President’s obscene pay to be cut and will be backdated to 21 May 2011

Image via Wikipedia May 23rd, 2011 | Author: Temasek Review


The obscene salary of the Singapore President appears likely to be cut after it was increased recently to an eye-popping S$4 million dollars annually.

According to a press statement from the Prime Minister’s Office on 22 May, the Committee to Review Salaries of the President, Prime Minister and political appointment holders will review the basis and level of salaries for these office-holders to help ensure honest and competent government.

It will take into account the following guidelines for the President:

“While the salary of the President should reflect the President’s high status as the head of state and his critical custodial role as holder of the second key, it should also take into account the fact that unlike the Prime Minister he does not have direct executive responsibilities except as they relate to his custodial role; the salary of ministers should have a significant discount to comparable private sector salaries to signify the value and ethos of political service.”

President S R Nathan, who will not be seeking re-election when his term ends in August this year, has informed Prime Minister Lee that he will adopt the new salary from 21 May 2011.

The timely move is likely to soothe frayed nerves among disgruntled Singaporeans who are long unhappy with the astronomical salaries of the PAP ministers. It remains to be seen if the Committee will reduce their pay to a more ‘respectable’ level in line with those of other First World nations.

Indonesia's Islamic Vigilantes

Image via Wikipedia
May 19, 2011 - NYT

By AUBREY BELFORD

CIREBON, INDONESIA — Before he strapped on his suicide vest, walked into a crowded police station mosque and blew himself up last month, Muhammad Syarif was typical of the scores of angry young men who pass their days at fundamentalist mosques in this coastal Javanese city.

Mr. Syarif, 31, was a familiar face at often-violent protests, organized by local clerics, against alleged places of immorality, like karaoke bars and unregistered Christian churches. Last year, he joined mobs wielding sticks, staves and machetes who clashed with members of Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect deemed heretical by fundamentalists.

But to the police, Mr. Syarif was of little interest. Like many members of a small and vocal fringe of Islamist vigilante groups in Cirebon, Mr. Syarif operated with near-impunity as the local authorities turned a blind eye to — or even tacitly condoned, liberal Muslim leaders say — an atmosphere of intimidation against minorities and others deemed un-Islamic.

No one, it seems, saw it coming when Mr. Syarif slipped into the police station mosque during Friday Prayer and detonated his bomb, killing himself and wounding 30 people, including the local police chief.

The attack, which shocked Indonesians by occurring in a place of worship, points to what some analysts say is a disturbing trend. Across the country, they say, the authorities have largely stood by as fundamentalist vigilante groups have increasingly used street-level violence and intimidation in an attempt to turn Indonesia — a nonsectarian democracy where moderate Islam predominates — into a conservative Islamic state. Now, emboldened by a lack of official action, it appears some Islamist vigilantes are turning to terrorism.

“I think there is a merging of extremist agendas,” said Sidney Jones, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, “and that’s why it becomes imperative that the government address the issue of intolerance.”

“Because if we have a merging of the moralist agenda with the terrorist agenda, then ignoring the hard-liners that use blunt physical force in the effort to impose their views of morality, you are giving a green light to people who move one step further in using terrorism,” she said.

Conservative Islam has exploded in influence in this Muslim-majority country since the 1998 protests ended the three-decade dictatorship of Suharto, which held political Islam firmly in check. For the most part, this has manifested itself in the growth of private piety and the development of a significant minority of Islamic politicians in local and national government. But there has also been growth at the fringe.

At the most extreme end, terrorist groups have staged a series of deadly attacks, including the 2002 bombings in Bali, which killed 202 people. Successive police crackdowns have seen hundreds of militants arrested and key leaders killed. Terrorism is now at a low ebb, although militants still plan attacks — in April the police also uncovered a group that was alleged to have planned to bomb a church at Easter and to have sent mail bombs to prominent figures deemed “enemies of Islam.”

Much more successful have been above-ground fundamentalist groups that use strong-arm tactics to push for Indonesia’s Islamization. Emerging after 1998, these groups have mounted raids against vices like gambling and prostitution and led mobs that have burned and ransacked churches. In politics, they have seen success by allying themselves with more mainstream conservative Muslim politicians, lending their muscle to campaigns to ban pornography and Ahmadiyya. For the most part, they are rarely arrested.

In a striking example of official reluctance to tackle vigilante violence, video footage taken in February showed the police in West Java standing by as a mob killed three Ahmadiyya members and mutilated their bodies. Rather than lead to a crackdown on vigilantes, the incident prompted provincial and local governments to issue decrees curtailing the rights of Ahmadis to worship.

In the case of the Cirebon bombing, it appears that Mr. Syarif was one person drawn from vigilante violence into terrorism, amid an atmosphere of official tolerance for hard-line intimidation, said Marzuki Wahid, co-founder of the Fahmina Institute, a Muslim human rights group.

“My impression is that the authorities are letting this happen,” Mr. Marzuki said. “They’re cowards when it comes to facing these groups. Frankly, they’re rearing a tiger that wants to jab its master.”

In Cirebon, a coalition of extremists grouped under an alliance called the Islamic Community Forum has during the past decade taken control of the city’s imposing central mosque and Islamic center, drawing power from a smattering of nearby mosques and boarding schools. From offices financed in part by the city government, the Forum-allied vigilante groups have mounted their campaigns, with the police often seeing them as an aid in maintaining local order, said Nuruzzaman, the local leader of Ansor, the youth movement of Indonesia’s largest mainstream Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama.

Local vigilante groups, however, see themselves as a last resort in the face of democratic Indonesia’s growing Westernization and official corruption, said Andi Mulya, a bearded cleric who heads the city’s most active group, the Forum’s Anti-Apostasy and Anti-Heresy Movement, also known as Gapas, whose protests Mr. Syarif attended.

Like other Indonesian groups of its kind, Mr. Mulya said, Gapas documents cases of vice and blasphemy and reports them to the police. It is only if the police do not follow up, he said, that Gapas takes action. “What gets branded ‘radical,’ ‘anarchic’ or ‘violent’ is due to the failure of the government and the police to fairly enforce the law,” Mr. Mulya said.

It was into this world that Mr. Syarif drifted several years ago as a poor, young man upset by his parents’ divorce, according to a younger brother, Muhammad Fatoni. Falling under the spell of Forum-aligned preachers, Mr. Syarif denounced less religious family members as “infidels,” Mr. Fatoni said.

Although the police initially portrayed the bombing as the lone act of a self-starter jihadi, they now say Mr. Syarif was part of a larger terrorist cell that had planned further attacks and was linked to Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid, or J.A.T., the above-ground organization of Abu Bakar Bashir, an elderly cleric who is a founder of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network and is currently on trial for overseeing another terrorist network in Aceh.

So far the police have arrested 13 people in connection with the bombing, killed two suspects and recovered 14 additional bombs. One of the arrested was a brother of Mr. Syarif, Muhammad Basuki. The police have not yet said when and how they believe Mr. Syarif joined the terrorist cell, but a pattern of increasing radicalism and violence is clear.

