Singapore’s King Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew wants to assure everybody there’s no cause for alarm and that, although all the jobs are going to China and India, things will be rosy again:

In two, three years, if we make the right decisions now, we will see sunshine through the clouds.

[….]

Let me assure you that the ministers have thoroughly studied all the options and know that the best approach is to meet the challenge head-on, even if this calls for painful measures. They know what they are doing.

As always here, it is the ministers, the government, that will take care of it. This isn’t criticism, but an acknowedgement — it’s just the way things are done here, and as I’ve said before, it’s worked amazingly well, at least so far.

Lee didn’t make any reckless promises, and he made it clear that there will be periods of reduced wages and fewer jobs, but that there will also be light at the end of the tunnel. And the government, of course, will be holding the flashlight.

As a relative newcomer, I still marvel at how everyone’s fate is in the hands of the government, and at how happy the citizens are to have it that way. It’s worked so far, so why shouldn’t they be? It’s just such a far cry from Hong Kong where, at least when I was living there, no one cared much at all about the government and wanted it to be as laissez faire as possible. An interesting and dramatic contrast.

I just watched with some amazement the BBC news report on the death of the Brothers Hussein. The main point of the report was why the US used such massive force against 3 men and a teenager in a little house. Nothing about why this was such an important victory.

I am all for asking questions, but why are they so obsessed with making the US appear to be worse than devils like the Husseins?

I thought this was bad, until only moments later I saw– courtesy of Conrad — an article by the infamous Robert Fisk. You literally have to read it to believe it. Here’s a random sentence; tell me what you think:

And American intelligence – the organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001 – was also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20 March, which was supposed to kill Saddam. And the far crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at the end of the air bombardment in April which was supposed to kill Saddam and his sons but only succeeded in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians. All proved to be miserable failures.

I mean, isn’t this bizarre? Yes, I dislike Bush and I think there have been lots of duplicities for which he and his buddies need to be made accountable. And accidental deaths are a terrible thing. But he is making it sound as though the “slaughter” was an intentional act of malice. It’s friggin insane. The bold prejudice — a mission isn’t a failure, it is a “miserable failure.” How can they publish this cockeyed drivel?

He then questions whether the whole story is another lie by the US military:

And in a family obsessed, with good reason, with their own personal security, would Uday and Qusay really be together? Would they allow themselves to be trapped. The two so-called “lions of Iraq” (this courtesy of Saddam) in the very same cage?

Finally, he closes the article with a brilliant prophesy:

If he [Saddam] and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish – on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.

I have a lot of misgivings about the war, but articles like this truly are, as Conrad says, “beyond parody.”

Predictably, the Singapore government’s sudden about-face on its traditional policy of not hiring gays is creating a backlish, according to The Straits Times:

The Government’s change of policy in hiring gays is causing a stir in the Christian community. So far, it has prompted a meeting led by the mainstream National Council of Churches of Singapore and an online campaign against homosexuals by another group.

One local pastor put up a post on his church’s Web site titled Don’t Be Silent:

‘We cannot stand idly by. Homosexuality is a sin and it is far more rampant, militant and organised than most of us actually believe it to be. The battle lines are now drawn and it is time for the Church in Singapore to rise up and make a stand.’

(The article also cites another religious group that urges tolerance and acceptance.)

The outcry is really a silly thing. They are deriding the government’s decision to hire gays, but I have bad news for them: gays are already there, just as they are in the military and just about every profession you can think of. To say they are forbidden is an exercise in self-deception.

These proteseters should also see that this has little to do with toleration or compassion. Only one thing matters now to the SGP government, and that is holding onto the international businesses it has here and wooing new ones. The no-gays policy has been a turn-off to some of these companies, and the last thing the government wants to do is turn any company off.

Singapore is in a terribly perilous position as US companies that previously would have set up their Asian headquarters here or in Hong Kong choose instead to skip the “stepping stone” and set up shop right in Shanghai.

This could literally suffocate the HK and SGP economies over time. It is no time to chase away potential business because of outdated and prejudicial hiring practices. So the government has made the correct and moral decision, even if their motivation had little to do with correctness or morality.

[Courtesy of a tip from Vaara.]

In case you haven’t noticed, The Peking Duck has been spiced up with some new graphics and features. My thanks to Sekimori for helping me out, and to my consultants (willing and un) Conrad, Adam and Jeremy.

There’s an interesting post over at Adam’s Brainysmurf about a topic of unmatched interest — me. Check it out, as well as my comment on it (which I still can’t believe I wrote).

Click to enlarge. [Via Tblogg]

Absolutely fascinating article on how a little-known policy group (boasting some of the most prominent names in Bush’s coterie) has been pushing for war on Iraq for years and years. This article is an eye-opener from the opening sentences.

Sample:

An obscure, ominous-sounding right-wing policy group called Project for the New American Century, or PNAC – affiliated with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s top deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Bush’s brother Jeb – even urged then-President Clinton to invade Iraq back in January 1998.

