Power Quotes

Another quote from Eduardo Galeano, who is inspiring me lately, he has such incredible ability in lucidity at explaining humanity's struggle. These quotes are also very relevant and appropriate for the upcoming Peoples' World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth's Rights taking place in Bolivia from April 19th to 22nd of this year.

"Its out of hope, not nostalgia, that we must recover a community-based mode of production and way of life, founded not on greed, but on solidarity, age-old freedoms, and identity between human beings and nature. I believe there is no better way to honor the Indians, the first Americans, who from the Arctic to Tierra Del Fuego have kept their identity and message alive through successive campaigns of extermination. Today they still hold out vital keys to memory and prophecy for all America, not just our Latin America. Simultaneously, they bear witness to the past and cast the light of fresh fires on the path ahead. If the values they embody were only of archaeological interest, the Indians would no longer be objects of bloody repression, nor would the powerful be so anxious to separate them from the class struggle and from the People's Liberation Movements."

"I am applauding the fact that America can find its most youthful energies in the most ancient sources; the past tells us things that are important to the future. A system lethal to the world and its inhabitants, that putrefies the water, annihilates the land, and poisons the air and the soil, is in violent contradiction with cultures that hold the earth to be sacred because we, its children, are sacred. Those cultures, scorned and denied, treat the earth as their mother and not as a raw material and source of income. Against the capitalist law of profit, they propose the life of sharing, reciprocity, mutual aid...... which today helps us discover the American face of socialism, whose deepest roots lie in the tradition of community." - Eduardo Galeano.


"Banging on the system,
Fighting my kind of War,
Loud as a Whisper,
Quiet as a Lion's Roar!"
- Talib Kweli.

Social Spending Freeze, War Spending Increase

This is what Obama and the United States of Aggression have been up to. Late last week they announced a freeze on government spending for three years, not applying to medicaide, medicare, or, of course, "national security" as Obama puts it, or war spending to be more accurate. This is in part due to the multi billion dollar bail-out of wall street, the U.S coffers now are stretched out and struggling, and as a result they have prioritize spending on what is most important, military efforts.

On Monday Feb.1, President Obama unveiled a record setting $ 3.8 trillion budget that cuts social spending and increases funding for war. Under the plan the Pentagon budget would grow by 3% with separate funding for the Iraq and afghan wars, for a total of $ 741 billion. This budget request also seeks a $ 5 billion increase in nuclear spending demonstrating clearly that the U.S' pledge to being committed in reducing nuclear arsenals is pure whitewash.