My Blogtalk Radio Discussion with Silvio Canto, January 12, 2015

Topic today: Paris massacre and the European Demographics (29 minutes)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2015/01/12/the-paris-shooting-troubles-in-europe-and-other-issues-with-dr-ileana-johnson

The American Oligarchy

We are fundamentally changing, it’s been coming for decades but it is more noticeable now because we have Internet, wireless devices, pocket size encyclopedias encapsulating libraries around the world, and instant access to real news around the globe.

We see how the main stream media has become the spokesperson for the ruling elites, corruption rules and day, and education is melting in the flames of common core.  

We are no longer a Constitutional Republic because we failed to keep it. We are a benign oligarchy composed of same party rule of the few oligarchs, no matter how we vote at the polls. The oligarchs do as they please.

Oligarchy is a “form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; it is government by the few.” Nations ruled by oligarchies do not fare well, whether they are benign oligarchies or absolute tyrannies.

Newly elected politicians sign worthless pledges to constituents which they immediately break on the first day of Congress, joining those they swore to defeat and corruption is epidemic with all politicians, new or expert octopuses with tentacles strangling the heart of the republic. The oath of office is just a meaningless step to power.

We go about our daily lives; we go to work, shopping, to the movies, to parties, and watch surreal “reality TV” and sports while our country continues to fall apart. Nobody understands the insurmountable debt accumulated by Congress after Congress that is looming over our futures.

We still have food, we are fat thanks to food additives and a sedentary lifestyle, we are lulled into a false sense of security, we have a warm place called home, some have jobs, some have 2-3 part-time jobs, the welfare checks keep rolling in, what is there to worry us?

We are like the declining Roman Empire – America is waning because of the corruption of our leaders which we elect time and time again.

The average American does not really care right now. But the day to day contentment will change during their life time because of millions and millions of illegal aliens brought into the country by this administration. Their children will exist in a third world state riddled with poverty, illiteracy, crime, welfare, shortages, and equal and deplorable penury.

Most people are not feeling the change in their lives, but “fundamental change is in the air” and coming at dizzying speed.

We still have freedom of religion, although some “religions” are catered to more by government laws and regulations, forcing the rest of us to accept a “religion” that is contradictory to our Judeo-Christian values, lest we are sued or killed. Christianity is constantly under attack around the world and at home.

We have to self-censor or pay the penalty of hate-speech. The United Nations wants to codify into law a punishment for anyone who dares to criticize the very violent “religion of peace.”

Theoretically, we still have freedom of speech but, if we exercise it, we are marginalized as loons or phobes, forced to apologize for factual statements, or lose our jobs. In essence, we have lost the freedom of speech guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. We are now fearful to speak publicly, to our neighbors, and even whisper to relatives who have not yet written us off as strange and inimical because we have divergent opinions.

Ask tenured professor Dr. John McAdams of Marquette University about his suspension for exercising his freedom of speech in a blog which criticized an instructor who forbade students to have dissenting opinions in his class because the topic “was settled.” http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/fight-erupts-over-universitys-censorship-of-student-speech/

Speech is free as long as you agree with me. If you advocate for freedom of speech, you are going to be fired or suspended in the very place that prides itself over freedom of speech. But are universities a place where anyone can express their thoughts freely anymore? Especially when they have installed tiny corners called “free speech zones” but you have to ask permission from the university to use it.

We have freedom of the press but the press is run by liberals. We can write our opinions, but can we get them published? After all, most of the publishing houses are owned and staffed by brainwashed progressives.

We have freedom of assembly as long as the city government pressed by progressive agendas approves our petition to assemble and the topic of discussion. Conservative groups are often told no, while illegal immigrants can freely assemble to protest their illegitimacy and law-breaking presence in our country.

What is the goal in bringing into America four million Muslim immigrants per year who are intolerant of infidels and of their freedom of speech, as evidenced in the most recent massacre of twelve innocent Parisians who dared practice their trade of free speech through cartoons? The slain policeman who arrived on a bicycle and unarmed, was unable to protect the other eleven victims.

How could this happen in the liberal paradise of France where police has been disarmed and guns prohibited as demanded by the progressive society who believes that an unarmed populace will convince terrorists to give up their weapons. Surely they will respond to reason and mercy. We are all civilized humans, aren’t we?

Fareed Zakaria said on his CNN show, “There is within the world of Islam many, many pockets, many groups that really have a great deal of difficulty with the modern world, and particularly with the open Western freedom of speech loving, freedom of expression loving world.  The grievance, the grievance is that they feel they live in a world not of their making, a world of the west's making.” Well, in that case, let’s remake the world in the intolerant image of Islam and terrorism will go away. If they hate our world so much, why are they immigrating in droves to the west? http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/01/09/left_focuses_on_non_existent_islamophobia_to_smear_conservatives

Christiane Amanpour, referring to the Paris massacre, said, “One of the things that we're living right now is a very ugly and unseemly rise yet again of Islamophobia, and this is very worrying.  All these governments now are gonna be watching to see how the far right, which made huge gains in the last local elections in Europe a few months ago, National Frontier, UKIP in England, you know, the groups in Belgium and Germany and elsewhere, which are mobilizing big anti-Islamic demonstrations, how this is gonna play into this very ugly political situation.” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/01/09/left_focuses_on_non_existent_islamophobia_to_smear_conservatives

What “ugly political situation?” Twelve innocent individuals, doing their jobs and exercising their right to free speech in the civilized world, have been slaughtered by the adherents to Islam. Can anyone name contributions to civilization that Islam has made since the 11^th century other than violence, destruction, and death?

France24 reports that fifty world leaders have gathered in Paris to attend the Anti-Terrorism Rally on Sunday, January 11, 2015. http://www.france24.com/en/20150110-paris-rally-charlie-hebdo-sunday-leaders/ Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority among them, “are marching in solidarity against radical Islam,” said LTC Ralph Peters on Fox and Friends Weekend.

Kirk Lippold, Commander of USS Cole, wonders on his Facebook page why the United States is not represented in this massive rally against terrorism. “This is an embarrassment for the United States and speaks volumes about this Administration's commitment to defeating radical Islam and the terrorists who kill innocent civilians.” https://www.facebook.com/kirk.lippold.9/posts/10205683838880415?notif_t=close_friend_activity

We are in the phase of a “soft, benevolent dictatorship,” some call it “despotic oligarchy,” shaping what we do, what we say, what we think, what we eat, what we drink, what medicines we take, what doctors we see, but people are generally blind so far to this new phase of reshaping America away from the “evil” capitalist empire that has brought prosperity and development to the entire world.

The moral decline of America is driving more nails into its coffin because everything deviant is now protected and promoted by law and the medical field is encouraging and paying for any physical changes desired.

Rome did not fall in one day, it took a long time for its collapse and it split into two empires, the Western and the Eastern. The Western Empire fell quickly in 476 A.D. to the barbarian hordes that wanted the Roman lifestyle but were unwilling to assimilate.

Political corruption, a mercenary army disloyal to Rome, unchecked immigration,  waves of Visigoths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Franks, Ostrogoths, and Lombards who took turns damaging the Empire, an inflationary economy, decreased agricultural production, trade deficit, decadence, piracy, and lead poisoning were other variables that contributed to the fall of Rome. The Eastern Empire flourished for another 1,000 years as Byzantium.

How long is the American Empire going to survive under a soft, benign oligarchy?

 

 

 

Furs and Environmental Political Correctness

Photo: chinchillaguide.com

Genesis 4:21

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.*

 

 

 

I touched the buttery soft banded white and grey chinchilla coat on the mannequin, draping a fiery red dress. I wonder how many tiny animals were sacrificed to make this beautiful coat that would adorn the shoulders of an elegant socialite who might get cold in the climate change winter air on her way to a fashionable restaurant or a D.C. party. The $50,000 price tag can certainly buy a small house in the south.

The label says that the full-length chinchilla came from Slovakia, the former territory of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the “fall” of communism in 1989.

The red dress under the chinchilla coat cost $300. It’s like drinking a glass of cheap red bubbly Moscato in my 85-year old crystal glass from Grandma Grace.

This department store is certainly not alone in its offering of high-end furs. There is another store that actually specializes in fur coats. I had expected this furrier to go out of business long time ago but it’s been around for quite some time. There are no PETA protests and no sprayings of red paint like they used to do in the 1990s.

According to furriers, it takes about 130-200 chinchillas to make a coat, depending on size and length. Sixty-five minks, 10-24 foxes, and 60-80 sables must die in order to make a full-length coat.

Chinchilla fur is thirty times softer than human hair. Because the fur is so thick, 20,000 hairs per square cm, parasites such as fleas suffocate in its thickness. A chinchilla has more than fifty hairs growing from each follicle. The animal must bathe in volcanic ash or dust frequently in order to remove excess oil and moisture from its fur.  

Who needs furs in our climate change? If you ask environmentalists, since the planet is warming globally, this dastardly man-made climate change, it is ridiculous to even own a fur.  It is an unnecessary fashion statement of social status, like driving a gas-guzzling or an expensive car. Even if you live in permafrost regions, with all this polar high tech clothing, who needs furs in order to prevent frost bite or freezing.

There are 6,000 fur farms in the European Union, capturing 63% of the mink production alone, 64% of farms are in northern Europe, 11% in North America, and the rest are in places like Argentina and Russia. https://www.change.org/p/eu-ban-fur-farming-in-the-european-union

Major producers are China, the Netherlands, the Baltic States, Finland (fox pelts), Russia, Canada, U.S., and the European Union (70% of fox pelts production), with China being the largest re-exporter of finished fur products.

Notwithstanding PETA’s dreadful description of the caged conditions of animal farms destined for fur coats, environmentalists tell us about the environmental pollution by chemicals such as ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, and other chromates and bleaching agents used to preserved and dye furs. These chemicals prevent the decomposition of furs over time in owners’ closets and, in their opinion, are a waste of resources that should be used somewhere else.

According to the environmental lobby, the production of one fur coat from farm-raised animals uses “more than 15 times more energy than producing a faux-fur coat.” They do not say how they arrived at this number and I am not holding my breath for its accuracy.

The much maligned and often cruel modern fur industry occupies an important part in the history of the United States. “Beaver furs were one of the first commodities settlers traded with Europe,” more specifically France.

Beaver pelt traders stretched their routes from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to the Mississippi River with outposts in St. Louis and New Orleans, leaving their French mark in names such Des Moines, Iowa and Detroit (French détroit, “straits”), Michigan.

The fur trade followed the beaver in the north and to the Pacific north-west. You may object to wearing furs today but states like Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon (Benny the Beaver), California, and Wisconsin owe their existence to the beaver fur trade.

* Chriss R. says, "Notice he did not make them wool clothes or linen clothes. He used SKIN---leather!"

 

How Did We "Fundamentally Change" So Fast?

The gilded cage
Photo courtesy of Internet free stock

How did American culture fall prey to the lowest common denominator in our country?

When did we start admiring primitive cultures and considering them superior to our western civilization, giving in to their needy and outrageous demands no matter what happens to our own citizens?

How did the western world fall prey to Marxist-Leninists, to Islam, and to the rap music of the ghetto and prison culture?

How was Europe colonized by Islam in just a few decades of open-borders immigration? Why did its leaders eagerly embrace Islam instead of their own citizens, committing cultural and demographic suicide?

How did American education change so fundamentally that now communism and jihadi Islam are praised and admired?

How did our education decline so much that Boards of Education are composed of liberals and universities are populated by Fabian socialists and communists who have watered down the curriculum to the point where “studies of” have become one of the more popular majors in college even though jobs are not available in such fields?

How can sane educators teach Common Core indoctrination into collectivism and Islam in elementary, middle, and high schools, and still sleep at night, content that they have done their job to educate the youth of America into what it is to be a successful American citizen?

How in the world so many “useful idiots” socialist educators and administrators have made it into their positions of influence and power with superficial academic preparation?

I remember one outstanding history teacher, Judy M., who always posted gruesome pictures of the Holocaust in the hallways.  Her message to students was that we must never, ever forget.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered plenty of pictures taken of the liberated concentration camps because he realized that someday there will be individuals who will deny that the Holocaust ever existed.

In April 1945 Dwight Eisenhower visited the concentration camp near the town of Gotha and wrote about his experience:  “I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency… I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.” http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=136

And Eisenhower was right. A 2014 Common Core assignment, a mere seven decades later, asked students to write on the topic, “Did the Holocaust really happen or was it staged for political reasons?” The six million Jews, gypsies, priests, and other innocents who died in concentration camps must be rolling in their graves. http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/education-2/common-core-students-asked-to-write-essay-did-the-holocaust-really-happen-or-was-it-merely-a-political-scheme\

When Judy M. introduced the topic of the Great Depression each year, students had to forgo food all day except for thin soup so they could truly understand what it was like for people standing in soup lines. Students eating in the cafeteria their allotted bowl, surrounded by an abundance of food, found out that it was hard to concentrate and go about their daily studies with growling stomachs. There are not many teachers left like Judy M.

Carl B., invited victims of communism to his classes to give first-hand testimony of life under a totalitarian regime. He asked victims of the Holocaust with numbers tattooed on their arms to tell the story of what happened to them in WW II concentration camps and how few of their family members survived.  He had former Ambassadors, Governors, and decorated veterans come to his classes. He was so proud of our American heritage and of our selfless courage in the face of adversity!

The late Carl B. loved history so much, he dedicated his entire life to preserving an abandoned three-story ante-bellum home in which doves had made their nests, and brought it to its former glory, filling it with antiques, carpets, music, and paintings of the era. He invited groups into his home every year during Easter and Christmas to admire and enjoy a restored labor of love. A 400-pound statue from a New Orleans antiquary graced his lawn on a bluff, shaded by colorful azaleas in the spring.

Carl B. organized a Pilgrimage tour to other ante-bellum homes in the area and facilitated an evening visit of the local Civil War cemetery. His students chose a few tombs, researched the family history, and, wearing period costumes, re-enacted a candle light tour, describing the lives of those buried there.  People from around the country and around the world came to Columbus, Mississippi for the annual Pilgrimage and the Cemetery Candlelight Tour.

What happened to the American psyche? What intervened since 1979? Was it the establishment of the Department of Education by Jimmy Carter that began the slide of our education system?

Was it the college the education, a mill of socialist indoctrination, producing educators who were certified by the state to make beautiful lesson plans and eye-arresting bulletin boards, but lacked substantive content in their teaching areas? 

College of education majors attracted weaker students, who often lacked basic courses of math and science. The fluff degrees taught them the latest methodology of instruction, usually an untested fad created by a college professor trying to get tenure. Such professors were the role models to emulate around the country, the darlings of the conference circuit, lecturing other minions how to dumb down the education system. 

Was it the fact that we socially-promoted students, we accepted them into college based on racial quotas, minority groups, and other discriminatory systems, and not on merit? 

We now have college professors who are open vitriolic Marxists who staff or chair departments of studies of feminism, racial issues, social equality, social justice, environmental justice, and collectivism, the hallmarks of communism.

Were educators in a North Carolina high school Common Core approved English class teaching vocabulary or were they proselytizing for Islam?   Why would an American teacher be willing to drill their American students into such a subliminal Islamic lesson? Why would an American administrator approve such a curriculum and not call it into question? Why would parents not care what their children are taught? http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/12/north-carolina-public-high-school-proselytizing-for-islam-in-vocabulary-lessons

If teachers had used Christianity and Jesus to teach vocabulary, liberals would be up in arms, invoking the manufactured excuse that church and state have no place in a state-run school curriculum, and demanding that the offending teachers be terminated immediately.

Common Core has not been tested, it is the dream of Bill Gates who has invested over $200 million of his vast fortune into its implementation and it is now pushed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.   

It is sad how far and how quickly the Republic has “fundamentally changed.” Can we restore the spectacular education system that we had prior to the founding of the Department of Education that drains $72 billion annually from taxpayers? Can we reverse the insane Common Core math that is impractical and counterproductive in the real world? Can we reverse the Islamic and Marxist indoctrination of Common Core?

The liberal media is constantly harping and criticizing American values, often in front of foreign audiences, lying and inciting hatred and racial bigotry, enmity, protests, and violence. Manufactured reality takes center stage while real news are ignored. The main stream media is constantly dishonest, covering up for the Democrat Party and for corrupt politicians.

The “journalists” are talking heads who read teleprompters well, indoctrinating the entire country into falsehoods and lies, clouding the minds and judgment of impressionable youths with the agenda of the Marxist Democrats who are now running the country.

The globalist billionaires, with no allegiance to our country, have used their vast fortunes to turn it into a banana republic, infusing their money into progressive causes that are detrimental to the United States, supporting illegal immigration, amnesty, and open borders in their pursuit for cheap labor. Shamelessly, they are using their fortunes to make more money at the expense of future Americans who will eventually find themselves citizens of a global tin-utopia ruled by the United Nations.

The globalists and Hollywood elites with their decadent lifestyles are destroying the future of our children and of America. They are demolishing the middle class by demanding that everybody must be equally poor and equally miserable.

The welfare mentality and dependency created and promoted by politicians has produced generations of adults living on the financial plantation of the Democrat Party that needs their votes but doesn’t care about their education.

The Americans on the dole, who have given up their freedoms in order to live in gilded cages tarnished by fool’s gold, seem content to receive their welfare checks, the crumbs from the powerful elites who run the “changed” world.

Last, but not least, professional corrupt politicians of both stripes are also “fundamentally changing” the country by serving their own greedy interests in the quest for power and control.

Who will inherit the “fundamentally transformed” western civilization and what will they do with it?

 

Hospital Closures under ObamaCare

Photo courtesy of Lazar Dinu
Colentina Hospital Patients 1989

A remarkable photograph taken by Lazar Dinu in 1989 shows patients from a hospital in Bucharest, overjoyed that the communist dictator was gone and they would be able to find drugs in pharmacies, doctors would treat them without bribes and would not kill them during simple surgeries, hospitals would be modernized and actually heal patients, and happiness would be restored.

I wrote about socialized medical care in communist Romania in my autobiographical book, “Echoes of Communism,” (http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Communism-Lessons-American-Choice/dp/1456535080/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419872185&sr=1-1&keywords=Echoes+of+communism) and in a recent article on ObamaCare. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/68532

Judging by the comments of Romanians today, twenty-five years later, not much has changed.  A few private hospitals were built, the bureaucrats and politicians are getting rich off the EU funds that are supposed to go into health care, a Palestinian doctor wants to install a monopoly over healthcare, state-run hospitals are still dirty, deficient, money run out early in the year, doctors and nurses still take bribes to care for patients, patients are still housed in wards and cared for by their families, drugs are more easily available when bought out of pocket, and medical insurance pays modest and inadequate sums for various procedures and for drugs.

If you might think the situation in Romania is bad because they have to overcome 44 years of communist totalitarian dictatorship, you would be right, however the socialized medical care in many EU countries is not much better. Take for instance Ireland - their overworked doctors and nurses are wonderful but conditions in some hospitals are dreadful.

