Gold Shines

“Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.” – Mark Twain

People have chased gold since they realized that keeping a barter economy was not always feasible because commodity money like grain rotted, salt scattered, and cows were tough to take to the market. So, they invented money: stone money (Yap Island), salt (China and Roman Empire), ivory (Fiji), elephant hair (Africa), tobacco (Solomon Islands), brick tea money (Siberia), East Indian Money Tree (Malay Peninsula), Copper money (Alaskan Indian), to name a few.

The history of precious metals shows that as early as 2500 B.C. gold, silver, and copper were used in Egypt and Asia Minor to pay for goods and services. The kingdom of Lydia was minting coins in 700 B.C. made of electrum, a pale-yellow alloy of gold and silver.

People minted coins. Silver and gold coins had high value, portability, and payments by tale were made, counting out the right amount rather than weighing it. Even though animals did not die on the way to market, and perishable commodities did not spoil, there was always the possibility of being robbed of commodity money and coins.

Ridges were added to coins made of precious metals because humans filed the edges of coins to get gold or silver dust which they then sold as bullion or bartered for goods.

The next step was storing wealth in gold and silver bars. Bars held value over time and were easier to store as wealth. Most nations store their gold bars with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. From this location, nations can request payments to other countries and the respective gold amounts are moved from the safe shelves of the payor to the shelves of the payee.

The one troy ounce ingot today sells for around $5,200, while the 3 kg bar sells for around $167,000. The price of gold has increased dramatically in the last ten years by 700 percent.

If a currency was not made of gold and silver, its value was measured in gold and silver. This gold standard held for a while. After 1971 the gold standard became outdated as countries no longer backed the value of their currency with gold. Inflation exploded as countries printed money without any backing of gold or backing by goods and services. Fiat currency was born. Our U.S. fiat currency, the “greenbacks,” date back to 1862.

According to reports by the World Gold Council, the top 10 countries with the most gold reserves as of January 2025 are: U.S. (8,133.5 tons), Germany (3,355.1 tons), Italy (2,451.8 tons), France (2,436 tons), Russia (2,299.9 tons), China (2,068.8 tons), Switzerland (1,040 tons), Japan (846 tons), India (760.4 tons), and Netherlands (612.5 tons). U.S. gold reserves are kept in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but nobody has seen them in decades.

John Maynard Keynes, the famous Keynesian economist, wrote that gold is a “barbarous relic.”  Used somewhat in electronics and chemistry, gold has major uses in jewelry and as a store of value in ingots and collectible coins.

According to Ed Conway, the typical gold wedding band requires the removal “between 4 and 20 tons of rock” from the top of a mountain while traditional mining methods required “0.3 tons of ore” to make a wedding band.

Conway wrote that, in a single day, three-story tall trucks remove rocks from the top of a mountain, or the hole dug up into a mountain, the weight of the Empire State Building. “For a standard gold bar (400 troy ounces) they would have to dig out about 5,000 tons of earth.” It is thus no surprise that whole mountains have been torn down to produce gold. Nobody knows the exact amount of pure gold ever extracted.

And how do they produce gold? The rocks blasted out of the mountain are ground into a fine powder which is then mixed with a cyanide solution to separate the gold, quite a toxic method for the earth, humans, and animals.

It is not surprising that humans have tried for ages to turn other metals into gold. Enter medieval alchemists, scientists, and charlatans, trying to find the “philosopher’s stone or the great elixir” that would change lead or other common metals into gold and silver. The most famous alchemist, Nicolas Flamel, a Frenchman, claimed in 1382 that he was able to change lead into silver and mercury into gold.

Even though Nicolas Flamel claimed that he had found the “philosopher stone and the great elixir,” there is no evidence that gold and silver could be transmuted from other metals unless particle accelerators and nuclear reactors were used.

Although unsuccessful, medieval alchemists promoted unknowingly the advancement of chemistry, optics, mathematics, and astronomy. History is full of gold stories which point to human ingenuity and greed.

The medieval ruler of Mali, Mansa Musa (1312-1337), lived in spectacular splendor and largesse thanks to the gold mined in massive quantities by slaves.

