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August 15, 2024
 

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William Pfaff
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2014
EU voters send a message
Press and political circles in Europe and North America have reacted to the recent European Parliament elections in shock as if 'Europe' is all over. This is sheer nonsense.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014
A right-wing shock for Europe?
A new European Parliament will be elected this weekend on the heels of French poll that says fewer than 40 percent of France's citizens think the European Union is a good thing.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014
What Ukraine really needs
The last thing Ukraine needs is domination by either the New Russia or the partisans of an American neocon organization. A federal system of self-governing provinces might work.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
Third Obama disappointment seems imminent
In the trivial case of the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu isles, there was no cause for President Barack Obama's recent warning to China that the U.S. considers the islands as falling under protection of its Security Treaty signed with Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War. A polite reference to the matter as one for peaceful settlement would have sufficed.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
Not the time to turn virtual war into a real one
Although a dozen or so people have been killed in random incidents, the 'war' in eastern Ukraine remains virtual. The old existing civic administrations go on as before, ignoring the pro-Russian takeovers of civic buildings.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2014
Only one practical solution to Ukraine crisis
The only practical solution to the Ukraine crisis is administrative partition of the Ukrainian nation, and neutralization of the country in its international relations.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 11, 2014
Ukraine crisis aggravating an international disorder
No one knows what the U.S. wants for Ukraine beyond the ambition it has displayed since Communism's collapse — and which now has exploded in its face — of shoving NATO membership and Western missile installations right up to the Russian borders. Yes, Moscow considers that a hostile policy.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2014
French polls show extreme right moderating
The French municipal elections held late last month have demonstrated that the extreme right is not a threat in today's Europe.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2014
What does the West now want?
The U.S. has acquired a dangerous militarist outlook on world affairs in which problems are defined primarily in military terms. In the case of Ukraine, such a view could lead to catastrophe.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2014
The rest of Ukraine promises only more trouble for Russia
Once again Russian President Vladimir Putin's rhetoric has made U.S. President Barack Obama seem out of touch protesting violation of international law, as the world knows the U.S. is the country that ignores it most.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2014
To achieve peace, the past must not be forgotten
The past must never be forgotten when trying to make peace between Ukraine and Russia. The U.S. risks war with Russia if it can't adjust the same reckless sentiments responsible in recent years for promoting NATO membership for Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2014
What happens now in Ukraine?
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sounds precisely like the organization to sort out the Ukraine crisis and underwrite an impartial solution — if U.S. President Barack Obama is willing to accept its mediation.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2014
Obama complicates policy, playing good cop, bad cop
The Obama government has taken a Cold War stand on the crisis in Ukraine, which is a questionable tack given his disposition of combining threat with accommodation.
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2014
Legacy of carnage and ruin
This is probably, but not certainly, the year that sees the end to the United States' three-decades-long effort to establish permanent American strategic bases in the Muslim Middle East and in Muslim Asia.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2014
Swiss voters send EU a message on immigration
Conventional debate in Europe has interpreted increased anti-immigrant sentiment as the result of xenophobia, racism and a new sympathy for the authoritarian far right. Analysis does not bear this out in the case of Switzerland and its narrow majority vote against 'massive immigration.'
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 9, 2014
EU effort bound for conflict
The EU's effort to build a political association with Ukraine in order eventually to make Ukraine an EU member has been extremely reckless and was inevitably destined to end in conflict.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2014
Hollande's split may scar the female electorate
French President Francois Hollande's glacial dismissal of the 'official' First Lady — 18 words long, including three uses of the personal pronoun 'I' — will do him no good with the French electorate.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2014
War appetite outlasts an era
If there is no longer a British Empire and the American effort to sustain Europe while creating a new, balanced, Israel-friendly greater Middle East has failed, does the continued appetite for war and conquest mean that Darwin was wrong?
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2014
Let Iraq, Afghan regimes look after themselves
What more than a decade ago was believed by Americans to be the omnipotence of the U.S. in the Middle East and Central Asia is today being replaced by a fear that the U.S. is responsible for why everything seems to be going wrong.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2013
Still-standing hope for peace
The only man of peace for whom there currently seems universal admiration and deference is Pope Francis.
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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