BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
NATO’S NEW DIRECTION TO THE SOUTH & WEST & OTHER VIOLATIONS
This Day in History
Today marks the quarter transit in the Twelve Days of Christmas in the European tradition, the third 24 – hour span of that Solstice holiday; in what was then Constantinople and that we now know as Istanbul, craftsmen and workers one thousand four hundred seventy-nine years ago put the finishing touches on the temple that bears the modern name of Hagia Sophia; fully nine and three quarter centuries beyond that completion, in 1512, new imperial masters, this time Spanish, laid out the protocols on the Laws of Burgos for how they would rationalize their decimation of indigenous Americans; just short of six decades later, in 1571, the male child bounced into the world en route to his life as the cosmologist, astrologist, and scientist of the motions of the spheres Johannes Kepler; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
More so than for any other reason people have persisted as individual creatures because they have banded together, in the fullness of time forming the social phalanx that today marks the entire Earth with our signs, and as much as anything else, these societies have persisted because repeated agitation from below has contested ruling hierarchies that have universally mandated murder and mayhem to forestall all basic social reformulation; as the capacity to crush or control upheaval for change, a dialectical dynamic in response to populist upsurge, has become just about irresistible, therefore, continued human viability hinges on grassroots organizing for participatory democracy despite the apparent impossibility of that truly inescapable necessity.
We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
- Johannes Kepler, As quoted in Cosmos (1980) by Carl Sagan.
"women's rights" OR feminism OR "sexual equality" "gender discrimination" OR sexism OR "male chauvinism" resistance OR organizing OR movement OR resurgence leadership OR grassroots OR engagement class OR "social status" contradiction OR paradox history OR origins analysis OR research marxist OR radical = 550,000 Results.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
In furtherance of reason and justice and reality, whatever corrupted and cynically hypocritical pharmaceutical ‘experts’ might say, a briefing from the Free Thought Project that delves the doubling of overdose deaths and the continued criminal insanity or worse from official responders–i.e., the so-called ‘War on Drugs’–and proffers for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens to peruse in the process a TED-Talk that delineates the empirical and spiritual realities of addiction and how Portugal’s approach is the only rational one, a POV that the talk’s YouTube portal amplifies in many ways and that an astonishing documentary by Russell Brand even more powerfully demonstrates in at once tragic and hilarious fashion.
Nearly Naked Links
From Sunday’s and Monday’s Files
A Boko Haram Backgrounder – http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/11/boko-haram-rise-nigeria-armed-group-161101145500150.html
Fidel’s Ineffable Comradeship – http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Comandante-Fidel-Combatant-to-the-End-20161126-0013.html
Hibernation As a Space Reality
Deep Space Hibernation Is Possible & Technique Could Be Ready For Man’s First Trip To Mars
EVENTS
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
The deadline has been extended for submissions of art and writing to Exposition Review for their upcoming issue on the theme of Surface.
JOBS
Deutsche Welle International Graduate Trainee Program for English and German native speakers
The Traineeship
We are looking for open-minded young people full of creative ideas from all over the world interested in a comprehensive, exceptional quality journalism program with an international broadcaster. Candidates should have journalism experience or have skills in a relevant field such as information design, statistics and a demonstrable interest in applying these to journalism.
The DW editorial traineeship is paid, with a gross starting salary of approx. 1,800 Euros per month. As full-time employees, DW trainees are automatically eligible for German public health insurance. As our trainees move to Germany from abroad, we assist them at every step of the visa process.
A site that could serve as a great writing resource or ‘networking/community’ building opportunity, where the tech savvy and book lovers come together to transcribe public domain books into audio books: “LibriVox was started in August 2005, by Hugh McGuire, a Montreal-based writer and web developer, who has gone on to start other publishing related enterprises including PressBooks, a simple book production tool, and iambik audiobooks a commercial audiobook company inspired by LibriVox, which partners with publishers and narrators to produce in-copyright audiobooks. More about him can be found at hughmcguire.net. An interview with Paula B from The Writing Show describing the project in its earliest days can be found here.”
A great resource from the Smithsonian, for all those seeking to find appropriate and fresh holiday music, for fun and edification: “A “singing map” featuring traditional holiday music from the collection of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit record label of the national museum of the United States.”
Crazed Copyright Concatenations in Europe
From Falkvinge, a look at that sad little world whose only purpose is to make a buck off others’ intellect, and the effects this and recent court results has had on intellectual ‘property’ and knowledge access as a whole: “This was a case that had the copyright industry salivating: they have been trying to establish for over a decade that links are illegal if they link to material that violates the distribution monopolies, and in particular, going after any links-to-links in what they hoped would be an indefinite chain of liability. So far, courts had thrown them out wholesale and for good reason. For the first time, a case of this caliber was in a continental Supreme Court: were you allowed to link to things that themselves constituted an infringement of copyright? The case had enormous implications for the file-sharing witch-hunt and “speculative invoicing” (what we normally would call “systematic fraud by copyright trolls”).”
A Collective Evolution article that shares with us the wise and revolutionary words of a Pope whom even non- Catholics should heed: “Responding to a question from a journalist about whether or not there is a link between Islam and terrorism, more specifically addressing the fatal attack on a priest by a Muslim extremist in France last week, Pope Francis said, “Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person.” “This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity,” he continued.”
An appropriate-to-the-season posting from AAIHS that looks to the history of the holiday season during slavery’s heyday as a time of respite but also crowd-control, and for some, a window to freedom: “It—is the time of feasting, and frolicking, and fiddling—the carnival season with the children of bondage. They are the only days when they are allowed a little restricted liberty, and heartily indeed do they enjoy it.”
Yet, Douglass rightfully criticized the double-edged purpose of this seeming autonomy, arguing that the holidays were “among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection…These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity…The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery.”