Chile’s Mapuche Conflict, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Tomás Flores Saavedra via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 14, 2020

On 1 August, 2020, a group of civilians, in complicity with the Chilean national police force or the carabineros and right-wing hoodlums, violently attacked Mapuche community members who were on a hunger strike in front of the Municipality of Victoria, in Araucania. The attack was strategic, organized and preplanned with the occupied town halls of Ercilla and Traiguén also being attacked, Mapuche women and children being beaten and vehicles being set on fire.

Financialization of Copper Mining in Chile, by Yanis Iqbal

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by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 21, 2020

As Chile gets convulsed by the aggravating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the structural brutality of copper mining is being starkly outlined. At Codelco or the National Copper Corporation of Chile, approximately 3,000 workers have been infected with Coronavirus and El Teniente and Chuquicamata are the hardest hit regions with 1,044 and 636 cases, respectively. In June itself, unionized workers had reported the suspect deaths of 3 workers and had demanded a proper investigation. Codelco peacefully airbrushed these cases by saying that the workers contracted the virus from an outside area. Chile´s Federation of Copper Workers (FTC), in response to the sheer carelessness and profit-mindedness of Codelco, stated that “It is unacceptable that Codelco’s senior management tries to evade its legal responsibilities to protect … the health and safety of its workers.”

The Tactics of Terror, by Kenn Orphan

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by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 20, 2020

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” — Vladimir Lenin

Between 1973 and 1990 scores of people were disappeared by the US supported fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. They were incarcerated, tortured and thousands were murdered. In fact, the official total of those killed by the regime is just over 40,000. But some critics suggest it was much higher. Pinochet was able to do all of this with the blessing of the CIA who assisted him in the coup against the elected President, Salvador Allende, and in his reign of terror afterward in Chile. The painful lessons of the Pinochet years has often been obscured under neoliberal historical revisionism, but with what is currently unfolding in cities like Portland, Oregon, it is urgent to revisit them.

The Ravages of Lithium Extraction in Chile, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Davide Zanchettin via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 15, 2020

In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging with an unprecedented speed. There are more than 300,000 confirmed cases with one of the highest per capita infection rates of 13,000 cases for every 1 million people. The economy is severely experiencing the repercussions of Coronavirus-caused restrictions and the historically high national unemployment rate of 11.2% is an indicator of such damage. Chileans have took to the street to protest against the malfunctioning right-wing government of the billionaire president Sebastian Pinera and the police force has responded aggressively by shooting dead a young agitator.

The Year in Latin America: The Right Continues to Advance, but so do Popular Movements + Latin America Teeters on the Edge of Revolution

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Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews on Dec 30, 2019

2019 presented a complicated and mixed legacy for Latin America. Right-wing governments continued to make electoral in-roads, but popular uprisings against neoliberalism also left their mark on the region, says TRNN’s Greg Wilpert.

The 2020s Will Be When America Experiences A Social Breakdown by Rainer Shea + Jeff J. Brown: 19-year-old Rainer Shea is a Proud American Communist

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 16, 2019
December 19, 2019

The United States, like the other parts of the world that have been ravaged by rampant economic inequality and corporate despotism, is headed for a social breakdown. This gets more apparent every time wealth disparity is shown to be at a decades-high level, every time the military budget is expanded billions of dollars to fight endless wars, every time the country’s militarized police shoots an innocent person. Ten or twenty years from now, our society’s current form will have taken on an extreme version of itself: no real freedoms, basically no semblance of democracy, and conditions for the majority of people that are in or approaching squalor.

What Was The First 9-11? by The Anti-Social Socialist

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“We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows, without a flag, with powerful weapons that are placed in a wide range of influential positions. We are potentially wealthy countries and yet we live a life of poverty. We go here and there, begging for credits and aid and yet we are – a paradox typical of the capitalist economic system – great exporters of capital.” — Salvador Allende, Speech to the United Nations, December 4, 1972

Uncle Sam’s Grisly Record of Murder and Mayhem Since 1945 by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, July 30, 2017
August 1, 2017

The United States has killed, maimed, displaced, and otherwise harmed an astonishing number of people in its 241-year record of murder and mayhem – including more than 20 million killed in 37 nations since 1945.

A U.S. Guide: 7 Steps to Kill a Revolution

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teleSUR English on Apr 25, 2017

The same plan used in the 1970s to overthrow Salvador Allende in Chile, is being used by the U.S. today in Venezuela against the Bolivarian Revolution. These are the steps to kill a revolution.

Amulet, reviewed by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
June 17, 2016

(Rome) I am reading for the first time the work of Chilean born writer, Roberto Bolaño. His novel, Amulet, set in a phantasmagoric Mexico City that, perhaps, also because it is Latin America’s biggest city, represents the entire crushed and tortured and imprisoned and murdered Latin America while also his characters are emblematic of the suffering and decimation of much of the best of the Latin American youth. Perhaps the author chose to highlight Mexico City, not only because of the massacre of Mexican students there in 1968, but also because he moved there as a teenager and lived there many years before moving to Spain and Barcelona where he died at 50.

Global Power Project: The Group of Thirty, Financial Crisis Kingpins by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally published on Occupy.com, 18 December 2013
February 25, 2014

Following parts one, two and three of the Global Power Project’s Group of Thirty series, this fourth and final installment focuses on a few of the G30 members who have played outsized roles both in creating and managing various financial crises, providing a window on to the ideas, institutions and individuals who help steer this powerful global group.

The Assassin of Argentina

Prior to 2008, one of the most notable examples of a highly destructive financial crisis took place in Argentina which, heavily in debt, faced a large default and was brutally punished by financial markets and the speculative assault of global finance, otherwise known as “capital flight.”

Noam Chomsky: Instead of “Illegal” Syria Threat, U.S. Should Back Chemical Weapons Ban Worldwide + Chomsky on 9/11

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Dandelion Salad

with Noam Chomsky

democracynow on Sep 11, 2013

www.democracynow.org – In a national address from the White House Tuesday night, President Obama announced he is delaying a plan to strike Syria while pursuing a diplomatic effort from Russia for international monitors to take over and destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons. However, Obama still threatened to use force against Syria if the plan fails. We get reaction to Obama’s speech from world-renowned political dissident and linguist, MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky.

“The Russian plan is a godsend for Obama,” Chomsky says. “It saves him from what would look like a very serious defeat. He has not been able to obtain virtually any international support, and it looked as though Congress wasn’t going to support it either, which would leave him completely out on a limb. This leaves him a way out: he can maintain the threat of force, which incidentally is a crime under international law. We should bear in mind that the core principle of the United Nations charter bars the threat or use of force. So all of this is criminal to begin with, but he’ll continue with that.”

September 11: Forty Years Later by Carlos Torres

Dandelion Salad

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

by Carlos Torres
Socialist Project
September 11, 2013

On September 11, millions of Chileans commemorate 40 years since the coup d’état in which the Palace of La Moneda in Santiago was attacked by warplanes and President Salvador Allende died fighting the conspirators. This event marked years of state terrorism and bloodshed in our country and the fortieth anniversary of the assault has been a political and emotional recollection for our friends and comrades from around the world.

Heather Wokusch: NSA Leaks, Obama Prosecuting Under 1917 Espionage Act, the TPP, TTIP and more

by Heather Wokusch
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Heather Wokusch
July 4, 2013

Heather Wokusch Jul 3, 2013

From the NSA leaks and revelations about widespread surveillance to massive trade agreements being negotiated out of the public eye… government secrecy is an important topic. This ‘rant’ provides background and interesting connections not found in mainstream media.

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.