Terminal Loops Its that rally speech again, littered always with captivating words, moving promises, prelapsarian anxieties. statistical suasion. Not the chest-thumping jingo-jingle of Lee Hoong's Pax Singaporeana, but the calculated sensibilities of practical reason. A rally always of implied shifts, always heralding that slip of change, winds of change. Holding us captive, captivated that perhaps ... just perhaps ...Inflation? Do the math and you're really not so worse off. ERP? But there is your car, a dream Corolla, gleaming at the parking lot. What wants remain unfulfilled, how far the subsistence line when three billion dollars were pumped out to you and to me? Read the numbers, do your sums, what wants have not been met? The numbers don't lie, your mind tricks you. So the rally goes. Boring deep in our heads. Awaking our rational conscience, changing our minds, seeding change through a reinstatement of status quo, reinstating the state. The stubborn Singaporean, too greedy perhaps? Expectations maybe, just maybe a little too high? Forgetting the benevolence of the king? The ground shifts, the position changes, the angles are re-configured and dreams of a rainbow Singapore re-surface. First class education. Another brick in the wall.A sensible seduction, a re-dressed opening up. Pushing the infamous "boundaries". Opening up, blooming, hundreds of flowers ... wait, a wrong memory, another rally, another time, the same message. Collapsing memory, collapsed rallies. Push the boundaries, when only You can see it while they remain always invisible, amorphous, sinously sinister to us, the un-productive citizens. Push the boundaries, but where are these spectres, these lines, these conditions, when only You can will their appearance, wield that axe that makes us yield?Opening up? More freedom in cyberspace! More politics in cyberspace! Freedom during election time! Seductively re-dressed as opening up, as liberalisation. When it is already free. When it is already was. What opening up when it already exists? How to open this space when it was always already open, in spite of, despite of the porous legal barricades erected to ring-fence it?Engage you. Engage me. Engage ad nauseum. Renege. Engage. Renege. Renege. Renege.When all you have to do is listen. Forget engage. Listen. Listen to the voices in cyberspace. Listen hard in your facebooks, youtubes, flickrs, blogspots, wordpress. Listen to that sound, vaguely familar? Listen to all that text, all those pixels and you may remember a Singapore that has gone underground. Recall a vibrancy, a hope, a future, a discourse, long extinct in physical Singapore. Listen, forget engage, forget rally, forget speaking. Listen to this raucous slipstream, this digital babel of wired Singapore and you may re-discover the continuities of Singapore past, present and future.The rally speech, an annual discursive masterpiece, piping us like little children merrily to wonderland. A textual orchestra of sensible cadence, reasonable rhythm, looping and re-looping like that hypnotic techno riff that is re-mastered, re-assembled, re-presented as new music this year, next year and next and the year after next. A rally like last year's rally, like last year, and last year and the year before last and that last year.Inflation. Babies. Angbaos. FT. Economy. Opening up. New Media. Inspiration. Success story #1, #2 ... Economy, economy.Our minds, conditioned again. A condition of nervous anticipation. We smell something in the air. Hint of change. Something different. Conditioning our senses, always expectant, always dissonant. Conditioning our anxieties, always compliant, always reliant.A terminal prelapsarian loop in an event horizon imagined as Pax Singaporeana.Quote of the Day –“The Hinkypunk is a strange will-o’-wisp which stands on a single leg and consists of evanescent whorls of smoke. The Hinkypunk supposedly hops around with a lantern, which the creature uses to lure anyone walking nearby to fall in a ditch, stumble into a bog, and so on. While this creature may sound somewhat preposterous, genetic science has come up with a plausible explanation for its existence: The Hinkypunk could be a swarm of bacteria in a puddle of bog water. When this colony grows to a certain size, it can give off a flash of light to confuse any innocent passerby.” – The Science of Harry Potter, Roger Highfield Remaining Time You are born in KK. You go through pre-school. You go through kindergarten. You enrol in a primary school. Tuition classes begin. Extra classes in English, ballet, piano, on top of normal curricular subjects. You sit for your PSLE. You enter the secondary school based on your PSLE results; if you fail you enter the ITEs. You study hard through O'levels, you go to either a polytechnic or JC. Or your education can end here. Or if you are really good, you through-train to A'levels. For the boys, you go to NS. For the rest, it is university or work. After university, you work. You find a mate. Get married. Get a place, probably HDB. Take a loan. Work through 40 plus years. Attend weddings, attend funerals. Probably watch thousands of movies. Go for bbqs or blading at East Coast Park. Make love. Go for holidays. Have children. You retire at 65 plus. Collect your CPF. You get sick. You pass away. Your ashes finally laid to rest at Mandai columbarium.And along this life process, the Singapore political system, through its institutions and instruments of the state, imbibes you with the proper values, the proper beliefs, the proper behavior. Your outlook is schooled, your life road submitted to the vagaries of the needs of this Singapore system. Engineers, biomedical, life sciences, PPE, MBA. As this system requires, so too the available paths on your life path. As the system requires, so your humanity is gradually leached. As this system requires, so you become that little more de-humanised.What is there to cherish in Singapore? Its a simple answer. Your life outside the system. Your tranquility in those moments of peace when the system's tentacles cannot reach you. Your secret exercise hang-out at Seletar reservior. Your secret fishing spot at MacRitchie. Your little overgrown garden. Your balcony on a crisp early rain-washed morning. Your session in front of the computer, tapping wildly away at your blog, your discussion forum. Your moments with your children, without the blemish of life's worries planted across their delicate brows. Your favorite zi char stall, with your buddies and a couple of beers after a game of football, basketball. Your moments when you are you. Your humanity. Your existence. Your life.Why do Singaporeans leave? Not only those leaving to the first world countries. But those Singaporeans who leave for developing countries. In Thailand, Vietnam, Uganda, Mongolia. Why? What is the allure of that foreign land? Is it the suspense of encountering new rules, new cultural continuities, new options, new possibilities? Do they hate Singapore? No, more, they are terrified of Singapore, of its system and what it represents. An epitome of dehumanity. Why do they leave? Not to recover but to rediscover life.There is little or no suspense in Singapore where the system of rational outcomes, economic needs supersedes all of life's imperatives. It is this need which requires security. It is this need that precludes participatory politics. It is this need that determines existential continuity in Singapore. We cannot question this rule. And without question, questioning, we lose that gram of humanity which accrues through the years we co-mingle with this system. When the time comes to retirement, reflexion and the shock of system withdrawal is too late. We can only remember the moments of life at that secret spot, at that first kiss.Reader, you asked what is there to cherish in Singapore. There is much and there can be more.But will the system permit this?For those who left, they cannot wait for the system's answer.Because they know, life is lived on remaining time.Quote of the Day --"To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright." -- Walter Benjamin Why They Like Singapore There are some Singaporeans who like Singapore.They belong to that sacred convenant of Singaporeans who have the most freedom in this island state. Well-schooled through the elite schools and recipients of prestigious scholarships to Oxbridge or the Ivy League, this class of Singaporeans are intelligent, articulate, sagely and well ensconced in the civil service, in the national newspapers, in the major GLCs, which run Clockwork Singapore.These Singaporeans have it good. They can speak, reason and talk about politics in valuable newspaper space with absolute free reign. What authoritarian Singapore? They ask. They have all the freedom to publish commentaries with absolute impunity. They can talk about the Singapore system, on political accountability, freely without the blighting shadow of defamation.For these Singaporeans, they cannot understand why other Singaporeans cry bloody murder on freedom of expression, freedom of speech, or the lack of human rights in Singapore. They cannot understand why Westerners hate Singapore.In their sanguine sagacity, they dismiss these complaining Singaporeans as blue-eyed idealists who will grow out of their angst and accept the system; they scoff at the Western detractors as jealous, as cultural bigots who cannot escape the liberal paradigms they were schooled under.These Singaporeans, so rational and pragmatic, who always have the answers, rooted deep in an ultra-Rankean historical perspective, for every contradiction apparent in Singapore society today.Ministerial accountability for a terrorist escape? Look through the annals of history, there is no need. Why this fury?Raising taxes to help the poor? Look at history and you see that the people have to bite the bullet to survive economic crises.Gerrymandering in elections? Come on, we are a multi-racial society which needs proportional representation for the sake of democracy.Every contradiction. A perfect, rational answer. Sometimes backed up with the necessary statistics.These Singaporeans have absolutely no reason to dislike, what more hate Singapore? They reap the fruits of this nation's spectacular economic success. They enjoy great career success and hold positions of influence in the political, social, economic fields. They are the direct beneficiaries of Singapore Inc, the beautiful meritocracy of controlled political diversity.These Singaporeans, who read the Singapore Story as how the PAP triumphed against the communists (after riding on the Malayan Communist Party to obtain political power and betraying them), went through a painful Merger with Malaysia (and the launch of Operation Cold Store to remove all the political opponents under the war against Communism), fighting the economic struggles of 1970s (enacting the Trade Union Act, the Newspaper Act, forcing the closure of Nantah and Chinese schools to annihilate all the bastions of Communist mass support), rising to the housing challenge with HDB (the forced repatriation of Singaporeans who received no compensation and the enactment of the grassroots RCs who receive favoured distribution of flats) and the birth of a modern economic miracle ( via the systematic de-politicization of society).Really, for these Singaporeans, what's there to dislike, much less hate about Singapore? For them, the grass is always green. For them, a 10% pay-cut is just a few hundred off their six figure salaries. For them, the ERP is wonderful for removing congestion. For them, raising bus fares is an alien notion because they do not take buses. For them, Singapore is wonderful, they are free to do anything and they are happy citizens.They just have to sing One song. They just have to believe in One nation. They just have to see One people.And these Singaporeans are One Singapore.Waltzing on a glass floor, looking down on the rest of the country, the rest of the world.While the rest of us lift our heads and watch them dance through the glass ceiling.Quote of the Day –“Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.” – Joseph Goebbels, Hochschule für Politik Singapore Spirit It is said that during this month, spirits of the netherworld are given license to roam the physical world. In Singapore, many activities cease during this month, house-moving, renovations, marriages, wedding dinners, for fear that it will bring inauspicious beginnings to new ventures. There cannot be too much joy during this month. Because the spirits are sad, hungry, lonely.But still, we celebrate National Day in this luckless month. This year's theme, ironically, a celebration of the Singapore Spirit. The spirit of you and me. Our spirits chasing that dangling carrot in front of our eyes. A long, long queue outside the neighborhood betting shops. Hoping for luck in this luckless month. Fifty cent quickpick, dreaming a return eight million over, to lift our spirits, to lift us from our luckless lives.This year's National Day, a paean to our indomitable Singapore Spirit. A spirit sliced wafer thin by cold political design. A spirit disfigured with mouths sewn shut. A spirit disembodied from our bodies which plod on like beasts of burden keeping Singapore Inc alive. A spirit mostly asleep, awakened every four years to sluggishly ink away emancipation. An emaciated spirit looking always for flight even as hordes rush in to replace his place. The Singapore Spirit, an indomitable Spirit.The Singapore spirit, standing below the huge garishly lit National Day billboard of our beaming political masters surrounded by our multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-caricatured daguerreotypes. The Singapore spirit looking sadly at the Singaporean with his five dollar offerings of million dollar Hades money, a pair of flickering joss candles, a cluster of smoking joss sticks, praying fervently for blessings, for luck in this luckless month, in their luckless lives.The Singapore spirit, a fragile wisp of ether, sadly watching a fictional celebration of million-dollar fanfare, elaborately synchronized dance displays, precision marching, streaking sonic jet fighters, muscular anthems and paeans, telling lustrous myths of unity, strength, indomitablity. Outside the stage, the old man collects discarded cardboard boxes and drink-cans from crowded coffee-shops, filled with patrons enraptured by the olympian spectacle in Beijing on the hanging TV screens. The Singapore spirit, so diffuse, so faint, so slight, like a whiff of alchohol in a Sunday choir-boy's breath. The Singapore spirit, united only by a common dream of flight from their luckless lives, from their lifeless lives.The Singapore Spirit of National Day, a community of meanings, a sovereign display of resemblance and common reflexion, from which emerges the principles of unity and eventually political domination. While the singapore spirit of this Seventh Month, trudges on dispirited, unable to rupture its mythic patina of joyous unity, unable to voice, unable to signal its plea against the illogical political slogans of more taxes and necessary rising costs.The dispirited Singapore Spirit, accepting the ashes of offerings from little bonfires scattered around the country. Unable to offer anything back but dreams of a better life as insubstantial, as ephemeral as the fireworks we will see this Saturday night.Quote of the Day --"These pre-existing forms of continuity, all these syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain in suspense. They must not be rejected definitively of course, but the tranquility with which they are accepted must be disturbed; we must show that they do not come about of themselves, but are always the result of a construction the rules of which must be known, and the justifications of which must be scrutinized: we must define in what conditions and in view of which analyses certain of them are legitimate; and we must indicate which of them can never be accepted in any circumstances." -- The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault Will You Be Back Tomorrow? Somehow, this Singapore Dissident, a former Singaporean, got himself arrested in Singapore for contempt against a public servant. Somehow, there was enough reserve of anger left in him, as he witnessed the spectacle of the Lee-Chee courtroom confrontation, to dangle himself as political bait to the Singapore Government. Regardless the fact that he was a former WP member, regardless the often muddied opposition delineations in Singapore. Regardless the fact that he has left Singapore and is living in relative comfort in the US. Regardless, this former Singaporean stood forth and issued another challenge aimed straight at that fragile weave-work known as Singapore’s defamation laws.Sometime last night, he was arrested. He wanted arrest, he wanted a challenge and our Government, mindful of face to the last iota of political insensibility, reacted accordingly. This is the fatherly political reflex which has remained constant throughout the years of chimerical political development in Singapore. When faced with a political challenge, with a crossing of the political face of the ruling regime, the necessary reflex is a fatherly arrest, detention or lawsuit.This is the political constant in Singapore. Despite all the rhetoric of opening up, allowing creativity, tolerating dissent. This is the cold basic stark political reality when you cross the invisible, shifting, convenient boundary defined by our political rulers.The knocking on the door in the dead of night. The plainclothes police, the arrest, a scene replayed endlessly across the world in regimes sharing the cozy bed of tyranny.For the dewy-eyed who continue to be able to dissect Singapore’s political system and extol or debate the virtues and merits of governance from the safe confines of political permissibility; this episode is but another transgression in an endless litany of political brutalities that will never disappear with this Government, this political party. Remember that. Talk about the relentless rising costs of living to an extent when you tap into the seething discontent of the dis-empowered and all the pretence of political paternalism, light touch, will vanish in that very instant you hear the cold hard slap of the shackles around you hands, your legs and your mouth.This is our Singapore. When you really stand, you will be cut at your knees. When you really open your mouth, it will be sewn shut. And the hardest, most cruel reality is that no one will know. Or you will be ridiculed as deserving of this cutting, this silencing. You asked for it.There is nothing in this political system that will protect you from this. And there are no brethren who will stand by your side. Because the system has ensured your total solitude when its existence, its rules, its rule is questioned.Will any Singaporean stand forth and say nay, this arrest is political irresponsibility? No, because they will say that this Singapore dissident had it coming. He issued a challenge and he was answered. Snigger snigger.Will any Singaporean stand forth and say nay, this arrest is blatantly political and an act to silence someone who is speaking up against what he perceives as gross injustice in our courts of law? No, instead they will say that this dissident is a quitter, that he has the protection of his US citizenship behind him. Snigger snigger.We have been conditioned to think like this. Better these snide remarks, better these cynical insinuations, better these rational analyses than real full-blooded anger. Anger that makes you stand forth, makes you speak up to challenge the system to come to you.This is our Singapore.Quote of the Day –Won't you come back tomorrowWon't you come back tomorrowWon't you come back tomorrowCan I sleep tonightOutsideSomebody's outsideSomebody's knocking at the doorThere's a black car parkedAt the side of the roadDon't go to the doorDon't go to the doorI'm going outI'm going outside motherI'm going out thereWon't you be back tomorrowWon't you be back tomorrowWill you be back tomorrowU2 Tomorrow From Godot to Robot "The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father"This was the response of Minister Vivian to a request for governmental help against errant ex-spouses who evade their maintenance liabilities.There was a time if Vivian was to make this statement, it would have had an absolutely different, almost opposite intended meaning.The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father. How apt a statement in Sigapore if it contains even the slightest whiff of that dirty ideology, welfarism.Stand on your own two feet boy. Gather your own feed. Raise your family with your own hands. Do not beg from the state. The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father.But father we are dying.Than you will have to go for you have failed. It is not the money. it is the principle. A free quarter for you and the floodgates will open. Our economy will crumble. The state will be destroyed. singapore perishes. So go my son. The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father.Then I will speak out, my father. Make known my grievances.Careful with that my son. If you are too inflammatory, if you are too populist than you will be seditious. You will be upsetting the balance and harmony of this state. Then you will have to be silenced. You will face the Penal Code. You will face the ISA.Then I will protest, my father. I will protest the CPF system, I wish to opt out and take my money.No you cannot do that. The CPF system is good for you. It ensures that you will be taken care of in your old age. By forcing you to save your own money, the State is helping you prepare for your old age. CPF plus, even, now that you can live beyond 80. And protests in Singapore are illegal. You will break the law. You will have to be arrested.Then I will write, my father. Make my story known. Talk to my journalist friends, find others like me.You are being subversive. The national newspapers cannot involve itself in such partisan issues. It can and only report facts. The newspapers are important institutions of the state. It cannot be used for the people by the people. The mainstream newspaper must report accurately, objectively and responsibly. And that they must adopt this model that they are part of this nation-building effort, rather than go out and purvey views that would mislead people, confuse people, which will in fact undermine our national strategy. So if you write seditiously, you will break the law. You will have to be arrested.Then I will vote, my father. Vote you out.Yes that is fair, that is politics. But you will find out that you are in an uncontested GRC. And we cannot change that. Its for your own good. The GRC system is so that all races are fairly represented. Its to ensure harmony, equal representation to all. It is not a system to squeeze out political competition. It is for the good of the people.The state cannot and should not play the role of a surrogate father. Do you see that? Do you understand that? Ours is not a paternalistic system. Ours is not a father-child relationship.Think. And finally accept. Even if you are dying.Like me, Godot turned Robot.Quote of the Day --"If you broke the law, there was only the one law, which everybody broke again and again ... and there was always the same penalty for any breaking of the law, from jaywalking to treason: the penalty was the death penalty, and there was agitation to have the death penalty removed, but it would not be because then, for like jaywalking, there would be no penalty at all. So it stayed on the books and finally the community burned out entirely and died. No, not burnt out -- they had been that already. They faded out, one by one, as they broke the law, and sort of died." -- A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick A Kilo of Rice from Tua Pek Kong While we were whipped into a wild frenzy over the Mas Selamat debacle, this little CNA report quietly slipped past most Singaporeans eyes. According to charities, the queue for free food is getting longer. While this queue grows longer, the Dept of Statistics uses a fairly odd adjective to describe the situation. Inflation was "boosted", it has an uncannily happy, almost positive ring. Boosted.----------------Singapore's March inflation rate at 26-year high of 6.7% ( 23 Apr 2008 1331 hrs)SINGAPORE: Singapore's annual inflation was 6.7 percent last month, the highest in 26 years, the Department of Statistics said on Wednesday. It said the consumer price index (CPI) was boosted by higher costs of food, transport, communications and housing.The March CPI was down 0.1 percent from February's figure, the department added. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the index was 0.3 percent higher in March, compared with the previous month. Inflation reached 6.6 percent in the first three months of 2008, compared with the same period last year.Singapore is not alone in grappling with inflation.The United Nations food agency on Tuesday said the world faces a "silent tsunami" of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply.Rising food prices are driving more people in Singapore to join the queue for free meals, charities said.Crude oil is also trading at near record high prices globally.----------------------Such a major boost in inflation should have been printed prominently in our media bastion, the Straits Times. Prominently featured just as when the paper positively glowed and glistened with feel-good mojo during the glorious proclamations of the GST hike.Boosted, booted, busted, bastard.The proclamations have become faded echoes. Faded as always with these mass Govt-media campaigns. If we were to replay the jingoistic speeches during 2007’s Budget Debate , they would sound horribly hollow now. Irrelevant, inconsequent, insipid, invalid. Faced with boosting inflation, the Government reverts to its trusted media strategy, another two billion dollar package to help Singaporeans tide over these dire times just like the billion dollar package to tide over the GST hikes. Another screaming headline. Another faded echo to come. Repeating, repetitive, recursive, eventually repulsive. Media mediated visions to re-slave the enslaved, to nurse the sleeping to unconsciousness.And while the state machinery churns out its movies, its frames to rapture us about our future, to squeeze us in our ennui, its efficient and grotesque political machines continue humming at the local levels, local governance, our little temaseks, masked as town councils, blithe to the cries of our citizens, standing in line for a kilo of rice from Tua Pek Kong, a kilo of rice from Prophet Mohammed, a kilo of rice from Jesus Christ.There is something fundamentally wrong in Singapore.There is something fundamentally wrong when our town councils masquerade as little temaseks, squirreling away significant percentages of our conservancy charges into enormous sinking funds. Little temaseks hoarding 30% of what we pay every month and investing them in funds and financial products with only whispers of accountability. Town councils playing little temaseks, while those they bleed from, stand in line for a kilo of rice. Perhaps these little temaseks should occasionally pretend to be town councils and build some covered walkways to all the charities so that citizens can wait for their kilo of rice in condescending shade.It is perhaps tolerable for the citizen during times of reasonable plenty, to witness political control of local governance, our town councils, our little temaseks through Governmental manipulation of community funding, and turn a blind eye. Political control through fund conditions like the mandatory allocation of surplus funds to sinking funds, which in the case of Hougang means that the town council is forced to charge higher conservancies, or the inequitable distribution of Community Improvement grants by MND to different constituencies, are political luxuries in times of plenty. In times of plenty, all these manipulations at local governance to add gloss to living in a PAP-controlled ward as opposed to an Opposition ward, does not hurt the citizen and he is mostly oblivious to the difference.In times of need, the burden of such systemic grotesque political mechanisms, like maintaining huge sinking funds, while the needy are trying desperately, simply, just to get food on the table, is a political cruelty. It is cruelty when almost 30% of what you pay in conservancy charges is allocated into town council sinking funds; it is a political cruelty when conservancy charges have to be raised so as to meet the minimum contribution into town council sinking funds.It is cruelty to forget the impact such political controls, such political mechanisms, have on the lives of citizens at these local governance levels.Rolling out billion dollar packages are mere stop-gap measures which look good on paper. There is a reason why more people are queuing for free food at the charities. It is not only because they need this aid; it is more the simple fact that aid disbursed by charities comes with much less bureaucratic tangle than the billion dollar packages. With the charities, the needy need not have to crawl through broken glass to get a kilo of rice; they need not have to have their dignity broken.There is something fundamentally wrong in Singapore if we have to stand in line for a kilo of rice from Tua Pek Kong while 30% of the conservancy charges we pay every month feeds nobody.Quotes of the Day --“You are a historian. You know what evils have been perpetrated through the ages to ensure the survival of nations, sects, religions, even individual families. Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that he has been formed by history, that his life-span is brief, uncertain, insubstantial, but that there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe. That hope has finally gone except in the minds of fools and fanatics. Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast … We have plans that will ensure that the last generation fortunate enough to live in the multiracial boarding house we call Britain will have stored food, necessary medicines, light, water and power. Besides these achievements, does the country greatly care that some Sojourners are discontented, that some of the aged choose to die in company, that the Man Penal Colony isn’t pacified?” – Children of Men, PD James“A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed... When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James Of Angry Journalists, Anger & the Evil Internet Again I remember playing the board game Monopoly once with a group of children comprising my nieces and nephews. Being the only adult and the only person most familar with the game amongst a group of DOTA and Maple Story veterans, wily me started slowly, cornered some utilities and very soon owned the essential parts of Monopoly which squeezed the liquidity from the children. Then, one of my nephews, the youngest, who enjoyed the initial luck of the dice, pushed all the little green houses and little red hotels away from the board and whined that it was not fair. He did not want to play anymore.Board games like Monopoly live through the ages because it make-believes very human emotions like greed, ability to handle failure, the embarrassment of failure, the fear of defeat/failure and of course, the thrill of winning, the satisfaction of monopoly.Reading Chua Lee Hoong's latest ST article on the Internet reactions to the Mas Selamat debacle strikes an immediate sense of deja vu. If I am not wrong, not that many years back, her fellow journalist, Sumiko Tan, opened her diatribe against the Internet with exactly the same angry descriptive barrage of the evils in cyberspace, crawling with bad people, filled with nasty brutish demons and poisonous commentaries. Years later, another fellow journalist repeats the same diatribe on this lawless space known as cyberspace.We have to engage Lee Hoong's article precisely. She has dissected and isolated this Mas Selamat debacle and ends wondering why the reactions of the Net and of the mob are so incommensurate to the issue at hand? Why are Singaporeans over-reacting? Why this much anger? This much hate, this much scorn, this much disdain? To be fair to Lee Hoong, this is not so bad a form of analysis. Isolate the issue, study it, than assess the implications and measure the reaction/response. Incidentally, this is a method of journalism which ST excels in. Isolate, measure, assess and respond. Indeed, the entire article by Lee Hoong has a narrative structure not unlike how PM Lee dissected the Mas Selamat debacle in Parliament. Clinical, efficient, laying bare the facts, laying bare the skeleton with skeletal facts. When Lee Hoong removes her surgical mask, she cries out in boiling anger: What for this anger? Why this anger?The answer is simple. This anger is not only about Mas Selamat. This anger is inextricably entwined with how the Ministers gave themselves a huge pay rise on the reasoning that they have to benchmark themselves to the private sector. This anger is intertwined with how the Government pursues accountability in every action, every utterance, every behavior of an Opposition politician. This anger is tied deeply with how the Government removed a columnist from his job at the newspaper because of his accountability for one column mocking the rising costs of living. This anger is about the unfairness of political accountability in Singapore. This anger is about the shifting meaning of accountability in the political landscape of Singapore. So Lee Hoong, the answer is simple, this anger, this “hysterical” mob manifesting in the Internet, is precisely the product of the actions of this Government.Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the angriest of them all?Perhaps, to be fair, we also have to measure, assess the reasons why Lee Hoong’s blood is boiling. Why her anger? Is it a commensurate anger? Somewhere along the commentary, she assures Singaporeans that her past articles have shown she has been critical of Government if it warrants. This is her licence to ask the thinking Singaporean why we are behaving irrationally, disproportionately. Perhaps she has to ask herself why, even if she has “rebelled”, inserted subliminal messages of protest, why does it never find resonance with Singaporeans? Perhaps, she and other journalists should reflect whether their exercises in this measured dissent are more to salve, satiate their own egos, soothe that little hidden rebel deep in their consciousness rather than real, sopisticated messages with true resonance among their readers?Lee Hoong’s anger is ultimately an incommensurate anger. The Net moves on. The world moves on. The people whom Lee Hoong is trying desperately to connect with have moved on. Perhaps, this is the reason for her anger. No one cares what she writes anymore. No one bothers. It is incommensurate anger because the thinking Singaporean now has choice, has the ability to choose, to respond, to voice. Look at Catherine Lim's blog, old school writer, new media advocate. Whereas for Lee Hoong, what recourse is there but incommensurate anger if her choice is staying in an institution like the Straits Times whose excellence is only in its ability to isolate incidents/issues rather than extrapolate from incidents/issues. Her subliminal messages of “protest”, of “change from within” will ultimately remain at best as exercises in intellectual self-gratification, disconnected from the pulse and reflexes of the real world, the connected world as the Mas Selamat episode clearly shows.Occasionally I still play Monopoly with the children. The nephew who threw the tantrum is fine now because he understands that throwing tantrums is poor behavior indeed because then, no one will play with him anymore. And this is his greatest fear.Quote of the Day –“Dr Judson, you were against the Super Collider, were you not?”“Oh, absolutely”“And you testified in favor of cutting off its funds?”“I did indeed”“Please tell this committee why you did it.”“Quite simple. I made an idiotic mistake.” …“Dr Judson, I’m afraid you have to explain that”“No problem, There’s only so much money for science in the Federal budget. Back in 1993, I thought the Collider was soaking up far too much money … I never anticipated the Chinese would come up with the Higgsie”“The Higgsie? Do you mean the Higgs boson?”“Sorry, around the institute we call it the Higgsie and regard it as fairly trivial … Nevertheless, there was a world race on to find the Higgsie … I mean by 1993, the Higgs boson has become a sort of Holy Grail of physics, hadn’t it? So it was politically important. We’re all here today because the Chinese have aced us, aren’t we? …” – A Hole in Texas, Herman Wouk Politics, Gladiator, Praetorians and a Missing Fugitive While many viewers were enthralled by the epic battle scenes in the Gladiator, hardly any noticed that the plot of the film turned on a single focal point. When the Emperor Commodus was un-sworded by General Maximus in the final fight scene, he turned to his Praetorian Guards and demanded another sword. As the Guard unsheathed their swords to offer their beleaguered Emperor, the Guard Commander, Quintus, overruled the Emperor, ordering the Guard to stay their swords. General Maximus subsequently killed Commodus with the latter's own dagger in front of a shocked Coliseum. It was not the first time that the Praetorian Guards played a pivotal role in the film. In this sense, the film was unerring in historical accuracy, the praetorians were more often than not, the true Caesar-makers of Pax Romana. The Prime Minister's explanation of the Mas Selamat escape fiasco is a lesson in politics. He perhaps more than any other recognises that the ISD is an intelligence agency, staffed by intelligence officers, whose primary job is the gathering of information of leverage, of value. Running a prison is a routine task beneath such intelligence officers, such tasks delegated to the lowly Gurkha mules. It is precisely this mindset that allowed the Mas Selamat escape to occur and this was probably what the PM meant when he singled out the mindset issue. The element of complacency. Interestingly, the PM made one slip of tongue which did not really come out in the COI report findings, he uttered something about the unclear lines of command on the security responsibility in the detention centre. This is the nub of the issue. It is apparent that ISD intelligence officers are not prison wardens. More likely, intelligence officers are egotistical bastards who like to kick down toilet doors rather than perform lowly prison escort duties. Hence, the security of Mas Selamat was delegated by these intelligence officers to the two Gurkha mules. They made the critical mistake in thinking that two Gurkhas on one prisoner should be adequate security. But alas, the Gurkhas are good only for parades and are basically gentle savage mules with less initiative than your average Filipino maid. This was the critical failure, window or no window, fence or no fence.If a cock-up of this scale occurs in a ministry like MICA, the PM will have much less of a headache. Essentially, ministries like MICA are politically dispensable. They have no value to the politicians. But when a cock-up happens in a intelligence agency, in Mindef or even in an elite military unit like the Commandos, especially in a regime like Singapore where institutional checks and balances are only of face value, the political ramifications are much more complex. When a cock-up happens in ISD, which has an organisational history that is promiscously intertwined with the political history of Singapore, think Coldstore, think Marxist conspiracy, it creates a hugely delicate problem for the politicians. The Prime Minister is sharp and recognises this fact, this conundrum he is faced with. He explains to us citizens that a demoralised ISD will be detrimental to Singapore's security. That is an equivocal statement. It is not the mob reflexively baying for the blood of Ministers and politicians he is wary of. Handling the mob is simple politics, especially the Singaporean mob which has always been fairly one-dimensional. It is evident from this Mas Selamat escape that political savvy in Singapore remains a rare commodity. Grasping and exploiting political nuances appears to be a lost art or perhaps the monopoly of the cloistered group in the ruling regime. Rather than exploiting the interstices of this ISD cock-up, the Opposition wastes the political opportunity pursuing dead hypotheses or demanding accountability knowing that accountability will always be provided for that group of conservative stoic Singaporeans who are the electoral bedrock of the regime's survival. In the film, Gladiator, the Roman mob in the Coliseum was silenced when Emperor Commodus slumped dead at the feet of Maximus. They were further silenced when Maximus died of the earlier dagger wound inflicted by Commodus before the fight scene. Most viewers forget or fail to recognise that it was the Praetorians that allowed this to happen.Quote of the Day --"Is Rome worth one good man's life? We believed it once. Make us believe it again. He was a soldier of Rome. Honor him." -- Lucilla, from the film Gladiator Let Them Eat Cake It is not merely the price of rice and it is not nearly so simple a solution as to switch to cheaper rice. Around the world, from Burma, to Nepal and to Haiti, there is a sweeping anger at the ineptitude of the incumbent governments in guaranteeing this simple basic commodity. There is an implicit anger at the governments for failing this most basic convenant of governance, the provision of affordable rice. Nearer to Singapore, our brothers and sisters in Malaysia have exercised also their anger and the incumbents are noticably shaken. It is not merely the price of rice nor nearly so pat a solution as switching to cheaper rice.Cheaper rice cannot be the only solution when even cheaper rice have become more expensive. What about the next citizen who has always bought cheaper rice and realises that he cannot buy rice any more because there is no other cheaper rice. When he is at the end of the grain chain? When he is left no longer with any choice, no longer with any options, as perhaps we are all invariably headed? Maybe then, we will have to devise another means test to find which grade of rice we belong to. Rice just like healthcare. Mean tests. And all this while we lower the taxes for the corporate suits as they they milk the rising price of rice and our means to get the rice.It is a global phenomenon, the Government says, with an unseen wry shrug, its not their fault. Forgetting that their repeated claims of captaincy, of the mandate to lead this nimble ship called Singapore, steering it always away from an imagined danger, is based on their ability protect Singaporeans from these global vissicitudes.And when they fail, its not their fault. With a pained look, they simply say "switch to cheaper rice". And my aged mother dutifully obeys, taking a feeder bus and another bus to another town and another feeder bus to the nearest Sheng Siong, ten kilometres away. To find the cheaper rice. But public transport hikes will come again soon. Its an annual affair now, they have promised this. To raise bus fares gradually, yearly,to even out the pain of a sudden steep increase. And when you cannot afford the bus, switch to walking then. Its the cheapest, just like cheaper rice. Same logic. Simplistic logic.What happened to the unbridled optimism and ebullience when we announced the GST hikes last year? When the newspapers were emblazoned with shiny happy headlines proclaiming with such truthful conviction, such persuasive factualisations that raising GST will help the poor, raising GST will help you, raising GST will keep prices down, raising GST will bring us to heaven? What happened to this optimism? Where is the promised outcome? How have we been helped?Switch to cheaper rice, you say.Perhaps it has reached a stage where the citizens have to imagine that we can no longer afford this so expensive Government, perhaps the citizens should consider switching to a cheaper Government? That is political naivete, the Government will say. You can switch to cheaper rice, but cheaper Government? Are you crazy? The government has to be paid, to retain the talents, the very same talents that make sweeping proclamations such as to raise GST to help the poor and advise us to switch to cheaper rice when we cannot afford rice.Marie Antoinette, queen of France, was once attributed with this response when told that Parisians could no longer afford the rising price of bread, she said "Let them eat cake!" Regardless the veracity of this assertion, it resonates through history and time as an indictment of the spectacular schism between ruling and the ruled during the heady days of the French Revolution.It is not nearly so simple a solution as to switch to cheaper rice nor so nearly a simplistic solution to a simple problem; it is what the solution signifies, what it represents in our political relationship with those who rule us. It is how they think and the convenience with which political logic and language is shifted with an almost flippant, arrogant impunity.In China, an artisan carved 115 Chinese characters from a famous poem onto a single grain of rice. Perhaps this simple grain of rice will present us the hope, the opporutnity to carve out some fundamental differences in the pages of Singapore's political history.Quote of the Day --"Rice must be the best sleeping potion in the world, he sensed, certainly more effective than a woman's body. And it was right there beneath him." -- Su Tong, Rice none people, no nation, not singapore The flags are fluttering again. Unfurling a fabric of society, ravelling a fabrication of unity. National Day it is, a day of the nation, of its citizens as one people, one nation, one Singapore. The citizens become a collectivized imagination, riding the fires of the independence struggle, striding through the splinters of a communalist, communist past. To emerge as one people, one nation, one Singapore. Picture from Dansong’s intriguing Moments in Heartland seriesOne people, like these puppets, gracing the many celebratory carnivals across the weekend. Carnivalesque manifestations of the Chinese, the Malay, the Indian/Sikh. But not the Other. Where is the Other in the CMIO category found in all our little hi-tech pink identity cards binding us as one people? Carnivalesque mimics of one people, exaggerated cutesy China doll hairbuns, ambling down the roads, A delight to one and to all. Delight at their aura of un-reality. Laughter at their comic excess of racial features. Laughter at their distance from