Saudi Arabia’s heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), sent an interesting signal last week: in a startling – but not unprecedented – action, MBS arrested 18 rich, powerful Saudis. Of course, this kind of activity isn’t unprecedented, kings and other absolute or near absolute rulers have been purging their courts for […]

Begin with two assumptions: 1) American society today is more liberal today than it was 75 years ago, and 2) that shift, which in some sense paralleled LBJ’s Great Society, stems from a deliberate effort to change society – ostensibly better. So, has society changed for the better? The thought occurred to me as I […]

(The lead ship of the Zumwalt class Guided missile destroyers, a death star that is light on the death part of the equation). Our pal Arrias stirred up some controversy in his essay “Lattes for Peace” over the weekend. The retired Naval community can actually say what they think, rather than cower at the feet […]

Last week, the acting Under Secretary of the Navy suggested the nation’s fleet wouldn’t reach its target of 355 ships until after 2050, more than 30 years from now. Since our ships (except aircraft carriers) are designed to last about 35 years, that means, with the exception of just three aircraft carriers, all those ships […]

Do you enjoy a hot cup of coffee at dawn? So, how’d that Sumatran coffee get to your grocer? How did the farmer arrange for the beans to be picked up and moved to a warehouse? Who made those big bags he used? Where did they come from? Who figured out how to recognize blight […]

Editor’s Note: Barcelona- pronounced with a lisp- “Barth-alona”- is a delightful city with a vibrant street life, marvelous cafes, tasty tapas nd bold red wines. It is also the epicenter of a popular revolt against the nation-state in which it resides. This morning, Arrias examines what the implications might be for a united Europe. -Vic […]

A famous world leader once said: “The facts as they are to-day cannot change the facts as they were last September. If I was right then, I am still right now.” Conversations are almost certainly now taking place in South Korea, Japan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran that would have been considered impossible […]

“Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth” – Archimedes, Greek mathematician and physicist, on realizing the science behind the lever and fulcrum. The President lambasted North Korea in the UN. Finally, someone stood up in that assembly and said what needed to be said. In response, Kim Jong Un, North […]

It’s said that real love only comes with sacrifice, that real love requires placing some cause or some one first, and truly giving of yourself for that person or cause. Several stories have “percolated out” following the two recent US Navy collisions at sea which include a number of sailors who gave their lives for […]

An East Asian country: threatening its neighbors while making snide and outrageous comments about the US and our allies, building an ever larger nuclear force, ruled by a man who sees no limits to his powers and who has, in the last several months, replaced all his senior military leadership to insure loyalty to him. […]