I don’t know if anyone did a story on this yet but, i am still going to do it, A women was being mugged in new york, and a good Samaritan, tried to stop it, the guy stabbed him, and took off, the good Samaritan ran after him for at least maybe 15 steps before he passed out, apparently 20 to 25 people passed by him, and no one helped, one guy actually stopped to take a picture, then walked on by, the guy died , how fucked up about our priorities are we that we can’t AT LEAST CALL THE FUCKING COPS, it is not that fucking hard people it is called FUCKING morals and fucking consideration for your fellow man
Category: courage
When we “expect”
we allow others
to determine the
hour of our happiness
I can fly
I can make a machine
I can make it fly
I can leave the earth
I can soar above the clouds
I can reach the heavens
I learned to fly when I was 6 years old
I can fly
Muhammad Ali training underwater
Photograph by Flip Schulke
Miami, August,1961
“The work begins anew.
The hope rises again.
And the dream lives on.”
Rest In Peace.
District 9 earned overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a “Certified Fresh” rating, with 89% of critics giving it a positive review, with the consensus being, “technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching, District 9 has action, imagination, and all the elements of a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction classic”.
Some critics have been ecstatic about the film. Sara Vilkomerson of The New York Observer writes, “District 9 is the most exciting science fiction movie to come along in ages; definitely the most thrilling film of the summer; and quite possibly the best film I’ve seen all year.” Christy Lemire from the Associated Press was impressed by the plot and thematic content, claiming that “District 9 has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction but it’s really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he’s forced to confront his identity during extraordinary circumstances.” Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum described it as “…madly original, cheekily political, and altogether exciting…”
Roz Savage is a British ocean rower, author, motivational speaker and environmental campaigner. She has rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean and is now rowing across the Pacific Ocean.
Roz Savage rows near Diamond Head in Hawaii. You can see where Roz is at any time using “RozTracker.” (Roz & “Junk” meet…video.)
Roz Savage is my new hero. You can visit her website if you click on this post title. Godspeed and good luck to Roz. Wish I was there.
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII
- Labels: corruption, courage, democracy, fascism, fear
And what of man…
will he ever learn to fly?
“This is Walter Cronkite
And that’s the way it is
July 17, 2009″
- Labels: acceptance, courage, discovery, education, humility
Every day
in every way
I’m getting better
and better
(repeat)
Edward R. Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 â April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.
Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss and Alex Kendrick considered Murrow one of journalism’s greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.
A pioneer of television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
On October 15, 1958, in a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association in Chicago, Murrow blasted TV’s emphasis on entertainment and commercialism at the expense of public interest in his “wires and lights” speech in which he said, “During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: Look now, pay later.”
At the end of his 1958 speech, Murrow made a hopeful statement: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.”
Twenty years ago today the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre. The next day, the “Tank Man” showed the world the meaning of the word fearless.
The protests were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square.
Participants included disillusioned Communist Party members and Trotskyists as well as free market reformers, who were generally against the government’s authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.
The movement lasted seven weeks, from Hu’s death on April 15 until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on June 4. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or severely injured. The number of deaths is not known and many different estimates exist. There were early reports of Chinese Red Cross sources giving a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the Chinese Red Cross has denied ever doing so. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.
Dave and Jaja spent seven years sailing around the world (1988-1995) aboard their 25-foot Cal 25 DIRECTION. Dave purchased the boat in 1985, gutted her to a bare hull, and then went to work beefing up the structure. He glassed in stringers, added keel floors and extra bulkheads, and then re-designed and re-built the interior. “I built a new rudder, re-stayed the mast, built a smaller cockpit, and then christened her with a bottle of warm Bud in an effort to get the mood right for the intended circumnavigation” is the way Dave puts it.
Dave was 22 when he started this project, and 24 when he finished. He met Jaja shortly after starting his cruise in St. John, USVI, and they finally got together in the UK (after a solo Transatlantic) in the fall of 1988. They were both 25 when they left England on their circumnavigation.
From England they headed West to the Caribbean, via the Cape Verde Islands. They were married in Barbados, then transited the Panama Canal, visited the Galapagos; and did the usual trip through the South Pacific, spending several seasons in Australia, New Zealand, and the nearby cruising paradise to the north. A trip through the Torres Straits, Indonesia, and then across the Indian Ocean had them rounding South Africa before arriving back in the Caribbean and then the States in 1995. Along the way they had two children (Chris and Holly). A third (Teiga) was born aboard DIRECTION at the end of the voyage.
The Martin family set sail again in 1997 on their 33-footer DRIVER, and have spent time in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Iceland, the Faroes, Northern Scotland, Norway, Greenland, and Newfoundland. They are currently settling down for the winter in Maine.
…by Frida Kahlo 1946…
The spirit of a fearless man
is in acceptance of mortality
only the dead are without fear
When asked if he were on drugs
Salvador Dali replied,
I am the drug, take me.
“Tibet has been turned into a living hell”
…His Holiness the Dalai Lama…
- Labels: big brother, buddhism, control, courage, fear
Eat dessert first……
life is short
and full of peril
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
from the sermon on the mount of course, and is also part of a tune by the Incredible String Band way back when
good to hear from you Oberon, be well.
- Labels: acceptance, courage, education, perspective
Which Honour Does Obama Talk About
Agha Amin
At Camp Lejeuene in the Carolinas President Obama while talking to US soldiers talked about honour.
One may ask a simple question ” which honour is Obama talking about ” or ” where is the honour” ?
You attack a country with no air force and air defence with overwhelming forces. So there is hardly any danger to your soldiers which is well proven by your extremely low casualties! So where is the honour without the dignity of danger for which the soldiers profession is honourable?
You waste US tax payers trillions US Dollars to fight a war with no objective so where is your sanity. Was the Iraq war fought so that some private US companies can make money in construction and reconstruction contracts?
You did not go for Iraqs oil as you say. If so why you wasted trillions in Iraq? If USA had gone for the Oil in Iraq we could say , ” OK there is an objective”.
What USA did in Iraq neither has honour nor sanity nor logic. Its beyond logic.
And no US military or civilian leader dissented! A fine indicator of lack of intellectual honesty!
You attack a pen of chickens with overwhelming superiority so it’s not correct to talk about honour!
What is the lesson that Bush and USA have taught the world. If a small country like Iraq does not have WMDs it will attacked with that strange kind of honour that Obama talks about and destroyed.
And then you have totally shameless bulky Arab kings of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Gulf, Egypt etc who buy billions of munitions for killing and controlling their own people! What a disgrace!
So there is logic in North Korea and Pakistan and even India having nukes!
- Labels: audacity, barack obama, courage
Rosa Parks
George Carlin
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Note to self…….
……shut the hell up
I don’t know
what happens when I die…
…I think everything will be okay
…..Oberon…..
My life is a complete disaster.
(I just wanted to make
the rest of you feel better)
…..Oberon…..
- Labels: acceptance, courage, forgiveness, hope, perspective
Practically all the great religions, spiritualities and philosophies of the world advise us to live in the present – to live in the NOW! NOW, I am no follower of a particular church though I was born and reared a Roman Catholic and lived the first forty years of my life as such. Since then I am more a sort of agnostic Buddhist who is open to all the possibilities that lie anywhere – in any area of human knowledge from science to literature to religion even – for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of human kind. I read the Bible as a wonderfully inspiring piece of literature – with the exception of those blood-thirsty sections of a very racist Old Testament. However, the teasing out of the latter is a matter for another post.
True Religion?:
True religion, if such exists, is one which seeks to find its spiritual base and disavows the abuse of power. However, history and common sense tells us that the abuse of power is endemic in all organised religions. But, in my experience there are oases of spirituality in the great Religions, in certain religious orders of monks and nuns and denominational charity workers who follow a vision of asceticism and sharing and caring and peace etc.
The Pain of Yesterday:
By this I mean that many of us can be slaves of our past, namely enslaved to hurts and regrets and maybe even remorse, which one of our national poets, Patrick Kavanagh describes as “the devil’s contrition.” A powerful metaphor! Maybe even we cannot forgive ourselves for some past wrong against another. It is my experience that often self-forgiveness can be more difficult than forgiving others. In this sense, regrets can eat our soul away. We cannot live in the NOW if we are slaves to the past, not having let go or allowed our past brokenness to be healed.
The Fear of Tomorrow:
We can be slaves of the future, too. How many of us are slaves to the empty dreams of how much we will earn and how much we will achieve? How many of us are never happy with where we are NOW in our lives. As Shakespeare says in Sonnet 29:
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
We can be slaves also to fear, which is probably as endemic as wishful thinking and base greed and desire. We may fear what tomorrow will bring: whether by way of breakdown in relationships or loss of jobs or whatever.
The Answer is NOW!
Buddhism teaches us through meditation practices to cease to be slaves to our past and our future, and by being mindful to live in the endless possibilities of the present moment. Be aware of the rhythm of your breath. Awake to the wonder of being alive. Find hope within the beauty of your own soul, even if the body is getting old and breaking down. Observe the cycles of the seasons, how they come and go. Such is life and such is death. Neither is the opposite of the other really. Actually both are part of the greater cycle. Both belong to the eternity of NOW!
Above I have uploaded a picture I took from the bank of the Tiber, Rome, Easter, 2007. A brief peek at the beauty of NOW!
- Labels: buddhism, courage, forgiveness, humanity, now, spirituality
Recently, Mr Pat Cox, former Irish President of The European Parliament, scholar and politician, diagnosed the root cause of the economic recession here in Ireland as being the tsunami of greed that had enveloped the mythical and legendary green isle. The land of mythical leprecauns had become the land of the mythical Celtic Tiger. Most Irish people swallowed whole this myth of inevitable progess and increasing wealth. With greed and selfishness the core values, there seemed to be no hindering the onward flight of the legendary Tiger. However, some few perspicacious souls like Eddie Hobbs (financial adviser) and David McWilliams (economist and journalist)saw through the myth and saw that the Celtic Tiger was but an inflated toy made of rather brittle plastic. Now the economic bubble has burst and the Tiger is a deflated, sad and lifeless mess.
Our national economic boom was a myth based upon a vastly over-priced housing market. The basic economic law of supply and demand brought the whole rotten mess collapsing down. Now we have an oversupply of houses and apartments and what has come to be termed “ghost housing estates” in many rural areas around the country. Bankers lent too much money to builders who in turn cannot sell the houses at vastly over-inflated prices. Added to this, we have been dealt the second blow of the international economic crisis.
However, this short post will not attempt too much analysis of the economic situation as its writer is poorly equipped to do so. However, it would seem to all and sundry that what has caused both our national crisis and indeed the international one has been nothing short of naked greed and selfishness. The world needs leaders at this moment in time. Barak Obama, the US President, is one such towering leader with principles and ideals. He is standing up to all those who have been sucked into headless and heartless capitalism. He is to be praised for capping the earnings of CEOs at $250,000. We need to follow his leadership here in Ireland. We need such leaders in the world today. Mr Obama can walk the walk as well as talking the talk.
- Labels: barack obama, courage, greed, humanity, morality
how about this as an idea: spreading love & peace through flowers. a specific amount of people receive free flowers daily – (use revenue from a grant/or wildflowers from across the world) their job- to hand the flowers out to 5 other 
individuals, who passes it on to another five & on & on it goes. the flowers can have a note of love/appreciation/etc. written or one of these pictures. do this for a specific time frame. we need to research on how long it actually takes for habits to be made (i think it is 21 days). spread the love & keep spreading it until it lasts. redo this again & again until the oceans are crossed & wars cease to exist & global love persists.