Black Underworld Inc. – Part III

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Professor Taboo

In Part II of Black Underworld Inc., the economic repercussions of foreign and American exploitation in Central America has sired many, if not most of our modern illegal immigration-refugee problems at our southern border. Economic indicators over 35-years show substantial income per capita inequality in Texas, the state that makes up half of the southern border as well as one of four states that immigrants-refugees might first enter. The reality is most illegal immigrants enter the U.S. through points-of-entry like airports and seaports, and stay well beyond their visas when here then disappear into the general population. A tiny percentage actually gain entrance through our southern border.

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there are five (5) sectors driving the current national economy and have been for many years. Construction and Retail/Service are #3 and #4 respectively. Both of these U.S. industries illegally hire tens of thousands of low-wage workers via contractors, subcontractors, by mid-size and small businesses. Mega-corporations rarely do because they are high profile and therefore utilize buffer methods, or scapegoat contractors. In Texas and the U.S. this unprincipled, illegal labor finessing has become a booming underworld relationship, benefiting America’s upper 10% – 20% along with the mega-corporations or companies they own or are employed by.

The fact that the other three big driving GDP sectors of the U.S. economy—healthcare, technology, and non-durable manufacturing—demand highly educated, degreed, sector-specific experienced workers able to garner high wages. This trend has another domino effect. Sparse high-wage jobs channel most U.S. citizens or Texans without the under or post-grad degrees, or impeccable industry-experience into low-wage construction or retail/service occupations once again profiting the upper 1% – 20% of the nation’s population. This in turn contributes to America’s amassing economic inequality and a host of other domestic hardships and unlawful markets.

The More Extreme the Inequality, the More Extreme the Converse Abuses and Crimes

The majority of the U.S. economic wealth in 2014 was accumulated in 18 firms or corporations. The Hill reports:

[Those 18 firms hold] 36 percent of all wealth last year, a jump from 27 percent in 2009 with the gap expected to widen further, according to a report from Standard & Poor’s, a New York-based credit rater.

That means that out of a record $1.53 trillion in cash and short-term investments held by U.S. corporations the wealthiest 18 held about $535 billion.

“In our view, current U.S. corporate tax policy and accommodating credit market conditions have been primarily responsible for this growing wealth gap,” the report said.

Furthermore, the wealthiest top 20 percent held 89 percent of total cash, leaving only 11 percent for the bottom 80 percent of firms.

The top 1 percent are mostly investment-grade businesses — Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, Ford, Coca-Cola and Boeing — and are concentrated in technology and healthcare industries.

By utilizing advantages of foreign deposits and other minor investments, these 18 wealthiest corporations mostly or completely avoid their ethical and taxable obligations back home.

The corporate analysis shows that the top 1 percent gets about 55 percent of its revenues offshore, and that more than half of the cash flow is generated overseas, as well.

That cash is rarely brought onshore because of the U.S.’s 35 percent tax rate, which would be on top of the taxes paid in the country in which the revenue was generated.

“As a result, overseas cash continues to accumulate untouched,” the report said.

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Before stepping into the lethal venomous part of BU Inc., it is critical for readers to fully grasp the gravity of obscured, illegal American labor practices and abuses onto economically average and below-average Texas and U.S. citizens. This cannot exclude exploitation of abundant undocumented workers and the corporate evading of fair, compulsory reinvestment back into our nation’s general well-being via effective statutory tax rates. I am hence obliged to drive home how grim this toxic disparity has become, how misconstrued Americans perceive it and the ulcerating consequences of the American (and Texas) naïvety or shirking of the elephant in the room.

In order for a single person to live alone safely and comfortably in 50 of the biggest U.S. cities one must earn (in 2014) an average of $57,879 per annum—in Texas’ seven largest cities it is an average per annum of $50,686 with San Antonio the lowest and Houston the highest, $46,238 and $60,795 respectively. As I noted in Part II, the per capita annual income of Texans in 2017 was only $28,985 for about roughly ±25-million Texans. The American population, according to a 2011 study, of any political persuasion grossly underplays the nation’s true wealth inequality.

And so as the elephant of growing severe inequality continues to lounge unimpeded in our room of false patriotic optimism, then the horrors of the darkest parts of BU Inc. here in our own backyard will continue to feast and cannibalize our malnourished middle and lower classes.

Essentially, the wealthy possess greater financial opportunities that allow their money to make more money. Earnings from the stock market or mutual funds are reinvested to produce a larger return. Over time, the sum that is invested becomes progressively more substantial. Those who are not wealthy, however, do not have the resources to enhance their opportunities and improve their economic position. Rather, “after debt payments, poor families are constrained to spend the remaining income on items that will not produce wealth and will depreciate over time.” Scholar David B. Grusky notes that “62 percent of households headed by single parents are without savings or other financial assets.” Net indebtedness generally prevents the poor from having any opportunity to accumulate wealth and thereby better their conditions.
—Causes of Wealth Inequality, Wikipedia, accessed Feb. 24, 2019

Whether the abuses and crimes take place on this side of our southern border or just across it in Mexico or clear down to Colombia in South America and everywhere in between—a small part in a enormous picture is not a “crisis” and especially not a national emergency—then we native-born U.S. citizens, our corporations, and our federal and state governments have a major role in how we address, reduce, and cure ourselves of the venom and pestilence we have helped create and sustain. Vague political rhetoric does not make the beast go away.

Tentacles of Our BU Inc. Monster

There are at least fourteen (14) known tentacles to this insatiable monster. Its den of Lords, its associates and offspring are too numerous to count and as difficult to identify. Ignored for so many decades and as many to prepare and countervail, the BU Inc. beast has slithered into a litany of feeding grounds. Some are familiar I assume, others maybe not so much:

I will probe only five of these tentacles since there is not enough time to probe all fourteen and I could not do each justice and the exposure they deserve in this series. However, if you would like to read brief summaries of the other nine black (tentacle) markets then click here. Following are the five I believe harbor, amplify, and distribute plutocracy, not democracy, increased tyranny and the worst of human trauma and suffering to disadvantaged millions and their families. That in turn rewards the few BU Inc. kings, lords, their associates and spawn. As I soon conclude this 5-part series, next in Part IV then five, will be close up ugly and frightful looks into America’s illegal gambling, phony pharma, human trafficking, ghost guns, and the human organ trade. The nemesising black byproducts of America’s unlawful corporate grey market.

And in my conclusion (Part V) I will share some of my one-on-one personal stories of three homeless people (out of ten) I spoke with over the last 12-months. Just over a mile away from where I currently live is a part of Dallas called Preston Hollow. Further up a bit is North Dallas where the Dallas North Tollway cuts through on its way to Addison and Frisco, Texas, two suburbs that are some of the wealthiest in the DFW Metroplex. Barely over 1,400 feet from me to the south then east of 75/Central Expressway is a large number of rotating, roaming homeless persons.

I met six of them at one nearby convenient store where they often loiter hoping to receive money or food and drink. The other four I met were not too far away either. There I often purchase my car’s gasoline at another convenient store that borders one of our many city public transit rail-stations. In this area are two or three times as many homeless people roaming and loitering for the exact same help. The stark demarcations of haves and have nots within a 2 ½ square mile area is remarkable and curious. I hope you can return to read their personal stories that speak directly to what my BU Inc. series reveals: how and why these underworld markets thrive and who suffers.

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Black Underworld Inc. – Part II

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Professor Taboo

Previously in Part I we learned that what happened then—119-years ago in our Pan-American hemisphere—ripple-effects what happens now and into the near and not-so-distant future both in prosperous and horrible ways. Part I was the more visible and dirty, complex public domain where historical facts and political motivations are not always freely attained nor aggressively sought by the average American. Here with Part II let’s follow the Pan-American histories of the 19th and early 20th century and examine what is going on today on the north side of our nation’s southern border.

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Involved with the North American FTA’s covered in Part I and their decades socioeconomic impact on Caribbean and Latin American nations (CLAN) are the foreign corporation’s abilities to conquer the CLAN’s through Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanisms. There are two development distinctions between politicized “economic development” and how much of that development by foreign “investments” are really stimulating and occurring inside the CLAN’s, or not, and how much “foreign stimulus” is benefiting the investing, foreign corporate pacts. From Dr. Walter Ferrier, University of Kentucky:

Through the 1990s, foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) seemed unrelenting in their quest to invest in and conquer this culturally rich land of more than 500 million people, upwardly mobile consumers, and promising industrial markets. Between 1991 and 2001, the ownership of the 500 largest companies in Latin America changed dramatically, with non-Latin multinational ownership growing to 39 percent from 27 percent. (see Exhibit 1 and 2 below.) The rising foreign competition pressured local Latin companies, which historically served only their home-country markets, to consolidate and expand into other Latin American countries, transforming themselves into “multilatinas.”
—Multinationals vs. Multilatinas: Latin America’s Great Race, Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky

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Also mentioned in Part I, the Latin populace rightly protested in the streets against foreign Multinational FTA’s (and BIT’s) that ultimately did benefit those foreign interests. Since 2009 Multilatina investment pacts are slowly able to acquire some CLAN foothold, but in doing so they become competitive threats to powerful American and foreign investment groups and their international law firms.

However, to date few local Latin firms have taken on the world or tried to create large multilatinas. In fact, very few Latin American companies earn more than 50 percent of their revenue outside their domestic market. […]

The post-2000 stock market collapse, currency devaluations, mounting political disorder, and the prospect of defaults on debt obligations have considerably reduced both the rate and the value of foreign investment in Latin America.
—Multinationals vs. Multilatinas: Latin America’s Great Race, Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky

Since the early and mid-20th century, perhaps too going back to the Age of Imperialism, Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s prosperity has essentially been dictated or at minimum heavily influenced by North American and European interests and their own economic stability or volatility and recessions. This 118-years of exploitation created the modern Black Underworld Inc., then creating further repercussions domestically to the USA. What are some examples of those American-made repercussions?

Big Texas and American Businesses Perpetuate BU Inc.

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It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We live in a society where we don’t really want to acknowledge that… precisely because business depends on those workers. —Bill Beardall, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Center – Austin, TX

Minimum wage in Texas is $7.25 per hour, $290 per 40-hour week, or just $15,080 per year. This wage was last changed in 2008 from $6.55 per hour. The vast majority of the jobs that pay minimum wage are food preparation/servers, restaurant dishwashers, retail cashiers, hosts or hostesses, cinema ushers/ticket-takers, and farm workers (any farm). Just 19-years ago it was $3.35 in 2000. The latest Texas per capita income (2017), in other words for legal, documented citizens was $28,985 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure amounts to a $13.93 per hour wage. Texas has a minimum (legal) population of 28,300,000 assessed in 2017. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 6.3% of that 28-million people (i.e. just 1.8 million people) earn over $200,000 per year, or a $98.16 per hour wage.

Yes, the economic inequality or simply the buying power of those 26.5 million average Texas consumer-laborers (see this Texas Tribune article) is frankly atrocious by American standards, particularly in light of rising housing and living costs in an economic model that in so many ways favors and rewards wealth (or proven credit) with more wealth/credit. Texas’ disproportionate wages does not include those wages of the border states: southern California, Arizona, or New Mexico.

And yet despite the wage disparity, oddly enough the U.S. apparently has a big illegal, undocumented immigrant and refugee crisis according to Conservative Republican ~~rhetoric~~ reports, but more bizarre is that we have no hiring or labor crisis. To be honest, in the entire context “border security” immigration is just a small component of a bigger dynamic, but it is not a crisis, much less a National Emergency. What the causes are is never quick or simple to pinpoint. It’s not just one cause either.

No Shortage of Low-Wage Jobs for Illegal Immigrants-Refugees

Within the larger historical political context the United States has a significant debt and responsibility to many decades of political and financial instability/poverty in the Caribbean and Central America since 1901. Recently, one of the major contributing factors of illegal immigrant entrances—that many erroneously describe as a “crisis”—is the constant available work undocumented Latinos and Afro-Caribbeans can easily find throughout the U.S. and here in Texas. Unauthorized immigrants are constantly “hired” illegally by Texas employers and businesses. The current enabling by American-Texas illegal hiring practices creates a non-stop merry-go-round of U.S. invite, seduced migration then/or deportation, and false work/reward dreams to Latinos going back to 1992, but in several ways even to the 1980’s with Ronald Reagan’s overt and covert interventions in Latin America.

unauthorized-immigrants-testimony-REPORT-03+05

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As reported by one of the nation’s most unbiased news and media organizations, The Texas Tribune, in 2016 – 2017 launched an investigative project over several months into U.S. border security, immigration, the reality and the rhetoric. Their findings in “Bordering on Insecurity” are painfully sobering and about as far away from patriotic pride as an American could ever muster, unless hypocritically mustered. I will briefly pull from this outstanding and extensive report.

Let’s not forget that our U.S. Capitol building, the White House, and many buildings and landmarks in Washington D.C. and throughout the entire U.S. proper—most of the fifty States—heavy hard labor and construction inside the ‘Land of the Beautiful’ was mostly done on the backs of slaves and minorities. During modern times of prosperity, booming business and economic stimuli, certain disadvantaged ethnic groups still do all the hard labor for exploitative wages and labor abuses by their supervisors and employers:

Though it’s illegal, brothers Israel and José Martinez [native Mexicans] have no shortage of work, moving from one construction job to the next in the ongoing building boom of Central Texas. They’ve worked on homes in affluent communities along the Upper Colorado River and renovated sprawling apartments in North Austin. They were on a crew that erected a new health center at a high-end retirement community, and as expert masons have built luxury pools, interior chimneys and backyard grilling stations. […]

In all their years in Texas, Israel and José — pseudonyms, since both asked that their real names not be published — have experienced a lot. One thing they say they haven’t seen: U.S. citizens doing the heavy lifting on construction projects.

“We’ve never seen any Americans carrying cement, picking up stone, working from sunup to sundown,” Israel said. “Never.”

This is the economic and social reality in which the brothers, and millions of other unauthorized immigrants, find themselves — a country so reliant on cheap labor that substantial portions of the economy are built largely on the backs of immigrants willing to do work most Americans won’t, and for lower pay.
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

Because of Wild Wild West circumvention, good ole boy private agreements, and rear-door activities by (usually) well-educated or street-smart, unscrupulous, native-born American big business owners and supervisors, they’ve learned over decades how to finish “under budget and before deadlines.” With this success comes higher motivation for repeating their illegal rewards for the project-foremen and upper/middle management, and habits are formed blatantly bypassing lawful prohibitions of hiring workers illegally. Next, their competitors duplicate the illegal methods and work abuses to stay in the game of hyper-capitalism… and the vicious cycle continues. Much of the time these native-born American and Texas executives and hiring managers silently know, before and during work projects, that casual oversight in hiring and paycheck finagling are not only illegal, but they also ignore the long-term DAMAGE to many American principles and values. More audacious is that these same good ole boys publicly and “patriotically” rally and campaign for diversionary “problems” in election years. The rally speeches are all the same, the usual vague, oversimplified political rhetoric from candidates. But the damages and the ignored red-white-blue “elephant in the room,” as Beardall described, do not stop there.

Another negative side-effect from these native-born patriotic American business owner’s/employer’s and their subversive double-standard practices cheat all American citizens out of public state and federal tax-funded services and programs:

Many undocumented immigrants also find informal work paid in cash under the table, often at rates far below minimum wage, and the employer can pretend they were never hired.

Operating in the shadows of this clandestine labor market puts the workers in a vulnerable position: Yes, jobs are plentiful, but only in exchange for working long hours for low pay and little recourse against unscrupulous employers who cheat or exploit them.
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

And these unethical, illegal practices by (advantaged, wealthy, white?) American and Texas business owners and supervisors create more negative ripple-effects of social, economic, domestic, and illegally explicit temptations and behaviors. These are the native-born Americans with criminal records and/or ties to organized crime-groups which prey upon the thousands of undocumented immigrants. The snaring of illegal, struggling immigrant workers fuel increased problems of drug addiction/abuse, drug dealing or running, further public mental-health problems—due to state or county clinic’s following proper, legal admission protocols so they go back out to the streets—and prostitution and/or sex-trafficking.

The Martinez brothers in the Tribune’s article are fortunate. They are mobile when they recognize employer abuses. The brothers state repeatedly just how ‘easy and endlessly available the service or construction jobs were to find.’ The never-ending availability of low-wage jobs is due in large part because the vast majority of college-educated young Americans are not seeking low-wage jobs after 4-5 years of going into thousands of dollars of debt or spending it to acquire their Bachelor’s degree. It was easy for Israel and José to work multiple 10-12 hour a day jobs, 365 days a year. However, as state and federal immigration policies become increasingly strict, he and his brother had to adapt or counter the new, stricter policies and laws:

[Now] they have to get past the laws that forbid their being hired. For many undocumented immigrants, that path forward is through fraudulent documents.

“The workers present false documents of the kind that the law requires the employer to inspect,” said Bill Beardall, executive director of the Equal Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-wage workers, many of whom are undocumented, in employment rights disputes. “Now, the employers know this. The workers know this. The prohibition on hiring undocumented workers has stimulated the growth of that whole industry in creating false documents.”
—Bordering on Insecurity, The Texas Tribune by Travis Putnam Hill, December 2016

Yes indeed, today large American and Texas corporation CEO’s, department Heads, Hiring Managers and Supervisors are for the most part familiar with the numerous benefits of low-wage illegal workers laundered through (sketchy) subcontractors. There are many who are so familiar with hiring and labor laws they know what not to see, hear, read or inspect closely. They also understand the buffering benefits of having scapegoats, ala Senior Executive Bunny Greenhouse of the USACE, Lt. Colonel Oliver North and National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Capt. Charles McVay of the USS Indianapolis, or famously PI Bryan Wagner employed by Board Member/External Director Patricia Dunn of Hewlett-Packard, or more famously Kareem Serageldin of the Credit Suisse Group.

As the nation’s 39th ranked company in total revenues on the 2018 list of Fortune 500 American corporations, the Target Corporation and its many subsidiaries is the 8th largest retailer in the U.S. As of Sept. 2018 Target had 1,839 stores across the USA with 148 in Texas.

In 2004 or 2005 an Austin-area Target store hired/contracted a local janitorial-cleaning company, Jim’s Maintenance, to clean bathrooms, take out garbage, wash windows and carpets, and polish floors to a reflective white sheen, something the Target Corporation publicly prides itself. An undocumented Mexican immigrant nicknamed “Chunco” had been working for several contractors cleaning Target stores. Chunco told The Texas Tribune that all the cleaning-janitorial workers he’s ever known in those 12-years are illegal immigrants. They go in the stores between 10 and 11pm and are scheduled to leave between 7 or 8am on company records. However, he said, that rarely happened.

Target night managers locked them in and they couldn’t leave until a walk-through inspection by the manager was completed, usually well after 8:30 or 9am. Working this way in the wee-hour shadows puts Chunco and fellow immigrant workers at risk for exploitation. They were hired by Austin-area contractors and companies with full unspoken knowledge and oversight they were or might be unauthorized to work in the U.S. and Texas. Many times Chunco reported that he and fellow custodians were paid less than minimum wage and no overtime pay for working 7-day work weeks.

“We’ve realized that [employers] prefer us for being undocumented because we just keep our heads down to get jobs,” Chunco said. “[We] can’t afford to complain. They take advantage of us being undocumented.”

Chunco and 28 other custodians represented legally by the Equal Justice Center filed a lawsuit against Target and Jim’s Maintenance for unpaid wages and overtime. Despite the fact that it was Target night managers letting the workers in back doors late at night, directing them what to do for 10- or 12-hour shifts and letting them out the back doors late into the following morning, attorneys for the large retail corporation claimed they were not co-employers with Jim’s Maintenance. The case was eventually settled out of court in 2008. Jim’s Maintenance, however, had already been put out of business in 2006 because Target terminated its contract with him and withheld $496,000 in fees owed to Jim’s for its services. This buffering tactic has sometimes been called scapegoat contracting.

Executive Director of Austin’s Equal Justice Center Bill Beardall talked about how disadvantaged workers like Chunco are not informed by native Texas (or American) business owners and contractors of any labor rights they actually do possess:

“Employment rights apply equally to all workers, regardless of their immigration status,” Beardall said. “The problem is most undocumented workers don’t know that, and employers may not know that. If they do know that, they will nevertheless use those workers’ vulnerable immigration status to discourage them from enforcing their rights.”

The H.E.B. Grocery Co. is a supermarket chain I am very familiar with; it was founded in 1905 in my Mom’s 20-year hometown of Kerrville, Texas, now based in San Antonio, Texas. Today H.E.B. and its many subsidiaries, including in Mexico, has 350+ locations with over $21-billion in revenues in 2018. According to the National Retail Federation’s 2017 ranking of retail stores, H.E.B. ranked 20th in the USA. Like the Target Corporation, H.E.B. also practices in scapegoat contractors.

In 2012, produce workers filed a class action lawsuit against Pastrana’s Produce and H.E.B. for cheating them out of minimum wages and overtime pay. As in the case with Target, the H.E.B.-Pastrana’s undocumented workers worked long 10-12 hour shifts and frequently 7-day work weeks. And…

As in the Target case, lawyers from the Equal Justice Center argued that the workers were jointly employed by H-E-B and Pastrana’s because they were a vital part of H-E-B’s business. They worked only in stores owned by H-E-B and under supervision of H-E-B managers, who determined their work hours and daily production.

Once again this case was also settled out of court with H.E.B. shouldering no responsibility for their ties and contract with Pastrana’s Produce. What is more aggravating to note is that in both of these cases the immigration status of the plaintiffs was never a concern in the court case! Care to guess why?

Consequently, like hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants and refugees, construction workers Israel and José Martinez step closer into illicit, illegal activity to keep jobs and keep working. Chunco is still cleaning the exact same bathrooms and floors of Austin-Target stores he always has for the last 14-years with a host of custodial companies all contracted by Target, but below minimum wage and still 10-12 hour shifts with no overtime pay. Yet, in their native countries everyone knows work in the U.S. is very easy to come by. So they come. And keep coming because the standard of living in their hometown or city is much worse and in many cases has been as far back as 1901, as covered in Part I.

Added Dec. 13, 2019:
North Texas construction company owners charged for continuing to employ undocumented workers, reads the Dec. 13, 2019 Dallas Morning News headline. It goes on to say:

For the second time in as many months, a North Texas business has been accused of defying the government by continuing to employ undocumented workers despite being caught in the act and agreeing to fire them.

Four corporate officers of Speed Fab-Crete in Kennedale [just south of Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex] admitted in court papers to shifting their undocumented workers to a staffing company instead of firing them — one year after an I-9 audit first exposed hiring problems. The plea documents say the defendants hid their continued employment of 23 undocumented employees.

For these immigrant workers and thousands of others who can find abundant work, but want some protection from exploitative Texas and American contractors, better hours, and better pay, they then slip into another side of a growing profiteering equation, the underground market of forged and falsified documents and I.D.’s. For each work document or I.D. a forger charges $100 – $1,000. This puts them at risk for another type of exploitation. But Israel and José Martinez are men. Associating with and having to depend on certain mechanisms and unethical or abusive people in positions of power over their American dreams, or its dormancy, or detection and arrest. It is a racket with daily temptations for the American-Texas extortionist or blackmailer. And these vulnerabilities for illegal, but hired workers are significantly higher for female teenagers and women, and possibly their children.

The Effectiveness of a Great Wall of China

On a final note, when there are hundreds to thousands of American corporations, business owners, upper and middle management supervisors/foremen illegally hiring undocumented immigrants—either directly or through scapegoat contractors—and have been doing it since at least the late 1990’s, what is any practical use of a fixed, and quite permeable 1,954 mile Medieval wall when American big businesses are (allowed) happy to give illegal immigrants jobs? A near 2,000 mile symbolic hurdle seems insanely asinine to me.

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In Part III I want to further peel back the uglier, illegal black market a majority of every day Americans know little about, are too busy and/or naïve to connect all the dots of how their own business-as-usual consumer-values and American corporate profit-models fueled and have sustained the inhumane virulent tri-continental black market. It gets worse.

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Black Underworld Inc. – Part I

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Professor Taboo

The black market is brutal, exploitative, and corrupt. Nothing is off-limits; everything is for sale. Any hints of morals and ethics are non-existent or false. What you buy may not be what it once was or what it now seems. How one justifies their involvement in an entire global network is ignored or never introspective. Workers, suppliers, U.S. employers, foreign sellers, customers in all countries, no exceptions—and the domestic or foreign law-enforcements hoping to keep it tamed and in balance while unaware their own native people, governments, and businesses fuel the ugly, black machine—the experiences, the victims in ALL stages of this inhumane, violent, monetary commerce—is a hidden world out in the open. One way or another it effects us all. All of us are responsible and like it or not we are more accountable than the resident, native-born and wealthy American can fully comprehend. As a whole, our U.S. values equate in various legal and illegal “currencies” of supply and demand. They are the literal blood that pumps life into BU Inc.

Red, White, & Blue Fathered BU Inc.

McKinley 1900 campaign poster – Wikipedia Commons

Yes, historical U.S. foreign policy with domestic big business sired a bastard monster which is now cannibalizing its family. Though the Age of Imperialism, expansion, colonialism was by the European Big Nine “fathers” between the 15th and 19th centuries — Belgium, Great Britain, France, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden — at the turn of the 20th century the hungry United States became the belligerent step-son in family imperialism. The 1900 Presidential campaign and election in the wake of victory from the Spanish-American War and resulting prosperity assured the Red, White, & Blue was embraced into the Imperialist family tree.

Republican-candidate William McKinley ran a campaign ticket of unfettered trade and bigger empire. Democratic-candidate William Jennings Bryan ran one of anti-imperialism and “Free Silver.” However, due to the country’s renewed prosperity under McKinley’s first-term coupled with America’s general approval of the Spanish-American War and victory, as well as acquiring and annexing territories in the western Pacific and Latin America, the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket managed a comfortable win over Democrats Bryan-Stevenson. Yet, these imperialist “victories” came at a cost and further problems for the United States, especially in Latin America in the following centuries. The most ideal whistle-blower to explain the U.S. appetite for expansion and global wealth, no matter the human cost, is from one who was actually there through it all from the beginning: Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC (ret):

Major General Butler mentioned Nicaragua and Guatemala. These two Central American nations, along with a few others, are the unstable hotbeds today for drug cartels and trans-generational government corruption fueled and sired to-date by 119-years of American-European exploitation.

Retaliation by U.S. Army on Filipinos

In 1901 President McKinley was assassinated at, of all places, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. The assassin was protesting American military atrocities in the Philippines and sociopolitical inequality in the U.S. by the wealthiest enriching themselves with McKinley’s government exploiting foreign and domestic, impoverished workers and civilians. This included Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama, among several others. Why Panama? Since 1513 European explorers from the original Nine Imperialist Fathering empires saw the enormous commercial benefits of a canal for their coffers and treasuries. By the 1820’s U.S. businessmen and their corporations lobbying Congress wanted European powers out of all Americas. They accomplished this by pushing the legislation and approval of the Monroe Doctrine. Many in Central and South America viewed this doctrine as self-appointed permission to bribe native dictator-puppets or replace one imperialist foreign sovereign with another: the United States. This Pan-American perception was by no means outlandish and unfounded.

Once France tried and failed to complete a canal through Panama in 1889, interest by the U.S., President Teddy Roosevelt (also a strong Imperialist), and Congressional lawmakers and corporate lobbyists looked into building the canal in Nicaragua. But heavy pockets from various business interests in Europe and the U.S. wanted the canal in Panama. Securing the construction of the canal via the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty and Panamanians winning independence from Colombia (more tension for the U.S.) garnered the apropos term of gunboat diplomacy: the constant U.S. financial, military presence, sovereignty and exploitation throughout the western Pacific and Latin America. Little did Americans back home know that this world perception of U.S. foreign policies and imperialism would last through the entire 20th century and into the 21st.

The Silver and Gold Roll system – the Jim Crow laws of Panama

From 1903 until 1989 Panama was a struggling pawn-Republic dominated by commercial oligarchies influenced by many world powers—none bigger than the “prosperous” U.S. business expansions. These were known as the Banana Republics with Congressional lobbyists from U.S. companies dependent on hard goods, cheap labor, and crude oil and Presidents bound to their party’s corporate promises and politics. Enter Manuel Noriega as early as 1981 with America’s new insatiable coast-to-coast craving for illegal drugs out of Central and South America.

Lords and Kings — Mastering Supply and Demand, Distribution and Buyers

Today almost half the world live in poverty, on about $2.50 per day, and around 1.4 billion live in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 per day according to United Nations Development Programme’s “Human Development Report, 2014.” Between 1903 and 1990 world poverty and all the consequential problems, crimes, and corruption connected to it was much worse than those figures. Therefore, young girls and boys who grow up in those regions and countries where poverty, crime, and corruption are worse many learn all the tricks and trades of the Hustle. Morality, God, and ethics mean nothing when one is merely surviving (barely) and living day to day, hand to mouth, and night to night. Hoping to see the sun in the morning or some nights to be relieved of the insane hustling-game at the end of a gun-barrel was and today still is the popular Central-South American attitude. Lots of these kids grew up to be drug lords, military elite, and trade kings. Birth-rights and zip codes had little and a lot to do with survival or success in their world and little or a lot to do with death and/or prison in other’s worlds. What’s the difference. They have, I don’t. I have, they don’t. The better the Hustle, the better the life… no matter what side of the flag, fence, wall, river, or canal you are on.

Students protesting President Daniel Ortega & government – Esteban Felix/Associated Press 2018

Whether one was Henry Meiggs or General Manuel Bonilla, President Dwight Eisenhower or Jacobo Árbenz, President Ronald Reagan and Daniel Ortega or Manuel Noriega, or any number of investor-states utilizing various 20th and 21st century “free trade” agreements or treaties—i.e. DR-CAFTA, CTPA, PTPA, and NAFTA—lucrative for the U.S., Canada, and bilateral or multilateral FTA’s for the European Union, the hustle remains the same. These corporate interests with their lobbied governments in bed with Caribbean, Central and South American puppet-governments and leaders, all of it championed as “economic prosperity.” The modern developed nations, lead by the United States, have now fathered, sired a humanitarian crisis and BU Incorporated. For additional details read this excellent and poignant 2014 briefing by the Institute for Policy Studies, “What ‘Free Trade’ Has Done to Central America.”

Some of America’s foreign economic, military, and diplomatic ~~interventions~~ interference over the last five to six decades have seen and made the richest, most violent hustlers, drug Lords and crime Kings blossom from the Central and South Americas. Here are just a few others (Pablo Escobar is excluded; he’s very well–known) from an extensive list of first and second generation BU Inc. Lords and Kings:

Frank Lucas – American, from La Grange, North Carolina.
Rafael Trujillo – Dominican, from San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic.
George Jung – American, from Boston, Massachusetts.
Nicky Barnes – American, from Harlem, NYC, New York.
José Figueroa Agosto – Puerto Rican, from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Richard “Freeway” Ross – American, from Troup, Texas.
Juan Perón – Argentine, from Lobos, Argentina.
Rafael Quintero – Mexican, from Badiraguato, Mexico.
Joaquín Guzmán – Mexican, from La Tuna, Mexico.
Griselda Blanco – Colombian, from Cartagena, Colombia.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle – Nicaraguan, from León, Nicaragua.
Carlos Lehder – Colombian, from Armenia, Colombia.
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela – Colombian, from Mariquita, Colombia.
José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha – Colombian, from Pacho, Colombia.
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva – Mexican, from Badiraguato, Mexico.
Augusto Pinochet – Chilean, from Valparaíso, Chile.
Guillermo Rodríguez Lara – Equadorian, from Pujilí, Ecuador.
François Duvalier – Haitian, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes – Mexican, from Guamuchilito, Mexico.
Christopher Coke – Jamaican, from Kingston, Jamaica.

Back in 2004 and even as far back as 1998 citizens of all these Central American nations publicly protested against FTA’s because they favored foreign interests, not their own. From the IPS:

[The people, economists, and legal experts] warned of the unemployment, poverty, hunger, pollution, diminished national sovereignty, and other problems that could result if DR-CAFTA were approved. But despite popular pressure, the agreement was ratified in seven countries—including Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

[…]

Contrary to the promises of U.S. officials—who claimed the agreement would improve Central American economies and thereby reduce undocumented immigration—large numbers of Central Americans have migrated to the United States, as dramatized most recently by the influx of children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras crossing the U.S.-Mexican border last summer. Although most are urgently fleeing violence in their countries, there are important economic roots to the migration—many of which are related to DR-CAFTA.

One of the most pernicious features of the agreement is a provision called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism. This allows private corporations to sue governments over alleged violations of a long list of so-called “investor protections.”

The most controversial cases have involved public interest laws and regulations that corporations claim reduce the value of their investments. That means corporations can sue those countries for profits they say they would have made had those regulations not been put into effect.

1964 protests in Panama – Life Magazine

These types of lawsuits have financially wrecked poor Central American countries often struggling to provide basic quality of life programs and services. These imposed conditions have greatly tempted the weak or corrupt governments away from domestic accountability and invoke policies favoring transnational corporations abroad in the U.S. or Canada. In certain circumstances U.S. Presidents, Congressional lobbyists, and/or corporate trade-investment partnerships push for clandestine military interventions—e.g. Lt. Colonel Oliver North—to stabilize or destabilize foreign governments depending on the most profitable U.S. interests. However, these operations, agreements, and policies are only part of the public domain or veiled and patriotically ~~distorted~~ manipulated mechanisms in the “restricted” public domain. This accessible domain is only the stained dirty side of a much darker, black underworld side.

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In the upcoming Part II of Black Underworld, Inc., we find after closer investigation that the dark criminal domain and the public domain discussed above actually stimulate each other’s livelihood in a largely symbiotic dynamic. But at what costs in the short, mid, and long-term? And costs to who specifically?

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This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Truth, Denial & Phobia

Posted on January 8, 2019 by Professor Taboo

This is the second part of Being Wrong & Feeling Right: Two Parts.

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Deborah Lipstadt is an American historian and author specializing in the Holocaust. In 1993 she published her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory where she responds in extensive detail to rising, growing movements in Europe and parts of N. America challenging the veracity of the Holocaust during World War II and claiming it did not take place and was overly exaggerated by the European Jews. David Irving, a Nazi Germany advocate and controversial scholar, sued Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books Ltd in the U.K. for her characterizations of his writings and public speeches writing in her book he was anti-Semitic, preposterous, and barely a pseudo-historian.

Lipstadt and Penguin Books won their case by proving in the British court that her characterizations of Irving’s work and speeches were significantly true and not libelous to Irving. The judge’s decision was a paramount victory not only against Holocaust denial, but also a major victory against shotty, ill-founded denialism while further reinforcing credible, consensual, established academia and scholarship by some of the world’s most elite institutions of higher (highest) education and their renown experts and staffs.

In 2016 the film Denial dramatized these proceedings in British court, the case and the real-life characters, and was deservedly nominated for Best British Film in 2017. For these above reasons I highly recommend watching the movie. The official trailer:

When upsetting, distressing, or traumatic events and/or information arises that shake-up or shatter a person’s belief-system and/or our perception of life, our human brain and nervous system—and if we’re more fully comprehensive, our ego as well—can create a psychological coping routine, a mechanism that neglects and negates what is or has actually happened. Fear and anxiety over being wrong and confused or the potential of it, causes a large portion of the human population to simply deny those events/information exist(ed). For them it is easier to deny than walk the harder, troubling, longer road of learning to solve, adapt and cope. They will often seek out echo-chambers (organizations or groups) to further cement the psychological denial. Over time the repeated immersing into the neuro-cognitive pathologies and regular participation with echoing support-groups can and often do create long-term phobias.

Another powerful motive for denialism is self-interest, that prideful ego which convinces us we deserve favorable praise and inflated importance at the expense of reality and others. Self-preservation at any cost.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair

Or when his image of power is threatened! Sinclair could not be more correct when considering a long, long history of prime examples. I will name only a handful of examples, but the list of overly inflated egos (some tyrannical), self-preservation, severe denial, and paranoia through atrocious brutality is long and always growing:

Henry Ford and the too little too late Model A — Henry Ford, Sr. was in Model T La-La land (denial) virtually until his death. He blamed worker unions for the plummeting sales of the 20-year antiquated Model T automobile. When he finally relented to production of the Model A, Chrysler-Plymouth and General Motors had seized the industry’s top market positions, leaving Ford to wither and struggle until World War II arrived.
Coca-Cola — a small number of taste-test participants influenced or contaminated Coca-Cola Company’s (un)controlled market testing (Project Kansas) of a sweeter formula being considered as the New Coke to boost sales and market share. The change was an utter failure/denial by Coke executives because the facts of market data showed for decades it was Coke’s brand-name that made and kept loyal consumers, not a newer formula and change.
DuPont — and their disposal (or failure to properly dispose) of chemicals used to make Teflon that leak or eventually leak into human or animal drinking water-basins. Well over 3,500 lawsuits against DuPont and/or Chemours still await trial. Both mega-billion dollar corporations deny their chemical or waste management directly cause major health-injury problems in at least 27 U.S. states. However, since 1961 DuPont’s own scientists knew their chemical wastes caused severe and lethal problems in lab animals, but intentionally concealed (denied) these studies from the public and EPA.
Lehman Brothers — and their asset overvaluation (denialism & greed) then subsequent bankruptcy in 2008, a major player/cause of the 2008 Wall Street crash then bailout by U.S. taxpayers via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Joseph Stalin — the “Great Purge” between 1936 – 1938 when Stalin murdered around 750,000 political rivals and dissenters and over 1-million others he perceived as threats. These are conservative estimates.
Saddam Hussein — aside from the gassing of some 5,000 Kurdish Iraqis and wounding over 10,000 more in 1988, Hussein convened a public meeting of Ba’ath Party officials in July 1979. He ordered the gathering to be videotaped. Hussein read a list of 69 names of perceived “traitors” who were then escorted out in custody then executed by firing squad or given weapons inside a courtyard and ordered to execute each other or themselves.
Intel — for nearly 3 decades (60’s – 80’s) Intel reigned supreme in semiconductors, with their memory-chip and microprocessors both. By 1983 Japanese semiconductors had stolen a big chunk of that market. Intel was in a nose dive. Like Henry Ford, old vanguard CEO’s at Intel thought their long dominance in memory-chips were the future (denialism, skewed rationalism) whereas Gordon Moore and Andy Grove realized the ominous hard data, facts and stats overwhelmingly pointed to the microprocessor and PC’s as the future. Their decision to change the business model—amp up and expand production of microprocessors while cutting way back on memory-chips—saved Intel from looming bankruptcy. “Pentium” is now a household name.
ExxonMobil — one of the most blatant hypocritical cases of denialism for self-preservation has been ExxonMobil. Within almost 200 in-house publications between 1977 – 2014, the oil giant’s own scientists admitted (click here) that climate change was unequivocally occurring and caused by human discharge and/or waste.
Richard M. Nixon — though a number of U.S. Presidents clearly fall into this denial, truth, phobic examination, President Nixon is the poster-boy of denialism for self-preservation during and after the Watergate scandal in the early 1970’s. A new poster-boy President of blatant denialism and inflated ego may(?) be just around the corner.
Adolf Hitler — Duh, of course. No explanation necessary.
Should I name all the evangelical pastors or Catholic clergy?
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. — in tandem with The Tobacco Institute and PR firm Hill & Knowlton, Inc., the tobacco industry launched a massive counter-attack against scientific and medical-health researchers determining and publicly publishing the negative impacts of smoking. Their counter-attack? “Doubt is our product.“
Merck and their VIOXX — Before the FDA could approve Merck’s blockbuster pain-relief rofecoxib hit drugstore shelves, health professionals were finding and reporting in 1999, 2000, and 2004 the drug increased the risks of heart disease. With 88,000 – 139,000 heart attacks (30% – 40% fatal) attributed to rofecoxib, over four years later the drug was finally banned in November 2004. Merck executives knew of these reports, but misled physicians, the public, and the FDA.
USS Indianapolis Capt. McVay Tragedy — in the dying months of the Pacific War 1945 the naval heavy battlecruiser, while carrying the atomic bomb to eventually be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was headed for her next assignment. At 12:15AM 30 July 1945, the USS Indianapolis was fatally struck by two Japanese torpedoes and sunk in 12-minutes. Due to her top secret cargo and mission she was never reported missing even after 24-36 hours after her scheduled arrival in Leyte. In the end and after an official investigation into the tragedy, the U.S. Navy solely blamed Capt. Charles B. McVay III and court-martialed him, putting the 1,139 lost sailors on his head and in self-preservation of and abdication by the U.S. Navy rather than take the public shame and embarrassment for numerous mistakes in combat intel. For many years after McVay received hate-mail from families of lost Indianapolis sailors. Declassified naval documents now reveal (though too late) that Capt. McVay was in truth not to blame for any causes leading to the ship’s sinking. But in 1968 McVay committed suicide.

These 14 prime examples are a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the modern refined art of denial, distorting the truth and reality. I am quite sure you could name off several more I did not mention, right?

Public Outcomes of Denialism, Phobia, and Untruths/Lies

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Immunization Non-Compliance — Despite the remarkable declines or near eradication of measles, mumps, rubella, and pertussis across the U.S. and most of the world over the previous century and modern, universal availability of vaccines, resurgence of these diseases persist. CDC data for the measles:

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Paranoia Over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) — Despite the significant consensus by scientists, healthcare physicians, and bio-genetic engineers from many acclaimed prestigious institutions and universities across the world, who stake their lifetime careers and reputations on making these studies and publications, a large percentage of Americans are afraid and skeptical of foods that have been genetically modified. From the National Academies for Sciences, Engineering & Medicine:

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One such university, Purdue University’s College of Agriculture addresses the misinformation and conflicting media stories; click here for more details.

The Impact of Ignorance or Restricted Knowledge — Truth or fiction. Fiction or truth. Many selectively choose what they want to accept as factual if it aligns with their own political, social, or religious beliefs. They also choose what is fallacy or untrue, or will ignore the evidence/data when it doesn’t align, whether it is verified, confirmed, factual and true, or not.

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Ideological Divide On Climate Change — Despite the abundant evidence and facts over the last century measuring global climate change, there remains a deep ideological divide in the U.S. about whether it is very serious and harming people now.

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Holocaust Doubting and Denial — Despite the eye-witness accounts by thousands upon thousands of Allied liberating soldiers and their commanders at Nazi death or concentration camps across Europe in the last months of World War II, as well as the abhorrent physical and forensic evidence at the time, a noticeable population today believe the Holocaust did not occur or was greatly exaggerated by Jews and Jewish sympathizers.

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Don Quixote: My lady…

I am not your lady!…
I am not any kind of a lady!

So of course I became,
As befitted my delicate birth,
The most casual bride
Of the murdering scum of the earth!
—Aldonza

Don Quixote: And still thou art my lady.

And still he torments me!
How should I be a lady?

If you feel that you see me
Not quite at my virginal best,
Cross my palm with a coin,
And I’ll willingly show you the rest!
—Aldonza

Don Quixote: Never deny thou art Dulcinea.

Take the clouds from your eyes
and see me as I really am!
—Aldonza

Those are a portion of the musical lyrics from the song and scene “Aldonza” in the 1972 film Man of La Mancha. Though the beautiful, alluring, prostitute Aldonza is trying to convince Don Quixote that she is not the woman he imagines, it is clear for several reasons that he is not seeing it nor will he accept it. Such is the force of denialism lost in euphoric romance. Emotions have over-powered critical reasoning.

Recognizing Methods of Truthiness, Denialism, or Phobias

This will not be an exhaustive list, but I will spot-light more popular, modern methods of reframing, misdirection, or flagrant deceit by employing pseudo-science or pseudo-historicity (vs. accredited historicity & historiography) that an audience or people are so dazed by the audacity, they may doubt or question their own perceptions of reality. Here are five traits of denialism from the European Journal of Public Health by Paschal Diethelm and Martin McKee:

Pinpointing emotionally based or controversial conspiracies and publicizing those opinions. This would include tainted or polluted peer review or checks-n-balances by other expert colleagues in the subject field. Inversionism is a variant of conspiracy theories which can be utilized.
Employing fake experts or paper-vapor institutions to refute (and slander?) legitimate experts. The internet or world-wide-web is ideal for this tactic.
Specifically isolating or cherry-picking support and sources while ignoring or overlooking exhaustive databases, research studies, and counter-reviews.
Imploring near-impossible or ridiculous standards of confirmation, e.g. the Lenski Affair.
Employing logical fallacies which might include red herrings, straw-men arguments, or false analogies.

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Attacking Intellectualism on the Rise

Why is the majority of the general public gullible and/or naïve to hyped or erroneous influences? Why do celebrity, charismatic personalities attract droves of people to ill-founded causes and misguided, immoral, unethical ideologies? When we are trapped by self-imposed fears and external turmoil caused and funded by targeted propaganda, it becomes easier to simply deny our imperfections and mistakes, as tragic as they might be, in order to feel right instead of the alternative: shame or embarrassment.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation’s Founding Fathers and the 3rd President, opportunistically attacked intellectualism. John Adams, as well as Alexander Hamilton, got into heated debates with Jefferson about democracy and how it should be governed. Jefferson and his political party supported the wisdom of the commoners, a peer review, if you will, to hedge against tyranny and oligarchies or dictators. Adams Sr. and Hamilton, however, knew too well how poorly educated most commoners of that day were to con-men tyrants and charismatic persuasion by corrupt causes and ideologies. Yet, in today’s more advanced, more widely educated populations—primarily in first-world or advancing second-world nations—as opposed to 18th-century America, the mob revolutions in which Jefferson witnessed in his day occur less frequently due to informed early detection by the citizens.

In other words, today there exists exponentially more credentialed “experts” to police Cults of Personality and protect the less fortunate and more gullible against precisely the cunning tyrants Jefferson detested. One difference in today’s pool of experts is that they are all highly specialized in very specific fields of study, possibly two or three, maybe four on a basic level. But not ten or fifteen or more. Being a Nobel Prize winning expert or scholar in ten or more subjects is humanly impossible. Therefore, like it or not, we must… no, we have no choice but to rely on highly trained, vastly experienced professionals, the “intellectuals” in their fields of expertise. In this regard, even Thomas Jefferson fell short. Now, with all due respect to our 3rd President, if we commission a large pool of experts, ala a democracy of intelligent commoners(?), then we could hope Tommy would have approved.

Pessimistic or Vigilant?

Truth does matter. Truth backed up by incontrovertible, scientific or historical facts, repeatable ad infinitum, do indeed exist. In an interview about the movie Denial and her legal run-in with David Irving, Deborah Lipstadt said:

I try to be optimistic about things, but history teaches me that that is not always the case. There are people out there who are very much beguiled by these stories. When I see it seep into the general conversation of people not on extreme ends, that’s when I get worried. This is why it is so important to challenge liars about their lies. Challenge them with the facts.

I do have a lot of admiration and respect for what Ms. Lipstadt and her legal team showed and protected regarding accredited scholarship, freedom of speech, and the accountability one must always own in speaking or printing ideas or opinions as facts of science and/or history. She certainly deserves applause and recognition for protecting the atrocious reality of the Nazi Holocaust against saber-rattling, self-proclaimed, self-absorbed, charismatic trouble-makers calling them self a great leader, or reformer, or intellectual. Her victorious feat cannot be denied.

Ms. Lipstadt is Jewish by birth and by all available accounts and information it is reasonable to assume she is still active in practicing her Jewish faith. There is no easily accessible information to the contrary. This leads me to my own question for Ms. Lipstadt in regard to her quote just above.

There are increasing amounts of scholarly and scientific evidence and facts suggesting, even convincingly demonstrating that all three Abrahamic religions are based on “beguiling stories” which are indeed within “general conversations of people not on extreme ends” over 2-3 millenia that in the end are hoaxes, gross distortions of historicity, and the three religions worry and cause great concern for a large number of sane, reasonably intelligent secularists and humanists around the world. My question:

Have you or would you, Ms. Lipstadt, put your religious faith to the exact same rigorous scrutiny you afforded the defense of the Holocaust and put bogus Holocaust deniers through?

