The world was focused on Singapore very recently as the little red dot was designated as the meeting place between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A whopping 5,000 journalists descended upon the city-state to cover the historic US-North Korea summit and already, some international news organisations appear to be having some trouble with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s name and designation.
First, the Associated Press reported that the head of government’s name is to be pronounced as such: “lee haz-ee-en lahng”.
Several netizens poked fun at the news agency’s erroneous pronunciation guide for PM Lee’s name. Prominent blogger mrbrown was one such voice who wrote on social media, “Dear NYT, I tried to pronounce my Prime Minister’s name the way you said it should be pronounced. I sprained my tongue. #TrumpKimSummit”
Even as the news agency was drawing flak for the mispronunciation, another publication – a little closer to home, this time – drew scrutiny for misidentifying the Prime Minister’s job title.
Yahoo Singapore reported that PM Lee is a “President” in one of their articles covering the summit:
These recent gaffes bring to mind the incident where President Trump himself momentarily confused PM Lee for Indonesian President Joko Widodo, during his first meeting with Lee:
Speaking to the press following his unprecedented meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Trump thanked Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the citizens of Singapore for helping to make the historic US-North Korea summit possible.
President Trump later acknowledged that PM Lee “probably made a difference” with regards to the summit:
PM Lee shares what appears to be a pretty warm relationship with President Trump. The two leaders met for the first time at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Hamburg, last year. Later in October, PM Lee made an official visit to the US and was invited to the White House where President Trump reaffirmed the relationship the US and Singapore share.
During the devastating Hurricane Harvey that hit Texas and Louisiana last year, PM Lee offered Singapore’s assistance in the disaster relief operations by deploying our air force’s CH-47 Chinook helicopters from its Peace Prairie detachment in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Prior to the summit with Kim, President Trump met with PM Lee. The pair had a conversation before moving for lunch. PM Lee shared that he had invited President Trump to make a state visit here soon following the meeting.
In a tweet, “Blogfather” Lee Kin Mun, who is better known as “mrbrown” and carries that name on his Twitter account, drew attention to the pronunciation guide for Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s name in the New York Times yesterday.
mrbrown tweeted a portion of the article, and highlighted the pronunciation guide, with the quip, “Dear NYT, Lee Hsien Loong name is not liddat pronoun one. -@mrbrown.”
Singapore has been featured in many international newspapers recently, since it is the venue for the historic summit meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12.
The New York Times featured an article with a timeline of the summit, which included an update on a meeting between Mr. Trump and PM Lee Hsien Loong on June 11 at Istana Palace, and was followed by an announcement from Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Trump had accepted an invitation to return for a state visit in November of this year.
The update included a pronunciation guide for the Singaporean Prime Minister’s name, “Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (lee haz-ee-en lahng).”
His humorous caption for the tweet was, “Dear NYT, I tried to pronounce my Prime Minister’s name the way you said it should be pronounced. I sprained my tongue. #TrumpKimSummit”
The news article on the New York Times was originally from the Associated Press, which means that it has gotten published on hundreds of news sites.
The correct way to say the Prime Minister’s name is simply, “lee see-yan long.” If the AP journalists had done a little howeork, they would have even found this pronunciation guide on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndfcQXbjCc0.
Many netizens responded to mrbrown’s tweet, with some even attempting to school the New York Times on the correct pronunciation
Omg @nytimes. It’s really not that hard. How about “Lee See-anh Lo-ung”??? GEEEZ
Lee Sea-en Loon. And I’m not trying to be funny. Thats how i’d write it. It’s not hard to work it out IF you’re asking a bilingualist but you also need to be familiar to translate the sounds into English. Ugh it’s so important to get these things right.
Lee Kin Mun, or mrbrown, is one of Singapore’s best-known bloggers. He is also an influential podcaster, with thousands of people downloading his podcasts daily.
A sketch from Vincent Leow, that was removed after receiving much flak online, led to the artist himself speaking out.
When asked about public reactions, Leow told the media that he was “surprised” by the reactions the piece drew.
The sketch shows the back of a nude human figure possibly sitting astride a chicken, that was made by Leow back in 1989.
Leow said his sketch was to explore the relationship between man and his natural environment, and the way we think about nature and development.
He also added that there was “no specific reason” for the nude portrayal, just that it is usually considered to be humans’ “purest form”.
After a Facebook account calling itself Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family posted the sketch on their page criticising that it was “promoting bestiality,” it drew much attention from netizens. There was also concern expressed that Leow’s sketch was near the children’s section at Esplanade.
Vincent Leow addressed this and said, “When my own children visit exhibitions with nudity or when they watch difficult scenes on TV, if they ask questions I will explain it to them”.
He continued, “I don’t even have to explain it to them sometimes. It is part of one’s everyday exposure to the world. The children today see so many things that even I don’t know”.
He said that his sketch was made in 1989.
He said that he “did not understand why this small group of people can have this weird and perverse perception of this work… and influence people into thinking this perception”.
Yvonne Tham, CEO-Designate at The Esplanade Co Ltd acknowledged that Esplanade had made an “error of judgement in exercising [their] responsibility to both artist and audience for presenting work in an appropriate space and context”. By the next day, the sketch had been removed from the Esplanade’s Community Wall.
Vincent Leow said that he was still going to continue with his creative processes, without any self-censoring. “As an artist I’m not going to tell myself: I’m not going to do this,” he added.
He continued saying, “I have my own creative process, I do what I do. I don’t know when, but I hope that these people will understand my work better someday”.
Let Singapore be a good host for the Trump-Kim summit. Let’s give peace a chance. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Fresh from his return from North Korean capital Pyongyang, Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan declared that he was “very impressed” with the country.
“Clearly, the government has been hard at work all these decades to upgrade their infrastructure . . . so the society itself is a very impressive society and a city in its own right,” said the Minister.
But a CNN Fareed Zakaria Special shown this morning (8am, 11 June), “The Two Faces of Kim Jong Un,” talked about how the North Koreans mislead visitors into thinking that Pyongyang is like the rest of the country when in fact the majority of its people are starving, where food is rationed and electricity is in short supply.
The Minister was only seeing one face of North Korea.
The short answer to why dictator Kim Jong Un is opening up to the world, says Fareed Zakaria, is that he “is running out of money.”
A recent BBC report dated 1 May 2018 concluded with this paragraph: “Decades of this rigid state-controlled system have led to stagnation and a leadership dependent on the cult of personality. The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses.”
So let’s not try and sweep everything under the carpet and start heaping praise on a country that for decades has been known as a hermit kingdom – a country which walls itself off from the rest of the world and is famous for its systematic human rights abuses.
The Trump-Kim summit is a step in the right direction. The Singapore government has bragging rights for hosting it, deeming it a privilege and an honour.
PM Lee has said that it is not just a whole-of-government effort but a “whole of Singapore effort.”
Makes no bones about it – it is purely a government initiative, for which $20 million is being spent.
It should not be taken as a people’s initiative, and the hosting of a peace summit must not become a movement to shore up national pride.
Augustine Low is a proud but concerned citizen. Voicing independent, unplugged opinion is his contribution to citizen engagement.
With the transition of leadership following the 14th general elections, policymakers would be looking into new ideas and new policies to chart the destiny of the nation. This is imperative especially as the nation’s finances are in dire straits.
Think tanks in the country have a role to play towards shaping policy agendas as they are able to mobilise expertise and push for innovative change and catalyse action.
Two prominent think tanks that come into mind in Malaysia that would have a greater role to play are the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) and the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER).
Unfortunately, both these institutions are in a deplorable state as their input towards nation building has been at best mediocre. ISIS Malaysia set up in the 80’s under the stewardship of Dr Nordin Sophie was in the forefront of policy-making and had led to many valuable contributions towards many important policies in the nation.
