"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson (attr)

***

Clinton's civil response to Lee Kuan Yew
South China Morning Post

"Singapore's infamous censorship regulations have never quite applied to its officials, nor has their sensitivity about criticism from outside inhibited them from commenting on other governments.

The island nation's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, underlined that point on Tuesday with his commentary on various global issues in a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative. And yesterday Bill Clinton felt compelled to clarify one of Mr Lee's remarks - the rather disparaging suggestion that Asian culture, based on Confucian values, inherently meant civic groups were weaker in Asia than in Europe and the United States.

Mr Lee, the former US president declared, "gave a very historically accurate answer about Confucian society ... but ... it's not a factually accurate description of where you are today. I mean, this gentlemen [Wang Jianzhou, executive director of China Mobile ] has 450 million customers of his cellphones, he does not have to be here ... Michelle [Yeoh Choo Kheng] could be making another film at the moment. None of you have to be here. It's important that we say to the rest of the world that Asia is a part of not just the global economy but in building a global civil society".

Did he mean Singaporean society should be a model for the rest of the world? We think not, though Mr Lee would doubtless say otherwise."