A Thought for the Day
Apropos the cusp of a certain holiday, we might note this: What shall we say at the end of the day to guide us along a halcyon way?
Some believe that such a reprieve is more than we shall ever receive;
Still, at the heart of where we may start if we search for such a typecast part
Remain amendments to sacred commandments that merely ask our attention:
To wit,
1. The Golden Rule Reigns Supreme.
2. All Children Receive Priority.
1. All Who Work Are Welcome.
4. All Who Work Are Equal.
5. All Who Work Have Responsibilities & Rights.
6. All Who Work Receive Benefits & Provide Support for Others.
7. All Who Work Own Everything That Labor Transforms.
8. All Who Work Are Family.
9. All Beliefs, Congruent with the Golden Rule, Are Welcome.
10. All Other Matters Are Negotiable.
We’d hardly need a gentler creed to assist us as we try not to bleed
Away all the joy that comes, bold or coy, if only we’ll make appropriate noise.
This Day in History
On this day, New Zealand celebrates Random Acts of Kindness Day, while Russia commemorates Journalists Day; in the Eastern Mediterranean and around What is now Istanbul in Turkey precisely thirteen centuries ago, Byzantine naval forces forestalled a crushing invasion by Muslim armadas that may have numbered more than 1,800 ships, putting to use the recently developed incendiary weapon that combatants labeled “Greek Fire” in the process, spraying the secret and ‘waterproof’ formulation onto enemy ships that drew near enough to engage them; MORE HERE
first science fiction movie, A Trip to the Moon; four years exactly after that, in 1906, upper crust attorneys and their business and financial partners and cohorts formed the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys, which continues to exert influence, even hegemony, over the framing and contextualization of patent and other ‘I.P.’ issues to this day; three hundred sixty-five days subsequent to that point, in 1907, the male child shouted out who would mature as the revered and tough-minded labor leader, Walter Reuther; half-a-dozen years subsequent to that juncture, in 1914, six thousand miles Northeast in Russia, authorities renamed St. Petersburg as Petrograd; six years even nearer to now, in 1920, a Texas baby girl entered our midst whose fate was to enchant the world as the political reporter and feminist savant, Liz Carpenter; eighty-three years back in Rhode Island, textile workers struck against predatory employment practices in a move that would soon involve more than 400,000 wage-earners in the industry nationwide and establish the beginnings of a struggle for an amalgamated international union; five years afterward, in 1939, Adolf Hitler signed authorization for practicing euthanasia against imperfect or otherwise impure citizens and people, on the same day that the German blitzkrieg inaugurated World War Two; another dozen years later along the temporal arc, in 1951, halfway round the world, New Zealand and Australia formed the ANZUS treaty organization with the United States; three hundred sixty-six days after that moment in space and time, in 1952, Ernest Hemingway first published his brief gem, The Old Man and the Sea; forty-eight years prior to the present pass, in a coup against neo-colonial stooges in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi first came to power; a year hence, in 1970, the French Nobel Literary Laureate, Francois Mauriac, took his final breath; thirteen years yet nearer to now, in 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 strayed into Soviet airspace and faced fighters that shot it from the sky; two years afterward, in 1985, on the other side of the Northern Hemisphere, French and American divers collaborated in first exploring the seven-decade-old wreckage of the Titanic; fourteen years ago, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations formed Working America as a way for non-union-member citizens and supporters to show their backing for, and gain tangible contemporary benefits from, organized labor; three years henceforth, in 2006, György Faludi died, bringing to an end the long life of a Hungarian and frequently expatriate composer of verse and narrative.
"vice media" OR gawker OR buzzfeed OR "alternative media" OR "new media" OR "digital startups" owners OR investors OR shareholders OR stake "legacy media" OR "mainstream media" OR "monopoly media" OR "corporate media" = 372,000 results
Interesting People Places Things of Note
A Global Research Centre look at the ubiquity and provability of false flag attacks: “Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror
In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos.”
General Media & ‘Intellectual Property’ Issues
Generally Orwellian Censorship
A Consortium News look at Google censorship regarding alternative and dissenting views in relation to current stories, especially the fake Russian narrative: “The U.S. mainstream media continues to spread its own “fake news,” like the falsehood about an intelligence community “consensus” on Russia-gate “hacking,” as algorithms begin to marginalize dissent, reports Robert Parry.”
General Past & Present Issues
Liberal Views of Historical Populism
An Aeon view of at historical narratives that have defined populism: “No one is more responsible for shaping the way we understand populism than the influential historian Richard Hofstadter, and when influential scholars err, that error can flourish. Writing during the early years of the Cold War, Hofstadter argued in The Age of Reform (1955) that members of the late 19th-century Populist Party were not small farmers losing their grip on independence. Instead, they were aspiring capitalists who, reeling from their loss in status, gave expression to their reactionary political concerns in backward, anti-Semitic and anti-modern ways. Hofstadter was writing at the height of the anti-communist crusade of the US senator Joseph McCarthy, and it’s easy now to see him trying, through his rendering of the Populists, to understand Americans who supported McCarthyism.”
extractive endeavor, WEAF radio in New York City broadcast the first ever new media advertisement; seventy-six years prior to the present pass, German Nazis in Ukraine, along with their local fascist allies, began the systematic murder of some several tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, thereby setting the stage for events that led like a crow flies to the Maidan ‘uprisings’ more recently; two years hence, in 1943, Danish anti-fascists and allied collaborators scuttled the entire fleet of Denmark’s Navy to preclude its falling into the hands of the Germans; a year yet later on, in 1944, well over 50,000 Slovak fighters turned against their Nazi overseers and made war on the Germans; an additional three hundred sixty-five days round and round the solar system’s solar center, in 1945, Harry Truman deployed the Navy against striking oil workers, mimicking Nazi tactics against unions; four years still nearer to the here and now, in 1949, in what any brainless idiot could have predicted had to be the result of the United States attempt to monopolize nuclear weapons, the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon, which was never a secret and was always only a matter of engineering and resources; an additional year along time’s path, in 1950, in a related development in East Asia, British troops arrived to help U.S. soldiers resist communist North Koreans’ incursion into the Southern half of the peninsula, while back in North America an erstwhile cultural impresario, in the employ of the CIA, advanced the claim that the hatred of East Europeans for Soviets justified U.S. distortions and interventions simultaneously; a typical transit’s three hundred sixty-five days yet later on, in 1951, a girl child entered our midst who would grow up as the poet and multi-jurisdictional Poet Laureate, Rita Dove; seven years after that, in 1958, only twelve years after its initiation, the United States Air Force opened its officer training school, the United States Air Force Academy, and in a likely wholly unrelated development, a baby boy opened his eyes who would rise as the estimable lyricist and redoubtable rocker Michael Jackson; half that period in the direction of the here and now, in 1962, acclaimed poet Robert Frost departed the United States for a ‘goodwill’ tour of the Soviet Union; another four years into the future from that juncture, in 1966, the philosopher of radical Islam and reactionary resistance to ‘Western Modernism’, Sayyid Qutb, faced an Egyptian firing squad for his part in plotting Abdul Nasser’s assassination, while roughly 7,000 miles to the West, the Beatles played their final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco; two years farther along, in 1968, upheaval among protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago resulted in a ‘fracturing’ of what had been the SOP ‘Cold-War consensus’ that both wings of the ReDemoPubliCratiCan Party would support aggressive, imperialist chauvinism as a fallback ‘foreign policy’ position; another seven hundred thirty days beyond those occurrences, in 1970, police depredations against community in East Los Angeles during the Chicano Moratorium on the War killed several people, including prominent journalist Ruben Salazar, injuring hundreds of others and establishing the impunity of the American police state; precisely twenty-one years even closer to the current context, in 1991, an honest businessman in Italy paid with his life for the integrity of refusing organized criminals’ ‘protection’ demands, and, to the North and East in the disarticulating Soviet Union, the legislature stripped the Communist Party of most of its special privileges and powers; an added half a decade toward today, in 1996, roughly 8,000 miles to the West in the Bay Area of San Francisco, a group of workers in the erotic arena formed a Service Employees international Union local and gained substantial material benefits and general empowerment from their prior condition as mere employees; seven hundred thirty days still later, in 1998, Northwest Airline pilots gave up on making concessions to profiteering owners and went on a strike for higher pay; another two years more proximate to the present pass, in 2000, organized workers in Minnesota established the first online labor news service in the United States, 
That the tongue is the body’s strongest muscle should surprise no one who pays even a modicum of attention to material reality: after all, the communication function’s development, which without possible refutation marks a key aspect of Homo Sapiens hegemony, corresponds here on our fair planet with the evolution of a larynx to create sound and a lingual organ to give that aural capacity many examples of infinitude in the languages of humanity; the allure of speech in this context of dexterous strength should surprise no one, nor should the equally—and some would say more—compelling quality of the many varieties of kissing that the tongue can manifest, truly giving our mouth’s central motor such multifarious mellifluous mastery, ample aptitude, and monumental muscularity as to make it one of the prime movers of the human condition.
Today, Paris and a significant swath of the rest of the world commemorate French citizens’ and allied soldiers’ liberation of the city from the Nazis; in Italy, one thousand, nine hundred and thirty-eight years back, Roman historian Pliny-the-elder died; two hundred forty-six years subsequently, in 325, the first Council of Nicaea ended, placing control of the development of Catholicism squarely in centralized hands, using doctrinal matters to marginalize critics of such choices; four hundred eight years prior to the present pass, Galileo Galilei demonstrated his telescope for the first time to legislators in Venice; twenty-one years afterward, in 1630, around the world in what is now Sri Lanka, Portuguese forces experienced a setback in colonization plans with a defeat at the hands of fighters from the Kingdom of Kandy; 
Today in Ukraine is Independence Day, when the nation declared its complete independence from Soviet control, and this evening in Uruguay is Nostalgia Night; in what is now Algeria, along the Bagradas River, two thousand sixty-six years ago, Roman imperial forces that sought to dispose of Rome’s African colonies as Caesar dictated faced a crushing defeat at the hands of Numidian fighters who wanted to order matters differently; more or less a century and twenty-eight years after that bloody set of facts, in 79, the volcano Vesuvius erupted to catastrophic effect on the other side of the Mediterranean; 
for Jewish property, rioted violently against Jewish people and those who protected them; sixty-five years past that conjunction, in 1456, early printers finished the first edition of a Gutenberg bible; another six decades henceforth, in 1516, Ottoman Turks completed the conquest of Syria, routing Arabic Muslims in the process of consolidating imperial rule; ninety-two years subsequently to the day, in 1608, English merchants established their first outpost in India at Surat; eighty-two years further onward, in 1690, the consolidation of saltpeter production at a factory in Bengal led both to a significant enrichment of the East India Company and to the manifestation of what came to be the great city of Calcutta; two centuries and three years back,British troops razed and burned much of what was the first incarnation of the United States capitol at Washington; seven years still nearer to now, in 1821, the Treaty of Cordoba established the Mexican nation’s independence from Spain; thirty-six years still later, in 1857, one of the initial worldwide ‘panics’ gripped centers of capital everywhere, in particular destroying wealth and afflicting property in the United States; precisely a quarter century more proximate to the present, in 1872, an upper crust English family welcomed a new son, who would mature as the caricaturist and critic and multifaceted writer, Max Beerbohm; a hundred twenty-six years in advance of this moment in time, Thomas Edison gained the patent for a motion picture camera that was to change the face of culture and human communication; seven years after that juncture, in 1898, a baby boy was born who would grow up as the critic, writer, and editor Malcolm Cowley; three hundred sixty-five years more along time’s path, in 1899, an Argentine boy child gave voice en route to a life as the prolific and peripatetic Jorge Luis Borges; three years hence in France, in 1902, another male infant came along whose destiny was intellectual insight and legerdemain as the historian and philosopher Fernand Braudel; seven years hence, in 1909, Southwest across the Atlantic, U.S. contractors poured the first concrete that went into the formation of the Panama Canal; a half decade farther down time’s road, in 1914, U.S. Poet Alan Seeger, a classmate of John Reed’s at Harvard, volunteered for the French Foreign Legion, learning prior to his being shot to pieces two years hence that modern industrial warfare had little or nothing of glory and elan in it; eight years additional along the temporal path, in 1922, the infant male took breath who would gain acclaim and audience as the 
popular historian, Howard Zinn; seven years beyond that point in time, in 1929, in British mandate Palestine, a massacre of several score Jews took place in Hebron at the hands of Palestinian Arabs who were rioting about immigration and possible plans for a Jewish homeland; another seven years onward, in 1936, the baby girl opened her eyes who would soon enough see her way to write the iconic and disturbing novels of A.S. Byatt; a year after on the dot, in 1937 on the Iberian Peninsula, Basque forces surrendered en masse to fascist Italian volunteers who had been assisting Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War; half a dozen years later, in 1943, the French philosopher and mystic-idealist Simone