| May |
Quick decisions as Bangkok burns
- I was scheduled to return to Bangkok on the same day that armoured units came out to suppress the Red Shirts. How to avoid the mess?
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Red layover, part 1
- I wandered around the Red Shirts' protest site in Bangkok on perhaps its last peaceful afternoon
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Red layover, part 2
- the Silom area closed off by the military and eerily quiet
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Red layover, part 3
- confrontation between the Red Shirts and the army on Bangkok's Rama 4 Road
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Issue work permits to sex workers
- denial that a sex industry exists is foolish, instead regulate it
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Mother-tongue policy undermines education and our future
- in this guest opinion, Jonno argues that the mother-tongue policy has serious and adverse effects on education and adult Singaporeans' communication skills, behaviour and ability to engage with the wider world
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Reform Party unveils six election candidates
- with potential but relatively unknown, thus lots more work
ahead, including on the party's stand over the gay issue
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Mother-tongue conservatives voice existential fears
- as expected, an emotional debate has erupted, but the debate
may be missing the point
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Effects of recent electoral changes
- we can afford to be bolder with electoral reform without
risking instability
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Entry to clubs "on the basis of ... testicles"
- furious at being humiliated by a Clarke Quay club, transgender
women organise to fight discrimination
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Sacking of discriminatory counsellor upheld by UK court
- a judge pronounces strongly on what freedom of religion does
not mean
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An elastic band here, a clothes peg there, part 2
- PAP and Nominated MPs argue against extending the NCMP scheme
with some of the worst arguments I've heard in a while
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An elastic band here, a clothes peg there, part 1
- more arbitrary patching done to our parliamentary electoral
system
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| Apr |
Singapore homophobia takes world stage
- Archbishop John Chew now leads the global fight to
discriminate against gay people in the Anglican Communion
|
|
At the feet of gods
- two embarrassing fiascoes beg serious questions about how our
public service officers go about their jobs
|
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Singapore's political system a one-legged stool
- Lee Hsien Loong in justifying why he is the prime minister
avoids saying it's because he won an election
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Where religious freedom ends
- Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng pussy-foots around the
issue of religious zealotry and defensiveness
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| Mar |
Breeding a subsidy mentality in housing
- why are housing subsidies given to nearly everybody? Isn't
that fiscally irresponsible in the long run?
|
|
Foreign funding a necessary antidote in authoritarian states
- time to reexamine our allergic reaction to foreign funding for
causes, including political ones
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| Jan |
My letter to the Censorship Review Committee 2009
- the CRC wanted public feedback, so I gave them my strongly
held views
|
|
Should Singapore's Home Minister be thrown into a Vietnamese jail?
- trading in Vietnamese brides is human trafficking; the
government abets it
|
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Sex bombs and other wayward self-destructions
- al Qaeda exploited Western society's prudishness to design a
bomb for Abdulmutallab
|
|
Mixed-marriage babies now given race choice
- the move only highlights how absurd trying to record race is
|
| Dec |
Two oppositions, and why in the long run, they may not matter at all, part 3
- they may not matter because power is for the PAP to lose, not
for opposition parties to win
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Two oppositions, and why in the long run, they may not matter at all, part 2
- opposition politics depend too much on dislike of the PAP, but
let's face it, most Singaporeans do not dislike the PAP that
much
|
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Negative income tax
- what is this and why is it worth considering?
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Two oppositions, and why in the long run, they may not matter at all, part 1
- why is it important to abjure civil disobedience? What does it
tell us about ourselves?
|
|
What we don't read about casinos and Rwanda
- too much gushing in our mainstream media obscures reality
|
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Stone-age sex law hidden in plain sight
- boy has sex with girl; who gets prosecuted?
|
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Tough getting elected if gay
- of course, we know that already, but here’s news from the
Philippines, Houston, and Britain where an election of a
different kind took place.
|
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Churning cities
- now immigration is affecting the Malay-Muslim community; what
I saw in four cities
|
| Nov |
Away
again - preparing for a trip, I had to run around looking
for vaccine and a good bank
|
|
Fogged lens
- the story behind Maruah's screening of Burma VJ and other
resistance documentaries
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Film censorship correspondence, part 2
- follow-up replies from the film censors of MDA as to why text
stills were not allowed
|
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Sucking demigods' toes
- our Law minister, chief justice and the Straits Times commit
unnatural sex
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| Oct |
Burma VJ to be shown again
- an award-winning documentary about citizen journalism in
extreme circumstances
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Tough tests serve a positive purpose
- parents complain that the Primary 6 exam math paper this year
was too difficult
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Throwing fish
- Singapore joins the Myanmar regime in making Asean human
rights and civil society engagement a farce
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Sam Schwartz and the police, part 1
- falsely accused of running a massage parlour; what happened to
due process and presumption of innocence?
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Sam Schwartz and the police, part 2
- raided, whacked, then falsely accused of biting someone
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Third-rate television for a Third-world country
- four young people asked about local television; all four think
it sucks
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Another teenager caught, set to hang
- one more awful case in a long campaign that has only just
begun
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More thoughts on the 'Not a procession' judgement
- the judge told defendants: You should have applied for a
judicial review. Ah but....
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Non-discrimination is nothing if not gray
- how far do we wish to push the non-discrimination ideal?
Thirty test scenarios
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Education ministry looks like it has something to hide
- poet and playwright Ng Yi-Sheng axed as arts mentor
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