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Why Is Lee Kuan Yew’s Wish For A Quick Death Not Respected By His Doctors?

Hello readers, apologies for the long hiatus. Too busy eking out a living to write as much as I liked. Hopefully in this New Year of the Goat, many things will change for the better. 😉

A couple of days back, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that our founding father Lee Kuan Yew was hospitalized in SGH for severe pneumonia since 5 February.

They revealed that he was lightly sedated, on mechanical ventilation and warded in the the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

But in a 2013 interview, Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that he feels weaker by the day and wants a quick death.

To accomplish this, Lee Kuan Yew had an Advanced Medical Directive (AMD) done which specifies that if he had to be fed by a tube, and if it is unlikely that he would ever be able to recover and walk about, his doctors are to remove the tube and allow him to make a quick exit.

Based on what we know now, he is on mechanical ventilation whereby anendotracheal tube is inserted into the trachea in order to provide air to the lung. This method is only used when the patient’s own breathing is inadequate to maintain life.

In short, Lee Kuan Yew’s condition is severe and not looking good. Given his lightly sedated state and inability to breathe normally, how possible would it be for him to feed himself for basic nourishment? Chances are, he is now unable to feed himself and also relies on a feeding tube. If this is true, it would fulfill part one of Harry’s Advanced Medical Directive (of being fed by a tube).

The second portion of the Advanced Medical Directive speaks about Lee Kuan Yew being unable to recover and walk about. Look at last year’s NDP parade and you can see the state in which Lee Kuan Yew is in. He is frail and unable to walk on his own and basic tasks like standing and sitting down is a problem.

His bodyguards and minders are by his side 24/7 to help him with his mobility. Now that he is bed ridden, what are the chances of him making a full recovery and regaining his ability to walk pre-pneumonia? If this holds true, it would fulfill Lee’s Advanced Medical Directive authorizing his doctors to give him a swift exit.

Why is the Advanced Medical Directive not taking effect in accordance to the old man’s wishes? Are the doctors very optimistic about Lee Kuan Yew’s full recovery or are there other hidden reasons behind Ah Gong’s current pitiful existence?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Source: http://theunseensingapore.blogspot.sg

February 25, 2015
Anwar Ibrahim’s Family Pleads For Royal Clemency On His Behalf

KUALA LUMPUR: PKR President Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and her second daughter, Nurul Nuha Anwar, were earlier reportedly at Istana Negara to submit a Petition for a Pardon from the Agong for jailed Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Earlier, Anwar’s lawyers had expressed some doubts that the Opposition Leader would apply for a Pardon and stressed that he continues to maintain that he was innocent of the charges.

A Petition for Pardon would delay Anwar’s disqualification as Permatang Pauh MP.

Anwar’s eldest daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar was reported in Malay Mail Online as confirming that the family was seeking the Pardon from the Agong, on Anwar’s behalf, and there’s a precedent for this.

She cited the case of DAP’s father-and-son team Lim Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng who had submitted a similar Petition when they were in prison.

She was apparently speaking from Parliament where she was submitting the letter on the Petition on the Pardon to Dewan Rakyat Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia.

In the absence of a Petition, Anwar can be barred from being a federal lawmaker 14 days from February 10, based on Article 48 Clause 4 (a) of the Federal Constitution.

Nurul Nuha confirmed, in a statement, that the Petition for the Pardon had been submitted to Istana Negara for the Agong’s attention.

“An appeal for a royal pardon has been submitted. The courts may have pronounced a guilty verdict but our father, and we as a family continue to state that he is innocent,” she said in the statement. “By virtue of Article 42 of the Federal Constitution, we hope that the Royal institution would in the name of justice based on the entire facts grant an appeal.”

The family, she stressed, she said would continue to pursue and exhaust all available legal means to free Anwar.

PKR veteran Sivarasa Rasiah, one of Anwar’s lawyers, said on Monday the legal team will apply for a review of the decision under Rule 137 of the Federal Court Rules as a judicial review was not possible for a criminal conviction.

The Federal Court, on February 10, saw no reason to interfere with an earlier Court of Appeal decision to convict Anwar on a sodomy charge and sentence him to five years in jail.

The Bar Council, in an initial reaction, said that Anwar had been convicted of a victimless offence and implied that there was no law on this.

On the role and function of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and the State Rulers, the Federal Constitution is largely fashioned on the British model but with local adaptations, according to Law Professor Shad Faruqi in an advisory written in 2006 for Australian journalists who raised the case of Anwar.

“The Agong has the power to grant pardons, reprieves and respites. On any constitutional question, he can refer a matter to the Federal Court for the court’s advisory opinion.”

The British Queen’s judicial powers are now very minimal and there is only really one which is used on a regular basis, with others having been delegated to judges and parliament through time:

Royal Pardon – The Royal Pardon was originally used to retract death sentences against those wrongly convicted. It is now used to correct errors in sentencing and was recently used to give a posthumous pardon to WW2 codebreaker, Alan Turing.

Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com

February 25, 2015
Indonesia Prepared To Return Australia Tsunami Aid

Jakarta. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Monday that Indonesia was prepared to return the $1 billion in aid that Australia provided following the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.

The comments were in response to a reminder from Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who last week mentioned the relief when making a plea for two Australian drug traffickers on death row in Indonesia.

“I have explained that we understood during the tsunami, there was humanitarian aid from 56 countries, including from Australia,” Kalla said on Monday. “If it was not considered humanitarian aid, we will return it.”

Abbot’s comments have struck a raw nerve with many Indonesians, and in some major cities protests and theatrical coin collections have started.

Twitter and Facebook have been flooded with messages under the hashtag #CoinsFor Australia — a campaign to repay Australia and a demand its neighbor respect Indonesia’s legal system.

Since making the comments, Abbot has claimed they were not a threat but instead the aid referred to the strength of the two countries’ bilateral relations.

Kalla said he had been communicating with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and he had explained that the execution of Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan — ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine heroin trafficking group — was not a decision made solely by President Joko Widodo.

“She appreciated the explanation. She understands Indonesian law and I have told her it wasn’t the president who decided on the death penalty but an independent and objective court,” Kalla said.

Sukumaran, 33, and Chan, 31, were caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Bali in 2005. They are among the next group of inmates to be executed by a firing squad.

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com

February 25, 2015
Datin Rosmah Mansor: GST Will Protect Housewives Like Me

KUALA LUMPUR: The next time your tailor or hairdresser plans to charge exorbitant rates while making a house call, tell them the prime minister’s wife has already stated their days of overcharging are over.

Speaking to members of Bakti, the Welfare Association of the Wives of Ministers and Deputy Ministers, Rosmah Mansor showed she could relate to others like her when she spoke of the trials and tribulations faced by women who were the wives of “civil servants” with no income of their own, a Malaysiakini report said.

“We housewives always become victims. Before we could tailor a baju kurung for RM500, and even then it is considered expensive, but now to make a nice one…well, we have no choice because we need to wear proper clothes to functions…

“They (tailors) are profiteering, but they try to evade this by claiming it is service tax,” she painstakingly explained, saying that with the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), tailors could no longer take advantage of women like her and hide behind the “sales tax” issue as a convenient argument to raise prices.

She said the same applied to hairdressers and added, “For people like us, even a RM200 hike will hurt.”

Relating how preposterous the charges were for washing and dyeing her hair at home, she said, “Now when I want to dye my hair at home, the hairdresser charges me RM1,200. Wow, that is expensive but they say the price is different in the store. It’s pricey because it is home service…

“They can charge three, four or five times the price citing ‘home service’”, she pointed out saying it had become too expensive and almost a luxury to get her hair done.

Feeling strongly about being taken advantage of, Rosmah reiterated, “I am speaking on behalf of housewives. Bakti believes that home services must be subject to (pricing) guidelines.”

Preferring to suffer in silence and place her hopes on GST to make prices fairer again for women like her, Rosmah said, “I can’t ask Najib, he wouldn’t answer.”

So for now, Rosmah has to simply bite her lip and pay up, safe in the knowledge that her financial woes when it comes to tailoring and hairdressing will be a thing of the past come April 1 when GST is finally implemented.

Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com

February 25, 2015
Racially Diverse Emoji Emoticons Coming Your Way

Apple paved the way for racially diverse emoji to come to the Mac two week ago, and now with the release of iOS 8.3 beta 2, Apple has added access to 300 new emoji for iPad and iPhone users.

With iOS 8.3 beta 2 Apple now allows users to choose between five different skin tones for 60 different emoji. Switching between the different skin tones is just as easy as adding an accent mark to letters: simply press and hold an emoji to reveal the the entire palette of color options.

The new racially diverse emoji are also available in the new OS X 10.10.3 beta. Mac users can pull up the characters by hitting CNTRL + CMD + Space. Once your select a color variation for an emoji your changes are saved in the keyboard, so you don’t have to change them every time.

Almost all of the human emojis can be modified – including minor ones like surfer, swimmer, and runner – but Apple still hasn’t added the skin tone modifiers to the family emojis. The emojis aren’t available to the public yet, and when you send an emoji with a modified skin tone to other iOS users they just see a ‘

Source: www.cultofmac.com

February 25, 2015