TOM PLATE WRITES – Like each of his seven predecessors, the current occupant of the Office of Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, gets to pick his own impossible dream to imagine solved, and he certainly has his. However, the SG disagrees that he’s tilting at windmills, as…
Author: Tom Plate
Tom Plate is a journalist and university
professor who has worked at Time magazine,
the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and other
media institutions.
THE TOM PLATE COLUMN: Crying for Thailand
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES (7 May) — More than almost any political crisis on the face of the earth today – more than in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea; even more, in a way, than in dreadfully miserable Syria – it is the crisis in Thailand that seems so sad.…
TV REVIEW: HOW JOHN OLIVER STOOD UP FOR INDIA!
ASIA MEDIA WRITES – Do not miss (walk, not run, to) former Daily Show regular John Oliver’s own new show: LAST WEEK TONIGHT. It’s a Sunday night half-hour on HBO, and if the first show this past weekend (27 April) is any indication, it will be quite the winner. We…
THE PLATE COLUMN: Russia in the Ukraine – Beyond Good and Evil
WRITES TOM PLATE FROM LOS ANGELES IN HIS SYNDICATED ASIA COLUMN – ‘Ukraine Isn’t Armageddon.’ Now, how bold and direct is that?! This was the banner headline splashed over the most incisive journalism I have read on Vladimir Putin and the Crimea crisis. It led the April edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, the…
MONDAY AT LMU LOS ANGELES: THE DRAMA – HIGH AND LOW – OVER DRONES
To use drones against enemies … or not to drone on? You are invited to an unprecedented review of this immense geopolitical, domestic political and ethic controversy over drone warfare on the LMU campus near Marina Del Rey, California, starting Sunday night. The issue is both new — and as…
HONG KONG: A Positive Review of First Lady Obama’s Mainland China Visit
By Tom Plate, reprinted from the South China Morning Post (27 March) — You’d have to say that US first lady Michelle Obama handled herself pretty well during her trip to China. Perhaps it was no surprise that she seemed undaunted by the political complexity of the assignment, didn’t cower…
THE PLATE COLUMN: Skating on Thin Ice
TOM PLATE WRITES IN HIS SYNDICATED COLUMN APPEARING IN THE JAPAN TIMES (Tokyo) – Like so many people around the world, I was totally blown away not only by Olympic skater Kim Yuna’s performance on the ice in Sochi, but even more so by her cool and classy performance off…
THE PLATE COLUMN: Should Crimea Be Such a Priority?
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST TOM PLATE WRITES — Viewed from Los Angeles, tiny Ukraine seems much, much farther away and remote from our core national interests than, for example, gigantic Indonesia. So perhaps something is wrong with us on the West Coast of the United States, and we simply fail to understand…
WE BEG TO DIFFER: … With Professor Jay Rosen of NYU
ASIA MEDIA WRITES: NYU’S Jay Rosen has been analyzing the American media for decades. He may be the best mind the U.S. has on this important beat. A recent post by Professor Rosen, however, raised our eyebrows. It praised the New York Times for ‘flooding’ the Ukraine story, calling the…
BANGKOK: THE GRAVE DARKNESS DESCENDING OVER THAILAND
TOM PLATE WRITES: The stakes in the outcome of the ongoing Thai Crisis are huge and go beyond the strict parameters of the country itself. Geopolitically, Thailand has been a solid U.S. ally, particularly during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Economically, it has been a vital force amid…
LOS ANGELES: USC PRESENTS ON THE ‘FORGOTTEN CHINA’
ASIA MEDIA IS HAPPY TO PASS ON TO YOU THIS INVITATION FROM OUR HARD-WORKING COLLEAGUES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: “USC’s East Asian Studies Center invites you to our upcoming event entitled Taiwan in the World on March 3, 2014: Taiwan in the World Monday | March 3 |…
Former Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin: Why did they have to do that?
In December 2010, in his exile home in Emirate Hills, a suburb of Dubai, former Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sat down with American journalist Tom Plate for an exclusive series of five two-hour interviews that became the basis of the controversial book “Conversations with Thaksin” (Marshall Cavendish Singapore, 2011).…
LOS ANGELES: Trying to Keep Japan in Perspective
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…
LOS ANGELES: Hong Kong – “New York in a Chinese Fortune Cookie”
The following interview with Asia Media founder and editor in chief Tom Plate was conducted by G. Bruce Smith of the firm of SMITH WRITING & PR in Culver City, California (http://www.smith-writing-pr.com). The occasion is the U.S. release of Professor Plate’s new book IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUTURE (Marshall…
INDONESIA: IS ‘JOKOWI’ THE GREAT NEW HOPE?
TOM PLATE WRITES IN THE JAKARTA POST: Our favorite optimist of Asia is at it again, and may the gods of our future bless this learned man. He is Kishore Mahbubani (KM), the savvy Singapore policy-school dean and acclaimed author whose most recent book “The Great Convergence” might almost be…
KOREAN ART: FROM K-POP TO STRING THEORY
Asian art from the Republic of Korea and from all over the globe’s many Korean diasporas has become an awesome trend on the contemporary art scene. Like K-Pop, K-Art is sweeping the world. Over the past year, Korean Eye 2012 became an internationally acclaimed collection of key works by 33…