The Climate Change Industry and the Hoax of Global Warming

Cherry Blossoms Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

It’s late April 2015 and it is still quite cold and the growing season is behind – an unusual late and frigid spring. The trees are just now sprouting green leaves and a few brave ones have even bloomed. If you ask the environmentalists, it is global warming. If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or the earth will perish. Hundreds of billions have already been spent around the globe on a deliberately manufactured panic.

I am not sure who coined the term “climate change industry” but it is an apt description of the snake oil salesmen who have become billionaires on the unfounded and irrational fear of debunked global warming and of climate change based on manufactured consensus science. The climate has been changing for millennia in cyclical periods dominated by either unusually cold or unusually hot temperatures.

It is convenient to the promoters of the climate change industry to purposefully confound weather events with climate. Having declared that the “science is settled,” the global warming scaremongering environmentalists are moving on to the next target of limiting our property rights and freedoms via carbon footprint and draconian, coal-industry destructive EPA regulations.

After all, the number one threat to our national security has been declared to be climate change. It is not the crushing out-of-control debt, it is not the planned and unchecked flood of immigrants into countries around the world, changing the demographics and eliminating sovereignty to the benefit of global elitist control, it is not ISIS beheading Christians and occupying the formerly liberated towns and provinces in Iraq, and it is not Iran with its nuclear bomb program, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, our ally and the only sane patch of reality in the Middle East.

The climate change industry has admitted through a Freudian slip that their agenda of climate change is “disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow.” Of course climate has been changing and we are in a cooling period now but truth cannot impede the liberal political advocates’ agenda of taxing rich countries more, spreading the wealth, and destroying our economy in the name of protecting the Earth.

The climate change industry has managed to transform a natural phenomenon of climate change into a global disaster that needs to be addressed by bureaucrats through fundamentally changing how we live, what we own, how our economies are run, by carbon footprint taxation, Smart Growth, Green Growth state and local programs around the world, and through weather modification spraying of chemicals into the atmosphere. This spraying of chemicals (chemtrails) is really affecting the weather and the growing season for agriculture, reducing yield. The climate change industry has become such a religion of environmentalism gone berserk that they are now trying to ban farming.

Electricity costs are going up, smart meters that catch on fire have been installed everywhere in order to control people’s energy consumption and in-home ambient temperature, and many electricity generation plants are scheduled to be closed due to draconian EPA regulations. The government’s all-out assault to redress climate change through regulatory planning and financial control is having a serious impact on our economy, the coal industry, the oil industry, and on everybody’s lives.

The hypothesis that rich nations caused climate change by burning fossil fuels to produce energy has never been proven by IPCC’s computer modeling. The fact that now the hypothesis changed its name from global warming to climate change in the face of obvious 18 years of global cooling is enough evidence that the purveyors of the industry of climate change are desperate but are not giving up. There is never a shortage of young, idealistic rioters-for-hire who, for a nominal fee will demonstrate anywhere against global warming, even in Quebec in the snow. Fleecing rich countries with carbon taxes is too lucrative a scam to give up the agenda.

The real reason behind the global warming scare and why the United Nations’ alarmists have been driving us into forced submission of environmentalist stewardship is that they want capitalism destroyed and replaced with their vision of a utopian communist economy that has never worked across the centuries.  These progressives have a problem with the Industrial Revolution, with “fossil fuels,” (They are not so fossil since the earth keeps producing them), with the only successful economic model that has provided generous income to all these hot-air spewing, idle bureaucrats, who have nothing better to do than meet in exotic locales planning the destruction of the goose that lays the golden eggs that feed their exorbitant lifestyles, salaries, bonuses, and pensions.

Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.’s Convention on Climate Change, disclosed the real reason for the climate change industry when she told us that they are not interested in saving the world from global warming Armageddon but they want to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

Fashion by Any Other Name Is Still Clothes

A typical Lilly Pulitzer print

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what is pretty and comfortable to some, it is ugly and low class to someone else. We all have different tastes. Aren’t we told all the time that diversity is great?

Not when it comes to clothes. The Washington Post fashion critic excoriated the Lilly Pulitzer for Target line and the brand in general.  She admitted that “The Lilly Pulitzer line is a coup, but what the retailer’s really selling isn’t pretty.” It was a successful retailing debut which sold everything around the country within five minutes and jammed its website, while some of the items showed up on eBay at three times the price. http://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-post/20150421/282668980893874/TextView

She declared, “Lilly Pulitzer is not fashion. It is clothes. The classic Lilly Pulitzer dress comes in shrill shades of yellow and pink that are vaguely infantilizing,” a preppy line you can see from far away, “50 paces” to be exact.  I think the middle class is not interested in buying fashion, or high fashion for that matter. They want to buy clothes that are comfortable, reasonably priced, in bright colors that make the wearer happy, a Floridian casual that only the relaxed southerners can truly understand.

“Anyone can work hard and save up enough cash to go out and purchase a Chanel suit or a Gucci handbag. A devoted student of Vogue can cobble together a personal style that speaks to her public identity,” the critic continued.

This is the problem with rich people who live in a bubble, completely disconnected from reality. Nobody in their right mind would save cash to buy an elitist, snobby Chanel suit that is uncomfortable, tight, and impractical in an economy in which many people have a hard time paying their bills and buying decent food for their families. Most Americans do not dress according to Vogue or carry around real Gucci bags when $5,000 is better spent to help the family survive a few months.

