Adventures in Blunderland

"Marx interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny."

- Che Guevara (via redflagflying)

“We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers cited to justify it.  Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions.  Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.”

(via empathicsociety)

"There must be something in the Indians’ social bonding, something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans."

- Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur

"Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!"

- John Brown

"It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before… to test your limits… to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

- Anais Nin

"We are critically impoverished as human beings if the best we can come up with is money as the mediator of our relationships with the non-human world. Allocating financial value to the environment does not mean that we will embody practices of appreciation, attention, or even of love in our interrelationships with a sentient, moral and agential non-human world. Instead, it lowers ‘the moral tone of social life’ and, through doing so, it furthers damage to both humans and ecosphere because ‘the pricing of everything works powerfully as a device for making morality and love… seem irrelevant.’"

- Sian Sullivan, Green capitalism, and the cultural poverty of constructing nature as service provider (via perscientiamlibertas)

(via america-wakiewakie)

“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this, it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Manning said Feb. 28 when he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges. He said he hoped the release of the information to WikiLeaks “might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counterterrorism while ignoring the situation of the people we engaged with every day.”

But it has not. Our mechanical drones still circle the skies delivering death. Our attack jets still blast civilians. Our soldiers and Marines still pump bullets into mud-walled villages. Our artillery and missiles still raze homes. Our torturers still torture. Our politicians and generals still lie. And the man who tried to stop it all is still in prison.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

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• Milton Mayer in They Thought They Were Free.
• Milton Mayer

(via protoslacker)

(via cultureofresistance)