Shanmugam indirectly argues that piracy stifles the creative industry, by linking a strong legal framework to helping creative industries. This is not true. On the contrary, piracy helps the creative industries by publicising innovation and pressuring the big companies to respond to the marketplace. As described in The Pirate’s Dilemma, a large number of music genres – acid house, dubstep, hard-core – took off after being broadcast by pirate radio stations in the United Kingdom. These music brands began life as too unconventional for mainstream taste, but the pirate radio stations gave artistes a platform to reach out to large audiences, given the artistes the critical mass necessary to achieve mainstream popularity.

The same can be said for Japanese manga, through the scanlation community. Whenever a new manga volume is released in Japan, people scan the entire issue and post the raw images online. These raws are downloaded by translators, who translate the works into different languages, and publish the translated issues online. Both the scanners and the translators are, for the most part, ordinary people who happen to possess the right equipment and know-how to hold up their end of the scanlation process. This allows Japanese manga to reach audiences far outside Japan – especially for manga that are released only in Japan. With some creativity, these audiences can be turned into paying customers.

It is true that online piracy leads to the loss of revenue. The music and motion picture industries (among others) routinely report losses in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. In Singaporean movie theatres, advertisements extolling audiences to respect IP rights and cease pirating are regular screened before the feature film. These advertisements claim that failure to respect IP rights will lead to filmmakers choosing to cease making films, and movie theatres to close down. But this advertisement does not ring true in a world where the global movie industries continue to rake billion-dollar revenue in ticket sales alone. While it is true that there will be some people who will consume pirated content without giving IP owners any compensation, piracy can help boost sales, as in the case of Japanese anime, music, and books. The big picture is, quite clearly, more complicated than what the big corporations are saying.

Governments and corporations need to stop blaming pirates and start understanding why people pirate IP. Speaking as an IP owner, I can think of three reasons why people do it.

1. Cost

Let’s face it: when forced to choose between paying $50-plus for the latest blockbuster video game, or waiting patiently for a few hours/days/weeks to download that same game off a torrent website, there will be people who will gladly choose the latter option. Especially if, for a few more hours of waiting, they can have any additional downloadable content or extra features that have already been released. Even more so if these people live in places with low income, and high prices for IP. The same holds true for other kinds of IP: books, music, movies, television dramas.

2. Availability

There is a large amount of IP that is simply not readily available in some parts of the world. Anime and manga, music, and more. Pirates create and meet demand for this IP by publishing and distributing this IP on places where users can readily access this IP. Sometimes this is done using legal means like YouTube. Sometimes this is done using more questionable means, like pirate radio stations. The platform pirates use are engineered to reach a large number of people at low cost, giving them a distribution network that could potentially rival the ones used by existing companies.

3. Convenience

Digital Rights Management tools are complicated. Many games, such as Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin’s Creed 2 and beyond, have DRM measures that prevent people from (easily) pirating software. The same goes for music, ebooks, and other digital IP. But these measures punish legitimate consumers. Coding a program to prevent multiple installations of the same game from the same DVD (such as SecuROM) may sound like a good idea, but this prevents legitimate consumers from re-installing their games. This can happen when the computer is reformatted, when the user gets a new computer, or when the user simply wants to play the game again after having deleted it. These are perfectly legitimate uses, but DRM software like the one I’ve described punish users for doing any of these by preventing consumption of software. Other tools, like the one used by Arkham City, are fairly complex to navigate and spoil consumer enjoyment. Pirates make consumption of IP convenient by scrapping DRM tools  from the original content and posting the now-DRM-free content.

Legislation is not the answer to these questions. These are legitimate consumer needs not being met by the companies that insist on DRM regulation and strict anti-piracy policies. Strict legislation may make piracy more inconvenient, but it will not address these concerns. If anything, they will exacerbate them, because consumers will have fewer places to address these needs, and they will take out their frustrations on the corporations by refusing to buy their IP and spreading the word to boycott their products. This creates additional market pressure on the pirates, who will at some point team up with hackers and crackers to circumvent any new anti-piracy means to publish pirated content.

What is needed is a new business model. Pirates shouldn’t be seen as evil money-sucking parasites. Pirates should instead be considered as friendly competitors. IP owners should strive instead to compete with pirates on their terms – on the terms of cost, availability and convenience, and any other reason why consumers will choose pirates over legitimate purchases. In this sense, piracy can be thought of as simply an additional cost of business.

If possible, IP owners should also factor piracy into their business models and understand how to use their distribution models to the IP owners’ advantage. Underground music artistes in the UK went mainstream after the mainstream record companies started collaborating with the pirate stations. The pirates gained prestige, the artistes made more money, and so did the record companies. It could be possible to do something similar for other IP. Author JA Konrath reported an explosion of sales after he started giving away one of his ebooks. Shortly after the creation of the Baen Free Library, in which Baen’s published books are posted online in their entirety for free reading, Baen reported increased sales of those published books. In those two cases, online pirates could easily reproduce the text of those books and distribute them for all to see. The result was increased publicity, increased consumer awareness, and therefore increased sales.

Piracy is a problem that has been around since the articulation of intellectual property rights. Legislation has done little to curb it. What is needed is a different approach. Instead of trying to stamp out piracy, companies should instead seek to meet the consumers real needs and wants, and compete with pirates on their turf. Companies should also seek to co-operate with the pirates to create win-win situations, or at least situations that are advantageous to the IP owner. IP is produced for consumption – it’s time to understand understand what the consumer wants and meet it, instead of blindly focusing on profit.

That said, I have planned a few writing goals for 2012. I’m already working towards them, have been for the past year, and now that I’m a certified author I reckon it’s time for me to share them. With deadlines, too.

Q1 2012

1. Start up my website

Conventional wisdom says an author can afford to wait a little before he gets a website. Normally I’d agree – start-up costs run into the thousands of dollars for a professionally designed and hosted website, and that money has to come from somewhere. But conventional wisdom doesn’t apply to an author who publishes on the Internet, and interacts with his readers primarily over the Internet. A traditionally published author has many ways to interact with his readers: book tours, book signings, writing in to magazines, getting book reviews, etc. But ebooks are not (generally) sold in physical stores, so there are no physical locations for me to pop up and talk to people. That means I need to focus on web-based marketing and promotion tools for the time being, and the main conduit for reader interaction is still the Internet. Therefore, I’ve been searching for cheap website solutions – have been for the past week. I’m coming close to resolving this; I just need to pick the best option and execute.

2. Finish and publish the next two stories in the Michael Chang series.

I’ve finished writing the sequel to Eventual Revolutions, and I’m working on the third Michael Chang story. The former is a short story titled Watchman, the latter is a novella, working title Games of Magi. In Watchman, Michael is watches over a pair of women in a nightclub. A group of hardcases try to muscle in on them, and Michael has to protect the women – and along the way re-align his sense of right and wrong. As for Games of Magi, Michael meets a fellow magician, and he has to decide whether to treat him as friend, foe, or otherwise. Watchman is in the editing stage. Games of Magi is in the writing phase.

Q2 2012

1. Write and publish the fourth and fifth stories in the Michael Chang series.

Self-explanatory. Once again, they are a short story, and a novella. I don’t want to spoil anything just yet – especially when they are still being planned and might change at a moment’s notice. But I will say this: the short story is tentatively titled Night Hunters, and the novella Necessary Wounds. And Necessary Wounds is the climax of the first Michael Chang cycle.

2 . Expand into audiobooks – if feasible

I’m looking into creating audiobook versions of my stories. I’m still studying the various options available to me, but it does seem like a legitimate option for my writing. If this line of approach works out, I might just be able to produce audiobook versions of my stories in the foreseeable future, starting with Eventual Revolutions.

Q3 2012

1. Put together a Michael Chang story anthology – in print!

I’m not going to write ebooks forever. At some point I’d really like to sell my works in print. For all the hype about ereaders and digital publishing, there are and probably always be plenty of people out there who like a real book in their hands. When I finish the first set of Michael Chang stories, I’ll have enough stories to put together an anthology of sorts – and that anthology would be economical to print and sell on paper. I’ll probably call it Dawn of the Magician or some such. I already have the solution – I just need the material to make this feasible.

2. Work on a non-Michael Chang story

I don’t think of myself as a mystic thriller/urban fantasy/insert-genre-here writer. I’m just a writer. I think about what I want to write first, and everything else – character, plot, setting, genre, etc. – follows. At any given time I have at least a half-dozen story ideas floating in my head (you’ve already seen four of them). When I finish the Michael Chang anthology, I want to take a break from it and work on something else. Right now, it’s a flip-up between a military science fiction story like Ghost in the Shell (the manga, the anime and the movies) meeting The Unit (American TV series), or an occult noir story loosely inspired by ‘traditional’ urban fantasy, H. P. Lovecraft, and espionage thrillers. Or I might do something else altogether. More details to follow when I have something viable.

Q4 2012

I can’t say for sure what the future holds here. I’ll be coming to the end of my course at this point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a couple of massive projects that would eat up a lot of my time. That said, it would be nice if I can start placing the Michael Chang print anthology in bookshops. Maybe indie bookshops in Singapore. And I might be able to do an actual book signing/book tour too.

Year-long Goals

1. Blog more often

When I was in Junior College, I wrote blog posts maybe once a month. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all the time and energy I had for after schoolwork, studying, and writing. Now that I have more time and energy on my hands, I’m thinking of blogging more (we’ve already seen that in December) regularly. At least once a fortnight. In addition to everything else I’m doing. That way, I think, I’ll be able to better promote my brand while simultaneously getting my thoughts out there for public consumption.

2. Spend time promoting the stories

The world is inundated with books, and more and more books are published every day. No matter how talented she may be, a writer won’t be noticed if she doesn’t promote her stories. So I’ll look for ways to promote myself, online and offline. Off the top of the head, I’m thinking book reviews, interviews, price experiments, online book groups…and of course, more posts.

3. Graduate!

I’ve always disliked formal education. For all the talk about ‘Teach Less, Learn More’, the school system is still inadequate. The entire academic system is still based on tests and examinations, and schools concentrate their efforts on getting students to pass these tests and exams. Preparation for the rest of your life is secondary, if it is ever considered. For all that, though, to someone who knows what he wants, the formal education system does pass on relevant skills and information. My current course teaches skills and techniques that, with some adaptation, can be applied to the writing biz. If I pass a module, I get to move on to the next module, which teaches me more information. To get the full benefit from this course, I need to graduate. Preferably as quickly as possible, so I don’t spend more time and energy and money than I have to.

So here you have it. My 8 writing goals for 2012. Time to get cracking.

I do have a solution in mind. I intend to set up a website with an incorporated and fully-automated ebook store. Unfortunately, I can’t afford that now – and even if I did, it would take a while to get everything online.

In the meantime, I’m introducing a stopgap measure: a page that serves as an ebook store. It’s not exactly pretty, but it’ll do the job until I can afford a more permanent solution. To buy Eventual Revolutions – and future stories – you may make your order through that page. Please note that you won’t be dealing with me through the store – you’ll be dealing with my staff.

Right now, we only accept payment through PayPal, and we will send purchases in .pdf format. We’re still new to this business, and we’re ironing out the kinks in our order process. Any and all feedback is welcome.

That said, it is taking longer than expected for Eventual Revolutions to be accepted to the Premium Catalogue. I understand it will take a week – if I’m lucky. It was something I should have foreseen and I apologise for any inconvenience. This is my first time publishing solo on this scale, using Smashwords’ proprietary software, and I’m still ironing the kinks out.

–

You can’t stare down a pile of bills. They won’t blink. They won’t back off. They won’t go away. Only way to get rid of them is pay them. Which is an increasingly difficult bill to swallow.

It’s not that I can’t pay them, but I’d have to dig deep into my savings. Business has been slow. Very slow. Barely enough to hold back the tide of expenses. If this keeps up, I’ll have to close up shop and move out of here. And going back to my parents is not an option.

But I am a magician, and magicians have more options than most people.

I sit in seiza – legs folded under my thighs, back erect – close my eyes, and breathe. On the inhale, pure energy from the cosmos fills my lungs, clearing it of waste energies. Breathing out, a dark cloud leaves my open mouth, taking with it the anchor the bills had dropped on my heart.

In seiza, I release myself into my breath, becoming my breath, then fading into – becoming – the universe.

‘Hello Michael.’

The voice fills my mind with warm, deep reverberations and pulses of white, blue and gold. Taking my time, I pull myself back into my body. My brain registers my palms on bare knees, the rough nylon of my shorts, the soft cotton of my shirt. I take a few breaths more, open my eyes and appraise my visitor.

If you saw him, you’d think he’s an old man who has miraculously retained a thick beard, bushy moustache, and a full head of hair. But he is no human. He’s a being that transcends the material plane. To see him, you’ll need a powerful ajna chakra, commonly known as the third eye. And if you could see him, you’d also see the corona of gold-tinged white light that perpetually surrounds him.

He likes changing his appearance often. I’ve seen him in smartly tailored business suits and in the robes of a warrior-king. But today he wears blue jeans and a white shirt. His clothes are plain, so devoid of brand labels and markings they are a brand unto themselves. His clothes nudge my eyes away from their plainness and centre them on his face, and in my peripheral vision I see his aura in its unfiltered glory, with its promise of warmth and Creation.

‘Hi, Yahweh. Just came from visiting some hippies?’

The god erupts into laughter, doubling over and clutching his sides. I laugh too, taking myself out of seiza and coming to my feet. Never let it be said the gods do not have a sense of humour.

‘Oh, Michael,’ he says finally, drawing himself back up. ‘Why do you think so?’

Yahweh’s gentle gaze meets my eyes. I suspect it’s a courtesy more than anything else. So I smile. Strictly out of courtesy.

Yahweh’s current form is no more substantial than a beam of sunlight, very much like a hologram. His body is composed of subtle energies. It’s the closest term the English language has that can describe the substance. It’s been called qi, ki, prana, and other names by other cultures and philosophies. It‘s basically the underlying essence of the universe. Like all other metaphysical beings, the material plane is not Yahweh’s native environment. He lives in some higher form of existence, what laymen would call ‘Heaven’. Once, I asked him how he visits the material world in person. He told me he projects a part of himself into a given location, though magicians can and often do smooth the process or magnify what does cross over through effective magic. It’s as good an explanation I’m likely to understand for a long time.

‘You could at least knock. When a man meditates, his mind goes to strange places. If he’s interrupted, not all of him comes back at once. Or intact. It could be detrimental to his wellbeing.’ And, consequently, yours, I don’t need to say.

Neither he nor I am speaking out loud. We’re sending thoughts to each other telepathically. It’s very useful for communicating with beings without physical speech organs.

Yahweh nods. ‘Agreed. And if he were interrupted by a loud, piercing sound, such as a telephone ringer, his mind would take even longer to come back.’

‘I’m going to get a phone call?’

The god smiles benignly. ‘Yesterday, you petitioned a certain Ceiling Cat for money sufficient to cover your bills. He listened.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘That wasn’t exactly supposed to be taken seriously.’

Yahweh chuckles quietly. ‘Be careful what you wish for, and to whom. Especially if you follow through with a magical working that attracts money to you.’

I sigh, shake my head. Trust a being born from a meme of humour to amuse himself this way. ‘What can you tell me about the client?’

‘Why don’t you ask yourself?’

My iPhone rings. I turn around, walk to my table and answer the call.

“Yeah, Sam,” I say.

Sam Ang was a repeat customer, and therefore a favourite customer. Usually, he hires me to work over his advertising agency. I like him enough that I conduct business with him over telephone and SMS instead of e-mail.

“Hey Mikey,” he says. “Got a couple of minutes to talk?”

“Let me guess: you’ve got a job for me.”

My mind’s eye sees Sam trying not to spit out a mouthful of mojito. “Hey, how did you know?”

“A cat told me.”

A long meow descends from the ceiling.

“A…cat?”

“Never mind. What’s the job?”

“My uncle has a problem. His daughter, Anna, ran away from home three weeks ago. My auntie and uncle want her to come back.”

I sigh, shake my head. People have a lot of misconceptions about magic. In my experience, only people who seek to understand the true nature of reality – the reality that lies beyond the physical senses – can come close to understanding magic. Magic is the manipulation of reality through metaphysical means, and nothing more. Magic isn’t a panacea. It doesn’t make money grow on trees, induce cockroaches to spill out of your enemies’ mouths, or let you shoot green death rays from a stick. And it sure can’t teleport a missing girl home.