Despite a reputation for violence at Gapas protests, Mr. Syarif largely stayed off the police radar until last September, when he joined a group of 11 people who smashed bottles of alcohol in Cirebon convenience stores. Those raids were organized by the local leader of J.A.T., Agung Nur Alam, who operates in alliance with other clerics at Cirebon’s city mosque. The police now say that Mr. Syarif was a member of J.A.T., although Mr. Nur Alam has denied this.

Among the items seized when the police arrested six members of the group was a laptop containing video showing Mr. Syarif being trained for a terrorist attack, the police said. Whether this piece of evidence went unnoticed, or was simply not acted on, is unclear. In early April, Mr. Syarif’s driver’s license was found at the scene of the fatal stabbing of a soldier. Less than two weeks later, Mr. Syarif carried out his bombing.

For Mr. Nuruzzaman, the local youth movement leader, it is no surprise the police missed the budding terrorist group in their midst.

“Because the government is letting things go, groups like this are doing ‘sweeping’ operations on minorities, so they feel they’ve got the power to do anything,” Mr. Nuruzzaman said. “If the state was acting firmly against them, I’m convinced this wouldn’t go on.”

The police, however, deny there is any broader connection between the rising tide of vigilante violence and the uncovered network.

The man who became police chief after the bombing, Lt. Col. Asep Edi Suheri, denied that the police condoned Islamic hard-liners, or that the latter presented a security risk. “Not everyone in these Islamic organizations is a radical,” he said. “It’s a just a few rogue individuals.”

Abhisit versus Thaksin

May 18th, 2011 by Andrew Walker



Pheua Thai’s nomination of Yingluck Shinawatra as their candidate for Prime Minister gives Thailand the electoral contest it had to have. It’s not quite Abhisit versus Thaksin, but it’s as close as Thailand can get to a historical confrontation that has been ten years in the making.

Thaksin Shinawatra has dominated Thai politics for a decade. Electorally he is the most popular politician Thailand has produced. In his last electoral confrontation with the Democrats, in 2005, he flogged them. Like any political leader he had his vulnerabilities, but the forces arrayed against him in 2005 and 2006 had neither the wit nor patience to chip away at his power via electoral means. The Democrats (or, as I used to refer to them, the “Democrats-except-when-you-can’t-win-an-election-and-then-a-coup-is-ok”) refused to rise to the occasion when Thaksin called their bluff with a snap-election in April 2006. The Democrat boycott of that election helped to pave the way for the military coup that came only five months later.

Given all that has passed since, it is easy to forget the central reality of recent Thai politics: Thaksin was a thrice-elected Prime Minister who was forcibly deposed by an illegal military coup. For a great many in Thailand his electoral legitimacy remains intact.

The Democrats are terrified of another contest with Thaksin. Together with their allies in the army, the judiciary and the palace, they have done everything they can to neuter his power. The coup was just the beginning. It was followed by the dissolution of two opposition parties, the banning of scores of Thaksin’s political colleagues, the imposition of a new constitution that can be used to sabotage electoral decisions, the conviction of Thaksin for one of his more trivial infractions, and the seizure of Thaksin’s assets as punishment for his success in contributing to a buoyant stock market. But it’s been an uphill battle for the Democrats, despite the backing they have received from the military and the palace. In the 2007 election, when the smooth and urbane Abhisit faced the odious Samak Sundaravej, the Democrats fared well in the party list vote, but were soundly beaten in the constituencies.

Yingluck is a much better proxy for Thaksin than Samak. That she is more presentable goes without saying. More importantly, she does not have Samak’s long and volatile political history and the whiff of maverick independence and unpredictability that went with it. Yingluck is clearly Thaksin’s woman: “Thaksin thinks, Pheua Thai acts”. Unlike Samak, Yingluck perfectly symbolises Thaksin’s appeal to generational change; her femininity underlines his challenge to established expressions of power; her business background echoes his CEO style; her economic success excites the aspirations that Thaksin cultivated; and, most potent of all, her surname is Shinawatra.

In political terms, Yingluck is Thaksin in a frock.

The government can fume all they like about her being Thaksin’s proxy—with her ear always to the phone—but, of course, that is exactly the point.

This will be a fascinating contest. If Ahbisit can win, he will be able to claim some electoral legitimacy. But he will have to manage that claim carefully, given the numerous shackles that have been placed on his opponents over the past five years. It’s not really a level playing field. Nevertheless, an Abhisit victory would surely force Pheua Thai to re-think the potency of the Thaksin brand.

If Yingluck wins, we’re back to 2005, except with political divisions hardened and a symbolic power vacuum opening up as Thailand contemplates the not-too-distant coronation of an unpopular king. A Shinawatra victory would set the scene for very interesting times indeed.