The patient named Maureen I described in my previous article (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/68077) had to share a room recently with five men. One was 94 years old and had dementia, shouting incessantly, and another was a mental patient who kept his clothes piled on the floor, while two security stood guard at the door in case he became destructive or dangerous.

There was one bathroom for all six patients, with no rails to hold on to and the shower did not work. The entire room stunk to high heaven. There were two holes in the wall where the rail had been. Maureen was lucky that a kind nurse gave her a sponge bath each day.  On the day Maureen’s husband was visiting, one of the men urinated into the water jug. 

Family members were told not to alert the media in case their loved ones needed to be hospitalized there again.  One visiting family member who wanted to speak to the media was asked not to do so.

The hospital was supposed to be closed down but people marched and it was kept open under these horrible circumstances. People felt that a hospital with such ghastly conditions was better than no hospital at all.

Apparently co-ed wards are now the norm. When wards are full, it is common to keep patients on gurneys in the hallways. Most doctors come from third world countries and have limited training. There is not enough money for adequate medical staff or hospital administration. Medical personnel are frustrated because they cannot provide proper care to all patients.

If you are lulled into a false sense of security because this cannot happen in the United States, think again. ObamaCare is causing a wave of small hospital closures across our country. According to Paul Bremer, “Eighteen acute-care hospitals across the United States shut their doors in 2013. At least 12 more hospitals have closed this year in rural areas alone. More are getting out the plywood to nail over windows and barricades for doors.” http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/obamacare-blamed-for-killing-hospitals/

Small and mid-size hospitals are closing in inner cities and rural areas with a disproportionate number of Medicare/Medicaid patients.

Reasons for closures are low reimbursements rates, bureaucrats telling doctors that some patient services are “not medically necessary,” physician practices heavily dependent on government reimbursement, ObamaCare regulations that are too expensive to implement, high out of pocket expenses for the insured under ObamaCare, causing less people to go to the hospital, and economically depressed rural farming towns where locals cannot afford to go to the doctor or to the hospital.

Additionally, California hospitals are in danger of closing their doors due to the overwhelming influx of illegal aliens who are treated for free and have their anchor babies delivered free at huge costs to taxpayers.

Madeleine Pelner Cosman wrote a five-page report titled “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine,” in the spring 2005 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in which she stated that “84 California hospitals are closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system.” http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf

Lee Hieb, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, wrote, “Today, all over America, small and mid-size hospitals as well as hospitals in inner-city, poor areas are closing.” In her book, Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare, Dr. Hieb said that “Events happening now give us some idea of what medicine will be reduced to in the future.” http://www.naturalnews.com/048141_Obamacare_hospital_closures_health_care_system.html

For people like me who survived the maltreatment and lack of proper medical care under socialized communist healthcare, there is no surprise; we know exactly what is coming. If Americans would only listen to the voices of reason and experience! If something sounds too good to be true in this “fundamentally transformed America,” it is going to be rationed and miserable.

 

 

 

Communism Left So Many Scarred Lives Behind

On Christmas 1989, twenty-five years ago, the brutal communist dictatorship of Romania ended with the execution of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena in front of a firing squad at Tirgoviste, following a brief trial. His reign of terror lasted 24 years (1965-1989).

The first communist despot, Gheorghe Georghiu-Dej (1945-1964) was so ruthless, the citizens felt like “hunted” animals during his regime.

Almost forty-four years of brutal communism left a deep and festering wound that would be hard to heal and would scar a few generations. In 1990 the world found out about the dreadful orphanages where hundreds of thousands of “orphans” were institutionalized under the benevolent “care of the state.”

These children were abandoned by their parents out of desperation because they already had too many children to support at home and it was impossible to feed them in an economy in which everything was rationed and the grocery stores were empty. It was a choice between death by starvation or accepting the magnanimous “care of the state” who promised them gentle care, food, and education.

