Covid, Cabin Fever, Protests and Riots

The news is all about ‘protest’s’ in the US.  I was in the peace movement with long hair and sandals. I had love painted on my forehead with lipstick. I miss that time. A lot of weed ,Patch and incense, you could get high from the second hand smoke if someone wasn’t already passing you a joint.  I was with the sexiest funniest woman in the world at the time. The phenomes were thick too. All that youth.  We were young. Artists. Dancers. Athletic. World class cyclists.

 John Lennon’s « Give Peace a Chance’ and the Bed In  Love In really said it. That was a protest. Great performance art.  We were against all war.  I learned Buffy St. Martie’s Universal Soldier and sang it in coffeehouses, playing, guitar poorly.  People actually asked me to sing and play, Draft dodger’s Rag, a great song by Phil Ochs, I’d learned from Jon Cowtan.   Still a funny song.  I was an intellectual but I wasn’t serious.  We were at the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love festival. In San Francisco we shut down the city, so many of us.  It was psychedelic.  The White Room by the Cream instantly takes me back there. More so than the Grateful Dead who were playing then. It’s a bit of blur with flashes of smiles, laughter, naked bits of beautiful bodies, the Golden Gate Bridge  and bits Gracie Slick blasting out across the city. across the city. 

No one was throwing rocks. No one was attacking police. No one was carrying guns or shooting weapons at the authorities.  It wasn’t a riot. It was a protest.  

Kids these days don’t know the difference between a protest and a riot.  None of us were getting paid. All of us were living off our parents or summer jobs, casual work that paid for the rent.  There wasn’t any coke or fentanyl.  People drank beer and wine.  Some of the old geysers in their 30’s were chugging back whiskey but they were just there for the young girls. Mostly everyone was too wasted to be smashing federal buildings.  All that lovemaking, smoking and hiking didn’t make for playing baby military types in black suits and throwing Molotov cocktails.  Paisley and bright flower Hawaiian shirts were more the motif. Lots of dancing. I remember a group of us dancing  one evening in candlelight like a Winter Palace Matisse painting. It was a time of encountering zen and learning about mystical Christians like St. Theresa of Avila.  Gandhi was our hero and Martin Luther King. Non violent resistance was a protest.  We were protesters.  

Years later , long after I’d been billy clubbed and hand cuffed for ‘giving lip’ to the authorities, long after I was expelled from high school for saying fuck, the mayor would march beside me along with some MP’s in the last of the peace marches I joined in.  That was way before the Pride Parade and way before I dressed in drag and made a pilgrimage to Stonewall in New York. I was respectable , a bit peculiar, but respectable.  Like protests.  Protests were respectable. 

My parents raised me that if you broke something you had to pay for it. My parents raised me to respect the work of another man. My parents raised me to know that a man and a woman in uniform were just doing their job and that I shouldn’t make it more difficult for them than necessary.  Dad had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII and respected the men who served. He didn’t even hold a grudge against the Germans and Japanese soldiers who served against him. It was the politicians and leaders he had concerns about.  He didn’t feel they cared much for the middle classes and lower classes. I learned young that politics is about choosing the least bad alternative.  I learned also that democracy could be bad but it was never as bad as dictatorships, especially religious and communist dictatorships.  Like Phil Ochs said, « we hate Chow en Lai and I hope he dies , but there’s one things you’ve see, someone’s got to go over there but that someone sure ain’t me. ». We were humble kids compared to the narcissists today. I’m not saying we weren’t arrogant like them but we were just saying ‘Give Peace a Chance’.  There was no civil war.  Hanoi Jane was a traitor. We cared for the American POW’s up to their neck in farces tipped pogo sticks.  We didn’t like celebrities fucking the enemy.   We even knew communists lied.  They tried to continue the war in Europe after Berlin was taken.  They would always claim to be the victims ,but they built walls to keep their citizens in.  The Berlin airlift was a thing of beauty.  Non aggressive.  I grew up seeing that on tv documentaries.   Brilliant flying,   Not long after, we watched Armstrong stepping down on the moon. 

I remember it was another  miracle when the Berlin Wall came down.  All those people freed from communism.  All the folks Solzhenitzen wrote about  getting out of the Siberian Gulags. Now there’s  millions in the Communist Chinese Gulags today and  hundreds of thousands in religious Islamic Iranian prisons. 

Today I listen to the news and hear liars calling riots and looting,  protests.  I can’t wrap my head around it. A lot of people in the north go crazy with a thing we call ‘cabin fever’.  The lockdown really must have done a number on people, especially the media.  They sound so turned around they don’t know right from wrong like the Prime Minister of Canada. CSIS, the national security service, says the Communist Chinese party has infiltrated the Canadian education system, media and politics to the highest level.

I’m too old for this shit.  I like staying in.  I’m as afraid of ignorant people and the lawless as I am of Covid 19.  I don’t understand why paying more than half my income in taxes I can’t feel safe walking in the streets at night.  The elite then and now had walls around their own homes.  Now they have bodyguards and private armies and don’t want citizens to have rabbit guns.  Everyone had guns when I was growing up, before Trudeau’s father..  Then we left the doors unlocked.  I asked the police I know why the mobs keep destroying property, interrupting traffic and communications ,more and more, without anyone  suffering consequences.  What happened to law and order and peace.   They told me the  politicians won’t let them stop the riots.  

I’d like to defund the politicians.    

June 4, 2020 Jumanji, Astronauts, Communist China’s Fifth Column

Confusion reigns with riots in the street stoked by Communist China’s Fifth Column and International Looter rings seeking the latest TV sets. It’s all happening while a couple of Astronaughts from Space X and NASA are advancing history with the latest manned flight. On the streets of New York women are pooping in public as a protest against their parents affluence.  The envy and greed are palpable.  Anxiety flares.  Already the poverty hits the third world because of first world truculence.  Black children facing starvation look at television images of Beverly Hills. Pedophiles salivste. A Brooklyn Democrat lawyer sets a government building on fire with a Budweiser Molotov cocktail.

I’m sitting in a virtual office in a northern rain forest. I’m trying to calm and reassure and keep the flow of medications coming: antidepressants, anti anxiety, anti psychotics, methadone, suboxone, naltrexone. anti seizure, viagra, cialis.  I am impressed with the acceptance and resilience of the mentally ill. There’s still  an increasing need for asylum. 

When I’m not looking at a screen and talking into an iPhone, I watch birds outside my window. Yesterday nuthatches. The day before cedar waxwings.I walk the dog each day . Yesterday I saw an immature eagle. He seemed confused as to what he was supposed to kill.  

Covid 19 is still with us.  The old and sick have continue in quarantine while the young and healthy return to work and play while others loot.  Herd immunity is hoped for. Moderna and Zeneca vaccines are promising.  There’s still nothing to fix stupid.  PM Trudeau continues his reign of pillage and the people love that he gives them free stuff,their futures, the futures of their children, the futures of their grandchildren.  Canada daily descends into communism.  Xi Jinpeng with the UN and George Soros wish to rule the world.  Trudeau turns his back on the Commonwealth and America and invites the Chinese Communist Party to work with him.  So far the sound of guillotines hasn’t come to Quebec.

It’s bizarre. This fictitious media reality drama, stranger than fiction, is funnelled into my bubble world through the same Satellite Internet that takes out my words of comfort and hope. The media creates crazy narratives. Competing industries of activism and marketing.  The new sacred cow is social justice. The worship of words like multi cultural and intersectionalism is reminiscent of a facelifted  70’s ‘running dog capitalism’ phrase book. The same old snake skins. Me first. Me first.  Ego and more ego.  I feel old as I listen and the young don’t.  

I pray and meditate.  I pay more and more taxes. Notice that the price of meat has doubled.  Still I’ve running water, heat, sunshine, Gilbert’s seems better today, the heart medicine hopefully working. It’s been a long week.  I’m weary by Thursday.  Have meetings this evening.  Will rally.  The chaos in the streets is unsettling. I wish we had India’s Shacta.  Our legal system has to be overhauled and brought into the 2020’s.  Our parliament has been closed so politicians always fat cats are paid to languish in palaces.  The drugs and booze flow in a constant palace party  Sophie sings, ‘Let them eat cake!” No transparency.  

I don’t know. It’s all hearsay. The more the media says President Trump lies, the more he twitters truth. Benghazi Hillary lost her appeal. Trudeau steals more guns. No ID is required to vote. Postrationalism truth is convenience. Taqiya helps. 

Here I watch little birds and get bum shots because they turn at the last moment. They all have ADD.  At least the big predators sit still for portraits. It always was thus.  

