Zachary Charles Zorro

forest in my heart

The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long and painful return to that which has always been.

—

Helen Luke (via samsaranmusing)

exactly exactly… IT.

(via wordslessspoken)

Time is so elastic, and it’s not just that it’s speeded up in this era; it could also be slowed down if we’re more aware. Maybe you’ve experienced that on some drug or something. Maybe you’ve experienced it in a dream or a vision. Time can also be very slow motion. The outer slowing down of time with slow motion film and all is just an image of how this feels internally, when you’re more aware.

—Lama Surya Das (via kelledia)

(Source: buddhistgeeks.com, via v-eggieheaven)

thepeoplesrecord:

Greek workers walk out to protest ban on teachers’ strike
May 14, 2013

Greek public sector workers walked off the job on Tuesday to protest against a government decision to ban a strike by high-school teachers, shutting down several schools and reducing staff at hospitals to a minimum. Invoking emergency legislation, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has threatened teachers with arrest and dismissal if they go ahead with a planned walkout on Friday that would disrupt university entrance exams, as he tries to show Greece’s foreign lenders that Athens is sticking to unpopular reforms.

The action on Tuesday was the latest in a string of anti-austerity strikes since 2010, when Greece adopted severe budget and wage cut measures as part of its international bailout. The turnout was not near someone of the movement’s larger demonstrations; turnout in demonstrations last year topped 100,000 at times. But activists insist that they are committed to fighting for humanity.

“Our message, that we fully condemn these policies, was sent, despite the low turnout,” ADEDY’s general secretary Ilias Iliopoulos told Reuters. “The government must make up its mind and show that it does care about students and teachers.

The conservative-led coalition wants teachers to put in two more hours of work each week to reach the average levels of high school teachers’ working hours in Europe, and transfer 4,000 of them to remote parts of Greece to plug staffing gaps.

These measures would allow the government to dismiss about 10,000 part-time teachers when their temporary contracts expire, causing outraged unions & citizens alike to call for the 24-hour strike on Friday and rolling strikes next week.

The government responded by invoking a law that allows it to mobilize workers in the case of civil disorder or natural disasters.

ADEDY had disagreed with the high school teachers’ decision to hold a strike on the first day of exams because it would inconvenience students. However, it opposed the government using emergency laws to pre-emptively ban the action, saying this was undemocratic and violated workers’ constitutional rights. ADEDY and GSEE, Greece’s largest private sector union, are also planning a four-hour work stoppage on Thursday.

More than 1,000 high-school teachers marched to parliament late on Monday, holding banners reading: “No to the civil mobilization and this terror!” and “It won’t pass”.

GSEE and ADEDY represent more than half of Greece’s workforce, which has been shrinking rapidly during the crippling recession after years of austerity. As unemployment grows, unions may not yield as strong of turn outs as they have when they had higher membership, but the increasingly impoverished people of Greece will not tolerate limitless government oppression.

Source

(via anarcho-queer)

descentintotyranny: The Draft Is And Always Will Be Slavery May 10 2013 Obama says some Americans are paranoid, fretting about an imagined tyranny lurking behind the corner. Progressives cheer as he mocks his lowly subjects. Yet some among them embrace one of the most despotic state powers imaginable: the draft. The draft is military slavery. It cannot be justified on any basis. Ever. It is wrong in and of itself, just like aggressive war. It is true that the Vietnam war did end partly because of the draft—but only after the draft had allowed for a much larger war in the first place, entailing the death of millions of Southeast Asians and tens of thousands of Americans. Progressives always seek to cure evils caused by the state by running to the state and asking it to resemble fascism even more than it already does. If you hate war, hate the state. If you can’t bring yourself to turn against modern corporate liberal imperialism, then just back off. If you vote for people like Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama, who promise more war and deliver more war, a program 100% consistent with their agenda at home, then you have no business forcing millions of Americans to die and commit murder on behalf of your beloved government in some twisted, too-clever-by-half scheme to stem the predicable evils that are not peripheral but intrinsic to the type of government you favor. You want a government that manages the economy, takes care of us all, stands up to every real and perceived evil of social power? Then you get mass murder. You don’t get to relieve your guilt by forcing young Americans, under threat of imprisonment, into the horrors of war that inexorably follow from your own agenda. Slash and smash the state. It is the problem. Giving it the power of military enslavement is not just self-defeating; it makes you a party to atrocity on a mass scale. Now, short of abolishing the state or military, we could conceive of a reform that at least moves things toward freedom. Despite the pro-draft propaganda, we don’t have an “all-volunteer” military. People in any other sector have a right to quit their jobs at will. They might be in violation of contract to do so, but they are not thrown in cages for quitting. The military is the only institution, or at least the major one, that still utilizes indentured servitude. This is inconsistent with freedom and human rights. Soldiers should be free to quit. If they were, these wars would be much harder to sustain. During the Iraq war, many soldiers are marines were forced to return to combat two, three, or six times under Stop Loss Orders. They should have been free simply to say, “No.” If you want to stop wars by tweaking with military personnel policies, establishing a truly volunteer military, where people can quit at will, would be the single best reform. It would also reduce the many problems of military recruitment, which uses dishonest and shady methods to ensnare young Americans into the Armed Forces. There would still be a lot of awfulness, including the military’s tendency to draw on the poor who have few other options, but there is simply no way to make the intrinsically hierarchical and regressive military into an egalitarian institution. A draft too will always hit the poor much harder than the politically connected. Calling for military conscription to stop wars is wrongheaded in many ways. More important, the draft is a form of slavery, and simply evil from top to bottom. If you want to reform the system and strike a blow against perpetual war, fight for the right of soldiers to quit their jobs at will. It is consistent with human rights and peace, and shrinks the power of the military state rather than doing the opposite. If your true interest is in ratcheting back imperialism and discouraging particularly disastrous wars, rather than in glorifying the state, work for greater recognition of the dignity and liberty of those who find themselves stuck in the Armed Forces, not less.

