Hope is the Thing with Feathers: A Meditation about Empathy on a Dying World, by Kenn Orphan

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by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 29, 2023

Recently, I’ve been listening to The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy, by American composer Christopher Tin. [Video below] It is an arrangement based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti. It is sung beautifully by Voces8 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Tin composed this marvelous arrangement as a memorial to various bird species that have been driven to extinction by habit loss, pollution and encroachment. The pieces soar and dive in a powerful rollercoaster of emotion, especially when one has been a student of extinction for as long as I have.

Finian Cunningham and John Shipton: Daring to Hope for his Son Julian Assange

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by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Ireland
December 26, 2022

Finian Cunningham on Dec 24, 2022

John Shipton, Julian Assange’s father, spoke to me in an interview this week just days before Christmas. I was bracing for a difficult, anguished encounter, given the appalling injustice meted out to Julian.

A Gift For The Future, by Rivera Sun

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by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 11, 2021

Today, a child was born, tiny hands curling and unfurling with the startled shock of cool air on wet skin, oxygen flooding into newly-opened lungs as she cries upon entering this strange new world.

Chris Hedges: This Is The Unraveling Of The US Empire + The Childish Mania of Hope

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Katie Halper on Oct 9, 2020

Journalist Chris Hedges and Historian Gerald Horne discuss the “perilous moment we’re facing,” which reminds Hedges of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Middle East, which he covered.

Chris Hedges: American Empire Collapse: It’s About To Get Much Worse

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

act.tv on Sep 21, 2020

Julianna welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, Chris Hedges, to discuss how in his current book, America: The Farewell Tour. Hedges takes a close look at the array of pathologies that have arisen out of a profound malaise of hopelessness as the society disintegrates due to the “slow moving [corporate] Coup d’état” instituted by the ruling classes in the ’70s in reaction to the activist movements and reforms of the ’60s. And how this disintegration has resulted in an epidemic of diseases, despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function.

Chris Hedges: The Issue Before Us is Death

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

“The corporate forces that have commodified the natural world for profit have also commodified human beings. We are as expendable to global corporations as the Barrier Reef or the great sequoias. These corporations and ruling elites, which have orchestrated the largest transference of wealth upward in human history, with globe’s richest 1 percent owning half the world’s wealth, kneel, and force us to kneel, before the dictates of the global marketplace. They have seized control of our governments, extinguishing democracy, corrupting law and building alliances with neofascists and authoritarians as the ruling ideology of neoliberalism is exposed as a con. They have constructed pervasive and sophisticated systems of internal security, wholesale surveillance and militarized police, along with criminalizing poverty, to crush dissent.” — Chris Hedges, Confronting the Culture of Death

Chris Hedges: All Revolutionaries are Possessed with Sublime Madness

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Opednews.com Progressive News and Opinion on Jan 22, 2019

A wide ranging interview exploring Chris’ thinking on some very important but not always explored ideas, as well as a discussion of his book, America: The Farewell Tour. “I don’t accept the mass-culture, Disneyfied view of hope.”

Chris Hedges: The Diseases of Despair at the End of Empire

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

acttv on Feb 15, 2019

Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Chris Hedges sits down with us to talk about his new book, America: The Farewell Tour. In it he goes deep into how the opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. Where do we, as a people and a planet, go next?

Chris Hedges: The Power of Hope

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Renovatio: The Journal of Zaytuna College on Nov 8, 2018

During an event discussing his latest book, America: The Farewell Tour, Chris Hedges was asked about where he finds hope. His answer points to the power of faith, resistance, and the importance of values. This is from an event at Zaytuna College, America’s first Muslim liberal arts college.

We Must Keep Despair At Bay In The Siege Waged By The Forces Of Destruction And Greed!

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The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Nov. 16, 2017
September 17, 2018

Despair rides in front of our opposition, an invisible wind that blows like plague through our hearts. Here, our stand begins. Moment-by-moment, day-by-day, we must keep despair at bay in the siege waged by the forces of destruction and greed.

Chris Hedges: Know That If We Resist We Keep Hope Alive

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Christopher Smiley on Jun 3, 2017

Chris Hedges speaks at memorial day rally hosted by Veterans For Peace.

The First Thing They Steal Is Courage

Image by Lorie Shaull via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published Nov. 9, 2016
June 15, 2018

When the forces of destruction, hate, bigotry, greed, and violence rise into power, there are three things they steal before they plunder the treasury. Stopping them is where the struggle for life begins.

Chris Hedges: The Power of Writing as Resistance + Q&A

Image by Lorie Shaull via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

UNAVOX on Nov 21, 2017

Video Production courtesy Stephen Rose/UNAVOX

The outspoken American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges will speak on his life and work as a writer, engaging head on with some of the most contentious issues of our time. The talk is held in conjunction with Precarious: Peterborough ArtsWORK Festival. Chris will engage in a Q&A with the audience following the talk.

Fling Back Despair!

Image by jocchannna via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
November 16, 2017

Despair rides in front of our opposition, an invisible wind that blows like plague through our hearts. Here, our stand begins. Moment-by-moment, day-by-day, we must keep despair at bay in the siege waged by the forces of destruction and greed.

Wasted Lives: The Worldwide Tragedy of Youth Suicide by Graham Peebles

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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
September 29, 2017

The pressures of modern life are colossal; for young people — those under 25 years of age — they are perhaps greater than at any other time. Competition in virtually every aspect of contemporary life, a culture obsessed with image and material success, and the ever-increasing cost of living are creating a cocktail of anxiety and self-doubt that drives some people to take their own lives and many more to self-abuse of one kind or another.