Eduardo Galeano

No vale la pena vivir para ganar, vale la pena vivir para seguir tu conciencia.

Nos quitaronla justicia y nos dejaron la ley.

Chris Hedges -The Liberal Class in the U.S.

The liberal class, which attempted to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values. The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.

Derrame de mercurio en Choropampa

151 kilos de mercurio líquido de propiedad de la minera Yanacocha se derramaron a lo largo de 27 kilómetros de la vía que atraviesa la comunidad de Choropampa.

Un grupo de trabajadores de la minera llegó esa noche y ofreció 100 soles por cada kilo recuperado. Decenas de niños se lanzaron a las calles con cucharitas en mano para juntar en tazas el líquido letal.

Unas 750 personas –40% de ellas menores de edad– sufrieron las secuelas de la intoxicación por mercurio. Las quejas por una serie de malestares físicos continúan hasta hoy. Pareciera que una epidemia de migraña se hubiera instalado en esta comunidad ubicada a tres horas de Cajamarca.

Taibbi: 'U.S. Politics - Reality Show Sponsored by Wall Street'

Political journalism

The global corporations (and the politicians they own) have refined propaganda to a level that Hitler and other epic propagandists would envy.

Bill Maher

FLASHBACK: The Stay-Go Handbook

Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite

Cornel West believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“This was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment,” Cornel West laments. “We are squeezing out all of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone."

"The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways."

No dignity at Ground Zero

It was a shock to find hundreds of others had turned that hallowed ground into the scene of a home crowd celebrating an away victory they hadn't attended, the roots of which they were probably not there to experience or were too young to remember.

It didn't take 10 minutes for the frat party atmosphere to sicken me. Olympic-style chants of "USA! USA!" I could just about take as a freshly minted American, as of Friday. But "Fuck Osama! Ole ole ole!" crushed any ambition of dignity for the thousands killed, many of whom had jumped hundreds of storeys to their deaths, their bodies shattered to pieces close to where we stood.

I wanted to stand in vigil, too, for the thousands more killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as part of the war on terror that George Bush unleashed and Obama hasn't done much to rein in. I wanted to stand in vigil as a Muslim who just last summer reminded Americans – insisting that Park 51 move "out of sensitivity for 9/11 victims" – that Muslims were also its victims.

The scene at Ground Zero was like a parody of Team America, the film created by the South Park team to parody Bush's America gone wild on nationalism. Now that we've parodied the parody, can the frat boys go home and can we return to the revolutions of the Middle East and north Africa that symbolically killed Bin Laden months ago?

I'm not hearing sympathy for Bin Laden from Muslims and Arabs I know. They're relieved he's finally gone. But they're understandably concerned that media obsession will let him hijack these noble revolutions. One man has been killed; dozens courageously staring down despots are slaughtered every day.