Instagram story viewer> @james.mendes_> Posts

James

@james.mendes_

1.1K

followers

5179

following

Poker Pro
Tennis Master
Dhamma Walker
Singer-Songwriter
Restorative Justice Pilgrim
Full Thyroidectomy for Cancer
Hunyuan Qigong Taiji Practitioner.

POSTS STORIES REELS

Trigger warning: loud boys.

A video with the haka, led by the youngest MP in New Zealand's parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, went viral for protesting a provocative proposal by problematic Pakeha aiming to modify the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding agreement between the British Crown and the indigenous leaders of the north island of Aotearoa. The proposal had no hope of success and was therefore simply agitation. She responded appropriately. The entire parliament had to be suspended.

Here you see a group of Maori and Pakeha boys, in their assembly at Palmerston North Boys’ High School on the 14th April 2016, living haka. They honour guidance counsellor, John Adams, who was a teacher at the school for 30 years, himself Pakeha. Please stop calling haka a war dance. It's not. It can be. It can also be this.

The fire of indigeneity has not gone out, is burning brighter, and will eclipse the world soon. Be warned. by @james.mendes_

Halfway through the month of remembrance, what else can we remember? Or what else have we forgotten? Answer for yourselves, again it is obviously not for me to say.

But what I will comment upon is what I have been hearing a lot of during my movements around Germany and Europe. I have been doing much what I have been doing here. Having conversations, ranting a little, perhaps some might prod that I was preaching, possibly poke even that I was proselytising.

Well, all well and good. Maybe I am, and maybe I was. Most of you are from my previous lives. People I commune with from Berlin don't tend to follow me here. Either they are not social media people, too busy with their own influencing, or their own professional preaching.

Again, all well and good. They are not my target audience. Many have been active for far longer. Most 'get it'. And a lot are 'getting on with it'. You lot are my audience, and quite a few of you also get it, I'm sure. I just haven't seen most of you in years. So I don't really know whether you're getting on with it. But I also know a lot of you either don't get it, or get it but aren't getting on with it.

So let's define terms. What does it mean to 'get it'? Well, for me, that means understanding 12 genocides are happening around the world right now, if not more, and many ecocides for good measure, along with plenty of femicide, homicide, domicide, culturicide, all the '-cides' you can shake a stick at.

To 'get it' means understanding modern imperial extractive capitalism is the radical (meaning 'root' from the Latin 'radix') cause of most of these genocides, ecocides, femicides, etc; understanding that modern imperial post-communism (i.e. capitalism again) is the radical cause of at least one of the genocides, a lot of the ecocide too, and many of the other -cides as well.

Continued in comments... by @james.mendes_

@nabil.boukili #génocide #nonviolence #truth by @james.mendes_

Representing the School of Hunyuan at last weekend's Tuishou Exchange at @shaolintempleuk . Thank you @naxoencinatuishou for the recommendation to contact @mcginlay.barry to whom I also thank for organising such a fun event. Learned just as much, if not more, sitting with @shifuyanzi over tea afterwards, founder of the London temple, and a chief disciple of Shi Yong Xin, Abbot of the Shaolin Temple in China. Sending regards to the School of Hunyuan in Berlin under @diego_agullo training with Sifu @taijidisciple right now! And thanks as always to @kaya.podcast for starting me on this particular path of qigong and taiji.⚡️

The free paper produced by @shaolintempleuk confirming the eternal principle of change, or anicca in Pali dhamma, amongst other cosmologies and wisdom traditions, offered by @shifuyanzi also pictured.

The next exchange is on the 2nd August, and is open to complete beginners. Tuishou means 'pushing hands' and is the playful application of taiji forms. It is a nonviolent energy exchange, asking questions of the physical structure of one's partner. Contact @mcginlay.barry for more info, as there is also a more regular session on Hampstead Heath! by @james.mendes_

"NULLIUS IN VERBA": Take no-one's word for it.

As seen on the M1 Southbound by Junction 13 between Rugby and London en route to the Shaolin Temple and Wimbledon; a motto from 1663.

By all the gods of sound and stone, for my sins, sometimes I love this country.

#duediligence by @james.mendes_

I've been challenged by @tomjennings_woodcarver to start a rival Instagram page. Still haven't managed to upload the Spanish hike and stream-of-consciousness footage, so I might let him run his woodworking business in peace. This was a couple months back, and it's always great to work with your hands, especially in wood, one of the most sustainable materials around. On top of which, we need to relearn the old ways anyway. The new-fangled planned obsolence of consumerist garbage will be the death of us...

#woodcarvingart #oldways #thehand

Watch the pro at work...

Spoon-ageddon.

The start of a stool.

We ran out of time, so I'm finishing at home. Give me a year and you might see the final product... by @james.mendes_

Not a bad day. Proper coach again. ATP accreditation through one of the players I've worked with. Straight on to the Andy Murray Arena to watch @emmaraducanu in the semis with a massive win over @iva_jovic07 in straight sets. Then down the tunnel into the guts of Queens and on into the Player's Lounge. Massive all you can eat buffet with incredible food, two things that never usually go together! And then to wrap it all off, the cushiest chair massage I've ever had. Little kip and back for the final 😁

*edit, oh yeah, thanks @adil.kalyanpur wasn't sure if you wanted me tagging you in case I got in trouble for robbing half the kitchen 😅 by @james.mendes_

No, I'm not Christian. I was Catholic, but am removing myself from the Vatican lists. I was confirmed to keep my Avo happy. But I held my fingers crossed behind my back, even as a child, when they said "Do you accept Christ as your Lord and Saviour?" The Man of Galilee was cool. Christ is not. But again, this first James was great. The James of the Way of St James to Santiago (translates as Saint James) de Compostela, which you all walk thinking it makes you holy or some nonsense, was cooler. They were both Palestinian in the sense they were born in the Roman Empire's district of Syria-Palestine. They were spiritual anti-imperialists as today's Palestinians still are. The black James Brown might be the coolest though. Full images in story, and in story highlights if posterity has come knocking. Whether you read this in 2026 or 3026, know that James' represented until the end.

#james by @james.mendes_

Slide 1 - 5. Self-explanatory. Practise your literacy for a change. Slide 6 - artist forgotten, but seen in Berlin somewhere. Do you have any discipline? Do you have any willpower? Where there is a will, there is a way. But willpower is not everything. Krishnaji does mention how the will is a bastardisation of presence. But he does not condemn it of course. We must start with willpower to wield power to move beyond power. Or something. Idk, go read Krishnaji too. Or go to his school in Suffolk. I've posted enough of his stuff by now. Those of you still propagandised by what the chap who wrote the first 5 slides mentions, just jog on. There's nothing for you to see here. If you haven't started to see the evil you are participating in, there is absolutely no hope for you, in this lifetime anyway, IMHO. by @james.mendes_

Just a little reminder that I am still a progressive performance and participation tennis professional. The permanent nerve damage in my dominant shoulder from the cancer surgery did lead to complete trapezius atrophy and scapular collapse a couple years back, and nothing has changed, but we do what we can. Which is one of the reasons I went for a padel coaching certification with @ptrtennisuk and @pcrpadel in Glasgow. The fact @judymurray_ had also signed up to become padel trained had absolutely nothing to do with it, honest 😁

Bunch of great coaches being trained on this course, and I apologise to the chap I blocked the face of during the crazy shot on the third slide. I've got a similar photo to the second one, from the Master of Tennis certification I took with the PTR over a decade ago, given by one of the strongest mentors I've ever met, the battleaxe, Dr Anne Pankhurst. In that photo, we were all men. Here, 60% of the coaches are women as you can see. Thankfully some things change for the better. But not all of course.

Great respect to @nikslater07 for running a tight course, and to @emmavictoriawells the owner of PTR UK for putting it on. (And apologies again for unleashing 40 years of frustration into that ball!)

Fantastic location as well at @racketbarnglasgow as every single inch of the site was clean as a whistle, the systems were smooth, and the structures seemed sound.

Hit up @overstonepadel for your padel needs in the Midlands though. My cousins' community courts on the ancestral farm! by @james.mendes_

Will be starting a new account (*edit, now @ai.soil ) for the community garden project I just started with @gardenorganicuk at the transformative justice project I am in the process of starting where I live, called SOIL@AI: Solidarity Organised In Love at Abbotts Inn. Will get the account names tagged in the comments below whenever I get around to creating them. Will make a song and dance about it anyway later on, so you should hear and see more later.

One correction, it was 26 years ago, not 25. We moved at the turning of the millenium, as the fears of the Y2K Bug died down. (Gather round children, as I tell you tales from before the turning of the world.)

Do comment below if you want to come visit. I have eight double bedrooms available for now. But they will eventually go to people seeking refuge and asylum who I currently volunteer for teaching their children tennis at the local hotel in Dunchurch, when the government closes that facility down and expects us in the private sector to somehow house everyone who has fled to this country from the wars and genocides that we have enabled. A lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through first, as well as endless renovation that Heritage England will have to approve.

Also therefore let me know if you want to host a meditation retreat, yoga workshop, taiji or qigong course, etc etc, as I have the space. @sarahsteinlubrano and @max.haiven are currently considering become the first spaceholders here, as they run radical writing retreats, and that meshes very nicely with transformative justice, or so I am led to believe!

In solidarity organised in love from Abbotts Inn,

✊🏾 by @james.mendes_

Hike footage delayed. Met Haya and Alia from @soasliberatedzone and @soaspalestine at the Frontline Club where @kennarduk launched his book on neo-nazis the US recruits into its genocide forces, from five posts ago. No need to wait years to upload, unlike the Lisbon and Berlin media from six and seven posts ago. Permission granted by organisers, most people's faces obscured, speakers known, nothing illegal occurring. We still have a right to protest, for now. Because UK government has proscribed free speech at protests, has scrapped jury trials for protesters (insane), and is using Israeli facial recognition software to track citizens on the street irrespective of activity: shopping, jogging, cycling, etc all included. "It doesn't matter if you obey the law!" STFU, you white supremacist lackeys.

1 & 2. SOAS is one of at least 12 UK universities to pay a private security firm illegally spying on Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students, some children. They expelled Haya, essentially for being Palestinian. They are one of the worst examples of zionist rot in this country. I had my own disciplinary witch-hunt for challenging the toxic and deceitful tennis apparatus at Loughborough University, for which I had to seek my own legal advice, but this is another level of McCarthyism.

3 - 8. Downing Street protest against the Israeli summary execution via hanging of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are civilians, some children.

9. Alanbrooke, Master of Strategy. I do not concur. Empire's strategy is now coming home to roost. The moral arc of the universe is actually a boomerang. And it is about to hit us in the face.

10. We honour women in this country supposedly. Shame we can't shut down a r*pe academy.

11. @soasliberatedzone itself at Byng Place, near Euston, London.

12 & 13. @ijan_uk International Jewish Anti-zionist Network speakers were eloquent, compassionate, and angry their own Jewishness is labelled as antisemitic by zionists who are the worst antisemites and islamophobes on Earth.

14. Box behind my bolthole.

15 - 17. Elephants.

18. 'The Mendes Goat' to be referenced in hike post.

19. Fewer oilseed r*pe seeds here than r*pists.

20. Tigga no#5. by @james.mendes_