Daylight Savings Time, Is It Good for Us?

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

As my body struggles each spring to cope with the Daylight Savings Time (DST), I wonder if it is beneficial to humans and what effect does it have if any on loss of productivity due to sleep deprivation, on health, and potential accidents. Who decided first that it was a good idea to turn clocks forward one hour in spring and wind them back in the fall? Did it save significant amounts of energy and thus money?

At 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March until 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November, all states except Arizona, Hawaii, and territories, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands observe DST. Seventy other nations around the world also follow DST.

Benjamin Franklin, then Minister to France, proposed in 1784 to reset the clocks when the sun came up and people were still sleeping, saving one million francs per year in candles.

A British builder, William Willett, proposed in 1907 to move hours of work and recreation more closely to daylight hours, cutting back on artificial light. The bill he proposed in Parliament did not pass.

To conserve fuel, Germany started DST on May 1, 1916. During the war, most of Europe also adopted DST.

In the U.S., DST was not formally adopted until March 19, 1918, establishing both standard time zones and summer DST to start on March 31, 1918. Because the idea was unpopular, Congress abolished DST after the war, overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. Some states observed DST until WW II. At that time, President Franklin Roosevelt established “War Time” on February 9, 1942 which ended on the last Sunday in September 1945. The following year, many states adopted summer DST.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-387) established federal regulation across the country because the transportation industry needed consistency in time observance. Clocks were to be set forward one hour on the last Sunday in April at 2 a.m. and set back on the last Sunday in October. An entire state could exempt itself from the law, including states that were located in split time zones, as long as the entire state would follow the same time. Arizona exempted itself in 1968 and in 1972 the act was amended to allow states split in different time zones to be exempted or be entirely included in DST. The Department of Transportation became the law’s enforcer.

The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 prompted Congress to have a trial period of year-round DST in order to conserve energy and fuel. Benefits advertised were more recreation, reduced light and heating demand, reduced crime, and reduced auto accidents. Many worried about children going to school in the dark. After the trial period, in 1975 the whole country returned to DST.

The DOT found that “modest overall benefits might be realized by a shift from the historic six-month DST (May through October) in areas of energy conservation, overall traffic safety and reduced violent crime” when the DST was proposed to be changed to March-November.

Beth Cook wrote that the DOT reported, “These benefits were minimal and difficult to distinguish from seasonal variations and fluctuations in energy prices.” (March 9, 2016, CRS, R44411, p. 2)

Cook also wrote, “Congress then asked the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) to evaluate the DOT report. In an April 1976 report to Congress, Review and Technical Evaluation of the DOT Daylight Saving Time Study, NBS found no significant energy savings or differences in traffic fatalities. It did find statistically significant evidence of increased fatalities among school-age children in the mornings during the four-month period January-April 1974 as compared with the same period (non-DST) of 1973. NBS stated that it was impossible to determine, what if any of this increase was due to DST. When this same data was compared between 1973 and 1974 for the individual months of March and April, no significant difference was found for fatalities among school-age children in the mornings.” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44411.pdf

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 was modified in 1986 to change DST to first Sunday in April through last Sunday in October and in 2005 when Congress changed DST to second Sunday in March and ending it the first Sunday in November. Congress also asked the Department of Energy (DOE) to report on the impact of extended DST on energy consumption. DOE sent this report to Congress in 2008. (Fred Sissine, CRS RL32860, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Legislation in the 109^th Congress)

Cook enumerated some studies on energy savings, health, and safety:

-          Department of Energy (DOE) studies in 2006 and 2008 revealed that ”Total potential electricity savings benefits of DST are relatively small, 0.01 percent to 0.03 percent of total annual U.S. energy consumption.” http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/pdfs/epact_sec_110_edst_report_to_congress_2008.pdf

-          “There is general consensus that DST does contribute to an evening reduction in peak demand for electricity, though this may be offset by an increase in the morning.” (M.B. Aries and G.R. Newsham (2008), “Effect of Daylight Saving Time on Lighting Energy Use: A Literature Review,” Energy Policy, 36(6), 1858–1866.)

 

-          “Our main finding is that, contrary to the policy’s intent, DST increases electricity demand.” A trade off was identified between “reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling.” http://environment.yale.edu/kotchen/pubs/revDSTpaper.pdf

-          A. Huang and D. Levinson, studying the effects of DST on vehicle crashes in Minnesota, found in 2010 that “the short term effect of DST on crashes on the morning of the first DST is not statistically significant.” http://nexus.umn.edu/papers/daylightsavingstime.pdf

 

-          T. Lahti et al found in their 2010 study, “Our results demonstrated that transitions into and out of daylight saving time did not increase the number of traffic road accidents.” (T. Lahti et al., 2010, “Daylight Saving Time Transitions and Road Traffic Accidents,” Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 657167)

 

-          Y. Harrison found in his 2013 that “The start of daylight saving time in the spring is thought to lead to the relatively inconsequential loss of 1 hour of sleep on the night of the transition, but data suggest that increased sleep fragmentation and sleep latency present a cumulative effect of sleep loss, at least across the following week, perhaps longer. The autumn transition is often popularized as a gain of 1 hour of sleep but there is little evidence of extra sleep on that night. The cumulative effect of five consecutive days of earlier rise times following the autumn change again suggests a net loss of sleep across the week. Indirect evidence of an increase in traffic accident rates, and change in health and regulatory behaviors which may be related to sleep disruption suggest that adjustment to daylight saving time is neither immediate nor without consequence.”  http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/23477947

 

-          MR Jiddou et al in their 2013 study, “Incidence of Myocardial Infarction with Shifts to and From Daylight Savings Time,” The American Journal of Cardiology, 111(5), 631-635,  stated, “Limited evidence suggests that Daylight Saving Time (DST) shifts have a substantial influence on the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Previous literature, however, lack proper identification necessary to vouch for causal interpretation. We exploit Daylight Saving Time shift using non-parametric regression discontinuity techniques to provide indisputable evidence that this abrupt disturbance does affect incidence of AMI.”

If savings in electricity are relatively small, cumulative sleep deprivation has been demonstrated which could result in productivity loss and traffic accidents, and potential health effects, why are we embracing DST? Wouldn’t following nature’s biological clock be more beneficial to our wellbeing?

 

 

 

 

 

Energy Poverty Around the World

The global warming/climate change industry has been aggressively pushing renewable energy, wind, solar, and biofuels for a long time even though the economies of various industrialized countries need much more energy than what renewables generate.

The green activists have been zealously lobbying Congress and the EPA to change the laws, rules, and regulations that would make it much more expensive and difficult for fossil fuel energy producers to survive while passing the higher costs onto consumers, impoverishing those customers on fixed incomes and taking away disposable income from the rest.

Green energy causes electricity poverty around the world. Today the Fraser Institute of Canada, an independent, non-partisan public policy think-tank released a study that found that energy poverty is on the rise in Canada.

"Government policies that raise electricity prices may push some families into energy poverty and further stretch the household budgets of families already in energy poverty," said Taylor Jackson, study co-author and policy analyst at the Fraser Institute.

"Because high energy costs take a large bite out of many household budgets, families across Canada pay the price when government energy policies boost the cost of electricity," said Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's senior director of natural resource studies and co-author of Energy Costs and Canadian Households: How Much Are We Spending?

According to the study, Canadian households that make $47,700 or less per year are disproportionately affected by energy poverty.

The Fraser Institute found that in 2013 the three regions most affected by energy poverty were Atlantic Canada at 20.6 percent, Saskatchewan at 12.9 percent and Ontario at 7.5 percent, with a general 7.9 percentage in Canada. “Between 2010 and 2013, energy poverty was on the rise in most provinces.” British Columbia had the lowest at 5.3 percent.

The study authors also found that the Green Energy Act of Ontario is responsible for the increase in electricity prices.

In 2013 Der Spiegel warned us that “the political world is wedged between the green-energy lobby, masquerading as saviors of the world, and the established electric utilities, with their dire warnings of chaotic supply problems and job losses.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html

In Germany, the Energiewende, or energy wave (revolution), was “Chancellor Angela Merkel’s project of the century.” It turned out to be a flop, although not as bad as her recent policy of welcoming with open arms of waves of violent Muslims into Europe.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Merkel “quickly decided to begin phasing out nuclear power and lead the country into the age of wind and solar.” The government-predicted renewable energy surcharge turned out to be higher than the 20 percent price hike.

Of all the companies that must pay the renewable energy surcharge, 2,300 German businesses with lobbying representation, were able to exempt themselves from this green energy surcharge by claiming tough international competition.

Der Spiegel said that German customers were forced to pay 20 billion euros for electricity from solar, wind, and biofuel plants that had a market price of only 3 billion euros. The authors explained that this cost did not include “unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project.” The costs included the fact that, depending on weather and time of day, the entire country can face “absurd states of energy surplus or deficit.” Solar panels and wind turbines can generate lots of electricity at times and other times zero.

According to Der Spiegel, more than 300,000 German households a year had their electricity cut off for unpaid bills. Caritas, a charity group, called this “energy poverty.”

Sweden, a heavily forested country, used up its biomass from wood and paper industry waste to fuel conventional power plants; once it exhausted this source, it switched to wind farms on land because the offshore ones were very expensive and tended to rust much quicker.

There is no doubt that Americans have also been affected by energy poverty. The Institute for Energy Research is citing the case of the residents in Pueblo, Colorado. The state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act forced inexpensive coal plants to be closed. Their residential kWh rate has increased 26 percent since 2010 when “the new local utility company in Pueblo replaced nearly all its inherited cheap coal capacity with wind and natural gas.” Residential customers, with a poverty rate of 18.1 percent and one third of the population on welfare, had to pay for the large infrastructure bills when the switch was made. Wind turbines were added in order to meet the state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act requirement of 30 percent capacity coming from renewable resources. http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/energy-poverty-coming-america-coal-shuttered-green-power/

At CPAC 2015, during a panel discussion on climate change and global warming alarmism, Gary Broadbent, representing Murray Energy Corporation, the largest privately held coal mine in the U.S., highlighted Obama’s “war on coal” via regulations passed by EPA alone in the last five years totaling 25,000 pages.  Quoting Robert E. Murray, Chairman of Murray Energy Corporation, Broadband said, “Prior to the election of President Obama, coal provided 52% of the electricity generation in our country. Today it is 37%. In our judgement, it will further decline to about 30%, at a maximum.”

