Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin and David Swanson: Ukraine: Senseless Conflict

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Dandelion Salad

with Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin and David Swanson

Ralph Nader Radio Hour on Nov 26, 2022

On this week of Thanksgiving, Ralph welcomes two distinguished anti-war activists and Nobel Peace Prize nominees, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODE Pink to discuss her book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict and David Swanson of World Beyond War to not only put the conflict in Ukraine in context but also to reveal the financial incentives that drive endless war.

Chris Hedges: Marcel Proust’s Masterpiece: In Search of Lost Time

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Nov 18, 2022

A century ago, on November 18, 1922, Marcel Proust died. He worked feverishly in his final hours on his masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu, In Search of Lost Time.

Chris Hedges and Andrew Bacevich: After the Apocalypse and the Folly of Endless War

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Nov 11, 2022

In the months of July and September 1940 the French historian and future resistance fighter Marc Bloch, who fought in World War I and World War II, wrote a short book called L’Étrange Défaite or Strange Defeat.

Tell the Truth: Veterans Day Is A National Day of Lying, by David Swanson

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Nov. 2, 2018
Originally published Nov. 12, 2018
November 10, 2022

Some are inclined to recognize that Trumpies are dwelling in an alternative universe in which neither climate collapse nor nuclear apocalypse is a concern but terrifying wild hoards of Muslim Hondurans are skipping and dancing into the Fatherland armed with gang symbols, deadly rocks, and socialistic tendencies.

Chris Hedges and Lee Camp: War—That’s How Empires Die

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Dandelion Salad

“They going to have to negotiate in the end. It’s not about Ukraine, it’s not about democracy, it’s not about freedom, it’s about degrading Russia.” — Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin: War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict

Image by Felton Davis via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Nov 4, 2022

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats.

Read Glen Ford, by David Swanson

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Jan. 12, 2022
October 23, 2022

Someone asked me the other day for advice on collecting the best essays of the past 20 years. I recommended the new collection of Glen Ford’s called The Black Agenda. I recommend it to everyone — including people who are not black. I’m not black.

The Proletariat in Search of a Class, by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Originally published Feb. 3, 2020
October 16, 2022

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”, has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept the United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariat is still quite adequate.

Chris Hedges and Gabor Maté: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Oct 14, 2022

Trauma shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we interact with others, our perception of ourselves and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds.

Chris Hedges: Dystopia, Octopus Intelligence, and What Makes Us Human

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Oct 7, 2022

In Ray Nayler’s novel The Mountain in the Sea he explores the marine habitat of a hyperintelligent species of octopus, endowed with its own language and culture, is seized by a global tech corporation determined to harness this non-human intelligence for profit in new systems of artificial intelligence.

Chris Hedges Is Right: The Greatest Evil Is War, by David Swanson

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Oct. 3, 2022
October 4, 2022

Chris Hedges’ latest book, The Greatest Evil Is War, is a terrific title and even better text. It doesn’t actually argue a case for war being a greater evil than other evils, but it sure does present evidence that war is tremendously evil. And I think in this moment of nuclear weapons threats, we can consider the case pre-established.

What Would We Do Without Police, Prisons, Surveillance, Borders, Wars, Nukes, and Capitalism? by David Swanson

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Sept. 27, 2022
October 1, 2022

What would we do in a world lacking police, prisons, surveillance, borders, wars, nuclear weapons, and capitalism? Well, we might survive. We might sustain life on this little blue dot a little longer. That — in contrast to the status quo — ought to be sufficient. We might, in addition, do a lot more than sustain life. We might transform the lives of billions of people including each person reading these words. We might have lives with less fear and worry, more joy and accomplishment, more control and cooperation.

Interview with Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil is War

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

“Anyone who has been in war would understand that evil is real.” — Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges: How George Armstrong Custer Became a Martyr Used to Justify Genocide and US Imperialism

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Sep 16, 2022

Custer became in death a martyr to the American empire. He was in popular mythology the last to die in the battle, a symbol of martial valor, although there is scant evidence for this assertion.

The Far-Right Crusade Against Human Sexuality, by Kenn Orphan

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by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 23, 2022

It has become impossible not to notice the trend. Whether it is banning the word “gay,” or banning books that contain topics related to human sexuality, or the Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federal right to an abortion, the war on human sexuality and those who are sexually divergent is ramping up on multiple fronts. Even I’ve been a target of this war. Because of my outspoken advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth, I have been labeled a “groomer” by a few figures on the far right.