Ironic Prejudice

in the Daily Nurture
I traced out five little Stars and a Crescent
on red-penciled paper
then taped it on a stick;
"you are Singaporean."
she told us with knowing eyes
and the stature of high-heeled shoes

and this — I kept in my heart.

across the Peaceful Ocean and
across the Great Grass Expanse
I approached Them
expecting amicability;
"he has Cooties!"
she informed her companions
hazel eyes gleaming disgust
coffee-coloured hair turned up with indignation

and this — I kept in my heart.

in a teeming hallway
filled with footprints of boots
that had been in mud, slush and snow
he came up to me and said
"why don't you go back to China?"
his head of spiked blond hair
agitated in my direction
smirking with his blue eyes
while at this witty remark
his comrades found delight

and this — I kept in my heart.

in a class that taught as a second language
The Language that was my first
I read aloud material mired in fantasy Cathay;
and when a misconception I rejected
for the umpteenth time
she told me with her red-tinted hair
and raspy self-indulged voice
"look, I know over in Indonesia they...."
her green eyes surprised
at an exasperated protest

and this — I kept in my heart.

back in the land of my nationality
where I struggled to find my Home
I retained an Element
which distinguished me from my own
she told me with her black-coloured hair
and heightened voice of irritation
"can you stop speaking in your fake accent?"
an exchange of Looks circulated
around the project table

and this — I kept in my heart.

an Examination and a graduation
a choosing of a place
I pass by a walkway
that has never seen ice or snow
they inquired in their various coloured hairs
and various skins of dark to light
"hey Slanger. why do you slang?"
I reciprocated an indignation
that I once saw so long ago

and this — I kept in my heart.

but what hurts me the most is
when he told me with his combed blond hair,
fell complexion and crying blue eyes
"you are so racist!"
in that same hallway which never saw snow

it was a sob that I could not quell
because it was true.

and this: I keep the most in my heart.

The nature of property

I remember reading a book in third grade by Natalie Babbit called Tuck Everlasting. In it were some pretty heavy treatments of philosophy for a children's book, but there is a question I still remember seven years on. When you are given a deed to own land, do you own it all the way to the core of the Earth, or do you only own the few inches of soil where most ants will never have the knowledge of your existence?

It is my opinion, that as technology progresses, we will only have more challenges at the conception of property. This is probably where my political stance shows, but here I argue not for its radical abolition or conscious redistribution. Rather, like many concepts we hold with sanctity, it requires redefinition as time progresses. A proper definition after all, is needed to achieve justice.

One only needs to look at file-sharing and the almost sheer impotency of the RIAA, World Trade Organisation and the other various authorities to put a stop to it. "Information wants to be free", goes the famous cry. But at the same time we must ensure that thinkers and artists are rewarded for their effort and their intellectual creation, or otherwise no one would bother to create such works.

In Disney's Pocahontas, our young heroine is horrified at the idea of owning land. How is it possible to own a demarcated plot, its trees, its fauna, and its life? Ownership is a very crude concept. From the age of infancy, we sought to clame our stake on things, then were told off when we didn't share them. Some of us were also horrified at giving our things to that other person, who might not know how to take care of them. Property is a convenient designation of control. But it is becoming increasingly inaccurate.

Similarly, as we tamper into genetic engineering, cloning, or human gestation, former sacred boundaries of life are being desecrated. What makes us homo sapiens sapiens after all - our genome? But is the baby with cri du chat and a maimed fifth chromosome any less human? What about the cancer sufferers with rampant occurrences of Philadelphia chromosomes, or even entire chromosomes deleted from many of their cells? What if I genetically enhance my baby to become stronger, faster and perhaps to have longevity? Would he or she be still human? Will the human race perhaps split somewhere down the evolutionary tree in a few hundred thousand years, if we survive that long?

But as our knowledge of science increases, we know our objects aren't static. In a complete vacuuum, virtual particles abound. Chemical interactions originating from material from our neighbours affect our property without our persmission. Runoff, air pollution, acid rain, the nuclear reactor experiment from the boy scout next door. Can you own air? But at the same time we're selling oxygen tanks. Can you own a genome? But we're already patenting genes.