Enumerating the 411 power plants designated for closure through 2016, “101,000 megawatts of the lowest cost electricity in America,” CEO Murray wrote that electricity, generated by coal at the plant cost of 4 cents per kWh, will be replaced by “Mr. Obama and his appointees” with 15 cent per kWh electricity from natural gas and 22 cent per kWh electricity from wind and solar power, not to mention the huge subsidies to solar power from American taxpayers.

In CEO Murray’s opinion, the Obama Administration has bypassed illegally Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the States and their Public Utility Commissions, which are “empowered to regulate the availability and cost of electricity.”

According to Chairman Murray, while we came within 700 megawatts of reducing loads to 61 million Americans in 13 states during the Polar Vortex of 2014, “China has been building a new 500 megawatt coal-fired plant every week for years, [and] burned about 4.0 billion tons of coal last year.”

"Combating Hate in Europe" Forum

From left to right: Fred Hiatt, Washington Post moderator, Peter Wettig, German Ambassador, Gerard Araud, French Ambassador, and David O'Sullivan, EU Ambassador to U.S. Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Despite the snowy conditions in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum held a program on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2016 on the topic of “Combating Hate in Europe.” http://www.ushmm.org/online/watch/index.html

In advertising the forum, the museum explained the importance of such a program.
“Around the world, antisemitism, religious persecution, and violent extremism are on the rise, and each threatens the stability and freedoms that democratic leaders are working to preserve.”

The Museum’s intent was to examine how the lessons of the Holocaust could help “combat extremism and also stand up to antisemitism and violence against religious minorities.”

Ambassadors were to address what can be done to confront these challenges today, “what their governments are doing and still need to do to educate young people, counter hate speech, and create economic opportunity while also maintaining secure borders and offering safe harbor to refugees.”

Speakers included Gérard Araud, Ambassador of France to the United States, David O'Sullivan, Ambassador of the European Union to the United States, and Peter Wittig, Ambassador of Germany to the United States. Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor at the Washington Post was the moderator.

Dr. Alfred Munzer

The special unannounced guest and speaker was a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Alfred Münzer.

In her opening remarks, the museum representative described the day as a “day for education and reflection,” keeping in mind the social unrest in Europe, the fear on the ground, the resentment, xenophobia, hate speech, vicious, sexual attacks, and the treacherous slide into the worst extremism, the rise of terror groups and of government leaders who engage in hate speech. She described the rise of radical groups in Poland, “which are bolder and stronger than ever,” and the “anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, anti-NATO, anti-Europe feelings, “the unbridled threats and actions against minorities; the anti-s have taken over the global discourse.”

Fred Hiatt remarked that America spoke with “moral arrogance” about Europe but “nobody is in a position to lecture anybody else when we are talking about these topics.” He mentioned how dismayed many were at the level of intolerance in parts of our presidential debates, “the ease with which other human beings were dehumanized.”

Peter Wettig explained that his country, Germany, has a moral responsibility to never forget the Holocaust, and that shapes its foreign policy, especially towards Israel. Anti-Semitism is not tolerated – “my country has strict laws on incitement, on hate speech, and on Holocaust denial which are punishable under the law, under the full force of the law.”

Those who decide what constitutes hate speech are lawyers and judges, an obviously subjective decision. One of the panelists explained that, in order to be hate speech, it must “incite” violence. I thought violence in general is caused by hate, an “intense and passionate dislike” of something or someone, by revenge, or insanity.

What is then “hate speech” as determined by progressive scholars. There is a legal and a dictionary definition.

“In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.”

In the dictionary, it is “speech that attacks, threatens, or insults a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.”

By this definition, most Democrats should be fined for “hate speech” and inciting riots and violence. But we do have freedom of speech, particularly unpleasant and offensive speech.

The audience expected the forum to address “the growing concern of most of Europe and many here in this country of the virulent spread of hatred meted out by the growing Muslim population in their host countries.” Instead, “the general position taken was that the rest of us aren’t tolerant enough of their customs and religious ideas.”

According to Chriss Rainey, “the discussion was presented in a panel of like-minded socialists who represented their socialist governments. I don’t think anyone has the answers yet for the Muslim infiltration of Europe and the western world, but to think we can do nothing but increase tolerance is irrational.”

Rainey continued, “Did it ever occur to anyone that the repeated mention of Republican candidates running for office, Trump in particular, was offensive and bordering on hate speech? Or is it only acceptable to speak your mind and express your sincere beliefs if you are Democrat or a socialist?”

The German ambassador Wittig expressed his country’s position of respect for Jewish groups, for Israel’s right to exist, and his country’s stance of intolerance towards any form of anti-Semitism. He almost foolishly insisted that anti-Semitism, “if it existed, was a German problem and not a threat from the million Muslims they have invited and allowed into the country.”

