Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Prospecting for new trading partners, pressing for political influence in a vast region increasingly ignored by the United States, and possessed by a near unquenchable thirst for natural resources,the People’s Republic of China is forging closer ties with Latin America. The links goes well beyond […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The spate of brutal and systematic attacks on Christian communities in Syria, Iraq and Egypt by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant has surged. Yet despite this targeted violence, there’s a climate of international indifference by many governments and even some Christian communities in […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The vast swath of nine countries bordering the southern reaches of the Sahara desert are marked by poverty, drought and chronic instability. Yet these oft-forgotten lands are increasingly making the headlines as in the case of Mali a few years ago, when militant Muslim factions […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — In recent years there’s been a dearth of media coverage of Darfur’s humanitarian crisis. What had once been a focus for both diplomatic and high profile celebrity efforts to detail human rights abuses during more than a decade of inter-ethnic conflict in Sudan’s troubled western […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — There’s been a disturbing decline in global freedoms over the past year with a clear erosion of political rights for the ninth consecutive year. These are among the dire findings of the Freedom House report which rates rights and freedoms in 195 countries around the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — While America seems transfixed on a spate of six separate Middle East crises, there’s been far less attention paid on the brewing storm in Europe. Thus as politico/military efforts are focused on trying to sort out Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, Washington policymakers […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Proclaiming an end to the American economic recession and declaring that “the shadow of crisis is past,” President Barack Obama addressed a skeptical Republican-controlled Congress in the annual State of the Union Address. Yet the same speech offered a fuzzy view of key foreign policy […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — More than a million people along with forty-four world leaders rallied in Paris to proclaim liberty and call for press freedoms in the wake of the radical Islamist media massacre and subsequent terror attacks. The rallies were the biggest since the liberation of Paris from […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The appalling attack on the offices of a satirical magazine in Paris by Islamist militants which killed twelve, was a deliberately focused and targeted hit not only to stun and intimidate a free press but a free society as well. In recent months France has […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler Bennington, VT — It’s time once again to peer into the crystal snow-globe to try to decipher and predict what we may expect ahead in 2015. After a dangerously tumultuous past year, the dust has yet to settle on a score of crises ranging from the man made […]