Other children were abandoned because they were born imperfect or became sick, and the state refused to treat them medically in the substandard hospitals and polyclinics. Rationing medical care in the utopian paradise of communism dictated that the weakest in society, the elderly and the very young, be neglected and institutionalized to a miserable existence in unimaginable hell holes.
Izidor Ruckel spent 11 years of his life in such an institution, a “Camin/Spital pentru Copii Deficienti.” His parents abandoned him there when he contracted polio at an early age and the hospital institutionalized him.

Vaccines, just like drugs and medical care, were scarce, and doses often ran out before all children were immunized.  Many villagers were too uneducated to understand the importance of vaccinating their children against polio and other childhood diseases.

After ABC’s “20/20” aired a special on the plight of these terribly neglected children, Izidor was adopted by a California family and brought to San Diego.  He describes the trepidation and excitement when the family promised to come back and get him, the dreams to come to America of the show “Dallas,” his let-down when he thought he had been stood up, and the elation when they came back for him.

In a Washington Post video, Janice Tomlin, former “20/20” producer, talks about the megalomaniac Ceausescu who controlled Romania with an iron fist. “He basically destroyed the country. He outlawed abortion, he outlawed contraception, and every woman was required to have five children. In order to have a strong country, he needed to populate the country,” she said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/entertainment/romanian-orphan-tries-to-close-the-chapter-on-his-troubled-past/2014/01/30/596f8ee0-69ce-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_video.html

While she is correct that he destroyed the country, it was not because he outlawed contraception and abortion.  He condemned 20 million people to a life of total control, from cradle to grave, when sometimes death was a relief from the pain and misery of exploitative egalitarian life for the masses, while the communist elites lived in the lap of luxury in fancy homes, took expensive vacations, shopped in their own stores, and were treated in their own hospitals by western-trained doctors.

Contraceptives were not known well or easily available in socialist/communist Romania; women used abortion as a form of contraception. If they could find contraceptives on the black market, they were expensive, and women did not take them daily.

Women were certainly encouraged by law to have children to replenish the dying population but were not dictated to have five. The more children a woman had, the more welfare she received from the communist state. Country folks in general had lots of kids in order to have enough hands tending the co-operative farms and a place to stay in the old age in the absence of nursing homes.

Sighetul Marmatiei where Izidor was born is certainly a very impoverished area, and was so particularly during the communist regime.

Tom Jarriel’s report from ABC showed the cruel treatment of children in these orphanages. People were full of outrage yet nobody in this country bats an eye knowing that more than 40 million babies were aborted in this country since Roe v. Wade – it is considered a “choice” to murder a baby in the womb.

“Izidor was not abandoned into another family, he was abandoned into a hell hole,” said Janice Tomlin.

Dr. Jane Aronson, adoption specialist, described the children, “They were emaciated, skeletal… I’ve never seen that anywhere except in Romania.” I wonder if she had equal access to orphanages in communist North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Union, or China of that time.

Watching these children, most of whom have never been touched by human hands, hugged, loved, kissed, spoken to, read to, rocking themselves endlessly with a blank stare was heartbreaking.

Dr. Charles Nelson, professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at Harvard University, explained how the adopting families in this country were not prepared to intervene in the development of their children who still remembered what had happened to them while raised in an institution that neglected them during their most important formative years.

He also explained that institutionalized children have “lower IQs, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders, anxiety, attachment problems, difficulties in interpersonal relationships,” and show on scans smaller brains and less electrical activity. “Interventions may not yield the expected outcomes” even in cases when the children were not raised in institutions but were severely mistreated early in life.

Izidor is now in his early thirties and wants to rebuild his life, to help others. He said, “Sighetul Marmatiei is always going to be my hometown. My life is awareness, speaking for those orphans who did not get out.”  

Yearning for his real identity, for his biological roots, Izidor concluded with sadness and determination in his voice, “I’ve been known more as an orphan for 22 years now, that is my identity, and I would like to close that chapter and not be known as an orphan.”

The scars left on the soul and minds of so many surviving victims of communism are hard to heal.

