Image by tq2cute via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, June 30, 2020
July 2, 2020
The media firestorm over alleged Russian intelligence collusion with Afghan militants to kill US troops has the hallmarks of a psy-ops orchestrated by America’s Deep State.
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 30, 2020
July 1, 2020
Matt Taibbi concluded that the 2008 Wall Street bailout had “built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failier, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors.” In this post-crash environment, the largest financial institutions gained more of a hegemonic grip than ever, with the five biggest banks having come to own almost half the industry by 2015.
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
Netflix on Apr 17, 2020
Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America.
Image by Paula Funnell via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, June 28, 2020
June 29, 2020
The New York Times claims that Russia offered to pay Afghans to kill U.S. (and allied) troops. It does not claim that any payments were made. It does not claim that any troops were killed. It does not claim that any impact was had on anything. It does not name its sources. It does not offer any evidence other than the supposed assertions of nameless government officials. It does not offer any justification for not naming them. It does not provide the context of all the years the U.S. government spent arming and funding Afghans to kill Russians, nor all the more recent years during which the U.S. military has been both the enemy of the Taliban and its top funding source (or at least second to opium). It promotes the ridiculous and debunked Russiagate notion that Trump is too kind to Russia.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 20, 2020
June 26, 2020
Underneath the bluster of a Trump administration that still acts like the United States is the world hegemon, the ruling class is working to pragmatically respond to the loss of America’s status as a dominant power. In 2017 the Pentagon put out a report that admitted American global influence is rapidly declining, and now that the U.S. is sure to soon lose its superpower status, the corporatocracy has to address this issue.
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by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, June 22, 2020
June 23, 2020
BlackRock is a global financial giant with customers in 100 countries and its tentacles in major asset classes all over the world; and it now manages the spigots to trillions of bailout dollars from the Federal Reserve. The fate of a large portion of the country’s corporations has been put in the hands of a megalithic private entity with the private capitalist mandate to make as much money as possible for its owners and investors; and that is what it has proceeded to do.
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with Chris Hedges
acttv on Jun 16, 2020
Julianna welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, Chris Hedges, to discuss how as lawmakers and activists are working together to make real changes in policing that are worth celebrating, it is important to name the statements that are opportunistic and performative, like police officers taking a knee with protesters before proceeding to pepper spray them. Chris talks about why these faux actions are so insidious.
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with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jun 20, 2020
On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the criticism and censorship surrounding Michael Moore’s film “Planet of the Humans,” with director, Jeff Gibbs.
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with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jun 18, 2020
The US “War on Drugs” has ramped up in the Caribbean Sea, with the United States targeting alleged cocaine trafficking into the United States. Meanwhile, the United Nations reports the amount of land being used to grow the coca plant has decreased in Colombia. RT America’s John Huddy reports. Then Chris Hedges, host of “On Contact,” breaks down the “War on Drugs,” and comments on the recent US uprisings against police brutality and capitalism.
Image by Tom Blackwell via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 15, 2020
June 18, 2020
Covid-19 has brought about the era of biopolitics, an era that will continue for the foreseeable future. This is because the virus is far from being defeated; a resurgence of it is likely to happen this fall, and the neoliberal world’s refusal to sacrifice business for public health is sure to perpetuate the pandemic for as long as neoliberalism exists. Biopolitics is also here to stay because we’ve reached a point in the climate crisis where global weather patterns are much more compatible with viruses than they used to be. More viruses are going to appear in the coming years with increasing ferocity, which will necessitate an irreversible series of changes to how society functions.
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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
June 17, 2020
“A civilization reveals itself as fruitful by its ability to incite others to imitate it: when it no longer dazzles them it is reduced to a mere collection of odds and ends and vestiges of former worldly greatness. The successive attempts of Napoleon and Hitler to create a world empire failed, as the United States of North America has failed in our time because any initial attraction they might have exerted on the conquered transformed into resistance and hate as a result of their genocidal policies or military occupation and/or exploitation of the resources of the conquered lands instead of gradual absorption and acceptance of different peoples and the furthering of local cultures.” (Paraphrased from Cioran’s Histoire et Utopie)
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“The liberal co-optation is the genesis of repression not only in the state as we see it now with the police brutalizing protesters, killing black people, targeting journalists, all of the egregious human rights violations that we see occurring right now in the United States. That is one form of repression but then there’s the other ideological repression and war that is part of this struggle and we are seeing it pretty outwardly right now with the corporations and the local governments and the Democratic Party with the Kente cloth-kneeling all that as part of this ideological war, a war of placation, the attempts to really steer the movement into acceptable means of protests.” — Danny Haiphong
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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, June 13, 2020
June 14, 2020
I have never heard it louder than I did this morning.
The Interstate highway, I-80, that is, two miles or so north of my abode in Iowa City.
It’s a highway to Hell in the heartland of the deranged Superpower that leads the world in per-capita Greenhouse Gassing.
Image by Geoff Livingston via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jun 13, 2020
On the show today, Chris Hedges discusses the George Floyd protests, erupting in over 140 American cities, with Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report.
Image by Tony Webster via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, June 10, 2020
June 12, 2020
Donald Trump’s indulgence in conspiracy theories is running amok. The latest is his speculation that a 75-year-old man who had his skull split open by police was a “provocateur”.
