2005 Birth Rates Released

Minilee Baby Bonus Failure!

Today, the Straits Times reports the official birth rate for 2005 in Singapore. Almost 15 months after Minilee's upsizing of the baby bonus in August 2004, the country's official bean counters report a staggering 1.13% increase in birth rates.

No doubt Minilee and Vivian Balakrishnan will stage a photo op at some hospital, with both of them in maternity dresses in a room full of newborns, and a huge banner overhead proclaiming MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Let me just disabuse them of the notion.

1. Over the past 20 years, annual increase in births ranged from 15% (Dragon year effect) to 2%. Minilee's 1.13% certainly sets a new record, for lowest birth increase!

2. The release by Vivian Balakrishnan, of a 3% increase in birth rate for the period of May to July 2005, was designed to be a 'teaser' of the immediate effect of Minilee's new baby bonus plans (i.e. couples who conceived immediately after the bonus was unveiled in August 2004). For the average figure for the entire 2005 year to whittle down to 1.13%, it means no one else was fooled into reproducing - aside from the few stupid Singaporeans who bred in that short period.

3. Our national propaganda press has been at it since last August, reporting anecdotes of couples giving it a go after Minilee's 2004 NDRS, to surges in hospital visits by expecting parents. As with all Leninist states, reports of good news to the Dear Leader may be are indeed slightly exaggerated.

4. Note the figure for 2000. Mr Goh's baby bonus plan was unveiled in 1999, causing an 8% spike in births. Minilee has failed to beat his predecessor's plan, despite increased gifts to conceiving couples!

5. Gavin Jones of the National University of Singapore apparently believes that Minilee's baby bonus might take time to work, and looks forward to better figures next year. How very droll. I suppose he hasn't consulted the statistical records on the aftermath of Mr Goh's 8% spike: Birth rates have fallen steadily and continuously after 2000.

6. However, I'm waiting to see if Minilee will defend himself by saying Mr Goh had an unfair advantage (2000 was a dragon year!). This, of course, will invite questions from the public, such as: Why on earth did Mr Goh throw money at couples who were already going to conceive en masse anyway?

This will be very interesting, and I'll want to see how Minilee keeps the baby bonus failure out of national discourse.

Miscellaneous musings: What has happened to Singaporeans' will to live? Survival and reproduction being irrational urges that plague all living creatures, something has tipped Singaporeans to deny this Will, to seek permanent relief.

Is it life in industrial society? Or have our leaders failed to socialise Singaporeans, that they have become conscious of social reality, and hence rationally refuse to reproduce society by their refusal to reproduce?

Reason #1,846,778,387 why the gay movement in Singapore is infantile

Blogger requested in email to cease criticisms of PLU

Yesterday evening, pleinelune, who speaks for gay lobby group PLU on Singabloodypore, emailed me, requesting that "for the sake of community image" and the image of PLU, I should not expose the public to further criticisms of PLU's modus operandi and public statements. Somehow, the image of PLU and the community is threatened every time I comment that I do not agree with their policies or actions. Newsflash: PLU does not have a mandate for sole representation of the community. Newsflash: Even in a one-party state, people are allowed to openly raise disagreements with party policy. Newsflash: Wong Kan Seng, Minilee, and Papalee have NOT said that criticisms by Singaporeans will lead to a diminishing of the public image of Singapore.

Most recently, Alex Au issued a statement that the NVPC is not a real NGO, because it gets funding from the government. His usual spokespersons on Singabloodypore also maintained that as the offices of NVPC are located in a ministry building, NVPC is not an independent organisation.

I have taken pains to point out this line of argument is untenable. Alex Au, with more than 10 years in activism and what his defenders call "constructive engagement" with the government, wouldn't know an NGO if it came up and slapped him with a trout. I pointed out several NGOs which receive substantial proportions of their budgets from governments:

1. A quarter of the US$162 million income in 1998 of the famine-relief organization Oxfam was donated by the British government and the EU. Applying Alex Au's logic, Oxfam is not independent!
2. The Christian relief and development organization World Vision US collected US$55 million worth of goods in 1998 from the American government. Therefore they are run by the government!
3. Médecins Sans Frontières gets 46% of its income from government sources. It's a stooge of the French government! It's NOT an NGO!

Gentle bloggers, these are facts that one can easily look up on the internets. Did Alex Au conduct due diligence before he accused NVPC of being non-independent due to government funding?

I have also commented that PLU's second press release "Behind the Liberty League Scandal", was a strategic failure. When the Ministry pulled a reporter's news story off the papers at the last minute, PLU went ballistic and accused the government of censorship, of poor governance of NVPC, and said "the hole is being dug deeper and deeper".

PLU's defenders then went on to say that MCYS and NVFP ganged up on the lobby group. Presumably, that's why the news article was pulled off. And presumably that's why PLU has issued a statement that preemptively cuts any lines of communication and goodwill it has with the bureaucracy.

1. NVPC is an NGO. It is not a "government body", as PLU's statement erroneously claims. Did PLU do any research before typing out its statement? The ministry provides the funds, but it is up to NVPC to spend it, as it wishes. There is no issue of governance here, merely an issue of poor judgement: NVPC foolishly funded a sex ed quack.

That Liberty League is a Pte Ltd is irrelevant. As long as it declares itself a non-profit to NVPC, it is obliged to provide full and regular accounts. That it has only $10 in startup capital is irrelevant. It will find the rest of the money elsewhere, in order to match NVPC's funding, dollar for dollar.

2. I don't know if there was a secret agreement by MCYS and NVFP to oppress gay people. Certainly it's nice to think so, and even to speculate on the basis of insufficient information. I don't know if MCYS called off the news story because it supports NVFP, or whether it needed time to conduct investigations with NVFP on the Liberty League, or whether it needed time to spin an appropriate response. Certainly it's nice to think of the possibilities, and even to speculate on the basis of insufficient information. Or even to blog about it.

It would be prudent, if one wanted to do more than blog about it (like say, issue a press statement), to make inquiries about the status of the investigation by MCYS and NVFP. PLU did not do so, and instead chose to issue its statement. For all we know, MCYS and NVFP could be doing background checks on Liberty League; making Leslie Lung conform to the rules; finding a way to drop the Liberty League quietly; anything. In fact, there is insufficient evidence for myself or PLU to guess what is going on.

Yet PLU has chosen to interpret the removal of the press story as outright censorship, whereas it could be a media blackout. One would assume that as PLU had cooperated with the reporter to write her story, it would've contained all the errors I have pointed out, like the insistence that NVFP is a government body, or that in effect the Ministry has sanctioned Liberty League for schools as a semi-official sex ed course, for example.

3. It's very nice to preemptively tag the issue as a "scandal" and frame it as a scandal, even before the public gets to know about it and get all worked up over it. Along with the insinuations of a ministry pulling the strings of an NGO, and the claims of press censorship, this is a particularly nice and constructive way to engage the issue with the government, and to persuade the bureaucrats to listen to your lobby group in the future.

By pointing out these flaws in PLU's statements and operations, I have once again undermined the image of PLU, an image so precious to them, they're asking me - through their proxies - very nicely to keep quiet. I'm sure the very possibility that mistakes should be pointed out when they're made doesn't matter. Or perhaps we're witnessing the doctrine of PLU exceptionalism - it is free to criticise the government, but for the sake of 'unity', no one is allowed to criticise them in public.

PLU is too weak to stand up to public scrutiny! The Government has always been hostile to PLU! Don't give PLU any more trouble by criticising it! I fail to understand how by pointing out the flaws in PLU's very open actions, that I'm washing its dirty linen in public. Or that it's a very bad thing.

As a blogger and contributor to Singabloodypore I take this request to stop talking about PLU as an insult to myself and to the ideals of SBP. They suggest I voice out my dissention privately to their organisation in the future, instead of subjecting it to public scrutiny. Actually, I find their suggestion very humorous.

I concede your point about PLU having to be open to criticism. Every organisation, every society has to be. However, the issue of washing our dirty linen in public comes into question. Yes, PLU has made mistakes, but it is ineffective to publicly denounce PLU in front of anti-gay people. We are only penalising ourselves.

No. I hold that the more mollycoddled PLU is, the less its mistakes are pointed out as such, the more its defenders penalise it. I don't wish to see PLU as a monolithic party that is more interested in party unity than an open marketplace of ideas. I would hate to think of PLU as having a monoculture, and dominated by groupthink, where no one dares to tell its leaders that what they're doing might be not quite right.

See also:
More reasons why the gay rights movement in Singapore is infantile.

Design methodology

You may notice a longish period of absence from posting. I have developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Updates will be fleeting while I attempt to recover.

Meanwhile, here's a fun quiz for everyone who likes to bitch about badly designed quizzes.

Do it. I'm not going to put any spoilers here. And do discuss about it.

The Artist's Pledge

The social ritual establishes a kind of truth; through each re-enactment, that truth is restated, reaffirmed as a timeless fact in itself. The speaker reads from an ancient score, his voice and part, an obliggato which drowns out the initial question, and reestablishes that primal state of innocence of his endeavor in the eternal silence of the natural, undisputed, commonsensical state of always-now.

Question: How do artists here operate, given the restrictions of the state?
Artist's ritual answer: There is freedom of speech, and we have to be very creative in putting certain politically-sensitive points across, and we occasionally have to exercise some self-censorship. So as an artist, I do not feel the heavy hand of the state.

So why is it the most important piece of art here in 2005 was created by a local businessman and PAP minion grassroots activist? I refer to the 1-day display of 8 white elephant cardboard sculptures at the unopened Buangkok train station last August, organised by Mr Leow, a grassroots activist of Punggol South and other leaders minions.



The white elephants installation epitomise the best of public art:
1. Site-specific art accessible to the public
2. Relevant to area residents
3. Strong, clear social and political criticism commentary that speaks on a national level
4. Controversial, yet humourous and cheeky
5. Safe and almost legal

Question: How do the grassroots minions leaders of Punggol South operate, given the state's testiness and control of public art and politics?

Surprisingly, their answer involves none of the 10-year series model artist's answer that we've heard far too often in arts forums. No, they did NOT have to tread carefully and censor themselves in order to put up the white elephant installation. No, they were not creative enough to avoid such a sensitive issue and an entanglement with the police and the incestuous transport authority-business complex. But they were bold enough to see a good idea and to see it through.

When will local artists make socially relevant public art instead of safe, state-sponsored, high concept, sterile public art?

God Complex

In the unprecedented case of Job vs God, Job, having submitted his testimony in the form of the Oath of Innocence, and parried the cross-examinations of the defense team, now calls upon the defendant to the stand. Job demands to know why a decent man like him has been rewarded by failure in life despite his exemplary obedience.

From the tempest, like a whirlwind, God answers:

Who is this man who speaks darkly, without understanding?
Who is this man who has broken the unspoken rules as to how we survive, how we have prospered?

(Aside to ISD: Who is this man? Who was his lecturer? Who is he related to? I want answers)

Now put up your fists like a man; I will ask and you will answer.
If not, your head will be broken and your knuckles dusted.

Where were you when I founded Singapore from a tear in my eye?
Who decided how many people it should hold - sure, you must know -
or how many are selected as worthy elites?

On whose word is the law based, on whose existence does Singapore depend?
When the scribes at the Straits Times gather, whose name do they praise?

In all your life, did you command the nation?
Did you tell the stock market to rise?

Have you entered the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore,
and did you see the treasures of the Budget surplus?
These I have saved for a very rainy day,
and not to be raided by an opposition party or wild-eyed populists.

