She had not read this Boethius
Not even his consolation of philosophy
Yet it pains for the reader to think her facetious
As she googled his fame blundering into anomaly

Missing philosophies salacious good patrimony
Innocence seduced by the traducers chatter box
Shying away like a petrified pony
Into the shadowy cavernous maw of the flickering giant blind Cyclops

A shimmering philosophy’s true gold
Small consolation dangled before a school girl
Enticed by the baubles gleam into dubious fold
Then buggered by the goat footed churl

What howling was heard monotonously
As she bled from the barbed shaft
Consoled by De Sade’s bedroom philosophy
She gobbled it up with due craft

By Gary
18 May 2013
Long Beach

Vegan incense burning acolytes of great mother Gaya
Murderesses, vagabond thieves of sanctimony with big eye puppy porn
More agents, more diva killers, great white tornado hunters
Dread locked zombie flesh eaters of carrot and long suffering soy
Hold high the image of God’s son mocked by bread and rejected by flesh
For we the living, are the dead enclosed sepulchers, cyphers bearing Drachmas and
Candle tongues frothy with epileptic notation
“Hear me oh lord
I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Gone are the night watches calling out the hours
Sleepy are the bundled beggar children on Bogata balmy boardwalks
Remorseless are bug zappers and
Solitary masters on Mount Meru
Fighting the oncoming Kali Yuga with pitchforks and
Chakra encrusted fingers tasting of shit, sending
Bile and acrid smoke signals to the bodhisattvas below, chanting
“Where were you when the darkness coiled like serpents devouring Laocoon and sons?”

In the Vatican Museum
Lapping up the ages drinking from roadside ditches
Sated with quick sniffs of butt bitches,
Behold the God king as he mounts
Behold as he digs spurs into fat sow flesh
Queen wench of Babylon
“Whoore,” Archie Bunker relishes, lingering longingly on the cock sucking sound

We are all Jesus on the cross
Demeter weeping for her Persephone
Laughing Romulus hefting Sabine virgins
Hanuman greeting Sita’s tears with monkey solicitude
Stealing baubles for bananas in the Seva Kunj while
Thor’s hammer sits cobwebbed and closeted

Only once does the sight of Leptis Magna
Give pause to the Christmas gift from B-52’s over Hanoi, “the pride and
Spiritual strength of the good-willed and wise Vietnamese people….”* insignificant, nothing to
Santa’s justifiable and homicidal rage, Dresden… Nagasaki… mere boneless chicken breasts,
They had been naughty, not nice.

And we, the hungry ghosts, wear our crowns proudly,
Sitting meditation on bony bottoms chanting secret words
Crying crocodile tears for sad eyed children needing Apple apps
Caring little but for our own aching knees

These are the things that make Jesus weep
Angels flagellate imagined flesh
Mary Magdalene laundry orphans wring reddened writs and knobby legal briefs

For damned wasted lives
For singing superlative gospels

We stand at attention and salute those who are about to die.

By Gary
18 May 2013
Long Beach

*Mitchel, Marshall. “The Christmas Bombing.” Air and Space Smithsonian. Jan. 2001. Web. 18 May 2013.

I missed the famous party where W.S. Merwin was put upon by Rimpoche’s thugs at a drunken orgy as described by Ed Sanders of the Fugs fame. Good luck finding this anywhere. It has become something of a non event…
Sanders, Ed (ed.). The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary. 1977.
Copies are available through Amazon but links for a free copy seem to have disappeared from the internet.

-Note: Trungpa Rimpoche was Tibetan Buddhist Crazy Wisdom lineage leader, rather a drunkard, but smart, who ended up in Boulder started the NAROPA Institute and some of his more famous followers from the beat scene formed the Jack Keroac poetry school.
it was a place for middle aged beat poets to rest their weary bones and teach neophyte escapees from the upper and middle classes how to be bohemian without the risk of endangering their trust funds…or getting cut off from parental support systems…(my own observations), I was a cynic and an anarchist even then. Allen gave me a burnt out stick of incense from his reading one time. I was not impressed. I was impressed with Bill Burroughs and shook his hand. That handshake must have contaminated me, I spent years under the influence.

