If something looks good, smells good, sounds good, feels good and/or tastes good your senses are positively turned on and you automatically enjoy the experience you are about to have.
Physical sensations define our relationship to ourselves and to our surroundings.
There are many pleasures in life.
Some women enjoy imagining bathing in a star filled sky at night in the nude surrounded by butterflies.
Some people enjoy the physical experience of eating braided Apple Strudel.
Some people have brains that don’t feel.
They do not recognize what they are feeling.
They are out of touch with their feelings.
People’s inner-reality shape their view of the world.
There is nothing better than loving human contact.
That mom is very much with her daughter and her daughter is relishing in that fact.
They both feel truly alive right now.
You are not a drop of water.
You are a human being.
Your life will depend largely on your imagination and the thoughts you have.
Imagine eating bright lush colorful melons in a field of wild flowers, and smelling the scent of freshly baked breads and rolls, and drinking freshly brewed strong tea. Better yet do it.
Enjoy a shot of espresso with Creme Brulee with your personal assistant after eating a delicious lunch with your personal assistant of Bacon wrapped Jumbo Shrimp with Saffron Fried Rice with small baby shrimp and bacon bits in it and steamed fresh vegetables.
You and your assistant will be energized and work better after eating a relaxing fun lunch like that together.
Work hard, and play hard, but do not spend all your time working.
The eye has to travel.
Passion and talent arm great artists.
Great artists have the power of genius.
Great artists have the ability to make an audience/viewer/customer/client/lover a part of their own experience.
Here is what was said of Coco Chanel:
“She was extraordinary. The alertness of the woman! The charm! The chic! She was French, don’t forget – totally French!”
Art is story telling.
Fashion is art.
In fashion/art, you have to be one step ahead of the public.
Art has always been not just in step with history but has led the way.
Artists are creators of knowledge.
The more resistance artists encounter the more motivated artists become.
The man or woman who drinks out of this cup is elegant.
Copyright © 2021 By Gary S. Smolker
We are living in an AGE OF FAIRNESS, in an age of creativity, social fairness, racial fairness, inclusiveness, diversity, etc. etc. It is a RENAISSANCE.
We have left the Stone Age. We have left the DARK AGES. We have left the ENLIGHTENMENT and the renaissance which followed the Age of Enlightenment and we have left the Age of Secularization which followed the Age of Enlightenment.
We have entered an age of rational compassionate fairness and religious ferocity.
Some people now realize (1) Black people are just people; (2) they are not an inferior race or a violent race of people; (3) they have suffered many grave injustices, including slavery, systematic anti-Blackness, and inequality of opportunity (a) for an education, (b) for employment, (c) for housing, and for health care.
Some people now realize (1) doing the right thing is just, is justice in action; (2) everybody wants justice; (3) justice is eternal; (4) evil is only temporary, evil doesn’t last; its not the light at the end of the tunnel that counts, it is the light within that counts.
Nearly 95% of the counties that have had protests in the past few weeks are majority white, 75% are more than 75% white. The age group with the largest share of protestors was people under 35 and the income group with the largest share of protestors were those earning more than $150,000.00
According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they had participated in a protest since the beginning of the Trump administration.
In recent weeks, 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of GEORGE FLOYD and others.
The Women’s March in March 2017 had a turn out of about 3 million to 5 million on a single day.
The civil rights marches in the 1960s all together had hundreds of thousands of participants, not millions
Across the United States there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protest began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. Turn out has ranged from dozens to tens of thousands in about 2,500 small towns and large cities.
On June 6, 2020, half a million people turned out in 550 places across the United States to protest against police brutality and for racial justice.
According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they have participated in a protest since the start of the Trump Administration, and 19% said they were new to protesting.
[This post has been revised four times. I began typing this post in May, 2020. The above sections of this post were typed and added to this post on July 13, 2020.]
This post is still a work in progress.
I have rewritten this post three times and I am now revising it for the fourth time.
This is the fourth revision of this post.
This post is still a work in progress.
I am still writing, editing, and revising this post because I believe it is vital to be pushing the conversation on the important social issues of (a) racial injustice,(b) racism, (c) protests against racial injustice, (d) law enforcement reform, (e) the shut down of the economy in the Unites States and other countries to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and (e) Russia’s and China’s efforts to dominate the world and to destabilize and to destroy American society and the American economy.
People are feeling the pain of the coronavirus pandemic.
The pandemic effects (a) people’s health, (b) the health of the economy, and (c) how safe things are. and how safe it is to do things.
The pandemic exposed big problems of our time that connect [(a) health care, (b) race, (c) inequality, (d) racial injustice] and foundational personality traits [(a) empathy, (b) dignity, and (c) human decency] each of which have now become political issues
People are working tirelessly to advance civilization.
The Black protestor in the photograph above is carrying a sign which reads:
“Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I am drowning.”
On July 4, 2020, at protests and counter-protests, in Richmond, Virginia, White Supremacists, Black Lives Matter people, and armed Black Men sang “God Bless America” together at the same time, at the same place.
TODAY: The citizens of the United States are intensely engaged in a propaganda thought control war – an ideology war about racism.
Getting history right is of great importance in present thought control wars.
In the last two months, people living in the United States have lived through a series of convulsive events.
Before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered on May 25, 2020 the world, including the United States, was being battered by the Coronavirus pandemic.
One part of the world economy after another was shut down: people were literally locked down; people were ordered to shelter-in-place; businesses were ordered to close; businesses closed; schools were ordered to close; schools closed.
People’s lives and the business world was turned upside down in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
This caused people to become extremely stressed out.
Forty million Americans had lost their jobs as a result of the lock-down before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.
Then GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.
Then a video of the murder of GEORGE FLOYD was broadcast on social media.
Then the same video was broadcast on conventional media and news outlets.
The murder of GEORGE FLOYD, the callousness of the police officers responsible for his murder – their belief that they would suffer no consequences from the authorities – the man crushing GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes staring straight into the cameras of bystanders who were taking videos and taking pictures of what he was doing – and the lack of an immediate response to GEORGE FLOYD’S murder by the Minneapolis police department was more than the world could take.
Then the local district attorney for the City of Minneapolis decided no crime was committed – that was more than the world could take.
People went into the streets to protest police brutality, social injustice and systemic social injustice. They went into the streets to protest for racial justice.
After watching videos of GEORGE FLOYD being murdered, and hearing about and seeing additional videos of other black men being murdered while in police custody, it was universally believed – and universally agreed – that police treated black people as if black persons’ lives did not matter.
Intense protests and discussion of policing, racial injustice, racism, and white supremacy followed.
NBA superstar Michael Jordan treated:
“We must never turn our backs on senseless brutality. We need to continue peaceful expressions against injustice and demand accountability.”
People became sensitized to the words “racism” and “protest.”
Currently, the most searched words on Google are “racism” and “protest.”
Currently, the best selling book is Ibram X. Kendi’s book HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST.
People received videos that showed black and brown men and women being killed by a one white policeman or by a group of white policemen, people received videos showing the use of excessive force by police, and people received videos of events that took place at protests that followed.
The United States has a history of protests – remember the Boston Tea Party.
Before the 13 British Colonies declared their independence from Britain, White Americans dressed as Indians stormed a British ship in Boston and threw its cargo of tea into Boston Harbor as way of protesting “taxation without representation” – taxes imposed on the American Colonials by the British government.
There were massive citizen protests against the Vietnam War during the Vietnam War.
Americans know their government lies to them.
That is what the Pentagon Papers [published by the New York Times and the Washington Post] lawsuit was about.
The American government lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.
The Pentagon papers exposed the governments’ lies.
The Nixon administration tried to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.
The Nixon administration was unable to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.
While the Vietnam War was raging, people of all ages protested against the war at protest rallies.
Song writers wrote songs protesting the war.
Popular singers like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills Nash and Young (CSNY), and many other leading song-writers-singers wrote and sang songs protesting the Viet Nam War.
In “Teach Your Children” CSNY warned we’re bound to repeat mistakes of the past if we don’t do our best to “teach our children well.”
“Teach YOUR children/ To believe and
“Make a world that/ We can live in.”
That song asks parents to teach their children to be kind … and to understand the why’s of our values.
“Four Dead in Ohio”, a CSNY song penned by Neil Young, is heralded as the the ‘ultimate protest song’ of the turbulent 1970s.
The lyrics evoke the utter shock and moral outrage felt by the Nation following the shootings of college students protesting against the Vietnam War on the Kent State College campus.
The chorus chant “Four Dead in Ohio,” coupled with the lyric line “Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming” refer to the Ohio National Guardsmen who shot and killed four students during the campus protest.
“Four Dead in Ohio” was banned from some AM radio stations because of the challenge to the Nixon Administration in the lyrics but received airplay on underground FM stations in larger cities and college towns.
In 1833 free black people were banned by the State of Alabama by law from living in Alabama.
Jim Crow laws have been common in the South – separate bathrooms for white people and black people, etc. – even after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union.
Lynching of Black People was common at the time Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
From 1915 to 1970, almost six million black people fled the Jim Crow South for northern and western states
People in power – such as President Donald Trump – are trying to deny Black People and Brown People and Native American Indians the opportunity to vote by impeding the use of mail-in ballots.
LeBron James, NBA team owners, and stadiums are stepping in to make sure that BLACK people will get to vote in the upcoming elections.
Stadiums in which NBA games are usually played will be turned into polling places before elections take place later this year.
Lyft has committed to offering free rides or discounted rides to people who need transportation to get to voting places.
White People, Black People. and Latino People are demanding that police departments be defunded; that police conduct be changed; and even that police departments be disbanded.
People are demanding that police procedures be changed – that when police are deployed what they are allowed to do be tightly regulated.
Law enforcement reform has become a hotly discussed topic.
The City of Los Angeles’ city budget has been changed – the amount in the City budget previously proposed be allocated to the police department was reduced in the current city budget – as a result of these demands.
The County of Los Angeles’ budget has been put on hold while the County Supervisors study what is to be done with respect to the amount of money in the County’s budget that is to be allocated to the Sheriff’s Department.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has cut $1 Billion from New York City’s $6 Billion budget for the police department.
The Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed a reform bill which (a) restricts the use of choke holds, (b) bans no-knock police raids, (c) will create a police officer misconduct registry, (d) lowers the threshold to prosecute a police officer to “if they show ‘reckless disregard for someone’s life.'”
ASIDE: Police Officer Derek Chavin – the police officer who killed GEORGE FLOYD – already had 18 complaints lodged against him before he killed GEORGE FLOYD by kneeling on GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes.
A majority of Americans have come to believe that what happened to GEORGE FLOYD is part of a broader pattern of excessive police brutality towards African-Americans.
Information supporting that thesis keeps coming in.
White people have heard from multiple black sources that black mothers tell their children what to do when they see a police officer in order to stay alive.
White people have seen unarmed black men being killed by while police officers – either shot or strangled.
On June 29, 2020, the New York Times reported finding at least 70 people who had died while in police custody over the last decade, after saying [like GEORGE FLOYD said before he died] “I can’t breathe.”
Many people are fed up wit the concept of White Supremacy, the existence of White Supremacy, and the existence of monuments that celebrate White Supremacy.
People have started tearing down and defacing monuments which they feel glorify white supremacy.
People have successfully demanded that many statues honoring white supremacists be removed from public places.
The most famous statue to be removed is a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt was a eugenicist – a person who believed in the superiority of the white race.
People demanded that the statue honoring Theodore Roosevelt (statue pictured above) of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse and a Black Man and an American Indian beneath him at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan be removed.
The American Museum of Natural History announced that it is going to remove the statute.
An intense discussion of the impact of what statues and names represent is on-going – which is a discussion of what constitutes promotion of white supremacy – what promotes the idea that the white race is superior to the black race, and/or what promotes the idea that people who belong to white race are superior to Native American Indians.
