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JAMES' PERSONAL WRITINGS: SLOVING
JAMES' MOST STRATEGIC POSTS: *****
MUCH OF MY POSTING WAS ON FACEBOOK: STARTLOVING1
Showing posts with label vlog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vlog. Show all posts

8.12.2015

vlog. Day 5. These two solar panels seem shockingly effective in overcast


vlog. Day 4. Sleeping with the dead. No. Really.


Day 4. Iccarus cont


vlog. Day 4. Iccarus, flying too close to the sun....


vlog. Day 3. Impossibly weak and fatigued. Well...


Day 5. 1st great solar day... sailed, surfed... the fusion far


vlog. Day 5. My life, my blog - Intersection of Jesus, God, Good...etc and Jay...


7.11.2015

***** VLOG. One microscopic step for humankind, one giant step in my personal attempts to serve humanity...... (click link for vlog and transcscript.)...

One microscopic step for humankind, one giant step in my personal attempts to serve humanity.

A few of you know that for months now I have been contemplating a radical escalation in my attempts to serve, a radical escalation in my personal commitment, a substantial escalation in personal risk my person and physical wellbeing.

Well, in the last month or so I have been working diligently to see if I could stabilize my body, and strengthen it enough, to move out of the shelter, far to traditional and comfortable a refuge, back into the streets where by every argument I would be consuming much less resources.  And if I could determine that my body was strong enough then I needed to see if I could make arrangements that would provide me a modicum of material support, particularly the availability of my computer gear, and my advocacy gear, my posters, what I sit on, etc.

And then finally could I secure the financing, the Financial Resources, the donations required for what I had in mind.

What I had in mind is a self en closed, solar powered vehicle called the Elf from Organic Transit, a small company out of Durham North Carolina.  A company that I visited a week ago yesterday traveling on Megabus, where I spent maybe 5 hours asking questions and pondering all the ramifications very deeply.

Yesterday, was the culmination.

A complete stranger emerged with 1/3 funds required, and the longest, lifelong supporter of my work for humanity (the only one) came forth with the other 2/3.  No one else to did.  But it was exactly Just enough.

So yesterday the seller of this Elf solar bike and I reached a verbal agreement, and roughly next Thursday or Friday by travel 30 miles from DC, to pick up the Elf, and drive it back to DC, a rather long virgin voyage for me, but this is not the time for timidity.

There are four aspects to my advocacy here in DC: full human rights for all Palestinians including the millions of refugees who have been brutally and mercilessly driven from their land against all law against all morality; the end of greenhouse gases from our burning of fossil fuels through the promotion of renewable energy; decency, respect and huma ity for the poorest among us including the poorest among us here in United States including the homeless; and a new way of being which is vastly less resource consumptive and vastly more contributory of our resources and varied being to the well being of humanity, and all creation.  What I will be attempting to my satisfaction is the fulfillment of my best possible attempt to serve all four of those objectives more powerfully, much more powerfully, then I have been able to serve as far.

Within a month, much sooner if I am able, the Elf will include graphics promoting full human rights for Palestine, renewable energy, and LIVE FULL SOLIDARITY... START LOVING.  The fact of my life, living on the streets at a projected cost of 100 to several $100 per month, will be the exemplification and promotion of an infinitely more joyful alternative to the life that I have lived even up until now, a life of ungodly resource squandering on my person and the few people associated with the closely.  Sinful.  Unsustainable.  Suicidal for the species and for all creation.

Yes, I'll now be at substantial physical risk sleeping on the streets.  This is unchartered territory.  I will be easy prey including for rogue police who want to head off such a radical and potentially threatening form of homelessness.  I'll be easy pickings for the Zionists who would love to see me tortured and go away.

My only concern with such issues is that I not throw away my body and therefore my ability to do my work so I think in detail of how to secure the Elf, though rarely if ever will it be out of my site, how to make it slightly less attractive to bash my head in as I'm sleeping, or to vandalize the Elf.

