Priorities

Here's a game. I'd say fun, but tastes differ.

Go to which is the Singaporean film censorship database and see if the movies you own would be banned in Singapore, or perhaps only allowed with editing.

I've been going through my collection. Here's what I've found so far:

Apocalypse Now - Passed Clean, that is unadulterated. I was surprised - war violence, the proximity in Southeast Asia. Huh.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - Passed Clean. Apparently child torture is okay.

Clerks. Passed Clean.

The Shawshank Redemption. Passed Clean.

Blazing Saddles. Passed Clean.

Milk. Passed Clean. Even though homosexuality is illegal... Same goes for Brokeback Mountain.

The Godfather. I don't actually own this, now I'm just seeing if I can push buttons. Passed Clean.

Snatch, Scarface, White Heat, Taxi driver. Passed Clean. (The latter, almost cutely, warns "violence AND course language" D'aaaw.)

Romeo and Juliet. Passed Clean. I guess there're no objections to depictions of underage nudity, either.

Passion of the Christ, Schindler's List. Passed Clean. ("some nudity" is the warning for the latter.)

Well, I guess that's it. Maybe I was wrong. Singapore is apparently pretty tolerant. I guess I'll just go through the rest of my collection. What have we here? Oh, yes

Life of Brian. BANNED.
Well, shit.

Of all of my movies, and many movies I don't own but could rationalize censorship for, my copy of Life of Brian is what's banned.

Here's what's interesting. Some titles are both banned and not banned. Like The Big Lebowski or A Clockwork Orange.

Also, some titles don't even appear, like The Third Man. Dr. Strangelove does not exist either. If they were banned they'd show up. They simply...aren't.

My entire collection is a-okay for importing (at a fee) except for a Terry Jones comedy. Because it pokes fun at religion. You can't do that. But you can:

Depict open homosexuality
Glorify crime
Demonstrate drug use (which in Singapore would result in death)
Show underage nudity and child violence and torture
Exhibit violence of any variety
Present any harsh language, including racist slurs and profanity
Make fun of bureaucracies and government incompetence

Oh wait! Wait! I had forgotten I own a movie. Let's see if I can get away with

Reservoir Dogs. BANNED.

Right. So the pattern here is...? I mean, Taxi Driver and Scarface, those are fine. Zatoichi, with outlaws killing outlaws and cross-dressing...a-okay. Both parts of Kill Bill are Passed Clean, too.

So I guess there is no pattern. Arbitrary decisions made by mindless bureaucrats. Fear the mindless.

The SF Green Festival is Decadent and Depraved

A rainy Sunday for free parking and a check-up on the health of America's hippies. Great!

San Francisco - the motherland, the home-stop. 9th annual this time. San Francisco in the 2010 Hope-bust. Obama had been here a few weeks before. Now he's in India.

Crowds don't change. Whether the sloppy weather would drive people away or inside had me nervous enough to show up in the late afternoon. Last day - perhaps some good discounts on whatever the hucksters flung my way.

Rather than the Cow Palace, whose halls I know, the greens had come to significantly more lush auspices. Parking a block away from the SF Tennis Club, I wonder how many members the recession has driven away from an admittedly lousy locale. This part of town, 5th and Bryant, is useless for living, although some artistic types pleasantly resign themselves to these Tenderloin outskirts. I'm not sure of any American neighborhood so well-named.

But even if greyed the light is still from sun-source instead of lamp post, and the festival-goers are out in droves. Too slight a drizzle to keep them away, but enough to drive them inside.

My tickets were free, and there were hot pink hospital bracelets at the entrance, that no one would check for the duration.

Besides a check-up on the green movement, which I'd not looked in on in ten years, I was curious to see how it was adapting to the infirmities of middle age. They were young and strong in the late '60s and '70s, and fully adult by the 90's. After the 2000 mid-life crisis I dropped out of it, and concepts like watersheds, r-value, foodwebs, solar and snow leopards had been replaced by buying a gallon of organic each week.

The ulterior motive for this was to see if there was free ice cream and business shirts good for the tropics.

We'd missed the ice cream - that was on Saturday. So up we went to the fashion section. I should mention I was with my father, whose slate ponytail was not out of place.

Plenty of greens in the building. Were they aware of their playing to stereotypes?

The man with the trimmed white beard, beret, and suit. Olive oil vendor.

Dreadlock babies, cute eye-linered girls so fashionable they'd passed to the other side, the well-meaning hipsters in skinny jeans and caps asking the critical question "What is falafel, anyway?"

Earnest teens ready to exchange cleavage for business, and two girls showering in what was some sort of demonstration in water-recycling or soap.

Asian people selling Asian remedies, offering Asian bodywork, handing out Asian business cards.

A young girl in pink and grey rhythmically kazooing towards the kid's arena where the hand-made stuffed dolls waited.

The San Francisco suits, always men in pairs, looking for something to brighten their lives.

Gauged ears and shaved heads, goatees, long greys, and a polyester-clad braided Native American man whose bright shirt I couldn't out-manoeuvre.

Oh, the hippies are alive in 2010. I'm just not sure they are well.

The festival isn't festive at all. It's a shopping market, a indoor street fair-cum-ethics violation. Which booth do you support: the one for hard working rural Kenyans or the one for hard working rural Guatemalans? Both are fair-trade and organic! Gluten-free!

Or do you instead, I think, buy whichever is cheapest?

Not that cheap items were abundant. Besides the clothes, which I abandoned after two rounds, there were home furnishings, crafts, jewelry (of course jewelry - the American entrepreneurial ideal survives on the potential of home-made jewelry), food to go and cook and food to eat for lunch, subscriptions and petitions...

"This man who had no chance of winning, a junior senator that no one had heard of..."

Keep trying to rally the faithful. I wonder if they voted last week.

...books on every type of spiritualism and green investing, paper made of elephant dung, soap and shampoo and cream and conditioner made of anything from goat's milk to bee spit to acai juice (probably) and all of it peddled by young ladies ready to convince you why their product was the greeny-est. Water bottles water bottles water bottles: sleek, patterned, self-purifying, a collapsible bowl made of recycled chopsticks.

My dad found two rival ink cartridge refill programs, and got their business cards. I would walk away with no such find. Hemp shirts may wick water effortlessly, but at $55-95 per, I wasn't buying.

These hippies had itching palms: but what else but expensive art and crafts was there? A few speakers, getting a few listeners. Amateur musicians. Movies.

How can the hippy survive on mark-up? All the corners of the idealized world were sharing wares: Tibet, Africa, Chile - anything third-world would do. No booths bragging their items were from Paris or Tokyo. California was a safe bet: Buy Local!

Corporate greenwashing has become the green movement at the San Francisco Green Festival 2010. Nothing outlandish like BP. Just every vendor in the place happily accepting Visa or Mastercard for your [exotic location][thneed]. Even if you said "Fuck it - I'm only supporting the Guatemalans this year" you'd still feel the trap spring shut on the way home when you realize you'll be cherishing this thing because of it's dear price rather than it's ethical capital.

When your apartment burns down and all the third-world do-gooding merchandise is gone will the pang come from cultural loss of knickknackery, or loss of stuff? To put in Buddhist terms: are you attached to your organic fair-trade vegan lifestyle and do you need that wrap to prove it?

"Save the fucking planet? We can barely take care of ourselves!"

When we decided to split re-entering the San Francisco early evening glow the walk back to the car landed on any topic of conversation besides the Festival, from blinds to bars to cross-walks. A busted afternoon, void of revelry but secure in spending, the American hippy is either buying or selling.

Geographic Fluency

I am fluent in:

San Francisco Bay Area

Boston Area

Bennington, VT

Reno, NV

Greater Aspen Area

I am partially fluent in:

Leeds, UK

New York City

Los Angeles

Washington DC

Seattle

Columbia and Greenville, SC

Rome

Venice

Florence

London

Istanbul

Edinburgh

With help I can regain fluency in:

Athens

San Jose, Costa Rica

San Diego, CA

Naples

Denver

Cleveland

Manchester, NH

Tallahassee

I will soon be fluent in:

Singapore

The Life and Times of Young Teetotaler

I can only imagine what a difference alcohol makes in a person's life. As a life-long abstainer I've found no use for the stuff. Yet, now that studies are beginning to show that moderate alcohol consumption is healthier than no alcohol consumption, I feel a slight pull to defend my position in light of health benefits. Further, since teetotaling is relatively rare amongst youth, it may do well to explain what appeal it holds for me.

* * *

I'm 24 years old. I've not been legally drinking for three years now. I didn't illegally drink for 21 years before that. My whole life has been one of abstaining from alcohol.

There's no religious reasoning to my decision, which I presume accounts for most youth teetotalers. Having no religion I have no religious qualms as Muslims or Baptists or Mormons might about the dangers of drink.

Let's not kid ourselves about those dangers, either. The other day in the UK there was a study showing that the effects of alcohol were in that country more damaging than heroin. Simultaneously there is research being vaunted by the pro-tipsies that alcohol in moderation is linked to longer lifespans than no alcohol at all. What to make of this?

I think the latter study on the benefits of alcoholic moderation is correlative rather than causative. That is, I'm not surprised that most people who drink a bit live longer lives. I think alcohol is, for many, the number one stress reducer in their lives.

Stress, as much more research has shown, really is a killer. We can reduce stress through chocolate, or sex, or alcohol. Chocolate only goes so far, and a great many people get together every Friday desperately looking for sex, so I think alcohol may be the way most people choose to relieve their tensions.

Obviously, as a drug (more accurately a poison) we know that alcohol has horrid side effects, in fact many more than a Hersheys. The liver damage is one deterrent, no matter what, if anything, it does for the heart. My heart is fine - I want my liver to be as well. Like any drug it also has the potential for addiction.

Here's a story: Once when I was a teen I was contemplating pot usage. Literally all of my fellow classmates were users, with the exception of only two or three individuals (who later were). A fellow I wasn't fond of took me aside and gave me some solid advice.

"Three things could happen. First, you could try it, find out you don't like it, and not smoke it anymore. Or! Or! You might just try it, find out you like it and that it improves your life giving you depth and clarity that you didn't have before, and be a regular user. Or you might turn out like Jesse."

Jesse could not, medically, have been addicted to marijuana. But the dude was addicted to pot. This was the kid who smoked up after school, before school, and in-between classes. He smoked at least three times a day, and got horribly irritated if he didn't: docile as he may have been high, he was a mean cuss when deprived of his weed.

So I didn't try it. 2/3 odds? Not good enough. To this day I still don't smoke.

This same type of roulette applies to alcohol. Someone very wise once pointed out: No one starts to do drugs with the intention of becoming an addict. No one initially starts smoking or shooting up or drinking hoping to become a victim of abuse. Yet millions of people fall prey to addiction.

Some day, genetically, we'll be able to know who is more likely ahead of time. But that day is still only a glimmer at the end of my lifetime. For now there is no way of knowing with your first hit, first drink, or first smoke, what the outcome will be. Whether you will escape or have it ruin your life.

Here's part of where the atheism comes in: I only have this one life. I'm not going to play around with a possible loss of ten years to drink or drugs and (hopefully) rehab. Even as a possibility it is abhorrent - an obvious path to avoid. Would you take the road whose warning sign said 'Caution! 1/3 chance road will lead to inescapable cliff!' You're lucky if you survive the fall, and far too many don't.

Furthermore, from a social perspective, we know that alcohol is very damaging and costly. As The Streets succinctly put it: "Government funding for further education pales in insignificance when compared to how much they spend on repairing leery drunk people on the weekend in casualty wards all over the land." We repeat the mantra over and over: Don't Drink and Drive. Every year innocents keep being killed.

Even if we enforced the laws we had there'd be a nice change. Try and figure this one out: Drinking in bars is legal. Being drunk in public is illegal. An interesting thing it would be if police stood outside bars waiting for the drunks to hit sidewalk so they could arrest them. Maybe bars would have special sobering-up rooms - not allowing patrons to leave until it's all worn off.

But enough reasoning for a bit. On to the life and times.

Being a teetotaler does put you at odds with a society where drinking is common in some obvious and other more opaque ways.

Dating is more difficult. Think about it: if you don't drink why go to a bar? Most people who drink or not have had the experience of being the sober one surrounded by people drinking. Everyone who has knows what a bad time it is. Some do it for charity, and put up with it out of kindness. Others simply feel like they're wasting their time being around drunks.

So if you don't drink going to a bar is very awkward, unless you stick to a close group of friends, in which case it's, at best, just a dull time. On your own, however, it's a little peculiar to try and chat people up for flirting if you're sober in a bar. The same goes for young people's parties, of the collegiate sort, and clubs. I suppose you can still dance at a club without drinking. But so often there is a drink minimum that you either waste your money or don't go.

Besides the brusque social and dating ramifications there are subtler ones. I love food and love good restaurants. Ever been to a 4-star restaurant with a date and not ordered wine with dinner? The waiter is never pleased. Or assumes you're a mature looking teen playing 'adult'. Neither experience is much fun, but hopefully when my hair goes grey that'll begin to change.

Teetotaling can also be a slight strain on relationships. The only two major fights I've ever had consisted of sober me and a girlfriend who'd been drinking. If being around drunks is a bore or outright unpleasant to you, then if your partner is drinking it means spending time with them can be a bore or unpleasant. Drama!

Then there are the small details: the aisles in the grocery store which you will never go down, the commercials on television for beer, the toast, the shared experiences and mindset you've not had.

Two final stories.

The first can't be told by the guy who lived it, a friend of mine from high school. Avery Mathieu and I were just beginning to cultivate a great friendship the end of my Junior year. We shared a similar sense of humor, intellectualism offset by silliness, and we could sit a jaw for an age. Ironically, before a drunk driver killed him that summer, the last thing we talked about was how he wanted his funeral to be joyous. I miss him.

The other was from a work colleague telling a story, which I will try to recapture while doing justice to the original, of some times he had in Hungary:

"I was drinking the night after exams and I got totally wasted. In Hungary they have a game where you take two shots for every one someone else takes, and I was already buzzed on beer. I started the evening in the bar I usually do. What I remember next is kind of fuzzy, but:

First I ended up in a bar I didn't know with some girls I didn't know.

Then I was sitting on the sidewalk of an alley with some bums puking and crawling towards a streetlamp.

Next I somehow ended up in the middle of the street, lying down, with cars driving around me.

I may have been naked at that point, come to think...

Anyway, I don't know how I got home, but somehow I ended up back in my room. Ii didn't go to work the next day. In between these visions, these episodes, I must have blacked out. I have no idea what on earth happened, and talking to my friends they don't know either. Who knows what I did. I don't even know. It's a weird knowledge that part of your life you lived without knowing it."

* * *

In a way I find the latter story sadder than the first. I have only one life to live, and I want to be aware of it. So my teetotaling will continue. Thank you, out there, for putting up with it. I do my damnedest to put up with you.

What I've Cribbed from Philosophers

Or: Lessons Learned With Consequence

The first philosopher who influences my current thinking is Socrates. Those before him are interesting to me only in an academic way: Empedocles, Democritus, Pythagoras and Epicurus amongst the rest. Socrates, for many, is the purest philosopher, a martyr for Truth. The shadow-figure of Socratic practice would be Diogenes, who took Socrates' distaste for the shallows of society to a logical conclusion, forswearing home, family, and decency.

