Most Popular
-
1
[Weekender] Geeks have never been so chic in Korea
-
2
N. Korea says it test-fired tactical ballistic missile with new guidance technology
-
3
NewJeans members submit petitions over court injunction in Hybe-Ador conflict
-
4
[News Focus] Mystery deepens after hundreds of cat deaths in S. Korea
-
5
S. Korea's exports of instant noodles surpass $100m for 1st time in April: data
-
6
[KH Explains] Why Korea's so tough on short selling
-
7
Actors involved in past controversies return first via streaming service originals
-
8
[Herald Interview] Byun Yo-han's 'unlikable' character is result of calculated acting
-
9
US military commander in S. Korea during Gwangju uprising dies
-
10
‘Kim desperately wanted to denuclearize,’ Moon writes in memoirs
-
It’s time to promote a third option in Syria
The conflict in Syria was “extremely bad and getting worse.” That’s what Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy to Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League and one of the world’s most skillful diplomats, told the Security Council in late September. The major powers listened but offered no new ideas on how to end the crisis. We need to change direction.Up to now, two strategies have been pursued. Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general and Brahimi’s predecessor as special envoy, tried to ne
Oct. 15, 2012
-
Rushdie: ‘Vampires shrivel in the sunlight’
Salman Rushdie just published his memoir about his years under the “fatwa” by Ayatollah Khomeini. It is named “Joseph Anton” after the alias he used in those years. He was interviewed by Patt Morrison for an article that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. ― Ed.Q: In the new book you write that the protagonist ― you ― chooses ethics and the universality of freedom over fundamentalist religion and moral relativism. Is this the defining conflict of the epoch?A: I think so. I really wanted
Oct. 15, 2012
-
Military actions: a way of life in the U.S.
A great power without a significant enemy? That’s what the U.S. has become.Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of
Oct. 15, 2012
-
[Itamar Rabinovich] The message carried by the drone in the desert
TEL AVIV ― A drone recently penetrated Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean. It was allowed to fly for about half an hour over southern Israel before being shot down by the Israeli air force over a sparsely populated area. It is still not known who dispatched the drone and from where, but it is now assumed that it was launched from Lebanon, either by Hezbollah, acting in Iran’s service, or by forces of the Iranian regime itself.If that is indeed the case, the episode should not be regarded a
Oct. 15, 2012
-
Venezuela’s depressing electoral statement
Score another lamentable election victory for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The fiery, anti-U.S. revolutionary now has another six-year term to continue with the plans he launched after his first election in 1998 to dismantle Venezuela’s free-market economy and pursue his anachronistic socialist agenda.Not long ago, American leaders would’ve had good reason to be concerned about the national security implications of another Chavez term. Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves
Oct. 14, 2012
-
[David Ignatius] Romney’s Mideast position
CAIRO ― Like other commentators, I found many echoes of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in Mitt Romney’s supposedly tough critique of it at Virginia Military Institute on Monday. I suppose that’s reassuring ― that Romney generally sees the same set of problems that Obama does, and in many cases would take pretty much the same action, though girded in “no apology” rhetoric. I also found many points in the speech that made sense. The one anomaly in the speech was the way Romney lavished praise o
Oct. 14, 2012
-
Why men don’t wear engagement rings
In the 1930s, Fortune magazine called weddings a “depression-proof” business; these days, the term is “recession resistant.” That isn’t exactly true, but there’s no denying that the U.S. wedding industry is big business today: Even in a sluggish economy, the average cost of a wedding in 2011 was $26,501, according to a Brides magazine survey. Much of the debt incurred by marriage-bound couples and their families stems directly from a desire to follow tradition ― to purchase the goods and service
Oct. 14, 2012
-
Celebrity economist rushes to save India
The first time I met Raghuram Rajan, the Indian economist couldn’t sit still. It was over coffee in Bangkok in November 2008, less than two months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded and almost took the global financial system down with it. Rajan had become a big draw by then, having warned as early as 2005 that a crash was coming. On that day in Thailand, he had a more local crisis on his hands: The hotel’s WiFi was out. “I’ll be back ― I need to make a call and make sure the world eco
Oct. 14, 2012
-
[Eli Park Sorensen] The uncanny minds that play on our sensitivities
Most people have experienced receiving an uncanny phone call from an excessively loquacious person ― only to discover, usually after a few moments, that one is listening to an automated voice advertising some product. In his essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” from 1906, the German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch suggested that feelings of anxiety often emerge in cases where we have difficulties discerning whether an entity is an automaton or human consciousness. “The life-size machines that per
Oct. 14, 2012
-
Chavez shows ‘elected autocrat’ isn’t oxymoron
