Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Every Friday I receive in my email inbox a Shabbat reading list from Jewish Currents , "a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left." Last Friday, the reading list consisted of articles and links about the crisis unfolding in Palestine/Israel. I found one recommended online event organized by The Middle East Institute and Project48 to be particularly informative. For an instance, I had the misconception that the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland was a result of the wars between Israel and the Arab states. In the video, the historian Rashid Khalidi corrected that error. 300,000 Palestinains were expelled before the wars, and were followed by another 450,000 Palestinians after the wars began. The 9.1 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons is the largest in the world, and the displacement is still going o...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A sociologist, a political scientist, a media studies professor, and two economists meet in a webinar to talk about Singapore beyond the pandemic. The sociologist emphasizes the social inequities surfaced by the pandemic. The political scientist urges a mindset change from profit calculation to moral reasoning in the formulation of public policy. The media studies professor warns of the dangers of fanning nationalistic rhetoric. One of the two economists argues that efficiency pursued to the detriment of social justice actually becomes inefficient. The other economist wants Singapore to change its input-based development model because it has not been working for the country for years before the present crisis. Although the webinar is not about hawker food or getting ahead in school, it attracts scores of people, partly because the speakers have strong social-media followings, and partly because it is so refr...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act tabled in Singapore's Parliament on Monday threatens to restrict free speech in the country even further. It effectively gives any Minister the power to decide what is fact and to demand corrections or removals of statements that he deems to be against the public interest. If passed, the Act will not just create a Ministry of Truth, so ironically named in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 , but will turn all agents of the Singapore government into Ministries of Truth. The best commentary that I have read on the bill so far is written by media professor Cherian George . Here I will just highlight one provision of the bill that indicates its wide-ranging scope: its extra-territoriality. Section 7.1 states that "A person must not do any act in or outside Singapore [my emphasis] in order to communicate in Singapore a statement knowing or hav...