Time to Counter Land Trust Abuse Against Farmers

A chapter is dedicated to Martha's story.

Tired of land trust agents frequently abusing the public trust and the rights of property owners, Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, Martha Boneta, owner of Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia and other major property rights advocates are organizing a property rights rally, conference, and an early morning hearing before the Virginia Outdoors Federation on November 6, 2014 in Richmond, Virginia at the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“It’s time to counter the powerful Green voices that are dictating policy and harassing property owners,” said Tom DeWeese in an open letter to the American public.

Farmers are demanding land trust reform to stop abusive practices of land trust agents who often disregard the rights of property owners and use local officials to intimidate and harass farmers with onerous fines and audits. A glaring example is the video showing a Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) agent who, in a German Stasi police manner, demands to inspect Martha Boneta’s closets.  http://youtube.com/watch?v=LAywKw93ucs

According to Tom DeWeese, “The Piedmont Environmental Council, an elitist cabal masquerading as a conservation group, has repeatedly overstepped its authority under the Virginia Conservation Easement Act.”

The fact that PEC was successful in bullying for eight years Fauquier County farmer Martha Boneta in spite of the well-publicized and well-documented “transgressions” against her farm is an indication that other “control and power-hungry groups” could violate property rights of Virginians across the Commonwealth and of Americans across the country.

Allowing the public trust to be violated in one area is setting a bad precedent for other well-funded groups like PEC to impose their control and will through underhanded venues on farmers, landowners and businesses in general as has been the case around the country.

Preserving private property and the rule of law in our nation is essential to safeguarding liberty.  If the rule of law is no longer respected, the Founding Fathers’ America is in jeopardy. “The first act of a tyrant is to take away your property rights,” said DeWeese.

Virginians and the American Policy Center are calling for:

-          The General Assembly to enact Land Trust Reforms “to end welfare to the rich in the form of sale of tax credits”

-          Virginia General Assembly to create Land Trust “fair business practices, consumer protections, and sanctions when Land Trust abuse occurs”

-          Virginia General Assembly to develop a “framework” to safeguard the public interest against Land Trust agents who engage in malicious and counterproductive business practices

-          Legislation enactment by the Virginia General Assembly to curb and “reign” in abuses of the Piedmont Environmental Council and other analogous land trusts.

I dedicated a chapter to Martha Boneta’s story in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2/186-3038350-6259617?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414163958&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

The glaring, behind closed doors collusion is evident in Martha’s ordeal which has stretched for eight years. The Daily Signal ran her story recently. http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/20/farmers-harassment-claim-against-green-group-to-get-airing/

It is vitally important to protect our property rights in a Constitutional Republic. Unfortunately, the left brainwashed our society into believing that we live in a democracy where the will of the leftist majority is forcing the rest to comply. But we live more and more in a corporatist atmosphere where the international bankers have stripped individuals of their rights bit by bit with the help of “green” legislators and environmentalist NGOs.

As John Adams so eloquently said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” (John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)

Amnesty for 34 Million Illegal Aliens

The ISIS threat has already been forgotten and the Ebola crisis has been dumped in the lap of the Department of Defense. Climate change has been declared to be the number one threat to our national security. The next manufactured crisis to be resolved is amnesty by fiat.

Soldiers, highly trained to fight wars only, will provide medical containment expertise, testing for Ebola, and hermetic and cremation mortuary services, in place of the local burial rites that have contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola.

Why stop the flights from the affected countries and ban the travel and visas for West African citizens affected by the epidemic when we can deploy thousands of healthy U.S. soldiers to contain Ebola at its source? If any foreign national travels sick to the U.S. and spreads Ebola to anyone he/she comes in contact with, it’s a chance that we have to take because we don’t want to deprive those foreign nationals of their right to travel or affect their economies.

“Operation United Assistance” began with the President’s request to Congress to make “excess Overseas Contingency Operations funds appropriated for FY2014” to respond to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The funds will be used for:

-          “Transportation of DOD and non-DOD personnel and supplies

-          Coordination and delivery of supplies from both DOD and non-DOD sources such as isolation units, personnel protective equipment, and medical supplies

-          Construction of 17 planned Ebola treatment units

-          Training and education in support of mortuary affairs functions to limit the spread of the Ebola outbreak.” http://fas.org/sgp/natsec/IN10152.pdf?

In October 2014, 1,400 soldiers were deployed, 700 from the Army’s 101^st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and the remainder combat engineers from other units. Trained how to “avoid contracting Ebola and other endemic diseases,” the troops will be led by Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky who is replacing Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams. http://fas.org/sgp/natsec/IN10152.pdf?

Following requests made on September 8 and September 17, 2014, the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees made available $1 billion for “DOD’s support of the United States’ response to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Some of the funding from the initial $500 million request would be available to support continuing humanitarian activities in Iraq.”

In the meantime, the feds are preparing for the amnesty of 34 million illegal aliens by government fiat, in a manner which is very similar to the flood of unaccompanied illegal alien children (bused and flown from Central America to our southern border), that occurred months after the federal government (DHS’s ICE) advertised in January 29, 2014, looking for Escort Services for 65,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children.

Many church charities jumped at the opportunity to receive millions in grants to care for and settle illegal minors. As we know, these illegal minors were quietly distributed across the country in small towns. Many were infected with illnesses that have been previously eradicated in this country or were unknown to this country. Lacking proper hygiene, some allegedly brought in the “mystery” respiratory illness with partial paralysis, caused by the enterovirus D68, endemic to Central America, which has killed several American children.

FedBizOps.gov, the site for federal business opportunities, posted on October 3, 2014, solicitation number HSSCCG-14-R-00028 by the Department of Homeland Security, the Citizenship and Immigration Services, called Card Consumables. As stated in the draft solicitation posting, “The objective of this procurement is to provide card consumables for the Document Management Division (DMD) that will be used to produce Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) and Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards. The requirement is for an estimated 4 million cards annually with the potential to buy as many as 34 million cards total. The ordering periods for this requirement shall be for a total of five (5) years.” https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=20bc202b0a49bbe9f2a705782dba0090&tab=core&tabmode=list&=

It is obvious that the clandestine plan is to amnesty millions of illegal aliens by Executive Order since the American people vehemently oppose amnesty and Congress is unwilling to pass (before mid-term elections) the very unpopular law supported by big businesses who want cheap labor.

One thing is certain, once the cards are issued, the already dire unemployment figures among America’s blue collar workers are going to worsen and the welfare rolls are going to swell. The Democrats will be singing happily all the way to the voting booths, having achieved in perpetuity the fundamental transformation of America into a one party system utopia.

 

What Congressmen Are Told About Ebola

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

The Congressional Research Service has been driving the legislative debate since 1914, giving our Congressmen information on various topics. The latest report on October 3, 2014, entitled, “Ebola: Basics about the Disease,” by Sarah Lister, Specialist in Public Health and Epidemiology, provides the following information obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

1.       Ebola outbreak began in December 2013 in Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone by March 2014.

2.       Ebola virus is a filo-virus named after the Ebola River in Zaire, with five different strains; the Zaire strain is causing the current outbreak.

3.       Fruits bats are considered the most likely “reservoir” of the virus which is spread to humans through contact with infected animals.

4.       Human to human transmission occurs through “direct contact with body fluids or contaminated objects such as medical equipment.”

5.       “It cannot be spread through the air” like common cold viruses or influenza.

6.       Healthcare workers and family members that care for EVD patients “have a high risk of infection.”

7.       Incubation period in humans, from exposure to onset of symptoms, “varies from 2 to 21 days, with an average of 8 to 10 days.”

8.       Survivors still have Ebola virus and “remain contagious for several months after infection even though symptoms are no longer present.”

9.       Symptoms include “high fever (greater than 101.5 degrees F), severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal (stomach) pain, and unexplained hemorrhage (bleeding or bruising).”

10.   Lab tests are available to detect the disease but they often show false negative in the incipient infection.

11.   Patients can be isolated in a medical setting (to separate ill people from healthy people) or quarantined at home (to restrict movement of people who are well but may have been exposed).

12.   The fatality rate of Ebola “exceeds 50 percent.” The World Health Organization (WHO) reported the current outbreak fatality in West Africa to be 70.7 percent in Guinea, 72.3 percent in Liberia, and 69 percent in Sierra Leone. Patients in hospitals had a death rate of 61-67 percent.

13.   Transmission prevention can be done by avoiding contact with body fluids of those infected. “EVD is not likely to be easily transmitted in community settings in the United States.” Caregivers and healthcare workers “face considerable risk of transmission.” Protective gear, “liberal disinfection, and careful handling of human remains and contaminated objects are essential.”

