While protests in Hong Kong and the debacles in the UK Parliament under Boris Johnson have pushed Venezuela out of the media narrative, a recent troop detachment indicates Caracas may be back in the crosshairs. For example, I suspect most Americans have heard of the Monroe Doctrine. But I equally suspect that very few Americans…
The summer/autumn of 1989 was a period of great change in Europe, leading to the end of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But have all the changes been positive – for the east and west? Someone wrote recently that there needs to be more focus on post-war West Germany and its many…
It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would…
The Empire has suffered painful defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one has to admit that these are “tough” countries to crack. The Empire also appears to have lost control of Libya, but that is another complex country which is very hard to control. We also saw all the pathetic huffing and puffing with the…
Juan Guaido and his supporters in Venezuela, among them elements of the Venezuelan military, have rolled the dice – a Stars and Stripes dice – in a desperate bid to overturn not Nicolas Maduro but democracy in Caracas. As we have come to expect, the usual suspects in the form of the clutch of US…
Eight years after the start of the US-led military intervention to overthrow Moammar Gaddafi and promote “stability,” Libya is still wracked by civil war. Ironically, the violence over the next few days has forced the US to evacuate its remaining forces—there for diplomatic security and counterterrorism—from the volatile country. Ever since the collapse of the old…
