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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 2012

Thomas Jefferson's view of equality under siege

A week after the 236th anniversary of the birth of the United States — which was squalling to the world in its very first utterance that all men were created equal and endowed with unalienable rights — the essence of our politics is still about who are those people who are self-evidently equal and...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2012

Refugee pines to go back to, help Myanmar

When Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced her trust in President Thein Sein last August, Tin Win Akbar decided it was time to return home after spending almost 16 years as an exile in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2012

Myth-busting Obama's foreign policy

Barack Obama campaigned as a visionary on foreign policy. He vowed to repair the breach with the Muslim world, make a major dent in global poverty, establish detente with dictators, arrest climate change and work toward global denuclearization.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2012

Pragmatic Islamists of the Maghreb countries

Just over a year ago, the Arab Spring sparked dramatic change throughout the Arab world. Popular movements have brought a range of avowedly Islamist political parties to power, replacing the largely secular former regimes. What that will mean for these countries, and for the region, is one of today's...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2012

Egypt muddies waters of relationship with U.S.

When the government of erstwhile U.S. ally Egypt shut down 17 Western prodemocracy groups, trashed their Cairo offices and slapped travel bans on some of their staff, political relations between Washington and Cairo hit a new and unexpected low.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2012

Defense chats in Okinawa said lobbying

The head of the Defense Ministry's Okinawa bureau gave two "lectures" urging ministry officials and their family members living in Ginowan to vote in an upcoming mayoral election, indirectly suggesting they support a candidate backing the government's contentious plan to relocate the U.S. Futenma base,...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2012

The Putin regime's terminal disease

The history of successive authoritarian regimes in Russia reveals a recurring pattern: They do not die from external blows or domestic insurgencies. Instead, they tend to collapse from a strange internal malady — a combination of the elites' encroaching disgust with themselves and a realization that...
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2012

Fukui nuclear plants key issue in Kyoto mayor race

With one of the world's largest clusters of nuclear plants just some 60 km to the north, the Fukushima crisis is looking to be a major campaign issue in Kyoto's Feb. 5 mayoral election.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2011

Shape of Osaka takes center stage in election

The long awaited Osaka mayoral race, which takes place Nov. 27, kicked off Sunday with former Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto, 42, pitted against the incumbent, Kunio Hiramatsu, 63.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 2, 2011

Press miss the point at antinuke demo

Three weeks after Japan's biggest antinuclear demonstration, there is still some dispute over how many people actually attended. The organizers estimate 60,000 and the police say about 30,000. Except for the Yomiuri and Sankei newspapers, which accept the police figure, the mainstream vernacular media...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2011

Once Gadhafi is finally gone

A relatively successful transition from the Gadhafi regime to a united, stable, more open and democratic Libya would be seen in the region, and more widely, as a credit to the NATO-led intervention. It would enable Libya to resume its oil and gas exports, demonstrate international community capacity...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2011

A daughter of dictatorship and democracy

It is something of a cliché question in South Korea nowadays: Who would be the country's next president if the election were held tomorrow, rather than in December 2012?
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2011

Britain's adversity to A.V.

Britain's rejection of a new electoral system in last Thursday's referendum comes as no surprise. Nor does the predictably low turnout of 42 percent. Alternative Vote (A.V.), the system proposed to replace the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) method of electing ministers of Parliament (MPs) to Westminster,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 10, 2011

Ishihara may just benefit from 'divine retribution'

There are 11 men vying today for the office of Tokyo governor. Four are taken seriously by the media, the eccentric inventor Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu is humored as a perennial also-ran, and the remaining six are dismissed as margin-dwellers who are in the game to draw attention to themselves or advocate...
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2011

DPJ withdraws child allowance bill as opposition digs its heels in

The Democratic Party of Japan-led government withdrew a bill Wednesday to provide monthly child allowances for the fiscal year that starts Friday, including increasing payments for children under 3, amid criticism from opposition parties that the money should be used to reconstruct the March 11 disaster...
JAPAN
Mar 9, 2011

Maehara donation trap easy to fall into, and rectifiable

The Democratic Party of Japan-led administration finds itself again on the brink, following Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara's resignation Sunday for taking illegal donations from a foreign resident who has a Japanese name.
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Mar 8, 2011

DPJ loses potential successor to Kan

Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara's abrupt resignation Sunday may have averted even more turmoil in the Diet, but his loss bodes ill for the Democratic Party of Japan because he was a leading candidate to succeed Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2011

Whither Tunisia's 'Jasmine Revolution'?

NEW YORK — As I try to grasp the meaning of the Tunisian Revolution and gauge its future, I am looking at my desk, where I have spread two issues of The New York Times, both featuring Tunisia on their front pages. The two issues are dated 23 years apart.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2011

Iraq could use the open culture and enterprise spirit of Lebanon

NEW YORK — After watching the collapse of Lebanon's government, it is hard not to think about efforts to build a stable Iraq. The two countries have so much in common.
COMMENTARY
Jan 23, 2011

Beyond the protests in another 'Arab regime'

SEATTLE — When faced with problems, most authoritarian regimes maintain a policy of rigidity when the appropriate response should be flexibility, political wisdom and concessions. In this way, authoritarian leaders can control their populations to serve the interests of a few individuals and political...
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2011

Crisis shows African Union's limits

LONDON — "It's not a bluff," said an adviser to Alassane Ouattara, the real winner in November's presidential election in Ivory Coast, who is now besieged in a hotel in Abidjan, the capital, under United Nations protection. "The (African Union) soldiers are coming much faster than anyone thinks." But...
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2011

Kan's foreign policy plate full, waiting to be attacked

The foreign policy agenda of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Democratic Party of Japan-led government in 2011 is stacked with pressing bilateral diplomatic issues with the United States and China, as well as broader, strategic goals, including curbing global warming and promoting regional free trade....
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2010

Obama's seven headaches

HONG KONG — Supporters of U.S. President Barack Obama are greatly cheered by notable victories in the final days of Congress before Christmas: the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law concerning homosexuals serving in the military, and the ratification of the New START treaty with Russia to curb...
COMMENTARY
Nov 21, 2010

To fold on rights is not an option

LONDON — In his recently published self-justifying and self-congratulatory memoir "Decision Points," former U.S. president George W. Bush declared that the waterboarding of al-Qaida suspects, which he had authorized, was justified because the information obtained from the suspects had been instrumental...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2010

U.S. voters set to jump from frying pan to the fire

HONG KONG — Is the United States heading for disaster when the country goes to the polls Tuesday to elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate?
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2010

It's no surprise that America isn't working

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the U.S. economy limps toward the second anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, anemic growth has left unemployment near 10 percent, with little prospect of improvement soon. Little wonder that, with midterm congressional elections coming in November, Americans are angrily...
EDITORIALS
Aug 26, 2010

Looking at a double dip

The U.S. economy is faltering. Consumer confidence is shaky and business uncertainty is rife, and the two create an ugly downward spiral. Worried about tomorrow's bottom line, companies refuse to hire. Fearful of being unemployed, consumers are tightening their belts. The result is a stagnant economy...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight