“You’ll Pry My Car out of my Cold-Dead Hands” by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
May 2, 2010

The scope of the tragedy of the undersea oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is shocking. Please don’t call it a “spill” the gash in our Mother Earth is literally hemorrhaging oily death-blood.

British Petroleum, the company who owns the offshore well, gave “liberally” to candidates in the 2008 election cycle, with the largest donor receiving $71,000 for his campaign—Barack Obama.

We should scream bloody-murder about BP and boycott them straight to bankruptcy. Additionally, the company that everyone on the “left” loves to hate: Halliburton probably shares a majority of the blame for this catastrophe of biblical proportions, too.

Ralph Nader: We have a Corporate Government!

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[Note: this the longer version of this post: Ralph Nader Rips Obama, Praises Ron Paul + Why Aren’t Corporate Crimes Prosecuted?]

by William Hughes

photo by Dandelion Salad

On April 20, 2010, author and political gadfly Ralph Nader gave a lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in Baltimore, MD. He spoke before a near capacity audience for over an hour. Mr. Nader spotlighted corporate power and abuses in the U.S., and how AIG, the insurance titan, is the biggest recipient of “welfare–$182 Billion!” He showed how the workers in Western Europe have long had splendid social programs, like: “universal health insurance,” that are regularly denied our citizens. Mr. Nader submitted that the American psyche is dominated by a “fundamentalist market” ideology. Corporation loyalty, he also charged, citing various examples of gross abuse, is to the “dollar sign,” and not to the country. Professor Fimin DeBrabander of MICA introduced Mr. Nader.

Chris Hedges: Violence is our primary form of communication (must-see)

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
May 2, 2010

[Note: The Q&A starts at 1 hour in.  Much of this speech is taken from a previous speech he gave, Chris Hedges: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (2004; must-see; transcript)]

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

talkingsticktv

May 02, 2010 — Talk by Chris Hedges author of “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” given April 23, 2010 at the 8th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference “War & Global Health” held at the University of WA in Seattle.

Francis Boyle on the 2001 Anthrax attack, Israel’s war crimes, interviewed by Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds

by Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
2 May, 2010

Professor Francis Boyle discusses the October 2001 anthrax attack, the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle, and assesses the case based on his years of expertise with America’s bio-weapons programs, and as an expert who was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. He discusses possible motivations behind the anthrax attacks, including those held by criminal elements within the US government to foment a police state, and the investigation that never was. Professor Boyle talks about Israel war crimes as crimes against humanity, and more.

Britain’s Election: Welcome to No Choice Democracy by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Finian.cunningham@gmail.com
2 May, 2010

British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a general election that promises to be historic – for all the wrong reasons.

Firstly, voter turnout threatens to hit a post-Second World War record low. Over the past six decades, the percentage of eligible Britons casting their vote has steadily fallen from 80-70 per cent to around 60 per cent. With public apathy and antipathy towards the three main political parties – the incumbent Labour government, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – running at all-time highs, there is a real prospect that the British general election of 2010 will see as many citizens forfeiting their democratic right as those turning out to vote.

On the edge with Max Keiser: Goldman Sachs Fraud with David DeGraw

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PressTVGlobalNews

May 02, 2010 — Max Keiser is on the edge of the financial news where future financial scandals, market crashes and monetary crisis begin .Be there before it happens

No space on Earth for the thunder of peace & conscience

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No space on earth for peace and conscience? Hearing the music in our Afghan thunder

13 year old Abdulai

ourjourneytosmile

May 01, 2010

No space on earth for peace and conscience?

Hearing the music in our Afghan thunder

Abdulai had recently applied for a US visa upon being invited by Fellowship of Reconciliation USA for a State-side peace tour this summer. He was hoping to meet his new friends face-to-face, as human beings do.

Sadly, the most ‘powerful’ nation on earth rejected him for fear that he might not return to his widowed Afghan mother and to the only home he’s known in a mountain village in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

“The world may have made you think that my mother, my brothers and I are bad people but, like yourself, we are tired of violence, corruption & selfish governments.”

Bill Moyers Journal: Iowa Citizens + Jim Hightower + Barry Lopez + The Last Show

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Bill Moyers Journal
April 30, 2010

The Journal also travels to Iowa where one group, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement CCI, has been helping ordinary citizens fight for change for more than three decades..

Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2010 + Jay Leno

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whitehouse

May 01, 2010 — President Obama and Jay Leno trade jokes at the 2010 White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, D.C.

“The 15% Solution,” Serialization, 4th Installment: Chapter Three: 2001: The Real Drug War

by Jonathan Westminster, Ph.D. aka Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on TPJmagazine
May 2, 2010

2001: The Real Drug War

Author’s Commentary

The year 2000 marked the election of President Carnathon Pine, who came to be known as the Last Republican.  A former Republican Senate majority leader, he was known for his sharp tongue, his war‑damaged leg, and over the course of a long and not otherwise dis­tinguished career, his exquisite at­tention to politics rather than policy and governance.  At age 74, he was the oldest man ever to be elected President.

He had run on a platform of “if not her, then me,” “everything they do is wrong,” and, referring to the series of natural disasters which had befall­en America annually since Hurricane An­drew of 1992 and the Great Floods of 1993, “God is pun­ishing America for its sinful ways.”  This theme had be­come increasingly popular for Right‑Wing Reaction­aries since the mid‑90s.  For example, in 1993 Christian Coali­tion lead­er Pat Robert­son said this about the flooding in the mid‑west of the old U.S. (Right‑Wing Watch):

Parliamentary ‘democracy’ – a triumph of Victorian engineering By William Bowles

By William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
crossposted at Strategic Culture Foundation
1 May, 2010

To understand what’s going on with Britain today we have to look back to the 19th century and the rise of industrial/mercantile capitalism, for it was during that period that the Victorians got into the business of myth-making in a big way, rewriting our history almost completely. Truly a triumph of Victorian engineering.

The vast movement of people not only from country to city but from artisan to wage labourer fractured our collective memory so completely that inventing a new, more capitalist-compliant version of ‘our’ history was relatively easy to do. Add to this the fact that even the oppressed working masses still benefited from the wealth of England’s slave/colonial Empire, persuading people that ‘Britannia Ruled the Waves’ wasn’t such a difficult task to accomplish. And we need only look at the USA for a current example of how Empire corrupts totally.