Grace Jaramillo, PhD

My comment for @The_Dialogue #LatAmAdvisor about the #Ecuador #US joint operations, prospects and consequences. tinyurl.com/89vxjdd6

If the #US Congress does not immediately vote a resolution against any use of nuclear weapons in Iran, they will also be responsible if anything happens.

Noted.

We can see PM @Keir_Starmer priorities

Vance's speech in Budapest is truly outrageous: 1. The US vice president campaigns for an enemy of the EU & NATO, but a friend of Putin & China. 2. Vance attacks the EU for pressuring Hungary, but Hungary has received net about 3% of GDP a year from the EU, but it has squandered much on corruption. 3. In effect, Vance argues that the EU should promote corruption just as the Trump administration does. Trump and Vance fight freedom and the rule of law in favor of autocracy, kleptocracy and Russia. US foreign policy has hit the bottom.

Don’t just write a Substack. You are a senator! Organize a vote in a Congress against the commission of war crimes. Even if it fails, it creates a precedent.

Trump has implicitly threatened to break the nuclear taboo — the deeply-ingrained, extremely robust social injunction against the use of nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo withstood decades of dangerous U.S.-Soviet superpower competition — and helped us avoid global disaster. The U.S. lost Vietnam rather than break it (and rightly so). The nuclear taboo has helped to protect the world from humankind’s worst excesses. *Every single U.S. government leader* — and every world leader, especially U.S. allies — has the responsibility to ensure that the nuclear taboo constrains Trump by rejecting civilizational threats against any country. Rhetoric like this must be condemned. We simply cannot allow such threats to be normalized. @NinaTannenwald @defpriorities

No words 🤦🏻‍♀️

Where is the moral high ground?

And then, Labour asks why people vote the greens 🤦🏻‍♀️

I've taught European history for 30 years. Americans have always asked me how the Holocaust was possible, how Germans could have enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans. Now we can see in real time how this is enabled; now we have front-row seats.

Beyond the pale…

He hablado con el presidente de Egipto, @AlsisiOfficial, con el rey de Jordania, @KingAbdullahII, y con el Emir de Qatar, @TamimBinHamad. Todos deseamos un Oriente Medio próspero y en paz. Una escalada del conflicto supondrá un devastador retroceso global. España exige el fin inmediato de esta guerra.

After five weeks of war in the Middle East, it is clear that only a diplomatic solution will settle its root causes. Any targeting of civilian infrastructure, namely energy facilities, is illegal and unacceptable. This applies to Russia’s war in Ukraine and it applies everywhere. The Iranian civilian population is the main victim of the Iranian regime. It would also be the main victim of a widening of the military campaign. As I stressed in my recent call with the President of Iran, @DrPezeshkian, the European Union urges Iran to immediately put an end to its attacks against countries in the region and to allow for the reestablishment of full freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Escalation will not achieve a ceasefire and peace. Only negotiations will, namely the ongoing efforts led by regional partners.

Finally the Secretary General warns

In Gaza, MSF continues to treat an alarming number of patients with severe facial burns in our clinic in Gaza City. Among the most vulnerable are children, who make up 85 per cent of our current cohort of 88 active patients in the Gaza City clinic.   To prevent permanent disfigurement and disability, patients require specialised pressure therapy masks. Since 2020, MSF has been the only provider of 3D-printed physiotherapy masks in Gaza.   These masks apply consistent pressure to healing burns, preventing hypertrophic scarring and contractures that can impair breathing, movement, and facial function.   But since the Israeli authorities revoked the registration of MSF to work in Palestine, along with 37 other NGOs, on 3 December, 2025, we've been unable to get new supplies into Gaza. We are running out of filament, the essential material needed to create each customised mask.   At the same time, only two functioning 3D scanners remain in the entire Strip. Spare parts for printers are also blocked. We urge all relevant authorities to take immediate action to allow the delivery of essential medical supplies, equipment and spare parts into Gaza.

The @ICRC the only international organization insisting on respecting human rights and laws of warfare

If the European Union cannot hold the door, imagine the rest of developing nations

Bloomberg acknowledges that the US war on Iran is backfiring, undermining the petrodollar system that gives the US empire so much power. Gulf regimes are exporting significantly less oil, and they're not reinvesting those petrodollars in US assets. Meanwhile, many foreign central banks have been selling US Treasury securities (US government debt) to prevent their currencies from depreciating, leading to US bond yields rising markedly -- not falling, as they typically did in past crises, when investors engaged in a "flight to safety". The US financial sector is losing its perception of having "safe haven" status. This means that both key aspects of the petrodollar system are breaking: there are fewer oil exports in dollars (Iran wants oil to be traded in Chinese yuan), and there are fewer petrodollars recycled into US financial assets.

Bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime, and the time to speak out against it is right now.