Popagandhi

I concur! Everything about Bushy, about S’pore’s (too) conservative govt, about spore’s covt trying to please everyone AROUND Singapore but hushing the ones IN the country itself… everyone else’s blind obedience, most people’s (lack of) a mind of their own… and more!

Amen Adri, Amen.

I bet you the response would not have been so benign if it’d been a local dignitary being heckled =D

In the last two days, we have had to contend with protests near where we live. While i support freedom of speech and all that jazz, there is a chance of things going wrong - and it often has. Protests are common in this country and it’s great to have an avenue to vent our anger, but it also means transport delays because roads are blocked with protesters, or exams disrupted because 175,000 noisy people are marching outside your exam hall (bloody hell, they should’ve given us straight As). Minor inconveniences for the right to speak some would say. Right.

In the last two days, protesters have turned rioters. These were people passionate people who spoke about democracy, the right to speak and their desire to change the world, but by what means? Through violence? They attacked the police horses, threw urine at the police, injured bystanders. They stormed banking offices and shut them down for the day. Fuck them.

Several months ago hardlined groups sparked a wave of anti-semeticism in their protest of the israel-lebanon conflict. Do i want this in Singapore? No. I wouldn’t want my jewish counterparts, or anybody for that matter, to fear unwarranted attacks on the basis of their ethnic group.

I’m finally beginning to find merit in the iron fist of Singapore. For one, Singapore gives avenues of feedback by which every individual can write in/contribute to. Give a man too much freedom and he will use it to bite you. There are laws in place to prevent riots and racial attacks in Australia, but what do you do when people take freedom to the extreme?

Perhaps, like Singapore does, nip the problem in the bud and we shall remain safe. While i think that protests are a good way to express displeasure and to press for changes in policy, they are frightening. The line between freedom of speech and criminal action is thin and can and will be transgressed by those who see violence as a means to change the world.

To some extent, d is right. To most extent in the opposite direction of the spectrum, I still think that Singapore’s Govt are taking it at a ridiculously strict level in terms of freedom of speech.

I don’t even know how Singapore’s next generation will be affected by this overt obedience and lack of personal stand regarding issues that matter, that have built up by Govt’s investment in keep everyone mum.

And I don’t see anything wrong with protesting against today’s tyrant murderer (bush). My 2 rupiah’s worth.

I know what you mean, d, I do. My liberal heart was unwaveringly given over to Admiral Adama and President Roslin when, in the midst of crisis (i.e. the extermination of humanity by Cylons), I found myself calling those who wanted a quorum and democracy “idiots”. That might have been on TV (on battlestar!), but I literally bit my liberal tongue as I said that — and wondered when I’d ever find myself saying that, in an actual situation.

That said, is the blanket rejection of those ideals any justification for a lack of civil rights? Are Singapore’s avenues of feedback REALLY sufficient? Is there really any way we can have our voices heard, and get close enough to effect change, without being co-opted into the system (think someone like Tharman and Vivian; versus those who weren’t co-opted)? Is it really true that by simply going to our MP, offering feedback to the Feedback Unit (or whatever they’re called these days.. REACH?); our voices are heard?

Take, for example, the issue of the repeal of 377. What the government is effectively saying is: anal and oral sex are going to be OK — but if you’re homosexual, it’s not. Why? To appease those ‘conservative factions of society’.

Now consider what options any individual, straight or gay, who finds this utterly ridiculous can do. The emails that are going on around the glbt mailing lists are certainly vociferous. People are writing in to REACH, saying: look. This is dumb. And what? The people up there simply don’t want to listen. Even if they acknowledge the weakness of the case — they’d rather say, you know, we’re going to leave the law as it is but it’s just there in place to assuage those conseravtive factions (who are these people? do you know?); but if you’re homosexual and you violate 377A, it’s not likely that you’ll be prosecuted because the law is difficult to enforce. Ok, so the integrity of the law is not as important as the happiness of a certain group of people.

Your experiences in your time abroad have showed you certain aspects that affect another country at another period of its development. But does it then follow that we should avoid going down that same path, to avoid that same outcome? I’m inclined to think that every country has its own battles to fight and its own issues to work out, at a different point in its development. You can’t pick and choose what you want; economic development without a corresponding give-and-take in the political and social arena.

