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Chris Bors and Ketta Ioannidou Chris Bors, Jennifer Burbank, Chris Coffin Daniel Davidson, Linda Ganjian, Ketta Ioannidou Tricia Keightley, Jesse Lambert Liz-N-Val, LoVid Donald Porcaro, Leslie Wayne Opening: Thursday, Sept 10, 6-8 PM The Educational Alliance Gallery 197 East Broadway New York September 10-October 29, 2009 JENNIFER BURBANK CHRIS COFFIN DANIEL DAVIDSON LINDA GANJIAN AND JESSE LAMBERT TRICIA KEIGHTLEY LIZ-N-VAL TALI HINKIS & KYLE LAPIDUS aka LoViD DONALD PORCARO LESLIE WAYNE

Now that Chip Goodyear's tenure as CEO of Temasek is a non-starter, a great many questions would be flooding Singaporean minds about the non-answers provided in the official statements of Temasek. Strategic differences? What were they? Why did they not surface earlier during the courting process? Why were they not noticed by the astute custodians of Temasek? Perhaps, the differences involved some corporate governance issues? Perhaps they involved issues of transparency? We will never know. But, in politics, speculations are just as bad as damaging revelations. How would the average Singaporean voter react to Goodyear's departure and the return of Ho Ching? Given the losses churned out by Temasek and the complete silence on the accountability front, it is tempting to assume that the latest news of Goodyear's departure would broaden discontent amongst the electorate. I am not so sure. One type of Singaporean is a hardcore oppositionist. Everything negative involving...

The junior school was hit pretty hard by a very localized Earthquake on Tuesday with desks and chairs tipping over and injured staff and students everywhere. Luckily for us the senior children were safe and sent to assist where they could in the junior school. All this activity was filmed by staff and used as an amazing discussion tool about disasters. All we can say is that it was a good thing that our whole school topic for this term is set around answering the big question of how to survive a disaster. The students all agreed that we are not prepared and we need to do a whole lot of work to find out how we can be. This should be a very interesting topic, one that will generate much discussion at home.

Clayton Cosgrove MP for Waimakariri visited Addington today to look at the Conductive Education Unit and talk with Teachers and parents of students attending. Mr Cosgrove was contacted by a concerned parent who lives in his electorate. Our principal Trudy Heath, Dave Ching, NZ Conductive Education Foundation member, and Teachers and Conductors from the Unit spoke with Mr Cosgrove about the history of the Unit, its funding, and the impact of funding cuts on our families.  Brittany and her Mum, Julie Baker, spent some time, outlining to Mr Cosgrove and the Christchurch Press reporters with him, the consequences for their family in particular.  At the end of his visit Mr Cosgrove thanked Trudy and her team and said he was now very aware of where our students would be without Conductive Education and was committed to assisting the school raise the profile of our funding issue.

In the run up to the 1996 General Elections, the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong warned voters: "Your estate, through your own choice, will be left behind. They'll become slums. That's my message." The PAP then issued an open letter stating: "Please remember that the PAP government cannot upgrade all estates at the same time..... Our resources are limited. Which ones to upgrade first will depend on you. If you give strong support, you will be first in line." The US State Department had some unkind words for the PAP with regard to the latter's 'threat' to the voters. BG George Yeo retorted by stating that pork barrel politics had a long tradition in the USA. so, I take it that pork barrel politics is good. In 2005, at a luncheon organised by the Foreign Correspondants' Association, PM Lee Hsien Loong said the following with reference to Japan: “...they landed into problems because of corruption, money politics, pork barreling, and then neces...

I am mulling over this issue: Is it possible to advocate for human rights and yet qualify it by asserting that not all humans are entitled to rights? The easiest answer to give to that is to say that if you do not advocate rights for all humans, then you do not in fact stand for human rights. What you stand for is rights for a group of humans or a majority of humans. So, how could you be classified as a human rights advocate. This issue has now been articulated through NYU’s invitation extended to Pro Thio Li-Ann. Let us consider the following hypothetical situations: a) Can I be considered an advocate for human rights if, despite other strong views supportive of human rights, I believe that the worship of idols either in public or private should be criminalised? b) Can I be considered an advocate for human rights if, despite other strong views supportive of human rights, I believe that the law should state that women must be homemakers so long as there is a child in the family tha...

My suspicion is that there is a general consensus or at least a majority view in the Cabinet that homosexuality is a non-issue. Clearly, as a matter of policy they keep asserting that s.377A would not be enforced. This indicates, probably, a Cabinet view that what happens in private between consenting adults is of no concern for the state. If, indeed, this was the predominant perspective of the Cabinet, then why did they still insist in Parliament that the law should be retained? I have a rough idea as to what might have motivated the current posture. Like many average heterosexual individuals in Singapore, I expect that Parliamentarians as well as the Cabinet members by a majority are neither here nor there on homosexuality. Many are not homophobes. Many would have no difficulty communicating or mingling with a homosexual colleague, friend or relative. But, being heterosexual, they don’t understand the marginalisation of a segment of the population on account of sexual orientat...

The High Court in Delhi has interpreted s.377 of the Indian Penal Code as not criminalising consensual homosexual relations between adults for to criminalise such conduct would be unconstitutional. To put things in perspective, Singapore had already repealed s.377 in 2007. However, we do have s.377A: Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years. What is our government's response to the Indian Court's decision? “We have the law. We say it won’t be enforced. Is it totally clear? We, sometimes in these things, have to accept a bit of messiness.” - Mr K. Shanmugam, Minister of Law, 2nd Minister of Home Affairs. Boy do I have a problem with that statement! The Law Minister is making a case for messiness in the law. Is it acceptable to have ...

At our full school assembly today, we said goodbye to two teachers from Conductive Education. Mrs Wycherley and Mrs Pilgram are leaving us after many years. We are very sad to see them go. We asked them what they would miss most and they said they would miss the wonderful children, teachers and staff, and how everyone gets on and treats each other so well. This was the best thing about Addington and they would miss everybody heaps. Mrs Pilgram was going to spend more time with her family and maybe do a bit of study at university. Mrs Wycherley will be spending more time with her family. Both hope to do some relieving at school so we will see them again. YAH! Reporters: Jyr and Jack

Today Room 8 went to Room 2 our Year 1 ‘Buddy  Class’ to find out what they had learnt about the earth. They had three groups: one learnt about the earth inside and out, another about rocks and the last group learnt about volcanoes. The Earth Group made a KidPix presentation telling us all about the earth. Mrs Craib said it was because they didn’t want to talk too much. We found out lots of interesting things - like sand is made from broken down bits of rocks.  The Rock Group told us all about what rocks are made of. If crystals cool fast they look like glass, but if they cool slowly they look like ice crystals. They made some yummy rocks by melting butter and marshmallows to make the magma and adding rice-bubbles for the minerals and chocolate bits for the crystals. At the end we got to taste some and it tasted  delicious.  The Volcano Group knew heaps about volcanoes. They made a volcano and showed us how it erupted. It was all very interesting and amazing. Reporters for Room 8-...