HUNGER IS NOT A GAME
May 16, 2025
When a billion people go hungry each day, how can we spend another dollar on war?
We need Food Not Bombs more today than at any point in our 45 year history. President Trump has proposed the first trillion dollar military budget an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion in Pentagon spending while also proposing 22% in cuts for social services. President Ronald Reagan 2.0.
The lines of people seeking meals at Food Not Bombs grow longer month after month. American seniors call me all day long distressed that they have no food.
“I worked my whole life and always paid my taxes but now I am forced to beg for help. This is embarrassing” Jim said adding that all the pantries in his area have closed because they couldn’t keep up demand. I could hear his tears over my phone. Hour after hour calls of desperation. One has not eaten in three days. Another is eating cat food. All one woman has left is a box of Cheerios. It is heartbreaking that often all I can do is suggest they call their local 211 help line.
But nothing can match the shear horror of Israel and the United States starving two million Palestinians reducing thousands of children to skin wrapped skeletons.
On October 9, 2023, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, pledging that “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”
Thousands of truckloads of food have been blocked for over 70 days sitting but a few miles from these desperate mouths. the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report saids nearly 71,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children under five are expected between April 2025 and March 2026. We have gone from witnessing drone video of the February 29, 2024,Flour Massacre killing over 100 Palestinians as they struggled to grab food for their families to images of starved sunken eyed children breathing their last breathe.
When Food Not Bombs started during the May 24, 1980 Occupation Attempt of Seabrook Nuclear Power Station the eight of us could not have imagined that four and a half decades later that we would have provided billions of meals with the hungry. Yet the wars would also continue. Wars of famine and wars of genocide. A billion dollars in naval forces, lost F 18 Super Hornets and US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones lost in one month this year defending Israel’s right to exterminate the families of Gaza.
The idea that Food Not Bombs volunteers would be sharing food in Moscow, Russia would have seemed impossible in those days when we were busy organizing for protests like the June 12, 1982 March for Nuclear Disarmament where over a million protesters walked across Manhattan to the Great Meadow that day. A world without a Soviet Union was unimaginable.
Food Not Bombs started when my friend Boston University Law student Brian Feigenbaum was arrested during our May 24th attempt to stop the nuclear power station on the New Hampshire coast. We found someone who could bail out Brian and that evening as we chugged back to Boston we agreed to raise the funds needed to repay his generosity by holding bake sales.
Well that was not at all lucrative but we did have a moving company called Smooth Move and one of our customers was discarding a yellow and green poster that said, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” It was a light bulb moment for our little collective. We bought surplus military uniforms, mounted the poster on cardboard, dressed as generals and headed out with our baked goods asking pedestrians to help us buy a bomber. We had stumbled onto an effective way to get an otherwise distracted public to hear our message.
While we were pitching our baked goods for bombers we also learned of planned protests in Germany against the deployment of the Pershing II nuclear weapons on their streets. In solidarity, Food Not Bombs and Cambridge City Council organized an October 10, 1981, march from City Hall to Draper Nuclear Lab. A tiny story in the Boston Globe that week noted that nearly 300,000 people took part that day in Bonn West Germany. Our march only attracted about 100 people but it was an important step in our campaign to mobilize for the nuclear disarmament protest in New York.
Later that month on a drizzly Halloween night Vice President George HW Bush spoke at MIT about those protests. About 3000 came out to the protest that ended with many of us dancing around a bonfire of wooden police barricades in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue.
“It is one of the exquisite ironies of our times that the United States should find itself in this position,” Bush said. ‘The Soviet disinformation apparatus is as disquieting as it is dishonest, but it has not been unsuccessful. These protesters are not only the most recent ones to have been attracted by the argument that the world has more to fear from America than it does from the Soviet Union.”
“Most of the people who turned out to demonstrate against NATO’s nuclear forces are well-intentioned men and women,” he continued. “Many of them are young, too young to have had first-hand knowledge of World War II. I don’t question their idealism.”
Even though Bush portrayed our call for an end to the cold war as naive our campaign for nuclear disarmament would play an important role in pushing President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987easing the threat of a nuclear conflict.
The Trump administration withdrew the United States from that treaty in August 2019, and Russia reciprocated by suspending its participation.
Now the US plans to deploy the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile systems in Germany returning to the days when the Pershing missiles lumbering across the cobble stone streets. Maybe it time to launch another mass mobilization against the nuclear threat.
After we started our “bake sales for bombers” street performances the original Food Not Bombs group began organizing against the banks that were investing in the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station and were profiting from the nuclear weapons industry.
We organize a theatrical soup line outside of the Bank of Boston’s stockholders meeting on March 26, 1981. I designed a flyer to show the connections between the bank and the military contractors with a warning that Reagan’s policies and those of the banks could lead to a future where Americans would have to seek food at soup kitchens.
Our friends were invited to dress as Depression Era hobos but as we were preparing a huge sixty quart pot of stew we realized we had not recruited enough people to have the shock value of a real soup kitchen. At around midnight I went to the Pine Street Inn Homeless Shelter and gave a speech about our protest and invited them to join us. One man excitedly responded, “cool, a protest like we did in the sixties.”
Nearly everyone I had spoken with at the shelter showed up. The first man we shared our soup with responded with “God bless you,” gently bowing his head. One by one they stepped forward for their cup of warmth offering a heart felt thanks. A young business man expressed alarm that Reagan had only been in office for a month and people were already standing in line to eat. The guys who ate with us suggested we share food everyday since there was no place for Boston’s homeless to get a free meal. It is difficult to imagine now but in 1981, homelessness in America was not a thing.
That evening we agreed to give our bosses two weeks notice so we could focus full time on recovering and delivering food while preparing meals to share at Harvard Square or outside Park Station Subway Station on the Boston Commons. I was a produce worker at Bread and Circus Natural Food Grocery and had been taking the food I was discarding to the mothers at the pubic housing projects on Portland Avenue. My boss agreed to let me continue to recover the discarded food.
One morning while dropping off food to the projects the women who I had been helping pointed out that a new building had just opened across the street. The women said scientists were designing nuclear weapons in the new offices, inspiring us to adopt the name Food Not Bombs.
I moved to San Francisco in 1987 with my wife Andrea and our Afghan Hound Bear. One morning we hear news that Veterans For Peace activist Brian Williams had been hit by a munitions train at the Concord Navel Weapons Station in the East Bay. He was participating in a campaign to stop weapons shipments to the wars in Central America called Nuremberg Action. Food Not Bombs had supported Brian and the other Veteran’s For Peace activists during their fast in Boston and I was stunned by reports that Brian’s legs had been severed so Andrea and I were moved to attend the protest that weekend. When we returned home and switched on the TV to watch the news reports on that day’s rally Andrea suggested I start a second Food Not Bombs group.
We pulled together a few volunteers meeting at a Chinese restaurant on Haight Street and agreed to share our literature and meals at the entrance to Golden Gate Park at Stanyan Street. We learned that there were no free meals in the Haight on Mondays we agreed to fill that day.
A hippy looking man stopped by our meal and suggested we could get a permit from the Recreation and Parks Department. I wrote Director Peter Ashe on July 11, 1988 requesting the suggested documents. Police officers would pass by our meal each Monday and ask if we had received a permit yet and I would walk over to the parks department office to find out the progress. No one there knew what I was talking about but agreed to take a message.
On August 15, 1988 the San Francisco Tactical Squad marched out of the woods and arrested nine of us. Local photographer Greg Garr took pictures of the police blocking people from getting food. His photo appeared with a UPI story of the arrests in Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle inspiring outrage.
A week later a couple hundred people marched down Haight Street many banging spoons on pots while others carried buckets of stew and fruit salad or cases of produce and bagels. We set up at the entrance to the park. The police arrested 24 volunteers and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force took notes sending a memo on August 29th to the San Francisco Field Office claiming that Food Not Bombs was “a credible national security threat” even though we had just three chapters and a total of 30 volunteers.
The August 22nd arrests made CNN, the New York Times, The Times of London and several other news outlets. People started to send request for information on how to start their own chapter in defiance so I took my notes on how I formed the San Francisco group and made a flyer called “Seven Steps to Starting a Local Food Not Bombs Group.” I still mail copies out to people wishing to start their own local chapter.
The San Francisco Police made a total of 1,000 arrests over eight years. News of these arrests would inspire others to start chapters in their cities. We organized our first International Gathering to coincide with the indigenous community’s protest against the 500th anniversary of Columbus invading the Americas. The national celebration was held in San Francisco since the city had the longest running Columbus Day parade in the United States. During our two day gathering we agreed on our three principles.
1. The food would always be vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone, rich or poor, stoned or sober.
2. That each group is autonomous and uses a process of consensus to make decisions. There are no leaders, presidents or directors, and no headquarters.
3. Food Not Bombs is not a charity but is dedicated to using nonviolent direct action to change society so no one needs to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen.
After the gathering we joined the protest at Aquatic Park witnessing the indigenous elders push the official Columbus back out into the bay as we shared breakfast with the protesters before heading to Civic Center Plaza to feed the main rally against the 500 years of exploitation.
The Savings and Loan crisis was raging that across the country that same year tossing families out of their homes. That November the San Francisco Tenants Union and Food Not Bombs held a film showing in the Tenderloin about the squatters movement in Europe to inspire our own squatters campaign.
One participant agreed to pretend to be interested in buying the decrepit old building that once housed an X rated movie theater and would ask the real estate company for a key to check it out. We also planned to sneak into the gutted hotel across the street from the Glide Memorial Church soup kitchen the night before Thanksgiving knowing that the Mayor would arrive to do his annual photo op of serving a slice of turkey to a homeless guest.
When Mayor Jordan arrived we emerged from the glassless windows hanging a banner saying “Homes Not Jails” and blasted our disdain for the Mayor’s brutal “Quality of Life Enforcement Matrix Program” of homeless sweeps.
At the same time we had moved several families into the second floor of the movie theater. According to the book “No Trespassing” by Anders Corr we had placed locks on 400 buildings left vacant as a result of the corruption of the Savings and Loans industry and we had people living in as many as 100 of those buildings.
In 2008 another housing crisis forced over 5.5 million families into foreclosure. When Obama opted to bail out the banks, leaving millions of Americans to fend for themselves, thousands of people responded to the Ad Buster Magazine’s call to Occupy Wall Street on October 17, 2008 and took to the streets. Food Not Bombs volunteers swung into action helping set up kitchens to provide for their local Occupy Camps. That Thanksgiving Obama’s Homeland Security, the FBI and local police departments started to crush the protest.
The United States wasn’t the only country suffering from the 2008 economic crisis. I was invited to speak in England in 2010 and found that the least expensive flights to the British Isles were on Icelandic Air. The airline encouraged its passengers to spend as much time in the country as you wished with no increase in airfare so I spent a week visiting the local Reykjavik chapter of Food Not Bombs. I joined them at their weekly meal where they described how the conversations at their Saturday lunches often turned to a discussion about the corruption that had resulted in their own 2008 economic crisis. At one point the weekly conversations turned into a weekly march to the Parliament Building.
I was invited to speak about the history and philosophy of Food Not Bombs at a local community center. During the question and answering period a reporter asked me how I felt about Food Not Bombs initiating the uprising against the bankers and central government. I was amazed. Food Not Bombs had initiated a movement that toppled a government.
The Grapevine Magazine reported “Ever since the Prime Minister’s so-called ‘Disaster Speech’ on October 6, where he outlined the crash of the Icelandic economy, a crowd has gathered outside the parliament building every Saturday afternoon to voice their discontent and demanding the resignation of the government, the Central Bank directors, and other key figures associated with the collapse.”
A young Food Not Bombs activist, Haukur Hilmarsson, climbed up onto the roof of the Parliament building and raised the pink pig emblazoned flag of the Bónus food chain where the Icelandic national flag usually flies. Bónus is a part of Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson’s Baugur investment empire, which owns the majority of the country’s food stores as well as most of the media, and is widely seen to be one of most powerful men in the country, and a key figure in the economic crash.
Local news outlet Fréttablaðið calculated that in the past few years after the economic crisis the Icelandic judiciary had sentenced 36 bankers to a total of 96 years in prison. All of the criminal cases are linked to the notorious crash of the Icelandic banking system in 2008.
In 2011, Iceland rewrote its constitution using a uniquely open process. It reshaped the dialogue on how a population can use available technology, consensus building, and civic engagement when reinventing the governmental processes supporting the needs of their constituents.
As the global economy faces another economic crisis possibly more dire than those in 1992 and 2008 and the horrific genocide and wars continue to kill and maim, the work of Food Not Bombs has never been needed more than today.
Our 45th anniversary is a good time to consider strategies not only to meet the growing need for food but also how to use our global network to force a redirection of military spending towards funding healthcare, education, local infrastructure and social services. I believe we are creative enough to organize a coordinated campaign to disrupt the techno-fascist seeking to implement a totalitarian digital control grid with their Stargate AI warfare and surveillance. Our freedom and humanity is at risk. The bonds we have made at Food Not Bombs can provide a foundation for this resistance. This task might be more difficult than the removal of the Icelandic government but we have every reason to try.
I will be encouraging the audience at our 45th anniversary celebration in Santa Cruz to join us in initiating another mass movement against war and austerity.
