morla the ancient one

"If we as a society can’t even bother to treat a simple, unassuming, stunningly gentle and..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:36:58 -0500

“If we as a society can’t even bother to treat a simple, unassuming, stunningly gentle and demonstrably sentient creature like a cow or a deer with a modicum of decency, how the fuck do we ever expect to be able treat each other–infinitely more complex, wildly divergent and often exasperating individual human beings–with anything even remotely resembling civility? It just ain’t gonna happen.”

- From the liner notes of Propagandhi’s Supporting Caste. (via vulcanbrrrn)

thepeoplesrecord: Sister Assata - This is what American...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:05:00 -0500

thepeoplesrecord:

Sister Assata - This is what American history looks like
By Alice Walker

I don’t know why, given where we are with dronefare, but I didn’t expect the man making the announcement about Assata Shakur being the first woman “terrorist” to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list to be black. That was a blow. I was reminded of the world of “trackers” we sometimes get glimpses of in history books and old movies on TV. In Australia the tracker who hunts down other aboriginals who have, because of the rape and murder, genocide and enslavement of the indigenous (aboriginal) people, run away into the outback. He shows up again in cowboy and Indian films: jogging along in the hot sun, way ahead of the white men on horseback, bending on his knees to get a better look at a bruised leaf or a bent twig, while they curse and spit and complain about how long he’s taking to come up with a clue. And then there were the “trackers” who helped the pattyrollers during our four hundred years of enslavement. When pattyrollers (or patrols) caught run-away slaves in those days they frequently beat them to death. I’ve often thought of the black men whose expertise at tracking fugitives helped bring these terrors, humiliations and deaths about. When I was younger I would have been in a rage against them; not understanding the reality of invisible coercion, and mind and spirit control, that I do now. Today, only a few years older than Assata Shakur, and marveling at the unenviable state of humanity’s character worldwide, I find I can only pray for all of us. That we should be sinking even below the abysmal standard early “trackers” have set for us: that the US government can now offer two million dollars for the capture of a very small, not young, black woman who was brutally abused, even shot, over three decades ago, as if we don’t need that money to buy people food, clothes, medicine, and decent places to live.

What is most distressing about the times we live in, in my view, is our ever accelerating tolerance for cruelty. Prisoners held indefinitely in orange suits, hooded, chained and on their knees. Like the hunger strikers of Guantanamo, I would certainly prefer death to this. People shot and bombed from planes they never see until it is too late to get up from the table or place the baby under the bed. Poor people terrorized daily, driven insane really, from fear. People on the streets with no food and no place to sleep. People under bridges everywhere you go, holding out their desperate signs: a recent one held by a very young man, perhaps a veteran, under my local bridge: I Want To Live. But nothing seems as cruel to me as this: that our big, muscular, macho country would go after so tiny a woman as Assata who is given sanctuary in a country smaller than many of our states.

The first time I met Assata Shakur we talked for a long time. We were in Havana, where I had gone with a delegation to offer humanitarian aid during Cuba’s “special period” of hunger and despair, and I’d wanted to hear her side of the story from her. She described the incident with the New Jersey Highway Patrol, and assured me she was shot up so badly that even if she’d wanted to, she would not have been able to fire a gun. Though shot in the back (with her arms raised), she managed to live through two years of solitary confinement, in a men’s prison, chained to her bed. Then, in what must surely have been a miraculous coming together of people of courageous compassion, she was helped to escape and to find refuge in Cuba. One of the people who helped Assata escape, a white radical named Marilyn Buck, was kept in prison for thirty years and released only one month before her death from uterine cancer. She was a poet, and I have been reading her book, Inside/Out, Selected Poems, which a friend gave me just last week. There is also a remarkable video of her, shot in prison, that I highly recommend.

This is what solidarity can look like.

The second time I saw Assata, years later, I was in Havana for the Havana Book Fair. Cuba has a very high literacy rate, thanks to the Cuban revolution, and my novel, Meridian, had recently been translated and published there. However, this time we did not talk about the past. We talked about meditation. Seeing her interest, and that of Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, and others, I decided to offer a class. There under a large tree off a quiet street in Havana, I demonstrated my own practice of meditation to some of the most attentive students I have ever encountered. The mantra: Breathing in: “In,” breathing out: “Peace.”

I believe Assata Shakur to be a good and decent, a kind and compassionate person. True revolutionaries often are. Physically she is beautiful, and her spirit is also. She appears to hold the respect, love and friendship of all the people who surround her. Like Marilyn Buck they have risked much for her freedom, and appear to believe her version of the story as I do.

That she did not wish to live as an imprisoned creature and a slave is understood.

What to do? Since we are not, in fact, helpless. Nor are we ever alone.

