Singapore’s times are finally changing
May 18, 2009 12:00 am admin features
Singapore’s leaders are going to have to engage with its people if they want prosperity and stability to continue, says Roderick Clyne
SINGAPORE has been agog over a row in recent weeks that might be regarded as no more than a storm in a teacup in some other countries. A previously unremarkable feminist group called Aware (the Association of Women for Action and Research), which among its other activities advises on sex education in schools, was taken over in a surprise putsch at its annual general meeting. It emerged that the takeover had been organised by the Church of Our Saviour, a small group of born-again Christians virulently opposed to homosexuality – a subject on which Aware had supposedly been far too non-judgmental.
Over the next few days, there was a big fight-back. Aware’s hitherto tiny membership increased dramatically and the new executive, mostly members of the Church of Our Saviour, was itself ousted at a special general meeting.
Unsurprisingly, opinion polls suggested that most women across the island were not bothered about the issue at the heart of the dispute – lesbians and gays – and were far more concerned about bread-and-butter issues, particularly the collapse in the economy.
But what is very surprising about all this is what did not happen. The government of Singapore took no action. It let the opposing sides get on with their battle without intervening and without even expressing an opinion – although there is said to be a strong presence of born-again Christians at senior levels in the government.
For 50 years, the People’s Action Party has been in power and has ruled on almost everything in the public domain. If the government didn’t like something – chewing gum, say, or Muslim headscarves in schools – it was promptly banned. And the government’s policies tended to be enforced vigorously with draconian penalties for those in breach of the law. However, it now seems that Singapore’s leaders, including the PAP’s founding father, the 85-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, might be relaxing at last – at least to a small degree.
The PAP celebrates five decades in power on June 3, with Lee Kuan Yew having been prime minister for more than three of those decades. He remains in the cabinet, and is still respected and feared in equal measure.
The clash at Aware comes as the PAP is preparing for new parliamentary elections, even though the last ones were held as recently as May 2005. As the old joke goes: with American elections you know exactly when they will take place and only the outcome is uncertain, but in Singapore you don’t know the election date until two weeks before, although the outcome is never in doubt. Even so, it would be sensible for the island’s rulers to get these elections over with soon, in case the public sense of wellbeing evaporates.
Singapore’s export-led economy is not doing well. Unemployment is rising and the latest International Monetary Fund report on the economic outlook for Asia and the Pacific forecasts that Singapore will experience an overall contraction this year. However, so far, people do not appear to blame the government or wish to seek revenge.
At the 2005 election, the PAP gained 66.6 per cent of the vote across those constituencies that were contested. The opposition is fragmented and largely personality-based, but the various rival parties do usually manage to get together before an election to decide which of them stands where – meaning that there is never a three-way fight. Even so, there are only two opposition-held seats. Before 1981, there were none.
Out of Singapore’s 4.8 million population, which includes foreigners, there are 2.26 million adult citizens registered to vote. The population is largely of Chinese background, but there are sizeable Malay and Indian minorities. Despite their high public profile, the Christians number just 15 per cent of the population – about the same proportion as Muslims or people with no religious affiliation. More than 40 per cent are, at least nominally, Buddhist.
Singapore is a small island, with few genuinely local issues dividing the different areas. There are roughly similar income distributions in each constituency and there are no single-race ghettos, so the winning margin is broadly similar in most seats. But this strength is also a potential trap. Although winning two-thirds of the vote constitutes a huge endorsement by any reckoning, the PAP’s share of the vote has been declining in successive elections. Should it reach tipping point, the consequence would be very sudden and profound, with almost every parliamentary seat changing hands at one go.
The PAP was founded as a socialist party, but quit the Socialist International in 1976 after the Dutch Labour Party proposed to expel it for its authoritarian leanings. Even so, it has had successes of which any left-leaning political party would be proud. Singapore has a huge and well-maintained public housing system, a progressive tax policy, general prosperity and the world’s most successful planned economy. In contrast to Malaysia and Thailand, abortion is legal and available.
Government investment funds control most strategic local operations and they have large stakes in many other corporations, including banks around the world. This has led to large paper losses of late, but the investments are expected to come good in time.
All this has been organised from the base of a small political party that is organised on Leninist lines. Since the island’s newspapers have to seek a licence in order to publish, no one should expect to find criticism of the government in the press. The internet does not have to contend with such restrictions and plays host to much of what public debate there is.
Apart from voting from time to time, the population as a whole has little interest in politics. Some say that they were warned off such sensitive subjects when at school – “You’ll only get into trouble; it’s far safer to think about other things”. As one businessman put it to me: “We’ve got an unwritten agreement with the government. We don’t interfere with them and in return they let us make lots of money.”
Singapore’s government is only just waking up to the idea that this lack of engagement might be a problem. Politicians are now saying in public that, with so few people wanting to have anything to do with politics, they are concerned about where the next generation of leaders will come from. There is even no obvious candidate for prime minister in waiting.
In such a vacuum, without mass participation in public life, the power of small groups of fanatics could well increase. Following the Aware furore, it is clear that one potential source of such fanaticism is the membership of born-again Christian cliques.
It looks like Singaporeans are going to need to learn to take an interest in politics for a change.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29246.1
Monday, May 18, 2009
Temasek’s divestment of BoA stake - A clear admission of an investment error
Temasek’s divestment of BoA stake - A clear admission of an investment error
“Yes, they were good long term investments with risks thoroughly assessed”
- Minister Tharman, Jan 2008 on Singapore investments in banks.
These were the words of Singapore’s Minister of Finance, slightly more than a year ago when Singapore’s SWFs made major investments in a few global financial institutions. Take note, in particular, that Minister Tharman was defending the individual investments made by the SWFs in the banks - not the portfolio performance.
A year later, everything had changed. The stock markets had declined significantly and the global financial system was in major turmoil. The stock prices of the big banks had sunk to record lows after having their balance sheets destroyed by the dislocation in credit markets. Seeing that his original argument was no longer tenable, Tharman changed his tack as the investments in the banks sunk deeper and deeper into the red. Now, instead of taking the line that the investments in the banks were good long term investments, he instead argued that Singapore’s portfolios were well diversified, and hence Singapore’s investments were fine.
‘We would be worried if global banks comprise a large proportion of the portfolios of GIC and Temasek, or for that matter, any other highly vulnerable industry globally,’ he said. ‘But these are diversified portfolios, with not a large degree of concentration risk.’
- Minister Tharman, Jan 2009, on Singapore investments in banks.
But nevermind that the markets sunk and the stock prices of financial institutions crashed. The SWFs were protected by the fact that the global banks comprised a relatively small portion of the overall portfolio. This was the official political line that was to be held by the government - and the minister’s roles were no longer to comment on individual investments, but instead just to talk about the overall portfolio performance.
MM Lee & Co. went along with it. His job, after all, is to keep the PAP afloat during times of duress. The government could no longer defend the individual investments of the SWFs, but it could defend the overall performance of their portfolios:-
“GIC and Temasek have the ability and resources to weather the ups and downs, over multiple economic and market cycles,” Lim said. “The government is confident that they will continue to deliver good long-term returns within the risk limits set.”
- Minister Lim Hwee Hua, in parliament, Feb 2009
“When we invest, we are investing for 10, 15, 20 years. You may look as if you are making a big loss today, but you have not borrowed money to invest. You will ride the storm, the company recovers, your shares go up.”
- MM Lee, Feb 2009
And while the official political line was not to comment on the individual investments, there was one man - and one man alone, who could. That would be MM Lee himself, who double hats as both Minister Mentor AND Chairman of GIC. This was the first and only admission of fault, by the only man who had the political capital to do so, by the only man with the political power to do so and yet not fear reprise.
Lee said GIC bought “too early” into global banks such as Citigroup (C.N) and UBS (UBSN.VX), which were both hammered by the financial meltdown that quickened in the second half of 2008.
“How could we have known this was the extent of the damage? You look at all the big-name banks that have gone down, misjudged the situation, ruined their careers,” he said.
“When the market fell, we went into UBS and Citi. But we went in too early. That is part of the ride.”
- MM Lee in a Reuters Interview, Mar 2009
With GIC admitting that it had made a mistake in its investments, there was only Temasek left to do the same. But it never did, choosing instead to try to wriggle out the slick and slimy way. Temasek did not release any statement to admit that its Merrill investment had been an error, unlike, for example, Warren Buffett, who admitted that his investment in Conoco Phillips was a major error. Temasek’s CEO didn’t admit that the Merrill investment had been a mistake.
Instead, they just quietly divested their BoA stake in the open market, only making a press statement thereafter. And then, Ho Ching proceed to throw smokescreens by talking about a ‘rebalancing’ of the portfolio and a ‘10-20-30-40′ strategy.
The rebalancing is a ‘re-weighing of the growth trends and the changing risks over the next decade or two, particularly for Asia’, said Ms Ho.
Ms Ho said: ‘In short, we will continue to invest like a 35-year-old with a dynamic balance for the long term. Half a century ago, one 35-year-old became the first prime minister of Singapore.
‘We invest with the appetite of a young 35-year-old for growth and risk-taking.
‘At the same time, we also share his thoughtful conservatism to plan and provide for his children’s needs for another 10 to 20 years, while he invests to build his rainy day and retirement kitty with a 30- to 50-year horizon.’
-Ms. Ho Ching in an address to Junior Pyramid, May 2009
Absolutely irrelevant, Ms Ho. Singaporeans don’t give a shit about your grand portfolio rebalancing plans. We want transparency, accountability, and an admission of fault where there has been one. And clearly, what had started as a ‘long-term’ investment is now out of the Temasek portfolio only but a year later - this is clearly an admission that your investment was a mistake.
As for the govt, notice how significantly its tack has changed. A year ago, Tharman dared to speak up for the SWFs’ individual investment decisions. Now, he only meekly says:
‘What matters to the Government is the overall performance,’ …
“it is for Temasek, not the Government, to comment on its investment moves.”
“it is the responsibility of the board and management to make individual investment decisions, whether large or small.”
- Minister Tharman, May 2009, on SWF performance
Well, Mr Shanmugaratnam, let’s just see how the long-term performance of the portfolios fare. You can be sure I’ll be revisiting this issue in 5, 10, 20 and 30yrs time. And make sure you don’t ever, ever, comment on any of the SWFs’ individual investments, ever again.
You can be sure Singaporeans will be watching.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29004.25
New university, institute to be set up to boost higher education
New university, institute to be set up to boost higher education
Posted: 18 May 2009 2217 hrs
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SINGAPORE: Singapore will set up a new institute to offer a more direct route for polytechnic graduates to get degrees. The institute will partner foreign universities that offer degree courses.
President S R Nathan said this in his opening address to the new session of Parliament on Monday.
Singapore will also set up a new university, in close partnership with one leading university each from the US and China.
"These two new institutions will open up more opportunities for students to upgrade themselves," said Mr Nathan when he touched on the need to strengthen Singapore's higher education to meet growing aspirations and to train the skilled professional and creative manpower the country will need.
He said: "Our aim is to have 30% of our students admitted to state-supported universities."
"Whether it is to promote economic growth, narrow the income gap or bond the next generation, education is key. Education is our best investment in Singapore's future.
"Our education system is designed to give each and every child the best opportunity to stretch his abilities. All our schools maintain high standards, and prepare our young to seize their own opportunities in a complex, dynamic and uncertain world.
"We will do better, by building more peaks of excellence, and establishing new pathways and programmes to cater to students with different aptitudes, interests and learning styles."
Meanwhile, Senior Minister of State for National Development & Education, Grace Fu, said: "It will be a very unique proposition for our students. I think it will be a great opportunity because in the future, I think it will be a combination of technology from the US plus the exposure to China that will be a very attractive proposition for students who are thinking of being exposed to the world."
Other Members of Parliament added that President Nathan's speech raised concerns that were timely with the current economic and social climate in Singapore.
They agree with Mr Nathan on issues such as education enhancements, economic restructuring and leadership renewal.
MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, Inderjit Singh, said: "This does signal that we may change some of the things that we do. In my mind, one of the things that can change is the size of GRCs. Perhaps it's time we reduce the GRCs. This is what the public like to see done."
MP for Hong Kah GRC, Zaqy Mohamad, said: "This downturn has also showed how we are dependent on the US economy. So going forward do we still go ahead with the same strategy? I think it's a good call for us to relook the way we develop our economy and in our policies in that sense."
You can view the transcript of the President's speech
- CNA/ir
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29224.3
NMP Siew Kum Hong makes police report against netizens
NMP Siew Kum Hong makes police report against netizens
By 938LIVE/TODAY | Posted: 18 May 2009 1834 hrs
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SINGAPORE: Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong has made a police report against netizens posting defamatory comments about him. He revealed this in his blog. He has also requested forums which hosted such remarks to take them down.
When contacted, Mr Siew refused further comment, saying the matter is now with the police.
The latest attacks have alleged or insinuated that he had asked for and is receiving foreign funding from a Swedish politician who allegedly funds the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) as well.
They have also alleged that he is involved or associated with the SDP and may be their representative or "mole" in Parliament.
Mr Siew has issued a strong rebuttal to these allegations on his blog. He said both of these allegations are untrue and false.
He considered them extremely defamatory and criminal in nature and goes beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly perceive as being a valid or legitimate exercise of the right to free speech.
Mr Siew stressed that he did not at any time ask for and have not at any time been offered or accepted any sort of funding from any local or foreign entity.
He said the only sources of income or funding that he has are from his employer and the government in the form of his monthly NMP allowance.
He also said he is not involved or affiliated or associated, whether directly, indirectly or in any other way, with the SDP, and certainly not their representative or "mole" in Parliament.
The attacks on Mr Siew first started in the aftermath of the extraordinary general meeting of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE). They have culminated in a campaign to sabotage his re-application for a second term of NMP.
A week ago, netizens flooded the REACH portal with comments about why he should not be given a second NMP term.
REACH chairman Amy Khor confirmed that the feedback unit has received Mr Siew's request to take down defamatory comments about him.
As a general policy, while "always mindful that over-regulation could stifle participation and engagement of contributors", Dr Khor said that like other online platforms, REACH would not hesitate to remove postings "deemed sensitive or offensive".
As at 8pm on Monday, the discussion thread involving Mr Siew had almost 13,900 page views and more than 900 postings since it was initiated on May 1.
On one occasion last week, REACH administrators urged Netizens to refrain from personal attacks and offensive postings. After growing feedback from users and as the discussion "became heated", said Dr Khor, REACH had removed some of these postings.
Meanwhile, the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) has referred to the Law Society the issue of Mr Siew's role in the AWARE saga.
Earlier this month, corporate counsel Tongel Yeo had emailed the AGC and three other legal bodies, including the Law Society, to ask if Mr Siew had breached the Legal Profession Act by advising the AWARE "Old Guard".
When contacted, a Law Society spokesperson said that under the Act, it "cannot comment on any complaint or disciplinary matter".
- 938LIVE/TODAY
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28866.55
LHZB interview special with Dr. Thio Su Mien
LHZB interview special with Dr. Thio Su Mien
“Feminist Mentor” Dr. Thio Su Mien: The “coup” was accidental
The “coup” that occurred at AWARE’s AGM several weeks ago was actually an accident.
At least this was how Dr. Thio Su Mien perceived it.
At the AWARE AGM on March 28th, a twelve-member executive committee (exco) was voted in but the majority of the exco members, including Ms Josie Lau who later took over as president, were new and relatively unknown members. This provoked unease and dissatisfaction amongst the veteran members of AWARE; later, this also sparked a series of tussles between the old guard and new guard of AWARE.
However, Dr. Thio, widely perceived as the one who orchestrated this “coup”, in an interview with this newspaper, claimed that she did not expect the outcome of the AGM elections to result in a new guard taking over as the exco. She also claims that her encouraging of young women to join AWARE was aimed only at injecting new vitality into the organisation and to preserve the core family values of Singaporean society.
According to reports, AWARE’s membership numbers have, in recent years, been declining, reaching a low of 200 members at the end of last year. However, amongst those attending AWARE’s AGM on March 28th, only a minority was long-standing members of AWARE while the majority were new members who joined only shortly before the AGM.
According to Dr. Thio, if the long-standing members of AWARE had all attended the AGM, the new members “may not even have a single chance of winning a position, hence who can we blame for the outcome of the exco elections; even I was not expecting such an outcome”.
In a media report in April, it was revealed that Ms Josie Lau, the new AWARE president, along with another 5 new exco members are from the same church of Church of Our Saviour (COOS) while Dr. Thio is also a member of COOS and a mentor to Ms Lau and company. It was later revealed that Ms Lau is married to Dr. Thio’s nephew. All this were cited as proof of a well-orchestrated “coup” by Dr. Thio.
When reminded of this during the interview, Dr. Thio laughed and said: “If you say that I planned all this, I indeed was the one going around encouraging people I know to join AWARE. But all these people were mobilised at the last moment. Some amongst them did not know one another but only know me; some in fact are not that familiar with me. My purpose was: if you are able to, you should join this organisation and contribute to society”.
She added that if she was indeed the mastermind behind the whole thing, she would not be “as stupid as to find people from the same church”.
“If I really premeditated this, then I would be a real strategist; if so, I should organise a rainbow coalition like them (the old guard of AWARE). However, my thinking was very simple. But now thinking back, I was in fact rather foolish and naïve in my thinking. I never thought that the outcome will be this and that things will get so out of hand”.
On the April 23rd press conference held by the exco headed by Ms Lau, Dr. Thio was present to answer questions on behalf of the exco. At that press conference, Dr. Thio made statements about AWARE’s declining membership numbers, the proposed changes to its constitution to allow for male members to be eligible to vote. Her accusations about AWARE’s Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme and about it promoting a homosexual lifestyle were also made at that press conference.
The AWARE saga later attracted more attention from outsiders and supporters of the old guard and this was because of Dr. Thio’s confession that she has been the mentor of the exco for several years and was the one who encouraged them to join AWARE. Also, it was revealed through online sources that Dr. Thio had, before the AGM, sent out mass emails criticising the CSE and encouraging people to vote for “reformers who want to be in charge”.
The question is: why didn’t this retired veteran lawyer personally run for a position on the AWARE exco if she was so concerned about the supposed direction the organisation was heading in?
Dr. Thio, who is already 71 years of age, explained that besides her age, another more important reason why she didn’t personally run for an exco position was that she felt that being a mentor, her responsibility was to nurture people who can make contributions to society and not try to glorify herself.
Similarly, it was because of her role as a mentor that Dr. Thio decided that it was necessary for her to present at the April 23rd press conference to defend Ms Lau and company.
Surprised at the anger and emotions at the EOGM
“I originally only planned to speak at the EOGM but when I saw the exco being lambasted, I felt that I have the responsibility, since I was the one who encouraged them to join AWARE and serve the interests of womenfolk and the nation, to be present at the press conference. I did not expect that they will be attacked and, even worse, that their lives, livelihood and businesses will also come under threat.”
The exco originally has no plans to hold a press conference and had wanted to wait till the EOGM to express their views.
“But”, said Dr. Thio, “the media was having a field day with the AWARE saga so we had to hold a press conference to clarify matters”.
Besides being surprised at the “coup”-like outcome of the AGM, Dr. Thio also expressed great surprise at the sudden increase in membership numbers for AWARE and the intensity of the emotions displayed at the EOGM on May 2nd.
During the 7 hours long EOGM, a scene which is perhaps most memorable to those present and those paying close attention to the happenings at the EOGM would be that of Dr. Thio proudly holding up a publication by AWARE to announce that she is on page 73 of the publication. This act was heavily criticised by the supporters of the old guard present at the EOGM. Dr. Thio’s attempts to rein in the noisy crowd by reminding them that they need to respect their elders also provoked a round of jeers.
Reminded about this during the interview, Dr. Thio expressed surprise: “I never thought that on the day of the EOGM, people’s emotions would be so intense, that the atmosphere will be so filled with anger”.
Nothing to be angry about
However, with regards to being unable to finish her speech due to the jeers, Dr. Thio said that there was nothing to be angry about.
“There is no need to be angry. Being angry will be like playing an old record non-stop”. Dr. Thio feels that if an individual is not able to let go, he or she will only cause him/herself to be trapped in the past and not be able to move on.
Hence, even though her remarks of “Please respect your elders” and “I am on page 73” was printed onto slogan t-shirts, Dr. Thio also laughed it off, saying: “This sort of design is quite interesting and can increase the income for the designer; I also want to buy one to take a look”.
As for what her future plans for herself and her “mentees” will be, Dr. Thio said: “Let’s talk about this after I return from a vacation! Perhaps taking a vacation will inspire me. And hopefully, the anger over this saga will dissipate and Josie will be able to continue using her strengths to contribute to society”.
Box story: “Homosexuality is a political movement”
Been keenly aware of the developments in homosexuality in Europe and North America, Dr. Thio firmly believes that there is a political movement promoting homosexuality. And the aims of this movement will include the de-criminalisation of anal sex. This may be witnessed in the attempts by individuals in Singapore to repeal Section 377A of the local Penal Code.
Dr. Thio said: “This is a significant point. Because if once the law is abolished or liberalised, homosexual activists will start to raise issues, such as marriage equality, education equality, and medical equality, to ask for funds from the government.”
In Finland, singles and lesbians are, with government subsidies, able to receive artificial insemination. This, according to Dr. Thio, will thus involve how taxpayers’ money should be used.
Dr. Thio also cited an example from Canada. According to her, there was a case in Canada in which a kindergarten teacher filed a lawsuit against the school management committee, accusing the committee for not including three books with contents about same-sex parents in the syllabus for kindergarten and primary one students. Although parents from different religious backgrounds, e.g. Hinduism, Sikhism, Catholicism and Christianity, supported the school management committee in the Canadian Supreme Court, the school management committee lose the case and had to put the three books into the school library.
She originally did not want this interview to be published
This interview with Dr. Thio almost did not get published.
Although she readily agreed to be interviewed one week ago, Dr. Thio later wanted to prevent this interview from being published.
As one of the central figures in the AWARE saga, Dr. Thio felt that Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng’s statement about the government stance on the AWARE saga and call for individual religious groups and secular organisations to be tolerant and exercise restraint already provided a very good conclusion to the AWARE saga. Thus, she did not want this interview to be published lest it stirs up emotions or polarise society.
Eventually, Dr. Thio was convinced to allow this interview to be published. This was because she knew that the focus of this interview will be the family values she espouses. As she said, one week ago, when she agreed to be interviewed: “If you all want to find out my views on family and values, then we may talk. But if you all want to talk about the AWARE saga, then forget about it”.
The interview was conducted at a restaurant in the Botanical Gardens. The day before the interview (6/5/2009), Dr. Thio attended the 150th anniversary dinner and dialogue session with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew organised by the Botanical Gardens; amazed by the beauty of the Botanical Gardens, Dr. Thio wanted us journalists to also experience it.
Dressed in a purple floral top and a long skirt, Dr. Thio looked markedly different and softer from how she looked like during the AWARE saga – serious and dressed in proper business attire. Without wasting any time, Dr. Thio proceeded to, through sharing one story after another, express her staunch belief in the core family values which she seeks to protect.
The first story was the “Chicken Egg” story, a story her daughter, Ms Thio Li-Ann, in conjunction with Mothers’ Day, wrote in The New Paper to express her gratitude towards Dr. Thio.
With regards to this story, Dr. Thio said: “I was in disrepute after the AWARE saga, thus I was very moved by Li-Ann’s use of this story to express her respect and support for me; it also shows that she still remembers the meaning behind the story”.
After the end of World War Two, Dr. Thio, who was then only 7 years of age, was visiting her grandmother’s hometown in Fujian along with her parents and siblings. Her relatives there, although they were very poor, will always present Dr. Thio and her family with a big bowl of noodles with an omelette placed on top. Seeing this, Dr. Thio’s father will remind her and her siblings to finish the noodles as although her relatives were poor, they offered them the best. This childhood lesson about respecting others that Dr. Thio’s father imparted to her was a memorable one to Dr. Thio which she later imparted to her own children.
Dr. Thio said: “My parents each had their own personalities and strengths and it was them who provided me with an environment that shaped my character and value system. Hence, I firmly believe that every child should be able to live and grow up in a family with full parental support. A family headed by a same-sex couple will find it difficult to provide children with a conducive environment to best grow up in”.
For the past 10 years and more, Dr. Thio has been involved in church counselling work and once, a father lamented to her that it is most unfortunate that a small golfing ball can alienate a father from his family. This lamentation by this father also illustrated to Dr. Thio the importance that parents have in their children’s lives and education.
“When my children were about 2 to 3 years old, my husband gave me a set of golfing equipment. I went to play a few rounds of golf but I realised that I was neglecting my children. Thus, I decided to throw the golfing equipment into the storeroom and brought my children out for swimming. In the years which I have been doing family counselling, I have also been encouraging parents to bring their children for swimming or cycling to strengthen the bonds between them and their children; don’t play golf. When it comes to discerning what is truly important, we often make mistakes”.
Witnessing the trends and changes in Europe and North America with regards to the family and gender relations, Dr. Thio was more convinced of the paramount importance of family education and that many societies, including Singapore, are facing challenges to their value systems.
Dr. Thio is especially worried about the erosion of values by a movement, originating in the West, that is challenging people’s belief in the family. And this movement, according to Dr. Thio, aims to “basically redefine the meaning of marriage, to redefine marriage as not only belonging to couples of different sexes but also to same-sex couples. This movement aims to legalise same-sex marriage and to redefine the traditional concept of the family”.
“This is a movement which constantly appeals to people to support it. You can recognise its existence but you cannot allow it to become part of the mainstream. Schools should have sex education but this should be done appropriately to preserve our core values about the family”.
And encouraging eligible women to serve and contribute to society is one way that Dr. Thio has been using to preserve the core values of Singaporean society. As the mentor of Ms Josie Lau and others, she often “nags” at them to be more concerned about society at large and “not to be only interested in fashion and handbags”.
This is basically why she encouraged them to join AWARE.
“We cannot depend on the schools and the government for everything. We all understand the need to seriously learn how to be good reporters and lawyers but this is not the case when it comes to learning how to be a good parent. If parents are only concerned their children’ academic grades and leave the rest to maids and society to handle, the family and society will collapse”.
In an interview that spanned 2 hours, two-thirds of the time was spent on discussing the importance of maintaining core values. As the interview came to an end, Dr. Thio said to us journalists: “If I had known you all earlier, I would perhaps also encouraged you all to join AWARE”.
“Why is it that everytime someone offers an opposing view to homosexuality, that person will receive death threats or have his/her livelihood threatened? Does this involve the use of politics of fear? Shouldn’t the media be concerned about this? Shouldn’t we be having a regulatory mechanism to ensure objective and fair reporting by the media?” – On the former exco of AWARE and herself receiving death threats during the AWARE saga
“I am very glad that now there are more people discussing about the issue of sex education and desiring a better vetting process to be put in place for sex education in schools. However, I am not sure how the Education Ministry will oversee the matter, as in how will they check on the teachers, who are crucial figures in sex education, who are teaching sex education? This point will need to be clarified.
Originally, the Education Ministry wanted me to produce evidence for my claims about there being parents complaining about sex education. However, the report in the April 24th edition of The Straits Times and my response letter to the Education Ministry have made it clear that I never said I received complaints from parents. Also, after investigations, the Education Ministry has publicly announced that some sex education programmes have contravened its guiding principles. This shows that my accusations were not inaccurate.
What is comforting is that the Education Ministry has decided to examine how it can enhance its vetting process for sex education. We should improve on the transparency and credibility of this process. A supervisory body should also be specially set up to communicate with and consult parents. Also, perhaps the vetting process should include placing relevant information online as a display of transparency?” – On the Education Ministry announcing on June 7th the suspension of sex education programmes provided by external organisations e.g. AWARE after its initial statement that it did not receive any complaints from parents
“The responsibility of a mentor is to nurture and groom them before allowing them to go out to contribute to society; to allow for the continued increase in the numbers of talented individuals. If you do not let young people to serve in leadership roles but do everything by yourself, this will be most inefficient.” – On why she did not personally run for a position on the AWARE exco
“50% of Singapore’s population consists of women; we actually have an abundance of talent. If we are able to have 10 Mrs. Lim Hwee Hua (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office), 50 Professor Chan Heng Chee (Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States) or 100 Olivia Lum (CEO of Hyflux), that will be a great blessing. There are two levels to this: firstly, on the societal level, we will need to help those women at the bottom of the social ladder to improve themselves and for those women who are better off, we will have to let them possess more skills and to inspire them to contribute more to society.
We will have to nurture more women leaders in different fields because CEDAW’s target is to have women have 30-35% representation in different fields. I, with my life experiences, should be able to contribute towards this endeavour.” – On why she encouraged more eligible women to join AWARE
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.408
“女权导师”黄嗣绵：“夺权”事件是一场意外
AWARE风波 专访黄嗣绵
“女权导师”黄嗣绵：“夺权”事件是一场意外
（2009-05-17）
● 林妙娜 吴新慧
几个星期前在妇女行动及研究协会（AWARE）执委选举上闹出的“夺权”事件，原来是一场意外。
至少对“女权导师”黄嗣绵博士来说，这是如此。
在3月28日的AWARE会员大会上，产生了由12人组成的新执委，但当中包括新任会长刘鸣鹂等人在内的九名新成员占了绝大多数，引起了旧执委及会员的不安和不满，也因此引起了双方在之后的一连串反弹动作。
被视为是“夺权”事件幕后推手的黄嗣绵博士，在接受本报专访时却表示，她并没预料到选举会产生新成员掌权的结果，声明自己在AWARE会员大会前号召年轻女性入会及参加竞选，纯粹是希望这些新人能为AWARE注入生气，通过AWARE维护新加坡社会的家庭核心价值观。
据报道，AWARE近年会员人数不断下降，截至去年底有200多名会员，但出席3月28日AWARE会员大会的百多人当中，只有一小部分是入会已久的会员，其他大部分是在大会召开前才加入的。
黄嗣绵博士说，如果较资深的会员当时都出席大会，新会员“可能连一个中选的机会都没有，所以执委改选出了意外结果能怪谁，连我自己都没料到”。
有媒体在4月中的报道中，突出大会产生的新会长刘鸣鹂和其他5位新执委都是救主堂（Church of Our Saviour）成员，而黄嗣绵也是救主堂成员及刘鸣鹂等人的指导。过后又有报道爆出刘鸣鹂是黄嗣绵的甥媳妇，这一切都被看作是黄嗣绵幕后精心策划这场“
夺权”戏的力证。
本报在专访中重提这事，黄嗣绵笑了起来。“如果你说这是我策划的，那我确实是四处鼓励我认识的人参加AWARE，但这都是临时召集的。她们当中有的彼此并不相识，只认识我；有的其实也跟我并不相熟。我的用意是，如果你有能力，就应该参加个组织，贡献社会。”
她坚称，如果事件真是她一手策划，她不会“笨到找同一个教会的人”。
“如果我真有预谋，真是个懂得谋略的战略家，那我应该组织一个彩虹联盟，就像他们（旧阵营）那样。但是我的想法其实很简单，只不过现在想想其实我挺愚蠢天真。没想到结果会是这样，更没想到事情会演变到一发不可收拾。”
在4月23日新执委召开的记者会上，黄嗣绵代表新执委回答媒体的提问，也对AWARE近年来会员人数锐减、计划修改章程以让男会员投票等课题提出看法。而她对AWARE的性教育计划和“鼓吹同性恋生活方式”的指责，也是在那次记者会上提出的。
AWARE改选风波后来引起更多局外人及旧阵营支持者的注意，也因为黄嗣绵在记者会上坦言她是刘鸣鹂等人多年来的指导，以及她们是在她的鼓励下参加
AWARE竞选。另外，网上的消息也揭露，她在常年大会之前曾广发电邮，在指责性教育计划的同时，也鼓励大家把票投给“想要作主的变革使者”。
问题是，这名退休的资深律师，为何不自己出来竞选，从中改变她所期望的AWARE发展方向？
现年71的黄嗣绵解释说，除了因为年纪大了，另一个更重要的原因是她觉得身为导师，她的责任是培养能够为社会作出贡献的人，而不是忙着让自己光芒四射，把光环套在自己身上。
也因为是为人导师，黄嗣绵觉得她有必要在4月23日的记者会上现身，为刘鸣鹂等人辩护。
对特别大会上的愤怒情绪感到意外
“我原本只打算在特别大会上讲话，但是看到新执委遭到炮轰，我觉得自己有责任，毕竟是我鼓励她们参加AWARE，鼓励她们通过社会组织为妇女及国家服务。我没有想到她们会遭到攻击，更严重的是生命、生计和业务也受恐吓。”
新执委原本不打算就改选风波召开记者会，想要等到特别大会上才对所有会员发表看法，而黄嗣绵也计划在会上发言。
她说，“可是，媒体对AWARE事件作广泛报道，我们只好召开记者会澄清。”
除了对改选会出现“夺权”结果感到意外，这个风波让黄嗣绵感到震惊的另一个“意外”，是突然激增的3000多名AWARE会员在本月2日的特别大会上的愤怒情绪。
长达7个小时的会议中，让与会及网上观望者印象非常深刻的一幕，是黄嗣绵举着AWARE出版的刊物，自豪地说自己在第73页里被特别点出。这个动作遭到与会广大旧阵营支持者的强烈反弹，而黄嗣绵也因为会员过于吵闹，激动地提醒他们要“请尊重长辈”，招来另一轮的喝倒采。
在专访中被提起这一幕，她不解地说:“没想到那一天的大会，大家的情绪是这么激动，空气中充满愤怒。”
一再被喝倒采无法发言 没什么好生气的
不过，对于一再被喝倒采而始终无法发言，她笑称没什么好生气的。
“没必要，因为生气就好比不断重播着一块旧唱片”，她觉得一个人如果无法释怀只会使自己受困，没法往前看。
也因此，即使事后有人将她说的“请尊重长辈”和“我出现在第73页”这两句话印制成T衫出售，戏谑她在特别大会上的表现，她也一笑置之。“这样的设计还挺有意思，又能给人家增加收入，我也想买一件来看看。”
下来要怎么继续自己的信念及鼓励刘鸣鹂等人往前走，黄嗣绵说：“等我放假回来后再说吧！也许放假会给我一些启发。也希望这场风波的怒气能缓和下来，刘鸣鹂也能继续发挥特长，服务社会。”
“同性恋主义是一场政治运动”
同性恋主义在欧洲和北美的发展，让关心这一趋势的黄嗣绵博士深信，这是一场政治运动。这运动的目的包括使肛交除罪化；而在新加坡，这可从有人要求废除刑事法典第377A条文中看出。
黄嗣绵说：“这是个关键，因为法律一旦废除或放宽，同性恋活跃分子就可基于平等婚姻权利、平等教育权利，平等医药权利等议题，向政府申请拨款。”
在芬兰，单身者和女同性恋情侣就可在政府津贴下，接受人工授精。她说，“这就引发纳税人的钱如何使用的问题。”
黄嗣绵引述加拿大的例子指出，当地一名幼稚园教师起诉学校董事局，指校方没有将三本有关同性家长的书籍列为幼稚园和一年级学生的教材。来自不同宗教背景——印度教、锡克教、天主教和基督教的家长入禀加拿大高庭，声援校方。但校方败诉，须把三本书放进学校图书馆。
黄嗣绵谈话录
为什么每当有人对同性恋提出异议时，就会接到死亡恐吓，或生意受到威胁？这是否涉及到恐吓性的政治手段？媒体是不是应该关心这一点？我们是不是应该有一个能确保媒体平衡报道的监察机制？
——针对本身及新执委在AWARE
事件上曾接到死亡恐吓
我很庆幸现在有更多人讨论性教育课题，也希望学校的性教育会有更好的审核程序。但我不知道教育部可以如何监督，因为性教育的关键人物是教师，教育部打算如何监察？这一点须澄清。
教育部原本要我就我的指责拿出性教育遭家长投诉的证据，《海峡时报》4月24日的报道以及我回复给教育部的信，都说明我并没有说我曾接到家长的投诉。而教育部在调查后，公开表示一些性教育计划违反了教育部的指导原则。这显示我的指责并没有错。
让人感到欣慰的是，教育部已在探讨如何改进性教育的审核程序。我们应提高这方面的透明度和公信力，并成立一个特别与家长沟通的监管单位。监管过程是否也应包括把有关资料放上网，以示透明？
——针对教育部先是表示不曾接到家长的投诉，后来在本月7日宣布中止妇协等校外机构提供的性教育课程
为人导师的责任是栽培他们，然后将他们释放到社会贡献，让有才华的人不断增加。如果你不让年轻人去扮演领袖的角色，而是由自己包办，这是没有效率的做法。
——针对自己为何不亲自竞选AWARE执委
我国有50％人口是女性，我们其实有很多人才。如果我们能有10个陈惠华（总理公署部长）、50个陈庆珠教授（新加坡驻美国大使），甚至100个林爱莲（凯发公司总裁），那将是件乐事。这里两个层面：首先是社会层面，我们必须帮助社会底层的女性提升自己；第二，条件已不错的女性，我们要让她们掌握更多技能，激发她们为社会作出更大贡献。
我们要在社会的各个领域培养更多女性领袖，因为‘消除对妇女一切形式歧视公约’（CEDAW）的指标，是让女性在各领域有30至35％的代表性。我的人生经历，应该可让我在这方面献一份力。
——针对为何鼓励更多有条件的女性参加AWARE
“黄根成答复很好地
为事件划上句号”
副总理兼内政部长黄根成本周四针对AWARE事件回复媒体的询问时，重申了李显龙总理前年在国会参与刑事法典（修正）法案辩论时的立场，新加坡是个保守社会，奉行男婚女嫁、生儿育女为家庭伦理观念，但同性恋者有权过自己的生活。黄根成也保证，政府对同性恋的立场没有改变，更不会因任何团体施压而改变。
从网上得知黄根成的回应后，黄嗣绵当晚就在电话上告诉本报，副总理的答复“很好地为AWARE事件划上了句号”。她的语气是平和的。
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.407
Passion for activism extinguished…but not for long
Passion for activism extinguished…but not for long
Monday, 18 May 2009
Gerald Giam / Senior Writer
On 21st May 1987, 22 social activists in Singapore were detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for allegedly plotting a so called “Marxist conspiracy” to overthrow the Singapore government. Although they were never tried in an open court, the full weight of the government’s machinery, including the state-controlled media, was used to make the government’s case against these activists.
The detainees’ side of the story has seldom been heard by the general public. In the 20 years after the detentions, the mainstream media has shied away from telling the ex-detainees’ stories.
Mr Tan Tee Seng was 28 years old when he was detained, along with 21 others. In an exclusive two-and-a-half hour interview with The Online Citizen, Mr Tan speaks about his background and activities in the 1970s and 80s, his arrest in 1987, his experience under interrogation and detention, and his life after his release.
The social activist
Mr Tan’s involvement in social activism started when he was a student in Singapore Polytechnic. In 1976, he joined the Singapore Polytechnic Students’ Union (SPSU), becoming the vice-president of the SPSU the next year.
After graduating, Mr Tan worked as a technician in various multinational electronics firms. He continued his activism after work each day by volunteering at the Geylang Catholic Centre, a welfare and advocacy organisation, which provided social assistance to ex-offenders, battered women, retrenched workers, migrant workers and abused foreign maids. The Catholic Centre was founded by a French catholic priest, who was also a prison chaplain.
The volunteers at the centre included former SPSU members, Catholic worker Vincent Cheng and lawyer Teo Soh Lung. Mr Cheng became the manager and the first full-time staff of the centre in the late 1970s. He and Ms Teo were also detained together with Mr Tan.
Mr Tan also helped out with the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC), together with Mr Cheng. His role in the JPC was to help compile and summarise the news of the day for Catholic priests.
