Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts

Saturday, January 22, 2022

The Walking Dead and Freedom

For the past two years, I was dismayed at how many of my friends were watching and discussing on social media the series, The Walking Dead, and its companion, Fear the Walking Dead, two related shows about an apocalyptic world when Earth is struck by a mysterious virus originating from space.

Humans turn into the walking dead (zombies) when they die from natural death or from this virus. Everyone is infected, the CDC can do nothing about it, and it is actually blown up to prevent the escape of other variants of the virus. Nobody can evade the “turning” into flesh-eating zombies when they die of natural death, viral disease, accident, or are bitten by “walkers.”

The Bible says that the dead shall rise again but Christians had imagined that the risen dead would be normal humans again, not slow moving and guttural zombies who must feast on fresh blood and live tissue in order to survive.

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:19)

In the Walking Dead, the action takes place on the southeastern area of the United States. In the companion series, Fear the Walking Dead, which intersects at some point with some of the Walking Dead characters, the story is told how the virus occurred on the west coast, the trials and tribulations of characters in Los Angeles area, San Diego, Mexicali, Tijuana, and  other compounds on farms in Mexico.

Life transforms from the mundane to a survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, kill or be bitten, a constant battle that takes the main characters from town to town, along familiar roads now strewn with abandoned bloody cars, and an ever increasing army of walking zombies in search of a living, breathing victim.

A group of survivors, led by officer Rick, eventually finds a prison with tall fences, barbed wire and cells that can be cleaned of corpses and the walking dead. This prison becomes their freedom, their home for the foreseeable future. They feel safe inside, they can grow food in the courtyard, they have some medical supplies scavenged along the way or during their daily incursions “outside.”

Outside is a world of danger, gloom and doom, so frightening that the alternative of living inside a prison for the rest of their lives seems like safety from harm, a bleak world, but secure. The world is far from secure, as various living, breathing groups survive by praying on the weak and the defenseless.

The virus cannot get to Sheriff Deputy Rick Grimes' group and the dreaded walkers, the feared zombies with sharp teeth, are neutralized by the existence of the prison fence. The prison, with its enforced fences and gates, becomes the symbol of freedom. Designed to keep people in, the prison becomes safe heaven and keeps undesirables out. However, in greater numbers, they can still break down barriers and the chicken wire fence.

The viral pandemic destroyed the world as they knew it and there was no going back. They were driven into abject fear by their own friends and relatives, infected by a virus and now dead. Fear and the instinct for survival at all costs had become the epicenter of their lives.

I could not help but recognize the same real or imagined fear, in our world, a panic bordering at time on mass-driven hysteria, that is still driving our population in the United States and around the globe, two years after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of a pandemic.

President Trump brought into the White House and on the world stage two specialists, Drs. Fauci and Brix, who proceeded to scare the American population with death and dying on a daily basis. Dr. Fauci never left the White House, coloring the proverbial “sky is falling” with various colors of fright.

The abject fear drummed up and identical narratives repeated on every venue of mass communication by eager to please journos, drove the population at first forcibly into lockdowns and then by personal choice behind a mask and self-exile behind closed doors. People’s homes were no longer their castles, they became their voluntary prisons from which they communicated with the outside world by virtual Zoom calls and smart phones.

People gave up their freedoms immediately because they were driven into mass hysteria by globalists with a plan to fundamentally change their lives into the Marxist Shangri La they envisioned as a way to control everything from the Build Back Better platform of the Great Reset agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The Great Reset | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

Build back what? Voluntary prisons? Better jails and isolation? By rules devised by a few psychotic billionaires and U.N.? Build better fairy dust solar and wind energy so we can stop using fossil fuels like the United Nations has been advocating for seven decades but nobody listened? Plunging us into medieval darkness and despair? Funny how suddenly prominent world leaders  inserted the same rhetorical phrase, Build Back Better, into their speeches. And they were all doing it for the World Economic Forum’s The Great Reset agenda, ‘never let a crisis go to waste, global communism/fascism.

An engineered for gain-of-function virus provided an amazing excuse to do all the things psychotic globalists at U.N. couldn’t – engage planet lockdown, destroy fossil fuels, destroy medicine, get rid of a lot of old people, reduce consumption drastically, reduce the food supply, reduce water usage, reduce land use by a whopping percentage, and force humanity back into the dark ages.

You are not just hiding behind a prison barbed wired fence to find freedom, you are hiding behind a soulless mask, where your social cues are hidden, your empathy and compassion are diminished, and you experience constant fear. Behind a mask, people tend to become more prone to outbursts of violence, less empathetic, and they tend to dehumanize their peers.

Your life is not much better than officer Rick’s group in the Walking Dead, or those in Fear the Walking Dead, hiding in your home prison as a safer alternative to the dangerous outside world governed by a virus created as a bio weapon in Wuhan, you struggle to escape the Corona-19 Virus, and in the process you have lost your freedom and your humanity in one fell swoop.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                            

Sunday, November 12, 2017

How Free Are You?

Woodcut - "The Ship of Fools"
What happens if you live off-grid?

If you live independent of utilities, water, and sewer, and provide your own energy through solar panels, have your own sewer system, and use rainwater, you may run into problems with your local government. Robin Speroni of Cape Coral, Florida, was sued by local officials that her off-grid home was illegal, citing the International Property Maintenance Code. She was found guilty of not being hooked to the water supply.

“Speroni is still being hassled by the municipality of Cape Coral for not having a connection to city water or property sewage. This is in spite of the fact that the city capped her sewers themselves.”http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/03/09/florida-makes-off-grid-living-illegal-mandates-all-homes-must-be-connected-to-an-electricity-grid/

What happens if you don’t send your kids to public school?

It is certainly against the law not to send your children to school and charges vary from state to state. You may lose public assistance such as food stamps. According to the U.S. Department of Education in some states you may have to go to jail. If you home-school, you have to follow laws specifically designed for home-schoolers. https://howtoadult.com/consequences-not-sending-kids-school-13544.html

What happens if you want to worship in a church that is not sanctioned as a church but deemed a cult?

To answer this question you must study both sides of what happened to the people at Ruby Ridge and Waco.  Here is a link for the liberal version of the fiery events that resulted in the deaths of many people, especially innocent children. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oregon-standoff-fbi-negotiator_us_568a956ee4b014efe0daf42c

What happens if you don’t have a driver’s license?

Driving without a license is considered a crime in all 50 states. You have a right to travel but you cannot operate a vehicle without a license. If you are an illegal alien, the law is much laxer, as the law breaker will get a slap on the wrist and will be released back into the streets to repeat his/her behavior.

What happens if you jay walk?

Jaywalking is an infraction that requires in some states a fine but a misdemeanor with a court appearance in other states. Penalties vary by state and by municipalities. Fines range from $1 to $1,000.

What happens if you refuse to have your child vaccinated?

In most states, vaccines are required for your child to enter day care, schools, and universities. Laws vary from state to state.

What happens if you refuse to be molested by the TSA in an airport?

It is obvious that you cannot fly and you will be promptly escorted out of the airport by TSA agents. If you are belligerent and vocal in your refusal, you will be arrested in most states.

What happens if you disagree politically with a group?

You will be shunned, may lose your job, you will become a pariah, you will be tracked and possibly beaten by the opposition, your home and property, including your car, will be vandalized, and you will be forbidden from expressing your divergent opinion on an American campus. Those opposing you will resort to violence and fascistic means in order to prevent you from being on their campus to express your opinion guaranteed by our Constitution because your opinion hurts the feelings of campus snowflakes and they will label your views as “hate speech,” in essence cutting off your freedom of speech.

What happens if you go to college and dare to express your conservative or divergent opinions from those of the teachers and the majority of snowflakes?

Your teachers will prevent you from speaking in class, you will be ridiculed, marginalized, and possibly given a lower grade in class than you actually earned. You will be relegated to a designated corner on campus where you might be able to express your opinion without being physically assaulted and verbally insulted.

What happens if you protect your property and shoot an intruder?

It depends on the state. The intruders have been known to hire eager attorneys who successfully prosecuted those protecting their homes, resulting in the loss of their homes and land which is awarded to the intruder and his family and even jail time for those who engaged in self-defense.

What happens if illegal aliens try to steal from you and you shoot them?

The most recent case in Kansas City, Missouri, involves David Jungerman, a business owner who shot a home intruder in the leg. A 39-year old attorney, Tom Pickert, who represented the home invader and won millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit against Jungerman, was shot and killed in his front yard. http://heavy.com/news/2017/10/david-jungerman-kansas-city-trump-raytown/

What happens if you express your opinion that illegal immigration is illegal and should be stopped by building a wall?

At best you are considered a conspiracy theorist nut-job and heartless who does not understand that America was built by such illegal immigrants; at worst you are a xenophobe and racist. Irrational globalists will hide the fact that America was built by LEGAL immigrants who were vetted for their health in quarantine at Ellis Island and, who did not come to America for the welfare system because the welfare system did not exist at the time.

What happens if you criticize the theocracy of Islam, Sharia Law, and genital mutilation?

You will be publicly humiliated, accused of Islamo-phobia, and marginalized, your home and property vandalized, threatened with lawsuits, become a potential victim of a fatwa, and possibly fired from your job.

What happens if you try to home-school your children in certain states?

You must jump through incredible hoops in order to be allowed to home-school your child.

What happens if you object to your children being subjected to the Islamic curriculum indoctrination of Common Core?

You are ignored, you are banned from any school property or meetings, you are told that it is required by the Common Core Curricula, and security will be called to prevent you from entering the school building. You will not be allowed to attend or speak at public school board meetings. The principal and the teacher(s) in question will not answer your calls or letters.

What happens if you object, as a parent, to the teaching of your children in kindergarten and elementary schools about sexual perversions?