The Antikythera Mechanism, the First Analog Computer

Antikythera Mechanism computer-generated
Source: Wikipedia

The advanced computer age has conditioned us to take for granted all the electronic devices surrounding us that bring us instantaneous access to our friends and family, and eliminates the need for the NSA to do any field work to find out everything they ever want to know about us.

Anonymity has disappeared. Thanks to developments in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are now in the age of nanotechnology. Computers have changed in size from an entire building to the size of a credit card and even smaller.

I was very surprised to find out that we had an analog computer in 87 B.C. made of bronze. Captain Demetrios Condos sent his bored crew around the Antikythera Island to dive for sponges shortly before Easter 1900. His boat had been driven off course an entire week by gale winds off the Island of Crete into the calmer waters of the northern tip of Antikythera Island, Greece.

The most exceptional seaman, Elias Stadiatis, dove to 140 feet, aided by lead weights attached to his diving boots. He yanked the rope to be pulled up and, instead of bringing up sponges, he told Captain Condos about “naked women and horses” he saw on the bottom.  The next dive revealed a shipwreck dating back to 80 B.C. Treasures and statues were scattered and plainly visible on the sea floor. The shipwreck find was so exciting! The happy sailors were imagining a treasure trove of gold coins and jewels.

When the salvage operation finally commenced in November 1900, the difficult and dangerous work lasted nine months. Dangerous weather conditions and primitive techniques made scuba-diving so precarious and perilous that one deep-sea diver died and two were seriously hurt.  

Among the treasure trove found in the Mediterranean and later housed at the National Archeological Museum in Athens, an archeologist named Valerios Stais discovered one single encrusted bronze mechanism  in a pile of discarded debris and marble pieces. It appeared to be a clock of sorts.

Fractured later into three pieces, the mechanism lost smaller pieces later during handling and cleaning. Since the initial find, 82 fragments have been discovered by subsequent expeditions, including that of Jacques Cousteau. Seven fragments are actually significant because they contain the mechanism’s gears and inscriptions in Koine Greek.

Valerios Stais announced in 1902 that his find, half the size of a portable typewriter at that time, was an ancient Greek astronomical device. Some thought it was an astrolabe, a tool used by navigators to measure angles of distances between planets and stars above the horizon. Others thought it was a planetarium.  Some believed the mechanism was too complex to be either one and must have been “created by aliens from outer space.”

Professor Derek de Dolla Price of Yale concluded that it was a computer made in 87 B.C. comprised of 30 bronze gears to calculate the movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets. Professor Price described the discovery as “finding a jet plane in King Tutankhamun’s tomb!”

The Antikythera Mechanism, also called the Rhodes calculator, “the forerunner of the computer age” was described as the “wheeled computer of the heavens.” It mathematically calculated the movements of planets and celestial bodies during a period of time when humanity believed that the Earth was a disc floating on a great ocean with the sky above like a bowl. “The planets and the Moon were thought to move along certain geometrical paths.” The mechanism was to calculate and determine the celestial bodies’ exact movement, making further calculations unnecessary.

In 1976 Jacques Cousteau and his crew found coins at the wreck site dating between 76-67 B.C. Cousteau’s coins may point the origin of the mechanism to the city of Pergamon.

Because the mechanism was so complex, The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project concluded in the late 2000s that it was probably made in the Corinth colonies of ancient Greece such as Syracuse.

The Rhodian style vases may point to the city of Rhodes. Rhodes was a center of astronomy and mechanical engineering and home to Hipparchus with his theory of the motion of the Moon.

Michael Edmonds of Cardiff University described the mechanism in 2006 as “more valuable than the Mona Lisa” because the astronomy was correct.

Carman and Evans, in their 2014 study dated the mechanism to 200 B.C. and attributed it to the Babylonians. If that is so, why is the inscription in Koine Greek?

A new expedition is planned for spring 2015 by the Hellenistic Ministry of Culture and Sports. They are hoping to find new parts of the Antikythera Mechanism.