To my readers, followers, and visitors. Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, or challenges. They could stimulate an invigorating discussion or debate!

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Cheating: More Fashionable & Popular!

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Professor Taboo

Yes, the results of the “anonymous” polls and the historical court records are in, cheating on your spouse (sometimes called “irreconcilable differences”) is today more popular, perhaps run-of-the-mill and even expected, more than ever in our societal facade of til death do you part! Why? Why in the early, middle, or latter years of a long-term commitment do two people wonder away from each other emotionally, mentally, and/or sexually from lifetime vows, promises, and contracts? How many acclaimed cinema films tell the truth about love, dying love, love rediscovered, or mistaken naïve love despite the noble vows, promises, and contracts?

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A May 2016 New York Magazine article says women now “cheat” or have extramarital relations as much as men always have throughout cultural history with their mistresses, concubines, courtesans, and harems, but fortunately with much fewer severe consequences.

It is, perhaps, another milestone in the march to equality. Women and men are now taking an equal-opportunity approach to extramarital hanky-panky. A report out of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University found that, for the first time in modern history, women are cheating at nearly the same rate as men. Another study, published in the National Opinion Research Center’s 2013 General Social Survey, found that while the percentage of men who admitted to infidelity has held constant over the last two decades, the percentage of wives who reported having affairs rose almost 40 percent.

[…]

Another recent study found that some women are genetically predisposed to “extra pair bonding,” euphemistically speaking. Men don’t have this gene.

But the prevailing theory is that modern marriage is what’s killing marriage — that the more deliberation women put into whom they pair up with, the more willing and motivated they are to make a move when something’s not working.

[…]

Women now are more aware of the alternatives to monogamy and more inclined to demand to have all their needs met. That’s because happiness is such an important part of marriage. Fewer women are marrying out of need; instead, they’re marrying to please themselves. But that also means when they’re dissatisfied with something they feel justified to go elsewhere.”

I would argue quite earnestly on the validity of one claim the article made. It says “The crazy part, [Rebecca] elaborates, is not the apparent epidemic of adultery, but that it’s the women who seem to be fueling it.” I disagree. As the popular and truthful cliché goes it takes two to tango — that is, consensual tango. Thriving and loving lifetime marriages are a 50/50 responsibility as well as a 50/50 risk or reward, no more, no less… always. Is that not the correct definition of full and true equality? And using the description “epidemic of adultery” is unnecessarily harsh when an action/behavior is a choice, not a contagious virus which is not chosen. Last I checked, adultery is a human choice.

What is wrong with having dreams and hopes in life? Isn’t it inherently and socially accepted, even encouraged, for a man or woman to “have it all” in a lifetime monogamous marriage? The article later reads:

Lauren, 41, admits she wanted it all: “the best friend, the domestic partner, the professional equal, the lover,” she says. She had two out of four when, some eight years and one baby into her marriage, she began sleeping with a co-worker — a guy who was more her professional equal than her low-earning husband, who’d largely given up on his career. “A healthy attraction to a person does demand you have a little bit of intrigue and imbalance, which in male-female-empowered relationships is not a priority,” she says. “Wanting some hetero-normalcy isn’t something people want to talk about, not in that bougie Brooklyn world I live in. A lot of women I know stick with it and suffer through it even as they have that fantasy of being with someone who is their equal, or even their superior.” — New York Magazine article

The journalist Alyssa Giacobbe reports the very real and justified anger of a husband who has been deceived and cheated-on sharing two examples of his public shaming of the unfaithful wife. But once again, if one is expected to impeccably honor their words, vows, promises, and contracts, then it applies equally to both husband and wife. Yet, examining our human social, patriarchal history doesn’t quite bear that ideal, does it? What I found very comically intriguing in Giacobbe’s report was what Dr. Ian Kerner, a sex and relationship psychotherapist, had found in his decades of practice:

When the woman strays, there’s anger, yes, but there’s also much more interest from the [husband] than there ever was to collaborate and talk and work it out, [while the wife has been having an affair with] some douche bag down the street. — New York Magazine article

The husband erroneously thinks it is a phase she is currently going through and will pass like a common cold. Many men rarely ask, Might it have something partially to do with me, or a LOT to do with me!? What a novel question! But to be fair, a novel question for either spouse. And why does it take something so painfully dishonorable or negligent by both spouses, and so late in the infection, if you will, in order for a sudden inspiration “to work it out” and improve, to be a better husband or wife? Why the delay?

Most or perhaps many of the stories of marital struggles and/or infidelity are quite familiar to you the readers I’m sure, and among your social or job circles, possibly within your own family or your own past relationships or marriages. Cheating is honestly not uncommon (to utilize a juxtaposition here 🤭) despite those appearing as “civil” marriages that underneath are hush-hush and closeted. It is however, unsurprisingly, a long distorted and ‘mystified’ result frequently manifested by limiting, proprietary, phobic or paranoid protective (hyper-jealousy), verbally silent, and repressive structures in those marriages. Furthermore, one should never presume that one’s own marriage or long-termed relationship is forever immune to such changes, possibly major surprises and challenges, when humans and circumstances are constantly fluid, moving and changing. I purposely emphasize this to my own heterosexual gender fooled into thinking that a socio-religious contract is unbreakable or unsinkable! Many old and ancient marriages — including those of our grandparents, great grandparents, etc. — simply remained intact due to the potential hardships the woman faced having to survive solo as a divorcee, even harder if publicly labelled an adulterer. Not so for the man.

With all of the above said, known, or unknown — intentional distortions, deceptions and mystifying of cheating — is there more to it, something mainstream traditional society has not considered, or is too afraid to seriously consider for far too long? I think so.

I suggest that the old, antiquated, mainstream construct of marriage, in particular monogamous marriage, was never ideal or realistic in the first place. Traditions that fail to evolve and adapt eventually die-out. Therefore, there are a number of reasons (supported by continued, advancing sciences) for our apparent(?) rise of marital cheating. I will list just five important reasons and the last two are critical to understand, possibly requiring our acceptance and embrace if you are a strong advocate for total marital monogamy. If so, if you believe lifetime monogamy is the best or only marital setup, then put on your thickest battle armor and prepare for years of relentless, 24/7, 365 days of acute alertness, attentiveness… never letting your guard down. Warning! Keeping a lifetime monogamous marriage/relationship in tact, much less thriving, is and will be a visible and sometimes invisible struggle upstream against natural (rarely against immoral or evil) forces everywhere. And even if you foolishly believe you have been victorious, sometimes your “enemy” is in and has been in your encampment for a long time and you did not notice. Faulty intelligence is ever-present, anywhere at anytime. That is simply human nature.

Nevertheless, for those who believe in Walt Disney-style eternal love and romance with one person their entire lifetime, it can be done. I have 3-4 different married aunts and uncles who have done it for 50-60+ years. They all have one thing in common: societal remoteness. In other words, they are quite recluse when it comes to daily social engagement; it’s very infrequent. Think about that.

To the five contributing factors of marital cheating. The first three reasons are summarized from Dr. Susan Whitbourne’s excellent report on PsychologyToday.com. The fourth reason is summarized from Ker Than and LiveScience.com. And the fifth and final reason below is from yours truly. I feel it is an overlooked or badly ignored factor in an already maligned, faulty, antiquated marital construct. Hence, I list it last.

Emotional Dissatisfaction
These spouses are seeking emotional intimacy and understanding they feel they are not experiencing in their primary relationship or marriage. Feeling appreciated and valued on a regular basis is an integral component in marriage if it is to last lifetimes. The precise details of this dissatisfaction can and do change over time for various reasons. The priorities of partners/spouses change and fluctuate over time, for example, when children enter the picture. Or a residential move or job-relocation occurs. How attentive we are to those fluid changes and what actions we take (or not take), verbally and non-verbally, will also dictate or influence future solutions and/or behaviors.

Sexual Dissatisfaction
This is the most common reason cited by clinical-counseling studies. I find this very interesting for two reasons. One, I discuss below in Mammalian/Primate Biology; it’s a natural biological force in 97.9% of humans, for a segment of humans it is a raging force relative to their sexual organs and hormonal makeup, starting as an embryo and genetically from their parent’s families and ancestors. Let me say this though.

Humans want to improve and/or explore their natural sexual desires. Medically, this does not generally decrease until a person’s late 40’s or 50’s, later if they lead a healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, participants in these studies cited desires to experience additional sexual encounters with non-partners or outside of their spouse. This number is typically and predictably low due to societal pressure of it being unacceptable, historically of women, as if a marriage was NOT 50/50, but 30/70 or 20/80… where the woman either was expected to have the lowest desire for good/great sex or the higher expectation of responsibility of always pleasing the husband! HAH! Yeah, riddle me that one.

Dying Love and/or Redefined Love
This is a lower cited reason in clinical-counseling studies probably because love is difficult for many people to unanimously define. Today, it is indeed more complex socially (vs. biologically) than it was 100, 500, or 1,000 years ago. Overall, the studies suggest that deeper emotional and sexual intimacy are more compelling reasons for extramarital behaviors. They both can be simultaneous expectations or demands too, not necessarily one or the other. And falling in love with someone new is not often cited as the driving force for infidelity. This might be because keeping an affair secret often requires a sometimes exhausting amount of preparation, forethought, juggling of schedules, physical, mental, and emotional energy, and the careful explanations (disinformation, deception) for activities “without” the spouse and/or kids involved. When a cheater’s secret lover usually only comprises maybe 5% to 20% (give or take) of the cheater’s realistic available time in a day or week (factor in children), there is little to no time for deeper definitions of love to develop. Not in a reasonable, sane(?), stable fashion.

I want to quote one of the paragraphs in the PsychologyToday.com article and invite commentary on its validity:

The findings also show that a substantial group of people who engage in extramarital affairs are pretty good at shifting the responsibility away from themselves. Many claimed that the decision to enter into the affair was a mutual one, that their affairs were justified, and that they felt no guilt.

My contention with these spouses claiming the decision to enter into the affair was mutual, I would immediately rephrase by adding and asking “Was it a verbalized mutually understood decision!?” In other words, penetration was consented to? What type of penetration? What about fellatio or cunnilingus? And often the real biggie, what about emotional attachment or love? Allowed? Disallowed?

Why should these liberties or boundaries not be openly discussed, negotiated at anytime in a healthy marriage? Better still, BEFORE the wedding day! More on this later in my last reason for cheating while married. And when should guilt and remorse be genuinely felt and expressed by the cheater, or should it at all? Is this the popular PR counter-move of turning oneself from a villain into a victim while portraying the true victim into a villain. We see this save-face tactic too often in politics by officials in power positions or celebrities in the public eye. The tactic does have its successes, though warped as they are. Take Tiger Woods or President Trump as two prime examples. Both are ~~blindly~~ adored by their fan-base despite their adulterous habits.

In the end, should any of these conditions, reasons, or results be the standard, the higher road? I don’t think so. I think it all stinks, or they set themselves up for future repugnance of the most vilest stench, if I can be frank!

Mammalian/Primate Biology
We humans, us Homo sapiens, are unequivocally lifetime members of the aquatic and terrestrial animal kingdom on Earth. We all share the same origins, period. DNA sequencing has put to bed any slight, wild doubts, misconceptions, or ill-founded blatant denial that this is not true. Much can be learned about ourselves by studying and thoroughly understanding animal mating behaviors. Let me begin this section by quoting a portion of Ker Than’s article from LiveScience.com:

Of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals*, only 3 to 5 percent are known to form lifelong pair bonds. This select group includes beavers, otters, wolves, some bats and foxes and a few hoofed animals.

And even the creatures that do pair and mate for life occasionally have flings on the side and some, like the wolf, waste little time finding a new mate if their old one dies or can no longer sexually perform.

Staying faithful can be a struggle for most animals. For one, males are hardwired to spread their genes and females try to seek the best dad for their young. Also, monogamy is costly because it requires an individual to place their entire reproductive investment on the fitness of their mate. Putting all their eggs in one basket means there’s a lot of pressure on each animal to pick the perfect mate, which, as humans knows, can be tricky. [1]

Our closest relatives, or cousins you might say, are the bonobos and common chimps of the Hominidae family of which we also belong from 4.5 – 5.5 million years ago (click here). We share 99.6% of their DNA. I likely do not need to go into the mating and social behaviors of the Bonobo chimpanzees; it is well-known. Read this article if you are unfamiliar with their distinguished behavior and social structure.

As it turns out, the neurotransmitter chemical dopamine is heavily linked to sexual and emotional love. But news flash, it isn’t that simple. Dopamine does not distinguish between monogamy or non-monogamy as some biased experts may claim. In the animal kingdom as well as with humans, individual, familial, diet, exercise, and the social dynamics surrounding those components play a significant part in levels of dopamine production just as much as sexual and/or emotional situations do. According to Healthline.com, there are 10 natural methods of increasing healthy levels of dopamine. No surprise, of those 10 ways, frequent exercise is one. Now, how many various ways can we humans regularly, erotically exercise? Exactly. By the way, emotional exercising is a part of exerting ourselves physically and/or mentally. Hence, how many different ways can we exert and challenge ourselves and our partner/spouse, or significant other(s), mentally and emotionally? I can name a minimum of five ways! Not all discomfort or nervousness is bad or life threatening in moderate, short-term amounts.

Like many different animals in their natural habitats and social environs, we humans also require regular mental, emotional, and physical stimulation in order to live, thrive, grow in strength, i.e. 3-part strength, and pass on the best possible genes and lifestyle to our descendants. That said, why then are cheaters labelled with or risk such distressing, troubling, negative feelings and connotations after engaging in extramarital affairs? Again, it is not so simple.

Poor, Ambiguous, or Impeded Unreserved Communication
These marital situations are not simple primarily because of one initial reason: communication. Communication between cheating partners or spouses typically has not been open, voluntary, articulated well or accurately to reflect behavior, honest in other words, and therefore not well understood or erroneously understood by the listening, inquisitive, attentive partner/spouse. These ideal, lofty components of a happy, thriving, intimate relationship or marriage are an essential foundation for a long-term commitment to one person, much less a lifetime commitment. Why?

Because everything about humans change, evolve over time and the circumstances around them, e.g. family, careers, finances, ups, downs, health, births, deaths, and a plethora of societal and regional variables are constantly in play, whether weekly, monthly, annually, or longer. The only setup where these variables and components have little effects on a relationship or marriage is if the couple are consistently recluse, or lacking in those aforementioned healthy emotional, mental, and physical exercises. In those recluse cases, the “changes,” the “fitness” tends to be slower (non-existent?) due to much less diverse stimulation and exertion. You don’t know what you don’t actually experience or push yourself to achieve. You are unable to honestly say you have it best if you haven’t tasted the joys or pains of many bests and disasters. Many!

Therefore, everyone should always ask themselves, monitor attentively, maintain attentively their committed relationship, by gauging its health and asking… how freely, how proactively, how accurately, honestly with no reservations or shame or fear of shame do we both vulnerably express ourselves to each other? How often does this intense, safe level of intimate communication/expression occur between us? If your answer is not at all, or not so much, or could be better, or all of these above case studies of cheating spouses and victims admitted the same, examined the same, then the likely conclusion is that they, yourself, and your partner/spouse have poor, ambiguous, or reserved, impeded (greatly impeded?) communication with each other.

That silent, distorted, secret or fearful relational environment becomes a nitroglycerin catalyst for much bigger problems and less time to redirect or solve if allowed to fester. In today’s mainstream, traditional, moderate relationships/marriages dishonorable cheating apparently then becomes one of the most common (easier, quicker?) reactions or results of poor, ambiguous, or impeded unreserved communication. The quick fix that doesn’t really fix at all.

What do all of you think? Why has “cheating” become more popular, more accepted, fashionable? Is there an easy or easier preventative measure to be implemented? Let me know in the comments.

[1] – The Ker Than LiveScience.com article is now a bit out-of-date as of 2025. The latest figure of known mammals is more than 6,736 species according to the World Animal Foundation. Thank you to Davin Trent of that organization for this update.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always