The Voice That Should Be Heard

What is it like to be detained for 32 years? Locked away without trial? Dr Chia Thye Poh was the longest-serving political prisoner of Singapore, longer than Nelson Madela's 27 years of incarceration on Robben Island, at Pollsmoor Prison and in Victor Verster Prison.
If your train ride to a workplace swarming with aliens is getting you down, or the seemingly impossibility of accessing your life savings at age 55 for retirement appears desolately remote, take a well deserved break and be uplifted by this video clip of the indomitable Chia Thye Poh, his first public appearance since his release in 1998.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Malala Yousafzai (Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ‎ [məˈlaːlə jusəf ˈzəj]; Urdu: ملالہ یوسف زئی‎ Malālah Yūsafzay, born 12 July 1997) is the youngest ever Nobel Prize recipient in any category.

At the tender age of 11, Yousafzai started blogging under a pseudonym ("Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl", a blog for BBC Urdu), about human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban made life miserable for just about everyone.

On the fateful afternoon of 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was seated in her school bus when a gunman asked for her by name, and brazenly fired 3 shots at point blank. One bullet entered the left side of Yousafzai's forehead, traversed through the length of her face, and embedded into her shoulder. She was rendered unconscious and was in critical condition for several days. When her condition improved sufficiently, she was flown to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation. The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai and made her "the most famous teenager in the world."

While our police are making life miserable for our own bloggers, it is unlikely they have martyrdom in mind. Bullets are expensive, and there's the pesky paperwork that needs to be filed. On the other hand, a Noble Prize winner from Singapore is mighty tempting.

The mainstream media are taking great pains to paint a softer picture of the Taliban tactics. We are told the goon squad called at the personal residence of one blogger to inform of an interview invite only "after she did not answer... telephone calls". And the interviewee was allowed change the officially appointed time to suit her busy calendar ".. and arrangements were made to accommodate her schedule." Best of all, she was provided with refreshments during the chit-chat. The snatch theft of her mobile phone and inexplicable confiscation of her notebook were not mentioned.

The unofficial version has it that the bang on the door came at midnight. The blogger arrived at the police station at 2pm on appointed day - the Friday Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - but was made to wait for half an hour before being grilled until 10pm. Presumably free Wifi was not available during the interminable wait. No food was given, and no permission was granted for a dinner break. They may have opened some window for free smoke, since the haze has been pretty bad these days.

It's the The Rashomon effect all over again, contradictory interpretations of the same event on a same day by different people. But you saw the video on the internet, you can make your own assessment about the phantom cancellation of an approved event. Jack Nicholson's Marine Colonel Jessup became a cultural icon for declaring on the witness stand that liberals “can't handle the truth.” Lots of other people can't either.

Time Off For A Reality Check

A few minutes into the first of 12 radio broadcasts compiled for "The Battle For Merger" launch, the speaker is heard saying, "without merger Singapore will not survive". That was 53 years ago to the day, and it would be stretching the truth to say we are currently subsisting in the boondocks. Was merger over-rated?

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said the reprint of the talks is meant to "provide a reality check" to attempts by some historians to recast the role played by communists and their supporters on the issue, most of whom are dead or exiled, and unable to fact check the minister's assertions. Melanie Chew's "Leaders of Singapore" is a treasure trove of alternate views from key persons of that era. Her archived interviews cover Goh Keng Swee to Lee Siew Choh, with only the notable exception of Lee Kuan Yew.

Dr Toh Chin Chye is on record telling us that when Lee got back to Singapore (Toh stayed behind in Kuala Lumpur to clear up the mess), he invited the members of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention to attend his press conference. He was crying. "I don't understand him at all. On one hand, he worked so hard for merger. Having gotten the cupful, he shattered it. And then cried over it." That's not included in the "The Battle For Merger" compilation.

Our "strongman" disappeared to Changi, staying incommunicado at the government holiday bungalow for 6 whole weeks. Toh was not appointed to act for him while he was away. The constitutional position was not clear about an absent or an incapacitated Prime Minister. When Lee went off to Changi, Parliament did not meet. So Singapore had a Parliament in suspended animation.

Melanie asked if Lee's provocative speeches could have been part of a deliberate strategy:

"I do not know why he did that. But he was influenced by Alex Josey, who came from the Middle East where he had been a reporter. Josey fed him ideas about the Muslims. The "Mad Mullahs." The "Ultras." Lee used the term, "Mad Mullahs." This was Alex Josey's phrase. Alex Josey was his close friend, golfing friend and biographer."

And why did Lee Kuan Yew ask the Tengku to write to Toh to explain that it was Tengku's decision to separate, was it because he was afraid?

"Yes, I think that was the purpose. To tell me that it was a decision made by the Tengku. So the blame would be on the Tengku's shoulder. Not on our shoulders. The Tengku was far sighted. However desirable it was to continue as one country, we could not do so. He wrote, "We cannot avoid a bloodshed if we remain."

Forget about the compilation of one sided radio talks, pick up a good book to read instead. That way you get a better perspective of the merger issue.

The Movie Version Is Better

Tang Guoqiang is a Chinese actor best known for portraying historical figures in several films and television series. One of his more memorable roles include portraying Mao Zedong in "The Founding of a Republic" (Chinese: 建國大業), a 2009 Chinese propaganda film commissioned by China's film regulator to mark the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Here Mao is treated to several revisions, appearing jovial, tolerant, and even permissive of some forms of capitalism, the latter being definitely out of character with the real Mao during the heydays of his revolution. Tang Guoqiang bears such a remarkable resemblance to the Communist Party leader that he has played Mao in at least ten other films.

Tang's Mao tip toeing through the tulips

Bruno Ganz played Adolf Hitler during the final ten days of his reign over Nazi Germany in "Downfall" (German: Der Untergang), a 2004 German war film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The New Yorker film critic David Denby wrote that Ganz's performance was not just astounding, it's actually rather moving. By emphasizing the painfulness of Hitler's defeat Ganz made the dictator into a plausible human being. Other journalists in Germany were queasy about "humanizing" Hitler, and some wondered aloud whether it might be somehow dangerous to see him as a human being.  Hitler was, after all, human being or not, an especially obnoxious, detestable specimen capable of cold ruthlessness and dispassionate brutality in determining the horrible fate of millions.

Ganz's Hitler listening to the sound of music

Lim Kay Tong has agreed to play the role of Lee Kuan Yew in the $2.8-million SG50 movie "1965", to be directed by Randy Ang. The vice-chairman of Singapore Film Society thinks Lim has the gravitas required of the role, but the actor is not without trepidations: "Because it's a real-life person, and it's Lee Kuan Yew. I hope he doesn't call me." Then again, Lee might not want to see the documentary, a film genre his son dissed so vehemently recently.

When Lee first saw himself on television, Josey tells us, he was momentarily shocked into silence. He was appalled at the fierce and unsmiling figure on the screen, clearly spoiling for a fight. "This was not the figure the political Lee wanted to present to the electorate," wrote Josey.
("No Man Is An Island", James Minchin, page 284)

According to the author, Lee set out to soften the image, but the result was not an unqualified success: "... his official smile is not unlike that of a crocodile tenderly anticipating its prey." Looks like Lim Kay Tong has his job cut out for him.

It’s Not That Complicated

It is heartening to note that not all our youngsters have been subjugated by the Ministry of Education (MOE) into mindless automatons to be fed like grist to the mill of the economic machinery. Student Agatha Tan of Hwa Chong Institution attended a school workshop conducted by Focus on the Family (FotF), and discovered to her horror that "bigotry is very much alive". The “It’s Uncomplicated” FotF workshop which the students had to sit through could easily pass off as handiwork of the misogynistic Taliban.

In defence, FotF head of corporate communications Ms Vicky Ho said that the workshop "is designed to be a relationship programme to help young people unravel the world of the opposite sex, uncover the truths of love and dating, and reveal what it takes to have healthy and meaningful relationships."

What is revealed is the booklet distributed to the captive audience - FotF has been approved by Minister Heng Swee Keat's MOE to run sex education programmes in schools since 2009 - states as gospel truth that boys are "visual", and that a "guy can't not want to look", and they have a desire to "visually linger on and fantasise about the female body". That has to be a shameless plug for promoting burqa attire.

You have to agree with poor Agatha when she concluded that FotF sends a dangerous message: that you should always assume that a girl means something else (like “yes”) when really she just means “no”. Even "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" author John Gray wouldn't go that far. Michael Kimmel, a professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, in his 2008 lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, titled "Venus, Mars, or Planet Earth? Women and Men in a New Millennium", contends that the perceived differences between men and women are ultimately a social construction, and that socially and politically, men and women want the same things.

A proselytizing group should be the last choice to be tasked the sensitive subject of sexuality education. Especially when some of them actually subscribe to a tenet that women folk are not fit to preach from the pulpit. The dishonourable bit is that they actually went to the schools with a hidden agenda.

Major Mariam al-Mansuri made history as United Arab Emirates’ first female pilot and F-16 team leader in the  airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). You can bet this lady means business when she says "yes", she won't be hesitating with the trigger for the bomb load. Thank you, Agatha, for firing your broadside.

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