Latest Posts
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Politics Never Ends: Free James Gomez!
From the raw numbers it seems little was changed by the election in Singapore. The opposition won no new seats, holding onto the only two they have in a legislature of 84 elected seats. The PAP will continue… Continue reading
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Inspiration
"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." — Aung San Suu Kyi. "Fear – The PAP’s… Continue reading
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Will PAP rig the vote?
It is an extraordinary thing. Half a world away we can feel the political momentum of the opposition in Singapore. Thanks to a beautiful ode to political activism and life by Xenoboy, and incisive critiques by Singabloodypore, and… Continue reading
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Repression Consumes Itself
A brilliant piece of Singaporean political analysis by Xeno Boy, "The Political Savant." He shows how the PAP’s earlier repression of Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (the CSJ of his post, for… Continue reading
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The Tao, and Non-Tao, of Engineering
Henry Petroski, an engineer who writes, comes up with some Taoist sounding ideas in a discussion of his recent book, "Success Through Failure." Success masks failure. The more a thing operates successfully, the more confidence we have in… Continue reading
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More on Singapore
I know some readers come to this site for reflections on Taoism and, occasionally, the I Ching. And for those people – who I very much want to continue communicating with – my recent turn toward Singaporean politics… Continue reading
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Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Sorry to see that Indonesian writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, has died. I have used the first volume of his Buru Quartet, This Earth of Mankind, in one of my classes for years now. His characters, and the sprawling… Continue reading
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PAP Ministers: “Vainglorious Thievery”
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post, "Inequality, Again," that reflected upon the large and growing gap between the incomes of the richest US CEOs and the average worker, using Mencius and the Tao Te Ching… Continue reading
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Singapore Fights Back
The PAP’s Legalist tactics are being resisted by various political actors in Singapore and around the world. For the first time in about two decades opposition parties (there are several) plan to contest more than half of the… Continue reading
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Virtual Mourning
I don’t know yet what to make of this: Just as the Web has changed long-established rituals of romance and socializing, personal Web pages on social networking sites that include MySpace, Xanga.com and Facebook.com are altering the rituals… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 