Columns

MLK Middle School: Dead and Alive

aThe students at MLK Jr. Middle School have totally transformed their block on Rose Street and it's worth a drive—or a walk—to swing by and appreciate the changes.

In October, on the Day of the Dead, scores of students tip-toed over the wide steps at the school building's entrance and laid down a carpet of colorful paint to celebrate the occasion.

In November, the students returned to swarm over the campus' recently uprooted lawn and hand-planted a variety of saplings—hundreds of them —to create a dense, ecological, carbon-capturing Miyawaki Forest. 

The Economy in Three Sentences 

On Monday I got a federal notice that my Social Security checks for 2022 were being increased 5.9% to reflect the Cost of Living (Note: the actual 2021 COLA was 6.8%). 

On Wednesday, I found that the price of every item in the Dollar Store had increased from $1 to $1.25—a 25% hike (meanwhile, the price of gas has risen 58%) 

Time to apply for food stamps. 

Cleaning Up at the Laundromat 

The Central Launderette, which has been in the same spot on Shattuck since the 1940s, recently surprised me with an unexpected gift. 

While I was moving a load of wet laundry from my bags to the nearest empty driers, one of the laundry staff emerged from behind her counter, tip-toed in my direction, executed a perfect bow and extended her hands with an offering of two shiny quarters. 

They came with a receipt that indicated the gift had been registered as a "Senior Discount." 

I happily plunked the unexpected change into the drier slots. But then, as I watched my sheets and undies tumbling, I started to wonder: "Hey! I'm wearing a mask and a hat. How did she determine that I was eligible for special 'senior' status? Are my ears starting to sag? Are the bags under my eyes starting to look more like satchels?" 

That will be a question for my next visit. 

Watch Those Double Negatives 

Carve this one in stone! Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45^th President of the USA:
"Anybody that doesn't think there wasn't massive Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is either very stupid or very corrupt." 

Blinken and Nod 

Trump has his Big Lie (that the 2020 US election was rigged and stolen) and Joe Biden has his own Big Lie that claims that Venezuela's recent election was neither free nor fair. Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called Venezuela's election "flawed" and "grossly skewed." 

In fact, unlike some previous elections, Venezuela's latest ballot included opposition parties (they actually won some of the contests). The election drew 8 million peaceful voters and was overseen by more than 130 election observers from 55 countries and inspectors from the UN, EU, and the Latin-American Council of Electoral Experts—all of whom pronounced the voting and ballot-counting to have be transparent and fair. 

Meahwhile, Biden announced a Summit of Democracy and invited Juan Guaido, the discredited leader of a Trump-backed coup that attempted—and failed —to seize power during Venezuela's 2019 election. Guaido, the "self-declared president" of Venezuela, failed to oust leftist leader Nicolás Maduro—even though Guaido had the personal endorsement of then-VP Mike Pence. 

To democracy's shame, when Biden introduced Guaido at his Democracy Summit, members of both the Republican and Democratic parties gave Trump's failed usurper a standing ovation. 

Biden and Blinken criticized the "low turnout" for the Venezuela election in which 42% of Venezuelans voted. Fun fact: the average turnout for US elections only runs around 55%. (The 2020 election had the biggest turnout in the 21^st century—66.8%.) 

A Post-Halloween Capitalism Quote 

A few words from the pen of British scholar Mark Fisher who, reflecting on the topic of Capitalist Realism, wrote: "Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us." 

"Renewal Creep" 

That's the term for a common billing practice wherein publications and member organizations mail renewal statements months before the memberships actually expire. Some renewals come two months before a membership ends; some arrive three-to-eight months early. The result is that subscribers and supporters can wind up paying earlier each year while the magazines and organizations derive major dividends. 

I've been tracking this phenomenon since 2015 and have seen the practice invoked across the board. Some of the worst offenders include: AARP, Brady Campaign, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Committee, and Greenpeace. 

A few weeks ago, I received a subscription reminder from Consumer Reports that included the offer of a free subscription for a friend along with payment of my yearly renewal. I sent off a check along with the name of a family member. Two weeks later, I received an "Urgent Note" from CR stating that I needed to send in a $30 renewal check ("Reply by 12/06/21"). It was only with this second billing that I noticed the expiration date on my CR membership invoice—January 2023! 

That's what "Renewal Creep" looks like. 

Weather or Not? 

How accurate are TV weathercasts? Do TV forecasters ever apologize when they get their predictions totally wrong? Case in point: On December 6, one of our local weatherfolk stood in front of an animated satellite map and waved his hand over a moving carpet of clouds that were predicted to stream over the Bay Area on December 7. The forecast was for more fog, little sunshine, and the likelihood of sprinkles. 

But weathercasters' "satellite images" are not reality: they are fictitious extrapolations of what was predicted to happen. And the bleak weather didn't happen. Instead, the day began with clear skies and remained cloudless and sunny all day long. 

So did the weatherwonk address the miscasting? Instead of confessing "We blew it!" he offered an oblique reference—"Well, we did manage some sun today"—that he attributed to "weather whiplashes." My favorite weather prediction for the week cam from the same weather pundits, who projected that the overnight temps would drop so low that it could "cause the fog to freeze." 

US A-bombs in Germany 

During a recent webinar on the topic of "NATO and War," a panel of global strategists reviewed the status of Washington's nuclear capability on European soil. One of the participants mentioned that the US currently has 160 nuclear weapons stored on the ground in fice European nations—Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey. 

In 2020, a national poll in Germany found 83% of the public wanted the weapons removed. While the outgoing Merkel government remained steadfast in its support of US nukes on German soil, members of the incoming coalition government—the Social Democrats and the Greens—had openly called for the removal of the weapons and for Germany to join 50 other nations that have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

The new government was close to passing legislation insisting on the removal of Washington's nuclear weapons. Under NATO guidelines, however, member countries cannot compel the Pentagon to pack up its nukes and leave. Challenged by Berlin's new left-leaning leadership, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reportedly made an offer: NATO would agree to remove the bombs from Germany only with the understanding that the weapons would be moved to a new location closer to the Russian border. 

In order to avoid a major provocation with Russia, the German reformers withdrew the call to denuclearize their country. 

New Book Celebrates Berkeley's Free Speech Movement 

A newly published book by Ellen Shrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, includes a chapter on Berkeley's Free Speech Movement (Chapter 4: "The Berkeley Invention"). 

New York University (NYU) history prof Noam Chomsky (who taught at UCB during the Sixties) has called Schrecker's book a "careful and enlightening account." NYU history professor Robert Cohen calls the book "by far the best yet on the national campus political scene, which is not surprising since Ellen is the author of the classic work, No Ivory Tower, on academic McCarthyism." Cohen (whose books include the classic FSM account, Freedoms' Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s) notes that, unlike many books on the 60s that are "condescending to the student movement," Schrecker's work is "empathetic, fair-minded, and even deconstructs the twisted logic of movement detractors who caricatured student protest as irrational." In addition to revisiting the history of the FSM, Shrecker's book assesses the student movement nationally and cites its faculty supporters and critics. 

The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions will be Zooming a panel discussion on the book at noon on Wednesday, December 15. Speakers will include both Schrecker and Cohen, You can click on this link for a University of Chicago Press flyer that offers Shrecker's book at a 25% discount.  

A Neat Lit Hit Notes Milton's Tomes 

The December 9 selection of online offerings from The New Yorker included a salute to Paradise Lost poet John Milton, who was born in December 1608. Noting that Milton "has been accused in some quarters over the years of being boring" the Yorker's editors offered the following observation:
“Never mind,” as Jonathan Rosen has written, “that he survived imprisonment, the threat of execution and assassination, the plague and the Great Fire of London, and, blind and disillusioned, dictated the greatest long poem in the English language.” 

Milton, bless him, was also a Free Speecher. As he wrote in Areopagitica (1644): "Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself." 

Chavez/Huerta Solar Calendar Update 

Weather permitting, there will be a Winter Solstice ceremony at the Berkeley Marina's Solar Memorial on Tuesday, December 21. 

Santiago Casal (the driving force behind the creation and maintenance of the Cesar Chavez/Dolores Huerta Memorial Solar Calendar (which sits high atop a hill at the Marina) has partnered with Ecology & Culture Stop to create a mobile tour for visitors to the site. 

The new online walking tour will cover the history and ecology of the park and its Solar Calendar. With Spinnaker Way and the Turnaround currently closed for construction, the tour is set to start after the work wraps up in January/February—just in time for the Chavez/Huerta Commemorative Period (March 21 to April 10) which includes the Spring Equinox, the start of the 2022 planting season, and the birthdays of Chavez (March 31) and Huerta (April 10). 

The Global Food Metaverse 

I was just enjoying a sip of apple juice from a store-bought bottle that I chose because the label boasted the drink contained no "additives"—"only juice." 

But then I noticed the back of the label stated the ingredients contained "juices from Brazil, Chile, China, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and US." 

I can't imagine how/why so many disparate nations could-have/should-have contributed their local juices to the contents of a single 12-ounce bottle for sale in Berkeley. 

That got me wondering if anyone has written a book about the profit-driven world of multinational food-mongers. I was imagining an investigative tour de force titled "The Global Gobble" but Google quickly informed me that name's already been claimed—by a food and beverage company in Maharashtra, India. 

Well, it turns out the book does exist. Thanks to Greta Zarro, the Organizing Director at World BEYOND War, for recommending Wenonah Hauter's excellent exposé of capitalism's calculated corporate consolidation of crops in her perfectly titled tome, Foodopoly. (In addition to being a good exposé, the book is replete with dozens of meme-worthy graphs and charts.) 

A 2024 GOP Coup in the Making? 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has spelled out a dire scenario if the Dems lose their slim House and Senate majorities in the 2022 mid-term elections. Where that to happen—and 33 GOP voter-suppression laws have been passed in 19 states (so far) to assure a Republican sweep—the new Speaker of the House would be Kevin McCarthy. The Trumpublicans have already demonstrated they are willing to ignore the popular vote and overturn the outcome of the Electoral College in order to reinstate the twice-impeached TrumPOTUS. TrumpleThinSkin has signaled that a GOP takeover in 2022 would seal the deal for his return in 2024 because—as the DCCC predicts—he would then have "a puppet [McCarthy] in place to deliver him the presidency on a silver planner… even if he loses the 2024 election in the popular vote and the Electoral College." 

SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces 

By Gar Smith 

MLK Middle School: Dead and Alive 

aThe students at MLK Jr. Middle School have totally transformed their block on Rose Street and it's worth a drive—or a walk—to swing by and appreciate the changes. 

In October, on the Day of the Dead, scores of students tip-toed over the wide steps at the school building's entrance and laid down a carpet of colorful paint to celebrate the occasion. 

In November, the students returned to swarm over the campus' recently uprooted lawn and hand-planted a variety of saplings—hundreds of them —to create a dense, ecological, carbon-capturing Miyawaki Forest. 

The Economy in Three Sentences 

On Monday I got a federal notice that my Social Security checks for 2022 were being increased 5.9% to reflect the Cost of Living (Note: the actual 2021 COLA was 6.8%). 

On Wednesday, I found that the price of every item in the Dollar Store had increased from $1 to $1.25—a 25% hike (meanwhile, the price of gas has risen 58%) 

Time to apply for food stamps. 

Cleaning Up at the Laundromat 

The Central Launderette, which has been in the same spot on Shattuck since the 1940s, recently surprised me with an unexpected gift. 

While I was moving a load of wet laundry from my bags to the nearest empty driers, one of the laundry staff emerged from behind her counter, tip-toed in my direction, executed a perfect bow and extended her hands with an offering of two shiny quarters. 

They came with a receipt that indicated the gift had been registered as a "Senior Discount." 

I happily plunked the unexpected change into the drier slots. But then, as I watched my sheets and undies tumbling, I started to wonder: "Hey! I'm wearing a mask and a hat. How did she determine that I was eligible for special 'senior' status? Are my ears starting to sag? Are the bags under my eyes starting to look more like satchels?" 

That will be a question for my next visit. 

Watch Those Double Negatives 

Carve this one in stone! Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45^th President of the USA:
"Anybody that doesn't think there wasn't massive Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is either very stupid or very corrupt." 

Blinken and Nod 

Trump has his Big Lie (that the 2020 US election was rigged and stolen) and Joe Biden has his own Big Lie that claims that Venezuela's recent election was neither free nor fair. Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called Venezuela's election "flawed" and "grossly skewed." 

In fact, unlike some previous elections, Venezuela's latest ballot included opposition parties (they actually won some of the contests). The election drew 8 million peaceful voters and was overseen by more than 130 election observers from 55 countries and inspectors from the UN, EU, and the Latin-American Council of Electoral Experts—all of whom pronounced the voting and ballot-counting to have be transparent and fair. 

Meahwhile, Biden announced a Summit of Democracy and invited Juan Guaido, the discredited leader of a Trump-backed coup that attempted—and failed —to seize power during Venezuela's 2019 election. Guaido, the "self-declared president" of Venezuela, failed to oust leftist leader Nicolás Maduro—even though Guaido had the personal endorsement of then-VP Mike Pence. 

To democracy's shame, when Biden introduced Guaido at his Democracy Summit, members of both the Republican and Democratic parties gave Trump's failed usurper a standing ovation. 

Biden and Blinken criticized the "low turnout" for the Venezuela election in which 42% of Venezuelans voted. Fun fact: the average turnout for US elections only runs around 55%. (The 2020 election had the biggest turnout in the 21^st century—66.8%.) 

A Post-Halloween Capitalism Quote 

A few words from the pen of British scholar Mark Fisher who, reflecting on the topic of Capitalist Realism, wrote: "Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us." 

"Renewal Creep" 

That's the term for a common billing practice wherein publications and member organizations mail renewal statements months before the memberships actually expire. Some renewals come two months before a membership ends; some arrive three-to-eight months early. The result is that subscribers and supporters can wind up paying earlier each year while the magazines and organizations derive major dividends. 

I've been tracking this phenomenon since 2015 and have seen the practice invoked across the board. Some of the worst offenders include: AARP, Brady Campaign, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Committee, and Greenpeace. 

A few weeks ago, I received a subscription reminder from Consumer Reports that included the offer of a free subscription for a friend along with payment of my yearly renewal. I sent off a check along with the name of a family member. Two weeks later, I received an "Urgent Note" from CR stating that I needed to send in a $30 renewal check ("Reply by 12/06/21"). It was only with this second billing that I noticed the expiration date on my CR membership invoice—January 2023! 

That's what "Renewal Creep" looks like. 

Weather or Not? 

How accurate are TV weathercasts? Do TV forecasters ever apologize when they get their predictions totally wrong? Case in point: On December 6, one of our local weatherfolk stood in front of an animated satellite map and waved his hand over a moving carpet of clouds that were predicted to stream over the Bay Area on December 7. The forecast was for more fog, little sunshine, and the likelihood of sprinkles. 

But weathercasters' "satellite images" are not reality: they are fictitious extrapolations of what was predicted to happen. And the bleak weather didn't happen. Instead, the day began with clear skies and remained cloudless and sunny all day long. 

So did the weatherwonk address the miscasting? Instead of confessing "We blew it!" he offered an oblique reference—"Well, we did manage some sun today"—that he attributed to "weather whiplashes." My favorite weather prediction for the week cam from the same weather pundits, who projected that the overnight temps would drop so low that it could "cause the fog to freeze." 

US A-bombs in Germany 

During a recent webinar on the topic of "NATO and War," a panel of global strategists reviewed the status of Washington's nuclear capability on European soil. One of the participants mentioned that the US currently has 160 nuclear weapons stored on the ground in fice European nations—Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey. 

In 2020, a national poll in Germany found 83% of the public wanted the weapons removed. While the outgoing Merkel government remained steadfast in its support of US nukes on German soil, members of the incoming coalition government—the Social Democrats and the Greens—had openly called for the removal of the weapons and for Germany to join 50 other nations that have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

The new government was close to passing legislation insisting on the removal of Washington's nuclear weapons. Under NATO guidelines, however, member countries cannot compel the Pentagon to pack up its nukes and leave. Challenged by Berlin's new left-leaning leadership, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reportedly made an offer: NATO would agree to remove the bombs from Germany only with the understanding that the weapons would be moved to a new location closer to the Russian border. 

In order to avoid a major provocation with Russia, the German reformers withdrew the call to denuclearize their country. 

