Did PM Lawrence Wong poke the dragon?

On 19 November 2025 at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum gala dinner in Singapore, Lawrence Wong was asked to analyse, from the view of Asia, the contentious and intense China-US rivalry and its spillovers in the region, with "this spat going on between Japan and China". Singapore's prime minister called for stability and de-escalation. Mr Wong even called for a normalisation of ties between Japan and China. His subtext: China's policy of nurturing historical grievances to fuel jingoist nationalism must seem bewildering and abnormal to the peoples living in Southeast Asian nations, which experienced a long Cold War in succession to WW2. (Or indeed, anyone living in the European Union.)

Right on cue, outraged online mobs in China were whipped into a frenzy by one Peking loyalist and online influencer Yu Pun-hoi in Hongkong and his ultra-nationalist collaborators in Shanghai. And then, panic and concern from various segments of Singaporeans who now feel Wong should not have poked the dragon and sparked off a bonfire.

Was Lawrence Wong unnecessarily provocative? How much of this controversy is his fault? Or was the online mob just the latest chapter in a long-running but increasingly ineffective Chinese influence campaign to decouple Singapore from the American security apparatus in the Asia Pacific? Or is this a sign that Singapore has a vocal homegrown faction that stands for realignment and Sincization?

Mob with pitchforks and torches, from Young Frankenstein.
"A riot is an ugly thing. And I think it's just about time that we had one!"

Should Singapore still mourn the loss of The Projector?

It has been exactly a month since the sudden closure of indie and second-run cinema operator The Projector. The closure may have provoked widespread despair and outrage online, however performative or overwrought, but for the sake of public education this discussion must now move beyond narratives marked by self-regarding romanticism, naive sentimentality, and uninformed anti-capitalism.

What different things can we learn if, for example, we took a production of culture perspective? What if we treat watching an indie or foreign film in a shabby chic cinema as an end result of the interplay between organisational structure, industry culture, market forces, audience preferences, and contractual agreements and unwritten norms within the wider movie industry? That is: What does it really take to screen a movie in a cinema? And if a cinema operator like The Projector fails, whose fault is it really?

Woud've been appropriate and poetic, but
The Projector didn't end its run with a screening of Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Did the Straits Times just paint a bullseye on Wang Quancheng?

Can you smell it in the air? This year in Singapore, the Hungry Ghost month begins on 4 August. For a entire lunar month, practitioners of Chinese folk religion or Shenism will burn gigantic sticks of incense, joss paper, and offerings to the dead, sparking the perenial complaints of air pollution by the public and admonitions for multiculturalist tolerance by political leaders. As for more pleasant sights and sounds, visitors to Singapore can look forward to pentatonic Chinese wayangs and racuous charity auctions in the heartlands, organised by temples, clan associations, and neighbourhood business associations.

No wonder then that the Qixi festival has been recently revived by state fiat? And hence, the Straits Times report on Singapore's revival of the Qixi festival, with the newspaper's usual nation-building focus. But wait, there's something wrong in the ST story: a lengthly digression featuring a president of a Chinese association that isn't even an organiser or partner of this year's festival, but is a mere participant, among a field of scores of clan associations? It's as if the Straits Times is dog whistling to readers who have been trained over decades to read between the lines of SPH journalese: Pay attention to Wang Quancheng of the Hua Yuan Association! Don't you want to find out more about him?

"William Tell and The Apple-shoot woodcut", from the printed edition Of Jakob Ruff's version Of The Canton Of Uri folk play "Von Dem Frommen Und Ersten Eydgnossen Wilhelm Thellen",

acted by the townspeople Of Zurich, Switzerland, on New Year's Day, 1545.

Was it wise for Singapore to impose sanctions on Russia?

As war wages on in Ukraine, American president Joe Biden leans on reluctant NATO allies in Europe, long dependent on Russian gas, to stand with the Ukrainians against the invasion. Russia must be punished, yet not hard enough that it could spark another World War. Biden instigates his European allies to propose and vote to condemn the war in the United Nations, while many others refrain from taking a stand. Like most of the world outside NATO, in fact.

Mykhailo Khmelko depicts the Treaty of Pereyaslav in a 1951 painting.

