bigleaguepolitics--2019-12-16--WTF: Church of Sweden to Remove Homosexual Orgy Mural Due to Fears It May Be Transphobic

The Church of Sweden recently unveiled a mural at the St. Paul’s church in Malmö modeled after the Garden of Eden that featured a homosexual orgy with a transgender individual depicted as a serpent holding an apple. This blasphemous display was presented prominently in the church in the name of diversity.  But now, it is being removed for alleged transphobia because the transgender individual being pictured as the snake is considered offensive.  Trending: Meet the Female Georgia Republican Who Plans to Dismantle Planned Parenthood  take our poll - story continues below  The degenerates at Out magazine explain the controversy:  The Church of Sweden has reportedly removed its LGBTQ+ inclusive altarpiece over fears it may be perceived as anti-trans. The issue stems from a depiction in which a transgender person is holding a snake — a figure which, in the Bible, is a stand-in for Satan. While the Church of Sweden claimed that the fact that there “are two gay couples in the artwork is completely uncontroversial,” it feared the altarpiece, which was displayed in St. Paul’s Church in Malmö, could be mistaken as an endorsement of transphobia. “[T]here is a snake, which traditionally stands for evil,” the church said in a statement, “and that it also turns into a trans person means it could be interpreted that a trans person is evil or the devil. The Church of Sweden certainly cannot stand for that.” A pastor with St. St. Paul’s Church added that the artwork has been removed from the main room and relocated, claiming “it has too many unanswered questions.” “I would like to emphasise that this has nothing to do with where Church of Sweden stands on the [LGBTQ+]issues, which we work tirelessly on,” the church leader claimed in a statement.  This has happened because the Swedish people have largely abandoned Christianity and God, and they are among the most secular nations on Earth.  The Local reported in 2015 that “almost eight out of ten Swedes are either ‘not religious’ or ‘convinced atheists’, according to a new global study that concludes the Nordic nation is the least religious in the West.”  “Swedes’ beliefs contrast dramatically with the vast majority of most other nationalities on the planet, with more than six out of ten people surveyed across 65 different countries describing themselves as ‘religious,’” the site continued.  Abandoning the truth of Christ has left Sweden rife for conquest, and Muslim “refugees” commit crimes with relative impunity as diverse liberal leaders open the borders to these third-world invaders.  Judith Bergman of the Gatestone Institute reported that there were 120 bombings in Sweden from the start of 2019 to the end of July. Killings have doubled since 2014, and sexual abuse rates have tripled over the same time period. Half of the country’s unemployed population were born outside Sweden, and they are quickly swelling the nation’s welfare rolls.  Having abandoned Christianity, it seems Sweden has lost God’s favor and is headed toward societal collapse.


breitbart--2019-04-23--Another French Church Burns on Easter Sunday Probable Arson

Another French Church Burns on Easter Sunday, Probable Arson

The fire was started in a large, wooden confessional around 4:30pm and proceeded to consume a dais in the presbytery of the eighteenth-century church located in the southern French town of Eyguières, near Provence.  “Flames several meters high were coming out of the church,” said the mayor of Eyguières, Henri Pons, before a team of 30 firefighters with six vehicles arrived and managed to contain the blaze.  An area of some 20 square meters in the church was destroyed but observers have noted that the damage would have been far worse had it not been it not for the bold intervention of a local inhabitant.  A man who lives in front of the church saw the flames emerging from a stained-glass window, the mayor said. He “used fire extinguishers from the village movie theater and courageously entered the church while waiting for firefighters to arrive.”  “If this brave citizen, a former top sportsman, had not intervened, the church would probably have burned to the ground,” the mayor reported. “It was Easter Sunday and there was almost nobody in the village.”  The local hero, a judo champion by the name of Joel Jouve, said afterward that the air in the church was “unbreathable” and there was very little light when he entered, but he was able to find two holy water fonts, which he emptied onto the fire.  “I shouted for someone to find me fire extinguishers and I used them on the fire,” he said, adding he was just happy to have “saved something.”  According to the local parish priest, the Catholic community is still in shock.  “After Notre-Dame in Paris and especially the attacks in Sri Lanka, this fire moved the faithful who were preparing to celebrate the joy of Easter,” said Father Christophe Nowak. “They are in shock and messages of support have been arriving.”  “It is an ordeal but life must go on,” the priest said.  An investigation has been opened to determine the causes of the fire, enlisting the assistance of experts from the Gendarmerie Scientifique. Investigators are treating the blaze as arson.  A dozen Catholic churches were desecrated across France over the period of just one week this past March and the recent spate of church profanations has puzzled both police and ecclesiastical leaders.


breitbart--2019-11-24--Virginia Church Turns Neglected House into Home for Women Veterans

Members of a Baptist church in Hampton, Virginia, unveiled a remodeled home for women veterans on Saturday after spending three years renovating the formerly neglected space.  The West End Baptist Church in Hampton saved $25,000 to go towards renovations to transform the space into what is now the Victory House, a transitional space for women veterans, 13News Now reported.  “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your love and your giving, cause it was your giving that made this happen,” said Pastor Paul Thomas during the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday.  The Victory House will not only provide women recently transitioning out of the military into civilian life an affordable place to live, it will also provide them with job training and access to medical care with the Hampton VA Medical Center three miles away.  The women will only have to pay $500 a month to access the home and its services. WAVY reported that the house hopes to start accepting residents on December 1.  “A lot of times, once [veteran women] they’re released from the military, they don’t even know where to get resources…they don’t know where to start,” said Vernissa Thomas, the church’s first lady and the person behind the idea of Victory House.  Vice Mayor of Hampton Jimmy Gray thanked the congregation for their work in lifting these women veterans out of poverty.  “Many [veteran women] fall on hard times and need a hand to lift them up and put them in a better position so that they can continue living a productive life, and I think that’s what this home is gonna do by providing a place to live and helping veterans make a transition and get the services they need,” said Gray.


breitbart--2019-12-14--Not Woke Enough: Swedish Church Removes Gay Painting, Not Pro-Trans

The St. Pauli church in Malmö has removed a controversial LGBT painting from its altar in case viewers see the transgender individuals as being associated with evil.  While many have criticised the LGBT painting in the church, according to pastor Per Svensson, the painting will be moved to another area not because of conservative backlash but because of its portrayal of transgender individuals, SVT reports.  Pastor Svensson said that the gay couples in the painting were not a problem for the church at all, but the possible association of transgender people with the snake of the Garden of Eden, a symbol of temptation and evil, was not something he could stand for.  “At first I did not realise the complexity, but upon closer reflection and careful discussion with the management, there is no alternative but to move the board from the church room,” he said.  Bishop of Lund, Johan Tyrberg, weighed in on the issue, saying that the painting could be interpreted as being both pro-LGBT and as being anti-LGBT depending on the perspective of the person viewing it.  He went on to add that the church should have discussed the painting with the County Administrative Board before hanging it above the church altar.  “It would have been appropriate to make the decisions first and then hang the painting,” he said.  The hanging and subsequent removal of the painting is part of a trend in the Swedish church of being one of the most “progressive” and pro-LGBT churches in the world, with its own Stockholm archbishop Eva Brunne being an open lesbian.  Archbishop Brunne, along with several other senior clergy, has also expressed very pro-Islam views, to the extent that Brunne claimed earlier this year that she had more in common with Muslims than with conservative Christians.  In 2015, Brunne even went as far as asking Stockholm churches to removes crosses from their walls and set up Muslim prayer spaces during the height of the migrant crisis.


breitbart--2019-12-30--Pastor at Texas Church Thankful Congregants Could Defend Themselves: ‘There Is Evil in This World’

The pastor at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, where a man shot two parishioners to death before he was killed by an armed member of the congregation, said he is thankful for the state law that allowed the church to protect itself.  “I’m thankful our government has allowed us the opportunity to protect ourselves,” Britt Farmer said.  He also said that protection is needed because, “There is evil in this world.”  Farmer announced the church would be gathering on Monday night to continue the service that was cut short by the attack.  “We lost two great men today but it could have been a lot worse,” Farmer said. “Today is one sermon I will never preach. It was called ‘Leaving a Legacy,’ and two men today left a legacy.”  The Daily Caller reported the Texas Department of Public Safety Director described the armed members quick response as “heroic” and “miraculous.”  “The citizens who were inside that church undoubtedly saved 242 other parishioners, and that might get swept aside,” Jeoff Williams said. “It was miraculous. The true heroes in all this are the people who were sitting in those pews today and responded, the immediate responders … it was truly heroic.”  Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the incident only lasted six seconds thanks to the church’s volunteer security team members, a team formed after the passage of the state law that allows licensed gun owners to carry weapons inside houses of worship.  “Two of the parishioners who are volunteers on the security force drew their weapons and took out the killer immediately, saving untold number of lives,” Patrick said.  Authorities have not identified the victims or the shooter, according to CNN.


buzzfeed--2019-04-23--Inside The San Diego Church Where ICE And Border Patrol Bring Pregnant Women

