The Nakba is back on the Palestinian agenda. For nearly three decades, Palestinians were told that the Nakba – or Catastrophe – is a thing of the past. That real peace requires compromises and sacrifices; therefore, the original sin that has led to the destruction of...
Dissident Voice
The Economy of Tolerable Massacres: The Uvalde Shootings
Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices. Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting. To an extent, crime and violence can be allowed to thrive. In the United States, the...
Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled by America’s Toxic Cult of Violence
Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them...
Forgetting Freedom a Generation at Time
In the 16th Century, French essayist Etienne de la Boetie, amazed at people’s obedience to perceived authority, penned Discourse On Voluntary Servitude. It wasn’t obedience per se that disturbed him, but that he saw people as “driven to servility,” when refusal to...
Russia-Ukraine war: George Bush’s admission of his crimes in Iraq was no “gaffe”
It was apparently a “gaffe” of the kind we had forgotten since George W Bush stepped down from the US presidency in early 2009. During a speech in Dallas last week, he momentarily confused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current war of aggression against Ukraine...
Biden in Tokyo: Killing Strategic Ambiguity
Could it have been just another case of bumbling poor judgment, the mind softened as the mouth opened? A question was put to US President Joe Biden, visiting Tokyo and standing beside Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida: “You didn’t want to get involved in the...
Human Rights Activist Deported from Colombia in Run-up to High Stakes Election
While enroute to observe the presidential elections in Colombia, Teri Mattson was denied entry by Colombian authorities and had her passport seized. After arriving at 6:55 am on May 22, she was forced to spend the day and the night at the Bogotá Airport before being...
The More Some Things Change, the More Others Stay the Same
The treatment to which Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee subjected Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing was atrocious. The first ever African-American woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court, Brown Jackson faced GOP senators who...
India: Birds Drop Out of the Sky, People Die
In case you have lingering doubts about the reality of human-caused global warming, hop on an airplane to parts of India or Pakistan and spend a few days. And, as long as you’re there, maybe be a good citizen and pick up a few of the dehydrated birds that drop out of...
Monkeying Around with the People?
The post Monkeying Around with the People? first appeared on Dissident Voice.
What’s missing from the gun debate [sic]?
The shooting in Buffalo has once again ignited an ill-informed “debate” on the topic of guns. Thus, I feel compelled to re-share some of the missing context. Male Violence (as usual) Must Be Factored In Please allow me to introduce some damn good reasons to consider...
New York Times Repudiates Drive for “Decisive Military Victory” in Ukraine, Calls for Peace Negotiations
A week ago, we made note of a May 11 New York Times news article, documenting that all was not going well for the U.S. in Ukraine, and a companion opinion piece hinting that a shift in direction might be in order. Now on May 19, “THE EDITORIAL BOARD,” the full...