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August 06, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Jun 21, 2007

Mark Twain and the sins of 'our race'

By Ramzy Baroud

LONDON — When I resorted to Mark Twain's writings, I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his "The Mysterious Stranger," although published 1916, left me with an eerie feeling. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 21, 2007

Breathing new life into France's economy

By Georges De Menil

PRAGUE — Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential election triumph in May, and now the victory of his party, the UMP, in the parliamentary election, has created the most favorable opportunity in decades for deep structural reform in France. Not only did Sarkozy win the presidency with 53 percent of the vote,...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 21, 2007

World's last interventionist

By David Rieff

PRAGUE — When Tony Blair, having procrastinated about his departure almost to the point of unreason, finally gives up the British premiership this month, it will be to the general relief not only of the British public as a whole, but also of the overwhelming majority of his own party.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 20, 2007

Don't underestimate Hamas' extremism

By Barry Rubin

PRAGUE — Hamas' capture of the Gaza Strip has created, along with Iran, a second radical Islamist state in the Middle East. The region, probably the Arab-Israeli conflict and certainly the Palestinian movement will never be the same.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 19, 2007

Five storms set collide in the Mideast

By Joris Voorhoeve

AMSTERDAM — The region between Egypt and Pakistan is a caldron of five discrete, explosive components: Iraq's civil strife, Afghanistan's insurgency, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the long-standing Israel-Arab conflict, and the risk of clashes between extremist groups and corrupt, repressive governments....

COMMENTARY

Jun 19, 2007

Giving China the red hook

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — U.S. Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer has a tiger by the tail. And since he hails from the mean streets of Brooklyn, you can count on the fact that he's not about to let go soon, no matter how loudly the tiger roars.

COMMENTARY

Jun 18, 2007

The first to save the planet

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG — Focusing on climate change, the most recent Group of Eight meeting, chaired by Germany and attended by five of the world's biggest developing countries, marked a significant step forward in a battle for nothing less than the survival of humanity on this planet.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 18, 2007

World Bank's ongoing corruption battle

By Sanjay Pradhan and Danny Leipziger

PRAGUE — The recent turbulence surrounding the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz from the presidency of the World Bank has underscored the need to push ahead with the bank's good governance and anticorruption agenda. This is necessary not only for the sake of the bank itself but, more fundamentally, for...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 17, 2007

Stand by your language — but not as a nationalist icon

By Roger Pulvers

Last month, on May 21 to be exact, something caught my eye in the English-language IHT/Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In an article headlined "Holistic patriotic education still missing," Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of Takushoku University in Tokyo made an impassioned plea for Japanese children to be imbued...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 15, 2007

Divvy up the gas allowance

By Peter Singer

PRINCETON, New Jersey — The agreement on climate change reached at Heiligendamm by the Group of Eight leaders merely sets the stage for the real debate to come: How will we divide up the diminishing capacity of the atmosphere to absorb our greenhouse gases?

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 14, 2007

Europe, open your borders

By Philippe Legrain

PRAGUE — It is time for Europe's politicians to admit to voters that governments cannot stop people moving across borders. Despite efforts to build a Fortress Europe, over a million foreigners bypass its defenses every year; some enter covertly, but most just overstay their visas and work illicitly....

COMMENTARY

Jun 14, 2007

Wanted: A 'new deal' for globalization

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — There is no such thing as "free" trade. In truth, the phrase "free trade" is an oxymoron.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.

80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped

By Elizabeth Beattie

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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