Băile Herculane

Photo: Oana Chirila
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I am not sure how the delicate coffee cup survived my childhood and moving half-way around the world. Made of white porcelain, the words, Băile Herculane, are painted in cobalt blue letters; there is a little chip on the lip, close to the handle.  It is a memento given to me by “tataia,” my maternal grandpa Christache, who used to visit the thermal baths every year. 

Located in the picturesque Romanian region of Banat, a valley of the Cerna River, between Mehedinti Mountains and Cerna Mountains, Băile Herculane has a population of about 5,000, swelling with younger crowds during the tourist season.

Named after the Roman hero Hercules, Aqua Herculis, the small spa town has a long and storied history. Archeological digs have revealed that the town had been inhabited since the Paleolithic era. The Cave of the Thieves (Peștera Hoților) contains evidence from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

During Roman times, the town was a leisure center for wealthy citizens. It is said that even the mythological Hercules had stopped to bathe and rest here. Six Roman statues of Hercules were unearthed, giving some credence to the legend. In 1874, a bronze replica of one of the statues was cast and placed in the center of town.

Băile Herculane was captured by the Ottoman Empire on September 7, 1788, following the battle of Mehadia.  One year later, at the end of September 1789, the Austrians took it back from the Ottoman Turks.

Grandpa spoke highly of the healing properties of the hot springs which contained sulfur, chlorine, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and other minerals. From a child’s perspective, I could not understand how water and ionized air could help the aching bodies of humans racked by arthritis and pain born by repetitive motions of years of hard labor in factories and in the fields.  I understood water saturated with sodium chloride because the salt in the lake of Slanic kept me buoyant even though I could not swim.

Westerners patronized Hotel Cerna which was built in 1930. During the communist regime, many multi-storied, concrete block hotels were built in order to house the proletariat and retirees whose state-issued vouchers were welcome in Băile Herculane. A cheap vacation, mostly subsidized by the state, relaxed and soothed workers’ pain through mud and sulfur baths, massages, and physical therapy, if necessary.

The voucher waiting list for this spa resort was very long and some workers’ turn came in the middle of winter, not in August when Europeans preferred to take vacations. Many times, a husband’s turn would come in winter and his wife’s in fall or spring. It was always expected that a couple could seldom spend vacations together on a state-sponsored voucher.

Nine- and twelve-story hotels served the masses while the political elites had their private villas confiscated by the Bolsheviks from the “evil bourgeoisie.” After communism fell in 1989, privately owned hotels were built along the Cerna River, from the train station to the end of the hydro-electrical dam.

Wikipedia photo

 

Sadly, beautiful buildings dating from the Austro-Hungarian Empire era are in a pathetic state of disrepair, literally falling apart because the former owners, from whom the communists confiscated the buildings, are now owners again, but cannot afford to repair the 19^th and early 20^th century buildings which are literally crumbling and oozing decay. Additionally, some buildings may still be tied up in court since the government ordered them to be given back to their rightful owners who sometimes could not be found, had no money to fight in court, or to make repairs once they had won.

Wikipedia photo

 

Interestingly, during Ceausescu’s communist regime, all historical buildings were carefully maintained, lawns were beautifully manicured, streets were clean, and no graffiti could be seen anywhere.

Photo: Oana Chirila

boredpanda.com

 

Photo: Oana Chirila

boredpanda.com

 

Oana Chirila, a 23-year old architecture student from Timisoara, Romania, posted heartbreaking photos from the interior of the Neptune Sulfur Baths, built in 1883-1886. The gorgeous baroque and modernist building is literally falling apart. It is sad that history is no longer preserved but billions are wasted on globalization. http://www.boredpanda.com/stunning-interiors-from-abandoned-thermal-baths-in-herculane-romania/

The Newly Approved Mega-Mosque in Rural Virginia

Henrico country mosque flood
Photo: www.telegraph.co.uk

 

Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted “yes” to allow a special sewer to be built in the “Rural Crescent “ of Virginia, a small rural community where another mosque will be built on cheap agricultural land, with great possibility of future expansion.

According to Bob and Laura Parks, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) bought a piece of land three years ago in a part of Virginia that is “zoned agricultural, development is limited to one home per 10 acres and connections to the public sewer line are generally prohibited” and “almost all homes and farms utilize septic systems for waste. Many people have been denied ‘special use’ permits in this area if their requirements failed the zoning rules.” https://www.blackandblondemedia.com/2017/06/28/pr-william-co-board-caves-gives-special-treatment-new-mosque/

But the proposed mega-mosque wants special treatment to tap into the sewer system, while the surrounding residents were told to abide by the zoning rules.

After a nine-hour hearing that lasted until 3 a.m., the Board of Supervisors voted “yes” to the sewer exception. Corey Stewart, who ran for governor of Virginia on the Republican ticket on a platform of America first, voted “yes.” Building mosques in rural communities is not exactly America first. How many more worshippers will be added in the future to the 500 proposed ones today for the Nokesville mosque? What will be the impact on the sparsely populated land in the area?

This property is agricultural and, as one lady testified, people must eat first. If we keep taking land out of agricultural use and change zoning regulations in order to accommodate a special religion because we are afraid of expensive lawsuits from a group awash with money, we will find ourselves exactly where the globalists want us to be, dependent on a few huge farms who import our food from abroad because it is no longer produced here.

Accusations of Islamophobia, bigotry, and racism flew from Muslims and their liberal friends who testified in support of their expansion of the ADAMS mosque to Nokesville. Appealing to our Judeo-Christian faith and tolerance, and to “what would Jesus do,” one Muslim speaker said that Jesus would vote “yes” to allow the building of this mosque because Muslims are just like any other religion, they want to get along with their neighbors and live in peace. But it seems that Henrico County people may have a different story to tell:

-          parking jihad

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/07/the-parking-jihad-comes-to-henrico-county/ -

 

-          sewer flooding https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=henrico+co.+mosque+sewer+flooding&qpvt=Henrico+co.+mosque+sewer+flooding&qpvt=Henrico+co.+mosque+sewer+flooding&qpvt=Henrico+co.+mosque+sewer+flooding&FORM=IGRE

             -          overall eco-havoc.  https://virginiafreecitizen.com/2016/08/21/mosque-reaps-eco-havoc-on-surrounding-communities/

The hearing and the public present was heavily loaded with mosque supporters and many of the anti-permit locals who showed up to speak did not get a chance to do so. According to Bob and Laura Parks, “The 1,000 or so Muslims and liberal allies who showed up at the hearing could have easily watched it on cable access television. They showed up in person to bully, intimidate, and it worked. At the end of the night (morning), the mosque will be built and allowed a sewage infrastructure no other resident could acquire because it was never about equal treatment; it was about special treatment.” https://www.blackandblondemedia.com/2017/06/28/pr-william-co-board-caves-gives-special-treatment-new-mosque/

Jim Lafferty, had he been given the chance to speak, would have explained why the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force, which he leads,  was opposed to a special caption permit for the ADAMS mosque.

1.       “Contrary to what Muslims have testified, nobody is depriving them from the right to worship. If the application conformed to the Prince William County land-use regulation, no special exception would be needed. As it stands, the ADAMS mosque is a very big building on a lot which typically would be appropriate for a single family dwelling… On that issue alone, this application should be rejected.

2.       You will also hear that the county cannot sustain the cost of a suit by the Department of Justice and the Religious Land use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and a threatened suit by ADAMS and CAIR. The Board has a responsibility to enforce county laws and regulations even if the violator threatens to sue. The Board owes to the law-abiding citizens of Prince William County to enforce the law.

3.       The Obama administration distorted RLUIPA for its own political objectives. RLUIPA was passed by Congress to ensure that religious buildings could not be treated differently than other uses, such as movie theaters. Nowhere in the law does it require local authorities to waive local regulations or laws for applicants who self-identify as a religious institution.

4.       Shariah code is incompatible in a country of free people. In America, we are ‘endowed by our creator’ with certain rights. Each citizen has the same identical set of rights. Under Shariah, rights vary by gender, religion, age, etc. Three minutes are insufficient to describe all the rights which Americans would lose should we become subject to Shariah.

5.       This mega-mosque will dominate the free men, women, and children in this rural community.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Too Will Be Old Someday

My beautiful Mom, 2016

Every time I go to the nursing home to see mom, I am reminded how self-absorbed and neglectful families have become in this country. For the last three years, on my weekly trips to see my mom, the patients, whose relatives never come by or only show up at Christmas to make sure they are still in the will, are sadly spinning their hours away in pain, loneliness, and suffering until the final moment when God calls them to Heaven.

Time is a precious commodity and people of all walks of life have become really selfish with their time. Senescence is an inconvenience in our western culture, not a source of wisdom and experience that we should seek and learn from. Many less developed cultures praise old age and respect the experience and knowledge gained from the long life of their elders. They don’t even have words in their language for nursing homes or assisted living, these are alien concepts. The tribe takes care of their sick and old.

