Starbucks Exploits Muslim Restrictions Controversy in Blatant PR move

Today, Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees in response to Trump's "Muslim Ban" (really it's temporary restrictions) and (temporary) ban on refugees until better vetting procedures are developed. Immediately after this announcement, the trending hashtag popped up on Facebook #BoycottStarbucks. Apparently "Trump supporters" said they would boycott Starbucks because they think veterans should be given the jobs, or blacks, minorities, poor people etc. Of course, the insinuation I've seen with the trending hashtag is that Trump supporters want to boycott Starbucks because they don't like or support refugees.

As for me? Well, let me first just say that I wouldn't call myself a Trump supporter or an anti-Trumper; I would say I'm a not-yet-sure-what-to-think-about Trump as president guy. I'm a let's-give-him-a-chance guy, a this-could-go-very-well-or-horribly-wrong guy. I'm also a Trump's-not-as-bad-as-the-media's-making-him-out-to-be guy.

And, as far as Starbucks goes, I certainly don't want to boycott Starbucks (I love their coffee) but I am offended by their move. What offends me is that they clearly exploited the trending "Muslim Ban" controversy to appeal to its large demographic of liberals and leftists. This is similar to their "let's talk about race" campaign during the time of Ferguson riots. They seem to latch onto every fashionable trend in the liberal culture and turn it into a PR campaign. They don't care about refugees. They care about good PR.

The Corporate Elite Retaliates After Trump kills the TPP

NOTE: The official "Burnzo Papers" book comes out on Amazon later this week. Now that the book is basically out, the format of this blog may become more journal-like with shorter "blogs", not long articles. Here is the first one:

The Corporate Elite Retaliates After Trump kills the TPP

Just a humble two cents and humble theory/perspective here that hopefully doesn't get me stoned. I'm not saying Trump is Jesus Christ by any means, but I've noticed that the frenzy of misleading news coming from the mainstream press has really amplified big-time this past week, literally almost like it's freaking out, bombarding us with negative Trump story after negative Trump story, riling us up into a frenzy of complete hysteria. I feel like this media frenzy stems from Trump's killing of the TPP deal (one of the first things he did), which really pissed off the corporate elite and their anger is coming through the mainstream media which they own and control. I mean, Trump's killing of the TPP was a big deal...a HUGE deal, but, with the exception of one-day's-worth of tepid coverage, it completely got glossed over. The TPP would have been devastating for all American workers/all American human rights/human rights in general. It benefited a small minority corporate elite -- I would call it a corporate cartel -- and basically nobody else. It can't be stressed how big this thing was and how horrible it was for America. Read more about the TPP and its disastrous implications in an article I wrote about a year and a half ago entitled: "The Gay-Marriage Wild Card (And Other Ways Our Government is Smoke Screening the TPP)."

But the corporate elite loved the TPP deal, and now the corporate world is pissed and as retaliation they're just slamming us with misleading news and getting us into an anti-Trump frenzy. Right now on Facebook the top two hashtags are #MuslimBan and #NoMuslimBan. What's happening is not really a Muslim "ban" at all; from what I understand after reading the full executive order text, it's temporary travel restrictions for certain countries in attempt to get terrorism under control and improve vetting procedures. Don't get me wrong: it sucks big-time and it's pretty sad watching interviews of those affected and I'm personally skeptical whether it's going to get anything under control anyway...but it's not an all-out, permanent Muslim Ban. Again, I'm not saying it's necessarily going to make a positive difference but the media should be more fair in their coverage of it. Let's get the story right.

So that is just one example of misleading, fearmongering/hatemongering/frenzy-inducing media that stems from the mainstream press which the corporate elite owns, an elite that is more than likely infuriated at Trump for killing its beloved TPP. My humble two cents is take a deep breath, unplug yourself from the frenzy, follow the money and follow the power and, in the words of my beloved PUBLIC ENEMY, don't believe (all) the hype.

Is Trump an 'SP'? Parallels Between Scientology and the Corporate Cult We All Live in

I've been watching Leah Remini's fascinating A&E series on the Church of Scientology and I can't help but draw parallels between scientologist practices and the current, over-the-top narrative to discredit President-Elect Trump, a narrative that seems just as contrived as L. Ron Hubbard's religion. We're talking Russian hacking, blackmail, perverted sex tapes, British MI6 spies, all sorts of fantastical stuff that sounds like it was born from the wild imagination of a fiction writer like Hubbard.

