Failure in Iran and the Potemkin option
Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas, Iran. Photo by Ali Khodabakhsh. In his February 28, 2026 announcement of the likely illegal US-Israeli war against Iran, Donald Trump outlined four strategic…
John Duncan
COVID-19: a perfect storm?
Image by Leon Cheung/Blendswap As we approach a third pandemic spring in Canada we are surfing down the tail of a fifth COVID-19 wave. The spring weather promises open windows…
Our disastrous war in Afghanistan
Outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, 2010. Photo from Flickr. In two hours during the morning of September 11, 2001, 2,981 people were murdered when 19 hijackers crashed four airliners into the…
Facing our plague: COVID-19 and Albert Camus
A woman sits alone at a bus stop in New York City. Photo by Nickolay Romensky. In 1947, Albert Camus published The Plague—La Peste in the original French—a novel about…
Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ Iran strategy in historical perspective
Anti-American propaganda artwork on a wall just outside of the former American embassy in Tehran. In January, the Doomsday Clock—a symbol of how close we are to “destroying our world”…