Tag - states

 
 

STATES

Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 7, 2014
U.S. federal judge strikes down Wisconsin ban on gay marriage
A federal judge deemed Wisconsin's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional on Friday to the delight of gay couples who immediately began rushing to county offices to wed as word of the ruling spread.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 6, 2014
Let Japan help defend America — and itself
The growing risk that Washington will be drawn into a confrontation with Beijing over parochial issues in East Asia will go down as soon as Japan takes greater responsibility for its own defense and that of its allies, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposes.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014
Opportunity for U.S. to extricate itself from Korea
The U.S. should reduce the possibility of impoverished, remote North Korea interfering with its own peace, stability and prosperity by simply going home: Terminate the defense treaty with South Korea.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 20, 2014
Washington mixes signals about aims toward China
Even while reconfirming its 'pivot to Asia,' Washington tries to construct multifaceted bilateral ties with Beijing, raising questions about the ultimate fate of longtime alliances between the U.S. and a number of Asia-Pacific countries.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014
Media's one-sided Yemen spin
According to the Western narrative, Yemen exists for one purpose and nothing else: maintain Western interests in that part of the world. When these interests are threatened, only then does Yemen matter.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
The once-mighty U.S. is in decline: Get used to it
Like fourth-century Romans, Americans are beginning to realize that they are no longer citizens of an unrivaled superpower. And they're kind of freaking out about it.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014
What Ukraine really needs
The last thing Ukraine needs is domination by either the New Russia or the partisans of an American neocon organization. A federal system of self-governing provinces might work.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
Why the dollar will remain the top currency
China is missing one crucial ingredient as it builds the renminbi's claim to reserve-currency status: the world's trust with regard to a broader and more credible set of public and political institutions.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
A new cold war or a cool power calculation?
Americans understand that if they go too far too fast in pushing sanctions against Russia in the Ukraine crisis, Europe will publicly break with the U.S. approach, because the Europeans have a lot more at stake economically.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
Is China the top economic power?
New World Bank figures suggesting that China's GDP will overtake that of the U.S. sometime this year raise profound issues for Americans who have presumed that postwar economic affluence depends on countries becoming more like the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
N. Korea won't disarm nukes so stop pushing it
Why shouldn't the U.S. and South Korea grudgingly accept the North's nuclear weapons status and focus on what they might actually be able to change: Pyongyang's belligerent behavior?
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
Freedom of expression under fire in America
If you can lose your job in the U.S. as Mozilla's CEO did — because those in charge found his politics repugnant — there are only two options available to those of us who need to earn a living: Keep our opinions to ourselves, or lie about them.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
Third Obama disappointment seems imminent
In the trivial case of the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu isles, there was no cause for President Barack Obama's recent warning to China that the U.S. considers the islands as falling under protection of its Security Treaty signed with Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War. A polite reference to the matter as one for peaceful settlement would have sufficed.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2014
Reverberations of the Ukraine crisis
Having annexed Crimea, Russia has lost Ukraine, turning it from friend to foe. There can be no return to business as usual anytime soon.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2014
Alarm bells ringing in Asia
The deteriorating situation in Ukraine and rising tensions between Russia and the U.S. threaten to bury President Barack Obama's floundering 'pivot' toward Asia.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2014
Unfortunately torture is an all-American value
Even when Americans rose up in 2011 to protest their government as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, torture was less than an afterthought on activists' menu of complaints.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
Biased media give customers what they want
A study by two University of Chicago economists disputes the conventional wisdom that publishers impose their views on newsrooms. What actually happens is both more innocent and more insidious.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
Not the time to turn virtual war into a real one
Although a dozen or so people have been killed in random incidents, the 'war' in eastern Ukraine remains virtual. The old existing civic administrations go on as before, ignoring the pro-Russian takeovers of civic buildings.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
America's Afghanistan albatross
Pakistani interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs can be made to stop only if the Obama administration finally makes that a condition for continuing its generous aid to cash-strapped Pakistan — a remote prospect.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
Perilous road to Slovyansk
The utter disconnect between America's diplomatic principles and practice is emboldening the country's adversaries. The lone actor most responsible for threatening world peace might unwittingly be U.S. President Barack Obama.

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’