Cuban fiasco: Obama throws a lifeline to an imploding, tyrannical, bankrupt regime

Cuban fiasco: Obama throws a lifeline to an imploding, tyrannical, bankrupt regime

Sol W. Sanders In that simplistic jargon characterizing President Barack Hussein Obama’s worldwide “transformation” of U.S. foreign policy, the chief argument for his Cuban shift has been “[T]hese 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked.” In the facts of history, in this as in so many other instances, Obama is wrong. The fact […]

Pushing the envelope on foreign policy and putting the squeeze on Israel

Pushing the envelope on foreign policy and putting the squeeze on Israel

Sol W. Sanders One of the many anomalies of President Barack Hussein Obama’s collapsing foreign policy is Washington’s growing rift with Israel, despite the two countries’ historically intimate ties at every level. Obama’s fundamental antagonism toward Israel was always apparent: during the 2008 campaign he announced one of his “transformations” would be putting “light between […]

Superwasp: The life and times of Jean-Paul Getty’s man in the Far East

Superwasp: The life and times of Jean-Paul Getty’s man in the Far East

By  Sol W. Sanders “Authorities investigating the death of Andrew Getty, an heir to the Getty oil fortune, are trying to determine whether foul play was involved.” (Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2015).  Jean-Paul Getty’s Tokyo representative and Andrew Getty’ cousin, Jean Paul Getty III (infamous for a celebrated kidnapping a generation earlier) are featured […]

Daydream believers: Tapped out world economy now rushes to bail out China

Daydream believers: Tapped out world economy now rushes to bail out China

Sol W. Sanders A most peculiar crisis is developing for the Chinese economy – and, indeed, for the regime – while the world’s attention is riveted on the chaos and terror in the Mideast and Russian aggression in Ukraine. Not the smallest element is the clever manipulation by Beijing’s strategists of the world’s hopes for continued […]

A list of basic unanswered questions about Iran

A list of basic unanswered questions about Iran

Sol W. Sanders Why is one of the world’s poorest countries [40 percent living in poverty, halfway down on list of countries in per capita GDP] building capital-intensive nuclear power facilities? Iran has the third largest oil and the second largest gas reserves in the world [without recourse to new shale gas potential]. 2006 oil […]

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and David Marshall: anti-hero and hero

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and David Marshall: anti-hero and hero

Sol W. Sanders Following is an excerpt from People! Vignettes gathered along the way through a long life, by Sol Sanders, to be published later this spring by Lulu.com. Former Mentor Minister Lee Kwan Yew, 91, died March 23, 2015 in Singapore. “You should get your equipment together before you come to an appointment with […]

Egypt’s bet: Reform Islam, boost economy, ignore Obama

Egypt’s bet: Reform Islam, boost economy, ignore Obama

Sol W. Sanders Any hope for an exit from the current Middle East chaos lies with the efforts of Gen. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to stabilize its politics and rebuild the Egyptian economy. With its 90 million people and traditional role as the intellectual leader of the Sunni Arab world, Sisi’s efforts to move out […]

Needed by today’s media: The basics, please; But also ‘decorum’ and, dare I say, ‘style’

Needed by today’s media: The basics, please; But also ‘decorum’ and, dare I say, ‘style’

Sol W. Sanders   Among the many complaints I have against most of my colleagues in the mainstream media [MSM] these days is the anachronistic contradiction that they are largely ahistorical. An anachronism since there has never been a time when with the benefits of the digital revolution more information is available – including archives. […]

In East Asia, Japan is on the move … away from ‘rising China’

In East Asia, Japan is on the move … away from ‘rising China’

Sol W. Sanders   Rather suddenly there is a welter of developments turning Asia’s dozen-odd countries into a cat’s cradle of conflicting interests — some new — that could lead to war. Central, of course, is “a rising” China. The Chinese, themselves, have given up the phrase “a peaceful rising”. That was a promise that […]

GREATEST HITS 2013: While Obamcare stuns the U.S., ‘leading from behind’ unravels world peace

GREATEST HITS 2013: While Obamcare stuns the U.S., ‘leading from behind’ unravels world peace

Sol W. Sanders   Originally published Oct. 28, 2013 The U.S. is transfixed by the Obama administration’s massively bungled attempt to nationalize one sixth of the economy, the health welfare system. But the rest of the world watches the slow motion unfolding of another debacle: the loss of post-World War II American leadership of the […]