SINGAPORE - Singapore leaders have been busy in recent days currying favour with the city-state's Malay Muslim community after state founder Lee Kuan Yew stirred uproar with remarks on Muslims, claiming their piety hindered their full integration into Singaporean society.In a new book titled "Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going" the famously outspoken Lee commented on multiracialism in the tightly controlled island-state with its population of 5 million, saying that "we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came.""The other communities have easier integration ... than Muslims," said the 87-year-old, who serves as a minister mentor in the cabinet of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong."Today, we can integrate all religions and races, except Islam," the elder Lee said, noting that "Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate."In order to facilitate integration in Singapore with its predominantly Chinese population and minority races including Malays and Indians, he urged Muslims to "be less strict on Islamic observances."His comments annoyed Muslims, prompting some strong reactions in local internet forums."Who you or your family prays and what you eat, drink and do is your business. We Muslims don't give a hoot," said one comment, telling Lee to "mind your own business."However, another comment called for moderation, noting that whatever Lee "said out of ignorance," the critics should be able to pardon, because "that is the way of Islam."Singapore's Association of Muslim Professionals issued a statement, saying it "deeply regrets" Lee's remarks as they "have hurt the community and are potentially divisive.""Just like other Singaporeans, we celebrate diversity of beliefs and practices," said the association, noting that "a good Muslim is duty bound, in Islam, to be a good Singaporean."The group sought clarification from the government over Lee's comments because he was "a core member of the cabinet" and his remarks "raise questions whether they reflect the thinking of other political leaders."On Saturday, the minister in charge of muslim affairs was the first top politician seeking to calm the waves as, with general elections due by February 2012, government leaders were eager not to snub Malay Muslim voters."Muslims and non-Muslims alike know that identity is not a zero-sum game," Yaacob Ibrahim said. "We can be both religious and patriotic at the same time."Lee had painted "at best a worst-case scenario," Yaacob said, adding that the minister mentor had a perspective that "may not be accurate now," but maybe 40 years ago.On Sunday, the prime minister made his stand, saying his perspective was different from his father's."MM (minister mentor) Lee was giving his personal views, based on his experience looking at Singapore evolve over more than 50 years and other multi-racial societies," he said."My own perspective ... is not quite the same," said the younger Lee, stressing that Muslims "have done a good deal to strengthen our harmony and social cohesion."In remarks covered extensively by the state media, he reiterated "that Singapore is one of the most harmonious and successful multiracial and multi-religious societies in the world."But a long-time rival of the elder Lee added some fuel to the flames.Former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who exchanged verbalblows with Lee over several issues during his administration, slammed the minister mentor over his comments."I am not surprised by his statement because to him religion is not important," Mahathir told the Mingguan Malaysia newspaper."For him the end justifies the means, so if he wants racial integration in Singapore, he won't let Islam stand in the way of his goals," said Mahathir."The Malays over there (in Singapore) are actually afraid of the government," he claimed, adding that Muslims were under a constant siege from the authorities and had no choice but to compromise their Islamic belief.-related article
DECEMBER 14, 2010 BY TAXI2DRIVER S’PURA MERDEKA MELALUI HELAH MASUK M’SIthe Lee Kuan Yew that very few Singaporeans know about To Catch A T...
SINGAPORE - Singapore leaders have been busy in recent days currying favour with the city-state's Malay Muslim community after state founder Lee Kuan Yew stirred uproar with remarks on Muslims, claiming their piety hindered their full integration into Singaporean society.
In a new book titled "Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going" the famously outspoken Lee commented on multiracialism in the tightly controlled island-state with its population of 5 million, saying that "we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came."
"The other communities have easier integration ... than Muslims," said the 87-year-old, who serves as a minister mentor in the cabinet of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
"Today, we can integrate all religions and races, except Islam," the elder Lee said, noting that "Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate."
In order to facilitate integration in Singapore with its predominantly Chinese population and minority races including Malays and Indians, he urged Muslims to "be less strict on Islamic observances."
His comments annoyed Muslims, prompting some strong reactions in local internet forums.
"Who you or your family prays and what you eat, drink and do is your business. We Muslims don't give a hoot," said one comment, telling Lee to "mind your own business."
However, another comment called for moderation, noting that whatever Lee "said out of ignorance," the critics should be able to pardon, because "that is the way of Islam."
Singapore's Association of Muslim Professionals issued a statement, saying it "deeply regrets" Lee's remarks as they "have hurt the community and are potentially divisive."
"Just like other Singaporeans, we celebrate diversity of beliefs and practices," said the association, noting that "a good Muslim is duty bound, in Islam, to be a good Singaporean."
The group sought clarification from the government over Lee's comments because he was "a core member of the cabinet" and his remarks "raise questions whether they reflect the thinking of other political leaders."
On Saturday, the minister in charge of muslim affairs was the first top politician seeking to calm the waves as, with general elections due by February 2012, government leaders were eager not to snub Malay Muslim voters.
"Muslims and non-Muslims alike know that identity is not a zero-sum game," Yaacob Ibrahim said. "We can be both religious and patriotic at the same time."
Lee had painted "at best a worst-case scenario," Yaacob said, adding that the minister mentor had a perspective that "may not be accurate now," but maybe 40 years ago.
On Sunday, the prime minister made his stand, saying his perspective was different from his father's.
"MM (minister mentor) Lee was giving his personal views, based on his experience looking at Singapore evolve over more than 50 years and other multi-racial societies," he said.
"My own perspective ... is not quite the same," said the younger Lee, stressing that Muslims "have done a good deal to strengthen our harmony and social cohesion."
In remarks covered extensively by the state media, he reiterated "that Singapore is one of the most harmonious and successful multiracial and multi-religious societies in the world."
But a long-time rival of the elder Lee added some fuel to the flames.
Former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who exchanged verbalblows with Lee over several issues during his administration, slammed the minister mentor over his comments.
"I am not surprised by his statement because to him religion is not important," Mahathir told the Mingguan Malaysia newspaper.
"For him the end justifies the means, so if he wants racial integration in Singapore, he won't let Islam stand in the way of his goals," said Mahathir.
"The Malays over there (in Singapore) are actually afraid of the government," he claimed, adding that Muslims were under a constant siege from the authorities and had no choice but to compromise their Islamic belief.
-related article
DECEMBER 14, 2010 BY TAXI2DRIVER S’PURA MERDEKA MELALUI HELAH MASUK M’SIthe Lee Kuan Yew that very few Singaporeans know about To Catch A T...
by chittarkotain
the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) as a third force in Malaysian politics.
If politics is the art of the possible, then compromise is the soul of democracy. In the deal he proposed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts (now signed into law), President Obama reminded his critics on both sides of the aisle that the refusal to compromise can make everyone worse off. It privileges the status quo — in this case an earlier status quo that virtually no one wanted.
Syed Husin knew of this “guy” candidate quite well, so he told off the backers that they should have done a thorough background check and would have found that their nominee was a regular pub-goer who often ended up drunk.
By StraightTalking
“…IF MCLM REALLY WANTS TO REPRESENT THE ‘CIVIL LIBERTIES’ MOVEMENTS, WHERE ARE THE ‘UNIONS’? WHERE ARE THE HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS? WHERE ARE THE NGOS? I DON’T SEE THEM JOINING THE MCLM IN DROVES. IF MCLM CANNOT ACCEPT GENUINE AND PURE CRITICISM, IS IT NOT GOING TO BE SIMILAR TO ‘SUHAKAM’, SAYING THE RIGHT THINGS BUT DOING THE WRONG THINGS? BERSIH WAS A BETTER MOVEMENT BY THE WAY! WHY NOT BERSIH CONSTITUTING A MASSIVE GROUP UNDER PAKATAN AND MCLM OFFERING ITS ‘MEMBERS’ AS CANDIDATES ONLY? THE FACT THAT THE MCLM REFUSES THE ‘ORDERS’ FROM PKR, PAS AND DAP AND THE FACT THAT THEY FEAR THE LEADERSHIP OF THESE PARTIES, SHOWS THAT THERE IS A DEEP DIVISION AMONG THE OPPOSITION SUPPORT PANELS AND THIS WILL DEFINITELY BE CANNON FODDER FOR THE BN TO TARGET IN THE NEXT GE. ONE LAST POINT: THE MCLM IS BEING CREATED NOT AT THE ‘DEMAND’ OF THE PEOPLE BUT BY THE THINKING OF A GROUP OF GOOD INTENTIONED CITIZENS BUT LET ME TELL YOU, NOT ALL GOOD INTENTS END UP IN GOOD THINGS!”I AM NOTTHENEW AGERAKYAT!
YAH?A BLIND FAN OF PAKATAN. I’VE SEEN ALL THREE MOVIES THAT ARE NOW SHOWING IN OUR CINEMAS:
MY FOOT
READMORE
Why is compromise so hard? Obama was in a difficult position because in the 2008 campaign he had promised to reject tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Now he was proposing to accept them. His Democratic critics cried betrayal: We are not against compromise, they said, only this compromise, at least so soon. Stick to the principles you championed in the campaign. Hold out for more.
The Republicans were suddenly seized with the virtues of compromise, but only for this compromise, and only after their electoral success. If the Democratic critics are looking to the promises made in the last campaign, the Republicans are looking to the promise the next campaign holds for them.
The critics on both sides misunderstand what compromise in a democracy really requires: a different mindset than what they are currently displaying. But achieving this crucial mindset is becoming increasingly difficult – because of the rise of the never-ending campaign.
Campaigning vs. governing
Compromise requires a shift from the postures of campaigning to the positions of governing. The president’s critics miss the depth of the problem when they focus on how the specific gains and concessions in the proposed compromise match their campaign platforms. They are still in campaign mode, operating with a mindset that is perfectly appropriate for running for office, but counterproductive for running a government.
This uncompromising mindset stands tenaciously on principle and mistrusts opponents. In that frame of mind, you can always believe that your side could have won more if only you had pressed harder or the other side had been more reasonable. When the uncompromising mindset prevails, desirable legislation founders.
The mindset that promotes compromise – which favors adapting one’s principles and respecting one’s opponents- used to be more robust than it is today. The most comprehensive tax reform legislation in modern American history, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, was forged with the support of a bipartisan group that included President Ronald Reagan, Democrats Dan Rostenkowski and Bill Bradley, and Republican Bob Packwood. They were partisans – by no means oblivious to electoral pressures, but prepared to take responsibility for governing, and adopt the attitudes required to fulfill it.
The incursion of campaigning into governing is increasing because campaigns have become, in effect, permanent. Campaigning is an essential part of the democratic process, but when it spreads out of its natural environment and threatens the process of governance, it needs to be pruned back. The mindset it breeds is hostile to governing.
To govern, politicians need to look beyond how a particular compromise matches their campaign principles or how it affects their opponents’ fortunes. While the compromising mindset attends to political realities, it also focuses on the most critical question for governing: Compared to the realistic alternatives, does this compromise promote the principles of both sides better than the status quo?
Shifting the balance
The influence of campaigning is not necessarily greater than other factors that make compromise difficult. Increased polarization in Congress and the parties certainly does not help. But the mindset associated with campaigning – with its overriding goal of producing a winner and a loser – reinforces and exacerbates all of the other factors. Sharp ideological differences would present less of an obstacle to compromise in the absence of the continual pressures of campaigning, and the mindset on which it thrives. Despite standing toward the right and left wings of their parties, respectively, Senators Orrin Hatch (R) and Ted Kennedy (D) managed (according to Hatch) “to come together in a bipartisan fashion to craft some of this nation’s most important health legislation,” among other legislative achievements.
We need to shift the balance in our democratic process more toward the compromising mindset and the promotion of political compromises it makes possible. This shift requires less governing by campaigning, and more respect for the virtue of compromise in its place.
This shift also requires some fundamental changes in our electoral and governing processes – changes that many observers believe desirable anyhow. We must regulate fundraising and provide public financing so that the pressures of campaigning are not so dominant in governing. We must prevent the abuse of congressional investigations for partisan purposes to make campaign points. We must design open government initiatives so that they engage moderate citizens and inform rather than manipulate, simply to mobilize. We must also regularly raise questions during the campaign about how candidates will govern.
The capacity for compromise has long been one of American democracy’s greatest natural resources, which we are now squandering. As the 112th Congress convenes, its conservation has never been more needed.
This post originally appeared at the Christian Science Monitor.
HOW CORPORATE AMERICA IS PUSHING US ALL OFF A CLIFF (APCO) AT ANWAR IBRAHIM
From Global ResearchBy Michael Moore
When someone talks about pushing you off a cliff, it’s just human nature to be curious about them. who are these people, you wonder, and why would they want to do such a thing?
That’s what I was thinking when corporate whistleblower Wendell Potter revealed that, when “Sicko” was being released in 2007, the health insurance industry’s PR firm, APCO Worldwide, discussed their Plan B: “Pushing Michael Moore off a cliff.”
But after looking into it, it turns out it’s nothing personal! APCO wants to push everyone off a cliff.
APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter — best known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake “grassroots” organizations around the country to do the bidding of big Tobacco. All of a sudden, “normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americans” were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outraged — outraged! — by exactly the things APCO’s clients hated (such as, the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were “furious” that regular people had the right to sue big corporations…you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report “The CALA Files” (PDF) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)
Right about now you may be wondering: how many Americans get pushed off a cliff by big Tobacco every year? The answer is 443,000 Americans die every year due to smoking. That’s a big cliff.
