Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant

By | |
Leave a comment

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

–Netanyahu

A direct line runs between the judicial overhaul and the Gaza war. Netanyahu should emulate Begin and go, but we can’t expect introspection from him. The future inquiry must invrstigate how much time the prime minister devoted to the reform – and how much listening to the military leadership

רה"מ נתניהו הערכת מצב

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at an update at the Kirya army base in Tel Aviv, October 10, 2023 Credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO

Gidi Weitz

Oct 9, 2023 (haaretz.com)

How depressing and upsetting it is today to recall Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrogance under interrogation about Case 2000, one of the three corruption cases against the prime minister. “This is classified, don’t let it leak, okay?” he said, flattering the police investigators with the magic lure of security secrets. And then he explained his doctrine regarding Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We have neighbors,” he said, “who are our bitter enemies … I send them messages all the time … these days, right now … I mislead them, destabilize them, mock them, and them hit them over the head.” The suspect then continued his lecture: “It’s impossible to reach an agreement with them … Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames.”

This arrogant worldview, so disconnected from reality, isn’t the only thing that blew up in Netanyahu’s face, and ours, on Saturday morning. The other “concept” that collapsed was one many good people warned about: the idea that the leadership of the state could be entrusted to a criminal defendant.

History will judge everyone who lent a hand to this moral distortion – first and foremost the defendant himself and his fanatic supporters, party colleagues, and partners in the governing coalition, but also the media personalities and jurists who mobilized to kosher this abomination.

It will also presumably cast an unflattering light on the 11 Supreme Court justices who refrained from putting their fingers in the dike on the grounds that they lacked the power to do so, while shutting their eyes to the disastrous consequences of their passivism.

But even before that history is written, the state commission of inquiry that will have to be formed once the fires die down will have to delve into the prime minister’s priorities and agenda. It will have to examine how many hours he devoted this year to his dangerous justice minister, to the court’s reasonableness standard and to the Judicial Appointments Committee, compared to how many he devoted to his defense minister and the army’s chief of staff; it will have to examine how much attention he paid to the head of Military Intelligence compared to how much attention he paid to his lawyers and PR people.

It’s infuriating to recall that just a few months ago, Netanyahu found time to appear in the Jerusalem District Court to deter a frightened witness, the businessman Arnon Milchan, while Israel’s own deterrence was eroding. Or to recall his refusal to meet with IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, who sought to warn him about the destructive consequences of abolishing the reasonableness standard, on the day the law doing so was passed.

It’s impossible to close your eyes to the reality. There’s a clear connection between the corruption trial, the government’s judicial overhaul, and the greatest failure since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, perhaps even since the establishment of the state.

Admittedly, the intelligence agencies failed inconceivably at foreseeing the actual attack. But they warned Netanyahu time and again in recent months that Israel’s enemies had identified a historic weakness, making the likelihood of war higher than it has been since the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

Yet instead of quelling Justice Minister Yariv Levin, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich due to this danger, Netanyahu prioritized ensuring his personal survival and the integrity of his coalition at the price of capitulating to insane, messianic racists. To this end, he turned his domestic rivals into enemies and systematically destroyed the connective tissue that, with great difficulty, held Israel society together.

He and his partners in this criminal organization forgot that Israel isn’t Poland or Hungary, but first and foremost a country deeply embroiled in a national conflict. Consequently, it doesn’t have the privilege of entertaining itself with dictatorial games.

Hamas as partner

Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

The worst terror attack in Israel’s history also strips Netanyahu of his title as “the terrorism expert,” a source of pride ever since he established the Jonathan Institute in memory of his brother Yoni, who was killed during the Entebbe hostage rescue. With its help, he marketed himself for years and eventually reached the Prime Minister’s Office.

Netanyahu learned the lesson of his predecessors Menachem Begin and Olmert and for years, maneuvered skillfully to avoid getting embroiled in a war in which hundreds would die, since he knew that would likely be the end of his road as a politician. But the vertigo of his current term, during which he sacrificed everything for the sake of clinging to power, resulted in “his nightmare scenario coming true,” to quote a man who knows him well.

