Book Review: Dachau Review (Volumes 1 and 2)

Apologies to those who think a dictatorship, pushed to cut population along the lines of hate it had been using for other purposes, is too real for Halloween. This Halloween, I think it's real enough that it should distract us from the cute little ghost and witch costumes. Not only do we have a party that overtly wants Socialism; that party has formed an alliance with a group who hate Jews. If ghosts can haunt, a lot of grandfathers are coming out after their grandchildren this Halloween.

Title: Dachau Review

Editor: Wolfgang Benz

Publisher: Comite Internal de Dachau, Brussels

Date: 1988

Length: 240 pages (v. 1), 206 pages (v. 2)

ISBN: 0854962697

Quote: "The Dachau Review is the first volume of a new periodical which contains in unabridged form in English the most important contributions of the previous three issues of the Dachauer Hefte."

These two cheaply produced, poorly bound paperbacks aren't fun to read. They weren't meant to be. They're a serious, scholarly collection of survivors' accounts and historians' studies of the German prison camps during the 1930s and early 1940s. Their purpose is to document the atrocities that really happened, and dispel the myths.

Although there's no reasonable doubt that the prison camps were the scenes of atrocities, one thing these reports confirm is the huge amount of concealment and deception that went on, the impossibility of knowing for sure whether some stories were true or false. Prisoners lied, for obvious reasons. Prison managers also lied, for reasons that may be less obvious. Bribery often worked, and the value of a bribe was completely unpredictable: a gold tooth might buy a prisoner a cup of dirty water, or a plausible English passport. Threats were used as discipline. Rumors abounded.

So, were prisoners' bodies used to manufacture household goods? After reviewing the evidence Benz, Barbara Distel, and others can't really say that that never happened; all they can say is that no such goods were found.

Were masses of prisoners gassed in shower rooms? In some other places--first in nursing homes for elderly and disabled "Aryans"--that happened. "In Dachau no gas chambers were used," our researchers report. In Dachau prisoners could be shot for any breach of discipline, for becoming unable to work, or just to intimidate other prisoners, but rumors about gas chambers seem to have been based solely on the existence of crematoria, which no living prisoner had actually entered. Poison gas cost money; both gas and money were in short supply. Guards and overseers could be vicious--there was no penalty for beating a prisoner to death. Still, starvation and infectious diseases killed far more prisoners than were either euthanized due to illness, executed according to what passed for due process of law, or murdered outright.

Were the majority of those imprisoned, or of those killed in the camps, Jewish? Not at Dachau.

Were individual guards kind enough to help individual prisoners escape? Sometimes, but not often or predictably. One informant describes having to thank for saving his brother's life the same guard he blamed for killing his mother.

In the end, how many people--Jewish or otherwise--did the Nazis kill? No true answer will ever be known. The number is certainly in the millions, but too much lying and destruction of evidence went on for any estimates to be accepted as facts. These books contain some eyewitness accounts of faked deaths that may or may not have allowed prisoners to escape.

Certainly faked deaths did allow several of the presumed dead to survive. In a family I know two teenaged boys, first cousins who had been friends, disappeared at about the same time. During the year each young man mourned the other's death, they were living within a mile of each other in London. Both enjoyed long and successful lives, and were able to recognize each other and share memories when one of those fifty-years-later TV programs featured one of the cousins.

Holocaust deniers have even cited the case of an entire town whose Jewish population, apparently decimated during the Holocaust, surged back almost to prewar levels between 1945 and 1946. And not many houses or businesses had been sold, either during or after the war, either. Apparently there was just a benign conspiracy to accept, for the duration of the war, that a few thousand individuals had never been Jewish--whom did people think they were talking about?--until it was safe for these people to identify themselves as Jewish again.

Unfortunately it wasn't always so easy, and while the species of contrarians known as Holocaust deniers were able to disprove some claims without much difficulty, the Nazi Holocaust was just too big to fake.

Meanwhile, people who view the Holocaust from a different historical perspective have exaggerated the sadism of the Third Reich and overlooked the profit motive. Dachau was built not to torture or kill men, but to profit from their labor as the (alleged) criminals "paid their debt to society." As long as it was profitable to keep prisoners healthy, most were well enough fed and sheltered, even medicated where possible, to keep them alive (as slaves) for years. That's why there were so many survivors. 

But why, now that most of the survivors have written out their memories and died of old age, do we need to go on reading about it? Certainly not for pleasure; and I for one don't think there's any comfort to be gained from comparing our own immediate misery with someone else's theoretically greater misery. If you're feeling sad because you didn't win the competition or the person you've had a crush on has asked someone else for a date, reading about how the victorious U.S. troops found one group of seventeen almost-survivors who were too sick and starved to digest food when they were fed may help you put your angst into perspective, but it's unlikely to make you feel good. (If it does, I don't want to know you.)

I don't get any particular jollies from thinking about "the triumph of the human spirit" in the survivors, either. My brother, adoptive sister, and I inherited the non-depressive gene along with the brown eyes and crooked teeth genes. My natural sister got the alternative genes. That humans can agree that some genetic traits are more pleasant to be around than others doesn't say anything particularly uplifting about the human spirit, to me.

Some survivors learned moral lessons in the prison camps, although that's not what you'll find in the Dachau Review. In one of Bob Schuller's books, reviewed here last week, a survivor shared the edifying story of how his camp usually offered two kinds of food to prisoners: bread, and soup. The bread was cold, coarse, and unflavored, and tasted vile, but did contain some fibre and nutrients from whole grains. The soup absorbed some flavor, but was usually just a cup of hot water with very little nutrient value. Some prisoners would trade their bread for other prisoners' soup rations...and at the end of the war, all the survivors turned out to be bread eaters; the soup sippers starved. Preachers have already publicized that kind of stories. The Dachau Review didn't need them, or use them.

So, what made this well-fed, non-Jewish American pay hard-earned cash for these books? Supporting the library that allows me to maintain this web site was one reason, but why choose the Dachau Review over the "westerns" and romances that had also been donated to the library's benefit sale? Obviously, I thought these books deserved resale; I do think this piece of history has some relevance to our time.

It's best stated, though oddly reversed, by Ralph Giordano in volume two: "I warn you young people of today: don't let anyone tell you that this undemocratically and un-humanly motivated anti-communism ever was, is or will be anything other than the belligerent brother of its own professed diametrical opponent."

Germany, a smaller country already impoverished by losing another idiot dictator's useless war, collapsed faster under National Socialism than Russia did under Soviet Socialism. In both countries, and in most other countries that have experimented with socialism, the socialist government collapsed and the result was chaos, wars, plagues, and mass deaths. A few countries that flirted with socialism, like Britain and China, have survived by learning from examples and giving up unsustainable socialist schemes. Either of those things could happen here.

German Jews, Lutherans, and "Communist" atheists had not exactly liked each other, but had coexisted peacefully, in times of prosperity. Religion became a cause of hate and war when the people felt poverty-stricken and desperate. Hitler whipped up hate of both minorities in order to unite the majority for his own self-aggrandizing purposes, while telling people he trusted how much he preferred the war and death cults of Pagan Germany to the Protestant churches he had to exploit. (What has survived of Germanic Pagan mythology was complex; there were "gods" and cults of love and peace, as well as war and death; Hitler had no use for the nice ones.) These United States have prospered as a nominally Christian, in practice predominantly Humanist, nation where all religions are tolerated...until what are still a minority of Americans have started to feel poverty-stricken, and although I doubt that most of these people know anything about poverty, immediately mistrust of all religions but one's own (including the pseudo-religion of atheism) sets in. Religious hate could happen here. Even the explosion of religious hate into mass violent insanity could happen here.

Hitler really owed his success, though, less to hate than to his Biggest Lie of All--the seductive lie that Germans could recover prosperity, rather than sinking into real plague-and-famine poverty, by giving their leaders total power over every aspect of life. The United Nations, once the trusted mediator between Europeans like Stalin and Hitler, has succumbed to this fantasy with its "Agenda 21" bid for total control over every aspect of life in every member nation. To the extent that the ostensibly civilized nations of the world cooperate with Agenda 21 or any of its successor schemes, the totalitarian government and the poverty it produces could very easily happen here...in the U.S., in the U.K., in any part of Europe or of any other continent, or, if the lunatics in the U.N. get their way, in all of them.

Probably everyone has, and should have, our own way of saying "Never Again." For me, as an American Christian, "Never Again" tends to blur into an older slogan: "Love all (never buy into collective hate as any kind of solution to anything), trust few (never entrust anyone with more power than is necessary to prevent violent crime), and always paddle your own canoe (make your own decisions based on what you observe where you are, which really is something about which you would know more than anyone else could)."

The Dachau Review is a good clear explanation of the alternative.

