Random Discourse – #FreeMyInternet

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I was at Hong Lim Park last Saturday for the above event. The turnout wasn’t really spectacular, but at least healthy. There were about 1500 ~ 2000 people there even though I did not expect this to attract a crowd as big as the protest against the Population White Paper. In fact, there was a carnival feel about it and at some parts of the park it even looked like a picnic.

I went not because I agreed with all the points raised by the organisers and the speakers. I went because I felt no one should decide for us what “the right news” should be. Whether that refers to doctored, or accurate news reports is moot. What truly offended me is that not only does the government treat us like children who aren’t capable of making the right decisions, it actually had the audacity to believe it had the moral authority to decide what is “right” for us. I felt strongly no one should modify our input in such a way whereby it affect our ability to come to an informed decision, or to “guide” us to only one particular conclusion about a matter. To but it very bluntly, that is simply mild or subtle brainwash.

So, my presence at Hong Lim was merely to make myself counted. However, I have to point out that the organisers may have missed one important point because I wasn’t really paying attention. While it is true the expansion of these regulations to cover online media can be used to stifle free speech online (and Tan Chuan Jin’s response that blogs which carries news can thus be covered by the expanded regulations clearly enforces that opinion), the fact is that the pre-existing regulations are already insidious on their own.

We are all aware that before the Internet came along, it was way more difficult for us to obtain counter opinions apart from that of the government, much less a detailed and well thought out one. Clearly, governments all round the world realised a long time ago it is far better to be able to affect how another think, than to control what he can or may say! Thus, media control is put in place because when counter opinion or another point of view is overwhelmed and drowned out, the public is left without enough information to decide, much less say, otherwise!

If that is done very, very well, the powers-that-be can not just pay lip service to ensuring the right to so-called free speech, it can even enshrine it in the Constitution! So, the Media Development Authority [MDA] is not really a watchdog at all and is in fact trying to live up to its name of “developing” media – the way the government wants it. Since that is the case, the matter of “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” that often pops up in the ongoing discussion of the expanded regulations is completely irrelevant. Simply do away with the first watchdog (i.e. the existing media regulations) and there will be no need for more watchdogs to keep an watchful eye at all.

Anyway, I arrived late at around 5:30pm to meet my colleague and friend who was already there. I couldn’t remember much of what the speakers said between then to the time I left. The only thing I could remember was one of the speakers mention that the government continue to treat us as if we were still in the 60s or 70s, which went on to inspire this piece. My personal opinion is, regardless whether there are those who have failed to behave maturely, it is high time for the government to relax its grip on this area. Even parents need to let go and let their child fall when he learns to walk, though that fall may hurt, and is rather unpleasant to the child.

Current Affairs – New licensing requirements imposed by the Media Development Authority

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As long as they [the public] go onto online news sites to read the news, I think it is important for us to make sure that they read ‘the right things’…” – Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister of Communication and Information


Courtesy of Joshua Chiang

It is almost comical when Yaacob said the above in the BBC Video (at around 1 min 40s). It also reminds me of Dr Evil from Austin Powers, or the Cylon known as “Brother Cavil” from Battlestar Galactica.

It is my considered opinion that policies should be made with the sole objective of achieving a positive outcome that benefits the people. It is clear to me from Yaacob’s comment that there is no obvious benefit in these new regulations other than to further the ruling party’s agenda. Regardless whether this would control our freedom of expression on the Internet, what gave the government the right to decide what is the “right” thing for us to read? With Singaporeans being more educated these days, aren’t we more capable of discerning what is right or wrong regardless whether our society is more matured?

Those in support of these regulations said when Yaacob said “the right things”, he meant “accurate reporting”. Does the government believe those reports which put the various ministries in a difficult position or portray them as incompetent to be “inaccuracies”? Does it believe that new regulations enforcing that sites put up only “accurate articles” will make us believe Singapore to be a bed a roses, and that all the government ministries, departments and agencies are doing their job? If that is the case, then Yaacob is right to make quotation marks with his hands when he said “the right things”. Because it simply isn’t right at all! Anyone should rightly object to that because that means they are being fed only officially approved reports by the media. What is there to prevent us from being fed outright lies? If the government finds it difficult to convince the general public, then it is a crisis in trust and confidence where regulations will do nothing to improve.

