Massive US Surveillance On Iran Draws Yet Another Nuclear Blank by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
East Africa
April 9, 2012

Washington’s Real Agenda is Not Global Security, It’s Regime Change

A “surge” in US secret surveillance of Iran’s nuclear programme over the past three years, involving “hundreds” of spy drone flights, has not produced the slightest evidence to support Washington’s much-vaunted fears that the Islamic Republic is building a nuclear weapon.

The complete lack of gun, never mind smoking gun, comes days before the resumed P5 + 1 talks in Istanbul in which the US-led Western nuclear powers will no doubt try to browbeat Iran over its entirely legal and legitimate civilian nuclear programme.

Yves Béhar, Sodastream is not ethical, so it cannot be beautiful!

Sent by Stephanie Westbrook
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Italy
9 April 2012

Image by Takver via Flickr

Designer Yves Béhar has teamed up with Sodastream, an Israeli company operating in violation of international law, and will be presenting a new design for the company next week in Milan, Italy. Human rights groups from Canada to New Zealand, from the US to Europe signed the letter below from Stop Sodastream Italy calling on Béhar to terminate collaboration with Sodastream.

SEP Candidate Jerry White: The Decay of American Democracy

Image by quisnovus via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday on Apr 8, 2012

RT’s Marina Portnaya talks to socialist equality presidential candidate, Jerry White.

The Man in the Mirror by Jill Dalton

by Jill Dalton
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
recoveringarmybrat
April 2, 2012

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

When I learned of the Kandahar massacre of 17 civilians including 3 women and 9 children and the subsequent burning of their bodies by the alleged lone assailant, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, my first thought was obviously he snapped. The more I learned about Bales the clearer this thought became. Here’s a soldier, a trained sniper with a traumatic brain injury being redeployed shortly after he’s been told he wouldn’t be redeployed, for the fourth time into yet another combat zone.

The Stimulator: Push It!

Dandelion Salad

http://submedia.tv/

stimulator on Apr 4, 2012

This Week:

1. No Dick for Canucks
2. Margaret Thatcher is dead
3. Resistance in Quebec

The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control? by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
April 9, 2012

This is part 2 of the series, “Class War and the College Crisis.”

Part 1: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education

In Part 1 of this series, I examined the elite assault on education – through the Chamber of Commerce, right-wing think tanks, and the Trilateral Commission – which arose in response to the massive social and political activist movements of the 1960s. The threat of popular democratic participation – that is, active and activist participation of the population in the decision-making process of a community or nation – was too much to bear. The fact that a significant degree of this activism had been mobilizing from the universities was enough reason for elites to declare a “crisis of democracy” and demand more apathy, complacency, and pacification from the population, more authority for themselves, and more control over the society as a whole.

Iran and Israel are locked in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence status by Franklin Lamb

by Franklin Lamb
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Beirut, Lebanon
April 3, 2012

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the potential annihilation of both the attacker and the defender, thus becoming a war that has no victor but only reciprocal destruction is increasingly becoming relevant to the Iran/Israel regional confrontation.

The children killed by war by Ed Ciaccio

by Ed Ciaccio
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
April 5, 2012

The children killed by war

Should haunt us forever,

Their mangled limbs,

Charred bodies,

Innocent minds,

Unreached dreams

Cursing us for our blind zeal

For revenge,

Saudi Arabia and Qatar Accused of Shielding Iraqi ‘Death Squad Leader’ by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
East Africa
April 5, 2012

Fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi, who is wanted on terrorism charges in Iraq, has fled to Saudi Arabia amid growing controversy over the role of the Gulf monarchies in the region’s volatile geopolitics.

Hashemi, a leading Sunni politician, is facing charges that he ran death squads at the height of the Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict in Iraq, which saw thousands killed, during the US-led nine-year occupation of that country. Hashemi denies the charges, but the authorities in Baghdad claim they have evidence that he personally directed Sunni death squads.

NATO: The Military Enforcement Wing Of The West’s 1% by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
April 9, 2012

Image by Gosia Malochleb via Flickr

On April 7 Fox News Chicago reported on Occupy Chicago’s march through the city’s downtown, the Loop, recording that hundreds of protesters chanted “End the war, tax the rich” during part of the group’s Chicago Spring actions throughout the city “as the movement prepares for NATO.”

Numbing Numbers Explain US Frog Revolution by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
April 6, 2012

Believing in the classic American Dream that hard work will deliver prosperity is like believing that buying super lottery tickets is a smart way to become wealthy. Both are delusional beliefs because both are bets on incredible long shots that will disappoint nearly everyone who believes this garbage. The American Dream has been destroyed by a revolution from the top.

The Real Health Care Debate by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthout
April 9, 2012

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was first put into practice in 2006 in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages. It is a law that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill—some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone—for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional.

Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
April 2, 2012

The following is the first part of a series of articles, “Class War and the College Crisis.”

Today, we are witnessing an emerging massive global revolt, led primarily be the educated and unemployed youth of the world, against the institutionalized and established powers which seek to deprive them of a future worth living. In Chile over the past year, a massive student movement and strike has become a powerful force in the country against the increasingly privatized educational system (serving as a model for the rest of the world) with the support of the vast majority of the population; in Quebec, Canada, a student strike has brought hundreds of thousands of youth into the streets to protest against the doubling of tuition fees; students and others are on strike in Spain against austerity measures;