The old men and women, who are now patients, were someone’s mom, dad, the soldier, the warrior, the teacher, the nurse, the home maker, the farmer, the mathematician, and the skilled builder who erected your home.  That someone seldom shows their face in the hallways to witness the pain, suffering, abuse, neglect, unsavory smells mixed with yells of help, to check on their loved ones, who were once strong, healthy, and full of life just like you.

We let poorly paid strangers from faraway lands feed mom and dad three meals a day of institutional food, bathe them, change their wet beds hopefully on time, their diapers, their outfits, wash and bleach their clothes to unrecognizable colors,  and give them medicine and proper care.

The nursing homes are always understaffed but it gets worse on weekends. As I limp in pain to see mom, I wished I could take her out of this place and have someone care for her in my home. But not every state pays for skilled nursing care at home. I can’t lift and do all the things for my mom that she needs, even though she has shrunk in size. No matter how many times I go visit her, or how hard I try to make her stay more home-like, it is never the same and I feel that I have failed her as a daughter and as a human being.

There are some patients who have outlived any immediate family or have never had any relatives to begin with. Nobody ever comes to see them. They are all alone in the world, sullen, and silent amid the cold and cruel world around them. Nobody notices them anymore and they seldom make eye contact.

I make a point to talk to some of them, touch them, bring a treat, and say hello. A twinkle of the former liveliness softens their furrowed faces, bringing out a short-lived smile. And a bit of sugar free chocolate sweetens the day, albeit it momentarily.

Catalina Grigore wrote recently about a 70-year old who died in a nursing home.  Having been Europeanized, Romania now has nursing homes, sad places where people go to die. The nurses did not like her, she seemed mean and uncommunicative. She left behind a pointed lesson in kindness that brought many to tears. https://voce.biz/info/2017/mar/23/aceasta-batrana-nu-era-suportata-de-nimeni-din-azilul-in-care-si-a-trait-batrinetea-ce-au-gasit-ingrijitoarele-dupa-ce-aceasta-a-murit/

You see an old lady, senile, with strange habits, a sad face, lost eyes who mentally contemplates times gone by, forced to do things she does not want to do, and stubborn. You think, she interferes with your daily routine, and that’s irritating, but you have no idea who she was or how she got there.

Inside she is the naughty child she used to be, skipping, jumping rope, and climbing trees in her grandma’s back yard; she is the beautiful twenty year-old who just graduated from college, in love, engaged, and soon to be married; she is the forty year-old with kids who are now adolescents; she is the fifty year-old crying into the pillow at night because her house is empty, the children’s laughter is gone, the nest is empty, and the life that revolved entirely around them is now gone; she is the sixty year-old who took care of and spoiled her grandbabies; and she does not know how she got to be seventy and then eighty, and so sick and lonely.

Everybody abandoned her – they either died or moved away and forgot her while living their busy lives.  Her husband passed away and she is frightened. She is now old, no longer the vibrant young woman who could move mountains. She is no longer a mom, a wife, a grandma, a sister, or an aunt. She is just a door number in the nursing home. Her name appears on a small plaque but the nursing staff calls her by her door number. It is much easier than trying to pronounce her foreign name.

Mother Nature is cruel – it robs us in the end of all that makes life worth living. Strength, health, youth, stamina, and joy of living abandon us.

In her moments of clarity, I asked my mom how she felt about her treatment in the nursing home. What she said brought me to tears.

“We are still young inside and healthy, dressed in our finest, ready to go shopping, to work, to a fine restaurant, dancing the night away at a party, loving and living.  But the nursing staff treats us with contempt because we are helpless. They argue with us to do their bidding. They want their shift to go smoothly and fast. Can you not see my soul and my crushed desires behind my shaking hands and my wrinkled face? I lost my children, my family, and everything I’ve ever loved; can you not be patient and kind with me? I don’t have much left in this world, just this old, aching, body who does not want to respond to movement. We are not ready to die and we certainly don’t want to die alone next to strangers.”

Just remember, if you live long enough, you too will be old someday, at the mercy of strangers, helpless, racked with pain, and arthritic.

 

Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse

On a sunny and breezy June 24, 2017, a group of over 100 Romanians from states and suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C., have gathered in front of the State Capitol’s reflecting pool to pose for a group picture in celebration of the Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse called “ie,” a hand-woven and hand-sewn artisanal blouse. Women from the three regions of Romania, Transylvania, Moldova, and Wallachia, have sewn these intricate works of art for centuries.

The event was organized by Bogdan Banu and the group photo, taken by Ioana Buliga, was posted on La Blouse Roumaine, the website created to celebrate the rich tradition of folkloric designs;  its name was inspired by the Henri Matisse painting, “La Blouse Roumaine.”

June 24 was officially recognized by the Mayor of Washington, D.C. in 2015 as “reaffirmation of Romanian cultural values and traditions, and serving as a bridge to ancestral homeland.”  

According to Banu, June 24 educates the American public about Romanian culture and tradition and “brings awareness that many of the clothes they see and buy are inspired by Romanian folk creations… the ‘peasant blouse,’ the emblematic piece of clothing of the 60’s and 70’s in America, of the Hippie Era, was in fact, a Romanian blouse.”

Banu continued, “Nowadays we see great fashion designers such as Tory Burch or Dior inspired and sometimes exactly copying traditional Romanian clothing. We have therefore used the opportunity provided by this event to draw public attention that these fashion designers have a duty to recognize their source of inspiration, to #givecredit and, above all, to work with traditional craftsmen who are still creating.” https://www.facebook.com/LaBlouseRoumaine10/photos/a.286820234769651.68861.286810884770586/1312488265536171/?type=3&theater

Expensive designers can copy Romanian folkloric costumes such as blouses, coats, vests, pants, skirts, and other garments without attribution, but only a Romanian artisan can create them with originality and unrivaled talent.

A few ladies, who posed for this event, were wearing long-sleeved and short-sleeved “ie,” some new, some sewn more than a hundred years ago. A special “ie,” which belonged in a museum, had been worn for the first time on the day that the Eiffel Tower had opened in Paris. The yellow stains of time were barely visible here and there.

Original skirts, blouses, hats with feathers, and hand-made leather shoes called “opinci” were worn for the photo shoot. A man’s long shirt with red stitching was also on display. One lady told me that she has her own Romanian costume museum in her home in Arlington, Virginia, where she preserves with love all the items she has collected over decades.

The national “ie” is one of many symbols of the rich Romanian culture, passed on from generation to generation, the artistic creation of thousands of talented and anonymous women who could easily spend months toiling on one “ie,” worn for a special occasion and during church services.

Such works of art were passed on to daughters and granddaughters as part of their dowries.  There are men’s and children’s traditional costumes as well. Folkloric dancers dazzle audiences on stage with their skill and beautiful costumes from various regions in Romania.

Queen Maria of Romania was often seen on the grounds of the Bran Castle in Risnov, dressed in a beautiful white “ie” with red and black stitching and the traditional skirt, “fota,” also hand-woven.

I still remember my aunt and my grandma who were intricately weaving yards of white cloth which was then painstakingly sewn to size and cross-stitched or embroidered by hand in beautiful colors chosen according to the region and the taste of the wearer. Not one “ie” was identical to another; they each had a distinct flare that expressed the talent of the creator. The sleeve often had a wish sewn in a bright color by the owner. Only then would the wish come true.

I have my own “ie” gifted to me on my wedding day in 1978 by my parents, several sizes ago. On my subsequent trips to Romania, I’ve always sought an unusual pattern and color and I brought back a new “ie.” I wear them with pride and it makes me feel that a small part of Romania is always close to my heart.

Photo credit: Ioana Buliga, Buliga Photography

 

A Progressive Migration to Conservative States

Liberals from California and smaller blue states are exerting their influence on the electoral process in red states, determined to flip them to blue, and, by and large, are succeeding with the exception of the most recent election in Georgia’s 6^th district where Democrats spent over $23 million, the most in the history of the House of Representative elections ever.

I’m still scratching my head trying to understand the insanity of 144,000 low information Americans from Georgia who voted for the Democrat candidate Jon Ossoff, a French President Macron look-alike, even though he did not reside in their district and did not have much of a platform.

No amount of cash, air time, dishonest claims, speeches, and other shenanigans Hollywood and progressives around the country engaged in, convinced the rest of the well-informed Georgia voters to elect Jon Ossoff.

Someone comically wrote that “Snowflakes are crying their Ossoff in their parents’ basements’” after the results of the election determined that Ossoff lost.

Trying to cajole young voters who had just graduated from high school, frustrated that conservative parents interfered with their attempts to reach potential 18-year old voters living in their parents’ basements, voters who have no idea who runs the political world and our lives into the ground, Democrats complained to the compliant press that parents were mean and unresponsive to their frequent calls and attempts to brainwash their offspring to vote for the Democrat candidate.

