The Zinns of Revised History

Arlington National Cemetery established on land confiscated

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Elementary school students learn their first version of history from their College of Education licensed teachers. Some deliberately change historical facts to match their social engineering agenda or are too ignorant and lazy to research on their own and thus do not care what damage they inflict on their charges as long as nobody gets physically hurt while in their care and everybody has breakfast, preferably at the taxpayer expense. Once their minds are made up, nothing can change their reality - it becomes the solid rock chiseled by water over millennia.

Parents may be either too busy to check the validity and veracity of what their children learn in school, may agree with the teacher’s activism, or may themselves be ignorant and unmotivated to do anything about it, not caring that their kids’ minds will be forever imprinted with misinformation and social justice drivel. Very young students look at their teachers in awe as the ultimate arbiters of truth.

Middle school students may or may not escape the deliberate indoctrination, depending on how involved some parents are in their children’s homework and school and on how much information students bring home at the end of the day or discuss with their parents.

Middle school students may ask their teachers more difficult questions, depending on their personality and the teacher’s eagerness to answer inconvenient queries from Johnny who happens to be disruptive to her pre-prepared lesson plans pulled from the state-approved curriculum and textbooks.

By high school students have been exposed to a barrage of misinformation from various teachers who may or may not have had a personal socialist agenda, but they were using Common Core textbooks which emphasized collectivism and Islam to the detriment of Christianity and American history facts.

The textbooks used today around the country are almost exclusively Howard Zinn’s version of history published in 1980, A People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn, a native of Brooklyn, New York, considered himself a radical. The 729-page book is overloaded with manufactured history told from the revised perspective of the downtrodden and the exploited. I am familiar with this heavy-handed indoctrination as our textbooks when I was growing up presented history from the Communist Party’s collectivist perspective.

According to Zinn’s book and other Common Core approved textbooks, America is a land of brutal racism and oppression of the downtrodden but economically is a great place because wealth was stolen from the slaves who made this abundance possible. It is our duty to pay reparations to black people whose ancestors were forced into slavery when they were sold to white men by their tribal brethren in Africa.

Most high schools and colleges in the United States are teaching their students that America was and is bad, yet the downtrodden of the world risk life and limb to cross our borders illegally. If it is so bad, and their third world cesspools so wonderful, why are they coming? Is it because the welfare is great, and money grows on trees?

George Orwell wrote that “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” If people cannot understand where they came from, who were those who have fought for their country and why, they become people without a compass who judge what happened in the past through the lenses of modern societal social trends. And our youth today is offended and triggered by anything that does not fit into their philosophical view of the global U.N. compact. 

When we sat in history class, the teacher gave us dates and her opinion of the events which may or may not have transpired as described, or the textbook writers’ opinion, or the government in power’s opinion of history. We understood who we were as a people based on this information or misinformation.

People with dementia forget their own family’s history, who they are, their families, and no longer connect to their tribe and its history. They are lost and confused. All their memories and experiences which had defined them, have been lost forever, in a jumbled mass of neurons. “Wipe out their memory and you erase their identity.” Wipe out their history and they become global citizens.

When you deliberately repeat in class ad nauseam America’s mistakes, while ignoring or omitting America’s successes, you prepare students who have no respect for their own culture, who are embarrassed by their own history.

Since Jimmy Carter’s department of education was established in 1979, progressives have been overtly promoting their dangerous socialist narrative meant to divide the nation and its accomplishments by constantly separating people by race, class, gender, and deviant sexuality and sowing the seeds of hatred, self-loathing, and revolution.

One of my Economics students decried the statistics in the textbook written by Democrat academics, saying that everything is divided by race, age, and gender.  In his opinion, the book, which had numerous editions, was biased and racist.

Academia, Hollywood, corrupt politicians, and the main stream media have invited real and imagined victims of “evil capitalism” which they elevated to a minority entitled to exercise the tyranny of the oppressed while the rest of us must pay reparations to those who have been mistreated by history. 

All traditions that have defined our culture, Thanksgiving, Presidents Day, raising the flag, singing the National Anthem, celebrating discoverers like Christopher Columbus, special holidays like Christmas, Easter, and other traditions have been replaced by ethnic holidays or cancelled altogether.

James Robbins described in a recent PraegerU video that we are now involved in a “non-violent civil war.” I am not sure if it is a civil war but the non-violent aspect of attacks is debatable if we consider the ANTIFA violence on campuses around the nation and in the streets. ANTIFA is a radical organization that fashions itself as anti-fascist but is fascist in the behavior of its masked members.

Even though America abolished slavery and many Americans, black and white, have lost their lives in the fight to end such an inhuman practice, the radical left continues to poison the minds of useful idiots with slavery while ignoring the actual slavery taking place in the Islamic world of Africa and the Muslim genocide against Christians.

Our country is portrayed as unjust even though we are the most tolerant nation on the planet today when it comes to accepting people from all over the world as long as they come here to make America greater than when they found it and are not here to fleece the generous welfare system.

All nations on the globe have been established and reshaped from land purchased, taken, given, won, occupied, or gained following wars and other means of partition. It has always been a struggle.

Our students should be taught that America, although not perfect, is still a land of opportunity if those seeking it assimilate and understand its history and culture from factual data, not collectivized and manufactured history to fit the radical agenda of Democrat Socialism.

Virginia, Fairfax County, Education, and Trailers

Virginia is an interesting educational and political study in how to destroy a formerly well-off state with tolerance and multi-culturalism dictated by politicians from Richmond and Washington, D.C. It is a microcosm of the civilization suicide that is taking place in Europe.

Virginia is not very far behind the Seattle School District that sent a letter recently to teachers asking them to bless Muslim students in Arabic during Ramadan. Virginia obsesses over accommodating those who will not give an inch in their quest to be a specially protected class.

The Guardian wrote that “Virginia students learn in trailers while the state offers Amazon huge tax breaks.” And the unhappy teachers went on strike in January 2019 to express their dissatisfaction with what they saw as low pay, $9,000 less than the national average, while the state of Virginia was so generous to Amazon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/27/virginia-teachers-strike-amazon-tax-breaks?CMP=share_btn_fb The Washington Post published data from the National Education Association that the average K-12 teacher earned $58,353 in 2016-2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/05/how-much-or-little-teachers-earn-state-by-state/?noredirect=on

According to the Guardian, “more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county [the third richest county in America] receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to the baseball fields next to McClean High School.”

McClean is a rich area in NOVA where the average homes cost over a million dollars. The property tax base to help fund public schools is thus very large.

Quoting school board member Ryan McElveen, the Guardian wrote, “Our staff often likes to say that Fairfax Public schools is the largest trailer dealer on the east coast. We own 820 trailers, more than any other entity on the entire east coast.”

Gov. Ralph Northam proposed to increase the education budget by approximately $270 million. Teachers objected to Northam’s proposed $750 million expenditure to lure Amazon to build its second HQ in Virginia, while classrooms were overcrowded, necessitating the use of trailers.

Why is there such an overcrowding in northern Virginia’s schools?  It is certainly not because Americans are having more babies, far from it, it is because illegal aliens have so many anchor babies that we are educating for free.

Educators are the first to push the liberal agenda of flooding the country with illegals whose children must be educated in their own native language, often dialects that require financial investing in specialized translators, teachers, textbooks, classes, and special tutoring, at the expense of American children who must learn in trailers and make do with less.

These new illegal arrivals must be also be fed at taxpayers’ expense and illegal families must be sheltered in welfare housing and provided with everything they may need to survive, including free and expensive healthcare.

Some teachers believe that giving tax breaks to Amazon is wrong when they could teach so many more illegal aliens’ children instead and house their families at the expense of the Virginian taxpayers.

Local and very vocal liberals in Fairfax county, who push for more school funding, argue that “building new schools could actually create more jobs than bringing in Amazon.” More schools mean more teachers and a lower teacher-to-student ratio argues Lee Carter, a Democrat Socialist state delegate from Manassas.

Northern Virginia (NOVA) with its progressive and corrupt political atmosphere is the reason why the entire state of Virginia is turning socialist. Republicans barely control the House of Delegates by only one delegate and the Senate by two Senators.

The NOVA population is composed mostly of federal government workers from Washington, D.C. and an ever-growing and very large contingent of illegal and legal aliens who vote Democrat as a block because they want to turn Virginia into the socialist paradise they’ve fled from.

Fairfax County Public School has adopted highly controversial curricula on sex education, sidestepping the important role of parents to teach their own children about human sexuality.  FCPS agenda was transgenderism and co-ed bathrooms.

The state education budget and local property taxes fund the public schools but is the money being used judiciously?

FCPS, with its budget of $3 billion annually, focuses more on globalism, with graduates who have “…attributes of Communicator, Collaborator, Ethical and Global Citizen, Creative and Critical Thinker, and Goal-Directed and Resilient Individual.”

Next year’s proposed budget increase of $117 million will “provide excellence and equity, hiring more staff to teach 1,000 fewer students.” According to Arthur Purves, “FCPS has a Chief Equity Officer but not much equity.” https://thebullelephant.com/Fairfax-county-public-schools-excellence-for-a-few/

The Twilight Zone Plus One Makes Reality

“The universe is made of protons, neutrons, electrons, and morons.”  -  Anonymous  

While the left is busy demonizing President Trump for his remarks about the MS-13 gangs who enter our country illegally through the porous southern border, Congressional members, working against the safety interests of the American people and cheered by the leftist media and half of the voting population, are doing their best to stall, defund, and vilify any effort by our president to build a border wall and to deport the illegal criminal elements who are already in this country and have committed atrocious crimes.

