TOM PLATE WRITES – Among the easiest things on the face of the earth on which one can become quickly aware of is an Australian after-party. That’s because it tends to carry on for so long that with each additional (happy) hour, it gets very audibly happier. But, as a…
Full Article PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE: On China, Australians Make a Lot of Sense – and DollarsTag: Pacific Perspectives
PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: Getting Hot Over Global Warming
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…
Full Article PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: Getting Hot Over Global Warming
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…
Full Article THE PLATE COLUMN: Russia in the Ukraine – Beyond Good and EvilLOS 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…
Full Article LOS ANGELES: Trying to Keep Japan in PerspectiveBOOK EXCERPT: The Enigma of Thailand’s Thaksin
The Following Excerpt from the New Book ‘Conversations with Thaksin’ Appeared First – and Recently — in The Japan Times daily newspaper in Tokyo. It is reprinted in its entirety below. CONVERSATIONS WITH THAKSIN OF THAILAND: PORTRAIT OF A PRIME MINISTER WHO BECAME THE PRIME SUSPECT IN HIS OWN LAND…
Full Article BOOK EXCERPT: The Enigma of Thailand’s ThaksinPACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: Vietnam on the Positive side, Asia on the American Mind
16 November 2011 Los Angeles — Real-life diplomacy reveals, as Lord Palmerston, twice British prime minister (1855-8, 1859-65), famously put it: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Over the decades…
Full Article PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES: Vietnam on the Positive side, Asia on the American Mind