In the future, we'll have technology that will be able to copy conceptual information in a manner far more advanced than we have now. Copying music is possible because we can translate an analog signal into digital PCM information representing sound waves. But soon, perhaps we'll get to a transhumanistic stage where computers are more closely integrated with our minds. When we hear a piece of music, just as we can play it inside our minds, we can also merge it with other thoughts to create a new, derived work. With technological aid, we could send those sounds playing inside our heads to our friends.

Copyright law would say that is a derived work of the original work of the creator. This would mean it would be illegal to transmit what you think to your friends. Somehow that is disturbing - you are forbidden to express your thoughts. This arises because when we receive information, our brain is actively processing it, reworking it, transmitting it. Artists can get sued for merely including a few notes from a musical theme into their own works, perhaps out of inspiration.

But when we create intellectual works, is it necessary that we own it? Must we forbid each other to all transmit our thoughts? Would it not be better at a certain point to lift all restrictions for fear that this might be counter-productive in itself? And yet we must make sure the original intellectual thinkers are rewarded. Then you have patenting of software. Just because you invented the scrollbar, does it mean you have the right to make everyone who puts it in their programs pay royalties to you?

How do you own land? How do you own property? Perhaps as science advances, we might find that there are more to our physical objects than we think, as well.

the Casus Belli

you must let our Army through
so we can conduct a Search
for the instigators of this severe Wrong against us
where is Justice? how can you let this happen?
this is a grave Misdeed against our Sovereignty
an Offence to everything a nation holds sacred

you must suppress all radical elements at once
arrest their members and put an end to their activities
they create Terror and undermine Security
with their assassinations and kidnappings
and caused this very Calamity

is there no Law? is there no Order?
why do you allow them to conduct activities against us
with their their riotous demonstrations
their anti-sentiment propaganda
their slanderous newspapers
their subversive movements
their irresponsible Vitriol
in broad daylight, in the open Streets
within your Territory
while you turn a Blind Eye?

we really don't want another Incident
and we would all loathe another War
but if you don't comply
by ten o'clock tomorrow evening
we're afraid we will have but no Choice
but to fire upon you
then you'll experience our Shock and Awe

we tolerated your Regime
but we cannot allow this to happen
we will not helplessly stand by
we will not be afraid
to show our Strength
our Courage and our Resolve will show through
and it will cut like a knife

do you really want to risk the Consequences
and loss of your Industry
and put millions of lives under menace?
the sole Responsibility rests on you

so be it.

our Artillery shells fall today.



(Inspired by three Ultimatums: 1914, 1937 and 2003, and a bit of current events. A slight jab at censorship. I wonder how the Japanese kept it up as an excuse: "We're going to kill 200,000 of your troops at Shanghai, capture Nanjing and kill millions of your civilians. You can blame it on yourself that you didn't let us search for our single AWOL soldier on the other side of Lugou Bridge!")

Language cleansing — the evils of the Speak Mandarin Campaign

"Singapura, oh Singapura
little P-R-C, dot in the sea...
Singapura, oh Singapura,
Huayu cool, good for you and me..."


There was something I saw when I came back to Singapore in Primary Five, some five or six years ago. I remember I was passing by the old teacher's lounge in Fairfield Primary when I happened to see a creased pink sticker on the doorway, which read roughly (to memory):

"Speak Mandarin! Don't speak dialects!"

Along with a motif of a face, with sound waves emanating from the mouth. I was ignorant of the situation at the time, though I knew it was a sticker that came from the government. I had heard rudiments of the Speak Mandarin Campaign. This was quite early in my return then, and I had been reading in the infamous newspaper of the #140 - the Straits Times - about how some minister was declaring "the importance of speaking good Mandarin". With this sticker came along a bad impression of the dialects, and I thought the dialects were a form of "broken Chinese", ie. "bad Mandarin". Mandarin, Putonghua and Chinese are often used as synonyms but in truth there are important distinctions. They are not equivalent, and such usage only leads to more marginalisation of the minorities.

At the time, my impression of a dialect was something related only on the level of accent, vocabulary and choice of construction, such as on the level of Cockney. In addition my impression was that Singlish was a form of "broken English", rather than a creole distinct from English. There is the exasperation at the fact some of us use it in situations that demand a more formal register, since Singlish reflects a familiar attitude between its speakers. For that , a distinction of good code-switching should be made, not complete discouragement. If such a misconception can be put upon a Primary Five student, think about the repercussions for people who have been hearing it since Primary One. It is language cleansing and linguicide; even democide to a degree.

Cultures naturally change, and so do languages. Yet when they are changed by design one should be wary. On one hand, certain forms of social engineering and guidance have always been around and is acceptable — kindness movements and charity campaigns have always been around, and not just in Singapore. However, it depends on where the attempted engineering is coming from — whether it is government-based or from an activist group, and in what capacity.

Singapore's Kindness Movement in particular is peculiar. It is run by a government agency with taxpayers' money, but encourages the most obvious things that some Singaporeans otherwise seem to lack. In contrast the other kindness movements of the world tend to be run by activist or private organisations, and usually are non-profit. There was the NKF before all the scandal broke out - its success at the amount of funds it can raise in a single night should not be overlooked. If an actual genuine charity had that money...well, who knows, eh? For this particular case, things like governent-run kindness movements are more harmless than not: either they are effective to some degree, or don't work at all and are a waste of money. There isn't a lot of potential for significant disaster that can't be reversed. This is besides the fact of course, that it can be just plain mortifying to receive a daily dose of the campaign in front of tourists, and of the kind of mortification that makes you cringe when you hear something extremely hackneyed.

Language campaigns like the Speak Mandarin Campaign are horrifically different. The Speak Good English Movement is also an evil to a lesser degree.

You see, the measures the nation's rulers are willing to use to enforce these language campaigns are much much more draconian than the kindness campaigns. The Speak Mandarin Campaign differs from the Kindness Movement in terms of how far they were willing to go to achieve an objective. The difference is terrifying.

One might say, of course I'm naturally against the Speak Mandarin Campaign when I have lived in the United States for half of my childhood, unable to converse in Mandarin or any other language besides English and perhaps some French. Fine then, I am perhaps slightly anglophonically biased, but I do not think that this bias is because of sour grapes, however. I will clarify that I am trying myself to pick up Mandarin and the written Chinese language, being a Chinese Singaporean. One should also note that I'm against the Speak Good English movement as well, even though my proficiency with English is that of the opposite of Mandarin's.

The vicious thing about these campaigns are their desire to eliminate entire dialects, arguably languages in their own right, or at least sublanguages, from common use in Singapore. Their capacity is also very strong — the nation's rulers are willing to use censorship in order to enforce language policies.

The first obvious problem with the Speak Mandarin Campaign is its undue emphasis on Mandarin, and ignoring many of the minority languages. I wonder how the others feel about the sheer and unnecessary dominance placed upon Mandarin compared to the other languages. Note that Chinese Singaporeans are a rather interesting paradox because despite being part of the largest ethnic group in the world, they always seem to feel like underdogs, or at least I do. They're in an an effort to compete against China of late, more specifically the People's Republic of China. They already have their own identity which places the PRC nationals as foreigners and completely distinct, or even perceived as inferior.

When I was in a Singaporean kindergarten, I never seemed to wonder yet why such a far-away country like China could have such linguistic influence on my hometown, or know that Singapore's environment was unique. There was this children's book as I recall, expounding on mosques, temples and churches, and I thought the omnipresence of varied culture was like that everywhere else. Note I should make a distinction with "varied culture", in the sense of truly multicultural, rather than plural monoculturalism.

