Thursday, September 9, 2021

Snakes in the Garden

 

How even the best of intentions can fail 
 
Every day now is a struggle for many Americans who must cope with the prevalent surreality --- if they are awake! How many of us are not awake, because we are forced into a mold that disallows us the privilege of thinking for ourselves much less with expression?
 
Examples of surrealism abound for those who are half-way awake. We just withdrew from a country where we have held a twenty year occupation which we really had no right to invade in the first place, but where a lot of collective punishment took place. We did get a lot of dope that helped fuel the opioid crisis which Dr. Fauci was somehow involved in, just as he is somehow involved with big pharmaceutical companies today. But Dr. Fauci is a tutelary god according to the mainstream media. He would never have any kind of conflict of interests since he is above scrutiny. 
 
Should we take the mainstream media seriously? I haven't wanted to broach this awful subject, afterall, it's a well known fact, according to the establishment media, that only losers could hold a gripe. Consider that a number of alternative news channels have been yanked off the air by YouTube (Google). They include holistic medicine doctors, experts with a different take on Covid-19 than the mainstream media, news channels leaning too far right, left, and libertarian. They yanked off Corbett Report and Corbett Report Extras probably because the truthstream was too believable on false flag events such as the Oklahoma City bombing. They are biding their time to take on AE911 (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth). Google is also manipulating and scrambling search results. They just threw in jail another British whistleblower reporter, Craig Murray, essentially because he drew attention to the wrongs against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. 
 
A private gripe about alternative news sites is well meaning as they seem, they often are a mirror image of the mainstream media or worse, particularly where fair representation of news by minority reporters are concerned. While they may seem like hipsters, more often than not, there are no news published by Asian American reporters. It's not like we don't try---it is more like they refuse to accommodate us. They deliberately perpetuate the stereotype that we cannot read or write, even if the Times of India, or CGTN displays plenty of evidence that Asian female journalists do exist, can ask hard questions, and are articulate.

The mixed messages by our society are crushing the will of the people on purpose. It's like traveling along a gravelly road filled with potholes, while you are trying to drive to a destination. There is a sense of drag, of foreboding, of being intentionally weighted down, even in the midst of disaster. I've showed you my favorite photo, right?

1.5C to 2C of warming --- between a rock and a hard place in priorities!
 
Most of the DC residents don't like to talk about climate change. Especially when they see Asians, they love to herd us into their lockstep monologue about careerisms. An older well-intentioned black woman tugged at my elbow yesterday on Metro and queried me quite seriously about whether I was still at my job at McGraw-Hill. What? We are passing strangers, and I am heading down the escalator...I quickly tell her no, but not enough time to explain, never worked there! But clearly, all she identified about me was a face and title! I was not privileged with being human! I know a lot of blacks (and other people) who are like this in DC. They really don't see Asians as humans! But when they talk to each other, they will talk the time of day, the good food places, the hum-drum of life, crack jokes, and all that other nice stuff that human beings regard as human conversation!
 
So these jolts, both microscopic and macroscopic, take an effort to mindfully fight off and push back. You don't have time to say, Hey, you just interrupted me while I was chanting my mindfulness mantra! Do you really think that is all I am supposed to be to you? How about you allowing me to share with you that there are roads less travelled in life, and I have a great future, because every day, I have the chance to cultivate and learn about virtue?
 
There would, I imagine, be an incomprehensible look on that woman's face. We are taught to focus, our mouths attached to the great whale of belly fat of provisions, to focus like lamphreys on gorging ourselves with what we can get for ourselves. That is the measure of our success in life!
 
The mixed messages have only intensified whether in media, daily life, and social messaging from our well-intentioned "minders." Especially in transitional/permanent supportive housing, the minding is quite intense. This is because the bull-market really does not like the idea of housing priced at a maximum of 30% of one's income. In fact, they hate it to death, literally! And now, with the ending of unemployment benefits, even with new buildings going up while older ones are torn down, evicted tenants will have to make do with a tent resting on the hard pavement because if they got to live inside a building, it might make instill within them too many expectations!
 
Residents in permanent supportive housing are routinely publicly shamed! We have very class-conscious residents, people who like the lamphreys mentioned above, have that weird materialistic judgmental glaze in their eyes wherever they happen to trot by with their dogs. You even seen them inside the church, virtuously praying louder, singing in their slightly offtune soprano, and staring with hostile eyes at any identifiable misfit. Their love is like 1/4-inch thick or less. They see a yellow-person, the age, the garb, the probable socio-economic income, and like human calculators, they dole out a welcome at the presumed consumer value.
 
You just made my day feel a bit more surreal! I am not going to take your bait though! I am going to walk out, take a deep breath, and realize that I need to pray for you because your spiritual development is....
 
But you see, spirituality of the good kind no longer has much use in our society. The bad kind is definitely popular, but the good kind engenders laughs and guffaws practically. So these teenaged girls are mocking me for some reason, and it's the same reason as once, a long time ago, I saw these teens at the National Zoo, a breaktime from Edmund Burke high school in DC, and they were seriously hating on this poor little Chinese baby. I never saw such flames of hate oozing from their eyes. It was because the little Chinese baby boy looked beautific, angelic, innocent, sweet, and oh my gosh, happy! 

It's a crime for Chinese people to be successful or happy in healthy ways nowadays. That's why any good news from China is heavily censored. It's a crime for the establishment news to report on Chinese accomplishments in a positive tone and perspective. No news about the travels of Chinese astronauts to their very own space station, underreported news about China's bullet trains, and if there is too much good news coming from China, the deep state might even order a "deep state hit." I kind of think that is what happened near Hualien in Taiwan. The connection to a deep state can be remote---it can be the orders from demons from another dimension. Our minds may not be mind-controlled, but our hearts are...

And so this is the case also close-up in our housing complex. We see these staffspersons whose official job is to care for the needs of the residents, develop programs, implement guidelines, etc. In reality, they spend a great deal of time, sort of like how we used to spend time bull-shitting at the Lion's Club, and with a 20% efficiency at actual doing. But it's worse than that at times, because whereas every member of the Lion's Club sort of comes with the notion of relaxing and socializing, here we have a very strange if not perverse indoctrination taking place. All kind of hidden jargon and innuendo, and with deeply troubled insulting behaviours and mannerisms towards the residents. Staff will rarely if ever greet the residents (especially those whose 1/4" surface is lighter toned). When they rush by, if they do happen to glance at you, it is with a very condescending look on their face. And ideally, they train any guest to behave towards us with the most patronizing, agonized stare of disgust and contempt at our piteous state of poverty. If we question their gaze, their tone, or expect them to talk to us like human co-equals, they will escalate and try to write us up!

I have tried to rationalize with the staff (there is really only one major staffperson who runs the show, even though there may be four people reporting to her) that (poor) students living in student housing will often be treated with respect and genuine positive support. I have brought up ethics and fairness. Recently I did bring up religion, but was rudely brushed off. 

In the style of disaster capitalism, authoritarian types love to exert total power over the powerless. And of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely! Our one and only case manager/social worker has re/written the program guidelines so that she is mentioned on every single page at least once, and there is nothing that she cannot monitor, find out, or control about us because it is capitalized that she is our SOURCE, CHALLENGER, and GUIDE. She claims to know all about us from our past, and will therefore be the indispensible determinant for our future.We must turn to her, rather than to our peers for solace, comfort, and direction. She is our collective Big Sister because evidently she has the power and capability to moderate all things.

The program overview and design is not written by one hand though---it is the intention of the staff to make it appear so, however, fully knowing that the sense of power and authority emanating from one-figure will work to over-awe the residents. 

And so it didn't matter that at some point, I was able to garner permission to establish some space in the garden for a House community garden. Over the summer, I did have success in this space. I planted about 20 different plants and herbs, created a clear plot, nurtured the tree-lings, and even wrote up a grant application. Recently, I even put in a small cold frame for over-wintering, which I personally designed and built. In fact, I have done about 80% of the total work, although my resident-comrades have been supportive particularly with ideas, enthusiasm, and just the sense of general empowerment. 
 
Well, that is exactly what the staff, meaning the SW, is not happy about right now. After furnishing them a copy of the grant, they pretended that nothing had been given to them. Of course this is easy since they never even greet us in passing. They pretend that no email with a grant report was delivered. They will probably never think of saying "thank-you" since obviously, if I am seen working happily in the garden, that is sort a crime! (Not to mention that I am an Asian, too----most DC blacks consider Chinatown, DC, not really Chinatown, but homie-town.) My presence is gratuitous --- I am an invisible tutelary!

And the thing that I think really ticked her off is that the report mentions that the theme of this garden, Washington Senior Garden Corps, is that it will be resident-led, and resident-centered, in order to heal from several recent deaths. It's a concept from the teacher inspired student-centered theory. But there's more to that, which is that if the authority cannot be totalitarian, with our unquestioning conformity, then the adage cannot be successful:

 

Absolute power CORRUPTS absolutely!

So that's the moral of the story. She is going to try and close the garden down if she can because it's too painful to see residents being independent, self-empowered, and using their time to recreate outside their room besides sitting inside their room watching TV. In fact, soon after I moved in, she had once asked why I didn't just adjust to life at my age and start watching more TV? Forget that the library has pretty much nothing-books and trashy videos, in fact, they work at consciously furnishing the rack with serial women-consumer magazines. They don't really like to furnish us books of intellectual quality, and outright discourage community activisms.

Maybe I will have to buy a pet frog for the garden. It will be a rock-frog, then it will never have to be cared, and I can maybe blow a kiss at it every day, hoping it will turn into a contemporary version of the Prince. That might make her jealous too though, but yeah, if her future and mine and all of ours here must meld, since she really wants to control our Fate, then I do have to pray to the Prince of Peace. Forget about the ill-intentions of the Queen deliberately trying to downsize my hopes and dreams, or the suffering the stink-eye looks that the Regents give us when they do see the 1/20 woman who manages to risk actually cooking in the kitchen during the daytime. 

WE HAVE HUMAN RIGHTS! I DON'T HAVE TO EAT A TV DINNER EVERY NIGHT. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO LEGISLATE MY LIFE, BUT IF YOU DO, I WILL NOT HOLD BACK MY PRAYERS FOR YOUR WELL BEING AND MIND-HEART. YOU CAN HATE ME, DECIDE TO CAUTERIZE OUR LIVES DOWN TO SOMETHING EDIBLE, THE ONE-TIME ENDLESS PARTY, THE HOT RANGE ROVER, THE COOL BLING, THE NEAT CONCERT. I AM NOT GOING TO GIVE UP HOPE ON YOU!








 

 

 

 

 

 

  














































 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

















 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, May 23, 2021

One Country for All, End the Demonisation

 

Photo from inside the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

End Occupations, One Country for All 

 

The Trapped Child Analogy

Imagine there is a child in your home which you have decided is not human. You leave it locked in the room all day long. Whenever it wants to go out, it must pass through a security guard, perhaps a relative you pay to keep it confined. Going out or going back into the room, it is a lengthy procedure involving interrogation. The child has no playfriends, and you want to keep it that way, so it constantly feels a state of shame. Any calls are monitored and recorded. Compared to your other children it has no new clothes, no nice education. Everything it gets is hand-me-downs, and the education it receives is of inferior quality. You definitely do not intend for it to go to college.

Palestinians must obey segregation laws at gunpoint whether housing, education, socializing (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, palestinecampaign.org)

Your children already know that the system is rigged in their favor if they play the game, abusing-the-unwanted-children. They will get to go to college. In college, they learn more ways of labeling Others as outsiders. More secret handshakes and networking. They become more cruel, more wanton, more ruthless toward the unwanted-siblings. They learn how to hate without feeling any sense of shame, how to agitate and incite others to hate, how to shut down those who tell the truth, how to prevent truth-tellers from being hired anywhere...

Palestinians sent to courts tried for cases which they always lose (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, palestinecampaign.org)
  

All the unwanted children in the neighborhood are now trucked to a fenced-in-site. A camp where they are so desperate, so cognizant of their deprivations, that they will use anything, even rocks, to throw at the guards. They must be desperate, knowing that their best efforts will be met with unequal measures: crushing responses, such as bullets, grenades, bombs, and delivered by drones. You say all the children are bad, affiliated with evil organization, they are using their bodies as merely human shields, so any destruction is justified. 

