Blowin' In The Wind

Fifty years of Lee Kuan Yew

2009-07-13T02:05:49+08:00

It's telling that a Malaysian and not a Singapore newspaper noted Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew completed 50 years in office, becoming the world's longest surviving national leader, on June 5. It was on that day 50 years ago he was sworn in as the first prime minister of a self-governing Singapore. He was succeeded in 1990 by his deputy, Goh Chok Tong, who in 2004 handed over power to Mr Lee's son – current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Singapore has never known a day since the end of British rule when it has not been under the firm and capable leadership of Mr Lee and his People's Action Party. He has led the tiny city state of 4.8 million people to prosperity. From Third World To First is the title of the second volume of his memoirs.

The Star asks:

So why is the image-conscious government so reticent about Lee’s political longevity?

Party insiders say it is because he is bent on avoiding doing anything that will promote a personality cult…

Critics, however, give a different reason. One said the government would rather not mention the subject for fear it would renew calls for him to leave.

In a Yahoo online poll, 53% of Singaporeans said they wanted their founding father to quit politics either immediately or very soon – and that was five years ago…

It is the younger Singaporeans who want him to go. Unlike the previous generation, they are not beholden to him for his contributions to the republic.

Well, he may not be as popular as Nelson Mandela, with whom I contrasted him on Mandela's 90th birthday on July 18 last year. But as I wrote in that post before the economic recession:

His achievements are evident even in the lives and aspirations of ordinary Singaporeans, many of whom have studied abroad, holiday abroad. They may take it for granted and ask how is that different from the lifestyle of people in the Gulf, the South Koreans and the Japanese. Well, the Gulf has oil, the Japanese and the South Koreans make things. What does Singapore produce except a well-educated workforce? It has grown into one of the richest nations in Asia with no other resources at all. And that is proof of the remarkable vision and achievements of the old man.

Lee Kuan Yew on race, equality and foreign talent

I have been reading his memoirs, From Third World To First, and find it quite revealing. He was amazed, he writes, by the views of American professors on race and equality when he visited Harvard in 1968.

They were too politically correct. Harvard was determinedly liberal. No scholar was prepared to say or admit that there were any inherent differences between races or cultures or religions. They held that human beings were equal and society only needed correct economic policies and institutions of government to succeed. They were so bright I found it difficult to believe that they sincerely held these views they felt compelled to espouse.

But he wanted equal treatment for all races during the brief period when Singapore was part of Malaysia during the early 1960s and has promoted racial harmony since independence in 1965 while keeping Singapore open to foreign talent. He writes:

Without foreign talent, we would not have done as well. In my first cabinet of ten, I was the only one born and educated in Singapore. (Goh) Keng Swee and (Toh) Chin Chye were born in Malaya, Raja (Rajaratnam) in Ceylon. Our present chief justice, Yong Pong How, came from from Malaysia, as did our attorney-general, Chan Sek Kiong. The list could roll on. Thousands of engineers, managers and other professionals who came from abroad have helped us to grow. They are the extra megabytes in Singapore's computer. If we do not top up with foreign talent, we will not make it into the top league.

He is a pragmatist who wants what he thinks will be good for Singapore – for which he even supported the Vietnam war. He wanted Washington to continue bombing North Vietnam despite the suffering it caused – even when the war became unpopular in America. For, as he says in his memoirs, the war saved Singapore and its neighbours from communism. But more about that later in another post.

Arundhati Roy right about Slumdog

2009-07-12T16:37:14+08:00

Arundhati Roy is right about Slumdog Millionaire. In an interview with the Observer, she says:

Only her compatriots could have celebrated the victory of Slumdog Millionaire on Oscar night. "The fact that the film - not even an Indian film - won these prizes sent people into orbit. But it is an odd movie for a country to be proud of. What were we celebrating? Child poverty? If it wasn't so tragic it would be comical."

I could not see what was so great about the movie. There have been far better movies made about poverty in India by Indian directors. Satyajit Ray's Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) is a classic based on the famine in Bengal during the Second World War when people starved to death. The Bengali film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1973, but never reached an international audience like Slumdog.

I have nothing against anyone highlighting the poverty and corruption in India, but Slumdog is too stylized, too overtly arty, for me. It is garish, which Ray never was. I was surprised it ended up as one of the biggest all-time Oscar winners, winning as many as eight Academy Awards.

