Red Sea Tensions May Become ‘Impossible to Contain’ – UN
The current instability in the Middle East may soon spiral completely out of control, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a press conference in New York on Monday.
Guterres once again addressed the crisis triggered by the events of October 7, when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. The ensuing Israeli blockade, bombing, and ground assault of Gaza has since killed almost 24,000 people, according to local health officials.
The civilian death toll in Gaza has resulted in widespread international condemnation of Israel’s actions, and has already drawn the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis into the conflict.
“Tensions are also sky-high in the Red Sea and beyond – and may soon be impossible to contain,” Guterres said, adding that he is concerned that “daily exchanges of fire” risk “triggering a broader escalation between Israel and Lebanon and profoundly affecting regional stability.”
While the secretary-general condemned the actions of Hamas, he also blasted the Israeli operation as “collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” saying it has caused an “unprecedented level of civilian casualties,” while noting that “the vast majority of those killed are women and children.”
Last week, the Houthis pledged to continue targeting Israeli- and US-linked ships in the Red Sea “until the siege on Gaza is lifted.” The Houthis have also targeted British and American warships operating in the area as part of an international maritime operation organized last month by the US to safeguard shipping in the region. The “heightening tensions” also led Iran to send one of their warships to the Red Sea earlier this month.
US and UK warplanes attacked Houthi targets in Yemen with around 70 airstrikes last Thursday and Friday. While US National Security spokesman John Kirby stated that the strikes are having a “good effect,” a New York Times report claimed that around three-quarters of Houthi military assets remain intact.
Moscow has condemned the strikes on Yemen, calling them “illegal” and saying they were carried out in violation of the UN Charter.
The UN secretary-general has said that “the longer the conflict in Gaza continues, the greater the risk of escalation and miscalculation.”
The NWO’s 2024 Black Swan Tell
Appeals Court Rules The Homeless Have A Right To Camp On Sidewalks
The 9th circuit court of appeals affirmed the constitutional right of vagrants to sleep on sidewalks, in parks, and even on the steps of court houses.
Please consider the Coalition on Homeless v. the City of San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department filed January 11. 2024.
In the ruling, the court sided with the Coalition on Homeless and against the city to “prevent the City and County of San Francisco from enforcing any ordinance that punishes sleeping, lodging, or camping on public property“.
The ruling was based on an extreme interpretation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution.
Eighth Amendment
The 8th amendment says “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
In a 53-page ruling, the Appeals Court ruled that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to prevent camping on sidewalks or any public property, presumably even courthouse steps.
The last 36 pages of the ruling (first link) was a blistering dissent by circuit judge Patrick J. Bumatay. Here are some pertinent snips.
Today, we let stand an injunction permitting homeless persons to sleep anywhere, anytime in public in the City of San Francisco unless adequate shelter is provided. The district court’s sweeping injunction represents yet another expansion of our court’s cruel and unusual Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Our decision is cruel because it leaves the citizens of San Francisco powerless to enforce their own health and safety laws without the permission of a federal judge. And it’s unusual because no other court in the country has interpreted the Constitution in this way.
Based on a misreading of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the district court now dictates to San Francisco how it may manage its sidewalks, streets, and parks. The result of the district court’s far reaching injunction is that homeless persons now have a choice to sleep, lie, or sit anywhere they want in public at any time until San Francisco can provide them shelter. That ruling is far removed from the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and disregards the long history of anti-vagrancy laws in this country. And the district court goes beyond even our circuit’s extraordinary reading of the Clause.
The Coalition on Homelessness sued San Francisco seeking to enjoin enforcement of State and local laws barring sleeping on sidewalks at certain times, public lodging and camping, and obstructing streets and parks. See Cal. Penal Code §§ 148(a), 370, 372, 647(e); S.F. Police Code §§ 168, 169. Based on an underdeveloped factual record, and apparently without even considering how these individual laws fit within our Martin/Grants Pass framework, the district court agreed to enjoin enforcement of the laws against “involuntarily homeless individuals.” Worse yet, the district court didn’t even define what it means to be “involuntarily homeless” and gave conflicting signals on the point—an issue we address in our concurrently filed memorandum disposition. To top it off, the district court then set a novel end date for the injunction. It continues “as long as there are more homeless individuals in San Francisco than there are shelter beds available.” Never mind that injunctions usually terminate at the end of litigation, or that the relief here is merely meant to be preliminary. This sweeping injunction has no basis in the Constitution or our precedent. San Francisco should not be treated as an experiment for judicial tinkering.
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear the Case
Due to the overwhelming and unprecedented stupidity of the 9th Circuit ruling, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from local governments in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.
The Wall Street Journal noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom argued in a friend-of-court brief that “courts are not well-suited to micromanage such nuanced policy issues based on ill-defined rules.”
The Journal’s comment is quite the hoot: “We look forward to Mr. Newsom’s constitutional communion with Justice Clarence Thomas.“
The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It
On January 10, I commented The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It
Wealth Tax Details
- The bill would impose an annual excise tax of 1.5% on the worldwide net worth of every full- and part-year California resident that exceeds $1 billion, starting this tax year.
- Come Jan. 1, 2026, the state would tax wealth that exceeds $50 million at a rate of 1% each year, with an additional 0.5% tax on assets valued at more than $1 billion.
- Part-time residents would be taxed on a pro rata share of their wealth based on the number of days they spend annually in California.
- The tax would also apply to nonresidents who have recently left the state.
- Democrats exempted real property from the tax as a favor to their high-end real-estate industry and Hollywood donors.
- To spread the wealth around to plaintiff-bar donors, the bill would apply the state’s False Claims Act to wealth-tax records and statements. This means plaintiff attorneys could sue affluent individuals on behalf of the state for allegedly under-reporting assets. Plaintiff attorneys would be entitled to a share of the state’s recovery.
If the wealth tax passes, I look forward to another mind meld of a different nature with the US Supreme Court.
Deep State To Remove Joe Biden At DNC In July
Bayer’s Modified Soil Microbes Could Trigger a Genetically Engineered Doomsday
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Bayer’s modified soil microbes could trigger a genetically engineered doomsday for agriculture
- If you don’t like the toxic pollution from industrial agriculture’s synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, Bayer and its partner Ginkgo Bioworks have a solution
- They say they’re going to swap out some of the old fossil-fuel-based agrochemicals for genetically engineered microbes
- The uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered microbes could contaminate soil on such a vast scale that it could be the end of farming!
You don’t have to take our word for it, just read Ginkgo’s own report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s like a sci-fi writer’s brainstorm of plots for a disaster movie:
“The release of genetically modified organisms or materials, whether inadvertent or purposeful, into uncontrolled environments could have unintended consequences …
The genetically engineered organisms and materials that we develop may have significantly altered characteristics compared to those found in the wild, and the full effects of deployment or release of our genetically engineered organisms and materials into uncontrolled environments may be unknown.
In particular, such deployment or release, including an unauthorized release, could impact the environment or community generally or the health and safety of our employees, our customers’ employees, and the consumers of our customers’ products.
In addition, if a high profile biosecurity breach or unauthorized release of a biological agent occurs within our industry, our customers and potential customers may lose trust in the security of the laboratory environments in which we produce genetically modified organisms and materials, even if we are not directly affected.
Any adverse effect resulting from such a release, by us or others, could have a material adverse effect on the public acceptance of products from engineered cells and our business and financial condition …
We could synthesize DNA sequences or engage in other activity that contravenes biosecurity requirements, or regulatory authorities could promulgate more far-reaching biosecurity requirements that our standard business practices cannot accommodate, which could give rise to substantial legal liability, impede our business, and damage our reputation.
The Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP), involves rules administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that regulate possession, use, and transfer of biological select agents and toxins [a euphemism for bioweapons] that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal, or plant health or to animal or plant products …
[W]e could err in our observance of compliance program requirements in a manner that leaves us in noncompliance with FSAP or other biosecurity rules … Third parties may use our engineered cells materials, and organisms and accompanying production processes in ways that could damage our reputation.
… [W]hile we have established a biosecurity program … to ensure that third parties do not obtain our engineered cells or other biomaterials for malevolent purposes, we cannot guarantee that these preventative measures will eliminate or reduce the risk of the domestic and global opportunities for the misuse or negligent use of our engineered cells materials, and organisms and production processes …”
Ginkgo’s SEC filing makes clear how unleashing Frankenmicrobes into the environment might wreak havoc, but if that doesn’t do it for you, this chilling true story from Dr. Elaine Ingham will. (You can also watch a short film about it at Protect Nature Now and read the original 1999 scientific publication here.)
When Dr. Ingham was an associate professor at Oregon State University, she led a study on a genetically engineered soil bacterium that changed the course of her career — and threatened all plant life on Earth.
In the 1990s, a European biotech company (I haven’t been able to figure out which one, but reports identify it as German, like Bayer and BASF), was preparing to commercialize a genetically engineered soil bacterium called Klebsiella planticola. In its natural form, K. planticola helps decompose plant matter.
The genetically modified version was intended to convert plant waste to alcohol, which could be used for fertilizer or fuel. But when Dr. Ingham and her team decided to run their own test on the alcohol-producing bacterium, they discovered that it not only killed all of the plants tested, but had the potential to kill all terrestrial plants.
Her findings ultimately prevented the genetically altered bacterium from being commercialized, but also brought about the end of her affiliation with Oregon State University, an institution funded by the biotech industry.
That Dr. Ingham lost her university job when she saved the world from a GMO microbe that could have killed every plant on the planet tells us everything about the intentions of biotech behemoths like Bayer. According to Friends of the Earth:
“Bayer has amassed a collection of at least 125,000 wild microbial strains and in 2019 created an umbrella branch for related products called Biologicals by Bayer. The company has rapidly expanded their activities in this area via acquisitions.
Between 2012 and 2014, Bayer acquired three biologicals companies and in 2022 established a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, a startup company which has received $15 billion in investment to develop a platform to automate the genetic engineering of thousands of microbes at once. Bayer also acquires and markets individual microbial products from other companies.
The most prominent microbial products released by the company to date are bacteria-based fungicides as well as some plant growth promoting products.”
Bayer has made a pledge to “reduce the environmental impact of crop protection by 30 percent without sacrificing yield and the health of the harvest” by 2030. The truth is, Bayer has no plans to reduce its pesticide sales. What it’s looking to do is create additional products to stack on top of the ones it already sells.
Bayer is working with the Bill Gates-backed Pivot Bio on genetically engineered nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The promise is that it could cut synthetic fertilizer use, but there’s no evidence of that. Pivot isn’t letting independent scientists evaluate their claims.
It’s the same story with Poncho/VOTiVO, a hybrid chemical/biological insecticide product originally created by Bayer and now sold by BASF. Instead of marketing the genetically engineered Bt bacteria VOTiVO as an alternative to the neonicotinoid insecticide Poncho (which kills bees), they’re sold together — and only together — as a single product. This way, the companies can up-sell farmers, and if the product doesn’t work as advertised no one knows what’s to blame.
The soil microbe scam is just another in the long line of empty promises about the potential benefits of genetic engineering for food and farming: We’ve been fed so many lies about GMOs.
GMOs were going to “feed the world,” but Monsanto (which merged with Bayer and retired its infamous name in 2018) never came up with any genetically engineered traits that increased yields. They just bought up control of all the high-yielding varieties — that had all been conventionally bred.
GMOs were going to “reduce pesticide use,” but there’s no other reason to genetically engineer crops to be impervious to pesticides other than to sell more pesticides — and that’s exactly what Monsanto did.
GMOs were “safe,” but they were never safety-tested. Monsanto avoided Food & Drug Administration regulation by getting GMOs declared Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).
GMOs were going to “coexist” with organic, but Monsanto made sure the burden was on non-GMO farmers to protect themselves from genetic pollution and pesticide drift. When farmers’ seeds got contaminated, Monsanto successfully claimed the farmers were stealing its GMO traits.
GMOs were going to make farming more resilient to climate change, but Monsanto’s “drought tolerant” corn was a failure. Bayer claims to care about pollinators, but it invented the pollinator-poisoning neonicotinoid insecticides that are killing the birds and the bees — and it refuses to stop selling them!
Bayer claims to care about farmers, but 11,000 rice farmers had to sue it when Bayer contaminated rice seeds with unapproved GMO traits, causing $1.2 billion in losses. Bayer eventually paid $750 million. Farmers still can’t grow that rice.
According to a Greenpeace investigation, the contamination — which involved three different GMO varieties — impacted rice seeds and 30 percent of rice supplies, including rice exported to 30 countries.
The contamination was discovered in 2006, but the rice hadn’t been grown since 2001. The unapproved GMO rice was still being found in Mexican supermarkets in 2010! It’s hard to believe that any of this is an accident, especially considering Bayer’s history.
Bayer used prisoners in experiments at Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Auschwitz was the industrial production headquarters of Bayer and its parent company I.G. Farben during World War II, built with slave labor purchased from the Nazis. Bayer was the I.G. Farben division that marketed Zyklon B. During the war, almost all sales were to the Nazis for their “gas chamber” genocide.
Monsanto conducted human radiation experiments on unwitting, uninformed U.S. citizens — from its own employees to the residents of whole housing projects — while working as a Pentagon contractor. It ran the chemistry side of the Manhattan Project and then maintained the U.S. nuclear weapons production facility known as Mound Laboratories.
When the war was over, the two companies jumped straight from the Holocaust, and building atomic bombs to kill Japanese civilians, right into a merger they called MoBay. That collaboration resulted in the Agent Orange toxin the U.S. used in the Vietnam War.
Bayer is evil. From Zyklon B to Agent Orange to glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup to pollinator-poisoning neonics, the company has done nothing but try to kill us and destroy our capacity to feed ourselves!
Why? They plan to make money off the transition from agriculture as we know it to a world where lab-grown and synthetic “proteins” are the new processed foods. We must stop its latest plot to destroy our food system.
Iran Fires Missiles At ‘Terrorists and Spies’ Near US Consulate
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it used ballistic missiles against an ISIS base in Syria and a stronghold of the Israeli spy service Mossad in Iraq on Monday, in retaliation for recent terrorist bombings in Iran.
Two explosions killed almost 100 people in Kerman on January 3, as pilgrims gathered to honor the late General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the US in 2020. Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) claimed responsibility. Last month, another suicide bombing in the town of Rask killed 11 Iranian police. It was blamed on the Pakistani-based group Jaish Al-Adl.
“In response to the recent crimes of the terrorist groups that unjustly martyred a group of our dear compatriots in Kerman and Rask, we have identified gathering places of commanders and elements of ISIS related to recent terrorist operations in the occupied territories of Syria and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles,” the IRGC said in a statement.
⚡️Videos from the missile strikes close to the American consulate in Erbil, #Iraq pic.twitter.com/fIQXAmwGGw
— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) January 15, 2024
In a follow-up statement, the IRGC said it also used missiles against “one of the main espionage headquarters of the Zionist regime [Mossad] in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.”
The attack was “in response to the recent evils of the Zionist regime in martyring the commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Resistance Front,” it added.
“We assure our beloved nation that the offensive operations of the IRGC will continue until the last drops of martyrs’ blood are avenged,” the group said.
While the announcements did not specify the location of either strike, reports from Iraq indicate that the missiles struck the city of Erbil. Iran has attacked alleged Israeli targets in Erbil before, in March 2022, in reprisal over airstrikes in Syria that killed two IRGC officers.
The suspected Mossad base was near the US consulate in Erbil, leading to mistaken reports that the Americans had been targeted.
An Iraqi security source told ABC News that four people were killed in Erbil, but that no American troops were among them. The same source said that “eight locations” near the US consulate had been hit.
Iranian media has circulated several videos purporting to show the missiles being launched. There were unconfirmed reports of multiple explosions and gunfire in Erbil, presumably from air defenses attempting to engage the incoming projectiles.
Ukraine Urges China To Be Involved In Swiss-Hosted Peace Summit
President Volodymyr Zelensky appears increasingly more serious about pursuing peace negotiations to end the war, and this was on display in comments issued by his top aide headed into the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak on Sunday explained that Kiev now believes it is crucial for China to be at the table for future talks on its peace formula. “China needs to be involved in talks to end the war with Russia,” the Ukrainian top representative said following diplomatic meetings going into the WEF. China remains the most influential Global South country widely viewed as squarely in Russia’s corner, having refused to rebuke Moscow or join Western-led sanctions after two years of the conflict.
Importantly, Chinese Premier Li Qiang is leading the delegation from Beijing at the WEF this week, which presents a significant opportunity for serious engagement on the question of Ukraine peace. There’s also the potential that Li and President Zelensky could meet, given Yermak said “let’s see” when he was asked by a journalist whether they would directly engage.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has successfully cobbled together a peace summit proposed within the context of world leaders gathering in Davos, and the Swiss government has agreed to play official host, and yet Russia – the other crucial party capable of ending the war – is not invited…
Switzerland agreed to host the summit at Zelenskiy’s request, a Swiss government spokesperson said, adding that further details were being worked out.…
“We would like the Global South to be present…. It is important for us to show that the whole world is against Russia’s aggression, and the whole world is for a just peace,” he said.
The outcome to the summit, expected to be initiated Tuesday, is likely to be merely be more of the same…
A high-level meeting to discuss peace in Ukraine ended without a significant resolution, as talks were held on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos with the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion fast approaching.
Representatives of more than 83 countries were involved in the fourth and final such meeting of national security advisers, but little common ground was found towards ending a conflict that appears stuck in a grinding deadlock.
Ignazio Cassis, the foreign minister of host nation Switzerland, said the gathering helped clarify certain points for future discussions but that it was clear none of the warring parties were willing to make territorial concessions.
It remains that there are some key aspects of Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan which Moscow sees as a non-starter. For example, here is Point 6 of Zelensky’s ten point peace plan:
To cease the hostilities, Russia must withdraw all its troops and armed formations from the territory of Ukraine, plain and simple. Ukraine’s full control over its state border, recognized internationally, needs to be restored.
Without this, no long-lasting peace can be achieved. Each day Russian soldiers remain on Ukrainian land, Ukrainians have to fight and die to protect their homes and to shield the world from the long-lasting consequences of this aggression.
Additionally, Zelensky has issued the following words on X: “I will also discuss the return of Ukrainian children stolen by Russia, sanctions, ways to use frozen Russian assets, humanitarian mine clearing, financial assistance, and recovery,” he wrote.
China is seen as key to getting Russia to make significant compromise, yet both Xi and Putin know that Russian military success in Ukraine means Kiev has no cards to play. Ultimately, without China being on board with such initiatives to woo Global South countries to take a firmer anti-Russian line, there’s little that will come out of it.
Still, it seems each side is at least inching toward possible near-future talks. “Liu Jianchao, head of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told an event in the US that Russia has showed enthusiasm to have peace talks with Ukraine, when Chinese officials talked with them,” according to Bloomberg last week.
Deep State To Remove Joe Biden At DNC In July
American Media And White House Ignore Ukrainian Military Murder Of American Journalist
Breanna Morello joins The War Room to break down the story of American journalist Gonzalo Lira who was murdered by the Ukrainian military.