The biggest point of sadness is that it is too wide to fit between the security pylons that ring the White House where I'm sitting at this moment.  Sometimes I will park it about two blocks away, and I've already discussed this with the secret service who are quite intrigued with the idea what I'm doing I think.  I'll park it in a high visibility area where someone wanting to vandalize or steal would think twice, and I'll walk here with just the gear that I have with me now.  Other times when I would have come to the White House on weekends I will park and sit with my posters in the Elf at the very top of the park on K street where there is a significant drive by and were many of the tourists enter the park.  It might be that the Elf and the signage on the Elf will be a significant draw.  I'm concerned this might not be the case but it's worth a try.  And if almost all the time that I've been coming to the White House I now go down on the mall, most likely down by the Washington monument, and or near the (1st) Holocaust museum, I think that what I lose by being here in the park is gained by the much heightened statement that the Elf and it's signage and will make.

And when Congress is in session I expect that for the foreseeable future that will remain my top priority, being on Independence Avenue outside of their office buildings were they slither to and fro to the capital to do their token voting, their bidding for their corporate financial masters.  And again my advocacy will be amped up in all respects by the presence of the Elf parked by where I will be sitting with my signs.

It is a miracle that that stranger emerged out of nowhere to cover a third of this project.  It is a miracle that my sole, lifelong supporter stepped forward and had the resources at their disposal;  truly, for anyone that knows the situation, a totally unexpected Marichal.  But it happened.

4.23.2015

***** SPDF Day 52: MUST WATCH. VLOG. Sadly, It seems to me in that there may be little or no benefit in continuing this death fast beyond this Day 52.

I STRONGLY suggest reading the transcript as you listen to, watch, this vlog.  3:42, onsite, Capital $$$ Hill.

This is day 52 of Stop Palestine's Death Fast.  And I've been here on Capitol Hill since 7"15 this morning.  The Congress scum have just finished their hour in the Capitol building and have most or all returned to their offices and shortly will return to raising money from the special interests until they reconvene on Tuesday of next week.

Sadly, it seems to me in that there may be little or no benefit in continuing this death fast beyond this Day 52.  I feel and experience zero urgency in reaching that decision. Zero. Neither my body nor my mind are the least bit eager to reach that decision.  But each of the last 52 days suggests to me that I have learned, any onlookers if there be any have learned, and anyone in the future has been positioned to learn as much from this campaign as is likely to be achieved. 

There is no event that has transpired yesterday or the day before or today that has anything to do with this view that I am finding within myself today.

I have spoken recently of intending to go several more weeks to be able to more fully express my rage, my horror, my agony at what we Americans are doing to our Palestinian Brothers and sisters. But I don't think that more than 52 days will make any difference in expressing the clarity of my depth of feeling, depth of commitment, desire to pay the ultimate price as soon as it can be taken to save even one Palestinian Life.  I don't think it will make any difference. 

It is clear to me that, as I saw, but with less clarity and less evidence, on the prior death fast I conducted in front of the Canadian embassy to stop global warming, that there's no life left here in America, except maybe among some of the remote indigenous tribes, there's no life left to benefit from this action, the witness, that I have been living.  It is a graveyard.  The thoughts

I shared in yesterday's video log was a significant advance in my understanding of things.  The video log of yesterday.  We are such a degenerate culture, we have lost our capacity for empathy, and it's not by accident in the sense that we pursue that with all of our might.  And the latent, untapped humanity, the latency capacity for loving, in the available population to the nonviolent warrior, is the raw material that is the basis for any hope in nonviolent actions such as this Death Fast.  And this most recent 52 days of experience, of drilling to tap even the merest hint of that resource, indicates that there is none available in the United States.  Virtually none.  Zero.  We are a dead people. 

Of course I saw that by the end of the Death Fast to stop global warming several years ago in front of the Canadian Embassy.  And I had not totally forgotten what I had seen.  Every day since has reminded me, to my horror.  But as I have shared in earlier video logs for this death fast I perceived that this was different in the immediacy of the ongoing horror of our torment torture terrorization and termination of our Palestinian family and that as a consequence there was a Palestinian Diaspora and a relatively heroic free Palestine U.S. activism in which there would, I thought, be a latent humanity to be taped and educated by this Death Fast if not in my lifetime, afterwards.

Each of the last 50 days, 52 days, has taught me that this was completely, profoundly, absolutely in error.  I have taken small but reliable steps to make certain that the leading organizations and individuals, Jewish Voice for Peace, Open Hillel, If Not Now When, If Americans On Knew, Miko Peled, Allison Weir, the Australian Robert Martin,(THE BEST POST '60's ACTIVISTS I'VE EVER SEEN, excepting Peace Vigil Thomas, some Indigenous Peoples, ISM in Palestine, maybe some of the Christian Peace Maker Teams, and Diane Wilson,, and maybe Rick Hohensee, too, who seems deeply committed) Code Pink...  And others knew of this Death Fast.  And there has been zero response.  Zero.  Deafening, profoundly telling silence.

I am convinced by these 52 days that those that I just mentioned and others like them are not what I had believed.  I mean, they are not committed to Freeing Palestine.  They are INVOLVED in freeing Palestine.  But they are not COMMITTED to freeing Palestine.  The chicken is involved, the pig is committed.  There is no marine and that is not committed to the mission except a dead marine.  There is no special forces that is not committed to a mission other than a dead special forces representative.  There is no high stakes business person it is not committed to their venture except one that is going out of business or losing their job. 

Even in this greatest evil on earth today, the subversion of the world's superpower to execute a slow motion genocide on behalf of a Satanically powerful and sick Zionist mafia, there is no Vanguard outside of Palestine itself that is committed to stopping this atrocity.

That is a dead, and not to be saved, U.S. population.And of course it is this U.S. population that is the engine this behind ecocide and behind the final termination of any and all democracy in the United States.  So what I'm saying is not relevant to only the totalhopelessness for stopping Palestine's Death, it is even more so an observation of hopelessness for any saving of U.S. democracy and or the stopping of ecocide.

I'm guessing that the perceptions I'm sharing with you will hold and that within hours or days this Death Fast will be terminated.

Again, I find no particle in my body that prefers for this, rather than to be finding what I perceived at its beginning that this was both why I have been born, and that it could be a matter of supplying the key to those after I died to bringing about the end of these three Armageddons.  If any part of me saw a glimmer of this hope, on this day 52, then none of those thoughts I'm sharing here would be in my mind.  But I see not the faintest glimmer. 

Instead of a glimmer of hope I see the evidence I cited above as virtually conclusive than we are dead, there is no latent humanity to tap. 

Earlier today I posted graphic and an article from Penn. that I found quickly searching for data that I've known since my master's in psychology program in 2000, that the measured apathy among college students has declined virtually every year for many decades now, and that's what I'm seeing here.  We have systematically, relentlessly, passionately, fiercely, destroyed our humanity in ourselves, in our children, year on year, decade on decade now.  And now there's no one left to save US, to save Palestine, to save Creation.

So what now?  There are individuals to be saved. 

Yes, I keep surprising myself.  But as I sit here it seems virtually impossible to me that by continuing such efforts as I'm doing at this moment, without the Death Fast, but with the posters, and with great discipline and commitment, it seems near impossible to me that I can't at least slightly improve the life, but not save the life, of one Palestinian child in the next 20 years.  It seems impossible to me that by my committed life I can't improve the spiritual life, by moving another in the direction, to the path, of infinit piece of heart, participation in loving, deep joy, profound vitality, that is my experience in every waking second, and in that sense it seems impossible to me that without the Death Fast, but otherwise continuing in the direction that I have been traveling in recent months and years, that I can't improve someone else's life. 

Yes, that's a rather different order of magnitude goal than Stopping Palestine's Death, and stopping ecocide, and saving democracy, although it never occurred to me that I could do more than my tiny little part. 

But maybe, maybe forever for me now, those three goals are dead within me now, for all the appropriate objective reason.  But certainly at the moment, I feel nothing but peace and clarity with the notion of continuing to strive as I have been striving but with the goal of improving just one other person's life. 

I may well have spoken very similarly at the end of the Ecocide's Death Fast of two or three years ago.  But I certainly have a greater base of information contained in those years, and contained in these last 52 days, may give me a much greater conviction and peace and clarity as to all this.

Although I discipline my mind relentlessly in the way that a hideous creature like Donald Trump disciplines his investment habits, and I have disciplined my mind relentlessly these 52 days, there have been moments when my mind has wandered to what my future might look like were I to terminate the Death Fast.  Among the thoughts that have occurred to me are attempting to become more knowledgeable and to share what I learn along the lines of thriving amidst the Armageddon's, and I know that that is entirely possible, to thrive amidst the immediate, unstopping, unstoppable, unfolding Armageddon's.  I do it every second.  But I think there's much I can do to learn more that could be a guidance to others, and by making the attempt I would both lead others in that direction and provide greater clarity and depth as to how and why it can be done and how to do so. I'd have a particular interest in h0w to guide parenting of children who are born, and encouraging, PLEADING, the case to not bring more kids to live Armageddon.

And I have thoughts about how to continue to lead the life of minuscule consumption and maximal output, contribution, that is the life I've been living ... the ONLY joyful life - Serving the Neediest, from the Soul, in Solidarity. 

The major event probably in front of me is the closing of the shelter, the homeless shelter, in which I've resided this last year that has been such a godsend base for my operations.  The central thought I have, to move, which would enable me continued to do the work that I do here in DC, involves moving out into an electric vehicle; no, not a car, an enclosed electric bicycle.  The upfront cost of $6-8000 is not insignificant unless it's considered against even the cost of the tiniest of house or certainly against the $600 to $1000 monthly cost of an apartment here in DC.  And then the ongoing costs are virtually zero in as much as it is solar powered.  I'm concerned about the legality, that is whether it is legal to sleep in such a vehicle in DC, but it is legal to sleep on the sidewalk in DC, so in all likelihood that would not be a legal barrier.  I'm concerned about being here on Capitol Hill or in front of the White House with such a vehicle but that too should be a minuscule risk, inasmuch as it is absolutely, thoroughly, illegally a bicycle by every consideration in all 50 states; that was an important design criterion by this North Carolina based engineering team.

4:48pm 4/23, Capitol Hill:

.......... If you value my work at all, and no way am I saying you should, but IF you do, or have in the past, then I have a request. Watch this video, and the several others linked to within it, deeply. And if, upon reflection, you find any deep, important, reactions within yourself, primarily about my view of the world herein expressed, you will do me a kindness by sharing either in a comment on FB or on the blog post itself. BTW, with zero joy, with zero relief, with great sadness (the tears, sobs of sorrow, come to me now) I am terminating the Death Fast now. So sad. So dreadfully sad.) There is no point in continuing, and what slight work I can do for even one in the world whose Spirit or body I might save or help, is in jeopardy any longer that I remain on this Death Fast. James

4.22.2015

***** SPDF Day 51 vlog: (7:30am Capital $ Hill) LATENT, UNTAPPED HUMANITY - THE FATALLY MISSING ELEMENT IN THIS DEATH FAST CAMPAIGN TO STOP PALESTINES DEATH FAST


If YOU don't share this... IT WILL NOT BE SEEN.

NOTICE:  Among the reasons for some long pauses in this vlog is waiting for morning rush hour buses and traffic flows to pass when the light turns green, to reduce the difficulty of hearing me over their noise....  
ALSO, some corrections and clarifications are made in the transcription below. I recommend that as you watch/listen to the vlog that you read the transcript.
 
Transcript:  The missing ingredient in this Death Fast, several weeks ago I made an all important post, The Law of Social Change, which is the Law of Suffering,which is  the Law of Paying the Price of the Change. There are only two ways of bringing about massive social change: threatening to take the life of others as the price of them not changing, or, offering the price of ones own life, lives, to mobilize the onlookers to join the press for the appropriate change; the righteous change.  Examples of the latter are Tahrir Square 3 years ago, the March on the Dharasana Salt Works many decades ago; the march in Selma.... Paying and or absolutely offering ones life, lives, for a righteous, just, humane, social change.

It may be that the missing ingredient in this Death Fast is the element that must be there for such a nonviolent (unviolent) action to work. And that missing ingredient, that ingredient is, an untapped humanity - first among a vanguard, and then secondly among the masses. 

