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The idea of giving women who feel threatened the power to summon drones is patently a cynical PR stunt to acclimatize the public into accepting the general introduction of drones as a tool of mass surveillance.
Posts Tagged ‘dystopian’
Dystopian Pipe Dreams — Global CBDC’s Would Go The Way Of “Vaccine Passports”
Posted by M. C. on July 1, 2023
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: dystopian, Global CBDC, vaccine passports | Leave a Comment »
The Bretton Woods Institutions and the Accelerated Dystopian Transformation of the Food Industry
Posted by M. C. on September 8, 2022
Subsequently, in 2020, the IMF stressed the importance of raising the prices of “land-intensive food (for example, beef).” This would help reduce the consumption of animal products by shifting “consumer preferences away” from items like meat, milk, and egg products. In essence, the IMF supports having “taxes levied” on “meat, dairy, and ultra-processed food” in order to “discourage their overconsumption.”
Time for “World” and “International” institutions to go. Oh ya, guess who is paying for them.
The global food industry is currently undergoing a major transformation in the name of averting “climate change” that will involve the adoption of new technologies in the production process and the creation of alternative food products for consumption. Facilitating this transition has become a key priority of many international organizations and institutions, including the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations, and the Bretton Woods institutions, which consist of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
However, while the role of the WEF in the “Great Food Transformation” has been garnering more attention in recent months, those of the IMF, World Bank and WTO have gone relatively unnoticed. Like the WEF, these institutions have been highlighting the negative effects of the agriculture sector on the climate over the past few years, primarily “crop cultivation and livestock production.” They also claim that, in addition to being detrimental to the environment, meat and dairy products are “unhealthy” foods. According to the IMF, “reducing livestock emissions” is among the key actions needed to meet the “climate neutrality target [also known as net-zero emissions] by 2050,” which will also include “replacing polluting coal, gas and oil-fired power with energy from renewable sources, such as wind or solar” in over 120 countries. With respect to agriculture, the IMF advises “diversifying away from beef production” by “applying enhanced farm management practices and new technologies.”
In fact, the IMF published an article in 2019 urging radical changes on the supply side of food production in order to decrease “emissions in agriculture.” Specifically, this article stated that
global production and consumption of red meat (especially beef) and dairy will need to be cut by about 50 percent, through substitution of proteins supplied by plants. Urgent action in the top three beef (United States, Brazil, European Union) and dairy (United States, India, China) producers is key. Second, a large-scale shift is needed away from conventional monoculture agriculture toward practices that support biodiversity, such as organic and mixed crop-livestock farming, sustainable soil management, and ecosystem restoration. Denmark and the Netherlands were among the first countries to announce ambitious organic transformation plans.
Subsequently, in 2020, the IMF stressed the importance of raising the prices of “land-intensive food (for example, beef).” This would help reduce the consumption of animal products by shifting “consumer preferences away” from items like meat, milk, and egg products. In essence, the IMF supports having “taxes levied” on “meat, dairy, and ultra-processed food” in order to “discourage their overconsumption.” According to the IMF:
The average US retail price of a Big Mac, for example, is around $5.60. But with all the hidden expenses of meat production (including health care, subsidies, and environmental losses) the full burden on society is a hefty $12 per sandwich—a price that, if actually charged, could more than halve the US demand for burgers…. Likewise, a gallon of milk would run $9 instead of $3.50 and a store-bought, two-pound package of pork ribs would jump from $12 to $32.
It appears that, much like the WEF, the IMF is so committed to achieving “a Great Food Transformation” that it openly endorses using a centrally planned system to set the quantities and prices of food products to be sold instead of allowing them to be determined through voluntary exchanges in the marketplace, even though this would bring about the demise of economic freedom. The IMF also supports measures aimed at preventing individuals from consuming “animal products for breakfast or lunch.” To encourage the acceptance of these ideas and changes on the part of the people, the IMF has called for promoting the notion that such “dietary changes would entail health benefits as well as public spending savings.”
According to the IMF, achieving “a Great Food Transformation” will also require the redirection of state subsidies and loans toward “sustainable farms producing plant-based protein for human consumption and toward incentives for innovation on alternative proteins and smart farming technologies.” It would also involve “removing tax expenditure favoring products with emission-intensity,” such as “dairy/meat products,” and “providing financial support to R&D initiatives on emission reduction and carbon capture in agriculture.” Additionally, the IMF is of the view that stripping financial institutions of the ability to “lend to nonsustainable agri-food firms” would “provide essential support to a Great Food Transformation.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bretton Woods, Climate Change, dystopian, Food Industry, IMF, UN, WTO | Leave a Comment »
UK Government Greases Skids For Fleets Of Surveillance Drones Over Cities | ZeroHedge
Posted by M. C. on January 4, 2022
by Tyler DurdenTuesday, Jan 04, 2022 – 02:00 AM
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
In what appears to be a cynical PR stunt, the UK government is considering plans to allow women who feel threatened on the street to call upon surveillance drones that would arrive in minutes and shine a bright light on any potential attacker.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Women in fear of an attack will be able to use a phone app to summon a drone, which could arrive within minutes armed with a powerful spotlight and thermal cameras to frighten off any potential assailant,” reports the Telegraph.
Trials will take place on campus at Nottingham University at a cost of £500,000 during which the tech will be used to “protect students and staff.”The scheme will be submitted to the UK government’s Innovate research program, and could eventually see helicopters being replaced by drones as a front line tool of law enforcement.
“It is a high capability drone that costs just £100 an hour but can do 80 percent of what a police helicopter can do,” said Richard Gill, the founder of Drone Defence.“It cannot do high speed pursuits but it can do the other tasks such as searching for people and ground surveillance.”
Gill noted that 25 drones could do the job of one police helicopter in London for the same price, with the drones being housed at five base locations across the city.The idea of countless government drones whizzing around a city keeping tabs on people is garishly dystopian.Allowing individuals to access the drones would also be completely open to abuse and misuse.Innumerable people would make a mockery of the system by constantly calling upon the drones to harass random people or use the drones for target practice.A far more effective means of preventing such attacks would be to allow women to be armed with pepper spray, but current law in the UK makes that illegal.Changing the law would give women the power to defend themselves while avoiding the dystopian nightmare that state surveillance drones would bring.The idea of giving women who feel threatened the power to summon drones is patently a cynical PR stunt to acclimatize the public into accepting the general introduction of drones as a tool of mass surveillance.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: dystopian, Surveillance Drones, UK government | Leave a Comment »
CNN Lists Job Opening For Head Fiction Writer
Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2021
https://babylonbee.com/news/cnn-lists-job-opening-head-fiction-writer
ATLANTA, GA—Shortly after being forced to let go three journalists for their involvement in publishing a fake story regarding President Trump’s alleged connection to Russia, media and news network CNN listed a new job opening Wednesday morning for a new head fiction writer.
The network is reportedly looking for a seasoned author of thrilling fiction novels to fabricate news stories for its online and televised news coverage.
“Must have a penchant for weaving complex narratives and fabricating intricate storylines out of thin air for the sake of ratings. Experience in Cold War-era spy novels preferred, in the style of Tom Clancy, etc.,” the listing states. “Author will be responsible for making stuff up out of the blue to form the basis of 5-6 news stories per day. Full salary & benefits.”
The listing also states that “no journalism background is required.”
The network is also reportedly accepting resumes from authors in the genres of science fiction, epic fantasy, and dystopian novels in hopes of bringing well-rounded coverage of completely made-up stories to its followers.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: CNN, cold war, dystopian, fiction, journalism | Leave a Comment »
Being an Enemy of the State – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2020
Our “representatives” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don’t believe in, or pay attention to. The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss. And yet, while it’s taken on a power and scope it’s not supposed to constitutionally have, it provides virtually no services in return. It just takes. And mandates.
