Chris Hedges: Change Doesn’t Come Through Voting—Change Always Comes From The Streets

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

acttv on Jun 16, 2020

Julianna welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, Chris Hedges, to discuss how as lawmakers and activists are working together to make real changes in policing that are worth celebrating, it is important to name the statements that are opportunistic and performative, like police officers taking a knee with protesters before proceeding to pepper spray them. Chris talks about why these faux actions are so insidious.

Trump and Fox… Peddling Fake News for Military Coup + So It’s OK to Erase Soviet Statues, but Not Western Imperialist Ones? by Finian Cunningham

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by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation, June 16, 2020
June 21, 2020

President Trump’s favorite news channel Fox has been caught out falsifying protests in Seattle, giving the distorted impression that the city is overrun by armed anarchists. That conveniently set Trump off on a rant in which he threatened to send in military forces to “take back” the city from “domestic terrorists”.

Chris Hedges: This is a Class and a Generational Revolt

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jun 18, 2020

The US “War on Drugs” has ramped up in the Caribbean Sea, with the United States targeting alleged cocaine trafficking into the United States. Meanwhile, the United Nations reports the amount of land being used to grow the coca plant has decreased in Colombia. RT America’s John Huddy reports. Then Chris Hedges, host of “On Contact,” breaks down the “War on Drugs,” and comments on the recent US uprisings against police brutality and capitalism.

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

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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.

Danny Haiphong: Malcolm X on American Exceptionalism: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Dandelion Salad

“The liberal co-optation is the genesis of repression not only in the state as we see it now with the police brutalizing protesters, killing black people, targeting journalists, all of the egregious human rights violations that we see occurring right now in the United States. That is one form of repression but then there’s the other ideological repression and war that is part of this struggle and we are seeing it pretty outwardly right now with the corporations and the local governments and the Democratic Party with the Kente cloth-kneeling all that as part of this ideological war, a war of placation, the attempts to really steer the movement into acceptable means of protests.” — Danny Haiphong

There Will Be No Social Or Racial Justice Worth Having On A Dead Planet, by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, June 13, 2020
June 14, 2020

I have never heard it louder than I did this morning.

The Interstate highway, I-80, that is, two miles or so north of my abode in Iowa City.

It’s a highway to Hell in the heartland of the deranged Superpower that leads the world in per-capita Greenhouse Gassing.

Chris Hedges and Glen Ford: Analysis of the George Floyd Protests

Image by Geoff Livingston via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jun 13, 2020

On the show today, Chris Hedges discusses the George Floyd protests, erupting in over 140 American cities, with Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report.

Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief + It’s Reckoning, Not Wrecking, by Finian Cunningham

Image by Tony Webster via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, June 10, 2020
June 12, 2020

Donald Trump’s indulgence in conspiracy theories is running amok. The latest is his speculation that a 75-year-old man who had his skull split open by police was a “provocateur”.

The Corporate Origins of the Anti-Science “Reopen” Demonstrations, by Pete Dolack

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by Pete Dolack
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Systemic Disorder, June 10, 2020
June 11, 2020

Many of the same extreme right operatives who created the “Tea Party” are behind the anti-science and anti-intellectual spectacles opposing measures designed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. And with much the same agenda.

Chris Hedges: Cops Are The Primary Source Of Social Control + The Censorship Has Been Cheered On By The Left

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Dandelion Salad

“You have this completely clueless, out of touch elite amassing more and more power and making decisions that are deeply destructive to the state but ultimately I think self-destructive. So I don’t see them stopping, I don’t see them responding in a rational way and I think that the country is headed for some very serious unrest.” — Chris Hedges

The Ugly States of America, by Finian Cunningham

Image by Ted Eytan via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, June 8, 2020
June 9, 2020

The United States seems hopelessly riven with division, as the mass protests over the police killing of African-American man George Floyd reveal.

Protesters are calling for police forces accused of systematic racism to be defunded and disbanded. While opponents – many of whom seem to be supporters of President Trump – are calling for a tough law-and-order response to what they view as rioters and subversives.

Over the Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd, by Jim Kavanagh

Image by Dan Gaken via Flickr

by Jim Kavanagh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Polemicist
June 8, 2020

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” — Aristotle

It has been an extraordinary week. On the heels of a pandemic and months-long lockdown, a nationwide uprising erupted in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. In some 75 cities across at least 16 states, and around the world, militant, multiracial gatherings of thousands of rightfully-enraged people overwhelmed police forces, prevented arrests, forced the evacuation of, and burned, a police precinct, and damaged and burned dozens of buildings. Mainstream news reporters from around the world were arrested and fired upon with rubber bullets on live television. Police SUVs drove into crowds of people. It has been the most extensive, and the most threatening, explosion of popular rage against the machine since the uprisings of 1967-8.

The Good, the Potential, and What Might Happen, by David Swanson + Chris Smiley: Truth About The Uprising From A Leftist

Image by Geoff Livingston via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, June 5, 2020
June 7, 2020

Already we’ve seen, as a result of people taking to the streets in the United States:

Chris Hedges: The Capitalist Class Wants To Keep The Working Class In A State Of Constant Distress

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Dandelion Salad

“The longer the ruling elites refuse to address the root causes behind these protests, the more they loot the treasury to enrich themselves and their fellow oligarchs, the more they engage in futile and absurd efforts to deflect blame, the more unrest will spread. The last desperate resort by the oligarchs to save themselves will be to stoke the fires of racialized violence between disenfranchised whites and disenfranchised people of color.” — Chris Hedges

It Can Happen Here, by Kenn Orphan

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by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 3, 2020

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” — Vladimir Lenin

With a global pandemic where over 100,000 Americans are dead, staggering unemployment not seen since the Great Depression, the ever present and unfolding threat of climate change fueled catastrophes, white supremacist agitators, the wealthiest and most powerful empire on earth today is facing the perfect storm. Quite possibly, its quietus. At the center of this firestorm, an unhinged emperor is fanning the flames.