Can you ride a communist tiger, or lay the smackdown on gangsters and secret societies?
Can you imprison enemies of the state indefinitely, or bankrupt them to irrelevance?

Do your enemies speak softly to you, or offer apologies in newspapers and magazines?
Do you have to queue to get treatment in hospitals?

Then Job answered:

I know you can do everything and no purpose of yours can be frustrated.
You, whose designs and machinations are veiled in non-transparency,
I have heard your reply and my eyes have seen your face.
Therefore I despise my life, and I will be consoled on dust and ashes.

More improbable iPod fashion items

Are you happy to see me, or is that an iPod in your briefs?

(Okay, fine. Not the most improbable iPod fashion item, since there's a ladies' accessory involving iPods, batteries, and vibration...)

NKF roundup

The auditors from KPMG have spoken, and their 442-page report is damning.

Agagooga compiles the juciest quotes from their report as a public service, in his "National Education Lessons we can learn from the NKF scandal" series, in 3 parts.

We suspect KPMG had a fun time writing the report. As rench00 also notes, the lessons and failures of NKF are far too close to what we know about the governance of Singapore.

Even Ong Soh Chin of the Straits Times compares the NKF to the Matrix. And for the past 5 or so years, the Matrix has been compared to Singapore...

Note the similarities:
Heavy reliance on lawsuits to silence critism.
Concentration of power in one person.
A system of checks and balances that actually act as a rubberstamp (NKF board. Parliament backbenchers.)
Failure of board to challenge decisions or even discuss them. Unanimous voting.
And so on.

Then, there was that live press conference yesterday, where Minister Khaw Boon Wan admitted that he now "looks silly", having stalwartly defended NKF for the past 3 years.

But no, he did not explain how the Ministry of Health renewed the IPC status for NKF (enabling donations as tax-deductable) less than a month after the National Council of Social Services withdrew the IPC status. Minister Khaw did not mention what the auditors from MOH found that actually proved the NCSS complaints wrong. He did not reveal what criteria the MOH used to give NKF a clean bill of health. There should be an official inquiry and investigation on MOH's actions in January 2001, since the Minister is not forthcoming with the details.

The media should also be taken to task. The Q&A session of the press conference was not telecast live and unabridged. This is not the time to protect the Minister from embarrassment - he should by rights resign from his post for this.

The Great Singaporean Novel

In your opinion, what should the Great Singaporean Novel be about?

Some answers from offline people so far:

Protagonist(s) contemplating emigration
A taxi driver (perhaps contemplating emigration... to Perth?)
Compilation of Xiaxue's online posts
A researcher/scholar finding out some discrepancies between official history and actual history (Major whoopass and conspiracy follows??)
The rise and fall of civilization with 3 generations, a story of transition and transience.

What is your opinion? Consider this an open thread, or post the reply on your site, or ask other people you know!

Daughter of Papalee, Sister of Minilee

They say the fruit never falls far from the tree.

Recently a letter Dr Lee Wei Ling wrote to the Straightened Times forum titled "Prestigious school not always the wisest choice", shows that credulity towards crackpot theories is indeed hereditary.

Like her sire, who believes in the superior glands of the Chinese race as the contributing factor to their dominance in Singapore, Dr Lee writes that

Our meritocratic system, and the fact that academic intelligence (some would call it IQ) is to a large extent genetically determined, has already allowed the cream to float to the top.

NO IT'S NOT.

On the heritability of IQ, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (2002), The Inheritance of Inequality, report after a meta-analysis of existing IQ research:

A person’s IQ — meaning, a test score — is a phenotypic trait, while the genes influencing IQ are the person's genotypic IQ. Heritability is the relationship between the two. Suppose that, for a given environment, a standard deviation difference in genotype is associated with a fraction h of a standard deviation difference in IQ. Then h^2 is the heritability of IQ. Estimates of h^2 are based on the degree of similarity of IQ among twins, siblings, cousins and others with differing degrees of genetic relatedness. The value cannot be higher than 1, and most recent estimates are substantially lower, possibly more like a half or less.

It is NOT a fact that intelligence is "to a large extent genetically determined". It is irresponsible and possibly a breach of ethics for Dr Lee to mislead readers so, and worse yet, fail to provide figures to illustrate (or rather disprove) the extent of genetically determined IQ.

It is also sheer incompetence and disconnection from reality that Dr Lee cheerfully advises academically outstanding students not to worry if they don't get into elite schools. After all, it's not as though the Old Girls/Boys Network actually exist. In Singapore, people succeed due to sheer intellect, not their connections and social capital!

The posthumous pardon of Devan Nair

Chengara Veetil Devan Nair died in exile in Canada, aged 82.

Much has been made about Papalee's character assasination of President Nair, which continued years after the latter's forced resignation in 1985. Even more has been said about how Nair was to survive, for the next 20 years, in Canada, where he stepped up criticisms of the authoritarian rule of Papalee, his proscription of various opposition leaders, and his perversion of NTUC (whose independence was guaranteed in its founding constitution) into a branch of the Whiteshirt Party. Absent in the national propaganda press's coverage and state-coordinated posthumous pardon of Devan Nair is his outspoken support of the opposition movement in Singapore during his exile.

It amazes me that Malaysian blogs constitute the vast majority of online writing about the passing of Devan Nair, reporting with more objectivity and honesty than the Singaporean press.

Dear Reader, you can find them easily, and I shan't repeat their talking points and accurate historical narration. Instead, let's examine why the need for Papalee to invoke the vast machinery of the state to pass what is effectively a posthumous pardon for Singapore's 3rd President.

One might note that amongst Papalee's Old Guard, Devan Nair stands out as the most politically loyal (until his forced resignation). He was the only leftist member of the pre-schism Whiteshirt Party who did not cross over to Dr Lee Siew Choh's Barisan Socialis. He was the father of the national union movement that proved to be a shortcut for Papalee's control of the masses. And yet the stalwart soldier became the voice for a non-authoritarian polity, even deterring Papalee from one of his trademark suits against the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, in 2002.

