Is culture the key to Israel’s success?

Three years ago, Dan Senor, now a foreign-policy adviser to Mitt Romney, was in my radio studio promoting a book he’d co-authored called “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.” It is a book that Romney acknowledges as having shaped his thinking on Israel.Back then, Senor laughed when I said reading the book made me think of something once told to me by Bobby Greenberg, a businessman and former Philadelphia treasurer: “Always try to dress British and think Yiddish.” But Senor w

Aug. 13, 2012

Make it hard for parents to deny kids vaccines

The U.S. this year is set to have the worst outbreak of whooping cough since the 1970s. Already, from January to mid-July, there have been 17,000 registered cases and nine deaths. Like the whoop that punctuates the cough, this number is a warning that something is very wrong. The increase, researchers suspect, is partly due to the waning effect of whooping cough vaccines introduced in the 1990s to replace older formulations. It’s also connected to the rising number of parents who refuse to get t

Aug. 12, 2012

Playing to lose is strategy, not a scandal

Olympic athletes want to win ― we all know that. So why are they being disqualified for trying to lose? After the badminton scandal that marred the early days of the games, the latest athlete to be kicked out was Algerian middle-distance runner Taoufik Makhloufi, who walked off the course in an 800 meters semifinal on Aug. 6. Makhloufi got lucky. After an appeal, the International Association of Athletics Federations accepted the doubtful excuse that he was feeling injured, and reinstated him. T

Aug. 12, 2012

The right way for the U.S. to help Syria’s rebels

As diplomatic options for ending the conflict in Syria have failed, calls to arm and provide air support for Syrian rebels are becoming more widespread ― with several senators, a former Bush administration senior official and a former Obama State Department official leading the charge.Although we share their commitment to a humanitarian end to the brutality of the Assad regime, arguments to support the rebels militarily are based on three common assumptions that do not withstand scrutiny:― Milit

Aug. 12, 2012

Marilyn Monroe, the eternal shape shifter

Why is Marilyn Monroe still an American icon 50 years after her death? She is endlessly analyzed in films and biographies; her image appears on T-shirts and posters; her popularity is reflected in the 52,000 Marilyn-related items for sale on eBay. My University of Southern California students, fixated on contemporary pop culture, know little about 1950s Hollywood stars, except for Monroe. Like everyone else, they puzzle over her death, respond to her beauty, recognize her paradoxes: the ur-blond

Aug. 10, 2012

Restricted public disclosure invites public distrust

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has at long last made public, albeit partially, video images of in-house teleconferences held during the crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to discuss countermeasures.The video footage is valuable data for evaluating the crisis management capabilities of the government and the utility.But the publicized images were limited to about 150 hours of teleconferences held from March 11, 2011 ― when the crisis began ― to March 16. Such partial disclosure will only

Aug. 10, 2012

Myanmar: Old habits die hard for the powerful

Censorship is alive and well in Myanmar despite all the enthusiasm surrounding the promises of reforms by Nay Pyi Daw’s leaders that there would be no press censorship in the country from now on. Unfortunately the truth inside Myanmar tells a different story. Local journalists have condemned the return of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), which has halted indefinitely the publication of two weeklies, The Voice and the Envoy. The publications allegedly violated the so-called 20

Aug. 10, 2012

Is Japan still the land of the rising sun?

Japan’s economy has been described as being neither dead nor alive for so long that its detractors could be missing positive signals. The first-quarter gain was 1 per cent ― twice the rate of the United States, which nobody would suggest is a failed economy. If the full year brings 2 percent growth projected on the stimulus of the earthquake and tsunami rebuilding program, it will accentuate a positive trend of the past decade which has shown seven years of GDP gains since 2002. This will make J

Aug. 10, 2012

Revising the U.S.-ROK New Missile Guidelines

Since January 2011, the governments of the Republic of Korea and the United States have been negotiating a revision of the U.S.-ROK New Missile Guidelines. The ROK government is demanding a more flexible agreement that allows for enhanced missile capabilities, including an extension to range and warhead weight. South Korea considers these revisions critical to robust military deterrence against North Korea. Since the guidelines limit the maximum range of South Korea’s missiles to less than 300 k

Aug. 9, 2012

Trouble-making statement

The press statement the White House issued this weekend has deservedly evoked curses on the street and angry diplomatic representations from Beijing. Despite all the endeavor to leave the impression that the United States is a disinterested third party committed solely to peace in the South China Sea, that statement convinced us of the very opposite. To enhance the image that White House has tried hard to build for itself, the statement repeated the same old high-sounding words that portray the

Aug. 9, 2012

Don’t fall for Sandy Weill’s crocodile tears

The remarkably ironic pronouncement from Sandy Weill that the U.S. should resurrect some form of the Glass-Steagall Act ― which he worked assiduously to tear asunder in the 1990s as he created Citigroup Inc. ― has touched off another debate about how to control the worst instincts on Wall Street. There is no question that bankers, traders and executives need help reining themselves in. After all, it was their collective actions that brought us the financial crisis in 2007 and ― as if nothing had

Aug. 9, 2012

On human rights, U.S. must lead ― or no one will

In the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, one would frequently hear worried musings about the sudden role of the United States, left alone on the world stage as the “World’s Only Superpower.” Some referred contemptuously to the American “hyper-power.”Now, in an unexpected turn of events, Washington’s harshest critics are asking the United States to take an even greater role in world affairs, but to do it for the sake of protecting human rights across the globe.Whoever

Aug. 9, 2012

Advancing the rights of persons with disabilities

When I delivered my maiden speech on the Senate floor on April 14, 1969, the anniversary of the day I was wounded in World War II, it was customary to speak about something in which you had a deep interest, and something about which you could offer some leadership. I chose to speak about a minority group, as I said then, the existence of which affects every person in our society, and the very fiber of our nation.It was an exceptional group I joined during World War II, which no one joins by pers

Aug. 8, 2012