Re: Off Topic: Basic Assumptions

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Two opposition politicians were convicted in
Singapore on Wednesday of violating a law that requires police
permits for political speeches. 

Their sentences bar them from participating in elections for five
years. 

Chee Soon Juan, head of the small Singapore Democratic Party, and
assistant secretary-general Wong Hong Toy were led away by policemen
to serve 12-day prison terms for staging an unlicensed speech in a
downtown park on Jan. 5. 

"They both acted in deliberate disregard" of the law. "The sentences
must reflect this," said Judge Mavis Chionh, who ruled that
arguments about the law's constitutionality were irrelevant. 

Singapore's constitution guarantees freedom of speech and assembly.
But the ruling People's Action Party, in power for 40 years, has
imposed tight restrictions on civic activity. 

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9902/24/BC-Singapore-FreeSpeech.ap/

Singapore gives a good example, here, of how it all works:  the
Constitution guarantees one thing, the ruling party makes a law that
violates the guarantees on some 'good' pretext.  Then people become
*law-breakers*, not people exercising their Constitutional rights.
The terms of discourse are changed, voila!

Just as happens to the poor, here, who are stigmatised as 'lazy
freeloaders' rather than people who have been excluded from
substantive employment by the choices of the rich.