Asia

BY RAWAN ZEINE On May 30, 2018, as I sat in my apartment in Cambridge, MA, I scrolled through my Instagram photos of my home, Jordan. Usually, photos with the caption “Jordan is beautiful” are images of Jordan’s nature, heritage, and historical sites. But in May, it was different. The caption “Jordan is beautiful” was an […]

BY YUSAKU KAWASHIMA Working conditions in Japan are widely regarded as severely demanding. In fact, there is even a Japanese word, karoshi, that means “death from overwork,” with its own Wikipedia entry.[1] However, as someone who has worked in Japan for more than ten years, I wonder how much of the country’s actual working situation […]

Ben Davis should be allowed to disrupt or defer National Service, writes Brendan Dean. That this will not be allowed under current policy shows that the policy should be changed, to recognise the dynamics of team sports and the contributions to national spirit that having Singaporeans on the world athletic stage makes. The supposed choice between duty and talent development is a false dichotomy.

The decision to support or reject the opposition in its appeals to AKP voters is bound up with its identity as the representative of official secularism, a reputation that has proved difficult to shake. The memory of the divisive 1970s and the terror-filled aftermath of the 1980 coup remains a deeply impactful force conditioning voter behavior. An understanding of these traumatizing years, which left few segments of society untouched, contextualizes the steep odds against which the opposition was forced to contend.

BY JENIE SON AND ANDREW HONG When Americans think of North Korea, they tend to focus on the country’s dictatorial leader and the threat of nuclear war as Kim Jong Un squares off with Donald Trump. It can be easy to forget that there are ordinary people living there, continuously suffering under the most repressive […]

As we put more of our lives and data online, personal data and its management has become a much more controversial issue. What are Singapore’s laws on the issue, and how do we balance technological progress with personal privacy? Jarret Huang explains.

BY CAMERON LINDSAY Last month, 27 of the 28 national European Union ambassadors to Beijing denounced China’s “Silk Road” project as one that hampers free trade and places Chinese companies at an advantage. The sentiments, in response to China’s One Belt Initiative (OBI), strongly contrast the themes of cooperation, openness, and mutual benefits espoused by […]

BY SASHA RAMANI President Trump’s long-promised trade war against China has begun. In March, President Trump unveiled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and later targeted China directly with tariffs on $60 billion worth of imports on technology and energy industry components. In April, he launched a further 25 percent tariff on Chinese industrial technology, […]

On January 20, 2018, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) entered the Syrian city of Afrin in what the Turkish government claims is a response to threats posed by Kurdish political groups within Turkey itself, and in northern Syria along the Syrian-Turkish border. Now Ankara must contend with an unclear near-future in which it may remain in Syria for an indefinite period of time.

BY MAX NATHANSON The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will change Pakistan. CPEC — a proposed network of highways, power plants, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) worth a reported $62 billion — is set to bring Pakistan more than double the entire volume of foreign direct investment that the country received since 2008. But who, exactly, […]

ISIL violated international, national, regional and tribal law when it recruited children to participate in its armed conflict.  With ISIL’s loss of territory in Iraq, the rush to enact justice against perpetrators of these abuses has overlooked the status of children and the need to tailor treatment specifically to child soldiers who survived a brutal occupation.

By VARYA MERUZHANYAN For over a century, April has been a moment of a deafening silence for Armenians. Every year, on April 24, Armenians around the world pause to commemorate the 1.5 million victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. This year, however, the silence was broken by the loud sounds of vuvuzelas […]