Obama is Not a Socialist — Meet the Real Socialists by Danny Katch

Dandelion Salad

by Danny Katch
SocialistWorker.org
December 11, 2013

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

SPEECHES THAT go down in history do so for different reasons.

Mario Savio’s call to students to throw themselves on the “gears of the machine” during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 conjures the best of the moral outrage of that era. Sojourner Truth’s biting question “Ain’t I a woman?” conveys the impossible position that Black women still hold at the intersection of two different forms of oppression.

WikiLeaks’ Second Release of Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Documents (#TPP)

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Dandelion Salad

wikileaks.org
Dec. 9, 2013

[…] Today, 9 December 2013, WikiLeaks has released two more secret TPP documents that show the state of negotiations as the twelve TPP countries began supposedly final negotiations at a trade ministers’ meeting in Singapore this week.

One document describes deep divisions between the United States and other nations, and “great pressure” being exerted by the US negotiators to move other nations to their position. The other document lists, country-by-country, the many areas of disagreement remaining. It covers intellectual property and thirteen other chapters of the draft agreement. This suggests that the TPP negotiations can only be concluded if the Asia-Pacific countries back down on key national interest issues, otherwise the treaty will fail altogether.

TPP Salt Lake Extracts

TPP Salt Lake Positions

[…]

via wikileaks.org

Global Power Project: The Group of Thirty and Its Methods of Financial Governance by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally published on Occupy.com
December 8, 2013

In the first part of this exposé, I examined the origins and recent history of the Group of Thirty as a highly influential institution in the arena of global financial governance, bringing together top central bankers, financiers, policymakers and academics in the world of economic and monetary affairs.

More than three decades since it was founded in 1978, the Group of Thirty has maintained its reputation as a prominent institution in the financial world, continuing to produce influential reports and advocate for policies which are largely accepted and implemented across the globe.

Seymour Hersh: Obama “Cherry Picked” Intel on Syrian Chemical Attack to Justify U.S. Strike

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Dandelion Salad

democracynow on Dec 9, 2013

democracynow – Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh joins us to discuss his new article casting doubt on the veracity of the Obama administration’s claims that only the Assad regime could have carried out the chemical attacks in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta earlier this year. Writing in the London Review of Books, Hersh argues that the Obama administration “cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.” The administration failed to disclose it knew Syrian rebels in the al-Nusra front had the ability to produce chemical weapons. Evidence obtained in the days after the attack was also allegedly distorted to make it appear it was gathered in real time.

The Man From The North: How to Fight a Tyrant by Rivera Sun

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 8, 2013

Image by theunabonger via Flickr

The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. In spite of severe surveillance and repression, the Man From the North’s banned articles circulate through the American populace, reporting on resistance and fomenting nonviolent revolution. This article is one of a series written by The Man From the North, which are not included in the novel, but can be read here.

Chris Hedges: Credibility of the Ruling Elite is Being Shredded, Part 2

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Dec 7, 2013

On RAI with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges says that while people are disgusted with the centers of power, unless there is a constructive alternative, any eruption will be nihilistic and could be fascist.

Amend the Fed by Ellen Brown

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by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
December 7, 2013

December 23rd marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed. At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates.

J is for Jubilee, K for Kleptocrats by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
December 6, 2013

Parts J & K in the Insider’s Economic Dictionary.

Jubilee Year: In Judaic Law (Leviticus 25) a Clean Slate to be proclaimed every 50 years annulling personal and agrarian debts, liberating bond-servants to rejoin their families, and returning lands that had been alienated under economic duress. Long thought to have been merely a literary religious ideal, the policy has now been traced back to royal proclamations issued as a matter of course in Sumer and Babylonia in the third and second millennia BC. (See Bronze Age.)

Killed Beaten Raped: Migrant Workers are Slaves by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
December 6, 2013

With few opportunities at home, millions of poor, desperate men and women from South East Asia and the horn of Africa migrate annually to Saudi Arabia. Vulnerable at home and vulnerable abroad where many are enslaved and badly abused, some killed. Slavery is woven into the fabric of the psyche of the kingdom; according to Saudi scholar Ali al-Ahmed, a “culture of slavery pervades the country”[The Guardian[i]], and although banned in 1964 (when it is thought there were 30,000 slaves in the country) the barbaric practice of owning a fellow human being still exists in the form of the internationally condemned kafala sponsorship system. By tying the residency status of migrant workers to their employers, the system grants the latter total control, amounting to ownership.

Nelson Mandela: Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Blair: Tributes of Shameful Hypocrisy by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
December 6, 2013

Accusing politicians or former politicians of “breathtaking hypocrisy” is not just over used, it is inadequacy of spectacular proportions. Sadly, searches in various thesaurus’ fail in meaningful improvement.

The death of Nelson Mandela, however, provides tributes resembling duplicity on a mind altering substance.

Chris Hedges: The Pathology of the Rich, Part 1

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Dec 5, 2013

On RAI with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms.

Chris Hedges, Kade Crockford and Michael Ratner: National Security Overload (#NDAA)

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RFLS NYU on Nov 9, 2013

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. This is Hedges speaking at an event hosted by the NYU Radical Film & Lecture Series entitled “National Security Overload: The War on Whistle-blowers, Journalism, and Privacy, and its Implications for Democracy”.

Ellen Brown on Bail-ins (the Big Disaster Coming), GMO Foods, Trans Pacific Partnership (#TPP)

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with Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
December 4, 2013

Greg Hunter on Dec 1, 2013

Ellen Brown, founder of WebofDebt.com, thinks so-called ‘bail-ins’ are coming. Depositors’ money will be legally taken. Brown says, “That’s the big disaster that’s coming. Probably one of these big derivative banks will go bankrupt . . . the derivative players will get first dibs. They’ll grab all the deposits, and there won’t be anything left.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with author and journalist Ellen Brown.

Global Power Project: The Group of Thirty and the “Good Discussion” They’re Still Having by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally published on Occupy.com
December 5, 2013

The Group of Thirty (or G-30) describes itself as “a private, nonprofit, international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia,” which “aims to deepen understanding of international economic and financial issues, to explore the international repercussions of decisions taken in the public and private sectors, and to examine the choices available to market practitioners and policymakers.”

Is Iran Being Lured to Shore up US Hegemony in Middle East? by Finian Cunningham

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation
December 4, 2013

It sounds like an incredible question, but is Iran being lured in order to stabilize US hegemony in the geo-strategically vital Middle East? Yes, that’s right: is Iran being co-opted to, effectively, collaborate with the US in securing Western imperialist interests?

These interests include an accommodation with the oil-rich Persian Gulf Arab monarchies and regime change in Syria.