The Stop Urban Shield Coalition will hold a rally in front of the Alameda County government building near Lake Merritt in Oakland at 4 p.m. today to protest the "Urban Shield" law enforcement disaster training event that's being hosted by the county sheriff's office this weekend. -more-

The word fascism is getting bandied about quite a bit without ever being defined. And “Nazis”. We are not remotely close to fascism in the US today. The real threat is quite different.

While Fascists support a strong authoritarian central government with a strong man leader and reject liberal democracy and suppress all opposition, the problem today in the US is the elected members of Congress who want to roll back government programs and protections such as Medicaid, Medicare, environmental protection, etc. They want smaller government that just spends a lot to protect the interests of American corporations abroad via big defense budgets, but with reduced government regulation of what corporations do here and abroad and with reduced government spending in all areas that benefit the large mass of low and middle income people.

Also, globalism is widely accepted by people governing this country. Trump may make populist appeals about trade deals but what has he really done to challenge the global Neo-liberal, free market system? Trump is not a fascist and he’s not as big a problem as Cruz, Rubio, Pence, McConnell, Paul, et al, the “Freedom Caucus”, and quasi-libertarian congress people, if only because he has no idea how to be president and doesn’t know anything about the main issues. Harpers Magazine had a good article about whether Trump is a fascist or a plutocrat a few months back. The conclusion: plutocrat.

The “alt-right” (another term that is not well-defined)or far right wing fringe today is still very small by historical standards. Even if you look at Charlottesville rather than handful of fringe rightwingers who showed up in Berkeley on Aug 27, who weren’t all necessarily white supremacist or nazi. -more-

As an alumnus of the 1964 Free Speech Movement and a veteran of the civil rights movement, I was appalled to read about the recent violent confrontations in Berkeley.

Those reports took me back to the 1960s when I was doing voter registration for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and marching against segregation in Birmingham and Mississippi.

Then we were the equivalent of the "fascists" that Antifa and the black bloc are beating up in Berkeley. They called us Communists, not fascists, but like Antifa, they believed we were invaders who held them and their Southern values in contempt. The local whites whose towns we marched in burned us with their hate stares, blistered our ears with their curses, threw bottles and firecrackers at us, drove cars into our march lines, and sometimes used fists and bats. Guns were visible. Occasionally someone was shot.

Sometimes law enforcement stood between us and our detractors, their faces and rifles always pointed at us, and sometimes they took a vacation, leaving us to the will of the crowd.

Sound familiar?

What we learn from these comparisons is that when a group or a person significantly dissents from deeply held community-wide views it will be attacked when it publicly challenges those views, and the attackers will feel justified without any concern for "free speech" as a more important value.

That is dangerous. As UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Carol Christ put it "Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it." -more-

Trump’s decision to kill DACA is a moral obscenity evicting 800,000 young people to a terrifying, uncertain, future. Killing DACA would be killing the American dream for the dreamers. It reeks of racism. Their only crime was to be born with a brown skin. The racist AG Jeff Sessions tried to justify his boss’s edict with voodoo economics, claiming dreamers were an economic burden on America. Nothing could be further from the truth. -more-

Except for Amy Goodman's progressive radio and TV program, Democracy Now, the TV news programs have resisted linking the flooding in Houston to climate change. Despite the increase in frequency and intensity of climate related disasters, the fossil fuel industry continues to insist that climate change is a fiction. This is extraordinary since almost all scientists have concluded otherwise. -more-

While Mr. Trump declares war on the children of illegal immigrants, perhaps he should remember that his German grandfather pleaded not to be deported from Germany.

Friedrich Trump wanted to return to Germany with his wife and daughter after having emigrated to the US. He was refused reentry because he failed to complete his mandatory military service and to register his initial emigration to the US 20 years earlier. This seems to be a familiar family trait. Remember how Donald Trump successfully used his wealth and connections to evade the Vietnam draft 5 times. -more-

Are we ready for the worst? I am concerned with the idea of a Third World War starting with a counter-attack by America. If we do take such drastic action to stop the Korean President from using nuclear bombs, we will not be able to save our own people from being killed. I still feel that diplomatic and friendly mutual talk can stop the aggression of other powers. -more-

The Mayan god Huracan is hugely pissed at the way we humans are messing up the planet, and he’s letting us know by throwing wads of wind, rain, and fire our way. The great one-legged deity of ancient mythology is said to have destroyed mankind once before, and now that Donald Trump is threatening Huracan’s progeny with deportation, we can expect even more extreme weather conditions. The President had better wise up and allow “the dreamers” to stay or see Mar-a-Lago washed away. Vengeance belongs to the gods.

Just as Texas is drying out from the ravages of hurricane Harvey, the successor storm Irma is wrecking havoc in the Caribbean on its way to Florida. Human activity doesn’t cause cyclones but the effects of climate change - rising ocean temperatures and sea level - ramps them up. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and powers a storm like Irma, one of the most destructive hurricanes ever.

We got a whiff of heat last weekend with the thermometer hitting 100ºF in Berkeley and higher inland, the record-breaking temperatures drying forests into tinder, while millions of trees have already died due to the ravages of a bark beetle infestation, adding fuel to the infernos. In California 10,000 are fighting 25 fires, the worst being the Eclipse and Salmon fires in the Klamath National Forest and the Pier fires in Sequoia.

Nature is looking pretty apocalyptic; meanwhile back in the nation’s capital, the climate change deniers fiddle while California burns and the southeast drowns, hoping that a kinder god will make America’s weather great again.

The Lessons of Houston -more-

Trump has decided to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) over six months unless Congress steps in with its own plan for these childhood arrivals.

If Trump has a "great love for DACA recipients," he would have called on Congress to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act or Dream Act, and if it did, promise to sign it into law. -more-

When you feel bad, feel down and out, or if you are very upset, it matters how you deal with that. You should not tell yourself things such as: "I'm going crazy." You should not tell yourself, "What's wrong with me?" -more-

In a lifetime of opera-going, having attended nearly 800 fully staged operas, I’ve never before attended an opera whose composer was unknown. However, on Saturday, September 9, I attended at San Francisco’s ODC Theatre the Ars Minerva production of the 17^th century opera La Circe, whose composer may or may not be Pietro Andrea Ziani, or may or may not be Francesco Freschi. These two composers both worked in Venice around the time La Circe was first performed. However, La Circe’s 1665 premiere took place not in Venice but in Vienna. For this reason, among others, Ars Minerva credits this opera to Pietro Andrea Ziani, a well-known Venetian composer who was in Vienna in the service of the Empress Eleonora around the time of La Circe’s 1665 Vienna premiere. -more-

Opening Night at the San Francisco Opera is not quite the event it used to be, though it still has its share of glitter. However, I can recall opening nights when people who couldn’t afford tickets used to line the streets outside the War Memorial Opera House just to check out what the rich and gaudy were wearing, and TV crews lurked inside the lobby to film the high society crowd as they entered. Happily, none of this fashion-frenzy was on display at this year’s opening night on Friday, September 8. Mostly, what glitter on offer Friday was on stage, where David Hockney’s garish sets for Puccini’s Turando, which takes place at the Imperial Palace of Peking, glittered in lurid reds and greens, and the cast and huge chorus packed the stage wearing exotic and colorful costumes. -more-

This coming Monday, September 11 the Tax the Rich group will be celebrating a tremendous achievement, its sixth year birthday party. The group has been protesting and working on issues since September 12, 2011. On domestic issues, it has been the longest running political rally in Berkeley's history. Indeed, that's six years on the streets of Solano Avenue. -more-