Friday Round-Up 4

This column has been delayed do to good stuff like birthdays and hosting guests - but now the day is quiet and the time to type has arrived.

"Swift death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking,"
from the story 'Sinister Barrier' (1939) by Eric Frank Russell

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”
- Edward Abbey (if you are interested in environmentalism you should know this name)

Articles

1. I was a fan of UFC from the first PPV on the big-dish. Then I saw the documentary 'The Smashing Machine' (2002) and realized not only the bodily toll UFC fighters paid - but also how little they got paid. Once I realized that the UFC was mostly working-class guys selling their bodies for a few thousand dollars I could never enjoy it the same way.  Major league 'player unions' are some of the greatest labour victories ever achieved but you are not supposed to talk about 'unions' in the same breath as sports because it might ruin their entertainment value. Sporting has a great history involving real issues of race, gender, and labor but don't say this to loud in case you awaken the legions of man-children who just want to be entertained...
   
   The NBA proves that unions work. The UFC shows why they’re necessary.
   http://fusion.net/story/325337/nba-ufc-unions/
   
   
   
2. Newfoundland continues to wage a war against basic education.
   
   

   There’s a history of problems with private colleges in Newfoundland and Labrador. In the 1990s, a private college bankruptcy left thousands of students with large debts and no way to complete their training. In 2010, it emerged that 48% of students who attended private colleges in the province were unable to repay their student loans. Yet again, privatizing college education is costing Newfoundland and Labrador residents more and leaving students high and dry.
   
   But the government didn't stop there.Since privatization of adult basic education in 2013, the average cost of tuition has increased by 88 per cent. The number of students has dropped by over 30 per cent.

   
   Government of Newfoundland and Labrador tops list of worst privateers in Canada
   http://nupge.ca/content/13042/government-newfoundland-and-labrador-tops-list-worst-privateers-canada
   
   
3. A friend told me about some landscapers how had a Human Rights charge filed against them for wearing 'revealing' clothing, a little digging showed that charge was filed by the laid-off unionized landscapers that the new landscapers were replacing. Denied any economic rights the recently fired workers were forced to use the language and tools of Human Rights. That about sums up North America in 2016: the State will defend plenty of your 'rights' except if they conflict with Capitalism...
   
   

   James Peck’s “Ideal Illusions,” which helps answer why labor rights have been airbrushed out of the language of human rights. It wasn’t always this way: Economic rights and workplace rights were for decades at the very heart of the human rights movement. This was officially enshrined in 1948, when the United Nations adopted a 30-point “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” putting labor rights and economic equality rights alongside those we’re more familiar with today, like freedom of expression, due process, religion and so on. But somehow, labor rights and economic justice have been effectively amputated from the human rights agenda and forgotten about, in tandem with the American left’s abandonment of labor.

   
   http://thedailybanter.com/2012/06/the-quiet-extermination-of-labor-rights-from-human-rights/
   
   This is a nice addition to Chris Hedge's 'Death of the Liberal Class'. Here is Hedge's speech on the topic.
   
   
   
   
4. The 'House Select Committee on Benghazi' has issued their report on the Libyian ambush that killed a US diplomat. The US forces were "next to helpless" until rescued by a group "comprised of former military officers under the Gaddafi regime who had gone into hiding...individuals representing the government that the Obama administration was trying to overthrow at the time."
   
   Gaddafi Loyalists Rescued Americans In Benghazi Libya
   http://sputniknews.com/africa/20160629/1042193121/gaddafi-loyalists-saved-americans-in-benghazi.html
   
   
5. Stephen Cohen is an American scholar of Russian studies at Princeton University, he is also good friends with Mikhail Gorbachev. In this interview he warns us that Western policy toward Russia has become so aggressive and delusion that is no longer at a 'cold war' stage but at a 'pre-war' stage.
   
   https://off-guardian.org/2016/05/31/audio-stephen-cohen-unprecedented-nato-mobilization-looks-like-war-with-russia/
   
   
6. Public workers in battle. On one side, stumbling, overly-armed and overly-armored storm-troopers, the other side, a nurse channeling a supernatural gracefulness with only glasses and a dress. This is one of those photos that does all the talking, so I will say no more.
   
   
   
   
7. From Wikipedia "On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran, ambushed a Dallas police officers killing five officers and injuring nine. Johnson was who was reportedly angry over police shootings of black men. Police killed Johnson with a bomb attached to a remote control robot. It was the first time U.S. law enforcement used a robot to kill a suspect."
   
   
   
   
8. Browsing through obscure documentaries I found one summarized as "a 1976 Japanese black-and-white 16 mm documentary film, by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi, which follows the exploits of young Japanese motorcyclists, the "Black Emperors." The title is 'Goddo supiido yuu! Burakku emparaa' or in English 'God speed you! Black Emperors!'
   
   
   
   and here is a great album by the Quebec band named after that documentary:
   
   
   

One More:

NEVER TRUST A CORPORATION TO DO A LIBRARY'S JOB
As Google abandons its past, Internet archivists step in to save our collective memory

https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-librarys-job-f58db4673351#.4mhhogo6e

In 2006, Google News Archive launched, with historical news articles dating back 200 years. In 2008, they expanded it to include their own digitization efforts, scanning newspapers that were never online.

Google News Archives are now dead, killed off in 2011, now directing searchers to just use Google.

Even Google Search, their flagship product, stopped focusing on the history of the web. In 2011, Google removed the Timeline view letting users filter search results by date, while a series of major changes to their search ranking algorithm increasingly favored freshness over older pages from established sources.

Google may have dropped the ball on the past, but fortunately, someone was there to pick it up...

I have seen this happen in real-time. As a professor and researcher  I loved 'Google News Archives' - then it disappeared, I also loved Google's Timeline view - then it disappeared. Google too busy making $$$ off of Youtube celebrities to care about the real power of the internet.

The power of the internet is not sentimental stirring caused by the flood of social media or all the other ephemeral BS. The power is giving everyone access to a library. The World's Library. Google doesn't give a damn about this anymore. Corporation only care about the public good when it makes $$$, there is no higher calling.



But there has been one website, The Internet Archive, that has been slowly, faithfully fulfilling their mandate to help make the internet into The World's Library by fulfilling their motto: Universal access to all knowledge.

Google's motto is inane "Don't be evil" - a motto right up there with "Never Put Salt in your Eyes!".....