TOM PLATE WRITES IN HIS SYNDICATED NEWSPAPER COLUMN: Try it, you might like it: a sense of proportion. Avoid the extreme cry of apocalypse now — or, at least, of apocalypse soon. Stretch your intellectual and historical horizons to appreciate Japan as an expanse of more than just a few…
Tag: Lee Kuan Yew
SINGAPORE: Thoughts about Lee Kuan Yew at 90
TOM PLATE WRITES – Lee Kuan Yew, whom I first interviewed in 1996, was always a terrific interview and if you ask Western journalists how many public figures they can say this of, you may be surprised at how few they name. But I cannot think of one journalist who…
SINGAPORE: One Man’s View Receives Mixed Reviews
STEPHANIE GARCIA WRITES – The world weighs in as the Father of Modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, shares his most pugnacious opinions in his latest book. One Man’s View of the World, a fitting title for a book whose author single handedly took a nation from rags to riches, was…
SINGAPORE: New MDA Regulations Have Web Users Up in Arms
STEPHANIE GARCIA WRITES -The Singapore government just made it a lot harder for small news outfits to do their jobs. But netizens refuse to go down without a fight. On May 28 the Media Development Agency (MDA) enacted new Internet regulations on news sites. Under the rules, sites that regularly…
SINGAPORE: Book on UN Secretary General Reviewed
On 5 January The Straits Times of Singapore published as its lead opinion essay a review of ‘Conversations with Ban Ki-moon,” the new book on the United Nations Secretary General that is featured as part of the ‘Giants of Asia’ series. The reviewer Asas Latif, a visiting research fellow at…
SINGAPORE: Getting the Scoop from a Malaysian Newspaper
Want to know what is really happening in Singapore’s inner-circle politics? Sometimes you have to read a newspaper in neighboring Malaysia. On September 1st, Malaysia’s big-circulation daily newspaper The Star ran a report on major speech by neighboring Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong’s at the National Rally Day. The…
PROGRESS REPORT: “Conversations with Ban Ki-moon”
“Conversations with Ban Ki-moon,” the fourth in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series, and the first book on the current UN Secretary General with which he has cooperated, is moving closer to publication, now scheduled for September by Marshall Cavendish International (Singapore, New York, London). Late last month, author Tom Plate…
SINGAPORE: ‘PEOPLE’S CHOICE’ AWARD GOES TO BOOK ON LEE KUAN YEW
“Soft authoritarian” or not, Lee Kuan Yew, now 88, remains a figure of great interest in Asia. “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” a 2010 book by Tom Plate, founder of Asia Media, was recently honored at a major Asian book festival as the English-language book of the year.
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: How to Better Understand Asia and the World
A book bag of contemporary gifts that show real smarts December 4, 2011 LOS ANGELES – It has finally hit Washington that Asia will be the major-league playing field for the foreseeable geopolitical future. But why should we complain when Uncle-Sam-comes-lately? Instead, we vow stay ahead of the great global…
Pacific Perspectives: An Asian Leader Receives Coveted American Award
They honored the controversial, though increasingly appreciated, Asian statesman Lee Kuan Yew at the historic Ford Theater in Washington recently, and frankly I wish I had been there.