Notre Dame vs. European Secularism

Photo: Ileana, Christmas 2002

Notre-Dame spire

For centuries the European faithful have sacrificed to build exquisite monuments to their faith that subsequent generations would cherish as much as they did. It is a legacy that unfortunately secular Europe has been busy extinguishing for decades. The transformation has been visible to any visitor who cared to observe the change.

Secular Europeans today value venerable old churches as cash cows, to the extent that they provide millions of visitors annually who spend a lot of tourist money to marvel at and admire their remarkable history, art and architecture, and often climb (for a fee) to the rooftop for a breathtaking view of the surrounding city.  

According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of France in 2014 was approximately 66.3 million. France is mainly Catholic Christian, with 63-66% Christians, 23-28% secular people, and 7-9% Muslims. Some areas of Paris like St. Dennis are 40% populated by African Muslims.

There are pockets left of the fervent faithful who are still attending church on a regular basis while the rest may attend Easter services, Christmas, weddings, baptisms, and burials.

While strolling in during service, I often noticed with regret the small crowd of worshippers and their advanced age. The young Europeans seemed to be missing among the parishioners. They were found outside, enjoying their secular existence devoid of God.

Following an alleged accidental fire, the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral’s spire has burned completely to ashes. The stone base, the altar crucifix, the interior statuary and artwork, and some of the famous rose stained-glass windows fortunately remained intact.

President Macron and the secular French immediately proclaimed that the spire will be rebuilt better and grander, from modern materials and with a design that would be even more beautiful - a multi-faith monument that reflects France of today. Who will get to decide what alterations improve on the original? The atheists and the non-Christians?

Almost one billion dollars has been donated so far for the rebuilding project that was estimated unrealistically by the former banker now President Macron to be five years. Those of us who appreciate old churches as a place of worship, the soul of western civilization and of its Christian people, know that beautiful, masterful, and enduring construction takes a lifetime to achieve. I am not sure that the master craftsmen and stonemasons of yesteryear still exist today.

Notre Dame cathedral itself did not collapse because medieval builders knew that rib vaulting and flying buttresses were the best ways to support the massive structure to withstand the passage of time. They built for endurance, almost nine centuries of existence.

John Harwood, an architectural historian from Toronto, said, “Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was – a non-secular, white European France – but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making.” He sees Notre Dame as a “reflection of the modern zeitgeist;” cathedrals are “political monuments.”

Rev. Ben Johnson disagrees vehemently – “Christians built cathedrals as earthly embassies of the kingdom of Heaven, … created as an expression of faith. Their beauty and wonder provide a foretaste of the splendor and order of eternity.” He argues that, if Notre Dame reflected who the French are today, it would be a parking lot or a concrete government building because atheism “erects no cathedrals.” What are the European values, one wonders, suicidal tolerance and failed multiculturalism?  https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/notre-dame-may-be-rebuilt-secular-monument

Architecture, art, sculpture, poetry, and literature were inspired by Christian faith and created by the West. Notre Dame was and is the symbol of Christian faith and of our collective western civilization, not just of Catholicism. Rev. Johnson argues that “The belfries of all Christendom echo its message of hope, redemption, and peace. Only those ablaze with the fiery flame of divine love can rebuild Notre Dame, or Europe, from the debris.”

The cathedral reconstruction should never be about “what modern French people want” even though it is in the center of Paris. Notre Dame, like all other cathedrals in Europe, is a monument to Christianity and part of the history of Western Civilization and must be restored as it was.

Notre Dame, A Symbol of our Collective Western Civilization

My husband and I visited Paris for ten days around Christmas and New Year seventeen years ago. It was blustery and drizzling the whole time and we eventually got used to the bone-chilling cold. It did not stop our adventurous streak at all and we took the metro everywhere.

I had visited Paris twice before but only for a couple of days each time with my youngest daughter - the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame cathedral, and Versailles.

With my daughter, March 2001

Photo: Ileana Johnson, Christmas 2002

Notre Dame spire

This time we had more time and we went inside Notre Dame and lit up a candle for my dad. We prayed and walked around in amazement at the beautiful stained glass windows. The paintings, the floor mosaics, and the solid columns gave us a feeling of eternity as if this church has been there forever, almost nine centuries of civilization.

Photo: Ileana, Xmas 2002

We tried to imagine how many millions have stepped on those floors before us in the last nine centuries and how many prayers have been lifted to Heaven and to God.

How many sacrifices poor and rich Christians alike have made to contribute financially through tithes and donations to the construction of so much beauty that generations have admired and enjoyed in silent prayer and people from around the world have visited?

There was a meager nativity scene to one side and I remember commenting that it was rather simple compared to the awe-inspiring beauty sorrounding us. But then there was not much indication around the secular Paris that Christmas was an important holiday to the Parisians. They had partied heavily on New Year's, trashing the famous steps of the Basilica in Montmartre.

Nanook of the North admiring a gorgyle

Photo: My husband David, Christmas 2002

We then stayed in line in blistering rainy winter wind for almost an hour in order to climb to the top to see the famous Notre Dame gargoyles up close and to admire a breathtaking view of Paris.

