no. 688

“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink. And never put it in email” Eliot Spitzer, I’m told.

no. 687

"We had an agreement to be open-minded. Open-minded does not mean you choose the most illogical solution and call it open-minded. That’s just being stupid and wrapping it up in beautiful stupid paper. Unwrap it, and you realize you have been an idiot." from Michael Anderle's book Forever Defend

no. 686

That Christianity became an imperial religion is antithetical to everything Jesus lived and taught. The Empire was never a friend to Jesus, and Jesus was never a friend to the Empire. The Empire executed Jesus with its most public and brutal method in order to display its power and eliminate a threat, and when the Jesus movement would not die, the Empire eventually co-opted the movement for its own purposes. That is what empires do. - From “Refusing the Hand of the Empire” by Mark Davies

no. 685

Christianity in the United States continues in [the] long and tragic tradition of serving as the religion of the Empire. The way of Jesus has been mistaken for the American way; including adherence to its social, political, and economic systems. Through increasingly sophisticated and ever present forms of propaganda, a form of Christianity is used to bolster loyalty to and support for the Empire. Every cry that we are a Christian nation is an echo of the imperial voice that seeks to tame Jesus and use the power of the Jesus movement to consolidate power of the Empire through the alienation of the “other,” by highlighting that their way is not our way, that “they” are not us. - From “Refusing the Hand of the Empire”

no. 684

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

no. 682

no. 683

"Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening." - Chico Mendes, Brazilian environmentalist and trade union leader (1944-1988), assassinated for trying to save the Amazon

no. 681

no. 680

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. Upton Sinclair