An Occupier’s open letter to Chris Hedges by Caleb T. Maupin

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by Caleb T. Maupin
www.workers.org
Mar 30, 2012

Image by marniejoyce via Flickr

Chris Hedges, a writer for The Nation and former New York Times reporter, spoke at the Left Forum’s closing plenary on March 18 in New York City. [DS added the links.]

As someone who was among the thousands of youth on Sept. 17 when the occupation of Zuccotti Park began; as someone who attended some of the early General Assemblies prior to that historic day; as someone who was arrested as part of the OWS Martin Luther King Day actions; as someone who is currently involved in the continuing occupation of Union Square in preparation for the May 1st General Strike, I must say loudly and clearly that you, Chris Hedges, do not speak for me.

What If Gorbachev Had Won 20 Years Ago? by Gaither Stewart

by Gaither Stewart
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 28, 2011
Rome, Italy

As a follow-up to Patrice Greanville’s article, “The Soviet Union—Environmental Degradation: Some Historical Antecedents“, I have presented here excerpts from some of my own articles written during the Gorbachev perestroika period, plus notes and reflections concerning Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Chief of State of the USSR, and his role in the history of Socialism. As an intermittent correspondent in Moscow for a West European newspaper during the Gorbachev era I covered some of the evolving crisis in Russian Communism in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News (2002; must-see)

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Please turn off your TV. Forever. ~ DS

Image by niiicedave via Flickr

by Spread Knowledge
http://vimeo.com/33442989

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky demolish one of the central tenets of our political culture, the idea of the “liberal media.” Instead, utilizing a systematic model based on massive empirical research, they reveal the manner in which the news media are so subordinated to corporate and conservative interests that their function can only be described as that of “elite propaganda.”

Decline of the American Left by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 16, 2011

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

In The New York Times “Sunday Review” of Sept. 25, 2011, Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent magazine, published an article entitled “Whatever Happened to the American Left?” It is drawn from a new book of his entitled American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. In the article (full disclosure: I have not read the book, only the review that appeared in The Times Sunday Book Review on Sept. 18) Mr. Kazin attributed the aforementioned decline to a number of factors.

GIobal Rollback: After Communism by Michael Parenti (2002)

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.michaelparenti.org
Originally published at www.thirdworldtraveler.com
CovertAction Quarterly, Spring 2002
Sept. 25, 2011

Image by Juliano Mattos via Flickr

Lately we have been hearing a great deal about “blowback.” But the real menace we face today is global rollback. The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world.

In this rabidly anticommunist plutocratic culture, many left intellectuals have learned to mouth denunciations of the demon Soviets, thereby hoping to give proof of their own political virtue and acceptability.

In Cuba, the revolution continues, softly, as times change by John Pilger

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by John Pilger
Information Clearing House News
www.johnpilger.com
3 August, 2011

Image by little rev via Flickr

On my first day in Cuba, in 1967, I waited in a bus queue that was really a conga line. Ahead of me were two large, funny females resplendent in frills of blinding yellow; one of them had an especially long bongo under her arm. When the bus arrived, painted in Cuba’s colors for its inaugural service, they announced that the gringo had not long arrived from London and was, therefore, personally responsible for this breach in the American blockade. It was an honor I could not refuse.

A critique of General Leonid Ivashov’s article, “BRICS and the mission of reconfiguring the world: An alternative world order?” by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 17,  2011

The recent article of General Leonid Ivashov (1) deals with BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of countries and its current and future potentials for changing the nature of civilization and the world balance of forces. In doing so, Ivashov has touched on some of the underlying macro-level historical-intellectual foundations of the developmental historical process.

A brief review of some of Noam Chomsky’s erroneous positions by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

Image by Mayu ;P via Flickr

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
May 9, 2011

Along with his great intellectual contributions, Noam Chomsky, the Guru of American Left, has taken some erroneous positions, some of which are astounding strategic blunders. As much of the left in this country and a considerable part of it in other Western countries has been, and continues to be, influenced by him, it is important to identify these, without denying or negating the accuracy and depth of much of his voluminous analyses and writings on various issues. Below is a brief summary of some of these:

The Enduring Mystique of the Marshall Plan by William Blum

by William Blum
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.killinghope.org
1 March, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

The Anti-Empire Report

The Enduring Mystique of the Marshall Plan

Amidst all the stirring political upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East the name “Marshall Plan” keeps being repeated by political figures and media around the world as the key to rebuilding the economies of those societies to complement the political advances, which hopefully will be somewhat progressive. But caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.

African Americans and the struggle for socialism, 1901-1925 By Abayomi Azikiwe

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

By Abayomi Azikiwe
www.workers.org
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Feb 19, 2011

In 1901 the Socialist Party of America, after much ideological and political struggle, emerged as a coalition of various factions within the socialist movement. It had conservative, moderate and revolutionary tendencies within its ranks. Eugene V. Debs, an organizer of workers in the railroad industry, emerged as a charismatic figure, the party’s political candidate and a public spokesperson for the socialist movement.

Debs ran numerous times for presidential office and opposed wars of imperialism waged by the U.S. ruling class. He served prison terms for his outspoken opposition to war and U.S. foreign policy.

What’s at stake in the global class struggle against capitalism

Image by Julia Manzerova via Flickr

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www.workers.org/

http://blip.tv

Larry Holmes, WWP secretariat member, speaking at the Workers World Forum, Jan. 14, 2011, in New York.

The Case for Socialism by Rocket Kirchner

photo by Dandelion Salad

by Rocket Kirchner
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Rocket Kirchner (blog)
Rocket Kirchner (youtube channel)
January 11, 2011

I never was a very good Capitalist. I felt it was wrong and boring. And I never bought into Communism either. There are those who confuse an American with being a Capitalist, and those who confuse Socialism with Communism. There are others who think that the best critique of Capitalism came from Marx, when it really came from the novels of Dickens.

Marxism and political organization by Elizabeth Schulte

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Image by oemebamo via Flickr

by Elizabeth Schulte
SocialistWorker.org
December 2, 2010

How do we get from the vision of a socialist society to achieving one? Elizabeth Schulte looks at what Karl Marx and the Marxists after him had to say.

SOME ACADEMICS and historians may be happy to foster the idea that Karl Marx confined himself to analyzing the world, but the truth is that he and Frederick Engels sought to change it–and took part in building organizations dedicated to the goal of socialism.

In 1885, looking back on their discoveries about class society and the founding of the Communist League, Engels wrote:

John Pilger: Vietnam: The Last Battle (1995)

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Warning

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

www.johnpilger.com

1995. Nearly twenty years after the Vietnam War, Pilger returns to review those two decades.

In 1975, John Pilger reported the end of the Vietnam War from the American Embassy in Saigon, where the last American troops fled from the roof-top helicopter pad. He was made Journalist of the Year and International Reporter of the Year for his reporting of the Vietnam War over a period of almost ten years. The American invasion of Vietnam marked the last stage of the longest war of the last century, a war in which the greatest tonnage of bombs in history was dropped, in which more than two million Vietnamese were killed and a bountiful land devastated.

Vietnam: The Last Battle by John Pilger

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by John Pilger
Global Research, December 4, 2010
johnpilger.com

Saigon. The rain sheeted down, time washed away. I looked down from the rooftop in Saigon where, more than a generation ago, in the wake of the longest war of modern times, I had watched silent, sullen streets awash. The foreigners were gone, at last. Through the mist, like little phantoms, four children ran into view, their arms outstretched. They circled and weaved and dived; and one of them fell down, feigning death. They were bombers.

This was not unusual, for there is no place like Vietnam. Within my lifetime, Ho Chi Minh’s nationalists had fought and expelled the French, whose tree-lined boulevards, pink-washed villas and scaled-down replica of the Paris Opera, were facades for plunder and cruelty; then the Japanese, with whom the French colons collaborated; then the British who sought to reinstall the French; then the Americans, with whom Ho had repeatedly tried to forge an alliance against China; then Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, who attacked from the west; and finally the Chinese who, with a vengeful nod from Washington, came down from the north. All of them were seen off at immeasurable cost.