A request for interview

From: Yan Jun
Sent: Monday, 9 September, 2019 12:49
To: Lian He Wan Bao (wanbao@sph.com.sg) <wanbao@sph.com.sg>; news@theindependent.sg; Online Citizen (Singapore) (theonlinecitizen@gmail.com) <theonlinecitizen@gmail.com>; Shin Min Daily (shinmin@sph.com.sg) <shinmin@sph.com.sg>; Straits Times (stforum@sph.com.sg) <stforum@sph.com.sg>; Today (voices@mediacorp.com.sg) <voices@mediacorp.com.sg>; Zao Bao (zblocal@sph.com.sg) <zblocal@sph.com.sg>; Hong Kong Journalists Association (hkja@hkja.org.hk) <hkja@hkja.org.hk>; Ming Pao (mingpao@mingpao.com) <mingpao@mingpao.com>; Oriental Daily News (news@odn.on.cc) <news@odn.on.cc>; SCMP (letters@scmp.com) <letters@scmp.com>; Singtao Daily (localnews@singtao.com) <localnews@singtao.com>; The Standard (editor@thestandard.com.hk) <editor@thestandard.com.hk>; Taiwan news (service@taiwannews.com.tw) <service@taiwannews.com.tw>; United Daily News (newspro@udn.com) <newspro@udn.com>; 'Apple Daily' <news@appledaily.com.tw>; Asia times <special@atimes.com>; Jon Fasman (Economists) <jonfasman@economist.com>; Keith Bradsher (New York Times) <kebrad@nytimes.com>; 'Linus Chua (Bloomberg)' <lchua@bloomberg.net>; 'Philip Bowring (The South China Morning Post)' <philip@bowring.net>; Reporters Without Borders (dbastard@rsf.org) <dbastard@rsf.org>; Rico Hizon (BBC) <ricohizon@gmail.com>; Roberto Coloma (Agence France-Presse) <Roberto.Coloma@afp.com>; 'Seiff Abby (Freelance Corrrespondent)' <aseiff@gmail.com>
Cc: AGC (AGC@agc.gov.sg) <AGC@agc.gov.sg>; SUPCOURT QSM (SUPCOURT) <SUPCOURT_QSM@supcourt.gov.sg>
Subject: A request for interview

Dear Media,

I refer to my email to PM Lee Hsien Loong dated Dec 31, 2018 about judicial corruption in Supreme Court, the Terrex conspiracy and Singapore’s Watergate scandal.

My interview request

I am writing to invite the media to interview me. I can talk more about judicial corruption, conspiracy, espionage activities, political abuse of psychiatry in the Institute of Mental Health, and cruel and inhumane rule in Changi Prison.

Although the People's Action Party (PAP) had argued that “Integrity is the Fundamentals for Singapore's Governance Success”, the PAP government is authoritarian in nature and has earned its good reputation by deception and a full control of local media. My experience with Changi Prison shows that prison officers have made no difference to inmates.

Since Aug 24, 2018, I have gone on a hunger strike against the abuse of power by Senior Sergeant Ahmed Ashraf Bin. On the afternoon of Aug 28, I was brought to Supreme Court to attend my appeal hearing. When I asked the court for some bread on the grounds of 3 days starvation, it was hard to image that the court ignored my request.

Donation

I am currently unemployed so I would give priority to the media who can donate S$10K to me. I can be interviewed in early October as I need one month or so to prepare for it. The donation money is meant to improve my living standards only. Please email your questions to me in advance, and I will reply to you in English or Chinese. For reporters who speak English only, it is better for them to have a translator with them during the interview, if any.

Please feel free to forward this email to any media, press, or organizations. The international community will see this email soon.

Clash of civilizations

Nowadays social scientists are still interested in clash of civilizations thesis and have used it to explain the growing conflicts between the US and China. It seems to me that there are two common misunderstandings of this thesis. As far as I know, no one proposed the idea of self-renewal of a civilization or explained how the self-renewal can take place. I can share my personal opinion in this regard during the interview.

Samuel Huntington, the late political scientist who proposed clash of civilization thesis in 1993, famously said that “the honesty and efficiency that Senior Minister Lee has brought to Singapore are likely to follow him to his grave”. It is me who happened to prove Huntington right.

In April this year, Kiron Skinner, the director of policy planning at the US State Department, claimed America’s rivalry with China was “a fight with a really different civilization”. A challenge to this argument is whether there are universal values to be preserved by a fight. My answer to this question is that the universal value to be preserved is just fundamental justice.

In my opinion, one common mistake about the clash of civilization thesis is to see the development of civilizations as a marathon race. Although athletes follow the same route in a marathon race, civilizations develop in the same direction but along different routes.

It is more appropriate to see the development of civilizations as a mountain climbing. All mountain climbers, or civilizations, go up from the foot of the mountain to the summit along totally different routes. As a result, climbers have to respond to different challenges posed by distinct types of mountain environments such as stone, or forest, plateau, or even volcano. It is self-evident that climbers will acquire different and sometimes unique skills during the course of their mountain climbing.

Researchers have given various answers to the Needham Question, or why had China and India been overtaken by the West in science and technology, despite their earlier successes? A popular answer given by Justin Lin in 1995 was that “the contents of civil service examinations and the criteria of promotion, which distracted the attention of intellectuals away from investing the human capital necessary for modern scientific research.”

If this answer is correct, Chinese government probably needs to push through radical political reforms to boost its scientific research. I think not. If a researcher cannot do his job well, he should blame himself but not the government as long as he has adequate research funding and access to scientific equipment. 

One simple answer to Needham Question, as given by Nathan Sivin, was that the development of science but not technology was a unique achievement of Western civilization. While other civilizations have every intention of catching up with the scientific developments initiated by the West, the question is how do that.

Maoism and Confucianism

At page 92 to 93 of Tom Plate's book Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: How to Build a Nation, the late MM Lee Kuan Yew said that “He (Richard Nixon) asked me about Mao. So I gave him a graphic assessment of what I thought of Mao was doing. I said that Mao is painting on a mosaic with 5,000 years of history behind the mosaic. He's painting his picture on it. The rains will come. What he's said will be washed away, what's been settled for 5,000 years will remain. This is Confucius.”

It is clear to me that MM was wrong. What Mao’s said will not be washed away because it has already dramatically changed Confucianism. Under favorable circumstances, this dramatic change could make Confucianism undergo self-renewal and thus lead to the creation of a new civilization. To understand how this dramatic change works, one need to think about how Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism, a question answered by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Thank you.

Regards,

Yan Jun 

(S7684361I)