By Simon Erskine Locke

As communicators we know the power of language. Words matter. The choices we
make, whether for a press release or an article, frame understanding.
​
The limits of the power of words to override what we have seen in Minneapolis over the
last few weeks was all too apparent when the Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino made a
boldfaced attempt to describe Alex Pretti and Renée Good as domestic terrorists to
justify the killings of these American citizens.

Despite efforts to convince our “lying eyes” that Pretti and Good were the bad guys and
ICE officers were the victims, and the initial fever-dream response of MAGA die-hards,
most on the right and left held the line, choosing to believe what they saw and
disbelieve evident lies.

For a brief moment, those on the left were united with right-to-carry advocates and
Republican legislators willing to call out the Administration. The push back was strong
enough to lead to a temporary retreat.

Most of us have likely been struggling to find the right language for Minneapolis. Two
terms have been used more than most by the left to describe the actions of the
government – authoritarian and fascist.

In an article for my Substack “The Spin,” I recently wrote that both terms have been
stripped of their power and reduced to partisan insults that only seem to trigger
democrats and progressives.

The idea of a strongman leader is embraced by many in the current take-no-prisoners
approach to achieving ideological goals. Far-right ideologies once verboten, underpin
policies of governments and opposition parties at home and abroad. With this as
context it should perhaps be no surprise that President Trump is comfortable enough to
play with the insults of dictator and fascist hurled against him.
Minneapolis does underscore the resonance of the risk to citizens of a government that
seeks to dominate and exercise control over individuals.

Merriam-Webster defines totalitarianism as “centralized control by an autocratic
authority and the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an
absolute state authority.” The individual is subordinated to the State with strict control
over all aspects of life and productive capacity.

We are not there yet. But I am confident that most Republicans would join their
Democrat compatriots in the recognition that there is reason for concern.

Although authoritarianism also diminishes the individual, because totalitarianism
encompasses both communism and fascism, it’s not as easy to dismiss as an insult
from the left. The language is not about an autocrat, or the right versus the left, it gets
us to the heart of the issue of the exercise of power by the State over individuals.
Individual rights are something that are profoundly important. They are as fundamental
as motherhood and apple pie, and a reason to check the power of any administration
and to come together in common cause.

Totalitarianism is language that encapsulates the threat to the individual of a ratcheting
up of the path we are on.

Simon Erskine Locke is a CommPRO columnist, entrepreneur, and member of the
Board of the Foreign Press Association.

Thought Leadership | Corporate Communications | Strategic Public Relations | Jan 8 
Written By Simon Erskine Locke

The idea of “the media” is a hangover from an increasingly distant past. A time when professional values of journalism were shared across channels, broadcasters and broadsheets. It was relevant at a time when we could rely on news to be based on the truth, reporting and facts, even if it leant left or right of a center that truly was a middle ground.

I say this without idealizing the imperfect institutions I grew up with, and without casting aspersions on mainstream media organizations that continue to prioritize the truth over politics – I’m looking at you 60 Minutes newsroom team, The New York Times, and the BBC.
​
There will be many that disagree with me. Depending upon the definition, for some FOX may be mainstream at least by the measure of viewership, if not by accuracy and partisanship.

Read the full article HERE

​In this episode of The Leadership Thread, Dr. Peggy Pelonis speaks with global strategic advisor and mentor David Michaels about leadership beyond titles and visibility. With decades of experience advising world leaders and major organizations, Michaels shares his belief in guiding quietly, empowering others to solve their own challenges, and valuing listening over speaking. He reflects on how his upbringing, education, and early mentors shaped his ethics, problem-solving mindset, and commitment to critical thinking. The conversation also touches on philanthropy, humor, and viewing problems as opportunities, offering a grounded, thoughtful perspective on what lasting leadership truly looks like.

I was a little girl in Lahore during the Partition, and although I remember a couple of isolated events, I did not understand what was going on. Why all the grownups seemed so agitated and careful about where they went and whom they talked to. Normal talk within the house often turned to whispers.
​
My father, Sardar Jagjit Singh, who was working for the British railways in India, was put in charge at the Lahore Station, and he would occasionally let us come to visit him at his office at the station, give us drinks and cakes and let us see all the goings on at the station. These visits were happy ones full of excitement at the prospect of seeing one of the famous trains pulling in – the Frontier Mail, the Toofan, The Grand Trunk Express and so on. For us it was great entertainment to see the English ladies dressed in all their finery getting off their luxurious salon wagons, walking their dogs, with personal bearers running around bringing tea and attending to their needs.

Suddenly our father stopped our visits. The only explanation we got was that it was no longer safe for us to go to his office. Sometimes we would hear a lot of shouting from the streets and people shouting slogans. Even that got more frequent and we were frightened.

One day my father came home and told my mother to get ready to leave for Simla to stay with our aunt and uncle, that it was no longer safe for us to stay in Lahore. Many non-Muslim families were getting killed and Sikh families were a special target.

Sarab Kaur with two of her six sisters. So in a few days we went to the station with our luggage. It was very crowded, with lots of police, and groups of people shouting “Pakistan Zindabad” (“Victory to Pakistan”) and waving swords. We felt very frightened. My father met us there and when a train pulled into the station, my father led us to the special salon wagon reserved for us to take us to Amritsar. He did not come with us, and we were sad and crying when the train pulled out of the station.

There was my father standing at the station in his black uniform studded with many gold buttons, and a baton in one hand, with his turban and beard, looking very handsome, waving out to us with wet eyes. We did not know when we would see each other again.
The family of Sardar Jagjit SinghLater I learned that he was not sure we would get safely to Amritsar, as many trains were stopped along the way and people hacked to death. But we were the lucky ones to get to our destination safely. We got to Simla to the home of my aunt, who had no children of her own, and doted on us but disciplined us with an iron hand. She would make us sleep wearing three dresses, our hair tightly braided, and shoes near the bed, in case we had to run in the middle of the night.

It was my father who was caught in the middle of a very bloody ordeal. There were riots almost every day at the station, with people killed here and there. It became an uncontrollable situation and trains were so crowded that they could barely move. The roofs of the trains were filled, and people hung on to anything they could grab on the train –  door knobs, railings, window guards, with bundles of possessions on their arms, filling the sides of the trains, hanging on for dear life.

Sadly, so many of them were butchered in the riots or on the way to the Indian border. My father saw the danger mounting and asked his British bosses to transfer him to Amritsar in India to receive the incoming refugees. In Amritsar when the trains came from the Pakistan Punjab side, there were very few people left alive. It was even difficult to open the doors and windows that were caked shut with blood.

This was an unimaginable nightmare.

My father had to organize the transfer of dead bodies to a cremation ground. Those left barely alive were sent to refugee camps. My father saved many lives, and allowed some of the refugees to stay at our large Railway home and in its servants’ quarters, until they found their relatives and moved on to other places.
There were other families my father knew, families which he never saw again. He received the news that a whole train had disappeared on its way from Rawalpindi to Lahore. The father-in-law and brother of a Parsi family, our family friends, were travelling in it. That train was never found. The same Parsi friends also lost a son and father, butchered on another train while they slept.

Another friend’s sons, Harcharan and Gurdial escaped by cutting off their hair and beards in the Muslim fashion, walking for fifteen miles, and then hiding in a military truck to get to the border. Later Haracharan married my eldest sister and the story is now part of our family history.

Entire families were killed, and many women and young girls were raped and then hacked to death. The best of friends, regardless of religion, became enemies overnight.
Did the British care? They sent a man, Radcliffe, to set the border lines between India and Pakistan. He had never set foot in India, and without much study of the region or the culture, a line was drawn arbitrarily to divide the two countries. There was no organization of a peaceful transfer.

The British just walked away from it all, leaving the Indians to their fate.
The result was butchery and bloodshed. A country was created for Muslims, and yet more Muslims opted to stay in India. Was this Partition necessary? The biggest migration in history took place, over 20 million displaced, and over two million dead. No one could prevent this horror.

My mother’s cousin and her husband and baby had to escape by foot in the heat of August. They had little to eat. Her husband was killed before they could even cross the border. She and her son had to starve for days. They never fully recovered their health, and she had to depend on help from relatives to live.

Similarly my mother’s brother, our Mama, and his family had to walk across for miles and miles in horrible conditions; they witnessed skirmishes on the way, many killings, but were lucky to have survived. They saw the discomfort of old people walking and dropping dead, babies being born and mothers dying as no food was available for them and no milk.

For our parents and their generation it was such a horrendous trauma that they could not talk about it for years.

