Indonesia may have lost a lot more than the opportunity to see Lady Gaga when she canceled her June 3 concert in Jakarta last weekend. The episode could mark the beginning of the end for Indonesia’s civil liberties as radical groups continue unabated in their assault on the nation’s freedoms. Those who care about their freedom should speak up and fight to defend it rather than busily trying to distance themselves from Lady Gaga and whatever it is they believe she represents through her songs and

Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of the social network and Facebook Inc., stands accused of violating the social contract ― the idea that government is based on an agreement among its citizens to ensure mutual protection of person and property. His decision to give up his American citizenship before the Facebook initial public offering drew criticism for his perceived breach of financial and patriotic duties, including the duty to pay income taxes. He is even the target of legislation called the

Two lawmakers elected through the United Progressive Party’s proportional representation list will have to resign on their own if they wish to avoid the humiliation of being expelled from the National Assembly. Both the ruling Saenuri Party and the opposition Democratic United Party are already moving to force them out of the National Assembly.At issue are the ideology that Rep. Lee Seog-gi and Rep. Kim Jae-yeon of the divided leftist party are alleged to espouse and the process of putting them

An annual electricity-saving campaign started on the first day of June ― one month ahead of time. The early launch of the government-initiated promotion reflects a deep concern about power shortages that may cause nationwide blackouts in summer.Nationwide blackouts are not just a remote possibility. They are an imminent threat to the nation, which experienced rolling blackouts last year ― successive blackouts in small areas that were designed to conserve electricity when supply fell to a dangero

What a difference a year doesn’t make. Last July, the birth of the Republic of South Sudan promised an end to a decades-long conflict that had claimed more than 2 million lives. Yet nine months after South Sudan took its place as the 193rd member of the United Nations, its forces were fighting those of its reluctant parent, the Republic of Sudan, over an unsettled border and control of oil resources. Today, after a stern diplomatic intervention by the U.N. Security Council, both sides return to

Our long wait for firm and concrete measures to stop the huge waste of taxpayers money on fuel and electricity subsidies has turned out to be futile as what Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced through a live television broadcast on Tuesday evening was nothing more than a weak appeal for energy conservation.Utterly inadequate institutional capacity will be the biggest barrier to the implementation of the five measures scheduled to start Friday.The half-baked measures include g

As people grow old, they tend to develop a divided personality. A case in point is ex-President Chiang Kai-shek. After he lost the Chinese Civil War and moved his government from Nanjing to Taipei, he assigned his Kuomintang its third task for the Chinese Revolution. The first task, of course, was to topple the alien Manchu government in Beijing. The Kuomintang which Dr. Sun Yat-sen founded succeeded in creating the Republic of China in 1912, but China was a divided country with warlords ruling

It has surfaced that the Cabinet Offices’s Atomic Energy Commission, in the course of its review of Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle policy, has held a series of closed-door study meetings attended by insiders in the nation’s nuclear power establishment. These meetings were separate from the official meetings held by the commission’s subcommittee that is dealing with the issue.It has also come to light that a report submitted to a May 8 meeting of the subcommittee by the commission had been changed to

In the first move of its kind, a U.N. working group recently concluded that Pyongyang has forcibly detained the wife and two daughters left behind by a South Korean man who escaped North Korea in 1986 a year after defecting there with his family.Their continued detention since 1987 “has been and is arbitrary,” said the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a statement adopted at its session last month, which was made public by a Seoul-based rights group Tuesday.It also requested that Nort

It has been a long time since Koreans ceased to be recognized for their passion for saving.A recent report confirmed they have lost that passion more rapidly than people in other major economies over the past decade.According to the report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Korea’s household savings rate ― the ratio of savings to total disposable income ― declined from 23.2 percent in 1998 to 3.1 percent last year. The decrease of 20.1 percentage points over the cited

To see the results of self-defeating U.S. immigration policies, you need only open your browser to www.canadavisa.com. There, you’ll see a shrewd neighbor fishing for talent at U.S. expense. At the top of the website, in large print, is the question: “Currently on an H1B Visa or otherwise working or studying in the United States?” There is nothing subtle about the appeal. Canada is seeking skilled foreigners who’ve grown frustrated with the U.S. visa gantlet, which can take a decade for the luck