He has been prime minister for most of the last 16 years, yet what he will be remembered for after he goes is this last devastating year. In a single day, under his reckless leadership, Israel paid a much higher price in blood than it did during the Second Lebanon War, and similar to what it paid during the first Lebanon War in the early 1980s.

Olmert will be credited with destroying Syria’s nuclear reactor and striving to end the conflict with the Palestinians. Begin will be remembered for bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor and, of course, making peace with Egypt. Netanyahu’s portfolio of achievements is pretty thin, with all due respect to the Abraham Accords.

Not long ago, we marked the 40th anniversary of the cabinet meeting at which Begin announced that he couldn’t go on any longer. Israel was bogged down in the Lebanese quagmire, with fatalities mounting every day, and this overcame him.

“The reason is that with every fiber of my being, I can’t go on,” Begin told his partners in Likud and the governing coalition, who begged him to reconsider. “There are times like that … If I had even a shadow of a doubt that I could go on, I would do so. But it’s not in my power to do so. What does a man need to do if it’s not in his power? … Allow me to go to the president [to resign] this very day. Forgive me, pardon me, grant me atonement. I can’t do it anymore.”

What we need now is for Netanyahu to follow in the footsteps of Likud’s first leader. But you can’t expect any soul-searching from him, and certainly not self-flagellation or shutting himself up at home à la Begin. Soon, any moment now, he’ll be blaming everyone except himself. The poison machine has already started to work.

Another tech wave is coming for San Francisco’s Mission District

By | |
Leave a comment

By Ariana Bindman Oct 9, 2023 (SFGate.com)

FILE: The Mission District in San Francisco.peeterv/Getty Images

San Francisco’s Mission District feels like it’s straddling two different worlds. 

Everything to know about the Palace of Fine Arts

For years, this small, vibrant Latino enclave has been home to many immigrant families, artists and longtime residents — but in the past decade, the eclectic neighborhood has also been a home base for tech titans and wealthy residents like Mark Zuckerberg. For every old-school Victorian home and grimy, longtime dive bar, it seems that there are just as many brand-new loft spaces and trendy restaurants packed with moneyed office workers. And despite surviving a previous “onslaught” of gentrification, now, it appears that the neighborhood is bracing itself for yet another tech movement: the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry. 

Derek Daniels, a regional research director at Colliers International, a multibillion-dollar investment management company, said the Mission neighborhood is jokingly referred to as “Area AI,” an homage to Area 51. “Most of it is concentrated in that area,” he told SFGATE. 

“All the talk has been ‘tech is shrinking’ — but the AI segment is a segment that’s seeing significant growth in funding,” Daniels added. 

Even though San Francisco is hemorrhaging tech companies left and right, a map Colliers shared with SFGATE shows that this industry is slowly, quietly taking hold in one of San Francisco’s most diverse neighborhoods. Adept AI, for instance, which was founded in 2022, has offices just a 15-minute walk from 16th Street BART Station. OpenAI, arguably the most prominent artificial intelligence company, is around the corner on Florida Street, and companies like Zoox, Ideo and Embark Trucks are all clustered in the same gray region of the Mission District. 

“OpenAI has somewhat of a queen bee phenomenon,” says John Jensen, Colliers’ executive vice president. 

“As someone who has lived and worked in the Mission since 2016, I found it to be the ideal location for a startup like ours,” Sonia Kastner, Pano AI’s CEO and co-founder, told SFGATE. 

Aside from offering mixed-use office space and easy highway access, the neighborhood provides a “vibrant urban setting” for the company’s local employees and makes it easy for customers, investors and policymakers to visit headquarters, she said. 

Soran Mofti, a manager at Remoov, a company in the area that declutters and resells secondhand furniture, can attest that tech’s landscape is changing based on the number of clear-outs he’s been assigned.   

Many startups have told him that they’re going remote or moving to other neighborhoods — namely, the Mission. 

Most employees in the industry work, live and play in the neighborhood, said Jensen, and Mofti agrees that the area’s proximity to bars and restaurants is what makes it so alluring compared to downtown. 

Jensen predicts that the prices for office space will go up, but he believes this demand will ultimately benefit the community’s residents and small businesses. Unlike downtown San Francisco, the Mission has a wealth of foot traffic, contributing to the area’s vibrancy — tech’s presence, he says, will only bolster it even more. “Success breeds success,” he said. 

