WISDOM TREK / THECAST NEWSLET TER

Spring 2013

“The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence.”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Life is dangerous—you will almost certainly die at the end. But it is through danger that life attains to maturity, growth. You must accept the conditions of your existence in order to take back your soul from the machine.

If you are reading this, you are part of the resistance.

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When people ask me about my politics I tell them: the best reason to be a revolutionary is that it is simply a better way to live.

Their laws guarantee us the right to remain silent, the right to a public trial by a jury of my peers (though my peers would never put me on trial—would yours?)—what about the right to live life like we won’t get another chance, to have reasons to stay up all night in urgent conversation, to look back on every day without regret or bitterness? Such rights we can only claim for ourselves—and shouldn’t these rights be our central concerns, not the minutiae of social protocol and survival?

For those of us born into a captivity gilded by the blood and sweat of less fortunate captives, the challenge of living a life of stories worth telling is a lifelong project, and a formidable one; but all it takes, at any moment, to meet this challenge is to contest that captivity.

When we fight, we’re fighting for our lives.

The world will open before you like the petals of a rose. I swear it to you, the heart of an anarchist is a kingdom.

Laws are nothing more than the shadows of your predecessors’ customs. The man who insists that justice can only be maintained by the rule of law is the same one who appears on the witness stand at the war crime tribunal swearing he was only following orders.

The inevitable result of hurling yourself into the fires of transformation is terror. Terror, terrible freedom—moments of rapture that force us into new worlds where our previous desires are exceeded so fantastically that we can't even remember them.

Beyond our familiar desires and identities, past the limits of civil discourse and consensus reality, on the furthest edge of the map of what we know there is a cliff. Do you dare?

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Kim Phúc in JapanKim Phúc was pictured in a famous photograph from the Vietnam War. She was a young child, running naked from an explosion, with her entire back covered in 3rd-degree burns. Kim was brought by her photographer to a hospital, and although was not expected to survive, she did.

Today she runs the Kim Foundation. It is an international non-profit organization who’s mission is to help heal the wounds suffered by innocent children, and to help restore hope and happiness to their lives by providing them medical and psychological support. She travels the world to spread the spirit of forgiveness and to focus on the importance of helping children. She is a mother of two.

Philosophers and poets throughout history have thought about the very essence of human existence. Some have likened it to a gift. Others to a test. Still others to some punishment. It is all of these things, and a chance for rebirth.

Visit the Kim Foundation website here: (Link) War always involves children. Watch this video for an honest reminder: (Link)

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Silk Road & Defense Distributed UpdatesDread Pirate Roberts, the founder and administrator of the Silk Road global marketplace published the founding document of the mission on April 26, 2013. It has been republished here for your convenience.

Defense Distributed, led publicly by Cody Wilson, is the online home of decentralized weapon development. Today, you can print workable semi-automatic rifles, rifle magazines, handguns, and explosive munitions casings using 3d-printers, which cost approximately $700 (in 2013 dollars). The united states department of state sent a letter to Cody Wilson requesting censorship of the data. According to the US government, it is illegal for this data to be made available to the public.

You can download all of it here via The Pirate Bay (now in Iceland!):

http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8449468/Liberator_-_First_3D_Printable_Gun

http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8387853/DefDist_DEFCAD_MEGA_PACK_v4.2_(Saito)

More than 100,000 people have already downloaded the firearms modeling data since it was published. The world is awakening to a new level of information exchange—one where it is very difficult, if not impossible for old government tricks like “censorship” to work.

You can print most anything with a 3d printer. Check out this cool design for a bong you can download on Thingiverse! (click the link)

[finder’s credit: Dylan]

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http://thingiverse.com/thing:63742

Silk Road CharterSilk Road is a global enterprise whose purpose is to empower people to live as free individuals. We provide systems and platforms that allow our customers to defend their basic human rights and pursue their own ends, provided those ends do not infringe on the rights of others.

Our mission is to have voluntary interaction between individuals be the foundation of human civilization.

We conduct ourselves and our enterprise from the following fundamental values that are at the heart of who we are:

Self-ownershipIndividuals own their bodies, thoughts and will. Anything they create with their property or obtain without coercion is also theirs.

ResponsibilityPeople are responsible for their actions. If one infringes on another's rights, they should be held accountable.

EqualityProperty rights apply to all individuals equally, without exception.

IntegrityHonoring one's word as one's self. Word, thought, and action are aligned.

VirtueStriving to improve one's self and the lives of others in all actions. To create value.

We promise to be true to our purpose, to accomplish our mission, to operate consistent with our values, and to run our enterprise in service of our customers.

This is who we are.

This is what you can count on.

-- Dread Pirate Roberts, posted april 26, 2013:silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/charter

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