Image by Dave Herholz via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer’s Newsletter, Oct. 31, 2022
November 2, 2022
When we analyze the collapse that our civilization is undergoing, we need to factor in the reality about collapse that our ruling class doesn’t want us to consider: collapse isn’t a politically neutral thing. It’s something that exists because capitalism has made the conditions for it possible.
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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
December 16, 2019
I find surprising the detailed manner in which history repeats itself. The result of the landslide described here seems to have been replicated in the USA of our times in ways that all of us witness each day. The Germany of say 1939 seems like the blueprint for the US role in the world of today.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published March 5, 2017
September 28, 2018
There are those who would have us fold up our banners and take down our protest signs. They urge us to be reasonable and polite. They expect us to cram our dissent into narrow boxes of occasional grumbling comments and take our frustration out at the election box once every few years. These people write letters to the editor of small town newspapers claiming that the visible signs of dissatisfaction – pickets, protesters, political signs – are bad for business and distasteful.
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“I have seen British Imperialism at work in Burma, and I have seen something of the effects of poverty and unemployment in Britain. In so far as I have struggled against the system, it has been mainly of writing books which I hoped would influence the reading public. I shall continue to do that, of course, but at a moment like the present writing books in not enough. The tempo of events is quickening; the dangers which once seemed a generation distant are staring us in the face. One has got to be actively a Socialist, not merely sympathetic to Socialism, or one plays into the hands of our always-active enemies.” — George Orwell, 1938
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with Chris Hedges
TheRealNews on May 15, 2015
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and Truthdig editor in chief Robert Scheer continue their discussion about surveillance, corporate power, and the national security state.
by Walter Brasch
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
June 21, 2013
Image by Free Press Pics via Flickr
It makes no difference if Edward Snowden, who had fled to Hong Kong and revealed that the American government was spying upon American citizens, is a traitor or a hero.
Intelligence agencies from China, Russia, England, Israel, and maybe even Lichtenstein, probably already know that the National Security Administration (NSA) is collecting data of all the phone calls and emails of Americans, and linking them to conversations with foreign nationals. Continue reading
Chris Hedges (Photo credit: Dandelion Salad)
with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 5, 2012
MICAmultimedia on Apr 4, 2012
Hedges writes a weekly column for Truthdig and has been very involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement and was arrested with others in New York this past November as part of a demonstration.
Author and journalist Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for the Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has authored 11 books, including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig and has been very involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement and was arrested with others in New York this past November as part of a demonstration. Hedges talk is sponsored by the Humanistic Studies Department.
by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
June 9, 2011
Image by sakuraknight2000 via Flickr
“Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.”
— Steve Allen
“Patriotic” Americans are still berating me for “demeaning” my son’s “sacrifice.” A typical message goes something like this:
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
February 7, 2011
Empires communicate in two languages. One language is expressed in imperatives. It is the language of command and force. This militarized language disdains human life and celebrates hypermasculinity. It demands. It makes no attempt to justify the flagrant theft of natural resources and wealth or the use of indiscriminate violence. When families are gunned down at a checkpoint in Iraq they are referred to as having been “lit up.” So it goes. The other language of empire is softer. It employs the vocabulary of ideals and lofty goals and insists that the power of empire is noble and benevolent. The language of beneficence is used to speak to those outside the centers of death and pillage, those who have not yet been totally broken, those who still must be seduced to hand over power to predators. The road traveled to total disempowerment, however, ends at the same place. It is the language used to get there that is different.
with Derrick Jensen and Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Jul 12, 2010 Continue reading
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 15, 2010
When Empire Hits Home, Part 4
Part 1: War, Racism and the Empire of Poverty – When Empire Hits Home
Part 2: Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis: The Impoverishment of the Middle Class
Part 3: The Global Economic Crisis: Riots, Rebellion and Revolution by Andrew Gavin Marshall
As the western world is thrown into debt bondage and the harsh reality of the draconian economic ‘reforms’ to follow, a social collapse seems increasingly inevitable. We will soon witness the collapse of western ‘civilization’. The middle classes of the west will dissolve into the lower labour class. The wealthy class, already nearly at par with the middle class in terms of total consumption, will become the only consuming class.
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 12, 2010
Crossposted from Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters Feb. 8, 2010
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Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
RT on Feb 13, 2010
American journalist and Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges told RT the United States has developed a new form of corporate totalitarianism.
“We have to break the back of the consumer economy,” Hedges said. “70 percent of our economy is driven by consumption. We have to cripple our money flow to the extent that we can build a popular movement that counters the corporate rape of the country that is furthered both by the Democrats and the Republicans – the better off we’ll be. Many people are disillusioned by Obama and quite rightly so. But whether that means that they will take the active step to step outside the system and to fight, that is unknown.”
by Gary Corseri
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 27, 2009
Welcome to the Tipping Point! The End Times. The Bizarro Hall of Mirrors. The Funny Farm. The Monkey House.
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
By Chris Hedges
Hardcover: 232 pages
Publisher: Nation Books (2009)
ISBN: 9781568584379
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
February 17, 2009
[Editor’s Note: DS added the blockquotes and footnotes to previously published text.]
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Transcript of Chris Hedges’ presentation at the University of Missouri, Columbia, February 17, 2009. University Lecture sponsored by College of Arts and Science, Peace Studies Program, and Center on Religion and the Professions.
The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.
Dandelion Salad 