14.   No therapies and vaccines against EVD have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

15.   “WHO assumes that EVD-specific therapies and vaccines will not be available in sufficient time or amount to quell the current outbreak.”

16.   Oral and intravenous fluids are administered to maintain hydration as well as blood transfusions to replace the loss of blood from hemorrhage.

17.   Some victims received serum and plasma from EVD survivors in order to provide antibodies.  “The effectiveness of this approach has not been demonstrated.”

18.   WHO said that testing unproven therapies on human subjects, although it raises ethical questions, is warranted in the current outbreak. Experts in the medical field disagree.

19.   WHO warned on September 22 that by early November there will be 20,000 people infected with Ebola Zaire.

20.   The CDC warned that in the worst case scenario, the case count projections will be 1.4 million by January 20, 2015. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43750.pdf

Lister concludes her report, “In light of concerns raised by the introduction of EVD into the United States, the CDC Director has said that these concerns can best be alleviated by controlling the outbreak in West Africa.”

This begs the questions, why is the United States not closing all flights from the affected areas, and why is it still issuing travel visas to citizens from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea who want to come to the U.S.? Travel is a privilege, not a right.

  © Ileana Johnson Paugh 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quarantine Quandary

Photo courtesy: Facebook Timeline Photos

As the ISIS crisis is conveniently ignored right before the election, the main stream media is focusing on the next crisis, the Ebola spread and the schizophrenic response from the CDC. Meanwhile Congress is silent, waiting for guidance on what opinion they should form before they actually do the job they were elected to do, legislate to protect the best interests of the American people.

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on October 9, 2014, RL 33201, outlining the federal and state quarantine and isolation authority. Jared P. Cole, Legislative attorney, overviewed the state and federal public health laws in regards to the “quarantine and isolation of individuals” when individual liberties will be restricted. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33201.pdf

The state public health authority is derived from the Tenth Amendment. The federal public health authority to “prescribe quarantine and other health measures” is derived from the Commerce Clause, a clause that gives Congress authority to regulate interstate and international commerce.

Cole describes two measures that can be undertaken by health authorities in order to prevent those infected with or exposed to a contagious disease from infecting others:

-          Quarantine (separating individuals exposed to an infection but “not yet ill” from those who had not been exposed)

-          Isolation (separating “infected individuals” from those who are not infected)

http://www.flu.gov/planning-preparedness/federal/pandemic-influenza-implementation.pdf

The state health departments have primary quarantine authority.  (Cole, RL33201, p. 4)

“The federal government may assist or take over the management of an intrastate incident if requested by a state or if the federal government determines local efforts are inadequate.”  http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dq/sars_facts/isolationquarantine.pdf

Who is responsible for preventing the outbreak and spread of an infectious disease in the U.S.?

The Secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority granted by Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act to make and enforce regulations “to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States.” (RL33201, pp. 4-5)

The HHS Secretary has broad authority to “apprehend, detain, or conditionally release a person.” The Secretary can only do so with communicable diseases that are included in the Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003. The diseases listed are cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and influenza viruses with the potential to cause a pandemic.

The HHS Secretary transferred quarantine authority in 2000 to the Director of the CDC. Measures for interstate and foreign quarantine are now under CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. http://www.cdc.gov/ncpdcid/dgmq/index.html.

Federal regulations authorize the “apprehension, detention, examination, or conditional release” only of persons coming into a state from a foreign country.” Ship captains and airline pilots are required to report immediately the presence of ill passengers on board their vessels.  “If found to be infected, such individuals may be detained for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.” (Cole, p. 5)

If someone becomes violently ill on domestic and international flights, pilots are required to notify before arrival the CDC Quarantine Station closest to their destination airport. Twenty such stations are located at ports of entry into the U.S., assisted by DHS in “the enforcement of quarantine rules and regulations.”

Since we have not stopped flights originating from West Africa where Ebola has reached epidemic proportions, the probability of such infectious persons arriving daily is very real.

The Director of the CDC is in charge of preventing the spread of communicable diseases from state to state.

