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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
May 11, 2017
The USA is still bogged down in Afghanistan (the 16 year-old occupation is the longest in American history) and in Iraq (since the unconstitutional, illegal invasion of the country 14 years ago).
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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
May 10, 2017
The Constitution suddenly seems to have bestirred itself and declared itself, through its many Washington spokespeople, to be in crisis.
I’m sorry, interjects the world, but what the hell took you so long?
by Arthur D. Robbins
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
May 9, 2017
War has indeed become perpetual and peace no longer even a fleeting wish nor a distant memory. We have become habituated to the rumblings of war and the steady drum beat of propaganda about war’s necessity and the noble motives that inspire it. We will close hospitals. We will close schools. We will close libraries and museums. We will sell off our parklands and water supply. People will sleep on the streets and go hungry. The war machine will go on.
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by Roman A. Montero
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Libcom, May 4, 2017
Oslo, Norway
May 8, 2017
The early Christian Communities practiced communism, here’s how we know.
When I wrote the book All Things in Common, The Economic Practices of the Early Christians some people suggested I drop my use of the term ”communism” from the text; their reasoning was sound: the term communism has many negative connotations. When most people hear the world “communism”, they think of one of two things: totalitarian regimes such as Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, or some far off utopia where the entire world lives without any property whatsoever or any state. The actual classical meaning of the word, the meaning that actually represents something in reality, is basically nothing more than any social-relationship or structure where the principle of “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” is the primary moral framework of the social relationship or structure. Instead of replacing the term with something else, I went through the trouble of breaking down what communism actually means and contrasting it with other principles of social-relationships like hierarchy or exchange. The reason I stuck with the term “communism” was simple: that term is simply the most fitting term for the economic practices of the early Christians that differentiated them from the larger Roman world; the more I studied the issue the more I became convinced of that.
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ampopfilms on Jul 16, 2014
Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics.
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by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation, May 4, 2017
May 6, 2017
After decades of delaying, the United Nations finally released archives from the Second World War-era war crimes commission investigating the Nazi Holocaust. The source of those archives on Nazi war crimes were Western governments, including those in exile at the time of the war, such as the Belgian, Polish and Czechoslovakian. The time period covered is 1943-1949. Washington and London had long sought to halt the release. Why?
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with Chris Hedges
RT America on May 6, 2017
On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges is joined by Adam Jackson, CEO of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a grassroots group working to improve the lives of African Americans in his home city of Baltimore. RT correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the rise of the new black radical.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
with Abby Martin
Empire Files on Jun 19, 2017
Out of the periphery of most online users, there’s a vast, hidden space used by people who want to remain anonymous, which filmmaker Alex Winter explores in his documentary Deep Web. The film focuses on the Silk Road, a black market hosted on the Darknet using bitcoin cryptocurrency, and the trial of Ross Ulbricht, who was given a double life sentence without the possibility of parole for creating and hosting the site.
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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
May 5, 2017
Anxiety and depression are at unprecedented levels worldwide and the numbers are growing. The World Health Organization (WHO) describe it as an epidemic, and estimate that 615 million people are suffering from one or other of these debilitating diseases. A staggering number, that in all likelihood is an indication only of the depth of the problem; anxiety as documented by the WHO, is primarily a developed nation’s issue. The 800 million living in extreme poverty in India for example are not polled, and are too overwhelmed by the daily demand for survival to even question if they feel depressed or anxious; so too the 500 million living on the margins of life in sub-Saharan Africa, or rural China.
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with Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Michael Hudson
May 4, 2017
The Laura Flanders Show on Mar 28, 2017
We’re living in a time of economic babble, where politicians and economists throw out words like “reform,” “privatize,” and “austerity” to prop up corrupt capitalist opportunists. So says our guest this week, economist Michael Hudson, author of J is for Junk Economics.
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World Socialist Web Site on May 3, 2017
The threats against North Korea are part of a broader confrontation with China, which the US regards as the chief obstacle to its global hegemony.
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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
May 3, 2017
The large marches, in Washington, DC and around the country, calling attention to importance of science and focusing on the calamitous impacts of climate change had impressive turnouts. But the protests would have been more productive if they concentrated more – in their slogans and signs – on 535 politicians to whom we have given immense power to influence policies relating to those issues, for ill or for good.
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by Arthur D. Robbins
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
May 2, 2017
War has indeed become perpetual and peace no longer even a fleeting wish nor a distant memory. We have become habituated to the rumblings of war and the steady drum beat of propaganda about war’s necessity and the noble motives that inspire it. We will close hospitals. We will close schools. We will close libraries and museums. We will sell off our parklands and water supply. People will sleep on the streets and go hungry. The war machine will go on.
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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Originally published August 31, 2016
May 2, 2017
The quality of loyalty has played an important but perplexing role in my life, both positive and negative, which for many years has prompted countless nocturnal ruminations about the reasons for my concern for what at first glance might be considered banal. Along the way I have experienced that loyalty is often confused with sense of duty to which, in my opinion, it should not be reduced. Instead, rather than a quality related chiefly to duty, obedience or obligation, I have come to relate loyalty more easily to love. Nonetheless, in my experience too much loyalty has been a curse, a cross to bear. As a result of my family background, religious and typical American South, as well as the ideological environment of the second half of the twentieth century in which I became closely involved, I have been infected with a powerful sense of loyalty. The quality of loyalty as I intend it includes—by some complex extension in my mind almost a perversion—discipline and severity and, above all, love. Thus, although at times a handicap and an impediment, loyalty remains ethically desirable.
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Dandelion Salad
Originally published May 1, 2015
Republished with permission from IWW
by Eric Chase
IWW, 1993
May 1, 2017
Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers’ Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don’t realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as “American” as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.
Dandelion Salad 