WRITES STEPHEN NOERPER OF THE KOREA SOCIETY — A month and a day after conducting its fourth nuclear test, North Korea launched a multi-stage rocket carrying a 440-pound satellite. The launch of the Taepodong missile defied a United Nations ban, once again placing North Korea in direct defiance of international…
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.
CHINA: PLEASE DON’T SHORT US, SOROS!
TOM PLATE WRITES (in the South China Morning Post) — There are more than a few financial figures in PRC circles that no longer trust Western financial advice (or most advisers) any more than they have to. There is a rich, as it were, history, behind the mistrust. And in…
SPECULATION FROM SEOUL: PRESIDENT BAN KI-MOON?
Exerpted with permission from Joongang Daily from Soul – Amid speculation about the possibility that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon may run for president next year, multiple diplomatic sources told the JoongAng Sunday that the UN chief is establishing a foundation to support his domestic activities. The sources indicated that…
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: BBC COMEDY LEGEND DOES ANGELA MERKEL
WRITES ASIA MEDIA – Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery. Like Tina Fey of ‘Saturday Night’ who pactically destroys Sarah Pallin with each satirical joust, BBC comic legend Tracey Ullman has now taken on Angela Merkel, the powerhouse German Chancellor. The result is pretty darn funny. …
SOUTHEAST ASIA: HOW THE ISIS SHADOW IS GROWING
ROHAN GUNARATNA WRITES FROM SINGAPORE (courtesy of the Pacific Forum CSIS) – The so-called Islamic State (IS) is likely to create IS branches in the Philippines and Indonesia in 2016. Although the Indonesian military pre-empted IS plans to declare a satellite state of the “caliphate” in eastern Indonesia, IS is…
JAKARTA: THE FIRES NEXT TIME – THERE ARE MORE TO COME
SINGAPORE-BASED SOUTHEAST ASIA EXPERT DERWIN PEREIRA WRITES (courtesy of the Business Times of Singapore) — The terrorist attack in Jakarta last week achieved little but foretells much. It signifies the renewal of an implacable religious insurgency that could cost Indonesia and the rest of the region dearly. From the point…
SINGAPORE: BEST NEW BOOK ON THE ‘REAL’ UN!
ASIA MEDIA WRITES: Singapore has been marking the 50th anniversary of its independence in many distinctive ways. One is with the launch of a book on the United Nations – on the 70th anniversary of its founding — that needs to be added to the short list of truly great…
CHINA: ‘Baidu’ Scandal Rocks the Mainland
THIS AUTHORITATIVE REPORT IS EXCERPTED COURTESY OF CHINA DAILY IN BEIJING – The central government has set up an investigation team to probe search engine giant Baidu, after the company was accused by a hospital patient, who since has died, of providing misleading medical treatment information. The team is made…
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ODD COUPLE
Kishore Mahbubani and Lawrence O. Summers write in the current edition of FOREIGN AFFAIRS (excerpted with permission) – The mood of much of the world is grim these days. Turmoil in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees; random terrorist attacks across the globe;…
KOREAN PENINSULA: NEGOTIATION REMAINS THE SUPERIOR OPTION – FAMOUS EXPERT CHUNG-IN MOON
The following analysis by internationally respected scholar and former South Korean official Chung-in Moon has just been published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Professor Chung-in Moon writes: “In an address to the Workers’ Party Congress on May 7, Kim Jong-un told his audience that North Korea was “a responsible…
CHINA AND TRUMP: HOW HE USES IT
TOM PLATE WRITES (IN THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST) – At times China and its ways are viewed from America as if little has changed. One of those times is now. This is our quadrennial U.S. presidential campaign season. Sometimes it is our silliest season. One spurious claim about China…
FRANCE: EXTERNAL THREAT … OR INTERNAL CONDITION?
ERISA TAKEDA WRITES FROM PARIS – Everyone already knows what happened on the night of the night of November 13th in Paris. Social media, despite its questionable reliability, was the first to spread the word so widely about the horrible attacks. Instead of dwelling on this tragedy, I would like…
CHINA/U.S.: SHOULD THE XI JINPING CHARM OFFENSIVE SOUND AN ALARM?
THIS TOM PLATE COLUMN APPEARS COURTESY OF THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, WHERE IT FIRST APPEARED 9 NOVEMBER: China’s new focused diplomacy, as viewed in an off-balance U.S., is close to remarkable. After all the past foreign-policy fog, through which it was sometimes hard to see where Beijing stood, we…
LONDON: Putting a Bit of English Spin on China Policy
(This article appears in the South China Morning Post print editions as Dealing with China) TOM PLATE WRITES – Let us recall that almost two decades ago, a cocky William Jefferson Clinton, then president of a country but two-centuries-plus old, bluntly informed Jiang Zemin that his country, of many millennia,…
LOS ANGELES, ASIA MEDIA: PUNDIT/PROF PAVIN DELIVERS PENETRATING PITCH ON THAILAND
The famous Southeast Asian, media commentator and political analyst “Pavin” visited LMU Friday (8 Oct.) to offer informal but deeply informed observations about the politics and government of contemporary Thailand. He was not optimistic that the current government could succeed; nor was he optimistic that a new government could easily…
LOS ANGELES: Don’t Be Fooled by Media’s Hype of Phony University Ranking Lists
THE FOLLOWING COLUMN BY ASIA MEDIA FOUNDER TOM PLATE COMES TO US COURTESY OF THE KHALEEJ TIMES NEWSPAPER IN DUBAI, WHERE IT FIRST APPEARED: You may have noticed that yet another one of those allegedly authoritative Top 100 rankings of world universities has managed to cut into all the heart-warming…