BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
HEARINGS THAT PRIMARILY SERVE AS STAGED SET-PIECES & THEN SOME
An ongoing transcript and archiving of the Congressional ‘Russian-hacking’ hearing from The Hill, which in context of more honest and nuanced assessments, provides centrally important documentation for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens to consider, as two phenomena seem to be ubiquitous, the unshakeable assertion of a divine-right-of-capital to define our narrative and a growing assault on the right and capacity to present alternative perspectives, a sense of pending struggle, of verifiable and undeniable class conflict, attendant on the entire process, a conclusion which The Hill reports straightforwardly in another breaking news installment as Congress’ intention to “rein in liberal cities.”
This Day in History
For those who are believers in such things, today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and, in the United States, it is National Bird Day; when Edward, England’s last Wessex King, died childless nine hundred fifty years ago, a succession crisis ensued which contributed to the Norman Conquest of the country later in the same year, 1066; five hundred seventeen years before the here and now, Ludovico Sforza for the third time took command in Milan, where he for decades had supported such artists as Leonardo da Vinci and generally improved infrastructure and military capacity; twenty-seven years to the day after that, in 1527, Anabaptist leader Felix Manz died by drowning at the order of the Catholic leaders of Zurich, where his congregation was at the time; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
The requirement to form alliances, to produce partnerships, to stand in solidarity with those who face similar plights as do we, has become at once the most clearcut sine qua non of human viability now at the same instant that it seems further away from realization than at any time since hunter-gatherer forebears faced globally-warmed drought ten thousand years ago or so and trekked across the face of the globe for the most part in isolated clan-based groups, which the crisis of those elder days forced into the first slaving, exploitative, class-based civilizations, actual societies that have both all the miraculous, essential strengths that facilitate humanity’s thriving survival and the insidious and monstrous weaknesses that, we can only hope paradoxically, logically become worse as human capacity widens and increases, meaning that the time is nigh indeed to emphasize a need to be strong rather than an accedence to being weak, at least if we hope to avoid extinction.
Well it’s cold blooded murder friends, I’m talking about …’Such is the accusation that opens the angry chorus of ‘The Yablonski Murder.’ Hazel Dickens penned the musical indictment in January of 1970 after she read the newspaper story describing what she rightly surmised was the assassination of union leader Joseph “Jock” Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and his daughter Charlotte on New Year’s Eve, 1969. Unlike many of the ballads we consider in this blog, this one deals in essential facts proven in multiple trials of the men and women convicted for involvement in the crime. Cold blooded murder it was indeed. MORE HERE from Daryl Worthington, “Cronyism, Mining and Murder–the Death of ‘Jock’ Yablonski”
"labor history" OR "radical history" OR "peoples history" "class conflict" OR "class war" inequality OR injustice yablonski OR reuther OR ludlow OR homewood OR haymarket OR "great strike" murder OR killing OR "open war" analysis OR investigate OR research = 7,600 Connections.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
Nearly Naked Links
From Thursday’s Files
Prepping For Trump’s Assault on Workers – http://portside.org/2017-01-03/dont-bankrupt-labor-departments-mission-wages-chief-tells-trump-nominee
Can Reality TV Get Real – https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/the-new-reality-tv/511907/
EVENTS
Iceland Writers Retreat
The 2017 Iceland Writers Retreat for fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers will be held from April 5 to April 9 in the Icelandair Hotel Reykjavík Natura in Reykjavík, Iceland. The retreat offers workshops, panels, lectures, and time to write, as well as tours of Iceland. The faculty includes fiction writers Chris Cleave, Sara Gruen, Bret Anthony Johnston, Nadifa Mohamed, Paul Murray, Madeleine Thien, and Meg Wolitzer; and nonfiction writer David Lebovitz. The cost of the retreat is isk $289,000 (approximately $2,600), which includes lodging, most meals, and tours. Travel expenses are not included. An optional two-day extension is available for an additional isk 65,670 (approximately $590).
JOBS
Editorial assistant (Winterville) hide this posting
compensation: Negotiable
employment type: part-time
Organizing For Political Power
A Boston Review article by a seasoned, courageous political organizer who delineates steps towards building practical community power: ” While modern critics hyperventilate about Alinsky’s radicalism, they misunderstand the nature of his innovation in citizen organizing. It had nothing to do with left-wing or progressive conformity. In fact, twenty-five years later, in the 1960s, Alinsky would rail against the ideological purity on the left and the left’s lack of appreciation of the lives and struggles of working people, many of whom were fighting and dying in Vietnam. The Back of the Yards Council was radically different because, as Horwitt writes, its “political identity . . . seemed varied, even muddled.” “
A Columbia Journalism Review post that most writers who have been offered peanuts or less for writing will rejoice: “The long-chronicled decline of print has gored many a writer and editor. It’s hardly a secret that magazines and newspapers are now leaning mercilessly on their dwindling staffs, unable to pay outsiders as much as they once did or take them on at all. Fair enough; as Hyman Roth stammered in The Godfather, Part II, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
But there is something fundamentally obscene about expecting anyone to work gratis. And that applies even to us ink-stained wretches.”
A Wall Street on Parade glance at Trump’s picks, a situation which underscores the utter meaninglessness of the election results: ” Donors to the Hillary Victory Fund included Sullivan & Cromwell Senior Chairman, H. Rodgin (Rodge) Cohen, who donated $250,000 on May 12, 2016 and another $35,000 the following month. During the Wall Street panic and crash in 2008 and 2009, Cohen darted from representation of one failing institution to another. The Wall Street Journal dryly noted in the midst of the crisis that Cohen was “in demand because he helped mold the financial system that is now under assault. He helped draft the rules that led to the emergence of powerful national banks, waged the first hostile bank takeover in the U.S. and lobbied, in the early 1990s, to expand the Federal Reserve’s power to provide the emergency loans now being employed by the government.””
Mein Kampf’s Bestseller Status
A Forward look at a historical, albeit controversial book: “By all accounts, the republication appears to have been a success – sales and revenue for an important cultural institution, the decontextualization of a noxious book, and the addition of a critical tool for the teaching of anti-Semitism. There are, however, a couple reasons to worry.”