Anti-gay-discrimination laws in schools A thread in relation to Finally, I’ve decided to take the plunge. I’m coming out . . . (as a post-homosexualist):Gabriel:> Do cats witter endlessly on about being cats? Do redheads drive us> to distraction with their thoughts on being ginger? How many serious> comment columns in the editorial pages of newspapers are devoted to> the musings of straight men on what it is to be a heterosexual? No,> they just get on with it – with being cats, redheads or straights.> Such things are for the lifestyle sections of weekend magazines, not> rubbing shoulders with the debate on global warming, housing or the> terrorist threat.So much for the historical injustice and oppression that is used to justify angst and grievances in the present.A: If only Parris' vision were accurate with respect to all kinds of historical injustice and oppression. Unfortunately, not are all as widely discredited, and the discredit as deeply internalised, as in the context of gay rights in the specifically public political and public social arena in the particular context of Britain in 2007. And there may be a sizeble number of gay schoolchildren who might find it difficult to agree even with that.B: Gabriel: I believe gay teenagers are still much more likely to commit suicide than straight ones. Dying, generally, is not a good thing.Gabriel: Men are also much more likely to commit suicide than women (3-4x).Cock: Actually if I recall correctly, women are more likely to attempt suicide but men are more successful at ending their own lives.In any case, get a grip. I fail to believe that the lot of the white gay teenager in britain is worse than a female kurdish teenager in britain, considering the honour killings. Problems with acceptance exist but they are much better than in the past and are improving. B: Er... Yes, but no. No one said it was the shittiest thing to be in Britain. I know you like coming up with spurious comparisons, but not everyone likes wasting time reading them. The fact merely is that there is still much work to be done. Take Section 28. Yes it has been abolished. But that merely means that it is not unlawful for a teacher to 'promote' homosexuality, whatever the fuck that means, in state schools. In no way is it mandatory for a teacher to ensure that gay schoolchildren are not picked on, etc etc. Do you really think that kids in all C of E or Catholic or Muslim schools are being told by their teachers that it's ok to be gay? Sadly I don't think so.Gabriel: What about kids who are bullied by their peers because they are fat, ugly, poor (I am told that "His father drives a Mazda" is a slur in ACJC), short, bespectacled (okay, maybe the days of being called four-eyed are past), immigrants, speak with a funny accent, unpopular, orphans, politically conservative, have orange skin and/or vegan?Beyond a certain point, authorities cannot and should not do anything; I don't see how it is acceptable for certain causes to be privileged above others.Cock: But in Britain, the problem of schoolteachers making unacceptably discriminatory opinions of their gay or whatever students in Britain, while still there, is less and less likely to be a problem no thanks to the tireless efforts of legislators and the courts in placing a duty of care upon school authorities not to cause psychiatric harm on their students (i.e. fear of getting sued). It is only a matter of time before religious schools are also under the new sexual discrimination regulations too.In contrast, while I am optimistic about the end of discrimination against gay teenagers in schools pretty soon, not enough is being done to prevent women who live in cultures which practice honour killings from being maimed, killed or driven to suicide. It is far more insidious than the gay discrimination problem in Britain because much of the abuse takes place in the private life context ( i.e. not in employment, dealings with government or business).And Gabriel, the good news ( for the human rights lawyers and the zealous human human rights campaigners that is. Okay fine, the victims too, just to stop B and C frothing at the mouth at my lack of sympathy for their real suffering. ) is that school authorities can be held sued for failing to take steps to stop bullying on all those assorted grounds you mention. There was in fact a landmark case in Australia recently where a school was made to pay compensation for laughing off bullying of one of their students by his peers. A: I used to find it difficult to identify why responses of this nature were so dissatisfying. Some recent comments threads on feministing.com have helped me figure it out. The thing is, the conversation wasn't about men committing suicide or women committing suicide. It was a conversation about gay teenagers. Why does it have to become a conversation about whether men have it worse than women? Even if it had been a conversation about women's problems, why would it have to have become a conversation about men's comparative problems? Is it so difficult to beleive that gay people may suffer from specific problems, and that women may suffer from a different set of specific problems, AND that men may suffer from yet another set of different specific problems, without having to conflate all these conversations? Why, if I were talking about the genocide in Sudan, would it be necessary or even helpful to say "Oh well, it's not as bad as the Holocaust" (Alan Bennett's The History Boys has a great sequence on this topic) or even "But what about the Holocaust?" I mean, how ridiculous is this:A: "Gay kids are bullied."B: "Fuck gay kids, what about the honour killings, man!"Well, yeah, honour killings are awful, but _they_ _are_ _another_ _topic_, and do we have some kind of problem with considering the possibility that there are different kinds of problems that different people face, which are all problematic? If we were policy makers, of course, there would be the problem of limited resources which poses a constraint on the directions to which you point certain resources to solve the problems. But we are not policy makers dealing with a budget, this is a conversation, and the amount of time we spend making the point about the COMPARISONS seems to suggest our time for having the conversations about the THINGS being compared is not so very limited. And if that's the case then surely the point of having a conversation about things is to deepen our understanding of such problems as do exist. It's not like we can each only talk about the problems that are MOST IMPORTANT at any one time.For instance, when the issues that women (for instance) face are brought up, is it really meaningful to respond with "but men face XYZ issues too"? Why not respond with "but LOBSTERS face ABC issues as well!" So what? OK, fine, the lobsters/men have it tough, but what does it have to do with the problems women face that were brought up? Why does the fact that there are generally problematic gender relations affecting BOTH genders in bad ways mean that when one specific manifestation of this is brought up with respect to women, any other specific manifestation of this to do with men should necessarily be relevant? And if you accept that, then if turning a conversation about women into a "men v women: who has it most shit" smackdown is so meaningless, what more turning a conversation about gays into "men v women: who offs themselves more"?Now maybe you just find the original conversation uninteresting: you don't want to talk about gay men, you want to talk about honour killings. You don't want to talk about women, you want to talk about men. Obviously, that's fine. Some people are more interested in some things than others. But then why does it seem to take the form of a comparison, a response, a refutation, rather than introducing a new topic? Clearly there is something more than mere disinterest at work here? The dynamic isn't just one of "mere" disinterest, it's almost like the problems need to be in some way dismissed. As if even the fact that other people find it important or interesting is so distasteful or problematic. Why is this the case?Will Young responded to Matthew Parris in Saturday's Times, giving an opposing view, by the way. If anyone gives a shit about the situation gay people face to begin with, as opposed to this ridiculous "whose genocide was worst" dick-waving.Gabriel: The point is not that "men have it bad so gays should shut up", or about scoring points to prove who is more miserable.The point is, B says that gay teenagers are more likely to commit suicide than non-gay (presumably straight) teenagers. He says that this is evidence that there is a big problem, and that we should be more vigorous about making gay teenagers feel welcome, loved, cherished etc than catering for people with orange skin who might also similarly be laughed at, but presumably do not kill themselves at as high a rate.The reason I made the point about the suicide rate of men is that nobody says that men are discriminated against, marginalised etc and that we should therefore revoke the Women's Charter (or whatever) so they stop killing themselves. Comparisons allow us to get a sense of perspective. For example:A: "Gay kids are laughed at. Negative peer pressure is ruining their self-esteem. We need to make sure they are not laughed at by fining teachers who do not protect them from excoriation."B: "Vegetarian kids are also laughed at but they turn out fine. Being laughed at for being different is part of growing up. Perhaps you are barking up the wrong tree."A:> that> nobody says that men are discriminated against, marginalised etcMy perception is that on the contrary there are many oft-discussed men's issues: for instance, boys are lagging behind girls in school, men have more addiction problems than women, men are often unfairly denied access to their children when relationships between parents sour, men are under pressure to behave in a traditionally masculine way which leads to emotional repression, men who suffer domestic or sexual abuse do not get adequate support, many men commonly lack role models in terms of father figures in their lives, men who are gay suffer more violent responses generally than women who are gay (who face a different set of problems), so on and so forth. It isn't a binary case of being "marginalised" or "not marginalised". There are different contours to the way both men and women are treated which creates different sets of problems for both. Most people who are conscious of gender issues (and granted many aren't, many are blissfully unaware or uninterested in one or both sets of problems) tend to become sensitive to both. You will probably almost never, for instance, find a conscientious feminist saying, "Yuck, that man has been raped, now he is less of a man" - that's more likely to be something a misogynist will say!I feel that you are still taking a "men v women smackdown" attitude so that because women have traditionally received more attention as a class (having traditionally suffered more severe and more identifiable repression and had a wider array of more obviously identifiable problems) and had had to organise more self-consciously as a class (for the same reason), this means that "nobody says" men also have problems as a class or that nobody pays any attention to those problems, and therefore such statistics cannot be a useful indication of some kind of underlying social problem. This seems to me to be wrong. If there ARE problems affecting men which have been overlooked, that lead to those higher suicide rates, that is a problem that needs to be explored and rectified - that suggests a lacuna in looking at problems men face, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER WOMEN ALSO FACE DISCRIMINATION. I cannot say this enough. Women and men can BOTH be oppressed on account of their gender, IN DIFFERENT WAYS.Thus, the statistic is not in any way a reason not to consider that gay teenagers face certain pressures that straight teenagers don't, as well. This is your chain of logic, with my summarised responses in square brackets:(1) People don't think men are discriminated against, they only think women are discrimimated against. [But some of us do think men are discriminated against, it is not inconsistent with women being discriminated against](2) THEREFORE the comparative suicide rate (men v women) doesn't say anything about whether men face specific difficulties and discrimination that may require attention [But just because some or even many people don't think men are discriminated against doesn't mean they can't be](4) THEREFORE the comparative suicide rate (gay v straight) doesn't say anything about whether gays face specific difficulties anddiscrimination that may require attention [Because surely on its own terms it suggests a problem!]On another note, the kind of "comparison" you did in the email below is very different from the kind of "comparison" you did in the earlier email regarding suicide rates and would not, even if on its own terms helpful, redeem the point of the earlier email. Taking it on its own terms however, I am very doubtful whether very many vegetarians have been beaten up in school or even murdered for being vegetarian - or whether negative attitudes towards them have resulted in the past in imprisonment, legal restrictions on their practising vegetarianism, being stared at whenever they walk down the street with their salad wraps in hand, being ostracised from their own family, having exorcisms performed on them by their religious communities, and being denied jobs or fired from jobs. Which may be going on to a lesser extent with gays, now, as compared to in the past, but only as a result of very recent changes, which means we can expect the social attitudes of (for instance) schoolmates of gay children to probably still be influenced to someextent by this extremely recent discrimination.C: No seriously. When did B say "we must privilege gay rights above everything else". This is something that you cooked up yourself. And seriously, orange skinned people? Who the fuck are you talking about? WHAT the fuck are you talking about? Actually, forget that I asked. You'll just copy and paste some ludicrous Wikipedia link and go "aha! I have proven you wrong! Orange skin syndrome actually exists! I am so clever!" Which is not only irritating, but pointless.As I have said. There are more persistent issues at hand. Gay teens still commit suicide at a higher rate than straight teens. There is no corresponding evidence for vegetarians, orange-skinned people, or martians sent to earth to pretend to be teenagers so that they can spy on our planet. Presumably because discrimination on grounds of sexual preference is still rampant, widespread and unacceptable in any situation. That is all B is saying. That is all.In other news, perhaps you could laugh at vegetarians, but I assure you that vegetarians are not laughed at in the same way that homosexuals are. It is not, for example, said that vegetarians are perverted. It is not said that they are morally wrong. It is not said that they will never amount to anything just because they are vegetarian. You are full of shit.D: But this could simply mean that we should be more vigorous about making vegetarians feel accepted. However, there is a reasonable case to be made that vegetarianism is a relatively less central part of vegetarians' identity compared to gayness and the identity of gays. And there is the issue of 'choosing' vegetarianism but not 'choosing' sexual orientation (this is thorny territory, but at least it has to be acknowledged this is a potentially problematic difference between the two). So discriminating against vegetarians could be considered a less severe offence than discriminating against gays.On a broader point, I have no idea what you mean by 'sense of perspective' --- if all you mean is that we should acknowledge that these other problems exist, then well and fine --- we do, but it's hardly germane to the current conversation. If you mean that the present 'tolerance' ('part of growing up') of these other problems has any bearing on whether we should deal with gays' problems, then I disagree. Ok, we've got the perspective now, honour killings and gender discrimination are also big problems --- so what does that have to do with gays? The 'being laughed at for growing up' point can be used to get people to tolerate essentially any kind of childhood hardship. For example, it's often part of growing up that one is caned by one's parents. Does that mean we should tolerate corporeal punishment?In other words, the 'sense of perspective' point is either irrelevant, or, if it prescribes any attitudes we should take towards gayness, relies on fallacious reasoning.Gabriel: > My perception is that on the contrary there are many oft-discussed> men's issues:Okay you're right.What I should have said was that much less attention is paid to the discrimination and marginalisation etc of men than that of women, gays etc, and nobody suggests privileging them with protection of the sort that women, gays etc get.This is not just in a historical context but also a contemporary context.