The Iraq Embassy Revolt Portends to the Future of Class Struggle by Rainer Shea + Mike Prysner: No War on Iran! Troops Out of Iraq!

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Jan. 4, 2019
January 6, 2020

In her 2017 book No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics And Winning The World We Need, Naomi Klein wrote in reference to her experiences in post-invasion Iraq that:

“There have been times in my reporting from disaster zones when I have had the unsettling feeling that I was seeing not just a crisis in the here and now, but a glimpse of our collective future-a preview of where the road we are all on is headed unless we somehow grab the wheel and swerve.”

The Gehlen Org + The Powers of Love and War by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
January 3, 2020

In February 2019 Germany opened a brand new intelligence complex in the city of Berlin. The new headquarters of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst or Federal Intelligence Service) occupies a huge space—by the way, much as STASI or State Security Service once did in East Berlin the former German Democratic Republic—and supposedly employs a total of over six thousand persons. The move from its former secret location in the Munich suburb of Pullach reflects both the centralization in Berlin of federal institutions that after World War Two were widely dispersed throughout Germany and importantly, European Union-NATO leader Germany’s efforts to get away from the nation’s Nazi past. The new BND location in Germany’s capital city seems also a giant step away from the former obsessive secrecy of its location in Munich, hidden away in that obscure suburb and operating under a cover name and, above all, until the late 1950s an affiliate of the CIA. The move to Berlin can be interpreted as the BND’s declaration of sovereignty.

Gladio: The Story of a Secret Army by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
December 27, 2019

Albert Camus in his essay “L’Exil d’Hélène” discusses contemporary disregard for the Greek value of limits. Camus writes that only the artist by his nature recognizes his limits, limits which the historic spirit disregards. The very idea of a super-secret organization like Gladio to remake the world in its own image reflects that same disregard for the Greek values that Camus so cherished.

The 2020s Will Be When America Experiences A Social Breakdown by Rainer Shea + Jeff J. Brown: 19-year-old Rainer Shea is a Proud American Communist

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 16, 2019
December 19, 2019

The United States, like the other parts of the world that have been ravaged by rampant economic inequality and corporate despotism, is headed for a social breakdown. This gets more apparent every time wealth disparity is shown to be at a decades-high level, every time the military budget is expanded billions of dollars to fight endless wars, every time the country’s militarized police shoots an innocent person. Ten or twenty years from now, our society’s current form will have taken on an extreme version of itself: no real freedoms, basically no semblance of democracy, and conditions for the majority of people that are in or approaching squalor.

To The Capitalist Ruling Class, Communism Will Always Be Evil by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Nov. 21, 2019
November 26, 2019

The capitalist class doesn’t hate communism out of concern for mass murder. The accounts of the mass deaths that communism has supposedly caused are exaggerated or fabricated, and capitalist governments have caused hundreds of times more deaths than can be attributed to communist ones. Anti-communism isn’t about human rights, at least not human rights as a socialist would define them. Capitalists and imperialists vilify countries like China because they don’t like that these countries have challenged the “rights” to exploit and oppress.

Will Griffin: A Soldier’s Journey to Revolution, Part 2

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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.

Will Griffin: A Soldier’s Journey to Revolution

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Peace Report, Oct. 21, 2019
October 23, 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.

Iran, Hong Kong, and the Desperation of a Declining U.S. Empire by Rainer Shea

Image by Debra Sweet via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Sept. 19, 2019
September 22, 2019

The U.S. empire’s global influence projects, especially the ones in Iran and Hong Kong, have a different nature from the ones that were carried out when American power was still in a stable state. There’s now an aspect of desperation to what America is doing abroad, an unacknowledged but ever-present reality that the purveyors of Western imperialism are fighting a losing battle against the inevitable process of imperial collapse.

The Imperialist Motives Behind Sanders’ Attacks On Chavismo by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
September 18, 2019

It’s no wonder why Bernie Sanders’ supporters are so loyal to him in spite of his pro-imperialist tendencies. He’s offering them universal healthcare and adequate social benefits at a time when neoliberalism has made half of the country effectively poor. Many Americans have gravitated towards Sanders simply out of the desire to attain adequate living standards, which his policies would indeed create for them. What anti-imperialists must do is shatter the illusion that Sanders’ agenda of bettering life for Americans equates to an agenda of bettering life for the world’s colonized people, which Sanders has shown he doesn’t want to do.

The Sources of Early Christian Communism by Roman A. Montero

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by Roman A. Montero
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Oslo, Norway
Roman A. Montero’s blog
Originally published by Church life Journal, July 30, 2019
September 6, 2019

In the vast literature dealing with the rise of Christianity, we find many different accounts of how this small sect of Jewish messianists arose, spread, and eventually took over the Roman Empire. However, most of these histories focus on Christianity as a group defined by a set of beliefs, or a group dedicated to the adoration of the person of Jesus Christ. While it is true that Christianity, as it arose, was certainly those things, it was also a group with its own socio-economic ideology and set of practices.

Orwell, Hitchens, and the Hollow Self-Righteousness of Trotskyism by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 1, 2019
August 6, 2019

In addition to all of the propaganda pieces that anti-communists use to legitimize their position, they often utilize a more general rhetorical tool, which is the denunciations of communism that have come from two of the last century’s most prominent intellectuals: George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens. These figures maintain large cult followings and are widely seen as moral authorities for their crusades against civilization’s evil and hypocritical aspects, which for Orwell was a crusade against totalitarianism and for Hitchens was a crusade against organized religion. Yet the cultural and ideological makeup of both of these men caused them to infuse their works with the anti-communist agenda, and to give this agenda’s followers the sense that they’re righteous upholders of honesty and virtue.

Chris Hedges, Kali Akuno and Richard Wolff: Lenin: His Works’ Pertinence Here and Now, Left Forum 2019

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges, Kali Akuno and Richard D. Wolff

Left Forum 2019

A century ago, Lenin led the world’s first revolution against capitalism that successfully established a new and different government and society, the USSR. Lenin’s work before, during and shortly after that revolution left a legacy of insights, strategies, and programs. This panel aims to highlight and discuss some of the most pertinent aspects for today of Lenin’s life and work. We intend to include time for audience participation and discussion.

Caleb Maupin: History and Overview of Marxism in 12 Minutes + Socialist Heroism in Our Time

Image by Royal Opera House Covent Garden via Flickr

with Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Caleb Maupin (website)
Caleb Maupin (Facebook Page)
June 5, 2019

“Marxism and Karl Marx taught us there are two classes. There is the bourgeois and the proletariat. There are those who own the major centers of economic power, the factories, the banks, the means of transport, the means of communication and make profits from them. And then there are the rest of us who sell our labor power to those capitalists in order to survive. We get wages, we live by working, we’re proletarians. They live by owning, they’re capitalists.” — Caleb Maupin

Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire (must-see)

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Dandelion Salad

“If you think by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement … the movement from which the down-trodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery, expect salvation — if this is your opinion, then hang us!

Will Griffin: The North Korea You’ve Never Heard About

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Watch the video below

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Peace Report
April 8, 2019

“The principle of self-reliance–that one can and should solve one’s problems utilizing one’s own resources and skills and not become dependent on foreign powers–was the guiding philosophy of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-sung since the Korean people’s anti-colonial struggle against the Japanese. And it has been the country’s guiding philosophy ever since. North Korea’s experience during the Korean War–when countries that had pledged support didn’t come through with supplies of armaments in its moment of desperate need–reaffirmed its belief that to guarantee its survival, it cannot rely on others and needs to develop its own resources.” — Soobok Kim from ZoominKorea