BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
PERSISTENT, & EXPANDING, ELEVATION OF CAPITAL OVER SOCIETY
For all scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens who intend to comprehend the current context, a little blessing from EcoWatch about just-enacted legislation in the jurisdiction that, happenstantially, happens to be far and away the nation’s largest coal producer, a briefing about a new Wyoming statute that effectively seeks to tax renewable energy into submission and thereby, in fact if not in name, outlaw the wind energy that in this part of the world represents such a threat to the purveyors of carbon and fission based electrical grids, a series of ideas and insights about empirical reality that fit all too neatly with what The Hill has just proffered, that Donald Trump’s ‘new’ administration will offer its adherents among monopolists particular beneficence in the matter of the so-called ‘mega-mergers’ that so characterize our contemporary crises and advance oligopolistic interests.
This Day in History
The United States today marks a holiday that is as likely to subvert as fervent to promote, National Religious Freedom Day; in an event that Caesar’s rubicon-crossing foretold two decades prior, two thousand forty-four years ago, the Roman Senate affirmed its privilege and class orientation by handing over the keys to the kingdom to Rome’s first emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus; four centuries and half a decade onward, in 378, in the as-yet ‘undiscovered’ Americas, the human proclivity to conquest and empire played out, a different tune with a markedly similar theme, when early Aztec chieftain Spearthrower Owl continued his consolidation of power when his army conquered Tikal; fourteen hundred sixty-seven years ahead of our present dawning day, back in Europe, Ostrogothic forces furthered this ongoing multifaceted saga with the overthrowing of Roman rule through bribery and other treacherous means; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
If radical love revolutionizes everything, which ought to ring true since rooted connections could address most of what troubles us, then we need to promulgate such practice pronto inasmuch as cascading catastrophic crises threaten every second now to crush the human project, either by swamping our common craft’s—the Earth’s—ability to tolerate our presence or through more dynamic and explosive means of extinguishing our presence here in this realm of beauty and grace and glory that on any given day we seem intent on ruining or razing or otherwise destroying in outbursts of venality and sin that make Biblical descriptions of evil seem tame by comparison.
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
psychology OR philosophy morality OR ethics epistemology OR knowledge advertising OR public relations OR propaganda OR commerce "women's rights" OR feminism OR "woman question" culture OR sports OR entertainment OR hollywood intelligence OR spies OR CIA analysis OR explication OR research history OR origins marxist OR radical = 2,850,000 Citations.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
From the wit and wisdom of the ineffable Tom Decker and his Clandestime ‘brand,’ an interlude that looks at the career of, and various intelligence, political, and cultural intersections in, the life of Sterling Hayden, who famously played General Jack Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s warning against annihilating thermonuclear agendas, Dr. Strangelove, a character who in many ways summarized threads in Hayden’s own life–militaristic, conspiratorial, communistic-and-anti-
Nearly Naked Links
From Friday’s and Saturday’s Files
Anti-Abortion Bills Springing up Everywhere – https://news.vice.com/story/at-least-46-anti-abortion-bills-are-already-in-front-of-state-legislatures-in-2017
Dialogic Roots of Logic – https://aeon.co/essays/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-logic
Chicago, Violence, America – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/08/racial-segregation-chicago-ills-america-too
EVENTS
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
Palooka is seeking unique fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and graphic narrative submissions for its eighth issue. They are also hosting a chapbook contest. |
JOBS
This 20-hour/week position combines journalism with social-media skills to increase LA Weekly‘s audience and serve as its online public face. The social media editor manages the Weekly‘s Facebook and Twitter accounts, among others, with the expectation of continued engagement and growth. The social media editor must have a firm grasp of SEO and be able to write compelling headlines that get shared on social media and attract eyeballs via search results.
A Philosophical Salon post whose writer looks inward at the implications of choosing the academic career: “Implicitly, we came to the university seeking refuge from utilitarianism, functionality, market logics, banality, tradition, conformity, consumerism, capitalism, patriarchy or the racial state. Perhaps our lives weren’t threatened, but the life of the mind that we develop while we are here could not be sustained outside its hallowed walls.
Scholarly excellence has led to a sort of dependence on the university; specialisation in academia and little else renders us reliant on this asylum for our income and our identity. The winners of the intellectual game are rewarded financially, but cannot really leave the game.”
A self-congratulatory though impactful post that shows how Patreon can be a great site for creatives and scrappy scribes: “2016 was the best year, in the history of humans, to be a creative person. Over the last 10-15 years, the pipelines to audiences have been unlocked and free distribution channels have bloomed. If you have something to say, then fucking say it, because in 2017, no one can stop you.”
A Rational Liberal ‘Fake-News’ POV
A Politifact look at all the fake news and all the misrepresentations that have occured in this past tumultous year: “Each year, PolitiFact awards a “Lie of the Year” to take stock of a misrepresentation that arguably beats all others in its impact or ridiculousness. In 2016: where to start? With such a deep backlash against being truthful in political speech, no one person (though there are world-class frontrunners) and no one political claim perfectly stands out as the dust settles from an extraordinary campaign.”
A Paul Craig Roberts commemoration of a recently passed European journalistic voice: “Ulfkotte had been an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitzung. He published a courageous book in which he said that the CIA had a hand on every significant journalist in Europe, which gave Washington control over European opinion and reduced knowledge of and opposition to Washington’s control over European heads of state. Essentially, there are no European governments independent of Washington.”
A Nation look at a volume that provides some important perspectives on this country’s history: “The process through which the American nation-state emerged and then grew into an empire is the subject of A Nation Without Borders, a compendious new work on America’s 19th century by New York University historian Steven Hahn. The third entry in the Penguin History of the United States, A Nation Without Borders takes us from the Jacksonian dawn of American “democracy” to the First World War.”