Your opinions and wishes will be overridden by the school, the principal, and the teacher. The curriculum will be taught as planned with or without your knowledge.

What happens if you object to mentally-ill grown men or boys, pretending they are women, use the restrooms and lockers that your little girls use?

You will be labeled a homophobe who does not respect their freedom of expressing who they are inside their heads. The fact that your child is in danger of molestation and rape does not matter. They have rights that supersede your rights or your children’s rights.

What happens if you object to the Common Core curricula and do not wish that your Christian children be indoctrinated into the Five Pillars of Islam?

Your child will still be made to wear hijab in order to feel what a Muslim feels like and they will attend a mosque despite your protests. They will be made to recite by heart the Five Pillars of Islam, and to pray in the mosque, thus indoctrinating them into Islam.

What happens if you refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple because of your religious beliefs?

You will pay huge fines, lose your business, your savings, and possibly serve time in jail for protecting your religious beliefs. http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/54265/20150205/christian-bakers-lose-business-face-150-000-fine-for-refusing-to-bake-same-sex-marriage-cake.htm

What happens if you refuse to pay taxes?

You will pay confiscatory fines, have property seized, and possibly go to jail.

What happens if you protest the takeover of your property via eminent domain or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shows up with agents to confiscate your land that has been in your family for generations?

You will lose your land and home. Cliven Bundy protected his ranch and grazing rights. Following a 21-year legal dispute between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Cliven Bundy, for allegedly “failing to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy’s use of federally owned land adjacent to Bundy’s ranch in southeastern Nevada,” an armed confrontation between supporters of the cattle rancher and law enforcement ensued in 2014. LaVoy Finicum was shot and killed in Oregon in 2016.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/18/politics/nevada-bundy-ranch-land-rights/index.html

What happens if you try to collect rain water or snowmelt on your property?

Gary Harrington from Oregon served 30-days in jail for nine misdemeanors and paid a fine of $1,500 for diverting snow runoff and rainwater into three reservoirs on his property, thus violating “an antiquated law governing personal water use.” https://www.naturalnews.com/046359_oregon_rainwater_collection_big_governemnt.html

What happens if you don’t pay HOA fees?

HOA will take you to court and eventually may foreclose on your home and sell it in order to pay overdue fees, depending on the state in which you reside. HOAs retain attorneys for such offenders. http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-associations-20141109-story.html

What happens if you try to fly the American flag and Muslim or hard-core liberal neighbors who hate America object?

You will be ordered to take it down, fined, and possibly told to move if you are renting the property. Crosses have been removed from churches and monuments in order to appease Muslims and atheists. Statues have been torn down to appease the racist BLM who were offended by the alleged racist intent of the monument. Large crosses that have been part of a landscape for decades, honoring the fallen or our Christianity, have been ordered removed by the courts in order to satisfy atheists.

What happens if your favorite NFL team players kneel during the National Anthem for the alleged “social injustices” and “deliberate police racism” against blacks, while insulting the veterans present?

The middle class white men will stop buying tickets and attending NFL games, buying jerseys and other football memorabilia, giving the owners and the overpaid players a clear message that their faux political antics do not have a place on a stadium where they are paid to entertain the public with a game, not give the public their two cents of misinformed opinions. Americans still have the power of the purse. You have the freedom to protest in a very public venue but expect consequences of your insulting behavior.

What happens when Hollywood bash conservatives? What happens when slutty starlets pretend to be paragons of virtue, lecturing the rest of us, and claim to be the ultimate source of knowledge because they played a role in a movie?

Americans still have the power to stop buying tickets to their movies and concerts. Boycotts work quite nicely as many actors learned this summer when their movies tanked at the box office. You may fancy yourselves political gurus and know-it-all, but, at the end of the day, you are just script memorizers who act in a movie. You dropped out of high school because you did not have academic ability; you had talent to act in a movie and to impersonate a certain character.

What happens when academia and public schools turn your children into hard-core socialists/fascists who hate their country while you think they are getting an education?

The results are evident in the millennial generation joining ANTIFA, an organization run by communist anarchists who employ fascistic violence to protest those whose divergent opinions they want to squash yet they call them fascists and their organization anti-fascism when in reality they are the violent fascists.

The results are also evident in the brainwashing of several lost generations of American voters who believe that the communist Democrats are the “real” Americans, U.S. should be socialist/communist, and everything that made this country the success that is today must be destroyed. They spit, defecate on, and burn the American flag, demand the abolition of the National Anthem, of the Star-Spangled Banner, the replacing of the Constitution with their own Marxist version, and the Bill of Rights with the Socialist Bill of Rights.

What happens if you try to plant a bush or cut down a tree next to a rain puddle and environmental NGOs show up with paperwork telling you that you are not allowed to do so?

Martha Boneta can tell you volumes about her farm and the NGO’s interdictions that plagued her ownership rights in the rolling, gentrified hills of northern Virginia. http://www.conservativehq.com/article/14081-fitzgibbons-recounts-harassment-martha-boneta

Obama has promised that, if Obamacare was passed, you can keep your doctor and the insurance premiums would go down.

How many of you were actually able to keep your doctors and how many were unable to see doctors and specialists because they no longer accept Medicare patients due to low and slow reimbursement rates? Why would that be? Because the Obama administration robbed billions from Medicare in order to fund his socialized medicine jewel, Obamacare. And millions of Americans who previously had other forms of affordable medical insurance now cannot afford the high premiums and deductibles driven by Obamacare’s regulations. In essence, Obamacare insurance and regulations have destroyed middle class Americans' formerly stellar medical care and sky-rocketed their previously affordable insurance premiums.

As an American, can you cross the border without a passport?

International banks and the Federal Reserve which is neither federal nor a reserve control your money supply, interest rates, and gold reserves.

And there are many other freedoms that you think you still have but they are highly restricted or no longer exist except in theory.

Do you still think you are free?

 

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Tom DeWeese Fights for Property Rights

Property owners in Texas have received a temporary reprieve when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which attempted to grab 90,000 acres of “Texas sovereign land” along the banks of the Red River, stopped the surveys that were ordered by the Obama administration.

According to Breitbart, Tommy Henderson won in August 2015 his 30-year personal battle with the BLM over the acreage his family lost in the federal lawsuit. Now the land his family had owned since 1904 was his again, with full ownership and control. http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/04/08/texas-wins-victory-ranchers-blm/

Breitbart quoted Acting Cadastral Survey Chief Stephen Beyerlein, who wrote on March 29, 2017, “Having reviewed this deposition testimony and other new information, the BLM believes the survey methodology was used in error and may have caused errors in identifying the location of the Gradient Boundary.”

President of the Texas Farm Bureau, Russell Boening, wrote, “We take it very seriously when government decides that private property no longer belongs to those who have purchased, paid taxes, and hold titles to it.”

Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, wrote, “This latest action by the Trump administration protects the property rights of Texans as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court and prevents the federal government from infringing upon Texas’ sovereign borders. It was our contention all along that the BLM’s surveys were conducted improperly and unlawfully. We will vigilantly defend Texas’ border from federal overreach.”

When it comes to property rights issues, Tom DeWeese has been fighting the federal, state, and local overreach for decades. President of the American Policy Center, DeWeese travels around the country giving lectures on the many facets of property rights infringements, one of the many issues deemed unsustainable by the Sustainable Development plans of U.N. Agenda 21 of 1992, now morphed into Agenda 2030.

Local governments are changing and Americans are not paying attention unless it affects them directly. American philosophy is based on individual liberty. At the core of this philosophy is the private ownership of property, of one’s own land. Globalist bureaucrats want to change that.

Tom DeWeese quotes in his speeches an economist from Peru, Hernando de Soto, “In the West, every parcel of land, every building, every piece of equipment, or store of inventory is represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy.”

In his book, The Mystery of Capital, Hernando De Soto argues that it is private property that allowed the West to create such wealth and become so successful. Equity in private property was used as seed investment for various ventures.

As Calvin Coolidge said, “Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing.” The Nevadan Rancher Wayne Hage, who first stood up to BLM and fought them to his last day, said, “If you don’t have the right to own and control property, then you are property.”

But, as John Adams said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” That is why people are fighting the government at all levels to maintain and control their land.

In 1976, the Report from U.N.’s Habitat 1 Conference said, “Land – cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

Property rights are important elements of Agenda 21, a 40-chapter document signed in Rio in 1992 by 178 countries. Agenda 21 is a “comprehensive blue print for reorganizing human society” around the three Es:

1.      Economics (private public partnerships, eminent domain)

2.      Ethics (social justice, environmental justice, gender justice, racial justice)

3.      Environment (the excuse for it all)

Saving the environment from human activity (the anthropogenic global warming debacle now morphed into the climate change industry) is the given excuse for all of the globalist control of every facet of human life, including ownership of private property. But, as H. L. Mencken said, “A plan to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

The American Planning Association pushes the Agenda 21 goals in their planning groups, calling them a comprehensive blue print, but denies that Agenda 21 exists, said DeWeese.

The United Nations bureaucrats want to harmonize the United States into the rest of the global matrix. You should not be able to control your government, they say, government should control you, including your private property.

According to Tom DeWeese, until around the year 2000, governments were proud to advertise their compliance with U.N.’s Agenda 21’s now turned Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development plans, including every agency of our government that rewrote their mission statements to include Sustainability. After 2000, the agenda continued more aggressively but quietly, overtly calling anybody who opposes it or discusses it conspiracy theorists. DeWeese added that politicians vacate auditoriums and are silent any time the discussion turns to U.N. Agenda 21 as if it does not exist. Yet thousands of documents released in the last decades prove otherwise.