The few Asian nations to impose sanctions on Russia are America's closest allies: South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. And then, there is Singapore. This move has international observers scratching their heads. It is unexpected, uncharacteristic, and unprecedented. Singapore does not live in the shadow of Russia nor is it a NATO member. Nor would most people describe it as a close ally of America. Singapore's brand of diplomacy has been quiet and low key; it rarely sticks out, if ever, from the ASEAN consensus position.

There are those who argue that Singapore should have stayed on the sidelines like its neighbours. That it should play the role of a neutral peacemaker. That Singapore's pro-Ukraine positioning is too extreme, and going further to impose sanctions against Russia is a mistake.

What can Singapore learn from other countries on Covid-19?

Does Singapore still have an advantage in the lockdown era?

On 3 April 2020, Singapore became one of the last major economies of the world to enter a lockdown. Singapore's lockdown came 2 weeks to a month too late, after the pattern of case doubling had already been observed in early March. The international media has used the massive outbreak in Singapore's guest worker dormitories to write off Singapore as a role model for the pandemic.

To be fair, Singapore's SARS textbook response is a mitigation model aimed at containing the spread of a virus and eradicating it over time. Once community spread and outbreaks occur, Singapore as much as the rest of the world is in uncharted territory. Singapore's mitigation model will become relevant to the world again after nations emerge from their suppression model lockdowns. As for being 2 weeks to a month late to the global lockdown party, Singapore's leaders can fashion its own lockdown policy and implementation from mistakes and successes from the rest of the world.

Are Singapore's fake news public hearings a waste of time?

Singapore's Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods have begun hearing testimonies from the public.

It is tempting to dismiss the proceedings as a prelude to new laws against free speech online. But it is more profitable to suss out the complexities, competing agendas, inconsistencies, and blind spots that arise from select committee hearings even as the committee balances its fact-finding function with its practical role in parliamentary decision-making and consensus-building.

In other words, ignoring a select committee's public hearings is an indicator of political illiteracy.

What is a reasonable response to the fake news problem?

The window for public submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee on fake news shutters on 28 February 2018 in Singapore. We at Illusio have decided not to make a submission to the committee. What we have written on the matter is intended a resource for the public at large, legislators in parliament, media practitioners and consumers, and legal and communications researchers, specifically on the knowledge gaps that the committee is expected to acknowledge, address, and recommend further research on before it authors a White Paper.

There may be unknown unknowns, but have we dealt with all the known unknowns of fake news?

Are Fake News laws inevitable in Singapore?

Civil society activists in Singapore will no doubt claim that legislation against fake news is inevitable and imminent, that it is part of the authoritarian government's general clampdown on the online media.

In terms of Westminster procedure, Singapore's inevitable march towards fake news laws is in its infancy. Cabinet signals interest and concern on an issue in a Green Paper, a Select Committee is convened. That's where we are at now. Public hearings need to be convened, a committee report drafted and presented in parliament, the cabinet's response to its recommendations and findings presented in another parliament session, a White Paper drafted by the cabinet, potentially more public hearings convened for feedback, the White Paper debated in parliament, a Bill drafted and read twice before passing into law. That is how much more needs to be done.

Yet given how Singapore puts its own spin on Westminster procedure, our hysterical activists might well be right.

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?

Hard Talk with the Prime Minister: Singapore loses the plot

HARDTalk interviews are hardly a fireside chat

Did prime minister Lee Hsien Loong "do us proud" yesterday, or did he stutter, freeze, and turn all defensive? It is unlikely that PM Lee thought his BBC HARDTalk interview with Stephen Sackur would be a walk in the park, much less a fireside chat. His father had appeared on the same show several years ago and turned in a feisty performance.

It is far likely that Lee's media team is aware of the performative aspects of an international interview, given the pre-approved trailer showing Lee throw out a combative line: "I would not presume to tell you how your press council should operate, why would you presume to tell me my country should run?"

But if we are to judge if that's a winning line or a defensive cover, we cannot take that line out of context.

"Prosecution or persecution?" The continuing Judge Dredd tendencies of the Elections Department

As we argued last month, the principles of the exercise and distribution of power by the state and its agencies, in the event of an investigation, have been contravened in the investigation of alleged breaches of the cooling off amendments of the Parliamentary Elections Act. The police have usurped the role of the public prosecutor and attorney general in their questioning of Roy Ngerng, and more importantly, both the ELD and police have usurped the role of the courts in their joint press statement.

One month later, the separation of investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial roles of state agencies continue to be blurred. This is cause for major concern.

"Prosecution or persecution?" Public law issues in the investigation of Teo Soh Lung and Roy Ngerng for Cooling Off Day violations

In the distant future of the 2000 AD comic books, Mega-City One is patrolled by a police corps empowered to arrest, convict, sentence, and execute criminals. Judge Dredd pushes the popularity of authoritarian anti-crime rhetoric in society in the 1980s to its most logical conclusion: a world where due process and separation of powers mean nothing. The gimmick is fashioning a hero for a world where these authoritarian fantasies have come true, while the twist is showing that what passes for justice in this world is hardly something we'd recognise or desire.

Conversation with the Prime Minister: Just a conversation?

How Minilee thought he'd appear on TV last night:
as an FDR conducting a folksy fireside chat

Time to ditch the NDP

First ever parade at the Padang Red Square

We bring to your attention Channelnewsasia's report on the 2013 Singapore National Day Parade, and its figure of 27,000 celebrants.

Figures on attendance and participation in previous years' NDPs have not been officially collated; nonetheless a rough gauge can be gleaned from the headlines and reports from The Straits Times. In 1966, the participant figure was 23,000. In 1969, 30,000. In 1986, it swelled to 70,000 at the National Stadium. In 1997, ST decided to report only on the spectators (as opposed to everyone at the NDP, including the contingent and performers), which they pegged at 60,000.

From these numbers, a few statistical observations emerge.

Singapore's population has increased from 1.65 million in 1966 to over 5 million in 2012. Yet the attendance at its National Day Parade appears to have plateaued on the eve of the Asian Financial Crisis and declined steadily since, and shrinking to early independence era numbers. As a percentage of total population, attendance figures haven't just returned to early independence era figures; they have plummeted far below that.

Despite the NDP being telecast on every free-to-air channel ever since its inception, the Media Development Authority and its predecessors do not publish viewership figures. We only have anecdotal reports that people have been tuning in to the NDP far less these days.

Since 2002, the cost of putting up the National Day Parade has increased almost every year. We're not certain if the punchline ought to be this: As fewer people (both absolute and as a percentage of total population) turn up each year to watch the NDP, the cost of the NDP has been going up (both absolute and per audience).

Ditch the NDP now, I say!

Why watch the NDP anyway?

People need to question why NDP has so much military hardware porn

 
"No need lah. It's the same every year." - anonymous

"My preoccupation wasn't the audience at the parade. They were the converted... It's actually the rest of the Singaporeans who are thinking, 'Ah, another propaganda event.'" - MP Chan Chun Sing

I have neglected to say that lower audience numbers may be due to declining interest -- or they could be the direct result of venue capacity, or due to an interaction between the two.

But to read MP Chan Chun Sing's thoughts on his 2009 parade, one might come to the idea that the SAF possesses statistics which show a steady tapering off in the numbers of "the converted" which predates the New Normal. But why?

It can't be because the NDP is the same every year. The NDP has to be the same every year. You'll agree too if you see it as a secular ritual commemorating nothing less than the State itself. The ritual serves to recreate the social and political order in mystical and symbolic terms, to reify the official narrative(s) (Singapore: from fishing village to cosmopolis and nation, for example) as a spectacle, an assault on the senses, ready to be consumed by awed and numbed citizen-units whose sole contribution is to stand up to sing the year's NDP song (which fails as a patriotic song if it can't be sung in unison by a crowd).

The sequence of each National Day parade follows the logic of military
protocol: a school choir sings; hundreds of provost guards march; ministers
arrive; spectators stand as the prime minister appears; guards salute as the
president arrives with a fanfare; the national anthem is played; the president
inspects the guards; the show begins with gun salutes, military stunts, fly-past, drive-past, and march-past.
- Leong Wai Teng, "Consuming the nation: National Day Parades in Singapore", New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3, 2 (December, 2001): 5-16.

Well-travelled observers will no doubt seize on the striking similarities between the military pornography, authoritarian fetish, and spectacle addiction of Singapore's NDP to similar displays in Soviet Russia, the DPRK, and other post-communist relics of the world.

If there is a gradual but terminal decline in interest in Singapore's NDP, it can only be a symptom of a far greater malaise; it could very well be that Singapore has come of age, that top-down secular rituals, mass displays, the performance of grand national narratives are no longer effective means of directing a people towards a shared national consciousness. Perhaps, if the NDP planning committee were sharp and farsighted enough, they'd be asking what kind of national consciousness we'd get if they applied a bottom-up approach instead.

I still won't watch an NDP but I'd watch this

Oh look, even the Russians do reenactment spectacles these days

If the priestess of Ise were in charge of the NDP planning committee, I'd scrap the NDP entirely. Its time has come and gone.

Instead, I will give you a non-NDP, an anti-NDP. Imagine from dawn till dusk, several roving camera teams tasked to find out how people are spending their 9 August. As you tune in over the day, you'll see actual people, actual events actually happening right now on national day...

In Singapore, with Singaporeans working (or having a rest), celebrating (or refusing to, or celebrating something else entirely), taking a break from life or having to deal with life. Singaporean citizens and PRs, FTs and tourists. We'd watch Gilbert Goh's Hong Lim Park celebration, fly to the Botanic Gardens for the Pink Picnic...

Outside Singapore: emigres, expats, exiles. Former guest workers now back in their home countries or working elsewhere.

We'll see the aged grandmother who still needs to sell tissue on National Day, the foreign maid who used to work in Singapore on a pittance, a group of ah bengs hanging out at AMK Central spoiling for a fight, a fever-wracked middle class, middle age man desperate to find a clinic open on National Day. We'll hear from the ra-ra patriots, and maybe say hi to Francis Seow and Tan Wah Piow after all these years.

Imagine all this, in 5 minute segments. It'll be quite literally one Singapore, many stories. And it will be truth in advertising. And I'd watch that.

Book Review: Freedom from the Press by Cherian George

Part I: Cherian George doesn't want you to take him seriously as an academic

If you have a good impression so far of the career of Dr Cherian George as a serious political commentator on Singapore politics or as an academic, don't read his reply to Vernon Chan's review of Cherian's book, "Freedom From The Press" on The Online Citizen.

What are we to make of an academic who reacts in this fashion to an unknown complaining that his book isn't rigorous enough, doesn't follow normal academic writing and research standards? It's one thing to perhaps claim that Chan is a nobody making a mountain of a molehill, or that Chan is wrong about the standards required of academic publications. But it's a very different thing to say: "Fortunately for me, NUS Press – one of Asia’s top academic publishers – applied less lofty standards than Chan." or admit that most of the book is "the result of painstaking original research by my assistant."

We have read Cherian George's book following Chan's review in TOC and Cherian George's curious hissy fit, which is remarkably curious and unprofessional since it amounts to an academic telling a non-academic why he didn't have to declare his theoretical framework, and telling the non-academic why he's pretentious in trying to hold the academic to academic standards in his review.

Now we at Illusio have never shied away from being polysyllabic, hurling theoretical frameworks at readers as a preface before answering any question, or even teaching you all about the media theory of Roland Barthes. We can afford to be pretentious while taking down Dr Cherian George.

Pseudo-Intellectual Waffling

But let's give credit where credit is due. Where it comes to pretentiousness and putting on pretensions, no one outshines Cherian George. Let's take a look at the first two chapters of Freedom From the Press.

Geroge presents no theoretical framework, no consistent strategy of presenting an analysis of "journalism" and its relation to "state power in Singapore". What about the concept of "freedom" then? For some mystifying reason, George spends two entire chapters feeding us red herrings. In the bizarro universe of Cherian George the academic from NTU, there is a huge controversy over the concept of press freedom. He vacillates between acknowledging its existence, viability, and rightness as a concept and denouncing it, Kishore Mahubhani style, as a convenient western invention that isn't quite practised in the west.

Dispensing with references, sources, and resorting to misrepresentation and strawmen arguments

My issue with these two chapters is not the glibness of Cherian's argument but that it's part of his centrist for the sake of centrist schtick, which I've identified before in this blog. Yet what dismays me (and probably Chan) is Cherian's frequent resort to strawman arguments on both ends of the political divide. Sentences like these are littered throughout FOTP, so much so that Cherian should be hauled up for an Intellectual Public Work Order to clean up his tome.

"One favourite retort of defenders of authoritarian press systems is that there is, after all, no country with absolute freedom."

"Those at the opposition end of the political spectrum includes foreign critics with a barely concealed contempt for Singapore and its people..."

