Mohamed Ali died this
morning. A few days ago he was admitted
to the hospital with respritory complications and at first it wasn’t seen as
serious but then on the news last night they said it was a lot more serious
than they all thought and you had the impression that something was
brewing. Mohamed Ali died at age
74. Of course he was known as Cassious
Clay and he defeated Sonny Liston in early 1964 and then he changed his name to
Mohamed Ali, ahead of Lou Alcintor changing his name to Kareem Abdul Jabar just
shortly afterward. Apparently it was
Elijah Mohamed of the Nation of Islam that suggested that name. Ali and Malcolm X were known to hang out
together. I must say a thing or two on
the question of boxing being a violent sport and Ali trying to be a conscious
objector to the Viet Nam war. Sure on
occasion some people get killed in the ring, or else suffer brain damage and
die years later. But boxing is a voluntary
sport. In the Dylan song ‘Who Killed
Davie Moore?’ there is note taken of how boxing isn’t legal in Cuba any more
with the vague inference that communist nations are more civil in this
regard. But there is a violence of the
State which reflects itself in a passive, beaten down population like they have
in Russia that is too cowed by an over-bearing repressive state to even protest
against. And of course in Russia they
have mental institutions to drug you up and make you passive. Someone once said that the only “Peace” a
Communist will accept is the peace of the graveyard. There is a certain kind of violence which
reflects itself in such “Peace” but capitalism is “messy” as Bernie Sanders
might put it. Democracy is “messy”. Sometimes, not to mix metaphors or anything,
you have to break an egg to make an omelet.
So it could be said that American sports are “messy”. People suffer from football injuries to the
head and are never the same. But we in
America don’t want to make our sports “safer” and free from risk. Because we in America have always embraced
risk. It’s the price of freedom. But when it comes to protesting the Viet Nam
War this is something else altogether.
Here you have troops going and massacring innocent women and children in
their villages and burning them to the ground.
There is nothing sporting in this.
Mohamed Ali didn’t flee to
Sweden. He stayed here and paid the
price for his protest. He was stripped
of his championship. Apparently Ali won
back the championship twice more. But
first he was banned from boxing for over three years. Then the Supreme Court overturned his draft conviction. In March of 1971 he had his comeback fighting
smoking Joe Fraisure in Madison Square garden in early March of 1971 and
Fraisure won and Ali lost. But they say he won the
next two bouts with Fraisure. Ali had
various other big matches like the Thriller in Manilla and the Rumble in the
Jungle in Zaire where he fought and beat George Forman. But he developed Parkinson’s disease and
people question whether it was worth it.
He did those “bugs” commercials.
Ali had a come-back of sorts when he carried the Olympic Torch in
Atlanta taking it from Janet Evans, and he was shakey lighting the flame. It was some commentator on the radio who said
that giving the torch to Ali was a fire hazard.
Of course I have described myself as the Malcolm X of Christianity. I’ve always been a fan of Malcolm. He speaks the unvarnished truth about society
today much as Bernie Sanders speaks the unvarnished truth. Malcolm had a pure heart tword God and when
he saw what ‘Real Islam” was like in March of 1964 he changed his views on
race. I changed my view on “The Last
Times” after being at a Chuck Smith speech at the Convention Center in early
September of 1977 and I recoiled in horror.
Jesus taught that Christianity was an instrument of Peace. My prophecy book “God’s Winepress” could be
called the Christian gospel without all the Calvary Chapel bullshit. In the book I talk a lot about breaking out
of walls and prisons and such. I also
speak of the totalitarian State getting you to rat out your brothers turning
friend against friend. In a portion of
the book I deleted I spoke of the Viet Kong and US Troops perhaps getting
together smoking a few joints and getting high together and reaching their own
peace accords. I spoke of cities like
Saigon being inherently immoral because they were Westernized cities whereas
the Viet Kong were from the country. Some
would criticize me because I don’t say “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful
plan for your life” every few lines.
Black Sabbath had Christian lyrics, too.
