More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

COMMENTARY

Sep 30, 2007

China might still the hands of the junta

By Tom Plate

BANGKOK — In 1989 Chinese troops, on orders of the government, mowed down demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. It was a sad spectacle that China is still living down, though memory fades with every year of spectacular economic development — and with the nation's steady prideful movement toward...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Sep 30, 2007

Bilingual blanks are nothing to kobosu your guchi about

By Roger Pulvers

Last week in this column, I addressed the trials and tribulations of bringing up a child to be bilingual — both for parents and children. As anyone who has been down that road knows, it's what Japanese people would call shinan no waza (an arduous task).

COMMENTARY

Sep 28, 2007

Bank crisis exposes limits of confidence

By Hugh Cortazzi and Diego Areas Munhoz

LONDON — Mortgage lending is inevitably long term. To cover such lending, banks depend on deposits by savers that may well be short term. If banks don't have enough deposits to cover their loans, they have to borrow on the interbank market. Banks are required to carry enough cash to cover up to five...

COMMENTARY

Sep 28, 2007

The politics of assassination

By Ramzy Baroud

LONDON — The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on Sept. 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further U.S. and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the Phalange...

COMMENTARY

Sep 27, 2007

Hype on nuclear power is misleading

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI — Talk of a "global nuclear renaissance" remains just that — all talk. Notwithstanding the strong public relations campaign by the nuclear power industry and its powerful lobbying groups, nuclear energy is hardly the answer to the twin challenges of carbon mitigation and energy security...

COMMENTARY

Sep 27, 2007

Crunch: a question of trust

By David Howell

LONDON — Financial markets all round the world, from New York to London to Tokyo, have been rattled by the recent squeeze on credit and lending, which originated in the United States. All kinds of lessons have been drawn from the experience, many of which boil down to the simple adage that dubious...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 27, 2007

The rise of the middle-ranking powers

By Hideaki Kaneda and Pamela Cox

The security environment since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States has clearly demonstrated the limits of the United Nations, or even the U.S. as the world's sole military superpower, to maintain international security. However, like-minded mid-level powers with similar intentions...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 27, 2007

Danger in distorted views of terrorism

By Dominique Moisi

WARSAW — A distorted view of the present is the worst way to prepare for the challenges of the future. To describe the struggle against international terrorism as "World War IV," as the leading American neoconservative Norman Podhoretz does in his new book, is wrongheaded in any number of ways.

COMMENTARY

Sep 26, 2007

Keep the Arctic free of nuclear weapons

By Ramesh Thakur

WATERLOO, Ontario — As a nonnative speaker of English, I have always been intrigued by the phrase "polar opposites." Fact is, nothing so resembles the North Pole as the South Pole. Based on this polar symmetry, there exist the opportunity and an increasingly urgent need to emulate Antarctica and establish...

COMMENTARY

Sep 25, 2007

Ugly truth of antiwar lefties

By TED RALL

NEW YORK — Although its appearance in The Nation guaranteed it would receive scant notice, a July 30 essay by Alexander Cockburn was one of the first to seriously address the most troubling internal contradiction of the anti-Iraq War left. War, everyone knows, is a zero-sum game. For one side to win,...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 25, 2007

Rules for making 'friends' from faces

By Deanna Lee

PRAGUE — I'm embarrassed to say that after reading Newsweek's recent cover story on Facebook, I joined. The majority of the social networking site's new members are people over 35: oldies like me. Still, it's uncool — and supposedly "old school" — to join because of pieces in "old media" like Newsweek....

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 24, 2007

Russia and the Kosovo card

By Charles Tannock

TBILISI — Look before you leap is as sound a principle in foreign policy as it is in life. Yet, once again, the Bush administration is preparing to leap into the unknown. Even though lack of foresight is universally viewed as a leading cause of its Iraq debacle, the United States (with British backing...

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

By Johan Brooks

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Cainz enriches lives and communities through DIY

Cainz enriches lives and communities through DIY

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports