So, John, Where Are The Homeless Gonna Go? He has no soul:
People living in a city-sanctioned homeless tent village at a local Wilmington park woke up on Monday morning to eviction notices from Mayor John Carney’s office.
Residents said several police officers and representatives of the Friendship House, the site manager, moved through the park handing out the notices without explaining what they meant, leaving people upset and confused.
“What was your purpose?” Latifah Evans asked. “Why give us an area then take it from us? Why give us something and then take it away?”
The eviction notices state that camping in Christina Park is banned after June 15. Residents must remove all their belongings and leave the tents the city gave them at the park when they leave, although individuals may be able to get permission to keep them.
A spokesperson from Carney’s office disputed the residents’ claims that the notices were not explained to them.
Shyanne Miller, a local housing advocate, said she was at the park Monday morning when police officers arrived with the mayor’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Walker, and Friendship House staff.
“This is what the cops were doing — they would tape the notice on the tent and knock on the tent and be like, ‘Hey,’” Miller said. “If someone was standing outside, they would hand them the notice in their hand. But it wasn’t like, let’s gather everybody around and have a little conversation about what’s to come. It was just like, here’s this notice.”
Friendship House, a nonprofit organization, has a contract with the city to manage the encampment site from January through June 30.
CEO Kim Eppehimer said the mayor’s office did not explain why they were closing down the only sanctioned homeless encampment in Wilmington. Officials have barred sleeping outside in all other areas of the city.
Carney’s office stated its intention is to balance compassion for unhoused people with the expectations of the broader community. But local advocate Miller said what the city is doing is cruel.
“This is going to be the hugest sweep, and that’s the thing to remember,” she said. “This will be one of the biggest sweeps that the city will have ever conducted, and it’s manufactured because they forced everyone to go to this section of the city.”
The statement from Carney’s office said community organizations will try to help as many people experiencing homelessness as possible. Carney’s office is also exploring possible low-barrier shelter site options in Wilmington.
Besides empathy, you know what’s missing here? John Carney actually saying something. He hides behind spokespersons. Yo, John, is commenting on your cruelty beneath you? Is this what your Catholic faith, which you reference all the time when you veto bills, taught you? To screw the homeless? Do you really need the job of Mayor this badly? Aren’t all your pensions enough to live on? You are beyond redemption.
Trump About To Be Played In China? Well, he’s senile and delusional. Oh, and he’s dealing from a position of weakness due to Iran:
Donald Trump was expecting a “big fat hug” from China when he visits Xi Jinping this week in thanks for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
He won’t get one, though, because he’s failed to end the throttling of Beijing’s oil supplies. Good news for China, because Trump is indifferent to his own failure.
Bad news for Taiwan. Bad news for the West. Bad news for US allies around the world. Bad news for democracies in general.
The US president will arrive for his summit with China exasperated that he has achieved none of his many and varied war aims in Iran. He will arrive having been humiliated by a weaker but dogged regime that survives in Tehran.
The results are likely to be a sudden shift in the tectonic plates of geopolitics to China’s advantage, and Beijing has done almost nothing to deliver it.
Here’s what Trump could give away:
Trump, meanwhile, continues to threaten Iran while offering negotiations. His main option for getting out of the war without total loss of face may be in getting Iran to agree to send its nuclear materials to China for safekeeping. This would appear to end Tehran’s ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.
That would be a bauble that China could offer a US president who wants to share the same space as Xi and Putin.
These men know how to play on Trump’s weakness for their power.
Xi may be able to get Iran to agree to terms that allow Trump to get out of his war. In return, though, Beijing is likely to want to see the $11bn (£8.1bn) military aid programme for Taiwan, which it claims as Chinese territory, go away.
China would like free rein to continue its longstanding extensions of its claimed territory in the South China Sea, where it has been building artificial islands. It wants to own that sea, which, oddly enough, is a potential choke point of global trade.
These concessions would give China unlimited powers in its region, just as the deliberate weakening of Ukraine gives Russia a strategic boost in the realms that Moscow has traditionally dominated in tsarist and Soviet times.
Trump’s Big Man mission is, he has repeatedly said, to see the world carved up into spheres of influence, with the US dominating the western hemisphere, China the east and Russia the middle, with its western faultline running through Ukraine.
That means ceding US power in these regions. Weakening the US global reach suits Xi and Putin just fine.
In other words, Xi could make off with everything but Trump’s diaper. Some things are untouchable.
Y’know, some days, less is more. Although, to be fair, John Carney is proof that less is less.
What do you want to talk about?