I was dressed like Nanook of the North and the frigid cold still reached to my bones but it was worth every icycle hanging from my frozen face - I felt the winds of history touching my being.

I never believed that in my lifetime this 860 year-old jewel of Christian art and prayer, a symbol of our collective western civilization will be partially turned to ashes, a victim of “accidental” fire.

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Photo: Wikipedia

America’s seventh president, Andrew Jackson, embodied an “unruly, ambitious, and contentious” leadership style, making him an unconventional and controversial people’s president, not unlike the current President Donald Trump.

“He was loved, loathed, revered, reviled, but never ignored.” He was a giant in his own right, and a physically tall man (6 ft 1), weighing 144 lbs., with a size seven shoes that nobody could fill. His courage was legendary, having joined the Revolutionary battlefield at the age of 13, never shying away from brawls and duels.

His troops admired him for his courage and iron will and thus nicknamed him Old Hickory. Without formal training as a soldier, Jackson was elected general because people liked his strength, charm, and charisma, he was not a “Sunday Soldier.” He never asked tasks of his soldiers that he himself was not willing to do.

When Jackson called for enlistments in the coming war of 1812, he famously said, “… we are the born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.” (March 12, 1812)

His bold personality seldom considered consequences and he marched forth. He campaigned and appealed to the common man ideals thus transforming American politics.

Most renowned for the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson designed a victory that stunned the British. He was instrumental in the westward expansion at the cost of Indian removal from their lands.

Jackson was a firm Unionist, but his grandsons joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War. When he defeated the Creek Indians in 1814, the U.S. Army rewarded him with a commission as a Major General in the regular army.

Photo: Ileana Johnson, April 2019

Not far from the airport in Nashville, Tennessee, a “four-hour carriage ride from downtown Nashville” of long ago, is the former plantation and mansion called Hermitage as well as the Jacksons original log home in which they lived during the frontier era of America. Two natural springs still provide water today.

Photo: Ileana Johnson, April 2019

Archeologists had found evidence at the Hermitage that Indian cultures thrived here – projectile chiseled rock points were dug from different parts of the property. Two tornadoes and lots of historical changes have altered the Hermitage landscape over time. As the fortunes of the Jacksons declined after the Civil War and slavery ended, a public museum and a hospital for invalid Confederate veterans were created at the farm after 1889. (Museum Archives)

Back side of the mansion

Photo: Ileana Johnson, April 2019

An archived deed shows that Jackson sold his riverfront home, Hunter’s Hill for $10,000 and used the money to buy the neighboring farm and to pay off debts. He invested in 1805 with other business partners into a general store, a tavern, a boatyard, and a horse breeding and racing operation at nearby Clover Bottom. The store sold goods from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans such as cloth, buttons, blankets, nails, hoes, and comb cases. After two years of operation, the venture proved unprofitable, so he concentrated his efforts in agricultural production.

Cows at the Hermitage

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

The original 425-acre frontier farm which he bought in 1804 from Nathaniel Hays for $3,400 eventually developed into a 1,000-acre cotton plantation where slaves picked cotton, 200-300 lbs. per day each until their hands were bleeding from the rough plant and then ginned it into 500-pound bales. At first, the seeds inside the cotton bowl had to be picked painstakingly by hand as well. Eli Whitney invented the first mechanical cotton gin in 1793 which made the lives of those picking cotton somewhat easier.

Andrew and Rachel Jackson's tomb at the Hermitage

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

Andrew Jackson’s love for Rachel Donelson and their subsequent marriage in 1791 was marred by a lifelong scandal as it happened before Rachel’s marriage to her first husband had legally ended. Jackson remarried her in 1794. They are still together in death, buried in the “Greek-inspired garden tomb Andrew built for Rachel in 1831, where he joined her in 1845.” He was so grief-stricken by her sudden death that he refused to believe she was dead and had surgeons bleed her – there is a white nightcap stained post-mortem with her blood.

Jackson was a war hero and quite popular with “farmers, mechanics, and laborers.” They supported his presidency for two terms, upsetting the status quo and the elite Washington establishment. They derided him as having brought “muddy boots and common voices” into the White House.

Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, the same year and month his father died. Although very young, he participated in the Battle of Hanging Rock in 1780. A year later, both he and his brother Robert were prisoners of war and contracted small pox; unfortunately, his brother died. His mother Elizabeth died a year later in the cholera epidemic and Jackson was orphaned at the age of 14.

Jackson’s career included delegate to the Tennessee Constitutional Convention (1796), Tennessee’s first U.S. Representative (1796), U.S. Senate First Term (1797-1798), Judge of Tennessee’s Superior Court (1798-1804), commander of the Tennessee Militia with the rank of Colonel (1801), Major General of the Tennessee Militia (1802).

Andrew Jackson attained the impossible – he fought successfully against the world’s greatest power at the time in order to win New Orleans, the Jewel of the American West and the gateway to control the Mississippi River. New Orleans was a major trade port which connected America to the Gulf of Mexico. The British could potentially bring troops from Canada and split the nation in two parts.

Jackson’s earthworks in New Orleans, “built along a four-foot ditch stretching from swamp to riverside” for the purpose of installing cannon, were attacked at dawn on January 8, 1815. The British troops, 8,392 strong and well trained were overwhelmed by American cannon and sharpshooters with rifles and muskets. Their casualties mounted quickly, 291 killed, 1,262 wounded, and 484 missing. The American troops (5,359) suffered 13 killed, 39 wounded, and 19 missing.

Jackson’s army was a “ragtag of soldiers, sailors, militia, volunteers, Indians, and free blacks.” He had a short period of time to train these Americans to fight in battle as a regimented group.

His victory in New Orleans and the prior Treaty of Ghent (Belgium) that ended the war of 1812 set off a wave of nationalistic pride, celebrations, and parades. Jackson became a national hero, so popular that it carried him all the way to the White House. The wounded pride of America by the burning of Washington, the nation’s dignity, the uncertainty of its existence for three years, had been finally restored by Jackson’s victory.

Composers wrote music to celebrate his unexpected victory and his face adorned coins, medals, plates, pitchers, silk ribbons, handkerchiefs, posters, papers, and other memorabilia. He was the rock star of his day.

His success assured his reputation as an aggressive fighter which allegedly intimidated Indian tribes into ceding millions of acres of land, “setting the stage for the cotton boom in the American South.”  Jackson used bribery and force and pressured Spain to contract their empire.  By 1821 when Jackson resigned his commission, “the United States – for the first time – stretched from Florida to the Pacific Northwest.” (Museum Archives)

View of the working fields and Uncle Alfred's cabin from Jackson's window

Photo: Ileana Johnson, April 2019

The Hermitage is a National Historic Landmark. In addition to the mansion, the slave quarters, the President’s Tomb, the Jackson Family Cemetery, the First Hermitage, the Hermitage Church, and the beautiful acre garden, the mansion grounds and its 1.5-mile nature trail tell the story of the once working plantation.

Back porch at Hermitage

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

The First Hermitage was a log two-story farmhouse in which Rachel and Andrew Jackson lived from 1804-1821. After they built the brick mansion, the log house was converted into a one-story house for the slaves. According to museum curators, 90% of the furnishing in the mansion are original.

The Ladies’ Hermitage Association planted a double line of trees in 1915 as an entryway for visitors coming in cars. Each tree came from a battlefield where Jackson fought - sugar maple, willow oak, black cherry, sweet gum, and cedar. It was called the War Road.

Rachel's English garden

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

Rachel’s beautiful garden design has four squares with center flower beds. This style is the English tradition that dates to the middle ages.

Hermitage Cemetery

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

President Jackson and his beloved Rachel are buried in the Greek revival tomb located in the right-hand corner of the garden. His tombstone reads simply, General Andrew Jackson. Jackson believed that the evil gossip about the circumstances of their marriage, and attacks from his enemies during his bid for the White House, caused Rachel’s stress and eventual death at the age of 61 on December 22, 1828. Witnesses said that he visited her tomb daily after his presidency ended. He was laid to rest next to her on June 8, 1845.

Uncle Alfred's headstone

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

To the right of the President’s tomb, a simple headstone reads “Uncle Alfred.” Alfred Jackson was a former Hermitage enslaved worker who had requested that the Ladies’ Hermitage Association bury him next to Jackson’s tomb. He died in 1901 at the age of 98.

Alfred's slave cabin at Hermitage

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

His cabin still stands as it was when he worked as a caretaker and guide for visitors. He had witnessed the rise and fall of the plantation and its turn into a shrine to Andrew Jackson. He was born at the Hermitage and worked as a wagoner in charge of horses and vehicles. After the Civil War, he rented 24 acres from the Jackson family and raised cotton and made butter for sale. He had moved into the log dwelling that became to be known as Alfred’s cabin. Alfred was well known and was often asked to pose for pictures with visitors.

Hermitage Smokehouse

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

The plantation was successful thanks to the hard sun-up to sun-down labor of more than 150 enslaved black men, women, and children. They tended the rotating crops, took care of animals, picked cotton, worked the fields, the smoke house, and everything else that was needed to run the farm and to care for the mansion’s occupants.

Crops of wheat, millet, oats, sorghum, and hemp provided supplies for the plantation. Cotton fields were planted for the Jackson family profit.

Hermitage Dining Room

Photo: Ileana, April 2019

Three hundred acres of corn and pork provided diet staples for everyone at the Hermitage. Slaves also raised the Jackson family’s kitchen garden with varied vegetables and the fruit orchards. Jackson had encouraged slaves to cultivate their own gardens as well.  

Jackson built a cotton gin and press and made money by ginning his neighbors’ cotton for a fee. A receipt survives that shows cotton received at his gin and press from one John Donelson, Rachel’s brother.

Based on archive lists, it is known that the enslaved lived in family groups, some of three generations. Duties ranged from tending to the smokehouse, the icehouse, butchered animals, plucked chicken, making soap and candles, doing laundry outdoors and cooking. Others cared for he distillery, the carriage house, the stables, the horse training, the cotton gin, the blacksmith shop, the carpenter’s shop, the corncribs, the weaving shop, the bathhouse, the animal pens, the paddocks, and the wood piles.

