American Foreign Policy – Have Our War Lovers Learned Anything? by William Blum

by William Blum
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.killinghope.org
February 7, 2013

Image by World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr

Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think that if the war lovers who run the United States had known of this in advance they might have had serious second thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war crime.

Daughters of India Violated and Abused, by Graham Peebles + The ‘Genocide’ of India’s Daughters

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
January 6, 2013

Image by Imagens Evangélicas via Flickr

A woman’s lot

In the ancient land of India, where female deities deeply revered, Kali and Lakshmi, Sarasvati and Parvati, are held high upon the alter of Hinduism, where each day thousands of Hindu’s ritually bathe in the Holy waters of the Ganges, cleansed within and without by the Goddess Ganga, women and girls; in the forests, cities, villages and towns, on buses and trains, in the street, the office, at school and in the home are being violated, abused, raped and trafficked into prostitution and domestic slavery.

John Pilger: Obama’s Greatest Achievement: To Seduce and Silence the Anti-war Movement

Dandelion Salad

with John Pilger

John Pilger speaking at Marxism 2010, the annual conference hosted by Socialist Alternative. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Apr 23, 2012 by marxismconference

Marxism 2012: Revolution in the air hosted radical journalist, writer and film-maker John Pilger. Back for his fourth year, Pilger says about the Marxism conference:

“Marxism in Melbourne is now Australia’s premier festival of debate and free speech on issues that are either excluded from or suppressed by the mass media: issues such as the government’s agenda for Indigenous Australians, Palestine and propaganda in its many disguises.”

Lebanon’s Oppressed: Domestic Workers, Women, Palestinians by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
April 10, 2012

University students surveyed last month in Lebanon on the subject of how to improve their society and move it in the direction of meeting international human and civil rights norms identified three groups most in urgent need of immediate Lebanese governmental action.

Occupy Boston Student Summit: Noam Chomsky

Image by thelastminute via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Chomskyan on Mar 8, 2012

Occupy Boston Student Summit
Feb. 12th, 2012
Harvard University

Sam Roberts Christiansen, Instructor, Northeastern University

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, Mass. Institute of Technology

Video produced by Charngchi Way, Boston IWW

Michael Parenti: Free Speech (2011)

Image by Toni Kaarttinen via Flickr

with Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.michaelparenti.org
Sept. 4, 2011

48South7th on Aug 31, 2011

Author Michael Parenti challenges his audience to learn about and advocate free speech in the face of oppression. From the origins of the Bill of Rights up to today’s challenges by the FBI and other government entities, Parenti says, it is essential to stand up for one’s rights. He spoke at an event sponsored by the South Bay Committee Against Political Repression. See michaelparenti.org for more information.

The Intimately Oppressed by Howard Zinn

by Howard Zinn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at www.greanvillepost.com, July 20, 2011
August 12, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Chapter 6 from A People’s History of the United States.

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

In this invisibility they were something like black slaves (and thus slave women faced a double oppression). The biological uniqueness of women, like skin color and facial characteristics for Negroes, became a basis for treating them as inferiors. True, with women, there was something more practically important in their biology than skin color-their position as childbearers-but this was not enough to account for the general push backward for all of them in society, even those who did not bear children, or those too young or too old for that.

“Nepal girls are cheaper to buy” by Brian McAfee

by Brian McAfee
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 13, 2011

Image by C. Elle via Flickr

One of the most significant ongoing scourges that befalls humanity worldwide is the ongoing exploitation and sexual abuse of over two million girls and boys through sex trafficking. UNICEF estimates that two and a half million children, most of them girls, are tricked or forced into the multibillion dollar global sex industry.

Mother’s Day Revival by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
FIRST APPEARED IN BLACK COMMENTATOR, May 5, 2011
May 8, 2011

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender
of those of another country to allow our sons
to be trained to injure theirs.” — Juliet Ward Howe, Mother’s Day Proclamation – 1870

Recently, I had the opportunity to see a movie called Water. The film was written and directed by Deepa Mehta who is an Indian born Canadian most known for her Elements Trilogy: Fire, Water and Earth.

Noam Chomsky and Malalai Joya: The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Image via Wikipedia

Dandelion Salad

PHubb on Apr 27, 2011

Noam Chomsky & Malalai Joya: The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan March 25, 2011 Memorial Church, Harvard University: Filmed by Paul Hubbard http://haymarketbooks.org http://socialistworker.org

Exclusive: Is the New Testament a sexist book against women? by Rocket Kirchner

by Rocket Kirchner
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Rocket Kirchner (blog)
Rocket Kirchner (youtube channel)
March 27, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Often you will hear a common excuse as to why people, mainly women … refuse to accept Christ as their Savior. This excuse goes thus, “I cannot accept a book that is sexist against women”.  Mmm.   Either they never read it, or they missed one of the most unique features of the New Testament, which is that mainly in the Gospels women have such a preeminent role. Not to mention the fact it is the women who come off looking great, and the men who are total idiots. Ten cases in point:

1. According to the Gospel of Luke, Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, (this is called in Greek “Logospermotokis”). That means that God by-passed the entire Patriarchy to send Christ into the world.

British Tamil Women Fight for Justice by Suren Surendiran

by Suren Surendiran
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://www.tamilsforum.com
6 March, 2011

British Tamil women joined hundreds of thousands of women marching through London to mark the 100th year of international women’s day to call an end to violence against women, highlighting the suffering of Tamil women and children in Sri Lanka and demanding justice for the victims.

Exclusive: The long history of feminists against abortion by Rocket Kirchner

by Rocket Kirchner
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Rocket Kirchner (blog)
Rocket Kirchner (youtube channel)
January 23, 2011

Image by jarapet via Flickr

When seriously studying in depth any movement, it is imperative to go back to how and where it got started. Historical feminism began with Mary Wollstenecraft’s The vindication of the rights of Woman in 1792. From that point until the 1960′s, all of the rough and tumble feminists were vehemently outspoken against abortion. When Betty Freidan wrote The Feminine Mystique (2nd edition), there began a shift away from real feminism, and the real got distorted and derailed in this area. Today’s feminists who are pro-choice have clearly betrayed the historical Matriarchy. And very few know anything about this, because it has become a taboo subject.

Spogmai Akseer: A View from the Inside of Afghanistan, interviewed by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
January 23, 2011

(SOAPBOX #84) – Cindy welcomes Canadian resident PhD student Spogmai Akseer, representing that whole group of Aghans world wide, both internal and abroad, who take a stance against war and occupation in Afghanistan and demand that the Afghan people be allowed their right to self determination.  That group is formally known as Afghans for Peace.  They present a non-propagandized “view from the inside” of Afghan reality. 

Can the working class unite? by Jen Roesch

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Image by oemebamo via Flickr

by Jen Roesch
SocialistWorker.org
November 4, 2010

Jen Roesch looks at where ideas like racism and sexism that divide workers come from–and how the working class can overcome this obstacle to unity and solidarity.

ONE OF the most common objections to socialism is the idea that the working class is too alienated, too tied to its narrow material interests and too internally divided to play the revolutionary role that Karl Marx envisioned for it.