About

One impetus for starting this blog was reading two books, Overthrow, America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006), and Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future (2010), both by Stephen Kinzer, for 20 years a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, now a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

They propelled me into what turned out to be an 18-month odyssey of my own reading, research and writing, culminating in A Century of U.S. Meddling in the Middle East, 25 posts in the dropdown menu. I invite you to read them, one at a time, starting at the top, most can be read over breakfast in less than 10 minutes.

At some point I may return to this project and take on Saudi Arabia, the Iran nuclear deal, Turkey, Lebanon, Libya and once again the never ending Israeli – Palestinian tragedy. But for now my focus will be on the state of American democracy, U.S. foreign policy, especially vis a vis China, and anthropogenic global warming. We live in perilous times, democracy is under attack, rationality and compassion are in short supply, and our planet, our home for 200,000 years, is burning up. We must resist, we must work for a better world. MacLeod Post is my voice in that struggle.

Jon Walker MacLeod

September 1, 2020