Palestine: Reconfiguring The Liberation Struggle, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Chris Beckett via Flickr

Updated: October 6, 2020

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
October 5, 2020

Palestine is currently facing a quadruple crisis consisting of Covid-19 pandemic, Zionism, imperialism and reactionary Arab regimes. With more than 50,000 Coronavirus cases, Palestine is finding it hard to combat the pandemic with a war-torn and fragmented healthcare system. The ruthlessness of Zionist ideology has invariably prevented the proper development of health infrastructures and what we have now is a severely under-resourced health architecture perforated by the wounds of settler colonialism. As a result of Israel’s 53-year occupation of West Bank and Gaza, the region has been converted into a donor-dependent system that has perennial shortages in equipment, medication and staff due to military raids and import restrictions. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) has tried to effectively operate within this restricted environment, the all-encompassing Israeli chokehold around the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) has greatly curtailed the administration’s ability to secure key supplies to counter the spread of infection. Not contented with the restriction of medical supplies, Israel has further hampered Palestine’s Covid-19 response by comprehensively destroying two Coronavirus testing centres.

Will Griffin: Pine Gap: Australia’s Most Secret Site + Menwith Hill: NSA’s Largest Overseas Spying Base

Image by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament via Flickr

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 17, 2020

“Then there’s that secret room on the base in which even Australians aren’t allowed to enter. For decades Australian government officials have claimed that they know everything that is going on at Pine Gap mainly in response to the public demanding answers to what the CIA and other US military agencies are doing there. So much has been and still is in secret.” — Will Griffin

The Growing Disparity In Living Conditions and Its Consequences, by Rainer Shea

Image by Russ Allison Loar via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 9, 2020
August 10, 2020

The high-tech sector, along with the U.S. national security state that it partners with, have lately been pushing the idea of upgrading society into a futuristic technological structure that makes life far more convenient. Last year the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, an organization created in 2018 to further the partnership between U.S. intelligence agencies and tech plutocrats, articulated this vision in a document. It called for a near future where the country’s “legacy systems” are replaced with a new paradigm of infrastructure, one that allows for self-driving cars, total home delivery in alternative to retail, and home appliances that can connect to an “internet of things.”

Crises Can Either Bring Revolution Or Strengthen Capitalism + Moving Towards The Worst-Case Covid-19 Scenario, by Rainer Shea

Image by The All-Nite Images via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
July 23, 2020

Consider the scenario presented by the TV series Mr. Robot, wherein a group of hackers aims to take down the giant conglomerate E Corp-known by the head hacker Elliot Alderson as Evil Corp. To put an end to Evil Corp’s hegemonic control over finance, the hackers sabotage its ability to keep count of how much debt people owe it. When the first big digital attack happens in the show’s universe in 2015, Evil Corp is struggling, hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost, the public is protesting Evil Corp over its failures to provide for society’s needs, and the capitalist world is falling into a depression.

Global Assange + Julian Assange’s Father, John Shipton Speaks Out

Image by Anarchimedia via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

ARTE Documentary on ~ Jun 30, 2020

The ‘Operation Hotel’ revelations back in 2018 revealed that the Ecuadorian government was spying on Julian Assange, taking refuge in their London embassy at the time. But recent evidence from Spanish authorities suggests that it was in fact American intelligence that sponsored the surveillance. With the USA currently trying to extradite Assange from his London prison to be tried for the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents on WikiLeaks, the global Assange story, murkier than ever, is ongoing.

Imperialism Won’t Be Over After The U.S. Empire Falls + Covid-19 Commercialism Is About Undermining Social Cohesion, by Rainer Shea

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 20, 2020
June 26, 2020

Underneath the bluster of a Trump administration that still acts like the United States is the world hegemon, the ruling class is working to pragmatically respond to the loss of America’s status as a dominant power. In 2017 the Pentagon put out a report that admitted American global influence is rapidly declining, and now that the U.S. is sure to soon lose its superpower status, the corporatocracy has to address this issue.

The Capitalist “Great Reset” and the Descent Into Techno-Tyranny + With the Economy’s Collapse, More Waves of Unrest are Inevitable, by Rainer Shea

Image by Tom Blackwell via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 15, 2020
June 18, 2020

Covid-19 has brought about the era of biopolitics, an era that will continue for the foreseeable future. This is because the virus is far from being defeated; a resurgence of it is likely to happen this fall, and the neoliberal world’s refusal to sacrifice business for public health is sure to perpetuate the pandemic for as long as neoliberalism exists. Biopolitics is also here to stay because we’ve reached a point in the climate crisis where global weather patterns are much more compatible with viruses than they used to be. More viruses are going to appear in the coming years with increasing ferocity, which will necessitate an irreversible series of changes to how society functions.

Will Griffin: How Military Satellites Spy on You

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

by Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 15, 2020

“Hybrid warfare is a concept that brings together conventional warfare and cyberwarfare using tactics of fake news, diplomacy, lawfare and foreign electoral intervention into a form of political warfare. Cyber attacks and hacking play a key role in both covert and overt warfare. The hacking of communication systems and eavesdropping on, for example embassies around the world, is now commonplace.” — Will Griffin

Chris Hedges: The Integrity Initiative: British Government Psyops

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Aug 3, 2019

On Contact host Chris Hedges and investigative journalist Mohamed Elmazzi discuss documents showing an alleged British government-financed propaganda mill, equivalent in scale to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird psychological operations. Elmazzi’s work can be found at TheInterregnum.net.

Edward Snowden: The Dangers Are Real

Image by Susan Melkisethian via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

“Your communications, as they happen largely today, don’t actually take place between you and the person that you are talking to. They happen between you and Facebook, who then provides a copy of it to the person you are talking to, or you and Gmail, who then gives a copy of it to the person that you are talking to and every time these transactions occur through these service providers, they keep a record of it.”

Edward Snowden: Maybe You’ve Heard About It–This Is Mass Surveillance

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

“It is through this sort of unholy connection of technology and sort of an unusual interpretation of contract law that these institutions have been able to transform this greatest virtue of humanity—which is this desire to interact and to connect and to cooperate and to share—to transform all of that into a weakness.

Abby Martin and Bill Binney: Mass Surveillance and the Intelligence Industrial Complex

Image by Susan Melkisethian via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Abby Martin

Empire Files on Apr 1, 2019

Abby Martin interviews former Technical Director of the National Security Agency, Bill Binney, who blew the whistle on warrantless spying years before Edward Snowden released the evidence. They discuss mass surveillance and the Intelligence Industrial Complex.

Silicon Valley Will Not Save You from the Surveillance State by David Swanson

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
July 6, 2018

There was something quite odd about the very welcome news that some Google employees were objecting to a military contract, namely all the other Google military contracts. My sense of the oddness of this was heightened by reading Yasha Levine’s new book, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.

Industrializing Class War by William Bowles

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
February 3, 2018

Have you noticed that it’s no longer PC Dixon of Dock Green who mediates the relationship between the state and its citizens as he goes about his beat in your neighbourhood? Instead, it’s a Kevlar-armoured, video-monitored, taser-equipped, drone-surveilled, spit-masked supplied soldier, straight out of Star Wars, who now staggers along under the weight of an industrialized capitalism, visibly physically disconnected from the citizens they monitor by their bullet-proof uniforms, that more resemble a rack of tools in your local hardware store than the Bobby on the beat.

Thomas Drake: From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much (must-see)

Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Previously posted Aug. 7, 2015 (good discussion in the comment section)

with Thomas Drake

Part 1

TheRealNews on Aug 2, 2015

On Reality Asserts Itself, former NSA senior executive Mr. Drake and host Paul Jay talk about the “dark state” and how 9/11 opens up disturbing questions about power, who we are, who’s in charge and the secret subversion of the U.S. constitution.