>If there ARE problems affecting men... that suggests a>lacuna in looking at problems men face, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER WOMEN>ALSO FACE DISCRIMINATION. I cannot say this enough. Women and men>can BOTH be oppressed on account of their gender, IN DIFFERENT WAYS.The point of raising the comparison is not to go: "Men are oppressed, therefore women cannot be oppressed as well". I accept and acknowledge that certain groups are oppressed, but the fact is that some phenomena which are labeled as, or being due to oppression or discrimination may not be so.The classic example is that since men make up the overwhelming majority of the prison population, this means that the justice system is structurally biased against them and that there is massive and unacceptable discrimination perpetrated against them.This is incorrect.The reason why men make up the bulk of the prison population is because they commit more crimes.>I am very doubtful whether very many vegetarians have been beaten up>in school or even murdered for being vegetarian - or whether>negative attitudes towards them have resulted in the past in>imprisonment, legal restrictions on their practising vegetarianism,>being stared at whenever they walk down the street with their salad>wraps in hand, being ostracised from their own family, having>exorcisms performed on them by their religious communities, and>being denied jobs or fired from jobs.The solution is to legislate against beating gays up or murdering them etc, not to fine teachers who do not prevent them from being laughed at (or whatever it was in the first place).Going back to the gay suicide example, there seem to be 2 questions here:1) Is the higher gay teenager suicide rate indicative of a problem?2) If so, should we do anything about it (eg fine teachers who do not prevent them from being laughed at)1) Looking at simple correlations is oftem misleading. I trust that no one would look at correlations of race and IQ or school performance and then proclaim that Blacks/Malays/insert-your-favourite-marginalised-minority-here are stupider than insert-your-favourite-non-marginalised-minority-here/insert-your-favourite-majority-here. Yet this is what is being done with gay teenagers.The higher gay teenager suicide rate may not be indicative of a problem, for a variety of reasons. One that comes to mind are that gay people, almost by definition, tend to be less conventional and more eccentric (which results in the problem for the individual of social integration above and beyon the fact of being gay).Another interesting point to consider is suggested by this paper:Suicidality and Sexual Orientation: Differences Between Men and Women in a General Population-Based Sample From The Netherlands"Homosexuality has been shown to be associated with suicidality and mental disorders. It is unclear whether homosexuality is related to suicidality, independently of mental disorders... Younger homosexuals were not at lower risk for suicidality than older homosexuals in comparison with their heterosexual counterparts. Among homosexual men, perceived discrimination was associated with suicidality. This study suggests that even in a country with a comparatively tolerant climate regarding homosexuality, homosexual men were at much higher risk for suicidality than heterosexual men. This relationship could not only be attributed to their higher psychiatric morbidity."Even in what is probably the most gay-tolerant and friendly culture in the world, homosexuals are more likely to kill themselves than heterosexuals.If you want to tell me that homosexuals in the Netherlands nevertheless still face discrimination and are marginalised, this would be marginally plausible, but for the fact that younger homosexuals were at as high risk of suicidality as older homosexuals. Presumably with the passage of time social attitudes towards homosexuals became more tolerant, yet we see no change in suicidality. Hell, even if, grasping at straws, you want to claim that Dutch social attitudes towards homosexuals had become less tolerant, we see that sucidality had nonetheless not changed.With regard to 2) there're practical issues as well as philosophical issues.How do we draw the line? What would constitute a transgress against the putative (or are they already implemented) rules/laws?Determining when someone has been assaulted is easy.Determining when someone has been offended is not.Of course death threats and the like should clearly be disallowed, but what about more subtle forms of 'discrimination'?In secondary school, 'faggot' was a popular perjorative hurled at people. A gay would probably feel insulted if called a faggot. A gay could also feel offended if someone else (even if a straight person) were called a faggot, yet I'm sure one could agree that this offence is of a lower degree than the first.But what about other examples? Is kids crowding around a laptop laughing at a Hard Gay video evidence of discrimination against gays? (For those not in the know: Hard Gay is this Jap guy who dresses up in tight black leather and does pelvic hip thrusts. In real life he is straight, so he's just pretending to be 'gay' for laughs. He has been criticised for plumbing homosexuality for laughs)Aggrieved gay students could thus allege discrimination when it is mostly in their heads (Someone listening to "Rudolph the Deep Throat Reindeer" on their iPod) or even non-existent (eg If they hang a rubber chicken from their bags and get laughed at, they could think it's because they're gay and make a complaint).I'm sure you can think of many more examples.Furthermore, how is the former example different from the atmosphere of derision that surrounds short people when they are called 'shorty'? If you do not understand the structural biases in society against short people, please ask The Cock how he feels.You could say that it is more morally wrong to make fun of gays than short people. Why this is so is hard to fathom (perhaps someone could explicate).You could also say that the consequences of making fun of gays are worse than those of making fun of short people. Yet this is untrue; it is alarming to note that one study has found a Strong Inverse Association Between Height and Suicide. A 5cm increase in height was associated with a 9% decrease in suicide risk (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/7/1373). Clearly, we should fine teachers who do not stop height discrimination in school. Yet, we privilege gay issues above height issues despite the greater awareness and legal protection given to the former.There is also potential for abuse. Allegations of homophobia could be made to ruin disliked students or teachers, especially since verbal assault is so difficult to prove. Laws protecting underaged females are already used to blackmail men; this is not to say that these laws should be repealed, only that one must remember the potential for abuse and circumscribe these laws and provide safeguards. Ditto for the anti-homophobia laws/rules that are proposed.Perhaps fining teachers who do not prevent gay students from being laughed at is not what we were originally discussing and we have wandered somewhere out there. If so, please prod me back in the right direction. Nonetheless I hope at least some of the above points are relevant.>The 'being laughed at for growing up' point can be used to get people>to tolerate essentially any kind of childhood hardship. For example,>it's often part of growing up that one is caned by one's parents. Does>that mean we should tolerate corporeal punishment?For the record I favor spanking but not caning.Yet, the paranoia to protect children has resulted in some schools banning playground time (I can't remember the details).Traditions should not be adhered to for the sake of adhering to them, but there is at least a case to be made of considering whether they can be kept. Going back to 'being laughed at for growing up', just as someone who doesn't visit Malaysia and eats clean food all the time gets diarrhea when he goes to Hangzhou (to wit, Me), so too will a child who has been sheltered from even the mildest form of derision when growing up find it hard to survive the real world.A: I'm not sure where this discussion about fines originated. However, I don't like the idea - it's a minefield for enforcement and I don't as a general rule think that criminal liability for failure to prevent fairly open-ended behaviour perpetrated by others in the complicated social context that school constitutes is a good idea. That said, there are a number of points still open:(1) Do gay kids face homophobic bullying/discrimination on a significant scale?Obviously, this varies between contexts. In Singapore I cannot imagine how anyone could have got through the schools that I attended without verbal harassment or physical abuse if they were openly gay. In the UK it probably varies between regions and the type of school, but I know barely any gay people who feel they could have or did comfortably come out in school - which immediately puts them on the outside with respect to something which is a huge part of a teenager's life. It means, for instance, not being able to date, as many of their peers do; and not being able to discuss dating, as many of their peers do, without discomfort or subterfuge. It sets the stage for a sense that they live in a society where, because of prejudice, they may never realise hopes that are one of the greatest sources of joy and meaning for the vast majority of people. (It puts me in mind of the long-standing past practice of many light-skinned American blacks, adopted so they could participate fully in society, known as "passing" i.e. pretending they were white. It's impossible to describe that as anything other than evidence of racism.)So injustices in the statute books have been redressed in Britain. This does not necessarily mean homophobia is not still severe in some contexts. Taking forcible repression out of the laws doesn't cause attitudes comprehended in those statutes (and thus bolstered by them and enshrined in other social institutions and the public consciousness) to go away immediately. It's barely been a historical blink of the eye since those laws were changed. I don't think your Dutch example is apposite - it's not like the people who victimised older gay people aren't still around, interacting with younger gay people.Re the continuing "men v women" conversation which I don't seem to be able to make go away - there's a substantial body of opinion that regards the disproportionate incarceration of young males as the product of, amongst other things, social problems afflicting that demographic (for example, being the target of pressure to join gangs in which substance abuse, violence, risk-taking and rule-breaking are badges of masculinity). So, well, yeah, "nobody" says it's the result of problems with the way society treats/views men... except some people do.As for the claim that gay people are somehow generally eccentric, regardless of marginalisation on account of sexual orientation, and this would lead to difficulties fitting in, accounting for the higher suicide rates. I disagree for reasons too complicated to go into at the moment, but even taking it as read, this is simply a reason to take their social difficulties even more seriously, since it would mean they were a particularly vulnerable group.(2) Should we do anything about it?(a) In principle, you suggest, we shouldn't do anything about milder forms of bullying, based on a "character-building" argument. The gist is kids'll fall apart as adults if sheltered, and being bullied helps them "toughen up". This seems to be based on a belief that stopping these forms of bullying is detrimental because they bring benefits (so even where the balance of harms/benefits would otherwise suggest intervention, we might nonetheless want bullying).But is the emotional strength to deal with bullying like resistance to disease? Emotional resources are a function of emotional support as well as innate personal constitution. In general, we expect people from supportive families, with sympathetic circles of friends and in positive school environments to develop more self-respect and be more emotionally resilient and better at dealing with unpleasant behaviour as adults than those without these advantages. It is not clear to me that someone love and encouragement throughout childhood is less well equipped to deal with emotional hardship in future than someone who is bullied, scorned and abused. The oft-cited correlation between victimisation in youth and abusive behaviour towards others in adulthood seems apposite.Obviously, people can be given support even if the bullying is not prevented or addressed as such. They can be loved at home while bullied at school, or treated with respect by teachers even if scorned by peers. But one important form of validation is having other people stand up to those who are doing wrong to you and say "We do not accept this." People who feel that there is no place for them in their community, because their suffering is not regarded by others as a problem, are going to have difficulty becoming emotionally "strong" in a socially integrated way (which brings about other problems for the rest of us, who have to live with them).And even if we did our best to address bullying, given other practical constraints, some of it would still be there. So even if we accept that using childrens' avoidable suffering to create Emotionally Resilient Adult Ubermensch is okay, this isn't much of an argument for inaction.(b) Your second argument for not doing anything is based on the idea that dealing with homophobic bullying specifically unfairly "privileges" gay students over others who are bullied. I don't really follow. Consider the following, greatly simplified for illustrative purposes:Case #1 - Short kids are bullied. Gay kids are bullied.Case #2 - Short kids are bullied. Gay kids are not bullied.Case #3 - Neither short kids nor gay kids are bullied.Presumably Case #2, where there is less bullying than previously, is preferable to Case #1, though Case #3 is preferable to both. (I'm confused about why I'm even having to say this.) And in the case of the UK at least the political movement against homophobic bullying is part of a movement against bullying in general, which condemns all forms of bullying including on grounds of personal appearance, while recognising that homophobic bullying is especially prevalent, brings its own nuanced set of specific problems, and is often overlooked by schools uneasy about tackling a sensitive topic.I wonder if your objection is still based on a curious idea that talking about bullying based on gayness is somehow excluding conversations about bullying based on height - i.e. we're back to wholly irrelevant items for the sake of 'fairness'. If you want to have a conversation about short people, I think I'm qualified to participate! - but, again, it's a different conversation.(3) OK, so what can we usefully do about it?Depends on who you are. Parents can encourage children to be sensitive to the feelings of bullied gay children and teach them to refuse to participate (or even tell their friends off) when their friends engage in bullying. Similarly if you are an older sibling, a cousin, an uncle or aunt, or any other relative or friend. As an individual (especially a teacher) who notices what's going on you can take the time and effort to draw out a victimised child (or a bully) and act as a supportive/influential figure in his or her life.Individual teachers can do even more: gay issues can be touched upon, however briefly, in existing class discussions to do with equality (e.g. historical lessons on the Holocaust) to make students aware of parallels. The occasional hypothetical example can feature a gay couple. The sexual orientation of historical, literary or political figures can be remarked upon without adverse comment where relevant. (And obviously if you are a parent or a friend you can do all of these when simply having conversations.)Institutional measures - even if there are instances where bullying is not obvious, there are many instances where it is. Schools can formulate policies requiring teachers to reprimand and report instances of unambiguously homophobic language (I think "faggot" qualifies without difficulty), or jeering at someone for real or putative homosexuality, which create a stifling environment for gay people even if directed at straight kids (and obviously impairs the quality of life of straight victims). It can be mandatory to address the homophobic element of physical bullying, where that occurs. They can discipline staff who set bad examples (one can imagine, for instance, a sports coach egging a team on in a homophobic way). They can hold training sessions to make gay issues more accessible to staff and answer misgivings. Perpetrators can be required to go for counselling. Homosexuality can be included in a factual, informative way in the sex education syllabus. Regular meetings can be held in which bullying is discussed and each teacher can make others aware of problem cases so they can be more attuned to what's going on with their students.Re allegations being made up, obviously that's possible with any kind of verbal abuse. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be mechanisms of redress. Presumably, notwithstanding this risk, we still want schools to have disciplinary procedures or responses of some kind in place where a teacher verbally sexually harasses a student, or a group of students chant racist abuse at a classmate. I don't see that this is different (and I understand you agree).I'm sure you can come up with more ideas - but I want to illustrate that it is not pointless to think about or discuss the ways in which gays face discrimination, even in a relatively enlightened society like Britain, because there are plenty of things we can do in different capacities to contribute to reducing it.Gabriel: I agree with most of what you said, and don't really feel like flogging this dead horse further, so unless someone has something new/novel/interesting to add I shan't continue this thread.C: A, I admire your pluck and sheer blind optimism at casting your numerous pearls before this swine. It seems as if these days you are the only person who can stare stupidity in the face and not say "ok, I give up, you can keep on being a dumbass, dumbass."B: Again, yes, but no. This reminds of the Patrick Mercer incident in the UK recently. Basically, some Tory shadow minister who was once a Major in the British Army was interviewed about the setting up of what was in all but name a union among UK military personnel in order to tackle issues of racism. Patrick Mercer is a man much like Gabriel Seah in this respect. His line was 'oh many people feign racist attacks but actually they are just trying to excuse their poor performance, etc'. That may be so, but this applies to everything. Saying so is neither helpful nor insightful. For example, many people turn in fake MCs to get extra leave. In no sense is this phenomenon an argument for ignoring the plight of the genuinely ill, etc. In any case, such things usually have a natural constraint in the 'boy who cried wolf' syndrome: if you constantly take MCs or if you constantly say 'I am being attacked because I am of X race', without basis for those claims, or at least without apparent basis, then your credibility (and I mean your *individual* credibility) will take a beating, and with good reason. Patrick Mercer went on to construct an utterly false and idiotic moral equivalence between racism and other types of bullying or teasing. That is, he acknowledged that it was common in the British Army to call black soldiers 'you black bastard'. But, as if this was in any conceivable sense an excuse for racist language, he went on to explain that 'oh but some people who have ginger hair get bullied too, sometimes more badly -- we hear taunts on the assault course like "come on, you ginger bastard" or "come on, you fat bastard" so in fact it is not simply on the basis of race that people are singled out for abuse'. This was a shockingly stupid thing to say and Mercer was (rightly) called on to resign his shadow ministerial position. Firstly, surely the right attitude to take in this situation is to say that all such taunts should be avoided. Secondly, there is NO moral equivalence between attacking someone for his race and attacking someone for his hair colour or weight. The former is a constitutive part of many people's identity, and in any case is utterly immutable, the latter two much less integral to personal identity and self-respect. Similarly, there is NO moral equivalence between kids in school who are bullied for their sexual orientation and kids who are bullied for being vegetarian. This point is fairly obvious. If I say 'I hate blacks' this is completely different morally from 'I hate vegetarianism'. Obviously. Lastly, at no point did I say that I PERSONALLY experienced discrimination in Britain stemming from my sexuality. Indeed in Singapore, apart from obviously the legal discrimination which is blindingly obvious, I experienced very little. But a lot of gay teens who commit suicide etc etc are probably more tormented than I was, especially by being consumed with self-doubt, etc. I'm not saying "oh my God you do not feel my pain", I am saying "there is much work to be done". And there is. Matthew Parris made the mistake of thinking that every gay man is Matthew Parris -- affluent, well-educated, and moving in progressive circles (for a Tory, at any rate). Sadly, this is not the case. I am in general also getting rather weary of these 'I hate political correctness' diatribes by Gabriel. They have been neither interesting nor illuminating, which is surprising since contrarian positions are usually entertaining in some way. Gabriel has made his point that most of the people who suffer prejudice in the world are merely perpetuating a culture of victimhood. You may agree or disagree -- and clearly I disagree -- with this point, but it is literally only ONE very uninteresting point, which has been laboured many times already. Give it a rest.>Obviously, this varies between contexts. In Singapore I cannot imagine how anyone >could have got through the schools that I attended without verbal harassment or >physical abuse if they were openly gayApropos the Singapore/Britain comparison: Raffles Junior College, Singapore was less homophobic than Christ Church, Oxford, and by a significant margin. So this doesn't alway hold true.Gabriel: Somebody asked me to add the following remarks:"someone should bring u pthe point that there IS a moral equivalence between teasing someone for being gay and teasing them for being fatso B is in effect saying it is ok to tease someone fo being fat butnot for being gaywoot. i get it now.clearly i am not subtle enough either.fat people go into bouts of depression because of societal prejudice against their weight. and kill themselves. and do strange things. it's clinically documented!teasing/making fun of people ont eh basis of them being the "other" is equally unaccceptable in all situationsit is indeed rather presumptuous to assume that it's marginally more acceptable to tease someone for being fat than for being gay"B: No. (Obviously.) That is all.D: While I do not condone teasing people for being fat, I don't thinkit's obvious that there's a moral equivalence. One condition is moreavoidable (through free will) than the other. One is more central to aperson's identity than the other.E: I disagree. Bringing the idea of free will into discussion treads a dangerous line. One might, for the purposes of example, pose the argument that gay people have the free will not to engage in active homosexual relationships. And while the scientific evidence is not definitive, there is ample proof to suggest that free will (or lack thereof) is hardly the only explanation for obesity, childhood or otherwise.Anyway, posing such faux-equivalences are kind of besides the point. Any form of bullying so extreme that it results in emotional scarring/psychological trauma should be treated with equal severity, regardless of the original motivation. That is all. I don't see the need to hold one form of "otherness" over another, in this context.Gabriel:>I don't think your Dutch example is apposite - it's not like the>people who victimised older gay people aren't still around,>interacting with younger gay people.I remember I said I wasn't going to comment on this, and you're on holiday now, but I thought it important to explain this bit.Many of the people who victimised older gay people in the past have now died. The population has since seen an influx of younger people who are almost certainly more progressive.Also, state policies on homosexuals and cultural attitudes have surely changed over time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_in_the_Netherlands). Most notably the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2001.Frankly, it's ludicrous to claim this example is not apposite. Discrimination is not a binary aye/nay thing, but rather a wide spectrum which can range from lynching on one end to cries of "faggot" muttered sotto voce near the middle to refusing to marry 2 same-sex partners in your religious institution if your denomination opposessame-sex marriage near the other and imprisoning Jerry Falwell for 20 years for saying Tinky Winky is gay since he carries a handbad, since as we all know this is advocating the lynching of homosexuals.> Case #1 - Short kids are bullied. Gay kids are bullied.> Case #2 - Short kids are bullied. Gay kids are not bullied.> Case #3 - Neither short kids nor gay kids are bullied.>> Presumably Case #2, where there is less bullying than previously, is> preferable to Case #1, though Case #3 is preferable to both. (I'm> confused about why I'm even having to say this.)Hell, since I'm at it (and maybe also because you're on holiday and won't reply to me, hee hee): the point is that we don't see short kids as being "bullied" (MFTTW scolds me for being too subtle), so the vastly different standards some have for the bullying of homosexual kids are puzzling. Many forms of social disapproval are not serious enough (this is why telling someone "You smell, your body odour isquite bad, please use deodorant" is not considered a hate crime even though the person can't help smelling, was born with genes giving him sweaty armpits or whatever etc). Yawning Bread mention The Cock will be pleased to note that this mailing list has been featured on Yawning Bread.yax-684 Hate speech law badly draftedAttacking Christian creationismOn the mailing list Young Republic, the hottest thread is currently "Why (fundamentalist) Christianity is dangerous". If you're the sensitive type, you might say, aha, such an accusation that this religion is dangerous wounds the religious feelings of some Christians. Charge them all under Section 298 of the Penal Code!The fact though is that the thread is about some Christians' attempt to lay their theory of creationism thick upon us, to discredit evolutionary biology and indirectly, the very foundations of scientific rationality. The discussions in Young Republic are first class, full of meaty arguments and citations. There are no rants.But as the law stands, these rebuttals could be construed as criminal. On the other hand, the creationists who seek to damage the education we provide our young and Singapore's hope of building a science-based future -- they get off scot-free.As a libertarian you might say, freedom of speech includes the freedom to spread word of creationism. Fair enough. But then shouldn't freedom of speech include the freedom to criticise the religion that promotes creationism?How does one square that with the Penal Code as written or proposed? The Online Citizen It has been a long gestation period, The NEW Young Republic magazine finally gets an online home!!!!!!!This project was a collaboration between a team from the Young Republic- that is me, Zheng Xi, Enming and Vernon, and Andrew Loh and his team.As you can see from the site, what this site will need to sustain itself in the future is content and readership. I hope you guys will support this project by contributing articles and commentary. This is one of the better opportunities we have to create an alternative media. Play your part in helping it grow!As splintered blogs, we are "internet chatter"; as "The Online Citizen", we will have a more robust voice.Please send articles (in word format) to Zheng Xi, who is contactable at:remy_choo@hotmail.comJie Kai Someone on Scholarships > Anyhow the term "scholarship" is misleading. It's a business contract> pure and simple, despite all the moral overtone those who award them> try to pile on.That's exactly right, and it's something which even the scholarship-awarding bodies seem to have genuinely forgotten. They wonder why so many break their bonds and never think that trying to 'trap' people into a job where they aren't really challenged and have far lower compensation than they could get in the private sector simply doesn't make sense. If the civil service really wanted to attract talent, they could significantly streamline their scholarship scheme so that it acts more like a bursary scheme and then significantly increase the pay of civil servants from day one. They should also do away with this ridiculous admin officer scheme -- there's no reason why a select few on some special scheme should be paid very handsomely while the rest of the civil service is paid (comparatively) very poorly. Even scholars know that they won't necessarily get into the admin service, so the mere prospect of large pay packets in the admin service alone may not offset the opportunity cost they run by foregoing lucrative jobs elsewhere, since the risk remains that they will be stuck in the non-admin service track.If you think of the UK, for example, civil servants are well paid from day one (I'm talking about graduate civil servants). Of course civil servants will be paid less than bankers or city lawyers, but it isn't a ridiculous pay differential. Moreover, there isn't an admin service (although there is a fast track for some graduates) -- you can get promoted quickly, and therefore earn some serious money (civil servants were ranked only slightly below doctors in pay in the UK last year) but it doesn't depend on some retarded one-off ticket into some special scheme. It is completely possible that a non-fast track graduate in the UK civil service will later overtake a fast track graduate (and anyway the non-fast track graduate is paid quite well as it is) while in Singapore a non-admin officer will forever languish below an admin officer.It appears to me that the Singapore civil service and govt agencies think that the best way of securing talent is by offering a plush scholarship when potential applicants are literally young and stupid, and then trap them into the job for six years. They then wonder why scholars are poorly motivated, many break their bonds, and why some turn out not to have been that great anyway. (Not to mention the huge amount of resentment created among NON-scholars in the civil service). Moreover, the low pay in the civil service discourages potentially interested applicants who have spent lots of their own money on the their education from joining the civil service.Chris's idea is interesting, but I would suggest also post-graduation debt forgiveness (i.e. students are allowed to take loans to fund their education at reasonable rates, and then they have this debt forgiven if they take up a contract at the end of their studies), or large sign-on bonuses. Finally, the government's position on the press explained in crystal clear clarity! First of all I want to make a few declarations. I am a completely biased observer- I'm a bit of a wishy washy liberal when it comes to things like freedom of speech, and I look forward the day will be when the Straits Times publishes stuff that shows Gayle's level of insight.I would also like to be prime minister one of these days. However I am completely useless at the whole business of electioneering. Like the only elections I've ever won were all walkovers. That was how I really got to be treasurer of the Salsa Society in Oxford and part of the disciplinary panel on the Corpus Christi JCR. I am known to many people who know me as an over-excitable and annoying personality. I managed to lose Agagooga's memory card with all his photos on it in a CPU in a Munich Internet Cafe. I have an embarrassing video of myself on Youtube dancing to a Gunther song. Worse, I can't speak any dialects. One of my baby cousins is also positively frightened of me.So what political party still wants me as a political candidate again? I wish.Having completely trashed my own potential political credibility as one would wipe a dishcloth on a Newton Hawker Centre table, let me now go on to my completely and utterly biased criticism of something that really ground my gears today.By now I am sure you are all familiar with the rebuke of the famous blogger mrbrown.However I want to point all of you to this passage from Mr Lee Boon Yang's press secretary "mrbrown is entitled to his views. But opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards. Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly. It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government. If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics." How it is logical to offer "constructive criticism" and yet not at the same time "champion issues" or "campaign for or against the Government", hence undermining "the Government's standing with the electorate" completely escapes me.Suppose I thought that preserving the now-demolished national library building, because of its historical value, was more important a priority than building a tunnel through it. That is constructive criticism. But my value system, and those who agree with me are at odds with the Government. By putting forth my views in the papers, I'm trying to persuade more people. In this way I'm undermining the Government's standing with the voters.Similar logic just about applies to everything else.Of course, unlike the prime minister, I did not get a double first in maths from Cambridge. Perhaps with his vast and undeniable intellegence, the prime minister can help clarify how the government's position is not an incoherent crock of garbage.koh Jie Kai The Singapore Politics Drinking Game The Singapore Politics Drinking Game-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Every time the Party, the State and the Government are conflated, drink once.Every time you see a stupid ST Forum letter about how democracy and Freedom of Speech are bad for Singapore, drink once. If the letter ends with "Majulah Singapura", drink twice.Every time you see the archived shot of MM Lee crying, drink once. If it is accompanied with moving music in the background, drink thrice.Every time a new buzzword is thrown up, drink once. Every time we have a new silly acronym ("SPRING Singapore"), drink twice. Every time a new false dichotomy is introduced ("Stayers" vs "Quitters"; "Heartlanders" vs "Cosmopolitans"), drink thrice.Every time a Minister says things like "save on one hairdo and use the money for breast screening", drink once. Every time someone else doesn't say whether they want tur kwa or not and we get a week long scandal in the media, drink twice.Every time ministers get a pay rise following xxx years of no pay rise, drink once. Every time the CPF contribution rate is cut, drink twice. Every time the GST rate is raised and income tax for the top brackets cut, drink thrice.Every time citizens get lectured for being choosy or grumbling, drink once.Every time someone talks about Asian Values, drink once. Every time someone talks about the decadent West, drink twice. Every time we want to emulate the decadent West, drink thrice.Every time a new ERP gantry goes up, drink once. Every time public transport fares go up, drink twice. Every time COE prices drop to S$50, smash the bottle.Every time someone talks about radical English-educated intelligentsia or ivory tower academics, smash the bottle over said someone's head.Every time a Progress Package or something similar is announced, buy more alcohol in preparation for more drinking ahead.Every time the PAP wins an election despite high Opposition rally turnouts, discontent from many, promises that the tide will turn this time and to cries of "never again!", finish the whole bottle!If alcoholic liver cirrhosis is added to the already insanely large appendix of 'diseases you cannot claim Medishield for', jump off a building. Okay offical line out.... Official description of The Young Republic The Young Republic is a private mailing list set up in October 2003 to discuss political and social issues. Most of its members are Singaporean. >4) What is the significance of Young Republic to you and to other young>Singaporeans? What the Young Republic represents I think is an experiment to build a community for young people interested in Singapore's political and social development. It provides a forum for young Singaporeans to test their ideas, to share their ideas, and be prepared to debate and defend them.It also represents a way to make free discussion more mature in Singapore. From the heated and passionate tone of some of the emails making up the discussions, a casual observer may commentators that the commentators with the most serious disagreements would kill each other if they saw each other on the street. Yet very often it is the exact opposite which is closer to the truth. I think that encouraging this sort of culture is healthy in Singapore's development. A reply to the opinion below ( read the below opinion too! ) Young Republic is fair and balanced. Here is another view on the issue: =====================================================Your five-page rhetoric is mostly just that - rhetoric. Plus your claims that you are not anti-PAP are really, really convincing. I have not fallen for the "media tripe", neither do I believe Gomez is dishonest just "because Inderjit Singh and Wong Kan Seng say so". Nor do I assume any nobility in PAP's words and actions during this election campaign - there is no doubt that they are trying to assassinate Gomez's character. But that is hardly relevant. What I have done, basically, is made a common-sensical evaluation of Gomez's honesty as a human being, which, to me, is important in deciding whether or not he deserves election (not that I'm an Aljunied voter - I'm just making a hypothetical point). Despite your five-pager, there is actually some objective evidence regarding the events of the past week that we possess. We have: 1. The videotape of what happened at the ELD last Monday 2. The transcript of the conversation between Gomez and the ELD official 3. Inderjit's (and his fellow PAP man's) account of his conversation (which has yet to be challenged by Gomez) 4. Gomez's own apology 5. Sylvia Lim's non-backing of Gomez's account of what happened on Monday (he claims she saw him hand in the forms) You talk about objectivity, Ben, but you have chosen not to analyse the hard evidence that we have regarding the man's integrity. From the evidence above, we can at least infer that Gomez lied about 2 things - (1) that he handed in the form and (2) that Sylvia Lim had corroborated his claim that he handed in the form. But let us first assume he was not lying in all the circumstances above. If this gives us a better explanation of the events of the past week, then we might be tempted to accept this hypothesis. If we assume he has been truthful (i.e. he was indeed distracted at the time and had subsequently given only honest, albeit false, replies), we are faced with at least two problems that defy our logic. 1. He claims during the conversation with the ELD official (before he became aware of the CCTV recording) that Sylvia Lim had corroborated his claim that he had handed in the form. If this were so, why is Lim evading reporters' questions and refusing to give a committal answer as to whether or not she had indeed given Gomez such a corroboration? If she had indeed corroborated his version of the events, then it only makes sense for her to support him by saying, perhaps, that she was also mistaken. As it stands, her non-backing of his version casts more doubt on his character, which hardly helps her election chances. It is far more likely that he had not gained such a corroboration in the first place and was using her name without her knowledge during that conversation. 2. His response to Inderjit's questions are especially baffling. If he was indeed being honest and really thought he had handed in the forms, a more likely response when Inderjit asked him about the incident would go along the lines of: "You know, Inderjit, I really don't know what happened. I am sure I handed in the forms but they said I didn't." He chose instead to speak about it being a "wayang" and a ruse to fool the media about him running in Ang Mo Kio. A really odd answer for an honest man. Given these two problems, you can, of course, still choose to believe that he was honest. But it would require a greater stretch of your imagination. Common sense would point you to the more natural reading of the events - Gomez was dishonest. You talk about the PAP having the burden of proof and that Gomez was "innocent until proven guilty". I have two responses to this poor point. (1) the PAP has put out enough evidence and has already fulfilled their "burden", if they had any; and (2) "Innocent until proven guilty" is a principle that applies only to criminal charges. There is no criminal charge here. It is a question of the people evaluating Gomez's honesty. However, if you still insist on using the principle (why I do not know), I would submit that he has indeed been proven guilty from an initial state of innocence. That the PAP has a lot to lose in Aljunied and is using this opportunity to assassinate the character of an opposition member is not doubted. Nobody assumes the PAP is noble and altruistic. However, that hardly changes the fact that objective evidence points to Gomez's dishonesty on the matter, and his unwillingness to admit it (he still claims he was distracted and had made an honest mistake). The implications of his dishonesty is to be decided by the individual voter. Some will consider this level of dishonesty acceptable. Some will point out that no politician is honest anyway. These views are fair and can be debated. My point is, there are two issues at hand here: (1) Gomez was dishonest, and (2) Gomez does not deserve to be an MP because of his dishonesty. (2) is debatable, (1) is not - unless fresh evidence emerges to exonerate the man. One opinion from the Young Republic discussions The following is an opinion from one of our subscribers. As I repeat, IT IS ONLY AN OPINION BY SOMEONE.To be fair and balanced here, may I also add that the House Of Lords upheld then DPM Goh Chok Tong's side in a lawsuit launched against him by Jaybix. A full account of Charles Gray's cross examination can be found in Jaybix's book "make it right for singapore". And in this editor's opinion, GCT held a fairly consistent line then. If you're curious, ask Jaybix if he will supply you a copy the next time you see him outside your neighbourhood MRT station. Alternatively try looking for it in your neighbourhood public library ( surprise surprise! The NLB stocks Jaybix's books!)Remember, decide for yourself!Jie Kai. =================================================================BackgroundTo anyone who actually believes that James Gomez is dishonest and a liar etc.. I suggest that you attend the WP rallies and listen to what they have to say, instead of relying on the media for information. Please do remember that this is the media ranked 140th out of 167 in the world.I have followed every election keely since 1997 and I have also read extensively about the incidents in 1988 with regards to Francis Seow. While I am not so foolish as to take what the opposition says at face value, I urge everyone here not to do the same for the PAP. Read factual accounts, based on past trends and make your own judgement.The Defamation Suit TrapTo me, it is clear what the PAP is trying to do. They are trying to round on Gomez and assassinate his character. He is in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. Watch what happens. It is perfectly conceivable now that he says "I am not the liar, Wong Kan Seng in the liar" and I assure you that defamation suits galore will immediately start pouring in. This is based on the "doctrine of innuendo" that the Singapore courts have evolved, to which there is completely no objective test. I have provided 3 examples of precedents for this: 1. Tang Liang Hong In 1997, they labelled Tang Liang Hong "a dangerous man", a "racist", "Chinese chauvinist" etc, allegations which were all untrue. The fact is that Teo Chee Hean had heard Tang speak at a dinner function in 1994, where the latter urged more members from the Chinese community to step forward, as the number of English educated in the Cabinet was disproportionate to their actual number in society. Strange then that they waited 3 years to bring this up. Just like Inderjit Singh in this case, Teo was the 'whistle blower' whose intention was to warn Singaporeans of this so-called dangerous man.Tang refuted their claims by calling them 'lies', and this invited 13 defamation suits, with damages totalling some $6+ million, because this implied 'by innuendo' that the Ministers were morally bereft, dishonest and therefore unfit for office. Tang's assets were frozen BEFORE the court had reached a verdict, and his wife (who had nothing to do with it at all) was made a co-defendant in the case.2. J.B. JeyaretnamAt a rally during the same election, J.B. Jeyaretnam held up a police report which Tang had made against the PAP leaders for slandering him and tarnishing his reputation. Police reports are supposed to be confidential. However, Wong Kan Seng retrieved the police report (so much for the separation of powers) and passed it on to Lee Kuan Yew, who released it to the press. Then 13 PAP leaders sued both Tang and Jeyaretnam for defaming them, by insinuating that the leaders were guilty of a criminal offence and therefore unfit for office.Jeyaretnam was also sued for saying "I have a police report which Mr Tang has made against Mr Goh Chok Tong.." because this was implying that Goh was a criminal and therefore unfit for office. In the first instance, the court awarded "derisory damages" to Goh because it held that the lawsuit had been brought frivolously. "Derisory damages" amounted to $20,000 - hardly "derisory". This was largely due to Goh admitting, under cross examination from Charles Gray QC (now Mr Justice Gray) that he had had "an excellent year", in contrast to his claims in his affidavit that his reputation, both locally and internationally, had been severely impugned by Jeyaretnam's words. Interesting then that the trial judge, Rajendran J, was subsequently removed, and Mr Justice Gray is now barred from appearing as counsel in Singapore courts because he is a person of 'questionable moral character'. Goh appealed against the judgement of Rajendran J on the basis that the damages awarded were "manifestly inadequate", and the Court of Appeal duly increased the sum ten-fold, to $200,000. Jeyaretnam, who had already paid off millions in damages, still remains an undischarged bankrupt to this day.3. Chee Soon JuanDuring the 2001 elections, Chee Soon Juan asked Goh Chok Tong during a community walkabout, using a loudhailer, "Prime Minister, where is the money?" This was held to be an insinuation that Goh was corrupt, dishonest and unfit for office. Duly, Chee was made to pay $500,000 in damages, and, as the court held in a 'summary judgement' earlier this year, was subsequently made a bankrupt. How convenient that the elections were to be held this year, eh?Can you not notice the trend here?I am not anti-PAP in my personal political outlook, but I believe that their politics of slander and character assassination are most unbecoming of a Government who has accomplished so much. There is no doubt in my mind that Wong Kan Seng, Lee Kuan Yew and George Yeo et al are trying to bait Gomez into making one of those "implicitly" defamatory remarks so that they can destroy him once and for all, because thus far, all of the Workers' Party leaders have been very astute in terms of making their public comments. What good is Lee's "dare" to Gomez to sue him, when it is unequivocally clear that Lee effectively owns the courts? The incident involving the Cheng San polling centres in 1997 and then-AG Chan Sek Keong has been given sufficient consideration in another thread, and shall not be discussed further. Wong Kan Seng noted that Gomez's apology "had been drafted by a lawyer" and was therefore "insincere". He means that Gomez's apology is overly tactful, and as a result, the PAP has little room with which to rub further salt in his wounds. I believe Gomez has, given the cirumstances, acted very prudently in doing so.Now, they are trying to bait Sylvia Lim and Low Thia Khiang. If you read their latest response, again they have been very careful. Low merely says that he never planned to field Gomez in Ang Mo Kio. He never expressly accused anyone of lying, nor did he even go so far as to say that "what the PAP says is untrue". What else do you expect him to do, with the threat of the cripping defamation suits loomimg over his head?Refusal to Engage Policy PointsIt is also telling that the PAP has steadfastly refused to debate the WP's policy points. They refuted the WP's manifesto saying it was "dangerous" but without giving any specific details of why this would be so, save the same old rhetorical arguments as to why GRCs are important, why government-led unions are important. In fact, in response to WP's suggestion that the PAP gets out of the unions, Lee Hsien Loong merely gave examples of other parties in other countries that are linked to the unions, and took a humourous jibe at the fact that the WP was not befitting of its name "Workers' Party". They also did not respond to Perry Tong's points about healthcare, I have had the privilege of listening to sound clips of his speech, and I think they are very sound policy suggestions.They said that the policy of free healthcare has been proven to be disastrous overseas due to long queues (I presume they are referring to the NHS, and they are right) but that was never Perry Tong's point. They failed to respond to his suggestions to lower GST on medical supplies and to set up a medicine manufacturing hub in Singapore to both lower the costs of medicine and to create more jobs. And they repeatedly accuse the WP of failing to suggest ways to create more jobs. Their response to other points in relation to public transport have also been dealt with only in passing, in a dismissive manner rather than substantively. Unsurprisingly, the proposals made by Perry Tong (who is a Berkeley grad and a management consultant) and Tan Wui-Hua (who is CFO of a billion dollar company) have been given almost no airtime, with the media instead choosing to focus on the Gomez "scandal".Question of IntentionAs to those who believe that Gomez is truly dishonest, an electioneering rat, and a person of dubious moral character, I have this question to ask. Where is the evidence that this is so? Because Inderjit Singh and Wong Kan Seng say so? If you were to watch the video recordings, what do they actually show? Nothing, other than the fact that Gomez indeed placed the forms in his bag, and questioned the Elections Department about the submission of his forms.Now, why do you think the PAP has come out and 'exposed' Gomez? In order to warn Singaporeans of this dangerous man who is out to harm them at his own expense? Has it never occurred to you that the PAP is a politicial party trying to win an election, and that there is a realistic chance that they may lose Aljunied GRC?Has it never occurred to you that this outcome would be unfavourable to them?I cannot believe, for the life of me, how some people actually believe that the PAP is 'exposing' Gomez out of altruism and goodwill. So, when Gomez does something, it is serving his own selfish ends, but no PAP member would ever do such a thing? Please stop believing the 140th ranked Singapore media, and have a look at the rallies, the independent political blogs, and internet forums to get the true 'feel of the ground'. The media has lionised the PAP leaders and made them appear to be larger than life, but at the end of the day, we musn't forget that Wong Kan Seng and George Yeo are as much politicians as James Gomez is . At this point, it is their word against his, and I am choosing to believe his account, not because I am biased against the PAP, nor because I am outraged at the sheer disgracefulness of what they are doing, but because I have seen this happen many times before, and based on track record, past evidence and trends, I am inclined to believe that they are assassinating Gomez's character in order to gain political mileage, or rather, to destroy the WP's political mileage (which has become rather significant in recent months).Objective TestIf we were to apply the 'Objective Test' to this incident, that is, what would a reasonable-thinking, objective third party think -1. Is Gomez trying to orchestrate an elaborate and deceitful plot in order to discredit the entire elections department in order to gain political mileage?OR2. Did he genuinely forget to submit his forms?I believe most reasonable thinking people would go with the latter. The former is hard to believe because so far in this election, the WP's main issues have been policy ones, unlike the SDP who have been focusing their efforts on disparaging the PAP's underhand tactics. The WP has taken jibes at these underhand tactics, primarily the use of upgrading to entice voters, but they have not made it their main election platform. I don't think Gomez would 'break ranks' with the party's stand, I think it appears that the WP is actually taking a very united stand this time round, and they seem determined to focus on 'bread and butter issues' as opposed to liberal ideals etc.Of course, Wong Kan Seng would tell you that the ENTIRE WP created this impression so as to deceive Singaporeans, and lull them into believing that they were genuinely concerned about their well-being, when in fact they are actually opportunists who are trying to get into Parliament by any means necessary. Even though Low has already said that ALL the WP candidates are prepared to lose. Now, to consider the second possibility. Is this even remotely as far-fetched as the scenario above?Have you never seen anyone insist to a teacher that "I am sure I have handed my assignment in" only to realise that the assignment was actually in his bag?I think that comparison is much more apt than George Yeo's far-fetched and tenuous 'shoplifting' analogy, where the subject-matter is concerning theft, i.e. removing something, as opposed to failing to submit something. Burden of ProofLastly, why has the burden of proof now shifted on Low, Gomez and the WP to disprove the PAP's allegations? Whatever happened to the rule that a person was innocent until found guilty? So far, what conclusive evidence do we have that Gomez is guilty? A video which suggests nothing by way of wrongdoing, and a bunch of opinions from Wong Kan Seng, Lee Kuan Yew and Inderjit Singh, who are all PAP members, and who can all be presumed to have a conflict of interests with the subject-matter here.Just because a bunch of PAP politicians say so, does it mean Gomez is guilty?Look at Wong Kan Seng's "statement", upon more careful scrutiny I think you will find that he draws very tenuous links and fails to substantiate most of them. It is laced with self-righteous rhetoric, and fails to convince me that Gomez was indeed trying to orchestrate a plot to discredit the Elections Department and the PAP. One must realise that this is a very serious allegation to be making, so it needs to be well substantiated. I do not think the standard of proof has been at all satisfied here.So why has the burden of proof shifted to Gomez? Are you telling me that in Singapore law, there is a doctrine of "presumed" immorality/dishonesty just because someone is from a party other than the PAP? ConclusionFor voters who are in Aljunied and any other WP-contested constituencies, I must urge you to consider your vote very carefully. Do not be taken in by what the PAP and the sycophantic 140th ranked media says, research the facts and the precedents yourself, and if you arrive at the conclusion that you should indeed be voting for George Yeo, then so be it.But please do not distract yourselves from the main issues here. Please also familiarise yourself with what George Yeo et al stand for, and compare this with what Sylvia Lim and the WP stand for. "If you are not of a certain economic class, then you shouldn't even be thinking about going to [the casino].. you should stick to 4D, Toto and Horseracing"This is what George Yeo said about whether Singaporeans would be allowed to visit the casino. In my honest opinion, it smacks of arrogance, haughtiness and elitism. As I've said, I am not a WP supporter nor am I anti-PAP, I personally take a more holistic view, that whatever benefits Singapore as a whole, ought to be done. I think Ngiam Tong Dow's interview posted in the other thread was spot-on. Singapore needs to be bigger than the PAP, and people need to accept that. I just think that it's dangerous for us media consumers to accept, at face value, whatever we are told.The PAP talks about making an informed choice, debating the bigger issues, "clean and fair elections", etc. Well, suffice to say that whoever has made those promises, has gone down more than a notch in my estimation. Why the rationale for the rules on internet broadcasting are not convincing As a registered overseas voter, I am following the upcoming elections closely.I wish to express my disagreement with the rationales given by the government for the general restrictions on internet publishing. In an answer to a question posed by Mr Low Thia Kiang in parliament on the 3rd of April 2006, Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts Dr Balaji Sadasivan identified several reasons why there are such restrictions.He said that "in a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debates could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse flush with rumours and distortions to mislead and confuse the public. The Government has always maintained that political debates should be premised on factual and objective presentation of issues and arguments. The regulations governing Internet campaigning have served well to safeguard the seriousness of the electoral process."He also said that "[w]e recognise that in our society, people will have their diverse opinion and some will want to share their opinion. But people should not take refuge behind the anonymity of the Internet to manipulate public opinion. It is better and more responsible to engage in political debates in a factual and objective manner". There are problems with this reasoning.It is true that generally, there is a lot of nonsense being said with regards to political issues on the internet. Much of this nonsense is also published anonymously. But is the average internet user really going to take such views more seriously than views which are published by writers who are willing to reveal their identities? Probably not.Moreover, many bloggers publish their personal details on their websites. They can hardly be described as anonymous. When they express their views on political issues, they are likely to do so responsibly. If they do not do so, they face liability from other areas of the civil law ( for instance, defamation) or the criminal law ( for instance, if they incite racial hatred).The requirement that discussions be made in a "factual and objective" also makes it difficult for any meaningful political discussion to take place. It is not clear what this requirement means. Does it mean that every time an internet user comments on a political issue, he needs to mention an alternative view? Or is it that an internet user must appear not to condone any particular view at all? Why the rationale for the rules on internet broadcasting are not convincing Part II The previous post was a draft letter to the Straits Times and Today. I shall further explain my viewpoint.Generally, if we ever need to advance rules against freedom of speech ( as Germany does with Nazi symbols and salutes- doing the Hitler salute in Germany can land you in a couple of years of jail!), the position we need to start from is that the benefits and necessity of freedom of speech are so overwhelming, that the reasons needed