tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86070935277513572032024-03-13T03:18:52.918-07:00Quiet Highway: Saga of a Gentleman"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert FrostMatt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.comBlogger1766125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-53558204126129134862022-03-06T15:25:00.004-08:002022-08-03T22:49:44.132-07:00A Journalist's Goal<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A journalist must avoid ego and hatred. Both vices block you from empathizing, then understanding all points of view. Until linguistic translations are seamless and historical facts uniform, a journalist's job is to tell stories with context, opening doors to the truth. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2022)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-31239593050818964502022-01-28T12:04:00.004-08:002022-04-14T19:21:21.099-07:00On Caitlin Flanagan: High Society Pulp<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s impolite to malign skilled writers, particularly when they’ve done nothing wrong. When I say nothing wrong, I mean not one wrong breath taken, nor a hand raised at anything impersonal. For </span><em style="font-family: georgia;">The Atlantic</em><span style="font-family: georgia;">’s Caitlin Flanagan, everything is personal, and the personal is worth sharing.</span></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>“I think I’ll head over to the kitchen and look out the window for a few minutes.” — Caitlin Flanagan, March 16, 2020 </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This would be absolutely true were Flanagan, daughter of an Ivy League professor, not a reminder of birthplace invoking fate, the kind of person only possible in America’s sheltered cul-de-sacs. <br /><br />When I first heard <a href="https://youtu.be/2c4S_AzELIE" target="_blank">Flanagan</a>, she was exactly what I expected: a privileged schoolmarm who, deep down, believes in the Establishment but is rebellious enough on the surface to convince us otherwise. Indeed, Flanagan's greatest crime is becoming her circumstances’ diktat: an American-born white woman who makes fragility look alluring. (Think Marilyn Monroe with a dog, two degrees, and no scandal, unless buying a birth control pill qualifies.) <br /><br />Take away Flanagan’s familial money, and she’d be more desperate than sexy, which is precisely why she’s popular--many people, some even non-whites, wonder the same about themselves. A flesh-and-blood reminder of “There but for the grace of God go I,” Flanagan’s made a career as social critic for the country club set and its aspirants. Good for her. Perhaps other writers have become beloved by doing nothing wrong and nothing remarkable, but Flanagan does it all with such empathy, it’s impossible not to admire her—preferably in print than in person. <br /><br />© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (January 2022) </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-10413307082632414472021-12-26T11:34:00.002-08:002021-12-26T11:43:47.228-08:00Sweet and Sour Coffee<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Like every coffee aficionado, I'm always trying to make the perfect cup of coffee. Yesterday, I formulated a blend I call “Sweet and Sour Coffee.” If you want to try it, instructions are below:</span></p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Using a stainless steel French Press, steep the following whole beans for five minutes (or longer, depending on the size of the French Press) in the following percentages: <br /><br />40% Chiapas or Veracruz (Mexico, medium) <br />20% Sumatera (Indonesia, dark) <br />40% Andes or Cuzco (Peru, light)<br /><br />Want more sour? Increase the percentages in favor of Sumatera. <br /><br />Want more sweet? Increase the percentages in favor of Andes or Cuzco. <br /><br />Making a perfect cup of coffee isn’t easy because water type, water temperature, steeping time, and whole bean quality can be unpredictable. Peru currently makes some of the best <i>arabica</i> light roasts, but just one bad season can cause country flavor profiles to change. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (December 2021)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-62110557846094239692021-12-23T12:24:00.006-08:002021-12-23T12:25:34.724-08:00Declassified JFK Files: Soviets and Cubans, American Right Wing, or ???<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Newly declassified JFK files do not appear to have new information; however, they do confirm existing suspicions. The CIA believed JFK’s assassination was the work of Soviets collaborating with Cuban intelligence. Some key points: <br /><br />Lee Harvey Oswald “defected to USSR in Oct 1959.” Source: <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32344074.pdf" target="_blank">104-10054-10296</a>.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiovVAz8_Xnj8E8l54EsQPXIzPoIGd1I4PYi2bLRpPkBRwuL9cvYW5nP9DmncfZgDQfoGQuSwqOD7xmC8cH7oUbtb2MvALMRVguKrbWrlBiFg-iM33_xxRR4ZPVNBjvc6R5uzb9KHeCAwsHZuNyp6vBQVz9ULtknB15Nm4gvRmFsVdsW3UZdLSzZVEm7A=s2100" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1573" data-original-width="2100" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiovVAz8_Xnj8E8l54EsQPXIzPoIGd1I4PYi2bLRpPkBRwuL9cvYW5nP9DmncfZgDQfoGQuSwqOD7xmC8cH7oUbtb2MvALMRVguKrbWrlBiFg-iM33_xxRR4ZPVNBjvc6R5uzb9KHeCAwsHZuNyp6vBQVz9ULtknB15Nm4gvRmFsVdsW3UZdLSzZVEm7A=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">“OSWALD stated that he had been employed since 13 January 1960 in Belorussian radio and TV factory in Minsk where he worked as a metal worker... OSWALD was married... to Marina Nikolaevna PSAKOVA [sic]...”</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Oswald apparently attempted “to kill General Walker early in April 1963” and identified with Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution as early as his Marine Corps service in El Toro, California. Source: <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32352854.pdf" target="_blank">104-10086-10181</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Lydia Dimytruk and Alexander Kleinlerer were persons of interest. The CIA believed Soviets were actively targeting USA military personnel, particularly anyone <a href="https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339674/" target="_blank">undesirably</a> or dishonorably discharged—just like Oswald. [<u>Note</u>: Edward Snowden also defected to Russia, but for different reasons. Though we’re taught the Cold War ended in 1991, apparently no one told the intelligence agencies.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fidel Castro's <i>Times-Picayune</i> interview with <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10062-10121.pdf" target="_blank">Daniel Harker</a> on September 9, 1963 delivered direct threats to JFK and RFK. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Cuban intelligence was valuable because of Spanish-speaking abilities, which facilitated intelligence operations in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32106384.pdf" target="_blank">Mexico City</a>, Mexico. Oswald appears to have taken a Greyhound bus from <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32348121.pdf" target="_blank">Mexico City to Dallas, Texas</a> on September 30, 1963, allowing three weeks’ preparation time. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Chairman Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev “had some dark thoughts about the American Right Wing being behind this conspiracy... He said he did not believe that the American security services were this inept... [with respect to Jack Ruby shooting Lee Oswald].” “[His] attitude was one of complete skepticism as to the public version [of events.]”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021) </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-24681306665350560292021-10-16T15:59:00.005-07:002021-10-16T16:00:58.238-07:00Economics, Malaysia, and Economic Growth<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Economics is broken because other than Hernando de Soto's work, it fails to account for politics and sociology. One of the field's most egregious mistakes is assuming protectionism always equals failure within a globalized trading paradigm--or that slower economic growth is necessarily inferior to faster growth. Post-WWII, debt within allied Western nations created an interdependent system facilitating common goals and knowledge transfers. Meanwhile, in formerly colonized countries, most residents remained poor during as well as after colonization, and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 confirmed a distrust of Western finance. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When judging formerly colonized countries like Malaysia, one must remember just how poor the natives were. According to Tun Dr. Mahathir, "The country's per capita income in 1957, the year of Independence, was less than USD350. <b>Under British colonial rule more than 70% of the population lived below the poverty line... there were only about 100 university graduates in the whole country."</b> If an Asian country associated Western influence with mismanagement--not an illogical conclusion after the Vietnam War--then it would prefer homegrown businesses over FDI, even if slower growth resulted. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why so much misunderstanding? When globalized trade focuses on things rather than people, cross-cultural understanding cannot succeed except on a superficial level. In a debt-soaked world, will the 22nd century be different?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)</span></div>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-50508533641478187742021-07-17T18:21:00.051-07:002021-08-13T22:15:26.660-07:00Journalism, Judges, and Justice: a Neglected American Alliance <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The United States, after losing propaganda wars against Russia and China post-Trump, appears to be doubling down on anti-democratic allegations while elevating Asian-Americans into visible positions of power. This hybrid strategy is too little, too late, and will do nothing to alter China's rise to superpower status. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">By now, American politicians and CEOs know their country's institutions are no longer export-ready without substantial advertising and trillions of dollars of government stimulus. To add ballast to the strategies above, they are consolidating media and using government lawyers to prosecute perceived enemies of the state. Such maneuvering, which attempts to combine a Soviet hammer with American marketing and banking expertise, will fail because it brings nothing new. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">No government, irrespective of the political party in power, is really interested in freedom of the press. All democratic governments are keen to control the media by using undemocratic means. -- <a href="https://www.barandbench.com/columns/supreme-court-and-the-fourth-pillar" target="_blank">Preetika Dwivedi</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Six corporations already control most of what Americans see, but social media, streaming services, satellite radio, and podcasts represent challenges to crafting a united narrative. As media further consolidates, it can distract you on firmer financial footing, sidelining critical voices by drowning you in options. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">For example, the American journalist most resembling Edward R. Murrow or Dan Rather is British-born Mehdi Hasan, whom most Americans have never heard of; meanwhile, any American wishing to read America's most honest political commentary would need to turn to the opening letter of Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine. When a semi-mainstream pornographer is a country's most incisive native-born journalist, it is unclear how further media consolidation will assist the role of journalist as the legislature's unofficial fact-finder.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">"[I]mperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government." -- Chief Justice Hughes, 299 U.S. 353, 365 (1937)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Regarding "lawfare," the current Democratic Party majority has failed to secure significant jail time against even one alleged bad actor. Republican Steve Bannon's indictment was dismissed. Republicans Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were pardoned. Army lieutenant general Michael </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned. The list of pardoned and/or convicted military personnel is long and, the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-kill-team-how-u-s-soldiers-in-afghanistan-murdered-innocent-civilians-169793/" target="_blank">occupation of Afghanistan</a> h</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">aving lasted 20 years, includes members under both Democratic and Republican administrations. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">History may not be kind to Clint Allen Lorance, Robert Bales, Jeremy Morlock, Edward Gallagher, or Mathew Golsteyn, but they can always claim they were victims of a corrupt military hierarchy, thus casting doubt on America's justice system. Such doubt means the law, designed to punish the guilty and free the innocent, cannot be wholly trusted, which in turn means American lawyers and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-judges-misconduct/" target="_blank">judges</a> cannot be trusted or believed. Doubt and legal maneuvering are not new phenomena, but when they have appeared together, the first casualty has been the credibility of the legal branch. In a ternary system where the judiciary supervises the executive and the legislature, it is not difficult to predict rot from one branch spreading everywhere. This, again, is nothing new. The 1995 O.J. Simpson trial foreshadowed issues not only within the criminal justice system, but the entire legal branch, including police departments, just as the Rodney King beating foreshadowed <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/04/chauvin-and-floyd-two-men-america-failed.html" target="_blank">George Floyd's manslaughter</a>. (The result of the upcoming Theranos trial, where a blond-haired, blue-eyed CEO is claiming she was the victim of a brown-skinned svengali, will determine whether California's justice system is capable of reform or irrevocably corrupt.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Rot is particularly apt to spread where students lack proper civics and history instruction, and Americans who study the My Lai massacre are not taught the following facts: 1) twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader, was convicted; 2) the "<a href="https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/12/nixons-leniency-after-my-lai-hurt-veterans-trumps-will-too/161905/" target="_blank">day after the verdict, Nixon ordered Calley released from the post stockade</a> and placed under house arrest in the Fort Benning bachelor officer quarters. Appeals would eventually reduce his punishment to time served." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why didn't</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> President Nixon pardon Calley outright? The public--including a majority of whom voted--wouldn't have tolerated it, and their political engagement allowed Congress to use impeachment to drive Nixon out of the political arena. In contrast, when a divided <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-democratic-national-convention-was.html" target="_blank">Congress impeached Trump</a>, few Americans cared because Trump was already out of office. (Politics may be a show, but it must contain some substance to maintain viewership.) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Understanding events between Nixon and Biden requires remembering what happened between the American War of Aggression against Vietnam and twenty years of Afghan occupation: the Iraq War and Guantanamo Bay. There, too, justice and judges were feckless. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Iraq War criminal Charles Graner served six and a half years of his ten year sentence. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lynndie England, Graner's co-conspirator, served only eighteen months of her three year sentence. As of July 2021, Guantanamo Bay is still open, despite former President Obama's pledge to close it. After the </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iraq-murder/tearful-soldier-tells-court-of-iraq-rape-murder-idUSN2037158220070221" target="_blank">Mahmudiyah rape and killings</a>, justice <a href="https://caccapl.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/web/repository/written-case-studies/black-hearts-yusufiyah-iraq.pdf" target="_blank">prevailed</a> against Steven Dale Green, James P. Barker, Paul E. Cortez, Jesse V. Spielman, Bryan L. Howard, and Anthony W. Yribe, which made it all the more disheartening to see political and judicial integrity retreat again during the Afghan occupation. In stable countries, the scales of justice ought not to wobble so much. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now would be a good time for Americans to re-evaluate why political parties exist. It is not only to elevate intellectuals onto public platforms so they can compete with others under transparent rules that advance the nation</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. Ideally, politics is played by people who first and foremost prevent corruption within government itself, thereby gaining credibility to regulate the private sector, including criminals. Without such credibility, China's one-party system will succeed against the more complex, more variegated American system of checks and balances for obvious reasons: more variety is inferior when it allows more rather than less corruption, and when it renders corruption harder to root out. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the United States lacked global political competition, its political negligence was understandable. Today, America's political negligence is perplexing as well as unforgivable. After all, every empire eventually expires, but whether systemic corruption is part of its history is entirely up to its people and its politicians. Perhaps, in the end, not all empires are doomed to fail--just ones that make a mockery of their judges and journalists. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat, active member of International Federation of Journalists as of date of publication (July 2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Bonus</i>: The war crimes mentioned above are by no means an exhaustive list. According to CNN, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"In testimony at an Article 32 hearing -- the military's version of a grand jury or preliminary hearing -- [Colonel] West said the [Iraqi] policeman... was not cooperating with interrogators, so he watched four of his soldiers from the 220th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body. West said he also threatened to kill [the policeman]. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Military prosecutors say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel. Apparently not knowing where West's gun was aimed, [the Iraqi policeman] cracked and gave information..." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">However, the policeman, Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi, "said in an interview that he did not [provide any valuable information], because he knew nothing." According to the NYT, "Hamoodi said that he was not sure what he told the Americans, but that it was meaningless information induced by fear and pain." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"At least one man named by Mr. Hamoodi was taken into custody... and his home was searched. No plans for attacks on Americans or weapons were found. Colonel West testified that he did not know whether 'any corroboration' of a plot was ever found, adding: 'At the time I had to base my decision on the intelligence I received. It's possible that I was wrong about Mr. Hamoodi.'" (Source: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121002151438/http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/world/struggle-for-iraq-interrogations-colonel-risked-his-career-menacing-detainee.html?src=pm" target="_blank">NY Times</a>, THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: INTERROGATIONS; How Colonel Risked His Career By Menacing Detainee and Lost, May 27, 2004, by Deborah Sontag) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">95 members of Congress signed a letter to the secretary of the Army supporting the colonel. West was fined 5,000 dollars. He became a Florida Representative and is now Chair of the Texas Republican Party.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"There was a looming sense of doom in America, a perception that established politics had failed. Many pundits had said that--after being motivated and defined for 30 years by the Communist threat--Americans seriously needed to find a new enemy." -- Mark Lawson, <u>The Battle for Room Service</u> (1993) <br /><br />After candidate Ross Perot's popularity, the "unnerving burden on President [Bill] Clinton was to restore democratic equilibrium--and confidence in the conventional ballot box--or America might yet be the territory for a populist, anti-political, sinister Mr. Fixit." -- </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mark Lawson, <u>The Battle for Room Service</u> (1993)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-50229068408709028932021-06-10T13:41:00.013-07:002021-09-20T11:18:10.159-07:00African-Americans and the Military: a Predestined Relationship? <p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iY659ZS7VT8/YMKr_ep4k6I/AAAAAAABfkM/tL4Jaen-CjgN3a0TpuD4dygwJZfn7S9VgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_5297.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iY659ZS7VT8/YMKr_ep4k6I/AAAAAAABfkM/tL4Jaen-CjgN3a0TpuD4dygwJZfn7S9VgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_5297.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screenshot from The Americanization of Emily (1964), starring Julie Andrews <br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The United States preys on young black men. The pattern--where the civilian government's negligence is used to promote the military as savior--is devastating: </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1. Continue racial and religious segregation across American cities, assuring areas with the progeny of former slaves will have fewer economic opportunities than others; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">2. Fund K-12 education through local taxes or complex state formulas, thereby guaranteeing comparatively less funding for racially segregated areas and less attraction for top teachers due to longer travel times and inferior student quality; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">3. In non-segregated areas, promote legal immigration, especially of immigrants holding degrees in engineering, math, and science; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[Note: all American STEM hubs have substantial immigrant populations, which attract venture capital.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">Venture-backed companies outperformed the overall economy in terms of creating jobs and growing revenue... In recent decades, venture capital has played an instrumental role in creating high-tech, high-growth industries such as information technology, biotechnology, semiconductors and online retailing... -- <a href="https://reseaucapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/nvca_venture_impact_5th_ed.pdf" target="_blank">IHS Insight</a>, "Venture Impact" (2009)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">On real estate, in particular, if I had one piece of advice--go where the creative and technology types are, because those are the markets where there will be the most economic activity... Tech is driving so much of the growth in this global economy. -- Blackstone Group Inc. President Jon Gray (Bloomberg News, June 11, 2021)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">4. In segregated areas lacking viable educational, economic, and extracurricular opportunities, watch as the environment promotes short-term thinking and thus less long-term family creation, which impacts inter-generational wealth creation and transfer; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">5. As single motherhood increases in more racially segregated neighborhoods, blame everything except vestiges of Christian and Catholic-led chattel slavery and the <i>de jure</i>, then <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/04/chauvin-and-floyd-two-men-america-failed.html" target="_blank"><i>de facto</i> segregation</a> resulting from it;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">6. When K-12 graduates from more segregated neighborhoods are comparatively less prepared for college and professional growth, watch as they are either coddled and <a href="https://www.jbhe.com/features/46_black_student_mismatch.html" target="_blank">advanced</a> or treated equally and <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/123rothstein.pdf" target="_blank">failed</a> unless exceptional; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">7. When non-K-12 graduates mature, watch as they confront a formal labor market without significant advancement opportunities and an informal labor market with comparatively superior opportunities; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Seeing dead bodies and machine guns, that is what I remember most from my childhood in the South Side of Chicago. Drive-by shootings. It was the biggest black ghetto in the worst depression. There was nothing but gangsters around us and I wanted to be one, too. -- </span><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/8146333/Quincy-Jones-interview.html" style="font-family: courier;" target="_blank">Quincy Jones</a><span style="font-family: courier;"> (2010)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">8. For both recent graduates and non-graduates in segregated American neighborhoods, watch as well-funded military recruitment centers offer a way out of the inferior formal job market and the superior but riskier informal job market; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[Fact: Quincy Jones, Malcolm X, Mark Twain, and James Lipton all worked for pimps or as pimps/<a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/james-lipton-defends-one-time-pimp-job-france-6C10128770" target="_blank">mecs</a>, proving the draw of the informal labor market in recessionary or exclusionary times.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">9. Watch as well-funded, finely-tuned <a href="https://matthewrafat.medium.com/military-grade-propaganda-f74759962d05" target="_blank">military propaganda</a> convinces deliberately under-prepared young adults to join an organization that gives them opportunities they lacked in their first 18 years of life--as long as they follow orders; </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" (1967)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">10. Watch as the United States military, through negligence, fear, and funding, replaces the father figure in the African-American community. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And so it goes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Dedicated to Dr. Vincent Harding and <a href="http://www.veteransofhope.org/" target="_blank">Veterans of Hope</a>. <br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: American mainstream <a href="http://www.veteransofhope.org/veterans/andrew-young-2/" target="_blank">religion</a> lost moral authority as military spending became unaccountable and all-encompassing at the same time lawyers perfected tax shelters. The lure of low-cost debt in an age of increased tax resistance was bound to reduce civilian government's efficacy, but the impact on communities, especially segregated ones, was perhaps more profound than anticipated. Without civilian government offering principled leadership or effective service, American women reasonably sought community in religious structures while their men reasonably joined the cult of the military. <br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: "Negroes have always held the hope that if they really demonstrate they are great soldiers and if they really fight for America and help save American democracy, then when they come back home, American will treat them better. This has not been the case... for the Negro GI, military service still represents a means of escape from the oppressive ghettos of the rural South and the urban North. He often sees the Army as an avenue for educational opportunities and job training. He sees in the military uniform a symbol of dignity that has long been denied him by society. The tragedy in this is that military serve is probably the only possible escape for most young Negro men... They know that life in the city ghetto or life in the rural South almost certainly means jail or death or humiliation. And so, by comparison, military service is really the lesser risk." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., <i>Playboy Magazine</i>, January 1969, pp. 236, published posthumously </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-63512836959042163402021-05-03T15:06:00.012-07:002022-08-19T21:33:45.626-07:00Technology Credit Union: A Sinking Ship? <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">After Technology Credit Union's 2018 annual meeting, I opened my <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/04/technology-credit-union-tech-cu-annual.html" target="_blank">article</a> like so: "All of us suspect financial institution executives are SOBs, but most of them have the decency to act dignified in public. Not San Jose, California-based Tech CU." Three years later, nothing has changed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Some background: in 2012, Tech CU tried converting from a state-chartered credit union to a bank. Members overwhelmingly <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2012/09/technology-credit-union-bank-conversion.html" target="_blank">rejected the proposal</a>: "Of those casting ballots, 77% rejected the idea of becoming a bank." Did Tech CU's management apologize for spending member funds on their cockamamie idea? Nope. Did any of Tech CU's directors or executives resign? Not a one. In 2011, Diana Dykstra of The California Credit Union League, which represents the state’s 428 credit unions, criticized Tech CU's conversion plans, saying, "In the end, those <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/10/03/technology-credit-union-bank-conversion.html" target="_blank">members could be left with a financial institution that no longer strives to put their interests first</a>." Dykstra was more right than she knew. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">On May 1, 2021, Tech CU updated its membership agreement, granting itself the kind of absolute power European royalty would have envied pre-French-Revolution. From </span><a href="https://www.techcu.com/uploadedFiles/_Techcu/Content/PDFs/Consumer-Membership-Account-Agreements-and-Disclosures-5-1-2021.pdf" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">Page 10-11</a><span style="font-family: georgia;">: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">We reserve the right to deny all services ... if any of the following occur: ... You fail to conduct your business with Tech CU (including at Shared Branch locations) in a civil and businesslike way... You agree to pay any attorney’s fees and court costs we incur to enforce our member conduct policy.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Who needs a corrupt workers' union when employees have lawyers apparently unaware unconscionability under California Civil Code 1670.5? Remember that a credit union is a union of members with some common interest, whether location, group membership, or workplace. If a credit union can arbitrarily expel anyone, membership means nothing. One also wonders why the state in "state-chartered" lacks initiative when substantive due process is absent, but I suppose American governments stopped feigning interest in the individual when they realized debt was more lucrative than taxes. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Vanguard, the model of member-based financial organizations, remains an investor's best option, but when it comes to regular banking services, American consumers are bereft. <b>A government more dependent on debt than taxes is incapable of neutral oversight regarding consumer-facing financial institutions.</b> <br /><br />I wasn't wrong when I called Tech CU executives SOBs, but I wasn't as thorough as I should have been. I should have also named California's </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://dfpi.ca.gov/ca-consumer-financial-protection-law/" target="_blank">Division of Financial Institutions</a>. I don't know if they're SOBs, but given their failure to disallow Tech CU's overly broad, one-sided membership terms, we'd be better off if California legislators were replaced by monkeys. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (May 2021) <br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: a court filing involving Tech CU's alleged misuse of its membership terms can be found at the following link: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/506030928/Obj">https://www.scribd.com/document/506030928/Obj</a> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">More court filings are available by searching <a href="https://www.scscourt.org/online_services/case_info.shtml" target="_blank">Santa Clara County's court website</a> for case number 21CH009964. A video of the alleged "incident" can be found on YouTube: <a href="https://youtu.be/-zIvzCMIeCc" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/-zIvzCMIeCc</a> <br /><br /><i>Update August 2022</i>: <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/credit-union-sees-workplace-violence-restraining-order-reversed">https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/credit-union-sees-workplace-violence-restraining-order-reversed</a> </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-32546004916589343842021-05-01T16:54:00.012-07:002021-05-05T14:25:35.182-07:00Governmental Isolationism amid Corporate Outreach: a Post-Political World?<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. held its annual meeting today. For all the talk of frosty relations between China and USA, the American billionaire's longest ancillary presentations were China-related: "U.S.-China forum" and "U.S.-China Investor Forum." China-based BYD and Oglivy Global China also made appearances, with Oglivy indicating "rule of law" and "capital markets" were the major reasons USA businesses continued to succeed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Capital being mobile and American lawyers being no pillars of honesty or efficiency, one wonders if Chinese executives have already co-opted the best elements of America's corporate playbook. After all, it was China, not USA, that most recently issued an antitrust ruling against one its largest technology companies, and China that received more capital inflows than USA during COVID19 because of its deft (and draconian) handling of the pandemic. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yyiR2crJa7I/YI3hEFFfo7I/AAAAAAABbmY/QjCXWqbTBekl_DeLb1JTF02QF8e7tAHFACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_6149.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1385" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yyiR2crJa7I/YI3hEFFfo7I/AAAAAAABbmY/QjCXWqbTBekl_DeLb1JTF02QF8e7tAHFACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_6149.heic" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">What was China's reaction to receiving "hot money" after its world-leading post-pandemic recovery? It increased its funds' limits on overseas investments, essentially transferring "paper" inflation risk to the United States and the EU. (If it sounds like Communist Chinese regulators are one step ahead of capitalist Americans, it may be because China has studied Hong Kong and Singapore.) </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Twenty years after September 11, 2001, the evidence is clear and convincing: g</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">iven the size and influence of the informal economy, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">America's single-minded focus on terrorism guaranteed American <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/11/isolationism-has-consequences.html" target="_blank">isolationism</a> and thus China's rise. More specifically, when American regulators demanded full compliance with financial regulations designed to catch criminals, capital reaction was swift: capital, being mobile, left to more neutral, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/04/sweden-sverige.html" target="_blank">business-friendly</a> locations. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">In seeking status as the world's indispensable currency, the USD failed to acknowledge a conflict: it required legal monogamy and obedience from its partners at the same time it actively played the field. Cheating was inevitable. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Consider sanctions: they work only if the party being blocked needs something from the sanctioning body. In other words, sanctions fail in a multi-polar world where parties can obtain goods and services from multiple sources at comparable prices. Where such goods and services are available at <i>lower prices</i> than sanction-happy competitors, the result is foretold: China's economic rise from 2001 to 2021 and beyond. Similar to America's gun laws, long-arm statutes pursuing international enforcement have produced not compliance but more creative sellers, leaving the already law-abiding as the only persons affected. In this context, USA's extrajudicial actions, such as arresting a Huawei executive (via Canada), make sense, as does the rise of non-traditional banking such as cryptocurrency. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">"Extrajudicial" is exactly what it looks like: outside the law. When lawyers fail to create workable alternatives to international competitors, whether formal or informal, they create disrespect for their country's laws while increasing opponents' opportunities. As of today, the effect is both domestic and international: after at least sixty years of failure, many American local governments are no longer interested in following federal policies on drugs or <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/21/989588072/a-relic-and-burden-manhattan-district-attorney-to-stop-prosecuting-prostitution" target="_blank">sex</a> unless paid handsomely in federal grants. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A geographically-isolated democracy in which lawyers and politicians cannot prove their legal model is ideal creates a vacuum that will be filled by multinational corporations, international mafia, and one-party governments. Why one-party governments? Because a world lacking idealistic, moral and wise lawyers favors the executive branch and thus non-democratic political systems. China's most significant 21st century contribution may not be replacing the United States but establishing a "post-political" world. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Do we really want the most accessible cultural values to be determined by multinational banks, behemoth investors, and centralized governments? As long as more people are likelier to listen to Buffett than Biden, we'll find out. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">© Matthew Rafat (May 2021) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">"The Chinese government will allow businesses to flourish... [after studying Singapore] they changed Communism, and now we have Communism with Chinese characteristics." -- <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2008/05/wesco-shareholder-meeting-may-7-2008.html" target="_blank">Charlie Munger</a> (2021) </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-31407975810505315332021-04-26T13:04:00.023-07:002022-02-14T15:28:34.923-08:00Levi Strauss 2021 Investor Call<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Levi Strauss aka LS&Co. held an investor call on April 21, 2021. Most of the call involved LS&Co. executives pontificating on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/04/09/levis-ceo-chip-bergh-voting-laws-gun-control.cnnbusiness/video/playlists/business-corporate-responsibility/" target="_blank">politics</a> and social issues. We don't need <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2007/12/book-review-when-game-was-ours.html" target="_blank">NBA</a> star Michael Jordan to remind us Republicans buy jeans, too, but LS&Co.'s real problem is political hubris.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u>Levi's, on Georgia's voter ID controversy</u>: "Voting is not a partisan issue. It is an American issue... Democracy only works if every eligible voter votes... Democracy needs to work around free, fair, and equitable access to the polls. More than 350 bills [are being proposed across the country that intend to suppress voting accessibility]... this proposed legislation is racist. By the way, I've never said anything about voter ID." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[If you're confused, I don't blame you. Why oppose a proposed law without actually mentioning the specific parts you oppose?] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u>Levi's, on gun legislation</u>: "Gun violence in America is tearing the country apart... Over 90% of Americans support background check legislation. Business leaders have a responsibility to serve their customers and their communities." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">[His full response included remarkably specific statistics. In other news, according to a poll I just paid someone to do, over 90% of thinking human beings oppose Levi's giving canned, general answers to complex issues.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">PETA, an organization against animal abuse, asked about Levi's use of leather patches. Levi's said the majority of its patches are non-leather.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As far as political discussions go, this is top shelf, gold tier gibberish. The person answering questions wasn't an <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/careercenter/career-choice-series/election-law/" target="_blank">elections lawyer</a> but still assumed familiarity with different states' legislation. Worse, his level of statistical specificity would cause a pessimist (or an astute marketing firm) to believe most of the questions were corporate-sponsored plants--except for the parts lacking sense, such as demurring on voter ID. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Regarding voting, the Levi Strauss Foundation issued 13 million USD in "grants to organizations and individuals working to protect the civil liberties of vulnerable communities, expand voter participation and access and support the well-being of workers in our supply chain." (pp. 4) 13 million USD should get you better legal advice, but as it stands, Levi's has rendered its corporation into a <i>de facto</i> marketing arm of the Democratic Party, thus alienating about half of the country. <br /><br />I probably don't have to tell you California, home of Levi's HQ, is a <i>de facto</i> one party state, where every single state political office is controlled by the Democratic Party. If there's one way to guarantee biased feedback, it's living in a politically homogeneous state that deems different-minded people racist. (Michael Jordan, who took a more measured approach, lived in North Carolina, which has wavered between Republican and Democratic state control.) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">"It struck me as notably ironic that Southerners could despise blacks so bitterly and yet live comfortably alongside them, while in the North people by and large did not mind blacks, even respected them as humans and wished them every success, just so long as they didn't have to mingle with them too freely." -- Bill Bryson [<u>The Lost Continent</u>, paperback, pp. 63 (1989)]</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">The tragedy of Levi's executive team isn't alleged political bias--it's their obliviousness to the fact their comments overshadow <a href="https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/features/about-us" target="_blank">the company</a>'s truly admirable actions. For example, Levi's is adapting well to e-commerce. It offers "Buy Online Pickup in Store" as well as "Same-Day Delivery and Appointment Scheduling." Its "ship-from-store capability" is operational in USA and has "expanded to Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany." Levi's direct-to-consumer business--basically, direct online sales vs. direct brick-and-mortar sales--"reached 39% of revenues." Levi's also reduced its CEO's salary "by 50% and other executive salaries by 25% for four months as part of [COVID19] cost reductions and cash saving measures." (pp. 33, proxy statement) There's more to praise, including the company's history catering to blue-collar workers, but why bother, unless you're a Democrat? <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Levi's claims its "brand heritage and authenticity is unmatched." I agree. Absolutely no other apparel company is more authentic when it comes to pablum and group-think. When shoveling political manure, be sure to wear Levi's jeans. For everything else, consider <a href="https://www.7forallmankind.com/" target="_blank">7 for All Mankind</a> (the most comfortable pair of jeans I own), <a href="https://www.wrangler.com/" target="_blank">Wrangler</a> (Brett Favre's jeans), or <a href="https://www.columbia.com/" target="_blank">Columbia</a>'s Silver Ridge or Royce Range pants (founded by a German refugee). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Rafat (April 2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Disclosure</i>: I own an insignificant number of LS&Co. (LEVI) shares. I also worked as a Levi's contractor in HQ's compliance/legal department. One day, Levi's invited police and the FBI to a recruiting event on its ground floor. After one of the FBI recruiters demanded my name after I mentioned Hoover's spying on MLK, I walked away, then returned to give him an extended one-finger salute. Security escorted me out the same day without an investigator bothering to contact me. Maybe Levi's is <a href="https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand-president" target="_blank">politically progressive</a> except when it comes to protecting individuals against the FBI?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What about honesty? During the investor call, Levi's falsely claimed there were no further questions, despite the fact I asked a question. See screenshot below, showing submitted question one minute into the meeting. When I allege some or all of the questions Levi's publicized were planted by a marketing firm, I'm not entirely speculating. I left a voice mail for Levi's attorney Seth R. Jaffe after the investor call, and as of April 26, 2021, I've received no response. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGc8MmKNSAA/YIcX1RxXMiI/AAAAAAABbcY/E_u3tami3Bsz40434JyZ2jkYTPMqCdk-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/LevisShareholderMtg.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1533" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGc8MmKNSAA/YIcX1RxXMiI/AAAAAAABbcY/E_u3tami3Bsz40434JyZ2jkYTPMqCdk-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/LevisShareholderMtg.heic" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: georgia;"><div><i style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></i></div>Bonus</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">: Voting is not as straightforward as it seems. Can someone moving from California to North Carolina vote in an election to be held in one week? Can someone who has had months to register as a voter--allowing the state to verify his or her state residence--just show up to the polls on election day, show ID, and vote? If so, how do poll workers know if the ID is fake? What prevents a non-registered voter from showing state ID and voting multiple times at different voting booths? If registration is required, how many times does a voter need to register? Once or annually? How many months in advance is reasonable to allow a voter to register? What documents does the voter need to prove state residence? Is a utility bill too much? What if the voter rents a private room and does not pay for utilities directly? Does a voter need to prove a substantial impediment before being able to vote by mail? If anyone can register as an "absentee" voter, then does the voter need to mail the ballot individually or can s/he have someone else do it? Is a signature enough to prevent fraud on a vote-by-mail ballot? If so, what prevents community organizers from gathering ballots of local people they assist and doing the voting and mailing for them? Finally, why should the voting procedures of a </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">de facto</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> one-party state like California be anyone's preferred model?<br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: civil rights hero Michael Schwerner was wearing blue Wrangler jeans when he was <a href="https://lononaut.blogspot.com/2021/08/mississippi-burning-first-definitive.html" target="_blank">murdered by the KKK</a>. (See MIBURN files, Part 5 of 9, pp. 283) </span></span><p></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-31761504399746132742021-04-20T22:49:00.034-07:002021-08-13T22:45:45.013-07:00Chauvin and Floyd: Two Men America Failed <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Today, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of three counts of unintentional homicide against George Floyd. That such a tragic event occurred in a city with a black police chief and a black federal Representative indicates <a href="https://youtu.be/_zf-v9QPry8" target="_blank">racism</a> may not be the most culpable co-conspirator. Already, most Americans have forgotten the other three officers at the scene, only one of whom was white: J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao. (</span><a href="https://www.startribune.com/what-we-know-about-derek-chauvin-and-tou-thao-two-of-the-officers-caught-on-tape-in-the-death-of-george-floyd/570777632/" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">Thao was sued in federal court</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> in 2017 for unreasonable force, causing a <a href="https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/File/2017-01491" target="_blank">25,000 dollars taxpayer-funded settlement</a>.) All officers involved in Floyd's homicide were low-level patrolmen--not detectives, not sergeants, and not lieutenants. After 19 years on the job, Chauvin was doing the same police work as someone hired one week prior. Had I less education, I would say Chauvin was a sh*thead working a sh*t job in a sh*t area. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Floyd was no role model, either. To minimize prejudice, the jury could not hear Floyd's prior convictions, including a guilty plea for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Such imposed ignorance was reasonable given the lack of nexus between Floyd's death and his prior conduct, and I highlight Floyd's criminal record to show both men have more in common than one might assume. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Chauvin, too, has a record: eighteen complaints, two reprimands. </span></span><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Chauvin is the product of a divorced home; Floyd was raised by a single mother. Chauvin is now divorced; Floyd was never married. Both men attended community colleges, then third-tier public universities. Both were in their mid-forties the day their paths crossed. Incredibly, they once had security jobs at the same nightclub, though no reason to interact, as one worked inside and the other worked outside. ("You </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">had the house Negro and the field Negro.") If Floyd's death was tragic, then so was Chauvin's life: </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"'<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210416171443/https://www.startribune.com/those-who-know-derek-chauvin-say-they-would-not-have-predicted-his-killing-of-george-floyd/572054552/" target="_blank">Nineteen years on the street is a long time</a>, period,' said former MPD Chief Janeé Harteau. And 19 years in mostly the same place on the same shift is too long.'" Regardless of creed or color, we should be able to agree: no one, given a choice, would want the lives of these two men, which conveys a failure broader and more encompassing than race. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the contrary, who doesn't admire <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2019/06/segregation-as-logical-extension-of.html" target="_blank">Joe Elsby Martin</a> of LMPD or Ferdinand Alcindor, Sr. of NYPD? It was Officer Martin, a white man in segregated Louisville, who introduced Cassius Clay to boxing, and then presumably to the white <a href="https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=sportslaw&httpsredir=1&referer=" target="_blank">lawyers</a> who would represent Muhammad Ali. It was Officer Alcindor who fathered and helped raise the boy who would become UCLA graduate, NBA Hall-of-Famer, and author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Who invented Spock and the Vulcan philosophy of <a href="http://www.playgroundtothestars.com/2015/03/gene-roddenberrys-curious-inspiration-for-mr-spock-lapd-chief-william-parker/" target="_blank">"infinite diversity in infinite combinations"</a>? That would be Gene Roddenberry, former LAPD officer, whose father worked for LAPD. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sadly, despite past luminaries, NYPD and LAPD are now </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">recognized as two of America's most corrupt police departments. Multiple <a href="https://www.lapdonline.org/search_results/content_basic_view/928" target="_blank">DOJ consent decrees</a>, including one mentioned in Christopher Dorner's "manifesto," have been entered against them. As for Louisville Metro PD, it became infamous last year when officers shot and killed a sleeping (and innocent) Breonna Taylor in her bed. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">How did police departments morph from admiration to contempt on the same timeline that removed <i>de jure</i> segregation while subjecting police to greater oversight? Logically, the only explanation is that</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> segregation, on a fundamental level, never changed, and judicial oversight failed to counter</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> police unions' political influence. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">“You think about the imposition of Jim Crow laws,” [Kirsten] Delegard said, referring to laws and customs in the post-Civil War South that separated black people from white. “It’s not just in the South, it’s everywhere.” -- from MinnPost article by Greta Paul (2019)</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">In the 1993-94 school year, less than 1% of Black students in the Minneapolis region attended highly segregated public schools--where 90% or more of the student body was not white, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Almost three decades later, in 2018, 25% of the region's Black students were attending such schools. -- <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/minneapolis-re-segregated-schools-set-the-stage-national-crisis/" target="_blank">NBCNews report</a> (2020)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"Historian and author Richard Rothstein has studied segregation in education and housing in the United States for over 50 years, and in his book, <i>The Color of Law</i>, he shows that our segregated society is not the result of private activity or individual bigotry, but rather is a product of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels..." -- Jeffrey Sachs</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Indeed, an online search for "Minneapolis <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/attachments/WhyAretheTwinCitiesSoSegregated22615.pdf" target="_blank">segregation</a>" generates <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2015/03/why-are-twin-cities-so-segregated-new-report-blames-housing-policies-and-edu/" target="_blank">numerous</a> <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2019/02/with-covenants-racism-was-written-into-minneapolis-housing-the-scars-are-still-visible/" target="_blank">links</a>, each more disconcerting than the last. According to professor Myron Orfield's research, in 2015, low-income black residents in </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Minneapolis were 10 times more likely as Portland's black residents and over 5 times more likely as Seattle's black residents </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">to live in high-poverty tracts</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. Read that again: we are referencing differences of 1,000% and 500+%. Oh, t</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">hat black Representative I mentioned earlier? She's one of eight Minnesotan Representatives, and all seven of her colleagues are white.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">America has a segregation problem resulting from the majority's desire to manage slaves after the Civil War. Racism is the effect, not the cause, of policies put in place by real estate agents, lawyers, judges, mayors, and police chiefs in response to free black movement. As long as America talks about race without fixing segregation, there will be other George Floyds and more Derek Chauvins. Both men are playing the same parts their ancestors played, a poor slave and a working slave, neither of whom was ever in control of his destiny. There is more than one tragedy here, but to see it, you must first admit every American is a part of it. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Rafat (April 2021)<br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: "Historically, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese laborers from coming to the United States. Although the act was repealed in 1943, Chinese immigrants were restricted until 1965, when the National Origins Formula was abolished. Japanese Americans were interned in camps during World War II. Ms. Owyoung’s grandmother was not allowed to live outside Chinatown in San Francisco, and when the family moved to Oakland, it was prohibited from buying property in certain areas." -- <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2021/0420/How-one-Chinatown-curbs-anti-Asian-violence-and-unites-a-city" target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor</a>, by Francine Kiefer (April 20, 2021)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-60550681019107675762021-04-16T21:06:00.005-07:002021-06-17T18:56:18.815-07:00Review of Ault Global's 2021 Investor Call <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If I didn't know any better, I'd guess <a href="https://youtu.be/noi4h1-o9Cc" target="_blank">Ault Global Holdings</a> (DPW) was a money laundering operation hiding in plain sight. With a portfolio of businesses tied partly to Bitcoin mining; the military industrial complex; and <a href="https://www.aultglobal.com/assets/" target="_blank">assets</a> in the United Kingdom, USA, and Israel, the set-up appears ripe for accounting shenanigans. <br /><br />On an April 15, 2021 investor call, executives sounded upbeat and aboveboard, focusing on the company's strong balance sheet and Bitcoin mining operations. At one point, a speaker compared Ault Global to Riot Blockchain (RIOT), indicating Ault's aspirations. Though Ault had issues when it first began mining Bitcoin, it has since bought a datacenter space where it owns a 17,000 square foot facility on 34.5 acres. Ault is not selling Bitcoin mined in Michigan, a different strategy than its Indiana operations. (No explanation was given for the different approaches.) In addition to the businesses already mentioned, Ault is also involved in electric vehicle chargers and New Zealand's Naked Brands Group Ltd. (Interestingly, NAKD also touts its financial strength: "Naked currently is in a very strong financial position due to capital raised from shareholders in readiness to deploy its new strategy of developing a world class e-commerce lingerie and intimates retail platform.") </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">During the Q&A session, the company provided mostly generalities. For example, it would not comment on EV charger sales or its pipeline. It did not answer a question regarding how its EV chargers differed from competitors. It had no comment on questions relating to its NAKD investment, saying it was a "passive investor." <br /><br />As a value investor, I know Amazon and Bezos changed everything by showing profits matter less than attaining a dominant technological standard. It appears the Bitcoin, Coinbase (COIN), and blockchain aficionados believe they are on the verge of attaining a new dominant technological standard. I have my doubts. Then again, as a value investor, I have been on the outside looking in for at least a decade. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qCQITkFOCC0/YHpeToHw_vI/AAAAAAABbSI/my9AoNS26jo1flTNOMaKw5UhD_NtEU1yACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_6026.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1187" data-original-width="2048" height="185" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qCQITkFOCC0/YHpeToHw_vI/AAAAAAABbSI/my9AoNS26jo1flTNOMaKw5UhD_NtEU1yACLcBGAsYHQ/w349-h185/IMG_6026.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Rafat (April 2021) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Disclosure: I own insignificant amounts of DPW and NAKD but my positions may change at any time. <br /><br /><i>Update, June 2021</i>: from Ault's "definitive proxy statement," page 8: <br /><br />"Coolisys' innovative charging solution can produce a full charge for an EV with a 150-mile range battery in just 30 minutes... Coolisys EVSE series can charge virtually any type of electrical vehicles..." <br /><br />From page 63: "On December 31, 2020, we had cash and cash equivalents of $18,679,848." </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-86678866304961558052021-03-14T17:16:00.029-07:002023-01-19T21:43:59.046-08:00Sweden Sverige: World's Biggest Snow Job? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In terms of audacity, <a href="https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norway-sweden-union/" target="_blank">Sweden</a> is the world's greatest propaganda artist. News organizations praised the country last year because it <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0413/Sweden-broke-norms-with-low-scale-lockdown.-Is-it-working" target="_blank">avoided full lockdown</a> in response to <a href="https://www.thelocal.se/20201106/is-sweden-heading-for-a-national-lockdown/" target="_blank">coronavirus</a>. Prior to these laudatory stories, readers were treated to loads of pro-female, pro-equality Scandinavian slop, including ones where Sweden's foreign minister pledged to put <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2018/0207/Can-foreign-policy-be-feminist-Sweden-says-yes" target="_blank">feminism at the heart of its foreign affairs</a>. (Maybe focusing on human rights issues would interfere with its <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-05-23/peace-loving-sweden-and-switzerland-are-among-top-arms-exporters-capita-world" target="_blank">arms exports</a>?) Leading the transformation from "Old Milwaukee" beer's Swedish Bikini Team to the New Enlightenment is teenager Greta Thunburg, whose strategy against <a href="http://www.swedishepa.se/Environmental-objectives-and-cooperation/Swedish-environmental-work/Work-areas/Climate/Climate-Act-and-Climate-policy-framework-/#:~:text=The%20Swedish%20Climate%20targets&text=The%20long-term%20target%20for,by%202045%20at%20the%20latest.&text=Achieving%20zero%20n" target="_blank">climate change</a> appears to involve speaking sternly to adults in a voice so annoying, the non-deaf will be forced to agree to her demands, including, if necessary, hostages. (Whether her existence is an updated form of Stockholm Syndrome, now available as counter-strike, I do not know.) </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;">If there is one country in the world that ought to be more careful, it is <a href="https://twitter.com/matthewrafat/status/1204980127945248768" target="_blank">Sweden</a>. Home to people who look suspiciously German, with a language openly borrowing from Germany, the Swedish media machine has somehow managed to erase its WWII ties to Nazi Germany. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJWM-eLoJcI/YE58XLQlSnI/AAAAAAABahI/LM870zZnOecja7FzdtKQF-l2lCVeFvrMACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3272.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJWM-eLoJcI/YE58XLQlSnI/AAAAAAABahI/LM870zZnOecja7FzdtKQF-l2lCVeFvrMACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3272.HEIC" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Does that say Valkommen or Willkommen?</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;">As </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Espen Eidum's <u>Blodsporet</u> (aka The Blood Track) explains, Sweden's so-called "<a href="http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2017/12/18/was-sweden-really-neutral-in-world-war-two" target="_blank">neutrality</a>" during WWII meant it facilitated everyone's wartime efforts, including Nazi Germany's, profiting from both sides. As such, like "neutrality," the seemingly innocuous term "Scandinavian" improperly places </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Norwa</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>y's attempted resistance, especially at the </span><span>Battle of Narvik, on par with </span><span>Finland's support of Nazi Germany and Sweden's lack of ethics</span><span>. (Tellingly, Sweden was never directly attacked in WWII.)</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;">Unfortunately, Sweden's moral compass continues to waver as we march into 2021, in no small part because of economic links with its former WWII "expertise." We mentioned Sweden's arms exports, but its private security businesses are no less accomplished. Securitas AB, one of the world's largest employers, is based in Stockholm. Securitas owns Protectas AG in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings/sinister.html" target="_blank">Switzerland</a>, another country claiming neutrality in WWII. (Protecting Nazi loot is big business, apparently.) When you combine weapons manufacturing and global private security, you start to realize if the dystopia featured in Logan (2017) ever approaches reality, all the non-X-Men characters will speak Swedish. <br /><br />Think I'm exaggerating? The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/29/nazi-past-followed-ikea-founder-ingvar-kamprad-to-his-death/" target="_blank">founder of Ikea</a>, Ingvar Kamprad, once belonged to the Nazi movement. Even considering the strong possibility Kamprad was an infiltrator, the fact that Germany's Nazi movement seeped into 1943's rural Sweden speaks to the Swedes' feeble resistance. Infiltration, of course, works both ways, and Nazis and white supremacists sometimes hide out in police departments, military barracks, and intelligence agencies. In 1986, anti-war <a href="https://www.nlb.gov.sg/biblio/203987861" target="_blank">Prime Minister </a></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.nlb.gov.sg/biblio/203987861" target="_blank">Olof Palme was assassinated</a>, and his case has never been solved. Palme had once protested the Vietnam War (aka the <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/09/saigon-vietnam-unpretentious-and-vibrant.html" target="_blank">American War of Aggression</a>), and one gets the sense if the military-industrial complex could be personified, that person is sitting comfortably in a plush leather chair smoking an expensive cigar somewhere neutral. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">To its credit, Sweden knows it has problems. <a href="https://twitter.com/matthewrafat/status/1204992792755236864" target="_blank">Stieg Larsson</a>'s </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/03/766391131/in-the-man-who-played-with-fire-stieg-larsson-is-brought-to-life-again" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">The Man Who Played wiith Fire</a> <span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">(2019)</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> warned us of Sweden's neo-Nazi movements and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/elin-ersson-and-ismail-k-how-an-activist-tried-in-vain-to-rescue-an-asylum-seeker/a-47295356" target="_blank">intimidation</a> against journalists. Subjected to the weight of history, both past and present, is it any wonder Sweden is desperate to make a teenager the face of its country?</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;">In any case, Sweden's propaganda didn't fool Dr. Alfred Nobel, perhaps its most distinguished citizen. Stockholm may host a Nobel Prize Museum, but the museum's eponym intentionally designated <a href="https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/" target="_blank">Norway</a> to administer the <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/History/Why-Norway" target="_blank">Nobel Peace Prize</a>. I suppose in the end, there's a limit to <a href="https://poets.org/poem/i-sing-olaf-glad-and-big" target="_blank">how much sh*t a Swedish male will eat</a>. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">© Matthew Rafat (March 2021) <br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: confidential email from January 11, 2008. </span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HqzJablGjLo/YSLZWsz9WdI/AAAAAAABoDg/p5oSQsngJKgoKTHhrYIjvvrfh9pHPvejwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_8363.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HqzJablGjLo/YSLZWsz9WdI/AAAAAAABoDg/p5oSQsngJKgoKTHhrYIjvvrfh9pHPvejwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8363.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span><br /></span></div>
Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-91879435359957120472021-03-02T13:15:00.081-08:002021-08-13T23:04:25.312-07:00Hiking into the Wilderness <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Recently, I hiked with a friend. After losing over 100 pounds, she enjoys walking an hour a day and can get along with anyone, which explains her willingness to spend time with me. I'd call her a "Southern belle," except she's Midwestern and from Minnesota. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Speaking to any native-born American in 2021 involves some degree of post-traumatic political disorder. They are beginning to realize the same tools that elevate deserving and undeserving elites also shield just about anyone capable of generating marketing dollars. Consequently, once multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are bought, a domestic violence incident becomes insignificant to local police departments as well as private security and PR firms receiving assignments from those same marketing firms. Though </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">a symbiotic relationship between the entertainment industry and government--which issues permits and provides consultants--encourages positive portrayals of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/movies/get-out-lil-rel-howery-tsa-rod.html" target="_blank">government employees</a>, once upon a time, Americans recognized the difference between protecting talent to promote leadership versus advancing people to mislead the public. (Neither <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vermont-state-dairy-festival-rutland-vermont" target="_blank">General Eisenhower</a> nor General Marshall saw <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/02/jocko-willink-and-fog-of-war.html" target="_blank">combat</a> but were justifiably recognized as military experts, and their values shaped the entire world after WWII.) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Obviously, </span><a href="https://www.revolt.tv/2021/2/22/22295205/malcolm-x-nypd-fbi-police-officer-letter" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">government's corruptibility</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> when receiving non-transparent, private funds is nonnovel. Mobster Al Capone wasn't convicted of federal tax evasion rather than murder because local governments were </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">more</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> honest in the 1930s. Moreover, even if local governments manage honesty, they are often outgunned technologically. (Someday, Americans will realize expertise allowing an intelligence agency to "spoof" surveillance video of a competing country's nuclear reactor may also be used to replace domestic surveillance footage, complicating police work.) Though marketing departments have never been bastions of integrity, a sharp eye isn't required to see USA's content machine degrading as it produces flimsier copies of the same celebrities, with Kanye West replacing Puff Daddy, Kim Kardashian replacing <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22287463/dolly-parton-explained" target="_blank">Dolly Parton</a>, and several more attempted clones I'm glad not to know. (We don't immediately recognize clones because their color or ethnicity has changed, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/04/rafats-law-of-diversity.html" target="_blank">diversity</a> used to sweeten superficiality.) Meanwhile, as </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">America's upper echelons also enable the trend of marketing dollars overwhelming substance, politics has mutated into a jobs program for content curators and other persons intent on occupying space otherwise open to competitors hostile to the status quo. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Against this backdrop, my friend and I walked and talked for two hours at a local park, having e</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">nough of a pleasant time to schedule another hike in two days. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the day of the hike, however, my friend texted me, saying she needed to change plans. She was going to the beach by herself to "listen to some music and not talk about governments or politicians or politics." "I need to recenter my vibe," she said, and in that moment I fully realized the precariousness of the American experiment. That my friend and I were able to converse at all was a small miracle. Our time occurred only because the American marketing machine convinced my father and mother, whose second language was English, to leave <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2019/01/scotland.html" target="_blank">Scotland</a> for Texas. From these two ESL learners came a son who earned an English degree and whose linguistic ability you are now seeing because of the risks they took. Had my parents been inundated with media reports of school shootings, police brutality, and other American events, it is possible they would not have taken the transatlantic journey. Risk-reward ratio is a concept everyone understands, regardless of mother tongue. The marketer's or propagandist's job is to render the equation in their client's favor and leave the rest to fate.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Such a paradigm might not be inherently immoral, except fate isn't the correct term. What we deem fate--including an empire's decline--is the direct result of whether institutions uphold their <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4764669/user-clip-elanor-holmes-norton" target="_blank">principles</a> in ways balancing the status quo with changing demographics. If native-born citizens (aka the majority) no longer have the patience or willingness to adjust their institutions as circumstances change, the result is failure fated by reason of <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crec/1999/04/15/CREC-1999-04-15-pt1-PgE682-2.pdf" target="_blank">indifference</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals? -- Elie Weisel (1999)</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thus far, I have approached the situation from the perspective of a political minority, but <b>indifference is contagious and does not spare the majority. It is only that the majority takes notice of failing institutions much later than the minority unable to use government connections or political savvy.</b> For example, last week, I needed a response from the county to <a href="https://lononaut.blogspot.com/2021/02/t-shirts.html" target="_blank">complete some work</a>. An automated reply indicated a three-week wait, an unacceptably long time for a process requiring 10 minutes per individual application. No database exists showing the number of outstanding applications--they are handled as soon they reach the appropriate department--and the public has no choice but to trust government workers are not dallying. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In a one-party state like California, my immediate reaction was to assume a lack of accountability based on non-transparency, but I realized a more connected, more trusting, more faithful person might take a different approach. He might, while accessing the application, notice translations incorporating our city's sizable Vietnamese and Spanish speaking population and conclude resources were being diverted that would otherwise accelerate the process. A tale of two cities emerges: whereas I blame the majority for using government to boost their influence under unaccountable terms, the majority can counter by blaming the costs of greater inclusivity. Just like that, two residents reach vastly different yet reasonable conclusions using the same data, but with one distinction: as a political minority disdaining the state's political Establishment, I cannot vote in ways that impose my interpretation on the majority, and without millions of dollars allowing me to advertise <a href="https://youtu.be/3eeVzqG42ZM" target="_blank">my opinion</a>, I cannot convince dispersed voters to change their minds, nor can I nudge government lawyers to investigate themselves. In contrast, my fellow resident can more easily access established channels of communication used by the majority to carry out his proposed solution(s). Put simply, he is not bound by the weight of historical vested interests and their present-day progeny. <br /><br />Of course I do not mean to suggest a native-born American can flip a switch and inspire a mob. The journey from an open society to isolationism, from curiosity to scapegoat, requires sustained effort from government and the private sector, particularly when eluding self-blame. Somehow, whatever the time period, as services degrade, <a href="https://youtu.be/WtkOmr987Uo" target="_blank">a minority is always there to deflect attention</a> from </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">the majority's own mismanagement or to assist </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">powerful interests eager to associate with a vulnerable group</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">. Given humanity's wont to project faults onto dissimilar groups or to create institutions whitewashing weaknesses (e.g., regularly including <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210430040808/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stone-foltz-hazing-death-bowling-green-fraternity-pi-kappa-alpha/" target="_blank">bars</a> and pubs in Christian media makes alcoholism more acceptable), true diversity always denotes cultural powderkegs.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6QNEw5Zl5II/YDq_PVpxDrI/AAAAAAABZvg/z193hc_lkOQneU5Fw6N7d32FEFJ0LWLcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/AlcoholDisplay.heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6QNEw5Zl5II/YDq_PVpxDrI/AAAAAAABZvg/z193hc_lkOQneU5Fw6N7d32FEFJ0LWLcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/AlcoholDisplay.heic" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small part of an aisle selling alcohol in an American grocery store</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">What happens to a dream deferred? ... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. <i>Or does it explode?</i> -- Langston Hughes, "Harlem"</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Another example: to some native-born citizens, a police officer is helpful and to be trusted, but to many others, the same person represents danger. Yet, neither the minority nor the majority know which uniformed officer will come calling when needed, and since many honest officers exist, any gap in perception results from one side having faith in their institutions' willingness to impose accountability while the other is skeptical of equal treatment. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">From where </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">does the majority's faith arise? Is it segregation, a feature of post-WWII planning that divided groups by religion and race in order to better manage them through targeted investments and tax spending? (Not all international law experts realize segregation and partition, often with United Nations support, go hand-in-hand: Israel was partitioned into three states based on religion: <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/august/palestinian-christians-survey-israel-emigration-one-state.html" target="_blank">West Bank</a> (Christian), Gaza Strip (Muslim), Israel (Jewish); Czechoslovakia became Czechia (non-Catholic) and Slovakia (Catholic); Pakistan (Muslim) split from India (Hindu); South Sudan (Catholic) seceded from Sudan (Muslim); etc.) If Western city planning includes segregation, which may have resulted from Western dependence on slave labor and an unwillingness to see black/Negro slaves as fully human, then <a href="https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/1871/2/1chapter_1.pdf" target="_blank">gerrymandering</a> and other <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf" target="_blank">legal maneuvers</a> ("separate but equal") are features, not bugs, of American culture. As such, while American progressives are taught their country is continually striving for "a more perfect union," in reality, perfect divisions have succeeded. Yet, so</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> long as any group is skeptical of equal government treatment, even well-meaning government employees become viewed as non-individuals--a matter not helped by government unions--which in turn leads to contempt of public institutions by violating the principle of the sanctity of the individual.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"My mom and dad may have been segregationists, but we were taught fairness and decency, and what we were seeing [in the South with Bull Connor and KKK bombings] was not fair and not decent... It was a turning point [in our critical consciousness]." -- progressive Judge William Alsup, who grew up in Mississippi and attended MS State in the 1960s (February 25, 2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If a diverse society requires effective checks and balances to maintain trust between residents and government, can a segregated society function without legal safeguards by using tribal affinity as a cost-effective replacement? Our political betters certainly seemed to think so. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Where does this leave my kindhearted friend and I, her cynical compatriot? Nowhere new. Conflict portends opportunity, giving citizens, politicians, and business leaders a chance to mediate, gather information, and achieve a balance between vested and new interests. Absent open conflict, information gathering requires cloak-and-dagger operations ill-suited for local governments. Conflict, however, is a two-edged sword: at the same time it improves the signal (and hopefully the fidelity) of noise, it stress-tests political structures, often finding them wanting, especially as voter-targeting technology encourages soft deceit. (I've seen photos of my Catholic-educated mayor kneeling in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and also standing next to a Catholic-educated police chief encouraging cooperation with federal deportation authorities. To see the hypocrisy, watch <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/aug/19/netflix-immigration-nation-ice-true-horror" target="_blank">Immigration Nation</a> (2020).) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sadly, it has never been easier for public leaders to dissemble and in doing so, bamboozle their communities. When confronted with conflict, some attempt solutions, and some get better at public relations. The United States, like my friend, probably prefers a bit of both, but also finds it easier to avoid the matter altogether. Unfortunately, avoidance or better PR masks indifference while allowing authorities to temporarily solve issues using unoriginal ideas like debt and deportation. Somewhere along that path, diversity's long-term benefits are put in danger of being subsumed by short-term negatives, with the mob always waiting for its cue. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I wish my friend would reflect on the following: "Why do we not remember most native-born Germans fondly from 1932-1938, if at all? And why, given Germany's past and present ethnic and religious diversity, do we not lionize anyone but anti-Germans from that time?" One clue involves German emigration; after all, if Germany's Albert Einstein left in 1932, other talented individuals must have also departed, shifting attention away from monolingual Germans. Be that as it may, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">given Germany's economic success after 1936, which includes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/03/the-nazi-marilyn-monroe-goebbels-had-very-nice-eyes-but-he-was-a-devil" target="_blank">movie-making</a>, why are we, the recipient of so many German immigrants, mostly indifferent to Germany's individuals based on the accident of time? Though Americans may be in denial, we know the answer: indifference spreads quickly and spares no one in its wake. In murdering millions of minorities, Germany obliterated its citizens' place in humanity's remembrance, even though most Germans were not directly culpable. <b>A people indifferent to brewing conflict or skilled at avoiding genuine inclusion tend to be as forgotten as the minorities they neglect or deport, whether knowingly or unknowingly.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">A leading voice in the chorus of <a href="https://items.ssrc.org/insights/martin-luther-king-jr-s-challenge-to-northern-liberalism-and-us-social-science/" target="_blank">social</a> transition belongs to the white liberal... Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers tranquility to equality... The White liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love, but justice. It is not enough to say, “We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.” They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would love for a pet. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., from <u>Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?</u> (1967)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I forgot to mention my friend enjoys trance music, a form of electronica. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I won't belabor it. It's too easy. Almost as easy as going to the beach. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Rafat (March 2021) <br /><br /><i>Bonus I</i>: My friend and I discussed cruise ship workers, who are often non-citizens because of low wages. Cruise ships are not subject to labor laws because their operations mostly take place in non-territorial or extrajudicial waters. I said </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">given currency arbitrage,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> the hourly wage was not as important as working conditions and the likelihood of citizenship. Additionally, an empire's ability to underpay, in relative terms, foreign workers improves its willingness to accept immigrants. My proposed solution? Mandate one-year contracts with quitting for good cause or early termination immediately vesting all contractually unpaid wages; and require companies to put foreign workers on a path to citizenship after two years' tenure. Of course, companies may "game" such rules by terminating employees after two years, even good ones, and aggressively litigating the meaning of "good cause," but the law was never meant to replace integrity, and at some point, journalism must play a role in modifying unfair corporate behavior. (Note: upon hiring, one years' worth of wages could be put into an escrow account handled by an independent entity.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Bonus II</i>: Some people may see a conflict between my appreciation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, and Amish and the ideas herein. There is no conflict. The aforementioned groups are apolitical as a matter of morality, not apathy, and have ample evidence supporting their intent. </span></p><p><br /></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-45585018901519653732021-02-26T17:39:00.019-08:002021-04-18T23:56:10.536-07:00Most Political Debates, Summarized in Two Conversations<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The majority of America's political debates can be summarized in just two short conversations:<br /><br /><u><b>SCENE ONE</b></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A: "Look at this wide-ranging, comprehensive legislation that will change everything." <br /><br />B: "Have you actually read it? This legislation spans several volumes, much of it indecipherable. If it really replaces the existing paradigm, then you're seeing a bonanza for politically-connected players as they swoop in to provide what this legislation requires." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A: "Under existing legislation, your side benefited because you passed it and your friends and lobbyists doled out contracts based on your understanding of the legislation. Why it is a problem if we do the same thing?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">B: "Well, if it works, we're going to catch hell because it'll look like we didn't know what we were doing before, so I'm going to try to stop it. Then we'll copy the parts we think we can incorporate into our existing framework, take the credit, and let the judges resolve any poorly-worded sections." <br /><br />A: "Sounds like you've got a lot of faith in lawyers and litigation, but go ahead and try to stop us. We'll blame you for harming the poor, handicapped, [insert vulnerable group], and the country by not passing this." <br /><br />B: "How are you going to fund the legislation? More taxes? Good luck with that." <br /><br />A: "We will do exactly what you do--borrow money. We're the federal government. We can borrow as much as we want." <br /><br />B: "What's next? Are you going to promise voters a unicorn in every backyard?"<br /><br />A: "If it wins us the election, why not?" <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u><b>SCENE TWO</b></u> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A: "We've been getting complaints about [INSERT GOVERNMENT AGENCY]. They are too slow." <br /><br />B: "We can centralize the work, but eventually we'll become a sprawling, intractable </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">bureaucracy and lose all efficiency we gained pre-consolidation." <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />A: "But right now, by spreading the work across different local and state agencies, we're creating unnecessary complexity." <br /><br />B: "Sure, but we're also reducing opportunities for centralized corruption and giving residents an easier time contacting local officials, who are more closely situated to the issues." <br /><br />A: "That may be true, but decentralization also potentially creates entrenched political fiefdoms because multiple agencies can slow down the work deliberately or claim they are not getting enough credit or recognition. Can't one entrenched city council hold up the entire process if it rejects accountability or if it tacks on additional requirements purely to justify its existence or expansion?" <br /><br />B: "Sort of. The more decentralized a government process, the more lawyers are required to navigate the system. In other words, more government complexity reduces personal agency, but also potentially improves the system as it adapts over time while keeping lawyers, judges, and legal associations in the loop." <br /><br />A: "So decentralization oftentimes means more lawyers, which either improves efficiency or reduces it based on finding the right lawyer; on the other hand, centralization might makes everything easier by creating a 'one-stop shop' but in doing so, eventually increases the risk of corruption." <br /><br />B: "In theory, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/05/WhyPrivateSector.html" target="_blank">the smaller the country</a> and the smaller the population, the better centralization works, whereas the larger the country and the more diverse the population, the better decentralization works. This, however, is only a theory. Many other factors are in play, such as inflation, social cohesion, etc." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">END SCENE</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (February 2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Bonus</i>: In the spirit of political cartoonist Tom Toles, I'll add the following sidebar to the first scene: "It's almost as if an independent third party could somehow help." </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-22885529102863532012021-02-13T21:32:00.026-08:002021-06-10T13:58:18.983-07:00Jocko Willink and the Fog of War<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">I've copied a Twitter thread below. With so many technological standards, a simple copy-and-paste across different platforms is no longer possible, but I've done my best to clean up the content. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Original interview is here: <a href="https://tim.blog/2018/06/04/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/">https://tim.blog/2018/06/04/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/</a> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">________________</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">One day, when Americans are paying war crime reparations to Iraq</span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">, I want you to remember this 2018 </span><a class="entity-mention" href="https://twitter.com/tferriss" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #515151; letter-spacing: -0.003em; opacity: 0.75; text-decoration-line: none;">@tferriss</a><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> </span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">interview with</span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> John Gretton Willink aka </span><a class="entity-mention" href="https://twitter.com/jockowillink" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #515151; letter-spacing: -0.003em; opacity: 0.75; text-decoration-line: none;">@jockowillink</a><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">, former</span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> </span><a class="entity-mention" href="https://twitter.com/USNavy" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #515151; letter-spacing: -0.003em; opacity: 0.75; text-decoration-line: none;">@USNavy</a><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> </span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">officer. <br /></span></span></p><div class="row t-tweet" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-12" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 730px;"><div class="content-tweet allow-preview" data-screenname="matthewrafat" data-tweet="1271808470333952008" dir="auto" id="tweet_1" style="border-radius: 15px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"><div class="entity-url-preview" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; margin: 10px 0px 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: hidden; width: 700px;"><div class="row no-gutters" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><div class="col-12 col-md-8" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 66.6667%; max-width: 66.6667%; min-height: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; position: relative; width: 465.328px;"></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"><div class="content-tweet allow-preview" data-screenname="matthewrafat" data-tweet="1271808470333952008" dir="auto" id="tweet_1" style="border-radius: 15px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">[The photo below appears to be from Iraq and <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/gold-bars-pique-173rd-s-interest-at-checkpoint-1.5892" target="_blank">USA's 173rd Airborne Brigade</a>, NOT </span><a class="entity-hashtag" href="https://threadreaderapp.com/hashtag/JockoWillink" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;">#JockoWillink</a><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">.]</span></div></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZeVaFXQAAS-Gi.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZeVaFXQAAS-Gi.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></span></a></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: times; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">The issue of mentioning prisons in the interview will soon become obvious... </span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZfVVsXQAA_ROg.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Willink continues defending the military industrial complex. Does he realize General Eisenhower popularized the term as a warning? </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZfudnWsAAvtf8.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZfudnWsAAvtf8.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></span></a></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">You don't have true freedom</span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> if your country and its citizens require debt to survive. </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">From </span><a class="entity-mention" href="https://twitter.com/nntaleb" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #515151; letter-spacing: -0.003em; opacity: 0.75; text-decoration-line: none;">@nntaleb</a><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">: "To the ancients, someone in debt was not free, he was in bondage." </span></span><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZgA2rWoAINm_O.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZgA2rWoAINm_O.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></a></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: times; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Also, re: freedom in USA, "As of July 2019, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide, with about 2.12 million people in prison." </span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"></span><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZgoaVXQAMsV-F.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZgoaVXQAMsV-F.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></a></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Wars are often fought not only to capture another country's resources or to prevent a rival's territorial conquests, but to place the defeated country in debt. The debt is usually demarcated in the victor's own currency, thus strengthening liquidity of victor's currency and victor's ability to impose economic as well as legal terms. </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZg8e3XYAg5b-X.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZg8e3XYAg5b-X.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></a></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">democracy</span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">?" -- Mahatma Gandhi </span></span><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZiBWTXsAILgaG.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1da1f2; letter-spacing: -0.003em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Image" class="b-loaded" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaZiBWTXsAILgaG.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("/images/loading.gif"); background-origin: initial; background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-radius: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 700px;" /></a></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Cal Fussman: "I turned to the editorial page of a British newspaper. A cartoon depicted a giant Statue of Liberty wearing sunglasses & clutching a bayoneted machine gun towering over tiny Iraqis, who were throwing back stones. There were a lot of ways to feel about that cartoon." </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/25621-harold-pinter-nobel-lecture-2005/" style="letter-spacing: -0.003em;" target="_blank">Harold Pinter</a><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">: "The crimes of USA have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good." </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Almost forgot about <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-order/index.html" target="_blank">Afghanistan</a>: There was "'a reasonable basis to believe' that members of the Afghan National Security Forces, the US armed forces and the CIA had committed 'war crimes,' including torture and rape." </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">I’ll end with a cautionary quote from Vietnam War veteran Paul Coates: “When you’re in the military, the only thing coming at you is military information. It’s just like being in America: You are totally brainwashed. Everything around me <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-military-and-african-americans.html" target="_blank">supported the war</a> in Vietnam, so I bought into it.” </span></span></span><span class="entity-image" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #575553; display: block; letter-spacing: -0.003em; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">And so it goes.</span></span></span></div></div></div>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-91854879089176531372021-02-10T23:04:00.023-08:002023-05-02T23:52:19.920-07:00The Democratic National Convention Was a Farce -- and so is the Impeachment<p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hunter S. Thompson once said Democrats don't learn. Today, Congress apparently finished Day 2 of an impeachment trial against a president no longer in office. I say "apparently," because no one sane is voluntarily watching the trial, nor does anyone believe enough votes exist to convict. Democrats seem unable to comprehend Republicans voting for a trial did so the same way an apiarist pretends to befriend bees in order to take their honey. (The analogy isn't perfect, because unlike the Democratic Party, professional apiarists understand danger and wear protection before walking into a hive.) In any case</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, the Democrats, having won Congress by less than a 1% margin and t</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">he presidency only because too many people voted for the Libertarian Party</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, are approaching a second impeachment as if Donald Trump is Richard Nixon reincarnated. An American history lesson is warranted, and we'll start from last year.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Not until after the 2020 Democratic Convention did I realize uninvited Representative Tulsi Gabbard was, like VP pick Kamala Harris, a mixed Desi. The popular media had hit us so many times with stories of Harris's ethnic background--visions of Obama and sugar plums dancing in their heads--they ignored the fact that the Democrats' messages of unity and diversity were contradicted by a single absent person. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G4ZXsEuuyWM/X0GCNLNNbjI/AAAAAAAA0Yg/Ryyz_Iis8S8LPuPmKyjAFuibrccJe17gQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_1606.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1283" data-original-width="2048" height="321" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G4ZXsEuuyWM/X0GCNLNNbjI/AAAAAAAA0Yg/Ryyz_Iis8S8LPuPmKyjAFuibrccJe17gQCLcBGAsYHQ/w512-h321/IMG_1606.jpg" width="512" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">As an immigrant with an American passport--I no longer call myself American, preferring a more distended designation--everything indicates I stand to reach the upper echelons of political power only if I conform and agree with one of two sides. In elevating a mismatched duo of prosecutor and public defender to the top of the Democratic Party while literally shutting out anti-war dissenters, the only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is now on <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/11/something-wicked-this-way-comes.html" target="_blank">the issue of abortion</a>. Decades of unchecked military spending since Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục and Catholic Joseph McCarthy dragged Americans into Vietnam have given the military-industrial complex a holy victory: total control of America's political structure with <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/06/joe-biden-americas-golden-retriever.html" target="_blank">an obedient Catholic</a> leading the way. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Conventions were not always this way in America, that alleged <a href="https://mushare.marian.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=fp_hss" target="_blank">land of the free</a>. At the 1968 Democratic Convention, reporter <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/dan-rather/" target="_blank">Dan Rather</a> was <a href="https://youtu.be/ddrKLqpH5AA" target="_blank">attacked by security personnel</a> as he attempted to question a delegate being removed, and </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Senator <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/02/how-fake-news-was-born-at-the-1968-dnc-219627" target="_blank">Andrew Ribicoff</a> dared go off-script, criticizing Mayor Daley's Gestapo-like tactics. (Catholic Richard Daley responded by insulting Ribicoff's Jewish background.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself. Heir to a corrupt history, in which are mingled fallen revolutions, technology gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ideologies, where mediocre powers can destroy all yet no longer know how to convince, where intelligence has debased itself to become the servant of hatred and oppression, this generation starting from its own negations has had to re-establish, both within and without, a little of that which constitutes the dignity of life and death. -- Albert Camus (<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/" target="_blank">1957</a>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The conflict's genesis? The Vietnam War aka the American War of Aggression. One faction of the Democratic Party, led by George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with pro-war Joseph McCarthy), was anti-war, and another, led by <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/comp1" target="_blank">Hubert Humphrey</a>, favored continued military action with the <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/d134" target="_blank">objective of forcing a negotiated settlement</a>. The unpopularity--and infeasibility--of the war was underscored by VP Humphrey in 1965, who wrote, "American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public."</span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;"><span>American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public. There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to have sustained public support. In World Wars I and II we had this. In Korea we were moving under UN auspices to defend South Korea against dramatic, across-the-border conventional aggression. Yet even with those advantages, we could not sustain American political support for fighting the Chinese in Korea in 1952. Today in Vietnam we lack the very advantages we had in Korea. The public is worried and confused. -- </span><a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/d134" target="_blank">VP Hubert Humphrey</a><span>, in 1965, ten years before the last USA serviceman left Vietnam</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>As part of the generation that grew up under multiple Iraq invasions--not just for oil, but natural gas--Humphrey's words sound quaint. It was against this conflicted backdrop and a mandatory military draft that the 1968 Democratic National Convention occurred, ensuring a volatile event. Policemen beat </span><a href="https://www.mnopedia.org/multimedia/demonstration-1968-democratic-national-convention" target="_blank">anti-war</a><span> protesters using batons, knowing they had the full support of Chicago's leadership. Consequently, for at least one day, Americans couldn't tell the difference between the Chicago mob and their own government. How did the Democratic Party go from being so concerned about anti-war sentiment that it was willing to beat protesters in broad daylight to barring anti-war politicians from their own Convention? The answer is gerrymandering, aka political segregation. Put simply, if you divide enough factions into their own districts, you can easily govern any group not already in power by ensuring conflicting opinions never meet in a public forum, thus sputtering and stalling out. Post-WWII, though the prevailing framework internationally </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">and domestically</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> has been more "divide and govern" than "divide and conquer," American students are taught Western democracies promote optimal communication between conflicting groups.