Naturally in the United States, religions that are not part of Christianity receive less attention. Going to the United States in fact made me feel more race-conscious. It was where my "English as a second language" assistant (which the school placed upon me in first and second grade, despite the fact I spoke fluent English and in fact I was losing my Chinese from then on) kept placing an emphasis that my ultimate origins were from the Orient, of China and Japan, and made me read books that dreadfully misinterpreted the cultures. India? Malay-Austronesian culture? Islam? Taiping Rebellion? Never covered, despite the fact I was Singaporean. Maybe they mentioned Islam once or twice in that book about the Crusades. I have never forgotten the bigotry of Cape Elizabeth and the United States. The United States is the place where it misperceived my race, distorted my identity and left me quite scarred. When I returned to Singapore I now had some of this race-consciousness with me.

Recalling this entire affair has made me realise that Singapore has already formed a large bulk of its own identity. There is no need for the government of Singapore to try to consciously shape it. Singapore is in fact very much unlike China and indeed very multicultural. Yet, the way the government goes about it, harping upon "racial harmony", is becoming hackneyed, oversimplified and misses key points. Being very unlike China, though with a majority Chinese population, Singapore is paradoxically becoming very much like China already by the efforts of its own government. The government's efforts at social engineering is what is in fact making us less multicultural and more and more like the repressive state known as the People's Republic of China.

The four languages for four races policy in itself is flawed and majoritarian. All the Eurasians and naturalised Caucasians are labelled with one label, despite wherever their diverse ancestries might hail from. The minority Indians are marginalised, because the Indian Indo-European languages of Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and other such languages are very much neglected in Singapore. Often they are forced to take up another identity in Tamil, which is different from their mother tongue. And then you have the Chinese peoples, who are forced to majoritarianise themselves into Mandarin. The Malays themselves have many dialects and trace their ancestry to all over the archipelago; I assume only a small percentage descended from the original pre-1819 villagers, though yes they are more likely to speak standardised Malay (which is politically divided into Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, but these are mutually intelligible and linguistically classified as the same language).

The second problem with the language campaigns is the sheer amount of censorship and government power the rulers of Singapore are willing to use to enforce their vision. Television programmes in dialects are not allowed, unless it is a premium channel from overseas screened by StarHub, of which there are only a few. Neither are programmes in Singlish, despite the fact that it's not the same as broken English, but a creole. Things in Indian languages other than Tamil? Guess not.

This language cleansing affair must stop, the Speak Mandarin Campaign in particular, but as well as for the other Indian languages as well as the government-based opposition towards Singlish. It is destroying our heritage and culture, rather than preserving it or encouraging "knowledge of our roots", as the ministers keep saying. The dialects are themselves a wealth of culture, which Mandarin cannot replace. I am told of a time where before independence, everyone spoke each other's languages: Malay was the language of the street, and everyone spoke each other's dialects. It is almost possible to (over)simplify Singaporeans to two criteria: they will either know Malay (pre-independence generation), or know English (post-independence). If they don't speak either, well, it's likely they weren't educated locally. This is of course, an oversimplification to portray an identity.

Goh Chok Tong said in 1991 that the Speak Mandarin Campaign will help to "unify the community". But this is the problem. The Chinese community doesn't need to be unified. Singaporeans need to be unified, if they aren't united by nature already. You do not unify a community by purging it of its own diversity. In Singapore, Chinese often understood each other by dialects alone — they didn't when they first came ashore during the Straits Settlements. They then learned Malay, and later on, English. That is Singaporean culture.

In the Workers' Party rallies during this year's elections you might recall, dialects were often used, or dialect jokes. These dialects often help the speakers spread a closer message to people than if speaking in Mandarin alone. Perhaps the People's Action Party is deficient in this and do not want to cede an electoral advantage.

The dialects also cast more spotlight on the other languages, because with them the various communities see at most a plurality, rather than a Chinese majority. We do not need a racial majority after all - we need diversity. Elimination of these dialects is a sign of a downfall of an identity I have come to love. The PAP has accused various opposition members of Chinese chauvinism and racism, but in truth, who are the the true racists? Unification is given as an excuse to suppress dissent and reign everyone under the yoke of conformity, just like the People's Republic of China's attempts to annex everyone into "56 nationalities under one union", conform people into Putonghua and Simplified script.