It was only a coincidence perhaps that a tale of corruption and poverty in India also won the Man Booker Prize last year.

The White Tiger by the Indian author Aravind Adiga is a taut, chilling little tale. But it can't be compared with two panoramic historical epics which were also in the competition – The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie and Sea Of Poppies by another Indian writer, Amitav Ghosh.

Sea Of Poppies also depicts poverty and corruption in India but it is set in the 19th century. It is about exploitation by the British. There is not a single sympathetic British character in the novel. In The White Tiger, on the other hand, set in modern India, all the villains are Indians.

The truth about the Beatles

2009-07-12T14:17:43+08:00

I can't wait to read Elijah Wald's How The Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll. The New York Times reviewing this history of popular music says:

While Wald never says in so many words that the Beatles destroyed rock ’n’ roll, he does take a stance several degrees removed from standard-issue Beatles worship. He suggests that their ambitious later work, widely hailed as a step forward for rock, instead helped turn it from a triumphantly mongrel dance music that smashed racial barriers into a rhythmically inert art music made mostly by and for white people.

I love the Beatles, but most of my favourites are from their early days, up to 1966 and 67. Of course, they continued to make great music later. Tracks like Get Back and Ballad Of John And Yoko are among their very best. But I fell in love with the Beatles when I first heard songs like I Want To Hold Your Hand, Help, She Loves You, Ticket To Ride and my favourite – A Hard Day's Night.

How The Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll also sounds interesting in what has to say about music from the 1950s. The New York Times review says:

He doesn’t deny that rock ’n’ roll delivered a new energy and a new attitude, but he maintains that Elvis and Perry (Como) had more than a little in common — and he notes that plenty of teenage record buyers liked them both.

He also makes a case for the importance, and the lasting influence, of artists like Paul Whiteman, a bandleader who was phenomenally successful in the 1920s and ’30s but has rarely received anything more than grudging respect from music historians...

And he finds parallels between Whiteman — who commissioned “Rhapsody in Blue” and whose quasi-symphonic approach was said, in the unfortunate terminology of the time, to have made an honest woman out of jazz — and the Beatles.Whiteman, he explains, took a music that had been seen as rough and uncouth and made it respectable to a wide audience; the Beatles did the same thing with the string-quartet elegance of “Yesterday” and the operatic grandiosity of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Sgt Pepper is great but so are the earlier Beatles albums. I love the Beatles more for their exuberance and harmonies than for their musical experiments.

Burger King apology to Hindus

2009-07-09T16:56:38+08:00

Burger King has apologized for running an advertisement in Spain that offended the Hindus, reports The Times of India.

The print ad showed the Hindu goddess Lakshmi seated atop a meat sandwich and other foodstuff with a catchphrase, "A snack that's sacred", written in Spanish.

The ad can be seen in a report by ABC 7, which also interviewed a Hindu American Foundation spokesman, who protested against the ad.

What was Burger King doing showing a Hindu goddess sitting on a piece of meat? Will it run a similar picture of Jesus Christ?

"We are apologizing because it wasn't our intent to offend anyone," said Burger King spokesman Denise T Wilson.

"Burger King Corporation values and respects all of its guests as well as the communities we serve. This in-store advertisement was running to support only local promotion for three restaurants in Spain and was not intended to offend anyone.

"Out of respect for the Hindu community, the limited-time advertisement has been removed from the restaurants," Wilson said a day after the Hindu American Foundation asked Burger King to remove the offensive advertisement.

India gay sex ban back in court

2009-07-09T16:31:14+08:00

The Indian court ruling lifting the ban on gay sex is now being contested in the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court hearing begins on July 20.

The Indian Express reports:

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice to the Centre (Indian government) on a petition challenging the Delhi High Court judgement legalizing gay sex among the consenting adults.

Notices were also issued to Naz Foundation, the NGO, and other respondents who were parties before the High Court. The court was hearing the appeal filed by Suresh Kumar Kaushal, an astrologer, against the July 2 verdict of the High Court.

Kaushal sought the quashing of the verdict of the Delhi High Court legalizing gay sex between consenting adults in private, which was earlier a criminal offence under section 377 of IPC.