Archimedes found the solution to a gold problem when he was hired by Hiero, the king of Syracuse, to detect if his crown was pure gold or was adulterated with silver. Archimedes found the solution while sitting in his bath and ran into the street shouting the infamous “Eureka,” I found it (the solution).

Gold is denser than silver and displaces more water in a tub when a gold crown is submerged than a crown made of both gold and silver. Silver is lighter so less water is displaced when such a crown is submerged.

Very few treasures in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia survived the European melting pot of the Conquistadores who looted temples like the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco.

Pizzaro and his men captured Atahualpa, the emperor of the Incas. Atahualpa offered to fill his prison apartments with gold in exchange for his freedom. He filled one room with gold and two rooms with silver. He kept his word, but Pizzaro not so much. Gold Inca treasures were melted for coins.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus and his men found gold jewelry on Arawak chiefs in the West Indies and, in the next 40 years, the fiercest gold rush ensued and “the majority of the known gold-producing regions of the New World were theirs.”

“The natives of pre-Columbian America prized the gold for its beauty, presuming that the shiny yellow metal had a divine origin. In Mexico, the Aztecs called it the excrement of the gods, while the Incas of Peru thought it to be the sweat of the sun.” Gold was not valued as a major metal for currency. Because it did not corrode, it was used for fishing hooks and other tools, or it was just admired for its beauty in decorative arts. All the gold confiscated by the Spaniards enabled them to fund their fearsome armada.

Not long ago, grave-robbers in Panama sold ancient gold objects to dentists to be melted down for use in dental fillings.

Never forget, “all that glitter is not gold.”

Fighting the Icecrete with Our Neighbor

Saturday we were going out to meet a friend for lunch. My husband backed the SUV out of the garage and, because the cleared path through the ice was narrow and crooked, he wound up in a huge bank of piled up ice which took his traction away from the wheels. The county had cleared one small and narrow path through the middle of the street for cars to drive through but piled the mountains of ice in the cul-de-sac.

Since he got stuck, hubby tried to get out the door to shovel. The mountain of ice was blocking the wheels and the doors on both sides; the doors would not open. Lucky for my athletic sixty-something hubby, he was able to crawl out through his window, went to the garage, picked up a shovel, and started shoveling the concrete-like ice. I called it icecrete.

Our neighbor’s son across the street saw him struggle and came with a shovel to help him dig out. He was neighborly and quite helpful. Eventually, after 45 minutes of shoveling hard ice, he brought a piece of wood which they were able to place under the front tires to create traction and hubby was able to drive the SUV off the ice bank. Needless to say, I could not come out the door on my side because it was also blocked by the mountain of icecrete.

Saying that we were momentarily unlucky, is an understatement. Fortunately, and graciously, our friend waited for us even though we were one hour late for our lunch date.

Getting old is a challenge for everyone, but my hubby was able to crawl out the window, not an easy feat for a man in his 60s.

Could he feel the pain next day? Of course, but he never complained once.

I Was a Resident Alien

In our county, the Census Bureau counted, the illegal population has grown by 40% in the last ten years. This figure does not count all other illegals dropped in our midst overnight by the Biden administration, all bussed or flown from the open southern border, aided by NGOs stationed in the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, NGOs financed by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

The arguments from the left about the illegals’ presence in this country is many-fold: we were all migrants/undocumented to this country at some point, we need open borders in order to facilitate the one world government, we need their labor, illegals need safety and a better economic life, and this land was stolen from them in the first place. Hollywood celebrities make sure they remind us of this misleading notion every chance they get together to award prizes to each other.

A person I met from Central America talks about the abject fear that the illegal community lives under daily. One of her friends was picked up on his way to work and deported; now his family of four does not have enough support because the social security benefits are inadequate. Mom must work now to support her family. The father had been in this country for ten years. Why exactly could the father not obtain a work permit?

Three ladies she knew, traveling on the HOV on their way to work, were arrested and deported. She did not know why they were stopped, but they were all here illegally. None of them had work visas.