Weil drew here last breath; four years still closer to today, in 1947, the Brazilian boy baby shouted out who would end up the popular and critically acclaimed writer Paulo Coelho; seven hundred thirty-one days onward, in 1949, the formal papers that created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into force; another year afterward, in 1950, Edith Sampson became the first Black representative of the United States to the United Nations; another year later still, in 1951, a baby boy opened his eyes on his way toward life as the thinker and storyteller Oscar Hijuelos, and another male infant was born, to the Mormon Card family in Richland, Washington, who would go on to great popularity and critical controversy as Orson Scott Card; three years yet nearer to the here and now, in 1954, the Communist Control Act took effect, essentially outlawing the American Communist Party; a dozen years after that, in 1966, the trust fund baby entered our midst who, as Nick Denton, would go on to monopoly media success with Gawker; another year even closer to today’s light and air, in 1967, Abbie Hoffman led Youth International Party activists in raining dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, setting off a scramble that temporarily halted trading; seven hundred thirty-one daily passages round the sun farther along, in 1969, a different sort of ‘protest’ against empire transpired when an entire U.S. Army Company‘s soldiers refused their commanding officer’s order to continue a punishing and likely fruitless attempt to reach a downed helicopter; thirty-four years ago, the iconic thinker and leader, Scott Nearing, took a final breath just after his hundredth birthday; six years hence, in 1989, Colombian drug gangs ‘declared war’ on the central government there; 
Today is an International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition, as well as representing—for twenty-odd years now—Internaut Day to commemorate those who use the Internet often and well, while a European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism unfolds on this date, and Iran honors medical doctors with Physicians Day; 
opium by seizing the island that is now Hong Kong in preparation for three years of punishing warfare that we now know as the First Opium War; twenty-two years further along time’s road, in 1861, back in the United States, Union authorities apprehended one of the first Confederate spices in the District of Columbia, Rose Greenhow; five years yet later on, in 1866, across the Atlantic In Central Europe, Austria accepted the generous terms—a Bismarck ploy—of the Peace of Prague that ended the Austrian-Prussian War with merely Vienna’s having to concede Venice to the Italians; a two year stretch toward the future, in 1868, a baby boy was born who would grow up as the masterful poet and dramatist and writer, Edgar Lee Masters; twenty-eight years afterward, in 1896, as organizing and resistance against Spanish rule accelerated in the Philippines, the Cry of Pagun Lawin—now Quezon City—drew nigh, and Filipinos now commemorate the initiation of their revolutionary struggle for independence on this date; one thousand four hundred and thirty days only along time’s forward march, in 1900, a little baby girl opened her eyes who would rise as the singer and performer and songwriter and stalwart champion of social justice, Malvina Milder Reynolds; a single year after that, in 1901, back in Manila, five hundred ‘Thomasite’ teachers arrived to instruct Filipinos in practical subjects such as how to be good servants of the United States; eight years yet nearer to the present pass, in 1909, around the world in McKee’s Rock, Pennsylvania, International Workers of the World strikers responded to a sheriff’s firing on them by killing him and starting a gun battle that claimed ten or more additional lives; partially in response to extreme violence such as this, the result of the ‘American style’ of oppressive class warfare, three years subsequently, in 1912, the President appointed a Commission on Industrial Relations that would document the depredations and depravity of capital in search of higher profit; eleven years more on the temporal arc, in 1923, a female child emerged among us in Iraq who would, as Nazik al-Malaika, become the first Arabic language poet to use free verse; three additional cycles of the sun on the path to the here and now, in 1926, the male infant entered the world in standard fashion who matured as Clifford Geertz, a social scientist and a founding father of Cultural Anthropology; the next year, in 1927, the State of Massachusetts put to death two men, Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose trial was a travesty of justice and at least one of whom was verifiably innocent