Starting Points: October 2011

Friday, October 28, 2011

Cornell University SEAP eNewsletter

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

DW - Dams threaten Mekong's fish and region's security

Source - http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15489589,00.html

ASIA | 26.10.2011

Tourists enjoy the low running Mekong River at sunset on the border of the two Southeast Asian nations

Life on the 'mother of all rivers' could change soon

The Mekong River provides food, water and work for millions of people, but development plans for hydroelectric dams pose a threat to the environment and diets. As a key decision looms, neighbors look on anxiously.

Known to the people who live long its banks as the "mother of all rivers," the Mekong provides food, water and work for some 60 million people who live along its shores.

It flows from the mountains of Tibet through Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before opening into the Mekong Delta and ultimately the South China Sea off Vietnam.

It's also home to over 1,000 species of fish, including the world's 10 largest fresh water fish, making it second only to the Amazon in terms of biodiversity, according to Avia Imhoff of the International River Network.

"It's still one of the last great rivers of the world that is still in a mostly natural state," Imhoff said. "The diversity of species is still largely intact and the whole ecosystem is intact because there have been so few river interventions until now in the basin."

A cycle of life

The cycle of high and low water levels that delivers nutrients for farmers' fields and fish for locals' diets is part of the reason the region has been able to remain intact. People have grown accustomed to water levels that can rise by up to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) during the rainy season, says Eric Baran of the Worldfish Center.

A man walks with his bicycle though a flooded street at a village along the Mekong River

The Mekong flood doesn't catch people on its banks by surprise

"They expect a flood every year because the flood rejuvenates the agriculture and the productivity and brings fish and water," Banan said. "It is really a beneficial event."

Some 2 percent of the all the world's fish catches come from the Mekong system, making it largest source of fish after the planet's oceans.

The 1.5 million tons of pulled from the river annually are worth about a billion dollars. They also account for most of the protein in locals' diets, according to So Nam, deputy director of the Cambodian Fisheries Administration.

A growing burden

There are signs that people are already fishing too much.

"What's clear is that fish sizes and catches are decreasing, while the effort to catch them has inceased," said Martin Geiger, freshwater expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Thai villagers hold banners reading 'Love Mekong, No Dam' during a demonstration to protest against the proposed dam

People have taken to the streets to protest against damming the Mekong

The region's rapidly expanding population troubles environmental protection groups. By 2025 they expect some 90 million people to be living along the Mekong. That's a 50% increase within 15 years. More people and rising affluence is also expected to generate more demand for energy, making dams along the Mekong an increasingly attractive investment.

There are already plans for 11 hydroelectric plants along the lower Mekong, including seven in Laos alone. Four power plants currently exist on the Chinese portion of the river.

Dams pose an enormous problem for fish populations. Two thirds of the species in the Mekong travel great distances to spawn and the number of planned dams would prevent many fish from being able to use 'ladders' or other detours, according to Geiger.

"Dams would lead to the collapse of the valuable fish biodiversity as well as the supply of protein to people," he said.

Poor to bear the brunt

The region's poor would be hardest hit by a drop in protein supplies as they are least likely to be able to afford fish from aquaculture.

A Cambodian boy stretches to hoist his makeshift fishing net out of the Mekong River

More and more nets are coming out of the Mekong empty

Setting up fish farms would also represent another major interference in the region's ecosystem. They take over wetlands and conditions often pollute waterways and breed disease.

"What research has suggested - that people breed rabbits or concentrate on alternative forms of income and protein supply - will be difficult," Geiger said. "It would require land and it would require investment and, of course, the know-how to do it."

No stopping progress

The Mekong River Commission (MRC), founded by Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, is aware of the threats to the Mekong's resources and works to promote cooperation along the river.

In November, it is expected to give its verdict on the environmental impact of one of the dams that Laos seems determined to press ahead with: the Xayaburi.

There are no guarantees that Laos will respect its decision. The Commission is concerned that dams would prevent mineral and nutrient-rich sediment from flowing downriver into the "rice bowl of Vietnam" - a region that produces more than 16 tons of rice a year.

Laos argues that hydroelectric power will have fewer detrimental effects on the region than other sources of energy.

It aims to become "the battery" of Southeast Asia by eventually building 10 dams on the Mekong. It doesn't need the energy for itself. It intends to export it and has signed contracts with Thailand for up to 95 percent of the energy expected to be generated from its projects.

Sediment transported by the Mekong is crucial to Vietnamese rice fields

Sharp criticism from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam has led Laos to reevaluate the environmental effects the dams could have. But politicians and environmental protection groups say they realize developing economies will not put off development indefinitely.

"For us it is not about preventing all hydroelectric power dams," Geiger said. "In cooperation with the Mekong River Commission, we want to keep dams off the Mekong's main arm for the next 10 years. Until we know what the real effects will be on the population's protein supply and food security."

China holds all the cards

China's absence from the Mekong River Commission, however, makes it difficult for the organization to decide on the best dam locations. Beijing has substantial plans to develop the region. It intends to deepen the river to make commercial shipping easier and to expand on the four power plants it already has on the Mekong.

Kelly Brooks from Oxfam says that, ultimately, China's location means it holds all the cards.

The Mekong River connects many people, nations and interests

"China has a strategic geographic position," she said. "With China being upstream to all of the countries in the MRC they have the position where they can control the flow of the water."

As a transnational institution, it's up to the Mekong River Commission to come up with ways of balancing members' interests in using the river for industrial purposes and protecting the ecosystem. But that's no easy task.

"Because the region here has a history of conflicts and there are still many, many sensitive issues just below the surface," the Mekong River Commission's Joern Kristensen said. "Unless this situation is managed well, it could turn into a problem."

Author: Alexander Freund

Editor: Nathan Witkop

Unspun Blog - Wisdom of Whores Takes Tea with the Dead

Source - http://theunspunblog.com/2011/10/26/wisdom-of-whores-takes-tea-with-the-dead/

Unspun’s past life was as a journalist in a newspaper too incredible to be true, The Asia Times. It was a menagerie of strange characters from an editor who spoke like he was high all the time as speakers taller than him blasted Wagnerian music out of his office, to his deputy who had been an advisor of Lyndon LaRouche, to ex CIA, Mossad and KGB spooks pretending to be journalists and other assorted drunks, poseurs and yes, a few legit and good journalists.

One of the the journalists, and a damn good one, was this plucky woman by the name of Elizabeth Pisani. We met in Bangkok just as the paper was starting back in 1997 and became fast friends for life. I guess it was the feeling of solidarity as we seemed to be the only legit, and productive journalists there. Then, she had been a journalist for Reuters in Jakarta for several years and at Asia Times she covered Vietnam while Unspun covered Indonesia, inheriting some of Elizabeth’s friends and contacts whom she generously introduced.

When the Asia Times went South after the Asian Economic Crisis, Unspun, then already in Jakarta sought refuge in The Dark Side (Public Relations to the uninitiated) and lost track of Elizabeth.

Until she surfaced in Jakarta, this time in her other life as an epidemologist working in the field of AIDS and HIV infection. Her stint here resulted in a wonderful and controversial book, The Wisdom of Whores. Elizabeth then disappeared into the lecture and training circuit and each time I heard from her she was in some exotic location. The last I heard from her, I think was when she was kneed deep in floods in some South American country doing god-knows-what.

Now she’s popped up in Jakarta again and after a brief catch-up at Anomali in Senopati she’s vanished again, this time to Bali and on to the more remote places of Indonesia. The reason: Taking Some Tea with the Dead. That’s the title of her new book on Indonesia which will be a culmination of all the traveling that she’ll be doing for the next few months. But while she travels, Elizabeth will also be keeping a blog, Portrait Indonesia, of her journeys and the adventures she encounters in Indonesia.

She writes wonderfully and eloquently, and has a wry eye out for the unusual so it should be lots of fun. So check out her blog and you might ant to let her know in English or Indonesian (her Indonesian – and Bahasa Gaul at that – is way better than Unspun’s) some of the more unusual and interesting people or places she could visit in her travels. I believe she’s heading for Sumba as her first port of call after Bali.

