It's been awhile but I've finally listed some books for adoption. Books are completely free to adopt for Milo Peng Funders; for free subscribers of WTC, it's $5 to cover the postage costs. Note: I'm only able to send books to people in Singapore because of the cost of international shipping!
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A little bit of a stir within the Workers' Party this month. A special cadres meeting will be held on 28 June, the same day as their biennial ordinary cadre members' conference. More than 20 cadre members of the party had asked for such a meeting at the end of last year, after Secretary-General Pritam Singh was convicted of lying to a parliamentary committee. The party's central executive committee had also given Singh a letter of reprimand earlier this year.
High on the agenda for the meeting is Singh's position within the party. There have been calls for him to step down as secretary-general; if he doesn't, cadres will vote to decide whether he can stay on or not.
This is part of the very long tail to the drama that kicked off years ago, when former WP parliamentarian Raeesah Khan admitted to having lied about accompanying a survivor of sexual violence to the police. There've been a Committee of Privileges investigation, police investigations, criminal charges, court hearings, disciplinary proceedings, a tired saga dragged out and out and plaguing Singapore's only opposition party with seats in Parliament.
Kirsten Han
Conflict within political parties aren't very common in Singapore, especially since any tensions or disagreements within the ruling party are usually locked down tight. It makes this "first overt challenge" of Singh's leadership seem rather noteworthy, but contestation within political parties aren't new or remarkable in the greater scheme of things. We'll just have to wait and see who Singh and WP emerge from this turbulence.
Meanwhile, Yee Jenn Jong, the former WP NCMP, and Loke Hoe Yeong have launched their new book, Step Up: The Workers' Party of Singapore 2.0. At the launch, Yee observed that, while WP is in a stronger position in Singapore politics now, campaign messaging is going to get more tricky for the party to persuade Singaporeans that we need more opposition voices in Parliament than we already have.
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Singapore's AI era continues apace. Last month, OpenAI committed to invest in Singapore's AI ecosystem. It looks like their rival, Anthropic, is wading in as well. The company, which creator of Claude, counts Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC as one of its financial backers, and is looking to establish a presence in the country.
One can't get very far in Singapore without hearing about AI this-or-that in Singapore these days. The government is very enthusiastic about embracing the technology: this week, the Urban Redevelopment Authority launched its AI For Cities exhibition, spotlighting the use of AI in city planning, building, and management. I haven't seen the exhibition myself, and lack the knowledge to fully evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of all the AI 'solutions' being presented (although I think it's fair to assume that there'll be some amount of hyping up and over-promising going on). But many of the same questions apply: concerns about environmental costs, about the perpetuation of inequality and skewed power dynamics, about whether we're getting too caught up on what we might AI might be good at and turning a blind eye to the things that it's very bad at and can't actually do. What parameters are fed into the machine? What's considered important, and what isn't? What gets lost in increasingly non-human processes? What is the impact on all of us when AI is leveraged to further expand already very expansive state surveillance?
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Al Awda, Jason Soo's documentary on the 2018 Freedom Flotilla mission to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, can finally be screened again. Unlike most films, Al Awda—which has an R21 classification—can only be screened with permission from the Infocomm Media Development Authority. Soo had previously been told that screenings wouldn't be allowed between February and May. According to him, IMDA told him during an online meeting earlier this year that:
The dates you have proposed from Feb to May will not be appropriate because they run into important dates that clashes with the Jewish, Israeli and Islamic calendars. So this will include Ramadan, Hari Raya Puasa, Hari Raya Haji. And because the focus of the documentary is really about what is happening now in the Middle East, so there are concerns that any screening of the film should not catalyze negative sentiments between various groups.
Screenings can now resume, although each one will be subject to IMDA approval. Post-screening Q&A discussions will, however, no longer be allowed.
Al Awda will be on at the Filmhouse on 14 June at 1:30pm. Given the restrictions, screenings are being planned one at a time, based on demand. A good turnout on the 14th increases the chance of another screening being scheduled.
Got some more...
👨🏻⚕️ Last month, Koh Poh Koon announced that he was stepping down as senior minister of state for both health and manpower so that he would have more time for his family. He said that, since he entered politics, he'd become an "absent husband, father and son". He remains an MP for Tampines GRC which, as we all know, is considered a part-time position. A day after he officially relinquished those roles, he announced that he's going back to being a surgeon.
👷🏾♂️ An operator is facing more than 20 charges under the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act for the crappy state of their dormitory for migrant workers. There was a whole host of problems with the dorm: faulty urinals, holes in walls, broken floor tiles, exposed wiring, no shower curtains in the communal toilet, even a loose ceiling fan. I've heard migrant workers complain about their accommodation before, but this seems to be a rare case of an operator actually getting charged. Are they being made an example of, or is enforcement going to be tightened across the board?
💜 I've made peace with not seeing BTS when they roll into town towards the end of the year; the demand is through the roof. The police and the Consumers Association of Singapore have issued warnings to be careful of scams.
The Transformative Justice Collective is thrilled to bring 'We Keep Us Safe', a day of activities pulling focus towards the need to build strong communities from the grassroots, allowing us to rely on one another rather than hand power and control to an authoritarian regime.
Thank you for reading! As always, feel free to forward this weekly wrap to anyone you think might be interested, share the web link on social media, or spread the word about this newsletter!
Music for the weekend—I can't go to the concert but at least I can still listen to the album: