Buying news by the kilo

I have given up buying the daily paper, instead I just catch the main stories online for free at the 2 newspaper's websites and also on local blogs. But I do generally buy the Saturday and Sunday editions for several reasons. All the advertising is much bulkier on Saturdays especially classifieds and property sections, the editorials and summaries are filled out but mainly because it is double the size for the same 80cents; the edition on my lap is 306pages and weighs 1.5Kgs.

It's enough to make you anxious; that's a lot of reading time to devote to keeping up with society and the implied imperative to do so runs counter to sound principles of time management, a focus on high-value productivity and the elimination of overhead. With my speed reading and skimming skills on song, I'm looking forward to see the coverage and summary of an eventful week.

First up will be the volte-face by the Malaysian Government over the ban on fuel sales to foreign vehicles within 50kms of a national border (ie, Singapore and Thailand). The policy was morphing before the end of the press conference that announced it. First, it wasn't really about Singapore but Thai truckers loading up on subsidised diesel, but they felt they had to be fair and apply the rule at both ends of the country. Then they delayed introduction by a week. Then it didn't apply to motorcycles because they have small tanks and were generally used by those less well off. Then they decided to scrap all fuel subsidies forcing an immediate 40% hike in prices for everyone. Talk about making policy up as you go along.

This still leaves Singapore gas more expensive but with the benefits reduced to the point of marginal gain. We might see a change in the 3/4 tank rule at some point but given the trigger is crude oil price volatility, I imagine the Singaporean Government will wait and see.

The other gem is a long tale of political mud-slinging and court cases. Briefly, a brother-sister pair of opposition politicians, the Chees, have a long history for spouting pure political vitriol against the ruling party (PAP) and its leaders. Their main target of course are the Lees (father MM Lee Kuan Yew and son , the current PM Lee Hsien Loong). The Lees sued the Chees for libel for their accusations in the lead up to the 2004 election. The Chees lost (they didn't turn up to court) and the hearings for damages have just concluded. They did turn up this time and with the opportunity to cross-examine the Lees in the dock, continued their outbursts which were comprehensively ruled irrelevant by the judge. The Chees have now both been convicted of contempt of court and received 12 and 10days in jail. The damages award (irrelevant since the Chees declared bankrupcy ages ago) is deferred.

The next story dovetails with the last. A long time Singaporean lawyer and dissident (his term) now a US citizen came back to Singapore to cover the Chee/Lee case. He checked in to a hotel and then posted his address and phone number on his blog together with a continuing diatribe (some well argued, some not) against the Government with a "come and get me" invitation. More seriously, he apparently e-mailed the judge of the Chee/Lee case with some unflattering comment on her impartiality. He was arrested for insulting a civil servant, held for 4 days, and while now out on bail, looks set to be charged with Sedition.

What I find curious is that sitting members of the cabinet will take on libel cases and defend themselves in court. The Chees certainly went beyond fair opinion into libel but it's the Singaporean way apparently that even fringe political accusations are never allowed to rest on file unchallenged. I don't think either side comes out well in the end although the court transcripts make for vicarious entertainment and many headlines. The dissident lawyer has no defence and provoked the authorities into arresting him. That's a standard dissident tactic but he's no Gandhi I don't see a bigger game plan. What now?

And that perhaps is the overall point. If this is the state of the art of Singaporean political opposition, then the Government has nothing to worry about.

Singapore: 29, UK: 49

Vision of Humanity has published their world peace rankings, putting Singapore in a relatively comfortable #29th place, well above Malaysia (#38), UK (#49th) and USA (#97). Topping the list of non-hitters are:

1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. New Zealand
5. Japan
6. Ireland
7. Portugal
8. Finland
9. Luxembourg
10. Austria
11. Canada
12. Switzerland
13. Sweden

So you might be wondering what is being measured here as some places (Iceland, Denmark) seem natural choices whereas putting Malaysia ahead of England seems to fly in the face of headline news. You can follow the link but comparing UK and Singapore highlighted some standout differences:

Potential for terrorists acts. UK 3, Singapore 2 based on a qualitative assessment of the potential for terrorist acts. Ranked 1-5 (very low-very high) by EIU analysts.