Here’s what she has to say about Portrait Indonesia

In late 2011, epidemiologist, writer and adventurer Elizabeth Pisani granted herself a sabbatical from the day job and set off to rediscover Indonesia, a country she has wandered, loved and been baffled by for decades. On this site she will share photos and occasional musings from her journey, which, if all goes well, will cover some 10,000 kilometers.

The journey will form the backbone of a book (and a multimedia BookPlus), which will include also reflections on her earlier incarnations in Indonesia. The first of these was as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ten years later she was back in the very different guise of epidemiologist, helping the Ministry of Health better understand Indonesia’s HIV epidemic. That work contributed to her first book, The Wisdom of Whores, published in 2008.

The new book, with the provisional title “Taking Tea with the Dead”, will deal less with sex and drugs, and more with the other enchanting and sometimes maddening foibles of Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation. We hope it will give you a taste of this beautiful, chaotic and unfathomable land.

Sent from the back of a cab in a Jakarta traffic jam

Monday, October 24, 2011

Wired - FBI Crime Maps Now ‘Pinpoint’ Average Muslims

By Spencer Ackerman
October 24, 2011

It started out as a crimefighting tool. But over the years, an FBI effort known as “geo-mapping” evolved into something more expansive — a method to track Muslim communities, without any suspicion of a crime being committed.

Last month, Danger Room revealed that the FBI was training its agents that religious Muslims tended to be “violent” and that Islamic charity is merely a “funding mechanism for combat.” In response, both the FBI and the Justice Department promised full reviews of their training materials. But the geo-mapping effort indicates that the FBI may have more than just a training problem: The suspicion of ordinary Muslims promoted in those lectures may be spilling over into its counterterrorism tactics.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union acquired some of the FBI geo-maps (.pdf), like the one pictured after the jump, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although many of the maps are heavily redacted, they represent the first public confirmation that the FBI compiles maps of businesses, community centers and religious institutions in ethnic enclaves around the United States.

The ACLU — where, full disclosure, my wife works — blasted the mapping effort, and in an interview with the New York Times, FBI agent turned ACLU attorney Mike German tied the maps to the incendiary anti-Islam trainings first revealed by Danger Room. Agents who received the briefings might be “predisposed to treating everyone from a particular group as suspect,” German said.

In response, the FBI issued a nuanced defense of its geo-mapping efforts. While pledging that the FBI “joins the ACLU in opposing racial or ethnic discrimination,” an FBI statement said that “[j]ust as putting push pins on a map will allow a local police chief to see clearly where the highest crime areas are, combining data that is lawfully collected into one place allows connections to be identified that might otherwise go unnoticed.”

Except FBI geo-mapping isn’t just aimed at tracking criminals. Over time, the maps’ rationale shifted from representing crime scenes to displaying the patterns of life in minority neighborhoods. In other words, the pushpins on the new FBI geo-maps indicate where people live, work, pray, eat and shop, not necessarily where they commit or plan crimes.

In 2004, a self-professed “visual learner” in the FBI’s Philadelphia field office, Special Agent Bill Shute, set out to prove a hypothesis. Shute took arrest reports from local cops and court records and plugged it into some off-the-shelf Microsoft mapping software (probably MapPoint) to create a visual display of where crimes occurred on his turf. His theory: If he pounded the pavement in those areas, he’d find informants who’d help him close cases. Shute called his pet mapping effort Project PinPoint.

If you ask the FBI, PinPoint was a resounding success. “The program led agents to arrests in the separate slayings of a city police officer and a 9-year-old,” according to a 2007 bureau account. “In the days after the multiple shootings at the Southwest Philadelphia bar in July, it helped identify potential witnesses and assisted with the recovery of the murder weapon.”

It shouldn’t be surprising: The effort isn’t dissimilar to New York City’s vaunted CompStat program, which displayed crime patterns to inform cops what parts of the city required more police work. Within a year, the FBI’s counterterrorism branch got in on the PinPoint action.

Deputy counterterrorism chief Willie Hulon told a congressional panel in 2004 that a massive FBI database called the Investigative Data Warehouse would collect and disseminate the maps amongst FBI agents and partner police forces across the country. “These tools allow FBI agents and analysts to look across multiple cases and multiple data sources to identify relationships and other pieces of information that were not readily available using older FBI systems,” Hulon testified.

