The three points of contention are that the Singapore Government asserts:
* The Singapore Government did not threaten to end the business operations of Nikkei Inc. in Singapore;
* M Ravi was not suspended from practising law for criticising the Government; and
* Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Suet Fern were not threatened with Government action for warring with Lee Hsien Loong.
and the blocking is due to the Asia Sentinel's refusal to masthead the 'correction' for thirty days and alter(?) the original article to comply.
Right or wrong I side with the paper - it's relevant that they report that the Singapore Government disputes asserted factoids, it's fair that perhaps some form of this dispute goes to arbitration | court to independantly prove | disprove assertations .. but being forced to masthead a 'correction' to thirty days on pain of blocking prior to any (that I know of) independant review is extreme.
There's nothing surprising here, although it's important to call this out. As I've traveled around SEA a lot over the past few years, I've found that many sites are commonly blocked and surprising how little it seems to be discussed. In particular, medium.com and BBC.com seem to be blocked in at least Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Probably Singapore too. Those are the ones I noticed, I'm sure there are many more blocked that I've not seen.
There's no "great firewall" level blocking going on and the blocks are easily circumvented using a proxy or alternative DNS.
But blocking media sites when they publish anything critical of the government is unfortunately standard in this part of the world.
Neither bbc.com nor medium.com are blocked in Malaysia (source: I’m there presently), and I don’t recall either being blocked in Singapore or Indonesia. The sites blocked in Indonesia (e.g. Reddit) cannot be accessed by using an alternate DNS (e.g. Google’s) but are available via VPN.
It's not like there are shady corners and open boulevards in this world. Many "free world" countries block Russian outlets and extremism websites. That's sort of a rightful block considering the circumstance, but same a dictatorship would say. WWW/the Internet is already regional and there are mere bridges. There have been no global Web for at least a while, possibly it never existed.
I'm starting to think that access to porn is direct indicator of Internet freedom and freedom of speech in general. There don't seem to be many governments that has to say on tastes of beige audiovisual content but not political speeches.
I am in Thailand, and neither bbc.com nor medium.com are blocked right now. Do you mean that they can selectively be blocked? “Problematic” articles, critical of government or key public figures?
From my understanding of TLS and how governments are able to block sites (IP, DNS, SNI) it shouldn't under normal circumstances be possible for them to block specific articles. Maybe if they somehow could control the Certificate Authority, they would be able to bypass TLS, but I don't think that qualifies as a 'normal circumstance.'
I consider Singapore less than ideal to live in, but not because some websites are blocked. While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently; not all countries started from the same place and lifting people out of hardship is the primary goal. As they prosper (as Singapore did), it'd be good if priorities are realigned and they become more open. But it's a process and it takes time.
Now the second part. Singapore has some barbaric laws incompatible with modern society. Many times a year, they put to death people for drug related offenses (even cannabis), almost always poor people. It is tragic and heart breaking that such a wealthy country with a well-educated population (80% supporting death for drug offenses) gets behind execution for non-violent crimes. Most recently - 6 weeks back Tangaraju Suppiah was put to death for carrying 2 pounds of cannabis [1].
It's a well manicured garden, but I'd stay away from that place. Especially if you're raising kids.
He was a kingpin dealer who manipulated others into trafficking drugs, not just some poor guy who was unwittingly forced or tricked into carrying cannabis. His pawns, forced into doing his bidding, were spared the death penalty.
I personally don't think marijuana is harmful, but if you're going to be intentionally running a network distributing drugs knowing full well the law, there is really nobody to blame but yourself.
> Especially if you're raising kids
There is no better place to be raising kids to be honest. Singapore boasts a world-class education that consistently ranks at or near the top of the OECD PISA scores, a rich culture with both Eastern and Western perspectives. My Singaporean colleagues (here in the Bay Area) are all outstanding people with both a fine grasp of technical matters and great creativity and critical thinking skills.
> As they prosper (as Singapore did), it'd be good if priorities are realigned and they become more open.
There’s a lot of arrogance in this statement. The prosperous Asian countries (Singapore, Korea, Japan, maybe UAE too) all have more restricted social freedoms. But they’re also the safest and most orderly places in the world. Why would anybody living in those places look at LA, or NY, or Paris, or London, and think “I want where I live to be more like that”, ya know, filthy and full of violent and property crime…
> Singapore has some barbaric laws incompatible with modern society. Many times a year, they put to death people for drug related offenses (even cannabis), almost always poor people.
Nothing to do with people being poor. Majority of those executed are foreigners coming into the country.
