thethirdgracchi

The conclusion of this statement is that Putin is an extremely powerful mage who bends reality to his whim not out of concern over anything real but entirely based on how it makes him look.

Amazingly The Economist is finally admitting the obvious about Ukraine's counteroffensive.

The war in Ukraine has repeatedly confounded expectations. It is now doing so again. The counter-offensive that began in June was based on the hope that Ukrainian soldiers, equipped with modern Western weapons and after training in Germany, would recapture enough territory to put their leaders in a strong position at any subsequent negotiations.

This plan is not working. Despite heroic efforts and breaches of Russian defences near Robotyne, Ukraine has liberated less than 0.25% of the territory that Russia occupied in June. The 1,000km front line has barely shifted. Ukraine’s army could still make a breakthrough in the coming weeks, triggering the collapse of brittle Russian forces. But on the evidence of the past three months, it would be a mistake to bank on that.

Granted, the article goes on to advocate for turning Ukraine into a fortress state with a robust war economy so it can throw infinite Ukrainians into the meat grinder of a long war of attrition that will beat Russia if we all believe hard enough, but it's interesting to see the mainstream press begin to look down the barrel of Ukraine's clear failure here.

Al Jazeera reporting (not anything new but I missed that it's been made official):

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have signed a mutual defence pact, as the three Sahel countries aim to help each other against possible threats of armed rebellion or external aggression. The charter, known as the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS), signed on Saturday binds the signatories to assist one another – including militarily – in the event of an attack on any one of them.

Yeah, I'm an ASS (Alliance of Sahel States) man.

You should look into Kagi. It's a search engine where you can block sites like Pinterest entirely. You pay for search, but it's really good. You can promote sites you like, rank things, and it learns. Also has a Stumbleupon type small web feature!

> browse the web

> "I'm sorry, this feature is only available on our app"

> talk to customer service: "is it an Electron app or native"?

> they don't understand

> "It's a good app sir"

> download app

> it's fucking Electron

I think developers for Valve specifically have very high salaries and an incredible amount of autonomy to determine their own projects. A lot of Valve devs get paid a lot of money to contribute to upstream open source projects like Linux and Proton so games can run better on Linux; that sounds like a very specific example that fits this.

Yeah I'm very lucky they put up with my shit.

Yeah it's always interesting to me that Singapore gets the illiberal democracy label but Japan, which follows the exact same model, never gets any label of the sort. I think at least part of it is Singapore's position in global politics; it buys weapons from the West and certainly trades with them, it is distinctly not a Western vassal state like Japan. It has extremely good relations with China, it pursues its own path.

Footnotes

(1) Michael D Barr, The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence, IB Tauris, London, 2014.

(2) Having joined Malaysia in 1963 shortly after gaining autonomy from the UK, Singapore – under Lee Kuan Yew – then exited the federation and declared independence.

(3) Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Epigram Books, Singapore, 2015.

(4) See Philippe Revelli, ‘Singapore’s golden triangle’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, August 2016.

(5) See testimonies on the TWC2 website, twc2.org.sg/.

(6) MPs are elected through a hybrid procedure that combines voting for a single candidate and a list system. Some seats are reserved for the ‘best losers’, the ‘non-constituency MPs’ (NCMPs).

(7) Mathew Mathews and Melvin Tay, ‘Must you speak English to qualify as a Singapore PR or new citizen?’, The Straits Times, Singapore, 4 March 2023.

(8) Gabrielle Chan, ‘476 suicides reported in Singapore in 2022, 98 more than in 2021’, The Straits Times, 6 July 2023.

(9) Yong Shu Ling, Unteachable, Singapore, 2019.

(10) See Caroline Wong, Singaporean Film Industry in Transition – Looking for a Creative Edge: the Nature and Role of Intangible Resources that Shape an Uncertain and Changing Environment such as the Film Industry, Lambert Academic Publishing, printed on demand, 2010.

(11) Thum Ping Tjin, ‘Explainer: Inequality in Singapore’, New Naratif, 28 April 2023, newnaratif.com/.

(12) Singapore Department of Statistics, 2023,www.singstat.gov.sg/.

(13) ‘Lawrence Wong launches “Forward S’pore” to set out road map for a society that “benefits many, not a few” ’, The Straits Times, 28 June 2022.

(14) ‘Global wealth report 2019’, Credit Suisse, 2019, www.credit-suisse.com/.

(15) Éric Frécon, ‘Singapour: Des politiques et des efforts de transition, d’ajustements… ou de façade?’, in Gabriel Facal and Jérôme Samuel (eds), L’Asie du Sud-Est 2023: Bilan, enjeux et perspectives, IRASEC, Bangkok, 2023.

The ‘compact’ is being questioned

To be sure, this ‘compact’, a hybrid of conveniently reinterpreted Confucian values (respect for hierarchy, obedience, fairness) and adapted Western ones, is being questioned. One need look no further than the 2020 legislative elections: in spite of gerrymandering, opposition parties’ restricted access to media and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it campaign (nine days), the governing party got its worst ever results – even if it still holds a majority that any French president would drool over (83 MPs to the opposition’s ten).