Palestinians get 20 gallons while Illegal Israeli Settlers get 98 gallons of Water per Day (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, palestinecampaign.org)

 
 The camp is considered part of your land, but you make sure that it has no infrastructure. Children there die in higher number due to toxic pollutants, limited utilities and poor health. You blame them for not being able to care for themselves, when in fact you forbade any caretaking. You accuse them of being terrorists while never recognizing that this is genocide. The humans inside are dying but you laugh from the thrill, a big grin on your face, because you can see how you are making sure that your loved ones experience Manifest Destiny.
 

The Gangstalking, Mind-Control Analogy

There is a gangstalking website or two out there where highly trained specialists talk about what happens when they buck the system. Call it the "Elijah Effect" or what you will. They claim that they become TIs, meaning "Targeted Individuals." In the age where black-listing and censorship is taking place, why bother with targeting?

We know from the Targeted Individuals about the surveillance and monitoring taking place inside mass communications systems or via satellite interception. We know from Targeted Individuals about war atrocities. We learn from Targeted Individuals about the kind of secret landswaps taking place with regard to say, the New York Public Library development. Watchdog reporters provide the public with information and ideas on how the most privileged in our society are shutting down access to hard-bound books by warehousing them, pre-determining who has access, for how long, and what sorts of books are made available. Visit citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com if you don't believe me...

Palestinians drive around all border walls just to get to work every day adding countless miles and extra hours to their workdays (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, palestinecampaign.org)

 

Reporters and watchdogs not infrequently want to remain anonymous because of the harassment they endure. The patterns are ingrained within establishment "mind-control" through mass-media propaganda. Take for example the Black Lives Matter and other color movements. As historian Vijay Prashad describes, we are no longer being shown how to connect-the-dots in forming effective social movements because they do not want an effective socialist labor movement. If there were May-Day type movements in America, we would begin to notice the commonalities we share with all laborers around the globe. We would begin to recognize that the only real way forward to fight climate change and depletion of Earth's resources is to believe in Plan C, community-oriented, bottom-up, localized development funded by community banks, and with plenty of rewards-based cooperatives.

Targeted Individuals are frequently those who think or act outside the Black Box. Perhaps their perspective has become too holistic, veering from what is profitable. The Black Box architecture is the product of those who foresee a future where robots, AI technocrats, and aristocrats rule the planet, control all its resources, and farm out humanity for the Brave New World. It's not going to be a cut-and-dry classification of who belongs and who does not. But the current dialectics favor a mindset of autocracy, loyalty to the oligarchy, and blind to all the losers. The losers are taught to blame themselves and everything is portrayed as having failed to achieve success within the system. Screaming for justice, no one has equipped them with the confidence, power, creativity, or even well-roundedness to retool the system, reshape it, craft new tools that truly help liberate everyone trapped inside. 


Sam Gompers Valued People over Profit!

The Great Risk-takers

The trapped child sees a society of apartheid, of people who appear to identity with a state religion or philosophy that is reinforced in every thought, word, and deed. Are these truly children of God? We can see universities where the chosen magically float to the top due to name-brand social affiliation. Through networking, they spin illusions around the ignored. Stigma makes it easier to display contempt and openly despise. Whatever decisions the decision-makers make, outsiders cannot question, and that accustoms the chosen to believe in their infallibility. The prime minister must act like a dictator. The president must create rules of exemption for himself. And so on, on down to local news, where changes to the zoning ordinance are dispensed blithely, maybe because the privileged class are salivating over the prospects of revamping blighted neighborhoods.


Palestinians have had over 50,000 homes and businesses destroyed (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, palestinecampaign.org)
 
The reason why one is shaken down before one steps outside into the rest of the house is precisely to instill fear and discouragement of reporting what one sees. Are the Harold Rosenthals correct? Can we see how after so many years of hiring from privileged internship pools, that most of the government agencies, many of the think-tanks, and including the non-profits, Federal City is led by those who believe themselves infallible? Sayanim who deeply understand to who they owe their choice work assignments, higher pay, faster promotion, and superior networking? They are not necessarily manchurian candidates, but are convinced that the system demands conformity, inequality, and hive-mindedness.

It wouldn't be so bad if Shahid or Fatima standing outside didn't see that there are so many others deliberately sent around the maze, obstructed, and silenced because there is not enough to share with them. Like any for-profit system, the maximum profit is created by instituting slavery or as close-to-slave-like conditions as possible. This helps makes knavery, like plagiarism, okay. I personally know a professor who attempted to plagiarize a paper that I wrote; it feels pretty awful when that kind of stuff happens; and yet there are now an amazing number of teachers and academics, as well as graduate students, who either borrow from one another or access the old dissertations stowed away in storage archives.

A system full of cheats and bandits help make for a failed state. And that is what the family is, a failed family, that abuses their unwanted children. That is what a nation is, a failed nation, that cannot understand nor care for all their states, but insteads creates miserable "occupied states"; states which are not even autonomous. All those people are humans and they deserve equal rights and the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is what Thomas Jefferson, our Founding Father, wrote. Never mind that there are gangstalkers even at the Jefferson Monument, trying to mind me while I am taking photographs:

"ALMIGHTY GOD HATH CREATED THE MIND FREE. ALL ATTEMPTS TO INFLUENCE IT BY TEMPORAL PUNISHMENTS OR BURTHENS...ARE A DEPARTURE FROM THIS PLAN OF THE HOLY AUTHOR OF OUR RELIGION...NO MAN SHALL BE COMPELLED TO FREQUENT OR SUPPORT ANY RELIGIOUS WORSHIP OR MINISTRY OR SHALL OTHERWISE SUFFER ON ACCOUNT OF HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS OR BELIEF. BUT ALL MEN SHALL BE FREE TO PROFESS AND BY ARGUMENT TO MAINTAIN, THEIR OPINONS IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. I KNOW BUT ONE CODE OF MORALITY FOR MEN WHETHER ACTING SINGLY OR COLLECTIVELY." ----Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father of the United States


No wonder the BDS Movement is expanding.  It is seemingly unfair to target the USA and Israel by boycotting, divesting, or sanctions against our economy or what fuels it. But it is much worse for those who are never even be able to participate. Arabs had no voice in refusing to have the Al Jazeera news building bombed, so that perhaps a Kentucky Fried Chicken is built there. Arabs have had no voice in voting, in public review, in appealing, in full citizenship, in equal representation, in establishment journalism, in owning their home, owning their business, naming their street, accessing the mosque, traveling thirty miles from Gaza to the West Bank, having soldiers wrongly imprison you or your loved one because a stone is found in your pocket, etc. The ludicrousness of it all is encapsulated by one American-Zionist neoliberal hardliner, head of a think-tank, who asserts that Palestinians must accept whatever is offered in a two-state solution because they have no rights. Who determined that the citizens of two unjustly occupied states, states in their own rights, have no rights? Who determined that Palestinians who voted for an Islamic party, one justifiably angry yet willing to compromise, are universally all terrorists? Who is deciding that the infrastructure must be bombed to eliminate terrorists who are "hiding" inside hospitals, schools, news buildings, residential apartments, and safe tunnels? Arabs are a pariah to the State of Israel, asserts the Likkud.  
 
The narrative is so faulty, unreasonable, lacking in any sense humanity or brethrenhood that as The Last American Vagabond asserts one must: "Question Everything!"

Consider today what you can do to help the Palestinians trapped in genocidal Israel: 1) Join BDS; 2) Sign a Petition; 3) Call your legislator; 4) Learn more; 5) Share your support!
 
 
Screenshots from PalestineCampaign.org 
 

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Making Peace with God-Universe-Nature

Is this really the best we can do?
 

Making Peace with God Starts with Me

     After the death of S.T. here in our permanent supportive housing, I was seriously hoping for social justice. Afterall, had we not had a whole summer of raging social justice madness? BLM activists outside marching, holding rallies, screaming at police, and fully expecting the police to disband. The lesson was to "make noise so you will be heard." 
 
    We want justice because someone is mistreated, abused, treated with contempt, and in the age of Covid, it has nothing to do with race. The victim can be anyone targeted by someone else who feels they are vulnerable. Sometimes the bully is obvious---you can see the hate in their eyes, the contempt in their words, the perverseness that characterizes abuse of power.
 
    In America, we are taught that marching and demonstrating is how social justice looks, even when all and said and done, I am reminded of the movie, "Animal Farm," an adaptation based on the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. Mr. Harkness showed us this movie at least three times in our English class, and if there was at least one memorable scene, it was the ending: The board may change, but it will be just a new set of pigs!  
 
   And that is really how justice per identity politics tend to play out in the United States because of the entrenched market and industrial capitalism under which there are only so many available paths up to the middle class and much fewer decent government jobs today. And the worst part, is just like in Animal Farm, the troublemakers can move up to the top at the cost of the decent and most loyal employees. 
 
    That happens so much today that it is almost routine. There are people who are hired at the health club who once they are hired, totally believe they are there to just sit. When they open their mouths, it is to discuss capitalism from a personal perspective. If there is a piece of broken equipment and it is reported as injurious, the information is ignored, or a pretense is made to do something about it, but nothing is done. 
 
    This kind of lackadaisical attitude has become commonplace and it is a contributing factor in why some businesses have not survived Covid. When they close, of course it is saddening, and we all feel bad for those workers, yet one cannot help wondering if they have any real remorse for how badly they treated some of their customers. Is the solution for changing people's hearts and minds really going to come through firing them?  
 
      That's the question about which I have struggled over the past month in mourning for my neighbor over her death, which I fully believe was preventable. She was marginally mobile, yet staff required her to move to the second floor. She could barely climb the stairs, yet the staff assigned her several two-week rounds of hauling out the kitchen garbage. She had memory problems, yet the staff reassured us that she was "independent and tough." They trivialized her safety concerns even after her room had been broken into, and never bothered replacing the door knob. What was infuriorating was she could be their grandma too, afterall, she was black, the staff are black. But presumably, she is poor, elderly, and no one to pay attention too, so the staff took full advantage...
 
    In contrast, her next door neighbor is also elderly but white, and always full of rage at the unfairness from just about all parties here. She has pursued restraining orders, legal paths, orders in writing, and staff meetings to ensure that she receives full decent treatment even though she is also so poor that she once lived in a tent near the White House. The staff are accommodating because they are afraid of her, presumably, but it does nothing to alleviate their bestial attitude towards anyone else here they can take advantage of! 
 
    And that is also the sore face of social justice in our society. One party wins a $25 million dollar settlement lawsuit from Monsanto over glyphosate (Roundup) but what about the countless numbers of other colon cancer victims? What about my friend who developed colon cancer from enjoying killing all the dandelion weeds on his farm? What about other people like me who were exposed to alot of that weed killer? 

    Human justice is blind, for sure. We can't sit around and wait for justice to come around, for that person to transfer or be let go, for this person to move away, or for those people to change. I have had countless internal discussions over how to communicate with the social worker after ST, because days before her death, I wrangled with her over the need to look after her better. It's in my notes, but not hers, since she pretends the meeting did not take place, how many times I mentioned ST in our meeting, and each time, being pretty much brushed off. Each concern was met with a counterargument and dismissal as if it were trite. Again, because I am a charity recipient being able to live here, nothing I say has any kind of validity. Any good idea that is worthwhile is freely appropriated with no credit assigned. 

    Even students have more value than older adults according to the capitalist industrial system because they encourage consumer spending, and are the future of America. Whereas under the simplistic mindset, older adults have no value; their consumer spending is merely habitual; and their needs are subsumed under the market value of the rich and famous. And since all colors in America pretty much abide by this jingoism, all ills must be spent away.

    We addressed the social-justice issue for ST in various ways that are legitimate and within my rights, such as talking with the investigative officers, communicating with supervisors, discussing the matter with friends and relatives, and writing it out. Even now there is a dread that this SW had become quite bullish in her self-righteousness by virtue of authority and status over the residents. She knows which of us believe the staff wronged ST, and she is brow-beating those residents. Her one virtue is that she can talk herself silly, and so it is easy to allow her to go on under the belief that we are listening...but she never counsels us without asserting insistently that her opinions are the most important. 

    And this is why after the social-justice hunting, the discussions, the explorations about the psychology of the dark-triad (narcissism/divisiveness/psychopathy), and religious ruminations, we were still searching for peace. She can lecture us about the stages of grief in a sort of parochial manner, and counter that "She was going to die anyway" but it does not prevent the thought: "She would be alive today, only one year after she moved in, if you hadn't moved her. You are unfair allowing that white woman to move downstairs after only one meeting. It takes the rest of us 3-4 requests and weeks of deliberation to change rooms!"

    That kind of argument is only met with obstinance, a staunch counter-argument, a blatant denial of the facts, and so on...there are professionals who are black who are like Trump but don't even know it! And there is no argument wanting to be created so the case must rest. Please, go on with your wonderful job working in the tunnel, nothing to see here! 

    Okay, none of that is going to work. We can also project our anger onto the Church or charity administration. All kinds of far-flung accusations and lawsuits are lined up, and the internet is a happy hunting grounds for conspiracies---at least some of which are part true. But this again takes us nowhere. Anger, as we recently witnessed, tends to need an outlet to further legitimize itself. It will use anything for fuel and to rationalize the destruction. Arguably, Americans have become experts at internalizing the need for wars abroad...

    Of course the religious aspect on all of this also matters. Strangely, nobody here is of a particularly religious cast, even though this home was founded by nuns. I guess by today's standards they are also trite persons, for the staff would scoff at "vows of poverty" and most likely view them as just a bunch of underqualified worthless disposables also...

    Hours of watching podcasts on Buddhism, on meditation, on the beauty of the lotus sutra, on watching benevolence take place in foreign countries through the efforts of Tzu-Chi Buddhist Foundation as shown on Da-Ai TV. But things were still not clicking for me, because of flashbacks---flashbacks on all the other bad things that have happened recently together with events in my life---really depressing when taken together.
 
    I know I needed some faith, and I am sort of interfaith when it comes to religion having grown up Catholic. A Buddhist-Catholic who also practices Falun Dafa meditation. Altogether these practices help heal and calm together with chanting Ami-Tuo-Fo (Amitabba Buddha incantation). Certainly, it helps that the unpeaceful neighbor is now moved downstairs; it is quieter here. But the aspect of an unhappy ghost remains. 
 
    I was too angry to visit the Church nearby. We can't comment on other aspects over there, yet, the need for healing was so strong that we still undertook a small pilgrimage to the National Shrine. And despite a sort of karmic aftertaste, there was still a very good sense of faith validation. You may not be happy with the church, with administration, with politics, but there is still the faith itself. Only by being grounded in faith can there be healing. 
 
    It seems trite today to quote from the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Isn't that poem a bit too loaded with extremes, binary suppositions? I can't replace sorrow with joy just like that. Nor does peace come with the snap of the fingers. We see how sorrowful life must be for the Plowshares Eight, including priests and nuns protesting for peace, a true cause. Peace and healing is a process, a personal process that no one should violate or interfere with! 

    So despite the exposure, let me share with you a beautiful discovery from online at OurCatholicPrayers.com. Even if I doubt that Pope Francis is going to be able to do all that much to ameliorate the piteous situation in Iraq, where the people have suffered decades of wartime unrest and the region is fraught symptoms of climate change, maybe its neighbors will relent more in their persecutions, water-hoarding, and sanctions. Pope Francis has little to do with me anyway. My belief is that he is only a nominal head of the Church; only I can help myself get to heaven. What I can change is how much I can broaden my view of Western faith. All is not lost in this world if we can still pray, whichever part of the world.

    So here is just one find from Christopher Castagnoli on "Spiritual PPE: Prayer, Perseverance, and Equanimity." The essay centers around a simple prayer at its heart:
"Dear Lord, when I’m fighting against darkness and confusion so often these days, strengthen my will in prayer so that i may persevere in good intentions in following You and doing Your will. Help me to develop and nurture the spirit of equanimity, so that I may keep my thoughts and emotions on an even keel, confident that You are there and will see me through whatever choppy waters or even storms that may lie ahead. Amen."

    Its theme involves the ability to stay centered, grounded, amid the distress, the flotsam and jetsam we are surrounded by as we navigate through our complex lives. Shallow people emphasize the rules and regulations in order to scare us into believing that we must do this or that, or else. They want to delude us into magical-thinking, using head-in-the-sand reasoning. Some people delight in intimidating others and seeing them react with fear and anxiety, or other negative reactions, by which they can pull their strings. Others use jeering and mockery as a failsafe to create a sense of shame and humiliation. Still others have such unreasonable rules or mixed messages in dispensing order, that you cannot help breaking them and thereby inducing a sense of guilt. All these are just fleeting emotions which impede you ability to achieve inner peace. This is why Father includes St. Theresa's bookmark prayer: 

"Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing;
God only is changeless.
Patience gains all things.
Who has God wants nothing.
God alone suffices."

    In my humble spiritual sojourn, arm-chair pilgrim, there are many secret treasures in Western Literature, such as William Blake in "Auguries of Innocence" about which the Buddhist Master Venerable Guan Cheng commented upon in his Lecture 60 on The Longer Sukavativyuha Sutra in his podcast on February 19, 2021 (youtu.be/la8xqaTxTfs). 

    Its not just a simple matter of me becoming more like Mary in the Martha and Mary parable of the New Testament, but me really becoming more sincere in trying to see and find God in other people. The healing is not going to happen overnight, but it definitely starts with me.

Jesus with Mary and Martha, Bible Women, Painting by He Qi


Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Signs Your Habitat is Controlled by a Slumlord

 

He wants his freedom but they don't want to allow that...
 
Recently I ran into a person I used to see at Miriam's Kitchen, one of the poets of our group. There were several white males in our group that met every Wednesday morning (pre-Covid). One was a former professor, up in years, who due to taking care of his wife, had used up his savings. Another, a very dapper fellow, preferred roughing it rather than submitting to living in shelters. This one was not actually a regular of our group---rather, I would see him at the GW Cafetaria, him and his friend. A long time ago, at least six years back, when things were better, they confided to me that they actually lived on Roosevelt Island. I don't know if he still lives there, but I could tell that things had not gotten much better for him.