In December 2008, however, the FBI loosened restrictions on just what “other pieces of information” those maps could collect. Its revised master plan for operations, known as the Domestic Investigational Operations Guidelines, subtly shifted the targets of those maps — from displaying criminal data to displaying data on the communities in which suspected criminals might live.

“If, for example, intelligence reporting reveals that members of certain terrorist organizations live and operate primarily within a certain concentrated community of the same ethnicity,” the revised guidelines read, “the location of that community is clearly valuable — and properly collectible — data.” (.pdf)

Danger Room asked the FBI about those maps a full year ago, before any of them had become public. We received a generic statement that read, in part: “In order to become an intelligence agency, the FBI cannot be content to wait for people to tell us about potential threats. Part of being proactive is making efforts to ‘connect dots’ to find previously undetected criminal and terrorist threats. Geospatial mapping is not nefarious.”

Tell it to Salam al-Marayati. The president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, one of the U.S.’ most influential Muslim organizations, Marayati wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed warning that anti-Muslim efforts like the FBI training manual were a nightmare for counterterrorism. Such training will “undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community,” wrote Marayati, who referenced Danger Room’s stories on the subject. The maps can’t be helping.

Last week, at a civil rights conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole reiterated what Danger Room first reported: that the Justice Department will “re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security” to scrub out Islamophobic instructions. Already,anti-Muslim authors formerly taught by the FBI, like Robert Spencer, one of the ringleaders of opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” are crying censorship. But Cole didn’t indicate whether the relaxed rules on mapping “ethnic communities” will come under review as part of that scrub.

Photo: Flickr/Paul Lowry. Image: FBI, via ACLU

ANN - The rise of Asia's middle class

Robin Chan
The Straits Times
Publication Date : 23-10-2011

Companies rub their hands with glee when they think of Asian consumers.

Dr Bala Shankar, an adjunct professor at Singapore Management University, recently wrote: "Asia is home to nearly four billion consumers, more than half the world. If the predictions that China and India will overtake many of the Western nations in GDP terms come true, it could be the largest bonanza for the marketers."

The key is the rising middle class.

While there is no standard definition or measurement of the middle class in Asia, whether it is by income or consumption, whatever it is, the figures show the middle class is growing, and fast.

In its report, Imagining Asia 2020, DBS Bank defines the middle income group as those individuals who spend more than US$10 a day.

By that measure alone, Asia today has a middle class of 525 million people. They make up 28 per cent of the world's middle class, said DBS.

This is projected to expand significantly to an incredible 1.74 billion people over the next 10 years.

They will then make up half of the middle class population in the world.

It's not just a China and India story but one of Southeast Asia too.

"Over the next nine years, Malaysia and Thailand will see a significant increase in the number of people who will spend more than US$10 a day," DBS said.

The growth of the upper middle class in China will surge from 80million in 2010 to 208 million by 2020.

As Asia's middle class grows, so will its demand for goods and services.

'The rising middle class will be a significant factor in reshaping national economies. They will be an influential and profitable market segment thanks to their size and emerging buying power,' noted DBS.

No wonder consumer giants like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have set up headquarters in Singapore to be closer to the Asian market.

They also have innovation centres to provide products specifically for different Asian tastes and preferences.

An example Economic Development Board chairman Leo Yip likes to cite is that the thickness of Asian hair is not the same as that of European hair, so shampoos sold in Asia must be made with different levels of conditioner.

According to DBS, global demand from the middle class will expand from US$21 trillion to US$35 trillion by 2020.

Over 70 per cent of this growth in demand will come from Asia.

How will this burgeoning middle class spend its money?

Middle class families generally have fewer children and spend more on health care, nutrition and education than the poor do, according to DBS.

Asia's middle class will be similar, influencing how their new money will be spent.

"Having fewer children would give middle class parents greater ability to afford quality education for their children," said the DBS report.

"More women would also be more likely to rejoin the workforce. Additionally, families would have more opportunities for savings and personal consumption."

Durable goods

For a start, there will be much more demand for durable goods such as refrigerators, cars, television sets and mobile phones.

Just take a look at these numbers for the mobile phone market: China already has some 780 million mobile phone subscribers. In India, there has been a significant growth of 66 per cent in the number of mobile phone users from 2000 to 2010.

But these figures represent only about half of the population in these countries, which means China and India still have substantially untapped markets.

While the middle class is growing, the more impressive expansion will come from the income groups of those earning between US$4 and US$10 a day, especially in Indonesia, Viet Nam, India and China, said DBS.

They will also demand goods and services but at a cheaper price, which will in turn drive the search for innovative solutions to achieve this.

Godrej, an Indian manufacturer, is one such company, selling refrigerators for just US$70.

Other companies, such as Unilever, sell 10-cent shampoo and conditioners.

Education and health care

It is not just demand for goods that will rise. The middle class will also be willing to spend more on important services such as education and health care.

DBS said the middle class in Thailand spends about 4 per cent of its income on these two services. This is more than double what the lower-income group is willing and able to spend.

The Chinese spend the higher proportion of their income on education and health care.

This will in turn drive demand for infrastructure - more schools and hospitals.

Cars and property

China's car market is already the largest in the world, overtaking the US' two years ago.

An incredible 18 million cars were sold in China last year. DBS forecasts car ownership to grow further as incomes rise, more roads are built and car makers aggressively roll out new designs for the Chinese market.

By 2020, two out of every 10 Chinese will own a car.

This means that total sales will surpass 30 million by 2020 at a growth rate of 5.3 per cent.

In Southeast Asia, car demand is expected to grow at an even faster pace. DBS expects car ownership to grow from the current 9 per cent pace to about 10.5 per cent, and at a similar rate each year from 2010 to 2020.

Housing demand in Asia is forecast to grow from a market value of US$694 billion last year, to US$1.1trillion by 2020, said DBS.

It calculated that 16.5 million property deals will be transacted in China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.

The populations of these places combined make up a quarter of the world's total population.

These figures will be music to the ears of property developers, who will be able to offer a wider supply of properties catering to different income groups.

"The pace and pattern of this growth will vary according to market development and demographics in each country," said DBS.

In China, it will be driven by low ownership levels, urbanisation and a high incidence of people in the home-owning age range.

In countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, it will be sheer demand for housing, as people under 25 make up about 46 per cent of the population and will soon progress to the home ownership age.

Energy and commodities

China today consumes four billion barrels of oil a year of the 6.9 billion barrels consumed in Asia a year. This is second only to the US' seven billion barrels each year.

By 2020, China is expected to raise its consumption to 4.3 billion barrels a year.

By 2035, it will account for more than a fifth of total global oil demand, up from 17 per cent today.

With energy-hungry China and India, coal demand is also expected to remain high, and grow at an 8 per cent annual rate until 2020, said DBS.

But don't expect Asia to become much greener. Renewable energy is unlikely to be able to make up for much energy demand by 2020. Coal power plants are still estimated to account for more than 70 per cent of power generation, said DBS.

Palm oil and rubber will also be in hot demand in Asia.

"It will be home to 86.3 per cent of the 81.7 million tons of global palm oil supply, and 95 per cent of the 15.5 million tons of global natural rubber supply over the next eight years," said DBS.

Jakarta Globe - Taufik Tells PDI-P (and his Wife) To Give Younger Candidates a Chance

Ezra Sihite & Markus Junianto Sihaloho | October 25, 2011

How old is too old to run for president? For Taufik Kiemas, the answer is 68 — the age his wife, former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, will be in 2014.

Taufik, the chairman of the advisory board of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said his wife, the party’s chairwoman, should reconsider her own plans to run in 2014.

“It would be better if Madame thinks first before moving ahead [in the 2014 elections.] She would be 68 years old in 2014,” he said.

He said the PDI-P should be looking for a replacement for Megawati. “If we prepare younger members in the next three years, one of them will certainly emerge. The older members must give way,” he said.

Taufik’s feelings aside, a recent poll by the Indonesian Voting Network (JSI) found that Megawati and Prabowo Subianto, the founder of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), were the most popular potential presidential candidates for 2014.

Taufik declined to name any potential young PDI-P candidates, nor did he say whether his daughter, Puan Maharani, 38, would be among those groomed.

