The Ruling Class Wants Us To Accept War As Never-ending, by Rainer Shea

Image by inmediahk via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
February 28, 2021

The ruling class of the U.S./NATO empire justifies the heinous actions of its military forces, the brutality of its internal police states, and the cruelty towards the poor of its neoliberal economic deprivation by claiming that everything it does is necessary to combat some grand evil. Whether this evil is Islam, or communism, or the very presence of opposition to Washington’s war narratives, the threat is portrayed as being so all-encompassing and enormous that it should solely occupy our political concerns.

Chris Hedges: China Is Not Our Enemy

Image by d mw via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

CODEPINK on Feb 17, 2021

As we continue to dismantle the anti-China rhetoric we are uplifting stories through webinars, hosted by CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, featuring guests from across the world that are working towards peace. This week on China Is Not Our Enemy we are excited to be in conversation with Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, author, and TV host. Jodie and Chris will discuss how propaganda drives us to war as well as the true cost of war. As a witness to war and the failings of the US hegemony, capitalism, and imperialism, Chris Hedges has a lot to share.

Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky: The State of the American Empire

Image by Jagz Mario via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jan 23, 2021

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Noam Chomsky, the pioneering linguist, prolific author of numerous seminal political works, about the state of the American Empire.

Exploiting the Chaos to Impose More Surveillance and Censorship, by Rainer Shea

Image by inmediahk via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
January 12, 2021

Welcome to the latest stage in the process of reaction that’s occurring within the U.S. ruling class amid Washington’s imperial decline. This is the stage where after Trump’s personality cult has escalated a petty political dispute into violence, the liberal technocrats who will soon have control over the White House are escalating their war against dissent.

The Nature of the American State: Corporate Dictatorship, Mass Incarceration, and Imperialism, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
December 29, 2020

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (1990): xvii

US War Machine Masquerading as Country, by Finian Cunningham

Image by Christoph Scholz via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Ireland
Crossposted from Sputnik, Dec. 21, 2020
December 22, 2020

The late and not-so-great Republican Senator John McCain once provocatively described Russia as “a giant gas station masquerading as a country”.

Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate and fellow Republican Senator, was quoted in US media over the weekend channeling McCain’s contemptuous description of Russia.

The Most Lethal Virus Is Not Covid. It Is War. by John Pilger

Image by Elliott Brown via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
John Pilger, Dec. 14, 2020
December 15, 2020

Watch Pilger’s 2010 film The War You Don’t See.

Britain’s Armed Services Memorial is a silent, haunting place. Set in the rural beauty of Staffordshire, in an arboretum of some 30,000 trees and sweeping lawns, its Homeric figures celebrate determination and sacrifice.

Total Shutdown of Dissent is U.S. Censorship’s Endgame, by Rainer Shea

Image by inmediahk via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 1, 2020
December 7, 2020

Whenever I hear about an instance of imperialist online censorship, or a short-term plan by a ruling class technocrat to further the erosion of free speech, I wonder: what’s the endgame of this? How far do these oligarchs plan to take their campaign to control the flow of information and suppress dissent? Because the destabilizing events the U.S. empire has undergone during the last year is small compared to what the climate’s meltdown will ultimately do to the capitalist world; as professor Jem Bendel concluded in his 2018 paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, at this point in the deterioration of the climate we need to view “collapse as inevitable, catastrophe as probable and extinction as possible.”

How Liberal Capitalism Has Devolved Into Open Tyranny, by Rainer Shea

Image by Strifu via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Oct. 24, 2020
October 28, 2020

Liberalism, particularly the type of liberalism from after World War II, has advertised itself as the only alternative to chaos and barbarism. As Henry Kissinger said in order to rationalize helping the side of the liberal geopolitical bloc:

The Promise of a Shiny “Great Reset” Masks Our Terrifying Future + The 2020 Election: The Latest Step in the Loss of U.S. Stability, by Rainer Shea

Image by Infinite Ache via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Oct. 14, 2020
October 20, 2020

In 1937, the storyteller H.P. Lovecraft wrote this about the direction that capitalism was taking:

“Capitalism is dying from internal as well as external causes, and its own leaders and beneficiaries are less and less able to kid themselves…The only avenue of survival for plutocracy is a military and emotional fascism whereby millions of persons will be withdrawn from the industrial arena and placed on a dole or in concentration camps with high sounding patriotic names. That or socialism—take your choice. In the long run it won’t be the New Deal but the mere facts of existence which will be recognized as the real and inevitable slayer of Hooverism.”

The Dollar Crash Of 2021: The Next Step In Capitalist Collapse + 2020 Will End With The U.S. Moving Much Closer To Dictatorship, by Rainer Shea

Image by Jernej Furman via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Sept. 30, 2020
October 2, 2020

As this year’s economic crisis has developed, the U.S.-centered corporatocracy has desperately been trying to maintain the illusion of growth, or at the least the illusion that the current contraction is sure to end and things will return to normal. But as unemployment claims in the U.S. have continued to rise, and factors like the cold war with China have thrown the NATO countries into further economic chaos, it’s become clear that the stock market has been overly optimistic about a coming recovery. Market Watch wrote last month that “The rebound will be much more gradual than the V-shaped pattern investors are betting on.”

American Cultural Psychosis and Anti-Chinese War Propaganda, by Rainer Shea

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
September 23, 2020

The Iraq invasion was a prelude to our current war run-up, the war run-up that the United States would experience when its global imperial hegemony came under threat during the 2020s. Like was the case in 2003, the empire’s propaganda machine has inculcated its narratives into the minds of a solid majority of the public. Like was the case in 2003, the main target of the empire’s violent rage is merely a scapegoat for the crises that the U.S. has been experiencing. The difference is that in 2020, America’s cultural psychosis is being directed towards preparing for a war far larger than the Iraq War, a war so destructive and costly that it could end up breaking U.S. hegemony for good.

Late-Stage Capitalism Deprives Us Of Meaning + The Capitalist Class Is Bringing America Towards Fascism, by Rainer Shea

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 17, 2020
August 24, 2020

Consumerism, and the capitalist mentality more broadly, are equivalent to nihilism. They strip the human experience of meaning beyond what serves the market. When a culture revolves around this monetary and commercialist view of the world, it ceases to bring true fulfillment.

Chris Hedges: How Teaching History Is Too Often A Form Of Social Control, Part I

Image by tq2cute via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Aug 22, 2020

Chris Hedges discusses the teaching of history as a form of indoctrination with Professor James W. Loewen.

Another Hiroshima is Coming—Unless We Stop It Now, by John Pilger

Image by International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
John Pilger, Aug. 3, 2020
August 5, 2020

In a major essay to mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, John Pilger describes reporting from five ‘ground zeros’ for nuclear weapons – from Hiroshima to Bikini, Nevada to Polynesia and Australia. He warns that unless we take action now, China is next.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.