BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
INTERNATIONAL INDICIA ECHO MAYHEM & BREAKDOWN
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
On a day when Nigerian internecine conflicts took the lives of hundreds seven years back, an account from our ‘paper of record’ of new carnage in Africa’s Western spaces, in the event an apparently errant National jet that has bombed and strafed a refugee camp and thereby butchering at least hundreds more as it purportedly sought to attack terrorists instead of murdering innocent civilians on the run from contradiction and crisis, a topic of acute import to scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens, in similar fashion as a new report , also from the Times, exposes how Korea is now seeking to arrest the head of the vast Samsung enterprises there on a day just past two decades beyond Japan’s Prime Minister’s formal apology for sex slavery forced on the Peninsula’s women during World War Two, in today’s context a significantly different and yet also still related expression of crises of capital and empire, difficulties that have continued for decades if not for centuries.
This Day in History
Greeks today, reflecting traditions that date back prior to ‘Olympian’ times, initiate the celebration of an annual Patras Festival, an advance hurrah for Spring in the depths of Winter; as erstwhile Republican dissolution loomed and imperial predominance pended, two thousand fifty-five years ago, Octavian’s decision to divorce one wife and marry another upset a delicate balance that helped pave the way for the empire to hold sway; more or less four hundred thirty-three years onward in space and time, also in Rome in 395, the demise of the first Emperor Theodosius upended the agreements that permitted a ‘unified’ rule under Rome’s aegis and inaugurated the thereafter permanent division of the struggling Empire into a Western and an Eastern constituent;
A Thought for the Day
Amidst the chaos and wreckage that color the carnage of collapse right now, opportunity abounds, in the form of abandoned treasures of those in flight, in the form of all the loot and plunder of empire that the hegemons haven’t a clue how to use, in the form of all the unmet needs that underlie the masks of human misery in these troubled times, in the form of every case of rationalized insanity, every expression of inane fetish, either of which so clearly portray the present pass that paradox and surreality are apt symbols in almost every cultural contextualization; in relation to all of this, scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens must take at least two steps after they have performed due diligence in deconstructing and understanding the apparent madness and cascade of contradiction that characterize the here and now, to wit, first they must look to their own survival or even thriving without joining in the rationalized mayhem or in any substantive way abandoning their solidarity with their equally befuddled and downtrodden fellows, and then second, no matter how frightening or implausible the prospect, they must begin to forge the relations and alignments with each other that will permit, sooner rather than later, their conjoined move toward assuming power and exercising command for their own purposes, which in the event is also the only sustainable strategy for maintaining human life on our commodious and yet tiny planet, the ‘pale blue dot’ of which wise yarnspinners have spoken.
IT IS STILL 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
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First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
"military industrial complex" OR militarism OR "military keynesianism" profiteering OR plunder OR corruption OR racket OR plutocracy system OR systemic OR inevitable OR inherent capitalism OR "free enterprise" OR bourgeois empire OR imperialism OR colonialism fascism OR reaction "working class" OR proletariat OR labor analysis OR explication history OR origins = 1,160,000 Links.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE ARCHIVES: DOCUMENTING THE ‘DEEP STATE‘
A brilliant documentary effort that its makers have produced precisely to serve scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens, a second hour long installment of four total sections about counter-intelligence, in today’s manifestation an examination of the Deep State as a concrete expression that has evolved over time both to characterize United States imperial imprimatur and to command obeisance from government and citizenry alike, in so doing fulfilling clear and identifiable mandates of corporate capital and monopoly finance, a telling tale that appears completely congruent with a recently-recovered Sixty Minutes video segment in which George Soros speaks of his privileged, and at least slightly grotesque, youth as a Nazi factotum after his father bribed Germans not to murder the young Jewish fellow along with the rest of his family, all of which aggregates compellingly with an archival viewing of Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address on this fifty-sixth anniversary of that momentous rhetorical exercise.
Nearly Naked Links
From Sunday’s and Monday’s Files
Bauman on Sources of Nostalgia – http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/living-towards-the-past/19148
Cherokee Congressional Options – http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-cherokee-nation-is-entitled-to-a-delegate-in-congress-but-will-they-finally-send-one-20170104
Israel Lobby Spooks – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/israel-lobby-insidious-threats-feared-170111154847051.html
EVENTS
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
The Nature Conservancy will award $5,000 to an Australian writer for their place-based essay on the Australian landscape.
JOBS
Lecturer in Global and Imperial History
The post of Lecturer in Global and Imperial History will contribute to extending the research profile of History at Exeter, particularly in areas related or complementary to the transnational history of imperialism, globalization, and decolonization since 1750. This full time post is available from 1st September 2017 to 31st August 2020 in the College Humanities on a fixed term basis.
An In These Times post by a fellow peace-seeking comrade that brings useful insights for those seeking to make lasting change today: “The pacifists failed in their near-term goal, certainly, but that isn’t the whole story. Kazin reminds us that the meaning of the pacifist movement in World War I is still manifesting and evolving. “A grand cause that fails may, sometimes, matter as much as one that succeeds,” Kazin writes. “That failure can mark, with a bright line, a moment when a people and their government might have avoided making a decision that fundamentally changed their society.””
A Medium look at the creative process of one of the geniuses of our time: “Asimov wasn’t born writing 8 hours a day 7 days a week. He tore up pages, he got frustrated and he failed over and over and over again. In his autobiography, Asimov shares the tactics and strategies he developed to never run out of ideas again.
Let’s steal everything we can.”
Capitalizing Podcasting’s Renaissance
A Drum look at a fascinating development for those who care about media generally and the abilities of podcasting in particular to change lives: “ Yet when it comes to awareness building, the company has a “pretty long way to go”, says Julie Kim, the director of content and editorial at Slack. Which is why the messaging platform has recently dipped its toe in podcasting as a way to reach engaged audiences and build its brand organically. It sees podcasting as a “warm-up” form of content marketing designed to introduce potential customers to Slack before asking them to buy a product or download.”
A Fortuna’s Corner post that looks at the special relationship between the President Elect and the Special Forces: “Indeed, there’s an excellent chance that the Trump-Flynn mindset will mean fewer restrictions on special operations forces fighting ISIS. That’s one reason why his election was greeted warmly by many in the SOF community, said a retired Special Forces officer in close touch with operators in the field. “Across the board everyone’s happy,” he said. “‘Trump is going to remove the shackles and let us get to work’-that’s the perception. But I suspect the reality is murkier.””
A New Republic look at the resurgence of a lysergic solution to psychology’s and society’s many fractious ills: “Lysergic acid diethylamide is in the midst of a renaissance of sorts, a nonprescription throwback for an overmedicated generation. As pot goes mainstream—the natural solution to a variety of ills—LSD is close behind, in popularity if not legality. By 1970, two years after possession of LSD became illegal, an estimated two million Americans had used the drug; by 2015, more than 25 million had. In A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, Waldman explores her own experience of taking teeny, “subtherapeutic” doses of the drug.“