Some people would say that the new MDA regulations are good, because it gave them confidence on what they read online. But they are missing the point. How can I have confidence in what I read when it forever presents a one-sided view – that of the government? For e.g. Am I to believe the bullshit that a person earning $1000 can indeed own a HDB flat, based on what the papers have shown me? Yet at the meantime it does not present the facts that this person will then be in debt, technically “enslaved” for at least two decades and by the time he finish servicing his loan there will be almost nothing in his CPF and on paper he still owe himself interest for the money he took out from the CPF? Am I to believe that we have a World Class Transport, when the experience of my daily commute says otherwise? Am I to believe that Singaporeans are given equal consideration when applying for a job if some so-called anti-government pages or sites did not expose classified ads where employers discriminate against Singaporeans by specifying that only Filipinos or Indian nationals need apply? In fact, if I wasn’t present at the Jurong East Stadium for Singapore Democratic Party’s Rally during GE2011, how would I know Dr Chee Soon Juan did not attempt to stage a march as The New Paper had reported? As far as I am concerned, regulation has not made our media any more truthful. In fact, not only has the “approved media” presented half truths, I would consider some of them to be blatant lies!

Considering all of the above, is it a wonder why our Press Freedom Index ranking is 149th, and also our Freedom of the Press ranking is 153rd? Not only am I against any further regulation of online news, I felt the pre-existing regulations should be lifted. To even accept that current printed media needs to be regulated would be to accept the argument that we need the thought control or even “approved news” in the first place. Frankly, why is there even a need for these new regulations, when the government already has in its arsenal so many tools to deal with rogue postings – from defamation lawsuits, to the Sedition Act and even the Internal Security Act [ISA]?

Some would quote the likes of The Real Singapore [TRS] as an example of why the Internet should be regulated. But the point is that if we have confidence in our “approve media”, what would provide the fertile ground for such sites to flourish? I know some of my friends still read the vitriol on TRS with a whole bucket of salt, if they have not stopped reading it already. As for those people who still believe the hatred or the so-called “outright lies” on TRS and hold it as the gospel truth, the fact is that such people exists in the form of those who consistently voted against the ruling party even before the advent of the Internet. Incidentally, that is also why I despise TRS, because it provided the perfect excuse for new regulations. Well done TRS, for an own goal!

Furthermore, there is a threat that these new regulations will now provide the legal framework to shut anyone down in the future. After all, it will only be a technicality to re-classify a blog or even a forum considered to be difficult and unfriendly to fit the description so that these new regulations would fit. There will be those who would say it is too far-fetched to imagine that it will be used to gag dissidents. My friend Roger Tan describes it best with this interesting analogy – “There is a reason why our officers punished us for pointing their weapons at another soldier during our National Service [NS] days, even when we know it is not loaded.”

If you need me to explain this analogy, then we are either on different channels, or you did not serve NS.

Before I end, a group of bloggers collectively called #FreeMyInternet, will be staging a peaceful protest at Hong Lim Park from 4pm to 7pm this coming Saturday. If you feel strongly about this matter and would like to be counted, please feel free to go and lend your support.

Navy Open House 2013

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It’s been two weeks since the open house and I finally got my lazy ass to pen this blog post.

It was a sunny day at Changi Navy Base on May 18th, and I was happy the transit from Singapore Expo to the base was pretty uneventful. I am pretty surprised to see that many ships at the base, and for a brief moment I contemplated that fateful Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.

I can’t remember when was my last Navy Open House visit. I believe it was at least more than 2 decades ago since I only remembered going there with one of my secondary school classmates. Those were the days when the navy was still at Pulau Brani, and the Singapore Navy’s largest warships were “missile Gun Boats with radars that looked like water tanks” armed with Israeli Gabriel anti-ship missiles. Yep, it has been a looooong time…

The Republic of Singapore Navy [RSN] has come a long way since then. It now has capabilities that I couldn’t have possibly imagined when I was a teenager. These days we have submarines, huge transport docks that has circumnavigated the earth, and even sent our warships to the Gulf of Aden to participate is counter piracy operations. The RSN has gone from a coastal defense force to one that is now fully capable of operating alongside some of the world’s most advanced navies.

I am no military buff so I will not go into details about the navy ships. For those who are interested it is best to perhaps read some of the posts [1] [2] [3] [4] from one of the experts here. David Boey’s observations are much better than mine, and his insights are far better than anything I can imagine to write. After all, I can’t even be bothered to visit all the ships of the same class…

Meanwhile, enjoy some of the photos I have taken.

Travel Journal – Phuket, Again…

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It has become almost an annual pilgrimage since my first visit in 2009, with only a break in 2011. I had wanted to post this right after I came back in April but only these few days I had only found time to sort out the photos I have taken over the past few months. No thanks to Ingress, in particular.

I almost had to cancel this trip because for the better part of the week before my flight, I was down with flu. It was particular bad two days before, when I was shivering in cold in spite of the warm weather. It would have been really sad if I had to cancel the trip, because I love Phuket and I would miss it dearly if I can’t go.

This time round I stayed again at the Woraburi Resort. There wasn’t much changes and the staff are still as friendly. What has changed, is that some of the staff can now speak Mandarin, perhaps as a reaction of the tourism industry in Phuket due to the number of mainland Chinese tourists flooding all parts of the world. Two of them attempted to speak to me in Mandarin even though they heard me conversing in English with my companions. When I told some friends of this, their reaction was horror, and even revulsion for being mistaken as mainlander Chinese. I have to say that Singapore appears to be the only place in the region that rejects the new reality of a resurgent China, even though we had no problem adapting to the influx of Japanese and Korean tourists in the past. For a predominantly Chinese place to reject Chinese, it has got to be another first for Singapore! The eradication of Chinese education in Singapore has been so successful that many Singaporean Chinese have become OCBC – Orang Cina Bukan Cina. Well done, PAP!

Anyway, rants aside. I had once again visited Phuket during the Songkran. The reason being that is the only time where I can play with water with abandon and not worry about getting soaking wet. While I would admit I hated being sprayed in the face and eyes with high-powered water guns, that doesn’t really happen very often anyway. It helps a great deal to get the stress and frustrations out of me as well.

I will end here and let the pictures speak for themselves. Unfortunately I ain’t very good at photography so I might not have captured the essence of what I saw very well. But I do hope it manages to bring out the beauty of the place so others may visit the place to experience it for themselves.

Random Discourse – Since the last post…

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Malaysian General Elections 2013

By 2pm on 5th May, I was in the opinion that it is unlikely the Pakatan Rakyat [PR] would win a simple majority. I am not making this up. The reason I said so was by 2pm I saw a number of photos of votes being posted online. A quick glance and I saw 75% of these votes were going to Barisan Nasional [BN] (see below).

I agree that just a few votes like these doesn’t mean BN is winning. But what caught my attention was that these are more or less tech savvy people which means it is not all pro-PR on the Internet. It also reminded me that while I have seen a lot of anti-BN videos or postings on Facebook, they are predominantly in Chinese (or some Chinese dialects). In particular, I had seen only one in Malay, with English subtitles. In other words, is the PR reaching out enough to the Malay majority? It might not have been a “Chinese Tsunami” but clearly the main bulk of opposition vote must have been Chinese. With the Chinese population mostly for the PR, I am not surprised that it actually provoked a reaction from the Malays – at the very least by turning out to vote for BN. Would they not be concerned the status they enjoyed would be threatened, when there seems to me the PR had done very little to reach out to them, and to assure them otherwise?

Malaysia, unfortunately remain segregated along racial lines. One part of it is caused of national policy, and the others because of history, and racial prejudice. Sadly, the parts themselves are not mutually exclusive. I need not elaborate much about the 13 May incident in 1969, and the subsequent New Economic Policy [NEP] that came into effect in 1971 for the next 20 years.

The racial divide is deeply rooted even though the PR leaders may not want to admit it. I came to this conclusion from a friend’s account. Being Singaporean Peranakan, he easily mixed with both Malays and Chinese and had friends from both sides in Malaysia. He understood the aspirations of the young Malay professionals, and also how some of these capable ones are themselves unhappy with the NEP. While we would look up to any Malay person who had done well here in Singapore, the Chinese in Malaysia would be skeptical regardless how capable those Malays are on their own merits. Many Chinese in Malaysia would have believed they got to their positions as a result of nepotism or national policies. Thus, even some of these young Malay professionals are in the opinion that UMNO and its racial politics are dated and has to go.

