"A Billion Minutes Ago Jesus Was Alive" and Mega Data

The author of Lazarus Man, Chet Nagle, spoke to the Republican Women of Clifton on March 18, 2015 about “The cyber world and you, and how I learned to rob banks – with a computer.”  

The cyber world is a daunting ether space inhabited by bytes, kilobytes , megabytes, terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, and zettabytes (ZB). Each measurement is larger than the previous one by increments of 1,000. It is so huge that one zettabyte can hold almost five quadrillion books of 200 pages each.

According to Nagle’s research, the Internet held 1.2 ZB in 2009, 2.8 ZB in 2012, and it is expected to grow to 40 ZB by 2020. Imagine 1.2 ZB as 75 billion fully loaded 16 GB iPads, stacked 339 miles into the sky.

Humans produce now in two days “more information than was created in all of history up until the year 2003.” Nagle said that “if you had bought the computing power found inside an iPhone 5s in 1991, it would have cost you $3.56 million. A TI-83 calculator’s computing power could have taken astronauts to the moon in 1969.”

In the seventies one computer occupied an entire building. Now a major international bank needs just five servers, each the size of an ordinary box.

The data is stored in computers, laptops, iPads, tablets, cell phones, external flash drives, servers in schools, businesses, companies, government, and servers in the “cloud.”

The Mother Ship is the NSA Cloud in Utah where water and electricity are plentiful, enabling its global Cloud to exist. They save not just Meta data, they store EVERYTHING of EVERYBODY around the world, citizens and governments. “If it’s on the Internet and it can be picked up with antennas, it’s there,” said Nagle. Even Hillary’s emails are there, he added, “now try to get them out.”

In addition to personal and banking information, addresses, social security numbers, 70 million medical records are stolen, a veritable cash trove of blackmail. If a database can be hacked, the hacker can engage not just in identity theft but also in identity change.

According to wired.com, an entire town in Romania owes its bustling economy to online hackers. “Râmnicu Vâlcea is a town whose business is cybercrime, and business is booming.” The town of 120,000 is known to the cyber world as Hackerville. http://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_hackerville_romania/

The situation is so out of control that the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Secret Service held a Cybercrime Seminar in Brasov on October 3, 2012, sponsored by American Express, EBay, Microsoft, Western Union, Trustwave, and MoneyGram International, the larger victims of cyber-criminal activity.

Cybernetics, the study of how humans and machines control and communicate information, has been around since 1948, and it is thought to derive from the Greek word “kybernētēs,” meaning pilot, governor (from kybernan to steer, govern).

The cyber world and its data are under attack from many fronts. There is hacking by those malcontents who want to get even with the perceived wrong-doers. There are criminal hackers who want your identity and want to profit financially from access to your information. There is the possibility of EMP attacks from an enemy force such as a country’s government or from natural disasters such as solar flares. Last but not least are cyberwars, nations being the biggest hackers. A case in point is China, which employs hundreds of thousands of young hackers. They placed malware in the New York Times servers as discovered in 2013. Russia used cyber-attack on Estonia in 2007 and “shut the country down, basically.” They used it in 2008 in Georgia. Ukraine and Russia are currently using cyber-attacks on each other on phones, military vehicles, radios, electronics, GPS systems, anything vulnerable, and anything is vulnerable today.

Malware is software with malicious content designed by young computer intellects. Kaspersky Labs see 325,000 new malware attacks daily. Stuxnet attacked the Iranian nuclear centrifuges, probably developed by U.S./Israel. Lizzard Stressor got into routers, using Wi-Fi to access data. Tyupkin in Eastern Europe inserted malware into ATMs. Dark Hotel inserted malware into business travelers’ cell phones, laptops, and tablets. Last but not least, Nagle mentioned Regin & Flame, U.S. cyber-attack programs.

The 228,700 cyber incidents recorded in 2013 more than doubled when compared with the 100,000 incidents recorded in 2009, said Chet Nagle. Today, Homeland Security reports half a million such incidents a day because the computing power has doubled every year and hackers have become more sophisticated.

The Internet is going to be controlled in this country via the innocuous-sounding net neutrality under the guise of “fairness.” It is already controlled in countries like Cuba, China, and North Korea and we know what that does to freedom of speech, thought, and the ability to write and publish.

Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called net neutrality “Obamcare for the Internet,” because the government will determine “internet pricing, terms of service, and the types of products and services that can be delivered, resulting in fewer choices, fewer opportunities, and higher prices for consumers.” John Boehner (R-Ohio) believes it will “destroy innovation and entrepreneurship.”

http://theweek.com/speedreads/441874/heres-conservative-case-against-net-neutrality

 

 

 

 

A New Breed of Global Communism on Steroids

Politicians like to tell us ad nauseam that the immigration system is broken. What exactly is broken? I asked this question recently of the panel on immigration at CPAC 2015. It became obvious that conservatives and progressives conflate the issue of legal immigration with the issue of illegal immigration.

One of the panelists began to show us a very complex chart of the LEGAL immigration system and the hoops and offices that a person must navigate in order to legally immigrate to this country. The system appeared no different than the system in place in 1982 when I became a naturalized American citizen. We are told that there are 4.1 million unresolved applications for LEGAL permanent residence in the United States, some of them backlogged 15 years or more. These people want to join their families already legally in the U.S. They are unfortunate that they cannot jump a fence, swim across a river, or walk across the desert. They are not the chosen ones to be flown or bussed across the border by our own government that wants to fundamentally change the demographic makeup of our country.