With this success under their belts, APCO created “The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.” TASSC, funded partly by Exxon, had a leading role in a planned campaign by the fossil fuel industry to create doubt about global warming. The problem for big Oil speaking out against global warming, according to the campaign’s own leaked documents, was that the public could see the “vested interest” that oil companies had in opposing environmental laws. APCO’s job was to help conceal those oil company interests.
And boy, have they ever succeeded. Polls now show that, as the world gets hotter, Americans are getting less and less worried about it.
How big is this particular cliff? According to the World Health Organization, climate change contributes — right now — to the deaths of 150,000 people every year. By 2030 it may be double that. And after that…well, the sky is literally the limit! I don’t think it’s crazy to say APCO may rack up even bigger numbers here than they have with tobacco.
With this track record, you can see why, when the health insurance industry wanted to come after “Sicko,” they went straight to APCO. The “worst case,” as their leaked documents say, was that “Sicko evolves into a sustained populist movement.” that simply could not be allowed to happen. something obviously had to be done.
As Wendell Potter explains, APCO ran their standard playbook, setting up something called “Health Care America.” Health Care America, according to Potter, “was received by mainstream reporters, including the New York Times, as a legitimate organization when it was nothing but a front group set up by APCO Worldwide. It was not anything approaching what it was reporting to be: a ‘grassroots organization.’ It was a sham group.”
Health Care America showed up online in 2007 (the year “Sicko” was released) and disappeared quickly by early 2008. You can still find their website archived here. as you’ll see, their “moderated forum” allowed normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-the-insurance-industry Americans to speak out. for instance, here’s something Nicole felt very strongly about:
“Moore shouldn’t be allowed to call his film a ‘documentary.’ It should be called a political commercial. We need to fix our health care system, but we shouldn’t accept a Hollywood moviemaker’s political views as the starting point.”
Here’s what Wendell Potter revealed about the insurance industry’s media strategy:
“as we would do the media training, we would always have someone refer to him as ‘Hollywood entertainer’ or ‘Hollywood moviemaker Michael Moore.’ They don’t want you to think that it was a documentary that had some truth.”
Thanks for your perspective, “Nicole”!
Now, how big was THAT cliff? A pretty good size — according to a recent study, 45,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance.
And here we are in 2010. A lesser PR firm might be resting on its laurels at this point, content to sit back and watch hundreds of thousands of people continue to be pushed off the various cliffs they’ve built. but not APCO! Right now they’ve taken on their biggest challenge yet: leading a giant, multi-million dollar effort to help Wall Street “earn back the trust of the American people.”
We may never know the size of this particular cliff. but we can be sure it’s gigantic. According to the New York Times, one of the things Wall Street’s recession gave us is “the crippling of the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to Americans with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them.” Internationally, organizations fighting AIDS and other diseases are “hugely afraid” of cutbacks in funding.
Of course, there are the 101 ways recessions kill quietly. for instance, children’s hospitals are seeing a sharp 55% rise in the abuse of babies by parents.
And that’s just the previous cliff. If APCO and its Wall Street co-conspirators lull us into turning our backs on them again, we can be sure the next cliff — the next crash — will be much bigger.
Anyway, this is all just a way for me to say to APCO: No hard feelings! my getting mad at you would be like a chicken who’s still happily pecking away getting mad at McDonald’s. Compared to the millions you’ve already turned into McNuggets, you’ve actually treated me much, much BETTER! Spying on my family, planting smears and lies about me, privately badgering movie critics to give the film a poor review, scaring Americans into believing they’d be committing a near-act of treason were they to go to the theater and see my movie — hey, ya done good, health insurance companies of America. And, most important, you stopped the nation from getting true universal health care. Good job!
There’s only one problem — I’m not one of those “liberals” you fund in Congress, the ones who fear your power.
I’m me. And that, sadly, is not good for you.
Yours in good health,
P.S. It seems to me that APCO’s discussion of pushing me off a cliff should legitimately be part of their Wikipedia page. And why not something about their role in Wall Street’s new PR offensive? So I’m asking everyone interested to write something up that meets Wikipedia’s guidelines and help bring the APCO Worldwide entry up to date. Post it somewhere online and send a tweet about it to @mmflint. I’ll award a signed copy of “Sicko” by noon Sunday to the best entry…and then deputize you to post it on Wikipedia for real and make sure APCO’s minions don’t take it down. just be sure afterward not to walk near any cliffs!
P.P.S. The late, great comedian bill Hicks had some thoughts about marketing and the people who do it.
Michael Moore is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Michael Moore
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