MAY 12, 2025
Sebastian Bennett is a foreign affairs officer in the nation’s capital. He has held a number of jobs in government, including as an aide to a Senator on Capitol Hill and as a presidential management fellow at a major federal department. Sebastian has also worked for think tanks, both in the nation’s capital and in Madrid. He was also a White House Intern. Sebastian has a post-graduate degree in international relations. Due to the sensitive nature of his current position, he is writing for The Daily Dissident, which he co-founded, under an assumed name.
Our political system, having largely been "captured" by corporate interests, is broken. Washington doesn't respond to the people's will so much as the desire of the rich and powerful. We live in an oligarchy. Why, then, try and affect change through Congress? That's hopeless. Better to go out on the streets - and that's precisely what's happening. Continue Reading...
ISIS, that scourge terrorizing Iraq and Syria, grew from al-Qa'ida's franchise in Iraq. That much is known. But less publicized is how closely Syrian intelligence worked to facilitate its development as a means of destabilizing its neighbor in Iraq led by an American-friendly government. Yet, once again, the sorcerer's apprentice is now haunted by his maniacal creation, with ISIS knocking on Damascus' door. Classic case of blowback. Continue Reading...
This more or less states the obvious: our country is deeply divided along racial lines, which is played out in our politics, with the respective major parties essentially aligning with whites (GOP) and whites as well as minorities (the Democrats). What makes this piece particularly interesting is its source: an admittedly centrist writer, but one who works at the American Enterprise Institute, a decidedly right-wing outfit. The GOP must grow Continue Reading...
To gauge just how far rightward the GOP has shifted, even in the last 10 years, consider Jeb Bush, scion of the famous dynastic family of American politics. Thoroughly conservative by any conceivable standard, his occasional moderation on hot-button issues like immigration makes him a non-starter for dyed-in-wool Republicans. This all begs the question: how far right will the right get? One wonders. Continue Reading...
Levels of economic inequality are glaring. That we know. But they're actually getting worse in the US: between 2010 and 2013, inflation adjusted incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans actually fell, while it rose for the top 10 percent. No wonder that Americans are so despondent about the country's direction. We're on the road to serfdom, to co-opt the famous expression. Continue Reading...
Here's one business model: Pay your workers so little that half of them have to rely on public assistance, but you get to reap massive profits. Here's another: Pay your workers a living wage, give them good benefits, and still make a profit, albeit not quite as handsome a one. Which is better? The latter, most would say. Guess which business model we Americans practice? The former. It's called lowest common denominator capitalism, and it's Continue Reading...
London is a Tier I international city. Global capital of culture? Check. International financial hub? Check. Gathering place for the world's ambitious and upwardly mobile? Check. Bastion of economic inequality and home of unhappy residents? Check. Keep calm and take in the paradoxes of perhaps the world's most dynamic and infuriating city. Continue Reading...
The executive at the head of the Wall Street entity - hedge fund, in this case - responsible for the biggest insider trading scandal ever remains free, fat, and happy. That is Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, that is. Amazing story of how ambition gone a muck sinks one of SAC's bright young things while Cohen slips the noose. A must read, if lengthy. Continue Reading...
The Arab World is defunct. The onetime progenitor of modern civilization, it has fallen into decrepitude, particularly in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's demise. Now it's a mess - poor, autocratic, and sclerotic. It's not going to get any better anytime soon, according to the author. Welcome to a real-life dystopia. Continue Reading...
“If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so." So said Ronald Reagan when running for governor of California in 1966. Shocked? You shouldn't be. Racism and, more specifically, the backlash to the civil rights movement and its legal victories inspired and continues to inspire the GOP. A party of and for bigots? You decide. Continue Reading...
"Ten measures of beauty descended to the world,” it is written in the Talmud, “nine were taken by Jerusalem." One may quibble about the particulars of that celestial distribution, believing Paris or Cape Town deserving of several measures each, but the learned rabbinical text is not far off the mark. Continue Reading...
Stalin may now occupy an inner sanctum of hell, but to Vladimir Putin he occupies a hallowed place. No wonder given the Russian leader's tyrannical disposition, which, for the keen observer, was evident before he assumed power over a decade ago. Now the ugly unvarnished truth is clear to all. His tenure won't end well - that much is guaranteed. Continue Reading...
America, it is often said, is formed around an idea: the idea that an individual - any individual - free and unencumbered, can achieve whatever his talents and ambition allow. That's the stuff of the "American Dream." But what if it's called the American Dream because, as George Carlin once said, you have to be dreaming to believe it? That is, what if inequality has crushed the meritocracy beyond recognition? What then? Continue Reading...
The marquee above the Israeli-Palestinian epic never dims. Intense interest in the grim spectacle ensures as much. Many of Israel’s backers are deeply suspicious of the attention. After all, the world is full of far bloodier hotspots than that riddling the stamp-sized sliver of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yet it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more specifically, the Jewish state’s role in the Continue Reading...
I was reading the newspaper in a café recently when a woman merrily marched through the door and, spotting an acquaintance, sat down next to him. Grinning broadly, she announced, “I got it!” “It” was her dream job, she explained within earshot, the sum of her ambitions. “I got it!” she repeated with barely contained excitement. And then it happened. As if carefully choreographed, two hands, one his, one hers, shot upwards simultaneously in Continue Reading...
