Month: June 2023

Authored by Rudy Blalock via The Epoch Times,

Some residents in Santa Monica, an idyllic beach town in Southern California, are pushing for an outdoor county-operated program that distributes clean syringes weekly to homeless drug users near the city’s parks to be moved indoors to a county-owned facility.

The “overdose prevention program”—which is overseen by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Division of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control—currently distributes syringes, first aid kits, opioid overdose reversal medication, and hygiene kits every Friday at three city parks, according to a spokesperson for the department.

Members of the Santa Monica Coalition, a group of retail and commercial tenants, residents, and property owners, are looking to put an end to the syringe distribution, which they say has been operating without public knowledge since 2019.

According to John Alle, who owns property on the Third Street Promenade, some city officials weren’t even aware of the county-funded program until he brought it to their attention a year ago.

“We raised it. We went to the local papers, and we wrote letters directly with photos to the city council and to downtown Santa Monica business owners and residents, so they had to address it,” said Alle, who also helped found the coalition.

The recently closed Wetzel’s Pretzels of Santa Monica, Calif., on June 2, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

City Councilman Oscar de la Torre confirmed that he only learned of the program after Alle first raised the issue.

“There was never any discussion. We never really talked about it in city council meetings. It’s never been agendized, so it was kind of a shocker for me to just hear that that was going on,” he told The Epoch Times.

The county’s health department works with the Venice Family Clinic, a community health center with several locations in the Los Angeles area to carry out the distribution of medical supplies, including needles. According to the coalition, Santa Monica is the only city in the country that currently has a publicly funded outdoor needle distribution program.

“The City of Santa Monica and the County along with Venice Family Clinic have been operating the only open-air, publicly funded needle, condom, and synthetic distribution program in the country,” reads a petition created by the coalition in March that has since received 8,000 signatures.

Petitioners are asking the city of Santa Monica to “force the County to move their distribution program indoors under medical supervision with supportive services.”

Some residents say they’re concerned that outdoor giveaways could lead to an increase in homelessness, drug use, and crime.

A Venice Family Clinic van is seen in a park in Santa Monica, Calif. (Courtesy of John Alle)

City officials sent a letter to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in September 2022 asking for the program to be halted in and near parks, noting that a large majority of residents are renters and rely on parks for open space.

“Because roughly 70 percent of Santa Monicans are renters, our community relies on the City’s parks and open spaces as they do not have access to private open space,” reads the letter, signed by then-Mayor Sue Himmelrich.

The city asked for the program to be moved to a “service-rich environment,” instead, that was “preferably” indoors inside a county-owned facility, with services for substance abuse and mental health.

De la Torre told The Epoch Times that county officials did respond, saying the distribution would instead be done from a van, parked near the parks.

But Alle said that’s not the case.

Recently, he posed as a homeless person at one of the parks and was almost given a syringe—until it became clear that he was testing the program—by one of the nonprofit’s social workers, when he told them he was unable to walk to the van to retrieve it for himself, he said.

“They’re not only operating from inside the van. They were giving out supplies to people in the park,” Alle said.

John Alle is seen in a recent photo disguised as a homeless person in Santa Monica, Calif. (Courtesy of John Alle)

Alle said he and two colleagues observed three workers of the clinic passing out Narcan—an opioid reversal medication—condoms, and syringes to several homeless people in the parks that day.

Officials from the Department of Public Health didn’t return a request for comment on the allegations.

According to Alle, such programs have exacerbated the city’s homeless and crime crisis.

He recounted how he leased one of his properties on the promenade to the NFL for a pop-up store this year in advance of the February Super Bowl. But the football league asked for its money back after less than a week, he said.

“After six days [they] said ‘John, we’ve had three break-ins, two of our employees have been hit over the head going to their cars, and we have people pissing against our windows during the day,’” Alle said.

According to Alle, the promenade is roughly 50 percent vacant now.

The clinic began passing out items in the area in 2019 at six locations in the city, including along Third Street Promenade.

The locations have now been reduced to three parks.

Bryan Paarlberg, who receives free meth pipes from the Venice Family Clinic, sits near his collection of items in Santa Monica, Calif., on June 2, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

“Los Angeles County is currently experiencing the worst overdose crisis in its history, and overdose prevention services are critical to save lives and protect public health and safety,” a public health department spokesperson said.

Restricting access to such services will only lead to more overdoses and “exacerbate” the homelessness crisis, according to the spokesperson.

“As part of our commitment to save lives and protect public health, we are in constant communication with Santa Monica officials to address community concerns and needs,” the spokesperson said.

A family uses a playground near a homeless man in Santa Monica, Calif., on June 2, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

According to the health department, the clinic distributes 200 syringes at the three Santa Monica locations every month to 100 people and disposes of the dirty needles.

It also refers those interested in substance use treatment services and refers individuals for free HIV or hepatitis C testing.

The Washington Post is reporting that an unnamed European intelligence service told the CIA that Ukraine’s military was planning an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines a full three months before the September 26, 2022 sabotage blasts which disabled them.

The revelation is based on Pentagon and classified intelligence documents leaked by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, or part of the so-called Discord leaks. The intelligence report in question was drafted in June 2022 and shared with the Biden administration, which means the White House has known all along that the “Putin did it” narrative which the West rallied around was false from the start. According to the new report published Tuesday: 

Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

Among the more interesting aspects to the intelligence leak is that it says the Ukrainians conducting the sabotage operation reported directly the country’s top military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in order to avoid sharing it with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, likely for the sake of plausible deniability. 

The US government reportedly saw the information as of enough importance or authenticity to share it with Germany and other European intelligence services. It appears to be based on a single source or asset in Ukraine: “The intelligence report was based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine” – as the Post report indicates.

The intelligence describes a plot which is very similar to a theory which recently came to prominence as German investigators spent months attempting to uncover a culprit, which claimed that six individuals under false identifies utilizing a small boat conducted a deep diving operation in the Baltic Sea to plant the explosives on the pipeline. 

The Washington Post writes in its Tuesday report, “The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year Western allies had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage.”

“That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.”

And WaPo offers the following verification that European intel services were briefed by the US on the information in its possession: “Officials in multiple countries confirmed that the intelligence summary posted on Discord accurately stated what the European service told the CIA.”

The paper noted: “The Post agreed to withhold the name of the European country as well as some aspects of the suspected plan at the request of government officials, who said exposing the information would threaten sources and operations.”

The timing of this revelation is interesting, as the WaPo report was published the same day as the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam was blown up. In fact, Russians are already seizing on the parallels…

NEW: Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s UN Security Council Ambassador warns about a Bucha-Nordstream-style coordinated disinformation campaign in NATO-nation corporate media about the alleged 🇬🇧UK-🇺🇲US-🇪🇺EU-armed attack on the #KakhovkaDam threatening water supplies in Crimea. pic.twitter.com/7mye7YtvWo

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) June 6, 2023

Many are now calling it the new Nord Stream sabotage mystery, as just like with the pipeline attack both the Russian and Ukrainian sides are quickly pointing the finger at the other.

One thing is clear in the wake of Tuesday’s Washington Post Nord Stream reporting: the White House is lying about major, war-shaping events related to Ukraine. The US is lying about the conflict, and the US has been lying for a long time. 

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

The burning question arose over the past two years what these largely empty older office towers in San Francisco are worth.

The market had frozen over.

There were no transactions because no one knew what anything was worth as San Francisco’s office market has morphed in just a few years from being one of the hottest office markets in the US with a vacancy rate of 7% in 2019 and some of the highest rents in the US, to being put on ice by working-from-home. About 33% of all office space is now on the market for lease – worse even than Houston, which was for years the worst office market in the US.

So now there’s the second deal in about a month — though the sale hasn’t closed yet. Wells Fargo found a buyer for one of its office towers in San Francisco, the 13-story 355,000-square-foot 1960s-era tower at 550 California, across the street and around the corner from its headquarters tower on Montgomery.

Wells Fargo had purchased the tower in 2005 for $108 million. It is vacating the building. Last year, it listed it for $160 million, but then pulled the listing after receiving bids reportedly below $40 million. Earlier this year, it engaged real estate investment bank Eastdil Secured to relist the tower.

And it has now made a deal – the name of the buyer has not been disclosed – for about $42.6 million to $46 million ($120 to $130 per square foot), according to sources cited by the San Francisco Business Times. That would be 71% below the original asking price and nearly 60% below the purchase price in 2005.

The first tower to find a buyer in the new era of working-from-home and office-footprint reduction had been the Union Bank headquarters tower at 350 California, which changed hands in early May at 75% off the original listing price in 2020, at around $200 to $225 per square foot. But it had undergone $41 million in seismic upgrades and renovations recently.

The price of the Wells Fargo tower ($120 to $130 per square foot) and the price of the Union Bank tower ($200 to $225 per square foot) now serve as benchmark for other older office towers. It seems, as price discovery is beginning to take place, the door has been opened to more deals.

And maybe the buyers, who will have a much lower cost basis, can figure out what to do with those towers, such as leasing office space at lower rents that are attractive to potential tenants, which could then start bringing down the prohibitive office rents in the City.

Office-to-residential conversions are now a hot topic in San Francisco. Everyone knows that if it can happen, it should happen. Earlier this year, the mayor’s office introduced legislation that would amend the planning codes to make conversions easier.  So we’re off to the political races. But a conversion, if it even makes economic sense, will take years.

Neither the Wells Fargo tower nor the Union Bank tower involve defaults, foreclosure sales, and huge losses for creditors. There are no hapless CMBS holders involved that would lose their shirts. The towers did not serve as collateral for debt. Both properties have been owned by banks for many years to use as their offices. But the banks – like most other major companies in the area – are shrinking their office foot print. And in doing so, they’re now establishing benchmark prices.

*  *  *

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Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has alleged that Ukraine’s military intelligence mulled plans to detonate a “dirty bomb” on Russian territory as retribution for the ongoing invasion. 

The FSB released a Tuesday statement claiming that Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) considered a high stakes plan to utilize a light aircraft capable of flying at low altitudes to fly saboteurs into Russia as well as a dirty bomb, or explosive device covered with radioactive material capable of dispersing contamination over a large area.

The statement said the “terrorist attack” was under preparation but never happened, and the alleged information appears to have been gained in part after interrogation of a captured Ukrainian pilot. 

This comes at a time of near daily cross-border attacks on Russian regions lying near Ukraine, including artillery and rocket attacks, and now multiple instances of ground raids by Kiev-aligned militia men in Belgorod.

According to further details of the alleged plot described in state media:

The Russian agency released footage of an interview with an alleged Ukrainian pilot who was intercepted while flying one such mission. Identified as Dmitry Shimansky, he was detained in May in Tula Region some 200km south of Moscow, when his plane landed to deliver drone parts and explosives for a planned attack on a Russian military airfield.

The pilot claimed that the GUR leadership had considered using the same tactics to prepare a dirty bomb attack in Russia. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive device covered with radioactive material, which contaminates a large area around it after detonating.

The significant, though unverified, allegation by the FSB comes a day after CNN issued a bombshell report describing how Ukraine is overseeing a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia who are conducting covert sabotage campaigns inside the country.

Ukraine’s military and intelligence has begun providing the agents with drones to heighten the impacts of the attacks they are staging, CNN was told by multiple US intelligence sources.

“US officials believe these pro-Ukrainian agents inside Russia carried out a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in early May by launching drones from within Russia rather than flying them from Ukraine into Moscow,” CNN wrote.

The report underscored that “cash works wonders” – given the impact of the ongoing war and the chaotic nature of border security at this point:

A European intelligence official noted that the Russian-Ukrainian border is vast and very difficult to control, making it ripe for smuggling – something the official said the Ukrainians have been doing for the better part of the decade that they’ve been at war with pro-Russian forces.

“You also have to consider that this is a peripheral area of Russia,” the official said. “Survival is everyone’s problem, so cash works wonders.”

CNN, citing U.S. intelligence sources:

Ukraine has created a network of agents in Russia who receive drones and carry out sabotage. pic.twitter.com/nJsA72W7Rd

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 5, 2023

This without doubt sets the stage for greater unpredictability and escalation in the war, with President Putin having recently vowed “mirror actions” and retaliation for these attacks on Russian territory. But the cross-border raids from Ukraine are also meant to have a demoralizing effect on the Russian populace, and put it on edge, building pressure on Kremlin decision-makers. 

To some degree this demoralization strategy is having a serious impact, given for example Wagner is using the events in Belgorod to continue its scathing critiques of the Russian military command and top decision-makers.

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

“When you think of a place like Chicago, these kids, you’re more likely to get shot than you are to get a world-class education in some of these places.”

That was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ comment about Chicago’s crime and failed education system late last month. 

Hyperbole, maybe, but not that far off if you only consider the city’s struggling black community.

Data from the Mayor’s Violence Reduction Dashboard shows there were 3,512 fatal and non-fatal shooting victims in 2022, nearly 20 percent of which were aged 19 and under.

With black Chicagoans, on average, making up over three quarters of all victims, that’s about 500 black youths shot in 2022.

How does that compare to the number of black Chicago Public School students getting a “world-class” education? 

We looked at the Illinois Report Card data for 2022 and found that only a dismal 0.4 percent of Chicago’s 110,000 black students exceeded the requirements for math – a proxy for “world-class” education. That’s just shy of 500 black students.

DeSantis basically nailed it.

The fact that his statement is even close to true shows just how badly Chicago’s leaders are failing the city’s children – not only through their failure to tamp down on violent crime but also through their inability to educate.

Nearly one-third of Generation Z says they’d be just fine with government-installed surveillance cameras in every household under the guise of reducing domestic violence and other illegal activity.

“Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?” asks a new survey from the Cato Institute. Of the responses, 29% of those aged 18-29 said yes.

As the NY Post notes;

In 1791, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed building a “panopticon” in which people’s behavior could be monitored at all times.

But Bentham’s panopticon was meant to be a prison. A sizable segment of Generation Z would like to call it home.

When it comes to other age brackets, 20% of millennials (between the ages of 30 and 44) also want everyone watched.

Then, wisdom appears to kick in – as just 6% of Americans aged 45 and older were OK with government surveillance in every home.

Broken down by politics, 19% of liberals and 18% of centrists agreed that our daily lives should be monitored by the government for our own safety, while 9 – 11% of those who identify as conservative, very conservative, or very liberal agreed in what appears to be a “horseshoe” issue that unites both ends of the political spectrum.

It’s the middle that has the ethic of old East German secret police — or the KGB.

Maybe that’s not surprising considering the way respectable liberal institutions now run themselves.

From Ivy League campuses to the publishing industry and the digital domains of Facebook, there is an Orwellian sense of perpetual emergency, an irrational fear that misinformation and hate speech will overwhelm society unless every utterance is subject to a censor’s scrutiny.

Even Orwell didn’t imagine Newspeak would require new pronouns. -NY Post

Broken down by race, 33% of black Americans said they’re fine with government in-home surveillance, as did 25% of hispanics, 11% of whites, and 9% of asians respectively.

The question was asked as part of the Cato Institute’s survey on American attitudes on the prospect of a ‘central bank digital currency.’ What’s interesting about that is that 53% of Americans who support a CBDC also support in-home surveillance cameras.

Notably, Americans who support a CBDC stood out in how they think about in‐​home government surveillance cameras. A majority (53%) of Americans who support a CBDC support the government installing in‐​home surveillance cameras to reduce abuse and other illegal activity. This suggests that some of the psychology behind support for a CBDC springs from an above average comfort level with trading some personal autonomy and privacy for societal order and security. -Cato Institute

What’s more, those who view the Federal Reserve favorably are more likely to support a CBDC (duh).

Sheep gonna sheep?

Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramped up his threats of war against Iran and slammed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, for cooperating with Tehran on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s warning was included as part of a video statement recorded from Tel Aviv’s underground command bunker – at Israel’s military headquarters – where a rare cabinet war drill was convened. The Israeli leader reemphasized his willingness to launch a preemptive war, including bombing the country’s nuclear facilities, if international diplomacy fails with Iran.

“We are committed to acting against Iran’s nuclear [drive], against missile attacks on Israel and the possibility of these fronts joining up,” Netanyahu said. The stepped-up threats come as Israel is carrying out a two-week series of military exercises dubbed “Firm Hand.” The drills are eyeing a war on multiple fronts with Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria, as well as Iran, simulating “multi-arena combat” across the “air, sea, land, electromagnetic spectrum, and in the cyber arena.”

Since taking power last December, the current regime in Israel has waged a brutal bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip which has killed 33 people, doubled the number of air raids in Syria, conducted strikes in Lebanon, as well as drone attacks in Iran. Additionally, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 119 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far this year.

While flanked by his security cabinet ministers and defense chiefs, Netanyahu warned that the possibility of a multi-front war means Israeli leadership must “consider, if possible consider ahead of time,” major decisions.

Earlier, Netanyahu also took aim at the IAEA, after the Vienna-based org reportedly resolved some outstanding inquiries with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear energy program. The concerns put to rest pertained to one of three so-called “undeclared” nuclear sites, where trace particles of unprocessed uranium had been found previously, as well as some recently discovered highly enriched uranium particles.

Netanyahu blasted the IAEA’s success with Tehran, including re-installing some monitoring equipment originally put in place under the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal which the US illegally exited. The Israeli leader declared “Iran is continuing to lie to the International Atomic Energy Agency,” insisting the “agency’s capitulation to Iranian pressure is a black stain on its record.”

Without providing evidence to support his claims, Netanyahu said Iran’s explanations are “technically impossible,” and that the agency is politicizing the issue and endangering its own credibility. However, coming under pressure from the US and Israel in recent years, the watchdog group has been increasingly politicized against Tehran.

The issue of the unprocessed uranium traces found at what have long been dubbed the “undeclared sites,” an allegation which originated in Israel, is highly controversial. This is because the the trace particles themselves never posed any proliferation risk, but the allegation has long been used by Washington and Tel Aviv to thwart diplomatic progress on saving the JCPOA. Iran provided the IAEA with full documentation on these inquiries last year and allowed inspectors to access to the sites as well. Only now is the Islamic Republic’s cooperation being officially recognized, something which the White House had actively opposed.

For their part, the Israelis have railed against the JCPOA, hailed the US “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, and called for a credible military threat against Iran. If Israel was truly concerned about Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, Netanyahu would support the JCPOA, which mandates the most comprehensive international inspections regime ever implemented.

In any case, both the Pentagon and the CIA have repeatedly denied Israel’s accusations that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb and the country has been a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for more than 50 years. Israel has never signed the NPT due to its open-secret nuclear arsenal thought to contain hundreds of warheads – technically making decades of American aid to Tel Aviv illegal under US foreign assistance laws.