For her part, Puan said she was ready to run for president. “As a cadre, I’m ready to be assigned to any position, especially if it is mandated by the party,” she said. “My grandfather was president, my mother was also president, and hopefully in 2014 we can win.”

The same family political dynamics were seen during the PDI-P’s last congress, when Taufik pushed for the creation of a deputy chair post in the party, ostensibly for Puan, which was rejected by Megawati’s backers.

The couple have failed to see eye to eye for years, and Taufik said it was his opinion that Megawati should not run, not the party’s.

“Bung Karno once said that leaders would always be born if they were well prepared. Every era would give birth to a leader and they had to be prepared,” he said, referring to the country’s founding president, Sukarno, Megawati’s father.

He said the country and its political parties needed to do a better job of grooming as many potential young leaders as possible.

Taufik added that if the PDI-P insisted on fielding the same old candidates in the 2014 legislative and presidential elections, it risked becoming a laughingstock.

“We once laughed at Suharto when he still wanted to be president at 70. How come we are following in his steps?” he said.

Maruarar Sirait, a young PDI-P politician, rejected the idea that Megawati was too old and said the party should throw its weight behind her in 2014.

He said the results of the JSI survey, which was not commissioned by the party, showed that Megawati still had the support to be a successful candidate in 2014.

“If all the requirements are met, then there is no reason to forbid Mrs. Mega to run for the presidency,” Maruarar said.

Taufik’s comments also sparked a debate among politicians over age requirements for presidential candidates. Priyo Budi Santoso, a deputy House speaker from the Golkar Party, said that age should not become an issue for anyone wishing to serve the state.

“Megawati is also a central figure in this country. If a figure of her calibre still wants to go forward [with a presidential candidacy] then it should be respected. And the same goes for Aburizal Bakrie. If he is pushed [to run], do not forbid him,” Priyo said, referring to the Golkar chairman, who will be 66 when the presidential election takes place.

Priyo said there was no need to rush younger leaders. “If Golkar wants to back senior figures it should be allowed to, don’t scold them,” he said.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Asian Correspondent - Top 10 Incorrect Singaporean Stereotypes

By Sharon Chen

Singapore is a city of contradictions. Is it a bustling metropolis? An exotic tropical island? A ruthless Asian Tiger? It’s impossible to sum up the unique country in a single phrase, but we can separate the truth from exaggeration. Here’s a look at 10 common misperceptions.

1. Singapore in China.

Yes, Singapore is 74% Chinese. No, it’s not a part of China. In fact, Singapore is located in South East Asia, just south of Malaysia, 3801 kilometers from Shanghai. While Chinese culture is a big part of Singaporean life, it’s just one aspect of its vibrant mishmash of multiethnic local traditions. Chinese New Year is a big deal, but so are Hari Raya, Deepavali and Christmas.

2. Singaporeans can’t speak English.

Non-Singaporeans are frequently astonished when they discover that Singaporeans can speak fluent English. In fact, English is the primary language of business, government and instruction here. While Chinese, Malay and Tamil are commonly used as well, almost everyone is bilingual to some extent.

3. Singapore is run by an authoritarian regime.

The People’s Action Party dominates elections, government bureaucracy and the media. There is little chance of any opposition making a serious impact on institutions and policy. This may have been true in the past, but Singapore’s socio-political landscape is changing rapidly.

The recent general and presidential elections are the best testaments to this. Newly elected President Dr. Tony Tan faced fierce competition despite strong support from the PAP and was elected by the skin of his teeth. Most dissent used to take place online and was often tinged with self-defeatist resignation. Today it is quickly spilling into the mainstream and demanding serious consideration by the powers that be.

4. Singapore is a nanny state.

You can’t chew gum, smoke weed or graffiti public transport for fear of caning and death by hanging. Seth Rogen got quite a few Singaporeans riled up when he painted the city as a “barbaric… and frightening… benevolent dictatorship” in an interview with Conan O’Brien.

While there is harsh corporal punishment for crimes involving drugs, rape, murder, vandalism and so forth, the idea that Singaporeans are living in blissful ignorance under the iron fist of totalitarianism is false. Singaporeans are well aware that the restrictions placed on them are excessive compared to other countries, but generally agree that the safety and cleanliness they enjoy are a worthy payoff. The average law-abiding citizen would have no reason to be concerned with the cane or noose anyway.

As for visitors, they are made well aware of the rules before they enter the country and it makes sense that they should be expected to follow them – just as any Singaporean would be expected to abide by the rules of whatever country they were in. Also, it isn’t illegal to chew gum here, just to import and sell it.

5. Singaporeans are uptight.

They can’t take a joke – look how they overreacted to that hilarious Seth Rogen video! This seems to stem from a perception that Asians in general lack the ability to laugh at themselves. I beg to differ. Take a look at this popular blog and website for Singaporean self-deprecation at its finest.

6. Singaporeans are apathetic and uninformed.

There is a big difference between indifference and ignorance. It is almost impossible in this day and age to be completely oblivious to the news of the day, especially when controversial issues arise. It might be true that Singaporeans are less likely to speak up for fear of sanction, but that should not be mistaken for a lack of concern.

Some might say that the lackluster showing at the attempt to “Occupy Singapore” is a symptom of passivity, but there are many other ways to achieve constructive change. The fact that such a protest was attempted, no matter how ineffectively, is proof that Singaporeans are anything but apathetic, much less uninformed.

7. Singaporean kids have no fun.

Is Singapore full of Tiger Mums (and Dads)? Well, one couple did make it onto an episode of “World’s Strictest Parents.” Singapore’s education system definitely places a strong emphasis on grades, especially since children start taking standardized tests at the tender age of 12. But children all over the world are facing increased pressure to excel in school, and parents can be equally strict everywhere. There are “cram schools” in India, China, the United Kingdom, the United States… the list goes on. Children here are just like their counterparts in other countries. There are those who study way too hard, and those who hardly study at all.

8. Singapore has no local Arts scene.

Singapore is sterile and boring – it’s only concerned with economic growth. No one is going to make a living as a singer, actor or painter. Local artistes certainly do have a tough time competing against the wave of Hollywood movies, TV shows and music that have consumed the island. But they are an ever-growing presence.

Pick up a copy of Juice, Singapore’s premier “indie” magazine, for a look into the not-so-underground world of local music. Playwrights like Dick Lee and Alfian bin Sa’at are household names. TV shows like The Pupil, Singapore’s first legal drama, and The Noose, a hilarious satirical fake-news program, are light-years ahead of previous locally produced fare.

In 2010, Singaporeans took part in an average of 92 arts- and culture- related activities everyday. It looks like that number is poised to increase as more young people choose to go to schools like the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Laselle College of the Arts over traditional universities.

9. Singaporean men are whipped.

I blame this on articles like this. Somewhere along the way, a caricature of Singaporean men as metrosexual, handbag-carrying wimps has emerged. We are talking about men who have had to spend two years in mandatory military training. They know how to fire guns, survive in the jungle and scale really high walls. In all seriousness, there is no way to prove or disprove this charge. To each his own.

10. Singaporean women are materialistic.

They are more interested in finding a man who can provide for them than “true love” (whatever that means). They want designer handbags, luxury cars and beautiful houses.Sarong Party Girls are constantly on the prowl for rich Caucasian men who can introduce them to the high life. There are those who argue that there is a fine line between materialism and pragmatism. I tried to get a response from Singaporean women but none of them could be reached. Prada just announced a 50% storewide discount.

Sharon Chen is a Regional Representative for Asian Correspondent based in Singapore. You can follow her on Twitter @thisissharons

Starting Points

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Friday, October 28, 2011

Cornell University SEAP eNewsletter

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

DW - Dams threaten Mekong's fish and region's security

ASIA | 26.10.2011

The Mekong River provides food, water and work for millions of people, but development plans for hydroelectric dams pose a threat to the environment and diets. As a key decision looms, neighbors look on anxiously.

Unspun Blog - Wisdom of Whores Takes Tea with the Dead

Monday, October 24, 2011

Wired - FBI Crime Maps Now ‘Pinpoint’ Average Muslims

ANN - The rise of Asia's middle class

Jakarta Globe - Taufik Tells PDI-P (and his Wife) To Give Younger Candidates a Chance

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Asian Correspondent - Top 10 Incorrect Singaporean Stereotypes

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