Anarchistcook’s Weblog

“As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Kamala Harris August  23, 2024

“I just saw the inside of a Palestinian baby’s head. What a day,” trended on X as Ana Navarro spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the Democratic National Convention.

As the carnival of unreality celebrated “the best four years” in America’s history at the Chicago Democratic National Convention the pace of phone calls from desperate seniors seeking food was exploding like the bombs raining down on the children of Gaza while the current regime has brought the US to the brink of a nuclear war with Russia.

The Biden/Harris administration made its intention to continue the genocide clear on
August 26th completing its 500th flight airlifting over 50,000 tons of weapons and equipment to the Israeli army for its over ten-month onslaught against Palestinians. As the joyous Chicago convention droned on the British Medical Journal reported that at least 186,000 Palestinians had been killed by the weapons the administration donated for the genocide. At the same time the US and NATO are bombing Moscow and other Russian cities in their mad regime change war. We have never been so close to a nuclear conflict as we are today.

As we teeter on the edge of a global war our people are suffering the terror of this democracy. The usual 6:00 am call rings while starting that morning’s pot of coffee. A soft spoken woman from Mississippi lets me know her insurance company gave her my number. She needs food. The $100 gift card United Health had provided has run out of money. She can’t see. Can I send someone over with groceries. Her church can’t help. I let her know we share meals with the homeless and that she might want to try calling 211, like 911 but 211 or possibly her county offices.

After a few more calls a 70 year old from southeast Texas named James dials me seeking both food and money. The pantries in his county and surrounding counties closed because they couldn’t meet demand. His power was about to be cut off ending the use of his two old window air conditioning units. He tells me it hit 110 degrees. James does not have the money to pay his copay for his cancer medication and his wife’s insulin.

I could hear him crying as he said he had worked his whole life, always paid his taxes and felt humiliated that he was seeking help.

I suggested as I do a dozen or so times a day, that he contact 211 or his county offices. He responded that he had called the Salvation Army, Community Action Network, Catholic Services, five or six other agencies and his own church and no one could help. He got my number from his health insurance company. He thanked me for at least listening and understanding.

A few minutes later I get a call from a senior woman in western North Carolina who shared that she had not eaten in three days.

Many who call tell me they are angry that we can send billions to fight wars in Ukraine and Israel but can’t help our own here in America.

The cruelty is not limited to starving our elderly. The Supreme Court ruling in April allowing cities and states to make being homeless a crime and Newsom’s Executive Order have given Santa Cruz officials a green light to step up their already horrific campaign of terror against the homeless. A $4 million “Encampment Resolution” grant along with other state funding sent tractors and dumpsters to the Pogonip to confiscate the property of those already clinging to survival.

The lines at the Food Not Bombs meal get longer each month. The frustration is electric. A mantra of “We have no place to go” hums around the plaza. Do you have a tent? A sleeping bag, the police took them yesterday.

Jessica York writes on August 14, 2024, “In the wake of concerns voiced by several community members, on Tuesday, the Santa Cruz City Council approved a $140,000 contract to clean up a scattered Pogonip homeless encampment.”

“The city voted to hire Santa Cruz-based Kenny Robinson Construction after officials had heard complaints about the estimated 40 active and abandoned camps along the approximately 1.5-mile Nature Loop, accessible off Golf Club Drive. Concerns included unleashed dogs, debris and fires, according to a memo to the council.”

At the same time Democratic mayors are claiming the Supreme Court Ruling and Executive order will not impact their anti-homeless policies. Mayor Fred Keeley is one of several California’s mayors whistling that tune. The Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v Johnson and Newsom’s Executive Order to clear all encampments will have no impact on our city’s homeless policies.

“‘Our focus on affordable housing and homelessness prevention is our North Star. We have to continue building on the momentum we’ve gained over the past two years, and we’re seeing real results from our strategic approach.’ writes the mayor.”

“One of those results is a remarkable 36% decrease in homelessness over the past year. This progress is a testament to the effectiveness of the city’s comprehensive strategies. The city has moved 184 people to more stable housing and provided 165 tent-based safe sleeping spaces.” Keeley claims.

You would not be surprised to learn that none of what he is reporting here is based in fact. If there really were a 36% decrease in homeless why would the city also agree to pay their friends at Kenny Robinson Construction $140,000 to steal our community’s poorest resident’s survival gear, hauling it off to the landfill?  Would it be necessary for the city to request a $4 million Encampment Resolution Grant to confiscate and discard the property of those seeking to survive at Harvey West and Coral Street. You can see the failure of this system every day with your own eyes. For many of us we experience it every day.

It’s likely to get more dire for Americans as we head into a World War and an economic Depression. News that the Biden Administration had made an 800,000 person mistake in the employment numbers blipped from view during the convention. Forbes reports that a staggering 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet dumps $982M worth of Bank of America shares in August as he moves out of stocks into cash, suggesting to many that there will be a rocky economic future possible, even a Depression forcing more families into the streets.

Unfortunately claims by mayors like Keeley of progress in building what they call affordable housing is really not so affordable and even if real and construction started now it would not be enough to house the cascading increase of the 15,000 Americans who become homeless every day according to HUD.

So the plan to address this brutal crisis is the criminalization of America’s homeless. The CIA-linked Cicero Institute is pushing a “solution” to “the homeless problem” that could lead to governments coercing people into FEMA camps, camps not unlike those where our Japanese neighbors were sent during the last World War.

The Cicero Institute provides a “Model Bill” it calls “Reducing Street Homelessness Act” to state and city legislators. Billionaire Joe Lonsdale started the Cicero Institute in 2016. He also co-founded CIA contractor Palantir Technologies with several others, including PayPal’s Peter Thiel. Palantir’s first backer was the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. Peter Thiel is also the money behind JD Vance, Donald Trumps running mate.

The Cicero Institute’s model legislation has already been introduced or adopted in ten states. In Kentucky a “stand your ground” feature protects those who feel threatened by those homeless whose property they are trashing gives them the right to shoot the homeless if necessary.

Joe Lonsdale’s Palantir is providing AI targeting to the Israeli and Ukrainian militaries. Their products were most famously used to kill the World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza.

The Nation Magazine reports “Such horrendous “mistakes” are hard to understand, considering the enormous amount of advanced targeting AI hardware and software provided to the Israeli military and spy agencies — some of it by one American company in particular: Palantir Technologies.”

Palantir’s software, which uses AI to analyze satellite imagery, open-source data, drone footage, and reports from the ground to present commanders with military options, is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,” according to CEO Alex Karp.

This suggests that Palantir is also providing the targeting inside Russia in the US regime change war against Moscow.

On August 31, 2024, Ukraine killed or wounded 46 civilians including 7 children in Belgorod Russia using the Czech Vampire Missile System and UK cluster munition. Videos of a missile obliterating a car into a fireball on a freeway in this city is chilling.

Journalist Patrick Lancaster has been reporting on the civilian crisis in Kursk. He interviewed the husband of a pregnant woman who was shot and killed by US backed troops as they fled their home. That was hard to watch. GoPro footage from an American rushing house to house in Kursk shooting at Russian civilians catches the voices of other Americans, Poles and French mercenaries yelling directions.

Ukrainians with the help of the US have been launching explosive drones at the Kursk nuclear reactor in Russia.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi wrote on August 26th “Given the serious situation, I am personally leading the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) in the Russian Federation.”

“Since new developments and increased levels of military activity in the vicinity of the KNPP, I have been closely following developments on the ground, especially with respect to the plant. It is important that when the Agency is called upon to fulfill its mandate to ensure that nuclear is used in a peaceful manner, we are present.”  Just as was the case when he visited the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, he refused to note that it is Ukraine that is attacking these nuclear facilities. Unlike the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant which has been switched off, the Kursk Nuclear Power station is still operating.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a World War III warning to the U.S. on August 28,2024, saying that the West was “asking for trouble” by even considering Ukrainian requests to use American supplied weapons to conduct strikes deep within Russian territory. Discussions about using Western supplied missiles to strike Russia are tantamount to “playing with fire,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow. The US has ignored this warning.

Russian TASS state news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday that Moscow had decided to revise its nuclear doctrine to reach a new balance in line with the escalation course adopted by the West.

“The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections”, Ryabkov was cited as saying by TASS.

Like Iran and the Palestinian resistance, Russia is trying to thread the needle between deterrence and the very real possibility of providing justification for a direct nuclear strike by the US on their countries.

US and European leaders have made it clear that they intend to topple the Russian government. During a speech in Warsaw, Poland on March 2022, President Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are among those in the West openly calling for the removal of Putin.

The “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” was approved by Biden in March 2024 according to top secret documents leaked to The New York Times during the Democratic Convention.

It is disheartening to say the least that few Americans seem to realize just how close the Biden/Harris Administration is to taking our country into a direct military conflict with nuclear armed Russia.

Many people have asked me lately about how I have come to my unusual opinions on current events. My mother’s father was in the Army’s Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War. The OSS was the precursor to the CIA. My grandfather directed the most deadly bombing campaign in world history, firebombing Tokyo in “Operation Meeting House”.

I watched him argue over the phone for the use of nuclear weapons on Hanoi, demanding his friends Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General Curtis LeMay “send a message” to Russia and China. We couldn’t let them think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were an aberration.

During the days that I was watching my grandfather argue with McNamara and LeMay his friends were plotting Operation Northwoods, a false flag attack in response to the Cuban Bay of Pigs disaster.

In the November 18, 1997, Reuters article by Jim Wolf on the just declassified files of this operation, “Pentagon Planned 1960s Cuban “Terror Campaign’” he quotes parts of the documents:

“The courses of action which follow are a preliminary submission suitable only for planning purposes,” Pentagon strategists said in an annex to a March 12, 1962, report about Cuba options to the military Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other cities and even in Washington,” they said in the document
stamped “top-secret.’’

During the decade that my mother’s father provided his wisdom he shared some of the most important lessons on “real politic” that would shape my understanding of how society is managed.

He explained that he and his friends had to instigate the Pearl Harbor Attack because the American public would have never supported a war in the Pacific otherwise. Sixty-three black and white glossy photos that he took from a B-29 of the firebombing of Tokyo hung framed around his Needham, Massachusetts den. Another framed photo of thousands of slaves in Burma using hammers and baskets to pave the runway for his bombers with stones leaned against his file cabinet that I slept next to in his basement. I would stare at those poor shirtless men wondering how that could be real.

He described why he shipped heroin from Burma to the US saying they needed to pacify the black community after the end of World War II because they were worried that the unequal benefits in the GI Bill could lead to civil unrest.

The reason he gave as to why I would grow up to aid in directing the world was that we were “genetically superior” and therefore the responsibility fell to us. He mentioned that god didn’t exist. I remember being annoyed when the pastor at his funeral spoke of him as being a godly man since he was proud of being a member of Satanic group. He told of joining one of the most secret of secret societies which he could have been invited into while attending Philips Exeter, Dartmouth or Harvard Law. Directing the destiny of our world was a burden our family and the elites we represented as members of the intelligence community had to shoulder. “White man’s burden” he called it.

“We would never let an election determine the direction of our society,” the retired Office of Strategic Services veteran instructed. The purpose of elections is to divide the people so they do not become a threat to those in power.

Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan speak that same language of the logic of unlimited carnage when required to shape events that I witnessed being expressed by my grandfather and his friends.

It has been difficult to write this essay as current events continue to point towards a global war between nuclear armed nations and whatever I publish today seems be out of date by the next morning.

I am not seeing any blaring headlines proclaiming that the US is seeking peace in their regime change war against Russia or in the expanding war in West Asia. No word of Ukraine surrendering. No end to the genocide in Gaza. This should be concerning to everyone as the current US administration continues to stoke both conflicts with money, weapons, fighter jets, carrier groups and satellite targeting.

I remember as if it was yesterday when I climbed under my tiny desk at Bethesda Elementary School in our Cuban Missile Crisis “duck and cover” exercises, laughing with girls about how insane adults must be to think this would protect us.

There has never been a more dangerous time than we are facing today. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis doesn’t even come close.

Even as I have been writing this the US and NATO have lobbed more bombs and drones at Moscow and Israel is on hair trigger alert with their undisclosed nuclear arsenal, contemplating their Samson Option as they wait for the response they provoked by killing Ismail Haniyeh the political leader and chief negotiator of Hamas in Tehran.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Americans will go to bed hungry tonight and many of those hungry people will be going to bed on our streets waiting to be moved and stripped of their last possessions by the police.

Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA – 1-800-884-1136

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