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This Day in History
In Western Christian tradition, which obviously stems from Wiccan and Pagan Solstice practice, today is the sixth day of Christmas; one thousand nine hundred seventy-seven years ago, an upper class Roman baby boy entered the world who would grow up to massacre Jews for the empire and serve as the first Emperor who inherited the title from his father; in Granada a thousand twenty-seven years henceforth, in 1066, a mob, largely Muslim, broke into the royal palace and crucified the Jewish vizier, after which many of the Jewish residents of the city suffered similar fates; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
The conclusion is obvious enough not to require noting, except for the willful ignorance about the issue that remains the way that most people relate to the matter, to wit, we don’t give credence to aspects of the cosmos—our neighbors, our ‘institutions,’ media, politicians, and so on and so forth—for one reason that we understand very well, i.e., many people and dynamics are inherently hypocritical and untrustworthy, and as a result of an additional interlocking cause that we assiduously overlook as if acknowledging the point would be our undoing, namely that we don’t trust ourselves as far as we might hurl an elephant, one-handed, with our weaker and less coordinated arm, an insight that, fully explicated and delineated, might yield all manner of knowledge about centrally important elements of the current crises of the human condition, such as how we might be responsible, what the requirements are to achieve transformation, why we so seldom give and arguably even more infrequently keep our promises to ourselves and others, and plenty more besides, a dynamic and largely dialectical whorl that ought to be of particular interest to scrappy scribes who hope to comprehend reality well enough actually and accurately to describe its psychic and moral parameters.
narrative OR story OR literature popularity OR acclaim OR repute OR approval OR esteem ideology OR sop OR "world view" sycophant OR imprimatur OR sanction OR acceptability OR congruent OR parallel resistance OR critique OR deconstruction history OR origins radical OR marxist = 4,180,000 Hits.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
Really a pair of profferals from the estimable Juan Cole, both of which contain centrally relevant video documentation of the points that he is making for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens, to wit, in the first place a briefing about the local developments that would without much doubt transform the top-down model of rule and imprimatur, developments in the realm of energy; in the second place a catalog of innovative achievements and research in the power sphere that nests seamlessly in conjunction with the strategic idiocy of America’s plutocrats, who are both permitting and facilitating the creation of what Cole terms a “Chinese Solar Juggernaut,” a tour of the everyday evolution and mundane manifestation of what really will be possible in a future where humans survive, which is to say a future without nuclear exemplars of the kilowatts of death.
Nearly Naked Links
From Thursday’s Files
Kissinger’s ‘Game’ & Its Warning
‘Free Reading’ In Croatia – https://globalvoices.org/2016/12/27/for-a-limited-time-croatians-get-free-access-to-a-digital-library-of-100000-books/
EVENTS
Saturday, January 28, 2017, 9:00 a.m.– noon
First Christian Church, 1314 SW Park, Portland, Oregon
Presented by Jeanne and Dick Roy, Co-Founders, Center for Earth Leadership
Pre-registration required (free)
In response to requests and concerns flowing from the presidential election, the Center for Earth Leadership will offer its Practice of Hope Workshop on January 28th. Originally developed at the request of Port Townsend Earth Day organizers, with portions covered in the Roys’ TEDx talk, the workshop addresses the following question: Living in a society where “bad news” seems so prevalent, is authentic hope possible? In this workshop, hope is explored as an intentional act or a practice.
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
Ahoy there new writers! We want your fiction!
About the issue
Overland is seeking fiction from new and emerging writers for a special online edition to be guest edited by Natasha Batten. For this special edition, ‘new and emerging’ describes writers at various early-career stages, from previously unpublished to no more than one collection of stories or a novel published.
Online contributors for this edition will be paid $150 per story.
Submissions close 11.59pm, Sunday 5 February. The special issue will be available online in April.
JOBS
University of British Columbia
Chair, Creative Writing Program
Chair, Creative Writing Program – Faculty of Arts, The University of British Columbia – Vancouver, BC
The Faculty of Arts invites applications for the position of Chair of the Creative Writing Program, with anticipated start date of July 1, 2017.
A Truth Dig article by Chris Hedges that examines the obvious social consequences of the various coming political betrayals and crises: “Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since Trump won the presidency. There is a lot of money to be made from a militarized police state.”
Presence, Mediation, Education
An Aeon look at the perils of technology and phones in the classroom and whether they act as a catalyst or impediment to learning: “I used to jump to the conclusion that students with whom I had such interactions were inherently flawed, academic lost causes. But that’s a reductive explanation, and doesn’t get at the heart of the problem; it’s not just that they have trouble paying attention or are distracted by their phones or laptops in the classroom. The problem is their use of technology in general. Technology demands a significant amount of time and attention and has conditioned them to not question it. It takes up more and more of their bandwidth, and the net effect is lobotomising.”
A Brookings post that discusses the grave consequences to comunications legislation and the ongoing FCC battles; “Last week, the U.S. Senate failed to reconfirm Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) before winter recess. Within days, current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced his intentions to step down following the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. Two vacant positions will exist at the agency beginning on January 20. This situation will make it easier for the new Republican majority at the FCC, with a 2-1 vote split due to the vacancies, to withdraw pending items under agency review, and repeal consequential rulemaking and decisions made over the last eight years. What began as a robust policy agenda to manage the explosive growth of the regulated media and telecommunications industries may result in an end to the Obama administration’s legacy issues in these fields, including net neutrality.”
Wednesday, and said Moscow would rethink relations with Ankara. Russia’s defense minister Sergey Shoygu said Wednesday that the country would send defense missile systems to its airbase near Latakia, Syria, just south of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Neither country wants to go to war, but the crash further strains relations between Moscow and Ankara in Syria, where Russian forces have bombed Turkish-backed rebel groups fighting against the Assad government.”
Neoliberalism’s Relation to Empire
A Global Research primer on neoliberalism, and the ways it signifies the state of capitalist and social decay: “Neoliberalism is “the ideology of corporate domination and the plunder of finance capital.” To preserve itself domestically, the modern system has created both the Mass Black Incarceration State and the National Security State. Internationally, “terrorism, ‘humanitarian intervention,’ and economic sabotage are the primary means of maintaining US hegemony of the neo-liberal variety.”