The Anti Neo-Democracy Theorist

The FEER wins several awards as it battles its defamation suits in Singapore

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Finally a Chance to openly debate Singapore government’s strategy in reducing levels of AIDS in Singapore?

Singapore’s HIV/AIDS Cases Raised in Record Levels

The 2006 figures released Friday on the ministry’s website showed an increase of 12.6 percent from 2005 when there were 317 new cases — then a record high number of new infections — from a population of just above four million.

More than 90 percent of new HIV cases detected in 2006 were through sexual transmission with two-thirds of the infections from heterosexual sex, the ministry said. Of the 3,060 cases overall in Singapore, 1,048 have died, 1,307 show no signs of the illness while 705 have AIDS-related illnesses, said the ministry.

More than half of those detected with the disease in 2006 were already at a late stage of HIV/AIDS infection, it said. “This was similar to the pattern in previous years,” said the ministry. “There is thus an urgent need for persons who engage in high risk behaviour such as unprotected casual sex and intravenous drug abuse to test themselves for HIV,” it said.

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The Hong Kong Standard provides an alternative viewpoint to the Straits Times’s glowing report of HK leader Donald Tsang’s announcment to encourage the increase of the population of Hong Kong to 10 million people.

Tsang comes under fire over vision for 10m population

Scarlett Chiang

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Sociologists and environmentalists have criticized Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen’s vision of a 10 million population for Hong Kong as “unrealistic” and “unwise.”

Sociologists and environmentalists have criticized Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen’s vision of a 10 million population for Hong Kong as “unrealistic” and “unwise.” Tsang told The Financial Times in an interview Hong Kong should increase its population by more than 40 percent as part of the effort to match New York and London as global financial centers.

He said the SAR cannot allow the population to shrink and its average age to go up. He believes the territory has the fundamentals to create a global financial center and a reasonably good standard of living for 10 million people like New York and London.

Although Tsang stressed it is a long- term vision, sociologists and environmentalists raised doubts.

Chu Hon-keung, environmental affairs manager of Friends of The Earth Hong Kong, said Tsang is not very clever if he thinks a population increase can lead to improved competitiveness.

“The more the better is an old concept,” Chu said. “If he just considers labor as competitiveness, he’s not very clever.”

He said Switzerland’s gross domestic product is high while its population is more or less the same as Hong Kong. He said Switzerland’s high GDP is due to its developed high-tech industries.

“The net profit from a watch made in Switzerland is equal to what four automobiles brings in Japan.”

Chu said Hong Kong would have to pay a very high price to attain what Tsang said Hong Kong needs to boost immigration and education as well as the improved infrastructure necessary to build on its status as a financial center.

“If the quality of lives worsens in society, people will leave.”

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Interesting report from the Brisbane Times

Anger on the Campus of Despair

Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter | June 16, 2007

WHEN Isabella Trahn packed her possessions into boxes and flew to Singapore she was excited about the grand finale of her 34-year career with the University of NSW.

As head of information services, she was one of the university’s most senior staff members, but here was a unique opportunity to start a library from scratch at the new and much hyped Singapore campus, as well as earn cash for her retirement.

Just a few months later she got her grand finale, but it was anything but the one she had envisaged. The University of NSW Asia campus was unceremoniously shut, and the employment of Ms Trahn, who had devoted her life to the university since 1973, was terminated with the same payout as her colleagues who had joined three months earlier.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think [the vice-chancellor, Fred Hilmer] would come up and announce a closure,” Ms Trahn said. “It was a total shock to me, and I didn’t come out of it for a couple of weeks. I don’t think I’m out of it now.”

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6 random and not necessarily un-connected points

1. It is interesting that hikes are happening almost all at the same time. From Starhub to eggs to kopi to electricity etc

2. It is interesting that parliament is not convening anytime soon.

3. It is interesting that many people have signed up for their GST credits.

4. Why are the hikes timed at this point of time? Is it really because of “higher costs?” Is it because our economy is really doing so well (see the latest reports on housing sales)?

5. Or is it because of the best uniquely Singapore reason, “No time is good time. Just do it now?”
6. Are policy makers aware of the effects of repeated and persistent rise in costs of living over a short period of time on lower income Singaporeans?

Electricity tariffs up almost 9% from July
By Foo Siew Shyan, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 15 June 2007 1615 hrs

SINGAPORE: Electricity tariffs for the next three months (Jul-Sep) will go up by almost nine per cent (8.83%).

This is an increase of about 1.6 cents per kilowatt per hour of electricity.

SP Services attributes the hike to higher fuel oil prices, which had gone up by about 20 per cent compared to the current quarter.

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Thomas Koshy’s article in TODAYonline ask this pertinent question

Reminds me of another case where Took Leng How slip out of Singapore without notice even though I must stress that two cases were different in some aspects.

Let’s see what the reply on Took’s issue was then:

I wonder if MPs would ask this question on Richard Yong in parliament. Hopefully they would; like PAP MP Dr. Amy Khor and former NSP and NCMP Steve Chia.

ACLU’s website on restoring HC to American legal system

Also quite relevant to us in light of the recent ISD arrests. ISD = detention without trial.

A light hearted description of Habeas Corpus:

You may not recognize him, but he’s been looking out for you.

Habeas Corpus has never had a very high profile, but for more than 700 years this quiet hero has stood watch over some basic principles of fairness and human dignity. When the Constitution was written, he was there. Since 1215, in fact, he’s been a humble, but unflagging, champion of justice and due process of law.

Most people don’t know what he looks like. There are only a few photos, a couple of early American paintings, and a handful of illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

Habeas Corpus — Habeas to his friends, which includes practically everyone who knows him — has never been interested in the spotlight. His face has never mattered, only what he stands for. Until now. Something happened last year, and now Habeas Corpus is missing.

Some time on the morning of October 17, 2006, Habeas disappeared. Eyewitness accounts say he was last seen in Washington, D.C., walking down the Capitol steps in something of a daze. But where he went from there, or where he is now, is anyone’s guess.

The one thing we know for certain is why he went missing. October 17 was the day that Congress let the president declare Habeas Corpus — and other parts of the U.S. Constitution — null-and-void for certain individuals.

For centuries, Habeas has stood up for anyone who was accused of a crime, protecting us against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment.

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One of the most thought-provoking book I have read recently. Reinterprets the way we look at contemporary concepts such as globalization in a long term perspective. Very important book.

From Amazon.com

Book Description
In this closely integrated collection of essays on colonialism in world history, Frederick Cooper raises crucial questions about concepts relevant to a wide range of issues in the social sciences and humanities, including identity, globalization, and modernity. Rather than portray the past two centuries as the inevitable movement from empire to nation-state, Cooper places nationalism within a much wider range of imperial and diasporic imaginations, of rulers and ruled alike, well into the twentieth century. He addresses both the insights and the blind spots of colonial studies in an effort to get beyond the tendency in the field to focus on a generic colonialism located sometime between 1492 and the 1960s and somewhere in the “West.” Broad-ranging, cogently argued, and with a historical focus that moves from Africa to South Asia to Europe, these essays, most published here for the first time, propose a fuller engagement in the give-and-take of history, not least in the ways in which concepts usually attributed to Western universalism–including citizenship and equality–were defined and reconfigured by political mobilizations in colonial contexts.

From the Inside Flap
“Probably the most important historian of Africa currently writing in the English language. His intellectual reach and ambition have even taken influence far beyond African studies as such, and he has become one of the major voices contributing to debates over empire, colonialism and their aftermaths. This book is a call to reinvigorate the critical way in which history can be written. Cooper takes on many of the standard beliefs passing as postcolonial theory and breathes fresh air onto them.”–Michael Watts, Director of the Institute of International Studies, Berkeley
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This article first appeared at Singapore Angle

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam’s (JBJ) return to the political scene by setting up a new party heralds both an interesting start and echo to Singapore politics. A start because a new political party is formed; an echo because JBJ’s act in forming a new party resembles his resuscitation of the Workers’ Party (WP) then in the 1970s. In what ways would JBJ’s re-entry into Singapore politics shaped the opposition scene in Singapore?

Some have argued that JBJ’s setting up of a new party creates a “diversity effect” into Singapore politics. Sin Kek Tong, a Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) leader, in welcoming JBJ’s re-entry into politics commented that, “Maybe there should be more parties to counter [the People's Action Party (PAP)].” On a similar note, WP’s organizing secretary, Yaw Shin Leong, commented that “[political] diversity [is] a good thing” when remarking on JBJ’s re-entry into politics.

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To be rich is glorious, but to be enlightened is even better.

有钱能使鬼推磨,有理能使天流泪.