News this week included: AI tools to simulate public responses to policies and transliterate old Malay-language newspapers written in Jawi; Hougang United sanctioned for fielding a foreign footballer without a valid work pass; a new SIM card checker tool to combat scams; the risk of retinal detachment for those with high myopia; kids among the victims of an alleged S$700,000 Pokemon card scam; an important debate about consumer protection sparked by the WP’s Andre Low; Chan Chun Sing refusing calls by the WP to pay national servicemen a base salary of S$1,800 per month, saying “…I don’t want us to get into the wrong concept that this is a transactional relationship”, which inevitably drew a backlash online, partly because public service has long been turned into a transaction through ministerial salaries; and improving road safety through lower alcohol limits, a tighter demerit points system, and a prospective new law around vehicular homicide—the government was quick to add, however, that criminals wouldn’t be liable for the death penalty. (Guess it’s one thing to kill poor Malaysian mules, quite another a rich Ferrari driver.)

Below are the issues we chose to explore in more depth.

International: Iran, where might makes right

On Monday, the Iranian women’s football team played against South Korea in Australia, in the first round of the Asian Cup. Before the game, they refused to sing along to their national anthem. In a video they look brave and beautiful, their stoic faces framed by their sports hijabs, tucked neatly into the collars of their gleaming white jerseys. In front of them stood young, bewildered Aussie kids (whose country is very much a part of this coalition of the willing). Did they not sing because they’re against the current regime? Maybe the absurdity of it all—the confluence of belonging, international sports, and geopolitics—has led to an even greater dissonance about a fraught national identity. The players and their coach Marziyeh Jafari, smiling through the song, later refused to answer questions about the conflict. 

It is one of many inscrutable scenes from the past week, after devastating joint military action by Israel and the US against Iran has led to a regional war—albeit a seemingly one-sided one, with Iran and proxies isolated by the rest. The human dilemma, which we are all forced to grapple with, is unlike any other in recent times. For while many Iranians have mourned the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, others have celebrated. Are you being attacked? Or liberated? What does solidarity look like in times like these? 

“Relief for the 92 million Iranians freed from the grip of an 86-year-old tyrant,” began CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in his commentary. Whether tyranny justifies one country assassinating the leader of another is murky moral territory. Zakaria transitioned to pummeling the assassin: by calling for regime change, Donald Trump has “defined the purpose of this war, and the measure by which it will be judged a success or failure.” Other countries, meanwhile, “are confronted by the reality that the world’s leading nation, the creator of the international rules based system, has said loudly and clearly, ‘Might makes right’. It’s a new rule, and one that will gladden the hearts of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.” 

Our diverse regional responses reflect these conflicting perceptions. Malaysia has been the most unequivocal in its condemnation. Its MPs put aside its fractious politics for unanimity, including a moment’s silence for Khamenei, his family, and the hundreds of children killed when Israel bombed a girls’ primary school. Anwar Ibrahim, prime minister, said Malaysia can no longer “swallow” arguments about human rights and democracy from Americans and Europeans, calling out the “hypocrisy” of an attack amidst peace talks. (A New York Times commentary suggests the talks were a farcical front given the warmongering influence of Benjamin Netanyahu on Trump.)

Indonesia, as an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s Board of Peace (BOP) and the world’s largest Muslim country, seems to be caught in a bind. Leader Prabowo Subianto had to defend its BOP involvement in a rare silaturahmi (strengthening social ties) meeting involving his predecessors, as people protested outside the US Embassy. The famed non-alignment of the mid-20th century, depicted as “rowing between two reefs”, has now evolved to “among several reefs”.

Singapore did not condemn its long-standing allies’ aggression, but among other things regretted “the failure of negotiations”. (ASEAN’s foreign ministers issued a similarly bland joint statement.) While analysts here worry about the war testing social cohesion, others are concerned about travel disruptions, and the shock to energy markets that might eventually spike electricity prices and costs elsewhere. The sheer nonchalance and obliviousness of the canary in the gilded cage was captured by an influencer posting a photo of her jog along Marina Bay, using Israel and Iran in a pun that suggested the news was overdone. (She later apologised.)

Amidst the carnage and confusion, there is still poetry to keep us strong. Maybe the words of Rumi, from the Iranian locker room to the Singaporean shore, can be a balm.

Search the darkness
Sit with your friends; don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.
Surge like an ocean,
don’t scatter yourself like a storm.
Life’s waters flow from darkness,
Search the darkness, don’t run from it…

The human shape is a ghost
The human shape is a ghost
made of distraction and pain.
Sometimes pure light, sometimes cruel,
trying wildly to open,
this image tightly held within itself.

Politics: Parley round-up

The Workers’ Party (WP) made numerous suggestions on behalf of the Singaporean worker, including on mandating flexible work arrangements and closing the youth employment gap. Among numerous other responses, Tan See Leng, manpower minister, rejected a suggestion by Pritam Singh, WP chief, for bigger companies to give higher retrenchment benefits; said that about 100 employers had been caught fraudulently inflating their foreign worker quotas through “phantom worker” arrangements in 2024-25, while rejecting a suggestion from Kenneth Tiong, WP MP, to scrap nationality-based quotas in favour of a price-based mechanism; and rejected a suggestion by Jamus Lim, WP MP, for a national on-the-job training scheme (in the age of AI), instead backing the government’s existing Graduate Industry Traineeships (GRIT) programme.