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AN ‘ALTERNATIVE’ MEDIA OUTLET’S DECONSTRUCTING ITSELFThis Day in History
All round the globe today, in an often disingenuous exercise of ‘sympathy’ and goodwill, the nations of the world mark Mental Health Day while in a more real expression of solidarity, people also commemorate World Homeless Day, and Cuba commemorates Inependence Day, to celebrate the initiation of its rebellion against Spanish rule; in the already-for-millenia-fractious Levant, a thousand three hundred thirty-six years ago,disputatious Islamic factions battled to a bloody conclusion at the Battle of Karbala in which the prophet Muhammad’s grandson lost his head to the forces of Caliph Yazid I; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
As clearly as imaginable if we can manage to gaze unblinking at the situation for a moment or two, unless individual ‘common folk’ manifest a collective will to oppose our rulers’ and masters’ continuing their persistent propagation of murder and mayhem, replete with plunder and profiteering for the plutocratic upper crust, the juncture in time and space and social exchange that graces our lives will soon enough be one of either dystopic emiseration or cataclysmic apocalypse, the former with a prospect so draconian and grotesque that the less stalwart and scrappy among us would wish for themselves and their children a thermonuclear armageddon rather than the slow and agonized decline that increasingly harsh concentration camp protocols promise to proffer.
Were I to try and analyse this kind of satisfaction’s many components in point of some of their puerile aspects, I should say a certain pride is involved. Quite apart from my own person, attention is directed to the country which, for better or for worse, is mine. It is by no means a bad thing that people should be reminded that, despite all that is “worse” about it, a certain life of the intellect, although denigrated, laughed to scorn and sometimes even hypocritically persecuted, still, like a stubborn protest, makes my country one of the places where some of our most currently menaced values still survive, indifferent to the inertia or sometimes even the hostility of the powers that be.
Further, if I, addressing as I now do the members of your Academy, say how sensible I am of your goodness in choosing me and thank you for doing so, it is no mere ritual act of submission to custom and good manners. MORE HERE from Claude Simon Nobel Literary Lecture
slavery OR "involuntary servitude" equals OR "equivalent to" OR "tantamount to" OR "similar to" OR "simulacrum of" OR "the same as" OR "no different from" imprisonment OR incarceration systemic OR systematic OR intentional OR purposeful = 1,360,000 Linkages.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
A SOBERING LOOK AT WHAT THE NEW IMF REPORT REALLY IMPLIES
EVENTS
Other Words Literary Conference
The Other Words Literary Conference, sponsored by the Florida Literary Arts Coalition (FLAC), will be held from November 3 to November 5
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
$10 ENTRY FEE.
Deadline October 31, 2016. Entries must capture the nuances of the cultures and consequences of war; the topic is not limited to military matters, but includes social, political and cultural subjects. All entries will be considered for publication. Send no more than three poems.
JOBS
Executive Director Cave Canem Foundation
Cave Canem Foundation, Inc, founded in 1996, is one of the most important organizations for U.S. literary arts and letters and the premier space for the cultivation of African American poetry.
Pop that Collar is looking for Freelance Writers- remote
We are looking for freelance writers/editors who have extensive knowledge of pop culture and viral content, strong news judgment, a fun and witty voice, and the ability to write quickly and cleanly.You will be editing smart, fun lists in the creepy, weird, entertainment, and viral verticals every day. …
Quiet American Fascism: Clinton Machine
A Blacklisted News look by a brave journalists who dares expose injustice and censorship at play in the current electoral process and American politics at large: “Quiet fascism has no party affiliation; it is a mindset shared by both parties that views power as a tool to reward friends and punish enemies. It has no moral foundation or indeed, no purpose other than to aggregate more power, maintain its secrets and lay waste to anyone who questions its Imperial authority.
This is the mindset of the Clinton machine. Intimidate, threaten, bribe, do whatever it takes to silence those who ask questions or release answers to unwanted questions.”
A useful post that proves useful advise to scrappy scribes as to the utility, purpose, and best ways to produce a query letter for pitching novels: “The query letter is so much of a sales piece that you should be able to write it without having written a single word of the manuscript. For some writers, it represents a completely different way of thinking about your book—it means thinking about your work as a product. And it helps to have some distance from your work to see its salable qualities.”
A Visual News look at design for folks with special intellectual and sensory issues, so that websites can be accessible to all: “These charts are just guidelines when making services more accessible. There are currently six posters that encompass users from these areas: deaf and hard of hearing, low vision, dyslexia, those with motor disabilities, users of screen readers, and users on the autistic spectrum.”
A Dispatches from the Edge look at recent alarming events in Spain, that presage trouble elsewhere in Europe: “While the chaos devouring Spain’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) mixed elements of farce and tragedy, the issues roiling Spanish politics reflect a general crisis in the European Union (EU) and a sober warning to the continent: Europe’s 500 million people need answers, and the old formulas are not working.”
Inexplicable Accounts & the Origins of Consciousness
A Chronicle article that looks at the origins of consciousness in the face of inexplicable events supposedly misproved by science but which humanity has pushed forth for ages: “Most scholars have no idea what to do with such poignant, powerful stories, other than to dismiss them with lazy words like “anecdote” or “coincidence.” Or perhaps we could study their textual histories and show that they are not as straightforward as they seem. That would be a relief.
As with the heads of Hercules’ Lernaean Hydra, however, with every story we so decapitate, three more, or three thousand more, appear. We are swimming in a sea of such stories, if only we could recognize our situation. We do not know how many such stories there might be, much less what they might mean. We do not know because we have never really tried to find out. Why, after all, would we study something that does not exist? “Water?” the fish asks. “What’s water?””