"Useful Infidels" Vetting Refugees

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”  - George Orwell

When America was great
Photo: Wikipedia

When truth has been replaced with moral relativism and progressivism teaches our American children through high school programs such as the International Baccalaureate and Common Core standards that they are global citizens, love of one’s country is bad, proselytizing for Islam in school curricula at the expense of Christianity is good, and socialism and the Islamisation of Western civilization have become the norm, it is time to worry.  America is “harboring in New York its own worst enemy,” and financing it with taxpayer dollars. It is time to stand up to the U.N. and its forced globalization programs, including the “refugee” relocation.

“Progressivism is anarchy and spiritual disorder.  It is an ideology of the global left which is based on envy. If you have something and I don’t, you can’t have it, neither can I, and I will destroy it.” Brainwashing our children in schools in this vein is a form of psychological warfare, teaching them about non-existent white privilege in order to anger non-Caucasians and instigate hate and division.

Closer to home, the Virginia Refugee Resettlement Program “Provides services to all refugees without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, or political opinion.” It is humane and Christian to help someone in temporary need but we have enough needy people in our own country, do we need to import the citizens and problems of other nations, and shouldn’t countries of the same religion that are much closer to the conflict zone offer refuge first?  Must they migrate across the globe? http://www.dss.virginia.gov/files/division/cvs/rr/state_plan/entire_plan/Virginia_2016_RR_State_Plan_submission_.pdf

And if we do offer services regardless of political opinion, would it not be important to our citizens’ safety to know which one of those admitted come here to destroy us because they despise our way of life and their holy book commands it?

Don’t we owe our own citizens a modicum of safety? Do we want to turn our country into a failed Europe, into Merkel’s Germany, an invaded country that has been deliberately flooded by its own liberal leaders in the name of pacifism and political correctness while Germans quietly accept their fate?

Should we not vet these people properly instead of saying that we do when in reality everybody knows that there is no known data base in their countries of origin that would flag problem refugees? And why are there most of them males with no skills or education who become wards of the state immediately, on the dole provided by hard-working Americans who are struggling to feed and support their own families?

If you were a newly arrived “refugee” who came from a poor part of the world, given to tribal strife and wars for two thousand years, would you not be elated to be cared for by American taxpayers’ generosity administered through the Refugee Assistance Program? In Virginia alone, newcomers become beneficiaries of the Refugee Cash Assistance Program (RCA) which is consistent with its Temporary Assistance to Needy Family Program (TANF).

“The Office of Newcomer Services collaborates with the Department of Social Services Division of Benefit Programs on the inclusion of cash, medical, employment, and support services for refugees in its Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF program guidance documents.” (p. 7) http://www.dss.virginia.gov/files/division/cvs/rr/state_plan/entire_plan/Virginia_2016_RR_State_Plan_submission_.pdf

The lofty goals stated are “durable economic self-sufficiency and social integration in Virginia’s communities.” Most of the areas where refugees have been inserted are conservative, small, and are unable to cope financially with a group in disarray, as the newcomers have no intention of integrating into orderly society or learn the language, they expect everything to be translated and conducted into the language of their countries, following their customs and Sharia Law which is antithetical to our Constitution and rejects American democracy.

Brian Sussman stated recently in a radio broadcast that we are vetting Syrian refugees incorrectly. We should not be vetting them for terrorism; we should vet them for “their acceptance of Sharia Law which will ultimately lead to terrorism.” Many who are settled into our small communities overnight, without local knowledge, are not even Syrian, they are Somalis or some other African Muslims.

Do we not care who comes into our country? Do we not care about the safety of our children and our families, of our fellow Americans? Do we not care if these migrants are not contributing to the betterment of America?

How are they going to improve our lives? Are they going to assimilate into our culture? Are they going to go back once this particular Shia/Sunni conflict ends in the Middle East and, will this tribal and religion-based millennial conflict ever end, especially when the flames are fanned by superpowers with industrial military complex interests?

We were told that we were involved in order to improve their lives over there, getting rid of their dictators, so they can live in peace and harmony, the Shia and the Sunni together, and now we are bringing them over here. It’s not enough that they have colonized Europe; they are now going to colonize us.

We spent money, treasure, trillions of dollars fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to make a better country for them, a democracy like ours, our American men have died there or have lost their limbs and now they are all coming over here to take over our country under the guise of refugees. Why not bring in an equal number of Christian refugees? Thousands and thousands have been raped, tortured, and slaughtered by ISIS, and their Coptic Christian churches burned.

These “refugees” are never going to assimilate, it is neither their intent nor interest, they just want to occupy the country and transform it, they want to install Sharia Law; they don’t want to speak our language, nor respect our laws, they are violent and anti-American. They wait patiently for such a time when they can take over our country through demographics.  Each man can have four wives and thus fertility rate is high, while our western fertility rates are declining below replacement value. They are conquering us through the womb.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a U.N. program, helps people displaced by conflict. UNHCR “mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself, assisting in “their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, this member organization of the United Nations Development Group was established at the end of WWII in order to address the millions of people displaced across Europe as a result of WW II. The Milanese Filippo Grandi is the 11^th United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who runs the agency. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/the-high-commissioner.html

Bruce Bawer wrote in his 2006 book, “While Europe Slept,” about the wave of immigrants spanning many decades as “refugees” and “asylum seekers,” migrating as “a consciously planned act of subversion,” no longer as guest workers.  He mentioned the “traditional Islamic division of the world into Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the non-Muslim House of War, so called because Muslims living in it are commanded to bring it under Islamic rule through jihad).” (pp. 28-29)

Since the recent conflicts in Libya, Egypt, and Syria, we can add other nationalities to the “refugees” migrating for the economic heaven of EU countries with generous welfare systems.
Bawer described in vivid detail the murder of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, at the hands of Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan parents and a member of a radical Muslim network. He pinned to Van Gogh’s chest with a knife a five-page letter addressed to Parliament member Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

“I know definitely that you, O America, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Hirsi Ali, will go down.”  (Bruce Bawer, “While Europe Slept,” Broadway Books, New York, 2006)

Bruce Bawer wrote, quoting from the Jyllands-Posten, “There is only one answer to violence, threats, revenge killings, taking the law into one’s hands, blackmail, private justice, blood feuds, camel  economics and imams who have not understood what society and what century they live in: NO!” (p. 212)

Should we sleep like Europe and allow radical Islam to destroy the West from within? Should we not pay attention to the multicultural elite, the “useful infidels,” who promote the admission of even more improperly vetted “refugees” into our country? And for the Islamophiles who consider the rest of us racists and xenophobes because we question the sanity of this planned invasion, Islam is not a race.

 

 

 

 

Joe Keller's Story

If you wish to comment, please do so on his Facebook page.
Ileana Johnson

https://www.facebook.com/notes/joe-keller/the-sew-girls-daughter/1407168982628709

Do You Take Your Grocery Store for Granted?

Bread line during the 1980s
Photo credit: adevarul.com

The Ceausescu clan and their communist useful idiots were quick to remind us of what an enchanted life we lived under his leadership and how terrible life was under evil capitalism and how their people suffered under the boot of the bourgeoisie.  We were so protected and full of hope under “mother” Elena and “father” Nicolae’s leadership, we were told ad nauseam, while the opposite reality hit us in the face every day.

Commies lied to us in order to cover up their mismanagement of the economy, the disastrous five-year plans, the gross misuse of the land, squandered resources, sold produce and grain to the west for hard currency while people were on rationing cards and hungry, and funds stolen from the treasury or from citizens accused under dubious circumstances of treasonous activities such as enemy of the proletariat.

The five-year plans had impossible to achieve goals set by those apparatchiks with high ranking in the Communist Party.  People would go to jail for not meeting these goals in the time frame dictated by the Stalinist bureaucrats, illiterate community organizers, who understood nothing about the economy, about industrial or agricultural planning.  When things went missing in factories, and they did often, accountants and managers would go to jail as theft occurred under their blind watch.

More tight lines for food
Photo credit: adevarul.com

At some point, they ran out of cattle feed and Ceausescu had to distress-slaughter cows. I remember mom saying that beef was tough to chew and purple-looking. To this day, we don’t eat beef. The meat was rationed to 2.5 kg per family per month.  Butchers would chop up bones in the meat which turned it into a purplish grey mass thrown on the counter with contempt. We had to bring our own wrapping newspapers and expandable jute shopping bags to carry food home. In addition to this shopping jute bag, people carried extra cash in case a line developed somewhere which meant that they could not pass up the opportunity to buy whatever was on sale.

This type of pathological lying to the people is not unlike the Democrats covering up their failed economic policies by telling Americans for eight years now how the economic status quo is our new normal, we should get used to the global economy, to the manufacturing sector moving entirely outside of the U.S., and how our jobs are never coming back.

Living under the boot of communism, we could not compare our meager existence with how other people lived because we were forbidden to travel, television programming was tightly controlled, and so were radio broadcasting and the press. 

Once in a while those in power slipped and broadcast successful mini-series like “Dallas” which gave us a glimpse of the opulent and dreamy life of the Ewings in Texas, the faraway Shangri La where money grew on trees and oil bubbled out of the ground.  American movies were smuggled into Romania, translated by a very courageous lady, and sold on the black market when VCRs became available.

Romania was not the only Iron Curtain communist regime to treat their people this way, but it was one of the worst.  Joe Keller described in a recent post, “When Victor Belenko defected and flew his Mig-25 Foxbat into Japan, he was taken to a safe house in Warrenton, Virginia, for debriefing and subsequent resettlement. Warrenton was not much of a town at the time. We had Peebles, shoe stores, grocery stores, an IHop and a couple of other restaurants and a bunch of gas stations. Belenko thought the Agency had staged the entire town for his benefit and did not believe stores had clothes, and restaurants had food in America. It ran against everything he had been told.”

The dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a man with no formal education, ordered in 1982 the passage of the “Program of Scientific Nutrition for the Population,” a law that established the rationing of food, how many calories a person could eat, and how much one could weigh.  Two years later, the nutritional standards were reduced even more.

Portions and consumption were controlled through the issuance of cards which could only be used at the local neighborhood grocery store where residents had to register each family member, present proof of identity and residence, and the number of people living in the house, including renters or temporary visitors.  Food could only be bought based on the number of people registered.

Lying was impossible as the police informers, the beat cops, and the housing registration office knew exactly where each person lived or if they moved and where. Cards were color-coded by cities and towns. Urban residents could buy more food while farmers were given less rations on the assumption that they grew some themselves. Those who tried to purchase in excess of their rations, when found out, were sent to jail. It was considered speculation punishable by law if a person tried to barter goods or sell food on the black market.  Many enterprising Romanians were clever enough and were never caught. http://adevarul.ro/locale/alexandria/ce-mancau-romanii-vremea-ceausescu-jumatate-paine-zi-litru-ulei-kilogram-zahar-luna-pui-marimea-porumbeilor-1_555f0c0acfbe376e3578994d/index.html

Imagine how mesmerized I was when I first entered the one and only grocery store in a small town in the south, population 3,000, Horn’s Big Star. It was filled with food to the rafters.  I was in awe and I kept filling the cart to the brim. My husband was laughing, putting things back and telling me that they will be there tomorrow. I did not believe him at first, I expected empty store shelves on my second trip.

I was so incredulous! I went to the grocery store every day to buy nectarines and Red Delicious apples. I was so shocked that I could buy fresh fruit in early January. I just knew that it was all staged for my benefit. Albert, the owner, who was a friend of the family, always greeted me with a big smile which I thought odd. Why is this man always smiling?  I was used to sour employees, shouting and treating us like animals, while we pushed and shoved each other in endless lines, often getting to the front of the line and finding out that they ran out of whatever we were waiting to buy.

We have an abundance of food and people get irritated in the U.S. when they can’t find their particular brand. Few have any idea that our grocery stores only stock a three-day supply of food. When major storms strike or even the potential of inclement weather in the U.S., shelves of milk, water, and bread disappear really fast at Walmart. 

Until you have to stand in endless lines to buy food and basics for survival, such as bread, milk, sugar, oil, flour, butter, or toilet paper and vitamins, until you have to live in the dark and cold when lights, heat, and electricity go out daily, when you have no running water at all or hot water is a rare occurrence, you cannot claim that you are poor, living in an “unjust country.” What you really need is a lesson in history, a trip to Cuba, to some other third world country, and an attitude adjustment to reality.

Eating Some of the Crust of a Loaf of Bread

Photo: 1 decembrie.com

I can sleep better at night now that the specter of global communism has temporarily dissipated from our America with the election and confirmation by the Electoral College of our 45^th president, Donald Trump.

One cannot imagine my temporary relief and inner peace, not having to hear Hillary’s hectoring voice, giving us lectures on social justice, equality, racism, bigotry, and white privilege, while banking billions of other people’s money. 

Her voice reminded me of Elena Ceausescu, the “mother,” co-creator and conspirator of our communist misery and exploitation we had to endure for decades. She and her husband brought an entire nation to its knees with a Stalinist police state that was state of the art at the time.

On a really cold day like today, 22 degrees Fahrenheit, I remember my gloveless fingers turning red in the frigid air but holding on tight to my precious loaf of bread called "franzela." I had waited in line for a long time to buy it and nobody let me ahead of the line because I was a child, it was a fight for survival.

No crayons, coloring books, or puppies to comfort and shield me from the harsh reality. I was fighting, in a small way, for our daily existence. There was no safe space for me to crawl into except my mother’s arms. And she was too busy to give hugs to her scared and cold little girl who did not understand that other people, in faraway lands, lived much better lives even in their darkest days. There was no time or place for pampering, we had to become hardened and learn fast how to survive.

We did not need a “safe space” from reality, reality was surrounding and suffocating us, there was no other place to go. If we had the easy and coddled life of precious American snowflakes, full of awards, rewards, and undeserved and unearned praises, we would have never wanted to escape to an imagined “safe space.”

As a six-year old, if I did not lose the money along the way, and if I found bread at the communist corner store, I ate a good portion of the crust on the way home, knowing that mom would be mad and there would be consequences. But I was so hungry and the loaf was still warm from the oven. That loaf of bread had to last a few days with mom’s soup made from bones bought at the communist butcher shop and stripped bare of any meat. We were only entitled to 2.5 kg of meat per month, with rationing cards.

Look around you, at the abundant grocery stores, your warm homes, with water, electricity, natural gas, stove, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, and plenty of food. You have indoor plumbing, bathrooms, a washing machine, the latest devices money can buy, TV, a myriad of channels for entertainment, warm clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, a warm bed, and lots of books and toys.

What are you really missing in your lives, in your standard of living? Who is exploiting you and controlling your minds? Your college professors and community organizers are filling your minds with imagined racism, bigotry, and intolerance you harp about non-stop, while looting and destroying other people’s property in the process of demonstrating your lunacy. Count your blessings before you wish for socialism and communism!

When I first started teaching full time in the 80s at a preparatory school for college in the south, I used to tell my classes stories of what life was like under socialism/communism; it was not the failed multicultural socialism you admire in western Europe. It was the socialism in Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain.

When students asked questions, I told them frankly how it felt to be exploited by communism, to have your spirit destroyed, to be kept hungry, cold, and without hope for any future; what it was like to be stripped of all personal possessions, land, home, and individuality, to be stuck in tiny cinder block apartments, to be jailed because you had something extra in your home that was not reported to the all-mighty Communist Party that had every right to confiscate what you owned and distribute it amongst themselves as a reward for their “purity of Marxist thought.” And there was no law or justice to protect and defend us. And we had no guns because they had been confiscated as well.

When students joked, “yeah, you had to walk uphill barefoot in the snow to get to school,” I realized quickly that students had been so thoroughly brainwashed that they laughed and giggled at my stories, so I stopped telling them anything. The reality of the cruel communist life was just a joke to them.

It was impossible to educate people who had been so methodically programmed by their activist socialist teachers before me. Logic would have dictated that they would have asked themselves, if socialism was so great, why were all these people leaving their countries and their loved ones behind, everything they’ve ever known and loved, often at great risk if they defected, to come to the United States, to the west? And why are not Americans flocking to move to the then USSR, Cuba, China, or North Korea, their utopian paradise?

Why are all these “refugees” from the Middle East coming to the United States, into small and conservative communities around the country, if we are such a racist, intolerant, and bigoted country? Do they enjoy our generous welfare system offered to them on a silver platter, a ridiculous system that does not require anything of them in return, not even assimilation?

If you don’t fight to preserve your country, if you don’t stop listening to the brainwashing from schools and the MSM, how long is it going to be, young know-it-alls, before these “refugees” colonize you and your “social justice” narrative? They are already on their way colonizing and Islamizing Europe.

 

Visiting a Nursing Home, a Sobering Reality

 

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Entering the nursing home, I never know what human drama peppered with dark comedy emerges. It is a life that most Americans turn their eyes and minds away from. The residents are the forgotten sick, disabled, recuperating, and old Americans about whom few dare to whisper. “This is where people go to die,” I was told by a very good friend. “I would never put my mom in such a place.” But this is where people live now and they want dignity and proper medical care delivered with humanity and patience.

It is bad enough that they cease to have an identity, they are reduced to a wing or room number. It is bad enough that they feel trapped and isolated as they no longer have the freedom to do things they’ve always enjoyed. It is bad enough that they spend most of the time alone because the families have long abandoned and forgotten them. It is bad enough that they realize their own mortality and understand that, when they leave, it will be because they’ve passed on. It is bad enough that no one takes them seriously anymore. They’ve lost their dignity as they are no longer able to feed, bathe, and wipe themselves. They depend on the kindness or meanness of someone else who is paid to care for them but often abuse or neglect them.

On the positive side, the residents get medical care, however slowly or quickly, three meals a day that they may not have gotten before; they befriend others in the same position in life, and are forced to participate in activities to stimulate their minds and social skills.

The smell of bodily fluids is overwhelming on most days, even for those used to it. Patients are showered twice a week, some screaming for help because they’ve been bathed last month and they don’t need it again. Some don’t speak English but scream and protest a shower anyway. In their third world countries, it is hard to find water and soap or indoor plumbing, so showers are rare.

There are never enough caretakers to handle the entire floor of patients and some are left to wallow in their feces and urine. It is difficult and time consuming to change diapers on someone who cannot move and many are left for 5-12 hours in beds entirely wet. Even babies scream bloody murder if they are not changed every two hours and are left with a wet diaper too long. Patients develop constant urinary tract infections from such neglect. One caretaker to five patients is not enough help. I don’t know what the margin of profit is for nursing homes but the large fees charged per patient should at least include keeping them clean and dry. It is not easy convincing a 160 pound person to cooperate – much harder than dealing with a 10 pound baby.

A few crafty patients escape through the elevators even though they are coded. One man was chased half way down the road on the side of a very busy highway. A woman was sitting on a bench outside, all dressed up, ready to go for an imaginary job interview. Another patient, who can still dial the phone, calls 911 regularly screaming for help; the police comes and stays outside for a while. It is hard to ignore calls of desperation even from a dementia patient. You never know when the call might be real.

Patients are transported to doctors and left there for hours. Nobody comes back on time to pick them up and some are forgotten. When they are discovered missing, a search ensues. A doctor’s office eventually calls a cab, the patient is delivered back to the nursing home and the nursing home refuses to pay the fare. Mary* suffered such an indignity recently when the cabby threw her wheelchair in disgust on the curb, potentially injuring the patient who was semi-mobile. She did not have the $11 to pay the fare.

There is an ombudsman listed on the wall if a patient needs help or is being abused but who is going to call them? Many patients have been abandoned there by their relatives who only show up once a year, usually around the holidays, to make sure their relatives don’t leave them out of the will.

Many patients are so alone, I’ve never seen anybody visit them in the two years I’ve gone by regularly. I advocate for better care for my mom, but most have nobody to make sure their relatives are properly treated and handled with care and respect.

But some staff members really do care, and it is heartbreaking for them to see their patients die - they are sad and shed tears. Encountering mortality and imagining the end of life for every human being is a very sobering experience. Nobody wants to ever live in such a place, they would rather die suddenly.

Jeremy* is the oldest resident, he has few family members left, his parents, who were his caretakers, have passed on long time ago. He still remembers his previous life and talks in halted speech about his mom’s pancakes.

Barbie* kept packing her bags to go home every day for a year and a half. She was sweet, wondering around other patients’ rooms, asking them if they knew when her daughter was coming to pick her up. She died one day when she stopped eating and drinking. She finally went home to heaven without her packed bags. Yesterday I saw her frilly favorite blanket and other personal possessions in a clear plastic bag in the hallway, waiting to be donated.

A Russian man talks constantly about his homeland, his garden, and his wife, especially how beautiful his town was. Nobody knows what he is saying except me. I hear his voice and my eyes tear up wondering how this man wound up in this particular nursing home, so far away from Russia.

The staff is far away from home too, they are mostly African and Asian transplants. Some speak English well, some don’t. Some are dedicated to their jobs, others could not care less. Those are the ones to watch because they are abusive physically, verbally, and neglectful.

They have coloring activities for people with severe dementia; those patients are kept behind locked doors in a wing sadly named Arcadia. The rest get to play bingo, have coffee socials, outings to Walmart, or a Christmas party and a collective monthly birthday party. Musicians are brought in once in a while to entertain those who still have their faculties but are suffering of other illnesses. A beautiful brown lab wonders the halls and enters certain rooms to let residents pet her. She is old herself, with a bad hip, slowly waddling in pain across the hard linoleum.

There is a beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby but most patients never get to see it as they are never ambulatory. Transport vans come and go, delivering the really sick patients on sudden visits to the ER. Some come back, some don’t.

When a new neighbor passes suddenly, the reality of a corpse behind a closed door across the hallway is a very sobering experience. There was once life there, screaming in pain, now it is silence. I am not sure if the soul has gone to heaven or it’s still hovering over the deceased’s bedridden body.

People screaming in pain become a daily reality. There is no medicine that could take their entire pain away. Such a cocktail of drugs would rob them entirely of their humanity and they would become comatose. Staff nurses can only do so much to alleviate their patients’ pain.

A nursing home visit should be a required part of American high school and college education. No matter how ugly, sad, or cheery, it is a reminder of where we all might wind up someday if we live long enough. It’s a vivid lesson about the frailty of human nature, a lesson that nobody should take their good health for granted, and we should behave decently and morally towards our fellow humans.

 

*Not their real names

"GlowBull Warming" and the Reindeer

“In God We Trust, all others bring data.”  - Motto of the Apollo team

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Global warming is not going away. Vice President Al Gore’s infamous words, “The planet has a fever,” referring to global warming, has been met many times with the planet’s natural and cyclical climate change response of frigid temperatures, ice, and snow.

A term has been coined, the “Gore effect,” reflecting the 2004 event when a global warming rally held by VP Al Gore was met by bitter cold weather. And it repeated in Australia in 2006. Mother Nature prepared snow and frigid weather in 2013 for global warming protesters in D.C. Environmental activists at Yale attempted to hold a global warming rally in 2015, but had to cancel due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.”

Members of the “Keep It in the Ground” anti-fracking activist group in Denver, Colorado were met this week with temperatures in the low twenties during their protest against fossil fuel drilling on public lands. Randy Hildreth wrote, “While it is clear that the national activist groups behind these efforts are not abandoning their goal to ban fracking, they picked a day to protest the use of fossil fuels when most Coloradoans are likely more thankful than ever for the affordable energy provided by domestic energy development.” https://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/bitter-cold-freezes-out-anti-fossil-fuel-protest/

Reducing one’s carbon footprint by taking all energy savings steps possible, solar panels, geothermal energy heating and cooling, low energy bulbs, caulking, turning the thermostat down, reducing consumption in general, has been an issue raised and preached by the climate change guru Al Gore.

According to a recent article, citing data from Tennessee Center for Policy Research and the Energy Information Administration, the Gore residence uses “an average of 17,768 kWh per month – 1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2153179/Al-Gores-electricity-bill-goes-through-the-insulated-roof.html

Good stewardship of soil, air, and water, and pollution reduction and mitigation are great ideas and we support them. Cleaning up the Ganges, the holy river, before it dumps trillions of cubic meters of trash and raw sewage into the ocean, would be a good start. Conservation of natural resources is very important and humans everywhere agree. http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-ganges-holy-river-from-hell-20140806-100xz9.html

But the climate change industry based on reduction of man-made CO2, the gas of plant life, is a very profitable ruse worth trillions of dollars for global elites. Not giving up on the climate change fear-mongering effort, the Oscar winning author of “An Inconvenient Truth,” has announced the sequel to his documentary which will debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/09/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-sequel-sundance

Engaging the church to influence people into believing that global warming is real, the activist Pope Francis announced in September that “global warming is a sin and man can atone by recycling and carpooling,” by stopping deforestation, not polluting rivers, protecting the soil, not destroying the bio diversity of the planet, as if reading a canned U.N. Agenda 2030 script. http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/09/01/pope-francis-global-warming-sin-man-can-atone-recycling-car-pooling/

The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the advisor to the Pope, has concluded that “global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity.” Catholic.org stated in a recent post that “new priests [are] to learn about global warming as part of formation.” Why would a priest who is not a scientist need to learn about alleged global warming? “The established community of experts agrees with frightful consensus that the planet is warming because of human activity. And while nature may play a role in the natural heating of the planet, it is known that the Earth’s temperature is dynamic, humans are clearly responsible for much of the present warming.” And the public’s opinion is being manipulated by climate change skeptics on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry. “The fossil fuel industry funds nearly all of the climate change skeptics, going so far as to commission questionable studies, to financing think tanks, and even paying individual bloggers.” http://www.catholic.org/news/green/story.php?id=72433

According to this Catholic blog, the church has a duty to care for people and the environment. And I thought that the church’s mission was to care for the salvation of our souls, not for environmental stewardship, a concept pushed by U.N.’s Agenda 2030.

The blog continues in an Armageddon manner, “The Earth’s temperatures are spiking faster than at any time in history. The speed of the warming is so great, it is fueling extinctions and other crisis. Natural selection, evolution, and adaptation cannot keep up with the pace of rapid change.”

And the Vatican said, because of the “emerging planetary crisis” on the “ecological question,” all Christians need an “ecological conversion.” All future priests will then become advocates of this ecological question called global warming, “promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation….”

Taken from the Vatican’s 91-page document, “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation,” http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf Eric Worrall quotes in his blog the passage describing the role of the new priest in the global warming proselytization of his flock. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/catholic-church-new-priests-will-be-expected-to-preach-global-warming/

Dr. Ken Haapala, President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, discussed in this week’s publication the Charney Report of 1979 to the National Research Council. CO2 and greenhouse gases warm up the atmosphere but are generally beneficial – CO2 is the gas of plant life. Atmospheric water vapor was proposed by global climate modelers as a potential second cause of global warming.

Comprehensive and independent data of atmospheric temperatures gathered from weather balloons are now available, dating back to December 1978. These data reveal that, “In general, the models overestimated atmospheric warming by 2.5 times and by 3 times over the tropics, where the water vapor warming should be more pronounced.” http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2016/TWTW12-10-16.pdf

Global warming “consensus” is not real science and global climate computer models are questionable. Scientists should use and compare reliable sources of information, independently and correctly gathered data, valid studies over long periods of time, and accurate measurements, not manufactured or manipulated statistics to fit the already-decided narrative and conclusion.

Haapala believes that the EPA did not produce data to justify the finding that “greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, … instead relied on three lines of evidence: 1) understanding of the physics of greenhouse gases; 2) a questionable study that late twentieth century warming was unusual; and 3) global climate models. The evidence is woefully incomplete.”

Additionally, “any warming of the surface is not the same as a warming of the atmosphere, and can be highly influenced by other human activities such as change in land use, change in instrument locations, and change in instrument types.”

The global warming advocates told us that polar bears were disappearing due to global warming; children were terrified in schools; solitary polar bears were depicted floating on tiny melting ice floes even though polar bears are very good long distance swimmers. It turned out that their numbers actually increased five-fold.

A study lead by Steve Albon of the James Hutton Institute in Scotland found that “over the past 16 years, the weight of adult reindeer in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic has dropped by 12 percent, likely due to global warming.” AFP quoted Steve Albon, “Twelve percent may not sound very much, but given how important body weight is to reproduction and survival, it’s potentially huge.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/reindeer-shrinking-warming-threatens-xmas-icon-000845791.html

But the study published in August 2016 actually stated that “The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. … We explored the causes and consequences of variation in body mass of wild female Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) from 1994 to 2015, a period of marked climate warming.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13435/full

Climate, weather, climate warming, global warming, terms are interchangeable for the general public who peruse headlines in a hurry or listen to fake-news MSM to interpret the news for them. We can now scare children that Santa Claus may not have enough reindeer at Christmas as they are threatened by global warming. https://www.yahoo.com/news/reindeer-shrinking-warming-threatens-xmas-icon-000845791.html

Blaming humans for the natural changes and variations in climate over the millennia, to the exclusion of all other variables such as solar flares, underwater volcanic activity, and oceanic currents, is not real science. And priests are no experts in climatology, they are spiritual guides.

 

 

 

 

The Role of Education in America-Phobia

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”     -  Mark Twain

Poster in D.C. mall advertising citizenship
in the global economy
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Have God and fervent prayers saved America temporarily from the scourge of global communism by electing Donald Trump for president? It was the hand of God that acted through the voting population to elect Donald Trump but it is up to his chosen administration to implement his promises.

If the President Elect is going to deliver a fraction of his campaign assurances, we are going to make tremendous progress in addressing our huge national debt and our national security.

There is a lot more to be redressed that has been deliberately diminished, fundamentally transformed for the worse, and even destroyed in the last ten years, i.e., the military, jobs, the economy, education, health care, family, faith, our personal freedoms, and our foreign policy.

No matter what problems we attempt to solve, unless we change the “global citizen” course of our educational system dictated from the Department of Education in Washington and the States’ Department of Education, we are doomed to fail, and Common Core will remain the curriculum tool of the global citizenship. America will continue on the globalist path of self-destruction and irrelevancy.

Charter schools will give marginalized students an opportunity for a better school choice, however, there is no guarantee that the indoctrination into Marxism will stop. Those teachers come from the same pool of the College of Education licensed teachers, the corps of “social justice” and “collectivist” thinking.

Socialist teachers will continue to be the vectors of Marxist indoctrination because they are rolled out with little effort on the College of Education assembly line and are encouraged to become proud members of the National Education Association.

Unfortunately for America, these socialist teachers have our children’s eyes, ears, and minds eight hours a day, ample time to shape them into the communist and environmentalist drones required by the 21^st century “social justice” and impossible equality know-nothing workforce.

Sadly, the establishment no longer educates teachers like some of my former colleagues who taught real American history, no matter how uncomfortable the truth may have been to some. They taught Civics and brought speakers to their classes who have experienced or survived communism, the Holocaust, and various wars. They infused pride in our American culture and honored our American exceptionalism. No revisionist history was taught and Howard Zinn’s popular textbook, “A People’s History of the United States,” was not used. David Greenberg wrote in 2013 about “Howard Zinn’s influential mutilations of American history.” https://newrepublic.com/article/112574/howard-zinns-influential-mutilations-american-history

One day a year students were required to eat just soup so that they could feel what it was like to stand in soup lines during the Great Depression. This type of “fasting” was uncomfortable for the coddled generation who felt deprived of their abundant choices in the cafeteria. Many complained bitterly when their tummies were churning empty.

Posters were hung in the hallway for a week, showing in grisly detail the Holocaust atrocities committed by the German National Socialist Party (the NAZIS) against the Jews, the gypsies, the gays, the priests, the handicapped, and anybody else who did not fit the insane profile of the perfect race as designed by Hitler’s Social Democrat party. No safe spaces for these students to flee from reality -- Judy wanted her students to never forget what evil atrocities monsters were capable of towards their fellow man.

A Christmas Cantata was organized every year and a Christmas tree was proudly decorated by students of all religions who enjoyed the tradition. A staff member dressed as Santa Claus; faculty and students took turns having their photographs taken. There was no “war on Christmas” then and people wished each other ‘Merry Christmas’ instead of the leftist politically correct ‘Happy Holidays.’

Ten years ago, an administrator thought it wise to bring an imam to school to indoctrinate a rapt audience of high school students to the wonders of Islam and the “respect” they afford women. The faculty stood silent, disapproving, but fearful of losing their jobs if they spoke out. Some nodded in agreement with the imam; one of his sons will be caught years later trying to join ISIS with his girlfriend.

Diversity did not have to be mandated by government, our society was already plenty diverse and tolerant but not self-destructive. Legal immigrants assimilated into our country, were proud to be here, learned English, but retained their traditions and language at home. Now, the government-imposed progressive and diversity at every level is splitting society into divided groups, at odds with each other, creating micro-societies within our country, each rooting for the hellhole they’ve escaped from, or pushing the agenda they were paid to advocate.

The America-phobia ginned up by the progressive left has reached a new crescendo. They are projecting and displaying all their hatred and intolerance for Americans, while glorifying third world nations and primitive cultures as better than our civilization, vilifying hard-working ordinary Americans who happen to disagree with them. America-phobes want to change everything in the image of their Marxist ideology, utopian nonsense that has failed fully in every country where it had been forced upon the disarmed population.

Progressives no longer hide their intolerance and disdain for Caucasians and conservatives, inventing terms such as “white privilege,” “micro aggression,” “pathological bias,” “ordinary prejudice,” “pathological bigotry,” requiring collegiate “safe spaces” for their frightened progeny, the Snowflake Generation, telling them lies that all conservatives are racist and bigoted, and are going to harm legal and illegal immigrant children.

At the same time, the progressive and Islamo-phile MSM are busy turning a blind eye to all the violence, mayhem, and crimes that Islamists have committed in this country and around the globe. Nobody in the Christian population at large has attacked, killed, or maimed any Muslims. However, most terror attacks that have occurred in this country in the last fifteen years had been orchestrated and executed by radical Islam.

Symbols of pride and Americanism, our flag, our National Anthem have been burned and disrespected; monuments and veteran cemeteries have been desecrated without much note or mention by the main stream media.

The cable news media ignored the massive fires in Tennessee while spending an inordinate amount of time on the Oakland fire even though both events were tragic. The MSM focused non-stop on paid rioters around the country, on their mercenary and violent demonstrations against the President Elect with whom they vitriolically disagree. Innocent bystanders were subjected to their hateful wrath and suffered physical injuries.

Since the presidential election was not to their liking, the intolerant left is now trying to subvert and destroy the Electoral College process. Baseless recount challenges have been made in three states and millions were raised overnight by the Green Party candidate. Additionally, alleged threats have been made to electors to change their votes before December 19.

Our future depends on who is going to win the war on our “borders, language, and culture,” on our sovereignty, the leftist America-phobes or the America-philes? Unless we change the global communist course and Common Core content of the public education and collegiate education of our children, the future looks uncertain.

 

 

Fidel Castro and His MSM Sycophants

Fidel Castro Visiting the United States in 1959
Photo: Wikipedia

Forbes estimated Fidel Castro’s wealth at $900 million while the country he ruled with an iron fist, 11.39 million people, lived in poverty and dignified squalor under his boot. The deceased “El Comandante” Castro left behind a huge fortune, a private island called Caya Piedra, mansions, a marina with his private yacht called Aquarama, bank accounts, an alleged gold mine, and thousands of worthless Marxist speeches.
http://www.abc.es/internacional/abci-fidel-castro-herencia-201612021149_noticia.html?ns_campaign=gs_ms&ns_fee=0&ns_linkname=boton&ns_mchannel=abc-es&ns_source=fb

Celebrity guests who have enjoyed Castro’s lavish hospitality on the island of Caya Piedra included the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the French underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau. Nothing but the best for western elitist visitors, they were never taken to the slums where Cubans were forced to live, playing dominoes and making beautiful music to soothe their trapped bodies and souls. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2637927/Castro-commie-hypocrite-lives-like-billionaire-Hes-posed-man-people-But-new-book-reveals-Cubas-leader-led-life-pampered-hedonism-fortune-big-Queens.html

Why God would keep such an evil man alive to the ripe old age of 90 is a mystery. The longer he lived, the more people he tortured and kept chained to his utopian idea of how God’s free people should live.

Castro enslaved and oppressed his people for 59 years while giving them speeches about the wonders of Marxism and the evils of capitalism. He tortured and killed an estimated 15,000 of his own citizens who dared to object to his proletariat hell.

The lucky ones escaped to Miami and made a good life for themselves, others drowned at sea in ingenious and desperate makeshift vessels, trying to flee this Marxist paradise that kept them in chains spiritually, economically, ideologically, and physically.

After decades of brainwashing, Castro created a perfect police state of fear and terror, run by his henchmen, loyal to his failed ideology that rewarded only the top elites running this beautiful island. Evidence that this man was insane surfaced early in 1959 when he appeared in pajamas on black and white American television in his first public appearance in an interview with Edward R. Morrow. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Morrow+interview+of+Castro&view=detail&mid=D10386F88FFC88BD551DD10386F88FFC88BD551D&FORM=VIRE

The main stream media liberals who adore dictators were quick to sing his praises, ignoring the glaring reality of his Marxism that ruined the lives of countless millions, stealing their potential wealth and any opportunity of a good life. Even “60 minutes” mentioned in its short biopic that he had brought education and medical care to his people. He did bring schooling of the Marxist indoctrination type and medical care for sniffles. Why have Fidel Castro and his family sought the best doctors, hospitals, and medical care in the U.S. and Spain instead of the clinics and hospitals in his own country?

The media is lauding and glorifying the killer Castro who has imprisoned other humans for their divergent political views, their faith which contradicted Castro’s atheism, and left many of his people on a starvation diet. If the MSM loves what Castro did for his people, why don’t they move to Cuba and seek medical treatment there?

Today the liberals in the media and academia are just plain communists disguising their communism under the euphemistic term of “progressives.” There is nothing progressive about forcing everybody under totalitarian government control without any possibility of choice and free will. It is regressive to control people to such an extent that they cannot leave their own country to pursue opportunities and freedom of spirit and body elsewhere – their island utopia becomes their prison.

I’ve never seen people fleeing from western, free market capitalism to communist nations. But history has shown, time and time again, that people fled oppression at all costs, even at the cost of being shot while crossing through Checkpoint Charlie, crossing the border from oppression to freedom, from east to west, including fleeing a beautiful tropical island where buildings and streets are so deteriorated and dilapidated that they look like they have an insidious cancer dripping with decay. In a way they do, the terminal cancer is called totalitarian communism. https://www.facebook.com/MiamiHeadlines/videos/445815272209280/

The intolerant and dishonest liberal media talking heads that commit journalistic malpractice by deliberately lying to the American public are just teleprompter readers who are verbally dancing on the graves of those who lost their lives at the hands of communist dictators like Fidel Castro. There is nothing worthy of acclaim about this man. He was not “awesome, great and inspiring.” Those are not the words to describe a Hitleresque sociopathic murderer.

All unethical western media praises for Castro’s regime are nothing but slaps in the faces of all Cuban Americans who have either lost family or had to leave their loved ones in the dead of night, sometimes not even saying good bye for fear that they may be discovered and arrested; they left with only the clothes on their backs, leaving their hard-earned possessions and wealth behind when this monster took power.

The media and public schools rarely discuss the “benevolent” dictator’s firing squads used to enforce compliance and discipline, to punish disloyalty, and to intimidate any possible opposition. Such “executions continued for decades.” http://babalublog.com/fidel-castros-greatest-atrocities-and-crimes/fidel-castros-firing-squads-in-cuba/

My Cuban friends, Alexis Maria E. and Silvio C. discern the reality of what Castro did to Cuba. I know exactly how it felt to flee your own country in search of freedom, to leave everything you’ve ever known and loved behind. Freedom has a very strong magnet and no man has the right to take lives and freedom away from others just because of divergent political opinions.

 

The Greek Sponge Divers of Florida

“Give me a word and I will show you that it comes from Greek.”

-          Mr. Portokalis, character in “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding”

 

Sponge diver with sponge in hand
Photo: Wikipedia

Having experienced the excruciating ear pain from failure to equalize the pressure change underwater, I am in awe of any scuba diver who goes underwater to explore the depths of our oceans or, as is the case of pearl divers, to find exquisite pearls that adorn rare and expensive jewels.

There are submersibles that operate at depths of 6,500 feet for scientific reasons, research and discovery.  A previously unknown life form, the sinking of famous ships, submarines, airplanes, ocean acidification from underwater volcanoes, marine life behavior, sharks, whales, and other creatures are explored and studied extensively at depths formerly off-limits to humans.

Pices V is such a submersible that can safely carry three people to depths that man cannot withstand. Even sperm whales’ lungs must collapse at such pressure in order to allow them to survive at 7,000 feet and lower, in their hunt for squid. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/pressure.html

At sea level, we are comfortable at air pressure of 14.5 pounds per square inch. Our bodies do not react in any way because fluids push outwardly with the same force. But, when diving even a few feet, the pressure starts to be felt by our eardrums. The hydrostatic pressure, the force per unit area exerted by a liquid on a solid mass, grows with every 33 feet by 14.5 psi.

According to NOAA, deep down, the pressure is as much as “the weight of an elephant balanced on a postage stamp, or the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets.”

How do animals survive at such depths? They have more flexible bodies; ribs are connected with “loose, bendable cartilage, which allows the rib cage to collapse at pressures that would easily snap our bones.”

How then can pearl divers learn to cope with the underwater pressure, often without a suit? Some people need ear tubes to be able to withstand even a few feet of water pressure.

Long time ago, in 1932, a movie was made about the “sponge fisherman of the Aegean,” operating in Tarpon Springs, Florida, “a quaint colony” of Greek fishermen who had dived for generations to find the sponges that were used for “washing cars and little Johnny’s back.”



Sponge diving boat
Photo: Wikipedia

The divers were descendants of the Greeks who used to dive naked with a stone under their arms to fight buoyancy. Their group had established in Tarpon Springs eighty years prior to the making of this film. Flying both the American and the Greek flags, the fishermen showed their pride in America and in their own heritage.

The Rock Island sponge bars were the realm of these “fantastic living things we call sponges.” The creatures thrived on graveled ocean floors.

Diving in an air-compressed suit, the master diver required several men to help him suit up properly for the dangerous dive. It was such a treacherous profession; the young did not seek employment in this field. There was such a shortage of divers that old and skilled men were brought from Greece.

By current standards, diving was an infant technology in 1932.  The diver controlled the air pressure in his suit with his head by touching an air valve. He was tethered to the boat by an air hose and a life line and depended on his mates on board to pull him up if he started going down head first and could not right himself up.

At the depth of 100 ft., suited in his 570 lbs. behemoth that kept him alive and conscious, the diver had to walk against the current that was sure to bowl him over otherwise. Dragging his cast iron shoes, the diver filled his basket with live sponges of the sea. When the basket was full, he attached it to the life line, signaled to the surface, and they pull it up.

Photo: Wikipedia

 

The divers sought the sheep’s wool sponge (Spongia equina) found in Florida and in the West Indies. This variety was the more valuable but others were harvested as well.

The diver was not protected in any way from encounters with giant marine life on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Barracudas and sharks were a primary danger but giant turtles, in excess of 2,000 lbs., could “bite off a man’s arm.”

After one hour of work, the scuba diver signaled to be pulled up to the surface. While floating helplessly on the surface, bobbing up and down, waiting to be pulled inside the boat, the diver was in danger of being attacked by barracudas.

Pulling his air hose in, the boaters towed the diver into the boat. The diver took his time surfacing, in order to adjust the pressure on his body. If he failed to do so, he suffered from the dreaded “bends.” Many divers became crippled and prematurely old from the “bends.”



Tarpon Springs, Florida
Photo: Wikipedia

Even though hyperbaric oxygenation treatment was tested and developed by the U.S. military after WWI and has been used safely since the 1930s to treat deep sea divers with decompression sickness, these sponge divers did not have such chambers to bring them back slowly and safely to atmospheric pressure.

The marine sponges were “cleared” off the live creature, leaving just its skeleton, the sought-after sponge people used. After a three-month journey, the sponge cargo was auctioned off at the Sponge Exchange after they were dried off on dock. A catch could be worth $90,000, with yearly revenue of one million dollars.

Little creatures that had burrowed themselves inside the sponges were hammered out. The larger sponges were cut into smaller ones while the workers sang the “Song of the Sponge Divers.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR68ZqgLKzc&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

And that is how real sponges arrived in fancy bath stores and were sold in beautiful packaging.