Cribbed: An avoidance of cocktail banter, except serving as a means to get to richer stuff; The notion that honesty will be vindicated; Convinced me that applying my cooking talents may not be the best use of my life (from either Gorgias or Parmenides, I can't recall).

Plato was a bit of a rotter. I don't think I'd like his society from the Republic and Laws. Nor do I think it would actually work. Come to think, most of Plato's ideas don't jive with my own. His ideas-forms dichotomy is bunk. I like his gymnasium school, though, educating both the mind and body.

Cribbed: The importance of educating the whole person; Why it's important to avoid false dichotomies.

Of the Greeks the last to be influential for me is Aristotle. Plotinus and the rest don't do it for me. To some small extent I think Zeno the Stoic is sort of useful, but I can't claim to be a stoic. Aristotle, on the other hand, was the best for his passion in studying everything. Yet his desire for theory to overwrite fact was rather disastrous. His logic was a great foundation, even if it took a couple millenia to be built upon.

Cribbed: A partial fluency in Aristotelian logic; An ethics of potential and achievement; Regard for scientific fact and observation being more powerful than theory.

The Romans didn't produce much of note. Likewise the Middle Ages were relatively useless for me. From Boethius to Maimonides to Aquinas I've found little of relevance. The next philosophers for me would be Descartes and his rationalist buddy Leibniz. Descartes' 'Cogito' is rewarding for young philosophers looking for stability. As Russell points out Leibniz was a powerful thinker, who, unfortunately, applied his talent poorly in his writings, seeking expedient fame over philosophical greatness.

Cribbed: Increased appreciation of how theory can get you nowhere fast; Increased wariness of dichotomies, esp. of the mind and senses.

Having read Locke only politically, so too do I categorize Hobbes and Rousseau. Having skipped Berkley, I pass on to the arch-Empiricist, Hume. His ethics are dull. Humean existence, too, is a bit iffy. Since we can't trust inductive reasoning we end up not knowing "what will happen if...". Like the Rationalists causality is very peculiar. All the same his Dialogues are the finest I've read in English.

Cribbed: Many arguments for atheism; A healthy skepticism of the differences between deductive and inductive reasoning; A greater acceptance of Carl Sagan as my lord and saviour.

Kant's ideas initially made me bristle. Now that I'm a duller person I'm beginning to come around to his thoughts. The mind tries to reach beyond itself, and in failing to do so creates a dichotomy. Still, his noumenal and phenomenal transcendental answer to the Rationalist-Empiricist debate had me upset for a long time.

Cribbed: Further need for an ethics that applies to context; A few more good arguments for atheism; Elucidations about the nature of what philosophical inquiry can get you: a look behind the noumenal veil.

After Kant you have Hegel and Marx. These two clowns ruined everything. Hegel's view of history is atrocious. Marx's is not so horrible an image, but equally flawed in reasoning. Lots of structure with little support.

Cribbed: A serious distaste for Marxists and Hegelians.

Countering Hegel and Marx you have Kierkegaard. The poor sad sack was not popular, and verged, I think, on misanthropy. His views of personal religion I don't care much for, but his ideas on society and our role in it are fine. Along with Soren I'll lump in Nietzsche, whose ideas have been profoundly bastardized. These 19th century thinkers were the first to emphasize personal discovery of the truth in a fashion resembling Socrates. It was the beginning of a back to basic questions about existence movement.

Cribbed: Derision for people who misquote and use 'subjectivity' as a cover-up for sloppy arguments; A healthy dose of paranoia regarding the intentions of those around me; Increased moral relativity.