The early eighties were a time of great political awakening for many Singaporeans, after Mr J B Jeyaretnam of the Workers’ Party (WP) won the Anson by-election in 1981, breaking the total dominance of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Parliament. In 1984, when Mr Jeyaretnam was running for re-election, Mr Tan witnessed on television how the full force of the government machinery was being used to demolish the WP leader. It was then that he and about 20 friends, some from the Catholic Centre, decided to step forward to offer their assistance to Mr Jeyaretnam’s campaign.
Mr Jeyaretnam felt he already had enough help, and redirected the volunteers to help two other WP candidates in their election campaigns. In the end, the WP candidates received unexpectedly high shares of the votes in the constituencies of Leng Kee and Alexandra.
Despite the oppressive political climate during that time, Mr Tan had no qualms about continuing his political activities with the WP and his activism at the Catholic Centre. At that time, he said, the boundaries for political activity — what we now call Out-of-Bounds (OB) markers — seemed much clearer: as long as he kept well away from the Communists — which he did with a “ten foot pole” — he felt it was a legitimate right of a citizen to be involved in such activities and that this would be safe. He was soon to be proven wrong.
After the 1984 elections, Mr Tan and his friends stayed on to help the WP with its party newspaper, The Hammer. He joined the de facto editorial committee, writing many of its articles and changing the design of its masthead. After about a year, circulation of the Hammer rose from about 10,000 copies to over 25,000 copies. This, Mr Tan assessed, was probably one of the developments that concerned the PAP government, led by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Detention and interrogation
By 1987, however, Mr Tan’s level of involvement in the Catholic Centre and the WP had slightly decreased due to work and family commitments.
The first and only forewarning of the impending arrests was sounded by Vincent Cheng, who claimed weeks earlier that he was being followed by government agents. Mr Tan dismissed it, thinking it was simply an intimidation tactic. He reasoned that all their activities were entirely legitimate and they had no need to fear the authorities.
At 4 o’clock on the morning of 21st May 1987, Mr Tan and his wife heard a banging on the door of their flat. At the door were two men claiming to be from the Immigration Department. They showed Mr Tan their official identity cards and Mr Tan allowed them into the flat.
However, once inside, they immediately handcuffed Mr Tan and threw him into one of the rooms, and proceeded to ransack the flat looking for incriminating evidence, according to Mr Tan.
After a two hour search they blindfolded both Mr Tan and his wife and whisked them separately away to Whitley Road Detention Centre (WRDC). On arrival, he was forced to strip and change into the prison garb — which was made of the same rough material used to make gunny sacks. He was allowed no underwear, no footwear and had his spectacles confiscated. Gurkhas then led him into an interrogation room.
The interrogation room had the air conditioner on at full blast, making it very cold. The walls were painted a foreboding dark blue, with a powerful spotlight shining on his face.
He was interrogated continuously for more than 72 hours with no sleep. The interrogators from the Internal Security Department (ISD), who were grouped into two teams of three to four officers, would take turns to interrogate him. The teams worked 12-hour shifts, with at least two officers interviewing Mr Tan at any one time.
Mr Tan had to remain standing most of the time, with one interrogator in front and another standing directly behind him, literally breathing down his neck. He was periodically forced to take off his shirt during the interrogations.
To intimidate him into “confessing”, his interrogators constantly threatened to lock him up and throw away the key, often reminding him of Chia Thye Poh, arguably the most well-known ISA detainee in Singapore at that time, who had been detained under the ISA for more than 20 years.
At times his interrogators would jump up from their chairs and slap him across his face, or press their knuckles into his chest. Nevertheless, the pressure was mostly psychological, not physical. His biggest worries were for his wife, who was also being held under detention, and that he might inadvertently say something that would incriminate his friends.
The agents asked about all his activities, which he willingly revealed, as he was sure he had done nothing wrong. In fact, he had all the while thought that his detention was a case of mistaken identity and he expected to be released after the initial questioning.
After about 40 to 50 hours of interrogation, he finally said something that the interrogators appeared to be waiting to hear: That he had been “Marxist inclined”.
Mr Tan saw nothing unusual about agreeing with some Marxist ideas, which many people in the 1970s had been sympathetic towards.
After the first 72 hours of continuous interrogation, he was allowed to return to his cell, where he was kept in solitary confinement. His cell was small — about 4 by 3 metres — with no windows and a light that was kept on 24 hours a day. On the concrete floor was placed a wooden board that served as his bed. During the daytime, it would sometimes get swelteringly hot. For about 20 minutes each day, he would be allowed out of his cell into a small courtyard adjacent to his cell.
For the next 30 to 40 days, he would be hauled back to the interrogation room to be grilled for about 10 hours each day.
He was served his detention order under the ISA after 28 days in detention. The detention order accused him of being “involved in communist united front activities to overthrow the state by violent means”, a charge which he said was completely false.
After six weeks in solitary confinement, he was moved to another cell, nicknamed the “Shangri-la suite” because of its slightly larger size, Mr Tan tells us. There he was able to interact with the other detainees, including a Catholic priest, Father Kevin de Souza, whom he met for the first time at WRDC.
About 4 months after he was detained, Mr Tan was released on Restriction Orders (RO) which prohibited him from leaving the country without permission or joining any political parties. Since the detention order lapsed after two years, Mr Tan said that his RO restrictions likewise did not apply any longer.
Life after detention
After his release, Mr Tan went back to working in the publishing services firm where he had previously worked. His employer did not have any issues with his arrest. This is unsurprising, since his employer had also been detained for similar reasons one month after Mr Tan was hauled in.
None of his clients shunned him. Most were more concerned about whether Mr Tan was ill-treated while under detention and they did not believe the government’s accusations.
The Geylang Catholic Centre was closed and the founding priest left Singapore.
Mr Tan is now 51 years old and a father of three children — the eldest of whom is 20 years old. He runs an education service company serving the China market.
Asked what effect the detentions had on Singapore, Mr Tan felt that the episode had cost Singapore badly. The government had lost a lot of political capital because “nobody believed their allegations”.
The blatant use of force against political dissidents was condemned by more than 400 organisations worldwide.
Mr Tan feels that many “passionate fires” in community service were smothered after that. Social activists and civil societies were “shell shocked into paralysis”. Indeed, the OB markers suddenly became very unclear, rendering almost all independent community activities as potentially crossing the proverbial OB markers.
Despite what he went through at the hands of the ISD, Mr Tan harbours no anger or bitterness against the authorities. He saw it as a political reality in Singapore — the cost of participating in political and social activism. Singapore, he said, has First World infrastructure, with Third World politics.
Nevertheless, he felt that the situation in Singapore has improved in recent years, but he describes the progress as “five steps forward, two steps back”. Still, he was confident that the government would not repeat its actions of 1987.
To underline this point, he pointed out that what The Online Citizen has been publishing on its blog went far beyond what he ever did as an activist, yet The Online Citizen was surviving without government interference. He attributes this to the changed political realities of the day, with a more educated population and a connected world.
In May 2007, the Straits Times did a feature on the 20th anniversary of the arrests and attempted to contact the detainees for interviews. Mr Tan, like most of the other detainees, refused to be interviewed. They were of the view that the government-controlled Straits Times would not write an objective account of what really happened. (The Online Citizen will have a feature on how the Straits Times covered the events of 1987 in an upcoming report.)
Asked if he planned to enter into opposition politics to challenge the government, he said he currently has “no plans yet”.
———
Other related reads:
1 ‘Marxist plot’ revisited, Singapore Window, http://www.singapore-window.org/sw01/010521m1.htm.
2 That We May Dream Again, Fong Hoe Fang (ed.), http://ethosbooks.com.sg/store/mli_viewItem.asp?idProduct=223
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29159.1
Monday, 18 May 2009
Gerald Giam / Senior Writer
On 21st May 1987, 22 social activists in Singapore were detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for allegedly plotting a so called “Marxist conspiracy” to overthrow the Singapore government. Although they were never tried in an open court, the full weight of the government’s machinery, including the state-controlled media, was used to make the government’s case against these activists.
The detainees’ side of the story has seldom been heard by the general public. In the 20 years after the detentions, the mainstream media has shied away from telling the ex-detainees’ stories.
Mr Tan Tee Seng was 28 years old when he was detained, along with 21 others. In an exclusive two-and-a-half hour interview with The Online Citizen, Mr Tan speaks about his background and activities in the 1970s and 80s, his arrest in 1987, his experience under interrogation and detention, and his life after his release.
The social activist
Mr Tan’s involvement in social activism started when he was a student in Singapore Polytechnic. In 1976, he joined the Singapore Polytechnic Students’ Union (SPSU), becoming the vice-president of the SPSU the next year.
After graduating, Mr Tan worked as a technician in various multinational electronics firms. He continued his activism after work each day by volunteering at the Geylang Catholic Centre, a welfare and advocacy organisation, which provided social assistance to ex-offenders, battered women, retrenched workers, migrant workers and abused foreign maids. The Catholic Centre was founded by a French catholic priest, who was also a prison chaplain.
The volunteers at the centre included former SPSU members, Catholic worker Vincent Cheng and lawyer Teo Soh Lung. Mr Cheng became the manager and the first full-time staff of the centre in the late 1970s. He and Ms Teo were also detained together with Mr Tan.
Mr Tan also helped out with the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC), together with Mr Cheng. His role in the JPC was to help compile and summarise the news of the day for Catholic priests.
The early eighties were a time of great political awakening for many Singaporeans, after Mr J B Jeyaretnam of the Workers’ Party (WP) won the Anson by-election in 1981, breaking the total dominance of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Parliament. In 1984, when Mr Jeyaretnam was running for re-election, Mr Tan witnessed on television how the full force of the government machinery was being used to demolish the WP leader. It was then that he and about 20 friends, some from the Catholic Centre, decided to step forward to offer their assistance to Mr Jeyaretnam’s campaign.
Mr Jeyaretnam felt he already had enough help, and redirected the volunteers to help two other WP candidates in their election campaigns. In the end, the WP candidates received unexpectedly high shares of the votes in the constituencies of Leng Kee and Alexandra.
Despite the oppressive political climate during that time, Mr Tan had no qualms about continuing his political activities with the WP and his activism at the Catholic Centre. At that time, he said, the boundaries for political activity — what we now call Out-of-Bounds (OB) markers — seemed much clearer: as long as he kept well away from the Communists — which he did with a “ten foot pole” — he felt it was a legitimate right of a citizen to be involved in such activities and that this would be safe. He was soon to be proven wrong.