Will the future prime minister heed the results? It’s far from certain (15). Public debate, viewed as a potential threat to stability, remains throttled, including on environmental topics. The route of the eighth Cross Island subway line, which requires digging under the island’s largest nature reserve and clearing three hectares of land, has been heavily contested. The transport ministry advertised that six minutes would be shaved off commutes and promised a 15% fare decrease; the line is now being built.

Intense protests against the construction of the Marina Bay casino met with similar success, recalls Caroline Wong, vice-dean for teaching and learning at James Cook University, who knows the island like the back of her hand: ‘Singapore [often] seeks to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number … using economic justifications (attracting more tourists, creating more jobs, providing more entertainment options), thereby ignoring divergent viewpoints and opinions. Growth alone is not enough to measure people’s quality of life,’ and she questions the ‘sustainability’ of this approach.

For now, the government is keeping a tight lid on controversy. Singapore, where the authorities can directly appoint members to the executive committees and editorial boards of mainstream media, ranks 129th out of 180 countries and territories on the annual World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. Last year, for instance, Terry Xu and Daniel De Costa — publication editor and writer, respectively, for news website The Online Citizen, which had been shut down a few months before — received three-week jail sentences (later reduced to fines).

The state’s arsenal also contains the 2019 Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. Since it took effect, any displeasing interpretation of a fact can be deemed a ‘falsehood’ by the government. Sanctions have begun to hit home, particularly on activists opposed to the death penalty, which continues as usual. On 26 April 2023 a Singaporean accused of helping import 1kg of cannabis (which was never found) was hanged; another met the same fate three weeks later for drug trafficking (1.5kg). Two more were hanged in July, including a woman sentenced for possessing 30g of heroin. Since March 2022, 15 people have been executed, typically after unfair trials. The most courageous human rights defenders face all sorts of harassment: surveillance, police summons, censorship of websites… Singapore is far from Beijing of course, but even the popular PJ Thum had to leave in the end. ‘It was becoming too hard,’ he told me. He still contributes to New Naratif, a dissident media site – from abroad.

Pressure of the ‘Singapore model’

This begins in school with the well-known ‘Singapore model’, feted in the West for its inclusivity, where the two first years of elementary school are spent learning English (reading and writing), mathematics and one native language of the student’s choice. Science and extracurricular activities are added over the two next years. But at the age of 12, students must validate their studies with the highly selective Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). Good scores mean good high schools, then good universities – and finally good jobs. Those with average results make do with ‘normal’ courses, either technical or academic. The rest get left behind.

Needless to say, students face significant pressure (‘insane’, says one parent). Some fear their kids will commit suicide – and rightly so. In 2022, the worst year on record, 125 young people (aged 10-29) took their own lives (8). ‘For children who don’t perform well in the PSLE, school is a nightmare,’ a young schoolteacher said in Yong Shu Ling’s documentary Unteachable (9). ‘I am unable to change the calculation mode, but I can reintroduce the desire to learn.’ This extremely selective educational approach saps the curiosity and creativity needed for new technologies as well as for culture (10).

Furthermore, it reproduces ‘class and race’ inequality, an unexpected turn of phrase coming from a hip Malay startup executive in her 30s, hair in a scarf, happy to speak her mind on condition of anonymity. She explained that using perfect English at home does not guarantee good results: one must also arrange tutoring at a private school whose tuition is pegged to its PSLE performance. Her parents, small shop owners who were ‘neither rich nor poor’, made painful sacrifices to ensure her success. Historian Thum Ping Tjin (known as PJ Thum), an activist against inequity, notes that the wealthiest 20% of families spend nearly four times more than the poorest families on their kids’ education (11). And 59.2% of Chinese-descended Singaporeans aged 20-39 hold a college degree, versus only 16.5% of those with Malaysian roots (12).

Officially, there is no discrimination and everyone is treated equally. The city does have some identity-based neighbourhoods – Little India, Chinatown, Kampong Glam (the Muslim district) — but these are more places to gather and shop than self-contained communities. Eighty per cent of Singaporeans own their apartments (it’s technically a 99-year lease), most of which sit in large public housing complexes whose demographics must, by law, reflect those of the general population: 74.3% Chinese, 13.6% Malay, and so on, which means the island has no ghettos. That said, some are more equal than others.

Sensitive to rising anxiety among the middle class – which has thus far enjoyed relative security – and aware that the days of authoritarianism might be numbered, Lawrence Wong, Singapore’s deputy (and likely future) prime minister, launched Forward Singapore, a yearlong public engagement initiative, in June 2022. He doesn’t mince his words: ‘Students, for instance, feel pigeon-holed in a system where stakes are high from very early in their lives, while graduates and workers are anxious about their careers and being priced out of the property market’ (13).

Young people can’t afford to become homeowners like their parents, with whom they often end up living, even after marriage. Wealth may be spreading (half of Singapore’s inhabitants are among the world’s richest 10%) (14), but the deputy prime minister wishes success were ‘less about the pot of gold at the end of the road and more about our sense of purpose and fulfilment along the way’. He warns that ‘if our social compact fails, a large segment of Singaporeans will come to feel estranged from the rest of society, believing the system is not on their side.’