The American Transcendentalists I find to be philosophically not worthwhile. Likewise the Utilitarians had a good idea, but poor support. William James I consider fundamentally to be a psychologist rather than philosopher. Instead I turn to the 20th century existentialists Heidegger, Sartre, and Tillich. Heidegger finally resolved the Rationalist-Empiricist debate without recourse to transcendentalism or elaborate messes of needless structure. Sartre's 'upwelling's are wretched stuff, but his emphasis on projects is dead-on. Tillich's definitions of faith and belief dissolve much of the religious debate nonsense.

Cribbed: Peace of mind regarding the nature of my existence; Calm in the face of death; An understanding of Purpose that goes well with Aristotelian ethics; The weight of total responsibility for one's life and actions.

Out of the Analytical mush of such projects like the Principia there came one good voice: Ludwig Wittgenstein. Eccentric, to say the least, his early logical face lift is not as interesting, to me, as his later post-teaching work on language. Many of the earlier problems of philosophy, he argues, were not, as presupposed, epistemological, but instead were linguistic.

Cribbed: New insights into meaning placed in words and the lack of coherence in many philosophical arguments; Philosophical vindication for the depth I'd read into Alice in Wonderland.

Elections

I'm sure someone said elections are the great American pastime. And if it hasn't been said yet, it should've.

Elections are wonderful for bellyachin'. Conservatives bellyache about the liberals. Liberals bellyache about conservatives. Both camps bellyache about the non-participants, who in turn bellyache about the whole thing.

Firemen all of a sudden become very important. So do teachers. Every two years education is inflated to The Most Important Issue Facing Our Country. Then the rhetoric goes away again, and the schools stay very much the same.

Here in California the political climate has been tremendously heated. The ads are non-stop. Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown, Carly Fiorina, Lee Stone, Tom Torlekson (sp?). Some races are garnering international attention, like Whitman's spending, while others you'd only care about in San Mateo County, or Pacifica.

I wonder who'll be SF's mayor after Newsom. Also, if the World Championship Giants can have beards why can't politicians? Some of SF's former mayors, like Sutro, had incredible facial hair.

Hats and facial hair - two male fashion standbys - gone with WWII as far as I can tell. But I digress.

In a few days we'll all vote (if we haven't already) and some stories will gladden our hearts, while others anger us and probably a few surprise us. As the camps become increasingly disparate then the elections will become increasingly important - eight years of hard work to undue the mess of the last eight years, and then when the rival gets elected another eight years to mess it up again. It only depends on your point of view of which party makes the messes.

Many of the incessant ads are patently false, and ethics committees are quick to point out which candidates are fine with that so long as they get in office. Unfortunately the ethics committees don't run ads themselves, so people who don't do research are likely to just listen to the ads and vote on the rhetoric.

I suppose voting on rhetoric will be good in one way: no matter which candidate you vote for, at any level of office, they want to help fix education. Republicans, Democrats and Independents all agree. They may say that their opponent has a terrible past, or is lying, when they say they want to help. But if you listen to the opponent's ads they will assure you that education is actually their primary concern. Oh joy.

The other evening I was discussing with a friend how different our political process would be if voting was mandatory. Think of it! The fringe element, on either side, being a minority. Wouldn't that be nice? No highly-organized loonies adversely derailing the process of government. Tea Partiers would maybe get a single candidate. Maybe. And if you don't like anyone, but are forced to vote? Well, as someone else pointed out, you can always write-in Mickey Mouse.

Not that I'd ever want Mickey to run government. His track record is laughable.

So here's to democracy, American-style (hot and spicy, with gravy.) May the first days of November usher in candidates who are sound, and policies that are reasonable.

US SG UN

I've been thinking a lot about human rights recently. Singapore had the highest death penalty sentencing of any country in the 90s. So let's take a look at the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which is binding for all UN members. Singapore is recognized as the 117th UN nation, and, to be fair, we'll compare the record against the 1st member, the United States.