It is not true that Lilly Pulitzer represents something that “money cannot buy.” Lilly is just comfortable, relaxed, and reasonably priced everyday clothes. A buyer does not have to forgo important purchases in order to buy snooty high fashion.  The preppy appeal to the college crowd is just that, floral and happy colors appropriate for someone so young who still sees the world with innocent eyes. There is nothing “one-percentish” or rarified “clubby” about the Lilly clothes.

What is wrong with people on a budget buying colorful prints, creative designs, and clothes that make them happy? Is it jealousy for a successful marketing strategy? Are shoppers on a low budget not having “discerning tastes” because the Chanel-promoting one-percenters think so? Is it better to buy high-priced designer jeans with holes and rips in them?

Downplaying and ridiculing the entrepreneurship of the Lilly brand and of her now-deceased founder as “a bored, rich house-wife who had started an orange juice stand in Palm Beach, Florida” is definitely not going to win any converts from the middle class to the rarified upper class of Chanel-wearing elites. There was nothing wrong with the entrepreneurial Lilly Pulitzer purchasing the fabric at Woolworth’s and having her dressmaker sew simple chemise dresses. Many American women bought their fabrics and Simplicity dress patterns at Woolworth’s and Hancock’s and then made their own clothes through the early eighties.  

No average American woman in her right mind is going to wear the high-end designer clothes which are not meant to cover someone’s body, they are too short, too tight, too revealing; these clothes are meant to scream to the world, look at me, I have money, I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on my high-end fashion, I flaunt my wealth this way, and I live a life filled with expensive adornments on my body.

The middle class women do not wait for a sale at Neiman Marcus; they go to Target to buy a $40 Lilly Pulitzer dress or to the flagship store for a $200 one. Yes, the critic is right, “Lilly Pulitzer is a classic. It is always hanging on a rack somewhere, everywhere, in all of its pineapple-print, feel-good, preppy psychedelia.” Ask any southern college girl and they will agree that a Lilly dress on a sunny football weekend is the best. Ask anybody else what they would like to wear to the beach or to a picnic and the answer is Lilly clothes.

I think that most women prefer the inexpensive, feel-good, and colorful “psychedelia” of Lilly Pulitzer over the overpriced, snobby elitist “psychedelia” of ridiculous high-fashion.  I personally remove the label of any clothing as it bothers my sensitive skin. We don’t wear labels to affirm who we are – we know that the handmade, “high-class promised quality” is still “stitched just so” in a couture sweat shop by Chinese hands.

On that note, I am going to wear my light pink Lilly t-shirt which only set me back $40 and makes me happy to wear. Clothes do not make a person good, exceptional, or bad; they just create an illusory image and give a false impression of the wearer. We don’t need a branding or “public identity” expressed through expensive high fashion, we want to be ourselves.

My National Blogtalk Radio chat with Silvio Canto Jr. on February 27, 2015

We discuss my newest book, Communism 2.0, and other economic issues.
http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/7/393/show_7393419.mp3

My radio chat with Silvio on April 20, 2015 on National Blogtalk Radio

Topics: Greece, confiscation of Social Security, and income inequality
http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/7/532/show_7532915.mp3

America the Broken Beacon?

Cape Meares
Photo: Wikipedia

America used to be the country of freedom where people dreamed of immigrating to if only they could get a passport, a visa, enough money to fly or sail across the ocean, if only the border guards would not arrest them in the U.S. if they had no papers, if only the military guards in their own countries would not shoot them on sight.

Cubans have risked their lives for decades to cross the 90 miles into Florida, fleeing a life of communist dictatorship, and a life of oppression and imprisonment in Castro’s regime, sometimes drowning in makeshift dinghies and other crafts, close to the shores of freedom, a beacon so close to the dirty fog of communism.

The drowning death toll in 2015 of immigrants from Libya, trying to reach the shores of Europe, has climbed to 1,500 according to the Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/700-migrants-feared-dead-mediterranean-shipwreck-worst-yet

Other reports describe the murder of African Christian immigrants sailing to Europe on same boats with African Muslims. They were slaughtered by Muslims during the voyage on the Mediterranean. Some survived to tell the gruesome tale when rescued.

If they could only survive all these trials and tribulations and have enough skills necessary to fend for themselves financially, not become a ward of the state the moment they entered this shiny city on the hill, their dreams would come true. Those were the distant dreamers of the 1970s. The Beacon of America was awaiting talent and skills from around the world to contribute to a nation of citizens, not a nation of immigrants with allegiance to their former countries.

Now the President’s Dreamers are the “anchor babies” birthed on American soil by illegal mothers who cross the border, fly in their last month of pregnancy, or visit Disney World; the Dreamers are the illegals bussed or flown in by our administration and fanned across the country overnight because we are not diverse enough; the Dreamers are the Syrian and Somali “war refugees” who are brought in each month and dumped unceremoniously on unsuspecting small towns; the Dreamers are the drug gang members who are allowed into the country, no questions asked; the Dreamers are mostly uneducated, illiterate in their own language, and placed immediately on welfare, an undue burden on Americans who are struggling with unemployment, underemployment, and a bad economy.

It used to be that America wanted the best and the brightest immigrants who were willing to work, to assimilate, and to pledge allegiance to our country, to be useful to society, to make it better. That is no longer the case.

America was a tolerant Christian country full of patriotic Americans who loved their country. We keep hearing from progressives that we are a nation of immigrants. As Mark Levin said, we are not a nation of immigrants; we are a nation of citizens. Now it is on the slippery road of Western Europe which has allowed a deliberate failed multiculturalist policy to destroy many countries that find themselves now overrun by Muslim zealots who have only one scope in mind, to establish a world caliphate and to convert by any means necessary all the infidels to Islamic theology and theocracy.

Unchecked diversity and tolerance is destroying our western culture, replacing it stealthily with Islam and Sharia Law. Look at all the proselytizing for Islam lessons in our high schools across the country and the many chapters devoted to Islam in World History, while Christianity is hardly mentioned in the curriculum. Was it not progressives who demanded for decades the “separation of church and state” and now they have written Common Core textbooks to indoctrinate our children into Islam? The social engineering architects of this Islamic invasion into the U.K. are now coming to the U.S. to repeat their plans of destroying America as well. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249797/Labour-threw-open-doors-mass-migration-secret-plot-make-multicultural-UK.html

If Islam is not the curriculum topic in social studies, English, or history, it is the indoctrination into the green religion of environmentalism, of Gaia, or Mother Earth, masqueraded as climate change. Skeptics are labeled terrorists. America had the best universities in the world where dialog and divergent thoughts and creative minds worked together to make things better for the world. Universities are now bastions of progressive intolerance where free speech and individual thought are stifled and persecuted.

There is nothing like the celebrated murderer and founder Ira Einhorn’s Earth Day to bring out the best and the not-so-brightest celebrants and worshippers of the global environmental movement – pretending to be green on the outside but rotten red on the inside. Just check out the photos of piles of trash they left behind around the National Mall in Washington, D.C. this past weekend.
Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015
 

Cuts in Social Security, Confiscation, or Wealth Redistribution?

The Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, gave a speech on Tuesday, April 14, 2015, in which he proposed, among other things, raising the retirement age from 67 to 69. He stated that, “We should remember that Social Security at its core should be retirement insurance. I’m suggesting that Americans pay into the system throughout the course of their life, knowing that it will be there, if they need it, to support them in their later years, so seniors will not grow old in back-breaking poverty. But, if you are fortunate enough not to need it, you will have paid into a system that will continue to help Americans, neighbors, friends, who need it the most…. It is fair, and it is what we must continue to do. We can only do that by changing Social Security.” http://www.wsj.com/articles/christie-to-call-for-raising-age-for-social-security-cutting-benefit-for-some-seniors-1429018212

According to our government’s website, “The Social Security Act was signed by FDR on 8/14/35. Taxes were collected for the first time in January 1937 and the first one-time, lump-sum payments were made that same month. Regular ongoing monthly benefits started in January 1940.” It is important to note that it is a TAX, not an insurance premium, and it is not an insurance program.

Is this a communistic issue of “fairness” or is it an issue of out-of-control welfare and government spending? Perhaps we should remind the governor that the Social Security Act of 1935 was just a retirement program that only paid benefits to the primary worker. According to their website, “a 1939 change in the law added survivors’ benefits and benefits for the retiree’s spouse and children. In 1956 disability benefits were added….The original law contained the first national unemployment compensation program, aid to states for various health and welfare programs, and the Aid to Dependent Children program.”

My question to Governor Christie would be, before we start talking confiscation of retirement benefits, shouldn’t the law be changed by legal venues? When did Social Security suddenly become an optional insurance program for which we can select to pay premiums or opt-out? As a matter of fact, Social Security is mandatory, people are forced by law to contribute into Social Security 6.2 percent and employers also contribute 6.2 percent per employee. Furthermore, Social Security benefits are taxed again. The premise of FDR’s law was that, if nanny government did not step in, Americans were too stupid or apathetic to invest their own money to help them survive in old age. http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

And who decides which Americans need it the most and what is the criteria? How far of a stretch will be before the smart government bureaucrats like Christie decide that your savings in the bank are not really useful to you, you must give them up to the needier and unfortunate who have made bad choices in life and wound up poor, downtrodden, and addicted to drugs. Taking it a bit further, how much of a stretch is it for the same omnipotent government to step in and decide for you that your home has too many empty bedrooms, or too much space and thus must be confiscated and occupied by poor illegal aliens who have lots of kids and are in need of space. After all, in the Marxist ideology, it is only fair and social justice to confiscate wealth and other people’s money and possessions in order to give to the community and especially to the communist party elites and apparatchiks. It has certainly happened in all the former Iron Curtain countries where everybody lost everything they owned to government confiscation, redistribution, and social engineering.

Governor Christie continued, “So, let’s ask ourselves the question, do we really believe that the wealthiest Americans need to take from younger, hard-working Americans, to receive what, for most of them, is a modest monthly Social Security check? I say no. And I propose a modest  means-test that only affects those  with non-Social Security income of over $80,000 a year and phase out Social Security payment entirely for those that have $200,000 a year in retirement income. Think about how much money you have to have.”

The argument is insulting and wrong. Who is to decide what I have to have? What if my needs change due to illness? Is $80,000 a year going to be enough? Nursing home care, in-home care, drugs, and medical care are very expensive. Inflation and economic policies have sky-rocketed the price of many goods and services. This arbitrary amount may not buy as much as it used to since the cost of living has escalated.

Social Security is a tax, it is no insurance and we pay taxes even on Social Security income. People are forced to take Medicare at 65 and pay expensive insurance plans for drugs, hospital, and doctors.

How about the Social Security lock box that has been robbed long time ago by politicians who spent our money with compunction? We were told that it is our money to have upon retirement at the age of 65. There is a reason why the Social Security Administration keeps accurate records of each individual’s contribution made throughout his/her employment life in order to determine the amount of annual benefit. That is an earned entitlement.

Go to a Social Security office in northern Virginia and it is overrun with illegal aliens who do not speak English. How long have these people, who are mostly young, have been paying into Social Security? What right do they have to draw Social Security benefits that were reserved and paid for by American citizens?

Christie makes the Marxist argument that people should draw benefits according to the slogan made popular by Karl Marx, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” the German version, “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen,” expressing the idea that communism will make enough goods and services that would meet and fulfill everyone’s needs.

This is outrageous in itself. Anybody who lived under communism can attest to the fact that the economy was plagued by chronic shortages and people were deprived of basics, suffered daily, lost weight, were anemic, malnourished, even starved to death. People are also familiar with the Jamestown experiment in communism when everyone worked the land collectively but received an equal share of the crop. Some worked harder, some were slackers. The colony of settlers almost starved to death. The following year, they reverted to individual plots of land and production flourished.

Marx made famous the phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” but he perhaps borrowed it from Louis Blanc who used it in 1839, an idea attributed to the Frenchman Etienne-Gabriel Morelly who wrote in 1755 a bizarre work, Code of Nature.
Under the heading, Sacred and Fundamental Laws that would tear out the roots of vice and of all the evils of society, Morelly wrote:

“I. Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.

II. Every citizen will be a public man, sustained by, supported by, and occupied at the public expense.

III. Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent and his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity with the distributive laws.” https://www.marxists.org/subject/utopian/morelly/code-nature.htm

What happens when a retiree passes on? His/her Social Security benefits revert back to the government if they are not married at the time. If a person were allowed to invest their money into private retirement funds, the money would revert back to the heirs and, even after paying inheritance tax, there will still be potential money left over.

Like Christie, we also “believe in the dignity of work,” but we must send young, able-bodied welfare recipients and illegal aliens to work for their unearned and generous benefits instead of sending them Social Security checks every month, while expecting those who paid into the system to have benefits reduced or confiscated altogether. If a well-off retiree chooses to donate his/her benefits, that is a different story. But forcing them to give up their benefits is Marxist confiscation and forced redistribution of wealth.

No matter how you look at what Governor Christie proposes in regards to entitlements, a progressive term that implies that anyone who receives any form of Social Security is entitled to it, regardless of whether they paid into Social Security or not, smacks of more wealth redistribution decided by greedy politicians who have already spent the supposed Social Security lockbox and threw away the key. If anything needs cutting or confiscating is the politicians’ power and insatiable desire to spend the taxpayers’ money.

 Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

The Armenian Genocide

“Around the world, Christians are facing violence, persecution, brutality in a way we have not seen in generations.”  – Rey Flores, “The Wanderer”

A New York Times article published
December 15, 2015

The hypocritical “war on women” movement is deafly silent, no real effort to save the captives, and good men are doing nothing when faced daily with photographs of Christian hostages on their knees, clad in orange jumpsuits, about to be beheaded, when women and girls are kidnapped, raped, genitally mutilated by ISIS, and driven into a life of slavery as forced converts to Islam.

One year later, the Clarion Project says, “ #BringBackOurGirls” are still sex slaves to Boko Haram, sold into slavery for 2,000 rials each, about $12. www.clarionproject.org/bring-back-our-girls-one-year-later-still-slaves-boko-haram

The Christian genocide continues unabated. ISIS is demanding $100,000 per hostage, for the 250-300 Assyrians who were captured in the Hasaka province. http://www.cbn.com/world/2015/ISIS-Demands-30-Million-to-Release-Christians?

The Pope spoke about the Armenian genocide during Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  Church leaders and the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan were in attendance. He spoke about humanity witnessing “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” in the 20^th century.  “The first, which is widely considered, ‘the first genocide of the 20^th century,’ struck your own Armenian people,” he said. The Nazi Holocaust and Stalin’s mass killings were followed by other genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Bosnia.

As Christians, it is our duty and responsibility to keep alive the memories of those killed, the Pope said. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” Pope Francis continued.

BBC News reported on April 12, 2015 that Turkey was angry with Pope Francis’ description of the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule in WWI as “genocide.”  Turkey plays down the genocide as smaller numbers of deaths resulting from the WWI clashes in which ethnic Turks have also suffered.  Most Western scholars regard the 1.5 million Armenians civilians, who were deliberately deported between 1915-1916 to desert regions where they succumbed to starvation and thirst, as genocide. “Thousands also died in massacres.” Countries like Belgium, Canada, Argentina, France, Italy, Russia, and Uruguay recognize the mass killings of Armenians as genocide. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32272604

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered condolences in 2014 for the first time to the grandchildren of all the Armenians who were massacred in 1915. This year marks a century since the atrocities were committed, and,  until all countries recognize that the genocide had occurred, it is an incomplete mourning exacerbated by the denial stories to this day. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/turkey-erdogan-condolences-armenian-massacre

Why were Armenians massacred by the Turks? To understand the reason, you must understand who the Armenians were, how, and why they lived under the Ottoman Empire, and their status as non-Muslims, “non-believers,” and second-class citizens.

Armenians are ancient people who lived in Anatolia some 2500 years ago. They had their own distinctive alphabet and culture. There are 6 to 7 million Armenians today, half living in the Republic of Armenia, while the rest are scattered in the U.S., Russia, France, Lebanon, and Syria.

In the year 301 A.D., the King of Armenia was the first ruler to adopt Christianity as the official state religion, even before the Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. Captured by the Ottoman Empire in the 15^th century, Armenia was absorbed into the Islamic Ottoman Empire, along with a large swath of European lands. As subject of the Sultan, Armenians had less freedom, had to pay higher taxes, were discriminated against, and were not allowed to serve in the military.

Armenian intellectuals killed
en masse on April 24, 1915

Unhappy with the second-class citizen status, by the end of the 1800s, Armenians demanded equality. In the 1890s the Bloody Sultan who was presiding over a weak government, used massacres as a way to maintain law and order.  In 1894-1896 200,000 Armenians were killed during the Hamidian massacres under the rule of Abdul Hamid II, a foreshadowing of what was to come in 1915. http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hamidian.html

When the Young Turks forced the Sultan out in 1908, Armenians were allowed to serve in the military. In 1912-1913 the Christian regions of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria gained their independence from the Ottoman Empire.

According to Vahaken Dadrian, Director of the Genocidal Research at Zoryan Institute, as quoted on a film aired on PBS, http://asbarez.com/133128/acclaimed-armenian-genocide-documentary-to-air-on-pbs/

“For the first time in recent history, the glorious Ottoman army suffered a major military defeat at the hands of their former subject-nations, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs,” losing in two weeks 75 percent of their former European territories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vahakn_Dadrian

The despair borne by such a loss in the Balkans gave rise to a deep hatred against Christians, inflamed by Ottoman refugees’ stories, refugees thrown out of Christian lands, turning angry Turks against their indigenous Christian population, the Armenians – “Revenge, revenge, revenge, there is no other word.”

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau published in 1918 his personal account of the Armenian genocide. Chapter 24, The Murder of a Nation, describes in grizzly detail how Armenian men, who were formerly soldiers and cavalrymen in the Turkish army, were stripped of their arms and transformed into road workers and “pack animals.” Carrying heavy loads onto their backs, these men were whipped and bayonetted by the Turks into the Caucasus Mountains, sometimes waist-deep through snow. 

“They had to spend practically all their time in the open, sleeping on the bare ground. … They were given only scraps of food; if they fell sick they were left where they had dropped,” while the Turks robbed them of their possessions and their clothes. “Squads of 50-100 men were taken in groups of four, marched to a secluded spot a short distance from the village,” they were stripped naked and shot, having been forced to dig their own graves.

Morgenthau describes the fate of an entire Armenian regiment sent to Diarbekir. Agents notified Kurdish tribesmen to attack and kill these weak and starved soldiers “that they might gain that merit in Allah’s eyes that comes from killing a Christian.”

Ambassador Morgenthau explained how “throughout the Turkish Empire a systematic attempt was made to kill all able-bodied men, not only for the purpose of removing all males who might propagate a new generation of Armenians, but for the purpose of rendering the weaker part of the population an easy prey.”

When thousands failed to turn in weapons, the Turks ransacked churches, desecrated altars, marched the naked men and women through the streets, letting them be whipped by angry Turkish mobs. Those imprisoned who did not manage to flee into the woods and caves were subjected to the “bastinado” torture, the beating of the soles of the feet until they burst and had to be amputated.

Crucifixion, pulling of fingernails, of hairs, of eyebrows, tearing of flesh with red-hot pincers, and then pouring hot oil into the wounds were some of the barbaric methods of torture drawn from the records of the Spanish Inquisition.

Torture was just the beginning of the Armenian atrocities. What was to come was the actual destruction of “an entire Armenian race” by deporting it to the south and southeastern part of the Ottoman Empire, the Syrian desert and the Mesopotamian valley. Morgenthau said, “The Central Government now announced its intention of gathering the two million or more Armenians living in the several sections of the empire and transporting them to this desolate and inhospitable region.” They knew they would die on the way of thirst, starvation, or murdered by “Mohammedan desert tribes.”

The deportations took place through the spring and summer of 1915. The entire Armenian population of villages were ordered to appear in the main square, sometimes with little time to prepare, their homes and possessions confiscated for “safekeeping” and then divided among Turks. Once the deported Armenians had traveled several hours, they were attacked and killed in secluded valleys by Turkish peasants with clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws.

The “caravans of despair” originated in thousands of cities and villages in the Ottoman Empire.  Ambassador Morgenthau described how village after village and town after town were emptied of its Armenian population and, in six months, “about  1.2 million people started on this journey to the Syrian desert.” He believed it absurd that the Turkish government claimed to deport Armenians to “new homes,” the real intent was extermination. He concludes, “The details in questions were furnished to me directly by the American Consul in Aleppo, and are now on file in the State Department at Washington.” (Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story:  A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide, Henry Morgenthau, Cosimo Classics, New York, 2010)

Henry Morgenthau Sr. (1856-1946) “details how Turkey fell under the influence of Germany and how this led to the Armenian Genocide. In a trial run of the extermination of the Jews, the Germans orchestrated the murder and exile of the Armenians from Turkey, with ‘Turkey for the Turks’ as a rallying cry. The similarities to the Holocaust are chilling.”

Also chilling is the recent discovery made by Stefan Petke of the Technical University of Berlin who uncovered rare WWII footage that documents the existence of Muslim units (The Free Arab Legion) in the Nazi army who were used as ‘working soldiers’ because they “were a complete failure in the battlefields of Tunisia in 1943.” http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4645922,00.html

The pogrom against Christianity continues to this day.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015 

 

 

 

Is There One Country Left Free of Communism Where One Can Retire?

Brasov, The Black Church
Photo: Wikipedia

Many Americans have asked me where they could retire away from this country’s advancement towards Marxism. I was wracking my brain trying to find a place that would be suitable for my retirement years where I could continue to live in the relative freedom I found in the 1970s America. As long as we follow the law, we have nothing to hide and nothing to fear except the arm of “environmental justice” and “social justice.”

After all, who wants to live their formative youth years under the Iron Curtain of communism and then their retirement years under the boot of communism on steroids in America? The Eastern Europeans’ Security Police were novices when compared to all sorts of 24/7 electronic surveillance in the U.S. , more sophisticated than the Soviets could have ever devised.

We have smart meters, water meters, gas meters, A/C meters, smart appliance meters, drones attached to our homes, flying drones, NSA spying, laptops, smart gadgets, smart TVs, smart phones, social networks like Facebook, and many other devices I don’t even know exist, aimed at controlling everything that we do, speak, create, think, and write.

In a sense, we are surrounded by regular police in the streets, cameras on every street corner, building, or intersection, and security police on a mountain top, usually college graduates in their best pajamas or fatigues, watching a bank of monitors, not just the lowly street-snitches variety, who recorded long time ago our comings and goings, or the poor shmucks who recorded, listened to our conversations, and wrote a report at the end of the day.

Is there such a place on the planet where communism/totalitarianism no longer exists? Not really, since global communism is not just on a relentless march, it is on a trot, thanks to government elites around the world and the United Nations.

A Romanian journalist suggested in a recent article that retirees should move back to Romania, more specifically, to the Brasov-Sinaia-Sibiu region, an ideal place where life in general resembles the life in a resort with clean streets, little traffic congestion, fresh mountain air, relatively inexpensive housing, and a very good standard of living. Not sure about the medical amenities which retirees usually need. I am sure there are some private clinics.

His invitation was not based on altruism and care for the wellbeing of the retirees as much as the uncomplicated financial salvation of the Romanian struggling economy affected by the worldwide deep and prolonged recession. 

Based on his calculations, the average retiree would spend monthly 600 euros and save 400 euros. I cannot imagine being able to save 40 percent of their gross income in such hard times, but I will go along with his overly optimistic formula.  

If 100,000 Romanians living abroad would repatriate in the next five years, and each family would invest 50,000 euros in the Brasov area as an epicenter of development, it would result in a 5 billion euro of new infusion of cash benefiting economic growth in housing, apartments, consumption, and services such as medical, tourism, transportation, construction, and other basic household goods.

Investors would not have to wait on corrupt politicians to fund economic development sporadically after they had squandered on themselves and on their pet projects the bulk of the money earmarked for economic development for impoverished areas that truly needed it.

Living well and salvaging the Romanian economy at the same time seems like a no-brainer, a win-win situation for everyone. There is a little nagging question in the back of my mind, a sort of “what if” based on my pessimistic realpolitik experience with Marxists.

The European Union brand of socialism that has been infused into Romania with the new capital for economic development, for environmental “green growth” projects, and other partnerships with corrupt politicians that were already scions of former hard-core commies, has given rise to a new class of global communism supporters who could confiscate or nationalize wealth, pensions, bank accounts, and investments just for “social justice” and the “common good.”

So, the short answer to the question, is there a place where you can retire away from communism, is no, the reason being that it has gone global.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

Grants Because the Economy Isn't Doing So Well

The economy is so rosy, the statistics tell us, we are at what economists call full employment. “Full employment is a situation in which everyone who is willing and able to work can find a job. At full employment, the measured unemployment rate is still positive.” Economists have argued for years that the full employment number was somewhere “near 5 percent unemployment.”

President John F. Kennedy tried to commit the federal government to a target rate of 4 percent unemployment but it was rejected as being too unrealistic and overly ambitious.

To prevent another Great Depression, an unemployment insurance system was put in place after 1933 as a temporary cushion. Through this insurance which gives money to those who become unemployed, unemployment insurance props up aggregate demand during recessions.

Unfortunately, unemployment insurance replaces about one half of the lost income of the unemployed persons who are insured. Economists agree that “fewer than half of the unemployed actually collect benefits” and the lost output that could have been produced had these people been working cannot be replaced.

The system of payroll taxes and unemployment benefits helps spread the cost of unemployment over the entire population, or so it was thought. But it does not eliminate the basic economic cost nor does it prevent the shrinking working population from shouldering an unfair burden of support resulting from bad economic policies that have failed to create jobs and increase aggregate demand.

When Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is below its potential, and it is under this regime, unemployment is above “full employment.” This begs the question then, is the reported unemployment of 5.5 percent accurate?  The answer is no because discouraged workers are no longer counted as if they had disappeared, and many unemployed have shifted from the ranks of the unemployed to the ranks of the disabled and of those on welfare.

A discouraged worker is an unemployed person who has given up looking for work and is therefore no longer counted as part of the labor force. Currently, it is hard to pin down the number of abled-bodied individuals that comprise the American labor force given the fact that we have so many illegal aliens in this country that are gainfully employed but work under the radar of statistics. We do know that we have the lowest labor force participation (62.7%) since the late 70s.

The World Bank lists the 2013 U.S. labor force as 158,959,242 persons. “Total labor force comprises people ages 15 and older who meet the International Labor Organization definition of the economically active population. … The labor force includes the armed forces, the unemployed, and first-time job-seekers, but excludes homemakers and other unpaid caregivers and workers in the informal sector.”

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN

 

In 2013, Brad Plumer told us that the shrinking labor force is caused by:  “1) The Ageing of America;  2) The bad economy is keeping workers in school and out of the labor force; 3) More workers are going on disability insurance.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/08/the-u-s-labor-force-is-still-shrinking-rapidly-heres-why/

The victims of high unemployment or forced partial employment due to Obamacare are paying a high financial and psychological price, costs that are borne quite unevenly by different groups of the population.

Instead of addressing the sluggish economy, the lack of job creation, the job-killing Obamacare, the job-killing EPA draconian regulations, the regime is offering grants to the unemployed, the disabled, and discouraged, and the generational welfare recipients.

On April 6, 2015, under the heading,” U.S. Government wants to help you,” Resource Depot sent out an email that said, “Did you hear the news? The U.S. economy isn’t getting better anytime soon. Thankfully, benefits may be available if you qualify for them.” (See if you qualify) “You may be eligible for a government grant. Many Americans never requested their piece of the $787 billion Recovery Stimulus. If you believe you may be entitled to some of these fund(s), please review your options.” (Click here to review your options)

If you are unemployed, discouraged, partially employed, or on welfare, do not worry, there are now grants to assure that you get your undeserved, unearned piece of the pie bought and paid for by someone else who does not mind supporting you financially – it’s the socialist way of spreading the wealth, take from the productive and give generously to the unproductive.

While we keep printing, spending, and giving away billions of dollars like there is no tomorrow, can anybody mathematically comprehend what $18 trillion of national debt means? Does anyone even care anymore?

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

Our Lives and Freedoms Matter More Than Progressive Propaganda

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The regime’s main stream media purposefully ignores the latest renewable energy news and events while bombarding us non-stop with gay issues, Christian bashing, manufactured “white privilege” stretching to the nude color of bras and Band-Aids, and “black lives matter” idiotic disruptions of restaurant patrons around the country, patrons that have nothing to do with the black on black crime in areas such as Chicago.

Mark Duchamp, Chairman of World Council for Nature, reported on the dangerous effects wind turbines in Australia have on animal farms located in the vicinity of wind farms. “Life near turbines is hell, according to a panel of south-west property owners who have battled against wind farms for the best part of a decade.”  http://wcfn.org/2015/04/02/wind-farms-deformities/

According to The Standard in Australia, farmers complained to a Portland panel that there is a need to shut down wind turbines at night across Australia, referring to their personal health and health impacts on their livestock. “The number of deformed lambs increased over the period of the wind farm operating near our property. The lambing rate in our merino stock decreased to a rate of 37 percent from 85 percent prior to the wind farms being established.” http://standards.net.au/story/2983411/turbine-neighbours-tell-of-their-hell/

I have written before about disruptions in ovulation, miscarriages, birth defects in mink farms and sleep issues with workers and ranchers who tended these mink farms in Denmark. http://ileanajohnson.com/2014/06/wind-turbines-and-negative-effects-on-animals/

The much praised and promoted smart meters that were supposed to form a “self-healing” and “resilient” smart grid turned out to be a nightmare for many, particularly for 5,800 residents of Stockton, California whose smart meters exploded simultaneously when a truck ran into a utility pole, causing a power surge. http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/03/30/stockton-smart-meters-explode-after-truck-causes-power-surge/

Josh Del Sol reported that the “catastrophic failure of these PG&E ‘smart’ meters – which are not approved by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) – not only damaged meter bases and other homeowner property, but left those 5,800 customers without power.” http://takebackyourpower.net/news/2015/04/01/hundreds-of-smart-meters-simultaneouly-explode

According to Take Back Your Power, following fires in Portland, Oregon, Lakeland, Florida, Arizona, and Ontario, the province of Saskatchewan ordered in July 2014 the removal of all 105,000 smart meters.  

Josh Del Sol wrote that, following another power surge in Palo Alto, California which ignited 80 smart meters, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) stated through its representative: “In the collective memory of TURN, we have not seen similar incidents with analog meters.”

I dedicated four chapters to smart meters in my bestselling book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy. The smart meter program is a massive data collection without the customer’s authorization or a judge’s warrant. Smart meters are expensive, have a short life-span when exposed to sunlight and heat, but the government gives generous subsidies for their installation. http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427990151&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

The smart grid is part of “the internet of things,” a way to control your smart appliances, your energy consumption, shutting down your electricity at will by the utility company, it does not save electricity, on the contrary rates and bills have gone up despite of consumption remaining the same, monitoring your every activity in the home, hacking vulnerability, and health issues associated with involuntary exposure to round the clock pulsed microwave radiation.

On March 27, 2015, the United Kingdom issued its IoD Policy Report written by Dan Lewis and Jamie Kerr on smart meters deployment, “the largest UK government-run IT project in history and the most expensive and complex programme in the world,” with the title, “Not too clever: Will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster?” www.takebackyourpower.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Smart-meters-Not-too-clever-1-IoD.pdf

This smart grid plan is sold to the entire electrified planet under the guise of climate change, protecting the environment through green environmentalist action, and the wireless “convenience” and “modernization.” The reality is that collecting data in real time, non-stop, and selling it to third parties is more lucrative financially than the entire utility industry.

Michael Thompson, wrote that a new study, released by the Thomas Jefferson Institute and researched by economists at the Beacon Hill Institute in Boston, revealed that under the new stringent EPA regulations, Virginia will have to reduce CO2 levels 38 percent by 2030 at a cost of $1.7 billion, resulting in a loss of 38,000 jobs and electricity rate increases by 25 percent. “And the impact on our environment – the reduction of CO2 – will be almost negligible.” www.thomasjeffersoninst.org/files/3/EPAStudy_March 2015.pdf

A Max Planck Institute for Meteorology study by Bjorn Stevens found “that aerosol radiative forcing is less negative and more certain than is commonly believed.” http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00656.1

Bjorn Stevens found that “the magnitude of the cooling effect from anthropogenic (man-made) aerosol emission during the late 19^th and 20^th century was less than currently believed, which eliminates the support for the high-end negative estimates (such as those included in the latest assessment of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”  http://www.cato.org/blog/you-ought-have-look-climate-sensitivity-environmental-worries-are-trending-downward

The implications are that carbon dioxide must be causing less global warming than climate models predict. “Going forward we should expect less warming from future greenhouse gas emissions than climate models are projecting,” according to Cato Institute climate scientists Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger, a potential “death blow to the global warming hysteria.”

Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center (APC), one of the main driving forces behind the battle to stop Agenda 21, is reporting that anti-Agenda 21 legislation has been introduced in several state legislatures, including Missouri, Montana, Maine, and potentially Louisiana. Concerned citizens and legislators will meet with Tom DeWeese in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Louisiana, and Arizona.

The main stream media ignores, ridicules, or attacks the thorough research and tireless work of the American Policy Center (APC). Few citizens are even aware that there are direct ties between Agenda 21 and Common Core; Obamacare in our health care; gun control; illegal immigration; the manufactured global warming that is fleecing taxpayers worldwide; and “all the local ‘planning’ that is transforming our neighborhoods into ‘stack and pack’ high rise monsters; no cars, limited energy, no suburban housing, higher costs and shortages are all included in the future of Agenda 21 policy.”

In the progressive propaganda quest to push its gay agenda, the “black lives matter” race-baiting campaign, the cultural wars against Christian values and businesses, the fake “war on women,” the manufactured racial bigotry, and its welfare agenda of “social justice,” amnesty for illegal immigrants intent on changing the face of our “evil” capitalist society, the importance of our lives and freedoms as a society is marginalized and ignored.

Progressives do not realize in their monumental ignorance that they are supporting dark forces that will imprison them and eventually kill them for the very liberties they are falsely claiming that are under attack.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Villages' Operation Shoebox

The Villages Hospital
Photo: Ileana Johnson March 2015
 

I recently traveled to The Villages in Florida, the largest and fastest-growing small town retirement community in the United States as reported by Forbes in 2014. With a population of over 50,000 as reported in the 2010 census, the community composed of numerous subdivisions located in Sumter County has experienced a population growth of almost 518 percent. I asked residents to approximate how many people are currently residing in the area and I was told over 110,000.

While traveling 50 miles northwest from the Orlando airport through Lake County to The Villages, I could not help but notice the devastating effects of the Obama depressed economy on the local communities, the many shuttered storefronts, abandoned homes covered by tall grasses, and the scarcity of commercial development.

The Villages began modestly with 400 units in the 1980s but were later expanded by H. Gary Morse who had a vision to create individual neighborhoods that regulated their own design, landscaping, repairs, maintenance, placement of satellite dishes, hedges, and other amenities such as golf clubs, dinner clubs, pools, and other activities desired by the residents. One intrepid veteran decorated his front yard with a very large canon. There were American flags everywhere, no shame here to fly the Old Glory, among the many patriotic retirees from around the country.

The themes and leitmotifs of each neighborhood are whimsically Floridian and delineated by convenient roundabouts. The vehicles of choice are golf carts, sporting symbols of the favorite collegiate team, carts driven with impunity even by those who no longer qualify for a driver’s license or have never had a driver’s license.

The town has grocery stores, doctors’ offices, its own bank and schools, having graduated recently its first small high school class. The neighborhoods have a 55-year old age restriction but there are three communities designated for families with children on the outskirts of the golfing areas.

The hospital looks absolutely spectacular, like a Disney attraction, surrounded by a retaining lake where white pelicans roost every day. Not sure how many alligators are residents of the interconnected retaining ponds, but I am told that there are a few even though many are caught and released elsewhere.

My dear friend Marlene drove me one morning in an electric golf cart, emblazoned with the Roll Tide logo, to their neighborhood clubhouse beautifully decorated with a nautical motif. The many rooms were a beehive of activity, the center for Operation Shoebox.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

One gentleman sporting a white t-shirt with the logo, “I helped pack 1,000,000 care packages,” was busy folding newspaper clippings that are included in the care packages sent to our American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Tables after tables were laden with goods donated by Sam’s Club, local, and out-of-state citizens: candy bars, hand sanitizers, antibacterial wipes, lollipops, crackers, peanuts, and whatever the organizers decide to purchase with the money donated.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

One room was busy sewing cloth bags that would include one of each item, carefully wrapped and packaged to fit as much as possible in a small space. Another room was braiding bracelets which I was told often came in handy when soldiers needed string in the middle of nowhere and they unraveled them.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Another room was crocheting small caps – it gets cold in the Afghan desert at night. A photograph was sent back of a group of smiling soldiers, all wearing the caps these ladies had lovingly created.

Flag Star cutters Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Another table was cutting the stars from flags that have been decommissioned and were placed inside a small plastic bag with the message, “I am part of an American flag which can no longer fly due to sun and wind damage. Please carry me as a reminder that you are not forgotten. Operation Shoebox.”

It cost about $100,000 in postage alone to send these shipments to the Middle East. Aside from the time and money spent, I was impressed by the selfless dedication of these ladies and gentlemen who were working joyously, faceless individuals who sent small care packages to faceless soldiers as a symbol of our love to our fellow Americans who are fighting the war on terror far away, and reassuring them that they are not forgotten.

Each soldier also receives a personalized, hand-written card inside the package. I can only imagine the trembling, tired, and dirty hands opening a stuffed care bag while their dusty cheeks are streaming with tears of joy and excitement in an otherwise drab and scary daily existence.

Occasionally, a few soldiers write back and tell the club members how much they enjoyed their token of love and what it meant to them. For these ladies, who could use their spare time to golf, have fun, visit family, spend time with their grandchildren, it is an altruistic labor of love and patriotism that many will never forget.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson March 2015