BlackRock’s Rise Shows the Dark Direction of Monopoly Capitalism, by Rainer Shea

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.

The Capitalist “Great Reset” and the Descent Into Techno-Tyranny + With the Economy’s Collapse, More Waves of Unrest are Inevitable, by Rainer Shea

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.

Chris Hedges: How the Covid-19 Pandemic has Exposed the Weakness of American Society

Image by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 30, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to John Ralston Saul, author and president emeritus of Pen International, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weakness of American society, and accelerated the decline of the American Empire.

The Memorial Day Massacre by Sharon Smith + Labor History: Chicago Memorial Day Massacre 1937

The Chicago Memorial Day Incident

Dandelion Salad

by Sharon Smith
SocialistWorker.org
Originally posted May 27, 2011, written in May 1989
May 25, 2020

The presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the reputation of the Democratic Party from the party of the Southern slaveholders to that of “friend of the working people”—a reputation that the Democratic Party, undeservedly, continues to enjoy.

Chris Hedges: The Prospect and Need For Ecosocialism

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 23, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to writer, teacher and activist Victor Wallis about the prospect and need for Ecosocialism.

A Pandemic and a Plague of Absurdity, by Kenn Orphan

Image by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr

by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
May 22, 2020

At a certain point in an age of absurdity the normalization of madness becomes so common that it is almost indiscernible to most in the thick of it. Indeed, late capitalism, the stage which is undoubtedly preceding complete barbarism, has produced an endless stream of absurdities which not only insult the senses of those who possess a conscience and a modicum of critical thinking skills, but can also deliver a fatal injury as we are seeing unfold in real time with tepid or reckless responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chris Hedges: The Student Uprising in Paris in May 1968

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 16, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author and translator, Mitch Abidor about the student uprising in Paris in May 1968.

Coronavirus Capitalism and “Exceptional” America, by Paul Street

Image by Peter Burka via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, Apr. 29, 2020
May 11, 2020

As the global coronavirus public health and economic crisis of 2020 approaches the international workers’ day May 1^st, let us consider 23 ways in which it is a crisis of and by capital and its class rule profits system:

Caleb Maupin: What is the Lumpenproletariat? + Will Griffin: What Are The Principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?

by Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Caleb Maupin (website)
Caleb Maupin (Facebook Page)
May 10, 2020

“Well also within the working-class, Marx talked about you have the lumpenproletariat and what the lumpenproletariat is, is people that are part of the working class but they’re never really allowed to be part of the working class. Their income comes from criminal activities mostly. They’re barely employed, they’re barely surviving, they’re desperately poor and they’re just completely locked out.” — Caleb Maupin

The Virus is a Mirror, by Andrew Gavin Marshall

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by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Toronto, Canada
Empire and Economics
May 7, 2020

Let us see that the virus allows us to reflect on ourselves, not simply at a national level, but at a civilizational level – at the level of the human species.

The Economic Collapse Is Going To Get A Lot Worse, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, May 1, 2020
May 4, 2020

The United States and the other core imperialist countries haven’t had socialist revolutions because the masses within them have been kept complacent. They’ve directly or indirectly benefited from the exploitation of colonized peoples, enjoying relative economic advantages despite their being subordinate to the capitalist class. Even as inequality has increased in the last generation or so, this has let the system keep them from taking action. They’ve been told that they need to be loyal to their country, that they can get ahead if they try, that capitalism gives them a better lifestyle than socialism would.

Nothing Is Going Back To Normal — May Day 2020

Image by brent granby via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

sub.Media on Apr 30, 2020

This May Day finds us at an important historic crossroads. Amidst a global pandemic, this year the streets will be eerily silent as people forgo the marches, rallies and riots that are the annual rituals of international workers day.

The Incomplete and Wonderful History of May Day + Chris Smalls: Support May Day Strikers

Image by Annette Dubois via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Updated: April 30, 2020
Originally published May 1, 2016

The Laura Flanders Show on Apr 26, 2016

Author and professor Peter Linebaugh discusses his new book, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day. Later in the show filmmaker Avi Lewis discusses worker-owned factories in Argentina, and Laura focuses on the intersectional feminism of 19th Century Anarchist Lucy Parsons.

The Fascistic Restructuring of American Capitalism, by Rainer Shea

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
April 29, 2020

Since the United States became the main world power in the 1940s, opening corporations up to the countries the U.S. empire would come to exploit in the following decades, working class people in America have filled a role more disposable than had previously been the case. Labor could be easily extracted by U.S. corporations from the Third World, because capitalism was now centered around the largest empire in world history. But now the economic order is changing, and the U.S. capitalist class is needing to adapt.

Chris Hedges: It’s the System of Corporate Power and That Is Not Going To Get Better Unless We Make War Against the System

Image by May S. Young via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

“The Democratic Party know they’re safe with Biden. Look, it’s the fact, it’s all of these programs of austerity, the evisceration of our constitutional rights and civil liberties, the right to privacy, the complete control of the legislative process by corporate lobbyists and corporate money. The massive amounts of money it takes to run which comes from the oligarchs which is only a form of legalized bribery.” — Chris Hedges