The Heavy Rains of My Childhood

I spent my early years before first grade with my maternal grandparents. My grandpa had golden hands, he could fix anything and was the best mechanic in the village. His outdoor shop with an awning between the summer clay brick hut and the nice brick home contained any tool imaginable that a Mr. Fix-It would need. He repaired engines, tractors, bicycles, and any motorized thing that the villagers brought to him for a small fee or a barter. He loved history and sometimes accompanied the archeologists who had rented his home for the summer while they were digging for Roman treasure at the edge of the village where the ruins of an old church were dug up by a farmer who was trying to plow his field.

Grandma was the best homemaker, having raised six children; she kept them fed and alive in circumstances that were often quite difficult. She raised a garden every year, one pig, chicken, ducks, and a milk cow. Grandpa Cristache raised rabbits. I was not too fond of eating rabbit stew; they were my pets who hopped around the yard, sending the chicken scurrying for shelter.

We had a torrential rain last night and it reminded me of the rains I used to love in the country at my grandparents' farm. Their yard was always a mess of bird poop when it was dry and a soggy mess when it rained. Grandma and I loved the rain for entirely different reasons. We sought shelter under the awning of the concrete patio of the summer clay brick home; Grandma Elena would busy herself with some chore while seated, resting her weary and tired body, and I watched mesmerized the rain pouring small creeks down the muddy yard. I could not wait to jump in the puddles! We made mud poppers, the closest we would ever come to having the bursting sound of firecrackers.

The rain was always peaceful, no furious thunder or lightning, just endless tapping rain on the tin roof, tap, tap, tap. It made grandma happy because she did not have to water her garden by opening the ditches running in front of the house to divert water into her patches of lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, corn, and cabbage. She did not have to sink her feet and half her legs into the muddy ditches to break the dams with a hoe to make the water flow. The skies provided steady, soaking water; she was free of all the demanding work she otherwise would have had to do to irrigate her garden that would feed us and the animals throughout the year from the jars of carefully canned vegetables stored in the root cellar.

I used to go down from time to time with my best friend Steluta, to cool off on the hottest days of summer. It always smelled like fresh dirt and onions, no matter what grandma stored there. There were rows of jars filled with tomato sauce, pickled beets, large jars of pickled red bell peppers, cauliflower, hot red and green peppers, cabbage, and fruit preserves like strawberries and plums, from her abundant harvest.

She preserved the best small plum-shaped green tomatoes with walnut pieces stuffed inside. It was a delicious treat for special guests, served on little crystal plates with a glass of cold water from the fountain in the yard. Rows of apples were lined up in the damp air. I do not know how they survived until winter, but they were still edible, albeit wrinkled.

White jars of lard with pieces of rendered pork added light to an otherwise dank and semi-dark root cellar. Grandpa never installed any kind of light there because, for the longest time, nobody had electricity in the village until the early 1970s. And the village was only 9 km from the largest city of 600,000 inhabitants, 2 km from the largest refinery, and was connected by gravel roads to a main, paved highway. We carried a match box and lit a candle from the shelf.

The worst part of living with my grandparents was the sleeping quarters in the small house made of clay bricks with two tiny bedrooms, one for me and one for my grandparents. The rooms were clean, but we were eaten alive at night by fleas from grandma’s army of cats she fed to control the mouse population attracted by her upstairs barn in which she stored wheat and corn. Mom would come from time to time and dust all the cats with flea powder and that helped for a short while, but they returned with a vengeance. And the cats could not kill all the mice that had taken up residence inside the walls and in the upstairs barn. At night, we could hear the four-legged menace trotting inside the walls.

I was always sad when, every Sunday, after a brief visit, mom would leave to go back to the city, with the empty promise, which I always believed, that she would come back and take me with her. I was sad because it never happened. She did not have day care nor babysitters while she and dad went to work. The living conditions were much cleaner with my parents, but I was not old enough to be left alone in the tiny apartment.

Grandma left me alone to roam with my village friends. She only worried if I did not come back by suppertime. On rainy days, I would be my grandpa’s shadow, asking constant questions. Grandpa, although annoyed occasionally, loved me because I was, at that time, his only grandchild. My insatiable curiosity knew no bounds. When I got tired, I sat quietly in a rickety chair and watched the drumming rainfall turn every plant into a beautiful, lush green and the ground into a muddy brown smelling like earthworms.

 

 

Rewriting History to Fit the Latest Narrative of Climate Change

In the latest twist of remaking Western civilization history, Jorge Pisa Sanchez wrote in Nat Geo’s History magazine that “environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.” So “plagues and climate change” were the culprits for the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The source of this new twist is Kyle Harper, a classics professor at the University of Oklahoma. In 2017, he [offered] “an ambitious synthesis on the causes of the empire’s decline.” He argued that “the fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers, and slaves. But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes, and solar cycles.”

As proof, the article cites the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Cyprian plague (circa 249-269 A.D.), and droughts in the Mediterranean (368-369 A.D.) caused by climate shifts.

Harper drew conclusions from “data from climatology and epidemiology.” The article does not explain how and where this data came from. The Roman Climate Optimum is “believed to have lasted from circa 550 B.C. to 150 A.D.” What this belief is based on is not explained.

The article cited firsthand accounts of agronomist Columella who “indicated that in the first century A.D. rainfall in central and southern Italy was more frequent in summer than it is today.” And how do we know that?

The vast Western Roman Empire depended on its supply of grain and food on the many provinces that they had conquered. These areas produced the grains needed to support the army and the local population.

The Nat Geo article suggested that a tiny change in the Earth’s tilt reduced solar energy penetrating the atmosphere from the mid-third century A.D. which impacted the climate, making things cooler and less productive agriculturally.

What is the scientific evidence? Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (in north Africa) wrote as an eyewitness account that the world has grown old and in wintertime showers were not so abundant to nourish the seeds and the sun is not so hot to “cherish the harvest.” And the grain fields are not so “joyous,” and the autumn harvest are not so “fruitful in their leafy products.”

So based on this scant written evidence of a Bishop, we are now told to believe that the Western Roman Empire fell because of plagues and climate change. Never mind that the climate has changed for millennia across human history. And plagues and disease have affected, diminished, and killed some empires. But the Western Roman Empire did not fall because of climate change or bacteria.

Yes, cities were densely populated, and fires, and disease (tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria), and plagues have killed many across centuries in such closed quarters. Empires, including the Roman Empire, were affected by such occurrences.

Bishop St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote in a sermon De Mortalitate (On Mortality) about the plague in the middle of the third century which originated in Ethiopia, Egypt, Levant, Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy (249-269 A.D.). The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., two centuries later for entirely different reasons.

Paulus Orosius, a fifth century Christian historian, who was not present at the Cyprian plague, wrote about it in terms that indicated nothing but devastation for Italy. How credible is this historian two centuries later, a man who was not there?

The Nat Geo article talks about “climate refugees,” a term coined by the global warming crowd, in the form of nomadic herders from the “Eurasian steppe, from the Hungarian plains to Mongolia.” These nomads allegedly forced other “nomadic peoples from the north toward the land of the Roman Empire.”

The Nat Geo article states, “it now seems certain [how certain is that?] that epidemics and droughts were a notable factor in the process that led to the definitive fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.”

Sanchez, writing for Nat Geo, ends his article very carefully with, “Our understanding of precise climatic conditions from that time remains incomplete, especially across a region as vast as the Roman Empire.” He warns against ‘deterministic conclusions’ because “history cannot be explained simply by a variation in temperature or rainfall or by the outbreak of plagues, however deadly they may be.”

Yet the title of his Nat Geo article clearly states, “Plagues and climate change, the fall of the Roman Empire, environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.”

Edward Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”

‘Climate change’ or plagues did not cause the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But many other variables were significant such as the sack of the Eternal City (Rome) in 410 A.D. which dealt a psychological blow to the Empire and the entire world; the Gothic invasions; the inability to control the vast and far reaching borders of the empire; the population reduction due to infertility from potential poisoning by lead pipes which carried water to the Western empire’s cities and provinces; drinking from lead cups and using lead as sweetener and cosmetics with lead would have certainly caused severe arthritic transformations in the population at a young age; the inability to defend its territories and borders with enough soldiers to keep the invading hordes out.