descentintotyranny:

The Draft Is And Always Will Be Slavery

May 10 2013

Obama says some Americans are paranoid, fretting about an imagined tyranny lurking behind the corner. Progressives cheer as he mocks his lowly subjects. Yet some among them embrace one of the most despotic state powers imaginable: the draft.

The draft is military slavery. It cannot be justified on any basis. Ever. It is wrong in and of itself, just like aggressive war. It is true that the Vietnam war did end partly because of the draft—but only after the draft had allowed for a much larger war in the first place, entailing the death of millions of Southeast Asians and tens of thousands of Americans.

Progressives always seek to cure evils caused by the state by running to the state and asking it to resemble fascism even more than it already does. If you hate war, hate the state. If you can’t bring yourself to turn against modern corporate liberal imperialism, then just back off. If you vote for people like Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama, who promise more war and deliver more war, a program 100% consistent with their agenda at home, then you have no business forcing millions of Americans to die and commit murder on behalf of your beloved government in some twisted, too-clever-by-half scheme to stem the predicable evils that are not peripheral but intrinsic to the type of government you favor. You want a government that manages the economy, takes care of us all, stands up to every real and perceived evil of social power? Then you get mass murder. You don’t get to relieve your guilt by forcing young Americans, under threat of imprisonment, into the horrors of war that inexorably follow from your own agenda. Slash and smash the state. It is the problem. Giving it the power of military enslavement is not just self-defeating; it makes you a party to atrocity on a mass scale.

Now, short of abolishing the state or military, we could conceive of a reform that at least moves things toward freedom. Despite the pro-draft propaganda, we don’t have an “all-volunteer” military. People in any other sector have a right to quit their jobs at will. They might be in violation of contract to do so, but they are not thrown in cages for quitting.

The military is the only institution, or at least the major one, that still utilizes indentured servitude. This is inconsistent with freedom and human rights. Soldiers should be free to quit. If they were, these wars would be much harder to sustain. During the Iraq war, many soldiers are marines were forced to return to combat two, three, or six times under Stop Loss Orders. They should have been free simply to say, “No.”

If you want to stop wars by tweaking with military personnel policies, establishing a truly volunteer military, where people can quit at will, would be the single best reform. It would also reduce the many problems of military recruitment, which uses dishonest and shady methods to ensnare young Americans into the Armed Forces. There would still be a lot of awfulness, including the military’s tendency to draw on the poor who have few other options, but there is simply no way to make the intrinsically hierarchical and regressive military into an egalitarian institution. A draft too will always hit the poor much harder than the politically connected.

Calling for military conscription to stop wars is wrongheaded in many ways. More important, the draft is a form of slavery, and simply evil from top to bottom. If you want to reform the system and strike a blow against perpetual war, fight for the right of soldiers to quit their jobs at will. It is consistent with human rights and peace, and shrinks the power of the military state rather than doing the opposite. If your true interest is in ratcheting back imperialism and discouraging particularly disastrous wars, rather than in glorifying the state, work for greater recognition of the dignity and liberty of those who find themselves stuck in the Armed Forces, not less.

minneapolis, it’s true - there are some things chicago doesnt have