This is the launch of the “Daily Ghion Water”, a rundown of articles from non-corporate news and independent journalists. The initial set of links are limited to publications that I’m aware of. Over time, I really want this segment to grow and have this be a gathering place for people to exchange ideas and share articles they find to be refreshing.
Our readers and supporters are growing in astonishing fashion, we are now ranked 920,000 in the world, not bad considering that there are nearly 2 billion websites in the world at last count. It is my hope that people who count the Ghion Journal as a source of news and information interact with each other so that people can share ideas and formulate solutions. More importantly, it is my hope that we can just learn to talk to each other instead of talking past one another, so please use this forum to comment below and get to know other readers.
The reason it’s called the Ghion Water is because the Nile River was renamed from the Ghion River to its present imposed name. Now you know why our publication is called the “Ghion Journal”, some people will understand the significance behind the word Ghion and why mercenaries and historical propagandists chose to rename the river that is still called the Abay (father) Ghion in my native land Ethiopia. There is a reason why our tagline is “fight ignorance with knowledge”.
One last thing before I lead with the summary and links, I’m looking for an admin who will be in charge of this segment. Someone who has a keen eye for finding great articles and leading conversations as well. If you are interested in being the water tender of sorts and aggregating the Daily Ghion Water, email us at info@ghionjournal.com with subject head “Water Tender. Now on to the Inaugural Daily Ghion Water.
Economy:
On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging student loan debt. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)
Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us. [from TruthDig].
Politics:
The Occupy Wall Street movement that spread across the country six-plus years ago lacked proper organization and strategy, but it deserves credit for having the right enemy – the corporate and financial ruling class. The same can be said to no small degree about the sadly Democratic Party-captive Bernie Sanders campaign, which targeted “the billionaire class” as the main culprit behind the miseries of life in the brutally class-disparate United States. Both populist phenomena – Occupy and the Sanders “movement” – failed to build lasting people’s organizations and failed to properly situate the “One Percent”/“Billionaire Class” within the specific historical contexts of capitalist class rule and capitalism’s “evil twin” imperialism. Neither offered anything like a revolutionary alternative to the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of wealth and empire. Still, both demonstrated a reasonable opening understanding of who calls the shots under what Noam Chomsky is right to sardonically call “really existing [U.S.] capitalist democracy, or RECD, pronounced as ‘wrecked’”: the U.S. corporate and financial oligarchy. [from Counter Punch]
Media:
A socio-cultural-political structure is in place wherein the individual is bombarded, to the point of psychical saturation, with self-serving, elitist manufactured media content. Decades back, news and entertainment merged thus freedom of choice amounts to psychical wanderings in a wilderness of empty, consumer cravings and unquenchable longings. Moreover, personas are forged upon the simulacrum smithy of pop/consumer culture, in which, image is reality, salesmanship trumps (yes, Trumps) substance. Among the repercussions: A reality television con man gains the cultural capital to mount a successful bid for the U.S. presidency.
Trump’s ascendancy should not come as a shock. Nor should desperate Democrats’ embrace of Russia-gate/The Russians Are Coming mythos. In essence, U.S. citizens/consumers are the most successfully psychologically colonized people on planet earth. In the realm of the political, Democratic and Republican partisans alike, on cue, are prone to parrot the self-serving lies of their party’s cynical elite, who, it is evident, by the utter disregard they hold towards the prerogatives of their constituency, view the influence-bereft hoi polloi with abiding disdain … that is, in the rare event they regard them at all. [from Consortium News].
Culture:
The catch is that Pottersville would have been a much better outcome for American small towns like Bedford Falls than what actually happened. Today, the lovely landscape of upstate New York today is dotted with small towns and even small cities that have absolutely nothing going on in them anymore, and stand in such awful desolation that you’d think a long war was fought here. Much of that is due to the activities of good-hearted suburban developers like George Bailey.
The Americans of 1946 must have had no idea where all this was headed, nor of the coming de-industrialization of the country that had won World War Two, or the massive social changes in the divisions of labor, or the annihilation of several layers of the working and middle classes, or the much greater wickedness of the generations of bankers who followed Henry Potter. It’s a Wonderful Life presents an American scene poised to arc toward tragedy. It’s an excellent lesson in the ironies of history and especially the dangers of getting what you wished for. [from Kunstler]
International News:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power to deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. The International Criminal Court, set up in 1998, regards such practice as a war crime. But because Israel, along with Iraq and the US, didn’t sign up to the ICC it feels free to carry on with its settlement programme regardless.
Genuine settlers come in friendship and with consent. But Israeli settlers are mostly hardline religious squatters who support their own government’s use of violence against Palestinian civilians. Their settlements are usually fortified colonies with gun towers, mine-strewn death strips and army back-up. No doubt they appear heroic in Israeli eyes but are offensive to the Palestinians and breach all international understanding of what constitutes acceptable behaviour. [from Redress]
Technology:
First, as one might infer, the human who is suddenly asked to intervene is going to have to quickly asses the situation. The handoff delay means a slower response than if a human had been driving the entire time. Second, and even worse, the human suddenly asked to take control might not even see what the emergency need is. Third, the car itself might not recognize that it is about to get into trouble. Recall that Uber tried to blame a car accident when its self driving car was making a left turn on the oncoming driver, when if you parsed the story carefully, it was the Uber car that was in the wrong.
The newest iteration of the “human takeover” fudge is to have remotely located humans take over navigating the car. Help me. Unlike a driver in a vehicle, they won’t have any feel for the setting. That means an even slower reaction in what will typically be an emergency situation. This is a prescription for bad outcomes, meaning a much worse safety record than with people as drivers, fatally undermining a key claim for self driving cars, that they’d be safer than human operated ones. [from Naked Capitalism]
Crime:
The world’s 500 richest people have increased their wealth by $1tn (£745bn) so far this year due to a huge increase in the value of global stock markets, which are likely to finish 2017 at record highs.
The big increase in the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy comes as billions of poorer people across the world have seen their wealth standstill or decline. The gap between the very rich and everyone else has widened to the biggest it has been in a century and advisers to the super-rich are warning them of a “strike back” from the squeezed majority. [from the Guardian]
From the Tubes
One for the Writer:
Let me wrap up this segment by introducing a new concept at the Ghion Journal. Going forward, in an effort to empower independent journalists and non-affiliated voices, I’m going to embed a “tip jar” of sorts at the bottom of each article. By clicking on the picture below, you can contribute to writer on the Ghion Journal. The money left in these “tip jars” will go 100% to the writer you designate by either giving a name or the article you that moved you to contribute. I do this in hopes of attracting more writers to the Ghion Journal and growing our base of writers and to make sure that existing and future writers at the Ghion Journal are being compensated for their work. Not only is this the inaugural Daily Ghion Water, the tip jar below is also the launch of our effort to empower writers. Click below to give one to the writer. 
Quote o’ the Day:
“The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Lij Teodrose Fikremariam
Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Lij Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Lij Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.
Latest posts by Lij Teodrose Fikremariam (see all)
- Judge Not… - May 16, 2019
- Why I No Longer Fight for Justice - May 9, 2019
- Why I Quit Democracy - May 3, 2019
