e pur si muove

It’s official: three days after then-Prime Minister of Poland Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz resigned after falling out with his party chief, President Lech Kaczyński appointed his identical twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński to as Prime Minister. Jarosław will be confirmed once the Polish parliament passes a confidence vote.

Nepotism? By definition, not at all. Cronyism? We’ll see.

At any rate, I thought this would have been a gold mine of bad science fiction stories.

In the news, three main points of note:

1. The 2006 World Cup ends; attentions wander back into the local sphere. The Brown-out matures (previous coverage here: [2] [1]).
2. Mr. Miyagi, long-time friend of mrbrown, also quits TODAY, a move widely popular with many bloggers. Mr. Miyagi has taken some flak from bloggers who feel indignant that he didn’t quit in protest of mrbrown’s suspension.
3. Molly’s prediction that the Government will “clarify” its position comes true, with Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan making a speech in the national media

Dr. Vivian explains that the Government is not interested in picking fights, but is “in search of solutions” by “engaging in an honest constructive dialogue”. He also says, rather clearly:

“[W]e want our newspapers to be a part of that process and also to be aware that, the mainstream media in particular. You are not an internet chat room.

I was initially skeptical when Cobalt Paladin brought up the point that the Bhavani letter was aimed at the offline audience, but the preceding quote does indeed make it quite unambiguously so. A subtext is exposed now: a claim that discussions in the blogosphere are nowhere as civil, nor as enlightening, as in the mainstream media. (Did anyone notice, by the way, that this appears to be the first mention of the phrase “mainstream media” in the Singapore MSM?) Anyone who reads Singapore Angle or Mr Wang (to cite just two) can easily pooh-pooh the premises here, so I’ll leave it at that. What Dr. Vivian (and by extrapolation, the Government) probably has in mind is discourse along the lines of Sammyboy’s Alfresco Café or any of the popular fora. This of course is akin to lumping Le restaurant haute together with kopi tiam and Food Junction food courts by addressing them all as “places to eat”. Perhaps the belief in fungibility should not come as too much as a surprise, given its assumptions already abound in the planning of the conomy, but still, surely People in Power can do better than that!

IPS researcher Tan Tarn How writes an illumination exposé On The Management of Dissent, and in particular stresses the “equally important” (if somewhat ineffable) contribution of non-public dissenters.

Tarn How identifies three principles at work, which I paraphrase as:

1. Going only for the centres of influence. Which makes perfect sense, in a very didactic Chinese way. (I’m thinking of 杀一儆百, “kill one to warn a hundred”; insert your favorite appropriate Chinese idiom here.) And justified even from a network-theoretic point of view, where it is well-established that taking down a few key nexi can bring down an entire network (e.g. in DDoS attacks on key Internet servers). A point well taken here is how Mr Miyagi was unscathed from the episode, even if he did later pull out voluntarily. Also a minor point on the collateral damage that ensues, which is not really explained. I am inclined to believe that the chief result will be a domino effect: remember how the Acidflask incident precipitated several blogs going private, offline, and even several blogicides.
2. Watch only the mainstream. Fringe dissent is OK, but not in the mainstream. A principle that is eminently sensible, even taulogical and inevitable since no country is entirely free from dissent and no country has unlimited resources to ferret out every last unhappy citizen. An example provided by Mr Wang is how Alfian Sa’at’s poetry goes unscathed because of the fringe nature of local poetry. (Mr Wang also mentions a possible need for another blogicide and reincarnation to escape the glare of the Public Eye.)
3. Respect politics and politicians. The Legal Janitor takes umbrage at this principle; I can’t say I disagree with him, given our common libertarian leanings. If this is indeed one of the principles the Government employs in managing unfavorable grassroots responses, that goes a long way to explain a lot of recent events.

On a parenthetical note, John Riemann Soong comments extensively on the Capital G Syndrome in references to the Government. I had already come to the conclusion that when a single entity dominates the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, the distinctions between government and Government, and Government and the ruling party begin to blur; and indeed when the official “ideology” is one of pragmatism, the dividing lines are mostly irrelevant.

It still doesn’t explain the patronizing tone though. Witness the newcaster’s story that “as long as everyone understands their respective roles, Singaporeans can have a useful dialogue moving forward”. And the “but you don’t do this” tone to Dr. Vivian’s TV interview. Erm.

OK, back to work now.

Here is today’s Youtube Monday, a Japanese television show created (and supervised by a TV personality and a Japanese veterinarian) to address the burning question of how much fish can a cat carry at one go? « Cute Overload

Answer under the fold, although it’s more fun to watch the video

technorati tags:japanese, television, show, cat, fish, drag, market, reality, tv

Read the rest of this entry »