WikiLeaks and the Altantuya Murder

Written by Our Correspondent

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Cables show the US embassy in KL feared "prosecutorial misconduct" during the sensational 2009 trial The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur closely followed the trial of the accused killers of Mongolian interpreter Altantuya Shaariibuu and frequently discussed whether current Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak was involved in the killing, according to diplomatic cables supplied to Asia Sentinel by the WikiLeaks website. The diplomats, like much of the public, also speculated that the trial was being deliberately delayed and feared what one cable calls "prosecutorial misconduct" that was being politically manipulated. The embassy officials based their concerns on sources within the prosecution, government and the political opposition. The cables also draw attention to an intriguing allegation that then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi may have attempted to use the proceedings to implicate Najib, a claim that was quickly hushed up in the Malaysian press. Altantuya was murdered in October 2006 by two of Najib's bodyguards, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri, 30 and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, 35. who stood trial and were pronounced guilty in April 2009.  Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib's best friends and Altantuya's lover, was accused of participating in the murder but was freed without having to put on a defense. The murder has been tied closely to the US$1 billion acquisition of French submarines by the Malaysian ministry of defense, which Najib headed as defense minister during the acquisitions. Altantuya reportedly acted as a translator on the transaction, which netted Razak Baginda's company a €114 million "commission" on the purchase.  Reportedly she had been offered US$500,000 for her part in translating.  After she was jilted, she vainly demanded payment. A letter she had written was made public after her death saying she regretted attempting to "blackmail" Razak Baginda. French lawyers are investigating whether some of the €114 million was kicked back to French or Malaysian politicians. Despite the scandal, the US government has not publicly backed away from Najib. In April 2010, Najib visited the White House and was praised by President Barack Obama for the parliament's passage of an act allowing Malaysian authorities to take action against individuals and entities engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The cables are replete with accounts of a long series of meetings with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who repeatedly told the Americans that Najib was connected to corrupt practices in the acquisition of the submarines as well as the purchase of Sukhoi Su-MCM-30 Flanker fighter jets from Russia.  Anwar also called attention to Najib's connection to the Altantuya case. A Jan. 24, 2007 cable, marked "secret," wrote that "Perceived irregularities on the part of prosecutors and the court, and the alleged destruction of some evidence, suggested to many that the case was subject to strong political pressure intended to protect Najib." In a Feb. 1, 2008 cable, the embassy's Political Section Chief, Mark D. Clark, wrote that a deputy prosecutor had told him "there was almost no chance of winning guilty verdicts in the on-going trial of defendants Razak Baginda, a close advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, and two police officers.  She described the trial as interminably long." (That, of course, turned out to be wrong. Sirul and Azilah were ultimately convicted and have appealed their sentence) Clark called the trial a "a prosecutorial embarrassment from its inception, leading many to speculate that the ineptitude was by design.  On the eve of the trial,Malaysia's Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail dropped his lead prosecutors and replaced them with less experienced attorneys.  Similarly, a lead counsel for one of the defendants abruptly resigned before the trial 'because of (political) attempts to interfere with a defense he had proposed, in particular to protect an unnamed third party.'" The protracted nature of the case, Clark continued, led "at least one regional newspaper to speculate that 'the case is being deliberately delayed to drive it from public view. Malaysia's daily newspapers rarely mention the case's latest developments, and it is unprecedented in Malaysian judicial history that a murder trial could drag on for seven months and still not give the defense an opportunity to present its case.  Such an environment has led many to conclude that the case was too politically sensitive to yield a verdict before the anticipated general elections." A January 2007 cable called attention to Razak Baginda's affidavit confirming that he sought the help of Musa Safri, later identified by reporters as Najib's aide-de-camp, in ridding him of the jilted woman, and in other cables pointed out that Musa had never been called for questioning. In another cable, dated May 16, 2007, Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh, a deputy home affairs minister in former Prime Minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi's cabinet told US Embassy officials that he was "certain that government prosecutors would limit their trial activities to the murder itself and the three defendants; prosecutors would not follow up on allegations of related corruption or other suspects." In a Jan. 27, 2007 cable, marked "Secret," embassy officials wrote that "In December we heard from one of (Anwar's) lawyers that Razak Baginda's wife was in contact with Anwar and Wan Azizah, suggesting one possible source for Anwar's information."  Razak Baginda's wife, during one of his first appearances in court, screamed that her husband "doesn't want to be prime minister." That was taken by observers as a reference to the fact that Najib reportedly had been having an affair with Altantuya but passed her on to Razak Baginda because it would be unseemly to have a mistress when he succeeded Abdullah Badawi as premier.  Najib has offered to swear on the Koran that he had never met the woman. However, in July 2008, P Balasubramaniam, a former policeman and private detective who had been hired by Razak Baginda to protect him from Altantuya, filed a sworn statement saying he had been told by the accused man that Najib not only knew the murdered woman but had an affair with her and introduced her to him, passing her on because he did not want the onus of having a mistress in the event that he would become prime minister. In a telephone interview on May 9, Anwar, however, told Asia Sentinel that Razak Baginda's wife was not the source of his knowledge of Najib's connection and that instead he had been told of the connection by Setev Shaariibuu, Altantuya's father, who said he had wished to present evidence of Najib's involvement, but was not allowed to do so.  Multiple attempts to contact Setev by Asia Sentinel have been unsuccessful. Almost immediately after he made the statement, Balasubramaniam was picked up and driven to a police station, where he was forced to withdraw the statement and write a new one saying Razak Baginda had told him nothing of the sort. Balasubramaniam fled Malaysia for India.  He later said Najib's brother, Nizam,  and wife, Rosmah Mansor, had met with him and that he was offered RM5 million (US$1.48 million) to forget his statement connecting Najib to Altantuya. Balasubramaniam displayed a flock of checks drawn on the account of an associate of Najib's wife.  The former private detective has made a a series of statements from outside the country about Najib's involvement. A February 2008 cable from Political Section Chief Clark gives a hint that Abdullah Badawi himself may have been trying to get rid of Najib by forcing Razak Baginda to implicate him in the murder. "In the latest turn of the ongoing Altantuya murder trial (reftels), accused political insider Abdul Razak Baginda, who has remained calm and composed through most of the proceedings, unleashed an emotional tirade shortly after the February 20 noon recess on the trial's 90th day," Clark wrote. "Referring to the Prime Minister by his nick-name 'Pak Lah,' Razak reportedly exclaimed:  'You can die, Pak Lah! (in Malaysian - Matilah kau, Pak Lah!) I'm innocent!' according to unpublished journalist accounts.  "Local  newspapers and the government news service Bernama reported the fact of the outburst, but did not print Razak's  statements.  The short-lived exception was the English language newspaper The Sun, which included the quotations from Razak in its early morning February 21 edition.  Sources at newspaper confirmed to us in confidence that the Ministry of Internal Security compelled The Sun to withdraw and recall thousands of copies of their first run paper in which the original quote was included.  Prime Minister Abdullah serves concurrently as Minister of Internal Security." During the trial, Clark wrote, Razak Baginda, "appeared uneasy throughout the morning session of court on February 20.  Razak's father, Abdullah Malim Baginda had whispered something to him shortly before the trial had begun for the morning and apparently upset the accused.  Razak had remained quiet throughout the morning hearings, but just after the noon recess was called and as he was leaving the courtroom he kicked and banged the door and yelled "You can die, Pak Lah! Die, Pak Lah!  I am innocent.  I am innocent."  He was later seen crying before his lawyer while his mother attempted to comfort him." "Speculation is rife in Malaysia's on-line community concerning what it was that set off Razak Baginda  outburst, including conspiracy theories alleging the Prime Minister's office had urged Razak to implicate Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak …in return for  sparing Razak a guilty verdict and its mandatory death sentence," officials wrote.   The cable goes on to write, "Regardless, the Internal Security Ministry would want to limit any possibly inflammatory reference to the Prime Minister at the trial, and particularly at this juncture due to the proximity of Malaysia's general election to be held on March 8.  Any connection between the Prime Minister and the murder trial would be scandalous.  The GOM (government of Malaysia) reportedly has worked hard to 'drive (the case) from public view' … and is not about to allow the case to influence the coming elections."

Microsoft Deepens Bing's Use of Facebook Data

Image via CrunchBase
By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News May 16, 2011 4:10 pm

Microsoft has incorporated more Facebook data into its Bing search results, increasing the competition around social search with Google, whose level of access to Facebook data is not as deep.

Leveraging its years-long advertising, investment and technology partnership with Facebook, Microsoft on Monday is rolling out a wider range of matches between Bing's Social search engine queries and Web content Facebook users have "liked."

The capabilities build on Bing's initial use of Facebook data, which was launched late last year and complemented regular search results with links that users' friends had tagged as favorites using Facebook's "Like" button.

"The dynamics of search continue to change, especially due to social media," said Lisa Gurry, a Bing director, in an interview.

As before, Bing users have to be logged into their Facebook accounts to take advantage of the search engine's integration with the social networking site.

The new capabilities fall into three major categories that Microsoft has labeled "trusted friends," "collective IQ" and "conversational search," according to Microsoft.

While Bing is already notifying users about search results their friends have "liked," Microsoft is now increasing the weight assigned to these "liked" results when ranking search results, and also expanding the variety of content it surfaces. "We all want that 'gut check' from friends when making decisions," Gurry said.

For "collective IQ," Bing will take into consideration the overall "like" popularity of sites and links, thus not limiting it to a user's circle of friends. The idea is to make Facebook "like" data useful in cases where a user's own friends don't offer a strong enough signal to sharpen query results. "There's power in numbers, in the voice of many, if your friends aren't experts on a particular topic," Gurry said.

Bing is also displaying recent posts made on Facebook Pages that companies use to market and promote their products, such as special deals and offers. Likewise, Bing will push notifications of travel deals to users' Facebook profile Walls, based on cities and other relevant information that they have "liked."

In the "conversational search" category, Bing is introducing features to let users share results with their Facebook friends and request their input, such as when they are using Bing's Shopping search engine and want advice on what to buy. When people are using the Bing Travel search engine, they will be able to share a travel wish list and see which friends live in those desired destinations.

While Google remains the dominant search engine, it recognizes that social search is increasingly important and has been beefing up its capabilities in this area as a well. However, Google and Facebook have a tense relationship, and Microsoft for now has access to Facebook data in a way and with a depth that Google doesn't. While Facebook is far from the only social media site, it is the world's largest social networking site, and the deeper the access to its data, the better for search engine providers.

In Philippine Newsrooms, the Women Rule

Veejay Villafranca for the International Herald Tribune

Inday Espina-Varona talks about her experiences as a journalist at a conference at De La Salle University in Manila. Ms. Espina-Varona has been a journalist since the Marcos era and now runs the citizen-journalism program of ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcast network.

By CARLOS H. CONDE
Published: May 16, 2011

MANILA — When a panel of executives from the Philippines’ top broadcasting networks defended their industry last September before legislators examining the news media’s conduct during a botched hostage rescue, the fact that four of the five executives were women attracted little comment. But it spoke volumes about the change the country’s journalism has undergone in recent decades, from an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession to one where women now hold sway.

The watershed came in the last few years of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled for nearly two decades and was toppled in a popular revolt in 1986. When Mr. Marcos imposed martial law in 1972, many of the mostly male editors and reporters who were critical of him were imprisoned or went underground to join the resistance. The men who remained in the newsrooms were often co-opted by the government or operated clandestinely to put out opposition publications.

Into the breach came the women, who up to then had been largely sidelined in feature supplements or less consequential jobs. For the first time, they took over key positions in news organizations. In several instances, they directly challenged the government with reports and commentaries that contributed to the groundswell of opposition against Mr. Marcos.

Today, these women and the ones they hired and promoted dominate the country’s largest broadcast networks, its most influential newspapers and magazines, and investigative journalism nonprofit organizations.

“You cannot explain the rise of the women journalists without talking about martial law,” said Inday Espina-Varona, a journalist since the Marcos era who now runs the citizen-journalism program of ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcast network. “When the men were struggling back into journalism, the women were already there.”

The Marcos dictatorship had a “radicalizing effect” on many women in the Philippines, especially journalists, Belinda A. Aquino, a historian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, wrote in the 1994 book “Women and Politics Worldwide.”

Lourdes Molina-Fernandez, managing editor of the Web site Interaksyon and the former editor in chief of Business Mirror, a Manila paper, said: “That period a few years right before Marcos fell — that was the time when women gained ascendancy in the newsroom because of the sheer preponderance of women writing very critical articles against the dictatorship.” She herself was fresh out of college at the height of the dictatorship and worked for anti-Marcos and leftist publications.

To be sure, women in the Philippines had advanced faster than their counterparts elsewhere in Southeast Asia, one reason perhaps that the U.N. Global Gender Gap Report last year called the Philippines a model for the region. Women were represented in the Senate before World War II, for instance, and many schools were run by women.

But somehow this was not reflected in newsrooms during these periods, said Luis V. Teodoro, a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. While there had certainly been some female journalists, the Filipino newsroom was dominated by men well into the Marcos years, he said.

The women who have since taken over advanced under the most arduous circumstances, when censorship was widespread and journalists were routinely arrested and tortured, a trial by fire that may have contributed to the assertiveness of the women-led news organizations to this day.

“It took a woman to test the limits of press censorship under Marcos,” said Ms. Aquino, the historian (and no relation to President Benigno S. Aquino III).

That woman was Maria Ceres Doyo, a human rights advocate who in 1980 wrote an article about a tribal chieftain, Macli-ing Dulag, who led his people in resisting a dam project and was killed by the military.

“Nobody was writing about it, so I wrote it, took my own pictures and sent it to the editor of Panorama, whom I did not know,” Ms. Doyo said. In hindsight, she said, “Maybe I was half stupid or half brave.”

Panorama was the Sunday magazine of Bulletin Today, a newspaper notorious as part of the “crony press” of Mr. Marcos. But its independent-minded editor, Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, decided to run Ms. Doyo’s story.

The government responded by calling in Ms. Doyo for interrogation. But this did not have the desired effect: Ms. Magsanoc came to her defense and, somehow emboldened, even wrote scathing editorials that, in Ms. Doyo’s words, “twitted Marcos and Imelda,” the dictator’s wife, in what had previously been considered a lightweight lifestyle magazine. Ms. Magsanoc was fired as Panorama’s editor in 1981, after publishing a column criticizing the government.

Official harassment continued. Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, who replaced Ms. Magsanoc at Panorama, and several of her female staffers were placed under military surveillance. Female journalists from other publications were also interrogated by the military, often under conditions, Ms. Doyo said, that mocked them.

The women fought back with more critical pieces about the government.

In 1983, several days after the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., the opposition figure and father of the current president, Eugenia Apostol, who owned the lifestyle magazine Mr. & Mrs., started Mr. & Mrs. Special Edition. She says she was angered by the news blackout by pro-Marcos papers of Mr. Aquino’s funeral, which was attended by an estimated two million people.

“Gathering the Mr. & Mrs. staff, I announced a special funeral issue the very next day,” she recalled in a 2010 essay.

The weekly Mr. & Mrs. Special Edition ran highly critical political stories in the final years of the Marcos government.

In 1985, in response to what they believed was a government cover-up regarding the Aquino assassination, Ms. Apostol, along with Ms. Magsanoc, founded The Philippine Inquirer, a weekly. When Mr. Marcos announced a snap election late that year, they turned it into a daily, to give more coverage to the political opposition. The Philippine Daily Inquirer is now the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, and Ms. Magsanoc is editor in chief and Ms. Doyo a feature writer.

The Panorama episode was also a defining moment for Ms. Doyo. After her story on the dead tribal chieftain was published, she turned full time to journalism. “It was an amazing, wondrous journey,” she said.

The same could be said of the careers of the many other women who rose in journalism during the struggle against the Marcos government, among them Sheila Coronel, who founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and is now director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University in New York.

“Every independent media group in the Philippines has been led by a woman,” said Maria Ressa, a former CNN correspondent who, until late last year, was senior vice president for news and current affairs at ABS-CBN. She was among the news executives who testified at the Senate hearing.

According to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, a Manila-based media monitoring and research institution, women occupy the top or key positions in most of the country’s broadcast and print newsrooms. During Ms. Ressa’s six years at the network, 13 of the 15 people in news management were women.

The country’s top prize for investigative journalism, handed out by the Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism, has gone to women in 15 of the past 21 years. More than 70 percent of enrollees in mass communications or journalism courses are women.

