Homelessness is the single most powerful indictment of capitalism, the embodiment of human disposability, the ultimate expression of callous cruelty. In this nation where one out of 16 rental homes is vacant at any given time, one in 600 Americans (550,000) sleeps outside. An additional 3.7 million people, the so-called hidden homeless — one out of 90 of our sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters, our fathers, our mothers — are doubled up in other people’s homes because they can’t afford their own place.
“You look out the window of the White House and see the ragged and pathetic figures huddled over the steam grates of the Ellipse,” former President George H.W. Bush told an audience of insurance agents in 1989, calling homelessness “a national shame. … It’s an affront to the American dream.”
He was right, of course. He promised to do better. Yet because not even a president can change an economic system, nothing has improved. Only the Left can fix it.
Of the many ways America fails its citizens, its failure/refusal to ensure everyone has somewhere warm and safe to sleep at night is the starkest reflection of what passes for a social compact: Unless you are lucky enough not to be born into poverty, and lucky enough to avoid succumbing to addiction or some other dysfunction, and lucky enough not to suffer from a debilitating physical or mental illness, and lucky enough to have the charm, education and experience an employer happens to need, and are lucky enough that the economy is not contracting at that time, sooner rather than later you may find yourself sleeping on the street or a subway platform or on a park bench or a steam grate across the street from the White House.
Such a society cannot credibly claim to believe every life is precious. It cannot criticize the way other societies handle their affairs. It has zero moral standing whatsoever.
Chronic homelessness creates problems that impact housed people as well. Responding to calls about public drinking and trespassing diverts police from dealing with serious crimes. Areas with a high homeless population suffer significantly reduced property values, which lowers assessments and hurts municipal budgets. Because homelessness is associated with chronic health conditions, mental illness and substance abuse disorders, homeless people’s frequent visits to emergency rooms — where they account for a third of all patients — cost hospitals an average of $18,500 per year per person, unreimbursed because they are uninsured. Those expenses are passed on to the rest of us. Mentally ill people are 35 times more likely to commit a crime if they are homeless, compared to the mentally ill domiciled; they are also much more likely to become victims.
Homelessness is expensive. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that one chronically homeless American costs the taxpayer an average of $35,000 per year. That comes to about $20 billion for Americans now living outside.
Catching a glimpse of a miserable attempting to shelter outdoors also has an insidious downward effect on wages and living standards for us, the housed. It reminds you: This could happen to you. Better, then, not to risk asking for a raise.
Cynical Marxists have suggested this may be a feature, rather than a bug, of the current system. Fear of falling is a powerful motivating force.
The answer to the present state of homelessness is “re-housing.” We give homes — not shelters — to the people who need them. If they don’t have money for rent, give them stipends. Most cities keep doing what doesn’t work: dangerous shelters that are only open overnight and deny people for drinking, using drugs or acting out.
This is exactly wrong.
Real homes, not shelters, help people get off drugs and alcohol because people abuse substances to numb the misery of their situation. As it happens we have plenty of real homes sitting empty: 15 million are vacant. Some 550,000 of them, beginning with abandoned units and those that have remained without a tenant for a long time, should be seized under eminent domain.
Rapid rehousing can and should be mandatory; no one should be allowed the “freedom” to succumb to the elements. Rehousing should be done free of traditional preconditions like employment, income, absence of criminal record or sobriety. Each person’s individual needs, whether they be addressed by physical rehabilitation, job or language training, psychological therapy or other services, should be carried out by a team of social workers and other experts. Housing first, The New York Times reported in 2022, rests on a reality-based approach: “When you’re drowning, it doesn’t help if your rescuer insists you learn to swim before returning you to shore. You can address your issues once you’re on land. Or not. Either way, you join the wider population of people battling demons behind closed doors.”
Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, moved 25,000 people directly into apartments and houses between 2011 and 2022, reducing its homeless population by 63%. Denver, another housing-first city, saw arrests of homeless people drop 95% and dependence on government cash-benefit programs fall by 80% after housing-first took hold.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “supportive housing” costs an average of $12,800 per person per year. That comes to $7 billion for the outdoor homeless population, or $55 billion if you also include the hidden homeless.
