TR EMERITUS

Singapore founder Lee Kuan Yew justified the city-state’s defence spending as necessary to resist any possible pressure from its larger neighbours. ‘Without a strong defence, there will be no Singapore,’ Lee said in an interview published by the Sunday Times newspaper. ‘It will become a satellite,... 

Those who think geniuses are born and not made should think again, says author David Shenk. Where do athletic and artistic abilities come from? With phrases like “gifted musician”, “natural athlete” and “innate intelligence”, we have long assumed that talent is a genetic thing some of... 

A NEW book to be launched on Jan 21 will offer a rare glimpse into the mind of the most influential man in Singapore’s history. Lee Kuan Yew Titled ‘Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going’, it is based on 16 interviews the Minister Mentor gave to seven journalists from The Straits Times from... 

John Kampfner, former editor of The New Statesman (2005-2008) and now chief executive of Index on Censorship, a British group promoting freedom of expression, weighed in on the Alan Shadrake case. He wrote a commentary in The Guardian after the 76-year-old freelance British journalist was found guilty of contempt of court... 

Singapore is brilliant at self-promotion, says an Australian analyst, but it is no financial dynamo. Much of the world has been deluded by its hollow roars of success Singapore, the modern city-state known for its authoritarian ways and conservative government, has a reputation for functional efficiency and capitalist success. The... 

May 21, 1987, will forever remain Singapore’s own day of infamy, the day when Lee Kuan Yew, then Prime Minister, using the guise of internal security, abused its executive powers by ordering the arrest and detention of twenty-two innocent young men and women (Operation Spectrum), who were associated with the Roman Catholic... 

To give a new twist to an old saying: Justice unevenly applied is justice denied. Alan Shadrake, in his new book, Once a Jolly Hangman — Singapore justice in the dock, shows how uneven it is. It’s a tour de force covering cases from the early 1990s to nearly the present, many of them ending with the prisoner meeting... 

Over the past few decades, investigative journalism has come to mean the kind of brave reporting that exposes injustice, wrongdoing and, above all, the abuse of power. Alan Shadrake’s hard-hitting new book cuts through the façade of official silence to reveal disturbing truths about Singapore’s use of the death penalty.... 

By Michael Cole from Taipei Times Book: Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong: Containing Contention by Stephan Ortmann It has often been said that democracy is not endemic to Asia, or that its development is inevitably stunted by so-called “Asian values” or “Chinese characteristics.” Opponents of this... 

By Tan Jing Quee, co-author of The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the politics on postwar Malaya and Singapore (An excerpt of Mr Tan’s article from page 263 to 297, republished here with the kind permission of Mr Tan so that more Singaporeans are able to know about the history of their nation from...