Waters of the United States

It's Agenda 21, crawled out of the crypt. The fact that it was resoundingly defeated ten years ago is no obstacle to the Illiberal Left's plan to force it on the people of these United States anyway.

Y'know, some of these ideas were actually not bad ideas until the Illiberal Left stepped on them. What kind of farmer wants to dump raw manure into water other people may have to drink? (Well, my Professional Bad Neighbor thought he did, a few years ago, but that was obvious enough that the real men in the family explained it to him right away.) Either you bury manure deep, or you burn it down to sanitary peaty stuff.  If this is a problem, you might have too many animals in one place, which isn't healthy even for the animals, and you might want to become a smaller operation. 

But let the "Dictocrats" deal with the issue in the way they do, and we can be sure "farmers" will crawl out from under every rock squawking that their great-grandparents always let the hogs wallow in the old town reservoir and they're positive that that had nothing to do with the typhoid, tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, and intestinal worms epidemics their town had in their grandparents' time, and antibiotics take care of that sort of thing, now, anyway, don't they? 

I oppose this kind of thing, too, on principle, just because it's coming out of that scumbags' convention going on in Davos where the unholy alliance of fascism and feudalism is trying to crawl out of its tomb. Because we can be sure that, whatever the language of the WOTUS legislation may say, it will actually mean "Big international companies will continue dumping manure and diseased carcasses into the reservoir, but at least the world will be spared from the real threat to the world's ecological balance presented by your children keeping pet chickens in the back yard." 

Anyway, from Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletter: 

"

On January 18th, the Federal Register officially published the Biden Administration’s final Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule. The rule was immediately met with heavy pushback from Republicans, like me. States and industry groups everywhere who saw the harm this new policy will have on Americans wasted no time filing lawsuits to stop the implementation of the rule. Texas filed a lawsuit on the same day the rule was published. A variety of agriculture groups, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association have also filed lawsuits attempting to overturn the rule. I know this issue is a top priority for constituents in agriculture and related industries. Everyone from the newly added to the 9th Bedford County, to Washington County has brought concerns to my attention. One of the first meetings I had in Bedford was about agricultural issues, including WOTUS. As soon as the Cattlemen announced their lawsuit, I heard from Gene Copenhaver of Washington County, who serves as their Policy Division Vice Chair. With the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Army Corps) were given authority to define what constitutes the “waters of the United States.” Due to the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case Rapanos v. United States, which challenged federal jurisdiction to regulate isolated wetlands under the Clean Water Act, the “significant nexus” test was created. The test used vague and expansive language that encouraged regulators to interpret the definition of WOTUS as increasingly broad. In 2015, under the Obama Administration, the EPA and Army Corps issued their Clean Water Rule, incorporating the “significant nexus” test from Rapanos. The two agencies took a sweeping approach to determine which waters fell within the definition. I criticized the rule at the time because it created regulatory uncertainty for too many folks – farmers, ranchers, small businesses, landowners, including homeowners, etc. – whose private land was unnecessarily burdened by this federal overreach. Criticism of the Clean Water Rule was bipartisan. In May 2015, just after the Obama Administration announced their WOTUS rule, I joined 230 Members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, in urging the EPA and the Army Corps to withdraw their rule. I also supported the Regulatory Integrity Protection Act, as did 24 House Democrats, requiring the EPA to withdraw the rule. In 2020, the Trump Administration thankfully replaced the 2015 rule, issuing the Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR), removing unneeded red tape for millions of Americans across the country. The rule did away with the “significant nexus” test and provided more clarity for property owners. Unfortunately, this victory was short lived. With the new Biden Administration, came new regulations. In December of 2021, the EPA and the Army Corps issued their proposed WOTUS rule, repealing the NWPR, and replacing it with what they characterized as a “pre-2015 rule definition”. Many immediately voiced their criticism of the Administration’s new proposal – it stripped provisions of the NWPR, removing needed certainty for many individuals and businesses. It also established significant criminal and civil penalties for violations to the Clean Water Act, which were extremely concerning. These new penalties meant jail time and thousands of dollars in fines a day, once again placing an undue burden on Americans who have had to keep up with ever-changing rules. Further, just after the proposed rule was released, the Supreme Court agreed to take up Sackett v. EPA, a case challenging the “significant nexus” test used in WOTUS. I, along with 200 other Members of the House of Representatives, urged the EPA and Army Corps to wait until the Supreme Court issued their opinion before releasing another final WOTUS rule. Unfortunately, the EPA and Army Corps ignored this common-sense request, issuing their final rule on December 30th. By doing so, the EPA and Army Corps discounted the Supreme Court’s pending decision, which will likely impact their action. Throughout this process, I’ve listened closely to the concerns of constituents and I am looking for opportunities in Congress to oppose this flawed policy. Also, before writing this column, I agreed to join a letter with other Members of Congress to urge the EPA and Army Corps to rescind the rule and postpone any subsequent agency action until the Sackett decision is announced by the Supreme Court. If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.

"

Virginia General Assembly Is In Session

...And it opened yesterday, my first day back in town, and I didn't make the time to post anything. I've not even read my men's bills yet. I had cherished an idealistic hope that, given the proposed gun regulations and the number of people who can be counted on to oppose those, this would be another quiet year when the General Assembly could get along just fine without us bloggers nipping at their heels.

No such luck.

Once again, this web site is officially following and praying for three men (yes, all of them are husbands and fathers) in the General Assembly. Fellow Virginians, I know some of you can do this too; it's a safe, friendly way to engage with the process. Christian women, specifically, join a project called "Encourage a Legislator," which sends out postcards expressly for the purpose of sharing non-political encouraging words with a Delegate or State Senator other than your own. This person is not there to represent you, so you can't tell him or her how to vote; you just pray for the person, that s/he will be blessed with wisdom and courage and good health and so on, and let the person know that Christians across the state are watching him or her.

Out here on the point of Virginia, this web site is represented by Delegate Terry Kilgore (House District 1) and State Senator Todd Pillion (Senate District 40). Links for them should work if you're in Virginia, and should track which part of Virginia you're in.

Delegate Kilgore of Gate City has been representing us, or at the very least our Republican majority, quite well for many years. While the bills he's proposed this year are (I note with great relief) of more concern to other people than they are to me, legislators' commendations of their constituents are always fun to read... http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+mbr+H56C .

Fiscal conservatives's eyebrows may rise when they read the bill of which he's listed as a chief co-patron. It doesn't raise taxes, but it does allow local governments to raise taxes. I will forward concerns from readers in other districts if they are expressed in a parliamentary way. None of us is getting any younger and the General Assembly always guarantees sufficient stress at best.

About Senator Pillion of Abingdon, so far, I can say that he's been very "conservative" in spending money to file proposed legislation: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+mbr+S111 .

The object of this web site's special concern this year is Delegate Ronnie Campbell of Raphine. Reading his collected works at http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+mbr+H309C is likely to motivate this web site's original primary readership to pray earnestly for him. Notable for its unacceptibility to all True Greens and Libertarians is his proposal to allow local jurisdictions to order people who don't even live in cities to "mow grass and weeds."

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+ful+HB875

Hello? Most of Virginia is not flat land, and you do not ever want to see mown grass on a steep slope. Mowing grass on a steep slope...

* guarantees erosion

* promotes the growth of the invasive nuisance called Bermuda grass (and other things prohibited under this web site's contract)

* encourages the unwary to build new dependencies on poisons like glyphosate and dicamba, not to mention "fertilizers" that can build up to toxic excess, and ultimately replace lovely native plants with more Spanish Needles, Johnson grass, and kudzu

* makes it more difficult for glyphosate-sensitive people to find and cultivate survival food in their back yards, which is certainly what's keeping me alive at this point, when nearly all commercially grown fruit and vegetables are poisoned

* disproportionately increases the burden of land ownership on the elderly and on young working parents, to no particular gain for anybody

* reduces much-needed biodiversity and "wild" land

* promotes un-neighborly meddling and petty personal harassment

* and also looks ugly...we don't need more Astroturf!

Am I ever praying that God will add an extra boost to the amount of wisdom the General Assembly should share with this gentleman, by killing this bill. (He proposed a similar bill last year. They killed it.)

I think we need a ban on any local requirements that anybody maintain a "mown lawn" even in a city. Native plants are much better. I don't know that we need to empower government to ban the bad habit of monocropping for Bermuda grass to maintain that Astroturf look, but we certainly don't need to tolerate any encouragement of this practice.

Long-term readers will remember the intensity with which Americans rejected the foreign-born land-grab proposal known as "Agenda 21." The United Nations disowned this agenda, but that in no way prevents people who supported it from insinuating little tendrils of it, like those first little sprouts of poison ivy in early spring, back into the edges of even Republicans' philosophical "lawns."

Their proposals sound so reasonable. So nice.

Scott County unanimously opposed the whole idea of a local zoning ordinance, ten years ago, because we opposed the kind of discrimination against low-income families that is involved in things like banning trailer houses. (Remember, "Agenda 21" was all about promoting all kinds of bans and regulations that would force all but the richest to give up owning private homes and land, allowing greedheads to take over large amounts of real estate whose owners refuse to sell it.) Our county board of supervisors assured us that nothing in the ordinance would keep anyone from putting a trailer house on their rental property and renting it out.

Yet, with some dismay, I already hear of people on town councils giving in to what sounds like a harmless reasonable proposal to boost town and city incomes by...banning trailer houses.

"But the reason why these people want trailer houses is that they don't have to pay property taxes on them." Once trailer houses are set up as permanent residences, not in camps but on privately owned land, what in existing state law prevents them from being taxed in the same way other houses are? Not that I think we need more taxes on more kinds of property; I think we need more frugal budgets. But the people who are really interested in land grabs don't want to think about removing a tax loophole that might be discouraging people from improving their trailer houses. Their real goal is to put more people out of their homes!

I already hear of people on town councils wanting to segregate "high-end" from midrange or minimum-investment businesses.

"But high-end businesses generate more profit and pay more taxes and allow cities to do more for the people." Maybe so, but do the people really need higher taxes to enable more dependency, or do they need more encouragement to keep themselves off welfare through low-investment businesses?

In Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, we learned the hard way about gun bans, and we also learned the hard way about how those nicely-nice proposals to yuppify neighborhoods create what I've always hoped would remain a unique kind of homelessness. We need to be vigilant about allowing this kind of ideas to spread into Virginia. One of Montgomery County, Maryland, is all...is probably more than all the world needs.

Maybe what we really need is legislation to establish a Free Enterprise, American Way, zone including all of Virginia under one nice, clear, simple rule: If you own land, you have no right to use it in a way that does harm to other people--which would include putting a chemical plant in the middle of a residential suburb, or keeping hogs in a pen adjacent to a restaurant. But those other people have no right to object to anything you do with that land that does not materially harm them.

Under that kind of clearheaded legislation, neighbors could petition a city government to impose a fine on people who fail to allow native plants to displace any lingering messes of Bermuda grass, or who persist in spraying the kudzu their "weed killers" have nurtured with things whose vapors kill songbirds--but they could not complain about native plants. Or trailer houses. Or the colors of other people's paint...I suppose Reston has a right to exist somewhere, but I'm not at all sure that it ought ever to have existed in Virginia.

Remembering that Agenda 21 also called for Delegate Campbell's and my generation to die younger than we grew up expecting we would, I urge Virginia's Republicans to be as vigilant about these sneaky little appeals to whatever little furtive traces of greed and snobbery they possess, as they are about the attention-grabbing gun ban. Not that gun bans are a safe experiment, as far as human lives are concerned. But land-grabbing is not a safe experiment either. 

Those who choose are welcome to join my prayer for the Virginia General Assembly for 2020:

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon You, and we beg the blessing of Your guidance to preserve our common wealth from the influence of malevolent patrons who gamble on our shortsightedness.

Help our elected representatives to remember, always, that individual freedom and accountability only to You are ideals that have served us well in this world, while European notions about "gentility," dependency on government, and concern for appearance had destructive effects on all those who succumbed to them.

We ask Your particular blessing on Delegate Campbell, who is not a young man but is new to the General Assembly, and on Delegate Kilgore, whom You have placed in a position to guide and correct him.

Tom DeWeese on "Developments" We Do Not Need

After posting our Congressman's latest, I next found this e-mail from Tom DeWeese. It's a fundraiser but it exposes the problems built into many "development grants"--people who want to destroy small farms and rural communities, and herd people into slums. "Planners" want to replicate the conditions that made (some of) our ancestors leave old Europe, to replace the conditions that allowed our more recent ancestors and us to enjoy better lives than people do in Europe. Let's be clear: Some people who think this way may also be socialists and/or Europeans, but basically it's about money. They want to make money on those slums. This is the kind of "development" we need to avoid, in the point of Virginia and everywhere else, however alluring the grants may seem to be.

"
The attack on private property is growing across the country at a frightening rate. And the target is single-family homes – most likely -- your home.

I have warned in recent weeks that Sustainable Development/Agenda 21 advocates are now calling zoning for single-family neighborhoods RACIST!

Minneapolis, Minnesota became the first city to end single-family zoning as the Mayor called such protections “self-segregation” devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods. Unbelievable!

Seattle, Washington followed Minneapolis. Other cities are looking into such plans. The federal agency HUD is pushing such plans under the Obama program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). And city after city are taking HUD grants that force them to impose such plans.

So, attacks on single-family homes are racing across the nation.

Now Oregon is about to become the first state to eliminate single family zoning across the state...

The speaker of the Oregon House, Rep. Tina Kotek, says this action is urgent because Oregon has a “housing crisis.”

That is bunk!  Oregon has a government-made crisis. 

For over 20 years Oregon has been enforcing “Urban Growth Boundaries” (UGB) around its cities. This is part of the Sustainable “Smart Growth” policy.

As I have told my audiences around the nation, under Smart Growth, planners put an artificial line around the city and declare NO GROWTH will take place outside that line. That’s “Urban Sprawl!” And the planners insist that urban sprawl is a danger to the environment because it encourages the use of automobiles, strip malls, and the need for infrastructure like roads and power.

We used to call that building an economy until the Sustainablists declared war on human society! 

Here’s what they didn’t count on. The UGBs assure the area of the city doesn’t expand. But what happens when the population does? The only way to grow is UP!

That means there is no room for single family homes with backyards for the kids. According to the rhetoric of the Sustainablists the only solution is to flood single-family neighborhoods with duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and “cottage clusters.” They call this “up zoning.” Says Oregon House Speaker Kotek, “The state’s housing crisis requires a combination of bolder strategies.”

I love how these control freaks always use the words “bolder”, “innovative”, and “master plan” to make their destructive policies sound urgent and brave!

The truth is they are pushing their own political agenda, and when they get caught by their unworkable plans, they pretend to offer a solution to their own idiotic regulations -- which they created.

For example, Portland Oregon has long been the poster child – the shining example -- of the genius of Smart Growth praised in government and environmental meetings across the country.

Smart Growth is an utter failure as property rights have been destroyed, housing costs have skyrocketed and now there is a housing crisis!

Why? Because over the years, under Smart Growth, Portland’s population has grown by over 80%. But legislators have only allowed the Urban Growth Boundary to expand by no more than 6%!

NOW PORTLAND HAS A HOUSING CRISIS AND SO WE MUST ABOLISH SELFISH, RACIST, SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES!!!

Imagine what these policies will do to your property values – your equity – all that you have worked for?

Most people could quickly figure out the problem and dump such destructive policies. But WHY can’t your city councils and county commissions see the lies?

Because they are surrounded – inundated – with special interest Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) - private groups with their own private agendas.

The worst offender of this is the American Planning Association (APA). They, or affiliated planning groups, are in nearly every single community in the nation. They have the plans and the ability to get your local officials to apply for specific grants from HUD, EPA and other federal agencies to put it all in place.

I have fought the APA in city after city. I have exposed their lies and their tactics, exposing their direct ties to Agenda 21. As local citizens heard my warnings and took action to stop such plans in their communities, the APA panicked.

The APA rushed to create an “Agenda 21 Myths and Facts” page on their website. They did all they could to hide any connections between their planning and Agenda 21. Their planning was all local, local, local, the APA insisted.

They assured communities that planning “protects private property…preserves and protects its value.” They said “planning preserves neighborhoods, providing certainty to homeowners…”

Well, do you think calling single family home owners “racist” and destroying single family zoning protections “preserves” neighborhoods --- or destroys them? When they build an apartment building in your neighborhood will you feel “protected?”

The truth is the American Planning Association is part of the Planners Network. The network is officially part of a group called the Organization of Progressive Planners, which is, “an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic and environmental planning…” That is Agenda 21!

On the website. www.plannersnetwork.org, you will find in its Statement of Principles this quote, “We believe planning should be a tool for allocating resources…and eliminating the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society…because the free market has proven incapable of doing this…”

That is social justice. Anti-free enterprise. Anti-private property. That is what every planner, working in every American city, believes!!

And the APA is digging in to promote more of Agenda 21/Sustainable Development policy which they deny exists.

Right now, the APA is sponsoring a webinar series for planners and elected officials. Here are some of the subjects they are addressing.

“New examples of cites approaching the challenge of climate change in creative and innovative ways,” including “rethinking transportation, to greening city buildings, to protecting against sea-level rise…” They go on to say the speakers at the webinars will offer guidance which “contextualizesinternational, national, and state mandates and goals.”

This is NOT local. This is NOT protection of private property. This is why you are seeing such reorganization of our local communities and counties across the nation.

The American Planning Association and its NGO co-conspirators are using their LOCAL planning lies to bring every city in the United States into compliance with UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development policy.

Let me be very clear about where this is all headed.

Single-family homes are the greatest example of private property ownership. Private property is the greatest means for individuals to build personal wealth through the equity earned. That’s why America grew so fast!

As private property ownership is destroyed, the wealth of the nation is diminishing. Now we are hearing some economists worry about a lack of housing starts in the building industry that could lead to an economic crisis.Yet, these “experts” rarely mention the true culprit – Sustainable Development, Smart Growth government tyranny!     

Now, as we see more and more housing moving toward the high-rise stack and pack rental properties, a new attack is growing – this time against private owner landlords.

New government regulations are raising taxes on landlords, along with higher building costs. But now, many communities are starting to impose rent controls, because it’s not “fair” to make people pay so much for their homes!

Here is the bottom-line goal of this attack on private property and single-family homes. If we lose this battle against Sustainable Development/Smart Growth policies, then, eventually all housing will become government controlled. There will be no private homes or condos. Only government housing!
 
A free society cannot survive that!

This is the tyranny that I have dedicated my life to stopping! The American Policy Center (APC) is the leading organization in the nation fighting to save private property.
"

With all that information I think the APC deserves a link, but their buttons were messing up the formatting of the whole page...donations will be accepted by americanpolicy.org.

Tom DeWeese on Community Planning

From Tom DeWeese...ends up with a request for funding, which I'm sharing, because I was so glad to receive a political e-mail that was about an ongoing political issue, as distinct from some person! As regular readers know, the American Policy Center is a legitimate online news site.

"

In the Bayou of Alabama there is a beautiful, small, quaint village called Bayou La Batre. Boat building is the major industry of the community. Shrimp boats. Sailing boats. There are ten to fifteen ship yards. These supply the jobs, the economy, and the tax base. This little community is the seafood capital of Alabama and every year the community sponsors the “Blessing of the Fleet.” For over two hundred years, the folks of Bayou La Batre have lived quiet, happy, productive lives. But we live in a time of massive upheaval in this nation. There are dangerous forces operating in every community, in every state legislature, in our federal government and on the international level. Those driving the upheaval are private, independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They include planning groups, land trusts, environmental organizations, and the like. These forces have their own agenda – their own vision of how the rest of us should live – whether we want to or not. Of course, they usually enforce these ideas based on the scare tactic of environmental protection. It’s emotional and most people are afraid to oppose such plans. To get their way, they partner with the power of government to create rules and regulations to force their agenda on us – usually funded by federal grants that are actually our own tax dollars. Private property rights, free enterprise and individual choice have no place in this powerful reorganization of our nation. Control of the land and dictating how people are to live on it is the goal. Well, last year these forces targeted little Bayou La Batre. A typically easy target because it has few resources to defend itself against the rich and powerful NGOs. This time their scheme called for transforming the town to “Eco-tourism.” What is Eco tourism you ask? It means land locked away from development. It means that every fly, snail darter and mosquito has more rights than the people who own and live on the property. The NGOs prepared an entire “visioning” plan outlining the town’s future, that would mean lots of rules and regulations that were never there before. In other words, Bayou La Batre was about to be locked into a time warp, restricting growth, destruction of property rights and denial of freedom of choice for the residents. To keep the residents calm the new plan called for “grandfathering in” the existing ship building companies. However, the small print told the truth. If a ship builder’s property happened to be severely damaged or destroyed by a hurricane, flood, or fire – they were forbidden to rebuild. Instead the property would be taken over and used for the Eco-tourism plan – perhaps becoming a bistro for the tourists. But this time the NGO plan met opposition. There were people in the town who knew the game being played against the residents. THIS WAS AGENDA 21 IN ACTION! How did they know? One reason was because some of the local folks had been to one of my speeches in Mobile a couple of years ago. There they learned first hand what Agenda 21 was all about. They contacted me for ideas on how to fight back. We had long talks on the phone. Then, using American Policy Center (APC) information, they went to work. After some initial opposition from local government officials, including the mayor, the activists were able to convince them that the new plan was going to be the death of their wonderful town. Even though the NGO’s came armed with powerful government connections, detailed plans, and the grant money, the local city council and the mayor rejected the plan in a unanimous 7 – 0 NO vote! I wanted to tell you this story because as I travel the nation teaching people about the threat of Agenda 21 too many of them believe it can’t be stopped. They fear that the NGOs and planners are just too powerful. I want you to know that is not true! It can be stopped. You can save your town and your property rights. This is what the American Policy Center is all about. This is what I do! I travel and speak. I write. I teach. I alert. APC has produced some of the most effective tools to help local activists learn the truth about Agenda 21 and take action to stop it. There is only one thing that limits my ability to organize across the country and stop the Agenda 21 assault. Funding. APC is not a large, wealthy organization. We are small, yet incredibly effective. We make every dollar count! No fat. No waste. Every dime goes into our fight. Will you help me expand that fight against these powerful - but beatable -Non-governmental organizations and planning groups that are using federal grant money and the UN international agenda to destroy our nation of freedom? I’m asking if you will today send $25, $50 or even $100?

DONATE NOW

The UN and its NGO shock troops thought you and I would do nothing as they destroyed our culture and system of government. We are proving them wrong! We stopped them in tiny Bayou La Bartre. APC can do it in your town. Yours in Freedom, Tom DeWeese

"

Tortie Tuesday: Pink Ribbons for Cats Too

Status update: Friday Market sales, $40. If your income for the past week was over US$60 you need to support this web site:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

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https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking

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https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing

You can also mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.

Though I'm getting a bit concerned about Freelancer.com being a legitimate site at all. Much as I'd like to believe that some sweet day I'll actually receive the payment I was promised for this post, I see site managers trying to embezzle the money they're supposedly just waiting to send until I've earned a little more. I really think the FCC needs to do something to prevent the abomination of job "agencies" taking bribes to recommend people for jobs from getting started in these United States...as in, if a writing or other online job site even tries to sell prospective employees anything, even a physical object they actually intend to deliver, before the employee has collected a payment, we need a law requiring that job site's address to redirect to a message that THIS WEB SITE IS TRYING TO EXPLOIT THE UNDEREMPLOYED AND HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN, for about a year. Job sites should not even be allowed to display ad links on pages people see while logged in as sellers-of-services. 

Now on to today's topic, which is the "Torties"--cats on whose coats black, orange, and white hairs form large patches of mixed, brownish-looking fur rather than distinct black, orange, and white spots, especially on the back. As regular readers know, my Queen Cat Heather has mostly a light-colored "heatherspun" coat, great camouflage at this time of year, with distinct black and orange rings and a cream-colored tip on her long tail; she's a long, lean cat whose normal weight is nine to ten pounds. Junior cat Samantha is mostly black with some distinct orange spots and some black-and-orange "tortoiseshell" spot, on her back, and white feet, and a white tip on her long black tail; she's a spring kitten and weighs four or five pounds. 

Samantha has a nervous personality, probably shaped  by growing up in a house that included middle school boys. Whenever she's scared she goes into an off-putting threat display of growling, nipping, and slapping with her claws out. Although she was brought up as a pet and answers to her name, and although I certainly would never mistake Samantha's carefully harmless threat display for a real feral cat's fight for freedom--if sweet little Samantha been taken to a shelter that follows the current evil policy of the Humane Society of the United States, she'd be classified as unadoptable and killed. 

Both Heather and I have recognized Samantha's obnoxious display as the bluff it is. If Samantha slaps Heather, harmlessly, Heather slaps Samantha, harmlessly, right back, and Samantha leaps back and cringes into a corner, and Heather nonverbally reassures her. If Samantha slaps me, mostly-harmlessly, I grab her by the scruff of the neck and tell her to calm down, which she usually does, and if necessary I put her in a nice safe cage. My "Aunt Dotty," who tamed feral cats when I was a child, used that technique to eliminate serious threat displays from feral cats (notably including Boots, the Tuxie, and Muffin, the Tortie, who lived with her for seventeen and eighteen years--and they were adult cats when she tamed them).

This morning, while Heather and Samantha were eating breakfast on the porch (because it was still wet outside), Samantha growled as I walked past her. Yes, and if I'd separated her from her food, she would have slapped me! HSUS shelters brand cats unadoptable and kill them for less...even though Samantha unmistakably nonverbally said that she wanted to stay with Heather and me; even though she comes when she's called and purrs when she's stroked and snuggles when she is or isn't picked up, just as if she'd been born and raised in my home.

They woke me several times during the night, chasing a mad squirrel that I heard yelling at us from an apple tree in the orchard on Sunday. A hawk was flying overhead, crows were giving their alarm call--that "Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw!" that's the "word" humans are most likely to hear American Crows utter. This squirrel was getting into the act and, in plain sight of cats and humans, about fifteen feet up the tree, it was shaking its tail and yelling "Wack! Wack! Wack!" like a rather hoarse, very loud and angry duck. I've not heard a squirrel quack like that before. The cardinals and a chickadee were also vocalizing, warning each other of every movement of the circling hawk. 

(The hawk wasn't close enough for me to see its size but it did fly toward the afternoon sun so that I had a clear view of its mostly pale spotted undercoat--no red tail yet, if it's ever going to have one. It might be one of the smaller hawks that frequently do eat birds. Most red-tails probably do eat a smaller bird at some time in their lives, but it wasn't good for them. When red-tails eat birds regularly or by choice, they're sick, and can be classified as "chicken hawks" and shot for the benefit of the local population...although Virginia law does not yet recognize this fact of life. Red-tails are beautiful birds, usually able to take care of themselves in the wild but also willing to become pets; like cats they rarely try to eat birds and usually fail when they do try--but a sick red-tail that finds a family of songbirds or young domestic fowl is indeed a nuisance.)

Anyway the Mad Squirrel thought it wanted to move into the house, because the edge of the passing hurricane had blown some dead flybush down from the hillside above the house into a position from which the squirrel could bound onto the roof, and it was trying to pry up a piece of the roof, and Heather and Samantha and also Tickle were trying to kill it. At least one cat got up onto the roof. I was too sleepy to go out and see whether Samantha was really working with them as part of a hunting team yet, although, if she is, that would indicate that she's a social cat after all. (If not, she's the cleverest non-social cat I've ever seen.)

When I left this morning it was still too wet for pruning to be a pleasant chore, but I had to force myself out of the house. There are some cyberchores and writing chores I can do on this laptop when it's offline; I usually leave this one in town overnight and do other things with my own personal desktop computer, or in emergencies with the Sickly Snail, at home, but this weekend I had this laptop at home. I woke up at 5:45 from a dream of cyberchores, ready to tear into the cyberchores in real life... 

Writer's id: "Eight o'clock already? Oh can't I stay home and putter today?"

Writer's ego: "You signed a Real Writing Contract on Friday! You need to use online time when you have it! It's not actually raining now, so load up that laptop, wrap it up in a blanket shawl, and get into town now! You're wasting online time!"

Writer's id: "Oh moooan, oh waaail...I want to finish these cyberchores! I want to do the housekeeping chores I didn't do on Monday! I want to prune the hedge above the house!"

Etc., etc., etc.

But I had received payment for regular blog posts this week, and while waiting for the client's input on the Real Writing Contract seemed a good time for a blog post. Well, it's Tuesday, a good day to post about the Torties. It's October, a time when many bloggers seem to like to post about a specific type of cancer. 

Personally, as a cancer widow, I think my awareness of cancer is as high as it can go without becoming a source of carcinogenic toxic stress, so I don't usually get into "cancer awareness month" things. 

But I had wanted to post an official comment about a nasty little meme that the Humane Cat Genocide Society, the evil modern HSUS that doesn't even promote Cleveland Amory's or Roger Caras's books any more, has been circulating. Even Mudpie's Human (isn't Mudpie the cutest Tortie in cyberspace? Or do you think beware-of-Petfinder-cookies Jade is?) has bought into the totally bogus idea that leaving our dogs and cats intact, the way nature intended them to be, is what causes them to get cancer.

Although dogs' and cats' mammary glands are usually flat and unnoticeable except immediately before birth and during active lactation, so they're called teats rather than breasts, the kind of cancer that forms in cats' mammary tissue is still called breast cancer. 

Pet food is what the meat industry does with unusable "meat by-products," including the actual malignant tumors of animals that had cancer before being slaughtered. It's also laced with toxic preservatives, of which arsenic is probably the least toxic to humans, that are banned from the human food supply as being long-term carcinogens  Pet food manufacturers get away with this because most cats and dogs don't live long enough to develop any type of cancer. Period. 

Nevertheless, both cats and dogs, both male and female, occasionally get cancer of the mammary glands. In fact, although cancer in cats and dogs is rare, "feline breast cancer" and "canine breast cancer" rank among the most common forms of cancer found in these species. If you can keep your pet alive long enough for carcinogens to build up in its body, the mammary glands are among the most likely places for cancerous tumors to form.

Sex hormone activity does not cause cancer. Sex hormones are naturally present in all healthy adult animals of every species. The role of estrogen and testosterone in cancer is to encourage bodies to develop the type of tissue in which breast or prostate cancers form.

However, when cancerous tumors form in the mammary tissue of male or female humans or other animals, estrogen is the hormone that encourages the body to expand a cushion of fat around the mammary glands, so sexually mature females are more likely than males to develop breast cancer. This is true for cats and dogs as well as humans.

Most unspayed cats don't get breast cancer.

Many spayed cats do get breast cancer.

The cause of cancer obviously has nothing to do with whether a cat, dog, or human, is sterile, or a mother, or a father. The cause of cancer is hard to pin down because it seems to be a combination of chemicals, some naturally present in food, most found in pollutants such as chemical pesticides, perfumes, preservatives, and by-products of things like gas-burning cars, that enables the "oxidation" damage that turns healthy cell tissue into cancerous tumors. All of us have been exposed to enough carcinogens that we could have cancer already--and in cyberspace many people already know they have cancer. If we don't have cancer, that appears to be thanks to a healthy balance between oxidant and antioxidant factors in our bodies. 

People who are seriously concerned about the health of cats and dogs are interested in knowing more about how antioxidants, and which antioxidants, work for cats and dogs--for one thing it seems that cats don't metabolize Vitamin C at all. Vitamin C from fresh fruit and raw vegetables is the primary antioxidant for humans. What is the primary antioxidant for animals that weren't designed to eat fresh fruit and raw vegetables?

People whose real goal is to extirpate domestic animal species--because that's part of the atheistic religion they were taught by people who coveted the food rich farmers were able to spare for domestic animals--are banging on their drums and screaming, "Hormones cause cancer! The ooonly way to protect your cat from breast cancer is to get her spayed before she can become pregnant! If you didn't have your cat spayed before she was six months old, and she got cancer, it's your fault! No matter how valuable your cat's DNA may be, how much you may want to preserve her bloodline, you haaaff to make sure she can't reproduce--because otherwise people will go on being able to enjoy the benefit of living with cats!" 

Is anyone else calling them out about the cruelty of saying this to people who adopted an adult cat from a HSUS-approved shelter? No? "Humane" types are cruel, Gentle Readers. Some of them are downright sociopathic. This web site might even say diabolical.

Because spayed cats get breast cancer too.

Obviously nobody would publish advertisements telling people, "Protect your daughter from breast cancer now by having all her female organs removed before age ten"--although that type of surgery is possible, and has sometimes been recommended for little girls at unusually high risk, and is, in fact, about as effective for preventing breast/ovarian/uterine cancer in women as spaying is for preventing breast cancer in cats and dogs. Neutering little boys before age ten is a pretty effective way to protect them against prostate cancer, too. And in fact the human population really is expanding beyond anything that's natural and healthy on this one known human-habitable planet, and really needs to be checked.

I keep seeing more confirmation, and no contradiction, of my belief that animal studies are giving us an unmistakable message. Homosexuality is not found in healthy animal populations (although sterility is). Most naturally sterile animals are asexual; many are also asocial, and many are also unhealthy in other conspicuous ways. (Some animals also have social behavior that looks like homosexual flirtation but, on closer examination, is actually part of the species' heterosexual mating routine.) When animals that seem healthy show enough interest in sex to be actively homosexual, the population is overcrowded. If homosexuality, and asexuality and sterility, don't slow reproduction fast enough to check population growth, nature's next steps are uglier: animals become violently aggressive toward their own species, and plagues cause "colony collapses" in local populations.

This web site continuously urges people to be as nice about homosexual individuals as they are about naturally sterile, heterosexual individuals like the members of this web site...but this web site also urges people to notice our existence as a warning. 

We don't recommend neutering children unless there is clear evidence of an elevated risk for cancer. (For example, if the child had survived leukemia and several close relatives had breast, uterine, ovarian, and/or prostate cancer.) We recommend neutering animals if and when you perceive that as your only viable alternative to killing young animals, if and when the animals develop medical conditions that make reproduction dangerous for them, if and when the animals have undesirable genes (such as the genes that produce Manx, Rex, completely albinistic, and "doll-faced" looks in cats), and if and when you feel emotionally attached to the idea of keeping a male animal as a celibate indoor pet (because otherwise his sexual urges will drive you up the wall). That's a lot of surgical operations...but we do not recommend having all domestic animals sterilized, frantically, manically, compulsively, before they can possibly reproduce.