“Have they filed a police report?”

“Yah. He lodged a missing persons report. The police said they’ll look for her, but nothing so far.”

“I’m a magician, Sam, not a private detective. I can’t bring the girl home; I don’t have the training or contacts to do that.”

Plus, my status in the eyes of the law is a little blurred, and I don’t need the clarity that comes from being on the wrong side of a prison door.

As my words leave my mouth, Yahweh sighs, and shakes his head.

“Can’t you do something? They’re getting desperate. And sixteen-year-old girls shouldn’t be out on the street so long. You should know that.”

Yeah, I know that too well. Sixteen. Christ. When I was sixteen, I spent some time on the streets of Singapore too. Look where I ended up now.

So I say, “I can cast a spell or two. They’ll make it more likely that she’ll come back home, or someone will find her and take her home. But I’m not going to look for her, know what I mean? I can’t.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. They’re at wits’ end, and they could sure use help like yours.”

Yahweh smiles, nods, and walks through my door.

I take a deep breath. “Set me up with them.”

–

Eventual Revolutions will be available through Smashwords at USD $3.99.

Here’s the cover art. Click for full image.

Kit Foster helped me design the cover. You can contact him here.

Executive Summary

Michael Chang, professional magician, is hard-up and needs cash fast. Accepting a job to return a missing girl home, he is soon faced with demons and gangsters, and has to confront the ghosts of his past.

Frequently (and not so frequently) Asked Questions

1. Will there be a print edition?

Not for the time being. It’s not cost-effective for me to run a print edition for Eventual Revolutions: either I make a loss, or I have to price the book at obscenely high prices.

That said, there will be a print edition. As soon as I have enough material to churn out a decent-sized book, I will be producing print editions of my stories.

2. Where can I buy it?

I’ll be publishing the story on Smashwords. When accepted to the SmashWords Premium Catalogue, it will be available on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel.

3. How much is it?

The novella will be priced at USD $3.99, though I’ll be running price experiments as time goes by.

4. Do you have a website or an author’s page?

Currently, it’s not economical for me to start a website. However, I do have a Facebook page, and I’ll be working on my profile page on Smashwords. Do tell all your friends about my page!

For the time being, my blog will be wearing two hats. In addition to writing about sociopolitical matters, I’ll also be discussing writing-related matters on this blog. Depending on how things work out, I might eventually switch to a new blog, use the website, or figure out something else.

5. What do you write about?

My writing tends to be cross-genre. In addition to mystic thrillers, I’m currently exploring military science fiction and occult noir. While Michael Chang is my flagship character, he won’t be my only series. To me, genre isn’t as important as the message. I think about what to write about, and then fit the genre and the setting to what I want to write.

That said, my writing does have several common themes. I write about violence, moral character, changing times, and human transcendence. Expect politics, current affairs, some familiar and not-so-familiar mythologies, and meditations on human nature and society.

6. What comes after Eventual Revolutions?

I have a number of story ideas in my head. Some chronicle the continuing adventures of Michael Chang. Others explore the impact of technology on society and human behaviour, explore a world populated by Lovecraftian horrors and Boschian nightmares, the future of war, things like that. Right now, I’ve finished the first draft of a short story that takes place a fortnight after Eventual Revolutions. In this story, Michael is asked to watch over a pair of young women, and his skills are soon put to the test. The story will (ideally) be published in late January/early February 2012. And the working title: Watchman.

Is this an overreaction? Absolutely.

Yes, feelings were hurt. People – not necessarily just Muslims – felt offended by their deeds. From their perspectives, to themselves, their feelings are completely justified.

But no harm was done.

These three remarks are one-off comments. None of the three are engaged in a calculated campaign to incite ill-will against Muslims. They are not engaged in harassing or bullying Muslims. None of the remarks they have made can reasonably be argued to incite others to violence. Donaldson Tan said he wanted to warn people that a certain image will attract a flame war – which probably means he acted in good faith. There are no race riots raging on the streets, and no sign that one will erupt any time soon. Nobody is using these comments as propaganda or to justify violence against anybody. Not even the terrorist comment, because it did not state, explicitly or otherwise, that violence against those children were justified.

For all the right or wrong of what the bloggers did, their comments did no harm. No potential or actual physical damage can be attributed to their remarks, and there is no sign that they harbour true malice towards Muslims. Malice, not prejudice – the difference being that the former is a will to violence and ill-doing, while the latter is thinking less of somebody else.

Feelings were hurt, but no harm has been done or will be done. This means that it should not be a police matter.

In democracies, laws that govern speech and expression have two purposes: preventing harm, and punishing harm. A man may spout all manner of angry words about Islam. He’s hurting feelings, but he’s not harming anyone. But a propagandist who spreads a message of violence towards Islam is inciting others to violence. That means he could harm someone through his deeds, and should rightfully be punished to minimise the damage done.

Using the law to prosecute someone for causing harm does social good. Using the law to prosecute someone for hurting feelings does social harm.

Firstly, it is not the job of the state to protect feelings in cases when hurt feelings do not cause harm. The state’s objective is to provide core services and protect the people from harm. There are all kinds of people living in the state, all of whom are unique. They have different experiences, mindsets and beliefs, which means they have different emotional responses to a given situation. The state can’t possibly account for them all. At the same time, the law must apply equally to everybody. Protecting hurt feelings is impossible: you need to accurately measure degrees of hurt, decide appropriate punishments, create objective tests for subjective feelings – all this in an environment where different people react differently to different things. The state cannot serve everybody by prosecuting people who hurt feelings. What the state can do is serve people at the level everybody has  in common: that of physical safety. If physical safety is not threatened, the state should not intervene.