This is an over the top version of “The Junkie’s Christmas.” Coppola was probably swept up in the eighties’ heroin chic’ thing. Ever see the movie “High Art”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kHN92Yv48

A more typical Burroughs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qDP4M2WYAk

My favorite Burroughs “Twilight’s Last Gleamings” but there is a longer version that I remember him reading at NAROPA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBTkk3b7Ofo

This is a youtube with both Allen Ginsberg and Trungpa Rimpoche.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYTEskqkGkg

Another one about a film about Trungpa and his approach, romanticized by his followers a bit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80jGSadccmY

This is Trungpa himself lecturing on Tantra in 1974, not long before the party. My girlfriend circa 1976 had been one of his lovers, or so she claimed. I stole her away to my cult at the time and lost her to my best friend… Live goes on…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7MWq7v7mQ&NR=1&feature=fvwp

I remember sitting in the back of Left Hand Books also in Boulder, where I ran a poetry series, getting drunk with Anslem Hollo and making fun of our friend Joe Shakarchi who was reading something of his. My girlfriend (new one circa 1980), who was co-host of the reading series, was getting pissed at me for being so rude and ending up taking a slug of the cheap red wine too. That was typical of the times. We partied hard and created like we were godlings…

Robert Bly said of my girlfriend and I that we were the future, this was when we met him at a Denny’s in Denver with my GF and the aforementioned Joe Shakarchi. Joe was writing his PHD thesis on Bly, it was rejected. Yet Joe got the last laugh, after a successful career teaching English and as a poet, he has retired in Thailand and lives the good life. So it goes…

Robert Bly from the way I remember him, pre-Iron John.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9LlA-Cl4NA

This is a reading of “The Ballad of Villon and Fat Madge.” Read by Tom O’Bedlam. Great name but he reading is a bit too upper crusty for the material. I think a drunken Gregory Corso reading would be better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbyDGU4bgg

Corso “Marriage”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXp2eyC2oaQ

I found this performance by Dennis Hopper on the old Johnny Cash show back in the early seventies of the Kipling poem “If.” Rather sentimental, but something I would not associate with Dennis Hopper. I always liked Cash and Hopper. This doesn’t really relate to anything except my dad took me to see “Easy Rider” as a warning against the evil ways of seeking to live free, when it first came out. Had the opposite effect on my impressionable mind, I couldn’t wait to go on my own easy rides, except I was afraid to go to Mississippi and Alabama for years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlfnm9gV52w

Much of this material is in my novel, but when I tried it out before the creative writing class at LBCC, (Long Beach City College) nobody seemed to like it, except the teacher and a couple of students my age, in fact most of them didn’t even know who Allen Ginsberg was…. I gave up on the book at that point. The common opinion of my drug infused youthful creativity was incomprehension at its unhealthiness…as if personal hygiene was the point. That is what frustrates. Where is the fire, the seeking after the Byronic heights, flaming of the candle at both ends…. I am getting grumpy in my senility.

I really wanted to leave my spelling of Trungpa Rimpoche as Trumpa, sort of a Buddhist Donald Trump, but for accuracies sake, I fixed it 5/12/2013. Also as the same friend pointed out, they were not really poetry wars, more like poetry rivalries…my poetic license I guess. I also modified my Joe section, he really is a good poet and we were being idiotic to tease him… Anslem is now a respected poet, and I am a reformed degenerate, so it goes… to give Vonnegut his due for the phrase. Now Karass mates, we shall perform ritual Bokononism.

Joe reading one of his poems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21DGSHQQwrw

Strategic interests in securing oil lanes and more specifically being able to cut the oil lifeline from Africa and the Middle East to China have become primary focuses for the US military machine. Chinese commercial inroads in South America and Africa, are seen as a threat, as well as Chinese support for Iran, Syria and the Rump Sudanese regime to name a few.

The author Dambisa Moyo seems to think in her book “Winner Takes All” that the world is headed for a massive conflict over resources:

“we are in big trouble – which makes the central premise of her book, Winner Takes All, all the more arresting. Governments across the world, she writes, have singularly failed to grasp what’s coming – with one sensational exception. “Simply put, the Chinese are on a global shopping spree.” State-sponsored Chinese corporations are busy buying up commodities across Africa, North America, the Middle East, South America – anywhere they can – in a concerted strategy to seize control of resources before the rest of the world wakes up to the looming crisis. They’re striking deals with what she calls the “axis of the unloved” – developing countries rich in commodities but poor in political and economic capital – in return for much needed investment, employment and infrastructure. Extravagant shoppers, the Chinese are happy to pay over the odds, treating their trading partners not as poverty-ridden charity cases nor political pariahs but valued commercial equals. But when the resources begin to run dry, the consequences will be catastrophic. Already, since 1990 at least 18 violent conflicts worldwide have been triggered by competition for resources. If nothing is done now, warns Moyo, commodity wars on a terrifying scale are all but inevitable” - Guardian.

Claiming that China has a leg up on the game is a little disingenuous as the British and French have been players for centuries and the USA has dominated the world sea lanes since the British passed the baton after WW2. This reminds one of the German, Japanese and Italian attempts to join in the fun after their own unification in the later part of the nineteenth century, mostly in Asia and Africa, Latin America being seen as an American interest. When they became successful, the alliance of France, Britain and Russia decided to clobber the Germans before they became too powerful. The Italians and Japanese wisely joined in with the Alliance. Not so in WW2 when they allied with Germany only to be clobbered together for their vain attempts to gain a place in the imperial sun. Now China an ancient player in the game, wants to play and it looks like the world is getting ready to gang up on them to crush their new found interest in becoming a world player. Not on your own terms seems to be the program spearheaded by the USA.

The French seem to be taking on the Al Qaeda in North Africa and spreading their arms interests around the world on the coat tails of the US and Russia the worlds biggest players. Why the French want to be the Junior cops, sort of Little American’s is a bit of a dubious question. They have long been dug into Africa and are prying into Syria, a former colony in the post WWI dissection of the Ottoman Empire by the European imperialist states Great Britain and France.

What will Russia do? That is critical for the Chinese interests. As the only other serious nuclear power besides the USA, they need Russian back up if they are to sustain their interests without becoming subject to western domination again. It will be interesting to see if a viable power block can be created to contest the US dominated NATO alliance and its friends. India seems to be leaning to the west after a long dalliance with the Russians, mostly done to thumb their post colonial noses at their former masters, the British. Now with a newly capitalist orientation in India, if they decide to end their neutrality and if Japan decides to take a more than purely defensive military posture the Chinese will have a serious problem of being contained. Its North Korean allies can hardly be expected to take on a newly militarized Japan, they could hardly sustain a conflict with their own South. Russia is the key to Chinese security, with a wealth of Siberian resources within easy access and the former Soviet Central Asia at its back door, an alliance is more than a benefit, it is a necessity something that the USA and its allies are sure to try to disrupt by any means. A history of Sino-Russian mistrust does not help, so this may be the Chinese Achilles heel .

Guardian article on resource war to come

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jun/24/natural-resources-and-development-china

Chinese Cyber Attacks in NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/world/asia/us-accuses-chinas-military-in-cyberattacks.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130507&_r=0

French Sub sales to Brazil in Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/28/brazil-france-submarine-idUSN2848663620080128

Defense Security Cooperation Agency reports on pending arms sales.

http://www.dsca.mil/pressreleases/36-b/36b_index.htm

Foreign Military Sales in Latin America.

http://justf.org/Program?program=Foreign_Military_Sales

Malaysian Scandal over Submarine Purchase from French Company DCNS, murder and suicides.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/scorpenes-sting-liberation-publishes-expose-re-malaysias-bribery-murder-scandal-05347/

Japanese concerns over DCNS sales to China.

http://japandailypress.com/japan-voices-protest-over-alleged-french-military-sales-to-china-1825326

Wiki article on DCNS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCNS_%28company%29

French Military interests in Africa Background

http://www.cfr.org/france/french-military-africa/p12578

France in Mali from a Critical African Perspective

http://thinkafricapress.com/mali/old-wine-new-bottles-justifying-france-military-intervention

New Cold Warriors skew data from Chinese African relations in new database.

http://thinkafricapress.com/development/china-africa-how-unreliable-data-skews-debate

Russian Arms Industry welcomes Chinese Military Interest

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-03-24/news/37981392_1_sino-russian-china-russia-defence-ministry

Russian-Chinese military cooperation

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/china-russia-to-strengthen-military-cooperation/

We then went to a movie at the Starlight Theaters, which on Sunday before six pm are only $5.00 per person. She wanted to see “Iron Man 3″ and I was hoping for something artier. But I was willing to go along with her. The lines were huge for her movie, and all the performances were sold out. We were going to leave but then we noticed that “Oblivion” the Tom Cruise movie was playing. So we went to see it. It was a rather run of the mill sci-fi movie, Cruse looked old, but it was ok, stealing bits from several sci-fi movies. I came out not particularly impressed but it wasn’t a rip off.