That idea emits the vile stench of an anti-American, fundamentally anti-human agenda...that's been seriously proposed in the United Nations, and is still under attack by people like Glenn Beck and Tom DeWeese because versions of it are still being blathered about there. The position of this web site is that the U.S. needs to limit funding to the U.N. until the U.N. voluntarily adopts a moratorium on any further discussion of any idea in "Agenda 21" or on any further suggestion that might in any way undermine the sovereignty of any member nation, or imply that the U.N. has any right to exist as anything other than a mediation service.

Eliminating domestic animals in order to feed more humans in more densely packed slums is part of the Old Socialist utopian vision of an endlessly expanding young population supporting an endlessly expanding older population in endlessly "growing" luxury...and that vision is not viable. It's been tried, and although the humans can be packed into slums and fed for a generation or two, that's not a sustainable way for humans to live. It triggers natural warning signs such as the drastic increase in non-reproductive lifestyle choices we're seeing now in relatively "advanced" countries. If we don't heed those warnings, animal studies show us that the consequences will become really ugly. (For those who've never been able to warm up to anyone who was homosexual, much less the mouthy, deliberately obnoxious, Christian-phobic woman-haters most people mean when they say "gay"--if you imagine the consequences of continued overcrowding, I give you my word, "gays" will start to look positively cute to you, too.)

If only to spite the totalitarian power grabbers lurking in the U.N., this web site recommends that you consider not spaying your female pet, and, furthermore, when you see any whines about how "faaailing to have your cat spayed earrrly causes caaancer!!!", consider posting a reply like "Shuddup and spay yer idjit self." (More polite versions are appropriate if the poster is a friend who just succumbed to the urge to post without thinking; this web site leaves that to your judgment.)

Yes, it's possible for local animal populations to be overcrowded, and if you can see that happening in your part of the world--if you can look out into an alley and see lots of starving, quarrelling, disease-infested feral cats, not just an occasional straying pet but a feral colony on the brink of collapse--then it's appropriate for you and your neighbors to start culling the population more intensively. 

But it's not appropriate for a part of the world like mine, where rats and mice are still much more of a nuisance than the occasional homeless pet. In fact, it's not appropriate to start blathering about a "cat overpopulation problem" in a place where anybody might have heard a rodent, including squirrels, nibbling on their house within the past decade. What that place has is obviously a cat underpopulation problem.

Lack of free-ranging, unaltered, naturally reproducing cats causes plagues that kill humans...so we all need to be asking ourselves whether we've seen healthy free-ranging cats lately, and, if not, whether we don't need more kittens in our part of the world. In some tropical island countries the answer may be no, but in the Eastern States it is unequivocally yes. 

Confining cats to safe indoor areas is likely to increase their life expectancy as they get older and start sleeping long and deeply enough to be vulnerable to other predators. Sterilizing cats who need to be confined may help reconcile them to being confined, although at this stage of her life Heather is nonverbally saying, loud and clear, "Not more indoor time for the cat, but more outdoor time for the human is indicated!" But Heather is, as regular readers know, not a normal cat. She does understand things...When she was younger she strayed a long way from home, often, on long hunting trips. Now that she feels a need for a long deep nap that takes up a good part of each afternoon, she's staying closer to home. When the time comes, I'm sure she'll be willing to spend more time indoors--probably demanding to spend most of it on my knee. I believe most cats belong outdoors, because most cats are young; Heather has earned the right to a long retirement when, and not before, she reaches retirement age.

And I sincerely hope that, by the time Heather becomes "old," we'll be seeing some worthwhile information on what does cause and prevent cancer in cats. 

Better food.

Lower pollution.

Tighter restrictions on the use of poisons to "protect" food.

And, by all means, prompt and complete surgical excision of all the reproductive parts of all cat haters, not necessarily excluding tongues.

Tortie Tuesday: Samantha, With Rant

Over the weekend, the Cat Sanctuary received a gift of $20 toward the support of a foster kitten...another "tortie." If you earned more than $38 last week, you need to support this web site. Here are the links that offer the options of supporting (and steering) this web site, or getting a guest post for your own site or other Perks & Goodies:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

https://www.freelancer.com/u/PriscillaKing

https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king

https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking

https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking 

https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing

You can also mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.

Next the apology. This post really ought to contain pictures of the two calico cats, Heather and Samantha. Well, I can repost the familiar picture that shows how Heather's mostly orange and black hairs are really "heatherspun" together, like the best Scottish wool yarn...

...But uploading new pictures costs money, and although the cost of an individual original picture for this blog is still only about a dollar, in order to make posting pictures even that cheap I have to buy $45 worth of phone minutes at one time. And I have property taxes to pay, not to mention food and utilities, before I can even think about buying phone minutes; at the time of posting I'm still eking out the phone minutes I received as a Christmas present, last year, by not even talking to my mother on the phone. So you'll have to make do with words. Samantha is a dark calico cat, like Heather, but with more distinct patches and less "heathering," much more black, and probably more white hairs although they're mostly clumped on her feet. Seen from above, Samantha can be described as a black-and-orange "tortoiseshell" cat. Like Heather she has a long enough tail that she has to curl the tip of her tail under if she doesn't choose to wave it high; unlike Heather's (ring-striped), Samantha's tail is almost solid black.

Although our new kitten shows no evidence of being a social cat, she may be a listening cat. She knows and responds to the name humans have given her, which is Samantha. Possibly she's failing to bond with Heather the Queen Cat because Heather doesn't know her real name in cat "language"...according to research cited by Jean George, most cats do assign specific "meows" to individual cats and humans in their families, although, just as most cats don't pay enough attention to human noises to recognize the names we give them, most humans don't pay enough attention to cat noises to recognize the names they give us.

Samantha is a Scaredycat...not without her reasons. She grew up in a house near a paved road where cars and trucks pass by fast enough to kill a kitten. Although her first human godparents were kind, they were old and poor, and Samantha soon realized that they intended to send her to a shelter rather than pay for her to be spayed. Then, as if that weren't enough, the school term started and Samantha had to train middle school boys to treat kittens with due respect...which taught her some habits that just might have caused her to be euthanized at a shelter! 

Much of my weekend consisted of retraining Samantha that humans and older cats (well, Heather and Tickle at least) are kind, and defensive threat displays lead to preventive actions--placing Samantha in her Safe Place, a.k.a. Cat Jail, a roomy cage, and clipping her claws.

I've blogged before about clipping cats' claws. It is not to be confused with declawing. Clipping the ends of the cats' claws is a safe, painless procedure analogous to trimming humans' fingernails. Declawing is a horrible, painful procedure analogous to yanking out the fingernails with pliers, or maybe chopping off the ends of humans' fingers. 

Should you trim your cat's claws? To find out, inspect the claws under a strong light. You should be able to see an end of dead, opaque white keratin, like the dead end of your fingernails, past the core of translucent living tissue through which you can see a pinkish vein. If not, either the claws are already as short as they need to be, or you should hire someone with clearer vision to trim the dead white ends off the cat's claws. 

Cats' claws do need trimming. Outdoor cats can usually file down their own claws at the same time they mark their territories by scratching wood--trees, fences, sometimes your door frame. Indoor cats meet this natural grooming need by clawing your walls and furniture. Some cats are nice enough to humor your preference that they limit this behavior to one "scratching post." As a point of policy I trim the claws of any cat who scratches any human or anything in or on the humans' house. 

Since the actual clipping process doesn't hurt the cat, and the cat gets extra attention and sometimes a treat for cooperation, cats who've stayed with me for a while learn to like having their claws trimmed--sometimes putting up their paws and just showing the claws, not actually scratching, as a hint that it's time for their next "paw-dicure." 

Samantha, however, had never had her claws trimmed or watched another cat's claws being trimmed before. She wasn't even confident enough to enjoy having the fleas that rode in on her removed with the flea comb, an experience in which she'd seen and heard Heather positively revelling. 

Heather solicits claw-clipping and absolutely loves flea-combing. Despite this good example, Samantha was extremely nervous about any objects approaching her, possibly as a result of having been poked and teased by children. While being flea-combed she scratched and bit. Although she inflicted a few surface wounds, even punctured a capillary--leaving the kind of wound that gushes blood just long enough to be washed, then dries up and becomes invisible--I could feel the difference between her friendly-warning nips and slaps and the serious fight a wild cat might have put up. 

