CatSynth

I found this photo on Facebook yesterday while following events at the General Strike in Oakland.

More people protesting a little later….the freeway is full on their way to the Port of Oakland during the #GeneralStrike. People can’t drive….10,000 people are marching.

In actuality, it is not a freeway. But it does appear to be the point in West Oakland where Adeline Street crosses over the train tracks and becomes Middle Harbor Road, which would be en route to the port where demonstrators successfully and peacefully shut down operations for the remainder of the night. That is quite an impressive feat.

I unfortunately was not able to join in the events in Oakland yesterday because of health reasons, but I am planning to be out again with a group in San Francisco on Saturday. In the meantime, here is a first-hand account from fellow Bay Area new musician Myles Boisen. He plays a mean blues guitar.

Shut Down! – Occupy Oakland 11/03/11 Vol. 7

Vol. 7 in a series by Myles Boisen

Port of Oakland SHUT DOWN
Wells Fargo SHUT DOWN
Bank of America SHUT DOWN
CitiBank SHUT DOWN
Comerica Bank SHUT DOWN
Chase Bank SHUT DOWN
Union Bank SHUT DOWN
Bank of the West SHUT DOWN
Nara Bank SHUT DOWN
T-Mobile SHUT DOWN
Burger King SHUT DOWN
Walgreen’s SHUT DOWN

Highlights of the Oakland general strike:

10 a.m. As I start reading news feeds I see Angela Davis is addressing the early morning crowd at 14th and Broadway. Unconfirmed rumors come and go that the Port of Oakland is already closed, with possible wildcat strike action and trucks unable to get through.

12 p.m. I arrive at Oscar Grant Plaza. On the way over radio coverage on KPFA-FM says that Wells Fargo bank is already shut down. People are streaming continuously toward downtown on foot and on bicycles. The crowd at 14th and Broadway is estimated at 5,000 or more. With friends I tour the area, photographing banks and corporate businesses that have shut their doors due to the strike. The crowd is made up of elders, working people, union representatives, teachers, religious leaders, and schoolchildren present with their parents.

By the BART station we meet Ethel, a senior citizen who is gathering signatures on a petition to end the death penalty in California. One member of our party – Phil, a well-read anarcho-syndicalist – has recently moved to Alameda County, and Ethel suggests that he can go to City Hall to get the requisite voter registration papers. Could City Hall possibly be open today? We go on a mission to find out.

After finding a side door that is open, we are ushered into an eerie calm of City Hall by a private security guard. There is practically no one inside. Entering the Office of the City Clerk, there is once again no one around, though there is a small hotel bell at the counter. After ringing the bell for a few minutes, this Kafkaesque scenario is resolved when a woman emerges and directs Phil to the proper documents. I ask her “How’s it going today?” She gives me “the look” and replies “ask me after 5.”

1:30 p.m. Our group wanders about, taking in dance performances, rappers, signage, the bustling kitchen, the music stage, and more. We run into two stilt walkers that I am acquainted with, as well as my friend Victor Lewis who is immediately recognized by someone as being the guy from the film The Color of Fear. Victor gets that a lot.

2:30 p.m. I return to my car to find a parking ticket – my first one of the year. Damn! A bite of lunch, and I fall in with a group of musicians associated with Mills College. From there it’s off to move my car and survey downtown on my own, again taking photos of shuttered banks. There are broken windows at the Chase Bank downtown, with reports of additional vandalism at the Whole Foods grocery by Lake Merritt.

5:00 p.m. I return to Oscar Grant Plaza to try and meet a friend when I notice the march to the port is moving out. People walk briskly, excitedly, and despite my best efforts I can’t catch up to the beginning of the procession stretching many blocks in front of and behind me. We wind through industrial West Oakland with minimal police presence.

6:00 p.m. The final approach to the Port of Oakland (the fifth-largest port in the US) is by way of an overpass that sweeps gracefully over once-bustling trainyards. The top of this overpass affords a stunning vista with the iconic cranes to the west, a maze of train tracks to the north, and Oakland’s office buildings to the east. Sunset yields a golden light with its own rich photo ops. Then darkness finds most of the crowd on the move again, back to Oscar Grant Plaza, BART, or homes and family. After a final visit to OGP I see broken windows and anarchist graffiti at the Wells Fargo Bank, then return home to write and work on photos. Arriving home I read that a frustrated driver ran into two marchers in downtown Oakland, sending both to the hospital and then being allowed to go home himself after filing a report with the OPD.

2:07 a.m. As I am finishing up this post I get a call from Cherie. Police have moved into downtown and tear gas is being used at 16th and Telegraph. My heart sinks into my stomach, and yet somehow I find the energy to drive back downtown to see what is going on. Many streets are blocked off by lines of police. At 16th and Telegraph there are three dumpsters turned over in the middle of the intersection, contents spilled and a burnt trash smell. I hear that the camp is surrounded, with no one getting in or out. Walking seven blocks around the perimeter of the police-occupied area I find this is not true.

14th street is open, and there is lots of graffiti with anarchy A’s that was not there this afternoon. Windows are broken, including the Tully’s coffeeshop at 14th and Broadway which overlooks Oscar Grant Plaza. A double line of police spans the broad intersection of 15th and Broadway. Asking around, I learn from an eyewitness that “anarchist kids” had set the dumpster fires using M-80s or road flares, and that a fire was also set around an abandoned building that had been occupied. One young man named Chris had been tear gassed earlier, and was concerned about his friend who had been missing since then. I gave him the NLG hotline number, wished him luck, and returned home to write.

5 a.m. Bedtime for citizen journalists.

The presence of violence and a destructive element in our midst is deeply troubling. And I am really saddened that such a powerful, peaceful and successful strike involving so many has been stained by the anger of a few. These actions present a new challenge for a movement which is committed to non-violence. Just yesterday I wrote this: When the police turn violent, the Occupation thrives. But if Occupy turns violent (or is perceived as being violent) that will be the one thing that will bring it down. The vandalism is not widespread – just broken glass and spray paint as far as I know now – and it should be cleaned up in a couple of days. But it will now be a long struggle for the movement to effectively distance itself from a violent minority, and somehow deal with similar incidents in the future.

The phrase on everyone’s lips after the strike is “what next?” Well, what do YOU want to happen next? Get down to the Oakland GA (7 p.m. every night in Oscar Grant Plaza) and make a proposal. I can’t be at the GA on Thursday, but I know there will be a lot to talk about.

On Thursday Nov. 3 5:30 P.M. (today!) a City Council special meeting will address the police actions of 10/25/11. Council chambers of Oakland city hall.

Last weekend we mentioned Tashirojima, Japan’s “Cat Island”. The island is populated by perhaps thousands of cats and 100 or so elderly human residents. The fear at first was that the island, right near the epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami, was lost. This week, we saw this article Discovery News reporting that the island survived!

Tashirojima, otherwise known as Japan’s “Cat Island” due to its numerous feline inhabitants, is intact after the recent devastating 9-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami, according to Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support. However, like so many others devastated by the disaster, both the human and feline residents of the island need help.

They quote the group Japan Earthquake Animal Relief, which reported the news on their Facebook page:

Just to give everyone an update on Tashirojima, the cat island. The people and cats are safe but short of food. A volunteer looked into transporting food by boat, but there is too much debris in the water. A helicopter is the only way. The army will probably get a helicopter ready soon so we are looking into the possibility of asking them to take cat food too.

Additional information via this blog post, along with some beautiful photos.

It is a rare bit of good news in a disaster that seems to be getting worse every day, especially now with the nuclear disaster. It could be another round of danger for this island and extraordinary number of people in coming days.

You can support the efforts of Japan Earthquake Animal Relief and see more information on Facebook. They are a coalition of at least two animal-relief organizations working together. World Vets also has a fund for disaster relief in Japan.

I didn’t think it would be possible to make this a “Cat and Synthesizer” post, but I did read via matrixsynth, that is matching donations to SXSW’s Japan relief fund with subscriptions. (Puremagnetik is a subscription service for sound/instrument packs for use with Ableton Live! and other software environments.)

Saw this poster on BoingBoing:

Hugh Electronic sez, “The I.W.W. hired Eric Drooker to design posters for a general strike which he is told, now appears imminent in Wisconsin. The Industrial Workers of the World asked him to design versions in Spanish and Arabic, for international solidarity.”

I doubt that general strike is actually imminent in Wisconsin, but one has to admire that poster. Of course, we love black cats, and black and red is great color combination.

From our local ABC affiliate:

BURLINGAME, Calif. Nov. 21, 2007 (BCN) – A man slept soundly this morning while a fire burned his home in the unincorporated Burlingame Hills area of San Mateo County, fire officials said.

Luckily, the man's cat woke him and alerted him to the blaze, Central County Fire Department Battalion Chief Ed Barton said.

The fire burned the man's home, which is a guesthouse located in front of a house located at 3037 Canyon Road, Barton said.

The two-alarm fire was burning when the man woke to put his howling cat outside, Barton said. The man went back to bed but woke again to the cat's insistent meowing.

When the man got out of bed to attend to the cat, he saw the fire and called 911 at about 5:21 a.m., Barton said.

The cat was not harmed by the blaze, and the man appears to have escaped safely as well.

What makes this story particularly significant is that I saw this fire. I happened to be staying in the Burlingame/Hillsborough hills above the canyon. I heard the sirens and saw the smoke, and then the fire, which looked to be quite large (as “guest houses” can sometimes be in this area). Many of you may have read about our nasty wildfire season here in California, so there is always a small worry of a house fire spreading up a canyon – fortunately, the weather has been pretty cold and damp lately.

Fires are terrible events. It was fortunate that both the cat and the man were safe.

Another (strange) case of violence against pets:

PUYALLUP, Wash. — Two cats have been shot and injured with arrows in Puyallup and another one is missing, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.
Authorities said they are offering a reward in the hopes someone will come forward and with information to help stop the attacks on neighborhood pets.
Ryan Campbell?s cat, Yaeger, stumbled in last week impaled by a carbon-shaft arrow…The cat is going to be OK, but Campbell had to pay hundreds in vet bills…
…Cody Kuzmer lives next door to Campbell. He said his cat, Bracelets, was shot by an arrow the night after Yaeger was attacked.

There are photos with the the original story. Because they contain “evidence” of the attacks, I opted not to repost them here.

Happily, both cats survived, and we hope they recover quickly. But there is still one missing, and might have also been a victim. I haven't seen any follow-up stories yet. I always wonder who does something like this? Kids looking for easy targets for their new “toy” (and why do people let their kids have weapons like that)? Or a neighborhood cat-hater with a grudge? There is no way something like this is an accident, especially with multiple cases.

Well, it's definitely news and commentary day here at CatSynth, and I found a much lighter story of cats in the news to finish things off. Those lolcat pictures that have all over the place, including on this site, are going mainstream with articles like this one from the Toronto Globe and Mail:

For reasons that nobody can quite explain – and not for lack of trying – the Internet is recently awash in photos of cats who are speaking like little hackers. “IM IN UR FRIDGE,” says one cat, “EATIN UR FOODZ.” A cat rolled up in a blanket says, “I IS BURRITO.” Another yowling cat has been immortalized beneath the caption, “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”…
… The fad is called “lolcats” – the “lol” stands for “laughing out loud” in online jargon – and it's more than a genre for ridiculing cats; it's becoming a shorthand for describing an exaggerated, faintly derogatory way of speaking.

A few examples of lolcats that have appeared on this site include dj lolcat, are our very own “Mission Accomplished” parody. Here's another I found today on lolcats2 that seemed worth a repost:

Not quite a CatSynth pic, but close. It is tempting to turn one of the many CatSynth pics into a LolcatSynth, but it's generally impolite to mangle other people's photos, at least without their permission. Any contributors OK with lolcat-ification of their submitted photos?

Of course, the phenomenon has jumped species. Walruses, or lolruses, are quite common – they seem particularly obsessed with buckets. It seemed to be an obvious extension to apply the lolcat language and captions to our rather dim and inarticulate leader, and a quick Google search suggests that I'm not the only one who thought of lolbush. From Tensegrity Dan at flickr, another take on “mission accomplished”:

I can haz Iraq?

lolcat news lolbush mission accomplished

We at CatSynth are hanging a brown ribbon today as part of the nationwide march to Keep Our Pets Safe. Marches and other events are being planned in several cities throughout the US (though not in the bay area), but everyone is encouraged to participate online by displaying the brown ribbon to support pets and and the families who have lost pets due to the pet-food recall.

We also heard from artsy catsy about the “My Pet Counts” postcard blitz. Mail postcards today (April 28) to the FDA, the White House, your representatives and senators, and others who have actually been involved addressing this issue. Among those listed is Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, who held hearings on the pet-food contaminations and the FDA response. He has also launched a public internet campaign asking “FDA to improve the safety of our pet food supply now!”

It was a bit odd to see Anderson Cooper of CNN specifically listed as a postcard addressee. I don't watch television at home. Apparently he did some early reporting on the pet-food contamination and did a segment in China. I haven't been able to find that video.

Speaking of China, they have admitted the presence of melamine and invited the FDA to help investigate, though the still have not admitted the link to the illnesses and deaths of any pets.

According to Pet Connection, more than 5,500 pet-food products, house brands and name brands alike, are now on the FDA's recall list. So far, Luna's favorite food remains safe – it contains corn gluten, but we are assured it is produced int the US (again, why would we important any corn products into the US?). Nonethless, it's still scary. What happens if it is later found to be contaminated as well? Switching to home-made food is not advised unless one really knows what he or she is doing. So while I'm happy to make treats for Luna from Meow Chow recipes and elswhere, I still rely on safe pet food for her continued healthy diet. We hope all our feline friends stay safe.

Pet Connection reports from its voluntary database that over 14,000 affected pets, of which 4500 have died.

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Well, there's more disturbing news on the pet food recall.

First, from MedicineNet:

The massive recall of pet foods expanded again Thursday with the recall of products containing rice protein concentrate imported from China.

