TR EMERITUS

From The Newsroom Team The Ministry of Education has issued an official statement on its website today in reply to recent comments and claims about AWARE’s Sexuality Education Programme in Schools. The sexual education programme started in 2007 and has reached about 12 secondary schools, run for small groups of students selected by their teachers to attend. To date 500 students, mostly girls, have attended the workshop, which comprises two three-hour sessions. It was only recently offered to boys. The schools that engaged AWARE found that the content and messages of the sessions conducted were appropriate for their students and adhered to guidelines to respect the values of different religious groups. The schools did not receive any negative feedback from students or parents who attended the workshops and talks. In particular, MOE has also not received any complaint from parents or Dr Thio Su Mien, who was reported to have made specific claims about sexuality education in our schools. MOE has contacted Dr Thio Su Mien to seek clarifications and facts to substantiate her claims. (read full release here) Dr Thio revealed during a hastily-arranged interview by the new AWARE Exco last week that she was concerned about the neutral stance adopted by Aware’s comprehensive sexuality education programme (CSE) in schools towards homosexuality. (read article here) This has led her to email fellow members of her Church and friends to join AWARE to change its direction: "Aware is a woman’s organization which conducts comprehensive sexual programmes for girls and it runs this programme in some of the schools. They encourage girls to express their full sexuality and this includes experimenting with other girls. It would be a good idea to join it and change its focus to other problems of women and families." (read rest of email here) In her conversations with parents, she insinuated that AWARE's sex education programme may lead to the promotion of same-sex marriages as an acceptable social norm in Singapore: ‘I started thinking, ‘Hey, parents, you better know what’s happening,” she said. ‘I talked to parents. I said: You better do something about this, otherwise your daughter will come back and say, ‘Mum, I want to marry my girlfriend.’ When pointed out that Aware’s programme was already in 30 schools, she said: ‘The suggestion is that in this programme, young girls from 12 to 18 are taught that it’s okay to experiment with each other. ‘And this is something which should concern parents in Singapore. Are we going to have an entire generation of lesbians?’ There is an obvious discrepancy between Dr Thio's personal observation and the official release from MOE. If there are parents concerned about the programme, why didn't MOE receive any complaints from them or Dr Thio in particular? Senior Minister of State for Education S Iswaran also said there are guidelines in place for sexuality education programmes in schools and no parents have complained so far. (read article here) He urged parties involved in the AWARE saga to get the facts right, before commenting on such programmes in schools. (read article here) As a senior lawyer with many years of working experience, Dr Thio should have substantiated her claims before hurling unfounded accusations at the old AWARE exco for promoting a homosexual agenda. Dr Thio's original assertion about the CSE which prompted her to email fellow Church members to launch a takeover of AWARE is therefore both flawed and misinformed since no parents share the same sentiments as her. We cannot have our school programmes being maligned and hijacked by scheming individuals to serve their own personal agenda which will undermine the public trust and confidence in Singapore's education. Dr Thio could have written to MOE to express her reservations about the programme if she is really troubled instead of airing her own personal views in public without concrete evidence to back them up. MOE should consider taking appropriate legal actions against Dr Thio if she is unable or reluctant to produce a reasonable explanation for her words.  Read More →

Written by Darkness of the brotherhood / Lately, there is a wave of irrationality weaving its way through Singapore. No I am not referring to the dreaded pig flu. This is far more insidious and pervasive. I had a brush with it recently when my secretary barged into my room and said she wanted me to pray with her; I asked her why? She said, the Devil has been stalking her. I asked, in what way? She said, he’s forcing her to eat all the time and all she can think of all day and night is food – well to cut a long story short, I told her we’ve continue the conversation another day as I was in the middle of a conference call. Actually, I was just pretending to work and finalizing the last segment of a new game. Sitting back I began to wonder why is it, when humans are stressed; they invariably surrender their senses to something as irrational as – the devil or some other mumbo jumbo belief? Coming to think of it why would the devil even want my secretary? She weights 2 metric tons; doesn’t even know how to make coffee and half the time, she cant even keep time without tripping up – why would the devil even want to run the risk of high blood pressure? I mean, he’s not dumb right so maybe you could go figure that out. I have this theory – this whole psychology that accounts for the blame game must be operating at a primal level – if you think about it the whole idea of pining the blame on the devil has been around for a very long time; and one reason why it continues to persist is because it’s such an elastic idea; it can be used to explain everything ranging from erectile dysfunction to bad breath. The other reason why the devil is to blame argument is so powerful, its grounded largely on our fears that we may already be living in a world where the only thing certain these days is uncertainty – in other words, it plays on our morbid fear for the randomness of life.  These days practically anything can do you in: a benign lunch with your friendly investment consultant can set off a financial Chernobyl – standing too close to someone who coughed in the MRT, may land you in the ICU in hospital, and so on and so forth. Misfortune lurks everywhere. There is no where to hide – and the condition is exacerbated further by the mind boggling times brought forth by the dire economic climate – these days nothing is ever what it seems - no one can be trusted; gays are spreading deadly viruses with their moral turpitude; pedophiles are snatching the innocent and the devil these days has even got an island wide broad band connection - all these manias play on our fears something evil comes our way - it has to be the devil. Against this dizzy dystopian backdrop when the centers seems to be giving way, it makes perfect sense for many; even the intelligent to buy into the idea there is an evil malevolent force responsible for all our misfortunes – giving our fears a name and a face by fingering the devil goes a long way to acknowledge our homily sugary belief, life is after all one grand tour de force where if good wins over the forces of evil, then its because we waged a righteous war against the forces of darkness – that idea of getting a handle on our fears may seem modern, but its actually quite old when you consider how hysteria and paranoia was used to fuel everything from crusades to justifying wars. The process, then and now, follows a strikingly similar arc; you could even say it’s a recurring theme in the history of man – the irony here is instead of expunging the real source of our fears, all we may be doing when we seek out simple Simon explanations as to why things screw up in our lives is deflecting the problem and projecting it on the innocent – in other words unknowingly, we become perpetrators of evil ourselves. The cost for pinning the blame on the wrong party has to be costly, but what’s even costlier is how it often produces a justifiable reason to believe we can interfere with the lives of others whilst completely disregarding their rights for no other reason than to propagate the belief the devil may somehow be behind it all – could well be imposing our ideal on a bunch of gays who we all feel need to be straightened in the fuzzy name of the common good; or even confecting the belief all anonymous bloggers suffer from some character flaw that prevents them from stepping out into the open; or even blaming foreigners for our diminishing job opportunities to even believing we have a right to expose a philanderer based on skimpy evidence. The antidote to the hysteria of our age may require all of us to carry something like donor cards in our wallets where we would all have to declare whether we believe in the devil – that way, if you find one of those "I believe in the devil" adherents slumped in the MRT coughing his lungs out due to pig virus – we could just as well skip the Tamiflu treatment and put a few colorful Reiki crystals on his tummy and try to summon up invisible forces to heal them – or better still contact us directly and for the right fee we will even arrange for a Nigerian foreign talent who works as a deejay but also moonlights as a part time African witch doctor (you know the type that even Africans shoo away once they get their hands on real medicine) to attend to him. I am sure with the help of a dried up chicken feet, drums and a few shrunken heads ripped from the P-65 blog – we could all watch these mumbo jumbo adherent melt happily away while we all dance around and wail our best to drive out the devil – still believe in the devil now? I thought not...My point is simply this; for too long, we have allowed these mumbo jumbo adherents to assert their reality on society without ever once insisting on the burden of proof. Result: whenever, its expedient they just explain everything away by referencing the