Opinion

The Saturday Farmers’ Market in Berkeley was awash with politicians, pressing the flesh and hawking their latest products. “Will you take the pledge?” one shouted at me, and I fled. I’ve got many historic associations with taking pledges, none of them good. -more-

In the last few days we’ve heard about a lot of crime in the area near our South Berkeley office. Our neighborhood association has reported at least three nearby hold-ups in broad daylight, and a frequent correspondent in the adjacent Temescal area has sent us a letter (in this issue) about a frightening unprovoked assault on a pedestrian by a gang of young teens who didn’t even appear to be looking to rob the victim. -more-

EMPTY LOT -more-

In a Nov. 18, 2003 commentary, Mayor Bates and Councilmember Linda Maio made what appeared to be a heartfelt plea for immediate incorporation of the University Avenue Strategic Plan into the zoning ordinance. In light of developments such as the behemoth building proposed for 1950 MLK, affectionately known to some as the Trader Joe’s building, this public promise to champion the UASP principles of protecting Berkeley from inappropriately large development and to maintain the residential character of the neighborhoods definitely bears re-examination. -more-

AC Transit proposes to eliminate two auto lanes on Telegraph Avenue and have curbed, restricted, and exclusive fast bus lanes in the middle two lanes for the new BRT service. Their thinking and the environmental impact report do not address the problems this will cause. Telegraph today is attractive, clean, and traffic flows. -more-

At last count, there were 43 separate militias in Gaza, including clan based militias, Fatah splinter groups, criminal gangs, and non-Hamas Islamic groups. It is unclear as of this writing how long it will take Hamas to consolidate its control, and eliminate all possible resistance. But they will. To subdue one clan, they took three female civilian clan members, one a young girl, and executed them summarily as an example. Summary execution has always greeted those accused (no trials necessary in Palestine) of collaboration with Israel. Now collaboration with Fatah has become a capital offense as well. Military control is but one aspect of the story. Gaza is about to descend into a very dark night of the soul. Hamas will gradually monopolize and Islamicize all aspects of life. There have already been innumerable attacks on normal expressions of modernity. Nightclubs and internet cafes have been torched, gays murdered, churches burned (Palestine, which, until recently, was 7 percent Christian Arab, is now only about 2 percent Christian). Women who commit adultery face death by stoning, if their own brothers and fathers do not kill them first. Hundreds of women have already been strangled by their own family members in so-called “honor killings.” Women also face forced genital mutilations, and, of course, they will be required to take up the veil. The education system will become Islamic. Already, Mickey Mouse broadcasts a message of hate on Hamas TV. “Kill the Jew and the crusader” (i.e., Christians), preaches Hamas’ Mickey Mouse, “for they are all pigs and apes.” But this has been going on for years. Hamas’ “summer camps” routinely taught children how to become martyred suicide bombers. Those children have grown up to become the shock troops which made short order of Fatah in Gaza, and may someday soon do the same in the West Bank. -more-

PRO-MASS TRANSIT, -more-

Parking in the Elmwood hangs by a tenuous thread. The proposed retail complex to be housed at the old Wright’s Garage near Ashby and College will have no on-site parking, and the only requirement owner John Gordon must meet is to try to provide parking. He doesn’t even have to try very hard! -more-

Our community, in particular, South Berkeley, is experiencing a gnawing anxiety about the apparently unstoppable will of Verizon/Nextel to install throughout South Berkeley a cell phone antenna net. This is an expression used in the cell phone industry and now also part of the accepted and incorporated lingo of our city planning department staff. -more-

The supporters of closed borders and deportations are not a fringe minority. Millions—including a majority of “liberal” elected officials like our California senators—favor the policy of walling off the United States at the Southern border. I visited the border last month. I talked with a few of the people deported from the Sonora desert of Arizona. I saw the bottoms of their feet torn to shreds after walking day and night in the desert sun and sand, and heard of beatings and humiliation at the hands of the private militarized Wackenhut company under contract with Homeland Security. Eight people were known to have died in the desert during four days I was there. One of the men we talked with was a San Francisco chef who had had to return home to the Yucatan for family affairs. Another was a peasant woman from Morelos the soles of whose feet I had to cut off because they were just dead separated skin. She cannot survive in Mexico because U.S. imports have financially ruined Mexico’s peasant agricultural base. Is this the kind of investment that letter writer Robert Gable believes will help get the Mexican economy back on its feet—the dumping of subsidized surplus US corn and other commodities on the Mexican market under NAFTA? -more-