Hiking in the East Bay Hills

This scene is a winter scene in the East Bay Hills.  As I like to point out, this is 10 minutes from a major downtown center.  We are very lucky to live in a major metropolitan area with so many trails and rural scenes so close.  If the developers and speculators had their way, they would keep the pleasure of this for their eyes only and develop the rest.

But one of the greatest dangers we face is the destruction of the environment by capitalism and the market.  There is no doubt that if we do not overthrow capitalism, if workers do not take the levers of society out of the hands of the speculators and bankers that now hold them, the system they perpetuate and defend will poison the environment to the point of no return. They will destroy life on this planet as we know it; they are driven to do this by the system itself not by some individual malicious intent or character flaw. Look at what they have done to California in but a couple hundred years.  The so-called free market is not nature friendly.

I am not a pessimist because I believe in an alternative, a democratic socialist society and economy where production is for social need and not individual gain.  Where our daily existence is carried out in harmony with nature.

My friend and I spent 3 hours today walking the trails and  photographing different stuff, especially fungi. And this brings me to another point.  The capitalist offensive is openly admitting that the height of the post war boom in the US was the best capitalism has to offer.  They are now dismantling all the gains workers in this country have made over the last 150 years.  They are increasing the hours people work and the conditions of employment are deteriorating in order for US capitalism to compete with the workers of the underdeveloped world who survive on a few dollars a day. They are increasing the retirement age so people will have to work in to their 70's and 80's. They have mortgaged the future for our youth who only have participation in endless wars or the alternative of jail.

The scene in this short video clip should be enjoyed by everyone in our retirement and spare time.  My friend said to me as  we walked, "And some people are sitting on the couch saying they have nowhere to go and nothing to do."  I am retired.  I have a decent retirment that I can live on becasue I worked in the public sector.  The capitalists want to end such luxury.  For them we must live in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity, fearful that we might lose our jobs or be attacked by hordes of foreign invaders.
The more afraid we are, the more insecure we feel, the more power they have over us.