What politicians and their minions talk about when they refer to the broken immigration system, is the wait time for LEGAL immigrants. What IS BROKEN is the fact that the government is not securing the borders, and is not enforcing the laws already on the books in regards to ILLEGAL immigration into our country.

Rep. Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, Chairman of the Congressional Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare is telling us that “Americans should prepare to protect their homes, businesses, and families in the event of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster” in a 24-page booklet that was just released.

Yet they are leaving our southern and northern borders vulnerable to entry of any citizen of another country who wants amnesty. And we are not just talking about illegal Mexicans. Border patrols have found prayer rugs and Qurans abandoned in the desert on the southern border.

The government is bringing in refugees from countries that hate our western culture, our legal system, and our way of life. They are bringing in thousands of refugees each month from Somalia and Syria to resettle them in the United States, knowing that these people are not interested in learning our language, accepting our culture, and becoming Americans.  As soon as they arrive, they become wards of the state, and start making demands to install Shariah Law and to accommodate their needs for madrassas schools, for exercise of their Islamic religion, and to take down anything that is American and offensive to them: our flag, our National Anthem, our Pledge of Allegiance, and our Christian religious symbols.

The new standards of education called Common Core, adopted pretty much around the country, are indoctrinating our children into communism and proselytize for Islam. It’s no news that academia has been communist for years but lately the assault against anything American has picked up speed. Take the case of the Irvine, University of California ban on the American flag. It is not the work of misguided individual students; they are supported by their professors. These are not isolated incidents. They are happening around the country at every level of our educational system and of our government.

When I came to this country legally, I had every intention of assimilating into the American culture, of learning the language, and becoming a contributing member of society. I did not run to the nearest Social Security office to sign up for benefits, to vote illegally, and to form barrios, countries within our country, bringing with me the hellhole I escaped from.

Politicians tell us that these people come here to work; they don’t come for the welfare or the in-state tuition. But the welfare figures and the earned income tax credit given to newly arrived illegals are in the billions of dollars a year and they are incontrovertible evidence that most don’t come here to work and then return home to their countries. They are here to stay; we are their social featherbed and financial support. The IRS tells us that they are entitled to retroactive earned income tax credit for 2011-2013 to the tune of $35,000 per family, even though they paid no taxes in those years and were here illegally.

Politicians and the main stream media tell us that illegals live in the shadows, they are euphemistically called undocumented Americans. They don’t live in the shadows. They draw welfare, they go to the same churches with us, they shop at the same stores, and they send their kids to the same day care, kindergartens, and schools. On the day when SNAP and EBT are distributed, all the cash registers at Walmart have lines of Hispanics and Middle Easterners who do not speak a word of English, not even “thank you.”

The illegal children that arrived last year to supposedly join their families were not all children after all , some were known-gang members and drug dealers from Mexico, many were sick, bringing in diseases that were formerly eradicated in the U.S. and new ones that are endemic to Central America. Some of our children have died from the enterovirus and a mysterious paralysis. Some adults contracted antibiotic-resistant TB. Illegals brought in measles, scabies, Chagas disease, and lice.

In New Hampshire there are some schools were 82 different languages are spoken.  How do you accommodate so many different children who do not speak English and have no relatives, and still maintain a semblance of normalcy in schools where scores are now plummeting?  How do you maintain standards of excellence without dragging down American students?

Churches took them in with open arms because they received millions of dollars in grants to do so from the federal government. It was not just the Christian thing to do; it was a money-making machine. The children were injected into small communities around the country, mostly without the knowledge of the population. Talk about forced colonization!

Many of these illegal immigrants come from dictatorships of communism, socialism, or totalitarianism. They don’t know what a democracy is, don’t care, and will not understand it. Many are illiterate in their own languages. Democracy for them is welfare from the government. Their trust and belief system are in BIG government. Capitalism and self-reliance are foreign concepts to them. Piracy, theft, cheating, stealing, bartering to survive, and a poor work ethic are the norm.

I remember the feelings of elation when I arrived in New York. I deplaned and I breathed freedom into my lungs. I knew, if I worked hard, I could be anything I wanted to be because I had freedom of opportunity, not guaranteed welfare. I did not expect anybody to support me and I did not expect others to translate everything for me into my language while I lazily pretended that I was too dumb to learn.

I still had a tremendous fear of the police state I escaped from and cringed every time someone knocked on the door and my heart pounded when I saw a policeman. Under communism, they were there to harass and to control us. We were always guilty no matter what.

Thirty-seven years later, I find myself more each day reliving the former communist country I fled in 1978. We now live in a neo-communism of sorts where the police state is everywhere, surveillance is more sophisticated and intrusive than the Soviets would have ever thought of; there is no need to place a spy on each street or stairwell in every block of apartments who registered the comings and goings of residents. There is no need to wiretap someone’s phone or home.

