Author Archives: lawac
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Donald Trump may have run a raw, no-holds-barred campaign, but as the reality of becoming President sinks in, a more complex picture is appearing, according to John Russell, a DC-based Republican lobbyist.
Congressman Adam Schiff said the prospect of Russian hackers influencing US election results 'terrifies him', that the new Philippines President is a 'loose cannon', and that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is 'as dangerous as we might fear.' Schiff, who represents California's 28th congressional district and is Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke at a LAWAC dinner on Wednesday October 26th.
Whoever wins the White House in November, Republican or Democrat, they will face a turbulent world. From the brutal civil war in Syria, the global terrorist threat from ISIS and a hostile government in Tehran to aggression from Moscow, an increasingly assertive China, a mounting loss of faith in global free trade and the world's largest number of refugees since the end of World War II, many challenges face the next US President.
US Presidents experience failures during their administrations, sometimes very visible failures – the botched roll-out of Obamacare, the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina by President Bush, the disastrous hostage-rescue mission in Iran under President Carter. Unexpected events cannot be discounted, but often Presidents make failures more probable by not consulting widely enough amongst the 4 million federal employees…
Colombians and the world at large were shocked when an October 2nd referendum on a peace agreement to end 50 years of war saw a majority vote 'No'. 'We have a very polarized country,' said Hector Aristizábal, a therapist and peace activist from Medellín in Colombia. 'The bigger message [from the vote] is we need more peace education,' he told a LAWAC Global Café Breakfast meeting on Wednesday, October 12th.
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Maureen Dowd, a political columnist for the New York Times, told a lunch meeting of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on Friday September 23rd that while she used to call up political analysts to help her with her columns in the past, 'now I call up shrinks.' The current campaign, which she says has 'gone beyond parody', is now so bizarre that one couldn't make it up.
The Los Angeles World Affairs Council's inaugural 'Future of Asia' conference on Sept 15th-16th revealed a continent where economic pragmatism increasingly trumps political animosity, where Asian millennials are focused on the promise of future growth rather than historical grievance, where private entrepreneurs are making inroads into the state-dominated economy in China, where an inward-looking India is starting to engage with the outside world, where a formerly flailing Japan has found some stable political leadership… but where air quality and food safety are suspect, and inter-state rivalries require, more than ever, a stabilizing US presence. Asia is a continent where the stakes are rising rapidly – both in economic promise and expansion of individuals' horizons, but also in environmental and security challenges.
Ten days after the attempted coup in Turkey it is still unclear what exactly happened, who was responsible for planning the coup, and why it was so ineptly carried out, according to Asli Bâli, a law professor and director of the Center of Near Eastern Studies at UCLA. 246 people died in the attacks carried out in Ankara and Istanbul on July 15th, but the coup plotters failed to capture the President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his prime minister Binali Yildirim, and they also were unable to shut down satellite communications and social media. This allowed Erdogan to appeal to people to come out onto the streets and face down the soldiers, effectively reversing the coup.
If the UK held the referendum on whether to leave or remain in the EU again today, the chances are the remain vote would carry the day, according to Shashank Bengali, an LA Times correspondent who covered the aftermath of Brexit for the paper. 'I think you would have a different result now – a number of people felt they had been lied to, and said afterwards 'we believed the rhetoric'.' Bengali, who is normally based in Mumbai covering South Asia for the LAT, flew in to the UK just after the Brexit vote on June 23rd and was sent by his editors outside London to report in the less affluent areas of the British midlands and Wales, where the 'Leave' vote was high.
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