Back in my Brooklyn NYC of the 50s and 60s we used to call the neighborhood luncheonette ‘The Candy Store’. In my Ave U neighborhood we had at least one such store every few short blocks. The one I will focus on was Moe’s Luncheonette on Ave U between East 24th St...
Dissident Voice
US State Department Travel Warning on Venezuela: What Washington Fears Most
Following his earlier threat that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s days are numbered, US President Donald Trump announced on social media he was closing Venezuelan airspace. He then immodestly proclaimed the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, commending...
When the World Yields to the Self: The Politics of Individualism in Stranger Things
The finale of Volume 1 in Season 5 of Stranger Things turns on a single charged image: Will, cornered by Vecna, suddenly awakening to powers that had supposedly lived inside him all along. A rush of home-movie memories flows through his mind, scenes of friendship,...
War Crimes and Pete Hegseth’s Lust for Blood
Pete Hegseth, the soap opera styled US Secretary of Defense, sports a questionable sanity. His behaviour before generals is the stuff of low comedy. His mania about sending narco-traffickers making passage on the sea from Venezuela to a watery grave has a millenarian...
Australia: A US Vassal State in a Peripheral Sphere of Influence
For reasons set out briefly below, let’s suppose that Australia is a US vassal state and that the Pacific — what Australia likes to call its ‘backyard’ — is a peripheral sphere of US influence. Under these circumstances, this essay considers what for Australia should...
How to Read the New National Security Strategy Document
The New US National Security Strategy (NSS) has been released. This is a critically important document prepared by every administration that sets out the United States’ national security priorities, along with a formulation of the strategy & policies it proposes...
Review of No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine
In author Jeff Schuhrke’s own words: This book tells the story of why and how US labor became one of Israel’s most stalwart defenders and generous benefactors through the Zionist State’s tumultuous and controversial history. Importantly, this is also the story of ...
People’s Response to APEC: Breakdown or Breakthrough?
The Doomsday Clock advances 10 seconds closer to midnight. Global temperatures rise beyond 1.5°C. Forests burn. Hurricanes intensify. Meanwhile, countries produce bombs and bullets, the New Cold War inches us closer to nuclear annihilation, and US President Donald...
The Dark Triad Can’t Kill Karl
“The most violent, mean, and malignant passions of the human breast…” are the emotions that protectors and defenders of capitalism focus on those who seek to end the profit system and replace it with a more egalitarian system. This is what Karl Marx wrote in his...
The Great Revolutionary Divide
Europe, mid-1800s: Two men stood at the center of a storm that would shape socialism’s future. Karl Marx, a German-born philosopher, believed in seizing the state (central government) and wielding its machinery to crush the ruling class. To him, power was a tool, not...
The Great Revolutionary Divide
Europe, mid-1800s: Two men stood at the center of a storm that would shape socialism’s future. Karl Marx, a German-born philosopher, believed in seizing the state (central government) and wielding its machinery to crush the ruling class. To him, power was a tool, not...
Casablanca’s Captain Renault Resurrected
Remember the famous line by Claude Rains as Captain Renault in Casablanca? After being told by his Nazi handlers to close Rick’s Cafe he relayed the ultimatum to Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart). Rick questioned why his cafe was being shutting? Renault simply...