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COMMENTARY / World

Aug 31, 2003

Enthusiasm for EU club has evaporated

By Jiri Pehe

PRAGUE -- When communism in Eastern Europe collapsed, the region's new democratic leaders agreed that joining the European Union -- fast -- must be their priority. "Back to Europe!" became the slogan, one enthusiastically backed by a majority of their populations. Yet eight months before that dream formally...

COMMENTARY

Aug 30, 2003

Governments must plan today for tomorrow's energy needs

By David Howell

LONDON -- Electric power -- or lack of it -- is once again in the news. It is not just the millions of East Coast Americans and Canadians who have suffered with monster blackouts. Power cuts have become drearily regular in France, Japan, China, Spain, Italy, not to mention in struggling Iraq. And shortages...

COMMENTARY

Aug 30, 2003

A tax hike for God? Don't you believe it

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- It has long been said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Today religion plays that role in the United States. At least it does for Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama, who is pushing a massive tax hike in the name of God.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2003

Washington lays siege to WTO system

By David Wall

LONDON -- In the last few weeks the U.S. Congress has approved free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore and has approved the opening of talks on FTAs with Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2003

Aussies discover cost of being Big Brother

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- No good deed goes unpunished, says the cynic. And that's the way it's looking for Australia's efforts to bring peace and stability to the South Pacific.

COMMENTARY

Aug 28, 2003

Brinkmanship in Beijing

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- "Surrender means death!" This pretty much sums up North Korea's opening position at the six-nation talks in Beijing this week. U.S. insistence that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program "fully, verifiably, and irreversibly" in advance of dialogue (or rewards) "is little short of demanding...

COMMENTARY

Aug 28, 2003

Asia needs export controls to keep terrorist forces at bay

By Brad Glosserman

SINGAPORE -- The recent bomb blast at the J.W. Marriott hotel in downtown Jakarta is only the most recent reminder of the ruthless cruelty of international terrorism. The topic dominates every discussion of Asian security. Those talks have become increasingly sharp in the face of a rising death toll...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 27, 2003

Machiavelli on the Mekong

By Glyn Ford

BRUSSELS -- In the West, Cambodia is synonymous with the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. David Puttnam's film "The Killing Fields" seemed to tell it all. Towns and cities were emptied into the countryside and the population enslaved and brutalized. "Luckier" intellectuals were...

COMMENTARY

Aug 26, 2003

Fujimori case testing Japan

By Kiroku Hanai

The Japanese government is facing mounting pressure from the Peruvian government for the extradition of former President Alberto Fujimori, who has been in exile in Japan since November 2000. Last March, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for the disgraced former leader and late last month, the Peruvian...

COMMENTARY

Aug 25, 2003

Japan's global security role

By Keizo Nabeshima

The most important feature of Japan's latest white paper on defense is that it gives new direction to the nation's defense policy. First, the report emphasizes that developing a missile defense system is a "matter of urgent importance for defense policy."

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 25, 2003

New Zealand struggles to stay nuclear-free

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- One of the first things that strikes a visitor to New Zealand are the innumerable signboards that proudly proclaim the small Pacific island country to be nuclear-free. Even the common man on the streets of Wellington or Christchurch or Auckland will tell you New Zealand fiercely protects...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 25, 2003

Humanity takes a bite out of Mother Earth

By Hiroaki Sato

SUNSET BEACH, North Carolina -- Sunset Beach is a summer resort town that appears to have achieved its full-blown status only about a dozen years or so ago, just about the time we started spending our two-week vacation in the beach house of our poet friend Grace Gibson. Photos taken when she built the...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

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