
The media in Singapore: Zip It - contingencies
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21655044-feisty-bloggers-face-trouble-zip-it
======
Cyph0n
Quite the neutral title. We now understand your disdain for Singapore. The
punishment is definitely harsh.

It is well-known that Singapore has quite the dictatorial side to it, but it
is a fantastic country when you look at where it was only 40 years ago. A
country with the total area of a city with absolutely no natural resources, no
official language, and a large variety of ethnicities i.e. not homogenous like
say SK. It took a lot of sacrifice to get it where it is today.

~~~
crdoconnor
>no natural resources

The port was considerably more valuable than any natural resources they could
have had, and was tapped as the 'seed capital' used to build the country.

Without it, they probably would still be as poor as they were in 1950.

The 'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' canard is useful, though,
for domestic propaganda.

>It took a lot of sacrifice to get it where it is today.

It mainly just took sensible economic planning and a willingness to share the
wealth on the part of the leadership from the 1960s onward.

The economic planning part - currency suppression via the purchase of US
treasuries, investment in education and subsidies of key industries has been
played out by other Asian tigers - Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China.

The interesting part is where the willingness to share the wealth came from in
the 60s.

In the 50s and 60s there was a sense of threat verging on outright panic among
the country's elite about certain domestic political opponents. A threat
which, not coincidentally, the elite of the United States _also_ felt very
strongly in the 1950s-60s from similar domestic opponents.

~~~
autokad
'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda.
sure, they had a sea port, but looking at what they have done is amazing. many
countries have some advantage, but most do not use them properly. Malaysia is
a bridge crossing away with just as much sea access and ample amounts of oil
and other natural resources, yet I do not believe they have accomplished what
singapore has done.

taiwan, south korea, china, and japan are bad examples to compare to
singapore, though Japan in the meiji restoration was at least somewhat
comparable except that all of the countries you mentioned relied on heavy
industry to get to where they were, where as singapore had no land for such
heavy investment in industry - let alone the materials.

singapore had to make a long series of specific-successful long term
investments which played out very well, and that had little to do with wealth
sharing. one of the things that made everything play out so well is the
singaporean's culture of kiasu - afraid to lose. singaporeans are very
determined and trying to get ahead rather than sharing wealth.

it was always easy for singapore to guide the ship with everyone in the same
direction because people obeyed so much to economic incentives. the only thing
it really failed at was getting singaporeans to have kids recently.

~~~
crdoconnor
>'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda.

It really isn't. The port gave the city a much greater head-start than PAP
have ever given it credit for.

This intentional misdirection is used to give credence to the idea that it was
Lee Kuan Yew's genius and the sweat and tears of ordinary Singaporeans that
grew the country out of nothing.

Which isn't to say that the country wasn't reasonably well run. It's just
saying that it just wasn't sheer genius or some kind of cultural superiority
that pulled them out of poverty. The truth is much more mundane than that.

~~~
autokad
if your statements were true, why is it that the country was in such a
terrible position come 1960s? the port is much older then that.

------
crdb
For background on the Amos Yee case and to put things in perspective:

\- The laws against insulting religions are part of a wider system to allow
for smooth integration in a region that has known genocide and riots as the
traditional means of resolving racial and religious differences. They have
been relatively successful in my experience, especially compared to some
neighbours who have overtly racist government policies; amongst other things,
Singapore has not known a race riot since the 1960s.

\- The laws against obscenity are a holdover from the British period which
(like 377A, which is almost never enforced today - edit, seems Section 377 was
repealed in 2007 according to Singapore Law Watch, as per link below! I never
heard of this before) will probably gradually disappear as the country becomes
a little less socially conservative and people stop putting pressure on their
representative not to strike them off (as happened in the USA, where it took
until 2015 for gay marriage to become legal).

Both were, nevertheless, the law, and he broke both repeatedly, including
breaking bail. This is kind of like being a Colorado resident (where weed is
legal afaik) and bringing a large bag of legally bought weed over to any
number of particularly harsh penalty countries (Singapore included), then
complaining when you're put in jail or even on death row due to local law,
arguing that weed is a victimless crime and the punishment is
disproportionate. Also worth noting that it was his own mother who first
brought him to the Institute of Mental Health, not the authorities, but this
is of course not mentioned by the Economist which is happy to resume the long
standing feud it has with Singaporean authorities by diluting the quality of
its usually high journalistic standards.

