Awareness is a core consciousness that is beyond our mind, intellect, and ego.

Organized religion has frequently become quarrelsome, divisive, and led to conflict. No organized religion has been immune to this unfortunate tendency. So, we have had the crusades and witch-hunts of Christianity, the Jihads of Islam, the violent communal riots instigated by fundamentalist Hindus and the persecution of minorities and ethnic cleansing all in the name of God.

Our present times are particularly dangerous because ancient habits combined with modern capacities and technologies of destruction are a devastating combination that can destroy life on our planet.

Apple admits using child labour

The Road To Guantanamo

Taking Back Power with Daniel Ellsberg

The Bush administration thrived on secrecy; Obama promised more transparency, but has yet to really deliver. What's more, when information does come out, it seems that accountability is nearly impossible to get: the torture memos were released, but there will be no trials.

We ask Daniel Ellsberg, one of the world's most famous whistleblowers, if there's anything the people can do to take the power back.

Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

Haiti: The politics of rebuilding

“No hay nada más lindo que tener identidad”

He vivido "como un fantasma", con "un vacío inexplicable".

Between resistance and complicity

Guillermo Cabrera Infante: "Las revoluciones son el final de un proceso de las ideas, no el principio, y es siempre un proceso cultural, nunca político. Cuando interviene la política -o mejor los políticos- no se produce una revolución, sino un golpe de Estado, y el proceso cultural se detiene para dar lugar a un programa político. La cultura entonces se convierte en una rama de la propaganda. Es decir, las ilusiones de la cultura, el sueño de la razón, se transforman en pesadilla".

McOndo

Joseph Stiglitz: capitalism socializes losses but privatizes gains.

Corporate Dominance

Suffering from post-traumatic Obama abandonment syndrome--an ailment that came from being severely traumatized by Obama's political moves in the past thirteen months? A palpable sadness, depression, anger and even despair carried by many who had worked for Obama and now felt betrayed by his choices in his first year in office was mixed with compassion and a strong determination to not allow the political Right to use our despair as their ticket to a political revival.
"You were always foolish to hope in Obama--don't you know that the military-industrial-health-agricultural-banking-investment-energy complex controls the society."

ADD: knowledge and awareness
Maté defines ADD as those who exhibit at least two of the following characteristics: poor attention skills, deficient impulse control, and hyperactivity. He explains that the neurological origins of ADD are rooted in missing neural connections and blood vessels in the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine and endorphins are central in generating the creation of new neural connections. These connections increase with an increase in the amount of endorphins and dopamine released which occurs when one has joyful, happy experiences. Those who are deprived of these experiences develop fewer dopamine receptors and blood vessels in the right prefrontal cortex; ADD is the result. Maté argues that this means that those with ADD were deprived of the happy experiences that nurture these attributes and as a result develop ADD.

Emotions are deeply implicated in the development of illness and in the restoration of health.

EL MUNDO MARGINAL DE BOGOTÁ EN LOS ÚLTIMOS VEINTE AÑOS EN LA OBRA DE MARIO MENDOZA
En este diálogo el escritor colombiano Mario Mendoza habla de su profundo amor por su ciudad y su inmenso interés en narrar el submundo de la Bogotá contemporánea. Esta charla tiene como temática principal la ciudad como gran protagonista en su narrativa, y en ella se profundiza en algunos aspectos relacionados con la marginalidad urbana cuyo fondo se recrea en la mayoría de los relatos y novelas del autor.
Bogotá: suma de voces, encuentros, atardeceres románticos, luces, tragedias sociales, paisajes verdes y ocres, y delirios de ocho millones de habitantes…

Mario Mendoza, escritor colombiano

Strength In What Remains

Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable U.S. journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.

Avatar y Hurt Locker

Social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety quickly became the third most diagnosed mental illness in the U.S.

How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

What’s been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions.