The elders told me that my great-great grandfather’s legend still lives on in the old town. Jawahar Mal was one of the favorite ministers of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. An elephant used to come every morning from the Court of the Maharaja to pick him up, and then he would return on the elephant in the evening. It was a spectacle for the people in the city at that time. I got such a chill hearing this and learning more about my family. The Sikh historian confirmed the story, and was then able to link my family history to other grandfathers who were engineers and soldiers and fought several wars in Persia (Iran) and Mesopotamia (Iraq/Syria).

Visiting her home and meeting with PakistanisAnother time I walked through the dusty Anarkali Bazaar, which did not seem to have changed much. It seems I got lost there at the age of 2, until finally my parents found me!

Then I also visited the Station Master’s home near the railway station, and again it was so surprising to see that the large home built in the British Colonial style was still there, unchanged, but somewhat old and dilapidated. The banyan tree that an older sister had told me about was still there in the backyard. As I walked through the empty house, I imagined the voices, the fingerprints and footprints of my parents echoing through my body.

I could picture my mother in the front garden, giving instructions to the gardeners what flowers, vegetables and fruit trees they were to plant. The smell of jasmine flowers made her presence so strong in my mind. It was so emotional that I shed some tears, thinking of what my parents must have suffered through the Partition, having to leave everything behind and starting a completely new life with none of their possessions.

Return journey - Sarab Kaur at Lahore StationI also visited Kotli Laharan, near Sialkot, where my mother’s family had large havelis, with private water wells in the inner courtyards. They had big farmlands nearby that grew mangoes, wheat and mustard. A 90-year old man, who I met there, showed me around and told me that the mangoes from my grandfather’s farm were the best and most famous in all of Punjab. He was about 18 years old at the time of Partition, and had worked for my family. Seeing me brought tears to his eyes and memories of his “happy” youth with the protection of my family members.

He took me to the school which my mother had attended until the fifth grade – when education ended for women. How emotional that was for me, to imagine my mother and her two older sisters there as young girls. He also showed me the school for boys, just on the edge of the big village.
​
When I left, many people had gathered to say goodbye, and yes I shed tears with them, hoping that I would return one day and find them all there.

Life Goes On…and happier days do return…

FPA Board Member Sarab Zavaleta's short film, Amritsar Junction, will be in final competition of the International Short Film,  opening on April 24, 2025

The International Short Film Competition annually encourages and showcases the creation of short films exploring themes of social justice, human rights, and the law by independent, emerging filmmakers worldwide. Finalist films are screened at the FOLCS Annual Awards Night.

“Social justice” may be broadly construed. You are free to choose any subject in which the relationship between law, justice, and society can be fashioned into a unique visual story. For example, your film could be about rights that have been denied, harms that have gone unaddressed, the aftereffects of courtroom decisions, government regulations, and statutes, or an attempt to take a new look at what “justice” really means. Any genre (animation, comedy, documentary, drama, musical, sci-fi, etc.) is permitted.
​
The FOLCS International Short Film Competition (ISFC) was created in 2011 to encourage the creation of short films exploring themes of law and justice. Expanding in reach each year, independent and aspiring filmmakers from around the globe are invited to submit their original shorts. Entrants not only have the chance to have their work screened before a New York audience but also the opportunity to have their shorts viewed by distinguished professionals from both the legal and entertainment fields. Each year ISFC features renowned filmmakers, actors, writers, journalists, public intellectuals, and members of the legal profession. ISFC also attracts overflowing and diverse crowds of film enthusiasts.

Wednesday, February 12th, 6pm - 8pm
Novotel Belleville, 64 Boulevard de Belleville, 75020 Paris

By Hollie McKay
12/18/24

In a horrifying act of violence that has largely gone unnoticed by the global community, hundreds of innocent civilians were brutally massacred in broad daylight in Burkina Faso last August. According to a confidential French government security report and confirmed by aid organizations, the death toll from the attack, carried out by Al Qaeda-linked militants, exceeds 600.

Subscribe to HollieMcKay's Substack to continue reading

Andelman Unleashed provides news, critical analysis and original perspectives on the world and America’s place in it. Originally conceived to chronicle every national election everywhere in the world, it has expanded into a broad examination of the challenges we face in this era of ever expanding globalization and to democracy. Plus a host of new and exciting from conversations to cuisine. Plus for our (lightly) paying subscribers weekly conversations with the founder, celebrity guests and so much more! Our Founding Members get even more exciting additions.