An interesting word used by several people on the panel raised my radar, “stakeholders,” a word that points to the one world governance socialist-speak coming from the United Nations.

Ambassador Gerard Araud focused his remarks on the French secularist society which “has just opened its doors to a very religious body of immigrants who do not share a common morality with host countries.” Reeducating and training the immigrants to the French way of life was presented in such a positive light as if it was remotely possible. Never mind the two massacres in Paris in 2015; that must have been just an exception to the peacefulness and good intent of the new comers to build a progressive life in France.

Chriss Rainey believes that “Araud’s remarks reflect an attitude that they don’t like religion because it puts barriers on human progress. They have ideas of right and wrong and anyone will be trained in the proper conduct of a citizen. The French expect to do this not through any religious body, which has been the source of morality for centuries, but from within state run schools that are set up to mold the next generation, outside the loving eye of home and family. But then, how could it be otherwise since they have basically destroyed the family already and the only thing left to train children—what few of them there are, is the state.”

Ambassador David O’Sullivan, representing EU, a house of cards threatened by the possible exit of Greece and U.K., explained his organization’s interest in controlling the 28 member-states to make sure they stay in line and preserve the EU. To succeed, EU bureaucrats must make sure any nationalist idea is rejected as dangerous, racist, hateful, xenophobic, backwards, and simple-minded. Anyone who opposes global government control is uneducated.

O’Sullivan expressed his disdain for Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who loves his country and speaks openly about protecting Americans’ rights to preserve their way of life. Ambassador O’Sullivan added that he had faith in the American voters to do the right thing, meaning, to vote for some other candidate who shares his progressive, globalist control views.

During the panel discussion and Q&A, the bashing of Donald Trump was almost a lait-motif. Trump voters were derided as “nativists,” “lower class” and “uneducated” for considering a vote for such a persona-non-grata whom the Labor Party in the U.K. contemplated banning. The two remaining ambassadors expressed their faith in the American voters that they would do the right thing and vote as the elites and the media desire.

As Chriss Rainey so aptly put it, “Could it be that the remarks about our conservative candidates that we heard mentioned again and again, are merely a reflection of their own fear of a growing conservative movement in Europe?”

After the conclusion of the panel discussion and Q & A, a Dutch survivor of the Holocaust, Dr. Alfred Münzer, made brief remarks about how he survived “the fury of anti-Semitism that had engulfed Europe,” having been hidden and protected “by a Dutch family and their Muslim housekeeper.” But his older sisters, 6 and 8 years old, did not survive. They were turned in to the authorities and taken to Auschwitz. “The father of a Catholic family whose wife had taken them in did not like Jewish children.” Sadly, he explained, the murder of six million Jews did not end the anti-Semitism that is very much alive today.

I was surprised that not once the real culprits of anti-Semitism and perpetrators of heinous crimes today were not mentioned. Yet every panelist and the moderator repeated ad nauseam the idea that somehow, conservatives and nationalists in Europe and around the globe who disagree with progressive goals and ideals are “far right loons” who deserve derision, contempt, and legal punishment of hate crimes.  

Freedom of speech must fall under progressive censorship law; eager judges should eliminate the right to speak and think which is divergent from the ruling elites. Working hand in glove with social media, especially Facebook, these European bureaucrats and Democrats want to nip in the bud any resistance against their speech dictates.

Unlike Europe, which is a basket case of linguistic Tower of Babel, of broke socialist states thanks to their open borders, multi-culturalism and diversity at all costs, most Americans like their borders, their sovereignty, and their culture, and would like to keep it this way.

Americans do not want to lose their national identity to hostile, invading cultures that do not wish to assimilate but desire to change the demographics of the host country, its history, and replace the local customs and religions with Islam. It seems that the ruling progressives and invading Islamists, who rape and pillage across Europe, make strange bed fellows. The media and the socialist authorities are on high alert to hide the chaos.

The panelists spent more time protecting minorities that actually engage in hate speech, incitement, and murder, while condemning the “hate speech” coming from the “far right” fringe and those so intolerant and disagreeable with the progressive open border, destroy western civilization agenda.

No mention was made of all the violence, chaos, and rapes committed by the military age Muslim refugees harbored in ever-increasing numbers and welcomed with open arms by EU leaders determined to change the arrogant and intolerant face and demographics of our western civilization.

Unfortunately, thanks to progressive tyrants, career politicians in Washington who only represent the interests of their capitalist cronies, billionaires, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbying around the world with coffers full of grant money, the fix is in for European style global socialism.

Further reading sources cited by the Holocaust Museum:

*Antisemitism in Germany. Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that antisemitism is "more widespread than we imagine." http://www.jta.org/2016/01/24/news-opinion/world/merkel-anti-semitism-in-germany-more-widespread-than-we-can-imagine?utm_source=Newsletter+subscribers&utm_campaign=e4d5d21674-Daily_Briefing_1_25_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dce5bc6f8-e4d5d21674-25299385

*Extremism in Poland. Our opening speaker and USHMM Council member, Amy Kaslow recently reported on the growth of nationalist movements in Eastern Europe.
http://fortune.com/author/amy-kaslow/

*Holocaust Remembrance events in Paris. To mark the global Day of Remembrance, the Museum and UNESCO Paris will co-host a series of events and open an important exhibition on propaganda, called State of Deception.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/oppose-new-propaganda-of-hatred-by-irina-bokova-and-sara-bloomfield-2016-01

 

Cleaning the Trash and Destruction Left Behind

Photo credit: Polish blogger Kamil Bulonis

As I look at photos posted by witnesses at the Italian/Austrian border, Serbian/Hungarian border, and various train stations around Europe, I am wondering who is going to clean the mountains of trash left behind for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, by the “refugees” from the Middle East.

“Why has everyone, from everywhere and all at once, decided to start heading towards Europe, five years into the Syrian civil war? This must be a manufactured mass migration.”

Photo credit: Polish blogger Kamil Bulonis

 

It is not what the refugees used on their journey, but what they left behind  unused – discarded Red Cross packaged water, crates of peaches, untouched packaged food, unopened baby diapers, brand new strollers, car seats, toys, and other necessities for someone traveling with a baby. Since these items were left behind, it is obvious that there were no babies among them.

Photo credit: Polish blogger Kamil Bulonis

 

Videos are coming in from various regions showing Muslim men fighting, throwing rocks and chairs at each other, breaking windows, throwing feces, blooding each other’s noses in vicious fights, Shia fighting the Sunnis, the same centuries old senseless religious tribal animosity and hatred.

Refugees have taken over Greek Islands, turning them into a gang-like war zone. Greeks are afraid, hiding in their homes, unable to go to work, or to take their children to school. There is no respect for private property and there is no civilized propriety. They are burning cars and flags, throwing feces at passing cars and at people unfortunate enough to be in the way.

A witness at the Italian Austrian border, a Polish travel blog writer, describes circumstances of horror. “This huge mass of people, but these are absolute savages … Vulgar, throwing bottles, shouting loudly, ‘We want Germany.’… But is Germany a paradise now?”

“I saw how they surrounded a car of an elderly Italian woman, pulled her by her hair out of the car and wanted to drive away in the car. They tried to overturn the bus in which I traveled myself with a group of others. They were throwing feces at us, banging on the doors to force the driver to open them, spat at the windshield. How is this savagery to assimilate in Germany? The bus is now damaged, covered with feces, scratched, with broken windows.” His group had to travel with Italian police escort from then on. He described the entire area as a war zone.

Should we not be compassionate to our fellow Muslims who, by no fault of their own, are invading Europe, fleeing a civil war in Syria? Since they are mostly young men 20-30 years old, would it not make sense that they stayed with their families and fought for their country, protecting their wives, children, and the elderly? Why trek 4,000 km to another continent whose culture they hate and despise, instead of going to the nearby rich Arab and Muslim countries that could have given them familiar shelter and religious accommodations?

Saudi Arabia promised Germany that they would build a mosque for every 100 refugees they take in. Why? Are they trying to colonize Europe with Islam? Why not take these refugees into Saudi Arabia?

As the blogger said, even though he felt subconscious compassion, he was glad the refugees did not choose Poland as their destination. “Poles are not prepared to accept these people culturally or financially.”

Why would refugees seek Germany and Sweden? The Poland MEP, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, of the conservative-liberal party, shed some light during his recent speech at the EU.

“Poland does not have a problem with immigrants. Poland has a problem with immigrants, who under the absurd Dublin regime (the Dublin Regulation), are being forced to stay at concentration camps although they want to escape from Poland to Germany, Austria, and other EU countries. Why? Because Poland has significantly lower social benefits. If we were to abolish social benefits, there wouldn’t be any people coming to Poland and Europe just to live off of handouts. People willing to work are valuable, but they are being sent back to their countries and we take in those unwilling to work. This is a ridiculous policy that results in Europe being flooded with human garbage. Let’s state this clearly: human garbage that does not want to work. America built its power because it took in immigrants willing to work and it does not give any handouts. We are ruining Europe and this policy is the cause of the downfall of Europe.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upTBiQEow94

The Polish MEP is wrong that America is not taking in immigrants that are unwilling to work. We have our share of them on welfare rolls as soon as they get here. There are legal immigrants who are still waiting for the resolution of their cases but southern border illegal jumpers get red carpet treatment at the welfare trough. Social Security offices are jam-packed with illegals, who do not speak English and have no intention of assimilating into our culture.

Angela Tocila, another European blogger, made some interesting points in her September 9, 2015 post. I translate ad litteram or paraphrase parts of her eloquent essay. We all learned to share as kids and to be compassionate. We remember the UNICEF ads begging for a few dollars to feed the starving children of Africa yet they are still dying of hunger.

Most people volunteer because they are Christians and want to help their fellow humans. Liberals volunteer because they are enamored with primitive cultures they view as superior and exploited by evil white men.  But Angela Tocila sees the new wave of European volunteerism to take in Syrian refugees as a new wave of “flower power.”

These “flower power” liberals are “pointing fingers and accusing that we are not in solidarity with the downtrodden on a blind quest with a fixed destination, Germany or nothing. Germany or I am going to throw my wife and child on the train tracks, Germany or death. The “flower power” ilk forces me to respond if I want to take in a family of refugees in my own home, in the name of human solidarity; they are trying to blackmail me into a sentimental guilt trip that I am not sensitive to, and I answer NO.”

She would not take in refugees because she does not have any duty or responsibility towards them. “That does not mean that I am insensitive to the drama of many, to the images of drowned kids whose dads survived miraculously while trying to save their kids. I am not insensitive to the male invasion who uses their women and children as shields, place them on train tracks or throw them through a fence.”  I loathe people who do not bathe, who demand that I cover my arms and legs in their presence, for fear that I might offend their religious obsessions, who would treat me in my own home as half a human being or less. I don’t want to feel obligated to find a shepherd to buy a sheep because I eat pork, beef, beans with smoked pork, or stuffed cabbage with pork.” If you stay in my house, you must eat what I eat. I don’t want to enter into a conflict with a male who treats his wife like a rag, while trying to explain to him that she is just as much of a human being as he is. I am agnostic and I would not want to create a prayer space in my own home and to respect a religious ritual foreign to me and to my culture. I would not want to become the victim of the conflict between the Shia family in my home and the Sunni family in my neighbor’s home. Last but not least, I would not take in a refugee family in my home when the conflict was caused by those who finance it and are responsible, the military industrial complex.” But the most compelling argument was, “I don’t want to wake up one morning with my throat slashed because I might be Christian.” https://politicstand.com/nu-nu-adopt-o-familie-de-refugiati/

The liberal do-gooders have moved from adopting starving African children to oppressed Afghani women and girls, to stopping the Darfur genocide caused by Muslims, to now adopting a refugee family from Syria. And the world’s problems seem to get worse while liberals are mum about the slaughter of Christians and Yezidis by ISIS.

Liberal humanitarians will try to run cover and explain benignly why 1,500 Muslims chanting Alahu Akbar, throwing rocks and bottles at police, are rioting at the closed Roszke-Horkos border crossing from Serbia into Hungary.  Hungarian police fired tear gas and water cannons at the refugees as they broke through the make-shift fence. http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/allahu-akbar-migrants-rampage-attack-police/

Germany and the EU are receiving a massive onslaught of militant multi-culturalism which they are ill-prepared to handle. Decades of European multi-culturalism has already been a substantial failure.

 

 

Refugees or Convenient Economic and Demographic Exodus?

Refugees in the Keleti railroad station in
Budapest Photo: Wikipedia 9/2015

The sudden and unexpected wave of economic refugees from Syria and Iraq appears to have similarities to the wave of young economic refugees fleeing Central America who started flooding our borders last year with several governments, including our own, as enablers and financers of forced settlement.

When this administration, bent on changing the face and demographics of America, granted amnesty under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to 2-3 million illegals, news spread through Central America which resulted in a massive influx of unaccompanied minors and adult young men. These minors and adults brought in diseases like the enterovirus 68 found in Central America, a polio-like respiratory illness that has caused deaths among U.S. school children. Lice and tuberculosis were found among adults and children.

The wave was organized then, busing and flying mostly young men, not children, into various locations around the country where Catholic, Lutheran, and Baptist organizations were paid millions of dollars in grants to facilitate and force small communities to take in these “children,” enrolling those who were children in school even though they spoke no English nor Spanish, only an indigenous dialect that nobody seemed to understand. Same church groups taught adults how to apply for welfare benefits for themselves and for the minor children immediately.

The “refugees” from the Middle East appear healthy, well dressed, well organized, calm, and carrying one average size backpack like tourists on a weekend jaunt. We know this from various MSM videos and photographs.

This mass migration of Muslims around the world has a purpose, as an ISIS operative revealed in February that the Islamic State takes advantage of the “refugee crisis” to “form a fifth column of Muslim fighters inside western nations” in which they claim 4,000 ISIS terrorists are already in place, having been smuggled among the presumed refugees.  Robert Spencer wrote on September 4 in Front Page Magazine that “This is no longer just a ‘refugee crisis.’ This is a hijrah.”

“Hijrah is the Islamic doctrine of migration, a form of stealth jihad.” Paraphrasing the Quran (4:100), Spencer wrote that “To emigrate in the cause of Allah – that is to move to a new land in order to bring Islam there, is considered in Islam to be a highly meritorious act.” ISIS wants to have a Caliphate in the entire world.

According to Leo Hohmann, “1.5 million Muslims have migrated into Turkey alone, with millions more refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and outside their homes in Syria itself.” WND reported that Christians are hiding in churches and in homes, afraid to go to the U.N. refugee camps which are run mostly by Muslims. http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/09/isis-smuggler-we-will-use-refugee-crisis-to-infiltrate-west/

These refugees are going to Sweden and Germany for asylum via Hungary and Romania. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, highly criticized by all liberals in the West, chose to block the Muslim migrants in order to maintain Hungary’s Christian heritage. Clare Lopez, Middle East analyst for the Center for Security Policy, said that more leaders should be as “astute” as Orban who wants to preserve national sovereignty currently “under concerted attack by the forces of the global jihad movement.” Both Putin of Russia and Erdogan of Turkey blame the West “for creating the refugee crisis in the first place through it fomenting of civil war against Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad.”