But they were stridently anti war and therefore hated by Calvary Chapel
people. It took me a long time to figure
out this connection. But in those days
you had people like Ali who were willing to pay the price for their uncompromising
principles. People don’t do that today
and Barock Obama is a prime example of that.
Some say that the minute you get elected President they take you behind
closed doors and instruct you how you will govern, particularly on foreign
policy. David Swanson has some strong arguments for
NOT dropping the two A Bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He says it was the arms merchants rather than
the generals on the battlefield that were asking that the new weapon be
demonstrated as kind of a “test to see what damage it caused”. There were only a few Japanese cities that
weren’t already carpet bombed into mass destruction so these would serve the
purpose. The mere fact that the A Bomb
was “when we let the genie out of the bottle” is reason enough to give us all
pause. I don’t think Obama should have
even visited Hiroshima if he was going to give such a confused and ambiguous
message.
I
had Shawn Hannity on over the noon hour and also after one and a little after two. Unemployment statistics are the weakest since
September of 2010 with only 38,000 new jobs.
How then does the unemployment number itself drop to 4.7% There are drops in the construction
industry. This whole thing with Trump attacking the Latino race of the judge in his Trump University case is really strange. According to Hannity the Judge is a member of 'La Raza" and hence should recruse himself from the case. It's just Trump exercising another oppertunity to let his racism show. In the one o clock hour Shawn
had the author of the book and soon to be movie in “Clinton Cash”. The movie showed at the Khan festival and
will be out a week before the democratic convention. Geraldo Rivera is leading a group called
“Latinos for Trump”, which is some kind of joke. Shawn was obsessed with this scuffle in San
Jose where the Latino anti Trump protestors got roudy and were beating up
people in Trump tee shirts. But Shawn
broadened this into an attack on liberals in general who “operate and come to
power by these means. Violence is their
way of life”. Shawn also said you must assume every Muslim
is lying when they swear allegence to the the laws of the land and the
Constitution. “The ISIS people instruct
them to lie to the authorities”. He
spoke of a “master plan” to take over Western Europe and America with Sheria
Law courts and there are now 88 of them in England, according to Shawn Hannity.
Hillary's speech in San Diego the other day was very basic. There were no specifics and if indeed we are fighting five or six wars simotaniously we need to hear specifics and justifications for all of those wars. The things Hillary says about Donald Trump have become obvious to everybody now. Even if you thought of considering Trump several months ago - - Trump has made an ass of himself over in speeches ten times over since them. What I want from Hillary is why she is a BETTER person for the job than Bernie, and I didn't get that. Once
again the “Ring of Fire” page was blank even under “clips”. I hope "Free Speech" isn't evoluting downward due to a lack of funds or something and they can no longer do live coverage. Democracy Now was all news reruns from
yesterday including Ken Starr resigning as president of Baylor University in
Texas due to the handling of some sex scandal. Now they are talking about a “Ring of Fire”
network, but I’m not seeing specific episodes listed. So
after “Democracy Now” I did catch a Sam Cedar interview on Ring of Fire and
then it was Ed Schultz for fifteen minutes critiquing Hillary’s speech in San
Diego yesterday. Ed wanted to know
foreign policy specifics on ISIS and such, but we may never get these. The
war in Afghanistan is “Operation Enduring Freedom” (fifteen years now). Operation “Inherent Revolve” is the official
name of the ISIS war. And of course
“Operation Iraqi Liberation” or OIL was the official designation of that
war. We are waging five wars right now
and each of them have these cute little names.
That’s as many as Norman Goldman
counts. We are at war in Somolia and
Yemen.
Thom
Hartman stated that 59% of the elected delegates have to vote for any candidate
in order to win in the Democratic Party.
Chris Matthews admitted the other day that there is a conspiracy to
declare Hillary the winner of Tuesday’s primaries at five o clock. Then I watched Hillary Clinton’s statement on
national security where she briefly touched on other relevant topics. In the middle I got two cups of iced
tea. Patty was out there and she was
talking to that new guy, Chewy. Then I
caught the rest of Hillary’s speech and right now I have a national security
briefing on audio.
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