Number of internal and external conflicts fought. UK 4, Singapore 1, based on a UCDP defined conflict as: "a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year"

Estimated number of deaths from organised conflict (external). UK 2, Singapore 1.

The democracy and transparency scores drag Singapore down, especially freedom of press (8.3 versus 5.6), but beats UK on corruption (8.4 vs 9.3), an expected strong suit for Singapore.

One to watch perhaps is willingness of citizens to fight in wars. UK 2, Singapore 5 (higher is more willing). Interesting, but we've always got Glasgow...

Gone but not going away

The saga of escaped detainee Mas Selamat continues. The Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng announced to parliament the disciplinary response to his escape.

From the ST article, 9 staff will be affected:

Who: Two Gurkha guards. They escorted Mas Selamat for his weekly family visit on Feb 27 and let him out of their line of sight.
Penalty: Demoted.

Who: Special duty operative. A junior officer who handled his family visit. She did not take immediate action when alerted by the guards. She also did not observe procedures such as noting how many sets of clothes he had, which is why he had more than one set on him when he escaped.
Penalty: Dismissed.

Who: Special duty operative's supervisor. Failed to assess security regarding detainees' use of the Family Visitation Block toilet.
Penalty: Letter of reprimand. Relieved of all supervisory duties.

Who: Technical officer responsible for CCTV upgrading at the Whitley Road centre. Did not ensure that the system was recording at the time of the incident
Penalty: Letter of warning.

Who: Chief warder. She approached the superintendent to allow detainees to use the toilet at the Family Visitation Block
Penalty: Letter of warning.

Who: Whitley centre's deputy superintendent. Lack of supervision over subordinates implicated in the case.
Penalty: Demoted with pay cut.

Who: Whitley centre's superintendent. Lack of supervision over subordinates implicated. Also failed to take appropriate action upon discovering the unsecured toilet ventilation window.
Penalty: Dismissed.

Who: ISD Command Director and officer-in-charge of Whitley centre.
Penalty: Relieved of his responsibilities to oversee the centre.

All in all, a fair and weighted response although some have already claimed the ultimate boss, the minister, should resign (Japanese style) to take responsibility for the whole fiasco, I think this approach is better because it distinguishes between Management and Policy.

A Minister sets Policy and directs operational matters as a delegated function. If a minister fails to respond to an issue raised to her, then sure, she becomes part of the operational chain of command. In this case, guards didn't guard, a window was left unsecured (they sawed off the handle to prevent it being opened when they should have fitted bars), CCTV wasn't properly working, and so on. These are Operational matters, not policy.

When it comes to politics, cynicism knows no bounds and one of the reasons I am keeping an eye on this story is that it clearly is an embarrassment to the Government that puts great store in competence. The view floating around the blogoshpere was that the story would be allowed to run for a while, the Government would take its beating, then a line would be firmly drawn under the affair and that would be that.

So I was waiting for this line to appear, and so far, it has not. The out-going border checkpoints are still clogged with vehicles being laboriously inspected (the local residents have complained about the frustrated car and truck horns at all times of the day and night). The fugitive's picture is still all over the place, in stations, bus shelters, shopping malls. Even the Straits Times website (free pages) have the image permanently showing and if a Government-directed line was being drawn, you can bet it would be seen there first. It looks like this story has a way to run. Unless they catch him of course which would spoil it for socio-political commentators.

YouTokenism

At this rate, I'm going to sound obsessed by censorship but I'm only reacting to the news, and it segues nicely from the report a couple of days ago about the arrested blogger and his vindictive diatribe.

The new news is that Singapore's Media Development Agency (MDA) has just adjusted its banned website list. I knew the Government can monitor telephone calls (LI, or Legal Intercept) but I am fairly ignorant of any Internet controls and presumed all adult sites were illegal or blocked or both.