Presalibera.net published numerous photographs and a video, reporting that on September 1, 2015, a Romanian tourist returning from a short vacation, boarded a ferry boat, Nissos Rodos, on the Greek island of Limnos, in the port of Myrna, with the final destination in Kavala, continental Greece. Hundreds of Arabic-speaking people were on board, two-thirds males between 20-30 and the rest women of similar age with small children. These passengers had boarded in Chios, Samos, and Mytilini (Lesvos) and the ferry staff referred to them as “refugees.”

Refugees are usually haggard, sad, frightened, hungry, poorly, and dirtily dressed, carrying luggage according to their physical abilities. But these refugees were different, reported the accidental tourist; they were happy, relaxed, well dressed, clean, well fed, joking and laughing in groups. When they noticed they were being photographed, he reported, some hid their faces, others looked at him directly and smiled, giving him the two-finger sign for victory. There was no tension as if they knew exactly what would follow, “they had the assurance of an immediate future without surprises.”

“Without exception, they were well dressed, some had designer clothes on, with new and expensive shoes, some elegant designer shoes, and some women even wore low heels.” On board, during the 3 ½ hour journey, the curious passengers were segregated in groups, some sitting inside in comfortable chairs and others outside directly on the deck or in deck chairs.

Alexandru Matei described their luggage as not reflecting their condition of “refugees.” All carried an average backpack  with no reserves of food, water, or any other necessities for an unexpected long voyage or passage as if someone else was going to take care of them. They were carrying, Matei said, as much as he would take with him on an outing with his kids in the park, not for a 3,500 km journey from Syria and Iraq to Germany.

Only two of the “refugees” admitted to speaking English and allowed themselves to be interviewed by Alexandru Matei.  They were Palestinian, Iraqi, and Syrian Muslims headed to Germany which agreed to take them in as immigrants. From Syria and Iraq they crossed into Turkey were they were taken by buses with concealed windows to the shore were boats took them in groups of 50 and crossed the sea into Greece in four hours. They were then taken by ship to Kavala, then by bus to Salonic, then to Skopje, and then to Germany.

Matei asked them how they got into Turkey. If he tried to cross the Turkish border without a visa, he would have been arrested, he said. These “refugees” had entry papers as tourists. How did they get into Greece, he asked them. We entered by boat without a visa or permit. With the statue of “refugees” they could enter any other country along the way.

Who organized so many people, asked Matei. Are there human smugglers with you? No, they said. Matei wondered how so many people, on their own volition, could get together in such large numbers, so thinly dressed, without food and water, and assemble to trek together in the same direction, 3,500 km without any prior organization.

Why flee now? The initial waves of refugees left long time ago, armed conflicts have been taking place in Syria for 4 years, 24 years in Iraq, and 70 years in Gaza, it is not something new that took you by surprise. Matei continued, when he fled communism 30 years ago, refugees left individually or in families not in such large groups.  

We have no future, everything is destroyed, lamented a 27-year old Iraqi engineer who was unable to find a job for five years. “We lost 4 million Iraqis in the first years of war,” he said. “We have no homes, no water, no electricity, no jobs, politicians are corrupt, 5 percent of people are intelligent, 95 percent are idiots who shoot each other all day. “ Who caused all of this, asked Matei. “Some politicians who want to enrich themselves and the American dictatorship,” the Iraqi engineer answered.

Getting off the boat, the “refugees” were orderly, relaxed, calm, and grouped themselves while a leader was talking to them. They walked to the bus station in Kavala where, after getting tickets, they boarded buses that seemed to expect them. Only 6-8 policemen on bikes were on hand to supervise this peaceful and highly organized transfer.

Alexandru Matei had one question he wanted to ask of the young women with children, “How do you move as a mother with your child in a stroller and just one backpack, across seas and across countries, on your way to a foreign country 3,500 km away, without even a bottle of water with you?”

This accidental tourist captured the essence of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande’s failed liberal policies and the alleged understanding they have with Greece and Tukey to allow these economic immigrants to move freely into Europe instead of fighting the problem of such illegal immigration onslaught. “The European authorities are inefficient and incompetent on purpose. We are in a full-blown crisis but the European authorities are not meeting until September 14.”

Nobody wants to stop the daily invasion of thousands of illegals into Europe. The Turkish President said that the “Europeans have transformed the Mediterranean into a cemetery.”http://www.presalibera.net/un-turist-roman-in-grecia-despre-minciuna-cu-refugiati-refugiati-cu-aer-de-turisti_1836485.html

 

Throw More Money into Government-Controlled Education

The Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, wants to have “equity” in education and to replace the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) with a new law that would include government-funded preschool. The sooner the collectivist indoctrination starts, the better. NCLB already cost taxpayers $25 billion in 2014. http://dailysignal.com/2015/01/12/obama-administration-proposes-expanding-government-funded-preschool-replacing-no-child-left-behind/

Government failed miserably with Head Start but the taxpayers’ memories are short. Sec. Duncan wants to throw $1 billion more to the Title I program to low-income school districts with no guarantee that it will make a bit of difference in the education outcomes of those students, particularly since curricula is dictated by the wicked Common Core standards with the nonsensical and unnecessarily complex math, collectivist indoctrination, and proselytizing for Islam.

No wonder teachers with a conscience are retiring early after 22 years of teaching—nobody wants to jump through political correctness hoops, they want to teach traditional curriculum that made Americans successful before the Department of Education came into being and before Bill Gates decided to change it into “Conformity Core” Standards.

Government intrusion into education is not a formula for success. Parents, teachers, and even some administrators have no idea how the data mining of their children is going to be used by third parties who will purchase the information. The start-up company, Knewton, has gathered information on 4 million children.

Politico reports, “Students are tracked as they play online games, watch videos, read books, take quizzes and run laps in physical education. The monitoring continues as they work on assignments from home, with companies logging children’s locations, homework schedules, Web browsing habits and, of course, their academic progress.” http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/data-mining-your-children-106676.html#ixzz3Oo9FovT6

Knewton, according to parents, administrators, and teachers, collects more data on our children than the NSA. When parents protested against data-mining, Knewton’s CEO Jose Ferreira responded that “concerns are overblown,” he was helping them learn. He asked, “Is it simply that they don’t want a for-profit company to map their kids’ minds? If not, why not? They’d rather the NSA have it? What, you trust government?”

Knewton, which advertises, “The world's most innovative learning companies use Knewton technology to boost student achievement,” has the following partners: http://www.knewton.com/

-          Santillana (Spain and Latin America)

-          Wizard (Brazil)

-          Sesameworkshop (“The Electric Company”)

-          Elsevier (scientific, technological, and medical information)

-          Gyldendal (Norway)

-          Sanoma Learning (Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Poland, and Sweden)

-          Malmberg (Netherlands)

-          Sebit (U.S., Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Asia)

-          Adaptive Curriculum

-          Microsoft

-          Cengage Learning (Management and Sociology)

-          Gutenberg Technology (My Ebook Factory)

-          Lelivresscolaire.fr (French grammar, English grammar, math, geography, and history)

-          Cambridge University Press

-          MacMillan Education

-          Triumph Learning (Common Core standards)

-          Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

-          Wiley Global Education (Australia and New Zealand)

-          Pearson (Common Core standards and testing)

There is nothing wrong with helping children learn by traditional methods but there is no evidence that using technology to spy on children’s habits and their thought-pattern is actually helping them learn. Technology can be used nefariously to implant thoughts and ideas into impressionable minds, brainwashing them into the ideology of the government’s choice.

It is impossible to demand “equity” in schools because not all schools are created equal and not all children are created equal, some have stronger musical intelligence, some logical, some are naturalists, some are mathematically gifted, some learn best kinesthetically, and some have stronger linguistic intelligence. Howard Gardner identifies 8 types of different intelligences in children, some are weaker and some are stronger in each child. http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/mismeasure/genius/research02.html

 A student coming from a small and remote school in Alaska cannot pick up where he/she left off when moving to another state. In many places, one cannot find an entire class of students ready, willing, and able to take advanced chemistry nor the teacher qualified to offer such a course. Perhaps it can be offered through the web but students need hands-on experimentation in a lab.

Germany has “sorted out” information on children and their families in order to address allegiance problems to the state. “Children were used to control their parents by being encouraged to report what they did and said. Hitler realized that older people would be less enthusiastic about his ideas, so he made every effort to win the minds of the next generation.” The control of people’s ideas was introduced in the form of a gradual change. The brainwashing/education included:

-          Nursery rhymes and songs were “about bloodshed, violence, and anti-Semitism

-          No foreign languages for girls and only math related to cooking and childcare

-          Textbooks were revisionist versions of Nazi propaganda

-          Lesson included only Nazi ideals and ideology

-          Girls were taught about church, 4 children, and cooking, no makeup, no expensive clothes, long hair worn in a bun

-          Propaganda lessons about the ideal German family

-          Boys studied math and science and outdoor activities/sports

-          Membership in Youth Organizations was compulsory http://www.johndclare.net/Nazi_Germany2_BBCnotes.htm

Then there is the Virginia Goochland County Board of Education that was swamped by angry parents who wanted the repeal of a policy that would have forced 14-year-old home-schooled children to be interrogated by the school board about their religious beliefs. Virginia’s religious exemption statute gives parents the right to control the upbringing and education of their children. http://www.redstate.com/diary/matthewclark/2015/01/14/virginia-county-interrogate-homeschool-teens-religious-beliefs/

What are some of these 600 plus data points collected on each child? When religion and political affiliation of your parents, or whether they voted or not in the last election are included in the data-mining, it is worrisome.

Suppose you know this information and your next onscreen lesson is about the non-existence of God, or that Republicans are mean and hateful people who stand in the way of progress and success of the downtrodden, conservatives are enemies because they object to redistribution of wealth, government control, and high government taxation, then your child’s obstacles will be overcome by training them to accept government control of their lives through subliminal messages included in their on screen lessons. Government curricula can thus make children believe whatever they want them to believe through subtle and subliminal brainwashing.