Alfred posing with visitors as a free man

Photo: Museum archives

Even though Jackson treated his black slaves paternally and called them his “black family,” when Nashville was captured by Union forces in the Civil War, most of Jackson’s “black family” fled behind Union lines to freedom, preferring an uncertain future over perpetual bondage.

Slaves were property and archival documents show that Jackson had sold Maria Baker and her family in order to settle Andrew Jackson Jr.’s debts.

On November 7, 1829, Jackson wrote to Graves W. Steele, “But I say that I have concluded to retain you another year, it is on the express conditions that you treat my negroes with humanity, & attention when sick; & not work them too hard, when well – that you feed & clothe them well, and that you carefully attend to my stock of all kinds, & particularly to my mares & colts …”

The Nashville cemetery houses the tomb of Charles Dickinson. Following a disagreement with Jackson and a subsequent duel thought petty by many locals, Dickinson, a better marksman by all accounts, drew first and wounded Jackson in the chest but Jackson fatally shot Dickinson.  His death established Jackson’s reputation as a violent man which was used amply by his opponents during his presidential run. The incident was printed often on broadsheets.

Love him or hate him, our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, left a significant mark on the history of our country.

Sources: Museum Archives in Nashville, TN

“We Are Serving the Working People”

It appears that America’s youth are turning collectivist and the ranks are swelling by the day with help from the accommodating indoctrinators called educators and Howard Zinn’s textbooks bastardizing history and Common Core standards of lower education now nine years old and covering most of America’s schools. Academics has taken a back seat to progressive activism 101.

Old progressives, simmering and stewing for the decades, and their young converts are working feverishly to squelch Individual freedom, private property, and limited government. They used to be the tenets of our society but now, the generations attached at the hip to their blue light electronic devices, provided by free market capitalism, have decided that socialism suits them better. Social Democrats, as they call themselves now, have promised so many phony pie in the sky freebies that they cannot resist the urge to fundamentally transform their parents’ America which is now passé.

They want economic justice, a harmonious society with no strife, prosperity for all, a society in which nobody has to work if they don’t want to. Somehow, in this socialist utopia, everyone has a perfect work ethic and is absolutely altruistic and generous to a fault, giving their time, wealth, success, and money to be spread evenly among the non-producers who just want to chill in their parents’ basements and smoke free marijuana provided by the benevolent state.

In this utopia they learned from their teachers in school, there is no misery, no repression, no materialism, no jails, no death of liberty, just kumbaya equality and free drugs. Except those at the top will be in charge and “serving the working people” just like the politicians of today who are serving the electorate, especially the illegal electorate from terrorist countries inimical to us.

If you ask millennials what kind of society they want to inhabit, according to a 2016 Gallup poll, 44% want to live under socialism. They have no idea what socialism is, cannot define it correctly, but they describe themselves as socialists.

Do they understand that socialism suppresses individuality, forces collectivism, causes mass starvation, imprisons people with divergent ideas in labor camps, herds them off their properties into high rise cinder block apartments, nationalizes all industries, and confiscates all private property and wealth?

To millennials, oppressive regimes, mass starvation, people kept in nation-prisons with borders made of barbed-wire fence are just stories in a textbook nobody believes. Have they had to fear any such oppressive regimes in their lifetimes? To them, it is just old people fearmongering, they call it the “new McCarthyism.”

Their mantra is, let’s just go and embrace more illegals and Muslims in order to show that we are good little socialists and then plaster car bumpers with the meaningless “coexist” stickers when everyone knows how well that is playing out in Africa and the Middle East between Christians and Muslims.

Young generations of Americans want free education, free healthcare, free daycare, free housing, daddy government-guaranteed jobs, everything that the Democrat Party includes in their socialist platform of the openly socialist candidates like Bernie Sanders.

Millennials know-it-alls want what Scandinavian and other European countries have. They have seen in travel brochures that everyone seems happy, have a lot of free time, work much less than Americans, and drugs are free and legal. They don’t understand that these countries allow private property, they had a capitalist foundation, were economically wealthy before they adopted generous welfare for all, and now their governments are socialist in nature. The government does not own the means of production and they are not totalitarian regimes. But their socialist leanings, tolerance, and failed multiculturalism have created unsustainable societies which are now grappling with serious issues of existentialism, threatened by the alien and inimical cultures they’ve invited in and that are now taking over parts of their countries.

The white-washing of socialism cannot be ignored. Venezuela’s situation is slapping millennials in the face if they care to look. Redistribution of wealth and government ownership of the means of production have failed miserably in the Soviet Union and all its communist satellites.

Centralized-government controlled by the Communist Party has not worked because the economic model is not feasible. Look at the latest victims, the population of Venezuela who kept voting socialism until it destroyed their lives. A formerly prosperous nation with huge oil reserves, Venezuelans have chronic shortages of water, toilet paper, diapers, electricity, medicines, food, and other basic staples. It is so bad that people eat garbage and animals from the zoo.

These young Americans have never heard the term “goner” (Dokhodyaga), a hard labor camp slang for a Soviet prisoner “who was so exhausted by work and wasted by disease that he had little time left to live.” Their standard form of address in the labor camp was, “How are you serving?” and the expected answer was, “I serve the working people.” They had copied it from the from of address between officers and men in the Soviet Army. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Frederick A. Praeger Publisher, 1963)

As Robert B. Charles said, “Today, Laos, North Vietnam (former), Cuba, Afghanistan, Benin, Cambodia, North Korea, Somalia, and South Yemen remain the most impoverished countries in the world, war-torn, repressive, reflexively imprisoning political critics. Venezuela is a basket case. China’s re-education camps, currently holding millions of Chinese (for religious convictions) are a hallmark of socialism, and of atheist China.” (AMAC magazine, vol. 13, issue 1, p. 41)

The rebranding of “old socialism” as “Democratic socialism” is just an attempt by politicians like Bernie Sanders to browbeat new and young converts to socialism, the same redistributionism of private property and enslavement to the totalitarian state. If we accept it, it will lead to America’s collapse. I should know, I escaped such a failed totalitarian state. The population is still struggling today to rebuild their lives and overcome decades of forced conformity, oppression, and miserable equality.

Is Modern Technology Hazardous to Your Health?

Wikipedia photo

Technology has impacted our lives in many positive and negative ways, computers, mobile phones with 5G present and future robotic and automotive applications, smart meters, solar panels, wind turbines, and geoengineering, just to name a few. But are they good for our health?

As the 5G rollout is happening around the world, concerned groups are organizing to mount an opposition and voice their concern about its safety to humans and animals bathed constantly in EMF radiation from towers that will eventually be deployed on every street corner.

A recent article reported that four students and three teachers in a California school in San Joaquin County were stricken with cancer which was caused entirely by environmental factors. Parents were demanding that a “radiation-emitting cell phone tower be removed from elementary school property.” https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-03-16-california-parents-demand-radiation-emitting-cell-phone-tower-be-removed-from-elementary-school.html

As reported by DrJockers.com, documented 5G health effects include “worsened eye health, lowered bacterial resistance, impacted skin health, and more biologically-active organs – more dangerous.”

Dr. Klaus Kaiser wrote that “there is a one-plus order of magnitude difference in the photon (electromagnetic wave, EM) energy between the current 4G communication (4G) and the proposed 5G systems (5G).”

He continues that “The more powerful EM wave energy (30-80 GHz of the 5G vs. 3-6 GHz of the 4G) requires a novel set of long-term assessment testing on a variety of species that could be affected by it, even if it were eventually proven to be of no concern in any testing.” In the absence of such a testing, the hurried 5G rollout is a global experiment on humans as unwilling laboratory rats who want faster internet connectivity, smart appliances, future robotic applications not yet thought of, and self-driven cars, all controlled from towers on every block, like steel trees everywhere. https://principia-scientific.org/recommendations-for-5g-communication-systems-testing/

Dr. Kaiser recommends studying any health effects of 5G technology on the animal population of a zoo with its biological universe at the ready – animals live, breed, and die in a relatively secure and enclosed experimental area. His proposal for 5G testing is detailed here. https://principia-scientific.org/recommendations-for-5g-communication-systems-testing/

A recent study, “Microwave frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produce widespread neuropsychiatric effects including depression,” was published in the Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy. The abstract said, “Among the more commonly reported changes are sleep disturbance/insomnia, headache, depression/depressive symptoms, fatigue/tiredness, dysesthesia, concentration/attention dysfunction, memory changes, dizziness, irritability, loss of appetite/body weight, restlessness/anxiety, nausea, skin burning/tingling/dermographism and EEG changes. … All collectively show that various non-thermal microwave EMF exposures produce diverse neuropsychiatric effects.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26300312

Josh Del Sol pointed out that the 5G seen in Wi-Fi routers means “5 GHz.” But the 5G they are talking about is the “5^th Generation” infrastructure. “Actual 5G (5^th Generation) is planned to operate at 25-90+ GHz frequencies, use beam-forming/targeting systems, and be integrated with thousands of satellites to blanket the earth.”

In a video found here, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal asked wireless industry reps questions about the safety of 5G technology and whether the industry that is pushing this 5G technology knows of or has sponsored any research studies as to the health effects on humans and animals and the answers were that the industry has done no health and safety studies on 5G technology. Independent studies do show “a risk to all biological life.”https://takebackyourpower.net/senate-hearing-wireless-industry-confesses-no-studies-showing-5g-safety/

Stephen McBride stated in a recent mailout that “China and the U.S. are neck in neck in the race to develop their 5G networks. In fact, so far China has outspent the U.S. by $25 billion in 5G, according to ‘Big 4’ accounting firm Deloitte.”

He believes that, even though “the Trump White House recently labeled 5G a national security priority for America,” the government’s “red tape is choking America’s 5G rollout.” He continues that America needs hundreds of thousands of new cell towers. These are “tiny compared to the 100+ foot cell towers you’re used to seeing.” They are the size of a trash can and carry signal only about half a mile. This means that “instead of placing one giant cell tower every few miles, we’ll need to place small ones every couple thousand feet.”

According to McBride, there are 220,000 cell towers in the U.S. today. In his estimation, AT&T alone will need 300,000 new 5G cell towers, a big project. The new towers are not just an improvement over 4G but a “huge leap.”

In their rush to deployment, the industry spent zero money to study the effects of the 5G towers on health.

Another health issue for humans and animals documented by many independent studies points to smart meters. Smart meters have been installed in most places for the convenience of utility companies and to the detriment of the population at large, who are experiencing various health problems, are paying higher electricity rates per kWh, are spied upon 24/7 without a warrant, their consumption patterns and activities sold to third parties, and are hit with radiation every so many seconds coming from the Mother Ship far away, measuring and controlling customers’ consumption by off switches during high peak demand. Why would the utility store extra electricity for high demand times when they can cut your electricity off and “save” you money while you swelter in your home for hours each day and your food and medicine spoil in the fridge?

Geoengineering is allegedly protecting humanity from the effects of global warming. It engages in aerial spraying and injection of the stratosphere with harmful chemicals in order, as we were told by former CIA chief, John Brennan, to mitigate the disastrous effects of global warming. The particles sprayed in the atmosphere are eventually inhaled by all of us as they fall to the ground and mix in the soil that grows our crops and in our waters from which we drink. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+brennan+video+talking+about+geoengineering+to+tcfr&view=detail&mid=51C4B7337867D35FBAE651C4B7337867D35FBAE6&FORM=VIRE

Despite complaints from farmers, environmentalists, and sick humans who experience heightened allergies and other medical problems, the geoengineering continues. The trails in the sky do not dissipate for hours and eventually turn into a milky grey cover that blocks the sun for hours or days. Water vapor trails from airplanes usually dissipate in minutes.

Solar panels installed in large fields are a health hazard to fauna, especially birds. Solar panels on homes reduce electrical consumption and eventually, after a high initial installation cost, begin to pay off in lower usage of electricity generated by fossil fuels. But, in the absence of sun, electricity produced by fossil fuels is necessary.

Fields of solar panels that produce more electricity require huge land area deployment that takes fertile soil away from agriculture and the production of food. Solar panels create heat fluxes, frying in flight any bird that is unlucky enough to fly in its proximity or is attracted to the solar panels that look curiously like shimmering rivers and lakes to them.

Wind farm victims of wind turbines - dead minks

Wikipedia photo

Wind turbines seemed like a good idea until the huge blades started chopping up millions of birds around the word. The constant thump-thump sounds interrupted the sleep pattern of humans and animals alike. Animals started exhibiting strange behaviors, attacking their young, and birthing dead litters. Humans living in the proximity of wind turbines complained of many strange health issues, such as insomnia, skin problems, hormonal issues, birth defects, and psychological problems.

A wind turbine on fire - Wikipedia photo

The production of electricity is sketchy at best since turbines produce electricity when winds exceed speeds of 32 MPH. Just because a blade is spinning, it does not necessarily mean that it produces electricity. According to the experts, the quantity of fossil fuels and other materials used to manufacture and maintain a wind turbine makes it almost impossible to break even in the life span of an electricity producing wind turbine. Some wind turbines in smaller European countries were installed in a hurry because the funds were available from the EU, but the turbines themselves were not connected to any electricity storage facility.

As I ponder the impact of technology on health, I cannot forget how at one time tobacco smoking was touted as a health benefit by those who profited from it.

Southern Seasons

Photo: Ileana Johnson 20018

How many southern season are there? It depends on who you ask. If you ask me and I don’t know why you would, as my opinion does not count for much, there are many.

The winter of 1978, my first year in Mississippi’s America was a pretty brutal winter, snow, rain, ice, and subzero temperatures, all knitted together in an ugly weather sweater. But then tornadoes came and I was confused, followed by heavy flooding rain and then ice. Within a month’s span on the farm, I witnessed most of God’s meteorological designs for the south and, while beautiful in their own devastating way, they were quite damaging to livestock and nature and frightening to a city girl who wanted to go back from whence she came.

The muddy creek, its shallow tributaries, and the small containment ponds overflowed their banks. Fish, snapping turtles, and water moccasins floated near and inside homes as if the mud cleaning was not bad enough. I never understood why a mother called Nature would wreak so much havoc on her own children. She had a temper for sure.

There was flash flooding in people’s homes who were unfortunate enough to live close to the Tombigbee River. Hail came at the most inconvenient crop seasons. Weekly tornado sirens in town were like the chiming bells of a church announcing the passage of time.

The landscape sported damaged homes, roofs, garages, and businesses in different stages of clearing, repair, or rebuilding from last months or last year’s tornado that had touched down somewhere in the area.

Sideways stinging rain, high winds, and flying leaves were God’s way of throwing lancets, reminding us to repent, pray for good weather, and stop complaining about 100 plus humid days when the most stoic of us would melt in a heap of sweat.

The icy days snapped the power lines and turned trees into a wonderland of dangling crystals ready to fall and impale the unfortunate person walking too close. Broken powerlines were not for the faint of heart and not for the foolhardy who dared to step on them. We had no electricity for days, usually during the hottest or coldest days of the year when you had just gone to Walmart and filled the fridge and freezer with food which would then promptly spoil and had to be thrown out.