New Book Celebrates Berkeley's Free Speech Movement 

A newly published book by Ellen Shrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, includes a chapter on Berkeley's Free Speech Movement (Chapter 4: "The Berkeley Invention"). 

New York University (NYU) history prof Noam Chomsky (who taught at UCB during the Sixties) has called Schrecker's book a "careful and enlightening account." NYU history professor Robert Cohen calls the book "by far the best yet on the national campus political scene, which is not surprising since Ellen is the author of the classic work, No Ivory Tower, on academic McCarthyism." Cohen (whose books include the classic FSM account, Freedoms' Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s) notes that, unlike many books on the 60s that are "condescending to the student movement," Schrecker's work is "empathetic, fair-minded, and even deconstructs the twisted logic of movement detractors who caricatured student protest as irrational." In addition to revisiting the history of the FSM, Shrecker's book assesses the student movement nationally and cites its faculty supporters and critics. 

The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions will be Zooming a panel discussion on the book at noon on Wednesday, December 15. Speakers will include both Schrecker and Cohen, You can click on this link for a University of Chicago Press flyer that offers Shrecker's book at a 25% discount.  

A Neat Lit Hit Notes Milton's Tomes 

The December 9 selection of online offerings from The New Yorker included a salute to Paradise Lost poet John Milton, who was born in December 1608. Noting that Milton "has been accused in some quarters over the years of being boring" the Yorker's editors offered the following observation:
“Never mind,” as Jonathan Rosen has written, “that he survived imprisonment, the threat of execution and assassination, the plague and the Great Fire of London, and, blind and disillusioned, dictated the greatest long poem in the English language.” 

Milton, bless him, was also a Free Speecher. As he wrote in Areopagitica (1644): "Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself." 

Chavez/Huerta Solar Calendar Update 

Weather permitting, there will be a Winter Solstice ceremony at the Berkeley Marina's Solar Memorial on Tuesday, December 21. 

Santiago Casal (the driving force behind the creation and maintenance of the Cesar Chavez/Dolores Huerta Memorial Solar Calendar (which sits high atop a hill at the Marina) has partnered with Ecology & Culture Stop to create a mobile tour for visitors to the site. 

The new online walking tour will cover the history and ecology of the park and its Solar Calendar. With Spinnaker Way and the Turnaround currently closed for construction, the tour is set to start after the work wraps up in January/February—just in time for the Chavez/Huerta Commemorative Period (March 21 to April 10) which includes the Spring Equinox, the start of the 2022 planting season, and the birthdays of Chavez (March 31) and Huerta (April 10). 

The Global Food Metaverse 

I was just enjoying a sip of apple juice from a store-bought bottle that I chose because the label boasted the drink contained no "additives"—"only juice." 

But then I noticed the back of the label stated the ingredients contained "juices from Brazil, Chile, China, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and US." 

I can't imagine how/why so many disparate nations could-have/should-have contributed their local juices to the contents of a single 12-ounce bottle for sale in Berkeley. 

That got me wondering if anyone has written a book about the profit-driven world of multinational food-mongers. I was imagining an investigative tour de force titled "The Global Gobble" but Google quickly informed me that name's already been claimed—by a food and beverage company in Maharashtra, India. 

Well, it turns out the book does exist. Thanks to Greta Zarro, the Organizing Director at World BEYOND War, for recommending Wenonah Hauter's excellent exposé of capitalism's calculated corporate consolidation of crops in her perfectly titled tome, Foodopoly. (In addition to being a good exposé, the book is replete with dozens of meme-worthy graphs and charts.) 

A 2024 GOP Coup in the Making? 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has spelled out a dire scenario if the Dems lose their slim House and Senate majorities in the 2022 mid-term elections. Where that to happen—and 33 GOP voter-suppression laws have been passed in 19 states (so far) to assure a Republican sweep—the new Speaker of the House would be Kevin McCarthy. The Trumpublicans have already demonstrated they are willing to ignore the popular vote and overturn the outcome of the Electoral College in order to reinstate the twice-impeached TrumPOTUS. TrumpleThinSkin has signaled that a GOP takeover in 2022 would seal the deal for his return in 2024 because—as the DCCC predicts—he would then have "a puppet [McCarthy] in place to deliver him the presidency on a silver planner… even if he loses the 2024 election in the popular vote and the Electoral College."