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August 23, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Sep 18, 2009

Competing northern passages

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — Early next week two German-owned container ships will arrive in Rotterdam from Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, having taken only one month to make the voyage. That's much faster than usual — but then they didn't take the usual route down through the South China Sea, past Singapore,...

COMMENTARY

Sep 18, 2009

Beijing's 'internal affairs'

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG — Ever since the 1950s, China has subscribed to the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries, which was first written into a treaty that it signed with India in 1954. China has loudly upheld this principle and criticized those who, in Beijing's view, interfere...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 18, 2009

Economists banked too much on rationality

By Robert J. Shiller

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The widespread failure of economists to forecast the financial crisis that erupted in 2008 has much to do with faulty models, which meant that economic policymakers and central bankers got no warning of what was to come.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 17, 2009

With Chen behind bars, Taiwan set to heal

By Sin-ming Shaw

BANGKOK — Last week, a Taiwanese court sentenced Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan's president from 2000 until 2008, to life in prison for corruption. Chen had embezzled millions of dollars of public funds. He did not act alone. His wife, children and other relatives all helped to hide the stolen loot in overseas...

EDITORIALS

Sep 17, 2009

New government out of the blocks

Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama became Japan's new prime minister Wednesday as the Diet voted him in to the post, ending the long rule by the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power almost continously since late 1955. In an interesting historical twist, the new prime minister's...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 17, 2009

Foreign policy and the democratic paradox

By Dominique Moisi

PARIS — Elections stolen in Iran, disputed in Afghanistan and caricatured in Gabon: Recent ballots in these and many other countries do not so much mark the global advance of democracy as demonstrate the absence of the rule of law.

EDITORIALS

Sep 16, 2009

The future of rocket business

Japan launched its biggest and newly developed H2B rocket early Friday morning. The rocket placed in orbit Japan's first unmanned space transportation vehicle — the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV) — for transporting supplies to the International Space Station. Around this weekend, the HTV is scheduled...

EDITORIALS

Sep 16, 2009

Hitter for all seasons

Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki made history in Texas on Sunday when he became the first Major League player to hit safely 200 times for nine consecutive seasons. Last season, Mr. Suzuki had tied the 108-year-old record held by Hall of Famer Willie Keeler, who had eight straight 200-hit seasons...

COMMENTARY

Sep 16, 2009

Mounting Afghan follies give U.S. a way out

By Gwynne Dyer

Maybe it's the relatively thin air up on those high plateaus that makes them foolish. First, ballot fraud apparently helped Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who would probably have won the second round in the presidential election in Iran anyway, to win in the first round and avoid a runoff. The incredible voting...

COMMENTARY

Sep 16, 2009

Back to Earth with the DPJ

By Brad Glosserman

The wave of hysteria that greeted the victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in parliamentary elections last month has receded. The win doesn't signal the end of the U.S.-Japan alliance, nor does it necessarily imply a rough patch for bilateral ties. In fact, domestic rather than foreign policies...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 15, 2009

Wal-Mart's sensible turnabout on health care

By Nelson Lichtenstein

LOS ANGELES, LOS ANGELES TIMES — Is Wal-Mart turning blue — blue enough to pull President Barack Obama's health care chestnuts out of the fire?

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 15, 2009

Drama won't cure the doldrums

By Christopher Lingle

GUATEMALA CITY — Japanese voters have rejected the one-party state under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has supplied most of Japan's government leaders since the party's founding in 1955. (Only in 1993 had an opposition coalition ousted the LDP, for a short time, by holding onto a 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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