I for one, perhaps tainted by my daily study of ‘those liberal insitutions… of political science and economics in academia..’ (quote unquote a certain right wing weblog i came across today)… cherish liberty, with the qualification that an unhealthy dose, in the wrong hands, has the potential to run amok. That potential to run amok does not disqualify liberty as irrelevant, because nobody is asking for untempered amounts of liberty here — we’re talking just a slight dash of it, such as the ability to possess an opinion.

Sorry, slight rant. Just run about 5kilometres and my heart is pounding as fast as my hatred for Bush.

There are laws in place to prevent riots and racial attacks in Australia, but what do you do when people take freedom to the extreme?
Quick correction of that statement: Committing violence is not taking freedom to the extreme it’s committing a criminal offence. Politicians talk about taking rights to the extreme as a means to subvert the rights of the individual and society at large.

Hear, hear.

Speaking of academia and with regards to your polemic on civil rights, Chua Beng Huat has a unique approach to communitarianism in Singapore (eg. ‘communitarian ideology and democracy in singapore’). You can find his articles on Jstor or in your uni library i think. I’ve learnt to view politics in Singapore without the tint of Euro-centric notions of human rights, and it’s not about Asian values (passe, but!). But i agree, the ex

Wrt to the Penal code i believe all politics is sexualised, in other words, heteronormative. To repeal the law would affect every pore of society, from the family unit, to the military, housing .. everything. The government isn’t ready to change our way of life; certainly not ready to give free reign to our alternative sexualities. Imagine, if gay sex were repealed, who else can push for more ‘rights’? Opening the floodgates must come slowly and i believe extant laws will change one day. Have hope! Discourse-Knowledge-Power.

And yes, Bush is quite the political anomaly. It’s a wonder how he managed to stay in power for so long. But oil is the order of the day.

yikes, didn’t delete that bit off the first para.

Being a student of one of the tertiary educational institutions of this state, and also engaging in its curriculum, it seems cynical to say that whatever is taught is manipulated in a way as to enforce the conservative ideology of the ruling elite, but then again, those lectures on liberalism, power, authority and legitimacy have strengthened my stance that we should seek to question. We are humans, not passive vessels desperately hoping for any dictatorial being to fill us up with ideological rhetoric simply so that we can feel “part of the nation”. Hobbesian, this state of nature is not.

Through progress, with our economic success being overplayed like a broken record at each opportunity - hoping to drown out any form of dissent through sheer repetition ad nauseum - one would think that the nation as a whole would move towards a more post-materialist mold. Yet day after day passes with the same materialist paradigm being reinforced, that economic success and the accumulation of wealth need to be achieved at the heavy expense of the liberties of the very same citizens who are responsible for this economic success.

Our state still relies heavily on transactional leadership, and being the astute politicians that they undeniably seem to be, the members of the ruling party have attempted to foster an ideology to try and convince the public that our survival as a people is contingent upon the survival of the ruling party and its “all-encompassing” ideals. They seem to want to move towards transformational leadership - one that inspires people to nurture a collective moral sense - but insist on re-emphasising our materialist principles. Self-contradiction seems to be the order of the day as the befuddled elites scramble to contain the liberal manifestations of the proverbial genie in the bottle.

This infantilisation of citizens will not bode well for our nation. People who are incapable of individual opinion and critical thought are not citizens; they are subjects. It is horrifying to contemplate that this repressive, knee-jerk protocol against even a modicum of tempered liberty may very well continue to perpetuate self-censorship and submissiveness.

Without the liberty to have an opinion, coerced into suppressing our critical thoughts, consumed by the omnipresent fear of swift and ultimate sanction - how do the ideological elites intend to nurture the nation beyond simply material satisfaction? What if they are unable to ensure economic prosperity? The basis of their governance will disintegrate, and they will realise that their emphasis on materialism has been self-defeating in every aspect.

d, you’re right that we should not view domestic politics through Eurocentric-tinted glasses, and I agree that it’s not about “Asian values”. Perhaps we are the only ones who are fit to criticise our own government, and not the liberal-spouting, democracy-exporting neoconservatives from America that our conservative elites fear so much. This presents a dilemma though: encourage foreign criticism and be labelled as stooges, or ask them to leave our internal affairs alone?

