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December 26, 2024
 

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Slavoj Zizek
If Russia insists on its nuclear doctrine, allies must adopt their own and assert that a nonnuclear country attacked by a nuclear power has the right — and duty — to receive nuclear weapons for deterrence.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2024
Should nuclear weapons for Ukraine be on the table?
The situation in Ukraine is absurd: While Ukraine's missile use is called an escalation, Russia's attacks on civilians are seen as routine.
Through a de facto partial suspension of democracy, French President Emmanuel Macron has kept the far right out of power and restored stability. Similar measures may prove necessary elsewhere.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2024
Saving democracy from Itself
Macron’s actions may seem undemocratic, but they were necessary to maintain stability and block the rise of the far-right.
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, is greeted by an honor guard upon arriving at Juba International Airport in South Sudan on Sept. 16.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 27, 2024
The dark reality of global capitalism and perpetual war
In countries like Sudan and the DRC, however, we have something closer to the feudalism of medieval times.
A billboard displaying pro-Russian slogans in the Russian-controlled city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. The billboard reads: "We are the one people. We are together with Russia."
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2024
Like in magic, Moscow is playing a game of distraction
Defying common sense, the Kremlin continues to proclaim with a straight face that its attack on Ukraine was an act of self-defense.
A destroyed mosque in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City on Monday, the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 8, 2024
Nothing new on the Middle Eastern front
While Israel claims self-defense, this concept can be problematic when considering similar situations in other conflicts, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Conservatives were wrong to call the Paris Olympic's opening ceremony a display of LGBTQ+ ideology and PC uniformity. While it did critique conservative nationalism, it mainly targeted rigid PC moralism or "wokeism."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2024
The emancipatory meaning of the Paris Olympics
The Olympic opening ceremony's theme didn’t just show Europe at its best; it reminded the world that only Europe could host such an event.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is greeted by supporters after arriving at the airport in Canberra on June 26 as a free man.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2024
Assange may be free, but are we?
The world needs heroes like Julian Assange. He did what needed to be done and he paid a high price.
Despite mainstream media downplaying the significance, the rise of figures like France's Marine Le Pen and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni indicates a normalization of the radical right.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 21, 2024
The specter of neo-fascism is haunting Europe
Despite mainstream media downplaying the significance, the rise of figures like Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni indicates a normalization of the radical right.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold a rally on London’s Waterloo Bridge on May 11. The current protests have many similarities to the student uprisings of the late 1960s, only the latter envisioned a new political movement to ameliorate the ills of their time.
COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 2024
Echoes of despair amid global outrage over Gaza conflict
Everyone knows that the situation in Gaza is unacceptable. But a great deal of energy has been devoted to postponing the kind of intervention that the crisis requires.
Police officers stand guard in front of the entrance to the venue of the so-called Palestine Conference in Berlin on April 12. Anger over Israeli aggression in Gaza is growing in the U.S. and in other parts of the world, including in the West.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 26, 2024
The world cannot just cancel Palestine
Germany and other Western governments are appropriating cancel culture to stop demonstrations against Israeli aggression, using antisemitism as a shield.
An Israeli soldier celebrates after returning home from Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in November.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2024
No barbarism without poetry
The collective abandonment of reason and where it leads is all too familiar — and yet remains all too appealing.
A rally in Moscow marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution on Nov. 7, 2017. Vladimir Lenin's belief in principled pragmatism offers important lessons for today's political leaders.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2024
Lenin’s lesson for Israel and Ukraine
The Bolshevik leader brought strong principles together with concrete analysis, an approach that could guide political leaders in Israel and Ukraine alike.
Practioners of Judaism pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on Nov. 12.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 6, 2023
Unraveling the new roots of modern antisemitism
Whereas antisemitism reproaches Jews for being rootless, Zionism tries to correct this supposed failure.
An Albanian communist hangs a banner with Enver Hoxha's image in a public cemetery in Tirana in April 2012 to mark the anniversary of the hard-line Stalinist dictator's death.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 27, 2023
When freedom does not bring about justice
From communism to capitalism, Lea Ypi's book,"Free: Coming of Age at the End of History" reflects on Albania's transition to freedom.
Israeli soldiers inspect the burned cars of festival-goers who were attacked and massacred by Hamas militants near the border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2023
The real dividing line between Israel and Palestine
The choice is not between hard-line factions; it is between the fundamentalists on both sides and all those who still believe in the possibility of peace.
Russian Communist Party supporters attend a ceremony in Red Square on March 5, 2021, marking the 68th anniversary of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s death.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2023
In Russia and Israel, national derangement runs wild
How can a priest bless a statue of Stalin and rabbis praise Nazism? In societies that are coming undone, absurd claims take root.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 2023
Supporting an embattled Kyiv amid an axis of denial
The debate over support for Ukraine has become a microcosm of the broader “democratic recession.”
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 2, 2023
Without whistleblowers, the West is lost
The biggest threat to Western democracies is not transparency, it is the nihilism and self-indulgence that have come to characterize politics.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2023
Antisemitism and intersectionality
The European Jewish Association’s conceptual framework on antisemitism could all too easily reproduce the very bigotry it seeks to oppose.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2023
The idiocy that will come with a reliance on AI
The real danger with AI is not that people will mistake a chatbot for a real person, it is that communicating with them will make real persons talk like chatbots.
Human error caused JAL jet collision at Haneda Airport: safety board
The wreckage of a Japan Airlines plane after a collision with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft, at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Jan. 5, three days after the crash.
Step into ukiyo-e: A digital journey through Japan’s traditional art form
"Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition" includes an installation of Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
Toyota to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony
This is set to be the first time Toyota will donate to a U.S. inauguration ceremony.
South Korean temple pledges to return Buddha statue next spring
The Kanzeon Bodhisattva statue, which was taken from Kannonji Temple in Nagasaki Prefecture to South Korea by a South Korean thief ring
North Korean hacker group behind DMM Bitcoin’s cryptocurrency leak
A North Korean hacker group is believed to have planted a virus on the computer of an employee at Ginco — a company that was entrusted with the deposit and withdrawal of DMM Bitcoin’s virtual currency — through a fake job recruitment message sent via LinkedIn.
Step into ukiyo-e: A digital journey through Japan’s traditional art form
"Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition" includes an installation of Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
High levels of PFAS found in water from 44 private suppliers across Japan
The Self-Defense Forces facilities are believed to have become sources of PFAS contamination because they used firefighting foam containing the toxic chemicals in the past.
For baseball fans, 2024 brought The Summer of Shohei Ohtani
Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani reacts to a standing ovation from fans after hitting his 50th home run of the season, against the Marlins in Miami on Sept. 19.
Trump's Pentagon policy pick pushed for Japan to spend 3% of GDP on defense
Elbridge Colby (center) speaks at the Threat and the Strategy panel during the Air Force Association Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in September 2019.
A brief history of ‘osechi ryōri,' Japan's edible tradition for the new year
Japan's traditional New Year cuisine has a long history, though modern developments have led to slight changes in the way things work.

Podcast

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

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?
By Kathryn Wortley

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