Stop Feeding the Vultures by Greg Palast

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

For In These Times

I get the idea that Eric Hermann doesn’t want to talk to me. When I came to his office suite, his hedge fund’s name plaque had been unbolted from the building’s wall, the suite number removed and all the employees locked in.

I’m not surprised. Hermann is a vulture, not the carrion-eating type, but the kind that prey on the financially wounded. “Vulture” is a hedge fund industry term for the financiers who buy up the right to collect old loans of the world’s poorest nations, and then use every trick in the book — from lawsuits to bribery to hiring Henry Kissinger’s lobby firm — to muscle destitute countries into turning over their meager foreign aid funds.

Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism — Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land?

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By Justine Sharrock
AlterNet
March 30, 2010

Naomi Wolf, author of ‘End of America,’ talks about why she has become an improbable Tea Party darling, and if progressives can learn from the conservative activists

In her bestselling End of America, Naomi Wolf outlines the 10 warning signs that America is headed toward a fascist takeover. Using historical precedents, she explains how our government is mimicking those of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin through practices like surveillance of ordinary citizens, restricting the press, developing paramilitary forces and arbitrarily detaining people.

The book was lauded by liberals under Bush: the Independent Publishers gave it the Freedom Fighter Award; John Nichols at the Nation named it the most valuable political book of 2007. Now, under President Obama, Wolf’s book is providing ammunition for the Tea Partiers, Patriots, Ron Paul supporters and Oath Keepers, who also warn of impending tyrannical government. Even when the book first came out pre-Obama, Alex Jones, Michael Savage and Fox News invited her on their shows, and agreed with her.

[…]

via Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism — Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land? AlterNet

see

Financing Fascism, Part II by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’ by Chris Hedges

The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London

“The 15% Solution,” Serialization, 3rd Installment: Chapter Two

Talk by Naomi Wolf – The End of America (video) (must-see)

The End of America (full video; Naomi Wolf)

Tea-Parties and Progressives, Maybe We Should Listen to Each Other By Timothy V. Gatto

Financing Fascism, Part II by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
Mar. 30, 2010

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

As I noted at the beginning of my Commentary No. 135 that appeared on BuzzFlash last week,fascism may be briefly defined as: “A politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; the massive and regular use of hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, the Big Lie technique, mob psychology, mob actions and ultimately individual and collective violence to achieve political and economic ends; and corporate domination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”

The Eikenberry Cables

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Truthdig
Jan 28, 2010

The now-famous Eikenberry Cables of November 2009 outline the opposition of Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, to sending more troops to that country. They were recently leaked to the New York Times, and you can read them in full below.

[…]

Once again, a CSIS report designates Turkey as the optimum route for a possible Israeli attack on Iran

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
30 March 2010

Daniel Ellsberg: Our President Is Deceiving the American Public

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Democracy Now!
March 30, 2010

“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public”: Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

We are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day. [includes rush transcript]

END:CIV Premise 3 of Derrick Jensen’s Endgame

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stimulator
March 29, 2010

subMedia

This short piece explores the third premise of Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame”

Attention Deficit Democracy by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
March 29, 2010

A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops illusion.