BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
From yesterday’s Financial Tribune, a key story for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens about the massive benefits of backing and boosting a solar energy future, which comes down to increased employment, more efficient and local economic control and development on the the one hand, and fewer H-bombs and less likelihood of imperial wars and interventions over oil on the other hand, not to mention what FT points out to capitalists, that the growth rate–leaving aside even larger differentials in potential–is a factor of ten larger in wind power, for instance, than it is in the carbonized or nuclear energy sectors, analysis that seems to abrogate everything that bourgeois economic theorists say about markets and enterprise, since the resistance to following a renewable path is hardly less now than it was in 1970, an appearance of paradox and emanation of contradiction that makes sense only if one applies an imperial rubric to the whole picture rather than hoping that at some future point markets will finally work as ‘classical economic’ theory predicts they should instead of leading to such results as both a new Global Research release notes in the appointment of Exxon/Mobil’s Chief Executive as Secretary of State and Mother Jones chronicles in arguing that Rick Perry’s potentially primary purpose as head of the Department of Energy will be not to promote renewable sources of electricity but to privatize and foster further nuclear investment through the ‘privatization’ of high level waste storage, all of which completely fits with a new assessment from Consortium News about the way that President Trump has managed to exempt the deepest dens of terror–the carbon suppliers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf–from immigration sanctions, the aggregate juxtaposition of which must undermine any notion that these issues are primarily technical and therefore manageable with merely bureaucratic and technological fixes that avoid examining and rooting out imperialistic depredation and profiteering rackets.
This Day in History
To honor the passing of Mahatma Gandhi in a hail of assassin’s bullets, India in particular and other places as far afield as Spain as well mark this day as a testament to the great thinker and his philosophy of nonviolence; in the Levantine cradle of so many iconic civilizations, two thousand five hundred thirty-three years ago, craftsmen and their Hebrew overseers completed the Second Temple of the Ark in Jerusalem; two thousand one hundred sixty-four years forward in space and time, in 1648 CE, the Dutch Protestant bourgeoisie successfully finalized its extrication from the clutches of Catholic Spain with the negotiation of the Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück; thirteen years subsequently, across the English Channel in 1661, exactly twelve years after the beheading of the obstreperous King Charles, English Loyalists ritually ‘executed’ Oliver Cromwell, approximately two years after his actual death; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
To articulate the necessary as impossible, repeatedly, doggedly insisting, “Well that will never happen,” must count as one of the most self-destructive of human tendencies, a point of view that nevertheless counts as the most common of perspectives, almost a given in regard to any idea that posits the importance and possibility of ‘fighting city hall’ or otherwise undermining, overturning, or replacing the imprimatur of imperial elites whose very existence depends absolutely on most of their underlings’ believing fervently that transformation toward engagement, tolerance, mutuality, solidarity, and commonality-of-action are nothing other than the ravings of delusion, ‘pipe dreams’ of the addled and the addicted to optimism—coming to terms with this assessment and following the only course that is other than mass collective suicide in response to it means, in Catholic terms, ‘examining one’s conscience’ and taking individual responsibility for the absolutely sine qua non move toward sustainability and survival, the achievement of something akin to an empowered collectivity of the downtrodden, the common herd, the working classes who in the scheme of things count as ninety percent or more of humankind’s numbers.
1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.
2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.
3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.
4.”
― Richard Brautigan
nihilism OR cynicism OR despair OR pessimism trap OR division OR treachery OR irresponsible alienation OR disaffection OR misanthropy OR ennui ethics OR philosophy OR ideology choice OR decision hope OR optimism OR belief necessity OR central OR essential OR mandatory survival OR sustainable analysis OR explication history OR origins marxist OR radical = 1,260,000 Links.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
HONEST REFLECTION ABOUT TODAY’S SURREAL HYPOCRISY
An utterly mandatory half hour engagement for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens who hope that their capacity for citizenship might rise above the level of fatuous ignorance and lockstep group-think, in the event a recent installment from Abby Martin’s TeleSur-sponsored Empire Files program, in which she interviews Russian expert and award-winning journalist Robert Ames to deconstruct the basis for present day “anti-Russian hysteria” and to identify the U.S. interventions in post-Soviet Slavic affairs that provide the essential context for understanding realities that underlie actual relations on the geopolitical stage rather than grandstanding about nonsense and matters that either make no sense or simply result from opportunistic imperial attempts, which have thus far failed, to treat Russia as a puppet that exists to further corporate profits, a brilliant and transfixing presentation that seamlessly melds into a new Rob Kall interview with Paul Craig Roberts, an exchange about the Trump Presidency that challenges erstwhile ‘liberals’ and ‘leftists’ and ‘progressives’ both to recognize their own complicity in a system that has produced President Trump and to deepen their critique of what has really gone awry in the world today, to wit capitalism itself, which has ceased completely to work for most people while it chugs along like a sinister engine in producing profit and plunder for a now vanishingly small minority of investors and bankers and bureaucrats.
Nearly Naked Links
From Friday’s and Saturday’s Files
American Dreams, Not Yet Extant, Further Failing – https://psmag.com/economic-mobility-is-fading-and-so-is-the-american-dream-d956ffcb7505#.h1d8fhxql
Rick Perry & Privatized Waste – http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/department-energy-rick-perry-nuclear-waste
Documenting Acid – http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/lsd-doc-sunshine-makers-what-we-learned-w463314
EVENTS
Brown Foundation Fellows Residency Program
The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston offers residencies of one to three months from July 1 to November 30 to midcareer poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France.
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
Ohioana Library Association
A prize of $1,000 is given annually to an Ohio fiction writer or creative nonfiction writer age 30 or under who has not published a book. Writers born in Ohio or who have lived in Ohio for a minimum of five years are eligible. Submit up to four stories, essays, or excerpts of longer works of fiction or creative nonfiction totaling 10 to 40 pages by January 31. There is no entry fee. Call, e-mail, or visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines.
JOBS
Casa Libre
Executive Director, Part-time
Organization Info: The mission of Casa Libre en la Solana, since 2004, has been to support and enhance the creativity of professional and novice writers by providing a community venue for classes, readings, and other professional development opportunities. Currently, Casa Libre presents one-time events to support visiting writers traveling with new books, as well as the monthly Fair Weather Reading Series, curated by co-founder and outgoing executive director Kristen Nelson.We are often accepting proposals for new series to be hosted at and/or through Casa Libre. For more information on our programming visit: www.casalibre.org.
