Dérive

On Friday, 40,000 AT&T workers in phone sales (mobility) and landline and cable installation went on strike across 36 states. In California and Nevada, workers (unionized with the CWA) have been on the job without a contract for over a year. The company's CEO, Randal Stephenson, was recently given a raise and now makes over $12,000 an hour. Meanwhile, mobility workers are being offered a 40 cent wage increase that means nothing in the face of increasing living costs, especially in the Bay Area. In addition, the company wants to relocated call center jobs to Mexico, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, increase the amount workers pay for health insurance, cut sick time, and increase a highly punitive points based penalty system in which workers would face disciplinary actions after using a fourth sick days.  Journalist David Bacon reports that "AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the country with $164 billion in sales and 135 million wireles...

One day in 2010 I was walking in downtown Berkeley and came across a group of people projecting a video on the wall of a building. The footage was low-quality and colorless, but the subject - radio chatter voice-over and an exploding van, bodies flying - was arresting. "Just fuckin,' once you get on him just open up - Roger that... - Let me know when you've got them. Let's shoot." "Light 'em all up. Come on, fire!" "Keep shoot'n, keep shoot'n'" "Got a bunch of bodies layin' here." "Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we got, definitely got something." I later learned this was footage of US airstrikes in Baghad on July 12, 2007. The video, Collateral Murder , was published by Wikileaks and shows a live feed from Apache helicopters gunning down 16 people, including two journalists, and injuring two children. Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning), a 22-year-ol...

"Despisers of life are they , decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so ... 'We have invented happiness,'say the last men, and they blink ."