Image by Zohar Manor-Abel via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
April 6, 2018
Overwhelmed by anxiety and image insecurity a friend’s 20-year-old daughter recently quit her university course and withdrew to her bedroom where she took to self-harming. Company and environments in which she felt emotionally secure became harder to find, until she stopped venturing out all together.
Image by Eric Bartholomew via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
February 11, 2018
Christmas may seem like a distant memory but the environmental effect of the annual consumer frenzy, over-indulgence and extravagance is lasting damage. And year on year the cost to the planet grows.
Image by RANT 73 via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
January 29, 2018
Pollution has become an everyday affair; a murderous way of life which, according to a report published in The Lancet, is responsible for the deaths of at least nine million people every year. The air we breathe is poisoned, the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans are filthy, — some more, some less — the land littered with waste, the soil toxic. Neglect, complacency and exploitation characterize the attitude of governments, corporations and far too many individuals towards the life of the planet, and its rich interwoven ecological systems.
Image by BrotherMagneto via Flickr
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
January 13, 2018
Reject the glossy and sensational for the gritty and educational. Wean your mind from corn syrup and eat your vegetables. We have become a diabetic, cancerous, obese, depressed, anxiety attack ridden culture from the consumption of glitter-sugary corn syrup politics, sound-bite news, vacuous entertainment, and catch-phrase economics. We are commercialized right down to our souls from our mega-churches to our worship of wealth to our brand cults. It is killing us and our world.
Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr
by James Petras
Global Research
Originally published Dec. 28, 2013
Dec. 23, 2017
Introduction
The transformation of Christmas from a story about a migrant working-class family fleeing state persecution, in the search for a safe haven and receiving support and solidarity to the biggest capitalist commercial bonanza of the year – has far-reaching political consequences.
Image by TheSeafarer via Flickr
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published December 1, 2013
November 25, 2017
The holidays are at hand. Boycott Season is in effect. As the snow starts to fall, the commercial war of the season asserts its dominance. Our identities as citizens are quickly buried in a blizzard of advertising that defines us as consumers.
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published November 24, 2013
November 24, 2017
Boycott Season is now upon us. Let every citizen take careful aim. Your target is the corporate empire. Your weapon is your wallet.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Nov 12, 2017
Stuart Ewen, Professor and Chair of the Department of Film & Media at Hunter College and author of Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture joins Chris Hedges for a conversation on the power of mass propaganda. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the influence of the public relations industry.
Image by Walt Jabsco via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
October 20, 2017
Irrespective of nationality, religion, race, or gender; whether stinking rich, desperately poor, or somewhere in between, happiness is the one thing everyone is seeking – consciously or not.
Image by Ted Eytan via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
August 18, 2017
Man-made climate change, and the interconnected environmental catastrophe more broadly constitute the most urgent crisis facing humanity. It has come about as the result of a certain way of life, a materialistic approach to living in which greed and excessive consumption has been championed.
Image by Lorie Shaull via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
July 13, 2017
Every day we are faced with numerous choices, some relating to practical issues and others based on more complex psychological demands – how to react, what to say and do. Whilst on the face of it choices appear to have been made, in the main we react habitually; many if not all of our decisions proceed from the past, and are in fact unconscious, conditioned responses to the challenges of the day.
Image by Francis Storr via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
June 30, 2017
In cities and towns from New Delhi to New York the socio-political policies that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster in west London are being repeated; redevelopment and gentrification, the influx of corporate money and the expelling of the poor, including families that have lived in an area for generations. To this, add austerity, the privatization of public services and the annihilation of social housing and a cocktail of interconnected causes takes shape. Communities break up, independent businesses gradually close down, diversity disappears and another neighbourhood is absorbed within the expensive homogenized collective.
Image by Becker1999 via Flickr
by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
December 18, 2016
Commercialisation has poisoned all areas of contemporary life, and together with its partner in crime, consumerism, is the principle cause of man-made climate change.
Image by Doran via Flickr
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 4, 2016
Corporate demons possess our nation’s soul. They crept in stealthily, full of trickery and deception, but now they’re lodged in place, as surely as if they had stormed our homes and halls of power with guns and tanks. Perhaps we’d recognize their coup if they had assassinated a flesh-and-blood president instead of merely stealing the souls of all our elected leaders.
Image by r2hox via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Depth Psychology Alliance on Sep 14, 2016
In this depth psychology oriented discussion powered by Pacifica Graduate Institute, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Chris Hedges speaks with Depth Psychologist, Bonnie Bright, Ph.D, about how, as both individuals and civilizations, we encounter cycles of growth, maturation, decadence, and decay, and death.