I’m hurting less today.  The pain was such I couldn’t breathe and lay for a while to let the spasm go. I took Tylenol and Ibuprofen and stayed still till the spasm passed. I wondered if it was when I lifted the piece of paper turning. It’s hard to walk.  I’m waiting for a special chair. Sitting on the couch working has been a special kind of stupid. It’s all psychosomatic. But the fear is less now. The tension passing.  Covid 19 is out there. It can kill me but I’m growing used to it like patients describedthe sounds of war in the streets of Sarajevo and the streets of Belfast.  I’ve hear so many refugees with stories of valour and shame.  

Meanwhile I’m here watching little birds and walking my dog and have nothing to complain about. My mother would say that to us as kids. You have nothing to complain about when we would whine. If we cried in a mood she would say, if you want something to cry about I’ll give you something to cry about. The we would laugh. My mother Irish. My father Scottish. Both true Canadian.

My aunt would say count your blessings.

My mother would also  say ‘if you’re bored and have nothing to do’ you can peel the potatoes or clean the floors or do the dishes. That quickly got us out of the house. I spent my childhood handing wrenches to my father and my brother.  Back then being an assistant was a glorious thing. Now everyone is entitled to being a CEO.  

I’m happy I suppose.  I’m not ecstatic. I’m grateful. It could always be worse. It could be better. I could have my own spaceship.  I could be a space archeologist looking for ancient technology on distant planets finding the secrets of new energy sources and meeting blue people. Perhaps my next life.

Here it’s good. Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Angel Michael. Thank you St. Francis. Thank You Mother Mary. Thank you St. Thomas. Thank you Saint Peter. Thank you saints of all religions. Thank you joy and hope.  God bless all. May the long time sunshine always surround you and the good light within you guide your way home. 

Taksim Gezi Park Riots, Istanbul, Turkey

My guide Mehmet Tetik pointed out Gezi Park when he first showed me Taksim Square.  I was more interested in the incredible monument to the truly amazing Ataturk one of history’s greatest soldiers and visionaries, a true statesman.  Ataturk was Turkey’s first president.
“This was where the riots occurred between the police and developers and students. Did you not see it in the news,”
Indeed, yes ,  I had. I’d followed the BBC filming of this, amazed at the numbers of people involved and the police with tear gas cannons.  “That was here!” I said somewhat.
Mehmet nodded.  I felt like I was at the site of modern history, a place like that in Berlin where the wall came down. Mehmet had been showing so much ancient history and yet here I was being showed in passing a bit of history of my own time. We walked on to the main street of New Town.
The park was so serene today with locals and tourists, women, children and old people enjoying this little oasis of green and tranquility in the midst of a bustling noisy city centre.

I thought of the urban developer I knew who studied what he described as ‘third spaces’. I remember him telling me that crime and discord could be directly related to the lack or presence of ’third spaces’ in a city.  A third space is different from the ‘first place’ or ‘home and the ‘second space’ or workplace in a city.  The third space were these other spaces that were the ‘anchors of community because they facilitated and fostered broader creative interaction. Oldenberg in his famous book, “The Great Good Place’ articulated this all. Obviously Gezi Park was just such a third space.
The Istanbul Modern Art Museum had an amazing black and white video of the Gezi Park riots.
My new friend, Deborah, a college professor, living hear Taksim Square had been kind enough to walk me through the conflict.  “The students were there but it was these politicians who couldn’t be arrested that were instant heroes as they stood before the bull dozers."
“It wasn’t radicals. Tens of thousands of ordinary people came out. There’s no other green space in Beyoglu like Gezi Park.  There was a sense that this government was like the bulldozers here so it was as much a metaphor.  There’s tremendous fear now about the government’s perceived destructiveness. Everyone loved Ataturk and Turkish people want democracy but there was a feeling that Turkey was becoming a police state. The Gezi Park Riots were at the centre of all this.  Then suddenly the police left, it was over and today we still have this park.  People saw this as a sign that the government could still hear the voice of the majority and wasn’t deaf as people had feared. “
We sat in a cafe enjoying coffee.  Some men came up wanting to interview us about the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. Deborah said how sad she was at  the loss of life and the tragedy of it all. I, typically , answered their questions with more vehemence.  “I don’t think murdering innocent people can be justified.  I think the murderers are just common criminals, sociopaths and psychopaths who have a desire to kill and use religion or whatever else is handy to justify their lack of civilization or social maturity.”  Deborah said she thought the young men had difficulty with translating words like “psychopath’ and ‘sociopaths’.  They did look a little befuddled after I’d spoken.
Gezi Park really was a lovely place. Deborah and I talked about our pasts and what had brought us to Istanbul.