When this was discussed with a female Chinese Malaysian, my friend suggested that perhaps the Chinese can reach out to these Malays and work together for a better Malaysia. To his shock, the response was very negative (and I am being polite here) because the Chinese person considered these Malays to be hypocritical. She even insisted that there is no reason to work with anyone who benefited from the policies. She isn’t an isolated case, because among my Malaysian Chinese friends, a number of them often spoke of the Malays derisively. I personally felt it is racist and unhealthy, but I doubt if I openly correct their views it would be taken amicably. Incidentally, that is why when Amy Cheong made those comments about the Malay Wedding, my first response was that she must have been a Malaysian-born Chinese.

I am sad to say that if both races in Malaysia cannot see beyond their own prejudices and work together, then the road to political change will be long and even painful. Thus, the outcome of this election was fairly predictable regardless of all the fraud allegations.

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Gang Rape is democracy in action?

A PAP MP quoted the following:

Since he has quoted it without any comment or input of his own, it is simply assumed he agreed (or even endorsed) whatever he has quoted. I am not surprised that denunciations and condemnation flew fast and furious there after, and he was ultimately forced to apologised for it. Whether he subsequently removed it from his Facebook account is immaterial because anyone who looked hard enough will still be able to find screen shots of it.

Zainudin Nordin hopes that netizens “will see the quote its in entirety”. And my question is, what is there to see?

Terry Goodkind “gang rape analogy” has no leg to stand on. First of all, it suggests to his readers that the plight of those who voted against the current government in power is caused by those who voted for it. It is nothing but divisive. Even if it maybe partially true that some people suffer because of the choices of the majority, it ignores that fact that political parties and politicians in a representative democracy can at times also have agenda of their own and take actions which may not be in line with the voters’ wishes. Thus, it might actually be a very small group of politicians screwing the people over. Let’s not forget political parties that wins simple majorities to form governments without winning the popular vote, or even governments that insists in pushing so-called “non-populist” policies “for the good of the most people”.

None of these is democracy in action. It is not much different from a monarchy, a feudal society or a dictatorship where everyone is raped by one or a collective leadership regardless they liked it or not. And it is of no wonder some Singaporeans often felt violated as well.

Talking about apologies, at times it is best for some people not to apologise at all if they do not already accept they are in the wrong. Maybe I am reading between the lines here but this says a lot about the earlier “apology” (see below).

It’s high time I read up on Freud and that bit about moral projection again.

And so… AIM good, FMSS bad?

I am more annoyed than surprised that instead of getting a detailed explanation on the entire AIM-gate matter, the ruling party tried to obfuscate and divert attention to other issues. A certain Teo Ho Pin made an issue out of the Workers’ Party [WP] awarding their management contract to FM Solutions and Services Pte Ltd [FMSS], and a whole lot of other matters as a result of that.

Teo Ho Pin isn’t exactly the paragon of virtue. I haven’t really forgotten his spectacular “fully answers” over the 8-month bonus received by one of the North West Community Development Council staff, and the losses Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council suffered in their Lehman-linked investments. As far as I’m concerned, and even without considering the role he has in the sale of the Town Council Management System [TCMS] software to AIM, he’s the least qualified to raise the questions against the WP. For him to do so would be like a common prostitute questioning the chastity of the nun in the monastery. And that, would be an insult to prostitutes who are often forthright in declaring the price of their services instead of playing coy and act like a virgin.

From the release of Town Council Management Report [TCMR] to the whole lot of questions raised by the $8 Cow Khaw Boon Wan and Teo Ho Pin, the whole agenda appears to be to create the impression that WP is incompetent and has mismanaged the towns under its charge. Some might be fooled but as far as I am concerned, what exactly is there to complain about when the town council isn’t dipping into the reserves or making the resident pay more to cover the cost, and that service standards have been maintained?

In other words, whether public interest has been served is not in how the WP answered the questions but in the accounts of the town council itself, and whether services have been provided in good order to the residents. I would have preferred Teo Ho Pin should simply shut up and sit down and not waste precious time in Parliament. After all, I personally remain unconvinced that the deal with AIM had in anyway served public interest at all!

But on second thoughts, it is good he raised it because I also loved to see how this so-called “elites” shoot themselves in the foot. The residents of Tampines are now questioning why their conservancy charges went up while management fees are down, and Kim Jong-Un expressed my sentiments perfectly.

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