Image by Marcela via Flickr
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
February 17, 2021
KO: I wanted to begin by disclosing that I had the great honour of working with Cheryl in hospice care as medical social workers and grief counselors for several years. Her compassion, intuitive empathy and healing manner taught me invaluable lessons on how to approach death and grief.
Image by Jeremy Castillo via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Aug 15, 2020
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge with Danny Sjursen, a combat veteran and West Point graduate.
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
Originally posted May 26, 2019
May 24, 2020
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.
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on May 9, 2020
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Matthew Hoh, former U.S. Marine Company Commander, about the high rates of veteran suicides. Hoh served two tours in Iraq as a Marine and with the State Department. He resigned his position as a State Department political officer in Afghanistan in 2009 in protest over the Obama Administration’s escalation of the war.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
[DS reposted the introduction to these interviews.]
by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Peace Report, Oct. 21, 2019
October 31, 2019
I recently interviewed an Afghanistan veteran about his transition from US Army soldier to Revolutionary Communist. Mason Bliss deployed twice to Afghanistan, in 2011 and in 2013. Since separating from the US Army in 2015, he has been organizing as a communist, raising the consciousness of the masses and fighting back against the system he once defended, US imperialism.
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
May 26, 2019
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.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the videos below
Published previously on May 23, 2016
with Abby Martin
teleSUR English on May 23, 2016
On Memorial Day, politicians will speak at ceremonies all over the country and repeat their favorite mantra: “Support the troops.” This pledge is hammered into the American psyche at every turn. But there is a hidden, dark history that shows that the politicians are in fact no friend to service members–but their greatest enemy. An easy way to prove this truth is to look at how they so quickly betray and abandon their soldiers after purposely ruining their lives, and even after using them as literal lab rats.
Image by duncan c via Flickr
by Soraya Boyd
Writer, Dandelion Salad
April 13, 2018
This June will mark 12 years of a crushing and unlawful land, air and sea Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Image by Adam Jones via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jan 2, 2017
On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges discusses the hidden tragedy of the Vietnam War with author of “Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”. Nick Turse uncovered documents that revealed systematic violence against civilians extending beyond the massacre at My Lai. They look back at Vietnam to understand what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the civilian cost that accompanied our defeat in Vietnam.
Image by Kate Tomlinson via Flickr
with Abby Martin
teleSUR English on May 23, 2016
On Memorial Day, politicians will speak at ceremonies all over the country and repeat their favorite mantra: “Support the troops.” This pledge is hammered into the American psyche at every turn. But there is a hidden, dark history that shows that the politicians are in fact no friend to service members–but their greatest enemy. An easy way to prove this truth is to look at how they so quickly betray and abandon their soldiers after purposely ruining their lives, and even after using them as literal lab rats.
Image by Dean Terry via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
teleSUR English on Apr 4, 2016
In this episode of Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges interviews two veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Michael Hanes and Rory Fanning. They lament the brutality of the American military presence, which they say creates the conditions for terrorism and fuels attacks in places like Brussels. They also speak out about the painful struggle of coping with PTSD, and the alienation faced by many soldiers when they come home.
Image by Gary Lund via Flickr
Warning: for mature readers only
by William T. Hathaway
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Germany
August 21, 2015
Coming Home
From the book
Radical Peace: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway
Published by Trine Day
RADICAL PEACE is a collection of reports from antiwar activists, the true stories of their efforts to change our warrior culture. In this chapter a mother tells of her son’s return from combat. She wishes to remain anonymous.
Sent to DS by David Gutnick, CBC radio
with Chris Hedges
CBC Radio’s Ideas
By David Gutnick
Paul Kennedy, interviewer
February 9, 2015
Chris Hedges (Photo credit: Dandelion Salad)
Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges spent decades as a war correspondent for the New York Times and other publications before the suffering he witnessed became too much to bear.
Now he is minister of social witness and prison ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a popular public speaker, and an author and freelance columnist who does not shy away from controversy. Continue reading
by Shepherd Bliss
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Santa Rosa, California
December 12, 2013
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez was killed by sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus on October 22, as the boy walked home in his Latino neighborhood in Santa Rosa, California. The Iraq War veteran claims he mistook the eighth-grader’s toy rifle for a real one.
A month later another Army vet, Paul Duffy, took his own life nearby. Duffy, as some friends called him, was found by his wife hanging from a rope in the writer’s cabin he had built outside his Tomales home by the Pacific Ocean. Continue reading
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
July 2, 2013
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
“I am sorry that it has come to this.” Thus began the searing suicide note by 30-year-old Iraq War veteran, Daniel Somers on June 10, 2013 to his wife and family.
On the other side of the violent divide are video messages from the suicide bombers – the oft-described “weapon of the weak” against U.S. soldiers and their presumed local collaborators.
In 2012 suicide by active duty American soldiers exceeded the number of U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan. Why?