After the 1984 elections, Mr Tan and his friends stayed on to help the WP with its party newspaper, The Hammer. He joined the de facto editorial committee, writing many of its articles and changing the design of its masthead. After about a year, circulation of the Hammer rose from about 10,000 copies to over 25,000 copies. This, Mr Tan assessed, was probably one of the developments that concerned the PAP government, led by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Detention and interrogation
By 1987, however, Mr Tan’s level of involvement in the Catholic Centre and the WP had slightly decreased due to work and family commitments.
The first and only forewarning of the impending arrests was sounded by Vincent Cheng, who claimed weeks earlier that he was being followed by government agents. Mr Tan dismissed it, thinking it was simply an intimidation tactic. He reasoned that all their activities were entirely legitimate and they had no need to fear the authorities.
At 4 o’clock on the morning of 21st May 1987, Mr Tan and his wife heard a banging on the door of their flat. At the door were two men claiming to be from the Immigration Department. They showed Mr Tan their official identity cards and Mr Tan allowed them into the flat.
However, once inside, they immediately handcuffed Mr Tan and threw him into one of the rooms, and proceeded to ransack the flat looking for incriminating evidence, according to Mr Tan.
After a two hour search they blindfolded both Mr Tan and his wife and whisked them separately away to Whitley Road Detention Centre (WRDC). On arrival, he was forced to strip and change into the prison garb — which was made of the same rough material used to make gunny sacks. He was allowed no underwear, no footwear and had his spectacles confiscated. Gurkhas then led him into an interrogation room.
The interrogation room had the air conditioner on at full blast, making it very cold. The walls were painted a foreboding dark blue, with a powerful spotlight shining on his face.
He was interrogated continuously for more than 72 hours with no sleep. The interrogators from the Internal Security Department (ISD), who were grouped into two teams of three to four officers, would take turns to interrogate him. The teams worked 12-hour shifts, with at least two officers interviewing Mr Tan at any one time.
Mr Tan had to remain standing most of the time, with one interrogator in front and another standing directly behind him, literally breathing down his neck. He was periodically forced to take off his shirt during the interrogations.
To intimidate him into “confessing”, his interrogators constantly threatened to lock him up and throw away the key, often reminding him of Chia Thye Poh, arguably the most well-known ISA detainee in Singapore at that time, who had been detained under the ISA for more than 20 years.
At times his interrogators would jump up from their chairs and slap him across his face, or press their knuckles into his chest. Nevertheless, the pressure was mostly psychological, not physical. His biggest worries were for his wife, who was also being held under detention, and that he might inadvertently say something that would incriminate his friends.
The agents asked about all his activities, which he willingly revealed, as he was sure he had done nothing wrong. In fact, he had all the while thought that his detention was a case of mistaken identity and he expected to be released after the initial questioning.
After about 40 to 50 hours of interrogation, he finally said something that the interrogators appeared to be waiting to hear: That he had been “Marxist inclined”.
Mr Tan saw nothing unusual about agreeing with some Marxist ideas, which many people in the 1970s had been sympathetic towards.
After the first 72 hours of continuous interrogation, he was allowed to return to his cell, where he was kept in solitary confinement. His cell was small — about 4 by 3 metres — with no windows and a light that was kept on 24 hours a day. On the concrete floor was placed a wooden board that served as his bed. During the daytime, it would sometimes get swelteringly hot. For about 20 minutes each day, he would be allowed out of his cell into a small courtyard adjacent to his cell.
For the next 30 to 40 days, he would be hauled back to the interrogation room to be grilled for about 10 hours each day.
He was served his detention order under the ISA after 28 days in detention. The detention order accused him of being “involved in communist united front activities to overthrow the state by violent means”, a charge which he said was completely false.
After six weeks in solitary confinement, he was moved to another cell, nicknamed the “Shangri-la suite” because of its slightly larger size, Mr Tan tells us. There he was able to interact with the other detainees, including a Catholic priest, Father Kevin de Souza, whom he met for the first time at WRDC.
About 4 months after he was detained, Mr Tan was released on Restriction Orders (RO) which prohibited him from leaving the country without permission or joining any political parties. Since the detention order lapsed after two years, Mr Tan said that his RO restrictions likewise did not apply any longer.
Life after detention
After his release, Mr Tan went back to working in the publishing services firm where he had previously worked. His employer did not have any issues with his arrest. This is unsurprising, since his employer had also been detained for similar reasons one month after Mr Tan was hauled in.
None of his clients shunned him. Most were more concerned about whether Mr Tan was ill-treated while under detention and they did not believe the government’s accusations.
The Geylang Catholic Centre was closed and the founding priest left Singapore.
Mr Tan is now 51 years old and a father of three children — the eldest of whom is 20 years old. He runs an education service company serving the China market.
Asked what effect the detentions had on Singapore, Mr Tan felt that the episode had cost Singapore badly. The government had lost a lot of political capital because “nobody believed their allegations”.
The blatant use of force against political dissidents was condemned by more than 400 organisations worldwide.
Mr Tan feels that many “passionate fires” in community service were smothered after that. Social activists and civil societies were “shell shocked into paralysis”. Indeed, the OB markers suddenly became very unclear, rendering almost all independent community activities as potentially crossing the proverbial OB markers.
Despite what he went through at the hands of the ISD, Mr Tan harbours no anger or bitterness against the authorities. He saw it as a political reality in Singapore — the cost of participating in political and social activism. Singapore, he said, has First World infrastructure, with Third World politics.
Nevertheless, he felt that the situation in Singapore has improved in recent years, but he describes the progress as “five steps forward, two steps back”. Still, he was confident that the government would not repeat its actions of 1987.
To underline this point, he pointed out that what The Online Citizen has been publishing on its blog went far beyond what he ever did as an activist, yet The Online Citizen was surviving without government interference. He attributes this to the changed political realities of the day, with a more educated population and a connected world.
In May 2007, the Straits Times did a feature on the 20th anniversary of the arrests and attempted to contact the detainees for interviews. Mr Tan, like most of the other detainees, refused to be interviewed. They were of the view that the government-controlled Straits Times would not write an objective account of what really happened. (The Online Citizen will have a feature on how the Straits Times covered the events of 1987 in an upcoming report.)
Asked if he planned to enter into opposition politics to challenge the government, he said he currently has “no plans yet”.
———
Other related reads:
1 ‘Marxist plot’ revisited, Singapore Window, http://www.singapore-window.org/sw01/010521m1.htm.
2 That We May Dream Again, Fong Hoe Fang (ed.), http://ethosbooks.com.sg/store/mli_viewItem.asp?idProduct=223
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29159.1
Siew Kum Hong makes police report against “vile, vicious and malicious” attacks
The line has been crossed
The attacks have continued since my last posting on this blog. In particular, the latest attacks have alleged and/or insinuated that (a) I asked for and am receiving foreign funding from a Swedish politician, who allegedly funds the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) as well, and (b) I am involved or associated with the SDP and may be their representative or “mole” in Parliament.
Both of these allegations are untrue and false. They are vile, vicious and malicious attacks on me, and nothing short of character assassination. I consider them extremely defamatory and criminal in nature.
I did not at any time ask for, and have not at any time been offered or accepted, any sort of funding from any local or foreign entity, including the Swedish politician named in the latest attack. The only sources of income (or funding) that I have, are my employer and the Government of Singapore (in the form of my monthly NMP allowance). Furthermore, I am not involved or affiliated or associated, whether directly, indirectly or in any other way, with the SDP, and am certainly not their representative or “mole” in Parliament.
While I have not previously taken any action in response to the attacks to me on the Internet, I feel that this latest attack crosses the line and goes beyond any attacks that I am willing to countenance as being fair game for a public figure. I do not think that it is appropriate or acceptable for any MP, including an NMP, to accept any funding, whether local or foreign.
Accordingly, I made a police report on this matter tonight. I have also requested those forums that I am aware are currently hosting these falsehoods, to take them down.
In the interests of full transparency, I did meet with certain Swedish gentlemen recently. Details of those meetings are set out in my statement to the police. I met them at their request, just as I have met other foreigners from time to time, including staff from the various High Commissions and embassies in Singapore (such as from Australia, the US, the UK and other EU countries) and visiting foreigners, such as academics doing research on aspects of Singapore. At these meetings, we discuss matters related Singapore, in particular current affairs and the political situation in Singapore. From my perspective, these meetings are to help the foreigners obtain a better understanding of Singapore. I do not think that there was anything wrong with those meetings, and I have nothing to hide.
While I continue to believe that it is, on the whole, beneficial for Singaporeans to speak up for what they believe in, and I certainly hope that this wish and desire will continue and extend beyond the current discussions around the NMP re-nomination process and homosexuality, I also do believe -- and have always believed -- that rights and freedoms have limits.
I have to date refrained from taking any legal action in response to the lies and falsehoods that have been levelled at me. But this latest attack goes beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly perceive as being a valid or legitimate exercise of the right to free speech, and I certainly will not tolerate the latest rounds of character assassination from cowards hiding behind the perceived anonymity of the Internet.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28866.37
The attacks have continued since my last posting on this blog. In particular, the latest attacks have alleged and/or insinuated that (a) I asked for and am receiving foreign funding from a Swedish politician, who allegedly funds the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) as well, and (b) I am involved or associated with the SDP and may be their representative or “mole” in Parliament.
Both of these allegations are untrue and false. They are vile, vicious and malicious attacks on me, and nothing short of character assassination. I consider them extremely defamatory and criminal in nature.
I did not at any time ask for, and have not at any time been offered or accepted, any sort of funding from any local or foreign entity, including the Swedish politician named in the latest attack. The only sources of income (or funding) that I have, are my employer and the Government of Singapore (in the form of my monthly NMP allowance). Furthermore, I am not involved or affiliated or associated, whether directly, indirectly or in any other way, with the SDP, and am certainly not their representative or “mole” in Parliament.
While I have not previously taken any action in response to the attacks to me on the Internet, I feel that this latest attack crosses the line and goes beyond any attacks that I am willing to countenance as being fair game for a public figure. I do not think that it is appropriate or acceptable for any MP, including an NMP, to accept any funding, whether local or foreign.
Accordingly, I made a police report on this matter tonight. I have also requested those forums that I am aware are currently hosting these falsehoods, to take them down.
In the interests of full transparency, I did meet with certain Swedish gentlemen recently. Details of those meetings are set out in my statement to the police. I met them at their request, just as I have met other foreigners from time to time, including staff from the various High Commissions and embassies in Singapore (such as from Australia, the US, the UK and other EU countries) and visiting foreigners, such as academics doing research on aspects of Singapore. At these meetings, we discuss matters related Singapore, in particular current affairs and the political situation in Singapore. From my perspective, these meetings are to help the foreigners obtain a better understanding of Singapore. I do not think that there was anything wrong with those meetings, and I have nothing to hide.
While I continue to believe that it is, on the whole, beneficial for Singaporeans to speak up for what they believe in, and I certainly hope that this wish and desire will continue and extend beyond the current discussions around the NMP re-nomination process and homosexuality, I also do believe -- and have always believed -- that rights and freedoms have limits.
I have to date refrained from taking any legal action in response to the lies and falsehoods that have been levelled at me. But this latest attack goes beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly perceive as being a valid or legitimate exercise of the right to free speech, and I certainly will not tolerate the latest rounds of character assassination from cowards hiding behind the perceived anonymity of the Internet.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28866.37
Gay activists a key constituency of Aware
Gay activists a key constituency of Aware
I REFER to last Saturday's letter, 'Aware has never had a 'gay agenda'' by Ms Dana Lam, president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Since I was specifically mentioned, a response is called for.
First, the fact that Aware has done sterling work for women in the 24 years of its existence is not disputed. The 'ex-new exco', in its press statement, acknowledged this contribution and declared its commitment to build on these foundations.
What was a matter of concern to the 'ex-new exco' was that in recent years, Aware had veered towards promoting the homosexual political agenda. Aware sponsored the premiere of the movie Spider Lilies, which was about lesbian love. When asked about this, former Aware president Constance Singam said the film explores themes that Aware supports in its Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme.
Aware's CSE has been taught in schools for more than two years. Its CSE instruction manual to schools expressly states that homosexuality is neutral and normal. This is a controversial proposition and parents should be concerned about the non-neutral content of the CSE programme. In fact, many are.
Additionally, the CSE manual goes further in stating that anal sex can be healthy or neutral with consent and a condom. Not only is this against the law, this kind of 'education' is designed to condition the minds of teenage students, from ages 12 to 18, towards the acceptability of homosexuality, purposefully equating homosexuality with the norm of heterosexuality. The Ministry of Education has stated categorically that there are aspects of the CSE instructor guide which are 'explicit and inappropriate and convey messages which could promote homosexuality'. These are hard facts and hardly figments of one's imagination.
On the day of the Aware extraordinary general meeting (EGM), the activist homosexual groups were out in full force, supporting the old guard. Many old guard supporters - those in the meeting hall and volunteers outside - were members of the activist homosexual group and spoke openly of their lifestyle. Many sexually challenged women were among the most vocal and vociferous supporters of the old guard.
If Singaporeans were generally unaware of Aware's 'gay agenda', it however, seems that the homosexual and lesbian supporters of the old guard attending the EGM were in the know. It appears that homosexual activists seeking to impose their values by mainstreaming homosexuality have become a significant chief constituency of Aware. Anyone present at the EGM would have seen abundant evidence of this. Discerning Singaporeans can examine the evidence, in print and from online eyewitness accounts, to make up their own minds.
Dr Thio Su Mien
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.384
I REFER to last Saturday's letter, 'Aware has never had a 'gay agenda'' by Ms Dana Lam, president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Since I was specifically mentioned, a response is called for.
First, the fact that Aware has done sterling work for women in the 24 years of its existence is not disputed. The 'ex-new exco', in its press statement, acknowledged this contribution and declared its commitment to build on these foundations.
What was a matter of concern to the 'ex-new exco' was that in recent years, Aware had veered towards promoting the homosexual political agenda. Aware sponsored the premiere of the movie Spider Lilies, which was about lesbian love. When asked about this, former Aware president Constance Singam said the film explores themes that Aware supports in its Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme.
Aware's CSE has been taught in schools for more than two years. Its CSE instruction manual to schools expressly states that homosexuality is neutral and normal. This is a controversial proposition and parents should be concerned about the non-neutral content of the CSE programme. In fact, many are.
Additionally, the CSE manual goes further in stating that anal sex can be healthy or neutral with consent and a condom. Not only is this against the law, this kind of 'education' is designed to condition the minds of teenage students, from ages 12 to 18, towards the acceptability of homosexuality, purposefully equating homosexuality with the norm of heterosexuality. The Ministry of Education has stated categorically that there are aspects of the CSE instructor guide which are 'explicit and inappropriate and convey messages which could promote homosexuality'. These are hard facts and hardly figments of one's imagination.
On the day of the Aware extraordinary general meeting (EGM), the activist homosexual groups were out in full force, supporting the old guard. Many old guard supporters - those in the meeting hall and volunteers outside - were members of the activist homosexual group and spoke openly of their lifestyle. Many sexually challenged women were among the most vocal and vociferous supporters of the old guard.
If Singaporeans were generally unaware of Aware's 'gay agenda', it however, seems that the homosexual and lesbian supporters of the old guard attending the EGM were in the know. It appears that homosexual activists seeking to impose their values by mainstreaming homosexuality have become a significant chief constituency of Aware. Anyone present at the EGM would have seen abundant evidence of this. Discerning Singaporeans can examine the evidence, in print and from online eyewitness accounts, to make up their own minds.
Dr Thio Su Mien
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28024.384
Temasek must set example on transparency
May 18, 2009
SALE OF BoA STAKE
Temasek must set example on transparency
I REFER to last Saturday's column, 'Temasek should clear the air', on the massive loss arising from Temasek Holdings' sale of its stake in Bank of America (BoA).
Temasek is neither a private equity fund nor a hedge fund, but it handles billions of dollars which belong to Singaporeans.
BoA's share price ranged between US$2.53 and US$14.81 during the period Jan 2 to March 31, when the sale is believed to have been made. This makes it well-nigh impossible to guess the size of the loss, except that it must be in billions of dollars.
After being told that the investments were for the long term - when the markets in the United States crashed after Temasek had invested heavily in US financial stocks - Singaporeans expect Temasek to explain the timing of the sale and the reasons for it. Do the reasons relate specifically to BoA or generally to the US stock market? Surely it cannot be due to diversifying the geographical distribution of future investments.
Temasek must give the lead and be transparent if other listed companies on the Singapore Exchange are expected to do so.
Denis Distant
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29004.15
SALE OF BoA STAKE
Temasek must set example on transparency
I REFER to last Saturday's column, 'Temasek should clear the air', on the massive loss arising from Temasek Holdings' sale of its stake in Bank of America (BoA).
Temasek is neither a private equity fund nor a hedge fund, but it handles billions of dollars which belong to Singaporeans.
BoA's share price ranged between US$2.53 and US$14.81 during the period Jan 2 to March 31, when the sale is believed to have been made. This makes it well-nigh impossible to guess the size of the loss, except that it must be in billions of dollars.
After being told that the investments were for the long term - when the markets in the United States crashed after Temasek had invested heavily in US financial stocks - Singaporeans expect Temasek to explain the timing of the sale and the reasons for it. Do the reasons relate specifically to BoA or generally to the US stock market? Surely it cannot be due to diversifying the geographical distribution of future investments.
Temasek must give the lead and be transparent if other listed companies on the Singapore Exchange are expected to do so.
Denis Distant
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29004.15
Support Suu Kyi in quest to be freed
Support Suu Kyi in quest to be freed
I REFER to last Saturday's report, 'Arrest is a setback, says Singapore', and would like to say we are heartened that the Singapore Government has made its position known to the Myanmar government concerning the new charges it has levelled against Ms Aung San Suu Kyi and its concern over her poor health.
Ms Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for almost two decades since winning democratically held elections in 1990. The 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has paid a huge price for her beliefs and has been held in near isolation from her family and friends.
She is scheduled to go on trial today for breaching the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam across the lake and entered her house. This offence carries a maximum jail term of five years, as has been reported in the media. Ms Suu Kyi and her two assistants are currently detained in the infamous Insein Prison.
We call for the immediate withdrawal of this charge against Ms Suu Kyi and her two assistants and that the schedule for her freedom from house arrest at the end of this month is adhered to.
We also ask Singapore and all Asean member countries to support Ms Suu Kyi in this quest to be freed. It will be a grave injustice if we let this courageous citizen live all her days under house arrest or in prison, based on these new charges.
It is also important for the Asean community that the Myanmar government stands by its ratification of the Asean Charter, an instrument that seeks to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and rule of law in all Asean member countries.
Braema Mathi (Ms)
Chairman, Maruah
Singapore Working Group for Asean Human Rights Mechanism
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29145.1
Break free of this world wide delusion
The idea that the web is revolutionising our lives is not only wrong, but dangerous
Bryan Appleyard
The web is in trouble. Last week craigslist, a vast classified-ads site, had to abandon its “erotic services” category because of claims that it was an “online brothel” being used by sexual predators. And in France L’Oréal discovered eBay could not be forced to stop selling cheap knock-offs of its products.
After British villages rose up against the intrusion of Google’s Street View, Greece has banned the mobile camera cars that put pictures of people’s homes and streets on the internet. Privacy campaigners fear the power of Google and the online ad company Phorm to gather and exploit personal information. They invade your computer, monitor your web-browsing and buying, check where you are and then bombard you with targeted hard sells. It’s in the name of freedom and choice, they say, but whose?
Twenty years have passed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web. From 1989 to 2000 it grew exponentially. Then it crashed, and bright-eyed, cash-burning dotcoms across the world went bust. From the ashes emerged web 2.0, a cult created, engineered and run by Californians. This can be defined in many ways, but its principal features are, as with everything else in California, freedom, personal expression, letting it all hang out and making shedloads of wonga.
