Virtues

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."
-Leo Tolstoy

Status Quo

"I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it."
-Niccolo Machiavelli

The Gaza Conflict

In this time, it is important to say some words about the current situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recently, Hamas militants began to fire rockets into Israel, some striking as far as 40 kilometers away. In response, Israel has begun a bombing campaign that has left over 300 people dead. The idea of all of these people being militants is illogical, as one needs only to look at history to know that civilians die at a much higher rate in any sort of armed conflict. Unfortunately, we, outside of the Conflict, have no reliable sources to inform us as to what is really happening in Gaza. Why has Hamas began firing rockets into Israel? It appears to be madness, but is actually a calculated step by Hamas leaders to gain an Ideological Victory against Israel, just as Hezbollah did in 2006. Because of this, it seems a ground campaign into Gaza by the IDF seems imminent. Who is and will be paying the price in this conflict? It most assuredly will be the civilians of Gaza, but also the people of Israel and throughout the Arab World. On each side, the people are trapped in an Ideological Conflict which they themselves had no hand in creating. There has been one Israeli man killed. In response Israel has killed at least 300 men. Ambitudo a Mortis declares both Israel and Hamas to be wrong, as each are killing in the name of Ideology at the expense of its civilians. Ambitudo a Mortis and the Revolution it advocates stands only for the People, throughout the world, and dismisses all Ideology, and damns all Conflict created for and because of it.

-AAM

Living Without a Why

"He who lives in the goodness of his nature lives in God's love, and love has no why."

- Meister Echart

Ideology

They do not know it, but they are doing it.
-Karl Marx on Ideology in Das Kapital

Dissent

"Power concedes nothing without demand."
- Frederick Douglass

Spinoza

“The purpose of the state is freedom”.

Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza, (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677), was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death.
-source

Slajov Žižek

A recent lecture by one of the greatest minds in our world today.

Apathy

"Apathy is always the impediment to progress."

- Shepard Fairey

Ethics, Aesthetics, and A Presidential Election

"Ethics is aesthetics." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Here is an article on artist Shepard Fairey and the Obama campaign Aesthetic.

CLICK

20th Cenutry Socialism

The fear of economic crisis, i.e. the loss of jobs, is most effectively being used by capitalists to keep workers' demands within limits.

-1971, New German Critique, The German New Left

John Locke

When a government is no longer serving its people, it must be dissolved.
At times, the dissolution of governments is necessary, to delay only results in further bloodshed.

Virtu

Justice is Balance.

Leo Tolstoy

On Politics:

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Revolutionary Art

When art inspires, or is inspired by, the Will of the People.

La Liberté guidant le people
by: Eugène Delacroix

Returning

Returning in September.
E-mail.

Featured Poem

"If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?"
-Pablo Neruda

Featured Painting

In the Car
Roy Lichtenstein

America

"America is the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else."
-Gore Vidal

Peace Without Freedom

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
-Malcolm X

Governments

The most important crime for any political system to avoid is hypocrisy.

Life

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue."

-Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Koons

I featured Koons without one of his works.



Stacked

The Importance of Art

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."
-Leonardo

Luxury Degradation

"The advertising industry uses abstraction and luxury to, eventually bring in degradation to whoever they're targeting in this life; you take their economical and political power from them."
-Jeff Koons

May

It's May. Live what you say.
-AMBITUDO A MORTIS-

Decadence

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent."
- Jacque Barzun

Featured Painting

The Second of May 1808
by Francisco de Goya

Fanon

"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization."

- Frantz Fanon

Teaism

"Teaism is a cult founded on the

adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday

existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual

charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a

worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish

something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."

-The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura