Indentured in Singapore's Little India

The insecurity of life as an R Pass holder in Singapore is pretty much how life is on the other side of any guest worker program. For the host country, a guest worker program is a good deal: a wealthy country gets sufficient supplies of cheap labor to do all the jobs no one else wants to do, without having to invest anything in the welfare of that labor force. For the worker, it is a period of hard (oftentimes demeaning or dangerous) labor with the ability to occasionally remit money back home, a constant sense of alienation and isolation heightened by an enforced separation from home and family and no legal rights to speak of.

- Rupali Ghosh
in Samar: South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection

Full article

police logic

$18m anti-riot boost
Police gear up ahead of IMF-World Bank summit
by Loh Chee Kong
in Today

"The police must ensure that while legitimate and peaceful activity, whether by local or foreign groups, can proceed in accordance with our laws, those who choose to breach our laws must be dealt with firmly."

Full article

baaa

Tonight on my way home from work, there was a kid at the back of the bus who would just not stop singing nursery rhymes at the top of his voice.

For once, I actually had a seat and didn’t have to occupy my mind with discovering the very limited permutations and combinations of ways in which I could arrange my body so that it wasn’t uncomfortably crammed up next to the 5 people standing around me trying to claim some space of their own.

So I got to thinking about nursery rhymes. And why the hell every single Singaporean kid knows Baa Baa Black Sheep even if they will probably never have the opportunity to witness the phenomenon of a sheep, much less a black one, in their entire lives. Plus how many of us will ever have the need for wool on our backs, anyway?

I suppose I’ll just have to take comfort in the fact that this nursery rhyme imparts life’s true lessons to those not yet in the know about the ways of the world – always succumb to authority (Yes sir, Yes sir, Three bags full), serve those who rule over you (One for my master, One for my dame), and then if you have anything left after that, show some charity (One for the little boy who lives down the lane).

Here’s to the kid on the bus tonight, and to every kid who’s ever sung Baa Baa Black Sheep the way it should be…incomprehensibly.

Baa Baa Black Sheep
Ay-me Nay-mee Noo

Suu Kyi remains under house arrest

Burma's military junta imposed another year of house arrest on opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Saturday despite stiff international pressure for her release, a government source said.

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Deconstructing fundamentalism: a response to Yawning Bread

Prefatory note: I generally really enjoy reading Yawning Bread’s writing. I think he writes well and has good analyses of much that is going on in Singapore and in the world, which does not necessarily mean that I agree with everything he says, ofcourse. As such, I offer this critique not as a vengeful attack but as an alternative viewpoint in the spirit of an exchange of ideas.

In the essay ‘Indonesia: fundamentalism on the march’, Yawning Bread offers an analysis on the history of religion and the rise of religious militancy and fundamentalism, using the specific case of Islam.

I believe his analysis is flawed in several ways.

For one thing, the history that he maps out is an extremely Eurocentric version. Charting out the history of the development of scientific thought in Western Europe doesn’t shed any light on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Scientific thought developed in its own unique way in Islamic societies; in fact, scientific pursuit and empirical experimentation were cornerstones in many Islamic societies of the past. The many scientific discoveries which are now popularly credited to Western Europe were actually built on the foundations of scientific thought in Islamic societies, most notably in the time of the Ottoman Empire. So right there, his main thesis that the tension between the mythos-logos dichotomy has caused a rise in Islamic fundamentalism falls apart.

Later, he goes on to say that the development of rational thought led to the development of questioning the dominant social ethos, particularly based on questions of unequal treatment (let’s call that discrimination) based on gender, ‘race’, sexual orientation, and so on. Again, I believe this is false. As long as there have been slaves there have been slave rebellions. As long as there has been patriarchy there have been women rising up against it. Resistance to oppression and exploitation precedes the Western European Enlightenment, it precedes the language of ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’ that we use today, and it will continue whether or not these ideas and this language remains a part of dominant discourse.

This is why I think the word “traditional” (as opposed to “modern”) is not the correct language to describe what we are talking about here. “Traditional” implies a harking back to a past way of doing things that is usually either romanticized or demonized. The “traditional social order” sounds like there was a time when things were peaceful, all was well, or at least calm, and no one was questioning anything, which I find very hard to believe. Perhaps ‘conservative’ is a more appropriate term to describe an ideology that is hierarchical and committed to ‘conserving’ the status quo.