But Mofti is concerned that these encroaching companies will displace businesses in the working class enclave, which has long been home to furniture warehouses and brick-and-mortar design shops.

“If this trend continues in the Mission, then it’s going to be a little bit problematic for the traditional furniture businesses that have traditionally been in this neighborhood,” he said. 

Major investment companies, however, believe otherwise. 

“Every day, we’re seeing groups that are evaluating expansion in this area. And it’s a good thing,” Jensen continued. “… San Francisco needs positivity, and these groups can provide that.”

More News

— The heartbreaking search for a teen who vanished from an SF mall
— Newsom just vetoed over 100 Calif. bills. Here are some of them.
— SF just opened 17 new shops and restaurants downtown
— Missing Katy Perry songwriter found after 3 months

Oct 9, 2023

By Ariana Bindman

Ariana Bindman is the news features reporter at SFGATE. To submit tips, comments or cat videos, please reach out to her at ariana.bindman@sfgate.com.

GRETA THUNBERG EMBRACES BIG OIL AFTER VISITING REALLY NICE HIGHWAY TRUCK STOP

By | |
Leave a comment

PublishedYesterday (TheOnion.com)

Image for article titled Greta Thunberg Embraces Big Oil After Visiting Really Nice Highway Truck Stop

PORTER, IN—In a surprising pivot that sent shock waves through the environmental movement, climate justice activist Greta Thunberg told reporters Monday that she was embracing big oil after visiting a really nice highway truck stop in Indiana. “If I had known you could buy a phone case, new sunglasses, an energy drink, and a roller-grilled hot dog all in one stop, I never would have supported a worldwide divestment in fossil fuels,” the longtime renewable energy advocate said during her visit to the TA Travel Center at exit 22B off I-94, where she reportedly admired a huge display of pocket knives, purchased several different varieties of beef jerky, and announced she was now fully on board with subsidizing oil companies. “Without diesel trucks and gas-powered cars, this vibrant culture might face extinction. An entire way of life full of sarcastic bumper stickers, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, DVDs of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, and Bible-themed crossword books could be wiped out forever.” Thunberg later announced a new campaign to promote offshore oil drilling during which she would tour America’s truck stops in a charter bus that gets six miles per gallon of fuel.

And in more environmental news…

Scientists Announce That Unexplored Parts Of Ocean Probably Contain More Water

PublishedYesterday (TheOnion.com)

Image for article titled Scientists Announce That Unexplored Parts Of Ocean Probably Contain More Water

CAMBRIDGE, MA—Advancing a bold new theory that could revolutionize the way scientists think about the planet, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Monday that the unexplored parts of the world’s oceans probably contain more water. “While we can’t say with certainty what lay in those deep recesses of the sea we have yet to observe firsthand, chances are there’s a bunch of water in there,” said Adrian Yu, an MIT professor who along with his colleagues spent decades studying what is considered one of the great mysteries of science before concluding the unseen reaches of the ocean are likely full of water, as well as waves, tides, and, in the colder regions, ice. “We’re pretty sure the water is salt water, too. If you go deep enough, there might also be sand or mud down there, but more research is needed before we can say definitely. It’s all pretty standard ocean stuff, though.” Leading oceanographers hailed the finding, calling it the greatest advancement in the field since last year’s discovery of a sophisticated undersea civilization of tiny merfolk who ride around on seahorses and talk to dolphins.

Blue skies, Blue Angels—and not many members of the public—at Feinstein memorial

By | |
Leave a comment

More cops than mourners as the late mayor and senator is remembered fondly by her friends.

By JJ LANSING

OCTOBER 8, 2023 (48hills.org)

On Thursday afternoon, under blue skies and Blue Angels, San Francisco celebrated the life and legacy of Senator Dianne Feinstein.

On the steps of the City Hall Feinstein walked as mayor, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Mayor London Breed accompanied Eileen Mariano, Feinstein’s granddaughter. Many members of congress made the six-hour flight from DC, alongside dozens of staffers of the late Senator. Pelosi acknowledged both groups in her remarks, the section of staffers laughing with each other when she referenced their infamous office t-shirts: “I survived Feinstein’s staff meeting.”