So, for example, you can publish to the world your every passing thought on Twitter, sneer at MPs on Blogger, display your life on Facebook, sell and bid for goods on eBay. And, all the while, Google, the biggest brand in the galaxy, will be watching everything you do, knowing where you live, logging your preferences and tracking your movements so that it can target its ads at you and only you.
Even if you don’t indulge, your life has been changed. At every turn you are told to get online and buy. Increasingly, shops are being seen as mere adjuncts to websites. Lots of things out there in cyberspace — this newspaper, for example — are just plain free, and most things are a lot cheaper. Web 2.0 is in your head and your pocket whether you like it or not. It will change everything.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, to start with, it is historically ignorant.
From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009
“The internet”, says David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London and author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, “is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”
Edgerton is the world expert in tech dead ends. Fifty years ago, he points out, nuclear power was about to change the world; then there was supersonic passenger flight, then space travel. The wheel, he concedes, did change the world, as did steam power. The web is not in that league.
One great promise of web 2.0 was that it would lead to a post-industrial world in which everything was dematerialised into a shimmer of electrons. But last year’s oil price shock and this year’s recession, not to mention every year’s looming eco-catastrophe, show that we are still utterly dependent on the heavy things of the old economy. In fact, says Edgerton, we may, in retrospect, come to see coal as the dominant technology of our time. China and America have lots of the stuff and they plan to burn it. The web, like it or not, uses energy, quite a lot of it, and that will continue to be made with big, heavy, industrial-age machines.
So what, if not everything, will the web change? The key feature of web 2.0 that is currently driving change is its intense focus on the individual. Google’s power springs from its ability to advertise not to populations or groups but to individuals. Blogging, tweeting and Facebooking all give the individual the unprecedented opportunity to blather to the entire world.
“Why not?” say the Californians. “This is paradise, the individual set free.”
The first objection to this is that it destroys institutions and structures that can do so much more than the individual. Clive James is no web-sceptic. He runs a superb website — CliveJames.com — and he regards the internet as “more of a blessing than a threat”. But he is wary of this focus on the individual.
“After Lehman Brothers crashed,” he says, “The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis that is still the best thing I have seen on the subject. But the story needed half a dozen qualified financial journalists to put it together, and masses of research that no lonely blogger could possibly do . . . This throws into relief the intractable fact that the liberty which the web offers to the individual voice is also a restriction on group effort.”
Institutions — publishers, newspapers, museums, universities, schools — exist precisely because they can do more than individuals. If web 2.0 flattens everything to the level of whim and self-actualisation, then it will have done more harm than good.
A further objection to the cult’s radical individualism is that it doesn’t have the intended hyper-democratic consequences. Wikipedia, for example, has tackled inaccuracy and subversion by introducing forms of authority and control that would seem to be anathema to its founding ideals. Bloggery is forming itself into big, institutionalised aggregators such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and remains utterly parasitic on the mainstream media it affects to despise. Even Twitter is already coming to be dominated by conventional, non-web-based celebrity — Oprah Winfrey in the US and Stephen Fry over here.
The slightly more sinister aspect of this is that excessive individualism leads with astonishing rapidity to slavish conformity. The banking crisis may not have been caused by the internet but it was certainly fuelled by the way connectivity and speed created a market in which everybody was gripped by the hysteria of the herd.
“There seems to be an inverse correlation between technological speed and intellectual diversity,” observes Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.
Or there is the weird phenomenon of flash mobs. People agree by text message or tweet to assemble in one place and, suddenly, do so. This was originally intended as a joke or art piece designed to demonstrate sheep-like conformity, but it rapidly became an aspect of cultish libertarianism. It doesn’t work. Flash mobs in Russia are simply prevented by cutting off mobile-phone coverage. Old-world politics is more powerful than the web.
And, finally, the everything-free, massively deflationary effects of the web may be over. Rupert Murdoch, head of The Sunday Times’s parent company, has said he is thinking of charging for online versions of his papers. The hard fact that somebody, somehow, has to pay for all this is breaking into web heaven.
The cult is the problem. I know that this article — it always happens — will be sneered at all over the web by people who cannot think for themselves because they are blindly faithful to the idea that the web is the future, all of it. I will be called a Luddite.
It is the cultists who threaten the web. They are the ones encouraging dreams of a utopia of the self. They fail to see that the web is just one more product of the biology, culture and history that make us what we are. In the real world, it is wonderful, certainly, but it is also porn, online brothels, privacy invasions, hucksterism, mindless babble and the vacant gaze that always accompanies the mindless pursuit of the new. The web is human and fallen; it is bestial as much as it is angelic. There are no new worlds. There is only this one.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=29201.1
Bryan Appleyard
The web is in trouble. Last week craigslist, a vast classified-ads site, had to abandon its “erotic services” category because of claims that it was an “online brothel” being used by sexual predators. And in France L’Oréal discovered eBay could not be forced to stop selling cheap knock-offs of its products.
After British villages rose up against the intrusion of Google’s Street View, Greece has banned the mobile camera cars that put pictures of people’s homes and streets on the internet. Privacy campaigners fear the power of Google and the online ad company Phorm to gather and exploit personal information. They invade your computer, monitor your web-browsing and buying, check where you are and then bombard you with targeted hard sells. It’s in the name of freedom and choice, they say, but whose?
Twenty years have passed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web. From 1989 to 2000 it grew exponentially. Then it crashed, and bright-eyed, cash-burning dotcoms across the world went bust. From the ashes emerged web 2.0, a cult created, engineered and run by Californians. This can be defined in many ways, but its principal features are, as with everything else in California, freedom, personal expression, letting it all hang out and making shedloads of wonga.
So, for example, you can publish to the world your every passing thought on Twitter, sneer at MPs on Blogger, display your life on Facebook, sell and bid for goods on eBay. And, all the while, Google, the biggest brand in the galaxy, will be watching everything you do, knowing where you live, logging your preferences and tracking your movements so that it can target its ads at you and only you.
Even if you don’t indulge, your life has been changed. At every turn you are told to get online and buy. Increasingly, shops are being seen as mere adjuncts to websites. Lots of things out there in cyberspace — this newspaper, for example — are just plain free, and most things are a lot cheaper. Web 2.0 is in your head and your pocket whether you like it or not. It will change everything.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, to start with, it is historically ignorant.
From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009
“The internet”, says David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London and author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, “is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”
Edgerton is the world expert in tech dead ends. Fifty years ago, he points out, nuclear power was about to change the world; then there was supersonic passenger flight, then space travel. The wheel, he concedes, did change the world, as did steam power. The web is not in that league.
One great promise of web 2.0 was that it would lead to a post-industrial world in which everything was dematerialised into a shimmer of electrons. But last year’s oil price shock and this year’s recession, not to mention every year’s looming eco-catastrophe, show that we are still utterly dependent on the heavy things of the old economy. In fact, says Edgerton, we may, in retrospect, come to see coal as the dominant technology of our time. China and America have lots of the stuff and they plan to burn it. The web, like it or not, uses energy, quite a lot of it, and that will continue to be made with big, heavy, industrial-age machines.
So what, if not everything, will the web change? The key feature of web 2.0 that is currently driving change is its intense focus on the individual. Google’s power springs from its ability to advertise not to populations or groups but to individuals. Blogging, tweeting and Facebooking all give the individual the unprecedented opportunity to blather to the entire world.
“Why not?” say the Californians. “This is paradise, the individual set free.”
The first objection to this is that it destroys institutions and structures that can do so much more than the individual. Clive James is no web-sceptic. He runs a superb website — CliveJames.com — and he regards the internet as “more of a blessing than a threat”. But he is wary of this focus on the individual.
“After Lehman Brothers crashed,” he says, “The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis that is still the best thing I have seen on the subject. But the story needed half a dozen qualified financial journalists to put it together, and masses of research that no lonely blogger could possibly do . . . This throws into relief the intractable fact that the liberty which the web offers to the individual voice is also a restriction on group effort.”
Institutions — publishers, newspapers, museums, universities, schools — exist precisely because they can do more than individuals. If web 2.0 flattens everything to the level of whim and self-actualisation, then it will have done more harm than good.
A further objection to the cult’s radical individualism is that it doesn’t have the intended hyper-democratic consequences. Wikipedia, for example, has tackled inaccuracy and subversion by introducing forms of authority and control that would seem to be anathema to its founding ideals. Bloggery is forming itself into big, institutionalised aggregators such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and remains utterly parasitic on the mainstream media it affects to despise. Even Twitter is already coming to be dominated by conventional, non-web-based celebrity — Oprah Winfrey in the US and Stephen Fry over here.
The slightly more sinister aspect of this is that excessive individualism leads with astonishing rapidity to slavish conformity. The banking crisis may not have been caused by the internet but it was certainly fuelled by the way connectivity and speed created a market in which everybody was gripped by the hysteria of the herd.
“There seems to be an inverse correlation between technological speed and intellectual diversity,” observes Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.
Or there is the weird phenomenon of flash mobs. People agree by text message or tweet to assemble in one place and, suddenly, do so. This was originally intended as a joke or art piece designed to demonstrate sheep-like conformity, but it rapidly became an aspect of cultish libertarianism. It doesn’t work. Flash mobs in Russia are simply prevented by cutting off mobile-phone coverage. Old-world politics is more powerful than the web.
And, finally, the everything-free, massively deflationary effects of the web may be over. Rupert Murdoch, head of The Sunday Times’s parent company, has said he is thinking of charging for online versions of his papers. The hard fact that somebody, somehow, has to pay for all this is breaking into web heaven.
The cult is the problem. I know that this article — it always happens — will be sneered at all over the web by people who cannot think for themselves because they are blindly faithful to the idea that the web is the future, all of it. I will be called a Luddite.
It is the cultists who threaten the web. They are the ones encouraging dreams of a utopia of the self. They fail to see that the web is just one more product of the biology, culture and history that make us what we are. In the real world, it is wonderful, certainly, but it is also porn, online brothels, privacy invasions, hucksterism, mindless babble and the vacant gaze that always accompanies the mindless pursuit of the new. The web is human and fallen; it is bestial as much as it is angelic. There are no new worlds. There is only this one.
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