The ST article relates how the MDA has put 2 popular video sharing sites onto its list of 100 blocked sites because of uploading & sharing of adult-themed videos. These 2 sites are #19 and #33 on the current Singapore 100 most accessed sites ranking.

First question: what are the sites? The article was sensibly silent on this but the top 100 sites list is easy to find (they are the unimaginatively named YouPorn and RedTube). I've never heard of either of them but what's more interesting is that now that the MDA has added these 2 sites to their 100 blocked sites, they'll have to drop 2 sites already on the list.

Next question: what happens if you try to access a block site? According to another blogger, you get a blank web pages with:

The site you requested is not accessible.
For more information please check Media Development Authority.

The MDA doesn't publish the full list of banned sites but at least they are upfront about the block when you hit one. In England, BT introduced blocking of kiddie porn with project CleanFeed in 2004, and it's now mandatory for all UK ISPs.

So panic over; this is symbolic censorship, not the Great Firewall of China. The Government can validly claim to be blocking morally contentious web content, while the populace gets on with enjoying the other 100 million sites on the Internet. You can't dam the Yangtze with a pebble. Apparently, the block list only affects home Internet connections; offices and commercial connections are unrestricted.

By the way, the most popular sites in Singapore are:

1. Yahoo.com
2. Google.com.sg
3. YouTube
4. Windows Live
5. Blogger
6. Friendster
7. Google.com
8. MSN
9. Facebook
   
10. Wikipedia

Baidu, the Chinese search site is at #14, MySpace at #35. So US mainstream companies dominate, highlighting a surprising absence of big-hitting Asian web portals. Addressing this issue is the MDA's real day job as they try to establish Singapore as a regional New Media and gaming development hub.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I know what treason means, it's actions disloyal to your country, but sedition is different; it's actions to destabilise or foment opinion against the Government. Wikipedia defines it thus:

"Put simply, sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state and has to do with giving aid to enemies or levying war. Sedition is more about encouraging the people to rebel, when treason is actually betraying the country."

The reason I'm explaining this is because Singapore has a sedition law and it's getting used against people who publish on the Internet, ie, bloggers. The latest was Tuesday; a Chinese man was arrested and had computer equipment seized for a blog post 2 months ago. Unfortunately for him, someone actually read it and linked to it on a popular socio-political blog (tomorrow.sg) saying how stupid this guy was. Then people complained. Then the police turned up.

So what did he say? It was an unnecessary, ignorant, crude tirade about a guy sitting on the floor of an MRT carriage. Where he got into trouble was that he stated and taunted the guy's race so he potentially fell foul of Section 3(e)

"(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore"

Previous cases of sedition include (from the ST article):

• April 2008: Ong Kian Cheong, 49, and wife, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 44, charged under Sedition Act and Undesirable Publications Act for allegedly distributing evangelistic publication that cast Prophet Muhammad in negative light.
• 2006: 21-year-old accounts assistant given stern warning for putting up offensive cartoon of Jesus on a blog.
• 2005: 27-year-old man becomes first since 1966 to be jailed (for a month) for posting racist comments online. In connected case, 25-year-old given day's jail and fined maximum $5,000. Later that year, 17-year-old blogger given probation.

As an Englishman, this feels very strange. Robust personal speech in England is not protected by a constitution as in America but having an angry, both-barrels rant doesn't feel like a criminal offense. I haven't read the full blog post (he has already deleted it and plans to write an apology) but I don't see incitement or a subversive intent. If he was a Hollywood celebrity, he would issue a written apology, check into rehab then tearfully repent on Oprah. Better to shun intolerance; gagging the source is at best unimaginative, and at worst, generates publicity.

England has not had race riots in recent memory (unless you count Brixton and Toxteth?) whereas Singapore has (1964) and the Government is determined to not just create but enforce a peaceful, multi-racial society. The issue of public expression is contemporary with the British Government's attempt to frame a Racial Hatred law so strict that comedy clubs would have to close due to lack of source material.