People have demanded that statues that celebrate Confederate Generals who fought to maintain slavery be torn down or removed because they glorify and honor the idea that black people are inferior to white people.
Native American People and other people have demanded that the name of the Washington Redskins NFL football team and the name of the Atlanta Braves MLB team be changed.
Above is a photo of the June 26, 1970 magazine cover of A Midwest Newspaper of Women’s Liberation.
The quote (1851) in the photo above (copy below) was written by Sojourner Truth:
“The man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over puddles, or gives me the best place — and ain’t I a woman?
“Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — and ain’t I a woman. I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well? and ain’t I a woman?
“I have born thirteen children and seen most of them sold into slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me – and ain’t I a woman?
On January 26, 2020 the New York Times published a op ed piece written by Caroline Randall Williams’ arguing that that statues of Confederate Generals ought to be torn down.
Her op ed piece begins:
” I have a rape color skin,
“My immediate white male ancestors were all rapists.
“I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.
“I am more than half white and none of it was consensual.
“White Southern men – my ancestors – took what they wanted from the women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power and then failed to claim their children.”
In Los Angeles officials estimate one in 140 residents is infected with COVID 19; a week ago the estimate was one in 400. Christian Ghaly, Director for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the county could begin running out of hospital beds in the next few weeks.Los Angeles officials have banned all July 4 fireworks displays and ordered beaches closed over the coming holiday weekend.
Everyone agrees that they should have respect for the people who protect them.
Last week the Tucson Police Department released a video showing Carlos Ingram Lopez, a 27 year-old Latino man, being restrained face down for for 12 minutes by police officers in April. He died shortly after.
Many Latinos across the United States are calling out police brutality against their communities, echoing similar calls by African-Americans.
Everyone in the United States is now asking:
Currently, the Federal Aviation Agency does not require airline passengers to wear masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Currently, the United States federal government does not require anyone to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
United States President Trump refuses to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
People question the leadership, intellectual integrity, vanity and immaturity of the top infectious disease expert in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
It is widely understood worldwide that the U.S. federal government failed and continues to fail in controlling the spread of the coronavirus.
Forty of the fifty eight states are currently seeing an increase in the rate of coronavirus infections.
The rate of new coronavirus infections in the United States is currently out of control.
The people tearing down statues, attempting to tear down statues, and demanding removal of statues are forcing us to ask ourselves:
The majority of American voters support demonstrators against police brutality.
Many Americans see President Trump as being out of touch with the concept of racial justice.
Many Americans see President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as not understanding the difference between rewriting history and adding a new perspective to history by adding the experience of nonwhite people in the historical narrative.
The people in favor or tearing down or removing statues see statues as a standing memory which supports and honors white supremacy ideas and ideals.
They say the monuments must be torn down to strip the people honored of their laurels.
They say the statues are an emotional investment white people have in a legacy of hate.
The people who tear down and/or ask for monuments to be removed, mantra is:
“Do you mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed ?
“If so, you have an emotional investment in a legacy of hate.”
People have been awakened through protests, and efforts to tear down or remove statues, to complaints about police brutality, racial injustice and systemic racism.
Protests in the United States have had a significant impact on our psyche.
On July 1, 2020, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department released nine minutes of body cam footage showing police officers laughing and celebrating after shooting protestors with rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police brutality after the killing of GEORGE FLOYD in Minneapolis.
Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Rick Maglione said, “our officers were dealing with the chaos of a developing situation.”
The cover of the June 22/June 29, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “THE OVERDUE AWAKENING.”
The cover of the July 6/July 13, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “AMERICA MUST CHANGE.”
Before the events described above took place one out of three Americans were suffering from being in an extreme state of stress and anxiety.
They still are.
At least one out of three Americans are suffering from the trauma of fear of the unknown.
At least one in three Americans are in a state of clinical depression.
Almost all Americans today cannot tolerate differences of opinion.
Their “nerves have been frayed.”
They are in a highly emotional state.
They are maxed out mentally.
The meaning of their life has been turned upside down by recent events.
Many forces are at play.
The amount and type of trauma being suffered by each individual depends upon such factors as:
The energy, momentum and motives of the people responsible for the current uproar about social justice differs from person to person.
The reactions to the uproar about social justice also differ from person to person.
If you are a Japanese American it might rub you the wrong way and it might be extremely irritating to you that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) picture is on all dimes in the United States.
FDR was the President who guided the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.
While FDR was president the U.S. government forced the relocation and internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans to detention camps during World War II.
The interment of Japanese-Americans was the culmination of the federal government’s long history of racist and discriminatory treatment of Asian immigrants and their descendants which had begun with restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.
At the time of internment, only three percent of Japanese-Americans were considered direct threats to U.S. security.
Two-thirds of the prisoners in the camps were native-born American citizens.
On March 18, 1942, the federal War Relocation Authority was established to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of war.”
John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, remarked if it came to a choice between national security and the guarantee of civil liberties expressed in the Constitution, he considered the Constitution just a scrap of paper.
In the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, more than 1,200 Japanese community leaders were arrested, and the assets of all accounts in the U.S. branches of Japanese banks were frozen.
On March 31, 1942 Japanese Americans along the West Coast were ordered to report to control stations and to register the names of all family members.
They were told when and where they should report for removal to an internment camp.
Japanese Americans were given from four days to about two weeks to settle their affairs and gather as many belongings as they could carry.
In may cases, individuals and families were forced to sell some or all of their property, including businesses within that period of time.
Nearly 2,00 Japanese Americans were told that their cars would be safely stored until they returned.
However. the U.S. Army soon offered to buy the vehicles at cut-rate prices and Japanese who refused were told that the vehicles were being requisitioned for the war.
Between 1942 and 1945 a total of ten internment camps were opened, holding approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time, in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas.
On December 18, 1944, the government announced that all relocations centers (internment camps) would be closed by the end of 1945.
The last of the camps was closed in March 1946.
With the end of internment, Japanese Americans began reclaiming or rebuilding their lives.
A presidential commission in 1982 identified race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership as the underlying causes of the government’s interment program.
Above information about internment camps obtained/taken from Encyclopedia Britannica.
Many Japanese-Americans fear that allowing affirmative action (to achieve racial justice) will adversely effect their children.
An amendment to the Constitution of the State of California (ACA – 5) is set to go on the ballot in November, 2020.
The purpose of the amendment is to void a law that makes it illegal to use race as a grounds for admission to state universities.
Japanese American parents have signed a petition against enactment because they fear if admission to UCLA and UC Berkeley is not based on the academic excellence of the applicant, their highly academically successful children will be discriminated against – they fear their children will have a lower chance of gaining admission to a public university in the University of California system.
While Black Lives Matter leaders and followers are working tirelessly to advance civil society, let’s protect ourselves from doing stupid things because of mindless anger.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Although it is important to put an end to use of excessive force by police it is at least as important to to be protected from violent crimes committed by thugs and for firemen and police to be able to respond to emergencies and to not live in fear..
My research assistant has reported to me:
Before the murder of GEORGE FLOYD, a black police officer Mohamed Noor in the Minnesota police department MURDERED a white woman, Gustine Damond.
Her family was awarded $20 million in damages for her wrongful death in 2018.
Mr. Noor was sentenced in 2019.
A grave danger of being beat up and robbed by black thugs in Minneapolis was well known before Frye (the mayor of Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered by four Minneapolis) was elected mayor of Minneapolis.
While I was writing this post, my research assistant sent me videos of black thugs beating up and robbing white people on a street corner in Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD.
It has been reported to me that up to 20% of many cities’ annual city budgets come from revenue generated by fines related to traffic violations written by policemen.
Someone other than an official policeman can write up a ticket for being parked in a parking space after expiration of time paid for at a parking meter.
There is no need for policemen to write up parking meter expiration of time violations.
Running traffic lights — going through a red light — can be monitored and “caught” with cameras located at intersections instead of by a policeman stationed near a stop sign or traffic signal.
Traffic stops routinely made by policemen and policewoman riding in patrol cars need to be regulated.
Traffic stops by a police officer should not be allowed to escalate into a police officer killing an occupant in the vehicle stopped.
But they do so often that black parents instruct their children what to do if they are stopped by a policeman while they are driving a car in order to avoid being killed by that police officer.
People should not be afraid when they see a policeman in a police vehicle.
Do you know anyone who is not frightened when they see a police car near their own car while they are driving their automobile?
All police officers should be required to attend a six hour course, at least once a year, in which “racism” is defined, in which it is explained in no uncertain terms that racism is bad, in which it is made abundantly clear that racial profiling is not permitted, and in which it is made clear that police are supposed to treat people in as friendly manner as they would like to be treated by their neighbors..
The amount of the traffic fine assessed for a traffic citation should fit the crime.
Poor people should not be required to pay a fine beyond their means.
Fines should be related to means.
The burden of proof to obtain a conviction in a criminal trial is “it must be beyond a reasonable doubt. that the accused committed the crime charged.”
The burden of proof required for a plaintiff to prevail – to obtain a judgment – in a civil trial is “that it is more likely than not the defendant caused damage suffered by plaintiff.”
The burden of proof to obtain a finding of police misconduct against a police officer involved in traffic-stop shooting ought to be “it was unreasonable for the police officer who shot the victim to believe his LIFE was in jeopardy.”
According to FBI Crime Statistics, Black People are responsible for 50% of all murders and 50% of all strong armed robberies.
The vast majority of violent crimes (murder and armed robbery) are black on black crimes.
Black victims are most often the victims of violent crimes committed by black people.
Black people need to be protected by policemen and policewomen from violent crimes perpetrated by black criminals on them in their neighborhoods.
Police departments shouldn’t be de-funded unless necessary to implement a viable alternative system.
There are 500,000 violent crimes between people of different races per year.
In approximately 450,000 of those 500,000 violent crimes the victim is white and the perpetrator is black.
In approximately 50,000 of those violent crimes the victim is black and the perpetrator is white.
Although the black population is only 13% of the population, the black population is responsible for 50% of all murders, and 60% of all strong arm robberies. The vast majority of these are black on black crimes.
Although 13% percent of the population of the United States is black, black people are responsible for between 24-26% of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics.
Information from FBI Statistics.
Information provided by my research assistant.
The number of young black men being arrested is going down.
Compared to 20 years ago, there are now half as many black men under the age 25 in prison.
Prison numbers come from Department of Justice.
Information from my research assistant.
Although almost everyone takes it for granted that there is systemic bigotry in America.
That is not true.
The fact that two and a half times as many black men are killed by police while in police custody than the number of white men killed while in police custody does not mean there is systemic bigotry in America.
It is inflammatory and self-destructive to claim that the majority of people in America are bigoted.
The majority of people in America are not bigots.
America is a county where capitalism flourishes.
That is one of the reasons immigrants immigrate to America.
America is a nation of immigrants.
Most people in the United States are highly ambitious.
All the people I know personally are highly ambitious individuals.
People can go from rags to riches in America.
For example consider Steve Jobs.
He was an orphan.
He had to drop out of college because he did not have the means to pay tuition.
Today the stock of the company he founded, Apple, is worth more than the entire net worth of the entire oil and gas industry,
Minorities are highly successful in America.
I personally know a number of spectacularly successful minorities.
I personally know that a high numbers and a high percentages of the graduates from the most elite universities in America are minority students.
Myself and my daughters attended elite universities in America.
When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in 1964 – 1967, over 75% of the students in my chemical engineering classes were students who were – immigrants or foreign nationals – not born in the United States.
When I attended the graduation ceremony of my daughter at Cornell University, an Ivy League University in Ithaca, New York, about 25 years ago, it seemed to me that over 80% of the students receiving MS and PhD graduate degrees in scientific disciplines and in engineering fields had Asian names.
When I worked on a graduate degree (MS degree in biochemical engineering) in the Olin Hall School of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 1967 and 1968 the Dean of the School was a White man. Today, the Dean of that School is a Black man.