to control it need to be strongly compelling, and that the measures taken be no more than neccessary.Mad right wing punditry is one thing. Having press laws that would place me in possible criminal liability if I go ahead to strongly criticise either only the PAP's election manifesto or only the Worker's Party election manifesto between now and May 6th is another. For that might be construed as "party campaigning"!It also makes Singapore and Singaporeans a lot less politically savvy than they should be. What happens when do not have the right to even publish a reasoned case for or against a political party's platform? It affects decision making, simply because part of the process of coming to a reasoned decision is discussing what you have just heard. It seems wholly irrational, according to the mainstream view in Singapore anyway, that a convincing case necessarily is a demagogic case. Why are voters who may not have very much sympathies with any politicians at all being prevented from discussing and questioning what sort of work their members of parliament have been doing in their respective Government Parliamentary Committees?No wonder this election will inevitably see in Sembawang GRC, an automatic 25% of the vote for the SDP simply because no one during this period ( apart from PAP candidates of course) can criticise the SDP for its unneccessary and unhealthy advocacy of "martyrdom" politics. Conversely, there will probably be many voters in that contested GRC who may be under the illusion that the job of a member of parliament is nothing more than being a glorified city councillor. Not being able to publish critical reasoning on the issues has a detrimental effect.Take for example this whole quibble about whether Singapore has a "first world" government. Both the PAP and the WP can be said to be simply vague in expressing what they mean by this. I think for instance Lee Kuan Yew is probably correct in a sense in saying we have a first class government in terms of its efficiency ( no really shitty cock-ups like letting 1000 foreign prisoners out into the streets of singapore instead of undertaking a promise to deport them) and its current and foreseeable lack of corruption in the near future. Low Thia Kiang on the other hand seems to be saying that we don't have a first world government in the sense of inadequate internal checks in our constitution- in other words a government which really works only because it is governed by gentlemen.So there are real problems with these slew of restrictions on internet publication. You throw out intellegent commentary together with rubbishy commentary. Is that really what we want? Worse, what is available for legal publication is to my mind, often very insipid. And so we continue to get stupid letters from writers like Raymond Ng being published in our most respectable national newspaper. To show you how silly these letters can get, I am reproducing Raymond's letter in full below. As someone who is currently pursuing a university degree in Britain, you might disagree with my lack of respect, of course. TV forum with MM Lee shows English-educated S'poreans are westernised, lack Asian values. Fix the school curriculum I refer to the recent televised forum with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. Why should anyone be surprised about what happened? It is not a question of who's right or wrong. When you remove all OB (out-of-bounds) markers, you expect nothing less than a free-for-all discussion. Blaming the young participants in the forum is counter-productive and unfair. They genuinely believed they were doing their best in such a one-off opportunity with MM Lee in a televised dialogue. There are several conclusions we can draw from this forum. Firstly, some of our young, especially the English-educated, are not just modernised but also westernised. They lack knowledge of Asian values which older people acquire as they get older and wiser. Like our children, most of them do not understand their parents, take everything for granted and rebel when they get nagged. Most of them get over this phase when they grow up and settle down with children of their own. Secondly, no matter how mature a society is, especially a diverse one like Singapore, you need OB markers. Remove them totally and chaos will prevail. Just look at the other societies around us. Personal or group freedom prevails over national interest. The result is perpetual disruption to economic growth and social instability. I think the present government's policies are already in place insofar as the OB markers are concerned. What needs to be improved are Asian values studies in the English education curriculum. Chinese culture with strong Asian values are inherent in the Chinese language itself. In my opinion, most of the Chinese-educated are more likely to have a stronger feel of Asian values. Raymond Ng Chay Boon There are many things that are very, very wrong with this letter. I will just deal with two issues. Firstly the whole notion that there exists a set of values called "asian" values. As opposed to what? Decadent western notions of freedom and liberty? African values? Suffice it to say it is a very debatable point.One might even say that Mr Ng has painted a completely misleading picture of many societies where there there is a bias towards individual freedom. In my stay in England, and in my 30 days of travel around the Netherlands, France, Austria and Germany, I observed that these countries continue to be relatively at peace. I observed a large and noisy street protest during my stay in Paris, and Sorbonne university had to be barracaded off by the police. That hardly disrupted my holiday there at all.Indeed there are animal rights protesters making a lot of noise in the middle of my university town every week and guess what Mr Ng? Most people's lives are not really affected!This is not to say that Europe does not have its problems- it was somewhat eerie and depressing to observe a depopulating east German town like Chemnitz.The point still stands however, that letters published in the Straits Times are not necessarily the font of wisdom. As already has been demonstrated, the opinions expressed in the above letter are the font of stupidity. In Britain, Raymond's letter would probably be worthy of being consigned to a cruddy tabloid like the Daily Mirror or The Sun.I will end by concluding the following:1- The current rules as they stand totally deter Singapore based bloggers from saying even sensible things about Singapore politics. It is a source of national shame that everyone, even talkingcock.com and everyone who contributes to tomorrow.sg, is chickening out simply because the rules about what we cannot say are so unclear. For heaven's sakes, what do you have to do to fall below or reach the standard of "fair and objective" comment?2- What sort of action am I advocating? One thing that is clear is that I don't approve of breaking the law. What I am approving, and it is the only thing that I am affirmitively approving in my two posts, is for members of parliament passing a bill in parliament to CHANGE THE LAW in a constitutionally approved manner i.e. in a session in parliament.3- As I have already explained, I think the reasons that are given for the law are on the first level, not convincing enough on their own grounds to curtail freedom of speech. Even if one agrees that some level of control is desirable, the general scaring off of all political comment whatsoever DOES show that the effect of such laws has been disproportionate to the aims that it is trying to achieve.My name is Koh Jie Kai. Don't tell me I'm hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to "mislead the public". The public can jolly well make up its own mind as to whether I am making sense or not. Does this call anything to mind? VI.ii.2.17 The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the slightest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much east as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserable, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.VI.ii.2.18 Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the view of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spit of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accomodate themselves to him and not he to them. It is upon this account, that of all political speculators, sovereign princes are by far the most dangerous. This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them. They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment. When such imperial and royal reformers, therefore, condescend to contemplate the constitution of the country which is committed to their government, they seldom see any thing so wrong in it as the obstructions which is may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will. They hold in contempt the divine maxim of Plato*, and consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for the state. The great object of their reformation, therefore, is to remove those obstructions; to reduce the authority of the nobility; to take away the privileges of cities and provinces, and to render both the greatest individuals and the greatest orders of the state, as incapable of opposing their commands, as the weakest and most insignificant.* - that is, "never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents" (VI.ii.2.16) Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI.ii.2.17, 18 Heartfelt but naive letter TODAYonline: Do S'pore teens know they have it much better?Before I go on, the biggest difficulty that I have with this letter is that it could have been much much more. By simply focusing on economic needs being met and the subsequent tsk-tsk over ungrateful youths, the author fails to make the much larger point that this is then the time and perfect opportunity for self-actualisation to occur according to Maslov's hierarchy of needs.The answer to his question is not just going to be met with a "so what?". Yes, we should be thankful perhaps, but this is simply a naif and insipid approach.Letter from Harry ChiaMr Nick Danziger's selection of the photos, "So, who stole their smiles?" is a poignant reminder of the harsh and stark realities of life.As I read the narratives of each photo, I wonder how our teenagers, who, hopefully, would have picked up a copy of Today, felt.Their lives here are a paradise, compared with those in the photos.Sure, but by comparison, we live in relative poverty compared to the Swiss.The teens here have everything cut out for them — they are able to go to school regardless of their parents' socio-economic status and given every opportunity to excel. Our environment is clean and most of us have a roof over our heads.Yes, granted that this is good, it's uber simplistic. Let's take each of the claims and examine them to observe if we should be doing better (and that's what the letter should be advocating instead of some argument from gratefulness)1. Right to education, article 16. It's great, as long as you don't mind giving up your right to expression (including dress) and freedom of speech within the context of having an education. Same price to pay it may seem, but dangerous in the long run2. Opportunity to excel. Not a constitutional right perhaps but the notion of meritocracy is highly valued. But for meritocracy not to become a self-perpetuating elitist cycle, there must be equality of opportunity and socio-economic background must not be an advantage nor a disadvantage. Early streaming and the misallocation of resources towards the 'smart' starts the cycle early and entrenches it. 3. Our environment is clean. Very true.4. Most of us have a roof over our heads. *Cough* No right to property people. There are very sound economic reasons for it. And the legal intricacies of Eminent Domain would make most law students cry even more during Public Law and Property Law anyway.The kids here are relatively safe from abduction and child prostitution.I'm not sure why this is here but I presume it is in contrast to the rest of SEA.The fact is, it's got to do with economic poverty. Children don't choose to become prostitutes but are often forced to do so due to economic destitution or organised crime rings which can only flourish in such destitution. I'm all for fighting to end the prostitution but just make sure there are jobs waiting for them ya?Life in Singapore is more than good.So let's make it better. Now that we have achieved a great measure of economic prosperity, it's time to consider society and self-actualisation. Poverty in the midst of plenty is a blight upon the conscience of society and welfare is simply the recognition of the basis of Humanity (and equality of dignity of all persons. There are economic arguments to be made but it would be kinda crass here). It's also about putting all those educated people to use and spur the notion of civil and civic society, rights and freedoms and the ultimate notion that the person herself is a person and that no other person or organisation should be able to strip that away from her. Absolute Idiocy, or The Benefits of the Singaporean Education System A: Today I accompanied my brother to collect his O-level results. At the foyer of his alma mater, Bowen Secondary School, a crowd was gathered. We thought that something might have happened and like any normal nosey Singaporeans rushed forward to the rabble. It turns out that the crowd consisted of students who had been prevented from entering school premises, for unsalubrious reasons such as 'inappropriate dress (e.g. spaghetti straps and short skirts)', having 'dyed or punkish hair', or (get behind me Satan!) wearing slippers.Now this would be fine, except that these students weren't allowed, at all, to enter the school hall to collect their results at the set time (1430hrs). They were told that they could only return at 1600hrs if they wanted their results. Meanwhile, they were being shooed off campus by the security guards, despite the fact that it was raining and that the closest shelter was a block of HDB flats about 5 minutes away.The question is, of course, why? Apparently because the school did not want to associate its own image with a bunch of hooliganish thugs (of course, hooliganish thugs always dye their hair and have 'punkish' coifs). Fine and good. But why then must these students be excluded from the excitement that is supposed to be their result-collection? Imagine the prospect of, after almost three months, returning to your old school, wanting to enjoy a small chat with your teacher, celebrate the achievements of the school with your classmates, mourn your losses - only to be stopped rudely at the foyer and be denied entry. Imagine now that 60 or 70 of your peers are also denied entry: in a class of 400, that's about 15%.This pissed me off greatly, needless to say. Brainless policies with little grounding in a sense of utility often do. First of all, what gives the school control over their ex-students? To disallow them from collecting their results in a timely fashion and to exclude them from school activities just because they have not adhered to a strict dress-code is, to my mind, just absolutely brainless. Of course, this would be more acceptable (but still unacceptable) had they informed the students earlier: according to students, however, they had only been informed the day before by SMS. The dress-code bias is plainly pointless: these are no longer students of Bowen Secondary School, but young adults and, dare I say, members of society at large. They should not be subject to the rules of the school any longer, and to punish them for not doing so by barring them from collecting their results on time and making them wait another one and a half hours serves absolutely no purpose at all. To preserve the pristine image of the school is, to my mind, not good enough a reason: this plays merely into the hands of the superstitious and unenlightened who still believe that dyeing one's hair a certain colour or keeping one's hair long or dressing down is somehow evidence of unsavoury character. Furthermore, no objective standard was employed in turning the students away: some students with short-ish hair, but who had gelled it up in a spiky fashion (which I assume was confused with 'punkish') were also prevented entry by the Operations Manager of the school.To turn students away based on external appearance is silly, but to turn them into the rain is just gratuitously cruel. The students were told to leave because the gates were being shut (they were not, by the way), and many made their way to the HDB flats across the street or went for roti prata at the hawker centre across the street. Some even desperately went to the nearest barber to get their hair cut so that they could collect their results as soon as humanly possible.So what's been achieved by this feat of brainlessness? This hasn't proven any point, and even if it has, it probably was a very trivial, insignificant and extremely petty point. Nor is this going to endear the students to their alma mater. Nor will it please parents, some of whom (like my own mother) was dressed inappropriately (my mother was in a spaghetti strap), and sported hair that was not typically Asian.'...Our scholars have also risen up the ranks to take up leadership positions in schools. Some outstanding examples include Mdm Yeo Teck Yong, Principal of Tanjong Katong Girls' School, Mdm Soh Wai Lan, Principal of Anderson Secondary, Mr Paul Chua, Principal of Bowen Secondary and Mr Sin Kim Ho, Principal of Greenview Secondary. Each of them was amongst our youngest officers to be made Principals. They are worthy role models for our scholarship recipients, and indeed, for all young teachers too...' -Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister for Education, 4 Aug 2005Mr Paul Chua, principal of Bowen, has obviously had the advantage of a good education, and is supposed to be young and hopefully dynamic. Yet his school policies reflect a startling and disturbing lack of sense as well as a rather reactionary bent: could we read into this a certain general malaise that infects Singapore? All things bad about Singapore - silly prejudice, petty showings of power, pointless enforcement of a draconian sense of 'discipline' as shown by one's dress sense, the treatment of the student (or even ex- student) as criminal - have been evinced by this. I can only hope that Mr Paul Chua is satisfied with himself: I know about 60 or 70 adolescents who aren't.B: I agree with Jireh's comments on this issue. The actions of Bowen Secondary were needlessly cruel. If the school wanted its former students to come back in proper dress ( and I do not disagree with this in principle), advance warning about this should have been given long before. The school should not be able to rely on its own half hearted failure to inform its students.C: I seem to recall that some of the RI students in my batch who had come back to collect 'O' level results with dyed hair were also warned about their inappropriate attire, but whether they were turned away or not I do not know. What I recall is that no advance notice was given to us about proper attire.D: I understand the desire for even ex-students to be well groomed, but to prevent them from collecting their results? and turning them out into the rain?that's just cruel.E: That's what you get when you send ex-SAF/Police personnel to schools when they retire.F: Just a technical question: if there were so many of them who were turned away, why didn't they just physically force their way into the school, greeting the security guards who tried to stop them with loud 'fuck yous'? This surely is what I would have done. By the way a similar incident occured a few years ago at St Andrews Sec School. A boy who was openly gay had his O level cert withheld from him for no reason, forcing his parents to go to the school to collect them, only to be greeted by a Principal who was more interested in informing them about their son's sexual orientation (they already knew anyway but whatever) than about his academic performance. This is chronicled somewhere in Yawning Bread, but I'm too lazy now to look for the exact post.G: The intrusiveness Singapore's schools feel the need to display in regard to clothing, whether in respect of students or ex-students, has truly baffled me for some time now. What purpose does this serve beyond the satisfaction of a fetishistic desire for compliant uniformity? (Perhaps a principle underlying any kind of 'uniform,' tellingly named, but some sense of proportion wouldn't go amiss.) F's suggested response will be strongly encouraged from any children I might ever have who attend school in Singapore. I'll be the parent from hell!H: Maybe to maintain a sense of decorum? Wearing what befits the occasion can be a show of respect to your own school as well as to the teachers who are handing the results out to you.There is a dress code for every occasion. Why should school events be singled out for criticism?D: Because they're Singaporean kids and such a blatant disregard of authority figures is unthinkable. Poor kids. And anyway, so what if they physically forced their ways into the school? Could they physically demand their results?While I don't agree with the school rules, I do understand where they're coming from. School uniforms ensure students are neat and well-dressed (ignoring students who alter their uniforms), which is arguably something we'd like our children to learn. That's why I believe that school uniforms should be clean and tidy at all times. But as a teacher, I would ignore things like dyed hair and pierced ears and even tattoos (unless it's a huge one proclaiming his membership in a gang...). Also, being forced to always be neat instills discipline, which I still consider a necessary duty of schools. Opposition coverage in the Straits Times A: The extent of Sumiko Tan's political analysis for why people vote for particular opposition candidates appears to be that they are "generally described as credible" and she "suppose[s] they must have done a good job" to be re-elected. Apart from the remote possibility that people are "disaffected with the ruling party's policies," said policies and said reasons for disaffection being entirely unspecified and indeed almost, it would seem, inconceivable, the main reason for voting opposition is "for opposition's sake." Aren't journalists supposed to be not completely ignorant about what they write about? If she has no idea why people voted for the opposition, might it not be a good idea - indeed, might it not actually be her job description - to ASK THEM? I guess fact-finding and actual investigation have no part to play in a responsible, nation-building press. B: If Mediacorp and SPH were still together, I'd advise Channel 5 to put together a S'pore version of The Daily Show. Not only would ST journalists be excellent replacements for Ed Helms and Stephen Colbert (who after all uttered the famous line 'I know some of you fact-checkers out there in the fact-o-sphere may point out that I'm just making this up, but I know in my gut that capital punishment is the number one reason why I haven't murdered anyone yet'), ST circulation might increase once people realise the immense comedy value of its columns.C: Consider:There are actually many bright and lucid people we know who are actually working in the national papers.However insightful journalism continues to not be in sight.Therefore, one is led to provisionally suspect that the less one actually thinks in the editorial room, the better the chance one gets of getting promoted.D: Wouldn't an easier analysis come from looking at the newspapers which win awards for journalism i.e. actual writing than for those 'gorgeous' newspaper designs? If so, then I submit that the reason why BT actually has stuff and editorials worth reading is because it has competition from FT and ASWJ Incest and morality I don't have moral issues with incest per se, provided:(a) There are no children, since said children are very likely to suffer, and(b) There is no coercion or undue influence (i.e. grooming and suchlike) involved. (Note this rules out incest involving children if we follow the common legal assumption that children under the age of majority simply cannot be deemed to consent to sexual acts.)As a matter of policy enforcing these conditions may be difficult if not impossible - for instance, all forms of contraception have been known to fail, and in such circumstances where the likely suffering of the resultant child will be great, the fulfillment from a sexual relationship needs to be set against that potential suffering in making policy.In the case of coercion and undue influence, the difficulties of enforcing this legally are even more trenchant - how does one investigate what goes on within a family? How do we know that when someone, even a twenty year old, says - indeed, swears up and down until he or she is blue in the face - that daddy or mummy or big brother/sister didn't pressure him or her, that that isn't a lie borne out of familial loyalty? What about the avenues for subtle pressures, like being groomed from young for sex, that may never be articulable even to those in the situation?I cannot see any way around this problem and because of the huge potential for sexual abuse to be masked by a legalisation of incest, I can see grounds for a wholesale ban, regrettable though it may be for those adults who do indeed make honestly consesual and mutually respectful choices. These are also grounds, though, for simply raising the legal age of consent to incest to something like 25 - which doesn't rule out this sort of abuse, but, if we were to be honest with ourselves, there are very, very many similarly emotionally abusive "normal" relationships anyway. There are plenty of manipulative adults who dominate more dependent-minded adults and pressure them into sex that doesn't make them happy and isn't good for them. We have simply chosen to rule out criminalisation of such behaviour, in my view wisely, because of the judgment call that after the age of 16 people simply have to learn these things for themselves, and because adjudication by a state authority is simply too intrusive and well nigh impossible to do well.Other that the problem of children and the problem of abuse, however, I don't see that there are any moral issues with incest. It is not impossible, for instance, to imagine a brother and sister couple, separated as very young children, who meet each other as full-grown adults and develop an attraction towards each other under circumstances that are no different from those under which two strangers might meet, so that undue influence is not an issue. Moreover one of them might be clearly, provably sterile. I cannot imagine any meaningful objection towards that sexual relationship; we might feel unease or even a sort of visceral disgust at it, but frankly I find this to be true of huge numbers of "normal" sexual relationships in any case (I don't think very many people are -not- disgusted at the image of their own parents having sex, just to name a common example).Where would you draw the line personally, anyway, ***? Do you have issues with first cousins marrying? If not, where's the magic line?This post and the one below are posted on the request and suggestion of SM. Homosexuality: Nature or Nurture - the red herring Apologies for almost 5 months without postings. A recent post on homosexuality being due to nature or nurture:I've always thought the issue of whether homosexuality is "nature" or "nurture", "biology" or "choice", was a humongous red herring. Obviously anyone can make themselves have sex and/or develop domestic partnerships with people for whom they feel no particularly deep feeling or attraction whatsoever. For generations both men and women have been forced into arranged marriages of precisely that nature. Today, it continues in multifarious forms: traditional arranged marriages, bride trafficking, the polite prostitution of marriages for convenience, wealth and status.Asking why people feel deep affection and yearning for someone of the same (or different, for that matter) gender and classifying the answer as "innate" or "conditioned" isn't helpful. The fact is that people have sincere feelings of that nature, and that for many people the relationships they develop thereby are amongst the things that most make life worth living. How could it profit us to deny them? I can't imagine. ST Correspondent Detained by PRC (directly from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/29/AR2005052900986.html )Hong Kong Reporter Being Held By ChinaWriter Sought Records Of Secret InterviewsBy Philip P. PanWashington Post Foreign ServiceMonday, May 30, 2005; Page A01HONG KONG -- China has detained a prominent member of Hong Kong's international press corps who traveled to the mainland to obtain a collection of secret interviews with a Communist leader purged for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.Security agents apprehended Ching Cheong, chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, on April 22 in the southern city of Guangzhou, where he was scheduled to meet a source who had promised to give him a copy of the politically sensitive manuscript, according to the journalist's wife, Mary Lau.Lau said Chinese authorities warned her and the Straits Times not to disclose her husband's detention, and she stayed silent for weeks in the hope he would be released. She said she decided to go public last week after a mainland official told her privately that the government was preparing to charge him with "stealing core state secrets."If charged, Ching would be the second journalist for a foreign newspaper arrested by the government of President Hu Jintao in the past year. Zhao Yan, a researcher in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, was arrested by the State Security Ministry in September on similar charges and has been held incommunicado without trial since.The arrests could have a chilling effect on foreign news operations in China. The Chinese government often jails Chinese journalists and writers -- the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders says there are more journalists in prison in China than anywhere else in the world -- but in the past it has generally refrained from arresting individuals employed by foreign news agencies.The Straits Times, which has not reported the detention of its correspondent, said in a written statement Sunday that it had been told by the Chinese Embassy in Singapore that Ching "is assisting security authorities in Beijing with an investigation into a matter not related to the Straits Times.""Ching Cheong has served us with distinction as a very well-informed correspondent and analyst," the newspaper added. "We have no cause to doubt that throughout his stint of reporting and commenting on China, he has conducted himself with the utmost professionalism."There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.Ching, 55, a Hong Kong citizen and a permanent legal resident of Singapore, is widely considered one of the most knowledgeable correspondents covering China, and he enjoys extensive contacts in the government and military developed over a 31-year career.His detention could prompt an outcry in Hong Kong, where residents have complained since the return of the former British colony to Chinese rule in 1997 about their lack of consular protections when traveling on the mainland. Though China has granted Hong Kong residents some special rights and privileges, they are treated as Chinese citizens under international law.In his writings and in conversations, Ching has developed a reputation as a Chinese nationalist who favors the mainland's unification with Taiwan and objects to U.S. interference in the Taiwan Strait. He spent 15 years working for Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper with close ties to the Communist Party, but resigned in protest with 40 other journalists after the violent 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.Ching's detention appears to be related to a high-priority government investigation aimed at preventing the publication of a series of secret interviews conducted over the past several years with Zhao Ziyang, the former premier and party chief who opposed the Tiananmen massacre and died in January after nearly 16 years under house arrest.What Zhao said in those interviews is unknown, but months after his death, China's Communist leaders appear worried that his words might pose a threat to the party's grip on power by reviving memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre and triggering fresh demands for democratic reform.The interviews were conducted by Zong Fengmin, a retired party official and longtime associate of Zhao's who managed to visit the fallen leader regularly while he was under house arrest.In a memoir published last year, Zong quoted briefly from his interviews with Zhao and indicated he was preparing a second book titled, "Conversations with Zhao Ziyang in House Arrest." Ching was the first journalist to obtain Zong's memoir and write about Zhao's remarks.Reached by telephone in Beijing, Zong confirmed the government had pressured him not to publish a book based on his conversations with Zhao. He said he had not finalized the manuscript and expressed surprise that Ching might have been detained for trying to obtain it. He denied ever meeting Ching in person.Xiang Chuxin, Zong's publisher, said Chinese intelligence agents visited him at his apartment in Hong Kong in October and asked polite questions about Zong's memoir. But after Zhao's death on Jan. 17, police detained him in the southern city of Shenzhen and interrogated him for several hours in an attempt to discover who brought him the book, he said.Police also placed one of Xiang's mainland employees, Huang Wei, under house arrest for several weeks. Reached by phone, she said she gave a copy of the memoir to Ching at Zong's request. She also said she sent text messages to Ching's cell phone pleading for help while trying to evade the authorities, but added the police never asked about him when questioning her.Lau said her husband learned of Zong's second manuscript late last year and met with Zong's editor not long after Zhao's death. At the time, Zong's editor wanted to publish the manuscript but was worried security agents would intercept it if he attempted to use the same people who published Zong's memoir, she said. Ching then agreed to help bring the manuscript to Hong Kong, Lau said.Lau said her husband told her a source attempted to e-mail the document to him several times without success. Then, in late April, he received a call from someone asking him to travel to Guangzhou to pick up the manuscript, she said.Lau said Ching never disclosed the identity of the source to her and that she suspected Chinese security agents might have tricked him into traveling to the mainland. A day after he was detained, she said, he called her and arranged for his laptop computer to be brought to the mainland, too.Security agents have allowed Ching to call her four more times, she said. In the latest call, on Sunday morning, Ching urged her not to tell reporters about his detention. But when a security agent picked up the phone and invited Lau to come to Beijing to see her husband, he grabbed the phone and told her to stay in Hong Kong, she said."He told me to work on his behalf in Hong Kong," Lau said. "He told me to visit his mother and father more." Twins hit the streets with flyers to plead for convicted father's life Tuesday • April 12, 2005Jose Raymondjose@newstoday.com.sgWALK down Orchard Road at almost any time of the day and you are likely to be "accosted" by any number of people handing out flyers selling everything from shoes to timeshare properties.But yesterday, people outside Centre-point Shopping Centre received flyers from two teenagers with a serious message — a plea to help them save their father, Shanmugam Murugesu, from being executed after he was convicted and sentenced to hang last April for drug trafficking.Twins Gopalan and Krishnan Murugesu, 14, distributed more than 500 flyers detailing Shanmugam's plight yesterday on the advice of their father's lawyer.Shanmugam, 38, was sentenced to death after being caught with more than a kilogramme of cannabis at the Tuas Checkpoint on Aug 29, 2003. He has asked the President for clemency after his appeal was dismissed.On their lawyer's advice, the boys made their public appeal, hoping that members of the public would join their cause.Said Krishnan, a Secondary 3 student: "My parents are divorced and my father has been looking after us. My mother remarried, lives somewhere else and doesn't see us anymore. If he is hanged ... we will become orphans."The twins' grandmother, Mdm Letchumi Murugesu, has been looking after them since Shanmugam was imprisoned. According to the twins, Mdm Letchumi is unemployed and relies on handouts from the Singapore Indian Development Association to pay the bills.Said Gopalan, also a student: "My grandmother will not be around for much longer to care for us. What's going to happen to us after that?"We have taken our appeal to the streets to seek some compassion."The boys are hoping that the public can write to President S R Nathan to help their cause. In the flyer, there is also mention of a public forum this weekend where members of the public can sign a petition, which will be delivered to the President.Among the speakers scheduled for the forum are former Workers Party chief J B Jeyaretnam and Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan.Shanmugam's lawyer, Mr M Ravi, who is working the case pro bono, stressed that he was not trying to politicise the situation.He said: "Mr Jeyaretnam is only going to talk about the rule of law on the issue. It is rather hard to keep Dr Chee out of this because he is willing to go against the use of the death penalty."But there are other speakers who, like me, do not have any political inclinations and are only doing this because their consciences tell them to."From the Today newspaper As much as I know about how hundreds of thousands of Chinese were brutally tortured and killed in the course of Japanese atrocities during World War II, and as much as I would agree that the Japanese do have a problem in fully admitting that they really did a lot of awful things in the course of a particularly gruesome war all over Asia 60 years ago, China has a problem. Let me refer to you to a historical story which happened during during the Warring States period. The king of Yue gets captured by the Wu state and gets imprisoned and humiliated for 20 years. After that, he returns to Yue, builds up his state, and then, in memory of the bitterness and humiliation of his treatement under the Wu kingdom, he comes in with his army to annihilate the whole country. And that, pretty much sums up the attitude of China to the rest of the world today. It is a zero sum game in which "The winner becomes the king, and the loser becomes the prisoner". Moreover in the long course of Chinese history, there has been little evidence to suggest that the China would treat weaker opponents with magninamity. As popular Think about it. Suppose China eventually does reach the superpower status of America- and my feeling is that it can probably do it. What would be its most likely fundamental policy in relation to the rest of the world then? Would it be "Let's use this power to help bring peace and prosperity to the rest of the world?" Or would it be "Aha! We are very powerful now. Now is the time to wreak revenge on Japan, on America, on Britain, on France- heck just about everybody who has made us lose face in the past for over 200 years of our history! Haha!" The evidence at the protests sadly, does suggest the latter. Think about it. We hear breathtakingly petty justifications for the boycott of Japanese goods- because apparently there is a 20 billion dollar yuan surplus in favour of Japan. Never mind the economics of comparative advantage for now. The problem is attitude. The Chinese would do well to remember the story of another people, with whom they are connected in mysterious ways. Remember 1999? You know, the year when the United States bombed your embassy in Belgrade due to faulty intellegence (thanks to the Iraq war, we now all know that these bumbling fools were probably actually teling the truth). If you recall, that intervention was in favour of Kosovars who were getting ethinically cleansed by Serbians. And among the other justifications that ultra-nationalist Serbs used to justify killing Kosovars (who mostly happened to be muslims) was an almost long forgotten battle in 1389 when they got whacked by Turkish invaders. I can very well assure young Chinese citizens that if they fail to put their nationalist feelings in perspective, the end result will be a great many lives lost and a great amount of blood shed. It will be genocide and ethnic cleansing on a scale the world has never seen before. You will be using the patriotic poetry of Chinese heroes like Yue Fei to eat the meat and drink the blood of other human beings. Given, as everyone would agree, the several thousand year history of Chinese civilisation, the only question that remains is "What grivience shall the Chinese nurse first? " I can assure you Chinese citizens too, that it is not just the Japanese who are disturbed by Chinese behaviour- it is just about every nationality in the world whose ancestors have, at some point or another, offended the sensibilities of China. You are no longer proving anything. You are merely scaring the whole world. Reform of the Penal Code BBC NEWS | Europe | Analysis: Turkish penal reform woesEven assuming that the penal code as it stands goes through in the near future i.e. after the two month delay, it will nevertheless still be more progressive than the penal codes in our Austral-Asian Region, including in certain respects, our local one.All references are to the Penal Code (Cap. 224, 1985 Sing. Rev. Ed.) unless stated. Check out statutes.agc.gov.sg for a public domain copy.In particular:1. Marital Rape exemption (s. 375, the exemption reads: Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 13 years of age, is not rape) Still in Singapore despite AWARE's valiant attempt (albeit a little misguided) to remove this exemption. The focus should be on reforming rape laws not removal of this exemption per se.2. Honour killings specifically removed as a defence to murder (s. 300) under provocation (special exception 1: Culpable homicide is not murder if the offender whilst deprived of the power of self-control by grave and sudden provocation, causes the death of the person who gave the provocation, or causes the death of any other person by mistake or accident.)Australia still allows for it unfortunately (case of immigrant Turkish father killing daughter for 'dishonouring' family). If it happens in Singapore, it would not be too difficult to get around the statute I suppose because of the Common Law test of the Reasonable Person.To quote the BBC, the Penal Code will generally be less sexist and less discriminatory against women. In Singapore, the code discriminates against men particularly in terms of sexual offences. Note: I don't wish to discuss at this point whether this discrimination has the effect of getting more convictions or if it encourages women, whose modesty has been outraged or whom have been raped, to come forward. I simply want to comment on the law as IT IS.So what is the situation as it stands locally?Rape is a male thing: As the Penal Code defines it, it constitutes a man inserting his penis into a woman's vagina (the literal stautory meaning of sexual intercourse) without her consent. So it effective denies that a male can get raped by a female (Australian courts have recognised this possibility). This sexist mindset also has the undesired effect of making women perpetual sexual victims in need of the law's aid.Furthermore things that we would ordinarily consider as rape i.e. forced non-consensual insertions (penetration) of foreign objects into another's orifice DOES NOT constitute rape. Instead it comes under Outrage of Modesty (s. 354), Insult to Modesty (s. 509 only applicable to women mind you), Unnatural Offences (s. 377) or voluntarily causing hurt (s. 321 and note: NOT grievous hurt, which requries very specific serious types of injuries).All these are highly unsatisfactory because their maximum sentence is generally that of a year or two so unless the prosecutor can make twenty charges stick you'll never hit the maximum sentence for rape. So, there are a number of nasty cases floating around which the criminal never got his just deserts e.g. forcing the victim to suck on a dog's penis. Or forced fellacio, or sticking implements up the victim's vagina and/or anus.So if we adopt the more refined definition of rape as most jurisdictions have done, then we will not encounter this problem anymore. In addition, we'll get various fringe benefits like making the law more gender neutral. The News (Until further notice, all references here shall be made to the print edition of the newspapers.) On this April Fool's Day, here are the more interesting things gleanedPg. 33: Chua Mui Hoong argues for "No double standards please, we're S'poreans". Thinks that the government gives leeway to foreigners to express themselves, while denying the same to Singaporeans. I quote:"It's obvious that the permitting of double standards is Singapore's way of having its cake and eating it too. It wants a morally conservative society, yet aspires to be tolerant diverse and open enough to be a global talent capital""While some locals may be offended by 'odd things', the truth is that other locals want to be the ones doing 'odd things' too...I value the option for myself and fellow citizens to be able to do so."I would go on to add that it is clear that, from the government's attitudes towards many issues, including the casino project, homosexual community, the film making industry, Myanmar's human rights abuses; indeed, from its ambiguous position on allowing foreign NGOs to stage protests against the IMF and the World Bank meetings next year, its primary interest is financial.The government's policy seems to be to extract the maximum ounce of profit out of each and every one of the situations mentioned above, while appeasing the homophobic and/or anti-democratic prejudices of a powerful and/or vocal section of the population. How very ethical.We have already noted, in the course of the discussions on this mailing list, the government's treatment of the homosexual community as nothing less than a cash cow to make sure that gay foreigners do not lack entertainment on this little island. Indeed, it could even be cynically postulated that the latest flurry of concern over HIV