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November 27, 2024

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COMMENTARY

Dec 21, 2001

Public servants untouched by economic woes

By Ryuichiro Hosokawa

On Dec. 10, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's winter bonus was 5,692,492 yen this year, and other Cabinet members received 4,155,717 yen. These are huge sums in these harsh economic times.

EDITORIALS

Dec 21, 2001

Public-sector reforms move forward

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's efforts to streamline inefficient public corporations have been largely successful so far. But he has suffered a setback in one important category of these corporations: state-run financial institutions. Faced with stiff resistance from both inside and outside the government,...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 21, 2001

Assault on India's symbol could fan new winds of war

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

T he Dec. 13 terrorist raid on India's Parliament in New Delhi has understandably drawn parallels with what happened in New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 20, 2001

Collective might in service

By Ramesh Thakur

NEW YORK -- "The Responsibility to Protect," the report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, was presented to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York on Dec. 18. ICISS was set up by Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and fully supported by his successor,...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 20, 2001

Scale of Sept. 11 determines type of trial

By John Barry Kotch

SEOUL -- While Afghanistan has historically been referred to as the great game among the Great Powers vying for political supremacy in central Asia, a great debate has emerged in the United States over whether the terrorists responsible for the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 20, 2001

War 'back home' divides Jordan's Chechen community

By Russell Working

ZARQA, Jordan -- When the wounded Chechen fighters arrived in Jordan in 1994, everything changed for Younis Ashab.

EDITORIALS

Dec 20, 2001

The danger next door

While the world's attention has been focused on the war in Afghanistan, tensions between India and Pakistan have been slowly building. A series of terrorist attacks on India has raised the specter of war once again between these two South Asian nations. Given the dangers involved -- both countries have...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 19, 2001

The real aim behind the Sept. 11 attacks

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- Osama bin Laden is Timothy McVeigh with a beard, and no more representative of the Arab world than McVeigh was of America. It's important to hang onto that thought, because otherwise the storm of emotion that followed the broadcast of the tape in which the author of the atrocities of Sept....

COMMENTARY

Dec 19, 2001

Door to constitutional change

By Keizo Nabeshima

Last June, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi created an advisory panel on his proposal aimed at empowering the public -- not lawmakers as at present -- to directly elect the premier. The group is expected to come up with recommendations on the plan by next summer.

EDITORIALS

Dec 19, 2001

EU readying for new challenge

Leaders of the European Union, meeting in Brussels last weekend, agreed to set up a broadly represented advisory body next March to draft recommendations for EU reform. The agreement marks another milestone on the road to an enlarged EU. Half a century following the creation of a common European market,...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 19, 2001

John Howard gets but a brief respite

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- Pangs of guilt are creeping into the Australian psyche in this self-indulgent time of year. The annual spending frenzy, known to some as Christmas, is being contrasted with the wretched life of hundreds of refugees detained on Australia's Indian Ocean territory, Christmas Island.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 18, 2001

Japan, India forging a counterbalance

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

India's explosion of a nuclear device in 1998 marred a fledgling relationship that New Delhi had had with Tokyo. Japan took the lead in condemning India at just about every world forum. This hit India hard diplomatically, and Tokyo's clamping severe economic sanctions against India had still greater...

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

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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