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Support and strengthen the United Nations 

Editor: 

Mayor Brown’s rousting of undesireables from United Nations Plaza - a scant block from his office in City Hall - reminded me of the lovely day spent tabling on Earth Day in our own UN Plaza - MLK Jr Park. The sun was out for this communion of ideas and causes focused on the precarious stewardship of this limpid blue life-marble. 

The scouring of Brown’s grand promenade restored to the sight of passersby the granite emblem and dedication statement of an indispensible world body founded nearby at the Opera House, in the closing weeks of World War II. 

To put it bluntly: until that dreamy day when humanity develops an array of global institutions - the new International Criminal Court being a template - operating under a system of democratically-legislated, enforceable world laws that can assure an end to war and atrocity, the vigor of the biosphere, and restraint on other “globalities” such as the global economy and reach of multi-national corporations, the United Nations are just about the best friend Earth has.  

The current Administration isn’t, nor are its big-business palsies. 

The UN must be supported and appreciated, but also strengthened and enhanced as provided in Article 109 of the UN Charter. 

Phil Allen 

Berkeley 

Let’s clean up our own house 

Editor: 

Most of us here in Berkeley are appalled as the Bush administration caves-in to business interests, and rolls back environmental protection. Vice President Cheney throws up his hands and says conservation will never work, so we have to drill for more oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. 

Bad Bushies. But here in Berkeley, we're pure, right? 

Well, not all that pure.  

We just ripped up a bunch of trees downtown. 

We are dragging our feet about bus shelters.  

We think parking is more important than reducing congestion. It looks likely that the Oxford lot will have a huge parking garage.  

Local business interests seem to have watered down the part of the General Plan that tries to promote use of public transit, in order to reduce the need for more parking.  

Berkeley looks a lot like Bush when it comes to cutting back on car congestion.  

Our commissions and council cave-in to the business interests and call for more parking lots, instead of trying to be "transit first" (whatever happened to that resolution, anyway?) 

I’d like to see less Bush and more bus. 

Steve Geller 

Berkeley