Everyone knows about tiananmen square massacre, but how many people have heard of this?

the PAP, in spite of its name, really is the party of big business, not of the people. their belief in the market is unshakable; it must be followed through every boom and bust, and all else can come later. they preside over the workers and employers as a supposedly neutral and “enlightened” arbiter-in-white, when we all know whose advice they will always take, or at least not oppose. the labour unions straggle behind, reacting only after layoffs as if caught totally by surprise. and that’s assuming if you even have a labour union to represent you. everyone else will have to depend on what’s available in the next national budget, for what diluted balm for festering wounds they can spare us, what little meat scraped off the bones. always a headache they say, having enough money to fund all the good things; and so comes the call to tahan a little, as we good citizens have always done. work-fare, no welfare. suck thumb.

coincidentally however, the paychecks for ministers and senior bureaucrats are never quite such a headache. indeed, neither are the surpluses skimmed off and used to feed the circuit of world capital. ostensibly it’s to get more money via returns for the reserves, for the indeterminate future. well, we can see all this wealth swirling before our eyes, that’s certainly true; that’s why we feel ourselves to be “affluent” in this gleaming city. but is this wealth actually ours? the niceties here seems to be coincidental to what life is actually like for a lot of us; of working till exhaustion, of exhaustion taking its usury from what free time we manage to get, then only to see our wages disappear in the race against inflation. these nice things - parks, gardens, libraries, museums, theatres, sports hubs etc etc - always play second fiddle to what seems to be the main purpose of life. the frustration shows itself in social problems, and in the proliferation of mental illnesses. indeed, the entire education system is geared towards preparing for work rather than anything else. the pupils go in and are machined to be tools in the various sectors of the economy; all interchangeable and replaceable, but always of a certain cut. those who cannot be machined into shape are tossed aside as useless, for apparently life is calculated entirely by what value you can create for employers, and by extension, the government through taxation.

we now live to work rather than work to live, for it no longer matters what you do as long as you get the money to survive. you find a job or some sort of living that you might not enjoy but have no choice because either that’s what you locked in as a student without knowing better, or the sector you were schooled/machined for isn’t hiring. and so proceeds the game, which most of us do not question. after all, isn’t this how it has always been? this state of affairs, in fact, cannot be called anything other than implicit servitude. think about it, why is it always a race to the bottom when it comes to wages? with greater skills comes greater productivity; do we not then deserve higher wages, a higher cut of the value we produce? why instead do employers just say that the wages are now too high and that it is now unprofitable to keep going? you weren’t working less, if anything you were working more for those increments which are now at risk of disappearing altogether. after all, labour is cheaper (read: even more exploited and underpaid) elsewhere in Southeast Asia. and all this while, the higher-ups continue to draw the cream of payouts, be it in dividends or their appropriations from the profit, their “wage”. they refuse even the smallest of cuts, and so we absorb them instead. what of those from our ranks who became managers but are still otherwise subordinates, the PMETs? they are bribed with just enough to keep them comfortable, and so they side against their own interests. they too are now starting to find out however; the capitalist owes no loyalty to slaves.

I began this rant/essay by talking about the PAP; why am I now talking about private employers and private interests? well, you may recall me alluding to ministerial salaries. you may also recall the photo scandal which leaked shortly after polls closed for GE2025, after which prominent political figures otherwise implied that they are on pretty good terms with people of wealth. the truth is that there is no line separating the ruling class from the capitalist class; they are one and the same. these links leave no paper trail, for they are relational rather than transactional, and so will never face real judgement in courts of law. neutrality is a myth. old boys from the same good schools will help each other pull invisible strings as adults, for “cream” always rises together to the same places. you may also recall me mentioning labour unions; it is no coincidence that they became impotent the wealthier the economy got in the 1960s and ‘70s. the foreign investor wants his dividends paid, and to make sure it does, the factory he invested in needs to have a docile workforce. no strikes, no disputes, no disruptions; just workers who will do as they are told and quietly take what they are given. who brought these investors in? the PAP. in this clash of interests between those they were supposed to represent and those who promised to bring great wealth, they chose the latter - and have continued to do so ever since. except now, the flow of wealth has ceased to be at least somewhat favourable to us; all the cream now rises away to the top.

as Lee Kuan Yew mentioned, the boom years of double-digit growth would and eventually did taper off. we are now past that. he warned against losing hope and becoming disillusioned as that happened. for such a famous clear-eyed realist, how did he not realise that it was merely the gilded cage finishing its construction? a beautiful, shiny and clean gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. the wealth which swirls around us but is never actually for us - that is the gilded cage, built by our labour but now used to keep us entrapped. it blinds and numbs us to the reality of our servitude, and that is all what Singapore is as a state entity. all is not lost however, for much of the strength of the cage is drawn from our implicit acceptance of it. a better way of life is possible, if enough of us reject the illusions and bribes given by the cage. remember that the capitalists have no wealth except what they appropriate from us; we are the real masters. this cage has been blindly and unknowingly maintained by us up till now, and it is up to us to smash it.

we have long outgrown this cage. to build a better society, to reach a higher form of society, we must awaken and shake it to pieces. our liberation is no utopia; it is possible, far more possible than too many of us think. sooner rather than later, the time will come when we will finally know what it means to live life to the fullest. I say, down with the gilded cage. our yearning spirits may be suppressed but they will never break faith.

Israel is running a widespread and deeply embedded, covert influence operation in Canada, and the government has refused to treat it as interference by a foreign actor, a new report by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has said.

The group is now calling on Ottawa to designate Israel as a "key threat actor" alongside the likes of China and India, expel Israeli diplomats, and ban Israeli spyware, among other recommendations published on Wednesday. 

"The pattern of deception and disinformation outlined in this report demonstrates the malicious role of the Israeli state in interfering in Canadian public affairs, undermining the rights and safety of Canadians," CJPME said.

"This rogue state behaviour has taken place within Canadian borders with a total lack of accountability, and requires immediate intervention by authorities."

While most countries are known to lobby one another in their own interest, Israeli activities cross a line because they are largely undisclosed, the report said. 

Five examples are provided in the document, all of which are designed to shape Canadian public opinion, government regulations, and media narratives via local intermediaries, as CJPME described.

The citations rely on reporting from the Canadian investigative outfit, The Breach, the left-leaning news site, Press Progress, and papers such as The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Haaretz, and The New York Times. 

Influence operations

The first example is of "secretly" funded polling in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, "which used biased language to sway results in support of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza [and] was conducted by Toronto public relations firm Aurora Strategies Global without disclosing that it was on behalf of the Israeli consulate", the report said.

Liberal Party insiders also discussed sharing the results with then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office before the poll's publication, the report noted.

The second example follows the federal court's ruling in 2019 that "Product of Israel" labels on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are "misleading".

The report said that Israel’s Ministry of Justice "secretly" hired a law firm in Toronto to intervene in the legal dispute and had staffers from that firm draft talking points for Canadian officials on the issue. 

The objective was to pressure Canada into appealing the ruling and preserving the labelling system favourable to Israel, CJPME said. 

The third example pertains to "propaganda junkets" by the Israeli government that "use Canadian entities as proxies" to send politicians and other influential figures on all-expense-paid trips to Israel.

"The lack of transparency around these delegations is a major issue, as the entire purpose... is to build support for Israel and influence Canadian politics," the report said, pointing to unelected Canadians who are not bound by the same disclosure policies as lawmakers.

"Even if these junkets were fully transparent, they would still be unethical, which is why [former] Prime Minister Brian Mulroney banned his colleagues from accepting paid trips to Apartheid South Africa in 1985 (although some Conservative MPs defied the voluntary ban)," CJPME said. 

A 'campaign of transnational repression'

The fourth example is of a mass disinformation campaign aimed at Canadians by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, first revealed in 2024.

"Israel commissioned a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv to create fake English- language websites, including one called United Citizens for Canada, as well as hundreds of fake social media accounts powered by ChatGPT, to spread racist and pro-Israel messages," the report said.

The messaging portrayed Muslims as threats to western society, and the report highlighted "Israel’s strategy of repressing global pro-Palestinian movements outside its borders". 

At the time, Ottawa admitted that the fake platforms were considered interference, and corroborated "elements" of the allegations when it raised its concerns with Israel, but no known accountability measures were taken. 

Finally, CJPME's report described what it called "a campaign of transnational repression" by Israel, which includes surveillance, profiling, and doxxing of activists in Canada who criticise Israel.

"Recent efforts by Israel through the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs have sought to brand any opposition to its illegal blockade of Gaza as a conspiracy of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood," it said, also citing Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, who has said that the Canadian government should "limit" certain "freedoms".

"This amounts to overt advocacy in support of measures to restrict Canadian civil liberties," the CJPME said.

To that end, it recommended banning the procurement of Israeli spyware, which aids in tracking critics. 

The report named NSO Group's Pegasus, Cytrox’s Predator, and Paragon Solution’s Graphite. 

"The Government of Canada has many legal and diplomatic tools available to fight foreign interference," the report said, and recommended that Ottawa expel the Israeli ambassador and other diplomats, and sanction all actors involved in covert influence campaigns. 

"A holistic approach to countering illicit Israeli influence will require holding Israeli state officials accountable while finding ways to discourage Canadian participation in these schemes," it concluded. 

there was a time in which the world was confused by what was happening in Japan in spite of its wonderful prosperity; hikikomori, karoshi, kodokushi. as it turns out, Japan was simply ahead of everyone else in its capitalist development. even in stable countries, even in places within the imperial core, its contradictions will mushroom everywhere as social problems. the cry and wail of the human spirit as it is forced into a spot in the machine, or dumped aside where it cannot fit in.

it is indeed socialism or barbarism, comrades. the basis for sophisticated human existence - environmental, economic, and indeed, social - are withering away, slowly but surely. we will either cease to exist altogether, or return to a primitive state where every person really is all on their own. one only need to look at falling fertility rates in the most wealthy countries; the ones gripped most by capitalism, the ones deepest within the machine.

as a newly-renounced Leninist, I would like to say it didn’t hit me that rigid hierarchy itself can create relations of exploitation - it is really obvious in hindsight, admittedly. exploitation isn’t inherent to the bourgeoisie, there was a historical stage in which they were the exploited class. if the state is just a tool of class oppression and can be nothing else, then it logically follows that a state led by the proletariat will just evolve a new underclass to exploit once the bourgeoisie is fully assimilated. this tendency is made much worse, however, by the Leninist idea of having a professional vanguard of revolutionaries leading from the front and necessarily separated somewhat from the masses; the germ of the new exploiter class is essentially prefigured in this way. paired with the functionaries needed to maintain a growing state apparatus, and suddenly the contradictions inherent in late Soviet society becomes a lot more clear in their origin.

a socialism which yearns to defeat all exploitation for good must therefore renounce the state altogether, not try to build a new one. inspired I may have been by Lenin previously, I now see he was a renegade opportunist. on the bright side, my vision of freedom is clearer now than it has ever been. special thanks to BadMouse on youtube, please do check out his videos criticising ML viewpoints from an anarchist perspective.