A Terrible Normality by Michael Parenti

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
www.michaelparenti.org
Jan. 25, 2013

Image by LKEM via Flickr

Through much of history the abnormal has been the norm. This is a paradox to which we should attend. Aberrations, so plentiful as to form a terrible normality of their own, descend upon us with frightful consistency.

The number of massacres in history, for instance, are almost more than we can record.  There was the New World holocaust, consisting of the extermination of indigenous Native American peoples throughout the western hemisphere, extending over four centuries or more, continuing into recent times in the Amazon region.

Iraq: A Twenty-Two Year Genocide by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
January 17, 2013

Image by matthewgood via Flickr

“It is the first genocide of the 21th century. Poor Iraq and Iraqis. The silence of the world pushes me to lose faith in humanity.” (Anonymous)

Incredibly it is twenty-two years to the day since the telephone rang in the early hours and a friend said: “They are bombing Baghdad.”

Western Smoke-and-Mirrors Terrorism by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from PressTV
December 13, 2012

Image by Nick Bygon via Flickr

Barack Obama, America’s Conjurer-in-Chief, is trying to entertain the world with a new smoke-and-mirrors trick, with the announcement that his government is recognizing the Syrian National Coalition as “the sole representative of the Syrian people”.

The chemical weapons trick seems to have fizzled like a damp squib. So, now it’s time for another illusion – the “worthy Syrian opposition”.

This motley crew of treasonous exiles – who mysteriously some how have bags of money to trot all over the globe from Doha to Cairo, Tokyo to Marrakech – are all of sudden anointed by the American President as the next government of Syria.

The Science of Genocide by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
August 6, 2012

Image by uoɹɐɐ via Flickr

On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.

Palestine’s Tragedy Commemorated by Felicity Arbuthnot

Warning

This article may contain language depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read by a mature audience.

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
20 April 2012

Image by Rusty Stewart via Flickr

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.” (Martin Luther King, 1929-1968)

Many dreams have been rained on since peace was declared at the end of the Second World War, on 8th May 1945.(i) Two veritable historic hurricanes were commemorated on 9th April, as was the burial of the man who dreamed: Martin Luther King.

Where Are All the Bodies Buried? by Michael Parenti (2000)

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
www.michaelparenti.org
www.thirdworldtraveler.com
Z magazine, June 2000
April 13, 2012

Image via Wikipedia

NATO commits acts of aggression

In March 1999, NATO forces launched an 11-week nonstop aerial attack upon Yugoslavia that violated the UN charter, NATO’s own charter, the U.S. Constitution, and the War Powers Act. Yugoslavia had invaded no UN or NATO member. The Congress had made no declaration of war. No matter. The “moral imperatives” and humanitarian concerns were heralded as being so overwhelming that legalities would have to be brushed aside. Here were mass atrocities perpetrated by the demonic Serbs and their fiendish leader, Slobodan Milosevic not seen since the Nazis rampaged across Europe; something had to be done-so we were told.

Iraq: Prime Minister Dictates Vengeance Beyond the Grave + 9th April: Iraq, Massacre of a Country by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
7 April 2012

“How does blood flow from a ghost?” (In: “They Didn’t Ask: What’s After Death?” Mahmoud Darwish, 1942-2008)*

“Nothing so terrible has happened to us since the Crusades.” An Iraqi friend

In November 2010, Iraq’s former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, under the shadow of execution, wrote to his lawyer requesting to be buried in Jordan and to be returned to his homeland: “after Iraq is liberated.” He feared his body would be desecrated – or exhumed by Iraq’s puppet government.

East Timor: A Lesson in Why the Poorest Threaten the Powerful by John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
Global Research
www.johnpilger.com
April 5, 2012

Milan Kundera’s truism, “the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”, described East Timor. The day before I set out to film clandestinely there in 1993, I went to Stanfords map shop in London’s Covent Garden. “Timor?” said a hesitant sales assistant. We stood staring at shelves marked South East Asia. “Forgive me, where exactly is it?”

A Tale of Three Tragedies by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
1 April 2012

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

“ … she becomes the endless scream in the breaking news,
which was no longer breaking news, when the aircraft returned to bomb a house with two windows and a door.”
(The Girl/The Scream, Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008)

March was another month of tragic, needless lives lost, the searing grief of mother’s and father’s for lost son’s and daughters.

John Pilger: Death of a Nation – The Timor Conspiracy (1994)

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

with John Pilger

thechangeprofitsee on Feb 26, 2011

An act of genocide on the East-Timorese people carried out by Indeonesian Troops with the backing of Western Nations ie., Australia. East-Timor is a country with substantial resources such as oil, which naturally, sparked controversy on the intentions behind the brutal genocide of its people.

Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
March 19, 2012

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

The war in Afghanistan—where the enemy is elusive and rarely seen, where the cultural and linguistic disconnect makes every trip outside the wire a visit to hostile territory, where it is clear that you are losing despite the vast industrial killing machine at your disposal—feeds the culture of atrocity. The fear and stress, the anger and hatred, reduce all Afghans to the enemy, and this includes women, children and the elderly. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short. And murder happens every day in Afghanistan. It happens in drone strikes, artillery bombardments, airstrikes, missile attacks and the withering suppressing fire unleashed in villages from belt-fed machine guns.

Rick Rozoff: U.S. Lied About Number Of Soldiers In Afghan Massacre + Afghan War, From Collateral Damage To Targeted Killing Of Civilians

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
March 15, 2012

Press TV
March 15, 2012

Rick Rozoff, manager of Stop NATO, commented on the recent massacre of Afghan civilians and said, “The rampage included more than one soldier and the U.S. frankly lied about it.”

Speaking to Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Thursday, Rozoff said the fact that an American soldier has been transferred to Kuwait “certainly has shown total disregard for Afghan national sovereignty and the feelings of Afghan people.”

Iraq War Crimes: Haditha: Another Small Massacre – No One Guilty by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
London, England
4 February 2012

“We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected round the world.”  (President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, 24^th January 2012.)

On the 24^th January, the day President Obama delivered his last State of the Union speech to Congress before the election, citing the:“selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces (their) focus on the mission at hand”, the “selfless” Staff Sgt., Frank Wuterich, leader of the massacre at Haditha,

Nagi Musa and the Sudan Ten by Michael Carmichael

by Michael Carmichael
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
PlanetaryMovement.org
Jan. 29, 2012

Image via Wikipedia

The Sudanese National Security Forces have arrested Nagi Musa and nine other leaders of Girifna, the nonviolent people’s resistance movement in Eastern Sudan.

On Wednesday the 25th of January, Nagi Musa was leading a conference titled:  “The Massacre in Port Sudan and the Crisis in East Sudan.”   Nagi Musa’s conference commemorated the seventh anniversary of the massacre.

Obama’s “State of Delusion Address”: Rebuilding America With War Crimes by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
East Africa
25 January 2012

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

From beginning to end, Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was replete with delusion and falsifications. His promise of building an “America that lasts” was predicated on a sentimental, but utterly disingenuous notion of selfless teamwork. The invocation of American military “heroes” and their “achievements” during nine years of waging war on Iraq as an exemplar of how to salvage his nation from economic and social catastrophe was both sickening and laughable.