The Korea Herald

[David Ignatius] Kissinger’s model for a stable Iran

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. ― Nobody can predict where the process of negotiation with Iran is headed, but here’s what I’d like to see: A broad dialogue that brings the rising power of Iran into a new security system in the Middle East in exchange for Iran’s commitment not to build nuclear weapons. If you’re looking for a lucid explanation of how such a framework could be built, I recommend an unlikely source: It is Henry Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation, “A World Restored,” published in 1957. The book an

April 16, 2012

[David Ignatius] Kissinger’s model for a stable Iran

Hordes of young people leave Greece

ATHENS ― I traveled to Greece to see the land of my fathers, to see its beauty and its economic crisis firsthand.But as I arrived, others were leaving.Especially Greece’s young people, suffering from unemployment that hovers around 50 percent.“They go to Australia or Turkey or wherever they can find work,” says my first cousin Sophia, a mother of two daughters who is fearful of the future.Every day here, as a handful on the hard left throw rocks in the streets, the stories get worse and worse. M

April 16, 2012

[Jeffrey Frankel] Budgetary wishful thinking and fiscal targets

CAMBRIDGE ― Why do many countries find it hard to control their budgets? Concern about budget deficits has become a burning political issue in the United States; helped to persuade the United Kingdom to enact stringent cuts, despite a weak economy; and is the proximate cause of the Greek sovereign-debt crisis, which has grown to engulf the entire eurozone. Indeed, among industrialized countries, hardly anyone is immune from fiscal woes.Clearly, part of the blame lies with voters who don’t want t

April 16, 2012

[Jeffrey Frankel] Budgetary wishful thinking and fiscal targets

[Meghan Daum] The radical message of HBO series ‘Girls’

When I was 24 and living in a funky New York City apartment with roommates, roaches and ambitions that were both utterly consuming and utterly unfocused, I was convinced my generation was cursed. It was the early 1990s, and between a recession, the AIDS crisis and the last vestiges of the crack-and-crime epidemic, daily life had a certain apocalyptic quality.Thanks to baby boomers bottlenecking the middle rungs of the corporate ladder, we’d never move up from our entry-level jobs. Thanks to real

April 16, 2012

[Meghan Daum] The radical message of HBO series ‘Girls’

[Robert Reich] We’re turning U.S. into a giant casino

Anyone who says you can get rich through gambling is a fool or a knave. Multiply the size of the prize by your chance of winning it and you’ll always get a number far lower than what you put into the pot. The only sure winners are the organizers ― casino owners, state lotteries and con artists of all kinds.Yet America is now opening the floodgates to organized gambling.In December, the Department of Justice announced it was reversing its position that all Internet gambling was illegal.That decis

April 15, 2012

[Robert Reich] We’re turning U.S. into a giant casino

[Rachel Marsden] GSA scandal and throwback civil service culture

By now you’ve likely heard about the infamous Las Vegas convention bash during which federal civil servants at the General Services Administration indulged in various frivolities to the tune of $823,000 of your money. That conference featured, among other things, a hired professional clown ― which is like Picasso hiring some guy from out of the Yellow Pages to paint a mural.As with political sex scandals, nothing vaults a fiscal scandal into the headlines faster than photographic or video eviden

April 15, 2012

[Rachel Marsden] GSA scandal and throwback civil service culture

Israel-Iran history, Holocaust perverted in Grass’ poem

Guenter Grass, the German writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, brought forth last week an odious little poem that focuses on the threat to world peace posed by the Jewish state, and congratulates its author for the courage to point out this truth. The poem, published in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and elsewhere, was titled “What Must Be Said,” which is quite a vainglorious title. There is very little in the world that is safer (or less novel) than criticizing Isra

April 15, 2012

[Kenichi Ohmae] Fukushima’s lesson: Probability theory is unsafe

TOKYO ― A year has now passed since the complete core melt down of three boiling water reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima No.1 plant. Because of the limited information issued by the Japanese government ― and its insistence that the disaster was only a result of the unanticipated magnitude of the earthquake and tsunami ― the world does not know what really happened and will thus draw the wrong lessons.The most critical lesson for the global nuclear industry to learn, since most

April 15, 2012

[Kenichi Ohmae] Fukushima’s lesson: Probability theory is unsafe

[Jonathan Schell] New wars to disarm rogue states

NEW YORK ― On April 13, Iran is scheduled to meet with representatives of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States ― the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ― plus Germany (the so-called “P5+1”) in an effort to decide the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, North Korea is reportedly preparing its third nuclear test, as if to provide a discordant sound track for the talks.If the talks fail, and military action against Iran becomes more likely, n

April 13, 2012

[Jonathan Schell] New wars to disarm rogue states

Arab Spring may not bring democracy after all

Ever since Islamists took office in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, they have been trying to convince us that they are advocates of moderation, democracy, women’s rights and individual freedoms. And most people in the West, after jubilantly watching the Arab Spring’s amazing revolutions last year, wanted to believe them.But now we can see that these Islamic groups are taking us for fools.In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood promised that it would not field a candidate for president. But then this month it

April 13, 2012

High-tech apps could help prevent crime

Many tend to imagine cities to be a place where people keep to themselves and strangers don’t talk to strangers. The fact is that in any given day strangers spend time with strangers, sometimes alone, in a closed room on thousands of occasions. It is called a taxi ride. Some taxi drivers like to share their views on current political issues. Some passengers like to chat with their cabbies about their daily routines. Some rides are almost silent except at the beginning when the passengers announc

April 13, 2012

Thai government plays down consumer price rise

Amid growing complaints in Thailand from consumers over the rising cost of goods, the Thai Commerce Ministry has insisted that prices are under control, but only part of the truth has been reported to the Cabinet and the public.In fact, the government has picked only some products whose prices have come down to showcase to society.Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyaphirom keep on saying that prices are under control and the cost of living has not risen d

April 13, 2012

[Salman Haidar] Mending relations between India and Pakistan

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to India originated in his desire to make his devotions at the shrine at Ajmer, the famous pilgrimage center where great and small, rulers and ruled, persons of every condition and rank, have been drawn through the centuries. They come from every corner of South Asia in an unending stream; several heads of state and government have preceded Zardari, and doubtless there will be many more after him. So from one point of view it is nothing extraordinary t

April 13, 2012

[Salman Haidar] Mending relations between India and Pakistan

High-tech apps could prove to be new crime fighting sensation

Many tend to imagine cities to be a place where people keep to themselves and strangers don‘t talk to strangers. The fact is that in any given day strangers spend time with strangers, sometimes alone, in a closed room on thousands of occasions. It is called a taxi ride. Some taxi drivers like to share their views on current political issues. Some passengers like to chat with their cabbies about their daily routines. Some rides are almost silent except at the beginning when the passengers announc

April 13, 2012

Man with beer in airport is economic indicator

Ethiopia isn’t the first place you would look for clues about Asia’s economies. Nor does Jose Rabacal, a 29-year-old Filipino sipping beer at an Addis Ababa airport cafe, think he’s a human economic indicator. But he is, and so are his 10 compatriots as they bided their time recently during a multihour layover. Each moved to Africa from the Philippines for opportunities that leaders failed to offer at home. Each left behind a family they see once a year, if they are lucky. “I haven’t seen my thr

April 12, 2012

Sea dispute between ASEAN and China reopens

Over the past decades, the Philippines used to be benign with its defence strategy over the claims in South China Sea.Domestic turmoil, economic down-turn and southern rebellions kept the country at arm’s length on this key security issue. However, since July 2010, the government under President Benign Aquino III has displayed assertive foreign policy postures in the relations with the U.S. and China ― which has currently moved in an opposite direction. At the last week’s ASEAN summit in Phnom P

April 12, 2012

Iran talks must yield a solution that even Reagan could accept

Apologies to Ronald Reagan as we mangle his catchphrase, but what the U.S. and other world powers need to do in negotiations with Iran later this week is to “accept, but verify” an Iranian nuclear-fuel program that’s limited to producing low civilian-grade fuel. Only the most reckless gambler would bet on a breakthrough in the talks, due to take place in Istanbul on April 14. Ten years of abject diplomatic failure, distrust and Iranian filibustering have fed a justifiable cynicism. Nor is an ele

April 12, 2012

[Fiorello Provera] Persecution against Christian minorities in the world

BRUSSELS ― Recently, the human-rights activist, former Dutch politician, and Somali exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote about a global war on Christians in Muslim countries. She discussed at length the appalling phenomenon of violent intolerance towards Christian communities, and cast blame on the international community and prominent NGOs for failing to address this problem.In almost every part of the world, reports emerge on a daily basis of Christian communities falling victim to harassment and perse

April 12, 2012

[Fiorello Provera] Persecution against Christian minorities in the world

To improve global health, reinvent the toilet

The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal. Unfortunately it is an impractical luxury for about two-thirds of the world’s 7 billion people because it relies on connections to water and sewerage systems that m

April 11, 2012

[Shlomo Ben Ami] Iran’s nuclear grass eaters

MADRID ― After long years of failed international efforts to end Iran’s cunning drive to develop nuclear weapons, the question today is no longer whether the West can prevent the nuclearization of Iran’s military arsenal, but whether the Islamic regime collapses first. Unfortunately, if it does not, the only option for stopping Iran is war ― and war is a very bad option.Pakistan is worth invoking when assessing whether the sanctions now imposed on Iran will force it to surrender its nuclear prog

April 11, 2012

[Shlomo Ben Ami] Iran’s nuclear grass eaters