Cat Sanctuary policy is that no cat is ever allowed to "win" a physical fight with any human, so although Samantha had made it clear that she was not a wild animal that needed to be zipped into a heavy sack for clipping, she had all her claws clipped. After defending the first fifteen claws with play-fighting, she gave in and let me clip the last three with no further ado. She was tired, and snuggled wearily against my hands. I stroked her, admired the precision with which she'd inflicted at least nineteen totally harmless surface wounds, and took her back to her Safe Place for an hour or two.

Cat Sanctuary policy is that no cat has to stay there. In fact I'd had some hesitation about fostering Samantha. She seemed to me to be paying attention during the preliminary conversation with her humans, and to be opposed to the ideas of being sold, adopted, or "taken to the pound." 

I've never seen a cat act as if it objected to the idea of being "sold" by humans, although most cats make it absolutely clear that they do not like being kept in shelters. Well, there's a first time for everything. Samantha's first human godparents had spent the day hoping their children would take them and a load of things they were willing to sell--mostly old clothes, and I suspect they'd bought the clothes secondhand in spring--to the Friday Market in Gate City, which is technically open from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., but slows down around midday as the most serious vendors pack up and drive to Nickelsville. Then when that didn't happen, they'd hoped their children would take them to the Friday Market in Nickelsville. Then when that didn't happen, they'd hoped spreading out their old clothes in the front yard, and sitting out there with the kittens, would prompt people to stop on the way between markets. (It's no longer legal to sell cats in flea markets, but still legal to sell them to visitors at yard sales.) Mostly that didn't happen either. So when I admired the kittens, I was talking to two very discouraged, hot'n'tired senior citizens who had spent the whole day trying to raise a little honest money and not succeeding. I felt their pain. Samantha went right up to me and cuddled in my arms as long as I was admiring her and talking about what a discouraging day it had been for other people, too, in Gate City. Then she heard her human godmother mention selling kittens, and she stiffened up, jumped down, and went to skulk behind a hedge.

I said I'd better be moving along, but if they had a good cat carrier for sale for up to five dollars, and could prove that it would hold a kitten, or kittens, I'd take it...and if my cat wasn't pleased with the kitten, or kittens, I'd bring them back for no extra charge.

So I did a couple of other errands, went back, saw a cat carrier on the porch and Samantha watching me from the flower border beside the porch, walked up and sat down on the porch, and invited Samantha to come and be scratched behind the ears. She did. I had a five-dollar bill in my hand. She sniffed it. I don't know whether she knew what it was, or even smelled a trace of cocaine (some claim that most of the paper money in some parts of the U.S. has picked up traces of cocaine), but Samantha unmistakably rubbed up against me in a possessive way, then cuddled up on my lap...while the other kitten was nowhere in sight. 

It had already been established that Samantha knew I belonged to a very friendly, possessive Queen Cat and her now friendly-feral son. Cats recognize each other's scent from the loose hairs they leave on their humans' clothes; if Samantha had not come home with me, Heather would have known I'd petted a young female cat, and Tickle might even have been able to pick up that information by sniffing the air around Heather. So, from the fact that she approached me, I knew that Samantha was either willing to be friends with Heather and Tickle or willing to challenge them for ownership of me.

So there was no reason not to save Samantha from the schoolboys and the horrors of animal shelter life, and I shelled out $5 for an excellent, fully waterproof carrier bag, and Samantha was duly loaded into it. She then rode home in her carrier with me. Heather sniffed her over and nonverbally said "Poor little thing," to which Samantha nonverbally said, "Touch me and I'll bite!", so Samantha spent the night in her Safe Place. 

In the morning it would have been funny if it had seemed less life-and-death serious to Samantha, as Heather and I watched Samantha vacillate between bravado and panic. I stood in the yard several times, holding Heather in one arm, close enough that she could rub her face against mine, and stooping over to stroke Samantha, who rubbed against my hand and ankles and nonverbally asserted, "You're my human whether you're holding another cat up above me or not." Then nervousness took over and Samantha slunk around the yard warily looking for a patch of sand or bare soil nobody else had scent-marked recently. A few times she went back to her Safe Place, all by herself, without being sent there. 

Tickle has been at the Cat Sanctuary, off and on, since approximately his second birthday. He has not reported for meals. When his great-great-granduncle Mackerel chose to go feral, Mac was sufficiently fond of me to tolerate being held and stroked--briefly--during visits to the home of his kittenhood, but he never ate the food treats I set out for him and never stayed longer than half an hour. Tickle and I never really bonded and now he doesn't come to the porch even for food. I suspect Heather still feeds him; I know the father of her kittens was a different cat, closer to Heather's age and not as close a relative. However, feral tomcats have valid reasons to avoid being close to humans: domestic cats have been deliberately bred to be smaller and less dangerous than their wild ancestors, so when they choose to live on what they kill, they need every hunting advantage they can get--and traces of human scent on their fur are not a hunting advantage. If Tickle lets himself be tickled or petted, again, he'll be admitting that he's old enough to need to be neutered and kept mostly indoors as a pet. And he's several years away from being willing to admit that.

The Humane Cat Genocide Society has of course extended tentacles toward my home town. Recently another animal rescuer waxed holier-than-thou about the fact that Cat Sanctuary cats have a choice whether to be porch-and-sometimes-indoor pets, barn cats, or totally feral males, and that they're not automatically sterilized. "They'd get bred to death! Inbred! All kinds of things would happen to them...and if they're not 'fixed' you'd have more cats than you could feed!" 

It always amazes me when people swallow the animal haters' propaganda so completely that they can actually parrot this entire line without, apparently, noticing that they're contradicting themselves. Cats allowed to lead a natural life don't thrive and multiply, or they do thrive and multiply too well? Which? Can these people stop conforming and think about what they do and say, or must they blindly follow their leaders right over the next cliff like horses stampeding out of a burning barn?

I'll say this much about Samantha's prospects:

1. Mortality is part of life for all of us. I don't know how long anybody's going to live, including myself. I have always had an updated Plan B for the animals if they happen to outlive me.

2. The fact that Humane Cat Genocide Society shelters aren't able to demand whatever price they want for every prospective pet that becomes available does not indicate that we have a local cat population problem. Some establishments that still maintain dumpsters may have a local cat population congestion problem, but the high rodent population indicates that, if anything, we don't have enough of the species at the top of the food chain--and yes, we do need to make sure that that species is cats or dogs rather than wolves, bears, cougars, or coyotes. Rat infestations and plagues are developing in neighborhoods where HSUS workers have succeeded in getting all the cats "adopted" from shelters that demand that the cats be sterilized and confined. In much of North America that may still be blessedly hard to imagine, but in Hyattsville, Maryland, I give you my word it is real. (And Hyattsville is a very "nice," clean, pretty, peaceful town: racially integrated, majority-minority, middle-class, and proud. And rat-infested.)

3. Even if some neighborhoods have an adequate supply of normal cats, that's a different population from social cats. I believe the world still needs more social cats. That doesn't mean Samantha, who seems very intelligent but not social, needs to have kittens; it does mean that I don't want to interfere with either Heather or Tickle (separately) producing kittens. The proportion of social cat DNA in the local gene pool could stand to be higher than it is. Social cats have a natural survival advantage in the wild, over normal cats, as well as being much more interesting pets.

4. Unaltered female cats do not "get bred to death." (Nursing mother cats do become thin and hungry; they can become malnourished, but, while acutely malnourished, they're unlikely to have more kittens.) Social cats protect themselves from the physical stress of having too many kittens by staying close to their kittens as the kittens mature. All the females in the family have consistently nursed all the kittens for as long as the cats were able to sustain lactation, which can be six months or a bit longer if the cat so chooses. Thus, unless a social cat's been separated from her kittens, as Patchnose had been when she came here, or has given up trying to nurse them, as Heather did with her first litter this spring, she has only one litter per year. 

Some of the cats in this extended family have apparently chosen not to have kittens at all. Ivy did this by bonding and mating exclusively with a tomcat for whom I recommended neutering, which he evidently got, and which did not affect his "romance" with Ivy in any way. Grayzel had a lot of sex with a lot of different males, after the first year (when she did produce two non-viable litters by mating with her own father), and once or twice every year it would look as if pregnancy were about to damp her style, and then Grayzel would come in reeking of pennyroyal and definitely not pregnant. I don't know whether she ate the phytoestrogen-rich herb or only wallowed in it, but Grayzel most definitely had worked out a feline equivalent to what women my age used to call a swinging, liberated, or cosmopolitan lifestyle.

