Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress by Howard Zinn

Image by Anthony Catalano via Flickr

It’s that time of the year again. In case you missed reading this, here it is again.

by Howard Zinn
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published October 13, 2009
October 12, 2020

An excerpt from A People’s History of the United States.

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

Chris Hedges: Challenging Corporate Power: Chevron VS Donziger

Image by Rainforest Action Network via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Sep 5, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Steven Donziger about the reach of corporate power. Donziger battled corporate oil giant, Chevron, over environmental pollution and destruction in Ecuador and won a settlement of $9.5 billion for indigenous communities. Since then Chevron has waged a campaign against Donziger to try and destroy him economically, professionally and personally. He is on trial in federal court in New York on September 9 for contempt charges, which could send him to jail for six months.

Indigenous People of Mexico Fight More Than Pandemic, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Cordelia Persen via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 26, 2020

In Mexico, the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic is increasing. With more than 568,600 cases and 61,450 deaths (third largest number of Covid-19 deaths), the country is staggering under the Coronavirus pandemic. While the entire country is experiencing the impact, indigenous communities represent the hardest hit demographic. Data from Coneval, the national government’s social development agency, has shown that the Covid-19 fatality rate in Mexico’s poorest 427 municipalities is 14.1. On the other hand, the fatality rate in the country’s 54 wealthiest municipalities is 8.1, “meaning that people who live in impoverished parts of the country are almost twice as likely to die if they become sick with Covid-19 than those who live in affluent areas.”

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.

The Garifuna in Honduras: A History of Pillage and Dispossession, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by fabulousfabs via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 29, 2020

Amid the current Covid-19 pandemic, the Garifuna community of Honduras is experiencing state-sponsored violence and regulated repression. On July 18, 2020, heavily armed personnel of the Police Investigation Department (DPI) barged into the house of Alberth Sneider Centeno, Garifuna president of the land community of El Triunfo de la Cruz, and abducted him. Later, the same armed group kidnapped Suami Aparicio Mejía García, Gerardo Mizael Rochez Cálix and Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, members of the OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), and a fifth person, Junior Rafael Juárez Mejía. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has issued a statement saying “that the kidnapping of these people is motivated by the activity of the Garifuna people in defense of their ancestral lands and the rights of Afro-indigenous and indigenous people in these territories.”

Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: The Plight of the Dene People

Image by TonyaHennessey via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jul 25, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to comics journalist Joe Sacco about his new book, Paying the Land. In the book, Sacco travels to the frozen Canadian Northwest Territories to reveal the Dene people in conflict over the costs and benefits of the resource extraction industry and development.

Environmental Disaster and Health Crisis in Cerrejon, Colombia, by Yanis Iqbal

Image by Lee Bosher via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 25, 2020

At Cerrejon (Colombia), the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America owned equally by BHP (Australia), Anglo American PLC (United Kingdom) and Glencore (Switzerland), the situation of the indigenous people is progressively worsening. Cerrejon Limited has informed the workers that “all the existing shifts will be unified into a single 7-day work, for three days off.” With the enforcement of the new shifts, “workers would go from working 15 to 21 days and the mine would go from 4 to 3 shifts, leaving at least 25% of the current workforce unemployed.” The new shift pattern is likely to aggravate the health of workers as long working hours increase the number of work-related pathologies. Current work shift arrangements have already led to more than “700 pathologies associated with musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular and ear diseases, among others.” As the level of work becomes more stressful, these occupational diseases will start multiplying.

The Potential For An Anti-Imperialist Revolution by Rainer Shea

Image by Hunter Desportes via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Mar. 14, 2020
March 25, 2020

Since the beginning of colonialism, there’s existed a category of middle class people who’ve shared certain economic and social interests with the capitalist class. These interests consist of the wealth, security, and opportunities that one receives while benefiting from imperialism. And since these benefits are shared both by the property-owning class, much of the working class, and even some of the poor within the core imperialist countries, the rich have been able to keep most of the people in these countries opposed to socialist revolution.

Shut Down Canada Until it Solves its War, Oil, and Genocide Problem by David Swanson

Image by Mark Klotz via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
February 16, 2020

Indigenous people in Canada are giving the world a demonstration of the power of nonviolent action. The justness of their cause — defending the land from those who would destroy it for short term profit and the elimination of a habitable climate on earth — combined with their courage and the absence on their part of cruelty or hatred, has the potential to create a much larger movement, which is of course the key to success.

Late-Stage Capitalism Is Creating A New Kind Of Global Despotism by Rainer Shea

Image by Glenn Halog via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Dec. 23, 2019
December 26, 2019

The power structure that now dominates the globe is a logical extension of the project for colonizing Africa, Oceania, and the Americas that the European imperialist powers began over five centuries ago. From the start of this project, it’s been a constant rule for those in the colonizing powers that one’s society is at war with a weaker enemy. The indigenous people, who have been portrayed as not capable of running things, have had to be brought under the colonial boot according to the ideology of imperial conquest. And in accordance with the global rise of capitalism that colonialism precipitated, the same dynamic of subjugation has existed between the poor and the rich.

Chris Hedges: In Conflict with the Natural World + What Happened to the Labor Movement?

Image by Woody Hibbard via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Nov 23, 2019

Chris Hedges talks to author Amitav Ghosh about the natural world and sacred forces that sustain life and the conflict when treated by the human species as an inert commodity to exploit. In his novel Gun Island, Ghosh explores how these ecosystems have turned with a vengeance on the hubris and collective lunacy of modern industrialized society.

INVASION

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

UnistotenCamp on Nov 1, 2019

In this era of “reconciliation”, Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people.

Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress by Howard Zinn

Image by Anthony Catalano via Flickr

It’s that time of the year again. In case you missed reading this, here it is again.

by Howard Zinn
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published October 13, 2009
October 14, 2019

An excerpt from A People’s History of the United States.

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

Chris Hedges: The Destruction of the Amazon Rainforest

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Sep 21, 2019

Host Chris Hedges talks to Sonia Bone Guajajara, leader of 300 indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil, about the future of the Amazon rain forest, its people, climate change, and the competing goals of agro business, multinational corporations, and the policies of conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

The Fight Against Climate Change Is An Anti-Colonialist Struggle by Rainer Shea + The Amazon is Burning at a Record Rate

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, Aug. 27, 2019
August 30, 2019

With this month’s burning of the Amazon as a result of the actions of the fascist Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, the first world has gotten a glimpse of the horrors that the world’s poor and indigenous people have long been experiencing at the hands of capitalism and colonialism. Because the Amazon’s existence is crucial for preventing climate apocalypse, the world outside of the region’s indigenous community now feels threatened by the consequences of profit-motivated white supremacy.