The Week

A private crime scene cleanup technician finishes donning his protective gear Thursday afternoon as he prepares to work on the Ashby Avenue room where police found a body buried behind a wall.
By Richard Brenneman
A private crime scene cleanup technician finishes donning his protective gear Thursday afternoon as he prepares to work on the Ashby Avenue room where police found a body buried behind a wall.
 

News

People’s Park Treesit Ends With a Reprieve

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 19, 2008 - 11:18:00 AM

Berkeley’s latest treesit ended Thursday, the same day it began, when campus police signed a Christmas truce that spares—for the moment—two acacias in People’s Park. -more-


Berkeley Man’s Suicide Leads to Discovery of Body Buried Behind Wall

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 19, 2008 - 03:02:00 PM

The dramatic suicide of a Berkeley man late Monday afternoon led police to a second gruesome discovery two days later, a badly decomposed male corpse walled up inside the a first floor laundry room. -more-


Berkeley Schools Top Bad Air Quality List

By Kristin McFarland
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:13:00 PM

Last week’s USA Today report that placed three Berkeley schools in the first percentile of schools with bad air quality has activists, community members and school directors in an uproar. -more-


Neighbors Win One, Lose One in Legal Actions Against Pacific Steel

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:14:00 PM

Neighborhood opponents of West Berkeley’s Pacific Steel Casting went one-for-two in Alameda County Superior Court legal decisions on Friday, with one judge overturning a previous Berkeley Small Claims Court ruling in favor of several PSC neighbors and, in a separate action, a second judge ruling that a class-action lawsuit against the steel foundry can go forward. -more-


Church Burial Rights Gain Support in Berkeley

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:15:00 PM

Forget all that stuff about “godless Berkeley.” -more-


Council Fails to Act on Cell Phone Antenna Applications

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:17:00 PM

Berkeley City Council stumbled (again) on Tuesday over the vexing issue of expanding cell-phone tower facilities in the city, failing to decide on a Verizon Wireless application for 1540 Shattuck Ave. and failing for the third straight meeting to either grant a hearing or dismiss a similar appeal for ZAB approval of a T-Mobile facility at 1725 University Ave. -more-


Conference Calls for Strategies To End America’s Prison Cycle

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:15:00 PM
Nation of Islam Minister Christopher Muhammad of San Francisco speaks at Saturday’s Stanley “Tookie” Williams Legacy Summit while Bill Ayers looks on.

More than 300 ’60s and ’70s era radicals and students not born until the ’80s gathered at Oakland’s Merritt College on Saturday to honor a man executed by the State of California three years ago and to hear strategies to end the cycle of criminalization of American communities and the country’s re-volving prison door and the death penalty. -more-


Hillside School Neighbors Seek to Purchase Playground

By Kristin McFarland
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:44:00 PM

Hillside Elementary School, a local and national historic landmark, stands on the brink of yet another reinvention. -more-


Zoning Board Approves Shattuck Offices, Delays Action on Kashani Condos

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:45:00 PM

Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board delayed approval of developer Ali Kashani’s five-story condo project at the corner of Ashby and San Pablo avenues last week. -more-


Two Marina Sites Emerge for Ferry Terminal

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:47:00 PM

Sprawling parking lots proposed at either of the two Berkeley Marina sites picked as potential locations for a new transbay ferry service have sparked concerns among the city’s planning commissioners. -more-


Fire Department Log

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:49:00 PM

Boat blaze -more-


Police Search for Three Men Involved in Pharmacy Burglary

Bay City News
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:50:00 PM

Berkeley police are searching for three men responsible for the burglary of more than $10,000 worth of prescription drugs from Elephant Pharmacy around 1 a.m. on Dec. 9. -more-


Shopping with Old Friends: A Day on Piedmont Avenue

By Anna Mindess Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:04:00 PM
A mud pie from Fenton’s.

The charm of Piedmont Avenue in North Oakland is its mix of newness and nostalgia; like a big family, where young and old live side by side. -more-


School Acknowleged for Closing Achievement Gap

By Kristin McFarland
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:45:00 PM

Berkeley’s Malcolm X Arts and Academics Magnet, an elementary school that integrates art and academics, has been awarded the Title One Academic Achievement award for 2008-2009. -more-


Prime West Berkeley Property Headed for the Marketplace

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:47:00 PM

Berkeley’s largest private development site—8.2 acres adjacent to Aquatic Park—is coming on the market, and the owners want the city to ease the rules. -more-


Commission Votes to End Downtown’s Fast Food Moratorium

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:46:00 PM

The man who residents of downtown Berkeley elected to represent their district on the City Council came to the Planning Commission last week to make a request. -more-


UC Santa Cruz’s Redwood Grove Felled

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:48:00 PM

The last UC Santa Cruz tree sitter surrendered to campus police Saturday, moments before a chainsaw-wielding crew began to level the redwood grove they had occupied for 402 days. -more-


Window-Smashing Burglar Sought by Berkeley Police

Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:48:00 PM

Berkeley police said that they have a person of interest and a vehicle of interest in connection with seven daytime “window-smash” burglaries, and one attempted burglary, at homes in northwest and north central Berkeley in the last two weeks. -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Watching the Watchdogs: It’s Everyone’s Job

By Becky O’Malley
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:54:00 PM

Those of us who voted for President-elect Barack Obama (possibly 95 percent of the readers of this paper) are waiting for his arrival with the same eagerness that our children and grandchildren are waiting for Santa Claus. But like the children of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the anticipation we feel is tempered by a bit of anxiety: Perhaps instead of sugarplums we might get Ashes and Switches or lumps of coal in our stockings. -more-


Cartoons

This Space for Sale

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday December 18, 2008 - 10:04:00 AM

Recessionary Snowman

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday December 18, 2008 - 11:11:00 AM

Browsing the Addison Street Gallery

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday December 18, 2008 - 11:15:00 AM

Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:54:00 PM

NEW SECRETARY OF ENERGY -more-


Berkeley High School Deserves the Best

By Jessica Quindel and Amy Burke
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:59:00 PM

Across our country, millions of Americans embraced President-elect Obama’s message of change. They embraced this idea because they knew America could do better. Today, Berkeley High School is also ready for change. We support the Berkeley High School Redesign Plan because it will improve academic achievement for all students by providing personalization through a student advisory program, increasing time on task in academic and elective classes, providing greater student support services, and improving teacher quality through increased opportunities for professional development. Moving to a block schedule is a fundamental component of this plan. -more-


RFID and Nuclear Weapons: Continuing Misrepresentations

By Peter Warfield
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:59:00 PM

The Berkeley Public Library is continuing its unfortunate tradition of seriously misrepresenting the facts about radio frequency identification (RFID) as it seeks a waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act from the Peace and Justice Commission (P&J), and eventually from the City Council. -more-


Address the Real Problems at Berkeley

By Yehuda HaKohen
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:00:00 PM

As director of the Zionist Freedom Alliance and one of the organizers of Israel Liberation Week at UC Berkeley last month, I was disturbed to learn some of the things being said about the ZFA not only by the “Students for Justice in Palestine” and their supporters, but also by the Bay Area’s organized Jewish leadership. For readers unaware of recent events at Berkeley, the ZFA hosted Israel Liberation Week on campus from Nov. 10-14. On the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 13, we brought Jewish, black and Mexican performers together for a concert advocating Jewish national rights. A series of unnecessary events that began with a disruption of the concert by the SJP and ended in a violent confrontation between Arabs and Jews has since become the focus of media attention. -more-


The Electoral College Has Gotta Go

By Bruce Joffe
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:00:00 PM

With the final vote count now certified, we can be very thankful that the victor’s margin was more than 8,500,000 votes. Had it been a closer election, with, say, a 500,000 vote margin, the wrong candidate—the one with fewer votes—might have been elected, once again. We know the terrible costs of this flaw in our electoral system: more than 4,000 American soldiers dead, 60,000 severely wounded, and three trillion dollars wasted on a war brought on by hubris and deception. This, plus 4 million Iraqi people displaced from their homes and over a hundred thousand killed. Now, in the twilight of this disastrous presidency, we are suffering an economic recession, a flat-out theft, of so many billions of dollars that one’s sense of outrage is numbly anesthetized. -more-


In Support of Windows Gallery Decision

By Patrick Hayashi
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:01:00 PM

I agree with the judgment of the curator of the Addison Street Window Gallery and am glad that the Arts Commission supported her decision. When I first saw Jos Sances’ poster, I had an immediate, visceral, negative reaction. I tried to figure out why I had reacted so strongly. I thought about the Eddie Adams’ photograph upon which the poster was based. I remembered the pain on Nguyen Van Lem’s face as the bullet fired by Nguyen Ngoc Loan ripped through his skull. That photograph affected me deeply as it did so may others because it caused me to wonder about how the Vietnam War had destroyed the humanity of both men. Adams’ photograph, in turn, caused me to think about Nick Út’s photograph of 9-year-old Phan Th Kim Phúc running naked on the street after being severely burned on her back by an American napalm bomb. I thought that Út’s photograph was powerful precisely because it showed how individuals were being brutally victimized by American actions. I wondered if the pilots of the planes, after they saw the photo, reflected on the unspeakable pain they were inflicting on innocent people. -more-


Minority Rights for ‘Those People’

By Russ Tilleman
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:01:00 PM

Charles Siegel’s Dec. 11 commentary “The Anti-Transit Crowd Is at it Again” takes aim at a local minority group, using the tired old language of discrimination. He correctly points out that only a minority of Berkeley citizens voted for Measure KK, but he seems to have forgotten that legitimate democracies protect the rights of minority groups whenever possible. -more-


Bus Rapid Transit Proponents at it Again

By Jim Bullock
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:02:00 PM

Charles Siegel’s entire Dec. 11commentary (“The Anti-Transit Crowd Is at it Again”) is based on a fallacy. In it, Mr. Siegel equated, as he has on many occasions, opposition to AC Transit’s current BRT proposal with being “anti-transit.” No one that I know who is anti-BRT is anti-transit. It is, in fact, just the opposite. Those of us who oppose the current BRT proposal oppose it because we are pro-transit. We want to see taxpayer dollars spent for real improvements in public transportation in the East Bay. The current BRT proposal is not projected to provide any benefit which would justify its enormous cost. -more-


A Few More Thoughts on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By Lawrence Jarach
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:59:00 PM

Don Santina is apparently incapable of discerning between disputing the lopsided writing of history and “historical revisionism.” Neither can he acknowledge that criticizing Communist Party politics do not make the critic a “McCarthyite.” Historical revisionism, in the lexicon of neutral historians, denotes questioning the dominant interpretation of past events. I would be honored to accept the label if Santina were using it descriptively instead of as an insulting conversation-stopper. The main Revisionist issue is Holocaust Denial, a predominately right-wing position, and Santina’s clear intent is to paint me with that brush, along with the other right-wing phenomenon he mentions: paranoid American anti-Communism. As an anarchist, my distrust of Leninists and Stalinists is directly tied to the often homicidal interactions (initiated by them) between the partisans of our respective movements, and has absolutely nothing to do with the frenzied Cold War hunt for secret Communist sympathizers and agents. I have no connection to Rush Limbaugh either—another of Santina’s absurd attempt at guilt-by-association, made in conscious bad faith. -more-


Columns

First Person: Academic Journey—Two Crashes

By Marvin Chachere
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:51:00 PM

One Friday in early March of 1965 I received in the mail two job offers: mathematics instructor at Diablo Valley College and Extension specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. -more-


Dispatches From The Edge: Angels and Demons in Mumbai

By Conn Hallinan
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:52:00 PM

Two things emerge from last month’s horrendous attack on Mumbai: one is how interconnected South Asia is with the rest of the world. The other is how the Carter Administration’s ill-conceived strategy in Afghanistan more than 30 years ago still reverberates throughout the region. Decades of subversion, terrorism and invasion have created what historian Vijay Prashad calls a “cauldron” from which has emerged avenging angels and dark demons in equal measure. -more-


