Recent Posts
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Autocracy Defeats Neoliberalism
November 14, 2024
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History… We’re Soaking in It!
October 2, 2024
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A Numbing Spectacle
September 22, 2024
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War Is the Air We Breathe
July 15, 2024
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Silicon Valley: A Living History
May 6, 2024
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And Yet, We Go On
April 22, 2024
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It IS Happening Here
February 16, 2024
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General Ludd to General Intellect
January 11, 2024
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Temporal and Geographic Edges
December 26, 2023
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The Root of All Evil
October 13, 2023
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IBM’s latest slogan is “We can make a smarter world” or something idiotic like that”¦ here, again, in a dumb marketing campaign we immediately confront the basic problem. The world is an incredible intelligence already. We humans really don’t understand it well at all”¦ It might make sense for a corporation like IBM to invite us to become smarter by learning more about natural systems, how we can redesign our existence on a paradigm of sensible insertion into those natural systems, but to hubristically claim that corporations could” or worse, should” go about “making” a “smarter world,” is just breathtakingly dumb.
Not that I expect anything different from corporations. They are always filling our mental and social spaces with their insipid messages. Once in a while they have a bad moment, like yesterday when Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company decided to settle out of court for about $15 million rather than face the shitstorm of bad publicity that a trial was going to put them through. The case was brought by the relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian activist of the Ogoni people who was murdered by the Nigerian government in an unsuccessful effort to quell the ongoing resistance in the Nigerian Delta to the incredible mayhem, death and pollution wrought by multinational oil companies like Shell and Chevron.
 Image drawn by Jim Swanson in 1996, dramatizing the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian military and its multinational sponsors.
It was a small but important step towards ending the impunity with which multinational corporations are able to wreak havoc across the planet. Another exciting development just happened yesterday when the Peruvian congress voted to suspend two laws that had been shoved through by the neoliberal Alan Garcia regime, using the Free Trade agreement with the U.S. as a pretext, which were designed to remove the traditional land-tenure rules that preserved indigenous cultures against global energy giants. Mass protest in the Amazonian part of Peru led to a horrible massacre of 500 people by the Peruvian military last week, and now the national parliament has entered the fray to try to defuse the situation. Kudos to the intense organizing and protest of the Peuvian indigenous who have, temporarily at least, halted the oil and timber companies.
Continue reading Commons and its Enemies
Following the siren song of the Fossil Fool, or expecting to anyway (he was very late!), I joined a surprisingly large contingent of San Francisco cyclists to ride the 20-odd miles to the Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. Gray foggy skies kept us cool as we headed out, and right away the etiquette of a Critical Mass broke down, as we separated into ever smaller groups of cyclists, broken up by the red lights.
 San Francisco cyclists leave on Valencia May 30 for the Maker Faire 20 miles south in San Mateo. We headed for a bayshore route, and took Bayshore Blvd southward, zigzagging across the freeway before finally getting into the relative open of the toxic landfill that was once San Francisco’s garbage dump in Brisbane lagoon. It’s a nice place to ride now, presumably relatively safe for passersby, but known to harbor some of the hottest of toxic hot spots that rim the bay. We slipped under the freeway again to regroup under San Bruno Mountain’s last spring greenery (we were in a sprawling Marriott parking lot), but a lot of the musical accompaniment was so far behind us that we never saw them until hours later at the Faire.
 Southward on Bayshore Blvd., beneath the freeways.  Regrouping beneath San Bruno Mountain, one of our area's least-appreciated ecological treasures. From the parking lot we meandered through the weird suburbia built on old bay wetlands, through office parks and wide, deserted roadways.
Continue reading At the Edge of Commercialization: The Maker Faire
John Ross, longtime correspondent from Mexico, even a longer time activist and radical from San Francisco, was honored with a “John Ross Day” declaration on May 12, which also happened to be the 25th anniversary of the End of the World’s Fair! Here’s John reading his refusal to honored by a city that has become a Sanctuary City for the Rich!
 John Ross at podium addressing San Francisco Board of Supervisors, refusing his "day". SAN FRANCISCO (May 15th) – May 12th – “John Ross Day” as proclaimed by the City of San Francisco, proved to be a tumultuous one as the poet, journalist, and globetrotting troublemaker turned down the commendation bestowed upon him by the Board of Supervisors with a rotund “thanks anyway.”
Ross lambasted the City fathers and mothers for having transformed San Francisco into “a sanctuary city for the rich.” Â 20 years ago, San Francisco proclaimed itself “a sanctuary city” for the refugees of U.S. wars in Central America. Â Now, as Ross pointed out, “indocumentados are rousted, jailed, and deported back to their devastated home countries from right here in Sanctuary City.”
Continue reading History, Natural and Other
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