His untimely demise led to the sharp descent in the standard of the institution with very little to show in terms of research outputs, alternative views or initiating important projects. A prominent civil servant said that even government projects would not be given to ISIS on account of the recent fall in calibre at the institution.
Its dismal leadership can be directly attributed to the lacklustre role of the institution, that has sunk into a ‘political bureau’ of the previous Barisan Nasional government.
In recent times, we saw very little contribution from its researchers aside from coming out with opinion editorials regularly in newspapers.
A cursory examination shows it would be difficult for it to justify a large number of people and huge expenditure compared to its meager output.
Many have accused the Institute of being quick to justify government policy without carrying out substantive research.
Before the General Elections, former Prime Minister, Najib Razak quoted a Director of Economics at ISIS who said that it “was nonsensical for the Pakatan government to abolish the GST and replace with SST”. That was done without even carrying out a detailed economic study on the matter by ISIS. Was that only done with the hope of winning brownie points with the Barisan Nasional Government?
How is that the present government can look at various ways of reducing the burden of the people due to an increased cost of living and still afford to abolish the GST. Did ISIS carry out an extensive study before deciding that abolishing GST was not tenable?
In the case of MIER, the rot already started a long time ago, with journalists finding little necessity to cover its annual economic survey. Its views and opinions are nothing but reiterating the government official view with nothing more to offer.
As an economic think tank, its fingerprints are notably absent in all the economic agenda’s of the government to date and it would be simply a waste of taxpayers fund to justify the existing of these two institutions.
For these two think-tanks to be useful in nation-building, the top brass of leaders must now make way for many other talented individuals who want to contribute to the nation’s progress.
The political landscape has changed and those who are not acquainted with dishing out ideas must do the only honourable thing left for them and that is to leave!
It’s no secret that United States–Russia relations are currently rife with tension and mistrust. The news is full of reports of Russia meddling in U.S. elections, seeding U.S. media with fake news, supporting the Syrian regime and so on.
The relationship between the two countries has reached an all-time low since the fall of the Soviet Union, with some going so far as to call it a new “cold war.” Diplomats have been unable to mend the relationship, as national security interests on each side are too narrow to provide common ground.
But there are avenues of collaboration beyond the security realm that can help to balance strained relationships, maintain open channels of communication and build trust, enabling a more positive diplomatic process overall.
One key avenue is science. As a common and apolitical language, science brings allies and adversaries together with technology and innovation to address cross-border challenges that exist across the Earth – think climate, disease pandemics and international trade – which are out of reach for a single nation to address alone.
Since the 1950s, the U.S. and Russia have been cooperating continuously in a four specific international spaces – the high seas, Antarctica, outer space and deep sea – and the mechanism for cooperation has consistently been science. For instance, they cooperate on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which preserves the continent for peaceful purposes as the first nuclear arms agreement with scientific research as the basis for international cooperation. Similarly, in space, collaboration between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 led to the design of an international docking system, creating a physical bridge for subsequent operations and joint experiments that we see with the International Space Station today.
The term “science diplomacy” is recently coined, with the first book in this new field emerging from the 2009 Antarctic Treaty Summit. But this diplomatic approach has long existed in practice. As both an academic who studies science diplomacy and a practitioner who implements it, I suggest that science can help bridge contemporary political differences between the superpowers as well as other actors, promoting cooperation and preventing conflict across the world.
A different avenue for diplomacy
People usually think of diplomacy as how states represent themselves and negotiate to advance their own interests. These are the fraught high-level talks between nations that are featured on newspapers’ front pages. Diplomats on each side angle and negotiate to come out on top of a particular issue with political expediency. Picture the sit-down in Singapore between President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
The agreement between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump will require continuity between the present and future, independent of political posturing – which science can help provide. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Science diplomacy is different, operating across a continuum of urgencies from political to sustainability time scales. Nations are still coming together to discuss and resolve cross-border issues. But what’s on the table revolves around common interests revealed across generations by science – including natural sciences and social sciences as well as indigenous knowledge – providing a foundation for negotiation that is far less politically charged and divisive to discuss and resolve the topics of the day.
For example, countries came together to share resources and design a joint response to two recent pandemics: Zika in Latin America and Ebola in West Africa. Following the easing of U.S.-Cuba relations in December 2014, scientists from the two countries began to collaborate on cancer research.
Science diplomacy also supports economic prosperity, balancing environmental protection and societal well-being through innovation. Countries are sharing and collaborating on technologies that will help transition resource-based economies to knowledge-based economies. This kind of cooperation can yield poverty-alleviating solutions along with progress across a suite of sustainable development goals.
Science diplomacy is also about contributing to informed decision-making by sharing evidence and options, without advocacy. This kind of exchange helps ensure the diplomatic process is objective and inclusive, relying on our leaders to make decisions that have legacy value. Imagine if a group of diplomats got together in a negotiating room to assess and design a response to a pandemic without consulting and involving medical and public health experts. It wouldn’t make sense. The recent Iran nuclear deal, for instance, relied on scientists’ expertise to build common interests among nations as the prelude for an agreement, providing an ongoing basis for cooperation despite political variability.
The SESAME center in Jordan aims to network staff with other global research facilities, thus enabling possibilities for scientific exchanges. IAEA Imagebank, CC BY
Collaboration between scientists from different countries can help create pathways for working together on controversial issues, more generally. For example, SESAME is the Middle East’s first major international research center. It’s designed to host both Israeli and Palestinian scientists. Instead of career diplomats and statesmen focused on pushing national agendas, researchers and practitioners with particular scientific expertise are focusing on research to address shared questions, divorced from politics. The CERN particle accelerators in Europe have demonstrated the value of this kind of scientific collaboration among nations since the 1950s.
And with cooperation and trust among scientists from diverse nations, there can be a ripple effect of goodwill between the nations involved, including agreements that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to negotiate at the time with any hope of continuity.
An Arctic environment example
My own involvement with U.S.-Russia relations started with chairing the first formal dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding environmental security in the Arctic Ocean. This 2010 dialogue at the University of Cambridge was funded by NATO along with other organizations and co-directed with the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. It involved four Russian ministries with representative to the president of Russia as well as experts and senior diplomats from 16 other nations.
As academics, my Russian colleagues and I were able to create an apolitical platform for a conversation that had never taken place. Matters related to military security had otherwise prevented open consideration of strategies to promote cooperation and prevent conflict around the North Pole, which remains a region of significant strategic interest with nuclear submarines. Here, science diplomacy brought together two long-estranged actors to productively address a security issue of common interest to both.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry share a handshake at a 2013 Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
Since 2009, and despite ongoing diplomatic tensions, the U.S. and Russia have co-chaired three task forces under the auspices of the Arctic Council, the region’s intergovernmental forum for sustainable development and environmental protection. And they’ve successfully led to three binding legal agreements among all eight Arctic states: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, along with Russia and the U.S.
Science is a neutral platform that allows for less politically charged dialogues, which in turn create bridges that help overall diplomatic efforts.
Over the years, science diplomacy has helped build common ground and peacefully manage international spaces, as well as achieve technological breakthroughs that have global relevance, from health care to the digital revolution. There is every reason for science to continue helping to maintain important channels of communication in the face of current tensions and all yet to come.
For today’s globally interconnected and growing civilization, which is confronting rapid transformation on the back of advances in science, technology and innovation, science diplomacy offers a unique process to build our common future.
Paul Arthur Berkman receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
A 69 year-old South Korean woman protested outside the Capella hotel, where US President Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a historic summit earlier today, demanding that North Korea return her father.