Undercurrents: A Beginning Analysis of the Dellums Administration

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:53:00 PM

I have long believed that in the first term of a two-term, four-year administration, the second year is the one to watch if you’re trying to figure out where the administration is going. The first year can be spent getting oriented, hiring staff, learning the situation, and beginning the first policy initiatives. Unless the mistakes are spectacularly bad, there is plenty of time left in the term to make up for first-year mistakes. The fourth year is an election year, and the administrator—president, governor, or mayor—is either deeply involved in running for re-election or have decided to settle for one term. The record upon which a four-year administration is running for re-election, therefore, must be firmly established by the third year. Because most government policies take a long time to actually bear fruit, things which an administration wants to make manifest in the third year must have already been planted at least a year in advance. Thus, it’s at the end of the second year that you can start making judgments of possible success or failure. -more-


Wild Neighbors: A Wren in the Room

By Joe Eaton
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:13:00 PM

I walked into my living room last Saturday morning and found a Bewick’s wren perched on the back of the armchair. -more-


About the House: Slavery Lite

By Matt Cantor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:12:00 PM

I recently received a letter from a reader (Let’s call him PR) about his experiences with a local contractor and his illegal help. His concern, which is to be commended, is in regards to the pay and working conditions afforded his helper, whom he pseudonymously called Gem (presumably his feelings about the worker, which he effused copiously in a letter which is too long to include herein). -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:04:00 PM

THURSDAY, DEC. 18 -more-


An Endangered People and Their Art

By Dorothy Bryant Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:02:00 PM
Margot Schevill, curator of the exhibit of Mayan textiles at the Hearst Musuem, stands in front of the display of a white and red Mayan ceremonial blouse from the 1930s.

More than two years ago (April 25, 2006) the Daily Planet published my profile of Margot Blum Schevill. In that piece I emphasized Margot’s successful, even smooth, transition from one creative phase to another. A well-known singer when I first knew her over thirty years ago, Margot had completed a degree in anthropology and had become an authority on the Maya textiles of Guatemala, both as art and as history of a culture. -more-


‘Mz. Dee’s Medicine Show,’ Live on BETV

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:07:00 PM

Mz. Dee’s Medicine Show, a new musical variety TV series, hosted by lifelong local jazz and R&B singer Mz. Dee, will be cable- and web-cast live on BETV Channel 28 and BETV.org, 2 p.m., this Saturday, from the Berkeley Community Media studio. -more-


Teen Playreaders Present ‘Bizarre Shorts’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:08:00 PM

Teen Playreaders, which meets weekly at the Berkeley Public Library to read aloud from plays and monologues, have invited the whole community to their free show of Bizarre Shorts, featuring short plays, musical numbers and monologues (some original), “something for everybody, from Shakespeare to Sondheim to Stoppard,” 7:30 p.m., this Saturday at the Willard Middle School Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. (off Telegraph). -more-


Hansberry Theater Stages ‘Black Nativity’ in SF

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:10:00 PM

From the staged, stylized Gospel story of the door-to-door search for shelter and the adoration of the wise men in a stable in Bethlehem to the full-out testifying, choral singing and social pageantry of the African-American church, Lorraine Hansberry theater company’s Black Nativity: A Gospel Celebration of Christmas, now in its 10th year (and Hansberry’s 28th), is playing through Dec. 28 at San Francisco’s PG&E Auditorium. -more-


Thornton Wilder on the South Side of Our Town

By Phil McArdle Special to the Planet
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:11:00 PM
Thornton wilder and Gertrude Stein in 1937 at her country home at Bilignin, in the Rhone Valley.

Thornton Wilder created a substantial body of work but there seems little doubt that his lasting fame depends on Our Town. Since its opening on Broadway 70 years ago this extraordinary play has never really been off the stage. New productions of it open somewhere in the world almost every month. -more-


About the House: Slavery Lite

By Matt Cantor
Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 07:12:00 PM

I recently received a letter from a reader (Let’s call him PR) about his experiences with a local contractor and his illegal help. His concern, which is to be commended, is in regards to the pay and working conditions afforded his helper, whom he pseudonymously called Gem (presumably his feelings about the worker, which he effused copiously in a letter which is too long to include herein). -more-


Community Calendar

Wednesday December 17, 2008 - 06:51:00 PM

THURSDAY, DEC. 18 -more-