Slashdot Mirror
Singapore Bloggers Charged Under Sedition Act
ChannelNewsAsia is reporting that for the first time in at least 10 years Singapore has invoked the sedition act and charged two local bloggers for posting racist comments on an online forum. From the article: 'Said Singaporean blogger Benjamin Lee (Mr Miyagi):" A lot of them will be looking at their blogs and wondering if they made any legally seditious remarks. I think because of the way this will be played up, it's negative publicity for the Singapore blogging community."'
Conflict in my central processor...
Racism...
Freedom of speech...
Freedom of speech overrides natural desire to slowly boil racists...
*back to sleep*
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
And does racist speech = hate speech?
This is an honest question. As much as I hate racism and hate speech, I have to admit that Dave Chapelle, whose comedy many times has to do with race, is one of the best/original comedians out there today.
Of course his is meant for comedy rather than hate, but where does one draw the line?
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Perhaps the original author was afraid that the Slashdot effect would put a chink in the armor of the hosting company's intrusion detection system, and was just trying to help keep the log files spic and span of extraneous hits. In any case, thanks for not being niggardly with the links.
Remember: It's only sedition/rebellion if you lose.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I am not surprised in the slightest. Having been to Singapore many times, it is a VERY "tight" country. If you break the rules, the punishment is quite severe.
Drug dealers = death penalty. Vandalism = caning (remember that?). No selling gum. No chewing gum (at least in public). No joke.
While I don't think the totalitarianism is required, I will say that Singapore is VERY clear about the rules. Everybody knows them and everybody knows that if you break them, you do so at your own risk. They don't seem to have as many ambiguous laws as here in the US so it seems to work pretty well. The fact that some bloggers would post "maybe it will get me in trouble" stuff, is very ballsy.
for non-southeast asian slashdotters:
singapore is an outpost of chinese in a malay region
it is a country independent of malaysia simply because the chinese there feared dilution of their power by malays
there is a history of friction between the chinese merchant class and the local malay population throughout the region, actually very similar to the resentment europeans had for the jewish merchant class that led to so much racially motivated nastiness there for centuries
malays and filipinos to this day complain of how they are treated by the chinese in singapore, who they say view them as little more than domestic servants or coolies
in the 1960s, under the guise of fighting communism, indonesians slaughtered thousands simply for having chinese ancestry... and confiscated their businesses
so maybe some of you who are very idealistically attached to the concept of free speech, without any mitigating conditions, perhaps you can at least understand why singapore would be so interested on clamping down on hate speech in its territory: it's not a big country, and it must remain at peace with its huge malay neighbors, at whom this hate speech is directed by some really stupid chinese bigotted bloggers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wrong! Nobody, that I have EVER heard of, has ever been prosecuted in the US for denying the holocaust. In fact, there are plenty of people who deny the holocaust and they are allowed to continue on and print/publish/say whatever they want. While you can certainly point to some flaws in the Hate Speech legislation, we are nowhere near the state of Singapore. And for good reason.
Don't make a mountain out of molehill. It's not even a close comparison.
If a few Chinese moonbats ranting about the Malays' alleged racial inferiority is enough to spark a conflict, the people of Singapore should just go ahead and prepare for war because clearly their neighbors are itching for a fight. Besides, the only way to get an honest dialog going is to let people speak their minds. If people are forced to censor themselves so as to not offend the people they already consider inferior then guess what you've done? You've just made them even more convicted in their racism!
Yes, that's right. If you take a group of people who already view themselves as racially, not culturally, superior to another and force them to limit their liberties so as to not offend the group they condescend to, their natural reaction will be to condescend even more because "clearly, those people are so weak that they can't even handle a bad attitude."
Conflicts like this usually have very, very deep roots and it never ceases to amaze me how American left-liberals can never fail to suggest to change a group's natural reaction instead of accepting it. Hate to break it to you people, but the reality is that the strong do not typically respect those that are weaker than they are. That is life. You do not expect a lion to respect a terrier, so why expect a group that is very economically and militarily powerful in their region to respect a group that is by comparison very weak? Are we not animals as well, and do not both religion and science agree that the strong does not respect the weak?
Yes, let's encourage them to reevaluate their attitudes and seek to become better people by accepting others' weakness. Do as the Bible idealizes, and encourage the lion to have the strength of will and character to lay down with the sheep. But do not think that it is natural, and do not think that a weekly class on "tolerance" is going to make them like those they tend to look down on. Besides, technically they already show tolerance toward them because tolerance simply means live-and-let live. It doesn't imply you like them or want anything to do with them. It means you tolerate them, which is basically what most people do to small children who behave like brats or yappy little dogs. What they need is brotherly/sisterly reconciliation between their groups, not some half-assed bullshit called tolerance.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
His blog can be found here and the post where he talks about the charges can be found here.
Ignorance is the natural breeding ground of racism.
This means that you cannot combat racism by limiting information or expression. The only effective way you can combat racism is by countering it with good information-- demonstrating the racists wrong, rather than silencing them.
If you try to fight racism by silencing it, you are only hurting yourself in the long run. Even aside from the slippery slope problem, you inevitably wind up with a situation where the fact you are trying to silence these people brands them with a false stamp of legitimacy. The old "help help I'm being oppressed" thing is a powerful tool, even to those whose message is itself in favor of oppression; the racists can easily twist the fact the government is trying to silence them into an argument in their favor.
In the long run this just isn't helpful; it's like trying to put out a grease fire by pouring oil on it. No good will come of what Singapore is trying to do here, only collateral damage.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Of course, what is more pathetic is that the West should stand up to such governments, but the West has been taken over by corporate lackeys who are only interested in bottom lines.
"We don't like what you do, but we like what you pay."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.