BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
WITHOUT VOTES TO BACK IT UP, AN OXYMORONIC ‘WARNING‘
This Day in History
Today in Panama commemorates the struggle against neocolonialism with Martyr’s Day, as citizens of the Subcontinent celebrate Non-Resident Indians Day for the diaspora that resulted from British imperial operations; in the seemingly eternally contested real estate of the Levant, Turkey, and the Eastern Mediterranean generally a thousand five hundred and forty-two years ago, the Byzantine emperor Zeno judged that discretion was the better part of valor and fled, leaving rule to one of his generals, a certain Baseliscus; a half decade and a year past two centuries onward in space and time, in 681, early Iberian Visigoth leaders determined at the Council of Toledo that multiple measures were necessary against the region’s Jewish population; eight hundred ninety years before this day, the denizens of the Song dynasty lost any real hope of regaining oversight of Northern China as Jurchen forces began the systematic looting of the Song capital city in the South; only a few years shy of two centuries after that epic imperial humiliation, in 1324, the now legendary Italian wanderer and visitor to China, Marco Polo, lived out his final scene; precisely a quarter century subsequently, in 1349, Swiss leaders in Basel, among the Swiss to the North of Polo’s home, initiated a slaughter of Jewish residents after divide-and-conquer regimens succeeded in placing blame for rampant plague on readers of the Torah; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
The first priority, for all those who in Aldous Huxley’s words have ‘to live by their wits,’ and who have little or ‘nothing to fall back on,’ must ever and always remain the seeking and finding of a true partner; inasmuch as the general need for mutuality and collaboration has forever defined human progress, one might reasonably imagine that all one’s acquaintances and certainly one’s friends stand in a kind of partnership relation of some sort, at the same time that a core component of building on such hoped-for common communality might realistically consist of having a particular other, more significant by far than all the rest, with whom one can dream and hope and plan and carry out all the merry schemes and brilliant sallies that two minds in tandem can cook up together.
“In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other Preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put ON, or rather that he will not put OFF the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide this contest; the appeal was the choice of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
childhood OR "early life" OR youth inculcation OR socialization OR patterning OR instruction OR schooling maturation OR knowledge OR learning OR insight responsibility OR ethics OR morality OR "social justice" choice OR elect OR engagement ideology OR "world view" OR perspective marxism OR radical OR feminism OR existentialism transition OR transformation = 3,500,000 Linkages.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
A grassroots interview, basically an hour that the producer has segmented into six easily-digestible pieces, with a University of Michigan scholar, Ahmad Rahman, whose involvement with Black Panther politics in Chicago occurred during the period in which local and Federal ‘authorities’ carried out the murder of Fred Hampton, and who faced a life-in-prison sentence for trumped up COINTELPRO charges in Michigan, gaining a Wayne State University B.A. while in jail for twenty-one years and quickly garnering, following a pardon, his masters and doctoral degrees before he began teaching history and African-American Studies, a frank and amicable exchange that proffers a moving introduction to a humble and powerful thinker who could bridge such issues as imperialism in Africa and mass incarceration in the U.S., who could ‘connect the dots’ about how social justice is impossible without a successful attack on militarism, and more, altogether of especial note given Dr. Rahman’s untimely death just over a year ago, the sum total of which interludes match beautifully a labor history blogger’s recent examination of useful and necessary, more or less au courant, films that touch on working class experience and social justice, including a trailer for, and gateway to portions of, The Brainwashing of My Dad, and a portal to documentary materials about the true nature of class war in the ‘land of the free’ that materials about the Memorial Day murders in 1937 Chicago so graphically, if horrifically, illustrate.
Nearly Naked Links
From Friday’s and Saturday’s Files
More ‘Getting High’ History – http://www.blacklistednews.com/Nitrous%2C_weed%2C_opium_and_peach-pits%3A_the_intoxicants_of_18th_C_England/56133/0/38/38/Y/M.html
CIA Hijacking of Literature – https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/how-the-cia-infiltrated-the-worlds-literature
EVENTS
Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat
The Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat offers residencies of three to five weeks from May 15 to September 30 to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers.
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
NATURE AND PLACE POETRY COMPETITION
ENTRY FEE £6 for your first poem £3.50 for each subsequent poem.
1st prize – £1,000. 2nd prize – £500. 3rd prize – A place on a creative writing course at Ty Newydd Writing Centre in 2017. TWO ADDITIONAL PRIZES: A personal tour with Mark Cocker of his most cherished wildlife places in East Anglia; a personal tour with Nick Davies of his beloved Wicken Fen to learn about his research there. Deadline March 1, 2017. You can submit up to six poems in one batch. Poems must have a title and must be no more than 40 lines.
JOBS
Las Vegas Editor & Writers Wanted (Las Vegas)
employment type: employee’s choice
Frozen Heart of Capital’s Culture
From L A Progressive, a heartfelt and outraged piece by a thoughtful writer in the LA area whose post describes the callousness with which today’s world treats its inhabitants, a world in which the labels liberal or conservative have lost all meaning: “So, that 51-year-old man, outside my office building, frozen, dead, pauper, nameless to the world, or with a name that is just another under-the-headline mix of letters, he represents in microcosm the complete failure of a rich country, rich city, a so liberal city, the one which made national news for its anti-Trump and pro-Sanders rallies. We are cogs and pigeons, followers and paycheck seekers. These people in every rotten city on the streets, in their backseats of their cars, in the alley, in parks, under overpasses, this society, each city, broken.”
A Lengthy List of Writing Tips
A Poynter post that brings useful tips to all scrappy scribes: “As is my habit, I have made a list. It contains 40 things I have learned in 40 years. In some cases, I learned it through study and teaching; in others, through reading and writing. A few of these I remember as original although most were borrowed and adapted from others or learned in collaboration. Whenever memory serves, I attribute this wisdom to others.”
A Duran post that elucidates the reasons why Russia, in general, and its flagship media site in particular, is of particular fear to the elites: “Prior to the launch of RT, there was no large media outlet broadcasting in the West which offered a critical view of the mainstream, establishment narrative. Whilst CNN and Fox bickered over hair-splitting interpretations of the ‘West is best’ agenda, no one offered a real opposing view.
RT has changed that. RT doesn’t have an anti-America view as Mr. Clapper implied. RT simply offers people in America and around the world an opportunity to question whether the establishment’s view of how America should rule the world actually makes the lives of ordinary Americans better or worse.”
Litigating Monsanto in Washington State
A Mint Press News look at some historic anti-GMO anti-agribusiness legislation, in an article from two weeks ago: “For the first time ever, a U.S. state is suing the agribusiness giant Monsanto over the toxic after-effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a dangerous chemical once commonly found in building supplies and industrial equipment….
“It is time to hold the sole U.S. manufacturer of PCBs accountable for the significant harm they have caused to our state,” Ferguson said during a Dec. 8 press conference in Seattle.””
Understanding Technology, Key to Capitalist Evolution, Revolution
A Spiked Online analysis that tries to set the record straight regarding everpresent fantasies concerning the role and fate of technology in a capitalist framework: “In eulogising capitalism’s reputed commitment to automation, the authors follow in a long line of economists and sociologists who, despite their ignorance about technology and, in particular, the human toil that still goes into making, maintaining, repairing and upgrading it, turn it into an independent force of its own. Marx wrote about the fetishism that surrounds commodities; these authors make a fetish of IT. Us ignorant readers learn from Mason that IT is the fastest growing technology in history; well, try getting a fibre broadband connection from BT anytime soon. “