As the United Nations implores countries to cease hostilities and wars to help fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is finding ways to use the COVID-19 pandemic to fight its wars. While Saudi Arabia promises to begin a...
The Quiet and Lethal Wars Against Iran
Some wars are fought with bombs and bullets. These are the wars in Syria and Iraq, in Afghanistan and Yemen. Then there are quieter wars executed by drone. These cowardly wars also kill people, but not our people. These quieter wars accomplish what the more...
Quieter and Quieter: The Evolution of Latin America’s Silent Coups
American interference with Latin American regimes began early and happened often. As early as the close of the nineteenth century, McKinley had betrayed and stolen Cuba. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt severed Panama from Columbia, declared it an independent nation and...
Lies, Missile Strikes and a Whole Lot of History
Recently, two stories have been in the news – though not enough in the news. They have been in the news because they are both stories of American missile strikes that importantly changed events and because they are both stories of missile strikes that were justified...
A Pattern of Passing Up Peace
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran was working. Iran was consistently in compliance, the US and Iran were talking and diplomacy was working. Then Trump turned his back on peace, shattered the diplomacy and resuscitated the...
The Assassination of Qassem Suleimani: Imminent Threat of Peace
On January 6, just days after the U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, requested that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres "establish an impartial...
Finally Got Him: The Bolivian Coup
The U.S. says it wasn’t a coup. Trump’s official statement "applauds" the Bolivian regime change for preserving democracy. Trump identifies the event as "a significant moment in democracy" because it stymied Bolivian President Evo Morales’ attempt...
The Cries of the Kurds
The way you frame a question can shape the answer you’ll get. On October 6, 2019, the US removed its troops from the Kurdish region of northeast Syria, clearing the way for the Turkish invasion of the region that followed three days later. Trump’s decision was born of...
Iran, Islam, and Banning the Bomb
Yesterday In 1982, Iraq changed the nature of their war on Iran. They began using chemical weapons. At first, it was only tear gas. But, within a year, Iraq was using mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and soman on, not only Iranian soldiers, but Iranian...
How Israel Could Prevent a War With Iran
The commonly offered logic behind America’s push for war against Iran is that it, at least in part, is pushed by Israeli desire for war with Iran. But that explanation defies the logic of the geopolitics of the Middle East. In the logic of the Middle East, Israel does...