Why funny things happen in the National Archives

Pay attention to state press releases during the holidays and long weekends. It is an ideal period to release embarrassing or inconvenient news that must be released, in the hopes that it will escape the public eye, if not the eye of journalists. This Christmas, the UK National Archives announced that thousands of declassified government papers had gone missing. To be more precise, "misplaced while being on loan to government department."

Was this incompetence on the part of the archives, or a pattern of mendacity and obfuscation on the part of the government?

What should Singapore do about Operation Spectrum?

We at Illusio disagree with Jolovan Wham's train protest, on the grounds that even activists and protesters in the liberal West know better than to stage a protest inside a train.

Assuming Wham had staged the protest to highlight the issue of Singapore's Internal Security Act and the infamy of 1987's Operation Spectrum, it is disappointing that after getting the book thrown at him, the coordinated response from his circle of activists has been to highlight his "veteran advocacy" for domestic workers and put him up as a poster boy for free speech and assembly.

You know, do everything but highlight the issue of Singapore's Internal Security Act and the infamy of Operation Spectrum? As though it was a useful pretext that once raised, is never mentioned again?