By David K. Shipler First published by Moment Magazine No fabrication or suppression of history is needed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Truths are enough to arm both sides. We are now witnessing additions to the stockpile of weapons in an arsenal of memory that never gets depleted. Victims do not…

By David K. Shipler We have entered a period of flux in international alignments. After decades of relative stability in the so-called “world order,” interests are being recalculated and affinities revised. It is a risky, promising, uncertain time. Vietnam and the United States, once enemies, have just announced a comprehensive…

By David K. Shipler We don’t know. That’s the honest answer. In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, Kremlinologists could estimate the pecking order of the grisly men (almost always men) who made up the governing Politburo by observing how they lined up atop Red Square’s Lenin mausoleum…

Florida Bans Scary Trump Mug Shot from Schools By David K. Shipler The Florida Board of Education, citing a state law’s prohibition against student “discomfort,” has instructed public school teachers to refrain from “showing, displaying, distributing, discussing, mentioning, or making implicit gestures or facial expressions during class regarding” the mug…

By David K. Shipler The right-wing Israeli government’s plan to eviscerate the powers of the country’s courts has generated massive demonstrations in the streets, worries by foreign investors, and boycotts of military service by hundreds of reservists in elite special forces and air force units. …

By David K. Shipler A reliably uninformed source has revealed that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s staffers, desperately bored without any significant national problems they’re allowed to address, have collected 41,000 hours of newsreel footage from 1939–45 and turned it over to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Reels of film are…

By David K. Shipler Forty-three years ago this month, the United States voted for a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Jewish settlements in Arab territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, and demanding that they be dismantled. After an immediate outcry by Israel and its American supporters, President…

By David K. Shipler A year into Europe’s largest land war in nearly 80 years, the prospect of “winning” remains not only elusive but — more telling — defined by wishful thinking rather than military reality. Neither Russia nor Ukraine seems capable of achieving its ambitious aims. Perhaps, looking far…

By David K. Shipler At Sunday’s Super Bowl, the United States will congratulate itself on another racial milestone, the first time two Black quarterbacks have played in the culminating game of the country’s most popular sport. “Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes will make history on Sunday,” crowed CBS News. But…