After a hectic period that began with the announcement of veteran Councilmember Maudelle Shirek’s disqualification for the November ballot, the filing deadline for candidates in the fall Berkeley City Council election closed with some minor shakeups, the non-appearance of one potential major candidate, and some interesting, competitive races developing. -more-

Bay Area environmental groups have teamed up with petro-giant Chevron to launch a new proposal that could spell trouble for a Berkeley developer’s plans to install a massive casino and hotel complex on Richmond’s Point Molate. -more-

The newest revolution to emerge from Berkeley may seem quieter—even geekier—than those surrounding People’s Park and the Free Speech Movement, but its architects hope its effects will prove even more enduring in reshaping the fabric of the American body politic. -more-

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 -more-

South Berkeley residents who live near the Ashby Bart Station gathered Wednesday night to view the latest plans for the Ed Roberts Campus, the two-story center for disability rights, education, training and advocacy named after the founder of the city’s internationally known Center for Independent Living. -more-

President Hugo Chávez seems almost certain to win the recall referendum called for this coming Sunday in Venezuela. -more-

Berkeley Heist Leads to Serial Robber Bust -more-

Just as the Democratic Convention was wrapping up in Boston, President Bush’s handlers announced that he’d be hitting the campaign trail with an amped-up stump speech. -more-

John LeConte Jory died Aug. 8, 2004. He was born in Berkeley on Sept. 3, 1924 and missed his 80th birthday by only one month. He grew up in Berkeley, spent World War II as a pharmacist’s mate in the Navy in the South Pacific, studied business administration at Cal, worked for the City of Berkeley as a recreation supervisor for 15 years, took care of his handicapped wife, Cathy, until she died in 1988 and after that, took care of other elderly people. -more-

SAN FRANCISCO—Ratana Som, 24, is trying to turn his life around. The ex-drug dealer works at a nonprofit in the city’s Tenderloin district, a high-crime neighborhood where his family and many other Cambodian refugees first arrived in the early 1980s. But along with 1,400 other young Cambodian Americans convicted of aggravated felonies, Som faces deportation. -more-

We come across an article in this Wednesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, headlined “Community Buys Into Cleaning Up Its Streets.” An awful idea emerges. -more-

POLICE BLOTTER -more-

Editors, Daily Planet: -more-

Zoning Adjustments Boardmember Laurie Capitelli wishes that “people would get their facts straight” about ZAB’s unanimous approval of La Farine’s application for a use permit for a retail bakery with incidental seating at 1820 Solano Ave. (Letters, Daily Planet, Aug. 6-9). -more-

The ongoing battle between neighborhood preservationists and the developer who plans a pair of duplexes in the recently landmarked Oceanview Sisterna Historic District flared anew this week during a three-hour-plus hearing before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. -more-

One of the first uses of the phrase “world music” was in 1974, when the Center for World Music opened its doors at what is now the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts on College Avenue in Berkeley. The Oxford English Dictionary lists it first in 1977, apparently missing all the previous uses in the Bay Area press coverage of the period. Today, a Google search on “world music,” brings up a list of 13,500,000 references within a half second. -more-

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 -more-

One of the most satisfying and relaxing rides you can take in the Bay Area is a tour of local artisan cheese producers in Sonoma and Marin counties. Starting with Vella’s Cheese in Sonoma and ending at Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, the trip is about 100 miles roundtrip from Berkeley. -more-

In what one prominent Berkeley progressive—Jaqueline DeBose—angrily said “appears to be a gentrified left-wing conspiracy,” the 20-year City Council career of Berkeley legend Maudelle Shirek may have come to an abrupt end last week when her campaign for re-election was disqualified by the Berkeley city clerk’s office. -more-

Three challengers will be taking on two incumbents for two seats on the school board for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in the November elections. Norine Smith, a San Francisco native and 33-year-resident of Berkeley, will repeat her 2000 challenge to longtime incumbent Councilmember Betty Olds for the District 6 Berkeley City Council seat. Filing remains open until Wednesday evening for council districts 2, 3, and 5, and for four seats on the nine-member Rent Stabilization Board. -more-

Following howls of protest from libraries across the nation, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has rescinded a controversial order demanding that libraries destroy copies of a federal statute and accompanying regulations and documents. -more-

Why are progressive staffers disappearing from San Francisco’s leading paper? In the past month, two staffers at the San Francisco Chronicle have quietly disappeared from their posts. Ruth Rosen, a progressive opinion columnist, was suspended without pay after she wrote a column criticizing the CEO of Curves for Women for supporting anti-abortion groups. Her supervisors accused her of spreading misinformation and of “disloyalty,” and Rosen eventually agreed to leave the paper. Two weeks later, William Pa tes was taken off his job as editor of the letters page after management learned that he had donated $400 to John Kerry. -more-

OWERRI, Nigeria—All summer long I’ve been a celebrity. Schoolboys clamor to greet me. Housewives invite me to their homes. Teenage girls scoop up and kiss my children. Burly security guards open doors for me. Thin roadside hawkers, confidently balancing on their heads baskets of eggs or consumer electronics, cluster excitedly around my car window. Everyone smiles, waves, shouts, “Oyibo! (Foreigner!) Welcome!” -more-

Mayor Tom Bates, Councilmember Kriss Worthington, LeConte neighborhood resident Paul Rabinow and two city employees toast the new sign on Derby advertising the City of Berkeley’s ban on heavy vehicles, which applies to more than three dozen small residential streets. -more-

Gunshots Hit Homes, Cars on Ashby -more-

I received an e-mail about a column I wrote several weeks ago. The writer said, “Tell your friends, the Scrabblettes, that they’re not following Scrabble rules. The first player must start with a four-letter word. Unless my ability to count is off, kea, a word your co-player Louise used, does not have four letters. Plus, you left out an important part of the definition of a kea. It is a green New Zealand parrot that kills sheep by TEARING AT THEIR BACKS TO EAT THE FAT THERE (Webster’s New Universal Unabr idged Dictionary, page 996). If you want to lead off with an acceptable parrot, try the kakapo, also green, and also from New Zealand. It does not have a breastbone and so it is the only bird of the parrot species (psittaciformes) that cannot fly. It is o ften misidentified as an owl, eats only at night, and stays in holes in the ground during the day.” -more-

NATURE ARTICLES -more-

We have read the report of the external review of the collaborative research agreement between Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute, Inc. (NADI) and the Regents of the University of California. We were pleased to learn the history of the “bidding approach” suggested for selecting corporate partners for the university. We were also pleased to receive assurance from the reviewers that the UCB agreement (the UCB-N deal) had minimal direct impacts on the university, but not excluding the College of Natural Resources (CNR). This conclusion was reached without asking the question “what would have happen if the UBC-N deal had not been brought to light?” by a courageous CNR Executive Committee (EXCOM) ably chaired by a vulnerable untenured Assistant Professor Ignacio Chapela. EXCOM (one of us was a member, APG) enabled a faculty review despite excessive pressure from the dean’s office to rapidly ratify the agreement. The report also assumes at Berkeley that the rise of biotechnology and the fall of applied agricultural fields such as biological control, plant pathology, soils and others is just part of the natural progress of science; a mere part of the process of modernization. In fact, according to the review, the “deal” appears consistent with the universities adjusting to the emerging norms of university-based economic development” and gives the impression that science at Berkeley is protected from the influence of politics and corporate power. -more-

On Aug. 3, about 120 staff from the remaining three county community medical clinics in Newark, Hayward and Oakland walked off the job and confronted the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. The supervisors were holding a retreat in an off-site location and the workers let them know what they think of planned new and deep cuts in staffing and services for the public. At that event I handed the following letter to each member of the board individually. -more-

While Bay Area folks often claim that California is two states, with a virtual political border crossing the state on an East/West line somewhere south of San Jose, perhaps the real second state begins north of Marin County—dividing the sparsely settled rural California of decades past from today’s postmodern urban landscape. -more-

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10 -more-

If you’ve been on the UC campus lately, you may have noticed the oval blue plaques warning against dumping waste into Strawberry Creek, and their logo: a truculent-looking fish with three spines along its back. That’s a three-spined stickleback, part of the creek’s original fauna, and maybe still there. I’ve found conflicting sources on that point. A Strawberry Creek walking tour guide says the sticklebacks were reintroduced during restoration efforts, but were flushed downstream and now congregate where the creek enters the bay, near the Berkeley Marina; another site, though, suggests that some remain. -more-

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10 -more-

Chalabys in the news again. Treason, espionage, murder…who knows where it will end? And who’s surprised? Evidently, yet again, the people in Washington who are supposed to be running the country. It’s scary. What I still fail to understand (and I’m sorry to keep coming back to this point, but it haunts me) is how many of us here in little Berkeley, not to mention our friends in New York and Boston and even in Illinois, West Virginia and Indiana, knew from day one that Chalabys I and II were bad apples, and Bush’s guys didn’t. It’s been all over the Internet, in letters to the editor in hundreds of papers, and the subject of conversation in probably thousands of cafes around the world. -more-

The ongoing plans to turn the Richmond area into Vegas-by-the-Bay last appeared in this space around the middle of June. This was right after our intrepid reporter had uncovered a hither-to-secret scheme to put a massive tribal gaming complex right smack in the middle of Point Molate, a former Navy fuel depot with gorgeous bay views, charming historic buildings, and lots of open space. The property was transferred to the City of Richmond a few years ago, with Navy promises to clean up serious on-site toxic waste problems. -more-