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

Rep. Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party, who has her sights on the presidency, looked invincible only a few months ago. She was not just the indisputable frontrunner for nomination but ranked the highest in approval ratings among potential presidential candidates.That is no longer so. Her leadership is under attack. True, her nomination still looks assured, with the party placed under her tight control. Moreover, no rival in the party is putting up an effective challenge against her. In o

The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party have been competing to commit themselves to expanding welfare programs and introducing new ones. Of course, their spending commitments aim to help their campaigns in the December presidential election.A ballpark estimate by the administration puts the additional spending needed to finance the welfare programs for the next five years at 340 trillion won. The administration says yearly additional spending would range from 43

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

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

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

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

The proposal by the main opposition party to raise corporate tax rates should be withdrawn, as it goes against the global trend of giving incentives for businesses to invest more and create more jobs.The draft tax revision announced by the Democratic United Party on Monday calls for, among other things, raising corporate tax rates to 22 percent for companies with annual taxable profits of between 200 million won ($177,200) and 50 billon won, and to 25 percent for firms with profits of more than

Seoul officials might have felt somewhat embarrassed by Vietnam’s reported commitment to donate 5,000 tons of rice to flood-hit North Korea. Making the pledge in his meeting with North Korea’s visiting nominal head of state Kim Yong-nam on Monday, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang expressed his “deep sympathy” for the deaths and property damage caused by the flooding. Pyongyang’s official news agency said last Saturday floods in the North had killed 169 people since late June, with about 400

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

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