Resist, collage and acrylic, 2010

MEDIA ROOTS- I pull a lot of inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut. The sentence “Here it is: the end of the world” from Cat’s Cradle stuck out to me, and this image is what came out of it. It made me picture a beautiful resistance blooming out of a bleak, dystopian society that had been pushed to the moral and economic brink by a hypothetical doom.

Vonnegut had the ability to put so much thought and emotion into so little words. He always managed to pepper some dry wit throughout the characters’ inner dialogue too, even when portraying some wretched and hopeless war torn scene.

To me, resistance means freedom- the act of breaking away from the institution. It means emancipation from societal, cultural and poltical chains and limitations. To resist is to liberate your mind, and to embrace knowledge, truth, enlightenment.

When society pushes you to the brink- will you peacefully resist? Would you surrender yourself in the struggle to save humanity?

Abby

HARAKAH DAILY–  At least 100 Egyptian protesters have been killed during clashes with police as the explosion of anger at President Hosni Mubarak continues to rock the North African country.

Medical sources stated on Saturday that over 100 people, including 23 protesters in the port city of Alexandria have lost their lives in streets fighting with police forces across Egypt since the outbreak of anti-government protests, while 13 people were killed and 75 others injured in the flash point city of Suez, along the strategic Suez Canal.

According to medical sources, at least 1,030 protesters have been injured as mass protests remain unabated across the country for a fifth consecutive day.

The worst unrest in Egypt’s history appeared to be ceaseless and police have reportedly fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters.

The fall-out comes after a curfew from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. was imposed Friday in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria.

In another development, Mohamed El Baradei, one of Mubarak’s fiercest critics and a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was detained by Egyptian police after appearing on the streets in the capital Cairo.

ElBaradei has promised that the street protests will continue with even more intensity until Mubarak resigns.

Continue reading about the Eqyptian Revolution.

Photo by flickr user Jacques Delarue

© COPYRIGHT HARAKAH DAILY, 2011

The AMERICAN DREAM is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you’ve been scammed by the most basic elements of our government system. All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away. Do you know how your money is created? Or how banking works? Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge? Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day? THE AMERICAN DREAM takes an entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems we have today are nothing new, and why leaders throughout our history have warned us and fought against the current type of financial system we have in America today. You will be challenged to investigate some very entrenched and powerful institutions in this nation, and hopefully encouraged to help get our nation back on track.

Learn more at http://theamericandreamfilm.com/ 

Photo by flickr user LateNightTaksForce

WASHINGTON POST– Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using “secret” forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

Continue reading about the U.S. ‘secret war’ expanding globally as Special Operations forces take a larger role.

Photo by Flickr user DVIDSHUB

© COPYRIGHT WASHINGTON POST, 2011