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November 23, 2024
 

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Sarah Benton
COMMENTARY
Aug 4, 2003
Get real about the Iraq war
LONDON -- Supporters of the war against Iraq have a point: The row in Britain about the "evidence" of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's deadly intentions toward the West is more froth than substance.
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2003
Tony Blair: a casualty of war
LONDON -- As the grim business of policing a vanquished Iraq drags on, it seems less and less likely that Prime Minister Tony Blair's authority over party and country will survive. For the first time since Labour's landslide victory in 1997 the Conservatives are nudging ahead of Labour in opinion polls...
COMMENTARY
Jun 2, 2003
Visions clash over EU future
LONDON -- It could be the most momentous change in Britain's history or it could be a big yawn -- something that reaches only the most nerdlike minds of constitutional lawyers. Yes, it's the European Union Constitution, worked on for months by a 13-member presidium and a convention of 105 ministers and...
COMMENTARY
May 3, 2003
War leaves Britons divided
LONDON -- For the first time that I can remember, the prevailing political mood in Britain is one of vindication and vindictiveness. Almost everybody who took sides over the war in Iraq now feels they are right, and wants the other side to bow down and acknowledge it.
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2003
Warfare that stymies protest
LONDON -- This, we were promised, would be the most politically correct war in history. Harlan Ullman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the strategy of conquering Iraq by "shock and awe" bombing, was devised simply because this is the most unpopular...
COMMENTARY
Mar 2, 2003
Dissent shaking institutions
LONDON -- I don't know what destruction may be visited on the Iraqis by the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein himself in the next few weeks. But it is clear that great waves of destruction are already roaring through the institutions of social...
COMMENTARY
Jan 29, 2003
War rhetoric leaves most Britons cold
LONDON -- A few thousand antiwar protesters gathered outside the House of Commons last week to lobby members of Parliament, to take part in a silent vigil or to attend one of several -- to the annoyance of those who would have liked unity -- antiwar meetings.
COMMENTARY
Jan 1, 2003
Pols are but small cogs in the machine
LONDON -- My God, the shame of it. Prime Minister Tony Blair is a poodle, yapping obediently when U.S. President George W. Bush snaps his fingers. This bitter vein of comedy runs through the thin political culture we have at the moment. But perhaps, muse the bitter critics, this British subservience...
COMMENTARY
Nov 4, 2002
Market approach to intimacy
LONDON -- The front page of Wednesday's Daily Mirror said: "Angus Deayton is a coke-snorting, hooker-hiring, three-in-a-bed love rat . . ." The front page of the Daily Mail said: "John Leslie is a vile, arrogant man who despises women . . ." Both men were sacked by their TV employers the same day.
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 2002
Once-cool Britannia begins to boil
WASHINGTON -- Britain split along three rift lines last week and it's hard to see where they might meet again. Perhaps only an Anglo-American attack on Iraq could unite the nation against such mind-boggling folly and terrifying, costly megalomania.
COMMENTARY
Sep 1, 2002
The need to lose individualit
LONDON -- One week British citizens were worrying over whether we were going to war against Iraq and I was phoning all the antiwar organizations to find out what preparations they were making; the next, Britain was plunged into a collective horror of abducted children, citizenship had been washed away...
COMMENTARY
Jul 7, 2002
Morality to match the times
LONDON -- What is it about the British and sex? Young people seem to leap to it as though having as much of it, as soon as possible, as flamboyantly and boastfully as possible and damn the consequences, is their national destiny.
COMMENTARY
Jun 9, 2002
Labour's dearth of dissent
LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair could be suffering from the first signs of the madness of princes. It is paranoia, and it afflicts almost every political man who has ambition but does not have the security of the divine right of kings (the madness of kings being grandiosity or megalomania.)...
COMMENTARY
May 2, 2002
'Third way' to stay in power
LONDON -- New Labour baffles just about everybody who comes across it. Is it "new" simply in the sense that a relaunched soap powder is new -- essentially the same plus a claim to have stronger power to wash away sins? Or is it really new, with just the Labour bit being misleading? And what on earth...
COMMENTARY
Apr 9, 2002
A conservative contradiction
LONDON -- The mission of the Conservative Party is to help the most vulnerable in society. To do this, it will not cut income tax but will make improving Britain's public services its main job.
COMMENTARY
Mar 10, 2002
Modern delusions of equality
LONDON -- Ask a total stranger about his or her sex life and, though he may be taken aback, he is likely to take it in stride. For what's so secret about sex? Ask a total stranger about his or her income, and she is likely to biff you for your impudence. Money is all secrets and lies.
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2002
'Doing your bit' isn't nearly enough
LONDON -- How to save the world: make sure your car tires are inflated properly. Eh?
COMMENTARY
Jan 4, 2002
Globalization's Faustian pact
LONDON -- The glories of globalization are taking on the specious glitter of a Faustian pact. We human beings have been promised that capitalism will never die; the threats of crashes, revolution and depression have been banished by vigorous free markets and judicious state interventions, all held in...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2001
Services decaying in Britain
LONDON -- You could take Britain's decaying public services -- despite four years of frantic New Labour ministrations -- as an advanced sign of the new world disorder, a sign of what will befall the homelands of global capitalism; or as a sign of what happens when a nation state signally fails to keep...
COMMENTARY
Nov 5, 2001
The threat of permanent war
LONDON -- It seemed possible, briefly, after Sept. 11, that the destroyers of the World Trade Center had crashed us into the perfect civil society. Strangers spoke kindly and with interest to each other. Trivia disappeared from the newspapers. Leaders of the opposition parties in Britain stood just behind...
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.

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