2.03.2017 Daily Links

          BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW          

 

BREAKING THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING OF PLUTOCRACY & PLUNDER

http://theslot.jezebel.com/someone-is-paying-strangers-online-to-beg-for-betsy-dev-1791976320
In a toxic context of personal pretense and nightmarish social injustice, a swamp indeed in which scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens must make their way, a incisively and persuasively reported briefing from Jezebel about the sorts of corruption that will become routine aspects of standard operating procedure under Betsy DeVos’ proposed Department of Education, environs in which money and profiteering and bullshit will rule as never before; a point that Counterpunch significantly deepens in a longform piece that first reconstructs Ann Gorsuch’s tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency and then deconstructs the impact of this treacherous and fraudulent operation on her then young son; a point moreover that the noncommittal reporters at The Hill amplify with their overview of ‘concerns’ among astute Democratic or otherwise ‘liberal’ political insiders who find the elevation to the number two spot in the Central Intelligence Agency of an admitted torturer who blithely administered such operations, at a minimum a disturbing development; a point, in the end, that the likes of Paul Craig Roberts, whatever his foibles on various fronts, can generalize as a shattering of the glass ceiling and thereby guaranteeing that ruling class women matched the evil of their men.

                    This Day in History                  

In Japan, today marks Setsubun, the day that commemorates the decline of Winter and the rise of Spring, an ancient holiday that tracks the Chinese Lunar New Year in some ways, while the United States celebrates Four Chaplains Day for the heroic work of four preachers on the sinking Dorchester who helped others board life boats and gave up their own life preservers to go down with the ship; in a dispute about Central Italian city-states’ rights and expectations vis-à-vis popes six hundred forty years ago, Pope Gregory XI’s minions oversaw slaughter by Papal Troops of upwards of 2,500 citizens of Cesena in what contemporary accounts called a “bloodbath;” MORE HERE

                A Thought for the Day                

Pixabay Image 1235169The necessity of an audience is at once just a tautology and an almost fathomless paradox in relation to any sort of cultural output today, especially here in ‘the belly of the beast,’ on the one hand the inevitably, almost mundanely collective pursuit of art or literature or any other such endeavor that, on the other hand, somehow or other in the ideological cauldron of America, becomes mainly another quirky expression of ‘individualism’ or ‘identity’ or other bizarre personal fetish, in effect an unavoidably solipsistic and supercilious manifestation of selfhood that thereby undermines the sense of relationship and engagement and mutuality that the very concept of gathered viewers and witnesses always entails, in the event, in the routine unfolding of a particular artist’s or writer’s pragmatic and day-to-day endeavors, a combination of critical contradiction and nagging, niggling non-sequitur that professed professional creators must unravel if they are to attain the nexus of interaction and regard that proffer the linkages that represent a central sine-qua-non aspect of that which elevates their enterprise above the level of purely private pondering and merely monastic musing, inherently closeted if not expressly cloistered.

                  Quote of the Day                       

“It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams…Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men”

― Johannes Gutenberg

                        Doc of the Day                          
Numero Uno—“Like the English Constitution, the English credit system is a living thing, that has grown out of its past and is growing into its future.   Past, present, and future are thus one continuing process, and no one can hope to understand its present, still less to peer into its future, unless he knows something of the past that is part of them.  Bagehot’s Lombard Streetlights up, with the fire of its author’s genius, the road that we have travelled, and helps us to see where we are and to wonder whither we are going.  Its usefulness, as a work of reference and a standard of comparison, has been enhanced in this new edition by a careful revision of the Notes, carried out by Mr. A. W. Wright, a member of the staff of the Economist newspaper, long edited by Bagehot. MORE HERE

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SEARCHDAYdemocracy OR "people power" OR "grassroots power" engagement OR participation OR citizenship OR "civic mindedness" "impossible without" OR "depends on" OR requires OR demands protest OR uprising OR dissent OR rebellion repression OR crush OR "police state" OR incarceration OR raid OR "red scare" history OR origins analysis OR research OR scholarship = 4, 720, 000 Intersections.

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              TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, &                                  AWARENESS VIDEO                  

A MONTAGE THAT REFLECTS & ILLUMINATES CREATIVE EXPRESSION NOW
In the dulcet expressions that are his signature, with the calming tones that allow him to grapple with the touchiest matters, from Waking Times, an overview of Terence McKenna’s trenchant critiques of established American culture, in which he notes that, while living in an “incredible bubble of privilege,” both scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens have often wrestled with beliefs about “historical inevitability” that precluded “its paradoxical twin political responsibility,” so that in the end “no real change has been tolerated,” in the event a window into analysis and rhetoric that could serve humanity well in the here and now, more than ninety minutes of articulation and insight that in a perhaps bizarre but nonetheless real way matches a new Aeon video that examines, at once lightly and seriously, the soul-crushing tendencies of office cubicles; and that counterpoints a recent Nieman Lab assessment that seeks to analyze evolving journalistic boundaries in our presently struggling democracy; and that serves as one contextual offshoot  of revolutionary developments in computing and calculating technology that a current University of Chicago podcast illuminates in more than an hour of presented research—all of which in turn might be possible to view as emanations of the sorts of knowledge that Forbidden Knowledge TV presents  in briefing viewers on how our languages originated and grew out of common roots; and that Aeon conveys in a second clip that looks at how artistic or cultural creativity can blend with ‘day jobs,’ or not; and that the inimitably potent Spy Culture produces in last week’s installment about the career–as government agent and Hollywood executive Jack Valenti, the complete aggregate of all of which proffer a variety of perspectives or lenses with which to make sense of our wild and woolly times.
FACE-TO-FACE WITH REALITY IN SYRIA & ELSEWHERE, NOW & THEN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k62w1IEOlr8
Via a very brief interlude  in Duran in which RT host Peter Lavelle commends Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a YouTube half hour from Arab Americans that examines Gabbard’s visit to Syria and interview with Basher Assad while there, aspects of all of which prove the lies and bullshit that have prevailed in government and monopoly media statements about Syria and its woes, in other words material of key import for scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens, in some senses similar to revelations about ‘official’ narrative snow-jobs in arenas where issues show up such as those that surround the collapse of buildings in New York on 9/11/2001, as in a Forbidden Knowledge TV segment  in which a National Institute of Standards and Technology whistleblower provides an overview of why NIST explanations are both disingenuous and implausible, an attempt to bathe the wounds of terror with the soap and water of truth in spite of how unpopular such an approach may be among our rulers and betters, a point that appears in magnificent testimony like that which characterizes the Winter Soldier film series, beginning with the particularly powerful sequences  that deal with the Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit in the early 1970’s.

                     Nearly Naked Links                  

From Thursday’s Files

Preparing For Union Defeat – http://portside.org/2017-01-31/labor-unions-appear-set-more-state-level-defeats-2017

Japan, Nukes, & Trump – http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46346.htm

Thirteenth Filmmakers’ Perspectives – https://psmag.com/ava-duvernays-activism-takes-a-step-forward-in-the-awards-campaign-for-13th-64f412a13580#.lq6yhykwk

MORE HERE

JOBSEVENTS

 

EVENTS

CFPD hosts online workshop on social media strategies [Latin America]

Media professionals can register for this online course in Spanish.

Organized by the Center for Digital Journalism (CFPD) at the University of Guadalajara, the course “Community management and social networking for journalists” will be held Feb. 27 to April 9.

Nominations open for US$1 million humanitarian prize [Worldwide]

Journalists and others who commit an extraordinary act of humanity are eligible for the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS

The Salem College Center for Women Writers offers $1,000 in each category for their International Literary Awards in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

pascal maramis - flickr
pascal maramis – flickr

JOBS

Every year, Overland publishes several online editions showcasing work by new and emerging writers. A paid opportunity exists for an emerging editor to work on one of these online fiction editions, to be published in June 2017.

ORGLINK

Engagement’s Necessity in Democracy

A Vox look by an engaging social commentator into what a true democracy could look like: “Beneath the acrimony, everyone seems to agree that citizens need a greater voice in our democracy. But both sides face a common challenge: Neither the marchers nor the president they detest have articulated a coherent set of mechanisms to translate their passionate rhetoric into concrete initiatives, programs, or policies that actually empower citizens.”