Thanks d for informing about Chua Beng Huat. Just found him in JStor!

Obviously, they don’t want to set any form of precedent, because that would simply “open the floodgates” as d mentioned.

Two years. Congress will give him hell. We’re counting down, Adri.

To repeal the law would affect every pore of society, from the family unit, to the military, housing .. everything. The government isn’t ready to change our way of life; certainly not ready to give free reign to our alternative sexualities. Imagine, if gay sex were repealed, who else can push for more ‘rights’? Opening the floodgates must come slowly and i believe extant laws will change one day.

You do realise the “slippery-slope” arguement, which is what you are making here, is a fantasy? Speaking as a sociologist, this argument has been used in numerous situations around the world by conservatives to justify holding-back rights from minorities, and in every single occasion, it NEVER came through. It’s simply not how society operates.

Changing recognition for sexual minorities ONLY effects sexual minorities. It does not effect the lives of anyone else. The only lives that would be changed would be those who wish to impose themselves onto said minorities. And honestly, they don’t have the right to do that.

I’ve heard the “wait, wait” line from a number of liberal-bretheren, and it’s just as silly now as it was then.

I’m not attacking you, just point out the reality of how insane the above argument is. It does not exist in reality (and where it is claimed by conservatives, it’s always been proved to have nothing to do at all with what they say it does). It’s just an intellectually BAD case to make.

Perhaps the 377 example was a bad one — what I really took issue with is, was your statement that there are adequate channels of feedback. Repeal of 377 is one example for the inadequacy of avenues of feedback, or if there are avenues you know your feedback doesn’t matter either (am I too cynical? I am trying very hard to think of a situation in which the feedback avenues have led to anything). It’s just the norm that when the state decides on something, there are flickerings of noise inviting feedback and comment. And it stops there. Repeal. Integrated resorts. Gst increases. What can you do? Blog? Write letters to REACH? Write letters to ST?

Is the right to have an opinion, the right to oppose the war on terror or the bush administration, the right to say “hey your handling of that archaic law is ridiculous”, euro-centric? Neither civil rights nor liberty are euro-centric. It’s not all about protest, though protest is one of these aspects. Take a look at the newspapers in India. To which our conditioned minds will have the twitch reaction, “so it’s the world’s largest democracy.. but it’s also very poor”. The beauty behind our social contract: democracy or development? Does it really have to be mutually exclusive? Is everything I’m learning about developmental politics and economics, everything I’ve believed in all my life (even before a western/euro-centric education) wrong?

I’m tired of having to live on political handouts, where rights, opinons, voting “isn’t an entitlement.. it’s a privilege”. The rule of the elite, bolstered by pseudo Confucianism. Even after I stop caring about civil rights, learn to live with plain clothes policemen infilitrating and video-taping and demanding full transcripts of our poetry readings, even lectures on classical Chinese and Indian literature and history (because it was given by a noted gay individual), even after I stop questioning gst increases and fall in line when I am told to do this or that… even after I stop hoping that maybe the day will come when I won’t be a lawbreaker everytime I make love — apparently it’s still not enough. To quote a certain poet, if you care too much about Singapore, first it’ll break your sprit, and finally it’ll break your heart.

Thanks Sarah for pointing that out.

Actually, the way you write reminds me of a song by Eminem.

As long as it’s not the one about killing his wife!

Sarah, i took my argument from a post Tan Chong Kee (a local academic) wrote on SiGNeL many years ago, and also from theories on sexual citizenship. It might or might not be a bad case to make, but it is an emerging field of study i believe could be used to examine the situation in Singapore.

if you care too much about Singapore, first it’ll break your sprit, and finally it’ll break your heart. Well said. And soon the old will go, the new will come. :)

d -

I do not know about the rest of your argument, because my knowledge of Singaporean culture is at best general (I’m not American, I’m from New Zealand, just live in the States now). However, the portion I quoted is almost word-for-word (in addition to a more general sense) the same argument not only made out throughout the word by conservatives against same-sex relationships as legal entities, but also historically against such things as women having the vote, non-whites having legal rights, and even interracial marriage. None of them were borne out. Furthermore, the argument doesn’t work from a theoretical sociological point of view, in a rough sense equating improbable future correlation with causation.

Sarah, if you read my dialectic carefully, I am not arguing against the right to same-sex relationships (I’m in a same-sex relationship myself, why would I want to fight it?). Rather, I am trying to analyse how sexuality and citizenship merge in the Singapore context, in all its glorious locality. Government rhetoric does not convince, surely there are other areas to explain their sometimes-farcical ways of doing? There is a growing body of work in the study of sexual citizenship and I do not think it’s fair to write off a new field without first examining the political utility of such studies.

I think, in Singapore, sexual agency cannot be reactionary - the harder we fight, the tighter the grip of the men-in-white. We need to find alternative means to celebrate and express our sexual selves but certainly not the way the West did it.

d -

I didn’t think you were against same-sex relationships, after all I made the comment in my original post regarding liberal-bretheren.

And yes, Singapore should certainly do things culturally as behoves Singapore, as that is the only way things should be done. However, I would caution against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A differing culture we may be (although as a western foreigner in the US, I have to question our grouping with this place, as it is considerably alien from home), but we HAVE been in a similar place to how you all are positioned in terms of being a sexual minority. In that experience we have learnt a considerable amont, and are still learning, and it would only make sense but to see what might be taken from our history here.

For instance, there was considerable resistance to activism in the 50’s, 60’s and into the early 70’s across the west within the gay rights movement, arguing that gay rights groups should not challenge the state, that we should work quietly and not aggravate those who held power. Now, they have been fairly well shown to be wrong, as I say this as someone that is considerably more likely to be seen in a heels and suit in a boardroom than scaling the battlements, as it were. Of course, they were also partially correct, in that working from the inside was also needed. But is it the activist agitating that moves society forward and ensure the space exists for people such as me to work within. This argument, as one would expect, is despite this, still partially present unfortunately (though thankfully considerably less so), in the rather appalling and reprehensible arguments against including transgender people in our fight.

Oh, and sexual citizenship has been a field of study for a considerable amount of time. If you go back to the 80’s and earlier in feminist theory you’ll find work done looking at how women’s rights and place as a citizen is articulated through sexuality. The application to more queer studies came from the early 90’s, and has solidly been seen as an intersection with new constructions of identity and self-hood. However, it has always been studied in a context where it could be used as an argument AGAINST those that would slow our push. Rather, it provides new more informed activist positions.

I’m with Adri on this one, yes there is a place for those of us who work in the inside and don’t make the general population nervous (hell, I tend to think we have MORE responsibility because of such), but reactionary minority activism is an important and crucial part of such. If for nothing else than people have the right to be (hell, SHOULD be) pissed-off when their rights are curtailed. Others do not get a say in our rights as citizen, that’s the point behind those rights.

Yes, i’m well-aware of the academic timeline having spent the last several years researching in these areas. Feminist theory has been around for a long time and has gone through countless waves. Queer theory is dead ten years on and is mostly concerned about identity politics which aren’t much of an interest to me. Sexual citizenship as an area of study itself emerged only in the last several years and i think is an exciting area to go into, but that’s personal. I suggest we take this offline, it’s completely OT.

I meant reactionary, in the sense that you go on the streets and make noise, placards and all (perhaps we are speaking on different planes here). I don’t think that’s possible now, which is why our activists came up with great events like IndigNation and a profitable portal like Fridae. We circumvent our boundaries through creative expression of the body. And like you, I’d love to see protests and all that one day, but it won’t happen anytime soon.

I’m no Bush fan myself and have been watching his policies with a combination of dismay and amusement over the years, but it seems all too easy to demonize Bush and forget that not only is he human, there is a bit of him in all of us. Everyone has “Bush nature” and instead of heckling the Bushes of the world (which they would ignore anyway), perhaps a more constructive/compassionate way would be simply to listen deeply to them and realizing they’re not so different from us after all. With such realization can there be some possibility of actual dialogue.

There is nothing in it for me — or for us — to engage this person and his party. I am not American, I don’t think I will ever be. I honestly don’t think there is a point behind engaging in constructive or compassionate discussion with people like that, no reason to listen deeply to them, when they have shown that they don’t really give a damn. They’ve defined the world in very clear terms. You’re either with them or you’re not. You’re either for America, for God, for Bush, or you “hate America”. They’re not interested in dialogue. Neither are people like us. I do not condone protests or heckling. But in the cases of people like Bush, Cheney, or worse — the idiotic Ann Coulters, Sean Hannitys, Michael Savages, Bill O Reillys, and Rush Limbaughs of the world — I’m quite happy to hold a placard above my head. I don’t think insane people can be engaged with. If it were, say, John McCain, maybe there’s still something to talk about.

I’m not sure I know what you mean by all of us having a Bush nature. It’s not about his character, or his stupidity, though I admit those are fun aspects to make fun of him with. But it’s really the extreme way in which he’s split the world, using a religion I care very deeply about; the way he’s split a great country, one that I always thought — and still continue to think — I might find myself living in someday.

On one level I suppose you’re right to say that since you aren’t American, there’s no necessity to engage Bush and Co. But if we look deeply, there are Bush-types everywhere – they are the well-meaning people who see the world through the lenses of belief rather than reality and become so attached to their ideologies to the point of causing damage to the others. These are the bulls in Chinashops who end up inflicting wreckage with their brash insensitivity.

But if we look even deeper, we could very well discover that we are not very different from the Bushes of the world. Sure, we haven’t launched wars against third world countries for dubious reasons or supported torture, but the seeds of fallibility, arrogance and ignorance exhibited by Bush or those like him can be found in us. All of us. That is what I meant by “Bush-nature”.

We feel repulsed by Bush when he makes yet another us-against-them-my-way-or-the-highway speech, but haven’t we all, at one point or the other, displayed such arrogance, whether implicitly or explicitly? This is not to excuse his mistakes, but simply a factual observation that we all have “Bush-nature”. As someone once (wisely) pointed out: “I have seen the enemy and it is us.” Think of Bush as someone who has magnified some of the worse aspects of human nature on a global level.

It is perhaps a tad too convenient to simply demonize people who hold diametrically opposed views or extreme positions as being “insane” and therefore not completely human and not worth reaching out to. To do so would fall into the same trap of the very fanaticism you seek to resist. Fanaticism, by its very nature, refuses to consider the humanity of its opponents. To Ann Coulter, the Democrats are a bunch of misguided godless liberals seeking to undermine the fabric of American society and they are “enemies of America”. Many Bush-haters, probably see him as an incompetent demon and a reincarnation of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini all rolled into one.

But perhaps the reality is less dramatic – we are all flawed human beings, reacting to circumstances in the best way we can, according to the data in our schema. The solution to the us-against-them folks isn’t to play their us-against-them game, but to wisely and compassionately reply: “No, my friend. We’re all in this together.”

I agree with you on all those points but for one: Ann Coulter doesn’t think Democrats are misguided. Ann Coulter thinks anyone who doesn’t subscribe to her out of this world beliefs (which give conservatism a bad name) is a combination of ‘devil’, ‘faggot’, ‘liberal’, ‘anti-american’, ‘anti-christ’, all of which mean the same thing to her!

It’s always about $$$$$$$/oil more than anything else.

Agreed. I’m a bit nauseated to have to defend my principles against those who criticise engagement and bipartisanship as “selling out” to the enemy. This is what the hardline ideologues do when they see moderates: any form of compromise is viewed as a sign of weakness, and they fear that us moderates will be susceptible to exploitation and manipulation by the enemy, seduced into the “dark side” or some other convenient euphemism for “evil”.

Yet these hardliners are guilty of the same crime: they seek to impose their ideology of intolerance and ignorance on moderates, as if it were a battle of whichever side could recruit more minions in preparation for a major conflagration in the future.

However acidly invidious their rhetoric may prove to be, just note that everything they say is political. Opportunists like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity may spout incendiary rhetoric as if it were the Fourth of July every day of the week, but their intentions are derived from the desire to amass political capital. Nobody believes that someone as radical as Coulter could ever run for office with a campaign that reeks of the same odour of ideological fanaticism as the mullahs of Iran, or the sheiks of Saudi Arabia.

They are still, first and foremost, human beings. If we can reach over and persuade them to engage with us in meaningful debate, then we should.

But I’ll still defend my principles, nonetheless.

Mmm…. those pple fighting to take photos with bush after his speech makes me feel embarrassed to be from NUS. _

Not all the students who attended are bush fanatics. The non-bush fans sat far far far far away from him… Your truely was one of them.

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