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November 29, 2024

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COMMENTARY

Oct 18, 2004

Afghanistan: the world's opium market

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan's presidential elections came off with little violence but some damaging controversy. President Hamid Karzai's 15 opponents charged vote fraud.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 17, 2004

Did Kosovo illuminate Iraq?

By Ramesh Thakur

One of the curious features of the Iraq war last year was the serious split across the Atlantic. And what seemed to puzzle as much as infuriate Americans was why the major European powers, having signed on to war without U.N. authorization in 1999 against Slobodan Milosevic, "the butcher of Belgrade,"...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 17, 2004

Election at all costs may cost democracy

By John Barry Kotch

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Elections set a new nation or a broken one on a course of renewal. Therefore, the conditions under which they are conducted -- the presence of security and the absence of intimidation, the degree of public participation (or apathy), including the openness to all segments of the...

COMMENTARY

Oct 16, 2004

Of course, U.S. should global-test policy

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- On the controversial issue of a so-called global test for prudent foreign policy, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has been skillfully put on the defensive by the Republican re-election machine. This is brilliant campaign politics but a potentially fatal foreign-policy direction....

COMMENTARY

Oct 16, 2004

Preventing a new dark age

By David Howell

The entire geopolitical system is now enmeshed with Middle East issues. Mideast stability is the absolute key to peaceful global progress, both economic and social, as well as to the future of many world leaders and their policies.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 16, 2004

Americans don't want, but need, illegals

By Domenico Maceri

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- "We're giving our country away," said my friend with serious concern. She was talking about illegal immigration to Italy and how the new arrivals have no respect for the law and have no intention to integrate and will ultimately destroy the fabric of Italian society.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 15, 2004

China's ASEAN strategies

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- The world's attention has been focused on China's smooth political transition at the last Chinese Communist Party plenum, the possible overheating of the Chinese economy and its impressive haul of 32 gold medals at the Athens Olympics. But little has been said of Beijing's strategy for its...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 14, 2004

Crisis that hangs on hearsay

By David Wall

LONDON -- I am rapidly approaching the age of retirement. I am already cutting back on my activities, slimming down my portfolio of work and deciding what activities are wastes of time.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 11, 2004

Taj Mahal survives foibles of humanity

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- Sadly, India continues to let its heritage and history decay. For example, recently when a scholar from the country's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi asked India's National Archives, also in the same city, for a document, the request was not entertained. The scholar...

COMMENTARY

Oct 11, 2004

New mindset is the only salve

By Gregory Clark

Japan-China relations are in trouble, again. The latest recriminations began with the fierce booing of a Japanese soccer team in Chongqing in July of this year. Few of Japan's many indignant commentators seemed to know that this large central China city had been the defenseless target of relentless Japanese...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2004

Bush, Kerry agree on the biggest threat

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry evidently surprised -- and puzzled -- their audiences during their debate in the election campaign when they both pointed to nuclear proliferation as the greatest threat to the national security of the United States.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2004

Choosing how to intervene

By Ramesh Thakur

From Iraq to Darfur, the topic of international intervention to protect people from the brutality of their own governments remains a deeply divisive one for the international community. Western countries are likely to be the subjects not objects of intervention, and their worldview is colored by this...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.

Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat

By Greg Dvorak

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’

SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’

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