For a moment last week, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte seemed to have orchestrated one of the most dramatic geopolitical shifts in Asia since the end of the Cold War -- abandoning the US, his country’s longtime ally, for rival China. Characteristically, he did so with zero subtlety. In responding, the US should avoid making the same mistake.That’s not to say Duterte’s anti-US comments in Beijing last week should be dismissed as the ravings of a hot-tempered diplomatic lightweight. He remai

Apparently we’re supposed to sympathize with giant conglomerates AT&T and Time Warner. They’re so beleaguered by changes in their core businesses that their only path to survival, so they say, is a merger valued at $84.5 billion that will keep their fleeing customers corralled.　Consumer advocates aren’t buying this. Politicians across the spectrum aren’t buying this — who would expect to find Donald Trump, the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats in the US Congress, who all are expressing doub

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal famously said, “It is not certain that everything is uncertain.” Had he been around for Brexit, he might not be so sure. While a moderate outcome remains likely, uncertainty and animosity have been on the rise in recent weeks. This is the Brexit paradox: The longer it takes for pragmatism to re-enter the debate, the higher the chance that the chilling effect of the unknown will cause permanent damage to both the United Kingdom and the European Union.This wa

“If you don’t see it, I’m a woman from Edae. You can’t put me into the big house!” Kim Hye-su famously said in the 2006 hit movie “Tazza.” The glamorous actress, playing a gambling house madam, was resisting a police detective trying to arrest her in a raid. “Edae” here is short for Ewha Womans University, the oldest women’s university in Korea and reputedly the largest in the world, with 25,000 students and 210,000 graduates.Without understanding the special place this school has in Korean soci

A promise between Japanese and Chinese leaders appears to have been one-sidedly discarded similar to a mere scrap of wastepaper, and this should not be overlooked.China has started operating two gas fields near the Japan-China median line in the East China Sea. In early October, the Maritime Self-Defense Force confirmed gas flares at the production sites and photographed them.This means 12 of the 16 offshore facilities that China has constructed are now in operation.Demarcation between Japan and

It seems obvious that President Park Geun-hye proposed amending the Constitution in the belief that it would help divert political and public attention away from the scandals that have been engulfing her presidency. Nevertheless, the reversal of her position is good for the nation. As expected, Park’s proposal to amend the Constitution within her term of office that ends in early 2018 was met with mixed reactions -- from outright rejection by the main opposition party and enthusiastic support fr

Just over a year ago, Tesla sent out a software update to its cars that made its “Autopilot” features available to customers, in what the company called a “public beta test.” In the intervening 12 months, at least one customer died while the Tesla was in autopilot mode. Cars have crashed, regulators have cracked down, and the headlines proclaiming that “Self-Driving Cars Are Here” were replaced with Tesla’s assurances that autopilot was nothing but a particularly advanced driver-assist system.Gi

The other day, I watched a 2012 Woody Allen movie, “To Rome with Love.” I first watched his hilarious comedy film “Take the Money and Run” in the 1970s and immediately put his name on the list of my favorite actors. Allen is a celebrated film director, but also a superb actor. He plays a timid but humane intellectual in modern times in the film. He brilliantly renders the melancholy and pathos of the petty bourgeois living alone in a big inhumane city like New York. In “To Rome with love” Allen

If developed countries acted rationally, and in the interest of electorates that understood how their tax money is spent, they would set their public-pension retirement age at or above 70. But most developed countries have retirement ages below this mark, and, despite some progress, it will be decades before they catch up. In the meantime, Western welfare states will remain financially unviable, economically sickly, and politically strained.Demographic aging is the social and economic equivalent

In less than three weeks, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States -- and if it feels like we’ve already heard enough about sexism and misogyny, get ready: The next four years are going to be filled with bitches, bimbos and nasty women.And that may be the best thing for women since the 19th Amendment.This ugly campaign has pushed our country, once again, to talk -- with uncomfortable words -- about how men treat women. But unlike other moments that ha

As presidential terms in South Korea age, scandals appear, causing the popularity of the president to fall further. In the fourth year of her five-year term, President Park Geun-hye finds herself embroiled in a growing scandal involving Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of the president and the ex-wife of her former chief of staff. Choi is accused of profiting from her work in the Mir and K-Sports foundations, which were founded in 2015 to promote Korean culture and sports overseas. The scandal, descr

When smoking costs more, more people quit. That’s why higher cigarette taxes are almost always good policy, for smokers and the public health, too.There’s a catch, though -- and it’s one that voters in four states should keep in mind as they consider ballot initiatives next month to raise cigarette taxes: Sin taxes work only if they’re high enough.Voters in California, Colorado and North Dakota are being asked to raise state taxes to well over $2 a pack. Then there’s Missouri, where voters will

While the government is set to unveil measures to curb spiraling apartment prices in the coming weeks, the issue of officials’ private interests during decision-making procedures has been at the center of public attention.Citizens question neutrality and fairness as well as the efficacy of the coming anti-speculation measures. They cite the recent data on some high-ranking officials’ property holdings in the affluent Gangnam district in Seoul.The district that includes the Gangnam, Seocho and So

Remembering the late Muhammad Ali, New York Times reporter Robert Lipsyte described how the boxer stood for civil rights and social justice as a brash young champion and was gradually morphed by the media and his admirers into “something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus” by the time of his death.It’s also an apt description of what the scholar Cornel West has described as the “Santa Clausification” of another “legend in soft focus,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Reduced to a collecti

If Donald Trump loses the election and doesn’t concede, it won’t violate the US Constitution. But it would break a tradition of concession that dates back more than a century and has achieved quasi-constitutional status. And like most enduring political customs, its value goes beyond graciousness: It helps ensure the continuity of government and offers a legitimating assist to democracy itself.It’s a matter of interpretation exactly when the practice of concession began. Thomas Jefferson drafted

As the conflict in Syria rages on, refugee migration into Europe continues. Most of the debate around the immigration crisis focuses on security. But there’s another related issue receiving far less attention: Who’s actually paying for the migrant wave?　No one seems to want to talk about the spiraling cost of mass migration here in Europe. The number of asylum-seekers doubled to 1.2 million last year, according to Eurostat figures. Last year, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper es

Democracy requires dignity to sustain itself.This shouldn’t surprise. The ruling system that democracy replaced had been divinely chosen; the royals had God-given dignity, with all the trappings. For democrats to compete, they had to prove first that the electoral rabble could govern its passions and temper its prejudices, and next that their leaders would be chosen from the highest common denominator, not the lowest.Democratic dignity is mutual dignity. That requires mutual respect and somethin

Does anyone remember President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia? The plan was to focus diplomatic and military assets in East Asia to contain a rising China. It was one of the reasons Obama said he was shrinking the American footprint in the Middle East.Well, the pivot is failing. On Thursday, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, announced to an audience at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing a “separation” with the U.S. “America has lost now,” he said. “d maybe I will also go to R

UNESCO, the United Nations organization supposedly in charge of education, science and culture, has passed many insane resolutions in the past. But its latest vote to essentially deny Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem has reached new heights of political madness.Fortunately, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNESCO’s own director Irina Bokova and other top UN officials have distanced themselves from the Oct. 13 Palestinian-backed resolution, which effectively denies Judaism and Christianity

Afghanistan government military and police forces trained and equipped by the United States are finding themselves increasingly challenged by the Taliban outside the capital, Kabul.The Obama administration’s theory in Afghanistan and Iraq is that their militaries’ forces can be strengthened to the point that US forces can be withdrawn without their governments being overrun by their enemies. In the case of Afghanistan, it’s the Taliban; in Iraq, the Islamic State.In Iraq, the theory is being tes