As Diane Feinstein said in a 1994 video interview, 40 percent of babies on Medicaid in California were babies born of illegal immigrants, and 17 percent of the prison population was comprised of illegal immigrants who committed felonies, costing the taxpayers $300 million a year. She called for the enforcement of our borders then but things have changed today.  The Democrat Party needs these illegal voters in order to stay in power. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Diane+Feinstein+1994+video+about+illegal+aliens&view=detail&mid=44B59C5383EB8D59311C44B59C5383EB8D59311C&FORM=VIRE

The Democrat Party has locked up the votes of minorities, illegals, Millennials, the welfare underclass, women, low information voters, and rich liberals who live a good life no matter who is in control of the country, the media, academia, and pretty much anybody who attended public and private schools for the past 50 years and has been brainwashed by socialist teachers and administrators into becoming the snowflake generation they are today. Divide and conquer and race-baiting has worked well for the Democrat Party.

A study found that Democrat professors outnumber Republican professors at 40 major universities by a ratio of 11.5 to 1. No wonder students, after having spent a fortune to be indoctrinated into progressivism, finish college as hard-core socialists. Hating capitalism, even though it provided them with opportunities and freedoms they would have never found in Castro’s Cuba or in North Korea’s prison state, they are adamant that socialism will bring them happiness and equality with a six-figure salary and five-star amenities. https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology

The fact that academia is highly controlled by liberals (75% at Yale) has aided in shaping generations to be blind and unquestioning little communist sheeple. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9769

Teachers unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) forced children in public education to take part in their professionally-organized protests.

Same teachers, administrators, and textbook writers, funded by billionaires like Bill Gates, Al Gore, George Soros and his many Open Society non-profit foundations shaped the thoughts and “feelings” of young and impressionable minds, young Americans who began to see themselves as global citizens even though they did not necessarily understand the issues clearly.

Our children worship at the altar of socialism, communism, and Islam, without really understanding why communism fell everywhere it was tried and why 100 million people living under communism were killed for wanting liberty and freedom of speech.

The same academics are forcing Common Core education on smart students so as not to hurt the “feelings” of other children and spare them embarrassment, dumbing down education for all. It is a touchy-feely snowflake generation that needs special spaces, corners, and rooms to hide from the reality of life otherwise they are “triggered” by visceral hate to destroy everything historical they disagree with.

Administrators have also decided that anyone can make the cheerleading squad because one child failed and the parents complained. Competition is bad and so is meritocracy, we are told by the left. Let’s make everybody “equal.” The proverbial trophy for walking across the stage without tripping has come to pass. http://abc13.com/education/new-rule-everyone-makes-cheer-squad-or-no-one-does/3438723/

Public education is now confusing children as to which bathrooms they should use, and what sex they are.  Sometimes dangerous hormones are given in public schools without parental consent in order to help a student transition to whatever sex they think they are or are told they are. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/teachers-must-keep-childs-transgenderism-a-secret-from-parents-ontario-scho

LGBT militant groups are in the classroom, mostly without parental consent, teaching children not sex education under health, but actually methods of having sex and sexual perversions, even to children as young as kindergarten.  Administrators are forcing students to listen to assemblies about sexual choices and the parents have no clue nor have they been given the choice to opt out their child.

Public education teaches students how to pass a test that determines how much funding the school receives per pupil from the federal government.  There is little math, science, reading, and English being taught because of the discipline problems and the time outs for protests for various causes d’jour, but there is plenty of Spanish taught and remedial math and remedial reading in college.

As our children and their parents go into debt to get that four-year worthless college degree in majors that cannot possibly find them employment, i.e. women’s studies, gender studies, social justice, environmental justice, racial justice, and even white guilt, technical jobs go unclaimed while Johnny and Jenny work as baristas, grocery store clerks, and waiters while living in mom and dad’s basement for free because they can’t afford to move out.

Will we ever be able to dismantle such deplorable public schools in which militant teachers indoctrinate students into their collectivist global politics? No matter how bad they are, how do you fire them when they immediately bring out the race and religious discrimination card?

We should optimistically keep in mind the words of the late Dr. Nino Camardese, an immigrant from Mussolini’s Italy, who used to say, “Truth plus one equals a majority.” Lately though, it’s been more like “The Twilight Zone plus one makes reality.”

Cultural Marxism and Euphemisms

Cultural Marxist academics, their sycophant students, and the main stream media are at war with America – a war of violent Marxist ideology and a war of cleverly chosen words and euphemisms that appear time and time again in many college courses, high school classes, in propaganda literature, newspapers, conferences, and in the manufactured news. Cultural Marxists are regular guests on all the alphabet soup networks masquerading as real news, spewing their hatred, their disdain and disrespect for our President, and their calls to renewed violence in the streets through their masked Black Shirts.