> While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently
"'The East' does not respect freedom of thought" is a sentiment one would be castigated for expressing in the West.
Singapore executes a dozen people per year. Trafficking, not consumption results in the death penalty. If that is barbaric, do you know that a hundred people per day in the US die of opioid overdoses? How many people are in prison for drug related crimes in other developed countries? How many families are ruined by drugs?
Singapore has made its rules clear, these punishments aren't arbitrary. If you bring drugs into a country that will sentence you to death for it, something the population supports, that's not barbarism on part of Singapore, it's just reckless crime.
> While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently; not all countries started from the same place and lifting people out of hardship is the primary goal
It’s deeper than that. Generally, asian cultures place a higher value on community and thus have a lower tolerance for antisocial behavior. That same communalism also means they tend to place a lower value on individual life. Hence death penalties for people engaging in antisocial behavior.
It might not be your cup of tea, but Asians tend to think that their “well manicured garden” is desirable. In my view it’s far better than say San Francisco—the embodiment of European individualism taken to its logical conclusion—where you’re stepping over needles and human feces to get to work.
Unlike in Europe where people choose to unite and live largely peacefully after many conflicts (2 world wars got people fed up especially quickly), Asian countries landed themselves in a different situation, and reasonably suspicious towards "outsiders". What makes things even worse is that due to how many of these countries are governed (dictatorships, monarchies, monoparties and fake democracies), the recent movement of globalization is less effective in terms of bringing enough benefits to their citizens to allow them to brainwash their old world views out of their head voluntarily.
Plus, many of these Asian countries don't have enough market ability to support the development of such Internet product domestically. As a result, if you just fully open up your Internet, the majority of the benefit from the action will then be absorbed by some companies located half an earth away while continue to deplete the market demand for homegrown alternatives. This is the situation where when you fully obey the international treaties, you lose.
So, all and all, it's not "the east (just) does things a little differently" ("argh, these uncivilized barbarians" probably follows). Some delicate and sophisticated calculation is involved there.
Malaysia doesn't block the BBC, I am a regular visitor there and read it each morning. They don't actually block very much compared to neighbouring countries, mostly some porn sites.
I assumed Singapore was a "modern" country with education, openness, etc. but the blocking of websites resembles closed countries like China and Russia.
It's a hybrid regime/illiberal democracy like Russia (before Russia became a full on dictatorship in 2022).
While they technically have opposition parties, they've de facto always been a one party state.
There is an extreme level of censorship in the state as well and Media, ISPs, and Telecom Providers are almost entirely owned by the Government.
The difference from countries like Russia is the Singaporean govt doesn't shoot their opponents - they just bankrupt them via litigation instead.
P.S. Singapore's model of Illiberal Democracy is the template used across developing countries in Asia - from Thailand to China pre-Xi to India. Singaporean advisors were critical to developing China in the 1980s and 90s, as well as Gujarat in the 2000s.
It is and it isn't and the establishment dance with blind eyes about the discrepancies.
The root cause article here is about openly reporting commonly known things that upset Muslim|Christian puritan values ..
On July 23, 2021, an article appeared in the Tokyo-based English-language weekly Nikkei Asia Review, calling attention to the Singapore government's handling of so-called KTV lounges, alleging that decades of institutional failures in dealing with what the article called "organized crime cartels” were running what amounted to illegal brothels, which were responsible for the widespread spread of Covid-19 among the lounges’ patrons.
... As most Singaporeans know, the KTV lounges have been an embarrassment to strait-laced Singapore for decades, ... [1]
To be clear twenty years back I was taken for business meetings to a 20+ story tower that was lounges and clubs from the basement to to the top floor .. with a strong height from ground correlation to sophistication|sleeze levels.
Initially I met with individuals that owned fleets of ships and several skyscrapers (top floor, free top shelf everything) ultimately I socialised after hours with ships crew (ground floor, unsolicited lap dancing | hands on groin unless firmly pushed aside).
Officially this didn't exist, in practice it appeared to be open knowledgge.
Websites that are critical to the governments message are blocked in the West too. Either blocking sites isn't only a symptom of a closed country or the West is more closed then you care to admit.
I am Indonesian, reddit are blocked on most ISP. The Law is called "Internet Sehat dan Aman (INSAN)" or "Healthy and Safe Internet". It's very easy to circumvent, I use 1.1.1.1 app from cloudflare.
>But blocking media sites when they publish anything critical of the government is unfortunately standard in this part of the world.
Probably because those media sites belong to countries with a tainted history with colonial involvement against the countries "in this part of the world", and push their narratives.
If the situation was inversed, and e.g. those developing countries had the inverse power relationship with western countries (e.g. had some past or present where Thailand or Vietnam invaded or exercized power over France or the US), and the media sites were theirs, they'd be banned or shadowbanned or cancelled within an internet nanosecond.
So, unless something changed over the last day, I'm in singapore and just accessed the site, so although I don't doubt the government would make onerous demands because that's what they do, they aren't blocked right now it seems.
> While the blockage does deny general Singaporean readers access to Asia Sentinel’s website, it will have little effect on subscribers as AS is published on the Substack platform as a newsletter, which it means it is available in email accounts.
Interesting, I haven't heard of email providers blocking senders by a country, so I wonder if you could connect a static site generator with a LLM to read emails from users and respond with the corresponding article. It'd be pretty easy to disseminate headlines because email clients typically give notifactions already and emails are really easy to share to other people.
Interesting place, Singapore. On the surface, very clean and orderly. (How?) (In the past few decades, some very popular musicians were not allowed to perform there. Who's doing the micro-managing?)
From Wikipedia's Singapore article:
Ethnic groups (2020)[b]
74.3% Chinese
13.5% Malay
9.0% Indian
3.2% Others ***
Interestingly while the minorities have a higher birth rate compared to the majority Chinese, the ethnic breakdown remains the exact same throughout the decades. This is because Singapore's unsaid migration policy is such that the government takes in more immigrants of Chinese ethnicity to make up for the shortfall.
Keeping it at a fixed ratio indefinitely has a plausible legitimate reason, preventing the inevitable backroom political battles and bribery schemes by various groups seeking to tilt the immigration ratio in their favour.
There has been a lot of friction between locals and Chinese immigrants lately, especially with the rising cost of living. Public sentiment is quite negative, but the government seems happy importing more wealthy Chinese.
Readit News
https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/singapore-kills-chicken-scare...
The three points of contention are that the Singapore Government asserts:
* The Singapore Government did not threaten to end the business operations of Nikkei Inc. in Singapore;
* M Ravi was not suspended from practising law for criticising the Government; and
* Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Suet Fern were not threatened with Government action for warring with Lee Hsien Loong.
and the blocking is due to the Asia Sentinel's refusal to masthead the 'correction' for thirty days and alter(?) the original article to comply.
Right or wrong I side with the paper - it's relevant that they report that the Singapore Government disputes asserted factoids, it's fair that perhaps some form of this dispute goes to arbitration | court to independantly prove | disprove assertations .. but being forced to masthead a 'correction' to thirty days on pain of blocking prior to any (that I know of) independant review is extreme.
There's no "great firewall" level blocking going on and the blocks are easily circumvented using a proxy or alternative DNS.
But blocking media sites when they publish anything critical of the government is unfortunately standard in this part of the world.
Unblocking reddit in Indonesia via DNS depends on the ISP, or did as of a couple of years ago.
https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-28-malaysia-medium-block-ex...
I'm starting to think that access to porn is direct indicator of Internet freedom and freedom of speech in general. There don't seem to be many governments that has to say on tastes of beige audiovisual content but not political speeches.
Which web sites are blocked, and where?
Are they blocked for copyright reasons?
Now the second part. Singapore has some barbaric laws incompatible with modern society. Many times a year, they put to death people for drug related offenses (even cannabis), almost always poor people. It is tragic and heart breaking that such a wealthy country with a well-educated population (80% supporting death for drug offenses) gets behind execution for non-violent crimes. Most recently - 6 weeks back Tangaraju Suppiah was put to death for carrying 2 pounds of cannabis [1].
It's a well manicured garden, but I'd stay away from that place. Especially if you're raising kids.
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/25/asia/singapore-cannabis-e...
He was a kingpin dealer who manipulated others into trafficking drugs, not just some poor guy who was unwittingly forced or tricked into carrying cannabis. His pawns, forced into doing his bidding, were spared the death penalty.
I personally don't think marijuana is harmful, but if you're going to be intentionally running a network distributing drugs knowing full well the law, there is really nobody to blame but yourself.
> Especially if you're raising kids
There is no better place to be raising kids to be honest. Singapore boasts a world-class education that consistently ranks at or near the top of the OECD PISA scores, a rich culture with both Eastern and Western perspectives. My Singaporean colleagues (here in the Bay Area) are all outstanding people with both a fine grasp of technical matters and great creativity and critical thinking skills.
There’s a lot of arrogance in this statement. The prosperous Asian countries (Singapore, Korea, Japan, maybe UAE too) all have more restricted social freedoms. But they’re also the safest and most orderly places in the world. Why would anybody living in those places look at LA, or NY, or Paris, or London, and think “I want where I live to be more like that”, ya know, filthy and full of violent and property crime…
Nothing to do with people being poor. Majority of those executed are foreigners coming into the country.
https://youtu.be/-PXAOZwvv04
You can argue cannabis is harmless but that’s simply not true. Most studies that look at long term usage conclude it affects the brain.
"'The East' does not respect freedom of thought" is a sentiment one would be castigated for expressing in the West.
Singapore has made its rules clear, these punishments aren't arbitrary. If you bring drugs into a country that will sentence you to death for it, something the population supports, that's not barbarism on part of Singapore, it's just reckless crime.
I don't disagree with him.
Not as common as you put it out to be.
It’s deeper than that. Generally, asian cultures place a higher value on community and thus have a lower tolerance for antisocial behavior. That same communalism also means they tend to place a lower value on individual life. Hence death penalties for people engaging in antisocial behavior.
It might not be your cup of tea, but Asians tend to think that their “well manicured garden” is desirable. In my view it’s far better than say San Francisco—the embodiment of European individualism taken to its logical conclusion—where you’re stepping over needles and human feces to get to work.
Give the history a look and you'll know why.
Unlike in Europe where people choose to unite and live largely peacefully after many conflicts (2 world wars got people fed up especially quickly), Asian countries landed themselves in a different situation, and reasonably suspicious towards "outsiders". What makes things even worse is that due to how many of these countries are governed (dictatorships, monarchies, monoparties and fake democracies), the recent movement of globalization is less effective in terms of bringing enough benefits to their citizens to allow them to brainwash their old world views out of their head voluntarily.
Plus, many of these Asian countries don't have enough market ability to support the development of such Internet product domestically. As a result, if you just fully open up your Internet, the majority of the benefit from the action will then be absorbed by some companies located half an earth away while continue to deplete the market demand for homegrown alternatives. This is the situation where when you fully obey the international treaties, you lose.
So, all and all, it's not "the east (just) does things a little differently" ("argh, these uncivilized barbarians" probably follows). Some delicate and sophisticated calculation is involved there.
While they technically have opposition parties, they've de facto always been a one party state.
There is an extreme level of censorship in the state as well and Media, ISPs, and Telecom Providers are almost entirely owned by the Government.
The difference from countries like Russia is the Singaporean govt doesn't shoot their opponents - they just bankrupt them via litigation instead.
P.S. Singapore's model of Illiberal Democracy is the template used across developing countries in Asia - from Thailand to China pre-Xi to India. Singaporean advisors were critical to developing China in the 1980s and 90s, as well as Gujarat in the 2000s.
The root cause article here is about openly reporting commonly known things that upset Muslim|Christian puritan values ..
To be clear twenty years back I was taken for business meetings to a 20+ story tower that was lounges and clubs from the basement to to the top floor .. with a strong height from ground correlation to sophistication|sleeze levels.Initially I met with individuals that owned fleets of ships and several skyscrapers (top floor, free top shelf everything) ultimately I socialised after hours with ships crew (ground floor, unsolicited lap dancing | hands on groin unless firmly pushed aside).
Officially this didn't exist, in practice it appeared to be open knowledgge.
[1] https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/singapore-kills-chicken-scare...
While I absolutely love visiting Singapore, I could never live there.
Afaik porn sites are also blocked there.
Dead Comment
lol why would Singapore block BBC? They love everything British.
Probably because those media sites belong to countries with a tainted history with colonial involvement against the countries "in this part of the world", and push their narratives.
If the situation was inversed, and e.g. those developing countries had the inverse power relationship with western countries (e.g. had some past or present where Thailand or Vietnam invaded or exercized power over France or the US), and the media sites were theirs, they'd be banned or shadowbanned or cancelled within an internet nanosecond.
Edit: See https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-block-as... for the local news about the blocking.
Interesting, I haven't heard of email providers blocking senders by a country, so I wonder if you could connect a static site generator with a LLM to read emails from users and respond with the corresponding article. It'd be pretty easy to disseminate headlines because email clients typically give notifactions already and emails are really easy to share to other people.
I suppose no matter what they should be allowed to publish whatever they want. But still is this a news portal? Or some kind of personal blog?
From Wikipedia's Singapore article:
Ethnic groups (2020)[b]