Perils of the Keystone XL Pipeline Confront Obama by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
February 21, 2013

Image by Daniela Kantorova via Flickr

Bill McKibben, a prolific writer and organizer on global warming and climate change, has had a busy year teaching environmentalists not to despair and will soon be learning some lessons himself.

In August 2011, he organized an unprecedented demonstration in front of the White House urging President Obama to deny a permit for the giant Keystone XL pipeline that would haul very dirty tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada down to Texas refineries, largely to be exported.

Koch Brothers Driving Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to Cut Out Venezuelan Oil by Greg Palast

Image by Elizabeth Brossa via Flickr

by Greg Palast
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
for Vice Magazine and The Other 98%
February 7, 2013

I’ve been tracking a tube of black putrid ooze, a toxic viper slowly slithering 2000 miles across the belly of America, swallowing all water aquifers, politicians and reason in its path.

The XL Keystone Pipeline.

As Nagini, the murderous snake in the Harry Potter tales, had its master Voldemort, I figured the Keystone XL Pipeline much also have its own dark lords.

The Financialization of Food and the Profitability of Poverty by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
January 29, 2013

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

The following is a brief excerpt from a chapter of The People’s Book Project, covering issues related to food, water, land grabs, environmental destruction, hunger and poverty. This excerpt examines the global food crisis.

There are a few things upon which humanity is entirely dependent for survival: food, water, land and the environment. One of the central questions with which humanity currently has to address its part, past and present, is the ways in which we, as a species, interact with our environment.

Tar Sands Exposed + Garth Lenz: The True Cost of Oil

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Image by kk+ via Flickr

MrEnergyCzar·Jan 18, 2013

Website: http://MrEnergyCzar.com

This video is about defining what the Tar Sands are. Tar Sands are also known as the oil sands because it sounds like it’s actually oil but it’s not, it’s Bitumen, underground mixed in with sand. Bitumen is a gooey tar substance that, through massive efforts and refining, can eventually be made into oil. We don’t call corn ethanol gasoline, it’s corn ethanol which can be used later on as if it’s gasoline. The Tar Sands are mostly up in Alberta Canada where the Boreal forest is.

Andrew Gavin Marshall: Indigenous Occupy: Why We Should All Be Idle No More

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
January 12, 2013

Image by russellmcneil via Flickr

The following is my latest interview from Russia Today.

An indigenous movement known as ‘Idle No More’ is gaining momentum in Canada. The First Nations people have promised to bring the country’s economy ‘down to its knees’ if aboriginals’ voices remain unheard.

Having begun with four members in November, Idle No More has now become reminiscent of other grassroots movements like Occupy Wall Street.

Corporate Culture and Global Empire: Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Poverty, Slums, Environmental Devastation and Resistance by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
January 7, 2013

Image by jonathonreed via Flickr

Corporate power is immense. The world’s largest corporation is Royal Dutch Shell, surpassed in wealth only by the 24 largest countries on earth. Of the 150 largest economic entities in the world, 58% are corporations. Corporations are institutionally totalitarian, the result of power’s resistance to the democratic revolution, which was begrudgingly accepted in the political sphere, but denied the economic sphere, and thus was denied a truly democratic society.

The Stimulator: Anarchy in Puerto Rico

Image by jonathonreed via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

http://submedia.tv
Jan. 3, 2013

This week:

1. Zapatistas Rising
2. Idle No More stops the flows
3. New year’s eve noise demo

Corporate Canada: The New United States by Tristan A. Shaw

by Tristan A. Shaw
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
British Columbia, Canada
December 26, 2012

Image by kk+ via Flickr

It seems necessary to remind fellow Canadians that our country was not always a malfeasant, blood-thirsty, islamophobic, imperialist-driven state whose actions are now protested across the third-world. The old Canada, the Canada too old for my generation to remember, was a mainstream country.

But that perception (Canada as a moderate mediator in international affairs) has long been replaced by one indistinguishable from the United States. The new Canada is a country that helps stage coups in Latin America, a country that stands as one of the leading impediments to a comprehensive climate agreement.

The Great Corporate Colony: Welcome to Canada Inc., A Subsidiary of the American Empire & Co. by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
Dec. 17, 2012

Image by Caelie_Frampton via Flickr

The following is a sample from the first volume of The People’s Book Project, a crowd-funded initiative to produce a series of books studying the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power and resistance. Please consider donating to help the Project come to fruition.

As one of the most resource-rich countries on earth, and the largest single trading partner with the United States, Canada is strategically positioned to influence the changing nature of global power structures.

The Stimulator: How did the Quebec student movement win?

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http://submedia.tv

Image by ricardoara via Flickr

Sep 26, 2012 by stimulator

http://indiegogo.com/streetpolitics101

For over 4 months, students and their allies, took over the streets of Montreal every day, to protest a tuition hike imposed by the liberal party in Quebec.

On September 21st, the newly elected Premier of Quebec scrapped the tuition hike and repealed a controversial law, that effectively banned public demonstrations.

While this is being touted as a victory by many in the student movement, one element that made this success possible is already being overshadowed. How the the movement’s militant street politics transformed the student strike from a single issue campaign to an uncompromising social insurrection.

Mexican Farmers Battle Canadian Mine for Control of Their Land by Paul Bocking

Dandelion Salad

Crossposted with permission from www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/

by Paul Bocking
Socialist Project | The Bullet
August 27, 2012

Image by sincretic via Flickr

Civil disobedience has halted production at Mexico’s “top grade producer of silver.” Farmers of the La Sierrita village, a close knit community of about 50 families, located 40 minutes north of the city of Gomez Palacio, Durango, have shut down the La Platosa mine owned by Canadian firm Excellon Resources for over a month.

This comes in response to the company’s refusal to negotiate with the community over its requests for the preferential hiring of local people on whose land the company operates, as well as pay the rental rates for its use.

How a Student Movement Can Become a Revolution by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
August 18, 2012

Image by ricardoara via Flickr

And so it seems that the student strike in Quebec is slowing down and nearing an end, as the college – CEGEPs – in Quebec have voted to return to class, with roughly 10,000 students having voted to continue the strike, a far reduction from the 175,000 students that were on strike in late April and early May. The strike began in February of 2012 in opposition to a planned 75% increase in the cost of tuition. The students mobilized massive numbers, held mass protests, undertook picket lines at schools, expanded the issue into a wider social movement, and were consistently met with state violence in the form of riot police, pepper spray, tear gas, beatings with batons, being shot with rubber bullets, even being trampled by horses and driven into by police cars. The government enacted Bill 78, assaulting the rights to freely assemble and speak, and put a ‘pause’ on the school semester to end picket actions.

Stand Strong and Do Not Despair: Some Thoughts on the Fading Student Movement in Quebec by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
August 16, 2012

Image by fatseth via Flickr

As eight of the fourteen CEGEP preparatory schools have voted to return to class, and thereby end the strike which began in February, Quebec is beginning to witness the fading away of the first phase of the student movement, mobilized by the planned tuition increases, and which expanded into a broader social movement known as the ‘Maple Spring.’ As some students have returned to class, they were met with a heavy police presence, no doubt to ensure ‘order’ during such a “dangerous” situation in which students enter school property. After all, Bill 78, which was passed by Jean Charest’s government back in May (now known as Law 12), made student protests on (or within 50 metres of school property) an illegal act.

The Maple Spring and the Mafiocracy: Struggling Students versus “Entitled Elites” by Andrew Gavin Marshall

Image by ricardoara via Flickr

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com
June 3, 2012

It says a great deal about our society when hundreds of thousands of students – already largely indebted, a significant portion of whom live well below the poverty line, who already work what few jobs exist for a generation forgotten before we leave home – take to the streets in protest and are portrayed as “entitled”, “spoiled brats” as they attempt to “negotiate” their very chance of having a future in this society… with a government that supports and works with organized crime, which is beholden to an economic elite, and which supports only those who can already support themselves.

Their enemy is our enemy by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 4, 2012

Image by fatseth via Flickr

I gave a talk last week at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the audience had pinned small red squares of felt to their clothing. The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French phrase carrement dans le rouge, or “squarely in the red,” referring to those crushed by debt.