Now we have electronic surveillance that is neatly stored by NSA in Utah. If we don’t make it easy for them via Facebook and other social media, they now have installed smart grids, smart meters, smart appliances that communicate with the mother ship everything we do in our own homes under the guise of convenience, saving the planet from manufactured and imagined global warming, and saving us money. They are spying on us without a warrant not just with drones and cameras at every intersection, but with our TVs, our laptops, our GPS devices, our car computers, and even medical tags and I.D. tags embedded under your skin.

The immigrants of today are a total different breed from the immigrants of 37 years ago. They are here to demographically alter the makeup of our society in order to “fundamentally change” who we are as a nation, just like we were promised by our president five days before Inauguration. He has been mystifyingly successful beyond anybody’s imagination.

The 30-50 million illegals that were amnestied by both parties in Congress will change America into a borderless country with no identity, no sense of real history, no traditions, no pride, a hodge-podge of global citizens of various ethnic backgrounds and multi-cultures who have no allegiance to the Founding Fathers, to the Constitution, and to the citizens before us who have sacrificed themselves and built this country with their treasure, sweat, tears, and blood.

If you want to know what America will look like ten or twenty years from now, look at Sweden, Paris, London, Marseille, Belgium and other countries where senescent populations are replaced by fertile Middle Eastern and African populations. Europeans and now Americans are not having enough babies, instead are strolling dogs and cats. This fundamental change was brought by decades of progressive indoctrination in schools and universities that have destroyed the fabric of many societies with their preaching of communism, tolerance, diversity, multi-culturalism, and immorality.

For the last seven years, we have gone daily and weekly from one manufactured crisis to another, where a misperceived social injustice had to be redressed by creating more and more bureaucracies that we will never be able to undo. We have become the most racially divided that this country has ever been, thanks to the current administration.

We have witnessed the creation of the progressive thought police and intolerance, labeling everyone with whom they disagree as bigots, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and domestic terrorists. We have also witnessed the government’s social engineering in action and takeover of the main stream media, of morality, marriage, education, finance, banking, housing, car manufacturing, health care, of millions of acres of arable land and parks, of the military, the Internet, privacy, nutrition, free speech, free assembly, of religion, and pretty soon the last bastions – the state police and the personal freedom to bear arms. It is déjà vu for me but it is communism on steroids.

Copyright:  ILEANA JOHNSON  2015

Dr. Savage Asks, "Where is America's Marine Le Pen?"

Marine Le Pen 
Photo credit: Wikipedia

In his valiant attempt to save our country from the illegal immigration invasion, the conservative talk show host Dr. Michael Savage asked with much passion the rhetorical question, “Where is America’s Marine Le Pen?”   

Savage dedicated his monologue intro on March 6, 2015 to the issue of amnesty, fast tracking millions of illegal aliens, potentially 30-50 million by 2016, who, armed with Social Security cards and driver licenses, will install Democrat party rule in perpetuity, with Republicans whining about their minority status while enjoying full privileges of the ruling elite.

Stating that we don’t have another party in power, Savage continues, “We have the most extremist, anti-American administration in history. They must be stopped. There is no precedent in the history of the world to accept 30 million illegal aliens into a nation and to change the demographics forever, unless that nation lost a war and was conquered by a foreign power.” Have we lost a war and, if so, which one?

According to Savage, the current administration is flooding the country with illegal aliens, the “New Americans,” at imperative speed; they are presented by progressives as part of the “civil rights movement,” even though they are violating our borders and breaking into our country.

The Democrats, seeking a majority, are building up a voter base that does not speak our language and has no desire to do so; in gratitude, they are going to vote Democrat, so long as they are getting a pathway to citizenship and Obama welfare. “They’ll vote Democrat for thousands of years!” Savage exclaimed in frustration. “Who will watch the watchers? The FBI is supposed to watch this. But it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the administration!” White people are now expected to step out of the way and give the country over to the flooding immigrants who are going to be integrated into mini-countries inside the United States. They will be the protected “New Americans” while the real U.S. citizens will suffer.

To facilitate this fundamental transformation, our children will be tracked with behavioral assessment for kids. “If your child is too American, or too hetero, they are going to red flag him,” said Savage.

Mental health care and substance abuse care for all the junkies will be paid for by Obamacare at a cost of $30,000 per week even though recidivism rate is high. The treatment facility, he says, will offer “group therapy, yoga therapy, sex therapy, meditation.” He believes “cold turkey therapy works.” All this expensive therapy is just a con, he said, “They are looking for sympathy.” And the treatments for substance abuse “will add to the huge cost of Obamacare.”

“Why do we not expend money on the exceptional [kids] in America? When was the last time the Obama administration spent any money on the exceptional, not the downtrodden, not the junkie, not the substance abuser, but the exceptional children who are not challenged enough in the classroom because they are spending time on the stupid ones? Has there been any money earmarked for the gifted child,” he asks. “I doubt it; it’s called the lowest common denominator. You keep sinking the class lower and lower. No gifted classes, nobody is looking for the bright children, as if they are the freaks of society.”

To make matters worse, the Common Core standards of education, now adopted around the country, teach anti-Americanism, proselytize children into Islam, and teach students revisionist history, making them ashamed of who we are, of our achievements around the globe, of our country, of our culture, and of Christianity. Symbols of our nation, our flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the National Anthem are often stripped from official locations and public events. Lessons indoctrinating children into Islam and communism are now common around the U.S.

