Remembrances for July – 2024

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

July 3^rd

John Crowe Ransom, one of the leaders of the Vanderbilt Agrarians and a leading 20th century writer and teacher.

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/john-crowe-ransom/

July 4^th

Thomas Jefferson, undoubtedly the South’s most recognizable Enlightenment philosopher, but his most important intellectual contribution is rather the opposite of all that:  his agrarianism and insistence on local customs and governance (i.e., the preservation of old English traditions).

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/?s=Thomas+Jefferson

July 6^th

Paul Hamilton Hayne, one of the South’s best poets.

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hayne-paul-hamilton/

https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/hayne/hayne.html

July 9^th

Sir William Berkeley, a colonial governor of Virginia whose influence is felt within Southern culture to this day.

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677

July 9^th

Pierre d’Iberville, Canadian soldier and explorer, the founder of the first permanent French settlement in Louisiana.

https://64parishes.org/entry/pierre-le-moyne-diberville-2

July 9^th

Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, one of the great figures of Southern literature for his comic work Georgia Scenes, but also an active preacher and a leader of four universities.

https://georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/augustus-baldwin-longstreet

July 10^th

Gen Henry Benning, from the Georgia Supreme Court to a successful general in the War and back to practicing law afterwards.

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/henry-l-benning-1814-1875/

July 17^th

John Coltrane, the famous jazz composer and performer.

https://southernorthodox.org/john-coltranes-jazz-the-african-diasporas-search-for-a-religious-home/

July 17^th

Gen James Johnston Pettigrew, a good example of a Southern gentleman.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/pettigrew-james-johnston

July 23^rd

Eudora Welty, one of the South’s best writers.

https://eudorawelty.org/biography/

July 25^th

Wilmer Mills, a gifted Louisiana poet who died young.

https://www.timesfreepress.com/obits/2011/jul/28/wilmer-mills/16401/

https://kirkcenter.org/essays/wilmer-mills-the-poet-as-maker/

July 26^th

Sam Houston, one of the most influential men in Texas history, but the arc of his life also touched other States and tribes.

https://www.dissidentmama.net/when-men-were-giants/

https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/sam-houston

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/510/sam-houston

July 29^th

John Slidell, an important diplomat during the War.

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/chron/civilwarnotes/slidell.html

July 30^th

George Fitzhugh, a helpful critic of the pure capitalist economic system.

https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughcan/bio.html

July 30^th

Gen George Pickett, a soldier for most of his life, he is best known perhaps for his part in the Battle of Gettysburg.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/george-e-pickett

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/812/george-edward-pickett

July 31^st

Randolph Shotwell, a gifted writer, and a microcosm of the suffering South as she went through the War and Reconstruction.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/randolph-shotwell-in-war-and-prison/

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of July from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, follow these links:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-july/

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/08/happy-feast-for-saints-of-july.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘What Would Make US Billionaires More Generous?’

 

It is not uncommon to find comparisons of the decrepit United States Empire with the decaying late, pre-Christian Roman Empire.  In one area, the disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor, the US are not only comparable to the Romans – they surpass them.  A study in 2011 found the following:

Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It’s a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues.

 

Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

 

To determine the size of the Roman economy and the distribution of income, historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen pored over papyri ledgers, previous scholarly estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages. Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America’s top 1 percent control.

With the transfer of trillions of dollars to the world’s richest people because of covid, this inequality in the US has likely gotten even worse.  This wouldn’t be quite so bad if the super wealthy were using their money for good purposes.  In the Roman Empire, the richest class made good enough use of their money that we still admire their works today.  From the same 2011 study:  ‘But buried at the end, they make a point that’s difficult to parse, yet provocative. They point out that the majority of extant Roman ruins resulted from the economic activities of the top 10 percent.’  In other words, the Roman upper class was responsible for the aqueducts, theaters, temples, baths, etc., before which people stand in awe when they visit former Roman lands.

What have the US billionaires been spending their money on?  Nothing quite so admirable, unfortunately.  While there are some respectable projects funded by some of them, such as housing the poor and treating malaria patients, much of it is going towards a conglomeration of woke social justice nonsense, transhumanism, promoting a one-world government, and regime change operations.  A couple of examples, via Forbes:

Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan

Source of Wealth: Facebook

Net Worth: $112.8 billion

Giving Focus: Science, education, criminal justice

Lifetime Giving: $3 billion

The Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) CEO and his wife Priscilla Chan, a doctor, have multiple ambitious goals, including to cure, prevent or manage all diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, their philanthropic and advocacy organization, says it has given out $3 billion in grants since it was founded in 2015, backing scientific and medical research, as well as education and criminal justice reform. At the end of 2021, CZI announced a new, ten-year, $3.4 billion initiative focusing on measuring and analyzing biological processes in the human body. The effort includes the creation of an institute for advanced biomedical imaging and a hub at Harvard working on using AI and machine learning in biology and medicine.

 

Ted Turner

Source of Wealth: Cable television

Net Worth: $2.3 billion

Giving Focus: United Nations, environment

Lifetime Giving: $1.4 billion

If not for his $1.4 billion of lifetime giving, the man behind Turner Broadcasting and CNN wouldn’t have fallen off Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans in 2021. But it was only a matter of time: like many other philanthropic billionaires, Turner signed the Giving Pledge and will donate the majority of his wealth eventually–he’s just closer than most to reaching this goal. The bulk of his philanthropy came before 2014, when he completed a $1 billion pledge to establish the United Nations Foundation, enabling the U.N. to raise money from philanthropists. Turner’s own namesake foundation is focused on environmental protection, which he views as "an effort to ensure the survival of the human species."

It would seem that the States will not be getting much in the way of timeless architecture, useful public works, etc., from these folks.

Even worse, much of the billionaires’ donations are given in such a way as to further increase their wealth, i.e., to help themselves, rather than to truly help others:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/what-would-make-us-billionaires-more-generous/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘We Probably Shouldn’t Call Them Fossil Fuels’

 

Erik Root, in an article for the Chronicles web site detailing the pitfalls of electric vehicles, does something else within it that is even more valuable:  He includes several links discussing the renewable nature of hydrocarbon energy.  Yes, you read that right – hydrocarbons are renewable.  Let’s have a look at some of what he shared (the information below deals mostly with oil and natural gas; yet even coal can be produced quickly, discussed here; a related article is here).

Appearing at American Thinker in 2012, this will serve as a good introduction:

 

President Barack Obama and his green energy confederates are determined to scare the public about a declining supply of "fossil fuels."  If we accept the idea that oil is produced by the conversion of organic matter -- from plants to dinosaurs -- under extreme pressure, we must also accept the idea that there is a limited supply of oil and that we've got to do everything we can to find a replacement for fossil fuels before we run out.

 

The evidence is mounting that not only do we have more than a century's worth of recoverable oil in the United States alone (even if there is a limit to the earth's oil supply), but that we also actually have a limitless supply of Texas tea because oil is in fact a renewable resource that is being constantly created deep under the earth's surface and which rises upward, where microscopic organisms that thrive in the intense pressure and heat miles below us interact with and alter it.

 

In other words, we have an unending supply of oil, some of which is constantly migrating upward from the depths at which it is created to refill existing oil deposits, and much more of which remains far below the surface.  This oil can be recovered using existing technology.

 

Scientist Thomas Gold presents the decades-old theory of "abiotic" oil-creation, which supports these facts, in his book, The Deep Hot Biosphere.  In it he explains that the idea of the "biotic" creation of "fossil fuels" -- that decaying organic matter is compressed into oil -- is incorrect.  In fact, the earth is constantly producing new oil very deep below its surface, and in some cases the oil flows up to replenish existing oil fields thought to be exhausted.  In simple terms, the microscopic organisms mentioned above interact with the hydrocarbons, altering them and leaving their footprint, thus disproving the notion that oil is a "fossil fuel."

 

Here's an example of how the process plays out:

 

‘Eugene Island is an underwater mountain located about 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1973 oil was struck and off-shore platform Eugene 330 erected. The field began production at 15,000 barrels a day, then gradually fell off, as is normal, to 4,000 barrels a day in 1989. Then came the surprise; it reversed itself and increased production to 13,000 barrels a day. Probable reserves have been increased to 400 million barrels from 60 million. The field appears to be filling from below and the crude coming up today is from a geological age different from the original crude, which leads to the speculation that the world has limitless supplies of petroleum.’

 

The theory of what Gold calls the deep hot biosphere was explored more fully in Stalinist Russia in the 1940s when the Russian dictator demanded that his scientists find a way to increase Soviet oil production.  As they explored the idea that oil and other hydrocarbons are constantly being generated deep beneath the earth's surface, Russian technology was developed in the 1970s to test the theory by drilling as deep as 40,000 feet into the earth.  As a result, Russia was the first nation to begin to understand and exploit these renewable oil reserves, and today their oil industry is thriving. . . .

Since this is the case, how did the term ‘fossil fuel’ come into use?  Unsurprisingly, the corporate, super wealthy Elite, coined it to manipulate populations.  A chemical engineer in Syracuse, NY, writes:

 

Oil was first found in the early 19th century as a lubricant for motors and transportation. It eventually became a valuable fuel and John D. Rockefeller, a leader in the business at the time, made a fortune from both transporting and selling petroleum. To increase the price of oil, oil companies made it appear to be scarce. In 1892, at a convention in Geneva of scientists, Rockefeller took advantage of the opportunity to have scientists declare that petroleum is composed of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon and is the residue from formerly living matter, making it a “fossil fuel”. However, no fossils have been found below 16,000 feet and oil is drilled for at 30,000 feet, making it unlikely to be a fossil fuel. The term “fossil fuel” is used to make the public believe that oil is a limited resource, but in reality, it is the second most prevalent liquid on Earth and will not run out for a long time.

From Rockefeller to Obama, not much has changed with the energy psy-ops.  Even if oil were not renewable, the US had enough known oil reserves in 2006 to last for 200 years.  The fossil fuel moniker is hung on hydrocarbons to scare us into marching in whatever direction the globalist Elite want us to go – electric cars, tiny apartments for all, cricket burgers, etc.

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/01/garlington-we-probably-shouldnt-call-them-fossil-fuels/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!