Why the US is Doomed, by Finian Cunningham

Democrats and Republicans

Image by Matt Katzenberger via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik
August 31, 2020

The fatal trouble with the US is that it has a chronic political disease. But none of the political class, including “populist” President Donald Trump, have a diagnosis to offer. And any remedial action always requires accurate diagnosis.

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Fascism and the Quickening of History + The Empty Theatre, by Kenn Orphan

Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally

Image by Anthony Crider via Flickr

by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 30, 2020

Over the last few months I have been revisiting research I did a long time ago on fascism. Pinochet’s Chile, Sukarno’s Indonesia, Montt’s Guatemala, Hitler’s Germany and beyond. I’ve spent time poring over the accounts of the survivors, the details of the crimes, the descriptions of the torture, of the camps, of the dehumanization, the cruelty, the terror, the photos of the train cars headed to concentration camps, the mass graves, the massacres, the piles of corpses. And reading through the accounts of people who knew things were going in this direction, that something ghastly was being done to other people, yet did nothing, not even raised their voice when they had the chance.

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Chris Hedges: Those Statues Are Statements Of White Supremacy, Part II

Albert Pike statue pedestal

Image by BeyondDC via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Aug 29, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges, in his second interview with Professor James W. Loewen, discusses public monuments and statues, who put them up and why, and what may replace them.

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Kamala Harris Is Not A “Left Radical” Or A “Marxist”, By Paul Street

DSC_2791

Image by Oisin Prendiville via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 28, 2020

Within moments of Joe Biden announcing Kamala Harris as his running mate, the Trump campaign and the American right-wing propaganda machine began portraying the California senator as a “far-left radical” of the “Marxist” variety.

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Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley: Kamala Harris Negates Black Freedom Movement

BLM March, Springfield, Oregon

Image by David Geitgey Sierralupe via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens on Aug 24, 2020

On this episode of The Left Lens, co-hosts, Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley analyze the record of Kamala Harris and why she represents a negation of everything that the Black liberation movement and U.S. political prisoners currently fighting for freedom stand for.

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Indigenous People of Mexico Fight More Than Pandemic, by Yanis Iqbal

Protest banner Oaxaca, Mexico - 2015

Image by Cordelia Persen via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 26, 2020

In Mexico, the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic is increasing. With more than 568,600 cases and 61,450 deaths (third largest number of Covid-19 deaths), the country is staggering under the Coronavirus pandemic. While the entire country is experiencing the impact, indigenous communities represent the hardest hit demographic. Data from Coneval, the national government’s social development agency, has shown that the Covid-19 fatality rate in Mexico’s poorest 427 municipalities is 14.1. On the other hand, the fatality rate in the country’s 54 wealthiest municipalities is 8.1, “meaning that people who live in impoverished parts of the country are almost twice as likely to die if they become sick with Covid-19 than those who live in affluent areas.”

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The Banality of Evil of The Evil of Two Lessers + The Democratic Party’s Raison D’être Is To Co-Opt, Absorb, Marginalize, and Neutralize The Left, by Phil Rockstroh

The Banality of Evil of The Evil of Two Lessers + The Democratic Party's Raison D’être Is To Co-Opt, Absorb, Marginalize, and Neutralize The Left, by Phil Rockstroh

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Phil Rockstroh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 25, 2020

“Not voting for Biden reveals your privilege.”

Only privileged people seem to believe the US possesses a viable democracy. The non-privileged live with the boot of the extant dictatorship of money/police state on their throats (of which, Biden has spent his life as an ardent operative). Withal, Biden has spent his political career in service to the profiteers of White privilege because, to quote the man himself, he did not “want his children to grow up in a racial jungle.”

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Late-Stage Capitalism Deprives Us Of Meaning + The Capitalist Class Is Bringing America Towards Fascism, by Rainer Shea

Nazi Donald Trump, Loretto street art

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 17, 2020
August 24, 2020

Consumerism, and the capitalist mentality more broadly, are equivalent to nihilism. They strip the human experience of meaning beyond what serves the market. When a culture revolves around this monetary and commercialist view of the world, it ceases to bring true fulfillment.

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Defund Fascism, Blue and Orange, by Paul Street

Racism Is A Virus-Zabou graffiti, Shoreditch

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 23, 2020

The American ruling class says it is opposed to “big government.” It isn’t. The wealthy Few are only against what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “the left hand of the state” – those parts of government that reflect the victories of past and ongoing social movements by serving the common good, regulating Big Business, and offering support, protection, inclusion and empowerment to the lower and working classes. That is the “big government” the rich and powerful don’t like. That is the big bad State they want to “starve” and “drown.”

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Payroll Taxes Are the Achilles Heel of Social Security, by Jim Kavanagh

to the order of me

Image by frankieleon via Flickr

by Jim Kavanagh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Polemicist
August 21, 2020

On August 8th, Donald Trump took four executive actions on coronavirus relief. One was a memorandum deferring, to the end of the year, payment of the employee portion of the payroll tax for employees making less than $4000 biweekly. (Employer payments had already been deferred in the CARES act.)

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Chris Hedges: The Importance of Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

Image by Truthout.org via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Originally published Jan. 25, 2020

with Chris Hedges and Howard Zinn

Originally on RT America on Jan 25, 2020

The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel on Jul 6, 2022

On the show this week Chris Hedges discusses the importance of historian, Howard Zinn, for a fuller understanding of American history, with author and journalist, Ray Suarez.

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Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley: Why Trump Can Still Win and Why We Must Oppose U.S.’ New Cold War Against China

China Industry

Image by AK Rockefeller via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens on Aug 17, 2020

In the fourth of the Left Lens, co-hosts, Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley discuss why Donald Trump’s re-election is not as unlikely as the Biden/Democratic Party let on. Also, Danny and Margaret discuss just some of the reasons we should oppose the U.S.’ New Cold War against China.

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US Snapback From Humiliation, by Finian Cunningham

No War On Iran NYC March

Image by Debra Sweet via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, Aug. 17, 2020
August 18, 2020

American President Donald Trump has darkly warned of something big this week, vowing to apply “snapback” international sanctions on Iran. It would be a drastic move and likely to further isolate Washington in the eyes of the world.

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The Declining U.S. Empire Is Resorting To Desperate Acts + The New Cold War Is Motivated By Fears Of Capitalist Collapse, by Rainer Shea

On the walls of the former American embassy

Image by Babak Fakhamzadeh via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 12, 2020
August 17, 2020

As Washington’s global influence rapidly diminishes, I’m picking up on a trend in how the U.S. imperialists operate: sporadically attempting to snatch up resources from other countries in desperate efforts at regaining what the empire has lost. This contrasts with the way that the U.S.-centered corporatocracy very smoothly exploited other countries when the empire was at its peak around the mid-20th century. In many cases, it was as easy and concealable as pressuring a poor country into becoming part of the corporatocracy’s business circle through some aggressive business deals.

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