For San Pablo city officials, it isn’t a casino so much as an economic godsend, a chance to save an impoverished city that will die without it. -more-
Is there enough room in West Berkeley for the green grocer and the guy in the hard hat? That is a question the Planning Commission started to consider Wednesday at its first public hearing/workshop on the proposed West Berkeley Bowl. -more-
While the Berkeley Unified School District awaits a decision by the Berkeley City Council on whether or not the city will close down a block of Derby Street, a BUSD-contracted architectural firm is moving forward to develop proposals for temporary use of the district-owned adjoining property. -more-
Starting this summer Marin Avenue is scheduled to slim down for its 21,000 daily motorists. -more-
The City Council has authorized up to $75,000 to prepare a lawsuit against UC Berkeley. -more-
Caltrans announced Thursday that it is “moving full speed ahead” with perhaps the most eagerly awaited transit project in Contra Costa County and one of the least loved in Berkeley. -more-
A sharply-divided Peralta Community College Trustee board this week narrowly approved Chancellor Elihu Harris’ request to authorize a Facility Land Use Plan. The decision followed a contentious debate. -more-
The Berkeley Historical Society has announced that it is sponsoring the first Berkeley Historical Society Life Magazine-style photo essay competition, and the Berkeley Daily Planet has agreed to be a co-sponsor. A total of $1,028 will be awarded for 12 prizes: first prizes, $127, second, $75, third, $50. -more-
When they came for Hadi Saleh, they found him at home in Baghdad with his family. First, they bound his hands and feet with wire. Then they tortured him, cutting him with a knife. He died of strangulation, and before fleeing, his assailants pumped bullets into his dead body. -more-
Taste of the Himalayas Restaurant -more-
THE STUPIDIPTY OF THE POLITICAL LEFT -more-
Now that we’ve heard the announcement that the Chinese government is going to rent two giant pandas to the Oakland Zoo—and before City Councilmember Henry Chang comes up with another five or six year project to occupy his publicly-financed hours—perhaps the time has come for Oakland to rethink this whole idea of an at-large councilmember. -more-
The election of a new Iraqi Assembly is a milestone in the occupation and, therefore, an opportunity for Americans to consider our options in Iraq: one would be to stick with the Bush “plan” to tough it out, another to withdraw our troops, and a third to proceed in some novel direction. This analysis considers the second option, a speedy withdrawal. -more-
The recent meeting between President Bush and the Congressional Black Caucus grabbed headlines because Bush and the group spent the last four years snubbing each other. What did not make news was a meeting Bush had with black evangelical leaders the day before his get-together with the caucus. -more-
Unless U.S. senators have a collective spine transplant (our own Barbara Boxer is thankfully excluded from this group) they will soon confirm Alberto Gonzales as the United States Attorney General. I mention spinelessness because it seems to be the new Democratic policy to “work with” the Bush administration, no matter how outrageous its proposals are. For example, if the Bush administration were to suggest strip mining the entirety of Yosemite National Park (as they probably will) we can be sure that some—if not most—of the Democrats will decry that and, instead, propose that they only strip mine half of Yosemite. Then, when a bill sails through the congress providing that three-quarters of the park be strip mined, the Democrats will trumpet that they got the best deal they were capable of. After all, they wouldn’t want to offend any middle of the road potential voters. -more-
The recount of Berkeley’s Measure R ended Jan. 10, with the Alameda County Registrar of Voter declaring this initiative had failed by 161 votes. However, inefficient counting methods, denial of voter intent, and flawed machinery combined to make this recount meaningless. Americans for Safe Access, a Berkeley based patient’s rights group, along with several individual voters, are contesting this count with a motion filed in Superior Court. -more-
We live in an era of privatization of essential social services. The most recent to come under attack is social security, a reform enacted during the New Deal which the Bush administration now wants to roll back. -more-
Lewis and Mary Suzuki will soon celebrate their fifty-second wedding anniversary, but a fair-sized book could be written about their adventures and misadventures before they ever got together, starting with Lewis’ father jumping ship in 1912, entering San Francisco illegally, and making his way to L.A., where he made a precarious living as a musician. In 1917 He went back to Japan, married, then re-entered the U.S. legally, starting a dry-cleaning business and a family in L.A. -more-
Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico (The Triptych), an unusual omnibus of three one-act operas, will be presented by Berkeley Opera this Saturday and Sunday and Feb. 2 and 6 at Julia Morgan Theater, sung in Italian with English supertitles. -more-
On early summer mornings John Muir would climb the stairs of his house to the bell tower above the attic. Here he would meditate and survey grand vistas of fruit orchards and the sweep of hills. Admiring the 360-degree views, his gaze may have turned farther east toward his beloved Sierras. With peace of mind, he would descend to his daily work, managing the ranch and fighting to save America’s resources. -more-
They came, they saw, they liked. -more-
Just one week after the City Council approved the tallest building to hit downtown Berkeley in decades, an appellant has charged that Mayor Tom Bates’ meeting with the project’s developers before the crucial vote violated city rules on ex parte contact. -more-
Before the crack of daybreak, a nondescript white van cruises the residential streets of central Berkeley picking up people unknown to neighbors. -more-
The City Council Tuesday is set to approve three affordable housing projects totaling 231 units—nearly double the number developed in Berkeley over the last five years. -more-
The proposed new Berkeley Bowl at Ninth Street and Heinz Avenue comes up for a Planning Commission workshop and hearing Wednesday night at 8:30 p.m. -more-
The union representing 30,000 northern California grocery workers announced Monday that it reached a contract settlement with three large grocery chains. -more-
A delayed district planning proposal is back on the agenda for Peralta Community College Trustees Tuesday night, when trustees will consider authorizing a six-month contract with Scala Design & Development company. -more-
Berkeley Iceland on Monday delivered to city officials a long-awaited plan to bring its 64-year-old skating rink up to code. -more-
A little more than a year after a district-commissioned report called for an overhaul of Berkeley Unified School District’s Special Education program, an internal report has revealed that many of the major problems still remain. -more-
Four and a half months after he came on the job, Berkeley High Vice Principal Mark Wolfe has announced his resignation for what he described as personal and family reasons. The resignation was effective immediately, and Wolfe’s last day was Wednesday of last week. -more-
One day after Condoleezza Rice’s Senate confirmation hearing I curled up with the book that provides her best claim to seriousness as a scholar: Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. -more-
Flying back from Jamaica to New York, in less than three and a half hours I went from nude, waited on and warm, to overdressed, ignored and freezing. It was an effort to put on clothes in Braco. It was equally hard to take them off once I returned to White Plains. From 85 degrees and sunny, to 1 degree with a wind chill factor of minus seven, it began to snow the moment our plane touched down at Kennedy and it didn’t stop until almost 24 hours later. The day before I was lying on the beach under a palm tree. Now I was shoveling snow from a porch in West Chester County. Where before I was sipping Piña Coladas and cooling off with multiple dips in the Caribbean, now I was drinking bad coffee and doing jumping jacks to keep warm. No one was calling me “madam” anymore or asking me if there was anything I wanted. Instead, people I didn’t know were yelling at me to get my ass in gear. -more-
On Jan. 30 there will be national elections in Iraq. Insurgent violence will keep many Iraqis from voting and, as a result, some groups, particularly the Sunnis, will be under-represented in the new Assembly. Nonetheless, Jan. 30 represents a milestone f or the U.S. occupation, and, therefore, an opportunity for Americans to assess our prospects, to question our plan going forward. -more-
THE CYCLIST AGENDA -more-
Most honorable profession at the point of a blade. -more-
The Howard Wiley Trio will perform a tribute to jazz inspiration John Coltrane this Friday at 9 p.m., presented by The Jazz House at 21 Grand Art Gallery, 449 B 23rd St., Oakland. -more-
Berkeley filmmaker Tom Weidlinger wanted to make a documentary about international aid workers fostering self-sufficiency rather than dependency. In 2003, Weidlinger visited Action Against Hunger amid stifling heat, scorpions and malaria-carrying mosquit oes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He decided he had come to the right place and found the right people. -more-
For an afternoon excursion to San Francisco, two galleries offer lively shows this week: -more-
Oh joy, it’s January and the acacias are blooming. -more-
One of the perks of this job is that you get an early window on what lies are currently being launched in the D.C. fabrication industry. No sooner do the Republicans dream up a lie in one of their many captive think tanks than it’s on the Internet as a press release directed at editorial writers across the country. That’s how we first found out about that masterpiece of doublespeak titling, the Healthy Forests Initiative, which was a covert attack by the logging industry on the nation’s old growth forests. Frankly, we laughed at it. We didn’t believe that such blatantly untrue propaganda would find any audience among thinking people. We set our Netscape filter to deposit the Healthy Forest people’s press releases in the trash folder and forgot about it. Boy, were we wrong! It passed, with some Democrats supporting it. -more-
Wow. We never thought the city of Berkeley was such a major philanthropic organization. You probably didn’t know that Berkeley citizens annually provide scholarships to at least 1,100 UC students, but this figure was confirmed last week by Chancellor Birgeneau himself. He told the Regents that if UC Berkeley paid $3 million toward what it costs the city of Berkeley to host the University of California, that would mean depriving 300 UC students of an education. You can do the math, no matter whether your S.A.T. math scores would have gotten you into Cal or not. Since the city actually subsidizes the University to the tune of more like $11 million in uncollectible property taxes, according to Birgeneau’s figures we are now providing 1100 students with a education that they’d have to forego if UC paid its own way, as do other universities like the University of Michigan, Stanford and Yale. If we take the population of Berkeley to be in the neighborhood of 110,000 (give or take a few thousand for ease of calculation) that means that every man, woman and child in Berkeley contributes about $100 a year to this scholarship fund. Pretty generous, wouldn’t you say? -more-