It’s always easier to second a popular motion, to be a well-paid “Yes” man. After all, if you’re saying the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, state and local officials, corporate America, the medical profession, the insurance profession, the educational system, the legal system, the media, and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt, you’ve alienated yourself from a lot of people. You’re no fun at parties.
https://donaldjeffries.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/being-an-enemy-of-the-state/
It isn’t easy being a contrarian, to instinctively go against the grain. It certainly isn’t financially rewarding. I would love to support something about our society, or someone who has a hand in running it. But I just can’t. The corruption is so immense, and so prevalent even at the local level, that it cannot be confronted by anything less than hundreds of thousands of coordinated opponents.
This situation has always existed. Think of the very accurate old canard “You can’t fight city hall.” The difference is that now the tyranny has grown well beyond crass political rivalries or even feuds between organized crime families. The mafia and more recent offshoot intercity gangs at least have some kind of twisted code, and lines they won’t cross. The elite that rule us appear to have no such lines.
The entire world was basically shut down in March of this year, over an alleged deadly virus. There were no overt signs that something dangerous was afoot. No bodies being carted away, and death visiting every family, ala the Great Plague that wiped out so many in Europe centuries ago. Most of us personally knew no victims. And yet all were quarantined to some degree. As a few critics pointed out, you don’t quarantine healthy people. Well, not until now. Sports, movies, churches, and schools were cancelled. Millions lost their jobs. The public donned ridiculous masks and followed “social distancing” rules that have no scientific basis.
And all of this was accomplished without any country needing their police to enforce it. No troops in the streets. Without a single shot being fired. The opposition to such unprecedented state control was confined to “conspiracy theorists” on the internet. Like me. Those of us who pointed out the emperor was stark naked lost many friends, and angered close family members. Our skepticism made us second-class citizens. I was called “dangerous,” and it certainly didn’t help any potential career opportunities. My own niece deleted me on Facebook. So did some of my celebrity friends, like Candy Clark of American Graffiti and Barry Livingston from My Three Sons. Oh well, at least I know they were reading.
It’s always easier to second a popular motion, to be a well-paid “Yes” man. After all, if you’re saying the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, state and local officials, corporate America, the medical profession, the insurance profession, the educational system, the legal system, the media, and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt, you’ve alienated yourself from a lot of people. You’re no fun at parties. Most people used to enjoy it when I pontificated and ranted in social gatherings, or at work. If we still had social gatherings, I wouldn’t be invited. And I would be fired pretty quickly from any job, if I simply conducted myself the way I did for 44 years, until experiencing one of the most unjust terminations imaginable. Which I am helpless to do anything about, because of that corrupt system.
Reason hasn’t prevailed in any battle since perhaps the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the forty hour work week, overtime, and other employee benefits Baby Boomers like me took for granted. Every war pushed for, since JFK stood up against the Military Industrial Complex during the Cuban missile crisis, has been given the green light. Well, I guess we should count that as a victory for reason as well. So sanity hasn’t won the debate since 1962. The list of losses for the people is lengthy. NAFTA, open borders immigration, coverups of every important state crime from the JFK assassination to 9/11, the Patriot Act, the NDAA, the Supreme Court upholding tyrannical asset forfeiture laws, and many others.
We are left now to fight a forced vaccination we don’t remotely need, perhaps even being forcibly chipped. Or to try to counter the creeping sprawl of “hate speech” and “hate crime” laws. To meekly mutter “I’m not a White Supremacist.” To argue for schools, businesses, churches, and cultural events to be reopened. But only with proper precautions, of course. Must keep up that “social distancing.”
We lost the culture war that Pat Buchanan warned us about. I mean, we were slaughtered. Shut out. And so we watch helplessly as the “educators” who have such influence over our kids devise ideas like transgender story hour in elementary schools. Or “gender reveal” parties where parents often manipulate their very, very young children into “identifying” as the opposite sex. If that’s not child abuse, what is?
For years, I argued that this casino economy of ours had to inevitably collapse. In my youthful idealism, I imagined something better emerging from the ruins. Now I’m much older, and have no such expectations. They appear to be able to keep this mess afloat on life support, no matter what. The fact that it hasn’t collapsed after thousands of businesses were forced to close, millions were thrown out of work, and huge parts of the economy like sports and movies were effectively cancelled, is very telling. They will just keep creating money out of thin air under their counterfeit banking system. Maybe we’ll get another $1200 check.
Our “representatives” in the Senate just voted unanimously to eliminate the cap on foreign Visa workers. That’s quite a strange thing to do during a deadly “pandemic,” and when millions of American citizens have lost their jobs due to the unconstitutional lockdown. Don’t expect a veto from Donald Trump, who of course pledged to eliminate the unnecessary foreign worker programs. Maybe we’ll get an exasperated tweet.
The people have actually been losing ever since the tyrant Lincoln crushed that whole “consent of the governed” thing. You know, the main premise behind the War for Independence. We lost every time when their laughable false flags, from “Remember the Maine” in 1898 to the “weapons of mass destruction” lie was believed by a gullible majority of the public. That’s our problem- that gullible majority. They’re the ones phoning the authorities to report “social distancing” violations, or screaming “there’s no evidence!” of voting fraud, and they will be first in line for the mandatory vaccine. They have been trained, like Pavlovian dogs, to be skeptical of the “conspiracy theorists,” not any authority figure or institution. Except Donald Trump. They have been brainwashed to hate him, like Orwell’s fake opposition leader Goldstein in 1984.
Speaking of Orwell, his dystopian world is here. What exactly is the distinction between his Thought Crime and the “woke” Left’s “hate crime?” That gullible majority again parrots the phrase “hate speech” without understanding how such a concept is incompatible with free speech. The majority of Americans now don’t believe in free speech for those they disagree with. Since that is the significance of the First Amendment, they really don’t believe in free speech. Period. And since they don’t consider a thousand or more witnesses signing sworn affidavits about electoral fraud, to be “evidence,” they don’t appear to believe in free and secure elections, either. But they hate “racism.” And they support every war.
If the Founders could see what a shocking Banana Republic we’ve become, they would be heartbroken. They didn’t secede from British rule so that society could celebrate 57 different genders. Or claim that even the poorest residents of Appalachia have some kind of “White Privilege” that Black billionaires don’t. Or permit our militarized police to abuse their authority and confiscate the property of those who haven’t even been charged with a crime. Or give benefits, public schooling, job preferences, and legal favoritism to noncitizens, including those who entered the country illegally. Or spend most of the federal budget on a centralized permanent armed forces, and shadowy intelligence agencies with secret budgets.
Our “representatives” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don’t believe in, or pay attention to. The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss. And yet, while it’s taken on a power and scope it’s not supposed to constitutionally have, it provides virtually no services in return. It just takes. And mandates.
We are like a boxer, who’s been beaten relentlessly for fourteen rounds. We’re in the fifteenth and last round, trying desperately to hold on to the ropes. The referee is openly against us, and the judges are not scoring the rounds fairly. The fans, who stand to lose if we do, are wildly cheering on our (and their) opponent. Our only hope is if those fans storm the ring and save us (and themselves).
As Orwell stated in 1984, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within.” We are the Proles, and we outnumber our corrupt and incompetent leaders by the millions. But if we don’t come together, that’s irrelevant.
As we enter the holiday season, that same gullible majority is embracing even more tyrannical restrictions. Cases are surging- we must cancel Christmas! It’s like we’ve gone through the looking glass- where the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is being celebrated.