DSM -the bible of psychiatry

Psychiatric medications, massive pathologizing of people, overdiagnose, psychosis risk syndrome

Michael Pollan on “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”

The author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, discusses the link between healthcare and diet, the dangers of processed foods, the power of the meat industry lobby, the “nutritional-industrial complex,” the impact industrial agriculture has on global warming, and his sixty-four rules for eating. “The markets are full of what I call edible food-like substances that you have to avoid,” says Michael Pollan. “So a lot of the rules are to help you, you know, navigate that now very treacherous landscape of the American supermarket.”

The Shock Talk

“When are we going to look hard enough at these moments of history so that we won’t repeat them?”
– Robert Redford

Sundance Review: The Shock Doctrine

'The Shock Doctrine' Trailer

La Red espía tus movimientos

Sofisticados programas informáticos rastrean correos personales y 'blogs' protegidos - No sólo los regímenes autoritarios invaden la intimidad

El significado de la palabra "Pishtaco"

Immanuel Wallerstein:

EU lee erróneamente la política mundial de Brasil

Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• John Lewis: Walking with the Wind
  
• A Higher Standard of Leadership: Lessons from the Life of Gandhi
  
• Martin Luther, Jr. King: Why We Can't Wait
  
• Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years
  
• Freddi Williams Evans: A Bus of Our Own
  
• Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement
  
• My Soul Is Rested : Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr.: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
  
• Howard Zinn: SNCC - The New Abolitionists

A People’s History of Poverty in the US

When you live in a shelter, other people control your life. They tell you when you may come in and when you must go out. They tell you when you can take your shower and when you can wash your clothing.

"Even by the standards established by the Social Security Administration, poverty in America is widespread. And it is particularly useful in this regard to asked how many Americans were ever poor. Researchers Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl have done just that, and their findings strike at the heart of the claim that poverty is a state confined to a minority of Americans. By the time they reach the age of seventy-five 58.5 per cent of Americans will have been officially poor at least once, with an income at or below 100 per cent of the poverty line. Some 68 percent of Americans will survive on 125 per cent of the official standard, and fully three-quarters will have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line. Worse, by age seventy- five, almost one third of Americans will be very poor, with incomes at only half the official poverty line. And, lest we conclude that these are isolated incidents of one-time hardship, some 30 percent of those who are poor at least once are poor for five years or more. For the majority poverty is an event, and for nearly a third, it's a durable condition.

Still, we misdiagnose the problem, for these are data about the entire population, and it's worse for particular groups of Americans. By the time they reach age seventy-five, for example, over 90 percent of African Americans can expect to have experienced poverty; for people with less than a high school education, it is over 75 percent. One third of our children can expect to live in poverty at some point. But if they are black, the number is 69.5 percent. If they are raised by a single mom with less than a high school diploma, 99.4 percent will be poor. And while we might make much, and rightly so, of the advances that Social Security has brought us, between age sixty and ninety over 40 percent of Americans will still be poor- by the official measures- at least once."

“Nothing is true; at the same time everything is true”

“If those in power have the right to imagine a history that is false, why then shouldn’t novelists attempt with their imaginations to discover the truth?

Tony Blair and his oh-so-clean conscience

Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

The Freedom Riders: New Documentary Recounts Historic 1961 Effort to Challenge Segregated Bus System in the Deep South

Is Latin America Turning Protestant?

Persepolis

La novela gráfica de Marjani Satrapi, es un relato autobiográfico de esa sorprendente y dolorosa experiencia de una sociedad que fue obligada a caminar como cangrejo, hacia atrás. La obra de Satrapi recoge las penas que causa la intolerancia, la enajenación de muchos de la vida social, y el empobrecimiento que acarrea el pensamiento único y la moral única que dictan autoridades político-religiosas, ciegas y sordas a las demandas de una sociedad que se le escapa sin remedio.

Howard Zinn

Charles Dickens, Las uvas de la ira, de John Steinbeck, y la novela Boston (sobre el caso Sacco y Vanzetti), escrita por Upton Sinclair, cambiaron su vida.

Howard Zinn

"Why do you still live in the United States, if you criticize the things the United States has done?""I'm not criticizing the United States, I'm criticizing the government of the United States. Patriotism means that you support the principles of the government. To criticize the government is the most American thing you can do."