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The number of chronically homeless persons in the U.S. dropped from more than 120,000 in 2008 to around 84,000 in 2014, a new report from the Congressional Research Service notes. The federal government has undertaken to end chronic homelessness by 2017. “One of the reasons that federal programs have devoted resources to ending chronic homelessness is studies finding that individuals who experience it, particularly those with serious mental illness, use many expensive services often paid through public sources, including emergency room visits, inpatient hospitalizations, and law enforcement and jail time,” the CRS report said. “Even emergency shelter resources can be costly. In addition to potential ethical reasons for ending chronic homelessness, doing so could reduce costs in providing assistance to this population.” See Chronic Homelessness: Background, Research, and Outcomes, December 8, 2015.

The US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in Geneva on Thursday for a long list of human rights abuses that included everything from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and endemic racial inequality.At the start of a two-day grilling of the US delegation, the committee’s 18 experts made clear their deep concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues. Many related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race.Other issues were relative newcomers. The experts raised questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. It also intervened in this week’s dispute between the CIA and US senators by calling for declassification and release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of torture techniques and rendition that lay behind the current CIA-Senate dispute.The committee is charged with upholding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992. The current exercise, repeated every five years, is a purely voluntarily review, and the US will face no penalties should it choose to ignore the committee’s recommendations, which will appear in a final report in a few weeks’ time.

But the US is clearly sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights obligations enshrined in the convention – as signalled by the large size of its delegation to Geneva this week. And as an act of public shaming, Thursday’s encounter was frequently uncomfortable for the US.The US came under sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaida suspects, and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice torture, such as Algeria. Committee members also highlighted the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute any of the officials responsible for permitting waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques under the previous administration.Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee, attacked the US government’s refusal to recognise the convention’s mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The US has asserted since 1995 that the ICCPR does not apply to US actions beyond its borders - and has used that “extra-territoriality” claim to justify its actions in Guantánamo and in conflict zones.

This world is an unsafe place,” Kälin said. “Will it not become even more dangerous if any state would be willing to claim that international law does not prevent them from committing human rights violations abroad?”Kälin went on to express astonishment at some of America’s more extreme domestic habits. He pointed to the release this week in Louisiana of Glenn Ford, the 144th person on death row in the US to be exonerated since 1973, saying: “One hundred and forty-four cases of people wrongfully convicted to death is a staggering number.”Pointing out the disproportional representation of African Americans on death rows, he added: “Discrimination is bad, but it is absolutely unacceptable when it leads to death.”

This crisis began when the housing bubble burst. Capitalist banks were lending money to profit-seeking real estate developers to build houses. The same banks were lending money to mortgage companies to make as many loans as they could. The goal was to boost profits. Soon there were more houses than the workers and the middle class could buy. The prices of homes fell. Mortgages could not be refinanced. Workers could not pay the steep increases in interest rates built into their loans. Banks stopped lending. Millions of households went into foreclosure. Put simply, people became homeless because there were too many houses! Not too many houses that were needed or already here, but too many houses that can be sold at a profit. Furthermore, the workers who build homes and all the workers who make the things that go into homes are losing their jobs because these homes can no longer be sold at a profit. That is the essence of all the capitalist crises that have occurred since the first crisis in 1825. It is the crisis of overproduction.

Now the crisis of overproduction is sweeping the auto industry. From the auto industry and the housing industry it is spreading throughout the economy. The stock markets are plummeting because the financial bailouts, the pumping of trillions of dollars into the banks, cannot stop the capitalist economic crisis.

Profits consist of unpaid labor.

The tragic shooting of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo on October 22, 2014 at the War Memorial in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada followed by a shoot-out at the House of Commons, and the death of the shooter, Michael Zebaf-Bibeau, serves as a catalyst to advance several hidden government agendas. The Canadian government wants to spread unreasonable fear of radical, violent Muslim terrorists so that it can better control all Canadians, especially those who choose to exercise their constitutionally enshrined rights. The government is also advancing a social control mechanism so that it can deny and negate domestic constitutional rights, in particular Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 which recognizes and affirms aboriginal and treaty rights

It is very unlikely that Michael Zebaf-Bibeau acted alone. Prof. John McMurtry, author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism From Crisis to Cure explains in “Canada: Decoding Harper’s Terror Game. Beneath the Masks and Diversions” describes Zebaf-Bibeau as a “ clinically insane, drug-addicted petty criminal living in a homeless shelter in Ottawa who had warned a judge in front of the police back in 2011:”‘If you can’t keep me in, I’m going to do something”. Furthermore, McMurtry wonders, “Who could have been a better tool for the events to come?” The notion that Zebaf-Bibeau was being exploited or set up by a handler/manager/police-informer is further reinforced by observations of investigative reporter Amy MacPherson who credibly claims in “Government Envisages Anti-Constitutional Surveillance Law During Ottawa Shooting” that U.S authorities had advance information. She wonders “… how American intelligence knew the name of a ‘possible terrorist’ as the mayhem was still unfolding. How did Americans know when Canadians didn’t, and how was this information so widespread that American media and Google had access to distribute, but domestic reporters on the scene did not?”

The theory that U.S agencies were somehow implicated in the tragedy is further reinforced by the fact that Operation Determined Dragon, a joint Canada/U.S counter-terrorism drill, was executed from 20 to 29 October 2014, so the murder of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo coincided with the time that Determined Dragon was being executed. Yet the Canadian government frames this tragedy as rooted in Islamic terrorism rather than the more credible alternative: that a homeless drug addict could have been used as a tool to further an already finalized agenda to participate in an illegal war in Iraq, and to restrict the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. Not surprisingly, the passing of the anti-constitutional surveillance law – Bill C-13, had also been expedited.

In the Spring of 2019, Californians will go to the polls in a historic vote to decide by referendum if California should exit the Union, a #Calexit vote. You will have this historic opportunity because the Yes California Independence Campaign will qualify a citizen’s initiative for the 2018 ballot that if passed would call for a special election for Californians to vote for or against the independence of California from the United States. This is a very important question. It is the responsibility of this campaign to explain what a yes vote will mean for you, your family, your community, our state, our country, and our world. We have designed this website to answer many of these questions and look to you to ask more. "As the sixth largest economy in the world, California is more economically powerful than France and has a population larger than Poland. Point by point, California compares and competes with countries, not just the 49 other states.” In our view, the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children. Although charity is part of our culture, when you consider that California’s infrastructure is falling apart, our public schools are ranked among the worst in the entire country, we have the highest number of homeless persons living without shelter and other basic necessities, poverty rates remain high, income inequality continues to expand, and we must often borrow money from the future to provide services for today, now is not the time for charity. However, this independence referendum is about more than California subsidizing other states of this country. It is about the right to self-determination and the concept of voluntary association, both of which are supported by constitutional and international law. It is about California taking its place in the world, standing as an equal among nations. We believe in two fundamental truths: (1) California exerts a positive influence on the rest of the world, and (2) California could do more good as an independent country than it is able to do as just a U.S. state. In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the international community with their “Brexit” vote. Our “Calexit” referendum is about California joining the international community. You have a big decision to make.

THE CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN 9 SIMPLE POINTS Being a U.S. state is no longer serving California’s best interests. On issues ranging from peace and security to natural resources and the environment, it has become increasingly true that California would be better off as an independent country. Here’s a summary of why we think so.

The “New American Century” proclaimed by the neoconservatives came to an abrupt end on September 6 at the G20 meeting in Russia. The leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US government attacks Syria without UN authorization. Putin told the assembled world leaders that the chemical weapons attack was “a provocation on behalf of the armed insurgents in hope of the help from the outside, from the countries which supported them from day one.” In other words, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Washington–the axis of evil. China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.” In other words, if you defy the world, obama, you are a war criminal.

We are yet to see an american president who can stand up to Israel. Or, for that matter, a Congress that can. Or a media. The obama regime tried to counter its smashing defeat at the G20 Summit by forcing its puppet states to sign a joint statement condemning Syria. However the puppet states qualified their position by stating that they opposed military action and awaited the UN report.

