Thoughts of death have become Lee Kuan Yew's constant obsession.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The state owned and controlled Singapore newspaper the Straits Times, just as the entire mass media is state owned and controlled in Singapore; has this story "Retirement means death, don't stop working: MM Lee" Jan 11, 2008.

In it Lee Kuan Yew says what he does to keep alive as long as possible. The trick, he says is to keep active and challenged with work. And to cycle, swim among other forms of exercise which he does. A sedentary life he says, will be the end.

Lee Kuan Yew is 84 years old. In September, he will be 85. We all become old and die. But in Lee Kuan Yew's case, he appears almost obsessed with thoughts of death. He fears death. He appears desperately trying to prolong life, as if every minute counts. He appears afraid to die! The question is why?

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a great Russian novelist. Among his books is the acclaimed "Crime and Punishment". The story is that of a young man who kills an old woman, a woman deaf dumb and evil. Evil because she was a moneylender in St Petersburg, his town, who lent money to peasants at enormous rates of interest. She had ruined the lives of many. But she was rich. The young man killed the woman and stole the money. He reckoned that killing her was no loss to society. She was an evil old woman. On the other hand, the money would help his family and send his sister to college. The benefit to society by her death outweighed the crime. So he killed her and took her money.

The young man, after the murder was progressively overcome by guilt. His conscience was killing him day by day. Eventually overcome by the sense of guilt, he goes to the police and confesses. And in confessing he becomes whole again. He is relived. The burden on his back is gone.

Dostoevsky's point is this. Man has to account to his conscience. And conscience is actually a living Hell, much worse than any Hell after death. I think in Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's case, he fears death. It is his conscience troubling him. He is afraid to die. He fears what lies ahead. He fears for his children; what will become of them. Will a truly representative government come about in Singapore? Will his children have to flee the country with their money. Will the future government of Singapore apply for their extradition to Singapore? Will they have to stand trial? Will they have to go to jail?

Then again it is the evil that he has done. What about his detaining Lim Chin Seong under the ISA, torturing him, his suffering under solitary confinement, his being injected with psychotropic drugs, the electric shocks, the beatings and the suffering that he endured for many years. Was it necessary? Was it for the good of Singapore? Or was it for himself?

Many others. What about the suffering of Chia Thye Poh the longest serving prisoner of conscience in the world! Why was it necessary for Lee Kuan Yew to punish a man so?

What about JB Jeyaretnam? What about Dr. Chee Soon Juan? Was all this done in the name of the Republic of Singapore or was it done for himself? What about the innocent men and women who were labelled Marxist Conspirators and tortured?

Is Lee Kuan Yew now, at the age of 84 suffering pangs of conscience? Is he the young man in Dostoyevky's Crime and Punishment?

This deliberate attempt to do all this for the purpose of prolonging life will have a negative effect. He is clearly afraid of death. He has created a situation in Singapore where the country is unable to continue upon his death. So he fears death. For himself. For his family and for his country.

In fact this obsessive fear on his part; in fact has the opposite effect. In his desperate attempt to prolong life even by the minute, his end approaches even faster.

As for any other man, I am sorry for him. Human decency requires me to say so. Poor man.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: gopalnair@us-immigrationlaw.com

A comment about my codemnation of Hri Kumar and other Singapore senior counsels and my response.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A comment has been received from an anonymous commenter "Also a lawyer" about my condemnation of the Senior Counsel award to Hri Kumar and others. This comment was sent to another recent post of mine in this blog headed

Saturday, January 12, 2008 A letter from a Malaysian in Germany.

I have cut and pasted it again here as a new post. My response to it follows.

"Also a lawyer said..."
My close friend, SC Michael Hwang, the current President of the Law Society, has read your "blasphemy" about Hri Kumar and others.I believe the society leaders will discuss your slanderous accusations in their next council meeting this month and decide on the appropriate course of action. You will know soon whether any action will be taken. If nothing is heard by end of this month, you can assume that they have decided to ignore your slander like as if they have never heard of it. Cheers!
January 12, 2008 4:51 PM

My response to it is as follows:

Saturday, January 12, 2008
Gopalan Nair said...

To "Also a lawyer",
First I notice you refuse to identify yourself. Why? Are you afraid of me or you afraid of Lee Kuan Yew?

Second, if you say that the Council is going to wait until the end of the month to discuss this; then you are obviously not taking it seriously! From now until the end of the month, thousands more would have read my account of the pathetic Hri Kumar and your legal profession in Singapore.

Instead, should you not immediately take out an injunction to compel me to remove my blog post forthwith? So that no more harm is done, if you think I have done harm?

As for your friend Mr. Michael Hwang, I know him personally. He was my pupil master in Allen And Gledhill when I returned from England. I regret it very much. Had I known that he was just as any other typical cowardly lawyer in Singapore, afraid to uphold the law because of fear for what Lee Kuan Yew will do to him, I would never have accepted him as a pupil master. JB Jeyaretnam would have made a great pupil master.

Michael Hwang is not a lawyer in the real sense of the word. If he was, he would have stood up to the erosion of the rule of law by the Lee Kuan Yew Administration in Singapore; by protesting the use of the courts by Lee Kuan Yew to eliminate political opponents. By remaining silent while Lee Kuan Yew misuses the law to bankrupt his political opponents, your friend Michael Hwang also stands condemned as a thoroughly dishonest, and unprincipled lawyer.

When your council decides to discuss this finally at the end of the month, you can add my condemnation of your friend Michael Hwang to the list in your agenda as to what to do.

By the way, something that is defamatory in print is libel, not slander. I think Michael Hwang can explain this to you.

You may try to pretend that you have never heard of what I wrote; you can pretend as much as you want. It is not going to help you. The fact remains the public, and especially the legal profession in Singapore has read it. That is the purpose and intent of my writing.

And you can expect more to come.

Thanks

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Fremont, California
January 12, 2008 7:12 PM

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: gopalnair@us-immigrationlaw.com

Latest. No response from Mr. Hri Kumar and others.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today is Saturday January 12, 2008 in Fremont, Northern California.

In my recent blog post on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 The Singapore Legal Profession. An odd place where dishonesty is rewarded and integrity punished!, I had deliberately and with intention accused Mr. Hri Kumar and 5 other lawyers of dishonesty. I have said they have betrayed their profession and the law.

My blogpost was not written in jest. It was written as a lawyer and about them and the state of law in Singapore.

Any other self respecting lawyer would have taken umbrage if such statements were untrue. My blog, as you are aware, is read widely not only in Singapore but also around the world. In particular it is read by almost the entire legal profession in Singapore.

I am as you are aware, an attorney in good standing at the California Bar.

Up till now, I have not heard of any action by any of them against me for what I wrote. This by itself speaks volumes about them and the state of the law in Singapore.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: gopalnair@us-immigrationlaw.com

A letter from a Malaysian in Germany

Dear Mr. Gopalan Nair,

Thank you for your good article. I´m a Malaysian Indian living in Germany. I have a daughter studying in California.
Keep up your political courage. As you already know, all Malaysians are rising up for their rights back home in Malaysia. It will gradually bring success for all. We have started the fight and will only end when justice is brought back again. We hope the same will happen in Singapore.

Keep it up Mr. Nair. We need civil courgae.


Balachandran Veerayan
Steinenbronn
Germany

A letter from a Singaporean

Good Day Mr. Nair,

Greetings from Singapore. I've read your articles in your blogspot and I must say, I truly admire and salute you. Thank you for those awesome articles. Thank you for breathing life into my soul. You don't know how great it feels like when you know you are not alone. Hope you don't mind me linking yours from my personal webpage: www.1stpressure.multiply.com. I had wanted to give a review on your articles but afraid my frail words do you and your articles injustice. Keep hope alive! By the way, I wanted to write a blog article with regards to our president, but dropped the idea halfway somehow. To me, Singapore's presidents should be called Presence instead...coz that's what they do literally...being present here and there, occasionally!

Regards,
Rashid

Lee Kuan Yew's First World Country. Or Alice in Wonderland.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Lee Kuan Yew wrote a book "From Third World to First" meaning Singapore. This is what Singapore is. Is it a first world country?

The Singapore constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression. In fact none exist. Dr. Chee is presently undergoing a trial in court for doing just that. That is for allegedly making a speech. To speak you need a license. He did not have it.

The Constitution of Singapore claims there is rule of law. There is none. All judges are appointed at the pleasure of Lee Kuan Yew and removed if he is displeased. In order to please Lee Kuan Yew and to keep their jobs, they always punish Lee’s opponents. Regardless of any law.

All newspapers and news media is wholly owned and controlled by the Lee Kuan Yew government. Therefore they publish only politically correct news or rather propaganda. The head of the executive committee in the Straits Times, the largest newspaper is Miss Chua Mui Hoong. She is an intelligence of officer with Internal Security Department, the government intelligence agency in Singapore whose main job is to arrest and convict political opponents and detain them indefinitely without trial. As well as her job as intelligence officer, she doubles as an editor of the paper.

The Singapore government claims that their GDP is several millions or billions and that the per capita income is US$20,000 or more. This gives the impression that Singaporeans are rich. Nothing is further from the truth. Singapore has a few millionaires from abroad, who are parking their money there. Most of it is illegal money. Singapore is a money laundering center used by Burmese drug lords and Indonesian criminals who defrauded banks in Indonesia. These have placed their illegal millions in Singapore banks.

The money of these criminals inflates the GDP of the country as a whole. In fact about half of Singaporeans can barely survive and many are unable to pay even their utility bills. Many of these people are just above the poverty line or below. Since Singapore does not provide any reasonable welfare payments for the underprivileged, they are given a few hindered dollars a month and asked to fend for themselves. The government is not interested in these people. Lee Kuan Yew believes that it is their own fault that they have not succeeded in life.

As most Singaporeans live in high rise government built flats, it makes it convenient for suicides. All they have to do is to jump off their high rise apartments. By this method, suicide is guaranteed. Recently with the government having built the Mass Rapid Transport rail system, people have been jumping onto oncoming trains to kill themselves. At the latest figures, there are at least 2 suicides a day. Most of those who die this way come from the half of Singapore who lives in poverty or just above the poverty line. The government is not bothered by these suicides. They may even be glad these people have gone. Lee Kuan Yew only wants successful people. In his thinking, mediocre people have no right to live anyway. Hitler too thought that way. Hitler killed disabled people.

Singapore has CPF. It stands for Central Provident Fund. It is meant to give you retirement savings when you reach 55. Lee has now declared that it is no longer going to pay anything when you reach 55. Lee wants people to continue working until they die. He believes retirement is a bad thing. Retirement he says, kills people. He has stated he does not intend to retire. He expects others to follow his example. Yesterday, he said in a Straits Times interview that at his age of 84, he still cycles, swims and does rock climbing among other vigorous feats on a daily basis. Although he has not said that he intends to run the marathon in under 2 hours, he may very well be planning that! But looking at his picture he looked more a frail old man. Whether it was a case of dementia or other mental illness, it is hard to say. The report did not make clear whether he wanted Singaporeans to exercise like him.

There is no minimum wage law or anti discriminatory laws in Singapore. Any employer can discriminate against Malays and Indians in employment by a simple expedient. By requiring them to have knowledge of Chinese. There was one case where an Indian knew spoken Chinese. He was still refused the job when the employer then required a new qualification, knowledge of written Chinese! I have heard another case where even though the non Chinese knew both spoken and written Chinese he was still refused the job! He did not know the principles of Confucianism and Taoism by heart!

Older people even though fit and well are still refused jobs. They are told they are too old. There was one case where the man was 60 and very fit. He was still denied the job. He could not run the mile in under 4 minutes!

These older people in Singapore who are kicked out of their jobs do not have any retirement. The CPF is not given to them. In any case, the do not have any CPF funds anyway. The government makes house prices so expensive that they have used all their money in CPF to pay for the house. When they are old, they have no retirement, no savings and no job. So the older Singaporeans end up as toilet cleaners and food stall table cleaners. You can see them every where in Singapore. Their ages range from 65 to 95. Even if they can hardly stand, they must work. Otherwise they starve. According to Lee Kuan Yew, if they are suffering, it is their own fault for not becoming an offshore banker!

