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COMMENTARY

Mar 10, 2011

What to do about Gadhafi?

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON — There ought to be many more red faces among the world leaders who used to kowtow and suck up to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, an insane megalomaniac bully. But only a minority will ever admit that they were wrong.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 9, 2011

Reduce global imbalances with wholesome asset diet

By Kenneth Rogoff, Masakazu Mitsuyama and Alonso Soto

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Doctors have long known that it is not just how much you eat, but what you eat, that contributes to or diminishes your health. Likewise, economists have long noted that for countries gorging on capital inflows, there is a big difference between debt instruments and equity-like investments,...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 9, 2011

How big is China's economy?

By Kevin Rafferty

HONG KONG — There was much fanfare last month when Beijing reported that China had overtaken Japan to become the second biggest economy in the world. But this celebration was bogus — because the reality is that in real terms China has already become the biggest economy in the world, edging slightly...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 9, 2011

The Gadhafis: like father, like son

By Omar Ashour

LONDON — "The enemy of yesterday is the friend of today . . . . [I]t was a real war, but those brothers are free men now." Thus spoke Seif al-Islam Gadhafi in March 2010, referring to the leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an armed organization that had attempted to assassinate his...

COMMENTARY

Mar 9, 2011

Beijing's struggle to achieve energy security

By Michael Richardson

SINGAPORE — Since China's surging demand for oil started to exceed domestic production in the early 1990s, Beijing has been preparing for a range of possible threats to its energy supply — including turmoil in the Middle East.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 8, 2011

Take away West's monetary punch bowl

By Edin Mujagic and Sylvester Eijffinger

TILBURG, Netherlands — There are times to think outside the box, and there are times to return to normality. The West's major central banks — the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve — should take this to heart.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 7, 2011

More trade, less hunger

By Pascal Lamy

GENEVA — The recent sharp spike in food prices and growing concerns about food security have sparked anxiety worldwide. The possibility of being unable to put food on the table fills parents with a deep sense of foreboding. And because the world's poorest people spend a higher proportion of their income...

COMMENTARY

Mar 7, 2011

U.S. foreign aid hinders more than it helps

By Doug Bandow

SEATTLE — The United States will run up a record $1.65 trillion deficit in 2011. Yet Washington keeps subsidizing foreign governments. House Republicans have targeted foreign aid. This year the State Department would lose 16 percent of its budget; humanitarian aid would drop by 41 percent.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 7, 2011

Spurred by Beijing, New Delhi moves to raise its profile in Iraq

By Harsh V. Pant

LONDON — After seven long years, the Indian government has decided that the time has come to make its presence felt in Iraq by naming an envoy to the country. The previous ambassador to Iraq was withdrawn in 2004 when the security situation in the country was spiraling out of control.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 6, 2011

Minding the tensions over changes in China

By Heizo Takenaka

The closing decade of the 20th century offered a crystal ball for anyone peering into the future of the Asia-Pacific region. Japan's economy, once the region's leader, was "lost" after its asset bubble burst, whereas China overcame the economic stagnation that followed the Tiananmen Square crisis of...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 6, 2011

Is Syria's regime the next domino to fall?

By Ribal Al-Assad

LONDON — With the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes gone and street protests roiling cities from Algiers to Tehran, many people are now wondering which domino might fall next. Syria, whose secular, militarized dictatorship most closely resembles the fallen regimes of Tunisia and Egypt, may not be next,...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Mar 6, 2011

Japanese families' nutritional values pay dearly for 'progress'

By Roger Pulvers

Last year, a gut-wrenching book by Nobuko Iwamura was published by Shinchosha titled "Kazoku no Katte Desho!" ("It's My Kitchen and I'll Do What I Like in It!"). Gut-wrenching because it describes, with the help of 274 highly unpalatable photos, the kinds of breakfasts, lunches and dinners ordinary Japanese...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.

How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan

By Megha Wadhwa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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