War of the World: How the American Empire Project Trashed a Planet for Profit, While Selling the Public Lies – An interview with Dahr Jamail By Frank Joseph Smecker

By Frank Joseph Smecker
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 6, 2010

Seven years ago, angered over the mainstream media’s flawed portrayal of the Iraq War, independent journalist Dahr Jamail took it upon himself to report from the front lines of the conflict. As one of the very few unembedded journalists dispatching from Iraq, Jamail cruised the streets of cities and villages with a local interpreter, a beat-up car and a penchant for depicting the conflict for what it really was: an illegal and brutal occupation, vanguarded by the US Empire and its corporate collaborators.

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Dahr Jamail pulled a degree in Speech Communications from Texas A&M University. Before his stretch in Iraq, Jamail’s post-college travels brought him around the world, from Chile to Pakistan, Mexico to Nepal, to climbing Denali in 1996 where he decided to be a mountain guide shortly thereafter.

Endless Wars for Endless Profits: My reflections on the 5th Anniversary of Camp Casey by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
August 6, 2010

Before my son, Casey, was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004, I was a mother of four, worried about all my children—but especially the one who was going to be deployed to Iraq—sometimes working as many as three jobs to survive, and only peripherally aware of the harsher realities of living in an Empire.

When Shocking and Awful rained down on Iraq, the military “operation” was then called: Operation Iraqi Liberation—but the geniuses in the War Selling Department figured out that the acronym was too obvious, so it was changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, which is the name that was on all of my son’s paperwork and medals after he was killed.

The War on Iraq: Five US Presidents, Five British Prime Ministers, Thirty Years of Duplicity, and Counting…. by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
6 August, 2010

“Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.” (W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, writing in 1939.)

Twenty years ago this August, with a green light from America, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had walked in to possibly the biggest trap in modern history, unleashing Iraq’s two decade decimation, untold suffering, illegal bombings, return of diseases previously eradicated and what can also only be described as UN-sponsored infanticide.

The reason for the Kuwait invasion, has been air brushed out of the fact books by Britain and America, and been presented as the irrational and dangerous act of a belligerent tyrant who was a threat to his neighbours. He had, they pointed out piously, attacked, then fought an eight year war with Iran, and exactly two years to the month, after the 20th August 1988 ceasefire, invaded Kuwait, on 2nd August 1990.

Verizon & Google Enter Reported Deal for Tiered Internet Use, Is Net Neutrality in Jeopardy?

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Democracy Now!
Aug. 6, 2010

Verizon & Google Enter Reported Deal for Tiered Internet Use, Is Net Neutrality in Jeopardy?

The internet and telecom giants Verizon and Google have reportedly reached an agreement to impose a tiered system for accessing the internet. The deal would enable Verizon to charge for quicker access to online content over wireless devices, a violation of the concept of net neutrality that calls for equal access to all services. The deal comes amidst closed-door meetings between the Federal Communications Commission and major telecom giants on crafting new regulations. [includes rush transcript]

New York’s Rebatable Bailout by Ralph Nader

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Aug. 6, 2010

You can’t make up the following realities in New York State! Note the following series of events driven by the preposterous plutocrats and see if you get steamed.

Greed, power, reckless speculation and theft of other peoples’ money by Wall Streeters collapsed the U.S. economy into a deep recession that started in 2007-08.

These super-rich Wall Street banksters looted and drained trillions of worker pensions and mutual fund savings while nationwide eight million jobs were lost.

Panicked that their overweening avarice was pushing their companies over the cliff, the banksters rushed to Washington, terrified members of Congress with the help of ex-Goldman Sachs CEO turned Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and propelled the Bush White House into a series of massive taxpayer bailouts and guarantees amounting to trillions of dollars during the last quarter of 2006.

Peter Phillips: The American Media Empire of Managed News

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

with Peter Phillips
Bonnie Faulkner
Guns and Butter
Aug 4, 2010

Propaganda model post 9/11 becomes deliberate disinformation; consolidation of media and public relations groups; prison torture across the US; domestic secret detention centers; Operation FALCON mass arrests; suspension of habeas corpus by the Chief Executive; US and NATO as protectors of global capital; structure of inequality maintained by global capital and military empire worldwide; repression that addresses us all; the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.

Bartholomew Bean: The Fourth Reich Blues + The Gestapo’s Back!

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Bartholomew Bean
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Bartholomew Bean’s Youtube channel

“The Fourth Reich Blues” — 2008

Wouldn’t it be funny?
Wouldn’t it be strange!
If the world were but a mirage
A land of the deranged