisters in Malaysia have exercised also their anger and the incumbents are noticably shaken.

It is not merely the price of rice nor nearly so pat a solution as switching to cheaper rice.

Cheaper rice cannot be the only solution when even cheaper rice have become more expensive. What about the next citizen who has always bought cheaper rice and realises that he cannot buy rice any more because there is no other cheaper rice. When he is at the end of the grain chain? When he is left no longer with any choice, no longer with any options, as perhaps we are all invariably headed? Maybe then, we will have to devise another means test to find which grade of rice we belong to. Rice just like healthcare. Mean tests. And all this while we lower the taxes for the corporate suits as they they milk the rising price of rice and our means to get the rice.

It is a global phenomenon, the Government says, with an unseen wry shrug, its not their fault. Forgetting that their repeated claims of captaincy, of the mandate to lead this nimble ship called Singapore, steering it always away from an imagined danger, is based on their ability protect Singaporeans from these global vissicitudes.

And when they fail, its not their fault. With a pained look, they simply say "switch to cheaper rice". And my aged mother dutifully obeys, taking a feeder bus and another bus to another town and another feeder bus to the nearest Sheng Siong, ten kilometres away. To find the cheaper rice. But public transport hikes will come again soon. Its an annual affair now, they have promised this. To raise bus fares gradually, yearly,to even out the pain of a sudden steep increase. And when you cannot afford the bus, switch to walking then. Its the cheapest, just like cheaper rice. Same logic. Simplistic logic.

What happened to the unbridled optimism and ebullience when we announced the GST hikes last year? When the newspapers were emblazoned with shiny happy headlines proclaiming with such truthful conviction, such persuasive factualisations that raising GST will help the poor, raising GST will help you, raising GST will keep prices down, raising GST will bring us to heaven? What happened to this optimism? Where is the promised outcome? How have we been helped?

Switch to cheaper rice, you say.

Perhaps it has reached a stage where the citizens have to imagine that we can no longer afford this so expensive Government, perhaps the citizens should consider switching to a cheaper Government? That is political naivete, the Government will say. You can switch to cheaper rice, but cheaper Government? Are you crazy? The government has to be paid, to retain the talents, the very same talents that make sweeping proclamations such as to raise GST to help the poor and advise us to switch to cheaper rice when we cannot afford rice.

Marie Antoinette, queen of France, was once attributed with this response when told that Parisians could no longer afford the rising price of bread, she said "Let them eat cake!" Regardless the veracity of this assertion, it resonates through history and time as an indictment of the spectacular schism between ruling and the ruled during the heady days of the French Revolution.

It is not nearly so simple a solution as to switch to cheaper rice nor so nearly a simplistic solution to a simple problem; it is what the solution signifies, what it represents in our political relationship with those who rule us. It is how they think and the convenience with which political logic and language is shifted with an almost flippant, arrogant impunity.

In China, an artisan carved 115 Chinese characters from a famous poem onto a single grain of rice. Perhaps this simple grain of rice will present us the hope, the opporutnity to carve out some fundamental differences in the pages of Singapore's political history.

Quote of the Day --

"Rice must be the best sleeping potion in the world, he sensed, certainly more effective than a woman's body. And it was right there beneath him." -- Su Tong, Rice

none people, no nation, not singapore

2007-08-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

The flags are fluttering again. Unfurling a fabric of society, ravelling a fabrication of unity. National Day it is, a day of the nation, of its citizens as one people, one nation, one Singapore. The citizens become a collectivized imagination, riding the fires of the independence struggle, striding through the splinters of a communalist, communist past. To emerge as one people, one nation, one Singapore.

Picture from Dansong’s intriguing Moments in Heartland series

One people, like these puppets, gracing the many celebratory carnivals across the weekend. Carnivalesque manifestations of the Chinese, the Malay, the Indian/Sikh. But not the Other. Where is the Other in the CMIO category found in all our little hi-tech pink identity cards binding us as one people? Carnivalesque mimics of one people, exaggerated cutesy China doll hairbuns, ambling down the roads, A delight to one and to all. Delight at their aura of un-reality. Laughter at their comic excess of racial features. Laughter at their distance from us, from us one people.

One people consisting of the family unit, the basic building blocks of our social fabrication. One husband, one wife, two children or three or four to grab that tax carrot. To build our fabrication of one nation, one people, one Singapore. The unit is the family. The family is the building block. Not you, not the individual. The individual is an aberration. A defective gene to ruin the fabrication of Singapore. To unravel the ravelled illusion. What more two individuals who do not make a family unit, a gay couple perchance? They do not, they cannot, they must not, they shall not, exist in the fabrication of our social fabric. Their existence rends the fabric. Breaks the fabrication. Despoils the beauty imagined in the heads of the despotic fabricateurs. Despoils the nation. These are the none people. They are not one people, one nation, one Singapore.

A carnival of puppets, to represent you, me, everybody. Grotesque harmony. Unreal reality jaunting down the streets of Punggol. While there is another series of photographs representing the Other, the gay, shunted like the insane fey. See no Evil and Evil does not exist. Invisibilise the none people, and they are none. Nothing. Empty. Replace the space. with unreal faces. of puppets. of you and me and everybody, walking fearlessly along the road of Punggol to inspire a fabrication of a social fabric. One people, one nation, one Singapore.

One people always given a Choice between a Devil or a deep Red Sea. Choose a partner of a different gender, the other choice is none. Choose to accept another round of public transport fare increase, the other choice is none. Choose to accept a GST hike, the other choice is none. Choose foreign talent to sustain our economy, the other choice is none. One people or none people? So many choices, choose your choice silent voice.

Ready to roll the die in 2009? Marina, Sentosa spoilt for choice. What fabric one people? What fabric but the survival fabric. To survive in a high-rolling world, we must fold the fabric, re-fabricate the fabric, flaggellate our little flag, just a little bit. Roll the die or we die? Despoilt of choice in our little social fabrication. Walk on by, little puppets, its our National Day, one people, one nation, one Singapore.

WHAT DO YOU WANT? perhaps just a little bit more freedom, a little bit more space. WORK FOR IT. UNTIL 65 NOW. PERHAPS MORE. DON"T GROW OLD. WORK WORK. WURK WURK.

The illusion of grammar in the Singapore wordscape drummed into us since young. Neither past perfect nor present tense. Neither present perfect nor past tense. That is too simple a rule for Singapore's grammar. It is Perfect Tense: the fundamentals of Singapore cannot be threatened. The media has a responsibility to nation-building. The conservative Singaporean is not ready for _____. If you want to talk about politics, join a political party. You cannot cross the OB markers. No need to strike when we have a Tripartite union. Offer solutions not criticism. Workfare not welfare. The welfare state threatens the fundamentals of Singapore. One people, one nation, one Singapore. The Perfect Tense consists of that golden rule ______. hush hush.

One people, one nation, one Singapore. Choose your category, Chinese, Malay, Indian or .... Others? What are the Others? It is a racial categorisation. You cannot choose Other, if you think differently. You cannot choose Other if you disagree with the policies of the State. You cannot choose Other if you are gay or lesbian. You cannot choose such Others, otherwise the social fabric rips. You are Chinese, Malay, Indian or another racial Other only. To be any other Other, any other unfabricated Singaporean is not possible. You do not exist. You disappear. You are nothing. Swept under the fabric if you are lucky, smothered to death by the social fabric if the despotic fabricateurs get their way. In their eyes, you are nothing, just vermin. One people, one nation, one Singapore.

One people, one nation, one Singapore, just like them.

Or maybe none people, no nation, not Singapore. Happy national day to you too.
--------------

Addendum -- A coincidence(?) over at Molly the Pureless. Contesting nations. Consternations.

Quote of the Day -

"This is a chronicle from the planet of Auschwitz ... time there was different from what it is here on earth. Every split second ran on a different cycle of time. And the inhabitants of the planet had no names. they had neither parents nor children. They did not dress as we dress here. They were not born there nor did anyone give birth. Even their breathing were regulated by the laws of another nature. They did not live nor did they die, according to the laws of this world ..." -- K-Zetnik, testimony during the Eichmann trial

Old Singapore

2007-07-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

"This is how one pictures the angel of history. Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in her wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them."

This is how an angel perceives the past, a single catastrophe piling a mountain of wreckage at her feet. But we are told that it is a logical chain of events. Linear time, cause and effect, leading us progressively to a better modernity. A storm is blowing in from Paradise, dragging the angel away from the wreckage of History, dragging the angel into a Utopian futurity. Hurled into a beautiful Paradise. Some time in the future.

Even an angel is helpless, what more mortals like us?

There is a certain beauty in Tan Pin Pin's new documentary, Invisible City. Underlying this beauty is a grief of absence. We are shown beautiful and rare colour footage of a forgotten era of Singapore. At the same time, this footage cannot be contextualised. There is an absence in the beautiful reels of another Singapore. The documentarian struggles to provide a narrative, some form of context, but he cannot. Because he cannot remember. The screen is blank as he tries his best to dredge his memory, desperately trying to fill that absence. But there is only incoherence. And that scene transcends into a presence of absence.

There is footage of archaeologists at work. Excavating bits and pieces of forgotten Singapore. There is a montage of "I was here" graffiti at one of the excavation sites. But again there is an underlying grief of absence. The same lack of context. The archaeologists are digging and dispassionately cataloguing the relics. Reading and recording each sliver of information in the relics. But again there is silence, absence. And you can feel this in the documentary.

There is another narrative by Han Sanyuan, a former Chinese school activist. His recollections of Singapore history has the greatest coherence. He provides the context and has the photographic evidence of an alternative perspective of Singapore's past. But when he presents this in a forum, only the older in the audience has that look of comprehension, that gleam of understanding. The younger look bemused. He laments eventually that no one was interested. That his narrative is at best quaint when set against the dominant Singapore Historical narrative. So even for one who has the context, who remembers best, eventually there is an absence. And this absence is in the present. Now.

Preceding the scene of Han at the forum is a silent slow footage of the modern Singapore skyline. Some may see progress. Others may sense absence.

There is a narrative of a former anti-Japanese guerilla recounting his story to a Japanese journalist. He sings an anti-Japanese war song, tells of the atrocities committed by the Japanese occupation army, of how he meets his wife. And eventually, the article that is published highlights only absence. His story is re-contextualised. That old cliché, to forgive and forget, takes on a new dimension, a new layer of meaning. Can we forgive without forgetting?

The most memorable scene is that with an old, half-blind and bed-ridden British photographer.

"My only regret is not leaving Singapore to go back England when I had the chance ... Singapore is not a place to grow old in ..."

It is a stunning moment in the documentary delivered in such an ordinary manner. Her work is evidence enough of her passion for Singapore; a series of rare photographs of Singapore architecture most of which are gone. And the Singaporean in me intuitively wants very much to apologise to her and to all those Others cast into the wreckage of Singapore's history. But how can we seek forgiveness when we are complicit in this forgetting? How can we seek forgiveness when we ourselves are victims of this relentless Storm dragging us into Paradise Singapore 2020? How can we seek forgiveness when we left at the first chance? To forgive is to remember.

The angel of History would like to stay, to awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise. Dragging her into the future. Turning her gaze away from the past.

The director has taken a camera and gazed into the wreckage of our past that Singapore has deemed unnecessary to remember. Resisting the storm of Paradise, of progress, of modernity. To awaken the dead. To make whole what has been smashed. To present absence for us to remember.

You step out of the Arts House after the movie and you desperately try to remember the Empress Place hawker center where your father used to bring you for a treat of delicious satay. Where you had your first date sipping teh tarik and gazing at the bright lights of Boat Quay. And there is a storm blowing in from the site for this year's National Day. Another History-orgy of the great strides made by Singapore from third to first. From past to present to future.

And you wonder whether you can grow old in this Singapore.

Quote of the Day -

"As Nietzsche observed long ago, the moderns suffer from the illness of historicism. They want to keep everything, date everything, because they think they have definitely broken from the past ... maniacal destruction is counterbalanced by an equally maniacal conservation." -- Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

On Banging Walls

2007-07-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

In her latest thought provoking entry, Molly has dis-assembled the irony of political discourse in Singapore. The context is this: There is a proposed constitutional amendment to give the Prime Minister power to nominate up to two members for appointment to the Legal Service Commission. NCMP Sylvia Lim raised a question to this amendment. Her point was simple: by enlarging the ambit of the PM's powers to make political appointments to an important institution within the judiciary, will public confidence of the judiciary's neutrality be affected?

The Law Minister issues a predictably scathing reply, accusing NCMP Sylvia Lim of resurrecting a conspiracy theory over the political integrity of the judiciary. A host of lesser MPs join the chorus of condemnation, but couched in perfectly rational and logical language. But it is the Law Minister's rebuttal that stands out. Insinuations abound in his reply on the supposed insinuations of the NCMP's question. Aspersions are cast on the supposed aspersions of the NCMP's question.

This is what happens when we adhere to the ruling regime's lexical rules and OB markers. This is what happens when we buy into this illusion that we can have perfectly rational and logical political discourse of difference in Singapore. This is what happens when we are ushered into the well-walled conduits laid down by the ruling regime governing political discourse. You will be shredded.

NCMP Sylvia Lim's question in Parliament was perfectly rational and logical. It is the epitome of how the ruling regime wants Opposition politicians and all contrarian public figures to engage in political discourse. If Catherine Lim had gone into politics as advised by former PM Goh after she transgressed the invisible OB markers, she would also have asked questions in the style and manner as NCMP Sylvia Lim. But would the criticism of her be any different? She would still be accused of crossing the OB markers. Exciting the masses. Inciting discontent.

It is apparently not enough adhering to this lexical monopoly of the ruling regime. And the cruel irony is that you are silenced by colorful, inflammatory, even dangerous words like "conspiracy theory". You are rebutted in a way you have been told is not allowed. You are rebutted in an inflammatory and highly politicised language.

If NCMP Sylvia Lim had replaced her questions with truly insinuatory vocabulary, she would have been accused of threatening the fundamentals of Singapore society. She would have undermined the sanctity of the judiciary. She would probably be sued for defamation. And the rebuttal would be in the rational and logical language.

And there is no recourse. You are silenced. silent. speechless. There is no way to speak politics in Singapore. Damned every linguistic turn you take. Who are the ones consistently engaged in adversarial politics then?

In the same Parliamentary sitting, Minister of State, Education cited the wrong figures on foreign students in local universities. The correct figure should be significantly higher than what was cited. But if you follow the news report on this mistake, its factual and rational tone pre-empts any damage by citing another figure of foreign student population in the prestigious MIT; another interviewee states that we should increase foreign student numbers. If someone stands up in Parliament to question this mis-citing of figures, the reply would be a rational answer. It was an honest mistake. If NCMP Sylvia Lim stands up to question the political convenience of the mis-cited figures, she will be accused of resurrecting another conspiracy theory and possibly defaming the good person of the Minister of State. If it was she who mis-cited figures, her integrity and her character and her motive would be called into question without mercy. Her credibility would be destroyed. Remember the story of the bak chor mee?

A citizen wants to save an angsana tree. She goes through the prescribed process, the meetings. But for public safety, the tree is cut down. She laments if only she could be given a chance to convince the motorists ... To speak to the right people ... It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. What about speed strips? It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. But they should not be speeding in the first place? It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. Cut the tree down.

There is another state of the blogosphere entry at Singapore Angle in video form. There is glowing mention of social-political blogging being rational, logical and non partisan. You can throw in "objective" as well. There is a different entry by Molly which would fail much of the above features of social political blogging. But the entry pummels into my consciousness. It is writing. It is writing in a multitude of disparate dimensions, differance. It is not a social-political blog entry. It is ringisei's utility in futility written.

The following lines are the cruel words from the seminal Pink Floyd album, The Wall :

All alone, or in two's,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

If by rational, it means measuring the length and breadth of each word to stab each word deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be rational. If by logical, it means weighing the heaviness of each paragraph such that it buries each paragraph deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be logical. If by objective, it means composing each nuance and tone of a blog entry such that each nuance and each tone sears itself deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be objective. If not, I will decline the mantle of a social political blogger.

The political discourse of the ruling regime is not one of reason or of logic. It is politics. It is clinical, it is ruthless, it is efficient. The ruling regime has the lexical monopoly. They won this monopoly not by banging their heads against the wall in the 50s and 60s. I will concede them this: they won this monopoly by banging their hearts against the wall.

So you can be rational. You can be logical. You can be objective. You can be non partisan. You can bang your heads against the wall. And when it’s over. You can take a step back, pat your back and tell your children : I was so into this anti-Government thing last summer.

Or you can just bang your heart against the wall.

And you may stagger, you may fall.

You must go on, I can't go on, I will go on.

Quote of the Day --

"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." -- Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

whats your story?

2007-07-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

There is something odd going on in the blogosphere.

The story is this.

Two weeks ago, someone leaked a story of a 2nd Lt, who happened to be the Prime Minister's son, in a discussion forum known as Hardwarezone.

The discussion thread was deleted.

No explanations were given then. No explanation exists now. No one knows why the discussion was deleted. No one knows what happened to the forummer who leaked the story.

~~Another discussion thread in SgForums, on the same topic, was deleted too. No one knows why. No explanations.~~ (Explained by CelluloidReality, a mundane replication post deletion thankfully)

An archaelogy of deletions. Very Singapore indeed.

Bury it. I won't let you bury it. I won't let you smother it ...

There is a very cute discussion thread in EDMW, a spin-off discussion forum from HWZ following the latter's acquisition by SPH. The title is "top secret news deleted" or something like that. Here, the forummers talk about the story in a way that is very funny.

Then, there is a blog entry by a SPH journalist on this story. The journalist cites the above story, but highlights the issue of discussion deletions. He suggest a little on the climate of fear and information suppression.

Fairly ironic.

Then, his blog entry gets cited in various forums and websites.

Everyone in Sg cyberspace is looking for this delicious e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.

Then, the e-mail appears, with names and details blanked out, in the comments of a Tomorrow.sg post on the blog entry by the SPH journalist.

Then, the very next day, Straits Times and CNA publish reports of the story of a 2nd Lt, who happened to be the Prime Minister's son, charged by Mindef for insubordination.

The news reports also highlight the reason why he is charged.

The reports also cite in factual terms what happened to those protaganists in that delicious e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.

The news reports give closure to the problem mentioned in the e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.

Problem solved, done and dusted. The errant are punished. Fair and square.

With the news reports, the blogosphere gets all buzzed. Even Rockson is awakened from his hiatus.

Some say the 2nd Lt is a hero. Fighting the system, fighting for his men.

Some say the 2nd Lt is a zero, a spoilt brat, bypassing command chains, disrespecting the officers' corps.

Others pat their own backs. Claiming the "power" of alternative media, of the Internet.

Maybe there is another story residing in this story of the 2nd Lt.

Maybe the story is about HWZ and what happened there.

Maybe the story is why the story was deleted first.

Quote of the Day -

"Learn their needs, and they'll dance to any fuckin tune you play ..."

-- DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little

A Silhouette of an Invisible City

2007-07-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

"Once I heard someone say that if you have to lose something, the best way is to keep it in your memory." -- Ouyang Feng, from Ashes of Time

The above line is from a Wong Kar Wai movie, Ashes of Time, which is not very well known even though it is probably his most complex film. Its a revisionist rendition of a classic martial arts novel by Jin Yong, The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The making of the film was so exhaustive that WKW took time off to make another film, ChungKing Express, which ironically became his most recognised work.

Ashes of Time revolves around the themes of memory and forgetting. The very fine thread that runs through this film is a bottle of forgetting wine (wang qing jiu) that the characters imbibe. And as one drinks, thinking that in forgetting her past, her pain is erased, her forgetting tragically moves the pain to another character who ends up drinking the same wine to forget his past, to erase his pain. And this tragic chain of forgetting result in the characters evolving into empty, elegaic husks, feeling loss, feeling lost. But not knowing what they have lost because they have forgotten. And this feeling of loss is no different from pain, perhaps even stronger.

There is a new film by Singaporean film-maker Tan Pin Pin. It is titled Invisible City. Unfortunately, I could not attend a preview screening of this documentary. Based on the website notes and the trailer, I have an inkling that it is an important film. Because it deals with this tussle between remembering and forgetting of a place or a space called Singapore. The Chinese title of the documentary translates as a record against forgetting. In her own words, the film is "less about Singapore and more about people who looked for Singapore, people who were propelled by curiosity to find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms".

The film trailer has the director with two interviewees who remember another Singapore, a different Singapore. They have evidence and relics from their city of the past, in the form of pictures, of film, of audio recordings. But they display some hesitation to share their memories of Singapore. They caution, they advise the director to "censor", to ask in a correct manner. They remember a different Singapore, from one where most of us are persuaded to remember.

What the director has done is to remember those who remembered a different Singapore. An invisible city. Perhaps the director in this remembering, will have etched a silhouette of a different city, possible memories which we have forgotten or for the younger, never there. At the same time, the film is edged by a shadow of hesitancy and a little underlying fear of remembering another Singapore, another city. That somehow this memory is not right. Because it does not fit the Singapore Story. That we cannot remember this.

But sometimes we do. We do remember a different city. And why not?

If so, this documentary is a brave piece of art. Because it shares memories which would otherwise have been silent. Stories which would have remained untold. Because this film is about people who "find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms".

In a previous post, I mentioned this moment of remembering Singapore, 70s Singapore, while in another city in the cusp of a gathering typhoon. Trying to reconstruct a memory I do not possess. Trying to feel for another Singapore, another remembrance that somehow, intuitively and disloyally, overtakes me in another city, another place, another space. Maybe I will be able to find that history, that city when I watch this film.

From her blog, I understand that Invisible City has no marketing budget. So I would appeal to my kind readers to help spread word on this film which premieres next week at the Arts House.

Because she has coaxed into existence, memories to be shared. Memories, which if kept, may otherwise have been lost.

Quote of the Day --

"I decided to seek out people who like me, choose Singapore as the topic of their work. I don’t mean where Singapore is the setting for their work, but where Singapore is the main subject. I was curious about whether I was the only person who found this country so interesting, enough to spend most of my professional life to date making films about its blind spots. I also wanted to thank and show my appreciation to those whose work on Singapore I admired and have benefited from. I sought out photographers, journalists, film directors, archaeologists who were observers and documenteurs of this city, past and present. The result of our interactions is Invisible City. It is a documentary less about Singapore and more about people who looked for Singapore, people who were propelled by curiosity to find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms. So Invisible City is really about the basic human need to search, to question, to preserve evidence and to share one’s discoveries with others. It is about the need to be remembered for what one has seen and experienced, about the fear of being forgotten and unaccounted for." -- Tan Pin Pin, notes on the making of Invisible City

Mur's Immanence

2007-06-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

There is a New Paper feature today on the 500 km Wall that separates Israel from the Palestine Territories. It reminded me of this excellent documentary, Wall (Mur), made by Simone Britton who has both Jewish-Arab heritage.

Mur is a fascinating film documenting the building of the Wall when the project began in 2002. Suddenly, for the sake of protection, for security, a physical landscape is artificially and dramatically changed. Culture and history is separated into two sides of the Wall. There is a scene where young Israeli children reveal that the Wall has been there forever in their memories. For this children, there was no time before the Wall. Their existence has been dominated with the permanence of this edifice, this structure. To them, the wall is natural. It has been there in their forevers.

There have been many other famous walls in History. Most notably, the Great Wall of China, to fend off the savage barbarians. Most recently, the Berlin Wall, an icon of the Cold War and with its utter destruction, a symbol of war's end. It is perhaps a very natural human instinct. Wall-building. To fend off the threats to our existence. In Australia, there was a 3000 km rabbit proof fence built to prevent rabbits from ravaging the Australian landscape.

We burrow ourselves into these walls and fences, enclosures to ensure our safety, maintain our stability.

There are many types of walls besides the physical. There are bureaucratic walls, like a letter telling you that you cannot be a relief teacher. That you cannot do this. That your reasoning is wrong. That the reality is such. That our survival depends on this or that, when both this and that are like walls, permanent, unmoving. The walls never explain why. It just is. A perpetual wall, always there since forever. Protecting something within, keeping threats without.

Then, there are also walls built into our minds, protecting our sanity, our rationality. Those outside our mind walls are the Other, something bad, something to be feared, to be kept out. These mind walls ensconce us snugly into the safe, the predictable, the logical and the reasonable. For some, when trying to push through these mind walls, they experience fear. For others it could be adrenalin, And yet for others it could be transcendence, Illumination. Insight. But there are also those who walk with these mind walls permanent, seeing only squalor, seeing only the lesser, seeing only the Other. There is only a sneer, some disdain while they revel in the cosy warmth of their lofty immanence.

Walls of a non-physical nature share one common disturbing trait if you decide to explore them. When you look up to ascertain the height of the Wall, you realise it looms infinite into the sky. When you look left and right, the Wall extends infinite into the horizon. No respite, no ends, no limits.

In Britton's cinematic rendition of the Wall, the structure becomes immanent. Casting its all-pervasiveness across the physical landscape, altering, othering and segmenting all along its 500 km path. The value of the film is its catalogue of a reality, of a Time before the wall. That there was a Time before this immanent structure was created. That there was a reality before this immanence of the Wall. The film catalogues a reality challenging the memories of the children who are growing up in Wall's shadow. Challenging these children to transcend their known memory, their known reality, their immanence. Challenging their notion of forever with an alternative before.

Before any physical wall can be dismantled, the mental wall has to crumble first. Film or art like Britton's documentary is for this purpose, resisting the Wall's immanence.

It is important to be able to transcend walls, be they physical or otherwise. The basis of most psychology of the Freudian ilk is about transcending the walls erected by the mind. Post trauma psychology is perhaps most akin to transcending the walls protectively put up by the mind in the face of a traumatic experience. The psychologist leads the victim to face her ghosts, overcome her fears to look beyond the wall. Finding redemption and perhaps love beyond the wall.

So too in a society where wall-building is ubiquitous, it may not be too far-fetched to imagine a citizenry who collectively dismantles first their mental walls to discover the possibility of a different forever.

Quote of the Day -

All alone, or in two's,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

Pink Floyd, Outside the Wall

Half Alfian, Half Singaporean

2007-06-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

If only Alfian can be halved. If only. Behind MOE's opaque letter explaining Alfian's termination as a relief teacher, this is the refrain. Half Alfian. If only Alfian can be halved.

His writings in prose, in verse are testament enough of his intellect. And this, without the need to list literary awards he has won. But perhaps more, his writings are testament of his heart, that thing which drives his brain to create something Singapore.

How do you want your child to grow up? Do you want a child with the ability to ask questions on the meaning of existence in Singapore society? To probe why there is injustice, why sometimes people are silent. Why we are told stories that we do not believe but have to memorise nonetheless. Do you want a child to think? Think with heart?

Sometimes we just want a smart kid. Writes well. Can think too. Pragmatic. A smart kid who knows the limits. The parameters. The markers. And to respect these lines governing him, governing how he thinks, how he acts, how he speaks, how he behaves. A smart kid.

Halved kid. Halved Singaporean.

Relieved of his duties. A relief teacher relieved. If Alfian was only half, that half which the government of Singapore so desperately wants, that half of creativity, of thinking, of courage. That half which asks so little of the state of Singapore. That does not call Singapore into question. That accepts the narrative as it is. A Merlion is a Merlion. It is a symbol of singapore and its associated virtues. Nothing else. Life is good, will be better.

If Alfian was only half. He would make the perfect teacher. To mould a perfect whole for the future generation of Singapore.

You are perfect only if you are half. In Singapore, there are no carpe diems.

There are many halving institutions in this state called Singapore. Institutions which exist on this halving paradigm. The mass media is another pertinent example. Ask Mr Brown. He would be perfect if he was halved. Witty, writes well, connects with his readers, keen nose for news. If MB was only half, it would be perfect. But like many others, who are nameless, who are silent, he too was relieved of his duties. Imperfect.

We see injustice and we give a half-hearted response. A wistful shake of the head. Friendly advice to toe the line. A glazed look. A hidden smirk. Marginal surprise. Life goes on. Halved Singaporeans. Perfect.

No students standing on chairs. Alfian my Alfian.

Just a cold letter. A relieving in the school holidays. A minor blip in the civil service machine, in the education system programmed to halve. Half your children as it halved us. Makes us smart. Makes us creative. Makes us think. Makes me me. Makes us us. Half Singapore.

Our capacity to accept incidents such as this is a mark of the success of our education system.

But there is always Alfian. Rebuking the cold refrain, if only he was half. If only. Rebuking a halved Singapore, half Singaporeans.

Hope for imperfection.

Quotes of the Day --

"Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom." Chapter 2, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

"The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that, or any other, consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant." Chapter 26, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

"A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness." Chapter 29 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

0

2007-05-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

"With regards to Xenoboy post, I am not too comfortable with his dualism on resistance; for me, I don't necessary see co-optation and institutionalization of movements and "resistance" as "sell-outs"; it could be a transformation of individuals' or group's tactics to effect positive policy outcomes. However, that depends on institutional access; you have entry points for women and environmental rights groups in Singapore, whether you have access points for issues of democratization is debatable. Whether one adopts a "co-opted" strategy versus a "civil disobedience" strategy is very much a empirical question; how would we know which one really is better? What are the goals of the movement?"

The post in question refers to this entry. Sigh.

If you have noticed, there is this NIN album, Year Zero, which topped Technorati's music links for some time. NIN is an industrial band, a musical genre which is not very accessible to many people. As a matter of fact, NIN's most accessible song, Hurt, is commonly mistaken as a cover of a Johnny Cash song. Much like Bizarre Love Triangle is commonly mistaken to be written originally by Frente and covered by New Order.

There is something very interesting about NIN's latest album. It is an actualisation of a viral marketing strategy that was probably first popularised in Gibson's novel, Pattern Recognition. Year Zero came into existence when a fan found a URL printed on his NIN concert t-shirt. He typed the URL and the entire Year Zero narrative began. The narrative is deliciously simple : we are finding relics, in the form of mysterious websites and songs embedded in thumbdrives, from future scatter. In short, we are finding fragments of the future telling a story of a resistance movement in Year Zero. As these fragments mysteriously appear, their existence are spread virally through the Web. Fans start to scour cyberspace, concert venues for these hidden fragments which provide clues to where the next song can be found. Then, download sites are set up and the songs are spread like illegal music downloads except that in this case, its perfectly legal. It is the basis of the marketing strategy, the basis of the narrative of a future resistance. As more songs and more sites are found, the story of Year Zero is gradually pieced together.

In his recent anniversary concert, Dick Lee, slipped in a segment subverting that iconic national song, Count on Me Singapore. Among the numerous positive reactions, there were an equal number expressing surprise that Dick Lee could be so "political". This is a strange reaction as it assumes that there is no precedent. But closer to reality is that such subversion of the national-istic narrative is happening daily. For a long time. At varying degrees. By many Singaporeans. The only difference now is that such acts of delicious subversion can be spread. No longer is Dick Lee's "political" moment confined to those laughing uproariously at his concert and subsequently forgotten, unrecorded. Today, now, that moment is part of the national song. Its meaning has shifted. And rightly so. We can now apprehend the "political" and perhaps achieve the understanding that the "political" is part and parcel of every single Singaporean. The walls are becoming increasingly porous. Stories and counter-narratives are slipping through the nets of the censors. If the broadcast remains opaque, then the casting needs to be viralised; more accurately, it is Deleuze and Gauttari's rhizomatic resistance.

But resistance is more than the medium of transmission.

In his recent admission on the inevitable decriminalising of homosexuality, LKY was probably unconscious of the irony in his statement on gays being creative and excellent in writing and the arts. They are creative and excellent mostly because they were forced into the margins of Singapore where their existence could only find legitimacy in imagined communities. imagine space, imagined speech, imagined rights. They excel because they resist a system which illegalised them. Which orphanised them from the State. Their very existence is a resistance in Singapore. They are Agamben's desubjectified people, existing in a space, in a state where they can be "killed" with impunity. But their defiance, their indig-nation, their tragedy, hidden, embedded, alluded, in song, in story, in art, is for the simple dignity of existence in Singapore. Dignity of existence. And now their resistance is reduced by LKY into a routine economic practicality justifying the State's embrace.

The resistance of the Sg gay community needs closer examination. It is not an active resistance, the likes of PLU, while playing an important role, is one fragment of an array of resistance forms. It is not an underground resistance unlike what the mainstream media is constantly trying to portray with "undercover" exposes of gay clubs, wild parties.

But it is a resistance which burrows deep into the interstices of defining the meaning of Singaporean-ness. It is a resistance which contests the meaning of existing as a Singaporean. At its core, it is resistance by the very act of existence. Gays exist in Singapore with any other Singaporeans but paradoxically, in the definition of Singapore's social meaning, they cannot exist.

Remove the label "gay" from the preceding analysis and consider resistance as an individual. An individual defined as a Singaporean. Imagine if we could receive scatter from a future Singapore, Year Zero, what is the story?

And we end again with the same quote :

"In this world are the strong and the weak. The strong never yield to torture, and they go to Paradise' but what about those like myself who are born weak, those who when tortured and ordered to trample on the sacred image ...", "There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?" -- Shusaku Endo, Silence

That Iniquitous Frog in the Well.

2007-05-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

"A proverb, one might say, is a ruin which stands on the site of an old story in which moral twines about a happening like an ivy around the wall." -- Illuminations, Walter Benjamin

We begin with that iniquitous proverb, of the frog in the well. The moral twines of this proverb is deceptively simple : The frog is an arrogant one. It looks up into the night sky and sees the moon shining only for it. It thinks that it owns that piece of night sky. The irony is that it does not know that it is living in a well. That its rule of the "universe" is only within the confines of the well. The proverb tells us about pride, arrogance and humility. Beyond that, it tells also of perspective. To look beyond our confines and understand the larger world, to expand our worldview. Never be the frog in the well, this proverb implies. The frog is iniquitous.

But a proverb, one might say, is a ruin standing on the site of an old story. And so it may be useful perhaps to rebuild the story behind this proverb of the frog in the well. It is a necessary re-building since this proverb and its attendant morals are always implied when the Government engages the citizens of Singapore in issues of controversy. It is the preferred rhetorical device of those in positions of authority.

The most intriguing puzzle to unlock this story is to figure out how the frog came to be existing in a well. As biologists and naturalists can tell you, frogs do not naturally appear within wells. So there is another hidden narrative in this proverb, a narrative which has been lost. Probably an important element in the old and complete tale of the frog in the well.

If frogs do not appear naturally in wells, then it can be surmised that the frog in this proverb must have been deliberately put into the well. It would also seem most likely that the frog was put in the well when it was but a tadpole, un-cognizant of the ways of the world. And so it grew up within the confines of the well. The well was its world, its only world.

But what evil-doer would do such a thing? To imprison another creature in an artificial world. Perhaps, the frog was deliberately put into this well precisely so that it would only see the world of the well. So that the evil-doer could manipulate the frog, test the frog, like a laboratory animal. A social experiment. At its extreme, the evil-doer, he who put the frog into the well, is playing God. By this social experiment, the God-figure maintains its supremacy over the frog. A supremacy situated precisely with the moral twines of the proverb. The God-figure always knows He has the real world to trump the frog; the arrogant frog that thinks it knows the world. Whatever perspectives the frog can come up with to challenge the omniscience of the God-figure, the latter has the ultimate answer to counter it; the God-figure has the real world and He knows it. And so, a cruel complexity to this proverb emerges as we tease a story into existence; the iniquity of the frog diminishes.

The well itself must be questioned. In this proverb, the well is a man-made structure. Those circular wells often associated with farms, perhaps with animals and other livestock. Presumably, the well is possessed by a farmer. So in this proverb, in which the frog was put into the well when it was but a tadpole, the well becomes the definition of a narrow world-view. But the well in which the frog lives its life is also the only possible world for the frog to learn about its existence; the well defines the limits of the frog’s knowledge. It cannot learn beyond the restrictions of the well. It cannot go beyond the walls, it cannot challenge the law of matter. Even if it wanted to. It is not given the choice. It was placed in the well. It did not ask to be born in the well.

The only possibility, perhaps the only consolation, left for the frog is that changing disc it sees high up in its world. The mouth of the well, in the eyes of the frog, is the only view that has change. That view is like its TV. That view is its only way to learn that there is possibility of change, because only that view, in the frog’s world of the well, can change. But it is a precarious view. What is to stop the God-figure from covering that "view" with words and pictures which change everyday? It is almost like the Socratic Cave analogy except that frog is trapped in the well. It is bound in that space. It can only learn in that space. It is a cruel story indeed that emerges.

And seen in this light, with the bare skeletal structure of a story, the moral twines of the proverb is complexified or more accurately, its morality becomes layered, No longer can we simply see this proverb as a humbling of the arrogant and iniquitous frog. To the One who delivers the revelation to the frog, to bring it down to its proper space, to damn its entire understanding of its existence, we ask : Why not lift the frog away from the well? Why not take it out from its forceful imprisonment? Why not set it free to learn from the real world? To the One who belittles the frog and reveals the true world, who has put things into the proper perspective, we ask : why not go down the well and experience what the frog can see and ponder how can the it ever see the “proper” perspectives?

As the frog is wrongly humbled, the One who reveals is in need of greater humbling. This is perhaps the moral complexity lost as the story became a proverb.

The sharp will see this as a critique of the Singapore political system. So let it be.

But we have to imagine something more cruel.

A frog in a huge test tube.

Hoping against hope to smash the glass into pieces.

But it cannot.

This is the condition why Singaporeans leave.

Quote of the Day --

"The widow anxiously studied that regular flight of meteors, and in it read the confused and slowly told fable of a dragon that had always watched over a vixen, in spite of the vixen's long ingratitude and crimes ... It was evening; the sky was filled with dragons -- this time, yellow ones. The widow murmured a single sentence, "the vixen seeks the dragon's wing," as she stepped aboard the ship." -- A Universal History of Iniquity, Jorge Luis Borges

A Song for Kitana, for Ben

2007-04-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

When I read Ben's brief farewell post last week, I wondered whether Kitana would go too. Its pretty sad to read her farewell post. There is always this question why young Singaporeans are so unhappy, ungrateful to their country; why they want to leave, why they quit. Its not that at all, most of time. It is disillusionment. Helplessness mostly. Its tiring to keep resisting a reality that makes little sense. And in the end, you let go, you cannot live with the make believe anymore. Its like breaking up with your country.

It doesn't matter what you say
i just can't stay here every yesterday
keep on acting out the same
the way we act out
every way to smile
forgetand make-believe we never needed
any more than this
any more than this

Sometimes, you try hard to fight. You fight because you "fucking make more sense", to borrow a phrase from another good blog run by young Singapreans, TSFT. Borrowing from the blog's tagline, you enter this contest between the relentless march of ignorance and the unworthy timid intelligence obstructing progress. But, for some, this contest overwhelms their sensibilities and leaves them hollowed out,

It doesn't matter what you do
i know i'll never really get inside of you
to make your eyes catch fire
the way they should
the way the blue could pull me in
if they only would
if they only would
at least i'd lose this sense of sensing something else
that hides away

We are surrounded by this place called Singapore. We are told many things, many stories. But the stories themselves are hollow most of the time. we are promised many promises but they remain deferred. They remain there in that fictitious ending of that story of promises, always out of reach. And slowly, as you grow up, as you mature, you realise that this place called Singapore becomes alien to you. A strange land out of your reach,

From me and you
there're worlds to part
with aching looks and breaking hearts
and all the prayers your hands can make
i just take as much as you can throw
and then throw it all away
i throw it all away
like throwing faces at the sky
like throwing arms round

yesterday

i stood and stared
wide-eyed in front of you
and the face i saw looked back
the way i wanted to
but i just can't hold my tears away
the way you do

It is not idealism. It is not wrong to think of that something in Singapore that is always hidden away and try to will it into existence. This need is part of politics, the political life of any society, whether totalitarian, authoritarian or democratic. But like all political struggles against the odious system, the odious machine, it grinds you down, tears your sensibilities to pieces, wears you out, leaves you dry and you give up. It is not wrong to give up, it is infinitely better than giving in and living in this lie called the Singapore political life,

Believe i never wanted this
i thought this time i'd keep all of my promises
i thought you were the one i always dreamed about
but i let the dream go
and the promises broke
and the make-believe ran out...

I have said it before. When you are left helpless and without choice, it is okay to run, it is better than running from the darkness in the night. Because it is better than giving in. When you know it is not right, when it is wrong. Because it is better than smiling and forgetting in this make-believe that you do not need any more than this, because you know there's nothing else you can really do.

It doesn't matter what you say
i just can't stay here every yesterday
like keep on acting out the same
the way we act out
every way to smile,

forget

and make-believe we never needed
any more than this
any more than this

and every time i try to pick it up
like falling sand
as fast as i pick it up
it runs away through my clutching hands
but there's nothing else i can really do
there's nothing else i can really do
there's nothing else i can really do
at all...

So a song for Kitana, for Ben. Thanks for the great writing. Hope you will resurrect soon. All the best as you both find your lives to live.

Respect.

Words adapted from The Cure, A Letter to Elise

On Abstraction

2007-04-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

In representative Governments, citizens elect their representatives to articulate their voices, their grievances, their accolades in the halls of government. These representatives are elected to represent the citizens. Because in the halls of government important decisions are made to distribute finite resources and also enact laws and regulations governing this distribution of resources. When such important decisions are made, the representatives of the citizens debate this distribution. Hoping to secure a favourable distribution for those they represent.

This is the basis of a debate. These representatives seek to influence the decisions for the citizens they represent. The different representatives are articulating for their citizens, conveying their voice into the halls of government. Even if the representatives of their citizens fail, the voice of his citizens are recorded in the annals of government. A record which states clearly that a dissenting voice was made in the event that some time in the future, the debated policy fails and accountability is sought. The representative has fought for his citizens even if he lost. Articulated their views, their voice. The representative of the citizens is precisely this, he represents his citizens. He is their conduit to channel their voice into the halls of government.

There is a breakdown when the representatives, start to represent the party they belong to. Rather than act as the conduit to represent the citizens, they end up representing the party. When this happens, there is little need for debate in the halls of Government. The representatives are not debating. They are representing their party. And the party is made to represent the concept, for example, the concept of Singapore. Than the chain of representation is lost when citizens becomes subsumed into the concept "Singapore" or the other favourite concept "little red dot".

Excerpts from the various CNA reports on the Parliamentary debates :

"Most of the over 20 MPs who spoke on the issue on Tuesday supported the salary rise." -- CNA report

Those who opposed the pay rise unequivocally were the two Opposition MPs, Low Thia Khiang and Chiam See Tong. The only MPs from the ruling party who gave qualified objection to the pay increase were Inderjit Singh and Lim Biow Chuan. Their comments are below :

"How do we answer the man-in-the-street when we're told that about one-quarter to one-third of the expected revenue increase this year from the GST is going to be for the proposed ministerial and civil service salary increases, about $240 million, I was told?" -- Ang Mo Kio MP Inderjit Singh

"I struggle to understand what a top Admin Officer aged 32 at grade SR9 has to worry about that will justify him receiving $363,000 a year … From many people's perspectives, they take no personal risk and are at best, paid employees." -- Marine Parade MP Lim Biow Chuan

Both Inderjit and Lim are raising in Parliament their citizens' unhappiness and concern over this pay increase. Both in their speeches, actually mentions the man-in-the-street and their perspectives. These two MPs are acting as a representative of their citizens, putting their questions, their Voice, into the halls of Government. They make qualified objections to the pay increase. They want to know how can they as representatives, go back and face their citizens. How do they answer to the people they represent? There is clear unhappiness from the people they represent.

We have other MPs from the ruling party, who are also representatives of the citizens, saying the following :

"MPs like Bishan-Toa Payoh's Mrs Josephine Teo, however, pointed out that ministers in other countries may make more money after their term in office ends, such as through public speaking." -- CNA report

As Molly points out, this argument is used by other MPs besides Josephine. And finally, we have the Minister in the thick of the action saying :

"This little red dot is very special because all of us have taken the trouble to take care of it very very well. All Singaporeans have worked hard to make Singapore special. The government is a special government - carefully constructed, bringing in the best people so that it can move Singapore forward, even with all the disadvantages that we have - the lack of resources, the position that we are in the region and in the world. And, Singapore is helped along by a first-class, excellent, efficient, uncorrupted public service that helps it to achieve Singaporeans' dreams." -- Minister Teo Chee Hean

The few excerpts demonstrate the process how "people" or the "man-in-the-street" often gets lost in Singapore governance. Perhaps "lost" is too strong a word, and to be more accurate, it is abstraction. How "people" becomes more and more abstracted in this process of Parliamentary debate. All the unhappiness and concerns of the "people" has become abstracted in that imaginary spiel by Minister Teo. Singapore, Singaporeans, little red dot, us, best people. In that little spiel, the people becomes an imagined concept.

Quote of the Day --

"Simple-minded ones like me can never realize eternal truths without constantly blundering and failing. Pray, forgive my errors and my rude speech. Instead of treating me as a mere monkey by birth, as I myself was content to think, you have elevated my status, and honoured me. After piercing my body with your arrow, and when I am about to die -- you are touching my understanding with a supreme illumination ..." -- The Ramayana as narrated by R.K. Narayan

On Fiction, History, Talent & Remembrance

2007-04-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

In History, tyranny and oppression exist side by side with honour and valour. It is a necessary juxtaposition. The former warns while the latter inspires. the juxtaposition is what makes History mostly fascinating. A reader has asked how many noble men can we unearth if we excavate the tomes of Chinese history in light of the imaginings of the previous entry. The answer is many. But so too, in excavating the past, Chinese or otherwise, History is replete with examples which can support the reasoning behind the impending salary increase for civil servants and the Ministers.

What matters is really who owns the power to determine narrative, who owns the power to tell the Story. Who dominates the Wordscape, setting the frames of reference for discourse, setting the conduits into which citizens' arguments are channeled. And more often than not, History is made to escort the helpless concentration camp refugees into the gas chambers without lifting a finger in protest. Because History is mute and History is just words waiting for deliverance.

But still, all is not lost. Culture and belief systems in human society are products as much from stories which escape the rigors of History. And sometimes, these stories live through Time achieving a pseudo historical significance much greater than those real Heroes and Villains from the recorded past. Epics like the Illiad and the Ramayana live in spite of Time, constantly finding rebirth and new representations in modernity as comics, as movies, as art, as dance, as plays, as computer and arcade games.

In this spirit, lets explore the Chinese epic novel telling the remarkable story of the Three Kingdoms. In many ways, this novel continues to live in culture and to inform modern values and belief systems. It is an apt story for Singapore because the novel, in one aspect, deals with the importance of political talent. Throughout the story, the rise and fall of kingdoms are determined by people of sublime talent. There is the coterie of great Generals recruited by Cao Cao, the ostensible villain in this epic. Generals, like the great Lu Bu or Zhang Liao, are not killed when defeated but co-opted into service in recognition of their talent. Then there are the talented strategists. Foremost being the famous Zhuge Liang. But peppered across the novel are other great talents like Pan Tong, who is the unsung hero of the Battle of Red Cliff. Lu Xun, the Wu strategist who perhaps starts the tragedy for the Shu kingdom of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. And Sima Yi, the Wei strategist who eventually united China under one kingdom.

Amidst the numerous colorful characters in the novel, Guan Yu is a mammoth. His prowess are such that when trapped and at the mercy of Cao Cao, the latter offers him amnesty. Guan Yu responds with three conditions : that he will yield only if his lord's two wives are guaranteed safety, that he swear fealty only to the Han Emperor not Cao Cao and that he will be discharged from service if he finds the whereabouts of his lord, Liu Bei. Despite these terms, Cao Cao gladly takes Guan Yu into service. What follows is a period where Cao Cao tries his best to fete Guan Yu with riches to win his loyalty. The latter does not budge.

Throughout this period when Guan Yu is in Cao Cao's service, he bows to Cao Cao only once, when the latter presented Guan Yu with the most prized steed in the Kingdom, Red Hare. Cao Cao asks "I have sent you beautiful women, gold, rolls of silk ... and never did you condescend to bow. Now for this horse, you keep bowing. Do you value a beast above humans?". In reply, Guan Yu says "I admire this horse for it travels a thousand li in one day ... it will allow me to reach my brother (Liu Bei) in a single day if his whereabouts are known." True enough, when Guan Yu finds out that Li Bei is alive, he seeks discharge from Cao Cao's service. Despite the latter's entreaties, promise of wealth, of power, implicit threats of harm, Guan Yu leaves, escorting Liu Bei's wives, with his honor intact.

Across the novel then, there is a fierce competition for political talent. The story of how Liu Bei making three trips and beseeching Zhuge Liang to be his adviser is one indication. The delight of men of power in the novel when generals or strategists defect or are removed is another.

For Liu Bei, the ostensible Hero of the novel, he is blessed with the best General and the best strategist : Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang. They stay loyal to him even when the cause is dying or to all effect, dead. For Zhuge Liang, he could have taken Liu Bei's throne upon his death but he does not do so. He stays loyal to the Shu-Han House and tries but fails to fulfill Liu Bei's dream of restoring the Han Dynasty.

The novel, Three Kingdoms, if interpreted by the rational, self-seeking individual, the cynic and the political realist will tell you: virtue and merit does not win the political struggle. But these same people forget that in the epic, none of the monarchs of the Three Kingdoms won. The epic ends with the family of Sima Yi, usurping the power of the Cao family, and finally re-uniting China. More importantly, these people will ignore the fact that what endures from Three Kingdoms is not Sima Yi, he is always forgotten. What endures is the character like Guan Yu. He is so venerated that he has become a Deity, a God who is prayed to still by the Police and the Chinese underworld, the triads. In the novel, all the characters including Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang and also Guan Yu have failings. But in folk understanding, they are remembered for the values they represent in totality. And these are the "talent" that are remembered across Time. The values they represent in pursuit of their political goals.

Three Kingdoms is a story that makes sense even if it is fictional. We are living in a political moment now that makes no sense even if it is reality.

Quote of the Day –

“Bold in arms by dint of godlike might
He knew his letters in a scholar’s right.
Like glare of day, his heart reflected true,
His Spring and Autumn honor touched the clouds –
A shining spirit to live through History,
Not just the crowning glory of a world in three.” – Ode to Guan Yu, anonymous Chinese poet, cited in Three Kingdoms, Luo Guan Zhong

Singapore Dreaming

2007-04-04T01:40:00.000-07:00

This blogger has often been associated as bleak, cynical and dark. Perhaps even somewhat fundamentalist. So today lets take a journey in political imagi-nation. Lets imagine political possibilities for Singapore. We can even say lets dream. In a city of sadness and unhappiness, over the inevitability of the Government pay rise, perhaps dreaming is the only recourse for possible happiness. A possible smile. Of course, we all know that only fools dream. But in a moment now in which there is only right and no wrong, surreal is real, illogical and contradictory is fundamental and logical, then maybe to be a dreaming fool is to be normal.

There is a groundswell of unhappiness over the inevitable pay increase. The media overdrive, the discomfort of the neutrals, the increasingly hapless justifications for its necessity, for its need by the politicians, all point to this unhappiness. At the same time, as how public policy is often decided in Singapore, when a problem is cited as threatening the fundamentals of Singapore, there is also a disillusionment that the pay increase will happen. That it is inevitable.

There is a political, or realist answer to why this is so. The ruling regime is at the zenith of its political power. If we were to dissect the physics of power in Singapore, the ruling regime presently, in the immediate post election year, has the maximum raw naked political power. And this allows them to push two major unpopular policies in quick succession.

But lets imagine. Lets see on what the ruling regime calculated its political risks.

First. There is a confidence in the ruling regime that people will forget. Come a time when its political power is on the waning cycle, the ruling regime will aid in this forgetting. They believe that the repercussions of their two unpouplar policies will not affect them negatively five years down. This is based on their belief, that like the past, Singaporeans will simply forget and accept the reality as time passes by.

Second. And more critically, the ruling regime believes that no one from within their core group will break ranks. The ruling regime takes this political risk. So long as they maintain a united front, the policies, however unpopular, will be implemented and forgotten. The policies are legitimate and justified. The policies maintain their sanctity only if those who ostensibly back these policies remain united.

It is from the second assumption where we embark on our journey of imagi-nation. Lets imagine, that there is one Minister, someone among that group who has been identified as a talent supreme, who does not believe in this pay increase policy. Lets imagine he is a noble person and that his choice of occupation is driven not by the salary but a desire to foster change from within.

In this imagi-nation, the current political moment represents an enormous political opportunity. Imagine that this "talent" resigns from office as a form of personal protest over the pay increase. Imagine the immediate political aura that will attach to this person. Imagine how much political power he can accrue by this act of noble rejection. He becomes an instant Singaporean. Someone who represents Singapore. Represents Singaporeans. Someone descended from the towers of ivory.

There will of course be accusations by his former colleagues. That he has embarked on populism. That his actions threaten the fundamentals of Singapore, and the usual routine of character assassination. But yet, as someone already identified as a talent supreme, the accusations have much less gravitas than the usual thrown at the Opposition politicians. So maybe, this one rebel politician maintains his integrity. Maintains his aura of political significance.

And then we imagine this Singaporean, who has in one simple act of protest, gained the symbolic authority of a million. Imagine then, this Singaporean, who will be a living symbol of remembrance, to ensure that forgetting does not come easy over this policy of the pay increase.

Imagine that he possibly allies with an existing Party or he forms his own Party. And then perhaps, just perhaps, this journey of imagi-nation ends with him mounting a political challenge that the ruling regime has never seen since the days of the founding fathers of Singapore. Since those days when the founding fathers fought their political battles on simple acts of protest as well. Since those days when the founding fathers fought not for money in their pockets but for dreams and ideals.

Imagine or dream. Our fool's dream.

Quote of the Day --

""It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak." -- Neil Gaiman, Sandman #19 "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

The Queer Sensibilities of Singapore's Wordscape

2007-03-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

The media is in overdrive. Spinning and spinning. Telling us the reasons why we have to pay 55% more to the Ministers and the top civil servants, of that stream known as the Administrative Service. No one expects an objection from the media. But not even a "concern" has been raised this time.

Instead, its a monopolistic narrative that calls upon the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape. The sense of crisis, of siege that will soon befall the Government if they are not paid more. That there will be a vacuum in Government. That the talent will leave or will not come. And without the talent, the Government suffers. And if the Government suffers, Singapore suffers. And if Singapore suffers, the Singaporeans suffer most of all.

This sense of impending doom, of competitiveness, that forces the Government to review salaries, forces them to accept the ignonimity of accepting 55% more money. It almost makes this salary review become noble. A form of noble-ness that is almost surreal. It is a review that becomes a ceremonial sacrifice by these talents to accept this necessary money. It is for the sake of Singapore that they make this sacrifice. Ultimately. It is for the good of Singapore. They take this 55% not because they need it, $290 is enough after all, but because the survival of Singapore needs them to accept this. So the narrative rolls across the Singapore Wordscape.

