Friday, February 27, 2015

Onward Christian Soldiers

Here are marching cadences taught to solders:

Children sucking on a mother's tit,
Wounded gooks down in a pit,
Dow Chemical doesn't give a shit,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Bombadiers don't care a bit,
Just as long as the pieces fit,
When you stuff the bodies in a pit,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Enjoy the entire rhyme here...

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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Active Duty Suicide Rate

It's 48% higher than the general population.  I would imagine much of this has to do with the poverty draft.
Of those who committed suicide in 2013, 64.9 percent had been deployed to either Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), or Operation New Dawn (OND). 54.1 percent of those who committed suicide had been deployed to Afghanistan, 50.9 percent to Kuwait and 39 percent to Iraq.
Now, at Apple's Foxconn factories in China, the suicide rate is 1/10th the general population.  Hmmm... better to promote jobs than war?  I wonder.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Defending Your Freedom To Lie

Seems the military has a problem:

“When pressed for specifics on how they managed, officers tended to dodge the issue with statements such as, ‘You gotta make priorities, we met the intent, or we got creative,’ ” the report said. “Eventually words and phrases such as ‘hand waving, fudging, massaging, or checking the box’ would surface to sugarcoat the hard reality that, in order to satisfy compliance with the surfeit of directed requirements from above, officers resort to evasion and deception.”
“In other words, in the routine performance of their duties as leaders and commanders, U.S. Army officers lie,” the paper concludes.

Thank you for your service?

There is a reason the founders forbid a standing army.

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Monday, February 23, 2015

Cold Water Swimming

There is even an association:
"You know people have done it for thousands of years, even the ancient Greek people knew what the good benefits of cold water are to the human body," says Mariia Yrjö-Koskinen, a Finland native and the president of the International Winter Swimming Association. "It releases the natural endorphins. I have said that it's the best endorphins you can get from the nature."
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Sunday, February 22, 2015

Why Ferguson?

John Gibson has a late night talk show devoted to the premise that people of African heritage are inferior, and their problems are all their fault.  But maybe not...

Yes, all the time. It is something I see a lot of, whether it was from deputies, supervisors or undercovers and even investigators. It’s almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it, they’re going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway; nothing is going to happen to them anyway. One of the consequences of the war on drugs is that police officers are pressured to make large numbers of arrests, and it’s easy for some of the less honest cops to plant evidence on innocent people. The drug war inevitably leads to crooked policing — and quotas further incentivize such practices. It doesn’t help that your higherups all did the same thing when they were on the road. It’s like a neverending cycle. Like how molested children accept that as okay behavior and begin molesting children themselves.”

Read the article here where the officers note people of African heritage are particularly selected for false arrest.  Abuse people, then blame them.

I've heard these stories about Seattle for the last 40 years.  From cops.

Not nice.

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Thursday, February 19, 2015

How Was ISIS Created?

We trained and funded ISIS?



Time to get out now.

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Sunday, February 15, 2015

Rules of Aikido

Aikido is unique inasmuch as there are no rules in the techniques themselves.  Everything is aikido, as opposed to all other arts, even MMA, which has some rules too.

Four principles:


  • Keep One Point
  • Relax Completely
  • Keep Weight Underside
  • Extend Ki


  • I read an interesting comment:  How come in every aikido video, the uke melts away, never offers a counter to nage?

    Well, the reason you see so many 60 year old aikidoka is uke melts away when he knows he has been had.  Taking a hard fall or rolling put of the twist is to avoid the sprain or break of further resistance.

    Also, uke is training to roll out, escape damage, and nage knows well when uke rolled even though nage did not throw uke.  Nage screwed up.  But at that point, the art is a different throw, from dynamic to static.  Uke will roll out of a poor execution of a defense against an dynamic attack so nage can have another chance to practice and get it right.  Reps matter.

    There is ran dori, where counters are legit, and those can be very interesting, and they do show uke resisting, but it can also look quite awkward (and rather real)...  people don't want to commit such real expression to film record, methinks.  Maybe I will...

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    Saturday, February 14, 2015

    More Misogi

    Swimming today, something was wrong.  I swam, enjoyed it much.  Stayed on the dock and went in for a second dip, nothing unusual there.  But then, it was no big deal.  52 degrees weather. So I went in for a 3rd dip.  Swam out to the raft, hanged out there for a few minutes, dove in off the raft, tried to go as long underwater as possible, came up, australian crawl to the ladder, back up on the dock.  Something odd.

    Just checked.  The lake has gone from 47 to 48 degrees.  It is warming back up.

    There is so much to be experienced in bringing the cold of the lake, that struggle, to the bokto and jo kata.

    The lake warming up is like hearing a good dojo is closing down. Pray for a cold snap.

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    Thursday, February 12, 2015

    Ukrainian Selective Service

    After investing $5 billion to destabilize a peaceful country and its democratically elected government, the USA is investing another $40 billion to finish it off, via the IMF, whose leaders enjoy sex orgies at taxpayers expense.

