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| Program Chair: Sally Brant | March 14, 2013 | ||||||||||||||
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This Week...
March 21
Upcoming...
March 28
Jeremy Sidell
"People Assisting the Homeless" Venue Change: W Hotel
April 4
Phil Gabriel & Diane Good
New Member Craft Talks |
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March 21 Sheriff Lee Baca "Call the Cops!" |
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March 28
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Dwight is back! Paul Aslan led the pledge and Diane Good provided
the invocation. Visiting Rotarians included Therese Campbell from the RPV Rotary Club and even Elliot Turner from our very own WVRC ;)
Special guests were- organist for UCLA and former Hollywood
Rotarian Christophe Bull, our Merchant Minute speakers from
Belmont Village, Sally Brant brought Chrys Stamatis, her
partner at Coldwell Banker Brentwood and rounding out our guests
was also Susan Wong with today's speaker.
Announcements:
The Merchant Minute this week was brought to us from Belmont Village Senior Living. Therese Campbell is in charge of Community Relations and Donna Hermann is their Executive Director. Belmont Village is home to 200 residents. It is an independent and assisted living facility with specialization in memory programming as their key element. The franchise has 21 communities nationwide. Our speaker Terry McCarthy from the Los Angeles World Affairs Council was introduced. The Los Angeles World Affairs Councilpromotes greater understanding of current global issues and their impact on the people of Southern California by inviting authoritative and influential figures in world affairs to Los Angeles and providing them an open forum. Terry McCarthy was appointed President and CEO of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in July 2012. Prior to that, he traveled the world for television and print media for 27 years, covering politics, business, military, social and environmental issues across the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. He has managed bureaus in the US and overseas, and set up two bureaus in war zones. He speaks six languages, has won four Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow award. The theme for today's lunch was The US' role in the world. He started by prefacing his talk with the 1988 uprising in Burma - and witnessing first-hand the "democrazies." He was one of the four journalists there with forged visas to witnesses the brutal slaughtering of peaceful student demonstrations near the US Embassy. Our speaker continued to share experiences from the 1990s and how Yugoslavia was a good time for the US to get involved. Or in 1998 information about the Good Friday Peace Deal and how Pres. Clinton sent George Mitchell to broker deal when Tony Blair, the Prime Minister wouldn't shake the hand of the head of the IRA, Jerry Adams. And stressed the political road works and sending over someone of that stature from the U.S. provided influence to the "hard men" of the IRA. No one else can play that role -- not China or Europe.
Our Iraq effort is an example of this not being appropriate. We
caused suffering without proper planning because we
over-reached.
Afghanistan is a different matter for our speaker. Shortly after
9/11 he was sent there. The US backed schools for girls and women
in 2002-2003. The country was more open to assistance - exhausted
from war with Soviet Union and Taliban. US then shifted attention to
Iraq and by 2005/2006 with help of neighboring Pakistan, Afghanistan
is again a threat. If we leave in 2014 Taliban will return, If we don't will continue to lose human life, national treasures, and more expense. It's complicated; as Marines do clear the bad guys out, but as soon as they leave the Taliban will return and punish "the friends of Americans" China: is not our enemy like Soviet Union, sells us their goods, so our relationship is complex. On the outside looks like a growing power, especially in Asia. US reminding they need to be good neighbors But internally it is not as monolithic as seems in fact, it is quite unstable. If you consider in Jan 2010 Google had been banned, that means 1.3 B people and the govt is on the wrong side of history. Our speaker set up a stand by Google and young tech geeks left flowers mourning. In essence the US stands for freedom to many. The lunch ended with Q&A re: Pakistan, Iran, North Korea. Rwanda was under UN control with Canadian and Belgian forces so unfortunately not up to the US.
-YYE Aly Shoji
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