CHANGI AIRLIFT

A warm welcome to all visitors from Mr Brown. I feel blessed for receiving the attention from such a celebrity (I have just taped your Channel-i appearance and am looking forward to watching it).

With that, I feel a need to share the wealth. For further reading...

Cicada also linked to my self-censorship post recently and noted his experience with a lawyer representing a well known newswire:

...the Wall Street Journal, Time, Bloomberg and the IHT have all groveled before the Singaporean authorities after writing offending articles...
When I was working for one of the companies mentioned above I was in a meeting with its libel lawyer, who was giving an over-the-top spiel about how we never back down, always fight the good fight etc, etc. So I asked him why we gave in to Singapore. With a straight face he said they feared for the safety of our employees in the country and even considered chartering a plane to fly them out. He probably didn't realize that I'd spent several years in Singapore and knew the place rather well, otherwise he wouldn't have said something so ridiculous. But he was on a roll.

While publishers may fear the libel laws here, they don't fear for the safety of their employees. There are lots of lawyers here but very few jackboots. So far, I've only seen one pair.

They were being worn by a strange death metal kid in front of the main DBS branch on Orchard (he was also wearing tight leather pants and a heavy leather trenchcoat at high noon in the tropics ... very freaky).

Further, for a completely different take on the Economist's recent settlement, the Sarong Party Girl offers her thoughts. The SPG can be an entertaining read - and she is probably work safe if your boss doesn't keep looking over your shoulder. However, be warned that most of her posts offer something other than family entertainment.