baby, what's in that satchel?

well here's a long post to make up for many days' silence:

two guys in singapore got charged with sedition recently because they'd posted racist comments on their blogs and forums. it was naughty of them to do so, but sedition! that's a bit of an overkill methinks. perhaps casting racial slurs on a blog would incite a blog war, but i fail to see how it's constitutes a crime against a state.

talk about a lopsided justice system. in australia you get nutjobs like jack van tongeren running about like hitler on crack, with his supposed followers fire-bombing chinese restaurants. and though the australian government basically told him that he could jump off a bridge for all they cared, he was never charged for sedition. and then there's pauline hanson, one-time purveyor of fish n chips, leader of the now-defunt one nation party. her party was anti-immigration! tut tut. where would all us fobs* be if she had succeeded??** [answer below]. but she's not langouring in prison, oh no .. she was for a time (on some minor technicality), but now she's very happy being a pin-up girl for middle-aged rednecks and prancing about on dancing with the stars (she's one of the stars by the way).

in the end those boys ended up posting bail and walking away shame-faced, but now their records are forever tainted and they can never work in Singapore again because nobody wants a racist fucker working in their company. i wonder if they will be on celebrity squares any time soon.

how funny that you can face possible jail time for typing something rude on the internet, despite the fact that in certain schools you get tutors and lecturers speaking in mandarin, even though there are other non-chinese students in the class who don���t speak the language and therefore won���t benefit from the gibberish they just heard. you wanna charge those guys with sedition too?

perhaps you can check out pranay gupte who worked for the straits times for awhile. he's an americanofindiandescent who was working as an expatriate and made observations on how even though he's educated and sought-after by high-flying publications, he was still treated like the bangladeshi worker who turns the stop-and-go sign at construction sites. eventually he got his work visa revoked because he tried to write an article on it that didn't make it past the editorial stage. why wasn't his editor charged with sedition either? he didn't actually overtly racist, but somewhere between reading the article and gupte getting fired, something must have happened right? what if gupte was so angry he phoned home (america, not india) and said "goddamn singaporeans blahblahblah", and whoever he called got angry too and called india, and india got angry and bombed singapore? they have nuclear weapons you know ?! and who would have brought that truckload of shit down on singapore? his editor. so maybe they should have nipped the potential problem in the bud and charged him. that oughtta learn 'im real good right?

maybe singapore is afraid of racism because it's so ingrained in society and even though people try to pretend it doesn't exist, it still rears its ugly head.just because you ace a civics and moral education exam doesn't mean you believe in the answers you give. maybe samy, ahmad, meiling and jane should rethink their national education methods.

* fob = fresh off the boat = people like me laaah. quit from singapore/indonesia/insert asian country here.

** answer: up shit creek without a paddle that's where.