To use scientologist terminology, Trump has been declared a "suppressive person" (aka SP) by the corporate/banker/global elite, an elite that wanted Hillary Clinton as their next representative in the oval office and backed her campaign with millions of dollars of contributions and Super PACS. Since Trump won the election and Trump was so rich he couldn’t be “bought” (i.e. funded) by corporate money, he is now considered "fair game" by the corporate elite, meaning he must be discredited at all costs and by whatever means possible. Hiring a British MI6 spy to bring him down is the equivalent of the scientologists hiring private investigators to bring an ‘SP’ down, which is common practice within the Church. It’s also common practice to launch a smear campaign against the SP, which is usually fueled by half-truths or blatant lies. In fact, the Church of Scientology goes so far as to create actual websites devoted to making the SP look like a terrible, sick and perverted person. Parishioners within the Church are exposed to nothing but this propaganda and it’s considered a transgression, or—to use the correct scientologist term—an “overt act” to be exposed to any other alternative form of media. This is all eerily similar to the current climate in the American culture where we are pressured to show allegiance to nothing but propagandized mainstream media while all alternative news is considered “fake news”.

What I’m getting at is that we're all unknowingly living in a scientologist-like cult created by the corporate elite who own all mainstream media and therefore can control and program our minds via control of information.

SUPPRESSIVE PERSON: often abbreviated SP, is a term used in Scientology to describe the "antisocial personalities" who, according to Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard, make up about 2.5% of the population. A statement on a Church of Scientology website describes this group as including notorious historic figures such as Adolf Hitler.

FAIR GAME: a term used to describe policies and practices carried out by the Church of Scientology towards people and groups it perceives as its enemies.

OVERT ACT: a harmful act or a transgression against the moral code of a group. An overt act is not just injuring someone or something, it is an act of omission or commission which does the least good for the least number of people or areas of life, or the most harm to the greatest number of people or areas of life.

-- Wikipedia 

Meanwhile...

Obama surprises his own Vice President Joe Biden with the medal of freedom, an unprecedented move that comes just a couple days after Obama's emotional (some are calling it emotionally-manipulative) farewell address to the nation. The award ceremony was obviously heavily covered by the media and I can't help but draw a parallel between the event and the Academy Awards…or, to be more timely, the Golden Globes…where Hollywood awards itself—in company picnic-style—for making "works of art", aka commercial, money-making movies. Or, to draw a more relevant parallel, the Scientologist Church itself does a similar version of this self-awarding at their grand “annual tribute”, which is a huge, Academy-Awards-like ceremony where they celebrate L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday and award/pat each other on the back for how great they are as scientologists. My point is that Obama's awarding Biden the medal of freedom is really an indirect way of giving praise/pats on the back to his own administration and, in turn, himself.

So, while there is a concerted effort to discredit Trump, there is, on the flipside, a concerted effort to make Obama look like the greatest president who ever lived. The mainstream media—a propagandized instrument of the aforementioned corporate cult we all live in—is programming our minds to hate Trump and love Obama. What this is all leading to, I do not know. Perhaps a huge, unprecedented protest at the inauguration to block Trump from presidency or perhaps, ultimately, it's meant to get our minds prepared to accept and support a Trump impeachment down the not-too-distant road (if he even makes it into the oval office in the first place).

The bottom line is that Trump is not doing the bidding of the corporate cult and they are doing anything they can to make him look like the next Adolph Hitler. Trump is no Jesus Christ*, that's for sure, but is he really as bad as we're being programmed to believe? If everything that's being said about Trump comes out to be one-hundred-percent truth, I will gladly punch myself in the face; and, trust me, I WANT to believe it's true because, otherwise, we're all being put under a spell of complete unreality and that thought frightens the hell out of me. Either way, I think people need to take a step back, unplug themselves from the media-induced frenzy, transcend the mass hysteria and question everything they're being told to believe.

Of course, I also realize that voicing all these—let's call them anti-anti-Trump—thoughts puts me at risk of becoming an SP myself, not that I'd be attacked by the corporate elite because, heck, I'm small potatoes, but it has the potential to cost me friends, family etc. This is a time when voicing anything that can even be remotely construed as "pro-Trump" will put you at risk of becoming an SP among peers, family, Facebook friends, Twitter followers etc. To use another Scientology term, anti-Trumpers are "disconnecting" from pro-Trump family and friends at alarming rates.

DISCONNECTION: the severance of all ties between a Scientologist and a friend, colleague, or family member deemed to be antagonistic towards Scientology. The practice of disconnection is a form of shunning. Among Scientologists, disconnection is viewed as an important method of removing obstacles to one's spiritual growth.

-- Wikipedia

But they don’t just disconnect. They also guilt and shame anybody who voted for Trump or even thought about voting for Trump. Let me be clear, though: I’m not saying everybody who doesn’t support Trump is like this—that wouldn’t be fair. I’m talking about the hardcore anti-Trumpers, the ones who “disconnect”. In their eyes, any semblance of Trump support is indicative of hate, racism, misogyny and bigotry being harbored in that person’s heart. This kind of shaming is a classic form of psychological manipulation and has been seen all over mainstream media and social media. I would liken it to the shaming scientologists use when their parishioners have anti-scientologist thoughts. If at any point a parishioner possesses any thought or feeling that falls outside of the scientologist status quo, it is supposedly indicative of an individual harboring “crimes” in their heart and they must get “audited” to “clear” those crimes so that their thinking is back in line with Scientology.

