War, Racism and the Empire of Poverty – When Empire Hits Home, Part 1 by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
March 23, 2010

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At a time of such great international turmoil economically and politically, it is increasingly important to identify and understand the social dynamics of crisis. A global social crisis has long preceded the economic crisis, and has only been exacerbated by it. The great shame of human civilization is the fact that over half of it lives in abysmal poverty.

Poverty is not simply a matter of ‘bad luck’; it is a result of socio-political-economic factors that allow for very few people in the world to control so much wealth and so many resources, while so many are left with so little. The capitalist world system was built upon war, race, and empire. Malcolm X once declared, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”

Depleted Uranium: A War Crime Within a War Crime By William Bowles

By William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
23 March, 2010

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As if destroying a country and its culture ain’t bad enough, how about destroying its future, its children? I want to scream it from the rooftops! We are complicit in crimes of such enormity that I find it difficult to find the words to describe how I feel about this crime committed in my name! In the name of the ‘civilized’ world?

“Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al-Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.” — Jalal Ghazi, for New America Media

Israel & Aid by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
March 23, 2010

On July 10, 1996, at a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation for these words: “With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. …But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to Israel than for us to be able to say: we are going to achieve economic independence. We are going to do it. In the next four years, we will begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to Israel.”

Whose Streets? (Our Streets between 1pm and 4pm With a Permit) by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
March 23, 2010

On the 7^th commemoration of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, there was a rally and march in DC sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition that was attended by about eight thousand people.

For quite awhile, I have been having problems with marches on Saturday, anyway. It seems like we march past empty buildings and shake our fists at them and promise that if those empty buildings don’t change their ways, we will be back next year to do the same thing. The arrests are symbolic and don’t shut down anything, except in the case of large arrests, where the police stations are busy for a few hours.

Getting into Massa’s Drawers: Truly Creepy Details about the Congressman by Greg Palast

by Greg Palast
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
23 March, 2010

Exclusive for Buzzflash.com

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For the two weeks before tickle-and-grope charges busted open on him, and before his resignation from Congress, our BBC Television investigations team was hunting for Representative Eric Massa.

We wanted to know what he had hidden in his drawers. Not his knickers, which have captivated America’s peep-show media, but Massa’s file drawers where he keeps his dirtier secrets.

Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Massa’s creepy little peccadilloes. But I care an awful lot about creeps that quietly backed him.

Massa plays himself as a two-fisted Progressive Democrat, telling the President to jam his fake health care bill where the Rahm don’t shine, and he gave the Iraq war his middle finger. I mean, the guy was on Rachel Maddow.

The U.S. is at a Precipice By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
March 23, 2010

We are at a precipice. This is the end of one era and the beginning of another. The “real” world that so many people believe in, here in America is not the world you see on your TV sets, that is the world that the government and the media want you to believe in. We are so accustomed to believing in our own American ideology that we can’t understand the ramifications of what we have done. So many people in this country continue to believe that what we have done can’t be undone. This is the reason we have come to this point. We are not “invincible”. We are not “exceptional”. We must abide by the same financial tenets that rest of the world must obey. We cannot spend above our means. We cannot spend 1.4 Trillion dollars on the military and get nothing back. We cannot give trillions in fiat money to prop up the bankers and financiers on Wall Street.

Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, India and Why Democracy Is “The Biggest Scam in the World”

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Democracy Now!
March 22, 2010

Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, India and Why Democracy Is “The Biggest Scam in the World”

We speak with acclaimed Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy on President Obama, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, India and Kashmir and much more. Roy also talks about her journey deep into the forests of central India to report on the Maoist insurgency. [includes rush transcript]

Obama the Cold Warrior? by Sean Fenley

by Sean Fenley
Dandelion Salad
The Anything and Everything
March 23, 2010

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“You can play a great game and still not win.”

-Barack H. Obama

After observing recent pronouncements from Hillary Clinton that Venezuela start ‘playing by the rules’ and revert to free market capitalism, it’s starting to look like we might be heading into an era of deja vu once more. Provocations from Obama against China and Russia, are making the current climate look a lot like the recent past. One would have thought in a world where the United States only has the courage to attack much lesser third world ‘powers’, that Obama wouldn’t be ginning up a great deal of antagonism with much more evenly matched states; but that’s precisely what seems to be occurring under team Obama’s charge.

Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production – Part 1 – Summary

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Gail Tverberg
www.theoildrum.com
March 22, 2010

Recently, a 55 page paper called Tipping Point: Near-Term Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production (PDF warning) was published as the joint effort of two organizations:

Feasta, a leading international think-tank exploring the interactions between human welfare, the structure and operation of human systems, and the ecosystem which supports both, and,

The Risk/Resilience Network, an initiative which was established in order to understand energy induced systemic risk, the scope for risk management, and general and emergency planning.

This paper talks about the likely systemic impacts of peak oil, including the possibility of collapse. With a long publication such as this, it is difficult to know how to present a reasonable subset of the material. In this post, we are publishing the Summary as Part 1. Our tentative plan is to publish three additional excerpts from the paper later. Those who wish to read the paper now can download it from the link above.