Will the PAP pay a political price for the committee of privileges?

Politics is a funny business. Both sides of the political divide in Singapore can agree on several immutable facts: Worker’s Party MP Raeesah Khan told several lies in Parliament for months, eventually admitted, apologised, and resigned for lying, a complaint for breach of parliamentary privilege was filed, and a committee of privileges convened to investigate the matter.

According to certain online commentators, given the same facts, it is the People’s Action Party that must pay a political price because the committee of privileges allowed Khan to implicate the leaders of WP (notably Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh and Opposition Whip Sylvia Lim) for their possible role in abetting her lies, and then to investigate these allegations. When did they know of the lie? What did they say to Khan over the course of 3 months? Why did they keep silent for 3 months? Why, the PAP will pay for the committee going in this direction, not the WP!

Everything you know about Fake News is wrong

Aside from Singapore, other far more democratic countries are considering or have already passed laws against fake news. When the inevitable accusations of authoritarianism and censorship are made by the usual quarters, all Singapore's minister for communications and information (or his permanent secretary needs to do is to point at France and Germany, which have just recently enacted them, and Canada, which has had them for decades. Even the UK has begun the process of studying whether it needs a fake news law.

If the minister and his permanent secretary are competent, they will point out that these laws have been passed in the "liberal West" even in the face of criticisms about the chilling effects on free speech, and promise to be responsible and circumspect with their new powers.

But that will still not detract from the elephant in the room: Fake news is fake.

Balled Over by the Empire

In our "Rise of the anti-intellectual, illiberal left" category, the question is:

Which of the following did not happen this week?

A. Social Justice Warriors waging war on pie. Empire Pie. I miss fafblog and its pie jokes.

B. Social Justice Warriors waging war on a museum. It put on a fundraising dinner called the Empire Ball to kick of its curated exhibition of the Tate's edgy, critical, anti-colonial take on Empire and Artists (co-branding yay or nay?). They object to the word empire, of course.

C. Social Justice Warriors waging war on Fox's Empire. The word empire is imperialist (duh) and triggering.

Blind men and the elephant: Chua Mui Hoong describes crony capitalism in Singapore

You've probably heard about the blind men and the elephant. In the dominant narrative, the moral of the story one should learn is the limitations to knowledge, how imperfect and incomplete information on the Truth may lead equally wise people to disagree on things. For my readers, I offer a counter narrative. The blind men and the elephant is an allegory for how things look to people who refuse to see what they're looking at.

Singapore's popcorn democracy

Every election, Singapore becomes popcorn democracy. Just look at its expert panellists.

Never again, PinkDot

I'm not attending PinkDot this year. This is coming from someone who has attended every Pinkdot except the one where Broadway Beng was engaged to provide the entertainment. This is coming from someone who has their fair share of gay and lesbian friends.

I made the decision last year after reading Alfian's criticism of the pinkwashing at Pinkdot, after hearing from various friends of the Pinkdot organisers' heavyhanded censorship of community booths and disrespect of the LGBTQI community's diversity and needs.

Which is the real PinkDot mascot? 

Why is PinkDot promoting fear and ignorance?

Why bother attending PinkDot if this is the day where instead of being safe and free, LGBTQI activists suffer the most censorship and oppression, and at the hands of PinkDot organisers?

My activist friends reported the organisers lecturing that this event is not for them, not for the benefit of the LGBTQI community, but for the benefit of appearing safe and unthreatening to mainstream Singapore and their straight allies. And so: a complete gag on safe sex. Straight people will freak out if you give out condoms and safe sex brochures and talk about safe sex! Please say as little about activism on this day itself. It's too confrontational! No one really needs to hear the plight of transsexual sex workers, much less their rights. It's too alternative! And please give us all your brochures to vet. We demand it.

Why bother attending PinkDot if, instead of encouraging diversity and non-judgemental attitudes, PinkDot organisers are the ones who promote the fear and ignorance of real LGBTQIs, and their issues, concerns, needs, diversity?

If Lawrence Khong and the Wear White campaign didn't exist, PinkDot would have to invent them from scratch

We're under attack! Shut up and stop criticising us!

This year, I wonder if PinkDot organisers and the LGBTQI community at large are just papering over issues that need to be addressed and allowing attacks from the religious right to band the community together in the absence of an authentic, living vision.

If not for the wear white campaign and the attacks by conservative Christian pastors, my activist friends would be making more criticisms of pinkdot, inspiring their brethren to actually promote diversity and tolerance within the LGBTQI community, and to question their motives for turning up, wearing pink, or feeling happy that PinkDot has now got corporate banking sponsors.