(Some women, not all who've tried it, have successfully used pennyroyal to "regulate their hormone cycles," meaning prevent pregnancy, just as Grayzel did. Even eating it doesn't always induce menstruation, but merely smelling it can have that effect, depending on the woman and any potential fetus involved. Other plants in the mint family are also rich in phytoestrogens...and holy basil, as discussed in a previous post, is so loaded with them it's been shown to reduce the fertility of male mice. That's why the sweet, clean, minty scents of pennyroyal, basil, and catnip have not become popular for perfumes and candies.)

5. I suspect that the alley cat Patchnose and/or her mate were already a bit inbred, because members of this cat family have not produced viable kittens without noticeable resemblances to males outside the family. They may try to inbreed; if so they don't succeed. But they do produce healthy, attractive-looking, and mostly highly social kittens.

6. There has never been an overpopulation problem for these cats, even when three females produced kittens in one year. Natural selection operates...and social cats are more valuable pets than normal cats, so there's been no trouble finding homes for Patchnose's descendants. They know when and where they're ready to move, and how to make themselves welcome.

7. Cats' normal life expectancy is about ten years; they can be considered "old," expected to spend increasing amounts of each day in increasingly long and deep naps, after six or seven years--about the age Heather is, and yes, she is starting to take long deep afternoon naps and being encouraged to take them indoors. Heather, Irene, and Ivy reached middle age as healthy cats. So did Grayzel. So--as an indoor cat, away from the Cat Sanctuary--has Mogwai. So did Minnie and Pepper. Dusty may well have reached middle age before she came to the Cat Sanctuary; she had a long active life afterward. Magic was murdered; the Cat Sanctuary has been so dedicated in her memory. Mac died relatively young, four years old, because he chose (as did Irene and Ivy) to stray down around paved roads where motor vehicles go fast. I know Graybelle moved out, suspect Candice was stolen, know Imp was stolen, and know Polly chose to move in with people who then chose to move away; for all I know they may be alive still. All of them have been healthy adult cats, despite a few kittenhood illnesses. Magic, Polly, Ivy, Elmo, and Sisawat were small, slim cats; Pepper, Mac, Mogwai, Bisquit, Candice, Heather, and Tickle were/are long, lean, muscular cats; Minnie and Irene were big, wide-framed cats who gained weight all too easily. None of them, except as nursing mothers, was ever skinny, and apart from a few surface wounds treated with Neosporin and food poisonings treated with charcoal, none of my resident adult cats has missed a meal or a day's "work."

We've lost kittens, and this person specifically mentioned whether this has been due to the Manx gene, inbreeding, or worms. Well...in the cases of Grayzel's and Graymina's kittens, this was due to inbreeding, although worms also happen. In the case of the kittens sired by Ivy's chosen mate (born to Ivy, Irene, and Heather) before he was neutered, it was due to the Manx gene and possibly additional paternal-line genes he shared with Irene. Basically Heather and Irene brought up all their kittens together; after that first disastrous year, Heather's kittens were healthy and Irene's died young, and Irene earned her right to claim to be the mother of the viable kittens by being a devoted nurturer. Worms are a chronic problem for all cats and dogs, and yes, for their humans as well...but once they learn to think of pumpkinseed meal as a taste treat, cats have much less trouble with worms.

8. Are they pleased with the amount and kind of food and attention they get? Different cats want and need different things. The Cat Sanctuary has "re-homed" animals who needed closer supervision...I'm willing to let Heather grow old as a mostly indoor cat, willing to let other cats become indoor pets in other  homes. Male cats seem in my experience to choose to subject themselves to natural selection. Female social cats really do seem to thrive, as I doubt that Heather consciously intended to type, but who knows, "by sixes." Wild felines do form packs or "prides," in which one dominant male struts around contributing little to a family group of females, so for social cats this female-dominant extended family arrangement seems as if it would be natural and optimal.

9. And, as a bonus...so many of the cat problems other cat blogs discuss just don't exist at the Cat Sanctuary, never have, never will. Most urban pet cats are what was described, in the 1980s, as "neurotic" pets. You'd be "neurotic," too, if you were subjected to lifelong solitary confinement with aliens who couldn't even hear most of what you said back when you still tried talking to them. Hence furniture-clawing, dawn raids on the humans' feet, hissing and retreating when petted, rejecting food and becoming skinny or stuffing themselves into stupors and becoming obese, wool-sucking and fabric-eating, fouling the humans' chairs or beds or food supply, "attacking" the humans when they are or are not being petted or played with, and that whole repertoire of Things Cat Sanctuary Cats Just Don't Do. Only a very few "neurotic" reactions have been noticeable in Cat Sanctuary cats, and both Magic's nonviolent hostility toward all males of every species, and Minnie's hiding when called, were immediate, direct reactions to having been spayed.

10. So then why do so many people tell us that all cats should be confined and sterilized and constantly bombarded with toys, treats, and even medications to discourage their inevitably "neurotic" reactions to solitary confinement in an unnatural environment? Because networking with various animal rescue groups out there inevitably sucks people into contact with large, well funded groups, like, well, HSUS. And these days those groups get a lot of their funding from rich old-school Socialists, like George Soros. And the old-school Socialists' party line was "Eliminate domestic animals and herd humans into stack-and-pack urban 'housing' where they'll be easier to control." 

As a general rule, although old-school Socialists were sometimes telling the truth about existing problems and sincerely offering solutions...all the members of this web site have lived long enough to see that very few small-scale Socialist solutions work for anybody, most Socialist ideas are unmitigated disasters, and large-scale Socialism of every school has failed every country that's tried it. So we don't hate Socialists. We empathize with Socialists. We want to enlighten Socialists. We understand that cognitive dissonance is painful, in a way, and it's been painful for Socialists to watch a Marxist-Leninist economy crash and burn, a Marxist-Maoist economy pull back just short of destruction, a Marxist-Fabian economy fragmentate...but even that pain constitutes less harm to fewer people than the disaster of allowing any further "progress" toward Socialism in these United States. We need to be moving away from Socialism on every front and, although whether people live with pets or not may have nothing to do with their politics, a #WarOnPets is yet another dysfunctional part of the dysfunctional Socialist agenda that we need to repudiate in all its forms. 

(What possessed the old Socialists even to think of abolishing the whole custom of domesticating animals? I seriously think "possessed" may have been the right word. I don't claim to know whether there is a personal "Devil," but I think a lot of things can only be explained by conceding the existence of an Evil Principle--and it now appears that, sincere though many of the old Socialists were, Socialism was always guided by it.)

So, where does that leave Samantha? Who knows? Life is uncertain. Currently Heather is still reassuring her, she's still a shy half-grown kitten with no natural social instincts...I left her perched on the storage bins on the porch, from which she has to bow her head to accept my greeting-caress. Heather could, very easily, shove her down, or just scare her down by hopping back to where she was roosting, last week, and looking down at Samantha and exuding more of the individual odor Samantha undoubtedly still smells on the bins. Heather is choosing to allow Samantha to absorb the feeling that Heather likes and trusts her enough to let her play queen-of-the-castle. For cats one of whom is merely normal, this is quite rapid progress in the direction of bonding, and suggests that Samantha may become a beloved permanent resident. 

(Yes, she's met Tickle--no timidity there! By autumn female spring kittens are positively interested in adult male cats. Yes, he recognized her as a female too young to mate. Yes, he likes her, which I think is a good thing--meaning she's less likely to stray off with some other tomcat. Yes, if she does have kittens, although Samantha has mostly black fur with some bright orange and white spots, her kittens are likely to have pale-colored coats, patches of color on their noses, and extra toes.)

On the other hand, unless Heather and Tickle are able to draw out social-cat behavior tendencies Samantha has not yet displayed, Samantha's genes won't be especially valuable, so she's likely to be spayed. And, spayed or not, around age two she's likely to decide--as Sisawat did--that although she'll always be fond of her mother and human godmother, she really prefers having her very own home, or sharing it with a male friend (Sisawat and Elmo pair-bonded and chose their Purrmanent Home as a pair). So I am willing to consider prospective adopters for Samantha. 

Will we be going back to see whether the other kitten can be zipped into the carrier? It was much smaller and thinner than Samantha...sometimes that's a genetic effect (Iris seemed much bigger and stronger than Heather until they were eight months old), sometimes an effect of an asocial mother cat allowing asocial kittens to bully the runt of the litter, and sometimes an indication of health issues. I plan to stay in touch with the humans and the smaller, more timid kitten.

But Samantha isn't looking for a new home in the immediate future, neither are Heather and Tickle, and therefore neither am I. After all, Heather can now be considered an Old Cat, and haven't I always preached that any human living with an Old Cat should adopt a Junior Cat before the Old Cat starts showing its age? Only if Samantha quarrels with Heather (as Inky eventually did) or Heather gives birth to, and accepts, a natural heir of her own, will finding a new home for Samantha become a priority for me.

In other words, I think she's adorable.