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What Happened to Dissident Voice?
My day began, as usual, by checking out the Dissident Voice website. But lo and behold, the website was suspended. Egads!
After checking with the hosting site for DV, I was about to be hit by a double whammy.
DV was entrapped by two catch-22s. The hosting service required payment for hosting. I had not been informed because the email requesting payment was sent to the previous editor Angie who had passed away on 2 January 2025. The payment was not a problem, as DV had accumulated a enough money from donations to pay server costs and hire the occasional tech person …
Jonathan Kozol and the Struggle Against U.S. Apartheid
We are the dust beneath your feet. We are the flowers that never bloom.
— beggars in Bombay1Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher, (Crown, 2007) p. 61
Although bookshelves groan under the weight of tracts about U.S. racism, no one’s writings on the topic are more unsettling than Jonathan Kozol’s. He is among our greatest and most eloquent dissenters. He writes not from studied objectivity but with an impassioned conviction that sears the conscience and haunts the soul. His books, once read, stay with you; his insights, once seen, can never again be unseen. Horrors we once attributed to happenstance …
The Power Shift which the War on Iran is Causing in Moscow
The Doolittle Question, the Do-Nothing Answer
MOSCOW — Professor Higgins’s question to Colonel Pickering about Eliza Doolittle in the line from the musical, My Fair Lady, (lead image) was: Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
In Moscow, where the course of the Iran war is having a profound impact on military, intelligence, Foreign Ministry, and Kremlin officials, almost nothing can be said in public. Not even the question they are asking each other downwards and sideways, not upwards: Why can’t a Russian be more like an Iranian?
The difficulty of answering …
Fairy Tales, Fallacies, and Naked Emperors
It’s time for us, like the boy in the story, to point out the bare, ugly truth. Trump’s followers need to see him for what he is and realize they are putting their trust in a sham, a fake, a fraud.
The first step, though, requires helping them to realize that no one is perfect, that ALL humans are fallible. Americans, especially, have forgotten a key principle of democracy: no man is divine, and America has no time for hero-worship or kings.
Some of us understand that perfection, while admirable, is not the end goal, and while we recognize that everyone has …
What Do We Know Today?
No one knows whether the ceasefire will hold but we do know a few things. First, Trump realized the war could not continue, even though none of his goals had been achieved. The war was both a personal humiliation for Trump and also an abject failure for the U.S. and Israel. It was the U.S., not Iran, that was begging for the ceasefire. And not to be left out, Jeffrey Sachs observes that “Trump exposed himself as a psychopath.”
Second, there is at least the opportunity to prevent this from occurring again as it will be difficult for the U.S. to …
Ceasefire or Calm before the Storm?
Interview with Pepe Escobar
A fragile ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is unfolding amid deep mistrust, conflicting demands, and ongoing regional violence. Mediation efforts, particularly through Pakistan, have exposed miscommunication and political manipulation on multiple sides. While negotiations begin, both camps appear to be using the pause to regroup militarily. Iran is seen as holding strategic leverage, especially around the Strait of Hormuz, while global powers like China and Russia play complex behind-the-scenes roles. Despite talks, a lasting agreement seems unlikely, with tensions, competing interests, and the risk of escalation still dominating the landscape.
Ending Israel’s War on Peace
To make lasting peace in the Middle East, the US must end its blank check to Israel’s perpetual wars and join with the rest of the world to force Israel to live within its internationally recognized borders of June 4, 1967.
A two-week ceasefire has partially halted the Israel-US war on Iran. The war accomplished precisely nothing that a competent diplomat could not have achieved in an afternoon. The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and it is open again now, but with more Iranian control.
Meanwhile, the chaos continues. Israel is intent on blowing up the ceasefire, as this …
Onward Israel’s Spartan Soldiers
The 13th and 14th centuries Mongol invasions and conquests were some of the most ferocious and deadliest incursions on humankind before the modern world wars. In its assault on Baghdad, the Mongol forces arrowed messages that guaranteed safety to those who had not fought the Mongols or surrendered to them. Resist and face execution. The Israeli military, purposely misnamed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and self-proclaimed as “the world’s most moral army,” out does the Mongol ferocity —surrender and leave or die. After persuading the terrified inhabitants to leave, Israel’s military forces proceed forward by bombing and dynamiting everything in …
Is Reality Extinct for Charter School Advocates?
In many ways it is. Blind dogmatic repetition of false, outdated, and capital-centered ideas and views has long been the norm for charter school proponents. Retrogressive ideas took hold long ago.
But reality also vanished long ago for most politicians, the media, the rich, corporate “leaders,” and higher education “leaders.”
Disinformation, lies, bromides, propaganda, and gaslighting, all turbocharged by Artificial Intelligence, have become the norm today. Every time someone hears, sees, or reads something these days they have to ask if it is fake or real.
Naturally, human cognition and relations have taken …
Trump, Hegseth, and the Language of War Crimes
He’s out of ideas, a mind running on empty. Increasingly, he is also short of reason, zapped by geopolitical addling and meddling. Now that US President Donald J. Trump has reached an uneasy understanding with Tehran that a two-week ceasefire should apply to the warring parties (Israel, as usual, has its own elastic interpretation as it continues attacking Lebanon), it is worth considering the warring language he has been using since February 28. Of note is the shrill wording of various ultimata he has directed at Iran.
On April 7, the President seemed to flirt with the notion of …
Be Skeptical: Trump Has Either Given in to Save Himself or Plays a New Two-week Game
These points seem to be in the mentioned 10-Point Iranian Plan that Trump’s message refers to:
1. A complete and final end to hostilities between the U.S. and Iran
A formal cessation of the current escalation cycle.
2. An end to Israeli military operations in Lebanon
This is one of the clearest points Al Jazeera highlighted — Iran wants a halt to Israeli action against Hezbollah.
3. A ceasefire in Gaza
Iran has consistently tied any de‑escalation to a halt in Gaza fighting.
4. Guarantees that the U.S. will restrain Israel from further regional escalation
This is …
What They Aren’t Telling You about the Ceasefire With Iran
In 2 Minutes or Less
The ceasefire plan with Iran, if it holds, will get things (somewhat) back to the way they were before Donald Trump took a chainsaw to the world order. (Except of course all the people who were murdered will not come back.) If you hadn’t noticed, this is a theme for Trump.
1. He does something utterly unhinged, insane, chaotic and stupid.
2. He tries to get something he wants — like control of Iran, control of Greenland, or a subservient trade deal from China.
3. He …
Careful What you Wish for
An Aide-Memoir for Muslim Asylum Seekers
Any regimes that need changing, including the U.S., Israel and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission.
— Arundhati Roy, 2026
As The Fat Boy Posse’s latest illegal, depraved, unprovoked, and predictable attack on Iran proceeds with the customary savagery and disregard for civilian life and infrastructure, we have been trying to put ourselves in the position of one of those Muslim Iranians said by the Western media to have been protesting in their …
No Clean Reset: War, Climate, and the Next Civilizations
(Illustration source: Flickr)
After the Fossil Age, Future Civilizations Stand on a Thinner Floor
There’s a comforting story that circulates in collapse circles: even if this version of industrial civilization is doomed, the planet will eventually reset. The fossil binge will end, forests will return, the climate will cool, and in a few centuries or millennia new Romes and Han Chinas will rise on a refreshed Earth, running on biomass and clever agriculture instead of oil and gas.
It’s an attractive story, not least because it reframes our crisis as a …
Exploiting Useful Enemies: Ukraine in Hungary’s Elections
The problem with demagogues is that they invariably fall into infantile practices. The politics of the playground is the politics of hate, violence and betrayal. It’s the politics of finding the useful enemy and bullying the theme till it’s raw. In Hungary’s parliamentary elections set for April 12, the only theme that seems to matter to the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) alliance and Viktor Orbán, the country’s demagogic leader of 16 years, is Ukraine.
Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelensky have been pictured as symbolic occupiers, intruders and meddlers, intent on bringing in Hungary and the rest of …
Bangladesh between Engineered Elections and Geopolitical Realignment
The 2026 elections in Bangladesh have ignited considerable debate. While segments of the middle and upper-middle classes lauded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) symbolic triumph over Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI), the election was markedly more complex than a routine political event. It has raised profound questions concerning the evolving political landscape, referred to as a ‘new settlement’, within Bangladesh.
The election underscored a second phase in the nation’s political development: it effectively served as a referendum on proposed constitutional reforms that have the capacity to modify Bangladesh’s fundamental identity and its secular character by revising the principles established after the 1971 Liberation …
Trump and Netanyahu: Two Madmen Playing God
When deranged leaders invoke divine catastrophe as a political instrument, it is not only their enemies who are consumed. Unless they are stopped, we will all be victims of these two psychopaths.
Here is Donald Trump’s Easter message to the world:
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Donald Trump and his partner in war …
Tempo of Charter School Crimes and Arrests Never Decreases
Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.
These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.
This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.
A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:
JD Vance’s UFO Demons Meet the Ghost of Donald Rumsfeld
JD Vance on UFOs: “I don’t think they’re aliens; I think they’re demons.”
Anaïs Nin: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”
We don’t see the world (or the phenomenon) as it is — we see it as we are. High time the exorcists known as clinical mental health workers were dispatched to Vance’s DC residence.
The Vice President, as do an evangelical cadre of top US Air Force brass, warn, UFOs are piloted by inter-dimensional things that go bump in the night. By the evidence, the primary threat to the security of the US homeland: …
Executing with Prejudice: Israel’s Death Penalty Law
It was celebrated with ghoulish delight. On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed the Penal Bill (Amendment – Death Penalty for Terrorists), an instrument expanding the use of the death penalty for offences of a terrorist nature. The death penalty had previously existed in Israeli law for war crimes but was abolished in 1954 for ordinary crimes in peacetime. Technically, it remained on the books for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and certain cases of martial law.
