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November 22, 2024
 

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Kevin Rafferty
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...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2010
Piyasvasti battles Thai Airways' beasts
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2010
A thought for the holy day
HONG KONG — A sad note in returning to Europe as the end of the year approaches is to see how "political correctness" (P.C.) has tried to drive out not only what is sacred but also what is important, vital and precious to our very civilization.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2010
Pernicious 'rogue' offers of aid
HONG KONG — China found itself in the unwelcome WikiLeaks spotlight the week before last with sweeping claims against its "aggressive" policies in giving aid to Africa. Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, called China "a pernicious economic competitor with no morals" about...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 17, 2010
'Made in the world' notion no answer to U.S. prayers
HONG KONG — Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, recently made an interesting and thoughtful plea for a new approach to trade, with the idea that "Made in the world" could often be a more accurate description than one that put a purely national label on a product.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 10, 2010
Scariest WikiLeaks' tales show U.S. wandering in fog
HONG KONG — Breakfast tea or coffee has suddenly become more interesting with the flood of tittle-tattle, gossip and serious political reporting pouring out via WikiLeaks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the American right fulminate and wish to charge WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange with...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2010
Airport security 'theater': dancing to terrorists' tune
HONG KONG — With air travel peaking next month in Asia and Europe for Christmas and New Year after going into overload in the United States over the Thanksgiving weekend, governments should re-examine the costs and inefficiencies of security that add tens of billions of dollars to the cost of doing...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 21, 2010
Suu Kyi: free to do what?
HONG KONG — Aung San Suu Kyi regained her freedom last weekend, but walked into a "free" life that is still misgoverned by one of the most repressive and stupid regimes in the world, which only days before had thumbed its nose at its own people by conducting fake elections.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2010
Overvalued club debate
HONG KONG — American domination of the world economy was challenged last week at the Group of 20 summit in Seoul much the same way that Barack Obama's Democrats were mauled in this month's U.S. congressional elections, which the president termed a "shellacking."
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2010
Kan ducks the rice problem
HONG KONG — Has Prime Minister Naoto Kan finally woken up to the fact that the world is changing rapidly and Japan risks being left behind? In recent days he has spoken of a fresh fleet of "black ships" off the coast of Japan, and has noted nostalgically that he comes from Choshu (now Yamaguchi Prefecture)...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 12, 2010
Economic voices to shift
HONG KONG — The Nov. 5 agreement on new shareholdings in the International Monetary Fund, which will see China become the third-biggest power in the institution, has been heralded as a triumph for a new global financial order that will challenge the old Western imperial dominance.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2010
Not so gentle on his mind
HONG KONG — Democracy in America — what a fine show it is, great television, wonderful speeches, some weird and wacky candidates, an opportunity for The People to make their views count.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 7, 2010
Bending over to humiliate Tokyo
HONG KONG — Is Beijing deliberately trying to intimidate and humiliate Japan and Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, or are the Japanese merely collateral damage in China's wider ambitions to assert the political muscle of its new global economic aspirations?
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 5, 2010
Thailand after the protests
BANGKOK — Only a few months ago, governments of the West were warning their citizens not to visit Thailand. The heart of the capital was a no-go area with battle lines drawn and blood shed between security forces and protesters. Shops and hotels were shuttered, but that did not prevent one of Asia's...
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
Oct 29, 2010
ATM for the new gold rush
HONG KONG — The 21st-century version of the Gold Rush is becoming so sophisticated and convenient that soon all you will have to do, if you live in the right place, is put your card in the normal slot of a special ATM machine, punch in your password, and out will tumble not boring paper currency but...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 26, 2010
Rationing miracle rescues
HONG KONG — Surely the picture of the month was of Chilean miner Mario Sepulveda thumping the air like a 2-year-old in jubilation that he was free after 68 days in a dank, dark dungeon more than 600 meters below the Atacama Desert.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 22, 2010
Entrepreneurs' best friend growing long in the tooth
HONG KONG — Standard Chartered Bank has an advertisement currently running on television that is eye-catching and thought-provoking. Its central message is that "not everything that counts in life can be counted" and that the bank wants to be "here for people; here for progress; here for the long run;...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2010
Return of a maverick
HONG KONG — On the way to the airport in early 1990, I saw a strange face among the profusion and confusion of election posters. Not a European grandee, or indigenous Indian, or mestizo, or mulatto. It was more like Chinese, but surely not in this heart of Latin America.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 15, 2010
Rebalancing global growth
WASHINGTON — Finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings ended their discussions last weekend with a whimper of a final communique. There was much talk of currency war and trade war in the hallways and hotels, but in the end the leaders postponed...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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