    Note the brave woman who takes the microphone from the soldier, but also note the soldier lets her go on.   The soldiers don't want this war either.  But it is existential for the USA welfare/warfare regime. When we can no longer steal, we cannot make our payments, then it is over for the banksters/military industrial complex.  Swith on the translation to see what the Ukrainian woman has to say in English...


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    Tuesday, February 10, 2015

    The Big Strong Attack

    Offense needs room, defense prefers tight space.  To close in on offenders is to at once deny the offense advantage and enhance your defense advantage.

    ma ai - the proper distance, safe distance, between opponents.

    Defensive stance is not assume a position and wait for violation,  it is to put out an arm in expression of your own seriousness and measure the distance.  From the offender's point of view you are emphasising your intent.  From your point of view you are measuring at what distance to intervene.

    From this position, you work the aikido (kendo) half steps to maintain the offender off balance.

    If and when he falls within the ma ai, that is to say he has violated your space, give him the hand and arm to deal with.  “Grab my wrist” defense is ludicrous, to be static, and expect the attacker to do as you say, grab your wrist.  No, no...  you are moving at this point. With a dynamic extension, it does not matter if he does grab or not, or swing, in any case, you will do an art, probably tenkan, or irimi.

    If there is no attack, you are merely in a position of unlikely attack.

    if there is an attack you are in a good defensive position.

    Another problem rarely addressed is the overwhelmingly powerful attack.  A large powerful person coming at you with the advantage of time and space.  In this instance avoid contact if possible, in any event, do at best a tenkan.  if you survive the onslaught, then the next wave will necessarily be half of the previous attack, since the sapped mass and surprise is now gone.  In that first pass by you made the measure of the attacker.

    If still too powerful, escape again, like a bull fight.  If you get caught, well, your number was up.  If not you slowed the attacker down, with a better chance.  The more time he takes, the more you are learning, the more likely he makes a mistake, which you can exploit.

    Keep moving. Always practice these in a dojo, not from a book.  Find a club.

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    Sunday, February 8, 2015

    Christian New York Police Officer Threatens to Behead Prisoner & Desecrate

    In the process of an illegal search, two police officers abuse captives and threaten to behead one for mentioning his constitutional rights.  And then desecrate his body.

    The phrase the police officer used I've heard several times before over the decades, it is stock terrorism. But wait, it is only terrorism when others do it.

    Nothing will come of this either, but it happened to be secretly videotaped.


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    Saturday, February 7, 2015

    The Pledge of Allegiance

    A meditation on the pledge of allegiance,
    Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of a magazine, called Youth’s Companion, was on a mission to sell American flags for every classroom nationwide.  The 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus provided him with an opportunity to solicit more sales. He announced that a salute to the flag would be taking place to commemorate the Columbus Day celebration and was part of theofficial program for schools all over America. He then commissioned Francis Bellamy, who wrote and published the Pledge. Ford attended the national meeting of school superintendents and implemented the pledge/salute nationwide.
    Well worth a read, manufactured patriotism.

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    Friday, February 6, 2015

    Aikido & Competition

    Compete comes from the root "to strive with" ... combat is to "fight with."  Competition is good, because everyone does better in a competitive environment.  I have my competitors in Misogi (I googled "Japan cold water swimming" and could find nothing) among the Chinese elderly (and I keep forgetting, at 60, people consider me "elderly").  I cannot dive from eight feet into cold water yet, but now I see a standard to compete against...  (NB: his hair is wet so it appears he has acclimated to the cold water and making a subsequent dive... this is easier than diving in dry...)

    China weekly photos

    And in Michigan, a cowboy has gotten into the swim of things, hee haw style:



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    Wednesday, February 4, 2015

    USA Training the "Enemy"

    Yet another "moderate Islamist" force trained and armed by the USA has defected to ISIS.

    The Hazzm Movement, associated with the Free Syrian Army, is a secular Syrian insurgent group backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It was one of the last of the non-jihadist opposition groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria.
    Its leadership has decided to join the Islamist coalition of the Levant Front fighting around the key Syrian city of Aleppo, according to Arab news sources, including NOW Lebanon.

    Unmitigated madness.  Then Buchanan says this in passing:
    While Reagan sent weapons to anti-Communist rebels in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, to the heroic Poles of Gdansk he sent only mimeograph machines.
    Yes.  Where you send weapons, horrors.  Where you don't,  peaceful improvements.

    If you google "moderate usa trained defect to isis" you'll see this has been going on for years.  Are we just stupid, or evil, meaning this is on purpose, to give Big War a steady income?

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    Monday, February 2, 2015

    Learning Aikido

    A solid foundation in basic move exercises is becoming less on offer at aikido dojos, and it shows.  Another element missing is instructors taking ukemi.  As beginners there is much to learn as nage, trying to master the throws, but there is a point where you begin to learn far more as uke, by feeling what is going on, seeing where the opening are, and discovering counters.

    We learn by teaching, and the higher up, the more ukemi should be taken.  I am just saying....

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    Sunday, February 1, 2015

    Abner Jay - Vietnam

    Delightfully ambiguous lyrics and fine music...

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