Chris Hedges: Rise Up or Die - Truthdig

We must either defy the corporate state or accept our extinction as a species. We have been stripped of the power to express dissent or effect change. Rebellion is the only way to remain fully human. - 2013/05/19

7 hours ago

"If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"

- Claude McKay

7 hours ago 2 notes

neurosciencestuff:

The Fractal Nature of the Brain: EEG Data Suggests That the Brain Functions as a “Quantum Computer” in 5-8 Dimensions

The brain has been traditionally viewed as a deterministic machine where certain inputs give rise to certain outputs. However, there is a growing body of work that suggests this is not the case. The high importance of initial inputs suggests that the brain may be working in the realms of chaos, with small changes in initial inputs leading to the production of strange attractors. This may also be reflected in the physical structure of the brain which may also be fractal. EEG data is a good place to look for the underlying patterns of chaos in the brain since it samples many millions of neurons simultaneously. Several studies have arrived at a fractal dimension of between 5 and 8 for human EEG data. This suggests that the brain operates in a higher dimension than the 4 of traditional space-time. These extra dimensions suggest that quantum gravity may play a role in generating consciousness.

(Image courtesy: Kookmin University)

8 hours ago 292 notes
20th
May
6 notes
Reblog

(via aboriginalpressnews)

14 hours ago 6 notes

"Be of service. You are taking your degree into a society dominated by concentrated poverty and a vulnerable middle class, a society where it is harder to pay for education, harder to find a job, harder to buy a house and harder to hold onto those things even if you manage to get them. You are entering adulthood during a period of mass incarceration and near constant war. There is a lot for you to do. Service is the rent you pay for the space you take up on the earth, and as a relatively privileged American you take up a lot of space. We are the most consuming, polluting, wasteful nation on earth. So your rent is steep. Pay it with service."

- Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry’s advice to Class of 2013

(via the-uncensored-she)

16 hours ago 511 notes

motherjones:

ellevish:

Their Instruments May Be Garbage, But the Music Will Bring Tears to Your Eyes

In a Paraguay slum, a children’s orchestra makes do with what it’s got—with inspiring results.

These kids are awesome.

16 hours ago 271 notes

Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent

thinksquad:

The “war on terror” cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of “terrorism”), and (2) the nation’s most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation.

(via smallrevolutionary)

1 day ago 102 notes

"Yes, I have cherished my “demagogue” role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine."

-

Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)

Happy birthday

(via revolutionizethesoul)

(via the-uncensored-she)

1 day ago 59 notes

gradientlair:

Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz - May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965. Happy Birthday.

(via satanic-capitalist)

1 day ago 2,072 notes

"

First of all, we have to be careful in the use of terms. When someone says America is in for a long period of decline, we have to decide what we mean by “America.” If we mean the geographical area of the United States, I’m sure that’s right. The policies now being discussed will have only a cosmetic effect. There has been decline and there will be further decline. The country is acquiring many of the characteristics of a Third World society.

But if we’re talking about US-based corporations, then it’s probably not right. In fact, the indications are to the contrary — their share in manufacturing production, for example, has been stable or is probably even increasing, while the share of the US itself has declined. That’s an automatic consequence of sending productive labor elsewhere.

"

- Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)

(via noam-chomsky)

1 day ago 30 notes

the-science-llama:

Reflection and Emission Nebulas
— Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

Credit: Gerald Rhemann // Astrostudio

1 day ago 47,838 notes

Astoundingly Disturbing: Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe

2 days ago

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” — Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961

2 days ago 2 notes

"Clinton’s crime bill not only increased the number of blacks in prison but also inspired a booming new industry. His 1994 crime bill’s allocation of $9.7 billion for prison construction was deemed “very favorable” to prison operators and other business executives, as it provided for the establishment of what the Wall Street Journal identified as America’s “prison-industrial complex.” The ever-increasing incarceration rate of blacks created a wellspring of profits for businesses, private companies and investors, unlocking the floodgates to billions if federal and state government dollars to construct and operate private prisons to accommodate this burgeoning population…by 1996, as Clinton began a second term, America was opening around three new prisons per week."

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Elaine Brown, The Condemnation of Little B

People need to stop supporting for Clinton.

(via daughterofassata)

(via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)

2 days ago 38 notes

"What has happened and continues to happen in Monroe, N.C., illustrates an old truth: that words used in common by all men do not always have a meaning common to all men. Men have engaged in life-or-death struggles because of differences of meaning in a commonly-used word. The white racists ‘believes’ in ‘freedom,’ he ‘believes’ in ‘fair trial,’ he ‘believes’ in ‘justice.’ he sincerely believes in these words and can use them with great emotion because to the white racist they mean his freedom to deprive Negroes of their basic human rights and his courts where a ‘fair trial’ is that procedure and ‘justice’ that decision which upholds the racist’s mad ideal of white supremacy. On many desperate occasions when our constitutional rights were denied and our lives in danger, we called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the Monroe situation, to protect our lives and to restore our constitutional rights, in other words, to administer justice. And they always refused our request."

- Taken from “Negroes With Guns” by Robert F. Williams (page 54). (via disciplesofmalcolm)

3 days ago 17 notes