We Don’t Need No Regulation
– The Online Citizen: Bloggers’ group proposes sweeping changes in Internet regulation
– Singapore Patriot: Bloggers to call for bold changes to new media regulation
– Hear Ye! Hear Ye!: A real grassroots initiative by bloggers
– Simple is the Reason of My Heart: Community Moderation as an alternative to Internet Regulation in Singapore
– Sgpolitics: Bloggers submit Proposals for Internet freedom in Singapore to Minister for Information, Communication & the Arts
– BHP: When Good is not so Good – A Study in Consultative Affirmative Action
Prison Break, My Fault
– Singapore Kopi Tok: COI Findings: Will the Government be Honest?
– Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Mas Selamat : Monday is the moment of TRUTH!!!
– Bad News on the Doorstep: Public responsibility
– My Sketchbook: The Mas selamat inquiry findings
Return of the JBJedi
– Singapore Patriot: What JBJ actually said at his Reform Party press con
– UrbanRant: Is JBJ a serial opposer or a die-hard romantic?
– Pseudonymity: VIDEOS: Reform Party
PM V1.3. Search for the next Prime Minstar
– A Sampan on S’pore Soil: The PAP’s new 100
– Diary of A Singaporean Mind: The PAP has already identified 100 potential leaders!
– My Singapore News: The emergence of the next PM
Free Tibet
– Salt * Wet * Fish: Of Protesting Monks and Nuns
– The Daily Backtrack: More on Beijing
– Hard Hitting in the Lion City: The Stupidity of the Chinese Protests against France
– nofearSingapore: Olympic Torch Relay: Hey China, what about Singapore?
– Ong Jiin Joo: Join the Torch Relay in KL – April 21
Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!
– BothSidesOfTheJohorStraits: Online hawker food price guide
– Cirque de Liberte: It’s Good News From The States’ Times For the Next 10,000 Years!
Freedom, Choice and a place for my Voice
– Used Brains For Sale: Who is allowed to speak?
Re Education
– The boy who knew too much: Homeschooling in Singapore and the USA: a comparison
Faith, Religion, to each his own
– Sam’s Thoughts: Religion should be within religious boundaries
Housing
– Enblocing Singapore: Suggestion of Short Term Lease to be Included in SPA
Daily Discourse
– Yawning Bread: Prosecute or nothing
– Used Brains For Sale: Lording it over the internet
– Cooler Insights: Neighbourhood Branding
– Alice Cheong in Wonderland: Capitol building and building conservation
– quachee’s blog: Does Singapore Really Cares About Malaysia? [Thanks QuaChee]
– BHP: Will the Singapore Story End Like Malaysia? [1] [2]
Life, the universe and everything
– harmless? bananas!: After thoughts of IDC’s Directions’08 Panel Discussion
Infoblogoramus
– Tech65: The Fiat Cinquecento aka 500
The Singapore Daily 
Maybe someone should go and check whether they are in the Intelligent Singaporean, from what I see there is always a few of them doing repairs & maint etc?
http://intelligentsingaporean.wordpress.com/
that beats speculating and wondering. Yes?
WHAT IS REALLY WRONG WITH THE G-15 PROPOSAL?
This interview took place in Aaron Ng’s Blog – http://aaron-ng.info/blog/a-real-grassroots-initiative-by-bloggers.html#comment-17595
Q: Anon: 1. If 15 is not enough, how many will be enough to represent you, me and probably 10,000 other bloggers? i doubt electing representatives will work on the internet. how do you organise an election? and, how do you get the consensus of 10,000 people?
A: Darkness: let me begin by setting the record straight. I have the deepest admiration and respect for these 15 bloggers. I respect any man who steps up to the plate, bc that takes deep spirited commitment and guts even if its for all the wrong reasons. In this case I believe they are genuine, so we have to really give them all the 3 hip hips here. Where we part waves – is on the issue of methodology and approach.
Here you have understand this is not an issue abt bean counting – it’s not an issue about 15, 1,000 or even, the statistical significant of 1,000, 000. As it remains an issue that revolves around the notion of what it means to preserve the elemental rights of anon bloggers – why is this so important? Because even if you happen to have a statistical majority, this does not mean you have the mandate to do anything you want under the sun – this is where we have to appreciate the practical limits of democracy and the discipline it imposes on even ordinary bloggers such as the G-15. While democracy remains the only effective anecdote against oppression, persecution and even harassment – what bears repeating is, it too can facilitate a very insidious form of tyranny – one where the statistical significant (in this case the open bloggers at the expense of anon bloggers) hijacks the law and the means to further their own designs and nefarious ends at the expense of the statistical minority. This hardly requires any elaboration, the world has seen this before, the Jewish holocaust, slavery the denial of rights for women etc. I can really go on and on here, history is redolent with such instances of abuse in the name of the statistical significant. So it behooves every netizen to understand that if we are really committed to crave a better world in the internet, then we must never repeat the mistakes of the real world – we have to even learn from them – this is the opportunity the net presents us with: a clean slate, that means we can never just commit ourselves into action in the name of the collective good, or the moral majority or even the Mickey Mouse club, but how do we accomplish this with wisdom?
My feel is the founders of the American constitution gave us a very good road map and we should really take a closer look at it – these intellectuals did not say, if you have the statistical majority, you have every right to paint the town red or burn down the white house in the greater glory of democracy – no, what they did was to impose limits on our understanding of democracy, by enshrining what they believed to be constitutional and even the elemental rights of man by weaving it specifically into the text of the constitution e.g freedom of speech, so that even if the statistical majority wanted to hijack it, their efforts would be blunted and why did they do this? You need to ask yourself this question as, this is the main plank of my argument why I feel the G15 bloggers have got it all wrong in their approach. If you miss this point, you will not understand why I am going on and on about the mechanics and methodology – and everything will just cease to make any sense and its even likely you think, I am an irrational person – Why did they (the founding fathers) deliberately put the cookie jar on the high shelve? Away from the grubby hands of the executive, legislature and judiciary? – because they knew only too well this was the best way to guarantee the rights of man and it’s premised on the understanding, we should never pursue actions with far and wide sweeping changes simply because its expedient, cost effective, economical or even because 15 is less than a 1,000 or even a 1,000, 000 – this discussion really goes beyond the numerical and encroaches even into the domain of the philosophy of what is required to keep a process democratic. Because in every oligarchy there will always be an idiot with a calculator and a ledger who always be quick to draw the cost and efficiency benefits – this simply means we need to take the high road instead of the short cut, because what we do today will serve as a precedent for our children, so we need to get it right the first time by building quality into the process, the G-15 bloggers need to be mindful of this, that in my view is the discipline that leadership imposes upon everyone of these bloggers – if they don’t have the political maturity to digest this, then, they should even be there! Taking the high road is not that unusual, if you think about it, that’s the reason why we typically have judges to preside over murder cases instead of a computer or an Ipod – do you see my point; democracy not only imposes responsibility, but it also demands from us the moral fortitude to keep to certain time honored and sacrosanct rules even if they are leceh (cumbersome). My feel is it’s simply foolhardy to ask the question, “how many will be enough to represent you, me and probably 10,000 other bloggers?” the fact of the matter remains pragmatic calculation can never ever take priority over the complexity of having to pay homage to the rights of man – this simply sets a very dangerous precedent.
2. Q: Would it not be better for volunteers (read: people who actually care) to come forward to put forth their views? in a place and time where no one leads, someone’s gotta! i think the bloggers come from all walks of life and are all responsible, reasonable people. I know some of them, and they command my respect. Why do you not think that these people cannot come up with decent proposals?
A: Yes that would appear to be a sensible proposition on the first cut, but on closer examination, I am reminded Durai started off as a volunteer, so did Adolf Hitler, Stalin and Idi Amin, they all started off as servants of the greater good believe it or not – what we need to understand here is that the very notion of power has the potential of modulating ones character for the worse given time and opportunity. You can even say this is inevitable, even the best of us are susceptible to this gravity of vices – that’s why the wise provision for good systems and inure it with good people – they never design it the other way round if you notice; the man is always dispensable; this adage simply means you cant put the horse bfr the cart and expect to make any meaningful progress – the system and processes must always comes first and by this people must simply be reduced to custodians and guardians of the due process – to me this is a non negotiable condition precedent priori, especially when you look at the Malaysian experience and consider what a basket case it is? When they failed to astudiously keep to this law – if that imposes upon us the need to take the high road, then we simply must simply do it even it is impractical – this is why I feel the G-15 should have opened up the discussion in the public square of the internet, so that they may even solicit responses from anon bloggers, posters and readers – granted, it’s the long road, but its also the gold standard. In this particular case you have to really ask yourself why no provision was ever made to reach out to the statistical significant anon bloggers, posters and readers? Even today none of the 15 have even addressed this matter directly. IMO this is not only a travesty of justice but also of logic and it makes a mockery of the whole process of inclusive dialogue with the blogging community. IMO if the price that’s the price of volunteerism, then its just not worth it.
3. Q: If you indeed object to the content, they’ve listed their key proposals here. with what points, are you dissatisfied with? (point 1 to 8, on TOC.)