For years, ICE and Border Patrol dropped off pregnant women at Christ Ministry Center. Now, as a record number of families are overwhelming the border, the church is overcrowded and being shut down.  SAN DIEGO — Around 2 a.m., about 17 hours after she crossed the border, Rose couldn’t wait any longer. The baby was coming and a cell full of people was not where she wanted to have her child. She banged on the door. When the officials came she told them what was happening and they brought her to the hospital. When she got there they said she was two centimeters dilated; she was already in labor. Soon after she had a son, a US citizen. Two days later, as she was recovering from childbirth with a tiny newborn in her arms, the hospital couldn’t keep her there anymore. She couldn’t be taken back to detention in her state; it was February and pouring buckets of rain, an aberration in Southern California — putting her out onto the streets with her newborn could have put them at risk. But she didn’t have any family in the US and had nowhere to tell them she wanted to go. So Customs and Border Protection called up the Christ Ministry Center in San Diego and told them they had another one.  When you walk around the church you can see pregnant women lounging on pews and chairs, cooking with their bellies up against the stove, brand-new mothers nursing newborns on their bunk beds in the makeshift dorms. According to the ministry’s founder and reverend, Pastor Bill Jenkins, 24 babies have been born to women seeking asylum living in the church in the past year — about one every two weeks. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m running a shelter or running a maternity ward,” Jenkins likes to joke. Christ Ministry Center is the only long-term shelter in San Diego for people seeking asylum, despite the city sitting next to one of the busiest border crossings in the country. Most people crossing the border into the US have a plan for where they will go, but those who don’t, don’t have the money to get there, or need to stay in the area for their court dates end up staying in places like this church shelter or risk ending up living on the streets. The shelter has a close relationship with CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jenkins told BuzzFeed News (and ICE and CBP confirmed). From its start the shelter was a place that favored taking in families, but soon it became a place that immigration authorities knew they could drop detained pregnant women and new mothers, especially those with no family or place to go in the US. “I’m on their speed dial. I’m not kidding you. I am on ICE and Customs and Border Patrol’s speed dial,” Jenkins said, speaking from his office in the church, where a stained glass window depicting Jesus kneeling before a rock in prayer glowed behind his desk. “I get calls sometimes at 2 o’clock in the morning telling me they’re bringing around a new pregnant woman. And we almost always say yes.”  An Obama-era policy prevented ICE from detaining pregnant women, but in December 2017, that policy was repealed by President Donald Trump. As a result, several women told BuzzFeed News in July that they had had miscarriages while in ICE custody and faced other mistreatment that threatened their pregnancies. And the number of women having miscarriages in ICE detention has nearly doubled since Trump took office, the Daily Beast reported, a statistic that medical workers and immigrant rights groups attribute to the higher volume of pregnant women in detention as well as the harsh conditions they often face there. It is still ICE policy to not hold pregnant women in their third trimester “except in extraordinary circumstances” (though there have been several reports of this policy being violated). In recent months, families have been crossing the border at a higher rate than ever before, and ICE has been emptying out family detention centers into border cities. Similarly, pregnant women — alone or with their partners and other children — are seemingly crossing in higher numbers as well. CBP told BuzzFeed News that it doesn’t have available data on whether more pregnant women have been crossing recently, but immigration lawyers, immigrant rights organizers, and medical workers who work at the border told BuzzFeed News that starting in 2016, they noticed an uptick in the proportion of pregnant women seeking asylum, and definitely an increase in them being detained. For many who entered the US at the San Ysidro border crossing, less than 20 miles from downtown San Diego, and had nowhere else to go, they’ve ended up here, at Christ Ministry Center. The church and the few other long-term shelters like it in other border cities have already become overwhelmed and overcrowded. That problem is slated to get worse. In late March, a Border Patrol official told BuzzFeed News that the agency was planning on releasing recently apprehended immigrant families into San Diego, among other border cities. As of last Thursday, 13,200 families crossing the border have been released by ICE into San Diego since the beginning of the year, ICE told BuzzFeed News in an email last week. “The sheer volume of family units crossing the border has overwhelmed ICE’s limited transportation resources, combined with a requirement to detain these individuals for no more than 20 days, the agency has no option but to expeditiously arrange for their release,” an ICE spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an email on April 11. “ICE makes every attempt to coordinate the release of these individuals with NGOs that provide assistance with basic needs, but the heavy influx in recent months has inundated these organizations as well.” So inundated, in fact, that Christ Ministry Center is being shut down. In January, the San Diego fire marshal told the center that its residential areas were overcrowded and not up to code: There were between 50 and 80 people living in spaces meant to fit only a few people and that weren’t designed to be slept in. The building didn’t have sprinklers or fire exits, so if a fire started, the rooms would be a death trap. The dozens of residents had to be moved out of the apartments immediately; they moved bunk beds into the health clinics and offices in the main building and set up cots in the “social hall” where the kitchen is. The staff started making plans for a full closure for the end of March, when Jenkins said most of the residents would have to move for good.  Despite being overwhelmed, Jenkins and the shelter’s head coordinator, Jimmy Marcelin, said that ICE sending them families and pregnant women is a positive thing. “Any way you look at it, [detaining pregnant women] is mistreatment,” Marcelin said. “If you have pregnant women inside the detention cell for at least two, three days without [enough] food, without showers, without proper hygiene, it hurts the baby. You know, some of them I have to rush them to the hospital [to give birth] when they get here.” The births are often premature, Marcelin said. Throughout the week the shelter was closing, staff expressed angst at what would happen to the apparent influx of asylum-seekers in their absence.   “The detention facilities are about to burst open, so where are these folks gonna go?” Jenkins said in his Mississippi accent. “And the fact we’re closing this shelter down, we’ve got to find another way to make up for those beds and even expand to a greater capacity. We just have to.”  Christ Ministry Center’s small, Spanish-style church and shelter is located roughly 20 minutes from the busy San Ysidro border crossing. The church is home to three single-room medical clinics, which help treat pregnant and postpartum women released from ICE and CBP custody. They share the space with more than a dozen congregations that hold services for different denominations in a variety of languages within the cramped quarters of the church. Most days music is coming from one of the two chapels, and asylum-seekers filter in and out of the large, cool rooms, attending services or listening to the songs.   Twelve of the shelter’s remaining residents, all pregnant or mothers of babies and young kids, spoke with BuzzFeed News during the week of transition at the shelter. Most of them said that they did not know where they were going next, weren’t sure when they officially had to leave, and were scared or upset about being pushed out of this place they had lived for weeks or months. “We don’t know where we’re going to go,” a resident of the shelter told BuzzFeed News while cooking a stew in the large kitchen of a neighboring church. She was there with five other women, laughing, talking, and cooking food for the whole shelter, sauce bubbling on the large industrial stove. Two of the women chopped vegetables rhythmically by the large, bright windows; three were elbow-deep in large pots of delicious-smelling pork, marinated the way they said they used to do it in Haiti. “No one has told us much, and we are worried because we have small kids,” one of the women, a 33-year-old named Fleury, said, gesturing toward the row of children. Her kids were 7 and 2 years old, she said. At one point during her long trip to cross into the US, she walked for seven days holding her youngest child in her arms. He is getting bigger by the week now — too big to do that again. The women told BuzzFeed News their kids had made friends since they’d moved into the Christ Ministry Center and they had managed to find a community of other people from their countries in the same situation as them. Some of them had distant relatives they didn’t want to rely on for help, but others, like Rose, said they had no family in the US at all. “I’m scared because I don’t have anyone,” Rose, a 38-year-old with fuchsia-tipped curls, told BuzzFeed News, her tiny newborn asleep in her arms. “I must leave by March 31, but I still don’t know where I’m going. There are people here that have family and they are going there, but that’s not my case.” “I can’t sleep at night,” she added, tears coming to her eyes. “Sometimes I feel crazy, like I walk with no direction.” One woman, who asked not to be named, was in her third trimester of pregnancy and said she was worried about what would happen if she had to leave the shelter with nowhere to go before she gave birth. Another, Charienne Noèl, was only a few months pregnant when she crossed, but came with her 14-year-old and 9-year-old. Noèl was not detained, but wanted to find a steady living situation before she had her third child. “We won’t kick these women onto the streets,” Marcelin told BuzzFeed News. “They’re women with small children; we can’t. We’ll find a place.”  As the women cooked, discussing the food in Creole, their kids sat in rows on the countertops, swinging their legs, eating arepas, and chatting in Spanish tinged with Haitian accents. The families had been living and traveling in Spanish-speaking countries for so long before reaching the US that some of the kids had only known Central or South America as their home. For most of them, Spanish had become their go-to language, even when surrounded by fellow Haitians. All the women at the church who agreed to speak to BuzzFeed News were from Haiti, but generally the shelter’s population was about 30% Haitian, 30% South and Central American, 30% West African, and 10% Russian and Ukrainian, Jenkins said. The residents are wary of American strangers, even new volunteers working to help with the move, because of a group that the staff have begun to refer to as “the haters.” Taped up all over the shelter were printed-out pictures from the social media accounts of a woman and a man (one selfie and one of them together, Instagram filters turning their eyes into hearts). These were two of “the haters”: anti-immigrant protesters who show up to the shelter and walk right in, the staff said, videotaping the asylum-seekers and posting the videos online for their thousands of followers. “The haters” often claim the shelter’s residents are in the country illegally and living off their tax dollars, the staff said. (All the residents of the shelter are legally seeking asylum, and the shelter does not receive local or federal funding.) Some “haters” have even physically vandalized shelter property or the lawns of pastors associated with the church, Ginger Jacobs, an immigration attorney who works with the church, told BuzzFeed News. Marcelin showed BuzzFeed News the Facebook profiles of some of the most active “haters.” In one post, a woman stood outside the gates calling the refugees “invaders” and referring to an “infestation.” One man wrote about the shelter on his Facebook page, saying, “If you need to shoot an immigrant, go here.” The threats echo the kind of violence and racism that many of the women said led them to the US and Christ Ministry Center in the first place. All the women who spoke to BuzzFeed News traveled for months, through up to eight countries, by boat, bus, and by foot, sometimes walking through the night with their young children, paying guides money wired to them by friends and family, often not knowing where they would go next or how long they would be traveling for. Oselie Franely, a 35-year-old mother of two young children, like many of the other women, said she fled Haiti after the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and ended up in Venezuela. Others said they, along with tens of thousands of displaced Haitians, went to Brazil where their husbands worked to help construct the Olympic stadiums for low wages. In the past few years, as the political and economic turmoil in those countries came to a head, the families started to plan to flee again. As immigrants in Brazil and Venezuela, they experienced racism, violence, and persecution, the women told BuzzFeed News. For many, it was impossible to find work, they didn’t have enough to eat, and they started feeling targeted by gangs and police. “They were all racist in Venezuela, all racist.” Franely told BuzzFeed News. She said her neighbors would try to steal their food and money all day and night, “Only because I was black.” “They scared me at night,” she said. “They started scaring my kids too. So we left.” Franely, and three of the other women who spoke to BuzzFeed News, had only arrived in the US after the shelter announced it was closing.  The church sheltered its first refugees almost 10 years ago. A Haitian band that had angered their government with a music video questioning killings by police fled to the US and found the church, seeking refuge and a place to play and worship. Jenkins took them in, and lead singer–turned-pastor Jean Elise Durandisse started up the Haitian Methodist Ministry, now the church’s primary congregation. About a year later, when the earthquake hit, he and his bandmates worked with Jenkins to take in those fleeing and help send resources back home. Over time, more and more immigrants seeking asylum showed up at Christ Ministry Center’s doors. By the spring of 2016, the number of refugees seeking asylum at the church began to quickly increase from dozens to hundreds to thousands. Shelter staff told BuzzFeed News the immigrants were telling their friends crossing the border to put Christ Ministry Center down as their sponsor and tell ICE they were going there. Durandisse and Marcelin both said they had been told by shelter residents that people were writing the shelter’s name and address in public bathrooms on the common smuggling route across Central and South America taken by Haitian migrants. “ICE would bring two or three buses a day, at least 200 people a day for months,” Marcelin said about the summer of 2016. They would sleep on the pews in the church and on the stage in the social room. Just before the 2016 presidential election, the influx slowed down. Former president Barack Obama had ended Haitians’ protected status in the US, enabling their deportation for the first time since the earthquake, and the shelter started seeing fewer refugees — but a larger proportion from other countries — come through. During that time, Christ Ministry Center was one of the only shelters or churches taking in migrants in the whole city. Since then, Jenkins has formed the Safe Harbors Network, a nonprofit organization that connects with other churches and private homes to help house immigrants who have nowhere to go and need long-term shelter, but cannot work until their asylum claims are processed. Those places usually only accept one or two families at a time, however. By the week the shelter was supposed to close, there were only a few dozen shelter residents left. There was a rush to transfer those remaining refugees out of the shelter to safe homes with whatever friends and families they had in the US. Some of them had finally gotten in touch with distant relatives they hadn’t managed to reach before, or decided to reach out to people they had resisted calling because they didn’t want to be a burden on them. Multiple times a day, shelter staff members would poke their heads into one another’s offices and ask permission to buy plane tickets for more residents to fly to the house of some relatives in another state. Then they’d put them in a cab or take them to the airport in the ministry van. But for those who had no friends or family in the US or who had to stay in San Diego for their court dates, no one at the shelter really seemed to know what would happen next. And still, immigration authorities kept showing up almost every day, bringing more pregnant women and families seeking shelter.  Jenkins will likely still be getting those calls even after the shelter closes, several members of the staff told BuzzFeed News. Jenkins plans for the church to remain operating as an intake center and provide refugees with aid and food, just not beds. Jacobs, the attorney who also serves on Safe Harbors’ board, works closely with ICE and CBP. She said they used to regularly collaborate with local NGOs on making sure people released by ICE or CBP on parole had a place to go, but ever-changing, unclear orders from the White House have recently caused a breakdown in the relationship. “This past winter it seems they threw up their hands and were like, ‘Okay, well we’re not gonna do that social work anymore,’ and just started dumping them onto the streets.” The majority of asylum-seekers released on parole are under an order of supervision by ICE, Jacobs said, and those orders usually require consistent check-ins with your local ICE office, or notifying ICE if you are changing cities. Shelters usually help asylum-seekers interpret the complicated stack of documents and directions given to them by ICE, which are often not in their language. “If they’re released onto the streets they’re gonna have a really hard time knowing what’s going on, and could violate the order without realizing it,” she said. In a statement sent to BuzzFeed News, ICE confirmed the existence of a new policy called the “Yuma Plan”; ICE said it informed local immigration NGOs about the policy in October. “The plan represented a change in policy due to the high volume of family units continuing to cross the border daily and ICE’s limited detention space for families,” the statement read. “The NGOs at the meeting were advised that ICE would no longer review post-release plans for families apprehended along the southwest border.” For the incoming wave of families, and anyone the shelter can’t relocate in time for the closure, Jenkins is betting on getting approval from the city to take over a large, remote, up-to-code facility that could potentially sleep more than 400 people. Jenkins asked BuzzFeed News to withhold identifying details on the sites they are considering, due to threats from the “haters.” However, the week following the original closure date for the shelter, representatives for the city government of San Diego told BuzzFeed News that this location was by no means a sure thing, that they had only just received the first of several required application materials from the shelter, and that they could not say how long the application and transfer process could take. Another, closer space— a decrepit, echoey, and strangely carpeted indoor basketball court belonging to an affiliated church — was also an option, but they still needed approval from the fire marshal to start making renovations to section it off, soundproof it, and make it fit for dozens of people to sleep in. It was clear: There was mounting risk that these pregnant women and families with tiny infants would find themselves living on the street.  By April, the date the shelter was supposed to close had come and gone, and dozens of the shelter’s residents, including Rose, were still there. Stacks of plastic bags and suitcases lined the wall of the back alley of the church, and mothers spent much of the day unpacking and repacking them, trying to find clothes or toys for their kids.   In a phone call with government staff for the city of San Diego in early April, the city’s deputy chief operating officer, Robert Vacchi, told BuzzFeed News that the shelter in fact had until May to close the shelter. Jenkins told BuzzFeed News that they chose to try to close the shelter a month early in order to “force the situation,” to get other churches and shelters to step up to help, but also to make sure they had enough time to sort out where everyone was going to go. “We were gonna have to close down sooner or later, we just chose to close them sooner, to bite the bullet now, and in some ways force the situation, you know what I’m saying?” Jenkins said in his office, the day after the shelter’s supposed closing date. “We forced the issue. On both ourselves and the city. You know, ‘Hey, these folks are going to the streets if something doesn’t happen.’” When asked if he thought that was dangerous, he said yes. “Very dangerous. And inhumane. Which goes against everything I’ve fought for the past 50 years and in ministry, but what else can you do,” he responded, sounding more subdued than he had at the beginning of the week. “There comes a point where I have to look out for the welfare of what’s going on in this building. The fire marshal could close down the whole building, not just the immigrant part of it. There are 12 congregations here, there are three medical clinics here, there’s a food ministry here. All those could be affected.” Just then, Durandisse knocked on the door, saying he had managed to get in touch with some distant relatives for one of the families and was hoping the shelter could buy them a plane ticket to go live with them. Jenkins approved the purchase, then sat back and sighed, looking at his hands. “Yeah. So they’re going to be in a better place,” Jenkins said quietly. “I think we’re going to land well. I have a feeling we’re going to have a soft landing on this.”●