We’re all in this together. Take your vaccines. Trust the “science.” Listen to the “fact checkers.” Embrace the “great reset” and the “new normal.” Yes, Virginia, there is a conspiracy. God bless us, everyone.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: dystopian, Enemy of the State, Orwell | Leave a Comment »
Shocking Dystopian Video of NYC – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on August 17, 2020
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/no_author/shocking-dystopian-video-of-nyc/
Don’t know who recorded it but I downloaded this yesterday
He’s single handedly wrecked Manhattan
Ghost town
“Beirut DeBlasio” without the explosion pic.twitter.com/5I48ZGcWTZ
— tadgermania (@tadgermania) August 7, 2020
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Beirut DeBlasio, dystopian, Manhattan, NYC | Leave a Comment »
Are You Loving Your Servitude? – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on August 4, 2020
Their weak-kneed toadies at the Federal Reserve have dutifully fulfilled their mandate of no banker or hedge fund left behind. While Main Street is beset with potholes, boarded up small business storefronts (if they haven’t been looted and burned), homeless drug addicts, and the unemployed lining up at local food banks, Wall Street is being paved in gold…
If you think the world doesn’t make sense and you don’t understand why people aren’t acting rationally, don’t worry. You are the one who is sane. It’s the rest of the world that is crazy. Don’t lose faith. There are others out there who refuse to embrace their servitude. Don’t follow the crowd. Think for yourself. Question everything. Prepare for the worst, because it’s coming. Use your time wisely. Keep your loved ones close. And befriend like minded people. The future of our country hangs in the balance.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/jim-quinn/are-you-loving-your-servitude-2/
In Part One of this article I laid out the argument Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future had played out over many decades, but now I observe Orwell’s darker vision in motion since the start of this century.
All the “solutions” being imposed by those in power don’t solve anything, because they aren’t designed to solve anything. These are nothing but short-term emergency sustaining maneuvers to keep the dying patient alive, while the criminals ransack his house, extracting whatever wealth he has saved. Throwing $1,200 bones and $600 a week bribes to what they consider the Main Street riff raff, while funneling trillions into the pockets of Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks, billionaire oligarchs, connected mega-corporations, and pliable corrupt politicians, is just what the doctor ordered for the ruling class.
Their weak-kneed toadies at the Federal Reserve have dutifully fulfilled their mandate of no banker or hedge fund left behind. While Main Street is beset with potholes, boarded up small business storefronts (if they haven’t been looted and burned), homeless drug addicts, and the unemployed lining up at local food banks, Wall Street is being paved in gold, with its inhabitants eating caviar, drinking champagne, and celebrating their brilliance in owning a central bank, guaranteed to enrich them.
The paths being chosen by those in power offer no exit or happy endings. Driving the annual deficit over $4 trillion, pushing the national debt to $26.5 trillion (don’t forget the $200 trillion of unfunded welfare liabilities), because you chose to shut the country down for a bad flu, has virtually guaranteed a multi-year economic contraction and eventual financial collapse. The Fed has propped up a zombie economy and horribly managed zombie corporations with zero interest rates and purchasing of their bad debt.
Free markets have been extinguished, price discovery has vanished, success is determined by who you know, and interest rates can never rise again, or the debt Ponzi collapses instantaneously. The $600 a week in unemployment produced an economic recovery mirage, as money that has no possibility of being repaid, was spent by millions on grocery deliveries, crap from Amazon, and buying bankrupt stocks on Robinhood by unemployed day traders.
The politicians who doled out this $600 per week to millions of people they purposely forced into unemployment are now trapped. Any politician who votes to not extend the payments will be scorned by the corporate media talking heads as heartless and uncaring. With elections just over three months away, it’s now just a matter of how big the newest debt financed debacle will be (somewhere between $1 and $3 trillion).
