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Andreas Kluth
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 5, 2021
Climate change will kill national sovereignty as we know it
In a world where all countries collectively face the planetary emergency of global warming, sovereignty is simply no longer a tenable concept.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2021
How Russia and Belarus are weaponizing migration
Belarus has been flying refugees from various points in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — then herding them toward neighboring countries that are members of the European Union.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2021
Nord Stream 2 will overshadow U.S.-German relations for years
Called Nord Stream 2 and more than 90% finished, it doubles the amount of gas Russia can export directly under the Baltic Sea to northwestern Europe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2021
Science shows why simplifying is hard and complicating is easy
Spotting solutions that are simple and elegant, in other words, requires mental effort or what the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls slow as opposed to fast thinking.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 5, 2021
What’s better in a pandemic: federalism or a central state?
How, in a pandemic, do you balance regional autonomy and flexible local responses with national coordination and coherence?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 25, 2021
We must start planning for a permanent pandemic
SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2021
Smell in the time of COVID-19
Smell, as much of the world is discovering in the pandemic, has long been our most underrated sense.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2021
The risk of nuclear cataclysm is increasing
To make the global matrix even more complex, there are seven other nuclear powers to consider. Of these North Korea appears most unhinged. But China is the most ambitious.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2021
mRNA vaccines could vanquish COVID-19 today, cancer tomorrow
Therein lies mRNA's bigger promise: It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides COVID-19.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2020
A letter from 9 million U.S. expats to Janet Yellen
This change would align American taxation of individuals with the systems of all other developed countries. It would free us expats to live, earn, save and invest as other people do.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 15, 2020
Here’s to the immigrant heroes behind the BioNTech vaccine
Their journey as Turkish Germans cannot have been easy. Discrimination, overt or subtle, is rife in German society.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2020
Would a universal basic income make us lazy or creative?
We are indeed in the midst of a digital transformation that will destroy many old jobs and create many new ones, and we need structures that help people adapt.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2020
The rights and wrongs of targeted lockdowns
With some groups more likely than others to be killed by COVID-19, the idea of keeping certain groups indoors has surfaced.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2020
If we can’t ban nukes, let’s stigmatize them
Since the end of the Cold War, most people have become much less afraid of nuclear war, when instead they should worry more.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2020
Lukashenko and Erdogan are laughing at the EU
The EU still requires unanimity for all foreign policy decisions. This has been one factor, amid many, that's neutered European foreign policy over the years.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2020
Will the coronavirus turn out green or brown?
This year's dip in greenhouse gases will make the world no more likely to achieve the goal of slowing climate change.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2020
Should freedom of assembly be an absolute right?
During the coronavirus pandemic, sizeable demonstrations have taken place in Belarus, Germany and the United States.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 2, 2020
U.S. expats can’t renounce their citizenship fast enough
The swearing in of new citizens often makes news in the U.S., especially if it happens in unusual circumstances such as one party’s national convention. Much less reported are the many citizenship renunciations by Americans, and the travails leading up to these life decisions. Almost all those giving...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2020
An epidemic of depression and anxiety among young adults
As COVID-19 spreads, so do mental health problems, especially among Gen Z and millennials. A lot of this had to do with uncertainty.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2020
OK Boomer, we’re going to socialize you
The pandemic is turning millennials into socialists. We must make them a better offer.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan