No Time to Relax: Dark Clouds in Biden’s America, by Paul Street

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, June 5, 2021
June 7, 2021

The sense of relief that came over many Americans after the malignant pandemo-fascist Donald Trump’s removal from power seems increasingly misplaced. The feeling of relaxation is understandable. The pandemic is in significant retreat inside the U.S. as summer dawns, thanks in part to the Biden administration’s vaccination efforts. The improved U.S. health outlook combined with Biden and the Congressional Democrats’ large opening stimulus package to spark some modest economic recovery and hiring expansion. Significantly vaccinated fans, shoppers, diners, vacationers, drinkers, entertainment seekers, and gamblers have returned to American major league baseball, basketball, and hockey games, beaches, bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, movie theaters, concerts, and shopping malls.

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 31, 2021

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.

Slaves to the Constitution, by Paul Street

Image by Brad Dougherty via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, May 21, 2021
May 28, 2021

Slavery lives on in U.S.-American life, crippling “our” supposed grand “democracy” in numerous ways. The massive wealth, income, and health gaps between Black and white Americans and the related persistent segregation and mass arrest and incarceration of Black Americans cannot be properly understood without reference to the two and a half centuries in which Black Americans were enslaved.

The Spotlight on Israeli Apartheid Must Not Fade, by Kenn Orphan

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
May 26, 2021

Unlike ever before, Israel is finally seeing some major pushback that is international in scope. With its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign exemplified by the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, its attacks on worshippers at one of the holiest sites in Islam, Al Aqsa, and on the holiest of holidays, and its murderous and criminal assault on the captive population of Gaza, Israel has been put in an uncomfortable spotlight. But the key to dismantling its entrenched apartheid system lies in keeping that spotlight fixed, especially now that a ceasefire has been implemented. If attention is diverted, as Israel desperately wants, then it will become even more intransigent, especially as the Biden administration continues its business-as-usual approach.

Chris Hedges: The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago

Image by Derek Goulet via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 1, 2021

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses police abuse and torture with civil rights attorney Flint Taylor.

The Intensification of Colonial Genocide Will Blow Back, by Rainer Shea

Image by Dave Phillips via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
April 27, 2021

Escalation has consequences. When a government pushes its people too far, a revolt is going to happen that the government may not be able to contain. We’ve seen this in the last year, when the latest series of murders by police following the coming of a new Great Depression resulted in the largest protest movement in U.S. history. And U.S. military experts understand that over these next several decades of ongoing living standards deterioration within the capitalist world, further unrest will come about should the government take its repressive efforts too far; a 2016 Pentagon training video implies that when the U.S. Army gets sent in to suppress internal revolts, it will need to err on the side of caution if it wants to avoid killing civilians and consequently destroying the state’s perceived legitimacy.

Plutocracy I-V (must-see)

Image by duncan c via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Part I originally published Jan. 2, 2016, Part II on Dec. 30, 2016, Part III on June 28, 2017, Part IV on Apr. 29, 2018, and Part V on June 4, 2019.

by Scott Noble
Dissident Voice
December 31, 2015

Plutocracy is the first documentary to comprehensively examine early American history through the lens of class. A multi-part series by filmmaker Scott Noble, Part I focuses on the the ways in which the American people have historically been divided on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and skill level.

Danny Haiphong, Margaret Kimberley and Ajamu Baraka: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the American Empire

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens on Jan 18, 2021

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is often celebrated without any regard for his radical political legacy.

Cracks Appear in Peru’s Neoliberal Agriculture, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Samantha Hare via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
December 14, 2020

Farm workers in various regions of Peru – such as Ica, Viru La Libertad and Piurahad – went on a strike in the first week of December 2020, blocking the strategic Pan-American motorway to demand wage increases, basic social security benefits and the repeal of the decades-old Agrarian Promotion Law, enacted in 2000, as a mechanism to bolster the bourgeoisie’s power in the agro-export sector. The law benefits agro-export corporations in two ways. Firstly, it cuts the corporate tax rate by 30 to 15%, making the government lose out on more than $1 million in tax revenue. Agrokasa, Beta and Miranda are some of the companies benefitting from such hefty income tax cuts.

Chris Hedges and Paul Street: American Discontent

Image by Chris Piascik via Flickr

with Chris Hedges

and with Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
November 7, 2020

RT America on Nov 7, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Paul Street about the outcome of the US presidential election, and how despite likely losing, Donald Trump has solidified an angry, disposed working class that cuts across racial lines and has embraced a right-wing populism.

Chris Hedges: The Nature of Resistance, White Supremacy and The Rise of a New Black Militancy

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Oct 17, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to former Baltimore Black Panther leader, Eddie Conway, about the nature of resistance, white supremacy and the rise of a new black militancy.

Chris Hedges: This Is The Unraveling Of The US Empire + The Childish Mania of Hope

Image by Matt Katzenberger via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Katie Halper on Oct 9, 2020

Journalist Chris Hedges and Historian Gerald Horne discuss the “perilous moment we’re facing,” which reminds Hedges of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Middle East, which he covered.

Chris Hedges: American Empire Collapse: It’s About To Get Much Worse

Image by Metro Centric via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

act.tv on Sep 21, 2020

Julianna welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, Chris Hedges, to discuss how in his current book, America: The Farewell Tour. Hedges takes a close look at the array of pathologies that have arisen out of a profound malaise of hopelessness as the society disintegrates due to the “slow moving [corporate] Coup d’état” instituted by the ruling classes in the ’70s in reaction to the activist movements and reforms of the ’60s. And how this disintegration has resulted in an epidemic of diseases, despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function.

Chris Hedges: The Rise of the New Black Militancy

Image by Susan Melkisethian via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Sep 19, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the rise of the new Black militancy with film director and producer, Mobolaji Olambiwonnu.

Fascism and the Quickening of History + The Empty Theatre, by Kenn Orphan

Image by Anthony Crider via Flickr

by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 30, 2020

Over the last few months I have been revisiting research I did a long time ago on fascism. Pinochet’s Chile, Sukarno’s Indonesia, Montt’s Guatemala, Hitler’s Germany and beyond. I’ve spent time poring over the accounts of the survivors, the details of the crimes, the descriptions of the torture, of the camps, of the dehumanization, the cruelty, the terror, the photos of the train cars headed to concentration camps, the mass graves, the massacres, the piles of corpses. And reading through the accounts of people who knew things were going in this direction, that something ghastly was being done to other people, yet did nothing, not even raised their voice when they had the chance.