In this sense, too, I find the term “religious fundamentalism” problematic and prefer the term ‘religious conservative’ to describe the phenomenon. A Muslim activist acquaintance I know in Canada has really challenged me to think about the connotations of using that term “fundamentalist”. As Yawning Bread himself has noted in the comment thread for this essay in his newly-created blog that supports his website, the term “fundamentalism” implies a return to the fundamentals, or basics, of a religion. However, the people we are referring to are not actually doing that. Usually they are advocating a highly skewed perspective on the religion. This is also a tricky thing because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate religion from culture, politics, economics, social roles and life on the ground in general. Is there really such a thing as ‘pure religion’? And if so whose interpretation is right, and why?

So how then to understand the rise of Islamic religious conservatism? Any attempt at analysis must take into account the world geo-political situation, the simultaneous (and arguably more powerful) rise of Christian religious conservatism, the economics of who controls the world’s resources, and the nuances of power dynamics created by the increased demonization of Muslims throughout the world but particularly in the so-called ‘First World’ as well as in Muslim-minority countries like India.

The protest against the Indonesian government’s rejection of the ‘anti-pornography bill’ (which Yawning Bread rightly points out is less about abolishing pornography and more about restricting sexual behaviour), is one indication that Islamic religious conservatism, like all religious conservatism, quite often chooses women’s bodies as its battleground. And again, women are speaking out against this. But in a world where they who have the most power have the most airtime, the question then becomes, who is listening?


Endnote: I use the term ‘Islamic societies’ with much caution, without trying to homogenize groups of people who are connected by a particular identity and in recognition that the term tends to invisibilize minorities within these societies.

civil liberties? what civil liberties?

Hundreds more cameras on streets to bolster security
By Goh Chin Lian
The Straits Times
May 22 2006

HUNDREDS of new electronic eyes will be watching the streets of Singapore, under three new police and transport authority projects to be completed by next year.

The Land Transport Authority will install closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras to monitor 67 traffic junctions and the Singapore Police Force will put up another 91 in the Raffles City area, where the International Monetary Fund and World Bank conferences will be held in September.

***

Whenever you're ready, i'll be waiting for you to shove that CCTV camera up my ass so you can monitor the 'terrorist cells' growing up there.

As if Singaporeans aren't monitored enough already, this new move can only add to the climate of fear that's already so pervasive as well as further threaten anyone who's even thinking about making any kind of public statement at the IMF/World Bank meetings.

And this paragraph in the article just made me wanna scream:
"Buses and trains here could be next to have electronic eyes, going by the experience of several major cities like London, where the network of 500,000 cameras helped track down perpetrators of the terror attacks."

Helluuu...you mean the cameras that made London police chase a suspect down London's streets just cos he was wearing a backpack and was brown, which apparently was close enough to what they saw on their highly fuzzy and blurred cameras on buses and which ended up leading to the STATE-SANCTIONED KILLING OF AN INNOCENT MAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT? Those cameras?

The good news: This story was front page news today in Singapore's widest circulating English newspaper.

The bad news: There probably won't be so much as a peep of protest about this new development in repressive culture, except maybe on a few other blogs. C'mon, my fellow countrypeople, surprise me.

silent conversion?

This seems most appropriate to Singapore
From the Sir! No Sir! galleries

war resisters

via missruckus

There's a film out about American troops organizing against the Vietnam war. It's called 'Sir! No Sir!' Looks pretty awesome. You can watch the trailer, find info about the Vietnam war resisters movement and check out drawings, photographs, underground newspapers at the film's website.

Also, you should really watch this music video slash movie thingy at notyoursoldier.org, which is a website to aid the counter-recruitment movement that is gaining momentum in the United States right now against the Iraq war. The music features The Coup, who's album Party Music is my favourite CD in the world for 3 years running. And they have a new album out, which i can't buy because it's probably banned in Singapore and i don't have a credit card.

But really. Watch the music video slash movie thingy. It's really well-done.

No War On Iran!

A statement by the S.T.A.T.U.S. coalition, which brings together community-based organizations in the Vancouver area belonging to movements and struggles of the people of the Global South (Asia, Africa, Central and South America, Middle East,the Caribbean region) and the struggles of such migrant communities in Canada.

Today it is our duty to speak out against any potential foreign invasionof Iran. The justification for such an intervention is given as the threat of the Iranian nuclear program. These reports recall the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" hysteria leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Just as in the case of Iraq, none of the claims made by the U.S. government about Iran stand up to scrutiny. Iran has submitted to the most intrusive and humiliating inspections, beyond what is required by the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). None of the inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have found any evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. In fact, according to the CIA, Iran is at least 10 years away from developing a nuclear bomb, which itself falsifies US accusations. Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East and the real nuclear threat to global society is the United States-the only government that has used nuclear weapons against civilian populations and has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.

