FLYING DUTCHMAN SOARS IN WORLD CUP

Robin van Persie of the Netherlands scores the team's first goal with a diving header in the first half during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Group B match between Spain and Netherlands at Arena Fonte Nova on June 13, 2014 in Salvador, Brazil. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

 

There is always a moment in a major sporting event when a spectacular shot or throw captures the true essence of the sport and that moment this year was Robin van Persie's on the fly header which tied the game with Spain and shocked the world with its uninhibited audacity, brilliance and joy and also established Holland as the team to beat in this year's World Cup: Allen L Roland

The flying Dutchman, Robin van Persie, not only electrified the world with his soaring header but he inspired his team and soon the rout was on ~ As Arjen Robben got in gear and brilliantly attacked through the middle ~ Spain’s central defenders, Sergio Ramos and Gerard Pique, faltered and last year's champion Spain was thrashed 5 to 1. All of this occurred with striking workers and bloodshed in the streets of Rio as an ongoing reminder of the world wide inequality of our times.

Van Persie's equalizer from the back of Spain's net.

 

I've always considered myself a citizen of the world so the World Cup every four years gives me the chance to exercise that liberty as a fan with 32 teams throughout the world. But what fully captures me is the joy and exuberance of each countries followers which is unlike any other event in the world ~ as such, the World Cup offers the whole world the chance to celebrate together for one month in the spirit of the true football (soccer).

 

The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation (Brazil) over a period of one month ~ this phase is often called the Final Competition.

A qualification phase, the Preliminary Competition currently takes place over the preceding three years, and is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation ~ which this year is Brazil.

 

This is truly a world event ~ The FIFA World Cup is the world's most widely viewed sporting event; an estimated 715 million people watched the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany and the 2010 event in South Africa was broadcast to 204 countries on 245 different channels. Inside the stadiums, a total of 3,170,856 spectators attended the 64 matches an average of 49,670 per match and the third highest aggregate attendance behind USA 1994 and Germany 2006.

 

The United States victory over Ghana 2-1 in Group G will be short lived since they still have to face Portugal and defeat a vastly superior Germany ~ which means that Germany will most likely eventually be facing Holland (the Netherlands) in the finals.

 

To me, this is Holland's year for they have never won the World Cup, although they were the finalists with Spain four years ago, but they are now playing like a team possessed. Watching Argen Robben manipulate the middle with his quickness and guile and strike like a lightning bolt was truly breathtaking along with Persie's speed and desire. See Robben in action ~ One minute video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7hNprwwb5s

 

Persie's header goal however is without a doubt the poster story for this 2014 World Cup and here it is in real time ~ along with Robben and Persie embracing each other while delirious supporters celebrate in the stands ~ One minute Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tS0swOhqBM

 

“It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.”
~ Simon Kuper, Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport

 

Catch the World Cup fever !!

 

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/flying-dutchman-soars-in-world-cup.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and heart centered spiritual counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations at allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is also a lecturer and shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

 

DEATH OF A LION / HUGO CHAVEZ 1954 - 2013

Larger than life and now larger than death ~ Hugo Chavez will not be forgotten. His permanently displayed embalmed body will be a constant reminder of his righteous indignation of the imperialistic West and our illegal wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as his empowering commitment to the Latin American poor and disenfranchised which even extended to the United States: Allen L Roland

"Like Bolívar, Chávez swore to break the chains binding Latin Americans to the will of the mighty. Within his lifetime, the ties of dependency and indirect empire have loosened" Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

Every lifetime personalities emerge whose personality, presence and commitment transcend politics and they stand alone at the pinnacle of human achievement. Nelson Mandela is one of these people as is Martin Luther King Jr but the irrepressible Hugo Chavez also belongs on that same world stage. Who can forget Chavez rightfully calling the Cheney/Bush administration the devil from the podium of the UN on September 20, 2006. Every word he spoke denouncing American intentions and imperialistic ambitions, to the enjoyment of many in the UN audience, was true ~ for seven years later American imperialism and exceptionalism is dying in the graveyard of Empires, Afghanistan. Three minute UN Chavez speech ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOsABwCrn3E

As Chris Nineham correctly concludes in ICH ~ "Chavez put to shame all the so-called progressive leaders around the world who hide behind fabricated public opinion to justify embracing the market and moving to the right. He proved that radical policies work and win support. He showed that defiance of US imperialism is possible and popular. He will be missed in every corner of the globe." See article ~ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34216.htm

He will be missed but not forgotten, as another nemesis to neoliberalism, British MP George Galloway, articulates on the death of Chavez during a recent interview ~ along with Republican congressman Luke Messer, who airily dismissed Chavez as an unimportant tyrant and despot and in the process revealed the moral shallowness of our political arena. Note the disparity of their views in this excellent 8 minute video interview ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0rojYMx5c4

Above all, Hugo Chavez was a man of the people and had a fondness for the south Bronx of New York. On one of his trips to the UN, Representative José E. Serrano, a Democrat from the South Bronx, invited him to the neighborhood. As Frances Robles writes in the New York Times ~ " Mr. Chávez, the congressman said, made it clear he did not want to visit “power brokers.”  Instead, he spent several hours one September morning greeting local leaders at a community development corporation, where tables were set up and various groups distributed brochures as if the event were a college fair at a high school.
Mr. Chávez stopped to chat with neighborhood advocates one by one, several people recalled, impressing everyone with his uncanny ability to recall obscure historical facts about each person’s home country… We expected, honestly, for him to walk through, say a few words and leave,” Mr. Serrano said. “Three and a half hours later, he was still there. ‘What’s the name of your organization? What do they do? How are you funded? Why did you name it that?’ He did this table by table by table. Then he would quote a poet, artist, politician or historical figure from Panama, Mexico, the Dominican Republic or wherever the person was from.”  He left people with the impression that he had looked at the South Bronx, saw the slums of Caracas and fell in love with the place. He ended the morning dancing with a straw hat perched on his head. Out of that visit was born a community-relations program that would donate $5 million to grass-roots groups in the South Bronx, paying for a variety of projects, including the restoration of the Bronx River, after-school classes, literacy programs and food cooperatives." See article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/nyregion/in-the-south-bronx-memories-of-chavez-and-his-largess.html?emc=eta1

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who died this week, playing percussion on the guira with Omar Freilla of the band Palol Monte during a visit to the South Bronx in 2005.

“Here was a guy who the corporate media tried to push us to dislike by saying, ‘This guy is trying to empower himself forever,’ ” said Julio Pabon, a City Council candidate who participated in a Citgo-financed food co-op. “That’s not how we saw him in the Bronx. In the Bronx, he was a guy who came here and talked about helping people so they didn’t get strung out trying to pay their heating bills.”

Here's some of Chavez's most colorful quotes which endeared him to many, including myself, for indeed he was a fearless revolutionary and truth teller in a time of worldwide apathy and deception;

“Remember, little girl, I’m like the thorn tree that flowers on the plain. I want my scent to passers-by and prick he who shakes me. Don’t mess with me, Condoleezza. Don’t mess with me, girl.” — Chávez, to then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in 2006

“A building never collapses like that, unless it’s with an implosion.” Chavez in 2006 reacting to a television report investigating a theory that the U.S. government was behind the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers

“Go right to hell.” “You are a pawn of imperialism.” To British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006

“He is a donkey.” “Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush.” On former president George W. Bush, 2006

Chavez was right on many counts and particularly on Bush and Iraq. "There were never weapons of mass destruction but Iraq was bombed, and over U.N. objections, (it was) occupied and continues being occupied," Chavez said. Bush alleged that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but none have been found, shattering one of his main arguments for going to war. That's why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country (USA), which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly," Chavez said.

As we come up to the 10th anniversary of the Cheney/Bush illegal attack on Iraq ~ history will show that it was indeed the worst mistake in U.S. history. Peter Van Buren elaborates on this mistake ~   "I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke…In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time."  See article  www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175658/

The lion may be lying in state but the truth still lives, the revolution will continue on and there will be other lions who will carry the banner of nonviolent progressive social change and South America's regional integration.

Hugo Chavez funeral / 2 minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLdUW24XJWo
 

"Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will live forever in history. My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned." - Oliver Stone

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/death-of-lion-hugo-chavez-1955-2013.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

WE ARE THE 99% WHO WANT PEACE, HARMONY AND LOVE ON THE PLANET

As people took to the streets in a rolling action targeting 951 cities in 82 countries from Asia to Europe, Africa and the Americas ~ they are all joined spiritually by a common innate urge to unite and bring about a world cemented in Peace, Harmony and love. We are not dreamers, nothing will stop our march to true freedom and we are already too big to fail: Allen L Roland

“You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain ~ but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life; that there's something wrong with the world; you don't know what it is, but its there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?” - The Matrix - 1999

Mark this moment ~ a true shift in global consciousness is upon us for the Occupy Wall Street Movement is touching deeply felt evolutionary chords which will eventually break down the global walls of greed, separateness and war and will eventually replace them with altruism, social cooperation and peace ~ the true driving forces of evolution.

As Michael Lerner correctly writes ~ “We want to replace a society based on selfishness and materialism with a society based on caring for each other and caring for the planet “.

