Syndicated columnist and LMU professor Tom Plate writes — Within days, President Barack Obama is set to visit Southeast Asia and this is a very good thing. The region is becoming more significant by the month. U.S. policy is said to be in the process of ‘pivoting’ to Asia after…
Author: Tom Plate
THAILAND: Thaksin — On the University Lecture Tour!
It seems that Thaksin the Educator – a man reviled at home as a virtual political anti-Christ – has become something of a star celebrity everywhere else but in Thailand. This appears to be especially true among university students, by nature intellectually curious and open-minded. Fresh off of his recent…
LOS ANGELES: NEW MANAGING EDITORS
Lani Luo and Selina Swatek, LMU seniors, have been promoted to the positions of managing editors of this site. The decision was made by acclamation — and to loud applause — at the regular ASIA MEDIA staff meeting recently in University Hall 3319, located on the university’s main campus. Commented…
THE DEMISE OF NEWSWEEK: When a Magazine Stands for Nothing
The Following Syndicated Column Is Reprinted from The Jakarta Post of Indonesia: One way or the other, a magazine needs to stand for something special — otherwise, who cares? As a once-young journalist I took in this maxim of magazining from the late Clay Felker, who in the seventies pushed…
FROM TOM PLATE: America’s New Emotional Isolationism
American columnist Tom Plate writes: Foreign policy has suddenly surfaced, like a leviathan sea monster, crawling onto the beach of the U.S. presidential campaign. If I were an incumbent American president seeking re-election, I might be worried. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet…
YOU CALL IT DOKDO, THEY CALL IT TAKESHIMA: Putting Asia Stability at Risk- Playing the Wrong Game Risks Playing Into the Wrong Hands
Look before you leap. This is a venerable American saying. Look carefully before you leap emotionally. So if I were one of the good people of the Republic of Korea, for whom my admiration is deep, long-standing and well known (as my Japanese friends understand well), I would be prudent…
Pacific Perspectives: Things I Have Been Right About — And From the Start!
Okay, so it is a rather short list…. still… Los Angeles — This column probably will get obnoxious. At least I hope so. Delightfully, it’s about things I said would happen and, guess what? They happened. You could look it up: The judgments enumerated, in one way or the other,…
THAILAND’S CONTROVERSIAL THAKSIN VISITS LOS ANGELES — AND LMU
Thaksin Shinawatra (pictured left with his sister, Yingluck, the current Thai prime minister) is undoubtedly the most controversial politician ever to become prime minister of Thailand, an oft-ignored country in Southeast Asia with a population and landmass greater than Britain or Italy. (But who besides a Thai knows this?) Elected…
NORTH KOREA: Wedding Gift for the ‘First Couple’ — a Modest Proposal!
(An opinion column) — I guess I am a sucker for old-fashioned romance. When I heard about the stunning marriage of Kim Jong Un, the young new leader of North Korea, to the lovely Ri Sol Ju, apparently a professional singer, I hurriedly buried the ideological hatchet and grabbed the…
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: BULLETIN: ASIAN STUDENTS ROCK – SO THIS IS BIG NEWS?
Los Angeles – High up in the category of news that’s too familiar to be newsworthy is the latest poll that finds Asians are the most-educated and highest-earning population in the United States. OMG – I didn’t know that, did you??!! Yeah, right: And so the good people at the…
MIDDLE EAST: An Example of Magazine Excellence
This month Asia Media is happy to spotlight for serious praise FOREIGN POLICY magazine. Its May-June issue takes on the extraordinarily relevant but ever-tricky question of the status of women in the Middle East. Not fearing a head-first plunge into the deepest of waters, the editors plaster their magazine cover…
THAILAND: Tragic TEXT-book Case of Repression — and Death
Previously ASIA MEDIA highlighted an article about Thailand’s lese majeste law and its oppressive reach over media systems such as social networking sites like Facebook or text messaging. Recently, Amphon “Akong” Tangnoppakul died while serving a 20-year sentence for allegedly sending text messages “deemed defamatory to the Queen.” He was…
GOOD JOURNALISM ALERT: On China — ‘My Country Is Not Good Enough’
The fact of the matter is neither is the U.S.! Much less Britain (or for that matter almost any other country). Even so, the ‘Lunch with the Financial Times’ conversation between Chinese novelist Han Han (Triple Door) and FT ‘s Asia editor and columnist David Pilling is suitably entertaining and…
CHINA: Media Star Uncle Wen – the Life of the Party?
Los Angeles– What was most amazing, to Westerners at least (and perhaps especially to the Chinese people), was that his comments were broadcast live on official China TV. After all, his official observations weren’t exactly pretty. Here is the back-story: In every historical movement and moment, there are good guys…
THE TWO KOREAS: The Reaction to Pyongyang’s Overture (an Update)
The Western news media – and especially The Economist Magazine of London – have been almost incautiously optimistic about recent diplomatic developments coming out of North Korea. But the media in South Korea has been rather cautious about Pyongyang’s latest pitch to suspend parts of its nuclear program, to allow…
BREAKTHROUGH IN NORTH KOREA?
The news media in South Korea is properly cautious about North Korea’s latest pitch to suspend parts of its nuclear program, to allow international inspectors onto suspected sites, and to halt long-range missile tests. Since 1994, endlessly back and forth across the Korean Peninsula, after all, negotiations of some sort over the nuclear issue have been on-going or going off on tangents — or (most often) going nowhere.