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COMMENTARY / World

Sep 4, 2006

An uphill battle for Manmohan Singh

By Kevin Rafferty

HONG KONG -- When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, following in the footsteps of Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke from the great gateway of Shah Jehan's Red Fort to celebrate Independence Day, he looked like a tiny, almost insignificant figure, framed by gigantic red sandstone walls, as he looked down on...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 3, 2006

Merkel's reforms drift toward dead end

By Hans-Werner Sinn

MUNICH -- A year ago, Angela Merkel, Germany's charming new chancellor, was in the final phase of her election campaign. The incumbent, Gerhard Schroeder, lagged so far behind her Christian Democrats (CDU) in public opinion polls that she thought she would win a landslide victory and could therefore...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Sep 3, 2006

Toeing the line may take a name-change for the LDP

By Roger Pulvers

It's September, and Japan is in the grips of selection fever. This month Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi steps down, and the ever-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will choose a new president. To all intents and purposes, due to the party's parliamentary dominance, selection of an LDP leader is...

COMMENTARY

Sep 2, 2006

A bridge to Latin America

By Kazuo Ogoura

The amount of Japanese cultural and educational activities conducted in Latin America has been flat or in decline over the last five years. The Japan Foundation, the largest Japanese nonprofit organization engaged in international cultural exchange, spent around 800 million yen on activities related...

COMMENTARY

Sep 1, 2006

Rights awareness spreading like wildfire

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- The headlines tell it all. On the front page of the International Herald Tribune: "Activist in China sentenced to 4 years -- decision seen as part of a sweeping move to punish dissent."

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 1, 2006

China's revolutionary myth

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- Arriving in Beijing on Aug. 23 for his third China visit in five years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised the country's Communist leaders to the skies for having rescued China from a "practically feudal" situation and made it one of the world's largest economies in less than half a century....

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 31, 2006

After the Guns of August?

By Saad Eddin Ibrahim

CAIRO -- The Middle East is a place where the dust hardly ever settles. When it occasionally does, even for a short interval -- as U.N. Resolution 1701 for cessation of hostilities in Lebanon seems to be holding -- it is time to take stock of events in the hopes that a responsible debate may influence...

COMMENTARY

Aug 31, 2006

Defuse crisis by letting Tehran save face on nuclear issue

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI -- With Iran rebuffing the United Nations Security Council, yet another global hot spot is emerging in the vast but volatile region between India and Israel. This arc of volatility between the only two democracies in the region has been made worse by the developments in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza,...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 30, 2006

Amnesty International on track with call for inquiry

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- An Amnesty International report severely criticizes the Israeli Defense Forces's behavior during the recent war in Lebanon and calls for an independent commission of inquiry. Such a commission should investigate the actions of not only the IDF but also Hezbollah, as civilians were the main...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2006

Mexico's president deserves a fair start

By Enrique Ochoa Reza and Alfred Stepan

NEW YORK -- As the crisis over Mexico's disputed presidential election continues, questions are being raised not only about the conduct of the seemingly defeated candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but also about Mexico's presidential system. Is "presidentialism" as practiced in Mexico part of the...

COMMENTARY

Aug 28, 2006

Slighting the air-raid victims

By Kiroku Hanai

This summer I saw three Japanese movies -- two documentaries and a feature -- depicting the plight of World War II victims.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 28, 2006

It pays to join China's CCP

By David Wall

LONDON -- The Chinese government recently announced that membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has grown to a record 71 million; apparently there are also 17 million applicants waiting to join. Last year 2,540,000 people were admitted. Since 1990 party membership has grown by almost one-fifth....

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

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