How do we handle this?

There is now a daily crisis of Muslim terror for the ordinary people of Europe.  This is also occurring more frequently here in the USA although the mainstream media seem to just report the headline massacres.  Obama is importing as many Somali Muslims as he can get away with before he leaves office. An historic dilemma may face us and also determine the quality of our future.

Today we publicly focus on slavery and Native American decimation. But we have forgotten, as probably a statement of healing, our history of religious intolerance. The New England Puritans hung Quakers. Everyone had to pay a tax to the Church of England whether they were Anglican or not until the Revolution. The history of anti-Catholicism is long and sad and lingered until the Kennedy presidency. Anti-Semitism only faded when the horrors of the Holocaust became known.

Since the 1960’s expansion of immigration, significant Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh communities have been established here. That has generally gone smoothly. But while there have been unfortunate incidents, they have been the work of hateful crazies. They will always exist on the fringe, that is the nature of human society. And while their crimes are inexcusable, they cannot render our values.  But having to label and separate one religion as dangerous presents an historic dilemma. As our streets, campuses, night clubs, offices, military bases, etc suffer Muslim brutality this discussion will begin. Plus there is the reality of vigilante activity and that danger to innocent Muslims.

Liberals preach tolerance. I can hardly disagree with tolerance and my personal beliefs are simple. There is one God or Great Spirit or Universal Wholeness or whatever term you want to use. There are many paths to that connection because there are many different people. Use the one that works for you. Muslims enjoy calling the Mass ritual cannibalism. While I can understand their definition, the Mass positively connects over a billion people to the divine.  By what absolute arrogance could anyone consider that wrong?

I have studied the Arabian tribes back to at least 3200 BC including their exemplary economy based on raiding caravans, plundering cities and slave trading. They had the revelation of Islam in the 600’s and used the Catholic Church as a model to integrate conquered counties into a unified empire. I’ve read as much of the Koran as I could stomach. All this information is available to anyone including their numerous frauds such as taking the zero from India and selling it to Europe as their own.  I have personally and intellectually concluded, as have many others, that Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion. They call it immigration jihad while the globalist establishment calls it refugee resettlement.

Some hope that Islam can reform itself as have the other faiths that modernized. I know two clergy working with Imams.  But this wishful thinking may not be reality. While I don’t know what will happen in Europe as the situation worsens, we all know that they have a history of separating people by faith. We not do have such a history, but we are approaching the point where we may. That may become a necessary decision in the near future and a difficult, precedent setting dilemma.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Nightmares Come True

Several recent news stories have appeared about Google and Facebook building housing for their employees in the high expense housing short Bay Area. We have regressed to the company housing/company town era. The freedom to live where you want is gone.  How did this nightmare come about?

Opening with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and growing with an unavoidable awareness of industrial pollution, the contemporary environmental movement was born. In some areas of my hometown of Buffalo, NY, people don’t have dogs because they die very young of cancer from contact with the soil. But as is common in many movements, the fanatics took over. They promulgated the nihilistic notion that growth is bad. This defeatist, and Un-American, idea has taken hold. We give up rather than solve. Conundrums appear. This is so clear in the situation of Marin County. They thwarted post war growth and forced people to commute from more distant locations like Santa Rosa. Then they protested the traffic through their “preserved” environment that their prior actions created. The current answer is a high subsidy passenger rail line, adding to the existing inefficacy and social costs of their “benevolent” actions.

When I left LA, it was changing from a regional metropolis into a world class city. People fruitlessly resisted an overwhelming historic change which, again, their own endeavors had helped create. "Save My Neighborhood" became the rallying cry. Some went as far as to propose freezing in time with subsidy an older art house movie theater. They seemed blind to even considering the blatant absurdity of doing that in the theater-blanketed Hollywood area. They called themselves liberals; I call them reactionaries.

This elitist attitude, coupled with the now extremist environmental movement, was hijacked by the globalist/new world order folks. It provided them with fear mongering propaganda and boots on the ground that could be used to achieve their aims. The power mad environmentalists had failed. The end of humanity by 1990 from pesticide pollution didn’t happen, nor did the global cooling/new ice age scare work. But this new alliance did work given the participation of the multinational corporations and the media they control. The global warming hysteria took off. Some convinced themselves that they had converted Goldman, Sachs et. al. to their side. Not surprisingly, fanatics are often also dense; it seems an inherent quality of their disposition.

These dramas also play out daily here in Amador County. We all know the upheaval at our local newspaper to free us of the political filth of Eric Winslow and the bias ramblings of Bret Parsons. But a new figure has arrived overtly on the scene (and probably covertly in the past) named Steven Frisch, head of Truckee’s Sierra Business Council. A recent photo of his dinner with Supervisor Lynn Morgan and environmental community leaders surfaced on Facebook. He also has voluminously participated in discussions on Facebook.  So I posted the following: “Steven Frisch’s Sierra Business Council partners with ICLEI, an organization dedicated to destroying the American way of life and repudiating the modern concepts of freedom and individual liberty we have taken for granted since the French Enlightenment, the American Revolution, etc. I would not affiliate with ICLEI anymore than I would join the KKK or the Communist Party.”

The above prompted a few days of heated verbiage. Frisch defended himself by citing his good works. These included energy efficiency, transit, access to recreation, having housing options, etc. No one is arguing against these noble, common sense ideas. But Frisch, along with some rather effusive notions about the motives of his critics, assumes you oppose these concepts. This seems keeping with his apparent character that if you question the manner of implementation, you doubt these benign goals.  Essential to his understanding is the human caused global warming fraud, so-called smart growth, disregard for Agenda 21 and his affiliation with ICLEI. Internalizing these doctrinaire assumptions allows him to decide what is good for others. This is policy and project from a non-regulated, nonprofit NGO. The democratic decision-making of local government is inhibited or abrogated. The free market where entrepreneurs produced what we decided we wanted is minimized or replaced. Decisions that forge our economic future are made by the self appointed and un-elected few for the many. How dare of us deplorables to object.

Frisch seems to ignore that housing shortages and/or too high prices were brought about by the land development policies of people of his ilk. He forgets that the “horrible sprawl” of the post-war period was the first time in all of human history that the average person was this well-housed. It must be scary for reality to intrude upon ideology.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Democratic Behavior?

I saw the following on the walkbikeamador.com website: “ACTC Transportation Planner and Upcountry Representative will present information related to the plan to the Pine Grove Civic Improvements Club. 11/2/16” I do not recall seeing that public meeting notice on any other local media and if my memory is incorrect then please let me know. Since this organization has a clear history of excluding certain Pine Grove residents from their email list who don’t completely share their vision, this exclusive behavior is not surprising.

Yet their website states: “The Pine Grove Civic Improvement Club is a nonprofit organization, incorporated in 1954. We strive to: Unite the inspiration and enterprises of the people of this district to promote education, moral, social, and civic measures and community improvement and betterment of the Community know as Pine Grove (and) Unite the members in the bonds of friendship, good fellowship and mutual understanding”.

Their behavior is, according to some, in violation of their lease agreement with Amador County.  I therefore ask the District Attorney, the County Council, the Board of Supervisors or whomever is appropriate to investigate this situation and respond accordingly. And while I do not want to finger certain individuals, anyone can go to their website and read their list of officers.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

            

Our Cowfart Future

With 30% of California’s dairies having closed and about an additional 600 slated to close, the yoke of our state government continues to threaten our rural economies and food supply. Of course, this is for our own good to protect us from imagined global warming. The self-serving California Air Resources Board has declared that 59% of our suddenly dangerous methane gas comes primarily from cattle. Of this, 31% comes from the enteric fermentation of their ruminate digestion with 28% from manure.

Their inspired calculations only include human-controlled sources. But methane is produced from rotting organic matter, including our cherished compost piles. Given the vast forests and other wildlands of California, natural methane production must dwarf that of human activity. A Dutch friend told me that as a boy, he and his buddies would place coffee cans on their boggy soil. After a brief spell they would carefully lift up a side and light it, the can taking off like a rocket. And if the Central Valley hadn’t been settled, I’m sure the elkfarts and marshes would probably produce as much methane as the current cattle.

This hysteria that the elites are engendering has caused the Canadians to add zeolite to cattle feed to reduce their flatulence. While this is a safe mineral and also used as a human health food, no one knows the long term effect of its consumption by cattle or by those consuming dairy products or beef. (Maybe this will be the basis of some juicy class action lawsuits in future decades?) The methane phobia has gone so far that one fearful global warming warrior has even suggested transporting our leaves to factories for controlled methane reuse with us buying the end product back as fertilizer. Self sufficiency certainly threatens the globalist agenda and impedes the global warming scare being used to frighten us into submission.

California human inducted methane production is 25% from waste with 21% from landfills and the remaining 4% from wastewater (sewage treatment plants). This methane can be, and sometimes is, captured and fed into the natural gas system. Using this gas, from an existing stationary source, reduces the need of the drilling into the earth that alarms some people. But capturing this gas is a lesser priority that "cowfart" regulation. Why use almost free energy when you can cripple an entire industry, throw people out of work and make us dependent upon imported food from countries that then may want concessions from us?

This reasoning of California’s ruling elite reminds me of decision to build the first section of high speed rail in the area least likely to produce revenue rather than the area most likely to produce revenue. Sometimes I don’t feel like I live in a state anymore, it’s more like an insane asylum. Go outside, take a deep breath and fill your lungs with methane. Live dangerously.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett