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November 28, 2024

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COMMENTARY / World

Oct 2, 2004

Toward ASEAN integration

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has begun a more promising phase of its integrative process in the face of three formidable challenges:

COMMENTARY

Sep 29, 2004

Offer Pyongyang transparency challenge

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- "It's all South Korea's fault!" In a refreshing change from its natural tendency to blame Washington for all the world's troubles, Pyongyang has recently announced that it cannot proceed with the six-party talks over its clandestine nuclear-weapons programs since "the foundation for talks...

COMMENTARY

Sep 28, 2004

No sense of proportionality

By Kiroku Hanai

I was intrigued by two recent U.S. antiwar movies -- Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911," and "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara," directed by Errol Morris. The former denounces U.S. President George W. Bush's justification for the Iraq War; the latter is based on an interview...

COMMENTARY

Sep 27, 2004

Election shows Indonesia has come of age

By Glyn Ford

BRUSSELS -- All the appearances are that Indonesia, the world's third largest democracy and largest Muslim state, has come of age, with the consolidation this year of a democracy that was reborn after 44 years in 1999.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 27, 2004

The sky should be the limit for Kashmir

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

India and Pakistan are still holding on to their own rigid positions. India keeps harping that Kashmir can only be one of a list of subjects to be discussed. Pakistan disagrees and argues that Kashmir is a central issue that has to be tackled first.

COMMENTARY

Sep 27, 2004

Global weather warnings

By Takamitsu Sawa

Weather in Japan this year has shown unusual patterns. In fact, what has happened in various parts of the country defies our common knowledge. Take typhoons. Aside from a record number that hit this summer, one of them -- No. 18, or Songda -- continued unabated. After landing Kyushu, it traveled northeast...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Sep 27, 2004

Debating the life of a long-deceased poet

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK -- Inuhiko Yomota, one of the most well-read and prolific writers I know, was in town, and when I said I am working on a new book on the poet Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), he told me that his friend, Masahiko Nishi, has written a book arguing that Miyazawa expressed strong anticolonialism through...

COMMENTARY

Sep 27, 2004

Reforming the United Nations

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- The Japanese government is understandably frustrated by the delay in reaching agreement on enlargement of the Security Council. Japan makes the largest contribution to the running of the United Nations, but still has to take its turn as an elected member of the Security Council.

COMMENTARY

Sep 26, 2004

Blame supply-side policies

By Gregory Clark

Toyoo Gyohten was the senior Ministry of Finance (MOF) official handling international affairs back in the early '70s, and a source of wisdom to those of us trying to understand Japan's financial maze. He now heads Japan's Institute for International Monetary Affairs. In a recent address to the Aspen...

COMMENTARY

Sep 26, 2004

Curtain falls on China's 'strongman' era

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- The decision by 78-year-old former President Jiang Zemin to step down as head of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission in favor of 61-year-old Hu Jintao, his successor as party and state leader, is a milestone in China's political development, marking as it does the completion...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 25, 2004

Subtle changes under Hu

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- The ascent of Hu Jintao to the third of the top three posts in China's hierarchy will most likely cause subtle changes in Beijing's relations with the United States and with China's neighbors North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia -- but not on the sensitive issue of Taiwan....

COMMENTARY

Sep 25, 2004

High-tech barriers to better ties

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI -- Catchphrases like "enhanced engagement," "strategic partnership" and "sustained interaction" are bandied about to describe the new U.S.-Indian relationship. A novel, hyperbolic tag, NSSP, or Next Steps in Strategic Partnership, was added to the diplomatic lexicon when on January 13, 2004,...

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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