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Hashimoto echoes Japan's past failure
Many in Japan are dismayed by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's claim that "comfort women" were necessary for the morale of troops in World War II. Abetted by the present government, more incendiary sound-bites from the far-right can only be expected. They are symptomatic of the nation's failure to come to terms with a checkered past.
- Walden Bello
(May 23, '13)
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Tokyo, Seoul hold 'ugly' nuclear option
The strategic consequences of a sustained North Korean nuclear weapons program are immensely troublesome. As neighbors such as South Korea and Japan consider possible countermeasures, they might consider it time to reassess whether nuclear weapons are an option to maintain an "ugly stability" in the region.
- Tahir Mahmood Azad
(May 23, '13)
US moves toward full Iran trade embargo
The United States Congress has stepped closer to a full trade embargo on Iran with legislation intended to increase support for Israel. If it is passed into law, President Barack Obama would lose his waiver rights that ensure countries with historic trade and financial relations with Tehran continue cooperating with Western efforts to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.
- Jim Lobe
(May 23, '13)
China's premier Li Keqiang in Islamabad
Several agreements including plans to work on developing a north-south economic corridor marked Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Islamabad this week. China has been a strong ally to its southern neighbor, but critics in Pakistan urge the government there to stop deluding itself and recognize that India is of far more importance to Beijing.
- Syed Fazl-e-Haider
(May 23, '13)
Darkness envelops Pakistan
Elections in Pakistan have seen one crony replaced with another, further distancing from power the educated and intelligent young generation that could shape a new future for the nation. Unless the generals and their political accomplices hand some power to the people, the moral and intellectual thread of society will continue to unwind.
- Mahboob A Khawaja
(May 23, '13)
A scar that stretches across continents
The death last week of former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla resonated with South Korean victims of their countries' past dictatorships, particularly as an Argentine human-rights group was coincidentally visiting Seoul to receive a human-rights award for work on ending Videla's impunity. Though separated by thousands of kilometers, the tales of the "disappeared" and the oppressed are strikingly familiar.
- Stephanie Wildes
(May 23, '13)
SPEAKING FREELY
The sea rises in age of drone terror
The Obama administration's drone campaign in Pakistan, with its killing lists and execution boards, is reminiscent of the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror". Just like the guillotine - invented as an "enlightened" mode of killing - the unmanned weapons have ended up slaying hundreds of innocents.
- Dallas Darling
(May 22, '13)
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THE ROVING EYE
And the winner is ... Khamenei
Iran's roster of would-be presidents has been whittled down to eight from nearly 700, courtesy vetting by the Guardian Council. Two potential big draws are ruled out - former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim, too much outgoing President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's man. That leaves an uninspiring bunch and one sure winner whoever wins - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
- Pepe Escobar
(May 22, '13)
Miles to go for Thein Sein
Myanmar President Thein Sein's welcome in the White House this week is due in large part to his government pushing through important reforms and the growth of civil society. Yet he will need all the outside support he can get for the next tough phase of more thorough democratic reforms, as the country has a long way to go before it can honestly claim to be a functioning and durable democracy. - Aung Tun
(May 22, '13)
SINOGRAPH
China nears point
of no return with Kim
China is losing patience with North Korean leader Kim Jong-eun, slowly but surely moving into the US orbit to deal with his threats and blackmail. As Beijing will sooner than later reach the point where it has little to lose from falling out with North Korea, Kim had better start contemplating his own mortality. - Francesco Sisci
(May 22, '13)
New spark in the South China Sea
Sanctions Taiwan has imposed following the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippine Coast Guard, including a hiring freeze on Filipino workers and banning tourism to the Philippines, are shows of sovereignty aimed at bolstering the administration's sagging approval ratings. Manila has no such problems, but economically and diplomatically it can't afford another front opening in the South China Sea.
- Julius Cesar I Trajano
(May 22, '13)
Survivors of factory collapse speak out
Harrowing survivors' tales from the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh recount an ordeal of darkness and screams, with many recalling how bosses threatened them with dismissal for questioning the sanity of working in the crumbling building. New safety standards have been rushed out, but punishment for the bosses looks unlikely. - Naimul Haq
(May 22, '13)
The case for
hope, continued
The crushing feeling of defeat felt by anti-Iraq war activists in 2003 as the invasion was launched is revived today by glass-half-empty Americans who say the Arab Spring failed and the Occupy movement faded. This ignores that, just as that failed war led to the toppling of a neoconservative elite, so to today's revolutions will generate waves of change that grow into social tsunamis. - Rebecca Solnit
(May 22, '13)
Japan tips its hand via North Korea
Tokyo characterized the revelation as a diplomatic fiasco maliciously inflicted by North Korea. Seoul slammed it, and the US was kept in the dark. Whatever the truth, the "secret" dispatch of Japanese envoy Isao Iijima to Pyongyang has broken a united stand and revealed Japan's determination to move beyond being an obedient US ally to being an independent regional force. - Peter Lee
(May 21, '13)
Syria highlights US political impotence
Contradictory discourse in the US over the Syrian civil conflict underlines how American strategy in the Middle East has become watered-down to the point of impotence. It's a far cry from the days of invading Iraq and carving up the region through "peace deals" - yet this was the likeliest end result of a foreign policy almost entirely reliant on blowing things up. - Ramzy Baroud
(May 21, '13)
THE ROVING EYE
Assad talks, Russia walks
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wasted a golden opportunity in an interview to explain to the Western public, even briefly, why petro-monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, plus Turkey, have the hots for setting Syria on fire. While he was talking, Russia was walking, sending a message it is ready to go where the Pentagon and others fear to tread.
- Pepe Escobar
(May 20, '13)
SPENGLER
Syria's madness and ours
While atrocities in Syria, such as the cannibalism viewable on YouTube, transfix the West, the real horrors of war are still to come in the Middle East. Americans, whose appetite for horror shows little sign of satiation, cannot abandon the region, but should avoid the conflict in the grim recognition that civilizations determined to destroy themselves cannot be prevented from doing so.
(May 20, '13) |
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Kyrgyz government
upbeat before
grilling on economy
The Kyrgyz government faces a rough ride when it reports to parliament on Thursday on its economic performance over the past year, but First Deputy Prime Minister Joomart Otorbaev is accentuating the positive, including strong growth, slow inflation and less red tape. - Gulnura Toralieva
Bangladesh farmers
battle water woes
Water shortages are endangering the livelihood of farmers on northwest Bangladesh, as drastically low rainfall fails to replenish the falling water table, while once-abundant flows from nearby rivers in the region are stemmed by damns across the border in India. - Naimul Haq
CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
Financial euphoria
At this stage of an inflationary asset market boom, it's perfectly rational to double-down with the "house's money" and play for the spectacular big win, using unprecedented ultra-loose finance and government backstops to accumulate as much financial wealth as possible.
Doug Noland looks at the previous week's events each Monday.
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Xi returns to California
By coincidence or not, the White House announcement on Monday appeared even as Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang was in the middle of his visit to India - that a US-China summit is scheduled to be held on June 7-8 in California.
- M K Bhadrakumar
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[Re Japan tips its hand via North Korea, May 21, '13] Japan announced a year or two ago that it would re-engage with North Korea as a handslap to South Korea over a territorial dispute on uninhabited islands. Pyongyang's nuclear test shelved that initiative. Now with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe back in power, reconnecting with the DPRK is on track.
Nakamura Junzo
Guam
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