In Singapore you can hardly hear anyone talking politics. They are silent. Government informers are everywhere and are all ears. It has been known that simple people who have been discovered criticizing the government have suddenly descended into all sorts of problems. They suddenly lost their jobs and their promotions. Many of them have had no choice other than the only job available to such cases. Toilet cleaners. So when you see a younger man who is a toilet cleaner, you can probably guess why. He must have criticized the government and was found out.

In Singapore you cannot chew gum. If you did, it will be confiscated and you will be punished. I do not know whether the police will use the gum in your mouth as evidence. If so, how do they compel you to spit it out? And if you refused, can Singapore cop use force to pry open your mouth, stick their finger in it, to force it out! I do not know how they do it, in this first world country! I shudder to think.

Singapore claimed recently that it has become a more liberal country. And to prove it they have now allowed bar top dancing. It is like this. Girls or young women are first required to remove their upper garments. As for lower garments, they can keep them on, but it has to be flimsy. In other words, not too much clothing. Something like a bikini is preferred. They then are asked to stand on top of a bar and to dance. As to what kind of dance is not specified. I do not believe that ballet is one of the acceptable dances but other kinds are permissible. Dances like the samba, the gig, salsa or disco is fine I think. But I am not too sure. I think bars may hand a list of acceptable dances. I am not sure.

The dancing is accompanied by music. Men are encouraged to surround the bar and admire the women. Also perhaps their dancing proficiency. I am not sure if the men are allowed to touch the women but I understand that different establishments have different rules. Someone had asked what this bar top dancing had even remotely to do with the government's claim of liberalizing the country; but the question remains unanswered.

I understand that recently Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, who is a minister in Lee Kuan Yew's government, had discouraged this rather unusual trick of bar top dancing. He correctly pointed out the women may fall off the bar table and injure themselves, as well as others in the fall; the boyfriends of the women on the bar top may start fighting with each other and murder and mayhem may ensue; and all other manner of untold problems may come about. I understand that the women in Singapore, have decided to take the advice of the minister, like they always do in Singapore, and have stopped the practice altogether. I do not know whether Lee Kuan Yew will have any other equally unconventional means of liberalizing Singapore, but we will have to wait and see.

Many educated people are leaving Singapore for other countries. They no longer are able to live in this first world country anymore. In their place, Lee Kuan Yew brings in Chinese babies from the People's Republic of China accompanied by their mothers. Lee Kuan Yew, for reasons best known to him, has decided that only the mothers of these Chinese babies can come. Since both the child and mother have no benefit of English, the mother has no choice but to work in establishments such as massage parlors and Chinese eating houses. Very often because of the refusal to admit the father to Singapore, these People Republic of China children are either illegitimate or from broken homes. This is unavoidable, since no self respecting father would permit his child to be taken away from him. Surely.

In Singapore when the parties are identified, litigants already know the outcome of a lawsuit even before they step into court. JB Jeyaretnam has lost all the cases that Lee Kuan Yew has brought against him. So has Dr. Chee Soon Juan. The judges are required to find in favor of Lee Kuan Yew. Otherwise they will lose their jobs.

Children and students in Singapore classrooms do not speak up. They are afraid of their teachers. If they question too much, they will be labeled troublemakers. This will mean the end of their careers. Students too, like their teachers and parents always keep their mouths shut. They sincerely believe that talking is only silver. Silence is golden.

The Malays are now running a race to keep up their population numbers . They are having more babies. But no matter how many babies they have, Lee Kuan Yew brings in a hundred times more babies with their single mothers from Communist China. This is troubling the Malays and Indians but they are afraid to complain. They fear being arrested and locked up without trial by Miss Chua Mui Hoong the Intelligence Officer.

I wonder how Mr. Lee Kuan Yew has decided that it is a first world country. It is more like Alice in Wonderland!

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: gopalnair@us-immigrationlaw.com

Interruption

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful to all the readers of Singapore Dissident. I believe many like what I write. But now, I have to spend more time with my profession. Although I enjoy this very much and I can see a purpose for it, I must slow down for the moment. I will write but not as often. In any case, my views are already in the public domain.

At least most certainly a post a week.

Thank you again ladies and gentlemen. A toast for Singapore.

Happy New Year
Gopalan Nair
Fremont, California