Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk You have to credit the North Koreans with chutzpah ― the Yiddish word for “nerve,” brazen arrogance or insolence, all in untranslatable exclamation. The leaders of the world’s 20 strongest, most powerful nations were gathered in a solemn conclave in China, and in Pyongyang North Korea’s Supreme Leader did […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders It would be hard to exaggerate the mess in the Middle East that President Barack Obama is leaving his successor. While the five-year Syrian civil war continues unabated, pitting a number of different armed groups against each other with their foreign sponsors, Washington is caught in its own […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders President Enrique Peña Nieto’s invitation to the two U.S. candidates for president is one more instance of the growing role of Mexico in domestic American politics. There was a time, now long ago politically, when Mexican politicians preferred to ignore what they considered an embarrassment of the Mexican […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk Time slowly erases the traces of those held in North Korea. The longer they’re there, the easier it is to forget them. Their families, reluctant to invest more psychic energy on those for whom they know the North Koreans have no mercy, give up the quest. As individuals move […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The majestic Danube River connects Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. Just 40 miles downriver from Vienna, the historic city of Bratislava rises above the Danubian plain. Still the turrets of Bratislava castle on the hill are more picturesque than forbidding but are usually missed in a […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Jeffrey T. Kuhner Forget the establishment media, the rigged polls and the anti-Trump talking heads. The dirty secret of this election is that Donald Trump can win — and in a landslide. The reason is simple: America does not want a third Obama term. The only poll that truly matters is the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk U.S.-China relations are at their worst in years, and North and South Korean are not getting along either. In fact, relations between those two are at such a low ebb that two-way trade, once about several hundred million dollars a year, has almost ceased. Curiously, however, North Korean coal […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders In all the torturous puzzles of the current Mideast chaos, perhaps the greatest unknown is what the Obama Administration thinks it is accomplishing with its Iran policy. Again, in the past few days, we have had evidence that President Barack Obama is moving – this time secretly – […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler PARIS — A vital American ally has gone geopolitically adrift in the wake of Turkey’s failed military coup, and the subsequent crackdown on all forms of domestic political dissent by the strongman ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The bloody coup in which hundreds died, nonetheless served as a tragic […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk The prospect of a missile war between North and South Korea poses a threat to regional stability that previously seemed unimaginable. Images of North and South Korean gunners firing ballistic missiles at one another from redoubts far north and south of the demilitarized zone are edging closer to reality […]