The Blue Angels, the controversial flying team that Feinstein brought to SF, makes a ‘D’ in her honor while interrupting her memorial.

The sweltering heat and direct sunlight resulted in about half the chairs allotted for the public remaining empty — there were more cops working at the memorial than there were people for them to monitor. Among the press, there were shared knowing glances and raised eyebrows at some things not mentioned about Feinstein’s career and impact on San Francisco. There was, of course, a silent understanding that critical analysis of a political legacy was not the objective of this event, but vague amusement lingered in its place, and in the rows of empty seats.

For a somber occasion, there was joy found everywhere. Many who attended chose to forego wearing black. Each of the brief speakers had a laugh or two — Schumer at himself when he had to chase his speech across the dais after a gust of wind picked it up, Breed at the sky when the jets overhead interrupted a speech for the seventh time (“I told the Blue Angels [they could fly over] twice!”) Pelosi when recounting how, after Feinstein’s ten years as mayor, local children were flabbergasted by the new nominees: “Can a man be mayor of San Francisco?”

Breed recalled being a young teenager in San Francisco during the years Feinstein served as mayor, and having the chance to play at her events with her school band. “She showed us a world where women lead, where we lift each other up, so that girls like me could follow in her footsteps,” she said of her predecessor, with palpable reverence. “Dianne Feinstein did it right. She was our mayor, our champion — she was the leader of our band.”

President Biden contributed pre-recorded remarks: “On this day of remembrance, we reflect on the many ways such a pioneer made history, and built a legacy that will benefit Americans for generations to come — and that’s not an exaggeration.”

Surely it’s not, as her accomplishments are listed and begin to pile up — the creation of Pier 39, standing by cable cars and conservation efforts of Lake Tahoe, establishing Death Valley and Joshua Tree as National Parks, efforts to ban torture and assault weapons, the AMBER alert system—even the Blue Angels roaring by disruptively, preparing for Fleet Week, are here because Feinstein brought them here.

Pelosi smiled up at the jets as they passed again and again. “This is just the beginning! All weekend, Fleet Week [is] dedicated to Dianne. Flyovers all weekend. She would like it like that.” After dedicating 2023’s Fleet Week to Feinstein, Pelosi announced the jets would be in “missing woman” formation to honor her memory. One Blue Angel broke away from the pack, skywriting a giant “D” over the memorial. Pelosi and Schumer grinned and whispered to each other.

Schumer remembered her as one-of-a-kind, professionally and personally. “Her integrity made her sparkle like a diamond in the senate,” he said with awe. “What a loving, caring friend she was. When my daughter moved to San Francisco out of college, I got a call from Dianne. She asked me, ‘does your daughter have anywhere to go for the high holy services?’ I said, no. So she said, ‘she’s going to services with me.’”

Harris could attest firsthand to walking the path Feinstein carved, making her own ascension from San Francisco politics to serving as California’s junior senator under Feinstein. She also warmly remembers a no-nonsense woman. “When I was sworn into the senate in 2017, it was Dianne who welcomed me. She invited me to her senate hideaway. There, with one hand, she presented me with a glass of California chardonnay; and with the other hand, a binder full of her draft bills.”

For all her colleagues’ remembrances of a fierce political force, Feinstein’s granddaughter remembers her family matriarch and mentor. “I would spend nights at my Grandmother’s house whenever she was home in San Francisco. She taught me to play chess, although she hated losing. We would pick flowers from her garden and draw them together, although only her drawings were worth making into prints. She would give me haircuts at home in the kitchen, much to my parents’ dismay, because my hair always turned out crooked. And she loved teaching me about San Francisco history.”

As a nation, when we gather to remember a monumental figure of politics, their track record is naturally scrutinized to quantify if the good outweighed the bad. Feinstein has been no exception, and she of all people would welcome the dialogue — though it seems the most incredible thing about her life and career was that she got to have both.

“At the end of the day,” said Mariano, “We would curl up close on the couch, and watch a movie or our favorite TV show. And when it was time to go to sleep, she would say goodnight, and she would always sing me the song, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

Billionaires file legal brief attacking the unhoused in SF

By | |
Leave a comment

While city fails to train staff on sweeps, the people who created this crisis are asking the Supreme Court to blame the victims.

By TIM REDMOND

OCTOBER 8, 2023 (48hills.org)

San Francisco hasn’t taken any serious steps to train its workforce on the current legal rules for addressing homeless camps, a new filing by the Coalition on Homelessness says.

The Oct. 6 filing is the latest in a lawsuit that has been going on for years and has led to an injunction against the city banning most sweeps—an injunction the city continues to defy.

As part of the ongoing battle, the Coalition’s lawyers have demanded records showing how city officials are responding to the injunction—and according to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, part of the Coalition’s legal team, those records suggest only limited training of city workers:

According to City records, its only formal training tool is a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation that does not mention the court’s injunction or meaningfully explain the procedures the City must follow when handling unhoused residents’ belongings. The City has shown this presentation only three times, and produced no records of how many people ever saw it.

From the legal filing:

Although the Court requested concrete details on the extent of the City’s training programs, the City has not described conducting any trainings specifically to address issues of noncompliance with the preliminary injunction. The City does not even indicate whether it has changed anything about DPW’s training regimen in light of the injunction. Additionally, the City presents no measures undertaken to monitor compliance with its trainings, incentivize adherence to the bag and tag policy, or sanction mishandling of unhoused individuals’ property. The City’s meager response regarding training further confirms Plaintiffs’ misgivings regarding the City’s compliance efforts.

In fact, the filing says, the minimal training has led to continued violations of the injunction, including the wanton destruction of the property of unhoused people:

Unsurprisingly, the City’s inadequate training has resulted in DPW employees failing to abide by the City’s bag and tag policy and the Court’s injunction. For example, despite instructions apparently given at Sup II Meetings to take photographs to document property removal at cleaning operations, no photo records exist for the vast majority of property removals taking place since the preliminary injunction—proof that these “trainings” are not heeded. The City has never surfaced comprehensive records of disputed property as contemplated by the City’s bag and tag policy …

More fundamentally, the training the City claims to conduct has not had any impact on the City’s unlawful property destruction practices since the Court’s preliminary injunction took effect.

“The City’s halfhearted efforts at complying with the injunction are irresponsible,” said John Do, senior staff attorney with ACLU of Northern California, who also represents the plaintiffs. “The fact is that the problem of homelessness in San Francisco can be improved, but only if the City adequately trains all of its staff who regularly interact with the unhoused population.”

The city has not yet filed any response.

At the same time the city is failing to abide by the injunction, a group of San Francisco billionaires, Republican donors, and tech CEOs has filed its own motion seeking to get the US Supreme Court to overturn the decision that in part led to the injunction.

In two cases, in Grants Pass, Oregon, and Boise, Idaho, federal courts have ruled that cities can’t criminalize people for sleeping on the streets or in the parks when there is nowhere else for them to go.

The City of Grants Pass is asking the Supreme Court to overturn those decisions—and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, some local business leaders, and billionaires Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, and Ron Conway are intervening on the side of Grants Pass.

In an amicus filing, the group argues that

A critical tool in addressing [the homeless] crisis is the enforcement of common sense public safety laws that prevent homeless encampments from taking over the City’s streets. By holding that enforcement of such laws violates the Eighth Amendment, the Ninth Circuit committed a serious legal error that will have devastating consequences for cities on the frontlines of the homelessness crisis. … There is nothing compassionate about abandoning homeless people to the nightmare of encampments.

Actually, for many unhoused people, camping together is about safety and community, and the real nightmare is the sweeps—and sometimes the city shelters.

This is one of my favorite quotes:

Homelessness is not a new challenge in San Francisco. Amid the City’s vast cultural and economic prosperity, some people have always lacked housing for a complex range of reasons.

Umm, a “complex range of reasons?” Actually, the reasons are pretty simple and obvious: The federal government, thanks to folks like the leaders of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, lets billionaires pay less and less in taxes, creating radical economic inequality. The federal, state, and local government have put far too few resources into social housing—and the state, thanks again to massive, high-dollar contributions and lobbying by some of the folks filing this brief, like the San Francisco Apartment Association and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, has prevented cities from imposing the type or rent controls and eviction protections that could prevent homelessness in the first place.

In a broad-brush sense, it’s the folks who are financing this brief who have created the problem.

