A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

Day of clashes at Occupy Oakland ends with at least 400 arrests

 

Oakland Police officers take away a Occupy protesters as arrests are made at the YMCA along Broadway in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. (photograph by Anda Chu/Oakland Tribune Staff)

 

Matthias Gafni, Chris De Benedetti and Rick Hurd of the Oakland Tribune newspaper reported that Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, stole an American flag from the City Council chamber and set it on fire Saturday night, punctuating a wild day in which police deployed tear gas, arrested more than 400 marchers and dodged hurling objects.

Demonstrators spent the day trying to break into a convention center and temporarily occupying City Hall and a YMCA, all the while snaking around lines of riot-clad police periodically shooting bean bag projectiles, among other uses of nonlethal force.

Saturday marked the first major clashes between protesters and police since November and left three officers with minor injuries, as protesters threw bottles, metal pipes, rocks, spray cans and "improvised explosive devices," police said.

Go here for the full story on the Oakland Tribune newspaper website   --->>>

Banks targeted at OWS West protest

 

A man is taken into custody by SFPD officers, in front of the Bank of America at 555 California Street on January 20, 2012..

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

A steady rain that came down most of Friday didn’t stop Occupy demonstrators in the hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand throughout the day, from converging on San Francisco’s Financial District.

They showed up in the belly of the city's international business machine to protest real estate foreclosures and financial institutions profiting from people losing their homes.

Two years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that it's unconstitutional for the government to limit how much money corporations and labor unions can donate to poitical causes, in the Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission case.

Now the headquarters, offices and branches of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other finance companies were targeted by a variety of groups aligned with the Occupy movement for direct actions, and in some cases, human blockades or “lock downs”.

By 5 p.m., 18 people had been arrested for misdemeanor trespassing, most of them taken into custody after they blocked the exit of a bank. Another man was also arrested and charged with a felony, after he was found to be in possession of a police baton that someone had stolen from an officer at the scene, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak of the San Francisco Police Department. 

Calling the event Occupy Wall Street West, protesters began the first actions early in the morning, before 8 a.m., and went on with them throughout the day and into the evening hours. They targeted more than 20 "action sites" for protesters to visit -- including the Macy's at Union Square, where a small flash mob showed up at about 2 p.m. -- ending at about 8 p.m., when a core group of about 40 people broke into an abandoned hotel, presumably hoping to squat there.

“Banks have spent more than any other sector, the greatest amount, on lobbying. Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo dropped $12 million between them in lobbying in 2011 alone,” said Cinthya Munoz over a bullhorn to a group of demonstrators standing in front of a Wells Fargo branch on California Street. “We’re asking that Wells Fargo put a moratorium on all foreclosures because we need our homes more than the banks need one more. … Wells Fargo, you owe us!”

 

Go here for the full story on the Examiner.com website   --->>>

 

A history of the Occupy movement (so far)

 

Thousands of Occupy demonstrators marched down Market Street in San Francisco on Saturday, October 15, 2011.

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Maybe the Occupy movement can be explained with the proposition that all actions are really just reactions, or that for every expansion, there's a contraction. It seems this movement has gained momentum through a series of actions and reactions, by rapid expansions and then sudden contractions.

Inspired by the so-called Arab Spring, the Occupy movement became something quite exceptional in its own right during the last quarter of 2011.

What started in New York with a couple of hundred protesters calling themselves Occupy Wall Street has spread across the country, sprouted up in cities from coast to coast, and now the total number of people who have participated in Occupy demonstrations is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

 

Go here for the full article and photographs   --->>>

 

Brown enlarges his role in California's foundering bullet train project

With the $100-billion project at a critical juncture, the governor puts his people in key positions.

 

Roelof van Ark is stepping down as head of the California High Speed Rail Authority. (Bryan Patrick / Sacramento Bee)

 

Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported that a surprise shake-up of senior leaders at California's bullet-train agency this week was partly Gov. Jerry Brown's response to a growing crisis of confidence and credibility in recent months that has threatened the political viability of the project.

As criticism of the project has intensified, Brown has moved to exert more direct control, installing two representatives on the board of the California High Speed Rail Authority and, on Thursday, playing at least a peripheral role in replacing the authority's chief executive, Roelof van Ark. Several state government sources said Van Ark, an engineering manager and high-speed rail expert, had become personally frustrated and lost the confidence of some key legislators.

Brown is under pressure from unions, engineering firms, big-city mayors and the Obama administration to stabilize and press ahead on a nearly $100-billion project that would be the biggest in California's lofty history of extraordinary public works gambles. With so much at stake, Brown is putting his own people in charge, although their ability to quickly reverse the damage of a wave of negative outside reviews of the project remains unclear.

Go here for the full article at the LA Times website  --->>>

S.F. Sheriff Mirkarimi takes office under a cloud

 

Photo of Ross Mirkarimi by Dylan Entelis of the San Francisco Chronicle

 

An editorial in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle said that newly sworn-in San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi should take an immediate leave of absence if he is charged in a domestic violence case that is now under investigation.

The emergence of allegations that Mirkarimi may have abused his wife, Eliana Lopez, cast a pall over his inauguration and consumed the public attention on his first week in office. The questions about his character and fitness for the job will not go away until either the district attorney's office decides there is not enough credible evidence to bring a case, or Mirkarimi is exonerated in a court of law.

Mirkarimi has not done his stature as a top law enforcement official any favors with some of his spare public comments and behind-the-scenes actions since the allegations have arisen. His suggestion that "this is a private matter, a family matter" evoked less enlightened eras in this society's response to domestic abuse.

 

Go here for the full editorial on SFGate.com   --->>>

Parasites turning California honeybees into ‘Zombie-like slaves’

 

Photo of a honeybee pollinating a blackberry flower in Golden Gate Park, June of 2011, by Thomas K. Pendergast 

 

KTVU Channel 2 News reported today that a San Francisco State University researcher has come up with an explanation for a stunning decline in Northern California honeybee colonies that sounds more like a plot for a science fiction movie.

According to John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, the die off has been triggered by parasites that inflect and transform honeybees into “zombie-like slaves.”

Hafernik had collected some dead honey bees that were found on campus, but then forgot about them.

“Being an absent-minded professor,” he said in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them...The next time I looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees.”

Further examination found that the fly pupae were those of the Apocephalus borealis – a parasitic fly.

 

Go here for the full story on the KTVU Channel 2 news website   --->>>

Montanans launch recall of US Senators who support NDAA military detention

 

Ralph Lopez of the Daily Kos reported that on Christmas Day, after the US Senate voted 86 - 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.

Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses.

 

Go here for the full story on the Daily Kos website   --->>>

Medical Journal Article: 14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout

 

Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count.

 

In the Sacramento Bee newspaper, Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman of the International Journal of Health Services reported that an estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services.  

This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. 

The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one.  The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.

The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org.

Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores.  Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S.

 

Go here for the full story on the Sacramento Bee website   --->>>

Sunset District Votes for Miyamoto, Local Schools

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Sunset District voting statistics for the last election are similar to citywide totals, except for the choice of San Francisco county sheriff and a lot of support for Proposition H, the call for local schools which was narrowly defeated.

San Francisco Department of Elections numbers show Paul Miyamoto got 33 percent of the District 4 vote for the office of county sheriff, more than San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who got 29 percent. Chris Cunnie placed third, capturing 27 percent of the district's vote.

In District 7, 38 percent of the ballots were cast for Miyamoto, Cunnie received 32 percent and Mirkarimi got 26 percent.

District 7 also had the distinction of producing the largest voter turnout in the City, with more than 50 percent of registered voters casting ballots. Of San Francisco's total registered voters, more than 42 percent cast ballots.

On the other hand, the Inner Sunset neighborhood (part of District 5) gave Mirkarimi 46 percent of its votes, while Cunnie received 27 percent and Miyamoto got 23 percent.

San Francisco voters gave Mirkarimi the office with 38 percent of their ballots, while Cunnie got 28 percent and Miyamoto got 27 percent.

Jason McDaniel, an assistant professor of political science at San Francisco State University, said there are several factors that account for this, one of which is the name recognition of Mirkarimi, which worked both for and against him.

 

Go here for the full story on the website of the Sunset Beacon newspaper   --->>>

Port operations resume after day of Occupy protests in Oakland

 

Occupy Oakland protesters stop a truck near the APL terminal gate at the Port of Oakland during the 3 a.m. shift on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 in Oakland, Calif. There was no police presence at the port. (Jane Tyska/Staff)

 

The Oakland Tribune newspaper reported that it was business as usual this morning at the Port of Oakland, with trucks moving through terminal entrances that had been blocked by thousands of Occupy protesters the night before.

Late Monday and early this morning, protesters had blocked two APL terminals, preventing workers from entering. By 4 a.m., they had dispersed, allowing the nation's 5th largest port to reopen.

Port officials said this morning that "due to the protests during the last 24 hours, there is a heavy backlog of work to get through." There are seven vessels at dock this morning.

The port shutdown was part of the Occupy movement's planned West Coast port blockade on Monday from Southern California to Anchorage, Alaska, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

 

Go here for the full story on the Oakland Tribune website   --->>>