The Sheep Look Up by Gray Brechin

by Gray Brechin
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
July 2, 2010

Arthur C. Clarke and director Peter Hyams proved less than prophetic in the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, but they gave the audiences of 1984 what they wanted to hear. Cosmonaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) — who in the movie 2001 disappeared into a mysterious black monolith orbiting Jupiter — reappears as a literally starry-eyed apparition on his widow’s TV set between commercials. He tells her that “something wonderful” is about to happen. It does hours later when exponentially proliferating monoliths send Jupiter critical, igniting a second sun in the solar system. Forewarned by Bowman’s specter, Russian and U.S. cosmonauts hightail it out of the Jovian neighborhood on the cusp of a blast of hot plasma. The two nations at home narrowly avert their own thermonuclear Armageddon. In the closing scene, cosmonaut Heywood Floyd (Roy Schneider) rejoins his wife and son for a happy reunion on the beach under double suns.

US Economy Stuck in Misery by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
July 2, 2010

The middle class is dead.  The US has produced a self-sustaining two-class society.  Most Lower Class Americans are in bad or uncertain economic shape but the rich and powerful Upper Class crowd keeps making and spending money as if there has been no recession.

Talk about a possible double-dip recession misses the larger reality: For many millions of Americans the first recession is still here; there has been no recovery for them.  Too bad President Obama cannot comprehend that.  Nice that only 23 percent of people believe that his policies have made economic conditions better.  Maybe they got the change they were waiting for.

Do you feel independent on Independence Day? By Jerry Mazza

By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.jerrymazza.com
July 2, 2010

Before “Old Glory” gets raised, the burgers and dogs go on the grill; before the potato salad and coleslaw and other goodies get heaped on your plate, let me lay this pickle next to them… .

First, do you feel independent if you’re one of the 10 to 20 percent of America’s unemployed facing your benefits being cut?

Do you feel independent if your voices expressed in the US government, the Congress and President, seem to be in the pockets of all those multi-large corporations they should be monitoring?

If McChrystal was Right, What does that Make Petraeus? by Dennis Kucinich

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Washington, Jul 1, 2010

Today Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made his third statement in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

“As related by William Polk in his recent article in Counterpunch — Just a few days before his dismissal, General McChrystal wrote what has been described as a ‘devastating report on his mission.’ He pointed out that he faced a ‘resilient and growing insurgency’ with too few troops and he expected no progress in the coming months.

Day 72 – linking what the world needs now by Roxanne Amico

by Roxanne Amico
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Spirit Morph Studio
July 2, 2010

“…The questions I keep coming back to are these: in this time, as countless multitudes of humans & nonhumans suffer 4 the profits & luxuries of a few, & as species go extinct at rates greater than any in the last scores of millions of years—as large-vertebrate evolution itself is being halted—what does the world need? What does the world need from me?…” —  Derrick Jensen

***

This isn’t the post I was going to write. I’m actually working on three others at one time, but this one came to me in a conversation I had yesterday… This is a very short post, anchored on an inspiring essay from Orion, including a few creative ideas about what others do to stop the systemic destruction of the only home we have. First a short commentary from me, and then that essay, and then excerpts and links linking what the world needs now….

All Power to the Casinos & Let the Devil Take the Hindmost! Who Needs A Social Safety Net? by Glen Ford

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio
July 2, 2010

In the endgame of casino capitalism, every “crisis” is an excuse to turn the screws tighter. The only solutions our leaders can propose are deeper cuts to social services, savage slashes in the government services ordinary people use, along with privatizations of public assets that benefit only a few of the best connected cronies.

Your smiling TV business reporter has doubtless assured you that the Great Recession is over, whether it feels that way to you or not, and that what looks like the destruction of life as the average American once knew it is really just a large bump in the road to prosperity. However, he adds, there will be some belt-tightening. But that belt is a noose, and President Obama and most of his Democrats and all of the Republicans have joined a lynching party led by the Wall Street gang. They are hell bent on finishing off what’s left of the fragile social safety net in the United States.

Obama’s Iran Diversion: Forget About Jobs, Forget About The Gulf! by Glen Ford

[tweetmeme source= “DandelionSalads” only_single=false]

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1109484

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio
July 2, 2010

If war with Iran is insane, why is Obama acting crazy? “Stepping to the brink of war with Iran only makes a kind of macabre sense if the Obama administration feels in desperate need of a diversion.” The bigger the better, since the diversion must call attention from the goo in the Gulf and the air in people’s wallets.

“Washington seeks to create an artificial confrontation with Iran in order to draw attention from the real, profound and multiplying crises that threaten, not just the Obama presidency, but global rule of finance capital.”