Fort Mason Tunnel

As the best connection from BART to the soon-to-be-redeveloped Fort Mason Arts Center, an extension of the SF Municipal Railway through the Fort Mason tunnel makes the Marina Green/Crissy Field waterfront a convenient addition to the Embarcadero and Fisherman's Wharf touristic zone.

First Amendment Under Attack

Fifty years after Governor Reagan used the FBI to attack the student Free Speech movement at University of California Berkeley, the UC system is again being pressured to curb free speech.

Art from North Beach

Lucia Gonnella captures the moment of life.

Green Growth False Promise

As I wrote in A World of Their Own, Marin County--the wealthiest in California--is where the stars of environmental show business go for seed money from the capitalist system. Unlike many venues, the National Bioneers Conference--held at Marin Center--frequently features assimilated indigenous celebrities, such as First Peoples Worldwide president Rebecca Adamson, Indigenous Environmental Network executive director Tom Goldtooth, and 350 staff member Clayton Thomas-Muller.

As I observed in Mammon's Missionaries, Naomi Klein's mission on behalf of Wall Street to co-opt indigenous activists such as Arthur Manuel and Clayton Thomas-Muller, and thus assimilate them into the corporate fold, is psychological warfare at its most repugnant. The consequence of this assimilation, as noted in The Collaborative Model Takes Root in Alberta's Tar Sands by Macdonald Stainsby, is environmental fraud, in which Big Green organizations like Greenpeace and 350 sell out the public interest, "shunting aside indigenous nations in the process and eliminating democratic oversight all in one fell swoop."

Under the umbrella of Klein's This Changes Everything project, this institutionalized racism--using assimilated indigenous celebrities as cover--leads to such things as crimes against humanity.

Collaborating with oil industry money laundries like TIDES Foundation, as well as notorious violators of human rights such as Shell Oil, 350 and friends engage in deceiving the public, while allowing Tar Sands investors to continue poisoning the planet. As Stainsby remarked in How Tides Canada Controls the Secret North American Tar Sands Coalition, backroom deals between Big Green and energy corporations leads to Big Green "defending a strategy of accommodation to capital."

The false promise of green capitalism, says Stainsby, is that we can have a growth economy and a healthy atmosphere. Commenting on this seductive claim, he maintains, "It is a lie."

Blue Over Bay

Supervisor Avalos is right to propose the Blue Angels be restricted to flying over the bay, and not over the city. When they strafe the city, it is impossible to hear a person speak, even when sitting right next to them. Imagine how terrorizing that is to some people and all pets.

As Supervisor Mar observes, this blatant promotion of militarism in a city known for peace activism is anathema to those values. The fact that a Blue Angels crash like the ones in South Carolina and Tennessee endanger civilians ought to outweigh this unnecessary display of military aggression.

Dead Wrong on Prostitution

48 hills is a welcome addition to San Francisco media, but on prostitution, they are dead wrong.

As I observed in my comment on the piece by Tim Redmond:

Politicians aside, the prostitution industry is an extremely violent aspect of organized crime, that destroys lives and corrupts communities. The Nordic model adopted by Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and France criminalizes trafficking and purchasing women and children for sex slavery, and decriminalizes the victims, i.e. prostitutes. Roughly 10% of prostitutes are in it by choice; the rest are victims of poverty and brutal criminal networks. Protecting the human rights of 90% of prostitutes is arguably more important than helping organized crime, don't you think?
http://prostitutionresearch.com/ 

San Luis Agreement

According to the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the San Luis Settlement Agreement by the President Obama and Governor Brown administrations will devastate the Klamath and Trinity salmon, as well as condemn the Hoopa, Karuk and Yurok tribes to poverty. The ongoing diversion of Trinity River water to Central Valley agribusiness, they say, only accelerates the pollution of the San Joaquin River and San Francisco Bay with toxic industrial waste. The Hoopa intend to sue the federal government for violating their trust responsibilities to the tribes.

Bernie Bumps Oakland

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders attended a forum in East Oakland, where he invited housing and police reform activists to participate in a discussion. 48 hills reports.

Journalist Murders Remain Unsolved

As ProPublica reports, the FBI has made no arrests related to the murders (1981-1990) of five Vietnamese-American journalists, targeted by the right-wing Vietnamese-American organization National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam for disagreeing with their far-fetched plans to overthrow the Communist regime in Vietnam. The murders began in San Francisco, when a publisher was shot outside his apartment in the Tenderloin.