Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been honored, together with South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol, with a John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award,” despite the fact that he personally has been unwilling to take any political risks to improve Japan-South Korea relations.
The US political and media establishment is beginning to wake up to the fact that, having lost the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War, it is now on the path toward losing its proxy war in Ukraine as well.
US President Joe Biden, already facing what increasingly appears to be an uphill battle to win reelection in November 2024, has further alienated much of the progressive wing of his Democratic Party with his extreme pro-Israel stance since the offensive launched by Hamas on October 7.
Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro appears to be plotting a comeback, but his prospects for a return to power–should he not be willing to wait four years until the next election–will very much depend upon who occupies the White House in the years ahead and how deep his support runs within his country’s military.
Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed over the weekend to lead a worldwide movement to end the 61-year US embargo of Cuba.
As the trial of sixteen pro-democracy figures began yesterday in Hong Kong, the global human rights group Amnesty International blasted what it called the “politically motivated” charges against the defendants, urging authorities to drop the case.
Although US President Joe Biden vowed on the campaign trail to phase out federal leasing for fossil fuel extraction, his administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.
Pushing Japan to remilitarize was never, and still is not, a good idea. This is not just because an arms race in Asia is the last thing the region needs. But also because Japan, consistently unable to face up to its own history, is simply not the country to represent the world’s liberal democracies in Asia, especially as a military power.
When it comes to highlighting issues affecting US citizens such as the student debt crisis, Democrats Abroad Japan has taken a passive approach, focusing mainly on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, rather than promoting a progressive agenda for positive change.
The US House of Representatives passed a mammoth US$858 billion military spending bill, putting the US budget for weapons and war-making higher than the next nine countries combined. Also attached to the bill was unprecedented US taxpayer funding for Taiwan’s military.
