Ninety Percent of Petraeus’ Captured “Taliban” Were Civilians By Gareth Porter

by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at IPS
12 June, 2011

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

WASHINGTON, Jun 12, 2011 (IPS) – During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, Gen. David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: in a 90-day period from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban.

Lie To Me by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
June 12, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

What is the main lesson from the recent fiascos of former Senator John Edwards and Representative Anthony Weiner?  If you follow the news shows you saw a number of video clips where each of them had lied many times about what eventually they confessed to, their stupid, sleazy sexual misconduct.  As I watched the videos I was amazed how good their lying behavior was, without any hint of their blatant dishonesty in how they looked or sounded.  Of course, I was also reminded how terrific a liar Bill Clinton was when he went on television to lie about his sexual misconduct.

Empire Games – but who writes the rules? By William Bowles

by William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
12 June, 2011

Image by quisnovus via Flickr

The Western left’s abdication, nay abandonment of principles that go to the heart of the socialist liberation project has been long in the making, centuries even and made all the more obvious by the left’s take on events in Libya and now Syria. Critiques of the ‘humanitarian, socialist interventionists’ came thick and thin but for the most part the fundamental question of why the left had abandoned its historic mission has not been asked.

Reporting From Tripoli: What is Really Happening in Libya by Cynthia McKinney

Dandelion Salad

by Cynthia McKinney
Global Research
June 12, 2011

Image by ЯAFIK ♋ BERLIN via Flickr

As my time in Libya winds down, I am rushing to see as much as I can.

A national tour has been organized and announced by ANSWER that will take me to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Atlanta (not necessarily in that order) in order to help me raise the funds to pay back the loan that brought the journalists and me down here.

Radical Democracy & Popular Power: Thinking About New Socialisms for the 21st Century

Dandelion Salad

Socialist Project -» LeftStreamed

Ottawa — 5 March 2011

David McNally teaches Political Science at York University, Toronto and is a long-time activist in socialist and global justice movements. He is the author of six books, includingGlobal Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (2010) published by PM Press.

“How can you have a dialogue with someone who is holding a gun to your head?” by Timothy V. Gatto and Finian Cunningham

by Timothy V. Gatto and Finian Cunningham
Featured Writers
Dandelion Salad
June 12, 2011

This third interview with Finian Cunningham, an Irish journalist now living in Manama, Bahrain, is probably the most telling yet. The arrest of 47 medical personnel and the subsequent torture after their arrest for crimes against the government in Bahrain belies this notion expressed to President Barack Obama that “everything is returning to normal” in Bahrain. With the presence of the US 5th Fleet in that country, our government surely knows that the massive reprisals by the monarchy in Bahrain are still continuing, right up to the present day.

NATO’s Afrika Korps Escalates War Of Attrition Against Libya by Rick Rozoff + NATO chief Rasmussen grilled

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
June 12, 2011

Image by BlueRobot via Flickr

The relentless and intensifying Western air war against Libya will soon enter its fourth month. For the first thirteen days starting on March 19 under the control of U.S. Africa Command and Operation Odyssey Dawn and thereafter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Operation Unified Protector, the air assaults represent the second longest armed aggression in NATO’s history, already surpassing by a week the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Only the now nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan exceeds the current campaign in length.

Election Fraud: An Interview with the Honorable Cynthia McKinney, Part I by Cindy Sheehan (2009)

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
June 12, 2011

Image by tiganatoo via Flickr

What follows is my edited (for length) interview with former Congressional Representative and Green Party Candidate for President in 2012, Cynthia McKinney.

I interviewed Cynthia is a warm studio in Atlanta, Georgia in the summer of 2009—but the interview below is still relevant and fascinating. Cynthia and I are very comfortable with each other and I hope her humanity can shine up from the page to your eyes and into your heart.