Secondly, it drives undesirable elements underground. Calling down the police every time someone makes an offensive remark has a chilling effect. Very few people, if at all, will want to voice an opinion that would earn them police attention. This won’t eliminate racism or other negative -isms. It simply means that true believers will go elsewhere to share their opinions, out of public view, where they won’t be monitored and criticised. In the best case scenario, it will be that much harder to reach such people and persuade them to change their minds. So they’ll pop up again when the police crackdowns end – and their views would be hardened by the crackdowns, as they see themselves with The Ultimate Truth standing against a hostile, ignorant society. Do this too many times, and the racists and other -ists may just decide that the state poses a threat to them, and use violence against other people.  Using the power of the state needlessly, on cases where no harm is or will be done, is therefore counterproductive, and can backfire.

Thirdly, it strangles public discussion. This is in addition to people not wanting to speak up because they don’t want to get arrested. By using the power of the state to clamp down on ‘offensive’ points of view, the community is sending a message that those stances are not tolerated. The more often and more widely such moves are taken, the narrower the message becomes, to the point where the message is, effectively, there is just one acceptable point of view. We’re already seeing this in Singapore: it is completely unacceptable to say anything negative about any (government-defined) race or (mainstream) religion – say anything negative and you risk the hammer of the law coming down on you. Never mind that negative comments about races or religions in Singapore haven’t actually sparked any hate crimes. The trouble with having just one perspective causes public discussion to stagnate. That perspective is created, not through mutual consent, but through mutual fear. This means very few people will want to say anything that contradicts the One True View, which leads to stagnation. Locked in stasis, the mainstream view will not evolve to suit changing times. This is how autocrats, dictators and tyrants maintained power – not just by silencing everybody who disagrees, but by shaping the discourse so everybody thinks that the right course of action is to support the ruler.

Fourthly, this isn’t just about racism. It’s about rules of engagement on all topics. Someone’s point of view may hurt feelings. But it does not mean it is automatically wrong. Telling a bunch of good ol’ boys in the American Deep South, circa 1920, that all races are equal may hurt their feelings. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that statement is wrong. As my contact Rory Miller likes to say, people confuse emotion with truth. That is, many people believe something is right because they feel it is right – never mind the truth of the matter. By letting the state defend hurt feelings, such people will be allowed to dominate public policy debate by getting the police to arrest people who disagree with them.  This distorts freedom of speech and expression and causes stagnation of debate. It also allows people to push through pet agendas without having to consider reality, leading to waste of time, energy and money. We’ve already seen cases like this – minus the state punishing people who disagree – in Singapore’s Social Development Unit (Lee Kwan Yew’s gentle eugenics program), moral panics, and Satanist scares. By refusing to defend hurt feelings, the state is refusing to needlessly meddle in the marketplace of ideas, and allows people to speak truth to power.

If people’s feelings are or can be hurt by remarks, they can be handled without needing the police to intervene. This is what comment policies are for – to encourage and enforce a civilised discussion. This is what public discussions are for – to understand where people are coming from, and to generate consensus instead of imposing a point of view. This is what public statements are for – to tell people about your particular stance and to indicate what you feel is offensive and what is not. The police don’t and shouldn’t have to step in unless harm is imminent.

Freedom of speech and expression applies to everybody. Not just the people you agree with. If they offend you, you have the freedom to let them know exactly how you feel. If no harm is done, there’s no reason to call the police.

–

Post script

I received an e-mail from Donaldson Tan about his thoughts on the controversy surrounding him. With his permission, I’ve reproduced a section of the e-mail.

If I were a Muslim, this action would be appreciated by the Muslim community as being watchful and civic-minded. However, my action were interpreted otherwise as I am not a Muslim. It looks like to be a whistleblower over Muslim affairs, one has to be a Muslim.

You guys might recall Noor Firdaus. He posted Jason Neo’s photo that carried the remark “future young terrorists” on several Facebook pages which include The Online Citizen, Young PAP and the public pages of some MPs. He and I essentially did the same but I am being castigated online because I am not trusted to be a whistleblower by a certain faction of netizens.

The bit on censorship was subsequent reaction to the use of implied threat by my detractors. I held my ground against cyber-bullying of these individuals.It is essential to take note that I didn’t commit hate speech at all. I also stress that I didn’t author the controversial photo.

To be sure, the movement has done a number of things. It’s highlighted the socioeconomic problems faced by the majority of the population of the United States. It has inspired many other people to do the same, in their respective cities and nations. It is an ongoing experiment in leaderless, democratic collectivism. It allows people to express their rage at Wall Street and the banks and corporations they feel are responsible for the plight of millions of people around the world.

What it has not done is come anywhere close to doing anything about the situation it decries.

Occupy Wall Street claims it had been inspired by the Arab Spring. But there is a fundamental difference between the protests at Wall Street and the protests at Tahrir Square. It lies in the gulf between We are the 99% and Ash-shaʻb. yurīd. isqāṭ an-niẓām. The former is a slogan of identity: We are the 99%; we are the marginalised, the homeless, the jobless, the poor, the Have Nots. The latter is a declaration of intent: The people want to bring down the regime. The former is a signal of identity. The latter is a call to solidarity – and to action.

The Arab Spring had a purpose: to topple oppressive regimes and/or to initiate political reforms. This purpose was manifest in the protests, the demonstrations, and the fighting. The revolutions were a means to an end.

In the case of Occupy Wall Street, the protests were an end in of themselves. OWS has no official demands, no goals, no leadership. It is just an amorphous entity railing against Wall Street.

Goals are important. A movement that focuses on toppling a dictator will concentrate its efforts on removing him from power, and will gain support from people and organisations with similar goals. A movement that wishes to express anger at banks will focus on making themselves heard, and will be supported by people who also want to tell the big corporations that they are angry. Toppling a dictator will remove him from power, allowing the revolutionaries to seize the reins of the state and (hopefully) build a better tomorrow. Telling the banks you are angry just gives more work and stress to the employees who have to deal with public anger.

I don’t blame people for getting angry at Wall Street. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and it’s been this way for a long time. This article shows concisely the problems of the American economy: high unemployment, massive income disparities, and 1% of the country owns 42% of its wealth. Getting angry at Wall Street is understandable. But it won’t do anything.

The 1% did not get to own a controlling share in the nation’s wealth by caring about how people felt about them. They got there by caring about the bottom line. They are not democratically elected by the people, and derive no power from the people’s consent or approval. They aren’t going to care about what people think of them, and see little to no purpose in caring for the 99%.

(Sure, there’s a fair number of rich people who do give of their time, money and energy to help the unfortunate – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation comes to mind – but they tend to be the exception to the rule.)

Anger is a means to an end, not an end. The heart of OWS is rage. It is rage directed at Wall Street. Instead of using this rage to do something useful, OWS continues to express continued outrage at the banks. Instead of sending a message to Wall Street in the language of money, OWS sends messages in the language of frustration – messages that the big businesses have no incentive to receive. Instead of giving direction to popular will, OWS is content to let somebody else dictate the national political agenda – which includes the big banks and their lobbyists, who are busy convincing the politicians that OWS is fundamentally irrelevant.

My sympathies lie with OWS, but I am not going to support OWS. I am not going to any Occupy-related event to show support the cause. I am not going to spread their messages. I am not going to post anything they say. I am not going to treat OWS as relevant.

What I am going to do is take action. To me, wealth is a means to an end. Having money provides options. I don’t care about being rich; I just want to be able to live without having to worry about the bills. So I have structured my life around this.

I’m a writer. That means I create my job, like every entrepreneur. Employability is now irrelevant from my perspective. I’m changing my life, slowly but surely, so I can make real money out of writing instead of having to depend on somebody else for my income. I don’t have much talent outside of writing, so I hire people to help me – people, not big corporations. I keep my money in a bank that (for now, at least) doesn’t play funny games with my money. I don’t use my credit card. My monthly income is in the high triple digits, expenditure in the low double digits, and every month the gap between the two increases. I plan my purchases months in advance. I don’t take any loans. In short, what I will do is take control of my life, and live on my terms – nobody else’s, and especially not the banks’.

Not everybody can come close to this. Not everybody is fortunate enough to do this, or even want to. But what people can do is to reduce their dependency on the global finance system and the corporations that run it. If they want the banks to fall in line, they need to send messages to the banks in a language that they will understand. Such as petitioning the government for increased regulations, pulling out money from the big banks, and boycotting corporations. That is something Wall Street will care about. Not protests in a park.

I am not the 99%. I am not the 1%. I will not be pigeonholed into either category. I will not spend my energy on fruitless endeavours. I will use it to make my life better. I am that I am, and I will be what I will be.

Ten years ago, I was just another nobody, hashing out so-called stories on tired second-hand computers. Today I stand at the threshold of authordom. My story is written and polished, and just about ready to go. I am weeks, maybe days away from publishing. I’m just waiting on the final edition of the cover art, and a final edit of the manuscript. Sure, I’ve published fiction before. But this time it’s different. This time, I’m doing this as a professional fiction author. No more free web fiction. No more practice pieces. No more pseudonyms and anonymous pieces. This story will be published under my name, and it will be priced at fair value. It’s going to be a whole new world.

I was a writer long before I was a blogger. I haven’t made much mention of it much here, or on my previous blog, but fiction is my calling. Has been for the past ten years. While I spent the last five years writing about politics on the Internet, my identity as a blogger has always been subordinate to that as a writer. It’s always been amusing to see that people think of me primarily as a blogger or a student, maybe both, and almost never as a writer. But then, I don’t draw attention to my fiction works. Not when they were still unformed, still clawing to express something deeper, something truer, than what my skills allowed me to produce. With the coming of my story, I will redefine my public self. This time as myself.

There will be changes on the horizon. This blog will change, as it has changed with me over the years. I can’t afford to set up a separate website solely for my books, and I don’t think sales from the story will cover the costs. Therefore, I have to rely on this blog, and the other social media I use (Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter) to market my works. More than that, I need it to represent who I am.

This blog once covered my views on politics. Now, it will cover a broader spectrum of topics. Including my writing, of course, but it will also include other topics of personal interest. Off the top of my head, I can think of writing, self-publishing, business, and philosophy. Previously, I didn’t have enough time or motivation to blog more than once a month. With the coming of the story, I suppose I will have an incentive to blog more often. I’m hoping I’ll actually have the time and energy to blog more often, too.

I’ll be using the blog to sell my stories too. I’m thinking of posting links on the sidebar, and creating a new page specifically for my fiction. This story, this novella, won’t be a one-off event. It’s only the beginning of my career as a professional writer. I’m already working on my next story, in fact. And it’ll be just one of many to come. Once I thought I could win a few awards and make a boatload of money. Now, I’ll settle for being true to myself.