In other words, the Trump shaming is a way of getting a person to stop having truly liberal thoughts and go back to conforming to the faux liberal—aka leftist—mentality. Popular slogans like “love trumps hate” (that were born out of the Clinton campaign, which itself was born out of the corporate elite) cleverly make the name ‘Trump’ synonymous with ‘hate’. This means that, even if a person supports Trump a liiittle bit, it reveals that person is harboring hate in their heart and chooses this hate over love. Or, to put it another way, a person must be one-hundred-percent anti-Trump—otherwise, they apparently lose their capacity to love others and should be ashamed. Or, to put it yet another way, true hate (towards Trump and Trump supporters) is taking on the guise of love while love is twisted into something resembling hate. Yeesh, is your head spinning? Of course it is, because this is insanity. It’s sinister psychological manipulation, the kind you see in a…yes, you guessed it: a cult.

In fact, this complex mental manipulation creates what-is-referred-to-in-psychology as “cognitive dissonance” where an individual, on one hand, may have pro-Trump thoughts but is, on the other hand, guilted and shamed into thinking these thoughts are very bad to possess. According to Remini’s show on scientology, cognitive dissonance is very characteristic of cult-like conditioning.

AUDITING: a practice wherein an auditor asks a question of another individual, known as a "preclear", and then acknowledges their answer in a non-judgmental form. Auditing began as an integral part of the pseudoscientific movement Dianetics and has since, with the addition of the E-Meter, become a core practice in Scientology.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: in psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, when performing an action that contradicts those beliefs, ideas, and values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas and values.

-- Wikipedia

In summary, the extreme anti-Trump movement born out of the corporate elite, an elite that, yes, Hillary Clinton was *supposed* to represent as the next POTUS, truly can be perceived as a gigantic, cult-like phenomenon. This corporate cult is very much like Scientology but on a much greater scale because, well, pretty much everybody is a part of it and they aren't even aware. But, then again, nobody is ever aware that they're part of a cult...so nothing is really new there.

*Trump is, at the very least, an immature man and has certainly said some scumbaggy things. He was perhaps at his most scumbaggy when he bragged over a hot mic about being able to grab a woman’s “pussy” without invitation because “he’s a star” and can “get away with it”. This could have been “locker room banter” as he claimed or it may, indeed, indicate that he is misogynistic and takes great pleasure in assaulting women. During the campaign, several women came forward to say he assaulted them. Nothing ever really came of those stories. I’m not saying they never happened but I guess, at the end of the day, they are still nothing more than allegations. For now, all we can really say is that Trump is immature and has, in the past, said some extremely scumbaggy things. As far as what is really in this man’s heart? Nobody really knows for sure; they certainly think they know, but nobody really knows. We can judge all we want. But nobody really knows.

Trump also seemed to have mocked a reporter who has a physical disability. This was a NY TIMES reporter named Serge Kovaleski who used to write for The Washington Post at the time of 9/11. The Washington Post denied writing a story that described Muslims partying and cheering in the streets of New Jersey when the twin towers went down. However, the Trump team dug up a story written by Kovaleski where he did, indeed, write a story about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in the Jersey streets. Kovaleski denied ever seeing what he in fact wrote about, which is kind of strange. At one of his campaign rallies, Trump called Kovaleski out on his backpedaling and seemed to mock the reporter who had a deformed right hand. The leftists took notice and spun the apparent mocking as Trump making fun of/hating handicapped people. This was a bit of an exaggeration since it was questionable whether Trump was actually mocking the reporter to begin with. Trump used similar hand movements in the past so it could possibly be argued that such gestures coincidentally appeared to be mocking the reporter’s physical deformity. Either way, the hand movements and gestures were immature, no doubt about it, but I don’t think it’s evidence of Trump making fun of handicapped people. The story was exploited by the left and blown way out of proportion, to the extent that actress Meryl Streep preached about Trump’s bullying of handicapped people during her recent Golden Globe lifetime achievement speech. Her point was that such “bullying” was evidence that Trump was a terrible person and unfit to be president. In my opinion, her speech was blow-hardy and unnecessary. It made a big deal out of something that wasn’t as big of a deal as it really was. The fact that it became such a big thing is baffling to me. Again, Trump is undoubtedly immature and lacks class and may have been trying to offend a reporter that he didn’t like. However, I don’t think that—generally speaking—he enjoys bullying handicapped people. There’s no evidence to support that claim.