The genocidal government of China, which spent much of the past decade forcibly programming the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province to abandon their religion and worship communism instead, on Wednesday gave Sweden a lecture on respecting the religious beliefs of Muslims after a Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran.
China turned the homeland of the Uyghurs into a high-tech surveillance state , herded millions of them into brutal concentration camps so huge they can be seen from orbit, and used physical and psychological torture to erase their purportedly dangerous religious beliefs.
Among other tactics, captive Uyghurs are forced to eat pork and drink alcoholic beverages, which are forbidden by their religion. Uyghurs are made to watch while Chinese officials systematically violate Islamic customs in their lands, such as the dawn-to-dusk fasting of the Ramadan holiday currently in progress, a practice the Chinese state classified as a “sign of extremism.”
Survivors of the camps have repeatedly testified that “deprogramming” Uyghurs from their religion and brainwashing them to become obedient communists is a major objective of the camp administrators. Chinese government documents leaked in 2019 confirmed these efforts to eradicate the Uyghur culture and religion.
China also implements far more restrictive immigration policies than most Western states, has a history of treating immigrants poorly , and adamantly refuses to take in refugees.
Opportunistic Chinese officials nevertheless look for every opportunity to harangue other nations as intolerant or Islamophobic, in part to keep their Islamic client states from dwelling on what happens in Xinjiang.
This photo taken on June 2, 2019 shows a facility believed to be a re-education camp in Artux in China’s Xinjiang. (AFP)
Such an opportunity presented itself in Sweden last week when politician Rasmus Paludan — who, unlike the Xinjiang concentration camps, cannot normally be seen from orbit — live-streamed the burning of a Quran and said he planned to begin burning the books at his political rallies.
Police officers stand at the outer entrance of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on April 23, 2021. Urumqi No. 3, China’s largest detention center, is twice the size of Vatican City and has room for at least 10,000 inmates. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says it has compiled evidence of increasing government repression against Uyghur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Paludan is the Danish-Swedish leader of a Danish group that actually calls itself the “Hard Line Party.” They are fervently opposed to immigration, particularly from Muslim countries.
Paludan torched a Quran in a Facebook live-stream last Thursday and announced he would take a tour of Sweden, burning a copy of the Muslim religious text in every town he visited. He proceeded to do so on Friday and Saturday, bringing counter-demonstrations that quickly turned violent, which is exactly what he wanted.
After his third stop in Sweden, Paludan canceled the rest of his tour, complaining that Swedish police were “completely incapable of protecting themselves and me.”
“We have seen violent riots before. But this is something else. It is serious violence against life and property, especially against police officers. It is very worrying and we will take strong countermeasures. This should not continue,” said Swedish National Police Chief Anders Thornberg, after making dozens of arrests and counting at least 40 police and civilian injuries.
Several Muslim governments condemned Paludan for his Quran-burning, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, and Turkey.
“We condemn, in the strongest way possible, attacks and provocations against the Muslims, to Islam, to the Quran and to places of worship in different parts of the world during the holy month of Ramadan. The recent attacks against the holy book of Islam in Sweden show that no lessons have been taken from the past,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
“In Sweden people are allowed to express their opinions, whether in good or bad taste; it’s part of our democracy. No matter what you think, you should never resort to violence. We don’t and will never accept it,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson insisted.
Having spent the weekend mutually confirming their worst suspicions of each other, the last thing anyone in the Swedish fiasco needed was genocidal China’s opinion, but they got it anyway from Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday.
“China always opposes extreme behavior of attacking different religious beliefs and instigating conflicts between civilizations,” Wang said with remarkable chutzpah.
“Freedom of speech should not be used as an excuse to incite racial or cultural discrimination and create division in society. No civilization is superior to others. They are different only in feature and geographical distribution. We advocate replacing clash of civilizations with exchange of civilizations. We oppose discriminatory rhetoric against certain religions and civilization,” he said.