“Nonimmigrant visa holders are typically required to have a work permit (EAD) before being hired to work in the U.S. In most cases, obtaining a work permit will allow you to work for any employer. And you do not have to work in any specific trade or profession.” Work in the U.S. with a work permit (EAD) | USAGov

The problem with foreign nationals who are here is that many cross our border illegally, with help from paid coyotes, and settle in heavily ethnic areas where they intend to work off the books. They have no intention to learn English and assimilate, which would benefit and improve their lives here.

Even though Democrat politicians object to the use of the term ‘alien’ and prefer that illegal immigrants are called ‘undocumented’ or ‘non-citizens,’ the U.S. Immigration Court has reinstated the [prior] use of the word ‘alien’ for non-citizens, stating that the term is neither pejorative nor insulting.”

Illegals do pay sales taxes in the process of living here but they seldom pay Social Security taxes and income taxes; they send their earnings back to the countries that they came from to help their extended families. Illegal families here are usually on various welfare programs while the father works for untraceable cash.

The conservative part of America welcomes legal immigrants who are vetted for health issues, have no criminal records or gang-related history, are not illiterate in their own language, assimilate and contribute to our society, and support their families without burdening the welfare, educational, and medical systems in the U.S.

To the leftist argument that we need more illegals to increase our diversity – the answer is that we are diverse enough. We do not need dozens and dozens of foreign cultures within ethnic areas; we need a unified American culture with people who are able to speak English as well as their native tongues at home.

We should not have to translate government forms into so many languages. If you are unable or unwilling to learn English, then perhaps you should stay in your home country and help make it better. If you do not contribute in any way to the growth of our society, you should have stayed in your home countries and helped them grow.

Illegal children burden the school systems in many ways. They are not vaccinated which places local children in danger. They have been exposed to illnesses indigenous to the areas where they came from, while our children were not exposed to such. Illegal students are usually behind in their education and must be tutored to catch up and the school systems must hire special teachers for them.

The corrupt media never discusses the burden of illegals on American taxpayers. Illegals were told by Democrats that, if they come across the border, their needs will be met, and all they have to do is vote Democrat in America’s elections. Democrats do not care what they do to America because they want absolute government control.

Illegals are housed, fed, clothed, schooled, their utilities paid, their college tuition, phones, transportation paid, all while our veterans linger forgotten and homeless. Gang members, bussed in the country, are now murdering American citizens while America’s drug problem is exploding.

What foreign parents would allow their children to travel alone to the U.S. in hopes that, once inside the U.S., they will have a better life? Who will take care of them, where will they end up?

According to our government, during the Biden administration there were 300,000 foreign national children missing. When asked about their fate, President Trump is quoted as saying that they are probably slaves, sex slaves, or dead.

Illegal immigration is an invasion promoted by Presidents Biden and Obama, to fulfill a socialist agenda to destroy western society, belief in God, morality, the family, and to establish a one world government. It started with United Nation’s plan which demanded from its members that they allow mass migration from the third world to Europe and to other western societies.

Democrats and Republicans agree with this mass invasion, using illegals to keep themselves in power while ignoring the wishes of the American people.

 

Icemageddon and Icecrete

For ten days, acres and acres of land and forest have been encased by thick ice which refused to melt; and it was not just the intense cold that accompanied it. Even when the sun shone, nothing was melting; even chunks of ice off the deck refused to melt with a flame. The pristine ice turned black, yellow, and looked like icecrete.

No animals dared to trek this glacial landscape shining in the daylight and at night like reflecting glass. It was seven days before animals dared to venture on this Icemageddon surface in search of food. 

Al Gore just celebrated twenty years since he released a Power Point presentation on global warming which garnered him a Nobel Prize. Earth had twelve years before Armageddon and ice in Antarctica would be melted. Gore’s presentation said polar bears would not have ice floes to float on while looking for food and would die off. Bears have multiplied, ice is thicker than ever, and we are still here.

The global warming alarmists tried their hardest to convince the “deniers” that global warming exists. When it failed, they morphed it into climate change industry.

Dr. Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton, among many other real scientists who do not rely on fake science called “consensus” to make faulty predictions, testified before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on February 25, 2009 that “over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never have CO2 levels been so low as it has been in the Holocene – 280 ppm (parts per million) – that is unheard of. Most of the time CO2 levels have been at least 1,000 ppm and it’s been quite higher than that. Earth was just fine in those times. The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So, it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started.” He added that, “children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science.”  Happer said, “the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. Earth in Carbon Dioxide Famine, Says Scientist - The New American

Reality did not stop global-warming alarmists to promote incredibly wasteful and expensive “carbon sequestration” and carbon “cap and trade” schemes to reduce CO2.

CO2 increase will benefit crop yields, more food for humans and animals, robust forest and vegetation growth, greater plant resistance to stress and disease, drought resistance, and reclaiming deserts and barren lands.

Green houses use extra CO2 pumped into solariums to promote faster and better plant growth. Satellite images show that CO2 is thicker around the Amazonian forests.

Is CO2 responsible for warming due to greenhouse gases? Scientists agree that “at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds.” And the current warming period started around 1800s at the end of the Little Ice Age, “long before there was an appreciable increase in CO2.”

“There have been similar and even larger [global] warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. [Warming can be influenced by solar flares, volcanic eruptions, and oceanic currents.] Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models."

Happer said, “The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature-- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.” Microsoft Word - Happer Senate Testimony - SPPI Reprint update - 6-14-10

Is the push to reduce CO2 more an effort to fleece the taxpayers? Is the Green lobby’s agenda to create a crisis that only they can solve? Are solutions more destructive than the crises? Are they brainwashing students to promote their agenda? It appears so.

Massive geoengineering efforts currently in progress around the world aim to block the sun with various substances to mitigate global warming. Scientists believe that this activity is most damaging to the planet.

Controlling, reducing, and capturing CO2 produces the science that creates most funding for professorial research and promotion. But, with less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the earth will be colder, covered in more ice, and home to sparser levels of all vegetation. A reduction in food supply due to shorter growing seasons would spell disaster and potential famine.

With little regulation, the climate change industry is happy to capture carbon in pipes. On February 22, 2020, a CO2 pipeline ruptured and exploded in Satartia, MS, following heavy rains. Two hundred people were evacuated and forty-five were hospitalized; cars stopped working in the absence of oxygen, emergency vehicles could not start, and people were unconscious on the ground for a while. Heavy CO2 spewed for four hours. A pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi has lessons for future CO2 projects : NPR

Large CO2 volume sucks oxygen out of the air. People and animals become disoriented, the heart malfunctions, seizures can appear, and eventual death by asphyxiation.

CO2 will disperse in open air but, in the Satartia incident, it remained for hours. To this day people have lung problems and other health related issues.

Coincidentally, a week prior, the Biden administration had announced $251 million for various projects focused on CO2 transport and storage. In 2020, 5300 miles of carbon capture pipes existed, with future projections of 65,000 miles. Billions have been invested in helping companies that collect CO2 to store it by sending it via pipelines to underground locations with the correct geology for storage. A pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi has lessons for future CO2 projects : NPR

Another poisoning with massive CO2 happened in northwestern Cameroon at Lake Nyos on August 21, 1986, following a limnic eruption which released 100,000-300,000 tons of magmatic CO2. The eruption killed 1,746 people, 3,500 livestock, and injured 845 more people in an area of sixteen miles around the lake.

According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, there have been 112 CO2 pipeline accidents on record. Ten states have had carbon dioxide pipeline accidents and Texas had the most.  Carbon dioxide pipelines: A statistical analysis of historical accidents - ScienceDirect

How many CO2 accidents must happen in the name of carbon neutrality?

U.N.’s war against climate “deniers” ramped up at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30) held in Brazil in November 2025. The Declaration at this conference was a pledge to ‘fight false information’ about climate change. The only problem is that the U.N. is disseminating ‘consensus’ science. which is not real science.

NOTE: All photos were taken by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh