Crossover As Transformation — My Testimony by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
October 31, 2017

I woke up in the early 1970s. Since such an awakening happened in my life, I believe something similar happens also in the life of others. Though I didn’t realize it I had stood for sometime at a crossroads. I had to take the left. This sounds reductive but in retrospect it feels that my transformation happened more or less like that. Before, I was one person. Afterwards—the interval might have been months long, maybe a couple years—I was another. No need to over-dramatize and claim that the event happened as if it arrived like a thunder bolt. In any case, over a period of time, in the same way revolution happens, I revolted against my own self of the time; against my old life. And I became another. Today, as a result, part of my personal philosophy of life is that people can and do change. Fundamentally.

Regulation Is Killing Community Banks by Ellen Brown

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by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
October 30, 2017

Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.

JFK Files: Cover-Up Continues of President’s Assassination by Finian Cunningham

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by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation, Oct. 28, 2017
October 30, 2017

The murder of President John F Kennedy 54 years ago has been described as the “crime of the century”. If US and Western news media cannot discuss this seminal event openly and honestly, let alone investigate it, then what does that say about their credibility?

Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer: The Silencing of the Left

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Oct 29, 2017

Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig and author of They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy discusses the New McCarthyism that is underway to silence the left-wing press. RT correspondent Anya Parempil looks at the apparent efforts to marginalize left-wing journalists online.

The Not-Radical “Socialist” From Vermont by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, Oct. 23, 2017
Previously published at Counterpunch, Oct. 20, 2017
October 29, 2017

Time as a Democracy and Socialist Movement Issue

Working-class and pro-working-class socialists and left anarchists have long fought for shorter working hours (with no reductions in pay) for some very good radically democratic reasons. It isn’t just that workers’ everyday lives and collective marketplace and workplace bargaining power are enhanced when they are freed from the scourge of over-work and when working hours are spread more evenly across the workforce. Beyond these real and meaningful gains, rank-and-file socialists and left anarchists have long supported decent working hours so that workers can have enough time to develop tastes and build knowledge and organizations to fight for a world beyond the rule of capitalism, the profit- and accumulation-addicted system that, in Karl Marx’s famous 1848 words, “resolve[s] personal worth into exchange value” and “le[aves] no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’”

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

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Dandelion Salad

Greatest AudioBooks on Nov 2, 2012

The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs.

North Korea: A Threat Or A Victim? by Felicity Arbuthnot + Sign The People’s Peace Treaty by David Swanson

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by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
October 28, 2017

If anyone is still wondering why North Korea was being “provocative” in missile tests and repeatedly declaring what would seem to be a daunting arsenal (although there is still no irrefutable, concrete proof of deliverable, long range nuclear weapons capability) here is just a small taste of what it’s southern neighbor, in cahoots with Godfather America, has planned:

Michael Roberts: The IMF Is Worried That With The Huge Increase In Inequality There Is Serious Danger Of Social And Political Unrest

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Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews on Oct 27, 2017

All income growth of the past few years is going to the top 10 percent, without paying more in taxes. IMF says that higher taxation of the top earners would not impinge on economic growth, explains economist Michael Roberts.

William K. Black: Pollution Kills 9 Million People a Year

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Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews on Oct 25, 2017

Pollution causes far more deaths than tobacco, infectious disease or war, and causes 4.6 trillion dollars of economic damage per year, according to a major new study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

War by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
October 25, 2017

If you have you ever seen a monkey hanging from a tree by its tail and showing its red ass to onlookers, then you have seen the animal kingdom’s representation of war. According to French playwright Jean Giraudoux, the pacifist and Légion d’onore holder in WWI, war looks just like that monkey’s ass. In 1933, on the eve of WWII, Giraudoux in his famous anti-war play, The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, the imminent author penned his memorable words: “When he shows us his red bottom, all scaly and glazed, encircled by a filthy wig, that’s exactly what war looks like. That’s its real face.” (Included in my novel, The Trojan Spy). Giraudoux’s play was first published in English in 1956 as Tiger At the Gates.

The Intimately Oppressed by Howard Zinn (repost)

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by Howard Zinn
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally posted August 14, 2011
October 24, 2017

Chapter 6 from A People’s History of the United States.

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

The Strange World of Russian Trolls, by William Blum

by William Blum
Writer, Dandelion Salad
October 23, 2017

Capturing the wisdom and the beauty of Donald J. Trump in just one statement escaping from his charming mouth:

“Our military has never been stronger. Each day, new equipment is delivered; new and beautiful equipment, the best in the world – the best anywhere in the world, by far.”1

Socialism, Land and Banking: 2017 Compared to 1917 by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Michael Hudson
October 23, 2017

An article written for the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, to be read in Beijing today.

Socialism a century ago seemed to be the wave of the future. There were various schools of socialism, but the common ideal was to guarantee support for basic needs, and for state ownership to free society from landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. In the West these hopes are now much further away than they seemed in 1917. Land and natural resources, basic infrastructure monopolies, health care and pensions have been increasingly privatized and financialized.

Chris Hedges: Radically Reconfiguring Our Relationship With the Planet

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Oct 22, 2017

Dr. James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, discusses the urgent need to radically change our relationship with the planet. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the accelerating pace of climate change.

Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth by John Pilger

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Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
John Pilger, Oct. 20, 2017
October 21, 2017

On 16 October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.