Weekend Roundup: 70 Years After Its Defeat, the Land of the Rising Sun Meets China's Falling Currency

The future and the past are never far apart in modern Asia, where both the Middle Kingdom and the Land of the Rising Sun are, as never before, great powers at the same time. This week, on the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, tensions simmered as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe once again stopped short of an apology for the suffering Japan inflicted during the war. Meanwhile, a newly assertive China prepares for a reportedly unprecedented military display in early September to mark the formal end of the historic war. After repeated calls from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury to let the market determine exchange rates, China this week devalued its currency. That, in turn, set off fears of beggar-thy-neighbor currency wars in a slack global economy. Taking this sudden move now, even as state intervention continues to prop up China's ailing stock market, has shaken confidence in the Communist Party's lauded ability to master events. Herbert Bix, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, says Abe aspires to make Japan a great power while sanitizing his nation's history. We excerpt key passages from the report just submitted to Abe by the Japanese government's "Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan's Role and World Order in the 21st Century," which controversially concludes that Japan committed "aggression" in World War II. In a reflection on the anniversary of Japan's defeat, I argue that it is time for Japan to re-Asianize and stop being an American protectorate and political dwarf. But to rejoin the neighborhood in the future, Japan must first come to terms with its past. Nicholas Lardy sees China's devaluation as a proper shift toward letting the market play a decisive role in determining exchange rates and not as an unfair move aimed at boosting exports. Tom Doctoroff sees China's sudden currency depreciation as damaging its brand, losing face and causing high anxiety across the globe. Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz argues that if the West is not living up to its development aid promises through the current global institutions, it should get out of the way and let the emerging economies construct a new architecture for the global economy. Alexis Crow worries about global "debt contagion" and makes a case for greater investment in infrastructure in the developing world to the benefit of all. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich embraces a new rule of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that requires the disclosure of the pay ratio between top executives and workers. Grasielle Castro reports that seven out of 10 Brazilians now support President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry explains why he has gone to Havana to open a new U.S. Embassy as relations thaw with Cuba. Writing from Shanghai, Yang Jiemian says that U.S.-China cooperation in guaranteeing the Iran nuclear deal signals a new day in global governance. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, tells her colleagues to support Obama's Iran policy or face another war in the Mideast. Writing from Tel Aviv, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi argues that the West should aim to contain rather that destroy ISIS. Former U.S. Special Advisor on the Transition in Syria, Frederic Hof, says ISIS cannot be beaten without taking out the Assad regime in Damascus. In a special report, we profile some of the mothers whose children have joined ISIS. Daniel Marans analyzes the latest Greek bailout deal. This photo essay of powerful graffiti in the Exarcheia district of Athens illustrates widespread frustration amid crisis. From the island of Lesbos, Greece, WorldPost correspondent Sophia Jones reports that masked commandos are attacking Syrian refugees trying to reach Greek shores by raft from Turkey. Under-Secretary General of the UN Philippe Douste-Blazy writes that "solidarity micro-contributions" for development are a key way to stem the tide of migration overwhelming Europe today. World editor Charlotte Alfred reports that while the U.K. panicked over Calais migrants, hundreds died at sea. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the world is a more dangerous place for youth than ever before, but sees hope in the way young people are fighting for their future. Benedict Rogers and Andrew Copson worry that freedom of religion and belief is under increasing threat worldwide. WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini and Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel warn that "humanity's demand on renewable natural resources exceeds the supply that our planet can regenerate" and that this week, humanity has spent our planet's budget for the entire year, marking "Earth Overshoot Day." On the first anniversary of the Ferguson, Missouri riots over the police shooting of a young, unarmed black man, futurist David Brin suggests that, in addition to cops wearing body cameras, every inner-city youth should be armed with a hands-free camera connected to the cloud to document interactions with authorities. WorldPost China correspondent Matt Sheehan meets the Chinese rappers "bringing hip-hop to the Middle Kingdom." Maina Chawla Singh reflects on the "aspirational energy" and "collective capital" of the Indian diaspora. This photo essay looks at daily life inside North Korea. Reporting on a Google Chrome app user's experiment in New Zealand, Fusion ponders what happens when the phrase "political correctness" is replaced with the phrase "treating people with respect" when you browse the web. In our Singularity series this week, we examine how virtual reality could unleash the greatest wave of creativity in history. WHO WE ARE EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels and Peter Mellgard are the Associate Editors of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost's editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost's Senior World Editor. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are World Reporters. Rowaida Abdelaziz is Social Media Editor. CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing. EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun). CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large. The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea. Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the "whole mind" way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine. ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council -- as well as regular contributors -- to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian. From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt. MISSION STATEMENT The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets. We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Tsipras dominates Greek politics despite crises and U-turn

By Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS (Reuters) - Alexis Tsipras has presided over a near-death experience for the Greek financial system and performed a U-turn on resisting austerity. With his ministers openly discussing the possibility of a snap election, Tsipras seems nearly ready to exploit his enduring popularity in Greece and further consolidate his position after seven turbulent months in office. Tsipras's one tangible achievement has been to seal a new bailout deal for Greece, but on terms so onerous that part of his radical left Syriza party is threatening to walk out.

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Stunt-loving Putin rides to the bottom of the Black Sea

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a small submersible craft down to the bottom of the Black Sea to see an ancient ship recently discovered off the coast of Crimea.Putin, who has a penchant for adventurous stunts, previously explored the Gulf of Finland and Lake Baikal in submersibles. In another of his well-publicized exploits, he went scuba diving and brought up ancient Greek pottery shards that his spokesman later admitted had been planted.On Tuesday, he went down 83 meters (272 feet) in a three-seat submersible to see the remains of a Byzantine trading ship, which he said dated back to the 9th or 10th century.Speaking by radio while still under water, Putin said he hoped the find would shed light on Russia's historical development.Join the conversation about this story »

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Greece appeals to EU to come up with migrant crisis strategy

Greece appealed to its European Union partners on Tuesday to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with a growing migrant crisis as new data showed 21,000 refugees landed on Greek shores last week alone. That number is almost half of Greece’s ...

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EU border agency: Migrants hit new monthly record in July

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's border agency Frontex says the number of migrants entering the EU hit another record in July, with mostly Syrians and Afghans entering Greece from Turkey.

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Greek PM Tsipras to Move Parliamentary Vote on Reforms to House Summer Sessions

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is considering closing down the Greek Parliament plenary in order for the new reform bills to be voted during the parliamentary summer sessions, according to sources from the Maximos Mansion. By closing down the House plenary, Tsipras avoids the vote of confidence option and subsequent early elections in September. Analysts

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Mauritania: Scholar Warns of "Implosion" Unless Leadership Embraces Change

Since 1978, Mauritania has - with the arguable exception of a brief interlude in 2007-2008 -continuously been ruled by military men hailing from the dominant 'White Moor' group. The leader of the last military coup, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was anointed as the country's elected president following a 2009 ballot that, while not without flaws, probably broadly reflected actual voting patterns. I spoke with Amadou Sall, a lecturer of social anthropology at the University of Nouakchott and leading member of the Mauritanie Perspectives think tank, about politics, social change and the prospects for democracy in this rapidly changing West African nation. The interview was conducted in French and subsequently translated into English. Q: What are the large trends driving social and political change in Mauritania? Thirty years ago, Mauritania was a rural country, and rural Mauritania had no concept of a state. Until the 1970s, people lived with the seasons, they didn't know money, only barter. There were no banks, no shops, nothing. In the decades after independence, many state posts were filled with West Africans and Arabs as there were no qualified Mauritanians to take on such work. Today, the country is urbanized. In towns, people come into contact with other groups that they would not have encountered in the countryside. To an extent, ethnic tensions come from that process, creating contact and competition between Moors and black populations from the South. There's also been an opening to the world, through migration, the media, international trade. All of these have accelerated the pace of change. Q: What are the effects of the spread of the state? The development of state infrastructure, and the parallel development of the notion of state authority and centralized power, have created a new universe. People see the state as a source of success, for example, they see how a farmer succeeded in securing a state job, like working as a guardian, and now he gets a salary. Those who act as local mediators with the state have become rich and powerful, and this has restructured society. It has undermined traditional structures and created visible symbols of new hierarchies, like cars and houses. The state has been seen as a protector, and as generous, a source of riches that should be taken advantage of. Q: There is a belief that Mauritanians always vote for those in power... Competition at the local level revolves around who can best seduce the state and thus occupy the position of mediator. Nobody is against the state; everybody is in a competition to get closer to the state. Look at the recent rural tours of the president: it's a mobilization of rural mediators. Q: How would such a presidential tour have looked forty years ago? The president wouldn't have been able to travel there because there were no roads and no 4x4s. There wouldn't have been any towns to visit, population density was very low. And anyway, people wouldn't have known he was the president. Today, villagers look towards [the capital] Nouakchott, towards power. Q: With his power seemingly assured, why does the president bother to build rural roads and attend school opening ceremonies? People have seen the products of the state, for example, they have seen fertilizer and veterinary teams and understand that there are animal diseases and that vets can stop epidemics. This has created new needs, and people have become more demanding. Today, demands are being made of the state from all sides, more demands than the state can deliver on. We now need to re-negotiate the state. Q: What could the result of that negotiation look like? There are two possible outcomes. Number one, Mauritanians understand that they need to negotiate a compromise, and our leadersin particular come to understand that some things have to change. Outcome number two is an implosion, hitting the wall. Essentially, a confrontation of some form - I do not know what form, maybe a civil war. There are social demands, and we need educated visionary elites to chart the course ahead. Leadership is essential for change, and it has to be leadership that is capable of making concessions. From what I see happening around me, I'm not optimistic. Q: Could the system not just crack down and maintain power through raw repression? Maybe, but the question is, up to what point? Look at Ben Ali [of Tunesia, who was overthrown in the Arab Spring]. Things will change, the only question is when. Once you start on a path of democratization, it's like opening the floodgates - water keeps gushing out, you cannot stop the flow again. All you can do is manage that flow of demands, including identity demands. You need an outlet for frustrations, you need to create a space for expression.You also need to manage diversity, including cultural diversity. Q: How is the government managing diversity today? The state is reinforcing an Arab identity, for example through its language politics and its foreign policy. This is cultural chauvinism, and it does not reflect reality. You cannot suppress cultures through denial. For example, [members of the] Pulaar [ethnic group] in Baltimore can make music videos in their language and upload them onto YouTube, and people here can watch them. Today, you can't kill a culture without committing genocide. Q: To what extent is the government trying to alter the ethnic mix through the new registration laws? There is a culture of borderization in the south, this fear of blacks from other countries coming to Mauritania and buying passports and settling here, hence the new registrations laws. Certain black African groups [French: "groupes négro-Africaines"] saw these laws as a threat directed specifically against them. There were a lot of demonstrations and marches. If you fully apply these rules, everyone everywhere will have problems. For example, officials were asking for marriage certificates of long-dead parents; in many cases, such papers never existed in the first place. The state seems to be relaxing its stance on this issue now. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that there may be legitimate state concerns about fraudulently obtained papers. Q: Why is there no separatism in Mauritania, like in South Sudan for example? Identities are aspirations. Black Mauritanians do not have separatist aspirations. That sentiment simply does not exist, the notion is absent from the public sphere. We had a bicultural project, but now people feel betrayed. Mauritania does not have a state problem, it has an integration problem. It's paradoxical that this artificial state does not have a separatist problem while our old French colonial master does. It makes Mauritania easier to manage that France or Spain, with their Corsican and Catalan problems. Incidentally, it also shows how unfounded this European catastrophism about Africa can be. Q: Can the grassroots mobilization and activism practiced by the oppositional Initiative pour la Résurgence du mouvement Abolitionniste (IRA) not equally fulfil this role? No. The IRA's mobilization is not the same, it is only aimed at some segments of society. And for some people, the IRA is a potential harbinger of violence. [Note by interviewer: IRA president Biram Dah Abeid has been in jail for the past nine months. An appeal hearing is scheduled for August 20th. Follow the #Biram hashtag for updates.] Q: What is your personal take on the IRA? I see them positively because they are provocative and open people's eyes. Now people understand that there is inequality. Q: Islam is usually interpreted as an egalitarian religion. Why does the Islamic discourse in Mauritania seem to support inequality, at times even slavery? Everybody is looking for things that support their own class interests in Islam. The dominant groups in society seek passages on obedience that help them to maintain their dominance. Among our religious leaders, there is not much idealism in evidence. Each religious discourse is an expression of interest. Q: There seems to be a lot of freedom of speech in Mauritania, but little democracy. How do you explain that? Now we can freely express our opinions but these do not carry far, be it via voice or via ballot. In recent years, the televising of National Assembly debates legitimized opposition by bringing opposition leaders' voices into people's houses. It was a form of democratic pedagogy. The broadcasts continue, but because the opposition boycotted the last elections, these alternative voices are now missing. The boycott was a big mistake; to challenge power, you need to challenge power's monopoly on discourse. We need an efficient democratic system. Q: Is democracy a realistic aspiration in a country like Mauritania? The world is not linear, advanced-versus-backwards. For example, the way people here deal with the elderly is a thousand times more civilized than in Europe. Also, there are certain administrative efficiencies. You emailed me two days ago and now we are talking. In Europe , you would have had to go through my assistant, and he'd have made an appointment two or three weeks in the future. In the 1940s, we had elections here in Mauritania in parallel with elections in France. In parts of the U.S., voting rights for blacks were only fully realized in the 1960s. Up until the 1980s, there was a lot of talk of coups and dictatorships in Africa, but at the same time, Franco ruled Spain and the military was in power in Greece. We're all part of the same process of democratization. Five hundred years from now, when historians look back, they won't say the West was democratic and Africa wasn't, it's the same process that is going on worldwide. Q: What are the main barriers to democratization? The main barriers now are illiteracy and a form of anthropological inequality, in which some groups are better than others. We just need to continue, try and build democracy every day. Q: Moving forwards, what should the top priority be? Above all, we need to cultivate the accountability of government. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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