Vlad Tepes, Cruelty, and the Janissaries

For five hundred years my people have fought the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, and their passage and battles have left an imprint in the national psyche and in the Romanian language.

The territory of what is now Romania, was a buffer zone between the advancement of the Ottoman Empire towards medieval Europe and their demands for treasure and heavy tribute.

One of our national heroes, Vlad Tepes, had fought the Ottomans to his eventual death. Vlad was a Prince of Wallachia; a province located between the Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River. The 15^th-century Wallachia was the state between the central European kingdom of Hungary and the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

When the Turkish Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453, the ruler of Wallachia was Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon. His personal coat of arms was a dragon, hence the name. When his son, also named Vlad, ascended to the throne, he received the title of “Son of the Dragon,” Vlad Dracula.

Vlad Tepes was born in 1430. He was exposed at an early age to medieval cruelty because, as a boy, was held hostage by the Turks in a fortress called Egrigoz, “Crooked Eyes.”

He also witnessed the murder of his own father and his elder brother being buried alive on orders of the Regent of Hungary. Medieval Europe was not lacking in utter cruelty, violence, and savagery among the princes and kings in power who devised the most disgusting ways to torture and kill their enemies.

Called Vlad Tepes, “the Impaler,” after his favorite method of killing Turkish prisoners and others, Vlad proceeded to rule with an iron fist. The impaling stakes were often blunted and greased to extend the agony, the impalement of a vital organ, and the eventual death of the victim.

Vlad continued campaigns against the invading Turks and helped save Christian Europe from Islamic conquest. He helped peasants fight the ruthless feudal lords of Eastern Europe called “boyars” and “restored order to a land torn apart by foreign invasion and civil strife.

Vlad did lock up a group of beggars and disabled people in a church and set them on fire, but the utter cruelty was explained away as stamping out disease when threatened by the plague.

He allegedly skinned women alive who were found guilty of committing adultery.

The myth of vampirism that Bram Stoker, a British author, assigned to Vlad Dracula is certainly not true. Stoker never traveled to Romania to investigate elements for his book; he just visited his local library and found the history of Vlad Tepes fascinating.

There is no doubt that he was a monster of cruelty as he strangled, boiled, roasted, and put to death a minimum of 50,000 people in his reign of ten years. He met a violent end in 1476, but nobody knows if the was killed by the Ottomans or his political rivals. His severed head was impaled on a spike for all to see. He was allegedly buried on an island in Romania, but, when they opened the tomb in modern times, it was empty.

His alleged residence, Bran Castle, was not his home even though the castle advertises some loose connection to one of his campaign stays. The Poenari castle ruins in Transylvania are more credibly the place where he lived. Its location is hard to access via 1480 concrete stairs. The citadel was destroyed partially by three different earthquakes and the masonry fell in the river below.

Poenari castle ruins are located on Mount Cetatea, a canyon formed by the Arges River. It was built in the first part of the 13^th century to be used by the Basarab rulers. Vlad repaired it in 1459 when he saw its potential for a hard to access fortress and became his residence until his death.

As a boy, held hostage by the Turks, Vlad witnessed what the Ottomans did to Christian boys they held captive. Turks used a system called “devsirme” (collect) to conscript physically and intellectually gifted Christian boys from the territories they conquered in places like Anatolia, Armenia, and the Balkans.

They used Christian boys because Turkish law forbade them to enslave Muslims and they could also keep powerful enemies under control, such as Vlad’s dad.

The Christian boys were circumcised, forcibly converted to Islam, and sent to the capital which is today Istanbul. Most of them were forced to join the forces of the Janissaries, “the shock troops” of the sultans. The Janissaries (yeniceri, Turkish) were founded in 1300s as the sultan’s body guards, later as the standing army of the Ottoman Empire. They wore a distinctive hat with feathers and spoons. Every Janissary regiment had a huge cooking pot called “kazan” (cazan, Romanian) and a huge ladle to distribute the food cooked. If said kazan was lost in battle, the punishment was expulsion; an overturned ladle meant mutiny.

Vlad was lucky to have escaped the conscription into Janissaries and all the military schools involved prior to being included in such a regiment. After centuries of thuggery and even murder of sultans, the Janissaries fell in disfavor and in 1826 in the Auspicious Incident, thousands of Janissaries were murdered in their barracks. Their influence disappeared and the Ottoman Empire disappeared a century later replaced by general Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the post-Ottoman Turkey.

Vlad Dracul, as an imprisoned boy in Egrigoz, dodged the bullet of Janissaries.

 

 

 

The Armenian Genocide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Marxist/Nazi/Ottoman/Islamist ISIS pogrom against Christianity continues to this day.

Empires End in the Dustbin of History

Stefan the Great (1457-1504) Romanian ruler who
fought the Ottoman Empire in 36 battles and won 34,
named by the church, "Athleta Christi"
Photo: descopera.ro

Empires come and go. The twilight of western civilization is not just a poetic idea, it is a painful reality. Liberals often say that they do not like to make broadly pessimistic pronouncements about the collective fate of civilization.  Of course not, it might upset their blind followers who dwell in the haze of marijuana, hard-core drugs, immorality, decadence, and debauchery.

Anarchists are allowed to burn down towns, while police are told to stand down. ANTI-FA and BLM, fascist and racist organizations by any description, deface statues they don’t like and beat up others whose ideas they disagree with, proclaiming that they have a right to attack them for their opinions.

Young brainwashed generations are rejecting God, morality, their countries, their own skin color, their history, and everything that made our modern society most developed.

Terrorists are allowed to cause destruction and mayhem around the world yet those in power bring more into developed countries under the insane notion that they are protecting multi-culturalism and diversity and the U.N.-established “right” to migration anywhere they wish, regardless of borders and sovereignty.

The lessons of 9-11 and the unity against Muslim terrorist evil forces lasted as long as the clean-up ended, those innocents killed were buried, and the families recompensed from the 9-11 fund. Even the death of the 200 or so jumpers before the towers fell was sanitized by the leftist media because it was too much to bear and see.

The sacred ground containing the bodies of innocents slaughtered that day, who were never recovered, will be protected perhaps for a few decades. When a new generation of BLM and ANTI-FA snowflakes will decide that the monument is offensive to them, it will probably be torn down too.

Statues honoring Francis Scott Key, the lawyer and amateur poet who wrote our National Anthem, Christopher Columbus, derided by the left as an “Italian navigator, explorer, and colonizer,” Gen. Robert E. Lee, a war hero and veteran, were either destroyed, defaced, or vandalized by home-grown terrorists who would like to shut down any opposition to their fascistic behavior and ideas.

Mayors in places like Baltimore, Charlottesville, Dallas, and other highly liberal municipalities, took it upon themselves to rewrite history by ordering the removal of statues they deemed offensive, often in the middle of the night, while the rest of the citizens stood by in stunned disbelief. Bolsheviks and fascists smashed many statues, monuments, burned books and works of art they considered offensive and bourgeois and priceless artifacts were forever destroyed.

Muslim terrorists around the world are killing with gusto because they hate civilization and infidels but love the welfare in the countries they are rapidly occupying through demographics. Europeans and Americans are committing demographic suicide and the church is applauding, praising, and enabling the invaders. Islamists are successfully installing their seventh century theocracy called Caliphate and the powers that be in the western world seem to agree that it is the best path for their citizenry. Twenty-one centuries of civilization must have been a mistake which they aim to correct by national suicide.

Hiring practices favor the newly protected class to the detriment of Americans. My former two bank branches eventually fired all Americans in the last eight years and hired only Muslims with limited English skills. One recently lied and tried to talk down to me about economics and finance. She had been on the job for a week. I wondered how the large Spanish-speaking population banks with them.

You would be hard-pressed to find a medical professional, a taxi driver, a sales associate in a store, or an airport employee in the D.C. area who is not from the Middle East and speaking with a thick English accent, often incomprehensible. It is not racist or bigoted to state such a fact, even though liberals throw around such labels like confetti.

London was just attacked again, this time a bomb blew up on the metro.  Numerous people were singed from the flash of the bomb that partially detonated in a Lidl shopping bag. I wondered how many more such terrorist attacks, whether by bombs, knives, or cars plowing into crowds, will eventually convince the EU that their globalist, multi-cultural plan of flooding the old continent with economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East has failed miserably and must stop the open borders, welcome all the flotsam and jetsam of Islamist refugees who have no intention of ever accepting western civilization or assimilate.

That is why the western empire is in its twilight and will eventually demise in the dustbin of history. And my people fought the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Much blood has been shed to keep them out of Christian lands. Now they are here to stay and fundamentally transform us because we let them.

Ionuț Sabău, a Hero for Europeans

Photo: Wikipedia

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D., Europe has been besieged by waves of invasion from tribes of peoples such as Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii, Jutes, Franks, Huns, Cumans, Avars, Bulgars, Alans, Moors, Mongolians, Khazars, Tatars, Vikings, Normans, to name a few, who brought war and pillage across Europe from 376 to 800 A.D.