cbsnews--2019-05-05--Biden goes to church in South Carolina where voters say they want a fighter

Biden goes to church in South Carolina, where voters say they want a fighter

West Columbia, S.C. — At a private fundraiser in South Carolina on Saturday, former Vice President Joe Biden gave President Trump a nickname of his own: "Clown."  On Sunday morning, congregants at the early service at the Brookland Baptist Church here said they're looking for a Democrat who is strong enough to take on Mr. Trump in the general election.  While the pews were undoubtedly packed with those seeking spiritual fulfillment, two attendees shifted the conversation to politics before the prayers. Biden and Dr. Jill Biden sat in the front row of the large church, which was filled almost entirely by black congregants.  Pamela Andrews Hutto, a 66-year-old retired English teacher, said her No. 1 issue is beating Mr. Trump.  "Trump is destroying America," Hutto said. "There is so much hatred now. I see it."  "I see it where people would keep their mouths closed years ago, but they feel free to talk about them because he does," she added.  Allen Green, 56, said Biden can "straighten out" the president.  "[Biden] said he wanted to take him out to the barn and I think [Mr. Trump] might need a nice little barn-settling," Green said, referring to the Biden's statement last year that he would have "beat the hell out" of the president for his comments about women.  Marie Jackson, 64, said she does not view the president as "for the people."  "I think he could be a little easier on the people. I don't think the wall needs to be up," Jackson said, referring to Mr. Trump's promised border wall.  Since announcing his candidacy in late April, Biden's stump speech has regularly included denunciations of Mr. Trump's conduct, particularly the president's reaction to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.  During Sunday's service, Rev. Charles B. Jackson Sr. recognized a Christian student athlete who is heading to Iowa State on an athletic scholarship and a group of young female entrepreneurs. He then acknowledged the former vice president, and the congregation reacted with excitement — the women ushers dressed in all white cheered, while several others jumped with delight.  Jackson told Biden, who is Catholic, that while he is not the first candidate to attend services here, he received a "pretty major" applause compared to the others. Kendall Corley, the Biden campaign's South Carolina state director, is a member of Brookland Baptist.  There were a few congregants who told CBS News it is more important for candidates to focus their campaigns on specific policies.  Michael Jackson, 47, said his top concern is affordable universal health care, and he is considering supporting Biden, Sen. Cory Booker or Sen. Kamala Harris. Other congregants, like 73-year-old Wille Wilson, said she hoped the Trump administration's tax cuts would be repealed — she said her tax refund this year was $300 less than last year.  This is Biden's first trip to the Palmetto state since announcing his third bid for the presidency on April 25. He held one rally and a private fundraiser here.  After praying and clapping along to the choir music with the congregants, Biden told reporters outside the church that South Carolina is "critical" for his campaign.


