There are two ways in which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first—the Orwellian—culture becomes a prison. In the second — the Huxleyan—culture become a burlesque…Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Neil Postman (1985)

Minister of Justice opposes capital punishment or does not want to participate in state killing, he or she can prevent executions simply by not signing execution warrants. A few years ago Minister of Justice Hatoyama Kunio of the LDP (who authorized 13 hangings while serving as Minister for less than a year in 2007-08) suggested that the execution process should be made more automatic by abolishing the Minister's discretion to make these life and death decisions. The execution process should be like a “conveyor belt”, he said, and the Minister should not be allowed to turn the switch off.

However one feels about the death penalty, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that its application in Japan is arbitrary. At a mid-April symposium hosted by the Delegation of the European Union to Japan and the EU Institute in Japan at Waseda University in Tokyo, former Justice Minister Hiraoka Hideo publicly denounced his successor Ogawa Toshio ‘s decision to have three men on death row hanged on March 29, saying that the government needs to discuss the matter more before continuing with executions. The fact that Hiraoka on principle did not sign any execution orders during his tenure while Ogawa, in accordance with a very different set of values, approved three soon after assuming office shows that choices regarding life-and-death are governed by personal whim. Don't forget, these two men belong to the same political party, the ruling DPJ.

Reading this beautifully written appeal from the Afghan Peace Volunteers is like hearing, amid the drums and trumpets of war, the delicate sound of a flute. What is heartbreaking about the Afghan struggle is that none of the main contenders we hear about - the Karzai government, the U.S. military, NATO, the Taliban, al Qaeda - seems capable of hearing that sound. An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, and the whole world goes blind. A bomb for a bomb, it could be added, and the world goes deaf as well - in particular, deaf to the sound of peace. It is heartening, and a source of hope, to hear that sound coming from Afghanistan, despite everything.

I delivered the following remarks at an antiNATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy to attend: as far as I can tell there may be less serious dialogue today between Russian and American intellectuals than there was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the danger of war involving the two leading nuclear powers has hardly disappeared.