How the 'miracle' of Singapore was achieved - a police state. "Lee was an exquisite example of the developing-nation leader who gets the dirty work of political repression done with the minimum of embarrassing mess." by 1kiki

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/31/lee_kuan_yew_is_finally_dead_and_ameri
cas_elites_are_eulogizing_a_tyrant_and_psychological_monster/

Tuesday, Mar 31, 2015 03:59 PM PDT

Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead — and America’s elites are eulogizing a tyrant and psychological monster
Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore wealthy & kept people in line with barbaric fear. Clinton & Kissinger should be ashamed
Patrick L. Smith

It would be difficult to match Boris Yeltsin, the drunkard who turned tanks on Russia’s post-Soviet democracy, for the effusions of twaddle he elicited among American policy people, pundits, scholars and correspondents. But in death as in life, Lee Kuan Yew is up there—no, down there—with the worst of the autocrats.

Singapore’s long-reigning dictator died of pneumonia at 91 last week and was buried after a state funeral Sunday. And you could set your watch by the old, faithful geyser of praise that gushed for the master-builder of Southeast Asia’s most efficient police state. It erupted more or less instantly in all the predictable quarters.

At the Council on Foreign Relations he was “the sage of Singapore.” The New York Times, in an editorial last Tuesday, had him down as “a towering figure on the global stage.” For President Obama, LKY was “a true giant of history.” Prominently in attendance in Singapore Sunday were Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger.

Lee Kuan Yew is dead, long live Lee Kuan Yew. This is the gist of it all. And this is why we should pay attention to all the bunkum. For ruling cliques in Washington and across the Western world, Lee was an exquisite example of the developing-nation leader who gets the dirty work of political repression done with the minimum of embarrassing mess. Therein lay the greatest of Lee’s several gifts—none of which was humane, in my view.

No machine-gun murders in public squares for Lee. No stadiums full of dissidents awaiting their turn to be tortured, no political prisoners thrown into the ocean from helicopters. All of Lee’s opponents kept their fingernails.

I watched Lee up close and very personal for many years, and more about this in a minute. His tactics always reminded me of the guard who beats his charges with a bag of oranges so the organs are ruined but the bruises do not show. In the custody of Lee’s goons, you stood naked in front of an air-conditioner set to max cool while they doused you with ice water all night. You spent your life eating lychee nuts on an outer island while your children grew up without you a ferryboat’s ride away.

Wait a minute, you might say. Are you comparing Lee Kuan Yew with Pinochet or the shah, with Videla and the other colonels in Argentina—with Yeltsin, indeed—and with al-Sisi in Egypt and other such people on the scene now?

Absolutely I am.

The difference between LKY and any other American-backed dictator past or present is a question merely of method and degree. “Soft authoritarianism” or “pragmatic authoritarianism,” the most common euphemisms applied to regimes such as Lee’s, are hair-splits deployed to render them acceptable to our tender sensibilities. They are all on the same dirigiste errand — the installation and maintenance of one form or another of neoliberal corporatism and the corresponding subversion of democratic process.

I make this point with a certain vigor for a simple reason. We all know Lee’s kind from the Cold War days — the Marcoses and Suhartos and Somozas. But do not drop your guard. Lee’s brand of leadership is precisely what Washington continues to look for across the non-Western world: The policy cliques want Potemkin Village democracies hospitable to American corporations, large CIA stations and, with the true golden boys, a military installation.

Who do you think Ukraine’s new leaders are? President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk are cut from the mold — the one a patently incapable candy-bar salesman and the other a water-bearer for Washington’s neoliberals. Poroshenko’s approval rating, as you have not read in the Times or any other American newspaper, now stands at roughly 30 percent and Yatsenyuk’s at 24 percent. This is because they are now well along in the process of cutting Ukrainian democracy off at its knees, as Yeltsin did during Russia’s 1993 constitutional crisis.

And as Lee did in Singapore in the decades following the island state’s independence, from Britain in 1963 and from Malaysia two years later.

Lee was a Cold War creature, let there be no question — a dependent of the domino theory. He made common cause during the pre-independence days with the Barisan Socialis, the widely supported Socialist Front, against the British. But as a closet autocrat from the first, Lee and his People’s Action Party split with the Socialists soon after he formed his first government (still under British control) in 1959.

Thereafter, Lee turned on the Barisan more ferociously than he had ever opposed the British. From those days forth, the colonial regime’s Internal Security Act, even now not repealed, was the blunt instrument Lee favored above all others.

A pause for full transparency. I was Lee’s victim twice. In 1983 he expelled me for my political coverage as bureau chief of the honorable, now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2002, Lee’s lawyers accused me of libeling his family and sued Bloomberg News, for whom I was then writing columns.

The first case cost me a harmonious household and a relationship that was supposed to go the distance. In the second, it cost Bloomberg a $450,000 settlement, including assorted fees. Bloomberg editor Matt Winkler apologized wrongly but abjectly, scrubbed the offending column from the archive, and fired me as soon as he was confident nobody was any longer looking.

By the time I arrived in Singapore, in 1981, Lee had intimidated, coerced, blackmailed, imprisoned, co-opted or exiled all but the most quixotic of his political adversaries. I used to visit a doctor named Lee Siew Choh, a Barisan Socialis founder and a veteran of many wars with the prime minister, who kept a quiet practice next to the American embassy. From this Lee, a delightfully bemused old man, I got vitamin B shots and history lessons. Internal security goons followed me to and fro whenever I went to see him.

But the game had changed by then. The bare-knuckles battles with those opposed to an increasingly right-wing regime had given way to the Cold War social contract in effect in every one of Washington East Asian satellites. You, citizen, will get an air conditioner, a refrigerator, a television and maybe a small car and a subsidized apartment. In exchange you will forego your voice and leave all the politics to us.

“Shut up and change the channel” was my shorthand for this arrangement when visitors came. This is how the Cold War was fought in East Asia and it held for decades, utterly cynical but never any surprise in cultures of poverty.

Lee’s Singapore was an especially interesting case. Having demolished any semblance of independent labor unions, having put the press on a very short leash and having commandeered education to turn out graduates the way GM turns out parts, the task was psychological — how to keep an increasingly affluent elite in line when they grew jaded with the bribe at the heart of it all.

The preferred instrument was a kind of totalized fear by the time I took up residence. The PAP, the ruling party then as now, thought nothing of ruining careers in business, politics or any other sphere. Nothing was infra-dig, and everyone had their stories. I knew a senior labor official who went silent when police detectives tailed him and then threatened to inform his wife of his late-night peccadilloes. He had three children and no choice.

No one since Lee’s death has written of his legacy without noting his obsessive grip on his people. It is simply not possible. But all have written of it as justified by the material advances made under Lee’s 40-odd year presence in Singapore politics—as prime minister until 1990, thereafter with titles such as senior minister and minister mentor, Confucian confections to the core.

I have never bought this line.

First, while Singapore’s material progress is beyond question, the argument that democracy and economic advances are mutually exclusive rests on paper-thin logic of the kind Lee did all he could to promote. One finds the damage wrought by this thinking more or less everywhere in Asia.

The true point here cannot be spoken plainly but must be. It is democracy and neoliberal capitalism that cancel one another out. And you cannot ask for a balder example than Singapore: Lee disemboweled political parties and democratic trade unions in large part to make Singapore attractive to foreign investors.

Second, there is the invisible violence noted above. Pervasive fear has produced a society marked by a pathology. At the risk of generality, the Singaporean character is malformed. Realizing one’s humanity with any wholeness is next to impossible. At bottom the condition is one of social psychology.

During my time there I took to calling Singapore Eastern Europe with palm trees until I concluded this may be unfair to Eastern Europeans. I did not say these things altogether unseriously and I do not now. Singapore’s tragedy is that its people allowed one man to humiliate them as deeply within themselves as Lee did. This is the hole they may have a chance to climb out of now. We will have to see.

Lee was never apologetic as to how he ruled, although the boasts sometimes seem to me to ring hollowly. “Nobody doubts that if you take me on I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in the cul-de-sac,” Lee said in a 1994 interview with the Times. “If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try.”