Despite his forced and dishonourable resignation, despite the years of character assasination that followed, Devan Nair's credentials as former Lee loyalist, patriotic anticolonialist fighter, and father of the NTUC gives him and his later criticism of the Lee regime credibility. This makes Devan Nair more dangerous in death than in life.

If Papalee could not finish his character assasination properly, the sensible action would be to pardon the former President, let the NTUC hold a memorial service for the dead hero, just in case a genuine love by the natives for Devan Nair turns him into Singapore's Hu Yaobang.

NTU Blogging survey: questions and answers

Abstract

While blogs in Singapore are largely accounts of personal lives with the odd post on social and political issues, several prominent blogs have appeared that choose to focus on such issues, including at least three by opposition politicians. This paper will thus examine the effects the sedition incident and other recent incidents involving online speech have had on the local blogging community. Through interviews with 20 bloggers, the paper explores if a "chilling effect" is being produced among those who blog on political subjects, given the vagueness of the laws and code of practice that govern online discussion of political issues. Also, the paper looks at how bloggers who discuss such subjects negotiate the various legal pitfalls that surround online communication. By doing so, it is hoped that the paper provides an insight into the future of blogs as applied to social and civic discourse in Singapore and the potential effects that these non-traditional sources of information are capable of invoking.

Background

What is your blog about?

This blog is a practical application of cultural studies, rather than a springboard for cultural theory. Inasmuch as current issues (say, the economy or politics) are raised on Illusio, I am more interested in the cultural significance of these issues. Other topics claimed by Illusio: comparative literature and cross-cultural studies.

You may say Illusio is an academic cultural (practical) blog, in the sense that its posts ensure (in the words of Bourdieu) the social world loses its character as a natural phenomenon, that the question of the natural or conventional character of social facts can be raised. This blog combats orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened opinion that aims at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa (the natural, undiscussed, and undisputed), and instead become heretical, heterodox, to alert consciously to readers of the existence of competing possibles and the sum total of the alternatives not chosen that the established order implies.

Who do you want to read your blog?

There are 2 important questions: Who are my ideal audience, and who actually ends up reading my blog?

Let us examine Illusio. It does not operate in a vacuum, but exists in the wider field of blogs. Like any social field, there are positions to be taken, an investment of interest and reputation, by both participants and spectators who are invested, taken in and by the game. To be interested is to accord a given social game that what happens in it does matter, that its stakes are important and worth pursuing.

Identify the position my blog occupies in the field of blogging and you will have the profile of my 'ideal reader'.

Now, do a technorati search to see who links to Illusio. Those are players who have invested and positioned themselves through linking to me. Then do a survey on who I have linked on my blog. Do they match the profile of A) your analysis of the positioning of Illusio, and B) the associated profile of who you'd expect to read this blog?

Knowledge

Regarding the AcidFlask and racist bloggers incidents, were the actions taken against the bloggers in each incident appropriate? Why or why not?

My opinion on the racist bloggers have been expressed in an earlier post (see 3 down, 1 to go and no, it's really about the internets).

Illusio has not commented on AcidFlask previously. All I'd say is we'd better look at the historical records on the eccentricities of Chairman Yeo and how he wishes to control public discourse on his A★★ agency. You'll find in more than a few parliamentary debates in the Hansard record, of his demands that MPs and ministers send him drafts of any speeches mentioning his A★★ agency. Then imagine what would happen when an ex-scholar attempts to break the iron curtain of non-transparency of his agency...

Were the actions taken against AcidfFlask appropriate? It was an extrajudicial silencing. Chairman Yeo and AcidFlask need to answer this question, not I. Was the action expected? Definitely, with that consistent pattern of behaviour from The Chairman.

How have these two incidents affected your blogging activities?

Were the bloggers punished because of what they did, or were they punished because they were bloggers? Or were they punished because the internet must receive the extension of the legal authority/policing of the state and the extrajudicial authority of Chairman Yeo's A★★ agency? Or were they punished for things that they would've been punished for if they had committed their acts offline? Note that not all of these possible intepretations require Akikonomu's blogging activities to be affected.

However, it may be noted that Illusio has never shied away from commenting on Singapore's leaders, and instead you may find it has increased in such commentary, and even provides links and citations to the more outrageous or courageous assertions made in blog posts.

Control/Censorship

In your understanding, what makes an issue political?

A. The political is the realm of the disputed. Disputed positions, facts, membership, positioning make things political.
B. The political is whatever touches on issues, events, anything related to the polity.

How do you blog about political issues? If you don't, why not?

Let's assume you mean to imply that Singaporean bloggers who are political are conflicted because of a popular interpretation on a law banning political publications and broadcasts. Then you should be asking the original crafters of the law, or lawyers, or politicians, on whether the issues raised on selected blogs in your study are political.

Let me reiterate: I blog about cultural issues as a practical application of cultural studies (as opposed to blogging on cultural theory). Given the blog's purpose to denaturalise the social world and its undisputed, commonsensical facts, you can call it political (in the sense of politics as the realm of the disputed). Any more and I would be repeating what my blog is about.

What do you think of current levels of control on blogging?

There's the comments feature. There's the linking. There's the whole goldfish in a fish tank, voices in an echo chamber feature and the public lynching thing that's so charming about the blogosphere. Bloggers and their readers police their own pretty well. Do a study on BBSes, internet newsgroups, and see what sorts of control evolve on their own.

But that's not what you're asking, is it? Can the entire internets be controlled? What is the current extend of control Singapore government holds over the internets? Compare that to the current levels of control on blogging, and compare that to whether blogs can be controlled. There's that neat cross-national study on state control of blogging and internet access by the Electronic Freedom Frontier that you may wish to consult instead (it's linked by Singabloodypore somewhere).

