• Chopsticks are not used to make noise, to draw attention, or to gesticulate. Playing with chopsticks is considered bad mannered and vulgar (just as playing with cutlery in a Western environment would be deemed crass).

• Chopsticks are not used to move bowls or plates.

• Chopsticks are not used to toy with one's food or with dishes in common.

• Chopsticks are not used to pierce food, save in rare instances. Exceptions include tearing larger items apart such as vegetables and kimchi. In informal use, small, difficult-to-pick-up items such as cherry tomatoes or fishballs may be stabbed, but this use is frowned upon by traditionalists.

• Chopsticks should not be left standing vertically in a bowl of rice or other food. Any stick-like object pointed upward resembles the incense sticks that some Asians use as offerings to deceased family members; certain funerary rites designate offerings of food to the dead using standing chopsticks.

Top American universities have caught up, and institutions in China and India are on the rise as well.

The curved four-storey Ogilvy Centre at the junction of Robinson Road and Boon Tat Street has been added to the Urban Redevelopment Authority's (URA) list of government land sites for sale.

Tiong Asia Marine, which repairs, paints and cleans boilers for the shipping industry, applied in May, despite signs that the market was overcrowded.

It will not affect the bilateral mood ahead of President Hu Jintao's state visit to Singapore next week, the ministry suggested.

Although some people turned up as early as 8.30am on Friday, there was no rush and queues thinned out quickly, with about 20 to 30 people waiting for their turns at any one time.

Amsterdam and Peroff have a new white paper discussing the case of opposition leader Dr. Chee Soon Juan in Singapore. The introduction of the executive summary of the report is below, followed by a link for downloading the full paper.

Introduction

This White Paper documents the repression of political freedoms in Singapore. It reviews how the Government of Singapore, under the leadership of the People's Action Party (PAP), has monopolized the state's apparatus to its own benefit. The result has been the denial of democratic rights and freedoms and the muzzling of domestic and international media.

The case of Dr Chee Soon Juan is examined in detail. Being the leader of one of Singapore's most important opposition parties - the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) - Dr Chee has been sued, charged, and sentenced ever since his first political act of opposition. He is recognized internationally and by human rights NGOs as a defender of political freedoms and has received the Defender of Democracy Award by the Parliamentarians for Global Action.

Happy Christmas, Singapore.
Singapore Resident

Amsterdam and Peroff have a new white paper discussing the case of opposition leader Dr. Chee Soon Juan in Singapore. The introduction of the executive summary of the report is below, followed by a link for downloading the full paper.

Introduction

This White Paper documents the repression of political freedoms in Singapore. It reviews how the Government of Singapore, under the leadership of the People's Action Party (PAP), has monopolized the state's apparatus to its own benefit. The result has been the denial of democratic rights and freedoms and the muzzling of domestic and international media.

The case of Dr Chee Soon Juan is examined in detail. Being the leader of one of Singapore's most important opposition parties - the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) - Dr Chee has been sued, charged, and sentenced ever since his first political act of opposition. He is recognized internationally and by human rights NGOs as a defender of political freedoms and has received the Defender of Democracy Award by the Parliamentarians for Global Action.

Read the rest of the report here:

http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2009.Nov05.Repression_of_political_freedoms_in_Singapore.CheeSoonJuan.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY follows after the break...

Ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit that will take place in Singapore on 12-14th November, Amsterdam & Peroff today issued a White Paper condemning the erosion of political freedoms in Singapore. The White Paper documents the repression of political freedoms in Singapore and outlines how the Government of Singapore, under the leadership of the People's Action Party (PAP), has monopolized the state's apparatus to its own benefit.

The result has been the denial of basic democratic rights and freedoms. Amsterdam & Peroff are an international law firm representing pro bono Dr. Chee Soon Juan, the leader of one of Singapore's most important opposition parties - the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP). The case of Dr Chee Soon Juan is examined in detail. As leader of the Singapore Democratic Party, Dr Chee has been repeatedly sued, charged, and sentenced ever since his first political act of opposition. He is recognized internationally as a defender of political freedoms and has received the Defender of Democracy Award from the Parliamentarians for Global Action (http://www.pgaction.org/).

The White Paper notes that ever since Singapore gained internal self-government in 1959, it has been ruled by the PAP which has won control of Parliament in every election. The government has solidified its near monopoly on the political machinery of the state by undermining the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Singapore through the passage of unconstitutional domestic laws. The combination of a compliant judiciary, a media silenced through state ownership and the ever-present threat of defamation and libel suits have created a climate for the suppression of political freedoms.

Recent legislative developments with the enactment in April 2009 of the Public Order Act have consolidated further the authority of the ruling PAP over the political opposition. The White Paper calls upon foreign governments, NGOs, and the media to put pressure on the Government of Singapore to act on the demands of the political opposition as well as for:

- APEC leaders attending the November 12-14 Summit in Singapore to meet with representatives of civil society in Singapore, including Dr. Chee, leader of the SDP;

- ASEAN to establish a viable Human Rights Commission;

- The charges against Dr Chee and other members of the political opposition to be dropped;

- A campaign for an independent and impartial judiciary in Singapore;

The White Paper is available at: http://www.robertamsterdam.com

For press inquiries please contact: Katy Epstein Amsterdam & Peroff E-mail: katy.epstein@amperlaw.com

SOURCE Amsterdam & Peroff For press inquiries please contact: Katy Epstein, Amsterdam & Peroff, E-mail: katy.epstein@amperlaw.com, Cell. Phone: +44(0)7920729513

Following the Ist episode with Alex Au, they feature Constance Singam, writer and social activist. Singam has been a longtime advocate for women's rights and she shares with us in this interview her views on the political situation in Singapore.http://yoursdp.org

And [teens] should not feel tainted by the process of figuring themselves out. Sometimes you try something and it doesn't work for you. You move on, and you don't do it again. No fundamental tear has appeared in the fabric of the universe.

Freaking out about sexuality because it is sexual may, ironically, lead to more of the teen sexual activity that so horrifies the defenders of Family Valuez. Their portrayals of sex communicate something brutal, dirty, and compulsive, best regulated in the confines of heterosexual marriage, and even then as a kind of dreary duty by wives who must satisfy their husbands' "urges" (a distinctly erotically unappealing word). Any sexual contact other than some piston-like penetration seems not to be imaginable.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "A less insulting view of teen sexuality. An overall better suggestion of how to approach sex education perhaps."

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Singapore is hot alright but we do get the occasional rain so Obama suggests that we put on our slippers, wear berms and singlet and don't forget the brolly. If that's what Obama suggests, then I'm seriously overdressed.

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Years later, if writers looked back at the current severe downturn to ask what lasting impact the global crisis had on this society, one answer would be the erosion of the middle class...

The theory, known as the M-shaped society, was enunciated by Japanese strategist Kenichi Ohmae. He observed that in Japan’s “M-shape” class distribution, very few middle-class people may climb up the ladder into the upper class, while the others gradually sank to the lower classes.

These people suffered a deterioration in living standards, faced the threat of unemployment, or their average salary was dropping...

Kenichi said all this might take place while the economy enjoyed remarkable growth and overall wages rose. However, the wealth increase may concentrate in the pockets of the very few rich people in society.

The masses cannot benefit from the growth, and their living standard goes into decline. For many middle-class Singaporeans, these sound uncomfortably like home. ...

Singapore has the second-highest income gap with a Gini score of 42.5 among developed economies after Hong Kong

Recommended by at82: "New millionaires will emerge from the ashes, but a bit of the middle class will disappear."

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Not say I say what.. This sentence seems to have angered quite abit of Singaporeans.... Lets get this straight... no one said anything about Singapore being a country. We have always been a city. We have always been an island city state. I can understand how we often we hear things like defending the country among others....it is not exactly correct. It should be defending the city.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "City or Country???"

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