The higher figure is 1.2% of the $4.5 trillion a year the U.S. is currently wasting on wars and other garbage. And after you subtract the $20 billion a year we’re currently spending on policing and hospitalization, it’s 0.8%.
Next: how to guarantee everyone the right to free, high-quality health care.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
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Yet the millions of ‘migrants’ or invaders are provided with free lifetime housing after they’re processed by ZWOG in the USA. Too many people in the US & on the planet. In 1931 the world’s population was 1.5 billion, now there’s 7-8 billion with over 90% being nonwhite. Mindless humanitarianism/egalitarianism vis a vis Judaism/Christianity importing western medicine/aid into Africa/Asia/Latin America over the past 100+ years has created this demographic disaster. Of course the clandestine rationale behind their intentional augmentation of the colored masses was always to weaponize them to inundate the West & diminish/deracinate the white race. Now you know.
What a load of BS, Ted Rall. As an ardent leftist, how many homeless people did you invite into your home? None. You ran an article in the past admitting you saw an homeless woman on the street, but couldn’t summon the courage to invite her into your home. Typical leftist. The National Institute of Health has found “from 31 empirical studies, that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals.” Many other studies show the same.
As leftist, why don’t you walk your talk, move to Africa, to work as an an aid worker, to help the 430 million Africans living in extreme poverty?
Ted Rall writes:
Now, no one disagrees that the U.S is a FAILED STATE.
Record numbers of Americans are living in:
1) Those ever expanding tent cities
2) Sleeping under freeway overpasses
3) Not even lucky enough to be in the former two categories, but are instead wandering around on the streets without shelter, in an opioid induced stupor.
And of course the USSA today is a Socialist Shit-hole. There is NO Capitalism of substance occurring in the big end of town in America.
The U.S today is all about Crony Corporatism, whereby Bloated Big Government schmoozes up to a select few ZOG/ZOG affiliated oligarchs and enacts legislation/regulatory impediments etc, to ensure their monopolies are protected and that consumers PAY MORE and in return GET LESS (hence the reason they can’t make ends meet).
The problem homelessness, the solution Soylent Green.
The only think the left wants to “fix” these Days are little boys and girls, Ted …….I must say ,nice touch quoting old man Bush, a fellow antique liberal.
I have to second the Soylent Green machines. Maybe Donald rump will implement this.
Every night we should send patrols out to collect anyone sleeping on the street or in homeless encampments and then take them immediately to the SG machines.
Voila! Homeless problem solved!!
So even die-hard socialists have a sense of humor. The primary cause of homelessness is simply being down on your luck.
Again the magical thinking of a cloistered socialist, if one is given everything one will automatically morph into a social saint to the benefit of all.
There are currently no laws stopping socialists from opening their own front doors to the homeless.
How many have you adopted?
I fully agree that our ridiculous military budget (federal reserve debt) could be spent better, however, it should not be spent by the government to begin with, let those who produce the wealth and have learned the value of a dollar keep it and invest it. Then there will be more living wage jobs available for those who want to avail themselves of the opportunities created.
Every large US city has no-go zone ghettos with plenty of available empty residential buildings within them, with multi-generational welfare recipients keeping guard, who are also coincidently down on their luck. Maybe first solve that riddle and we’ll have an answer to homelessness.
Your stupidity is limitless, Ted.
Well meaning and I agree with the concept of giving homes. The modern problem of homelessness came about for three reasons not contemplated by this article: (1)de-institutionalization of the mental ill beginning under Reagan; (2) the end of paternalistic large employers who dominated most small and medium sized towns from about 1880 to Ronald Reagan; and (3) social security.
In order, the GOP wanted to cut mental health spending and the obvious solution was close mental hospitals in favor of cheaper out patient treatment. Problem was the mentally ill cannot take care of themselves or reliably work. Most of the homeless suffer from some mental illness. For most homeless, they would be better off locked up for life in a mental hospital.
The second, paternalistic companies. Anyone who worked back in the 60s and 70s remembers “the guy.” Usually it was an old timer who delivered everyone’s mail, or who opened the door to the officers dining room, or who worked the coat room near some paneled lounge, or they were the elevator operator. In smaller, medium and even large cities wealthier corporations always had places to employ some folks who were older, not entirely self-sufficient, but were nice people when they felt wanted. The predatory capitalism of Ronald Reagan’s America ended all those jobs. Those folks are today’s homeless, or the folks who would have those jobs.
