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COMMENTARY / World

Nov 26, 2008

Too much for the Earth to bear

By Kevin Rafferty

HONG KONG — The global financial crisis that has sent economies teetering from recession toward slump is preoccupying politicians and families worldwide, who see their livelihoods being snatched away by the consequences of the inventive greed of financial whiz kids.

COMMENTARY

Nov 26, 2008

Pirates feel the sting of India's naval muscle

By Ramesh Thakur

WATERLOO, Ontario — The rising might of India and the growing menace of piracy collided recently in the Gulf of Aden, a 2.59-million-square-km stretch of waterway between Somalia and Yemen. This came after India's demonstration of prowess in space with the successful launch of a lunar probe. As a symbol...

COMMENTARY

Nov 26, 2008

Common sense versus PC

By Hugh Cortazzi

Presumably the recent remarks of former infrastructure minister Nariaki Nakayama about Japan being ethnically homogeneous were correctly reported. If so his remarks were tactless, in view of Japan's Ainu population, but also showed an ignorance of history. The Japanese are generally considered to be...

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 25, 2008

Room for Asian influence in G20 structure

By Michael Richardson

SINGAPORE — Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies have been meeting regularly for nearly a decade. But the decision to convene a summit of the G20 heads of government in Washington the weekend of Nov. 15 marked an important turning point in...

COMMENTARY

Nov 25, 2008

West Coast appreciates destiny with Asia

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Serious intellectual narrowing can happen to even the brightest folk once nested down on the U.S. East Coast. They become preoccupied (almost neurotically, almost provincially) with the problems of the past — especially with the Middle East and Europe — and lose sight of the new problems...

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Nov 25, 2008

U.S.-China ties weaken alliances

As the United States works harder than ever to strengthen relations with China, there are signs its alliances with Japan and Taiwan are weakening. A conspicuous sign of change in Japan-U.S. ties came early Oct. 12 when President George W. Bush telephoned Prime Minister Taro Aso to inform the latter of...

COMMENTARY

Nov 24, 2008

Tamp down the old ways

By Kiroku Hanai

Sixty years ago on Nov. 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMT) handed down its verdict branding Japan an aggressor nation and leading to the execution of six military leaders and one politician for instigating the war. As if to substantiate the validity of this verdict,...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Nov 24, 2008

Burst of U.S. bubble arouses old specters

By Hiroaki Sato

So the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has spoken: The "usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction" ("Depression Economics Return," Nov. 14, The New York Times).

COMMENTARY

Nov 24, 2008

Deciphering the oil puzzle

By David Howell

What happens when the demand for oil flattens out or falls and the supply of oil continues as before or actually increases? The answer is economics at its simplest — the price plummets. And that indeed is what has occurred.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 24, 2008

Connecting the solutions while there's time

By Ban Ki Moon and Ban Ki-moon

WASHINGTON — The world does not need to be reminded of the urgency of this historical moment. We sense it every day in the news. One day a major bank, insurance company, or automaker announces a record loss. The next brings word of the impact on nations and peoples least able to cope with these blows...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Nov 23, 2008

Judging Japanese architecture as the epitome of environmental art

By Roger Pulvers

"We sense the natural in things that form a happy link with their surroundings. . . . A natural architecture is architecture that creates this propitious connection."

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 22, 2008

A better built ship weathers a 'perfect storm'

By Augusto De La Torre

WASHINGTON — It was short-lived, the decoupling. For a few months — from August 2007 to mid-2008 — Latin America thought it might emerge from the global financial crisis relatively unscathed. Even as the subprime cancer spread through the industrialized world, in Latin America things didn't look...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.

Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly

By Tomoko Otake

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