GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: FOR WHO THE BELL TOLLS NEXT.

Just five people shy of Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting incident that claimed 26 lives, the Uvalde Texas Robb elementary school mass shooting at 21 victims, now ranks among the highest grossing gun carnage in America. It is sad that such frequent blood spilling has tragically become part of our culture as a society. May the souls of the killed now rest.

25th AMENDMENT: ITS NOW ALL CRICKET.

Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi once questioned former President Donald John Trump's fitness to remain in office due to what she claimed was his declining mental capacity. Does anyone know what Madam Speaker presently thinks about the incontrovertible case which America is now saddled with? Just curious!

WHO WILL REBUILD UKRAINE?

The West should convert frozen Russian assets, both state's and oligarchs' owned, into a full seizure and set them aside for the future rebuilding of Ukraine. Like the Marshal Plan, call it the Putin Plan.

A HERO IS BORN.

I am staying put. I will not run away and abandon my people. The fight is here in Ukraine. What I need are weapons and ammunitions, not a ride out of town like former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani - President Volodymyr Zelensky.

IT IS WHAT IT IS.

"There is too much hate in America because there is too much anger in America." - Trevor Noah.

WORD!

A life without challenges is not a life lived at all. A life lived is a life that has problems, confronts problems, solves problems and then learns from problems. - Tunde Fashola.

NOW, YOU KNOW.

When fishing for love, bait with your heart and not your brain, because you cannot rationalize love. - Mark Twain.

JUST THE FACT.

In our country, you can shoot and kill a nigger, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings - Dave Chappelle

DO YOU?.

“What you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk for it." - Stuart Scheller.

HEDGE YOUR CRISIS.

Never get in bed with a woman whose problems are worse than yours. - Chicago PD.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

'The best way to keep peace is to be ready to destroy evil. If you Pearl Harbor me, I Nagasaki you.' - Ted Nugent.

OUR SHARED HUMANITY.

Empathy is at the heart of who we are as human beings. - Cardinal Matthew Kukah.

WORDS ON MARBLE.

"Birth is agony. Life is hard. Death is cruel." - Japanese pithy.

REPENT OR PERISH - POPE.

Homosexuality is a sin. It is not ordained by God, therefore same sex marriage cannot be blessed by the church - Pope Francis.

CANCEL CULTURE IS CORROSIVE.


FOR SAKE OF COUNTRY.


MAGA LIVES ON: NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER!

TWITTER IS BORING WITHOUT HIS TWEETS. #RestorePresidentTrump'sTwitterHandle.


WORD.

"If you cannot speak the truth when it matters, then nothing else you says matters.” - Tucker Carlson.

#MeToo MOVEMENT: A BAD NEWS GONE CRAZY.

"To all the women who testified, we may have different truth, but I have a great remorse for all of you. I have great remorse for all of the men and women going through this crisis right now in our country. You know, the movement started basically with me, and I think what happened, you know, I was the first example, and now there are thousands of men who are being accused and a regeneration of things that I think none of us understood. I’m not going to say these aren’t great people. I had wonderful times with these people. I’m just genuinely confused. Men are confused about this issue. We are going through this #MeToo movement crisis right now in this country." - Harvey Weinstein.


RON DELLUMS: UNAPOLOGETICALLY RADICAL.

"If it’s radical to oppose the insanity and cruelty of the Vietnam War, if it’s radical to oppose racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression, if it’s radical to want to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, and other forms of human misery, then I’m proud to be called a radical.” - Ron Vernie Dellums.


WHAT REALLY MATTERS IN LIFE - STEVE JOBS

“I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth. Memories precipitated by love is the only true riches which will follow you, accompany you, giving you strength and light to go on. The most expensive bed in the world is the sick bed. You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone to bear sickness for you. Material things lost can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost – Life. Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others.” - SJ

EVIL CANNOT BE TRULY DESTROYED.

"The threat of evil is ever present. We can contain it as long as we stay vigilant, but it can never truly be destroyed. - Lorraine Warren (Annabelle, the movie)


ONLY THE POOR WISH THEY HAD STUFF?

“I’m not that interested in material things. As long as I find a good bed that I can sleep in, that’s enough.” - Nicolas Berggruem, the homeless billionaire.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

THE STARBUCKS ARREST: JUST A MICROCOSM OF THE RACISM IN AMERICA

ICHEOKU says Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson is just being clever by half in his pretentious display of indignation that two black men were arrested and marched out of one of his outlets in Philadelphia. How many other Starbucks outlets and other American business have black people been similarly marched out from and sometimes outrightly denied service or looked through simply because of the pigmentation of their skin. But here he is pretending that he just landed from out of space Mars to learn that racism is alive and well in America. 