The charge against insulting LKY has been deferred to a later trial once the
other two charges have been resolved. I suspect it was put on because the
nation was grieving and the insult was particularly badly timed. Remember
about a quarter of the population turned up for the funeral (and I lonely
expat here for three years also did), because most have seen the country
literally go "from third world to first" in the space of a couple generations.
It is impossible for foreigners - particularly those whose country's
independence and economic success is centuries old, or whose founders did not
have quite the same results - to understand the esteem (and frankly, love) in
which LKY is held locally. I would reserve judgement until the court decision.

Further reading:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Yee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Yee)
appears quite detailed and well written. Some background on Section 292:
[http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/slw/attachments/64631/Penal%...](http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/slw/attachments/64631/Penal%20Code%20s%20292rev.pdf)

I'm not taking sides, frankly I couldn't care less about the case. But wanted
to add some perspective before the sharks circle. By the way, congratulations
on the first HN Singapore thread that does not mention chewing gum!

~~~
Fajita_Mane
>The laws against insulting religions are part of a wider system to allow for
smooth integration in a region that has known genocide and riots as the
traditional means of resolving racial and religious differences.

It has more to do with controlling public discourse than ensuring racial
harmony. Despite Singapore's best efforts to forcibly integrate immigrants
(i.e. racial quotas on public housing blocks) Sg has a race problem. They had
their first race riot since the 60s last year. It was incited by a Chinese
truck driver injuring an Indian laborer in the relatively impoverished Indian
district of the city. The coverage from the Strait Times might be interesting
to you: [http://www.straitstimes.com/little-india-
riot](http://www.straitstimes.com/little-india-riot)

>Both were, nevertheless, the law, and he broke both repeatedly, including
breaking bail. No one is disputing whether Amos broke the law. It's more of a
question of whether the laws are intended to keep people safe or control
public opinion. Everyone knows about the libel prosecution of political
threats, but the PAP's crusade of information control goes far beyond that.
Protests are essentially illegal. Dissent is illegal. When I studied at NUS
for a semester, I was forced to sign a waiver going through customs that
stated, along with many other conditions, that I wouldn't criticize the
government in any way, online or off. Singapore is an extremely thoroughly
policed country, and riots are just not an acceptable excuse for draconian
policy.

>By the way, congratulations on the first HN Singapore thread that does not
mention chewing gum! inb4 someone excuses the human rights violations by
fawning over how excellent their metro system is. weev went into my Twitter
mentions to do this once.

~~~
crdb
This is not at all how I understood the riots. Roughly: a bus driver arrived
in an area where people were partying in the street, and refused to let in a
very intoxicated fellow. This fellow somehow ended up in front of the bus (I
think he decided to lie there) and got run over by the driver (I doubt
intentionally). As is customary in the country of origin of said partying
folks, the crowd got angry and "defended" its own. Within two hours, the
police had restored peace.

After examining the situation, the government decided to make street drinking
illegal in the area during the hours where further flash mobs were likely, and
restricted alcohol sales island-wide during night hours (10.30pm - 7.30am).

Now, the suspects happened to be one race and the driver another, but people
weren't protesting for racial reasons, it was a drunk crowd flashing up after
it got sparked that happened to be mostly from a couple countries.

This is in stark contrast to, say, the 1964 race riots and similar riots
around the region at that time against the Straits Chinese in Indonesia and
Malaysia, or more recently, Ferguson in the US, which were explicitly about
race. I suspect that the context of the Singapore riots was then lost on
journalists who couldn't resist fitting them into their more common narrative
of race or class based protest.

~~~
Fajita_Mane
>As is customary in the country of origin of said partying folks, the crowd
got angry and "defended" its own. So the reaction to the accident was
motivated at least to some degree by race. I agree that it wasn't an example
of race on race violence, and I don't think it was widely interpreted as such.
Though I'll admit I'm not informed on the specifics of how it started, it
certainly was nothing comparable to the riots that happened before Singapore
was undeveloped.

The riot isn't important in the context of the Amos Yee story except as an
example of an event where Singapore was portrayed in a negative light in int'l
press. The first instance of public violence in the nation for over 40 years
made a great headline.

I wasn't posting that article for the coverage of that event so much as to
show how journalism in Sg. The Strait Times will literally never publish
anything remotely critical of the dominant political coalition.