As David Horrowitz said, “Worse yet, this is the dominant culture in our universities, in our media, in our judiciary, in government, in unions, and in the shadow political universe of non-profits, with billions of tax-free dollars at their disposal.”

Language is a powerful tool of discourse, mass political indoctrination and agitation. Marxist Democrats are quite adept at using inflammatory language and deceptive euphemisms to suit their nefarious political ends.

In any kind of ideological and political war, the first victim is truth, replaced with lies, dressed cleverly by rhetoric, obfuscation, and intentional debasement of language.

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946, “Politics and the English Language,” focusing on language which “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Such language, often vague and meaningless, concealed the oppressive ideology.

Taking private property from farmers and other owners is thus called “transfer of population” or “rectification of frontiers.” The process of sending people to gulags to die becomes “elimination of unreliable elements.” “Pacification” attempted to defend the indefensible acts of bombing and driving out locals from their ancestral lands and giving the land to a population protected by the intentions of the elites.

Orwell pointed out that “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” The less sincere the speaker or writer is, particularly politicians and journalists, the more they “disguise their intentions behind euphemisms and convoluted phrasing.”

Academic writing is resplendent with “pretentious diction” and “meaningless words.” According to Orwell, “In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”

Concurrent with “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell published “The Prevention of Literature.” The two essays reflect his alarm over the victimization of truth in the distorted use of language. Orwell pointed out the “deliberate use of misleading double-talk language among those he identified as pro-Soviet.” He predicted the type of literature under a future totalitarian society – “formulaic and low grade sensationalism.”

Analyzing some of the euphemisms conceived by today’s progressives, and I only scratched the surface, we realize that Orwell’s words from sixty years ago are still true.

“Undocumented worker” is an obvious mischaracterization of illegal aliens who are invading our country with the approval of corporatist elites in both Democrat and Republican parties. These individuals do have documents from their countries of origin and have broken the law by crossing our borders illegally. Not only are they not repatriated, they are given equal rights with Americans so that corrupt politicians can stay in power in Democrat states like California. These people become illegal voters even though they do not speak the language, do not understand our laws, our Constitution, and do not care that they are helping transform our country into the hell hole they’ve fled. So long as they get undeserved welfare and Social Security benefits, they will vote Democrat in perpetuity.

“Our core values” is Democrat double-speak for demographic and cultural suicide. We allow every unvetted flotsam and jetsam from around the world into our country, disregarding the interests of the American public, their safety, health, and well-being under the guise of “that is not who we are as a nation.” The Democrat Party and the leftist agenda are now making the decision of who we are as a nation and as people, without bothering to consult the rest of America.

If we want to uphold law and order, our borders, language, and culture, we are “bigoted.” The meaning of “bigoted” has been stretched and bastardized to now mean pretty much anything the left wants it to mean. Yet it seems that leftists are truly intolerant toward those holding different opinions. They often turn their intolerance into violence, silencing the opposition and their right to free speech especially in the bastions of liberal academia around the country.

Additionally, if you disagree with any goals of the leftist agenda, you are “racist.” The real meaning of “racism” as described in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race,” has been lost in the leftist double-talk.

If you want legal immigration and national borders, safe from criminals, gangs, disease, and jihadi intrusions, you are a “xenophobe.” All foreign-born individuals who are now proud American citizens and prefer that immigrants follow the rule of law just like they did, are accused of xenophobia, “undue fear of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin.”

If you condemn militant jihad, hijra, and Islamic violence, you are an “Islamophobe.” That word silences the opposition so that the liberal goal of unrestricted Islamic invasion continues.

Liberals call themselves “progressives” even though their goals have nothing to do with progress but with regression to a totalitarian and oppressive communist society which has failed everywhere it has been tried. Liberals are repackaging the Bolshevik effort t by saying that communism was not implemented the right way.

“Liberalism” does not really represent the meaning of the Latin word, “liber” (free). Liberalism is disguised incremental socialism that will eventually lead to global communism.  “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of “liberalism” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

People accept the word “global citizen” without ever asking themselves what it entails. A “global citizen” is an individual who lives in a country that is no longer a state; it has no borders, no sovereignty, no national identity, no passport, and no national history.  Yet most schools and colleges advertise that their students have been brainwashed and prepared for global citizenship.

On campuses around the country, “snowflakes” are cowering and hiding in their “safe spaces” in fear of reality that contradicts what they’ve been told and taught since they were born and led across a stage and given participation trophies.

The word “inhumane” (without compassion for misery or suffering; cruel) has been trivialized to excuse any breaking of the law without punishment and repercussions. In the mentally disordered liberal brain, suffering the consequences of bad choices, decisions, and subsequent criminality has become cruel and “inhumane.”

The word “diversity” is no longer used as being diverse and different; it is now a liberal code word for perversity which must be acknowledged by the other side, encoded into law, and enforced by the courts.

Homosexuality hides behind the word “gay” which previously meant “happy.” Different types of deviance are disguised behind the words “cross-dressers.” “Gender fluidity” can be interpreted as any sexual anomaly and psychological confusion – anything flows.

“Multiculturalism” is the code word for Cultural Marxism agenda and the transformation of your country into a tower of Babel of illegal immigrants who have no intention of assimilating or accepting the invaded culture, its laws, its history, and its language. It is considered “inhumane” to force such illegal aliens to assimilate and contribute to society in a meaningful way.

Liberals force their ideas, plans, and global agenda on the rest of us in the name of “civil society.” This represents the globalist elites backed by power, influence, and money to socially engineer our lives any way they wish because they know best what is good for billions of people around the globe and the faux science backing them “has been settled.”

The laws and cries of “equal opportunity” coming from various special interest groups are not really asking for “equality,” they are asking for preferential treatment. And “social justice” is not asking for justice, it is asking for government sanctioned stealing, taking private property and money from those who worked for it and earned it, and giving it to those who did not earn it and are not entitled to it.

Social Security is not an “entitlement,” it is money that people have earned and contributed into a fund for decades in order to provide them with income in retirement.  It is theft when Social Security money is given to illegal aliens as soon as they set foot on our soil.

Liberals created special and protected categories for some races and ethnic groups such as calling Hispanic women “Latinas.”  To my knowledge, Latium was a region in the former Roman Empire, thus those people could be called Latinas and Latini. Black people are now “African Americans” even though most of them have never set foot in Africa nor were they born there. Caucasians don’t call themselves European Americans. There are Africans who are American citizens and have every right to call themselves African Americans, including Caucasians from South Africa. These special categories are not necessary; they are divisive and counterproductive, treating the special group as a group that cannot survive without the force of government.

It seems that liberalism is not really freedom; it thrives on divisiveness, separation, and inequality. They use deceptive language, euphemisms, and lies to implement their goals and policies in the name of “democracy” even though we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. But liberals count on their blind followers to be ignorant of history and civics.

When Our Neighborhoods Have Gone Global

Photo credit: Ileana Johnson
Washington, D. C.

As we cheer the election of a new President, the highly successful entrepreneur and businessman Donald Trump, having averted the advance of global communism and global citizenship, we must not forget the massive damage that has already occurred in our country and around the globe, involving the much debunked manufactured global warming turned into a profitable climate change industry worth trillions, accomplished through the non-stop work and indoctrination of the United Nations Agenda 2030, an onerous plan which has infiltrated every aspect of our society, limiting our freedoms and controlling every facet of our lives under the guise of “sustainable development.”

One month after the establishment of the United Nations, UNESCO was created by its first director, Julian Huxley.  UNESCO’s first task was to teach the world’s school teachers how to indoctrinate their students to become citizens of the world. Judging by the amount of global citizenship preparedness advertised by colleges and universities in the U.S. today, UNESCO has been highly successful.  Their materials on the topic of “Toward World Understanding,” brainwashed many generations in schools around the globe that “nationalism was bad, and had to replaced with the idea of world citizenship.” (UNESCO Publication 356, http://freedom.org/reports/unesco356.htm)

The effort to transform our children into global citizens mutated into the International Baccalaureate Program, an expensive and highly secretive curriculum from Switzerland, supported and paid for by local taxpayers. Parents thought that it was a superior education to our public schools when in reality it is just another attempt to indoctrinate them into global citizens, devoid of national pride, American history, and turning them into full supporters of global governance.

The relentless global governance promoters are convinced that their social engineering philosophy of collectivism is far superior to our free market capitalism. They are not dissuaded by the monumental failures of Cuba, Venezuela, Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Eastern European countries, and other nations forced to survive on the idea of ‘daddy government knows best.’

With its final goal of a “global neighborhood” (Our Global Neighborhood, 1995), the government-managed society rejects the idea of private property and does not think that controlling the use of private property constitutes taking, despite the existence of our 5^th Amendment which requires that government justly compensate owners for the taking of their private property.

The final barrier in the United Nations completion of this global neighborhood is the voluntary funding for the United Nations. The ideas of creating a global tax and a global currency have been introduced numerous times. In 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed its plan to create a global currency.

“International rules, institutions and practices that limit the behavior of people in the United States come from international entities such as the UN, UNESCO, UNEP, UNDP, WTO, ISO and other alphabet bureaucracies,” which creep into domestic policy via non-governmental organization (NGOs) lobbyists who advocate for global governance, politicians, federal employees, and delegates to U.N. meetings. Most in Congress support and promote the principle of global governance but their constituents have no idea what that means.

Why is global governance bad? Our system of freedom and self-governance cannot co-exist in a world governed by the United Nations’ tin pot dictatorships.  They believe that “government is the source of individual rights, and can give or deny those rights to individuals or organizations as the government deems necessary,” in the interest of the collective.

American self-governance believes that the Creator is the “source of unalienable individual rights,” including the right to form a government and limit its power to the consent of the governed.

We are at the crossroads of global governance, enabled by the voluntary participation of developed nations, particularly the United States, who has dragged its citizens into agreements, initiatives, and partnerships, whereby the voters were never consulted about such partnerships and initiatives, they were only subjected to the Vision of the globalists, pushed forward by elected politicians’ voluntary membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI).

Our current government is pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which is slim on trade and heavy on controlling what is left of our manufacturing sector, our economy, and our sovereignty. If it is so good for America, why were the proceedings secret? TPP is modeled on the failed European Union system that deprived 28 nations of their sovereignty while seeking to create a huge empire with all the powers of a single nation but masquerading as a trade organization. The recent Brexit of the U.K. from this EU union was painfully obvious that the Brits have had enough of the political and economic control from the technocrats in Brussels.

Plans that erode our individual freedoms and national sovereignty start at the local level with promises and euphemisms that are relevant to a particular locality and sound benign enough to the busy American, preoccupied with making a living and supporting his/her family.

The visioning process starts at the local level by a local planning agency (an NGO) or ICLEI itself with a federal grant attached to it. ICLEI was created in 1990 “to advance the concept of sustainable development,” the lynchpin of U.N. Agenda 21 of 1992 and now U.N. Agenda 2030.

Once the grant is in place, a facilitator is appointed to lead the visioning process of the local community. Participants are initially chosen carefully in order to support the plan. One local elected official is also included while the community knows nothing about until the end of the process.  The group may call itself “Yourtown 2030” and will put forth their pre-planned ideas of what your town should look like in 2030 in order to have a “sustainable community” and “smart development.” Anything else is catastrophic for the community.

Any objections are eliminated by advertising a “consensus.” The goals chosen by this visioning are usually recommendations taken from U.N. Agenda 21 or the President’s Council on Sustainable Development documents.

Next comes the plan of action which includes “bike paths, walkways, greenbelts, conservation areas, high-density areas, mixed-use housing, five minute walk or bike to work, shopping, and play, urban boundary zones, and other buzz-words from the sustainable development vocabulary.

As the plan is near completion, the group starts feeding information to the press in the local media. Public events are held that gloat over the righteous sustainable development and sustainable communities. The elected official on board with the visioning plan is “expected to convince the majority of the governing board to adopt the plan of action.”

Glossies will be printed and mailed out to the population, convincing the community that their visioning plan will make the community better in the 21^st century if they protect the environment by reducing their carbon footprint, their commute, their car use, their suburban living, and other activities that make life fun and free, but, the world will be a better place for all.

The elements of the plan are never really publicly debated before elected officials, and, it is too late to oppose it once it is so heavily publicized. The private landowners are usually never consulted, nor are the taxpayers. Many times, once the plan has been adopted and implementation has begun, the community starts feeling the pain of the visioning plan. Local comprehensive land use plans are often so restrictive, the farmers can no longer use their pastures, their lakes, their land, their water to grow food, or plant crops.

This brings me to my own back yard where Supervisor Frank Principi has embarked on the plan of “Smart Development for a More Connected Community.”  His flier describes the “Smart Development in New Woodbridge,” as connectivity. “In this type of development, communities are designed to be more compact, easily and safely transversed by foot or bicycle. Great thought is given to how “people will live, work and play in their neighborhoods.”  In his and Agenda 2030’s idea, Smart Development will be mixed housing, townhomes, single family homes, stack and pack apartments, with “employment opportunities in close proximity to these homes, which in turn are conveniently located to amenities such as schools, parks, entertainment, mass transit, churches, and shopping.”

He is concerned about your quality of life, “fostering a sense of community, (supporting the local community because you won’t be able to go very far), reducing commute times, promoting walking and biking and lessening environmental impact.” He is proposing a “50-mile pedestrian and bicycle network” as well as eliminating “sidewalks to nowhere.” You just can’t walk every which way you want, you must be on approved paths. These are specific goals listed in U.N.’s Agenda 2030.

Supervisor Principi states that funding to “build our network” (who is we) will come from “developer proffers, state and regional grants, and local tax dollars.”

I’ve lived in the area for eight years, I am a very well-informed citizen, yet I’ve never heard specifics on Supervisor Principi’s plan until now. However, in this brochure, he is announcing a town hall series on transportation, education, and development. The plans are already in place, now he has to inform us about them.

The first town hall is entitled “Get Woodbridge Moving.”

“New Woodbridge: Vision & Economic Impact” is advertised for November 10, 2016. “Classroom Overcrowding: Rethinking School Development” will be addressed on December 8, 2016.

Prince William County is overrun with illegal aliens that comprise most of the 40 percent population growth as published in the last census. Additionally, unaccompanied minors of school age have overcrowded our schools and drained the budget for special teachers who speak the obscure languages of some of these children.