And then this from his two-volume memoirs later on: “Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

Think about these statements. Lee was a street-fighter by his own admission — another of his raw gifts — and it was by the rules of the street that he ruled his nation. Is this what they mean when they call him a man of history and a great statesman? I take Lee at his word on this point, nobody else’s: He always came over to me as badly read and pretending otherwise, a poseur in the land of large ideas and a bully whose only principle was winning, the weaker the opponent the better.

As to his point about fear, what kind of person is it whose self-worth rests on how frightened he is able to make other people? My answer comes by way of another question. But to put the conclusion first, an unhealthy person.

A friend asked after reading the obituaries Monday, “Why did he bother with all these campaigns against chewing gum and spitting and making loud noise?” This is not the trivial matter it may seem. It has to do with a failure of self-acceptance.

In my estimation, Lee had a complicated relationship with Westerners since his childhood under British colonial rule and then his university years in Cambridge, where he earned a law degree. It was hatred and love, resentment and envy all at once—common combinations among Asians of Lee’s generation. He wanted to be proud of his Chineseness, but the only way he knew how was to make the Chinese as much like Westerners as he could.

Westerners, in turn, tended to love Lee in an interesting pattern. Powerful political leaders and business executives — presidents, foreign ministers, CEOs, senior editors at business magazines — held him in high regard. All others viewed him with more detachment for what he was. Why was this?

Having learned his lessons from the Communists active in Southeast Asia during his younger years, Lee structured the PAP as a Leninist party, led by vanguard cadres who were never identified. The powerful among foreigners appreciated this because the party got things done quickly and cleanly. The less-powerful understood the consequences of an organization’s guiding belief that the end justified any means to it.

A fitting coda to the life of LKY arrived over the weekend. One Amos Yee, a 17-year-old Singaporean, posted a YouTube video titled “Lee Kuan Yew Is Finally Dead.” In it Yee dressed down the great statesman as power-hungry, malicious, and deceptive, “a horrible person because everyone is afraid that if they say something they will get in trouble.”

Yee was reported to the police by a fellow student Saturday and by Sunday the video segment was erased and Yee was under arrest. Under Singapore’s penal code he could face three years’ imprisonment if the case goes to trial.

“Lee was a dictator but managed to fool most of the world into thinking he was democratic… by granting Singaporeans the opportunity to vote to make it seem like we have freedom of choice,” the video concluded. Well said, Amos. Be brave, and you will have an easier time looking yourself in the mirror, even if it is on an outer island.

The mounds of praise heaped atop Lee Kuan Yew now rely upon distance for their credibility. We, far away, cannot see easily into the man and the nation he shaped. Draw a little closer. As you look, recognize that this is a man and a nation the cliques in Washington wish the whole of the developing world would emulate.

Then ask yourself a couple of questions. Am I supposed to think it is well and good for people to be ruled by fear? Is Lee Kuan Yew the sum total of our aspirations for the world’s emerging societies? He is our 21st century ideal made flesh?

Not mine by a long way.

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Saturday, April 4, 2015 3:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/lee-kuan-yew

He did not create modern Singapore’s prosperity. The city state thrived naturally in a region of economic growth and rapid development of world trade. However, he certainly created the image of the state in his own likeness.

Being liked was not part of his agenda. A combination of high intelligence and unswervable determination were Lee’s characteristics, and he transferred them, at least superficially, to modern Singapore. Without him, it may in time go a different way, more reflective of its multiracial background and potentially precarious existence. But while he was alive few dared think, let alone put forward, alternative visions.

Lee has been described as many things. To Chinese, particularly during his days fighting Chinese chauvinism in the name of a multiracial Singapore identity, the Cambridge-educated lawyer brought up to believe in English education if not in British institutions, Lee was a “banana” – yellow on the outside, white inside. However, later in life, as Chinese identity and Confucian attitudes emphasising education, discipline and hierarchy became more important, he would be criticised for presenting himself as a fount of wisdom, a convincing articulator of modern Asia to western audiences, while actually behaving with all the intolerance of a Chinese emperor. At his worst, he could combine imperial hauteur with extraordinarily petty spite, relishing the destruction of irritating but unthreatening critics. At his best, he had an incisive mind and clear political judgment. For an avowed elitist, he had a remarkable ability to talk to a crowd.