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">[G]errymanders will only get worse (or depending on your perspective, better) as time goes on—as data becomes ever more fine-grained and data analysis techniques continue to improve. What was possible with paper and pen—or even with Windows 95—doesn’t hold a candle (or an LED bulb?) to what will become possible with developments like machine learning. And someplace along this road, “we the people” become sovereign no longer. -- Justice Kagan, dissenting, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-422.html" target="_blank">Rucho v. Common Cause</a> (2019)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1992, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">when Americans lacked conflicting viewpoints about the supremacy of their political system, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Francis Fukuyama talked about the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/its-still-not-the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyama/379394/" target="_blank">end of history</a>. A mere decade later, General </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/colin-powell-u-n-speech-was-a-great-intelligence-failure/" target="_blank">Colin Powell</a> would cheerlead America into Iraq, another <a href="https://prospect.org/features/congress-got-us-vietnam/" target="_blank">Vietnam</a>, proving history was very much alive and continued to repeat itself. From that debacle arose Abu Ghraib and the destruction of America's credibility, which included the Democratic Obama/Biden administration assassinating an <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB529-Anwar-al-Awlaki-File/" target="_blank">American citizen</a> without due process. "<a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/626/fear-and-loathing-in-america-hunter-s-thompson" target="_blank">The dumb are never with us for long</a>, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/hunter-s-thompsons-writing-foreshadowed-rise-trump/578395/" target="_blank">Republicans learn faster than Democrats</a>..." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">We now arrive at 2021, when the Democratic Party is impeaching a president already out of office, repeating the same highfalutin bullying that made Trump so popular in the first place. I've heard of <a href="https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/11/beyond_security_thea.html" target="_blank">security theater</a>, in which the government takes actions that "make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security," so perhaps this impeachment falls under the category of "political theater." Why, then, does it seem so much more pernicious than any Shakespearean tragedy? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (February 2021)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">If it weren't for this constant struggle on the part of the few creative types to expand the sense of reality in man, the world would literally die out. We are not kept alive by legislators and militarists, that's fairly obvious. We are kept alive by men of faith, men of vision. They are like vital germs in the endless process of becoming. -- Arthur Miller (USA)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-6803217236224425592021-02-09T20:40:00.019-08:002021-05-24T00:41:55.362-07:002021 Wall Street Quotations <p><span style="font-size: medium;">In February 2021, I decided to start a collection of quotes from Wall Street executives and pundits. <br /><br /><b>February 9, 2021</b>: "Now there are, with very few exceptions, no sectors that are cheap. [Yet] I think the market will gradually grind up during the year. I don’t see a correction anytime soon, unless the situation changes dramatically." -- </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>JP Morgan's co-president Daniel Pinto (source: </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/jpmorgans-call-for-the-stock-market-spacs-fintech-rivals-and-ceo-succession.html" target="_blank">CNBC</a><span>) [</span>Shiller P/E Ratio 35.62]</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>February 10, 2021</b>: "If there is a bubble anywhere, it is not in the equity market, it is in the fixed-income market." -- Cathie Wood, chief executive of ARK Invest (source: <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stocks-arent-in-a-bubble-but-heres-what-is-according-to-fund-manager-ark-invests-cathie-wood-11612958113" target="_blank">CNBC</a>) [Shiller P/E Ratio: 35.59] </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><u><i>February 17, 2021</i></u></b>: from Eddy Elfenbein's <a href="https://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2021/02/the-formula-to-spot-a-bubble.html" target="_blank">blog</a>: <br /><br />Mark Hulbert has an interesting column at MarketWatch. It’s about a trio of academics who have devised a bubble-spotting formula. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">"Applying the formula the researchers derive, I calculate there is an 80% chance that the Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals index will be 40% lower than today at some point in the next two years... Though no other industries satisfy the researchers’ definition of a bubble, two others come close. They are also in the technology arena: Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment, and Software. Why focus on an industry that may be in a bubble, rather than the market as a whole? Prof. Greenwood told Barron’s that he and his fellow researchers learned from their study of the history of bubbles that they 'rarely are marketwide' events. Far more common, he said, is for a bubble to manifest in certain pockets of the market even as other sectors remain undervalued."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><b>March 26, 2021</b>: from Barron's, by Andrew Bary, headline: "Higher Taxes? Deficit Spending? Why the Stock Market Isn't Worried." </span><span>[Shiller P/E Ratio: 35.75] </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><b>March 27, 2021</b>: from Bloomberg, by Ishika Mookerjee, Albertina Torsoli, and Lisa Pham, headline: "Funds Bet on a Consumer Boom to Rival 'Roaring Twenties.'"</span></span><span> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">[Shiller P/E Ratio: 35.75] </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>[Note: The Great Depression--and stock market crash in 1929--occurred after the excesses of the Roaring Twenties, as well as indications Germany would not honor WWI reparations.] </span><span><br /><br /><b>April 8, 2021</b>: from <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/08/jeremy-siegel-says-stock-market-could-go-up-30percent-before-boom-ends.html" target="_blank">CNBC</a>, by Kevin Stankiewicz, quoting Wharton School finance professor Jeremy Siegel: "It isn’t until the Fed leans really hard then you have to worry. I mean, we could have the market go up 30% or 40% before it goes down that 20%... We’re not in the ninth inning here. We’re more like in the third inning of the boom." [Shiller P/E Ratio: 36.81] <br /><br /><b>April 11, 2021</b>: "The path of least resistance for US equities remains higher." -- Bill Miller, CFA (S&P 500 4128.60)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><b><i><u>April 15, 2021</u></i></b>: "From a traditional perspective, the market is fractured and possibly in the process of breaking completely." -- David Einhorn </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><b><i><u>May 23, 2021</u></i></b>: "In real terms, the home prices have never been so high. My data goes back over 100 years... I don’t think that the whole thing is explained by central bank policy. There is something about the sociology of markets that’s happening." -- Robert Shiller, CNBC.com [</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">Shiller P/E Ratio: 36.86]</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-55451653051302196722021-01-28T08:52:00.010-08:002021-03-24T19:44:49.156-07:00Guns and Butter<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">People who think power comes from the barrel of a gun are mistaken. Real power comes from controlling the conduits, both legal and technological, of the currency that buys the gun. The more power involved, the more entities can buy protection, whether domestic or international, fueling further expansion and thus influence. In short, guns are the result, not the cause of stability, which makes sense once you realize a village with nothing valuable has no need for advanced weaponry. <br /><br />There is another component most people miss when discussing protection, and we can re-use the undeveloped village as an example. Such a village exists not only because of internal factors, but external ones. Its lack of development means it has not attracted foreign direct investment or cannot do so. Were it part of a larger economic unit, the larger economic unit would be interested in maintaining as little a gap as possible between its most developed areas and its least developed ones--assuming a cohesive system. (An empire merely makes the same mistake as a successful country, misapplying domestic lessons to international ones.) Though degrees vary, power is always connected somewhere so it can extend influence, the strong seeking out the weak. The absence of a need for a gun connotes not only a lack of influence but a lack of connectivity to neighbors and thus a failure to build sufficient conduits to exchange information. Now ask yourself: would you rather have a gun and a midnight sentry, or information that tells you when you will be attacked? <br /><br />I realized this morning though the United States has a strong military, it continues to decline because it attempts to overuse its influence overseas. If I am a small village, and a superpower approaches to offer its technology, which of course requires me to use its currency, I may be flattered, especially if I do not understand debt and currency arbitrage. Yet, even a naive villager realizes the same superpower that approaches and demands a rider requiring the village not to use another country's technology--thus inhibiting more diverse development--is not a true superpower, no matter the quantity or quality of its guns. The villager may even, after some deliberation, realize such a superpower does not see his community as an opportunity to exchange information but a way to block competitors. Now ask yourself: if you had a choice, would you rather buy guns from someone demanding an exclusive contract, or someone allowing you to diversify your economic contacts? <br /><br />The path from <i>kampong</i> to city to respected state may be long, uncertain, and arduous--and Singapore, which took this path successfully, makes its own guns--but the road from superpower to failed state is straightforward: when credibility goes, so does your <a href="https://youtu.be/bjiNfQvHFL0" target="_blank">empire</a>. One wonders if USA President Biden, who is promoting unity, comprehends he is looking too far ahead in the dictionary. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (January 2021) </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-17318168965790237772021-01-17T02:44:00.011-08:002021-03-24T19:02:24.406-07:00Slavery, Democracy, and the Jesuits<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Though JFK preceded him, Joseph Biden, Jr. is set to become a Catholic president in the United States during a time of unprecedented Catholic power. Remarkably, most Americans do not know the Catholic Church was banned in America's founding colonies, notably New York City: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">For most of the colonial period Roman Catholic worship in New York City was clandestine or nonexistent, because the Protestant Dutch and then the English enforced laws prohibiting the organization and maintenance of Roman Catholic churches. (From <a href="https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/catholics.html" target="_blank">Encyclopedia of New York City</a>)</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1816, </span><a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.049_0147_0148/?sp=2&st=text" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">Thomas Jefferson</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> warned of the conflicts between Catholicism and republican governance: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">The first shade from this pure element, which, like that of pure vital air, cannot sustain life of itself, would be where the powers of the government, being divided, should be exercised each by representatives chosen either pro hac vice, or for such short terms as should render secure the duty of expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider as the nearest approach to a pure republic, which is practicable on a large scale of country or population. And we have examples of it in some of our State constitutions, which, <b>if not poisoned by priest-craft</b>, would prove its excellence over all mixtures with other elements; and, with only equal doses of poison, would still be the best. [Emphasis mine] </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I must confess I did not know the "Republican" in Republican Party referred to republican governance, <i>i.e.</i>, a republic, because my American teachers and professors glossed over Christian religious differences. Reading Jefferson's words, it is easier to understand a republic is the opposite of a monarchy, and America's founders discriminated against the Catholic Church because they were anti-monarchy (aka anti-papist). Unlike American students today, our founders would have had no problem connecting the structure of the Catholic Church and its doctrine of papal supremacy with European monarchs and Catholic collusion. Once Catholic, monarchs regularly expelled non-Catholics, eventually inducing Germany's Protestant Reformation. Discrimination begets discrimination, and the history of America can be best understood as a country founded on discrimination and its discontents. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the most recent <u>Christian Science Monitor Weekly</u> publication, I came across the following tidbit: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">Q: How did the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order, become involved in slavery? <br /><br />They began to buy, sell, and hold slaves in South America. When they came to Maryland to start missions in the 17th century, they quickly became slaveholders. Other churches came to be slaveholders, too, but the Jesuits were among the largest slaveholders in Maryland during this period. (William G. Thomas III, author of A Question of Freedom, January 4 & 11, 2021)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Were Catholics and Protestants in America able to set aside their differences by shifting their discrimination towards African slaves rather than against each other? If unity is the goal, perhaps we ought to discuss whether America's chattel slavery and the racism that followed resulted from a transference of religious antipathy into a different-colored bucket. Such historical interpretation would align with our current political climate, where segregation is the norm and Catholics are considered Christians, even though all Christian offshoots, whether Christian Science or Seventh Day Adventist, exist because of splintering within the Protestant Church, which itself exists as a result of anti-Catholicism. <br /><br />Will President Biden assist his fellow citizens in reforming history lessons so more Americans can heal from four years of division? I doubt it. The only way American Catholicism could have succeeded so spectacularly is if Biden himself, along with most Christians, lack an understanding of both European and American history. Unfortunately for us, Europeans do not suffer similar educational handicaps, meaning Biden's presidency may come to represent not unity, but the ascension of the European Union. As of today, it appears we are continuing the pattern of modern American political negligence, where leaders focused on the Soviet Union only to see increased Middle Eastern threats, then focused on the Middle East only to see increased Asian threats, and are now focusing on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-director-national-intelligence-haines-china" target="_blank">Asia</a>. <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2018/11/05/when-history-rhymes/#:~:text=Mark%20Twain%20once%20said%20that,discordant%20notes%20of%20the%20past." target="_blank">History, it seems, may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (January 2021)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-27032854434543081942020-12-19T10:23:00.014-08:002021-06-03T11:24:24.475-07:00Book Review: William O. Douglas and The Anatomy of Liberty (1963)<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">While reading Supreme Court <a href="https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1328/william-douglas" target="_blank">Justice William Douglas</a>'s <u>The Anatomy of Liberty</u>, I was struck by the little progress we've made since 1963. Almost sixty years later, American politicians, judges, and lawyers have made a liar out of Justice Douglas, who used his book to explain America's legal and political system to the rest of the world. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPwprPLSnz7jk2GtZZNZYPjGC_yl2I6H2Fz4edPAj3sKiG7FSxUe_XedIjkTcks9Yr-XzwM7ZAtJg0nepCgD_A1LRGtvEXmMuy2IQ9jsch3l5XtJGsY5a6vOTyP1bRvfl4vacCYrQ7HZTe/s2048/IMG_3924.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPwprPLSnz7jk2GtZZNZYPjGC_yl2I6H2Fz4edPAj3sKiG7FSxUe_XedIjkTcks9Yr-XzwM7ZAtJg0nepCgD_A1LRGtvEXmMuy2IQ9jsch3l5XtJGsY5a6vOTyP1bRvfl4vacCYrQ7HZTe/w300-h400/IMG_3924.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I won't belabor you with exact quotes proven overly optimistic; it serves us better to understand differences between then and now. First and foremost, the spectre of nuclear extermination loomed larger for earlier generations. Students today read about WWII in history books, but Douglas lived Hiroshima and Nagasaki as real-time events. Like many of his peers, he realized nuclear proliferation meant every country in the world--including his own--was in danger. Regarding his generation's realization of foreseeable injury, Douglas wrote, "Whatever all the reasons may be, we walk the brink every hour of every day." (pp. 114)<br /><br />Such fear--based on a reasonable assumption of ever-increasing risk--left politicians with no choice but to cooperate--at least so Douglas thought: "Now the sheer necessity to avoid the nuclear holocaust makes it necessary for us to build unity in common goals of an international character." (pp. 107) Douglas firmly believed technology's destructive potential would require greater cooperation, and he was not alone. One of Diego Rivera's most striking murals, "Man, Controller of the Universe," places the nuclear atom at the center with </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov observing</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Pz8BqqBSQg/X904PrM8ZxI/AAAAAAAA1Zk/yEoIhZrUlnM-7jo2tE9Hvfbx-TJObqpyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2289.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Pz8BqqBSQg/X904PrM8ZxI/AAAAAAAA1Zk/yEoIhZrUlnM-7jo2tE9Hvfbx-TJObqpyQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/IMG_2289.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mexico's Rivera believed scientific mastery of nature would lead to less drudgery for workers, creating a world without exploitation in which (socialist) governments would favor cooperation. Examples abound of <a href="http://scott.london/reviews/postman.html" target="_blank">intellectuals</a> linking technology with greater collaboration out of necessity or natural progression; yet, as I sit in a Mexico City hotel in December 2020, it appears time has made fools of them all.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Douglas was a libertarian and Rivera a socialist, but despite contrasting political views, both men took it for granted that by 2020--if not earlier--cross-country cooperation would be optimized in favor of peace. By 1984, however, millions sang along to Alphaville's "<a href="https://youtu.be/7aulM5g1U2o" target="_blank">Forever Young</a>,"expressing a desire to stay childlike so as to avoid contemplating nuclear war. (In one performance, the lead singer salutes military-style during the lyrics, "Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?") If the Soviet-American conflict was caused by Western powers failing to include the also-WWII-victorious Russians within NATO, thus splitting the world in two spheres, by 1991, optimism emerged as the Soviet Union's economic fall produced a unipolar world. The very next year, Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama, an American-born Harvard political scientist, authored <u>The End of History and the Last Man</u> (1992), declaring Western values the endpoint of human cultural evolution.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Time humbles us all, and in 2020, no reasonable person believes Western values or Western politics are universally appealing or even workable. The only inevitability accepted is the rise of The People's Republic of China, which has been quietly promoting a post-colonization, de-Westernized world after its 1950 invasion of Tibet to secure freshwater reserves. And so, despite Douglas's and Rivera's exhortations, we are experiencing <i>déjà vu</i>, where the threat of nuclear extermination continues but with different players using international institutions to gain advantages within increasingly splintered financial, technological, and content-distribution systems. In the past, only two hostile superpowers were in contention, which allowed us to focus on specific problems emanating from their friction. Today, the rise of regional powers asserting themselves will either destroy the idea of universal values and thus prospects for consensus, or make us yearn again for the greater simplicity of a bipolar world. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And what of global cooperation? Sadly, except for the decade between 1991 and 2001, the picture looks bleak. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Our current COVID19 pandemic is producing vastly different domestic outcomes and thus increased inequality and potential conflict. Furthermore, as most </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">individuals worldwide suffer from economic uncertainty and greater dependence on governmental action, entities with the most secure digital infrastructure have gained influence while exposing globalization's indigestion of multiple technological standards. The old adage,"He who has the gold (and the military to protect it) makes the rules," has seemingly morphed into "That which provides your digital experience (and the best online security) is crucial to economic dominance and therefore unregulatable." As for diplomacy, I remember studying South China Sea maritime issues at Singapore's National University in 2001. Two decades later, the same issues exist, meaning exporting countries have been unable to resolve something as straightforward as shipping routes. I suppose I do not need to tell you that more countries possess nuclear weapons than ever before.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Perhaps global cooperation was doomed once governments used digital backdoors to spy on allies and competitors while private corporations tracked consumer behavior in order to maximize profits. Human beings may be willing to sacrifice some privacy for greater security, but a paradigm in which governments and corporations conceal technological vulnerabilities in order to peddle propaganda and gather data cannot succeed. As our earlier generation's worst fears are realized, their words might be heard asking for whom the bell tolls: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">[T]oday the young writer's characters must function not in individuality but in isolation, not to pursue in myriad company the anguishes and hopes of all human hearts in a world of a few simple, comprehensible truths and moral principles, but to exist alone inside a vacuum of facts which he did not choose and cannot cope with and cannot escape from like a fly inside an inverted tumbler. -- <a href="https://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/display/wfaudio23_1read.html" target="_blank">William Faulkner</a> (1958)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A world lacking integrity or diplomacy necessarily reverts to "<a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/04/capitalists-of-world-unite.html" target="_blank">might makes right</a>," which carries all the burrs and hooks one ought to expect. Listen to Douglas's prescient warning: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">So apart from the problems of nuclear war, disarmament is the world's number one concern... For it is only through disarmament that war can be prevented and adequate resources released for raising the world's standard of living. Prevention of war may be well-nigh impossible if the race to get bigger and better stockpiles of bombs continues... </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">The vast gulfs that exist between various world cultures mean that the common ground will be narrow and selective... [and] only limited areas where a common ground can be found. Yet they are important, indeed critical, ones; and they will expand as the peoples of the world work with their newly emerging institutions and gain confidence in them... The problem of survival is to widen [currently limited] areas of consensus [aka the basis of law].</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pray tell, which institutions do the people of the world agree deserve our confidence? Can most people within a single country point to a single institution they wholly trust? Here I must quote Faulkner again: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">[There is a] belief that there is no place anymore where individual man can speak quietly to individual man of such simple things as honesty to oneself and responsibility toward others and protection for the weak and compassion and pity for all, because such individual things as honesty and pity and responsibility and compassion no longer exist, and man himself can hope to continue only by relinquishing and denying his individuality into a regimented group of his arbitrary, factional kind, arrayed against an opposite opposed arbitrary, factional, regimented group, both filling the same air at the same time with the same double-barreled abstractions of "peoples' democracy" and "minority rights" and "equal justice" and "social welfare"—all the synonyms which take all the shame out of irresponsibility by not merely inviting but even compelling everyone to participate in it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That was 1958. Take a look at this sign in my hotel's restaurant: <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UVDWdXUvRiM/X917HZ2lr3I/AAAAAAAA1Z4/JSdnm_klDv0sjZzZaO8_4ExhdjlL4vFvwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_4344.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UVDWdXUvRiM/X917HZ2lr3I/AAAAAAAA1Z4/JSdnm_klDv0sjZzZaO8_4ExhdjlL4vFvwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/IMG_4344.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We don't need to know Spanish to know the intent of the sign-maker, nor the fact that it is easier to make a sign than to effectuate its lofty goals. I don't doubt this particular hotel sincerely believes in anti-discrimination, but it happens to be located in the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040573/income-distribution-gini-coefficient-mexico-state/#:~:text=A%20value%20of%200%20represents,average%2C%20which%20stood%20at%200.47." target="_blank">most affluent district</a> in the entire country, a country with vast income inequality, which is precisely why it is so confident signaling progressive values--and precisely why it shouldn't be. Rather than providing optimism based on greater understanding of each other, globalization's benefits have covered up cracks in the human dynamic, cracks most of us know are bound to swallow us whole unless seen and fixed. Are good intentions all we have to offer Donne, Faulkner, and Douglas? If so, then we have failed, and we don't deserve to survive and probably won't. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (December 2020)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">“The Constitution is paper. The bayonet is steel.” -- Haitian proverb</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Bonus</i>: "When will we and the Russians (not to mention the Chinese) awaken to the realization that each can no longer go it alone, that, like it or not, we are in the same fragile boat and desperately interdependent?" -- William O. Douglas (1963), pp. 123-4<br /><br />"Today all humanity is tied irrevocably together in an effort to escape the nuclear holocaust, to survive, to make technology the servant." -- </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">William O. Douglas (1963), pp. 167 </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-18270123743267161612020-12-13T08:31:00.002-08:002020-12-13T08:31:23.391-08:00The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same, Part 1836352<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">With all the positivity surrounding 2020's successful marijuana legalization initiatives, you'd think people were experiencing a new phenomenon. Take a look at this </span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Playboy</i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> July 1973 page, which demonstrates American lawyers and legislators have failed to accomplish their objectives for almost fifty years. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ_oZhM4K9c/X9ZBXyoVgHI/AAAAAAAA1Xs/0Jqn1KSyzDII0jnHb8YkRqgKbvYFaYntgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3887.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ_oZhM4K9c/X9ZBXyoVgHI/AAAAAAAA1Xs/0Jqn1KSyzDII0jnHb8YkRqgKbvYFaYntgCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h640/IMG_3887.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And so it goes. <br /><br />© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) </span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-91008505530542957422020-12-07T14:25:00.039-08:002023-02-10T02:16:12.726-08:00Good Journalist Hunting, Part 3: Criminal Justice <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">"I am not educated, nor am I an expert in any particular field--but I am sincere, and my sincerity is my credentials." -- <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/ali.html" target="_blank">Malcolm X</a> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><u>My Credentials</u></b><br /><br />In the spirit of Brother Malcolm, here are my credentials regarding America's legal system: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sanctioned 11,000 USD by Northern District judge <a href="https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/08/29/retired-judge-samuel-conti-longest-serving-in-northern-district-history-dies-at-96/" target="_blank">Samuel Conti</a> (the party seeking sanctions later declared bankruptcy); </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sanctioned 1,000 USD by Santa Clara Superior Court judge Socrates Manoukian, who reversed the sanctions verbally at a subsequent appearance once he realized a written order was required;<br /><br />Flipped off an FBI recruiter at Levi Strauss & Co.'s HQ in San Francisco, California after I criticized the agency and he demanded my name. Fired by Levi's the same day, took a trip around the world shortly thereafter. (Fun fact: the company likes to shorten its name to LS&Co.);</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Voluntarily resigned from D.C. Bar in protest against </span><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">Trump v. Hawaii</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (2018) and mailed my admission certificates to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Arrested by police in 2016, sent to jail for several hours, accused of being under a controlled substance, released without charge due to "LACK OF SUF EVID." (Though I have advocated legalization of most drugs, I do not drink alcohol, nor do I smoke.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Arrested by <a href="https://www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Groden-ONLINE.pdf" target="_blank">police</a> in 2019, sent to jail for several hours, accused of intimidation and obstruction. On the same day I sent </span><a href="https://www.scribd.com/lists/23882061/C1914108" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">trial briefs</a> <span style="font-family: georgia;">to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, the <a href="https://youtu.be/Yf_q0JFr7G4" target="_blank">deputy district attorney said he would dismiss the case</a>. At the next court hearing, the judge granted the prosecutor's request to dismiss my case in the "interests of justice." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As of December 2020, I remain in good standing with the California State Bar since 2002 and have never had a client submit a <a href="http://members.calbar.ca.gov/courtDocs/14-R-03409-1.pdf" target="_blank">complaint</a> against me. <br /><br /><b><u>Not All Government Agencies Believe in Transparency and Public Access</u></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">"I had a good working system of paying off policemen. It was here that I learned that vice and crime can only exist, at least the kind and level that I was in, to the degree the police cooperate with it." -- <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/pdf/050063playboy.pdf" target="_blank">Malcolm X</a>, referring to his pre-Islamic days as a numbers runner, bootlegger, and pimp.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-anJp8Fc3TZ8/X9BpN0tO1JI/AAAAAAAA1UM/jfcXEakhJ-Urpg28liDn1YccOKpKMNpSwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_9974.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1414" data-original-width="2048" height="276" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-anJp8Fc3TZ8/X9BpN0tO1JI/AAAAAAAA1UM/jfcXEakhJ-Urpg28liDn1YccOKpKMNpSwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h276/IMG_9974.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Paul Krassner's The Realist, when abortion was illegal throughout America.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When dealing with <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2010/08/alice-in-wonderland-california-unions.html" target="_blank">American government</a>, an honest man learns his experience varies based on which neighborhood he happens to visit, rendering all positive and negative stories equally true, and guaranteeing substantial private sector involvement. In fact, the more the government fails, the more the private sector enters with proposed solutions. Without balance, we shall live in a country with as many technological and regulatory standards as municipalities and also one where national leaders offer increasingly harsher promises of reform and efficiency. <br /><br />Today, Americans find it fashionable to bash local cops but not the national military, which lacks sense until you realize most of America's GDP is manufactured, shipped, and protected by the military and its virtually unlimited spending--including marketing--whereas <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/new-jersey-police-contracts" target="_blank">police departments</a> cannot run annual deficits. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMCZPqHQn9xJpiemvnZrrpakZKjReseP9-9nLl1cdqBGzVIbUfGTzrp12P69IzhOw5bbwmrjYJEONFIrsvJWT9k4vwuNTzMy9g4xgvpqM0QV7sz18h2ZmLIVzqiNykRMBUb8ZxZ4H9STo/s2048/IMG_3910.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1535" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMCZPqHQn9xJpiemvnZrrpakZKjReseP9-9nLl1cdqBGzVIbUfGTzrp12P69IzhOw5bbwmrjYJEONFIrsvJWT9k4vwuNTzMy9g4xgvpqM0QV7sz18h2ZmLIVzqiNykRMBUb8ZxZ4H9STo/w300-h400/IMG_3910.jpg" title="Playboy Magazine, July 1973" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Interview, Playboy Magazine, July 1973</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TZhbagC-uRQ/X9Bafl31Y7I/AAAAAAAA1T0/-iquqp5eTmcAjhjYiJlMkQHRxC2EQsfnACLcBGAsYHQ/s1126/IMG_3822.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1126" data-original-width="828" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TZhbagC-uRQ/X9Bafl31Y7I/AAAAAAAA1T0/-iquqp5eTmcAjhjYiJlMkQHRxC2EQsfnACLcBGAsYHQ/w328-h400/IMG_3822.jpg" width="328" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Though most African-Americans do not trust the police, their complaint has to do with competence, i.e., poor training, otherwise known as poor formal education. Subjected to constant examples of abuse of discretion, few Americans realize cops are only one piece of the legal ecosystem and its most easily derided. A landscape prioritizing mobile footage of police officers failing at their jobs while prosecutors and judges enjoy intransparency tilts toward instability. Consequently, the typical American voter has no qualms voting lawyers into political office despite the fact that <b>incompetent police officers cannot exist without corrupt lawyers, and corrupt lawyers cannot exist without indolent judges.</b> (It is worth noting most judges are merely lawyers with more political connections than other lawyers.). </span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Part of the problem is that California judges deem themselves masters of their courtrooms and set their own rules, which include banning recording devices. Santa Clara County, California has notices throughout courtrooms citing <i>Nixon v. Warner</i>, 435 U.S. 589 (1978) and <i>Marin Independent v. Municipal Court</i>, <a href="https://www.leagle.com/decision/1993172412calapp4th171211642" target="_blank">12 Cal.App.4th 1712</a> (1993) as authorities against transparency. The result? Unwarranted prestige of one governmental branch over another, with disproportionate respect gained from deliberate opaqueness. It is not until we actually look up the aforementioned cases that we realize the extent to which judges have gone to bar public access and thus public scrutiny. Incredibly, the "Nixon" in <i>Nixon v. Warner</i> refers to impeached President Richard Nixon, meaning California's judicial branch is using a criminal executive as protection against public access. As for <i>Marin Independent</i>, the court cited <i>Nixon</i> and used circular reasoning, holding that media can attend and report on judicial proceedings but has no absolute right to record proceedings because <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/SupremeCtofPAOfficial" target="_blank">courts can set their own rules</a>. Stated more simply, people can't record court proceedings because the king, er, court says so. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QCXD8bYf3_I/X90EnmI256I/AAAAAAAA1Y8/Dvc6xvSmZqgtQEguShDraix3P3QxOkylwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3931.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QCXD8bYf3_I/X90EnmI256I/AAAAAAAA1Y8/Dvc6xvSmZqgtQEguShDraix3P3QxOkylwCLcBGAsYHQ/w300-h400/IMG_3931.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Counterpoint from libertarian Justice William O. Douglas's book, Anatomy of Liberty (1963)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In California, I have civil law experience, but while practicing, had never seen criminal court proceedings other than assisting a colleague with a routine DUI--incidentally, an ample cash cow for local law enforcement when fines are paid as part of a negotiated plea. What I saw when wrongfully arrested would shock any professor, journalist, or academic who has ever praised the American justice system or who believes in robust checks and balances. Despite my legal education, I had no practical knowledge of criminal courts until my two arrests. Lawyers work either on civil or criminal cases, and even the courthouses are different depending on whether a case is criminal or <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/02/jury-trials-in-bay-area.html" target="_blank">civil</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><u>Relevant Statistics</u></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">First, five statistics:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1. "74% of people in American jails have not been convicted of a crime. Sometimes this is because they’re considered a flight risk or danger to society, but the majority of individuals in jail are there because they can’t afford bail." -- <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2020/0803/Who-s-really-inside-America-s-jails-audio" target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor</a>, August 3, 2020 </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">2. "[M]ore than half of Brazil’s prison population is eventually released without a conviction." -- <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2020/0827/In-Brazil-s-prisons-inequality-isn-t-just-a-condition.-It-s-the-law" target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor</a>, August 27, 2020 [I include this statistic because astute readers will notice a connection between USA and Brasil, two countries that share disproportionate <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2021/01/slavery-democracy-and-jesuits.html" target="_blank">Catholic</a> legal influence and a non-coincidental history of <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/02/travel-lessons-history-and-relationships.html" target="_blank">chattel slavery</a>.] </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">3. "One in three U.S. adults has been arrested by age 23. Communities of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; and people with histories of abuse or mental illness are disproportionately affected. As a result, between 70 million and 100 million—or as many as one in three Americans—have some type of criminal record." -- from <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf" target="_blank">The Sentencing Project</a> (2015) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">4. "Usually missing from the conversation about mass incarceration, however, is any recognition that imprisoned or detained Americans currently represent barely one-tenth of the total population of felony convicts. As a ballpark estimate, over 20 million Americans in society at large currently have a felony in their past, and this immense population is effectively statistically invisible." -- Dr. <a href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b23fea23-8e98-4bcd-aeed-edcc061a4bc0/testimony-eberstadt-final.pdf" target="_blank">Nicholas Eberstadt</a> (2019) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">5. "The countries with the highest estimated pretrial detention populations on an average day are, not surprisingly, those with the largest general populations. The United States heads the list with 487,000, followed by Brazil (190,000), Mexico (98,000)... As a result of these high pretrial detention rates, 10 to 40 percent of the entire incarcerated population is behind bars without a conviction in most countries in the Americas." -- <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/fulltextarticle/prisons-in-jail-but-not-sentenced/" target="_blank">Richard Aborn and Ashley D. Cannon</a> (2013) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">6. "Misdemeanors... [low-level criminal offenses] account for about 80% of all arrests and 80% of state criminal dockets, says Alexandra Natapoff, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of Punishment Without Crime." -- from <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/12/876221163/law-professor-on-how-misdemeanors-sweep-blacks-into-the-criminal-system" target="_blank">NPR</a> (2020) <br /><br />I had four thoughts when evaluating</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> the above statistics. First, American police possess virtually untrammeled discretion--which means judges, city councils, and unions have failed in their presumed oversight function. Second, it follows from the aforementioned that</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/meet-men-who-scared-de-blasio-away-police-reform.html" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">police unions</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> must have substantial power over city councils as well as judges and prosecutors. Third, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">prosecutors have little say in day-to-day police work and appear to operate in totally separate spheres than police--despite the teamwork one would assume in their symbiotic relationship. (Using an American football analogy, America's</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/is-us-justice-system-broken.html" target="_blank">criminal justice</a> system is like a QB attempting passes to a WR that drops the ball 3/4 times and doesn't know the play beforehand.) Fourth, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">prosecutors and police departments use misdemeanors to justify maintaining or increasing funding. After evaluating the above information and spending allocations, you may decide the military controls America's national government and police unions control local governments while politicians rotate every four years to provide the appearance of choice. The overall picture is more complex. <br /><br />When anyone is arrested, police have an option to take the person to a holding cell-- typically a county jail--or "cite and release." The former requires fingerprinting, a health questionnaire, a mug shot, and other steps commonly referred to as a "booking." The latter is a written citation sent to the county district attorney's office, which then decides whether to file charges. Only if charges are issued are you required to take further action, including checking in at the local police station. Right away, you can see every single cop, whether rookie or veteran, has the power to make your life easier or harder. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">You may also notice we are dealing with two different government agencies: the police work for a city, whereas the jail and district attorney's office are run by a county. Both answer to </span><a href="https://www.sccgov.org/sites/opa/nr/Pages/County-Sues-San-Jose-Redevelopment-Agency-and-City-for-Breach-of-Contract.aspx" style="font-size: large;" target="_blank">separate government</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> boards and sometimes </span><a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/11/judge-issues-decision-in-santa-clara-county-ballot-initiative-lawsuit-against-san-jose/" style="font-size: large;" target="_blank">sue each other</a><span style="font-size: medium;"> to establish their required scope of duties, indicating a potentially adversarial relationship. (Imagine the American football game we described in the previous paragraph, and now add separate assistant coaches who don't always get along and who are paid from different sources.) </span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><b><u><span style="font-size: medium;">Arrest Number One</span></u></b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">In my first arrest, the government accused me of taking illegal drugs and arrested me while I was walking. (Again, I do not drink alcohol, nor do I smoke. I am a middling but dedicated former athlete and coach.) After my arrest, I was given a blood test, fingerprinted, questioned by a nurse, offered a Pop Tart, then put into a temporary cell with two other people. (I was also photographed, but I can't remember where in the process this step occurred. It may be that the steps are done based on whomever happens to be in front of a counter rather than in the back.) While I stayed in the cell for several hours, pacing back and forth out of boredom, four to five other people cycled through the same cell, most of them drunk. It dawned on me that even a lowly county jail is an expensive economic ecosystem. My arrest alone bolstered numbers used to justify taxpayer dollars to a lab technician; a nurse; several police officers; the district attorney's office; and private companies selling snacks. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">After my release, my personal items were returned, and I used my mobile phone to book a ride-hailing service back to my residence. Other arrestees pay substantial towing fees because they are unable to move their parked cars in a timely manner. If released, they are returned a key to a car that is often fifteen to twenty miles away, because most homeowners don't want to be anywhere near a jail or prison.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><u>Arrest Number Two</u></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My second arrest was at a sporting event. A drunk fan had the audacity to complain to private security about me, even though he was the one causing problems. Long story short, he was with three other people, I was alone, and I suppose four tickets are worth more than one. Unbeknownst to most patrons, sporting arenas are staffed by private sector workers but at least partly owned by cities. Police departments love professional sports because an insurance policy or the law requires a certain number of officers at events, and strapped local governments view sports as a way to boost officer pay and morale off-budget. In my incident, arena police didn't do any work or independent investigation. They simply carried out the wishes of the low-level private security guard and made an arrest. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you've been reading closely, then you've already extracted the unsteady and variable relationship between the following factors: annually balanced budgets; union negotiations; automatic cost of living increases (aka COLA); voter antipathy towards higher taxes; and competing government agencies. Such interplay provides perverse incentives in favor of arrests--especially considering most arrestees do not have enough out-of-pocket damages to justify a lawsuit. In cases where cities have paid substantial sums to arrestees, serious death or physical injury was part of the arrest, such as in NBA star <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/nyregion/thabo-sefolosha-ny-atlanta-false-arrest-suit.html" target="_blank">Thabo Sefolosha</a>'s case. Seen another way, an arrest that doesn't lead to a conviction or even a charge still requires the same work as a legitimate arrest, and come budget time, no one is penalized for an arrest that doesn't generate a lawsuit and payout. <br /><br />After my second arrest, I was taken to the same jail as before and released after several hours. This time, the <a href="https://youtu.be/Zmm7GCA0UUA" target="_blank">Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office</a> decided to charge me, which meant they issued a warrant. Unfortunately, they issued the warrant (aka notice to appear) to my residence months after the incident and when I was out of the country and thus had no way of checking in. I later discovered the government is not required to personally serve notice of a misdemeanor warrant/charge. I am unsure if the same latitude apples to felonies, but compare such discretion with a civil case: when I file a civil lawsuit, I must effect personal service of the complaint unless I swear to the court I have tried every means of personal service and failed, a process that requires hiring a third party and/or using a specialized database. It doesn't matter if the case is worth 250,000 dollars or 8,000 dollars--I have to effect personal service, which means I have to do everything humanly possible to ensure you receive the complaint in your hands. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Note: in California, restraining orders utilize a less rigorous process than civil complaints, leading to potentially widespread abuse--and more work for police.) </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If the court later decides I was not forthcoming about my diligence in locating the defendant, the judge can sanction me and/or refer me for disciplinary action, which could result in the loss of my license to practice law. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Moreover, as a civil lawyer, I cannot sit on a complaint for months as the district attorney did in my case. I am required to serve the complaint within a short period of time and appear at a status conference regularly to tell the court I am actively pursuing the case. If I appear months after I file a complaint and tell a civil court judge that I have done nothing, the judge will likely dismiss the case <i>sua sponte</i>. Suffice to say, I was more than a little stunned at the gap in required diligence: work for an individual or business trying to get money, and you better cross your "i"s and dot your "t"s, or you can't get past the first stage of litigation; work for a government that can imprison you for failing to appear at a police station, and you can jail someone for 11 months without a reasonable person ever receiving or knowing about a warrant. <br /><br />Here we may be tempted to judge government more harshly than the private sector, but what we're actually seeing is government exempting itself from rules in order to avoid unnecessary costs or the potential for employee discipline. Since most governments are self-insured, any litigation, whether employee mistreatment or police brutality, impacts innocent taxpayers. In short, when the government "turtles," its shell is designed to protect the innocent. What's the catch? "Turtling" protects taxpayers but destroys the ability to see defects in governance, ensuring long-term decline. On corruption, George Carlin once remarked, "It's a club, and you ain't in it." When threatened, the "club"--any club, really--binds together more tightly, preferring jurisdictional carveouts as defectors sprout like statutory subsections from an original statute. The outsiders, aka the "others," leave because they are ignored or poorly treated, and they leave because the main body of law has failed to institute effective procedures alerting them to dissatisfaction. Even if you don't know Goodhart's Law, you know incentives matter, and incentives drafted in response to creeping corruption require plain eyesight, not rose-colored glasses or blindness. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Predictably, as voters raise complaints, city councils--staffed mostly by lawyers and <i>de facto</i> union representatives--increase regulation. Yet, because the regulation is like an NFL front office demanding changes to the strange QB to WR scenario discussed earlier, we have the additional obstacle of the blind inserting themselves into a game they do not fully understand. Faced with miscommunication and mixed signals, the QB, the WR, and the coaching staff all form their own clubs to insulate themselves from further regulation. More arrests are made or not made to placate the front office (aka city council), and regulation intended to reform has merely decreased morale: "These arrests are based almost entirely on the word of cops, who say they are <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-cops-cash-in-on-sex-trade-arrests-with-little-evidence-while-black-and-brown-new-yorkers-pay-the-price" target="_blank">incentivized</a> to round up as many 'bodies' as they can." <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Meanwhile, in <a href="https://youtu.be/SDy-ETCRjBE" target="_blank">criminal court</a>, the district attorney runs the show. The judge, being structurally independent, has no pre-trial contact with the police or the accused, and thus relies on the integrity of the district attorney, who in turn depends on the integrity of the police. At the hearing where my charge was dismissed, about thirty other cases were present, and the judge didn't know any facts of my case, not even my arrest date--even though I could have been sent to jail for months. The judge brushed aside my comment that California's <i>de facto</i> one-party state had seemingly produced an outcome where life and liberty are treated with less respect than property and money. (Later, I realized civil courts function better than criminal courts because businesses, especially cost-conscious insurance companies, regularly use civil courts, whereas poor people and government employees regularly use criminal courts. Stated another way, each civil court filing provides hundreds to thousands of dollars for the government as well as the private sector, but each criminal court case is a negative taxpayer cost because criminal courts do not charge the accused fees or costs.) <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Americans think of respected American judges, they are thinking of appellate courts with limited dockets, not busy trial courts. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The United States has a few judges who will be remembered as bucking the tide of totalitarianism, namely Judge <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/james-robertson-federal-judge-who-took-stand-against-warrantless-surveillance-dies-at-81/2019/09/16/aabf4db8-d64b-11e9-9343-40db57cf6abd_story.html" target="_blank">James Robertson</a>, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/08/japanese-american-hero-dies.html" target="_blank">Robert Takasugi</a>, </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Roger L. Gregory, and of course Justice Sonia Sotomayor. None of them are now trial court judges, which means you, an ordinary citizen, could never be heard by them. At the first level of litigation are mostly judges who do not understand much, who specialized in only one area of legal practice, and who are at the mercy of information given to them by lawyers. Were tragedy not certain, one might marvel at the fact that <b>American courts depend on the integrity of lawyers in a country where most people do not trust lawyers and most lawyers do not trust each other.</b> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><u>Conclusion</u></b><br /><br />As of 2020, I am not actively practicing law, and I've enjoyed <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/08/packing-for-trip-round-world.html" target="_blank">not wearing a suit</a> in five-plus years. <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lawlect.htm" target="_blank">Abraham Lincoln</a> once said, "Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief -- resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer." When I realized I could not give my clients reasonably predictable outcomes based on the evidence, I resolved to quit practicing law as soon as possible. To the extent Americans cannot find an honest lawyer, judges may realize too late they have relegated American courts to the realm of the rich and the overinsured. <br /><br />It is tempting to say the United States should become like <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/india-good-stuff.html" target="_blank">India</a>, a country with perhaps an even more <a href="https://scroll.in/article/866158/the-indian-justice-system-is-too-slow-too-complex-and-too-costly-says-new-study" target="_blank">complex legal system</a>. After all, post-colonial <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/india-part-5.html" target="_blank">India</a> excels at technology within a large, multicultural, and diverse land once colonized by the British, and no less a visionary than Jeff Bezos has said, "<a href="https://youtu.be/jzfXlg-wyUU" target="_blank">I want to make a prediction... I predict that the 21st century is going to be the Indian century</a>." Realistically, we should strive to be exactly like ourselves, no better and no worse, and accept that growing pains are a normal part of a young nation's growth. One day, we will realize the foundation of globalization was built on an inherently insecure technological standard, and we will understand our devolution from civilization to fragmented security state. For now, until diplomacy and global cooperation improve, all we can do is hope our lonely betters survive to tell our stories as we stumble along in open darkness. </span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (December 2020)</span><br /><br /><i>Dedicated to David Simon, creator of The Wire (2002-2008)</i><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Disclaimer</i>: Nothing herein is legal advice. As of December 2020, I am not accepting new clients. I am writing solely in my capacity as an observer, and your experience with police and/or the criminal system may differ substantially from mine. <br /><br /><i>Bonus</i>: Good Journalist Hunting, Part 1 is <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2019/09/good-journalist-hunting.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Part 2 is <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/06/good-journalist-hunting-part-2-drugs.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. <br /><br /><i>Update</i>: I don't mean to imply civil courts are perfect or more conducive to justice than criminal courts. Most civil court motion judges don't read all of the parties' briefs, but their law clerks prepare memorandums for them, which provide summaries of relevant law and facts. Civil court is procedurally intensive and geared towards creating a record of everything, which delays justice but also tends to soften both parties' original demands. In state criminal court, the district attorney functions as the judge's <i>de facto</i> law clerk until trial, blurring the lines between independent judiciary and executive branch (<i>i.e.</i>, the district attorney acting on behalf of the state, mayor, and police). Compared to civil cases alleging over 25,000 USD in damages, most criminal cases lack bespoke dispositive motions because the system assumes a trial will take place, even though most civil and criminal cases settle or plead. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Since lawyers know most cases settle, they are incentivized to overcharge or to allege every possible violation, but with an important difference: if a district attorney overcharges, s/he can usually drop the unnecessary charges before trial without consequences, whereas a civil lawyer, upon opposing counsel's request, must spend hours matching all of the facts and evidence to each element in each claim early in the case. This is another way of saying criminal statutes are extremely broad, whereas civil statutes at least attempt to restrict both parties. At the end of the day, civil lawyers not working for insurance companies have to show their clients results to get paid, and if a civil lawyer files too many claims or motions, at some point, the civil lawyer's own availability or client becomes a check and balance on excessive behavior. <br /><br />Finally, some civil lawyers do get default judgments against individuals by publication or by serving the complaint at an old address, but they still have to declare under penalty of perjury that 1) the address they used is the one given to them by a third-party investigator or specialized database (Lexis-Nexis, etc.); and 2) they attempted personal service at known addresses, including work. Any defendant not personally served can also file a straightforward motion to remove a default judgment if plaintiff failed to exercise proper due diligence. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Update</i>: regarding court transparency, the following opinion from federal Judge Davila in <i>USA vs. Elizabeth Holmes</i> (2021) is useful: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The United States Supreme Court has held that the right to attend criminal proceedings “is implicit in the guarantees of the First Amendment.” <i>Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia</i>, 448 U.S. 555, 556 (1980). The First Amendment right of public access extends to pretrial proceedings as well as documents filed in connection with those proceedings. <i>Associated Press v. U.S. Dist. Court for Cent. Dist. of Cal.</i>, 705 F.2d 1143, 1145 (9th Cir. 1983); see also <i>Kamakana v. City & Cty. of Honolulu</i>, 447 F.3d 1172, 1178–79 (9th Cir. 2006) (“Historically, courts have recognized a ‘general right to inspect and copy public records and documents, including judicial records and documents.’” (quoting <i>Nixon v. Warner Commc’ns, Inc.</i>, 435 U.S. 589, 597 & n.7 (1978))). Access to judicial records, however, is “not absolute.” <i>Kamakana</i>, 447 F.3d at 1178. The Supreme Court “has made clear that the right to an open trial may give way in certain cases to other rights or interests, such as the defendant’s right to a fair trial or the government’s interest in inhibiting disclosure of sensitive information.” <i>Waller v. Georgia</i>, 467 U.S. 39, 45 (1984).</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-6982106870734808162020-11-21T18:01:00.063-08:002021-04-10T13:05:26.351-07:00Something Wicked This Way Comes? <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The United States recently held an election, and results are pending two weeks later. Regardless of the outcome, we must finally admit the American political scene isn’t something others want to emulate—at least not without substantial bribery. No longer confined to smoke-filled rooms with nondescript doors, today’s <i>Pax Americana</i> bribes take place at golf courses, academic institutions, and legislative bodies, culminating in an American national debt of 26 trillion dollars. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Empire-building requires allies, and allies are apparently becoming more expensive. Though the inscription on the back of U.S. currency states “In God We Trust,” debt appears to be the undisputed binding agent. According to the Institute for International Finance, the coronavirus pandemic increased global debt to 272 trillion American dollars, adding symbiotic ballast to the more honest phrase, “In Debt We Trust.” Like all co-dependent relationships, momentum is key, and any well-traveled American has realized the momentum that made America great after 1991’s fall of the Soviet Union has shifted elsewhere. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The United States was particularly vulnerable to political slogans due to its inability to recognize propaganda even as groups hardened around selectively-edited truth. (The world would be more decent were recruiting and advertising budgets called by their true name: propaganda.) Future historians will note entrenched divisions but are less apt to recognize its causes—and oh, the causes. Not only are they large, containing multitudes, Walt Whitman’s earlier words ne’er rang truer: “The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them…” And for what? Lacking context, the abyss awaits once again, another empire ready to fall. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">My intent is not pessimism, but edification; namely, to show future generations the many-splendored ways a great nation can falter and never recover. Most astoundingly, though sources of political divisions are well-known to many Americans—gerrymandering plus local resistance to unfunded national mandates seeking reform—nothing can be done because once divisions encompass the weight of trillions of units of debt, everyone's interest is to go along. You'd think “going along” would coincide with “getting along,” but as it happens, the inevitable isn’t always certain. That’s our first lesson: knowledge is wonderful, but knowing the right path doesn’t mean anyone will follow you. Knowledge needs credibility to be meaningful in civil society, and credibility’s formula is complex and sometimes impervious to examination. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">We mentioned institutional bribery, but nothing fundamental has changed since at least the 18th century. Samuel Johnson may have said it best: “In civilized society, personal merit will not serve you so much as money will. Sir, you may make the experiment. Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.” Americans would do well to remember governments can increase debt to win friends and placate enemies, but <a href="https://youtu.be/MUOj-GkDqnI" target="_blank">lasting loyalty</a> is hard to find and even harder to buy. Lesson number two: unless institutions ensure they serve values of infinite duration and are able to reverse course when—not if—they go astray, nation-building and globalization are all for naught. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">If money and knowledge mean little in the long run despite their attraction, on what grounds shall we stake our claim? Locating suitable ground is difficult in every era because the future is always fragile. Money--a universal siren song--increases ego and power even if its possessor lacks wisdom and especially when debt is readily available. In this way, the greater the outward success, the more humility, a crucial element of all progress, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1932/v07n12-jun-1932-New-Masses.pdf" target="_blank">cries out: Help</a>! </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">To mitigate prosperity's unctuous byproducts, note the following: everything is incremental unless abject failure occurs. In other words, if you have succeeded, it is because you and your neighbors learned from others’ failures and benefited from time’s accumulative value. Note also that knowledge is neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. Its trajectory of success depends entirely on one’s ability to link personal knowledge to institutional knowledge useful to future generations. You have understood our third lesson when you realize it is the same as our second lesson.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Our fourth lesson is two-pronged: history and incentives. Growing up in the United States, I was inundated with the superiority of the Western capitalist system and believed it true not as an inherent economic matter, but because of its ability to absorb immigrants and thus new ideas. At the time, I had not traveled extensively, and I did not understand world history. I had no way of knowing USA’s most recent immigrants were present as a result of foreign policy mistakes and attempted coups rather than organic openness. A short summary may be useful: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">White residents with Hispanic last names filled Miami, Florida after a failed CIA coup against Cuba’s Fidel Castro, ironically himself from noble Spanish lineage.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Upc-Xe8JcwY/X718coyZFrI/AAAAAAAA1Qc/8nTVUAFjNc8Y4Ijij7sa6DDHSBU5OcHuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_0893.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Upc-Xe8JcwY/X718coyZFrI/AAAAAAAA1Qc/8nTVUAFjNc8Y4Ijij7sa6DDHSBU5OcHuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_0893.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seen in Sintra, Portugal<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> Cupertino, California is home to residents who are Taiwanese and not Chinese because they were on the losing side of the Chinese Revolution, which rejected <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Time-China-Trilogy/dp/B00008EY6M" target="_blank">Western corruption</a>. (Malcolm X called the Chinese who fled "Uncle Tom Chinese," i.e., people who betrayed their culture and country in service to American and European hegemony.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> In southern California, Iranians live in Beverly Hills, California only because Western governments saw value in Iranian oil and natural gas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> Meanwhile, in northern California, numerous Vietnamese restaurants exist because the Catholic Church, using <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/04/se-asian-history-chronological-primer.html" target="_blank">Joseph McCarthy</a> and Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, successfully lobbied Congress to split north and south Vietnam into de facto Communist and Catholic countries. The two-state attempt was unsuccessful, forcing the United States to re-settle foreign agents, who were conveniently assisted by Catholic nonprofits receiving both taxpayer funding and tax exemptions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even America’s Olympic medals appear immoral when considering American Christians (and others once connected with Catholic Spain) were able to breed the strongest Africans because they were convinced of God-given racial differences within a context of global trade of tobacco, sugar, and cotton.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now we may discuss incentives. Most people view incentives from the back-end—being nudged in a particular direction—rather than the front-end, i.e., <a href="https://youtu.be/0Xi8LoCn8_k" target="_blank">marketing</a> and mandates. In USA, one reason I am certain of near-term decline is because politics has been reduced to another marketing gimmick, a show where governments signal importance by reacting decisively to events while protecting image at the expense of authenticity. Some cauldrons should not mix together, and the aforementioned political dynamic places the witches’ recipe firmly in the hands of unaccountable third-parties, with politicians serving a pre-fabricated brew guaranteed to poison. An attorney might cite <u>Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</u></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), as the date marketing received a license to overwhelm sense, but marketing, at its root, is merely a promise based on words and images. W.H. Auden, my favorite poet, aptly summarized the age-old conflict inherent in mammalian speech:</span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not one of them was capable of lying,<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">There was not one which knew that it was dying <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Assumed responsibility for time. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let them leave language to their lonely betters <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Who count some days and long for certain letters; <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep: <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Words are for those with promises to keep.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Is a legislator’s time at the podium or media outlet an attempt to effectuate a promise? If so, how can this be possible unless we assume a one-party state or a paradigm lacking checks and balances? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Is billionaire Warren Buffett an insurance salesman propped up by a banking system further propped up by an unaccountable Federal Reserve? Or has he singlehandedly changed the world by bringing together billionaires in search of the public good? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Is the Catholic Church’s anti-abortion stance designed to more easily funnel government funding to Catholic-dominated voting districts, or genuine concern about society’s moral failings?
</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Does a black American “welfare queen” represent personal failure or the failings of an economic system unable to correct racial segregation? If over 80% of African-American women are <a href="https://khn.org/news/african-american-obesity/" target="_blank">overweight</a> because their ancestors were bred like animals by enterprising slave traders, should companies allow certain groups more gym time, or should some people more readily accept a manual labor position? On the flip side, when an African-American athlete proudly salutes the American flag, is he ignorant of his country’s history, or is he an optimist who believes in progress? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">All of the above questions have objectively correct answers, but none ascertainable in our lifetimes. Each answer begins with one of the two interpretations, and then depending on the time of analysis, ends somewhere at the other end. If we are lucky, we muddle in the middle as long as possible. By way of example, imagine the Alpha and the Omega or al'Awwal (الأول) and al'Akhir (الآخر), but in a quantum computing setting involving collective free will: the answer is ever-present and yet always changing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Perhaps a more concrete example would be instructive. Consider the now-unified country of Germany, once known as the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) aka the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). When we discuss Germany, which Germany are we entitled to use for analysis? The future and past are necessarily intertwined, so if we only take today’s Germany, will our analysis be complete? If our analysis is almost always incomplete, then do you now understand the “crucial element” we discussed earlier? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Yes, the fourth lesson is indeed the same as the second and the third, but you could not see it because marketers and politicians have spent billions of dollars proselytizing the belief everyone can go wherever they like on the al'Awwal (الأول) and al'Akhir (الآخر) timeline—often at a cost exceeding selectively-blind allegiance. In reality, your life involves predetermination as well as free will, a fact evident to those who recognize history was always assigned a seat at your table, whether invited or not. Luckily for Americans, their table may wobble, but it is still vast, it still contains multitudes, and unlike Hong Kong or Singapore, there are many, many empty seats available. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">I will leave the last lesson to baseball player Peter “Yogi” Berra: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” I am uncertain of our specific place in the nation’s timeline, but at this point, whether America’s table continues to wobble until it breaks is an outcome favoring free will over predetermination. In simpler terms, it is, once again, up to the youth, especially the builders, lovers, writers, and artists. Fix the table. There is time still. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (November 2020)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing. </span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">– Walt Whitman </span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And that a kelson of the creation is love... </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">– Walt Whitman</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The "rise of [American political conservatism in the 1980s] showed that hypocritical nostalgia for a kinder, gentler, more Christian pseudo-past is no less susceptible to manipulation in the interests of corporate commercialism and PR image. Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism." -- David Foster Wallace</span></div>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8607093527751357203.post-63881601514628828142020-09-23T02:03:00.019-07:002022-06-09T00:44:05.257-07:00Religion: Understanding the Abrahamic Trilogy <p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><u>In the Beginning is the End</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In a world embracing superficiality and sleights-of-hand, anyone sincere can be forgiven for seeing ever-smaller areas of substance. Politics has been exposed as a <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2019/09/hope-arrives-in-country-51.html" target="_blank">reality show</a> designed to distract voters from increasing debt levels at the same time they experience declining quality of life. Meanwhile, mainstream Christianity, especially Catholicism, appears nothing more than a political movement with tax-exempt status using public funds to advance private nepotism. Where, then, can a decent person discover pathways towards an enlightened mind? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A young Westerner growing up pre-internet might answer "newspapers," "books," "college," and, if lucky, "parents," "coaches," or "neighbors." A teenager in 2020 might cite video streaming services, documentaries, e-books, and college. Very few would include health care workers, police departments, politicians, the military, or the majority of their teachers, despite the fact that the majority of their parents' taxes go towards some combination of the aforementioned. Accordingly, we don't need an academic to explain why Western governments have become irrelevant while multi-national corporations, especially financial and technological institutions, have risen. <b>The technology sector's algorithms, driven by the highest advertising bids, determine what we see, while banks and venture capitalists provide the lubricant for our intellectual deadening.</b> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: courier;">"Social media is a nuance destruction machine, and I don't think that's helpful for democracy." -- Jeff Bezos (USA, July 2020)</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As the world's current technological leader, the United States requires a reformation placing technology not above philosophy or spirituality, but beside it. Rigorous anti-trust enforcement may shift placements, but no intellectual </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">ever credited man-made law as non-satirical inspiration, so we must examine something more fundamental than civil law to understand how we arrived at our current lopsided paradigm. As teachers, unions, lawyers, military commanders and politicians exchanged their moral duties for power and groupthink, the task of transferring institutional knowledge--for both the high and the low--is returning to institutions with the most longevity in human history: religion and its discontents. Will such reversion work? An answer requires exploring Avraham's/Abraham's/Ibrahim's influence on today's Western leaders, all of whom publicly profess spiritual backing and, even if financed by teachers' unions, will claim God a greater influence than any teacher.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I hope I have not already lost the agnostic or the atheist, and I also hope many of you equated "discontents" above with "rebels." For it is not self-professed leaders who always make history, but often the ones opposed to them; indeed, were it possible to study history through the eyes of the dispossessed, disenfranchised, and disregarded, surely we'd better understand how we arrived at our current disaffected state. However, since the victors and elites have historically been the ones with financial backing, and most of our kin illiterate for much of our history, we must train ourselves to filter existing information in ways acknowledging our existence as a product of a corrupted but successful narrative. Such training is precisely what I intend to impart here, rather than judgment or certain knowledge. But, pray tell, why religion and not science or some other more objective source? </span><br /><br /><u><span style="font-size: large;">Wisdom in the Shadows</span></u><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">First, the reason technological algorithms cannot be trusted with information is because they cannot see what and who is absent. In other words, algorithms cannot and never will be able to imagine historical gaps or to extrapolate meaning by identifying missing information. For example, Frederick Douglass may be one of the smartest men to have ever lived, but it would be a mistake to consider his words the main tributary into the oceans of African-American experience. Above all, </span><b><span style="font-size: medium;">the task of learning is an exercise in humility, in realizing our information is always incomplete, and a machine, being unable to understand humility, is therefore handicapped <i>a priori</i> in imparting wisdom.</span></b><span style="font-size: medium;"> Consequently, though we are, on our best day, sailors paddling a fjord admiring the scenery, because we are able understand the risk of drowning, our single drop of knowledge will always be superior to a machine's ability to analyze the depths of the water but not its own limits. In this way, the agnostic and the deist are better suited to the task of wisdom than anyone--or anything--certain of his or her sources of intellectual progeny. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Before proceeding, we must address the inquisitive reader's complaint that studying Avraham/Abraham/Ibrahim is a useless endeavor, particularly if agnostics, deists, and rebels are the ones we ought to study. Two responses should suffice: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1) We are unable to access the thoughts of a man murdered during the Spanish Inquisition, so we can stop right here, let the algorithms and academics dictate the narrative, or we can try to remember human nature has remained relatively constant since at least 2500 years ago and then examine pogroms, religion, and government overreactions generally to gain insights into human nature; and </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">2) No matter how enlightened or correct we deem ourselves, </span><b style="font-family: georgia;">all knowledge is incrementally gained</b><span style="font-family: georgia;">. The same young man enamored with Robert Burns' poem "A Red, Red Rose" will eventually consider the poem effete in his older years without realizing it must have been a lyrical masterpiece for all ages in 1794. Even more inscrutable is the notion that listeners in 1794 would not have understood an ee cummings poem just like most Americans today cannot read Shakespeare, and so it follows that ee cummings himself was not possible in 1794 though a Shakespeare is possible today. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">"We bear the scars of patient decades and centuries' dreams... The book, too, reads its readers in real-time." -- The Booksellers (2020 documentary)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you still follow, then you realize every piece counts, no matter how small, intangible, or incorrect, especially within an environment of incomplete information which is itself disseminated by technology unable to understand limits. We must also consider the possibility we have reached a point in human history where our information is so contrary to wisdom, we can only know what is true by shedding what is false--and, more importantly, to train ourselves to avoid making the same mistakes. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." -- attributed to Mark Twain (USA) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Having resolved the reasons to study religion as a source of historical knowledge about ourselves, we can now discuss the Abrahamic trilogy of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. </span><br /><br /><u><span style="font-size: large;">The Abrahamic Trilogy: Odd Man Out</span></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Abram/Avraham/</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Abraham/</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Ibrahim represents the story of a man equally claimed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; however, religious scholars know Abraham looms larger in Judaism and Islam than in Christianity. More specifically, Christianity places the Messiah--and by extension the Trinity--at the center of its message of faith, whereas Judaism and Islam place humanity below a single, unmorphable higher power and never on equal terms. In essence, Christianity emphasizes a personable faith, whereas its religious cousins emphasize humility. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"I learned I was Christian. It's the easiest thing in the world. You don't have to do anything. All you have to do is stop doing something. You have to learn to stop trying to preserve yourself." -- C.S. Lewis, as portrayed in Shadowlands (1993), comparing becoming Christian to taking a dive, or a leap of faith </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And here is where we reach, aptly enough, our next lesson. Not only is all knowledge, including science, incremental, but often a reaction to what came before. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: courier;">"Science is an incremental process of amassing information over repeated studies to slowly move towards a greater understanding. Rather than yielding sure answers, it's about reducing uncertainty." -- Eva Botkin-Kowacki (2020)</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The single largest impediment to human understanding is the inability to place one's current narrative in relation to historical ones </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">from the ancestors' perspectives</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, resulting in incompleteness as well as contextual bias. Yet, upon closer examination, we have enough to form a likely narrative based on human nature once we understand the process of incremental knowledge as well as humanity's rebellious instincts. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the prism of a religious chain reaction, if we see ancient Jewish scholars as high-handed, arrogant, and corrupted by profit-seeking, then the existence of Jesus makes more sense, from his disregard for religious pedants to his ostracism by established community members. (The same dynamic would be repeated later with the prophet Muhammad, who railed against the elitist Quraysh tribe of which he was a member.) </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The pattern of hard-nosed teachers producing rebellious students is not new, and in this instance, could explain why Christianity chose storytelling over dogmatic instruction, a three-pronged God instead of a more straightforward singularity. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: courier;">[W]hen a dictatorship claims absolute authority over an idea -- in the case of Iran, Islam, in the case of Egypt, a ham-fisted brand of socialism -- frustrated citizens will run to the opposite ideological extreme. [Consequently,] The Islamic Republic was secularizing Iran; in Egypt the short-robed fundamentalists multiplied and multiplied.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> -- </span><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2019/03/g-willow-wilson-deceptively-unassuming.html" target="_blank">G. Willow Wilson</a>, The Butterfly Mosque (2010)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By abstaining from a more structural belief system, Christianity as promulgated in the New Testament made itself more attractive but also more ambiguous and thus susceptible to fragmentation based on differing personal interpretations. 2,000 years later, my California community, settled by Catholic Spaniards, has a Jehovah's Witness Hall; two Korean-American churches; </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">numerous Catholic churches, including one catering to Portuguese-Americans;</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">a Mormon temple; and several more Christian institutions, none but the ones hosting Catholics and European history buffs aware of the reasons for such variety. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To summarize, Christianity's multiple factions--spawned from anti-Catholic European sentiment--may reflect its ideological source code, which is itself multi-pronged; more importantly, its reliance on storytelling renders clear-cut commandments less possible, allowing authorities greater discretion and thus greater diversity of outcomes. When the engines of debt and interest are added to a culture permitting authorities in one district to rule differently than authorities in other districts, especially when no fiat or edict exists against slavery, financial Jubilees become pre-ordained. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: courier;">Facts: between roughly 300 BC and 200 AD, millions of slaves arrived in Italy, and Rome's one million inhabitants made it the largest city in Europe. In Rome, 30% to 40% of the population were slaves; in Italy as a whole, 20% to 40% were slaves.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: courier;">As late as 1452 AD, the Catholic Church issued a papal decree, Dum Diversas, promoting "perpetual servitude" against non-Catholics.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, too, is the notion of a Western Christian nation possessing the world's most destructive military while presuming to follow a hippie-like spiritual leader who never retaliated against his captors or called for war, even in self-defense. And so, too, can nations of men and women enamored with marriage hold ceremonies in churches under the literal (and often false) image of a prophet who never married. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred, or rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam" target="_blank">Beyond Vietnam</a>" (1967)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Given such variances dislocated from logic and originalism, the Catholic Church, a centralized entity espousing the doctrine of papal supremacy, rose to power by offering to resolve such splits. From the moment it tasted power, the Church realized the shortest path towards relevance was as an intermediary between absentee rulers and illiterate commoners, especially where opportunities for personal discretion and subjective interpretation of laws existed. In such capacity, and unchecked by inbred kings mollified with self-portraits and other egotistical endeavors, it acted to supplant the court's sceptre with the </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">papal ferula; to </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">co-opt the military as royal advisor [</span><u style="font-family: georgia;">Note</u><span style="font-family: georgia;">: in chess, the bishop is next to the king and queen and </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">equal to the warrior knight.]; to call for </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">the Crusades; to murder non-Catholic women and children (unlike Saladin in Jerusalem); and to expel or persecute those not in line with its beliefs, whether Copernicus or common Jew. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1476" data-original-width="2048" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcIYEkRkaWcYd64D5xXRrSdtXoBOvMEdad2tpGQv_HEJ5zprkCEIePDW1k5-rRBY5cwdpsLxj7UWsBNv-Bj4cv21tFtiDtRXuhV7PwqIzKXr8OqpWOOEp3Nx3ER6oPGMfN_ChDUljkoJZ/w400-h289/IMG_4278.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Warren Hinckle's If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade (1974)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Understanding the Catholic Church's methods as well as its status as intolerant political movement reveals a straight line from Pope Urban II's call for the Crusades in 1095; to Pope Nicholas V's "Dum Diversas" in 1452; to Martin Luther's "95 Theses" in 1517; to England's <a href="http://anglican.org/church/ChurchHistory.html" target="_blank">dissolution of Roman Catholic influence in 1536</a>; and to America's Cardinal Francis Spellman and Joseph McCarthy, who, using the pretext of Communism, championed the Vietnam War to promote Catholic interests, including the installation of the Catholic Ngô brothers in South Vietnam, one of whom was an archbishop. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-111SMmZTVno/X2lOy3Sf77I/AAAAAAAA0c8/bFttOPsrrQgh3uIBy-pmWlAVIVXz3lxvgCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h640/IMG_4711%2BViet.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="480" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Warren Hinckle (1974)</td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Having formed a cohesive picture, we can draw still further to today's presumptive American president Joseph Biden, Jr., a Catholic who supported the Iraq War and thus the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Semites and Muslims. Whether the target is Jew, Muslim, Protestant, or Buddhist, the Catholic Church's ability to use centralization to consolidate power throughout history is a feature, not a bug, of Christianity's subjective and personal ethos. Think: if everyone but you is dispersed or fragmented, who will prevail in a democratic system? And if you are the main branch from which others have split in opposition, which part will be the strongest until the bough breaks? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last Catholic priest." -- attributed to Denis Diderot (1713-1784)</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: courier;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(<u>Note</u>: </span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Splits in Islam also occurred, not due to disagreements over Islam's (or, for that matter, Judaism's) fundamental tenets, but the bane of every corporate empire: post-succession planning.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u>A Linear Reaction</u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If logic, peace, or objective truth are not universally binding agents in today's Christian-majority United States, then what is? If you understood the Jubilee reference above, then you know the answer. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-puA2z1DzGxo/X2l4M_bD_sI/AAAAAAAA0dI/ZOwuQXrukJUKxmj1MmCfpTtSAP-uDwRZACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2005.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-puA2z1DzGxo/X2l4M_bD_sI/AAAAAAAA0dI/ZOwuQXrukJUKxmj1MmCfpTtSAP-uDwRZACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2005.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">America is the country where not one, but two trillion dollar bailouts--with another soon coming--were needed to rescue Western-led banks post-2000. (Jan Hus and Martin Luther's complaints of Catholics "<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-14/selling-forgiveness-how-money-sparked-protestant.html" target="_blank">selling indulgences</a>" continues, but in a different, more global form.) This trillion dollar machinery exposes debt as the glue yoking Christian residents and their institutions together, not ideology, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2020/08/high-school-rebellion.html" target="_blank">education</a>, politics, or religion. To sum up, the absence of a hard rule against interest, combined with a religious corps hell-bent on subsuming government policy to its own interests, has created, ironically, a reaction in which modern America's debt-soaked younger generation views <a href="https://youtu.be/sMlCn66_yFo" target="_blank">socialism as equally favorable to capitalism</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"In absolute terms, the average person in the bottom half of the US income distribution today is worse off than the average person in 1980 in the US... [But] the people at the bottom half of [Communist] China's income distribution today are four times better off than they were 30 years ago." -- <a href="https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/podcast/foreseeable-podcast-asia-and-the-international-world-order" target="_blank">Danny Quah</a> (2019), Singaporean professor of economics</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Having covered </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Judeo-Christianity's</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> progression and blowback from Torah teacher to anti-Establishment rebel, we can finally discuss Islam's role. At this juncture, the Trilogy's second chain reaction resembles the "flower children" and anti-colonialists of the 1960s who became corporate suits in the 2000s: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">In many countries, anti-colonial fighters and heroes would win independence and assume power, but then fail at nation-building, because the challenges of bringing a society together, growing an economy, [and] patiently improving people's lives are very different from [rebelling against injustice and] fighting for independence. -- Singaporean PM LEE Hsien Loong (2015) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Ottomans/Turks (Sunni but not Arab), Omanis (Ibadis, not Sunni or Shia), and Iranians (Shia, not Sunni) would protest the label of "corporate suits," but the Arabs, as traders and merchants (hence, the famous caravans), have little argument, particularly given Khadija bint Khuwaylid's (</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">خَدِيجَة ٱبْنَت خُوَيْلِد) status as an affluent merchant and employer of the young Muhammad (PBUH). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Despite Islam's attempts to create a more equitable economic system, the political </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">journey from dogma to status exploited for financial gain to equitable economic system is a recurring theme in human history, with the final step appearing more and more elusive. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A bright student like Jesus Christ may realize his community's teachers or priests are full of empty bombast and more concerned with stature than wisdom, but such knowledge alone does not render him qualified to work as a teacher or priest, a situation the Catholic Church capitalized upon. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Thus, from one point of view, it was left to the Arabians and Sunni branch of Islam to provide a more equitable structure to the ideas of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad under the assumption the last honest man had the advantage of the benefit of time--and incremental knowledge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As a religion that had to influence traders while led by an orphan marrying a successful businesswoman, Islam was in a unique position to create a system (sharia, or شريعة) that would obviate the stories returning caravans told of Christianity's loopholes for exploitation. Today, no Islamic-majority country has citizens with trillions of dollars or dinars of </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">consumer debt, a predictable outcome once one understands Islamic law's ban on interest (not just usury). Whereas Christianity's more subjective source code allowed interest to be charged, Islam negated the possibility of usury from the outset, realizing firsthand the coexistence of greed and business. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2m2IXoqzxbw/X2ryVTcHIcI/AAAAAAAA0dc/FaB44XgXAW4lXbgtEvEEiuc6I7iaF5x-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1668/IMG_2008.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="1668" height="158" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2m2IXoqzxbw/X2ryVTcHIcI/AAAAAAAA0dc/FaB44XgXAW4lXbgtEvEEiuc6I7iaF5x-gCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h158/IMG_2008.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">September 2020<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Furthermore, in contrast to America's Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist founders, Islam's prophet was </span><a href="https://youtu.be/G136cPY10qU" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">never a slaveowner.</a></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3WGp6NI87l8/X2ryIeReieI/AAAAAAAA0dY/NE196Uh1j6MLUP4nPPuogJXzz-cKnmy5ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2006.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3WGp6NI87l8/X2ryIeReieI/AAAAAAAA0dY/NE196Uh1j6MLUP4nPPuogJXzz-cKnmy5ACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/IMG_2006.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From cover of Stephanie F. Jones-Rogers' book, <br /><u>They Were Her Property</u> (2019)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not only did Muhammad (PBUH) never own slaves, he used his wife's money to free African slaves, including Bilal ibn Rabah; however, Muhammad (PBUH) <a href="https://youtu.be/5Y-tzFzsmMY" target="_blank">could not immediately ban the established practice of slave-trading</a>, which was highly profitable and as important to pre-Islamic Arab traders in 600 AD as to Christian-American Southern plantation owners in 1700 AD. That being said, from 610 AD to Islam's peak in 1511 AD, no person, whether African or otherwise, could be a slave if also Muslim, </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">though European influence in Africa post-1511 AD made </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Afro-Arab Muslim slave <i>traders</i> (e.g, <a href="https://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2018/02/travel-lessons-history-and-relationships.html" target="_blank">Tippu Tip</a> aka Tippi Tib aka حمد بن محمد بن جمعة بن رجب بن محمد بن سعيد المرجبي</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">) non-oddities</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">. (<u>Note</u>: the business of transporting goods across a vast landscape pre-navy required workers in the same way the tobacco or cotton industry requires manual laborers, with the main question being whether one treated such workers as minority partners or temporary chattel.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Abraham's Origin Story</u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In no way do I mean to denigrate Christianity. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">While Islam may be incompatible with Catholicism, Catholicism is not the only branch of Christianity. If Christianity is the odd man out in the Trilogy, then Judaism and Islam are the bookends attempting to corral the excesses permissible under a storytelling system. Had law and rationality been enough, we would have stopped our religious exploration at the Torah and Talmud and suffered a shortage of brilliant authors, including C.S. Lewis. Moreover, Islam's core tenets of anti-interest and anti-slavery would be less possible without Christianity's faith in mankind, even if sometimes misplaced. So too, does Islam have much to learn from a belief system able to weave a dream any which way and then attempt the task of elevating its believers into the story, with failure not preventing another dream state. Christianity's placement of a human being on the same plane as God lends itself to egoism and the "cult of personality" but also <a href="http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html" target="_blank">greater ambition</a> than belief systems more wary of mankind's limits. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We have neglected the man responsible for this entire discussion, so let us return to his story. It is true a polytheistic religion or one allowing multiplication of an ancestor could have formed the basis for an anti-slavery, anti-debt philosophy, but not as likely. As most adults know, the difference between themselves and their younger selves is the realization possibilities exist, but probabilities dictate outcomes. Thus, the probable challenger to Christianity's three-pronged approach had to have been one that re-asserted humanity's single, unbroken bloodline back to Abraham, a common ancestor. Why is such reversion so important? Put simply, <b>a shared common ancestor makes it harder to split humanity into racial or other factions, which in turns makes it harder to justify maltreatment of one's fellow human being. <br /></b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Once we agree human history can be traced to a single common ancestor, the unifying value of Avraham/Abraham/Ibrahim cannot be disputed. To the uninitiated, </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>Islam is a monotheistic religion with five pillars at its core and a prophet who united Arabia's nomadic tribes, but if monotheism is indeed Islam's </span><i>sine qua non</i><span>, why not follow Judaism, which also has a prophet who united his people? While any ideology </span><i>could</i><span> have challenged Christianity, probabilities indicate it had to have been one that expressly opposed Christianity's embrace of slavery and interest-driven banking while appealing to a single common ancestor. Islam's overlaps with Judaism look more deliberate under this theory than accidental, further promoting the idea a common ancestor can help unite us in unexpected ways. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></u></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some of you might be wondering what will be the linear reaction to Islam. You are asking the wrong question. Civil governments should have replaced religious authorities in the same way hospitals replaced shamans. The fact that most civil governments lack credibility while religious extremism is on the rise means we have all failed, merchants, storytellers, and scholars included. My advice? Anyone searching f</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">or truly Islamic neighborhoods should look at the prevalence of guest worker dorms, payday loans, and credit card balances, not mosques. A surprising number of countries claiming to be Islamic sanction a surprising number of unIslamic practices. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At the end of the day, if all you gain from this discussion is the idea that Jews were strict pedagogues, Christians were media-savvy, and Muslims were business-minded, you have not been paying sufficient attention. Look to Abraham to re-align your path, and stay the course. Humanity is counting on your perseverance. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2020) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Bonus</i>: Cultural differences relating to marriage are often highlighted in discussions comparing Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. On this topic, I am no expert, so I'll be brief. H</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">igh divorce rates in Christian-majority America;</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> r</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">elatively high poverty and inequality, especially for women, in countries once invaded by Catholic Spain; </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">and child molestation judgments against Catholics should give pause to anyone looking to a priest for marriage advice, but the beauty of a belief system emphasizing storytelling means we are only one positive story away from re-writing history, statistics, and, yes, your own romance. Good luck. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">Luke, on marriage: "It's a bureaucratic civil ceremony and a pretty pointless one... It's not biologically natural for people to mate for life. Animals don't mate for life. Well, ducks do, but who the hell cares what ducks do? I mean, people grow and evolve their whole lives. The chances that you'll grow and evolve at the same rate as someone else are too slim to take. The minute you say, 'I do,' you're sticking yourself in a tiny little box for the rest of your life. But hey, at least you had a party first, right?" (Gilmore Girls, Season 2, "Red Light on Wedding Night," 2001)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: medium;">"Well, I’m perfectly congenial to the idea of weddings, but what I think ruins so many marriages, though, is this romantic idea of falling in love. It happens, of course, I suppose to some people who are possessed of unusually fertile imaginations. Undoubtedly it is a mystical experience which occurs. But with most people who think they are in love I think the situation can be described far more simply, and, I’m afraid, brutally. The trouble with all this love business is one or the other partner ends up feeling bad or guilty because they don’t have it the way they’ve read it. I’m afraid things went off a lot more happily when marriages were arranged by parents. I do think it is absolutely essential that both partners share a sense of humor and an outlook on life. And, with Goethe, I think marriages should be celebrated more quietly and humbly, because they are the beginning of something. Loud celebrations should be saved for successful conclusions." -- W.H. Auden (Paris Review, Spring 1974)</span></p>Matt Rafathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13256519881560435397noreply@blogger.com0