We showered where we could, at the gym, in a hotel room if we could afford to get one or did without bathing for days whether we needed or not. It did not matter, everyone else smelled pretty bad too.

And then there were the times when it was so cold outside, we brought the gas barbecue grill inside to heat but left the front door open for dangerous gases to escape.

No neighbors asked if we were dead or alive, everyone was pretty much in the same boat – no food, no water, no electricity, and no heat or A/C.

And then there were days when the heat pump froze – on the coldest day of the year or the hottest day of the melting summer. We turned in beds like roasting cockroaches.

Speaking of cockroaches the size of a small hand and athletic and aerodynamic enough to fly, there was open season for them all year long no matter how much we sprayed. We exterminated ourselves with Raid but not the resilient cockroaches.

So we had many seasons in the south, so many that I lost count in most years: fools spring, brief spring followed by mild winter before Easter, whimsical blustery wind season, early summer followed by Indian summer, Just kidding spring again, pollinating season, a season that plagued us year around, tornado season, hurricane season on the coast, actual spring, late winter in April, spring of trickery, flu season, tick season, early fall, mid-fall, winter for a day before Thanksgiving, and then summer again all day on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That pretty much covers it. Come to think if it, I’ve never had to shovel snow and could only build a snowman once or twice in 30 years. That’s a blessing since my tennis elbow gives me fits even though I’ve never played tennis in my life.

Illegal Immigration and Western Civilization Demise

“We will never create enough laws to control evil – evil does not obey laws! –  church marquee in Texas

Katie Hopkins warned Americans about the dangers of unrestricted Islamic immigration and described in frank detail how it has affected the U.K. and Europe, contributing to a social decline and an inimical atmosphere.  Thanks to Barack Obama’s eight-year Islamophilic presidency, unrestricted immigration has spread to the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMdwUBBnhx4

Michael Savage, the conservative talk show host, was banned from the U.K. for alleged hate speech which offended Islam.  Few advocated on his behalf to protect his freedom of expression and now, one by one, conservative voices of dissent and opposition to illegal immigration are being silenced.

It is interesting to note that, the more is penned on the subject, the more skepticism prevails, the messenger becoming a Cassandra. The Greek mythological Cassandra was cursed to voice prophecies that were true, but her prophecies were not believed.

A few authors dare to describe the reality and statistics of a shocking coma of western civilization caused by massive immigration from the third world and orchestrated by globalist politicians. Warnings are ignored, derided, or condemned by those in power as hate speech or shrugged off as the latest conspiracy theory of edgy writers.

Books and many articles have been written about Europe’s demographic suicide and its eventual demise. The most recent and quite compelling is Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe.”

Douglas Murray explained that Europe has been afflicted by a fatal disease that is impossible to cure. Despite the passage of time and normal changes, cultural succession, traditions, customs, values, and behaviors gave us the ability to recognize European peoples as Greek, English, Spanish, French, etc. In the face of massive and unrelenting immigration, the host populations are harder to recognize as they have bent to the values of the invaders.

“As a result, by the end of the lifespans of most people currently alive Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home,” said Murray.

All these warnings have fallen on deaf ears. The politicians and corporatist billionaires have decided that our civilization is passé and must be replaced by fresh illiterate blood from the third world – easily duped and manipulated.

U.N., with help from its affiliated NGOs (non-governmental organizations) aims to dictate population control and birth, diversity, border erasure, education, immigration, business, transportation, commerce, energy consumption, private property, housing, food production, water use, and healthcare. For decades, they have chipped at our lives bit by bit, making incremental progress at local, state, and federal levels via their 1992 U.N. Agenda 21 now morphed into Agenda 2030.  Rep. Ocasio-Cortes’ New Green Deal is not new, it is not green, and it is not a deal. It is the derivative U.N. Agenda 2030 on steroids.

Their plan is that each country is meant to become a “home for the entire world,” no borders, endless welfare, all controlled by the United Nations and the billionaire elites who hold the purse strings of each former government.

American people seem to have lost faith in their own beliefs, traditions, and argue against their historical legitimacy to exist, an “existential tiredness,” or as my wise grandmother used to say, being tired of the good life and having democracy gone to their heads.

Teachers have been busy for decades telling generations of captivated students that their culture, history, and heroes are bad, not worth preserving, white people should feel guilty for their existence, and that they should turn over their culture to the noble and much-admired primitive nations. A new culture must be allowed to replace the old, tired civilization. In other words, let’s reinvent the wheel because it is their turn to do so.

Prior to 2000, few people have heard or used terms such as “alarmist,” “scaremongering,” “racist,” “Islamophobe,” “hater,” and “xenophobe” connected to immigration.  Legal immigrants and citizens who obey the law are called “xenophobes” when they object to illegal immigration and the flooding of the country with inimical individuals of military age.

Public concerns be damned, American corrupt politicians continue to stay in power by advocating for open borders and unchecked immigration, while complaining about the “broken” immigration laws ad nauseam. Such laws are not broken, they are not being enforced by orders of the very government charged with the protection of its citizens.

The same politicians object to voting I.D. laws because they want illegal aliens in their precincts to vote and to be counted as Americans with well-defined rights. Californians have even installed illegal aliens into public office.

There are Christians who live under oppressive conditions in Islamist African countries, yet they are often denied immigration access to the West.

We’ve heard many justifications as to why we are importing so many immigrants who refuse to assimilate and change the face and future of many countries:

1.       We have an ageing population – demographics tell us that Western women don’t have enough babies to replace the dying population. The replacement value is truly below what is necessary.

2.       Diversity is important and we are not diverse enough. When is diversity enough? Nobody knows as it is an arbitrary statement invented by the leftist monolith. There are over 200 nationalities in the D.C. area alone. How much more diverse must we be? We already have voting ballots and school curricula in some states in dozens of languages.

3.       Immigration cannot be stopped because of globalization – another concept invented and heavily pushed by the left.

4.       This is not who we are as a country, we are told, trying to excuse the illegal immigration. We are a country of legal immigrants. Many of us claim ancestors who have immigrated to the New World. The difference is that we all assimilated, learned English, and became part of the fabric of America, striving to make it better. We did not complain, demand welfare, special status, or Sharia Law. We swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution and to the maintenance of the Constitutional Republic.  We are not a Democracy and we do not condone mob rule.

5.       The downtrodden are flooding the West for a better life and who are we to stop them? We must spread personal hard-earned wealth with the rest of the world even when they don’t want to work, are staying home, making babies, and plotting to destroy the west. Economically speaking, truly poor people cannot afford to pay the human smugglers in order to bring them illegally to Europe or to the U.S.

6.       Illegals come because, no matter how poor they would be in this country, they would be far richer than in their own countries. It is easy to sneak in, easy to remain permanently and overtly, and safe to stay.

7.       It is very easy to deceive the authorities – illegals bring no papers, they are “undocumented,” they lie about their age, where they came from, and, if they learn that being from a certain country gives them priority at the front of the line, they lie about it as well although they do not speak that country’s language.

8.       The borderless world agenda is heavily promoted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), flush with funds, sending their useful idiots around to the world to advocate for all migration into the western world. Certain NGOs assist migrants before they make it to Europe or the United States.

9.       Multiculturalism – a failed idea, recognized by some European leaders, but still heavily pushed by the progressive left. Most immigrants fail to integrate into the new society, they want to tear it apart and mold it in the vision of the hellhole they’ve escaped from. They accomplish this by running for office and winning political positions, changing education to indoctrination, changing the host culture to suit their goals, demanding special rights and privileges, and establishing enclaves, countries within countries, where no westerners dare to visit.

10.   Destroying free speech in the host country by labeling it “hate speech” and passing laws to enact fines and jail time for those bold enough to speak freely.

11.   Europeans still believe that a core culture can be maintained in every country even though progressivism has pushed for a multi-racial, multicultural society. 

To illustrate that a core culture cannot be maintained, Murray describes the suburb of Saint-Denis on the northern side of Paris, the central location of French history and culture. The Basilica of Saint-Denis contains 3^rd century relics of the Bishop of Paris. The cemetery holds the remains of the French royal family – the Capetian dynasty, the Bourbons, the Medicis, and the Merovingians. Tombs were desecrated during the French Revolution but strangely, the King and Queen deposed by the Revolution are buried here, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.

“To wander the district of Saint-Denis today is to see a district more resembling North Africa than France. The market square outside the basilica is a souk more than a market. Stalls sell different types of hijab and radical groups hand out literature against the state. Inside, though all the clergy are elderly white men, the residual congregation is black African, part of the non-Muslim wave of immigration into the area from Martinique and Guadeloupe. This area has one of the highest Muslim populations in France. Around 30 percent of the population of Saint-Denis, also known as the 93^rd district, are Muslim. No more than 15 percent are Catholic.” (Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe, 2018, pp. 109-110)

12.   They are here, there is nothing we can do about it, and we must give them amnesty, thus encouraging not just family chain migration but also a non-stop future invasion.

13.   “The tyranny of guilt,” coined by Murray, refers to certain victims of immigration such as a child dying of illness in custody of the border patrol or the Turkish child whose body washed up on the European shores. The feeling of guilt and shame at such tragedies have turned the progressive borderless agenda against those who wisely and peacefully advocated against illegal immigration. Somehow, they were guilty of the death of these children.

The general sense around the world has been that we must learn to live with the flood of illegals, they are here to stay, they will never repatriate, and we must adjust to the violence and chaos they cause.

Mark Steyn commented about the heavy security public events in Europe must employ, a statement that supports in a way President Trump’s determination to build a southern border wall, “If free countries have to have unsightly security controls, why don’t they have them around the national borders rather than around every single thing inside those borders?” (Murray, p. 333)

And academia has filled the heads of their students with pipe dreams of Marxism and communism, where everyone’s problems will be solved by the benevolent government.  As T.S. Elliott said, “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good” and nobody will have to ever work if they don’t want to. After all, we are told that illegals do the jobs that Americans refuse to do.