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August 27, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Apr 18, 2012

A white flag in Latin America's war on drugs

By Mary Speck

The retired general who won Guatemala's presidency in November seems an unlikely advocate of a kinder approach toward counternarcotics policy. Otto Perez — whose party's symbol is a clenched fist — campaigned on the promise that his government would crack down on the crime ravaging parts of the country....

COMMENTARY

Apr 18, 2012

Dam-building disputes roil Asia

By Brahma Chellaney

Dam building on shared rivers has emerged as the leading source of water disputes and tensions in Asia, the world's driest continent whose freshwater availability is less than half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic meters per inhabitant. Dam-building activities by China and Central, South and...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 18, 2012

The ECB's lethal monetary inhibition

By Barry Eichengreen

Europe's financial system on the brink of disaster, the European Central Bank stunned the markets with an unprecedented intervention, offering banks across the eurozone essentially unlimited liquidity against any and all collateral for an exceptional period of three years.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 18, 2012

The lives of boys devalued in U.S. and Afghanistan

By Colbert I. King

What is a boy's life worth? The answer may depend on who is asking. It also may matter where the question is being raised.

EDITORIALS

Apr 18, 2012

Make way for low-cost carriers

Low-cost carriers will likely occupy a prominent place in Japan's aviation industry from now on as major airlines enter the LCC market. Peach Aviation, in which All Nippon Airways has invested, started domestic flights in March and will begin international flights in May to and from Kansai airport. Jetstar...

EDITORIALS

Apr 18, 2012

A critical role for the Shin-Tomei

The first section of the Shin-Tomei Expressway opened on April 14 in Shizuoka Prefecture, a 162-km stretch between Gotenba and Mikkabi junctions. The expressway will eventually link Tokyo and Nagoya when it is completed in 2020. The Shin Tomei runs through areas that are about 10 km more inland than...

EDITORIALS

Apr 17, 2012

Mr. Noda's taxing problem

One-on-one Diet debates between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and opposition leaders held on April 11 primarily concerned Mr. Noda's plan to raise the consumption tax from April 2014. The prime minister has stated that he will stake his political life on the tax hike plan, and added that he will tackle...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 17, 2012

Too little outcry over Palestinian censorship

By David Keyes

A university lecturer and single mother of two, Ismat Abdul-Khaleq, was arrested in the West Bank on March 28 for criticizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook. Perhaps this is what Abbas meant when he said during a recent interview with al-Jazeera that his party, Fatah, was a political...

EDITORIALS

Apr 17, 2012

Unwise attempt to restart reactors

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, trade and industry minister Yukio Edano and two other Cabinet ministers on April 13 concluded that the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors at Kansai Electronic Power Co.'s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture are safe enough to restart even though adequate safety standards and...

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Apr 16, 2012

U.S. digs in to hold Futenma

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has asserted that a Japan-U.S. agreement struck in February will help resolve the issue of relocating U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which now sits in the middle of densely populated Ginowan City in the central part of Okinawa Island.

COMMENTARY

Apr 16, 2012

Look at Social Security for what it is: welfare

By Robert Samuelson

Would Franklin Roosevelt (the 32nd U.S. president) approve of Social Security? The question seems absurd. After all, Social Security is considered the New Deal's signature achievement. It distributes nearly $800 billion a year to 56 million retirees, survivors and disabled beneficiaries.

EDITORIALS

Apr 16, 2012

China's prodemocrats lose a giant

Fang Lizhi, one of China's best-known dissidents, has died. He passed away in the United States, where he had spent the last two decades of his life after being forced to flee China in the aftermath of the 1989 crackdown on prodemocracy activists. The movement for a democratic China has lost a leading...

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

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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