David Swanson: How Do You Blow the Whistle on a Whole Society? + Transcript

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
February 6, 2020

“Both war and murder are crimes. It is a crime under Iraqi law to murder someone in Iraq, just as under U.S. law to murder someone here. It is a crime under international law to commit war in Iraq just as it would be in the United States. War is murder by military. Murder is war without military. The legal and moral distinction between murder and war is not and should not be what people suppose. And the distinction should not be a question of who the victims are.”

Glen Ford: History of Black Radicalism, Social Justice, and Antiwar

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by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Peace Report
April 16, 2019

The Peace Report on Apr 8, 2019

Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report was the keynote speaker at the No Compromise No Retreat campaign launch event organized by Black Alliance For Peace.

Chris Hedges and Andy Worthington: Over 17 Years of Detention and Torture at Guantanamo Bay Prison

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges and Andy Worthington

RT America on Mar 23, 2019

The most notorious U.S. detention site in the world, Guantanamo Bay, still holds 40 prisoners. Most of the 800 men shipped to Guantanamo Bay since it was opened under George W. Bush in 2002 were sold to U.S. forces for bounty by Pakistani and Afghan officials, militia and warlords. They were stripped of their legal rights, held for years without being charged or given a fair and open trial. Not only is the detention center a recruiting dream for radical jihadists, it costs American taxpayers $0.5 billion a year, roughly $11 million dollars for each detainee.

Chris Hedges: America’s Complicity in Turning Honduras Into a Failed State

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Dec 8, 2018

Dana Frank, Professor of History Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz talks to Chris Hedges about America’s complicity in turning Honduras into a failed state, and its geopolitical consequences.

Chris Hedges and Glen Ford: The Con Of Diversity

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Oct 27, 2018

Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report, talks to Chris Hedges about the history of affirmative action, reparations, and the con of diversity in America.

Time to End the Ruinous U.S. Alliance with Saudi Arabia by Gareth Porter + Saudi-led Coalition Airstrike Kills 21 Civilians in Yemeni Market

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by Gareth Porter
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Crossposted from Middle East Eye
October 26, 2018

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi now seems very likely to prompt Congress to impose some sanctions on the Saudi government, and it may finally act to end the active US role in the Saudi-UAE war on Yemen.

17 Years of Getting Afghanistan Completely Wrong by David Swanson

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by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Sept. 28, 2018
September 30, 2018

We expect 17-year-olds to have learned a great deal starting from infancy, and yet full-grown adults have proven incapable of knowing anything about Afghanistan during the course of 17 years of U.S.-NATO war. Despite war famously being the means of Americans learning geography, few can even identify Afghanistan on a map. What else have we failed to learn?

Michael Hudson: Jesus Would Have Cancelled The Debt But Obama Bailed Out Wall Street

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 14, 2018

With Max Keiser on the history of debt from the Bronze Age onwards. Max poses the question, has a historical precedent been set with the bailing out of creditors, not debtors in 2008?

No Liberal Rallies Yet for the Children of Yemen by Paul Street + The U.S.-Backed War That Is Tormenting Yemen by David Moulton

Image by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr

Updated: August 11, 2018, added a poem by Luis Lazaro Tijerina

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 8, 2018

Hundreds of thousands of people showed up across the United States at more than 600 gatherings three weeks ago. They came out to protest Donald Trump‘s “zero tolerance” immigration policy in highly choreographed, Democratic Party-affiliated “Families Belong Together” rallies and marches. Liberal celebrities marched and spoke. Local, state, and federal Democratic Party politicians and office-holders gave passionate speeches denouncing Trump’s separation of Central American migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border.

The Same Old Know-it-all Neoliberal Obama by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 4, 2018

Until he was tapped as a shiny new national and global asset by the white American ruling-class and catapulted to rock star status in the summer of 2004, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama was not particularly popular in the Black Chicago South Side that he deceptively called “home.” Besides being an outsider from Honolulu and Harvard Law, he was an aloof and arrogant part-time law professor over at the conservative and heavily white University of Chicago, an institution long known for displacing and lording over Black South Side communities.

Leo Panitch: Obama Defends Global Capitalism in Mandela Lecture, Parts 1-2

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Dandelion Salad

Obama Joins Club of the Super-Rich – Defends Global Capitalism in Lecture (1/2)

TheRealNews on Jul 29, 2018

Prof. Leo Panitch and Paul Jay discuss Obama’s Mandela lecture; Obama wants the impossible – a world where the super-rich give up “a little” and there is no massive inequality.

None of Us are Free if One of Us is Chained by Paul Street

Image by Derek Goulet via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
July 2, 2018

The road to total tyranny is littered with tests — moments when those atop reigning oppression structures learn how far they can push the boundaries of decency without sparking potent people’s resistance. One such moment was when the demented jackass and imperialist butcher George W. Bush marched down a red carpet to screw up his evil, moronic face to announce the U.S. invasion of Iraq on openly false pretexts including the shamelessly idiotic claim that Saddam Hussein’s government had been involved in the September 11, 2001 jetliner attacks and the equally bogus charge that Iraq possessed a threatening stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction.” The president and his team of Orwellian Neocon war pigs faced two days of mass protest across the country and around the world. Still, they were not deterred from launching a brazenly criminal invasion and occupation that would kill more than a million Iraqis, displace millions more, and devastate Iraq almost beyond recognition.

Denial and Mass Hysteria: The Liberal Loses It by Arthur D. Robbins

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by Arthur D. Robbins
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
April 16, 2018

If one had wanted to create a psychosocial experiment to study the liberal political mentality, one could not have come up with a better solution than to have Donald Trump follow Barack Obama as president of the United States: one a blank screen, the Archangel, the other, the Antichrist, a raging volcano. The Archangel departed from office to a fond and teary-eyed farewell. The Antichrist was greeted with anger and outrage. There were protests around the country. There were attempts to prevent his election. He is probably the first president in American history to be docketed for impeachment before he even took office.

The World Will Not Mourn the Decline of U.S. Hegemony by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
March 7, 2018

There are good reasons for any good progressive to bemoan the presence of the childish, racist, sexist and ecocidal, right-wing plutocrat Donald Trump in the White House. One complaint about Trump that should be held at arm’s-length by anyone on the left, however, is the charge that Trump is contributing to the decline of U.S. global power—to the erosion of the United States’ superpower status and the emergence of a more multipolar world.

Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda + The Hideous Pointlessness of Donald Trump’s Executive Order Keeping Guantánamo Open by Andy Worthington

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

by Andy Worthington
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Andy Worthington, website, Jan. 25, 2018
February 7, 2018

I’m delighted that the video is now available of my speaking event, “Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda,” at Revolution Books in Harlem, which took place last week as part of my annual visit to the US to call for the closure of the prison on and around the anniversary of its opening — on January 11.