The socialist Democrat platform was well articulated by candidates like Bernie Sanders. Vote for collectivism and social justice, he told his young and naïve followers; when I lose, I can buy an expensive sports car and a second home in Vermont while you dopes are driving tin cans or old cars with the “Feel the burn” and “Coexist” bumper stickers on and lay your head on your parents couch in the basement after a hard day’s work as baristas at Starbucks.

Democrats from progressive states have deep pockets which they spend on Millennials and other misinformed and brainwashed young people who, for $15 and hour, a “living wage,” will go anywhere dressed in black, with face masks, like the cowardly anarchists and fascists that they are, and will destroy someone else’s property in the name of “social justice” and “equality.” The not-so-feminine and self-described nasty women dress in vagina costumes like vile idiots. They attack people who disagree with their insanity and demonize our duly-elected President with vitriolic hate.

Progressives have been moving to conservative states in droves, changing the face of the electorate and flipping parts of a red state into blue, eventually succeeding in flipping the entire state to the progressive agenda by dominating in a few very populous cities. Thus, a state like Virginia, because of its heavy concentration of communists and other fellow travelers in the northern part, it has elected a fellow progressive governor, senators, and other representatives despite the fact that the rest of the state is very much conservative.

Former Rep. Allen West, who was redistricted out of his seat by his own Republican party who did not like his America-first stance on many issues, compared this exodus of progressives and invasion of conservative states to the Muslim Hijra which is also taking place all over the world as we speak, including the United States. By far they are succeeding in colonizing western civilization beyond their wildest dreams, both in Europe and here at home.

If you add into the mix the illegal vote of so many aliens who have crossed our border unlawfully or were brought here by the Obama administration, one can see how elections are swayed in the direction of the Socialist Democrat Party which now runs or heavily influences all the blue states, our government, the military, the fake main stream media, all the technology monopolies, social media outlets, publishing houses, academia, schools, Christian churches, the legal system, and the Deep State.

What conservatives are left with is the alternative media and talk radio with voices like Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, and TV personalities like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity. Nobody is sure how long that will last. Liberals, the intolerant bunch that they are, operate on the following predilection - you have a right to say what you want, as long as you agree with me.

We were lucky that Georgia conservatism won this battle. Will we be lucky next time and win the war? Most Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security, have food on the table, air conditioning, heat, water, in-door plumbing, multiple sports channels, a home sweet home and, as long as nobody bothers their daily routines, they don’t care who is in charge of their global enslavement. So they vote in more of the same corrupt politicians for both parties.

Many go to church and bend over backwards to appease the few atheists and their fellow travelers who demand “separation of church and state” in schools but say nothing when special accommodations are made for Muslim children and their prayer needs.

American Christian children are being indoctrinated into Islam by the Common Core curriculum in public and private schools, and are forced to go to the bathroom with a pedophile/mentally deranged person who pretends or “feels” that he is a she.

What else can possibly go wrong with our great country, the former “shining city on the hill,” that is being tarnished day by day by influential anti-American groups with huge coffers?

Why Are Billionaires, Media, Academia, Environmental Movement Promoting the Enslavement of their Citizens Who Must Decarbonize?

"One must give the Soviets their due. No other country is capable as are the Soviets of manipulating public opinion in the West." – Natalie Grant Wraga

Few intelligent people understood the global environmental communist agenda twenty years ago but Natalie Grant Wraga did. The majority did not pay careful attention and the MSM presented the environmental agenda of Cultural Marxism in a very positive light that seemed logical.

Most people understood the chemical and trash pollution of air, water, and soil. We could see it around us. Nobody wanted to live in a dirty world, polluted beyond safe and healthy habitation. Who can possibly object to the protection of endangered species that have been overhunted for food, selfish predatory trophies, or tribal customs?

But that is not what the environmental Cultural Marxists referred to – they wanted to decarbonize our civilized life, turn us back to a more primitive living in order to better control every facet of our lives, and to reduce the much maligned CO2, the gas of plant life, to levels progressives determined were safe for human and animal habitation.

In an article published in June 16, 2008, “The Marxist Roots of the Global Warming Scare,” Wes Vernon quoted Natalie Grant Wraga: “Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”

Wes Vernon mentioned in his article that Natalie Grant Wraga died in 2002 at the age of 101 and “was an internationally-recognized expert on the art of disinformation.” In her obituary in the Washington Post, “Herbert Romerstein, veteran intelligence expert in the legislative and executive branches of government, described Grant/Wraga as ‘one of our leading authorities’ on Soviet deceit.”

He further said that John Berlau of Investors Business Daily “wrote that some of the most respected scholars on Soviet Intelligence have credited this woman with teaching them how to penetrate desinformatzia, Moscow’s term for its ongoing operation to deceive foreign governments.”

Natalie Grant Wraga published her article, “Green Cross: Gorbachev and Global Enviro-Communism,” in the spring of 1998 at the age of 97. Very involved, alert, and out-spoken, Grant became legally blind in her late 80s and was helped in her writing pursuits by her devoted reader/researcher who prefers to remain anonymous. She learned a lot in the process of helping Natalie and considered her an early voice of the movement that would later emerge as The Tea Party.

The Soviets, who at the time were promoting their influence via the ‘peace’ movement, had decided to replace the issue of ‘world peace’ with the task of protecting the world’s environment. “Although ‘peace’ still remains a prominent item on the list of deceitful operations of Soviet leaders,” said Natalie Grant in 1998, “protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for.”

At the time, there were two groups, Natalie said, who represented environmentalism on the world stage – the Earth Council, an NGO chaired by Maurice Strong, then a U.N. top-tier bureaucrat, and the Green Cross International (GCI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) linked to Moscow and chaired by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, its founder.

According to Natalie Grant Wraga, GCI could trace its roots to the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders of Human Survival, in short the Global Forum.  Global Forum was supposed to join the Earth Aid Society through dialogues with its founder, C. Nobel.  The group first met in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in June 1985.

The meeting deliberated environmental degradation and depletion of earth’s resources. According to Grant, two people in the meeting were Angier Biddle Duke, former chief of protocol in the Kennedy and Johnson administration, and Congressman James H. Scheuer of New York. The Congressman visited Moscow and Soviet officials attended a subsequent 1987 conference in Oxford, England. Strangely, she said, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mother Teresa were also in attendance at this conference.

The next big conference of the Global Forum was held in Moscow in 1990 and was co-sponsored by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. With the Academy of Science supporting its content, speakers included U.N. Secretary General and then Senator Al Gore who spoke as a member of the Global Forum Council. He wrote an article in Shared Vision, the Global Forum publication. The keynote speaker was Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then President of the USSR.

The summary of his speech appeared in Shared Vision No. 7 on p. 11 along with the following recommendations: demand a nuclear test ban, establish an international monitoring of the environment, sign a “covenant” to protect “unique ecological zones,” pledge support of U.N.’s environmental programs, and of the June 1992 international conference on the environment in Rio, Brazil.

Natalie Grant Wraga believed that Gorbachev, as President of the USSR, was speaking and promoting the views of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These “communist recommendations” were taken to heart by the Global Forum which became a “communist front and started acting upon Gorbachev’s suggestions.”

Grant/Wraga thought that naïve non-communist environmentalists were duped into joining the communist effort to turn the communists’ recommendations into a battle to protect the Earth. Several events pushed the agenda further:

1.    Stockholm Conference in 1972 (Secretary General was the Canadian millionaire Maurice Strong) – he managed to force his environmentalist agenda onto the world

2.    U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 asked for a code to impose behavioral norms for individuals and states in regards to Earth

3.    The First Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 influenced 178 countries to sign the 40-chapter U.N. document called U.N. Agenda 21; politicians embraced it at first, then started calling everyone that criticized it as conspiracy theorists, then brazenly adopted it one county and town at a time with grants from the federal government disbursed through a foreign entity operating at local levels, the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)

4.    Formal launching of the Green Cross International in 1993, Kyoto, Japan when Gorbachev accepted the nomination as founder and chairman

5.    U.N. Agenda 21 of 1992, the blue print of Sustainable Development, now part of every government plan around the world, was further promoted and augmented during meetings in Copenhagen, Cairo, and Beijing. Social justice, a blatant communist doctrine, appears prominently in this document and is now heavily promoted by academia and the main stream media who are indoctrinating the American public non-stop.

6.    Rio+5 met in March 1997 to assess the progress of Sustainable Development five years after 1992 Rio conference

7.    The U.N. Second Earth Summit in New York, attended by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore stressed “aid to developing countries” and reducing emissions of “greenhouse gases,” a pact designed, in Grant’s opinion, “to cripple what’s left of American industry.”

The Earth Charter, which had been chaired by Maurice Strong until his death, had collaborated with Green Cross International, chaired by Gorbachev, and launched an Earth Charter in 1994 in Hague. In order to maintain life on earth, countries and their citizens had to engage in “norms of ethical and moral behavior” in all sectors of society as prescribed by these communists. The idea of “consensus” was developed, the bogus scientific “consensus” that progressives are browbeating real scientists with, and ridiculing and marginalizing those who deny that anthropogenic global warming exists.

Green Cross International (GCI) promoted Gorbachev’s communist values while he called for a “new civilization.” What this new civilization entailed was not explained but it was certainly not democracy, nor prayers, since Gorbachev had said that neither can solve the manufactured and bogus “world crisis.” He constantly discussed “change of values” but did not specify what values needed changing, why, and how. But he did say that the planet had rights and “the rights of the Earth” had to be guaranteed.

Natalie Grant Wraga wrote, “GCI suggests greater focusing on ‘soft law.’ Soft law refers to non-binding documents drawn up by special interest groups, such as GCI or the Earth Charter Council, that establish ‘norms,’ hoping they will take on the force of ‘law’ through customary practice. Majority rule and dissent are thereby circumvented.” Grant/Wraga was right, as most of U.N. Agenda 21, although not ratified by the U.S. Senate, has been implemented at all local levels through ICLEI’s visioning committees of Green Growth/Smart Growth initiatives of Sustainable Development.

The U.S. Chapter of Green Cross International, named Global Green USA, was opened in 1994 by Gorbachev during his visit. Its slogan was “one world, one people,” which brings into focus why every school and college in our nation now promotes global citizenship, anti-Americanism, social justice, and total divorce from one’s history, traditions, sovereignty, borders, language, and citizenship.

Grant/Wraga wrote, “Barely one year after its establishment, Green Cross and Crescent International had already formed five national chapters with two headquarters in Hague and Geneva.” She pointed out that none of these organizations had helped any flood or earthquake victims, oil spills’ mitigation, other environmental disasters, and have been silent on dam projects. They have been “long on rhetoric but short on action.”

When Grant/Wraga wrote her article on the Enviro-Communism in 1998, she astutely pointed out that the green movement, green on the outside and red on the inside, was a “Soviet disinformation operation” in which “Facts are exaggerated into a ‘nightmarish’ picture of floods, scorched earth, disease and death. The target was the industrialized West,” scared into submission by “Moscow’s sympathizers in science, academe, and the slavishly obedient Establishment media.”

The 97-year old Natalie Grant Wraga, referring to Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev, asked a very profound and telling question, “Who profits from the activities of these two men?”

Who profits today from the global warming/climate change industry, worth trillions of dollars? Why are billionaires, the media, the academia, and the environmental movement promoting the enslavement of their citizens who must decarbonize? If they are so worried about the environment, why are they not giving up their fossil-fuel driven wealthy lifestyles and huge fortunes to the poor of the entire world and become poor like the rest of them?

 

Progressive Equal Pay and Capuchin Monkeys

“Most people are pretty happy with what they’ve got until they see what the other guy has got.” – Alfred E. Neumann, Mad Magazine

Photo: Wikipedia

An article about “equal pay,” which appeared on my screen recently, caught my eye. The article was entitled, “What Happens When Two Monkeys are Paid Unequally for the Same Work?” The embedded video was clipped from a TED talk by Frans de Waal, primatologist, ethologist, and professor of primate behavior at Emory University, who talked about the “fairness study” as it involved the pillars of morality, reciprocity and empathy. His study was done with Capuchin monkeys who appeared to “reject unequal pay.” http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next?g=3

The outcome of the monkey video embedded bears no resemblance to the economics of remuneration but, to the untrained mind, it seems to validate the snowflakes’ mantra that we should all receive equal pay because it is our human right. These days, in the progressive philosophy, all welfare and the results of human activity are a human right bestowed upon us by the generous and omnipotent government that receives its money and generosity from thin air and money trees.

If two Capuchin monkeys were given cucumbers, they were perfectly happy. If one monkey was given grapes, the results were different. Using new monkeys who have not done the task before, the results were comical. 