Looking at France, trying to save itself from the “scimitar of radical Islam that is threatening to cut their throats,” Savage describes how Marine Le Pen proposes to do so. Smeared as a far-right politician, Marine is a “nationalist who loves France.” Savage said that “she is hated by the Socialist scum who have ruined France and exposed them to the Islamic sword.” The “slimy political class considers her xenophobic because they pander to third-worlders whom they flooded into their country,” but she wants to return the power to the French people.

Le Pen views the French government’s plan to control homegrown jihadis as nonsense.  Her solution is a zero tolerance on Shariah Law, no Muslim holidays, enforcement of French-speaking in mosques, no Arabic in mosques, and stripping dual citizenship jihadis of their French citizenship.

“Why wouldn’t’ that work in America,” asks Savage?  Marine Le Pen thinks an overhaul of French foreign policy is necessary and a review of relationships with countries like Qatar and Turkey who support terrorism.  Chaotic mass immigration has created places where the French public is afraid to go. “There is no Islamophobia in France,” Savage is quoting Le Pen. “There are no anti-women acts.  There is a rise of anti-Semitism.”

Savage describes Le Pen as the champion of the little guys against globalization; France should leave the euro from the Euro zone, boost the franc in trading; France does not need experience, “it needs a fresh pair of eyes.”

“She is hated by President Francois Hollande. She has laid out her vision for France. Why don’t we have a Marine Le Pen? Why don’t we have a true conservative party in this country,” asks Savage. But then he readily admits that a third party would be a catastrophe at this point in our country.

Who is Marine Le Pen? Member of the European Parliament, President of the Front National, the third-largest political party in France since 2011, lawyer and youngest daughter of long-time Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine is criticized as a far-right politician based on her “divisive approach to immigration,” which urges the west to “eradicate the cancerous cell that Islamic fundamentalism represents.”

Marine Le Pen said, “When we fought Islamic fundamentalism, when we denounced it, they dismissed us as Muslim haters.  It is those people who dismissed us as Muslim haters who have created the confusion – not us.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/11343571/Charlie-Hebdo-Will-Marine-Le-Pen-destroy-fragile-France.html

In a recent article in the New York Times, “To Call This Threat by Its Name,” Marine Le Pen states that “France, land of human rights and freedoms, was attacked on its own soil by a totalitarian ideology:  Islamic fundamentalism.” She describes the need to distinguish between Islamist terrorism and their faith because “Islamist terrorism is a cancer on Islam, and Muslims themselves must fight at our side.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/marine-le-pen-france-was-attacked-by-islamic-fundamentalism.html?_r=0

She continues, “Everything must be reviewed, from the intelligence services to the police force, from the prison system to the surveillance of jihadist networks.”  She identifies three mistakes made by those in power.

1.      The free movement of people and goods across the European Union borders must be revisited as it encourages the free flow of tons of weapons from the Balkans and jihadis move unhindered across many nations.

 

2.      The massive wave of immigration does not include an assimilation policy.  The desire to assimilate on the part of the immigrants does not exist. Culture is a major influence “on the way immigrants relate to French society and its values, on issues such as the status of women and the separation of state and religious authority.” She infers that immigrant cultures are at odds with French secularism, the “laïcité.” High unemployment is exacerbated by this massive immigration.

 

3.      French foreign policy is in a “geopolitical incoherence,” supporting Syrian fundamentalists and alliances with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, supporters of jihadi fighters. Le Pen suggests stripping jihadists of their French citizenship, reinstating national border checks, and zero tolerance for any behavior that undermines French Law.

Le Pen stresses that safety, liberty, sovereignty, French values, and independence are most important if France is to be saved from Islamist Fundamentalism.

And the words of Dr. Savage seem to echo in the wilderness, “Where is America’s Marine Le Pen?”

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015 

 

 

The Romanian Tradition of "Mucenici"

The 40 Martyrs (Mucenici)
Photo: Wikipedia

The celebration of spring in Romania starts on March 9 through April 23. It coincides with the Orthodox tradition honoring the forty martyred Saints (Mucenici) at Lake Sevastia. The forty Saints were Christian soldiers employed by the pagan Roman Emperor Licinius around 320 A.D. The governor of Armenia, Agricola, who found out about their faith, forced them to pray to his pagan gods. Because they refused and did not give up their Christian faith, the forty soldiers were jailed for eight days, stoned, and finally sentenced to death by freezing in Lake Sevastia.  During the night, the lake warmed miraculously, the ice melted, and forty crowns of light descended from Heaven above the soldiers. Taken alive from the lake in the morning, the emperor crushed their feet and left them to die.  Their remains were burned and their ashes were thrown into the lake. http://www.romaniajournal.ro/march-9-the-romanian-tradition-of-the-40-martyrs/

The folklorist Simion Florea Marian described the legend from Fratautul Vechi, Moldova, which actually mentions forty-four Saints, the exact number of days between March 9 and April 23.
In honor of their sacrifice, the Orthodox Church celebrates the forty Saints with special sermons across the country and the tradition of a special food called “mucenici.” March 9 coincides with the beginning of spring when all rural communities bring the plow out which is repaired by the village blacksmith, cleaned and purified by fire, while the farmers decide when and how they are going to start breaking ground for seeding the soil. Plows are then placed in front of each house, declaring the beginning of the agricultural season open.

