Dan Kovalik

Dan Kovalik   (author, activist, academic)
Born	1968
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Columbia University School of Law
Spouse	Christine Haas
Interests	• Colombia • Venezuela • Iran • Cancel Culture
US dissident and foreign policy critic

Daniel Kovalik is an American author and strong critic of US foreign policy.

Education

Kovalik graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1993.

Work

Kovalik was in-house counsel for the United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO (USW) until 2019. While with the USW, he worked on Alien Tort Claims Act cases against The Coca-Cola Company, Drummond and Occidental Petroleum – cases arising out of extensive human rights abuses in Colombia.

Kovalik was the recipient of the Project Censored Award for his article exposing the unprecedented killing of trade unionists in Colombia. He has written extensively on the issue of international human rights and U.S. foreign policy and has lectured throughout the world on these subjects.

“I make $3,000 for my 3-credit course, sometimes teaching over 50 students in my class at one time. In turn, these students pay between $36,000 and $46,000 in tuition a year, depending on their state residency. Averaging this out to $40,000 a year on tuition, and assuming students take around 30 credits a year, I figure out that for my class of 50, the school brings in a total of $100,000 and gives me $3,000 of that. In other words, while I make a very meager pay, and absolutely no benefits, the Law School is making a hefty profit - a profit that is sucked up by the growing class of administrators and by the few tenured faculty left. Pretty nice for an allegedly nonprofit institution.”
Dan Kovalik (2021) 

Books

Dan Kovalik is the author of several books:

Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture (2021)

The public shaming of individuals for actual or perceived offenses, often against emerging notions of proper racial and gender norms and relations, has become commonplace. In a number of cases, the shaming is accompanied by calls for the offending individuals to lose their jobs, positions, or other status. Frequently, those targeted for “cancellation” simply do not know the latest, ever-changing norms (often related to language) that they are accused of transgressing—or they have honest questions about issues that have been deemed off-limits for debate and discussion.

The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US Is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil (2019)

Since 1999 when Hugo Chavez became the elected president of Venezuela, the US has been conniving to overthrow his government and to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution which he ushered in to Venezuela. With the untimely death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, and the election of Nicolas Maduro that followed, the US redoubled its efforts to overturn this revolution. The US is now threatening to intervene militarily to bring about the regime change it has wanted for twenty years.

While we have been told that the US’s efforts to overthrow Chavez and Maduro are motivated by altruistic goals of advancing the interests of democracy and human rights in Venezuela, is this true? The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela answers this question with a resounding “no,” demonstrating that:

• The US’s interests in Venezuela have always centered upon one and only one thing: Venezuela’s vast oil reserves;
• The US has happily supported one repressive regime after another in Venezuela to protect its oil interests;
• Chavez and Maduro are not the “tyrants” we have been led to believe they are, but in fact have done much to advance the interests of democracy and economic equality in Venezuela;
• What the US and the Venezuelan opposition resent most is the fact that Chavez and Maduro have governed in the interest of Venezuela’s vast numbers of poor and oppressed racial groups;
• While the US claims that it is has the humanitarian interests of the Venezuelan people at heart, the fact is that the US has been waging a one-sided economic war against Venezuela which has greatly undermined the health and living conditions of Venezuelans;
• The opposition forces the US is attempting to put into power represent Venezuela’s oligarchy who want to place Venezuela’s oil revenues back in the hands of Venezuela’s economic elite as well as US oil companies.

The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World (2018)

While the US holds itself out as a beacon of democracy and freedom in the world, the US’s actions stray quite far from this pretense. From Vietnam in the 1950s, when the US blocked elections which would have allowed the Vietnamese people to vote for a unified country and for their own president, to the overthrow of democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala and the consequent installation of brutal regimes which killed tens of thousands, the US has undermined democracies in ways which make the alleged Russian “meddling” (the sum total of which involve claims of social media posts and computer hacking) look like mere child’s play.

The Plot to Control the World details these instances of US interference and other instances of meddling in other countries’ democratic processes, such as in Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela, Greece, the Congo, Honduras, and even in Russia in the very recent past.

The Plot to Attack Iran: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Iran (2018)

The world has a lot of questions about the current state of affairs between the United States and Iran…

• How has the US undermined democracy in Iran?
• Is Iran really trying to develop nuclear weapons?
• How has US waged a terror campaign against Iran for years?
• How is it that the US and Israel, rather than Iran, are destabilizing the Middle East?
• How has Iran helped the US in the war on terror?

In The Plot to Attack Iran, Kovalik exposes what Americans have known about the Islamic Republic is largely based on propaganda. The 1953 coup that deposed the democratically-elected prime minister for a US-selected shah? Sold to average American citizens as a necessity to protect democracy and guard against communism. In truth, it was America’s lust for Iranian oil and power that installed the tyrannical shah. The Iranian hostage crisis that miraculously ended with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president? Evidence shows that Reagan negotiated with the hostage-takers to hold the hostages until his inauguration.

Over the past century, Iran’s greatest resource, and at the same time its greatest curse, has been its oil. For it is oil that has caused the United States and other world powers to systematically attempt to destroy Iran. After a greedy Iranian monarch sold all of Iran’s oil and natural gas reserves to a British financier in 1901, the West started just one of its many invasions and exploitations of the country.

No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests (2020)

War is the fount of all the worst human rights violations―including genocide―and not its cure. This undeniable truth, which the framers of the UN Charter understood so well, is lost in today’s obsession with the oxymoron known as “humanitarian" intervention.

The books sets out to reclaim the original intent of the Charter founders to end the scourge of war on the heels of the devastation wrought by WWII. The book begins with a short history of the West’s development as built upon the mass plunder of the Global South, genocide and slavery, and challenges the prevailing notion that the West is uniquely poised to enforce human rights through force.

This book also goes through recent “humanitarian" interventions carried out by the Western powers against poorer nations.

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin (2017)

An in-depth look at the decades-long effort to escalate hostilities with Russia and what it portends for the future. Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent.

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