The fenced-in tree-sitters at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium oak grove gained new allies Wednesday as their counterparts in Santa Cruz climbed redwoods while their allies were driven back by an onslaught of police clubs and pepper spray. -more-

The City of Berkeley dredged the lagoon at the north end of Aquatic Park and dumped the sludge along the shoreline this week. State Water Resources Control Board officials said the city’s Public Works Department never requested a permit for the project. -more-

Amidst jeers, catcalls and demands for the mayor’s recall‚ and Mayor Tom Bates’ threats to clear the rowdy public from the chambers, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to allow two powerful telecommunications companies to place antennas atop UC Storage, a five-story building owned by developer Patrick Kennedy adjacent to the neighborhood at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue. -more-

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members turned thumbs down on point towers in downtown Berkeley Wednesday, voting 13-7-1 for a six-story maximum building height, while allowing for up to ten exceptions. -more-

While Berkeley Police Chief Douglas Hambleton agreed with many of the Police Review Commission recommendations aimed at preventing criminal activity among police officers, he took issue with a few. -more-

The East Bay Regional Park District temporarily closed water access at selected shoreline parks Thursday after an 810-foot container ship rammed into the Bay Bridge Wednesday and spilt oil into the bay. -more-

More than 100 home and business owners may get long-term low-interest loans through the city to add energy efficiencies and/or solar panels to their properties, if a financing plan hatched by the mayor’s chief of staff, Cisco DeVries, pans out. -more-

Community members urged UC Berkeley to keep People’s Park an open space and sharply criticized a report on possible changes to the park at the People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting Monday. -more-

It’s not at all unusual for the majority of Berkeley voters to wake up with a nasty political hangover the morning after a presidential election. -more-

DOWNTOWN BUILDING HEIGHTS -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This letter was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. -more-

Daily Planet columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor has been an un-abashed apologist for Mayor Dellums for too long. In a petty feud with Chip Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle, he uses his recent column to belabor the non-issue that Chip has been treating Mayor Dellums more harshly than former Mayor Brown. In the process, Allen-Taylor sadly misses the real story. Crime in Oakland is out of control and Mayor Dellums has failed to articulate a detailed action plan to address it. I for one applaud Chip Johnson’s tenacity in reporting the issue of crime. The Reader’s Platform in the San Francisco Chronicle relates the growing frustration residents face day after day with ever increasing crime and unresponsive and overworked police. Admittedly, Mayor Dellums did not create Oakland’s crime problem, but he has a responsibility to address it. -more-

I am not a member of the “Concerned Listeners”; nonetheless I am a ”concerned” listener. -more-

For the average KPFA listener, it’s not easy to understand what—if anything—is really at stake in elections for the Local Station Board, nor how to select and rank candidates. They’re divided into myriad slates and factions, all passionately denouncing one another, but they’re all experienced progressives, and at a glance their platforms and platitudes sound pretty similar. And beyond the official election pamphlet, the station itself isn’t doing much to help voters understand the issues: There’s been only one, poorly publicized in-person candidate forum, and as of this writing, more than three weeks after the ballots were mailed, KPFA had yet to begin airing the recorded pitches candidates were asked to make weeks ago. -more-

Although our City Council on Tuesday, Nov. 7 surprised many of us naïve citizens by reversing its position made two weeks earlier in support of South Berkeley residents, it was less surprising if one examines the council’s history. On many occasions, the council had led Berkeley citizens to believe that it was truly sympathetic to neighborhood concerns over RF radiation from cell phone antennas. They cite for their reason federal law as promulgated in the 1996 Tele-Commun-ications Act which pre-empts the city from being able to defend its citizen on the basis of health concerns. -more-

“Religion, sometimes, is a continuation of politics by other means,” notes Jon Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Middle East division, and it was hard to avoid that thought about last month’s conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in Washington, D.C. -more-

Water is the primary problem to solve if we’re to raise plants. I suspect this has always been the case almost everywhere (and offhand I can’t think of what the theoretical exception would be) and likely will be, at least until some theoretical descendants are working hydroponic plantations outside the orbit of, say, Mars, where the problem will be sunlight. Probably there’s some smiling herb grower now who’s working on an electricity-sparing solution to that. -more-

I tend to stare at the ceiling a lot. I think it’s only to be expected. If you sleep on your back or lie on the couch reading Jane Austin (as we all must), you’re bound to spend a certain amount of time staring off into space and guess what’s there … between you and space but your ceiling. There it hangs (Yes, that’s what it’s doing, hanging.) between the walls, with all those cracks and stains and Grateful Dead posters and you think, “Maybe I should do something about this mess but what can I do? It’s a ceiling, not a casserole. I don’t know where to begin!” -more-