BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
BREAKING THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING OF PLUTOCRACY & PLUNDER
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
The 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.
“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
democracy 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.
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
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
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.
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.

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.
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.”