A high percentage of the people earning the the most money working for tech companies in Silicon Valley are minorities; a high number and a high percentage of the most successful start-up companies in Silicon Valley and their founders are minorities-immigrants.
A high percentage of the managers of high tech companies in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, are minorities.
Recently, the United States has had a Black President and a Black Attorney General.
Mayors and Chiefs of Police throughout the United States are Black.
In a big city like Los Angeles, more than 50% of the residents are either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.
More that 200 languages are spoken in the City of Los Angeles.
Recent events shown on social media show unnecessary brutality and excessive use of force by policemen.
Policing needs to be humanized.
In John Grisham’s latest novel “Camino Winds”, as three characters are approaching a bridge to get back on an island that has been pounded by a hurricane, the following discussion takes place:
BRUCE “You are not going to believe this. The cops have the road blocked this side of the bridge and they’re searching each car with dogs. Can you please tell me why?
BOB: “Because they can.”
BRUCE: I mean, these people just had their homes and businesses blown away, so why would they want to sneak explosives onto the island? These cops are out of control.”
BOB: “For the same reason they send SWAT teams to arrest people for bad checks. Because they can and it’s far more dramatic. These guys think they are as tough as Navy Seals and they have to prove it. Look at all the military gear they wear. Why does every Podunk police department have a tank these days? Because the Pentagon has too much stuff and sells it cheap. Why do they send canine dogs units to sniff around the country fair? Because they have the damn dogs and need to use them. Don’t get me started.
BOB: “Why does every fender bender need three cop cars and four fire trucks? Because these guys are bored, sitting around the station and they get their jollies racing up and down the streets with sirens screaming. Tough boys in action. They like to block traffic in all directions, makes ’em feel powerful. They control the situation. Sniffing dogs. Unbelievable. It’ll be midnight before we get there.”
There are many ways to weave together facts to tell a story.
News media compete with other news media for eyeballs.
Media sell a product (advertising) to advertisers based on the number of viewers that view what they broadcast, who those viewers are, and how much and what type of attention their viewers give them.
In July, 2020 over 100 brands that used to advertise on FACEBOOK will not be advertising on FACEBOOK as their protest against FACEBOOK for FACEBOOK disseminating misinformation and hate on its platform.
On Friday, June 26, 2020, Honda of America announced it will not advertising on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM because it has “chosen to stand with people united against hate and racism.”
Levi Straus & Co., said it will suspend advertising on FACEBOOK through the end of July because of FACEBOOK’S failure to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform.
The North Face said, We’re in. We’re out.” — will stop posting content and advertisements on FACEBOOK through July.
Coca-Cola, Starbucks and others have temporarily stopped advertising o FACEBOOK in protest of FACEBOOK spreading misinformation and hate speech.
News is reported in a way that supports the views and desires of specific audiences.
That is why news/information is reported differently by different news media.
Each news outlet broadcasts information that supports the particular set of political/religious views/values of its audience and its advertisers.
People in social organizations, business organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, political parties, politicians, and highly specialized special interest groups, as well as governments, use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to provide propaganda – information and disinformation.
So called “educational institutions” [Kindergarten through high school, colleges, universities, and specialized schools] provide information [which they call education] which fits the agenda of the people in charge.
Like the picture below of two wolves fighting to the death, social media and the so called news media and educational institutions tell stories (report information) differently.
Mary Beard reports in her book ‘HOW DO WE LOOK” that people have been engaged in wars and fights to the death about how to think, in which each side claims it is on the side of God and claims the other side is the devil.
People write history (and the news of current events reported by the media is) slanted to favor the values of a particular audience.
We have reached a place in human social evolution where you may now purchase your choice of color of Band-Aid from Johnson & Johnson.
Today, the most searched words on Google are “protest” and “racism.”
Saturday morning, June 13, 2929), I was sent a video titled ALL BOARDED UP.
The video consisted of a man talking as he is taking a video as he is driving on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
The video showed one boarded up high end retail store after another.
In the video the narrator says, “The media doesn’t show us this.”
The narrator went on to say that the media does not want us to know that all the high end stores on Fifth Avenue were looted during the “protest rally” in Manhattan; the media does not want to wee all those broken windows, or that all the expensive merchandise in those high end stores was stolen.
That doesn’t fit with the narrative the media is selling.
The media is selling the narrative that the protests were all about injustice, the protests were all about the tragic violation of a black man’s (George Floyd’s) civil liberties.
For the past two weeks, whether we like it or not, we have been living in GEORGE FLOYD’S AMERICA.
Will there be a statue of GEORGE FLOYD erected in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House?
Will there be a statute of George Floyd erected in parks in every city in the United States?
Will the will of the people expressed in who they vote for as next president of the United States be based on what has been happening with respect to COVID 19 pandemic and what has been happening as a result of the murder of George Floyd?
Who do we want to venerate?
Do we want to venerate George Floyd?
Will the protestors force us to venerate George Floyd?
Nobody’s back ground is perfect.
I’ve been told George Floyd spent years in prison for armed robbery.
I’ve been told George Floyd was sent to prison for having pointed a loaded gun at a pregnant woman’s stomach, then robbing her.
I’ve also been told that George Floyd served his time and went to Minneapolis got a job as a night security guard and wanted to turn his life around and to redeem himself.
People are tearing down statues, removing statues and defacing statues which they consider to be emblems of white supremacy – which they consider to be powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.
Police have been using tear gas on protestors protesting police brutality and systemic racial injustice. Police have shot rubber bullets at protestors and have senselessly roughed up protestors.
People not associated with the cause of racial justice have joined protest marches. Those people have set fires which burned buildings, and burned police cars; they have been looting and destroying stores, generally causing mayhem.
Let’s hope we don’t go to the next thing.
When I grew up Band-Aids came in only flesh color. See photos below.
Now Band-Aids come in many flesh colors.
Band-Aids now come in many tones of color so that once a person puts one on it is the same color as that person’s skin.
Many years ago, 30 years back, the Crayola Company in an act of racial sensitivity, pulled the flesh colored crayon out.
Many years ago the Frito Lay Company did away with the Frito Bandito.
These acts of racially sensitivity came about without the enactment of any laws or the filing of any lawsuits.
About that band-aid, why not just make it clear so everyone’s true color shows through…because isn’t that what it is all about.
We are all unique.
Embrace the beauty of that.
I know a Hispanic woman who had an identity crisis when she transferred from a community college to UCLA.
When she arrive at UCLA, as a minority student, she was told she “had to join” a Chicano Club.
She attended one meeting. At that meeting she was told her skin tone wasn’t dark enough; that she could pass as being “white” and therefore she wasn’t wanted, she wouldn’t be welcome as a member in the club.
When she told people she wanted to be a corporate lawyer, she was told not to do that.
Instead, she was told to get a PhD in Chicano studies, and learn in her PhD studies how oppressed an victimized Mexicans and other Latin people are in the United States of America.
They told her she would be selling out her “people/her race” if she went to law school and became a corporate lawyer.
She had an identity crisis. She had never thought she would be selling out her “people” if she went to law school to be a corporate lawyer.
She couldn’t relate.
Her parents are immigrants from Central America.
She had never in her entire life felt underprivileged or oppressed or victimized.
She had always felt privileged and still feels privileged to be living in America.
She had always thought, and still thinks, it is wonderful that in America she could/can borrow money to go to UCLA, then borrow more money to go to law school.
Consider the fact that Jesus Christ was not a White Man.
The divine body of Jesus was not white.
There were no white men in the Middle East when Jesus was born, or when Jesus was alive.
Jesus did not have blond hair, or blue eyes, or white skin.
Jesus was either black or an Arab with dark hair and darker skin.
Photo below is a mummy portrait from Roman Egypt.
Mummy portraits were painted in late first – early second century CE.
Photo above is taken from the coffin of a young man called Artemidoros, who died in the early second century CE, excavated at Hawara in Central Egypt.
His mummy is a wonderful combination of the traditions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and a brilliant example of the cultural mix of the ancient Mediterranean.
His name is Greek and is written in Greek across his front. “Artemidoros, farewell’ it reads. His face is a Roman portrait.
What will happen if and when White Supremacists realize that Jesus was black, that Jesus was not a while man?
What would happen to the psyche of all Americans if all the Jesus’ in all the churches in America were black or a shade of black?
What would happen to the the collective psyche of Americans if all the crucifixes in the United States of America had a black Jesus?
Would things be calmer or more peaceful in America?
Black is celebrated as being being beautiful in the Torah.
The Torah tells us Moses’ wife was black.
The Queen of Sheba, also, was black.
Jesus was a Jew and would have looked like the Jews of 1st century Judea at that time.
How Jews looked is not abundantly clear as Jews tended not to paint pictures of themselves and there was no photography.
At or about the 1st century — there were two main locations where Jews were located: Judea/Galilee and Babylonia.
There were also thriving diaspora communities in Byzantium (Istanbul), Alexandria (Egypt) and, of course, Rome.
Following the two failed Judean revolts against the Roman Empire of 65 and 135 most of the Judean Jews were dispersed in the diaspora.
The conventional wisdom is that the majority of Judean Jews stayed within the confines of the Roman Empire and ultimately were the forebears of the Ashkenazi diaspora.
Therefore it is most likely (an another point of view is) that Ashkenazi Jews with the more traditional Semitic features – such as Adam Sandler, Jeff Goldblum, or Jerry Stiller – are probably closer in appearance to Jesus than is a blond haired, blue eyed white man.
The only people who drew a lot of pictures were the Egyptians.
When drawing themselves they usually colored themselves in medium reddish-brown tones.
When drawing Semitic people — they would typically draw them as bearded with black and often curly hair, almond eyes, and either tanned or olive skin.
They also depicted black skinned Nubians as blond haired slaves.
The Egyptians artists were sensitive to skin tone when drawing subjects.
A description of a Jew is found in the “Song of Songs” as follows:
“10. My lover is radiant and ruddy.
“11. His head is gold, pure gold, his hair like palm fronds, as black as a raven.
“14. His arms are rods of gold adorned with gems; His loins, a work of ivory covered with sapphires.
“15. His legs, pillars of alabaster resting on golden pedestals.”
Alabaster and ivory are typically white.
Gold and ruddy could describe tanned or olive skin.
Black as a raven is black as a raven
Hair like palm fronds — in an imaginative person’s imagination could be a colorful simile for a Jewfro.
While this is not conclusive it is not consistent with a person that looked African or Southern Arabian.
The Bible doesn’t pay much attention to skin color, but there are inferences here and there.
So we have “Simeon who was called Niger,” (Acts 13:1) who may have been black, or else just a nickname, paired with “Lucius of Cyrene,” who may or may not have been black, being from Cyrene.
The Bible is much more interested in cultural differences, which to some is more fundamental and pertinent than race or skin color.
We’re all one human race, after all, but many cultures that overlap across races and skin colors.
All of us are the “skin colored people,” whichever color that might be.
One person (BEN) I spoke to told me:
“I think he was probably the exact same shade as Barack Obama. Apparently, there is something about that shad that can convince Jews to follow any idiocy.”
Another person (JOE)) I spoke to told me:
“If it’s sunny and bright in heaven – perhaps one’s spirit would get sunburned and be darker? If it’s dark and no natural light in hell, one should be as white as snow.
“But no matter what color you are or skin tone if you figure out you are either in heaven or hell.”
Veronica:
Who cares? Race is an invention of the industrial era to divide and conquer people. It is being used as such now to distract the populace and keep our minds enslaved. Let’s not play their game. I’d rather talk about Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others than the color of his skin. If they want to paint him black, let them. If they want to make him into a cartoon, sure! Let’s just keep the conversation about what matters and let go of division. Let’s elevate!
Richard:
The image of God is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. If you believe in the Word of God, then you believe that we all can find something of ourselves in Jesus; so Veronica is correct. There are no true images of Jesus because it is irrelevant because the artist would have only have chosen to place emphasis on the things important to the artist. The Word of God therefore forbids us to make those images; yet we persist because like Sinatra, we all want to do it “my way.” As Veronica said we should be emphasizing the Words of Jesus, which I personally consider to be of great importance, rather than His appearance. God bless all of you. You might even consider reading the Bible to learn what it says about this subject and many other things that affect our lives, I do each day!
Dan:
Veronica you are absolutely right. The importance is the philosophical and moral teachings not his complexion.
In many ways this is an angels on the head of a pin type argument.
But, its one relevance is that for centuries the image of Jesus was Europeanized in order to disconnect him from his Judaic roots.
I think this was psychologically necessary in order to justify the persecution of his religious and ethnic kin, along with so many other non-Europeans.
The Europeanizing of Jesus was not merely a means of better identifying with him and his teachings, but to claim him for yourself in much the same way that so many people claim God to be on their side hence, any opposition to our way of thinking is not merely a difference of opinion but also an affront to God and God’s will — thereby justifying my resorting to violence against those who would blaspheme.
To Africanize or Arabize Jesus would be doing the same thing.
Keeping him a Jew puts EVERYONE on exactly the same footing – he is no more European than African, Arab, Indian or East Indian.
You can partake of his philosophy and teachings but not on YOUR terms, but on his.
My gut instinct is that the rejection of Jesus’ Judaic roots is one of the reasons why Christians around the world for so many centuries have such an inglorious record of acting in every way but Christian.
Some people think the only thing that matters about a person – or the most important thing about a person – is the color of a person’s skin.
The more important thing is Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others, which has nothing to do with the color of their skin.
In this time of civil unrest in the United States let’s be much better than wolves.
Wolves are intelligent, adaptable, fierce, and playful.
When strangers meet it usually results in a fight to the death.
Although a model of animal cooperation a wolf pack is not wholly harmonious.
Members are constantly being tested by more lowly wolves trying to rise up the ranks and such subordination must be dealt with quickly.
A wolf pack must defend its territory.
Without it, the pack cannot find food, cannot produce young, and will be forced to disband.
The pack patrols its borders regularly; if it encounters outsiders then its members have no choice but to attack.
Up to one fifth of all wolf deaths occur during these inter-pack bottles.
In this time of civil unrest, and new political realities, many persons are mustering the moral courage necessary to confront and solve problems with effective, honest and emphatic dialogue that seeks solutions rather than sowing seeds of division and disunity.
In connection with President Donald Trump giving the graduation address to the cadets at West Point, General Williams wrote a letter staking out the U.S. Army’s position on sowing seeds of division and disunity, a copy of which is set forth below.
The cadets who had been quarantined at home were ordered to come back for a graduation ceremony once President Trump informed the Army he would be giving the graduation address.
They sat six feet apart during the graduation ceremony.
President Trump caused an uproar of concern in the media and on social media about his health when he was photographed having difficulty walking down the ramp from the podium after having just given his graduation address to the graduating cadets.
An Assembly Constitutional Amendment relating to governmental preferences is pending in the California Legislature.
It states that Equal Opportunity is deeply rooted in the American ideals of fairness, justice, and equality. It states that as a result of the passage of Proposition 209, women and people of color continue to face discrimination and disparity in opportunities to participate in numerous forms of association and work that are crucial to the development of talents and capabilities that enable people to contribute meaningfully to, an benefit from the collective possibilities of national life.
It states that disparity still exists, particularly for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Black Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, and women, which should be rectified.
You should read the full text of ACA 5.
Here are some of the statistics cited in ACA 5:
In this bill state, is stated, “Underrepresented group high school graduates faced substantial long-term declines in educational and employment outcomes as a result of those changes.
The California Legislature has forcibly stated that the color of a person’s skin matters in the real world.
In a letter, dated June 16, 2020, to the LMU Community, President Snyder stated up front, “The killings of Black people – Rayshard Brooks, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and many others – resulted from anti-Black racism.”
He dedicated himself and LMU “…to eradicating systemic racism at LMU and addressing the histories and systems of injustice perpetrated against people of color, while also taking responsibility for LMU’s institutional complicity in the perpetuation of white supremacy.”
In his letter, President Snyder, listed ongoing and imminent actions at LMU including a review and change of the art and images in the University Hall:
“We will change the art and images in University Hall as part of a broader effort to ensure that LMU reflects more inclusive and diverse representations of our shared history and community, under the guidance of the Committee of Public Art and Images.”
In the last paragraph of President Snyder’s letter, President Snyder states:
“As is so with all of America society and culture, our pathway to justice, and its clear goals, will require renewed and reformed reflection conversation, commitment and action. We must be sure that each of us holds each entity of our community – person, organization, program – accountable. We need to be open to calling out what needs to be called out and accepting what others witness in our behaviors and actions as loci for revision. As actors within our larger society, we must do the same. Let us champion dignity. Let us champion justice. Let’s get to work.”
In his letter he mentioned participating in a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration organized by LMU students.
“On June 6, while participating in a Black Lives Matters demonstration organized by LMU students, I was reminded that the police violence and systemic racism that infects our society by killing Black people is a system in which I, as a white person of privilege, am complicit.”
He went on to say:
“I am grateful and humbled by our Black community’s leadership and willingness to impart its experiences, pain and anger; I am not in a position to understand fully how exhausting and burdensome it must be, especially given the persistent nature of experience in a racist society. Amidst this understanding, LMU’s duty to our Black students, faculty, and staff is, and will remain, steadfast. We are committed to a process of institutional transformation that addresses systemic racism and oppression.
Eugenics is a science that deals with improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.
Famous people in recent history were eugenicist – advocates of eugenics.
Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister of Great Britain in World War II – and Adolf Hitler – Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party – the leader of Germany in World War II – were eugenicists – advocates of eugenics.
Winston Churchill had great energy and pugnacity.
Not everyone appreciated Churchill’s energy or brilliance.
Lord Halifax – the man the King of England wanted to be Prime Minister, but who refused the position – was skeptical of the wild energy Churchill seemed likely to bring to office of Prime Minister.
The office of the Prime Minister was at 10 Downing, which was both the Prime Minister’s residence and official office.
Halifax grumbled that Churchill’s new cabinet appointees lacked intellectual heft. Halifax likened them to “gangsters,” the chief gangster in his view, being Churchill.
On Saturday, May 11, 1940, the day after Churchill was appointed Prime Minister by King George V, Lord Halifax wrote in his diary, “I have seldom met anyone with stranger gaps of knowledge, or whose mind worked in greater jerks.”
One staff member at 10 Downing said Churchill was a lackluster student at Harrow (AN ELITE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BRITAIN’S UPPER CRUST) who exhibited “phenomenal slovenliness.”
Many in Whitehall considered Churchill to be capricious and meddlesome, inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once.
Churchill’s appointment enraged the wife of one member of Parliament, who likened him to Herman Goring, the obese, brutal chief of the German Air Fore, the Luftwaffe, and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. “W.C. is really the counterpart of Goring in England,” she wrote “full of the desire for blood, Blitzkrieg,’ and bloated with ego and over-feeding, the same treachery running through his veins, punctuated by heroics and hot air.” – information excerpts from pages 22 and 23 of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.
But ordinary people loved Churchill. One diarist wrote, “If I had to spend my whole life with a man, I’d chose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr. Churchill if there were a storm and I was shipwrecked.” – quote from page 23, of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.
“My wish is realized,” wrote Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of H.H. Asquith, the former Prime Minister, who died in 1928. “I can now face all that is to come with faith & Confidence. I know as you do that the wind has been sown, & that, we must all reap the whirlwind. But you will ride it — instead of being driven before it — Thank Heaven that you are there & at the helm of our destiny — & may the nation’s spirit be kindled by your own.” – quote from page 23 of “The Vile and the Splendid” by Erik Larson.
“Everywhere I went in London people admired [Churchill’s] energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose. People said they didn’t know what Britain would do without him. He was obviously respected. But no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the war. He was simply the right man in the right job at the the right time. The time being the time of a desperate war with Britain’s enemies.” – Ralph McAllister Ingersoll.
“The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him. Not at all. The last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked years younger than before the war began… His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people.” – Hubert Knickerbocker
The people of Great Britain loved Winston Churchill during World War II because they thought he sincerely loved them.
He demonstrated in word and deed that he sincerely cared about them.
He was flamboyant and electric and had an indomitable spirit.
When he gave his first speech before the House of Commons, on May 13, he said “I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” and vowed to achieve victory.
On Tuesday, June 18, he addressed the House of Commons to address the French debacle, France had just been overrun by the Nazis.
“The “Battle of France” was over” he said, adding, “I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin.” At stake was not only the British Empire but all of Christian civilization. “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.” He then said:
“If we can stand up to him, all of Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail the the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.
“Therefore let us brace ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'”
As a young politician, Churchill was staunchly against votes for women.
While Home Secretary, there was an incident where politically motivated burglars holed up in a house that subsequently caught fire – Churchill ordered the Fire Department NOT to put out the blaze preferring that they die than water be needlessly wasted on them.
However, very much unlike Trump, Churchill knew how to be tactful. Indeed, Churchill defined tact as “the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way, that they look forward to the trip.”
Despite being lauded during WW II as the right many for the job and the right time, he was promptly voted out of office in 1945.
The Nazis persecuted those they considered to be racially inferior. Nazi racial ideology primarily vilified Jews, but also propagated hatred for Gypsies and blacks. The Nazis viewed Poles and other Slavs as inferior, and stated them for subjugation, forced labor, and sometimes death.
The Nazis viewed Jews as racial enemies and subjected them to arbitrary arrest, internment, and murder. Jewish prisoners received the most brutal treatment in Nazi concentration camps.
Among the first victims of persecution in Nazi Germany were political opponents – primarily Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to serve in the German army or to take an oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler and were also persecuted.
Prisoners in concentration camps were identified by a colored inverted triangle sown onto their prison uniform. Political prisoners wore a badge consisting of an inverted red triangle.
On Thursday, June 18, 2020, Facebook removed 88 ads that had using an Nazi symbol – an upside down red triangle – posted by Trump, the Trump campaign and Vice President Mike Pence that Facebook said were “violating our policy against organized hate.”
The red triangle is a symbol that Nazis used to identify Communists and other political prisoners in concentration camps.
The removed ads warned “dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem.”
The ads began running on Wednesday.
Before their removal they gained more than one million impressions on the Facebook pages of President Donal Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
QUESTION RAISED: Is it difficult to criticize a political opponent without using Nazi era imagery?
The red triangle was “the most common category of prisoners registered at the German Nazi Auschwitz camp.
Mr. Bark Bray, a historian at Rutgers and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said: “This is a symbol that represented the extermination of leftists. It is a death threat against leftists.
On Thursday, Twitter added a “manipulated media” warning to one of Mr. Trump’s tweets that featured a video about a supposed “racist baby” that had been altered to appear as if CNN had broadcast it.
Winston Churchill’s attempt to practice eugenics was a failure.
Winston Churchill’s son, was a failed effort at breeding a super race person.
Winston Churchill’s son Randolph Churchill was a complete failure and screw up.
He was a gambler. His ineptitude at gambling was legendary. He was always awash in debt.
He was loud, lacked tack, drank too much, spent beyond his income and gambled with particular ineptitude.
He was a drunkard. Once drunk he had a propensity for making horrible embarrassing scenes.
His father once wrote to him, “Your idle and lazy life is [very[ offensive to me. You appear to be leading a completely perfectly useless existence.”
There was no way his marriage was going to work.
To Randolph, fidelity was a fungible condition. He loved sexual conquest, whether his target was married or not. He once bragged that he would enter the rooms of women without invitation, just in case his presence might be welcomed. He told this to a female friend, who quipped sardonically “You must get a lot of rebuffs.” He said, laughingly, “I do, but I get a lot of fucking too.”