The first article states that all humans should act towards each other in a spirit of brotherhood. We're all entitled freedom and dignity.

Well, neither is exactly top scoring for brotherhood, but they aren't slavers (anymore) and maintain some dignity, each. I guess they'd be about even.

The second states that all the rights are to applied to all human beings without any distinction of any kind, regardless of the statehood of the person.

Until we look at the specific rights we're okay. If, however, either country treats anyone as a second-tier citizen, then they will fail this most basic injunction.

Third: life, liberty and security of person.

Liberty, security of person, okay. "Right to life" is a bit of a stickler. Does this mean that capital punishment isn't allowed? In that case both are guilty. But if it means arbitrary killing... well, it's still sticky.

The UN's fourth right allows no slavery.

In reality there is slavery in both countries. However it is not officially endorsed in either. So I guess they're okay.

Fifth, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Do we define the death penalty as a cruel punishment? If someone innocent is sent to the gallows, then definitely. It requires little empathy to put oneself in the horrific mind frame of an innocent man or woman headed to the hangman. Since we have plenty of examples of this I would condemn the death penalty as cruel: it is irrevocable and can be misapplied. The US is especially guilty here, since our fighting forces recently were torturing Iraqis.

Sixth article: Everyone has the right to be recognized before the law.

Again, the US with it's secret prisons...

Article the seventh states that all persons get equal protection under the law.

I think Singapore has some difficulty with this one. The judiciary is too buddy buddy with the executive branch - they defend the government against the people without hesitation.

Eight states: "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law."

If the US violates in constitution then the US people have the right to a national tribunal, as does Singapore. Who knew?

The ninth article disallows arbitrary arrest, exile, or detention.

Both fail. The US has Bush-era detainees and Singapore has three acts by which detainees may be arrested without warrants.

The tenth article is right to a fair and impartial public trial with jury.

Singapore does not have a jury system. All decisions are made solely by those judges who are buddy buddy with the executive. So, no.

Eleventh: innocent until proven guilty.

I guess they both hold up to this. Some laws are presumptive, like Singapore assuming intent to deal if you have a certain amount of drugs on you (which leads to the death penalty).

Number twelve declares a legal protection of the right of privacy.

Again, Singapore has three laws that circumvent this. In the Bush years the US did, too, but this illegal aberration ended with Obama.

Article thirteen guarantees freedom to move around your country, as well as reentry upon leaving.

I think we're both good here. Unless it means you can't deport or exile people. In that case both have issues.

The fourteenth grants asylum in another country, so long as the person isn't be prosecuted for non-political criminal charges.

While not claiming to know too much about this, I think both are okay.

Fifteen ensures the right of nationality to all people.

Yup.

Sixteen better be quoted: "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution." It goes on to require mutual consent in marriage and legal protection of families.

It doesn't say that men and women have the right to marry each other. It just says that all men and women have the right to marry. I take this, in conjunction with the second article stating no one is to be discriminated against, as legal entitlement to gay marriage along with heterosexual unions. If this is the case then the US has a mixed record, and Singapore, which outlaws male homosexuality, is worse.

The seventeenth requires that all have a right to security of property.

There are no problems with this in either state that I know of.

Next, the eighteenth allows freedom of thought, conscience and religion, with all the latter implies regarding practice.

Singapore fails here. Jehovah's Witnesses (who, really, seem like a nice-ish lot) are banned from practicing their religion, distributing materials, or worshipping in Singapore. Why, you may well ask? JW's refuse to serve an army, and in Singapore there is compulsory service for males, age 18.

Article nineteen: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Singapore fails again. The two media outlets are run by, and censored by, the government. They have a bureau of censorship which edits and bans materials. Historically they are one of the worst nations in the world (last year ranking in the 130s) for free speech.

The twentieth necessitates right to peaceful assembly and safety from compulsion to join assemblies.

Are we counting permits as a restriction, here? I doubt it, although in Singapore, in league with the above, you can't assemble if your intentions are deemed to be bad.

Twenty-one insists that all people have a right to participate in government, either through voting or office, and that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

I think the US does a decent job of this, although campaign finance may be seen as a prohibitive factor. Regardless Singapore fails. In the most recent election individuals were barred from running at the discretion of the government in power at the time. As such the will of the Singaporean people was not exercised.

The twenty-second article protects social security.

Who knew? Both have a decent record here. For now.

The twenty-third and twenty-fourth are worker's rights: choice of job, equal pay for equal work, choice to join trade unions. The latter ensures rest and leisure time, and reasonable working hours.

The role of unions in both countries is a bit delicate, to put it nicely. As for equal pay for equal work the US fails since women are still payed .75 on the dollar for equivalent male work. I'm not sure if there's a discrepancy in Singapore.

Then again both countries probably have illegal labor, most countries do. But, again, both governments make a serious effort to crack down on sweatshop conditions.

Number twenty-five maintains an adequate state of living, including medical care, along with guaranteeing disability and other protections for those who are unable to provide for themselves. Kids born out of wedlock still are entitled to all basic rights.

Both Singapore and the US do a good job with these provisions.

Article twenty-six demands a free, elementary compulsory education, of the parent's choice. Interestingly this education must: "promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace."

I'm guessing both would have passed until you get to the latter part. I know there are schools in the US where conservative teachers badmouth the UN. I'm glad to know that they should be fired. As for Singapore I don't know what their relation to the UN is. I'd imagine it's a little strained, given their human rights abuses.

Number twenty-seven is a little odd to me. It guarantees cultural rights, such as the enjoyment of the arts. The second part, however, protects "right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."

I'm not sure if any author on earth actually has the moral rights of their work. Material, sure. Moral? How do enforce that? At any rate both countries are fine, excepting, of course, Singapore's ban on free speech and self-censoring journalists.

Twenty-eighth, to me, is repetitive. It entitles all people to having a social order wherein these rights are observed.

However, now that we've seen what the rights are, I'd say the Singaporean people, and to a lesser extent the citizens of America, are being failed on these counts. So far the US is currently in breach of 5 points they've sworn to uphold, whereas Singapore has violated the international agreement in 9 places.

Penultimately, the twenty-ninth declares that in league with the ideals of the UN "In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society." In other words, 'your rights end where my rights begin' in a democratic society.

Both countries are democracies of limited functioning status(the US system allows only the wealthy the run and Singapore is setting up dangerous precedents of a future dictatorship by barring candidates). If we ignore this, then we must ask whether both uphold morality, public order, and general welfare. Here I'm again wary: whose morality do we uphold? But the UN has anticipated this: it clearly states that it must be in accordance to the principles of the UN. In this case both fail. Neither country insists upon a morality that is consistent with the UN's ideals. If they did there'd be no social conservatives in either state.

Lastly, article thirty wisely points out that no one at any level can interpret any of the above articles as allowing for the destruction of the rights and freedoms the declaration has set forth to advance.

The US and Singapore both are guilty and innocent of this. They are both guilty in that neither has upheld more than roughly 2/3 of the articles. Both are innocent of the specific charge, however, since they don't interpret the articles in the manner described.

Rather both openly and defiantly flaunt their choices to not uphold the most important and inspirational humanist document ever written. Singapore doesn't give a damn that it's people aren't free to speak their mind, while a cowardly un-democratic government hides behind 'security' as the vicious stand-by for ensuring compliance through a biased judiciary. The US is slightly better, now that Bush's human right's violations are the stuff of nightmares past. But still the democratic system is replete with corruption and gerrymandering, not to mention being too influenced by wealth. Neither country treats gays as less than second-hand citizens. Both have the death penalty.

So there you have it, with a final score of US with 7 atrocities and Singapore with 10 affronts to humanity. Almost makes you feel proud.