There is no direct data relating to temperature earlier than a couple of hundred years ago. Scientists use “proxies” such as tree rings and layers of ice deposited on glaciers and polar caps. But during the Roman Empire there were no tree-ring studies and glaciers in the Alps are far north. The Roman Empire's Worst Plagues Were Linked to Climate Change | Scientific American

John Haldon et al wrote that “Harper’s assertions that Rome fell as a result of environmental stress, in particular through a combination of pandemic disease and climate change is a conclusion cast under serious doubts.”

 

Pharmacies, Apothecaries, and Such

As a fresh legal arrival in America from communism, the requests I kept getting from my relatives left behind, besides the blue jeans everyone loved, was medicine, medicine that was non-existent in pharmacies or in very short supply in the socialist republic ruled by the inept Communist Party that had no idea how to run an economy and if they did, they did not care that people suffered and died needlessly.

For some reason, the extended family thought that I could walk into a U.S. pharmacy and purchase whatever I wanted, without a doctor’s visit, and without a prescription for a valid, demonstrable ailment. A refusal to deliver their requests put me on a do not contact because she is not going to deliver list. I had no money, no resources, and no prescriptions.

Looking at the history of pharmaceuticals and the places where medicinal drugs were made, the apothecary, it is self-evident that there was a definitive split between apothecaries and doctors – their distinct roles were to mortar and pestle a potion/compound upon the request of the doctors.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Fredrick II, who was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Emperor, but king of Sicily, promulgated in 1231 the Constitution of Melfi which determined that doctors were not to prepare remedies for disease, only prescribe them.

Based on surviving painting, murals, and wood carvings of apothecaries (“storehouse” in Greek) in medieval Europe, they looked very much like the apothecary in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. Potions, ointments, plants, and liquids were stored in ceramic jars on shelves around the store and a counter circled the shelves. Amulets, candles, and sponges were hanging from hooks.

What exactly did apothecaries think had curative powers in medieval times? Precious and semi-precious stones like agate were thought to cure eye problems; mineral water which is still believed today to have curative powers; products from animals (quite a big trade still exists in China today of different animal parts, some which result in the cruel slaughter of endangered species, often just to harvest their fins, tusks, or other organs); products from humans such as nails, urine, blood; spices; and a large variety of dried plants and mushrooms.

Because convents, monasteries, and abbeys were places of learning, could afford to purchase expensive hand-illustrated and written one of a kind books, and had special gardens called herbularius dedicated to medicinal plants called simples, they received the pilgrims and the poor who were offered hospitality within the abbey, in a wing called hospitals; the monks often treated their sores, ailments, and diseases for the duration of their stays. The monks were the teachers, the herbalists, the apothecaries, the doctors of first resort, and spiritual guides.

A pharmacopoeia, De Materia Medica, by the Greek physician Dioscorides, was found in monasteries in the medieval west as well as in the Arab world. A pharmacopoeia was a compendium published as an authority for standards of strength, purity, and quality of therapeutic drugs. It described how each drug, potion, poultice was formulated, their chemical properties, quantities, and preparation methods so that the resulting product would be ‘standard’ every time.  Today we have the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (USP), the European Pharmacopoeia (EP), and the British Pharmacopoeia (BP).

There is a fresco from an apothecary in northwestern Italy in the 15^th century; ceramic vessels with medicinal ingredients are lining the shelves and a precision scale/balance is present, as well as a mortar and pestle.

There is reference to an apothecary in Camadoli, east of Florence, in 1048. In the same town, a monk called Romuald founded a Benedictine group that ran a hospital for the poor.

In 1221 a Dominican convent was built in Florence next to Basilica of Santa Maria Novella which ran the precursor of the modern drugstore. “Apothecaries were obligated to label the bottles, indicating when the remedy was prepared.”

On the bell tower of Florence Cathedral there is a 14^th century panel carved by Nino Pisano, panel which represents medicine with apothecary jars.

In 1281Paris the Faculty of Medicine forbade apothecaries “to visit the sick or dispense any medicine without a prescription from a physician.” It is not known for sure how knowledgeable physicians of that time were about drugs and their efficacy in the treatment of disease. In modern times, it is fair to say that pharmacists know more about drugs than doctors do.

The rise of professional guilds further regulated the activities of apothecaries. For example, in 1353 the king’s statutes regulated by law the Guild of Spice Merchants-Apothecaries in Paris. One could not practice mixing potions “if he did not  know how to read prescriptions or had no one who knew how to do so.”

Apothecaries could not sell poisonous and dangerous medicines, bottles had to be labeled with the year and month of preparation, and products had to be sold “at a loyal, fair, and moderate price.” Perhaps modern medicine could learn a thing or two from such modest inclinations, following the medieval price regulation.

To ensure compliance, “a master of apothecaries with two physicians from the dean of the Faculty of Medicine inspected each apothecary at least twice a year” to make sure the substances within the shop were good. (Nat Geo 2025)

Women were not allowed to be apothecaries, they were only relegated to midwifery. Women were skilled in medicine and healing but were not accepted in Europe as they were accepted in the New World of 1682.

According to Nat Geo, there is record of a prescription in 1462 for the King Henry IV of Castile by the Spanish apothecary Fernando Lopez de Aguilar, for stomach water at a cost of 48 maravedis. The liquid contains chamomile flower 2 oz, roses 2 oz, violets 2 oz, and King’s crown (Pyrenean saxifrage) 2 oz. (Nat Geo, July/August 2025)

With such a long history of apothecary science and art, will modern pharmacists survive technology and AI?

 

Vlad Tepes, Cruelty, and the Janissaries

For five hundred years my people have fought the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, and their passage and battles have left an imprint in the national psyche and in the Romanian language.

The territory of what is now Romania, was a buffer zone between the advancement of the Ottoman Empire towards medieval Europe and their demands for treasure and heavy tribute.

One of our national heroes, Vlad Tepes, had fought the Ottomans to his eventual death. Vlad was a Prince of Wallachia; a province located between the Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River. The 15^th-century Wallachia was the state between the central European kingdom of Hungary and the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

When the Turkish Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453, the ruler of Wallachia was Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon. His personal coat of arms was a dragon, hence the name. When his son, also named Vlad, ascended to the throne, he received the title of “Son of the Dragon,” Vlad Dracula.

Vlad Tepes was born in 1430. He was exposed at an early age to medieval cruelty because, as a boy, was held hostage by the Turks in a fortress called Egrigoz, “Crooked Eyes.”

He also witnessed the murder of his own father and his elder brother being buried alive on orders of the Regent of Hungary. Medieval Europe was not lacking in utter cruelty, violence, and savagery among the princes and kings in power who devised the most disgusting ways to torture and kill their enemies.

Called Vlad Tepes, “the Impaler,” after his favorite method of killing Turkish prisoners and others, Vlad proceeded to rule with an iron fist. The impaling stakes were often blunted and greased to extend the agony, the impalement of a vital organ, and the eventual death of the victim.

Vlad continued campaigns against the invading Turks and helped save Christian Europe from Islamic conquest. He helped peasants fight the ruthless feudal lords of Eastern Europe called “boyars” and “restored order to a land torn apart by foreign invasion and civil strife.

Vlad did lock up a group of beggars and disabled people in a church and set them on fire, but the utter cruelty was explained away as stamping out disease when threatened by the plague.

He allegedly skinned women alive who were found guilty of committing adultery.

The myth of vampirism that Bram Stoker, a British author, assigned to Vlad Dracula is certainly not true. Stoker never traveled to Romania to investigate elements for his book; he just visited his local library and found the history of Vlad Tepes fascinating.

There is no doubt that he was a monster of cruelty as he strangled, boiled, roasted, and put to death a minimum of 50,000 people in his reign of ten years. He met a violent end in 1476, but nobody knows if the was killed by the Ottomans or his political rivals. His severed head was impaled on a spike for all to see. He was allegedly buried on an island in Romania, but, when they opened the tomb in modern times, it was empty.

His alleged residence, Bran Castle, was not his home even though the castle advertises some loose connection to one of his campaign stays. The Poenari castle ruins in Transylvania are more credibly the place where he lived. Its location is hard to access via 1480 concrete stairs. The citadel was destroyed partially by three different earthquakes and the masonry fell in the river below.

Poenari castle ruins are located on Mount Cetatea, a canyon formed by the Arges River. It was built in the first part of the 13^th century to be used by the Basarab rulers. Vlad repaired it in 1459 when he saw its potential for a hard to access fortress and became his residence until his death.