Hitlers attempt to practice eugenics – to create a master-race, was a failure as well.
When Germany lost World War II, Hitler committed suicide.
Hitler’s effort to kill all the “impure people” in the world, and to have the Aryan Race, with himself as its leader, rule the world ended up being a failed effort as well.
Statues of famous people are being taken down, torn down and defaced all over the United States.
On June 22, 2020, The American Museum of Natural History decided the bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse flanked by a Native American Indian and a Black Man on foot (photo above), that had presided over entrance to the museum since 1940, was coming down. Currently it is being protected by police in two police cars.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the Unites States, was a racist and eugenicist who thought African Americans to be inferior to white citizens.
His election in 1904 marked one of the first Presidential administrations opened opposed to civil rights and suffrage for blacks.
He believed in racial hierarchy, and endorsed sterilization of the poor and intellectually disabled.
That was the common thinking of the elites in the United States at that time.
in the early 20th century American eugenicists used forced sterilization to “breed out” traits considered undesirable.
They believed in “survival of the fittest” and thought they could help nature along by planning who reproduced and who didn’t.
They were frightened that unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than intelligent people.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was raised to believe that he and his “well-born” wealthy neighbors in Boston were the best people in the country, or the world.
He believed in eugenics, and wrote about eugenics, which he supported.
He wrote the majority opinion in a case [Bell v. Buck, 274 U.S. 208 (1927] in which the majority upheld a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered to be unfit to reproduce – unfit because they were mentally deficient.
In his opinion, Justice Holmes, urged America to do more eugenic sterilizations.
He wrote that it is better for the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind.
It was very hard to prove at a feeble minded hearing that you were not feeble minded.
Feeble minded was a broad term used to define large categories of people that were disliked by someone in charge of the decision making position.
Only Nordic types were considered good.
Jews from East Europe and Italians and Asians were considered to be mentally deficient and were discriminated against.
This was the belief of those who enacted the IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1924.
The Immigration Act of 1924 created quotas for the number of different groups that could immigrate and required that immigrants pass a mental feebleness test.
Buck v. Bell upheld eugenic sterilization.
It is still good law,.
It has never been overturned.
The decision in Buck v. Bell led to 70,000 forced sterilizations.
The woman in Buck v. Bell was not feeble minded.
She was set up to protect her foster parents son who had raped her and to get a court ruling that forced sterilizations are legal.
Her appointed lawyer believed that forced sterilizations should be legal.
He wrote arguments in his briefs that supported forced sterilizations.
The Nazis adopted American eugenic theory.
The Nazis took American eugenic theory – that there exists a racial hierarchy that requires breeding a super race – and ran with it.
The guiding objective of the 3,500 year old Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is to protect the weak from the strong to create a rule of RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE.
While writing this post I couldn’t help comparing U.S. President Donald Trump’s thinking to Nazi ideology.
Earlier today (Tuesday, June 23, 2020) I post on Instagram @garyspassion the picture above “DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.”
In my post I compare President Trump to the little boy (the major star) in the movie JoJo Rabbit.
JoJo Rabbit is a farce about Nazi thinking, Nazi ideology, Nazi conduct, and worship of Adolph Hitler.
The wild popularity, even today, of the 1862 French novel ‘LES MISERABLES’, shows us something.
LES MISERABLES is the story of Jean Valjean, a handsome young woodcutter, who is cruelly sentenced to nine years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread he took to feed his starving family.
Javert, an ice-cold Inspector of Prisons, relentlessly persecutes Valjean, determined to keep him in prison for life.
It is tear-jerking feel good story, that has been made into a movie several times.
I strongly recommend seeing the movie.
That movie should help even the most rabid law and order person understand the outrage after watching the video of a police officer murdering George Floyd by putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while George Floyd was handcuffed and pinned down by two other police officers while a fourth police officer directed members of the public away.
George Floyd was suspected of having used a counterfeit $20 bill. Nobody knows if the $20 bill was counterfeit or how George Floyd came to have it.
George Floyd lost his life because four police officers thought nobody would mind if they took his life.
Nothing happened to any of the police officers until AFTER world wide street protests erupted.
ONLY after protests against the police brutally murdering George Floyd erupted in 150 cities in the USA did the police officers involved get charged and arrested for breaking the law.
The grandson of President Roosevelt felt it necessary to remove the statue of his great grandfather from the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History.
He recognized that statue was a powerful and hurtful emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism.”
That statue was a symbol of systemic racism; that statue was a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.
Theodore Roosevelt IV said, “The world doesn’t need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice.”
The image of that statue is too offensive to stand as a monument to American History.
That statue is clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.
That statue implicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.
At a meeting on Monday, June 21, 2020, Joe Biden said,
“Hate just hides. It doesn’t go away, and when you have someone in power who breathes oxygen into the hate under the rocks it comes outs from under the rocks
“I really do believe that the binders have been taken off. I think the tidal wave is moving. I realize we’ve got to do something big, we can do it, and everyone will benefit from it.
Information taken/obtained from AOL news.
On the same Monday evening (June 21, 2020), President Donald Trump declared himself, “the president of law and order” from the White House as military police and law enforcement fired tear gas and cleared protestors from nearby La Fayette Park. La Fayette Park is located directly across the street from the White House.
After President Trump’s speech, one mayor complained, “President Trump has offered us military support to address violent protestors while denying mayors federal support to address the coronavirus fall-out.
During the protest on Monday (June 22, 2020) protestors attempted to topple a statue of President Andrew Jackson in La Fayette Park.
President Jackson has a record of owning slaves and oppressing Native Americans.
The next morning, President Trump tweeted that he had ordered the arrest of anyone tearing down a statue on federal land.and threatened such protestors with a long prison term and a large fine – imprisonment of up to ten years and a fine of up to $250,000.00.
Information taken/obtained from AOL news.
Art symbolizes and instructs what it means to be a civilized human being.
Art challenges our senses and provokes our senses.
Just imagine the effect having a black or brown Jesus in every church and on every crucifix in America would have today.
Above photos taken by me while I was viewing the art in one church after another and viewing the interior design and exterior design of one church after another while spending a summer vacation in Sicily.
All the paintings, all the statues, and all the decorations in the churches were of and about white people.
In “HOW DO WE LOOK” Mary Beard shows how making the divine visible in the human world has never been easy.
In her book HOW DO WE LOOK” she points out all religions have destroyed art as well as creating it.
“Iconoclasm” comes from the Greek word meaning “image breaking.”
Below is my recap of Mary Beard’s many poignant stories of destruction of religious art in the name of religion.
Throughout the history of Christianity there have been violent and sustained clashes between ‘image-lovers’ and ‘image-breakers” – the destruction of religious art has gone almost hand and hand with the appreciating and adoration of it.
In the past lurid stories were spread about the evil of the iconoclasts, which went so far as to suggest that the wickedness of those who destroyed images of Jesus was second only to those who crucified Jesus in the first place.
One of the first examples occurred in 726 in the capital of the Byzantine empire (modern Istanbul) when – so it is said – the emperor ordered the image of Jesus be removed from the facade of his imperial palace.
Whatever the reasons, the removal of that one painting has come to represent the beginning of an official ban on all kinds of images of the divine – painting, sculpture, mosaic – that lasted on and off for more than a hundred years.
Almost a thousand years later, thousands of miles away, during the fight between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians fought out in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ‘idolatrous icons’ and other ‘excesses’ associated with Catholicism were destroyed or removed by ascendant Protestants.
During the religious schism, the splendor of Ely Cathedral – a jewel of Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages – fell victim to one of England’s most determined Protestant reformers.
On January 9 1644, Oliver Cromwell, who was then governor of Ely, marched into the Ely Cathedral in what is one of the most mythologized and probably highly embellished incidents of those English religious wars.
The story goes that Cromwell went up to the priest who was conducting evening services, told him to put away his (Catholic) version of the prayer book and to stop the choir singing ( a ‘turn off the music’ moment). On the following days, it is said, he actively encouraged – or at least did nothing to stop – his troops turning on the fabric of the building, on the images and on the glass. As they made their way through the vestry and the cloisters, they smashed the place.
Above photo is a photo of Ely Cathedral, looking up into the great ‘lantern’ and down the nave (whose colored ceiling is part of the nineteenth-century restoration).
Decades before Cromwell, in the Lady Chapel (the chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary), remains evidence of widespread destruction wreaked on another occasion decades before Cromwell.
The iconoclasts also attacked the sculpted figures of saints, kings, and prophets, and scenes from the life of the Virgin. Sometimes the whole sculpture was removed, but often only the head and hands, leaving the body in place. Above is a photo of one of the sculptures.
This was not just a series of random acts of vandalism but destruction that was targeted, even thoughtful, and set against a background of debates about the power and potential dangers of religious images.
In the late 1100s Muslim armies from Afghanistan invaded northern India. By all accounts, they were horrified by what they found. This was home to the Hindu religion, whose people worshiped not one god but, on some counts, millions.
Muslim writers as far back as the tenth century CE often presented India as a place of image worship gone mad.
The Muslim invaders smashed the idols and destroyed the Hindu temples.
The first mosque to be erected in Delhi, the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque, constructed in the 1190s, was once known as the most imposing mosque in the world.
But in this mosque various elements of earlier Hindu structures and images have been reused and incorporated into the fabric of the mosque the human figures often defaced. It is striking that, even when they have been defaced some aspect of the humanity of those figures have been preserved.
The simple fact that the builders of the new mosque have chosen fairly consistently to place the reused figures the right way up suggests a respect for the human form and itrs image.
It betrays a certain appreciation for the very images that Islam condemned.
Does God dwell in hand-made temples? The correct answer is that he does not, but men have always been inclined to believe whereas He is present everywhere, He is nevertheless more fully present in some places than in others.
I have been to the Hagia Sophia.
It is magnificent.
God is obviously more fully present in the Hagia Sophia than in other places.
It has such grandeur.
The historian Procopius said about the Hagia Sophia:
“Whenever anyone enters to pray, he understands at once that it is not by human power and skill but by God’s will that his work has been so finely finished. His mind is lifted up to God and floats on the air, feeling that God cannot be far away, but must especially love to dwell in this place, which He has chosen.”
The present Hagia Sophia is the third church built on the same site.
The present church was built by Justinian between 532 and 537.
Justinian was a military expansionist and ambitious civil reformer (his law code still lies at the foundation of many modern legal systems).
The second church was built by Theodosius and consecrated in 415.
But who built the first and why? Constantine according to legend and Constantius II (337-361) according to historical evidence.
Constantine was the first Roman emperor to have become a Christian.
With the exception of of the short-lived Julian (361-363), all Roman emperors after Constantine were Christians.
Like wise, Constantinople continued to be an imperial city for the next eleven centuries, before becoming the seat of another, Muslim, empire.
To describe all the events that took place within the Hagia Sophia would almost be tantamount to writing a history of the Byzantine Empire.
The name Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom or God’s Wisdom, a designation which by the fourth century was applied to the second person of the Trinity, i.e. Christ.
Early Christians believed – and perhaps Christians today believe – that Wisdom was a separate entity created or engendered by God before the beginning of time, an entity that guided or informed the act of creation.
The Ottoman Turks converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 1453.
The Muslim, Ottoman Turks, retained that name.
They did not considerate the Hagia Sophia as an alien entity, the temple of a hostile if conquered religion.
They took steps to incorporate it mythically into the Islamic tradition.
The very word Ayasofya was interpreted to mean ‘house of worship’ (ibadetgah).
As strange as it might seem, in light of Muslim usage, the figural mosaics representing Christian personages and Byzantine emperors were not systematically covered up as soon as Hagia Sophia was converted to into a mosque.
The Ottoman conquest ensured not only the Hagia Sophia’s preservation but also its continuing maintenance and repair because it became the chief imperial mosque, amply endowed and often visited by the sultan.
What is going on – the Pandemic, the new George Floyd World, marginalized groups and women getting the short end of the stick in money earned for the same work etc. etc. etc., police brutality, stay-in-place orders, mass unemployment, the economy in shambles, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, climate change, mass protests, unequal opportunity, rioting in the streets, wide scale looting,- is scary.
You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is.
People love art.
Art conquers all.
What we see depends on how we look.
Gary Smolker, Social Commentator, Values Critic
Copyright © 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
Male cops will be provided with Sex Therapy and Meditation Training.
During mediation training they will be forced against their will to look at the crotch of women in yoga pants.
Before and after sex therapy they will have their testosterone level tested and their oxytocin level tested.
Only when those levels are at a predetermined level will they be allowed to go out on the streets.
They will also be tested for cocaine.
A lot of male police officers self-medicate with cocaine because of their trauma or other mental health issues.
Its scary sometimes.
All police precincts will be provided with the latest version of US Military Tanks – which they will bring out to protect protestors peacefully assembled at political rallies from hostile disruptions.
Gary Smolker, Social Commentator, Values Critic
Copyright (c) 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
Many of us are living in completely different information eco-systems.
My position is:
This was the longest week in American history.
We saw the collapse of civil society as we knew it and the birth of a better one.
I was so busy keeping up with current events I couldn’t finish writing Issue #2 of COVID LAWYER 19 during the week.
We are witnessing capitalism making changes in response to needs.
Capitalism and democracy are changing.
They are undergoing creative destruction – positive change – making everything better for every one.
Americans are never satisfied with the status quo.
They always strive to improve things, and they do.
Capitalism is an effective instrument for responding to needs.
The Republican National Committee was planning for a gathering of 50,000 at its convention August 24 – 27 in North Carolina.
In North Carolina, currently, gatherings are limited to 10 people indoors and 25 people out doors.
Other states are asking the Republican National Committee to hold its convention in their state.
Capitalism flourishes in an atmosphere of freedom and liberty.
Capitalism is a mechanism that facilitates exchange.
People keep on thinking up new things and keep on creating NEW things to exchange and new ways to exchange.
Capitalism is like the discovery in astronomy that we are living in an expanding universe.
Nothing stays the same.
Democracy works.
George Floyd’s horrible brutal racially motivated killing united all decent Americans.
All decent Americans are taking peaceful action to make equal justice for all to happen.
This is a moment in history where we all bare witness to the American people (living in their American democracy) peacefully non-violently make righteous things happen.
On Monday, President Trump mobilized federal forces, including a Black Hawk helicopter, to scatter swatches of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park next to the White House.
We saw orderly demonstrators routed by flash grenades and tear gas so that President Trump could hold up a Bible as a prop.
President Trump was immediately condemned by religious leaders, by civil activists, by ordinary citizens, and by retired military personnel.
Former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis said:
“When I joined the military some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstances to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
“Donald Trump is the first president who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.”
Retired Navy Admiral Michael Mullin, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, said:
“The military should never be called to fight our own people as enemies of the state. We have a military to fight our enemies, not our own people.”
On Sunday, June 7, 2020, President Trump ordered National Guard troops to begin withdrawing from Washington, D.C. saying, “Everything is under perfect control.” as anti-racism demonstrations continue worldwide.
That incident created a deep rift between the White House and the Pentagon.
The Pentagon ordered the National Guard deployed in Washington, D.C., to not use firearms or ammunition.
On Capital Hill, Democrats powered by the Black Caucus are drafting sweeping packages of police reforms to overhaul the way law enforcement works.
Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti has submitted a new city budget proposal which defunds the City of Los Angeles’s police department.
Mayor Garcetti said he will direct $250 million to youth jobs, health initiatives and “peace centers” to heal trauma and will allow those who have suffered discrimination to collect damages.
The money would have to be cut from other city operations.
As much as $150 million would come from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
That is a striking reversal from the budget Garcetti put forth in April, which proposed a 7% spending increase for LAPD, including a previously agreed upon package of raises and bonuses for rank-and-file officers.
In the budget he released in April the LAPD got 53.8% of money not designated for other specific uses.
The police department now stands at 9,985 officers.
Leaders of the union that represents LAPD officers said they found the shift abrupt and disingenuous.
They said to place the blame of Los Angeles’s social problems on our officers is hypocritical and political doublespeak of the highest order.
Jerretta Sandoz, vice president of the police union, in a statement said: “It was one of the most craven, disingenuous political sleights of hand we have seen in some time.”
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles leaders said they would like to see the share of L.A.’s general fund devoted to police reduced from about 50% to 5.7%.
Things have gone from business “as usual” to “business unusual” in the blink of an eye.
Complexity is an extension of the world in which we already live.
Chaos brought about by the coronavirus and COVID 19 is frightening.
For the past eight plus weeks: we have lived in a world which seemed to be completely unpredictable.
Things went totally out of control.
Businesses were not allowed to operate.
People were ordered to stay home; people were ordered to maintain at least six feet of physical distancing; people were ordered to not gather in large groups; non-essential business were ordered to close and to stay closed.
About a week ago, on May 25, a black man named George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer pressing his knee against George Floyd’s neck making it impossible for George Floyd to breath.
At the time George Floyd was handcuffed, pined to the ground, and one police officer was on top of him pressing his knee against his neck three other officers were involved.
Two other police officers helped pin George Floyd down while the fourth officer directed people away from watching one police officer pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck while George was handcuffed and pinned down.
George Floyd cried out that he could not breathe.
The three nearby police officers, heard George Floyd’s cry for help, watched the fourth police officer continue to press his knee on George Floyd neck for over eight minutes – for almost nine minutes – and did noting to stop what was going on.
After the public saw a video of what had happened to George Floyd, mass protests erupted.
Mass protests against police brutality spontaneously occurred all over America and sympathy protests spontaneously took place in many foreign countries.
Looting, destruction of buildings, and burning of police cars took place.
In some places, policemen watched while looters ransacked buildings, destroyed stores and stole merchandise.
Videos circulated on social media showing nearby groups of police officers standing by without doing anything while looting and destruction and theft of property took place in front of their eyes. They did nothing to stop or impede the looters or to stop or prevent the destruction of property going on in front of their eyes.
Yesterday, President Trump ordered active US Military personal to fire tear gas and pepper spray into a crowd of peaceful protestors in front of the White House.
He gave that order so that he would not have to walk through a mass of assembled peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square while walking from the White House to a nearby church.
President Trump had not been invited to the church, was not invited to visit the church.
President Trump did not tell anyone connected with the church that he was coming.
When President Trump arrived at the church, his daughter handed President Trumpt a Bible.
President Trump held the Bible.
Then photographs were taken of President Trump holding the Bible.
After photographs of President Trump holding the Bible were taken, President Trump and his entourage walked back across Lafayette Square to the White House.
President Trump’s conduct was universally condemned by religious leaders, by civil rights leaders, by the public at large, and by high ranking retired military personnel and by prior presidents of the United States.
There was a lot of misdirection given to the American public from the start with respect to the coronavirus pandemic, beginning in January, 2020.
There were many mistakes made by American leaders and by the media in January, February, March, April, May and June 2020.
This is going to be a famous year in history: 2020 is a year that will be go down in history books.
Many people now think they were manipulated by the Chinese government, by the World Health Organization, by many governmental institutions, and by many leaders of governments in many countries.
People complain our economy (the US economy) has been strangled by the pandemic, by the Coronavirus, by governmental actions, by governmental leaders, by governmental institutions.
Some of those people continue to complain the economy continues being strangled by misdirected governmental actions or by actions undertaken for political gain, actions taken for political purposes.
More than 40 million Americans lost their jobs due to stay in place orders issued by governors and public health officials in the United States.
People complain that state governors needlessly devastated our freedoms by issuing way too broad and unnecessary stay in place orders which not only shut down the US economy but needlessly devastated the US economy.
People complain their constitutional rights were infringed and are continuing to be infringed by restrictive coronavirus related orders made for the “ostensible” purpose of impeding the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some people suspect that foul play is involved.
People need information to make decisions.
Information is the currency of democracy.
The same set of facts can be put together many different ways.
Social commentators, such as myself, interpret what is going on.
Social commentators tell us what the facts mean.
Social commentators tell us what is going on – contextualize stories – carry the memory of the past into the present moment.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, California Governor Newsom issued orders which prohibited people from attending religious services.
Over 1,000 faith leaders delivered a letter to Governor Newsom informing Governor Newsom that they were going to defy his order prohibiting worshipers to worship in their churches if his order prohibiting worship in churches was still in place on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2020.
Governor Newsom relented.
Governor Newsom modified his order prohibiting worship in churches.
Governor Newsom’s modified order allowed churches to operate at 25 percent of church capacity but to allow only up to a maximum of 100 congregants to attend a church service at one time.
That did not satisfy people who wanted to exercise an unfettered right to attend church services.
A lawsuit challenging Governor Newsom’s power to limit worship in churches to 25% of church capacity, coupled with a limitation on church attendance to not more than 100 people worked its way up to the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court heard arguments submitted by interested parties in briefs filed with the court, and in oral arguments.
Some state health officials and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) linked church attendance to outbreaks of COVID 19.
In one example, the CDC said 38% of those attending a rural Arkansas church in early March caught the virus resulting in four deaths.
The State of California argued that California would lift or loosen the attendance restriction when the attendance restriction proves unnecessary. “In light of tremendous uncertainty continuing to surround this new and deadly virus, however it would be rash to do so today.”
Chief Justice Roberts, who cast the deciding vote, stated his reason for upholding Governor Newsom’s power to restrict church attendance: “Choosing when to lift restrictions during a pandemic is the business of elected officials, not unelected judges.”
The United States Supreme Court makes decisions based on the vote of nine Supreme Court Justices.
The United States, after President Trump’s appointments of Supreme Court Justices, has more “conservative” than “liberal justices.”
Many people thought the Supreme Court would rule against Governor Newsom’s restriction on religious worship.
United States President Trump, Vice-President Pence, and many religious leaders believe and argued publicly and to the Supreme that (a) freedom of religion is inviolate, (b) it is a violation of a constitutional right to limit the number of people who may worship together.
They argued that the First Amendment guarantees “Freedom of Religion” — they argue that any restriction on the freedom of people to worship together is a violation of that freedom.
There were other arguments against allowing a legal restriction to be put on the number of people who may legally worship together,such as:
The overall question to be answered is and was: What is an appropriate way to mitigate the risk of spread of the coronavirus?
Stanford University biophysicist Michael Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has said he believed other health precautions such as enforcing the use of masks, would have been more effective in combating the pandemic.
“I think lockdown saved no lives. I think it may have costs lives.
“There is no doubt that you can stop an epidemic with a lockdown, but is a very blunt and very medieval weapon and the epidemic could have been stopped just as effectively with other sensible measures (such as masks and other forms of social distancing.)”
“It will have saved a few road accidents lives, things like that, but social damage – domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism – has been extreme. And then you have those who were not treated for other conditions.
“We should have seen from China that a virus never grows exponentially. From the very first case you see, exponential growth actually slows down very dramatically.”
“The problem with epidemiologists is that they feel their job is to frighten people into a lockdown, social distancing.
“So you say ‘There’s going to be a million deaths’ and when their are only 25,000, you say, ‘It’s a good thing you listened to my advice.’ This happened with Ebola and with bird flu. It’s just part of the madness.”
After George Floyd was murdered by a police officer who crushed George Floyd’s neck making it impossible for George Floyd to breathe (while Floyd was hand cuffed and pined to the ground in police custody) … all Hell broke loose.
If equal justice under the law had applied to George Floyd – justice equal to that applied to the four cops now charged with his murder have received – he never would have been arrested in the first place.
On Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, 2020, a store clerk in Minneapolis called the police because he thought Floyd had paid for a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. The call should have started an investigation; that’s not what happened to Floyd.
Instead within minutes of the arrival of four police officers, Floyd was face down on the street, hands tied behind his back with Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes, while two other police officers restrained Floyd by pressing down on his back and legs, and the fourth police officer kept distressed passersby from intervening. Floyd pleaded for his life, telling them he couldn’t breathe.
Chauvin was caught killing a black man on video by a passerby, while several eye witnesses pleaded with him to stop.
On the video, Chauvin seems completely calm, bored even, with one hand nonchalantly in his pocket even as Floyd died beneath his knee.
No police cars swarmed the area to arrest the four officers. Chauvin went home that night a free man, and stayed a free man for the next three nights as well. The other three police officers were not arrested until Monday (June 1, 2020).
At first, Hennepin County District Attorney Mike Freeman said there was not enough evidence to arrest anyone, adding, “there is other evidence taht does not support a criminal charge.”
It took for days after the killing for the D.A. to arrest Chauvin – and only after protests over George Floyd’s murder began in nearly every major American city.
It was not until Wednesday (June 1), after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over the case, that felony aiding and abetting the murder were filed against the other three other officers.
At the moment, we now are facing all things ripple effects brought about both by the coronavirus pandemic, fear of the coronavirus pandemic and fear of COVID 19, and the ripple effects brought about by the injustice that began at the moment George Floyd was arrested and continued as he was murdered which was amplified by the complete indifference of the police department and local district attorney to the murder.
Peaceful protest rallies in many cities in the United States followed the showing of a video of the injustice of what happened to George Floyd.
Several of those rallies turned violent.
Chaos rained in several major cities in the United States.
Curfews were imposed.
Curfews were imposed in cities and counties throughout the United States
I live in Los Angeles.
Peaceful demonstrations in the City of Los Angeles began on Friday.
They turned into riots Friday night (May 29), which continued all day Saturday and Saturday night (May 30).
Friday night and Saturday night a citywide and countywide curfew was imposed.
On Saturday night, California Governor Newsom deployed 1,000 National Guardsmen to Los Angeles to assist local law enforcement.
A citywide and countywide curfew stayed in place until Sunday night (June 7).
A woman’s nails are important to her. They are a part of her identity.
Getting her nails done is very important to many, if not, all women.
Nail salons are essential businesses, essential for everyone’s well being.
Can you imagine having to be locked up in a house with a woman who is used to having her nails done once a week, when she can’t get her nails done, has not been able to get her nails done for over two months?
Some ladies are doing their nails themselves.
Some ladies are going to another woman’s home to have their nails done.
Thus stay at home (shelter-in-place) don’t go to nail salon orders are turning many of our women into criminals.
By the way, in San Francisco, California, it is currently against the law for women to get their nails done at a nail salon until August.
Nail salons will not legally be open in San Francisco until August, 2020.
We have learned lessons during the coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd mass protest rallies.
It is best to:
Below are four opinions of what is really going on with respect to the motivations of people in charge and the consequences of their actions.
I agree with American Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban (net worth $4.311 B according to forbes.com):
We need to create permanent jobs, jobs that are needed to make our economy function, jobs that will give people security and a state of mind necessary for them to be willing to spend money.
We need coronavirus contact tracers. The federal government should provide funds to train contact tracers and to pay them.
Any funds given to big companies should come with restrictions — Any funds used to pay top executives should be paid in the same percentage to all workers in the company. Any stock options or warrants given to top executives should be given in the same percentage to all workers, and should be given in the exact same amount to the US Government.
US Government leaders should negotiate with big companies who are loaned money by US government, or given money by US government, or given grants by US government on behalf of US Taxpayers.
Rebuilding American economy should and will come from the bottom up, not from the top down.
The government should provide for and/or pay for day care centers available to working parents to leave their children when they go to work.
The government should pay for and provide after school programs for school children to be able to attend after school and to be able to attend on the weekend.
I agree with other American Billionaire Entrepreneurs that the US Government should invest additional funds in social programs – at a minimum an additional amount of money – equal to any loss to the US Treasury of tax revenue from tax breaks given to big corporations and to affluent individuals.
[ASIDE: I have been told that the entire US Tax Code could be written in three pages. The only reason it is longer than three pages is that all the additional pages represent tax breaks lobbied for and given to special interests.
The minimum wage should be raised so that a working person will make enough money working at one job to support himself or herself, and have health insurance, sick leave, and a time off to have a vacation.
Attendance at community colleges and at state universities should be free, at no charge to students.
Everyone should have access to basic health insurance which will provide payment for basic medical care.
On May 26, 2020, I posted a cartoon on Instagram of an old man accompanied by the caption, “I wonder – out loud – if the spread and misinformation about COVID 19 and government action to prevent the spread of COVID 19 is a plot to rid the world of old people residing in rest homes.
The Beverly Hills Entrepreneur replied:
“Yes it is.
“First they want to bankrupt all the businesses and the rich.
“Then they want to kill all the old.
“I wonder why they don’t kill the homeless as well.
“Maybe they wait for their votes, then kill them as well.
“Not many people die because of COVID 19.
“Any patient that dies they put a COVID tag because that way the hospitals make a ton of money from the government.”
A friend resided in the State of Washington, replied:
“Here is Washington State we add gunshot victims to the COVID list. Any questions.
“All science is now politics used to reinforce Progressive Ideology.
“Any science that that does not do that doesn’t see the light of day.
“Refresh my memory.
“I’m a little slow.
“Has anybody ever heard of a computer model that has been even a little accurate?”
The Beverly Hills Entrepreneur replied, “I bet they do.”
Someone who follows me on Instagram @garyspassion replied, “It lowers the Social Security burden to kill old people, it gets them off the social security rolls.”
An entrepreneur on the East Coast added: “Yes it is a plot to get rid of old people. They want to get rid of old people because old people are Republicans.”
Another friend replied: “The end game is to take down capitalism.”
Various people have expressed the opinion that the coronavirus pandemic was either purposefully caused by the Communist Chinese government in Mainland China or was originally negligently caused by the Communist Chinese government in Mainland China and then knowingly and purposefully allowed to spread by the Mainland Chinese government.
But, nobody has proposed to me that the evil reason for the coronavirus pandemic “justified” shut down of all businesses in the United States was and is to purposefully create over 40 million unemployed people in the United States not only for the purpose of ruining the US economy but to also to create a mass of unemployed people available to protest an act of racial injustice.
Or that as part of this diabolical Chinese Communist plot/plan George Floyd was murdered for the sole purpose of creating social disorder and loss of face to the United States.
According to this, as yet unstated theory, the Chinese Communist Party leadership not only wants to destroy the United States and its economy, Chinese Communists want to make sure President Trump is not reelected President of the United States.
The Chinese Communist Party leadership does not want President Trump reelected president of the United States because President Trump has taken affirmative action to put an end to Communist China’s unbounded predatory trade practices.
Gary – I do not think there is a serious argument that Covid is a plot against old people.
I think the proper historical reference is WWII and the emergence of the US as a superpower. Prior to WWII – Western Europe, primarily England and France, ruled the world militarily, economically and politically. The U.S. was still an emerging power, struggling in the Depression and very much isolationist. After WWII – the French and British Empires crumbled, their power and influence waned – and the U.S. quickly assumed dominance of western culture throughout the world.
How did this happen? I would posit that it was less the brilliance of American minds and industry and far more the simple fact that Europe and east Asia destroyed itself in the war. There, a whole generation of young men was decimated. Their cities and industries were bombed and destroyed. On the other hand, the U.S. was never bombed – and the number of American soldiers that died (75,000) while tragic – did not change the demography of the U.S. So after the war, the U.S. was able to dominate the world economy simply because there was no competition.
The Chinese are very conscious of history in general and no doubt are fully aware of the secret behind America’s success.
As the Western countries shut down their economies in the wake of the Wuhan virus – damage, perhaps irreparable damage, is being done. Millions of businesses are going bankrupt, millions of people are unemployed, the economy is slowing down, demand is drying up, and trillions of dollars are being borrowed in order to prop up our failing economy. China is taking advantage of this — economically, militarily and politically. Lending money, buying up strategic assets, expanding its power in east Asia, and making in-roads into the Middle East, Africa and South America.
While Americans have been focused on the specter of Russia Russia Russia – like a magician’s sleight of hand distraction – China has engineered an economic coup that may precipitate the collapse of the West as the dominant superpower to its advantage. In other words, a plot far more sinister than ridding the world of the elderly.
My third friend immediately responded to Dan’s opinion, stating
He sent an article to me which describes the purposeful actions taking place by the the Communist Party Government of Mainland China to influence world events. According to that article.
Chinese state media in the mainland have portrayed the protestors as the “violent pawns of hostile foreign forces.
The University of Warwick has about 27,000 students. Of those, about 3200 are Chinese International Students.
Chinese students compromise the largest group of international students in Britain, with around 120,000 Chinese international students currently studying there.
Chinese embassies and consulates maintain close relationship with Chinese student groups, providing funding, occasional political directives, and paying them to attend pro-China demonstrations.
On February 3, 2020, the University of Warwick student union met to discuss a motion that would condemn the “abhorrent human rights abuses of the Hong Kong Police Force and the Hong Kong SAR Government.
During the 2019-2000 academic year, there were a total of 11 resolutions. Each of these resolutions with the exception of the Hong Kong resolution was voted on by around 1,000 students; most passed by a wide margin.
The Hong Kong resolution failed: 2,041 votes against, and 977 votes for.
A business person who goes to China frequently.
According to that person.
Every time a person goes to China it is necessary to get a new Chinese phone because their regulations on phones (e.g. how to set them up, get a phone number, etc.) change regularly.
For many years now, China has blocked Google/Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook access for all people within the borders of China and replaced them with Chinese companies (essentially copies) such as Baidu, Weibo, and RenRen. This creates a controlled information loop in China. Chinese people then use VPN services to access blocked websites and apps on their phones and computers. VPN services essentially reroute a computer’s access while disguising their IP address.
In May (last month) China demonstrated it now has the cyber ability to disable VPN in personal phones and computers by doing so.
American spirit, love of free speech, is the greatest force in the world to withstand this global force to control the free flow of information, ideas, concepts, different opinions and “fact based news.”
When people base their understanding only on the devices in their hands, when they don’t read books, when words and text can be altered digitally, when access to truth can be turned off… then we are talking about a mass control of consciousness.
The Chinese leaders are masters at this. They have been practicing for decades for now.
Perhaps they have been teaching and sharing their techniques with other global leaders.
If so, it is not too far fetched to suspect there are powers at play to either create or spread the coronavirus or to use this catastrophe to increase mass surveillance and control.
We must remain vigilant and cautious.
We must get closer together and communicate through trusted means.
We need places like churches to meet in person and discuss ideas since we cannot depend on the realities displayed to us through our phones.
We must do this together.
We must not stop communicating with people of different political backgrounds or who share varying views.
We must radically embrace different voices and allow free expression or else …. we will be come robots to whatever reality is told to us, outside of our control.
One of the many great things about America is freedom of speech, open debate of ideas an opinions.
The more pieces of the picture we see, the more clear the picture becomes.
Another friend, expressed in an email the following supporting point of view (addressed jointly to me and to the China expert).
Thank you for shinning the light on a truly toxic long-term problem that will outlive this current crisis – the control of access to information and the reduction of information nodes that China’s government uses in order to control its citizens and avoid accountability for its institutional crimes.
Now social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube are reflecting this extreme Chinese-style censorship with the ongoing bans of videos and statements from eminently qualified medical doctors, epidemiologists, chemists and structural biologist who are questioning Dr. Fauci’s assertions and also questioning the Beijing-style lockdown policies embraced by several US states – including lockdown policies in the State of California.
Our society is ablaze in lies.
Nowadays epidemiology is largely data science.