Meanwhile, there is a well deserved political panic growing on Wall Street as the Occupy Wall Street movement’s top demand of ‘taking the money out of politics’ brings about increased corporate anxiety as well as an intense moment of truth from the mainstream media’s Dylan Ratigan ~ three minute video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cCRnkamitVk

The poet laureate of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the late John Lennon whose prophetic lyrics to Imagine strike a universal need for a world community to unite in peace, love and harmony ~ not war, hatred and disconnection. Read and listen to Lennon’s words for they are now being carried in the streets of cities throughout the world ~

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people,
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_km0u64OLng

This is a people’s movement with the power to change the world ~ because the need to unite and co-operate is a soul based need whereas the need to separate, control and isolate is an ego based need and contrary to human evolution.

As such, the War on Terror is an Unwinnable war !

How can we defeat terrorism if the building blocks of terrorism are ignorance, poverty, hunger, hopelessness and despair?

The more bombs we drop, the more people we kill, the more people we unjustly jail ~ the more the disenfranchised resort to their only available weapon ~ terrorism.

Under these circumstances the most powerful weapon that can be used against Terrorism is social cooperation and altruism. And there is much evidence that these twin weapons of mass outreach to the poor and disenfranchised are the very foundation of our evolution as a human species.

Indeed, It is Teilhard de Chardin who clearly reveals this urge to unite and co-operate as a fundamental law of nature. " If there were no real propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level, indeed, in the molecule itself, it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up in the 'humanized' or human form. " ( The Phenomenon Of Man )

Charles Darwin, to me, captured the "without" of evolution but completely missed the "within" of evolution or mainly the universal urge to unite.

Teilhard used the term 'within' to denote the psychic face or consciousness of matter ~ since the beginning of time ~ which reveals itself in its innate urge to unite.

Teilhard defines this innate urge to unite as an energy force in his famous Law Of Complexity - Consciousness. The law states two principles:

1. Throughout all time there has been an evolutionary
tendency for all matter to unite and become increasingly
complex in nature.

2. With each increase in material complexity, there is a
related rise in the consciousness of matter and an even
greater urge to unite.

Teilhard divided this fundamental energy into two distinct components ~ a Tangential energy which linked the element with all others of the same order and a Radial energy which represented the innate urge toward union and greater complexity as well as a leap in consciousness.

It is this Radial energy in matter, this deep urge towards
union and completion, which eventually manifests itself
as LOVE .

As such, Teilhard's Radial energy is one in the same with what I call a state of Soul Consciousness and The Unified Field . A state of love and soul consciousness that exists not only beyond time and space but also deepest within ourselves and whose principle property is the universal urge to unite.

If we compare this with Darwin's evolutionary theory, Darwin's only error was to substitute matter for spirit as the motivating force of the Universe.

For it becomes increasingly clear, in light of this innate urge to unite, that man is the product of an evolution of cooperation and love. From the pre-atomic stage in the depths of the primordial sea to his present ' humanized ' state ~ man is the product of a seemingly endless evolution within a loving plan of plurality, union and a resultant energy transformation into something more complex, more conscious and more loving.

Our common task on this planet is to surrender to this same universal urge to unite and play our part in the great coming together of mankind ~ and it begins with each one of us surrendering to love, social cooperation and altruism versus hatred, separation and greed.

Richard Leakey wrote in “The beginnings of mankind” that there was very little evidence of violence and aggression in early mankind with considerable evidence of social cooperation and altruism as the deciding factors in evolution.

Scientific American said virtually the same thing in its issue The Arithmetic's of Mutual Help (June 1995) where it shared how computer experiments show how cooperation rather than exploitation can dominate in the Darwinian struggle for survival. The article by Martin Nowak, Robert May and Karl Sigmund seems to reinforce Teilhard's Law of Complexity-Consciousness ~ " Throughout the evolutionary history of life, cooperation among smaller units led to the emergence of more complex structures as, for example, the emergence of multicellular creatures from single-celled organisms. In this sense, cooperation becomes as essential for evolution as is competition."

They conclude by saying ~ “In the course of evolution, there appears to have been ample opportunity for cooperation to have assisted everything from humans to molecules. In a sense, cooperation could be older than life itself. "

And what else but Love, social cooperation and altruism could be older than life itself.

As such, we, the 99%, can no longer deny our deepest and most basic urge to unite and cooperate with one another by continuing to condone an unwinnable war on terror, excessive corporate greed as well as economic and social injustice!

And that is the world wide spiritual thrust of the Occupy Wall Street Movement ~ who utilize the consensus process in their general meetings which is an excellent example of true democracy in action.

Direct Democracy: Eight minute Video -A look into the "HOW" of the Occupy Wall Street movement: The consensus process. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dtD8RnGaRQ

There was no real political change in 2008. There was no real political change in 2010. However, there WILL be real political change in 2012, but it won't be coming from brainwashed couch potatoes, manipulated voter lists, rigged voting machines or predetermined ballot counts. It will be coming from us... The 99 Percent and we are already too big to fail!

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm obviously not the only one,

I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/we-are-99-who-want-peace-harmony-and.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net