As a boy, held hostage by the Turks, Vlad witnessed what the Ottomans did to Christian boys they held captive. Turks used a system called “devsirme” (collect) to conscript physically and intellectually gifted Christian boys from the territories they conquered in places like Anatolia, Armenia, and the Balkans.

They used Christian boys because Turkish law forbade them to enslave Muslims and they could also keep powerful enemies under control, such as Vlad’s dad.

The Christian boys were circumcised, forcibly converted to Islam, and sent to the capital which is today Istanbul. Most of them were forced to join the forces of the Janissaries, “the shock troops” of the sultans. The Janissaries (yeniceri, Turkish) were founded in 1300s as the sultan’s body guards, later as the standing army of the Ottoman Empire. They wore a distinctive hat with feathers and spoons. Every Janissary regiment had a huge cooking pot called “kazan” (cazan, Romanian) and a huge ladle to distribute the food cooked. If said kazan was lost in battle, the punishment was expulsion; an overturned ladle meant mutiny.

Vlad was lucky to have escaped the conscription into Janissaries and all the military schools involved prior to being included in such a regiment. After centuries of thuggery and even murder of sultans, the Janissaries fell in disfavor and in 1826 in the Auspicious Incident, thousands of Janissaries were murdered in their barracks. Their influence disappeared and the Ottoman Empire disappeared a century later replaced by general Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the post-Ottoman Turkey.

Vlad Dracul, as an imprisoned boy in Egrigoz, dodged the bullet of Janissaries.

 

 

 

Making Rain Via Cloud Seeding

Shawn Ryan interviewed on his show Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of Rainmaker, “a next generation cloud seeding company.”  Weather manipulation such as cloud seeding and geoengineering is something most Americans are unaware of or discount as a conspiracy theory, but it is not.

“Rainmaker, a cloudseeding company, uses weather-resistant drones to increase precipitation and novel radar hardware to measure how much man-made precipitation is created.”  Their stated aim is to reverse the desertification of the American West and to transform the deserts into green, arable land.  Rainmaker produces rain and snow.

Research is currently done by the Chinese, Europeans, Saudis, the Emirates, and others. The Chinese have 30,000 Weather Manipulation Engineers in the Chinese Meteorological Administration.

Recently in Switzerland a glacier and tons of dirt buried the entire village below. Doricko spoke of his company’s “snowpack enhancement, trying to protect and prevent glaciers from cracking, becoming unstable and collapsing.”

Shawn Ryan mentioned operation Popeye in Vietnam which Americans used to lengthen the monsoon season to give our side operational advantage.

Would blame be placed in case of severe property damage and loss of human life because of weather manipulation? “Would acts of God become a thing of the past?”

Doricko said that regulations are in place in every state, particularly in the west, to have licenses and permits approved by the State Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Water Resources, but not so much at the federal level. NOAA notification of cloud seeding is required.

To get approval for weather modification, the company must have permits and meteorologists on staff, and the “suspension criteria.”

Suspension criteria means that, if there is already a flood risk, if there are ground burns scars from fires, if high soil moisture is present that would cause flooding, if there is snowpack that would cause avalanches, even though customers might want more rain, the company is regulated not to cloud seed in those instances.

The states west of the Mississippi River have been experimenting with cloud seeding the longest because they have distressed need for water. They have weather modification programs in those states.

According to Doricko, cloud seeding was invented by Americans in New York in 1946 (they made snow over the Appalachians). But it was never proven to work until 2017 with the help of radars.

Why cloud seed with silver iodide? Ninety-three percent of all liquid water that traverses the lower atmosphere over the U.S. does not precipitate over land, it is recycled by the oceans, thus wasted water in terms of irrigation potential. And that seems enough reason to poison our atmosphere and land with silver iodide to make rain.

Geoengineering is different from cloud seeding, it blocks sunlight from the upper atmosphere, an entirely untested experiment. We have no idea what will happen if we block the sunlight and cool the planet down; crops will die, flora will die, and fauna that depends on it will follow.

An observer who lived in southern Idaho in the town of Fairfield since 1971 described how they used to get 6-8 feet of snow each winter. After they started cloud seeding, droughts happened all the time. Idahoans are fighting to end cloud seeding and weather modification.

As a non-scientist, my immediate reaction is, where is the informed consent of the American citizens breathing in the chemicals sprayed in the clouds, such as aluminum particles and silver iodide, mixed in with the water falling to the ground as rain, contaminating the soil and the water table? And, if it is harmless and we are going to benefit from it, why have they been gaslighting us about it for decades and still do today?

The exchange between Shawn Ryan and the 25-year old college dropout who claimed to be a Christian, a Peter Thiel fellow from whom he received funding for Rainmaker, while dodging all the important questions, was an obvious attempt to make cloud seeding and geoengineering appear acceptable and even desirable while downplaying the dangerous spraying of our skies and the blocking of the sun.

The weather has been working fine for millennia until psychopaths have decided to play God. Some blame the weather manipulation of hurricane Helene and Milton for destroying the topography of western North Carolina and parts of Florida.

If you believe that airliners are crisscrossing the sky in a perfect grid pattern, just flying by while leaving behind angry grey trails that spread throughout the day turning the sky into an ugly quilted blanket, you are quite naive. Contrails dissipate quickly, chemtrails do not dissipate. Weather warfare is a massive crime against humanity.

Last, but not least, how many people have been made sick and died by environmental damage that these individuals have caused, illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune diseases, and other life-altering conditions and poisonings? And how have fauna and flora been affected?

 

 

 

 

  

We Are Not a Democracy

I was strolling through Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia when I encountered a very loud group of high school students who did not speak English but were having a grand time in front of the Colonial Governor’s Palace.

After making a few inquiries with the adults, I found out from one of their American chaperones from D.C. that they were Pacific Islanders who were sponsored by the Department of Interior via the NGO Close Up with the idea to teach them about our American “democracy.”

Talking to one of the educator chaperones from the Pacific Islands, I emphasized the fact that we are not a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic with elected representatives who are to abide by our Constitution. She was naïve and did not understand that facet of our Constitutional Republic.

The Close Up Foundation advertises itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan civic education organization in Washington, D.C.” Established in 1971by Stephen A. Janger, Close Up is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. President and CEO is Timothy S. Davis, Esq. The foundation had a revenue of $28,706,197 (2014) and expenses of $27,846,081 (2014). The revenue for 2025 is $39,919,109. Datanyze reveals slightly different numbers. Close Up Foundation Company Profile | Management and Employees List

The website claims that since 1971, more than one million students and educators participated in Close Up programs “to inspire young people to find their unique voice and help them develop the skills and awareness they need to be engaged citizens for life.” They are expected to interact with people, places, and institutions to “discover how your voice can make an impact on American democracy.” Again, we are not a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic. Washington DC Student Programs & Resources | Close Up Foundation

“Using the city as a living classroom, Close Up’s Washington, D.C., trip allows high school students to make personal connections with the people and institutions that embody our nation’s past and present.”

“Close Up’s once-in-a-lifetime program opportunities are designed to inspire and empower students to become active participants in our democracy. With the help of our program instructors, students experience history and government, consider a variety of viewpoints on important current issues, and build the skills of engaged citizenship.” Close Up's Washington D.C. Trip for High School Students

Close Up Foundation hosts programs for students and teachers from all 50 states, Abu Dhabi, American Samoa, Canada, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Curacao, Guam, Federated States of Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Republic of Palau, and the United State Virgin Islands.

The educational idea is laudable, but should we be using Department of the Interior money to fund these trips, including expensive plane tickets? The elements of American civics are taught in every high school in the nation; we do not need the taxpayer expense to fund these trips to expose outsiders to our American “democracy.”

 

 

 

 

NGOs Are Unelected Parts of Governments

NGOs, non-governmental organizations, became an indirect part of governments through art. 71 of the Charter of the United Nations, Chapter X, The Economic and Social Council (1945). This council was tasked to make “suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence.” The organizations could be international and national as long as the U.N. member concerned was consulted.

At the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, there were representatives of 1,200 voluntary organizations. Chapter X: Article 71 — Charter of the United Nations — Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs — Codification Division Publications

In some countries and circles, NGOs are called non-profits, NPOs (non-profit organizations). NGOs are a form of ‘civil society’ partnership, as the U.N. Agenda 2030 calls them, private/public partnership.

NGOs spring up in many ways. They can be controlled by citizens with an agenda of a certain ‘vision’ and mission. Funding can come from private individuals, the state, other NGOs, rich individuals, and small and large companies with an agenda.

Some NGOs claim that they are autonomous and impartial and claim that they receive no official funding but only donations and volunteer work. Each country has different steps and requirements to allow an NGO to exist.

Generally an NGO must state their purpose and ideology; the rules that governs it; how it is operated and governed; must choose a name, find headquarters (many U.N. affiliated NGOs are located in Switzerland); NGOs must choose their scope of action, i.e., local, state, national, international; what activities will be carried out in order to achieve stated objectives; who are the founding members and their roles; where does the financing come from; who makes decisions; is the NGO an association, foundation, or group; draft the founding act, the official document; request a tax number for commercial transactions; and register the NGO with Social Security in order to pay its workers.

NGOs started in the early 1800s. According to Nalinakumari and MacLean, the first structured NGO was the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society which was formed to ban slavery in the British Empire. By 1914 there were 1083 NGOs. Women’s suffrage movement and unions had a significant role in the establishment of NGOs.

Chapter 27 of U.N. Agenda 21 of 1992 recognized the “vital role of NGOs and other major groups in Sustainable Development (SD),” the lynchpin of U.N. Agenda 21 and U.N. Agenda 2030, an U.N. agenda that controls every facet of how we live and how companies operate.

The Globalization of the 20^th century significantly lifted the role of NGOs. Non-governmental organizations were “developed to emphasize humanitarian issues, developmental aid, and sustainable development.”

Social NGOs are seen as “popular movements of the poor.” Others think that NGOs are “imperialist in nature,” and “operate in a racialized manner in third world countries.” Whatever their nature, NGOs are now a powerful transnational network of vast interests and citizens are not invited to participate in their decision-making, they must obey.

How powerful are NGOs? According to insiders, the “NGO sector is now the eighth largest economy in the world valued at over $1 trillion a year globally.” NGOs, alleged to employ 19 million paid workers and numerous volunteers, spend significantly on development each year.

NGOs and trade unions are inter-connected. ‘Civil society’ activism led by trade unions enabled the rise of NGOs. Some NGOs were established by unions and the term “social movement unionism” was coined.

If the labor movement were repressed in a country, NGOs would take over as proxies. Unions and NGOs exchanged money to support each other’s projects.

NGOs are a strange mixture of alliances, government entities, charities, businesses, various denominational churches, radical groups, conservative groups, industry lobby groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce, and other groups. Funding is hard to trace as it comes from many directions.

The first international NGO, the Anti-Slavery Society, was formed in 1839. The Red Cross grew out of the Franco-Italian war and was established in 1863; Save the Children after World War I; and Oxfam and CARE after World War II.

The biggest NGO today is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with almost $30 billion in endowments. Some of the better-known NGOs are:

-         Save the Children

-         Oxfam International

-         Doctors without Borders

-         World Vision

-         International Rescue Committee

-         Catholic Relief Services

-         CARE International

-         Amnesty International

-         Plan International

Recently, NGOs have become tied to governments via funding arrangements and service contracts. Even state and local governments have gotten involved with NGOs in the so-called public-private partnerships.

According to Global Policy, Doctors Without Borders received 46 percent of its income from government sources. CARE International got 70 percent of its budget from government contributions. A substantial portion of Oxfam’s income came from the British government and the EU. World Vision received $55 million from the U.S. government. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/176-general/31937.html

NGOs have exploded in numbers in response to globalization. There are few developments today that do not involve some kind of private/public partnership investment by ‘civil society.’ Nobody knows who or what the ‘civil society’ is, but it is not hard to find those involved, i.e., most politicians, D and R, academics, journalists, Hollywood stars, billionaires, rich athletes, United Nations members from third world countries, and famous authors with leftist leanings.

NGOs, with generous funds from our own government, have become tools of control and oppression of populations across the globe, including of American citizens. USAID provided huge funding, using our taxpayer dollars generously funneled by our own government to various programs that were not approved by American citizens.

NGOs facilitate and implement nefarious programs that go against our own interests, including the highly orchestrated illegal immigrant invasion of the United States from the Darien Gap in Panama.