Social security–social security was designed to break up families. Before social security, it was understood that family would take care of the elderly. For the most part, they did where there was family. The problem is social security is not enough. There is a homeless man who sometimes lives in the park across from me. He rarely speaks but the man has a computer and a cell phone. The story is, he gets social security but it’s not enough to pay for a place to live. He can afford a cell phone. You see him in Starbucks on his computer. Just no place to live.
Mr. Ralls solution is great, but we need more.
Truth,
I really mean what i wrote here:
https://www.unz.com/announcement/open-thread-9/#comment-6455483
His assault against you stuns and shocks me. I am absconding from here permanently. It is a massive mindfck operation.
Mev
Mr Rall,
Thanks for this important article. I live in Colorado and interact with the homeless almost every day on the buses and city streets and in the public libraries. Their situation both grieves me and frightens me, because I could easily end up in their terrible predicament.
A number of years ago the NYTimes published a long article about Vienna Austria. It claimed that Vienna has decided that homelessness is unacceptable and a blight on their beautiful city and therefore ensures that EVERYONE has affordable housing:
I’ve thought about this and have sadly concluded that it could never be implemented in America because America is a society of ethnically fractured malcontents, purposely kept in a permanent state of enmity to favor the interests of the ruling class who operate America like a chattel slave plantation owned by Wall Street and managed out of DC.
What do you think?
Mevashir
Druggies, more often than not, got themselves into the pickle they are in because of booze and drugs. It’s much like the situation of the women doing porn who does drugs to dull the pain of doing porn. Given a chance, a few will turn around if they can get off the drugs, but most I have known went back to drugs afterward.
As is so often the case, Rall’s assertion is pure rubbish.
George H.W. Bush, the author of the infamous “Read my lips, no new taxes.” However, like every other “good” politician, as soon as he was elected, he completely forgot what he had promised.
Q. How do you know when a politician is lying?
A. His lips are moving.
Presidents may not be able to change economic systems, but they can sure take a viable system which works and mess it up. Since Bush the First, there is nothing I have seen which makes me believe that those who followed him into the White House have done anything to make it better. In fact, it would be honest to say that his son, the despicable George W. Bush made things worse in a big way. Bill Clinton was no better. Neither was Obama, Trump, and now Biden. At least three of those are Leftists, yet here we are.
The more we rely on government to take care of us, the deeper into the economic and social sewer we sink. It is ludicrous to assert that only by resorting to more government will we solve our problems.
Thanks for your input Mev.
In all fairness to Ron, I had forgotten to recall which thread had the bulk of those exchanges I had with Fizzy-cyst Dovid and thus those accusations of mine were not called for.
We all need some tough love dished out our way from time to time to keep us grounded, and it was my turn to eat some humble pie.
In Southern California a few years ago, some government agency determined that 1/4 of the homeless were mentally ill. And then a private analysis determined that 2/3 of the homeless are mentally ill. (figures are approximate; I am doing this from memory.) I believe the latter. Thus, there are a heckuva lot of people who cannot take care of themselves and need care supervision and treatment. This means you cannot just hand them housing. Long ago some studies were clear as to what you DO need. You need a rural campus, leafy with lots of lawn, and lots of care workers to spend lots of time with the residents. Lawn, care workers. It’s simple!
Not so fast, Louie. The the irresolvable obstacle is finding people who are willing to be the care workers. Understandable. It’s a gruesome job, and a welfare package of benefits is the equivalent compensation, plus it comes with 52 weeks of paid vacation. So, few care workers. Thus, lock-up the residents, and basically ignore them. But that is inhumane. Thus, there is no answer, unless you are willing to pay the care workers, oh, say, $100,000 a year. Then they would come out of the woodwork. I can’t imagine there is the will to pay that.
I previously noted that to my knowledge the Red Vienna was the only
approach that actually worked (more actually Jakob Fugger pioneered the idea,
in a somewhat paternalistic way); instead of taxing empty rentals they levied
a special tax on rental property and used the proceeds to build their own,
outcompeting the landlords (the social structure of landlordism was somewhat
different, a rental property was the default pension plan of the bourgeoisie).
Foul detractors have always held the Socialist Realism architecture was intended
to be easily defended in case of fascist takeover, but the designs were unbelievably
modern and circumspect (remember, that was 100 years ago!).
– By now the landlords are the same as everywhere else, Jewish corporations,
but the city still owns these buildings (and keeps adding, only slower).
The US´problem is it is ruled by the (((slumlords))) (“donors”) and any attempt
at tackling immigration, unemployment or homelessness would cut into profits
ANATHEMA !!!
This quote is a rehash from Rall’s previous article, https://www.unz.com/trall/whats-left-5-lets-declare-war-on-economic-insecurity/, in which he said this and which I also commented on.
Yes, truly only the Left can fix it!
In a short essay titled Mass Murder and Public Slavery (The Independent Review, v. 22, n. 2, Fall 2017, ISSN 1086 –1653, Copyright © 2017, pp. 183–189, Yuri N. Maltsev began with these words.
The first property Ted Rall aims at in his drive for straight-out Marxism is self-ownership, a.k.a., individual freedom to make one’s own choices. You are not your own. You belong to someone else. You will obey, even if it is to your detriment. Personal decision making is not to be tolerated.
Once the self-ownership dam has been breached, logically the next step is to confiscate all the other properties which people think are theirs–land, houses, bank accounts, vehicles, children, jobs, lifestyles, etc., and which, for the Marxist (socialist, progressive, fascist) are easy pickings. Take away a person’s right to sleep in the cold and you take away his right to the pitiful bundle of possessions which he carries with him. After all, he must be saved at all costs, even if that means his free-will to choose his own destiny is destroyed in the process.
Summed up in one word: SLAVERY, or as Maltsev has described it, “…a regime of total public slavery.”
People like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Bush I, Bush II, Cheney, Trudeau, Gates, Soros, Schwab, et al., are in the game for only one thing: power and control. They do not care who lives or dies as long as they get what they want and every move they make is designed toward that end. They are self-consciously slave-masters and will never change.
On the other hand, people like Ted Rall approach this issue from a religious viewpoint. They truly believe in the underlying principle and swallow the garbage and gibberish spewed out of so many pulpits as “true gospel”. The salvation of mankind is paramount and nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of achieving this goal.
In reality, Rall’s religion is no different than that of someone who believes that Jesus Christ is coming back soon, real soon, to rescue us out of our misery and trouble by thumping his enemies with a “rod of iron” from a throne in Jerusalem. Or that Donald Trump will ride into town on his “white horse” (black limousine) and set things straight. Or that the Libertarian Party will triumph in the next election against all odds and the State will begin (shades of Marxism) to wither away. They have all subscribed to a false doctrine. They all want a savior who will take care of them and, as a consequence, have never learned how to live freely.
They never learn. They will always be slaves.
Nice try 😁
The American Way is that if the workers are happy, see, the malodorous ingrates
just do not work as hard; therefore, unemployment (“industrial reserve army”
is a (((self)))serving euphemism), immivasion and homelessness must be created [sic]
The early socialists, Big Bad Natzees ™ and paternalists (Ford) held that a healthy
worker is more productive; granted, it does not always work (though I doubt that
Fordlandia was brought down by the “no drinking, gambling or whoring” ordinance).
– So far Rall will probably agree; however I will go one up: When “Keeping up with the
Joneses” as the standard of need was laughed off the stage, a replacement was
desperately needed and Poof! Sibbyl Rites sprouted; the American Dream
is now “Getting away from the Kundelungus”, necessitating a single-family home,
two cars and three jobs; all very inefficient and very profitable; now that has run its course,
raise taxes on the middle class (never on the donors) and empower joggers to
move to the suburbs, forcing Joe Averidge Murkan to sell at a loss (guess to (((whom))) )
and move farther out necessiting four cars and seven jobs, rinse repeat.
All that is simple enough – but the population pressure is real too and there is no easy way.
I was speaking about the fact that he so viciously denigrated you and others as “idiotic anti-vaxxers.” The danger of the covid jab seems to be a huge passion in your life. Ron has completely dismissed your concerns as imaginary and foolish. And you simply go along with his accusation without a peep of protest. Ron seems to have created a community of codependent sado-masochists. Maybe he is right about you after all. You are a fool. Goodbye. I won’t interact with people with zero self-respect and who betray and contradict their own self-professed truth. You’re no truth vigilante but just truth vagary.
