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August 24, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2009

It's Italy for America and Japan for Europe

By Hans-Werner Sinn

MUNICH — The American business model has collapsed. During recent years, the United States borrowed gigantic sums of money from the rest of the world. Net capital imports exceeded $800 billion in 2008 alone. The money came largely from selling mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations,...

EDITORIALS

Oct 28, 2009

Mr. Hatoyama states his politics

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made his first keynote address to the Diet on Monday. He should be commended for summing up his "politics of fraternity" in his own words — thus dumping the practice of pasting together sentences written by bureaucrats from various ministries.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2009

Free expression under fire

By Christopher Lingle

GUATEMALA CITY — Freedom of expression is one of the most important cornerstones of a free and open society. Guarantees of freedom of expression allow citizens to learn about mistakes of the powerful and help reveal corruption at all levels.

EDITORIALS

Oct 27, 2009

Ambitious and anxious Asia

Asia aspires to lead the world. That is the chief message from the meetings of Asia-Pacific leaders that convened last weekend in Thailand. The region's rapid emergence from the global economic downturn has confirmed the belief among its leaders that it is time for an Asian community to emerge — a...

COMMENTARY

Oct 27, 2009

India has enough food for those who can pay

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CHENNAI, India — India is still hungry 62 years after it was freed from the British colonial yoke. The Global Hunger Index for 2009 places India at a low 65th, with the far more populous China doing much better. While China has reduced the number of "hungry" people by 58 million during the past decade,...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2009

Tokyo needs to get over the G8

By Robert Dujarric

The financial meltdown of 2008 has accelerated the decay of the Group of Eight. One of the ideas circulating is to discontinue the group and replace it with the G20. Within the G20, there would be a G4 made up of the biggest players — Japan, the United States, China and the European Union.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2009

Painful past must be put to rest for good

By Dominique Moisi

PARIS — A nation's relationship with its past is crucial to its present and its future, to its ability to "move on" with its life, or to learn from its past errors so as not to repeat them. This includes the past that isn't dead and buried — "in fact, it is not even past," as William Faulkner famously...

EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2009

Hub idea deserves airing

Transport minister Seiji Maehara's idea of turning Tokyo's Haneda airport into a 24-hour international hub has sparked controversy. Setting his eye on the completion of Haneda's fourth runway in October 2010, he wants to make Haneda a hub in East Asia by increasing the number of international flights...

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2009

Paranoids feast on China's 'peaceful rising'

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only — not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing — that we raise concerns about China. So here's the paranoid's question: Just what is China really up to?

EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2009

No-nukes action plan

The International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, an international panel co-chaired by former Japanese and Australian foreign ministers Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi and Mr. Gareth Evans, agreed Oct. 20 on an action plan toward global nuclear disarmament after a three-day meeting in the...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 26, 2009

Challenging Obama's word

By Kevin Rafferty

DELHI, India — During his U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that he would be prepared to meet with so-called rogue rulers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or Kim Jong Il of North Korea in the interests of peace.

EDITORIALS

Oct 25, 2009

A runoff in Afghanistan

Afghanistan will hold a runoff election after all. After weeks of intense speculation, fueled by allegations of fraud in the first round of the presidential ballot, election monitors have concluded that incumbent President Hamid Karzai did not win an outright majority.

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

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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