Frank Principi talks about the “Region’s Global Reach” and the “Global Cities Initiative Report,” all elements of the globalist U.N. Agenda 2030.

Describing the area’s longest commute among its peer regions, Principi stated, “Strengthening infrastructure connections globally while improving connectivity regionally could facilitate increased global trade and investment.”

If you are scratching your head with that statement, you are not alone.

Principi encapsulates this region’s visioning plan, “The central pillars of the vision for a New Woodbridge – Smart Development, Better Transportation and Strong Neighborhoods – reflect the top concerns and goals that community members express for our neighborhoods.”

In most neighborhoods people don’t even know their closest neighbors, apartments are built all over the place to handle the influx of newcomers, legal and illegal, roads are inadequate, there are no alternate routes to major highways, and congestion is the norm. Would walking and bicycling, more government control, and “strong neighborhoods” resolve these issues?

The American Planning Association, one of the main vectors of sustainable development change in this country has a host of definitions and requirements for any inhabited place in the country as to how the Strong Neighborhood Initiative (SNI) should be implemented according to a specific blueprint designed years ago by the U.N. Agenda 21 planners in Rio.

The neighborhoods must “promote or protect air and water quality, protect groundwater resources, and respond to the growing threat of climate change,” a threat that is not real. “Green infrastructure” must be used, such as “local tree cover mitigating heat gain.” Communities must “utilize measures or practices to protect or enhance local biodiversity and the environment.” https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/neighborhoods/characteristics.htm

At the end of the day, none of these plans are really about improving the lives of the people; they are about herding humans into small areas where they are more easily controlled by the government.

Every human wants their community to thrive, to be safe, and desire clean air and water, but at what cost are we going to reorganize and socially engineer our cities, towns, communities, and way of life in order to fit a master plan designed by people who are only interested in saving the planet from an imaginary global warming and by controlling the population that they deem to be a threat to our planet.

 

Big Brother of Smarter Planet, Smarter Cities

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2009

IBM has a vision for you, Mr. and Mrs. Global Citizen, a vision for Smarter Cities around the globe. You have not been consulted about it but you will be subjected to their vision whether you agree to it or not. And if you want to learn more about IBM’s international effort to build “a Smarter Planet, Smarter Cities,” in preparation for what they dubbed, “the cognitive era,” you can read more about it here. http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_cities/overview/

IBM aligned its philanthropic pockets with the plan to build a Smarter Planet. Some goals mirror U.N.’s Agenda 2030 seventeen stated goals for the globe. http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

Following a revelation in November 2008 that the planet is becoming smarter, “IBM began a conversation” about things that make the world work, cars, appliances, roadways, power grids, clothes, natural systems such as agriculture and waterways, and many other things that need to be mined and controlled through data and information systems.

“IBM is committed to a vision of Smarter Cities as a vital component of building a Smarter Planet. A Smarter City uses technology to transform its core systems and optimize finite resources. At the highest level of maturity, a Smarter City is a knowledge-based system that provides real-time insights to stakeholders as well as enabling decision-makers to manage the city’s subsystems proactively.”

“IBM Corporate Citizenship has launched the Smarter Cities Challenge to help 100 cities around the world become smarter through grants of IBM talent and technology.”

“The City of St. Louis is one of the 24 cities [U.S.] to earn a grant from IBM as part of that company’s philanthropic efforts to build a Smarter Planet. IBM’s Smarter Cities-Challenge aims to contribute to the improvement of high-potential cities around the world.”

The IBM 6-member team identified the “public safety ecosystem” as the communal reach and interaction of those participants in the public safety arena: mayor, board of aldermen, metro police, circuit attorney, clerk, judges, sheriff, corrections, probation, and parole, in essence controlling everything and everybody.

IBM published its findings and recommendations in a 64-page paper in 2011, IBM Smarter Cities Challenge Report. https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/mayor/documents/upload/IBM-Smarter-Cities-Challenge-St-Louis-Report.pdf

The specific report for St. Louis analyzed the causes of crime and made recommendations for public safety. Great detail and importance were given to “criminal justice” and its organizational structure, involving many governmental departments. Recommendations on how to deal with potential offenders included “cloud” and “data banking surveillance,” as well as “profiling.” In a global economy, IBM sees a co-operation between non-profits and government with the citizen being the subject of their control.

This website shows that IBM’s Smarter Cities is already international in cities like Africa, U.S., Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America. https://smartercitieschallenge.org/cities

The Smarter Cities framework chart shows four overlapping circles of control that leave nothing to chance:

-       Population management

-       Language

-       Wealth

-       Education

-       Community

-       Wellbeing

-       Retail

-       Housing

-       Environment management

-       Managing crime/public safety

-       Traffic

-       Street furniture

-       Office infrastructure

-       Broadband

-       Infrastructure

-       Securing inward investment

-       Economy

 

To express it more plainly, IBM envisions cities as a “system of systems.”  Independent systems will disappear and will become interconnected, supervised, and controlled by the powerful government that will see in real time how much and what you consume and engage in, thus will be able to curb anything you do that they deem “wasteful.” crime/

public safety

Environ

Education

Retail

Broadband

Infrastructure

Securing inward

investment

Part V Interview on Education with Mircea Brenciu

Thinker and his companion Constanta Museum
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

I asked Mircea Brenciu what happened to the education in Romania as it evolved from communist indoctrination to so-called western style education in 25 years. Although some young people earned international acclaim in science and mathematics, education in general has been a profound disappointment, he added.