Trump will sign whatever comes his way, because not doing so would guarantee a loss in November. Financially, none of this can work. The Federal government, with their co-conspirators at the Fed, can get away with running massive deficits for as long as the USD is accepted around the world as a safe investment. The record price of gold and the 9% decline in the USD since April are early warnings another financial crisis looms. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: BLM, dystopian, Federal Reserve, Huxley, servitude, Snowden | Leave a Comment »
For First Time Since The Great Depression, Americans Must Wait In Line For The Most Basic Essential Items | Zero Hedge
Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2020
But other Americans continue to grow more and more skittish about the practice, leading to another vein of increased tension across the nation. Francisco Salazar of East Meadow, New York, concluded: “Earlier in the pandemic, they were checking people for masks, cleaning the carts, giving sanitizer — they’re no longer doing any of it. I feel paranoid. I don’t want to be on these long lines.”
by Tyler Durden
The scene can be somewhat dystopian and third world when you look at it: as a result of the pandemic and the new way that our economy is forced to do business, Americans all over the country are waiting in line – even for the most basic of essentials.
For example, Bloomberg points out that food banks in Vermont have to deal with “miles long” lines of cars and at Covid testing sites in Florida, people have to show up with full tanks of gas because of how long they have to wait.
People applying for unemployment have similar horror stories – as we have detailed – trying to pile onto an overwhelmed website to collect benefits and left with no one to call when the system doesn’t function properly. The physical waits in unemployment lines are similarly distressing.
Kara Eaton, a 27-year-old industrial welder from Eufaula, Oklahoma, said: “We have to hope that the person next to us in line will hold our place while we use the bathroom — Subway usually doesn’t mind if we use theirs.”
Rachelle Basaraba of Oregon said: “Having to be patient and wait your turn — I don’t know if that’s necessarily the American way.” She says that a “herd mentality” and respect for rules bring order to waiting in line in Denmark, where her company is based. She called this a “a positive thing,” though was unsure about how it would catch on the U.S.
This time in America is the first since the Great Depression to make Americans wait in line for limited resources.
J. Jeffrey Inman, a marketing professor and associate dean at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business, said: “The U.S. is getting a dose of the scarcity economy, and we don’t like it. The U.S. has gotten spoiled where we’ve always had a plentiful, efficient supply chain. Now we’re seeing what can happen once it gets disrupted.”
But capitalism is trying to swoop in and solve the problem. For example, a company called Lavi Industries, that usually makes post-and-rope systems for Homeland Security, is now involved in making plastic sneeze guards and portable stations for lines to make the waiting for bearable. They are also working on their “virtual queueing technology,” which is a smart phone technology that can summon customers out of line from afar.
Perry Kuklin, Lavi’s marketing director, put it simply: “People hate to wait. If you make it more pleasant, make it more efficient, you as a business can not only profit from it, but you create a better passenger experience or theater experience.”
Richard Larson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and expert on queuing theory, says the issue is just temporary: “My parents had to wait in a bank queue line between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and now ATMs are everywhere. We have umpteen more gas station pumps you can stop at. A lot of traditional pesky queuing is gone.”
Some Americans are trying to make the best of the situation. “It was time to stop and notice, to look around and watch, to not be on my phone. I tried just to be there,” said Dena Babb of Torrance, California, about trying to be mindful while enjoying waiting in line.
But other Americans continue to grow more and more skittish about the practice, leading to another vein of increased tension across the nation. Francisco Salazar of East Meadow, New York, concluded: “Earlier in the pandemic, they were checking people for masks, cleaning the carts, giving sanitizer — they’re no longer doing any of it. I feel paranoid. I don’t want to be on these long lines.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Covid testing, dystopian, Great Depression, limited resources, Wait In Line | Leave a Comment »
IAN BIRRELL on how tech giants have turned San Francisco into a dystopian nightmare | Daily Mail Online
Posted by M. C. on February 3, 2020
Considering the city’s wealth, it smacks of callous and uncaring hypocrisy.
I had just passed dealers selling drugs beside a police car parked outside government offices
As one local resident says: ‘Are they really being progressive to that poor guy in the street with a needle in his arm who is going to die tomorrow?’