The history of US involvement in Iran and in other countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, Panama, Vietnam demonstrates that the United States has always supported the most dictatorial and repressive forces in its self-serving covert and overt operations. For over half a century, the US has intervened and sabotaged all progressive movements within Iran in the process of securing its own economic and political interests. For example, Iran suffered greatly when the U.S overthrew the government in1953 and returned Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (“the Shah”) in what was considered the CIA's first successful overthrow of a foreign government. For 25 years the Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist for the benefit of U.S. oil corporations.

Furthermore, contrary to the argument put forward by the U.S in order to legitimize its illegal actions, US military action against Iran will not liberate the Iranian people from the current regime or improve the situation for human rights. Only an uprising of the Iranian people can produce genuine democracy within Iran. The recent efforts and protests of the Vahed Bus Company drivers and workers, which saw over 800 union activists arrested and/or laid-off, was an inspirational moment for workers around the world. The Iranian people have a rich and long historyof struggling for democracy and independence since the early 20th century.These relentless struggles have taken place in the face of British colonial interests, US imperialism, and oppressive internal regimes. Aside from all the bloodshed and devastation of an imperialist war, a US invasion would give the Iranian dictatorship, against which the Iranian people have struggled for decades, an excuse to repress and imprison political dissidents in Iran.

The crimes of the current regime in its 27 years of existence include executions, stonings, flogging, throwing dissidents to jail, torture, stripping people of their rights, and violence against women. However, the main reason for the opposition of the governments of the West towards Iran has never been the atrocities of this regime against the people of Iran; in fact the US government has actively suppressed leftist forces in Iran. The alignment of the US with the Iranian clerical regime in order to combat leftist revolutionary forces was revealed in the Tower Commission, according to which "in 1983, the United States helped bring to the attention of Teheran the threat inherent in the extensive infiltration ofthe government by the communist Tudeh Party and Soviet or pro-Soviet cadres in the country. Using this information, the Khomeini government took measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran." It is also imperative to recall that in a complicated swap deal in the 1980’s, Israel and other intermediaries sold US-origin TOW and Hawk missiles to the Iranian regime in return for cash and for the release of hostages in the Lebanese hostage crisis. The money was used by the US to finance their covert operations against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, until the Iran-Contra affair were publicly exposed at the end of 1986.

The racism so deeply entrenched against Arabs and those constructed to be Muslims replicates itself in the West including Canada, where hundreds of Iranian refugees, readily deemed ‘terrorists’ or ‘fanatics’, are increasingly facing deportation. Our struggle against deportations of Iranian refugees continues within the context of a larger movement of immigrants and refugees throughout Canada, who are standing up to the exclusionary policies of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. We call upon all peace-loving people opposing war, militarization and racism to stand up for the rights of Iranian people in Iran and in Canada. We demand an end to deportations and detentions of Iranian refugees from Canada and regularization of status for all Iranian refugees. We also stand in support of the Iranian people who continue to fight for genuine democracy and self-determination for all Iranian people.

mmm...

The elections are over, and I am too pissed off and irritated at all that’s happened to do a meaningful postmortem (but if you want something to chew on try Dansong or Yawning Bread). So I guess I can go back to blogging about more important things.

Like chocolate-coated sunflower seeds.

Much more important.



Once upon a time, I had time to kill in my lunch hour, so I decided to wander aimlessly down the supermarket aisles for about 15 minutes. As I rounded the bend between soft cushy-looking diapers that made me feel guilty for not immediately wanting to have kids and cans of soup that reaffirmed once again that I never want to go back to my first year of university, something caught my eye. Small brightly-coloured packets sparkled enticingly as the light reflected off them. I bent down for a closer look, and there they were, chocolate-coated sunflower seeds. But ofcourse, I thought. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I hurriedly paid for my booty and ripped the packet open even before I was out the supermarket doors. Inside were dozens of tiny pebble-like tear drops, each a different colour. When I popped the first few in my mouth, I tingled with delight – crunchy seed surrounded by chocolaty goodness. Yum Yum. I think I’ll be 70 cents poorer again tomorrow…

the haves and the have-nots

Kudos to Today for publishing this piece

Lessons Learnt from May Day
by Irfan Husain

"One problem is that while the haves want market forces to operate freely, they are not prepared to follow the logic of this system. According to classical economic theory, goods, labour and capital should be able to move freely wherever they are most efficiently utilized and where the returns are highest.

But modern champions of the free market are not willing to allow labour to move without tight controls, while they insist on the free movement of goods and capital.

Where does this leave the have-nots?"

Full article

thoughts before Polling Day

Only a day left before all Singaporeans, or at least all Singaporeans living in a contested ward, get to exercise their democratic right to vote. Oops, I mean democratic duty. Now there’s an oxymoron for ya. Voting is compulsory in Singapore, which, to me, is not very democratic. Doesn’t having the right to vote also mean that you should have the right to not vote?

The last 9 days of campaigning have been extremely frustrating.

The Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) has spent the entire campaign period refusing to discuss real issues and simply engaging in the “politics of distraction”, as James Gomez so succinctly put it. From suing the SDP for defamation to boasting about ‘First World’ politics to the James Gomez-minority certificate saga, the PAP has spent the last 9 days bashing the Opposition political parties and playing up their own ‘accomplishments’ as the ruling party of Singapore since Independence. They’ve continued to claim responsibility for the rags-to-riches story of postcolonial Singapore (but whose rags? Whose riches?) and continued to dangle sweet crunchy carrots (lift upgrading) and wave threatening sticks (electing Opposition equals chaos and Singapore’s ‘successes’ going down the drain) to try and get re-elected.

Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party (WP) has begun to prove itself as a formidable Oppositional force, gaining popularity (have you not seen the pictures of the turn-outs at WP rallies?) and spending a lot of time talking about things that affect peoples’ lives. They haven’t really said much about their position on international and foreign policy issues like Free Trade Agreements, American imperialism and resource wars, but I’ll consider forgiving them for that considering that Singapore’s geographical small-ness makes for a General Election where all local, national and international issues are compressed together, which means that people will be more likely to focus on stuff that they are closest to on the ground. I’m particularly impressed with the fact that the WP has challenged the incestuous relationship between the trade union bureaucracy and the government. As far as I know, Singapore is the only country in the world where the trade unions support a right-wing conservative, pro-business, anti-worker political party. I’m not saying trade unions elsewhere aren’t full of screwed up politics, but usually if they support a political party it’s a social democratic one that at least claims to want some reformist policies that benefit workers. Maybe this is where the Singapore Tourism Board got its inspiration for its slogan – ‘Uniquely Singapore’.

In another corner of the ring is the Singapore Democratic Party, which may not have done a good job of garnering support from many voters, but has continued to push the envelope on exposing the excesses the ruling party and the rest of the ruling class by refusing to back down on engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, even at great cost to its members.

Finally, there is the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA). In my mind, this is the weakest political party we have. Aside from the enigma surrounding Mr Chiam See Tong for being one of only 2 Opposition candidates currently in office, no other SDA candidate has made any lasting impact and they don’t really have a firm platform on anything.

This is where I believe the WP slogan ‘You Have A Choice’ fails. In a context where one political party has ruled the country for years without strong contest, simply posing an alternative to it is very meaningful, certainly I would agree with that. But we also have to ask what kind of alternative? Cos there never is just one. There are many other ways the country could be governed. There are many other ways we could live together in this society.

And that’s another thing about this General Election, and also the political environment in Singapore generally – people rarely mention anything about ideology. We don’t hear the political parties being classified as left-wing or right-wing or centrist very often; in fact I’ve never heard it done in the mainstream media. I find that bizarre, although not altogether surprising, since when you mask your ideology you mask your intent, and if your intent is to stay in a position of power then you’re not going to be too popular with the masses.

So anyway, I still can’t decide how I’m going to vote on Saturday. It’s funny cos I’ve never really taken any meaningful interest in electoral politics before, partly because I’ve never had the opportunity to vote, partly because I’ve never really seen what difference my one vote would make, and partly because I believe democracy is about a lot more than simply voting for someone to ‘represent’ you (as far as anyone can represent any group of people – which is not very far) once in a while.

The ‘choice’ in my constituency is between the PAP and the SDA. Like I said before, I don’t think the SDA is much of an alternative to the PAP other than in name. However, I do see the value of voting Opposition as a way to send a message to the ruling party that it doesn’t have complete and total support.

I’ve also thought about spoiling my ballot. There would be uncountable ways to do this – marking an X on both parties, not marking anything, marking a question mark, writing a message across the card, I don’t know, something like ‘This is not a choice’ or whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some legal clause somewhere that says spoiling your ballot is illegal. I’m sure there are people who do it; I wonder how many. Cos ballot-spoiling can be a pretty cool mass action to point out the inadequacies of electoral politics.

Now there’s something meaningful to think about over the next 32 hours.

ps: It's way past my bedtime so my apologies for not adding any links. You're just gonna have to google it if you don't know what i'm referencing.

Pramoedya dies

"Ya, Ma, kita sudah melawan, Ma, biarpun hanya dengan mulut."

["Yes, Ma, we fought back, Ma, even though only with our mouths."]
Anak Semua Bangsa - Pg. 353

Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, died yesterday.

News reports:

Sydney Morning Herald

BBC

Malaysia Star

Info:

Pram's Page

A pretty comprehensive Pram Resource page