"Macinici" as Mom prepared them
Photo: Wikipedia

In southern Romania named Muntenia, where I was born and raised, women cook dough dumplings cut into shapes of eight and boiled in syrup with nuts, sugar, and cinnamon. Mom gave away “mucenici” or “macinici” for the souls of the dead while others did it as prayers for an abundant harvest. Women from the regions of Moldova, Dobrogea, and Banat bake “mucenici” pastries in the shape of eight in the oven and serve them with honey and ground nuts. According to Ramona Ciortescu, the regions of Maramures and Crisana do not celebrate “mucenici.” Why the shape of eight? Perhaps it is a reminder of the eight days of jail and a stylized shape of the human form of those forty martyrs who died for their Christian faith.

Baked "mucenici"
Photo: Wikipedia

Rural secular superstitions intertwine with Christianity, celebrating the end of “old ladies” capricious and cold winter days and welcoming the warmer and fertile spring days of “old men.” Around the country rituals of chasing winter and frigid days away abound -- striking the ground with sticks, repeating incantation verses, and a peculiar children’s game of jumping over fires, a symbol of purification. To this day, my Mom has a scar on her right leg with snow-white hair, when she burned herself as a child jumping over such a superstitious fire ritual.
Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

Freedom to Farm or Bust

Martha Boneta at Liberty Farm
Photo credit: Susan Lider

Virginia, like many other states, offers land preservation tax credits of $100 million a year.  Land preservation tax credits are tied to conservation easements which are binding agreements between a land preservation trust (usually a NGO) and a farmer who receives tax breaks in exchange for “legally restricting future development of their property” for a number of years or in perpetuity, as specified in the contract.

Martha Boneta, who was instrumental in passing the two bills now dubbed Boneta Bill-1 and Boneta Bill-2, bought a farm that had a conservation easement which was administered by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a non-governmental organization, and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a state government agency.

The Piedmont Environmental Council is a conservation group that holds 51 easements on 7,600 acres of land in Virginia. According to Kevin Mooney, when Boneta bought her farm in 2006, “she did not receive either tax breaks or money.”

Boneta purchased her 64-acre Liberty Farm in Paris, Virginia, from the Piedmont Environmental Council with the easement already in place from the previous owner. For eight years, Boneta fought the PEC’s frequent farm and intrusive closet inspections, video and photographic surveillance, and other forms of excessive harassment.

Bryant Osborn wrote in Culpeper Star Exponent, “Martha has charged that PEC has trespassed repeatedly on her farm and has attempted to drive her off the farm through unwarranted and overly invasive conservation easement inspections, and an IRS audit she says was instigated by one of PEC’s board members.”

Susan Lider said in a press release, “PEC was caught on video engaging in abusive inspections that involved interrogations and demands to inspect closets, attics, and even photographing the farmer’s laundry.”

The Boneta Bill 1, HB 268, which became law in Virginia with bipartisan support on July 1, 2014, protects “certain activities at agricultural operations from local regulation in the absence of substantial impacts on the public welfare.” This is meant to protect farmers like Martha from intrusive local governments that can go to excessive lengths to harass and prevent an honest farmer from engaging in simple farm activities such as growing organic vegetables, selling sheared wool, and jars of honey.

The Boneta Bill 2, HB 1488, which passed both houses in February 2015, and is awaiting the governor’s action by March 29, 2015, “allows a landowner or other party to a conservation easement to request that the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation use the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act to resolve a dispute relating to the interpretation of the easement.” If and when the bill is signed by the governor, it would control land trusts that currently have few standards, predictability, accountability, consistency, or transparency.

Martha Boneta’s farm has been in the crosshairs of PEC from the beginning but she has not given up. After a November 6, 2014 hearing in front of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a motion to take over all easement enforcement, if both Martha Boneta and PEC agreed, resulted in a trustee vote of 6-0 to approve a resolution. The VOF was chartered by the Virginia General Assembly in 1966 to promote land conservation and to monitor easements.

If you might think that Boneta’s troubles are over, you would be wrong.  Kevin Mooney reported that, on December 10, 2014, the PEC’s attorney sent an email to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation declining the amendment proposed by VOF on grounds that it “would likely confer improper private benefits” to Martha Boneta.

In the face of this “preposterous” claim, Bonner Cohen of the National Center for Public Policy said, “For eight years, she has been subjected to harassment and humiliation by the PEC’s reckless enforcement of the easement, and she has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself. Whatever the original intent of Virginia’s conservation easement statute, the PEC’s well-documented deplorable behavior calls out for the General Assembly to reform the program, lest other landowners be subjected to the hell she has gone through.”

Back to square one, Martha Boneta refiled a lawsuit in Fauquier County Circuit Court on March 4, 2015 against PEC, the non-profit land trust in which she alleges that “PEC colluded with realtors and government officials to issue zoning citations against her property in order to force her into selling her farm.” Martha Boneta had withdrawn the original lawsuit in order to allow the opportunity of mediation. Since the mediation has failed, she refiled her lawsuit.

According to a press release of March 5, 2015, “Martha also is considering filing a second lawsuit at the federal level against PEC, based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, commonly known as RICO.”



Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson portrait taken at a Spotsylvania County farm on April 26, 1863, seven days before his mortal wounding at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia   Photo: Wikipedia image

New evidence emerged that constitutes the basis of the federal RICO lawsuit. In the signed and filed versions of the easement, PEC makes the claim that Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate War General, encamped on Martha’s property on the evening of July 18, 1861. According to the press release, “Historical accounts of Jackson’s movements in Fauquier County place the encampment at another location.” https://books.google.com/books?id=IZI_y8Td5HUC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=%22STonewall+Jackson%22+Paris%2c+Virginia%22&source=bl&ots=2fmgq8IkxJ&sig=CWgTBXszYAzp-eejTIl_M-OHFC8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ujzTVMbZLMehgwTAkYPQBw&ved=0CGgQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22STonewall%20Jackson&f=false

The press release continues, PEC “makes a similar historical claim about Jackson’s whereabouts in the easement documents it has associated with Ovoka Farm, also located in Paris, but on a separate parcel of land from Liberty Farm.”  https://vof.app.box.com/s/tycexiapro4vhkl9smsvflfwp7oae7kd/1/2913997329/24711587393/1

This historical connection with Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson hyped the price of Liberty Farm beyond its actual value, thus Boneta paid $425,000 in 2006. She lost revenue for two years when she was told to fence off 18 acres of the Oak Grove section of the property where no farming was allowed because of the stated connection with the now-debunked historical encampment.

Stay tuned for the next development from Liberty Farm, Virginia, where a determined American is fighting for her farming rights and indirectly ours against a well-funded environmental goliath.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

CPAC 2015's Conservative View of Immigration Focused on "Consensus"

“We are not a nation of immigrants, we are a nation of citizens.” – Mark Levine to CPAC

CPAC 2015 Panel on Immigration
From left: Alfonso Aguilar, Rep. Jeff Duncan, Charlie Gerow, Mario Lopez
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Among the glitz and conservative rhetoric of CPAC 2015, one important panel discussion was barely attended by 40-50 people – “Immigration: Can Conservatives Reach a Consensus?” It is in my estimation an issue that is going to fundamentally alter the makeup of our society forever.

The panel was moderated by Charlie Gerow of Quantum Communications and consisted of three panelists:  Representative Jeff Duncan (SC-3), Alfonso Aguilar of the American Principles Project and Mario Lopez of the Hispanic Leadership Fund.

Alfonso Aguilar presented an argument for a conservative solution that respects the rule of law and focuses on border security but recognizes the need that our economy has for foreign workers, dealing at the same time with “the undocumented population without doing amnesty.”  Amnesty, in his view, and self-deportation that does not work, are “false choices.”

Because the status quo is not an option, Aguilar said, we must encourage those Republicans who share his view and convince the rest of the Republicans that “the status quo is not acceptable.”  People are staying here illegally because “Big Government encourages de facto amnesty.” Additionally, “people come here to work, they are not coming here to have children and to become citizens, no mother brings her child so they can pay instate tuition at Texas A&M.” They come here because there is no way for them to enter and exist legally, Aguilar continued.

Yes, we need border security, strategic fencing, and more resources in places like the Rio Grande Valley where there is lawlessness; we need expanded use of sensors, of drones, and an exit registry, Aguilar proposed.

“We believe in the free market. If American Big Business cannot find workers, why should the government tell an American employer that they cannot bring a foreign worker that they need? Let the market determine,” continued Aguilar. “The Braceros program worked, but liberals opposed it because of the unions.”  

Aguilar argued for family reunification, that we cannot break up families. There are entire towns in Mexico that have dislocated populations, he said. We have become a social featherbed for the poor Mexican population. Aguilar argued that “children” traveled last summer on top of trains to be reunited with their families. Yet there is factual information that many among these travelers were not children, were known gang members, and transportation and housing were arranged and paid for by our government.

The panel emphasized that we need a market-based guest worker program that will work as long as operational control and border security are under control. We cannot grow the economy, Aguilar said, if there are no American workers willing the do the job and we do not have foreign workers.  What about millions of American citizens who are currently unemployed and have no prospects of getting a job in this terribly mismanaged and depressed economy? Why does the government only care for the fate of illegal aliens and not the future of our own American citizens?

What can we do with the millions of “undocumented” currently residing in the United States? “We cannot deport millions of people,” Aguilar said, and self-deportation does not work. Actually deportations have occurred in the past successfully.  He proposes a penalty for the path of legal status, but no citizenship.

In light of the hurried Social Security cards which were issued to the five million amnestied by executive fiat, these people will vote illegally for those who brought them into our country. Contrary to what Aguilar said, “Latinos are not natural-born Democrats,” they do come from third world nations whose citizens look up to big government for their salvation and wellbeing even though they may be conservative with their families and with religious views. They look up to the Pope with reverence, a political figure, who has criticized capitalism in favor of Marxism and has interjected himself in the issue of global warming and population control.

Mario Lopez pointed to a chart from Reason.com, showing the backlogged legal immigration system as a proof that our immigration system is broken. He mentioned Obama’s executive overreach in reference to amnesty and how he voted five times as a senator for poison pill amendments to kill the immigration reform bill proposed long before he became President.

Pointing to the visa lottery, the country quotas, and the bureaucratic nightmare that backlogs family integration visas, he said, “It is almost impossible to immigrate legally to the United States.” My question is, how many members from an extended family in Mexico should be allowed to integrate with one illegal family member who successfully jumped our border, while millions from other countries are waiting to bring one spouse and/or child into the United States?

