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COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2012

World has a stake in Russia's youthful vanguard

By Condoleezza Rice

The election of the once and future president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, tempts one to despair that the brief and inspiring political awakening in Russia over the past year was for naught. He has gotten his way — replacing his protege Dmitry Medvedev and reclaiming the Kremlin to solidify...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2012

A wakeup call Japan ignored

By Paul Blustein

At 2:46 p.m. Sunday, March 11, my family and I joined millions of Japanese standing silently at a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine. With heads bowed, we remembered the events of one year earlier, when our house swayed for nearly three minutes and the power died. In the Tohoku region, several hundred...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2012

Renew commitment to building a new Japan

By Yoshihiko Noda

March 11 is etched in Japan's collective consciousness. Sunday, on the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which triggered the starkest crisis our country has faced in a generation, we commemorated all of those who suffered. Our thoughts went out to all of the victims of the tragedy...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2012

Sending the wrong message to North Korea

By Andrew Natsios

Another food crisis has spread across North Korea, caused by yet another poor harvest and Pyongyang's disastrous currency manipulation scheme, which wiped out the savings many people had used to feed themselves. We do not know how many people are dying, but it is not as bad as the famine of the 1990s,...

COMMENTARY

Mar 13, 2012

Greece could learn from Argentina's experience

By Cesar Chelala

To understand Greece's recent travails and how the country got there, it is useful to quote what Mikis Theodorakis, the famous Greek songwriter and composer, wrote about it recently on his homepage:

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 13, 2012

Public acceptance of high salaries for athletes contrasts with low regard for finance superstars

By Kenneth Rogoff

The biggest news around Cambridge in recent weeks has been Jeremy Lin, the Harvard economics graduate who has shocked the National Basketball Association by rising overnight from "nowhere" to become a genuine star, leading a losing New York Knicks team to an unlikely string of victories.

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Fear and consequences of defense budget cuts

By Robert Samuelson

It turns out that "budget sequestration," portrayed as an evenhanded way to spur bipartisan negotiations over budget deficits, is actually a dagger aimed at defense spending. The president and other top administration officials have said the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration are "bad...

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Foreign aid: sop to conscience and bad policy

By Ramesh Thakur

When India selected 126 French Rafale fighter aircraft (£13 billion) over the U.K.-manufactured Typhoon involving a consortium of European countries, some British politicians and commentators demanded that aid to "ungrateful" India, a fast-rising economic power, be stopped.

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Mar 12, 2012

Power reform now or never

Taking advantage of the serious difficulties besetting Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) since the catastrophe at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Democratic Party of Japan government is pushing a series of measures to restructure the outdated way in which the electric power industry operates....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 12, 2012

Turkey moving to ensure religious rights for all

By Bulent ArinÇ

After decades of official neglect and mistrust, Turkey has taken several steps to ensure the rights of the country's non-Muslim religious minorities, and thus guarantee that the rule of law is applied equally for all Turkish citizens, regardless of individuals' religion, ethnicity or language.

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Delusional pretexts to attack Iran

By Gwynne Dyer

The last time U.S. President Barack Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was obvious that the two men distrusted and despised each other. This time (March 5), their mutual dislike was better hidden, but the gulf between them was still as big, especially on the issue of Iran's alleged...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Mar 11, 2012

Japan's disasters must prompt a radical rethink of citizens' quality of life

By Roger Pulvers

It's a long time now since my first visit to Uluru, the stupendous sandstone formation in Australia's Red Center that European settlers called Ayers Rock, but which has now officially reverted to the name by which it was always known to the Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people. I had never before seen any...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Pedestrians commute through Shibuya Station in central Tokyo, an area that is almost never devoid of people.

As the rest of Japan shrinks, Tokyo grows

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Supporting women’s social participation is Cartier’s commitment

Supporting women’s social participation is Cartier’s commitment

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