Recently, a person, an elderly African-American woman in our house was sent home to Our Home in Heaven, at least we hope so. This woman, she was at least 75, possibly over eighty. It's hard to tell with African American women sometimes because they can age well. I won't go into the details of the elderly abuse problem in this house. There is so much injustice in the world today, and only places like Poor News Network is holding seminars on how to fight eviction notices.

Here are ways slumlords narcissistically enrich themselves at others expense, including their safety, dignity, and well-being. Note that we are working off of our reserves today, so if links are missing, it's because it's been so traumatizing.
  • Refuse to honor the CARE Act or any Congressional legislation allowing Renters to forego rent payment. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition in a seminar a couples months ago, landlords are filing court appeals to prevent any renters from nonpayment of rent. They are sending in police to enforce eviction notices, and they don't care what kind of exception exists. 
 You can't force people to care. How much does Trump care when the rules are not bent for his own profit? That is the example set, and when people are forced out, the prevailing "Who Cares" attitude ensures that passerbys will only mock them...
 
  • Gaslight and torment the most vulnerable. So if there is an elderly woman who is feeble-minded, who has mobility issues, who is timid, who has other special needs, they will do the opposite of care. It's hard to believe until you see it and experience this callousness close up. The staff will deliberately ignore this person even if they are advised to check up on her often. If told they are drinking themselves to death, they will continue to ignore that. 
  • Use Flying Monkeys. What is a "Flying Monkey"? I learned that term from Doctor Ramani in her narcisissm seminars online. Basically it means someone who aids and abets the bully, who is a willing minion. Here we have several Flying Monkey types who deliberately look the other way when they see abuse. They enable the bullies or the narcissistic staff by stroking their ego, "kissing up," and pretending to be standby authority figures among their peers. In turn, they are awarded with special favors, such as immediate access to staff, copies of house keys, special recognitions (even if they are inventive).
Picture how this works with the Peter Principle or principle of inefficiency: Residents love to act out and break things and waste supplies. Instead of counseling residents on these matters, the Program Administrator specializes in creating and administering work orders: the more maintenance requests there are to manage, the better. Therefore there is a preference to let things go unfixed, to delay or postpone, and to create more  paperwork by keeping track of new purchase orders.
 
  • Unleash the psychopaths in our society: COVID-19 has furnished its own unique excuse, given them free rein even. Whether it's a lurking Dr. Mengele, Dr. Ishii, Dr. Kevorkian, or whomever, the Death Doctor honestly probably feels he or she is doing society a favor by suffocating their patients to death. 
"The family will be spared caring for this older disabled person, if ever they did!"
 
"The government doesn't have to enact so many austerity measures or cutbacks on Social Security. We will help the government save money!"
 
"Euthanasia is the trend. Why must so many Americans live so long when they are no longer active in the production line? My line of thinking goes along with all those great industrialists! Save those pensions and health insurance for SpaceX." 
 
"Who cares if the COVID-19 vaccine is inappropriate or not? I am following orders and they are my laboratory guinea pigs!" 
 
  • Enable Agism, Machiavellianism, and Other -isms to flourish. If you had a mean girl streak, the time is ripe for conducting harassment under the cloak of virtue, following guidelines, climbing the career ladder, cheating, crime, etc. Because theoretically, everyone is too busy and nobody has the time to chase down petty crime. Just like the break-in to this older lady's room in our house. Even if she and I had a well-founded suspicion who it might be, nothing was done. The staff even doubted that 'she had so much money in her room.' But what about the fact that multiple people in the house have master/old keys? 
Even at the Sports Club near Georgetown, some gals were remarking in my hearing that with so many clubs around, older adults should just go exercise elsewhere. The implication was that we might be a 'threat to their safety.' Hmmph! And who is paying their club dues but their Daddy and Mommy, while we pay our own dues? In fact, a nearby yoga club now has more middle-aged women enrolling because they are welcomed and not just by their cohorts. 
 
Doctor Ramani advises in "Healing when there is no justice": Don't wait for justice to come around. In real life, often times it won't. Of course you can take steps to ensure it can take place. In the age of COVID-19, sure the senior centers and community centers are closed, but you do have their phone numbers and contact information! I have the D.C. Department of Aging and Community Living bookmarked! I have their phone number and email addresses. (https://dacl.dc.gov/services
 
  • Weaken our spiritual faith as a society. Note I am speaking in the United States, that our society abounds at best in mixed messages. We mostly have the "Who Cares?" sign on our $50,000 leather jacket, and most of the juvenile educated, former ex-con, love-watching-sports types take pride in their paganism. Even talking with our housing minion about the recent death (which followed another semi-suicide six months ago), the "Tough as a Teamster" gal switched subjects and tried to make it about the single-horse track of "career probing." (Her headgame varies per resident, whichever one she thinks gets under your skin). Of course I personally have tried to spiritualize our living environment, but the attempts have failed beyond hanging paintings, sprinkling holy water, attaching symbols of love, and other decorations. It's a miracle when they are not destroyed or taken down. 
Has it occurred to you that your concerns about the stove and whether the broken parts are fixed might be cured by PRAYER? YES, PRAYER. If we all prayed more, it might improve our temper and our patience, and then we might not be twisting the stove knob off, or kicking the wall, or cutting up the dish sponge...These things might just last longer if we cared more, treated our surroundings with gratitude...
 
I am not the only person who can feel the change, the passing of an age as it were, with the passing of so many elderly locked away, left to die, in nursing homes. They had wisdom, a free and useful product indeed, to share with society. But just like the recordbreaking wildfires in California, most people are too glued to their TV or smartphones to notice the winds of loss in the air. Even their pets can sense it, but the owners cannot, because it was not something told to them in the mainstream news.

We are not just a ship of fools; we refuse to acknowledge that a lifetime of wisdom does not happen overnight. When I study the buddhist tracts, I realize that the myriad of terminology, teaching methods, stories, songs, and art are all the work of centuries of monks and nuns who persisted in spite of adversity. They are like the scientists whose body of work we ignore in favor of the words of an ignoramus for President. (It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect of bias and illusory superiority.) 