U.N.’s Biodiversity Assessment Report declared the following not sustainable: “ski runs, grazing of livestock, plowing of soil, building fences, industry, single family homes, paved and tarred roads, logging activities, reservoirs, power line construction, and economic systems that fail to set proper value on the environment.”

Tom DeWeese is the author of Erase. Richard Viguerie said, “Tom DeWeese’s Erase presents a fictional path through a dystopian future. However, in Erase every single policy presented in the book, from the use of technology to change our culture; to the use of the public school classrooms to eliminate true knowledge; to the destruction of Christianity in a drive to meld all religions into one powerful tool for government, is all true and happening at this very moment.”

DeWeese is working on a new book, Property Rights Matter, “covering the issues and offering non-governmental solutions to using property ownership as a means to build wealth and freedom, from the inner city to the western ranges.”

When completed, he plans to launch a “Property Right Network, made up of activists and groups across the nation with the goal of making property rights a major issue for upcoming campaigns and to create a fighting force against Sustainable Development policies. DeWeese “fully believes that if we can protect property rights then we can stop Agenda 21/2030.”

Talking about how property rights affect the inner city, DeWeese wants to “build small businesses against the Smart Growth policies that have displaced ethnic neighborhoods.”

The American Planning Association admitted in a Special Report that Smart Growth does not work. “The current planning policy strategies for land use and transportation have virtually no impact on the major long term increases in resource and energy consumption. They generally tend to increase costs and reduce economic competitiveness… In many cases, the socioeconomic consequences of less housing choice, crowding, and congestion may outweigh the very modest CO2 reduction benefits.”

Yet all cities continue the Smart Growth/Green Growth planning and developing of bike paths, of stack and pack housing with mixed use, tiny apartments with no parking and elevators, of tiny alley or RV style diminutive homes in which the owner must constantly assemble and disassemble furniture in order to live in it, all located five-minute walk or bike from work, school, shopping, and play, a very attractive proposition for single young people who cannot afford a mortgage or do not desire to set roots and have a family.

“What we’re trying to do is see equity of public space. When you build your streets for cars, you’re actually building in the expectation that people are going to have cars.” This communist type thinking has kept for decades millions of people living in the Soviet communist satellite nations, close to the areas where they were born, their mobility highly restricted to a few-mile radius, at the mercy of public transportation, buses, rail, and trams.

The ideal communist city, as described by the Soviet architect Alexei Gutnov, was very much like the ideal Agenda 21 envisioned urban areas:

“The chaotic growth of cities will be replaced by a dynamic system of urban settlement. The region is formed by the economic inter-dependence of its development, from the industrial complex to the industrial area and industrial region. The region has a single system of transportation, a centralized administration, and a united system of education and research.” The U.N.’s various Agenda 21/2030 documents and conferences talk about human settlements.

Local and state planning group, planning departments and elected officials deny any connection of their plans to international programs, that there are any concerted efforts to install the mandates of U.N.’s Agenda 21/2030. But there are three main plans of attack:

1.      Destroy private property ownership and control
       2.      Impose regional councils through regionalism and thus take government away from the  people

3.      Support the entire plan with federal grant money which is hard to turn away, especially in areas strapped for revenue

The U.N. Commission on Global Governance talks about regionalism. “Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.” All the regional plans that have popped up around the world, Heartland 2030, Smart Growth 2030, are identical in scope, are run by NGOs who have applied for the grants, and have one thing in common, none of them are driven by locals.

The globalist planners and their local representatives keep telling us what they are going to do but Americans are no paying attention.

Ted Trainer, the author of Transition to a Sustainable and Just World, wrote, “Nothing of lasting significance will be achieved unless it is clearly understood that our efforts in these local initiatives are the first steps to the eventual replacement of the present society by one which is not driven by market forces, profits, competition, growth or affluence.”

Harvey Ruvin, the Vice Chair of ICLEI stated, “Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.” Thomas Lovejoy, science advisor to the Department of Interior said, “(We) will map the whole nation – determine development for the whole country, and regulate it all.”

Joe Hindman, a historian, suggested in 1966 that “The strategy is to make property ownership so unbearable by harassment through building inspections, remodeling orders, fines and jailings that owners give up in despair and sell to land developers at cut-rate prices. Punitive municipal codes are the weapons in the warfare.”

According to DeWeese, when Dave Foreman dreamed up the scheme for the Wildlands Project in 1983, he said, “It is not enough to preserve the roadless, undeveloped country remaining. We must recreate wilderness in large regions: move out the cars and civilized people, dismantle the roads and dams, reclaim the plowed lands and clear cuts, -- and reintroduce extirpated species.” So people living in the country will be stripped of their lands and herded into the cities, the same way the Soviets had herded villagers into the cities, bulldozed their homes for agriculture, for the “collective good,” and crowded them all into concrete high rise apartments the size of an average American hotel room. That is why the Bundys fought back.

We are told ad nauseam that Agenda 21 is just a suggestion, without any enforcement capabilities. How did every agency of the federal, state, and local government develop a comprehensive development plan exactly as mandated by U.N. Agenda 21?

Tom DeWeese explains how it became “the law of the land:”

After the Rio conference in 1992, when U.N. Agenda 21 was signed by President George H.W. Bush, thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) went to Congress, through HUD, EPA, DOT, DOE, and helped them create grant programs with strings attached that were the implementation of Agenda 21. Then they went to state legislators to pass laws that every community had to have a comprehensive development plan. As local officials scratched their heads as to what comprehensive development plans were, they were presented by the same NGOs with a box, with the whole plan and the grant money, local supervisors did not have to do anything, they only had to sign. And so Agenda 21 became the “law of the land.”

The rules imposed were strict building codes, punitive municipal codes, septic tank codes, plumbing codes, electric codes, bike lanes, high rise apartments with no parking lots, light rail trains, public transportation, HOV restricted lanes, formerly public roads given to developers who turned them into expensive toll roads, all paid by taxpayer dollars but without input or vote from the taxpayers. Once the local officials took the grant money on behalf of the community which was very often totally ignorant of what was going on or their objections ignored, they had to accept the restrictions. 

DeWeese describes the new government language of comprehensive development plans used to restrict and destroy property rights:  wetlands, conservation easements, watersheds, view sheds, rails to trail, biosphere reserves, green ways, partnerships, preservation, stakeholders, land use, environmental protection, diversity, visioning, open space, heritage area.

The stakeholder councils, people who do not live in your community, dictate your future according to the mandates of U.N. Agenda 21/2030. Your locally elected officials just rubber stamp what these NGOs envision for you and your children, for generations to come, because you are too stupid to be entrusted with your own future, your freedoms must be curtailed for the sake of the planet. All these restrictions are imposed on you by the elite globalists while they live how they want and wherever they want, with total disregard for their carbon footprint because they are “civil society.”
The community councils that you have not elected, self-appointed bureaucrats, appointed hacks armed with their own political agenda, have turned your community into a “little Soviet society.” You no longer have a representative government. You are forced to have smart meters on your homes, on your gas lines, on your HVACs; the councils control what you do on your property, if you collect rain water, snow melt, your tree and bush pruning or planting, the paint color scheme of your home, the height of your grass, what you can and cannot grow in your own back yard, and many other restrictions.

NGOs and regional councils know the right way to live and how to govern in place of locally elected officials. They have become a shadow government. Regional councils and planners answer to NO ONE. Americans are living the wrong way and must be forced to live the way the regional planners envision for them.

NGOs establish “the strategic vision to insure proper growth,” transportation, housing, jobs, land use, education, property, housing, and health care. “Under Sustainable Health Care, all the provisions of Obamacare are found,” said DeWeese. When the regional planners draw a boundary around your city, everything built outside of it becomes "urban sprawl," a dirty word for city planners. But to you and me, it is our homes; it is where we want to live, added DeWeese.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, described what is truly happening to every facet of our lives.
“What is occurring here, not just in this (conference), but in the whole climate change process, is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world. This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”

To sum it up, you are no longer free; you are now a vassal to the United Nations tin pot bureaucrats who are subjugating your freedoms and sovereignty with your own taxpayer dollars and the dictates of Sustainable Development.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, April 7, 2017

Vladimir and His Journey to Freedom

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”             -  Albert Einstein

Klevan, Ukraine
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
My friend Vladimir came to the United States legally in 1979. It was almost impossible to come illegally from the former Soviet communist state, USSR. It was the first and last time in his life when being Jewish helped him a lot, he said. If he would have been a member of the communist party, Vladimir would not have been allowed to immigrate to the United States at that time or to become an American citizen.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s agents of the immigration office loved America and did their best to protect it from invasion by flotsam and jetsam from third world dictatorships, especially communist ones.

Being a member of a communist party today is a badge of foolish smugness since academia and the Obama administration have advanced the global communist platform continuously. Who would have thought that, after escaping communism in the late 1970s, Vladimir would eventually have to live again under communism in the 21st century America, where it is worshipped by a large percentage of the American people. Did America not fight a war in Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism? How many millions died in the fight against communism and as a result of the oppressive exploitation of the utopian ideas of a professorial bum called Karl Marx?

Vladimir’s escape from Kiev was immigration based on religious beliefs. One could argue today that the mostly male, young, and military age “refugees” from Syria and the Middle East are refugees from tribal wars and religious beliefs.

The fundamental difference between Jewish immigrants then from the Soviet Union and other communist satellite countries and today’s “Syrian refugees” is that Judaism is a religion while Islam is a theocracy and a legal system of governance based on Sharia Law. These “refugees” are economic refugees who are not interested in assimilating and contributing to make America great as Jews did. These Muslims want to take over our country and change our Constitution to Sharia Law.  As statistics show, a large percentage of these immigrants become immediate welfare dependents and remain so in perpetuity.

