Fear of Harry lingers?

Like the smell of stale perfume? Or stale beer? Or tobacco? Or sweat?

I tot the above, when I read this on Facebook earlier this week

For those who are itching to see the move: To Singapore, with Love, but cannot make it to JB, you might want to pick up my book: Dissident Voices, on sale at Kino. Several of the personalities in To Singapore, with Love are featured in my book… Lim Chin Siong, Dr Lim Hock Siew (Operation Coldstore), Tan Wah Piow, Vincent Cheng (Marxist Conspiracy).
In my interview with The Independent Singapore, I said I did have some initial worry about writing about people who had incurred…

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Replaying the dissident voice

An interview with the author of Dissident Voices, Clement Mesenas How and why did you write the book? I was commissioned by the publishers, who told me that they had a grant for such a book. The idea was that that such a book would…

theindependent.sg

I reviewed the book here. Aimed at students, given that there is nothing not factual in the book, and that the author was a strike leader (he had balls despite being a ST journalist), I find it strange that he said he had some fear when he wrote the book. Either he was exaggerating, trying to puff his book or himself (ST journalists are very insecure), or the fear of one LKY was at the back of his mind. He became an adult at a time when the ISD was pretty busy*, and when LKY was intimidating and bullying, opponents and the voters. Only the Malayan ruling elite (Chinese and Malay) were not impressed by his behaviour: uncouth and unseemly. And S’pore got kicked out of M’sia, putting an end to his ambition of being PM of M’sia..

Seriously, given the way the govt is trying to ensure that only the “right” narrative is available for public consumption, we should only be interested in the “wrong” narratives, i.e. those banned by the “govt”.

Once upon a time, “banned” products were not easily accessible. But today there’s the internet (and YouTube).

Mind you, accessing the not “right” books are a bit more problematic than films. But alternative narrative authors should embrace e-publishing, Cheaper to produce and easier to access, if “banned’. And being “banned” is free, good publicity.

—–

*Another strike leader (another friend) had been “questioned” by the ISD because his dad was an oppo politician.

Why ISD detainees won’t be sending LKY birthday greetings any time soon

From the accounts of Dr Lim Hock Siew, Ms Teo Soh Lung, Francis Seow and others, the ISD used the following techniques

standing against a wall for hours
hooding
subjection to noise
sleep deprivation
very little food and drink.

These are rough, very rough, though to be fair not as rough as “waterboarding” (a US favourite) or electric pods on genitals a Latin American, Russian favourite).

The ISD methods are very British techniques. I’ll let what a Brazilian interrogator sent to the UK learnt:

“The best thing … was psychological torture*. When a person was in a secret place, it was faster to obtain information. He also studied in other places but he said England was the best place to learn.”

Prof Glaucio Soares interviewed more than a dozen of Brazil’s top generals back in the 1990s. Several of them told him they sent officers to Germany, France, Panama and the US to learn about interrogation but they praised the UK as having the best method.

“The Americans teach, but the English are the masters in teaching how to wrench confessions under pressure, by torture, in all ways. England is the model of democracy. They give courses for their friends,” he was told by Gen Ivan de Souza Mendes – an interview recounted in the book Years of Lead which he co-authored with two other Brazilian academics.

Gen Aoyr Fiuza de Castro said the British recommend interrogating a prisoner when he was naked as it left him anguished and depressed, “a state favourable to the interrogator”.

The UK was apparently seen as having effective practices as it had faced a serious insurgency in Malaya up until 1960 and had latterly honed its techniques in Northern Ireland.

The method, using sensory deprivation coupled with high stress, has come to be known as the “Five Techniques”. These were:
standing against a wall for hours
hooding
subjection to noise
sleep deprivation
very little food and drink.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27625540

Maybe the most effective is isolation http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds. Problem from perspective of interrogators is that this technique requires time, something they are often short off.

So can one really blame the ISD detainees, and the many S’poreans who refuse to wish LKY “Happy birthday”? Not that he would care. Like Darth Vader and his emperor, and other Sith Lords, LKY thrives on the hatred of those who hate him.

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*O’Brien  in Orwell’s 1984 said

“By itself,” he said, “pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable —  something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.”

This could have been a British intelligence grandee or Special Brnch officer talking. Remember that Orwell was in the Burmese police force when Burma was British. And the British ruled an unruly empire, think Palestine, Egypt, India and Ireland.

Related highly commended video http://singaporerebel.blogspot.sg/2014/08/the-nature-of-paps-governance-is.html

“How’s Harry doing?”

Castro* was asking Xi Jinping, earlier this yr when Xi visited Cuba.

He went on,”S’pore’s an exemplar for our way of doing things, a one-party state that is economically successful. According to leading Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, The country is usually known for its free trade policy and welcoming attitude towards foreign investments, but it has the most heavily state-owned economy, except for some oil states. State-owned enterprises produce 22% of Singapore’s national output, operating in a whole range of industries – not just the “usual suspects” of airline, telecommunications and electricity, but also semiconductors, engineering and shipping; and its housing and development board supplies 85% of the country’s homes.

‘But I hear that being kinder, more compassionate, tolerant hasn’t worked for the PAP’s popularity. Can only get 60% of the votes. Harry got high 70%s votes by intimidating his opponents, and bullying, haranguing the voters . Still he couldn’t beat my 99.9%, or Mao’s, Deng’s and yr popularity.