Here is a thought. Raise the minimum to guarantee these poor people will never get a job.
By Ian Birrell for The Mail on Sunday
Gilles Desaulniers moved to San Francisco 40 years ago, settling in the ‘friendly, quaint and affordable’ city after running out of cash while driving from Canada down the West Coast of America.
Today he runs a grocery store filled with fresh fruit, vegan snacks and organic wines typical of this famously liberal Californian city.
But Gilles has shut one outlet and would sell up entirely if anyone wanted this one, his remaining shop.
Each day, up to 30 people stroll in and openly steal goods, costing him hundreds of dollars.
A street cleaner showed me a box filled with used syringes that he had collected, then I met two charity workers picking up needles from the pavement. How many do you find a day, I ask? ‘Between 300 and 600, depending on the weather,’ one replies. A homeless man is pictured second left using a syringe to inject drugs in the city in June 2018
He has been bitten twice recently by people in his shop and he also found a woman turning blue in the toilet after a drugs overdose, a hypodermic needle still stuck in her leg.
He showed me a metal door that is corroding due to people urinating in his doorway, then spoke of finding a man relieving himself in full view of infants playing in a child centre next door.
‘Our society is falling apart,’ says Desaulniers.
‘If people do not play by some rules, society does not function. But it feels like there is no order, there is no shame.’
He uses two apocalyptic movies to illustrate the state of his adopted city: ‘Living here feels like A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner have both come true.’
I could grasp his despair. I had just passed dealers selling drugs beside a police car parked outside government offices, and seen their customers openly smoke fentanyl, an opioid 50 times stronger than heroin, then collapse on the street…
Yet true to form, San Francisco has just elected as district attorney a radical called Chesa Boudin, whose parents were infamous militants from a far-Left, anti-war group. They were jailed for triple murder when Chesa was a toddler, leaving him to be adopted by the founders of the organisation.
The 39-year-old, who studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and later worked as a translator for Venezuela’s former leader Hugo Chavez, a Fidel Castro acolyte, campaigned on moving away from prosecuting ‘quality of life’ offences to focus on serious and corporate offences.
The San Francisco Police Officers Association spent heavily campaigning against Boudin, saying he was the choice for ‘criminals and gang members’.
But Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the charity Coalition on Homelessness, argues city residents should get angry over ‘systemic neglect’ that sparked this crisis rather than blaming people on the streets.
‘No one wants to live like this,’ she says. ‘We’ve tried locking people up before but that didn’t work.’
Friedenbach insists that the problems stem from a lack of affordable housing, a significant reduction of emergency shelters and the slashing of spending on treatment programmes.
She says, rightly, that issues of homelessness, mental health and addiction are often linked.
The city’s mayor, London Breed, whose younger sister died of a drug overdose and elder brother was jailed for robbery, declined to comment.
In her inaugural speech, Breed said the ‘twin troubles of homelessness and housing affordability’ were the big challenge.
She is boosting grants for shelters, treatment and street cleaning. Yet those desperate sights staining this one-time hippy nirvana are ultimately the sign of abject political failure.
Her new fiefdom is, after all, so populated by millionaires in their exclusive enclaves that it is the second richest city in the world’s richest nation.
Considering the city’s wealth, it smacks of callous and uncaring hypocrisy.
As one local resident says: ‘Are they really being progressive to that poor guy in the street with a needle in his arm who is going to die tomorrow?’
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: A Clockwork Orange, dystopian, fentanyl, San Francisco, tech giants | Leave a Comment »
The Rutherford Institute :: Government Eyes Are Watching You: We Are All Prisoners of the Surveillance State |
Posted by M. C. on June 21, 2018
I seem to recognize the analogy!
You want to be free? Break out of the circle.
By John W. Whitehead
“We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people’s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”— Patrick McGoohan
First broadcast in America 50 years ago, The Prisoner—a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.
Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village. The Village is an idyllic setting with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.
While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers. Read the rest of this entry »
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