Kurt Campbell, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, is the “brain” behind much of what the Pentagon and US State Department are doing in East Asia today, but his policy approaches do not correspond with the realities of a global US empire now in rapid decline.
Calls by business groups and the academic world have increased pressure on Japan to reconsider its overly strict border policies and to reopen the country to essential travelers, but for many of the foreign students who have been desperately trying to enter in Japan for the past two years, the damage has already been done.
Remote work is no longer a remote concept. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen telework, work-from-home, and workations soar in the popular imagination, and indeed become a reality in many lives.
Recent revelations regarding the Japanese government’s purchase of US military drones underlines the East Asian nation’s unwillingness to refuse the “requests” of their US allies as they relate to the acquisition of weapons systems.
A broken rib, a chipped tooth—a worker kicked and beaten frequently over a period of two years. This is not a horror story of a survivor of a Chinese labor camp in Xinjiang, but rather that of a Vietnamese “technical intern” in Okayama, Japan.
US Forces Japan has the duty to recognize that what they do affects Visible Minorities in Japan, whether it be inspiring bigots to slam shop doors in their faces, or giving more ammunition to reactionaries who seek to seal off Japan’s borders.
The Covid pandemic has led many foreign workers to desert their places of employment in Japan, and some of them have become runaway workers and even illegal overstayers.
A delegation led by Ambassador of Japan to Iran Kazutoshi Ikawa traveled to Mashhad, the second-largest Iranian city, at the end of December, looking to deepen bilateral links in the region.
The Supreme Court ruled in three separate cases that Japan Post illegally discriminated against its contingent employees in comparison with its regular staff. At first glance, this seems a victory for workers that will raise all boats, but a closer look suggests it’s part of a design to sink all boats.
The Covid pandemic has gradually unleashed political and social forces in Japan that have lifted its underlying xenophobia to the surface, and thus transformed its culture from one of attraction into one of repulsion for many of its previous admirers.