“We urge you to… enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world,” stated the letter to Clinton, signed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others. “That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.”

The mission statement of this little group, PNAC, is downright prophetic:

“The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire,” says the PNAC’s statement of principles. “The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.”

Read the whole article, then comb around over at this site for the full scoop on what PNAC is all about. (Be sure to check out the links in the right-hand sidebar.) This is really a bit of a revelation.

This is all thanks to a post from Orcinus, to whom all I can say is “Thank you.”

[Disclaimer: I wrote this post after drinking a can of Baron’s Strong Brew Beer, and only after I finished it did I see how high the alcohol content is. (I’m amazed they actually sell it here.) So I am not responsible for anything that follows; blame it on Barons.]

It is infinitely harder to blog in Singapore than in Beijing, and I am really facing a dilemma. Everything here is so status quo, so…predictable. The weather, the news, the weekends. (Yes, of course the weekends are predictable, because the only thing to do during the weekend is shop and eat.)

That is actually a compliment, of course. It’s what many societies strive to be — harmonious, workable, under control, contented….(boring?). It’s great for Singapore, but it really sucks for blogging.

China, of course, is a Western blogger’s paradise. So much there is, to the average Westerner, extraordinary, incomprehensible, a true shock to the mind and the senses. And, thanks to our friends in the CCP, life over there never ceased to amaze me, from the ubiquitous deification of Madman Mao to the insane rituals of the annual Party Congress (which this year was made just a bit more insane than usual — if such is possible — by that devious little pathogen we call SARS) to the machine-gun-toting guards who stand in front of the national TV station buildings (without a tightly controlled media, the Party stands naked and vulnerable)….

No, there was never a shortage of blog material in the PRC. In fact, from my memory bank alone, I could blog about China for years and years to come. If my mother and my current boss didn’t read this blog, I would tell you all stories that would make your hair stand on end. I wasn’t happy living there, but God, I miss it, at least from a blogging perspective.

I am jealous of Phil and Conrad over in Hong Kong, where they’ve got the best of both worlds; they’re a stone’s throw from all the lunacy over in the People’s Republic, and they’re in the center of a vortex, witnessing “history in the making” as Hong Kong wrestles with defining itself in the wake of reunification with a very foreign mother country. They have blog material handed to them on a plate, with a red ribbon tied around it.

And then we get to Singapore. Work, eat, shop, watch sanitized TV, sleep, work, eat, shop…. Sorry for whinging, but it’s getting on my nerves lately. It’s really nice, really comfortable, really pretty. But there’s no Wan Chai, and there are certainly no demonstrations in the streets, no political upheavals or convulsive controversies.

My day begins each morning with my alarm clock going off; a radio clock, it is tuned to the only classical music channel in town, and like everything else in this city-state-whatever-it-is, it’s maddeningly predictable. There are rules (and if anyplace loves rules, thrives on rules, it is Singapore). Each piece of music will be no longer than 10 minutes. There will be no complete symphonies or complete operas or complete musical works of any kind: only 10-minute-long, instantly digestible, pleasant, bite-sized nuggets of music. A movement of Eine Kleine Nacht Music; a cheerful excerpt from a Beethoven Symphony; lots of happy, innocuous 10-minute pieces by Teleman and Haydn (whom I love, but not in little chunks). Pre-digested and pleasant. Never any brooding Mahler or dark late Brahms or sensual Wagner. Not in Singapore.

So that’s how the day begins, with some classical cotton candy. Again, it’s sweet, but it definitely doesn’t match my sturm-und-drang temperament, my thirst for the broadest spectrum of emotional sensations, from the bitterest to the sweetest, from those blinding sunrises to those dark, disquieting midnights of the soul, where one’s mind can romp about and pay homage to what D.H. Lawrence refers to as the “dark gods.” There are no dark gods in Singapore.

Singapore. What is there to blog about in Singapore, except the difficulty of blogging here?!? I don’t know, but what I do know is this: I had better think of something fast or this blog will be cancelled for lack of material. God, what a challenge! And it only goes to underscore the basic nature of man, to be unsatisfied wherever he is. After all, in China I longed for stability and comfort, and now that I have it, I long only for chaos and pandemonium. No, I can’t win.

Josh Marshall, who tends to go out of his way to be decorous toward his fellow reporters, today uncharacteristically blasts William Safire to bits for questioning the loyalty of those who dare question Bush’s use of unreliable data to justify invading Iraq:.

“I’ll be honest with you. I struggled for some time trying to think up a way to discuss Safire’s Monday morning column. But the whole thing was such a cynical mix of half-truths, untruths and twisted logic that it ended up besting me.”

He finally does come up with a way, and it’s great reading. The whole post seethes, which again is uncharacteristic of the usually reserved Marshall, and the closing paragraph is priceless.

A test to see whether I can upload images.