The Santa Cruz chapter of Food Not Bombs is hosting a free concert Soupstock 2025, on Saturday, May 24th at the Duck Pond Stage in San Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz starting at high noon. This fun party features six bands, arts and craft displays, information booths, face painting, dancing and free food.
I hope you will join us in taking nonviolent direct action to not only provide meals with the hungry but to disrupt the political and economic system to force an end to the suffering. Hunger is not a game.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – www.foodnotbombs.net
CONTROLLED OPPOSITION
April 18, 2025
Let’s build a movement against fascism outside the control of the genocidal pro-war Democratic Party
While progressive Senator Cory Booker was giving his 25 hour Democratic Party infomercial on the Senate floor a Palestinian father could be seen on social media emerging from clouds of concrete dust in Gaza holding his headless child to the heavens. Two days later in another theatrical stunt designed to secure progressive loyalty to the Democratic Party Bernie introduces a bill to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel which Booker voted against. Where was Bernie when he was voting to silence anti genocide protesters and backing Biden’s arms sales?
Capitalizing on the understandable anxiety of a Trump victory the Democrats are once again deploying their astroturf movement Indivisible. Since the mythology of the Democrats is that they are the party of the left they need to attract support from those who desire a progressive agenda. The party was trounced out of power for refusing to end the genocide or provide for the needs of the American people. The Republicans employed a similar strategy and used the fear of an Obama administration to launch the Tea Party to counter the perception that their party had moved away from their conservative roots. This is one method the billionaire class uses to tamp down any threat to their power.
After spending 18 brutal days in the Orange County Jail for the crime of sharing meals with the hungry I was released into the arms of Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez and handed a Tupperware of the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted. News helicopters whirled above but they were not there for me. Socialite Casey Anthony, whose daughter was found dead as she partied was also being released from the Orlando jail at the same time as myself.
I was one of nearly 30 food servers arrested in the summer of 2011 after an appellate court ruled Florida’s most liberal city had the constitutional right to ban the sharing of meals with the homeless when Food Not Bombs appealed the Orlando groups first arrest.
On April 4, 2007, at the conclusion of an Orlando police undercover investigation that, according to the Orlando Weekly, cost taxpayers $65,000, Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez was arrested. When Food Not Bombs lost its appeal of the city ordinance volunteers defied the order and continued to provide the meals at Lake Eola Park picnic grounds.
When I finally was able to access my email one message included a call from Ad Busters to “Occupy Wall Street” on October 17th in a campaign to protest Obama’s bailout of the banks instead of coming to the aid of the 5.5 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure.
I supported the strategy of occupation and delivered hundreds of pounds of rice to New York and Washington DC and cooking equipment ready to help feed the protests. By Thanksgiving I had participated in over two dozen camps when the Obama administration aggressively started to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A year after Occupy Wall Street was smashed Naomi Wolf wrote in the Guardian that, “FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF)… reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”
Many of us started organizing to ReOccupy the camps on May Day. As we were building our campaign a group calling itself 99% Spring asked San Francisco Bay activists to join them at a meeting in the Mission District. Nearly a hundred people sat around a conference room listening to the facilitators and watched their 20 minute inspirational film.
After the video people started to ask questions about why was there no mention of Obama’s bail out of the banks or his wars. The organizers dodged our questions and moved on to their plan. When it was suggested that many of us had already been planning to start the occupation on International Workers’ Day they claimed they had already picked their day in April. The presenters were clearly uncomfortable and deflected our questions. Nearly half of those attending walked out at lunch and never returned realizing that 99% Spring was just another Democratic Party front group designed to co-opt our movement.
The resulting confusion from their heavily promoted 99% Spring made organizing an independent return to the streets difficult. Masked people trashed areas of Seattle on May Day posing as a Black Block and news broke of a May first plot to bomb a bridge. The FBI had entrapped five of the 2011 Occupy Cleveland cooks including three young Food Not Bombs activists in a plot to use plastic explosives to topple the Route 82 bridge spanning Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park on 30 April 2012. Media reports of these events made sure that we didn’t continue the occupations.
The controlled opposition of the 99% Spring was only one of such subversions used to suppress threats against the Democratic Party from the left. MoveOn.org and Common Cause are among the well financed “grassroots” groups like Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution designed to “sheepdog” people they fear might dedicate their energy to organize against corporate power and war redirecting them back into the dominate political system.
I signed up with Our Revolution in 2016 when Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. Since he supported military contracts like the F-35 I was skeptical that he would bring the change he was campaigning on but I gave him a chance. It seems that contact list is still being used for the purpose of corralling those who might be a threat to their agenda from the left into their orbit. Bernie asked us to vote for the cackling about Libyan Open Air Slave Markets Hillary Clinton. He would go on to ask us to back genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That list was an important factor in drawing so many people to the Hands Off and Anti-Oligarchy Democratic Party rallies.
Those lists were also used to send out a Cory Booker fundraising text shortly after the Senator voted to stop Bernie’s theatrical attempt to cut arms shipments to Israel. Messaging intended to mobilize people still gullible enough to believe that the Democrats could be a progressive challenge to the madness of the Trump administration. The Pussy Hat distraction of the first Trump administration has become the Hands Off of Trump’s second term.
In their all out effort to protect their system of exploitation and empire they also launched the AOC/Bernie Anti Oligarch tour, started another group, 5051 to attract those who had become wise to the Indivisible scam, and made much of the Cory Booker 25 hour content free yapathon. We are sure to see even more seemingly progressive groups emerge but none will be opposed to the genocide, war or corporate power.
In 2016 when it became clear that Trump would win the election two Congressional staff members, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, initiated Indivisible “publishing a twenty-three-page document drafted by a handful of former Democratic Congressional staffers in the days after Trump was elected. The subtitle: “A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” with the intention of harnessing the fear many rightly had of what might happen during his first administration. It is no surprise that when the Democrats returned to power they made no effort to reverse some of the most damaging of Trump’s policies like the tax cuts for the wealthy, the mass deportations of migrants or even move the US Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv.
The August 18, 2017, issue of the Progressive Magazine writes, “Indivisible has, in a very short time, emerged as the public face of citizen resistance to Trump. Like the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, the official outgrowth of Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign, Indivisible has received a surge of interest post election. Unlike those groups, it didn’t exist beforehand.” The Tides Foundation provided $350,000 to help them start.
The article goes on to say, “The former staffers, including Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, now the group’s executive director and chief strategy officer respectively, had seen the Tea Party kneecap their bosses” attempts to pass progressive policies during Obama’s first term.”
One core member, Peter Dreier, claimed, “the goal of Indivisible was to “save American democracy&” and “resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy.”
Anyone following the Democratic Party knows the last thing they support is democracy, otherwise for example, Bernie Sanders would have been their nominee, they wouldn’t have sued to keep the Green Party off the ballot in state after state and they would have held a primary in 2024. To claim the political party that refused to increase the minimum wage, presided over an economy that caused a 30% increase in the number of Americans who became homeless during their four years in power and armed the genocide of Gaza as “humane” seems a stretch.
Indivisible’s website states, “We’re a grassroots movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.”
It is rare to see a grassroots movement receive millions in donations from wealthy foundations like Open Society Foundation that gave $3 million to one arm of Indivisible in 2023; $1,135,000 in 2022; $500,000 to one account in 2021 and $375,000 to another account also in 2021; $1,750,000 in 2019; $500,000 in 2018 and $350,000 in 2017. The Open Society Foundation has not posted how much it donated in 2024 and it is not clear how many millions more was provided by other foundations to the other Indivisible units like Indivisible Project, Indivisible Civics, and Indivisible Action. Open Secrets reported that one of the sections of Indivisible raised $9,922,930 in 2024. Hardly grassroots.
Indivisible isn’t the only Democratic Party project that was funded by Soros. In the second quarter of 2020, his organizations gave at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign’s largest donors. Soros was the country’s largest donor to political campaigns in 2022 donating $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in that election cycle. While Soros’ Open Society Foundation was financing the Hands Off rallies Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury happens to be Soros Fund Management partner Scott Bessent.
The Democrats are employing the same Color Revolution strategy they used to topple the elected governments of Ukraine and Georgia. Build a system of controlled opposition in defense of US centric corporate power. The Soros funding of regime change programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution coup. Alexander Lomaia, secretary of the Georgian Security Council, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million. The Biden administration was still seeking to subvert the democratically elected government of Georgia with a second color revolution as he left office. Like most of Biden’s policies Trump is continuing the effort to replace that government with a US compliant puppet.
I echo CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in strongly agreeing with most of the demands listed on publicity for the Hands Off rallies, Hands Off Medicare, Hands off Social Security, Hands Off Education, Hands Off Public Lands, Hands Off Immigrants and Hands Off LGBTQIA+.
But what suggested to me that these Hands Off rallies have another goal other than to stand against the terror of the CIA linked vultures hovering around the Trump administration was what was absent in their messaging. Their publicity didn’t include Hands Off Gaza or Hands Off Yemen even while US bombs were tearing children to shreds as people gathered for the rallies. Horrors that were beyond anything we have ever witnessed raging at the exact time these rallies were taking place.
Even more telling was that one of the institutions they want to protect is the organization directing the regime change war against Russia. The “Hands Off!” rally’s website even offers a pdf of a “Hands Off NATO” sign for activists to print and bring to their rallies. The website also quotes MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting saying, “This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people.” Does that include the dozens of “everyday people” who have been calling me nearly everyday for the past two years desperate for food often remarking that it makes them angry that we can fund a war in Ukraine but we can’t provide for our own people here in the US.
While most of those who join these rallies have the best intentions, some even came holding handmade signs against the genocide in Gaza or waved a Palestinian flag, it is unlikely that Indivisible intends to unite with the massive protests against the murder of Palestinian families. Their message of peace was drowned out by all the Ukrainian flags supporting the deadly war against Russia and their support of the political party that just spent 15 months slaughtering Palestinian babies.
It is understandable that people would join the Hands Off rallies. The stunning cascade dismantling our rights and social supports is frightening. Legal residents being snatched off the streets and deported, the privatizing of social services and threats to donate our National Parks to Trump’s billionaire friends for mining and oil extraction couldn’t be more terrifying. Americans are leading busy lives, struggling to pay their bills and base their political perspectives from limited information served by the same corporate media that supports the agenda of the war state and naturally joined the rallies in desperation. Had I not been following Indivisible since their founding and realized their organization was designed to kill any opposition to the system I would have also participated. I just can’t join rallies where it’s ok with the organizers for people to wave the Ukrainian flag. I don’t want to be seen as supporting war let alone one led by supporters of Stepan Bandera.
When rallies get such positive national news you know they have the support of those in power. You won’t see dozens of Democratic Party officials participating in protests that threaten the economic and political system. Insider trading success Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi spoke to her fawning supporters in the swing state Pennsylvania. Former vice presidential running mate Tim Waltz screamed to his supporters that the Democrats were back. The ghoulish anti-homeless YIMBY California State Senator Scott Wiener gloated over a video of himself he shared on Facebook that opened with a fluttering Ukrainian flag outside San Francisco City Hall. Wiener came to Santa Cruz on April 5, 2019 helping launch the luxury high rise condominium craze that is turning our community into a 15 Minute Smart City hell-scape.
Santa Cruz Indivisible is dominated by our city’s worst West-siders and pro development politicians. Their Facebook site includes supporters like anti-homeless Take Back Santa Cruz activist and former city councilperson Richelle Noroyan. One of the first members is the founder of the Predictive Policing Software Ryan Coonerty now used by CIA contractor Palantir to target Palestinians. Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti helped finance this program when he was Vice President of Yahoo.
Those who waved their Ukrainian flags most likely believed that Russia’s military actions were unprovoked and feared Trump’s claims of making peace with Putin were real. Nothing says provoked like the torrent of western leaders spending the last 20 years threatening to topple the Russian government. On March 26, 2022, Biden continued those regime change threats during a speech in Warsaw saying of President Putin that,”For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
The Hands Off events share the same Zionist sponsors as the current regime so it’s no wonder there was silence about the bombings of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Trumps threats to attack Iran. In a January 2024, article, “I don’t belong”: A Jewish student leaves Occidental College over wartime protests” the Forward writes, “Dreier, who identified himself as a “committed Jew” and has taught at the school for 30 years, acknowledged that “there are Jewish and Arab students feeling traumatized by what is happening in the Middle East.”
The Bernie AOC billionaire funded Anti-Oligarch tour is a second major front after Indivisible in the campaign to absorb those who might otherwise participate in an authentic movement against fascism into their dead end project. Police arrested Pro-Palestine protestors that had unfurled a banner saying “Free Palestine” at the Nampa, Idaho, rally as Sanders repeated his “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism&” Zionist mantra followed by “I am doing my best to demand not another nickel for Netanyahu’s war.” Bernie is careful to accuse Netanyahu and avoids placing blame on Israel or his own record of voting for the genocide. Many in the crowd chanted Free Palestine as they removed the protesters. Non-Binary Artist in Recovery Blakeley posted a video of the tour saying “Bernie continues to claim “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism” 18 months into a fucking genocide is actually fucking grotesque and you can’t call yourself pro-Palestine if you think this is okay or excusable.” Even though the Idaho crowned chanted Free Palestine Bernie ignored them and continued with his speech.