The woman revealed to reporters that her name is Kim Gi Young and her father, Kim Young Il, was kidnapped by North Koreans in 1960. Kim added that her father’s current whereabouts are unknown:
#TRUMPKIMSUMMIT: A South Korean woman, Kim Gi-young, 69, staging a protest near the Capella hotel this morning, urging North Korea to return her father Kim Young-il, whom she claimed was kidnapped by the North in 1960. Her comments were translated by Kim Kyou-ho, 52, a South Korean pastor. The two were later asked to leave the premises by the police. FULL STORY: http://bit.ly/2sU9BxwFollow our coverage at: https://bit.ly/2JJMKOX.
Accompanied by 52-year-old Korean Christian pastor, Kim Kyou Ho, who translated her protest, Kim held up a sign that read:
“If North Korea really wants to end the war, it will follow the Geneva Convention. Check the whereabouts of the kidnapped in the Korean War and send the remains!”
The pair were asked by members of the Singapore Police Force to vacate the premises.
Blown up images of the joint document US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed earlier this afternoon have been circulating online. Images show that Kim has given a “firm and unwavering” commitment to the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, as Trump promises unspecified security guarantees.
The documents reportedly say:
“President Trump held a first meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore today, June the 12th. President Trump and Kim Jong Un had a comprehensive, in-depth and sincere exchange of opinions of the issues related to the establishment of the new US-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean peninsula.
“President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK and chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
“Convinced that the establishment of the new US-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean peninsula, and of the world, and recognising that mutual confidence building will promote the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, Chairman Kim and President Trump state the following:
“1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations, in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
“2. The US and the DPRK will join their effort to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula.
“3. Reaffirming the April 27 2018 Panmunjom declaration. The DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
“4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
“Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit, the first in history, was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously.
“The United States and the DPRK commit to build follow-on negotiations, led by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a relevant high-level DPRK official at the earliest possible date to implement the outcome of the US-DPRK summit.”
In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, Member of Parliament (MP) for Mountbatten Lim Biow Chuan clarified a comment he made about an ex-offender who was denied jobs because of his past.
MP Lim was replying to the conversation that took place about Singapore People’s Party Member Jose Raymond’s Facebook post.
In his post, Raymond shared the plight of an ex-offender who was charged and convicted for assault in 2016.
He also added that the man was a father of four young children and was unable to find a job because of his criminal past. In an application to be a security officer, Raymond added that the Singapore Police Force rejected the man’s application citing the reason that he was “not a fit and proper person”.
In his comment on a member of the public’s Facebook page, MP Lim said, “I think it is easy to say that the police ought to give offenders a 2nd chance. But if you are a resident at a condo, would you be comfortable with a security officer with a criminal record especially if the record was recent. (2016).”
He also then went on to say, “Some of us would be OK but some would not be OK. Just like how many people would be comfortable to allow our young child to be taught swimming by a former child molester. I think the reality is that many of us would err on the side of caution”.
MP Lim posted a note on Facebook yesterday regarding the entire issue. He noted that his comments were carried by The Online Citizen (TOC) and Mothership.sg, two online media publications and as a result that attracted many negative comments on his Facebook page.
In his Facebook post, he added, “I don’t reply to comments on TOC because many of those comments were meant to attack, humiliate and destroy. It is not the kind of conversation which helps to make Singapore a better country or to improve the system.”
MP Lim also clarified his earlier comments, “As an example, I quoted a situation where we would not want a convicted child molester to teach swimming to young children; we would also not want a person convicted of dishonesty to be involved in finances or accounts of a company”.
He also said that the police takes into consideration former offences because “what if the offender re-offends? What if the security officer could not manage his anger again and hurts someone badly? Someone whom they are supposed to protect? Would the public turn on the police and ask why did they allow a past offender with anger management issues get a security licence?”
He ended his post adding , “With proper conversation and dialogue, we can improve policies”.
“As an MP, I always look out for such cases so that I can ask the authorities to re-consider the facts. But cursing or deliberately insulting people whose opinion differs from your opinion is not good for the system,” he said.
