Keio Electric Railway Co installed cameras on some of its trains in this past week in an attempt to curb groping. Train groping is a huge problem in Japan. In 2008, police handled 1600 groping incidents in Tokyo alone. And that number is a small fraction of actual groping incidents. According to a 2010 survey, […]
Sony and Japanese pop group, Kishidan, apologized this week for the band wearing costumes resembling Nazi SS uniforms in a Feb. 23 interview. A statement issued Monday from the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center called for an apology from MTV Japan for airing the interview. In the statement, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the […]
On Tuesday, nine years after 60 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive when their train coach was set on fire, an Indian court in the Western state of Gujarat found 31 Muslims guilty of the crime.
Two years ago, I wrote a long post discussing the political and economic relationship between Mainland China (People’s Republic of China) and Taiwan (Republic of China) ahead of the implementation of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). The ECFA was signed on June 29, 2010, in Chongqing, PRC, and went into effect on September 12 […]
As the introductory post to the Japan foreign policy blog, I pose the question, “Is Japan still relevant?” Twenty some years ago, no one would have thought to raise this question. In 1989, Japan was at the height of its asset price “bubble.” Japan’s post-war economy was dubbed an “economic miracle,” and it maintained the […]
Is it likely that the government of Pakistan is trying to delay the onset of proceedings against Raymond A. Davis, the man accused of allegedly killing two motorists on the streets of Lahore? This in order to buy time as back-channel negotiations run up against public sentiment, the natural political deadline in these circumstances? Yes. […]
This is a post on Somali pirates that I wrote for the American Enterprise Institute’s Enterprise Blog. I thought would be good to upload here too since it focuses on lessons for Somalia from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore’s strategy for combating piracy in the Strait of Malacca. Arthur Herman published an impassioned article in the […]
Recently there has been some heated discussion on who is ‘morally qualified’ to write about India. Socio-economic changes have made India the apple pie of global literary – fiction and non-fiction – circle. Patrick French’s India: A Portrait and Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking have invited the ire of […]
Dr. Mohammad Yunus has been fired from his role as managing director of Grameen Bank, essentially because he did not seek approval of his leadership role from Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh, from the moment he turned 61. Really, that’s the reason he was fired earlier today. According to the New York Times: […]
The Awami League government just let H.M. Ershad have a pass–it dropped charges brought against him by the BNP led government of the 1990’s. Along with 75 others withdrawals out 836 politically motivated cases,the case against former President Ershad’s moves to buy radar techinology from the United States at a higher price, presumably pocketing the […]
Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan’s contagion across the Kush, is bent on taking down the government in Islamabad by destroying the foundational liberal and multicultural bases that it had long promised to cherish. Militants have shot and killed the minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, a man who had for some time challenged the fundamentally intolerant and morally insecure and […]
By now, everyone monitoring the developments in the Middle East can’t help but liken them to dominos: once the first dictatorship fell (in Tunisia), the rest were just a matter of time. Of course societies do not behave like toys – what is common among the revolting populations of the Middle East is that they […]
The government of Bangladesh is working with its counterparts in Russia to put in a 2000 megawatt power plant in the district of Pabna. The joint move was put into play yesterday after having been accepted as a feasible policy last May. The final deal will be signed by Sheikh Hasina during a state visit to […]
Bangladesh, like other regional developing economies, has over the years taken steps to open up its doors to foreign investment. The Board of Investment (BoI) recently announced the following changes to its policy: Simpler rules and regulations for foreign companies seeking to open offices in Bangladesh Foreign workers must receive a work permit from BoI […]
