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Mafia Speak: The necessity for loyalty within Trump’s circle: The fast moving growth of a mafia within the U. S. Government!

March 10th, 2019

We complain about the rapid accumulation of 99% of the wealth within the United States economic system being available to only 1% of the population and we talk about Capitalism to Socialism to Fascism, but we don’t get into the particulars of how that is happening.

Clearly, if we did not have a mafia within the U. S. Economic System trying to take over we would not have a billionaire class. We have a very thriving Billionaire Class structure which is growing dramatically fast and dictating who will and who will not join them.

The kind of investment needed to create such a group; the “loyalty” demanded to keep it going and growing; the flagrant violations of the U. S. Constitution to keep the way clear for the mafia structures needed to replace the structures sustaining the U. S. Republi; the pressures to give up the Republic and take instead the structure of the more fascist-authoritarian governmental structures necessary have taken time and several administrations. With the Trump Administration we have finally arrived at that point where it becomes clear that we are barreling ahead into a government which is fast becoming a criminal enterprise headed by a man whose privately owned company could best be described as a RICO organization.

There have been many examples along the way, but the press has either been reluctant to make the call and do the investigative reporting to bring to the public the structures within which they are now living or they do not know and only see such things in the rear view mirror. And that makes sense since the role of the press is to report the news – to report what has happened.

The examples are becoming increasingly ‘in your face’ and they are being immediately ‘normalized’ as just the way we function today.

The latest example was extraordinarily blatant – and that was the sentencing of Manafort. It was an incredible example of “Mafia Speak” – right out front expecting the public and press to gloss over what was done.

A Prelude to the First Mafia Speak: (Setting the stage)

In the context of the original trial, Judge Ellis attacked one of the witnesses – Rick Gates – by testifying instead of maintaining himself as the judge – “…Manafort could not have been paying that much attention to what you (Gates) were doing. If so, he (Manafort) would have known how much money you were stealing from him.” That comment was apparently an attempt to turn the original trial, as much as possible, away from Manafort – to give him some breathing room and allow any juror listening to be persuaded in Manafort’s favor. That said there is Mafia Speak coming.

First Mafia Speak:

  1. The judge said – right before pronouncing the sentence on Paul Manafort – “You are not before this Court for anything having to do with colluding with the Russian government to influence this election.”

That was a very strange comment for a judge to make. Normally, a judge stays within the confines of the hearing in front of him, he does not wander off as Judge T. S. Ellis did to an unrelated and totally out of context comment which he apparently had a specific reason for doing. That reason became clear as the day progressed. Judge Ellis set up what followed and allowed the mafia “Don” to make his point later in the day for the public to be brought along in the way he wanted the public to go. The “Don” said he was “honored” by his people.

Second Mafia Speak:

2. After the hearing and sentencing when Paul Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, went to the microphones outside the courthouse to say a few words to the reporters gathered outside, he said: “There is absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from Russia.”

Interesting in his comments, they were also outside of what the hearing was about. In addition, both the judge and attorney, who are professionals in the law and who know there is no legal term such as “collusion” – it is Donald Trump’s favorite way to characterize the special counsel’s investigation – Attorney Downing’s comments as well as Judge Ellis’ comments began to sound like “Mafia Speak” – things said at the direction of the mafia boss ‘ Donald Trump.

Reason for the First and Second “Mafia Speak” comments:

3. To close the circle and bring it around to why the Judge and Attorney made those statements, which stood out because of their inappropriateness and un-attachment to the hearing and sentencing – later in the day, Donald Trump made comments about the hearing and sentencing when Reporters shouted questions to him at the White House.

Donald Trump’s comments were “I just want to tell you that his (Manafort”s) lawyer went out of his way actually to make a statement last night, no collusion”. “The judge, for whatever reason, I was very honored by it, also made the statement that this had nothing to do with collusion with Russia.”

The mafia don then completes the circle by coming out with what was supposed to be the denouement comment – the reason for the first and second “Mafia Speak” comments. The three of them – the Judge, who set the table, the Attorney, who brought the food to the table and Trump who sat down to eat what was being served to him, let his capo’s know they had done a great job by commenting on his feelings of being ‘honored’ by what had just been done for him. And clearly, Trump had paid for the table and its settings; the food on the table and was going to enjoy his meal knowing that mafia type loyalty still existed within his organization and with his ‘people.’ That is what James Comey missed in why Trump was asking for “loyalty” from him. Every mafia boss has to know that kind of loyalty is crucial because of the way they operate and the necessity for cover when the circumstances call for it.

That type of mafia control is spreading within the U. S. Government and will be hard to extinguish even after Trump is gone. That mafia structure became very clear to us as we looked at Wells Fargo and tried to decide if we should get involved with a boycott against them.

This is what is happening to your government, America. This is what has happened and continues to happen in your Court System. This is why McConnell has so much power – he is the one making this scenario possible so members of this mafia can function without too many repercussions until the society is better controlled by their mafia governing structure.

Even the seemingly innocuous language is telling. After the judge and attorney went out on a limb for Trump – he thanks them publicly and in the way of the mafia he was “honored by it.”

And now kiss the ring!

________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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Or you can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.co


Posted in #Wells Fargo Boycott, #WELLSFARGOBOYCOTT, American Corporate Businesses, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, James Comey, John Downing, Atty, Judge T. S. Ellis, Mafia Speak, Senator McConnell, Wells Fargo | Comments Off on Mafia Speak: The necessity for loyalty within Trump’s circle: The fast moving growth of a mafia within the U. S. Government!

Tell the Story!

March 8th, 2019

These are actual instances of how institutional racism and personal bigotry work hand in glove to destroy attempts to change this society from one of White Supremacy and Patriarchy to one which looks beyond physical differences. (I will start – send your stories to share with those who need to understand on a conscious level the structure in which they live, work and in which their children’s character, ethics, morality are being formed. – don’t let me stand out here alone. To talk about these experiences on a personal level takes a lot of humility. The first step to break through the ego and ‘better than’ needs is to allow humility to take hold.)

by: Marceline Donaldson

CHURCH

One of the dominant conveyers of bigotry. What follows is one very small example of how it works!

Currently, we are seeing the demolition of the Black Church. That has been happening for decades. It moved along in earnest when the overall society realized the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s was formed, nurtured and carried through successfully because of the Black Church. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a black preacher and Church leader with an ancestry filled with black ministers, organists and more.

This story starts in a Black Episcopal Church in Central Square, Massachusetts. A Church that has had its ups and downs and currently is down. What happens?

This is one small incident, but crucial in how the Black Church is being destroyed.

My husband and I served as interim ministers at St. Bartholomews Church in Central Square – Cambridge, MA. – in the mid-1980’s, a Church which is predominantly Jamaican, African American, with a few people from Barbados and Haiti – in other words, all people of color.

When we arrived there were two people licensed by the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to serve as Lay Eucharistic Ministers. One was the wife of the last rector.

We worked with several additional parishioners who were interested in serving their Church as Lay Eucharistic Ministers and as required, we sent letters to the Diocese asking that they be licensed. They attended the requisite training offered by the Diocese, were licensed and worked as Lay Eucharistic Ministers with no problems and many ‘thank you’s’.

The following year we added a couple more who also went through training and were licensed. We also encouraged them to get involved with the Diocese – as well as seeking out others in the congregation who were interested in Diocesan work. There were several and we did our share to make the Episcopal Diocese less White and more Diverse.

The Episcopal Diocese had one or two African Americans involved in their work – people they were accustomed to – the people who disproved the rule.

Everything went along fine until the Bishop under whom we made those additions and changes retired and a new bishop was elected. The new bishop was not comfortable with the increased numbers of African Americans having a say in the business of the Diocese and so began the process of elimination. How was that done? – Quietly! Under the radar, so to speak!

We applied for a renewal of the license for the -now – seven Lay Eucharistic Ministers, who had been licensed for a couple years; who had attended all of the training offered, some more than once and who were doing an excellent job. Back came a letter from the Bishop that those licenses could not be renewed because members of St. Bartholomew’s Church had never been licensed as Lay Eucharistic Ministers; the Church had never applied to have anyone so licensed and no one had ever appeared for training. So our request was denied and we were cast as irresponsible or ignorant for attempting to have licenses renewed which had not been issued in the first place.

That is how the constant struggle is set up and the negative stereotype ‘refreshed.’ Take one step forward. Make it a successful step. Others following in your footsteps become a threat and are seen as a ‘horde’. Minorities are put in the position of constantly having to fight against, have to struggle to achieve anything, which is exhausting. Block their path and after a time there are none. The fiction can then be run which goes “we don’t have any because there are none qualified or interested or willing to do the work. One Bishop moves to open doors; another moves to slam them shut.

It is stunning to see the paperwork, which we have kept, which lays out this scenario.

What did we accomplish? Nothing that made permanent change. The destruction of St. Bartholomew’s continued apace. It was time for us to move on and our place in the structure was outlined for us clearly so there could be no misunderstanding.

Time for us to move on meant the next step in the destruction of St. Bartholomew’s – a rector to whom the congregation had to minister instead of being ministered to and a couple steps after that made sure there would be an empty church soon and its small congregation would have to consider a ‘merger’ into a White Congregation – losing their history and identity completely.

We went off to the Bishop’s office to meet and attempt to correct what we thought was a mistake of some kind taking with us the copies of the licenses issued and all supporting paperwork hoping that would clear up any ‘misunderstanding’ or misplaced licenses or other records. It was a meeting that did not go well. It was clear licenses never having been issued was a fiction and one that was thinly veiled. The fiction was maintained even in sight of the licenses signed by the Bishop.. The copies and in two cases the original licenses were characterized as “we don’t know where those came from” and that went on until my well known temper exploded and I wound up accusing the Bishop of racism and outlining how, when, why and what this behavior was meant to create – and that basically was the intentional destruction of a Black Church. All denied with righteous indignation.

The Bishop started the meeting and acknowledged and complimented us on a job well done. He acknowledged the substantial increase in Church attendance over the time we served as Interim, but also said I was not Marceline Donaldson, but Mrs. Bennett and I should act accordingly- which he suggested should be attending Church on Sundays, sitting in the front row so I could be seen ‘appropriately’ as being ‘supportive’ of my husband.

We outlined for the Bishop the circumstances under which we had taken the job. I was in the ordination process at the time and this placement was totally in line with what I was doing in Seminary. I was to do most of the work because my husband had a full time job as a professor at an Episcopal Seminary and he was there to be supportive and the one who was ordained and who could carry out the responsibilities that fall only to the ordained. We also let him know I had never been Mrs. Bennett, would never be Mrs. Bennett and my legal name and the one I used under all circumstances was Marceline Donaldson.

The Bishop responded by saying he was ordaining people who were young, just out of seminary and he preferred to ordain young men because that is really who made the best priests. He added that because we had done such a great job he would use us as Interims in other Churches as needed and if my understanding of my position more closely matched his he thought our work could make a substantial contribution to the Church.

My explosion, which could be heard outside the Bishops office, did not help the situation, but it did make clear to the Bishop that I would not be a part of the picture he drew and that his concept was racist and sexist and we thought the Episcopal Church had and was moving away from that – which was really about sin.

He did agree to renew the licenses and Robert and I went home. We talked about how we were going to withdraw from St. Bartholomew’s and the Episcopal Church. We were clearly only welcome if we could go along with the program of using the reputations and respect we had gained to maintain the Episcopal Church in its current stance with its institutionalized White Supremacy in tact and its Patriarchy moving in such a way to incorporate those who could go along with the program and push out those who wanted the world Jesus promised.

I went back to one of the three places in Scripture which has sustained me:

Ephesians 6:12-18

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”

It has always been amazing to me how so many people are able to use the institution in which they serve to maintain themselves as “better than” and their institution serving the needs of White Supremacy and the maintenance of the Patriarchy while doing what they consider the work of that part of the world in which they have chosen to make their lives, raise a family, and thrive without a conscious realization that it is being done at the expense of the lives of others. What we also came to see and understand is that those so mired in the maintenance of the Patriarchy and White Supremacy are also mired so deep in sin that the lives they show to the public and the private life they lead are very different and separate from one another. That private life is generally immoral, full of serious ethical problems with a character that peeps out ever so often showing a very ugly personna.

Why was it necessary to keep the Diocese White, male and begin the destruction of a Church which had a long history in the Diocese as well as its neighborhood? WHY? Because that was the beginning necessity for the conversion of the neighborhood back to a White neighborhood. The era of the move to the suburbs was drawing to a close making necessary the “whitening” of neighborhoods which “darkened” when White Flight started. These movements happen over generations and our conscious awareness of them only happens at their end when their goals are being realized and can no longer happen “under cover.”

In the vineyard of the fallen are my brothers and sisters who want to segregate us by color – by sex – by ethnicity – by sexual orientation – by all kind of other ‘differences’ to shore up their ego and identity so they don’t have to do the work of being.

How long before the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the prisoners set free, those who walk in darkness brought into a great light.

When we shore up those who are keeping us all in bondage to their need for power, money and dominion-over, our lives are in jeopardy and our eternity closed out.

________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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Or you can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.co



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Posted in #meToo, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Episcopal Church, Feminism, racism, Religion | Comments Off on Tell the Story!

Bettina Members Share…

March 2nd, 2019

Congressman Jim Jordan accused of ignoring sexual abuse at OSU. see https://www.daytondailynews.com…/congressman-jim-jordan…sex-abuse…/lzfhebNU

I watched the Michael Cohen hearings and was appalled at Congressman Jordan and the way he led the group denouncing Cohen for lying plus as many other uglies he could think of to throw Michael Cohen’s way. Clearly that group thrives on threat, intimidation, abuse. And by the way, isn’t Jordan the one accused in some kind of sexual abuse thing against young athletes? Either he was involved or knew about it and didn’t report it or..? He fits right into the Trump orbit.

Rep. Jim Jordan Is Named in New OSU Sexual Abuse Scandal… https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jim-jordan-ohio-state-700578

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Hearing those who support and defend Donald Trump is showing what is wrong with the United States. I used to get angry when I heard people say – “if you don’t like this country leave it”. Today, I understand the sentiment. Maybe we should have a bigotry test to move out and keep out those White Supremacist and assorted others. They all seem to have given Donald Trump immunity.

Michael Cohen has admitted and is paying for his lies. Donald Trump’s lies make Michael Cohen look like a choir boy. Trump’s supporters seem totally able to attempt to defame Michael Cohen, calling him a liar and denigrating him for his lies and at the same time not even realizing others are looking at the person they are supporting and counting his lies into the thousands. How are they so tone deaf that they don’t see themselves as they are seen by others.

Cohen has no power, except what he had loaned to him by Trump if Cohen used that power to carry out Trump’s wishes. Trump as a liar, however, is dangerous because he does have power over many and much. He is a major, daily, liar whose lies will negatively affect your children’s future as those lies change this republic into a fascist state with Donald Trump leading the nation as he tries to use this country to become wealthier than Vladimir Putin.

Trump followers are saying- some people can lie to us and that is alright because the end justifies the means. What they don’t understand is that the process by which we reach the end totally changes the end we envisioned. That expected end changes and turns the goals we were willing to compromise our moral values and our character to reach into a monstrosity we are amazed has been created. It will be something we neither recognize nor want.

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CPAC BRINGING IN ANOTHER ROUND OF MC CARTHYISM

I’ve read in Bettina Network’s Blog about Donald Trump’s mentors – Roy Cohn and Senator Joseph McCarthy. After reading that, I did some research to see what that was all about. Shamefully, it was not a part of what I learned in school. I am also discovering other such times in these United States which were much worse. I did not learn about the massacres and slaughters in school. For example – I had to go out of my way to read and learn about the Trail of Tears. My first reaction was to deny. Not here – not in my country did or could that happen.

Germany did not want Nazism. They wanted to be better than the Jews and to have someone to blame the results of the war on and they wound up with a major massacre and horrendous event their children have had to endure.

I am now seeing, from the CPAC Conference, that the direction in which the Trumpians are going is to re-create, Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist era. Sorrowfully, that is coming on us very quickly with most of us ignorant about what that era was like.

CPAC and its speakers and listeners are now upping the ante – the “wall” in front of which they can stand and single out who goes in and who stays out – by simply proclaiming who, what policies, what acts are to be despised as “Communist” and who should be destroyed in the process. Joe McCarthy’s hearings and the way he upended this country over the years he was in power is the stuff of legend and history. Read that history and see how many people were destroyed. It is tragic. That is what CPAC is setting up. The White Supremacists – the neo Nazi’s – the KKK – and all the rest have found their common ground to bring about their Nirvana. Nothing is as chilling as listening to their talks at this CPAC conference and seeing the audience response. They are ready to come for the rest of us who don’t walk their path and mimic their speech.

Trump has successfully brought back into the present the United States in which he was mentored. He and his followers are working to restore and maintain Joseph McCarthy’s United States which only existed in McCarthy’s alcoholic fantasies.

This United States periodically returns to such brutality. Trump can do this because that kind of thing is a horrendous part of our history which we deny, deny, deny so we can repeat this again and again. When defeated and saner more humane people take over that past is then buried. This time, we need to make sure that history is not buried, but kept alive and taught in our schools so the next generation is not free to destroy itself and its children.

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Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott

Or you can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.co

_________________________________________________________






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Posted in Adolph Hitler, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Congressman Jim Jordan, Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, Nazism, politics, Roy Cohn, Vladimir Putin | Comments Off on Bettina Members Share…

The End……….

February 28th, 2019

by: Marceline Donaldson

If you didn’t get it before, yesterday was the end of Donald Trump.

If you didn’t get that during the Michael Cohen hearing you got it when Trump left Vietnam hours early with no agreement. You had a premonition that something was up; that all was not right with the fascist leaders’ world when the Russian Lavrov showed up in Vietnam on his private plane from Russia the day before Trump arrived. Something he had to say to Kim that he did not want to chance any intelligence group to hear? He did not have his plane land so he could have a cup of Vietnam tea – no matter how good or how nourishing it could be. Something that obvious does not happen without great consternation as its root cause in the circle of eastern european mafioso leadership.

The few pictures which emerged, even with Donald and Kim shown casually walking together said there was tension between Kim and Donald. but was it a lovers’ spat or permanent split? Or did Kim see himself aligned too closely with someone who will soon be out of office in disgrace when Kim was trying so hard to be one of the power elite of the autocratic world. Nothing said we were in Trump’s end-time louder or longer than that “summit”.

The Congressional hearing itself was amazing. The dynamics more so than the words – although the words had a small sway on what you saw.

The Republicans were acting out for all to see exactly what Michael Cohen was describing as to how he got his talking and marching orders from the “Don”. He got them the way the “Don,” as do most, if not all, of the world’s mafia leaders, communicate their orders to their underlings. And – each Congressman, well except maybe one, the renegade Amash – stuck to their talking points each and everyone of them. It was as if they were just learning English and everyone was repeating what the last one said as they grappled with trying to learn proper English grammar.

And then there was the small interlude with Mr. Meadow, the African slave auctioneer, refusing to acknowledge his racism. Emotions ran high at that point, but I was remembering Mr. Meadows and his racism showing during the tenure of President Barack Obama and weren’t there a few other times when his racism so stood out?

Congressman Meadows claimed he could not be racist because he has nieces and nephews of color. That was so funny I couldn’t stop laughing out loud. Racism does cause a blind spot thus the truth of the statement which screams out from the racists’ mouth “some of my best friends are….” Meadows comments reminded me of Donald Trump, who has Jewish grandchildren. In spite of that connection to the Jewish Community, Trump’s anti-Semitism screamed out loud and called for the violence that followed. I am sure you remember Trump’s proclamation that he is not a “Globalist.” -and – How could you forget that those hearing him, followed his proclamation – his call to action by shooting and killing some 11 plus Jews within hours of Trump’s call to arms. He did not say – kill those Jews and do it in a place where it is clearly understood that it is Jews you were after. He did it in the style Michael Cohen described – in his coded speech and his followers heard and took action.

It was a parallel example to Congressman Meadows indignation at being called out as a racist. To have put a young black woman on display – the way slaves are put on display at the auction market – for her price to be his describing her love of Donald Trump, while she stood silently by. Trump could not be racist because she would not work for Donald Trump if he were because her father is from Birmingham, Alabama. With that comment I was rolling on the floor not being able to stop laughing. Thank God for having given me a sense of humor.

Having been raised in that neighborhood I knew and know quite a few blacks who are ‘racist’ because they want too much to be accepted by (whites), to be different from (people of color), to be equal to (whites) they will do and say whatever is necessary and as they become adults, that need and those actions determine their character. They too live out of the character defining need to be “better than” – even those who look like and are colored like their ancestors. It was clear the young black woman being so paraded – with Meadows calling out to everyone the price he paid for her and what she would have to acknowledge in return for having been purchased by his family on that slave auction block – is well on her way to being one of those with such low character traits.

The rest of the Republicans questioning Michael Cohen were blindingly white. They were all so white – even the two women who spoke trying to tear down Michael Cohen – except for one. Congressman Higgins from Louisiana. That is where I was raised and one thing I know just from my upbringing and exposure and neighbors and family is the person with that color under the skin. The color, which you don’t see looking at those with some colored ancestors who have white looking skin, except when the person is seen under the television cameras.

People who look like Higgins with that kind of color showing when under the “klieg lights” were “passé blanc”. And there was this Congressperson Higgins showing that darkness more clearly than the rest, even in his lack of character. That extreme lack comes from the character built on the constant lie the passé blanc lives with in a society which puts you in a box with those of the same color, but then you have hopped out of your box into another with people of another skin color, originally probably to get a better job for your family to be able to eat, live and have better advantages which are given to those in the other box. Those constant lies one has to tell to stay in that ‘white box” gives your character and the character of your children that certain tinge – which those around you know, but you think is well hidden.

Higgins outed himself with his questions about the “boxes” Cohen was looking through in preparation for the hearing. Higgins knew quite well those were the boxes returned to Mr. Cohen after the government raided his home and office and carried them off. He heard Michael Cohen say that, but it was too good to be able to twist that into something negative to Michael Cohen – something Higgins could claim Mr. Cohen “hid” from the government and he demanded with much self-righteous indignation that Mr. Cohen immediately send off to the government agencies from whom he somehow managed to put something over on by his hiding of those boxes.

We tell on ourselves as humans. All you have to do is look and listen. Mr. Higgins was telling on himself as to who he was – a lifetime of such hiding – or a couple generations of hiding, hoping to move far enough away so he is accepted without fear of exposure.

What also stopped me was the way Mr. Cohen described Donald Trump’s “code” way of speaking and then immediately one of the very white Republicans coming behind to question him showing they were totally immersed in that “code” and were speaking and questioning out of the talking points they so received and were parroting.

What an incredible day. And the denouement at the end learning that Kim Jong Un sent Trump packing early without an agreement. Kim is trying to lift himself up into acceptance as equal by the world fascist leadership community and he can’t do that hanging out with someone who is being thrown out of that “strong man”, “macho”, very “fascist” leaning group.

Good bye Donald!!!!!!!!!

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Congresswoman Tlaid, Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, politics, President Obama, racism | Comments Off on The End……….

French Toast vs. Lost Bread

February 18th, 2019

by: Marceline Donaldson

As I turn to New Orleans, many things come back into focus. One is the breakfast phenom called “Lost Bread”. It has now probably become national – maybe even further – so I thought I would share two recipes with you which have geographical significance. French Toast I learned in the North – Lost Bread I grew up with in New Orleans. It is amazing how similar they are.

Lost Bread

In a mixing bowl whip together two eggs (organic), one cup organic turbinado sugar, enough organic milk to make a nice dipping sauce – but not too liquid/runny. If you want to use almond milk – coconut milk – or some other kind of liquid, enjoy!

Keep your bread until it is stale. If you don’t have time and/or throw away bread instead of keeping it for such things as Lost Bread or bread pudding, or for making bread crumbs when you have a minute, then put the new bread you want to use in the oven on a very low light – 250 degrees or 300 tops – until it has stiffened. And feel very ashamed if you actually throw away what some consider old stale bread. You could always sprinkle that stale bread with a bit of water, put it in the oven and ‘voila’ – you have freshly baked bread for supper.

Add cinnamon, nutmeg, grated ginger to your taste. Maybe a little organic hazelnut oil – whatever combination of tastes you especially like.

Drown the sliced bread in the sauce above, pick it up with a spatula and let the liquid drip off for a few seconds and then fry it in an iron skillet or grill or griddle until nicely browned on one side and then turn it over to the other side.

Either sprinkle turbinado sugar on the bread when you turn it over or just continue to let the bread fry until done and pour a bit of organic maple syrup over the Lost Bread once you put it on your plate for eating.

FRENCH TOAST

The basic difference between Lost Bread and French Toast is the kind of bread you use and the method of cooking.

For French Toast buy a loaf of organic french bread. For this you can buy the organic bread which is stale and being sold at a substantial discount. French bread is long and thin – Italian bread is sort of the same, but fat in the middle. I think French Bread is best used for this, however, it all comes down to a matter of taste – or culture.

Let the loaf harden if it isn’t already ‘stale and hard’.

Slice the long thin french bread into about 1 1/2 or 2 inch slices. Let the slices soak in the sauce above for a couple minutes until they seem spongy and then fry on an iron grill turning when one side is light brown. This serves up well when cooked on a circular iron grill and served on the same grill.

Once both sides have a bit of color arrange them on an iron grill or griddle and pour more of the sauce on top of the bread so it is soaked. It is also important to use generous amounts of grated organic ginger mixed with the sauce for a really fabulous taste.

Put the french toast, which is nice and shiny with the added sauce on top, in the oven to continue cooking. Make sure you are generous with the sauce because it turns into custard inside the bread with the sugar on top making the bread a bit crispy and crusty on top. This takes only about five minutes. The bread will puff out and become beautiful and very tasty. Don’t let it stay too long. It takes a bit of experimenting to get the hang of exactly when to take this French Toast out of the oven. Each oven takes a different amount of time.

Serve it with a platter of sliced ham and you have a fabulous breakfast.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

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Posted in Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Cookbook, Breakfast Table Talk | Comments Off on French Toast vs. Lost Bread

THE WALL: A 1920’s KKK Dream

February 15th, 2019

That dream, in the 1920’s when the KKK was at its height, was complete with steel slats and it was a very high wall on the Southern border between the U. S. and Mexico.

It looks as though Donald Trump, the illegitimate president of the United States, is doing everything he can to fulfill that dream. Is this his memorial to his father, who was apparently a part of the KKK? https://ahtribune.com/us/2016-election/242-trump-grandfather-pimp-father-kkk.html?fbclid=IwAR073Tg7RDAbs2uIjtiWeDGVC09i5tyRk7BTjBk0LMh_SDjsx6WRpbjWonM

His father’s legacy to Trump was to get him started in the same vein in which he lived his life – by incorporating into his life and work discrimination against African Americans, as in not letting them rent in the buildings father and son built. Trump was started on his racist path early in life and continued on that path throughout his life. As the United States became more diverse, the peoples included in this family’s racism became more diverse and today, apparently includes all of the brown and black peoples of the world.

How fitting that his denouement would be fulfilling the dream of many klansmen of his father’s era by pushing through to build this wall (in their honor?). As you look at the determination and energy and effort Trump has put behind this WALL it had to have a very special meaning to him. All of the trying in todays’ world by many talking heads to make it look as though Trump is working for his base just does not fit.

For his base, he could have moved on and worked for something to give them that was doable. This is a strong emotional commitment which has driven Trump. What could be stronger than doing this for his father? Was the part of the WALL Trump was trying to build to have his father’s name?

AND — a little bonus — because of the timing, Trump could also use this point in time to coverup, distract from, mute and diminish the publicity around the roll-out of Andrew McCabe’s book “The Threat”? Trump’s timing wasn’t perfect but it was close. If McCabe’s book was introduced when it was supposed to be – this weekend on 60 Minutes – without the preview of the 60 Minutes interview with McCabe on the morning and evening Talk/News shows, Trump’s efforts would have perfectly wiped “The Threat” off the news. As it is, he was able to reduce and diminish the coverage of McCabe’s book because of his announcement that he was going to declare a “National Emergency” after he signed the bill. Since most of the newscasters either didn’t know or simply eliminated, for better effect, the fact that this bill has enough votes behind it to make it veto proof, neither the House nor the Senate needed Trump’s signature taking away from him the circus he is creating to throw smoke into all of our faces so we can’t see McCabe and his new book. Is this what is called a ‘two’fer?

FROM TRUMP TO SENATOR LIZ CHENEY

Lying in bed, dozing off I was sharply awakened by this woman doing the most intense racist rant I have seen in a very long time.

Fortunately, I was recording that particular news show so I was able to rewind and watch it from the beginning. I was totally shocked to see that the person giving this racist rant in the most arrogant, smug and self-satisfied way was none other than Senator Liz Cheney – daughter of the ex-Vice President. I kept wondering why she had this super smug demeanor as she ranted on and on after having been asked a question about Donald Trump. Her rant focused on Elizabeth Warren and the fact that Senator Warren publicly acknowledged throughout most of her life, her Native American ancestry. Instead of talking about the courage that took, especially during the time frame in which Senator Warren made her family background public, Senator Cheney was ripping Senator Warren apart. What is there about that which set her off? Should we look into Senator Cheney’s racial background?

When the question about Donald Trump was repeated, Senator Cheney simply continued the most racist monologue against Senator Warren that I have heard in decades. My further shock was that no one called her on it. There should have been outcries from every corner of Congress demanding that she apologize. Not one peep. Today, having heard the backlash against one of the brown women, Ilham Omar, in Congress claiming she made bigoted comments and calling for her to apologize, and at the same time the same people ignoring of Senator Cheney’s comments shows up the claims against others for what they are – political attacks wherever and however you can get them.

I kept thinking I was in a time warp. I didn’t always agree with Senator Cheney, but I had never pictured her just inches away from the likes of the most bigoted of those in public life. One becomes accustomed to people like the Congressman Steve King and just dismisses anything he says. But Senator Cheney, I thought, was better than that. Well – so much for that misperception. Now I understand why Steve King was able to spout his racism and walk away unscathed. He has lots of compatriots who are viciously racist and don’t see anything wrong with Steve King’s racism. He is entitled?

EXECUTIVE TIME a la TRUMP

Maybe most of you don’t remember that far back, to the beginnings of Donald Trump’s illegitimate and illegal presidency, but I do. I remember when he talked about being shocked that the job of the president of the United States was so easy he could do both. He could run the Trump Organization and act as though he was President of the United States.

This was not said by a talking head interpreting Trump’s comments, this was said by Trump himself.

Now we have Trump’s schedule showing massive amounts of “Executive Time”. There have been many talking and poking fun at what that means – watching cable tv seems to be the first comment with the most repeaters, but every time I hear that I remember those comments made by Trump – and I’ve seen that he usually tells on himself and does things up front. Is he running the Trump Organization during his “Executive Time”? Are his comments about the Presidency being a part time job true?

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

I remember where I was when I first heard comments about “The New World Order.” The first time I heard this is was George Bush the Sr. making the comments.

As I look at this ‘Trump/vs the rest of us’ round in this war, it certainly looks like one of the battles trying to bring about that vision of such world governance by the Corporate/Billionaire Group.

From the comments I’ve heard – this New World Order seems to be about the Corporate/Billionaire Group ruling everything (and of course, being very patronizing to those not in their Group) and the diminishment of Government by the people, for the people and with the people. The people being those who do the work to maintain, grow and make life easier for that Corporate/Billionaire Group while dedicating their lives to trying to be like them on almost no money and very few assets.

Not like the traditional slavery in this country because slaves were brought in from Africa and they were very dark of skin. The people doing the todays work that would have been done by slaves in that past era includes those we call “white” along with all of the brown and black peoples of the world. And, some of the people in the Corporate/Billionaire Group are brown – haven’t seen any blacks yet, but they will surface.

Are we moving forward as a world where Cyber Warfare takes over and actual hand to hand and gun and other combat using the traditional artifacts of killing being pushed off center stage, being used to distract from the real war. A way to entertain and occupy the workers of the world so they will stop calling for these impossibles where we all benefit and profit?

We are certainly not fighting over Communism. That went out decades ago if it ever existed. What always amazed me about that was the theoretical definition of Communism seemed to be taken straight from the economic system outlined by Jesus in the New Testament and the people most against that economic system were the Evangelical Christians.

And we are definitely not fighting over Socialism – as you can see from this current beginning stage of the election of the next United States president. That word was introduced by Howard Schulz. Isn’t he one of the Billionaire Group? Beginning the anti-Socialist distraction rhetoric?

And, the biggest joke of all is Capitalism, which we claim exists in the United States, but which actually can’t exist anywhere as long as prejudice against groups exists and is a part of the societies in which we function. We can claim some economic system is capitalistic, but in reality we can’t have a capitalistic system as long as we have such strong prejudices in this world. What we have, in the name of capitalism, is a system which allows theft and other such uglies to be made legitimate, normal and actually a good thing in the systems we call Capitalist.

I wish we could clear our eyes to see the world as it is. One of the roles bigotry plays is to cloud the ability of people to see reality. And those who promote bigotry are benefitting mightily from John Q. Public’s mental illness.

Ed. Note: From several members of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community. Hope you learned something from these thoughts shared.


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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Feminism, Ilhan Omar, Memorials, politics, Senator Liz Cheney, sexism | Comments Off on THE WALL: A 1920’s KKK Dream

Come for Tea!

February 12th, 2019

One of the best ways we have discovered to stay healthy and away from those things like colds, the flu and other such diseases and infirmities is through drinking different kinds of tea.

NO – not the tea bags you buy in the store which you bring home and drop into hot, boiling water thinking you have done something great for yourself, but the drink you have thought about, analyzed and see as helping you and giving you lots of enjoyment and nutritional nourishment during the drinking.

We will give you one of our tea recipe’s if you respond and give us one of yours.

BETTINA TEA Number One

For this tea you will need the following:

Organic parsley

Organic ginger root

organic lemon

Fill a pot full of water. Which size pot depends upon how much tea you want to make. This tea gets better with age. Brew it today and let it sit on the stove overnight so you can have more when you re-heat the pot tomorrow.

and for all of you southerners – you will need, in addition, organic turbinado sugar to turn this innocent drink into ‘sweet tea.’

Squeeze a lemon into the pot of water. If the pot is quite large squeeze two or three lemons into the pot.

Chop the lemon, after you have squeezed the juice into the pot of water, rind and all, into small pieces and put this into the pot so the only thing left is the end of the lemon which attached to the tree. It may be perfectly respectable to use this piece of the lemon, but we prefer to throw it away.

Ginger Grater – one of many kinds. The sharper the teeth the better the grater. Steel, ceramic – they all suffice.

Using a ginger grater, grate a fairly large piece of the organic ginger into the pot of now boiling water. Again the size of the ginger root you use depends upon the size of the pot of water and your taste buds.

Pick the parsley leaves off the stems and put a generous hand full of parsley leaves into the still boiling water.

Cover the pot and let it simmer for as long as it takes the parsley leaves to dissolve so when you drink the tea practically every drop has a remembrance of parsley.

For those of you who can’t resist – immediately before serving, put your organic turbinado sugar into the pot and let it simmer about two minutes.

Or, if there are those who don’t want sweet tea and you do, put the sugar in your cup and then pour in this BETTINA TEA Number One.

The taste is fantastic. It relaxes you instantly and just think for a moment about the incredible nutrients sliding down your throat and going into your body to increase your well-being.

Enjoy! And may you live as long as you have something to give or receive.

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Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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Or you can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott.

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, BETTINA TEA Number One, Bettina's Cookbook, Breakfast Table Talk, Drugless and Caffeinless Tea, Make your own Tea, Parsley Lemon Ginger Tea, Recipe, Research and Collaboration, Tea, Tea without tea bags | Comments Off on Come for Tea!

Elizabeth Warren and Pocahontas!

February 8th, 2019

by: Marceline Donaldson

It has been a busy day! The writing from a Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Member on Elizabeth Warren has caused a bit of a blowup. So you know I have to chime in. Who would guess that among hard working people; thoughtful people; intellectual people there would be this bit of racism.

Is it racist to dump on Elizabeth Warren for talking about her Native American ancestors and as some are doing, claim that is reason for the Democratic Party to rethink her candidacy for president? “Drop her” is what I have heard from some and looking for justification to back their negativity towards Senator Warren is what I have heard from others.

What is the racial mythology fueling this? The claim that Blacks, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans and all those other minorities out there really want to be White. What negates this is a White American acknowledging her Native American ancestors and at a very young age. -That is clear in the past reporting on Michael Jackson. It came out periodically. The claim that Michael Jackson wanted to be ‘white’. He used ‘white’ make-up on his face to cover his blackness, etc. etc. The reality of his life was never acknowledged.

The fact that Michael Jackson had a disease that turns your skin from dark to stark white was never injected into those conversations. Neither was the fact that makeup on the white portions of your face where the pigment has gone away does not take very well so your choice is limited and it must be the white makeup. That was constantly reported, but the facts were skewered to accommodate the mythology of White Supremacy. No matter how great Michael Jackson was – and he was pretty outstanding in his day – what he really wanted was to be white. That is the other side to the rejection of and demand for an apology from Elizabeth Warren for acknowledging her Native American ancestors.

How do I know about this disease? My grandfather had the same disease. His hands were spotted as the darker pigment was moving away and his hands and face and neck were turning white as the disease progressed. Some people live to see themselves turn completely white, some die before that happens. I don’t think it is the disease which causes their death, it doesn’t seem to have any other affect on the body.

That is only one reporting which brought out and emphasized how blacks wanted to be white. There have been more. What does that do? It shores up White Supremacy. Those who are not white want to be. The opposite – those who are seen and accepted as white hide any minorities they may have in their background. “Passing” has always been looked down on, but once you have “passed for white”, married and have children that look white you are sort of safe, just stay put and don’t bring up those minority ancestors.

What Elizabeth Warren has done is turn all of that on its head. She had a life as white – until she started talking about her Native American ancestry. What is that? It is a violation of the contract whites have with each other. If every ‘white’ persons’ minority ancestry was outed we would have chaos in this country there are so many. Slavery wasn’t mostly on plantations, most of slavery happened in one house with one white family living “cheek by jowl” with one black slave family. The result of this produced many white plus children. White Supremacy would be in total confusion and destroyed if history were more accurate. The hold that the need to be better than has on all of us becomes clearer by the decade. The hypocrisy of racism and its ridiculousness is lost on most of us.

One great example of the ridiculousness comes from the life of Senator Strom Thurmond. A son of the south and one who viciously articulated hatred of blacks who should always know and stay in their place. His political career was founded on his racism. Senator Thurmond had a black daughter who he knew, educated, with whom he had a relationship, but everyone conspiratorially around him kept his secret. Thurmond was in the forefront of those Democrats who left the Democratic Party because they saw the possibility of taking control of and changing the Republican Party into a replica of the KKK and other such groups. And as we have seen from this current man who calls himself President of these United States, he was successful.

Our hypocrisy on race is the stuff of legend. So how does White Supremacy and racism remain? It stays put because of the inferiority and arrogance of whites – conservative and liberal – who need to have that feeling of being better than to feel normal.

How does that relate to Senator Warren, her Native American heritage and the societal reaction?

If we are going to maintain White Supremacy we must abide by the rules. A cardinal rule is that one follows the mythology – in this case that blacks and other minorities want to be white. To break that happens when a white person – one who is totally accepted as white – comes out talking about her Native American ancestors – that is the stuff which gets one stoned.

Senator Warren – you are white. Defined as being better than and as a young person just getting started in your career you came out putting “Indian American” on forms that need to be filled out with race on the form. Just look at what you are doing to this society. You have upended and disregarded and violated one of the basic rules that maintains White Supremacy. The mythology which is one of the pillars holding up White Supremacy is that Blacks and other minorities want to be white and here you are coming out to say I am White but I acknowledge and respect my Native American ancestors. Look around Senator Warren, even the Native American leaders can’t handle that. Why not? If basic change happens. If everyone starts coming out and acknowledging and respecting all parts of their heritage just look at what that will mean. Those leaders of minority groups, among others, will be out of work.

Hey, you put out your heritage let me put out mine, which includes Native Americans. But wait – that doesn’t do anything. For one minority to lay claim to their ancestors in another minority group – no sweat. That changes nothing and is barely noticed. Many of my African American friends acknowledge their Native American ancestors and no one notices. The problem comes when you – white female – comes out to dare to acknowledge and respect your Native American heritage, and lordy, to even talk about it in the highest places.

And to all of those claiming you do not belong to any Native American tribe and therefore can’t be Native American, that is mind blowing. Why? Because that is the way Native Americans are annihilated – eliminated – become obsolete . That is something we have been trying to do almost since the Pilgrims landed.

If you are mixed and live as white and the generations pass, your Native American heritage is lost and it is also lost to all of those Native American Tribes. Gradually Native Americans will become extinct as we become a more mixed society. Just think of what that means if only those who are members of a Native American Tribe can call themselves Native Americans. That is a form of genocide.

My great grandfather was Black Feet Indian. He worked for and received a Doctorate of Divinity from Philips University. He was an ordained Episcopal Priest who wound up in New Orleans where he was rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church; head of a school; and did a lot more. His story counts – his life was important – his ancestors deserve a place in history as who they were. He lived in an African American community and was considered African American. He was not a member of a Native American Tribe. If he and his life and his true identity are lost to history and he becomes submerged in other groups histories, Native Americans suffer as their history is degraded. That does not happen to the Irish, the French, the English or to any other group considered white. They accomplish and their progeny do not deny their ancestors because they were not citizens of Ireland or France or etc. It is tragic that we do not live in a time or in a country where your Native American heritage is not denied but celebrated.

We are watching, under Donald Trump, history repeating itself in another century with some changes, but basically the same annihilation of a group of people considered ‘minority’. The brown peoples attempting to come into the United States. Their children are being taken away from them at the gate. Native American children were taken from their parents and who knows what happened to most of them. A generation lost. That part of Native American history can only be reclaimed by those families which integrated and included Native Americans who were ripped from their families and thrown to the wind. That history will be an expansion of Native American history. For a more accurate history we need the stories from those mixed people who talk about their Native American ancestry and who tell the stories from their youth which have been passed down through the family. The Native American stories passed down through minority communities sort of remain. The Native American stories are totally discouraged from being passed down through white communities.

Your history and the history of your Native American ancestors is also a part of Native American history and should be talked about, included and accepted, especially by those Native American Tribes who are what -growing or shrinking?

Our society used to believe – if you had just 1% of minority “blood” you were a minority. That means, if you were mixed with any of the groups of the world that we call “races” and those ‘races’ were white you were considered “white” unless in the mix even as little as 1% was one of the minority ‘races”. Then you were considered a minority and then you, your history, your legacy, your life were thrown on the dump heap.

Some of us have begun to see otherwise. As blacks, latina’s, native americans, philippine’s and more begin to achieve greatness the conversation has turned. The conversation around the “black” golfer , who was number one and couldn’t be unseated, that public conversation went – he is not really black, he has these other ancestors and should not be called black. Isn’t his mother something else? How can he neglect and push aside her contribution to who he is. And she was not white, but enough to help turn the conversation. That gave us enough of a view to the future that we realized racism will continue, but it will be in us in other ways – which are beginning to be newly defined.

Minorities can be raised up into this group which espouses White Supremacy either overtly or covertly if their achievements are so great they question the negative stereotype by which we are raised. But, “whites” must give up, hide and not claim their minority ancestors. That is necessary because if it went in the other direction we would lose this great bonus of White Supremacy and many would have to live out their lives being equal to. What a death sentence to their ego.

So, Senator Warren, do you have the guts to continue respecting, honoring and raising up your Native American ancestors or are you going to be one who apologizes because you slipped and acknowledged the family history with which you were raised. Those Native American Tribesmen get it – or they should. They clearly understand that there are those outside registered tribe members who have Native American ancestors and can freely talk about them. Or do you need to be in lock step with the White Supremacist who are trying desperately to keep their ‘better than’ position by any means necessary?

And all of you Native American Tribes – you demonstrate for other things are you going along with what is happening to Elizabeth Warren? Are you going to stand up for those who acknowledge their Native American ancestors and heritage even if they are not a member of a particular tribe. Is that such a threat to you that you will jump on that White Supremacist band wagon and go along with the program? If you do, it will be to your extreme loss and to the loss of your progeny and to those who went before.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in African American history, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Blog Response, Elizabeth Warren, Feminism, Historical Support, Immigration, Native American History, Native Americans, politics, Preserving Family History and Stories | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren and Pocahontas!

Native American or White!!!!

February 7th, 2019

Because God knows in this society you can’t be both and be proud of your entire ancestry!

I am Native American and I need to weigh in on this conversation.

It is an amazing conversation to me because we are talking about the fact that Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors at some point “passed”. We are looking at a time in history when 1% was the criteria for whether or not you were a minority. If you had 1% African blood you were African. If you had 1% Native American blood you were Native American. If you had 1% Chinese blood you were Chinese – at least in America.

Today we are dumping all over Elizabeth Warren because she attempted to claim her Native American heritage. That is such a threat in a racist, bigoted society that we get up in arms about it and begin to dump on the person who is causing this uproar. MAKE HER APOLOGIZE SO THE REST OF US CAN RELAX AND NOT BE THREATENED WITH THE POSSIBILITY THAT ‘OUTING’ YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY MIGHT BECOME THE NORM!

Once upon a time, not that many years ago we would have dumped on Elizabeth Warren for trying to “pass”. Today we dump on her for trying to acknowledge her ancestry -trying to respect the stories that circulated in her family when she was a girl – because the ancestry she has held up as a part of her ‘racial’ identity is of a group considered a part of the oppressed minority in this country. We can’t have that! Just think of the chaos that will ensue! Most of you would have to move to the ghetto!

We are even trying to re-write history to get people to believe that if you were Native American during the time when Elizabeth Warren filled out the forms everyone is holding up you would have received some kind of special consideration and that special consideration would have gotten you rights, privileges and other goodies from this society that non-Native Americans could not have received.

Get real people! Stop lying and trying to redeem yourselves and your society at someone else’s expense.

There has never been a time in this society when you would have gotten any small part of the “goodies” passed around to everyone else if you were Native American. You would have been discriminated against and you would have been pushed aside and pushed back in favor of white males – and then black males – and then white females – and then black females – and then male Native Americans and at the bottom would have been any leftovers doled out to female Native Americans, but there never were any. That is history – what you are trying to create is another myth to ease your guilt at your participation in this racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. etc. society.

Today, Native American tribal leaders are concerned because they have profits from the gambling casinos on their reservations which are given to those members of the tribe who “qualify” and the tighter the definition of those who are members of the different tribes who “qualify” the more money and benefits they receive and the less competition for leadership of the tribes.

Remember when the United States took Native American children from their homes and families and reservations and put them into pograms where they were to be acculturated? They were never returned home and they and/or their progeny are someplace in this society where they have ‘integrated’, ‘intermarried’ and whatever else happened to them which successfully insured they would have no connection to any Native American tribe. So what are they? and where are they? Are they Indian Mongrels? No family – no ancestors they can admit to without risking the scorn of a nation? And what of all those other Native Americans who intermarried and became Irish, English, French, etc. plus Native American? Is their history also to be hidden because society does not want to see it to have to acknowledge that a Senator of the United States who was an attorney tenured professor of law at Harvard University is part Native American? My God – there goes the unravelling of hundreds of years of creating and nurturing White Male Supremacy in all things!

That is what this comes down to! Does this Elizabeth Warren thing challenge and upend White Supremacy? You can bet the store that it does, especially in the eyes of those who need to be White better than Black, better than Native American, better than etc. which is most of you. Isn’t that a large part of what elected and is keeping Trump in office? His racist, bigoted appeal to our lowest nature succeeds.

How do you explain such achievement, as attained by one like Elizabeth Warren who has Native American blood? Shouldn’t that disqualify her? How could she and her family have done such a thing to this society?

We have had other members of the White Privileged Supreme Society members who have been “outed”. Major difference – they didn’t out themselves to claim their minority heritage.

Wasn’t John Kerry accused of having Jewish ancestors or was it Madelin Albright? And then there were those accused of having African ancestors who they didn’t acknowledge and being dumped on because of it and because they were accused of ‘passing for white.’ When that is the narrative with the society doing the outing White Supremacy is safe. When the narrative is about someone the rest of you considered “White” and who is fairly frequently throwing up in your face that she really also has Native American ancestors – that is a very different narrative and threatens the very fabric out of which this society was woven.

Elizabeth Warren acknowledges her Native American ancestors without shame and in fact with some pride and so she has to be excoriated because that is totally unacceptable in this society. What if others started to do the same following her example? What a mess we would then have on our hands.

Bigotry pops out in many different ways and this is one way bigotry has jumped out without a white sheet and pointy hat, but with the same emotion and to do the same job.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in African American history, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Elizabeth Warren, Empathy, Feminism, homophobic, Native American History, Native Americans | Comments Off on Native American or White!!!!

Trump Talk @ Congress Stirs

February 6th, 2019

A Conglomeration of Comments

by: Bettina Network Members

  • I heard and saw Donald Trump’s talk to Congress, the Supreme Court Judges and so many more and couldn’t keep my mind focused. It has strayed whenever anything about Trump surfaces because what I can’t reconcile is TRUMP – PROSTITUTION – STONE!                                    
  • We have just been through a lot with the arrest and indictment of Roger Stone. Most striking to me was the fact that Roger Stone shared an apartment in New York with a woman who was referred to as an ex-madam, who commiserated with Roger Stone because she remembered what it was like to be arrested by the police. And she talked about knowing Donald Trump, who she considered a friend.
  • Given how close Donald Trump and Roger Stone have been over the years Trump could not help but know about this arrangement and knowing Rogers’ friend he would know she was an ex-Madam. I couldn’t help but take the next step to wonder if the compromat Russia has on Trump is his involvement with prostitution. Not the kind of hanging around in a Russian Hotel peeing on the bed with other prostitutes, but the kind of being a mafia Don where prostitution – the kind which is the selling of women’s bodies – is generally always a part of most mafia organizations’ income.
  • I could be wrong about this, but looking at the history and all else it certainly rings true in my mind. et tu?

The Look of Congress during Donald Trump’s Talk!

It was quite something to see the cameras pan across Congress to show us the look of our government when all are gathered together.

I saw one group, interspersed with many Congress people in white – the women of Congress. However, they were all seated on one side with one group – the Democrats. There were also hijabs sprinkled amongst them and colors from white to brown to black. The features of those seated in the Congressional Seats on the Democrat’s side were from Asian to Middle Eastern to African to Northern European. They were the America we mythologize; the America we sing to; the America we strive to be; the democracy we are and our ancestors were trying to build.

On the other side they were all white; almost totally northern european in looks – features – hair – ancestry; and almost totally male. They looked as though they would be at home in a Russian Parliament where the color is white and the gender is male.

Could that be what and why the collusion? the conspiracy? For white males to continue to dominate they must conspire to keep their countries with white males first and everyone else oppressed under them supporting them?

Elizabeth Warren and her Native American Ancestry!

I have been reading the coverage of Elizabeth Warren and her claim of a Native American Ancestry. It reminds me of the coverage of Rachel Dolezal when she clearly made a conscious decision to move from white to black and has lived her life in a black community ever since. The way the media attempted to pull her apart, to denigrate her, to make her the butt of many jokes, it was clear that Ms. Dolezal had touched a nerve.

Elizabeth Warren and her putting out in the public her family stories about being part Native American and not running away from that, but making it very public shows up the mythology of Affirmative Action. Our response to that says we know Affirmative Action did not work, did not give opportunity to minorities except in token ways, was not something we wanted to continue because we wanted the superiority of white and male to continue unabated. Anything that touches our myths attempting to destroy them must be ridiculed and the people who step out with something showing the lie of the myths by which we live must be either destroyed or made to heel.

The latest news story on Elizabeth Warren and her ancestry is about a form she filled in to attend a Texas School and goodness, she put in the place of race “Native American”. We can now all come running to bring up and make our denial of racism very clear. One can hear the jumps for joy and shouts as she is pilloried for doing such. Why pilloried? Because the media and others can claim that she was trying to take advantage of all of the ‘opportunities and goodies’ and advantages over whites which this society supposedly gives to Native Americans.

All of that sounds like a Trumpian – a lie told to hide a very ugly truth or to distract one from seeing something which would be damaging.

I was raised in a neighborhood which was very ‘integrated’. Quite unusual for these United States, but there are pockets of such here and there. In those pockets you will find people from blonde with blue eyes to very dark with kinky, thick hair. How does that happen? Especially since in this ‘integrated’ neighborhood everyone identified as black. You also had Jews in these neighborhoods because until the 1960’s Jews were considered black.

That happened because early on – even through the 1950’s and 1960’s there were many ‘mixed’ marriages. Marriages between African Americans and European Americans. That happened even during the time when that was against the law and you could wind up in jail. Whites who married blacks would quietly move into the black community and they, from that point on, identified as black because their children were to be considered and it was easier on everyone if that happened.

In our small community we knew those who were white, although that was not a topic of polite conversation.

Given the extreme mixing of Blacks, Irish and Native Americans in the deep south, there are many walking around this country with Native American ‘blood’ – or what we should more properly refer to as Native American roots. – hey Boston!! Check your ‘Irish” ancestry lately?

Since Native Americans were on the bottom of the ladder, not many acknowledged their ancestors if they were Native American. Anything but Native American was a step up. In most families, stories about Native American ancestry were ‘hushed up”. In Senator Warrens family, apparently they were told and passed down the generations.

What we have missed in this Elizabeth Warren story – or maybe we have not missed it because we want to have any opportunity to participate in the denial of our history and our bigotry – it took a lot of guts for Senator Warren to acknowledge her Native American roots in an application which she was filing to be able to move ahead. To know from family history that some part of your ancestry was in the Native American community is whispered about in close quarters not spread in public on application forms because the result would be your denial – with the claim of other reasons – or your not being able to move as far ahead as you would like to go because…… What the press and others want to make of this is quite Trumpian. It is an opportunity for them to pass back and forth in the society the lies about race told in their circles.

To take that stand in Texas, all those many years ago, was to put the possibility of your future move up in this society on the chopping block in favor of acknowledging and shouting out to everyone that you indeed walked around in this society carrying your Native American ancestry in the open – letting the sun shine in on it because it is a part of who you are. That is speaking truth and living that truth and making your move in your career taking along your total self. Look at how many people and how much custom and bigotry you aggravate and stir up.

Cudos to Senator Warren. May you live long and prosper and may you always continue to walk in your truth no matter the negative repercussions that might come therefrom. There are many of us who support your strength to be able to publicly and constantly acknowledge a family inheritance that many in this society would hide and run away from. The fact that you were acknowledging that inheritance all those many years ago and continue to do so today speaks to your courage, your truth and your character.

PLEASE do not allow the static you are going to receive constantly make you think, even for a moment, of denying your racial heritage – wear it proudly whether it brings you good or ill. In the end you will be encircled by those who appreciate what you have done because they realize and have lived the oppression even from those who do otherwise and hide their ancestry.

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__________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Feminism, politics, Rachel Dolezal, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Trump Talk @ Congress Stirs

BILLIONAIRES UNITE!

January 31st, 2019

The only thing Mr. Starbucks’ announcement about the possibility of a run for the presidency of these United States did for most people was to remind us that we have been screwed, raped, pillaged with practically everything taken away from us unless we spend our lives working from dawn to dusk for meager rewards – which will become even more lean as time goes on if they are allowed to continue.

