Denial, Selective Perception and Military Atrocities by Felicity Arbuthnot

Warning

This article and links to other websites may contain words/graphics depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read/viewed by a mature audience.

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at Global Research
22 September, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

“Wrong from the start.” (Ezra Pound, 1885-1972.)

When the horrors of the sadistic, near necrophile behaviour of U.S., personnel at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, first showed the tip-of-the-iceberg-lie of “liberation”: cruelty, depravity and bestiality on a scale which apparently dwarfed all that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been accused of, President George W. Bush said: ” This does not represent the America I know.”

What Do Empires Do? by Michael Parenti

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.michaelparenti.org February 2010
Sept. 22, 2010

When I wrote my book Against Empire in 1995, as might be expected, some of my U.S. compatriots thought it was wrong of me to call the United States an empire. It was widely believed that U.S. rulers did not pursue empire; they intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or to restore order in a troubled region or overthrow tyranny, fight terrorism, and propagate democracy.

But by the year 2000, everyone started talking about the United States as an empire and writing books with titles like Sorrows of Empire, Follies of Empire, Twilight of Empire, or Empire of Illusions— all referring to the United States when they spoke of empire.

Marx becomes a Marxist by Brian Jones

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Brian Jones
SocialistWorker.org
February 25, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

Karl Marx developed his ideas in an era of when young people were dedicating their lives to a struggle for new rights and freedoms. Brian Jones examines Marx’s revolutionary ideas in this second of three articles.

HOW DID Karl Marx become a Marxist? Marx developed his idea not just through study–although he was a voracious reader (really, the word “voracious” doesn’t begin to touch it). Marx’s Marxism is really the theoretical product of his practical efforts to build a movement for radical change, and his observations of struggles taking place around him.

This is worth our attention because Marx is not only the author of a set of ideas about history, but the author of a unique method of looking at history. This method is widely known as historical materialism or dialectical materialism.