“People are dying every day to get a piece of the American dream. “ They are not coming here for handouts, welfare checks. People come because America is the shiny city on a hill.” I say, it is a shining city on the hill with generous welfare programs at the border. This mass exodus into the United States created “legacy voters” who are loyal to Democrats who promise and deliver more welfare.

“Why is the system broken? It is not broken, it is not enforced,” said a member of the audience. “What has to be changed, radically changed?” Aguilar answered that the immigration track, the quota system based on the country of origin, treats other countries unfairly, and it must be stopped. The H2B visas for non-agricultural unskilled workers should not be capped at 65,000 per year, he argued, because employers cannot find American workers and the labor market should be allowed to prevail.

Do politicians and immigration lobbyists care how millions of unskilled and unemployed Americans are supposed to find jobs? The tired explanation that Americans won’t do jobs that illegals do is a convenient fantasy created for those in need of cheaper labor. Additionally, not all illegals are paid lower wages.

Rep. Jeff Duncan interjected that we have an unsecure border and a broken sovereignty.  “The American people do not trust the administration to enforce the law so why should we have another law for the President to pick and choose winners and losers; the President has poisoned the well to have a conversation in Congress because no one trusts the administration to actually do the job that it is charged to do. We have to uphold the law.”

Rep. Duncan said that the robust welfare system incentivizes people not to take the jobs. In order to redress the immigration problem, welfare reform must also be addressed concurrently.  Rep. Jeff Duncan’s partying words were, “ I don’t agree with everything the panel has said, but we should have a debate and listen to the American people.”

People should come here legally and then go back to their countries. The American people should decide how much immigration we have. Mario Lopez argued that “Labor is an economic commodity. Overpopulation is not an issue if you complain that you are bringing in too many illegals. There is a demand of labor.”

Panelists agreed with one audience member that citizenship should be outlawed if a person has committed a crime in the United States and the offenders should be sent back to their home countries.

To the question, could labor unions be a hindrance to the proposed immigration system, Mario Lopez answered that labor unions are generally against it with the exception of a few such as the SEIU. “Operatives in unions are generally Democrats.” He continued that “we cannot keep people out” and “the Chamber of Commerce wants cheap labor.”

The question remains, if illegals who refuse to assimilate do not come to the United States for welfare, why have so many received over $4.1 billion in earned income tax credit, who claimed children of relatives in Mexico, and why recently amnestied illegals, who have not paid taxes at all, will receive retroactively for 2011-2013 as much as $35,000 per family in earned income tax credit?

Would it not be cheaper for the American taxpayer to enforce e-verify and adopt $5 biometric cards that would match prospective foreign employees with prospective employers and stop all welfare to illegal aliens? Would it not be safer for the American people to stop bringing in “refugees” from countries that are hostile to our culture, to our western civilization, to our legal system, and to our way of life?

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

Exceptional Romanians and Their Amazing Country

Voronet Monastery Photo: Wikipedia

These days Romania receives bad press and Romanians are preceded by an unfair and negative reputation across the European Union thanks to its large indigenous gypsy population that travels to Western Europe in search of jobs and lucrative activities and businesses, legal or illegal.

You can only punish a person or a nation so much before that punishment starts to invade who they are, so I decided to write a short article highlighting some of the famous people and facts that are seldom mentioned or known about Romania. Truenomads.com has more interesting trivia and links for the curious traveler in search of history.



Peles Castle Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

I wrote about Peles Castle in my newest book, Communism 2.0. Peles Castle, the royal residence and now a museum, with its first corner stone erected in 1875, was the first European Castle to have self-generated electricity and heat in 1888 which are still operational today. But during Ceausescu’s brutal socialist/communist regime, the rural population survived by oil lamps.

The town of Timisoara was the first European city that used electricity in 1884 to illuminate its streets, second after New York City. In 1869 Timisoara was also the first European city to operate trams pulled by horses.

Brasov - Black Church

The largest gothic church located in Eastern Europe is The Black Church in Brasov. Built in 1380 and partially destroyed by a fire in 1689, hence its name, the Black Church has an organ with 4,000 pipes and a bell that weighs 6.3 tons.

The tallest wooden church in the world (78 meters) is located at Peri-Sapanta Monastery in Maramures. With its 7-meter cross weighing 455 kg, the church was built by Ion Macarie in 1766 for the Greco-Catholic community, to replace the previous stone church that stood there for 312 years.

The Unitarian Church was founded in Transylvania, in western part of Romania, the birthplace of Francisc David in 1510.

The Voronet Monastery in Moldova is known by its moniker, the Sistine Chapel of the East. The Biblical figures painted inside and out have a folkloric twist and date back from 1488. The famous blue color of Voronet and the greens are as vivid today as they were when painted during the reign of Petru Rares.



Babes Mountain - The Sphinx
Photo: Wikipedia

Bucegi Mountains - Babele Photo: Wikipedia

The beautiful Carpathian Mountains with rare and interesting rock formations such as Babele and active mud volcanos are home to the most virgin forests in Europe with over 400 unique animal species, including the Black Goat and sixty percent of the European brown bear population.