These attacks were followed by the bloody incursions and invasions of the Ottoman Empire in various European countries for several centuries in their quest to establish the sought-after Caliphate. The Crusades were the logical Christian reaction to defend their faith, territories, and way of life.

Romanians fought against and pushed back the Turks and their rule for centuries and eventually paid tribute in gold and lost lives to the Ottoman Empire. The most prominent defender of Romanian territory against the Ottoman invasion was the famous Vlad Tepes.

French and Italian scholars viewed this part of history as catastrophic; it followed the destruction of the great Roman civilization which was replaced in the West with a period they termed the “Dark Ages” because it “set Europe back a millennium.” German and English scholars saw this invasion as replacing the “tired, effete, and decadent Mediterranean civilization with a more virile, martial, Nordic one.”  German and Slavic historians used the term ‘migration.’ (Halsall, Guy (2006), "The Barbarian invasions", in Fouracre, Paul, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500 – c. 700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-36291-1)

This brings us to the current orchestrated mass invasion of Muslim “refugees” across the senescent continent of Europe which needs an infusion of new and virile blood from the Middle East and north Africa. These single young men of military age are quite willing to install the promised Caliphate across Europe and are not shy in their overt (but media-covered) effort to rape, pillage, and destroy across civilized society.

Secular Europe has a problem with continuing to exist by not having enough babies and is committing willful demographic suicide sped up by the politics of the European Union technocrats who are eager to have global governance under the U.N. umbrella.

It seems that one Romanian young man, Ionuț Sabău, has what it takes to defend his country, his family, and his way of life from the Muslim “refugee” social engineering plan. Non-governmental organizations have been preparing this flood of male humanity (if we can be so kind to men who behave like savages) with money from billionaire donors and socialist governments interested in changing the demographic face of old Europe.

Bill Still reported that “In early January, 28 year-old Ionuț Sabău found out that the Association Freres Romania (an NGO), in partnership with the Ministry for Internal Affairs was planning to make a ‘refugee’ center in the neighborhood of the small town of Ardud, in Satu Mare county.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcMcFmNdFvA

Ionuț Sabău, who had worked and lived in Paris in a prominently Muslim neighborhood, gathered 200 signatures and petitioned the local government to stop the planned settlement; the mayor set up a meeting with the prefect, the representative of the local government.

Ionuț Sabău told the prefect bluntly that he does not agree with this migration in any shape or form based on the simple fact that he wants his family safe from harm; he wants his children to be able to go to school and his wife and children to walk the streets alone safely. This is a small village (5,000 inhabitants) where children are not bussed to school, they walk.

“We don’t care what the law says or what the state says, we do not agree.  We are disposed to use violence and we want everyone to know that.” The prefect responded, “Please don’t talk about doing justice yourself. There are institutions for that.” Sabău rejoined, “I understand, but our children must also grow up in safe and optimal conditions and we don’t want a situation like in Western Europe where people are afraid to let children go to school alone or leave our wives alone in the streets. We don’t want any of that here! Under no circumstance! This is not an issue of defending the Romanian state as a whole, we are simply defending our own families.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5cw-8OT-EWc#t=116

Following the hearing, the Freres Romania Association, an NGO, canceled the project of resettling the Muslim refugees in a Christian country and culture that is totally alien to the Islamic faith and theocratic culture. http://breizatao.com/2016/02/03/roumanie-des-villageois-salues-en-heros-pour-setre-revoltes-contre-un-plan-secret-de-lue-visant-a-installer-des-migrants/

If only the men in the EU countries that have already been invaded and their lives violently disrupted would get half of this man’s courage!

Leaving aside the facts of who caused the Arab Spring and who financed this massive invasion, true war refugees can best be helped in countries that share their own culture and faith and provide safe-haven for their families. If these people are bona fide war refugees, young men of military age should stay in their home-countries and fight the enemy instead of fleeing like cowards and leaving women, children, and old people behind to suffer.

 

The Paris Massacre, Social Justice, and Redistribution of Wealth

Social justice is defined as “promoting a just society by challenging injustice and valuing diversity.” It can only exist when “all people share a common humanity and therefore have a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights, and a fair allocation of community resources.” http://gjs.appstate.edu/social-justice-and-human-rights/what-social-justice

There are many problems with this definition. The most glaring is the fact that “personal responsibility” does not seem to be a variable. Another problem is the fact that, to quote Dr. Savage, “Without quality there can be no equality.” Thirdly, this much touted and failed diversity/multiculturalism is causing severe problems in the west as the advancing hordes of Muslim “refugees” are causing massacres, chaos, and destruction in Paris and in Europe, soon to emerge in the U.S.

