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...
Dissident Voice
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...
Conditions Are Ripe for a Resistance Counter-Offensive
It’s been over ten long months that the forces of democracy have been on the defensive, doing our best to withstand the many and various assaults on us on issue after issue, but the tide is turning: -Trump’s polling numbers keep going down, at 36% positive and 60%...
The Magic Begging Bowl
‘One day a beggar knocked on the doors of a great king. By chance, the king himself opened the door. He saw the beggar: the beggar was not an ordinary beggar, he was almost luminous. He had such grace, such beauty, such a mysterious aura, that even the king felt...
The UN’s Financing Crisis: Who Pays, Who Doesn’t, and Why China’s Delays Matter
The United Nations is facing one of the gravest financial crises in its history. According to the UN Secretariat, by late 2025, only 145 of its 193 member states had paid their assessed contributions in full. That leaves 48 countries behind on their obligations, with...
Experiments in Futility: Australia’s Teenage Social Media Ban Approaches
The messiness of Australia’s social media ban for those under 16 as part of the Online Safety Act 2021 is becoming more apparent by the day. From December 10 this year, as announced by the commissar-minded eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, “age-restricted social...