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November 18, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Mar 13, 2012

Public acceptance of high salaries for athletes contrasts with low regard for finance superstars

By Kenneth Rogoff

The biggest news around Cambridge in recent weeks has been Jeremy Lin, the Harvard economics graduate who has shocked the National Basketball Association by rising overnight from "nowhere" to become a genuine star, leading a losing New York Knicks team to an unlikely string of victories.

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Fear and consequences of defense budget cuts

By Robert Samuelson

It turns out that "budget sequestration," portrayed as an evenhanded way to spur bipartisan negotiations over budget deficits, is actually a dagger aimed at defense spending. The president and other top administration officials have said the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration are "bad...

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Foreign aid: sop to conscience and bad policy

By Ramesh Thakur

When India selected 126 French Rafale fighter aircraft (£13 billion) over the U.K.-manufactured Typhoon involving a consortium of European countries, some British politicians and commentators demanded that aid to "ungrateful" India, a fast-rising economic power, be stopped.

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Mar 12, 2012

Power reform now or never

Taking advantage of the serious difficulties besetting Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) since the catastrophe at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Democratic Party of Japan government is pushing a series of measures to restructure the outdated way in which the electric power industry operates....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 12, 2012

Turkey moving to ensure religious rights for all

By Bulent ArinÇ

After decades of official neglect and mistrust, Turkey has taken several steps to ensure the rights of the country's non-Muslim religious minorities, and thus guarantee that the rule of law is applied equally for all Turkish citizens, regardless of individuals' religion, ethnicity or language.

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Delusional pretexts to attack Iran

By Gwynne Dyer

The last time U.S. President Barack Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was obvious that the two men distrusted and despised each other. This time (March 5), their mutual dislike was better hidden, but the gulf between them was still as big, especially on the issue of Iran's alleged...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Mar 11, 2012

Japan's disasters must prompt a radical rethink of citizens' quality of life

By Roger Pulvers

It's a long time now since my first visit to Uluru, the stupendous sandstone formation in Australia's Red Center that European settlers called Ayers Rock, but which has now officially reverted to the name by which it was always known to the Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people. I had never before seen any...

COMMENTARY

Mar 9, 2012

Breakthrough is close, again

By Ralph Cossa

The recent "food for freeze" agreement between the United States and North Korea has been described accurately by the State Department as reflecting "important, if limited, progress" and inaccurately by the media as constituting a "breakthrough" in the seemingly endless march toward Korean Peninsula...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 9, 2012

Mental health must match post-3/11 recovery

By Davinder Kumar

Over the past year, the tsunami-ravaged coastline of Japan's northeast has undergone a cleanup never seen before in history for its sheer scale and speed.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 8, 2012

Revenge of the Japanese mandarins

By Masahiro Matsumura

Ever since the huge earthquake that hit Japan's Tohoku-Pacific coast on March 11, 2011, the country's mass media have obsessively focused on the magnitude of the physical damage and the loss of life. Repeated broadcasts of traumatic video images of the great tsunami and the damaged reactors at the Fukushima...

COMMENTARY

Mar 8, 2012

Resources fuel tensions in South China Sea

By Michael Richardson

For much of 2010 and 2011, tensions over conflicting claims to disputed islands, maritime territory and energy resources rippled through the South China Sea, embroiling several Southeast Asian states and China in disputes that also involved the interests of outside powers, including Japan and the United...

COMMENTARY

Mar 8, 2012

Rethinking the welfare state

By Hugh Cortazzi

A Japanese father, mother and grownup son were recently reported in the British press to have starved to death rather than face the shame of applying for public relief. Self-reliance and the work ethic are important for economic prosperity and social cohesion, but it should not be shameful to seek outside...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.

A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo

By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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