World News Insights: Opinion Articles

When I was operations officer on an Aegis guided-missile destroyer in the late 1980s, we were given a mission in the Arabian Gulf. The Iranians, amid the so-called Tanker War with Iraq, were trying to close off the vital Strait of Hormuz. The rest of the world needed to keep oil flowing, and…

Once, when I thought of child sacrifice, I thought of ancient shibboleths. In Aeschylus, Agamemnon lures his daughter Iphigenia to a spot she thinks is for her wedding, as the chorus urges: “Hoist her over the altar like a yearling, give it all your strength … gag her hard.” Agamemnon agonized…

When Covid-19 cases were exploding across the United States in early 2020, public health officials remained in the dark, in large part because of major errors in developing a test for the illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the manufacturer of the only Covid-19 test then…

I was not surprised to see that Russian thinker Alexander Dugin has drawn more searches than any other. I have no doubt that many of those looking him up are not interested in philosophy, his primary field of interest; rather, they looked him up because of claims that he is “Putin’s Rasputin,” his…

The war in Ukraine may have dominated international political agenda, but Syria file is also very much active.  Most recently,  President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement on May 23, when he said that Turkey is on its way to carry out a new military operation in northern Syria, made headlines…

The world was too preoccupied with the Russian war on Ukraine to pay attention to the news of her release from Tokyo prison on Saturday. She completed her 20-year prison sentence. She was quick to apologize for the pain she had caused to the hostages held by her comrades. She also was quick to wrap…

Stocks have fallen to near-bear market territory. Bonds have suffered big price declines. Foreign currencies have nosedived against the US dollar. Cryptocurrencies, SPACs and other speculations have collapsed. But commodities have been on a tear. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index has surged 33%…

President Joseph Biden couldn’t have beaten Donald Trump in 2020 without the support of Big Tech and Black voters. Donations from Silicon Valley employees and political action committees gave the former vice president a critical cash advantage in the final scramble to election day, while Black…

Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is now 83 years old and one could see the signs of old age in his face and movements. There are recurrent news and rumors about his chronic conditions and bad health but this has never been based on any evidence nor has it been…

Despite all the Iranian propaganda about the power of the “Quds Force” and its expansion in the region, the Revolutionary Guard’s branch is now being chased down by Israel and its members are being assassinated inside Tehran. In football lingo, this means that Israel is now playing with Iran the…

What is going on between Iran and Israel has no other name than war. The war continues with or without Qassem Soleimani and whether there is a Likud government or anti-Likud government in power. This war is mostly being fought on and above Syrian territory. However, some of it is being fought…

China's economy is more than a weak spot in a faltering global expansion. Growth this year, assuming there is any, will likely fall well short of Beijing's own projections. The country may even turn in a worse performance than the US for the first time in more than a generation. These are momentous…