Bill Oberndorf gives large sums of money to Republican candidates. Ron Conway gives large sums to neoliberal Democrats. Many of the groups involved in the case lobby at every level for lower taxes on corporations, low taxes on capital gains, less social spending, and more economic inequality.

And now they are blaming the victims of their greed. Yes, that’s what homeless people are: The victims of more than 40 years of public policy promoting corporate and individual greed.

It’s sad to see some of the folks who have lined up with these corporate titans:

Abanico Coffee Roasters. Anresco Laboratories. Banks & Sugarman. Castro Room. Cliff’s Variety .Handcrafted Horticulture .Lucy Junus Interior Design. Micro-Tracers, Inc. Midnight Sun. Panoramic Interests. San Francisco Office Lofts (SFOL). Second Label LLC. Shared Studios. Sign Me Up! Photography. Smile SF. SV Angel (well, that’s Ron Conway). The Edge. The Ngo House. Zingari Ristorante.

If you want to see the entire list of who is behind this latest attack on unhoused people, you can go here, and scroll all the way down to Appendix A.

Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will do. Only about one percent of the cases that seek High Court review make it onto the docket. The Court may be happy to see the mayors of Democratic cities like San Francisco unhappy.

Or the right-wing justices may see this as a way to make life even more miserable for the folks on the streets.

Tim Redmond

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.

Save the Redstone Building!

By | |
Leave a comment

The historic building has housed progressive groups for decades. Can it survive a a home for the left?

By TINY

OCTOBER 8, 2023 (48hills.org)

Door after Door opened to nothing—

Emptiness

is the gentriFUKers idea of Best

But what is left ?

All of us wrecked, unable to rest

While bulldozers doze off cuz they barely slept 

Room after room of dismantled nests 

Lives lived in here—eyes cried in here— prayers were laid down and wealthhoarders were disrobed and tried in here.  

Unfair Labor was fought and died in here, 

replaced with unions and civil rights so all of us could work without fear  

 This is the Herstory of archives and dreams—sacred memories that belong to the trees 

From poor people’s theatre, living wages, trans visionaries and dreamers, a temple of work migrante /indigenous warriors, green cabs and Ronnie Goddmans Art—this building is all that is resistance and its beiing crushed by the deadly hush of blood-stained dollar lust   

The Redstone Labor Temple must live. Don’t let the gentriFUKers Win

“I was dealing with domestic violence, and I came to this building and Catholic Charities helped me,” said sister warrior for the people Guillermina Castellanos. “This building saved my life.” 

Guillermina told her story at a protest to Save the Redstone Labor Temple, a 107-year-old building in the Mission district of San Francisco, led by tenants and community. Guillermina, went onto explain that the Redstone was a very important resource for women like her in crisis. 

Supporters rally outside the historic Redstone Building, a labor temple that has been home to much of the SF left for decades.

After years of struggling with a landlord who was always trying to sell the building for millions of dollars, subsequent promises that were made by other organizations and even resolutions made by SF supervisors to “save the Redstone”. But the sacred Redstone was sold in 2021 to Aurora Lights LLC.

“They are now playing hardball with us as one of the last tenants, left in the building, telling us we need to relocate to a unit to us in the building that’s completely inaccessible for our disabled and elder communities. They know we can’t accept that,” said Karl Kramer, a warrior for labor and migrante justice and longtime lead organizer with the Living Wage Coaltion and CISPES ( a movement for the liberation of El Salvador).

POOR Magazine still shares a small office space in the Living Wage unit for our San Francisco Theatre of the POOR workshops for houseless and very low-income San Francisco residents, and we have a lot of disabled workshop participants who would not be able to attend a workshop in an inaccessible unit.  

The walls of the Redstone are covered in ancient murals of labor resistance. The halls are filled with the ancestors of every struggle that ever went down in Occupied Yelamu, and as Roger, the buildings manager for many years used to teach, it is literally on top of an Ohlone shell mound. 

This building saved this povertyskola’s life and the life of so many poor and houseless, migrante, indigenous, Black and Brown poverty skolaz who slept here, hid out here, lived here, and worked here. 

