Cornel West: Obama is a War Criminal + Julian Assange: What Makes Us Civil is Education

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Dandelion Salad

ignoredvoices on May 9, 2013

Influential philosopher and historian West is disappointed with Obama.

Jean Ziegler: Every Child Who Dies of Hunger Is Murdered, Translated by Siv O’Neall

Interview with Jean Ziegler by Harald Schumann, Norbert Thomma, translation by Siv O’Neall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Der Tagespiegel, Mar 25, 2013
Axisoflogic.com
Lyon, France
March 27, 2013

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Every five seconds a child dies of hunger – that leaves Jean Ziegler no rest. He calls banks and corporations “mass murderers”. And he hopes for a revolt from below.

Mr. Ziegler, you describe death from starvation as very “painful”. Where did you see this for the first time?

In Ethiopia, in an underground hospital of the Eritrean liberation movement. In this cave bunker I saw children dying of hunger. It’s much, much worse than we can imagine. For it is not as if with the lack of food, a person’s life energy easily leaves him.

Anti-Catholic Writers and the Politics of Genitalia by Rocket Kirchner

by Rocket Kirchner
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rocket Kirchner (blog)
Rocket Kirchner (youtube channel)
March 16, 2013

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No sooner had the Vatican announced a third world Pope, when the first world well fed comfortable horny de jour writers of our time led a full force attack à la the politics of genitalia. Why golly gee, you would think that these writers never missed a meal in their life, the way they placed sexual issues above the Vatican’s choice of a man who took the name of St. Francis that could possibly help at least relieve some of the brutal and senseless poverty on this planet.

The Green Green Gold of Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
March 7, 2013

Indian multi-nationals in clover

Ancestral land that for generations has served as home and livelihood for hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Ethiopia is being leased out, on 99-year renewable contracts at nominal sums to foreign corporations. The land giveaway or agrarian reforms as the government would prefer to present them began in 2008 when the Ethiopian government, under the brutal suppressive Premiership of Meles Zenawi invited foreign countries/corporation to take up highly attractive deals and turn large areas of land over to industrial farming for the export of crops.

Corporatism is the True Face of Terrorism by Siv O’Neall

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by Siv O’Neall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Axisoflogic.com
Lyon, France
March 6, 2013

The world the way it looks today seems like a stage production by Corpocrats – inhuman monsters who have made the entire planet into their horror-story set. It appears like a creation by insane people, one that wouldn’t stand the light of day. And yet – there it is, our world, gradually becoming annihilated by those mad Corpocrats who are cheering in their hidden castles. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know where they are. All we know is that they are in the process of destroying the earth.

Displacement, Intimidation and Abuse–Land Loyalties in Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
February 27, 2013

Image by STARSFoundation via Flickr

With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists (deemed irrelevant to the Government’s, economically-driven development plans) are being threatened, and intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced and herded into camps, their homes destroyed. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops, forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced – men beaten, children frightened, women raped, so too the land.

India: Growing Inequality and Destructive Development by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
February 15, 2013

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Upon a foundation of deep spirituality and philosophical treasures, proclaiming unity, justice and service, New India, horns honking in violation of the good; is racing, no time to spare towards the Alter of Materiality and Market Fundamentalism.

Under the careful guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the Indian government has for the last twenty years or so, (during which time the BBC 7/12/11[i] found “inequality has doubled”), embraced market liberalization and the global market; garlanded corporations with all manner of subsidies and damned the poor to greater poverty, destitution, suffering and, suicide in the case of farmers:

Unlivable Wages by Ralph Nader

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
February 15, 2013

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How could Barack Obama say, in his State of the Union speech, “let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour”?

Back in 2008, Obama campaigned to have a $9.50 per hour minimum wage by 2011. Now he’s settling for $9.00 by 2015! Going backward into the future is the price that poverty groups and labor unions are paying by giving Mr. Obama a free ride last year on this moral imperative. How can leaders of poverty groups and unions accept this back-of-the-hand response to the plight of thirty million workers who make less today than what workers made 45 years ago in 1968, inflation adjusted?

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

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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.

Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream

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Image by Dean.Chahim via Flickr

WhyPoverty·Jan 5, 2013

PARK AVENUE: How much inequality is too much?

740 Park Ave, New York City, is home to some of the wealthiest Americans. Across the Harlem River, 10 minutes to the north, is the other Park Avenue in South Bronx, where more than half the population needs food stamps and children are 20 times more likely to be killed. In the last 30 years, inequality has rocketed in the US — the American Dream only applies to those with money to lobby politicians for friendly bills on Capitol Hill.

Poor Us: An Animated History – Why Poverty?

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Image by The Advocacy Project via Flickr

WhyPoverty·Jan 3, 2013

POOR US: Do we know what poverty is?

The poor may always have been with us, but attitudes towards them have changed. Beginning in the Neolithic Age, Ben Lewis’s film takes us through the changing world of poverty. You go to sleep, you dream, you become poor through the ages. And when you awake, what can you say about poverty now? There are still very poor people, to be sure, but the new poverty has more to do with inequality…

Tavis Smiley: Vision for a New America: A Future without Poverty + Cornel West: You Don’t Play With Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dandelion Salad

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TavisSm
Jan. 17, 2013

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Tavis Smiley moderated a discussion focusing on poverty in the United States. Panelists discussed issues including the importance of education, prisons, welfare programs, the size of government, and the federal budget. The panelists generally criticized the administration for not focusing on poverty and Tavis Smiley called on President Obama to hold a “White House Conference on the Eradication of Poverty in America.”

A World Without Water

Dandelion Salad

by Craig Mackintosh
permaculturenews.org
January 12, 2013

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The law of supply and demand has been the basis of economic activity for millennia. In the context of our present economy, with its skewed, profit-centric priorities, this means that scarcity is profitable, and abundance is not. It’s an absurd reality, but one we see played out in almost every area of our lives on a daily basis. When this absurdity is applied to a resource as fundamentally existential as water, some people get rich, while others suffer and die.

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

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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.

Inequality and Poverty America Style–In Richness and in Health by Graham Peebles

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
December 7, 2012

Irrespective of ones circumstances or stage of life, illness is never welcome, in America if you’re poor it can prove to be a total catastrophe, ending often in personal bankruptcy. “According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60% of the personal bankruptcies in the United States“[i]. Health care insurance an unaffordable luxury, for the 15% or 50 million people now living in ‘official’ poverty in America, anxiously relying on good luck and a poor diet to keep sickness at a bay.