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air strikes
Caribbean Catastrophes: The Hurricane We See and the War We Don't
A deadly force is brewing—and it's not caused by the climate.
Oct 31, 2025
A deadly force, intensifying as it goes, claiming lives and destabilizing nations. Hurricane Melissa’s assault on the Caribbean was devastating. So is President Donald Trump's extrajudicial bombing campaign.
When Melissa hit Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, we saw heartrending pictures of homes underwater, families wading through muck, and hospitals with their roofs blown off. The compassion we felt was real, the urgency high, and for a news cycle or two, the media made the world pay attention.
But not too far from Melissa’s flood zone, another kind of disaster has been unfolding in comparative media quiet. This one is caused not by climate, but by our autocratic president, who gave us two month’s warning.
On September 23, in a thuggish address to the United Nations, Donald Trump explicitly threatened to blow “Venezuelan terrorist drug smugglers” “out of existence” in blatant disregard of international law or due process. Sure enough, as of the end of October, US forces had conducted 15 air strikes on multiple vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Politicians, pundits, and the press still have time to get the American people activated enough to stop this country’s next catastrophic war.
The White House thumps on about stopping narcotics flow, but we’ve seen no interceptions, no arrests, no narcotics cargo—only executions.
Melissa took, by an early count, 32 lives. Trump’s warships and drones have officially killed at least 61 people. The survivors and victims include nationals from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad, mostly fishermen and boat crews whose families—and governments—dispute all allegations of narco trafficking. The Trump team doesn’t care. Nor does it care to consult Congress—as the War Powers Act requires—or offer proof.
Now, a massive military force is massed just to the south and east of Melissa’s path of destruction. The US deployment reportedly includes tens of thousands of troops, eight major warships, three amphibious assault ships, a guided-missile cruiser, several fighter jets, and a nuclear submarine. The US military has also reopened formerly inactive facilities in Puerto Rico to support these operations.
It’s the largest military buildup in the Caribbean since the invasion of Panama in 1989, and yet it’s generating less media attention than a gale-force storm.
It’s not too late. Politicians, pundits, and the press still have time to get the American people activated enough to stop this country’s next catastrophic war.
The resignation of the military commander overseeing the operation—Admiral Alvin Halsey—head of US Southern Command, should sound an alarm. Meanwhile, “Demolition Don” is making no bones about his plans. After it was revealed that he’d secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela, he bragged, “We are certainly looking at land now.”
What are we waiting for? The blatant buildup to this country’s next imperialist war is at least as terrifying as a hurricane—or it should be.
Catch my conversation this Friday, October 31 at 5:00 pm ET with US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash) and Marine Captain Janessa Goldbeck on the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, exclusively on Laura Flanders & Friends.
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Fears of 'Serious Escalation' Grow as Israel Bombs Lebanon and Gaza
Lebanon's caretaker prime minister said he "categorically rejects any military escalation" amid concerns that the fresh exchanges of rocket fire and airstrikes could spark an all-out war.
Apr 07, 2023
Fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East mounted Friday after Israel bombed Lebanon and the occupied Gaza Strip in the early hours of the morning, an assault that followed two consecutive nights of violent raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
The raids spurred global condemnation and retaliatory rocket fire from southern Lebanon and Gaza, prompting Israel's latest barrage of airstrikes.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the rocket fire with hawkish rhetoric, vowing to "extract a heavy price from our enemies," other Israeli officials and Lebanon's caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati cautioned against further violence.
"Nobody wants an escalation right now," an Israeli army spokesman told reporters. "Quiet will be answered with quiet, at this stage I think, at least in the coming hours."
Najib Mikati, Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, similarly said his government "categorically rejects any military escalation," adding that an investigation into the rocket attacks that originated in southern Lebanon was ongoing.
The Associated Press reported Friday that "no faction in Lebanon claimed responsibility for the salvo of rockets," the largest such attack since the deadly 2006 war between Israeli and Lebanon.
"A Lebanese security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said the country's security forces believed the rockets were launched by a Lebanon-based Palestinian militant group, not by Hezbollah," the outlet noted.
