Free Market Health Care: True Stories by Michael Parenti

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
www.michaelparenti.org
2 March 2012

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery (“Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account“). In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America.

Health care in this country is hailed by conservative boosters as “the best medical system in the world.” It certainly is the most expensive, most profitable, and most complicated system in the world, leaving millions of Americans in shock.

Rick Rozoff: Kyrgyzstan and global war threats

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
December 16, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

The Corbett Report
December 16, 2011

Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO International joins us to discuss the scandal of the Manas Air Base, a facility in Kyrgyzstan that has been strategically important for the US in staging and transportation to supply its decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. We discuss the history of US-Kyrgyz relations, years-long rumblings from the Kyrgyz political establishment to kick the US out of Manas, its possible use as a drug-smuggling facility, and more.

Tom Barry’s Border Wars, reviewed by Guadamour

by Guadamour
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Dec. 9, 2011

In his important book, Border Wars (MIT Press, 2011) Tom Barry writes:

I found that the border security push has injected new life into the war on drugs by reconfiguring those failed policies as vital components of national security.  Immigration  control, too, has been swallowed by the security paradigm.  Instead of reforming the economic incentives that make illegal immigration inevitable, the United States has been stuffing non-threatening people into for-profit prisons.  Counter-terrorism, the ostensible purpose of these undertakings, is an excuse for sheriffs to absorb federal subsidies.  And the lack of a coherent border policy provides a vacuum in which reactionary populism and nationalism have flourished at the local, state and federal levels.

Charles Shaw: The History of Police Militarization in the U.S. (must-see)

Dandelion Salad

Image by A. F. Litt via Flickr

UnheardVoicesArchive on Nov 30, 2011

On Monday, November 28, 2011, students at UC-Davis occupied Dutton Hall, the University’s financial center, and held an all-day teach-in. Author/Journalist/Filmmaker Charles Shaw was one of the featured speakers. Here is his talk, “The History of Police Militarization in the US.”

In Mexico, a Universal Struggle Against Power and Forgetting, by John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

By John Pilger
Information Clearing House
www.johnpilger.com
November 10, 2011

Image by iVoryTowerz via Flickr

Alameda Park is Mexico City’s languid space for lovers and open-air ballroom dancers: the gents in two-tone shoes, the ladies in finery and heels. The cobbled paths undulate from the great earthquake of 1985. You imagine the fairground sinking into the cobwebs of cracks, its Edwardian organ playing forlornly. Two small churches nearby totter precariously: the surreal is Mexico’s facade.

Debunking the Iran “Terror Plot” by Gareth Porter

by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at www.merip.org
Nov. 4, 2011

At a press conference on October 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a place where large numbers of innocent bystanders could have been killed. High-level officials of the Qods Force were said to be involved, the only question being how far up in the Iranian government the complicity went.

U.S. May Have Concealed Deterrent Aim of Iranian Plan by Gareth Porter

by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at IPS
Oct. 21, 2011

WASHINGTON, Oct 21, 2011 (IPS) – Scepticism about the U.S. allegation of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador has focused on doubts that high-level Iranian officials would have used someone like used car salesman Monssor Arbabsiar to carry out the mission.

Hemp Versus the Status Quo by Rand Clifford

by Rand Clifford
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
October 16, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

The US rose to eminence by producing value, and by a fair percentage of citizens sharing the wealth. The further the nation has been corrupted from the stability of fairness, the faster our rate of decline. Runaway greed, lust for power, and raw capitalism have reversed our national trajectory so insidiously that not just we, but even Earth’s biosphere, are in free fall. Is it more than simple coincidence that such comprehensive decline so closely parallels our prohibition of hemp?

FBI Account of “Terror Plot” Suggests Sting Operation by Gareth Porter + Pepe Escobar: Iranian plot was an inside job

Updated: Oct. 15, 2011 added 2 video interviews with Gareth Porter

by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at IPS
Oct. 13, 2011

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) – While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government “accountable” for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI “sting” operation.

The Predatory Global Empire in Panama: Punishing the Poor by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
September 12, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Establishing a New War Doctrine

The war on Panama presents an interesting case to study. Taking place in 1989, it was the first war and intervention (whether covert or overt) which was not justified on the basis of a ‘Communist threat’. As such, it has been deemed as the first post-Cold War war. However, the justifications for the intervention, which was incredibly violent and destructive, especially upon the poor majority of Panama, were confused and inconsistent.

Paul Thompson: 9/11-A mind-boggling journey + Sibel Edmonds: 9/11, Ron Paul, Israel and more

Updated: Sept. 17, 2011; added Part 3. Sept. 6, 2011; added Part 2 of the interview

by Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
Sept. 1, 2011

Image by Vitamin-K via Flickr

This is Part I of our three-part one-of-a-kind interview series with author and researcher Paul Thompson. For additional background information please visit the complete 9/11 Timeline Investigative Project at HistoryCommons.Org and Richard Clarke’s interview by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski at SecrecyKills.Com.

Noam Chomsky: Drug Cartels and the Growing Border War, interviewed by Luis Fernando Cárdenas

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Luis Fernando Cárdenas
chomsky.info
August 17, 2011

Image by iVoryTowerz via Flickr

Guernica: Journalists in Mexico live in constant danger. A photojournalist from the newspaper El Diario was recently murdered in Juárez. The newspaper responded by printing an op-ed piece addressed to the cartels titled, “What do you want from us?” Can you speculate who is responsible for these attacks against the media and why?

Dennis Kucinich at Hempfest 2011 + transcript

https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

Updated: Aug. 22, 2011 added the transcript

Image via Wikipedia

PotTVNetwork on Aug 25, 2011

POT TV – US Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaking on the main stage at the 20th Anniversary celebration of Seattle Hempfest on August 20, 2011

No New Taxes For Prisons by Glenn Langohr

by Glenn Langohr
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 12, 2011

Image by micmol ? via Flickr

As the state seeks to cut crowding, voters favor sentencing modifications for three strike penalties and other non-violent drug crimes. The economy plays a major role along with the awareness of a futile drug war and tough sentencing laws that didn’t work out as expected. Tough on crime political stances and tough sentencing laws that started in the 1980’s during the crack cocaine epidemic, and the three strikes law in 1994 has targeted non-violent criminals for drug habits and crimes relating to petty theft and residential burglaries.

Time to Look at the New Heirs ala CIA, by Sibel Edmonds

by Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
July 13, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

There is no point in wasting too many words and space rehashing what every media outlet has been reporting and recounting on the assassination of Afghan Heroin Kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai. The US media began reporting on the Kingpin, his heroin network and operations, his shady deals and even shadier connections over two years ago. This is how it always goes when the relationship between Kingpins like Karzai starts souring with their masters in Langley: