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 Marina-Most Beautiful Statement
Gar Smith
Marina-Most Beautiful Statement
 

News

New: Attackers Near Campus in Berkeley Used Pepper Spray on Victims

By Sasha Lekach (BCN)
Friday February 22, 2013 - 05:48:00 AM

Three female suspects attacked two female victims in an attempted robbery on the southside of the University of California at Berkeley campus last Friday night, Berkeley police said. 

The two female victims were walking on Dwight Way, near Prospect Street around 9:40 p.m. when they passed three females, all believed to be teenagers. 

One of the suspects sprayed one of the victims with what appeared to be pepper spray. 

The victims tried to run away. The suspects grabbed the second victim, punched her in the face and then knocked her to the ground before also spraying her in the face, police said. 

The suspects demanded the victims' property, but a male passerby intervened and the suspects ran off without any of the victims' belongings. 

The suspects were seen getting into a white Dodge Charger that then drove off westbound on Dwight Way, police said. 

UC Berkeley police assisted Berkeley police in a search for the suspects, who as of late this afternoon remain at large, Berkeley police spokeswoman Officer Jennifer Coats said. 

The victims both suffered injuries but refused medical care, according to police. 

The suspects are all described as black female teenagers. One stood about 5 feet 4 inches and had short hair. 

Another suspect was described as having long hair in a ponytail and was wearing a long skirt. 

The third suspect was about 5 feet 5 inches and had braided hair. She was wearing a pink shirt and a jean jacket. 

Anyone with information about the assault is asked to call Berkeley police at (510) 981-5900.


Flash: Suspect Gone from Police Search Area on Oakland-Berkeley Border

By Bay City News
Friday February 15, 2013 - 07:49:00 PM

The Oakland police SWAT team searched an apartment on Shattuck Avenue this evening looking for a suspect in an earlier shooting but found the apartment empty and are dismantling their search perimeter, an Oakland police officer said. 

One person was detained earlier today in connection with this afternoon's shooting near the corner of Broadway and West MacArthur Boulevard, which left a man injured with non-life threatening gunshot wounds, Officer Johnna Watson said. 

The events began at 12:26 p.m. when at least two suspects drove to the victim on the street there and opened fire, fleeing in the same car, Watson said. 

The man managed to transport himself to a hospital while witnesses called police and reported descriptions of the vehicle and the suspects. 

Police tracked that vehicle to the 6400 block of Shattuck Avenue and quickly detained two potential suspects, a male and a female.  

Investigators determined the male suspect was connected to the shooting and he remains in custody, while the female has been released. 

Concluding that the second suspect was barricaded in an apartment on Shattuck Avenue, police established a wide perimeter around the home, shutting down streets between 63rd and 66th streets and from Racine to Dover streets. 

The standoff lasted for hours and finally the SWAT team entered the residence and after a thorough search determined that it was empty. 

Police believe that at least two suspects were involved in the shooting, possibly more, and are continuing to search for the second suspect. However, the search perimeter is being broken down and streets are reopening in North Oakland. 

Watson said that the witness assistance was crucial in making the arrests. "We're very thankful to the community for getting involved and providing witness information," she said.


Graffitirazzi – Valentine's Day Sidewalk Edition

By Gar Smith
Thursday February 14, 2013 - 12:41:00 AM
                
                               HippieGypsy
Gar Smith
HippieGypsy
 911 an Inside Job!
Gar Smith
911 an Inside Job!
 Marina-Most Beautiful Statement
Gar Smith
Marina-Most Beautiful Statement

Berkeley's Hippie Gypsy dinner (1797 Shattuck Avenue) recently celebrated a birthday. Now, if your café is called "hippie gypsy," what better way to spread the word than by staging a chalk-in on the sidewalk! 

(No, the restaurant does not serve mashed-potatoes-and-groovy.) 

--- --- --- 

When it comes to political conspiracies, there's no better place to "walk the talk" than a public sidewalk. 

--- --- --- 

At the Berkeley Marina, I came across this message chalked onto a paved walkway curving over the low hills. 

After puzzling over the sight, I imagined the following scenario: 

A young man, smitten by a special lady, invites her to join him for a stroll down by the Bay where he draws her attention to the clouds, the birds, and the view of the Golden Gate as he leads her to this spot. And then he stops, directs her gaze downward and says: "By the way, sweetchops, I worship the ground you walk on." 

And they love happily ever after….


Flash: Man Dies in Police Custody in Berkeley

By Hannah Albarazi (BCN)
Thursday February 14, 2013 - 09:33:00 AM

A man died in police custody Tuesday night in Berkeley, police said. 

At about 11:50 p.m., police received a disturbance call in the 2000 block of Allston Way. 

Uniformed officers located a 41-year-old man at a nearby residence, about one block from the Downtown Berkeley BART station, police said. 

The man became agitated and refused to cooperate with the officers' verbal commands. The man began to scream and violently resist, according to police.  

Officers were able to gain control of the man after a struggle and put him into restraints, police said. 

The subject continued to kick and scream at the officers. Police officers requested the Berkeley Fire Department's assistance in transporting the man with a gurney, due to his large stature. 

While the man was under restraint, officers determined the subject was not breathing. Officers immediately began CPR, police said. 

Fire crews arrived and transported the man to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 

The case remains under investigation and the name of the deceased has not yet been released, according to police.


An Anti-nuclear Half-Life Celebration Rocks an East Bay Night

By Gar Smith
Thursday February 14, 2013 - 12:46:00 AM
Jackie Cabasso
Jackie Cabasso
Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich
Daniel Ellsberg
Gar Smith
Daniel Ellsberg

You know you've accomplished something when a birthday rolls around and Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich and Daniel Ellsberg all show up for the party. That was the case on February 10, when the Western States Legal Foundation marked its 30th year as a nuclear watchdog. WSLF's spirited "Half Life" gala drew an energized gathering of activists that filled Oakland's First Congregational Church from the pulpit to the furthest pews. 

Festivities began with a catered "Taste of Oakland" feast and concluded with two extraordinary presentations. KALW "Your Call" host Rose Aguilar introduced the evening's four speakers: WSLF Executive Director Jackie Cabasso, Representative Barbara Lee, Congressmember Dennis J. Kucinich and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. 

Cabasso began by explaining the event's "half-life" the theme. "I'm about to celebrate my 60th birthday," Cabasso admitted with a smile, "and I've spent the last 30 years of my life working on these issues." 

It's been an eventful three decades since that day in 1984 when Cabasso was first busted for protesting nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In 1995, Jackie became a "founding mother" of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons. In 2008, she received the International Peace Bureau's Sean MacBride Peace Award. In addition to working as WSLF's Executive Director, Jackie also serves as the North American Coordinator of Mayors for Peace. 

WSLF's exploits and accomplishments are legendary. Formed in 1982 to defend protestors arrested while attempting to block construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, WSLF soon found itself providing legal support to more than a thousand activists arrested for protesting at the gates of LLNL. WSLF went on to block a food irradiation plant in Dublin, torpedoed plans to base a nuclear-armed battleship (and 16 other warships) in San Francisco Bay, forced state and federal environmental reviews for LLNL, defended Oakland's Nuclear Free Zone from attack by Washington, became one of the first groups to challenge the government's "Stockpile Stewardship" plan to "modernize" the Pentagon's atomic arsenal, and worked to end US, French and Russian nuclear testing. And all of that was in just the first decade. 

WSLF has become the preeminent nuclear weapons watchdog and a major grassroots player in national and global campaigns to reduce and eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons. Over the course of the last 20 years, WSLF has published books, written endless reports, helped craft international treaties, addressed the United Nations and worked tirelessly with governments and citizens groups around the world. (A more complete retrospective of WSLF's accomplishments can be found online at: www.wslf.org.) 

Representative Barbara Lee followed Cabasso to the microphone where she offered the standard stump fare of political praise and encouragements, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. But her main duty was to introduce Kucinich, the first of the evening's two Keynote Speakers. As Kucinich began walking down a side aisle to the stage, the audience rose to its feet, mixing loud applause with whoops and shouts. 

Kucinich's Address: A Catechism of Poetry, Polemics and Politics 

Dennis Kucinich spent 18 years in Washington, DC as one of the most fearlessly outspoken progressive voices in Congress. He has sponsored legislation to provide national health care, to control corporations, to cut military waste, to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act and to radically refocus foreign policy — most significantly, by creating a cabinet-level Department of Peace. 

Kucinich began by addressing the diverse throng of graying vets and college-aged activists with a chuckle-provoking salutation: "Welcome," he declared, "to the Reunion of the Graduating Class of Human Liberation." Kucinich extended "best wishes" on behalf of his wife, Elizabeth, who couldn't make the event because of a conflict. "Her film just premiered at the Berlin Film Festival a few hours ago," Kucinich explained. The film is a documentary that takes a critical look at Genetically Modified Organisms. With obvious delight, Kucinich told the crowd the title of the film: "It's GMO-OMG!" 

[Note: lacking a tape recorder and working with a borrowed pen, I scribbled furiously in an attempt to keep up with Kucinich's and Ellsberg's comments – in both cases, a stream-of-consciousness flood-tide of thoughts, quotes and observations. While the following quotations may not be verbatim, I hope they fairly capture the essence of the speakers' concerns.] 

Kucinich expressed alarm that President Obama's latest National Defense Authorization Act includes $130 billion for new spending on nuclear weapons. He also mentioned (and lamented) the government's announced plan to create a Manhattan Project National Historical Park in New Mexico to commemorate an event that, instead, should be a subject of shame — the once-secret scientific effort to build the world's first atomic bomb. 

This prompted Kucinich to ask how many in the pews remembered the Cold War classroom excercise called "duck and cover"? As scores of hands were raised, Kucinich continued: "My nightmare was that the missiles would come during recess!" — when there would be no desks to dive under. But then, Kucinich observed, "duck-and-cover was really nothing more than an exercise in stress reduction." 

The Congressman then spun off into a fascinating discussion about the relationship of energy and matter, citing Indian philosophy and drawing attention to "the sanctification of the material world." 

"We are the stars and the stars are us," Kucinich argued earnestly. "There is an underlying unity in everything — including humans and the natural world." Kucinich quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Ode to Beauty" and marveled about the "music of the spheres made into a chorus with color and majesty." 

Next, he quoted the poet James Russell Lowell's observation that "every clod feels a stir of might." Turning to John Keats, Kucinich concurred with the poet's claim that "beauty is truth" and noted "there is something innate in life that suggests truth" — despite the fact that our Earth is sometimes a place where "ignorant armies clash by night." 

Expanding on the theme of universality, Kucinich insisted "There is no 'other.' This is simply a construct designed to alienate us from who we are." The authorship of our Constitution, after all, is ascribed to "We, the people." "The fate of the individual and the group is the same. E pluribus unum means 'out of many, we are one.'" 

Kucinich deplored "the schism that's visited on us by dichotomous thinking" and reflected on the historical watershed-moment when humans first "split the atom," thereby bursting a fundamental unity and creating a non-natural element in a natural world that was thereby rendered as "dichotomized" as humankind's intellectual reality. 

Kucinich dismissed the debate over the "fiscal cliff" as an artificial argument, pointing out that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution "says we have the right to create wealth" by issuing government currency. In a move reminiscent of Sixties satirist Mort Sahl, Kucinich reached into a pocket and began waving a copy of the Weekend Edition of the Investors Business Daily — by way of illustrating how fortunes are still being made, even while the defenders of the rich were proclaiming poverty. 

"The natural world is being cartelized to create wealth for a few at the expense of the many," Kucinich declared. "We become victims of the way we see the world. This can only lead to anger and hate." 

Kucinich next referenced William Butler Yeats' vision of a world "turning and turning in an every-widening gyre" such that "the center cannot hold." The truth is, Kucinich observed, "The center is not holding now." 

With uncommon mental dexterity, Kucinich went on to quote UN Chief Dag Hammarskjold, Marshall McLuhan, T. S. Elliott and Alfred North Whitehead. "We must be masters of the world, not to be mastered by it," Kucinich summarized. "We reject this anatomy of human destructiveness. We are conscious procreators of our own existence." Citing physicist Werner Heisenberg, Kucinich reminded the audience that, "our actions affect the world." 

Kucinich urged the audience to reject the white noise of political defeatism, the passivity of people who looked at the plague of gun violence only to conclude: "We have no control; there's no way to stop it." 

"As if," Kucinich marveled, "we've lost the ability to evolve." 

Clearly, Kucinich granted, we are living in "an economy that is devoted to the destruction of nature" — a system that has placed humanity and all living things on "a long, slow slide toward ecocide." And quoting Herbert Wells, Kucinich acknowledged the risk that "We are becoming architects of our own destruction." 

What is needed, he argued, is a renaissance of "interconnected thinking" — a new epoch of activism defined by "cohesion, cooperation, coherence. By changing our thinking, we change the outcome." 

Kucinich echoed Thomas Berry's call for a "reconciliation with the natural world" and paused to recall a statue that hovers over the entrance of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC — it depicts a woman standing protectively over a small child engrossed in a stack of books. The title of the sculpture is: "The Goddess of Liberty Protecting Genius." 

Kucinich concluded his remarks with one last poetic reference, a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world." 

Once again, the audience rose to its feet, hands in the air, applauding and shouting enthusiastically as Kucinich left the podium. 

I think it is fair to say that, in our lifetimes, we've not seen another politician so versed in the wisdom of poets and philosophers as Dennis J. Kucinich. Rose Aguilar acknowledged as much when she leaned into her microphone and asked coyly: "Are we going to hear some of this poetry on The O'Reilly Factor?" 

Kucinich raced back to the microphone with a grin. "Stay tuned!" he said, with an impish wink. (Yes. It sounds unbelievable, but Kucinich, who is retiring from Congress, has been invited to join Fox News as a political analyst.) 

Daniel Ellsberg: From Wargamer to Whistleblower to Arch-Activist 

Anti-war freedom-of-information-fighter Daniel Ellsberg — the Washington insider who revealed the Pentagon Papers, faced a prison sentence of 130 years, and was reportedly targeted for assassination on the steps of the Capitol by a Nixon "hit-squad" — received another tsunami of applause from the cheering crowd. With a broad grin and a wave to friends in the crowd, Ellsberg rose and rode the wave of appreciation as it carried him all the way to the podium. And he didn't disappoint. 

Speaking calmly and softly, Ellsberg brought the huge audience to a state of silent awe as he shared a signal, defining moment from his extraordinary life. It was back in 1961, when he served the Kennedy Administration as a member of the government's nuclear war-planning team. Ellsberg had become concerned with the implications of the Pentagon's prevailing war strategy. It anticipated a US pre-emptive strike against Russian forces using nuclear weapons. Ellsberg had a question that no one else had thought to ask: "How many would die?" 

When the answer came back, it was contained on a paper stamped "Top Secret. Classified. For the President's Eyes Only." But because Ellsberg had asked the question, President Kennedy handed him the paper. Standing in the Oval Office, Ellsberg read the paper he held in his hand. 

"It concluded that 600 million would be killed." 

Compare this to the 60 million deaths in WW II, Ellsberg suggested. It would be the equivalent of ten WW II's — in the course of a single day. 

But this figure only dealt with the effect of the initial blasts, Ellsberg noted. The Pentagon had failed to factor in the inevitable firestorms that would magnify the devastation. The revised likely outcome was the near-immediate extinction of 1.2 million human lives, "almost entirely civilians; mostly allies and neutrals." 

Ellsberg recalled Dr. Edward Teller (aka "The Father of the H-Bomb") referring to the consequences of a full-out nuclear war. So what, Teller shrugged, it would kill "only one-quarter of the world's population." 

"I heard him say it," Ellsberg told the stunned and silent audience. 

While "Europe would be gone," he said, "it was assumed that the US would largely be sparred." But this raises certain elemental moral questions. "What if this had been discussed by Nazi Germany?" Ellsberg wondered. Would not the US — and the rest of the world — have recoiled in horror and risen up in indignation? 

But the full consequences of the Pentagon's nuclear strategy were even worse. In 1982, scientists revisiting America's war planning considered, for the first time, the effect of the smoke clouds thrown into the irradiated skies from continental firestorms. They warned of a "nuclear winter," where global temperatures would plummet, threatening lives and the world's food harvests. 

In response to the understandable public alarm, the government relied on a propaganda strategy known as "Merchants of Doubt." It was the same strategy the tobacco industry used successfully for years to dismiss concerns over cancer; it is the same ploy used today to discredit scientific findings that suggest a human-caused connection to global warming. 

More recently, Ellsberg continued, a new crop of scientists — armed with the latest computer modeling technology — have revisited the question and confirmed the earlier warnings. In fact, the latest projections conclude the consequences of nuclear war would be even worse than previously believed. Where earlier estimates feared a nuclear winter that would last a year, the best estimates now foresee the onset of a series of a nuclear winters that would linger for a decade or more. Imagine: no harvests on the majority of the planet for ten years. Imagine the collapse of human society. 

Ellsberg expressed alarm over the fact that Pakistan and India (each armed with about 50 Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapons) have the potential to create a nuclear winter that could diminish the amount of sunshine reaching the Earth's surface by 7% — for years. The resulting loss of harvests could mean the starvation deaths of 1 billion of the Earth's 7 billion human residents. "And it would be the poor — the most marginally challenged — who would be the first to go." 

"By 1961, the US had built a Doomsday Bomb that would have extinguished most life on Earth," Ellsberg noted. And the Russians had done the same. Those warplans from the Sixties "still remain unchallenged and unchanged." Are we insane? "There should not exist a Doomsday Machine in the world!" Ellsberg said. "Let alone two." 

Ellsberg addressed rumors surrounding President Obama's revised Nuclear Posture Review. It could turn out that the US will commit to cutting its nuclear arsenal by as much as one-third by 2017. But while that may sound like progress, Ellsberg cautioned, it would merely mean cutting the number of nuclear missiles from 1,550 to 1,000. And all of these missiles are still operational and sitting on "hair-trigger" alert. (The Pentagon has another 5,000 nuclear weapons in storage, all of which could be easily "operationalized.") 

Ellsberg called the "reduction" to 1,000 nuclear missiles "totally meaningless. We will all be gone!" 

Ellsberg recalled a meeting with Herb York, the first director of the Lawrence Livermore National Labs. The meeting involved a discussion of arms reduction options. Asked for an estimate of the smallest number of nuclear weapons the US would consider deploying (Less than 100? Fewer than 10?), York referenced a comment by McGeorge Bundy (National Security Advisor to presidents Kennedy and Johnson). Bundy replied pragmatically that, for effective deterrence, "only one nuclear bomb is needed." 

Need proof of this argument? Ellsberg simply pointed to recent history. Saddam Hussein didn't have the bomb and Iraq was invaded; North Korea, by contrast, hasn't been touched. 

"It's a miracle that we are still here today," Ellsberg mused. Given the risks and the odds of having two Doomsday Machines at the height of the Cold War primed with 30,000 nuclear bombs on hair-trigger alert, Ellsberg is amazed that the planet has managed to escape (either by design or accident) the total annihilation that would result from a nuclear war. "It shows that miracles are possible." 

Still, Ellsberg is still not optimistic. The odds, he emphasizes, still suggest that (human behavior being what it is) "we will still destroy ourselves and our planet." 

Ellsberg marveled darkly at how the creation of "The Bomb" has been celebrated as an example of the "brilliance" of the human enterprise — a remarkable achievement of intellect and technology. As Ellsberg sees it (from the perspective of a former insider), even had we not built the Bomb, if we have only imagined it, the thought alone "would shame us as a civilization." 

"The Doomsday Machines are still here," Ellsberg warned. "We are traveling on the Titanic — traveling very fast, in the dark, surrounded by icebergs." But there is an important lesson in the sinking of the Titanic, he added: one that's seldom mentioned. 

"There were other ships sailing in those waters that day," Ellsberg said. But all the other ships survived. Why? Because they stopped sailing east when night fell and turned south. The Titanic continued to plow towards its destruction only because the captain was under orders by the ship's owners who were intent on setting a transatlantic speed record on the ship's historic maiden voyage. They wanted the Titanic to go down in history. (They got their wish.) 

"We need Congress to hold hearings on these weapons!" Ellsberg insisted. "It's never been done! We need a Nuclear glasnost." (Glasnost, is the Russian word that describes Mikhail Gorbachev's radical introduction of government transparency in the second half of the 1980s.) 

The twentieth standing ovation of the night greeted Ellsberg's concluding comments and brought the event to a close as well-wishers, friends and fellow activists swarmed the stage to exchange handshakes, hugs, insights, strategies, phone numbers, emails, leaflets and handbills. 

The energy was high as people filed into the night waving to departing friends and shouting encouragements. Thanks to WSLF and the evening's keynote speakers, we'd all been reminded of the demons we face. And we left primed to confront the Nuclear Dragon with renewed vigor. 

For more information: WSLF, 655 13th St., Suite 201, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 839-5877. www.wslf.org, www.disarmamentactivist.org


Press Release: Berkeley School Board Launches National Search for Next Superintendent

From Leah Wilson, BUSD School Board President

Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 09:02:00 AM

The Berkeley School Board is beginning its search for the next Superintendent of Schools. With the guidance of professionals from Ray & Associates, a highly experienced school executive search firm, the School Board is launching a nationwide search for candidates who have successfully improved academic outcomes for all student groups, and who exhibit a commitment to furthering the work of the 2020 Vision[1] and educating the whole child.  

 

Ray & Associates will be using the Leadership Profile developed with substantial community input in 2012. As reflected in the profile criteria, the professionals from Ray & Associates will be searching for an instructional leader and strong communicator who is committed to the beliefs and values of the Berkeley public school community. 

 

“The search team of Ray & Associates have an excellent track record in placing superintendents who are a great fit for their school districts, with all of their placements in California staying with their districts for long tenures,” according to School Board Director Judy Appel. 

 

With the advice of the team from Ray & Associates and in recognition of the competitive nature of educational executive searches, the School Board has laid out an well-considered timeline and carefully outlined steps to ensure a hiring process that brings the most highly qualified pool of candidates to interview in Berkeley. The official posting of the position took place Friday, February 8, and the search will close on March 15, with the first round of Board interviews with semi-finalists will take place the week of March 25, and the expectation that the selection process will be completed in April. 

 

The community will be engaged in discussions of interview questions and criteria for best-fit candidates through a survey, community forums, and several key stakeholder focus groups; this will assist the School Board and the executive search team in identifying top candidates for the District. 

 

Director Karen Hemphill indicated her confidence in the quality of the applicants Berkeley will attract stating, “When potential candidates get to know the strength of our teachers and commitment of our staff, and get to know the priorities of this community, we will have some very strong candidates come forward.” 

 

It is the intent of the members of the Board to lead a transparent process, offering widely distributed updates along with the opportunities for additional community input. The Superintendent Search webpage will be updated regularly and members of the community are encouraged to subscribe to the district’s biweekly email newsletter, the A+ News. The community survey will go online on February 15 in both English and Spanish, and remain open until March 3. Community forums are being scheduled for February 28, March 1 and 2, with interpretation in Spanish at all meetings. 

 

Community Forums 

  • Thursday February 28th at Malcolm X School - 1731 Prince Street, 7-8:30 p.m.
  • Friday March 1st at King Middle School - 1781 Rose Street, 7-8:30 p.m. (In Spanish)
  • Saturday March 2nd BUSD Administration Building, 2020 Bonar Street Room 126, 9:30 – 11 a.m.
In the meantime, interim Co-Superintendents Javetta Cleveland and Neil Smith continue to move our schools forward in support of District Goals, including increasing the academic achievement of all students, implementing strategies to engage students in their learning and interventions to eliminate barriers to student success, establishing partnerships with our families and community, ensuring that systems are culturally and linguistically responsive, and generating and equitably allocating resources for programs and services that enable every student to succeed. 

 


[1] 2020 Vision for Berkeley’s Children and Youth is an innovative community-wide initiative to ensure that all children living in Berkeley receive a healthy start, are equally ready to learn, and are provided the opportunities and support necess


Grammy for Recording of Works by Berkeley Composer John Adams

By Bay City News and Planet
Sunday February 10, 2013 - 10:20:00 PM

The San Francisco Symphony won a Grammy award today for a live concert recording of works by Berkeley composer John Adams in the category of Best Orchestral Performance, according to symphony officials.  

The recording of Harmonielehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine was released in March 2012 during the symphony's month-long American Mavericks festival and tour.  

Harmonielehre was commissioned, premiered and first recorded by the symphony in March 1985, when Adams was serving as composer in residence. Short Ride in a Fast Machine was commissioned from Adams in 1986 by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.  

This is the 15th Grammy win for the symphony and the 8th won for recordings on its own SFS Media label, officials said. Thomas and the symphony also won seven Grammy awards for a recent recording of a cycle of works by Gustav Mahler.


Berkeleyans Receive Awards from Society of Professional Journalists

Friday February 08, 2013 - 05:00:00 PM

The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter (SPJ NorCal), has announced that it will honor “champions of open government and the First Amendment” at its 28th annual James Madison Awards banquet, to be held in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 12.

Two awards will go to Berkeley residents.

The “Citizen” award will go to Dean Metzger for leading the fight to enact the Berkeley Sunshine Ordinance.

The “Organization” award will go to Berkeley Copwatch, for “effective use of public records to block a Homeland Security grant for putting an armored military vehicle on the streets of Albany and Berkeley.”

In its citation of Metzger, the SPJ said: 

“Dean Metzger deserves a good deal of the credit for the fact that Berkeley has a Sunshine Ordinance. The longtime civic activist helped lead a tooth-and-nail fight for more than 10 years to increase City Hall’s transparency and accountability. 

“Berkeley voters last November rejected a ballot initiative (Measure U) that would have given the ordinance real teeth. But it was the success of Metzger and his fellow activists in getting the measure on the ballot that prompted Berkeley officials to enact the ordinance in February 2011. The ordinance included the creation of an advisory Sunshine Committee, which Metzger chairs.” 

According to the citation for Copwatch: 

“UC Berkeley and the cities of Berkeley and Albany almost got an armored personnel carrier through a $170,000 Homeland Security grant, but university students and city resident would never have known about it until the heavily armed vehicle actually rolled into town to put down civilian protests — had it not been for Berkeley Copwatch. 

“The police watchdog organization uncovered the grant through a general public records act request to the Berkeley Police Department, asking about equipment it was to receive through grant funds. Copwatch alerted the media and city officials to the grant. The Berkeley and Albany communities took the news badly (and angrily) and the grant was cancelled. 

“Berkeley Copwatch receives a 2013 James Madison Award not just for its dedication to openness and transparency, but for using it so effectively.”


New: Dog Bites Berkeley Police Officer in Richmond

By Bay City News
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 09:00:00 AM

Berkeley police officers conducting a search warrant in Richmond shot and killed two dogs this afternoon after one of the dogs bit an officer, Berkeley police said. 

At about 3:20 p.m. the officers were executing the warrant in an undisclosed Richmond residence when they found three pit bulls that belonged to the resident, police said. 

One dog bit an officer in the arm and another dog also attacked, prompting the officers to shoot and kill the two dogs, police said. 

The officer was treated for injuries and released from a hospital today.


Three Suspects Arrested for Allegedly Assaulting and Burglarizing Man in Berkeley

By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:08:00 PM

Three suspects, including a juvenile, have been arrested in West Sacramento for allegedly assaulting and burglarizing a man at his house in the Berkeley Hills in December, police said. 

Berkeley police said that when the alleged victim in the case returned to his home on Senior Avenue near Grizzly Peak Boulevard at 3:17 p.m. on Dec. 11 he saw an unfamiliar car parked in his driveway occupied by a woman who was sitting in the driver's seat. 

The man also heard noises coming from inside his house and when he went to check on the noises he saw two males come out of his house and run to the car in the driveway, police said. 

The homeowner tried to stop the car from leaving but he was knocked to the ground and the car ran over his leg, which resulted in minor injuries to him, according to police. The car then fled north out of the area, they said. 

Berkeley police officers responded to the scene and discovered that the man's house had been burglarized and several items had been stolen, police said. 

A felony assault and burglary investigation was initiated and a crime scene technician was able to recover fingerprints at the scene. The fingerprints were sent to the state crime lab, which reported a match to two of the suspects, according to police. 

Berkeley detectives were then able to identify a third suspect, find where all three suspects were and get arrest warrants and search warrants, police said. 

When Berkeley detectives served the search warrants in West Sacramento on Jan. 31 they were able to arrest all three suspects and recover evidence in their residences that linked them to the burglary, police said. 

Alameda County District Attorney spokeswoman Teresa Drenick said Monique Robinson, 22, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, namely a car, and first-degree burglary. Jesus Salas, 19, has been charged with burglary and receiving stolen property. 

Robinson and Salas were arraigned on Monday and are due back in Alameda County Superior Court on Feb. 26 for a pretrial hearing, Drenick said. 

Berkeley police said the juvenile has also been charged, but Drenick said details of the charges against the juvenile would not be released.


Press Release: Berkeley Police Department Arrests Senior Avenue Burglars

From Officer Stephanie Polizziani
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:05:00 PM

On December 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, a resident of Senior Avenue returned to his house after walking his dog. The resident saw an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway of his house, occupied by a female sitting in the driver seat. At the same time, the resident heard noises coming from inside his house. When the resident went to check on the noises, he observed two males coming out of his house. The males ran to the car that was in the driveway. The resident tried to stop the car from leaving, and while doing this he was knocked to the ground. While on the ground, the car ran over the resident’s leg which resulted in minor injuries. The car fled north out of the area. Berkeley Police Officers arrived and discovered the resident’s house had been burglarized and several items were taken by the suspects. BPD initiated a felony assault and burglary investigation and processed the scene for evidence. 