It’s clown world indeed, and everyone has season tickets to the circus.
MK, you’re not privy to several biting comments I wrote in response to Ron Unz – that’s because he trashed them all.
I could rewite them again in my next comment, but they won’t see the light of day – so what’s the point?
Anyway, if that’s how you feel MK, I appreciate you speaking your mind on that matter.
Look after yourself and keep fighting the good fight.
Good point; how do others deal with it – or do the US somehow
produce excess mental cases?
(Most bums I have known were divorced male alcoholics, though it wasn´t always
clear which came first).
By many indications, the US has the highest rate of mental illness of any country in the world. That goes along perfectly with its highest rate of incarceration both absolute and per capita. I think a big part of the problem is the diversity of American society: its multicultural racial ethnic and religious population causes enormous alienation. Old fashioned societies that are more homogeneous are also more caring. They have strong safety nets. The US is a gigantic plantation where people are simply resources for the enrichment of the owners in New York and the managers in DC.
Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion! (He did the same to me.)
I know you’ve poured your heart out into your controversial comments. I can only imagine how much time and effort you expend researching them and writing them up. You comment so prolifically on so many different threads that you probably lose track of what you said where. So I would suggest the following as a way of organizing your TUR comments for your own personal benefit. You can always do this via Ron’s archive of your comments, but it’s cumbersome to open up each page and search it every time. So I recommend the following to organize your material once and for all:
I think if Ron allows this comment to post, I should bow out of all future discussions, as he has repeatedly requested of me. I think I’ve pretty much shared all I can and am very grateful for the opportunity to do so at this site. I wish Ron, his contributors, and all the readers and commenters here every blessing.
And for Truth Vigilante, you have really inspired me by your tenacious devotion to speaking often unpleasant truths and to educating the rest of us.
G+D bless you in whatever do!
Mevashir / Michael Korn
Agreed, and a ctrl-f for “immigr” in Rall’s essay produces zero results. Apparently we can provide free housing for the entire world, right here in the ex-USA.
In Liberal World, the laws of supply and demand are forever suspended, and if you have millions of homeless on the streets of your cities, the solution is: 1) Import millions more 2) Blame the results on Trump 3) PROFIT
Thank you Mevashir for taking the time to spoon feed me and post that easy to follow menu.
(As you’ve no doubt already gathered, I’m a computer/tech dunce who is incapable of carrying out even the simplest of functions on my p.c).
As for your kind words, I can assure you that I have learnt much from you and the many other UR contributors who have exhibited every bit as much tenacious devotion (if not more so) to seeking out the truth and educating the UR readers.
There are only so many hours in the day, and it’s not possible to read even a fraction of the books/access info on reputable websites/watch the cutting edge videos etc, that will completely enlighten us.
To that end, I have relied on individuals* like yourself who have steered me in the right direction. Even those I’ve had disagreements with have been invaluable in sending me down rabbit holes, from where I’ve gleaned some tidbits of information that contributed to my being able to form a more complete analysis of the situation.
(*For those readers that are new to UR, these individuals I refer to are, for the most part, NOT those authors contributing article in this webzine. Yes, many of the articles are excellent and enlightening, but in most cases the really useful information comes in the links/videos/pdfs etc, posted by those in the comments section).
So don’t be one of those individuals (like I used to be who was reading the articles in UR for many years), that never cared to take the time to peruse or post a comment until the last few years.
As long as you can discern the wheat from the chaff and ignore the nonsense being posted by the usual gaggle of ZOG apologists, you’ll absorb much useful information here.
Mev, I wish you happiness and fulfillment in whatever direction your life leads.
Dear TV,
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-jewish-roots-of-the-gaza-rampage/
Today’s article by Ron I think really eviscerates ZOG on almost every conceivable level. It discusses the tyranny of Israeli power. It’s absolute capture and humiliation of the American government. And goes back to the world war II era. One of his best articles I think. I wonder if ZOG might better be represented as
I’ve mentioned this before here, but Zion in Hebrew is actually pronounced tsiyon with the TS like Tsetse fly. The Hebrew word Tsiyon means Monument or a gravestone. A gravestone in that culture was a monument meant to prevent people from walking over a dead body and also to bring honor to the deceased. The famous Mount Zion in the Hebrew Bible is really Mount Monument. Or Mount of Gravestones. Ther are two huge cemeteries in Jerusalem the Mount of Olives and the Mountain of Rest. On opposite ends of the city in the East and the west. Between the two of them are rumored to be over 2 million graves.
I mention all this because the word Zion as it is pronounced in English has a totally different connotation in Hebrew. The seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called Zayin. It means the number seven a weapon of war and in modern Israeli vernacular it’s a vulgar term for the male sex organ. It’s also used as a verb meaning to fck someone. So Zionism as it’s pronounced in English connotes this vulgar Israeli expression. Literally meaning an Ideology of Fcking Everyone Around Us.
Despite Ron’s ambivalence and hostility to the Jewish religion and Jewish culture, he has two essential Jewish traits. One is making novel discoveries (in this case novel interpretations of history). And two is as an educator sharing his discoveries far and wide by means of his website. We all have to be very grateful. Can you imagine a university level course teaching the things that are published every day at TUR? It would cost a fortune in tuition credits. Probably many of us are wondering what motivates Ron, why he spends so much time researching these obscure corners of history and then emblazing his findings across the internet. I do think he has the essential Jewish traits of a passion for research and for teaching. Unlike many people, it seems he does not want to monetize his discoveries but wants to share them far and wide for free. That’s truly an unusual and astounding approach for which we all must be grateful.
Check out this comment. See if you can discern what I am alluding to. I’m sure you can:
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-jewish-roots-of-the-gaza-rampage/#comment-6461035
Many blessings to you Truth. I’ve always wanted to visit Australia and if I manage to do so, it would be nice to meet you, perhaps at a beachfront cafe on the Gold Coast?
(My Aussie friend here in Colorado grew up in Moree and has told me about the Yiddish paradise on the Gold Coast.)
Mevashir
Dave mentions you 403 times in 2821 pages of comments. Amazingly it comes out to exactly 1 Truth citation for every seven pages of comments. 1/7. Like the Sabbath Day. A day of holiness and turning back to G+D. Can we say that 1/7th of the time Dave says something Truthful by simply citing your handle? LOL!
So it appears you have very successfully invaded his craw and rattled his cage!
Well done good and faithful servant!!!
Firstly, I’m sorry to hear about the passing of your father.
Hopefully, whilst in attendance at the funeral, some of the other family members you’ve had difficulties with (esp. your progeny), will extend an olive branch and a reconciliation of sorts will eventuate.
Meanwhile, your ‘Dialogue with the Devil’ suggestion is an excellent one, and I’ll be using that should I ever decide to publish.
As for meeting up, if and when the demise of ZOG comes to fruition, I promise you that you’ll be the first UR contributor that I’ll meet up with. However, prior to that I will be maintaining my anonymity on the internet – I don’t exchange personal details (email addresses/phone numbers etc) for security reasons.
I live in a country that does not have First Amendment freedom of speech protections so, in light of the things I’ve posted on UR and my activism elsewhere, I am compelled to adopt this stance.
So that face to face meeting may be on hold for some time.
(BTW, in case you hadn’t heard me mention it before, I’m in Sydney. That’s about 1000 km (600 miles or so from the Gold Coast), so you’re not likely to find me in the GC (I haven’t visited in over 20 years).
Lastly, thanks for the 5900 page pdf – I downloaded it a few minutes ago. (It’ll come in handy in the event that I’m banned from this webzine and my entire archival history is trashed with me).
Hi Truth. I saw a youtube commenter raise some significant Qs about Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice. I can’t locate the comment now. I wanted to repost it here for your assessment. Ron mentions Aaron in his latest essay and seems to take his action at face value and calls him a hero. One of the Qs the youtuber mentions is who uploaded Aaron’s video onto the streaming platform?
Do you see any reason to suspect Aaron as less than genuine or as a false flag propaganda ploy?
https://www.commondreams.org/news/aaron-bushnell
Mev, I was scrolling through that 5900 page pdf of my archived comments in UR (starting with the oldest ones at the very bottom and working my way upwards), and noticed that there are NO COMMENTS of mine for the period Mar.17 – Dec. 11 2021 (a nine month period where I recall posting a TON of comments).
Take the following 9/11 article from April 2021 for example (start at comment # 274 and thereafter keep scrolling down to see my considerable input in that thread alone):
https://www.unz.com/article/whats-wrong-with-conspiracy-theories/?showcomments#comments
Mev, I would rather you didn’t respond to this message of mine straight away, seeing as you have infinitely more important things to attend to in relation to your dad’s funeral.
I just thought I’d bring it to your attention. You can look into it at a time of your choosing some weeks (or months) down the track.
Okay. I see what you mean. It’s very strange. When you open up your archive it shows 5100 comments. But when you go into the little drop-down window that shows all of your comments by year, the total is 7,100 comments. So it appears that I missed all of those comments from 2021. I will get on it as soon as I can. If there’s a desktop computer at the hotel my brother is putting me up in, I can do this for you very quickly.
Shalom waSalaam
(My Aussie friend says Foster’s is overrated lousy beer. What is the best beer down under? You will owe me a pint!) 😁
I arrived in Boston. I am working at a hotel desk top computer, but unfortunately it does not have document programs. As soon as I am able, I will convert all of your comments from 2021-2022 into a second pdf file for you. They come to just over 2000 comments, consisting of 27 webpages in Ron’s archive of your comments. I see what you mean about the voluminous nature of these comments.
Here are the links to them:
I’m probably the last person you should be asking in relation to the immolation of Aaron Bushnell, as I’ve paid very little attention to it.
Because of that it never occurred to me that it could be a False Flag* or anything other than genuine.
(*A False Flag is a crime perpetrated against entity A by entity B, but evidence is left to suggest that it was perpetrated by entity C).
With that in mind, I’m not aware of any evidence to suggest Bushnell didn’t actually set himself on fire (and that he may have been set alight by a third party, whilst leaving false evidence to suggest that he did it himself).
As for your question about Aussie beer, I’m hardly a connoisseur and not a huge drinker (most of my drinking is done on social occasions).
I’d agree with your friend’s assessment of Fosters (I’m not even sure it’s sold here any more – I haven’t seen it in any pub I’ve ventured to in the last 20 years or more).
I live in the state of NSW and there is a bit of parochialism going on between the states.
Here in NSW the most common beer on tap over the decades has been Tooheys New. In the state of Victoria they claim that their brew (Victoria Bitter) is best.
In Queensland it’s XXXX Gold, Emu* Lager in Western Australia:
(*I’m not entirely sure that ‘essence of Emu’ isn’t incorporated into the taste of that Western Australian beer in the photo above, as someone once told me).
They’re all OK – nothing I’d write home about. That said, our beers are all around 4.5% -4.8% alcohol, so quite a bit stronger than those watered down beers served in the U.S.
Many a time I can be a bit of a snob and I’ll order a ‘foreign’ beer like a Corona or a Heineken. (Someone told me that the ones sold in Oz are not fully imported, but brewed here under licence from the parent company. That said, it’s the same recipe so it tastes OK and no different to the brew in the home country).
I don’t think that would work. Homeless people’s bodies are probably loaded with drugs and in some cases disease. They would not make for healthy food. Rich people would be a far more nutritious alternative. It would also be more economically viable, since their wealth, expropriated, would fund the whole operation and help lodge and heal the homeless.
from your comment “Too many people in the US & on the planet. In 1931 the world’s population was 1.5 billion, now there’s 7-8 billion….”
Guess what. THAT is the reason for “climate change.”
All those billions of people require food, housing, etc. which requires more more more industrialization, etc. When climate activists and supporting media complain about industrialization causing climate problems, the industrialization was caused by the massive population growth.
If several billion people disappeared tomorrow, there would be NO climate problems. But No one is going to disappear though.
What caused the massive population growth? F-u-c-k-i-n-g!
All forms of media has been encouraging irresponsible sexual activity for years, years, years!
Bottom line: Irresponsible sexual activity (encouraged by various media) is the real base reason for climate change!!!
MK, looks like the link in your comment # 37 covers the missing bits from the pdf you sent me originally.
And the link in comment # 38 appears to be the combined total of everything up to March 2024.
All good then MK. That covers everything.
Thanks for taking the time to do that for me my friend. That’s one I owe you.
Truth,
Glad to hear from you again. I was worrying about the long pause in communication and wondering if maybe you got offed below the barrier reef if that’s how the Aussie Mob behaves…
Honestly it was a privilege for me to do this. And in truth all Unz readers OWE YOU for your dedication to ferreting out and informing us of the truth.
I know some truthful people (eg they won’t lie cheat or steal) but no People of Truth. You and a few others (like Emergent Majority and Iris) on this site comprise my academy of truth seekers and truth tellers and I am forever grateful to Ron Unz for providing us this forum to educate and encourage each other.
I completed my project on Saturday, on the last day of my trip to Boston for my father’s funeral. It was an amazing trip that left me with many impressions. I will be writing them up in the next few days, and maybe I will share them with you here via a Google Cloud link.
I wanted to finish my project with your comments in Boston for a few reasons. Boston is a fabulous city, home to more colleges and universities than anywhere in America and probably the world. Just breathing the air is edifying. Probably at any given time in the city half the people on the sidewalks are college students and professors. The city has undergone a building boom and is frankly gorgeous. But it’s also incredibly expensive and only the privileged few can afford to live there or even vacation there. My brother got us an affordable hotel near the airport that was still about $300 per night. He told me hotels in Boston go for as much as $800 per night. I’ve read that Boston has benefited more than any other place from the flow of cash unleashed after 9/11 and the GWOT. Many think tanks, cyber-security firms, and other elements of what you call MISSS are located there. It’s obvious that Boston has profited from the global misery created by the US since 9/11. So that’s a BIG part of the reason I wanted to finish this project of compiling your Truth Discourses there!
Also your total comments came to over 7000 on over 7000 pdf pages and I completed this on Saturday the Jewish Sabbath, the Seventh Day.
Sunday was Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston which is a BIG event. Saturday we saw police barricades going up all over town. There was a cluster around the public library I used to finish your compilation. Boston Chicago and New York probably take Saint Patty’s Day most seriously. The masters of our society have learned how to foster these cultural expressions while they manipulate things from behind the scenes to all of our detriment. So I felt both admiration and disgust to see these preparations. In the hotel two lovely lasses from Eire got off the elevator and allowed my brother and me to enjoy briefly their beautiful Irish accents. But they too are clueless about what’s goes on behind closed doors.
So these are just some of my reasons for finishing your project up in Boston, a beautiful smart and talented city that may be the greatest beneficiary of the dirty MISSS money pouring forth since 9/11.
Wishing you every blessing and success in your life endeavors.
Mevashir
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/01/why-its-so-hard-to-end-homelessness-in-america/
I saw this very sobering article on homelessness. As someone who’s had direct experience with it, I have a rather radical solution. Unless family members intervene, I don’t think there’s any way to help homeless people. Society simply helps some tread water and stops them from sinking but doesn’t reverse their situation at all. Meanwhile it drains resources and maintains their blight in the commons.
I think the homeless should be rounded up into FEMA camps and then provided all the drugs and alcohol they wish until they OD and die. And then they can be cremated Auschwitz style. It sounds horrible but the homeless people are a failure of love and there’s no way society at large can provide what their families won’t.
If I was a benevolent dictator, I would go about it another way.
I’d forcibly conscript them into ‘work battalions’ and place them in remote locations far away from society/townships etc, so that they could not sneak off easily and go AWOL, thereafter reverting to their old ways.
There they would get sober and be taught life skills/engage in manual labour in group activities, thus developing some camaraderie between each other.
These new friendships they’ve made will replace those families that have abandoned them.
Importantly, once they’ve regained some semblance of self esteem, they can be assimilated back into the community and hopefully lead productive lives.
I had a similar concept of housing them in work camps and dressing them in uniforms and having them do rudimentary work around town. I hadn’t thought of the problem of them sneaking off, as you put it. It would be like the CCC program during the Great Depression.
But the problem is that many of them are addicts alcoholics and mentally ill. Especially the older ones are not capable of reform and constantly drain resources. Their presence is a blight on communities. I don’t understand why they have a “right” to camp out on streets and in parks paid for by the property taxes of residents. These places are public venues but not to the extent of allowing invaders to destroy them.
That’s why I think they must be euthanized, but in a gentle way by allowing them to drug themselves into oblivion.