To rigidly define "four races" as part of a culture is reminiscent of the People's Republic of China, where they say they are "multicultural" although Han Chinese hegemony is everywhere. This policy is part of many government policies that is turning Singapore frightfully into a little version of the People's Republic of China. Welcome to xiaoxiao Zhonghua Renmin "Gongheguo". You might as well discard "Singapura".

Some various statistics from Wikipedia articles on the Demographics of Singapore and the Speak Mandarin Campaign already hint at what damage has been done:

In 1990, 23.7% of people spoke Mandarin as the most frequent language at home. In 2000, this increased to 35%. The dialects have dropped from 39.6% to 23.8%. Many of my peers do not know dialects at all, and as my generation emerges the use of dialects will start to disappear. If this doesn't stop the PAP will get its "unified Chinese community", but discard all meaningful diversity. Note, the 1990 figures are already 10 years after the start of the campaign. In 1980, only 27% of the population knew Mandarin, so I estimate that in fact the toll taken upon the dialects is far greater than the statistics shown. One notices that with the language statistics there is really no majority, but one might have a majority with no meaningful diversity if this language atrophy continues.

The third problem is the gap with the older generation. Large groups of students and youth (including me) are unable to communicate with their grandparents effectively because of the sheer attempt at eliminating the dialects. The older generations will continue to speak them, because to speak a person's specific dialect shows familiarity and intimacy with such a person. The younger generations on the other hand, will not learn the dialects. This has a horrific consequence, in terms of further widening the generation gap profoundly. The Speak Mandarin Campaign arrogantly assumes that with its "replacement programme", the older generation will suddenly and automatically drop languages they have been speaking for years and suddenly communicate everything in a new language. Standard Mandarin, by virtue of being standardised, is especially less intimate than the familiar tone of the dialects. The Speak Mandarin Campaign ostensibly aims to unite Singaporeans, but it only amounts to bigoted hegemony and dysnomy.

There is nothing wrong with the encouragement of learning Mandarin, but to say at the same time speaking dialects is bad is horrific, and it is furthermore atrocious to enforce this at the end of the censorship gun barrel. Why is it that we don't instead have campaigns encouraging all the languages they are able to take, if only the fundamental and basic things at first? Perhaps by the time the original generation becomes senior citizens, we would truly have a richly multilingual population, where senior citizens would be valued for their vast knowledge (knowledge that one cannot merely mug for or pick up from a textbook), rather than be treated as a burden.

Yet the Speak Mandairn Campaign wants to conform us all to strict repression, one that is reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party that isn't. If anything we need campaigns to encourage more people to take up each other's languages, especially the minority ones, whether Tamil, Hindi, or Malay. They say that we must learn Mandarin because of the emerging powerhouse of the [People's Republic of] China, but if anything Malay is our national language and is even more business-practical.

Indonesia and Malaysia are much closer neighbours, and fellow founding members of ASEAN, and account for a larger amount of our trade than China does. How many transactions take place across the Straits daily to keep Singapore well-fed? How many such transactions are there with China? Also, Malaysia has double the per-capita income of the PRC; Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia are virtually similar. If anything we need a "Speak Malay Campaign".

Language campaigns can be good a thing, as long as they fall within the scope of things like Kindness Movements. They should not use censorship or attempt to eliminate other languages.

Capital G syndrome: the Government strikes yet again!

I told you, and I tell you again:

ST July 7, 2006
Today paper suspends blogger's column
Move comes after Govt slams mr brown's latest piece on the high cost of living here.

Now that we've established just exactly what we're talking about, and you can click on the link for the rest of the article, let's examine the language for the references to the Government.