us, from us one people.One people consisting of the family unit, the basic building blocks of our social fabrication. One husband, one wife, two children or three or four to grab that tax carrot. To build our fabrication of one nation, one people, one Singapore. The unit is the family. The family is the building block. Not you, not the individual. The individual is an aberration. A defective gene to ruin the fabrication of Singapore. To unravel the ravelled illusion. What more two individuals who do not make a family unit, a gay couple perchance? They do not, they cannot, they must not, they shall not, exist in the fabrication of our social fabric. Their existence rends the fabric. Breaks the fabrication. Despoils the beauty imagined in the heads of the despotic fabricateurs. Despoils the nation. These are the none people. They are not one people, one nation, one Singapore.A carnival of puppets, to represent you, me, everybody. Grotesque harmony. Unreal reality jaunting down the streets of Punggol. While there is another series of photographs representing the Other, the gay, shunted like the insane fey. See no Evil and Evil does not exist. Invisibilise the none people, and they are none. Nothing. Empty. Replace the space. with unreal faces. of puppets. of you and me and everybody, walking fearlessly along the road of Punggol to inspire a fabrication of a social fabric. One people, one nation, one Singapore.One people always given a Choice between a Devil or a deep Red Sea. Choose a partner of a different gender, the other choice is none. Choose to accept another round of public transport fare increase, the other choice is none. Choose to accept a GST hike, the other choice is none. Choose foreign talent to sustain our economy, the other choice is none. One people or none people? So many choices, choose your choice silent voice.Ready to roll the die in 2009? Marina, Sentosa spoilt for choice. What fabric one people? What fabric but the survival fabric. To survive in a high-rolling world, we must fold the fabric, re-fabricate the fabric, flaggellate our little flag, just a little bit. Roll the die or we die? Despoilt of choice in our little social fabrication. Walk on by, little puppets, its our National Day, one people, one nation, one Singapore.WHAT DO YOU WANT? perhaps just a little bit more freedom, a little bit more space. WORK FOR IT. UNTIL 65 NOW. PERHAPS MORE. DON"T GROW OLD. WORK WORK. WURK WURK.The illusion of grammar in the Singapore wordscape drummed into us since young. Neither past perfect nor present tense. Neither present perfect nor past tense. That is too simple a rule for Singapore's grammar. It is Perfect Tense: the fundamentals of Singapore cannot be threatened. The media has a responsibility to nation-building. The conservative Singaporean is not ready for _____. If you want to talk about politics, join a political party. You cannot cross the OB markers. No need to strike when we have a Tripartite union. Offer solutions not criticism. Workfare not welfare. The welfare state threatens the fundamentals of Singapore. One people, one nation, one Singapore. The Perfect Tense consists of that golden rule ______. hush hush.One people, one nation, one Singapore. Choose your category, Chinese, Malay, Indian or .... Others? What are the Others? It is a racial categorisation. You cannot choose Other, if you think differently. You cannot choose Other if you disagree with the policies of the State. You cannot choose Other if you are gay or lesbian. You cannot choose such Others, otherwise the social fabric rips. You are Chinese, Malay, Indian or another racial Other only. To be any other Other, any other unfabricated Singaporean is not possible. You do not exist. You disappear. You are nothing. Swept under the fabric if you are lucky, smothered to death by the social fabric if the despotic fabricateurs get their way. In their eyes, you are nothing, just vermin. One people, one nation, one Singapore.One people, one nation, one Singapore, just like them.Or maybe none people, no nation, not Singapore. Happy national day to you too.--------------Addendum -- A coincidence(?) over at Molly the Pureless. Contesting nations. Consternations.Quote of the Day -"This is a chronicle from the planet of Auschwitz ... time there was different from what it is here on earth. Every split second ran on a different cycle of time. And the inhabitants of the planet had no names. they had neither parents nor children. They did not dress as we dress here. They were not born there nor did anyone give birth. Even their breathing were regulated by the laws of another nature. They did not live nor did they die, according to the laws of this world ..." -- K-Zetnik, testimony during the Eichmann trial Old Singapore "This is how one pictures the angel of history. Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in her wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them."This is how an angel perceives the past, a single catastrophe piling a mountain of wreckage at her feet. But we are told that it is a logical chain of events. Linear time, cause and effect, leading us progressively to a better modernity. A storm is blowing in from Paradise, dragging the angel away from the wreckage of History, dragging the angel into a Utopian futurity. Hurled into a beautiful Paradise. Some time in the future.Even an angel is helpless, what more mortals like us?There is a certain beauty in Tan Pin Pin's new documentary, Invisible City. Underlying this beauty is a grief of absence. We are shown beautiful and rare colour footage of a forgotten era of Singapore. At the same time, this footage cannot be contextualised. There is an absence in the beautiful reels of another Singapore. The documentarian struggles to provide a narrative, some form of context, but he cannot. Because he cannot remember. The screen is blank as he tries his best to dredge his memory, desperately trying to fill that absence. But there is only incoherence. And that scene transcends into a presence of absence.There is footage of archaeologists at work. Excavating bits and pieces of forgotten Singapore. There is a montage of "I was here" graffiti at one of the excavation sites. But again there is an underlying grief of absence. The same lack of context. The archaeologists are digging and dispassionately cataloguing the relics. Reading and recording each sliver of information in the relics. But again there is silence, absence. And you can feel this in the documentary.There is another narrative by Han Sanyuan, a former Chinese school activist. His recollections of Singapore history has the greatest coherence. He provides the context and has the photographic evidence of an alternative perspective of Singapore's past. But when he presents this in a forum, only the older in the audience has that look of comprehension, that gleam of understanding. The younger look bemused. He laments eventually that no one was interested. That his narrative is at best quaint when set against the dominant Singapore Historical narrative. So even for one who has the context, who remembers best, eventually there is an absence. And this absence is in the present. Now.Preceding the scene of Han at the forum is a silent slow footage of the modern Singapore skyline. Some may see progress. Others may sense absence.There is a narrative of a former anti-Japanese guerilla recounting his story to a Japanese journalist. He sings an anti-Japanese war song, tells of the atrocities committed by the Japanese occupation army, of how he meets his wife. And eventually, the article that is published highlights only absence. His story is re-contextualised. That old cliché, to forgive and forget, takes on a new dimension, a new layer of meaning. Can we forgive without forgetting?The most memorable scene is that with an old, half-blind and bed-ridden British photographer."My only regret is not leaving Singapore to go back England when I had the chance ... Singapore is not a place to grow old in ..."It is a stunning moment in the documentary delivered in such an ordinary manner. Her work is evidence enough of her passion for Singapore; a series of rare photographs of Singapore architecture most of which are gone. And the Singaporean in me intuitively wants very much to apologise to her and to all those Others cast into the wreckage of Singapore's history. But how can we seek forgiveness when we are complicit in this forgetting? How can we seek forgiveness when we ourselves are victims of this relentless Storm dragging us into Paradise Singapore 2020? How can we seek forgiveness when we left at the first chance? To forgive is to remember.The angel of History would like to stay, to awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise. Dragging her into the future. Turning her gaze away from the past.The director has taken a camera and gazed into the wreckage of our past that Singapore has deemed unnecessary to remember. Resisting the storm of Paradise, of progress, of modernity. To awaken the dead. To make whole what has been smashed. To present absence for us to remember.You step out of the Arts House after the movie and you desperately try to remember the Empress Place hawker center where your father used to bring you for a treat of delicious satay. Where you had your first date sipping teh tarik and gazing at the bright lights of Boat Quay. And there is a storm blowing in from the site for this year's National Day. Another History-orgy of the great strides made by Singapore from third to first. From past to present to future.And you wonder whether you can grow old in this Singapore.Quote of the Day -"As Nietzsche observed long ago, the moderns suffer from the illness of historicism. They want to keep everything, date everything, because they think they have definitely broken from the past ... maniacal destruction is counterbalanced by an equally maniacal conservation." -- Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern On Banging Walls In her latest thought provoking entry, Molly has dis-assembled the irony of political discourse in Singapore. The context is this: There is a proposed constitutional amendment to give the Prime Minister power to nominate up to two members for appointment to the Legal Service Commission. NCMP Sylvia Lim raised a question to this amendment. Her point was simple: by enlarging the ambit of the PM's powers to make political appointments to an important institution within the judiciary, will public confidence of the judiciary's neutrality be affected?The Law Minister issues a predictably scathing reply, accusing NCMP Sylvia Lim of resurrecting a conspiracy theory over the political integrity of the judiciary. A host of lesser MPs join the chorus of condemnation, but couched in perfectly rational and logical language. But it is the Law Minister's rebuttal that stands out. Insinuations abound in his reply on the supposed insinuations of the NCMP's question. Aspersions are cast on the supposed aspersions of the NCMP's question.This is what happens when we adhere to the ruling regime's lexical rules and OB markers. This is what happens when we buy into this illusion that we can have perfectly rational and logical political discourse of difference in Singapore. This is what happens when we are ushered into the well-walled conduits laid down by the ruling regime governing political discourse. You will be shredded.NCMP Sylvia Lim's question in Parliament was perfectly rational and logical. It is the epitome of how the ruling regime wants Opposition politicians and all contrarian public figures to engage in political discourse. If Catherine Lim had gone into politics as advised by former PM Goh after she transgressed the invisible OB markers, she would also have asked questions in the style and manner as NCMP Sylvia Lim. But would the criticism of her be any different? She would still be accused of crossing the OB markers. Exciting the masses. Inciting discontent.It is apparently not enough adhering to this lexical monopoly of the ruling regime. And the cruel irony is that you are silenced by colorful, inflammatory, even dangerous words like "conspiracy theory". You are rebutted in a way you have been told is not allowed. You are rebutted in an inflammatory and highly politicised language.If NCMP Sylvia Lim had replaced her questions with truly insinuatory vocabulary, she would have been accused of threatening the fundamentals of Singapore society. She would have undermined the sanctity of the judiciary. She would probably be sued for defamation. And the rebuttal would be in the rational and logical language.And there is no recourse. You are silenced. silent. speechless. There is no way to speak politics in Singapore. Damned every linguistic turn you take. Who are the ones consistently engaged in adversarial politics then? In the same Parliamentary sitting, Minister of State, Education cited the wrong figures on foreign students in local universities. The correct figure should be significantly higher than what was cited. But if you follow the news report on this mistake, its factual and rational tone pre-empts any damage by citing another figure of foreign student population in the prestigious MIT; another interviewee states that we should increase foreign student numbers. If someone stands up in Parliament to question this mis-citing of figures, the reply would be a rational answer. It was an honest mistake. If NCMP Sylvia Lim stands up to question the political convenience of the mis-cited figures, she will be accused of resurrecting another conspiracy theory and possibly defaming the good person of the Minister of State. If it was she who mis-cited figures, her integrity and her character and her motive would be called into question without mercy. Her credibility would be destroyed. Remember the story of the bak chor mee?A citizen wants to save an angsana tree. She goes through the prescribed process, the meetings. But for public safety, the tree is cut down. She laments if only she could be given a chance to convince the motorists ... To speak to the right people ... It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. What about speed strips? It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. But they should not be speeding in the first place? It’s only a tree after all. Let’s be rational and logical. Cut the tree down.There is another state of the blogosphere entry at Singapore Angle in video form. There is glowing mention of social-political blogging being rational, logical and non partisan. You can throw in "objective" as well. There is a different entry by Molly which would fail much of the above features of social political blogging. But the entry pummels into my consciousness. It is writing. It is writing in a multitude of disparate dimensions, differance. It is not a social-political blog entry. It is ringisei's utility in futility written.The following lines are the cruel words from the seminal Pink Floyd album, The Wall :All alone, or in two's,The ones who really love youWalk up and down outside the wall.Some hand in handAnd some gathered together in bands.The bleeding hearts and artistsMake their stand.And when they've given you their allSome stagger and fall, after all it's not easyBanging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.If by rational, it means measuring the length and breadth of each word to stab each word deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be rational. If by logical, it means weighing the heaviness of each paragraph such that it buries each paragraph deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be logical. If by objective, it means composing each nuance and tone of a blog entry such that each nuance and each tone sears itself deep into a reader's heart, I will want to be objective. If not, I will decline the mantle of a social political blogger.The political discourse of the ruling regime is not one of reason or of logic. It is politics. It is clinical, it is ruthless, it is efficient. The ruling regime has the lexical monopoly. They won this monopoly not by banging their heads against the wall in the 50s and 60s. I will concede them this: they won this monopoly by banging their hearts against the wall.So you can be rational. You can be logical. You can be objective. You can be non partisan. You can bang your heads against the wall. And when it’s over. You can take a step back, pat your back and tell your children : I was so into this anti-Government thing last summer.Or you can just bang your heart against the wall.And you may stagger, you may fall.You must go on, I can't go on, I will go on.Quote of the Day --"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." -- Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable whats your story? There is something odd going on in the blogosphere.The story is this.Two weeks ago, someone leaked a story of a 2nd Lt, who happened to be the Prime Minister's son, in a discussion forum known as Hardwarezone.The discussion thread was deleted.No explanations were given then. No explanation exists now. No one knows why the discussion was deleted. No one knows what happened to the forummer who leaked the story.Another discussion thread in SgForums, on the same topic, was deleted too. No one knows why. No explanations. (Explained by CelluloidReality, a mundane replication post deletion thankfully)An archaelogy of deletions. Very Singapore indeed.Bury it. I won't let you bury it. I won't let you smother it ...There is a very cute discussion thread in EDMW, a spin-off discussion forum from HWZ following the latter's acquisition by SPH. The title is "top secret news deleted" or something like that. Here, the forummers talk about the story in a way that is very funny.Then, there is a blog entry by a SPH journalist on this story. The journalist cites the above story, but highlights the issue of discussion deletions. He suggest a little on the climate of fear and information suppression.Fairly ironic.Then, his blog entry gets cited in various forums and websites.Everyone in Sg cyberspace is looking for this delicious e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.Then, the e-mail appears, with names and details blanked out, in the comments of a Tomorrow.sg post on the blog entry by the SPH journalist.Then, the very next day, Straits Times and CNA publish reports of the story of a 2nd Lt, who happened to be the Prime Minister's son, charged by Mindef for insubordination.The news reports also highlight the reason why he is charged.The reports also cite in factual terms what happened to those protaganists in that delicious e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.The news reports give closure to the problem mentioned in the e-mail written by the 2nd Lt.Problem solved, done and dusted. The errant are punished. Fair and square.With the news reports, the blogosphere gets all buzzed. Even Rockson is awakened from his hiatus.Some say the 2nd Lt is a hero. Fighting the system, fighting for his men.Some say the 2nd Lt is a zero, a spoilt brat, bypassing command chains, disrespecting the officers' corps.Others pat their own backs. Claiming the "power" of alternative media, of the Internet.Maybe there is another story residing in this story of the 2nd Lt.Maybe the story is about HWZ and what happened there.Maybe the story is why the story was deleted first.Quote of the Day -"Learn their needs, and they'll dance to any fuckin tune you play ..." -- DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little A Silhouette of an Invisible City "Once I heard someone say that if you have to lose something, the best way is to keep it in your memory." -- Ouyang Feng, from Ashes of TimeThe above line is from a Wong Kar Wai movie, Ashes of Time, which is not very well known even though it is probably his most complex film. Its a revisionist rendition of a classic martial arts novel by Jin Yong, The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The making of the film was so exhaustive that WKW took time off to make another film, ChungKing Express, which ironically became his most recognised work.Ashes of Time revolves around the themes of memory and forgetting. The very fine thread that runs through this film is a bottle of forgetting wine (wang qing jiu) that the characters imbibe. And as one drinks, thinking that in forgetting her past, her pain is erased, her forgetting tragically moves the pain to another character who ends up drinking the same wine to forget his past, to erase his pain. And this tragic chain of forgetting result in the characters evolving into empty, elegaic husks, feeling loss, feeling lost. But not knowing what they have lost because they have forgotten. And this feeling of loss is no different from pain, perhaps even stronger.There is a new film by Singaporean film-maker Tan Pin Pin. It is titled Invisible City. Unfortunately, I could not attend a preview screening of this documentary. Based on the website notes and the trailer, I have an inkling that it is an important film. Because it deals with this tussle between remembering and forgetting of a place or a space called Singapore. The Chinese title of the documentary translates as a record against forgetting. In her own words, the film is "less about Singapore and more about people who looked for Singapore, people who were propelled by curiosity to find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms".The film trailer has the director with two interviewees who remember another Singapore, a different Singapore. They have evidence and relics from their city of the past, in the form of pictures, of film, of audio recordings. But they display some hesitation to share their memories of Singapore. They caution, they advise the director to "censor", to ask in a correct manner. They remember a different Singapore, from one where most of us are persuaded to remember.What the director has done is to remember those who remembered a different Singapore. An invisible city. Perhaps the director in this remembering, will have etched a silhouette of a different city, possible memories which we have forgotten or for the younger, never there. At the same time, the film is edged by a shadow of hesitancy and a little underlying fear of remembering another Singapore, another city. That somehow this memory is not right. Because it does not fit the Singapore Story. That we cannot remember this.But sometimes we do. We do remember a different city. And why not?If so, this documentary is a brave piece of art. Because it shares memories which would otherwise have been silent. Stories which would have remained untold. Because this film is about people who "find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms".In a previous post, I mentioned this moment of remembering Singapore, 70s Singapore, while in another city in the cusp of a gathering typhoon. Trying to reconstruct a memory I do not possess. Trying to feel for another Singapore, another remembrance that somehow, intuitively and disloyally, overtakes me in another city, another place, another space. Maybe I will be able to find that history, that city when I watch this film.From her blog, I understand that Invisible City has no marketing budget. So I would appeal to my kind readers to help spread word on this film which premieres next week at the Arts House.Because she has coaxed into existence, memories to be shared. Memories, which if kept, may otherwise have been lost.Quote of the Day --"I decided to seek out people who like me, choose Singapore as the topic of their work. I don’t mean where Singapore is the setting for their work, but where Singapore is the main subject. I was curious about whether I was the only person who found this country so interesting, enough to spend most of my professional life to date making films about its blind spots. I also wanted to thank and show my appreciation to those whose work on Singapore I admired and have benefited from. I sought out photographers, journalists, film directors, archaeologists who were observers and documenteurs of this city, past and present. The result of our interactions is Invisible City. It is a documentary less about Singapore and more about people who looked for Singapore, people who were propelled by curiosity to find a Singapore for themselves, on their own terms. So Invisible City is really about the basic human need to search, to question, to preserve evidence and to share one’s discoveries with others. It is about the need to be remembered for what one has seen and experienced, about the fear of being forgotten and unaccounted for." -- Tan Pin Pin, notes on the making of Invisible City Mur's Immanence There is a New Paper feature today on the 500 km Wall that separates Israel from the Palestine Territories. It reminded me of this excellent documentary, Wall (Mur), made by Simone Britton who has both Jewish-Arab heritage.Mur is a fascinating film documenting the building of the Wall when the project began in 2002. Suddenly, for the sake of protection, for security, a physical landscape is artificially and dramatically changed. Culture and history is separated into two sides of the Wall. There is a scene where young Israeli children reveal that the Wall has been there forever in their memories. For this children, there was no time before the Wall. Their existence has been dominated with the permanence of this edifice, this structure. To them, the wall is natural. It has been there in their forevers.There have been many other famous walls in History. Most notably, the Great Wall of China, to fend off the savage barbarians. Most recently, the Berlin Wall, an icon of the Cold War and with its utter destruction, a symbol of war's end. It is perhaps a very natural human instinct. Wall-building. To fend off the threats to our existence. In Australia, there was a 3000 km rabbit proof fence built to prevent rabbits from ravaging the Australian landscape.We burrow ourselves into these walls and fences, enclosures to ensure our safety, maintain our stability.There are many types of walls besides the physical. There are bureaucratic walls, like a letter telling you that you cannot be a relief teacher. That you cannot do this. That your reasoning is wrong. That the reality is such. That our survival depends on this or that, when both this and that are like walls, permanent, unmoving. The walls never explain why. It just is. A perpetual wall, always there since forever. Protecting something within, keeping threats without.Then, there are also walls built into our minds, protecting our sanity, our rationality. Those outside our mind walls are the Other, something bad, something to be feared, to be kept out. These mind walls ensconce us snugly into the safe, the predictable, the logical and the reasonable. For some, when trying to push through these mind walls, they experience fear. For others it could be adrenalin, And yet for others it could be transcendence, Illumination. Insight. But there are also those who walk with these mind walls permanent, seeing only squalor, seeing only the lesser, seeing only the Other. There is only a sneer, some disdain while they revel in the cosy warmth of their lofty immanence.Walls of a non-physical nature share one common disturbing trait if you decide to explore them. When you look up to ascertain the height of the Wall, you realise it looms infinite into the sky. When you look left and right, the Wall extends infinite into the horizon. No respite, no ends, no limits.In Britton's cinematic rendition of the Wall, the structure becomes immanent. Casting its all-pervasiveness across the physical landscape, altering, othering and segmenting all along its 500 km path. The value of the film is its catalogue of a reality, of a Time before the wall. That there was a Time before this immanent structure was created. That there was a reality before this immanence of the Wall. The film catalogues a reality challenging the memories of the children who are growing up in Wall's shadow. Challenging these children to transcend their known memory, their known reality, their immanence. Challenging their notion of forever with an alternative before.Before any physical wall can be dismantled, the mental wall has to crumble first. Film or art like Britton's documentary is for this purpose, resisting the Wall's immanence.It is important to be able to transcend walls, be they physical or otherwise. The basis of most psychology of the Freudian ilk is about transcending the walls erected by the mind. Post trauma psychology is perhaps most akin to transcending the walls protectively put up by the mind in the face of a traumatic experience. The psychologist leads the victim to face her ghosts, overcome her fears to look beyond the wall. Finding redemption and perhaps love beyond the wall.So too in a society where wall-building is ubiquitous, it may not be too far-fetched to imagine a citizenry who collectively dismantles first their mental walls to discover the possibility of a different forever.Quote of the Day -All alone, or in two's,The ones who really love youWalk up and down outside the wall.Some hand in handAnd some gathered together in bands.The bleeding hearts and artistsMake their stand.And when they've given you their allSome stagger and fall, after all it's not easyBanging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.Pink Floyd, Outside the Wall Half Alfian, Half Singaporean If only Alfian can be halved. If only. Behind MOE's opaque letter explaining Alfian's termination as a relief teacher, this is the refrain. Half Alfian. If only Alfian can be halved.His writings in prose, in verse are testament enough of his intellect. And this, without the need to list literary awards he has won. But perhaps more, his writings are testament of his heart, that thing which drives his brain to create something Singapore.How do you want your child to grow up? Do you want a child with the ability to ask questions on the meaning of existence in Singapore society? To probe why there is injustice, why sometimes people are silent. Why we are told stories that we do not believe but have to memorise nonetheless. Do you want a child to think? Think with heart?Sometimes we just want a smart kid. Writes well. Can think too. Pragmatic. A smart kid who knows the limits. The parameters. The markers. And to respect these lines governing him, governing how he thinks, how he acts, how he speaks, how he behaves. A smart kid. Halved kid. Halved Singaporean.Relieved of his duties. A relief teacher relieved. If Alfian was only half, that half which the government of Singapore so desperately wants, that half of creativity, of thinking, of courage. That half which asks so little of the state of Singapore. That does not call Singapore into question. That accepts the narrative as it is. A Merlion is a Merlion. It is a symbol of singapore and its associated virtues. Nothing else. Life is good, will be better. If Alfian was only half. He would make the perfect teacher. To mould a perfect whole for the future generation of Singapore.You are perfect only if you are half. In Singapore, there are no carpe diems.There are many halving institutions in this state called Singapore. Institutions which exist on this halving paradigm. The mass media is another pertinent example. Ask Mr Brown. He would be perfect if he was halved. Witty, writes well, connects with his readers, keen nose for news. If MB was only half, it would be perfect. But like many others, who are nameless, who are silent, he too was relieved of his duties. Imperfect.We see injustice and we give a half-hearted response. A wistful shake of the head. Friendly advice to toe the line. A glazed look. A hidden smirk. Marginal surprise. Life goes on. Halved Singaporeans. Perfect.No students standing on chairs. Alfian my Alfian. Just a cold letter. A relieving in the school holidays. A minor blip in the civil service machine, in the education system programmed to halve. Half your children as it halved us. Makes us smart. Makes us creative. Makes us think. Makes me me. Makes us us. Half Singapore.Our capacity to accept incidents such as this is a mark of the success of our education system. But there is always Alfian. Rebuking the cold refrain, if only he was half. If only. Rebuking a halved Singapore, half Singaporeans. Hope for imperfection.Quotes of the Day --"Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom." Chapter 2, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that, or any other, consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant." Chapter 26, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness." Chapter 29 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 0 "With regards to Xenoboy post, I am not too comfortable with his dualism on resistance; for me, I don't necessary see co-optation and institutionalization of movements and "resistance" as "sell-outs"; it could be a transformation of individuals' or group's tactics to effect positive policy outcomes. However, that depends on institutional access; you have entry points for women and environmental rights groups in Singapore, whether you have access points for issues of democratization is debatable. Whether one adopts a "co-opted" strategy versus a "civil disobedience" strategy is very much a empirical question; how would we know which one really is better? What are the goals of the movement?"The post in question refers to this entry. Sigh.If you have noticed, there is this NIN album, Year Zero, which topped Technorati's music links for some time. NIN is an industrial band, a musical genre which is not very accessible to many people. As a matter of fact, NIN's most accessible song, Hurt, is commonly mistaken as a cover of a Johnny Cash song. Much like Bizarre Love Triangle is commonly mistaken to be written originally by Frente and covered by New Order.There is something very interesting about NIN's latest album. It is an actualisation of a viral marketing strategy that was probably first popularised in Gibson's novel, Pattern Recognition. Year Zero came into existence when a fan found a URL printed on his NIN concert t-shirt. He typed the URL and the entire Year Zero narrative began. The narrative is deliciously simple : we are finding relics, in the form of mysterious websites and songs embedded in thumbdrives, from future scatter. In short, we are finding fragments of the future telling a story of a resistance movement in Year Zero. As these fragments mysteriously appear, their existence are spread virally through the Web. Fans start to scour cyberspace, concert venues for these hidden fragments which provide clues to where the next song can be found. Then, download sites are set up and the songs are spread like illegal music downloads except that in this case, its perfectly legal. It is the basis of the marketing strategy, the basis of the narrative of a future resistance. As more songs and more sites are found, the story of Year Zero is gradually pieced together.In his recent anniversary concert, Dick Lee, slipped in a segment subverting that iconic national song, Count on Me Singapore. Among the numerous positive reactions, there were an equal number expressing surprise that Dick Lee could be so "political". This is a strange reaction as it assumes that there is no precedent. But closer to reality is that such subversion of the national-istic narrative is happening daily. For a long time. At varying degrees. By many Singaporeans. The only difference now is that such acts of delicious subversion can be spread. No longer is Dick Lee's "political" moment confined to those laughing uproariously at his concert and subsequently forgotten, unrecorded. Today, now, that moment is part of the national song. Its meaning has shifted. And rightly so. We can now apprehend the "political" and perhaps achieve the understanding that the "political" is part and parcel of every single Singaporean. The walls are becoming increasingly porous. Stories and counter-narratives are slipping through the nets of the censors. If the broadcast remains opaque, then the casting needs to be viralised; more accurately, it is Deleuze and Gauttari's rhizomatic resistance.But resistance is more than the medium of transmission.In his recent admission on the inevitable decriminalising of homosexuality, LKY was probably unconscious of the irony in his statement on gays being creative and excellent in writing and the arts. They are creative and excellent mostly because they were forced into the margins of Singapore where their existence could only find legitimacy in imagined communities. imagine space, imagined speech, imagined rights. They excel because they resist a system which illegalised them. Which orphanised them from the State. Their very existence is a resistance in Singapore. They are Agamben's desubjectified people, existing in a space, in a state where they can be "killed" with impunity. But their defiance, their indig-nation, their tragedy, hidden, embedded, alluded, in song, in story, in art, is for the simple dignity of existence in Singapore. Dignity of existence. And now their resistance is reduced by LKY into a routine economic practicality justifying the State's embrace.The resistance of the Sg gay community needs closer examination. It is not an active resistance, the likes of PLU, while playing an important role, is one fragment of an array of resistance forms. It is not an underground resistance unlike what the mainstream media is constantly trying to portray with "undercover" exposes of gay clubs, wild parties. But it is a resistance which burrows deep into the interstices of defining the meaning of Singaporean-ness. It is a resistance which contests the meaning of existing as a Singaporean. At its core, it is resistance by the very act of existence. Gays exist in Singapore with any other Singaporeans but paradoxically, in the definition of Singapore's social meaning, they cannot exist.Remove the label "gay" from the preceding analysis and consider resistance as an individual. An individual defined as a Singaporean. Imagine if we could receive scatter from a future Singapore, Year Zero, what is the story?And we end again with the same quote :"In this world are the strong and the weak. The strong never yield to torture, and they go to Paradise' but what about those like myself who are born weak, those who when tortured and ordered to trample on the sacred image ...", "There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?" -- Shusaku Endo, Silence That Iniquitous Frog in the Well. "A proverb, one might say, is a ruin which stands on the site of an old story in which moral twines about a happening like an ivy around the wall." -- Illuminations, Walter BenjaminWe begin with that iniquitous proverb, of the frog in the well. The moral twines of this proverb is deceptively simple : The frog is an arrogant one. It looks up into the night sky and sees the moon shining only for it. It thinks that it owns that piece of night sky. The irony is that it does not know that it is living in a well. That its rule of the "universe" is only within the confines of the well. The proverb tells us about pride, arrogance and humility. Beyond that, it tells also of perspective. To look beyond our confines and understand the larger world, to expand our worldview. Never be the frog in the well, this proverb implies. The frog is iniquitous.But a proverb, one might say, is a ruin standing on the site of an old story. And so it may be useful perhaps to rebuild the story behind this proverb of the frog in the well. It is a necessary re-building since this proverb and its attendant morals are always implied when the Government engages the citizens of Singapore in issues of controversy. It is the preferred rhetorical device of those in positions of authority.The most intriguing puzzle to unlock this story is to figure out how the frog came to be existing in a well. As biologists and naturalists can tell you, frogs do not naturally appear within wells. So there is another hidden narrative in this proverb, a narrative which has been lost. Probably an important element in the old and complete tale of the frog in the well.If frogs do not appear naturally in wells, then it can be surmised that the frog in this proverb must have been deliberately put into the well. It would also seem most likely that the frog was put in the well when it was but a tadpole, un-cognizant of the ways of the world. And so it grew up within the confines of the well. The well was its world, its only world.But what evil-doer would do such a thing? To imprison another creature in an artificial world. Perhaps, the frog was deliberately put into this well precisely so that it would only see the world of the well. So that the evil-doer could manipulate the frog, test the frog, like a laboratory animal. A social experiment. At its extreme, the evil-doer, he who put the frog into the well, is playing God. By this social experiment, the God-figure maintains its supremacy over the frog. A supremacy situated precisely with the moral twines of the proverb. The God-figure always knows He has the real world to trump the frog; the arrogant frog that thinks it knows the world. Whatever perspectives the frog can come up with to challenge the omniscience of the God-figure, the latter has the ultimate answer to counter it; the God-figure has the real world and He knows it. And so, a cruel complexity to this proverb emerges as we tease a story into existence; the iniquity of the frog diminishes.The well itself must be questioned. In this proverb, the well is a man-made structure. Those circular wells often associated with farms, perhaps with animals and other livestock. Presumably, the well is possessed by a farmer. So in this proverb, in which the frog was put into the well when it was but a tadpole, the well becomes the definition of a narrow world-view. But the well in which the frog lives its life is also the only possible world for the frog to learn about its existence; the well defines the limits of the frog’s knowledge. It cannot learn beyond the restrictions of the well. It cannot go beyond the walls, it cannot challenge the law of matter. Even if it wanted to. It is not given the choice. It was placed in the well. It did not ask to be born in the well.The only possibility, perhaps the only consolation, left for the frog is that changing disc it sees high up in its world. The mouth of the well, in the eyes of the frog, is the only view that has change. That view is like its TV. That view is its only way to learn that there is possibility of change, because only that view, in the frog’s world of the well, can change. But it is a precarious view. What is to stop the God-figure from covering that "view" with words and pictures which change everyday? It is almost like the Socratic Cave analogy except that frog is trapped in the well. It is bound in that space. It can only learn in that space. It is a cruel story indeed that emerges.And seen in this light, with the bare skeletal structure of a story, the moral twines of the proverb is complexified or more accurately, its morality becomes layered, No longer can we simply see this proverb as a humbling of the arrogant and iniquitous frog. To the One who delivers the revelation to the frog, to bring it down to its proper space, to damn its entire understanding of its existence, we ask : Why not lift the frog away from the well? Why not take it out from its forceful imprisonment? Why not set it free to learn from the real world? To the One who belittles the frog and reveals the true world, who has put things into the proper perspective, we ask : why not go down the well and experience what the frog can see and ponder how can the it ever see the “proper” perspectives?As the frog is wrongly humbled, the One who reveals is in need of greater humbling. This is perhaps the moral complexity lost as the story became a proverb.The sharp will see this as a critique of the Singapore political system. So let it be.But we have to imagine something more cruel.A frog in a huge test tube.Hoping against hope to smash the glass into pieces.But it cannot.This is the condition why Singaporeans leave.Quote of the Day --"The widow anxiously studied that regular flight of meteors, and in it read the confused and slowly told fable of a dragon that had always watched over a vixen, in spite of the vixen's long ingratitude and crimes ... It was evening; the sky was filled with dragons -- this time, yellow ones. The widow murmured a single sentence, "the vixen seeks the dragon's wing," as she stepped aboard the ship." -- A Universal History of Iniquity, Jorge Luis Borges A Song for Kitana, for Ben When I read Ben's brief farewell post last week, I wondered whether Kitana would go too. Its pretty sad to read her farewell post. There is always this question why young Singaporeans are so unhappy, ungrateful to their country; why they want to leave, why they quit. Its not that at all, most of time. It is disillusionment. Helplessness mostly. Its tiring to keep resisting a reality that makes little sense. And in the end, you let go, you cannot live with the make believe anymore. Its like breaking up with your country. It doesn't matter what you sayi just can't stay here every yesterdaykeep on acting out the samethe way we act outevery way to smileforgetand make-believe we never neededany more than thisany more than thisSometimes, you try hard to fight. You fight because you "fucking make more sense", to borrow a phrase from another good blog run by young Singapreans, TSFT. Borrowing from the blog's tagline, you enter this contest between the relentless march of ignorance and the unworthy timid intelligence obstructing progress. But, for some, this contest overwhelms their sensibilities and leaves them hollowed out,It doesn't matter what you doi know i'll never really get inside of youto make your eyes catch firethe way they shouldthe way the blue could pull me inif they only wouldif they only wouldat least i'd lose this sense of sensing something elsethat hides awayWe are surrounded by this place called Singapore. We are told many things, many stories. But the stories themselves are hollow most of the time. we are promised many promises but they remain deferred. They remain there in that fictitious ending of that story of promises, always out of reach. And slowly, as you grow up, as you mature, you realise that this place called Singapore becomes alien to you. A strange land out of your reach,From me and youthere're worlds to partwith aching looks and breaking heartsand all the prayers your hands can makei just take as much as you can throwand then throw it all awayi throw it all awaylike throwing faces at the skylike throwing arms roundyesterdayi stood and staredwide-eyed in front of youand the face i saw looked backthe way i wanted tobut i just can't hold my tears awaythe way you doIt is not idealism. It is not wrong to think of that something in Singapore that is always hidden away and try to will it into existence. This need is part of politics, the political life of any society, whether totalitarian, authoritarian or democratic. But like all political struggles against the odious system, the odious machine, it grinds you down, tears your sensibilities to pieces, wears you out, leaves you dry and you give up. It is not wrong to give up, it is infinitely better than giving in and living in this lie called the Singapore political life, Believe i never wanted thisi thought this time i'd keep all of my promisesi thought you were the one i always dreamed aboutbut i let the dream goand the promises brokeand the make-believe ran out...I have said it before. When you are left helpless and without choice, it is okay to run, it is better than running from the darkness in the night. Because it is better than giving in. When you know it is not right, when it is wrong. Because it is better than smiling and forgetting in this make-believe that you do not need any more than this, because you know there's nothing else you can really do.It doesn't matter what you sayi just can't stay here every yesterdaylike keep on acting out the samethe way we act outevery way to smile, forgetand make-believe we never neededany more than thisany more than thisand every time i try to pick it uplike falling sandas fast as i pick it upit runs away through my clutching handsbut there's nothing else i can really dothere's nothing else i can really dothere's nothing else i can really doat all...So a song for Kitana, for Ben. Thanks for the great writing. Hope you will resurrect soon. All the best as you both find your lives to live.Respect. Words adapted from The Cure, A Letter to Elise On Abstraction In representative Governments, citizens elect their representatives to articulate their voices, their grievances, their accolades in the halls of government. These representatives are elected to represent the citizens. Because in the halls of government important decisions are made to distribute finite resources and also enact laws and regulations governing this distribution of resources. When such important decisions are made, the representatives of the citizens debate this distribution. Hoping to secure a favourable distribution for those they represent. This is the basis of a debate. These representatives seek to influence the decisions for the citizens they represent. The different representatives are articulating for their citizens, conveying their voice into the halls of government. Even if the representatives of their citizens fail, the voice of his citizens are recorded in the annals of government. A record which states clearly that a dissenting voice was made in the event that some time in the future, the debated policy fails and accountability is sought. The representative has fought for his citizens even if he lost. Articulated their views, their voice. The representative of the citizens is precisely this, he represents his citizens. He is their conduit to channel their voice into the halls of government.There is a breakdown when the representatives, start to represent the party they belong to. Rather than act as the conduit to represent the citizens, they end up representing the party. When this happens, there is little need for debate in the halls of Government. The representatives are not debating. They are representing their party. And the party is made to represent the concept, for example, the concept of Singapore. Than the chain of representation is lost when citizens becomes subsumed into the concept "Singapore" or the other favourite concept "little red dot".Excerpts from the various CNA reports on the Parliamentary debates :"Most of the over 20 MPs who spoke on the issue on Tuesday supported the salary rise." -- CNA reportThose who opposed the pay rise unequivocally were the two Opposition MPs, Low Thia Khiang and Chiam See Tong. The only MPs from the ruling party who gave qualified objection to the pay increase were Inderjit Singh and Lim Biow Chuan. Their comments are below :"How do we answer the man-in-the-street when we're told that about one-quarter to one-third of the expected revenue increase this year from the GST is going to be for the proposed ministerial and civil service salary increases, about $240 million, I was told?" -- Ang Mo Kio MP Inderjit Singh"I struggle to understand what a top Admin Officer aged 32 at grade SR9 has to worry about that will justify him receiving $363,000 a year … From many people's perspectives, they take no personal risk and are at best, paid employees." -- Marine Parade MP Lim Biow ChuanBoth Inderjit and Lim are raising in Parliament their citizens' unhappiness and concern over this pay increase. Both in their speeches, actually mentions the man-in-the-street and their perspectives. These two MPs are acting as a representative of their citizens, putting their questions, their Voice, into the halls of Government. They make qualified objections to the pay increase. They want to know how can they as representatives, go back and face their citizens. How do they answer to the people they represent? There is clear unhappiness from the people they represent.We have other MPs from the ruling party, who are also representatives of the citizens, saying the following :"MPs like Bishan-Toa Payoh's Mrs Josephine Teo, however, pointed out that ministers in other countries may make more money after their term in office ends, such as through public speaking." -- CNA reportAs Molly points out, this argument is used by other MPs besides Josephine. And finally, we have the Minister in the thick of the action saying :"This little red dot is very special because all of us have taken the trouble to take care of it very very well. All Singaporeans have worked hard to make Singapore special. The government is a special government - carefully constructed, bringing in the best people so that it can move Singapore forward, even with all the disadvantages that we have - the lack of resources, the position that we are in the region and in the world. And, Singapore is helped along by a first-class, excellent, efficient, uncorrupted public service that helps it to achieve Singaporeans' dreams." -- Minister Teo Chee HeanThe few excerpts demonstrate the process how "people" or the "man-in-the-street" often gets lost in Singapore governance. Perhaps "lost" is too strong a word, and to be more accurate, it is abstraction. How "people" becomes more and more abstracted in this process of Parliamentary debate. All the unhappiness and concerns of the "people" has become abstracted in that imaginary spiel by Minister Teo. Singapore, Singaporeans, little red dot, us, best people. In that little spiel, the people becomes an imagined concept. Quote of the Day --"Simple-minded ones like me can never realize eternal truths without constantly blundering and failing. Pray, forgive my errors and my rude speech. Instead of treating me as a mere monkey by birth, as I myself was content to think, you have elevated my status, and honoured me. After piercing my body with your arrow, and when I am about to die -- you are touching my understanding with a supreme illumination ..." -- The Ramayana as narrated by R.K. Narayan On Fiction, History, Talent & Remembrance In History, tyranny and oppression exist side by side with honour and valour. It is a necessary juxtaposition. The former warns while the latter inspires. the juxtaposition is what makes History mostly fascinating. A reader has asked how many noble men can we unearth if we excavate the tomes of Chinese history in light of the imaginings of the previous entry. The answer is many. But so too, in excavating the past, Chinese or otherwise, History is replete with examples which can support the reasoning behind the impending salary increase for civil servants and the Ministers.What matters is really who owns the power to determine narrative, who owns the power to tell the Story. Who dominates the Wordscape, setting the frames of reference for discourse, setting the conduits into which citizens' arguments are channeled. And more often than not, History is made to escort the helpless concentration camp refugees into the gas chambers without lifting a finger in protest. Because History is mute and History is just words waiting for deliverance.But still, all is not lost. Culture and belief systems in human society are products as much from stories which escape the rigors of History. And sometimes, these stories live through Time achieving a pseudo historical significance much greater than those real Heroes and Villains from the recorded past. Epics like the Illiad and the Ramayana live in spite of Time, constantly finding rebirth and new representations in modernity as comics, as movies, as art, as dance, as plays, as computer and arcade games.In this spirit, lets explore the Chinese epic novel telling the remarkable story of the Three Kingdoms. In many ways, this novel continues to live in culture and to inform modern values and belief systems. It is an apt story for Singapore because the novel, in one aspect, deals with the importance of political talent. Throughout the story, the rise and fall of kingdoms are determined by people of sublime talent. There is the coterie of great Generals recruited by Cao Cao, the ostensible villain in this epic. Generals, like the great Lu Bu or Zhang Liao, are not killed when defeated but co-opted into service in recognition of their talent. Then there are the talented strategists. Foremost being the famous Zhuge Liang. But peppered across the novel are other great talents like Pan Tong, who is the unsung hero of the Battle of Red Cliff. Lu Xun, the Wu strategist who perhaps starts the tragedy for the Shu kingdom of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. And Sima Yi, the Wei strategist who eventually united China under one kingdom.Amidst the numerous colorful characters in the novel, Guan Yu is a mammoth. His prowess are such that when trapped and at the mercy of Cao Cao, the latter offers him amnesty. Guan Yu responds with three conditions : that he will yield only if his lord's two wives are guaranteed safety, that he swear fealty only to the Han Emperor not Cao Cao and that he will be discharged from service if he finds the whereabouts of his lord, Liu Bei. Despite these terms, Cao Cao gladly takes Guan Yu into service. What follows is a period where Cao Cao tries his best to fete Guan Yu with riches to win his loyalty. The latter does not budge.Throughout this period when Guan Yu is in Cao Cao's service, he bows to Cao Cao only once, when the latter presented Guan Yu with the most prized steed in the Kingdom, Red Hare. Cao Cao asks "I have sent you beautiful women, gold, rolls of silk ... and never did you condescend to bow. Now for this horse, you keep bowing. Do you value a beast above humans?". In reply, Guan Yu says "I admire this horse for it travels a thousand li in one day ... it will allow me to reach my brother (Liu Bei) in a single day if his whereabouts are known." True enough, when Guan Yu finds out that Li Bei is alive, he seeks discharge from Cao Cao's service. Despite the latter's entreaties, promise of wealth, of power, implicit threats of harm, Guan Yu leaves, escorting Liu Bei's wives, with his honor intact.Across the novel then, there is a fierce competition for political talent. The story of how Liu Bei making three trips and beseeching Zhuge Liang to be his adviser is one indication. The delight of men of power in the novel when generals or strategists defect or are removed is another.For Liu Bei, the ostensible Hero of the novel, he is blessed with the best General and the best strategist : Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang. They stay loyal to him even when the cause is dying or to all effect, dead. For Zhuge Liang, he could have taken Liu Bei's throne upon his death but he does not do so. He stays loyal to the Shu-Han House and tries but fails to fulfill Liu Bei's dream of restoring the Han Dynasty.The novel, Three Kingdoms, if interpreted by the rational, self-seeking individual, the cynic and the political realist will tell you: virtue and merit does not win the political struggle. But these same people forget that in the epic, none of the monarchs of the Three Kingdoms won. The epic ends with the family of Sima Yi, usurping the power of the Cao family, and finally re-uniting China. More importantly, these people will ignore the fact that what endures from Three Kingdoms is not Sima Yi, he is always forgotten. What endures is the character like Guan Yu. He is so venerated that he has become a Deity, a God who is prayed to still by the Police and the Chinese underworld, the triads. In the novel, all the characters including Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang and also Guan Yu have failings. But in folk understanding, they are remembered for the values they represent in totality. And these are the "talent" that are remembered across Time. The values they represent in pursuit of their political goals.Three Kingdoms is a story that makes sense even if it is fictional. We are living in a political moment now that makes no sense even if it is reality.Quote of the Day –“Bold in arms by dint of godlike mightHe knew his letters in a scholar’s right.Like glare of day, his heart reflected true,His Spring and Autumn honor touched the clouds –A shining spirit to live through History,Not just the crowning glory of a world in three.” – Ode to Guan Yu, anonymous Chinese poet, cited in Three Kingdoms, Luo Guan Zhong Singapore Dreaming This blogger has often been associated as bleak, cynical and dark. Perhaps even somewhat fundamentalist. So today lets take a journey in political imagi-nation. Lets imagine political possibilities for Singapore. We can even say lets dream. In a city of sadness and unhappiness, over the inevitability of the Government pay rise, perhaps dreaming is the only recourse for possible happiness. A possible smile. Of course, we all know that only fools dream. But in a moment now in which there is only right and no wrong, surreal is real, illogical and contradictory is fundamental and logical, then maybe to be a dreaming fool is to be normal.There is a groundswell of unhappiness over the inevitable pay increase. The media overdrive, the discomfort of the neutrals, the increasingly hapless justifications for its necessity, for its need by the politicians, all point to this unhappiness. At the same time, as how public policy is often decided in Singapore, when a problem is cited as threatening the fundamentals of Singapore, there is also a disillusionment that the pay increase will happen. That it is inevitable. There is a political, or realist answer to why this is so. The ruling regime is at the zenith of its political power. If we were to dissect the physics of power in Singapore, the ruling regime presently, in the immediate post election year, has the maximum raw naked political power. And this allows them to push two major unpopular policies in quick succession.But lets imagine. Lets see on what the ruling regime calculated its political risks. First. There is a confidence in the ruling regime that people will forget. Come a time when its political power is on the waning cycle, the ruling regime will aid in this forgetting. They believe that the repercussions of their two unpouplar policies will not affect them negatively five years down. This is based on their belief, that like the past, Singaporeans will simply forget and accept the reality as time passes by.Second. And more critically, the ruling regime believes that no one from within their core group will break ranks. The ruling regime takes this political risk. So long as they maintain a united front, the policies, however unpopular, will be implemented and forgotten. The policies are legitimate and justified. The policies maintain their sanctity only if those who ostensibly back these policies remain united. It is from the second assumption where we embark on our journey of imagi-nation. Lets imagine, that there is one Minister, someone among that group who has been identified as a talent supreme, who does not believe in this pay increase policy. Lets imagine he is a noble person and that his choice of occupation is driven not by the salary but a desire to foster change from within. In this imagi-nation, the current political moment represents an enormous political opportunity. Imagine that this "talent" resigns from office as a form of personal protest over the pay increase. Imagine the immediate political aura that will attach to this person. Imagine how much political power he can accrue by this act of noble rejection. He becomes an instant Singaporean. Someone who represents Singapore. Represents Singaporeans. Someone descended from the towers of ivory. There will of course be accusations by his former colleagues. That he has embarked on populism. That his actions threaten the fundamentals of Singapore, and the usual routine of character assassination. But yet, as someone already identified as a talent supreme, the accusations have much less gravitas than the usual thrown at the Opposition politicians. So maybe, this one rebel politician maintains his integrity. Maintains his aura of political significance.And then we imagine this Singaporean, who has in one simple act of protest, gained the symbolic authority of a million. Imagine then, this Singaporean, who will be a living symbol of remembrance, to ensure that forgetting does not come easy over this policy of the pay increase. Imagine that he possibly allies with an existing Party or he forms his own Party. And then perhaps, just perhaps, this journey of imagi-nation ends with him mounting a political challenge that the ruling regime has never seen since the days of the founding fathers of Singapore. Since those days when the founding fathers fought their political battles on simple acts of protest as well. Since those days when the founding fathers fought not for money in their pockets but for dreams and ideals.Imagine or dream. Our fool's dream.Quote of the Day --""It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak." -- Neil Gaiman, Sandman #19 "A Midsummer Night's Dream" The Queer Sensibilities of Singapore's Wordscape The media is in overdrive. Spinning and spinning. Telling us the reasons why we have to pay 55% more to the Ministers and the top civil servants, of that stream known as the Administrative Service. No one expects an objection from the media. But not even a "concern" has been raised this time.Instead, its a monopolistic narrative that calls upon the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape. The sense of crisis, of siege that will soon befall the Government if they are not paid more. That there will be a vacuum in Government. That the talent will leave or will not come. And without the talent, the Government suffers. And if the Government suffers, Singapore suffers. And if Singapore suffers, the Singaporeans suffer most of all. This sense of impending doom, of competitiveness, that forces the Government to review salaries, forces them to accept the ignonimity of accepting 55% more money. It almost makes this salary review become noble. A form of noble-ness that is almost surreal. It is a review that becomes a ceremonial sacrifice by these talents to accept this necessary money. It is for the sake of Singapore that they make this sacrifice. Ultimately. It is for the good of Singapore. They take this 55% not because they need it, $290 is enough after all, but because the survival of Singapore needs them to accept this. So the narrative rolls across the Singapore Wordscape.And the citizens look on, listening to and watching as this narrative embraces the Singapore Wordscape. Formulating their indignations, their counter-narratives, mostly in silence. Forming words, mostly in silence. Only in new media does dissonance surface. That this narrative, flattening the Singapore Wordscape with its moral loud-hailing, is perhaps only one side of the picture, one side of the fence, one level above in the hierarchy of political meanings in Singapore. But it is new media after all, where lies and truths are enmeshed in an adulterous embrace. Let this dissonance dissipate, as it always does, into the digital slipstream. This Cyberscape never ripples over-much into the Singapore Wordscape, never causes so much dissonance as to the tear the fabric of meanings in the Singapore Wordscape.Many years ago, a counter-narrative was put forth by a writer of Singapore literature. A concern was raised. An affective divide was postulated. It happened in the old media. The traditional media. And Hell was unleashed. The OB dogs were born. These invisible OB hounds patrolling the Singapore Wordscape, sniffing for objections, sniffing for "concerns", sniffing for contrarianism. Since then, any counter-narrative cannot fail to escape the shadow of these hounds of Obaskerville, and it has come to be that the shadow of these mythical hounds overshadows subsequent attempts at counter-narrative. It is no longer worth the risk. And so a new sensibility is set in Singapore's Wordscape, and we forget how to articulate our "concerns". The illusion of chains weighs much heavier than the chains themselves.When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked : crisis, siege and most of all, Emergency, there is very little space to argue. The space for the articulation of "concerns" is diminished into font one. In an emergency, when survival is at stake, something drastic needs to be undertaken. Something painful. Something sacrificial. In this case, the salaries of the top talents of Singapore, those who define Singapore, have to be "reviewed" upwards. It is an emergency. Just like the emergency predicating the raise of GST and the cut in corporate tax.When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked, the invisible hounds are patrolling, sniffing and for that moment in Singapore Time, anomalies become normal. Right is right. Wrong is lost. Action does not lead to reaction. It leads to further affirmative action. Reality becomes skewed. Contradiction is logical and Time is suspended like a Trauerspiel. Only a futurity is in sight. A certain uncertainty of doom imminent if we do not accept the narrative, or buy into the constructed surrealism. And the citizens look on, mostly silent.In an emergency, the Singapore Wordscape gives birth to contradictions and conundrums. They become exigent norms. And the citizens are supposed to understand that. They are supposed to be angry. But like the top talent, they sacrifice too. For the good of Singapore, they sacrifice their anger. A ceremonial sacrifice just like the top talent who sacrifice themselves to accept that 55%. When the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape are invoked, a comforting silence envelopes the land. Soothing the seething, smothering the smoldering. The hounds of Obaskerville perform their perpetual vigil on Singapore's Wordscape while their fork-tongued* masters devise the meanings of crisis, siege, emergency, sacrifice, review for the good of Singapore. * A term taken from Phillip Yeo in Aaron's blog. If anything, at least Phillip Yeo, who this author has termed a nomos empsuchon, is direct, has candour and, in his own way, more engaging than the politicians on display in blogosphere. Perhaps his engagement in its current form, as opposed to his previous method, suggests a newer understanding that the word "defamation" has many meanings, many inflections unique to the Singapore Wordscape, so much so that a win, loses its semantic meaning and becomes a loss instead.------Quote of the Day --"... as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority when he became convinced in the trail of yellow leaves of his autumn that he had never been master of all his power, that he was condemned not to know life except in reverse, condemned to decipher the seams and straighten the threads of the woof and the warp of the tapestry of illusions of reality without suspecting even too late that the only livable life was one of show ..." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch Refrain There is often this refrain when Singapore is levelled with accusations over its poor record in personal liberties and various freedoms of expression. This refrain says that for stability and security, for the continued success and prosperity of the nation, our citizens give up certain rights. They give up these in exchange for security. For safety. For stability. Factors instrumental for Singapore's economic growth, social stability and continued wealth-making.The nuance of giving up in this refrain is important. In the State narrative, there is an inflection of sacrifice, something noble, something very Spartan in this imagined giving up. It is giving up in return for a more lofty goal. A communitarian sacrifice. It is giving up something for the greater collective good. In this inflection, you give up your personal good, hapiness for a diluted good, diluted happiness which can be spread across the larger community. For the whole. For the best. Noble and pure indeed is this inflection, this nuance. But giving up has other nuances. Other inflections. Some people give up because they no longer have choice. Defeatist, defeated. They give up because there is no other way, no other recourse. They simply give up. In either nuance, when something is given up, can it ever be recovered? But this is a digression, the point of this entry really is to question fundamentally what exactly it is Singaporeans have given up? This voluntary giving up, this imagined consent in Singapore's imagined social contract. What exactly is given up? Is it a few scribbled words on a piece of paper popularly referred as a Consititution? Is it tacit assent to a few legal words scribbled onto paper known as legislation? Is it a physical space and what we can do in a physical space that is given up? Did we give up space? Or perhaps we give up some of our time, moments of our life, to be conscripted to the State's cause? Or did we give up some speech, words which cannot be spoken? Or did we give up some form of self-identity, something which defines yourself?Do we even know what we gave up? When the refrain, of this noble giving up, appears in its various forms, disguises to legitimise policies of difference, regulations of restraint, laws of personal sacrifice. When we encounter this refrain in the name of national defence, future success, societal stability, what triggers in the citizens' minds?Lets cast the suppositions wider. Perhaps, when you give up "certain rights", what actually happens is that a certain mode of thinking is erased. Imagine, that perhaps, what you really gave up is a certain way of thinking. You gave up thought. In your minds, this avenue of thought is closed off. You do not even think that it is something tangible that has been given up. Because you did not even experience what you supposedly gave up it in the first place. This is pertinent indeed for Singaporeans who were born into a Singapore that has developed into a stable and secure system. The P65s? There is no basis for giving up when the "certain rights" are non existent in your mind in the first place. It is so much easier then, to give up something isn't it? You give up imagined, illusory, uncertain "certain rights". You give up nothing actually. Because there is nothing in the first place. Just this message, these words, this refrain, reminding you of something you do not even know. Because the knowing requires thinking, requires experience and this is non existent. It is absent. A total absence across the spaces and times which constitute Singapore.But yet, we are reminded often enough with the inflected refrain of giving up. Reminded that it is actually something tangible that is given up. Reminded of a presence. But in the citizens' minds, there is nothing. And the refrain passes us by. Like other contradictions which pass us by. And this giving up becomes a ceremonial giving up. And for the citizen, it is easy to give up these "certain rights". Because the erasure, the loss extends completely into your mode of thinking. You do not know what is there.Quote of the Day --"... for it was foreseen that the city of mirages would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude i hate i love tell me why Watched two movies recently. Both dealt with the issue of drugs. One Asian, the other Western. One dealt with crack, the other with heroin.Protege is a fairly archetypal HK movie. It is a slick look at the entire economy of heroin trafficking from the poppy fields in Mae Sai to the streets of HK. Seen through the eyes of an undercover narc who is being groomed as the successor of the ailing drug boss. Moral complexity is thrown in as the narc gets involved with a single mother heroin junkie who lives next door. As typical of most such slick HK movies, it suffers from insufficient characterisation. While we dealt a look at the mechanics of the entire economy of drug trafficking, motivations remain occluded. The drug boss character suggests the usual understanding, if there is demand, he supplies. A detachment from the junkies. Highly unlike a typical HK movie however, there is a uncustomary lack of moral ambivalence in this film. Instead, the message is as clear as the silhouette of a Raintree standing proud on an empty field : Drugs are bad. They kill. And if you traffic drugs into Singapore, you are dead. Dead. Dead.The other movie is "Half Nelson". It is not exactly an archetypal Hollywood movie. The lead actor, Ryan Gosling has made a name of himself starring in such indie flicks with fairly complex premises. His first success was "The Believer", which has him starring as a Jewish Neo-Nazi. If you thought Edward Norton rocked in American History X, than you should watch Gosling in Believer. In Half Nelson, Gosling reprises a role of conflicted identity. He is a fascinating History teacher in an inner city Brooklyn junior high school by day and a spiraling coke addict at night. His separate lifes meet when one of his students catch him high and sprawled with a coke pipe in the gym toilet after a tough basketball game.The student, played by Shareeka Epps, is herself a "victim" of the hood. With a brother serving time for drug-related offenses, a single mother and her brother's chums who are "looking out" for her and tempting her into the world of crack dealing. A crack runner. Gosling battles a crumbling life, crumbling ideals, forgotten students. Seeking life through the crutch of cocaine. There is a bar scene when one of his former student's father walks up to him and thanks him for inspiring her daughter to History majors in Georgetown. He tries hard but cannot remember who the student is. It is a poignant and perhaps, most haunting scene. The film builds towards that pivotal climax when student deals crack to teacher in a motel. It is a scene worthy of any movie made in recent memory.There is a quiet bleakness and subtlety to this film. It is compellingly genre-twisting; there is none of the stirring Dead