“The hypocrisy of “law and order” and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.”
“I saw what Chelsea Manning did,” Hammond said when we spoke last Wednesday, seated at a metal table. “Through her hacking she became a contender, a world changer. She took tremendous risks to show the ugly truth about war. I asked myself, if she could make that risk shouldn’t I make that risk? Wasn’t it wrong to sit comfortably by, working on the websites of Food Not Bombs, while I had the skills to do something similar? I too could make a difference. It was her courage that prompted me to act.”
I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for. I feel it is a far more potent political act to completely renounce the current paradigm than to participate in even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by obediently X-ing a little box.
Billy Connolly said: “Don’t vote, it encourages them,” and, “The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one.”
We are, each of us, purposefully chained by a leash in the Land of the Free™. But it is only those who stray from the cookie-cutter conformity who feel the leash’s harsh pull. Herman Wallace spent a lifetime tugging on that leash. We owe it to him and so many others to not only make the leash more visible but to also break the chains once and for all.
She became an international icon after surviving being shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls. But Birmingham poet Benjamin Zephaniah fears others may be using Malala Yousafzai for political reasons
Though former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been indicted for leaking secrets about the U.S. government’s intrusive surveillance tactics, he was honored by a group of former U.S. intelligence officials as a courageous whistleblower during a Moscow ceremony, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern who was there.
Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of growing public activism over pay inequality since the financial crisis.
A grassroots committee is calling for all adults in Switzerland to receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs — about $2,800 — per month from the state, with the aim of providing a financial safety net for the population.
Organizers submitted more than the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on Friday and tipped a truckload of 8 million five-cent coins outside the parliament building in Bern, one for each person living in Switzerland.
From August 11-17, the Zapatistas brought more than 1,500 people into their communities to attend the Escuelita Zapatista, the Little Zapatista School. According to a February comunicado by the EZLN, in a class entitled Liberty According to the Zapatistas: Autonomous Government I, “our compas from the Zapatista bases of support are going to share the little we have learned about the struggle for freedom, and the [the students] can see what is useful or not for their own struggles.”
A new squatted social space has been created in Hackney – 195 Mare St. The space aims to be an active and inspiring hub for local individuals and community groups.
The current projects we are working on are a language school, bicycle workshop, library, free shop, screenings, hack lab and a vegan cafe. There will also be workshops and info nights. Everything will be either free or for donations.
There’s an animal liberation meme making the rounds in which the image of a railway car loaded with doomed pigs is juxtaposed with this oft-quoted line from Dr. Helmut Kaplan:
“Our grandchildren will ask us one day: Where were you during the Holocaust of the animals? What did you do against these horrifying crimes? We won’t be able to offer the same excuse for the second time, that we didn’t know.”
“The stories you choose to tell indicate your politics. Even leftwing critics referred to the latest round of American CIA films as not being political, when in fact of course the politics is embedded in them like the word Blackpool in a stick of Blackpool rock – it runs through it.” So in saying that you don’t take a stance, you in fact take a very powerful stance? “Yes, the characters you put on the screen, the stories you don’t tell, the whole way you treat people implies an attitude, and implies your politics. The Iraqis in these films are mostly deeply stereotypical, not to mention that the films don’t question why American is in Iraq in the first place.”
A Minneapolis television station aired an unprecedented 6-minute news report on PhotoReading during the evening news. The anchorman demonstrated PhotoReading and interviewed a University of Minnesota reading expert, a student who improved his grades from Cs to As, and other PhotoReaders.
