by Guadamour
Writer, Dandelion Salad
October 17, 2013
In the 30,000 word dystopian novella, Wellspring (Cosmic Egg Books, 2013), William T. Hathaway describes the drought devastated California of 2026. “The 18-year-old new high school graduate, Bob Parks, escaping from LA meets up with the 77-year-old retired public interest lawyer, Jane Catherine Willoughby while hitchhiking. The two of them go on a Quixotic search for water which they believe exists underground.
by William T. Hathaway
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 22, 2013
Image by United States Marine Corps Official Page via Flickr
The US Special Forces is a bizarrely gendered world, as I found out when I joined it to write a book about war. This all-male bastion is sexualized in a truly perverted way, particularly in its methods for turning young men into killers on command.
Being the epitome of patriarchy, the military creates soldiers by forcing them into the role of the lowliest creatures in patriarchy: women. The recruits’ sense of personal power is stripped away, and they are required to obey commands from the men higher in the hierarchy and do the military’s “housework”: Continue reading
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
January 26, 2013
Image by Bob Elderberry via Flickr
Many of us on the left have been kettled at demonstrations: surrounded by a wall of police, herded into a small area, and prevented from reaching our goal. The term is a translation of kesseln, the German military tactic of enclosing an enemy force within a tight cordon of troops and gradually wearing it down rather than attacking it directly.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Dec. 19, 2012
A review of Gaither Stewart’s new novel, Lily Pad Roll
Gaither Stewart is a shatterer of myths. In The Trojan Spy, volume one of the Europe Trilogy, he shattered the myth that the USA is fighting terrorism and showed instead how our government works in a symbiotic relationship with the so-called terrorists. Now in Lily Pad Roll, volume two of the trilogy, he shatters the myth that America is invading countries and building foreign bases in order to defend the homeland and secure oil supplies. Continue reading
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 13, 2012
Image by Akbar Sim via Flickr
Saboteur
An interview with a domestic insurgent
From the book
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway
Published by Trine Day
I first met the man we’ll call Trucker in 1970 at a rally against the Vietnam War. Our demo was going to start on the Berkeley campus and continue with a march down Telegraph Avenue. This was shortly after the National Guard and police had murdered six demonstrators at Kent State and Jackson State, so the mood was extremely tense. The Berkeley city government had denied us a permit to march and called in police reinforcements from Oakland. Continue reading
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 2, 2012
Image by noahbloom via Flickr
Amazing but true: The first European settlers in what is now the USA weren’t English Puritans or French fur trappers but Sephardic Jews. Before the Mayflower sailed to America, Jews had fled the Spanish Inquisition and settled in what is now Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Although they were eventually absorbed into the mainstream culture, they built a real Jewish life here.
Who were these first pioneers? What happened that forced them to flee? What did they encounter in this far land? These questions fascinate me, and as I read what little we know about them and imagine their lives, a story emerges:
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
October 29, 2012
Image by BrotherMagneto via Flickr
The Split: Differences over Israel tear apart a Jewish marriage
From the Book
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway
Published by Trine Day
Stan and Hannah Cooper are friends of mine from college days. Both are Jewish, but they have diametrically opposed views about Israel, and their differences have become so bitter that they’ve decided to divorce. As the three of us talked about this, it became clear that their dispute is a microcosm of the conflict that is tearing the Jewish community apart and also destroying lives in an increasingly large part of the world.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
October 6, 2012
Image by Joelstuff V4 via Flickr
Exit Free
From the book
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway
Published by Trine Day
The following report was contributed by Naomi Golner, one of the founders of Exit Free, a collective in the USA that helps women leave the military by discharge or desertion.
I’ve become a criminal for peace. How I got there is a complicated story, beginning when the community college where I teach reduced most of its humanities faculty to adjunct status. Continue reading
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 12, 2012
Comrades in Arms
From the book
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
By William T. Hathaway
Published by Trine Day
I received this letter from an ex-soldier.
Hi Mr. Hathaway,
I got your letter (forwarded) asking for information for your book. To answer your first question, Yes, I’m enjoying living in Holland. I’m becoming the little Dutch girl — the little Black Dutch girl, but that doesn’t bother people here. They’re very tolerant and internationally minded.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
July 12, 2012
Image by funkandjazz via Flickr
Albert Einstein wrote in 1939:
“There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us, we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people…. Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.”
Einstein was opposed from the start to the setting up of a Jewish state and to mass emigration into Palestine. He was also one of the signatories to an Open Letter to the New York Times in 1948 denouncing the terrorist activities of Menachem Begin and the massacre carried out in the Arab village of Deir Yassin.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 20, 2012
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
“We’ve always had wars. Humans are a warring species. Without an army to defend us, someone will always try to conquer us.”
These assumptions have become axioms of our culture. They generate despair but also a certain comfort because they relieve us of the responsibility to change.
Some politicians and pundits declare that human nature makes peace impossible, that war is built into our genes. Continue reading
by William T. Hathaway and Paul Carline
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 10, 2012
Gaither Stewart‘s The Trojan Spy takes the thriller genre an important step forward, advancing it from the work of his predecessors John le Carré and Robert Ludlum. Le Carré and Ludlum rebelled against the conventions of the classic spy thrillers, which assumed that we’re the good guys who are under attack by bad guys so evil that we’re justified in bending the rules to save ourselves from them. In that world, lies, deceit, sabotage, and even murder are sometimes necessary to defend peace, justice, and the American (or Western) Way against (pick one, depending on when the book was written) Nazis, communists, or terrorists.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
May 9, 2012
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Endless war … endless despair. America’s military juggernaut continues to roll, crushing multitudes of soft, breathing human beings, creating more counter-violence at every turn, lumbering toward annihilation. We finally elect a leader who pledges to bring peace, and he morphs before our incredulous eyes into a war president, shifting the fighting onto mercenaries and local soldiers and claiming that’s peace. We’re still killing thousands of people, manipulating other nations, modernizing our nuclear weapons, forcing our financial will around the world, and jailing dissenters at home. Fortress America continues to expand globally as prison, sweatshop, and fire base. After all our years trying to change this country, how could we end up with this?
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 4, 2012
Image by ElvertBarnes via Flickr
Once again in election season the drums of patriotism are being beaten. Politicians on the stump and their Madison Avenue flacks are exhorting us to rally around the tattered flag. Their drumming sounds feeble and hollow, though, like cheerleaders trying to rouse the fans while the team goes down to defeat.
by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 28, 2011
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
“I used to be a war criminal, now I’m an anti-war criminal. The government awarded me medals for the first crime, now they’re trying to imprison me for the second,” says ex-Green Beret William T. Hathaway. “I’m a war criminal not because I committed atrocities. I didn’t, and most soldiers don’t. But the US government’s invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were war crimes. The United Nations Charter clearly forbids aggressive attacks on other countries. That’s exactly what those invasions were. Every GI who participates in that has to share some of the blame.
Dandelion Salad 