Occupy America by Michael Parenti

by Michael Parenti
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
www.michaelparenti.org
Nov. 9, 2011

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Beginning with Occupy Wall Street in September 2011, a protest movement spread across the United States to 70 major cities and hundreds of other communities. Similar actions emerged in scores of other nations.

For the first two weeks, the corporate-owned mainstream media along with NPR did what they usually do with progressive protests: they ignored them. These were the same media that had given the Tea Party supporters saturation coverage for weeks on end, ordaining them “a major political force.”

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised … But There’s a LiveStream by Joseph Natoli

by Joseph Natoli
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 17, 2011

“You wouldn’t be able to get your message out there without us.” — Griff Jenkins, Fox News producer

“If you put every single left-wing cause into a blender, this is the sludge you’d get.” — Sean Hannity Show, Fox

“Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.” — Slavoj Zizek, address October 9, 2011 to Occupy Wall Street protesters

Ralph Nader: Obama is a Dictator! + Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street

Image by SS&SS via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Updated: Oct. 12, 2011 added another video

With Ralph Nader

MOXNEWSd0tCOM on Oct 7, 2011

October 07, 2011 News Corp
http://MOXNews.com

Chris Hedges at October2011 Occupy DC: The Corporate State is in Trouble

with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 7, 2011

Chris Hedges: No way in US system to vote against banks

TheAlyonaShow on Oct 6, 2011

Between Occupy Wall Street, in New York, and the other cities it’s spread to, as well as the October 2011 movement that just began here in D.C, something seems to be happening in this country. Earlier at Freedom Plaza Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, tells us what this could lead to.

Against the Institution: A Warning for #OccupyWallStreet by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
October 3, 2011

Image by Adrian Kinloch via Flickr

While I fully endorse the efforts and actions of the Occupy Wall Street protests, now emerging internationally, there are concerns which need to be addressed and kept in mind as the movement moves forward.

The process through which a potentially powerful movement may be co-opted and controlled is slight and subtle. If Occupy Wall Street hopes to strive for the 99%, it must not submit to the 1%, in any capacity.

How the Most Dangerous Game Is Being Played by Joseph Natoli

Image by Sterneck via Flickr

by Joseph Natoli
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Sept. 11, 2011

There’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. — Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other. — Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged “

By the Democrats, the Game Has Been Played Like This Since the ’60s

Congressional Tea Party Downgrades America by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Aug. 8, 2011

The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company’s tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard.

Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives impose its havoc on the American people there, then on the Senate side and on Obama

The Coming Second Civil War in the United States: Will We be Enslaved by Corporate Governance?

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
August 4, 2011

Image by sandy_sanders via Flickr

History never repeats itself exactly.  But it makes some pretty decent copies.  As I write this on March 29, 2011, we are winding down to the end of the so-called “debt-limit crisis,” or the possible end, or the continuation of it, or what have you.  Of course what is going on is not really about the debt-limit.  It is about the future of the federal government in the United States and its appropriate role.  As I wrote in my BuzzFlash@Truthout Commentary on Grover Norquist’s wet dream his 25-year campaign is focused only at the secondary level on taxation.  It is primarily about his stated goal of “shrinking the federal government to the size of a bathtub and then drowning it in the bathtub,” or as he used to more simply state it: “starve the beast.”

Would the DC Republicans Really Prefer to Have Obama in the White House? by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
July 19, 2011

The GOP faces a major dilemma in the upcoming presidential election. Before I get into that, let’s define what I mean by “The GOP.” First, I don’t mean most of their public figures. Their elected officials for the most part are bought and paid for employees by those who run the Party. They have neither an independent voice nor independent power (as much as certain Tea Party GOP front men and women may think they do, this is not the case).

Ideological Inebriation on Capitol Hill by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
July 26, 2011

Image by joetta@sbcglobal.net via Flickr

Legislating while under the influence of ideological inebriation is not yet a statutory offense. It is only a multi-directional menace to much of what anxious Americans hold dear for themselves and their children.

Semantic Propaganda Feeds Stupidity by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
July 23, 2011

We would already have had a much needed American revolution in response to the tyranny of the money-fed two-party plutocracy that is destroying the middle class except for one big problem: so much of the American population is just plain stupid.  Too stupid to behave like angry Greeks and rise up in the streets to rebel against the dysfunctional government.

Obama, Claiming the Republican agenda as his own

Dandelion Salad

Editorial
SocialistWorker.org
July 13, 2011

By proposing cuts in programs like Social Security, Obama is emboldening the right.

TURNS OUT the president many expected to revive the New Deal is out to bury it instead.

That’s the inescapable conclusion following President Barack Obama’s offer to trade cuts in the Social Security and Medicare

Michael Hudson: Guns, Finance and Butter – Finance Is the New Mode of Warfare

Dandelion Salad

Updated: July 16, 2011; added transcript

with Michael Hudson
Bonnie Faulkner
Guns and Butter
July 13, 2011

Image by Plashing Vole via Flickr

The jobless recovery; the debt ceiling and default; China; Greece; banks, not countries, receive the bailouts; financial warfare; IMF and EU; European Central Bank; US credit default swaps; US agricultural exports create food dependency; currency devaluation devalues the price of labor; class war of banks against the rest of society

Can Van Jones Galvanize us to Rebuild the American Dream? by Jill Dalton

by Jill Dalton
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 28, 2011

Image by FasterDix via Flickr

Van Jones is calling all people of conscience who care about America to get involved, stand up and help rebuild the American Dream.

Thursday evening I attended the “Rebuild the Dream” event in New York City hosted by Van Jones, featuring the musical group ROOTS with Shepard Fairey DJing.  Honestly I went to hear Jones but also to see Fairey whose “Make Art Not War” poster hangs in my living room.

An Open Letter to the Tea Party from a Concerned Liberal by Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
June 23, 2011

Image by dreamsjung via Flickr

This country is in a mess right now. You can blame it on Clinton, Bush or Obama, but the reality is that it’s more like all three, along with most of the people that they brought into their administrations. It also was not only those that worked for and with the executive branch,  included were Congressmen, Senators, and lobbyists, along with just about anyone else that has had any influence in Washington for the last twenty years.