The Communist bloc nations severely restricted freedom and human rights to their populations. Vladimir would not have been able to immigrate to the U.S. had it not been for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. Two Democrats, Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, and Rep. Charles Vanik of Ohio, sponsored the bill which passed both houses unanimously. President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law on January 3, 1975. Vladimir and his family were beneficiaries of the Jackson-Vanik amendment which allowed Jewish people to immigrate to the West.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Jewish immigration loophole closed. Vladimir was lucky and escaped with his wife and son two months before the border closed. Immigration resumed in the late 1980s, generally for economic reasons, hence it was called the “sausage expatriation.” This was descriptive of the lone sausage or salami hanging in the windows of grocery stores during the communist era when shortages of food plagued every centrally planned economy. Socialist Venezuela is going through severe shortages of food, diapers, and toilet paper, in a country with huge oil reserves. Cuba is a classic example of a country exploited for 59 years by the communist junta of Fidel Castro.

In December 2012, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that gave freedom from the communist oppression to so many Jewish people.

The Soviets and even the former dictator Ceausescu took advantage of this Jackson-Vanik Amendment. The Soviets imposed a “diploma” tax on immigration.  The tax was so high that, after the outcry from the West, it was removed after being in effect for over a year. Ceausescu allegedly charged Jewish émigrés $1,000 per head. His regime charged me for my education before I was allowed to leave.

Vladimir’s family paid $500 per person to renounce their Soviet citizenship. Consequently, instead of a passport, they received a piece of paper with a handwritten note under citizenship, “stateless.” They were “stateless” but free.

Although this amendment only applied to Jews and Germans under the “family reunification” egis, the Russians used this opportunity to also expel quite a few dissidents, Soviet writers and other top intelligentsia, who were too much in the public eye to make them disappear, and were thorns in the side of the Soviet regime.

Vladimir remembered that there was no synagogue in Kiev when he grew up, they worshipped underground. A few Christian cathedrals were left for baptisms, weddings, and burials. If people attended church, special agents from each factory were sent to spy on their employees who would pray on Christmas, Easter, or other special holidays. They wrote names down and made sure that such worshippers were given a really hard time in society. They oppressed everybody.

No entrepreneurs were allowed in the former Soviet Union. Those who tried were caught and severely punished. It was easy to go to Siberia for 15 years for a small infraction. His best friend’s parents tried to make candy at home and sell it to friends and neighbors. Because the father was found to have extra cash in the home, over and above his allowed salary, he was arrested by police and later summarily shot. If the commies really wanted to catch someone and make them disappear, it was easy to set them up, to put something incriminating in their homes, and then arrest them for the set-up crime.

Living on the edge of fear was something people got used to. People worried about families, friends, and children. “Soft pressure” was exerted often instead of jail or execution. “Soft pressure” meant that, if you were not in line with the communists, you and your children were not allowed to find jobs, or decent jobs, housing, attend good schools, or universities. And you were constantly watched by the neighborhood informer.

It was a psychological game to keep you suppressed and oppressed at the hands of the state. It was a faceless type of oppression; you never knew who ordered it or exactly why. “They might let you know somehow but you never knew to whom to apologize for your infraction. In Vladimir’s estimation, at least 25 percent of the population was treated this way and they had no recourse.

Vladimir described how getting permission to immigrate took from six months to seven years for some people. Anybody attempting to leave was considered a traitor to the state.  In order to protect your boss from punishment for keeping a traitor employed, you had to leave your job; it was shameful and unpatriotic to keep such a person employed, such a “quisling.”

Wondering how the Soviets knew he was Jewish, Vladimir explained that everything had to be disclosed on the employment forms and it became part of the employment record that followed workers everywhere. Most places, once they found out that the applicants were Jewish, they were told they were wasting their time, they would not be hired.

Vladimir’s case was different because he was an exceptional professional. He was a geophysical engineer in the oil and gas field, working in a Soviet institute of 550 people, with many geologists, engineers, researchers, oil and gas explorers, specialists who knew how to put out oil fires through geological drilling and detonation, and many involved in research and development.

Once he was part of a small group that came up with a plan to put out a difficult oil well fire which they were able to extinguish in six days, a spectacular result, devising a plan to drill sideways in hard rock. For his part, Vladimir was given a bonus of 60 rubles, and a personal visit from the minister of energy. But Vladimir was happy with the personal satisfaction of a job well-done.

Forty-year old Vladimir, his younger wife, and eight-year old son left USSR on the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, November 7. The customs officers, armed to their teeth, reminded them that everybody was celebrating the Soviet Revolution and “you traitors are leaving the country.”

They were allowed to take 72 pounds per person and, not knowing where they would end up, they took forks, pillows, a frying pan, winter shoes, and other implements for survival. I remember when I left legally in 1978 with two sets of sheets that never fit any bed in America.

They were allowed to exchange from rubles the equivalent of $100 per person, $300 for his family, and he still has the money in an envelope. “This was our life-line. We did not have much family to leave our personal property with since most perished in WWII. We gave friends our books, we could not give away photographs older than ten years, and everything was strictly catalogued.” A person was only allowed a wedding band, a pair of earrings, nothing more expensive than 50 rubles, no paintings, and no art objects, nothing that was not on the approved list. Anything extra had to be given to the state. “My friend had given me some paintings, I had to give them back; if I hadn't, the state would have confiscated them.”

It took six months to a year to get paperwork to prove that they did not owe anything to the state. It was a terrible life to extricate from the clutches of communism and to gain freedom in the west. They would get the run around from every office. They had to prove so many things, they had to go to archives to prove everything and run the gauntlet of the Soviet red tape. “That was my life for six months.” Vladimir cannot understand why ignorant Americans are so eager to become communist!

A church in New York help them start their new life in America, got jobs, and eventually built a professional career that took him to Virginia where I met him a few years ago.

Since they left, Vladimir never went back to Kiev, now part of Ukraine. Many others, who left like him, did go back. He would like an apology from the state for what they have put them through. The chance of getting such an apology is zero. The country is no longer the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, it is now Ukraine.

© Ileana Johnson 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, July 1, 2016

The American Flag, Symbol of Freedom

The American flag has been a symbol of pride, of hope, of freedom, of liberation, of exceptionalism, of courage, of inspiration, of strength, and of power. It pains me to see anti-American elements, the enemies of freedom, Islamists, communists, and other traitors burn it, trample it, tear it, trash it, and do unspeakable things to it.

Our Stars and Stripes must be properly folded, stored, and disposed of. Yet the Rhode Island Veterans cemetery where Stan Sniezyk’s father and other heroes are buried disposed of piles of torn and dirty American flags into the dumpster and kept them in storage shed. Photographs and even a video outraged patriotic Americans around the country. Stan Sniezyk posted photos of mounds of flags in “Call 12 for Action.” When interviewed, he told WPRI 12, “It just broke my heart because everyone in this cemetery fought under that banner and every fiber of that flag is their blood, sweat, and tears.”

U.S. flags must be stowed properly and prepared for proper disposal by burning. Rhode Island director of Veteran Affairs, Kasim Yarn, seemed shocked that procedures were not followed. http://americanmilitarynews.com/2016/06/video-piles-of-flags-dumped-at-veteran-cemetery-is-a-disgrace-is-causing-an-uproar/?utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=alt&utm_source=colddeadhands

Fortunately, grateful Europeans who were saved by American soldiers fighting on their behalf against fascism, honor, respect, and understand what the American flag means to them. As our country’s most powerful symbols of freedom, the flag was revered by those suffering under the Nazi boot and occupation during WWII. Just seeing the American flag flying proudly in the wind, those in dire straits gave a sigh of relief – the Americans were coming, hope and freedom were around the corner, and everything would be returned to God’s grace and mercy.

Sergeant Donald Hall helped free the Langenstein-Zwieberge German concentration camp in April 1945 as a member of the 83rd Infantry Division, known as the Thunderbolt Division. The camp was a working camp with a prisoner life-expectancy of six weeks. One of the prisoners he helped liberate found enough materials to make an American flag which he then gave to his rescuers. After the division left, Donald Hall kept the flag and brought it back with him to the U.S. where it was moved several times and eventually stored in an attic.

Understanding the significance of the flag, his daughter, Mary Kay Flege, contacted the U.S. Holocaust Museum. “We siblings – and there are 10 of us – came to understand that the flag must have been a painful reminder for dad of things he had seen at Langenstein and elsewhere in Europe – things that must have been unbelievably tragic and cruel and heartbreaking, certainly not the kind of thing that he could or ever share with his young children, much less other adults in civilian life.” https://jewishlouisville.org/american-flag-made-by-camp-inmates-for-liberators-goes-to-ushmm/

Donald Hall’s extended family, their spouses, ten children and grandchildren, gathered from around the country to participate in a moving signing ceremony, following the donation of this aged-flag, a significant piece of history, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://engage.ushmm.org/2016-power-of-one-artifact.html?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWlRVM05XTXdOelZsWVdVMCIsInQiOiJjZytHdzJJWUZaWlBTelJHdlVUM0VWWnNlMnlXems0eUZcLzN5SEpSNCtLbzlZUzZZUHZ3bFBRZUN5RnJkZitJU3hKbnBVcTc1Z1U0dXBWSXpIOFlmaGx3WExWN2tEeXpxTmFFb0J6MTM4REE9In0%3D

July 4 is not about watching fireworks, eating hamburgers, hot dogs, and enjoying off time with your family. It is our Independence Day. You are where you are because courageous men before you made it possible, men that have been long forgotten or you’ve never met, read, or learned about.

On our Independence Day, remember and pray for all American patriots, American soldiers, and American heroes who sacrificed their freedoms and gave their lives as an ultimate gift of altruism so that people they never knew could live a better life, free from oppression, and could have the right to express their divergent opinions and liberties every day, however offensive those may be.