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August 27, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Oct 14, 2005

Missile defense will define Japan-U.S. security alliance

By Robyn Lim

The impasse about the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps air station at Futenma in Okinawa caused U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to cancel his forthcoming visit to Japan. So Rumsfeld, fed up with Japanese foot-dragging for more than a decade, will be going to China and South Korea, but not to...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 14, 2005

Can DVDs help stabilize and unite Asia?

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- Despite and beyond the copyright infringement issue, the booming "DVD phenomenon" in Asia appears to have a strategic importance to governments and a real psychological value to consumers. In fact, the DVD is replacing the video cassette as the best-selling item on the consumer market in...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 13, 2005

From national security to human security

By Ramesh Thakur

The suffering and death inflicted by last December's tsunami and Hurricane Katrina shows the need to reframe security in human terms.

COMMENTARY

Oct 12, 2005

New authoritarian ways cross the line

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- At the recent Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized the British criminal justice system. He said it needed toughening and called for "a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities" to deal with antisocial behavior and prevent terrorism.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2005

New Delhi gives U.S. the nod over Iran

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- India needs natural gas from Iran and nuclear technology from America. New Delhi chose to give priority to the latter, and went along with the European resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency asking Tehran to comply with its nuclear obligations. Iran has been asked to sort...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2005

America overhauls its Asia-Pacific force

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- Amid plans for a sweeping realignment of United States military services in Asia and the Pacific, the U.S. Army in the Pacific has begun extensive changes intended to turn it into the most flexible expeditionary force that it has been since the end of the war in Vietnam 30 years ago.

COMMENTARY

Oct 10, 2005

No 'Koizumi power' in Europe

By Andre Fontaine

PARIS -- As the London Economist wrote, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's "Revolution" was a "very Japanese" one indeed. What European politician today could dream of calling a general election designed to punish Parliament for having rejected his legislation and being rewarded with an electoral victory?...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 9, 2005

America's war criminals pass the buck to underlings

By Roger Pulvers

'I was only following orders." With these words, that have entered our language as a cliche reeking of bitter irony, SS-Obersturmbannfurer Karl Adolf Eichmann (1906-62) defended his part in the murder of innocent prisoners in Nazi death camps. The court in Jerusalem, where Eichmann was put on trial in...

COMMENTARY

Oct 8, 2005

Stellar play fosters globalized mindset

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Some things are just nice to see, and there's not much more to it than that. In America around this time every year, one of the nicest things to see -- especially for the inveterate sports fan -- is the invariably engrossing finale of the long Major League Baseball season.

COMMENTARY

Oct 7, 2005

Why not a nonlawyer on the high court?

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- For the first time in more than 30 years, an American president has nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court someone without prior judicial experience. It's too bad that President George W. Bush didn't go further and choose a nonlawyer.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 6, 2005

Australia gets tough on terror

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- Tough new laws enforcing preventive detention of suspected terrorists will soon drastically change the laid-back response that Australia has so far allowed to the growing world threat of terrorism. But even before new laws start, the wails of protests from civil-liberty groups are deafening....

COMMENTARY

Oct 6, 2005

A lesson from Pakistan on proliferation

By Farhan Bokhari

ISLAMABAD -- The controversy surrounding North Korea's nuclear program is a reminder of past miscues in Pakistan, whose disgraced nuclear scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, was accused last year of selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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