I call on the Ancestors
by whose blood
and DNA
we exist
to accompany us
as always
through this lengthening
sorrow.
And to bear witness
within us
to all that we are
aware.

Widows of Culloden: A Cheese Story.

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:54:35 -0500

Widows of Culloden: A Cheese Story.:

treekisser:

Step 1: Mother gives birth to baby.

Step 2: Baby takes his first steps. Mother nervously stares at human observers. She knows what’s coming. She’s seen it before.

Step 3: Less than 15 minutes after birth, the still-wet baby is taken from his mother.

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:48:19 -0500

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:48:09 -0500

I love them so much.

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:48:37 -0500

I love them so much.

happy birthday to the greatest

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:28:35 -0500

happy birthday to the greatest

"Children show no trace of the arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw a hard-and-fast line..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:32:16 -0500

“Children show no trace of the arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw a hard-and-fast line between their own nature and that of all other animals.”

- Sigmund Freud (via superkingdom)

my queens

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:50:06 -0500

my queens

compassionco: Douglas and Linus, two brothers who are lucky...

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:50:30 -0500

compassionco:

Douglas and Linus, two brothers who are lucky enough to live at Animal Place (Grass Valley, CA).

USDA Funds Major Research of Weather and Climate Impact on Cattle

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:20:51 -0500

USDA Funds Major Research of Weather and Climate Impact on Cattle:

superkingdom:

Welcome to madness: $19.5 million in government funding to help dairy and beef industries adapt to the climate change they’re causing.

“We have seen the impact that variable climate patterns have had on production agriculture for the past several years. These projects will deliver the best tools available to accurately measure and respond to the effects of climate on beef and dairy production,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

I appreciate that applying legitimate science to agriculture might slow down the global catastrophe that is meat and dairy, but this is like putting a band-aid on a severed limb.

The team will also develop an agricultural education curriculum with an urban foods focus at Vincent High School in Milwaukee in an effort to educate future leaders and consumers about the contributions of the dairy industry to economic and environmental sustainability.

Did you catch that? The next generation needs to understand how the dairy industry contributes to environmental sustainability. That’s like teaching them to understand that gunshot wounds contribute to overall health. If your agenda involves genuine sustainability, USDA, then maybe you should explore ways to transition these farmers from cattle to plants.

UGH. The resources it takes to raise animals for food for a population our size is NEVER going to be sustainable. Great news, though: humans don’t need meat or dairy to survive! Just imagine the innovations in growing plants that could be achieved with the time, money, and energy that is instead being used to unnecessarily abuse and exploit animals.

"Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:12:17 -0500

“

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

They are witnesses in this cruel history of workers being killed. The death toll is now more than 750. What a harsh situation we are in, where human beings are treated only as numbers.

This photo is haunting me all the time. If the people responsible don’t receive the highest level of punishment, we will see this type of tragedy again. There will be no relief from these horrific feelings. I’ve felt a tremendous pressure and pain over the past two weeks surrounded by dead bodies. As a witness to this cruelty, I feel the urge to share this pain with everyone. That’s why I want this photo to be seen.

”

- Photographer Taslima Akhter on her haunting photograph of two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.

(via timelightbox)

Click that link. This is a picture that needs to be seen just as badly as the endless failures of global capitalism, which encourages and necessitates the conditions that made this happen, need to be seriously addressed.

(via mohandasgandhi)

soycrates: What’s Up With Dairy? Some links to reference (with...

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:24:14 -0500

soycrates:

What’s Up With Dairy?

Some links to reference (with sources): [x], [x], [x], [video]

An extensive list of dairy alternatives, and other alternatives: [x]

An information page on vegan calcium requirements: [x]

saucefactory: kellymagovern: Summer Glau practicing fight...

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:23:02 -0500

saucefactory:

kellymagovern:

Summer Glau practicing fight choreography for the movie, Serenity (2005). Her kicks are amazing for not having any martial arts experience. She only did ballet. It makes me wish that more ballerinas got into martial arts. Their flexibility is perfectly suited for it.

[Video Link]

SHE’S LIKE A KILLER BALLERINA AND I LOVE HER

this is beautiful

inechi: For YESYES! zine #2 from Germany

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:08:40 -0500

inechi:

For YESYES! zine #2 from Germany

Photo

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:22:33 -0500

fingersandfelines: crystalsandmoss: :3 aww tiny hands can...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:14:45 -0500

fingersandfelines:

crystalsandmoss:

:3

aww tiny hands

can you even imagine what it’s like to be another species on the planet with humans so wild with ego that they think they’re the only ones who really matter?

Audio

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:11:00 -0500

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:31:04 -0500

Photo

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:44:38 -0500