Melinda de Jesus, executive director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, which published the Philippine Journalism Review, said the challenges now for the women-led newsrooms are to maintain editorial competence and independence and to keep pace with swiftly changing information technology.

But she also noted that, despite the journalists’ achievements in helping bring down an abusive government, many problems in Philippine society — poverty, corruption, ineffective governance — persist, and that the news media’s coverage of these issues “often lacks depth.” “The harder part is the development of quality journalism that the Filipino audience deserves,” she said.

Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew resigns

Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore's first prime minister after independence in 1965

 

BBC - 14 May 2011 Last updated at 11:03 ET 

 

Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew has resigned from the country's cabinet, ceding leadership to his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The move comes after their party's worst election result since 1965.

Lee Kuan Yew and fellow former prime minister Goh Chok Tong said in a joint resignation statement that the "time has come for a younger generation".

The 87-year old Mr Lee was prime minister from 1959 to 1990, after which Mr Goh took over until 2004.


Analysis
Rachel HarveyBBC South East Asia Correspondent

Lee Kuan Yew has designed, driven, and dominated Singapore's development for over 50 years.

But now, aged 87, he says it's time to step down. He will give up his post as Minister Mentor, a cabinet advisory role specifically established for him in 2004.

The move comes after an election in which the opposition mounted their most effective challenge since independence. Mr Lee, under whose leadership, freedoms and rights were curtailed in return for a promise of security and prosperity, described the vote as a watershed.

"The time has come for a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation," he said.

The next government will be led, like the last one, by Mr Lee's son. The Patriarch's retirement is, unquestionably, a key moment in Singapore's political history. But the dynasty is secure.

Mr Lee had been known as minister mentor, while Mr Goh was senior minister since 2004. Both won parliament seats in the city-state's latest general election on 7 May.

BBC South-East Asia correspondent Rachel Harvey says Mr Lee's retirement is, unquestionably, a key moment in Singapore's political history.'Clean slate'

In a joint-statement, Mr Lee and Mr Goh said the current prime minister and his team "should have a fresh clean slate".

"The time has come for a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation," they said.

"After a watershed general election, we have decided to leave the cabinet and have a completely younger team of ministers to connect to and engage with this young generation."

Politics in the tiny but hugely wealthy state have been dominated by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) since independence in 1965.

But in the latest elections, the PAP won only 60% of the vote - down from 67% in 2006 and 75% in 2001.

The Workers' Party won six seats, the most the opposition has held since independence in 1965.

Singapore is one of the world's richest countries, but soaring housing prices amid a surge of foreign workers have left poorer islanders struggling.

Swiss Bank Powers to Probe Taib Holdings

Written by Our Correspondent

Friday, 13 May 2011

Taib and Najib laugh it up Vast amounts of money believed to be held in Swiss banks by the Sarawak chief minister Just a month after the voters of the Malaysian state of Sarawak returned Abdul Taib Mahmud to office, Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Ray said Thursday that she asking Swiss financial authorities to investigate the chief minister’s assets held in Swiss banks. In a letter to the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund, Calmy-Ray indicated that if the investigation finds evidence of corruption from timber sales, Taib’s Swiss assets could be frozen.  The letter was made public by The Sarawak Report, a Sarawak-based website that has published detailed descriptions of Taib’s operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.  The Bruno Manser Fund is named for a Swiss national who disappeared in Sarawak in the 1980s while campaigning for the rights of the indigenous the Penan tribe. In the 30 years of Taib’s reign as chief minister, timber companies have cut more than 90 percent of the tropical rainforest, leaving forest-dwellers like the Penan deprived of their means of subsistence and starving, critics allege. The award of timber concessions has made Taib a billionaire, they charge. In a separate letter made public by the Bruno Manser Foundation, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which governs money-laundering, agreed to investigate Taib’s holdings in Swiss banks. The Bruno Manser Fund alleged that Taib is believed to have invested heavily in the Swiss banking system and that Elia Geneid, a Swiss national who married into the Taib family, has profited from  the use of lands held by native Sarawakian tribes. In February 2010, the Fund alleged there are 49 companies connected to Taib in eight countries which are thought to be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of US dollars.  Transparency International Malaysia and other NGOs have lodged reports against Taib through the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. “Taib is believed to have invested a great deal in the once secretive Swiss banks over past decades, although, following recent reforms, he has more recently focused his attention on Monaco which remains famously lax on the matter of money-laundering,” the Sarawak Report said. The question that arises immediately is who the Swiss authorities would return the funds to if they were discovered to be gained from the illegal sale of timber or other government assets. The Taib-led Barisan Nasional coalition was returned to office with 54.5 percent of the votes but holds 55 of the state assembly’s 71 seats. If the Swiss were to indeed freeze Taib’s Swiss-based assets, returning them to the Malaysian government would presumably put them back into his hands.  Taib has promised to step down after the election, but so far has not done so and there is considerable reason to believe he has no intention to do so.  The chief minister is considered a close ally and fundraiser for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. In the recent election, the Barisan Nasional, the national ruling coalition in Kuala Lumpur, pulled out all the stops to aid in the reelection campaign, cris-crossing the state to campaign along with other Barisan stalwarts to aid the chief minister’s reelection campaign. In addition to the Bruno Manser Fund, the Sarawak report, in a long series of reports prior to the election, showed, for instance, that family members and corporations connected to Taib have properties in Canada worth in excess of US$100 million. Taib’s children are the shareholders and directors of numerous companies controlling residential and commercial buildings in Australia, Britain and the United States worth additional hundreds of millions of dollars. Sakti International Corp. in the United States manages properties totaling an estimated US$80 million including the Abraham Lincoln Building, which houses the FBI’s offices in Seattle, Washington.  Records made public by the Sarawak Report showed that a family dwelling in Seattle was purchased for US$1 from a company to which the Sarawak government granted a timber concession. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission so far has ignored all requests from the Sarawak Report and other NGOs to investigate the Taib family’s assets and how they were acquired.

48 women raped every hour in Congo, new study shows, far surpassing previous estimates

Image via Wikipedia
By Associated Press, Published: May 11 | Updated: Thursday, May 12, 12:06 AM

DAKAR, Senegal — The African nation of Congo has been called the worst place on earth to be a woman. A new study released Wednesday shows that it’s even worse than previously thought: 1,152 women are raped every day, a rate equal to 48 per hour.

That rate is 26 times more than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the United Nations.

Michelle Hindin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health who specializes in gender-based violence, said the rate could be even higher. The source of the data, she noted, is a survey that was conducted through face-to-face interviews, and people are not always forthcoming about the violence they have suffered when talking to strangers.

“The numbers are astounding,” she said.

Congo, a nation of 70 million people that is equal in size to Western Europe, has been plagued by decades of war. Its vast forests are rife with militias that have systematically used rape to destroy communities.

The analysis, which will be published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, shows that more than 400,000 women had been raped in Congo during a 12-month period between 2006 and 2007.

On average 29 Congolese women out of every 1,000 had been raped nationwide. That means that even in the parts of Congo that are not affected by the war, a woman is 58 times more likely to be raped than a woman in the United States, where the annual rate is 0.5 per 1,000 women.

Previous estimates of the number of rapes were derived from police and health center reports in the nation’s troubled east where the conflict is concentrated. The authors of the study used figures from a government health survey and pooled data from across the country.

The highest frequency of rape was found in North Kivu, the province most affected by the conflict, where 67 women per 1,000 had been raped at least once.

“The message is important and clear: Rape in (Congo) has metastasized amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time,” said Michael VanRooyen, the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. special representative for sexual violence in conflict, welcomed the study.

“Conflict-related sexual violence is one of the major obstacles to peace in the DRC,” she said in statement, using the initials for Congo. “Unchecked it could disrupt the entire social fabric of the country.”

Wallstrom said the figures in the study are higher than the U.N.’s because it covers all sexual violence — including domestic and intimate partner violence — not just from military actors.

U.N. figures tend to be conservative because they must be verified by the organization itself, she said.

Wallstrom said she consistently stresses that “the number of reported violations are just the tip of the iceberg of actual incidents.”

__

Associated Press Writers Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo, Edith Lederer in New York and Mike Stobbe in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Bin Laden’s death ‘does not pose a great risk’ on SE Asia

Image via Wikipedia

Yassine Majdi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 05/12/2011 10:10 AM | World

Although Osama bin Laden has substantial influence among mujahideen (jihadists) across the world, including those in Southeast Asia, no repercussions are expected to result from his death earlier this month, experts agree.

Sidney Jones, International Crisis Group Indonesian senior adviser, said Bin Laden was an influence to mujahideen in Southeast Asia since his “fatwa in February in 1998 in the name of the World Islamic Front convinced many Southeast Asian mujahideen that the main enemies of Islam were America and its allies”. This fatwa led to the infamous bombings in Bali, and the attacks on the Australian Embassy and JW Mariott hotel, she said.

The 2002 attacks in Bali put Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) in the limelight. This organization, which was added by the UN Resolution 1267 to the list of the terrorist organizations linked to al-Qaeda, aims at establishing a caliphate that would include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Southern Philippines, Singapore and Brunei.

But, according to Jones the threat of an attempt to avenge Bin Laden’s death does not come from JI but “from men who have broken with JI or small groups who never had anything to do with it”.

“Those groups might attempt to avenge Bin Laden’s death with an attack but their chances of success are limited since their capacity of planning operations is not high,” Jones said.

One must wonder if Bin Laden’s death would trigger an interest in the jihadi cause in Southeast Asia. Jones said it was not likely since the recruitment depended more on local than international factors.

In fact, it seems that the attention on Bin Laden’s death has shifted for Southeast Asian jihadists. Their attention may have turned toward the trial of Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, accused of setting up and financing a paramilitary camp in Aceh. Ba’asyir was described by some as the “Bin Laden of Indonesia”.

In a trial on Monday, prosecutors requested a life sentence for firebrand cleric Ba’asyir for his role in financing a terrorist military training camp in Aceh.

Earlier, Jakarta Islamic State University professor Ismail Hasani agreed that the death of Bin Laden would have no significant effect on local terrorists.

“I believe that most acts of local terrorism are spawned by domestic, sociopolitical issues such as social tensions and religious conflict, rather than an international terrorist agenda,” Ismail said.
He said there was a connection between local groups and Bin Laden’s network. “However, it exists only at the ideological level, not at the operational level,” he said.

Jones said Bin Laden was not the biggest influence on jihadists as Abdullah Azzam who died in 1989 had the biggest influence on them. In fact, the Palestinian theologist’s works are required reading by all Southeast Asian jihadists, Jones said.

In Libya, perfecting the art of revolution by Twitter

Image by altelaumbanua via Flickr
By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / May 10, 2011

An Egyptian cab driver tells this joke to foreign reporters: President Hosni Mubarak dies and is greeted in the afterlife by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who asks him how he died. Mr. Mubarak answers, “Death by Twitter.”

Much has been written about the role of new media such as Twitter and Facebook in the so-called “Jasmine Revolution” that has swept the Middle East. But political rebels using the latest communication technology – from hand pamphlets to fax machines – is as old as tyranny.

What’s new is the speed and exponential power of today’s new media to jump over traditional boundaries of time and space, says Philip Howard, author of “The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam.”

Non-violent protesters and armed rebels all over the region have begun marshaling this unprecedented power to their cause.

“The media war is as important as the battlefield … if not more important,” a Libyan businessman, known only as Mohammed, told NPR. He is spearheading a delegation from Misurata to Qatar in search of weapons and money.

There has been a learning curve even among the most sophisticated media users, says Professor Howard, who researches information and communication technologies in politics and social development at the University of Washington.

In Tunisia, where fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation to protest the government became a cause célèbre, the news spread slowly, from a small number “who were close to him, who took pictures of his burnt and bandaged body and sent the images over trusted networks to families and friends. They passed them on and passed on the story,” he says.

A similar organic process spread the story of Khalid Said, the Egyptian blogger bludgeoned to death outside an Internet cafe, Howard adds. “He had been beaten, and a few family friends took pictures in the morgue and sent them by mobile phone to friends. His bruised face became the image that played out over social networks.”

Libyan rebels learned from the successes in Tunisia and Egypt. One of the most important lessons: Get the message beyond your own borders.

“Before the Libyan protesters had even met for the first time with their shadow cabinet government,” Howard says, “they had come together to build a website and send out the URL asserting their statehood.”

“No longer is it enough to communicate locally or even nationally,” agrees Joan McLean, professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.


§


“This reality is what makes social networking so critical to the Jasmine Revolution. The international community in all of its many forms must be reached. Governments, relief agencies, media outlets, nongovernmental organizations, and elites with resources all must be informed and mobilized into action,” she says via e-mail. Social media have transformed the range of voices that can be part of a nation’s dialogue, she adds.

Of course, there’s a difference between “knowing what you need to do – and then doing it,” adds Professor McLean.

The “next big wave of democratization”?

Nonetheless, a digital dialogue about national identity that jumps geographical boundaries is going to be increasingly hard to quell, says Leonard Shyles, a communications professor at Villanova University.

Global media are erasing the traditional constraints of time and space, he points out. Images of cultures where faith and reason coexist without government coercion can now move from one nation to another, bringing Western ideals not just to the educated elites but within range of anyone with a cellphone or access to an Internet cafe.

“It is no longer merely the elites in a society that will aspire to self-definition,” says Professor Shyles. Seeing what is possible – and watching revolutions in neighboring nations in real time – changes the shape of what people aspire to. “It may seem a platitude, but human beings want to be free.”

What the world is seeing in this “Egyptian Spring,” echoes Howard, are “the early signs of the next big wave of democratization. But this time, it will be wrestled into life in the digital living room of the global community.”

From now on, he adds, “you will not be able to tell the story of democratization without an appreciation of how social media works.”

Social media are not the causal factor in these movements, Shyles cautions. “Social media like Facebook and Twitter or texting are the accelerant for things that have been wanting to happen inside these countries,” he says.

Will it work?

It is not yet clear how many of the Middle Eastern countries currently in the throes of insurgent movements will evolve democratically, says John Foram, a sociology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“These movements represent some of our best possibilities for a better world,” says Professor Foram, but he notes that some of the countries, such as Syria and Iran, are among the world’s most repressive.