“It is hoped that Sweden will draw a lesson from the matter and earnestly respect the religious beliefs of Muslims and other minority groups, protect their lawful rights and interests, and square their words of respecting and protecting freedom of religious belief with actions,” he concluded, exhausting China’s strategic national reserve of hypocrisy.
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely staked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol , an online publication that covers technology.
There is nothing unexpected about the emerging right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall Street composition of the incoming Biden administration. Biden himself spent decades in Washington as a corrupt bag-man for wealthy interests in the state of Delaware, the legal headquarters of hundreds of thousands of corporations that take advantage of its business-friendly laws.
U.S. Companies with ‘Made in China’ Products, ‘Optimistic’ About Joe Biden PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
20 Nov 2020 1,181
5:19
American companies that do business and make their products in China are, by a majority, “optimistic” about a Joe Biden presidency, a new survey reveals.
The American Chamber of Commerce in a Shanghai, China, survey asked 124 business executives their opinions on a Biden presidency, to which a majority, nearly 63 percent, said they are “much more optimistic” or “more optimistic” about their doing business in the Communist country with the former vice president in the White House.
Likewise, the survey found that business executives do not expect Biden to impose more tariffs on China-made products — as President Trump did with billions of dollars worth of goods against the wishes of corporate interests.
CNBC reports :
“The majority of our respondents look at it as a positive,” Ker Gibbs, president of AmCham Shanghai, told CNBC in a phone interview. “The Biden administration would be a positive to the stability of the environment, the stability of the relationship.” [Emphasis added]
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Under a Biden administration, only 5.6% of AmCham Shanghai survey respondents expect more tariffs . Instead, 70.2% anticipate new U.S. leadership will work more with other countries to put pressure on trade relations with China. [Emphasis added]
In August, Biden seemingly claimed he would repeal Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products. Later, his campaign aides walked the statement back, and he has since not been definitive on whether he plans to keep the tariffs or throw them out.
Already, the Business Roundtable, which represents some of the nation’s largest multinational corporations, is pushing Biden to ease the tariffs imposed on Chinese products by Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal :
“Unwinding the tariffs, especially with China, shouldn’t be a unilateral act,” said Josh Bolten, the BRT’s chief executive . “It should be an opening to begin a serious negotiation that the Trump administration attempted but in many respects made difficult through overly aggressive measures.” [Emphasis added]
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On Monday, former George W. Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson made a proposal similar to Mr. Bolten’s. “I would only remove existing tariffs when we have extracted a reciprocal and tangible benefit from China , met by defined benchmarks in a phased bilateral trade agreement,” he said at conference. [Emphasis added]
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Myron Brilliant, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president, added his voice to the rollback call on Tuesday. “We would hope that China would agree to the importance of further efforts on structural reforms unaddressed by the phase-one agreement,” he said in an interview, “and that the U.S. and China can find the political space to pull back tariffs that are currently in place.” [Emphasis added]
Biden has promised the opposite approach to China that Trump has successfully implemented for almost four years. Whereas Trump’s focus was on an “America First” bilateral trade policy with other nation-states, Biden is promising the multilateral approach that has formed the Washington, D.C., free trade consensus for decades.
Many Senate Republicans have suggested that they are behind a return to the multilateral approach with Biden. Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report this week wherein they declared their support for Biden’s strategy, the Wall Street Journal reports :
“It is our populations—the U.S. and Europe—that built the world order of today, not China,” said Sen. Jim Risch, the chairman of the Senate committee, in an interview. “The world order that we have, based on democracy and based on the rule of law, is where this planet should go if it’s going to have a future.” [Emphasis added]
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If Republicans retain control of the Senate, Mr. Risch will continue leading the chamber’s foreign-policy committee, which President-elect Joe Biden also chaired during his Senate career. The Idaho Republican said the report wasn’t timed with the election or presidential transition but that he would be willing to work with a Biden administration on confronting China with more help from Europe . [Emphasis added]
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden transition team, said: “President-elect Biden agrees that we should stand together with our allies and partners to press China’s government to curtail its economic, human rights, and other abuses. And he looks forward to working with both parties in Congress to realize that approach.” [Emphasis added]
Since 2001, U.S. free trade with China has eliminated at least 3.4 million American jobs. In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) and before the U.S. normalized trade relations with China, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.
Biden supported China’s entering the WTO and normalizing U.S. trade relations with China.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Report: Apple Is Lobbying Congress to Weaken Bill Against Chinese Slavery NG HAN GUAN /Getty
LUCAS NOLAN
21 Nov 2020 39
3:23
Lobbyists for Silicon Valley tech giant Apple are reportedly attempting to weaken a new law aimed at preventing slave labor in China, the Washington Post revealed on Friday.
The Washington Post reported, citing two anonymous congressional staffers, that Apple lobbyists are working to dilute the effects of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would require U.S. companies to guarantee that they do no use slavery or forced labor from the mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang, where it is estimated that the Chinese government has placed as many as 3 million people into concentration camps.
Apple relies heavily on manufacturing in China and human rights reports have reportedly identified instances where Apple’s supply chain has been fed by Uyghur forced labor that evidence suggests is tantamount to slavery. The difference between forced labor and slavery in international law is that, in the former, the individuals being forced to work are treated as persons, rather than property, by the state.
China insists that its concentration camps are “vocational training centers” for underprivileged minorities.
A study published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in March also identified Apple as one of 83 companies around the world whose products are being manufactured in factories using Uyghur slaves, not necessarily in Xinjiang. While China initially built the camps in Xinjiang – where survivors say they endured communist indoctrination, torture, rape, slavery, and medical studies indicating trials for live organ harvesting – after intense human rights condemnations, the Communist Party began shipping Uyghur workers to factories nationwide. The ASPI study revealed government incentives to companies to hire Uyghur slaves.
The congressional staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Apple was one of many U.S. companies opposing the bill as it is written.
The staffers declined to detail the specific provisions that Apple was trying to have changed or removed as they feared providing that information would identify them to Apple. But both stated that they believed Apple was attempting to water down the bill.
Cathy Feingold, director of the international department for the AFL-CIO which supports the bill, stated: “What Apple would like is we all just sit and talk and not have any real consequences. They’re shocked because it’s the first time where there could be some actual effective enforceability.”
Apple spokesperson Josh Rosenstock said that the company “is dedicated to ensuring that everyone in our supply chain is treated with dignity and respect. We abhor forced labor and support the goals of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. We share the committee’s goal of eradicating forced labor and strengthening U.S. law, and we will continue working with them to achieve that.”
Rosenstock added that Apple this year “conducted a detailed investigation with our suppliers in China and found no evidence of forced labor on Apple production lines, and we are continuing to monitor this closely.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS: PARTY OF BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS and open BORDERS. I was reminded after reading that 131 billionaires who are pouring millions into Joe Biden’s campaign in their mindless obsession to defeat Trump in November. Among the prominent are Jeff Skoll, of eBay who has contributed $4.5 million; Laurene Powell Jobs of Apple and owner of The Atlantic magazine has donated $1.2 million, and Josh Bekenstein, of Bain Capital (co-founded by Mitt Romney), $5 million. STEVE McCANN
Michelle Malkin: There Is NO American Worker Shortage
Earlier, by Michelle Malkin: A Day Without American Tech Workers
" We're full, our system's full, our country's full! " That was President Donald Trump last year at our southern border.
"Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families." That was Trump in January 2017 at his inaugural address.
"The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult... to earn a middle class wage." That was presidential candidate Trump in 2016 .
Contrast those clarion "America First" statements with the apparent hysteria of Trump's current acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney , who was caught on tape telling a private audience of elites in England last week: "We are desperate—desperate—for more people. We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we've had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants."
Mulvaney reportedly went on to push for "expanding" merit- and employment-based immigration to fill all the high-skilled jobs that Americans purportedly aren't capable of filling. By how much, for how long, in which visa categories and under what conditions this "expansion" should happen, Mulvaney is not reported to have detailed. (He will be featured at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday morning. It would be nice if someone asked him to elaborate, wouldn't it?)
"Running out of people" is typical Beltway swamp talk from a big business lobbyist trafficking in open borders "Chicken Little" alarmism. Has Mulvaney opened a newspaper or browsed the internet in the last 10 years? How about the last week? Over a 48-hour period, I compiled a Twitter thread of more than 50 stories of tens of thousands of recent U.S. worker layoffs in tech and other high-skilled industries. Among the U.S. corporations and institutions responsible for laying off, replacing , offshoring, and outsourcing tens of thousands of American jobs:
Wayfair , TripAdvisor, LogMeIn, Inc., Zume Pizza, VMWare, Shutterfly, Intel, Comcast, Xilinx, 23andMe, NortonLifeLock, AT&T, Macy's, Walgreens , Uber , Lyft , UCSF Medical Center, Baptist Health, Sysco, WeWork , American Family Insurance, Tennessee Valley Authority, Amway, UPS subsidiary Coyote Logistics, Comcast, Lime, Bird, Unicorn, Getaround, Cerner, Oracle, Samsung US, Edmunds.com, Textron Aviation, Morgan Stanley, Spirit AeroSystems, Mozilla, UiPath, Plexus, Cisco, Ancestry.com, Clover Health, State Street Corporation, Anthem, Transamerica, Verizon , MassMutual, Disney , Carnival, Abbott Labs, EmblemHealth, Harley Davidson, Cargill, Eversource Energy, Best Buy, Southern California Edison and Qualcomm .
The most recent entry in my U.S. worker layoffs thread came in Monday from Expedia, which announced it is laying off 12% of its information technology workforce (roughly 3,000), including 500 employees at its Seattle headquarters. Tip of the iceberg. As leading American workers' employment attorney and Protect US Workers advocate Sara Blackwell (right) points out, "so many companies are able to conduct this awful business model under the radar." And they get away with it because it's legal, workers are silenced, and most Americans "just do not care because it does not yet touch them personally."
Do we " need more immigrants, " as Mulvaney claims? Marie Larson, an American mom who founded the American Workers Coalition with Barbara Birch and Hilarie Gamm, told me: "I talk to Americans almost daily who are being discriminated against, who keep getting laid off by Indian managers, who have to train their foreign replacements to get the much-needed severance packages, who have to pull kids out of college because they can't afford it, even having to sell their houses. These are STEM workers, who got the 'right' degrees and did everything they were supposed to do, only to have our government turn their back and sell out to big businesses push for even more H-1Bs." Tech firms cut 6 4,166 American jobs in 2019, up 351% from 14,230 in 2018.
Are we so "desperate" for more bodies to "fuel economic growth?" Let's recap the demographic math: We live in a nation of 330 million, 44 million of whom are foreign-born. Upward of 30 million immigrants are currently living, working and going to school here illegally. One million new legal immigrants are granted green cards every year. An estimated 600,000 temporary worker visas are issued annually, including the H-1B , H-2A, H-2B and H-4 programs. That doesn't include spousal visas or the more than half a million foreign "students" now working through the stealth guest worker plan known as the Optional Practical Training program, which allows f oreign students to work with little monitoring, no wage protections, no payment of Social Security payroll taxes and no requirement for employers to demonstrate labor market shortages.
"We" ordinary Americans don't need more immigrants. Corporations (and their trusty house organ, the Wall Street Journal ) want higher profits, lower wages, and endless pipelines of cheap foreign labor. They've been cooking up manufactured worker shortage crises since World War II and crying apocalypse since the 1980s, when the National Science Foundation's Erich Bloch hyped a STEM shortage based on groundless projections to crusade for agency budget increases.
Remember: The only persistent tech worker shortage in America is a shortage of workers at the wage employers want to pay. Beltway swampers gnashing their teeth over barren American worker recruitment pools are full of it.
Michelle Malkin [ Email her ] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores . Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies, ,Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs, and Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers.
Malkin is author of the book, "Open Borders, Inc.: Who's Funding America's Destruction," available directly from VDARE.com in hardcover . To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com .
A Homeless Village Is Growing on Apple’s Silicon Valley Property The Associated Press
LUCAS NOLAN
According to recent reports, a growing homeless encampment has been set up on dozens of acres of undeveloped land in the heart of Silicon Valley owned by tech giant Apple.
VICE News reports that despite Apple committing billions of dollars to fix California’s housing crisis, an encampment of homeless people living in RVs, shacks, and tents has taken over dozens of acres of undeveloped land owned by Apple in the center of Silicon Valley.
Between 30 to 100 homeless people have reportedly set up camp on the property owned by Apple in North San Jose. The area covers about 55 acres according to the local CBS affiliate KPIX . Some current residents of the site say that they feel they can be left alone there, despite the area’s proximity to PayPal’s corporate headquarters and other office buildings.
Before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, around 6,000 homeless people lived in San Jose with fewer than 1,000 beds available to them. It’s common for homeless people living outdoors and in vehicles across the Bay Area to be moved from place to place by security and police, those staying on the Apple property have largely been left alone according to Renee Corona who has lived in an RV on the property for nearly two years.
Corona, who receives disability payments but cannot afford to live in San Francisco where she was raised, stated: “This is an area where you’re secluded from the city. I don’t think a lot of people knew about this.” She added: “I’m grateful that they don’t kick us out. I just want to say thank you. They don’t bother us.”
San Jose City Council member David Cohen, whose district includes the property, told VICE News that his office is trying to schedule a meeting with Apple to discuss the site. “We’re setting up a meeting so that I can begin to talk to them about what we might be able to do to help the people who are living there, and to figure out some plan for offering services,” Cohen said.
Read more at VICE News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
THESE VIDEOS SHOULD CONVINCE ANYONE OF THE DANGERS OF LETTING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RUN THE COUNTRY.... INTO THE GROUND!
Walking Tour of Downtown Seattle in May 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZAFbj-918A
Searching for Hope: Homeless in Sacramento https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL5MROuIaGU
Inflation is Surging as Wages are Falling - People are Unprepared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9Ad7Y3SZE
Is Los Angeles the worst run city in America - Homeless Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeYZoWWBc4s&t=3s
Homeless Woman Doesn't Drink or Use Drugs. In a Tent for 8 Years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kNDhSl_IyE
Homeless Woman Has a Masters in Mathematics and Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT3VGI0V5Rs
What are you Spending Money On? - Prices Skyrocket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWlhnCmvws
The Economy is like a Bad Magic Trick - Full of Smoke and Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUKpeXiB2U&t=37 s
MacArthur Park Is a Complete Wreck - Hollywood Homeless Breakdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Yl97OypH0&t=32s
Chaos by the Bay: The Truth About Homelessness in San Francisco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8MACDZ3RI
City of Roses or City of Homeless? Portland's human tragedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZvD7lKZto
Meet the Homeless Americans Living in Walmart Parking Lots
Living on the brink: One family’s struggle to survive the pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92ubHU_AS8
Feeding a family on a food stamp budget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKkakwf6Vk
This is life on $7.50 an hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCB1t28nDU
New York City flooding exposes failing infrastructure Mark Witkowski
19 hours ago
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During the afternoon of Thursday, July 8, a series of powerful thunderstorms moved across the New York City area. These storm cells produced heavy downpours which in turn led to localized flooding in northern Manhattan, the Bronx and suburban Westchester County. The storms also resulted in thousands of homes without power in nearby New Jersey.
Screengrabs from Twitter videos showing flooding in NYC subway (Left: @Paulleewr; Right: @fiona79us)
These storms are not unusual in the northeastern US during the summer months, although a number of scientific reports have suggested that such weather may become more frequent and more severe in the years ahead due to climate change. What is significant is how quickly vital infrastructure failed under the pressure of a routine weather event.
As the storms hit, social media was quickly filled with disturbing images. One post on Twitter which has nearly 5 million hits, shows desperate commuters wading through filthy, waist-deep water in an underground passageway which serves as an entrance to the 157th street train station.
Other images depicted flood waters rushing across station platforms as commuters tried to board trains and water cascading down stairways and falling from ceilings in stations creating unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Only about half of New York City households have an automobile, which means many people have no alternative to public transport. Those wading through waist-deep water likely had no other means to get home and thus felt compelled to take the risk.
In addition to creating unsafe conditions in subway stations, the flooding resulted in massive rush-hour delays throughout the aging subway system which is among the busiest in the world.
The Major Deegan Expressway, an important highway connecting New York City to points north was closed, as were several other north-south arteries including Harlem River Drive which connects to the George Washington Bridge, the city’s busiest Hudson River crossing. Images on social media showed stranded motorists standing atop stalled vehicles in water up to the vehicle’s roof, as rescue crews helped them to safety.
This comes nearly a decade after so called “super storm” Sandy caused widespread flooding to low-lying areas across the New York/New Jersey region. Following Sandy, Democratic politicians pledged billions to harden and upgrade infrastructure to make it more resilient. One organization charged with doing much of this work is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA which operates subways, commuter rail services, vehicular tunnels and bridges.
According to the New York Times , the MTA has spent roughly $2.6 billion since Sandy to protect against flooding. Given these recent events, some questions arise: Is this level of funding sufficient to protect one of the largest transit systems in the world, with 472 subway stations alone? What work has been done thus far? Have the private contractors performing much of the work met storm standards? Why is the work taking so long?
The MTA, which is beholden to bondholders and thus the dictates of Wall Street, continually claims there is “no money” for projects needed to bring the system up to level where it can meet the needs of the population. In the last few years, trillions of dollars have been made available to Wall Street by the federal government, dwarfing the sums allotted for mass transit, or for disaster recovery and protection.
To put the $2.6 billion spent over the last decade since Sandy in perspective, a single new station, built for the extension of the Number 7 line one mile to the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan in 2015, cost $2.4 billion. When it was determined by the Bloomberg administration that the $25 billion Hudson Yards real estate project, largest private development in American history, could not move forward without a transit hub, the money was quickly found to build it.
The $2.6 billion spent on storm resiliency in the nation’s largest city is only one sixth of the $12.4 billion expended by the Pentagon building a single new Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. To meet social need, we are told there is “no money,” while nearly unlimited resources are available for the military projection of power on behalf of American imperialism.
The issues facing New York City are no by no means unique to that city nor are they limited to subways and highways. Public infrastructure across the US, and indeed around the globe, is starved so that money can be funneled to the financial oligarchy. In Detroit, flooding damaged homes and closed highways after pumping stations failed. Power grids have failed, notably demonstrated in Texas earlier this year. Parts of the Southwest are being devastated by drought and aging water infrastructure. The collapse of a residential condominium in Florida leading to numerous deaths.
Politicians at all levels of society have been weighing in. Eric Adams, the likely successor to Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City, used the flood to call for a congestion pricing, a scheme for charging motorist fees to drive into the city’s central business district. In Michigan, Governor Whitmer acknowledged “decades of underinvestment,” then sidestepped the issue, deferring to the federal government. President Biden’s highly publicized infrastructure bill is a handout to corporations that does little to meet social needs.
The numerous high-profile infrastructure failures in recent months are not mere accidents. They are an indictment of the irrational capitalist profit system which places the accumulation of private wealth in the hands of a financial elite above the social needs of the vast majority of working people.
