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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
About Me
- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
To email me, go to the main site.
Blog Archive
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2007
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November
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- China's trade surpluses: disequilibrium and accomm...
- Asean still toothless after 40 years
- Fees or fines, we make it all the easier
- Enforcing racial and religious harmony
- Taxi problem the result of 3 deadly sins
- It's the principle, stupid
- Parliamentarians with nothing to say
- Open call for a bloggers' meeting
- When the wind blows, thank the government
- A Rumsfeldian future
- Flat jokes and dumb remarks
- Minorities and state protection
- Towards a human rights mechanism, part 2
- Nasal straws in the wind
- Too proud of our noose
- Dispelling heat, light and smoke
- Ake Green and the freedom to monger hate
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November
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Posts
15 comments:
I just want to point out that KRS-ONE is one guy. Also that originality is a highly overrated artistic concept, which isn't to deny that the MDA rap is really lame.
Just to be devils advocate, maybe the "the" was a misprint/misquote or something, maybe it was really meant to be "high risk groups" without the "the"?
I'm not saying that MDA is actually above discrimination and homophobia and prejudice.
About the concert and MDA's statement in the press, i sensed early on MDA is using it to paint a picture of homosexuals being high risk and all that, in effect reinforcing the false notion propagated by certain minister on homosexuals and aids. Part of the propaganda and untruth aimed at brainwashing the masses.
MDA is just plain ignorant and cowards. The rap video is a complete waste of $$, saying the whole thing is simply embarassing is too kind already.
MDA (and for the matter the Gahmen) really sucks!
I really do not understand what MDA meant when it said "Fees or fines, we make it all the easier" in the rap video.
What I do understand is that I did receive a court summons to appear in court for failure to pay the TV licence, failing which a warrant of arrest would be issued to me.
This is despite the fact that I did paid the TV licence fee to the IRAS which is supposed to inform MDA accordingly. What happened was that IRAS failed to emphasize that the TV licence fee had to be paid into a different account from one's income tax account which resulted in MDA not being notified of the payment accordingly.
The irony is why should one be forced to pay for a fee to watch something when in the first place such TV programmes should have been sponsored by the Gahmen.
The question is should'nt such compulsory payment of the annual TV licence fee be on a "willing buyer willing seller" basis as the current demand for such payment appears to defy any logic. Otherwise it only serves to prove that the fact that our Gahmen really hard-pressed to squeeze every dollar our of hard-earned monies, especially those of the lower income families.
Desmond Lim -
In fact, it has turned out that you are right. I have since seen a copy of the statement issued by the MDA to the media, and they did use the plural "groups". It was Today newspaper that changed it to the singular "group"!
Bad reporting!
The essay has been amended accordingly.
zhaki -
Thanks, I have changed the reference to KRS-One in the essay to the singular.
Why are Spore policy makers so infatuated with the Afro-American Pop culture? The P65 MPs performed a lame hip-hop dance number during Chingay & now MDA tops that with an excruciatingly bad rap number performed by their head honchos. Just how bad is it? NameWee, a Msian rapper has a number of rap songs/music videos posted in YouTube including "Negara-kuku" which got the Msian govt hot under the collar! Listen to any of his rap songs, you'll find that his lyrics are vulgar but funny & has hard hitting social commentary. His rap song "Kawanku" hammers Spore - favouring national development over independent thought, citizens fear, conformity, etc. Listen to NameWee & hear the difference between creative musical talent & pure crap! As John Rachmat put it, "Creativity promotes economic development, but it also offends."
Regarding the banning and unbanning of the video game, Mass Effect.
In ST's Digital Life (27 Nov 2007), there is a review for the above game, written by Oo Gin Lee.
There is this paragraph:
"If you are here just for the Asari-human lesbian sex scene which caused the game to be initially banned, don't bother, you will have to spend days to get to the lame scene."
Now, it is now "lame" to the reviewer. It was "offensive" to MDA. I guess that MDA's standards have either "YES" or "NO" option and no "MAYBE".
By the way, the review rated it 9/10.
the MDA video has been pulled.
Self-censroship :)
Is there a copy available on the Net somewhere?
There's a copy on YouTube (for now)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksw2UqTyhhc
The Straits Times is doing damage control saying the video is "funny" and "many netizens praised the civil servants for daring to be different." The truth is 99% of online response to the video is it is trash and too unbearable to watch. The Straits Times is spinning the whole tragedy into a positive thing! The MDA Communications Director Cassandra Tay even said "We hoped it has raised greater awareness for Singapore's media industry." She speaks for the media industry! LOL ~~
I don't know about the media people out there. But Cassandra saying what she said has just insulted all of them by lumping them with this trash video.
Guys.... relaaax :)
Yes, the "rap video" is so bad that it's hilarious, and I guess (hope) that that was the idea...
But I'd say that all this incredibly dead serious bitching about is even sillier than the video itself. ;-)
Maybe an editor at Today changed what he/she thought was a grammatical error (high risk groups -> high risk group). In fact, the MDA should have said it was "targeted at high risk groups". Instead, they said it was "targeted at the high risk groups," as if there were a countable number of groups which is not really correct, perhaps causing the newspaper to "correct" it. Bad English (or at least, awkward English) causes problems communicating. Maybe the MDA should issue statements in Singlish from now on so that we can understand them.
Actually, I was wondering if "the high risk groups" were refering to those about 18 years of age. As implied by mention of M18. Or is it really about the homosexuals?
Anders,
you've got to take my word for it, but official "art" produced under one-party regimes is almost always hard to distinguish from a bad joke. (And more official art than the one produced by the Censor himself is kind of hard to imagine). E.g. 95% of USSR movies are totally unwatchable, and 95% books totally unreadable.
Especially given certain distance we have here from local events, as we can just pack up and get the hell out of here, after all.
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