What a bizarre comment again. Police State? What are you smoking?
Do yourself a favor and check when the last person was choked to death, beaten to death by police over here, how many police shootings we have per capita, how many people have their property taken by police at traffic stops, what our imprisoned population ratio is, and how many policemen and three letter agencies we have to oppress us.
Find us instances where our President or Prime Minister openly fabulate about shooting protesters, cheers about kids with assault rifles doing it for him?
Continue to research if police in Singapore can claim qualified immunity, whether we have a thin blue line here, whether minorities have to fear police in Singapore. Please go on, educate us how we are oppressed and cannot have a good life as a result.
Tell us how the police in Singapore is feared by a large percentage of the population because skin color means potentially getting shot through the windshield. Maybe find some cases of systemic police violence that have gone unpunished in our country? (Did you know public servants, including police get their punishment doubled on conviction because, shockingly, they are held to a higher standard here rather than receiving immunity and protection).
By all means, educate us on the last time a Singapore SWAT team accidentally shot someone in their bed, or in fact a single case of successful murder by Police/Swatting here. Or the last time police leadership covered up for a serial killer or rapist in uniform, we are burning to hear your insights into that.
We actually, by a large margin, like our police force here. Many of them are kids doing their national service.
Oh I get it, these things are not oppression, the Economist has a statistic somewhere that they are the price of freedom.
What is it with people who feel compelled to post “just reminders” that Singapore is definitely not a pure western democracy like Texas or Alberta or Bavaria who have true one party rule on the same population scale on random threads about … checks … the color palette of Singapore?
Is it fragility? The inability to accept that there are places in the world that are comparatively thriving compared to the West?
What is happening in other countries has no bearing on whether Singapore is a police state or not, it is what Singapore does that qualifies it. While the term “police state” might be too strong for Singapore, here is why it might apply:
1) Internal Security Act - The ability to detain anyone deemed as a “national security threat” indefinitely without trial. Lee Kuan Yew famously argued against it before independence. After independence, he retained it and went on use it against political opponents. (Who do you think are the new colonial overlords telling others how to behave, what to say or what to think?)
2) Lack of civil and political rights to act as check and balances against overreach by the state. Eg. Widespread and intrusive surveillance of much of the country, especially in the poorer areas; extensive power of the police to investigate with little oversight - TraceTogether data debacle; politically motivated persecution of dissidents and journalists etc.
3) Control and manipulation of the local media landscape in order to achieve/support their goals.
> Let me remind you again that you need to address my arguments to refute it.
It's getting hilarious at this point. It's like you think you had a valid argument and expected others to engage with you on your level.
You had empty assertions. GP explained why Singapore is not a "police state". Now you admit Singapore might not be a "police state" effectively agreeing with them, then finally follow up with substantial arguments, and accuse the GP of not engaging with them.
I'm not sure whether you're aware, your "arguments" are like so tired that I might have seen them hundreds of times. Why even bother to engage with an evangelist who's not interested in constructive discussion but rather in some toxic "refutation" of one's arguments?
If you believe I do not have an argument, feel free to refute my references and construct a coherent argument backed up by credible references (YouTube or thekopi.co are not).
None of these seem relevant to the question of why you feel the need to jump onto a thread about the colors found in Singapore with colonial mansplaining about authoritarianism.. backed up by writings from Cambridge, cherry on top by a writer specialized in Colonial Law.
Since all you do is basically spew links while ignoring any of the attempts to have a conversation, we thank you for your service of acting as a poster child for colonial mansplaining we shall be using in an upcoming article on the topic.
If I wanted to refute a bunch of random scholar's books and papers I'd be in academia already.
The fact that you think a reference ending in cambridge.org and princeton.edu is "credible" quite laughable. They're literally a government's propaganda reserve. It's like claiming studies funded by narcotics companies are credible for informing you about the benefits of smoking to your health. (Hate to "mansplain" for you but the main source of funding for universities are governments.)
> the main source of funding for universities are governments
Further off-topic, but extremely important: was a way ever found to avoid that pitfall, of intellectual production being bound by financial contributions? Freelance intellectuals living on other means (e.g. book sales) may be only somehow less constrained.
Aware of the issue of biased sources, you will have faced the problem: do you also have keys to get to unbiased sources?
This conversation perfectly illustrates the sort of bad reasoning common among anti-vaxx, conspiracy theorists etc.
They have little understanding of what constitutes good, credible evidence - Cambridge and Princeton publications are "literally a government's propaganda reserve" while the sources used are "YouTube and blogs such as the kopi.co".
Along with this erroneous standard is poor reasoning - "I read a blog post by thekopi.co on standards of the Singapore police so Singapore is not a police state"; "universities are funded by government hence universities are biased".
When they are faced with overwhelming evidence against their views, instead of changing their views, they refuse to accept the evidence and resort to ad hominem arguments plus abusive language.
If all else fails, they move the conversation to something else (shifting the goal posts) - "this post is not about politics, we shouldn't be talking about politics".
It is impossible to convince someone with reason if the person is simply unreasonable - erroneous standards, bad reasoning, fallacious arguments - but it has been illuminating on how such minds "work".
Carry on hnfong and gmerc, I'd love to add more to the above.
If you think online discussions are to "convince" people of anything, that is really hilarious.
If anything, to me, the more interesting discussions are the ones that present me with unexpected views that challenge my established views.
Your parroting of stereotypical Anglosphere academia ideologies is pretty boring TBH. You can't convince anyone with evidence they've already known. I have a law degree from Hong Kong and you better believe me when I say I've read enough of those Cambridge and Princeton crap on ivory tower notions of how governments should be run.
Ah, your cherry picked definition of authoritarian police state. And custom definition of abuse as freedom from having your nose thumbed into cognitive dissonances.
No, I need to do no such things as to address the vapid statements you make more than pointing your the internal inconsistency and massive cognitive dissonance of Americans and Brits trying to define true freedom.
By all means, let’s glance over the National Security Letters, Family Separation at Borders, the Snowden and Assange clown shows, Guantanamo, Black Sites, Texas or North Carolina travesty of governance but mention at any random thread about Singapore (colors!) that it’s authoritarian because … princeton study says it is. What is the thought process behind this urge? You avoided this question at every step, yet you demand engagement and protest abuse.
No, I don’t need to refute your arguments. Because they are none, but shifting strawmen. They are massive blinders of cognitive dissonance. Spare us your judgement over here, all you have is books and definitions and colonial mansplaining.
May you one day travel the world and get cured from your indoctrination.
Gmerc, you have provided good information and insight - and I myself have noted about 24hrs ago here that if someone wants to mention authoritarianism (or oddity, whatever daring idea) in a page about colourfulness some reference about how the two would relate is required -, and I understand that hearing the same in-ways weak ideas past the n-th time can make one edgy,
but look: if a Norwegian noted that Swedes have bumpy roads, he is not at all mandated to live somewhere without bumpy roads. The bumpy roads of Sweden are such if it is reasonable to call them so after fair assessment. The bumpy roads of Norway become relevant when somebody is denying that.
There are not just «Americans and Brits» in the public, there are not just people interested in defending one specific position in public, and crossfire that gets divergent from substance is not good for the system.
Some people may instead look at Singapore with interest (naturally also its counterpart: concern) because they are seeing a crisis in their own environment and may look at apparent champions with hope.
Assumptions should be limited. And we should remain coolheaded.
Do yourself a favor and check when the last person was choked to death, beaten to death by police over here, how many police shootings we have per capita, how many people have their property taken by police at traffic stops, what our imprisoned population ratio is, and how many policemen and three letter agencies we have to oppress us.
Find us instances where our President or Prime Minister openly fabulate about shooting protesters, cheers about kids with assault rifles doing it for him?
Continue to research if police in Singapore can claim qualified immunity, whether we have a thin blue line here, whether minorities have to fear police in Singapore. Please go on, educate us how we are oppressed and cannot have a good life as a result.
Tell us how the police in Singapore is feared by a large percentage of the population because skin color means potentially getting shot through the windshield. Maybe find some cases of systemic police violence that have gone unpunished in our country? (Did you know public servants, including police get their punishment doubled on conviction because, shockingly, they are held to a higher standard here rather than receiving immunity and protection).
By all means, educate us on the last time a Singapore SWAT team accidentally shot someone in their bed, or in fact a single case of successful murder by Police/Swatting here. Or the last time police leadership covered up for a serial killer or rapist in uniform, we are burning to hear your insights into that.
We actually, by a large margin, like our police force here. Many of them are kids doing their national service.
Oh I get it, these things are not oppression, the Economist has a statistic somewhere that they are the price of freedom.
What is it with people who feel compelled to post “just reminders” that Singapore is definitely not a pure western democracy like Texas or Alberta or Bavaria who have true one party rule on the same population scale on random threads about … checks … the color palette of Singapore?
Is it fragility? The inability to accept that there are places in the world that are comparatively thriving compared to the West?
Further Reading: https://thekopi.co/2020/06/12/how-did-singapore-avoid-the-po...