Not all people share a common humanity, some are quite barbaric. Western societies have built a civilization based on huge libraries of knowledge whereas theocracies like Islam base their entire existence on one book to the exclusion of all else. Additionally, allocating community resources fairly from an economic stand point is logistically impossible unless governments steal from one group or persons and give to others.

From Pope Pius XII, the much beloved, anti-communist and anti-Nazi Pope, to the current overtly socialist Pope Francis, the 266^th pontiff of the Catholic Church, the church has undergone transformational changes. These changes are influencing the politics of the globe and shifting the role of the papacy from caring for the souls of parishioners to promoting global socialism through redistribution of wealth, social justice, and submission to the politics of the climate change industry.

In his 224-page document, “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium), Pope Francis criticized the following. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html

 

-          The current capitalist inequalities

Do progressives, who criticize capitalism as evil, understand that socialism and communism were never equal, inclusive, kind to the people, and fair? There were two classes, the haves, composed of communist party apparatchiks, and the have-nots, composed of the proletariat.

-          “The idolatry of money”

Who pays for the salaries of priests and the maintenance of churches around the world for its 1.5 billion Catholics? Do they work for free? Do they not “idolize” money in order to survive? The Holy See is quite flush with cash and wealthy beyond belief if you consider thousands of priceless works of art, marble statues, gold and silver icons, urns, crucifixes, chalices, and marble cathedrals around the world. Should they not follow their own direction and distribute all this vast wealth to the poor?

-          “The inequality that spawns violence”

Have liberals and other assorted followers not understood that violence and wars around the world were borne not only by real or perceived economic inequalities but by religion, land disputes, drug cartels, plundering, natural resources such as oil, gold, coal, diamonds, silver, and insatiable lust for power and control?

How exactly does the millennial Islamic violence and wars, driven by the quest to kill the “infidels” and to install a world-wide Caliphate, figure out into this half-baked inequality theory? Schools have successfully indoctrinated generations of students who do not know that the Crusades were responses to Arab aggression and Islamic occupation of Europe.

-          “Trickle-down economics” as a theory that “expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”

The Washington Post immediately included the papal criticism in its editorial and pointed out that Democrats and liberals have rejected the “trickle-down economics” theory and used the phrase derisively to define it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html

“The phrase has often been used derisively to describe a popular version of conservative economic philosophy that argues that allowing the wealthy to run their businesses unencumbered by regulation or taxation bears economic benefits that lead to more jobs and income for the rest of society. Liberals and Democratic officials have rejected the theory, saying it is contradicted by economic evidence.”

As a matter of fact, trickle-down theories, which “assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” have been proven correct.

There is a good reason why the United States has done so well economically as opposed to centralized, socialist, and communist countries where indescribable poverty is rampant while the ruling, tyrannical elite live luxuriously. Even the poorest of the poor in the United States live far better lives than the rest of the world because free markets work despite heavy infusion of crony capitalism.

The Latin American Pope from Buenos Aires lamented that masses are still waiting for “social justice.” We have certainly spent trillions of dollars to no avail, in an effort to eradicate the poverty supposedly driven by social injustice. After decades of fighting the war on poverty and giving trillions around the globe and to our own population, we have made little progress because we have created a perennial welfare class that prefers to stay at home instead of being productively working.

The welfare class has been expanded with the addition of the multi-cultural illegal aliens brought in by the open borders non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who benefit financially from taking in as many illegals as possible, and the Muslim “refugees” resettled from around the world in places where their Sharia Laws clash violently with western civilization and are incompatible with our Constitution.

Never mind that economically speaking poverty is a relative term and there is a difference between wealth and income. But facts should not get in the way of the progressive agenda pandering to the economically-illiterate voting base and to the illegal immigrants invading U.S. and Europe who do not speak English and are often illiterate in their own native languages.

Somehow, in the twisted liberal logic, it is social justice to steal from the wealthy and the middle class.  These “rich” citizens have not earned their wealth through hard work but have stolen their ill-gotten gains from the poor and must therefore give it away to the downtrodden.

According to Gen. Pacepa, the Soviet communist-led idea of “social justice” was infiltrated successfully by the KGB into the Latin America’s Catholic Church as a religious movement called “liberation theology.” The goal was to “incite Latin America’s poor to rebel against the ‘institutionalized violence of poverty’ generated by the United States.” (Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Disinformation, Washington, D. C., WND Books, Inc., 2013, chapter 15, p. 106)

What kind of “social justice” are the masses waiting for who are pining for socialism and communism? They are waiting to vote again and again for the same individuals and the same socialist or communist governments that brought them to the brink of poverty and kept them perennially downtrodden. They are waiting for socialist governments to give them welfare and free minimal health care through Castro clinics while they stay home and procreate more dependents. They are waiting for the redistribution of wealth from productive citizens. They are enslaved to their governments who decide their daily lives yet it is the United States’ fault.

Does “inequality spawn violence?” Is the Pope’s statement that “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” true? That is an interesting question to ponder in light of the violence spawned around Europe by the Islamist “refugees” that is creating chaos and destruction in many small towns in Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, and Sweden.

The following is an excerpt from paragraph 253 of the papal document: …“We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.pdf

The Christian victims of jihad violence in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria carried out daily by Muslims who use the Koran to explain the burning of churches and the killing of innocents certainly contradict his Holiness. And the hundreds of dead and grievously injured westerners in the Paris massacre are blatant and painful evidence to the Islamist intolerance.

Based on prior history, we know neither appeasement nor reverse psychology works; on the contrary, appeasement creates war and more violence.

Robert Spencer explained that “The Bishop of Rome, by virtue of his position as successor of St. Peter, can, according to Catholic teaching, speak authoritatively about Catholic doctrine: he has the authority to delineate what is authentic Catholicism. This, however, is a statement about "authentic Islam." It would be interesting to know how he came to this conclusion, since the Pope of Rome has no counterpart within the Islamic world: there is no Muslim authority to which he can appeal in order to discover what ‘authentic Islam’ consists of, and many Muslim authorities would disagree with his statement that ‘authentic Islam’ is opposed to every form of violence." http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/pope-francis-authentic-islam-and-the-proper-reading-of-the-koran-are-opposed-to-every-form-of-violen.html

Pope Pius XII saved many Jews from pogroms. He was the voice of the Catholic Church to protest against Hitler’s attack on the Jews, the Polish people, and on the prisoners in the concentration camps.

He even used Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer home, to shelter thousands of refugees.  In fact, “his personal bedroom was converted into a nursery and birthing area, and about forty babies were born there during the war.” The World Jewish Congress estimated that 860,000 Jews were saved by the Catholic Church and the work of Pope Pius XII. (Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Disinformation, Washington, D.C., WND Books, Inc., 2013, p. 66, as quoted from the testimony of P. Guglielmo Hentrich before the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of Rome)

Would Pope Francis, with his vast and powerful influence, succeed in “nudging” the global population into the direction of global socialism with its “social justice,” complete redistribution of wealth, and blind submission to the climate change industry and to “Chrislam?”

 

 

 

Historian Neagu Djuvara Discusses the "Muslim Refugee" Problem

Neagu Djuvara
Photo: Wikipedia

Neagu Djuvara, writer, historian, philosopher, journalist, and diplomat, was interviewed on his 99^th birthday by Radu Turcescu from Evenimentul Zilei. Born in Bucharest on August 18, 1916, Djuvara studied at Sorbonne in Paris, lived in France, Niger, and Romania. http://www.evz.ro/vremea-intrebarilor-cu-robert-turcescu-neagu-djuvara-la-99-de-ani-hegemonie-americana-in-lume-este-o-certitudine-de-liniste.html

Djuvara confessed, the years passed by so quickly, it now seems that someone else lived his youth; he recounted when he was in World War II, how he was wounded, how he lived abroad so many decades, twenty years in Africa, and how it all flew by in a flash.

No matter where he was, he disclosed, he always loved his country and his people. His Romanian Bible and a volume of Eminescu’s poems kept his soul alive and his language unspoiled. After 45 years of absence from his beloved country, Djuvara was proud of his mother tongue, unspoiled by foreign inflections. So many leave Romania and come back with an English accent, he lamented.

When asked about the world today and about his views, Djuvara answered by describing how “All civilizations run through a similar cycle, a beginning, a period of maximum flourish, and an end. After the death of the Roman Empire, there were a lengthy Middle Ages and an Italian Renaissance of beauty and intelligence.”

Comparing the United States to the Roman Empire, Djuvara sees it as an “element of equilibrium,” a military and intellectual power. He imagines the next 200-300 years as free of revolution; future generations should be unafraid because this “supremacy, this American hegemony in the world is an assurance of peace.”  Perhaps Neagu Djuvara feels safe, reassured, and wildly optimistic because there is a small American military base now on Romanian soil.

Turcescu asked him if he really feels this way even though there is a brewing conflict with Russia. Djuvara responded that Romanians are afraid of Russia because they have inherited this fear. But Putin and Russia are weak, he said, because “Russians, of all Europeans, have the weakest birth rate; in 50 to 100 years, in the giant Mother Russia, only one tenth of the population will be Russian, the rest will be Tatars, Kirgiz, and pagan tribes, including the Chinese and the Japanese in the far east.  “As a European nation, the Russians are in a dramatic fall, and I am certain that Putin has no idea, he continues to believe himself big and strong,” Djuvara explained.

On the question of the Muslim “refugees” in Europe, Djuvara sees the flood of immigrants as an “invasion that cannot be stemmed because it is composed of a population that has no historical, intellectual, or soul connections to us, it is an invasion of barbarians.” Wistful that he is not going to live that much longer, he is very pessimistic about everyone’s future in the next fifty years. “The young people will see an absolute drastic change in Europe, with waves of foreign nations coming.”

Turcescu suggested that perhaps the Americans could save them. Djuvara agreed that they could be the European salvation again, politically and militarily. But the sad reality is that the United States of America could not save itself right now. The current American administration has shrunk the military to such worrisome levels but the conflicts around the world have escalated under the inept American foreign policy.

When asked about surviving the Maghreb invasion of Paris, Djuvara explained that, on a recent return trip to France, “he was horrified that the Parisian sidewalks no longer belonged to the French, but to the third world.”

“Can this Muslim invasion be stopped,” asked Turcescu.  “Nothing can be stopped in history without God’s will. For us to stop it, it is impossible, they crawl under barbed wire and still enter!” added the famous historian Djuvara.

On the sizzling debate that is splitting the country right now, the building of the largest European mosque in Bucharest, Djuvara revealed that he was against the project given the fact that the Romanian people fought the Ottoman Empire for 500 years to prevent the building of even one mosque on the territories of Wallachia and Moldova. “I think it is a tragedy that we are now opening the gates for the largest European mosque to be built here and to allow thousands of Muslims to come here, with their morals and crimes which some of them commit. The Romanian government and future administrations must categorically oppose the construction of this mega-mosque on Romanian soil! People like Victor Ponta [Social Democrat Prime Minister] would not oppose such a mosque; other men must come to power.”

“Why is the mosque dangerous,” insisted the young reporter. “The Muslims claim that it will be a place of pilgrimage, of prayer, a place where courses will be taught.”

Djuvara schooled Turcescu on the fact that “the main danger is their invasion, the sheer numbers that would overwhelm a small country, just like it happened with the Germanic invasion at the end of the Roman Empire.” …”The Muslim world stretches over hundreds of thousands of kilometers and this is the greatest danger for us, Europeans, and Indo-Europeans.”

The country is split between progressives and conservatives on the issue of accepting “refugees” from the Muslim world. Many opine that they find the development suspicious that suddenly, after years of conflict, Muslims have decided in groups of 500-1,000 to request asylum in the rich west nations with generous welfare systems, in the very western culture they despise and have nothing in common with, instead of going south or east to oil-rich Middle Eastern countries that share their culture.

Others wonder why these immigrants, who are incorrectly labeled “refugees,” are so accepted and welcomed with open arms by EU communist puppets and liberal hypocrites who label anyone who opposes the “refugees” as inhuman, racist, and xenophobe.

Yet others describe how Romania and the Eastern bloc countries like Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, accused of xenophobia, struggle to integrate millions of gypsies; the western European world lectures them how to do it properly and humanely, while failing themselves miserably at integrating gypsies and Muslims when they became a nuisance in the West.

Those who live and work in the west understand that a few real refugees are not the problem but the Muslim theocratic culture and religion which are not compatible with the European Christian culture. They give examples of Pakistani Muslims who install themselves in violent enclaves and rape girls in groups.

Many citizens suggested that lefties should integrate the existing Muslims into the European culture first before attempting to bring in more religionists of peace. Cultural diversity has been a dismal failure in Europe as both Angela Merkel and Nikolas Sarkozy publicly admitted.

Some wished to know what lefty feminists would do and say once they find themselves forced to wear hijab, become subjects to Sharia Law, and are spat at in their own hometowns for wearing pants and a skirt. Such daring attire is considered by Islamists an invitation to rape.

Is it fair to require 18 million citizens to support these “refugees” who receive more in benefits than half of working Romanians must live on? Why must citizens survive on $300-400 a month pensions or salaries while these undeserving immigrants receive much more in benefits?

How quickly will the “refugee” invasion overtake the indigenous European populations that have 1.1 babies per family, insufficient for replacement value in any culture, while Muslims have more than eight babies per family?

And the “refugee” invasion rages on in Eastern Europe with standoffs on trains in Hungary http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-opens-budapests-main-railway-station-after-twoday-standoff--but-cancels-most-trains-10483964.html

and in the Czech Republic. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/czech-police-haul-migrants-off-trains-to-germany-and-write-numbers-on-their-arms-in-ink-10482651.html

 

Transylvania, the Land of Enchantment

Cantacuzino Castle (photo: Ileana 2015)

Transylvania is a land of enchantment of middle and northern Romania with its breathtaking and spectacular landscapes, its rich and tumultuous history, bloody battles, occupations, and a proud population that maintains its distinct culture and art.

It is bordered on three sides by the Carpathian Mountains that appear on maps like a natural boundary between Transylvania and Wallachia, the province made famous by Vlad the Impaler, “Dracula,” Prince of Wallachia, who made Bucharest its capital in 1459. The pristine and wild countryside of Transylvania (Latin for “across the forest”) is sometimes impassable to humans.

Transylvania has a distinct Hungarian and German influence which can be seen in its fairy tale Hansel and Gretel architecture, its cuisine, the spotless streets, order and civility, in how successfully cities are run, and the seriousness on the faces of its population. However, many ethnic Germans have left in the 1970s when the communist Romanian state signed an agreement with West Germany.

Romanian settlements dating back to the Iron Age were found in the southwestern part of Transylvania. Because the area has been part of the Hungarian and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire for hundreds of years, there is a strong Hungarian and German influence everywhere. Schools, colleges, and theaters are still operating in Hungarian and German languages.

Hungarian kings had invited Saxons (from the province of Sachsen) in the 12^th and 13^th centuries to settle in Transylvania. Some of them were gifted goldsmiths, others were wood carvers  and builders. Their presence is reflected in the beautiful medieval citadel churches built in southern Transylvania.



Bran Castle in Brasov (photo: Ileana 2015)

Hungarians and Germans left behind castles, imposing manors, palaces, and churches in towns such as Cluj-Napoca, Alba Iulia, Sighisoara, and in the old Saxon city of Sibiu (Hermannstadt) with its famous medieval houses with rooftop “eyes,” roof vents that look like watchful eyes.

The miners and farmers in western Transylvania called “Moti” trace their roots for thousands of years. The Apuseni Mountains are rich in mineral reserves, rare metals, and gold, particularly in the contentious region of Rosia Montana.

The archeological evidence found at Sarmizegetusa speaks volumes of the rich civilization of the Dacians who were conquered by the Romans in 106 A.D. and colonized into a Roman Empire province. The story of the battles between the Romans and the Dacians is vividly told in the freezes of Trajan’s Column in Rome.

According to National Geographic , the eastern part of Transylvania has “the highest concentration of ethnic Hungarians.” Buildings have a different style, ethnic costumes vary, and many inhabitants speak both Romanian and Hungarian.

Cluj-Napoca is “the cultural and economic hub of Transylvania.” Alba Iulia, the former Hungarian capital, has an interesting Habsburg baroque citadel. It was the city where Romania and Transylvania became one on the great Union Day, December 1, 1918.

Bistrita, in the northern part, is the location where Bram Stoker set his novel “Dracula” in 1897. His fictional character, Jonathan Harker, spends the night in Bistritz (Bistrita) on his way to Tihuta Pass (Borgo Pass in Hungarian) where Voivode Vlad Tepes’ real castle ruins are located.  Bram Stoker never traveled to Romania; he used geographical information from his local library.

Sibiu house with "eyes" (photo: Ileana 2015)

Sibiu is the largest medieval town in Romania, built in the 12^th century with three concentric fortified walls (a few have survived), squares (a large and a small one), stairways, and strongholds built and fortified between the 13^th to the 18^th centuries.

The two famous battles of Sibiu on March 18 and March 25 1442 were fought nearby between the army of the Hungarian Empire and the army of the Ottoman Empire. Approximately 4,000 Hungarians and 15-20,000 Turks were killed in the two battles which resulted in a defeat and push back of the Ottomans.