Human beings and greed go together. It is one of the sins with which we are born and if we don’t work at constantly curbing our appetites we will all look like our current billionaire class – unmitigated greed, constantly searching for more, feeling poor unless that more comes into our coffers hourly; working to keep what we have, talking magnanimously about the charity we do and blaming the victim for not having what we have as billionaires. Those others could be in this group but for their laziness, lack of initiative, inability to lead, lack of vision, etc. etc. etc.

Some of us have helped to set up and enhance this system under which we operate; others work to make sure it continues; while still others see the evil, complain about it, speak eloquently about working to relieve the pain of the poor, but do nothing; others teach their children how to maintain within this system without sliding down another rung and others work hard just because that is how they were raised.

A few stories about this part of the societal structure and how it comes about:

  1. Because we have a vested interest in ‘bed & breakfast’ I will start with #Airbnb as an example of how the billionaire class is created – why it thrives – what it is about.

Bettina Network, inc. and Bettina’s Bed & Breakfast, inc. were the genesis for Airbnb. It is a classic example of how bigotry remains, thrives and supports the billionaire class and how the billionaire class supports its own and decides who will be let in. There is a thuggishness to those within and those chosen to enter.

When #Airbnb was founded it was on the back of an African American woman who worked over 20 years developing the concept and growing it by inches because venture capital money was and is not available to minorities or women. That is the most solid block in the foundation of this billionaire class. If they have a creed its foundational stone would be on the refusal to admit minorities or women except as tokens to disprove the rule.

Venture Capitalists sent Brian Chesky and two of his friends to the home of this African American woman to find out what she was doing, how, all the details they could glean. Our feelings about what happened circulate around the fact that they did not have an idea, a vision and saw Bettina Network, inc. from afar. They went into a Black woman’s home and family – put their feet under her table, ate her food and stole her business plan and vision. And – they knew nothing about bed & breakfast before that – they didn’t ‘find’ her through their own machinations or investigations or search for places to stay, they were sent by Capital Network in Central Square in Massachusetts to look at what she was doing as something they might steal and copy.

They were not graduates of Ivy League schools nor had they attended Ivy League schools and they had practically no business experience. Their experience consisted of brief times spent as entry level admin people. What they showed was their lack of character and their willingness to steal from someone else with all of the character traits that go along with that – and they did that in spades. Once established they even lied about their beginnings and where the idea for Airbnb came from.

What they created was a structure which incorporated their racism, their greed and more. It is clearly visible in the business they brought about for all to see.

Their racism structured into their corporation? It is entrenched and has many forms within the structure of Airbnb. The most obvious spits on the work of the civil rights leaders of the 1950’s and beyond. The Thurgood Marshall’s, the Jack Greenberg’s, those who litigated for years to move society to a more integrated place and were successful in that endeavor for a brief period of time. Before their legal work, if you applied to college you submitted your resume, your grades, your references and YOUR PICTURE.

Because it was not always possible to tell the color of a persons skin by their application alone, the picture helped Universities at the time to distinguish between applications and to make sure their entering classes were composed of majority white males and very few others.

That practice was deemed illegal through several law suits filed during the 1960’s and beyond. Universities stopped the practice of requiring a picture to accompany your application for admittance because of those law suits and because that practice was declared racist. That practice is now being turned on its head by Airbnb because to make a reservation at an accommodation through Airbnb one must submit a picture and that picture is more often than not used to determine whether or not you will be accepted as a guest.

Many have been discriminated against and have not been able to get reservations. There have been instances of minorities arriving at a home and being turned away with the owner or person at the house claiming the person engaged in ‘subterfuge’ to get a room. What was the subterfuge that got them turned away? A mixed Asian couple in California was turned away at about 10pm in storm conditions because one was Asian and the other of Northern European extraction. The picture they submitted for their reservation was of the Northern European extraction half of the couple. When the Asian woman appeared she was not acceptable so they had to find accommodations elsewhere. The host family claimed they “cheated” to get the room. That was not an isolated incident. The stories of discrimination from Blacks who tried to get accommodations, had to submit pictures and were subsequently turned down are legion.

It is a corporation structured to bring back that kind of racism from the 1950’s and earlier.

It is a corporation structured to make affordable housing almost unavailable and to bring out the greed of those who come near to use the web site.

It is a corporation which has been used by sex traffickers because it has set itself up in such a way that whoever has a need can use their web site and hide a lot they could not get away with, but for.

It is a corporation which, because of the way it is structured, has been a part of at least one client being murdered.

It is a corporation whose structure has allowed the destruction of many houses and estates in some of the most vile ways, causing the upheaval of neighborhoods with the wild parties that have happened in homes which were supposed to be used as a room or an estate for the night.

Investors put 1.2 billion dollars of investment money into Airbnb in promoting some of this society’s worse traits. It will soon go public and if that is successful we will have a corporate structure carrying on what many of us have tried to eliminate from this society for generations – and so it goes.

Isn’t it striking that the three people who started Airbnb and wound up with substantial venture capital money are people who showed themselves to lacking in good character, ethics, and more. Isn’t it striking that those character traits are what has handicapped this country to the point of finally seeing us wind up with a Donald Trump as president? A man who epitomizes exactly what Airbnb is about?

2. Let us move on to another such company founded and structured around questionable morals and character. – Take a look at Facebook. The vision of twins who engaged Zuckerberg to code their business idea. That however wound up the property of Zuckerberg who carried the idea into a corporate structure which is today wrecking havoc on this society in very gross, immoral and unethical ways.

What we are now trying to do is right this wrong which will not be possible because the corporate structure of Facebook has become too strong. It is being credited with being majorly responsible for the election to the presidency of Donald Trump, with the destruction of the privacy guaranteed to the citizens of the United States by the Constitution, with using private conversations and back and forth between family and friends as a front when in reality it sells every scrap of information it can glean to the marketeers and advertisers and others for 20 pieces of silver.

Take a look and analyze most of the corporate structures which have come up and have brought their owners billionaire status and see how they have used the backs of tens of thousands of people to attain their goals and have left the society stripped almost bare with a path for those without character, without good morals, without honesty.

Take a look and analyze and you will find they are all either northern european descendants – some middle easterners – ……

These are two of the most graphic examples, but there are many others.

Most notably, what has been happening and continues to happen is the groups of people looking around the world for up and coming corporations or LLC’s or neighborhood gatherings whose structure and ideas they can steal; that they can get funding for because those doing the developing could not – mostly because of their color and sex.

Because of our experience with the theft of our idea and work by what became Airbnb we have come across many. The stories were all eerily similar and nothing was done about any of it. Look furiously – not within yourselves – but at what others are doing which looks successful – find venture capitalists to fund your stealth and move on into the billionaire’s club. Once you get there all will be forgotten and those who do remember the unethical road you took will soon be dead so just hang on and you will become one of the racist, sexist corporate structures in this society which maintains who we are without any of those others moving up to challenge our superiority. It may happen temporarily, but the business class has insured that this move to open up this society making it more diverse will not last. Remember Martin Luther King, Jr’s sacrifice? How much of what was achieved by so many has been reversed seriously by those now moving up?

And it is not limited to the United States. In other countries where people of brown and black complexions have begun to move up in these corporations – they are swiftly removed and replaced with a whiter skin person with a penis. We have heard many of those stories. Stories that parallel what has been happening in this country for generations. Remember Madame C. J. Walker? Think about all those others, people of color and women, who struggled so mightily with others, white, male, etc. reaping the rewards for their labor, their vision, their imagination.

And what happens now?

A note from Marceline Donaldson: My garden has been torn up – literally the garden in front of my house. My business has been upheaveled! I have been threatened! and so much more. but I am old and neither sickness nor death fazes me so none of that scares me nor does it make me drop the struggle.

What does move me to a furious state is to continue to see this and to know that my children will have to undertake this same struggle when I thought my work and life would make theirs easier. My grandfather worked his entire life to change this society so his children and grandchildren would have a better life and would not have to dedicate so much of their lives and times to this struggle; so did my grandmother; so did my mother; and so have I. My children deserve better and so do your children. I have not paid nearly the price others have paid trying to bring about basic change.

Watching the young people coming along behind the disaster that was Donald Trump thinking they are going to make basic change is heart breaking – the system looks stacked against them. All I can do from my perch is to wonder when and how they will be taken down and replaced with Northern European – very white males and our young people made to pay for their arrogance of thinking they can make such basic change. If they could, the color of our total billionaire group would not be white, male, with some middle easterners – Saudi Arabians – thrown in and one or two African American men and a woman or two. That billionaire group – those who will totally control tomorrow look like Donald Trump’s cabinet and all those other groups where color is absent and women are practically extinct.

_______________________________________________________

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Airbnb, American Corporate Businesses, American Oligarchs, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Bettina's Box of Shame, Donald Trump, Facebook, Feminism, politics, racism, Saudi Arabia, Sex Trafficking, sexism, venture capitalists | Comments Off on BILLIONAIRES UNITE!

Bettina Oracle Speaks

January 29th, 2019

The end of Donald Trump: Illegitimate President of the United States

You folks need to stop bothering me and take care of your business. If you don’t, the next generation will simply have to repeat this scenario which has been repeated for generations without resolving anything. Learn a bit of history, your own history and you will be appalled at what you see – if you have any goodness left in your genes.

You are riddled with liars, murderers covering for each other, persecutions of innocent children, and so much more. The Jews of Hitlers Germany have been replaced by the Children of the United States who are being slaughtered with guns in your streets and in their schools and the Children of Immigrants, who are being put in Concentration Camps and are now being murdered. Those children who have have come to your country – some with their parents, some without – seeking asylum and refuge from so much evil. Their skin is brown and black and your bigotry won’t allow for that. Too many such colors in these United States already.

You need to be full of integrity, good character, working to eliminate poverty, homelessness, BIGOTRY – which is the genesis of all of your society’s ills. You need to stop allowing the likes of Donald Trump who is taking from his evil twins in history and ripping children from their parents; making slaves of those in prison who have suffered under massive incarcerations to do the bidding of the evil institutions in this world of yours and so much more. And no, Trump did not start all of this, but he is the inheritor and chief propagator of the evil coming through today. And to end this, all it takes is moral courage and who amongst you has that? You are all called, but who amongst you answers the call? This is still happening today after thousands of years of such history because only a few answer the call. The rest of you raise up those few and feel that your work is done because of that raising up and acknowledging those heroes. Interestingly, your heroes are never raised up in their own generation. That happens only after they are safely dead.

OK! So you want to know what is happening?

Roger Stone was indicted – did you notice how swift that happened with all of the charges against him not in that court document of indictment? Have you noticed the rumblings of major change? Are you beginning to hear many voices raised to call out the evil? Evil doubles down when those rumblings start.

What do we see: We see Whitaker having stopped the Mueller investigation by declaring to them they will not be allowed any more indictments. Stone is the last and he slipped through by a fluke. No indictments allowed against Donald Trump, against Jr., against Jared Kushner, against Steve Bannon, against Ivanka Trump, against Eric Trump.

Mueller can’t step up to the microphone to tell you this. There are enough bread crumbs along the way, however, for you to see this yourselves.

All of this must be settled and ended before or shortly after Barr takes on the post of Attorney General. He will clear Trump using the foundation set by Whitaker, a man who has been promised much, but who will be dumped on and pushed aside after his work is done – without his promised rewards. If he is lucky, he will leave with a loaf of bread, but no butter. Maybe as he sees his expectations so dashed he will step up to the moral plate and attempt to bring about something else – but he does not look like a soul who is destined to be a great hero.

All bets, in your society, are on the Democrats coming through in 2020 and taking over the government so the United States does not have to step up to the plate and deal with its sins. That is the way taken by lazy souls who want, but don’t want to give or risk. Cover-up is whats going on. Isn’t that what went on with Nixon? And his sins don’t begin to compare to the Trump Family Criminal Enterprise. Didn’t the Trump followers just blatantly take the sanctions from one of the wealthy, prominent Russians in their last days? And who will go against that and set it right? No one, so far.

What always amazes me is the ability of human beings to see themselves as ‘different from’, better than, – Trump may have treated those others badly, but I am going to be treated differently. All of my dreams will be realized because Trump promised me that…………..

And Khashoggi? Does Trump walk away having done a major work in covering up and taking the Saudi prince out of the spotlight? Did that give you a peep under the rug to see who is really working the gears and producing the results? It is definitely not Putin, although all media has anointed him as the one to whom Trump is beholden.

Trump and Putin are beholden to a mafioso who is so big in this world he makes the Italians look like thugs on the street and the Irish not far behind and lets not even begin to talk about the African American and other mafia.

You are going to be witnesses to how the clean-up ends. You can watch it with clear eyes or you can let the mythology replace reality. What mythology? That which was put into place to insure the rich get richer; the evil don’t pay; the thugs realign and move off into the sunset with new partners to get richer in tomorrows world. And the rest of you? Passing your lack of moral courage on to your next generation to preserve them in that struggling middle to upper middle class so they can pass the lack of moral courage you inherited on for many more generations.

So you asked – so I’ve said!

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in #Wells Fargo Boycott, #WELLSFARGOBOYCOTT, Adolph Hitler, African American history, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Feminism, Homelessness, Immigration, Khashoggi, politics, Press Release, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Bettina Oracle Speaks

The Trump Shutdown: OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

January 23rd, 2019

We have a man who calls himself President of the United States. He is illegitimate, an extreme bully, has covered up many crimes including a monstrous murder for another country and is totally engaged in treason and the destruction of the United States and yet we have not taken him down. He has delayed his own removal and the indictment of others who aided him by closing down the American Government. He knows his time is short so he has taken this grand action.

What will he do next?

His ex-wife claimed, in her divorce papers, that he kept a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” on his bedside table. With that as his reading material, I would guess his next step is to call for a National Emergency. Isn’t that what Hitler did? Weakened Germany with outlandish actions and as a denouement he called a National Emergency and it was all over until six million Jews and others were killed, Germany was totally destroyed – and unlike Trump, Hitler was not a puppet of a foreign sovereign.

Trump has an attorney who speaks for him on television. Rudi Giuliani. How was this attorney chosen by Trump? Could it be Trump saw the press conference Mr. Giuliani called outside the Mayor’s House in New York City with his then mistress to announce he was going to marry this woman?

Inside Gracie Mansion, Mr. Giuliani’s wife was making breakfast for their son totally unaware of what was going on outside or that there even was a press conference or that her husband was going to divorce her to marry someone else. She learned that when a reporter called to verify the story.

Does that way of operating seem to reflect Trump’s ethics and character? Does that clear up why he chose Giuliani and what he expects from him?

Besides hiring Giuliani, Trump has tried many other ways to shut down the Russian investigation by doing many things – he fired James Comey; he fired Jeff Sessions; he hired Matt Whitaker; he hired William Barr and on and on it has gone – mostly unsuccessful. But his greatest action in attempting to shut down the Russian investigation is this grand Trump government shutdown. Will we allow it to be successful? Or have we had enough!

Trump can console himself with what he has done to the children!

Something like what is and has been happening at the southern border of the U S. has a historical ring to it. Remember when, in these United States, tens of thousands of Native American children were taken forcibly from their homes and sent other places never to see their families again? What was the result? The complete and total oppression of Native Americans. They have not recovered from then to this day. An entire generation was taken from them, forcibly. The overwhelming feelings of helplessness and loss and what losing an entire generation of a nation’s children does to that nation is indescribable. Those children who survived and were not killed, maimed or otherwise destroyed just given a new identity, never recovered. Is that the playbook from which Trump has taken a page to decide what to do about immigration from South America?

Don’t you think we have done enough? Don’t you think it is time to stop pretending to fight the program until the job of total oppression is done and then we can abdicate all responsibility by destroying the final organizer -the doer – the bigot – the neo-Nazi – the Trump? He has no idea what lies in his future. He thinks he is going to be enormously wealthy and live out his life traveling the globe after his removal from office. Can he spell Khashoggi!

Pretend Donald Trump is African American! Now lets replay that reality show again and see what happens?

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Adolph Hitler, African American history, Attorney General Sessions, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Donald Trump, Immigration, Khashoggi, Native Americans, Rudi Giuliani | Comments Off on The Trump Shutdown: OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

Boycott Wells Fargo!

January 21st, 2019

Close your savings account! Close your checking account – or move it elsewhere! Any other accounts? Close them all – or work to have them moved to another bank. Choose carefully when moving to another bank. Make sure you are on solid ground, however, and your new bank is interested in you as a customer and is not about to cheat you.

One way you are cheated ‘big time’:

Banks involvement in REAL ESTATE TAXES:

Did you know your home can be foreclosed when you have paid your mortgage up to date – principal and interest? HOW? Real estate taxes. Wells Fargo insists on adding the collection of real estate taxes on your home to your mortgage payment. Even if you did not have that agreement going into the mortgage they can add your taxes to your mortgage payment anytime and without any reason – at least that is their claim.

On information and belief, we find it is possible they will do those things if one of their investors or others wants your house. In that case, it is helpful to slam you around a bit so they can weaken you financially and come after the house. Generally one with lots of equity. Notice how free are homes mired in more bank mortgage than worth of house. Once upon a time all houses were fair game because greed was rampant and banks thought they could turn a profit no matter what. Isn’t that was the last serious depression was all about? Banks running rampant trying to set people up so foreclosure was easy and banks could use that route as one way of making billions?

How ridiculous is it to foreclose on a house when what banks claim as monies that have not been paid and which they claim as overdue, justifying the foreclosure actually are not due? it is monies they can also charge fees upon if not paid in what the bank claims is a timely fashion, even though the overdue amounts generating those bank fees and penalties are actually not due when the banks add those fees and penalties to amounts owed?

Banks are not the aggrieved party in real estate tax charges. They do not decide how much your real state taxes will be (well, maybe not directly). They try to collect six months in advance of the due date so they can hold that money in the bank and have it work for the bank into the billions of dollars and if you do not pay six months in advance of the date the taxes are due the bank reserves the right to collect by foreclosing on your property. You can check that out by going over records of foreclosed properties. It is a shock to see how many people lost their homes to banks because of unpaid real estate taxes which were not due, even at the time of the foreclosure.

Most amazingly, that money – not due for six months, sits in the bank and works for the bank not the agency which would be owed the taxes in six months and which should have the sole authority to foreclose or lien the taxes onto the property.

Isn’t that also the reason why conservative judges are so important? People who would rule against you in Court because you have not paid what you did not owe and especially what was not overdue and unpaid – simply not yet due? Wouldn’t they be the judges most likely to acquiesce and add to monies due the bank from your property because they are fees charged by banks levied against you because you have not paid what is not yet due?

Appointing super conservative judges is crucial to maintaining the most inhumane parts of an inhumane society.

Capitalism

One basic assumption about this economy is that we are functioning under capitalism. However, that is definitely not true. One cannot have a capitalistic economy where the society actively practices sexism. racism or any other kind of bigotry. That by itself eliminates the possibility that an economic system structured to claim to call itself Capitalism is flying under a false flag and needs to redefine what it actually is? Some bizarre system can be established to try to tweak, change, camouflage what it really is while proclaiming it is a capitalistic system, but actually it is not – by definition.

Ed. Note: Just a few comments from Bettina Network Lifestyle Members which we found intriguing. Feel free to add to their analysis.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in #Wells Fargo Boycott, #WELLSFARGOBOYCOTT, American Corporate Businesses, Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute | Comments Off on Boycott Wells Fargo!

To Celebrate MLK, Jr?

January 20th, 2019

As I look back over my life I am amazed constantly at how, as human beings, we have created such a complicated mess when to live a good life should be a simple accomplishment.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyr because he could not live his life ignoring the ills in the society which surrounded him. Most of us live our lives contributing to those ills and making them worse. Our needs are not simple. They grow more complicated as we age in a society which markets hourly with goals to enlarge already out of control egos which we are willing to pay very high prices to satisfy.

I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. from my days as a teen ager. He was not a big hero, he was a young man, studying at Divinity School and doing what he could, with others, to mitigate and change the apartheid which existed in these United States.

A particularly strong memory of Martin King was the time when the Jr. High Choir at my Church went on a trip, driving across the back roads of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama. Rev. Nicholas Hood was the inspiration behind those trips and we met up at different places with Andrew Young and Martin King. We were about integration and attempting to break down barriers. Amazingly, as I look at my life, that is what I have been doing all of my years on this earth and I don’t see many results from the effort. To try to mitigate evil when it is so strongly entrenched takes more than my life has been able to deliver.

We spent many weekends visiting white churches and always stayed the night in the home of whites where there were young people our ages and on Sunday mornings we sang with them as a part of the Church Service where Martin King preached the sermon.

Our reception in the homes of these white families where we stayed was always warm and welcoming. We ate together, got to know one another and Sunday morning services gave meaning to what we were doing and why. It was truly God’s work. Doing that work, however, you come to know that good is always combined with evil and I saw for the first time what racism was all about.

Having been raised in a middle-class African American community, we were involved in a fairly closed community so our sense of self-worth and who we were was intact. I won’t try to explain that – if you don’t have any idea my sympathy goes out to you.

While I had white friends and white family and the city in which I was raised didn’t make a big deal out of that, but accepted much of that back and forth, it was not what the world in general accepted. Those weekends visiting white churches were about to open my eyes to the evils that existed in this world in ways I could not have imagined.

As we arrived, on a Saturday, in one town where we were to spend the weekend and sing in Church that Sunday morning, we were introduced to the young ‘white’ Jr. choir – our counterparts. At the end of dinner we were split up and sent to spend the night with families who volunteered to be our hosts for the weekend.

While we were getting ready for bed, frantic calls went out from one house to another and the next thing we knew, the ‘white’ families with whom we stayed had swiftly rounded us up and had practically thrown us into the station wagons which brought us and we were speeding down country lanes where we saw Martin King, Andrew Young and Nicholas Hood hanging in effigy from the trees as we passed. We began to realize what was happening when we saw a group of whites coming down the road trying to catch up to us. They were led by an older man with a shot gun. He was not the only one in that crowd with guns. What amazed me was the anger, bitterness, horribleness of their emotions against a group of 14 to 16 year olds – a church group visiting their neighborhood, come to sing in their church on a Sunday morning where Martin King was to preach.

That was the first time I saw racism in its raw form and saw the threat that my very existence posed to all of those people so furious that we dared to think we could sing in their church with their children. Since, as African Americans we didn’t self-segregate, their out of control emotions would force us to with guns and sticks and bricks and bats. Who was their god? It was clearly not God we worshipped on Sundays and met to talk about and study Scripture supporting the structures built to worship God – to learn about Jesus – to worship Christ. Their Churches had the same trappings as the one in which we worshipped – the same kind of cross, the stained glass windows, similar architecture with bibles in the pews, but clearly it was not about the worship of God. They had created a god with whom they could relate with values, a character, and all the trappings we build around religion which worked for them in their need to exist as ‘white supremacists’. The viciousness and ability and need to even murder if that is what it took to maintain themselves as “better than” – supreme over all others – oppressors of peoples not like them was so strong nothing else seemed to matter to them. If they could have caught up to Nicholas Hood, Martin King, Andrew Young they clearly would have hung them instead of the effigies they placed on the road we were driving down.

We were accused of being part of a sex ring. We were supposedly in town and staying with the boys and girls our ages to have sex with them, to morally corrupt them and on and on it went.

As I experienced all of that I experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were so corrupt themselves that they were projecting onto others their sins. I also experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were truly in their church to worship God. In the lives of this last group, they acted out of their belief system which is probably why they were the people who invited us to be a part of their communion. Seeing the evil amidst the good in which they lived and raised their children they were moved to act. At that same moment Nicholas Hood, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King, Jr. were there to help facilitate what they needed to do to bring love, goodness, justice, into the lives of their community.

Since that time I have seen ‘whites’ who live in many radically different ways. Some follow the call of God in their lives and understand they are one with us all. Some follow the call of the god they created and re-create as the need exists to help them live as unauthentic a life as possible, projecting an image onto the world which is very different from who they really are – always hiding the shame they feel -not trying to be perfect, but trying to project a perfect image of themselves – actually living out of their sin instead of living into the authenticity of their beautiful and flawed selves.

The next Sunday Nicholas Hood gathered us together and we studied Scripture while talking about that experience. He was determined to put what happened to us in the context of the Gospels.

Since that time, Martin King walked a long ways on that road and had many encounters with people who came after him the way that group came after all of us because they were so threatened by a Jr. High Choir singing in their Church on a Sunday and staying in the homes of their friends and parishioners some of whom they had known all of their lives, but were still able to accuse of exposing their children to ‘those sex fiends’.

I still see that group of people running down that back country road trying to stop, shoot and kill young teenagers who were such a threat to them and their way of life.

Martin King gave his life to save such people. Donald Trump gave his to make sure such people would live eternally on this earth and be able to wreck as many lives as they can reach and to destroy as much of life as he can reach – including his own.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, Martin Luther King, racism | Comments Off on To Celebrate MLK, Jr?

More from Bettina Members

January 11th, 2019
  1. I must admit when I first read “Thoughts on Color”, I thought it was frivolous and reaching to make a point. How foolish to put racism into the color one chooses to wear or the color of the car one chooses to drive. Then I saw Donald Trump on his trip yesterday to #TheWall. I was struck dumb for a few seconds. If ever I have seen a “dog whistle” there it was. If ever I thought the wall was about other than racism, Trump’s appearance at the wall in his MAGA Cap brought those thoughts crashing down.

The red MAGA cap was gone. In its place was a white MAGA cap. As I researched, that is not the first time the MAGA Cap’s color has changed. I owe an apology to the person who wrote the “Thoughts on Color” article. It is a powerful way to look at many of the things happening in this society. They range from dog whistles on bigotry to bull horns, all camouflaged with the color one uses.

Given the fact that #TheWall goes back to the KKK, White Nationalists, White Supremacists as one of their projects – made of steel – that they did not complete and have tried through others to bring life back to again – a white MAGA hat conveys the message symbolically, the way Trump’s call to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails was made. That didn’t take a genius to understand, neither does Trump’s white MAGA hat. His arrogance knows no bounds.

It has been clear from day one with Trump that the presidency for him is all about re-aligning the races and bringing us back as close as he can get to slavery. Trump, in the middle of treason with Russia, has to be concerned about the color of people in the U. S.

Russia is a white country – as are the others with which he is trying to align himself. Kim Jung Un may be basking in glory today, but he needs to realize he heads a nation of people of color and his involvement with Russia et al will be as a minority nation.

Trump changed the color of the U. S. cabinet and every place else in his administration he has eliminated, almost entirely, people of color and replaced them with people today we call “white”. Where he has reach and influence, we have moved from the beautiful flower garden of the Obama’s with its many colors and kinds of flowers to the Trump manufactured and very artificial white flower which looks as though it was produced in a factory producing the same product on its assembly lines day after day. A flower that was designed by a robot.

2. This Wall thing is not a dog whistle it is a bull horn. Go back into your history and look at the parallels. There was the Emancipation of slaves under Abraham Lincoln. That was followed by Reconstruction. After Reconstruction came the reaction which saw the KKK grow into an organization which could march down Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1920’s with tens of thousands of people in white sheets and pointed hats declaring white supremacy, making the country miserable and scared. Donald Trump’s father was one of the people in the white sheet with pointed hat walking with that group of klansmen. He was one the police arrested during the “march” which is one reason why we know Trump’s father was involved with the KKK.

One thing the KKK wanted was a wall on the southern border to keep out people of color – only they were called much nastier names by the klan. They wanted #TheWall to be made of steel. When Trump changed from cement to steel, I think you were right in your blog saying that was a clear message to the extreme bigots of this country. Isn’t that why racism has lasted so long? Because it is overtly and coverly supported by people like Trump with a long line of predecessors, many in Congress, who saw an opportunity and a way to gain power with as much cheating and illegalities as they could muster. All they had to do was to rise up on the backs of all of us – white, black, brown, tan, purple, pink. orange.

Today you can’t call someone the N word without getting into trouble, but you can push to build #theWall and you will be doing the same thing with an excuse and defense against people who will call you racist.

You can let the world know sexism is back and stronger than ever by making sure an alleged sexual assaulter winds up on the Supreme Court. You can have pictures go around the world of the U. S. Cabinet being made up of White Males and the Republicans in Congress being the same with only a 1% difference. That sends out a huge, direct message.

That is what #thewall is all about. Trump even changed the color of his MAGA hat, in case his followers didn’t catch on. That was a more specific signal.

The atmosphere in this country has been changing and it has become very tense with white males feeling their “superiority” threatened, as more people of color move into positions where once an unqualified white male would be hired rather than a more qualified person of color.

We had Mexico – where years ago its borders changed so parts of Mexico would become Texas – remember that piece of history?. The Mexicans who had lived for generations in the areas where the borders were redrawn didn’t leave. Their property and goods were taken and they were thrown out on the streets, but they stayed – what choice did they have – and the work then began by the “ruling class” in this country to make sure the ex-Mexicans were pushed as close to the bottom of the ladder as possible and kept there for generations. Got to keep people around to do the “dirty work”. With those “Texas” brown and black people threatening white supremacy, just by their numbers”, something had to be done.

To be sure some things were done even into the time of Hitler’s Germany. The Nazi prisoners of war were brought to Texas for their incarceration while the war was still going on. African American soldiers, on leave or visiting Texas, or working in Texas, were denied entrance into restaurants and other places because of their color supported by the separate and unequal laws. The Nazi prisoners were picked up on Sundays by the locals who took them to dinner at those same restaurants where the German prisoners of war were welcomed in their native language.

Much upheaval happened and the klan, among other groups, grew exponentially. They could never quite keep those ex-Mexicans down – although they made their lives a living hell most of the time. When you are next in Texas, think of this history as you look around at the substantial Mexican culture you see all around. That culture didn’t pop up as Mexicans came into the United States over the past couple generations, that has been there for quite a few years.

And now along comes Trump. In this time after our modern day equivalent of Reconstruction as Trump and his minions do their job of deconstructing and trying to turn as negative as possible the accomplishments of the Obama Administration, they have reached back into the history of one of our most racist times and come up with #theWall. That unfinished piece of White Nationalism, which they were not able to achieve before they were diminished.

Trump has brought back as much bigotry as he could possibly muster and when folks talk about his “base” they never quite talk about what that means. That means, for those of us who are a little obtuse and did not live that history, Trump’s base means the most bigoted people in this society gravitate to him and his administration because it means a little more time hanging onto their claimed white supremacy and a letting loose of their evil to make life as miserable as possible for the people of color amongst us. Let me note here that this also includes some few lost souls who are not white, but are overwhelmingly lazy, jealous, believers in their own inferiority and more. Even the KKK had those people of color, especially of African descent, who attached to their organization.

Amongst the other things he has done, Trump has certainly done an amazing job of bringing back the modern day equivalent to the Supreme Court which kept Plessy v Ferguson around for generations and guarded against anything that looked like it might facilitate a break in the extreme bigotry in which this country has been gripped almost from its beginnings. The Plessy v Ferguson racial apartheid ruling stayed in this country kept there by the U. S. Supreme Court because of the political beliefs of those on the Court for over 50 years. Isn’t that why Conservatives are so adamant about accepting anything Trump does if he appoints the” right people” to the Court? Look at the straight jacket in which the U. S. Supreme Court kept this country because of its own racism and look at how many years and how many attempts were made unsuccessfully to bring about a change. Thurgood Marshall and those who served with him are justifiably celebrated as “heroes”.

To get the Democrats to contribute to #TheWall would be a huge step forward for Trump’s connection to his followers. It would fulfill one of their great needs. That is why his advisers are saying if he caves on this he is finished politically.

Hopefully, something decent gets into his brain which moves him into joining the forces of good instead of the evil to which he has apparently irrevocably attached himself. It has brought him a future, not of hundreds of millions of dollars, but of total disgrace. How much better to stop lying and start living a decent, respectable, God filled life. He certainly isn’t even close to that today. He is moving in the other direction sending his Secretary of State to the Middle East to attempt to dismantle Obama’s foreign policy and turn it into something ugly. What that has actually managed to do is to remind people of Khashoggi and just how low the Trump administration has sunk. His activities in trying to pull down Obama has reminded everyone that Trump’s foreign policy includes condoning and giving cover to murderers who do gruesome things in addition to all of the rest – the adultery, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the setting up a criminal enterprise in the White House and so much more.

How long is this going on? Will we find relief soon or will this carry on for years to come? Will we be free of bigotry when Trump moves off stage? Or will something or someone else replace him to keep the U S. bigotry within its borders simmering and waiting for another chance to explode? Will the narrative of the United States contain long chapters of the goodness we have wrought and the road we have taken to walk with others to a better life? Or will we forever replicate a government which leads us down the ugly path finally to perdition.

3. Bar (r) the fixer. It is time – actually past the time – for Congress to put on its “big boy pants” and refuse to clear Barr for Attorney General.

As Trump brings ever more disgrace to these United States and moves us back into a morass from which it will take generations to extricate ourselves, we are also seeing and learning about the sins of those who went before and how they are coming home to be repeated.

Barr was a part of the Reagan/Bush disgrace. Some say he was one of the architects who made sure all of the sins of the Reagan and Bush administrations were not revealed to the voting public.

He was a “cover up” artist and he is now being pushed for Attorney General to do the same thing under Trump. Do we see the invisible hand of Bush, Jr. in this? There can be no equivocating as to why Bar (r) the Fixer was nominated. He volunteered for the job of “cover-up artist” and the only thing he will actually do is denigrate the name and reputation of George H. W. Bush. A lot of what happened in the Bush administration as he became president after Reagan has flown under the radar. Bush the Sr. got away with his reputation intact because of the machinations of Barr. With the ascendancy of Barr to Attorney General in this atmosphere and environment, that will no longer be true. Already the stories have started to uncover and dig up what would have been exposed to the Americana voting public and then to the world, but for Barr.

Are we going to allow that to happen again? Thanks to the Bush family we now have a Supreme Court with TWO sexual deviants. One an abuser and one an alleged assaulter. What Bush started Trump is finishing. The alleged sexual assaulter was started on his career which brought him to the Supreme Court by the Bush family. George Sr. and Jr. The alleged sexual abuser was moved into his career as a Supreme Court Justice totally by Bush, Sr. who in the pictures of them together with members of their respective families, Bush Sr. seems very proud to have moved up into society an African American man who could fit into the negative stereotype of African American men and carry that negative stereotype several degrees uglier and further into this society.

Barr brings the Bush family several steps down and negate their reputations. He is the latest star in the – from Bush to Trump saga. It is time for all of this to be acknowledged and stopped. This society has carried a heavy weight for most of its life. It is time for that burden to be lifted, not for more stones to be put on the backs of those carrying this society forward.

It is time for us to move out of the muck, the filth, the dirt we have walked through and take a hot shower to wash off the muck so we can keep on moving forward with respect for ourselves and to gain some of the world’s respect. It is time for us to treat all parts of the world as equals, not as people to whom we respond with noblesse oblige as we have in the past. Trump has been so outrageous and full of evil that he has presented us with an imperative – “shake off the dirt from your feet” and walk into the beautiful sunlight over lush grassy grounds.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, Khashoggi, Maga Cap, racism, Saudi Arabia | Comments Off on More from Bettina Members

THE WALL

January 9th, 2019

I know you want other than Trump writings, but this can’t be let pass.

Where does this WALL thing come from and why is it so important the government was shut down because of it?

The thrust of Trump’s life and his administration has had bigotry as its center. He and his are “better than”. His campaign came naturally out of who he is and what he has been about.

So where did this wall thing come from?

In the 1920’s a huge push of the KuKluxKlan was a wall which the extreme bigots of the country wanted because they thought it would keep the brown and black peoples of the world out of the United States. They considered it their territory and a white territory. Anyone different was not welcome because they would be taking the privileges, etc. from them and their family and their friends.

Trump’s wall was initially proposed as a cement wall. The buildings Trump’s companies constructed were built using cement and he bought his cement from an Italian Crime family. That is common knowledge. So, this wall thing could be business as usual.

Now, all of a sudden, he changes his wall from cement to steel. Where does that come from?

During that same time frame – in the 1920’s – when the KKK was making its big push for a wall on the southern border, that big push from the KKK and other such organizations was for a “steel wall”. The goal was to keep out undesirables. They were not trying to keep out “terrorists” they were trying to keep these United States white with everyone else not able to come in and a very high steel wall was what they pushed to get built on that southern border – where the black and brown peoples mostly came from.

Isn’t it interesting that first Trump is turned away from agreeing to sign the bill passed through the Senate which did not include the $5 billion dollar down payment for a WALL that would end up costing at least $25 billion. Then, as he backtracks on that and moves on he is declaring, in that process, that the wall would be a “steel wall” instead of a cement one. etc. etc.

Sorry guys. Guess the Italian mafia didn’t do their marketing and advertising to keep Trump as a customer for their cement. Better luck with the next project. If you align those projects with the history of extreme bigotry in this country and bring your sales pitch into line with that you might not lose business.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina Network Blog, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Donald Trump, racism, sexism | Comments Off on THE WALL

DJT – The Manchurian President

January 8th, 2019

by: Marceline Donaldson

Months, even years ago, we published blogs about “The Manchurian Candidate”. Clearly, that was right on! Today, this blog is about a president who we feel is guilty of treason – (don’t start blubbering about “treason” and what it means and doesn’t mean. I am adult and educated enough to know that a man who betrays his country by following the plans and dictates of those in a “criminal enterprise”, by following and supporting a “mafia leader” in another country for their benefit and to the detriment of what he claims as his own country in which he has citizenship is committing treason and when you obfuscate the word I know where you are coming from and it is not from a place concerned about the proper use of English/American words or idioms).

We love reading the articles which come in from Bettina Network Lifestyle Community Members. We try to publish them or to consolidate the ideas of several when many come in saying the same thing. We hope you understand that and have learned from what we publish.

We have to ask you to take another look at the comparisons being made between Hitler and Donald Trump. While we understand what you are seeing we think we all need to take another look at this and stop the comparisons.

Hitler was German. He led Germany into a moral minefield and used separating peoples using hate, distrust, bigotry and more to gain his goals of power, total control, endless amounts of money and the freedom to live his life at the top of a country while ignoring or not being able or caring about the fact that murder and mayhem were being committed under and around him. This was the only way he knew to govern to achieve his personal ego and other needs; he did not have the moral foundation to attempt to rule otherwise. Many suffered, died, were killed, and worse under Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Donald J. Trump apparently has the same needs as Hitler and the same lack of a moral base, but they differ in one substantial way as their choice of ways to govern and achieve their aims.

Hitler stayed within a German context. Trump has chosen to involve the enemies of the United States in a coalition to choose his goals. Kim Jung Un, Vladimir Putin and all of the other governmental leaders have sway over Trump the way such leaders of his time did not have sway over Hitler. Which says to us, Trump’s danger to these United States is exponentially worse in this world than was Hitler’s rise to power as head of a murderous government was to Germany.

Please rethink your comparisons.

Yes Trump and Hitler are alike in some of the ways they have chosen to rule. Yes they are alike in their ability to move in the direction of setting up governments which murder its constituents or those deemed their enemies or those needed to be murdered to get the populace up in arms moving in the direction they need the populace to move. Hitler, to satisfy those around him and within the German state. Trump, to satisfy those dictators who need the United States to move in their direction doing their bidding to make sure a republic style of government or a democracy is not feasible and breaks apart.

Trump is in his early days of murder and mayhem. He is moving in such a direction as to take down the structures in place in the United States so he can invite his friends in to help him shore up and maintain the United States in the way it has to be maintained for his goals and objectives to be met. The Muslim ban; the rise again of White Supremacist organizations; the encouragement of neo-Nazi’s to become more public to bring about fear within this nation. We see each day the many goals in place one after another tearing down the United States government as it currently stands. As you see that constant and ongoing destruction you can almost see which head of which fascist state is behind this new thing.

And, we should add, this has not started with Donald Trump. The way this government is moving started long before Donald Trump. Trump as a totally corrupt president surrounded by corruption in everything he and his administration are doing and saying which is destroying this country was started and grown in these United States long before Trump became President. He is simply building on the backs of those who have gone before. He is deepening the furrow in the road they have trod to lead the way for him to follow.

Today, we have a confluence of Government and Business moving in tandem in the direction of White Supremacy reigning, Sexism slamming back in horrendous and unbelievable ways; Neo-Nazi’s blatantly and very publicly recruiting for their movement and killing Jews with very little blow back from the public.

Looking at the Government under Trump – it has become almost totally white and male. A dramatic change from whence we’ve come under Obama and where we thought we were going.

Our government is being concentrated into those ‘serving’ being a certain class and background of white male consistent with those who have low to no moral base, no ethical structure other than their need to take what they want from whoever without pause for or patience with anything restraining their taking and more.

Trump has brought together and formed a criminal mafia/enterprise at the top of these United States Government and has done it in the light of day, describing what he is doing and getting some flak, but not much. Many have made righteously indignant statements about how they loathe where he is coming from and what he has done to this country, but when called to act, they act right alongside Trump, covering their actions with high moral statements and trying to hide their greed and power hunger under their blanket of righteous indignation.

Not even Trump’s MAGA theme was his own. It goes back to Ronald Reagan’s MAGA theme. A Call to make American Great Again when America was already great. So what is that call really about? You have lived this just as intimately as I have so I don’t have to fill in all of the blanks.

Look at Business. Who gets to grow a substantial business in these United States is dependent upon who has the attention and receives the investment money and people help from the Venture Capital Community and that Community has a very distinct Middle Eastern turn and tone and membership.

Those who have been ‘helped’ to grow billion dollar businesses have been those chosen by the Venture Capitalist groups – not for their vision, their ideas, their ability to head such businesses bringing the future into the present, but those who are properly white, male and who fit the stereotype to head such businesses so the general public does not take a good look at those businesses’ history, their development and what it is they have wrought. Especially so no emphasis is placed on the fact that mostly those businesses were stolen from others – obviously, blatantly, publicly stolen and mostly from minorities and women.

Because of the beginnings of an outcry from those so excluded and from whom ideas, visions and functioning businesses were stolen, those Venture Capitalists are now hiring and working with people who understand the need to bring in “minorities and women”, but who also understand that of those needing to be brought in, it has to be in and through a ‘ghetto door”. Those who have the connections and right mindset to understand they cannot serve all of the people, but must tailor their businesses to serve the “ghettoed women and minority people” and who know if that is done there is funding for them. That funding will not be in the billions of dollars kind of funding available and historically given to white male northern european types, but it will be in the ten thousands through the maybe 50 thousands of dollars to those who need and agree to be used symbolically and who can be pointed to as absolving the very racist and sexist venture capitalists who have made sure this next generation of entrepreneurs – the successful ones – will be white, male and that northern european person meant to be on top of everything and everyone as it has been for hundreds of years.

If this continues – humanity, the humanness of us all will have to wait several hundred more years to produce a community of caring people who have worked to dumb down their greed; who are concerned about others; who know some are strong and some are weak and that is no reason to take advantage of those who can contribute but do so without demanding all for themselves and their own kind.

Again, I won’t belabor that because you all know exactly how that story goes.

In this ending, we appeal to you – please send your thoughts, analyses, and everything else about life, work, art, literature without this emphasis on parallels between Trump and Hitler. We all saw that at the beginning of Trump’s “reign”. We did not have the experience to understand the differences as clearly as we do today. Evil is not just all the same. Even evil has its distinctions.

We are seeing that there is no longer a comparison. Hitler was Germany’s own – the way Nixon was the United States’ own. Trump is in a different category. He is the ultimate Manchurian President and will bring in whoever – do whatever – without caring that he is committing treason as long as it satisfies his needs of power over, brings into his coffers and into his future more money than god and all of the other needs he has shown for which he has sacrificed his life and his eternity. What he is also showing us – the covers have been stripped off several people, several communities, several projects, several groups, several so-called ‘religious’ denominations who are willing to give up their lives and their eternity for the few pieces of gold they will receive through their support of Trump and his minions going against everything that is good in this life.

Trump’s work has encouraged those who would have done their “dirt” hidden and in the dark, with their goals, objectives and results never to come out into the open. He has encouraged and set the example for them to be open and public as they work to create “a new world order” that accepts and promotes and lives by this very treasonous and extremely evil way of functioning. He has set a veritable smorgasbord in front of them from which they can pick and choose how they want to go forward to his benefit. And he has shown that the way to move ahead is to ignore the country, person, life of who is providing. An enemy of your country is just as good if they are providing you with the largesse and power you want and need.

The last person who did that with dramatic results for us was Martin Luther King, Jr. Only the choices he laid out were very different. He showed us the evil in this society and this world. He also showed us the road we need to take to prevent the evil from taking over from the good. Many took his messages and life’s history to heart. Many others preferred to point out the fact that he was human and use that to try to ensnare many to reject him. We need to take Trump’s message and work to heart and recognize the choices it is giving us. They are the choices of evil – sell out your country for a few pieces of silver; split humans into ‘better than’ and ‘lower than’ to be able to misuse and abuse those you designate as the ‘lower than’ to gain money and power.

My point is – see, think about, write about Donald Trump as he is. Not as a parable to or continuation of Hitler. Trump’s future could bring about a country and a world that would make what Hitler tried to accomplish look minuscule and good by comparison.

The talk about Trump being “crazy’ – the claim that Trump does all of this because he doesn’t like to read and therefore doesn’t understand – doesn’t ‘understand’ the system in which he is living and isn’t interested in learning – and all of the cliche’s thrown out to ensnare you. Don’t believe them. They are not true. Trump makes choices each day based on what he wants to achieve. Trump shows each day his priorities and values. Trump says to us in all of his actions who he is and from whence he has come and where he is going. We need to believe what he is showing and saying. We need to understand that is who he is – there is nothing magical about how Trump reading books and understanding the system of government he illegitimately heads would change him for the better. He is who he is and the path of treason is what he has chosen. To sell out his country, his friends and his companions seems to be how he is structured. It doesn’t even have to be for his own good – which he doesn’t seem to recognize.

To bring the worst of the leadership from around the world into the United States to work with him; advise him on his next steps; to help them bring about their goals and objectives in their own countries even if it means dragging down his own, is not about being crazy; nor unread; nor lazy; nor any of the other adjectives. It is about Donald Trump being a human being who has chosen this way and is following it to his end.

Anything else is our redefining him in ways that make him and what he is about palatable to us. Richard Nixon did some awful things, but treason was not one of them.

To give his supporters, friends, contributors reasons to continue without publicly accepting their responsibility for Trump, his administration and his life is our walking his path; doing his bidding; working to achieve his goals and calling them our own. It is our submitting to the evil in us instead of taking the harder road of seeing and speaking truth. To obfuscate and to ‘be nice’ is easy. To do good, to believe God and to speak truth no matter the cost is not easy.

Evil brings about confusion to entrap you. Trump is the champ at that. See those parallels, don’t let them confound you and take you down the justify path. See how history rolls out into the present and understand. See what love, justice and the American way means and not what Trump or anyone else tries to tell you it means. See where real sacrifice is necessary and don’t sacrifice for evil – it only brings death, starvation, extreme denial, theft and murder in its path.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Thoughts on color!

January 5th, 2019

by: Lani Stacks

I just read your blog and the racism and bigotry attempting to rejuvenate in this nation and become dominate and controlling again.  Being an older woman that still takes an interest and dresses fashionably I notice another corner of society that is a signal to other racists by which to identify each other.  It is not very obvious to many, yet I notice:  white clothing has come back into fashion for women.  It is fashionable to sport a white dress or suit for a little while now.

I have never had either.  White is a color I associate with the medical profession, which comes from the white cotton pants and represents a sterilized environment free of germs, usually black in color.  I wear black much, much more than white. I notice also that other than the court system of black robes for the judges and justices, black seems to be more frowned upon, except for black cars, which was the only color at the turn of the 1900s.  A large portion of black cars and SUVs in San Diego County are driven by affluent and wealthy white racists.  They live predominately in the wealthy areas of the county, as in the northern section of this large county.   When I see the drivers/owners in their white clothes and black mechanical horses, it is a sign to me that these are people that are nostalgic for the “good ol’ days of segregation and privilege for whites with money. It is a way for them to identify one another by the use of color by clothing and the color of their cars.  White cars are the highest percentage in Southern California.  

My car is a 1997 Ford Taurus and is a deep dark green. Previous cars were blue, green and yellow.
~ Lani

Ed. Note: Lani is a long term member of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Blog Response, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Thoughts on color!

Homelessness – What Causes It?

January 4th, 2019

We have been studying this for years.  I can remember a time when there didn’t seem to be homelessness.  At least it was so carefully hidden most of us were not aware of anything except the romantic tale of the hobo who couldn’t live in a house – did not want to be closed in, but spent his life riding the freight trains from one place to another.  Little did we know that was real, except for the part about the hobo not wanting to live in a house and wanting to spend his life riding freight trains, cooking over fires he made from whatever he could gather that would burn, freezing to death along the railroad tracks, etc.  He was pictured in movies and other media as a happy camper living this life. There was usually happy music in the background when talking about such.

That was and is an extremely painful way to live and not one lived that way by choice.  What was also carefully hidden from John and Jane Q. Public was the fact that the hobo was the hobo he and some were the hobo she.    

I have always asked – why would a seemingly wealthy society allow such within its borders?  I have no answer.

Homelessness is caused by banks.  Oh, Wow!  I can hear the screams, objections and denials.  You can hem and haw.  You can object and protest.  When you sit down, clear your head and do the work and the investigation you will discover HOMELESSNESS IS INDEED CAUSED BY BANKS.

Within the bank, accountants and others sit and get paid to figure out ways banks can make more money at the expense of the middle class.  Sometimes banks hire consultants – usually outside accountants to do the same thing. “How can we charge for  services we don’t render.  How can we increase what we make on services we do render.”

Well lets take this one profit making pocket at a time.   What is the number one way banks cause homelessness?  House foreclosures.  How does that make so much money for banks?  

The fastest way banks cause homelessness and increase their profits exponentially in the process is through their ability to collect the real estate taxes (RET) levied on John and Jane Q. Public, by the government.  

Cities and other governmental entities are supposed to levy and collect their own real estate taxes.  In fact, that has been turned over to banks to do and it is done by banks in such a way that hundreds of billions of dollars flow into banks from this function.  Bank charges to city entities; fees of all kind levied on home owners for many reasons, etc. It is one of the reasons we have such huge banks and why it is difficult to impossible for the smaller banks to grow at the rapid rate seen in the larger banks.  

If you take out a mortgage with a bank – you most likely have to agree to paying your real estate taxes directly to them instead of to the city or other governmental entity.  Those RET are kept within the bank for at least six months doing nothing except making money and being used by the bank.  That is an amount of money the bank can “bank” on receiving and when and know it will be received with regularity and they know how long it will be in the bank.   From that they can plan how to use that money to increase their profits exponentially because you can’t come to withdraw any of that money, it has to stay put for the requisite period of time and when it has to be turned over it will have been a work horse for the time it stayed.  But – you should say – that money should be a work horse for the governmental entity to which the real estate taxes are owed.  

Look at how much better that money would work for you and me instead of being used to work against you and me keeping us poor or with a glass money ceiling over our heads. How did this happen?

This is one answer to the question – “How did banks grow so big!”  How come they have so much money!  Why are they so arrogant, independent, can be ugly to their own customers and still grow and stay in business. How can they throw so much money around (not the least of which is throwing it around political campaigns to keep the politicians beholden to them). This is one of the ways banks have grown so very large and are awash in hundreds of billions of dollars and it is a biggie.  It is also one of the ways banks promote foreclosure. – It is one of the ways they become the largest promoter of homelessness in this society.

 Homelessness is not about mental institutions which put its patients out on the street for lack of money to sustain, treat and cure them where possible? That is the marketing/advertising campaigns that are out there to mislead us all.  NO! Susie.  It is not.  That is and was a smoke screen.  Homelessness can be traced directly back to banks as its beginnings and root cause.  And, banks are a causer of homelessness dates back beyond the founding of these United States.  Banks have had this role for eons of time.

There is no reason for banks to collect real estate taxes on houses.  The taxes have work to do taking care of different needs of the people who pay the taxes.  If your real estate taxes must sit for six months in a bank – having been paid some six months before they are due so the bank can have that bit of huge money inflow to help it grow ‘big time’, that is a ‘big time’ problem for the people for whom those funds should be working.

The money paid to banks far in advance of when the city says they are due should actually be working to gain more income for you or for the city – if indeed it is not obscene and a violation of your rights to make such a requirement.  In fact, almost all of the real estate monies are collected in this country by banks; sit in the bank working very hard for the bank; and earning untold billions to help grow that banks strength and reach into the community.

Many games are played around real estate taxes and banks.  We, the tax payer,  assumes the present system is the way it should be and we go along with the program – much to our detriment.  We make that assumption because we don’t think of ourselves and our rights. We accept what is, if it is dressed up in Patrician clothes and exhibits the mores of a Patrician class.

Banks collect RET (Real Estate Taxes) on a monthly basis from people who acquire mortgages from them.  The people must then repay the mortgage, usually monthly,  along with 1/12 of that years real estate taxes each and every month.  The bank keeps that money and uses it because real estate taxes are usually only paid by the bank to the city every six months.  The average mortgage holder much pay their real estate taxes monthly and six months in advance of their being due. 

This is an inviolable thing.  No one questions it – and it goes so unquestioned that banks can foreclose and they do foreclose on homes and families even if the mortgage is paid in full each month.  If the real estate taxes are not paid six months in advance the foreclosure happens – not by the city because it does not see taxes owed by citizens and does not foreclose if a citizen misses one six month period of paying taxes, but the bank does this on a regular basis.  Claiming a person is behind in their mortgage even though that is not true and even though the taxes – which they are behind in paying – are taxes, amounts of money, not due for another month or two.

To put that in its proper context. Banks make substantial sums of money on funds that stay in the bank overnight. And they maximize that in every way possible. These are funds that stay in the bank for six months, definite, not able to be withdrawn, tied up in the bank no matter what. Imagine the money made on that. The bank pays a very small amount of “interest” to the mortgage holder on their “escrowed real estate taxes” – minuscule to the amount it is making on those funds.

When that happens – add a little push to get the family headed into financial problems which results in the house being foreclosed, and banks have been known to do this frequently.  Add a minority to whom the bank has given a mortgage; add a minority who has somehow skipped past the banks red-lining policy; add to that a property which has a very small mortgage compared to the large equity position of the property owner – no matter the race, color, class, ethnic origin, religion of the property owner and, in a bank with lousy ethics which is or is bordering on becoming a criminal enterprise, another game usually moves hand in glove with the real estate taxes game.

Banks have been known to target families where there is a large gap between the value of the house and the balance of the mortgage.  When a person has a small mortgage and a large equity position they are sitting ducks for a bank to salivate over future profits.

That was out of control during the last recession and banks were so overcome running where their greed pushed them that our banking system almost collapsed.  Their greed overcame their ability to function any other way.  Many bankers and realtors became wealthy with such a scheme – one amongst many.  Many individuals faced poverty, bankruptcy, homelessness – especially homelessness.

 More on this story in another blog.  Maybe even a few real life stories!

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Posted in #Wells Fargo Boycott, #WELLSFARGOBOYCOTT, Banks, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Breakfast Table Talk, Finance, Foreclosures, Hedge Schools, Homelessness, Mortgages, racism, Real Estate Taxes, sexism, Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo Boycott | Comments Off on Homelessness – What Causes It?

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