David A. Andelman, founder and editor-in-chief, draws on his experience as an award-winning journalist and commentator, CNN columnist, author or translator of five books, who has reported from 86 countries on five continents in the course of his career as a New York Times and CBS News (Paris) correspondent, an executive editor of Forbes, editor-in-chief and publisher of World Policy Journal. On December 1, 2021 he was named by President Emmanuel Macron chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honor.

​Subscribe at https://daandelman.substack.com/

​Join us for Andelman's commentary, thoughtful original reporting, the best and most compelling work from news media around the world in their own languages, and a weekly cartoon courtesy of the incomparable Paris-based Cartooning for Peace collective.
We want to hear from you, our readers, and ask you to join us as we explore the greatest challenges of our times, then and now. Email us: [email protected]

Taiwan’s first ever minister of digital affairs has transformed politics, using online platforms and AI to give power to the country’s citizens – with lessons for us all

By Laura Spinney

In 2014, the approval rating of Taiwan’s government was less than 10 per cent. Popular dissatisfaction culminated in the Sunflower Movement, with students occupying legislative buildings to protest a proposed trade deal with China. Three weeks later, their demands were met. A decade on, this is seen as a turning point in Taiwanese democracy.One group to emerge from the movement was the civic technology cooperative g0v (pronounced “gov zero”), which included the well-known hacker Audrey Tang. g0v proceeded to build a virtual platform for democratic deliberation called vTaiwan. The “v” stands for “virtual”, but it could just as easily stand for “vulnerable”, says Tang. Born with a heart condition that nearly killed her as a child, she has since become the country’s first transgender minister, and she draws parallels between the fragility of her own life and that of democracy.
Tang was invited to join the government in 2016 and set about implementing her vision of “radical transparency”, starting with vTaiwan. After the first covid-19 cases were declared in mainland China in late 2019, she became a central player in the Taiwanese government’s response as a cabinet member for digital affairs. By 2022, Taiwan was being universally lauded for its handling of the pandemic and Tang was given her own ministry, becoming the country’s first minister of digital affairs. In her new book, Plurality, she argues that Taiwan – often seen as a potential flashpoint for future global conflict – is now a thriving democracy that has much to teach the world. She stood down from her post in May following January’s elections, which is when we caught up with her.


Laura Spinney: How has technology contributed to an erosion of democracy?
Audrey Tang: Democracy depends on a citizenry being informed and engaged in the conversation, and technology that’s used to censor communication or to conduct surveillance – to make people transparent to the state rather than the other way around – has definitely hurt democracy. Even in places where there is no such top-down pressure, the sheer polarisation that exists online has harmed the discourse that is the backbone of democracy. The backslide has been quite acute in the last few decades as it has become harder for people to see democracy as something they can contribute to, or that delivers.

This is a bumper year for elections globally, and some worry that democracy will take a (further) beating. Do you see it as a watershed moment?
Taiwan successfully overcame the many attacks on our democracy because we had 10 years of experience working against very well-funded adversaries. We know, for example, that collaborative fact-checking inoculates people against disinformation better than looking at a checked fact. For democracies that are less well prepared than ours, yes, I do see this year as a possible watershed in terms of amplifying counter-democratic trends, if only because online discourse has become so central to democratic processes and the artificial intelligence tools that let bad actors manipulate the facts have become accessible to all.

Does AI have the power to save democracy as well as erode it?
Only people – the demos in democracy – can save democracy, but AI can help if it’s deployed to assist or augment collective intelligence. There are already narrow AI systems that detect online toxicity, for example, but the new generative AI, including large language models, can detect more nuance, including affinity, compassion, curiosity, reasoning and respect. If social media platforms embrace these models to foreground pro-democratic, pro-social conversations, research suggests that people will spend the same amount of time online, but they will engage in conversations that bridge, rather than exacerbate, ideological schisms. They will begin to see democracy as something they can do here and now, rather than something they only experience at election time, or that they delegate to parliamentarians.

Taiwan had a scoreboard ranking people’s preferred covid-19 vaccines
REUTERS/Ann Wang

In Taiwan, this starts by educating children to be digitally savvy. How is that achieved?
Even before I became a minister, I was a member of the committee that advised the government on curricular reform. The overhaul took effect in 2019, and our new curriculum has now been deployed to all primary schools [ages 6 to 12]. Instead of a one-size-fits-all education, based on critical consumption of information and standardised tests, the new curriculum emphasises autonomy, interaction and the common good. Co-creation replaces literacy at the core of it. I think the results speak for themselves. Surveys show that vTaiwan now leads the world in civic education.

Taiwan has been criticised because the government is free to dismiss policy proposals, and often does. How do you judge vTaiwan’s impact?
vTaiwan served as a proof of concept that, using open-source technology alone, civil society can deliberate policy matters in a fully participatory way that leaves nobody behind. That is important given that 10 years ago, the administration was enjoying an approval rating of 9 per cent and people automatically distrusted anything it said or asked. To begin with, the platform addressed mainly digital issues, but it ended up delivering quite impactful policies – for the regulation of the ride-hailing company Uber, for example. And the project later broadened its scope to non-digital issues, such as consultations for the Open Parliament Action Plan [which aims to bolster democracy through transparency, openness, participation, digitisation and literacy]. vTaiwan helped rebuild legitimacy.

How do the Join platform and your latest initiative, Alignment Assemblies, move things on?
Join is a government-run – as opposed to a civil society-run – platform. It was launched a year after vTaiwan, and its most important function is to serve as a petition platform. Anyone who gathers 5000 signatures for a proposal can force a ministerial response.
Alignment Assemblies are conversations designed to steer the development of AI in ways that benefit society. It takes on board three lessons that we learned from the implementation of vTaiwan. First, we reach out to hundreds of thousands of people via SMS from what they know to be a government number. Second, once we have chosen a representative sample of several hundred citizens, we ask them to meet online in video chat rooms with AI facilitators – something that only became possible with recent advances in conversational AI. Both those measures have massively increased inclusivity, including of senior citizens. Third, we summarise the conversation using AI. A recent Alignment Assembly on the accuracy, reliability and consistency of information led, in just a few months, to an anti-fraud act that is currently awaiting deliberation in parliament.
​

How did your digital approach help in Taiwan’s response to the covid-19 pandemic?
Around the world, polarisation over vaccines hurt many more people than was necessary, but in Taiwan there was no anti-vaccine faction. That isn’t because Taiwanese people are homogeneous, it’s because we turned the conversation into a “my vaccine is better than your vaccine” race. We had a national online scoreboard where we kept track of people’s preferences for four vaccines by age bracket. It became a friendly competition, as between rival sports teams.
The idea, then and now, is to anticipate a conspiracy theory and prebunk it, instead of trying to debunk it after the fact when it might be too late. Prebunking works like inoculation: a weaker virus takes hold so a more potent one can’t. We applied the same strategy before the general elections in January to scotch the conspiracy theory that they would be rigged.

A decade ago, dissatisfaction with Taiwan’s government spawned the Sunflower Movement
REUTERS/Toby Chang

Did digital democracy have a positive impact on those elections?
Definitely. After the election, hate across party lines reached a historic low, and that’s despite Taiwan being the most targeted place in the world for disinformation and interference aimed at increasing polarisation. We have playbooks against such interference, including collaborative fact-checking and prebunking of conspiracy theories, so that it backfires and actually increases solidarity across Taiwanese people. The upshot is that, after the election, all three parties and their supporters feel that they have won a little bit. Our radically transparent approach to ballot-counting helped too: votes, which were on paper, were read out in front of observers with cameras.
Have other countries asked for your help in introducing digital democracy?
Very much so. I’m about to leave for a book tour in Europe, where I’ll meet my counterparts in European governments as well as civic society groups. I’ll spend a few days in Finland, which is one of the few countries in Europe to use the collaborative sense-making tool Polis for national consultation, as vTaiwan does. Digital ministers form an assembly of sorts, with experimental platforms all around the world, including Policy Lab in the UK and sitra in Finland.

Taiwan has a very high level of digital inclusivity. Could these processes work in other countries?
From 2016, we insisted that mobile broadband was a human right and the penetration rate of that alone was more than 80 per cent in 2022 – up from 67 per cent six years earlier. That’s even before you consider fixed broadband. We are one of the top countries in the world when it comes to internet inclusivity. But yes, what we have done is absolutely feasible in other countries. The point is that we bring technology to where people are. We’re not asking them to adapt to the technology – and offline options remain available. Accessibility is our top priority.

As a hacker-turned-minister, someone who has tried to renew democracy from the inside, is your ultimate goal to bring down the existing system?
I’m a Taoist, meaning that I don’t think in terms of bringing things down. I prefer Richard Buckminster Fuller’s metaphor in which an individual affects society like a trim tab – the tiny rudder that steers the actual rudder that steers the ocean liner. I don’t steer, I nudge. I want to persuade people to think of democracy as a social technology and to invent new ways of living together. The documentary Good Enough Ancestor, which is based on my book and my life, makes it clear that for me, it isn’t about trying to solve everything or closing down possibilities. It’s about opening them up for future generations, who will have different challenges and different tools, and harnessing diversity through co-creation. The same word in Taiwanese means “digital” and “plural”. I always thought of myself as both digital minister and minister of plural affairs.
Laura Spinney is a writer based in Paris, France

It would be a “diplomatic” solution to the conflict over sovereignty, says David Michaels, a British political and economic strategist.

The president of Argentina Javier Milei reiterated his intention to discuss the possession of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) with Great Britain, but in an “adult” negotiation without urgency. “There is no instant solution,” he said in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Monday the 6th. (May)

In parallel to those messages involved in that dispute, some ideas have emerged. 

Inviting the islands to become associate members of Mercosur would be a step towards a “diplomatic” solution to the Falkland/Malvinas dilemma that could, simultaneously, ensure a peaceful “economic” remedy and dispel any future thoughts of aggressive acts, proposes David Michaels, a British political and economic strategist. 

Although Mercosur does not formally recognize this territory as a sovereign country, a solution could be created if Mercosur members recognized the regional economic benefits and merits of the initiative, he stated in an article at the end of April on the EIN Presswire portal. 

A central element of their proposal is the creation of a “Malvinas/Falkland Islands Development Fund” that would go towards greater exploitation of the islands' natural resources. 

Las Malvinas/Falkland would be the main managing partner of the fund. To solve this, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Development Finance Corporation of the United States and other regional and international banking entities – including the central banks of the Mercosur countries – could be invited to subscribe to a minority percentage. The capital market could also be appealed to, via a consortium of Anglo-Argentine brokers, which would guarantee diverse and robust financial support, says Michaels. Furthermore, this initiative could be a catalyst to attract foreign investment capital to the entire South American Southern Cone.

The text includes the comment of a senior official in the United States Department of State: “The creation of an investment fund could provide the parties with a win-win situation, in which everyone saves face, and thus begin a long and fruitful collaboration.”

And he quotes a “very respected” Uruguayan foreign minister, who he does not identify: “Exploring a cooperation agreement between Mercosur and the islanders can be a first step in the right direction” and an “excellent instrument to build a civilized dialogue” between the islanders and Argentina.

The consultant, head of David P. Michaels Strategic Solutions, based in New York, was in Uruguay in April. When consulted by Search, he defined his proposal as “an economic initiative aimed at starting talks so that they can lead to a different type of solution” for the Falkland/Malvinas.

In 2021, Mercosur expressed its support for Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas. The consultant understands that his proposal “is a way to achieve what Milei has said. Currently, no talks are taking place. This initiative could boost them” and “lead to a different type of solution.” He added: “Milei's goal is the economy and improving relations with the United States and the United Kingdom. It needs to bring foreign investment to Argentina and opportunities for its citizens. 

Capital is needed to create a better quality of life for Argentines, not short-sighted distractions and conflicts” that take focus away from the goal of solid economic development.

According to Michaels, the benefit to the British would be “a peaceful and economically viable alternative to confrontation.” This, he maintains, can also be an “important step in the Mercosur-UK talks.”
​
David P. Michaels advises corporations and governmental entities on matters associated with conflict resolution, economic restructuring, and related political, financial, and economic negotiations. Notably, he is credited with anticipating the concepts behind the Brady Plan and the Enterprise for the Americas programs launched by the Bush (senior) Administration. During the 1980s sovereign debt crisis, he was the principal proposer of the “International Central Clearing House” for the registration of public and private sector debt instruments. David Michaels served as the President of the Foreign Press Association in the United States (founded in 1918) from 2014-2019.