The law’s purpose is articulated as establishing the death sentence “for the sake of the struggle …
When Opposition Calls for “Free” and “Fair” Elections to Guarantee “Democracy” in Venezuela, What Do They Mean?
Since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, the US has attacked the Bolivarian Revolution in multiple ways, including through propaganda that categorize it as “authoritarian,” “unfree,” and “undemocratic.” This US propaganda assault is intended to dictate what should be done in Venezuela, including a return to “democracy,” with “free” and “fair” elections. Emboldened by the US military attack on Jan. 3, and relying on the US propaganda assault, the Venezuelan opposition has launched an aggressive move to seize control of the state by seeking concessions from …
Why the 2026 Middle East Crisis Demands Critical AI Literacy
The Age of Generative Warfare
“Tel Aviv, stripped of illusion, as you have never witnessed it,” read the caption above a viral March 2026 video showing missiles hammering the Israeli city as explosions burst across the night sky. To the casual scroller, it appeared to be a harrowing document of modern conflict. The problem, however, was that the video was a deepfake.
Deepfakes are synthetic media edited or generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to the New York Times, a “cascade of A.I. fakes about war with Iran” have proliferated across social media since the United States (U.S.) and Israel reignited military actions with Iran on …
Dilemma
Every answer carries the next problem inside it, the way a season carries the one that will replace it. We have learned not to be surprised by this.
We were born here, and so we stay. What else is there? The world ends at the television frame, where the evening news flickers and dies each night and we sit in its light a little longer than we need to. Beyond that edge is something we have no name for.
This place made us and we made something of it. We got up before light and we worked and we felt that the …
US-Israel War against Iran Require a War Crimes Commission
Almost one year after the 2024 election on a peace platform, the Trump Administration backed itself into an alarming militaristic US-Israeli tag team that is not what the American public voted for. Almost immediately, the newly elected Peace President who continued to lust for the Noble Peace Prize, allowed his country to be drawn into a series of unconstitutional conflicts with the most recent being a severe unprovoked war of aggression against Iran.
Early in Trump’s second term his no-new interventionist war pledge was no longer public policy when he failed to end the war in Ukraine as promised, followed by initiation of …
What Mearsheimer Gets Right — and Wrong — About 38 Million Sanctions Deaths
A friendly quarrel while we agree that the US sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction and kill more people than wars do. And that we must talk much more about sanctions than we have so far.
John Mearsheimer recently stated that U.S. sanctions murdered around 38 million people between 1971 and 2021 – see the video below. It is a dramatic figure, and it has spread quickly because it captures, in one sentence, the enormous human cost of modern sanctions.
I share his concern about the destructive effects of economic coercion. But the specific number he cites — and the way he attributes it — deserves a friendly academic clarification.
The figure comes from a 2023 Lancet Global Health article estimating the mortality effects of unilateral U.S. …
Tanzania: Commissions Call for Mass Eviction of Indigenous Maasai from World-famous Tourist Destinations
President Hassan receives a report from the presidential commissions at an official handover ceremony, March 2026.
Two presidential commissions have recommended the mass eviction of Maasai people from some of East Africa’s most iconic conservation areas and tourist destinations.
The commissions were established by Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan following previous evictions of Maasai pastoralists from parts of the world-famous Serengeti ecosystem, and large-scale protests in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in 2024.
Now, despite a global outcry at the earlier evictions, the two Commissions have:
Backed the previous …
The U.S. Bombs Kids So Palmer Luckey Can Have Nice Things
Last week, we watched a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile murder more than 160+ Iranian school children. We watched in horror, helpless to stop the incoming massacres as the U.S. and Israel carpet-bombed Iran, then Lebanon, displacing millions of people from their homes. The pure, unrelenting terror continues to unfold. We are shocked and devastated, but we are also enraged — because for every bomb the U.S. and Israel drop, a bunch of men in cushy offices profit off all the death.
There is an urgent need to identify and address the burgeoning war profiteers that are leading the world headfirst …
Iran’s Arrows and the West’s Achilles’ Heel
The penny has clearly dropped. Trump and his domesticated colony of phocine honkers and clappers have been forced to admit what the Iranians (and presumably Western intelligence agencies) have known for some time: that Iran has a pretty much immovable stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz, which has now clearly been shown to be the Achilles Heel of the US-Israeli position in the Middle East and, to some extent, of the global economy.
For reasons set out later in this essay, the CIA will have known that there was very little that the US and Israel could do if Iran chose …
Hungary’s Parliamentary Elections May Become a Turning Point for All Europe
Next month, on April 12, 2026, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections that will have a great impact not only on the country’s future domestic policy but also on the coordination of its actions and decisions with EU countries in foreign policy. The main struggle will take place between the Fidesz Party, that in now in power, and the opposition party Tisza.
The Fidesz headed by incumbent Prime Minister Victor Orban has been in power for more than 15 years now, and for this whole period of time it has conducted the policy that often contradicts to the political course of the …