John Metzler

FPI / February 6, 2020 By John J. Metzler NEW YORK — In a stunningly positive speech before Congress, President Donald Trump delivered the annual State of the Union address to a deeply divided nation. While the president outlined a long upbeat list of economic achievements and trade deals, amounting to what was called a […]

FPI / January 30, 2020 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Amid deepening political and economic ties between Burma and China, the Southeast Asian state is being fully integrated into Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, emerging as a transportation hub and military asset. Yet at the same time, while Beijing’s leader Xi Jinping made […]

FPI / January 15, 2020 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — An eagerly anticipated UN Security Council meeting came in the nervous aftermath of America’s targeted killing of Iranian terrorist kingpin Qasem Soleimani by an armed U.S. drone. The rhetorical crescendo was building all week following Soleimani’s funeral cortege which wove its way across […]

FPI / January 6, 2020 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — A lethal lightning bolt pierced the Baghdad sky, as an American drone strike killed the terrorist Qasem Soleimani in an instant. The feared general of Iran’s infamous Revolutionary Guards external operations Quds force, was vaporized by the U.S. in retaliation for the aborted […]

FPI / By John J. Metzler NEW YORK — Peering into the crystal snow globe, it’s time to predict, prognosticate and presage into the year ahead. Without a pun we need the proverbial 2020 vision to decipher the political and security landscape that awaits us in the new year with both long running static conflicts […]

FPI / December 15, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — While dictator Kim Jung-Un is huffing and puffing about arbitrary deadlines to diplomatic negotiations between the United States and North Korea concerning Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, the UN Security Council met to deliver a unified call for peace and disarmament on […]

FPI / December 8, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump put Afghanistan back in the news again after his surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops stationed in the embattled South Asian country. Besides bringing holiday cheer for American forces serving in the eighteen-year long conflict, the President again offered a […]

FPI / November 24, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The stunning silence of the mainstream media which often overlooks ongoing anti-religious violence has become a sad barometer of our secular societies. Clearly, while most of the attacks are “somewhere else” be it the Middle East, Africa or South Asia, the media template […]

FPI / November 24, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Though out of the limelight for nearly a year, North Korea’s quiet and covert push for intercontinental ballistic missile capability along with the communist regime’s continuing political crackdown on its own population has not abated. While tough American diplomacy has pressured Kim Jong-Un’s […]

FPI / November 11, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Thirty years ago on Nov. 9 1989, the world suddenly changed. Mass civil and religious demonstrations rocking East German cities created a political tsunami which soon reached Berlin. Berlin, the divided city and German capital at the epicenter of the Cold War, would […]

FPI / November 1, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — From Hong Kong to Barcelona, and from Beirut to Bolivia and Chile, a global rage seems to be boiling over. It ranges from Hong’s Kong’s pro-democracy pushback to Beijing’s dour diktats, to Spain’s Catalonia region’s revived separatism against the central government, to Beirut’s […]

FPI / November 1, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — In a stunningly gloomy presentation, UN human rights experts reviewed the situation in Myanmar/aka Burma, the Southeast Asian country where the government continues to persecute, harass and eliminate members of minority religious groups, especially the Muslim Rohingya. An already bad human rights situation […]

FPI / October 17, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — You can’t make this up. Venezuela, a state marred by widespread human rights abuses, one whose government has created humanitarian violations and then callously blocked international humanitarian aid, has won a contested seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council in a three-way race […]

FPI / October 17, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Is the United Nations going broke? Well yes and no. The 193-member multinational organization is facing a serious cash crunch which has hampered the day to day operations of the world body but nonetheless may be resolved relatively soon when the United States, […]

FPI / October 9, 2019 By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Sustained and increasing attacks on Christian minorities from the Middle East to West Africa are often tragically overlooked by the mainstream media, underscoring an aura of hypocrisy and double standards towards the free practice of religion. Yet, some are pushing back to this […]