cnsnews--2019-05-01--Phoenixs St Joseph Catholic Church Destroyed by Fire on Feast of St Joseph

Phoenix’s St. Joseph Catholic Church Destroyed by Fire on Feast of St. Joseph

As parishioners prepared to celebrate their church’s 50th anniversary, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Phoenix, Arizona, was destroyed by a fire on Wednesday - the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker.  No one was injured and the cause of the fire is under investigation, the Diocese of Phoenix reported in a statement Wednesday:  “This morning we awoke to the tragic news of the fire at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Phoenix. The Phoenix Fire Department is investigating the fire. The church building was destroyed and there were no injuries. We will have more to share as it becomes available. “We are heartbroken for the St. Joseph Catholic community and we are grateful for the bravery of the fire fighters and first responders. “There are tentative plans to celebrate Masses somewhere on the church property this weekend. “Today on this feast day of St. Joseph the Worker, we ask the community to join us in prayer.”  “The church was going to celebrate its 50th anniversary jubilee in just a few months,” local Fox 10 news reports. “St. Joseph Parish was established by Bishop Francis Green of Tucson on August 18, 1969. Fr. John Cullinan was appointed as the first pastor,” the church’s website says. “Sunday masses were first held in the cafeteria of Paradise Valley High School for about 300 families.”  In an interview with Fox 10, Fr. Fred Adamson expressed gratitude to the other local Christian communities that have offered their support:  Catholics celebrate the annual Feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1.


dailyheraldchicago--2019-09-11--Arlington Heights church sees religious meaning in adding solar panels

With its installation of 272 solar panels set to be complete in a week, Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Arlington Heights is making significant strides in its efforts to be more green.  For church leaders like Operations Officer Jim Valentine, the work has not only financial benefits, but also religious significance.  "We've done this because of our overall emphasis on caring for God's earth, of being an example for all of the Arlington Heights community," Valentine said.  The project follows Our Savior's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and move to renewable energy. The church has transitioned to LED fixtures exclusively and replaced all its appliances with Energy Star products.  Its members recycle not only typical paper waste but also items like toothpaste dispensers, cosmetic containers and cereal bags.  The solar panels going up on the church's roof are the "icing on the cake," Valentine said.  The solar panel project will cost about $200,000, some of which was obtained through a fundraiser allowing donors to purchase panels. Half the cost will be paid through solar renewable energy credits over five years.  Valentine said energy savings -- about 50 percent current costs -- will make the panels worth it.  They also will help reduce the church's carbon footprint by 80 tons a year, he said.


dailyheraldchicago--2019-11-08--Chilean Catholic church looted by vandals as protests rage

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Hooded protesters looted a Roman Catholic church Friday near the main gathering site for three weeks of mass protests against Chile's government over inequality.  An Associated Press photographer witnessed people dragging church pews, statues of Jesus and other religious iconography from La Asuncion church onto the street and setting them on fire. Ashes spread to Santiago's Plaza Italia square where thousands were chanting and holding banners, while others turned on the lights on their cellphones and waved Chilean national flags.  Smoke also billowed from the nearby headquarters of Pedro de Valdivia University, though it wasn't known if protesters started the fire. Authorities said they were still investigating the cause.  Most of the protests over the past 22 days have been peaceful, but some have turned violent. Some rock-throwing demonstrators have been clashing with riot police, who respond with tear gas and water cannons.  The unrest began last month over a subway fare hike with students jumping turnstiles in protest. Demonstrations then erupted into clashes, looting and arson and the movement spread nationwide with a broad range of demands, including improvements in education, health care and a widely criticized pension system in one of Latin America's richest, but most socially unequal countries.  "We still haven't achieved anything, so we're going to keep protesting," said 17-year-old student Ginette PÃ©rez, who joined the crowds flooding the streets Friday.  At least 20 people have died and an estimated 2,500 have been injured in the protests, which also forced the cancellation of two major international summits in Santiago.  Associated Press writer Patricia Luna contributed to this report.


21stcenturywire--2019-07-03--Interview Fukushima is an Ongoing Global Radiological Catastrophe A Huge Coverup

Interview: ‘Fukushima is an Ongoing Global Radiological Catastrophe – A Huge Coverup’