The High Court’s judgment would result in spread of HIV/AIDS, no one can imagine the consequences of the unnatural acts. Even animals don''t indulge in such activities," Kaushal said in his petition.

The counsel for the astrologer said that since the High Court verdict, there have been seven cases of gay marriages, and raised several questions, which, he claimed, were likely to affect the institution of marriage.

This is the second petition filed against the Delhi high Court’s verdict. On Wednesday Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev filed a special leave petition on the same issue.

In his petition, he argued that homosexuality was a curable disease, reports the Telegraph.

"It can be treated like any other congenital defect. Such tendencies can be treated by yoga, pranayam and other meditation techniques," he said.

The television guru's yoga programmes are watched by an estimated 85 million people throughout the world and he counts senior government ministers among his devotees, the newspaper added.

Globalization hurting workers, says Pope

2009-07-08T13:07:18+08:00

Pope Benedict XVI has called for a radical rethinking of the global economy, criticizing the growing gap between the rich and the poor. He wants the United Nations reformed to create "a true world authority" that will manage the economy for the common good.

He speaks about the "the damaging effects on the real economy of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of peoples (and) the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources".

Globalization in its current form is hurting workers and weakening social security, he says. Read the papal encyclical, Caritas In Veritate (Charity In Truth), where he upholds the rights to food and water and "a just wage" and calls for freedom of religion and the "ethical use of technology". He says:

The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market.

These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers… trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.

The Pope is not against globalization per se. He says:

There is no reason to deny that a certain amount of capital can do good, if invested abroad rather than at home. Yet the requirements of justice must be safeguarded, with due consideration for the way in which the capital was generated and the harm to individuals that will result if it is not used where it was produced…

There is no reason to deny that a certain amount of capital can do good, if invested abroad rather than at home… It is true that the export of investments and skills can benefit the populations of the receiving country…Yet it is not right to export these things merely for the sake of obtaining advantageous conditions, or worse, for purposes of exploitation...

He urges international cooperation to protect the rights of migrants and says that "foreign workers, despite any difficulties concerning integration, make a significant contribution to the economic development of the host country".

Calling for an "ethically responsible use of technology", he points out there can't be technical solutions to every problem.

Often the development of peoples is considered a matter of financial engineering, the freeing up of markets, the removal of tariffs, investment in production, and institutional reforms — in other words, a purely technical matter. All these factors are of great importance, but we have to ask why technical choices made thus far have yielded rather mixed results.

Development will never be fully guaranteed through automatic or impersonal forces, whether they derive from the market or from international politics. Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the requirements of the common good.

Ingeniously he argues how marriage and children can help nations prosper.

Populous nations have been able to emerge from poverty thanks not least to the size of their population and the talents of their people. On the other hand, formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty and in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates; this has become a crucial problem for highly affluent societies. The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called “replacement level”, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the “brain pool” upon which nations can draw for their needs…

It is thus becoming a social and even economic necessity once more to hold up to future generations the beauty of marriage and the family, and the fact that these institutions correspond to the deepest needs and dignity of the person. In view of this, States are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society, and to assume responsibility for its economic and fiscal needs, while respecting its essentially relational character.

Raffles Hotel, Chowringhee and Death In Venice

2009-07-07T16:34:07+08:00

Singapore's Raffles Hotel and the Bengali writer Sankar (real name Mani Shankar Mukherjee) both feature in Brick Lane author Monica Ali's excellent essay on hotels and writers. The essay in the British magazine Prospect follows the publication of her hotel-based novel, In The Kitchen, which I am dying to read.

Ali praises Sankar's popular Bengali novel, Chowringhee, inspired by the famous Grand Hotel in Calcutta (Kolkata). This videoclip is from the 1968 Bengali hit film, Chowringhee, based on the novel. I loved both the movie and the novel. Seen singing here is the Bengali movie legend Uttam Kumar, who played the hotel receptionist Sata Bose. The song title Boro Eka Lage means "I feel very lonely".

Another hotel-based story Ali discusses in her essay is Death In Venice by Thomas Mann. It was also made into a movie. This videoclip is from the 1971 Dirk Bogarde starrer directed by Visconti. The slow art film is as beautiful as Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal of Venice.

Ali writes:

Writers have had a long and deep association with hotels. New York’s Algonquin and Chelsea hotels, the Savoy in London, Venice’s Hotel des Bains, the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, and the Bangkok Mandarin Oriental and Raffles in Singapore are just a few of the places in which literary history has been created. And, as witnessed by Joseph O’Neill’s 2008 novel Netherland (both written and partly set in the Chelsea Hotel in New York) and my new novel, In the Kitchen, which tells the story of Gabriel Lightfoot, executive head chef at the fictional Imperial Hotel in London, the hotel continues to exert a fascination for authors, not only as facilitator of the creative endeavour but also as a subject of that creativity.

I spent a year researching In the Kitchen. Most of this time was spent reading a mountain of non-fiction books about the restaurant and hotel trades, and delving firsthand into those worlds. I spent time in five large London hotels, on the understanding that I would not identify them. I talked to everyone from managers to receptionists, but mainly I hung out in the kitchens chatting to staff and absorbing the atmosphere.

She notes Death In Venice was set in Hotel des Bains but doesn't mention any particular book connected with Singapore's Raffles Hotel, whose guests have included writers like Kipling, Maugham and Noel Coward.

About Sankar's novel's Chowringhee, she writes:

The sense of the hotel as a stage, a set on which an ever rotating cast will play, affords the novelist many dramatic opportunities. As the receptionist in Sankar’s wonderful novel Chowringhee, located in a venerable Calcutta hotel, remarks: “This place should have been named Shahjahan Theatre instead of Shahjahan Hotel.”

Chowringhee, first published in Bengali in 1962 but recently available in English translation, exemplifies another reason why writers check into literary hotels. First and foremost it is a “social” novel, examining in luminous detail the iniquities of society through the poverty of many of the employees (some of the waiters even have to sleep on the streets) and the corruption and hypocrisy of the rich who frequent the Shahjahan. No other contemporary setting opens up the same opportunities for the haves and have-nots to intermingle on quite such intimate terms. When Nityahari, the God-fearing dhobi (washerman) has to change the bedclothes of the rich and adulterous Mrs Pakrashi, he asks for water to be poured on his hands: “I have to wash their sins off, haven’t I?”

Blog history video

2009-07-06T13:27:32+08:00

Twelve years after the first self-proclaimed weblog by Jorn Barger, Salon cofounder Scott Rosenberg has come out with a history of blogging -- Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters -- which will be released tomorrow. Rosenberg, who has his own blog, talks of Barger and other early bloggers in this video. The most influential of them was Dave Winer of Scripting News, he says. But the roots of blogging go back to essayists like Montaigne, he adds.

Here's an excerpt from his book, taken from Salon:

Reading is as much a part of blogging as writing; listening is as important as speaking. This is what so many bloggers mean when they claim that "blogging is a conversation"…

Bloggers are the most autonomous writers the world has yet seen -- the least dependent on others to publish their words… At the same time, of all the species of writer, bloggers are the least insulated from their audience, most vulnerable to the ebb and flow of attention and response. They are both alone and in a crowd. Their solitude can inspire self-indulgent ranting; their sociability can tempt them into self-serving pandering. But every now and then they manage to hold their balance in this paradoxical position for an extended, exhilarating spell.

Any act of public expression, of "putting everything out there" -- your political arguments or your creative work or your personal story -- is a gamble. We offer something to the world; we cross our fingers that our contributions won't simply be ignored or derided or misappropriated. Sometimes we're surprised at how much we get back, and sometimes we feel used.

Either way, we are going to keep at it. Blogging allows us to think out loud together. Now that we have begun, it's impossible to imagine stopping.

Happy Fourth of July

2009-07-04T23:27:37+08:00

And here's the transcript of President Barack Obama's Fourth of July speech taken from the White House website.

Hello and Happy Fourth of July, everybody. This weekend is a time to get together with family and friends, kick back, and enjoy a little time off. And I hope that’s exactly what all of you do. But I also want to take a moment today to reflect on what I believe is the meaning of this distinctly American holiday.

Today, we are called to remember not only the day our country was born – we are also called to remember the indomitable spirit of the first American citizens who made that day possible.

We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people.

That unyielding spirit is what defines us as Americans. It is what led generations of pioneers to blaze a westward trail.

It is what led my grandparents’ generation to persevere in the face of a Depression and triumph in the face of tyranny.

It is what led generations of American workers to build an industrial economy unrivalled around the world.

It is what has always led us, as a people, not to wilt or cower at a difficult moment, but to face down any trial and rise to any challenge, understanding that each of us has a hand in writing America’s destiny.

That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil.

Meeting these extraordinary challenges will require an extraordinary effort on the part of every American. And that is an effort we cannot defer any longer.

Now is the time to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity. Now is the time to revamp our education system, demand more from teachers, parents, and students alike, and build schools that prepare every child in America to outcompete any worker in the world.

Now is the time to reform an unsustainable health care system that is imposing crushing costs on families, businesses, large and small, and state and federal budgets. We need to protect what works, fix what’s broken, and bring down costs for all Americans. No more talk. No more delay. Health care reform must happen this year.

And now is the time to meet our energy challenge – one of the greatest challenges we have ever confronted as a people or as a planet. For the sake of our economy and our children, we must build on the historic bill passed by the House of Representatives, and make clean energy the profitable kind of energy so that we can end our dependence on foreign oil and reclaim America’s future.

These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.

These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.

We are not a people who fear the future. We are a people who make it. And on this July 4th, we need to summon that spirit once more. We need to summon the same spirit that inhabited Independence Hall two hundred and thirty-three years ago today.

That is how this generation of Americans will make its mark on history. That is how we will make the most of this extraordinary moment. And that is how we will write the next chapter in the great American story. Thank you, and Happy Fourth of July.

The man who might have been UN chief

2009-07-03T19:44:07+08:00

Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong could have been in the position of the man he is shaking hands with -- UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Maybe the thought did not occur to him when he gave a dinner in honour of the UN chief in Singapore last night. But Mr Goh was seen as a possible successor to the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan three years ago.

Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, however, said at the time that Mr Goh was not interested in the job. Singapore's Straits Times newspaper reported in April 2006 that Mr Lee was asked by a reporter: "Rumours have it that Senior Minister Goh Chok is considering taking up the post of the United Nations secretary general. Would you support him?"

Mr Lee replied: "I think you've got to ask him that. All I know is that he is not interested in the job. Answering to five masters and often unable to satisfy two or three at any one time... it is a tough job.

"From what I've understood from him, I think it's not a job that would add to his happy years after office."

The "five masters" Mr Lee sarcastically mentioned are the five permanent Security Council members – all of whom backed Mr Ban in his bid for the post.

South Korea spared no expense to have Mr Ban elected in October 2006. The Times reported days before the election:

The South Koreans have been waging an aggressive campaign on behalf of Ban Ki Moon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the front-runner to replace Kofi Annan as UN chief at the end of the year. The inducements range from tens of millions of pounds of extra funding for African countries to lucrative trade agreements in Europe...

Mr Ban announced his bid in February and has since been criss-crossing the globe trying to win support. A month later South Korea announced that it would treble its aid budget to Africa to $100 million (£53 million) by 2008… Seoul’s generosity seems to have worked. Yesterday Elly Matango, the Tanzanian Ambassador to Tokyo and Seoul, said that his Government had decided to support Mr Ban.

This month President Roh and Mr Ban headed the most senior South Korean delegation since 1961 to visit Greece, another Security Council member. Overseen by hundreds of South Korean businessmen, the countries signed agreements on trade, tourism and maritime transport.

Now Mr Ban is in Myanmar seeking the release of the the democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Interestingly, Mr Goh, also visited Myanmar recently.

I admire Mr Goh -- he would have made a good UN secretary general. With his ability to connect with people, he would have possibly been less low-key than Mr Ban. And he would have been equally diplomatic, a good mediator. There is also his proven skill in crisis management, seeing Singapore through the Asian financial crisis.

But, as Mr Lee said, he did not want the job. A pity. For there is no denying the importance of the United Nations. As the 2006 election showed, countries vie for the honour to fill the UN secretary general's post. The opportunity comes but rarely. There have been only eight UN secretary-generals so far.

Mr Ban is already in the middle of his five-year term. But the next UN chief is unlikely to be an Asian.