Scarisoara Glacier Photo: Wikipedia

Romania is home to the second largest subterranean glacier in the world. Situated in the Apuseni Mountains, not far from the town of Campeni, the Scarisoara Cave (Pestera Scarisoara) was first mentioned in 1863 by the Austrian geographer, Adolf Schmididi, who drew the first map of the cave. The largest such glacier is in Slovakia. The glacier, jutting from the icy waters of the cave, at the 1150 m altitude, is 3000 years old, with a total surface of 5500 square meters of ice, as thick as 37 m in some places and as thin as 26 m in others. It is a cave explorer’s dream.

The best preserved natural wonder in Romania is the Danube Delta where the River Danube flows into the Black Sea. The Danube, originating from the Black Forest Mountains in Bavaria, flows into the sea, forming the second largest delta in Europe and the best preserved with 3,540 square kilometers of unusual fauna, flora, rivers, canals, swamps, lakes, and arbors with islands of reed.

The oldest Homo sapiens fossils, carbon-dated to 37,800-42,000 years ago, have been unearthed in the south-western part of Romania. It is an archeologist’s dream, amateur or professional, to join the many on-going digs around the country, finding evidence of Romania’s early history, and its ties to the Roman Empire and to the fights with the indigenous Dacians.

The discovery in 1961 by archeologist Nicolae Vlassa of three clay tablets with unusual inscriptions that predated the Sumerian writings from 3300 BC, convinced some archeologists and historians that the Tartaria tablets, dated around 5500 BC, could place the written language away from Mesopotamia to the Danube River area in Romania.

Among famous inventors and Romanians of note stands Henri Coanda. The Bucharest-born inventor presented at the International Aeronautical Exposition in Paris in October 1910 at Champs-Elysee a red airplane without a propeller marked “COANDA-1910.” The single-seat plane was different because it was propelled by a piston-motor with 4-cylinders cooled by water, producing 50 HP at 1,000 RPMs, and then transferred to a compressor at 4,000 RPMs. While trying to test the motor, Coanda actually took off in his propeller-less unusual airplane that was shooting flames. Since he had not flown such a contraption before, Coanda made a forced landing. His extraordinary flight occurred 30 years before Heinkel, Campini, and Whittle and was the precursor of the famous Concorde.

Petrache Poenaru from Benesti, Romania, obtained in May 1827 the French patent for “plume portable sans fin, qui s’alimente elle-même avec de l’encre,” the portable pen without end which supplies itself with ink, the first fountain pen in the world. The remarkable inventor was Tudor Vladimirescu’s secretary during the Revolution of 1821. He escaped by fleeing to Paris where he received in 1826 a scholarship to complete his engineering studies at the famous Ecole Polytechnique.

Professor Nicolae Paulescu discovered insulin in 1921, the hormone that regulates metabolic lipids, minerals, proteins, and named it “pancreina.”  He published his research and findings in a Belgian journal under the title, “Recherches sur le rôle du pancréas dans l’assimilation nutritive.” In 1916, during final research stages, the Germans occupied Bucharest and delayed his announcement of the final results.  However, two enterprising Canadians, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, using Paulescu’s 30 years of research and published papers, isolated insulin and used it to treat a patient 8 months earlier. For this reason, they received the 1922 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Millions suffering of diabetes are saved by Paulescu’s research.

Ioan Cantacuzino is said to have developed the “Cantacuzino Method” of the anti-cholera vaccination. He was also instrumental in treating typhus and tuberculosis effectively, developing the notion of contact immunity.

The Romanian inventor Traian Vuia was the first to build and fly on March 18, 1906 an “automobile-plane with fixed wings” that was totally self-propelled.

A Romanian doctor, Ana Aslan, specializing in gerontology, prepared a product in 1952 at her clinic in Bucharest, which she named Gerovital or Vitamin H3, patented in over 30 countries, to treat dystrophic ailments in the elderly. Among her more famous patients are Tito, Pinochet, Charles de Gaulle, Claudia Cardinale, Charlie Chaplin, royalty, bankers, famous businessmen, and even President John F. Kennedy.

Renowned for its gymnastics school made famous by Coach Bella Caroly, one of his pupils, Nadia Comanici, was the first gymnast to receive a perfect score of 10 in the Olympics in Montreal, Canada in 1976.

The huge Parliament building, a painful reminder of Ceausescu’s communist destructive megalomania, is second largest in the world after the Pentagon building. Many beautiful and important historical and religious landmarks had been destroyed to make room for this opulence.

So many exceptional young Romanians have left their home country and still do today, trying to find themselves, their art, talent, education, freedom, and economic opportunity. Some make it, some remain in anonymity.

Mihai Eminescu
Photo: Wikipedia

Most memorable are the famous sculptor Constantin Brancusi who, in his old age, wanted to leave his entire life’s work to his compatriots in Romania but was refused; the celebrated composer, violinist, pianist, and conductor George Enescu, one of the greatest composers of the 20^th century;, and the legendary Romantic poet, novelist, and journalist Mihai Eminescu who wrote about valiant Romanian fighters and its tumultuous history; and the comedic and witty playwright Ion Luca Caragiale whose short stories, poems, political commentaries and plays rejoiced in painting the foibles of humanity; and the playwright Eugen Ionescu, who wrote mostly in French, a prominent figure of the French Avant-garde theatre.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015