Leilani Farha was being given a walking tour in central San Francisco. Near a thronged artisanal grocery store and a food-truck park, she saw something under a freeway that gave her pause.
A young homeless man sat on the ground. He wore two pairs of jeans and had a hood pulled over his long brown hair. Before him was a crockpot filled with burning paper, over which he was heating tortillas in a dirty skillet. As cars, cyclists and tech commuter buses rushed past, white smoke poured into the darkening air.
“The last time I saw cooking on a sidewalk,” Farha said, “was in Mumbai.”
Farha, 49, is a Canadian lawyer. She is also the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing, charged with probing deplorable living conditions and assessing compliance with international human rights law. Her latest project is a report on “informal settlements” – shanties, favelas, tent cities – which will be presented at the UN general assembly.
In Mexico City, she spent time in a slum by a railway line. In Manila and Jakarta, she visited decrepit and makeshift houses. San Francisco has a median home value of $1.3m and would seem an incongruous next stop. Farha had come on an unofficial visit, at the invitation of academics and advocates.
“The situation is unacceptable in light of the wealth of the country,” she said, adding that she was “deeply, deeply concerned” by the homelessness she saw.
Poverty in the US is an established UN focus; last month, another rapporteur was dismayed by visits to Skid Row in Los Angeles and hookworm-afflicted deep south communities.
In 2011, a UN representative visited Sacramento. After discovering that homeless people were defecating into plastic bags, the official wrote to the city’s mayor. Such circumstances, she said, could amount to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.
Despite the record stock market and unemployment at 4.1% (despite a December jobs miss), the socialist utopia known as California is home to an ever-sprawling tent city which estimated to contain over 1,000 residents.
After a ZeroHedge report last March on the sprawling tent cities, a 10-minute video, dubbed by some as “incredible” has emerged showing the shocking growth of the encampment near Angels Stadium in Anaheim, CA along the Santa Ana river.
Locals have become increasingly alarmed by the rapid spread of unregulated squatters and their belongings and their waste.
As a cyclist who uses the trail to ride to the beach often, over this last year it has gotten substantially worse. It is unsafe and unsanitary with loose dogs everywhere and human fecal matter scattered on the trail.
The area is disgusting and reeks of trash and feces.
He reports that the bike trail, once popular with outdoors enthusiasts and families which runs for miles to beaches along the Pacific Ocean, has become unsafe as miscreants plot assaults and robberies on passing riders, even laying tripwires across the path. –Dan Lyman
Domestic Migration
As we pointed out last March, California’s Democrats aren’t just failing the poor people that have been relegated to tent cities (see “Americans Fleeing Expensive, Over-Taxed Metro Areas In Pursuit Of Affordability“). In fact, people of all income brackets are fleeing the state in droves. Not surprisingly, these domestic migrants are flocking to areas with a lower cost of living, lower/no state income taxes, less regulations and higher job growth (aka “Red” states).
Ironically, the dark areas on the map above seem to match perfectly with the dark areas on this map which indicate those with the highest state income tax rates.
El Cajon, CA — In spite of the myriad stories over the years, in which police and governments across the United States have been exposed as tyrants, cities and their armed agents continue to persecute good people who help those less fortunate than them. The latest case of police oppressing those who’d dare to help the homeless comes out of El Cajon, California this week in which more than a dozen good Samaritans were arrested.
In October of last year, the El Cajon City Council unanimously voted to ban the act of sharing food on city-owned property. This ban was put in place for the ostensible purpose of preventing the spread of hepatitis A.
While the government held the fear of hep A over everyone’s head as a reason to not share food, their hypocrisy was revealed in the details of the law.
If a group of people attempts to hand out food as a charitable act, they are in violation of the law and are subject to arrest. However, if a group of people hands out food for non-charitable acts—such as birthday parties, group events, etc.—then they are not in violation of the law and are not subject to arrest.
Naturally, the good citizens of El Cajon saw the law for what it is—as hep A certainly cannot differentiate between charitable and non-charitable food—and they moved to stop this war on the homeless.
A group called Break the Ban organized the event on Sunday knowing they were in violation of the law but also knowing that what they were doing was morally right.
“It was absolutely necessary to break this law until they were willing to enforce it, and, now that they have, we will continue this fight in court,” said another organizer, Shane Parmely.
Mark Lane, one of the organizers of the event told the San Diego Union-Tribune that more than a dozen people—including a 14-year-old child—were arrested at the Wells Park.
Showing the sheer hypocritical nature of the arrests, the group was also handing out toiletries which would actually help to prevent the spread of hep A, yet they were still arrested.
“This park is part of city property so you aren’t allowed to food share,” the officer in the video below says. “…If you guys continue to food share, then you guys are subject to arrest, all right?”
Knowing that what they were doing was right, despite the police making their announcement, the group disobeyed and continued to hand out food and supplies to the homeless.
That is when the arrests began.
Most of the folks arrested were each charged with a misdemeanor for violating El Cajon municipal code 1.28.010, which prohibits “food sharing” in public spaces for charitable reasons.
In what was likely a PR move by police, none of the people who were arrested were actually taken to jail. Instead, they were given notices to appear in court for their charges.
Smugly speaking to NBC 7, Councilmember Ben Kalasho addressed the good Samaritans, telling them that if they really wanted to help “you can go out there, pick them up, take them back to your house and feed them and board them and room them and have them take a shower if you’re really wanting to help.”
However, this would most likely be against some other ordinance. As TFTP reported last week, cities have ordinances in places that prohibit property owners from providing temporary refuge to homeless people unless they meet rigorous industrial standards.
Greg Schiller, a good Samaritan in Chicago, learned the hard way about the police state who forced him to stop helping homeless people by threatening to condemn his home and charge him.
The good news is that the kind-hearted folks at Break the Ban have no intention of stopping what they are doing. They are going to continue to break the law because people need their help.
“Our goal is to get the ban overturned and sit down and figure out how to humanely deal with something that’s not going away,” Lane said.
Change does not come from sitting idly by and rolling over. True change comes when good people decide it is time to break bad laws.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.
The San Andreas fault has seemingly come alive in recent days, putting the highly populated Bay Area in California on alert. “The Big One” is coming, and it could be right around the corner.
The earthquake that rattled the Bay Area on Thursday was just one more reminder of the power and danger of the Hayward Fault, which runs below the populous East Bay area. But the San Andreas fault could awaken at any time, causing the Hayward fault to also shift, which would rock the area. The Hayward fault could easily produce a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake and it is directly underneath heavily populated areas.
“So who knows, California!” says Joe Joseph of the Daily Sheeple. “Better buy a boat, build an ark, who know what the heck you’re gonna need. And anybody out there that’s feeling ambitious in the real estate market, why don’t you go and buy up some desert land…who knows! Maybe you’ll have beachfront property soon!”
On its website, the USGS calls the Hayward fault the region’s “tectonic time bomb,” which could “cause hundreds of deaths, leave thousands homeless and devastate the region’s economy.” In 2016, David Schwartz, a USGS geologist, said in an interview that above the Hayward fault are “2 million people who directly live on top of it. It sits geographically in the center of the Bay Area. There’s a tremendous amount of infrastructure built upon it — water systems, gas, electrical, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) crosses it — so a large event on that fault is like hitting the bull’s eye on a target.”
Of course, the San Andreas fault is well overdue for a massive earthquake as well. The last major earthquake on the San Andreas fault happened in 1857 and scientists say they’re due every 100-150 years.
“One thing’s for certain,” says Joseph. “The San Andreas fault is a fault that’s certainly nothing to ignore. And if you live in California, you know how to deal with earthquakes.” Hopefully. Hopefully, those in California are taking these two faults seriously.
It appears that something unusual is happening along the California coastline. Over the past 24 hours, California has been hit by 46 earthquakes. That is approximately twice the normal daily number, and much of the shaking has taken place in the southern part of the state. In recent weeks I have been writing repeatedly about the alarming seismic activity that we have been seeing along the west coast, and many believe that the potential for a megaquake is significantly higher than normal right now. Unfortunately, most residents of California are not paying any attention to what is going on at all, and so if there is a major event they will be completely blindsided by it.
When a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck near Julian, California on Wednesday, that immediately got my attention, and that quake was followed very rapidly by several others…
The shaking began at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday when a 4.0 quake occurred nearly 10 miles beneath the earth’s surface, just east of the Earthquake Valley fault, one of the most active systems in Southern California. The temblor had originally been listed at 4.2.
The main shock was followed five minutes later by a 3.0 aftershock in the same spot. Then a 3.6 quake occurred near the same spot at 7:57 p.m. Wednesday.
Seismologists say that a 3.6 quake broke in the same area at 2:32 a.m. on Thursday, continuing the seismic spasm.
Of course Julian is not the only one that has seen a substantial earthquake over the past 24 hours. Just 6 hours ago, a magnitude 3.2 earthquake struck Gonzales, California. Anything in the magnitude 3 or magnitude 4 range is not going to cause any significant damage, but the concern is that these smaller quakes may be building up to something larger.
According to a study published by the USGS, there is a “99% chance” that California will be hit by a major earthquake within the next 30 years…
In a 2008 study, the US Geological Survey found there’s a greater than 99% chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake or larger hitting the California area over the next 30 years. That type of quake along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California could kill an estimated 1,800 people, the study said, injure 53,000 and result in $214 billion in damage. California’s infrastructure could be crippled for weeks, if not months.
Such an event would definitely be catastrophic, but California could definitely recover.
However, if the California coastline were to be hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the devastation would be unlike anything that we have ever seen before in American history.
Not too long ago, the Los Angeles Times published an article that discussed what the damage from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake would look like. The following is a short excerpt from that article…
Main freeways to Las Vegas and Phoenix that cross the San Andreas fault would be destroyed in this scenario; Interstate 10 crosses the fault in a dozen spots, and Interstate 15 would see the roadway sliced where it crosses the fault, with one part of the roadway shifted from the other by 15 feet, Jones said.
“Those freeways cross the fault, and when the fault moves, they will be destroyed, period,” Jones said. “To be that earthquake, it has to move that fault, and it has to break those roads.”
The aqueducts that bring in 88% of Los Angeles’ water supply and cross the San Andreas fault all could be damaged or destroyed, Jones said.
And remember, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake would be far, far worse than a magnitude 8.2 earthquake.
At the same time all of this shaking has been happening in California, we have also seen very disturbing seismic activity elsewhere on the globe.
For example, just recently a supervolcano in Russia shot hot volcanic ash “six miles into the sky”…
A Siberian super-volcano is worrying scientists after it’s shocking and sudden eruption flung hot ash six miles into the sky. This volcano is one of the most active in Russia.
Scientists working at the geophysical department of the Russian Academy of Science in north-eastern Russia’s Kamchatka Krai region have confirmed the giant eruption took place at the site of the Shiveluch Volcano yesterday over a 20 minute period. They also verified and saw the volcano spew piping hot ash 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the sky. So far, no locals or villages have been affected by this volcano’s eruption, but it’s sparking fears that a larger and more powerful explosion could occur in the very near future.
A major eruption of just a single supervolcano anywhere in the world could cast enormous amounts of dust and ash into the atmosphere and cool global temperatures significantly for up to a decade. If that happened, we would see massive crop failures all over the planet and millions upon millions of people could end up dying from the resulting famine.
With each passing year our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and scientists assure us that absolutely cataclysmic seismic events are in our future. Now is the time to get prepared, but unfortunately most people aren’t listening to the warnings.
“This is not your traditional nuclear apocalypse scenario. A lot of people will be killed but a large percentage of the population will survive. They will be at risk and they will need help.”
With each passing day and each new ICBM launch from a seemingly unhinged North Korean dictator, the fears of an attack on the U.S. mainland, though faint, increasingly weigh on the hearts and minds of Americans, particularly those in California. As The Guardian points out today, those fears have even prompted a group of California public health officials and emergency responders to gather for a strategy session with Hal Kempfer, a retired marine lieutenant colonel, to discuss which areas are the most likely targets and how citizens should respond to an attack.
Hal Kempfer, a noted international security expert, is getting a roomful of California public health officials and emergency responders to think about the unthinkable – a nuclear bomb exploding at the port of Long Beach, about four miles away.
“A lot of people will be killed,” he said, “but a large percentage of the population will survive. They will be at risk and they will need help.”
“If you want to mess up southern California, if you want to mess up the west coast, if you want to mess up our country – where do you attack?” Kempfer asks. “If I’m sitting in North Korea and looking at possible targets, I’m going to be looking at Long Beach very closely.”
He talks about the port and downtown Long Beach being “toast” – no exaggeration, since the blast wave is likely to vaporize everything in its immediate path. But the city health department, the Long Beach airport and fire department might not be; they are all somewhat protected by a hilly area that is likely to halt the initial blast wave. And so the city can, tentatively, think about setting up a center of emergency operations.
Of course, the radioactive fallout created as the explosion gathers up tremendous quantities of dust and ocean water and spits them into the atmosphere would represent a secondary grave risk, especially in the first hours after an attack.
Not to mention the electromagnetic pulse that is likely to knock out electronic systems including phones and computers, the pile-ups expected on the freeways as drivers are blinded by the flash of the explosion, the rush for food, water and gasoline as millions of Angelenos attempt to drive out of the region, and the terror triggered by even the idea of a second, follow-up attack.
Meanwhile, lest you think this was all just a creative way for some public employees to skip work for a day, Ventura County, located just northwest of Los Angeles, has even taken the unusual step of prepping a 250-page plan on how to respond to the humanitarian crisis that would result from a nuclear attack in Los Angeles.
In fact, their efforts even include this truly bizarre public service announcement that instructs folks to shelter in place and cover windows with plastic.
Of course, as we pointed out back in August, while a global nuclear confrontation is generally viewed as a bad thing, for Ron Hubbard, President of Atlas Survival Shelters in Los Angeles, it has resulted in an economic windfall as a staggering number of Californians have suddenly turned into doomsday preppers.
“It’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ron Hubbard, president of Atlas Survival Shelters, told Fox11. “It’s all over the country. I sold shelters today in North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, California.”
The company, based in Montebello in eastern Los Angeles, sells shelters priced from $10,000 to $100,000. Hubbard told the station that the shelters are designed to be buried 20 feet below ground and can sustain survivors for up to one year, depending on the size and model.
He told the station he had sold more than 30 units in recent days, including to customers in Japan.
All that said, Kempfer points out that there is a silver lining here because any attack from North Korea likely wouldn’t result in “your traditional nuclear apocalypse scenario” because Kim Jong-Un probably only has weapons capable of destroying about 1 square mile at a time.
Rather, it’s likely to be a Hiroshima-sized bomb – large enough to obliterate everything within a square-mile radius and kill tens of thousands of people, either immediately or through the lingering effects of radiation. But still leaving millions of survivors across the region who would need help.
“We’re talking about smaller North Korean things,” Kempfer emphasized, though the word “smaller” sounds very far from reassuring. “This is not your traditional nuclear apocalypse scenario.”
So, Californians at least have that going for them, which is nice.
Back in 2008, local news reported on a UFO that crashed near Needles, California. Residents in the tri-state area of Nevada, Arizona, and California saw something weird blaze out of the sky and crash on the banks of the Colorado River, South of Needles.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