Blue Buffalo, of Wilton, Conn., said it was recalling all of its Spa Select Kitten dry food labeled “Best Used By Mar. 07 08 B.” … On Wednesday, Natural Balance Pet Foods, of Pacoima, Calif., recalled all its venison dog products and dry venison cat food after discovering they were contaminated with melamine…

So now it's not just wheat gluten, but rice protein as well, again from China. And also in dry food for kittens. But things get worse:

Meanwhile in South Africa, melamine has been found in Royal Canin pet food company's Vets Choice and Royal Canin dry dog and cat food sold exclusively in South Africa and Namibia. The source of the melamine appears to be from corn gluten imported from China, according to published reports.

Corn gluten is exceptionally scary for us because it's a major ingredient in Luna's food. So far, the contaminated corn gluten has not been found here in the United States, and I can't understand why as the largest corn producer in the world we would get any corn products from China. But it's enough of a scare that I have contacted the manufacturer or Luna's main dry food (which is not one of the main brands in the news) for additional information. I will share whatever information I find on this forum.

For more detailed information on individual brands, I recommend checking in with Pet Connection.

So we have three major food products from China. From the Associated Press:

“Melamine was found in all three of those ? it would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it may be intentional. That will be one of the theories we will pursue when we get into the plants in China,” Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian, told reporters…FDA investigators were awaiting visas that would allow them to visit the Chinese plants where the vegetable protein ingredients were produced.

Good luck to the FDA getting any honest information on a visit to China if it ever happens. But there are questions about the FDA in this whole issue. On one hand, they are now floating the theory that melamine was introduced to purposely increase measured protein content. From David Goldstein at the Huffington Post:

One would expect the FDA to test this theory by directly measuring protein levels in melamine-contaminated samples to see if they otherwise fall below grade. One would also expect the FDA to release the names of all importers, distributors and manufacturers who are suspected of handling contaminated product. But then, one would expect a lot of things from the FDA that they have thus far failed to deliver.

Why are the FDA so slow to name names, particularly when it comes to the Chinese manufacturers and the US distributors that do business with them? Indeed, why don't we simply stop all Chinese imports of these ingredients?

Given the facts, it is now reasonable to assume either massive, industry-wide negligence, or intentional contamination, and that all Chinese produced high-protein food additives are now suspect.

China is becoming the Pakistan of food quality, and the danger is spreading to the human food supply (for those who are unmoved by the suffering of our companion animals). You have to wonder if there is politcal pressure not to go after China for this, as they are such an important partner for the big business interests in the U.S.

To date, 4,346 deceased pets reported by Pet Connection. We at CatSynth do not want to see this number continue to grow…

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The pet-food recall story continues to unfold. It has been almost a month since the original recall by Menu Foods. We've seen rat poisen and later melamine from Chinese wheat gluten as the potential root cause, and more and more brands being recalled.

OK, I just have to interject here, why are we getting pet food ingredients from China? It's one thing to import plastic trinkets, and even electronics (we've certainly done business with China at my work). But food products is another thing entirely. China is not known for their strong quality control, or aversion to cutting corners in production. That's not something to fool around when it comes to food for either humans or animals. Plus, pet food ingredients from a country that considers our pets (e.g., cats and dogs) to be dinner??

A great source of information has been Pet Connection, which includes the latest updates on recalled brands. I also like this summary from CNN, both for its being concise and the sweet but sad photo of a cat who recently became ill. Among the scarier developments were the recent recalls of one brand of dry cat food (Hill's Perscription Diet), and cat treats from Del Monte, including Pounce. All the recent recalls are products that contained wheat gluten from China. Luna's brand of dry cat food remains off the list, thankfully, and long ago we tried Pounce and Luna decided it was better as a toy than a cat treat (great for kicking around the floor). Neither her food nor her treats contain wheat gluten of any sort. But we're continuing to follow this, and encourage all our friends to as well…

Perhaps the saddest development is that the “16 or so cats and dogs that have died from poisoning” appears to be a gross underestimate.

PetConnection readers can report sick or deceased pets, and as of this writing they have 3240 deceased pets, of which 1729 are cats and 1511 are dogs. When you include both sick and deceased pets, the number they have is 9378.

Counting “sick and deceased pets” sounds really clinical in a lot of ways, kinda like casualty reports from the Iraq war, including the official undercounting. Putting a more personal face on the tragedy is a column by Christie Keith (who also contributes to PetConnection), the story “is bigger and more tragic” than many of the early official government and company reports suggest. It certainly is for those who have lost a precious member of their family.

There is going to be a nationwide (USA) day of rememberances and marches on April 28.

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From CityNews in Toronto:

Heroes made sure there were no hurt felines as a tabby almost used up one of its nine lives Thursday

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