Khaled Mohamed Saeed.jpg
So, basically, the way Tahrir Square worked, a friend of many of the small cadre of young leaders in Egypt, Khaled Mohamed Saeed, expressed himself in a way that predictably caused the security forces to torture him to death, and a photo of his destroyed face and destroyed body surfaced, and among those who saw it was a young Google executive for the Middle East, Wael Ghonim, who had been clandestinely maintaining a widely followed FB page, and he posted this photo; more importantly, he was hugely mobilized by the picture of his friend, and the fact of what had been done to his friend; he posted the photo at extreme risk to himself and further mobilized his social media skills to expose this picture, to expose what it represented, and to lay out an opportunity by which people could do what was never done, come  into the street and protest.  And it happened by the thousands, and then 10's of thousands, and maybe 100 thousand, and they stayed in Tahrir Square.

So the fact of this tells us that in Egypt at the time there was a latent, a huge latent, hidden, reservoir of humanity, first among the small cadre of people like Wael Ghonim, and as this horror that was done to their friend, this extraordinary injustice, tapped and released and hidden humanity in this small cadre, that set up a chain reaction where their humanity, their putting their lives out there, tapped the latent humanity in an infinitely larger pool of onlookers and then finally, those 10's of thousands in Tahrir Square, and then that unleashed the humanity of millions and millions of onlookers around the world.  Far and away the greatest humanity was that of the young man that stood up before anyone else, and was brutally murdered for it. The second largest pool of humanity (on a per person basis), though small in number of people, was the cadre of Wael and and handful of others.  The next larger pool was the 10's of thousands that went to Tahrir Square, and the next larger pool, that is smaller than the prior ones per person, was the millions.  But in each case, in each pool of potential resource, was a latent humanity, a latent, untapped, capacity for loving.

For this Death Fast, each of the last 51 days is teaching me that there is no such latent pool(s) anymore in the US.  There is every indication there is NOT the equivalent of Wael Ghonim and his small cadre of leaders. There is every indication of this, that is, there is no indication to the contrary.  All indications are that what could have been that cadre, the vanguard of the so called Free Palestine movement, would have shown, some affinity, some recognition, some understanding, some curiosity about this Death Fast, and all indications are that it is quite the opposite - they want not to see it, they want to be protected from it, they want to not be drawn in such a direction, they want to be opposed to it, they want to be horrified by it, all by way of denial and self-protection. 

Similarly with the Palestinian Diaspora and with the Palestinian leadership itself. 

Of course there is another possible explanation (other explanations) for what I am saying - that they don't know, or that I'm too strange with tattoos on my face, or that I've been too deliberately marginalize by those who have come before this campaign that have wanted to be certain that the standards by which I live do not become standards that pulled on them, and have gone to significant lengths to discredit, dismiss, disparage... me and my work. 

But my sense is that is not the case; that is not the way that latent humanity works, it is not easily fooled, it is not distracted by tattoos, it recognizes sincerity, it recognizes courage.

As I stated in a hugely important video log the other day, which included the beginnings of the thoughts I've just shared, whereas I'm down to only a 30%, sadly, a 30% chance of being able to pay the full price of my life in this Death Fast, because there is no one there to receive the payment, it is not time for me to stop my; my body says that it is, but I have not yet expressed as fully as I need to my horror, my outrage, the price want to pay... I want to pay as much of the price as possible of the Freedom of Palestine, of the Freedom of the Palestinians.  Don't you?

And I've not yet done that, this being day 51.  Beyond my control my body could terminate itself now, organ failure, whatever.  But tragically, due to this element that appears to be missing, any latent humanity left in this sickest of all societies, at best it is looking like a 30% chance that I'll be able to take this its final conclusion, the full payment of my life, now. 

Creator willing there are several more weeks that I'll be able to continue this.  And I keep watching and learning and learning and recalculating every waking second, but my current outlook, my current assessment,  is what I just shared.

I don't want to die.  I want live.  There's much I want to be able to do in this Fight for Palestine.  And if Palestine were freed, which is virtually certain it will NOT, NEVER (before they are all destroyed), be, but if it were, there are 100 other fights, 1000 other fights, that I want to live to fight.  But that's way down the list.  I want to pay, now, as much of the price as I possibly can to Free Palestine, and as best and as constructively as I can do it, that is what I shall do.