In a Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy, Something Must Give by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 27, 2020

The Democrats’ Quandary

To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat Trump. But when Trump’s billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, it’s obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party. Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which money votes. (If “corporations are people,” so is money in today’s political world.)

Neoliberalism Survives By Destroying Social Cohesion by Rainer Shea + The Neoliberal “New” Deal: The Rich Drink for Free While the Poor Pay More

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Updated: Feb. 28, 2020

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Feb. 12, 2020
February 19, 2020

When you compare socialist countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and the DPRK with neoliberal countries like the United States and Britain, a particular factor stands out in how their developments have differed: the socialist countries have vastly more social cohesion than their counterparts do. By this, I mean they have a lack of serious political polarization and a relatively small amount of ethnic or class divides. In these countries, most people think favorably of the governing parties, racial and religious violence aren’t sanctioned by the state, and strong social safety nets and firm checks on private business keep inequality from becoming too pronounced. These places aren’t perfect, but they lack the deep rottenness that pervades neoliberal societies.

Abby Martin: Eradicating Homelessness

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Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

Empire Files on Feb 9, 2020

Abby Martin meets with Nithya Raman, progressive candidate for LA City Council in District 4, about her campaign to end homelessness in the nation’s epicenter and how local politicians refuse to take easy actions to eradicate the phenomenon–but refuse to in the interests of big real estate developers.

How U.S. Imperialism Is Exploiting The World’s Growing Crises by Rainer Shea + William I. Robinson: How Capitalism’s Structural and Ideological Crisis Gives Rise to Neo-Fascism

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Feb. 4, 2020
February 5, 2020

After facilitating the atrocities of the Pinochet dictatorship and helping introduce neoliberal policies around the world, Milton Friedman wrote in an essay from 1982 that “Only a crisis–actual or perceived–produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

The Climate Apocalypse Is Accelerating–If We’re Going To Dodge Extinction, We’d Better Hurry by Eric Schechter

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by Eric Schechter aka LeftyMathProf
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Eric’s Rants and Videos blog
January 26, 2020

Waking from the Ancient Madness of Ownership

leftymathprof on Jan 24, 2020

For thousands of years we’ve endured wars, poverty, and other cruelties, all unnecessary. And now the madness is about to kill all of us with a climate apocalypse, which is coming much bigger and faster than most people realize. These problems can all be traced to a practice that we have long accepted as normal: the practice of not sharing with our cousins. Trade increases inequality, making corruption and plutocracy inevitable. Competition makes us insane. To avoid extinction we’ll need two revolutions.

The Next Economic Crash Will End Capitalism As We Know It by Rainer Shea

Image by Collin Anderson via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Jan. 20, 2020
January 22, 2020

When America next experiences an economic downturn, it won’t be like the relatively small recessions that the country used to regularly undergo before the 2008 crash. It will be a collapse of such magnitude that the global economy won’t ever be able to recover, like it eventually did after the Great Depression. It will likely be the end of the growth period of capitalism, and the beginning of an unprecedented contraction that leaves civilization dramatically changed.

Chris Hedges: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jan 18, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges, discusses the outsized influence of the writer, Ayn Rand, on America’s business and financial elite with New York University professor and author, Lisa Duggan.

I Have a Dream, a Blurred Vision by Michael Parenti

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by Michael Parenti
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published August 29, 2013
January 17, 2020

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington—in which Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famed “I Have a Dream” speech—has recently won renewed attention from various print and electronic media in the United States. But the more attention given to King’s extraordinary speech, the less we seem to know about King himself, the less aware we are about the serious challenges he was presenting, challenges that remain urgent and ignored to this very day.

Late-Stage Capitalism Is Creating A New Kind Of Global Despotism by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 23, 2019
December 26, 2019

The power structure that now dominates the globe is a logical extension of the project for colonizing Africa, Oceania, and the Americas that the European imperialist powers began over five centuries ago. From the start of this project, it’s been a constant rule for those in the colonizing powers that one’s society is at war with a weaker enemy. The indigenous people, who have been portrayed as not capable of running things, have had to be brought under the colonial boot according to the ideology of imperial conquest. And in accordance with the global rise of capitalism that colonialism precipitated, the same dynamic of subjugation has existed between the poor and the rich.

Shopping as an Act of Resistance

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The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published December 1, 2013
December 8, 2019

The holidays are at hand. Boycott Season is in effect. As the snow starts to fall, the commercial war of the season asserts its dominance. Our identities as citizens are quickly buried in a blizzard of advertising that defines us as consumers.

The Big Lie of the Fascists: That Climate Holocaust is Inevitable by Rainer Shea + Can Eco-Socialism Save The World?

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Nov. 8, 2019
November 13, 2019

The forces of fascism are trying to convince us of a deadly lie: that it’s desirable, natural, or inevitable for great amounts of poor and nonwhite people to die off because of climate change. This lie enters the discourse in many forms, both obvious and not. But every time it appears, it has to be countered with the declaration that we must not write off any lives as disposable or doomed; we must work to save as many people as possible throughout the coming catastrophe.

Why Dave Rubin is NOT a Classical Liberal by The Anti-Social Socialist

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Watch the video below

“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.” — Adam Smith

Challenging Structural Geographical Inequalities on a Global Scale by Andrew Henderson

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by Andrew Henderson
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
November 1, 2019

Many of the most pressing problems all nations face are a result of failing to adequately tackle our increasing level of global interdependence.

Mobilized capital can play the tax-regime of one country off against another with ease, such that there is a race to the bottom with respect to the corporate tax revenues which might be expected from even the wealthiest transnational corporations. Such economic arbitrage is possible precisely due to the propagation of widespread variations in the distribution of social justice across the planet. There are no national solutions to such problems, which ultimately require the more equitable distribution of social justice on a global scale.

Is America Ready for Socialism? by Finian Cunningham

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by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation, Oct. 13, 2019
October 21, 2019

Strategic Culture Foundation conducted the following interview with American professor of politics Colin S. Cavell on the seeming emergence of a more leftwing agenda among some Democratic politicians and a more radical consciousness among ordinary American citizens for social and economic equality.

Counting Down to Civilization’s Collapse + Inequality, Climate Change, and America’s Destabilization by Rainer Shea

Image by Collin Anderson via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Oct. 4, 2019
October 16, 2019

As I’ve watched young people around the world take part in the climate actions of the last few weeks, I’ve gotten the sense that I’m watching a spectacle which has been orchestrated to create the illusion that we’re still in an earlier, more stable time for the planet’s climate. Legitimate as the passion and commitment of this generation of teen climate activists is, their efforts are being packaged by the political and media establishment in a way that encourages denial about our situation. These ruling institutions neither want us to recognize the real solutions to the crisis, nor to see the irrecoverable and massive damage that’s already been done to the climate.