Ideally, how much control should there be?

There's the comments feature. There's the linking. There's the whole goldfish in a fish tank, voices in an echo chamber feature and the public lynching thing that's so charming about the blogosphere. Bloggers and their readers police their own pretty well. But... that's not what you really wanted to ask, was it? Can the entire internets be controlled?

Do the current laws/regulations help you understand what can or cannot be said in blogs?

Certainly there shouldn't be defamation or incitement to crimes. I write on cultural issues, in a semi-academic style. The rules of my positioning as a certain type of blogger constrains and enables me to write on certain subjects in a certain manner, with a certain agenda. Cultural studies, with analyses that open up the field of interpretations on taken-for-granted "social facts". Those are the rules of the game that I am governed and am empowered by. I occupy the position of a cultural studies blogger, not a political blogger.

You wanted to ask "Do the current laws/regulations help you understand if something blogs are allowed to be political" or something along the lines. That didn't prevent Chairman Yeo from taking an extrajudicial, extralegal action against AcidFlask. That certainly didn't prevent the 4 bloggers to be found ex post facto guilty and punished under a law that has never been used for the purpose of punishing those crimes.

Indeed, as your abstract points out, there is this "vagueness of the laws" that pervades the whole issue. Let me tell you it is the vaguenss of the legal code in the Political Broadcasts Act, in the whole political-legal arena (re: Papalee sentencing proscription on Capt Ryan Goh for "breaking the rules of the game, the unspoken rules as to how we survive, how we have prospered".

Ex post facto criminalisation is the constant threat when a state operates with vague laws and unspoken rules. For a political blogger, that would be the gravest thing. For myself, it's merely a topic to blog about, to analyse its cultural significance and implications.

Academic and critical writing

Newly graduated with a masters in economics, Wei ponders over a book he just borrowed from the National Library, Critical intellectuals on writing (Olsen G, Worsham L, eds; 2003). The anthology consists of interviews of leading scholars by the editors, on being intellectuals.

Interestingly, Wei notes their introduction attempts to delineate the difference between academic and intellectual writing:

Simply stated, the distinction is this: academic work is inherently conservative inasmuch as it seeks, first to fulfill the relatively narrow and policed goals and interests of a given discipline or profession and second, to fulfill the increasingly corporatised mission of higher education; intellectual work, in contrast, is relentless critical, self-critical, and potentially revolutionary, for it aims to critique, change, and even destroy institutions, disciplines and professions that rationalise exploitation, inequality and injustice.

I never noticed the distinction between academic writing and critical writing - or rather, that distinction was not adhered to when I wrote my honours thesis. Of course, most of my classmates were trying to game the system...

Then, my reading material consisted of Pierre Bourdieu, who had this to say in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977):

The social scientist has an obligation to see to it that the social world loses its character as a natural phenomenon, that the question of the natural or conventional character (phusei or nomo) of social facts can be raised. Academic discourse, in the universe of discourse or argument, must combat orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened opinion that aims at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa (the natural, undiscussed, and undisputed), and instead become heretical, heterodox, to alert consciously to readers of the existence of competing possibles and the sum total of the alternatives not chosen that the established order implies.

It's a completely different view altogether: ideally, academic writing is critical writing.

Let all the poisons hatch out...

The latest revelations about the NKF hardly come as a surprise. We knew all along that NKF was poorly managed, that they had a creative approach to accounting, that without any transparency, Durai and his minions got away with their misdeeds for years.

Previous NKF coverage on this blog:
Get that Man a Peanut!
He who lives by the peanut
and The peanut that launched a thousand ships.

So far, all my accusations and analyses have proven true, and Matilda Chua is apparently the next in line for a Durai treatment.

I urge Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan to step down after investigations are over.

1. Minister Khaw knew about the massive reserves and defended them last year. Khaw now muses regretfully why NKF got away with it for so long. The fact is NKF's excesses had always been under public scrutiny for the best part of the past 5 years. The fact is Minister Khaw and his precedessors at the ministry had always risen to NKF's defense. The fact is, with the backing of the Minister of Health, who would dare go up against NKF?

2. Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the government taxman, and the commissioner for charities have all audited the NKF's books for years and found nothing objectionable or illegal. I urge all of them to step down from their posts as well. They're bloody incompetent since it didn't take too long for Gerard Ee and his gang of newcomers to pick apart NKF's game plan.

3. If Minister Khaw says NKF can't be run by an emperor like old China, why should Singapore be run by an emperor like old China?

Julius Caesar is not amused

Apparently students in Temasek Junior College in Singapore think Chia Thye Poh, the prisoner of Sentosa, was an urban legend.

At their student forum page, the fruits of 20 years of tertiary History syllabus and incorporated National Education subliminal messages are shown for all to see.

rehtse: the ISA is used to deal with not just terrorists, but ppl who pose security threats to S'pore. however, the foreign media chooses to interpret it as "ppl who pose POLITICAL threats to the ruling party". that's their main reason for objecting to the ISA.

Solos: Yes, that's right... but I have not seen it used on any political figure as yet.

ashke: ummm... about out of point but wasn't there this fellow who's been exhiled to sentosa???

Solos: You mean exiled to Sentosa??? Never heard of it before... care to elaborate on it.

ashke: that's the problem, I've only /heard/ of it, it's like some kind of Singapore urban legend kind of thing or something...


Rench00, if you're reading this post now: THIS is the ultimate failure of Singapore education.

Condi Rice Jedi Mind Trick!

With more than half of Europe up in arms from reports that the CIA has been flying terror suspects to secret jails in Romania and Poland for torture and questioning, US Secretary of State unveils her Jedi Mind Trick.

So onwards with the top 5 Condi Rice Jedi Mind Tricks, all of which are preceded with the customary wave of the hand!

#5. "The US does not engage in torture."
#4. "These are terrorists, not terror suspects."
#3. "Renditions are legal."
#2. "It is US policy that questioning is to be conducted without using torture."
#1. "I just answered your question on whether the US operates secret prisons in Europe."

Yes, folks: the perpetual scowl on the face of Condi Rice (or what Jon Stewart calls her "stinkeye") is the result of constant concentration needed to pull off Jedi Mind Trick 24/7.

Rome II: Julius Caesar lays the smackdown

The Lone Gunman took a look at Roma Uber Alles last week and accused me of obscurantism. While it doesn't exactly take a training in Classics to figure out the ghastly parallels between Rome and Singapore (aside from having 7 or more hills), the link wasn't that clear in the previous post.

Here then, is your history lesson. I'll try to make it as interesting and entertaining as possible, like Julius Caesar laying the smackdown and leaving broken heads all over the Appian Way.

Proscription: Uniquely Singapore or Ancient Roman?

Proscription (Roman): The dictator, upon coming to absolute power, proclaims his political rivals as enemies of the state. These people are either stripped of their Roman citizenship (which means you could murder, torture, or crucify them), their properties confiscated, heirs dispossessed, and their wives prevented from remarrying (and hence condemning the entire family to penury).

Proscription (Singaporean)

A very long history, but let's start with the most recent cases.
Captain Ryan Goh, a Malaysian with a Singaporean PR, was stripped of his residency, expelled, and refused all future entry to the city state, for his central role in as a pilot in organising a wage negotiation movement in the pilots' union of Singapore Airlines. Papalee, the Father of the Nation and Minister-Mentor-for-life, declared the offending movement of the union as "breaking the rules of the game, the unspoken rules as to how we survive, how we have prospered". The heads of these people must be broken, he claimed sternly.

Tang Liang Hong, candidate in the 1997 elections, lost in the first real (and close) contest in a gerrymandered GRC constituency, Cheng San. The candidate and his team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, thanks to a last moment smear campaign by the Whiteshirts alleging Tang of being a Chinese chauvinist. Upon his loss, the police seized his documents for supposed tax evasion while he fled the country, but interestingly, the charge laid out was that of defamation. Like old fashioned Roman proscription, his wife was also dispossessed of his fortune by the state.

Let's not get into old-fashioned Singaporean proscription of the 1960s-70s, where the Barisan Socialists were shut down, their leaders exiled or jailed indefinitely...

Principate

Principate (Roman): The emperors after Julius Caesar were so afraid of getting assasinated by republicans that they did not dare call themselves King, but merely Princeps (First citzen, the first among equals in the Senate). The political reality of autocratic rule by the Emperor was still scrupulously masked by forms and conventions of oligarchic self-rule inherited from the political period of the 'uncrowned' Roman Republic (509 BC-27 BC) under the motto SPQR.

Principate (Singaporean): The hagiography (official biography, snivelling chroniclers at the Propaganda Times, etc) of Singapore's first Emperor also insist that he was the "first among equals" in a Cabinet graced by the genius that were Lee's Lieutenants.

Roman Succession: The emperor, while pretending to be just a First Citizen for life in a republic, still managed to name his heir, i.e. the next person to rule Rome. A strong emperor could even control the succession to the 3rd generation, while discreetly making sure the immediate successor isn't his son. No, his son would be the emperor after his heir.

Uniquely Singaporean Succession: The emperor, while pretending to be just a First Citizen, decided to hand over the reigns by naming his heir, i.e. the next person to rule Singapore. That strong Emperor even controlled the succession to the 3rd generation, while discreetly making sure the immediate successor was Mr Peanut and not Minilee. No, Minilee would be emperor after Mr Peanut.

Treason

Treason Trials (Roman): Lots and lots of them! Ex post facto criminalisation!
Treason Trials (Singaporean): Catholics branded Marxist for setting up maid union! Left-wing politicians branded Communist for being socialist! Ex post facto criminalisation!

Pandataria: Small rocky island 3km by 800m. Favourite exile destination of noble Romans like Vipsania Julia and Agrippina the Elder.
Sentosa: Small rocky island of 5 square kilometres. Chia Thye Poh was exiled there after 22 years of solitary confinement, detention without trial, and a good old-fashioned Roman purge.

Roma uber alles

From the final episode of HBO drama Rome, a screencap of Julius Caesar surveying a map of the city. Caesar intends to divert the river to reclaim land for the expansion of Rome. Strangely enough, the city has about the same shape as some other familiar place... No wonder our leaders have such delusions of grandeur, yes?

(Incidentally I find to my horror that Singapore is also a city of seven hills...)

The best man for the job

Apparently the spokesperson for this year's Speak Mandarin Campaign is actor Hossan Leong.

Notable facts from the interview article from the Propaganda Times:

Hossan claims that he used to get F9 in Mandarin as a student, but has now "mastered the language". He also claims that none of his friends believed him when he told them of his appointment as spokesperson - as they've never seen him speak Mandarin before.

Mmmm yes. He's mastered the language without anyone noticing that he speaks it.

I mean... GURMIT SINGH has a better claim to mastering the language than Hossan.

And if you are not queen, my dear

My colleagues at Singabloodypore have covered cut and pasted press articles and statements regarding the PLU/NLB affair extensively. Singabloodypore is a groupblog distinguished by the stringent analyses its contributors make on local issues and public policy, but in this matter, PLU has been given a free pass on the critical thinking treatment. After it has become apparent that no one here is willing to rise above their positions as PLU minions cheerleaders, I will have to make a sober assessment of the matter.

Let's go through PLU's initial announcement of the forum event on 1 November.

So we're going to hold a meeting there where the public can see real lesbian and gay people... talk about gay stuff. The public are of course free to wander in and listen. We're even going to allow members of the public to speak and offer their views. However, we will set one condition. If anyone wants to speak, he must take on the persona of a gay or lesbian person and speak from that perspective.