No injuries or deaths have been reported in the wake of the Israeli airstrikes, which damaged homes, buildings, and other infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza. One 19-year-old was lightly injured by shrapnel from the rocket fire into Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
\u201cThe Israeli military launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday, hours after rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Thursday, amid repeated Israeli assaults on worshippers in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque this week.\n\nThere were no immediate reports of casualties\u201d— Middle East Eye (@Middle East Eye) 1680825032
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement Friday that while Israeli and Lebanese officials have "both said they do not want a war," the "actions over the past day are dangerous and risk a serious escalation."
"We urge all parties to cease all actions across the Blue Line now," UNIFIL added.
Israeli forces' raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and attacks on Palestinian worshipers this week have been vocally denounced by governments and human rights organizations. In 2021, Israeli raids of Al-Aqsa and responses from the Gaza Strip led to a devastating 11-day assault on the besieged enclave.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Thursday that "these orchestrated attacks demonstrate just how far Israeli authorities will go to maintain their cruel system of apartheid."
"Shocking footage from the past two days shows Israeli security forces beating men, women, and children, and dragging them out of the mosque where they had gathered to spend the night in peaceful prayer and reflection," said Morayef. "Once again, Israeli security forces have shown the world what apartheid looks like."
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Escalating US Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq
May 01, 2016
USA Today revealed on April 19th that U.S. air forces have been operating under looser rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules.
U.S. officials previously claimed that air strikes in Iraq and Syria had killed as few as 26 civilians. A senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war told USA Today that was unrealistic, since air strikes that have destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians.
As the U.S. escalates its air strikes on Mosul, the largest city occupied by Islamic State, reports of hundreds of civilians killed by air strikes reveal some of the human costs of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.
Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist and Mosul native Souad Al-Azzawi (Ph.D. Colorado School of Mines) has compiled a partial list of air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure from reports by Mosul Eye, Nineveh Reporters Network, Al Maalomah News Network, other Iraqi media and contacts in Mosul:
- Many government buildings have been destroyed. As U.S. officials told USA Today, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings.
- Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed.
- Two large dairies were bombed, killing about 100 civilians and wounding 200 more.
- Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19th and 20th killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women's dormitory and a faculty apartment building.
- 50 civilians were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on 2 apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.
- A mother and 4 children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.
- 22 civilians were killed in air strikes on houses in front of Mosul Medical College.
- 20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops.
- U.S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul.
- The Central Bank of Mosul in Ghazi Street and several branches of Rafidain and Rasheed banks were bombed, with heavy civilian casualties, despite all cash reportedly being removed after the first bank was struck.
- Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the former Pepsi bottling plant.
- An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on April 18th.
- Bombs have damaged a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations in West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul.
- The Al Hurairah Bridge was destroyed by air strikes.
At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul and destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet by all accounts, this is only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul. One and one-half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the UN's estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before the November 2004 assault that killed 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly civilians. Meanwhile ISIL prevents civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.
International humanitarian law strictly prohibits military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure. The presence of several thousand ISIL militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate bombing or attacks on civilian targets. As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a Human Rights Report in 2007, "The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area." UNICEF protested the bombing of a water treatment plant in Syria last December as "a particularly alarming example" of how "the rules of war, including those meant to protect vital civilian infrastructure, continue to be broken on a daily basis."
The fundamental contradiction of the militarized "war on terror" has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world. Meanwhile U.S. wars and covert operations against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad create new zones of chaos where jihadis can thrive.
President Obama has acknowledged publicly that there is therefore "no military solution" to jihadism. But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military escalation at each new stage of this crisis, unleashing wars that have killed about two million people, plunged a dozen countries into chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries across the world.
If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and U.S. drone wars as a powerful catalyst for the next mutation of Wahhabi jihadism, which is likely to be more globalized and unified.
But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into ever-escalating cycles of violence, the jihadis cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians. Only our leaders can do that, making them morally and legally responsible for these crimes, just as Islamic State's leaders are responsible for theirs.
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