Cash is King and Freedom

My grandmother always kept cash under the mattress, and my grandfather stashed his precious silver and gold coin collection in a tin box which he hid in a special place he thought was safe. But I knew about it because I saw him one day.

When the Russian soldiers “liberated” the country after WWII, they confiscated most valuables they found, including cash. Whatever they missed, the Bolshevik communists behind them confiscated the rest, even digging up his small tractor he had buried in the garden.

The communist economy, from then until December 1989, was cash-based and barter-based, nobody had checking accounts and credit cards were something nobody knew existed in capitalism. The bartering as a medium of exchange was out of necessity to survive.

Everybody carried around large amounts of rolled up cash because people never knew when they walked by a grocery store with a long line of people, waiting for certain staples of food that would be delivered and, if they had the money, they stood in line to buy whatever was sold because they would need it, if not today, for sure tomorrow or in the near future.

Cash is a convenient medium of exchange; often the exchange happened between an underground-economy seller and a customer who did not want to stand in line and was willing to pay the price asked.

Cash is used for purchases from sources other than stores, for paying someone to mow the lawn or do a simple repair job. Illegal gambling is a cash-based part of the economy. Drug trafficking and human trafficking are also based on enormous amounts of cash, and no legal records are ever kept. And the government never receives any taxes.

People have used commodity money to pay for goods and services. Commodity money is an object used as a medium of exchange; such commodity money has value in alternative, non-monetary uses. Examples of commodity money could include cattle, stones, candy bars, chocolate, panty hose, gold, silver, copper, cigarettes, soap bars, woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth, giraffe tails, etc.

Bartering can be useful in smaller, rural areas but it is much harder in large cities because it is based on the coincidence of wants. Our economy is much more complex to allow a smooth provision of goods and services just based on coincidences of wants.

The problem with commodity money is that it has be easily divisible, readily identifiable, uniform, storable, durable, and compact. Of all the commodity money, gold and silver hold the most value, are most compact, and do not require refrigeration. Currently, gold has already surpassed $4,000 per troy ounce which is approximately thirty-one grams.

Gold and silver coins had been struck for 2,500 years. Paper money was invented by the Chinese in the eleventh century, and Marco Polo brought the idea of cash to Europe.

Ironically, the modern Chinese were the first to implement digital currency on their billion plus citizens, all tied to the social credit score system. This allows citizens to have an economic life, travel, fly, go on vacations, medical care, school tuition, food, and other necessities based on their social credit score, i.e., how they behave in society and whether the government approves of their behavior, what they say and do.

Cash is king and represents freedom, but the globalist plan wants to replace it with digital currency across the globe, removing any possibility of hiding sources of income, wealth, and economic activities that do not generate taxes for the globalist government. The digital currency becomes the absolute tool to control all economies, all income, the ultimate mean of power and control.

As more and more places refuse to take cash as a form of payment, our cash will disappear from the global and domestic markets. The “greenbacks,” named so after Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury to Lincoln, who picked the green color for our legal tender banknotes, will disappear.

All our freedoms depend on cash, however devalued the "greenbacks" may be because of the overspending by Congress and the constant printing of it by the Treasury.

 

 

 

 

Hurry Slowly

It is early October, the days are cooler, trees are shedding their yellow and brown leaves, but my lilac and azaleas have bloomed again. The azaleas did not surprise me, they are biannual bloomers, but the purple lilac did. The flowers appeared on the tip of dormant branches after the green leaves have turned brown and fallen off. The blooms are still fragrant despite their smaller size and the lack of leaves. One guy was complaining in a highly surprised voice on a reel video that his apple tree bloomed this October as well and he could not explain why.

Today I walked in the green grass that grew tall as if to make up for the dry summer when the arid lawn turned into a carpet of scorched yellow. No amount of watering helped and I finally gave up.

The footpath to the lake, well-tracked by deer coming through daily, is semi-green, even as the weeds have started dying. I am walking on the same path my mom used to stroll daily with our beloved cat Bogart. She used her straw hat to shield her eyes from the sun and the handle of an old broom to steady her gait through the tall grasses.

The neighbor on the other side of the pond used to mow the weeds surrounding the pond because he was afraid mom would get bitten by a snake crawling from its nest or from the water to warm in the sun. There was no young snake wrangler Gabe to protect her, so the best move was to mow the tall grass, carving a safe path for my elderly mom.

Her picture walking this path has made it into my children’s book, Being Bogart. I cherish that moment in time and the memory of it when I snapped the picture. I still have her colorful straw hat, resting by her glasses and the last piece of crocheted doily she made from memory with red thread during her art classes. Red was mom’s favorite color.

Today I am wearing a white straw hat which I purchased on Hollywood Beach during a hot August day while strolling on the boardwalk with my daughter Mimi and my husband. We bought new beach shoes too that day and we tried them in the crystal blue waters of Florida’s Atlantic Ocean.

This straw hat reminded me that I have finally become my mother after all, salt, and pepper hair too, more salt than pepper, a slow and unsteady gait helped by my regular hiking sticks. Regaining my ability to walk after a severe relapse of MS with transverse myelitis is giving me a new appreciation for life and for the ability to walk however slowly.

Years ago, when mom started walking unhurriedly because of arthritis and ageing, we were at the track, and she implored me to slow down at her pace. Sometimes I did, sometimes I did not – I walked faster or ran. As a young person, I took my ability to walk and fast for granted. Little did I know that fate was going to teach me a very painful and valuable lesson – if we are lucky to live long enough, fast walking or walking at all becomes a thing of the past.

Now it is my turn to feel what mom must have felt in the twilight of her physical ability but never expressed to me so clearly how disappointed she was that I rushed life and did not heed the old Latin saying, Festina lente, (Hurry slowly).

Now MS has forced me to slow down in many ways, and I came to the realization that I am my mom now - life and mobility are precious.

My hat is not mom’s gardening hat; it is more fashionable but still a hat which I must embrace with twilight dignity.

Bacon, Beans, and Moldy Flour

John Wesley Powell's expedition floating down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon in 1869 was running low on food rations; the storage had flour, smoked bacon, and beans but they were becoming increasingly moldy from the frequent dunking by the large waves and rapids. Every member of the expedition was dreaming about real food with each moldy meal they consumed. Hunting was eluding them and so was fishing. If they spotted a deer or a goat, it disappeared before they got closer to it. One day, one of the expedition's adventurers, Hawkins, was seen carrying the sextant up a hill. Not being known as a scientific mind, Powell asked him what he was doing with the sextant. Hawkins replied, "I am measuring the latitude and longitude of the closest pie."

Desolation Canyon and A Pair of Well-Worn Drawers

On July 8, 1869, the famous expedition of John Wesley Powell down the Green and Colorado Rivers through the Grand Canyon took an almost deadly turn. 

It was not an exaggeration that, up to that point, they all survived on borrowed time, given all the accidents and close calls that they encountered along the way while running the rapids, rowing, portaging the four heavy boats with all their food, utensils, instruments, and clothes, and other needed supplies. 

The raid of a Native American garden left unattended, not far from the Uinta Indian Agency, from which they stole potatoes, vines and all, almost killed them. Sick of dried beans, bacon, and hard tack, they decided to eat the greenery too. How bad could it be, they wondered? Unbeknownst to them, a ragtag of ten Civil War veterans and adventurers, potato greens are a relative of the deadly nightshade. Both plants contain the hallucinogen solanine.  

To say that they were deadly sick in the middle of nowhere, far from any civilization and medical remedies, is an understatement. As they all recovered, there is no doubt that they were quite tough and resilient. A mile down the river from the garden, the thieving gang must have regretted their crime. Sumner wrote, "such a gang of sick men I never saw before or since." Hall wrote that "he had coughed up a potato vine a foot long, with a potato on it as big as a goose egg." Even the tough Powell was in bad shape. 

The boats pulled to shore and "we tumbled under the trees, groaning in pain, and I feel a little alarmed, lest our poisoning be severe," wrote Hall. By supper time, most of them recovered and Sumner wrote that he "didn't think potato tops made good greens for the sixth day of July." Bradley comically remarked on the poisoning incident, "we shan't eat any more potato-tops this season."

Two days later the expedition found itself in such a bleak canyon that they named it Desolation Canyon. Grey and brown rocks surrounded them everywhere and shut up hundreds of feet. Not having any ropes, safety gear, and missing one arm which he had lost in the Civil War, Powell decided to climb up with Bradley and a barometer to measure the elevation. 

They started from a gulch, passing broken rocks, crevices, benches, until they ascended six or eight hundred feet and then suddenly found themselves in front of sheer precipice. 

Inching their way up a couple of feet at a time and passing the barometer back and forth, the pair found themselves suddenly in dire straits. Powell wrote, "I gain a foothold in a little crevice and grasp an angle of the rock overhead. I find I can get up no further and cannot step back." 

Powell had no choice and called Bradley for help. Bradley was on a ledge above Powell but could not reach him nor could he stretch any stick to haul him up. If the one-arm Powell let go, he would fall. As it was, he was standing on his toes and his muscles began to tremble, an involuntary spasming called today "sewing machine leg." 

Powell wrote, "If I lose my hold, I shall fall to the bottom, and then perhaps roll over the bench, and tumble still further down the cliff." The top of the cliff was at about 1,000 feet altitude. One cannot imagine that today anyone would attempt climbing such a sheer cliff without ropes and gear, especially while missing one arm.

Bradly devised a "desperate scheme." He stripped his tattered drawers and dangled them for Powell to catch from below. The problem was that the rock was hanging above Powell's head and the drawers dangled behind him. 

To grab this unusual lifeline, the one-arm Major Powell had to let go of his handhold, lean back into empty space, grab the drawers with his left arm, and pray that he would not lose his grip and tumble hundreds of feet below to his death. 

Bradley, weighing in at 150 pounds, was able to hold onto his drawers from which 120-pound Powell was dangling with all his might. 

The pair continued their climb as if nothing had happened and once they reached the summit at 1,000 feet above the river, they were rewarded with a view of "wild and desolate outlook, with sharp, jagged peaks in all directions." 

Bradley and Powell lived another day and their three-boat expedition on the Colorado River inside the Grand Canyon continued. 

NOTE: The two stories were told in the 2001 book, Down the Great Unknown, by Edward Dolnick.

The Propaganda Industrial Complex

The nostalgic posts of communists yearning for Ceausescu's communist reign of terror are the human equivalent of dogs howling because they miss their chains. - Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

Orwell’s Novel, 1984, highlights the Ministry of Truth which controls the lives of citizens through the dissemination of constant propaganda, an unrelenting assault on reality and truth.

The infighting citizens of Oceania do not really know what is going on in the world, only what they are told. They are controlled, regimented, and mass-surveilled by Big Brother and The Party to make sure that they conduct themselves as they expect them to always behave.

The ‘proles’ are the communist-controlled proletariat who are impoverished and have no access to any luxuries enjoyed by the Party members. They have no rights, except those granted by Big Brother and the Party, and their only escape is revolt. But is revolt easy to mount without any weapons or ability to organize under the strict control of 24/7 surveillance?

Having lived for twenty years under such an oppressive regime under the boot of the Communist Party, I know that rebellion is impossible to accomplish, given the fact that the Communist Party controls everything and has a huge standing army at its disposal, security police, financial and economic police, and thousands of paid informers among neighbors and hungry relatives. What chance does the unarmed, sick, cold, underpaid, and hungry proletariat have?

There are so many similarities between the fictious population of Oceania and our current political situation, that I do not have space to compare all of them in a short article.

How many Winston Smiths are there who work for the Ministry of Truth, altering current and historical records to fit the Party’s ideology and daily narrative? How is dissent punished in our current society by the authorities?

The main theme of 1984 is totalitarianism as expressed by an oppressive government/leadership that manipulates the truth and controls every aspect of society and private lives. The severe indoctrination devoid of reality is best exemplified by the phrases, “War is Peace, “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Fear and conformity to the mandated collective are expressed through surveillance and control enabled by 24/7 computer screens and the Thought Police. Such shadowing creates constant fear and uncertainty, raising the levels of cortisol and disease.

Winston’s Party manipulates the truth, using euphemistic language and approved history through Newspeak, shaping reality in a fantasy world. In our current U.S. fantasy world men can menstruate, get pregnant, have babies, and become women on demand just by wearing a dress and declaring themselves women. And the population goes along with their insane fantasy.

How many Winstons do we have today who rewrite the truth, historical past, and present reality in the bureaucratic rule of government? And how many leftists do we have today whose well-paid jobs are to protest, riot, and destroy in the name of fighting fascism while acting like fascists themselves?

Orwell’s Winston and his love interest, Julia, struggle to find some personal freedom and individuality away from the collective which controls everyone’s lives. Their eventual capture is meant to indoctrinate the masses to the fact that rebellion is futile against an all-controlling regime.

The current propaganda industrial complex is run with the help of the government bureaucracy staffed mainly by leftists, the main street media controlled by the left, leftist Hollywood stars insulated by their wealth from the struggles of the general population, teachers, administrators, and professors indoctrinated by academia and their communist parents, corrupt politicians on the take from the highest bidders, leftist billionaires with financial interests across the globe who don’t care about their own country, and the United Nations with its myriad of leftist NGOs. Generous taxpayer contributions fund our enemies, fundings that politicians are unwilling to cut.

How powerful is this Propaganda Industrial Complex and how encroaching is it? One monarch, who controls free speech with the designation of hate speech and hate speech laws which jail the offenders, controls trillions of dollars’ worth of land across the globe.

One highly placed bureaucrat said recently, “there is free speech and there is hate speech.” Who decides what the parameters are? Have they passed hate speech laws in America? What is the punishment if one just wants to express an opinion?

Will you be defeated just like Winston? Ask the jailed Katie Hopkins what her weekly comedic routine got her in England. Ask the banned-from-England Michael Savage. He claims to have spent $400k to clear his name but was unsuccessful. One cannot win against the Ministry of Truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occoquan and Mom's Apple Pie

Today I visited my favorite minerals store in the small historic town of Occoquan. It is a lovely stop on Hwy. 123, with picturesque hills, the Potomac tributary flowing through it, the eighteenth-century stone mansion, the ducks, the herons, the occasional bull shark caught in the nets of fishermen, the mom-and-pop boutiques, and the small and quaint restaurants on the banks of the river.

The average household income in Occoquan is $167,767. The median age is 43.7 years: 41.5 years for males, and 47.2 years for females.

Mom's Apple Pie turned The Golden Plum is no longer the attraction as you enter the town, it is now a Cafe that still sells pies, but the name has changed. The Golden Plum served the same delicious pies with recipes passed on to the new owner, the daughter. The Golden Plum no longer sold wines and spirits to the locals. Perhaps the daughter could not get a liquor license, perhaps she was not interested in selling wines to the rich Washington bureaucrats living in the expensive homes tucked in the hills and the condos built on the riverbank, perhaps that part of the business was not bringing in enough revenue. Nobody knows the reason.

The famous designer Andre Soriano had an atelier in the downtown Occoquan, but the leftist locals did not like his Republican politics, the American flag and the Trump flag he was flying on the second floor of his rented home. The atelier occupied the first floor and the second floor was his residence. The locals hated him so much that they harassed him constantly and even tried to burn the building down. The smoke stains were visible on the upstairs facade for a long time.

The building is now empty and for sale; Andre moved elsewhere. As a jet set celebrity designer for the stars as he is, he can live and create anywhere in the world. He loved the quaint town and its significance in the history of Virginia. Our friend Alice Butler, a friend of Donald Trump, had brought Andre to Virginia in 2016 from Los Angeles. The leftist, hateful locals of Occoquan made his life miserable. Andre was going to stay despite the constant attacks, but the owner decided to sell the building - prices are good and the unrelenting threats to Andre could have burned his building down.

A small church in town sold its building right across from the former Mom's Apple Pie to Muslims. They were welcomed with open arms and now the former church is a Muslim Community Center dedicated to Peace. Because of its proximity to the former Mom's Apple Pie and its sale of alcohol, the Muslims made sure that the wine liberals in Occoquan bought their alcohol somewhere else. With a population of 1,055, it won't be long before the Muslims outnumber the aging locals of Occoquan.

The Radicalization of American Students to Communism

The radicalization of American students into communism started long time ago but it has accelerated in the last forty years. Public school teachers, administrators, academia, foreign communist activists and agitators, the mainstream media, corrupt politicians, lax parents, and organized religion are to blame.

Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, a KGB spy and defector, born in 1939 in a suburb of Moscow, the son of a high-ranking Soviet army officer, said in an interview in 1985 with G. Edward Griffin that the indoctrination in American schools was so thorough that, even when students were presented with the reality of the big lie promoted by communist activists, the students and their teachers still believed the lies of communism.

The American teachers were and are still today trained at various colleges of education in America, all following the same education courses, indoctrination models and theories of education as prescribed by the materials and textbooks originally developed and written at Columbia Teachers College where many of the 20^th century professors were European communists who immigrated to the U.S.

Bezmenov stated in the interview that “ideological subversion” was the method used by communist activists and teachers to brainwash and convert American students to believe that communism was the best form of society, without any proof or evidence. Students were not taught about the horrors of communism and the killing of at least one hundred million in various communist countries simply because they disagreed with the Communist Party’s platform and ideology.

Bezmenov said that, if you “change the perception of reality,” despite ample evidence and abundance of information, no such indoctrinated person can draw a logical conclusion.

The communist activists and their trained teachers and academia, he said, used a four-stage method to brainwash students irreversibly. What are the four stages?

Stage 1 is the demoralization of the nation, which takes at least 15 years to achieve brainwashing in one generation. Once accomplished, the students’ minds cannot be changed, the basic perception of manufactured reality remains the same no matter what you do.

No amount of common sense can be inculcated into their minds. They become the “useful idiots” described by Soviet literature and used by communist activists to achieve their goals.

Once their work is completed, the communists do not tolerate such people, they have no use for them, “they will be squashed like cockroaches.” When brainwashed, such individuals are unable to assess and process true information even when presented with facts.

If they see concentration camps, the brainwashed would not believe they existed until they feel punishment on their own skin. And today’s Artificial Intelligence on all mainstream media and social platforms would make it impossible to comprehend reality. To turn the tide back to normalcy and patriotism, Bezmenov said, patriots would need a minimum of 20 years.

Stage 2 involves the Destabilization of a nation, via the economy, foreign relations, and defense.

Stage 3 will be a Crisis, or multiple crises.

Stage 4 involves Normalization after the crisis or crises, after the free markets would be destroyed. A benevolent dictator(s) will promise anything to the people, creating the false illusions that the situation(s) is (are) all under control. At that point, the nation is in an undeclared state of war, and the communist globalist conspiracy takes full control.

Bezmenov recommended a strong national effort to educate people against the welfare state, against communist infiltration because the danger is real, and to force the government to stop aiding global communism, and communist dictators. He said forty years ago, “educate yourselves, you are in a state of war, you have little time to turn the tide.”

Unfortunately, we are now past the opportunity to change the tide. Survival of the capitalist system is very unlikely. There is no other place on this planet to escape from the encroaching of global communism promoted by billionaires, the U.N., and all the NGOs who take funding from the American taxpayers to do their anti-American activities around the world.

In forty years since Bezmenov’s warning about communist indoctrination of our youth in America, the globalist communists and their billionaire sponsors have made great strides to reach their rebranded goal of global communism.

Current tactics used were:

-           mandated vaccines and passports which resulted in unemployment, spikes in vaccine deaths and the financial destruction of many small and medium-sized companies.

-           climate change industry to control everything humans do from cradle to grave in their own lives and in their economies, including land, water, rivers, sea, oceans, and all industries.

-           advertised hysteria of global warming promoted through aggressive climate change narratives.

-           lab-made viral pandemic.  

-           forced lockdowns as protection by the benevolent government.

-           mail-in voting ballots, allegedly protecting humans from contact with each other and thus the spread of death; these helped the self-proclaimed “Democrat Socialists” win elections.

-           American president with Parkinsonian dementia, who was incapable to do his job.

-           transgenderism aimed at sterilizing children early before they can reproduce.

-           weather modification to control rain, land ownership, and agriculture.

-           water control via United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

-           illegal mass immigration from the third world to the western world under the banner of the United Nations, increasing the voting bloc of the Democrat Party, and changing the face of America and of many western nations forever.

-           digital currency to control every financial transaction and the medical and social existence of every human being on the planet.

If you are a teacher, administrator, college professor, a pastor, a journalist, a corrupt politician lacking a moral compass, an NGO, a doctor, a nurse, you are part of the problem, and you created this reversal of good fortune. You radicalized entire generations of young people in the last 40 years, and you should take responsibility for your actions.