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 THREE BLACK MEN
SF Bay View -- March 27, 2019
I knew three Black men who died in the last four years in
San Francisco.
The story of their passing tells us much about the ongoing transformation of San Francisco into a
haven for the white and the privileged.
Dispense with any stereotypes about Black men being shot
down by the police or dying from some kind of street violence. All three of these men were in their
sixties, had lived in San Francisco for decades, and had achieved some form of
economic stability, if not prosperity.
All of them had engaging, sociable personalities that drew people to
them, and were surrounded by many friends.
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Forgetting Our Veterans:
SAN FRANCISCO'S HIDDEN MONUMENT TO WORLD WAR I VETERANS
48 Hills -- Veteran's Day, November 11, 2017
CounterPunch -- November 14, 2017
This year is the 100-year anniversary of the entry of the United States into World War I. It is also the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution, at root an open mutiny against that war.
Hidden away in Heroes Grove, an almost-forgotten part of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, is the Gold Star Mothers Rock. This monument is a memorial to U.S. veterans who died in World War I, and has a surprising relevance to the Russian Revolution.
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TELLING LIES ABOUT FIDEL
SF Bay View -- December 10, 2016
The death of Fidel Castro, for those of us living in the belly of the beast, has meant being forced to endure non-stop lies and hypocrisy from the mass media about Fidel. According to our “free press,” Fidel was a “brutal dictator” who would not allow “democratic” elections like we have here. Two words put the lie to the story that U.S.-style elections bring justice and prosperity: Donald Trump.
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BASTILLE DAY: No Politics as Usual
Beyond Chron -- July 15, 2014
Yesterday, July 14, was Bastille Day. That was the day in 1789 when the people of France stormed the Bastille, the fortress-prison that had held many political prisoners and at the time was an armory well-stocked with guns and ammunition. The storming of the Bastille was one of the seminal events of the great French Revolution, which emblazoned the goals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity into the consciousness of humankind...
That was over two hundred years ago. One of the most radical of the leaders of the French Revolution, Jean Paul Marat, while exhorting the people of France to overthrow the French aristocracy, and to seize power themselves, looked into the future and asked this question:
“What will we have gained by destroying the aristocracy of nobility, if it is simply replaced with an aristocracy of wealth?”
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Why I am Voting for BARRY HERMANSON for Congress
Fog City Journal -- January 31, 2012
Update:
San Francisco voters didn't see it my way. Over 89,400 voters took the Kool Aid and voted for Nancy Pelosi and more of the same. Nearly 6,400 voted for Barry Hermanson, but
16,206 voted for the has-been Republican John Dennis, who will be in the run-off election with Pelosi in November. So instead of a real and vital debate, we will have a coronation.
Ho-humm. [MN - 9/23/2012]
 This election is different, and so is Barry Hermanson. Because of the new “Top Two” primary system, the top two candidates in the June 5 primary will be on the ballot in November, regardless of party affiliation. Are you tired of the total lack of any real debate in the general election between
Nancy Pelosi and some retrograde Republican candidate?
Whether or not you like the new “Top Two” primary system, that is the way it is this year. And it is a real possibility that Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson could be facing Nancy Pelosi in November, if Barry comes in second in the primary.
Nobody believes that Barry would beat Pelosi in the general election. She has all the Democratic Party money and machinery on her side. But, just for once, wouldn’t you like to see Pelosi and the Democrats forced into a real debate...
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BILL CLINTON Busts Hotel Workers' Boycott
Open Salon -- March 21, 2011
You would think former President
Bill Clinton would have more sense than to bust a boycott at the Westin St. Francis, one of the swankest hotels in San Francisco.
Well, maybe Bill has trouble understanding the meaning of "boycott," just as he famously had trouble understanding the meaning
of "is."
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The Real State of the Union: CAPITALISM SUCKS
Fog City Journal -- January 31, 2011
 See if you can guess who said this:
“Clearly, a sizable portion of the assets created in recent years turned out to be ‘make believe,’ the result of an unsustainable, ephemeral bubble in housing and the churning out of increasingly exotic, ultimately toxic financial instruments.
“It’s one thing for folks and institutions that hold suspect paper to lose out, but it’s quite another when the process that created the stuff ends up undermining the global financial system and battering the lives of hundreds of millions of other people…
“Even those individuals not normally hostile to free markets now hold suspicions that capitalism is fundamentally based on greed and is immoral; that it enables the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor; that free markets are Darwinian places where the most ruthless operators unfairly crush smaller competitors and where the cost of vital products and services, such as health care and energy, are almost beyond the reach of those who need them…”
Did you guess that the author of these words is none other than Steve Forbes, editor of Forbes Magazine?...
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 MARCH 20:
Money for Healthcare, Jobs, Education,
Public Services
- NOT WAR!
Beyond Chron --
March 17, 2010
It is long past time for the antiwar movement to get back into the streets in a big way. It is also long past time for us to see the links between our permanent war economy -- regardless of the party or President in office -- and the growing economic, political and social crisis that we confront daily.
The massive March 4 demonstrations around the country against education cuts and fee hikes are a clear manifestation of a serious break, especially among youth, with the business-as-usual political elite that constantly strives to contain and diminish our righteous anger. It is time to take the fightback to the next level...
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 KILLERS: McNAMARA and ANDERSON
Beyond Chron -- July 8, 2009
The obituary page in last Tuesday's
San Francisco Chronicle had me looking
for the vomitorium.
The five-column headline at the top read "Killer, now blamed in girl's death,
a 'monster.'"
Curtis Dean Anderson confessed to kidnapping and killing one 7-year old girl, stands accused by the police of kidnapping and killing yet another 7-year old, and bragged about kidnapping and molesting many other children. "Everyone, it seems, hated Curtis Dean Anderson. Except his mother. And even she had doubts."
Right below this obit is a three-column headline:
"Robert McNamara -- led escalation of Vietnam War."
Do I really have to point out the irony here? The unemotional eulogy to McNamara, who "directed the escalation" of the war that killed three million Vietnamese -- including countless children -- never once uses the word "killer." But a killer is exactly what McNamara was...
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 TIGERS, CAPITALISM
and THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
Beyond Chron -- January 22, 2008
Tigers kill, as we saw at the San Francisco Zoo
on Christmas day.
But for all its ferocity, the tiger is not the King of Beasts. That title belongs to the lion. Let loose an equal number of tigers and lions, and the lions will
kill off the tigers. Why? Because the tiger, ever the rugged individualist, fights alone. Lions fight together as a pack.
I didn't learn this fact from some nature book. I learned it from reading a book called
Caviar and Cabbage, a collection of newspaper columns by Melvin B. Tolson.
Tolson was the professor, poet and writer portrayed by Denzel Washington in
The Great Debaters, which is based on a true story from 1935 America.
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 CONNECT the... HEADLINES
Beyond Chron -- November 9, 2007
"Former AT&T worker details federal internet spying in S.F."
Seems AT&T allowed the National Security Agency (NSA), the biggest and baddest intelligence agency in world history, to build a special room at an AT&T office on Folsom Street, right here in the City by the Bay.
According to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AT&T is sending "the entire Internet to the [NSA's] secret room... sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style... These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T's customers but everybody's."
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 HARDLY STRICTLY
Indybay --
October 9, 2007
I knew I had stopped having a good time when Emmylou Harris gave Warren Hellman a big hug at the Banjo Stage in Speedway Meadows. Hellman, after all, is the billionaire financier, venture capitalist and political heavyweight who tore up the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park to build a parking lot for his monstrosity of a museum, just a short stroll away from the site of his Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.
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 HALLIBURTON for PRESIDENT!
Beyond Chron -- July 24, 2007
Tired already of the gaggle of candidates
vying to take over the Oval Office? Most of them can't decide which side of the bread to butter without a focus group. It's time to try something new. Why limit presidential candidates to mere human beings?
We should elect a corporation as our
Chief Executive. After all, the Supreme Court says that corporations are people too.
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 Lynne Stewart/Michael Ratner Tour
Beyond Chron -- February 21, 2007
Lynne Stewart is an attorney renowned for her defense of radical and unpopular defendants... She has been convicted of bogus “terrorist conspiracy” charges, and is appealing her conviction and 28-month prison sentence.
Stewart’s two co-defendants, Mohammad Yousry (right) and Ahmed Sattar (far right), both legal workers for Stewart, were similarly convicted on trumped-up charges. Yousry faces a 20-month prison sentence, while Sattar faces 24 years.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has called the government attack on Stewart and her co-defendants “a triumph of fear over reason.”
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 The War Over the War
Beyond Chron -- December 15, 2006
Sometimes Pat Buchanan hits the nail on the head.
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All I See Are DEAD PEOPLE
Beyond Chron -- October 20, 2006
It was Bruce Willis who famously said:
"All I see are dead people..."
...a report from a prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, [says] that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died in the wake of the U.S. invasion...
As horrific as the war in Iraq is, Iraqis aren't the only ones on the planet who are dying. According to the United Nation's World Food Program, every five seconds a child dies because that child is hungry.
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