Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, May 1, 2022
May 2, 2022
The madness of militarism is a collective madness. Nobody catches it from a single exposure. The repetition that makes anything else unthinkable makes the insane acceptable — and not just acceptable but righteous.
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with Chris Hedges
teleSUR English on Jan 18, 2016
In this episode of Days of Revolt, host Chris Hedges sits down with legal scholar, animal rights activist and longtime vegan, Gary Francione. Francione begins by unpacking criticisms of the vegan movement, specifically addressing the structures of power that control the means of food production and access. He defends veganism from a moral standpoint, and explains how violence against animals is merely one form of violence inflicted by humans.
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with Cornel West and Bob Avakian
A film of the November 2014 historic dialogue on a question of great importance in today’s world between the Revolutionary Christian Cornel West and the Revolutionary Communist Bob Avakian. Continue reading
by Shepherd Bliss
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Santa Rosa, California
December 12, 2013
Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez was killed by sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus on October 22, as the boy walked home in his Latino neighborhood in Santa Rosa, California. The Iraq War veteran claims he mistook the eighth-grader’s toy rifle for a real one.
A month later another Army vet, Paul Duffy, took his own life nearby. Duffy, as some friends called him, was found by his wife hanging from a rope in the writer’s cabin he had built outside his Tomales home by the Pacific Ocean. Continue reading
By Camillo “Mac” Bica
Information Clearing House
February 16, 2013
Image by Lauriel-Arwen via Flickr
Mario Cuomo, commenting on the political process, once observed, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Though candidates for public office frequently campaign on a platform of change, when elected, promises remain unfulfilled and what they inevitably deliver is more of the same. Beholden to the special interests and the Super PACS, they govern solely in the interest of the wealthy and the privileged, and remain blatantly unresponsive to the general will, the needs of the majority of the people, and to the dictates of law and morality. Continue reading
Note: The Preface and Chapters One through Twenty can be found here: The 15% Solution
by Jonathan Westminster, Ph.D. aka Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on TPJmagazine.us
September 22, 2012
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This is the twenty-ninth installment of the serialization of a book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022. Herein you will find Appendix IV. This Appendix, purportedly written by the 20th century political analyst, (the fictional) “Dino Lewis” presents a comparison of the Religious Fundamentalist and he Jeffersonian/civil-libertarian positions on the subject: “Morality and the Uses of the Law. It is certainly fully relevant to the United States and what we might face in a future governed fully by the Republican Religious Right.
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
July 23, 2012
Image by laurinkofler via Flickr
The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions.
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 28, 2012
“The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”
A book by Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” trumpets yet another grand theory of evolution, this time in the form of evolutionary psychology, which purports to unravel the mystery of moral behavior. Such theories, whether in the form of dialectical materialism, Social Darwinism, biblical inherency or its more bizarre subsets of phrenology or eugenics, never hold up against the vast complexity of history, the inner workings of economic and political systems, and the intricacies of the human psyche. But simplicity has a strong appeal for those who seek order in the chaos of existence.
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Bill Moyers
February 3, 2012
Bill talks with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about the moral underpinnings of our contentious culture.
by William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
27 January 2012
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PM Cameron’s call for a “moral capitalism” would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic and hypocritical. After all, hasn’t it been capitalism’s alleged occupation of the ‘moral high ground’, what they now choose to call ‘humanitarian intervention’ that has been used as a justification for mass murder and genocide? But plainly the millions killed and the countries decimated don’t fall under Cameron’s definition of what is and isn’t ‘moral’. Clearly, it’s for ‘local consumption’ only.
by Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
www.counterpunch.org
October 15, 2011
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
I don’t like mixing politics with morality, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. What I mean is this: how can anyone cast a ballot for a man who they know will continue to kill people in other countries merely to advance US policy objectives? That’s the question people need to ask themselves.
by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.michaelparenti.org
July 5, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
City Lights Books, 2004
How hype, fear, and mindless flag-waving are supplanting informed debate, commitment to democracy, and real patriotism.
“In this skillfully argued book . . . with wit and humor and penetrating analysis, Parenti invites the reader to connect the dots.” — Rufus Browning, co-author of Protest Is Not Enough
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by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 20, 2011
Tim DeChristopher is scheduled to be sentenced in a Salt Lake City courtroom by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on July 26. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for fraudulently bidding in December 2008 on parcels of land, including areas around eastern Utah’s national parks, which were being sold off by the Bush administration to the oil and natural gas industry. As Bidder No. 70, he drove up the prices of some of the bids and won more than a dozen other parcels for $1.8 million. The government is asking Judge Benson to send DeChristopher to prison for four and a half years.
by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 5, 2011
Image by tdietmut via Flickr
Before it may be too late… if not already. My dear friend and fellow activist Ed Dunphy always likes to use that term ‘Moral compass ‘ when discussing our occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan and the current bombing campaigns in Libya. Sadly, we allow our leaders (and media) to chart a path for the continuance of empire, at the disregard for any sense of morality. The result is that we all have become lost, separated from the very reasons why we even became a nation. All the rhetoric and rah rah about our ‘Founding Fathers ‘and ‘Give me liberty or … ‘ is now nothing more than hype.
Dandelion Salad 