“You can refuse illegal orders … you MUST refuse illegal orders.” That’s the message from a recent video featuring six Democratic members of Congress, all former members of the US armed forces and/or intelligence services, and directed at current members of those organizations.
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will,” Union general William Tecumseh Sherman wrote in an 1864 letter warning the citizens of Atlanta — which his advancing army had just occupied — to evacuate. “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Over the last...
On September 2, the US government claimed that military operators acting on its behalf murdered 11 foreign nationals aboard a boat in international waters off the coast of Venezuela. I say “claimed” because Venezuelan communications minister Freddy Ñáñez suggests that...
On August 15, US president Donald Trump met with Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin in Alaska. On August 18, Trump met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a collection of European politicians in Washington. The goal of both meetings: Bringing an...
On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we’re in the “boasting about how splendid it all is” phase of Trump’s cyclical foreign policy approach. Phase One: Pretend to be “anti-war” and...
As I write this, US president Donald Trump seems deep in his usual dither. Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, “told senior aides late Tuesday [June 17] that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear...
On June 12, Axios reported, the US regime refused to support Israeli strikes on Iran… but US president Donald Trump said such strikes “might very well happen” even though he wouldn’t want Israel to “blow it” (“it” being a new nuclear deal to replace the one Trump...
“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia,” US president Donald Trump said on February 13. “And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.” Trump...
Bakhmut, 2023. State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. More than 40 years after its release, an exchange in the opening scene of Warren Beatty’s Academy Award-winning film Reds floats to the front of my mind...
On March 25, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2728 , regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, by a vote of 14-0. The United States abstained rather than – as it usually does when the Israeli regime dislikes a resolution – using its “permanent member”...