~~~
crdb
No, it was not motivated by race. Around 9% of Singaporean citizen are
Singaporean Indian and 58% of those are Tamil (I attended two weddings in the
last 3 years where one of the couple was Tamil) - the same as the non-
Singaporeans involved in the riot. There have already been two Singaporean
Indian presidents (Devan Nair and S. R. Nathan, the latter the longest-serving
in Singaporean history).

It's hard to find a parallel with any Western country, because no Western
country has as free an immigration policy for low income workers as Singapore
does (the US has a large illegal immigrant population to meet demand, but the
dynamics of that are very different) - around 12% of residents are on Work
Permits (i.e. construction workers or domestic help) [1].

The Straits Time did not publish the event as a race-motivated riot because it
wasn't - it was more about a bunch of drunk angry people burning a few cars -
and that it wasn't was immediately obvious to the readers of the Straits Time
(which include many non-Singaporeans; not to mention the ST has had its own
feuds with the Singaporean government).

[1] [http://population.sg/resources/population-
composition/](http://population.sg/resources/population-composition/)

~~~
Fajita_Mane
>No, it was not motivated by race. You mentioned in your previous comment that
it was a "customary" reaction to the accident. I'm no expert on the culture,
but I'd assume that public drinking is a great deal more socially acceptable
in South India.

Singapore is lucky enough to be close to a tremendous supply of inexpensive
human capital - even more so than the US/Mexico. Their immigration policy
allows low-paying marine/construction jobs to be filled quickly, but workers'
rights are essentially nonexistent.

Those 12% of foreign workers are almost all guaranteed to be earning enough to
support themselves and their families back home - and that's without the
benefit of a minimum wage or membership in an effective union. This sort of
public policy may attract foreign investment, but it's unfair to the workers
that have made Sg rich and it's unlike anything seen in the rest of the
developed world.

>not to mention the ST has had its own feuds with the Singaporean government
Are you referring to the long-standing tradition of the PAP suing print
journalists for libel?

I was browsing the front page of their site after I looked up coverage of the
riots. The biggest story currently is about a marine trade union leader and MP
resigning in disgrace after embezzling funds. Nowhere in the story does it
mention his involvement in the PAP. There's a reason they have the worst press
freedom rating of developed countries.

------
nickpsecurity
It will get worse for people given they are a top surveillance state that's
deployed NSA-inspired tech widely. The people I know over there work hard to
maintain a semblance of privacy to share their views. It's still not as bad as
a lot of places, though. One of the things strengthening the government's
power in these cases is that they tell me Singaporean culture embraces
government as a caretaker of sorts. Comes with good and bad.

Most are more likely to be hurt by employers that exploit the heck out of
them. I commonly hear about people working long shifts for next to no pay with
overtime expected. Labor violations go overlooked by authorities too often.
Kind of like the American situation pre-regulations and lawsuits. Hope their
situation gets a bit better overtime as it did in some countries.

------
petecooper
>The media in Signapore: Zip It

Typo in title: should be Singapore.

~~~
dang
Thanks, fixed.

------
realitygrill
What a show of recalcitrance. You could probably bring up this issue in
conversation and use it as a free speech litmus test. I am reminded of this
comment
[[http://lesswrong.com/lw/kat/the_benefits_of_closedmindedness...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kat/the_benefits_of_closedmindedness/ayqg)]:

2-26% of Americans thinks gay people should not be allowed to speak

3-36% of Americans think that atheists like me (& 79.2% of LW) are better seen
than heard

7-49% think militarists should shut up

16-48% of Americans disagree with free speech for racists

16-75% claim Muslims should not be permitted to preach against America

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Surely those aren't confidence intervals coming from a place like lesswrong.

(also "16-75%"? Seriously?)

~~~
icebraining
The data comes from a blog on Discover[1], which is itself an analysis of the
data from the General Social Survey[2].

The 16-75 is because the blog author groups the answers based on the score in
the Wordsum test by the responder. People with higher scores are less keen on
censoring others.

[1]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/09/intelligence-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/09/intelligence-
challenged-people-and-free-speech/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Social_Survey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Social_Survey)

------
daodedickinson
Oh, I thought maybe an underground press distributing encrypted archives was
growing in Singapore.

