PREVIOUS ONLINE EVENTS
A New space race? rediscovering star wars and the new high frontier
with william j. holstein and greg autry | july 13th, 2021
Two experts on China and the technological challenge it represents to the United States discuss China's recent successes in space and what they mean for NASA and US policy.
American space policy expert Greg Autry, co-author of the book, Death by China, will speak about the implications of China's landings on the Moon and Mars, and its rapid development of its own space station. Autry believes human kind should prepare to colonize space--but without the Chinese Communist Party.
Bill Holstein, author of A Grand Strategy: Countering China, Taming Technology, and Restoring the Media, argues that CCP's successes reveal the shocking gains it has made in core technologies such as long-distance communications. He sees CCP's gains as a repeat of the Sputnik challenge, which should galvanize Americans and their allies to respond. Limiting CCP's space aspirations starts here on Earth.
American space policy expert Greg Autry, co-author of the book, Death by China, will speak about the implications of China's landings on the Moon and Mars, and its rapid development of its own space station. Autry believes human kind should prepare to colonize space--but without the Chinese Communist Party.
Bill Holstein, author of A Grand Strategy: Countering China, Taming Technology, and Restoring the Media, argues that CCP's successes reveal the shocking gains it has made in core technologies such as long-distance communications. He sees CCP's gains as a repeat of the Sputnik challenge, which should galvanize Americans and their allies to respond. Limiting CCP's space aspirations starts here on Earth.
Battle of the bots
Helen Lee Bouygues from the reboot foundation
february 17th, 2021
Helen Lee Bouygues, Founder of The Reboot Foundation outlines their research into media credibility and consumer credulity.
At one point there were over a thousand tweets a minute on COVID 19, many of them the equivalent of shouting “Fire” in a crowded cinema, or worse Trump's loud reassurance “There is no fire!” in a blazing cinema. But governments should not decide what news is fake, nor can we trust the “markets” dominated by monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.
With the deployment of deep-fake technologies and fast breeding cyberbots, consumers need new ways to sort truth from fiction. Was Angela Merkel right that Twitter had no right to shut down Trump’s Twitter feed? But surely someone should have?
Helen Lee Bouygues questions the transparency of technology company algorithms and how to make the web giants responsible for their content. Her suggestions include a media literacy campaign to make fact checking second nature for information consumers, how to sort out paid content from commentary.
At one point there were over a thousand tweets a minute on COVID 19, many of them the equivalent of shouting “Fire” in a crowded cinema, or worse Trump's loud reassurance “There is no fire!” in a blazing cinema. But governments should not decide what news is fake, nor can we trust the “markets” dominated by monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.
With the deployment of deep-fake technologies and fast breeding cyberbots, consumers need new ways to sort truth from fiction. Was Angela Merkel right that Twitter had no right to shut down Trump’s Twitter feed? But surely someone should have?
Helen Lee Bouygues questions the transparency of technology company algorithms and how to make the web giants responsible for their content. Her suggestions include a media literacy campaign to make fact checking second nature for information consumers, how to sort out paid content from commentary.
AMERICAN KOMPROMAT
BRIEFING WITH CRAIG UNGER AND YURI SHVETS
FEBRUARY 9TH, 2021
Unger’s new book American Kompromat exposes how a relatively trivial targeting operation by the KGB’s New York station over forty years ago tried to recruit a prominent local property developer as an asset—and triggered events that morphed into the greatest intelligence bonanza in history. It recounts how this compromised coterie reached all the way into the office of the Attorney General, advancing themselves and their influence.
Based on exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—Soviets who resigned from the KGB and moved to the United States, former CIA officers, FBI counterintelligence agents, lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms--and analysis of thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, American Kompromat shows that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations leveraged the murky secrets of some the most powerful people in the US into potent weapons for Moscow.
Joining us on the panel, Yuri Borysovych Shvets - a former Major in the KGB, operating between 1980 and 1990. From April 1985 to 1987 he worked in the Washington, D.C. Rezidentura of the First Chief Directorate. While there, he held a cover job as a correspondent for TASS, a Soviet state-owned news agency.
Download the transcript here
IS JOURNALISM ANOTHER CASUALTY OF COVID-19?
JANUARY 27TH, 2021
Professor Damian Radcliffe and Will Church, Head of Journalism and Media Programmes at Thomson Reuters Foundation joined Ian Williams of the Foreign Press Association to expand on their report, "The Impact of COVID-19 on Journalism in Emerging Economies and the Global South".
Professor Damian Radcliffe reflects on how journalists and the nature of journalism has been effected by the pandemic which has contributed to the rise of fake news stories and evoked a surge of threats against the media in emerging economies.
Will Church provides context on the work of Thomson Reuters Foundation to educate and train journalists in emerging economies and highlights the research process of the report which involved the participation of alumni from Thomson Reuter Foundation's journalism training programmes spanning 26 countries. The contributors shared their own experiences to illustrate the reality of journalism outside of North America and Western Europe.
Download the transcript here
investigative reporting on china
press briefing with mara hvistendahl
JANUARY 21ST, 2021
Mara Hvistendahl, investigative reporter for The Intercept outlines ways to report through the Great Cyberwall of China and identify disinformation. She drills down into the murky provenance of the Hunter Biden stories and shares how journalists need to double check sources. An engaging insight into investigative journalism in China.
Download the transcript here
AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON on the outgoing trump administration
january 12th, 2021
Ambassador Bolton speaks on a wide range of areas including the recent events in Washington D.C, the outgoing Trump administration and the challenges faced by the incoming Biden administration.
Trump should resign but neither Article 25 nor impeachment “gesture politics” will work. he said invoking Nelson Mandela’s truth and reconciliation.
Capitol Hill rioters should get maximum sentences - without parole.
US should reverse recognition of Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.
US should open full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Britain better off after Brexit.
Would entertain talks about a position with Biden Administration, but thinks differences are too stark
Iran still main threat to US, while Saudi Arabia isn’t. Re-joining the JCPOA should take a Senate vote.
And much more
Download the transcript here
TIBETAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE KASUR GYARI DOLMA
MONDAY DECEMBER 7TH
Ian Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association and Bill Holstein of the Overseas Press Club in conversation with Kasur Gyari Dolma.
Across the world Tibetan Exiles are voting for their President, the Sikyong - not the Dalai Lama who is chosen by other means!
Kasur Gyari Dolma is the first woman candidate for the President of the Central Tibetan Administration and is in the US to meet voters. She will explain the election but also outline the prospects for Tibetans in the face of PRC power.
It’s been suggested that with the advancing years of the Dalai Lama, who actually knew and spoke to Mao Dze Dung, and is uniquely able to affect a compromise Beijing is missing a big opportunity for rapprochement.
THE DISTURBING SOUND OF SILENCE FROM HONG KONG!
Chris Yeung, Chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association
November 23rd, 2021
On Monday November 23rd the Foreign Press Association and Overseas Press Club held a joint press conference with Chris Yeung, Chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association.
Yeung told the OPC and Foreign Press Association (FPA) on Nov. 23 that four months after a sweeping security law went into effect in Hong Kong in June, it has become clear that officials plan to carry out its restrictions in a “rigorous, aggressive manner.”
The OPC and FPA held the joint press conference with Yeung to discuss how the new regime is affecting reporting in Hong Kong.
FPA President Ian Williams introduced the session, saying that China had used the distraction of the U.S. election to tighten its control on Hong Kong, removing elected representatives. When the OPC and FPA reached out to legislators to participate in the press conference, they declined for fear they might violate rules penalizing foreign contacts.
When the national security law went into effect in June, some observers thought it might have been little more than a “paper tiger,” but after several cases demonstrating that police would enforcing the law rigorously, it had become “a scary real tiger.”
“Media organizations and journalists are in particular worried that sooner or later, media will be a target,” he said, adding that those fears have been bolstered by public statements from officials including Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam who said “media is one of the sectors that she said should be ‘rectified.’ The other sectors are teachers and civil servants.”
Teachers had already been disqualified using the law, and civil servants are required to sign a declaration or take an oath of allegiance to the city. “This is seen as a kind of political vetting,” Yeung said.
The national security law includes an article calling for stepped-up regulation and supervision of media, Yeung added, saying it does not include details about how that might be carried out, “but we are expecting that the government will tighten control and regulation of the media.”
OPC Past President Bill Holstein asked what mechanisms Hong Kong police were using to pressure local journalists. Yeung said that police are demanding IDs and accreditation for journalists covering protests, citing concerns about what they call “fake journalists” who might break laws during rallies.
“It’s a pretty gloomy picture. One positive sign is that journalists are still resilient here, and there’s still strong support for a free and independent press.”
Yeung said that some Hong Kong journalists have already moved out of the city, but “the overall fleet of journalists is still in relatively good shape here. But the spirit, the mood perhaps, the sentiments are quite bad. I would say it’s the worst time in many decades,” he said. “We have to speak out and get society’s support to defend our rights and freedoms.”
WESTERN SAHARA CEASEFIRE OVER AFTER 40 YEARS
PROFESSOR JACOB MUNDY. NOVEMBER 17TH 2020
Polisario in the Western Sahara has declared the 40 yr-old ceasefire to be over after Moroccan troops broke the ceasefire in the buffer strip near the Mauritanian frontier. This comes after decades of Morocco’s refusal to hold the referendum it agreed to on independence for the territory which UN resolutions mandated.
Will the UN act? Outcomes range from guerrilla war against Morocco to war with Algeria, and yet another blow to the UN’s prestige.
Professor Jacob Mundy traces the origins and outcomes of an obscured but important struggle that calls the UN Charter into question.
Jacob Mundy holds a PhD from the University of Exeter and is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University. During the 2018–19 academic year, he was a visiting professor at the Université de Tunis as a Fulbright Scholar.
His research focuses on armed conflict and foreign intervention in North Africa, where he has conduced field research in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara. Among his books are Libya (Polity Press, 2018) and a new updated second edition of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, co-authored with Stephen Zunes.
DIRECTOR BRENNAN
OCTOBER 21ST, 2020
John Brennan, former Director of the CIA joins FPA President Ian Williams in conversation on October 21st, 2020.
John Brennan shows why he is ex CIA and out of favor with the White House, showing knowledge, candor, principles and humor in FPA briefing.
Director Brennan, offers a rare, behind the scenes look at crucial moments in recent US history, including the first Gulf war, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Arab Spring, the hunt for Bin Laden, the CIA’s controversial use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Obama drone policy, and when he first discovered Russia's aggressive efforts to undermine U.S. national security and interference in the 2016 election.
In a briefing for the Foreign Press Association Director Brennan considers the agency’s role in the U.S. government, admitting the insularity, arrogance, and myopia that have, at times, undermined its reputation in the eyes of the American people and of members of Congress.
Download the transcript here
John Brennan shows why he is ex CIA and out of favor with the White House, showing knowledge, candor, principles and humor in FPA briefing.
Director Brennan, offers a rare, behind the scenes look at crucial moments in recent US history, including the first Gulf war, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Arab Spring, the hunt for Bin Laden, the CIA’s controversial use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Obama drone policy, and when he first discovered Russia's aggressive efforts to undermine U.S. national security and interference in the 2016 election.
In a briefing for the Foreign Press Association Director Brennan considers the agency’s role in the U.S. government, admitting the insularity, arrogance, and myopia that have, at times, undermined its reputation in the eyes of the American people and of members of Congress.
Download the transcript here