Image by Cau Napoli Collettivo Autorganizzato Universitario di Napoli via Flickr
by Gregory Barrett
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aichtal, Germany
April 21, 2018
It feels as if world events are in overdrive, and sometimes it’s hard to escape the thought that that there is no longer much point in trying to analyse, or make sense of, a trajectory increasingly out of control.
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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 20, 2018
TheRealNews on Apr 19, 2018
Anti-war writer and activist David Swanson discusses his new book Curing Exceptionalism, and picks apart the chauvinistic idea that the United States of America is the greatest country on the planet.
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by William Blum
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Killing Hope
April 19, 2018
Unpersons
One reason it’s so easy to get an American administration, the mainstream media, and the American people to jump on an anti-Russian bandwagon is of course the legacy of the Soviet Union. To all the real crimes and shortcomings of that period the US regularly added many fictitious claims to agitate the American public against Moscow. That has not come to a halt. During a debate in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, candidate Ben Carson (now the head of the US Housing and Urban Development agency) allowed the following to pass his lips: “Joseph Stalin said if you want to bring America down, you have to undermine three things: Our spiritual life, our patriotism, and our morality.” This is a variation on many Stalinist “quotes” over the years designed to deprecate both the Soviet leader and any American who can be made to sound like him. The quote was quite false, but the debate moderators and the other candidates didn’t raise any question about its accuracy. Of course not.
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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
April 18, 2018
You’ve got to hand it to Hillary Clinton. In 2016, she helped put the right-wing racist, sexist, nativist, authoritarian, and nationalist oligarch Donald Trump in the White House. She and her operatives did this in two ways: (1) by rigging the presidential primaries against the popular progressive Democrat Bernie Sanders, the Democrats’ best chance to prevail over Trump; (2) by mounting a dreadfully uninspiring and transparently tone-deaf, neoliberal general election campaign – a reflection of her massive funding by the nation’s corporate and financial establishment, including big business money normally slated for Republican presidential candidates.
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by System Humanity
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
crossposted at System Humanity, April 16, 2018
April 18, 2018
What a good read I said to myself when I had finished The Dandelion Insurrection by Rivera Sun. And unusual. A delicious story with nourishing political content spiced with distinctive characters and served on beautiful prose. Love, adventure, struggle and thrills. What’s not to like? For an old grassroots political fox such as myself I wasn’t about to allow the sweetness of the fiction seduce my perception of bitter realities.
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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 17, 2018
Five years ago, the British Parliament said no to an attack on Syria that its prime minister wanted to join the U.S. president in launching. That action, combined with public pressure, was instrumental in getting the U.S. Congress to make clear that it would say no as well, were it absolutely forced to — you know — admit it existed and do anything at all. And that was key to preventing the attack.
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by Arthur D. Robbins
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
April 16, 2018
If one had wanted to create a psychosocial experiment to study the liberal political mentality, one could not have come up with a better solution than to have Donald Trump follow Barack Obama as president of the United States: one a blank screen, the Archangel, the other, the Antichrist, a raging volcano. The Archangel departed from office to a fond and teary-eyed farewell. The Antichrist was greeted with anger and outrage. There were protests around the country. There were attempts to prevent his election. He is probably the first president in American history to be docketed for impeachment before he even took office.
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with Chris Hedges
RT America on Apr 16, 2018
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, discusses the destruction of the independent press in the United States.
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TheRealNews on Apr 14, 2018
Economist Michael Roberts says the change of tone within the OECD is interesting, but there are no takers ready to implement estate taxes to reduce inequality.
Image by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Apr. 11, 2018
April 14, 2018
In the park today I saw a teenager watching two little kids, one of whom apparently stole a piece of candy from the other. The teenager rushed up to the two of them, reprimanded one of them, and stole both of their bicycles. I felt like it was my turn to step in at that point, and I confronted the bicycle thief. “Excuse me,” I said, “what makes you think you can commit a larger crime just because you witnessed a smaller one? Who do you think you are?” He stared at me for a while, and replied: “the U.S. military.”
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by Soraya Boyd
Writer, Dandelion Salad
April 13, 2018
This June will mark 12 years of a crushing and unlawful land, air and sea Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip.
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by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
April 12, 2018
As all becomes ever more rapidly surreal it seems that, barring a miracle, Draft Dodger in Chief, Donald Trump might trigger a world war, over an incident in Syria which is entirely evidence free.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
Previously published April 1, 2017
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Apr 1, 2017
On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges is joined by Professor Albert Raboteau, author of American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice. They discuss the theological and ethical motivations of prophetic figures and their importance in an age of radical evil. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the legacy of Dorothy Day who established the Catholic Worker Movement.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 10, 2018
Norman Finkelstein received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department in 1988. He is the author of ten books that have been translated into 50 foreign editions, including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering and, most recently, Gaza: An inquest into its martyrdom. His books include What Gandhi Says, About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage.
Image by Josh Bartok via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 9, 2018
Back in the 1890s those who believed conquering a continent was killing enough (without taking over Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) included Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. He clipped an article out of a newspaper about a lynching in South Carolina. He clipped a headline about “Another Outrage in Cuba.” He pasted the two together (fake news!) and gave them to a Congressman from South Carolina who was pushing for a war on Cuba. The Congressman eagerly read the article, then stopped, looked puzzled, and remarked “Why, this isn’t Cuba.”
