“Die Gedanken Sind Frei,” A Dedication to Norman Finkelstein

Posted on 11.02.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Die gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower
Die gedanken sind frei
My thoughts give me power
No scholar can map them
No hunter can trap them
No man can deny
Die gedanken sind frei

I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure
My conscience decrees
This right I must treasure
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator
No man can deny
Die gedanken sind frei

Tyrants can take me
And throw me in prison
My thoughts will burst forth
Like blossoms in season
Foundations may crumble
And structures may tumble
But free men shall cry
Die gedanken sind frei

Quote: Norman Finkelstein

Posted on 11.02.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Norman Gary Finkelstein, Ph.D (born December 8, 1953)
American Political Scientist, Intellectual, Author, and
Activist (Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Politics of the Holocaust)

I would like to say, speaking as a devout atheist, thank god in His mighty wisdom that He made us mortal we don’t have to endure it through eternity.

Aphorism: On the Judging of Ourselves

Posted on 10.30.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

By Madison S. Hughes (12.18.2009)

Other people are simply the benchmarks by which we judge ourselves. The humble seek the companionship of others they adjudicate as superior, while the haughty search for those deemed to be inferior. The former look up to others for enlightenment, while the latter look down on others for power.

Quote: Carl Sagan

Posted on 10.29.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Carl Edward Sagan, Ph.D., (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)
American Astronomer, Astrophysicist, Cosmologist, Author, Science
Popularizer, and Science Communicator in Space and Natural Sciences

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.

Quote: John Kenneth Galbraith

Posted on 10.29.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

John Kenneth “Ken” Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006 )
Canadian-American Keynesian Economist, Prolific Author

An understanding of our economic discourse requires an appreciation of one of its basic rules: Men of high position are allowed, by a special act of grace, to accommodate their reasoning to the answer they need. Logic is only required in those of lesser rank.

How Inequality Has Soared in the US

Posted on 10.25.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

If you want to get some idea of why the 99 per cent movement has attracted so much support in the US, just take a look at this graph. Over the last thirty years, the share of income taken by the top 1 per cent of Americans has risen from 10 per cent to 23.5 per cent . . . As you’ll notice, from the 1950s onwards, income distribution in the US remained broadly stable until the Thatcher-Reagan revolution. The neoliberal policies pursued by the Reagan administration – tax cuts for the wealthy (the top rate of tax was reduced from 50 per cent to 28 per cent), deregulation and privatisation, led to a dramatic rise in inequality.
Read more . . .

Sean Faircloth discusses his new book Attack of the Theocrats

Posted on 10.25.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Sean Faircloth, Director of Strategy and Policy for the US branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, discusses his new book, Attack of the Theocrats: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It, which examines the crumbling of the United States’ most cherished founding principle—the wall of separation between church and state—and offers a specific and sensible plan for rebuilding the church-state wall. The book also names The Fundamentalist Fifty, current members of Congress who have made some of the most extreme theocratic statements. If they weren’t so scary, they’d be funny.
Watch video here . . .

Quote: Noam Chomsky

Posted on 10.23.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., (born December 7, 1928)
American Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist, Professor (Emeritus)
Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, Author, and Activist

The reality is that under capitalist conditions–meaning maximization of short-term gain–you’re ultimately going to destroy the environment: the only question is when.

Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,(The New York Press, 2002), 58.

Quote: Michael Parenti

Posted on 10.23.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Michael Parenti, Ph.D., (born 1933) Political Scientist,
Political Scientist, Historian, Author, Lecturer, and Culture Critic

Wealth is pursued without moral restraint. The very rich try to crush anyone who resists their endless, heartless, unprincipled accumulation. Like any addiction, money is pursued in that obsessive, amoral, singleminded way, revealing a total disregard for what is right or wrong, just or unjust, an indifference to other considerations and other people’s interests–and even one’s own interests should they go beyond feeding the addiction.

Thus it is necessary and desirable to have laws to protect the environment, workers’ lives, and consumer health because big business has a total indifference to such things, and–to the extent that they cut into profits–an outright hostility toward regulations on behalf of the public interest. We sometimes forget how profoundly immoral is cooperate power.

Michael Parenti, Blackshirts & Redshirts, (City Light Books, 1997), 154.

Quote: Michael Parenti

Posted on 10.21.2011 by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

Michael Parenti, Ph.D., (born 1933)
Political Scientist, Historian, Author, Lecturer, and Culture Critic

U.S. commitments are not to the ordinary people of other lands, but to the privileged reactionary factions that are most accommodating to Western investors . . . right-wing government maintains the existing privileged order of the free market, keeping the world safe for the empowered hierarchies and wealthy classes of the world.