Hugo Chavez is something of a challenge to the worldview of many rich-country observers. His election victory this week has given him, health permitting, a new six-year term as Venezuela’s president. He’s the leading elected autocrat in Latin America and maybe the world. “Elected autocrat” is a confusing category. According to the model that prevailed for decades after 1945, there are really just two kinds of state: free and unfree. Democracy, good. Autocracy, bad. Chavez represents a third way,
Oct. 12, 2012
-
[David Ignatius] A revolt’s extremist threat
ALEPPO, Syria ― Leading the fight in Sakhour on the eastern side of this embattled city is the Tawafuk Battalion of the Free Syrian Army. It reports to a new coordinating body known as the Military Council, according to Mustafa Shabaan, the acting commander of Tawafuk. But wait a minute: A young fighter named Thaer tells me there are six or seven other battalions fighting in Sakhour, too, in what many claim is the decisive battle for Aleppo. Who commands these disparate fighters? And what about
Oct. 12, 2012
-
[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Monetary easing and growth
NEW YORK ― Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic took extraordinary monetary-policy measures in September: the long awaited “QE3” (the third dose of quantitative easing by the United States Federal Reserve), and the European Central Bank’s announcement that it will purchase unlimited volumes of troubled eurozone members’ government bonds. Markets responded euphorically, with stock prices in the U.S., for example, reaching post-recession highs.Others, especially on the political right, worr
Oct. 11, 2012
-
U.S. government should settle with Abdullah Kidd
In the aftermath of 9/11, the federal government allowed its anxiety about possible future attacks to overwhelm its commitment to due process and the rule of law. An early manifestation of that overreaction was the rounding up of Arab and Muslim men on the pretext of holding them as potential witnesses at the trials of others.One victim of that policy was Abdullah Kidd, who was known as Lavoni Kidd when he played football for the University of Idaho. A convert to Islam, Kidd was arrested in 2003
Oct. 11, 2012
-
Democratic system no excuse for inaction
When former Taiwan Vice President Vincent Siew said last week that he has seldom found Taiwanese society so powerless and lost, he cut his old boss some slack by highlighting the challenge of democratic governance. Gone is the autocratic era when decisions were made by a few people and could be quickly implemented; the president now has to build consensus, Siew later pointed out. Democratic inefficiency has been much talked about after the Great Recession. People were shocked by the ineptitude o
Oct. 11, 2012
-
Diet must get to work
Although both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the No. 1 opposition Liberal Democratic Party have chosen their new party leaders, the ruling and opposition forces still cannot agree on when to start an extraordinary Diet session. The primary responsibility rests on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. He must fulfill his promise to then LDP chief Sadakazu Tanigaki to dissolve the Lower House “in the near future” by clearly showing when he will do so. If he does so, the ruling and opposition fo
Oct. 11, 2012
-
Stimulus versus discipline: Which is the right road?
The world’s finance ministers face a crucial opportunity when they meet this week. At stake is a sustainable economic recovery, but their weighty task is to find the balance between monetary easing and financial discipline that will deliver it.The meeting will focus on the budget stand-off in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Europe.The annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank this year was timely indeed. The gathering of the world’s economic decision-makers came amid
Oct. 11, 2012
-
[Peh Shing Huei] Icebreaker for China-Taiwan ties
Cross-strait relations are adding a curious shade of brown.As the green of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) edges towards the communist reds on the mainland, an earthy tone is being splashed across one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints.It is not a bad thing, said analysts, as former Taiwan premier Frank Hsieh, the highest-ranking DPP leader to visit the mainland, wrapped up his five-day landmark trip here.Beijing must be happy that even the pro-independence party
Oct. 11, 2012
-
[David Ignatius] Face to face with a revolution
ALEPPO, Syria ― A red-faced fighter named Faisal arrives at the forward headquarters of the Free Syrian Army pleading for weapons. He’s just come from the front line in a neighborhood called Sakhour, which has been under attack by the government’s forces for three weeks. As he shouts at his superiors, you can hear the thunder of incoming artillery about a half mile away. Faisal rages that his men are dying and he needs rocket-propelled grenades to fight the tanks of President Bashar al-Assad’s a
Oct. 10, 2012
-
New style, but still the same old North Korea
Pyongyang again disappointed those predicting it was about to change its ways. For months, experts and major media organizations have proclaimed imminent economic reform, even declaring that “North Korea has virtually abandoned the planned economy.” A rare second Supreme People’s Assembly this year could only mean codification of free-market principles, or so it was argued.Yet the legislative assembly came and went in late September with nary a whisper of economic reform. What went wrong? There
Oct. 10, 2012
-
Climate-change denial getting harder to defend
It was a long hot summer.The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country. Overall, the summer was the nation’s third warmest on record and comes in a year that is turning out to be the hottest ever. High temperatures along with low precipitation generated drought conditions across 60 percent of the Lower 48 states, which affected 70 percent of the corn and soybean crop and rendered part of the Mississippi River non-naviga
Oct. 10, 2012