11.02.2016 Daily Links

          BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW          

A PROTESTING ATHLETE’S MOVE TOWARD POSITIVE ACTION

From the Free Thought Project, via Mint Press News, a briefing about a new initiative that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick–whose refusal to stand for empire’s anthem elicited vast waves of both bile and hosanna–has just launched, to enroll urban youth in instructional settings, or camps, that would use Black Panther models to teaching empowerment, civics, self-defense, and more, the sort of development that receives little printed or broadcast coverage from monopoly media yet is precisely the sort of information that scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens most need.

                    This Day in History                  

Today in Roman and Anglican churches marks the commemoration of All Souls Day, while in Mexico celebrants partake of a second Day of the Dead ceremony; in Tang Chinese environs thirteen hundred ninety-seven years ago, a Western Turkic leader dies at the hands of assassins, part of forces of Eastern Turkic rivals whom the Chinese had given a nod to carry out the murder; just six years beyond a millennium and a half century subsequently, in 1675, Plymouth Colony’s governor led forces against indigenous Narragansett in the bloodbath of King Philip’s War; two hundred eighty-two years ahead of our present moment in time, a baby boy was born who became the iconic hunter and early American nationalist, Daniel Boone; MORE HERE

                A Thought for the Day                

The basic rationale is simple to state that Only an organized and empowered citizenry can have even the slightest hope of addressing successfully any one of the individual crises that are each individually critically important: thus, before we worry about any seemingly most crucial group of predicaments—discrimination or bigotry; nuclear or conventional weapons proliferation; the ‘War-on-Drugs’ or the Prison-Industrial-Complex and their deleterious impacts on people; the Citizens United ruling or other forms of electoral fraud or theft or overreaching; anything—we must first address the dilemma of a disempowered, disorganized, inchoate populace, a mandate, of course, the reasoning of which in turn presupposes that democracy is a valid goal in its own right, either thinking along the lines of Churchill that ‘everything else is so much worse’ or in similar fashion as Jefferson in believing that majority-rule is the necessary state of civilized human existence, in any case an assumption that most readers would be willing to stipulate since even those who in their hearts despise turning over rule to the ‘unwashed masses’ presently find politic a nod in the direction of democracy, so that the conclusion to which this discussion leads is substantial in its scope and thrust, basically, coming down to this—without grassroots organization and empowerment, homo sapiens are either ‘toast’ or facing a future of concentration camps and mass slaughter,stakes that ought to make anyone want to achieve an understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ that are applicable in our present morass.

                  Quote of the Day                       
Nature was here a series of wonders, and a fund of delight. Daniel Boone
                   Doc of the Day                      
The unity of labor, economic and political, upon the basis of the class struggle, is at this time the supreme need of the working class. The prevailing lack of unity implies lack of class consciousness; that is to say, enlightened self-interest; and this can, must and will be overcome by revolutionary education and organization. Experience, long, painful and dearly bought, has taught some of us that craft division is fatal to class unity. To accomplish its mission the working class must be united. They must act together; they must assert their combined power, and when they do this upon the basis of the class struggle, then and then only will they break the fetters of wage slavery. MORE HERE from Eugene Debs, Revolutionary Unionism

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SEARCHDAY"wrongful conviction" OR "miscarriage of justice" OR "false confession" "police state" OR "prosecutorial misconduct" endemic OR ubiquitous OR omnipresent systematic OR purposeful OR "mass incarceration" OR intentional history OR evolution OR origins analysis OR explication = 6,960

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              TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, &                                  AWARENESS VIDEO                  

HENRY KISSINGER, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, & CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A 2002 documentary that looks at the legacy and likely vast criminality of Henry Kissinger, whom Hillary Clinton considers “a mentor,” available via 21st Century Wire, which in turn evolves from Christopher Hitchens’ articles and book that deal with the “very, very dark side…of” this ‘strategic genius’ of real politick, whose acts clearly effectuated mass murder in places as disparate as Southeast Asia, Chile, the Middle East, and various parts of Africa, a detailing of one of America’s imperial prime movers that all scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens would attend carefully if they wished anything other than infantile fantasy or murderous butchery to characterize their understanding of hegemonic Washington’s policies and practices over the course of the last half century and beyond.

 

JOBSEVENTS

student writing arm

OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS

Barking Sycamores seeks poetry, short fiction (1000 words or less), creative nonfiction (8,500 words or less), hybrid genre works (8,500 words or less), and art by neurodivergent (autistic, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexic, etc.) writers and artists for its unthemed Issue 11. Submission period: September 1 – October 31, 2016.

We also seek essays on the impact of neurodivergence on the creation of literary works(8,500 words or less) and book reviews (1,000 words or less).

JOBS

Technical Writer – UX Copy Writer (Mooresville, NC) hide this posting

compensation: $35-40/hr w2 plus benefits, Health, Dental, ST/LT, Life
employment type: contract

Technical Writer II- UX Copy WriterPhysical Work Location: Mooresville, NC

Duration – 6 months, possible extension

Responsibilities:

Document the specifications, design, features, and operation of moderately complex to extremely complex applicationsWrite and edit user manuals, help systems, and other technical documents for complex technologies and new technologies/processes.Design and format documents using document creation softwareInterview applications developers and other technical resource personnel to ensure the accuracy of all information presentedEnsure messages comply with any applicable regulatory requirements

 

WRISSAudio Video Transcription Tool, Open Source

A Nieman Lab look at some very useful open source tools for scrappy writers and media creators: “Transcribing and then trying to edit audio or video makes me want to tear my hair out. While there are free tools out there to simplify the process — oTranscribe, Draft — finding the right quotes from a long speech or cleaning up a Q&A still feels interminable.”

GENMEDIP
Gawker’s Final Settlement For Truthtelling

A Poynter look at the last days of a brave media enterprise: “Denton formally disclosed an out-of-court, $32 million settlement which ends related litigation involving Gawker journalists.

He discussed the decision to settle in a note titled, “A hard peace,” which opened, “After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over.”

The money for the settlement came from the sale of Gawker Media to Univision and will be paid from the Gawker estate.”

RECEV

Mass Ballot Initiative Targets Public Education

A Common Dreams look at a terrible initiative for a pro-charter school initiative designed to hijack public education: “to the financial industry’s backing of Question 2, the former presidential candidate said in a statement Tuesday, “Wall Street must not be allowed to hijack public education in Massachusetts.”

“This is Wall Street’s attempt to line their own pockets while draining resources away from public education at the expense of low-income, special education students and English language learners,” he continued.”

GENISS  A Reflection on Kissinger’s Impact

A Process History look at the dubious legacy of empire’s favorite bully: “For Grandin, Kissinger is consistently craven, aggressive, and self-serving. For Ferguson, he is reliably strategic, statesman-like, and even idealistic. The last claim is hardest to swallow. Ferguson adopts Kant’s framing of human dignity and morality as the center of gravity for politics, but then finds “idealism” repeatedly lacking in Kissinger’s positions on nuclear weapons, wars, and coups that clearly violate those principles. When Kissinger departs from the expectations of an idealist, according to Ferguson, he is making tough trade-offs; when others (e.g. McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, and Walt Rostow) do the same, they are hypocrites and sycophants. Grandin has the opposite double-standard.”