devil – as a consequence, we buy into their nonsense of the devil and leprechauns accounting for everything from slipped disk to our kids not being able to do well in school; it’s time to insist on evidenced based reasoning. Whenever there are charges against a person or group, we must demand for proof – the higher the burden, the better. The converse of remaining bovine is we may run the risk of surrendering our brains to only the designs of a few who may decide to use us it to fulfill their nefarious ends - again it matters little whether it’s some bent pastor who keeps begging for money to build another shopping mall in the name of Jesus Christ – or even someone who you once decided to buy an investment plan based on trust, instead of going through the fine print with the tooth comb. My point is when the shit hits the fan – the psychology of blaming others instead of ourselves kicks in too readily – and all too often it becomes a playground for hucksters, charlatans and religious fanatics – all these point to our potted history of how vulnerable we really are when we work ourselves up into a state of hysteria and paranoid – all because we never once bothered to sit down and think it through calmly and quietly. As for my two metric ton secretary who thinks the devil is out to spoil her new weight management program – the last time I saw her, she was tearing away at a jumbo sized packet of crisps. I tried to tell her softly that’s simply not good enough, it’s never going to come around – it’s no good. When she came up with her devil nonsense again – I shot it dead with a slam of my fist on the table. This time telling her, that if she didn’t stop eating, she would end up fat, poor and lonely because no self respecting man in his right mind would ever want to fuck her (I am sorry, there is no way to be nice about it, that's the truth and nothing but the truth) - she stared at me for a while, put away her chips and her eyes welled up with tears. I know it comes across as heartless, but my feel is that's the only way to get on top of the "devils" of our lives - al it deserves is the zero tolerance treatment - matters little whether it is the idea of brushing byzantine failures as only 'paper losses', when we all know, if that's really the case, then shouldn't we consider our gains as, 'paper profits' as well?  To why did Tan Tarn How of the IPS only invited a few bloggers he considered to be 'kosher' while consider the rest to be "devils" to his recent seminar about the internet? Do we really want to buy into his conception of "worth engaging?" Or maybe it's best to fuck him off in one straight line like we did by imposing a 5 year boycott on IPS? Or even how The Online Citizen keeps on talking about credibility all the time - as if it's one value that trumps all - when we all know it's fighting so hard to establish it, it probably never had any in the first place, otherwise why fight so hard  for something that should come naturally? Yes, as you can all see, it doesn't take alot of effort to fashion our devils to even account for everything that's uphill and going wrong in our life - but the truth believe or not is all you really need; as it will always set you free – don’t leave home without it, the rest you could just as well throw out of the window - its just mumbo jumbo. Darkness 2009 The Brotherhood Press 2009 Side reads: Find out who is Oh Tham Eng! Find out what is his real mission in the internet? Scroll down the thread and read for yourself, pay special attention to what the internet liaison officer has to say about the subject - learn how to defend yourself online: http://wayangparty.com/?p=8002                Read More →

27th April 2009     To: AWARE Members     EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING TO BE HELD ON 2ND MAY 2009  Notice is hereby given that:             Action & Research (“AWARE”) to be held on nd May 2009 , from 2.00 p.m. to          5.00 p.m. is hereby changed as follows:          Singapore EXPO Hall 2         1 Expo Drive, #01-01         Singapore 486150                 It is mandatory to show your NRIC for admission and registration.     2.   Messrs Rajah & Tann have been appointed to act as AWARE’s legal advisors to attend the       EGM to be convened on 2nd May 2009 to address legal queries relating to, and raised           during, the EGM including the matters intended to be transacted, AWARE’s constitution and       meeting law and procedure.   By Order Of The Executive Committee     Jenica Chua Honorary Secretary Association of Women for Action & Research             Association of Women for Action & Research  Block 5, Dover Crescent #01-22, 130005 Tel: 6779-7137 Fax: 6777-0318 Email: [email protected]   URL: www.aware.org.sg             Admission and registration would be from 12.00pm to 2.00pm on 2nd May  2009 .             1.      The venue of the Extraordinary General Meeting (“EGM”) of the Association of Women for            Read More →