Chris Hedges: Monitoring of AP Phones a “Terrifying” Step in State Assault on Press Freedom + Transcript

with Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
May 15, 2013

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democracynow on May 15, 2013

http://www.democracynow.org – The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press. The phones targeted included the general AP office numbers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The action likely came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story on the U.S. intelligence operation that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and former New York Times reporter, calls the monitoring “one more assault in a long series of assaults against freedom of information and freedom of the press.” Highlighting the Obama administration’s targeting of government whistleblowers, Hedges adds: “Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they are terrified of going to jail.”

Cornel West: Obama is a War Criminal + Julian Assange: What Makes Us Civil is Education

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Dandelion Salad

ignoredvoices on May 9, 2013

Influential philosopher and historian West is disappointed with Obama.

Dear President Obama: “By What Authority?” by Bruce Fein and Ralph Nader + Barack Obama’s Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Yemen

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
May 13, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

As a former lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, you know that the federal government, including the Office of the President, does not enjoy limitless powers.  As President, your powers are limited to those conferred either by the Constitution or federal statutes. 

Murder Is Our National Sport, by Chris Hedges

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by Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
May 13, 2013

Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. We have carried out blood baths on foreign soil and on our own land for generations in the vain quest of a better world. And the worse it gets, the deeper our empire sinks under the weight of its own decay and depravity, the more we kill.

US Driven By Nazi War Machine by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from PressTV
May 11, 2013

The annual VE Day – victory in Europe – celebrations held this month see, as usual, Western governments indulging in self-glory and moral superiority for their supposed defeat of German fascism. However, the official history books do not tell of the secret pact that Western governments and Washington in particular formed with the remnants of the Nazi war machine.

Only You Can Prevent Fracking by Peter Rugh + Frack Fact by Walter Brasch

Dandelion Salad

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by Peter Rugh
SocialistWorker.org
First published at Waging Nonviolence, May 7, 2013
May 9, 2013

SMOKEY THE Bear thought he smelled a fire in the woods. But as he approached the clearing and saw a giant derrick jutting out into the sky, he realized that what his nose had picked up was the scent of hydrocarbons. It was another piece of evidence that the increasingly widespread method of oil and gas extraction known as fracking was poisoning the environment that he and his human friends depend on. He decided something must be done.

The Banking System In Short by Rudo de Ruijter

by Rudo de Ruijter
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Independent researcher
www.courtfool.info
Netherlands
May 7, 2013

Today’s bank system adheres to a very simple principle. When you want to borrow money, you promise the banker you will pay him back and with that promise the banker creates a balance for you. You owe interest on it.

Because so few people know how the system works, nearly nobody sees how – in an almost mechanical way – banking with thin air parasites society like a cancer tumor and reduces people to cogs to appease its financial hunger.

You Might Be a Socialist If… by Michael Engel

by Michael Engel
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Socialism for Dummies, March 28, 2013
May 12, 2013

Image by origamidon via Flickr

There’s ironic pleasure watching Republicans as they fight among themselves to see who’s more right-wing.  Thanks to pressure from the Tea Party faction, the PC Disease that supposedly was the affliction of the Left has now infected them.  Too bad they didn’t learn from our history.  For 150 years, those who called themselves socialists have argued over the “correct” interpretation of the Sacred Texts and over who was entitled to mark the “true path” to socialism.  The resulting factionalism fractured the movement as a whole.

Norman Finkelstein: How to Solve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Dandelion Salad

Part 1 of 3: Possibility

jeannekyle on May 11, 2013

Large Corporations Seek U.S.–European ‘Free Trade Agreement’ to Further Global Dominance, by Andrew Gavin Marshall

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by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally posted at: AlterNet
May 12, 2013

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the latest plan of conglomerates to strengthen their grip over the planet.

A corporate world order is emerging, and like any parasite, it is slowly killing off its host. Unfortunately, the “host” happens to be the planet, and all life upon and within it. So, while the extinction of the species will be the end result of passively accepting a corporate-driven world, on the other hand, it’s very profitable for those corporations and their shareholders.

Hold the front page! We need free media, not an Order of Mates, by John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
http://johnpilger.com
9 May 2013

The other day, I stood outside the strangely silent building where I began life as a journalist. It is no longer the human warren that was Consolidated Press in Sydney, though ghosts still drink at the King’s Head pub nearby. As a cadet reporter, I might have walked on to the set of Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page. Men in red braces did shout, “Hold the front page”, and tilt back their felt hats and talk rapidly with a roll-your-own attached indefinitely to their lower lip. You could feel the presses rumbling beneath and smell the ink.

Rule Britannia for Global Crimes by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from PressTV
May 8, 2013

It’s an anthem that is usually sung with chest-thumping pride and misty eyes by British imperialists. “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves”. This jingoistic celebration of Britain’s former global conquest may yet degenerate into “Rue Britannia, Britannia rues the waves”.

This is because, as The Guardian newspaper reports this week, the London government has at long last been forced into recognizing compensation payments for as many as 50,000 Kenyan nationals who were victims of torture and other crimes against humanity during that country’s independence struggle in the 1950s. The eventual bill for compensation could run up to tens of millions of pounds.

Mothers and Allies Challenge Wine Industrialist by Shepherd Bliss

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by Shepherd Bliss
Writer, Dandelion Salad
May 9, 2013

Half a dozen mothers from small town and rural Sebastopol in Northern California quickly rallied hundreds of people to their side to challenge Sonoma County’s Paul Hobbs Winery. He wants to convert a 40-acre apple orchard into a vineyard that would use pesticides; it borders five schools on Watertrough Road, including Apple Blossom and Orchard View. Together they have around 700 children, as well as many teachers, staff, neighbors and wildlife.

If We Love Our Children, Why Are We Dooming Them? by Ed Ciaccio + The Campaign to Mislead the Public on Climate Change

by Ed Ciaccio
Writer, Dandelion Salad
May 10, 2013

Image by ironmanixs via Flickr

Environmentalist/Climate Catastrophe activist Bill McKibben’s campaign and web site www.350.org has a very specific, vital mission:

“350 means climate safety. To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm. But 350 is more than a number—it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.”

Secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt + Transcript (2011)

Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

libribooks on Apr 24, 2013

Leaked Full Secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Thanks to Wikileaks.
Date – 23 of June, 2011