That's a stunning vote for free speech, don't you think? Especially when PLU was aware that the purpose of the NLB-sponsored open committee meetings was "allow the public to observe and perhaps engage with the issues that these civil society groups deal with."

The whole idea of fighting for gay and lesbian rights rests on the refusal of homosexual people to continue speaking up and acting in society under a default heterosexual persona. And here they are, stipulating the public can only speak at their event if they take on a gay/lesbian persona. I'm sorry, but do you seriously think you'll get a sympathetic understanding from any straight person from this "How does it feel to have the boot on your face for a change" exercise? No one from the left would support this lack of free speech. No one from the centre will be won over by this unfair rule of engagement. No one from the right will be... well, they never were anyway. As a festival open to all, the programming needs to be accessible and have a broad appeal - and this PLU event has a broad repugnance.

Today's reporters and PLU's steering committee clearly know what the real objection of the NAC was. Here, they backpedal and play down the significance of their silly rule: "While we are discussing, members of the public are free to offer suggestions. In a way, it's also interactive theatre." Yes, Alex. The public is free to give feedback, as long as they speak in the appropriate persona. I however fail to see how interactive theatre would not have been served if the audience were allowed to speak up as their real selves.

Then, there has been some form of defence for the rather odd rule. Put simply by pleinelune elsewhere, the gag rule is there to deter some homophobic zealot from grabbing the mike and hijacking the meeting/forum/theatre. Yet the founding father of the Singaporean struggle for gay equality denies this: In the Today article, he estimates that "not more than 10 PLU3 members and only a handful of members of the public would have turned up".

Now, if your event is so unpopular that only a handful would turn up, the NAC should give the venue to a more popular group - and one that doesn't attract so many disruptive homophobic zealots. And if among that pitiful handful, there is still a "homophobic zealot" (and what about free-speech zealots?), who then will ensure that the zealot will follow the gag rule? And should the zealots make a scene about the gag rule and flout it at the same time, who shall control them? The security guards of the NLB? Armed officers from Singapore's counterterrorism squad? Special officers from the NAC? One of your well-built committee members?

Now, this is purely from the point of view of the idelogical audience and the organisation of the event. What about the authorities? The state worries that if the event proves it is effortless, harmless, and equally human to speak from a gay or lesbian persona, it will lead to the normalisation of gays and lesbians in mainstream society. This is tantamount to the criminal act of promoting homosexuality and homosexual lifestyles! Yes. This gag rule was in effect a very good excuse for the machinery of the state to shut the event down. Why did PLU give them such a convenient excuse?

Then, there's the issue of the agenda. Note that the initial release didn't mention anything about the agenda - Spell#7 had just gotten the in-principle, preliminary go-ahead from NAC, which had not been in communication with PLU at that time. Yes, that's precisely what I just said. Read carefully the extract of NAC's clarification email to Spell#7:

Would you mind writing up a brief outline of how you envisage conducting the meeting, and what issues would be addressed? Perhaps if you have any other information about the PLU(3) group, and a list of its recent state interactions and public profilings, that would also be useful.

Now, when PLU says it got an "initial approval" from NLB, we must understand that
1. Spell#7 as the organiser of the series had definite approval of the series. It then got preliminary approval for the PLU event, not definite approval from NLB/NAC.
2. NLB/NAC was never in communication with PLU when it was alleged to have given its "initial approval".

Let it be known that the NAC tried to signal to PLU that it had to do a better job at selling its meeting. First, the original agenda was inappropriate:

In the planned Open Closed Door Session, a few of them, about 5 to 6, plan to talk about a Quarterly forum they are organizing in January and the forums after that. Possible forum topics are "The Singapore Constitution and Gender Issues" and "The Home Affairs Ministry's Review of Sex Laws"

Let's see. A public forum on state property, funded by state organs. Possible forum topics all lead to: we oppose these following policies of the state. And then you want to involve the audience, as part of performance theatre? This is of course more subversive than any piece of performance theatre (which is usually less direct) practised in Singapore.

When asked by NAC to reconsider the agenda, PLU's reply was a masterpiece. "The purpose of a committee meeting was purely organisational (i.e. we would be talking about setting up events and how to get speakers, venues, publicity, about attending other conferences, and arranging meetings with researchers, reporters and other activists coming to Singapore)". And the purpose of the series of events hosted by NLB is (just a reminder) allow the public to observe and perhaps engage with the issues that these civil society groups deal with. I'm sure the purely organisational stuff is something the public is keen to observe and engage with.

After news of trouble with the higher bureaucracy, PLU hastily changes the agenda to:

1. Quarterly Forum (Dec) - speaker(s), exact date, venue options?, publicity arrangements
2. 2006 Pride Month - activity proposals from JC, venue status, time to call for papers
3. Asia Pacific Network conference Kuala Lumpur (2nd week Nov)
4. Upcoming visit of PJ (4th week Nov) - meet and dinner
5. Asia-Pacific Queer conference 2006 - discuss possibility?
6. MC's idea for a Gay and Lesbian Film Festival - discuss possibility?

Great. Work. At. Getting. Support. From. Non-gays.
Yes, a Pride Month would definitely get the sympathy of the public. As with a film festival - Singaporeans watche an average 8 films a year? And the purpose of the series of events hosted by NLB is (yet another reminder) allow the public to observe and perhaps engage with the issues that these civil society groups deal with.

There's a time and place for everything. I have no problems with both agendas of the PLU, and the set of events in the second agenda seem interesting to cover in SBP in the future. Both agendas were inappropriate for the NAC's purposes - they wanted a safe and entertaining show, not this. And both agendas could be discussed in any other private meeting by the PLU committee; they didn't need the NLB/NAC event at all.

PLU clearly didn't try its hardest to get the event. It botched the negotiations with the wrong agendas and the wrong gag rules. So why the free pass at critical analysis? If Singabloodypore prides itself on dispassionately dispatching bloopers and objectionable policies from the establishment, why not do the same for alleged members of civil society? Equal opportunity, I say.

