CLINICAL PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – You might well be starting to believe that the calibre of today’s political leadership isn’t what it used to be. Suddenly, the global field of play is cluttered with stunning individual wreckage. Political uncertainty rules, a war sparked by an invasion reveals our current…
TOM PLATE WRITES — America must understand that China is different, emphasised the late Lee Kuan Yew when some 25 years ago I asked Singapore’s iconic modern founder whether my new newspaper column on Asia, then in the Los Angeles Times, might possibly do some good. His counsel was to…
LULU ALKHALIDI WRITES – In polls conducted by Pulse Asian between September 14 and September 20, the rating for Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s performance was 91%. The poll was of course conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, with 5% of the population giving a negative response while 4% were undecided. In…
ZHI JIAO DANIELLE GOH WRITES — When the prime minister’s brother, Lee Hsien Yang, joined the opposition party in June, you knew the ordinary political scene in Singapore was never going to be the same. All over the world, Singapore’s democracy is often been questioned and criticized as the People’s…
(FROM THE EDITORS OF ASIA MEDIA: THIS COLUMN APPEARED ONE WEEK BEFORE THE SINGAPORE SUMMIT, IN THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)– BY TOM PLATE: Next week, it now seems, the American President will be in Singapore, along with the North Korean leader. Both are famously quirky. Is Lee worried? We…
TOM PLATE WRITES — The first thing that must be said to Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his Bersatu party for their stunning ejection of the greedy incumbent prime minister is simply this: Congratulations! Sometimes politics is fiendishly complicated, but in this case it is not. The voters of the Republic…
TOM PLATE WRITES – How sad is the ongoing family quarrel in otherwise brilliant Singapore? On my first trip to Singapore, as a Los Angeles Times columnist, which featured my first interview with Lee Kuan Yew, then titled senior minister, I returned home feeling I had seen something special and…
EXCERPTED FROM AGENCE FRANCE PRESS AND OTHER NEWS ACCOUNTS – A Singaporean teenager who became notorious for profanity-laced attacks on Singapore’s revered late leader Lee Kuan Yew is seeking political asylum in the U.S., his lawyers said Thursday. Amos Yee, 18, a filmmaker turned activist who has been repeatedly jailed…
TOM PLATE WRITES – I have been traveling to Asia and writing about it in various newspapers and journals for two decades, and I have visited China enough times to know it closely. My observation about China is substantially different from most of the written accounts I read or video-view…
TOM PLATE WRITES – When “Conversations with Mahathir,” the second of four volumes in the Giants of Asia series, was published a few years ago, some of my friends and colleagues were utterly aghast. How could you ― gullible American author ― dignify this vulgar man with such semi-reverential treatment?…
RYAN URBAN WRITES – Singapore has gained a great deal of success in the last 50 years as the world’s only fully functioning city-state. The only worry now is Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party has been a little too successful and is being damaged by its own success. Writers…
ASIA MEDIA WRITES – From one of America’s most prestigious universities, from one of our most prestigious foreign-affairs schools – and at a time when the U.S. is trying to decide on its own next new leader – comes an issue of a major journal devoted entirely to the issues…
BY ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL – Hear the world famous World Service’s weekend assessment of Lee Kuan Yew, who has died at 91. LISTEN AT: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02mtsbv
JOHN PO WRITES – Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew passed away peacefully on March 23. As Singapore observed her final day of mourning, the legacy that he leaves behind is one that can be seen in the modern city that is home to 7 million. Mr. Lee has…
Lee Kuan Yew, father of modern Singapore, passed away on March 23, 2015 at the age of 91. Asia Media International Editor-in-Chief Thomas Plate spoke with multiple news outlets regarding the man who helped Singapore grow from a struggling third-world country to a thriving first-world economy. Interviews featuring Tom Plate Bloomberg…
The following column by Tom Plate appeared in the well-known newspaper KOREA TIMES of Seoul on 4 September: LOS ANGELES ― Life can make for strange but true comparisons. Here are three public figures for whom I have great admiration. On the surface they have very little in common except…