Brenciu is a firm believer that the lack of spending in education is a direct reason for the pathetic performance. He explained that Romania continues to place last on education spending, behind countries like Bulgaria, China, and Indonesia.

Despite politicians’ promises to make education a priority, financing it has remained at the bottom when compared to schools’ needs and to allocations that other countries have made in education. He illustrated the dearth of investment in “human capital,” a.k.a. education, with a statistically low 2.5% of the national budget in 2013, 3.2% in 2014, and 3.7% in 2015.

Even though politicians have introduced a benchmark of 6 percent for education, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS), investment in education has never exceeded 4 percent. Yet every government in power and every prime minister have pledged to the voting population that education was a priority. Remus Pricopie, former Minister of Education (2012-2014) reported in 2014 3.2 percent of the budget for expenditures in education.

I happen to disagree with Mircea Brenciu that spending more on education, throwing more money at schools, is going to make a difference in student achievement, performance on tests, or long-term retention and learning.

I don’t think the communist party spent outrageous amounts to indoctrinate the youth yet, in general, excluding the worthless classes of Scientific Socialism, Socialist Philosophy, and other such courses, students received a well-rounded education even though they had no labs for experimentation in physics, chemistry, or biology.

When I arrived directly from the socialist/communist state to the United States, I was shocked how ill-prepared most students and their teachers actually were. The depth of knowledge acquired by most eastern block students was superior when compared to the education of most Americans. It is also true that American students were encouraged to think individually and outside the box instead of emphasizing the collective. Collectivism stunted creativity and inventiveness.

Since Americans have been spending thousands of dollars per pupil to improve achievement and raise test scores, in the face of the fact that test scores do not compare well to other countries, it is obvious that throwing more money at education does not increase student performance or test scores. There are other variables such as parental dedication and involvement in their children’s education and two-parent families that are also very important.

I understand, in many villages in Romania, where the aediles had not used the funds judiciously, or did not receive any funding for education, it was hard to learn in a classroom whose roof was leaking, had no heat, or the school had not been completed or repaired for habitation.

The most adversely affected by unemployment are high school graduates with a rate of 8.1 percent unemployment when compared to those with a college diploma (5.1%). By age, the group of 15-24 year-olds have 23.7% unemployment rate.  Among the 25-34 year-olds unemployment was much smaller, 7.75 percent.

It is obvious to Brenciu that there are special interests at play that ignore the national interest, resulting in diminished education possibilities. Having a Parliament is great, however, the voters, informed, misinformed, or deliberately ignorant, get the politicians they elect. There is no such thing as the best party in power. Romanians and people in general should run like crazy away from a party or a politician who wants to dominate political life. “Did we not have for over 50 years a ‘unique’ party which led us, against our will, to the highest peaks of socialism?”

The content of education has become globalist, emphasizing global citizenship or preparation for such global citizenship.  The elites and the United Nations’ non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working overtime everywhere to institute the sought-after socialist global control.

To me, it was refreshing to see so many churches mushroom around the country, and a comeback of faith after five decades of atheism under Ceausescu’s socialist/communist dictatorship. State funds were allocated to repair and rebuild many churches. But Romanians seemed to resent the church leaders and priests who lived lavish and luxurious lives when compared to most Romanians, while hospitals and schools were not funded adequately by the state and people died as a result.

I noticed many museum and architectural gems in a sorry state of neglect, decay, and rust. Priceless sculptures and mosaics were drowning in dust at Tomis and marble Etruscan sarcophagi were used as trash bins outside the Tomis Museum in Constanta.

Educators have told me that the curriculum is not teaching students so much about their national heroes anymore. History and national pride have been definitely marginalized in the quest to become “European citizens” as quickly as possible. The dumbing down of education has showcased depravity and immorality, denigrating good moral values, pride in national identity, and Romanian-ness. The noble ideals of love for their country, of patriotism, of respect for historical facts and for their ancestors, have disappeared from the curriculum, replaced by defeatism and shame for one’s ancestry.

Many well-educated and average Romanians sought employment elsewhere in the EU “openness” where the pay was commensurate with education, training, and experience, leaving a huge vacuum in Romanian key sectors of labor. Why work for 300 euros in Romania when you can get five times the pay (1,500 euros) for the same type job in the European Union and the cost of living is similar?

TO BE CONTINUED