Publishing the story won’t produce very many short-term changes. It won’t make me an overnight sensation, or propel me to the ranks of the nouveau riche. It probably won’t even be a blip on the literary radar. But it will mark the start of some long-term changes. Making money from writing is just one of them. I don’t pretend to see everything on the horizon, but I think I’m ready to face what will come. The road I’ve walked for the past decade is coming to a close. I feel the wheel of change rolling in my blood, spinning a new path from the end of the old. I can’t make out the shape of the new road from here – which merely means I’ll have to figure it out as I go along. So it’s time to spin the wheel, and start walking down this new road.

And as for the title of the story: Eventual Revolutions.

On the morning of 11 September 2001, I was daydreaming. While my teacher tried to teach some English concept or other, I let my mind wander through a wilderness of words mated with moving images. Schoolwork meant little to me; I had embraced the art of storytelling, and where others sought grades, I quested for the next big story. The real world was irrelevant, my writing was everything. I was all of twelve years old, and I was ready to be The Next Big Thing in writing.

When night fell, a friend called me, telling me there was an accident at the World Trade Center in New York. I thought little of it – I had homework to do – and hung up. When I finished my work, I turned on Cable News Network in time to watch the Twin Towers ablaze. Reporters and news anchors from CNN, BBC, and every other news channel I could find were talking about the same thing: two planes flew into the Twin Towers, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a Pennsylvania field. A few minutes later, the Towers collapsed.

I was twelve then. And already I knew the world had changed forever.

My school officially did nothing. There was no commentary, no announcements, nothing about the deadliest act of terror in human history. My teachers would only refer to it in passing. We were all children, and to us, passing the examinations was more important than three thousand deaths half a world away. Except for me.

George Bush declared his War on Terror. Though I didn’t know it then, I started mine.

The moment I found some free time, I booted up my computer. For the first time, I started Microsoft Word. Not for homework, for myself. I opened a reference book, played that little projector in my had, and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

Over the weeks and months, the story came to life. In the near future, Earth is invaded by aliens. Once they called Earth home, before leaving for the stars. Now they are returning to reclaim what they saw was their world. Their preferred strategy was to attack population centres and arm local insurgent groups, in order to intimidate global governments and populations. In response, a secret organisation deployed a small army of special forces personnel to destroy the alien menace. Employing the technologies of the day after tomorrow, they could go anywhere and do anything, free from government oversight, their names and activities censored in the press. The aliens recruited humans to do their bidding, with one of them rising to lead the campaign against Earth. That human was a former US Army soldier. The story ended with the death of the alien leader – but the war would still go on.

I completed the novel in late 2002. Looking back, I wonder at the parallels with the real world. Under the Umayyad dynasty, the Caliphate ruled over much of the known world, with territories in Hispania, North Africa, Persia and the Indus Valley in Pakistan. The power of the Caliphate would shrink over ensuing dynasties, until Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first President of Turkey, abolished the role of the Caliph. al-Qaeda would claim spiritual succession in the 21st century, and attempt to instate a new caliphate. al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations attacked civilians to intimidate governments. Intelligence agencies and special forces around the world stood at the front lines of this new War on Terror. Militaries – conventional and otherwise – would employ some of the technology I described in my stories in the real world. States pledged to cooperate against terrorism. Osama bin Laden, once trained by the Americans to fight the Soviets during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, embraced the way of terror while cloaked in religious zeal, and became the de facto head of global terror. He was killed on 2 May 2011, and the War on Terror continues to this day.

I was just twelve years old then. I didn’t even do much research for that novel. It was never meant to be a metaphor, only an action-packed novel. It was more Rainbow Six (book and video game series) and X-COM: Enemy Unknown than the War on Terror. I spent more time writing firefights than developing plot or structure. I wrote the story completely by ear, doing only enough research to get some of the technology right. I studied only enough military tactics to describe close quarters battle, not military and intelligence strategy. I didn’t even look into the history of terrorism or Osama bin Laden. All I did was sit at my desk, day after day, and bang out a few hundred (or thousand) words on my manuscript each time.

Thinking about it now sends chills down my spine. I don’t call myself prescient. I didn’t see any of this coming. But I was, and am, a writer, and the events of 11 September had indelibly marked my work. For better or for worse, I grew up when the Towers fell.

I would write more stories, and those would more explicitly deal with the War on Terror. I would do more research, pore over biographies and case studies and white papers. From where I am now, it seems that every generation in recent history is defined by war.

The wars of my grandparents’ were industrial wars between the ancient nation-states of the Old World – of the European, and later Asian, powers with many centuries of history behind them. Historians, pundits, and students came up with many reasons: resources, expansion, ideology, revenge, national security. To my grandparents, war was about powerful states attempting to define the future of Europe, and the world. When both wars ended, the balance of power swung towards the great powers of the New World: the young nation known as the United States of America in the west, and the experiment called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the east. The end of the World Wars was supposed to have ushered a New World Order, a time of peace, prosperity and international cooperation.

There was a New World Order. Just not the one many people wanted. This time there was a new war. One side claimed to fight for freedom and democracy, the other for freedom and communism. They didn’t directly engage each other, though, so history called it the Cold War. The Western allies competed with the Eastern bloc for influence over the rest of the world, engaging in small wars and propping up useful political leaders. Historians, pundits and students came up with many reasons: resources, expansion, ideology, revenge, national security. The Cold War saw the New World Order tread slowly, surely, ever-so-inevitably towards nuclear annihilation, before taking a few steps back. The defining war of my parents’ generation was the Vietnam War, in which a conventional army was frustrated and eventually defeated by guerrillas. In their generation, the big wars were about a superpower moulding the world in its image through force of arms. When the Soviet Union died on Christmas  in 1991, the world heaved a collective sigh of relief. The United States stood alone. While Moscow sought to impose order through tanks in its sphere of influence and foreign aid outside it, Washington sought to make money with friendly nations and send soldiers only in troublesome faraway states. It was something the world could live with. The end of the Cold War was supposed to have ushered a time of peace, prosperity, and international cooperation. Military action would be limited to punishing rogue regimes, aiding the downtrodden and keeping the peace in less fortunate lands.

Then the Twin Towers fell.

The powerful militaries of the Old and New Worlds were mobilised and brought to bear against a faceless, stateless, amorphous foe that based its tactics on guerrilla warfare. Historians, pundits and students came up with many reasons for this brave new war: misunderstanding, resources, expansion, revenge, national security. One side says it fights for civilisation, freedom from brutal dictators, and democracy. The other says it fights for civilisation, freedom from foreign oppressors, and Allah. Both sides are struggling to impose their vision on the rest of the world.

The face of battle changes. The soul of war doesn’t.

But there is one critical difference between the wars of my forebears and the war I live: the conditions for victory.

The industrial wars of the First and Second World Wars had a concrete endgoal: the defeat of the opposing alliance. Victory would come when the political leadership sued for peace following the destruction of sufficient military forces and the capture of strategic territory.

The Cold War had a definite endpoint: the demise of the opposing political system. One side could declare victory if the other’s political infrastructure collapsed under the weight of revolution and reform. Or if both parties were vapourised in nuclear fire.

While the industrial wars and the Cold War were conflicts between states, the War on Terror is a war on an idea that dates to the Sicarii Zealots of the 1st century. The basic notion of this War on Terror is the belief that one can use bombs and bullets to kill and intimidate something that has no physical existence. This belief is patently ridiculous, but it continues still. And so long as it remains, there is no end point in sight. Now, all it takes is proof of  involvement with terrorism, or credible threats against national or regional security, and the drums of war will begin to roll. The casus belli of the Iraq War was a continuation of the War on Terror, justified by claims that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and would consequently threaten regional stability. The Israelis invaded the Gaza Strip to prosecute Hamas terrorists, and Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah. The War on Terror has spread from a concerted campaign against al-Qaeda and its allies to assorted terrorists calling themselves Muslims, with no end in sight.

Bush outlined the goals of the War on Terror in 2003. But Iraq had little, if anything, to do with international terrorist groups. Saddam Hussein had no reason to tempt the might of the United States. But the proposal to invade Iraq was packaged as part of the War on Terror anyway – and the American public approved. If the invasion of Iraq could have been passed off as part of the War on Terror, I wonder what else will.

I’ve seen arguments about justice, national security, and international stability to justify the War on Terror. Some of them may even have merit. Regardless, the War on Terror continues, and there is no end in sight. It’s difficult enough to destroy al-Qaeda as it is. The death of Osama bin Laden merely marked a new chapter in the War on Terror, not the epilogue. The victims of 9/11 may have been avenged, but they remain dead, and a war is still fought in their names.

A war without focus is a war without a clear objective, and without a clear objective, blood and treasure would be spent pursuing goals that may or may not lead anywhere. Current enhanced security measures are better remembered for invading privacy and causing inconvenience than defeating terrorist threats – and for failing counterterrorism security exercises. The war in Iraq, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, and American unilateralism have been packaged as proof that the United States is hellbent on oppressing Muslims and conquering the world, inspiring many youths to join the nearest terrorist cell. Or to start their own.

I thought the War on Terror was supposed to make us safer.

Terrorism is an idea. You can’t kill an idea. Not with the weapons of war. I think what can realistically be done about terrorism is to reduce it to a manageable problem. I don’t think it can be eradicated: it is an idea and a strategy, which has worked in varying degrees. Pandora’s box is open, and there is no closing it. I’m no expert, and what I can offer are arguments repeated elsewhere.

The War on Terror would probably be won with soft power, not hard. The use of hard power, of military and security forces to crack down on terrorists, should be used sparingly, only to seek justice for victims, or prevent attacks. This would tend to discourage terrorists from mounting attacks, without giving them any more reason to attack you or any more ammunition to draw recruits and money.

The real focus should be on presenting an alternative to terrorism. Different people in different people have different reasons for joining terrorist groups; they must be given reasons to stay away. True believers become martyrs out of religious conviction – they need to learn that no religion condones violence against civilians. Politicals take up arms to express dissent – the people and the state must cooperate to air differences and meet the needs of the people. The poor sign up with insurgents to make money for their families – create legitimate jobs and make terrorism an unappealing career path. We need to understand why people turn to terrorism, look at personal, societal, and national causes, and systematically cut off means and motivations to embrace terrorism while simultaneously build superior alternatives to terror. Every culture and region have different circumstances, and solutions must be tailored to meet them. It won’t eradicate terrorism. Not by a long shot. But it might just reduce terrorism to a manageable problem, and take the peoples of the world to a time when they need not obsess about terrorism and worry when the next big attack will come.

But I’m no expert. Make of it as you will.

It’s been ten years on since 11 September. For better or for worse, 9/11 has left its mark on me through the way I write, through what I write. The war of my generation seems to be the War on Terror, and if it continues the way it has been, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a forever war.

Looks like we’re living in interesting times.