U.S. Army: 0 — Internet: 1, by David Swanson

The Intensity of PTSD

Image by Truthout.org via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
Originally posted May 26, 2019
May 29, 2023

The U.S. Army tweeted a harmless rah-rah tweet and got hit with a burst of reality never encountered on corporate-controlled media. Score one for the internet.

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Will Griffin: The Pentagon’s Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence & AI & Machine Learning

Image by Mike MacKenzie via Flickr

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
April 18, 2023

“As of April 2021, the Department of Defense has been working on 685 projects which are deeply invested in the development of artificial intelligence. Their budget mainly in the joint AI Center has increased dramatically from 89 million dollars in 2019 to 278 million dollars in 2021.

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Mass Murder: Our Wounded Humanity, by Robert C. Koehler

2022 March For Our Lives 19

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

by Robert C. Koehler
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
April 15, 2023

Once again… once again… once again….

I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. Yeah, another — the latest (?) — mass shooting in the United States, this one at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 10, two days ago as I write. Five killed, eight injured. The shooter, an employee of the bank, was killed in a shootout with police. Three officers were injured, including a rookie officer (ten days on the job), who was shot in the head and is struggling to survive. The gunman’s weapon was a nice, reliable AR-15-style rifle, legally purchased at a local gun shop a week earlier.

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Finian Cunningham and Clara Mattei: The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

Fascism

Image by Henrik Ström via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Ireland
April 13, 2023

Finian Cunningham on Apr 12, 2023

Western liberal democracy and its ubiquitous “austerity economics” is a euphemism for fascism. And the charade is finally coming to an end.

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New York Times Is Now Telling Bigger Lies Than Iraq WMDs and More Effectively, by David Swanson

Occupy Portland: How is the War Economy Working For You? Banner

Image by Lynn Friedman via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 12, 2023

The New York Times routinely tells bigger lies than the clumsy nonsense it published about weapons in Iraq. Here’s an example. This package of lies is called “Liberals Have a Blind Spot on Defense” but mentions nothing related to defense. It simply pretends that militarism is defensive by applying that word and by lying that “we face simultaneous and growing military threats from Russia and China.” Seriously? Where?

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Chris Hedges and Lori Grinker: Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict and Mike Tyson

Chris Hedges and Lori Grinker: Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict and Mike Tyson

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad
March 31, 2023

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Mar 31, 2023

I first encountered Lori Grinker’s remarkable work as a photographer in her book Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict, where a century of war is represented by and through portraits of individuals and their haunting stories of war.

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Staying Alive in a Country of Death, by Brad Wolf

Mad As Hell

Screenshot by tind via Flickr

by Brad Wolf
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 21, 2023

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

So screamed the character Howard Beale in the 1976 movie “Network,” a prescient commentary on the corporate capture and slow suffocation of America. Howard was a prime-time news anchor who’d had enough.

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Ralph Nader, Dahr Jamail and Matthew Hoh: Iraq War—Twenty Years Later + Peace in Ukraine – Say NO to Endless U.S. Wars

End the Endless Wars!

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
March 19, 2023

with Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader Radio Hour on Mar 18, 2023

In a lively and insightful roundtable discussion, Ralph hosts former Marine company commander, Matthew Hoh, who when not deployed also worked in the Pentagon and the State Department, and independent and unembedded Iraq war correspondent, Dahr Jamail. They mark the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and discuss the consequences of that misbegotten and illegal war. Plus, we hear a clip from Ralph’s and Patti Smith’s antiwar concert tour conducted in 2005. Continue reading

How U.S. Military Spending Works, by David Swanson

Stop the War$

Image by Daniel Lobo via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Mar. 10, 2023
March 15, 2023

Here’s how this works each year.

1) Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to. If you look at U.S. military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for inflation), Obama’s 2011 record will probably fall this year. If you look at actual numbers, not adjusting for inflation, Biden has set a new record each year.

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Kevin Gosztola and Daniel Ellsberg: Guilty of Journalism + Things to Learn from Daniel Ellsberg, by David Swanson

Daniel Ellsberg at The Most Dangerous Man in America

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
March 9, 2023

Shadowproof on Mar 7, 2023

Shadowproof and Project Censored present a conversation between Kevin Gosztola and Daniel Ellsberg to celebrate the release of Kevin’s book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.

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Christian Sorensen: America’s Militarization of Eastern Europe

Understanding the War Industry by Christian Sorensen

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Christian Sorensen
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 6, 2023

“Conflict is the inevitable result of a rapacious US war industry coupled with a Pentagon that behaves like it owns the world.” — Christian Sorensen

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10 Ways the War in Ukraine Threatens Our Environment

war is not green

Image by guano via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
February 22, 2023

Codepink on Feb 16, 2023

The war in Ukraine is not only a human tragedy, but an environmental disaster with exploding chemical plants spewing toxins into the air, rockets increasing greenhouse gasses and warships killing marine life.

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Inflation, Layoffs, and the $1 Trillion War Budget, by Scott Scheffer

Occupy Portland: How is the War Economy Working For You? Banner

Image by Lynn Friedman via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by Scott Scheffer
Struggle ★ La Lucha
February 11, 2023

In January, tech companies laid off 97,020 workers, more than double the layoffs in the first month of last year.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google were responsible for most of the January cuts – 18,000, 10,000, and 12,000, respectively.

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David Swanson and Lee Camp: Can The March To WW3 Be Stopped?

World War 3 - III

Image by r2hox via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Feb. 7, 2023
February 8, 2023

“It’s incredible the extent to which people still fantasize about a nuclear war in one part of the globe as if the scientists haven’t told us it impacts the entire Earth and the cloud of dust renders agriculture impossible and everybody starves and the living envy the dead.” — David Swanson.

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Chris Hedges and Richard D. Wolff: It’s Just Another Debacle By The War Profiteers

22-02-05 13 No War with Russia

Image by Felton Davis via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Democracy At Work on Jan 30, 2023

In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff explains why capitalism does not deserve credit for improved living conditions, Home Depot billionaire blames US capitalism’s problems on US workers being “lazy, fat, and stupid,” Southwest Airlines as example of failures by both corporations and their gov’t “regulators,” George Santos as creature of capitalist advertising.

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