In FOTP, which Cherian George crows that NUS Press saw fit to publish, arguments (mostly against the Singapore press system) are attributed to faceless, nameless critics. And foreign academics, who are almost always faceless and nameless unless they happen to be Mary Turnbull, who wrote a coffee table book (commemorating 100 years of The Straits Times, no less!) commissioned by Cherian's former employer, SPH.

We kid you not. This is a sample paragraph in Cherian's book.

"By misidentifying the ways in which the government controls media and politics, analysts have arrived at erroenous conclusions. According to some, Singapore's unfree media system was supposedly incompatible with an open economy and First World standards of living... Most of these predictions have been based on crude misconceptions..."

Who are these analysts? What are the conclusions, however erroneous, they have made? What predictions did they make precisely? What misconceptions did they base all these on? Where are the flood of citations and footnotes that would normally accompany a paragraph like this?

Cherian George doesn't seem to want to be taken as an academic as long as there are mysterious, unnamed analysts whose studies and predictions he rubbishes without the courtesy of 1. naming them, 2. and their actual studies or articles. It's as good as misrepresenting his fellow academics in other parts of the world, who thankfully won't hear of his wretched excuse of a book since no serious journal will bother reviewing it.

On one hand, George wants to be taken seriously eventually as an academic who writes on the media and state control of the media; on the other hand, George also wants to be taken seriously as a serious academic who isn't like the "western critics" and "anonymous critics" whose criticisms of the Singapore press system he denounces - probably because they're not Singaporean, they're Singaporean but anonymous, and they're more truthful about the state of Singapore's press than he allows himself, as a serious and credible commentator within the Establishment on Singapore politics.

Now here's your moment of zen

What gets Cherian George's goat apparently are the Reporters San Frontieres's Press Freedom Index, which places Singapore near the bottom. He seems to be mightily offended, dismisses the entire enterprise of press freedom indices with just one line: "RSF's methodology is dubious, resulting in the Republic being grouped with regimes where journalists lose not just their liberty but even their lives." And just to show what a good little academic he is, Cherian George provides a CITATION and reference for this judgement call. Namely, his own blog post.

No, I guess there haven't been any serious academics publishing articles in peer-reviewed international journals where they try to analyse the methodology, consistency, validity, and coherence of the Press Freedom Index and others.

In the bizarro universe of Cherian George, Google Scholar shows Zero Results for this because Harvard's Ronald Inglehart hasn't bothered to test the RFI, and SAGE isn't interested in academics trying to take apart surveys and indicators to see if they're worth anything. In the bizarro universe of Cherian George, the academics Harvard and SAGE, amongst others, can't really find a way to discredit the methodology or theoretical basis or validity of the various press freedom indices they've looked at.

In the universe we live in though, a simple Google Scholar search reveals all the western academics (amongst others) who have audited the RSF and Freedom House indices for decades and given them a clean bill of health, as well as explain what these surveys are really telling us (and consistently) over time.

I mention Ronald Inglehart because he's a big hitter in the world of political science. His World Values Survey finally made its way to Singapore earlier this decade. The NUS researchers co-conducting the Singapore leg of his survey spent about 6 months of preliminary research to critique or validate the concept, methodology, and validity of the WVS and found it acceptable. Now when Ronald Inglehart spends time doing the same to the Press Freedom Index and finds it passes muster and publishes a paper on it, you'd trust him. Not this Cherian George clown with his glib 'refutation' of the PFI on his 'journalism' blog.

Gee, so much fail just in the first 2 chapters of his book already? We advise "Dr" Cherian George to be a better academic or just stop pretending to be one.

And maybe If you have a good impression so far of the career of Dr Cherian George as a serious political commentator on Singapore politics or as an academic, you should skip the introduction and the first 2 chapters of his book, Freedom From the Press.

The good and the godless

Paul Tobin of the Humanist Society is outraged with The Straits Times Saturday feature on 27 November 2010, "God Wants You: Making faith cool".

With all due respect, Paul Tobin is barking up the wrong tree when he complains the feature expresses a "prejudice against those without any religious affiliation".

Pro-religious article or bad journalistic writing?

As a rule of thumb: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. As a further rule of thumb: Straits Times journalists - even if they're not Dr. "I don't need no stinking research" Andy Ho - are generally incompetent even when it comes to journalistic standards.

All you need to do is to read through the entire 16-page feature from last Saturday. One will then invariably make the following observations and conclusions:

1. The author has a 16-page, multiple article feature written on youth outreach by religious groups.

1a. This is not a 16-page feature on youth and violence, or solving youth problems through religion.

2. However, the editor sees more readers being interested to read the 16-page feature if the lead article suggests the outreach is tied to the rise in youth gang violence and the current moral panic.

2a. In other words, the lead article of the feature has been tweaked to be 'relevant' to 'current issues'. Hence the throwaway references to youth violence and gangs. Even Matthew Matthews, the pastor-sociologist interviewed here, says *nothing* about violence and gangs, but about religiosity as a youth phenomenon.

3. But anyway, that's why the lead article states early on that the youth outreach efforts have been going on for years to engage gang-prone youth - even though the reports in the next 14 pages mention nothing about reaching out youths and gangs - merely reaching out to youths in general.

4. My proof? How about: the list of interview questions Lee Siew Hwa sent to one of her correspondents in her feature article - which would have been the same set of questions she sent to everyone else.

But what about the line about "losing a generation to godlessness", or losing youths to "cynicism, violence and even fanaticism" in the absence of religion?

If this were Lee Siew Hwa's own words, then we have a case for her apparent bias against atheism and whatnot. A more likely explanation: journalists of The Straits Times - following certain bad practices in second-rate newspapers from the west - do not feel the need to indicate that a particular line or lines of thought are actually quotes or paraphrases from interviewees.

So think: which interviewee(s) would have made a remark about generations being lost to godlessness? Which interviewee(s) from which religious group(s) covered in the feature would have equated the absence of religion to an absence in morality?

[Hat-tip to AngryDoctor]

Theonlinecitizen replies

Choo Zheng Xi, currently a law undergrad at NUS and the co-editor of theonlinecitizen, has replied via MSN. He is the original author who broke Alfian's story, advised Alfian to send in his essay on Francis under a pseudonym, and also published Alfian's op-ed piece "Should homosexuals be allowed to teach" as an uncredited article.

The sum of it: Choo Zheng Xi has refused to answer any of the questions raised almost 2 weeks ago. I am reproducing his reply, stating his refusal to reply, word for word here, with no additions, subtractions or alterations:

[01:47] choo: hey sorri dont think ile be replying to your piece
[01:47] akikonomu: i didn't expect you to
[01:48] choo: ok
[01:53] akikonomu: you see, i don't expect you to have what it takes to explain away that breach of journalistic ethics
[01:53] choo: more like i dont think i need to actually
[01:54] akikonomu: nope. because you can't explain it anyway
[01:54] choo: well you wouldnt know would you =)
[01:55] choo: honestly it'd give the issue more publicity than a non issue deserves
[01:56] choo: none of the grand total of 3 ppl ive asked to look at your piece thinks it matters
[01:56] choo: they're probably the only ppl who read it
[01:56] choo: if i'd replied
[01:56] choo: i might have doubled your readership
[01:59] *** "choo" signed off at Wed Jul 11 01:59:14 2007.

I would like to thank Choo Zheng Xi for taking the time to explain that an explanation isn't needed, and to take the effort to impress upon me that this is a non-issue.

Alfian writes in

Mr Alfian Sa'at has emailed to clarify the questions raised in the earlier post, and I am reproducing his reply here word for word, with no additions, subtractions or alterations:

there is no big conspiracy. The story goes like this:

a) I file in the 'Francis' article for Trevvy.
b) Trevvy editors freak out; they think it's sensitive. They tell me they're not going to run it.
c) I consider passing it to Fridae (Which will piss off my eds, but I felt the story needed an airing. Francis needs to have people relating similar experiences with him, for people to step up and offer assistance, etc)
d) Someone from TOC is on MSN with me. I mention Trevvy spiking the story.
e) That someone suggests that I run it on TOC, but with a pseudonym. When I ask why a pseudonym, he says certain people in the blogosphere will just jump at it and accuse me of non-objective reportage.
f) At his insistence, I give him a pseudonym. 'Ramlah' is a silly drag name I have for myself; it's an inside joke among my friends.
g) Trevvy decides to run the article. But eds want to call it a 'parable' so as to cover their backsides.
h) Now Trevvy wants TOC to stop running it, claiming exclusivity.
i) It's messy. Ideally I would love to have the story on two different sites catering to two different readership profiles.

As to why I appear as various avatars for the articles (Alfian, Ramlah and one uncredited), much of it was based on editorial decisions rather than my own.

I wish to assure my readers and Alfian's friends that we have cleared the air between us, more than 3 days ago when he sent me this clarification. Notice that all outstanding questions posed to Alfian in the previous post have been cancelled. And I would like to note that 3 days since the poet and playwright explained the situation in his forthright and honest manner, we have heard not a peep from the editors of theonlinecitizen.

Here's what is really at stake: Suppose an article is reprinted several times over, with very minor differences, in multiple locations, but with different author names - or under no name at all - one might jump to the conclusion that either

a. there are different authors, and someone is clearly plagiarising from an original source, stealing someone else's intellectual work to pass off as their own, or

b. there is just one single author, who is running a sockpuppeting operation.

In the case of Alfian Sa'at, it appears that the editors of theonlinecitizen have clearly made a fool out of the poet and playwright - making him look either dishonest or conspiratorial, as either a plagiarist or a sock puppeteer.

Note that it is the editors of theonlinecitizen who have split Alfian's long article into 2 shorter ones - publishing the first under the pseudonym of Ramlah Abu Bakar, and the second as an anonymous article with no author attributed.

We are unclear why the editors of theonlinecitizen have chosen to do this. According to what Alfian has been told by the same editor, certain people in the blogosphere will just jump at it and accuse me of non-objective reportage.

I would understand this as an issue of a possible conflict of interest, i.e. "Some people would say Alfian's writing about Francis being rejected by MOE because Alfian himself was rejected by MOE". But here's the thing, and I hope the editors of theonlinecitizen pay attention: you do NOT deal with conflicts of interest by making the decision to withhold knowledge of the conflict of interest from your readers. An ethical journalistic source would actually *state* the conflict of interest, so that all readers can judge for themselves whether the article is fair and balanced, given the positioning of its author.

It's a simple, fundamental, publishing rule of thumb. Yet theonlinecitizen's editors have chosen to withhold information from its readers, to engage in deception (note the second article here is still uncredited, even after Alfian acknowledges authorship in his blog.

There is nothing wrong with conflicts of interest issues in writing, reporting, or opinion essays - that happens all the time. What is wrong is knowing that there's a conflict of interest, and then deciding to withhold that information from readers. The withholding of the fact is the real ethical issue - knowing who the person is, knowing his conflict of interest, and advising him to withhold his identity - so as to keep readers unaware of the conflict - that is not being open and honest.

It is to my regret that I find theonlinecitizen's silence on this issue most disturbing. That its editors had the arrogance to decide that its readers - and other blog aggregators who linked to those 2 articles - do not need to know the fact is most disturbing. That theonlinecitizen urges full disclosure on the part of the government and yet behaves as though they don't need to practice it themselves is most disturbing. And so it goes.

Compare and contrast. Discuss!

This is Alfian Sa'at on Trevvy.
This is Ramlah Abu Bakar on The Online Citizen.

Compare. Contrast.

Question for Alfian Sa'at: Are you the author of the Ramlah Abu Bakar article on theonlinecitizen?

Question for theonlinecitizen's editors: Were you aware that Ramlah Abu Bakar is Alfian Sa'at? If yes, when did you know? If you knew this, can you explain why you felt this fact had to be hidden from your readers?

Question for Alfian Sa'at: Why did you submit your article to theonlinecitizen under a different name?

Question for Alfian Sa'at: In your trevvy article, the title identifies Francis's story as a parable. I understand parable to mean "a fictitious narrative". Could you explain what are the factual elements in your report, and what has been fictionalised?

Question for theonlinecitizen's editors: Did the editors verify the details of Rmalah Abu Bakar's article and sources? Is RamlahAbu Bakar's article presented as a journalistic piece, or a parable? Enquiring minds want to know!


This is Alfian Sa'at highlighting an "interesting article"
This is theonlinecitizen's op-ed

Compare and contrast.

Questions for Alfian Sa'at: Are you the author of "Should homosexuals be allowed to teach" on theonlinecitizen?

If no, could you tell us why you've plagiarised and incorporated this article into a longer essay?

If yes, could you explain why you have chosen not to be identified as the author of this article?

Questions for theonlinecitizen: Could you clarify who is the author of this essay?

Could you explain why it appears without an author name this time, instead of a pseudonym? Enquiring minds want to know!

Questions for a new century

The history of communications (discourse, the exchange of ideas) is the history of the domination of relatively small groups over the means of literary, ideological, and literary production. Within the proto-state, only two caste-like classes of people had the legitimate access to public discourse and the interest to shape the content and nature of public discourse - the religious priesthood and its secular offshoot, the historians. Even during the age of the pamphleteers, of writers who could rouse hundreds of thousands to decapitate monarchs and overthrow governments, the story has remained the same: a vanguard leading the masses to revolution; the few, organising discourse, filtering the message and letting it loose on select crowds.

Even as technologies of communication and writing improved with the invention of the printing press, the newspaper and the nation-state, the message, now nationalised for the publics to embrace as their totality, has remained in the hands of the newspaper barons, opinion-makers, talking heads and pundits on television.

But you say, the internet has changed everything... Technically yes, perhaps, but it is important to note when and how this came about. The revolution did not come with newsgroups, forums, webpages or chat channels; the technology that you credit for the revolution did not give birth to it, but merely provided a space for people with similar interests to engage with each other. It is the blog and the social internet that has given the masses a medium to participate, influence and set the direction of public discourse itself. This is an age where everyone now has the voice to speak to all and the ear to listen to everyone else, where public discourse is discursively formed by the public itself. It is also an age where the public exercise of this power, the public participation in public discourse, creates a situation where discourse is made impossible.

To wit: Yes, we have the technological conditions, but what are the social conditions, the habits of mind necessary to create a conducive environment where people want to share points and develop ideas with each other? It's not a silly question - I have pointed out the deterioration in the climate of discussions and annonymous comments on local blogs some time ago, as have other bloggers more recently (some of whom I understand have become ex-bloggers).

So yes. We are at an odd juncture of local blogosphere history. In one ring, we witness a power grab of the blogosphere by the whiteshirts and their keyboard commandoes, with dual central command posts at the P65 and ypap blogs, supported by mysterious anonymous posters who pop up seemingly everywhere. In the other ring, we witness a power grab of the blogosphere by the redshirts and their keyboard commandoes, with dual central command posts at a non-partisan blog fueled by reader contributions (the open secret is the editor meets up with his regular contributors every fortnight to discuss articles and editorial direction) and an unofficial redshirt supporters blog fueled by apparently the same editors and public contributors from the first blog, and of course supported by mysterious anonymous posters who pop up seemingly everywhere. A pox on both their houses! Or as someone else has put it, black sheep or white sheep, you are still sheep. And in yet another ring, a gang of wise men pontificate politely over whether the state has any obligation to subsidise healthcare for the aged poor...^[1]

When you create an atmosphere of escalating incivility, turn polite discourse into a parody of itself by abdicating common sense and responsible analysis, offer commentary from an inauthentic "non-partisan" position, you poison the well of discourse. And through demonstration, prove that public participation in public discourse cannot be guaranteed by just technology alone.

And hence the slow evaporation of the political blogosphere, the gradual exit of bloggers, the sight of Gresham's Law running its course here - where the local blogosphere has been a venue for the exchange of ideas, bad blogging drives out good blogging. The warning signs have been here for at least a year, the alarms sounded at least half a year ago, and the rush to the exits beginning in earnest.

Don't call us when the dust settles, when you know which party has grabbed the blogosphere for what it's worth. Don't call us when you're done with the mass identical anonymous postings, the ratcheting of angry rhetoric and namecalling, the insincere and dishonest argumentation. Don't call us, because political bloggers aren't going to rebuild the credibility of this medium once you decide you need us once again.

To wit: Yes, we have the technological conditions, but what are the social conditions, the habits of mind necessary to create a conducive environment where people want to share points and develop ideas with each other? What will you gain if the only way to gain a foothold - and then some - in the blogosphere, will destroy its credibility outright, as well as its position as a safe haven for public discourse?

Footnotes

[1]

Surprisingly, the post questioning the public policy of state subsidised healthcare had no numbers - no breakdown of average healthcare costs for the aged, no breakdown of incomes. No shit, Sherlock! Isn't it obvious that healthcare has to be subsidised because most medical emergencies at that age cannot be afforded, even if the costs are shared by the family of the aged sick?! The farcial nature of the discussion was only added by the continuing commentary by the gang of wise commentors, who studiously ignored the big gaping flaw in front of their noses...