‘Any idea why his son is called Pinkie? And can you bring back a box of Havanas for his birthday: S’pore’s juz a bit further South. Yes, I know he doesn’t smoke, but he should start. I smoke a Havana a day and I think I’m fitter than he is.”

Above waz what I tot when I saw the u/m caption, pix and remark.

Party time for the one-party survivors

Xi Jinping and Fidel Castro met in Havana on 22 July

Caption for this photo anyone? asks the BBC’s Carrie Gracie.

My way of sending one LKY a belated birthday greeting. I’m sure the curses of the TRE ranters and other born-loser anti-PAP activists will invigorate him. Sith lords thrive on being hated.

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*Lest anyone forgets, Castro is LKY’s contemporary. Came into power the same yr as LKY did (1959) and is still the ultimate arbiter in Cuba, ruled by younger brudder. To be fair to LKY, he was a lot less brutal in dealing with dissidents than Castro was.

FTs: Quality control? What quality control?

Couldn’t stop laughing when CNA reported LKY as saying Mr Lee, ‘authorities here maintain a “certain quality of control”” on immigration http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1261274/1/.html. And then shaking my head on how out of touch he was. And to think that once upon a time, he was my hero because he was a good pragmatic micro-manager. He also talked sense when JBB was spouting nonsense. Seems LKY has picked up JBJ’s bad habit of talking nonsense.

I will not go into the instances where a violent, cheating sexy-looking PRC shop assistant turned out to be a PR, nor when a PRC prostitute got citizenship (this is not an urban myth: there is credible evidence that it happened), nor when a violent, drunk ang moh got PR status when he was awaiting trail for beating up two S’poreans , nor when an Indian murder suspect, here illegally, got a work permit. Nor the many reported cases of faked degrees, and “faked” salaries.

No, I will just point out that the govt has just only, again, tightened the rules for FTs getting a job here.

Acting Minister for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin yesterday assuaged such fears, declaring that “such practices have no place in Singapore’s workplaces”, and would not be tolerated.

Based on feedback so far, Mr Tan said there were three areas of frustration over nationality discrimination: “Hiring-their-own-kind” where the employers prefer candidates of the same nationality; hiring foreigners as it is faster than screening Singaporeans; and a preference for well-qualified foreigners willing to work for lower wages.

To tackle this, the MOM will introduce a tiered structure for S-Passes where salaries would be tiered according to experience so that local PMEs are not undercut. The ministry will also investigate companies if necessary and suspend work pass privileges if needed — this was imposed on one “fairly prominent company” which advertised for employees of a certain nationality, Mr Tan said.

The government will stop tightening the tap on foreign workers only if three goals are met. They are:

• foreign presence in the labour pool is capped at around a third;
• productivity grows 2-3 per cent a year; and
• when Singaporeans’ wages improve.

Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin told Parliament yesterday, during the debate on his ministry’s budget: “If we are not able to meet these targets, we are likely to continue the tightening and restructuring approach.”

He noted that the foreign workforce, excluding foreign domestic workers, grew by about 67,000 last year – still too large a number, so his ministry has tightened its policies further to bring it down.

It will track the numbers sector by sector, he added. CNA

If there was QC, there wouldn’t be a need for such drastic measures, or the earlier ones, would there?

Instead of wanting more FTs to “spur” S’poreans, maybe he should have “spurred’ on the PM and other ministers when he was in a position to do so? I mean if he had “spurred” the Home Team, tpt, and HDB ministers, and his son, 5the PAP and S’poreans would have been much happier. The PAP would not have lost Aljunied, gain only 605 of the popular vote, nor nearly have its preferred candidate lose the presidential election. And we S’poreans would have better public tpt, less expensive apartments, and less crowded public spaces.

As to his comparison with Japan, I can only wonder why I once admired his analytical skills. S’pore is trying to grow its population, not just mitigate for an aging population. And for all his sneering of Japan, the Japanese have done pretty well. The economy has on some measures outperformed even the US, his ideal of a country that allows in FTs. See analysis here from HSBC, https://atans1.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/honest-conversation-on-fts-lets-have-it-not-juz-pretend-that-weve-having-it-iswaran/

Two great Romans, the dictator Sulla and the emperor Diocletian, at the height of their powers, temporal, and mental, retired from public life, leaving only memories of them at their best (often brutal) moments. Maybe LKY should have done that. He was also very protective of the public image of his mouth-piece Rajaretnam in the latter’s dotage. It may have been better if he had taken such care for his own image.

What MM Lee said of the ties between CCCs and PAP

On 30 December 2009, our nation building, constructive ST reported MM Lee as saying of the Chinese officials who come here to study the governance of S’pore,“They discover that the People’s Action Party has only a small office in Bedok. But everywhere they go, they see the PAP – in the RCs, CCCs, and the CCs.”

(RCs (residents’ committees), CCCs (citizens’ consultative committees), and the CCs (community clubs)
are grassroot organisations under the People’s Association. Its Chairman is none other than the PM himself who is also the secretary-general of the PAP.)

Todate no-one from the People’s Association, PAP or government, has to my knowledge, contradicted the then MM Lee.

 Back story. PA waves white flag.

LKY and Dr M ain’t that bad

LKY and Dr Mahathir may have played very rough with their opponents, but he didn’t hound them until they committed suicide.

This man made a fool of Hitler in court. He was persecuted until he commited suicide. Dr Chee is still standing tall. So is Anwar.