If not for these attacks, someone would've risen up by now to condemn the hiring of security personnel by PinkDot organisers and exposed it for a fascist, if not a cynical PR move that it is.

Whoever would have thought that a pride event would need to hire its own thugs and goons, who will either harass people who look different or out of place today, or rough up a vocal protestor criticising PinkDot either from the left, or from the right?

No one in their right mind would think for one moment that the "Wear White" or "LoveSingapore" campaigns would be interested to crash Hong Lim Park today. "Wear White" wants to send a signal in the mosques. Lawrence Khong applied to have his event at the Padang. None of them wanted a confrontation, none of them wanted to be in the same space as PinkDot.

And yet PinkDot plays up the so-called attacks, fosters a siege mentality, all to justify the wasteful, immodest, and immoral hiring of mercenary thugs at today's event. Because in their bizarro universe, PinkDot's cheerful and peaceful picnic atmosphere either doesn't exist or is so fragile (despite a turnout of 3000 people on average) that a few protestors would create a riot. What does this say about the PinkDot organisers' perception of the LGBTQI community? That they can be prodded into violence? That they could never react to opposition in a Gandhian manner? What does this say about PinkDot's liberal credentials?

Most of my LGBTQI activist friends have said no to PinkDot's invitations to set up community booths this year. I guess they must be very tired of censorship and oppression. And maybe disappointed that the organisers of the most successful LGBTQI event are themselves the biggest homophobes in Singapore.

Most of them will still be attending the picnic. I will be boycotting PinkDot completely because their KPI is the turnout for the event. Until such time that PinkDot is run by a committee of intellectually honest people whose put the interests of LGBTQI people first, I will not attend any future PinkDot.

Paul Krugman repudiates High Broderism

The body of David S Broder lies cold in the ground where he is interred but Paul Krugman sees the need to repudiate the zombie idea of High Broderism, which sometime this decade had infected our very own Cherian George, now known as the apostle of High Broderism in the Archdiocese of Singapore.

Let's review what Cherian George wanted so badly, put in such eloquent words that half the blogosphere with less than half a brain clapped so wildly for:
1. Cherian George wants a fair and balanced blogosphere that he can award give gold stars to
2. In that heavenly blogosphere, the tone will be not too hot and not too cold but just right.
3. In that heavenly blogosphere, there must be a full "spectrum of views": for every anti-ruling party blogger, there should be a pro-ruling party blogger.

Let's review Krugman's own words, the central problem with High Broderism:

This gets at the heart of the current pundit problem. If you say that one of our two major parties has gone completely off the deep end, you’re considered shrill and extreme. But if you don’t say that, if you pretend that someone like Barbour is a reasonable guy with somewhat different views, then you’re fundamentally lying about reality.

Sure, Singapore is a one-party state right now. But we do have ministers like Tharman Shanmugaratnam who insist that the GST flat consumption tax benefits the poor. What do you want us to do to get our gold stars, Cherian George? Have enough bloggers to say that Tharman didn't fail Econs101 but he's merely a reasonable guy with somewhat different views?

And this is precisely what you'll get in the ideal blogosphere of Cherian George and David S Broder: rampant intellectual dishonesty.

Meet Cherian George, Singapore's apostle for High Broderism

We have never been fans of Mr Cherian George. When we have actually deigned to speak about him, we have not been kind. He has never given us reason to be kind even today and we will tell you why. But you'll need to read his latest essay first.

Cherian George is Singapore's pale imitation of David S Broder and the apostle for High Broderism in the archdiocese of Singapore. For those unfamiliar with American political culture the late Broder was an American journalist who, for want of a better word, was an extremist centrist who made a career and pedestal for himself out of denouncing extremists on both ends of the political aisle.

What needs to be pointed out is that the absolute mid point between two extreme political positions is not necessarily the correct position to take, that the truth can lie closer to the left than it is to the right. Sometimes the truth has a liberal bias. And yet the Overton Window of 'acceptable opinion' has easily been gamed by arch-conservatives shifting their positions further right, with useful fools like Broder advocating a shift to the new centre while denouncing... the extremist leftists!

Now read Cherian George's article again, with the recognition of his unstated High Broderist agenda of advocating a centrist position when reality and logic does not warrant it.

Note for example how Cherian Broder complains of the rabidly anti-government to moderately anti-government stance of online chatter and blogs. He forgets that PM Lee's cabinet has committed several public policy failures over the past 5 years. We would question why Cherian expects the "right mood" for the blogosphere to be more centrist. We'd assume that even wonkish bloggers, say Mr Tan Kin Lian at theonlinecitizen, would see no choice but to critique PAP public policy. Reality does have an anti-PAP bias, people.