What happened in Philadelphia is not just a one time unfortunate incident implicit bias incident; and there is nothing his apology will fix because racism is a continuing American underbelly and is system wide and country wide throughout the body fabric of the American society and Kevin Johnson knows this long before the two black men were put in handcuffs and humiliated out of his store in Philadelphia. So what did he do about it all this time, only to now shed crocodile tears because what was captured on video is not good for the corporate image of Starbucks and might also effect its bottom-line. He is apologizing and now promising to have the staff trained in "implicit bias and sensitivity" and you ask yourself how many blacks are top executives in Starbucks and how many blacks show up during Starbucks directors meetings if there is no racism in Starbucks preceding this incident? But the duo's arrest was captured on video and here comes a supposedly very "contrite" Chief Executive Officer pretending that he is being made aware of racism in America for the very first time. 

How many people of color are Kevin Johnson's friends? How many people of color live in his neighborhood and how many black children attend the same school which his children go to; and above all, how many black people are store managers, executives and in top level management positions in Starbucks? The thing that riles ICHEOKU most is the ever present sanctimonious fire-service approach of "addressing" race issues in America, which always follows each instant when a particular act of racism publicly breaks into the open and bubbles to the top. People react and involved corporate CEO's run around the place promising to "fix it", but only to return to the their default status when camera pans out and the incident is no longer cool to discuss or occupy the airwaves. It is all about corporate image and sooner than later, all the generated fury will blow off and it is deja vu the status-quo. But corporate image is at the stakes and Public Relations experts are are trying to stem the tide and here comes all the white washing and other temporary palliative measures being put in place. 

ICHEOKU says it is over fifty years since the passing of the Civil Rights Acts, yet blacks are paid less than their white counterparts in America, when they are lucky to be employed. Blacks still live in their own separate neighborhoods; their children still go to their own different schools; they still go to their own black churches; corporate America including Wall Street do not have a reflective population percentage number of black people within their enclaves; loan facilities for homes and cars are still not extended to black Americans on the same level as their white counterparts; police still disproportionately kill more blacks in America and for practically no reason other than to just remove some "nuisance" from their society and the list of painful experiences of being black in America go on ad infinitum. So is Kevin Johnson telling ICHEOKU or the world at large that he is oblivious of all these racial inequality and disparate treatment of people in America or was he just tagging along all this while in order not to disturb the groove until now? 

ICHEOKU is only taken aback by the pretentiousness and band-aid approach towards solving instances of race issue in America whenever one draws public attention; because after the very episode, things usually quickly revert back to the default mode until the next episode. Instead of seriously finding a way to indeed truly solve the issue of race in America, they simply place a band aid on issue by issue, sometimes make some token payment in compensation and few days later, it is back to business, the usual way of doing things. Even when the police kill unarmed innocent black man for instance, there is often no consequences as they just walk away Scot-free. As a result, other would be killers do not learn from the experiences of their past killers and they go on perpetrating their nefarious acts of singling out and killing blacks with impunity knowing fully well that nothing will happen to them because it was just another black man that was killed. ICHEOKU says if this is not racism, what else is? 

The only reason the Philadelphia arrest is making all these waves and headlines is that it was captured on video and people are reacting and expressing outrage. Starbucks is a Wall Street business that must reel in the cash in order to look good and they have to sell millions of cups of the hot liquid to do this. They also need a good corporate and community image to draw in customers who pony their money out for their overpriced hot cups. This is the principal underlying reason the fire brigade PR is trying desperately to quench the fire. The optics is not good and it might cause heavy loss of revenue for Starbuck, hence all these measures which are being hurriedly implemented. It will close 8,000 stores to do sensitivity training and you wonder why the drama of shutting down so many stores simultaneously when they could have achieved the same result by making  baristas watch sensitivity training video during their one hour lunch break and pay them for the hour. 

But no, it must be dramatized to appear that they in fact actually did something. How about opening coffee houses in black neighborhoods or employing more blacks or even giving back to the black community to help them send their children to colleges and universities on Starbucks' scholarships. Better still how about giving some Starbucks stocks and shares to the two fellas to really apologize to them and as them to please forgive. But Americans understand what is going on as the whole essence is the white man's effort to break the will of the black man to fight and survive, period. They carry it out everyday, every hour, every minute and every second both in jobs, housing, stores, streets and hospitals etc. When you refuse to give up, their police will either kill you or their judges will put in you in prison and often times throw away the key with some people dying in prison for offenses which they did not commit. They publicly humiliate you just to drum it into your ears that the Lord made a mistake by creating you black. 

Why did the police not ask the two black guys to just leave the store, after listening to their story, without the need to put them in handcuffs?  But no, they have to handcuff them to continue feeding the stereotype that black people are criminals and trouble makers; and telegraph to other blacks that we are ready for you and watching, so don't mess with us. Query, were the two black guys Caucasians or even Asians, would the police have arrested and put them in handcuffs? Were they the "right" color, would the Store manager have refused them the use of the bathroom or called the police to report them as being threatening or that they refused to leave the store. When did trespassing become an arrest-able offense without first asking the so called trespassers to quietly leave; following their refusal or recalcitrant, then an arrest might follow. But no, they had to arrest first and ask questions later and the ONLY reason they did it is the same reason such discriminatory practises have been going on in America for centuries and continuing till this day. SAD. 

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