Tuesday, July 7th at 10am on Zoom

Taiwan is a small country- about which we do not know nearly enough! Home to the most advanced semiconductors used in AI, it is mooted as a possible trigger for World War III, analysts often treat it as cypher in their calculations about China/US relations. Chris Horton’s book Ghost Nation examines the inner political life of Taiwan and its tech advantage, and frames it in global and regional perspectives.

Whether you are covering the matches or just enjoying them - you are invited to a quarter-final watch party at the Natural History Museum. This event will include food and drink and access to the museum’s current World Cup, World Cultures exhibit - FREE for FPA members - please make sure your membership is up to date and join us! Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.

With its notorious Citizens United decision the Supreme Court threw open the floodgates to electoral big money, in the name of free speech for corporations. This week a Delaware judge ruled that corporations even have the right to vote! But there is a fightback. Tom Moore of the Center for American progress explains that states have rights - to regulate corporations. Hawaii, Minnesota and California are pioneering the way which poses and acute dilemma for the Trump-appointed Supremes who have always cited States Rights! Tom Moore talks to FPA President Ian Williams in the latest Outside-In podcast from FPA.

Often US foreign policy is delineated by domestic lobbies as much as statecraft. Fron Nahzi, human rights campaigner and Albanian/Kosovo activist explains the background of the “Albanian Lobby” and its limitations in the context of interest groups in Washington during the decades of (still unresolved) conflict.

The FPA hosts Michael Kovrig to discuss the Xi/Trump summit with the unique inside view of China that his 1,009 days as a prisoner/hostage gives him. He assesses the tenuous results of Trump's visit to Beijing and the implications of Carney’s previous visit the Canadian "Middle Powers” initiative and discusses the PRC’s relentless campaign of diplomatic attrition to frame the agenda in Beijing’s terms. And of course we discussed the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai and Western silence about it!

Santiago Lyon, Head of Advocacy and Education at the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), shares his journey from war photographer to champion of the powerful new technology standard C2PA that builds a layer of trust into digital content in the AI Age. The discussion highlights how the Adobe-led organization, which includes the world’s leading technology and media companies, is leading the charge around the implementation of content authentication to address misinformation, disinformation and fake content by incorporating digital provenance into documents, images and video. Lyon is interviewed by Foreign Press Association board member and CEO of CAI/C2PA contributing member, Tauth Labs, Simon Erskine Locke.   

Journalist and author Rebecca Fannin and FPA Board Member Simon Erskine Locke discuss China's meteoric rise in the tech sector.

Rebecca Fannin, a leading expert on the Chinese tech sector, is an internationally recognized journalist, author, and speaker. Through her company, Silicon Dragon, Fannin continues to host global forums and connect business leaders, venture capitalists, startup founders, and others navigating the impact of China's rapidly shifting tech landscape and its increasingly contested place in the global economy.

The Foreign Press Association has had a long and productive relationship with our colleagues in Hong Kong. We were alerted to the worsening position of the media when we approached former speakers and they said they were unable to for fear of the consequences.

We deplore the real, harsh sentences imposed for the invented “crimes” of Jimmy Lai and his colleagues. Their “crimes” were behaving as normal journalists and they should not have been charged and tried, let alone sentenced. We call for their immediate release.

The FPA deplores the arrest of Don Lemon for reporting a demonstration inside a Minnesota church. It is a threat to the First Amendment rights of all residents in America and but adds a further chilling effect for foreign press journalists whose visa status is already under highly critical scrutiny. If a journalist well-known to an American audience can be arrested, then a reporter working for an audience outside the United States has every reason to expect consequences.

Many of our members, rushed downtown in Manhattan to the World Trade Center to report on 9-11 and its aftermath, and following this logic could have been charged with complicity in the attacks! 

In this episode of the Foreign Press Association's "Outside-In Scoop" podcast, FPA President Ian Williams is joined by Stephen Schlesinger, American historian, political commentator and international affairs specialist, and Craig Mokhiber, longtime human rights lawyer and former UN official, for an in-depth discussion on Donald Trump’s proposed “Board for Peace,” Gaza, and the future of international law.

The panel examines the origins of Trump’s Board for Peace, its passage through the UN Security Council, and its implications for Gaza, Palestine, the United Nations, and global governance. Drawing on decades of experience inside the UN system, Schlesinger and Mokhiber analyze whether the initiative represents a legitimate peace mechanism or a dangerous erosion of international law and UN authority.

Stephen Schlesinger is a Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York City. He is the former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School (1997-2006) and former publisher of the quarterly magazine, The World Policy Journal.

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York, undertaking dozens of human rights missions to countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

In this in-depth interview, Ian Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association, speaks with Venezuelan opposition figure Diego Arria about the dramatic political developments following the removal of Nicolás Maduro and the growing role of Donald Trump in Venezuela’s future. The conversation explores whether U.S. intervention represents liberation or a new form of control, as concerns mount over oil interests, political prisoners, and the erosion of international law.

They cover U.S. sanctions, alleged narco-terrorism links, the Venezuelan military, political repression, and fears that Maduro’s inner circle remains in power under a new arrangement. Diego warns that despite Maduro’s removal, over 1,000 political prisoners remain jailed, dissent inside Venezuela is still punished, and U.S. policy appears focused more on oil access than democracy or human rights.

Carey Gillam on what journalists should look at in toxic whitewash!

Carey Gillam is an American investigative journalist and author with more than 30 years of experience covering food and agricultural policies and practices, including 17 years as a senior correspondent for Reuters international news service (1998-2015). She has specialty knowledge about the health and environmental impacts of pervasive pesticide use and industrial agriculture, and has won several industry awards for her work. Her first book, “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science,” was released in October 2017 and won the coveted Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists as well as two other awards.

There are echoes of Kosovo in what is unfolding in Venezuela — raising profound questions of legality, sovereignty, and responsibility. As with the capture of Saddam Hussein, it risks becoming the lynching of a guilty man: morally satisfying to some, but legally and politically perilous.

To explore these issues, the day of the US raid, I spoke with Ambassador Diego Arria, Venezuela’s former ambassador to the United Nations and a former president of the UN Security Council during the Balkan wars who was, like many Venezuelans happy to see Maduro gone, but apprehensive about Trump’s intentions.

As Venezuela’s ambassador in the UN Security Council Arria played a significant role in shaping what Kofi Annan later formalized as the Responsibility to Protect and left his mark with the “The Arria Formula” meetings of the Security Council, designed to discuss larger issues. A progressive reformist, former governor of Caracas, and longtime opponent of authoritarianism, Arria is no reactionary outsider to Venezuelan politics although he has been exiled from home for some years and has in fact recently moved from New York to Miami to be closer to the action. He has remained deeply engaged in the opposition all this time.

What Actually Happened?