Tiny restaurant in Sibiu (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

The Large Square (Piata Mare) served as a grain market in 1411, medieval executions, and later used for carnivals, meetings, and now rock concerts. The little restaurant called Butoiul de Aur (The Golden Barrel) has been serving patrons since the 15^th century. Houses dating back to the 13^th and 14^th centuries are the oldest surviving homes with colorful tiles, sometimes mosaic-ed in beautiful patterns and with “eyes” on the roof for air venting.



17th century iron vial (photo: Ileana 2015)

The tiny four-room pharmacy museum, that used to be a 17^th century apothecary, displays curious instruments and recipes for potions perhaps made by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), the father of homeopathy.

Sibiu Church (photo: Ileana 2015)

The largest Catholic Church in Sibiu stands majestically between Piata Mica (Little Square) and Piata Mare (Large Square). Interestingly, on the day I visited, it was displaying a large banner at the back entrance urging people to stop fracking for natural gas and to stop mining in Rosia Montana.  Since the Pope is now a climate change expert and population control expert, why not turn the church into an environmentalist NGO?

Brukenthal Museum courtyard (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Brukenthal steam porcelain stove (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Brukenthal Roman lapidarium (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Medieval door (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

The National Brukenthal Museum is a treasure trove of art collections which Baron Samuel Von Brukenthal, the former Governor of Transylvania (1777-1787), housed in his Palace built in the Grand Square in Sibiu. Showcased in the baroque and rococo interiors are famous masters like Jan van Eyck from 1420, German and Austrian painters, Romanian painters, personal favorites like Teodor Aman and Nicolae Grigorescu, gold and silver coins, jewels, engravings, intricately carved furniture, books, weapons, silver and gold drinking cups and goblets, medals displayed in his former library, sculptures, costumes of the era, whimsical porcelain steam stoves interconnected throughout the palace, a novelty for that period,  a lapidarium with statues of Roman gods, Roman roads mile markers, and votive altars from Apulum and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, dating to the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries A.D.

ASTRA barn with carriages (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

 

Interior of a floating mill at ASTRA (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Four miles south of Sibiu, in the forest of Dumbrava, we found the largest Museum of Popular Traditional Civilization ASTRA in the country. Spread on 237 acres of rolling hills and lakes, it is the largest museum in Europe that showcases homes from different parts of the country, windmills, boats, barns with complete carriages, and many implements and tools necessary for everyday living. Each home is surrounded by a typical yard with ploughs, carts, barns, and interiors are decorated just like people were still living there and have left for the day to tend to the gardens or crops. The smell of old wood, mildew, wildflowers, and crushed fruits was overwhelming. A slow-moving red fox, accustomed to human presence, crossed the nearby yard.

ASTRA home interior (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

 

ASTRA home interior (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

The outdoor ASTRA museum is so hugely popular that locals use it for recreation, boating, and celebration of major life events. On the day we visited, there were three weddings at the wooden chapel and brides and their entourage were taking photos on the premises. I was fascinated by the various windmills displayed, and particularly a floating mill that used hydropower to grind grain.

All the workshops manufacturing silk and hemp, distilleries, forges, wine presses, paddle-wheel ferry, the blacksmith’s shop, and other machinery used by Romania’s country folk were actually in working order.

It is only fitting that this huge outdoor museum with its well-preserved history is called ASTRA. ASTRA was a patriotic literary society of the 18^th century, located in Sibiu, which was instrumental in Transylvania’s unification with Romania in 1918.

To the east of Transylvania is the famous Seckler Land. The Secklers are Hungarian-speaking people which are called “secui” in Romanian. They use their own language, have fascinating traditions, customs, delicious cuisine, and schools. No industrial development has touched this plateau where old farming methods are still used today to cultivate the land. It is a land where Hungarians have migrated to in the 9^th century from the Don River. The Hungarians were given land in exchange for the promise that they would protect the western Hungarian border against the invading hordes of Turkish tribes. There is a Crusader’s cross decorating a church in Tusnad as evidence of Christian support against the invading Muslims. Signs abound both in Magyar (the Hungarian language) and Romanian language.

The Hungarian king Endre II brought in the Teutonic Knights in 1211 to protect the southeast border of Transylvania from the Cumans, a migratory Turkic tribe.  It was these knights who built stone castles all over the area surrounding Brasov.  According to National Geographic, because the Teutonic Knights liked this magnificent area called Barsa Land and were going to claim it for the Pope, King Endre II forced them out in 1225 with Saxon help.

Brasov (photo: Ileana 2015)

The jewel of Transylvania is Brasov (Kronstadt). There are so many significant places in Brasov  and its vicinity that it merits a story onto itself.