And the citizens look on, listening to and watching as this narrative embraces the Singapore Wordscape. Formulating their indignations, their counter-narratives, mostly in silence. Forming words, mostly in silence. Only in new media does dissonance surface. That this narrative, flattening the Singapore Wordscape with its moral loud-hailing, is perhaps only one side of the picture, one side of the fence, one level above in the hierarchy of political meanings in Singapore. But it is new media after all, where lies and truths are enmeshed in an adulterous embrace. Let this dissonance dissipate, as it always does, into the digital slipstream. This Cyberscape never ripples over-much into the Singapore Wordscape, never causes so much dissonance as to the tear the fabric of meanings in the Singapore Wordscape.

Many years ago, a counter-narrative was put forth by a writer of Singapore literature. A concern was raised. An affective divide was postulated. It happened in the old media. The traditional media. And Hell was unleashed. The OB dogs were born. These invisible OB hounds patrolling the Singapore Wordscape, sniffing for objections, sniffing for "concerns", sniffing for contrarianism. Since then, any counter-narrative cannot fail to escape the shadow of these hounds of Obaskerville, and it has come to be that the shadow of these mythical hounds overshadows subsequent attempts at counter-narrative. It is no longer worth the risk. And so a new sensibility is set in Singapore's Wordscape, and we forget how to articulate our "concerns". The illusion of chains weighs much heavier than the chains themselves.

When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked : crisis, siege and most of all, Emergency, there is very little space to argue. The space for the articulation of "concerns" is diminished into font one. In an emergency, when survival is at stake, something drastic needs to be undertaken. Something painful. Something sacrificial. In this case, the salaries of the top talents of Singapore, those who define Singapore, have to be "reviewed" upwards. It is an emergency. Just like the emergency predicating the raise of GST and the cut in corporate tax.

When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked, the invisible hounds are patrolling, sniffing and for that moment in Singapore Time, anomalies become normal. Right is right. Wrong is lost. Action does not lead to reaction. It leads to further affirmative action. Reality becomes skewed. Contradiction is logical and Time is suspended like a Trauerspiel. Only a futurity is in sight. A certain uncertainty of doom imminent if we do not accept the narrative, or buy into the constructed surrealism. And the citizens look on, mostly silent.

In an emergency, the Singapore Wordscape gives birth to contradictions and conundrums. They become exigent norms. And the citizens are supposed to understand that. They are supposed to be angry. But like the top talent, they sacrifice too. For the good of Singapore, they sacrifice their anger. A ceremonial sacrifice just like the top talent who sacrifice themselves to accept that 55%.

When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked, a comforting silence envelopes the land. Soothing the seething, smothering the smoldering. The hounds of Obaskerville perform their perpetual vigil on Singapore's Wordscape while their fork-tongued* masters devise the meanings of crisis, siege, emergency, sacrifice, review for the good of Singapore.

* A term taken from Phillip Yeo in Aaron's blog. If anything, at least Phillip Yeo, who this author has termed a nomos empsuchon, is direct, has candour and, in his own way, more engaging than the politicians on display in blogosphere. Perhaps his engagement in its current form, as opposed to his previous method, suggests a newer understanding that the word "defamation" has many meanings, many inflections unique to the Singapore Wordscape, so much so that a win, loses its semantic meaning and becomes a loss instead.

------

Quote of the Day --

"... as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority when he became convinced in the trail of yellow leaves of his autumn that he had never been master of all his power, that he was condemned not to know life except in reverse, condemned to decipher the seams and straighten the threads of the woof and the warp of the tapestry of illusions of reality without suspecting even too late that the only livable life was one of show ..." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch

Refrain

2007-03-23T03:23:00.000-07:00

There is often this refrain when Singapore is levelled with accusations over its poor record in personal liberties and various freedoms of expression. This refrain says that for stability and security, for the continued success and prosperity of the nation, our citizens give up certain rights. They give up these in exchange for security. For safety. For stability. Factors instrumental for Singapore's economic growth, social stability and continued wealth-making.

The nuance of giving up in this refrain is important. In the State narrative, there is an inflection of sacrifice, something noble, something very Spartan in this imagined giving up. It is giving up in return for a more lofty goal. A communitarian sacrifice. It is giving up something for the greater collective good. In this inflection, you give up your personal good, hapiness for a diluted good, diluted happiness which can be spread across the larger community. For the whole. For the best. Noble and pure indeed is this inflection, this nuance. But giving up has other nuances. Other inflections. Some people give up because they no longer have choice. Defeatist, defeated. They give up because there is no other way, no other recourse. They simply give up. In either nuance, when something is given up, can it ever be recovered?

But this is a digression, the point of this entry really is to question fundamentally what exactly it is Singaporeans have given up?

This voluntary giving up, this imagined consent in Singapore's imagined social contract. What exactly is given up? Is it a few scribbled words on a piece of paper popularly referred as a Consititution? Is it tacit assent to a few legal words scribbled onto paper known as legislation? Is it a physical space and what we can do in a physical space that is given up? Did we give up space? Or perhaps we give up some of our time, moments of our life, to be conscripted to the State's cause? Or did we give up some speech, words which cannot be spoken? Or did we give up some form of self-identity, something which defines yourself?

Do we even know what we gave up? When the refrain, of this noble giving up, appears in its various forms, disguises to legitimise policies of difference, regulations of restraint, laws of personal sacrifice. When we encounter this refrain in the name of national defence, future success, societal stability, what triggers in the citizens' minds?

Lets cast the suppositions wider. Perhaps, when you give up "certain rights", what actually happens is that a certain mode of thinking is erased. Imagine, that perhaps, what you really gave up is a certain way of thinking. You gave up thought. In your minds, this avenue of thought is closed off. You do not even think that it is something tangible that has been given up. Because you did not even experience what you supposedly gave up it in the first place.

This is pertinent indeed for Singaporeans who were born into a Singapore that has developed into a stable and secure system. The P65s? There is no basis for giving up when the "certain rights" are non existent in your mind in the first place. It is so much easier then, to give up something isn't it? You give up imagined, illusory, uncertain "certain rights".

You give up nothing actually. Because there is nothing in the first place. Just this message, these words, this refrain, reminding you of something you do not even know. Because the knowing requires thinking, requires experience and this is non existent. It is absent. A total absence across the spaces and times which constitute Singapore.

But yet, we are reminded often enough with the inflected refrain of giving up. Reminded that it is actually something tangible that is given up. Reminded of a presence. But in the citizens' minds, there is nothing. And the refrain passes us by. Like other contradictions which pass us by. And this giving up becomes a ceremonial giving up. And for the citizen, it is easy to give up these "certain rights". Because the erasure, the loss extends completely into your mode of thinking. You do not know what is there.

Quote of the Day --

"... for it was foreseen that the city of mirages would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

i hate i love tell me why

2007-02-26T00:27:00.000-08:00

Watched two movies recently. Both dealt with the issue of drugs. One Asian, the other Western. One dealt with crack, the other with heroin.

Protege is a fairly archetypal HK movie. It is a slick look at the entire economy of heroin trafficking from the poppy fields in Mae Sai to the streets of HK. Seen through the eyes of an undercover narc who is being groomed as the successor of the ailing drug boss. Moral complexity is thrown in as the narc gets involved with a single mother heroin junkie who lives next door. As typical of most such slick HK movies, it suffers from insufficient characterisation. While we dealt a look at the mechanics of the entire economy of drug trafficking, motivations remain occluded. The drug boss character suggests the usual understanding, if there is demand, he supplies. A detachment from the junkies. Highly unlike a typical HK movie however, there is a uncustomary lack of moral ambivalence in this film. Instead, the message is as clear as the silhouette of a Raintree standing proud on an empty field : Drugs are bad. They kill. And if you traffic drugs into Singapore, you are dead. Dead. Dead.

The other movie is "Half Nelson". It is not exactly an archetypal Hollywood movie. The lead actor, Ryan Gosling has made a name of himself starring in such indie flicks with fairly complex premises. His first success was "The Believer", which has him starring as a Jewish Neo-Nazi. If you thought Edward Norton rocked in American History X, than you should watch Gosling in Believer. In Half Nelson, Gosling reprises a role of conflicted identity. He is a fascinating History teacher in an inner city Brooklyn junior high school by day and a spiraling coke addict at night. His separate lifes meet when one of his students catch him high and sprawled with a coke pipe in the gym toilet after a tough basketball game.

The student, played by Shareeka Epps, is herself a "victim" of the hood. With a brother serving time for drug-related offenses, a single mother and her brother's chums who are "looking out" for her and tempting her into the world of crack dealing. A crack runner. Gosling battles a crumbling life, crumbling ideals, forgotten students. Seeking life through the crutch of cocaine. There is a bar scene when one of his former student's father walks up to him and thanks him for inspiring her daughter to History majors in Georgetown. He tries hard but cannot remember who the student is. It is a poignant and perhaps, most haunting scene. The film builds towards that pivotal climax when student deals crack to teacher in a motel. It is a scene worthy of any movie made in recent memory.

There is a quiet bleakness and subtlety to this film. It is compellingly genre-twisting; there is none of the stirring Dead Poet Society or Coach Carter motivation of the teacher-student movie dynamic. There is no big play on the white teacher and colored students inspiration narrative. It is very much a simple and truthful movie. Which despite its hard look at life, offers some hope. Not much. But still some. There is an exercise of choice in the end. And this exercise of choice gives that faint glint of hope.

Running in parallel in Half Nelson is a narrative of Gosling in class as he tries to teach dialectics, historical agency and change to his students. The principal wants him to follow the curriculum and teach the civil rights movement. He, on the other hand, is more interested in getting across Hegelian dialectics to the children. To get them to see the movement underlying the CRM. Why change happened. And more importantly, why change can happen and must happen.

There is none of the moral loud-hailing as in Protege. Morality in Half Nelson is nuanced, approximating a reality, a truth rarely seen in fiction. In one movie, you stand as a detached audience, learning a lesson. In the other, the distance between screen and you is as fine as a knife's edge.

Despite our weaknesses, despite our failings and our imperfections, there is a possibility of change. Why change happens, why it can happen and why sometimes it must happen. It begins with choice and the exercise of choice.

Quotes of the Day --

"I hate and I love and who can tell me why?" -- Catullus. Opening lines from The Believer

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." -- Mario Savio, UC Berkeley student and leader of Free Speech Movement. Excerpt shown in Half Nelson

Wurk Wurk

2007-02-23T05:47:00.000-08:00

During the days before WarCraft became MMORPG, you played God, built a fortress, built an economy, raised an army and basically then crush the opposition, the enemy. The most basic unit then was the peon, the peon who automatically collects gold from the mine, chops the trees for wood, construct the buildings and repair stuff. When you clicked on these peons, they had this range of very cute auto replies "yes master?", "wurk wurk".

Peons were very important even though they were infinitely less sexy than an ogre mage or a death knight which had replies like "who u wanna kill?". These wurk wurks collected the stuff that made it possible for God to achieve his final objective of territorial domination. If you played LAN multiplayer WarCraft then, one strategy to strangle your opponent was simply to ghost some mages near the enemy's gold-mine and cast some tornadoes or hexes around the area where the endless stream of peons enter and exit from. The peons died fairly quickly. They did not really have much life-points. So, kill the peons, gain a strategic advantage in resource building. No one can wurk wurk. And you win the game.

-----

In the time before the British came to SEA, wars between different kingdoms, for example the Thai and the Burmese, were interesting conflicts. Forget for a moment the romanticised image of thunderous charging elephant armies and wild carnage. Whenever an army succeeded in conquering a city, they sacked it. They took the treasures (an example is the famous Emerald Buddha residing now in Bangkok) and then they took the people. In those pre nation-state days, there was no point really in holding on to land. Boundaries were non existent. Forest and jungles lay between jewel cities. Land was abundant. But people were not. Each conflict, whatever the lofty justifications, was an exercise in mass kidnapping. Exodus wars.

----

Came into Changi last week amidst the glow of the Budget. It was quaint, flipping through an actual copy of the Straits Times. Speed reading through a book of Hallmark cards labeled Hope and Inspiring. Info-graphics, numbers, choice quotes in an almost surreal holographic presentation. The paper glowed. The poor are saved. No more leaping on the MRT tracks. The paper was heavy with happiness. Heavy with glow. Walking towards immigration, a huge embracing sign "workcome home" beckons. Workcome to Singapore.

Two percent GST increase. To save the poor. It almost makes sense now.

Two percent corporate tax cut. Its an actual tax cut in a climate of a major consumption tax increase and hand-outs to the deserving poor. Two percent. Corporate tax. You see rising transport costs, rising cost of living and there is a God-given two percent corporate tax cut. Happiness.

Corporate tax decrease Goods Services Tax increase the Deserving Poor are Saved.

Workcome to Singapore. wurk wurk.

----

In the taxi, the driver is not very happy. In Hokkien, hor li kway tui, gia doe deng kway. Gives you a drumstick but takes back a chicken. Followed by that same old same old chuckle. Anger? Resignation? Frustration? lies dormant. Or is this hollow chuckle just dormant lies? This same old chuckle, hapless happiness perhaps.

----

Recently received a snail mail that was not from a bank. It was an aerogramme. A piece of paper that you can write something on, fold it into an envelope and send to wherever in the world. When having pen-pals was in. The aerogramme contained CNY greetings and this line "... remember water pump we build down hill? It broken now. :-) but ok, we know to make pump ok next month. Now we pump water with leg haha ..." This aerogramme glowed too. Made it much lighter than a gramme.

----

When you play WoW or DOTA now, peons no longer feature. They did away with this unit. Re-ordered the game economy. Made it faster and more real. No more wurk wurk. In DOTA and WoW just jazz up your heroes. Hurl the sacrifice troops. Keep the heroes alive and all will be fine. You win.

----

It was a relatively quiet CNY this time round. Same questions about wurk wurk from the retired parents. The inevitable slant towards Singapore, but even then, the anger, once expressed with countless classical Chinese analogies, seemed to have become slightly more empty, more hollow. Anger remains but despair has perhaps set in. Helplessness probably.

----

Happy Belated New Year and hope all of you will fare well in the coming year.

Quote of the Day --

"The chief's possessions were few: an arrangement of artfully woven floor mats, a couple of spears, a tall blowgun leaning in the corner ... and, incredibly, hanging at eye level on the otherwise bare wall, a trio of framed pictures, the official government photograph of President Suharto, the standard lithograph of a thorn-crowned and teary Jesus, and, in the elevated place of honor in between, a black and white glossy of a smirking Jack Nicholson ... 'My God, this damn photo is actually signed ..." -- Stephen Wright, Going Native

Mambo Jambo & A'Tuin the Turtle

2007-02-05T04:29:00.000-08:00

This post set me thinking. This issue of anonymity or the use of pseudonyms in cyber-space is a recurring motif. Whenever I encounter this motif, the movie Dead Man instantly springs into my mind. I have mentioned this Jarmusch flick before, its an anti-genre Western movie. The protagonist is about a gunslinger (Johnny Depp) who goes by the name William Blake and his encounter with an Indian, named Nobody or No Name (Gary Farmer), who believes that the gunslinger is the White Man slayer, the poet William Blake. Its a movie about identity, the power of identity and the power of words. Associative power. In my mind, was the formative beginning of a perhaps, eloquent entry on anonymity.

But I read the post again and realized that its structure, its placement of argument, ideas would render anything I write inconsequential.

I read the post again the third time and realized that in the end, the larger point the author is making needs no response. It is a good and well-intentioned post.

And so, in line with the mood of Wednesday mambo jambo nights at Zouk, in line with the imagery of honour in feudal Japan, I re-publish this little koan from an earlier entry. Its by Yukio Mishima, a writer with a checkered life history, titled "Nansen Kills the Cat":

There was a cute kitten that became an object of contention between the Eastern and Western wings of the great temple. The chief priest, Nansen, catches hold of the kitten and asks the contenders, "Why should I not kill the kitten?" No one speaks. Nansen decapitates the kitten. When the chief disciple, Joshu returns from his errand and realises what has transpired. He removes his muddied shoes and places them on his head. Nansen laments that if Joshu had been present, the kitten's life would have been spared. Nansen's action is the Murdering Sword. Insensibility begets a practice where the violent cutting away removes all contradiction and discord between Self and Other. Joshu's action represents the Life-Giving Sword. He cuts himself with such a humiliating gesture that he demonstrates the way of Buddha.

In the Discworld of Terry Pratchett, people and cities exist on the huge shell of a Turtle, A’Tuin, while it slowly swims through space. In DiscWorld, logic and physics do not hold much sway. It is belief that matters. If something is believed strongly in DiscWorld, it is true.

Quote of the Day --

“A’Tuin is the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram …” – Terry Pratchett

Deep Throats

2007-02-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

Note : do read a fellow treacherous idiot, dearest Molly.

The news that PAP activists on anonymous surfing duties, to blend propaganda into discourse does not really surprise me. What did raise my eyebrows is the fact that the ST actually reported a leak. A leak of ruling party Internet discourse strategies from no less an anonymous source. Perhaps next week, we will have DeepThroat on BlogTV, suitably shadowed, pixellated and deep-throated.

Is this DeepThroat a hero then? Someone working behind the lines. Someone who feels that this is not right. Someone who thinks that this is something that the public should know and to react to. Someone who believes that the integrity of the PAP should guarantee that its tactics remain above the board. That it should fight its narrative wars above board, without recourse to subterfuge, without recourse to penetrating the underground. Against this resort to fighting terror with terror? The choice of words in the report is revealing. Its a counter-insurgency. This means that there is an insurgency in cyber-space. An insurgency? What is this insurgency that merits a counter insurgency?

This is perhaps the most indicative implication of the report. There is an insurgency in Singapore cyberspace. An insurgency no less. An insurgency of words? Of literature? An insurgency of Art? Personally, its all the preceding and more. Much more. Much more to the extent that the PAP has reneged on its long-held belief that the Net is just a space to vent. They are seeing the existence of an insurgency of action. An insurgency of sharing. An insurgency that causes hearts and minds to waver. An insurgency that represents the embryonic ferment of a consciousness of what Singapore can be, what is its meaning apart from the state-sanctioned narratives. And its source is the Internet and its structure.

That this counter-insurgency action is the direct result of GE 2006 means only one thing. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, the influence of the Net on elections is significant. It is significant that in GE 2006, there was so much action, so much belief, so much passion as Singaporeans basically ignored the threat of regulations. This is what numbers can do. It renders regulations useless. Numbers overwhelm the State instruments of power. Numbers cause the enforcers themselves to waver in their self-belief. Its the same numbers arising from the NKF scandal.

And the objective of the counter-insurgency unit is to stop this coalescing of numbers. Its to plant seeds of doubt. Its to divide. Not overtly. Not overt propaganda at all. It will be a clever manipulation of words. Manipulation of reason. It will be the gentle and subtle prising apart of collective action. To keep Singaporeans separate. Alienated from one another. So that misery is a personal affair. Compartmentalised, misery becomes, in the psyche of the Singaporean, a personal failure. Compartmentalised, misery makes the Singaporean blame only himself. He is just not good enough to compete. Its his own fault that he is in such dire straits. If misery is allowed to become a collective, Singaporeans will realise that the problem is not them but the system. That there is a structural reason for their misery. If misery becomes a collective, insurgencies are born.

This is the objective of the counter-insurgents then. It is not to sell the Government message. That is the superficial level. It is to keep everyone separated. It is to introduce suspicion and mistrust into discourse. It is to divide ultimately.

It is inevitable that this counter-insurgency unit will happen. That it took so long is the surprise. That it is leaked to the ST and reported is another surprise. The motives of DeepThroat can only remain in the realm of speculation. Is he a hero? Or is this a deliberate leak. A deliberate leak to tell those in the sidelines to remain in the sidelines. A signal that there are anonymous agents around. Ready to report on you. A signal that They are in cyberspace too. Breeding mistrust and fear. Selling the party line? That is the superficial line. If you have a counter-insurgency unit, its not to do sales. Its much more than that.

There is one fatal weakness in this strategy. Its that they fail to see that the Net, or cyber-space is only the medium. The insurgency is happening because it is reflective of reality. Of the sentiments of the many. And they are using the Net only as a medium to mediate their feelings. No matter how sophisticated the counter-insurgency unit, this will be its singular failing.

The memory of numbers, of collective action will not fade so easily. Because it was through this medium that a sense of empowerment was born. A belief that there is a possibility of action. An act of uploading a rally video as a symbol of collective resistance. A belief that other Singaporeans will do it too. This memory will not fade. These feelings will remain.

when the time comes, this collective action will sweep the counter-insurgents aside. As it has already been done before in Singapore.

Quote of the Day --

"Wherever there is discontented, hungry or ill-treated peasants or craftsman, there is a potential heretic. That is why I shall not cease to collect information and to follow as closely as possible the fates of these unbelievers, to supply Your Lordship with new material to evaluate. I have nothing further to say except that I kiss Your Lordship's hands, imploring one to whom I owe such unbounded respect, to let me continue to lend these poor eyes to the cause of God. Your Lordship's loyal servant, Q" -- Luther Blissett, Q

Proposed Free Speech Curbs Helps Speechless & Grows Economy

2007-02-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

There are two things happening today. First, there will be a seminar on free speech at NUS. One of my favourite bloggers, Mr Wang, will be at the seminar. Second, it looks like the fall-out from the racist podcast will get wider. There is an inevitability that free speech will come under scrutiny again, specifically free speech in the Internet, in the coming weeks. And most, if not all, attention will gravitate toward the more delicious and controversial podcast. It is probable that the podcast, as an event, will overshadow the seminar, and more importantly, perceptions and important Government policies, will be shaped more by the podcast than the seminar. At a cost to free speech.

When the NKF scandal broke into the public domain, by dint of the lawsuit between Durai and SPH, there was a massive outcry. And most people forgot, or the media did not really highlight the truth that talk of NKF excesses were already circulating widely in the Internet a year before. A year before the scandal broke, people were talking freely about the abuses of Durai and his NKF. It was this stirring in cyberspace which got the reporters sniffing. From that came the ST article that incensed Durai. While the SPH lawsuit was pending, Durai took to court two Singaporeans who made claims of NKF excess in the web. Durai won both cases. In fact, both cases were not contested. Both Singaporeans threw in the towel. They paid the price for their free speech. When Durai faced SPH next, "Free Speech" won. "Free Speech" of the ST. "Free Speech" which was no different from the free speech of the two Singaporeans. "Free Speech" won because it had money, it had power to contest the case in the courts. To fight the defamation charge against "Free Speech".

The point is simple. The Government is correct. There is indeed free speech in Singapore. But free speech around the world and particularly in Singapore, is essentially an expensive commodity. This is a point articulated most eloquently by Chomsky. In Singapore, there is free speech, but it is relatively more expensive than in the US, for example. Free speech is a commodity which is so expensive that only some can afford this in Singapore. Most Singaporeans cannot. Free speech in Singapore is most expensive when it is co-located in space which has high visibility. Parliament space. Rally space. Newspaper space. Broadcast media space. In these spaces, free speech in Singapore has an astronomical price. The Mr Brown saga attests to this.

So where is free speech cheap in Singapore? It is cheap when there are less than three humans within earshot of you. It is very cheap in your bedroom. It is cheap in cocktail party sniggers. It is cheap in coffeeshops. In these spaces, free speech is relatively cheap. As a matter of fact, it could be really free. So long as you whisper. Keep your volume low. Its very cheap free speech.

For a very brief moment in time, free speech was cheap in Singapore cyberspace, ridiculously cheap as compared to the other spaces in Singapore where free speech is located. The regime perception then, most manifested by MM Lee when he once dismissed a NUS undergrad to "go set up a website", was that this was junk space. Useless space. They could not see that this cyber-space has potentially the same impact as the other astronomically expensive spaces in Singapore with regard to free speech.

It was a brief moment. The case of the two Singaporeans against NKF was probably the beginning of rising costs of free speech in this cyber-space. The beginning of a legal-juridical awareness of this space that was anomalous to all the other spaces where free speech was expensive. A space that made a mockery of those expensive spaces. Defamation makes its appearance, but this case is a poor example for the law-makers, especially in light of Durai's subsequent capitulation. Then, the AcidFlask case happened and defamation reared its head again, this time with greater prominence and confidence. A hike in the price of free speech.

Soon after, the racist blogs case, the Holocaust blog case happen in quick succession. And we are introduced to Sedition. Defamation's ugly little twin. The cost of free speech in cyber-space rises another notch.

As GE 2006 neared, regulations were publicised expressly to make free speech expensive. But the regulations flopped. Too many "websites" and not enough authority to stem the tide. The regulations were like ticketing-gates except that the gates were ignored. People just walked around, above, under the gates. The numbers made it impossible to manage.

For a while, after this regulatory fiasco, the price of free speech in cyber-space stabilised. There was and is still now a flourishing of free speech in cyber-space. The number of sites, blogs talking freely about Government, about policies (as evinced in the ongoing death penalty discourse) has increased dramatically since GE 2006. Its still early days. But its important days. To foster the art of discourse, the art of thinking, the art of speaking. The age of wonder. To experience relatively cheap free speech in Singapore. And from such experience, build a generation confident of a stepping over of spaces. From cyber to physical. Into a space like a seminar. Like this seminar on free speech in NUS. And this stepping over, can only occur when there is a cyber-space where free speech is still relatively cheap.

For the next week or so, listen carefully to the narratives that will surface when the story of this racist podcast is spun. Overcome the fear that these narratives will seek to invoke. Stay firm against the moral equivalence of these narratives. See through the narratives and understand that they seek to negotiate the price of free speech upwards another notch in this cyber-space. Less speech. Speech Less.

Remember this narrative?

Proposed GST rise helps lower-income group and grows economy

Don't let the racist podcast overshadow the free speech seminar at NUS. Its about the potentialities for a different Singapore, limited as they are already.

Quotes of the Day --

"Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe."

"There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing. So when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as storyteller who wants to share her way of seeing. Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories, its about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power."

-- Arundhati Roy, The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Anybody Wanna Drink Before the War?

2007-02-01T00:35:00.000-08:00

It is war. A war against drugs. In war, everthing goes baby. It is us against the monsters. This de-humanised enemy. It is war, in war we kill. In war, we hurt. In war, we destroy. It is war baby. So that we secure a future. It is war, so that we can be safe soon. It is war baby, so that our children will be saved, can be safe. It is war baby, we have to kill them. Its us or them. Us or them. It is war. And pray to God that only us will remain. Can remain. Remain standing. Justice. Infinite justice. Infinite war.

A recent book by Giogio Agamben "The State of Exception" explains this age of war. The book is the second segment of a tetralogy of the world we see today. This age of war, ofsiege. This world of war. infinite wars. It explains the theory and juriprudence of states of exception. It explains how law and war rhymes. It explains how moderns can wage wars of right, wars of righteousness. It is a lineage of exception. There is no war that is unjust. If law fails, there is always God. There are always exceptions.

War is ugly. But war is necessary. Its us dying or them dying baby. Think of the future. Our children. Our lives. Think of the future when there will be no wars. Imagine that. That utopia. When only we are left. Think of that baby. Think of that as we drink before the war. Think of that as we kill with heavy hearts. It is war baby. Those we kill are not humans. Collaterals.

It is war baby. Those monsters should know. Should know that it is war. Should know that we will kill them. Should know not to come into our kill zone. Should know about us. Should know. Should know. They should fucking know that this is a war. And in war, there is an exception. An exception that suspends these bastards as life. As human. An exception that strips them of humanity. An exception that justifies killing these vermin.

Ask the ghosts of Auschwitz. Ask the ghosts in the killing fields. Ask the ghosts in Rwanda. They should know. Should know that its war baby. Its always war. Us or them. Us or them. You want a drink? A drink before the war?

Go to bed baby. Take the children with you. Tell them its war baby. Its war for you, its war for them. For all of us. Tell them we are killing vermin. Make them understand. Its war baby. Go to sleep baby. Its war. Its right. Its just. Its us. Never them.

I'll come along soon baby. I'll come to bed soon. I'll come home soon. The war will end soon baby. It will end when all of the vermin are dead. Soon baby soon. Dead. Then it'll end baby. When They are all dead. I'll be home soon baby. Just need a drink. A little drink. Its war baby. Its war.

Quote of the Day --

"And you live in a shell

You create your own hell

You live in the past

And talk about war" -- Sinead O'Connor, Drink Before the War

Singapore Patriot

2007-01-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

The patriot. Whenever I encounter this word, images of the first Gulf War appear in my mind. That missile tearing across the sky, to kill the incoming missile. The great Patriot missile. Self sacrificing missile. This was the first war over Kuwait. The world's first glimpse of Saddam. The beginning of that blood feud between Bush and Hussein. Ended now with Iraq, the son's requeim for his father.

It is patriot that leads me to this entry. This word and how it sits uncomfortably next to Singapore. The Singapore Patriot. Hardly ever mentioned, hardly uttered in a sequence as this. Patriotic we must be, always that little twinge, on that day in August, when young middle and old gather to witness the paean of Singapore-ness in front of the television. But patriot? Singapore patriot? It remains uncomfortable, the words have a little resistance, a little distance between them. Two, perhaps three, more tabs of the space bar?

Singapore apathy, Singapore cynical. The distance is lessened. It trills more fluently. Rolls out more smoothly. But patriot? It is patriot, we explore. Specifically Singapore Patriot. Dotted here and there in this blog are valuable comments of those who have passed by. There is one particular type of comment that never fails to surface. It is those comments which remind me again and again to be thankful that I am not in Indonesia, Malaysia, Africa, North Korea etc. Reminds me that I am in Singapore. This place of plenty.

Are these not patriots? Patriotic? These patriots who see Singapore goodness only as a function of poverty of the Other. This Singapore Patriot, in an age where we have the ability of a global perception, sees only the evil Other and from this, draws sustenance for his survival. It is like Maliki who sees three cases and sees only evil and greed, a choosing to be homeless; is he a Singapore Patriot? Protecting Singapore from these hordes of the false Poor. It is like Lady Justice in Singapore who sees 15 grams as the defense against the menace of drugs and 15 grams as the decisive weight to hang; even as you read this in the morning, another has hanged, another soul sacrificed in our war against the scourge of drugs, another soul deterrent.

Singapore patriot in this reading, exists only as a reflection against evil, against the bad, against the Other. A relationship derived on misery. Singapore Patriot, willed into existence with a mentality of siege, of exclusivity and the threat of the Other. But surely no one would wear ths mantle, the Singapore Patriot, thus defined. Hence, this distance, this discomfort, this blush, when we locate the two words side by side.

The definition of the Singapore Patriot is the preserve of those ism-writers, those who craft the narratives of patriot-ism, those who lyricise the false songs of patriot-ism. They who tell a patriotic story of Col Adnan, of Lim Bo Seng. They who lace the papers with glowing praise of contemporary Singapore, the Singapore system. They who entwine Singapore with the ruling political party. They who humanise the Singapore Patriot. Except that to the horror of some, the humanised Patriot is almost always Chinese, homophobic, xenophobic, stoic and male.

There then arise contestations to define the Singapore Patriot. To re-humanise this creature. This two words that allow them to sit confortably. In the cultural landscape, a growing corpus of Singaporean poetry and literature questioning really, how to love Singapore. How do you love this country in spite of the cacophony of State-driven isms, narratives? They look not at the Other outside of Singapore. But they look into the Other within Singapore. within singapore itself. They bore into this place, this time called Singapore. They find poverty, they find tension, they find unhappiness existing behind the story-boards of the Great Singapore Story.

And only then can Singapore Patriot emerge.

Quote of the Day --

"Don't be cold Englishman
How come you've never said you love me
In all the time you've known me
How come you never say you're sorry
And I do" -- Sinead O'Connor, This is a Rebel Song

Another Brave New World Post

2007-01-15T09:20:00.000-08:00

“The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” – Aldous Huxley

The above quote is taken from the 1946 foreword of Huxley’s book, Brave New World. The foreword itself is an excellent piece of writing with several exceptional insights. This line on propaganda and its effectiveness by its restraint was that which stuck.

Imagine just what the line means. Propaganda is at its most effective and sublime when it is silent about truth. With lies, an elaborate and eloquent machinery has to be set up to propagate the lies, to cover-up, to make them seem real. This is both costly and risky for political powers. Lies could probably work in a world where every one of its citizens is separated from one another; it could probably work in an Orwellian 1984 world of constant surveill. But in modern nations, however cut off, channels of information flow, communications make it hard, virtually impossible to pull off large scale national lies. Propaganda. The swath of violence in pre-independence Timor, in May riots Jakarta, attest to this. No matter how hard Government tried to lie, tried to portray untruths, the reality was quickly presented. Forcing Governmental capitulation.

That’s why, Huxley, writing in 1946 unravels the darkest heart of propaganda. Its not the lies really. It’s the silence about truth. This silence about truth is the most elegant form of propaganda. Imagine, you as a citizen, presented with 99 truths each day but only one truth is not mentioned. It is mute, silent, silenced. The citizen goes on with 99 truths. The citizen has no need whatsoever to verify the silenced truth. Because the citizen does not even know it exists. If it does not exist, how can the citizen find it? How can he prove anything? How can he fight?

For the truth to stay silent. To be silenced. It is not only about controlling all the instruments of media, all the channels of communications and enacting a state of perpetual surveill. As mentioned, propaganda itself can be efficient and un-obstrusive. For truth to stay silent, propaganda has to attain its ultimate goal. To borrow Huxley’s words “the positive sides of propaganda must be made as effective as the negative.” In short, propaganda must make people happy. It must make people “love their servitude”.

To love servitude. How to make people love servitude? Its not about chains and whips. Its about joy in the state of servitude. Its about being content in servitude. Its about a sense of security, a sense of dependence on servitude. This can really only be established with a fundamental revolution in the mind and body of the ruled. This is propaganda in the modern sense. Its not about Goebbels-ic propaganda with all its pomp and paegeantry. Its about this nursing of your soul as a baby, and the slow inscription of invisible tattoos into your body, your psyche as you become adult. Inscription is an important word. To inscribe. Scribe. Words. Thought. Action. Inscription. A script. A story. A narrative. The inscription of the body and soul. Like a tattoo. Like a brand.

Propaganda. Such a simple word when taught in schools. But its hardly that. Its about staying silent about truth. Its about nurturing a love of servitude. Remember that.

Blogos seems fairly prominent recently. Non appearances by political bloggers in BlogTv. A call to unite the blogos and mainstream media by Cherian, to mend the schizophrenia. Another commentary on the divide between mainstream media and blogos by Littlespeck. These are all fairly true. Truths actually. A multiplicity of truths. No one is right nor any really wrong. All this attention around the truth of the blog and its existence.

But the blog is only a medium. The medium delivers a message. The message is more important than the medium. Especially in Singapore. As it enters the Brave New World.

Quotes of the Day –

“The world is stable now. People are happy. They get what they want and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill … they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave … Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability … Happiness is never grand” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Universal happiness keeps the world turning; truth and beauty can’t” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Weaving a World

2007-01-11T02:42:00.000-08:00

The known world for me when I was young was a fairly good world. There was a lot of peace. There were some hard times. But I never felt unsafe. I felt secure. I had an education. Violence was an imagination. The known world as I read the Straits Times was a world of terror, a world of war. And I was ensconced in this nest of safety. With a roof over me. That was the known world. When I took my first overseas trip, with my school-mates for community work, I was given to know how lucky I was. That I was in Singapore. Look at all these poor peoples. Their hopelessness. This was the known world. The world I once knew.

There is a book by Edward P. Jones. It is titled "The Known World". In one of the blurbs, Jones is described to have "woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities." In a very sparse, quiet narrative style, Jones delivers a crushing story. One of the slaves, Alice, feigns madness to survive. Feigns madness to freedom. The sheriff of the county, John Skiffington, almost a hero in the book, disintegrates in a culture, in a society, in a system he is born into. The book is about your body. Your body as a property. When your body is deemed a property, where does your mind go? where does your soul go. Where can they go but into madness? The book is about those who own property and how they reconcile their relations with property which is human. Which is alive. Where can their minds go? Where do they seek righteousness? Where do they gainsay their justification to property? The known world indeed.

For about 5 weeks, I was in a country spelt with ten letters with only one vowel. Internet access was non-existent, but I wrote a fair bit. Prose which will probably fail to cross the bridge to this blog. In this country, as I did my work amongst people devastated by power, by Nature, I saw their happiness still. Their hopes still. Their aspirations still. Its hard and not all of them will make it. But some will. And it struck me that I had long forgotten about being lucky. About being Singaporean in this Othering sense. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten my known world. That world of safety. Of security. Of blessed good living. The world I once knew. And I feel no loss.

To Gayle, if I have to sit in a TV panel in front of a Minister, I would have to feign madness. I would have to feign humour when I have anger. I would have to disappoint TSFT. The people who govern Singapore are highly intelligent, achievers in all senses of the word. I believe they see and they know what ails Singapore; but in their weightage of the known world, it is still a good world. That they speak and behave in certain ways is because they have this known world they wish to preserve. A known world that has been fully reconciled.

And this known world will not change because of blogs. We are but footnotes at the moment, which some read but not all. Footnotes to the history of Singapore, annotations to Straits Times' reports, endnotes in a grand meta-narrative. And this is already progress. Its weaving.

Quote of the Day --

"Moses was the first slave Henry Townsend had bought, $325 and a bill of sale from William Robbins, a white man. It took Moses more than two weeks to come to understand that someone wasn't fiddling with him and that, indeed, a black man, two shades darker than himself, owned him and any shadow he made." -- Edward Jones, The Known World

Freedom Deserved?

2006-12-07T00:36:00.000-08:00

The warden looks at the prisoner and unlocks his chains. The prisoner remains motionless. He makes no attempt to remove his chains.

"Your chains are unlocked". He says.

"I know". he says.

"You can move freely without the chains." He says.

"I am afraid of myself. My capacity for evil. My capacity for wrong-doing. The chains have to remain on me. It is self regulation." he says.

"No. Self regulation is for you to move freely with invisible chains around you. You have to always imagine these chains. They need not be there. Your imagination that they are there is enough. That acts as self regulation. Thats why I unlock the chains. You do not value your freedom? You do not want to be able to determine your movement? Your right to move?" He says.

"I have forgotten what is freedom. I do not know what it means anymore. What I know is that I am irresponsible. I am a wrong-doer. And thats why the chains are clapped on me. It is for my own good. What is freedom if I remain evil? Removing these chains will not absolve the evil in me. The presence of the chains reminds me that I am not perfect, I am not good yet. In your eyes. That is the point. Even if the chains are imagined, it is imagined on the presumption that I am still not good. Evil. Irresponsible." he says.

"Without the physical presence of the chains, it represents progress in you. Self enlightenment. It represents that you are on the path of good. It demonstrates that you can self-regulate. It demonstrates restraint, your capacity to battle against the evil tendencies in your heart. It is an improvement in you." He says.

"By transferring the chains into my mind. By imagining the chains on myself voluntarily, is it not a more insidious imprisonment? Is it not worse? With the weight of these physical chains on me, it symbolises my evil nature, reminds me that I am bad. There is no worse that can happen. If I imagine the chains, how can I know that I will not misjudge the weight of the imaginary chains? If misjudged, I live then in perennial fear that the real chains will clap down on my shoulders again. I have been dangled freedom. In truth, the removal of the chains into an illusory form will weigh me down two times heavier than the real chains ... Don't you understand?" he says.

"You are far from rehabilitated." He says.

"In your eyes, I am evil." he says.

"You don't deserve freedom." He says.

"Freedom is not something to be deserved." he says.

And the warden locks the chains again. And the prisoner goes on dreaming.

Quotes of the Day --

"To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law - a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security"

"Due process, they call it ... Due process of mass, state sponsored suicide. With all of society's blessings." ... Well, it's certainly better than letting them die horribly, by degrees ... It is? Better for whom? The street cleaners? Better to have your living corpses walk to a central disposal station while they can still walk? Less public spectacle? Less horror lying around? Less disorder? A few million corpses lying around might start a rebellion against those responsible. That's what you and the government mean by better, isn't it?"

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.

And Equality For All

2006-12-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

To be a citizen of Singapore, it means you submit yourself to the political system of totalistic control. You take on the citizen responsibility of defending Singapore. Of course as a citizen, you will also enjoy subsidies and the hand-outs which the Government doles out during election time. As a PR, you may lose out on some subsidies but then, you are also not liable to be tied down to a totalistic political system and you are not obliged to defend Singapore. You actually enjoy as many subsidies as most citizens. Which is precisely why citizens are feeling short-changed by this foreigner syndrome. The costs of being a citizen outweigh the costs of being a PR.

To finally address this issue, this divide, PM Lee has announced that PRs will no longer enjoy the same breadth of subsidised Government services as citizens. The costs of being a PR will be made higher. So that citizens will feel more privileged, more Singaporean. It sharpens the divide, privileges the citizen by penalising the PRs. Not that citizens will feel any substantial difference, for us, the status quo is maintained. We will pay the same amount, take up the liabilities of citizenship. We are made "better" in the sense that PRs will be made to pay more for refusing the liabilities of citizenship.

That punitive difference meted out to the PRs is very loosely then, the equivalent of the liabilities of citizenship. It is the measure of our circumscribed political rights and for males, our sacrifice of two years conscription and a minimum 13-years reserve military liability.

And it can be safely assumed that the punitive difference will never be qualitatively equivalent to the liabilities of citizenship, particularly Singapore citizenship. This bridging of the divide, through a punitive sharpening against the Other is supposed to make citizens happier? Behind this very political move is a worrying syndrome. That of pleasing a group of people by punishing another group. It is a warped privileging of the citizen. Almost nasty. It is typified Singapore governance.

There is another alternative. It is by sharpening the divide through privileging the citizens more, reducing the liabilities of citizenship. Then, the PRs will see that it is wonderful to be a citizen. And they will want to be a citizen, be part of the system whole-heartedly.

But more privileges for the citizen? It is a political anathema in Singapore, is it not? It smells of welfare. It smells of dissent. it smells of liberalism. It smells of political rights. It smells of freedom. All of which are pandora-ic political lexicons in Singapore. Uttered with sneers in cocktail parties, spoken with embarassed smiles in public forums. Lexicons which are always enclosed by the invisible parentheses when mouthed in Singapore.

So we are left then with one alternative, one vision for Singapore. And that is to fall back on the vaunted Asian values of our society. We make all equally miserable. So that the miserable citizen can look at the miserable PR and feel gratified : "At least he is as miserable as me!" Or : "Hah he is more miserable than me!". And the miserable PR will have to whip out his calculator and measure just how much, how worthy it is, in dollars and sense, to apply for the great Singapore Citizenship.

Quote of the Day --

"All applicants for citizenship must be of good character, have satisfied the residential requirement and have the intention to reside permanently in Singapore. They must also be able to support themselves and their dependents financially.", ICA guidelines for Singapore Citizenship Application

PS : For those who think me the master complainer, the ultimate hypocrite, for those who are impatient, who want action, who want change, I can only say that we have to first, regain the space, even for hypocrisy, to speak; because the space, even for hypocrisy, to speak has been denied us. Which is why we hear the all these signals, even hypocrisy, in the main media without a challenge. Second, with a foothold in this space, we populate it with lexicons, with words, which meanings were lost in the past twenty or thirty so years. Then, it will be the time when a word is uttered, the action follows simply because the meaning is known.

The Age of Wonder

2006-12-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

Imagine if on that night, through some strange intervention of fate, Singaporeans voted differently. Not much differently. Just perhaps that 10% in Aljunied. If on that night, a PAP GRC had fallen, would Singapore be so rosy today? The economy has burst into full flower, employment appears to have disappeared, growth rates are beyond expectations, bonuses are aplenty, prices can go up, Ministerial pay can be increased. Everything is rosy. So positive. Because we have able captains helming the ship. Directing the battle. An elaborate manufacture of consent which most have anticipated but none can speak of.

But what if, fate intervened on that night? Would Singapore be more gloomy? Would there be cut-backs? Would the people have to be reminded the importance of having a political party in totalistic control of Singapore? Or would there be a case even of change? That the ruling regime will re-think its approach to governance? To become more caring? More fair to Singaporeans? More symmetric to the heart of the people?

The question is : if on that night, the unexpected had happened, how would consent be manufactured?

Would the GST hike and welfare for the poor be juxtaposed so blithely? Would raising Ministerial salaries even be heard in the public domain in so cavalier a manner?

These are the possibilities which slipped us after that night. These possibilities of change, possibilities of disjunctures in the relentless linearity of the Singapore political meta-narrative. Think back to that night, when you felt alone. When you did not know that you stood on the cusp of change. When History had congealed itself into a monad of multiple possibilities, a juncture where change was possible.

I like to think that it was that knowledge-less while we stood on the brink to decide change which allows the Singapore political meta-narrative to resume normal service. A knowledge-less created by the stifled structure of Singapore's information and communication pathways, a knowledge-less created by the variegated and compartmentalized social strata of Singapore which alienates the political community and champions the loyal employee.

But there is a sadder side to the story which is not about the structures of Singapore political society. It is about us as Singaporeans who know we are on the brink and who shy away from change. It is about Singaporeans who cannot see beyond the present because they cannot or do not want to look beyond. It is about Singaporeans who live to live. it is not wrong but it is sad.

Or perhaps, we are only still at the Age of Wonder. After moving through the age of struggle of regimentation to achieve economic success, we are now languishing in the Age of Wonder. The politics have changed surely since MM Lee relinquished his Prime Minister's office. A kinder gentler Government under SM Goh. A open and more creative regime under PM Lee. And we remain in the Age of Wonder. Reveling in the limited freedoms, but nonetheless still freedoms, now accorded us. Learning to speak out, to speak up. Speaking only to speak. Learning to listen. Listening to listen. Still enjoying these freedoms which only really came about in the 1990s, abetted definitely by the revolution of the Internet.

Beyond the Age of Wonder is the Age of Action. That period in time when presented by the moment of congealed History, the Singaporean is in full knowledge that his choice really matters. That he stands at the juncture of history. To disjuncture the Singapore political meta-narrative. And his choice rests on courage. On embracing a political meta-narrative that is unscripted. Unknown even. Because the other option is a mapped and charted meta-narrative. Of PAP Singapore. How it will hub this and hub that, wire this and wire that. A meta-narrative that lives your life for you. You just need to follow its path. Your life is mapped from cradle to grave. Some promises will be broken but it will not kill you so long as you work hard and abide by the rules of the map. Faced with this clear, shining and right path, would Singaporeans go for the unlit, the unknown? As others before had chosen when they make their choice to leave for the unknown? This is the Age of Action. And if during this time, the majority opts for the known then so it shall be. There will be no age of schisms in Singapore in today's world; the world is too global for that. It will become instead the Age of Leaving.

There is a movie "Battle of Wits", which Loy from SingaporeAngle has done a good commentary on. Toward the end of the movie, the two protagonists engage in a discussion amidst the backdrop of a fierce battle in the city. The Mohist strategist asks the opposing General why he chooses not to retreat to keep his life. The General replies that even if he lives, it becomes a life devoid of meaning. The Mohist strategist is defeated for the only time in the movie in that one scene, I think. The strategist chooses to live because he has found meaning. Except that the meaning that keeps him alive has a tragic end unbeknownst to him. The movie has a sad ending ultimately. Political power always triumphs. The meta-narrative is retained.

Quote of the Day --

"In the highest sphere they blasphemed against Heaven, in the middle sphere they blasphemed against the spirits, and in the sphere below they oppressed the people. Thereupon the will of Heaven proclaimed: "From those whom I love these turn away and hate, and those whom I want to benefit they oppress. Their hate of men is without limit and their oppression of men the most severe." And, so, they were not permitted to finish out their lives, or to survive a single generation. And people condemn them unto this day, calling them wicked kings." -- Mozi, The Ethical and Political Works of Mozi, Book VII, Chapter XXVI, "Will of Heaven (I)"

Fingaporean

2006-11-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

To continue the vulgarisation of the notion of welfarism, the Singapore media highlighted a few forum letters from new Singaporeans who have experienced the "crush" of funding a welfare state. A letter by a former Finn has earned the ridicule of Singapore cyberspace. Other than criticisms directed at his foreigner status and hence, not obliged to NS liabilities, some netters probably googled his name and found that he was previously involved in an assault case against a neighbour. Apparently, his neighbour's golden retriever rushed to attack his dog and the ensuing spat resulted in the retriever being kicked and the female owner being punched in the eye. He was found guilty of causing hurt and fined $1,000.

There are more interesting google bytes of this Finn. It appears that he is no stranger to publicity and controversy other than the dog case. His name has even made the rounds in local cyberspace as actually a "hero", ironically. In a TODAY report, he was in the news because he rejected the Depart of Statistics request for him to participate in the General Household Survey. Subsequently, he was served with a warning of a possible fine of $1,000 if he failed to cooperate. The article went on to report that following his refusal, DOS staff actually knocked at his door late at night. Causing him lack of sleep. An allusion of course, to those Gestapo/KGB visit at night syndrome. In the report, the Finn goes on to defend his right to privacy and his right to decline taking part in the survey; citing the culture of Finland in his defence. As balance, he reiterates his love for Singapore on the usual cliches of it being safe and secure. This case was posted in several blogs, including Singabloodypore.

And then as you scroll down the Google list, there is a forum letter to TODAY by the same name. In the letter, the Finn actually complains about the exorbitant and arbitrary charges by a private clinic along Orchard Road for the removal of moles from his scalp. It is a a well-penned rant. Perhaps it is this experience more than any that shapes his perception of the general standard of Government healthcare in Changi hospital. Of affordable healthcare. Perhaps it was this experience which made him foreswear private clinics and opt for the cheaper hospitals.

It is really hard to imagine this Finn. His relics in cyberspace paint a strange picture. There is something uncanny about this individual. He loves Singapore, citing that its a very "safe country", but alludes to the sinister Government knocking on your door after ten syndrome. He whinges about being over-charged at a private clinic for a cosmetic procedure. He reacts violently to a neighbour over a rushing dog. He resorts to fistcuffs after probably, a heated argument with the lady. He is strangely like an Ugly Singaporean. Except that he is Finn.

But right at this juncture, based on this latest letter, it appears that he still chooses Singapore. He loves Singapore and the vaunted Singapore system. He is willing to forego some rights, some aspects of privacy. Just so to escape the "crushing taxes" in Finland. In the end, he hails : "Long Live the Singaporean Model".

And you realise that even as he comes from Finland, he shares that intrinsic value inculcated into so many Singaporeans. That value which David Marshall so despised. That worship of the Golden Calf. The eating of rice bowls full and brimming with jade chopsticks. It is money, money, money. It becomes clearer now. He is Finn but he is as Singaporean too. He buys into this system. This system of material wealth. It is a system which guards the selfish. Ask the cukongs from Indonesia. They were the first foreign talent to recognise this safe haven of money.

There are some who always tell me. Face reality. Prices will always rise. There is a global economy. I have no quarrel with that. I am not asking for North Korea. I am asking simply this. If you raise prices because you want to help the poor; than help the poor. In ways that can be seen, that can be felt. There must be change as obvious as raised prices. Its that simple.

Quote of the Day ---

"I have slain old Wainamoinen,
Slain the son of Kalevala,
That he now may plow the ocean,
That he now may sweep the waters,
On the billows rock and slumber.
In the salt-sea plunged he headlong,
In the deep sank the magician,
Sidewise turned he to the sea-shore
On his back to rock forever,
Thus the boundless sea to travel,
Thus to ride the rolling billows."

-- Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot

Killing You Softly

2006-11-16T02:38:00.000-08:00

There is something seriously wrong in Singapore. We have Ministers who are justifying the proposed GST hike with utterly pathetic reasons. The following headline from CNA sums it up :

Proposed GST rise helps lower-income group and grows economy

This is a line that screams contradiction. When GST rises, everything in Singapore rises. Your kopi-o will go up by ten or twenty cents. Your chicken rice goes up by fifty cents. Your groceries which are already bought on the cheap at Sheng Siong will go up. Public transport companies are already raising fares. In short, the cost of living in Singapore will go up. Oh, but we are not suppose to talk about rising costs of living according to MICA. It costs you your job if you write about this. Unless you are responsible and have a solution. So this is the solution. Raise GST to help Singaporeans who are affected by rising costs of living. So this is the great solution which citizens cannot come up with. And in truth it is a staggering solution. How can mere mortals come up with a solution to help Singaporeans hit by rising costs by raising a general consumption tax?

Lets not be sarcastic, nor do we make fun of this solution. Lets just say that this solution screws the lower income group. It does not help them at all. The truthful headline should be that the proposed GST hike hopes to stimulate the economy and then, hopefully help the lower income group. That is approximating the truth of the situation. There is no guarantee the lower-income group will be helped, but through the spin-offs of the fare hike, benefits will trickle to the lower income. However, going by the track record of a failed "many hands approach" and the continued vulgarisation of the word "welfare", the GST hike will most likely not help the lower income group. It screws them again.

The reasoning is that costs of living goes up but this increase will be offset by packages and more jobs, lower personal taxes etc. But very simply put, the Government is raising prices first, which the citizens bear the brunt in the short-term and forever-term, which are then returned to the citizens in the longer-term. Hopefully the returns will be greater. But it just does not make sense. Especially for the lower income group where the short term is the only term. Thye may not even make it to the long term where the supposed benefits of this GST hike will materialise. And even if materialised, the benefits may be in sectors of the economy or sectors of society which the lower income are not in.

But the benefits will be manifest. We can bet on it. The benefits of this GST hike will be magically manifest in 2010 or 2011. A couple of months or weeks before the GE. Suddenly, the State will give their hand-outs. Promise is fulfilled. To help all Singaporeans. When its just a sweetener to buy votes. And singaporeans will then forget that they funded their own GE progress package through acceptance of these hikes.
Raising the cost of living will help the lower income group. It is ridiculous, this reasoning. On the same page, we have NTUC Fairprice promising to help low wage workers by cushioning the impact of the GST hike.

NTUC promises help for low-wage workers to cushion proposed GST hike

On the one hand, the GST hike is supposed to help the lower income. But at the same breath, we are told by our trusted media that there will be help to cushion the impact of the GST hike. But the hike is suppose to help? We are used to such ScrewSpeak. Innured to such contradictions. We just accept these. And our politicians get away with this.

Quote of the Day --

"He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote 'enhanced' when he meant 'increased.'" -- Joseph Heller Catch-22

Soothing Brute

2006-11-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

The stoic Singaporean is valued by the State. That strong, suffering Singaporean who looks at injustice and lives through it, abiding by his own principles of self-determination, of personal perseverance. He looks askance at the complexities of the environment in front of him. He forges through the environment. That stoic Singaporean. Even when he fails, he picks himself up, complains to none, and presses forward. Never questioning the without. Only believing that his failings are from within. It is his fault. That stoic Singaporean.

Unlike the sayers of sooth, the stoic Singaporean never foretells the sooths of the future. He deals only with the sooths of now. It is more practical, more realistic to focus on your immediate needs. Let those who can vision worry about the future. The stoic Singaporean never complains. He accepts the environment as it is. He seeks solutions from the available options as presented in front of him. There is no need to hope for, to wish for something when it is not there. The stoic Singaporean does not waste energies there. He sees changes in the environment and he adjusts to them. He asks for nothing from no one. He seeks no favours. He is self sufficient. That stoic Singaporean.

He does not foretell. That stoic Singaporean. But he knows things. He knows for example, that after the GE, prices for everything will go up. He knows too that the State will never lift its hand to take a dominant role in the provision of welfare to its citizens. He knows that the 2% GST increase, ostensibly to help the needy, is a sham. Simply because three days previous, the State just reiterated that the failed approach to helping the needy will not change even though it is failed. He knows things. He can see sooth. But he utters nothing. That stoic Singaporean. Because he accepts his place. In society. He looks only at what is in front of him. If it is too expensive to take a feeder bus, he walks. If it is too expensive to eat in a restaurant, he eats in a coffeeshop. If it is too expensive to buy smokes, he rolls his own cigarette. If it is too expensive to buy foodstuffs, he does not marry. If married, do not have children. If it is too expensive to live, than die. That stoic Singaporean.

From cradle to grave, that stoic Singaporean takes what is given and gives back what he can give. He asks no questions. He reacts according to what the environment presents to him. Life is life. It is neither good nor bad. There are good times and there are bad. That stoic Singaporean. He takes it all. All the cards that are dealt him. He asks for nothing and utters not. Ridiculed by the children of those he put in power. Betrayed by those he put in power. He accepts these stabs without wavering. He works on and on. That stoic Singaporean. He is educated than he works than he retires and then, he dies. He lives his life and he adjusts to changes. He asks not for changes. He reacts. If there are foreigners, he competes. If he fails, he fails. If he is asked to re-train, he retrains.

That stoic Singaporean. He performs his role. He sees not the vision. He sees not his place in the cogwheel of the great Singapore Masterplan, the Singapore Dream. But he does not want to see that vision. Because he sees only what is ahead of him. He works so to be able to live. Driven only to live and not to dream. That stoic Singaporean. So valuable to the State. The priceless citizen. The great Singaporean Worker.

That stoic Singaporean. His life cut constantly, cut infinimestially. Just enough to breathe, just enough to live. Bleeding but never dried. Breaking but never broken. That priceless stoic Singaporean. Living to live and dying without a dream.

Quotes of the Day --

""O Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be." -- Epictetus

"No, not by silence, but by being softer than a feather. Nore fragile than an egg ... This will be a different kind of war. Long and arduous. And for weapons we will use stubborn patience and infinite weakness. They will not be able to bear it." -- David Grossman, The Smile of the Lamb

On Babble

2006-11-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

And so there is a lull. Catching up on movies and some books. There is a movie called "Babel" by Alejandro González Inárritu, its probably not showing in singapore yet. Its a multiple narrative, non linear film in the tradition of Traffic, 21 Grams and last year's Academy Best Picture Crash. Its a style favoured too by Wong Kar Wai, most notably in Ashes of time and 2046.

Babel is an intense movie. The title is an allusion to the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel; a mythic tower supposedly built during a time when humanity was unified by a common language after the Flood. Tired to be beholden upon God's grace to enter Heaven, these humans embarked on the grand construction project of the Tower to ascend Heaven without judgement from God. To stop these arrogant and ambitious humans, God confused the builders by creating a multiplicity of languages. The builders could not understand one another and the Tower collapsed. The builders were dispersed across the world. Humanity never to be united again.

The movie has three stories. They are set in Morocco, Mexico and Japan. The characters speak a myriad of languages. As with Inárritu's previous films, there is a relentless bleakness in this story. A fatalism that pervades throughout, a helplessness of humans in the face of larger forces, of Fate. If there is one common language in this film, it is the grief of the characters. In the end, the stories end with tears as stated in the NYT review of the movie. That seems to be the common language, the emotions which are intensely amplified by several powerful scenes, powerful close-ups. The isomorphosis between the diverse characters is grief, they share grief. Perhaps the Japanese character, a deaf girl, symbolises the only way to understand the language of humanity. But as she understands, so too is she cut off from society because she is deaf. As she understands, no one understands her.

Babel is etymologized with the Hebrew word "balal" which means to confound or confuse. The art of Babel is well practised in Singapore, especially in application to politics, or issues which have political resonance. For example, the respected MM, Molly Meek, recently dissected the myth of the P65 MPs with absolute clarity. No matter how the media tries to portray these MPs as different, as promising a more diverse, a more differentiated Parliament, they are fundamentally still PAP and governed by the Whip. Babel. In the building of Casinos in Singapore, semantic displacement was artfully practised. Casino is replaced with IR. All the three proposals for the Sentosa casino, as reported in the public media, makes little if no reference to the casino itself. A child born today would not know that all the three exciting proposals have in their hearts, a casino. Babel. The sweeping legislative changes to the Penal Code to make the laws more relevant, more in line with current reality. But like another language, it becomes Babel. The cleansing of TODAY, moving it towards a new direction. Babel.

But occasionally, a common Singapore language surfaces in the political landscape. During the NKF scandal, it was outrage. A common language of anger and outrage. In the recent MRT suicide of a desperate Singaporean, there was a common language of sympathy, of shock. In the WSM issue, there was a common language of anger, indignation and outrage. Despite the attempt at Babel by WSM and her father, the common language of Singaporeans shone through clearly, refusing to be confounded, to be confused. Sometimes, when Singaporeans articulate in a common language, there are positive effects even if it is limited. PAP MP Sim Boon Ann's opening Parliament speech is an example. That is some form of differentiation, to his credit. Even though he is not seen as a P65. Its a welcome riposte to the attempt by his party to manufacture a common language and build a state-sanctioned Tower of Babel for Singapore, a Tower which has some commonalities to the biblical story.

A common language in Singapore remains mostly elusive though; usually an anomaly rather than a norm. Without which we cannot build a tower to reach those ensconced above who are building the Tower of Babel. Instead, we are confounded and confused most of the time. And we lose the determination of our selves. And we end up as helpless citizens in the face of larger forces. And the promising share in emotions of disenchantment and disillusion to be dispersed across the world. Victims of balal, fragments of Babel.

Quote of the Day --

""Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do? Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion". And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth." -- Genesis 11:1-9

That Last Tyger

2006-11-03T01:26:00.000-08:00

This is a story of Hurricane Harry. Hurricane Harry O'Brien is his name. Not much is known of this mysterious adventurer. From his name, we can guess he must have some Irish blood somewhere along the family tree. Hurricane was born in Singapore in 1900, born no less in the semi-majestic Raffles Hotel.

It is a story by itself. His birth. They say that when he was born, a tiger snatched him away. Right from the crib. This was the last tiger in Singapore. His snatching caused an uproar in the Enlgish community. Savage savage nature. A posse of hunters was gathered in the Palm Court of Raffles Hotel. That very stormy night. with their wyatt Earp-ish moustaches, eyes glinting with anticipation at the hunt, double barreled guns gleaming in the faint electric lights of Raffles Hotel. Bets were traded. Who would bring back this tiger's skin.

The hunt could begin only when the local convicts had been escorted to the Raffles from their cells. A tiger hunt was an elaborate affair. There were equipment to be hauled, torches to be lit, trails to be tracked, defending of the hunters to be done. And cheap labour, in the form of native criminals and convicts, was provided by the prison warders. It was a good way to ease the over-crowded prisons. You sent 25 convicts and sometimes only 5 returned. All for a good cause.

Once the hunt began, the hunters and their guides swarmed into the steamy jungles of Singapore's heartland. They fired several shots and found dead mousedeer, a wild boar and the occasional collateral damage, typical of such hunts.

But elusive still was the tiger. Try as they might, the tiger was never seen, not even glimpsed fleetingly. The tiger's presence was there though. Without doubt. In the hunters' minds, they could feel the tiger everywhere. Behind the clump of bushes. Hiding behind the rainforest. Threatening them always. But what they had were only half prints in the mud, An occasional pile of excreta. But still the hunters persisted. It was a question of pride after all. And perhaps also that there was not much other things for them to do anyway. The plantations were well-run. There was an ample supply of cheap coolie labour.

The hunt went on. And on. Some of the hunters succumbed to typical tropical diseases. Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, the likes. Others got lost in the fetid jungles. But as one hunter succumbed, there were others who took up the cause. The prize was the tiger. It was the last tiger in Singapore. The last threat. The final solution to safe Singapore. So the hunt went on, and on.

The last tiger was found and killed in the western jungles of Singapore. A place they call Choa Chu Kang. Some say the old tiger died before the bullet pierced its worn skin. Too exhausted and too hungry to escape. The tiger just laid down and died as the guides surrounded it. But the hunter still had to shoot. Just to make sure. This was some time in 1930. Singapore was finally free from the scourge of tigers.

The weary hunters made their way to Raffles Hotel. To claim their prize. But to their horror, they were told the last tiger in Singapore was slain in 1902. Right at the Bar and Billiards Room. The tiger was crouching under a table. Ready to pounce when an Englishman snatched one of the ornamental rifles and blasted the tiger into oblivion.

Some say that this is a false story. what really happened was that a drunk Englishman, on exiting the Bar, saw a civet cat in the lush garden of the Raffles. And mistaking it for the fearsome tiger of lore, he drew his handgun and killed the poor civet cat. The Englishman who was really a professional hunter in Malaya, what we commonly call as poachers in current parlance, quickly thought up a scam. Replace the civet cat with a tiger. He had some ready carcasses anyway. And so, with the connivance of the Raffles staff, they "killed the last tiger" in Singapore and claimed the reward money.

Ah! Imagine the injustice felt by those true hunters. They who spent almost their entire lives pursuing the real tiger. But some of the wiser hunters thought that after all, it was really the thrill and spectacle of the hunt that mattered. And so ends this story of the hunt for the last tiger in Singapore.

Quote of the Day --

"In the midst of this entomological banquet there is, however, one drawback--a sword suspended by a hair over the head of the unfortunate flycatcher: it is the possibility of being eaten up by a tiger! While watching with eager eyes some lovely insect, the thought will occasionally occur that a hungry tiger may be lurking in that dense jungle immediately behind intent upon catching you. Hundreds of Chinamen are annually devoured. Pitfalls are made for the animals all over the country; and in one of them, within two miles of our house, a tiger was captured a short time before my arrival. Only last night a party of Chinamen, going home to their plantation, turned back afraid, having heard the roaring of a tiger in the path. These are unpleasant reminders of the proximity of a deadly foe; and though perhaps the absolute danger is little enough, as the tiger is a great coward and will not attack unless he can do it unawares, yet it is better to have the mind quite free from any such apprehensions." -- Alfred Russel Wallace, Letter from Singapore, 1854

Turning Away

2006-10-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

My parents are in their seventies. Three days ago, they sent a cheque to the family of the man who committed suicide. Like most Singaporeans, they were shocked and saddened by his death, the circumstances of his death. Their only reflex action was to send a cheque as a form of condolence. To make things right, to right a wrong. Something was wrong, something troubled them. And they could only right this wrong by this small token action. As a fellow human or fellow citizen, this was the only thing they could do.

From Kitana, she mentions an excerpt of the media coverage which riled her. A particular phrase from the MP of the GRC where the deceased was a constituent. "Family stopped asking for help". Embedded in this five words is a culture, an attitude, a leaning, towards social welfare which is utterly wrong. Utterly wrong. In many ways, this entry re-states Kitana's highly eloquent entry. So bear with me. It is an issue that needs stating. Needs framing. Before we are inundated by media articles explaining how this case is an aberration. That the social safety nets in Singapore are secure. And we are told of numerous successful case studies.

In Singapore, where competition and meritocracy are held as paragons of our economic success, poverty is treated with extreme delicacy. We are schooled against social welfare. We are told there are no free lunches. We are told to be the best that we can be. We are told to aim for excellence. We breed a form of self-determination which is the survival of the fittest. Exclusive self determination. We are told to win. Win. Win. No room for losers. No room for the downtrodden. Values which are revealed in rant by a JC student. Values which are the subject of abhorrece in the David Marshall interview. In such a system, the dominant perception on social welfare is that once controls on financial aid for the needy are lifted, there will be a floodgate of social demise associated with European countries which practice social welfarism. Images of uneployed and destitute youths lining up with hand-outs flash across the collective Singapore psyche. A mass of leeches. Waiting to suck our coffers dry. Leeches, an anathema in singapore. Set apart. Exiled. Accursed. Denounced.

This trepidation in dealing with social welfare, this aversion and distaste even for the term "social welfare" permeates across the entire structural construction of Singapore's social safety nets. The entire process to receiving financial aid reeks of this aversion against social welfare. The fundamental disposition to disbursement of financial aid is one of extreme prudence. It is a process that is littered with innuendoes and stigma. It is a process designed almost to discourage people from seeking financial aid. This is done to sieve out those "undeserving" of financial aid. To prevent abuse. To prevent images of people lining up for hand-outs. To prevent people from surviving comfortably in umeployment. So it is a deterring structure. Not caring. And while it succeeds in turning people away, at the same time, it can over-succeed. There could be those who simply stop asking for help. Because help is given like this. Like a fucking crime. While we disburse magical Progress Packages like Santa Claus. Images of people lining ATM machines, lining outside CPF building for hand-outs. Happy hand-outs. This is fine. This is an easy process. Money gets sent to your account, quick and efficient.

"Family stopped asking for help" -- these five words magically absolve the politicians, those who act as the custodians of social welfare, from blame. Once someone stops asking for help, the problem has disappeared. Its no longer the State's business. The logical flow of the statement is this : "They stopped asking for help ... so how can we help them? ... they should have asked for help, there are so many schemes to help the needy."

This is wrong. This is wrong logic. This is wrong.

There is a distance between those who act as custodians of all these financial schemes for the needy and those who really need these schemes. It is a distance that is vast. It is a distance that is guarded with a ferocity which is uncalled for. It is a distance justified by the official attitude towards social welfare in Singapore.

It is a distance which the needy must bridge. Again and again. Thats why some stop asking for help. Thats why they borrow money.

Thats why they fucking kill themselves.

This must change. And Kitana is right. An MP and his grassroots machinery should have the resources available to find these people who slipped through the safety nets. To activate this machinery requires a re-understanding of social welfare and stop this turning away.

Quote of the Day --

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won't understand
Dont accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others suffering
Or youll find that youre joining in
The turning away

Its a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we're all alone
In the dream of the proud -- Pink Floyd, On the Turning Away

On Exactitude in Science,

2006-10-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

Written by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. English translation quoted from J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.

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The story above is written by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, he narrates this empire where map-making attained such sublime levels that the cartographers were able to evolve a map of the Empire which was on the scale of 1 : 1. A full sized map representing or replicating the entire Empire. Of course, the map was eventually seen as fairly useless and left to decay. And fragments of this map remain in the fringes of the Empire, providing the occasional shelter for beasts and beggars.

It is a fascinating tale. Entire theories of representation and simulacra are packed into this brief paragraph which is a fiction but made to look like a true historical source by Borges. He even cites a non existent book and a non existent author. It is a rich paragraph for critical theory. But as always, the map leads me to Singapore.

There are many maps of Singapore. Perhaps the most common are tourist maps which one picks up at the arrival hall of Changi Airport. They depict the locations of tourist attractions and places of interest. Done in a neo-classical style with icons and symbols representative of the locality.

And then, there are other types of maps. Maps charting the path to Singapore's future. These are the national level campaigns which our Government is very prone toward. Courtesy Campaign and Singa. Productivity Campaign and the "good better best, never let it rest" Bee. Stop at Two birth control. Recently, there was a Frog for the Environment. A few years back, to herald the global world, there was the HeartBeat Singapore campaign. In technology, we have the Wired Nation. Its most recent incarnation , iN2015 and Wireless@Sg. In industry, we have that grand and ambitious map of Singapore as the life sciences hub.

To sell these maps, the national media exercises its role of responsible nation-building. They hype these maps. Front page screaming headlines. Story after story of pioneering successes which act like guarantees of eventual success. The media helps to build these maps. Make them bigger. More realistic. More attainable.

And we are left with a massive map of Singapore. A map that is even bigger than the actual territorial size of Singapore. Its bigger because we are building maps which draw on future time. Projected futures.

With such a map beckoning, many Singaporeans follow the path that has been so boldly charted. In Life Sciences for example, many a young Singaporean decides to make their career choice at the age of 16. Opting for a diploma in biomedical engineering, in life sciences. Others make that decision at 18, going for an undergraduate degree in life sciences. They follow this particular map of Singapore.

Except that many of these maps lead into indefinitely deferred futurities. In life sciences, we have a pool of trained personnel ready to populate the hub. But is the hub ready? Are we now a life sciences hub? Or is this map fraying at the edges?

There is a tendency for cartographers to forget that these maps into Singapore's future are massive social programs. That citizen's lives are at stake. Cartographers build these maps, fill the maps with beautiful embellishments, achieve a scale beyond even 1 : 1. But this has always been the template of Singapore map-building. The founding father, MM Lee, was the foremost cartographer. He mapped Singapore from Third World to First, involving first and foremost a massive social program to create a population able to fulfil the needs of the simultaneous industrialisation program.

Subsequent mappings have been less spectacular in visible success. From Elia Diodati, there is a pessimistic paper by Paul Krugman; suggesting that Singapore's success is perhaps one-off and cannot be replicated again. We achieved almost universal literacy, its not possible to train the entire population to be PhD holders. In many aspects, Krugman's paper illuminates various social maps in Singapore today. chief of which is the foreign talent program. It is a form of social engineering and programming. In regime thinking, it is a requisite for the map of Singapore to be realised. For the map to work, to be successful.

There is a funny thing about maps. Most times, you never see people drawn into maps. The cartographers usually pay more attention on aspects of territorial accuracy, legend-ising structures, detail of relief. People are usually not part of maps. The problem is of course, when the cartographers lose themselves in the exactitudes of crafting that map. Lost in the measuring of longitudes and latitudes. Lost in the intricacies of detailing the relief and beautifying the map. They create a perfect representation. A perfect map. But it is useless, cumbersome and left to decay.

Now do you understand? Why the need to connect with the people?

But time and again, we fall into that rote template established by our founding father, the pre-eminent cartographer. and when we build this new map, will we again forget to draw people into these maps? You do not need people to be cartographers. But you need a radical and creative deconstruction of cartography. Can we have a map of singapore with people in it?

Borges ultimately has the answer. and so as this entry began with him, it ends with too with this dead and blind writer, half a world away :

"Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy"

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PS : For those interested in my earlier entry on HWZ, bloggers Cobalt Paladin and Tan Gowing have their views on the valuation of HWZ and perhaps, the un-soundness of the deal. They are of course, more accurate than me.

wankstas

2006-10-17T03:39:00.000-07:00

Since there is so much hoopla over hip-hop and what it means to be hip-hop in the context of Singapore blogging, lets put up three stories of hip hop and see where it goes.

There was once a white rapper named Vanilla Ice. He had a monster hit called Ice Ice Baby which is widely acclaimed as the biggest selling rap single in history. Ice Ice Baby made Vanilla Ice phenomenally big and ultimately, it was also the reason that led to his fall. In the world of rap and hip-hop, a genre of music inextricably associated with Black culture and which prides itself on being real and from the streets, credibility is always a big aspect of the music. Vanilla's spectacular success with Ice Ice Baby naturally created a backlash since he was white and pretty. The Black community accused Vanilla of exploiting hip hop to make money. Purists accused him of turning mean, hard-edged rap into candy floss music with weak-ass lyrics. Vanilla's spectacular success meant that some form of image branding was necessary. To enhance his cred, an "authorized" Vanilla biography had him growing up in the mean streets of Miami where he earned his legit status as a rapper. This were all lies of course. The fabrications were exposed when a group of high school students from Miami researched Vanilla's background and found that he actually grew up in Dallas, Texas. His real name, Robert Matthew Van Winkle, was also exposed. Paradoxically, as part of his image branding, Vanilla was draped in amazingly ridiculous outfits and even acted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the sequel. How these balanced the cred-building fabrications is beyond comprehension. What followed was the downfall of Vanilla. Flopped albums, drug abuse, failed suicide. Eventually, he retired from the industry, went into motor-racing, found God and resurfaced as an emo rock-rapper in the mold of RATM or Korn. He enjoyed limited success and seemed unable to shed off the baggage of Ice Ice Baby.

If one googles Vanilla Ice, the story is not as simple, according to Vanilla himself. Vanilla claims that he was dazzled by his initial success and eventually got into everything for the money. Including $850,000 just to put the word "authorized" on his biography which was written by his manager. He claims to have been manipulated like a puppet by his manager and his label. And his re-invention into rock rap is mostly therapeutic. Something that is the "real" him. Money is not the motivation since he had made such a ridiculously large amount off his Ice Ice Baby days. He remains in the wastelands of the music industry, performing small medium-sized gigs, cutting and selling records in modest numbers. Any headlines he makes is perpetually shadowed by his days as Vanilla Ice of Ice Ice Baby.

There were once two German models who were spotted by a record producer and hired to become the band Milli Vanilli. Their first single, Girl You Know Its True, achieved phenomenal success and created this new genre of dance-rap, much like what you hear from the Black Eyed Peas today. Their album was so successful that they actually won the Grammy awards for Best New Act. Except that the two models were actually lip-syncing all the songs. Not only were they lip-syncing in live performances, they did not sing anything in their album. They were just fronting for the real singers who were deemed to be insufficiently eye candy. The scam was exposed when Milli Vanilli's producer, exasperated by the models' increasingly wild behavior and clamour to be the real singers, revealed the truth. Their Grammy was stripped, their careers plunged and of the two, one committed suicide while the other is a broken man, not even in the wastelands, but in the dumps.

There was once a rapper called Curtis Jackson. Born in the mean streets of Queen's Jamaica, he peddled cocaine and heroin as a kid, got busted for a litany of minor offences and eventually found fame as a mean-ass rapper, 50 cent. Along the way, he was beaten and stabbed by the producers of a rival record company, Murder Inc, and a few months later, shot nine times. He survived and went on to record Get rich or Die Tryin which sealed his status as The Rapper as we know it in the hip hop scene today. He maintains the feud, or beef, with another rapper, Ja Rule, who was from the same hood. Indeed, the violence in his life, the stabbing and shooting, is mainly attributed to this beef between him and Ja Rule. Entangled between them is a real gangsta, a drug lord of Jamaica Queens, Kenneth 'Supreme' McGriff. Critics of this hip hop violence voice their concern that both rap artists are trying to bank record sales on this blood feud. Songs in their albums are laced with threat rhymes targeted against each other. That real blood is spilled adds to the drama and perhaps marketing appeal of their albums. Except of course that real gangstas, when they get rich and famous, to the heady levels of 50 Cent or Ja Rule, actually try to go legit. Try to distance themselves from the hood. While these two try to get more cred, more street in them.

In most specialised musical genres like goth, indie, metal or hip hop, there is always this question of cred and whether you are a poser. A poser is akin to wearing a black Bon Jovi t-shirt and claiming yourself as a metal fan. In essence, its the music and whether you believe in or grew up in the entire sub-culture of the music that makes you a fan of these music genres. So the problem of the P65s is really this : you cannot connect by pretending or posing to be into hip hop. There is no cred and it is simply uncool. The fact that you are trying and putting effort to dance to a form of music which you do not like and know nothing about is not a plus point. It just shows that you are posers, wankstas. Thats all.

If you want to connect, work on your strengths. Parliament is to be convened soon. Thats where your mettle will be displayed. Thats where your cred can be built. Thats where you can really connect. Will you do it?

For a start, we can even discourse the banning of FEER. Go to the FEER website now and you will see three articles systematically dismantling Singapore and its foundational myths. Ripping the sham of meritocracy. Exposing the fragility of our financial system. Three articles which can still find their way easily into Singaporean homes in spite of the ban on FEER. Three articles which symbolise that Singapore's control systems are archaic at best and enbarassing at worst. Try to figure that out and forget about all this lip-syncing to hip hop business. This is where your mettle can be tested, where your cred can be built. But only if you dare to talk about it.

Quote of the Day --

You say you a gangsta but you never pop nothin'
We said you were a wanksta and you need to stop frontin'
You ain't a friend of mine,
You ain't no kin of mine,
What makes you think that I'ma run up on you with the nine
We do this all the time, right now we on the grind
So hurry up and copy go selling nicks and dimes

Damn homie, in highschool you was the man, homie
What the fuck happened you?
I got the sickest vendetta, when it come to the chedda
Nigga you play with my paper, you gonna meet my berretta

Wanksta, 50 Cent

Twilight Idols

2006-10-11T01:54:00.000-07:00

I recently finished a book, Was, by Geoff Ryman. Picked up the book for five dollars at one of those mega warehouse book sales they hold in Expo occasionally. What clinched the book for me was its nomination for the World Fantasy Award. Into the first third of the book, I realised that it was fascinatingly anti-fantasy, an anti-genre fantasy story.

The book tells the fictional tale of Dorothy Gael who inspired the fictional character Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. For someone who never read the Wizard of Oz and often confused it with the other classic, Alice in Wonderland, reading this book brings the pleasurable feeling of being lost in the instertices between history, fiction and fantasy. But this is a hard book about life's realities, a hard book which has a child hanging himself within the first few chapters, child abuse, homosexuality in an age of puritanism, dysfunctional families, madness, AIDS, survival and ultimately hope. There is of course, a fantasy element to the book after all. In three pages and fairly ambivalent.

The story pivots around Dorothy Gael, a small city girl, who is orphaned, her parents and brother are victims of diphteria, and moved to stay with her aunt in 1890s Kansas. Away from the glitter of the big city, Dorothy moves into a farmhouse, sharing the living space with a puritanical, God-fearing, frontier aunt and a farmer husband, Uncle Henry. On the first night, she is scrubbed clean, to rid her of the taint of diph. Her golden locks are shorn. Her dog Toto is denied home and left in the open. Ultimately Toto dies in the wilderness; the revelation of his death woven with utter skill and power by the author. Her only friend, a neighbour, runs away and hangs himself by the railway. More realities follow as she grows up into a young woman. The narrative intersects with other characters in other times, living other realities, hard realities; but all involved or related somehow to the fictional story, Wizard of Oz.

The book employs a fantasy narrative to strip away the fantasy narrative of Wizard of Oz. Re-telling this child fairy tale with very different lens. It is a relentlessly bleak book most of the time. Committed to an asylum in old age, Dorothy Gael watches the film version of Wizard of Oz by Judy Garland in a brand new television donated to the asylum. "It was not like that" and she goes hysterical. Soon after, Dorothy dies, after sneaking out of the asylum and reliving a child game of making angel impressions in snow. A game she remembers playing with her only childhood friend; the boy who hanged himself.

I am still not too sure how this book came to be shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. In one aspect, the book explores the fantasy genre, tracing its antecedents to darker realities, decadent roots. It is a fictional piece which unravels fiction, it seems much closer to reality. To life as we know it.

Closer to home, I am reminded of the movie 15 by Royston Tan. Other than the at times jarring cinematographic rips of Wong Kar Wai, that movie hit home because it reflected a reality which I believe we are all aware of but which we consciously try not tot hink it about. It is inherently an ugly film about Singapore. Abusive parents, the brutal monologue of Hokkien expletives by the father remains etched formly in my mind. Images of despondent youths, aimless lives. Any hope remaining in the film is in the bond of friendship despite life's realities; but even then, this bond is ambiguified by the film's glancing treatment of homosexuality.

I like Singapore Dreaming. Its one of the better made local movies. Technically, it is smoother than 15. But the narrative, in some sense which I cannot fully describe, further fictionalises the fiction of Singapore. Perhaps its the characters, perhaps its the ending, its hard to really pin it down.

The Latin root of fiction is "fingere" -- to form or create. In Italian, "fingere" is to feign or pretend. Fiction then, is an act of creating something which is feigned. Is fiction untrue then? It is hard to say. Because in its etymology, fiction really does not address the question of Truth. We know that it is an act of creation, to create a pretense. I can construct a fiction from facts?

More importantly, if fiction is a creation, than it can be de-created, un-created, counter-created. This is perhaps what I mean on further fictionalising the fiction of Singapore when there could be avenues to explore counter-fictionalisations of Singapore. This counter-movement, after many semantic translations, distils into difference. Real difference in Singapore. And not the simulacra of difference, that Nietzschean fear of the twilight of the Idols, when the absence of a basic reality is masked, and worst when there is no relation to reality, but pure simulacrum. This is the problem of Singapore.

Quote of the Day --

"... Then the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference." -- Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations

Cheating in Monopoly

2006-10-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just read the news that SPH has acquired the portal, HardwareZone (HWZ) for a cool $7 million. The HWZ conglomerate of web entities is one of those pioneers of Sg cyberspace which translated a simple idea into virtual form very successfully. The idea was to bring Sim Lim Square into cyberspace. Initially through word of mouth coupled with a loyal group of forummers, gamers, techies, HWZ just grew and grew. There is a romantic story embedded somehow in this sale of HWZ to SPH. One of the occasional guests here, Cobalt Paladin and his distinctive avatar, is, if I remember correctly, some supremacy member in the HWZ forums.

HWZ is one of those places in local cyberspace where there is a real community, and a vibrant community as well. Other than the other favourite cyber-ghetto, Sammyboy's Kopitiam, it is not an exaggeration to say HWZ discussion forums' are the most well participated and have the most eyeballs. It makes sense for SPH to wish to corner HWZ. By the acquisition of HWZ, SPH has just leapfrogged its Digital Life capabilities by a few notches. For $7 million, one cannot fault the founders of HWZ; as reported, HWZ was really just a hobby which grew into this highly valuable asset, with a highly valuable community.

Just a few months back, SPH launched STOMP, which was meant to engage the young in cyberspace. Now, they have dealt some relatively small change to acquire HWZ which has a much longer history, ready-made community and captive eyeballs. Some of the HWZ forummers are unsettled; they wonder what will happen to the relatively free-wheeling forums once SPH steps in. The specter of being part of the responsible Bhavani bandwagon, or that cheeky nick, "the 140th" (which has become inextricably associated with the Straits Times), hangs uncomfortably behind this take-over of HWZ. The worry is somewhat misplaced; for $7 million, SPH could have built a HWZ clone and have enough change to build another Softwarezone. Just like STOMP. But they did not do this. So the value of HWZ is really in its community, its ready network of advertisers, its already hyper-links in your 'favourites' tab. The management model of HWZ under SPH will be interesting; especially for the discussion forums which are essentially run by volunteer mods. How will this spirit of voluntarism pan out? Will we see GE rally video clips like those we saw from the HWZ discussion forums? These are questions which cannot be answered yet.

But there is one feeling from this takeover of HWZ. For want of a better word, it is just "sian". This is Singlish lingo for helpless frustration or just apathy. The analogy is probably inaccurate but SPH taking over HWZ is like NTUC buying over Zouk. One cannot help but have this feeling that another medium, another place in cyberspace is lost with this sale of HWZ. If it was Creative which bought HWZ, there would probably be much less of this "sian" feeling. Its like having won the game Monopoly, SPH is now playing the online version, both as banker and player. And there is definitely no player, foreign or local, to stop SPH from buying at its will. Monopoly is depressing. Monopoly faking competition is utterly depressing.

Do you fault the HWZ owners for taking the $7 million? No, you do not. But you can fault an economic system which has created a situation where only SPH can offer $7 million. Or worse, a situation that any other competitor to SPH is MediaCorp, Temasek Holdings, Sembcorp, Singapore Technologies, NTUC or GIC. Imagine that there is a ceiling, an invisible ceiling to your entrepeneurial spirit. And this is not good at all.

Quote of the Day --

"Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to have the most money and assets at the end of the game ... Win the game by snapping up all of the property on the board, ruining the other players and acquiring more money and assets than anyone else.", How to Play Monopoly

Note : To TOC984, yes you can re-publish any of the articles here. I practice a no rights reserved policy.

Disloyal Tourist

2006-09-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

There is a typhoon coming and I am in a city that somehow, intuitively, I always associate with 70s Singapore though I have only quarter-formed memories of 70s Singapore. I step out of a noisy 70s restaurant where there are ash-trays on the tables, take out some tattered notes for a pack of cigs from an old lady peddling them out of a 70s style box, with Wrigleys and some other assortments. Including match-boxes. If this is 70s Singapore, is it like this? Perhaps along Boat Quay?

There is lots of rain, sometimes a fine drizzle, other times, tree-bending storms in the day and in the night. I am staring at this quaint hotel and it reminds me of quite a few Wong Kar Wai movies. It strikes me, perhaps my memories of 70s Singapore, memories I don't possess, is mediated by the 70s noir of WKW's movies. where does this 70s feel come from? In Mee Pok Man, Singapore Dreaming, 15, 4.30, the movie-makers search for this 70s feel; almost invariably at Tiong Bahru with those first generation low HDB flats and their circular stair-wells.

When you search the history books for 1970s, you are told its a period of movements, resettlements and displacements. In Hokkien, they term this period of displacement as "Chu Keok Lai Kuar Chu", which literally means authorities are chasing people out of their houses. In history books, it reads as demolishing squatter settlements and re-settling inhabitants in brand new housing estates. The National Housing Programme.

There is not much more of the 1970s I can remember except perhaps the National Theatre and the National Aquarium inside. It was dark and cold and had very colorful aquariums.

Tonight, I am standing on this little balcony of a Hainanese hotel looking into a drizzling street where there are many motor-cycles, taxis, tricycles and bicycles. Smoking and thinking that this is 70s Singapore when I have no recollection of the 70s. It is really odd. How does it feel in 70s Singapore? Was there greater anticipation, more hope, more belief in opportunities, in the possibility of change? It had to be more noisy, less efficient, less stream-lined, less neat ... but the atmosphere? Is it like this? A slight buzz, something more charged.

It could have been the conversation I had in the afternoon with an old friend. Over a bowl of steaming rice noodles, looking out into a charming wet courtyard. He is a Singaporean and has been here for 15 years. He used to run a very profitable medium sized company in Singapore. Until a GLC squeezed him out of the market. Since then, he has not looked back; he tells me simply : "there are more possibilities here". Singapore is only a place to park money. That’s all. A massive parking lot for money.

He is not even looking for probability. Just possibility. And it drives him, makes him happy, keeps him satisfied. You don't really have to ask him about going back. Its just an unnecessary question.

Wanted to write about LKY and the banning of FEER. But they are old news really in new Singapore. The myth-making of racial marginalisation and the relative merits of Singapore's meritocratic system was systematically addressed and articulately critiqued in Dr Lily Zubaidah's seminal book, The Singapore Dilemma, years back. Publications, whether foreign or local, in Singapore are banned, restricted whenever OB markers are crossed. What is really new in new Singapore? If you are not in the ruling party, anything racial is construed as time-bombs and the racial riot specter is invoked. If you are not in the ruling party, any critical political commentary is deemed interference and treasonous.

Over here in a this city that is not Singapore, where I recall memories of 70s Singapore which I do not possess, I feel a bit elated somehow. Strangely distant from the events in new Singapore. In this constructed and imagined remembrance of old Singapore. A feeling more personal and stirring of things possible and thinking possible. Maybe its the reason why writers used to go to Singapore, downing a few Slings at the Long Bar and start writing their novels. Wonder what has happened now; where do writers go for inspiration, for possibilities.

Why go back and write about old news when there is something intangibly more promising in this imagined Singapore of the 70s where change seems so much more possible even though its a bit noisy, a bit chaotic. Except that I am betraying this city. A disloyal tourist, a disloyal visitor. Recalling the name of a lover you never had, in front of her.

Rain is getting heavier now. The last time they had a typhoon here, over two hundred people died. Preparations seem much better this time round. Most people are fairly sanguine, unpredictability is part of their lives. And it is quite fine.

Quote of the Day --

"I am she who asks what walks upon four legs at sunrise, upon two at noon and upon three at evening. And all who cannot answer me, at evening die ... In the morning of life, a young man goes forth as though mounted, because he is carried on the shoulders of his parents. By midday, their support has vanished, and he must walk by himself. In the evening of life, he can hold up his head only because he is supported by the memory of what once he was." -- Latro in the Mist, Gene Wolfe

Our Differences

2006-09-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

"They must, instead, stay and make a difference."

To make a difference. To make a difference. Must make a difference. Must. Stay. Difference.

I am brought back to one of my earlier entries. Very early entry. About making a difference. "What do you want to do when you go back? Why ... to make a difference, of course." To make a difference.

Define difference. How can difference surface in Singapore?

"What was important, he said, was not so much the medium used." "What you really need is also not just the medium but to be on the same wavelength as the young people, to know what the young people are concerned about and to be able to talk to them so that they connect, their concerns, their issues"

The medium is everything. The medium is the newspapers. The medium is in civil society. The medium is in music. The medium is in art. The medium is in film. The medium is everything; for difference to be made, to be noticed, to be effective. To signal, to hope, to dream. But when all the mediums are licensed and all have invisible and shifting OB markers and all operate in an environment of imminent censorship ... how can difference be born? How can difference prosper? How can difference be heard. And ultimately, how can difference be made?

If these mediums are tuned only to reflect concerns and issues deemed acceptable, than how can these mediums enable connection? How will difference be known? How can difference surface? How can difference be made? The truth is this. In Singapore, is there space to accept difference or only acceptable difference?

How about stopping the political victimisation of residents in Hougang and Potong Pasir for a start? How about giving these Singaporeans parity in a National programme? That is difference. Palpable difference.

To make difference, you need to be free from fear. Not only the citizens. But more importantly, the government, the ruling party, the authorities. It is these institutions which need to be free from fear. To stop fearing that Singaporeans are on the brink of revolt, that Singaporeans are plotting riots at every opportunity. When these institutions should be fearing that Singaporeans just do not care. Provide the housing, provide the infrastructure and thats enough. They do not care beyond the infrastructures. There is no Singapore in their minds, only infrastructures.

While those who care, leave. Those who imagine, leave. Finding more space elsewhere to make a difference. Space, space, space. Thats what you need to make a difference. To create difference.

Where are we? Back to the same unfulfilled promises.

How can a young Singaporean, with access to the world via a click, be obliged, to stay, to make a difference when she knows that difference is not there for the making? How much more courage does the State demand when the young can see for themselves what happens when difference is made in Singapore? Its not even Chee, just look at Seelan of the 400 Frowns. Just look at Mr Brown. How much more courage is demanded to stay, to make a difference?

No. There is no obligation for the young to stay and make a difference when there is no space to accept difference but only acceptable difference. There is no obligation to stay and make a difference when difference has no medium to flourish. There is no obligation to stay and make a difference when fear cripples difference. There is no obligation when difference is not free.

For some its better to just run. As if they had a choice. They hear another voice. Its louder and they are running for their lives. To a place where there are lights, lights and not only empty spaces, empty vassals.

They are running to make a difference.

Manufracturing Consent

2006-09-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

You wake up in the middle of a coup and the first thing that hits you is that its so quiet. Hushed. Tense. A voice on the phone which seems more distant, telling you "today not same yesterday, more better if you go north, you go tomorrow". You peer through the window onto streets which are empty. Straining to make out the tanks in the intersection a distance away. Everyone is like you, waiting, watching, wondering and wary in the beginning.

Perhaps it is what Bakunin terms as the "instinct to freedom", but people cannot stay cooped for long. Its always the children isn't it? They venture first. Tentatively onto the streets, Staring at the tanks and the guns and the yellow scarved soldiers. When the child walks, the mothers will follow. And a mother walks up to the soldier. A flower in hand, an offer of peace, perhaps hope. The soldier smiles, accepts the flower and partakes in this moment of peace, perhaps hope.

With this gesture, the empty street fills slowly. People step out from their hiding places. Its less quiet, less tense and some semblance of life is restored.

The people are happy. The bigger evil, Thaksin is gone. A little bit uneasy perhaps of the way he went, but still happy nonetheless. For there is the King still, the revered personification of Grace, who allowed this. The people are happy because the King is with Them, and they are with the King.

In my previous entry, there was some distaste at the notion of Singaporeans, in the shadows. Waiting. Commenters' fear its for Godot, we wait. And while we wait and tarry, people are leaving, one after another. There was some frustration, helplessness, resignation and well-placed anger even. And I agree with these sentiments. We can only wait because we have no King, no Messiah, no Saviour. And it may be some time for we could have possibly used up our quota of great leaders for a while yet.

I once made my way, in one of those freezing winters of NYC to attend a talk by Noam Chomsky in Greenwich. He is one of the few great living thinkers left in our crazy world today. It was in a small auditorium, crowded with leftists, anarchists, conservatives, liberals, intellectuals, intelligentsia, even hacktivists. Everyone rooted to Chomsky, a MIT professor emeritus in linguistics, rambling in his monotone. He was talking about Hume's Paradox in which, any society, the population always submits to the rulers, even though force is always in the hands of the governed. Be it democratic or not. He explained that submission is gained not through a social contract, but through a manufacture of consent. Manufactured.

Chomsky was talking about and critiquing the US sytem of governance, especially in its foreign policy.

In an entry, Singapore Central, I talked about resistance, what it means, what it can be, in the Singapore context. Its about accretion, accreting resistance into the Singapore consciousness until the moment of possiblities arrive. It could be an election period. It could be at other junctions in Time when change and disjunctures present themselves. No matter. But it is only though this accretion, that we can recognise the moment or monad in Time when "change is in the air", when History is in the making. To be able to recognise the moment is important because we lost that when the Government dulled our creative spirit and de-politicised us. We retain Bakunin's "instinct to freedom" but we have no way to act upon it.

But to accrete is slow. At times, the system will crush you. I too have said previously : it is okay to go. To run. To leave. Especially in today's world. As the visitors to this blog attests, even those who left, remain somehow for those left. We are frustrated, angry even, only when we think we are fighting alone. We have to nurture the instinct to freedom, with each other, for one another.

Remember this : force is always in the hands of the governed.

And our role is to accrete this. Then we will know when to manufracture our consent. When to refuse to buy what they manufacture. Because these moments do not come by every day.

Remember too : the coup was bloodless only when the soldier accepted the flower from the mother.

Quote of the Day --

"Whether the instinct for freedom is real or not, we do not know. If it is, history teaches that it can be dulled, but has yet to be killed. The courage and dedication of people struggling for freedom, their willingness to confront extreme state terror and violence, is often remarkable. There has been a slow growth of consciousness over many years and goals have been achieved that were considered utopian or scarcely contemplated in earlier eras. An inveterate optimist can point to this record and express the hope that with a new decade, and soon a new century, humanity may be able to overcome some of its social maladies; others might draw a different lesson from recent history. It is hard to see rational grounds for affirming one or the other perspective. As in the case of many of the natural beliefs that guide our lives, we can do no better than to choose according to our intuition and hopes.

The consequences of such a choice are not obscure. By denying the instinct for freedom, we will only prove that humans are a lethal mutation, an evolutionary dead end; by nurturing it, if it is real, we may find ways to deal with dreadful human tragedies and problems that are awesome in scale." -- Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy

In the End,

2006-09-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

In the end, the sunflowers did not really die, the Cenotaph is still enclosed and many groups of people are unhappy over this event hosted in Singapore. The guests are not happy, the hosts are also less than pleased, local activists remain immobilised and the foreign activists keep their heads high and their beliefs intact.

So the 4 million smiles did not really materialise and ironically, the 400 frowns became the more honest campaign, a more prophetic campaign.

The Prime Minister makes his grand speech of embracing globalisation in front of the world and the foreign media is at a sidewalk giving air-time to a bankrupted politician who has not taken a bath for three days.

No one's really happy isn't it?

The pre-hype surrounding the IMF/WB meeting suggested such a flurry of people, a host of activities, a sense of humanity and color and celebration. All we see is really a dominant motif of empty spaces. Empty fleets of Mercedes cabs. Empty meeting rooms filled with elegant white-draped chairs. Empty demonstration site. Emptiness except for barricades, sunflowers and policemen.

With due respect to Dr Chee and his SDP coterie, the Empower Singaporeans Rally also became an empty event really. No arrests (yet), trickling groups of sympathetic Singaporeans, lots of foreign media hungry for some action, any action. But so too, like the hyped Meetings, this event also emptied of significance eventually; to such an extent that what was previously a restricted act of handing out flyers by the group became now suddenly, permissible.

In the end really, the question to be asked is really, where are the people? The humanity for these empty spaces, to fill this spaces with meaning, with relevance?

While cinemas are filled with Singaporeans watching Singapore Dreaming, there is no one watching this movie, Singapore Reality. Perhaps it is because in Dreaming, Singaporeans are closer to the truth in their existence than in Reality. Perhaps they have watched Reality so many times, they are just tired, jaded from watching the same script, the same story, the same technical glitches occur again and again. Its not even a bad sequel. Its a repeat telecast.

And so all these empty spaces flourish in their protected and enclosed environment and this spatial emptiness leeches away the significance of the Event(s), to the extent that they become empty events too. Devoid of meaning. This is perhaps the reason why everyone is not really happy. From HDTV, to colour TV, to black and white and ultimately just white noise to an empty cinema hall, empty living room. No one is watching, no one is here. They are elsewhere.

Two SingaporeAngle entries provide contrasting viewpoints on whether or not there is a "crisis" to singapore's reputation from hosting this WB/IMF event. Both entries miss the point somewhat. The crisis is not really about "reputations" or our "image". The crisis is really about the empty spaces and all their attendant associations. The strong and the powerful will and can always play their games, spin their songs, tell their stories, lay their laws. Its whether there is anyone really listening, who really care. People who will fill up these empty spaces and give meaning.

Empty spaces are an absence. And that is the danger. That is the crisis. And maybe, if through this fiasco of hosting the WB/IMF, that this absence comes into the glaring light, it is not such an abject failure after all. Because, I do know, all of you silent readers, as you absorb, as you think, you can only envision something different, something less absent.

I originally wanted to end this entry with the question : where are you, Singaporean? Then I saw that everyone is there. Just waiting. In the shadows. In little groups, searching for the sunflowers. Encircling the cenotaph. Hovering at the edges of Hong Lim. Waiting to fill the absence.

Quote of the Day --

"In one poem, an old woman paces the hollow, thumping the floorboards of her house late at night, unable to sleep. then she hears the laughter of a child. She opens the door and sees only darkness, and calls out "Dodo?" ... outside her door is a town ... Creeping out of the darkness towards her and into the electric light come the tired faces of those long gone, men and women in plain dress, standing amid the new, not surprised, not confused or outraged. Simply standing." -- Geoff Ryman, Was

Hydra Wolf

2006-09-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

"It's a multi-headed Hydra with Paul Wolfowitz's face on every head." -- The Guardian

"there are some serious issues between us and the Red Cross about Guantanamo...[but] they have nothing to do with the kinds of abuses that we've been hearing about in Iraq." -- wolfowitz to the Red Cross

There was once a protest march in NYC. It remains the most amazing protest march for sheer numbers and the lack of violence. Hundreds of thousands filling the avenues of Manhattan, jammed on the Brooklyn Bridge, despite the cold winter, to register their protest against the war on Iraq. It was a protest against unilateral US-led action, in defiance of the UN, to invade Iraq. Popular sentiment against what was seen as an unjustified war. A fact clearly exposed when no WMDs were found in Iraq. It cost Tony Blair his last ounce of credibility. Bush Jr? Well, he is on his way out anyway.

Bush and Blair are the most obvious targets of ridicule. But for the ignominious War on Terrorism to fully crank, they need soldiers. Good soldiers like Mr Paul Wolfowitz, who is currently in Singapore as World Bank President, and the de facto Champion of civil society. It is ironic to the extreme how a wolf can change his skin into a sheep so quickly. Fortunately, for most of the civil society groups against the IMF/WB, they know the Wolf for who he is. They know that his Championing for them against the authoritarian Singaporean government is but a sham. Thats why the calls persist to boycott the IMF/WB by the CSOs. They know a hypocrite when they see one.

Paul Wolfowitz was the Deputy Secretary of Defence in the crucial aftermath of Sep 11 2001. He was the man brought in for the War on Terror. He headed a special intelligence unit known as the Office Special Plans which has been accused of cherry picking intelligence to justify the war on Iraq. He is acknowledged as the most hawkish of Bush soldiers for the war on Iraq. He has admitted that plans to invade Iraq were already discussed just two days after Sep 11. He was the one who sanctioned and built Guantanamo, a modern day gulag, perhaps even more brutal than those of the Soviets. He was heading the oxymoron Military Intelligence. He probably supplied the C-130s which ferried Islamic militants to East European farmsteads for summary trials and imprisonment in Guantanamo. In his governance of the Pentagon, he was as authoritarian as his policies. He was the good soldier. When he was sent into the Pentagon, he knew what role he had to assume. So long civil liberties, say yes to militarism. Invasion of Afghanistan? Approved. Operation Infinite Justice. War against Iraq? Lets go. Operation Enduring Freedom. Sending his precision lasers across the deserts hunting for Osama. Innocent casualties? Its war baby. We call them collaterals. Infinite Justice and Enduring Freedom, because of good soldiers like Wolfowitz, war is now a norm and a routine.

So Wolfowitz calls Singapore authoritarian? Putting this distance between himself and these authoritarian Singaporeans. Its bullshit. Mr Wolfowitz is as authoritarian as the Singapore Government. Make no mistake about that. If he is told to head the CIA tomorrow, he would lease Singapore for Guantanamo II, the unseen resort. That is his mien.

And now Wolfowitz is World Bank head? To lend money, a helping hand to countries which he personally OK-ed the razing of? You destroy a country and now you come in as banker to develop them? To create the next Osama? That is hypocrisy too.

But Wolfowitz has better spin sense. He is an American after all. He has mildly but surely pushed the Singapore Government into a corner. He has placed himself in the corner of the CSOs. Helping them. Facilitating them. Fighting for those who were banned. Claiming the moral victory when he is as guilty as the host country. As guilty, but he has manouevred himself well. Shows that he is a bigger hawk. A smarter hawk, a more deceptive hawk. He is teaching the Singaporean authoritarians how to be smiling tigers.

This is what the paralysed Singapore government cannot say now. Because it has effectively gagged itself with its vow of welcome. Come on Ms Bhavani, why not have a Commandment Release now? To tick this wolfowitz off? Or is your perogative merely to crush little Singaporeans at the behest of your Minister? Where is the Government's spin? Wolfowitz is dancing now, beyond the abilities of the Singapore Government to follow. Any pre-arranged dance with regard the CSOs is now slightly skewed. Wolfowitz is blowing the pipes and we are following in the hood. The Government is outspun because Wolfowitz is siding with the CSOs, something the Government totally did not expect as evinced in its paralytic handling of the CSO issue. Wolfowitz has saved his face and outplayed Singapore in the face game. Perhaps the Government should have let the 400 Frowns Campaign persist. But the Government's inaction is to be expected. He is the master authoritarian after all.

Quotes of the Day --

"The first thing that strikes the lay student of military commissions is the enormous power vested in the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the commissions' 'appointing authority'. The judges - seven in a capital case - are appointed by Wolfowitz. Any judge can be substituted up to the moment of verdict, by Wolfowitz. The military prosecutors are chosen by Wolfowitz. The suspects they charge, and the charges they make, are determined by Wolfowitz. All defendants are entitled to a military defence lawyer, from a pool chosen by Wolfowitz. The defendants are entitled to hire a civilian lawyer, but they have to pay out of their own funds, and by revealing where the funds are, they risk having them seized on suspicion of their being used for terrorist purposes, on the order of Wolfowitz. Defendants need not lose heart completely if convicted. They can appeal, to a panel of three people, appointed by Wolfowitz. When it has made its recommendation, the panel sends it for a final decision to Wolfowitz ... And Wolfowitz's role? 'It's right out of the Mikado, isn't it... the government has created something as close to being hermetically sealed as the human mind is capable of creating." The Guardian, Dec 3 2003

The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me." Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!". "All the better to hug you with, my dear." "Grandmother, what big legs you have!" "All the better to run with, my child." "Grandmother, what big ears you have!" "All the better to hear with, my child." "Grandmother, what big eyes you have!" "All the better to see with, my child." "Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!" "All the better to eat you up with." And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up. -- Little Red Riding Hood, Charles Perrault

BloodFlowers

2006-09-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

For one of my favourite bloggers Mr Wang, I will write about flowers today. It appears that the flowers that were forcibly planted into the soil around Suntec City are dying. They are not acclimatised to Singapore weather. They droop and wilt under the intense gaze of the sun in our little tropical paradise. The flowers had a noble role; they were supposed to be the beautiful backdrop to our collaged smiles. To welcome those important delegates into Suntec City. Its a pity. Probably with alittle more time, a little more water, these flowers could have taken root and thrived in Suntec City. Become permanent denizens of the place. Instead, these imported flowers have fulfilled their duties, blazed their beauty and left to die.

I am always reminded of PM Lee's maiden National Day Rally speech. This was the portion that so caught the fascination of Singaporeans, that actually instilled a sense of belief that change was in the air :

"We also need, as a government, to encourage participation and debate. We have opened up over the years, we've got a Speakers' Corner, we've allowed a lot more discussion, if you read the newspapers, what the newspapers write, the columnists and the Forum page writers. The degree of debate is much more than we used to have, or in Parliament. But I think we can go further ... Once in a while, Think Centre says they want to go to the Speakers' Corner and they want to plant 100 flowers there, let the hundred flowers bloom.

Well, I think go ahead. They want to water the flowers, go ahead. They want to turn the flowers down, go ahead. I mean, free expression as long as you don't get into race and religion and don't start a riot. It's a signal that speak, speak your voice, be heard, take responsibility for your views and opinions.

As a society also, we have to be forward-looking. I ask some young people what they would like me to say tonight. And one of them said this: Be forward-looking. Don't let elders deter you by saying it cannot be done or scare you with war stories. Maybe I was telling him war stories because I know him. I agree that you shouldn't be scared by your elders but I think you should listen to them, think carefully what their lessons mean in this new day and age and then use those lessons to avoid unnecessary mistakes and solve problems our way today.

But we have to be prepared to accept the diversity of views and to listen to the debate and to have this discussion always with a view to moving Singapore forward." -- ND Rally 2004

And when the flowers are blooming, as the flowers are of a different color, a different slant, they are wilted under the gaze of the sun. Apparently, Mr 400 Frowns has been arrested. Recently, Mr Brown was removed of his job as a columnist. As the flowers wilt and die around Suntec City, there is always the solution of bringing in more flowers to displace these failed ones. To make Suntec City sunny again. Beautiful as always.

And sometimes, I can only think. Think why, when we are so close to that moment, that hinge, that glimpse of possibility of promises realised, that opportunity of change, for change, the hopes are unhinged. Nothing ever really changes. The song remains the same. The promises remain as relics of hope-possible. The promises are deferred.

"This dream never ends" you said

"This feeling never goes

The time will never come to slip away"

"This wave never breaks" you said

"This sun never sets again

These flowers will never fade"

"This world never stops" you said

"This wonder never leaves

The time will never come to say goodbye"

"This tide never turns" you said

"This night never falls again

These flowers will never die"

Perhaps only Mr Wang noticed that the poor flowers are dying, he does have a poetic soul. Or it could be that others also do see the sorry state of the flowers but they just keep the sadness in their hearts. Telling themselves that one day, they will go to a place where the flowers will really bloom eternal. Because they cannot really wait for the promises to be realised any more. Because they have seen and experienced too many broken promises. Too many close "what ifs". Because they have been disappointed again.

"This dream always ends" I said

"This feeling always goes

The time always comes to slip away"

"This wave always breaks" I said

"This sun always sets again

And these flowers will always fade"

"This world always stops" I said

"This wonder always leaves

The time always comes to say goodbye"

"This tide always turns" I said

"This night always falls again

And these flowers will always die"

And so the greatest show for Singapore begins now. S2006. Welcome IMF. Welcome WB. Welcome to singapore. Silence reigns, all is peaceful and secure. From the physical to the cultural, the Singapore landscape has been sculpted back to its paradise form again. again. and again. And for Singapore's happy citizens, it is back to their customary relationship with the Government :

Between you and me

It's hard to ever really know

Who to trust

How to think

What to believe

Between me and you

It's hard to ever really know

Who to choose

How to feel

What to do

Night has fallen again. The dying flowers will be replaced. They always will. Because Singapore must always be beautiful, is always beautiful. For we have to be beautiful so that Singapore can survive, so that Singapore can bloom. There is no other way and so You say. And so You gave me flowers of hope and I let fall flowers of blood.

Song of the Day : "Bloodflowers", The Cure

For the Cenotaph

2006-09-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Singapore Zoological Gardens is lauded as one of the most enlightened zoos in the world. Its denizens are housed in enclosures which replicate their natural habitats. The entire layout of the zoo is modelled like nature. Its a giant enclosure with little or no cages. Its a giant enclosure, but yet, its very layout allows visitors to course through its lovely winding paths in relative safety. To see, to observe, to marvel to judge the wild creatures languishing in their little homes. The conceptual nature of the zoo itself, the notion of enclosure, has been masked. Rendered into a more benign, softer layout. Soothing and tranquil. Natural nature. The zoo usually posits that its enclosures are a form of protection. To keep the animals in. But enclosures are not so simple. As they keep the animals in, they keep people out as well. As they protect the people outside, so too the enclosure protects the animals within.

We have to understand enclosures. The power to enact enclosures. And the rationale of enclosures.

Its like concentration camps. Little is known of the juriprudence that underlies Hitler's enactment of the camps. Enclosures to house and kill the Jews. But there was juriprudence and there were official legal decrees which justified the enactment of the camps. The Nazi state enacted its sovereign right to the body of the Jews and in the name of protection, brought them into the camps. It was a State of Emergency which laid the legal mandate for 12 years of Night.

Near and around Suntec City, there is a Cenotaph. it is a monument for the war dead. It too has been enclosed. Made into an enclosure. The rationale is that the Cenotaph and the area around it must be protected. Danger must be kept out of the Cenotaph and its environs. This is a funny enclosure. Because it is not the Cenotaph that is endangered, but the danger the Cenotaph and its environs represent by its proximity to Suntec City. It represents a danger, in the sense that it is a "natural" gathering point for would-be IMF protesters, and hence, it is enclosed. Made into an enclosure. Caged for the danger that the space of the Cenotaph represents during this time.

To understand why the space of the Cenotaph represents danger by its proximity to Suntec City, we trace the source of this danger. The Cenotaph becomes a danger only because Suntec City itself is now an enclosure. It too has been enclosed by tall reinforced steel fences. And its enclosure is to protect those inside it and to keep out those who should not be inside Suntec City. Those who are kept out are the Danger. Because they are kept out from the Suntec City enclosure, they then endanger the Cenotaph and the space around it. Thats why the Cenotaph has become an enclosure too.

There is another enclosure within Suntec City. A smaller enclosure within the large enclosure meant to keep people out of Suntec city. Its the 18 by 4 enclosure to house accredited protesters. This enclosure is like an exhibit. To house those of different opinion. To cage difference from those who are caged within the larger enclosure that is Suntec City. Unlike the Cenotaph enclosure which is to cage a space, this enclosure is meant to cage difference and the danger that difference represents.

And around all these enclosures, enacted for various diverse reasons under vague signifiers like terrorism, security, danger, safety, are the wardens. The coppice-men. Patrolling the enclosures. Ensuring those which are in are in, those which are out are out and those which are empty spaces stay empty. Patrols who are supposed to understand the rationale of the different enclosures around Suntec City. Patrols who surveill and judge. Deciding your right of existing on that space, which has been enclosed and protected.

It is a slippery slope. Even though we do not consciously feel the implications the presence such enclosures bring. Yet.

All these enclosures enacted almost overnight. Enacted by Police authority. Enacted in the name of a Security Operation. Enacted by the powers invested into the Singapore Sovereign. The Government. The enclosures are enacted as a security routine.

And we carry on with our lives because we know these enclosures are really only temporary. A temporary inconvenience.

But what of the Cenotaph? Enclosed not because it is dangerous, not because it is different? It is enclosed, imprisoned merely for existing in a space which has an inferred danger, of which stems from another enclosure close by. It is enclosed for its association by space. Simple.

But it is a merely a Cenotaph after all. Devoid of feeling, without rights. The Cenotaph cannot be angry. Perhaps it enjoys this period of being caged. Because it has possibly become a master. The patrols outside its enclosure surveill it constantly. Slaves who protect it with their Gaze of authority.

There is a short story by Kafka titled "der Bau" which narrates the story of a nameless creature. The creature is building a burrow. It is paranoid about the secruity of its burrow. It is to be a perfect burrow. Safe and secure from all. In the end, the burrow is perfected into an inescapable enclosure. There is no entry. And no escape.

We really do have to understand enclosures. The right to enact enclosures. The legalities behind it. The implications to you, to me, as citizens, when enclosures are built. Or we could be like the Cenotaph, just retreating into its dreams of a glorious memories it is supposed to consecrate.

Quote of the Day --

"Today we face extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. In the course of a gradual neutralization of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security becomes the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several definitive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterium of political legitimation ... The thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terroristic." -- Agamben, G (2001) “Heimliche Komplizen. Über Sicherheit und Terrer”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No 219, 20. September 2001

Schizophrenic Smilies

2006-09-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

It is amusing to observe all the shennanigans leading up to the IMF/WB meetings. We have had PETA actvists dramatically tracked down by their cellphone signals and deported. We have had activists invited by the IMF/WB who are turned away under the vague banner of terrorism. While the world press and media have been reporting on the "rebuke" issued by IMF/WB to the host country Singapore over the barring of the accredited activists, local press have reported on the praise levelled by the IMF/WB for Singapore's role in planning the seminar programme for the meeting.

Schizophrenic signals bouncing around the world.

Lets get a few things straight. Singapore has always been a blind spot to international organisations whether deliberate or not.

On the one hand, in the world of civil society activism, Singapore's track record has been poor indeed. whether it pertains to media freedom or individual rights, Singapore has never quite escaped the tag "authoritarian".

On the other hand however, Singapore is held up as paragon of successful economic development. Pro-business and forward looking in its appreciation of Capitalism's necessity. These conflicting signals jostle for space when someone tries to understand Singapore. The essential paradox which many Westerners cannot really understand, because in their minds, a successful political state cannot be divorced from a free society. It has been ingrained into their psyches and philosophies.

This is the fundamental mistake committed by the IMF/WB. They looked the other way despite all the signals pointing to them that their meeting in Singapore will not enjoy freedom for the part of their entourage which are the CSOs. The CSO entourage are, in the eyes of the Singapore Government, a ship of fools, meant to be kept as far as possible from exciting Singaporeans in Singapore.

The IMF/WB chose to ignore Singapore's poor track record with regard to civil society activism. This is why the "rebuke" issued by the IMF/WB to Singapore for barring its accredited activists must be taken with a large dose of salt. The WB has an office here. It has paid employees residing in Singapore. That these employees did not see that Singapore will never budge on issues of political expression is simply hard to believe. The WB representative's claim that he was blind-sided at the last minute by the government's tough stance against activists, suggests an utter failure to appreciate the ground that is Singapore. Such expatriates should really read more widely on what other more enlightened expatriates see and witness that is Singapore's political track record.

In this sense then, the "rebuke" by the IMF/WB is unfair to the host country Singapore. By and large, this failure by international organisations like the IMF/WB to truly appreciate the depth of the Government's totalistic political control is symptomatic of the world's perception of Singapore. The country has perfected totalistic control to an art form that is unparalleled. For any percentage of nay-sayers to Singapore, you can find an equal percentage of yes-men to the political systme that is Singapore. For all its niggling failures, there are dramatic success stories to smooth over the cracks of the system. For all the simmering unhappiness there is still enough smiles to tide the country into the future. Singapore can be seen as paradise and hell at the same time. But most times, international organisations like the IMF/WB tend to see Singapore only as a paradise. They see its economic success. They see its stability and security. They see its pro-West stance. They get lulled into the belief that the Singapore smile is truly genuine. They are tricked by Singapore's prettier Twin.

Convenient facades. Behind the pretty smile is a schizophrenic political nature. When issues like drug trafficking or political expression slip to the surface, the other ruthless side of Singapore's political system comes into the limelight. The Ugly Twin rears its head. The country will never budge when such "political" issues are surfaced. Ask the Australians. The smile turns into a sneer. Paradise turns into hell. Transparency gets clouded over. Mules get hanged.

The Singapore Government, since being awarded hosting status for the IMF/WB meetings, has stated clearly and unequivocally that it will take a hardline stance against IMF/WB protesters. In numerous "signals" sent out via the press, it has refused to accept the IMF/WB's stance that civil society is part of the entourage, part of the guests. And the IMF/WB did not heed these signals. they were still lulled by that other "softer and prettier" Twin of Singapore. The Twin that seduces all the foreign investments, all the foreign businesses.

There was no fait accompli by the Singapore Government as the IMF/WB is trying to suggest now to appease its CSOs. It was just a failure by the IMF/WB to open it eyes and see that Singapore is a modern day perfection of the Foucaldian system of political control. To look beyond that beguiling schizophrenic smile.

Quote of the Day --

" If he is disobeyed, punishment must immediately ensure ... The physician could exercise his absolute authority in the world of the asylum only insofar as, from the beginning, he was Father and Judge, Family and Law." -- Foucault, Madness & Civilization

Entangled Contracts

2006-09-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

There is a very convenient way of analysing politics in Singapore. It is what most 101 undergraduates studying political science will be exposed to. It is a seductive way of intellectualising political discourse vis-a-vis Singapore. I am talking about the fabled "Social Contract". That between governance and the governed, there is an implicit social contract where rights of freedom are willingly given over by the governed to governance in exchange for security and stability.

Social contract theory draws its roots from democracy theory founders like Hobbes, Locke and Rosseau and to a certain extent, JS Mill. It has been used to explain and justify the evolution and establishment of liberal democratic systems of governance. At its base, social contract pre-supposes certain assumptions of human morality, or more accurately, human excesses which require limits in the form of governance; albeit an enlightened form of governance under democracy. There are lengthy theoretical disputes regarding social contract theory, this entry skirts them all. Let focus instead and place the Singapore Social Contract under scrutiny.

What is the Singapore Social Contract? Since young, we have been drummed with explanations that Singapore is what it is today because of the economic miracle. For this economic miracle to be achieved, the Singaporean gives up some of his liberties such that Singapore can be rendered stable and secure for its Economy to continue growing. But it is not one-way, the Government guarantees that you will have an education, affordable housing and adequate social services. So that is the Social Contract much simplified. If conditions are met, the Contract and its terms are renewed every four years when Singaporeans go to the polls to decide. The election is a manifestation of Contract renewal. Extending the lease.

Underlying this Social Contract are the assumptions. The assumptions of what will happen if the contract fails. If people do not honour this Contract. Quite simply, the social fabric of Singapore will tear apart. What we know of as Singapore will cease to exist. Our small size, our fragile social harmony will all disappear once the Contract ceases. The Hobbesian spectre of war of All Against All will prevail in Singapore. At the same time, the economic miracle of Singapore will burst. No more growth. No more money. In the Singapore context, only the PAP has exclusive rights to the Social Contract. This has been reiterated time and again. Any other Contract offered to Singaporeans are time-bombs. Scary indeed. Hence, the Contract, manifested as that piece of paper which Constitutes Singapore, the Constitution, has to be treasured. Held sacrosanct for our survival. And us Singaporeans as signatories based on that plactic card, identifying our citizenship, which we call an NRIC, give our acquiescence to take away some of our liberties so that there will be no time-bombs, no wars of All Against All.

But what if the social contract is just a figment of the imagination? What if social contract theory is just a very attractive theoretical grounding to justify systems of dominance? What if the social contrat is an over-determined term? What if, there is no such thing as a social contract in Singapore? That the two words are but empty signifiers devoid of contextual association to time and space? Do we dare think beyond this.

Its only a thought experiment. Lets suppose that there is no such thing as a social contract. Lets consider this possibility : social contract theory was especially attractive during the early years of Singapore's existence, because then, the threats were much closer than now. There were the racial riots. The Cold War was on. Wars in vietnam, in Afghanistan were realities close by. So based on social contract theory, Singaporeans then should have most willingly gave up their liberties in exchange for the security provided by dynamic PAP. But something is not right here. Singaporeans then did fight for their liberties. Singaporeans fought against the imposition of language policies. Singaporeans fought against forced closures of newspapers. Singaporeans fought against forced resettlement. They fought against conscription into National Service. They all lost. But the Government was proved right. Their policies were indeed successes, at a social cost surely, but still successes.

Than we look at today. Where we are still asked to compromise some of our liberties for continued economic stability and security. But surely, the pre-suppositions of an all out war of All Against All can no longer be held up as a justification in today's context? It cannot be held up as resolutely as in the past. but then what of dissent, how do we challenge this pre-supposition? This leads us to the ultimate clincher of the fabled Singapore Social Contract if we look at this logically. By giving up the liberties at the outset, when we "signed" the Contract, we have become toothless to resist each new Social Contract presented every four years. We gave up our liberties remember? thats too simplistic an argument. More accurately, from that starting point of a Social Contract, we signed away the institutions to challenge the Social Contract effectively. There is no break contract clause in the Social Contract. It is illegal and unlawful. It is commonly termed as Revolution. So we are at a point of the Contract where if governance is doing well, we reward them with another contract. If Governance is not doing well, than the assumed Chaos predicates that we sign the same Contract. Chichken and egg? Not even that. There is only the Contract.

The Social Contract in Singapore is a myth. There has never been a social contract. It is but a theory, albeit an attractive one, to justify perpetual political dominance. Until we understand and get it ingrained in us, that there is no social contract in Singapore, it will be impossible to imagine fundamental changes in Singapore. Even foreign observers like the Financial Times slips into this conundrum too as seen in its latest report on Social Contract in Singapore under strain. There is no social contract in Singapore. There is only a political party, a Government machinery and social institutions which have become utterly and incestuously entangled in the governance of Singapore. So entangled that each cannot see a means of survival as independent entities which they rightly are.

Quote of the Day

"The more visonary the idea, the more people it leaves behind. this is what the protest is all about. Visions of technology and wealth. The force of cyber-captial that will send people into the gutter to retch and die. What is the flaw of human rationality? It pretends not to see the horror and death at the end of the schemes it builds. This is a protest against the future. They want to hold off the future. They want to normalize it, keep it from overwhelming the present. The future is always a wholeness, a sameness. We're all tall and happy there. This is why the future fails. It always fails. It can never be the cruel happy place we want to make it." -- Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

The Battle of Toy

2006-09-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

Some imaginative reader over at Mr Wang imagines that Xenoboy, the Political Savant, is the alter ego of PAP youth Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. Minister Vivian is a good man. You can see it, he is a good man masquerading as a politician for a political party which is far too "pragmatic" and political for him. You can tell when he tried to reason that MM's dismissal of young Singaporeans after that torrid young Singaporean and MM interview session was not exactly correct.

But since we are diverted to Minister Vivian, I would like to talk about his recent call to the Young PAP to place recruitment on the top of the agenda. If I recall correctly, Minister Vivian himself was never part of the Young PAP. In fact, he was on the "other side", exploring alternative visions for Singapore until he was co-opted into the senior PAP and made a Minister in quick time. Now he heads the Young PAP and he wants to recruit. In his message to YP, he suggests that YP must accept those "like him", those "who had different ideas" just like how the senior PAP had accepted him despite his differing visions. This is the way to re-invent the YP. Let it stay young and hip and vibrant.

Let me offer my views. First, it is condescending to welcome those with differing visions into the YP if the intentions of YP is just to project the image that it is tolerant and willing to embrace "rebels". It is disgraceful and dishonest. While older people can use their world-weariness as justification to close half an eye to their co-optation, for any self-respecting young person, such a form of co-optation is commonly referred as selling out. Condescension to young Singaporeans is an insult. It fits exactly into MM Lee's cynical eyes that young Singaporeans will grow out of the phase. They will grow up wiser. They will end up like Vivians.

Second, for self-respecting young Singaporeans who are politically aware, who have fire and imagination, who are the creative forces which the Government desires so much, will never see the YP as an organisation that will challenge them. They would rather strike on their own, form their own young turk groups, even join the opposition parties. There will be more and more such young Singaporeans. This is happening, will happen more, given the way the world has turned today. They want their destinies in their own hands. Because they continually see that the PAP will never change its fundamentals and so they know that any attempt to cajole them into the YP ranks will lead to little if no change. These young Singaporeans have fires to burn and they will burn even if they hurt themselves, even if they end up jaded, even if they end up disillusioned. They do not want to burn in a safe and controlled environment within the confines of the YP. After this, then maybe, maybe some of these battle-hardened, grown-up Singaporeans may just throw in their lot with the senior PAP as Minister Vivian has done.

In line with XenoBoy consorting with exalted company is an entry by MercerMachine where Xenoboy shares a paragraph with Frederick the Great. (Note : Now that Neil Humphreys is gone, MercerMachine is the other ang moh dude you see hanging out in the HDB heartlands). While George Yeo is slumming it in cyberspace with tales of riding the MRT and visitng malls un-escorted, I find greater resonance reading entries/cartoons by this ang moh slumming it in the heartlands. There is a story to be made known about. Its a story of creative resistance, rhizomatic resistance. I once wrote a paper on it. I called it the Battle of Toy. When a movement was born in the Net. And the world played a game. A game with an army of toy soldiers to bring down a big bad bully who sold toys on the Internet. There are possibilities in interruptions, possibilities in counter-movements, possibilities in interstitial resistance. It requires, a belief, imagination and a fearlessness. All which the young have more than the average adult. Keywords are "etoy" "eToys".

And finally, in line with the theme of exalted company, XenoBoy finds himself with some very good blogs in some award thing. Vote for Mr Wang, Molly, Yawning Bread followed by ScrewySceptic and Popagandhi. For me, I would be most willing to give up this blog to Minister Vivian so that he can become a real alter-ego. He is a good man. He just needs to remember the fire, that fire.

Quote of the Day

"Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed
They're only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?" -- Nick Cave

Be-Longings

2006-08-31T03:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps in response to my earlier call for more subsistence Rallies, PM Lee is following up very quickly with a Teacher's Day Rally tonight. More emotional food for survival. Lets look into the crystal ball again and see just what might be broached tonight. Two related phrases :

National Education.

Connecting/Rooting the Young.

A week ago, the Education Ministry unveiled plans to revamp Singapore's National Education Program. In Singapore, when such revamps happen, it means the previous policy has been ineffective. It is just the media and Government's lexical habits to use words like "revamp" or "rethink" to signal this.

National Education is really a syllabus designed to tell Singaporean students about the Singapore Story.

The Great Story of Singapore's Construction. The success story. A paragon of Third World development. Intrinsically tied to the vision of one man, LKY and his political party, the PAP. The Singapore Story is one that broaches little dispute factually. Small country, no hinterland, no natural resources. Socially divided along ethnic religious lines. Politically located in a region of instability. From this template of desperation, the Singapore Story begins with all the massive programmes geared to lift us from doom. Industrialisation. Education. Socialisation. De-politicisation. In National Education, the necessary conclusion is that all these programmes were Successes. Indefatigable Logic based on facts, figures, numbers. Indefatigable Logic based on what you see around you today. The problems associated with these programmes, namely displacement, both spatially (think HDB re-location) and emotionally (think Nantah), are but little blips in the Singapore Story narrative, if you are lucky; more often than not, they do not even exist as blips. They are erased, forgotten. Because they are deemed inconsequential in the grand scheme to things.

Why revamp National Education then? To answer this question, we must understand the raison d'etre of NE. It creates the Singapore Story to instil in young Singaporeans respect for Singapore, respect for their citizenship and hopefully instils in them pride to be Singaporeans. If these conditions are met, than NE succeeds. If these conditions are met, then NE roots Singaporeans to Singapore. NE establishes you and me into the Singapore Story, we are part of the Narrative. Part of Singapore, part of Government, part of the PAP. We belong.

Except that we are seeing more Singaporeans leaving, less Singaporeans procreating and a younger set of Singaporeans who are Singapore Dreaming but dreaming in locations out of Singapore. So NE is not working out. We are supposed to belong. We belong, we belong together.

Hence, the revamp of NE. To make it stronger. To make you and me belong. To make me me again. Me in Singapore to be exact.

As Bhavani commanded, let me suggest something. Since we are revamping NE. Its time to approach the Singapore Story from another way, another angle. Rather than teach NE as an uninterrupted narrative of the Singapore Success, why don't we interrupt the narrative instead. Interruptions in the form of issues. Challenging issues. Excavate the silences of the forced displacement of Singaporeans to create the Housing Miracle. Excavate the silenced Chinese- educated generation who lost relevancy in one fell swoop when the Go English programme was launched. Excavate the stories of the lost kampungs in the seven lost islands which constitute Jurong Island today, sacrificed for our industrial edevelopment. Go listen to these excavations of our forgotten past. Listen to the alternative voices. David Marshall for example. Excavate the victory of JBJ in Anson. Excavate the story of Potong Pasir, the story of Hougang. Than confront these as issues in the Grand Singapore Narrative. Confront it head-on. Let the young Singaporeans decide. Allow them their empathies. Encourage them their queries. Let them excavate. Let them unearth truths, facts which have been forgotten or put on the wayside when the policy-makers scripted the Singapore Story.

But to do this we have to unravel NE itself. Because at the end of each NE lesson, each NE curriculum, there is a moral. There is a take-away. It is the determinism of NE in Singapore. That the Singapore Story is about perpetuating economic success through an emphasis on pragmatism, as defined by government. The institution that leads us all. The moral of NE is this. Place our trust in Government, its style of governance and it will lead us to the Promised Land as it has led us to here and today. Entangled somewhere in that lexical moral compass is the PAP. Pointing us to the future. Determined Futures. We belong.

If NE continues with that moral compass, it will always self defeat itself. And we will witness another revamp in 5 years. Because that Determined Future is increasingly blurred by how the world is connected today as it is always deferred by the NE curriculum.

But without that moral compass than it is no longer National Education isn't it? So do we want to truly unravel the NE syllabus? Or is this revamp but another jazzing up of the syllabus, to make it more hip and happening; a Singapore Story blog? So ask yourselves, script-writers of Singapore Story II, when you pen the story ... do you stay as Althuserrian state apparati or do you wish to really solve the problem? So ask yourself, PM Lee, do you dare trust young Singaporeans to really think and develop that potential for rootedness? Yuo cannot root anyone to a piece of land, but you can only develop that potential, leaving that choice ultimately to the individual. Can you do that? Can you take that political risk and give that choice to the individual? We long.

Or do you trod the well trodden path of choosing for us? Even when the world as it is is today tells you that your continued hold on that mandate of choice is illusory. Because youths are dreaming disconnected, Singaporeans have left, are leaving, will leave? And you are left with only those Singaporeans who depend utterly on you, because you have taken away every choice they have. They are left only with You :

"They will turn to you, because you're all they have. They will love you even while they despise you. They will trust you even though they know you well. They will vote for you even as you squeeze the very breathe from their bodies. They will drink what you give them to drink. They will breathe what you give them to breathe. They will live where you dump their belongings. They have to. What else can they do? There's no higher court of redress. You are their mother and their father. You are the judge and the jury. You are the World. You are God."

Is this really what you want? Because this is what your system of governance has engineered us towards. Strip to its bare naked truth, this is where the road of your governance leads to.

If this is not what you want, than lets revamp the NE syllabus indeed. Lift the crushing weight of the state-snactioned narrative from the shoulders of the teachers. Only then, maybe, maybe we can belong.

Quotes of the Day --

"To educate for the future, one must educate for the moment. Classes should sprawl beyond particular subjects. In digressions lie lessons. Expose students to possibilities. Let them know about your fondness for china, birds, tag sales, and gardening. Talk to them about economics and sociology, to be sure, but also about places you have been and things you have seen and thought. Instill the awareness that for the interested person days and nights glitter." -- Samuel Pickering, Letters to a Teacher

"In other words, the school (but also other State institutions like the Church, or other apparatuses like the Army) teaches know-how? but in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its practice?... [and] those teachers who, in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped... are a kind of hero" -- Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

Smile for Them Too

2006-08-28T03:13:00.000-07:00

Its coming soon. The IMF/WB meetings in Singapore. The event has galvanised the country's PR machine, road paving work, tree pruning activities and a massive phased campaign to bring out 4 million smiles for them rich folks coming into town.

The corresponding part of the travelling entourage, civil society groups and NGOs who protest against the IMF/WB have been warned off with the dreaded cane, well drilled riot troops, pepper spray and the gamut of enforcement activities which signal clearly that the protesters are not part of the 4-million smiles welcome package. Instead, these folks will be shunted off to Batam for their trouble-making activities.

Smile for the 16,000 folks who will step foot on our sun-spilled paradise to solve world problems and make the world a better place to live. Smile for these saviours and crusaders against world poverty.

"Today, India is in a situation where it pays back more money to the Bank in interest and repayments of principal than it receives from it. We are forced to incur new debts in order to be able to repay our old ones. According to the World Bank Annual Report, last year (1998), after the arithmetic, India paid the Bank 478 million dollars more than it received. Over the last five years ('93 to '98) India paid the Bank 1.475 billion dollars more than it received." -- The Greater Common Good, Arundhati Roy

Go read the article by Booker-winning writer Roy. Its long but there's an amazing story there. Of Government and a global financial institution, working hand-in-hand to bring progress and development to a Third World Country. There are some eye-opening mentions of Governmental deals, multi-billion industry projects wrapped in the politics of the World Development Aid industry. Building Big Dams. Bringing water to the people.

Not only smile, you will end up laughing like Roy when you finish reading the story.

So while our hallowed media institutions in Singapore will tell you all the benefits that hosting this event will bring to Singapore, telling you all the reasons why you have to put on the smile, teaching Singaporeans proper etiquette to play gracious hosts to our esteemed guests, they will omit to tell you some simple facts. Like what is the IMF/WB all about and what it has done so far :

"The bank and the fund gained reputations for uncompromising and often unsuccessful policies in the 1980's and early 90's, when they encouraged countries to pursue development plans that were based on rigorous economic logic but failed to consider local circumstances. Like an emergency room doctor who gives every patient an appendectomy regardless of the symptoms, the institutions treated almost every developing nation the same – with a package often referred to as "structural adjustment." Usually, in return for aid, they imposed strict budgetary discipline, the ending of subsidies for food and other basics, increases in the cost of public services like health care and the elimination of trade barriers." -- As Global Lenders Refocus, a Needy World Waits, March 17, 2002, New York Times by Daniel Altman

There is enough literature on the problems of the WB/IMF to flood this entire blog many times over. Instead, this entry is an explanation of sorts to the question why activists and groups from other countries are willing to spend their money, their time and their effort to campaign against the IMF/WB meeting. They do it because there are real people suffering in their countries due to the lending policies of WB/IMF. They do this because millions of people have had their lives displaced by the projects sanctioned by the WB/IMF.

But the local press and authorities do not see that. Instead they have demonised the CSOs and the NGOs, something not even the WB/IMF has done, and portrayed them as a potentially violent rabble who will cause all kinds of trouble in Singapore. Why?

Because in Singapore, there is this very fragile threshold towards people who believe in causes, who believe in something worthwhile. Because in Singapore there is this inherent suspicion that people who believe in something are necessarily communists or extremists. Because in Singapore belief in a cause does not feed the stomach, hence, it is un-pragmatic and further hence, something suspicious. Because in Singapore, if you believe in something which is not what the Government wants you to believe in, than you are trouble.

There are some obvious corollaries to be drawn to the state of Singaporeans. But lets not draw them. Instead, when we smile for the 16,000 delegates of the IMF/WB, lets also spare a smile for the untold hundreds or unseen thousands who will be making their way to Batam or to that yellow box in Suntec City. Because some of them are fighting for people who have been made homeless, people who have perished, people who need hope in their lives. Smile for them who are fighting for something they believe in. They are fighting for something real. As real as you and me.

Smile for them too. Smile for their beliefs, their hopes, their struggles.

Smile.

Quotes of the Day --

"Bhaiji Bhai and his people, forced to smile for photographs on government calendars. Bhaiji Bhai and his people, denied the grace of rage. Bhaiji Bhai and his people, squashed like bugs by this country they're supposed to call their own ... Bhaiji Bhai, Bhaiji Bhai, when will you get angry? When will you stop waiting? When will you say `That's enough!' and reach for your weapons, whatever they may be? When will you show us the whole of your resonant, terrifying, invincible strength? When will you break the faith? Will you break the faith? Or will you let it break you?"

"To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition. You demonstrate your absolute command over their destiny. You make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers who doesn't. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it ... You use caprice to fracture a people's faith in ancient things - earth, forest, water, air. Once that's done, what do they have left? Only you. They will turn to you, because you're all they have. They will love you even while they despise you. They will trust you even though they know you well. They will vote for you even as you squeeze the very breathe from their bodies. They will drink what you give them to drink. They will breathe what you give them to breathe. They will live where you dump their belongings. They have to. What else can they do? There's no higher court of redress. You are their mother and their father. You are the judge and the jury. You are the World. You are God."

Arundhati Roy, The Greater Common Good

Mr Wang is Right

2006-08-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Mr Wang is right. They will lose.

When PM Lee in his Rally Speech delivers the ultimate punchline to lay the bak chor mee to rest, to signal Government's engagement with the Digital Age Singaporean, those dreaming of somewhere else, he utters the phrase "Mee Siam Mai Hum".

This becomes an instant classic of dis-connect.

For my foreign readers, Mee Siam is a humble malay dish usually taken for breakfast in Singapore. "Mai Hum" is a a Hokkien dialect way of saying "no cockles please". The literal translation is, in the context of ordering the dish, to request the cook not to put cockles in the dish. This was mentioned in the Rally speech in the context of how the Government will employ its own brand of humour, to connect with Singaporeans. Digital Age.

In another subtext of the Rally Speech, this un-connected phrase was coined as a direct riposte to Mr Brown's hugely successful and popular bak chor mee podcast in GE 2006 which essentially laid bare PAP's ridiculous attempts to assassinate the character of a politician with the Workers' Party.

In a further subtext, its part of the continued Governmental displeasure against local blogger, Mr Brown who was removed as a columnist in a local broadsheet, TODAY, for writing about rising costs of living.

So many subtexts resting on this crucial phrase "Mee Siam Mai Hum".

Except that in this case, Mee Siam has never had cockles as an ingredient. Two other distinctly Singapore dishes use cockles. Laksa and Fried Kway Teow Noodles. Most Singaporeans know this. Its a fact of life.

To put it simply, most Singaporeans will NOT make this mistake. Its like ordering bak kut teh, another classic Singapore dish, without the soup. Ordering pizza and telling the chef to hold the dough. No, actually its worse. Its like ordering pizza and telling the chef to hold the spaghetti. In short, the phrase "Mee Siam Mai Hum" is an oxymoron. Its like one of those chain e-mail wordplay jokes "military intelligence".

From what I understand, our esteemed national newspaper, the Straits Times, "heard" and interpreted the crucial phrase as "Mee Siam Mai Hiam"; which means hold the chilli. If this "hearing" is correct, than the phrase is meaningless as a direct riposte against the bak chor mee podcast. I guess the ST is not being honest again. Its "hearing" certainly connects with PM Lee but it means all the rest of Singaporeans "heard" wrongly, very dis-connected. Lets STOMP this topic shall we?

CNA is more honest. They attribute this as a mistake. PM Lee meant Laksa not Mee Siam.

Except that most Singaporeans will not make this mistake.

So much resting on this punchline "Mee Siam Mai Hum". I wonder whether the audience at the Rally laughed. When they laughed was it because it was funny? Perhaps the Ministers in the front row laughed heartily, thinking that it was an ingenious punchline. PErhaps they were "blind" to the illogic of the phrase. I wonder how the rest of the audience laughed? Those handpicked heartlanders, trade unionists, grassroots leaders. How did they laugh? Its an honest mistake, but also an indicative mistake.

Its a mistake which highlights dis-connect. Which probably made Call Connect Singapore National Day Rally 2006 so important. So very important the need to connect.

Except that perhaps the audience is wrong. Who needs to connect more, I wonder? Mr Wang is right, they'll lose.

Its time to laugh. What goes around comes around.

Listen.

Quote of the Day :

"I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder

As I'm getting older y'all people get colder

Most of us only care about money makin

Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction

Wrong information always shown by the media

Negative images is the main criteria ...

Whatever happened to the values of humanity

Whatever happened to the fairness and equality

Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity

Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity ...

Father Father Father help us

Send some guidance from above

Cause people got me got me questioning

Where is the love? -- Black Eyed Peas

Call Connect to Singapore

2006-08-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

If we could subsist on words, perhaps we should have a National Day Rally every month. To rally us into the brave new world. To know that the powerful seeks to connect with us. That the powerful encourages us to connect amongst ourselves. That the powerful, pleads that we connect with the land. Connection Singapore.

The verdicts from the Singaporean stream in. Accolades galore according to our national press. Inspiring speech. Enervating. A feeling of goodwill. A Progress Package of words, progressive connectivities, progressive promises.

Minute changes in the lexical landscape. No more foreign talent. Just immigrants like us, not better than us, like us so like them. Like us all Singaporeans of immigrant heritage, diaspora connections. They are latter day Singaporeans, kinship forged with our grandparents, our great grandparents. Modern day settlers. Making that connection with Singapore, in Singapore.

With a scarlet-garbed magician, Singapore Central is defined strategically in Rally 2006. The Common Hero(es) are pedestalled and installed as the paragons of Success, justifying past policies, mandating future policies. Fallen Hero(es) are felled further, their shadows smirched onto mud to stay there. As reminders. The brainless scarecrow crucified in a lush prairie of verdant grass rippling to the breath of the gentle wind.

If we could subsist on words, we should have a Rally Speech every week. Suddenly, the chilling effect is suspended as jokes spill through, warmth is generated, elderly anecdotes which tug the heart-strings, seemingly genuine laughter, wearing down the hard-wired fear, coaxing heartware out of Singaporeans. Humour is fine. Innovative and hip/happenin ways to bring the powerful to you. To message to you. To massage a connection. Join up the dots and make a big heart in Singapore Central, for Singapore central.

Subductive. To subdue seductively.

The only dream worth having, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

This line has been haunting me, subsisting me for a few weeks. I saw the words come alive in Eleanor Wong's play on the JBJ Campaign when the dead was not allowed to die and the living played dead. A paradox resolved only when the dead danced with the living to coax life back into the living so that the dead could die. And so too, its shadows in Alfian's play Homesick. Both plays end with "dead" voices. Recorded messages, dead and alive confused, entangled.

I am trying to connect all three National Rally Speeches made by PM Lee. And the shape is still Singapore unchanged. Its still safe and secure. Institutions like the media, labour, judiciary remain strong. Facing the same direction as the institution of Government.

Except that there is social change. There is a movement. There is a flow. That Singapore citizens are dreaming every night about somewhere else. And nowadays they ride their dreams on that cable out of Singapore and into the world. Out-wired bound to read news, watch videos, make friends, join communities, experience life, to make connections. And they are doing this without the need for Government, of Government.

So the first two Rally Speeches were about change; change really to address this movement. Opening up Singapore. So that there is no need to go somewhere else when all you seek is already here. But the truth proved otherwise. When Singapore opened up, those who came out were quickly cut down. Because, whenever they opened up, devils would pop out. And their right of response carried an axe which severs you from a job, from a life. Bhavani responded to mr brown. And he lost his job with Today. Thats the right of response reserved by the Government. So who dares come out of the box left opened by the Government?

So those who remain in the box continue to dream of somewhere else, surfing out of Singapore on that precious wire. Without Government.

And so in the third Rally Speech, the Government will come after you in your wired dreams. Pushing their vodcasts, podcasts, STOMPS, Minister blogs into your wired dreams. Skype-ing you. It will be more subductive than my choice of verbs but it will be done. Call Connect. Connection Singapore. To connect you to them. To bring you home from cyberspace, from imagined Hougangs, imagined Potong Pasirs, imagined worlds.

Will they succeeed? Will they fail? I do not know. You cannot really subsist on the Rally Speech for long before you turn to other sources of nourishment.

The only dream worth having, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

The Cost of 21 Grams

2006-08-10T04:18:00.000-07:00

There is a popular scientific theory that our soul weighs 21 grams. That which determines us as human beings weighs only a slight 21 grams. It is a fragile thing. But encompassed within this 21 grams is infinite potential, if the potential is allowed to develop.

Have read and re-read the unedited interview Yadav had with David Marshall. And one theme he touches on is the lack of soul in the lives of Singaporeans. The refrain of empty lives repeats itself throughout the interview. The co-optation of our soul, and its infinite potential, to a blind worship of the Golden Calf.

Make no mistake. David Marshall has tremendous respect for the achievements of the Singapore Government in delivering us to where we are today. But his only question is at what cost this delivery? 15 grams of our soul? Or maybe 20 grams? There is no doubt that Singaporeans are armed to the teeth with pragmatic abilities due to our education system. And thus armed, they are supposed to enter Singapore society and fight. Earn money. Be successful. Climb and climb away from the abyss of failure. From the threat that threatens them always. But no matter how they high climb, they still hang by a thread. And when you live too long on the precipice of disaster, your sanity frays.

There is a point to be made for deferring the individual to the society. When the survival of society is hanging by a thread. But how long can we be hanging on a thread? There is a space between complacent mediocrity and being perpetually located at the precipice of disaster. Can we even name this space in Singapore? When you tread politically into this space. You are hit with defamation. Hit with OB markers. Hit with regulations. When you tread into this space artistically, you are hit with censorship. You are hit by the Conservative bogey. And so what is left? You can have this space only at a personal level. This is the freedom that the Singapore Government accords Singaporeans. Without which we will all be insane. At a personal level only. No politics, no expression which impacts society at large. A personal voice only. No community of voices. It is a personal space, and it is empty because I cannot share this meaningfully with anybody. Because 20 grams of me is still hanging by a fucking thread. And many still go insane in this personal space of alienation.

This is what they mean by democracy in Singapore. The young in Singapore have futures but lost lives. The red in our flag is bleeding. Soon only white will be left.

There is a discussion in Singapore Angle about the costs of protests. If we read David Marshall, than we understand why it is Singaporean to even argue about costs of protests. If we are pragmatic and practical, street protests make no sense. But street protests are not about being pragmatic and practical. You need a failure of reason to understand a protest action. You need empathy, you need compassion. You need to know about human relations and how capitalism impoverishes substantial segments of the world population to make people come out from their cocooned lives and protest. Protesters are not bums without jobs. They sacrifice their time too. Time they can use to make money.

But they suspend their worship of the Golden Calf.

Nay, they refuse this worship. Because they believe in something. People who see the importance of having all 21 grams of their soul. And not defer 20 grams to be redeemed with interest later. Especially when redemption is a perpetually deferred condition. Or when you are allowed to redeem only at a point in time when all 21 grams is due for expiry anyway.

Use the cost-benefit analysis, employ Reason to dismiss all my words. And it will be dismissed. Continue eating out of our overflowing jade rice bowls, with golden chopsticks. Because sometimes Reason leads us there. Leads us into this State where 20 grams are held as collateral for Singapore. Because we, Singapore, society, population are always hanging by a fucking thread. So be practical. Be pragmatic. You are schooled like this anyway. You have a personal space. Everything is reasonable.

21 grams of soul is all we have. How much for this 21 grams?

Quote of the Day --

The only dream worth having, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead ... "Which means exactly what?" ... To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. -- Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice

David Marshall -- 1994

2006-08-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

Below are some choice excerpts of a previously unpublished-in-full interview that Dharmendra Yadav had with David Marshall, Singapore's first Chief Minister, in 1994. The full article is here. Passion, fire, imagination, humanism, compassion, empathy. This is what Singapore needs and not just dismiss everything in a pragmatic and practical manner.

We have become good bourgeois seeking comfort, security. It’s like seeking a crystal coffin and being fed by intravenous injections through pipes in the crystal coffin; crystal coffins stuck with certificates of your pragmatic abilities ... I take off my hat to the pragmatic ability of our government but there is no soul in our conduct. It is a difficult thing to speak of because it is difficult to put in a computer, and the youth of Singapore is accustomed to computer fault. There is no longer the intellectual ferment, the passionate argument for a better civilisation. The emphasis on the rice bowl!

So are youths not content? They are not anti. Our youths frankly, very honestly respect the pragmatic achievements of the government, and I’m grateful, but they feel empty.There isn’t this joy of living which youth expects and youth needs – to learn the joy of living. How do you teach it?I think you teach it through respect for the individual. That’s our tragedy. If you want to put it in a nutshell, our tragedy is that we emphasise the primacy of society as against respect for the individual. Mind you, both are right.

And I’m according to Lee Kuan Yew in Parliament when he sought the abolition of the jury, “David Marshall is responsible for 200 murderers walking freely the streets of Singapore.”I’m proud of that. I told him to put it on my tomb. If there are 200 people walking freely the streets of Singapore, it means they are contributing to Singapore. Singapore would have been poorer by hanging them. I have no compulsion.

What matters most in life is the right of human beings to live fully in the context of their own genius. In one word, perhaps, to fight for human justice. I once said humanity’s cry for human justice reverberates down the corridors of the centuries, and it is still crying for human justice.

I was coming. That was the old building and I was coming along the corridor carrying a set of books. It must have been morning and, outside my classroom, there was a Chinese boy much slimmer than you [Dharmendra] with his back to the wall – absolutely pale, full of fear.And in front of him was my friend, an American boy – same student, same class – and dancing an Indian jig saying, “Ching! Ching! Chakama!”Without the slightest warning, I dropped my books and lunged at him [the American boy].

Wake Up Mother

2006-08-08T02:44:00.000-07:00

Wake up wake up my child. Its your birthday today. Make a wish any wish for they say wishes will come true on your birthday.

I wish, I wish that all my friends are not going to leave this country because they feel disenchanted.

"Some of my friends who have decided that their futures don't rest in Singapore have told me plainly they feel no reason to stay and fight for people who don't see the value of democracy or increased accountability." -- Gayle

Hush now my child, they leave because they are just spoilt brats who are stupid and immature. Who do not know what they want. Its a phase, they will learn. Grow up and out of this rebelliousness.

Wake up wake up my love. Its your birthday today. Make a wish any wish for they say wishes come true on your birthday.

I wish, I wish we can stop hiding my sexuality. That a prize-winning poem on lesbianism is recognised as such in the country I live in. That I can write, live here without the stigma of the unnatural, the criminal on me.

"I live in a country where the national paper will announce that a poem has won a foreign prize, but they will not willingly add (until much later) that it is written from a lesbian perspective. What the paper’s employees think of homosexuality and its criminalisation has nothing to do with this" -- Sayoni

Hush now my love, the country is not ready for this. People still fear you and what you represent. What is a little hiding so that people are soothed? People are just not ready.

Wake up, wake up my dear. Its your birthday today. Make a wish any wish for they say wishes can come true on your birthday.

I wish, I wish, I can just stop for a while and rest. If I do not keep up, I will be retrenched. If I do not upgrade myself, I will lose relevance and be lost. I have to be successful, there is no other way in Singapore, but I am tired when will this struggle end?

"I’m always
almost very nearly
there,
but never quite
there yet.
It seems that the
same goes for
nearly everyone else
in this peculiar,
perpetually
hungry
little nation
of ours." -- Social Ambitions, Gilbert Koh

Hush now my dear, you know Singapore is small, our economy is dependent on the world. the only way for the country and for you to have a future is to keep working hard. trust the Government. Listen to them. Don't stop for a moment or the chance will pass you by. And you cannot afford that. The country cannot afford that.

Wake up, wake up my friend. Its your birthday today. Make a wish any wish for they say wishes may come true on your birthday.

I wish, I wish, that I do not feel so alone in Singapore. Is it wrong for me to want more expression? To want to write a play without censorship? To make a film without censorship? To write without the fear of an invisible OB marker or an invitation to an interview by the authorities?

"This is my future; where is my life?" -- Molly Meek

Hush now my friend, you are no alone. No one stops you from expressing your views in Singapore. The regulations on the Arts, on performance are there because Singapore is a multi-racial country. We need some responsibility to ensure Singapore's stability. For with stability, than the economy is safeguarded. All these Western ideas of street protests are just a waste of your money, taxpayer's money. You can afford to worry like this only because of the economic stability we have.

Wake up, wake up my readers. Its our birthday today. Guess we are grown up. Guess we will stop the wishes. The first steps are always th hardest. But at least we're less alone than before.

Happy Birthday.

Quote of the Day --

"Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for president?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Or is it just a waste of time?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry.

Mamma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true,
Mamma's gonna put all of her fears into you,
Mamma's gonna keep you right here, under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing,
Mamma's gonna keep baby cosy and warm.
Of course Mamma's gonna help build the wall" -- Pink Floyd

Wordthief

2006-08-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

There is an obscure quote by Nadine Gordimer, a South African Nobel Literature writer which mentions that the State has no imagination because it puts imagination into its service. For the writer however, he/she is put into service by imagination.

And so today, prompted by another one of those illuminating comments left by an anonymous in my previous entry, I would like to consider imagination in Singapore. Many have dissected and rightly thrashed Andy Ho's column on why blogging should be State-managed just like the mainstream media because it is beneficial in developing individuals' political consciousness and building social bonds. I would like to steal two words in his commentary which represents freedom. Wiggle room. It is a curious choice of words to denote freedom for both mainstream and alternative media. Wiggle room freedom. Why only wiggle room when what you want to do is roll down the windows and scream on a deserted street at 3 am in the morning?

The imagined freedom of a wiggle room is modest. Just a little wiggle. Nothing substantial. Wiggle. Small freedom, a little shake, a little twist. Why this limit of imagination? Granted that there are of course barriers, both legal and assumed, to self expression, institutional expression in Singapore, why then when we do imagine freedom, we imagine only a wiggle. A wiggle in a room. It is as if the re-iterations of small Singapore, small space, small island, red dot, transcends the physical into our minds. That even when we imagine, we imagine small as well.

In conversations I have had with some of my friends whom grew old with me, they come across now as tired; tired of thinking. Tired to imagine big. To imagine beyond their capabilities. They dismiss this as the process of growing-up. Being all the wiser. Humble of their own limited capabilities. In their fatigue, they appreciate small mercies. All they want is indeed just wiggle room.

Are they tired or is it because the State has somehow claimed their imaginations into service? This is a question which I cannot truly answer even though I think it is the latter :

Imagination like all living things lives now, and it lives with, from, on true change. Like we all do and have, it can be co-opted and degraded; but it survives commercial and didactic exploitation.

If we take the above line at its value, which I am inclined to do so, than imagination in Singapore is truly in danger. It explains the little imaginations we have left in Singapore. It reasons why we imagine less and imagine small. If imagination in Singapore tires and shrinks into ever diminishing amounts for lack of true change, and it is left only to a select few in political power to imagine for Singapore, than the infinite opportunities which unfettered imagination brings about dwindles as well. And there will less possibilities because there is little to imagine beyond. And the possible paths of Singapore's future grows narrower.

The signals are there. 53% of Singapore's young wants out. There must be something more than just consumerism, materialism or commodification which create signals as such. For the young should have the biggest imaginations, not necessarily the most realistic, but always the most beautiful. And if slightly more than half of these imaginations do not have Singapore in them, then is it not a case that imagination in Singapore is diminishing. Two steps into the twilight?

And so when there is an event like the Singapore Theatre Festival, it is a gem to be treasured. Yes, it may not be cheap. Yes, it may be raw. But when you view it from the perspective of endangered imagination in Singapore, its value is deep. The Festival is a gathering of imaginations which are given Form. Imaginations enlivened with human voices. It is powerful to hear some of the messages transmitted by the performers' voice, a human voice. At certain moments in these articulations, art and reality fused. And then, further imaginings are born to lead us away from living fraudulent lives. Lead us away from the fear of stealing screen-time with a political blog in a school library.

All this just from the phrase "wiggle room". But still we cannot let imagination diminish further in Singapore.

And it begins by letting imagination put us into service.

PS : In line with this entry which stole the words of Andy Ho, the word thief that is me, have also stolen situations, lines, words, names and quotes from various nice blogs which have helped imagine this into existence. Thank you.

Absent Lives

2006-08-02T06:12:00.000-07:00

The illusion of choice in Singapore is nicely summed up by the proposed public transport fare hikes. Would you prefer small increases every year or would you prefer sudden large increases every few years.

This is choice? I would prefer no fare increase unless it is absolutely necessary. And this means that a monopoly corporation in Singapore providing sole public service, puts its public service imperatives before its private sector profitability needs. Raise fare prices if diesel costs rise, fair. What about as quickly dropping fare prices if diesel costs fall?

But I am no economist. There are others who can slice this apart with more finesse and more accuracy. Those who unmask greed better than I.

The illusion of choice in Singapore. The Straits Times and other mainstream media has social responsibility to ensure the stability of Singapore. It must be factual. It must be status quo. It cannot engage in prejudicial reporting. Thats why it comes across as boring. Un-interesting for those, especially the young, seeking an alternative spin. So choice is created. STOMP. Packaged nicely. Nice fonts. Beautiful and mysterious bloggers thrown in the mix. Discussing edgy and raw issues. Choice?

You do not need Opposition in Parliament. The ruling party creates its own diversity for you. Young MPs in jeans and t-shirts. High fives and V-signs. More colorful, greater choice. For you to seek them out, talk to them. They will listen all right. Thats their role. Listen, listen and listen.

Choice? What choice in Singapore? Especially the majority and the minority caught at the wrong end of the income spectrum? What choice is there? Change or die. Accept re-training or die. Stay relevant or die. Accept lower wages or die. These are not choices. These are directives to walk a certain way, trod a certain path. Because there is no other path as dictated in the choice.

So the only choice is to make the individual sacrifice. Wake up earlier to avoid the ERP. Walk to the interchange. Go home later to get more qualifications. Go to night school. Juggle taxi driving at night, during the week-ends. Or that most sacred choice : leave and not come back. The only choices we have are self sacrifice. And this cannot be right in a country which prides itself as a modern enlightened progressive Asian democracy.

And so too every four years when a group of Singaporeans make their choice at the ballot box, they are punished. Vindictively punished by supposed non-partisan institutions of the State of Singapore. Consigned to languish at the tail-end of any Government initiative to improve Singapore infrastructure. This is the reality of choice in Singapore.

In 1979, Edwin Thumboo, Singapore's poet laureate, wrote the following lines :

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,
Explore the edges of harmony,
Search for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.

In 1979 we can still buy these lines. But in 2006, to borrow the words of a South African poet, when I turn the pages of the Merlion's face, and I read the look in its eyes, I see only absent lives. An absence of life.

The consultative Government lays down all these choices to us. They lead to emptiness and then the choices lead to a unique form of dissent that finds expression in emigration. That finds happiness away from home. A Ulysses or a Odysseus that leaves Ithaca eventually.

An absence of life that is co-inspired with a mainstream media that remains in a stupor. Other than a front headline of fare hikes, there is a remarkable column by senior writer Andy Ho today, an ideational portmanteau which is staggering for what it represents :

For the blogosphere continues to expand. The significance of the fact that publishing on the web has become so easy is that the barriers of professionalism and specialisation have been removed such that 'ordinary' people come to see media production as something they can do and as part of the everyday, according to Dr Chris Atton, a reader in journalism at the Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

As Dr Atton told The Straits Times, participating in this alternative media can 'shape one's political awareness by raising one's consciousness'. How? Liken the activity to glue, he suggested, but one that is subject to refinement to make it a more effective social glue.

The activity itself provides an opportunity to research, write and reflect on issues that impact upon our status as citizens. It also encourages a more thorough going relationship with one's community.

Finally, that communication also works outwardly to government bodies, city councils, business corporations and nonprofits, Dr Atton added.

Essentially then, blogging provides an opportunity for citizens to reflect on their place in the world and develop solidarity with and communicate their needs, demands or desires to others, he said.

At the heart of this activity is creativity. It is not about joining a protest group or going to a demonstration. It is, Dr Atton said, about developing a personal voice through which to make sense of the world, both for oneself and for one's community.

So while blogging may not impact government institutions in radical ways for now, it has the capacity to change the polity in small, indiscernible ways that may accumulate to make a difference - even at the polls - some day down the road.

With Technorati, the blog search engine, showing more than 940,000 blogs that are associated with the search word 'Singapore', it may be high time the Government began to take this more seriously than just chatter.

As seriously as the mainstream media, perhaps.

So the responsible non partisan senior writer is saying that all the effects of blogging in raising political awareness, encouraging creativity and community bonding, a more effective social glue, of changing the polity in small indiscernible ways is not good and requires control?

That government should nip this rising consciousness in the bud by giving as little wiggle room to blogos as mainstream media?

This is a newspaper column of the national newspaper. But it reads like a policy paper for the Government. A journalist is advising the State to exercise greater control of blogos because of the future implications of blogging.

Choice? what choice? when the yellow box is drawn as blatant as this? When a senior writer of the Straits Times can pen this? What kind of Singaporeans do we have?

Flip the pages of the Merlion's face and tell me what you see if not absence. Absent lives.

This National Day, ask not for choice but for change. Simply to lead fuller lives.

Quotes of the Day :

But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory...
Puzzles. -- Edwin Thumboo, Ulysses by the Merlion

Rough beast, you are neither idol nor ideal.
Your heart is hollow, cold, and open
for admission, but we have nowhere else
to hide our dreams. -- Alvin Pang, Merlign

"And why does it keep spewing that way?
I mean, you know, I mean..." -- Alfian Sa'at, The Merlion