Cole said, “To prevent the spread of diseases between states, the regulations prohibit infected persons from traveling from one state to another without a permit from the health officer of the state, possession, or locality of destination, if such a permit is required under the law applicable to the place of destination. (RL33201, p. 7)

Cole added that the Secretary of HHS can bar the entry of persons from foreign countries if the “existence of any communicable disease” poses a “serious danger” of entering the United States. The “suspension of the right to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of public health.” The 2005 proposed rule for this statutory authority was not adopted. (70 Fed. Reg. 71892)

Then there is the Do Not Board (DNB) list which was developed by DHS and CDC and made operational in June 2007. To make this list a person must be:

-          Likely contagious with a communicable disease

-          Ignorant or non-compliant with the recommended medical treatment (such as someone with antibiotic resistant TB)

-          Likely to board a commercial aircraft or boat

At the state level, state police has the authority of quarantine and isolation; time and manner vary from state to state. Most quarantine state laws are 40-100 years old, lacking the contemporary scientific knowledge of communicable diseases. (RL33201, p. 10)

Can an individual have the right to challenge his or her quarantine or isolation?

Some courts recognize the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, to test the legality of the detention. “Often petitioners seek a declaration that the statute under which they were quarantined is unconstitutional.” (RL33201, p. 11)

Here are some legal challenges described in Cole’s  report:

-          Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824, the Supreme Court “alluded to a state’s authority to quarantine under the police powers”

-          Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana State Board of Health, 1902, “addressed a state’s power to quarantine an entire geographic area” (even though commerce was affected, the quarantine was not unconstitutional)

-          In another case, the court ruled that “it is ‘well settled’ that states may impose quarantines to prevent the spread of disease even though quarantines ‘affect interstate commerce’”

-          Miller v. Campbell City (leaking methane and hydrogen gases prompted an entire area quarantine which was broken by a resident who tried to go home; the court decided that the quarantine was not in bad faith or malicious)

-          U.S. v. Shinnick (a female passenger who could not prove vaccination after arriving from a smallpox-infected area in Stockholm, Sweden, was placed in isolation)

-          People ex rel. Barmore v. Robertson (woman who ran a boarding house and boarded an infected person, was quarantined in her home as a carrier of typhoid fever)

-          O’Connor v. Donaldson (man diagnosed with tuberculosis was hospitalized a few days in New York against his will; the court ruled that a “state’s police powers may confine individuals solely to protect society from the dangers of antisocial acts or communicable diseases”)

-          Wong Wai v. Williamson (San Francisco Board of Health “ordered all Chinese residents to be inoculated against bubonic plague, restricting their right to leave the city, citing nine deaths allegedly from plague. The inoculations were tainted, causing severe consequences.”)

-          Jew Ho v. Williamson (the quarantine was discriminatory since it applied only to Chinese residents, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; it questioned whether the plague actually caused the deaths)

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33201.pdf

Cole raises the question of potential future legal challenges:

1.      Eminent domain

-          case of widespread domestic public health emergency, if the quarantine and isolation necessitate private facilities when medical facilities become overburdened

In August 2003, after a heat wave caused 11,000 deaths in Paris, the government took over refrigerated warehouses as temporary morgues.

The State of Washington, after a volcanic eruption, restricted access to a town near the volcano. The court declared the “exercise of police power permissible and did not require compensation.”

           

2.      Self-imposed or home quarantines

-          can a “state support a population asked to voluntarily stay at home for a period of time”

-          can a state provide “legal immunity to businesses asked to provide facilities for quarantine”

We have the power and rules in place for quarantine and isolation in order to safeguard the health of the people of the United States from illegal immigrants’ communicable diseases like Ebola and the enterovirus D68 which has already killed several children. Instead, Congress is busy playing politics with people’s lives in order to win elections and to support this administration’s immigration policy. Scanning someone’s temperature at the airport is a sick joke.

We are not stopping flights from the affected Ebola zones, and illegal alien children from Latin America are still entering through our southern border, and are still being dispersed among our healthy children. Our soldiers, highly trained for war but sent to West Africa to play doctors, are going to be placed in quarantine in Liberia in the event they should become infected with Ebola, while potentially sick West Africans are still given visas every day to fly to the “racist” United States for first class treatment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butler on Business, October 9, 2014 The Latest on Ebola Outbreak - Liberty Express Radio

I come on at the 16 minute mark. Alan and I are discussing the latest on the Ebola outbreak.
http://host1.cyberears.com//27918.mp3

Dr. David J. Bobb spoke to the Republican Women of Clifton

“No oppressed people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.”  

-  Abraham Lincoln, January 1861, Fragment on the Constitution and the Union

 

Dr. David J. Bobb
Photo: Ileana Johnson

The Republican Women of Clifton hosted at their October 15, 2014 meeting Dr. David J. Bobb, President of the Bill of Rights Institute. Founded in 1999 as a 501(c) non-profit, the organization is “focused on providing educational resources on America’s Founding documents and principles for teachers and students of American History and Civics.”

With a vision to shape knowledgeable citizens with values and skills to exercise their God-given rights and responsibilities in order to maintain a free society, the Bill of Rights Institute educates young people about America’s Founders, the liberties guaranteed in our Founding documents, and how these principles are relevant today.

Dr. Bobb worked with Hillsdale College for 12 years and realized how malleable high school students are and how important it is to teach them what it means to be an American.

He compared the status quo of our country with the Office of Personnel Management, a dinosaur staffed by 600 people who bureaucratize all the paperwork necessary for federal employees to retire. The work is done entirely by hand, at great expense to the taxpayers, in windowless offices in a cave in Pennsylvania. People are crabby because they never see the sunlight. One employee finally quit, taking a job in handling explosives.

The American people are in that cave where the situation is so dark and dim, that taking a job as an explosives handler seems like a happier alternative. We are a nation “mired in debt,” and our economy is choked by a myriad of regulations under the control of progressives who are sclerotizing economic activity, in a schizophrenic state of affairs that dominates our political landscape.

Dr. Bobb’s organization is in touch with 35,000 teachers of the 120,000 teachers in the nation who teach “what used to be called Civics,” now called Social Studies, a substitution that treats the Declaration of Independence as an old artifact that has no bearing in your daily life, it is just a dusty museum piece.

The Constitution has become a “living document,” accountability is no longer present. Congress rubber stamps anything the administration throws their way. Congress has created a system of confusion and disorder, a lack of sense of reason, with a “mindboggling complexity made possible by a Constitutional illiteracy.”

The Constitution has become irrelevant, an obstacle to be overcome, an afterthought which prompted a college professor to write that there is no reason why we should abide by and be governed by a Constitution written by a bunch of dead white guys. “It is no taken seriously as a controlling document. You don’t take the structure that has been set up seriously.” That is the way academics treat it, Dr. Bobb said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when asked by Egyptian officials, recommended as a model the South African Constitution, a very complex and lengthy document, 100 pages or more, with a section on “rights” longer than our entire U.S. Constitution. The South African Constitution promises a right to education, health care, and a job, all the progressive utopia which is so appealing to our young people today.

MTV reached out to young people through Rock the Vote, using rockers and rappers to promise students that, if they vote, they can vote their way into prosperity. The reality is that young people, some of whom have yet to graduate, are saddled with $1.2 trillion in college debt, no job security, just a verbal con job. Why not “Teach the Vote” and “Reason the Vote?”

Young people can sense that something is wrong but they are not blaming the administration or the progressivism that created their economic situation. They are not seeing the real culprits because they’ve been told that the deck is stacked against them since 1980 when Howard Zinn wrote his book, The People’s History of the United States, a sort of Bible for Hollywood A-listers who shamelessly quote from it to young audiences with brains full of mush. Young people are shaped to work in activism for the left, in social justice, and schools groom and churn out students for activist causes.

Dr. Bobb does not think counter-curriculum control is the solution and the most effective way to reverse the trend. Students have to learn how to think and how to become careful evaluators of history.

Outlines of history classes are huge, sometimes 94 pages long, leaving no time for George Washington, resulting in neglect of important topics. And who decides what the important topics and standards are? Progressive standards in education neglect human nature, the fact that teaching is an art.

Dr. Bobb explained that the default setting of young people is progressivism. How can we get them to think and question the way in which they are brought up, he asked. Often they don’t even realize that they are progressives. They have no sense of history. What does it mean to be human, to be good, to be great, and to really connect with other people?

The Bill of Rights Institute advocates for a non-political curriculum developed from primary source documents with professional development programs for 21,000 teachers so far from all 50 states.

© Ileana Johnson Paugh 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charity Begins at Home with American Citizens

Photo: Martha Boneta 2014

While we are fighting in Virginia and around the country for small farmer’s rights to maintain their freedom to farm, unencumbered by local government permits and environmental NGOs that are determined to force all farmers under conservation easements and regulatory control, war refugees are given land and grants to farm in our country.

A recent report by the Associated Press from Des Moines, Iowa, stated, “The rapidly rising demand for locally grown fruits and vegetables has created a robust new market for refugees who fled violence in their home countries and found peace in farming small plots of land in several U.S. cities.”

The Global Greens program offered through the Lutheran Services of Iowa enabled 26 refugee families from Bhutan, Burundi, Burma, and Rwanda to grow tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, kale, lettuce and eggplants for their own consumption on small plots of 50 feet by 50 feet. Eight families are growing food on quarter-acre plots for local commercial consumption.

The 2003 federal Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program awards a maximum $85,000 to each organization ($1 million per year). In addition to previous organizations, plots are currently funded in New York City, Buffalo, Cleveland, Honolulu, Nashville, Providence, Sioux Falls, and Tampa. http://www.federalgrants.com/Refugee-Agricultural-Partnership-Program-41339.html

Simon, a refugee from Burundi said, "We were in a refugee camp and life was not good there but the United States gave us the opportunity to come here. This means a lot to me because we get to sell stuff and make a little bit of money so we can help our family and we can grow food so our family can feed other people and feed ourselves too." He expressed his hope to return to Africa one day and “to teach them new techniques to grow food and fight hunger.”

The goal of the Global Greens program is “to help families make money, but it’s also about being able to grow some of their own cultural crops. It’s being able to involve their families, being able to just have their own land.” http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dc77e20b44534de5b9b029f968cb21c4/refugees-settle-thanks-small-farm-plots

Should these government grants and charity not be given to our own unemployed and destitute American population who would welcome the opportunity to have their own piece of land on which to farm commercially and grow their own food? Charity begins at home but lately it seems that our own population does not count; illegal aliens and refugees from war and poverty-torn areas are given priority over the wellbeing, financial security, and health security of our own citizens.

Additionally, has any American citizen tried recently to get a "Farmers Home Loan?”  What about two years of free living like the State Department gives to refugees? 

Environmentalists in the historic York County, Virginia having collected 130 signatures, have asked the Board of Supervisors to ban commercial farming. Anthony Bavuso, a local oysterman, did not believe that York County should require him to purchase a special use permit for his oyster-farming operation at York Point because the Commonwealth of Virginia passed a low in 2014, the Boneta Bill, to protect small farming.

This law is strongly opposed by conservationist activists and environmental NGOs and they are determined to obstruct it by “asserting that the county of 66,000 could cite lot sizes and other considerations to quash farming activities.” www.watchdog.org/170548/county-farming-ban/

Martha Boneta, the small farmer who owns Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia, has been battling for eight years the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), a 501(c) non-profit land trust that co-holds an easement on her family farm with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF). Her easement contract permits agricultural, industrial, commercial, and residential uses of her property. Yet PEC regularly inspects, to the point of harassment, her barn, tools, kitchen, bathroom, and closets to make sure that nobody resides in her barn. According to Boneta, based on the secretive “confidential agreement” between the NGO and realtors, there is no doubt about the intent of the constant harassment and unending court battles.

While American farmers who have farmed for generation on small plots are being squeezed out by the NGO environmentalist assault on property rights, refugees and illegal aliens are given land and money to achieve the American dream. It is nice to be charitable and altruistic but our American citizens and their children’s dreams should have priority.

Nazi Environmentalism

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2014

Mark Musser describes how “God granted Adam and Eve a substantial amount of autonomy over the natural world.” Some environmentalists believe that this Biblical command is one of the reasons why the planet is in ecological distress, coupled with the population explosion, the industrial revolution, the unrestrained pollution, our obscene wealth, and western living standards. (Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, pp. 10-11)

Musser explores in his book the philosophical and practical roots of environmentalism and its potential connection to the modern version of the Green movement.

Environmental bureaucratic regulations and taxation will force humanity to make such personal sacrifices that there will be no personal behavior left that will not be regulated in some way, including taking videos and pictures in our federal parks. The permit is $1,500 and the fine for non-compliance is $1,000. Would we eventually have to obtain permits from animals to photograph them? Would PETA represent them in a court of law?

According to Musser, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment are responsible for the “utilitarian view of nature” which facilitated the Industrial Revolution and free market capitalism, the main culprits of ecological destruction as viewed by environmentalists. (Ibid, p. 13)

The predecessor of the infamous Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), is considered the father of “deep ecology.” Western man cannot rise above the circle of life; he must be “humble” with nature. Leopold promoted this view strongly after returning from Nazi Germany in 1935, the most nature-obsessed regime at the time, not unlike the current fixation with environmental pristine conditions, devoid of humans.  His influence left a mark on environmental existentialism. Man should “think like a mountain,” just exist. The Judeo-Christian God could not rule over nature and the universe. (Ibid, p. 14)

Musser wonders if the “greens” could eventually turn into a “much darker shade of green” like the ancient nature worshippers who sacrificed thousands of human beings to appease the nature gods in exchange for good weather. (Ibid, p. 16)

Nazi leaders were concerned about the capitalist mechanization of farms because they saw it as a way to destroy the soil and the landscape of the Vaterland. The SS, the “greenest faction of National Socialism,” was the “green praetorian guard.” (Ibid, pp. 18-19)

The disturbingly anti-Semitic Nazis like Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Rudolf Hoess, who committed unspeakable atrocities, found solace in nature.  Hoess rode his horse or walked through stables to chase away the demons and the pictures of horror.  “This is precisely how the authentic natural men of Nazi Germany walked down the barbaric road to Auschwitz,” said Musser.  (Ibid, p. 22)

Hitler was personally obsessed with wolves for their predatory lifestyle. A lot of elements in his life revolved around the wolf.

National Socialism fixation with nature and the environment bears a striking resemblance to modern environmentalism. The similarities between Nazi yesteryear and today’s environmental movement are “troubling,” said Musser. (p. 26)

The Nazis created corporate welfare between the state and big business, state sponsored corporatism, squeezing out the middle class as bourgeois, and forcing consumers into rationing in order to build the war machine. Hitler himself believed that Germans would run out of food and thus needed more Lebensraum, space to live. The Greens have adopted the Malthusian overpopulation theory (which was proven incorrect) when evaluating scarce natural resources such as land, forests, and water. Malthus “believed in long term population control measures, including birth control and economic protectionism.” (Ibid, p. 33)

The communist side of Hitler found it unjust that one group of people could have so much land compared to another, an affront to the “eternal justice of Nature.” (Ibid, p. 35)

The Nazi version of sustainable development (SD) was a mixture of environmentalism and racism. Musser said that “the ‘dialectical’ relationship between racism, Malthusian math, environmentalism, existentialism, naturalistic science, and biology would help give birth to the modern ecological cult of sustainable development.” (Ibid, p. 37)

In 1935 an environmental planning office was formed called “The Work of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning,” the first official social engineering of private property, the trademark of the modern conservationists today. Even Hitler’s four year economic plan was to be achieved by environmental friendly sustainable development measures.  “The Nazi war machine was developed under the green hue of sustainable development,” said Musser. (Ibid, pp. 38-39)

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823-1897) co-mingled socialism, nationalism, protecting nature, and anti-Semitism in his view of life which influenced early German environmentalism.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a favorite philosopher of Hitler, discussed animal rights, blaming Judaism for the barbaric treatment of animals in Europe and in the West. “It might truly be said that men are the devils of this earth and animals the tortured souls.”  (Ibid, p. 93)

It is no surprise that leading Nazis were vegetarians.  (Ibid, p. 101)

Schopenhauer even accused Christians of treating animals with cruelty. “The morality of Christians has not consideration for animals.” (Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, p. 178)

Then there were the “Volk” (villagers and farmers) adherents who believed in the simple life on the land, a return to nature. What stood in their way? It was their perennial foe, the Jewish people, because they owned businesses, banks, and ran the cities, all things threatening the ”volkisch” return to nature. (Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 103)

German zoologist Ernst Haeckel wrote about the adulation of nature and introduced the “ecological cult worship.” Haeckel and his followers pushed racial eugenics in Germany. The German Monist League proposed several eugenic programs before World War I. It is no surprise that eugenic-environmentalism became the stepping stone to a natural world dictatorship. Haeckel even advocated the replacement of Christian humanities in school with a nature based curriculum. (Ibid, pp. 108-109)

“In the school of the future nature will be the chief object of study; man shall learn a correct view of the world he lives in, he will not be made to stand outside of and opposed to nature.” (Haeckel und Allmers, p. 363, quoted by Musser, Nazi Oaks, pp. 109-110)

Maryland passed a law, No Child Left Inside, advocating that every high school graduate must be a diligent and knowledgeable steward of the environment as a condition of graduation, even though math, science, and reading scores were lacking.

Modern German Greens have dropped racism from their environmental creed but Ernst Haeckel is still their mentor. Monists believed that all organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, including human beings, are similar and equal to each other because they are “blood brothers.” This explains the fixation of some of the modern environmentalists with legal representation of animals in a court of law.

In 1933 Hitler signed the Tierschutzrecht, the right (law) of animal protection. Schopenhauer had criticized animal cruelty and experimentation.  He said, …”the animal is absolutely identical with us and that the difference lies merely in the accident, the intellect, not in the substance which is the will.” (p. 184)

The law was updated to include animal transportation, how much space they could have and how much food and water they should have. Considering how inhumane the transportation of the Jews to the concentration camps was in overcrowded cattle trains, the regulation for the transportation of animals seems obscene.

Hitler hated hunting, the killing of innocent animals, but had no compunction in torturing and killing six million Jews. Even though there were no wolves left in Germany, Hitler placed them under protection. There were wolves in Poland and the neighboring countries. (p. 196)

But the love and appreciation of animals did not extend to humans. “Nature was king over man.” Himmler went a bit further and proclaimed in a 1942 speech that “Man is nothing special.” This dehumanization of man made possible the atrocities committed against the Jewish people.  (p. 141)

Hitler believed that capitalism and communism were disobedient to nature and Jews were guilty of financing it and Christianity of spreading it. The “blood and soil” propaganda was used to promote moving back to the countryside, to preserve nature, and for environmental sustainability.

Musser said, because the original Bolsheviks, including Karl Marx, were Jewish, Hitler concluded, “The world of Judeo-Bolshevism must collapse.” (Hitler’s Table Talk, February 27, 1942, p. 260, quoted by Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 122)

Musser describes the giant oak trees at the entrance to Auschwitz, the doors of the crematorium made of massive oak, Adolf Eichmann’s (Man of the Oak) placement in charge of the Holocaust, and the possible symbolism of pagan rites of sacrifice under the oak tree. (p. 144)

The oak became such a symbol of nationalism that Hitler directed that oak trees be planted all around the Reich. (p. 150)

Goering, an avid hunter, declared in front of his hunting buddies in 1936, “For us, the forest is God’s cathedral.” (p. 202)

Such was the respect for plants and animals that Himmler “established experimental organic farms,” including one located at the Dachau concentration camp where herbs were grown for SS medicines.

Dr. Todt, who built the German interstate system (Autobahnen), was careful to protect forests, rivers, and wetlands.  The Autobahn was declared a “magnificent example of landscape design.” (p. 164 and p. 239)

Hitler was in love with his alpine retreat in Obersalzberg but somewhat embarrassed by the lavish and expensive Eagle’s Nest above the mountain landscape.

The Reich Conservation Agency legalized environmental and totalitarian social engineering. This is a model that socialist bureaucrats have used to set aside federal lands for preservation and conservation, lands that were not inhabited. However, regulating private property and turning it into state parks is another matter. (p. 209)

Nazis developed spatial planning, a precursor to today’s sustainable development and green building. (p. 216)

In common core education style, “knowledge” was replaced by “will” with a focus on life, vitality, and nature. (p. 233)

Hitler had grandiose plans to depopulate 30 million Slavs in order to make room for the Germans. The East was going to become Germany’s sustainable development mass project – transforming the Russian steppe into a German garden park through environmental planning.  Human settlements would be surrounded by pristine areas. This sounds eerily familiar to Dr. Coffman’s Biodiversity Map. (pp. 259-260)

As Musser explains, “Environmental imperialism was one of the primary reasons why Nazi Germany decided to conquer the eastern territories,” an extension of the German “blood and soil” beyond Germany’s borders. (p. 263)

The planners were given carte blanche to “re-sculpt the eastern territories in their totality, even if it meant the suppression, exploitation, and extermination of the people who lived there.” (Wolschke-Buhlman, How Green Were the Nazis?, p. 247, quoted by Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 268)

Hitler wanted to build wind mills all over Ukraine to supply its needs of electricity and to export only the wheat demanded. Colonizing the East would solve their overpopulation problem and his fear of running out of natural resources . He was sure that the “future belongs, surely, to water - to the wind and the tides.” What gave him the right to destroy so many millions of people, Jews, Russians, and Poles? They were not properly in synch with nature.

Walter Christaller, a former SS spatial planner, developed his Central Place Theory on regional and urban planning. His plan is considered by some the model for sustainable development and the Green movement today. Some environmentalists deny any connection between Nazism and going green. (p. 289 and p. 293)

How green were the Nazis? Probably as green and as controversial as our renewables are today.

© ILEANA JOHNSON 2014