The two monkeys paid the human with a rock first and then received the treat, either cucumber or grapes. The monkey on the left got cucumbers and the monkey on the right received grapes. The first piece of cucumber was fine, the monkey ate it, however, after she saw the monkey on the right receiving grapes, a better tasting treat, the first monkey rejected the next slice of cucumber and threw it in apparent displeasure back to the human running the experiment. Each time the monkey received cucumber, she was agitated, banged and rattled the glass enclosure and threw the cucumber back. As the presenter said, this is the “Wall Street” protest on display, the audience erupted in laughter. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dMoK48QGL8

This may seem like a convenient lesson of Economics 101 and why all Capuchin monkeys should be paid equally for the price of a rock, however, it is more a lesson on malicious Envy, a deadly sin.

Keynesian economics, taught in our colleges and universities, tells us that “The United States has rather more income inequality than most other industrialized countries,” and “The distribution of income in the United States has grown substantially more unequal since about 1980.” (Economics Principles and Policy, William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder, tenth edition, p. 450)

First of all, we are not Capuchin monkeys. Secondly, food is not income, nor pay, unless we live in a primitive society and use food as commodity money.

Thirdly, progressives recite the politically correct talking points that agitate and enrage them, demanding equal pay, an economic impossibility. They have failed to learn in school the real causes of income inequality.

1.      Differences in ability (Some of us can do math faster, some are better wordsmiths, some program computers more accurately, some run faster, some can play an instrument, and some are born with poor health due to genetic mutations or have different IQs.)

2.      Differences in intensity of work (Some like or are able to work longer hours without making mistakes)

3.      Risk taking (Entrepreneurs gamble sometimes all they have and win, other times they lose and start all over again with the same energy and curiosity)

4.      Compensating wage differentials (Some people work the night shift or work very dangerous jobs that other people are not willing to take; consequently they must be paid more as an incentive to work.)

5.      Schooling and other types of training (Those who go to college and receive a degree with an employable skill are going to receive higher pay upon graduation; those who choose to end their learning with a high school diploma or a worthless college degree with no possibility of employment at the end of four years, will experience an income differential that they will not like but it was based on a voluntary decision.)

6.      Work experience (Research has proven that workers with more experience earn higher wages.)

7.      Inherited wealth (Children of wealth can go to more expensive schools and can finance businesses and thus potential success; there is no guarantee that inherited wealth will make one successful but, in most cases, it is quite beneficial; Chelsea Clinton received a very high salary on her first job even though she had no experience whatsoever in the field, it was based strictly on nepotism.)

8.      Luck (Chance and luck play important part in income inequality. Someone develops an idea that makes him/her a multi-millionaire. At the same time, thousands others toil for years on great ideas that never take off.)

When it comes to unequal pay due to economic discrimination, Americans find this intolerable. Economic discrimination, according to Economics 101, happens when equal factors of production receive different payments for equal contributions to output. This sounds great in theory but in practice, how do you measure, each and every time that two factors of production are equivalent; it is always a subjective determination, not a precise and objective one.

You may spend eight hours a day at your desk but your productivity may be half of someone else’s because you spent part of the time day dreaming, surfing, taking breaks, talking to your co-workers, playing computer games, and not turning your assigned report on time. Should you get paid the same as another person who completed twice as much work as you in eight hours? In the case of assembly line production, it is easier to measure productivity based on the number of widgets you produce.

Even Keynesian economists agree that “equality is bought at a price” and that there are better ways to promote equality by seeking policies that do the least possible harm to incentives and efficiency in the economy. They prefer redistribution of income to fight poverty. “Neither complete laissez faire nor complete equality would normally be society’s optimal choice.”

Centralized planning economics has experimented with equal incomes for most professions, and failed miserably in every communist country it was tried, with disastrous effects. People became even lazier than they are by nature, hid and slept part of the day instead of working, pretended to work because they knew the commies pretended to pay them, justified stealing from work to supplement income, and developed a black market in order to survive.

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, a social critic and a psychologist, wrote a book, The Bell Curve, which became rather controversial due to the claims made on the distribution of IQ tests on a bell curve. Most people clustered in the middle, with fewer at both ends.

As Baumol and Blinder said, “No one doubts that intelligence contributes to economic success, nor that genetics has some bearing on intelligence.” But some argue that environmental factors are more important than genetics in determining intelligence and that “true” intelligence is different from test-measured intelligence. I might add common sense, which is not so common anymore, to the list of economic success. Cognitive ability is certainly not the main ingredient in economic success. Why else would a ball player and some actors make so much money? They have a unique skill or talent that most people don’t have.

To sum it up simply, we are not Capuchin monkeys, envy is a sin, and, in my humble experience, progressive equal pay at all levels is a utopian communist promise that cannot be fulfilled; it is just equal misery for all.