Fallen dead birds eaten by America's homeless?
Deborah D
Update: The following article was based on a report by Associated Content's Adam Michael Luebke, "371 Dead Birds Fall From Sky on Sunset Blvd." The events are unconfirmed and his article appears to have been no more than a hoax. The writer expresses sincere apologies for reporting on this, especially to Mr. Jeff Rense who offers a truly humanitarian solution for feeding the poor. Other facts presented in this article, aside from the bird hoax that this writer regrettably fell for, are verifiable.
As the human right to food continues to be violated in the U.S., birds falling to their death on swanky Sunset Boulevard were stuffed into jackets of the City of Angel's poor and hungry or barbecued onsite Friday. Bird suicides have rocked the world as they have fallen in California, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri as well as other countries such as Sweden, Romania, New Zealand and Italy.
Some of the birds, such as those fallen in Italy, show signs of poisoning, a blue tinge on their beaks. Nevertheless, when excessively hungry, people eat anything they can, as witnessed in America - from the Gulf of Mexico coastal communities where people are eating recently poisoned fish - to Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles this Friday.
In Los Angeles, at least four in ten people live in poverty, 1.5 million actually live at the federal poverty level, and one out of 10 Angeleno families live in extreme poverty (below the federal poverty level).
"By the time I arrived at Sunset and Cahuenga, confusion was in full swing and the homelesses were busy picking up the dead birds and stuffing them into their dirty jacket pockets," writes Los Angeles Associated Content reporter, Adam Luebke:
"The dead birds in this incident were exclusively pigeons, but for the homelesses, they were food. One man had already cleaned his fowl and was arguing with a hot dog vendor about frying it on his hot dog grill. The homeless held a bloody knife and shook the pigeon in the vendor's face. The pigeon's entrails hung at least a foot from the pigeon's slashed belly. The guts swayed as the homeless man passionately pointed his knife at the hot dog grill...The poor pigeons that had landed in the street were mostly squashed. A bloody mess."
While theories are running rampant as to the cause of the dead bird rains, Mitch Battros uses the term, "mass suicide" for the phenomenon to reflect official explanations for most of these events.
"The Texas massacre was said to be 'birds flying into cars.' The Louisiana deaths were caused by 'hitting power lines or cars.' The Sweden incident 'was caused by difficulty finding food.' And of course the Arkansas suicidal occurrence was caused by 'fireworks and they flew into homes and cars.'"
While the Silent Spring-like horror has occurred around the world, nowhere had it been reported that people descended on the scene, so hungry, they were scooping the feathered friends to eat them until the Los Angeles report.
In Los Angeles:
"The hot dog vendor had abandoned his cart and a dozen or more homelesses were cutting the breasts out of the pigeon corpses and grilling the meat. They had formed a small mob. One whole pigeon corpse, still with feathers and not gutted, sat atop the grill. Soon the smell of burning feathers filled the air—a putrid stench that made me cough into my voice recorder."
The report reads like not only Silent Spring, but also something out of Les Miserable, including little rays of hope offered from least suspected places:
"I'm with the press, I yelled,'and CNN just told me that anybody wishing to fry their birds can do so in their building.' I pointed to the CNN building, where the large flat screens showed Anderson Cooper talking. The homelesses looked hesitant. Seriously, I shouted, the cops will bang you up for stealing this grill. CNN has a kitchen in the building. CNN needs to do community service anyway. I'd take them up on their offer.
One man quickly turned his breast meat over and licked his fingers. 'Hot,' he said. I told them, Roll this grill in there, at least, so the cops can't get at you. CNN said you could bring this grill also.
They all had beards. "If they're inviting us," one of them said, and then to the others, 'he's right. We don't need no cops in on this here fiasco."'
The nation with the most has turned into this. Why? That's what Mr. Jeff Rense asked during his Friday night, January 14 Rense Radio Network program.
Leubke, in his LA article refers to the homeless as "bums." The U.S. has 100,000 veterans living on the streets. Tent cities have sprung up outside Los Angeles as people lose their homes in the mortgage crisis caused by banksters and criminal "justice department" officials. (See embedded below: Tent cities spring up in LA, Youtube)
Most people experiencing homelessness are sheltered. Nearly 4 in 10, however, live on the street, in a car, or in another place not intended for human habitation, says Alliance's new report, State of Homelessness in America reporting on 2007 to 2009. "Figures are expected to be worse for 2010." (Also see: Homelessness, poverty up across the country, People's World, Joe Sims, January 14, 2011.)
More food is discarded in the U.S. than in any other nation on Earth. "According to the Agriculture Department, each year Americans toss more than 25 percent, of all domestically produced food," reported Scientific America in 2010.
The humanitarian, Mr. Rense stated that there is enough restaurant food thrown away every day in the U.S. to adequately feed every single homeless and hungry American. What is preventing the poor from being fed in America?
According to the Mr. Rense, the sensible solution of every restaurant feeding the poor simply lacks people of goodwill to organize it on the local level, including their ensuring a law, ordinance or code of some sort that would hold harmless restaurants in case someone became ill.
Instead, as highlighted on the Rense program, some officials are inhumanely preventing the feeding of the poor - to "protect" the poor. Houston couple, Bobby and Amanda Herring, who have been providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day have been ordered to stop according to Bradley Olson for the Houston Chronicle in his article, "City puts stop to homeless outreach."
"They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said. That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their 'Feed a Friend' effort for lack of a permit. And city officials say the couple most likely will not be able to obtain one.
'We don't really know what they want, we just think that they don't want us down there feeding people,' said Bobby Herring, a Christian rapper who goes by the stage name Tre9.'"
If Houston's City Councilwoman Wanda Adams has her way, the poor will be fed with dignity, as is their human right.
"I'm very passionate about what they're doing," [Adams] said.
"Somebody needs to make sure our homeless people are being taken care of. ... We have to look as a city to see if there are other ways we can partner with people like this who are trying to help."
There have been no noted health reports, including warnings, related to American homeless people risking illness from dead or dying birds they ate Friday.
Copyright Deborah Dupre, Examiner 2011. All rights reserved.
Deborah Dupré, B.S., M.S., DipContEd, QMHP from U.S. and Australian universities, has been a human and environmental rights advocate over 25 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles and forwarding the link of this article to friends and colleagues or reposting only title and first paragraph linked to this Examiner page. Emails info@DeborahDupre.com. Send targeting and Gulf illness news tips to her with your name or anonymously. See her Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus Compassion Film Project DVDs at www.DeborahDupre.com.
Jan. 15, 2011