Note how cleverly he builds up his High Broderism to present us with a false dilemma which is as intellectually dishonest as it is an advertisement for his centrist at all cost ideology: "it is a mistake to put all our eggs in the government basket, it is surely also a mistake to put all eggs in the opposition or non-government basket."

There are so many things wrong with that statement. I'm happy to point out just two.

1. For an academic, George is surprisingly politically illiterate, conflating the PAP with the government and conflating the opposition with non-government. He forgets that the government includes the civil service talent which advised and implemented the public policy failures of the Minilee government over the years, that non-government talent extends far beyond the political opposition to the much wider civil society.

2. He conflates the singular PAP ideology and talent base with the multiplicity of that of the opposition. Putting all your eggs in a singular solution means you lose all your eggs if that solution proves wrong. Putting all your eggs in multiplicity of solutions doesn't mean you lose all your eggs... But clearly, Cherian George would love to mislead us with his imagery. Just saying.

Make no mistake about it: like the late David S Broder, Cherian George is putting himself up as the arbiter of moderate political discourse, a wise man who can put down any idea and position too radical in his eyes; even if reality, truth, and logic have a certain bias.

ASEAN diplomacy, Singapore style!

Will East Timor be allowed to join ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian nations)?

Its application is sponsored by Indonesia, its former occupier. A few days ago, it appeared to be a done deal.

"We have visited all ASEAN countries and everyone has agreed politically that Timor can join," said Ramos-Horta.

That was then. Now, it seems the ASEAN members who have given East Timor's president assurances are backing away. The loudest dissenters, according to Barry Wan from The Straits Times, are a motley group consisting of Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Burma.

Their reasoning?

Singapore has been quite adamant that the prospective new member needs to prepare properly before it can join the bloc.

Cambodia, Laos, and Burma believe ASEAN cannot afford to accept a weak and poor nation as a member.

Vietnam believes accepting a weak nation will put ASEAN more firmly into the Chinese orbit.

In ASEAN, diplomacy is another name for international comedy.

Singapore's diplomats lobbied hard for the entry of the Indochinese nations into ASEAN in its last expansion, knowing full well that Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam were not properly prepared to join the grouping.

Cambodia, Laos, and Burma certainly didn't object to their own membership applications despite being already preyed upon by the Chinese model of mercantile capitalism prior to them joining ASEAN.

As part of the new Indochinese membership of ASEAN, Vietnam's diplomats and politicians should already know that their neighbours (let's say Burma at the very least) report dutifully to Peking the proceedings of each ASEAN meeting they attend.

East Timor, as a Southeast Asian nation with oil reserves, will attract Chinese diplomacy, development, and political influence whether or not it joins ASEAN.

ASEAN diplomacy deconstructed

Being China's second banana in ASEAN, Singapore will not want to see ASEAN fall further under or more obviously into the Chinese orbit because it means having to compete with 10 other countries who also want to be China's second banana in the region.

Similarly, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma are aware that East Timor is an oil-producing upstart. As a new country that needs to build its infrastructure from scratch, East Timor is terra firma and fresh meat for investment and development funds. The three Indochinese nations do not want China to divert its ASEAN warchest (spent partially on building railroads to connect Peking to Indochina) to this new nation.

As Vietnam's diplomats and leaders are aware, being earmarked as a Chinese satellite doesn't mean co-option as a Chinese ally. Vietnam's China policy consists of resisting Chinese political influence in its ruling party and state organs, while accepting Chinese money. Their opposition to East Timor's membership is motivated by the fear that East Timor will better Vietnam on its own China policy.

Will East Timor be allowed to join ASEAN? Even its biggest detractors in ASEAN think it would do just fine in ASEAN!

Rethinking secularism I

Secularism 1.0: The beta version Papalee would rather forget

Believe it or not, Singapore's wayang model of religious consultation isn't the first time the State had enlisted the religious communities in the nation-building process. This isn't the first time the State had its good intentions blow up in its face either. And guess what, the last time it happened, it involved teaching in schools too.

As they say, all this has happened before; all this will happen again.

I speak of the Religious Knowledge curriculum in secondary schools in Singapore, introduced as a compulsory examinable O-Level subject in 1982 and abolished in 1989. As with Goh Chok Tong's model of religious consultation, the Religious Knowledge was largely a wayang show.

The purpose of RK was peddled to the populace not as religious education, not even as moral education, but mainly as a "cultural ballast" to the bad influences of a rapidly Westernising society and what Lee Kuan-Yew perceived as deculturalisation and loss of traditional values (Straits Times, 15 March 1979). Of course, religious experts and philosophers were activated or enrolled by the state to produce multiple studies and panels to form a curriculum.

On a far more practical level, RK was seen by Singapore's leaders as a piece in their arsenal of tools to promote their vision of a communitarian society, to reinforce their ideology of society over self.

In particular, Confucian Ethics was hoped to be the default choice of Chinese students, unifying the various dialect groups through the 'grand tradition' of Confucianism, then touted by Lee Kuan Yew as the secret of Singapore's economic success.

Needless to say, things didn't work out that way. Confucian Ethics was one of the least popular subjects. Most Chinese students took Buddhist Studies. Bible Studies claimed more than 21.4% of students - and during the 1980s Christians numbered less than 10% of Singapore's population.

Most unfortunately for Lee Kuan Yew, the civil servants, and the panels of religious experts involved in forming the RK curriculum and training the teachers to deliver that curriculum, the failure was more severe than that. A study named "Religion and religious revivalism in Singapore" by sociologists Eddie Kuo, Jon Quah and Tong Chee Kiong directly implicated the Religious Knowledge courses in creating intense religious fervour and religious differences amongst students, and warned of the very real possibility of inter-religious conflicts in the long term.

And this is them being polite about it. And within 1 year of the study's publication, Religious Knowledge was phased out.

Unofficially though, let's just say that members of a certain religious affiliation in Singapore took the state sanction of "Religious Knowledge" to promote their strong-arm evangelising activities, which of course produced very vocal, outspoken, and strident students who put their classmates ill at ease.

To be completely impolite about it: Religious Knowledge was scrapped in schools because of the radicalisation and self-radicalisation of Christian students or students taking Bible Studies.

AWARE: a civil society primer

1. Where PN Balji doesn't get it, once again

A paid hack for the whiteshirts veteran journalist, P N Balji is now a political appointee the director of the Asia Hack Academy Asia Journalism Fellowship, a quango set up for aggrandisement of the gahment and its hacks joint initiative by the Temasek Foundation and the Nanyang Technological University.

As a journalist, Balji is clearly cognisant of the wider civil society in which AWARE operates. He comments on the recent stealth takeover during its AGM by a group whose motives, agenda, and rationale for launching the takeover have not been revealed to the media, ordinary members of AWARE, and least of all to attendees at the AGM. Claiming that "the ladies at AWARE do not seem to get it", Balji does a David Carradine, reminding everyone that it's all about clash of ideas!

The silly old guard who got outfoxxed and outgunned should not be "furious" "sore losers" - if they want to take back their organisation, they should engage in a clash of ideas! If the old guard are upset at the sneaky nature of the takeover, they must take them on and show why they are no good for the future of AWARE.

Silly, silly old PN Balji obviously doesn't get it, despite shaking his avuncular finger at the "old", "sore", "upset" "losers" (btw, NICE JOB slamming the old guard and casting them as emotional whacko females, MR BALJI!!!!1111 I luvs how subtle you can get!).

One wonders why he's preaching the good old civil society value, the clash of ideas, to the old guard. If I'm reading the esteemed Mr Balji right, the onus is on the old guard to commit itself to a clash of ideas and show AWARE members that it deserves to get the organisation back.

As opposed to having the onus on the new guard to commit itself to a clash of ideas at the AGM itself - instead of stacking the meeting with their minions and getting themselves elected without a candid discussion of what they stood for, how they differed from who they sought to replace, and why they were no good for the future of AWARE.

But just so you know, PN Balji has more issues with the old losers than the new interlopers.

2. Clash of ideas - once more into the fray

But bless the pox-ridden heart of PN Balji! Deep down in his black soul, the man realises the sanctity of civil society and its core values.

Let's review: civil society is the conglomeration of free, uncoerced human association and its set of relational networks, formed for family, faith, interest, ideology. These networks would include interest groups, various clubs, labour unions, social movements, citizen advocacy groups and others.

The health of civil society depends on its constituents to freely and civilly engage in the clash of ideas that PN Balji so cherishes. It doesn't matter who you disagree or agree with, out of whichever ideology or faith - what matters is the freedom to engage, disengage, to foster patterns of civility in the polity, to create a sphere of social action independent of any totalising force.

Let us apply to the case of the AWARE takeover, the concept of civil society and its basic requirement for an open, honest, protected clash of ideas.

Much of the online wanking tossers - gays, conservatives, pseudo shock jocks, or fashionistas simply trying to grab recognition as serious political commentators - have come up with praises for the takeover - it worked, things like that happen in condo committee AGMs, this shows they're organised and effective (AND READY ON DAY ONE!)

I would not have believed that there are people who could be more blind than the esteemed PN Balji. But what we have here, is a failure to understand the concept of civil society and its underlying fundamentals. Civil society cannot exist if people stop talking to one another. Civil society cannot exist if people resort to violence. Civil society cannot exist if people are more interested in secretive, numerical-based power struggles instead of the clash of ideas.

The new AWARE exco did not behave as if AWARE was a civil society group. They behaved as if it were some condo committee. The new AWARE exco were the opposite of open, refusing to explain themselves in the AGM, or to offer what they saw was wrong with the old gang, or right with themselves. The new AWARE exco gave perfunctory speeches about their belief in the tenets of feminism, so perfunctory no one believed it was their real agenda. The new AWARE exco shot first, then promised to talk later. We're still waiting for them to give a clear account of who they are, what they believe in, and what they intend to do with AWARE.

On a side note, I would like to express my profound regret about Charlotte Wong Hock Soon and Peggy Leong Pek Kay. Wong was a former sociology and anthropology lecturer at NUS, while Leong was a sociology graduate. It is extremely embarrassing for the Sociology Department of NUS, as for its graduates, that these two persons hail from the same department. One would expect, from the wealth of wisdom and teaching from sociology and anthropology, that this sort of hostile takeover is just not done, and runs counter to the spirit of everything we have been taught about urban society and the civic space. Shame on the both of you!

Wankerdämmerung!

Not a good week for wankers, apparently. On one hand, the gang of wise old men are called out by Elia Diodati and twashers.

On the other... The Void Deck has pronounced Wankerdämmerung on the Brotherhood, while Mr Wang Says "Wankerdämmerung!" to the Brotherhood as they invade his blog.

Agagooga has looked into the eyes of the Brotherhood, and he says Wankerdämmerung to them.

It is now twilight for these wankers as more and more people decode their self-referential prose, their space opera stories, their posing as some kind of sg Illuminati.

As a satire of anonymous commentors, the Brotherhood illustrates the principles of strength in anonymity (no one knows who you are, that you're just the same person posting), strength in numbers (always intimidates people if you seem to be a huge movement), strength in incoherence (very easy to dismiss arguments if you have a dozen anonymouses posting non sequitur replies).

As a satire of local parliamentary debates and online discussions, the Brotherhood's "Great Hall Debates" and discussion style elsewhere illustrate the tendency for discussions to dissolve into brinksmanship, namecalling, thinly veiled threats, obfuscation, and fallacious and illogical arguments by the second reply.

As a satire of aggregators, the Intelligent Singapore illustrates the principle that for a political blogosphere that's as populous as the number of digits in two human hands, people should just use their own blogroll or rss feeds because it'll be the same blogs featured over and over again.

Sure, we kind of appreciate the satire that the Brotherhood is performing, a triple satire on the state of the blogosphere. But it's done in a style that very few people get the joke; that those who do get the joke won't find it in good taste; that the space for reasoned discourse is cut off each time the Brotherhood brings their discussions onto other blogs.

So, I also say Wankerdämmerung!

An academic debate

Duly noted: Ellia Diodati and twasher have set into motion what I call the Wankerdämmerung.

Elia calls out the current Singaporeangle as "trapped in its self-pleasing, obsessive groupthink over academic rigor as applied to things that really don’t deserve such standards", while twasher notes that a recent article on the Angle is marked by confused thinking, doubtful operationalisation, and ultimately empty academic rigour masking an irrelevant argument.

Also duly noted: the dignified, overpolite but "We are not amused" response on SA, the exaggeratedly polite Victorian era Botanist Society meeting manners masking a definitive stonewall to the problem pointed out by the barbarians outside the gate, an academic invocation of the right to end a discussion by saying I am not arguing on that context... (however you want to interpret and however you induced that context), by declaring "I am not going to indulge in arguing this further" as a unilateral end of discussion announcement.

I will not repeat my commentary on the gang of wise men (see footnote in cited article). Instead, I am content to refer to a previous post which was made more than half a year before the institution of the Angle groupblog.

Academic and critical writing

...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.

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."

The pseudo-academic language (posts beginning with "I refer to X's article, which was a response to Y's article on...", "In this post, I shall attempt to argue that...", the use of the word treatise, the careless word-dropping - longue duree as applied to the life-span of intellectuals!), the exaggerated politeness masking a mutual agreement not to show up, call on, or embarrass the authors, not to critically examine and reflexively interrogate academic arguments, the rigorous analysis over issues of non-importance...

Now I see why Olsen and Worsham really believe it is possible for academics to work against their own duties as public intellectuals.