Peace Outlaws by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
first published in Islam Times
March 29, 2010

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
Henry David Thoreau

A week ago today, I was literally cooling my jets in a freezing cold DC jail for protesting the continuation of the illegal and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For an offense (crossing a police line) that doesn’t even have any jail time associated with the penalty, if convicted, I stayed in jail for 50 hours. I was arrested with seven others and six of us had the similar fate of spending an unreasonable amount of time in jail for standing up for peace and justice.

Why I Hate Palm Sunday by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
first published in Islam Times
March 29, 2010

Six years ago, I woke up on Palm Sunday listening to the birds sing and already feeling that it was going to turn out to be a warm one.

I got up and was surprised that the constant anguish that I had been feeling for two weeks since my oldest son, Casey, was deployed to Iraq wasn’t that bad. I chalked it up to the beautiful spring day and the fact that my other children were safe and sound in their beds.

I went about my day doing laundry, shopping, going to brunch with my best friend at the time, and getting things ready for my impending workweek as a benefit’s analyst for the County of Napa. It was also the first Sunday in over two decades that our family didn’t go to mass on a Palm Sunday. Our separation from the church had already begun.

Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis: The Impoverishment of the Middle Class by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
March 29, 2010

When Empire Hits Home, Part 2

Part 1: War, Racism and the Empire of Poverty – When Empire Hits Home

The western nations of the world have built their great wealth and societies on the exploitation and plundering of the people and resources of the rest of the world. The wealth, freedom, and structures of our societies have been built on the starvation, robbery, deprivation and murder of millions upon millions of the world’s people, both historically and presently.

It seemed for a time that “Western Civilization” had worked, even if only for the west. We saw the emergence and growth of a vibrant middle class, which has its origins in the Industrial Revolution, out of which we also saw the formation of the “nuclear family.” The middle classes of the west grew in wealth, education, and access. While the great problems of the world, and for the majority of the world’s people, persisted and expanded exponentially, the great purpose of the middle class was siphoned and expanded into facilitating the development of a massive consumerist society. The function of the middle class became that of consuming, not necessarily contributing to determining the direction of society.

Peddling Peril, Peddling Lies by Luke Ryland

by Luke Ryland
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Luke’s blog post
March 29, 2010

David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has a new book out (which I haven’t read) about AQ Khan and the nuclear black market called Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies.

In the “Acknowledgements” section of the book, Albright writes: “Many former government officials generously provided critical knowledge about the Khan Network, US policy, nuclear terrorism, and illicit nuclear trade. In particular, I would like to thank Richard Barlow, Joseph DeThomas, Robert Einhorn, Mark Fitzpatrick, Robert Galluci, Thomas Graham, Marc Grossman, Khalid Hassan, Fred McGoldrick, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Joseph Nye, Howard Shaffer and John Wolf.”

9/11 Reconstruction: Mental Before Physical by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
March 29, 2010

The failure to rebuild the World Trade Center site in Manhattan has received endless attention.  But public anger about this failed reconstruction should not been seen so negatively.  After all, mental reconstruction has also still not been successful and is surely more needed, with too many Americans still accepting the official government story about 9/11.  This, despite a huge amount of compelling evidence that elements of the US government played some role, despite a very large, active 9/11 truth movement, and despite an impressive number of highly credible people demanding a new investigation as documented at patriotsquestion911.com.

US Bagram Airbase hit during Obama visit

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PressTV
March 29, 2010

The US Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan has been hit by rockets during an official visit by President Barack Obama to the war-torn country.

Afghan officials told Press TV on Monday that three rockets targeted the airfield.

No damages or casualties have been reported; however, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who claimed responsibility for the attack, said there were serious casualties inside the base.

He added that the incident occurred as the US president was leaving Bagram.

Obama landed at Bagram Air Base on Sunday and left Afghanistan after six hours. He met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US troops during his unannounced visit.

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see

The CIA’s Strategy to Manipulate European Public Opinion on the Afghanistan War Revelations of Leaked Document by Tom Burghardt

President Obama’s Flawed Premises in Afghanistan

President Obama’s Surprise Visit to Afghanistan

Obama tells Karzai to combat graft in surprise Afghan visit

NATO Tries to Silence a Truth-Teller in Afghanistan After Killing Pregnant Women by Derrick Crowe

Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’ by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
March 29, 2010

The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.

“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”

The CIA’s Strategy to Manipulate European Public Opinion on the Afghanistan War Revelations of Leaked Document by Tom Burghardt

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, March 28, 2010
Antifascist Calling…

Since their 2007 launch, the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks have been the subject of “hostile acts” by state and private security services for spilling the beans on crime, corruption and violence perpetrated by the capitalist deep state.

But rather than being deterred by government threats or overt acts of violence, including the murder of two human rights attorneys in Nairobi last March, who provided the whistleblowers with reports on extrajudicial killings by Kenyan police, WikiLeaks have turned the tables on the CIA.

Moscow metro attack: Dozens killed in subway explosions

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Sympathies and condolences to all in Moscow.

RussiaToday
March 28, 2010

There have been two explosions on Moscow’s underground metro system. Both blasts happened during the Monday morning rush hour in what authorities believe could have been a co-ordinated attack, although it’s still not confirmed how the explosions happened. At least 32 were killed and 11 wounded in the first explosion at Lubyanka station just before 8am, Moscow time. The station is near to The Kremlin and is beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service. A second explosion occurred 45 minutes later at Park Kultury station in central Moscow, killing at least 12 people and injuring 15 others. Both stations are on the same subway line, which has now been closed in the centre of the city. The police are on high alert across the Russian capital, and are investigating whether suicide bombers could be to blame. A terrorism investigation is underway. Emergency crews are at both blast sites. The wounded are being airlifted by helicopter to hospital, because the surrounding roads have ground to a halt.

Turkey’s President Gul: Iran’s ultimate aspiration is to acquire nuclear weapons

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
29 March 2010



1)  President Gul: Iran’s ultimate aspiration is to acquire nuclear weapons (26 March 2010)

from the archives:

2)  President Gul: Tehran shouldn’t be devastated like Baghdad (August 2008)
3)  Foreign Minister Gul: The possibility of Iran’s having nuclear weapon will disturb Turkey (June 2006)