As climate change and environmental degradation exacerbate existing conditions caused by failing infrastructure, capitalist politicians offer no way forward. The only way for humanity to marshal the resources to contend with these issues is to eliminate the profit system and replace it with a planned socialist economy.
A Homeless Village Is Growing on Apple’s Silicon Valley Property The Associated Press
LUCAS NOLAN
According to recent reports, a growing homeless encampment has been set up on dozens of acres of undeveloped land in the heart of Silicon Valley owned by tech giant Apple.
VICE News reports that despite Apple committing billions of dollars to fix California’s housing crisis, an encampment of homeless people living in RVs, shacks, and tents has taken over dozens of acres of undeveloped land owned by Apple in the center of Silicon Valley.
Between 30 to 100 homeless people have reportedly set up camp on the property owned by Apple in North San Jose. The area covers about 55 acres according to the local CBS affiliate KPIX . Some current residents of the site say that they feel they can be left alone there, despite the area’s proximity to PayPal’s corporate headquarters and other office buildings.
Before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, around 6,000 homeless people lived in San Jose with fewer than 1,000 beds available to them. It’s common for homeless people living outdoors and in vehicles across the Bay Area to be moved from place to place by security and police, those staying on the Apple property have largely been left alone according to Renee Corona who has lived in an RV on the property for nearly two years.
Corona, who receives disability payments but cannot afford to live in San Francisco where she was raised, stated: “This is an area where you’re secluded from the city. I don’t think a lot of people knew about this.” She added: “I’m grateful that they don’t kick us out. I just want to say thank you. They don’t bother us.”
San Jose City Council member David Cohen, whose district includes the property, told VICE News that his office is trying to schedule a meeting with Apple to discuss the site. “We’re setting up a meeting so that I can begin to talk to them about what we might be able to do to help the people who are living there, and to figure out some plan for offering services,” Cohen said.
Read more at VICE News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
THESE VIDEOS SHOULD CONVINCE ANYONE OF THE DANGERS OF LETTING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RUN THE COUNTRY.... INTO THE GROUND!
Walking Tour of Downtown Seattle in May 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZAFbj-918A
Searching for Hope: Homeless in Sacramento https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL5MROuIaGU
Inflation is Surging as Wages are Falling - People are Unprepared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9Ad7Y3SZE
Is Los Angeles the worst run city in America - Homeless Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeYZoWWBc4s&t=3s
Homeless Woman Doesn't Drink or Use Drugs. In a Tent for 8 Years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kNDhSl_IyE
Homeless Woman Has a Masters in Mathematics and Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT3VGI0V5Rs
What are you Spending Money On? - Prices Skyrocket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWlhnCmvws
The Economy is like a Bad Magic Trick - Full of Smoke and Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUKpeXiB2U&t=37 s
MacArthur Park Is a Complete Wreck - Hollywood Homeless Breakdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Yl97OypH0&t=32s
Chaos by the Bay: The Truth About Homelessness in San Francisco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8MACDZ3RI
City of Roses or City of Homeless? Portland's human tragedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZvD7lKZto
Meet the Homeless Americans Living in Walmart Parking Lots
Living on the brink: One family’s struggle to survive the pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92ubHU_AS8
Feeding a family on a food stamp budget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKkakwf6Vk
This is life on $7.50 an hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCB1t28nDU
New York City flooding exposes failing infrastructure Mark Witkowski
19 hours ago
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During the afternoon of Thursday, July 8, a series of powerful thunderstorms moved across the New York City area. These storm cells produced heavy downpours which in turn led to localized flooding in northern Manhattan, the Bronx and suburban Westchester County. The storms also resulted in thousands of homes without power in nearby New Jersey.
Screengrabs from Twitter videos showing flooding in NYC subway (Left: @Paulleewr; Right: @fiona79us)
These storms are not unusual in the northeastern US during the summer months, although a number of scientific reports have suggested that such weather may become more frequent and more severe in the years ahead due to climate change. What is significant is how quickly vital infrastructure failed under the pressure of a routine weather event.
