The Problem is Civil Obedience by Howard Zinn + Matt Damon Reads from Howard Zinn’s Speech

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by Howard Zinn
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Previously published on November 25, 2013
March 22, 2018

[By the latter part of May, 1970, feelings about the war in Vietnam had become almost unbearably intense. In Boston, about a hundred of us decided to sit down at the Boston Army Base and block the road used by buses carrying draftees off to military duty. We were not so daft that we thought we were stopping the flow of soldiers to Vietnam; it was a symbolic act, a statement, a piece of guerrilla the after. We were all arrested and charged, in the quaint language of an old statute, with “sauntering and loitering” in such a way as to obstruct traffic.

Corporate, State-Capitalist and Imperialist Media, Not “Mainstream Media” and Other Terminology by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
March 20, 2018

Climate Crisis, Not “Climate Change”

My next-to-last CounterPunch essay (“Someone Tell a Reporter: the Rich Are Destroying the Earth”) elicited a smart criticism from a senior scientist:

Martin Luther King Jr.: The Drum Major Instinct

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Dandelion Salad

“God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.”  — Martin Luther King, Jr., The Drum Major Instinct, February 4, 1968

Happy New Year! The Radical MLK by The Anti-Social Socialist

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Happy New Year!

“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter to Coretta Scott, 1952

Why The Documentary Must Not Be Allowed To Die by John Pilger + Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny

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Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
John Pilger, Dec. 11, 2017
December 12, 2017

I first understood the power of the documentary during the editing of my first film, The Quiet Mutiny. In the commentary, I make reference to a chicken, which my crew and I encountered while on patrol with American soldiers in Vietnam.

9-11 Commemoration Garbage Was Nothing But More War Justifying Propaganda by Daniel N. White

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by Daniel N. White
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 11, 2017

Bernard Fall, the great French-American writer on the wars in Vietnam, wrote a piece in his Street Without Joy about his early days in Vietnam, during the French war there. One day Fall was in Cambodia doing interviews and research, and afterwards went with a pair of French officers that he’d interviewed to the local club tennis courts, and watched them, in their spotless tennis whites, play a full match of tennis. Early on in their game, a Cambodian NCO came up to the court and attempted to get one of the officers to sign some papers he had. The NCO got a brushoff—the French officers were busy with their game—and so the Cambodian NCO just went off to the sidelines, squatted on his haunches the way Cambodians do, full out in the tropical sun , and waited while the two French officers in their tennis whites batted the ball back and forth. Fall watched, with a feeling of dread coming over him, as the post bugler sounded Last Post, the colors were lowered, the Cambodian standing to attention while the French officers continued playing tennis. Fall wrote:

John Pilger: Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa and the Plight of the Working Class

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See video below

Dandelion Salad

with John Pilger

goingundergroundRT on Dec 4, 2017

In this episode, we speak to the legendary journalist John Pilger looking back at decades documenting human rights abuse, wars and corruption.

If Anyone Knows About the “Heavy Toll of War”, It is the Vietnamese by Felicity Arbuthnot

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by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
November 15, 2017

“One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.” — Mike Hastie, Former U.S. Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71

The War of US and NATO Imperialism in Afghanistan by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

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by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published on imperialismandthethirdworld, Oct. 14, 2017
October 16, 2017, revised October 19, 2017

Sixteen years of war in Afghanistan by US and NATO imperialism is the longest in their history. In spite of their incomparable high tech military and economic superiority, and after gathering the military forces of 50 client countries there, committing diabolical atrocities, and spending close to a trillion dollars, they have essentially lost the war against the poorly equipped Taliban and their allies that have been waging an effective and experienced guerrilla warfare against the invaders and becoming stronger in the process, again demonstrating the accuracy of dialectical theories of guerrilla warfare by Mao Zedong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Ernesto Che Guevara.

Cold War Then. Cold War Now. by William Blum

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by William Blum
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.killinghope.org
September 26, 2017

Cold War then. Cold War now.

The anti-Russian/anti-Soviet bias in the American media appears to have no limit. You would think that they would have enough self-awareness and enough journalistic integrity -– just enough -– to be concerned about their image. But it keeps on coming, piled higher and deeper.

The Killing of History by John Pilger

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Dandelion Salad

by John Pilger
John Pilger, Sept. 21, 2017
September 24, 2017

One of the most hyped “events” of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, “They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way”.

John Pilger: Propaganda and Censorship Is the Real Problem in the US

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See video below

Dandelion Salad

with John Pilger

Watching the Hawks RT on Sept 18, 2017

With all eyes on the nuclear standoff with North Korea, what is the over-arching agenda in play behind the politics of crisis? Tyrel Ventura sits down with documentary filmmaker and journalist John Pilger to learn more about the unfolding behind-the-scenes power play, and to discuss his latest documentary, “The Coming War on China.”

SPIN: The Art of Selling War (2004)

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Dandelion Salad

Originally posted June 15, 2011

rushingfan on Jan 29, 2007

Directed by Josh Rushing, a veteran Marine Corps media spokesman, “SPIN: The Art of Selling War” is an investigative documentary that looks at the standard justification for going to war by the American administrations of past and present.

The Anti-Trump Protests: Don’t Ask: Where Were You For The Last 8 Years? by Bill Dores

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Dandelion Salad

by Bill Dores
Workers World
January 30, 2017

Since the election of Trump, spontaneous protests have erupted as well as the massive counter-inaugural marches on Jan. 20 and worldwide women’s marches on Jan. 21. Some leftists and anti-war people on social media have had nothing but criticism for the protests and skepticism regarding their participants.

Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.: The Three Evils of Society: Racism, Militarism and Capitalism (must-see)

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Dandelion Salad
Previously published Jan. 17, 2016

“What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., Address Delivered at the National Conference on New Politics, August 31, 1967