Also, refer to other mistakes made by PLU, the première [note: premier is spelt without an e and without the silly accent] Singapore advocacy group for gay equality.

Si non dominaris, inquit, filiola, iniuriam te accipere existimas?
And if you are not queen, my dear,
Think you that you are wronged?

Solidarity Vigil Review

The Solidarity Vigil for Nguyen Tuong Van was organised by Think Centre and the Reach Out Campaign and held at Asia Hotel on 7 November. For today, I have no comments on the death penalty - readers already know my views through the discussions at Singabloodypore. Instead, I'll give a review of the vigil, which will serve as an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this campaign/movement against capital punishment.

The Ticket

The vigil for Nguyen follows a different format from Shanmugam's vigil in September this year. Instead of a flower child and hippy poet procession-cum-performance reading session, this month's event is a soapbox parade of opposition politicians and civil society activists.

When you have a diverse group on the same campaign, giving speeches at the same event, the ticket is expected to show some unity and discipline. That was lacking, however. Signs of trouble first showed themselves when JB Jeyaratnam began to speak after Alex Au's introductory fact-laying. The veteran politician (the first opposition member to win a parliament seat after Independence), a fiery orator, never warmed up, giving a hestitant and sententious speech.

That is not a problem. The problem was with how his fellow panellists and fellow campaigners on the ticket showed their utter boredom during his speech. Au took off his spectacles and buried his face into his palms, while Anthony Yeo propped his jawbone with a hand. At least the ticket was not further disgraced, as Dr Chee and a Brother from the Catholic church sat attentively, looking and listening to the speaker.

When you're on the same ticket, even looking at your watch while another speaker is giving a speech is taboo, as any greenhorn campaign manager will tell you.

Message Discipline

Chee, Yeo, and the Brother stayed on message. They had just one point to make in their speeches (The Burma Question, the psychological harm to the family of the executed prisoner, the stand on the Catholic church on the matter), and delivered that one point to its conclusion. Contrary to public impressions of Dr Chee as an out of control slanderer of authority figures, the real loose cannon of the night was Nguyen's lawyer, Ravi, who had too many points to make and many more irrelevant points as well, including frequent jibes at the Nominated Elected President, SR Nathan.

There is a place for all things, and a vigil to drum up support for opposition to the death penalty is not the best avenue for politicking or political comedy - something that Jeyaratnam and Chee understood. One wished Ravi had paid attention to the lack of politicking by the two opposition leaders, who went before him.

Unity of Message

This simply means that for a properly organised campaign, speakers on the same ticket cannot afford to contradict each other. Yet, we have

Alex Au: I read a lawyer's account on the internet that the jury system was abolished shortly after Independence because Singaporean citizens were reluctant to convict a member of their peers, if it meant execution.

Jeyaratnam: That's not true. I was a prosecutor during that time and I assure you Singaporean juries never made adverse verdicts - that is to say, finding a clearly guilty man innocent because it would mean the capital punishment. That claim about reluctant Singaporean juries was first made by Lee Kuan Yew in order to justify the abolition of the jury system.

Yes. The poster boy of the internets shows the power of online research... Having contributed to several academic anthologies on the construction of gender, Au forgets to apply the same discourse theory to the lawyer's account he finds on the internets, and also neglects to put proper footnotes and citations for the statistics in the handouts for the audience. Plain embarrassing to have someone on the ticket to correct you like this, really.

Then, we also have, during the Q&A session, Ravi trying to blame everything on Nathan. He would've gotten scot-free and the audience none the wiser had not this exchange taken place:

Ravi: Why does Nathan, upon being nominated (audience laughter) - sorry, elected - as President, refuse to grant clemency to any of the over 100 criminals on Death Row during his tenure?

Jeyaratnam: Constitutionally, the President can only issue a clemency after being advised by the cabinet, which has to be advised by the Attorney-General.

Ravi: That's the elected President, yes? Who has less power than the ceremonial President? (audience laughter) All his predecessors, as ceremonial Presidents, managed to grant clemency to several criminals! So Nathan...

Jeyaratnam: Actually the ceremonial Presidents also could only issue a clemency upon the advice of the cabinet and the AG.

Clearly, one of these men here is wildly uninformed and wrong about how the presidency works. One is a lawyer of over 50 years. Another is a laywer who is currently petitioning the President for clemency for Nguyen. The horrors, the horrors! Ergo, no message unity.

Organisation

For a campaign organised by a political group, there is clearly insufficient organisation per se, little coordination, little preparation. Just requiring the speakers to submit their points to each other for vetting would've prevented all this.

JB Jeyaratnam was lacklustre during his own speech. He had very little to say about the case itself, admitting at his opening statement that he is unfamiliar with the details of Nguyen's case, and what he had to say was put forth in tortured syntax that - given his reptutation as an orator - disappointed the audience. Yet his best contributions were as a fact-checker, to rein in the excesses of the claims by Au and Ravi...

One would've expected Think Centre to place Jeyaratnam as one of the last speakers, instead of being the second speaker. That way, he would've had some inkling of the case by the time he was due to speak...

Thankfully, the final speaker, Madam Letchumi Murugesu, Shanmugam's mother, gave a touching and sincere speech on the futility of the death penalty and its nihilism. She is the true poster child of this campaign, not Nguyen, and not Shanmugam. Think Centre and the Reach Out Campaign would do well to realise this.

Special mentions

Au, the so-called "founding father of the Singaporean struggle for gay equality", made the worst fashion faux pas ever for the vigil. In an event with dozens of video cameras by major news organisations (including Reuters), the dapper man wore a shirt with checked patterns. The rest of the panel, being much more media-savvy and fashion-conscious, wore solid colours. Au will be known as the Hypnotist or Mr Moire due to his satorical choice.