As the storms hit, social media was quickly filled with disturbing images. One post on Twitter which has nearly 5 million hits, shows desperate commuters wading through filthy, waist-deep water in an underground passageway which serves as an entrance to the 157th street train station.
Other images depicted flood waters rushing across station platforms as commuters tried to board trains and water cascading down stairways and falling from ceilings in stations creating unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Only about half of New York City households have an automobile, which means many people have no alternative to public transport. Those wading through waist-deep water likely had no other means to get home and thus felt compelled to take the risk.
In addition to creating unsafe conditions in subway stations, the flooding resulted in massive rush-hour delays throughout the aging subway system which is among the busiest in the world.
The Major Deegan Expressway, an important highway connecting New York City to points north was closed, as were several other north-south arteries including Harlem River Drive which connects to the George Washington Bridge, the city’s busiest Hudson River crossing. Images on social media showed stranded motorists standing atop stalled vehicles in water up to the vehicle’s roof, as rescue crews helped them to safety.
This comes nearly a decade after so called “super storm” Sandy caused widespread flooding to low-lying areas across the New York/New Jersey region. Following Sandy, Democratic politicians pledged billions to harden and upgrade infrastructure to make it more resilient. One organization charged with doing much of this work is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA which operates subways, commuter rail services, vehicular tunnels and bridges.
According to the New York Times , the MTA has spent roughly $2.6 billion since Sandy to protect against flooding. Given these recent events, some questions arise: Is this level of funding sufficient to protect one of the largest transit systems in the world, with 472 subway stations alone? What work has been done thus far? Have the private contractors performing much of the work met storm standards? Why is the work taking so long?
The MTA, which is beholden to bondholders and thus the dictates of Wall Street, continually claims there is “no money” for projects needed to bring the system up to level where it can meet the needs of the population. In the last few years, trillions of dollars have been made available to Wall Street by the federal government, dwarfing the sums allotted for mass transit, or for disaster recovery and protection.
To put the $2.6 billion spent over the last decade since Sandy in perspective, a single new station, built for the extension of the Number 7 line one mile to the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan in 2015, cost $2.4 billion. When it was determined by the Bloomberg administration that the $25 billion Hudson Yards real estate project, largest private development in American history, could not move forward without a transit hub, the money was quickly found to build it.
The $2.6 billion spent on storm resiliency in the nation’s largest city is only one sixth of the $12.4 billion expended by the Pentagon building a single new Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. To meet social need, we are told there is “no money,” while nearly unlimited resources are available for the military projection of power on behalf of American imperialism.
The issues facing New York City are no by no means unique to that city nor are they limited to subways and highways. Public infrastructure across the US, and indeed around the globe, is starved so that money can be funneled to the financial oligarchy. In Detroit, flooding damaged homes and closed highways after pumping stations failed. Power grids have failed, notably demonstrated in Texas earlier this year. Parts of the Southwest are being devastated by drought and aging water infrastructure. The collapse of a residential condominium in Florida leading to numerous deaths.
Politicians at all levels of society have been weighing in. Eric Adams, the likely successor to Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City, used the flood to call for a congestion pricing, a scheme for charging motorist fees to drive into the city’s central business district. In Michigan, Governor Whitmer acknowledged “decades of underinvestment,” then sidestepped the issue, deferring to the federal government. President Biden’s highly publicized infrastructure bill is a handout to corporations that does little to meet social needs.
The numerous high-profile infrastructure failures in recent months are not mere accidents. They are an indictment of the irrational capitalist profit system which places the accumulation of private wealth in the hands of a financial elite above the social needs of the vast majority of working people.
As climate change and environmental degradation exacerbate existing conditions caused by failing infrastructure, capitalist politicians offer no way forward. The only way for humanity to marshal the resources to contend with these issues is to eliminate the profit system and replace it with a planned socialist economy.
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