The following is a transcript of the 8th anniversary Fukushima, with an interview between Global Research host Michael Welsh and Dr. Helen Caldicott, first published on March 21, 2019  The eight year anniversary of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility passed mostly without comment in mainstream media circles. In spite of ongoing radiological contamination that will continue to spread and threaten human health for lifetimes to come, other stories dominate the international news cycle. The climate change conundrum, serious though it may be, seemingly crowds out all other clear and present environmental hazards.  As part of efforts to normalize this historic event and cover it up in its magnitude, the Japanese government has invested considerable financial, public relations and other resources into what they are billing the ‘Recovery Olympics‘ set to take place in a year’s time in Tokyo.  But Helen Caldicott warns that the dangers associated with Fukushima have not gone away and remain a cause for concern. Dr. Helen Caldicott has been an author, physician and one of the world’s leading anti-nuclear campaigners. She helped to reinvigorate the group of Physicians for Social Responsibility, acting as president from 1978 to 1983. Since its founding in 2001 she served as president of the US based Nuclear Policy Research Institute later called Beyond Nuclear which initiates symposia and educational projects aimed at informing the public about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and nuclear war. And she is the editor of the 2014 book, Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe.  On the week marking the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima meltdowns, the Global Research News Hour radio program, hosted by Michael Welch, reached out to Dr. Caldicott to get her expert opinion on the health dangers posed by the most serious nuclear disaster since, at least, the 1986 Chernobyl event.  Global Research: Now the Japanese government is preparing to welcome visitors to Japan for the 2020 Olympic Games, and coverage of the 8th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is hardly, it seems to me, registered given the significant radiological and other dangers that you cited and your authors cited in your 2014 book, Crisis Without End. Now it’s been more than four years since that book came out. I was hoping you could update our listenership on what is currently being recognized as the main health threats in 2019, perhaps not registered in the book, that you’re currently looking at in relation to the Fukushima meltdown.  Helen Caldicott: Well it’s difficult because the Japanese government has authorized really only examination of thyroid cancer. Now thyroid cancer is caused by radioactive iodine and there were many, many cases of that after Chernobyl. And already, they’ve looked at children under the age of 18 in the Fukushima prefecture at the time of the accident, and … how many children… 100…no 201 by June 18 last year… 201 had developed thyroid cancer. Some cancers had metastasized. The incidence of thyroid cancer in that population normally is 1 per million. So obviously it’s an epidemic of thyroid cancer and it’s just starting now.  What people need to understand is the latent period of carcinogenesis, ie the time after exposure to radiation when cancers develop is any time from 3 years to 80 years. And so it’s a very, very long period. Thyroid cancers appear early. Leukemia appears about 5 to 10 years later. They’re not looking for leukemia. Solid cancers of every organ, or any organ as such appear about 15 years later and continue and in fact the Hibakusha from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are still alive are still developing cancers in higher than normal numbers.  The Japanese government has told doctors that they are not to talk to their patients about radiation and illnesses derived thereof, and in fact if the doctors do do that, they might lose their funding from the government. The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency interestingly set up a hospital – a cancer hospital – in Fukushima along with the Fukushima University for people with cancer, which tells you everything.  So there’s a huge, huge cover up. I have been to Japan twice and particularly to Fukushima and spoken to people there and the parents are desperate to hear the truth even if it’s not good truth. And they thanked me for telling them the truth. So it’s an absolute medical catastrophe I would say, and a total cover up to protect the nuclear industry and all its ramifications.  GR: Now, are we talking about some of the, the contamination that happened 8 years ago or are we talking about ongoing emissions from, for example–  HC: Well there are ongoing emissions into the air consistently, number one. Number two, a huge amount of water is being stored –over a million gallons in tanks at the site. That water is being siphoned off from the reactor cores, the damaged melted cores. Water is pumped consistently every day, every hour, to keep the cores cool in case they have another melt. And that water, of course, is extremely contaminated.  Now they say they’ve filtered out the contaminants except for the tritium which is part of the water molecule, but they haven’t. There’s strontium, cesium, and many other elements in that water – it’s highly radioactive – and because there isn’t enough room to build more tanks, they’re talking about emptying all that water into the Pacific Ocean and the fishermen are very, very upset. The fish already being caught off Fukushima, some are obviously contaminated. But this will be a disaster.  Water comes down from the mountains behind the reactors, flows underneath the reactors into the sea and always has. And when the reactors were in good shape, the water was fine, didn’t get contaminated. But now the three molten cores in contact with that water flowing under the reactors and so the water flowing into the Pacific is very radioactive and that’s a separate thing from the million gallons or more in those tanks.  They put up a refrigerated wall of frozen dirt around the reactors to prevent that water from the mountains flowing underneath the reactors, which has cut down the amount of water flowing per day from 500 tons to about a hundred and fifty. But of course, if they lose electricity, that refrigeration system is going to fail, and it’s a transient thing anyway so it’s ridiculous. In terms… So over time the Pacific is going to become more and more radioactive.  They talk about decommissioning and removing those molten cores. When robots go in and try and have a look at them, their wiring just melts and disappears. They’re extraordinarily radioactive. No human can go near them because they would die within 48 hours from the radiation exposure. They will never, and I quote never, decommission those reactors. They will never be able to stop the water coming down from the mountains. And so, the truth be known, it’s an ongoing global radiological catastrophe which no one really is addressing in full.  GR: Do we have a better reading on, for example the thyroids, but also leukemia incubation—  HC: No they’re not looking–well, leukemia they’re not looking for leukemia…  HC: They’re not charting it. So the only cancer they’re looking at is thyroid cancer and that’s really high, and you know it’s at 201 have already been diagnosed and some have metastasized. And a very tight lid is being kept on any other sort of radiation related illnesses and leukemia and the like. All the other cancers and the like, and leukemia is so… It’s not just a catastrophe it’s a…  HC: Yeah. I can’t really explain how I feel medically about it. It’s just hideous.  GR: Well I have a brother who’s a physician, who was pointing to well we should maybe, the World Health Organization is a fairly authoritative body of research for all of the indicators and epidemiological aspects of this, but you seem to suggest the World Health Organization may not be that reliable in light of the fact that they are partnered with the IAEA. Is that my understanding…?  HC: Correct. They signed a document, I think in ‘59, with the IAEA that they would not report any medical effects of radiological disasters and they’ve stuck to that. So they are in effect in this area part of the International Atomic Energy Agency whose mission is to promote nuclear power. So don’t even think about the WHO. it’s really obscene.  GR: So what would… the incentive would be simply that they got funding?  HC: I don’t know. I really don’t know but they sold themselves to the devil.  GR: That’s pretty incredible. So there’s also the issue of biomagnification in the oceans, where you have radioactive debris, hundreds of tons of this radioactive water getting into the oceans and biomagnifying up through the food chain, so these radioactive particles can get inside our bodies. Could you speak to what you anticipate to see, what you would anticipate, whether it’s recorded by World Health authorities or not, what we could expect to see in the years ahead in terms of the illnesses that manifest themselves?  HC: Well number one, Fukushima is a very agricultural prefecture. Beautiful, beautiful peaches, beautiful food, and lots of rice. And the radiation spread far and wide through the Fukushima prefecture, and indeed they have been plowing up millions and millions of tons of radioactive dirt and storing it in plastic bags all over the prefecture. The mountains are highly radioactive and every time it rains, down comes radiation with the water. So the radiation – the elements. And there are over 200 radioactive elements made in a nuclear reactor. Some have lives of seconds and some have lives of millions of years or lasts for millions of years will I say. So there are many many isotopes, long-lasting isotopes – cesium, strontium, tritium is another one – but many, many on the soil in Fukushima.  And what happens is – you talked about biomagnification – when the plants take up the water from the soil, they take up the cesium which is a potassium analog – it resembles potassium. Strontium 90 resembles calcium and the like. And these elements get magnified by orders of magnitude in the rice and in the plants. And so when you eat food that is grown in Fukushima, the chances are it’s going to be relatively radioactive.  They’ve been diluting radioactive rice with non-radioactive rice to make it seem a bit better. Now, into the ocean go these isotopes as well, and the algae bio-magnify them by – you know -ten to a hundred times or more. And then the crustaceans eat the algae, bio-magnify it more. The little fish eat the crustaceans, the big fish eat the little fish and the like. And tuna found in – off the coast of California some years ago contained isotopes from Fukushima. Also fish, being caught on the west coast of California contained some of these isotopes. So, it’s an ongoing bio-magnification catastrophe.  And the thing is that you can’t even taste, smell or see radioactive elements in your food. They’re invisible. And it takes a long time for cancers to occur. And you can’t identify a particular cancer caused by a particular substance or isotope. You can only identify that problem by doing epidemiological studies comparing irradiated people with non-irradiated people to see what the cancer levels are and that data comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many, many, many other studies.  GR: Chernobyl as well, no?  HC: Oh, Chernobyl! Well, a wonderful book was produced by the, uh, Russians, and published by the New York Academy of Sciences, called Chernobyl with over 5000 on the ground studies of children and diseases in Belarus and the Ukraine, and all over Europe. And by now over a million people have already died from the Chernobyl disaster. And many diseases have been caused by that, including premature aging in children, microcephaly in babies, very small heads, diabetes, leukemia, I mean, I could go on and on.  Um, and those diseases which have been very well described in that wonderful book, um, which everyone should read, are not being addressed or identified or looked for in the Fukushima or Japanese population.  May I say that parts of Tokyo are extremely radioactive. People have been measuring the dirt from rooves of apartments, from the roadway, from vacuum cleaner dust. And some of these samples, they’re so radioactive that they would classify to be buried in radioactive waste facilities in America. So, that’s number one.  Number two, to have the Olympics in Fukushima just defies imagination. And uh, some of the areas where the athletes are going to be running, the dust and dirt there has been measured, and it’s highly radioactive. So, this is Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, who set this up to – as a sort of way to obscure what Fukushima really means. And those young athletes, you know, who are – and young people are much more sensitive to radiation, developing cancers later than older people – it’s just a catastrophe waiting to happen.  GR: (Chuckle). Is there anything that people can do, you know, whether they live in Japan or, say, the west coast of North America to mitigate the effects that this disaster has had, and may still be having eight years later?  HC: Yes. Do not eat any Japanese food because you don’t know where it’s sourced. Do not eat fish from Japan, miso, rice, you name it. Do not eat Japanese food. Period. Um, fish caught off the west coast of Canada and America, well, they’re not testing the fish so I don’t know what you’d do. Um, I mean, most of it’s probably not radioactive but you don’t know because you can’t taste it.  Um they’ve closed down the air-borne radioactive measuring instruments off the west coast of America, uh, but that’s pretty bad, because there still could be another huge accident at those reactors.  For instance, if there’s another large earthquake, number one, all those tanks would be destroyed and the water would pour into the Pacific. Number two, there could be another meltdown, a release – huge release of radiation, um, from the damaged reactors. So, things are very tenuous, but they’re not just tenuous now. They’re going to be tenuous forever.

disaster, accident and emergency incident


21stcenturywire--2019-08-12--Americas Forgotten Nuclear Disaster Church Rock Still Poisoning Navajo Tribe 40 Years Later

America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster: Church Rock Still Poisoning Navajo Tribe 40 Years Later

IMAGE: The imposing and stunning sight of Church Rock in the Navajo Nation, located in northwestern New Mexico.  Here is the true cost of the American empire.  In 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested at the U.S. defense facility at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Just 34 years later, the area also suffered the worst nuclear waste disaster in its history – which did not receive nearly as much media and political attention than other high-profile incidents. And there is a reason for this.  On July 16, 1979, at the Church Rock uranium mines, occurred the worst spill of radioactivity release to our environment in the history of the nuclear industry. The radiation is invisible to this day, still devastating communities living along the Puerco River in northwestern New Mexico. There you will witness the devastation wrought on residents, including high levels of cancer, as well as the impact of other toxic substances left-over from the Church Rock disaster.  In the words of Larry King, an underground surveyor at the United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock Uranium mine in New Mexico, “Three Mile Island had more coverage and people were compensated right away.” He added, “I always say we don’t get the same attention because we live in impoverished native community… We live in a sacrifice zone.”  After 40 years, the problem still persists, and appears to much larger than previously thought.  Early in the summer of 1979, Larry King, an underground surveyor at the United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock Uranium mine in New Mexico, began noticing something unusual when looking at the south side of the tailings dam. That massive earthen wall was responsible for holding back thousands of tons of toxic water and waste produced by the mine and the nearby mill that extracted uranium from raw ore. And as King saw, there were “fist-sized cracks” developing in that wall. He measured them, reported them to his supervisors, and didn’t think anything more of it.  A few weeks later, at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1979, the dam failed, releasing 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive water into the Rio Puerco and through Navajo lands, a toxic flood that had devastating consequences on the surrounding area.  “The water, filled with acids from the milling process, twisted a metal culvert in the Puerco,” according to Judy Pasternak’s book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos. “Sheep keeled over and died, and crops curdled along the banks. The surge of radiation was detected as far away as Sanders, Arizona, fifty miles downstream.” According to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, radioactivity levels in the Puerco near the breached dam were 7,000 times that of what is allowed in drinking water.  The heavily contaminated water flowed over the river banks, creating radioactive pools. “There were children up and down the river playing in those stagnant pools, and they were deadly poisonous,” Jorge Winterer, a doctor with Indian Health Service in Gallup, New Mexico, said after the spill.  Earlier this year, standing in his yard next to an old Chevy, King pointed in the direction of the now dry Rio Puerco. “It came right through there,” said King. The unleashed river of waste had flowed through his family’s land just a half-mile from his house. “I remember the terrible odor and the yellowish color of the water.” He recalls seeing an elderly woman who had burned her feet crossing the Puerco while watering her sheep that day.  King still lives on the family land, two miles downstream of the rebuilt dam in the Church Rock chapter of the Navajo Nation. His home is surrounded by a beautiful, unforgiving landscape of red rock cliffs, a scattering of Navajo residences and, if you look closely, fencelines with KEEP OUT signs marking the numerous abandoned uranium sites.  Forty years later, the Church Rock spill remains the largest single largest accidental release of radioactivity in U.S. history, worse in terms of total radiation than that of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and second in world history only to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, both of which have loomed much larger in the cultural imagination. The effects of the spill have lingered for an entire generation: In 2007, the Church Rock Uranium Mining Project found widespread contamination of drinking water sources in the Church Rock area.  Navajo residents say they have not been given the attention given to other victims of nuclear accidents, even as they remain under the catastrophe’s long shadow, dealing with poisoned livestock and ongoing health problems amid other aftereffects. “We have never been a priority,” said King. “Forty years after the spill and nothing has been done.”  “Our generation is afraid of having children,” said Faith Baldwin, who grew up on the Navajo nation surrounded by abandoned uranium mines. “Cancer runs in our family but it shouldn’t. Cancer, diabetes were nonexistent in Navajo rez.”  (…) For many residents, the spill has come to embody the broader toxic legacy of the uranium industry on the indigenous lands of the West. According to the EPA, there are over 500 abandoned uranium mines, mill sites, and waste piles on Navajo Nation land that continue to contaminate water, soil, livestock and housing.  “The Church Rock spill symbolizes the governmental and societal indifference to the impacts of uranium development on Indigenous lands,” said Jantz. “The Church Rock spill is the third largest nuclear accident after Fukushima and Chernobyl, and the largest in the US in terms of radiation released, but nobody knows about it.”


21stcenturywire--2019-12-09--EXCLUSIVE: Indigenous Bolivia Ready to Go to War Against Fascism

Bolivia, December 2019, three weeks after the fascist coup. It is devilishly cold. My comrade’s car is carefully navigating through the deep mud tracks. Enormous snow-covered mountain peaks are clearly visible in the distance.  The Bolivian Altiplano; beloved, yet always somehow hostile, silent, impenetrable.  So many times, in the past I came close to death here. In Peru as well as in Bolivia. More often in Peru.  Now, what I do is totally mad. Being a supporter of President Evo Morales from the beginning until this very moment, I am not supposed to be here; in Bolivia, in the Altiplano. But I am, because these mud huts on the left and right, are so familiar and so dear to me.  My comrade is a Bolivian farmer, an indigenous man. His hands are red, rough. He usually does not talk much, but after the coup, he cannot stop speaking. This is his country; the country that he loves and which has been stolen from him, from his wife and from his children.  We can both get screwed here, but if we do, that’s life; we know the risk and we are happy to take it.  Carlos (not his real name), my driver and a friend, explained:  “I called them, the elders, and they said it is OK that you come. I sent them your essays. You know, people here now read, even in the deep villages. After 14 years of Evo’s government, the entire country is covered by the mobile phone network. They read your stuff translated into Spanish. They liked what they read. They agreed to give you a statement. But they said, ‘if he is not really a Russian-Chinese left-wing writer, but instead some Camacho crony, we will break his head with a stone.’”  Camacho; Luis Fernando Camacho, a member of the fascist, U.S.-backed Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, and the Chair of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz since 2019. A major adversary of Evo Morales, a man who during the 2019 Bolivian general election, sided with the West, with the treasonous Bolivian military (trained in the United States), and demanded Evo’s resignation, on 5 November 2019.  I am fine with what they say. We are going.  We drive up, and then, at approximately 4,100 meters above sea level, we level up.  A new, wide road is being constructed. Of course, it is a project from the days of Evo’s presidency.  But it is not only the road building that can be detected all around us. There are water towers and water pumps and faucets in every village. Water is free, for all. There are schools, medical centers as well as sport facilities, and carefully attended fields.  The drive is long, tough. But at one point, we see a few buses and cars parked on the top of a hill.  There is a small plateau, and a giant white speaker sitting in the middle of the field.  People in colorful outfits are scattered all around the site: men, women and children. A group of elders is seated in a closed circle. They are chanting, and their appeal is broadcasted through the speaker. They are addressing what is sacred to them: Mother Earth. They need strength in order to go on, to struggle, to defend themselves.     Deeply Rooted: Indigenous people in Altiplano gather to speak with Mother Earth (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  I am first ‘scanned’ by the people, and only then allowed to approach the elders. I explain who I am, and soon, the formalities are over.  “Please record but do not film our faces, for security,” I am told. “But later, you can film the gathering.”  Soon after, I sit down, and they begin to talk:  “The situation which we are living in these days in our country, in the communities up here, in the Andean communities is very difficult. In reality we feel frustrated, often abandoned because during the previous government led by President Evo Morales, we as farmers and indigenous people, felt very good. Even if, sometimes, we did not receive too much help, still, the government, the very President Evo Morales, is of our own blood, our own class. For that reason, we were supporting him. And we keep supporting him.”  “And this, what we have, now is a government – dictatorship. They say the contrary, but it is a fascist government. It is a government which is burning Wiphala, our symbol. It dishonors us. We feel humiliated, we feel discriminated against. For that reason, we realize that we cannot fail; we cannot stay here like this, we will continue fighting. There will be elections in our country, and we will continue supporting that one person who has elevated our name; the name of the native people, of workers, of working people, and of the poor.”  “First, we will go to the elections, if of course there are elections. We will go and support our people; our leaders. In case that they will produce electoral fraud, then yes, we will rise!”     Indigenous elders gather to discuss the current state of affairs in their country (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  I told them that I have known their country, and Altiplano, for more than 25 years. Everything has changed. The villages consisting of mud huts came to life. They woke up, began to bloom.  Water for all began to run through the pipes provided by the government. Modern ambulances have been deployed, serving all corners of the nation. Health centers opened their doors to millions of students, and so did schools, and vocation centers. New roads have been built. The government encouraged ecological farming.  Bolivia, for decades and centuries living under monstrous apartheid has been exploited, humiliated and robbed of everything, but lately has begun rising to its feet.  I told them this. I told them how I used to come here, again and again, in the 1990’s, from Peru; a country devastated by the so-called “Dirty War” which I have described in my novel “Point of No Return”. Peru was terribly broken, but here, in Bolivia, people were half-alive. There was no hope, only silent, frightening misery.  Now Bolivia, once the poorest country in South America, has been way ahead of Peru, a state which has been relentlessly cannibalized by the neo-liberal economic model, while still racially and socially divided to the extreme.  I asked the elders, whether they agreed. They did.  “Certainly. Because with our own eyes we have seen enormous economic changes and we have witnessed how Bolivia rose and after those 14 years, got ahead of this entire Latin American region.”  Before we left, an elderly woman approached the car, and screamed something in a local language.  “We will all fight those evil beings who declared themselves our rulers. If they don’t disappear, soon again we will close the roads between El Alto and La Paz, and they will have to eat their own excrement. Our people will never again be defeated. Say this wherever you go!”  I said that I will.     Real transparency: Bolivia’s president publishes his government’s financial account on billboards (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  In 1971, the great Uruguayan writer, journalist and poet, Eduardo Galeano, published his book Open Veins of Latin America, which soon became the most important tome for the Latin American left-wing thinkers and revolutionaries.  Inside the book, which was regularly banned all over the continent, Galeano had written about those 500 years of monstrous plunder, deceit and cruelty, committed by the Europeans and the North Americans against the people of South and Central America. Some of the most terrible crimes were committed on the territory which is now Bolivia, particularly in the silver mines of the city of Potosi, which helped to make Europe rich, but whose tens of thousands of people died, while forced to live and work as slaves.  Not long before he passed away, I worked with Eduardo Galeano in his café, in the old city of Montevideo.  It was during the heady days of the “Pink Revolutions” wave. We were celebrating our victories, sharing hope for the future.  But at one point, Eduardo paused, and said, simply:  “You know, all of our comrades who are holding power now have to be very careful. They have to understand that the poor people who voted them in, or who supported them when they were taking power, have only one thing left in their life, and that is hope. You take away their hope, and they are left with nothing. Robbing them of hope is like killing them. That is why, whenever I encounter our left-wing leaders, and I do it very often, I always tell them: ‘Comrades, careful, Do not play with hope! Never promise to people what you cannot deliver. Always keep your word.”  Juan Evo Morales Ayma, the first Bolivian indigenous president, understood Galeano and his work perfectly well. He and his Movement for Socialism (MAS), never betrayed the trust of the poor people. That is why he was never forgiven by the West, and by many individuals coming from the treasonous Bolivian elites and the military.  After my meeting with the indigenous leaders, I asked Carlos to drive us around Altiplano, without any particular plan. I wanted to talk to people; to the poorest of the poor of Bolivia.  At one point, we arrived at a tiny hamlet. A dog with a broken leg welcomed us with loud but innocuous barking. There were two sheep near the entrance to the house. An elderly farmer, his blind wife and a daughter were working in the field.  They were not afraid to speak, even to be recorded and photographed, as long as I promised not to reveal their names.  The farmer had half of his teeth missing, and he was leaning to one side, but his thoughts and words were clear:  “Thanks to Evo for everything. There is his work, and it speaks for itself; that road, infrastructure. Even this little house that we have is because of him.”  “Here we don’t want that so-called President Añez. She wants to mislead us, she lies to us. We are with MAS; all of us up here are strongly supporting MAS. We are supporting our brother Evo. We have always been suffering here, but Evo came with excellent projects… but now all progress will stop.”  The daughter is perhaps 14 years old. She is a product of Evo’s government. Neatly dressed, with nice glasses, she speaks fluently. Her words are well formulated:  “Those coup leaders have no pity on us. They have been shooting at us, beating us, gassing us. They have been violating our women. Lately, our mothers, our fathers suffered tremendously in La Paz. People were injured, people died, and the military and the coup leaders have no mercy. We don’t want to be slaves, like before. After the coup, the new government said terrible things about our president; things that we don’t like at all. We don’t want to be slaves, nor to be dammed by that new lady-president and by her people. She is a racist. The truth is that she is too racist. They call us ‘Indios’, and say things about us that make us furious. They are discriminating against us in all possible ways.”  “I don’t,” she smiled. “I am with MAS. And MAS is going to be victorious. We will defeat those who are behind the coup.”  We left, heading towards the main road.  The family members spoke over each other:  “In November, Camacho sent here several buses full of his supporters, from Potosi. They arrived, and began beating us up, insulting us, killing our animals and destroying our houses. They forced us to our knees, tying our hands behind our backs. They called us the most insulting names. They humiliated us. They said that it is over, that now we will know again where we belong.”  I asked Carlos whether he had heard these stories before. He replied, without thinking:  “Of course. You can ask anyone up here, and they will confirm what you just heard.”  Before descending to La Paz, in El Alto, I asked Carlos to stop at several places, where in November, dozens of people died, blocking the capital as the protest against the coup, and against forcing Evo Morales into exile.  The bullet holes that damaged the walls were still visible, and they were clearly marked. There were flowers there, where people had fallen. Soon, hopefully very soon, there will be monuments.  The graffiti all over El Alto, spoke clearly and loudly:  “Añez, we will finish you off – you coup-maker!”, “Añez – dictator!” and “Añez – killer!”     Bullet holes are marked in front indigenous woman and her daughter waiting to cross the road in El Alto (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)     Unpopular US-backed puppet: Anti-Añez graffiti can be seen in cities and town (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  Just half a year ago, I witnessed great fiestas in El Alto. I filmed colorful processions, people dancing, fireworks. I admired the new public spaces, super-modern cable cars, public swimming pools as well as the playgrounds constructed for children.  Now, the city felt like a cemetery. It was eerie, silent, gloomy.  The enormous Mount Illimani, the symbol of this ancient land, was covered by snow. It was beautiful now, but it is always stunning, in good times as well as during the disasters. La Paz, sitting in a tremendous crater, was clearly visible from above.  “The Yankees coming,” said Carlos. “You know, Añez has restored full diplomatic ties with Washington. And their spies and agents are flooding the embassy; all in civilian clothes, of course…”  “With their backs covered by the treasonous Bolivian military,” I uttered, sarcastically.  Carlos was quiet for some time. Then he decided to speak:  “When I was young, I was in the military myself. In Cochabamba, you know, during the water crises, and popular rebellion aimed at making water free. I never told you. Those were tough times. People stood up, and some died. Our unit consisted of mainly indigenous soldiers. The officers were white; almost all were. At one point, we let them know that we would not fire at our brothers and sisters. They shat their pants: captains, colonels; you should have seen them: they were running around, in barracks and outside, with no marks of their ranks. You know, at one point, if they were to have forced us to slaughter our people, we would have refused, and slaughtered them, instead.”  “They were trained in the West?” I asked.  “And now Carlos? What about now?”  He began whispering, although no one seemed to be around:  “I have two relatives in the army. I talked to one of them, a few days ago. It is the same as when I was serving in Cochabamba. The upper ranks are with the Yanquis, but the troops, most of them, are with MAS; they are with Evo. You see, if there is a mutiny, and there very well may be one, soon, then Añez, Camacho and their gringo friends will all soon be fucked!”     Police are stationed everywhere, at the ready, but still very uneasy (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)    I went to the luxury hotel Suites Camino Real in La Paz, for lunch. I had to see “them”, the other side. Those who import exquisite beef from Santa Cruz province, those who consume it here, those who are now celebrating.  And celebrating they were.  Several parties were taking place, simultaneously. People were jumping around, hugging each other, shouting like mad. All white, all “tall and beautiful”, all blonde, peroxide or real. Wine was flowing.  Most of the waiters were indigenous, dressed in Western clothes; hushed and uncertain.  I met a former top economist in Evo’s government, Ernesto Yañez, who at one point served as the vice-President of the Central Bank of Bolivia. It was safe to meet here. We found a quite corner where we could talk:  “I certainly call what happened here, a coup. There was no election fraud.”  “Without any doubt, Evo’s years in power were marked by great economic stability. Especially in the beginning, there were almost no economic problems. The poverty rate decreased from 55% to below 30%. Quality of life increased dramatically.”  “In relatively poor Bolivia, poverty rates are lower than in the richest country on the continent, Argentina, after the reign of the neo-liberal President Macri”, I could not help but mention.  “Yes, but after the coup, the economy here is collapsing,” Ernesto said.     Former economist in the Morales government, Ernesto Yañez (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  Half a year ago, I was here, and there were violent strikes by doctors all over Bolivia. Many of them were educated for free, by the state, but after that, they were demanding a neo-liberal medical system, in which doctors and nurses would gain unrealistically high salaries. Many Cuban doctors have been deployed by the government, all over the country, in order to improve medical care.  “During Evo’s government, millions of people moved from lower to middle class. Most of them were young. Which means, before the coup, and after 14 years of MAS rule, many young middle-class people had no idea what it is to live in misery. They took all the achievements of Evo and MAS for granted. Then, when certain hardships arrived, including the slowing down of the economy after 2014, they saw them as the failures of Evo’s government.”  “You know, for instance the doctors that you mentioned; they thought that if they brought down MAS, all their requests would be immediately fulfilled by the right-wing government. It never happened. Now they have no idea what to do.”  “The same as in Santa Cruz,” I agreed with him. “Fuel and utility prices are going up. Now the right-wingers will realize what it is to have their dream come true – a neo-liberal regime. They are getting wiped-out; desperate.”  “You, know, Evo made many Bolivian businessmen rich, too. The country and its economy were very stable, for years. Before he came to power, the big players were North Americans, Europeans and Chileans. During his mandate, Bolivian companies were given priority. Bolivian elites were always racist, for them, Evo was ‘un Indio mas’ (just another Indian). But they hid their feelings well. It is because Evo did things well. He changed this country for the better, almost for everybody.”  “But now, things have gone from bad to worse. The new president comes with the bible and cross, burns Wiphala, and people die. Now the Indigenous people want Evo back.”  And not only indigenous people, although almost all indigenous people who I met this time in Bolivia, do.     State of Emergency: Army still controlling roads in La Paz (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  I walked to Plaza Murillo in La Paz, where the Presidential Palace and the National Congress of Bolivia are located.  The police and military were everywhere. During Evo’s government, this was a quiet, open space, full of green trees, children and pigeons.  In front of the National Congress, several ladies dressed in beautiful indigenous clothes, were gathering, talking to each other. These were deputies from MAS.  I pulled out my cameras and approached them. Immediately, security dudes in plainclothes began approaching me, but the two lady-deputies made protective gestures with their arms, smiled at me, and rebuffed the security officers: “Leave him alone, he is with us.”  I knew we had no time, and I asked only one thing: “Are we standing, comrades?”  They did not hesitate:  “We are standing. They will not defeat us. MAS is the legitimate government of Bolivia.”  And so, this is what I am reporting from the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia:  The country is under attack from the United States and its allies. It has been injured by its treasonous cadres, both military and civilian. Blood has been spilled. The legitimate president and vice-president are in exile. According to Reuters, “Bolivian minister seeks Israel help in fighting alleged leftist ‘terrorism.” Meaning, the legitimate government.  But the country is standing. People are not on their knees. First there will be a vote, but if there are any tricks from Washington or from the Organization of American States (OAS), there will be a fight.  Evo Morales and MAS won the recent elections. There is absolutely no way that MAS will not win again. I spoke to people, and now, even more than before, they are closing ranks around the Movement towards Socialism which made Bolivia one of the greatest nations in the Western Hemisphere.  The indigenous people of Bolivia and the rest of South America are not beggars or slaves. Long before the arrival of those brutal religious fundamentalists and badly brought-up looters – the Spanish conquerors – they were the owners of this beautiful land. Their civilization was much greater than that of their tormentors.  Evo’s government did much more than just improving the social situation in his country. He began reversing 500 years of cruel injustice on this continent. He gave power to the powerless. He returned pride to the people who had been robbed of everything.  Washington shows clearly where it stands. Despite its hypocritical “political correctness”, it is on the side of racism, colonialism and fascist oppression. Instead of defending freedom, it oppresses freedom. Instead of promoting democracy (which is “rule of the people”), it is raping democracy: here in Bolivia, and elsewhere.  Until Bolivia is free again, the entire freedom-loving world should be waving the Wiphala.     The Wiphala flag can still be seen flying on some buildings (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)  The elders from the Altiplano sent a clear message to the world. Elections will take place, but if the people are robbed of their government, there will be an uprising and an epic battle.  Sadly, if there is a battle, some people will join the Earth. But also, the Earth will not stay idle – it will join her People.  Añez together with her colonialist symbols, is already being cursed by the majority of Bolivian people, and so are Camacho and several other traitors. But perhaps, technically, they are not “traitors”, after all. Their allegiances are to those nations which had attacked and have been looting this part of the world, for several long centuries.  After 500 years of being tormented and humiliated, the mother Earth, Pachamama, is embracing her children. Evo and MAS brought them together. This is a tremendous moment in history. People here realize it. European, racist elites realize it. Washington is well aware of it.  Right now, there is a moment of silence; a brief one.  If the fascist coup leaders do not back up, there will be huge thunder, and the people of Altiplano will rise, Wiphala in hand, supported by their ancient, sacred Earth.  ***   Author Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are “China Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries, Saving Millions of Lives”, “China with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism the revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his . Visit his Patreon page.  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abcnews--2019-11-26--Evacuations ordered near Southern California wildfire