In late January, Dr. Fauci was repeating the lies put out by the Chinese Communist Party and their enablers in WHO – that COVID was not a threat to the world. You can Google’s Fauci’s interview with Newsmax TV to see the video where Fauci stated Americans had nothing to fear from this virus. Then four weeks later Fauci gets exposed for being way wrong and decides to atone for his failure by cosigning Neil Ferguson’s alarmist projections and throwing in with the lockdown crowd.
Neil Ferguson is an epidemiologist of Imperial College London who is known to be consistently wrong on his projections going back 20 years – with disastrous results in his home country – ruined farmers from his hoof and mouth disease alarmism, magnitude of failure on his team’s projections on mad cow, bird flu, etc. Neil Ferguson’s modeling has been revealed to be a sham many times. He has spit out failed predictions time after time.
FAUCI DEPENDED ON AN OUT OF BOUNDS EPIDEMIOLOGIST’S MODEL OF FATALITIES.
THAT EPIDEMIOLOGIST HAS A LONG HISTORY OF ALWAYS GETTING EPIDEMIC PROJECTIONS WRONG.
So do we now have any responsible news platform questioning the basis of this entire lockdown effort or putting hard questions to Dr.Fauci about his rationale for destroying people’s lives and livelihoods? Hell no.
We here now in this “Information Age” are being rendered ignorant by the messengers and their medium with data deluge. Indiscriminate, unintegrated, unintelligible noise voiced by personalities to attempt a credibility that is fake and phony.
The cable news TV viewing audience and the YouTube viewing audience are accomplices in this crime.
In that regard, there is video posted on YouTube with the title “Italian residents hug Chinese people to encourage them in coronavirus fight.”
This video was taken while Wuhan was shut down, before widespread coronavirsus infections decimated Italy.
It depicts the Mayor of Florence’s “hug a Chinese program” – which was going on full blast while Wuhan was a coronavirus hot spot.
In this video Italians (people in Florence) are shown hugging a Chinese man in an act of solidarity — the English subtitles in the video state: “I’m not a virus. I’m a human. FREE ME FROM PREJUDICE. ERADICATE THE PREJUDICE.”
Stupidity is static.
Stupidity doesn’t follow Boyle’s Law, Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, or even String Theory.
Someone sent me an article which states China controls critical medical supplies, supplies most of the critical medicines consumed in the U.S.A. The article also states American companies couldn’t/can’t complete because the Chinese pharmaceutical companies are subsidized by the Chinese government. They drive down the price of medicines to the point where American manufactures can’t manufacture their medicines at a profit. Later, after the American manufacturers no longer manufacture a particular medicine, the Chinese company that manufactures that medicine raises the price it sells the medicine at.
Another person sent me an email in which the claim is made that Chinese companies manufacture many if not most of the smart phones and computers used in the United States.
WE have to make sure these protests do not become super-spreader events.
Anyone attending a protest is facing a risk of contact with coronavirus.
Distancing is most important to reduce risk of spread of COVID 19.
Police and protestors should wear masks.
Use of tear gas and pepper spray by police will cause coughing, sneezing, and touching face.
Sneezing and coughing will spread virus further – get it on you and others.
People put in custody should be given masks, and transported and processed while maintaining physical distancing of at least six feet.
Large congested crowds create the perfect conditions for the virus to be transmitted.
Shouting and singing, which are common at protests, have been shown to hasten the spread of the virus via droplets.
On May 30, 2020, a 22 year old Ohio State University grad, Sarah Grossman, died shortly after being sprayed with tear gas kneeling at a Columbus, Ohio rally protesting the death of George Floyd. She stood up to protest police brutality and was tear gassed as a result.
The City of Columbus, Ohio has opened an investigation into her death.
Experts and Black Live Matter leaders tell us
Black mothers in radio interviews and on YouTube videos tell us what it is like to be a black mother. They tell us that they tell their black son’s “the story.”
Beginning when their sons are very young Black Mothers tell their sons, “don’t wear a hoodie,” “don’t do anything that will alarm a white person,” “be passive around white people.”
Black women tell us in radio interviews and on YouTube videos that the thing they fear the most is they will get “the call,” a call in which they are told their husband or their son or their daughter has been murdered by a white person.
A day or two ago, the President of the American Psychological Association (APA) stated, in writing, “We are living in a racism pandemic.”
According to the APA, racism is associated with conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorders. It can contribute to the development of cardiovascular and other “physical diseases.”
Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
Through black people make us 13% of the U.S. population, they account for 24% of the deaths where race is known.
Racism is a belief system that makes us all sick.
Living with diminished respect makes us more vulnerable to pathology and premature death.
Our minds and bodies are interrelated.
Our beliefs are the most important force in our life.
The belief that people have a descending order of value depending on their race (belief there is a racial hierarchy) is racism.
I agree with Colorful American Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban’s statement:
“Treating people equally means treating people with equal amounts of respect for who they are and for what they have experienced.”
We get more accomplished when we listen then when we act.
Interacting with people who have different views than our own, allowing ourselves to understand their motivations – what motivates them – expands our perceptions, leads to empathy, develops emotional intelligence.
Knowledge changes perspective.
The more we know the more we see.
The more we see the more we understand.
Listening and talking to people in uncomfortable conversations gets people to see their humanity, to share their humanity, and as a consequence people come together with love, respect and honesty and act more intelligently.
We have to understand what is going on, because when we don’t we are a danger to ourselves and to everyone else.
Our beliefs are the most important force in our lives.
“‘Whose the greatest.’ he asked all the children, and they all shouted his name. ‘Who upset the world?’ and they all shouted his name. ‘I am the champion.’ He told them, ‘and that means all of us are champions. I showed you all what we can do..'” – Sports Illustrated March 9, 1964
On May 17, 1965, the young heavyweight champion of the world stopped for a bite to eat on the Florida-Georgia border – and was told to eat out back with his kind.
That would not happen today.
Gary Smolker
Copyright (c) 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
We are building the future today.
These are unprecedented times.
Elon Musk has defied a local shut down order that prohibited his Tesla manufacturing factory to continue operating in a small town in Alameda County, California.
Elon Musk has threatened to take his Tesla manufacturing operation – which employees 11,000 workers – out of the State of California if he is not allowed to run his Tesla factory where it is presently located in California.
Elon Musk said he is willing to be arrested for breaking the local shut down rule.
Elon Musk appears to believe: Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
Elon descries his staff this way: “If you’re at Telsa, you’re choosing to be at the equivalent of the Special Forces. There’s the regular army, and that’s fine, but if you are working at Tesla you’re choosing to step up your game.”
“Success is never accidental.” — Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square
“Real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. Never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit.” — Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, made the first outside investment in Facebook, funded companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn
“It’s as easy to do something big as it is to do something small, so reach for a fantasy worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort.” — Stephen A. Schwartzman, Chairman, CEO. and Co-founder of Blackstone
President Trump recently sent me a $1,200 Economic Impact Payment after Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).
In the West Wing of the White House staffers are now required to wear face masks unless they are sitting at their desk.
Vice President Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller, and one of President Trump’s valets tested positive for COVID 19 last week.
Three members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force are self-quarantining after potential exposure. They are Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Stephen Hanh, head of the Food & Drug Administration.
President Trump must be thinking about hunger, hunger signals, food shortages, and the upcoming elections in the United States, especially voting in the next presidential election.
I can eat at a friend’s home.
I remember pleasant days in Sicily
It was a different time, a pre-pandemic time.
I can eat Sushi at my daughter’s home in Massachusetts, with my daughter, her husband, and their two children.
There are places that make me realize how tiny I and my problems are.
It’s impossible for me to forget the grandeur and refinement of the works of art I saw in Sicily.
Nelson Mandela was a member of the Thembu royal house, descended from King Ngubengcuka (c. 1790 -1830) who united the Thembu nation before it was subjected to British colonial rule.
University of South Africa (UNISA) is one of the largest distance education institutions in the world, and the uni8versity through which Nelson Mandela achieved his LL.B degree. After he was forced to end his studies through the University of London, he continue through UNISA and graduated, in absentia in 1989. He was able to practice as a lawyer before he was imprisoned, as in those days, only a diploma in law was necessary.
In Robben Island prisoners were made to sit in rows in the prison courtyard and smash stones into gravel.
Every great story on planet Earth happened when someone decided not to give up, but kept going no matter what.
When South Africa’s first democratically elected government came to power in 1994, the government reorganized the ten existing Bantustans, or homelands, and the four existing provinces into nine smaller fully integrated provinces. The four provinces that existed from 1910 – 94 were reorganized into new provinces.
Copyright (c) 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
The world is more amazing than any dream.
Creative people have endless obstinacy.
They continue to be creative through matter what happens.
Their enduring happiness comes from productive work and the transcendental elements of their lifes.
The centrality of productive human endeavor is creating a sense of purpose in life.
What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning success serving others.
Enjoying your life is the most beautiful thing you can do for yourself.
Love what you do.
Every great story happened when someone decided not to give up, but to keep going no matter what.
Enjoy every moment of your life.
If Plan “A” doesn’t work, there are 25 more letters in the alphabet.
I hope your cognitive faculties are working with a bit more alacrity than your most recent actions exhibited.
Keep smiling.
Keep gathering intellects and forces.
Keep getting people to coalesce around your way of thinking.
Someday, life will tire of upsetting you.
Be in touch with yourself.
Spontaneity is the best kind of adventure.
There is no time to be bored in a world as beautiful as this.
I tried being normal once. It was the most boring hour of my life.
Copyright (c) 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
A person is either turned on by a field of poppies or not.
A person either has the imagination to quarantine themselves in a field of poppies or not.
When extreme Imagination Compatibility exists a man and woman can enjoy listening to a clock tick when they are together.
Copyright (c) 2020 Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
Fundamental success, unless your are born rich and/or are connected, comes from pursuing high ambitions, having hustle, being creative, having chutzpah, persistence, drive, stamina, passion, practicing smart thinking, having good luck, being patient, and good timing.
Everyone has Animal Spirit.
Whether people acknowledge their Animal Spirit, let it free, or suppress it will make a difference in the life they lead, the adventures they have, how they face the unknown, and will determine how they treat opportunities.
Whether an opportunity will be passionately seized and turned into a success or be put on the back burner and turn into a failure or will not become part of your life depends on whether you throttle your animal spirit.
Everybody is re-engineering their life as a result of the pandemic.
It is best to adapt to reality on the ground.
Animal Spirit matters.
Artistic temperament matters.
Taste matters.
Refinement matters.
Personality matters.
The whole picture has to be right.
Success comes down to being ready to seize rare moments of opportunity.
Success comes down to rare moments of opportunity.
Gather the right people and resources then commit.
Be open, alert and ready to seize opportunity.
Make decisions when you are ready.
Information is the most important asset in business.
The right people never get complacent.
The right people never stop learning.
The right people are receptive to new ideas provided they are thoughtful.
The right people are bold.
They have the confidence and courage to act when the moment seems right.
The right people accept risk where others are cautious and take action when everyone else is frozen, but they do so smartly.
The right people thoughtfully match their passion with their ambition.
I am co-publishing Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes with a friend who is passionate about shoes.
DGTWS is a feel good publication.
DGTWS is publicizing feel good fun fashion.
DGTWS is a source of uplifting shoe fashion information and photographs.
Check out DGTWS shoe fashion picks of the weeks during the past eight weeks of the pandemic.
Below are screen shots of favorite shoe picks published in Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes in the past few weeks.
Copyright © 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved
 | Diana Kohler on Reality On The Ground –… |
 | boobibooblog on “UNCUT GEMS”… |
 | Passport Overused on VISUAL IDENTITY #3 – A W… |
| boobibooblog on VISUAL IDENTITY #3 – A W… |
| Boo Schaub on WORLD CHANGERS by Gary Smolker… |
Gary S. Smolker 