A short synopsis, Cruise is part of a two person team, in charge of maintaining attack drones which are guarding factory ships that suck water out of the ocean to create hydrogen fuel or something. They are survivors of a war in which humanity had to make the planet virtually uninhabitable to destroy an alien attack that destroyed the moon. Humanity has evacuated to Titan, the moon of Saturn. After the Moon is destroyed which causes environmental havoc, how is never explained, but apparently is related to the lunar gravitational effect of the tides, we are supposed to simply assume that part. Cruise and his partner have had memory wipes supposedly to make them incapable of giving information to the enemy if they are captured, who still resist in small pockets on the devastated Earth.

Cruise is tricked by the unseen enemy who had captured one of his drones in a ruined library, and bait Cruise with a copy of “Lays of Ancient Rome” by Macaulay which opens to the page with the lines:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
the Captain of the Gate
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his father
And the temples of his Gods.”

This prompted some subconscious memories, leaking through the mind wipe were dreams about a woman from the past, who just happens to crash land shortly there after. Cruise finds the woman played by Olga Kurylenko and her crew in stasis pods. Drones come and destroy all the crew members except the woman, who he takes to his home base where she is treated by his partner/lover played by Andrea Riseborough. Cruise goes out again with Olga who wants her ship flight recorder and they are captured by the alien enemy who happen to be humans led by Morgan Freeman. They tell Cruise he is fighting for the wrong side, Cruise doesn’t believe them, so they release him and Olga, tell them to go to the bad lands which are supposed to be a radioactive zone and find out the truth. They find the old Empire State building, a wreckage, and Cruise remembers the woman is his wife. He had proposed to her there. There are some more twists and turns, his partner is killed by drones, he gets in a fight with a clone of himself and realizes that he too might be a clone, returns to the Freeman group convinced they were right, and ends up going into space to attack the alien seemingly robotic, mother ship, a giant upside down pyramid, that makes clones of the Cruise character who are used to conquer Earth and suck its oceans dry for their own nefarious purposes. Cruise listens to the flight recorder on the way to this attack, and remembers that he was captain of a ship sent to investigate Titan in 2017, and instead was diverted to investigate a space object which happened to be the aliens who capture Cruise and his co-pilot, Risenborough. His wife Olga was in a suspension pod in the back part of the ship which is released into space before Cruise is captured. Evidently he is cloned, memory suppressed and sent to attack earth, then after it is mostly subdued he is sent to maintain the drones while their factory ships proceed to suck the water out of the oceans. Cruise and Freeman, now act the part of Horatio at the bridge and destroy the alien ship with a nuke they smuggled on board saving the Earth. Meanwhile Olga has his daughter and three years later the other clone Cruise shows up at Olga’s hideaway in some Rocky Mountain paradise, and picks up where the other Cruise left off.

Lots of illogical and improbable sequences. But it is mildly entertaining. The aliens seem to be the modern industrial world, sucking the life out of the planet, with the only way to save the world seemingly being to destroy the brains behind this planet destruction, i.e. destroy Wall Street, and its ilk. Or it could just be a sci-fi tale with no particular significance, but I tend to think my analysis is correct, the environment being a big concern now and frustration at the lack of action being widespread among the thinking classes of the world. Nice bypassing of Christianity using an ancient Roman symbolism. I don’t know if the writer of this is apparently it was based on a unpublished graphic novel from director Joseph Kosinski and Arvid Nelson, rewritten several times, and then made into a movie.

I had meant to write something completely different, but now I am out of time, have to get ready to go to school and deal with the day on about two hours sleep. I had been thinking about the concept of the scape goat, how some of us, in fact most of us are loaded down like mules with the burdens of the world, think all those slaves or free workers, building pyramids. Some elites somehow are able to dominate and force or entice others to do their wills. We all are for the most part sheep being sheered or slaughtered for the machine of this elite, for ultimate unknown reasons. I mean why does this god need suffering and sacrifice? It only makes sense as part of some kind of power grab. Thus we are all lied to and act as clones going to work, doing our duty, sacrificed like lambs going to the slaughter to what end? Shades of anarchy or some Scientology fantasy. Who or what are the puppet masters? I was thinking about the fact that in India yogis thousands of years ago tried to find ways out of the web of karma that these gods used to keep us under their thumbs, meting out so called karmic justice over generations of lives. So the Yogis theorized that by stopping Karmic activity they could break the wheel. But how? But if this is simply a set up to control, then all these efforts are in vain. The only escape is refusal to participate, walking away or rebellion on a mass scale. But can sheep wake up and rule themselves successfully? Anthropology indicates man did fine for eons until the sudden development of sedentary man about 5-10 thousand years ago. We might really be part of some alien prison planet, or did humanity simply decide to break into elites and masses with the invention of agriculture? The theoretical basis is still pretty shaky, leaving room for doubt. And in the middle of the night I am full of doubts.

Back to the Redford film and the Weather Underground. Briefly the story is about a group of former members of the Weather Underground and their supporters who are still underground. They have families who for the most part don’t seem to know about their pasts and they have a communications system to stay in touch in emergencies, including alternate sets of identification. Redford plays a lawyer in upstate New York who does public interest cases, reminds me of Abbie Hoffman, the Yippie, who was an environmental activist when underground in Upstate New York. One of the group who was involved in a bank robbery where a guard is killed, reminding me of the Brinks Robbery in the early eighties, is arrested by the FBI and a young Albany, NY reporter out to make a name for himself digs around to find where the other missing robbers are, leading him to Redford who goes on the lam looking for his former lover who can clear him of involvement.

There is a chase scene, the FBI is on his case. Redford’s character leaves his eleven year old daughter with his brother who reluctantly helps. This leads to a journey meeting the former members and supporters, all now established in their own lives, one runs a lumberyard, played by Nick Nolte, who helps out giving Redford a safe place to stay, a clean car, talks about old Weatherman politics in a convincing insiders manner and in general is true to his past, a ‘bro’ who has found a way to accommodate beliefs and the modern world. Another character played by Richard Jenkins is a college professor in Chicago, who had not agreed with the bank robberies and was not happy to see Redford, but helped out anyway.

The FBI and the reporter are on his trail, he meets his former lover played by Julie Christie, who has remained radical and underground. This takes place in a cabin in back woods of Michigan where they relive their past, talk about the daughter they abandoned to another family years before, who has become interestingly enough the love interest of the young ambitious reporter. Ultimately Redford is arrested, Christie who was going to escape had a change of heart, turns herself in tells the authorities Redford was innocent, he gets to go home to his eleven year old daughter. We don’t know what happens to Redford’s older daughter who is now studying law in Ann Arbor, but presumably her step -father. The reporter, who had been ruthlessly exposing people for the sake of the story, now decided to quash what he had found out about her, love conquers his reporter’s instincts.

Like a good thriller, some twists and turns, lots of political grandstanding with some characters still trying to live the radical dream, others attempting to accommodate to the modern world, with varying degrees of acceptance, all seemingly comfortable members of the middle or upper middle class. It is reasonably fast paced for a Redford film, not as didactic as some, but with a Hollywood ending that is not particularly satisfying although my girlfriend seemed to like it.

There are several key perspectives presented, that as Susan Sarandon’s says “if it weren’t for my kids I would still be in the struggle” or words to that effect. Secondly as Redford’s character says “I didn’t get tired, I grew up.” The third option offered by the character played by Julie Christie to keep on with the struggle, as an unrepentant pot smuggler in California. But even this hardened radical has a soft spot and ultimately turns herself in to save Redford’s persona from going to jail. Nolte, the loyal friend of old who gives jobs to ex-cons and helps as he can is my favorite character. The Marxist college professor who enjoys teaching but doesn’t believe in the path taken by the Weathermen, the cynical reporter who doesn’t take sides, only cares to promote his career, and the FBI who seem to be single minded, although not particularly successful in tracking the enemies of the state.
Redford got his friends in trouble as the FBI followed him and busted at least the Nolte character for aiding and abetting a fugitive. The Christie persona ends up locked up for participating in the bank robbery as does the Sarandon character. Redford’s character seems to only care about exonerating his name and being reunited with his eleven year old, not exactly an exemplary model of a revolutionary or a human being, but in the movie this is downplayed, and his return to normalcy and legitimacy, redemption so to speak seems to be its point.

I wish Christie’s character had simply kept on flying the flag of resistance. What was missing was any link to some present day movements such as Occupy which seemed to be a natural fit for her or some sort of third world activism besides delivering boat loads of pot from Latin America. She seems sort of like the elder Yippie, Dana Beal, who is serving time for a pot bust currently in the real world. Redford seems hell bent on reconciliation, and his Bill Ayers like character seems to be a stand up for Obama’s old school liberalism, sort of a paternalistic view of the responsible elites taking care of the country and keeping the world safe for the established order. The FBI is simply doing its job, the harpies of a Greek tragedy. The American continuation of war mongering, Vietnam all over again in Iraq, Iran and god knows where else, which has never stopped is not brought up in the context of the movie, except as an unstated rationale for the continued resistance of the Christie character and the uncompromising view of the Sarandon persona. Redford seems to want us all to get along, and not continue to make too much trouble, at least not so much trouble that it would cause him to lose sleep at night. For me the ending was intellectually troubling as it seemed to promote the view that all we need is some reconciliation, to smooth out the wrinkles in our collective pasts, facile and ingenuous in my view.

Note on being underground, that is living under assumed identities and contacting others only as needed through a fairly elaborate system of codes and safe houses, that seem to mirror the CIA if not in technology, at least in its sophisticated understanding of surveillance and how to avoid detection, which I remember boning up on back in the early eighties reading books like Without A Trace and self-help books on changing identities. Some of the techniques showing up in the movie, such as using the birth certificate of a dead person who would be about your age since birth records and death records are rarely kept by the same agencies or in the same cities given our propensity for movement.

Interesting I could not find a link to the original book Without A Trace. It might be a banned book in the USA. Or the underground publisher may never have copyrighted it back in the seventies.

Weather Underground links

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/weatherunderground/movement.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground

A relatively good and comprehensive analysis of the movie and the real persons being represented at this link

http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/the-company-you-keep/

Jewish American liberal perspective comparing book and movie at this link

http://www.juf.org/news/blog.aspx?id=420482

Downloadable version of movie

http://kat.ph/the-company-you-keep-2012-dvdrip-xvid-ac3-by-zinkslane-t7325560.html

“The “Siege of Parliament” protest came hours after the release of official figures showing that unemployment had risen above 27 percent, with 6.2 million people jobless.

Among the signs protesters carried aloft were: “6.2 million reasons.”

The demo was organized by the political online platform ¡En Pie! (Stand Up!), an amalgam of political groups calling for the resignations of lawmakers, the dissolution of both the upper and lower houses parliament and a new political process.”

http://www.dw.de/violence-flares-as-protesters-besiege-spanish-parliament/a-16773486

I don’t usually copy an entire post but I am curious about the evolution of the protest movement in Spain. This is from a blog site called “Gender : Visual : Communication”

“8. April 2013 | INT. ROMA NATION DAY

#25A Spain: New protest mobiblizing for social justice
Posted on April 8, 2013 by birgitstoeckl

source: plataforma ¡en pie!

The platform “Plataforma ¡en pie!” [platform stand up] are activists from different cities in Spain, most come from other social / protest movements, lacking the right target when defining the roots of the problem of economic crisis- thus they raise a new platform with a very concrete objective.

They wanted to to position themselves ideologically, without any ambiguities and move to the action for the sake of those ideas, moving forwards a more forceful and committed protest. This was how one night, with the idea of promoting a strong mobilization in Congress comes to an initial group, later on the named it “Plataforma ¡En Pie!”.

Left not leftist

En Pie believes that social change is fundamental to start and move forward with a solid set of ideas about the current reality and desired reality, the discourse of “neither left nor right, go together without ideology” seems dangerous, they say not to stand with ideas is running like a headless chicken. Thus, they position themselves down and left, referring to left in its original sense, the social left, with the values ​​that this item represents justice and equality, which has nothing to do with parties who call themselves leftist.

This platform was initiated by the 25S movement, whose activists are convinced, that the real problem in Spain is living under an illegitimate regime installed in 1978, which still lacks democracy. Thus they believe in opening the debate on the necessity to initiate a process of transition towards a transparent and democratic social organization where power truly resides in the people.

Siege the Congress

#25A: ¡en pie! call for a new protest on 25 April, promoting to siege and final release of the Congress of Deputies as main action. As a secondary actions: Free disperse actions affecting the established power are planned, always within the framework of human rights. Their general objective is the the fall of the regime including the government’s resignation, dissolution of the Parliament and the Head of State), and the opening of a transition to a new model of political, economic and social justice and truly solidarity.

With the support of experts they are developing an information pack about everything related to the transition process, soon they will edit a package of documents. Moreover, they especially appeal to the female community, convinced that the system has been and is especially pernicious with. Thus ¡en pie! consider it essential that the female people stand up and exercise leadership in order that this revolutionary process is set up in equality, women and men side by side, fighting for a common goal. They also call for the solidarity of the syndicates to coincide their action day with #25A and support their protest with an indefinite general strike.

http://genderview.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/25a-spain-new-protest-mobiblizing-for-social-justice/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-5

I saw a show on one of the PBS channels about this British guy who is concerned about death and longevity. He did some research and discovered that fasting, i.e. not eating as much, as we do in a normal American diet, is a key. There was a 3 day fast with nothing but Miso soup and black tea, an every other day fast, with one day eating one meal of 400 to 600 calories, and then the next day eating normally and then a third fast twice a week with normal eating five days a week. I chose alternate day fasting which seemed to be a reasonable compromise, my experiences with three day fasts in the past have not been pleasant and I thought the five and two method might be too lax.

After a few weeks, I noticed a real decrease in weight, on the days when I fasted my blood sugar was down and I didn’t need to take insulin or as many of the pills I had been taking. Blood pressure did not seem to be as much affected, and I don’t know about cholesterol, but the article below suggests that cholesterol and blood sugar would be modified in a beneficial manner. They suggested blood pressure would not be affected as much and that is what I experienced. Blood pressure, was better but not as much as I had hoped. I did find that blood pressure was reduced by exercise, walking specifically.

My body weight in the morning now is about 175lb when I get up, and goes up to about 179Lb after two meals in a day, less with one meal, and a half hour walk or more every day. Where as previously it had been at about 185lb upon waking and went up to 190lb. The fast worked rapidly and effectively. One side effect I noticed was that on the non fasting days my blood sugar shot up higher than normal, and I am not sure if that is because of decreased use of medication or because my body had not adapted to the diet. I noticed also an increase in energy levels. At first I became tired sooner at night but after a week or so I adjusted to the pattern.

After three weeks or so I became a bit concerned about the speed of the weight loss and decided to switch to an every third day fast. This did not work as my body could not adjust back to fasting after two days of meals as easily as the ever other day, so I dropped the idea and now I am simply eating less. A good sized breakfast, and a light dinner, with perhaps a snack of a handful of no salt sunflower seeds, or a piece of fruit in between, or if my blood sugar drops too low, which is now a concern, a piece of a protein bar if it drops to the point where I feel woozy.

I am hoping that eating less overall will keep me from gaining weight back. A big part of the solution I think is avoiding prepared and fast foods, which tend to be laced with salt, fats, and sugar, all things to avoid in the diet. I keep salt to a minimum, just what is in the salsa and hot sauce I like, buying Turkey bacon or Soy Bacon and sausages for breakfast which tend to be low fat and low sodium. Eating only one or perhaps two eggs a day, and I am thinking of switching to egg whites, using salsa and other low fat alternatives to butter or jam on toast, eating whole grain bread and keeping that to a minimum or using corn tortillas instead of bread. I use a lot of veges in my meals, keep the grains lower than before, only eat chicken with the fat removed, usually by baking the cuts in tinfoil, then refrigerating and throwing away the fat that accumulates before I heat the meat to eat. I tend to saute a lot, so I use extra virgin Olive oil and tend to keep the heat medium to low so that I don’t overcook, because I tend to like to throw in lots of fresh ingredients, so most of my cooking time is spent pealing and chopping vegetables, then sauteing them or steaming them. I like to prepare potatoes in batches by baking several days worth in the oven wrapped in tin foil, I do the same with chicken, salmon, etc. the trick is to under cook, then put them in the fridge so that you can just grab and throw them in the skillet at the last minute with your sauteed veges. Also use lemon wedges instead of salt and fruit instead of sugar, although I have to admit occasionally I drop some chocolate into my morning coffee.

As a result my BMI is now just within the normal range at about 24%-25% over ideal. I am in the 25th percentile for persons my age, meaning that 75% of men in their 50’s weigh more than me. I don’t know if it is controlled for height as well in that statistic, at least according to the BMI calculator I used.

After I get used to this new weight I plan to fast again to drop down to my goal of 165lb as morning weight, but I don’t want to drop precipitously as that may cause a boomarang effect or have deleterious health effects. The “people’s choice” ideal weight for my age and height seems to be 170lb. which will probably be my top weight after meals if I hit the 165lb for morning weight.

BMI calculator with some nice features, includes sex, age, and tells you where you fall in the percentile of your peers. It has links to ideal weights and is pretty nifty.
http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm

Alternate Day Fasting versus Calorie Restriction is examined in this article from “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/7.full

The only data I could find on fasting and kidney transplants was for Muslims fasting for Ramadan, which means fast all day and eat at night for a month.

http://www.sjkdt.org/article.asp?issn=1319-2442;year=2010;volume=21;issue=3;spage=417;epage=420;aulast=Khedmat

Obama’s administration likes a more discrete war mongering. Drone strikes, and smaller scale bombings, picking on smaller foes, like North Korea, and dancing around the bigger potential bug bears such as Iran and ultimately the biggest contender China.

The gradual build up of forces in Asia has a handy trigger in the North Korean faux conflict. As anyone should understand North Korea is a proxy for US and Chinese interests, with Japan playing a secondary role as America’s backup, they are even planning to re-militarize as part of the overall new containment strategy being pursued by the Obama administration. The shift in Focus from the Middle East, note Obama’s total unwillingness to get into the Syrian debacle, and his tentative support of Israel, as the main focus is moved to East Asia. Beefing up existing alliances, bids to take Myanmar from the Chinese orbit into the Western alliance, movement of troops into Northern Australia for easier access to the Gulf of Malacca choke point for oil imports to China, backing up Japanese aggression in the South China Sea to intimidate the Chinese and possibly provoke a premature reaction, are all part of the international chess game of big power ploys to retain or gain access to vital resources around the world.

China has expanded into the global South in a big way and has become the main contender for African loyalties. But the largest investments by far are in the United States and Australia. Australia having become economically dependent on continued Chinese economic growth as a resource supplier, hardly more than a third world country, and the USA dependent on Chinese production of cheap consumer goods in its scramble to become the world’s largest dumping ground for cheap consumables, presumably to keep the increasingly dispossessed American lower classes able to afford the necessities of life in a Faustian bargain, Americans trade good paying jobs for low paying service positions in exchange Americans get low cost consumer goods at Walmart and the proliferating Dollar Stores.

It is interesting that both of the sites I have linked too have vested interests that are governmental as VOA clearly is, or Heritage Foundation with its association with Neocon policies as the IRC report indicates.

The ratcheting up of East Asian tensions over the last few years, with China increasingly asserting itself in the region as a creditable alternative to the US as the hegemonic power, it remains to be seen if a renewed Sino-Russian alliance can counter the weight of the USA and Japan with India as a potential additional asset in the gambits to control resources and spheres of influence.

Still by far the largest overseas deployments are in Afghanistan, Japan and Germany, with larger numbers in cold war formations surrounding Russia than China at this point in time. Russia with a large nuclear force is still deemed the most dangerous of the forces potentially confronting the US.

China and Russia seem to be working in a loose alliance to contain the USA and its allies, with supporting Iran against western bombing and maintenance of Syria. The Russians seem to be wobbling in their support of the Syrian regime, they have an ally that is a bird in the hand with Assad, as opposed to the opposition which is currently a bird in the bush and potentially trouble if Al Qada gains a base there. The Russians already have trouble with Chechnya and Dagestan’s Islamic resistance. China faces Islamic resistance in Xinjiang, Buddhists in Tibet and a restless domestic population seeking greater freedoms, less pollution, greater food safety and increased wages to name a few. Russia has its own domestic problems, including a growing fascist tendency.

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/heritage_foundation

http://www.voanews.com/content/brics-summit-south-africa/1629306.html

http://rt.com/news/china-us-military-pacific-219/

http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/china-global-investment-tracker-interactive-map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/NF07Ad01.html

http://www.mei.edu/content/chinas-evolving-stance-syria

http://www.usak.org.tr/EN/myazdir.asp?id=2129

http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/Russian-Muslims-and-Foreign-Policy-15687

http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5627/print

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/hard-love-and-empty-promises-china%E2%80%99s-domestic-counterinsurgency-in-xinjiang

http://rt.com/politics/reform-chubais-forecasts-protests-484/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/15/us-russia-summit-chubais-idUSTRE68E58W20100915