Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.


Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Benjamin Zephaniah ~ Rong Radio Station

The Black Cab Sessions

Usury, to be clear about it, is rich people taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to make them fail. All three of the great religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, had a moral prohibition against usury because they recognized that society can't function like that. People of great wealth and their institutions like banks naturally have the power to overwhelm people of lesser means. And you can't allow that in a decent society. It won't survive.

William Greider

FatBoy Slim ~ Song for Shelter

When I was a kid, a friend of mine used to say that if he were ever granted the "super power" of his choice, it would be the ability to speak in any language, any dialect, and with any accent.

Wax Poetic ~ Keyif-The Relaxed Minute

Git 'er done.

The progression of apologists for the state is always more or less the same: to suggest that the government is doing something flatly illegal and immoral is disloyal, and then once it has been proved that the government has been doing something flatly illegal and immoral it is only soft-headed idealists who think that such things are unjustifiable. “We have to be pragmatic!” they tell us. This is where the logic of wanting to “get things done” takes you.

Daniel Larison ~ On Torture and Detainees


via Rod Dreher ~ Rule of law? Screw it, says US president

Cinematic Orchestra ~ To Build A Home, feat. Patrick Watson

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." Aristotle

TPMTV ~ John Yoo, fmr. Deputy Asst. Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel, testifies during Hearing on Detainee Interrogation, June 26, 2008

Gaspar Claus

video by Vincent Moon

Lamperd Less Lethal "Keeping the Situation Under Control"

Manu Chao ~ Señor Matanza

Lunch and dinner for the "the most powerful bellies in the world" as they meet to discuss the global food shortage.

Liam Devally ~ An poc ar Buile

Frozen Smiles of Indonesia

Maddie and Anthony

Jason Webley and friends

"I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give 'orders' to private citizens that must be complied with?"

~Glenn Greenwald~

Jake Shimabukuro ~ The Star Spangled Banner

"They’d never seen the images of hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Center before, and they wanted to know what got America so angry."