Only last week, the Singaporean Government wrote in response to an open letter from a group of prominent bloggers that its regulatory light touch of the Internet was clearly working and is now open to an even lighter-touch regime. So far, it's all sledgehammers and crushed nuts.

So I started off a teensy bit smug that England doesn't have or need a law on sedition but the Internet is turning every home into a printing press (which must be registered in Singapore) and the legal balance between this new-found public expression and social responsibility is in flux.

Gone Missing

The annual Miss Singapore Universe beauty pageant crowned Shenise Wong as the winner last night but you'll have to read about in the paper as it wasn't televised by MediaCorp due to falling audience interest. Shenise is pretty, tall, dark and a foreign exchange broker who when asked what animal she would most like to be chose a dog, for its loyalty and intelligence.

Even with the publicity from films like Miss Congeniality, a Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine light comedy of a few years back, the tense world of lip gloss and sling backs is a sub-cultural backwater. The Straits Times have a discussion board that is often refreshingly down to earth and welcome contrast to the stuffy tone of the main paper. On this topic, the apathy was tangible so when one commenter linked to the missosology.org and I initially mis-scanned it as misogyny.org (how Freudian is that?).

This is the kind of sideways contextual teleport that is unique to the web. The site's About This Website is a hoot; it was setup by a Filipino in 1998, initially as a personal site, but by 2001 was dedicated to the various Miss Whatever competitions, and was quickly creaking with 115 hits a day, requiring a change of hosting company. Wow, 115. Per day.

Shenise and her canine fantasy now go on to represent Singapore in the international finals held in Vietnam in July.

Going Underground

Singapore is looking to dig itself out of its real estate troubles. I can imagine the meeting:

Official A: Okay Gentlemen, settle down. As you know, Singapore is an island and despite our best efforts at land reclamation, we can't build out much more sideways without sparking an international boundary dispute. The hi-rise factory idea isn't working out. We need a new plan.

Official B: How about building underground? We could claim ownership down to the earth's core.

Official A: Brilliant!

Singapore recently complete a major project to move much of its military ammunition storage into underground rock caverns. Despite the cost, it's worth it to free up the valuable surface land (300 ha) needed to provide a safety buffer zone around the ammo bunkers.

Now, eagle-eyed watchers have spotted a new tender issued to explore the feasibility of other 'underground rock cavern' (URC) facilities:

Singapore is looking at building underground power stations, water reclamation plants, wafer fabs and R&D labs, data centres, warehouses and port and airport logistics centres to free up surface land for other economic uses.

I thought the explosives cache was a good idea and they were sensible enough to say that the bomb storage is under a disused quarry, not housing estates. Well, that's what the claim, anyway. They're also building a petroleum storage facility under Jurong Island for crude oil and oil products like naphtha, condensate and gas oil, which also seems reasonable if only because of the neat symmetry of oil extraction and subsequent storage.

It's a pot pourri of ideas: ammo (dangerous); oil (practical); warehousing (economic); data centres (secure); factories (strange); R&D labs (huh?). Aren't geeky engineers pale enough? Notably, they didn't say what sort of R&D, perhaps it's something ... risky? The concept also puts the Singapore Government in league with some paranoid and sinister people, for example:

• James Bond super villains had secret, underground facilities.
• Dictators and military types love bunkers.
• In Silence of the Lambs, the psychopath held captives in a well dug in the cellar.
• In the post-apocalyptic Matrix, mankind had retreated underground.
• Austrian men like holding women in cellars. [what is that all about?]

The English language is full of negative associations with that which is below us: "underworld" (hell), "under-hand" (sneaky), "under the table deal" (corrupt); that was "beneath even you" (contemptible); although ironically "downtown" is not perjorative. Whatever the practical and economic merits of the idea, it puts them in undistinguished company.