Of course he turned his back on his supporters.In 2023, as the genocide was reaching its most murderous levels, Bernie Sanders voted for a Senate Resolution condemning anti-genocide student protesters and organizations as “antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible”. AOC and Bernie are not likely to travel to the Louisiana Detention Center where Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is now being held.
This could spell disaster for our future as the US threatens to start a global war while the economy collapses. Two aircraft carrier armadas, six to ten B 2 stealth bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons, and dozens of heavy transport planes, air defense systems are set to attack Iran if they fail to bend to Trump’s demands. At the same time Ukraine is increasing its attacks on Russia while it is reported that Moscow strikes a meeting with NATO officers in Kyiv and the global economic system crashes, threatening to force millions of Americans into financial ruin. Yet none of this was even a blip on the agenda of the Hands Off or Anti-Oligarch rallies.
Indivisible helped smother any possibility of using the terror of Trump’s first term to build a massive movement. Their solution was more war, austerity and a genocide.
If we have any hope of the change required to defend ourselves from the onslaught of the End Times Techno-fascists implementing their Stargate AI digital future we had better stop falling for the two party illusion. We urgently need to build a movement independent of the Democratic Party. A movement that threatens power.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
https://open.substack.com/pub/keithmchenry/p/controlled-opposition
FOOD NOT BOMBS – OUR BERLIN CONNECTIONS
March 31, 2025
The New England chill was starting to warm into a pleasant spring morning in 1980. Food Not Bombs cofounder CT Butler and I coasted through Harvard Square in our old Dodge van on our way to Brattle Square to set up our daily literature and food distribution when we caught a glimpse of an addition to the square.
A new character in the theater of our Cambridge streets stood near Out of Town News dressed with a bright colored poncho depicting a Russian bear and American eagle embracing. The white bearded man balanced a pole topped with a weather balloon painted to look like the Earth. After setting up our equipment I walked over to greet our latest addition to the carnival.
He introduced himself as John Runnings and gave me a copy of his flyer about his “The Odessa Odyssey”, his plan to travel to the Soviet Union for a person to person type détente. He shared that he had bought a boat back in his home in the state of Washington with the intention of sailing to Odessa Russia. He described how he would have docked in some seaside town, stepped onto shore and greeted the first people he came upon with a message of peace from the Americans. Unfortunately the person repairing ship stole the vessel so his new plan was to board a plane in Boston for Berlin and attempt to cross the wall to meet East Berliners
He slept in his van outside the Food Not Bombs house using our restroom before heading down to promote his dream to the pedestrians of Harvard Square. After a few months he recruited the Food Not Bombs volunteers to help him in his plot to sneak onto a Lufthansa flight to the divided city.
We lifted the slight man over a plastic wall that guarded the gangway to the plane but he was never able to board a flight without a passport so he gave in and flew legally to his goal. Once in Berlin he scaled the wall banging a chuck out of its rim, walked along the barbed wired top and dropped into the GDR side where he was arrested. A website tribute to his work says, “He then became the first person in history to have gone over the wall from west to east and back to the west again, all without a passport.” The piece of wall that he hammered free on one of his 1986 walks between worlds is displayed at the “Checkpoint Charlie Museum”.
Around the same time we had first become friends with the “Wall Walker” the Food Not Bombs collective organized a solidarity march with the German people who were protesting the deployment of US Pershing Nuclear Missiles. In October 1981, 300,000 protesters assembled in Bonn, West Germany.
We marched that same October from Cambridge City Hall to Draper Laboratory where they were designing nuclear weapons. Our name Food Not Bombs comes from our learning of the lab while we were donating produce to the mothers at the public housing project across from Draper. That evening I dialed International phone operators in Germany seeking to find an operator who could pass on the message that we had a protest in the United States in support of their campaign against the Pershing missiles. After a dozen or more calls we found one man who promised to let the German Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament know about our protest.
Food Not Bombs helped organize a protest against newly elected Vice President George H Bush who was set to speak against the Pershing Missile protests in Germany. Sue Eaton and I made the first Food Not Bombs banner before the action and she suggested the fist in the logo should be purple to honor all races. A friend borrowed the car of Food Not Bombs co-founder Jo Swanson’s to use while wheat pasting posters for the rally and along the way he spray painted the popular slogan “Shot Bush First” on the wall of the MIT Student Union inspiring the Secret Service pay her a visit but thankfully her roommate who answered the door sent them away. Jo went into hiding to avoid arrest. We brought torches as well as hot food. The torches were used to start a bonfire of wooden police barricades in the middle of Mass Ave. People drummed and danced around the fire and we provided psychedelic mushrooms to all who wished to enjoy them.
George Bush told his audience of MIT alumni that, “Most of the people who turned out to demonstrate against NATO’s nuclear forces are well-intentioned men and women. Many of them are young, too young to have had first-hand knowledge of World War II. I don’t question their idealism”. He continued,”That alone really ought to give these demonstrators pause. Pacifism and Soviet ideology are as incompatible as sheep and wolves, but the latter always fashions clothing out of the former’s wool.” History may be repeating with the new US attempts to deploy short range nuclear missiles in Europe as part of NATO’s current regime change war against Russia.
On the sidelines of the July 2024 NATO summit in Washington DC, Germany and the US announced plans to deploy missiles capable of being nuclear armed. The September 2024 issue of “The Arms Control Association Newsletter” said, “U.S. Army forces in Germany will field the multipurpose Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile, and a hypersonic missile that is still in development in ‘episodic deployments’ as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the joint announcement said. These weapons will equip the army’s Multi-Domain Task Force based at Wiesbaden, Germany, which the army first activated in September 2021.” My father was stationed in the same armored unit as Elvis Presley at Wiesbaden and thus I was born in Frankfurt in May 1957 in the US occupied Luftwaffe Hospital that featured huge concrete swastikas on its cornices.
There is another Berlin connection. A cold San Francisco wind chilled the small ACT-Up rally against Anthony Fauci that I was attending in 1994 outside the Social Security office at United Nations Plaza. A friend named Michael saw me and hurried my way. “Keith, it’s great to see you. Heinke and I did a small tour to highlight your case. We even made T-shirts,” he told me. I had been framed by San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan in his attempt to crush Food Not Bombs and was facing a prison sentence of twenty-five to life.
He was excited. His partner Heinke had booked a popular Kreuzberg pub during Michael’s visit to Berlin and organized an event to build interest in my California Three Strikes case. The threat of a twenty-five to life sentence for crimes that included feeding hungry people and “stealing” milk crates must have been intriguing to a Berlin audience .
He described meeting an activist who had been sitting in the back of the bar listening to their presentation. The activist approached my friends and introduced himself as Manolo. He told them he was touched by my plight and suggested they join him in Spain. He offered to organize a couple of speaking events. Michael spoke warmly of his new friend Manolo. He was a serious radical and well connected in European circles. Michael would give me several news clippings about their presentations in the Basque country and an X Large T-shirt with “Free Keith McHenry” silkscreened across the chest at our next meeting. I felt honored. I would join Manolo on a tour of Spain and host him and two other Spaniards on a two month tour of North America that we called the Unfree Trade Tour, seeking to build resistance to the globalization of the economy by organizations like the Word Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum.
We showed the video “Fifty Years is Enough” about the impact of the economic policies that came from the 1944 the Bretton Woods Conference in the US and the intentions of those same financial vultures to expand their control. The movie showed peace, labor and environmental activists united in protest the introduction of Euro and the European Union warning it would bring in economic and environment damage to Europe. I had participated in a giant protest against the formation of the European Union organized by labor unions, communists, socialists, anarchists, peace activists and environmentalists in Bonn, West Germany and attended a two week long convention against the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. This coalition also tried to disrupt the World Economic Forum in Davos each year seeking to build opposition to the slavery and destruction caused by these globalization programs. It was shocking to return to Europe as the Euro was transitioning from the local currencies. The introduction of the Euro was already driving down wages while increasing prices. The contrast from the relative economic security of the pre Eurozone days and the financial struggles of Europeans after the Euro was heartbreaking. My friends no longer had the time to spend their days with me as they were now too busy meeting their financial expenses.
The UnFree Trade Tour featured one of our low-watt FM radio stations which let us broadcast the program over the airwaves. We shared literature not only on the threat to labor rights and damage to the environment that could happen if the policies of these global organizations were not stopped. We also provided details on how to start your own low-watt radio helping build the Free Radio movement across the US and Canada.
We proposed that people organize a massive protest against the World Trade Organization in the event that they were to hold one of their economic summits in North America. A year later the World Trade Organization announced its summit in Seattle to be held the last week of November 1999. A coalition of left groups united in a campaign to block participants from entering the summit. Since Food Not Bombs had formed the first IndyMedia Center in San Francisco during our second International Gathering in 1995 spreading the idea across the globe and by the time of the Battle of Seattle we had IndyMedia centers all over the world. An IndyMedia center in Australia had written code that let us post videos, sound, photos and text on our IndyMedia sites much like people can on Facebook or other social media platforms today making it possible to share uncensored news of the protests.
While global capital was busy tricking the public into supporting their wars and austerity plans Food Not Bombs chapters were also springing up all across the world in defiance. Food Not Bombs activists joined in anti-globalization protests across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The Gothenburg European Council meeting was held on June 15-16, 2001, laying the groundwork for EU enlargement while addressing what the corporations called “sustainable development”, as well as economic and social issues, and external relations. The presence of US President George W. Bush at the EU-USA Summit attracted a huge crowd of protesters.
CBS News reported that “Up to 25,000 activists from dozens of anti-EU, anti-U.S. and anti-globalization groups have descended on Gothenburg. About 1,500 people appeared to have been involved in Friday’s rioting.”
The Guardian report of June 15, 2001 said “Anti-globalization protests spilled over into serious violence at the EU summit in Sweden last night as two people were shot and wounded by police apparently overwhelmed by demonstrators. Police in the southern port city of Gothenburg confirmed that two people had been shot when street fighting broke out after a day of clashes. Twelve police officers were injured and 600 people were detained.”
Gothenburg Food Not Bombs co- founder, Hannes Westberg was shot in the chest by police, suffering multiple injuries. According to a hospital spokesman, he had a damaged kidney and liver and is ‘critically ill’. Surgeons had to perform a series of complicated operations in a bid to save his life. I recall that he spent some of his time as a prisoner in a coma. I was honored to play Father Tomte for Hanne’s child on his son’s first Christmas when I visited Sweden on one of my European speaking tours.
My work against the centralization of the global economic system has never stopped. I joined a bus caravan at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City and headed to the 2003 protest against the World Trade Organization protest in Cancun. Several Food Not Bombs volunteers from Australia had rented a house on the edge of the old town. My Mexican Food Not Bombs friends set up a camp in a park downtown where we provided meals for the protesters. The first day we shared food outside the Ritz Carlton on the beach front. That area was closed to the public soon after. Tens of thousands of us marched outside the security fences. I was less than ten feet away when Lee Kyung Hae, a South Korean farmer, scaled a fence and stabbed himself to death with a penknife while wearing a sign that read “WTO kills farmers.” A few minutes after he fell to the street the police started to toss chunks of concrete at the demonstrators. I joined a friend under the nearest car as blocks of cement rained down around us.
Our history of organizing against the exploitation by the financial institutions has been at the core of our actions from our founding. Our first soup line was a theatrical event outside the Bank of Boston’s stockholders meeting outside the Federal Reserve Bank in March 1981. The night before our noon meal I spoke at the local homeless shelter and invited the twenty or so men to join our protest. They showed to our protest suggesting we share food everyday since there were no free meals for Boston’s hungry. We handed out literature warning that the policies of the bankers and President Reagan could lead to a future where people would be forced to line up for meals at a soup kitchen. Pedestrians were surprised to see people were already queuing up for food just a month after Reagan had taken office.
That evening while cleaning our cooking equipment we made the decision to give our employers two weeks notice so we could dedicate all our time to recovering and sharing food. We all had to seek work after six months when our landlady reminded us that we has not paid rent for half a year but she was so impressed with our work that she reduced our rent from $600 a month to $400 and asked us to start paying at the first of the following month. Our humble beginnings sure have blossomed into a strong global community of compassion in an often very brutal world.
It’s been 45 years since we started the first Food Not Bombs collective after our friend Brian Feigenbaum, was arrested during the May 24,1980, occupation attempt of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station construction site in New Hampshire. During these four decades our volunteers have join relief efforts after cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and wild fires. Our volunteers initiated the campaign that toppled the banker government of Iceland, shared vegan meals outside MacDonalds on the annual McLibel protest each October and during the Millions Against Monsanto marches in May. The Anarchist Against the Wall campaign in Palestine started after the Tel Aviv chapter of Food Not Bombs has helped provide meals during a two months long Peace Camp on the West Bank. We have supported indigenous sovereignty movements in the Americas, Australia and across Asia. As a worldwide movement Food Not Bombs is in a position to initiated global days of action against the cruelty of the emerging totalitarian digital dystopia. And of course we have filled the bellies of the hungry millions of times and will do so for decades to come.
The crisis of war, state repression and poverty is greater today than at anytime in our history. Thankfully we have a global network of over 1,000 chapters to provide mutual aid, emotional support and solidarity.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 – http://www.foodnotbombs.net
FOOD NOT BOMBS IN THIS TIME OF TECHNO-FASCISM
March 17, 2025
CIA funded Billionaires publicly take control of the United States while we organize our resistance to their digital dystopian panopticon.
“…one suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted…” Peter Thiel, February 21, 2024
The eight college aged antinuclear activists who started Food Not Bombs in May 1980 imagined a time when we would need to respond to a time like we are living through today. We thought President Reagan would be the Trump of our time but thankfully it’s taken four more decades to arrive at this dystopian moment.
We could have never imagined there would be nearly 1,000 autonomous chapters of Food Not Bombs in over 65 countries when we started. But we did consider a number of strategies of survival.
If faced with the repression of a totalitarian police state our vision was to build our own communities outside the system with a focus on meeting the basics of water, food, shelter, free expression and friendship.
We had planned to coordinate days of actions with what we at the time dreamed might be a network of dozens of Food Not Bombs chapters spread across to United States. Our first multi-city action happened on October 15, 1988, when all three groups that existed at the time participated in a protest against the US war in El Salvador. The Boston group helped organize and shared meals outside the US Capital in Washington DC while chapters in San Francisco and Long Beach provided meals with those protesting to end the war in their own cities.
This vision of creating a community outside a totalitarian society was experienced in a condensed version by over a thousand people who participated in the 1995 International Food Not Bombs Gathering held in San Francisco during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This ten day event may offer suggestions on how to build a community of sanctuary from the dystopian digital prison being implemented by the DOGE transfer of the US government’s assets to this junta of techno-fascists. Programmable digital currency linked to your biometric facial digital ID connected to the internet of bodies could be our future if their plans become reality. The Stargate of electronic control and warfare.
The hours of preparing and sharing free vegan meals together built many strong friendships. Smuggled plastic buckets of stew and garbage bags of pastries and bread were quickly shared at United Nations Plaza at noon before the San Francisco Tactical Squad marched in to make the daily felony conspiracy arrests. Over 130 were cuffed for serving food in violation of a court order. We were released a day or two later in to the welcoming smiles and hugs of our fellow Food Not Bombs activists.
At a meeting of about 200 people we came to consensus that we would continue to unite around our three principles that we had agreed to during the first International Gathering held in San Francisco before the October 1992 protests against the 500th anniversary of Columbus invading the Americas.
1. The food is always vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone rich or poor, stoned or sober.
2. Each group is autonomous, there are no leaders, directors or headquarters and decisions are made by consensus and we strive to include those eating with us in our meetings.
3. We are not a charity but instead we are dedicated to taking nonviolent direct action to change society so no one is forced to sleep in the streets or seek food at a soup kitchen.
The assembled also agreed that we would never request or accept a permit from the government to share meal with the hungry. Sharing the gift of food is always an unregulated act of compassion.
Our decentralized horizontal philosophy of organizing is our strength. A strength that could save us under the current conditions.
While these meals and meetings were getting underway people started to pass through our tiny convergence center in an office we rented for the occasion on the fifth floor above one of the Off Broadway theaters on Market Street. Those staffing the office registered over 1,000 names of those who came to attend our second world gathering.
The first Indymedia Center ever was housed in that same office. We broadcast news of the gathering from a low watt pirate radio station whose antenna was mounted on the theater’s roof. That got busted after just a few days but we were also broadcasting on Free Radio Berkeley and San Francisco Liberation Radio. Stephen Dunifer held workshops on how to build your own low-watt free radio transmitter and radio station. Participants took these plans home and set up their own stations. I had the honor of being a guest on many of those stations while on tour. You can see our diagrams in the book Hungry for Peace.
By the time of the blockade of the first World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle in November 1999 there were Indymedia Centers in cities all over the world. Activists in Australia wrote code that made it possible to upload news, photos and videos of the action globally. Massive protests like the blockage of the 1999 WTO Summit rarely made the news outside the city where they were happening before Indymedia. A protest against the first war on Iraq attracted nearly a million people in San Francisco yet few outside the Bay Area had any idea this took place. People are still surprised when I tell them about the Rodney King Uprising in San Francisco and the implementation of martial law assuming that it had only happened in Los Angeles.
As part of the gathering the group Homes Not Jails invited activists to help take over the abandoned officers quarters at the recently decommissioned Presidio Military Base. The housing was in perfect condition and could have housed more than a hundred homeless vets but since it has one of the best views of the Pacific in the city they were not about to sacrifice the property to the poor. Federal police arrested the occupiers hours after we seized the buildings. Even so Homes Not Jails also occupied other housing San Francisco left empty by the Savings and Loan Crisis and was providing shelter for dozens of formerly homeless people.
The workshops on the most effective way to squat abandoned buildings were a popular feature of our gathering. There were also classes on lock picking, making giant puppets and banners, consensus decision making, vegan cooking and other organizing strategies as well as the free radio workshops.
In contrast to the drama in San Francisco there was no threat of arrest for sharing meals at People’s Park in Berkeley where East Bay Food Not Bombs hosted playful events on the lawn and powerful concerts on the stage. Terri Compost shared her skills in what could be called a Food Not Lawns garden near the stage.
The closing event was a torch light march against the death penalty. Black Panther journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal had been sentenced to death in Pennsylvania and was set to be executed soon after the gathering. Hundreds marched from UN Plaza through the Mission with torches, banging drums, chanting, tipping over a flaming dumpster outside the Mission District Police Station as we marched past the precinct. Then the parade was off to the Castro where the police kettled the procession making the country’s largest arson arrest taking over 200 people to jail.
Our ten days of skill sharing and resistance inspired many participants to return home excited to strengthen the Food Not Bombs movement, start their own radio stations, plant vegetable gardens, organize Indymedia Centers and initiate local squatter campaigns. Consider reading our book Hungry for Peace to get an idea of how to start creating an outside the matrix community in your city.
The horrors of the techno-fascists who are now overtly seizing power may feel over whelming but thankfully we have the sanctuary of our Food Not Bombs community.
After 45 years of direct action and service many of us have the experience needed to respond to these terrifying days. We are more prepared than ever to welcome another wave of Americans who could be forced into homelessness under the policies of the privatization of Medicare, and SNAP food stamps. This crisis is not limited to the United States. European governments are removing many of their social safety nets so they can fund their war with Russia and a failing global economy is sure to increase poverty around the world.
Thankfully the Democratic Party’s phony astroturf “resistance” rallies calling for more war and genocide and our vote in the midterms are slowly evaporating as their political party commits a slow suicide. The fact that the share the same agenda as those they are protesting has become all to obvious.
At the same time the Palestinian and immigrant solidarity protests are building an authentic resistance to this totalitarian coup free of Democratic Party domination. Food Not Bombs activist are supporting those actions as well as participating with Veterans for Peace, local homeless unions, LGBTQIA+ diversity rights groups, anti racist activist, labor organizations, mutual aid collectives and environmentalists to build a movement to resist the tyranny of these cruel technocratic oligarchs.
As a Great Depression scale economic crash unfolds Food Not Bombs groups are in a position to use our decades of practice to ease the suffering. No such movement was in place when the world was ravaged by the impact of the 1929 crash. The Catholic Workers, anarchist and communist collectives had to start from scratch as the calamity unfolded. Our flexibility and history of responding to major crises like Hurricanes Katrina, and Sandy, the Covid Lockdowns and the Hurricane Helene floods provides us with an advantage when it comes to making a difference at this critical time.
Along with our regular sharing of food and survival gear we are able to offer our years of logistical skills to support a wider resistance movement. Logistics are what we do week in and week out. We could even initiate our own nationwide campaigns of protest, blockades and noncooperation to this dystopian AI dominated digital war and surveillance state of control. Our creativity is unlimited.
If you are not already volunteering with a local Food Not Bombs group I encourage you to do so. If there isn’t a chapter in your community you are welcome to start a group with your friends. We are happy to help. It could not only save your own sanity it can provide the infrastructure for the change required to protect our rights and wellbeing from the techno-fascist CIA contractors, hedge fund vultures and financial institutions who are seeking to impose their will on society.
Our 45th anniversary reminds us that Food Not Bombs is capable of accomplishing amazing things. If there ever was a time when the spirit of Food Not Bombs was needed that time is now.
Food Not Bombs documentary of the 1995 International Gathering – San Francisco
SOUPSTOCK 2025
Saturday, May 24, 2025 – San Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz, California – Visit our website to find the celebration nearest you or email menue@foodnotbombs.net
https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
HOW DID I KNOW?
February 5, 2025
By Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” Oracle’s Larry Ellison – September 24, 2024
My mother’s father John Vanderpoole Phelan slowly rowed our family’s sky blue dingy into position across the placid waters of Middle Pond a few hundred feet from our beach on Cape Cod. My 5 year old frame sat on the bow bench armed with my first fishing pole. I faced my grandfather at the stern. He picked up a fresh water mussel from a pail, broke the paper thin shell, scooped out the slimy life and stabbed his fish hook into its grey flesh. I followed his instructions, skewed my bait onto my hook and dropped my lead sinker into the still waters. It wasn’t long before there was a tug on my line.
He instructed me to snap my pole to set the hook. A heavy creature fought as I reeled it to the surface.
“Unhook him and smack his head hard on the gunnel” he explained. “You don’t want him to suffer,” he added. I looked at those big perch eyes starring back at me, slid the hook from his gasping lips and smashed it against the wooden boat.
He continued with his lesson. “One day you may be asked to kill others. This is our duty. Those you kill will have no moral ambiguity. They will just be dead but for you it will be more difficult. This is the white man’s burden.”
He would repeat this lesson in one way or another for the next ten years often adding that I was born into a genetically superior family that was tasked to defend the rewards of capitalism.
My Grampy Phelan followed the path of many in the intelligence world attending Phillips Academy, Dartmouth College and Harvard Law. He was recruited into the US Army’s Office of Strategic Services, attended boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi, spent time overseeing the testing of Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress in Wichita, Kansas before being stationed in Burma where he directed bombing raids on Japan during World War II.
The 10 acre property on the Cape was our vacation home. My mother’s parents lived in Needham, Massachusetts in a huge two story white house with Dartmouth green shutters. My bed was down in their finished basement. I slept next to two metal file cabinets filled with the MIT formulas that my grandfather would sell to Ken Olson and became the foundation of Digital Electronics. A black and white photo hung on the wall next to my bed showing thousands of people in Burma smashing rocks with hammers or balancing reed baskets piled with stones as they toiled building my grandfather’s runway for his squadron of B-29s.
My grandfather’s first floor den was lined with 63 framed black and white photos that he snapped from 20,000 feet of his progress in the world’s most deadly bombing campaign,Operation Meeting House, the fire bombing of Tokyo.
I watched him pace under those photos arguing over the phone with General Curtis LaMay and then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about the need to drop an atomic bomb on Hanoi. We had to “send the Communists a lesson.” he insisted. Let the world know that the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a “one off” and that America had no limits to what it would do to defend capitalism.
My grandfather taught me about how the US provoked Japan with tariffs and naval blockade and ordered the Pacific fleet to line up at Pearl Harbor to maximize the impact. He claimed that even though US intelligence knew Japan was about to attack the naval facility they intentionally concealed this from the base commander. My grandfather explained that he and his friends set up the attack “because otherwise the American people would never support a war in the Pacific.”
During those days when my grandfather was arguing the logic of a third nuclear strike his good friend Curtis LaMay was trying to convince President John F Kennedy of the logic of bombing a shopping mall in Miami and blaming it on Fidel Castro to justify an invasion of Cuba in their Operation Northwoods plot.
Grampy explained that elections were designed to divide people so they won’t be a threat to those in power. The intelligence agencies had the responsibility of placing people in positions of power making sure the correct people came to office and that according to him this included the President of the United States.
This can be achieved in many covert ways. For example their claims that the Hunter Biden Laptop was Russian disinformation to make sure Biden won or making a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to hold the hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran in exchange for US weapons in an effort to sink President Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign.
Chuck Schumer told Racheal Maddow in a January 2017 interview, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you, so even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman [like Trump], he’s being really dumb to do this,” referring to claims by Trump that he would take on the Deep State. And sure enough the Deep State ate Trump and today we are witnessing the bitter fruits of a military dominated surveillance state free to overtly seize control of the government and confiscate its assets for their own benefit.
I spent the summer before high school living in that sweet little cubby in my grandfather’s basement while I attended summer classes at Needham High. He passed that winter.
My grandfather’s second wife held his funeral at the Congregational Church in Needham. The pastor claimed Grampy was a great and godly soul and would be remembered in heaven. I was stunned as my grandfather made it clear to me that he believed that God was a fiction and talked about his having belonged to a secret Satanic order.
When I was an art student at Boston University I had a part time job staffing Old South Meeting House on Milk and Washington Streets telling visitors about the drama of the Boston Tea Party, collecting the 50 cent entrance fee and selling post cards of the historic building.
During a lunch break I went to Boston Commons to eat and enjoy the warm spring sun. An older lady was standing on a milk crate telling a small audience of other elderly women about the threat of nuclear Armageddon and Mutually Assured Destruction. Her name was Dr Helen Caldecott.
After absorbing Helen Caldecott’s speech it occurred to me that I could use my skills as an artist to address what seemed to be the most important yet mostly invisible issue of our times.
I dropped into the offices of Mobilization for Survival in the basement of Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church to see if I could put my artistic skills to use. It wasn’t long before I was participating with the just formed Boston Alliance Against the Registration and the Draft. At first, nearly a hundred people were attending the weekly meetings but the number of participants started to decrease after a few months.
We had organized a plan where we would table outside the local high schools in the weeks before the students left for summer vacation to warn them of the potential danger of cooperating. Red Sun Press was going to give us a great price for the literature we intended to distribute. Once we were set to launch our campaign one of the leaders of BAARD announced she had spent most of our money on a first class plane ticket from San Francisco to Boston for Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and that he had agreed to speak at a rally on the Boston Commons after attending his child’s graduation at Harvard. We needed to raise more money for our printing.
Since the number of people attending our meetings was plummeting just when they were most needed my friend Frank and I called those on our phone list to see why they stopped participating. Most were disturbed about the jokes by some of the core members about “getting guns for the revolution” so we made a suggestion that we stop any reference to guns since the point of the organization was to oppose war. There was push back from the others so we agreed to take a vote at the next meeting.
When Frank and I arrived to the meeting a dozen or more people who had never attended before were there to vote against our proposal and the policy was not adopted.
After the meeting I returned to the street with a bucket of wheat paste and a stack of flyers but I was arrested before posting the first flyer. Frank was still in the office and saw the woman who had spent all our funds on the first class plane flight for Ellsberg dial up the Cambridge Police. This event is described towards the end of Brian Glick’s book “War at Home” on covert actions against the peace movement.
The shock at learning that BAARD had been infiltrated and was intentionally sabotaging our efforts at tabling and plans for the July 21,1980 protest outside the Main Post Office inspired us to start another group we called AWOL. We organized our first meeting at the Clamshell Alliance office at 595 Mass Ave in Central Square and just as it was about to start members of BAARD arrived with rebar and started attacking us.
It was very disturbing to discover that many of those who you thought were friends were likely working for the FBI. I was no longer a virgin to covert state manipulation and disruption.
I would face years of FBI, CIA, Interpol, local police and corporate intelligence operations. I have survived over 40 years of honey traps, the confiscation of all my out going and incoming mail for months at a time, elaborate smear campaigns, wiretaps, police doubles dressed as me who did crimes that I would be arrested for and the trauma of learning that an FBI agent slept with my wife while I sat in jail facing 25 to life in prison.
On August 15, 1988, the San Francisco Police arrested nine Food Not Bombs volunteer at the entrance to Golden Gate Park for sharing meals without a permit, a permit we would learn did not exist. A week later another 24 of us were arrested at Haight and Stanyan. Fifty-five more food servers were cuffed and taken to jail on Labor Day. The pressure on Mayor Art Agnos to end the spectacle led to our negotiating an end to the arrests and the creation of a permit process. I had to take the City to Federal Court to force them to comply with the process but they revoked the permit shortly after issuing it anyway and deleted the permit a year later.
That Thanksgiving volunteers wearing the Food Not Bombs button on their coat were approached by uniformed members of the National Guard as they waited for flights home after the holiday. They remarked that they had seen the Food Not Bombs logo at that weekend’s Domestic Terrorism Workshop claiming we were “one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups.”
In 2021 as part of a decade long Freedom of Information Acts Request effort by “Property of the People” we received a document that showed that the FBI- Joint Terrorism Task Force had watched the August 22nd mass arrests and sent a memo on August 29, 1988, to the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office claiming we were a “credible national security threat.” There were only three chapters at the time with a total of 30 volunteers combined.
The San Francisco Police made over 1,000 arrest in all for sharing meals ending in 1995. I was arrested 94 times, spent 500 days in jail and as noted before faced 25 to life in prison after being framed by the Mayor’s office. I was captured three time and taken to a dark room where my clothes were ripped off, was lifted by my arms and legs until my ligaments and tendons were torn and stuffed into a tiny Stress Position Cage. I spent hours in that cold dark cage struggling unsuccessfully to stretch my legs.
A parade of Food Not Bombs volunteers have been framed in FBI invented terror plots. Connor Cash on Long Island, Eric McDavid in California and three of the cooks at Occupy Cleveland, Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter and Connor Stevens are among the many targeted.
While I find it frustrating when people express distress or support for the actions of Donald Trump suggesting they believe he is all powerful I understand they’ve had a lifetime of messaging that suggests that things like elections and the law are real.
I believe Trump was “hired” by the Deep State to perform the needed drama designed to implement the strategies formulated in think tanks, intelligence funded university research programs, the halls at the Pentagon and Langley and corporate boardrooms on Wall Street, in London, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley.
The choice of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate signaled that the Deep State was no longer going to play nice. When the PayPal Mafia of CIA contractors at Palantir took over power of the United States on January 20, 2025, it became clear to me that things are about to get very bleak and not just the ways the liberals have been crowing about.
At Trump’s first press conference of his second term on January 21st he announced the $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project called Stargate. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank and Larry Ellison of Oracle introduced their grand designs as though they were the masters of the Universe.
Larry Ellison stepped to the mic, “Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. We certainly couldn’t do this without you. It would simply be impossible. AI holds incredible promise for all of us, for every American. We’ve actually been working with OpenAI for a while, and with Masa for a while. The data centers are actually under construction.The first of them are under construction in Texas. Each building is a half a million square feet. There are 10 buildings currently being built, but that will expand to 20, and other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is our first location.”
“Walking down a suburban neighborhood street already feels like a Ring doorbell panopticon.” writes Kenneth Niemeyer of Business Insider after Larry Ellison spoke at Oracle financial analysts meeting in September 2024.
“We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
It appears that the United States government is about to be privatized and handed over to the techno-fascist oligarchs associated with the intelligence community. They seem to have the belief that their AI program has finally sucked up enough data that they are ready to implement a totalitarian terror state here at home and launch massive automated wars abroad to achieve their vision of global domination.
So when people ask me how I come to my unusual perspectives it is because I have nearly five decades of real world experience in the application of the grand lessons of my grandfather.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
POWER HUNGRY
January 23, 2025
By Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry
There is a growing realization that the left right divide is mostly a fiction and that we all share the same struggles of paying our bills and keeping our families safe. We have never needed unity more than we do today.
One suggestion that this is true is the response to the assassination of United Health CEO Brian Thompson. People across the political spectrum are starting to see the billionaire vulture class as our common enemy. The response in the comments on Ben Shapiro’s podcast in support of Luigi was epic. Class war is replacing the culture wars as it gets more difficult to survive realizing that we have more in common with one another than what is claimed by politicians and media.
The TikTok ban was another sign that the human spirit cannot be crushed so easily. Americans on both the so called left and right turned to RedNote as the days ticked towards the TikTok ban. Popular TikTok personalities invited their followers to the Chinese app Xiaohongshu with #RedNote racing across the American social media.
As the day of the January 19th ban grew closer people started to post their RedNote content on X and other platforms. Americans realizing that they had been lied to about China as the Chinese RedNote members welcomed the #TikTokRefugees.
I have been inspired by the posts. The app has an instant translation feature that makes it easy for people across the Pacific to talk. Chinese people express shock that Americans are charged for ambulance trips to the hospital. Americans and Chinese are showing one another the contents of their refrigerators and comparing prices. Chinese members expressed shock that the homeless crisis was not Communist Party propaganda. One gruff MAGA hat wearing fellow was almost in tears at what he had experienced on the platform in just a couple of days. He had been lied to about China.
If there is one person that has the pulse of public opinion it is billionaire CIA contractor Peter Thiel the man behind VP Vance. He owns what he claims is the world’s most powerful AI surveillance data company Palantir. He is worried for the survival of his economic class.
Thiel appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where the host asked him, “to those who think this shooter is a hero because he did it, because he said this healthcare executive is presiding over a healthcare system which kills thousands of Americans by denying them coverage. What would you say to them?”
After being speechless for nearly 20 seconds, Thiel offered up a halting answer, telling Morgan, “It’s, I don’t know what, what to say? I, I think I still think you have, you should try to make an argument. And I, I think this is, this is you should, you know, there may be things wrong with our health care system, but you have, you have to make an argument, and you have to try to find a way to convince people and and change, change it by by that, and this is, you know, this is not going to work.”
“I don’t know. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, I mean, all sorts of things I, I could say about it, but I don’t, I don’t think, and I again, I think, you know,” he added.
On May 9, 2024 Palantir CEO Alex Karp at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security in Washington D.C. expressed fear that the protests for Gaza meant that they were losing control. “We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show…If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.” They know the pitch forks are coming if we can see our fellow working class Americans as allies rather than fall for the false divisions of Democrats and Republicans.
The TikTok ban not only also demonstrates the possibility of class unity but it reveals what could be a central feature of our future. The CIA founded company Oracle switched off TikTok after the US Supreme Court ruled its elimination was not a violation of the Constitution only to turn it back on less than 24 hours later. When you logged back on millions of Americans were greeted by this message. “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.” It wasn’t long before people started to discover that you can’t post “Free Palestine”on the new TikTok.
On January 21, 2025 Trump, flanked by Oracle’s Larry Ellison, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Japanese CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son, announced the $500 billion AI total surveillance Project Stargate. “I’m gonna help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built. So they have to produce a lot of electricity. And we’ll make it possible for them to get this production done easily, at their own plants if they want.” Trump trumpeted.
And the outrage by Trump supporters at Larry Ellison’s glorification on the individual mRNA cancer vaccines made possible by AI was instantaneous on social media. Many in the MAGA crowd were already posting anger at all of his Neocon appointments, the prominence of billionaires like Elon Musk on his team and disappointment at Trumps support of the immigrant H-1B visa program.
“We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said to investors in 2024. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
But what’s maybe even more important than the ability to implement Biometric Digital ID, programmable digital currency and total surveillance is warfare. Biden’s Jake Sullivan told Axios, “Regardless of what was said in public, every background conversation we had with President Biden’s high command came back to China. Yes, they had concerns about the ethics, misinformation and job loss of AI. They talked about that. But they were unusually blunt in private: Every move, every risk was calculated to keep China from beating us to the AI punch. Nothing else matters, they basically said.” AI targeting in Gaza, and autonomous swarm drone warfare is already being used on the battle field.
The Moss Landing Lithium-ion battery fire on January 16, 2025 provides a number of lessons that may bridge the artificially magnified left right divide. It is turning out that the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals may not be so green as the toxic gasses and heavy metals raining down across “America’s Salad Bowl”, farm land that provides 70% of our country’s vegetables.
This mental struggle is apparent in the public statements of Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church who both supports the Green Agenda but wants the battery storage facility to be safe, saying to the media the morning after the fire started, “This is a Three Mile Island event for this industry” We really don’t know much about this technology.”
“There are a lot of really powerful forces in this state and in this country that want to see these batteries in place and going out here… and we don’t really matter,” Church told a public meeting at Prunedale Grange 388 on January 20th. The State of California adopted legislation on June 30, 2022, that allows state authorities to bypass local laws in permitting large-scale renewable energy projects.
The case of OpenAI whistleblower 26 year old Suchir Balaji found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26, 2024, suggested Supervisor Church may be correct about what the community is up against. Suchir Balaji worked on the ChatGBT program and quit after Sam Altman turned OpenAI from a nonprofit to a for profit company. He started raising the alarm about AI’s use of copy written material to make OpenAI a profit.
In a new interview with KTVU his mother insisted there were things out of place in his “ransacked” apartment where his body was found four days before he was due to be called as a witness to the OpenAI case.
The New York Times wrote in October 2024, “But after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, he thought harder about what the company was doing. He came to the conclusion that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted data violated the law and that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet.” His mother claims flash drives were taken during the murder that San Francisco authorities ruled was a suicide.
Amanda Gerut writes in Fortune Magazine, “President Trump on Tuesday announced an eye-popping investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the U.S., funded through a joint venture called the Stargate Project. According to Trump, the investment is likely to spur an increase of 100,000 jobs and will be accompanied by a spate of executive orders to ensure new data centers built in connection with the investment will have enough energy.”
A Scientific American article of October 2023 reported, “A continuation of the current trends in AI capacity and adoption are set to lead to NVIDIA shipping 1.5 million AI server units per year by 2027. These 1.5 million servers, running at full capacity, would consume at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—more than what many small countries use in a year, according to the new assessment.”
The mantra of “saving the climate” may morph into “made in America” but America’s move to an electric future will march on. Robotic warfare preparation, digital surveillance and the production of autonomous vehicles will increase. Teslas will continue to roll off the assembly lines and the 15 Minute Smart City and the Internet of Things programs will advance. Essential features of the digital panopticon of Stargate.
We are facing an existential crisis and its time to unite the working class against this billionaire technocracy.
UNITED HEALTHCARE’S HUNGER GAMES AND THE MURDER OF BRIAN THOMPSON
December 4, 2024
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed this morning in New York City. His net worth was estimated at approximately $42.9 million as of February 16, 2024, according to Wallmine.com, yet I spend my days talking with his clients who often haven’t eaten in days and are seeking groceries.
I get the first of what would be between 10 to 20 calls a day from seniors seeking food in February 2023. “Are you Community meals? United Healthcare gave me your number.”
It wasn’t but a couple weeks into this sudden flood of requests for food when I went on line and found the number for the CEO&’s office of United Healthcare to see if they could stop sending people my way and instead refer their clients to 211 or food programs in their local area. The women who answered each week were sympathetic and claimed they would correct the situation. But the calls continued to today.
At first people would say they had called the number on the back of the benefit card that United Healthcare had provided. The $100 on the cards had run out and they were confused thinking they would get $100 a month for food. When United Healthcare gave them the sad news they suggested they call Community Meals at 1-800-884-1136. I would try to see if a local Food Not Bombs group could help but often all I could suggest is to call 211, their county offices or United Way.
People called from Hawaii, California, Texas, Maryland, Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Maine and all across the South East.
The stories were heart breaking. One older woman in Georgia was down to three cans of tuna and didn’t even have bread for a sandwich. A man in Florida hadn’t eaten in days but he sure was proud of his guns. He would call six months later.
An older lady called from rural Tennessee. She had just been housed after being homeless. She had a car but no money and not enough gas to get to town even if she could afford to buy groceries. She lived a two or three hour drive from our groups in Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville. Too far for our volunteers to deliver groceries.
One of the most heartbreaking calls was from James, a man in his seventies who lived with his diabetic wife and disabled son. The food pantries in his county and the neighboring counties had closed down because they couldn’t keep up with the needs. He lived on $800 a month, was not able to afford the co-pay for his wife’s insulin nor his own cancer medicine. He said it was already 105 degrees outside and he couldn’t pay his electric bill so his two old window unit air conditioners wouldn’t be working by week’s end. He started to cry telling me he had worked his whole life and always paid his taxes. Like many others he was angry we could pay for war while turning our backs on the American people.
I had been off the phone for about five minutes when a senior from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina rings. She hadn’t eaten in three days and was desperate for help.
Many of those who call introduce themselves as calling from United Healthcare and have a senior on the line that needs home delivery of groceries. I suggest their client call that 211 number or their county offices. I also ask them to remove my number and direct everyone to the 211 service, the local United Way or county offices.
As of December 2024 United Healthcare has a market cap of $561.15 Billion USD. This makes United Healthcare the world’s 16th most valuable company by market cap according to CompaniesMarketcap.com.
With the billions United Healthcare makes they could have hired a team of social workers to investigate a realistic policy of directing the hungry to services that could help rather than sending people to a group that shares food with the homeless.
Keith McHenry
PO Box 422
Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA
575-770-3377
keith@foodnotbombs.net
A DEMOCRACY OF TERROR
September 2, 2024
“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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IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING HERE
July 27, 2024
Santa Cruz and the theater of hypocrisy, carnage and suffering
The “Buzz Windrip” type characters of Santa Cruz planned to read the 1935 dystopian political novel written by American author Sinclair Lewis. A Good Times cover story promoting Bookshop Santa Cruz’s reading of “It Can’t Happen Here” warned that if we didn’t vote for the political party waging a genocide in Palestine and arming far-right Nazi groups in Ukraine that Trump would come to power. The fascist dictator Buzz Windrip of Lewis’s text.
Before that July 19th The 418 Project event featuring Congressman Jimmy Panetta and Mayor Fred Keeley I visited my friends on the levee handing out some of the last of the announcements for that evenings “It is Already Happening Here” protest. As I walked up to one group perching along the levee I could hear two Santa Cruz Police officers chatting with several tent occupants about providing pizza. Once the officers moved on I asked about this pizza donation. They explained that the police claimed they would give you pizza if you took a drug test. They were not sure if that offer was still good if you tested positive.
Joe Shultz of India Joze met me at the Trader Joe’s parking lot delivering ice tea for the 6:00 pm rally. We set up the table with pastries, sandwiches and cold drinks on the River Street sidewalk. The first of those from the levee joined us for a snack. I saw a few people assembling outside the front door of the theater so not wishing to waste the last of my flyers I ambled down to share them with the people waiting to hear the congressman and mayor. A security guard dashed out of the venue and thrusting two white envelopes at me as he mumbled something about my being banned from the area. I shared that I didn’t care and continued passing out flyers until he summoned one of Santa Cruz’s police officers. To avoid a pre-protest arrest I wandered off to retrieve my bullhorn returning to blast my message to those in my banned area. “It’s already happening. You don’t need to wait for Trump. A genocide sounds like fascism. Arming Nazis in Ukraine sounds like fascism. Sweeping the homeless also sounds like fascism”.
It wasn’t long before a crowd of protesters arrived and I suggested they could move from the sidewalk and take the action directly outside the entrance to the event. Before long several dozen people arched around the people lining up to get in. I gave my bullhorn to one of the Palestinian activists and joined the group holding our “Stop the Sweeps” banner defying the threat of arrest.
Wallace Baine writes in Lookout Santa Cruz “Several dozen protesters, armed with bullhorns, drums and flamethrower passions, ringed the theater, creating a din that the ‘actors’ inside had to nearly shout over. On top of that, a few protesters found their way into the audience and, at least five times, interrupted the play reading with loud denunciations aimed at the panelists.”
After the spoiled political theater ended it was clear from their distressed looking faces that Keeley and Panetta were desperate to flee their free speech circus.
I opened those two envelopes the next morning discovering that The 418 Project executive director Laura Bishop’s letter that I was “persona non grata” adding “person not welcome” until August 1, 2034. You read that right, a decade long ban “at 155 River Street or any event held elsewhere by The 418 Project.” The second letter also banned me from the Galleria Mall for 10 years.
Sinclair Lewis’s novel warned that Buzz Windrip was an enemy of free speech, adding an interesting twist to my pre-ban letters seeking to silence the protest. This is not too much of surprise. The event’s host, Bookshop Santa Cruz commemorated “Banned Books Month” while owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti directed the unit at Meta that silenced medical professionals who were critical of Trump’s COVID policies, posts detailing the arming of far-right Azov Nazis by the Biden administration and the ugly truth of the genocide in Gaza.
Fascism is a family affair for the Coonerty folks. Casey’s brother is former county Supervisor Ryan Coonerty. A 2012 Monterey Herald article titled “‘Predictive policing’ gets capital boost” reports that “Attorney Caleb Baskin and Councilman Ryan Coonerty have taken the experimental ‘predictive policing’ program used by the Santa Cruz Police Department and created software that they hope to sell to law enforcement agencies around the nation. The duo, who founded the co-working business NextSpace, say they’ve raised more than $1 million so far to fund their newest venture.”
The article continues, “The program has gained international media attention — and the attention of law enforcement agencies nationwide, many asking how they can get the program.”
“Based on such requests, Zach Friend helped coordinate a meeting between Mohler and Baskin and Coonerty to discuss the idea of creating a business.”
“Baskin, 36, and Coonerty, 38, say investors who’ve helped fund their venture include Plantronics CEO Ken Kannappan, former eBay executive Rob Chesnut and Coonerty’s brother-in-law Michel Protti, a vice president at Yahoo.”
PredPol is based on an analytics model developed by a group of researchers, including mathematician George Mohler of Santa Clara University and Jeff Brantingham at UCLA’s Department of Anthropology.
In 2018 theverge.com posted, “Jeff Brantingham is as close as it gets to putting a face on the controversial practice of ‘predictive policing.’ Over the past decade, the University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted his Pentagon-funded research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to predicting crime for American police departments, patenting his research and founding a for-profit company named PredPol, LLC.”
A June 2021 article “Stop LAPD Spying Sues LAPD to Uncover Communications with UCLA Professor Who Founded PredPol “ reports on opposition to this dystopian racist police state software started by Ryan Coonerty.
In 2019, a group of 68 UCLA professors and graduate students sent a letter to LAPD condemning Professor Brantingham’s work on “predictive” policing technologies. And in June 2020, over 1,400 academic mathematicians joined a public letter condemning mathematical research that contributes to racist policing. The letter singled out Professor Brantingham’s work with LAPD and named PredPol’s “racist consequences.”
Posted on datasmart.hks.harvard.edu in 2013, “Dr. George Mohler could not have foreseen the deluge that descended upon him at Santa Clara University, shortly after local police adopted his groundbreaking algorithm in July 2011 and media reported that his new software program was taking criminals off the streets.”
“It may seem a stretch, but the model of post-earthquake temblors is very similar to that of criminal activity,” Dr. Mohler says. “Criminals want to replicate their successes, they go back to similar locations, they repeat their crimes — it’s almost identical to how aftershocks roll out after earthquakes, following predictable fault lines and timetables.”
“In 2010, Dr. Mohler took his seismology theory north to Santa Clara University, where he joined as assistant professor of mathematics and computer science, married and started a family. Then serendipity struck — he met Zach Friend, a public information officer and crime analyst with the Santa Clara police. Friend was intrigued by the potential of predictive analytics; soon he and Dr. Mohler were brainstorming how the latter’s algorithm to track earthquake aftershocks could be adapted for police work.”
“We met several times and decided to try for deployment with the Santa Cruz police,” Dr. Mohler says. “I wrote the prototype software and gave it to the police in July 2011. It turns out Zach was a media mastermind — he’d worked in the press office of the 2008 Obama campaign. Once PopSci and The New York Times picked up the story, it was off to the races.”
It was fitting that someone supporting the genocide in Gaza and the arming of Azov far-right military units in Ukraine would be reading a play warning of fascism. His April 20, 2024 post on his blog announced his support for more war as he writes, “The package would deliver critical support for Ukraine in its efforts to push back against Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression, safeguard Taiwan from an advancing China, and ensure the security of the nation of Israel in a volatile Middle East.”
“The $95 billion national security package includes; $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, $8 billion to bolster defense capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, and $9 billion for global humanitarian assistance.” Meanwhile the City of Santa Cruz is getting $4 million to clear the homeless from outside the homeless shelter.
Bookshop Santa Cruz is not shy about hosting war criminals. They invited a former CIA Director to speak on the need to expand the war on terrorism on September 10, 2018 at Peace United Church. Several of us who protest Panetta’s call for more war were banned from Bookshop Santa Cruz for life but Casey changed her mind realizing I was helping organize an event with Chris Hedges and she had already ordered copies of his books.
Panetta has been a solider advancing the agenda of the Empire for decades. When Panetta was Clinton’s chief of staff the administration’s sanctions and no-fly zone killed more than 560,000 children according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
A December 12, 2011, Voice of America report noted “U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he says 2011 will mark a turning point in the 10-year-old war.” Panetta would denounce Biden’s hasty evacuation 10 years later after tens of thousands of Afghans had been killed.
The locally owned Bookshop Santa Cruz is not the innocent free speech defender of democracy as it likes to project. Like others in Santa Cruz who seek to project a “do no harm” image many are direct participants in the creation of a frightening dystopian digital panopticon complete with robotic warfare.
An officer of the anti-homeless hate group Take Back Santa Cruz is the husband of Google’s general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado. We received a snap shot of Manuel’s emails between himself, City Manager Martin Bernal, Mayor Donna Meyers and Republican City Councilperson Renee Golder coordinating efforts to rid Santa Cruz of the homeless.
In a December 18, 2020, email Manuel thanks Martin for the week before’s zoom meeting writing about striping Delaware where many living in vehicles sleep, stepping up enforcement of all parking rule “(not just 72-hour limit)” and this “- Update on why some folks such as Keith McHenry (parked on McPherson) and Alicia Kuhl (parked on Delaware) have not been towed despite receiving so many tickets.” It is a relief to learn that their intelligence on my parking locations and ticket reality is so inept.
Google is one of many companies advancing slaughter in Gaza with their product Project Nimbus. This $1.2 billion joint contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021 provides cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military.
A staff person who attended the 2 by 2 meetings between city and county officials shared the Halimah DeLaine Prado exchange with County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty and Mayor Donna Meyers. Meyers and Coonerty talked about busing the homeless to Camp Roberts California National Guard Base in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties.
Facebook is another local CIA linked member of the national security state. Investigative journalist Whitney Webb’s April 12, 2021 article “The Military Origins of Facebook” writes”Facebook’s growing role in the ever-expanding surveillance and ‘pre-crime’ apparatus of the national security state demands new scrutiny of the company’s origins and its products as they relate to a former, controversial DARPA-run surveillance program that was essentially analogous to what is currently the world’s largest social network.” According to Meta’s website Ryan Coonerty’s brother-in-law Michel Protti is the head of privacy at Facebook.
Webb writes “In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as ‘anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacist, and anti-police,’ was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of ‘transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.’”
“The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. ‘If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,’ Baker had written on his Facebook event page.”
“Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first ‘precrime’ arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing ‘increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,’ the steady advance toward a precrime-centered ‘war on domestic terror’ has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.’”
Palantir was in the news the night Congressman Panetta and Mayor Keeley read “It Can’t Happen Here”. Palantir’s co-founders Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel announced that they would be supporting Donald Trump and JD Vance. Peter Thiel is the puppet master behind JD Vance’s career from setting him up in his Mithril Capital hedge fund, his book and movie deals, the US Senate to his rise as Trump’s Vice Presidential running mate. The “Swamp” is already in Trump’s tent. Another Thiel associate, the military contractor Elon Musk also pledged support for the Trump ticket assuring the wars will continue no matter who is elected.
While Palantir is donating millions to Trump’s campaign they are also bragging in their ads that their AI software was used by the FBI to nab nearly 1,000 January 6th Trump supporters.
Palantir serves as a contractor to all 17 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as many other U.S. federal agencies including the Pentagon. It was largely funded into existence by the CIA’s In-Q-Tel and the CIA was Palantir’s only client from 2005 until 2008, during which time the CIA was a key part of directing Palantir’s product development.
James Bamford writes in the April 2024 issue of the Nation, “ Earlier this month saw a continuation of that effort, with the targeting of three well-marked and fully approved aid vehicles belonging to World Central Kitchen, killing their seven occupants and ensuring that the food would never reach those dying of starvation. The targeting was precise—placing missiles dead center in the aid agency’s rooftop logos. Israel, however, said it was simply a mistake, similar to the ‘mistaken’ killing of nearly 200 other aid workers in just a matter of months—more than all the aid workers killed in all the wars in the rest of the world over the last 30 years combined, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.”
“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. “We stand with Israel,” the Denver-based company said in posts on X and LinkedIn. “The board of directors of Palantir will be gathering in Tel Aviv next week for its first meeting of the new year. Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.” As one of the world’s most advanced data-mining companies, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s ‘work’ was supplying Israel’s military and intelligence agencies with advanced and powerful targeting capabilities—the precise capabilities that allowed Israel to place three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked aid vehicles.”
Cicero Institute’s Joe Lonsdale
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s corporate profile says he is a technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the managing partner at 8VC, a US-based venture capital firm that manages several billion dollars in committed capital. He was an early institutional investor in several technology startups including the Santa Cruz military contractor Joby Aviation. Ryan Coonerty’s investor Ken Kannappan sold his Plantronics building to Joby Aviation in November 2022. The Joby Aviation website noted in April 2022 that the U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program would net more than $45 million for the Santa Cruz company.
“Building on more than five years of engagement with defense agencies, the expanded contract leverages Joby’s years of research and technology development and will include new testing to evaluate Joby’s advanced technologies. It brings the potential value of the total contract to more than $75 million.”
Joe Lonsdale also started the Cicero Institute, a policy group that delivers “entrepreneurial solutions to public problems.” The Cicero Institute campaigns for laws that allow private competition in government areas such as health care, housing, and education.
The Cicero Institute provides legislative templates to states and cities.
His website on homelessness starts, “States should ban unauthorized street camping.”
“Street camps are dangerous to the public and the vulnerable homeless alike. They are often hotbeds of violence, especially against women and children— especially those who are homeless themselves.”
“The public widely supports enforcing ordinances against dangerous street camps and moving individuals into emergency shelters.”
He goes on to write, “States should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves — and keep them out of prison” adding, “Many street homeless suffer from chronic and untreated mental illness. For those that are a public nuisance or a danger to themselves or others, there must be a third option besides prison and abandonment.”
So far the Cicero Institute, has placed ten bills in at least eight states including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Florida and Wisconsin. Texas became the first state to pass such a law in 2021, and Tennessee and Missouri followed in 2022.
Cynthia Griffith wrote about Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669 on the Invisible People website, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies — as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin.”
And it gets even worse. “Kentucky GOP’s New Bill Decriminalizes Use of Deadly Force Against the Unhoused” writes Zane McNeill for the January 17, 2024 edition of Truthout.
“Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing.”
The Cicero Institute website notes, “On March 20, 2024, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1365 / SB 1530, which will make Florida a leading state in the fight against the failed homelessness policies that have wreaked havoc on so many American cities.”
Joe Lonsdale writes in his blog, “It has been a momentous few weeks for homeless policy in the United States. As you may know, this has been a keystone policy area for us since founding the Cicero Institute, and we have become the leading organizational voice for reform, as well as a resource for state leaders who want to take bold action. In Florida, we were proud to work with lawmakers on a legislative package that meets the needs of the state and emphasizes the incentives & accountability model that we pioneered at Cicero.”
Joe Lonsdale had another win on April 22, 2024 with the US Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v Johnson letting localities impose criminal penalties for acts like public camping and public sleeping without violating the Eighth Amendment — even if they lack sufficient available shelter space to accommodate their unhoused population.
Democratic mayors and governors pushed to have the meager protections of the Grants Pass case overturned. “Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets,” Newsom said in a statement after the ruling, “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.”
The bipartisan march to criminalize America’s homeless doesn’t need to wait for the election of Trump and Vance. It is happening now in Santa Cruz.
The city of Watsonville began to clear out a homeless encampment along the Pajaro River Levee on Monday July 22, 2024. It’s a process that is expected to last through August 2, 2024. The Santa Cruz Police posted eviction notices on tents throughout the Pogonip telling those who fled the sweeps at Harvey West and Coral Streets they had to remove their belongings by 9:00 am on July 29, 2024.
Jessica York writes in her April 19, 2024 Sentinel article “Santa Cruz receives $4M to address Harvey West, Coral Street homeless encampments”
“In April 2024 the city of Santa Cruz has been awarded a two-year $4 million state homeless encampment resolution grant.”
“During the two-year life of the Encampment Resolution Fund, granted via the state Department of Housing and Community Development, Santa Cruz would be expected to assist 55 people sleeping on the streets.” The city claims there are over 1,000 people living outside in the city and that is based on what seemed an intentionally poorly organize Point in Time Count.
In a June 4, 2024 email, Chief Executive Officer of Housing Matters Phil Kramer thanked Mayor Keeley, City Managers Matt Huffaker, Lisa Murphy, Larry Imwalle and Housing for Health Director Robert Ratner for clearing the area around the homeless shelter of the homeless.
“Hi all- Thanks you for your work to create a more welcoming and safe Coral Street for shelter guests, day services participants, staff and partners. I appreciate what a large undertaking this was and understand there is more infrastructure work (fencing, etc.) coming soon.”
“The sidewalks are stained and reek of urine. Is it possible for City staff to do some sidewalk powerwashing? If you give us authorization we might be able to do some of this cleaning work ourselves, or hire it out. Please let me know.
Thanks again,
Phil”
Deputy City Manager and girlfriend of Police Chief Bernie Escalante responds that afternoon by email.
“Hi Phil,
Thank you for recognizing the incredible undertaking this effort took to accomplish. We had nearly 20 employees out at the location on Monday, and we will continue to have our team in that location. We still have lots of work to do to try to break the cycle of people returning to that space. Our team is scheduled to power wash the sidewalks, and may have already done so by now. It may need multiple washes. I will let you know what the status is of the cleaning.”
“I look forward to working with Housing Matters as a valuable partner to help those individuals in and around Coral Street with our recently awarded Encampment Resolution Grant. This will help keep this location clear.”
The rush to remove the homeless got another boost when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-1-24 on July 24, 2024, directing state and local officials to start removing homeless encampments stating that the recent Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v Johnson now empowers cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public.
“Today I announced an executive order to move the process forward. We’re done, it’s time to move with urgency at the local level to clean up these sites, to focus on public health and focus on public safety. There are no longer any excuses,” Newsom said. “We now have no excuse with the Supreme Court decision.”
So, yes it is already happening here and is likely to get even more repressive as the noose of biometric IDs and programmable digital currency, an AI driven World War and the internment of homeless Americans is implemented by those very same people who struggled to read, “It Can’t Happen Here” at the Bookshop Santa Cruz event.
Keith McHenry – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA – 575-770-3377
A CLOCKTOWER CENTER OF CONTROL
June 12, 2024
Santa Cruz and the high-rise development of the dystopian digital panopticon.
Instead of enjoying the beautiful warm seaside evening I forced myself to log on to the Workbench Team’s webinar on the Santa Cruz Clocktower Center development, an 18 now 16 story tower “proposed” to be built next to where Food Not Bombs shares its meals every weekend to an increasing number of hungry and homeless people.
Online daily Lookout Santa Cruz reviewed the farce, “At 16 stories and rising to 192 feet, with 260 housing units and ground-floor commercial space, the Clocktower Center is a wholly new kind of project, in both scale and density, for Santa Cruz County; but it’s one which Workbench says is sorely needed in the most unaffordable housing market in the United States.”
Developers, government officials and their nonprofit shills across California often justify these projects claiming if they build more housing it will bring down the cost of rent but as anyone trying to rent an apartment in Santa Cruz can attest, the many completed projects have not reduced housing costs at all. A failed supply and demand argument.
Many people living in Santa Cruz may wonder why even though there is little public support for all these high rise projects and an organized citizen opposition to each project, every development is approved.
Lookout notes, “Twice, people asked whether the community could stop the project. Twice, Workbench’s co-founder Jamileh Cannon said no.”
“Is it possible to stop this project?” Keith McHenry wrote in the virtual Q&A chat box. McHenry leads Food Not Bombs, a local organization that hosts an open-air soup kitchen at the town clock on weekends.”
“It’s not possible to stop it, but we are very open to your constructive feedback and to making improvements,” Cannon replied.
Lookout writer Neeley links “open-air soup kitchen at the town clock” to a mostly fact free article fed to him by City Manager Matt Huffaker.
There are a number of reasons these unwanted monstrosities like the city’s library parking garage, the Front Street projects and the Cruz Hotel are assumed realities. Giant project after project each with limited parking spaces and claims that the high density towers are designed to meet the environmental goals of the city as described in their obtuse “Community-wide Climate Action Plan 2030.” The city’s website lists these actions in one of their powerpoint style reports,” Direct emissions reductions; 3 new Municipal Solar PV arrays + energy efficiency work; Rail Trail Completion; Public Transit / Active Transportation Improvements; Fleet Electrification Roadmap and Investments; New Building Energy Reach Code; Induction Cooktop Loaner Program with Library and Food scrap collection.”
Workbench’s webinar painted a wonderful upbeat picture of their tower where you can step out the first floor atrium and walk or bike to all your favorite places. A survey question asked the viewers if we own an electric car and if you required a car for work. It was suggested you could rent a Zip car if you required the use of a vehicle. When asked in the chat if this was a “Fifteen Minute Smart City” project they reported that they had not heard of this and would look into it.
Nothing to see here. Just happy people provided with all the Eco-friendly convenience of a walkable community. Foamy cafe lattes sipped in the sun on the 16th floor terrace cafe as your Tesla sits charging in the garage above the Cedar Street book-less digital library.
So why did “team member” and co-founder Jamileh Cannon say it was not possible to stop the project? Is this just the case of wealthy people making more money or could there be more to this sudden flurry of construction projects. Could there be any other reason for concern beyond a distaste for the ugly buildings and the elimination our local democratic process?
Or could it be because this massive construction bonanza is part of a global strategy initiated by the institutions controlled by billionaires like Bill Gates, King Charles, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and their UN and World Economic Forum’s pleasant sounding programs like the, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.
There is a complex system that intentionally soaks the media and every other institution in this ecological affordability story of bliss that meets the interests of the board rooms that intend to reap the “rewards” of their dystopian digital panopticon. That system includes the mobilization of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) or non-profits as a tool in nudging the policies that most benefit the hedge funds, banks and global financial vultures of institutes. It’s a strategy that was used effectively in shaping society before Obama’s 2014 coup of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and that the US is currently deploying in the effort to topple the Hungarian, Serbian and Georgian governments. The National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros and other foundations spent nearly $5 billions to fund pro European Union NGOs in their campaign to replace the Ukrainian government with US State Department’s choice Petro Poroshenko.
Our local NGOs such as Housing Matters perform the same function. They help foster the impression that the homeless are helpless through their “Smart Solutions” community meetings while promoting the myth that more development will lower rents in Santa Cruz providing housing for our homeless. I am sure many of the administrators and staff in those agencies want the best and believe the oceans of information asserting these dodges from reality will really help ease the “problem” of homelessness. I remember seeing Housing Matters Don Lane stride across the Trader Joes parking lot with his “No on Measure M” yard signs in hand out to support the predetermined policy allowing unlimited building heights and the suppression of local control. As soon as Measure M, which would have required a community vote on the height of downtown developments failed, the Clocktower Center was unleashed on the people of Santa Cruz.
The upbeat “we care” messaging of “sustainability” and “income-restricted” affordable apartment units expressed in the June 8th Workbench webinar joyously proclaimed such features as limited parking, Zip cars at the library garage, electric vehicle charging stations, pleasant cafes and attractive retail shops.
“I think it is imperative that we work to create as much sustainable housing in Santa Cruz… I think that the scale of Santa Cruz hasn’t changed in 95 years [since the city’s tallest building, the Palomar Hotel, was built] and that is a huge tragedy,” Workbench Team member Simon wrote at the webinar.
As the public relations webinar progressed it became clear that this project, maybe unknowingly to the developers, was just one piece in the puzzle outlined in the UN and World Economic Forum”s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their Agenda 2030. The Santa Cruz City website lists the high impact actions needed to meet this Agenda 2030. “Choose Renewable Electricity from Central Coast Community Energy; Reduce Air Travel; Eat more Plant-based Meals; Take Public Transportation; Buy or lease an Electric Vehicle; Electrify: Install Electric Heat Pump Water Heater or Space Heating; Use Active Transportation: bike, walk, skateboard, or scooter; Install Solar Panel.” I would normally be a big supporter of many of these aspirations if there wasn’t a hidden agenda that is much more sinister behind Agenda 2023.
The path from the seas of think tank white papers, World Economic Forum seminars, UN pronouncements and the legislation required to implement their Agenda 2030 is expressed in a brutal silent manipulation that trickles into state, county and municipal law by way of workshops hosted by associations such as the California League of Cities, business associations and foundations that fund cooperating university departments and non-profits like Housing Matters and No on Measure M buster Second Harvest.
Not only did Second Harvest encourage a no vote on Measure M they also paraded around the county to their agencies a state mandated presentation that touted the ecological virtues of accounting for each pound of discarded food recovered, an illogical burden that seemed more about surveillance of the food supply than an effort to reduce the threat to our climate as advertised.
It is easy to understand why people would embrace the “reasonable” concepts promoted in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In principle the idea people being able to walk or ride a bike to obtain all you need sounds wonderful. Promises of clean air and water, safer streets, housing for everyone, streamlined digital healthcare system and a slowing of the climate crisis all sound worthy.
But looking more closely at who is driving these utopian promises and it will reveal some very disturbing features. Journalists Iain Davis and Whitney Webb write at Unlimited Hangout that, “Many of these goals sound nice in theory and paint a picture of an emergent global utopia – such as no poverty, no world hunger and reduced inequality. Yet, as is true with so much, the reality behind most – if not all – of the SDGs are policies cloaked in the language of utopia that – in practice – will only benefit the economic elite and entrench their power.”
They continue, “This can clearly be seen in fine print of the SDGs, as there is considerable emphasis on debt and on entrapping nation states (especially developing states) in debt as a means of forcing adoption of SDG-related policies. It is then little coincidence that many of the driving forces behind SDG-related policies, at the UN and elsewhere, are career bankers. Former executives at some of the most predatory financial institutions in the history of the world, from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America to Deutsche Bank, are among the top proponents and developers of SDG-related policies.”
These policies of a Santa Cruz filled with an “Internet of Things,” high density car free housing and Smart Meters comply with the SDGs pushed with the objective of implementing the social control designed to increase the power and wealth of the master class. Why would giant military contractors, global banking and investment interests, high tech firms, oil and coal companies be at the forefront of initiating this Sustainable Development agenda? Ending war is never on the climate solution map even though it is the single largest contributor to every environmental crisis. More war is in fact at the core to the success of implementing Agenda 2030.
Is it possible that the recent purchase of license plate readers that record every vehicle entering Santa Cruz and small fleet of surveillance drones are more than innocent public safety measures? Could they be another step to normalize the total social control described in the SDGs and other UN, World Bank and Bill and Melinda Gates publications.
Even though you might get the impression from what you have read so far that I am opposed to protecting the environment but that could not be farther from the truth. I grew up in a family of environmentalists. My father’s father Donald McHenry was the Chief Naturalist at Yosemite National Park before retiring to the Santa Cruz mountains. He started the tidal pool walks at Natural Bridges State Park. My father, Bruce McHenry followed in his footsteps also spending his adult life as a naturalist in the National Park Service, was a world-renowned pioneer of the environmental education movement and cofounded Association of Interpretive Naturalists. I was thrilled when he took me to the founding convention of Earth Day.
The roots to my radical environmental activism started during my childhood while living in America’s National Parks. I was blessed to spend time in those sacred lands of the Hopi witnessing the Corn and Snake Dances, the majesty of the red canyons dotted with Anasazi cliff dwellings and the vast northern Arizona landscape before it was desecrated by Lake Powell, Peabody’s coal mines, and the high tension power lines. I recall that day when I was 16 sitting atop the Wasatch Mountains looking down at the black smoke drifting up the valleys of southern Utah from the Navajo Generating Station. Right then and there I decided to dedicate my life to dismantle the political and economic system that was willing to inflict such horror.
We really don’t know how far back intelligence agencies, think tanks and the billionaires that direct them have been working on the creation of the Fifteen Minute Smart City idea that is currently devouring our seaside community. The rewriting of our history by Google makes it difficult to search for that which they wish to conceal. But I do know that I rented office space from a pioneering AI start up in Boston in the early 1980s and without AI it would not be possible for these Smart Cities to work, suggesting its roots may go back to the development of the internet by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
IBM launched its “Smarter Cities” marketing initiative called Smarter Planet in 2008, which included the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge. Two years later Cisco Systems, with $25 million from the Clinton Foundation, established its Connected Urban Development program in partnership with San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Seoul. In 2011, a Smart City Expo World Congress was held in Barcelona, in which 6000 people from 50 countries attended. During that event the United Kingdom proposed to invest £140 million in the development of smart cities and the Internet of Things.
According to Earth Island Journal the 15-minute city concept was the idea of Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno who found that urban life involves large amounts of wasted time adapting to what he calls the “absurd organization of cities, which require a lot of traveling to get to and from basic functions such as home, work, education, and social interaction” adding “Even if we have to spend 45 minutes to one hour for a trip to work, this was considered normal,” Moreno says. His solution was the 15-minute city. “In such a city, all residents should be able to access their daily needs of home, work, education, care, essential shopping, and socializing within the distance of a 15-minute walk or bike ride.”
“When Moreno proposed the concept of fifteen minute cities at the UN climate talks in Paris, people considered it a great idea but too utopian, mainly because they thought it unrealistic that everyone should work close to home. Fast-forward to 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic forced many people all over the world to work not just closer to home, but actually at home, using technology to access meetings and information they previously had to travel to a central place of work for.”
Even though it appears that these plans have been in the works for decades to aid in fulfilling the dreams of Agenda 2030 the UN publicly announced support for Smart Cities as the world was reeling from the pandemic lockdown restrictions. The UN website has a page that reports, “The United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) launched a Smart City Project in 2021″.
– Considering high risk of natural disaster and climate change impacts on cities and communities in developing countries.
– Acknowledging profound impact of sea level rise and health emergencies such as COVID-19 pandemics on the sustainable development of developing countries
– The United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) launched a Smart City Project in 2021 which aims to provide technical assistance and support to urban policy makers, planners, and city officials for building their cities and communities safer, smart, efficient, resilient, inclusive, livable and sustainable through smart city solutions.
The wedding of the 15-Minute City and The Smart City concepts of Agenda 2030 are marching forward with little public understanding of the future they will force on our town and as Jamileh Cannon said in the Clocktower Center webinar nothing can stop it. That is unless we start getting serious and initiate a campaign of nonviolent direct action to physically disrupt their construction sites.
Just like the insanity of belief that accounting for every pound of discarded food will slow the climate crisis, Agenda 2030 is also implementing infrastructure to “make the world more inclusive” by issuing a biometric digital ID to every person on Earth. How this makes our environment more sustainable is not so obvious. To help make this global “sustainable” Eco-solution possible Elon Musk has launched an aggressive satellite program. “The satellites are launched into orbit by batches, each batch containing between 15 and 56 satellites. As of early 2024, there are nearly 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. Eventually, SpaceX plans to build a massive constellation of 12,000 satellites, with a possible expansion to 42,000 satellites later on.” If they succeed it will impossible to escape their totalitarian digital prison.
The website biometricupdate.com states, “As digital public infrastructure becomes the norm, governments must adopt digital services to improve access and development. The UNDP released a blog post outlining a rights-based and inclusive digital ID governance framework in response to frequent requests for institutional support.”
The UN writes,”The goal of Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 is to provide legal identity and birth registration for all, underscoring the importance of comprehensive civil registration.” Since the UN compartmentalizes information about their programs one must flip through link after link to find the many pages praising their progress,”The government of Malawi, with technical and financial support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the European Union (EU) and Irish Aid, recently launched a project that will ramp up digital inclusion efforts in the country and make access to essential public services much easier.” If one wishes you can click through page after page on country after country who are making progress in this grand transition to these electronic corporate chains.
The biometric ID of everyone on Earth is designed to facilitate their digitalization of programmable currency. The Atlantic Council and International Monetary Fund are among the many international organizations participating in Agenda 2030’s digital currency program. In May 2024 the NATO think tank The Atlantic Council published, “134 countries & currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC. In May 2020 that number was only 35. Currently, 68 countries are in the advanced phase of exploration –development, pilot, or launch.” This programmable digital currency aspect of the Fifteen Minute Smart City vision may start as a Universal Basic Income promoted to help the poor under SDGs Item One – NO POVERTY.
When you move into your 16th floor apartment at the Clocktower Center you may be required to provide access to your digital wallet so your rent can be extracted. Management will be able to download your financial and medical history to confirm you have complied with the requirements for residency. The fees for your smart stove, smart refrigerator, smart shower, smart washing machine and smart entertainment center will flow into some BlackRock or Vanguard super computer carrying with it the times, energy usage and other details of each service used.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website explains, “Digital ID is a critical piece of digital public infrastructure. Digital ID systems are one of the three pillars of what’s known as digital public infrastructure (DPI); the others are digital payment systems and data exchange systems.
The stated benefits of a programmable digital currency linked to your biometric ID for those implementing the program is that it is supposed to make it impossible to cheat on your taxes and will provide the global corporations profiting from this demonic scheme more control.
The Bank for International Settlements head Agustin Carstens explains, “Our analysis on CBDC in particular for the general use we intend to establish the equivalence with cash and there is a huge difference there for example in cash we don’t know for example who is using a one hundred dollar bill today we don’t know who is using a one thousand pesos bill today a key difference in the CBDC is that central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability and also we will have the technology to enforce that those two issues are extremely important and that makes a huge difference with respect to what cash is.”
The use of financial de-platforming of critics to this agenda was used in December 2010 when CIA linked PayPal froze the public donations of the whistleblowing publication WikiLeaks and the now imprisoned Julian Assange. In August 2023, GoFundMe froze more than $90,000 from 1,100 contributors to The Grayzone independent news platform, citing unspecified “external concerns”. Max Blumenthal said he believed the concerns were political and related to the platform’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. In 2022 Canadian banks started freezing the accounts of people linked to the anti-mandate truckers protests in Canada. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that “the federal government is promising to take more accounts offline in coming days in an attempt to clear demonstrators from Ottawa, which has been occupied for nearly a month’.
A programmable digital currency can geofence you into your 15- Minute Smart City by switching off your money if you travel outside the a prescribed area or wish to make an unauthorized purchase. For example it could be determined that a drive to see your family in Sacramento will deplete your allotment of Carbon Credits making it impossible to refuel your car, take a bus or plane. Like the examples already noted with Wikileaks or the Canadian truckers you might not be able to use your funds to buy materials for a protest or if caught expressing “wrong thought” on line an AI algorithm might cut you off your digital money all together.
Instead of restricting the use of your digital dollars those implementing Agenda 2030 could geofence you in other ways. You might jump into your Chevy Volt that has been charging at the library parking garage to take your friends to a protest against a mining project outside of town but that extraction enterprise is deemed essential. You get ten miles from the protest and the car is remotely stopped much like those Trader Joes Shopping carts that lock before you wheel to your vehicle.
Sometimes it takes a bloody war to shock people into surrendering their freedom to this digital dungeon. That sure worked in Ukraine where there are more than 21.7 million users of their Diia portal and 500,000 dead soldiers.
The Brookings Institute posts, “Following the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising, which ousted Russian-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych, the successor government led by Petro Poroshenko embarked on Ukraine’s national digital transformation.”
“With technical support from the Eurasia Foundation, initially funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and subsequently also by UKAid, Prozorro is a platform built on open-source code that removes much of the human element (and therefore opportunity for corruption) in procurement.”
The website Ukraine Now boasts, “Taking the lead internally, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has the ambition to make Ukraine a world champion in being digital, and we are already the first ones who can use digital IDs with absolutely no internal restrictions. Here is how Ukraine moves forward with the concept of building a digital state over 70 government services are available online. Mobile application Diia allows Ukrainians to access 14 digital documents (ID card, foreign biometric passport, student card, driver’s license, vehicle registration certificate, vehicle insurance policy, tax number, birth certificate, IDP certificate) and 21 services in total.” Some of those 21 services include a “snitch” feature where you can turn in a neighbor who comments negatively on the war effort.
“Just recently, Ukraine has become the first country with a digital ID that is valid and can be used everywhere within the country and the fourth in Europe to launch a digital driving license. All digital documents in Diia now have the same legal force as their plastic or paper counterparts.”
The same web of global institutions that lied us into war after war, lied us into their military counter measures, mandates and lockdowns are behind the ravaging of Santa Cruz with their high density sudo-ecological Smart Solutions matrix of blissful slavery.
Like many of you I attended one planning department promotional hearing after another. I have attended many of the twice yearly Smart Solutions homeless charades and suffered long hours of presentations about the inevitability of the library garage. Self serving shows pretending to be democracy. It was rare to hear any support for any of these projects by those of us who live in Santa Cruz.
One law suit after another. One ballot measure after another. One election after another and this tsunami of glass and metal horror and electronic panopticon are still on their way to completion. Our real problem is our having any attachment to the institutions of power. If we want to have any hope of stopping this diabolical monster we need to remove all allegiance to this system and build organizations independent of social control. In the short term if we want to stop all the high rise towers we had better cost these vultures money by taking nonviolent direct action blocking delivery of their materials and disrupt their ability to continue.
In the long term we must refuse to comply with their dictates and embrace a love of freedom. End all cooperation with these genocidal sociopaths and their attempt to force us into their dystopian digital house of horrors.
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