What this reveals is that the support behind the liar obama is feeble and limited. The ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a cover for self-interest, murder, and genocide.

money power exists and is wielded ruthlessly by the Anglo-American power elite that has amassed astounding, unimaginable wealth. Today, as the Internet forcibly relaxes the grip of the power elite (at least momentarily) the term is making something of a comeback. There are over 1.5 million Google cites featuring the term "money power."

US President Barack Obama arrived today in Jamaica as part of an ongoing effort to persuade the island and its neighbors to reduce dependency on Venezuela’s bilateral PetroCaribe program.As the first active US president to visit Jamaica in 33 years, the primary goal of Mr. Obama’s trip will be to develop, in coordination with the World Bank, an investment plan in the Caribbean’s energy sector. Vice-president Joe Biden has alleged that PetroCaribe, founded by Hugo Chavez in 2005, is being used as a “tool of coercion” against the region by the South American nation. For almost a decade, Venezuela has shipped fuel to 18 nations in the Caribbean and Central America with favorable terms for payment, such as low-interest loans, while investing in community projects including hospitals, schools, highways, and homeless shelters.

Last week, the Bolivarian government, through the Petrocaribe initiative, donated US$16 million to help the government of St. Kitts and Nevis provide for former sugar industry workers.In January, Biden gathered Caribbean heads of state in Washington as part of his Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which he claims is seeking clean energy solutions for small island governments. However, the focus of the event was less about environmentalism and more about breaking away from Venezuelan trade.“Whether it’s the Ukraine or the Caribbean, no country should be able to use natural resources as a tool of coercion against any other country,” he told the leaders in attendance.Last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned of “strategic damage” on Venezuela’s part which could cause “a serious humanitarian crisis in our region.”

According to a Miami Herald report published on March 26th, Venezuela has halved subsidized shipments of crude oil to Cuba and other PetroCaribe member nations from 400,000 barrels per day in 2012, to 200,000 barrels per day.The article, which claimed to cite a Barclay’s Bank report, has since been refuted by the Venezuelan government. Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Delcy Rodriguez insisted last week that the information was “not true,” and was being published in a concerted effort to discredit PetroCaribe.

The depth of the sectarian war unleashed in Yemen shows itself in almost every Gulf Arab official statement and in the official press. The Saudis take it as read that Iranian forces are actually present in Yemen to assist the Shia Houthis. There are Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon with the Houthis. Iran is itself behind the Houthi uprising. One Kuwaiti journalist calls the Houthi rebels “rats”. As usual in Arab wars, real evidence has gone out of the window.

At a Syrian refugee conference in Kuwait this week, the Saudis were lauded for their generosity in pledging $60m for homeless and destitute Syrians out of a total of $3.8bn of promised aid world wide. No-one was ungenerous enough to mention that the Saudis bought $67bn worth of weapons from the US in 2011-12.

With that kind of money you might be able to buy up most of the protagonists in the Syrian war and get them to agree on a ceasefire. But this is the figure that makes sense of the Yemen war.That, and the fact that Pakistan is part of this extraordinary coalition. Pakistan is a nuclear power – “Saudi Arabia’s nuclear bomb outside Saudi Arabia”, as one conference delegate bleakly put it in Kuwait.There are 8,000 Pakistani troops based in the Saudi kingdom. And Pakistan is one of the most corrupt and unstable nations in South-west Asia. Bringing Pakistan – widely believed to have shipped second-hand weapons to anti-government rebels in Syria via Saudi Arabia – into the Yemen conflict is not adding oil to the fire. It’s adding fire to the oil.Iran has maintained a diplomatic silence. When Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal accused Iran of supporting the destabilisation of Yemen, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned that the Saudi attack was a “strategic mistake”, a comparatively mild reaction.

If the federal government shut down the Federal Reserve system, started issuing debt-free money and established a new system based on sound financial principles we might have a chance of turning this thing around.

“”If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation,the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson

The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.

Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that at least 18 medical facilities, including five UNRWA health clinics, had been hit by airstrikes and shelling since the beginning of the fighting.  The seven-year blockade had destroyed Gaza’s economy, with high unemployment rates and growing dependence on international assistance.  The United Nations was feeding 67 per cent of the population.  The international community and the parties to the conflict had to live up to their obligations.  Lance Bartholomeusz, Director of Legal Affairs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said that by yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.  The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises.  Makarim Wibisono, Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking on behalf of the Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, said in addition to at least 599 Palestinians killed, the destruction of numerous houses had left several thousand families homeless.  At the same time, the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation could not justify the launching of thousands of rockets and mortars directed against Israeli civilians. 

NAVI PILLAY, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said since Israel announced its military operation “Protective Edge” on 7 July, Gaza had been subjected to daily intensive bombardment from the air, land and sea, employing well over 2,100 air strikes alone.  The hostilities had resulted in the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, including at least 147 children and 74 women.  As in the two previous crises in 2009 and 2012, it was innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, who suffered the most.  According to preliminary United Nations figures, around 74 per cent of those killed so far were civilians, and thousands more had been injured.  Hundreds of homes and other civilian buildings, such as schools, had been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Palestinians had been displaced.  Two Israeli civilians had also lost their lives and between 17 and 32 others had been reported injured as a result of rockets and other projectiles fired from Gaza, and 27 Israeli soldiers had been killed during military operations in Gaza.  The indiscriminate firing by Hamas and other armed groups of more than 2,900 rockets and mortars from Gaza continued to endanger the lives of civilians in Israel, and Ms. Pillay once again condemned such indiscriminate attacks.  It was unacceptable to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas.  However, international law was clear - the actions of one party did not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.

he also warned that the current situation in Gaza overshadowed the backdrop of heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and expressed concern about a significant rise in incitement to violence against Palestinians, including through social media.  Only those responsible for criminal acts could legitimately be punished, she said, individuals should not be subject to collective penalties. 

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, under extreme pressure over the real possibility that he will lose the March 17 elections, has made a powerful appeal to his far right wing constituency by openly admitting that he will never allow a Palestinian state and that he intends to flood Israeli squatters into East Jerusalem and its environs to make sure this Occupied territory never returns to the Palestinians.Millions of Palestinians whose families were violently expelled from their homes by Jewish settlers in Mandate Palestine in 1947-48 remain stateless. These include the people of Gaza, the West Bank (four million) and a million or more in diasporas in Lebanon, Syria, and other countries. A million Palestinians are now citizens in Israel, and others have rights of citizenship in far-flung places like Chile and Honduras, as well as the United States. But I figure five million at least remain stateless.

Statelessness is rare in today’s world, a result of reforms initiated by the international community after the horrors of World War II and its preceding decades. Franco rendered many on the Spanish Left stateless after his victory in the Civil War in 1939 (not to mention massacring tens of thousands of them). The White Russians lost citizenship after their revolt against the Communists failed. The Nazis took citizenship rights away from Jews, Gypsies and others in Europe. In fact, the Holocaust was made practically possible in part by the denial of citizenship to Jews, which left them with no access to courts or other levers of social power that might have combated the monstrous Nazi plans for genocide. Millions were stateless in the 1930s and 1940s, and their lack of citizenship rights often exposed them to ethnic cleansing or loss of property and displacement.

The Palestinians are the last major stateless population. Stateless people do not have rights as most people understand the term. Their situation in some ways resembles slavery, since slaves also were denied the rights of citizenship. Stateless people’s property is insecure, since people with citizenship rights have better access to courts and to ruling authorities. Palestinians never really know what they own, and Israeli squatters routinely steal their property with impunity. Squatters dig tube wells deeper than those of the Palestinian villagers, lowering aquifers and causing Palestinian wells to dry up. Squatters go on wilding attacks, chopping down entire olive orchards (a prime source of Palestinian income) or beating up Palestinians. If Palestinians assemble peacefully to protest the loss of their farms to ever-expanding squatter settlements, the Israel army arrests them, including, often, children, who are taken away from their families and put in jail. Palestinians can be held for long periods without being charged. The prisoners are sometimes tortured.

The Japanese Labor Ministry announced that it has recognized that one Fukushima cleanup worker has contracted cancer. Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup after the nuclear disaster in 2011. Most of the workers’ health history is undocumented while the government cracks down on journalists who document the government’s and Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO’s cover-up of the impact on workers’ health.

Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup operation at the crippled Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power plant since the plant was struck by three reactor core meltdowns, spent fuel fires, and the distribution of highly radioactive spent fuel rods and pellets during an explosion. The vast majority of the cleanup workers belong to socio-economically underprivileged strata of Japan’s society, including long-term unemployed and the homeless. Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO has been criticized for outsourcing the recruitment of cleanup workers to sub-contractors with ties to Japan’s organized crime network, the Yakuza. While the Labor Ministry’s admission that one cleanup worker contracted leukemia due to exposure to radioactive nucleides during his work at the disaster site may seem like “progress”, it merely covers the tip of an iceberg. Several factors contribute to what amounts to a systematic cover-up of the true impact on the health of cleanup workers. For one, there is Japanese legislation that threatens anyone, including journalists who disclose unauthorized information about the disaster and its detrimental health and environmental impact with up to ten years imprisonment.

Another factor is the systematic intimidation and threats against investigative journalists by the Japanese government, Japanese police, TEPCO, as well as by organized crime networks. One example is the case of independent journalist Mako Oshidori who interviewed and documented the cases of numerous cleanup workers. In 2014 Mako reported that she discovered a TEPCO memo, in which the Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO instructs officials to “cut Mako-chan’s (questions) short, appropriately”. Mako Oshidori was enrolled in the School of Life Sciences at Tottori University Faculty of Medicine for three years. Mako revealed that TEPCO and the government cover-up the death of Fukusjima workers and that government agents began following her around after she began investigating the cover-up.

Billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson says cash handouts will eventually be required to keep people from becoming homeless in the US. "I think with the coming on of AI and other things there is certainly a danger of income inequality," Branson tells CNN's Christine Romans in a piece published Thursday. The inequality will be caused by "the amount of jobs [artificial intelligence] is going to take away and so on," Branson says. "There is no question" technology will eliminate jobs, he says. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates echoed this sentiment recently. "AI is just the latest in technologies that allow us to produce a lot more goods and services with less labor," says Gates, speaking with "Hamilton" composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his wife, Melinda, at Hunter College in New York City earlier in February. "AI will bring us immense new productivity."

So new jobs will have to be created, says Branson. But also, a "basic minimum earnings," or a universal basic income, should be instituted "so that there is nobody that is having to sleep on the street," Branson tells CNN. "One hundred percent, I think that is really important." Universal basic income is a cash handout, distributed irrespective of employment status.

Billionaire SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk told CNBC in 2016 that he expects cash handouts will be necessary too. "There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," says Musk to CNBC. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen." Additionally, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg promoted the idea of universal basic income during his commencement speech to Harvard in May. "Now it's our time to define a new social contract for our generation. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," says Zuckerberg.

The province of Ontario will start its pilot project testing universal basic income in three Canadian cities this summer, premier Kathleen Wynne announced on Monday. About 4,000 residents of Hamilton, Thunder Bay, and Lindsay will be randomly selected to take part in the three-year program. One group will start receiving funds this summer—as much as $12,570 annually for individuals—while the other will be part of the control group, and not receive any money. Researchers will track the program’s impact on the economy, public health, education, and housing.

“It’s not an extravagant sum by any means,” Wynne said. “But our goal is clear. We want to find out whether a basic income makes a positive difference in people’s lives. Whether this new approach gives them the ability to begin to achieve their potential.” Participants will be screened to ensure that they are between 18 and 64 years old and living on a low income. “This is a new world with new challenges,” Wynne said. “From technology to [President Donald] Trump, it is a time of greater uncertainty and change.” Universal basic income, a form of social security that provides unconditional financial support from the government to all residents of a country or region, has recently gained traction as a solution to poverty, homelessness, and low quality of life. Similar pilot programs are on the way around the world, from Finland to Kenya. According to the Globe and Mail, a separate basic income plan for First Nations communities will be introduced later this year.