The continuing crackdown on civilian protesters in Syrian may illustrate some limitations of the power of social media to rally public opinion. Indeed, Syrian and Iranian governments are tracking their foes on Facebook, illustrating the technology's double-edged sword.

On the other hand, notes Foram, “If this movement is successful in Syria, then repressive countries around the world will have to consider what they need to do to be seen as legit in the eyes of their own people.”

Analyzing the Singapore Election

Written by Garry Rodan
Wednesday, 11 May 2011




Lee Kuan Yew wonders if this is necessaryA Step on the Long Road to Political Pluralism?

Hardly on a par with developments in North Africa and the Middle East in recent months, Singapore's 7 May general election is nevertheless significant in the struggle against the authoritarian rule of the People's Action Party (PAP).

Opposition campaigns linked the cost-of- living rises, growing inequalities and public infrastructure pressures associated with foreign workers to the absence of parliamentary accountability and genuine political competition.

Enough voters bought the argument to suggest the PAP's elitist authoritarianism might be headed for greater scrutiny. Certainly there is growing skepticism about the PAP's ideology of meritocracy and exorbitant ministerial salaries justified by it. And tensions between the PAP's economic model and its ideological resistance to social democratic notions of redistribution will continue to fuel public disquiet over government policy.

But what is the extent and nature of opposition gains from the recent election? Can these be harnessed to promote sustained progress towards political pluralism? And what are the implications of a greater parliamentary opposition presence for wider political competition through civil society?

To be sure, the PAP still enjoys overwhelming electoral support and parliamentary supremacy. Even after dropping 6.5 per cent of total votes in this election, it commands a 60.1 per cent approval rating. Under Singapore's first-past-the-post voting system, aided by gerrymandering, this translates into all but six of the 87 seats in parliament. The political space opened up by the Workers' Party taking these six seats should thus not be exaggerated.

Yet, coupled with the 2006 election results, the PAP has now lost a combined 15 per cent of total votes since 2001. The opposition now collectively accounts for 40 per cent. This is quite remarkable given the extensive legislative impediments to critical political expression and independent civil society activity. And the Workers' Party victory in the Group Representation Constituency of Aljunied, netting five seats, is also a major psychological fillip for all PAP opponents.

Introduced in 1988, supposedly to guarantee minority ethnic representation, GRCs have enabled the PAP to capitalize on the limited opposition resources, shielded weaker PAP candidates from head-to-head contests and simplified electoral gerrymandering. They now constitute all but 14 parliamentary seats.

However, by a new strategy of concentrating their best candidates in the GRCs, Workers' Party leader Low Thia Khiang and colleagues demonstrated that the GRC fortress is not impregnable. Even senior ministers can be unseated – as was Foreign Minister George Yeo in the Aljunied loss. It is a strategy that opposition parties generally adopted to achieve marked improvements in vote share.

This election has also begun to blur the traditional product differentiation between PAP and opposition candidates on the basis of educational and professional credentials. Most of Singapore's six opposition parties recruited candidates who, by the PAP's traditional meritocratic yardsticks, are high achievers.

The Workers' Party's Aljunied candidate, Chen Show Mao, is emblematic of this. The former Oxford University Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Stanford University was involved in the world's largest initial public offering as a lawyer at international law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell's in Beijing.

Meanwhile, weak PAP candidates are being exposed, as in Marine Parade GRC where Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong conceded that this was a factor in the National Solidarity Party's (NSP) 43.5 per cent of the vote. The PAP's 27-year-old business consultant Tin Pei Ling was unimpressive and widely parodied in the blogosphere as a dud candidate, as were several other PAP candidates. By contrast, NSP's articulate 24-year-old Nicole Seah proved a politically savvy debater and eclipsed Lee Kuan Yew during the campaign as Singapore's most popular politician on Facebook.

For a party that claims utmost rigor in selecting candidates of merit, this raises a question. Will the narrow techno-bureaucratic types who dominate the PAP be able to attract and identify candidates to cope with more natural politicians like Seah, who may increasingly come out of the woodwork for the opposition in the wake of this election?

As Low sees it, the first step has been taken towards realizing a ‘First World Parliament' in which a critical mass of opposition genuinely holds the PAP to account. Significantly, Low asserted the legitimate long-term goal of forming a government to replace the PAP – challenging prevailing political culture among opponents and supporters of the PAP alike.

Certainly the medium- to long-term political opposition in Singapore will continue to be presented with opportunities from tensions between the structural and ideological realities of the PAP's model of state capitalism. This model combines an embrace of global market forces with an array of government-linked-companies and state institutions controlling citizens' access to economic and social resources.

If these controls were ever inspired by social democratic goals of income and wealth redistribution, it is the economic and political interests of a virtual class of state capitalists and functionaries thereof that have increasingly gained ascendancy. Indeed, the PAP has claimed ideological virtue in eschewing welfare-oriented programs that are characteristic of other developed countries.

Consequently, as Singapore's exposure to the disciplines of economic globalization has intensified, social and material inequalities have widened substantially. The average incomes of the top 20 percent of households rose by 50 per cent from 1997/98 to 2007/08, but dropped by 2.7 per cent for the poorest 20 per cent of households in this period. Recent studies by National University of Singapore academics also suggest that intergenerational social mobility in Singapore is now low.

The government's Workfare initiative and other programs meant to ease the pain of rising living costs through government rebates and other handouts are simply too meager to address this growing problem. Either the PAP has to find a solution that doesn't concede ideological ground to social democracy or crank up welfare and redistribution and admit it has been going down the wrong path.

But the challenges for political opposition exploiting these tensions as a basis for a sustained assault on authoritarian rule are also considerable. Despite recent improvements, opposition parties need to transcend inter-personality issues to concentrate on more clearly defined ideologies and programs. Six opposition parties may be a luxury. These parties are also severely restricted in the resources, networks and mobilization capacities available to them.

Most important here are the constraints on collective organization around social and political issues which are heavily regulated under the Societies Act. These are intended to prevent links between opposition parties and wider interest groups as well as to stymie the possibility of social movements and other informal political activities.

It is this denial of organic links to civil society by opposition parties and the confinement of political competition to the consequently stunted competition of electoralism that stands in the way of genuine political competition and pluralism in Singapore.

Resigned to a buoyed up Workers' Party presence in parliament, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has expressed his preference for a ‘constructive relationship in policymaking.' If the ground is to be laid for more meaningful long-term challenges to authoritarian rule, though, exploiting the parliament to subject the political system itself to systematic scrutiny is paramount. Garry Rodan is an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

Pop Your Internet 'Filter' Bubble

By Mike Elgan
May 9, 2011 3:25 PM



Think you're on the Internet right now? Well, you're not. You're on your Internet. The exact version of the online world that you see is available only to you.

Most of the major conduits through which you see the world online, including Google Search and Facebook, are gathering all kinds of data about you, then presenting you with a custom version of the world they think you're interested in. They're hiding or de-emphasizing the version of the world they assume you're not interested in.

In the past two years, the biggest gatekeeper websites have gotten very good at figuring out what you want and giving it to you. What's wrong with that?

