Edward Snowden: Take back the Internet

The NDAA Explained in 3 Minutes

it is possible to bring about peace

i have a dream

free pussy riot

pussy riot

Madiba

"In a way I had never quite comprehended before, 

I realized the role I could play in court 

and the possibilities before me as a defendant. 

I was the symbol of justice in the court of the oppressor, 

the representative of the great ideals of freedom, fairness 

and democracy in a society that dishonoured those virtues. 

I realized then and there that I could carry on 

the fight even in the fortress of the enemy." 

Mandela, 1994

seen enough yet ?

liberty

"When the people 


fear their government, 


there is tyranny; 


when the government 


fears the people, 


there is liberty." 


Thomas Jefferson 

wayseer

obey

obey

a brief history of tyranny in america

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French occupation of Mexico, which took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire.

Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juárez and his government into retreat. Moving on from Veracruz towards Mexico City, the French army encountered heavy resistance from the Mexicans near Puebla, at the Mexican forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. The 8,000-strong French army attacked the much smaller and poorly equipped Mexican army of 4,500. Yet, on May 5, 1862, the Mexicans managed to decisively crush the French army, then considered "the premier army in the world".

The victory represented a significant morale boost to the Mexican army and the Mexican people at large. In the description of The History Channel, "Although not a major strategic win in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's success at Puebla represented a great symbolic victory for the Mexican government and bolstered the resistance movement." The description of Time magazine was: "The Puebla victory came to symbolize unity and pride for what seemed like a Mexican David defeating a French Goliath." It helped establish a much-needed sense of national unity and patriotism. (read more)

International Workers' Day

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international industrial union that was formed in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain.

The IWW promotes the concept of "One Big Union," contends that all workers should be united as a social class and that capitalism and wage labor should be abolished. They are known for the Wobbly Shop model of workplace democracy, in which workers elect their managers and other forms of grassroots democracy (self-management) are implemented. IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, nor does it exclude membership in another labor union.

The Wobblies differed from other union movements of the time by its promotion of industrial unionism, as opposed to the craft unionism of the American Federation of Labor. The IWW emphasized rank-and-file organization, as opposed to empowering leaders who would bargain with employers on behalf of workers. This manifested itself in the early IWW's consistent refusal to sign contracts, which they felt would restrict workers' abilities to aid each other when called upon. Though never developed in any detail, Wobblies envisioned the general strike as the means by which the wage system would be overthrown and a new economic system ushered in, one which emphasized people over profit, cooperation over competition.

One of the IWW's most important contributions to the labor movement and broader push towards social justice was that, when founded, it was the only American union (besides the Knights of Labor) to welcome all workers including women, immigrants, African Americans and Asians into the same organization. Indeed, many of its early members were immigrants, and some, like Carlo Tresca, Joe Hill and Mary Jones, rose to prominence in the leadership.
(read more)

Intermezzo

. in·ter·mez·zo/  [in-ter-met-soh, -med-zoh] 
noun,

2. a short musical composition between main divisions of an extended musical work. 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Origin:
1805–15;  < Italian  < Late Latin  intermedium;  see intermediary
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.

It is perhaps incumbent upon tHE mAN to make addicts of us all, and at this hE is deft and insidious.*

Recently, during the restless interim between two periods of - what I've been falsly led to believe all my life was - "fitful" or, "broken" sleep, I did a little online digging into the subject.
Turns out, the only thing "broken" was my idea(MY IDEA? All I could think of was, "What do the experts say?") of what constitutes normal sleep.
For centuries of human history, waking up in the middle of the night was acknowledged as the norm.

Taking a pill to eradicate that is just the latest attempt to implement tHE mAN's reach into and control of our personal lives.*

Here are just a few of the articles, and if you want to persue the research that brought all this to light, just do a search on Roger Ekirch.

1.  http://blogs.discovery.com/dfh-sara-novak/2012/02/ancient-history-shines-lights-on-the-8-hour-sleep-cycle.html

2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

3.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

Ekirch got us all stirred up; there are many more, plenty to do during a sleep break. I've had the pill they're pushing these days and my opinion is, a little reading is better for you.

*Also my opinion.

Art: The Nightmare by John Henry Fuseli

something to live for

Necessitous men are not free men. 

Liberty requires the opportunity to make a living, 

a living decent according to the standard of the time, 

a living which gives man not only enough to live by, 

but something to live for.

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

the sleeper must awaken

profit above life

time will tell

Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an editor, activist, political talk show host, computer programmer, publisher, and journalist from Australia, currently granted asylum in Ecuador. He is best known as the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks, a media website which has published information from whistleblowers.

Assange has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award, Readers' Choice for Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Snorre Valen, a Norwegian parliamentarian, nominated him for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2010, a European Arrest Warrant was issued for Assange in relation to allegations of rape and sexual assault by two women in Sweden. Assange was arrested and after ten days in Wandsworth prison was freed on bail. On 30 May 2012 Assange lost his Supreme Court appeal in England to avoid extradition to Sweden though the court gave Assange a stay of 14 days on the extradition order. This final appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected and, barring any appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, extradition was to have taken place over a ten day period commencing on 28 June 2012. On 19 June Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London, asserted he was being persecuted and requested political asylum, which was granted on 16 August. However, the British government has said he will be arrested if he tries to leave the embassy. (read more)

(why the world needs wikileaks) (collateral murder)

Che

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was radically transformed by the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of capitalism, monopolism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives; he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico , was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world". (read more)

"Guerrillero Heroico"
Che Guevara at the La Coubre memorial service.
Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960.

boot