A: My concern is not really with the substantive, as I do not believe it can be even considered seriously by any policy planner, not seriously at least – this is what our best strategist tells me even at this early stage. They appear to me more concerned about the informal platform that has been discussed at length by Bernard Leong. You have to go and check out his post: http://bleongcw.typepad.com/simple_is_the_reason_of_m/2008/04/community-moder.html For some reason our strategist have tagged this as a ‘real and present’ threat, this is not only unusual, but usually we don’t really consider threats to be that serious, so I really need to sit underneath a coconut tree with these clever monkeys and discuss the specifics with them to understand it further – I regret to inform you I have no comment for the time being
4.Q If you agree with the content, but disagree with the method, then can you propose a better one? a method that will see all 10,000 bloggers being heard. or electing blogger representatives.
A: Again you seem to be preoccupied with bean counting, pls refer to my reply to your question in (1)
5.Q: of course this is not gonna make the government repeal/amend any laws. they don’t pretend that it will! (read their cover letter, once again on TOC). It’s all about being heard, and letting the powers that be know that the laws are being scrutinized. and of course, offering key proposals that hopefully the government will take into account.
I hope you understand Darkness. and of course answer my few questions listed here, especially point 3 and 4.
A: “It’s all about being heard, and letting the powers that be know that the laws are being scrutinized” – I disagree vehemently under the strongest possible terms with your simplistic view of how events may unfold. Let me give you an analogy of how I really see this group of 15 and their proposal to our govt – it’s really like a pretty lithe convent girl driving around soliciting for church funds. Suddenly she takes a wrong turn. In a while she’s in a different world, it could just as well be downtown Kampala, Mogadishu or Baghdad – she naively steps out of her rental and walks into a watering hole to ask for directions and when she walks in, she sees a group of men strung out in the bar counter…..you could just as well fill up the blanks yourself with a bit of imagination, but I guarantee you, they’re not going to be playing doctor or can where we find the rabbit who went down the hole?
IMO the best case scenario we can expect is, our govt will sent a few wax works to review it and say thank you very much, we will get back to you and file it under the X files and outsource it to both agent Molder and Scully since they’re also task with the Mas Selamat mystery – worst case scenario in my view is if this proposal falls into the hands of some real savvy bad ass scholars monkeys – who are a bit like us, then we will really be in trouble as not only will they streamline and retrofit some of these proposals with their own hidden agenda, but they may even use it as a Trojan horse to further a broader longer term design – this is always a theoretical possibility – IMO this is where the real danger lies when one gets too close to govt and how do I know this? Because this is exactly what we the brotherhood will do, we will look at it smile and say it is good but behind the scene mystery will be furiously at work – this is how the game is played, you cannot blame these ppl, what did you really expect when you mash clever ppl together? Besides who in his right mind would look a gift horse in the mouth and say, go break a leg?
Thank You.
Darkness 2008
[Anon / Darkness – Interview – The Brotherhood Press 2008]
Related post: http://ian.onthereddot.com/
Probably took him at most 20 min on his Nokia Communicator. Great Stuff BP. Keep it up!
Dear Lady of the Lake & friends,
Yes, lady. Darkness will be around during your coming visit to Singapore. Indeed when he heard your entourage will be visiting our island, he insisted on the privilege to chaperone both you and your friends around to some of our new sights and sounds – I am sure you have heard we have the world’s largest Ferris wheel over the Marina – the pleasure he said would be his entirely and his alone. And he was most insistent about it. I hope you will seriously consider our offer. I am sure he will be happiest. May we the brotherhood on behalf of the SDC very respectfully convey, our heartiest and warmest regards of good health and long life to the PT consort on her coming birthday.
Darkness is has sent a message capsule to you Lady, he is currently on board our flag ship Les Enfant du Paradis, here;
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XK2Mn-XgHjA&feature=related
He said, you will understand.
Yours very respectfully,
2nd Class Pre-Science Officer / Space Diplomatic Corps / Div VI
Harphoon
WHY IS THE LADY OF THE LAKE & HER FAT FRIENDS ALWAYS GIVEN SPECIAL TREATMENT WHEN THEY COME FOR SHOPPING TRIPS TO SG? TELL ME IS THIS SOME FORM OF NEW APARTHEID TWO TIER SHITTY TREATMENT????????????????
KKP
Maybe it’s because the fat lady sings.
The juxtaposition between a beautiful voice and a pear is always astounding. It is nothing short of amazing where the tenderness to the ear came from; it is unimaginable that something as beautiful could have come from quite possibly clotted veins; the biology defies explanation.
Note: I’ve absolutely no idea who is the Lady of the Lake of course.
I’m just writing to continue the story. It’s a creative writing game.
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