Most of the thousands of people who fled a raging California wildfire in the mountains north of Santa Barbara were told they could return home Tuesday as an approaching storm offered hope the flames would be doused.  About 4,000 of the nearly 5,500 evacuees were affected when authorities reduced the size of the evacuation zone.  The blaze had blackened more than 6.5 square miles (16.8 square kilometers) of the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains, but most of that acreage was scorched in its first hours Monday.  Fire commanders described a fierce battle that saved homes as the blaze consumed brush in an area that hadn’t burned in 29 years.  “We’ve had winds move up slope, down slope, across the slope,” Santa Barbara County fire Battalion Chief Anthony Stornetta said.  An infamous 1990 wildfire in the same area destroyed more than 400 homes.  “It’s just a hard, difficult piece of country to fight fire in and the weather is the most extreme anywhere around,” said Jim Harris, Los Padres National Forest fire chief.  Rudy Gruber, 79, watched the smoke and flames from the top of a hill near his house in Santa Barbara.  Despite orders to evacuate, he said he decided not to leave because he didn't think the fire would cross a canyon to his home. Plus, it'd be tough to move his 50-pound tortoise, Amstel.  Even so, he’s been prepared for about a year, packing photo albums, computers and a carrier for his cat Scooter.  Gruber, who’s lived in the area since 1976, was facing his fifth fire but said he’s only evacuated once, when he saw smoke in his neighborhood in 1978. He didn’t see any this time, so he decided to stay put.  “We’re better prepared than we used to be,” Gruber said. “We’ve gone through it so many times now.”  Helicopters dropped water on the fire during the night, and daylight allowed air tankers to drop long strips of fire retardant to box in the flames.  The fire began in Los Padres National Forest as winds gusted to 30 mph (48 kph) and higher.  Miryam Garcia, 21, and her mother, Norma Ramos, 47, fled their home as flames approached.  “I was just kind of praying that it didn’t get to our house,” Garcia said.  She and her mother stayed overnight with friends and then went to a Red Cross shelter at a community center in Goleta, west of Santa Barbara.  Red Cross official Tony Briggs said 34 people stayed overnight at the shelter, where face masks were being handed out.  Fire officials said as much as an inch of rain was expected to hit the area by midnight.  The possible arrival of rain also posed hazards, ranging from shifting winds to debris flows from steep mountainsides.  Gruber said he’s going to visit cousins in Orange County for Thanksgiving and isn’t worried about his house.  “I’m counting on the rain to kind of snuff“ out the fire, he said.  The dangerous cycle of fire and flood is a raw memory for many others in the region.  In January 2018, a downpour on burned slopes just east of Santa Barbara unleashed massive debris flows that devastated Montecito, killing 23 people and destroying homes.


abcnews--2019-11-27--Rain may douse California wildfire threatening homes

Firefighters are hoping rainy weather will douse a wildfire that threatens thousands of homes in the coastal foothills north of Los Angeles.  The wind-whipped fire that erupted Monday raged through tinder-dry brushy canyons in the same area where a 1990 blaze destroyed more than 400 homes.  No homes had burned as of Tuesday night but about 2,400 homes and other buildings in the Goleta area near Santa Barbara remained threatened, fire officials said.  The National Weather Service expected rain to hit the region before dawn Wednesday, with up to an inch possible as the storm moved through.  The rain should help drench the flames. Forecasters said it probably won’t fall strongly enough to trigger any major mudslides on the fire-stripped ground.  In January 2018, a downpour on burned slopes just east of Santa Barbara unleashed massive debris flows that devastated Montecito, killing 23 people and destroying homes.  Most of the fire’s growth occurred Monday and while the burned area increased on Tuesday, most of the 5,500 people who had been ordered to evacuate were being allowed home.  The fire was 10% contained Tuesday night after burning nearly 7 square miles (17 ½ square kilometers), much of it in Los Padres National Forest.  The steep terrain, coupled with dry vegetation and erratic winds, made for a tough firefight.  “It’s just a hard, difficult piece of country to fight fire in and the weather is the most extreme anywhere around,” said Jim Harris, Los Padres National Forest fire chief.


activistpost--2019-07-30--NOW Is The Time To Demand 5G Wireless Health Environmental Impact Studies At YOUR State Capitol Or

NOW Is The Time To Demand 5G Wireless Health & Environmental Impact Studies At YOUR State Capitol Or Regret Not Doing It Later On

Sample state legislation establishing a commission to evaluate the environmental and health effects of the deployment of 5G wireless technology.  If the great State of New Hampshire did it, so can you, the readers, in your respective home states capitols. What did ‘proactive’ activists in New Hampshire, The Granite State, accomplish regarding 5G?  New Hampshire became the first U.S. state to enact legislation establishing a commission to evaluate environmental and health effects of 5G wireless technologies. Here is a proposed legislation, which Americans for Responsible Technology suggests everyone uses to contact his/her state capitol legislators in order to get an unbiased evaluation of effects from a never-tested for human and environmental impacts 5G safety broadband network.  However, I do not agree with the makeup of the ART’s proposed Commission; it’s already ‘slanted’ from what I read. Respectfully, there are no provisions set forth for accredited 5G or other RFR technology INDEPENDENT researchers suggested for nomination, such as:  Who should those scientists, MDs and PhDs be?  Magda Havas, PhD., Associate Professor Trent University School Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields. See Dr. Havas’s studies in live blood cells and electrosmog causing clumping technically called “Rouleaux.”   https://magdahavas.com/live-blood-cells-and-electrosmog/ Martin Pall, PhD., Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University. See Dr. Pall’s 90-page, online book regarding the effects of 5G here   https://peaceinspace.blogs.com/files/5g-emf-hazards–dr-martin-l.-pall–eu-emf2018-6-11us3.pdf David O. Carpenter, MD., Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University of Albany, co-editor of the BioInitiative 2012 wherein 1800 new studies regarding bio-effects evidence are published about various stresses, health and environmental stressors are documented. https://bioinitiative.org/table-of-contents/   Report charts https://bioinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/BioInitiativeReport-RF-Color-Charts.pdf Any one of the 250 scientists who signed the Petition to the UN “Warning about EMF.”   https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/scientists-sign-petition-warning-about-emf/  It is my most sincere, plus scientific, opinion if any of the new state-by-state 5G impact studies legislation do not include at least two of the above-named research scientists, then we might as well forget it, since it will be a waste of time, money and a prolonged effort, as I can tell you right NOW what those results will be.  The results will coincide only with consensus EMF/RFR science ICNIRP, World Health Organization, United Nations Agenda 21 and 2030 dictates, BECAUSE 5G is integral platform to implement the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI (Artificial Intelligence)—the most unholy grail of consensus science to control humans, the weather and the environment!  Where have all the trees gone?  To make way for 5G transmissions!  Do you want that?  Where have all the forests gone?  To understand more fully “controlling the weather” via weather geoengineering, Dane Wigington of Weather Geoengineering.org explains the climate control horrors that have been ongoing for close to 70 years, which now result in a hopefully-not ‘final’ destructive Solar Radiation Management (SRM) strategy that is second to none, including the onslaught of 5G platforms that will pump out microwave RFRs (millimeter waves) at one hundred (100) times the oscillation powers of 4G, which is not in full capacity transmissions!  In addition to 4G having much better coverage, it will actually improve with the deployment of the upcoming spectrum like AWS-3and 600MHz. The carriers are going to continue to deploy their existing spectrum and future 4G spectrum that will continue to justify investment as they try to increase capacity and coverage in 4G where they can realistically make money .  Below is a 22 minute video regarding the ‘purposeful’ use of forest fires smoke to effectuate Solar Radiation Management.  Please take the time to watch it, as it just may change your mind.


aljazeera--2019-01-09--Trump threatens to cut off funds for California wildfire relief

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he has ordered a halt to federal disaster relief for California's wildfires unless state officials involved in forest management "get their act together".  "Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen," Trump wrote on Twitter, a day after western governors asked for greater federal investment in fire prevention.  "Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!" the president said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  California has suffered a series of increasingly massive, deadly blazes in the past two years that have destroyed homes and businesses and put burned areas at a greater risk of mudslides.  Governor Gavin Newsom said 167 people have been killed by fires and floods over that time.  Trump's move targets a state that is home to some of his biggest political rivals, including Democratic US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is leading the fight in Congress against Trump's demands for $5.7bn in funding for a border wall on the Mexican border.  Writing on Twitter, Pelosi blasted Trump, saying his "threat insults the memory of scores of Americans who perished in wildfires last year & thousands more who lost their homes".  Newsom, also a Democrat, said at his swearing-in ceremony this week that the Trump administration is "hostile to California's values".  FEMA, which provides grants for home repairs or rental assistance after disasters, said it could not respond to queries about Trump's order due to the partial government shutdown, and it was unclear whether there would be any immediate effect.  More than half of the 13.4 million hectares (33 million acres) of forest in California are managed by federal government agencies, according to the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.  State and local agencies control only three percent, and the rest is privately controlled.  On Tuesday, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington asked federal agencies to "double" their investment in forest management in a letter to the White House.  California plans to spend $1bn on forest management over the next five years, the letter said, and has spent $111.3m since 2017, just under half on federal lands.  During a November tour of the wreckage of the Camp Fire, the deadliest in California history, Trump blamed what he called poor forest management for the fire, and threatened to end FEMA funding.  The California Professional Firefighters organisation, with more than 30,000 members, said at the time Trump's assertion was "dangerously wrong".