“Mission Agenda, The National Campaign to Stop the Vietnam War, Women’s Inc., Prison Focus, Theatre Rhinoceros, Luna Sea Theatre, El/ La and more….”  Kramer said.  He, along with musician and warrior for the people Francisco Hererra gave a bi-lingual herstory of  the hundred years of labor resistance at the Redstone from a truck parked outside on 16th street  at the protest in September to save it.

Both of them mentioned scores of revolutionary and grassroots organizations. To sum up their oral history, the Redstone housed almost every movement that ever did anything to resist the violent, extractive system of  Krapitalism. And now Krapitalism is trying to kill it.

San Francisco is littered with the sorrow of its endless removal of the sacred. Ever since the dot-com sickness, grassroots movements and organizations have been scrambling just to stay safely housed so we can serve, organize and rise up. POOR Magazine is one of those movements.

In 2009 POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE a poor/houseless, indigenous people-led movement of education, liberation, art, media, and advocacy was being evicted from a tiny run-down office in the Tenderloin so the new building owners could turn the building into a luxury hotel.

Living Wage Coalition told us about space at the Redstone. We visited and walked around the beautiful building, we prayed and spoke to the ancestors. We saw our warrior comrades in houseless people’s liberation—the Western Regional Advocacy Project was also in the building. We knew we were home. 

In the years we were safely and lovingly housed at the Redstone we authored the Declaration of Interdependence, The Poverty Heroes Mural, The MamaFesto for Change, the original plans for Po Peoples Radio PNN-KEXU 96.1fm, the blueprints and Peoples Agreement for (a MamaFesto that guides us to this day in our creation of Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness.)

We led hundreds of writing, theatre, media and radio workshops and published POOR Press publications for and by scores of low/ no-income and houseless youth and adults. We collaborated with our comrades from Idriss Stelley Foundation, also in the building and many more and held our weekly Street Newsroom and hosted community skolaz and warriors like Jeff Adachi and Papa Bear and more.

This building is Life. For any movement people who care about the struggles of homelessness, false borders, Labor, Liberation, Global Terror, Human Rights and Mama Earth, please come thru to an emergency meeting on Tuesday at 5pm at 2940 16th St #301.

War Profiteers’ Stocks Soar as Israel Bombs Gaza

By | |
Leave a comment
gaza refugee camp

Palestinians inspect the damage to the Al-Sussi Mosque and their homes following Israeli air strikes in the Al-Shati Palestinian refugee camp on October 9, 2023 in Gaza City.

 (Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

“As countries need to replenish their weapons, we do think defense companies will do very well,” said one expert.

JESSICA CORBETT

Oct 09, 2023 (CommonDreams.org)

“War is good for business.”

That’s what one defense executive said at a London arms conference last month, and what the stock market reflected on Monday, as Israel blockaded and bombarded the Gaza Strip—bombing the occupied Palestinian territory’s main university, residential buildings, a refugee camp, and a major hospital—in response to Hamas’ weekend attack that killed hundreds of Israelis.

The United States, which already gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military assistance, is now preparing to send additional weaponry and other support. Meanwhile, the stocks of U.S. and European firms that make money off of war soared on Monday.

U.S. companies including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—previously known as Raytheon—were all affected, as were top British, French, Germany, and Italian firms, according toThe Wall Street Journal.

Fox Businessreported that “shares of General Dynamics, which makes submarines and combat vehicles, rose the most since March 2020 when it gained over 9%.”

“Lockheed Martin’s stock jump Monday was the biggest for the U.S.’ largest defense contractor on a non-earnings day since March 2020, narrowly topping the gains it notched immediately after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” Forbesnoted. “Northrop Grumman shares also had their best day since 2020.”

Barron’spointed out that “separately, Lockheed’s board on Friday approved the expansion of Lockheed’s stock repurchase program by $6 billion, and the company raised its quarterly dividend to $3.15 a share from $3.”

Commenting on the bloodshed in Israel and Gaza over the past few days, Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, toldMarketWatch that “clearly it’s a huge human tragedy.”

“It seems like we’re entering a different phase globally with respect to geopolitics,” he added, with conflicts appearing more likely compared with recent decades. “As countries need to replenish their weapons, we do think defense companies will do very well.”

Less than two months after Russia’s invasion last year, William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, highlighted how such conflicts benefit the arms industry, writing for TomDispatch that “the war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.”

“First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands,” he explained. “The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.”

Last December, in Forbes, Hartung warned against using the Russia-Ukraine war to permanently expand the weapons industry:

Plans that have been floated so far include building new weapons factories, dramatically boosting production of ammunition, anti-tank weapons, and other systems, and easing oversight of weapons procurement. These changes will come at a cost that over time will run into tens of billions of dollars above current spending plans, and possibly more—much more.

This drive to rapidly expand the size and reach of the military-industrial complex is both unnecessary and unwise. The rush to do so while reducing existing safeguards against waste and poor performance risks promoting price gouging and substandard production even as it ties up funds that could be used more effectively on other urgent priorities.

Oil prices also climbed on Monday in response to the violence in the Middle East. The Associated Pressexplained that “the area under conflict is not home to major oil production, but fears that the fighting could spill into the politics around the crude market sent a barrel of U.S. oil up 4.1% to $86.16. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.9% to $87.91 per barrel.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JESSICA CORBETT

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Large Pro-Palestinian Rally Outside Israeli Consulate In San Francisco Met With Counter-Protest

By | |
Leave a comment

9 OCTOBER 2023/SF NEWS/JAY BARMANN (SFiST.com)

Following a major outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza over the weekend, pro-Palestinian rallies occurred Sunday in multiple U.S. cities which were met by groups supporting Israel, leading in some cases to skirmishes.

Here in San Francisco, one such rally drew hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the Israeli consulate on Montgomery Street on Sunday — NBC Bay Area puts the number in the “thousands” — and they were met by a reportedly smaller group of pro-Israel counter-protestors who allegedly threw eggs at the crowd.

The chants included “Free Palestine!” and “One, two, three, four, occupation no more!” as ABC 7 reports.

Palestinian supporters say that the violent uprising by Hamas militants comes in response to years of Israeli aggression and the 16-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Sunday’s demonstration was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Arab Resources and Outreach Center, as the Chronicle reports, with the aim of stopping U.S. aid to Israel and ending the blockade.

Supporters of Israel say that the ground and air attack by Hamas was an act of terrorism aimed entirely at innocent civilians. An estimated 600 to 700 people were killed, though the numbers remain preliminary — and Saturday’s attack was one of the most significant ever undertaken by Hamas, with comparisons being drawn to 9/11.

Israeli air strikes on Gaza in response to the attacks are estimated to have killed 400 so far, as the Chronicle reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to the attack as terrorism in a statement.

“There is never any justification for terrorism,” Blinken said. “We stand in solidarity with the government and people of Israel, and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks.”

Sunday’s rally and counter-protest in SF ended largely peacefully, with police intervening to try to keep that peace. NBC Bay Area reports that there were no physical altercations between the two sides.

That was not the case everywhere. As the Associated Press reports, a similar rally and counter-protest occurred Sunday in New York City, where “a skirmish broke out between opposing demonstrators near the United Nations compound.”

Palestinian Americans also staged rallies outside Israeli consulate buildings in Chicago and Atlanta.

Top image: Historic file photo of pro-Palestinian demonstrators demonstrating against Israel’s military offensive against Palestine and Lebanon July 13, 2006 in San Francisco. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples

By | |
Leave a comment

Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples

by Peter P. d’Errico (Author)

Telling the crucial and under-studied story of the U.S. legal doctrines that underpin the dispossession and domination of Indigenous peoples, this book intends to enhance global Indigenous movements for self-determination.

In this wide-ranging historical study of federal Indian law-the field of U.S. law related to Native peoples-attorney and educator Peter P. d’Errico argues that the U.S. government’s assertion of absolute prerogative and unlimited authority over Native peoples and their lands is actually a suspension of law.

Combining a deep theoretical analysis of the law with a historical examination of its roots in Christian civilization, d’Errico presents a close reading of foundational legal cases and raises the possibility of revoking the doctrine of domination. The book’s larger context is the increasing frequency of Indigenous conflicts with nation-states around the world as ecological crises caused by industrial extraction impinge drastically on Indigenous peoples’ existences. D’Errico’s goal is to rethink the role of law in the global order-to imagine an Indigenous nomos of the earth, an order arising from peoples and places rather than the existing hegemony of states.

(Amazon.com)