John Metzler

Most countries politely prefer to look the other way when it comes to confronting widespread reports of North Korean human rights violations. After all what can you do about what goes on in one of the world’s most closed and repressive communist regimes [headed by the dynasty of Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-Un]?

The recent military coup d’etat in Niger, a vast and arid land on the southern tier of the Sahara, underscores the widening political crisis in Africa’s Sahel region, where instability, dire poverty and Islamic jihadi terrorism, have stalked the land.

The one-year countdown for the opening of the Paris Summer Olympics has begun.

The Russians are acting more and more like Soviets. Their brutal war in Ukraine underscores the point that Moscow’s military ambitions have counter-humanitarian consequences.

North Korea’s unannounced launch of another ballistic missile has nearly become a ho-hum event given the rash but predictable actions of Pyongyang’s rulers. After all we have seen this bellicose stunt many times before and thus have become dangerously numb and nearly indifferent to its ultimate threat and consequence.

The United States has long had a tumultuous relationship with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization.

As chaos and conflict seem to be the tragic trend in many parts of the world, a sad parallel follows: Large numbers of people are fleeing and being displaced by the violence.

It’s hardly a surprise, but an affirmation of the obvious. Burma’s military regime is being backed, supported and protected by both Russia and China.

Another earthquake has jolted Turkey. But contrary to the seismic calamity which devastated large parts of eastern Turkey in February killing more than 50,000 people this was an electoral jolt whose political shockwaves and aftershocks continue to rattle the entire country from Istanbul, through the Anatolian plain to far off Mt. Ararat on the Armenian frontier.

There’s a significant sea change affecting Japanese defense policy. Some would say it’s the result of a political tsunami. Others would argue it’s a long overdue wake up call.

It’s all about the timing. Ana Belen Montes, an American who served a more than twenty years in federal prison for spying for the then-Castro regime while serving as a senior analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, has been released. But this case is hardly the ho-hum end to another Cold War espionage story.

Our world remains an increasingly tumultuous place and the tragedy of expanding conflicts is only surpassed by the waves of refugees fleeing those troubles.

In a hugely symbolic but stinging rebuke, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been expelled from the UN’s Commission on Women’s Rights. The vote in the 54-member Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) came amid growing global outrage at the Iranian regime’s brutal and bloody crackdown on widening demonstrations across the country in protest to the theocratic regime’s restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms.

A powerful wind from the East is blowing across the Arabian desert. During a significant but overlooked three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, China’s leader Xi Jinping has scored a “strategic partnership” with oil rich and strategic Saudi Arabia.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, the Biden Administration announced it was quietly reversing policy and allowing limited petroleum imports from Venezuela.