There are downsides, according to a new book called The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You.

In a nutshell, the book argues that the sophisticated personalization engines improve things in the short run. But in the long run, they dumb us down, reduce our exposure to new ideas and ultimately could lead to a society without a shared set of facts about the world. The personalized Internet favors the marketers and propagandists but provides an obstacle for people who are trying to introduce new ideas.

The Internet is increasingly turning us all into dictators and divas. Like the entourages of Saddam Hussein or Jennifer Lopez, the Internet tells us what we want to hear, feeding us a version of the world that feels good, goes down easy and doesn't challenge us.

The book ships May 16. It was written by Eli Pariser, who is the president of the MoveOn.org board. MoveOn is a liberal public-policy group, and Pariser's concerns are mainly political. But the "filter bubble" concept affects you no matter what your interests. And you're going to hear a lot about this concept after the book hits.

In this column, I'm going to tell you how personalization works, why you may not want it, and also how to pop the bubble and opt out of a system that censors your Internet based on stereotyping.

Your own private Google

The "secret sauce" of Google Search has long been an algorithm called PageRank (named after co-founder Larry Page). But on Dec. 4, 2009, Google announced an additional algorithm that custom-tailors search results according to the individual attributes of the user.

According to Pariser, Google uses 57 "signals" -- even when you're not logged in to Google -- to customize search results. (Google was unable to confirm the number of signals.)

These "signals" include where you are, what you have clicked on in the past and who your friends are. But that's just the beginning. Google also gathers information about which browser and device type you use, how much you travel (based on where you use search over time), how long it takes you to click after getting a search result, and many, many other data points.

From all this data, Google decides how to sort your search results. (A Google spokesman told me the company rejects the term "filter" because it implies that Google is hiding links rather than prioritizing them.)

Here's a fun experiment to try. Search for something on Google, and have a friend or two do the same search. See how the results are different? Many of the links are the same. But they're in a different order and "skewed" subtly in one direction or another.
As we increasingly use mobile devices, our exact locations, where we've been, which stores and restaurants we've entered, who we've met with and possibly even activities on unrelated services will be increasingly factored into the decision-making process about what we see and don't see. In fact, all the major improvements Google has promised for search involve far more and deeper personalization.

"The power of individual targeting -- the technology will be so good, it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them," according to Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman.

Google apparently tries to be responsible with its power over your attention. A spokesman told me Google understands that "people value diversity on results pages." The company uses its deep understanding of you not only to target your assumed interests, but also to deliberately challenge you with a few links outside those interests.

Facebook's antisocial filter

Facebook is less responsible, in my opinion. The social networking giant determines what appears in your "News Feed" using an algorithm called EdgeRank. (Facebook ignored my request for an interview.)

Every action you take on Facebook -- clicking "Like," commenting, sharing, etc. -- is called an "Edge" internally at Facebook. Each Edge is weighted differently according to secret criteria.

What you need to know is that relationships and content that don't get enough "Edges" will get "edged" out of existence. Facebook will cut your ties to people -- actually end the relationships you think you have -- and block content that doesn't earn enough Edge points.

For example, many Facebook friendships exist solely through reading each other's Status Updates. An old friend or co-worker talks about a new job, shares a personal triumph like reaching a weight-loss goal, and tells a story on Mother's Day about how great his mom is. He posts and you read. You feel connected to his life.

Without telling you, Facebook will probably cut that connection. Using unpublished criteria, Facebook may decide you don't care about the person and silently stop delivering your friend's posts. Your friend will assume you're still reading his updates. You'll assume he's stopped posting.

Any friends who fail to click or comment on your posts will stop getting your status updates, too. If you have 500 friends, your posts may be actually delivered to only 100 of them. There's no way for you to know who sees them and who doesn't.

Facebook also filters content. EdgeRank keeps track of how many of your friends comment on a link to content, and it will use that criteria in the default view of your News Feed, which is the "Top Stories" setting.

The vast majority of even technical, savvy people I asked about this have no idea that their friends' activities are determining what content they see and don't see on Facebook.
Why everyone is doing it

It's not just Google and Facebook that shape and filter what you see online based on invisible assumptions and behind-the-scenes stereotyping. Amazon, Netflix, Pandora and hundreds of other companies offer "recommendations" or content based on personalization algorithms.

And personalization is becoming big business. Companies like Strands license their personalization engines to other companies. Strands customers include major banks, coupon and discount services and retailers, music sites and advertising companies.

The whole Internet is rapidly being personalized. Nobody can predict what kind of Internet -- what kind of world -- will emerge when everyone has a unique view of the world that nobody else can share.

Companies are aggressively pursuing personalization because it makes users happy. Personalization validates existing beliefs and prejudices. "Consuming information that conforms to our ideas of the world is easy and pleasurable," according to Pariser. "Consuming information that challenges us to think in new ways or question our assumptions is frustrating and difficult."

Personalization can create an "identity loop," according to Pariser. If you click to satisfy some passing curiosity, the algorithm might favor more such links in future. Because there are more links, you click more. You might even monitor your own activity and conclude that you must be especially interested. Personalization not only responds to personal interests. It shapes them.

And personalization based on activity favors the frivolous and the commercial. We all click mindlessly for temporary escapism. But we don't realize that we're training the Internet to favor that kind of content over important information.

Ultimately, personalization is ideal for marketing. We want perfect relevancy when shopping. As one venture capitalist said at this week's Social-Loco conference in San Francisco, "when you walk into a store, the only shoes and clothes available should be in your size."

The Googles and the Facebooks of the world are advertising companies. Their customers are advertisers, not users. And their customers love user personalization, because it's the shortest line between consumer and point of sale.

Of course, most sources of content are "biased." The site you're reading now, for example, is "biased" in favor of technology-related content over, say, stories about Latin music. The difference is that online personalization is invisible. Nobody knows what's being filtered out or why. Most people don't even know that filtering is taking place.
How to pop the bubble

If you don't want your Internet filtered by some invisible stereotype, here's how to pop the bubble. These tips are a combination of my own, plus some offered in The Filter Bubble.

* Deliberately click on links that make it hard for the personalization engines to pigeonhole you. Make yourself difficult to stereotype.

* Erase your browser history and cookies from time to time.

* Use an "incognito" window for exploring content you don't want too much of later.

* Use Twitter instead of Facebook for news. (Twitter doesn't personalize.)

* Unblock the Status Updates of your friends that Facebook has already blocked. Click the "Edit Options" link at the bottom of your Facebook News Feed. The dialog box will show you who is being blocked. You can hide or un-hide each friend manually, or unblock everybody. This dialog box affects only what comes from friends to you. It does not affect what your friends see of your posts.

* Every week or so, post something and then ask the Facebook friends you really care about to go "Like," comment and click. This activity should prevent Facebook from censoring your comments later for these people.

The most important thing about the "filter bubble" is that you know it exists. The Internet you see is not the Internet I see. The Internet you see has recently been redesigned to flatter, pander and validate -- not challenge, enlighten and educate.

The filter bubble is real. But it can be popped.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. Contact and learn more about Mike at Elgan.com.