of anything in relation to the charges that led to their judicial murder; seven hundred thirty-one days even closer to the current context, in 1929, Palestinians who opposed the British Mandate rose up in riotous rebellion in Hebron, killing plus or minus seventy Jewish people and driving most of the rest from the city; in a different outburst of violence, at once divergent and similar, plus or minus eight thousand miles to the Northwest four years beyond that conjunction, in 1933, vigilantes in and around Yakima, Washington attacked two hundred or more migrant workers; half a dozen years farther down the pike, in 1939, back in the Eastern Hemisphere, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a ‘non-aggression’ pact that both fully intended to violate quite quickly, and the author and screenwriter Sidney Howard gave a final gasp; half a decade afterward, in 1944, Romania switched sides from the fascists to the allies, and in one of the worst instances of accidental military carnage, a B-24 American bomber crashed into a school in Feckleton, England, resulting in more than sixty deaths, mostly children; a mere year later, in 1945, Soviets laid the basis for using Japanese Prisoners of War as laborers in Manchuria; a thousand ninety-six days more along time’s path, in 1948, the World Council of Churches came into existence; another year onward from that propitious happening, one of America’s fiercest feminists, Helen Churchill Candee, an upper crust designer and writer and thinker, sang her swan song before departing forever; nine years still more proximate to the present pass, in 1958, a second instance of a serious potential for war shaped up in the Taiwan Straits as Peoples Liberation Army forces bombarded positions of the Nationalists; five years more down time’s current, in 1963, the boy child first gazed about him on his way to life as the screenwriter and filmmaker Park Chan-wook; three years hence, in 1966, a Lunar Orbiter took the first photograph of Earth from such a distant vantage point; four further years toward today, in 1970, back on terra firma, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee started the Salad Bowl Strike, the largest work action among agricultural laborers ever; three years even more in proximity to our own point in time, in 1973, across the continent and over the ocean in Stockholm, a bank heist flailed so badly that many employees and customers ended up hostages, who in the course of their tense and tenuous experience, often came to sympathize with their captors and thereby have a ‘syndrome’ that bears the name of their location; sixteen additional years on time’s forward path, in 1989, the brilliant humanist and psychiatrist, R.D. Laing played out his final scene; a year thereafter, in 1990, Saddam Hussein sought to 
forestall Gulf War escalation by appearing on television with ‘Western friends’ who were his hostages; three hundred sixty-five days still nearer to now, in 1991, Tim Berners Lee officially inaugurated the World Wide Web and thereby established the Age of the Internet; two years again moving toward today, in 1993, the Galileo spacecraft discovered the first case of an asteroid around which another object, or moon, rotated; three years henceforth, in 1996, Osama Bin Laden issued a ‘Declaration of War’ against the infidel nation that occupied Islam’s holy places; another thousand ninety-five days onward along time’s pathway, in 1999, in a development similar to recent viral events, New York City reported the first confirmed case of a West Nile Virus infection; two years over the hump and after the dawn of the new millennium, in 2001, the true-crime and spy-craft narrator and general stalwart of journalism, Peter Maas, came to the end of his road; eight years after that precise passage, in 2009, William Glasser died the psychological innovator whom some would label rebel; two years past that conjunction, across the Atlantic in 2011, the reign of Muammar Gaddafi came to an end in fire and terror and blood and death; an extra two year trek toward today, in 2013, a Bolivian prison riot ended in the deaths of over thirty inmates and their guards.
Celebrating an imperial inauguration three hundred seventy-eight years in advance of today, India commemorates Madras Day in honor of an English purchase of property in order to found that community; on the opposite side of the world, in Northern United Kingdom, one thousand four hundred fifty-two years ago, a saintly and proselytizing visitor to Scotland supposedly stopped a Loch Ness monster from eating a swimmer; three hundred seventy-five years prior to the present pass, King Charles I sealed his fate and began the English Civil War with a statement that labeled Parliament a ‘nest of traitors;’ 
