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In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

Critical appraisals of foreign affairs and politics from a global-citizen perspective

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20Sep 202620 Sep 2026
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Post #527: The Crimes of the Trump Regime

(Note to the Reader: This is the fifth iteration of a blog originally posted after the first two weeks of…

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17Sep 202617 Sep 2026
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APB: The US Denies Visas to Palestinian UN Delegation

For a second consecutive year, the US State Department has denied visas to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and…

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16Sep 2026
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Post #526: Is Xi Coming, and Will AI and Human Rights be on the Agenda?

Xi Jinping has indicated that if the US approves a second major arms shipment to Taiwan, it would cross a…

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American Politics and the World…

Post #123: Donald Trump—A “Unique and Present Danger”

23 Jul 201627 Feb 2017
“There can be no prosperity without law and order.”  If you saw Donald Trump delivering those words—he repeated “law and order” three more times—you had every reason to think you…
BLOG…

Post #122: China’s Bad Day in Court

13 Jul 201627 Feb 2017
As had been widely expected, the Permanent Court of Arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled on July 12 in favor of the Philippines’…
BLOG…

Post #121: Unintended Consequences and the Warfare State

7 Jul 201627 Feb 2017
“The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences.”  So wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W. Bush in 2002, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/06/full-text-annotated-tony-blairs-2002-iraq-memo-to-george-bush). …
BLOG…

Post #120: Is Brexit the End of the World?

27 Jun 201627 Feb 2017
To judge from a New York Times front-page article that appeared two days after the British vote to withdraw from the EU, the entire post-World War II global financial and…
BLOG…

Post #119 – Too Close for Comfort: The Dangerous US-China Maritime Dispute

11 Jun 201627 Feb 2017
The Background              Two recent close encounters between US spy planes and Chinese jets spell trouble for relations between Washington and Beijing.  The first occurred over the South China Sea…
American Politics and the World…

Post #118: Cowgirl Diplomacy? Foreign Policy Under Hillary Clinton

24 May 201627 Feb 2017
America’s mainstream media, ever attracted to the splashy rather than the serious, has a new topic to occupy the time until Election Day: President Trump.  What will he do first? …
BLOG…

Post #117: Evaluating Obama’s Foreign Policy Record

15 May 201627 Feb 2017
So you’re not excited by Donald Trump’s announcement of his first foreign-policy acts as president: building the Mexico Wall, the No-Muslims Wall, the End-of-NATO Wall, and the China Trade Wall. …
BLOG…

Post #116: Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea (Part 2)

3 May 201627 Feb 2017
(This is the second of two posts; the first appeared as #115. The two together have also been published in the Asia-Pacific Journal, http://apjjf.org/2016/09/Gurtov.html.) Part 2: North Korea’s New Weapons:…
BLOG…

Post #115: Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea

23 Apr 201627 Feb 2017
Part 1: Sanctions—A Failed Strategy (Note: This is the first of a two-part commentary on North Korea.  The second part will discuss the North’s latest weapons programs, which have evidently…
BLOG…

Post #114: The Panama Papers and the 1%

15 Apr 201627 Feb 2017
One of the many tools at the disposal of multinational corporations (MNCs) for maximizing profits and undermining state sovereignty is moving operations to low-tax countries.  Global companies do not simply…
American Politics and the World…

Post #113: Nuclear Insecurity

5 Apr 201627 Feb 2017
The fourth Nuclear Security Summit, hosted by President Obama, has just ended.  The focus was on terrorism, a perfectly reasonable topic.  But the larger question, not taken up by the…
American Politics and the World…

Post #112—The Republicans: Cowardice in High Places

27 Mar 201627 Feb 2017
Jeb Bush endorses Ted Cruz.  So do Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney. Chris Christie endorses—in fact, practically fawns all over—Donald Trump. Ben Carson suddenly thinks Trump would make a great…

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  • Post #527: The Crimes of the Trump Regime
  • APB: The US Denies Visas to Palestinian UN Delegation
  • Post #526: Is Xi Coming, and Will AI and Human Rights be on the Agenda?
  • Post #525: Losing Hand in the Iran War
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Listen to my "Global Citizen" commentaries every Tuesday, 5:25 pm, on KBOO.fm (Portland area) and Wednesdays on KXCR.net (Florence, OR area). The Global Citizen International Digest of the week's news is on KBOO Thursdays at 5:30 pm and is also on SUBSTACK, free, via https://melgurtov.substack.com

  • A philanthropist makes a grand pledge for conservation
  • Making China a U.S. enemy is counterproductive
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  • Canada’s PM Sets an Independent Course
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