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Saturday, April 4, 2015 4:10 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

When I read things like this: "... Lee also had a third dimension, especially in western eyes – statesman, philosopher king, embodiment of the wisdom of the east." my bullshit meter goes off. It puts everything else under a cloud.

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Saturday, April 4, 2015 5:48 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
When I read things like this: "... Lee also had a third dimension, especially in western eyes – statesman, philosopher king, embodiment of the wisdom of the east." my bullshit meter goes off. It puts everything else under a cloud.

I think the obituary is politely saying that if Lee had all these imagined qualities in western eyes, then the westerners were deluded about Lee by Lee's words.

I've noticed in Texas, where words are more real than facts in Texans' minds, that the most polished and articulate can sell the biggest lies. Lee was highly polished and articulate and he was successful selling very big lies about his leadership. As the obit snidely said, "Lee’s fortunes as a politician benefitted from his bravura courtroom performances. It was this very success with juries that made him critical of the jury system. Judges were less easily swayed by emotion, and were appointed by the government. Once in power, Lee abolished juries." Lee understood that bullshit and emotions rules over juries and nations.

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Saturday, April 4, 2015 10:53 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Kind of like the eulogies written by the west over the death of Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, despotic ruler of Saudi Arabia and promoter of the rabidly fundamental Wahabbist (Salafist) version of Islam though al Qaida and and its various affiliates and offshoots.

WHY are TPTB (and our ever-compliant press) trying to convince us that these assholes deserve a grand and caring send-off?

If nothing else, this outpouring of official mournful propaganda over the death of yet another Fearless Leader should reveal to us (the masses) that those in charge have absolutely no motivation to represent us or our interests. The only time they're interested in what we think is when they're busy manipulating it to cloud our comprehension.

A Fearless Leader is Dead.

And we should all be breaking out the champagne! Not reading with dull confusion these paeans to autocracy.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, April 4, 2015 6:34 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Second - I just want to get back to this specifically but briefly: "... Lee also had a third dimension, especially in western eyes – statesman, philosopher king, embodiment of the wisdom of the east." In my opinion western - or eastern, northern or southern - leaders aren't that naive. If you're the leader of a country, you're already knowledgeable about how power is achieved, and on what maintaining it (and who) it depends. To think that someone like Bill Clinton was a starry-eyed fan of some mystical je ne sais quoi is beyond my imagination. And someone who's trying to sell me that notion is suspect.
But in any case, there definitely were themes that tracked between the two povs, and that made logical sense to me. And I truly appreciate informative posts.
As for your observations about Texans, I can't see how they match my experiences, since I don't have enough. But I'll definitely keep them in mind!

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Sunday, April 5, 2015 11:02 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Two Putin fans criticising autocracy, hilarious.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Sunday, April 5, 2015 12:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

KPO: One nazi fanboy decrying two people who are against autocracy.

Ridiculous.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, April 5, 2015 3:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Two Putin fans criticising autocracy, hilarious.

Here is a funny thought:
Imagine if the Father of his Country, George Washington, had acted like the Father of Singapore. Washington would have jailed John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe for something, maybe chewing gum in public. Then Washington could have been President for 12 terms, almost as long as Lee was Prime Minister and Minister-Mentor.

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Sunday, April 5, 2015 7:34 PM

I've been to Singapore a number of times, and have friends and family who have or still do live there. It's an interesting place, very pleasant to visit actually. It's a very safe, clean, vibrant place, easy to get around, lots to see, the best food you could ever imagine.

Living there, for a wealthy affluent westerner, or Ang Mo's as they are called, is usually also quite pleasant, although it's easy to enter the vacuous world of the ex pat with its emphasis on pleasure. It's kind of a weird twilighty place I observed, but very affluent.

and of course some things become apparant, that Singapore really is a caste ridden society where the different strata do not mix, and living standards vary enormously, wiht the mix being Chinese, Malay and Indians and the Ang Mo. At the bottom of the pile are the guest workers from places such as Burma or the Philippines who lead pretty dreadful lives.

The cost of the affluence is keeping your mouth shut, as the modus operandi is to sue people who criticise the government, which is basically how they stifle opposition.

The question is how does Singapore stack up against other countries in the region? It's certainly much more prosperous, but is it any less free and is life worse or better for its inhabitants than those who live in Indonesia or Malaysia.

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Sunday, April 5, 2015 11:55 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Do you think freedom and equality are incompatible with economic progress? Could Singapore have achieved the same result with less repression?

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Monday, April 6, 2015 12:19 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, a couple of comments on development and equality:

In order for development to occur, there SOME consumption has to be deferred. If everyone was immediately consuming everything that was produced, there would be no "excess labor power" to experiment, develop technology, or improve infrastructure. To provide a primitive example, if there is an agricultural community in which everyone farms, then everyone farms. But if the agricultural community is productive and grows surplus food, then SOME people are free to figure out how to make better clay pots, or a better loom, or dig a better irrigation system. Some people might look at them and say that they're "not productive" because there they are - not farming, and still eating! And - indeed - many of these experiments may never work out. How do we know that they're not just daydreaming, or cooking up yet another scam so they can still eat for free? Are these people loafers? Parasites? Early technologists?

On the other hand, there is nothing to say that the sacrifice for development HAS to be placed on a certain set of people, and an permanent caste at that. It MIGHT be spread out over many. Perhaps the goals of the developments are decided on by the many? In fact, at this level of technology and energy use, there is no reason why there needs to be a permanent starving underclass.

There is a famous paper which argues that inequality is necessary for growth. (Growth in a Time of Debt, Reinhart and Rogoff, 2010) It was used to justify the policies of "austerity" which rob from the poor to give to the rich in order to re-kindle economic growth.

However, that paper was debunked by Herndon and Ash, when the graduate student Thomas Ash, as a learning exercise, attempted to replicate the famous Reinhart-Rogoff paper. When he couldn't recreate the results, he requested the original spreadsheet used to reach those conclusions, and what he found was

Quote:
that coding errors, [the dreaded spreadsheet cell reference errors- SIGNY], selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period. Our nding is that when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/public-debt-gdp-growth-and-au
sterity-why-reinhart-and-rogoff-are-wrong/
http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_
301-350/WP322.pdf

So basically, as far as I can tell from history and theory, while it is necessary to generate a surplus in order to have technological and economic growth, it's not necessary to generate inequality. The imposition of high degrees of miserable hereditary inequality on vast numbers of people is entirely unnecessary, and merely the argument by the wealthy who simply wish to retain their vast advantage.

As an aside, while the R&R paper used to justify austerity has been thoroughly debunked, the policies of austerity haven't been abandoned, naturally. That's because the wealthy elite has control of economic policy, and they're not about to give up their favored position.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Monday, April 6, 2015 4:44 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Anyway Magons - I was hoping you would post an opinion. You're the one person posting here who speaks from personal experience and personal observation.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2015 6:24 PM

But perhaps not from experience that may illuminate. Lee is a conundrum wrapped up in a puzzle, both admired and disliked for his management of opposition. Singapore became an economic power house in the region when South East Asia, actually all Asia was synonymous with the Third World. I think his idea was that western style democracy just wouldn't work in these regions at these times and perhaps he is right. I do believe that some regions need long transitions to anything resembling democracy.

Singapore, like Australia, is a parliamentary democracy, something we both inherited from the Britain, but Singapore doesn't have parliamentary privilege, which makes it difficult, well impossible, to hold the government accountable. Basically the government’s method of oppression is to sue the will out of any opposition. Lee’s arguments on freedom of speech/press etc was that the region, was notoriously unstable during the 60’s in particular, and that instability was a canker to economic prosperity. Who knows…..

So Singapore’s record is that it is a stable, peaceful, prosperous country, largely free from corruption although rife with nepotism and not particularly renowned for arbitrary human rights abuses . However, its law allows for the death penalty, and it’s particularly ruthless with regards to importation of drugs, but in that respect it’s the same as the other countries in the region, and something of which Australia is critical – not having the death penalty here and supplying many of the unfortunate/stupid drug mules that get into difficulty. It also allows corporal punishment in the form of caning, a left over from British rule for crimes such as rape and vandalism??

The only other thing that I can add is that clearly Lee hated the mess and chaos of other Asian countries, and frankly they are messy and chaotic. I think Lee would have struggled against such stereotypes, which fed into the somewhat racist notions that Asians (like the rest of the world) would fall in a heap when left without the rule of their colonial masters. Because basically chums, they work like hell, but aren't born to rule.... I think Lee was desperate to disprove that notion and create, under Chinese rule, an ordered prosperous state not rife with chaos, at any level of society. And he did it, you might not like the result, but you kind of have to admire.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2015 8:20 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
I think his idea was that western style democracy just wouldn't work in these regions at these times and perhaps he is right. I do believe that some regions need long transitions to anything resembling democracy.

I think this is a good point. I read a good quote recently (with regards to Russia and Putin) along the lines of 'fascism is the scourge of young democracies'. And it rings true, when you think about the notorious fascist governments of the past. I think with some of these undemocratic countries it pays to take the long view, and celebrate stability, economic growth and good governance in the short term, with the expectation that these will lay a good platform for democracy later.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2015 10:47 PM

or maybe never.

One of the things we may have to accept is not everyone views western style democracies, western liberalism, and western ideals as desirable.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2015 11:26 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:
I think his idea was that western style democracy just wouldn't work in these regions at these times and perhaps he is right. I do believe that some regions need long transitions to anything resembling democracy.

I think this is a good point. I read a good quote recently (with regards to Russia and Putin) along the lines of 'fascism is the scourge of young democracies'. And it rings true, when you think about the notorious fascist governments of the past. I think with some of these undemocratic countries it pays to take the long view, and celebrate stability, economic growth and good governance in the short term, with the expectation that these will lay a good platform for democracy later.

Are you talking about Ukraine under Poroshenko? Or Russia under Putin?

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 12:13 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I just started doing random searches ...

http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/12/06/singapore-domestic-workers-suffer-g
rave-abuses

Singapore: Domestic Workers Suffer Grave Abuses
Migrant Women Face Debt Burden and Exploitation
December 8, 2005

Many domestic workers labor without pay for months to settle debts to employment agencies, work long hours seven days a week, or are confined to their workplace.
Ken Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

(Singapore) - Women migrant domestic workers in Singapore suffer grave abuses including physical and sexual violence, food deprivation, and confinement in the workplace, said Human Rights Watch in a new report released today.

SINGAPORE—Singapore’s decision to grant foreign maids a weekly day off was welcomed Tuesday by social workers and rights groups, but some employers grumbled and critics said the move falls short of international labor standards.

While Singapore is proud of its squeaky-clean image and widely admired for its economic development, it has been regularly criticized for its treatment of foreign workers.

Announcing the change, Minister of State for Manpower Minister Tan Chuan Jin said Monday the mandatory weekly rest day would apply to maids whose work permits are issued or renewed from January 1, 2013.

Employers who need the services of their maids on their rest day must compensate them.

More than 200,000 women from impoverished villages in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India work as maids in Singapore. Some do not get a single day off during their first two-year contract.

Read more: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/27383/cheers-and-jeers-for-maids-day-
off-in-singapore/#ixzz3WgcK9E7H

Modern-day slavery? Shopping mall in Singapore found to be selling housemaids like commodities

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/modernday-slavery-shoppin
g-mall-in-singapore-found-to-be-selling-housemaids-like-commodities-9581931.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26349689

The city-state's efficient infrastructure, relative safety and low taxes have attracted many of the world's wealthy. It now boasts more millionaires per capita than any other country. Its gross domestic output per individual is among the highest too, at over $51,000 (£30,600), outranking that of developed economies like Germany and even the US in some measures.

But the wealth gap is the second-widest among advanced economies in Asia, next to Hong Kong. And Singapore recently ranked as the world's sixth most expensive city ... So it comes as no surprise that the less well-off would struggle to pay for daily necessities.

There is no minimum wage or poverty line set and no welfare provision along the lines of many developed Western economies. ... According to the campaigners, S$5 a day is what nearly 400,000 Singaporeans are left with after paying for utilities, school, rent, loan instalments and healthcare.

http://thehearttruths.com/2013/10/28/poverty-in-singapore-grew-from-16
-in-2002-to-28-in-2013/

Poverty in Singapore Grew from 16% in 2002 to 28% in 2013

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:12 AM

Yep, yep. All true. That's the stratified society that I was talking about. Most maids are Filipino, I believe and are often treated badly by their wealthy employees. Just like other places that relies on cheap imported and often illegal labour to do the grunt work(eg the US?)

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:42 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I'm still trying to get a 'picture' of Singapore. There's ~ 28% poverty rate and roughly 5.4 M people which works out to 1.35M in poverty. That's a lot of poor people. What I think is that there's a lot of poor people without the 'trappings' of poverty. There are no (outwardly visible) slums, though having 5 children sleep in one room on a mattress on the floor while the parent sleeps on the couch, and having your child go without asthma medication is impoverished indeed. By decree the place is kept publicly clean. I would presume there are strictly-enforced penalties for panhandling or poor public deportment. But if they're to be believed, suicide rates are low. (not sure I trust the stats tho).

So there's significant poverty in Singapore - but it's not publicly visible. That may be one of the biggest differences between Singapore and other places, which is the extent to which poverty is swept under the rug.

As far as freedom goes - I have an idea that people don't care that much about freedom if they think they're getting the goods. So there must be a fair number of discontented people, given that there's such a robust and well-oiled mechanism for dealing with complainers and criticizers.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:59 AM

Yeah, I don't know how that poverty rate is measured, so not sure how accurate it is. I guess you do see a generally prosperous place, although pockets will look more like standard Asia, ie Little India feels more like other Asian countries and is clearly less prosperous.

Guest workers live as guest workers tend to do...basic would be a polite way of describing it. It's a hard one, because these people come from poverty and the money they make is good compared to what they make in their own countries and they send it back to their families. They face the usual problems of being statusless but again, this isn't peculiarly Singaporean problem, you'd get the same situation in Switzerland for example.

I think the other thing that happens is that people travel into Singapore from Malaysia to work. It's a small Island state, so it's pretty much like commuting. Malays would do much of the retail work (I think), don't get paid enough to live in Singapore but live across the border.

You'd also need to compare Singapore to other countries in the region, both economically and in terms of 'freedom' to get an idea of whether you approve of what happens there or not. And again, freedom, the way we speak of it, is a western construct (not a bad one either) but it's pretty normal in SE Asia that you'd find yourself in trouble if you oppose the government. For example, in Thailand, you are forbidden from criticising the monarchy (although you can to some extent protest against the government). Freedom of speech is not a universal condition.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 8:42 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

You'd also need to compare Singapore to other countries in the region, both economically and in terms of 'freedom' to get an idea of whether you approve of what happens there or not.

What about comparing competency of leaders? I can imagine Lee Kuan Yew using the “greatest memo of all time” as a lesson to his son, the prime minister, on how NOT to think about Singaporean problems:

April 7, 2003 11:46 AM
TO: Doug Feith (Undersecretary of Defense, USA)
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense)
SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries

We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.

We also need to solve the Pakistan problem.

And Korea doesn’t seem to be going well.

Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?

Thanks.
www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8363525/rumsfeld-memo-feith

Needless to say, none of this got solved in the last 12 years.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2015 10:59 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:
I think his idea was that western style democracy just wouldn't work in these regions at these times and perhaps he is right. I do believe that some regions need long transitions to anything resembling democracy.

I think this is a good point. I read a good quote recently (with regards to Russia and Putin) along the lines of 'fascism is the scourge of young democracies'. And it rings true, when you think about the notorious fascist governments of the past. I think with some of these undemocratic countries it pays to take the long view, and celebrate stability, economic growth and good governance in the short term, with the expectation that these will lay a good platform for democracy later.

Are you talking about Ukraine under Poroshenko? Or Russia under Putin?

Russia under Putin, of course. A fascist state in Ukraine is complete nonsense - the invention of Russian propagandists.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Saturday, April 11, 2015 10:58 AM