A Thought for the Day
Supreme among the paradoxes of human consciousness, or at the very least first among equals as regards the contradictory conundrums of our awareness, must always remain the twin duties at once to seek knowledge and understanding of every single aspect of All-That-Is, without even one exception, and to acknowledge not only the absolute impossibility of ever achieving this total awareness—of any complex, long-lasting phenomenon or dynamic—but also to affirm that anyone who asserts such an overarching apprehension must be at best a charlatan and a fool, someone to avoid and eschew, someone quite likely as dangerous as any similarly deluded champion of self-serving falsehood and narcissistic braggadocio throughout history.
This Day in History
Around our globe today is World Population Day, while Ireland celebrates a Day of Commemoration on the Sunday nearest to this date, Argentina marks the Day of the Bandoneon, and China honors National Maritime Day; in the environs of what we now know as Turkey, near Constantinople, eighteen hundred sixty-three years ago, a favored child of nobility entered the world who would bear the name of his birthplace, as Bardaisan, en route to his life as a chronicler of the culture and people of the subcontinent and practitioner of philosophy and astrology; in Rome, at St. Peter’s Basilica three hundred eighteen years later, in 472, the able and ‘Western Emperor’ of noble background, Anthemius, foreshadowed much of Europe over the past century or so when his own generals captured him and executed him; MORE HERE
Doc of the Day
3. Peter Comejo, 1971.
"teaching history" OR "history class" "secondary school" OR "high school" "u.s. history" falsehood OR lies OR distortion OR misrepresentation OR "half truth" OR propaganda ubiquitous OR omnipresent OR widespread destructive OR dangerous OR undermine OR destroy understanding OR awareness OR consciousness analysis OR assessment critique marxist OR radical = 40,400 results 
Nearly Naked Links
Debs Speech – https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Sanders’ Debs Documentary – https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Furman v. Georgia – https://supreme.justia.com/cas
Darwin – http://darwin-online.org.uk/co
Interesting People Places Things of Note
A Boston Review article that introduces readers to a radical and powerful educator: “Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that’s what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever met.”
General Media & ‘Intellectual Property’ Issues
Learning & Teaching Citizen Participation
A Chief Organizer look at an interesting citizen engagement model: “There are a lot of great ways to celebrate Independence Day. There are picnics, barbecues, parades, fireworks, and good times and sober reflections throughout the land. For me this year, it has meant flying across the world to arrive in Budapest and then catch a lift to somewhere about an hour out of the city to a great facility operated by a Hungarian nonprofit where something called the Citizen Participation University has been meeting annually about this same time for several years now. A year ago, I had visited with Mate Varga of the Civil College Foundation which runs the CPU and had promised I would try to come back and lend a hand, and so I have.”
Recent Events
Petrodollar Blues & Their Implications
An International Clearing House post that looks at the specific and more general geopolitical consequences of American blunders in regards to the value of the petrodollar: “The Chinese and Russians proactively set upalternative financial systems for countries looking to distance themselves from the Federal Reserve. After the IMF acceptedthe yuan into its basket of reserve currencies in October of last year, investors and economists finally started to pay attention. The economic power held by the Federal Reserve has been key in financing the American empire, but geopolitical changes are happening fast. The United States’ reputation has been tarnished by decades of undeclared wars, mass surveillance, and catastrophic foreign policy.”
General Past & Present Issues
An Ian Welsh post that looks at the historically more honest take on the USSR: “The great problem with most critiques of the USSR is that they do not explain its successes. In the 20s and 30s, it did far better in most respects than the West. In the 40s and 50s–and even into the early 60s, it was still doing very well. They put the first satellite in orbit, produced tanks that were as good as the West’s, and produced the most successful assault rifle in history. As late as the early eighties, there were points at which Russia’s best tanks were better than the West’s.”