First minor point I noticed, "here" is very ambiguous and informal for a newspaper. However, that's just tone and register. Yet, the way the article is written can reflect a lot about the current culture in Singapore, especially for the media:

Second highlight: "Move comes after Govt slams mr brown's latest piece on the high cost of living here"

Let's see, shall we? This sentence seems to assume that firstly, that it is the Government. Things like excluding a grammatical article can be a subtle sign of the attitude of the press, or many Singaporeans, towards the government of Singapore. Or shall I say, Government. Right away the reference is ubiquitous: that great collective entity, almost worshipped and exalted to such high heights with its capital G. Despite the Government seemingly being composed of thousands of civil servants, 84 members of Parliament and dozens of ministers, they all unanimously slammed mrbrown's latest piece, and perhaps passed legislation on it that declared, "this House vehemently slams mrbrown's column of 'Singaporeans are fed, up with progress'". Telepathically, most likely. Quite!

Note for that one, government-run newspaper Today had no objections about the column until they received a letter about it from Bhavani. This seems to be reactionary censorship. Is the great establishment a giant unified entity like so claimed?

Third highlight: "four days after the paper published the Government's rebuttal on the column"

Let's analyse the language. When Bhavani issued her rebuttal, apparently it was clearly a rebuttal from everyone in the entire Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, despite the fact she did not explicitly say it was on behalf of the Ministry. Very well, fine. Never mind one ministry, but then apparently this rebuttal is from all the departments of the Singaporean government, or shall I correct myself, the Government. Truly a unified rebuttal from a monolithic government, despite the Constitution's declaration to the contrary, and despite the fact that the a judge punished Chee Soon Juan for "contempt of court" for alleging that there was no separation of powers within the Government. Despite all this, we clearly know that the all the Government came to a consensus over this.

Was there even a formal motion in Parliament, or perhaps a show of hands? Remember the time when it was reported by Today that no voting was required to choose Lee Hsien Loong as Goh Chok Tong's successor, because clearly "it was unanimous" on the part of the government that Lee Hsien Loong succeed. What amazing powers of consensus decision-making! Clearly, the Government should not keep this a secret from the medical journals or the psychologists, because imagine the potential efficiency for jury trials - perhaps they could rebut the defence's arguments without ever raising a hand!

Fourth highlight: "The Government issued a strong response"

Things are getting redundant here, almost making my responses redundant. Perhaps the Straits Times wants to emphasise the issue that the Government was united behind this matter, strongly and firmly? In contrast, Today's coverage of the side that disagreed with the decision is not as emphasised. It raises an eyebrow. They also published excerpts from her statement, in comparison, almost nothing was quoted from mrbrown's column, except the title. Clearly, the standards of a national newspaper are being upheld.

Fifth highlight: "It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government"

I'm not even talking about the sheer misassumption about the role of the press in that quote. However, the use of the term "government" is actually a bit more tolerable: you can dissent against how a country is run, its executive administration, and such, and thus technically "campaign against the Government" because the ruling party forms a new government each election. This however is only a very technical use.

Let us ask, when elections start and Parliament is dissolved, does the country instantly stop being governed? Does it stop having a government? When a new party is elected is it truly that the old government is being thrown out and a new one put in its place, including all the ministries, departments and employees? (Okay, okay, back in the old era of the United States they had this nifty thing called the spoils system.) How one refers to governance is a very telling side of the population's attitude, and the media's attitude, towards political issues in general, especially if the population adopts the language of the Straits Times.

In this quote by the Straits Times, written originally by Bhavani, nothing was edited and no brackets were added in. Clearly, they support the use of her language if not her views. There is complaining about government policies, then there is campaigning for or against the Government. She is again, equating "the Government" with "the establishment", though usually often "the establishment" resides in a government, or perhaps the government is influenced by individuals outside the government which form "the establishment". Rarely are they are completely equated with each other.

Sixth highlight: to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate"

This is also slightly more acceptable (as the standing of a current government tends can be referred to singularly as often it is the opinion of the entire system), but again note the use of the capital G.

Seventh highlight: "He believed it was 'probably intended' by the Government"

This is reported speech. Note that our dear Tan Harn How, who criticised the decision to axe mrbrown's blog, might not have actually used "the Government", but I want to bring up two possible scenarios. Either:

1. The Straits Times might be doing some (subtle) mauling of the dissenter's words by selective use of reported speech. This calls up into question whether the author of this article ever remembered how to do reported speech, something part of basic PSLE standards.

2. Tan actually used "the Government" in his quote.

I think the latter is less likely seeing as he was only quoted by "probably intended". What did he say? It seems more likely that he meant it was intended by the PAP, the PAP's leaders, or the Lee Hsien Loong administration, perhaps? For one, saying that he meant "it was probably intended by the Government" unfairly reflects upon his attitude if he did not use the style.

In the scenario that he did, that's another thing I want to cover. Even some of us Singaporean dissenters have this tendency to go around referring to the government of Singapore with a capital G. Inadvertently, we have treated it like a unified entity that has no dissenters within it, which is dangerous even if it does not have separation of powers. How the establishment refers to itself is one thing, but how we refer to it is another.

Eighth highlight: "the Government statement is drawing a clear line"

Here the noun is "Government statement", ie. "statement of the Government". I find a problem with this because the government of Singapore, or shall I say again - the Government probably doesn't have a universal press secretary like MICA does. It's not a statement by the Parliament, which also did not pass any motions about the matter, the PAP general secretary, Lee Kuan Yew, or anything of the sort.

It is a statement by Bhavani, representing one ministry only, and that as a whole, and not even everyone in it. Furthermore, it was stated as her opinion. When she released it there was nothing about it being a "government statement", or representing the opinion of the entire Ministry. Since when was the conclusion made that this represented the entire views of the MICA? This is quite a leap indeed - was it intentional? Or perhaps it was the language. It warrants thinking about.

Ninth highlight: "Obviously, anyone - Government, media or any individual - can offer their counter views"

This language implies the Government has the same unified views as the media, which in turn has the same unified views as an individual. And never mind the use of the singular they, which is a reflection of the mindset of the author who wrote this article as well as a colloquial mannerism, bordering on a grammatical error. Here we have the same syndrome: everyone responsible for the governance of Singapore has the capability to offer their views as a unanimous, single, entity. Does this not already bring up thoughts of "Hive Mind", as well as hint at their unwitting treatment of "the media", without even reading the actual content? Perhaps it's a Freudian slip.

Now in contrast, let us see the Reporters without Borders press release:

"Daily newspaper Today sacks blogger “mr brown” after government criticism"

Note the Reporters without Borders calls it "government criticism" with a lower "g", namely because "government" is just adjectival, and it is criticism by government elements. Here, the treatment is more indefinite. Singaporeans, it appears, are the few that exalt their Government so highly in contrast.

"after a member of the government criticised the blogger in the newspaper"

Reporters without Borders (an international observer), unlike the Straits Times, did not say "the Government slammed" or "the Government criticised". Rather, it was "a member of the government", with a lower case "g". It is a very notable difference, because blanket labels often distance the entire issue. Reporters without Borders is more accurate in this case; Singapore Press Holdings is not. As I said in my earlier post, whenever we label an entire group's actions for the actions of a few members, it is very dangerous, for it destroys information and marginalises the minority and the dissent. As I said before, SPH isn't the only one doing the blanket labelling: those disillusioned with Singaporean politics must stop this too.

"the fears we have about the government stranglehold on the media"

Here the statement declares that there is a stranglehold, ie. censorship, that is controlled by government elements. Here, "government" is adjectival and isn't definite - the definite article "the" corresponds to strangehold, which is sourced by elements within the government. The language used by non-Singaporeans is very different compared to the Straits Times.

Language is a very telling thing. Keep this in mind whenever you read the Straits Times. It may seem like a very small detail, but as the "capital G syndrome" as I call it, keeps recurring, it speaks very loudly about the current situation. The article is also littered with several grammatical mistakes. So much for high standards for our national newspaper.

And I certaintly don't have to tell you what I think of this entire affair concerning the sacking, seeing it's self-evident. I'm not covering the ethics of the move at length here, because however unethical it is, everyone has already roughly covered it. The entire affair however, as reported in the Straits Times, is a good example of Singaporeans' Capital G syndrome.