If there is any takeaway, I am dealing with the sorrow as much as I can on my own. There's precious little comfort here. So many of the guests and visitors are taken in by the superficial charms and hospitality of the moment....


Doctor Ramani in "How to heal from narcissistic relationship when there is no justice" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6LzDnJ6ziM -

Watching Dr. Ramani, and Surviving Narcissism is not a sure-safe method to develop tactics against abusive people. Like Trump, they often will claim they are victims, and that perhaps you are the narcissist. All kinds of headgames...
  
 
 

Friday, January 8, 2021

Trump is a psychopath, remove him now!

 

Union Station now looks like ghost town from the 1970s & Steal the Rally sponsors recommended the marchers to dine out in Alexandria, VA!
 
Trump is a psychopath, he deserves jail time!
  
We watched it all, starting on January 5, 2021 with the gathering at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. through January 6, 2021 at various patriot outlets. I will list them here, although due to the trespassing on the Capitol grounds, including in Washington, DC, Columbia, SC, Olympia, WA, we are not sure those YT channels will stay up. 
There are various small channels that also offered live coverage or feeds. The channel operators claim that the feeds do not necessarily reflect their views, yet obviously, like NTDTV or Epoch Times, the rebels were not just talking with anybody. You needed to be on their side to be granted access for interviews, is the way they saw it!
 
On January 5, 2020 at Freedom Plaza, one citizen-journalist making the rounds with Trump activists was repeatedly rebuffed, even threatened for being suspected of "being a socialist, communist, antifa." WUSA9's reporter stayed blocks away from the melee because these blokes are not your friendliest.
 
We encountered quite a few of the 'Stop the Steal' activists inside Walmart on January 5, and wandering around along Massachusetts Avenue. Just very average looking people, yet it is clear they are on a mission, sent by God himself no doubt. Typical of these reactionaries are several noticeable traits. They are excitable. Within a minute or two if they discover your views do not align with theirs, they will commence attacking you, calling you names. They refuse to listen to the voice of logic and reason once they can no longer defend their shallow talking points. They have a lot of deep-seated anger, and arguably this is misplaced anger, since taking the side of the billionaire kleptomaniac family is far from good for the American public. 
 
Just in case you don't believe me, my neighbor is one of them...
 
Just in case you don't believe that we know what we are talking about, my neighbor is one of them! She routinely hates on people, and maintains all kinds of stock stereotypes of how we should behave, yet somehow because we do not meet expectations, she has a right to be angry, accuse us of discrimination, call the police...

For over four years we have had to watch more and more people succumb to the Trump Derangement Syndrome. The marvelous part being that any time the person tries to defend themselves against a false accusation by a TDS patriot, that patriot will also play the victim, sort of how an opossum plays dead to escape capture. And of course the counter-attack, counter-lawsuit, counter-distraction is one of Trump's most notorious plays. It's how he's managed to evade the plaintiff, and according to USA Today, it was over 4095 lawsuits in 2016. It's not rocket science to understand why he wanted to stay in office! It has nothing to do with Jo Public, but rather legal protections afforded by immunity from prosecution as a President of the United States! (Here's a nice graphic for aspiring law students in case you want to join his team!)

So why are so many followers being duped into believing that he is the Son of God himself? That his words are unquestionable? That his tweets are COMMANDS? Is it because it gives them the same kind of torpor as some sweet red knockout drops?

No doubt it's sort of complicated. People who are conservative, according to Big 5 personality tests tend to be less open, more prone to rigid inflexible thinking. Like my neighbor will only listen to radio stations with plenty of Trump-speak. Technology has enabled us to share over time and space in split seconds, but it has also morphed what used to be a daily diet of balanced news into a smorgasbord selected by Facebook or our other artificial intelligence feeds. So we revel in group confirmation and viewpoints that increasingly exclude and target the opposing side. 

Insecure people (including Trump or Bannon) will devote hours upon hours checking their social feeds because they have become addicted to managing their profile. Just look at how many WH press secretaries Trump has turned over, an average of one per year; not to mention the other turnover in the Cabinet. They absolutely demand that people reflect, no genuflect in front of them, take the "Trump Oath." There are people who adore Trump because they adore his manly power. They believe he exudes financial gain, limitless fame, and the boundless glory of the Presidency. 

In every age, there are the worshipers of Baal (god of Money), and Moloch (god of human sacrifice). Moloch requires child-sacrifice, and this is why Trump set up the detention camps and wants to build the US-Mexican border wall. Like the counterpart in Israel, the border wall is a ruse to foment bloodshed, captivity, and human suffering. According to human rights groups such as Amnesty International, hundreds of children have gone missing. However, since those are only from official reports, there are more likely thousands of missing children, children who conveniently disappear and reappear in human trafficking as slave labor or child sex-slaves or are sacrificed.

The type of people who gravitate towards Baal and Moloch don't wear special name tags and do not need to join the occult. In America, all they have to do is become addicts of junk pop-culture, such as the Hollywood-elite controlled satanic worshiping trashy rock music videos; for children, their induction comes via stages of advancement in the world of virtual gaming. Their brains fried by ritual slayings, their hearts benumbed by one-sided episodes, their souls become as corrupt as their parents. And for those who cannot believe that this behavior is condoned, please investigate all the politicians who were potentially tied to Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia or K12 teachers connected with Hell's Angels drug and human trafficking. Their nights are the same as their days, an endless jumble fest of feeding, acquiring, and preying upon others...

Our mainstream culture bans spirituality in public news, schools, and almost any other setting. The only practice left is hedonism and decadence, pagan savagery and competition. This is why the elders are fascinated with raping children, is because they cannot believe in God, but meanwhile, they lust after youth, because they do not believe in the sanctity of true Nature and the sacred Cosmos. Its like some savages that we know who will celebrate chopping down the very last tree in the forest as an unforgettable ritual, and who will wake up with the forest gone, the riverbed dried, and yet not be able to recount their own responsibility, but instead, will start murdering and cannibalizing one another. Sacred indeed!

But here is what Jared Hussey lists in "13 Types of Donald Trump Supporters." There are the haters, proud deniers, ignorant dads, fans of The Apprentice, die-hard Republicans, child molesters, slogan suckers, establishment Russians, Frat D-Bags, ISIS, sexists, gun people, selfish people. 
 
We pointedly beg to differ on the "establishment Russians" for several reasons. One, there are not that many Russian-Americans; two the Russians have been accused of info-war spin ala puppet master Vladislav Surkov, however, there are a lot more neocons involved in spin, not to mention the Mercer family, who may have once again helped this election cycle through social media or via superPAC funding; third, the accusation of the Russians being involved might be less precise than that of Zionist Jews favoring the incumbent. It is no secret that there are close links between Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Some people have alleged that ISIS itself is not only a CIA funded creation but assisted and infiltrated by the IDF. In the aftermath of the election, and as the frustrations of Donald Trump have mounted, where did Jared Kushner run to but Israel? Presumably it was to advance the Peace Treaty, and in fact he also can spend time in his home on the West Bank (where Jewish developments have mostly been acquired by illegal settlements since the land belongs to Palestine). Thus, if Trump is looking for a safe haven in the aftermath of leaving office, the West Bank might be a such a place, as there are other illegal settlers there, but he would still be afforded the free protections of the IDF, and can remain invisible there if he wants to, or build some new hotels. And the West Bank has become a safe-haven for convicted Jewish criminals, perhaps such as Jeffrey Epstein.

Selfish people? Hussey writes:
 
"You might be a Trump supporter reading this and thinking to yourself, 'Hey, I don't fit any of these categories.' First, look back and read again. Are you sure you're not racist? Are you my dad? Well, if you don't fit any of the above groups, then this group is for you. You're just plain selfish. You voted for Trump because his policies would benefit you (or you thought his policies would benefit you)...."
 
Does this explain the close election results? Our opinion is that in fact there was voter machine tampering or envelope miscounts but that it might have been the other way because in October, the political pundits had forecasted an up to 15% lead by Biden over Trump. How could that 15% lead be narrowed down to less than 5%? It's actually surprising that more Democrats have not been screaming about cheating...

But our pro-Zionist media is always also intent on keeping the American public focused on "civil war" possibilities; the elite would see the common citizens as nothing but pawns who must by kept distracted by bread-and-circuses. Since they have gotten most of the "bread" breaks from any bail-out legislation, then all we have left are the "circus" arenas; such is the fanfare of this past summer's Black Lives Matter riots. Those riots (enabled by the Trump-law-and-order cops) have pitted the voters on the opposite side of the patch, the poor whites, against their traditional fictive enemy, the hapless blacks. It is nothing less than pathetic, that in the middle of the worst pandemic to strike the world, and especially the United States, since 1917, along with global recession, that the American public is warring over "socialism and CCP." 
 
#MagaThugs had it planned out weeks in advance!
 
The "selfish" per Hussey have no concept of the virus being a natural borne transmogrified entity. They are too conformist to recognize that trickle-up has actually happened; we can see they NEVER notice homeless people who are invisible to them; but they love to PROJECT THEIR BLAME onto whoever they can target. And Trump embodies that opportunity for them: He is the figure-head of the angry bloviating monster who will blame, balk, and bombast his figurative enemies rather than try to understand, empathize, coordinate, and cooperate. This is one reason why in the middle of such a horrible year, all Trump has bragged about is the health of Wall Street, and the need to take military and economic action against enemy nations. 
 
Selfish People? Haters? Proud Deniers? Gun People? Sexists?
 
You saw plenty of those at the Steal of the Century MAGA Rally on January 5, and January 6, 2020 (even if the Virginia Women did hold a 'fake' prayer circle). And if you check out some of these hash tags, you will be assured that I am not alone in my condemnation of these horrific events which took place yesterday. After all, my first introduction to Washington, D.C. was in 1977 when our family took a Back East vacation that included several days in the nation's capital. I still remember our VIP tour of the Capitol building. My parents loved it so much they signed us up for a VIP tour twice. Funny that in the intervening years, I have not gone on any additional tours, but I have been in the vicinity quite often, often for research purposes, other times conducting political advocacy. It's like the Black Lives Matter twitter feeds notes, that double standards are SO OBVIOUS HERE IT WAS INTENTIONAL. 
 
Last year, I was just taking a walk around the Capitol building, and had to sit and rest. Well, just because the bench was too close to the steps on the West side, the guard scowled at me and pointedly tried to make me sit somewhere else. It was a marble bench by the steps and I had no intention of climbing the steps, yet he would not even let me sit there. And he was a guard of color, but it really doesn't matter; it's their somewhat blatant sexist attitude and particularly towards Asian-American female walking alone, as if that were somehow a crime from the Victorian era...
 
And this is not to mention the perfectly shameful descending on a handful (less than 30) Poor People for Economic Human Rights Marchers the security agencies harassed and tried to arrest for camping at Dupont Circle in June 2018, after they had triumphantly and laboriously marched from Philadelphia, PA to Washington, D.C.
 
There's a lot more at these Twitter.com feeds about whether or not these were not a blatant coups attempt. Believe me, all you have to do is watch (hopefully not too redacted) the videos at StatusCoup channel to view the sophisticated coordination via social media, the planned points of entry and methods of attack to gain entry. The clumsy responses of the guards looking like rapprochements, as if they were playing football. Nothing like what would be expected if this were a group of angry colored women, which might include their using tasers, rubber bullets, and clubs. All the Capitol police, even in the Library of Congress normally carry taser guns or guns with possibly rubber bullets. So why the guards would be essentially standing by is more than likely because they were told this circus would appease the Group of Seven...
 
 
Stay tuned....Afterall, this unrest is not going to go away soon, and that's exactly what the elite like, is a state of civil war, just so Trump and his family can safely stowaway those $600 million SuperPAC monies, or arranges self-pardons, or keep those dirty slaving subcontractors off their backs, maybe in China, right? 
 
PS. Epoch Times and NTDTV were paid off a long time ago to become the Asian version of Fox News. They have literally furnished Trump all the toxic lingo he uses on a daily basis to "blame China" such as "CCP Virus" and all the rest of the baloney.