John Metzler

Over the past year human rights abuses in places ranging from Afghanistan to Ukraine, and to Myanmar/Burma, Xinjiang China, the Middle East, to name a few sordid cases, have splashed across the headlines.

In an extraordinary and fast paced series of events, the Islamic Republic of Iran was thrust back into the headlines.

The arc of history passed through the UN last week as the global Assembly debated and deliberated on the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Presidents, prime ministers, kings and potentates are converging on New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. The 78th annual Assembly of the world organization presents both a global gala and expanded Summit meeting to try to solve a myriad of crises facing the international community.

The tragic collapse of Kabul to the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban signaled the last sordid chapter in the Biden Administration’s appalling and shambolic “withdrawal” from America’s longest military commitment. But beyond the perceived American weakness and strategic myopia it glaringly manifest, the Afghan debacle incentivized what political scientists dub as “bad actors” such as Russia and Communist China.

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.