A Crime Scene Unit Identification Technician recovered finger prints at the scene. That evidence was then sent to the State Crime Lab, who reported a match to two of the suspects. Using that information, BPD detectives were able to develop the identity of a third suspect and a location for all three. BPD detectives obtained arrest warrants for all three suspects as well as two search warrants relating to this case. 

On January 31, 2013, Berkeley Police Detectives served those search warrants in West Sacramento, CA. During the service of these warrants, detectives arrested all three suspects; Monique Robinson (22), Jesus Salas Campos (19), and a juvenile. Detectives also recovered evidence located in the suspects’ residences that linked them to this case. This case was presented to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. The District Attorney’s Office filed various charges on all three suspects in this case. BPD will not be releasing photos of the suspects in this case. 


Press Release: Berkeley Post Office Sale Hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 26th at 7

From Margot Smith
Friday February 08, 2013 - 03:42:00 PM

The US Postal Service Public Hearing on the sale of the Berkeley Main Post Office is on Tuesday, February 26th, at 7:00 PM., at Berkeley City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley. After the meeting, the 15 day public comment period commences. Following that, the USPS can decide whether or not to sell our building, with a short period designated for appeals.

The City of Berkeley finally received a confirmed date from the US Postal Service for the public hearing on the proposed sale of the historic main post office on Allston Way. Towns and cities throughout the nation, like Berkeley, may lose these historic sites which were built with public funds. The giant realty firm CBRE headed by UC Regent Richard Blum advises the USPS on which buildings to sell, and CBRE makes a tidy profit as listing agent when sales go through.

Come to the hearing on Tuesday, February 26th, when we citizens outraged at this proposed sale and the Save The Berkeley Post Office group will tell the USPS our views. We hope to make a difference! 

Berkeley's beautiful and historic main post office was built in 1914, and houses two New Deal artworks. Across the country, 3700 post offices are at risk of being sold or closed--many of them equally historic. Some also house irreplaceable WPA/New Deal art like ours that was meant to be permanently in the public domain. 

Sold post offices have frequently morphed into restaurants or offices, or even been abandoned. At some, it is necessary to ask permission to see the public art. At others, nobody even knows where the art has gone. 

The USPS was established in Article I of the constitution, Benjamin Franklin having been our first Postmaster General. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation and transformed into the USPS In 1971. George W. Bush signed legislation in 2006 that transfers $55.8 billion out of USPS operating revenue between 2007 and 2016 and sends that cash to the US Treasury. The new law destroyed the financial stability of the USPS and is laying the groundwork for its privatization. If it were not for the 2006 law the USPS could be as solvent today as it has been for hundreds of years, and would continue to provide the service we all so admire and appreciate. 

Those opposed to the selling of our post office, and possible privatization of the USPS system as a whole--which would then be operated for profit, not for service--are encouraged to write to their senators, representatives, and to Ms. Diana Alvarado, USPS Facilities Office, 1300 Evans Ave., Suite 200, San Francisco 94188 by March 13, 2013.. For further information, please visit www.savethepostoffice.com. 

CONTACT Dave Welsh 510-847-8657 sub@sonic.net Save the Berkeley Post Office


Press Release: City of Oakland Launches Open Data Platform to Spur Civic Innovation

From Karen Boyd, Office of the Oakland City Administrator
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:57:00 PM

Oakland, CA — Announcing the launch of its open data platform today, the City of Oakland has joined the ranks of other forward-thinking government organizations around the world that are using Open Data as a platform for increased civic engagement and government transparency, improved decision making, and more efficient and effective service delivery. 

The newly launched data.oaklandnet.com website will serve as the central repository of the City of Oakland’s public data. The new website allows users to access, visualize and download City data. In addition, programmers will appreciate the site’s Application Programming Interface (API), which enables direct access to tap into City data to build software applications. 

Data.oaklandnet.com also provides the public with the opportunity to engage with the City and contribute feedback and ideas. The site allows users to request additional datasets and create their own unique maps and charts that they can then share via social media, or embed on blogs and websites. 

The City of Oakland collects a broad range of data in order to perform its tasks. By making the data easily accessible to both staff and the public alike, it has the potential to transform how the City does business. The platform gives the community a better view into the inner workings of local government, and encourages the community to develop applications that enhance City services. 

The data catalog will grow over time as City employees discover or aggregate new data, or as data is suggested by the pubic. An initial offering of over 50 datasets is available on the site, including: 

  • Crime statistics
  • City infrastructure
  • 2010 census data
  • Parks and Recreation facilities
  • Spatial data
 

The Open Data platform is the latest in a series of recent efforts by the City to engage with citizens through the use of free, third-party apps, social media and Open Data. 

  • Last year, the City of Oakland’s Public Works Agency opened up its service request data and integrated with SeeClickFix, an online and mobile tool that helps residents report, track and monitor non-emergency problems, such as graffiti, illegal dumping or potholes.
  • The Oakland Police Department began using Nixle and Twitter to send out neighborhood-specific crime alerts.
  • Citizens have long had the ability to track and monitor crime through websites such as crimemapping.com and oakland.crimespotting.org, as a result of efforts by the Oakland Police Department and the Department of Information Technology to open Crime Data to the public.
  • The City has been working with OpenOakland—the Code for America Brigade—to launch “Adopt-A-Drain,” a map-based, web app that allows for individuals, small businesses and community organizations to volunteer to clear the City’s storm-drains.
  • Last fall the City launched a community engagement web site called EngageOakland.com. The platform encourages community ideas, feedback and suggestions to help shape, grow and sustain the healthy future of Oakland. The site is sponsored by the City to help advance innovative ideas and improve service delivery.
Oakland is a dynamic hub of innovation and visionary thinkers. The City of Oakland is fortunate to have creative, committed and tech-savvy residents and community partners. By opening City data, the City of Oakland hopes to spark innovation and allow for the creation of dozens more free or low-cost customized apps that would create value for citizens and promote civic engagement.  

The launch of the open data platform comes as Oakland welcomes three innovative Code for America fellows to start their one-year fellowship. Their role will be to work with City staff and the community to develop new apps and technology tools to bring greater openness, efficiency and participation to local government. The goal of Code for America is to help bridge the digital divide between the public and private sectors by helping local governments create new tools and demonstrate new ways of resolving local challenges. 

 

Open Data Day Hackathon 

 

On February 23, 2013, the City of Oakland will co-host a hackathon with OpenOakland to celebrate International Open Data Day. Join volunteer programmers, coders and community members at the 81st Avenue Branch Library to explore, visualize and build apps using government data. To suggest ideas for apps and needed data, visit engageoakland.com. For more information and to register for the event, visit: http://opendatadayoakland.eventbrite.com/.


New: In Defense of Pigskin

By Gar Smith (with apologies to George Carlin)
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 11:21:00 AM

In the run-up to Superbowl Sunday, National Public Radio played a recording of George Carlin's classic comparison of football and baseball. Carlin depicts football as a game of war-like combat while baseball is a genteel sport — e.g., football players wear "helmets"; baseball players wear "caps." Baseball is "pastoral;" football is "technological." [You can catch Carlin's sketch on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYS_1bQ-rXo or view it here.] 

 

Carlin points to football's military jargon ("throwing a bomb," "mounting a blitz," "penetrating defenses") but it occurs to me that baseball is militaristic, too. 

If you think about it, when baseball players aren't hunkered down in a "dugout" or a pacing in a "bullpen," they spend most of their time confined to "bases." 

And, if you stray too far from your "base," there's a danger you could be "picked off." 

With all due respect to Carlin's stand-up masterpiece, I believe an argument can be made that the sport of football — while more militaristic in terminology — is actually a more socially inclusive and egalitarian activity while baseball is elitist and autocratic. (And why is the word "egalitarian" and not "equalitarian"? Blame the French.) 

Baseball is exclusive: 

In baseball, you're either "in" or you're "out." There are "innings" and "outings." Even the field is divided into an "infield" and an "outfield." 

In football, by contrast, you have a "midfield." 

Baseball is autocratic: 

In baseball, the players spend most of their time isolated from one another, holding their set "positions" while an "ace" pitcher presides from atop a "mound." 

Football is Zen: You have a "center," a "balanced line," an "endzone," and the goal is "completion" or, failing that, a "conversion." 

In baseball, you have to belong to a "club." 

In football, you belong to a "team." 

In baseball, you have "leagues." 

In football, you have "conferences." 

In baseball, you strive to "blast the ball out of the park." 

In football, you "cradle the ball" and try to score a "touchdown." 

In baseball, you want to "knock the stitches off the rawhide." 

In football, you "carry the ball downfield." 

In football, you "take possession" but you can exercise an "option" to "handoff" to an "open receiver" and then provide "cover" to "help the runner." 

On the diamond, balls are "foul" (or they are just plain "base"). 

What's more playful than "pigskin"? 

In baseball, you "catch." 

In football, you "receive." 

In baseball, you 'throw" or "pitch." 

In football, you "pass." (But only to an "eligible receiver.") 

In baseball, you "throw someone out." (Or even worse, you "run down" a player.) 

In football, you can call for a "fair catch" and, when the opposing team has a "kickoff," your team "returns" the ball. 

On the gridiron, if you drop the football, it's called a "fumble." 

If you drop a baseball in the outfield, you've committed an "error." 

In baseball, you "steal" a base. 

In football, you "recover" a fumble. 

In baseball, you run in circles to wind up back where you started. 

In football, you make "forward progress." 

On the football field, the teams consult a "playbook" and then call a "huddle," where they proceed to hug each other. 

In the end, both games are puzzling. 

In football, the players seldom use their feet to move the ball, so shouldn't "football" be called "armball," "gutball" or "chestball"? 

In baseball, you try to strike the ball with a bat. If you strike the ball, that's called a "hit." But, strangely, if you don't strike the ball, that's called a "strike."


Grafittirazzi #1

By Gar Smith
Friday February 08, 2013 - 05:37:00 PM
Last week, in a failed search to find an electrician, I drove down Allston Way to the foot of the Bay. On the way back, I discovered a hidden mural painted along a railroad track and took two photos. Imagine!
By Gar Smith
Last week, in a failed search to find an electrician, I drove down Allston Way to the foot of the Bay. On the way back, I discovered a hidden mural painted along a railroad track and took two photos. Imagine!
Gar Smith

This will be an ongoing feature in the Planet.


Opinion

Editorials

Building Boom Will Turn Downtown Berkeley into East Frisco

By Becky O'Malley
Monday February 11, 2013 - 09:19:00 AM

In case you needed any more reasons to avoid Downtown Berkeley, Frances Dinkelspiel on the Berkeleyside website has provided a thorough tally of 1,000 more reasons why you’ll be shopping elsewhere in the future. She’s checked in with a bunch of commercial landlords, developers and developer-wannabes and documented their existing desires, including some actual entitlements, to add at least a thousand new apartments (with several thousand inhabitants and associated autos) to the area covered by Berkeley’s new Downtown Plan. The best thing you can say about this scenario is that it promises to create at least 2,000 SRO beds for the unemployed in a few years when the current high tech boom has gone bust as the dot.com boom did before it. 

My old boss Bruce Brugmann used to rail against the “Manhattanization” of San Francisco in his Bay Guardian, along with inveighing against the sins of PG&E. Turns out he was right about PG&E, so much so that the stodgy Chronicle took up the fight after the big pipeline explosion, but he lost the Manhattanization battle. 

San Francisco, formerly a diverse and colorful international hub, is now, like Manhattan, an insanely expensive perch for the over-paid, many of them perpetual juveniles who are bussed daily to Silicon Valley where they toil like indentured servants. 

The Irish, Italian and Pilipino families who gave San Francisco its distinctive flavor in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century were priced out of the housing market and have moved to the distant suburbs. The traditional artsy Bohemian contingents were chased away by high rents too: first the Beats from North Beach and then the hippies from the Haight. 

African-Americans were long ago evicted from the Western Addition by urban renewal, and not many are left in Bayview-Hunters Point, as the south-of-Market building boom spreads into their neighborhoods. A gentrification bulls-eye is now painted on the Mission, the last refuge of Spanish-speaking San Franciscans. More prosperous Asians, better positioned for techie jobs, do persist in some neighborhoods, but working people are moving to Oakland and elsewhere. 

And now the Manhattanization of Berkeley has begun, per developer shill Mark Rhoades, quoted by Dinkelspiel: 

“ ‘The number one investment region of the country… is the San Francisco Bay Area because of the incredibly robust job market fueled by the tech sector on the Peninsula’ , said Mark Rhoades, whose Rhoades Planning Group is advocating for two of the biggest projects proposed for Berkeley: Acheson Commons and The Residences at Berkeley Plaza. ‘And when the tech sector pushes into San Francisco and starts creating an enormous amount of demand, the bleed-off effect of that is a push into Oakland and Berkeley, which are just a few BART stops away. That changes the economics with regard to apartment financing. With the commensurate increase in rents, the lending institutions and equity investors have more confidence in the market and are willing to spend their money on new development.’ “ 

Yep. More precisely, it looks like we’ll be seeing the Brooklynization of Oakland alongside the Manhattanization of Berkeley. Like Brooklyn (and unlike Berkeley) today’s Oakland is edgy, interesting and multi-ethnic. It still has enough open industrial and warehouse space to host some artists as well as to allow manufacturing businesses to expand if they are able. 

Last week I got a lengthy tour of the Oakland landscape. When my stolen car was recovered in East Oakland last week, police had it towed to a garage on 86th Avenue. Since it turned up missing its catalytic converter, radio, rear windshield and one tire, I elected to drive it home on surface streets instead of on the freeways I take to get to my usual East Oakland destination, the airport. 

(By the way, this turned out to be prudent, since I later discovered that each of my remaining wheels was missing three of five lug nuts, which might have created a problem at freeway speeds.) 

My slow and careful trip via International Boulevard (formerly East 14th Street) gave me a good look at all the things Oakland has going for it, despite its manifest problems. For one thing, there’s space, plenty of space, and a good quantity of housing stock, modest sized houses surrounded by lots big enough for the kind of gardens which gave Fruitvale its name. And the weather is the best in the Bay Area. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of these homes are now in foreclosure, as evidenced by the for-sale-by-bank signs on many blocks. Construction by non-profit affordable housing entrepreneurs is visible on a few larger sites, but the big multiple-unit complexes with small apartments they’re building don’t look like good substitutes for the family homes with yards which have been seized by the big money boys. 

And the 1000 downtown apartments now on the drawing boards in Berkeley, though bigger, will be even less desirable for working families. If Rhoades and his speculator clients get their way, we’ll just become (thanks to “the commensurate increase in rents”) SF East: over-built, over-priced, dark and dull. Like family neighborhoods in San Francisco, Berkeley neighborhoods of family homes adjacent to Downtown will suffer the overflow impacts. 

The move to Manhattanize older cities like Berkeley has been in the works for a while now. Way back more than a decade ago, in 1999, E.J. Dionne wrote a column for the Washington Post entitled “Smart Growth May Be Gore's Winning Issue “. 

He said that “Spotting the next big issue that will move people is one of the essential political arts. Vice President Gore placed a large bet this week on the idea that Americans are tired of wasting time in their cars on clogged highways. 

“He's gambling that they want more green space near their homes and more growth in developed but economically lagging inner cities. They want suburbs that create the sense of community we associate with old urban neighborhoods. 

“The issue he's latched on to is ‘livability’ created by ‘smart growth.’ It's taking off all over the country, and Gore would like to ride it to the White House.” 

Well, that’s a horse that failed. (Though you could argue that Gore actually won the 2000 election…) But somewhere along the way those buzzwords have morphed into yet another of America’s money-making bubbles, once again enriching the few at the expense of the many. The oxymoronic but cleverly branded Livable Berkeley developers’ lobbying group (fronted by Erin (Mrs. Mark) Rhoades) is heavily pitching the proposed high rises, but announced plans don’t seem to show that “livability” will be a big component. 

Robbie Burns (whose birthday has just passed) taught us: 

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy..."
 

What's going agley with the "smart growth" scheme for Downtown Berkeley? 

“More green space near their homes” ? 

Hmm, no. Most of those targeted to live in Berkeley’s 1K proposed units will have little or no green space near their new apartment homes, unlike the Oakland families who are being foreclosed out of their houses. At most, there might be a rooftop terrace or a few trees on the street or a courtyard, but urban gardening will be out of the question. 

”… more growth in developed but economically lagging inner cities”? 

Here in the East Bay, as in many other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and California, urban development has historically been spread thinly over a large geographic area, but the economy that produced the existing infrastructure is now lagging. That’s why great swathes of Oakland and Richmond have wide paved boulevards serving semi-deserted one-story strip malls and enormous parking lots. 

There’s some good news in this phenomenon. Judging by the multilingual and often hand-lettered signs I saw on E. 14th St. between 85th Avenue and Lake Merritt, vacant storefronts provide opportunities for immigrant entrepreneurs to start restaurants and grocery stores to serve their communities. But small local businesses like these need stable residents with dependable jobs to patronize them, and those good jobs have moved out of Oakland, often out of the country. 

No amount of apartment construction, even near BART stations, will stabilize such areas, and BART won’t take the remaining residents to where the jobs are now, whether that’s Silicon Valley or China. What’s needed is reinvestment in the available manufacturing sites in places like Oakland, Richmond, Vallejo…and even a few in West Berkeley. But that’s doesn’t look to be on the immediate horizon. Speculators instead are trying to have West Berkeley rezoned, a la the failed Measure T, for office towers to house high tech ventures with a small number of highly educated and well-paid employees but few working class opportunities. 

“[Americans] want suburbs that create the sense of community we associate with old urban neighborhoods” ?  

Instead, luxury high-rises have been multiplying first in San Francisco, then in downtown Oakland under Jerry Brown, and are now planned for downtown Berkeley. They’re just waystations for the affluent unattached young on their way to Woodside and Ross and Lamorinda and Danville , or perhaps for the comfortably retired old, but they will never create that sense of community. 

Dionne foresaw the problem in 1999: 

“Smart growth won't work if it's designed simply to preserve the good life for those who already have it. Its power will come from linking the desire for more agreeable suburban communities with the need to expand economic activity in decaying city neighborhoods. If Gore forges this bond, he may have a lot to say to a lot of people.” 

Sadly, whatever populist vision Gore might have had fourteen years ago seems to have been sacrificed, as happens all too often in this country and others, to the goal of making the good life even better for the haves at the expense of the have-nots. It’s growth, sure, but it’s not nearly as “smart” as it’s been advertised to be. 

Taxes on new residents seldom pay the cost of the services they will need. Adding 1K apartment units for the affluent here in Berkeley to Jerry Brown’s fabled 10k new Oakland residents and San Francisco’s Manhattan-by-the-Bay explosion of pricey pads for high-techies won’t make any of these cities better for working families. Pushing families out to the distant ‘burbs could even make their lives a whole lot worse. 


The Editor's Back Fence

Current Issue Continues

Thursday February 14, 2013 - 09:35:00 AM

This issue will stay up for a week or so-- there will be no "new issue" dated Friday because the editor is traveling. Burglars Beware: the house-sitter at my house is there and is fierce, so don't try anything while I'm gone. I'll post what I can when I have Internet access.


Return of the Red Van

Friday February 08, 2013 - 05:34:00 PM

Thanks to everyone who expressed their sympathy to me when it was stolen. The California Highway patrol located it on Wednesday in far East Oakland, regrettably minus catalytic converter, radio, a tire, etc. etc. The resulting commotion about getting it fixed delayed the editorial, but now it's in.


Cartoons

Odd Bodkins: Long Distance Calling (Cartoon)

By Dan O'Neill
Monday February 11, 2013 - 03:32:00 PM

 

Dan O'Neill

 


Odd Bodkins: Home Sweet Home (Cartoon)

By Dan O'Neill
Friday February 08, 2013 - 05:25:00 PM

 

Dan O'Neill

 


Bounce: FUNDamental Raising. (Cartoon)

By Joseph Young
Tuesday February 12, 2013 - 12:59:00 PM

 

Joseph Young

 


Public Comment

New: "Luxury Apartments" or "Ecotower"?

By Vivian Warkentin
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 11:29:00 AM

As a long time left leaning local environmental activist, I have been scratching my head over why our environmentally minded,(I thought) City of Berkeley equates environmentalism with high density big development projects, like the high rise apartment building featured as "luxury apartments" in Judith Sherr's article in the Jan. 18 issue of the "Berkeley Voice", and dubbed an "ecotower" by "East Bay Express" writer and editor Robert Gammon. Is environmentalism being turned on its head? Rosa Koire's book, "Behind The Green Mask: U.N.Agenda 21", telling of her similar experiences with the City of Santa Rosa and its relationship to international interests, is a stunning eye opener. 

Can you remember when we started hearing jargon phrases like "smart growth", "high density urban mixed use", and that word that is music to an environmentalists' ears,"sustainability"? The U.N.'s idea of sustainability is quite different from what the average environmentalist might have in mind. Have you watched as old buildings are torn down and huge building after huge building is erected now seemingly unoccupied? Why? The City of Berkeley did not come up with this stuff. The exact same lingo, methods, and policies, "climate change action plans", are being adopted by cities all over this county, country and world. El Cerrito, Oakland, Walnut Creek Albany, have all unbeknownst to most of their constituents, signed on with ICLEI. The International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives is tasked with carrying out the goals of U.N. Agenda 21 originally signed onto by George Bush Senior, and by every subsequent president. Shouldn't it concern us that an outside unelected non governmental organization is inserting itself into the zoning and planning departments of cities all over this country and regional boards are being created that make land use decisions unaccoutable to the public? 

"Smart growth" is not a local initiative. It is a land and power grab by international corporate forces who are hijacking and financing the unwitting frightened leftist environmental movement into accepting phony solutions for global warming. Those on the left who are willing to make sacrifices and take personal responsibility for environmental degradation, need to apprise themselves of how they are being used, the ultimate goal being to take away the sovereignty of local city governments, take away property rights of average citizens via redevelopment, eminent domain and rezoning, and to increase government control over our lives. 

The farther government gets from the people the less power we have over our lives and local environment. Do the research. We are not getting a straight story from our city about what is being done in the name of climate change, and why.


Reforms For CEQA? – Watch Out!

By Gary Patton
Monday February 11, 2013 - 12:41:00 PM

You have probably heard talk about “reforming” the California Environmental Quality Act. My advice? “Watch out!” The bill language proposed in the last two weeks of the legislative session last year would have eliminated all the benefits of California’s most important environmental law. When widespread “fracking” is on the horizon; when global warming and its impacts are ever more real; when water supplies are diminishing, and when huge and costly infrastructure projects (including desalination) are under consideration at the state and local level, this is not the time to weaken laws that protect our environmental quality. 

Here are the three main things that the California Environmental Quality Act actually does. First, it makes government “stop and think” before it acts. Often, governmental officials decide that they really have a good idea, and want to push it through. In Santa Cruz, the proposed desalination plant comes to mind. The California Environmental Quality Act makes governmental agencies go through a process that fully analyzes the pros and cons. This means that the government sometimes changes its mind, precisely because of the new information generated in the environmental review process. Often, the changes are improvements, so projects are made better. That is what has been happening for more than forty years, thanks to the California Environmental Quality Act. There are countless examples. Unless you think that state and local government officials always “know best,” and shouldn’t have to “stop and think” about their plans, you will not want to weaken CEQA. 

Second, the California Environmental Quality Act gives ordinary members of the public real power in the project approval process. Without CEQA, members of the public get two or three minutes at the podium, and their remarks are then routinely ignored by the local officials who are often not even listening. If you have ever been to a public agency meeting, you know what I am talking about! The California Environmental Quality Act requires the public agency to respond substantively to all comments that the public makes, and the courts will find an agency’s Environmental Impact Report or EIR inadequate if substantive responses are not provided. CEQA is the only California law that makes governmental agencies respond to public concerns in a substantive way. 

Third, the California Environmental Quality Act includes a “substantive mandate.” If an Environmental Impact Report identifies a measure that could eliminate or lessen a negative impact, the governmental agency is required to implement that measure. For instance, if an EIR says that a left turn lane is needed to go into a new development, to reduce traffic impacts, the developer must put it in. Only CEQA requires this kind of substantive mitigation. CEQA’s substantive mandate costs the developers money, and makes sure that the true cost of projects is borne by those who get the benefits, not by the public at large. In fact, this is the main reason that business and development interests are attacking the California Environmental Quality Act. They don’t want to pay for required mitigations. 

Usually, Governors belonging to the Democratic Party support the protection of our environment as a high priority, and thus they support CEQA. Our current Governor does not, because he does not want to “stop and think” about projects like his high‑speed rail boondoggle. He knows he is right! 

If you want your government to stop and think, and to provide substantive responses to public concerns, and if you want developers to pay for required mitigations, then watch out for those so‑called CEQA “reforms.” They are trying to take away one of the best laws we have ever had! 


Gary Patton is an environmental attorney. He served on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of Sierra Club California. 


Israel’s Military Speak Out

By Jagjit Singh
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:54:00 PM

An Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Gatekeepers" provides a stark admission by six former heads of Israel’s internal security (akin to our FBI and CIA) of their agency’s methods of targeted killings of militants and civilians in the Occupied Territories, including torture and the suppression of mass protests during two intifadas.  

All six former heads are now critical of the methods they were assigned to use to subjugate the Palestinians and they warned that successive governments have undermined Israel’s future by refusing to make peace. A former head, Carmi Gillon, admits that “We are making the lives of millions unbearable, into prolonged human suffering. Another - Avraham Shalom adds, “ we have become a brutal occupation force similar to the Germans in World War II." 

Israeli forces have begun the year with a spate of killings of unarmed Palestinian civilians. A 21-year-old Palestinian woman was the latest victim – gunned down at a West Bank School. 

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem castigated Israeli Defense Forces accusing them of "extensively and systematically violating their own rules of engagement when suppressing protests in the West Bank.” 

Dror Moreh’s powerful documentary might jump start the moribund peace process aided by Israel’s recent election which tilted power from right wing extremists to the center. It is now up to President Obama to show leadership in brokering a lasting peace and usher in an independent Palestinian state. Failure to do so will surely lead to unending conflict.


State of Equality and Justice in America: 'Fifty Years Later, the Lawyers' Committee Remains in the Vanguard'

By U. S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.)
Friday February 08, 2013 - 09:11:00 AM

"The State of Equality and Justice in America" is a 20-part series of columns written by an all-star list of contributors to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The contributors include: U. S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) LCCRUL 50th Anniversary Grand Marshal; Ms. Barbara Arnwine, President and Executive Director, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL); Mr. Charles Ogletree, Professor, Harvard University Law School/Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice; the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., President/CEO, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Co-founder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference; U. S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.); and 14 additional thought leaders and national advocates for equal justice.

Here's the fifth op-ed of the series:

At a time when our nation needed its legal community to step forward and join in the struggle for equality, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law was born. I was privileged to be present in the East Room of the White House on the day that President Kennedy urged a group of 244 lawyers to use their training and influence to further the goals of the civil rights movement.  

Within weeks, the formation of the Lawyers' Committee was announced as attorneys from around the country heeded the call of the President. Fifty years later, the Lawyers' Committee remains in the vanguard of both domestic and international initiatives to protect the rights of diverse communities. 

While there is no question that America has made substantial progress over the last 50 years in creating a more just society, we cannot say that serious challenges to achieving the American dream do not exist for large segments of our society. I ran for Congress in 1964, a time when we battled Jim Crow era poll taxes and institutionalized discrimination.  

In those days, the battle lines were clearly drawn and easy for anyone to see. Successful litigation and legislation have largely ended the practices of institutional discrimination and the Lawyers' Committee has played an important role. However, as the civil rights movement has expanded beyond race, we have seen a return of discriminatory practices that continue to challenge the goal of equality under the law. 

The institutional memory found at the Lawyers' Committee is vital to ensuring that our society is not revisited by old discrimination in a new package. Its work during the 2012 election cycle, for example, was critical in protecting the voting rights of millions of Americans.  

Just as Jim Crow era poll taxes were designed to erect barriers to the ballot box, the current wave of voter purging, citizenship and identification schemes were intended to make it difficult for young, minority and older Americans to equally participate in the political process. This organized and well-financed campaign to subvert the election process is ongoing and will require a combination of litigation and legislation to ensure that our campaign finance system and election laws reflect the important principle of equal participation in the political process. 

While voting rights remain the touchstone in the quest for equal rights, millions are fundamentally deprived of their basic liberty by a criminal justice system in a race to incarcerate. The United States has the largest prison population in the western world, with 2.25 million people behind bars. This figure illustrates the greatest inequality facing the nation. Sadly, more than 60 percent of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities.  

For the African-American community, these statistics are devastating, with one in every 10 Black men in their 30s in jail or prison on any given day. A felony conviction can stifle economic independence by restricting voting rights, job prospects and access to government- sponsored training programs and subsidized housing. In communities already devastated by unemployment and a lack of educational and economic opportunity, the prison pipeline has created a lost generation.  

As progressive advocates like the Lawyers' Committee move to address inequality in the 21st Century, the outstanding question for me is whether Congress can shift its focus to tackle the root causes underlying poverty. I fear that the drive to cut blindly entitlement programs - from the Second Chance Act to Head Start and Community Services Block Grants - runs the serious risk of exacerbating the economic isolation of poor communities and their related civil rights burdens. 

Ultimately, we must act to break the persistent link between poverty and the criminal justice system. Ending inequality in America is a battle that can be won, and although the barriers are still largely the same as those of the 1960's, our approach in the 21st century must not lack the strength and courage which brought us those earlier victories. 

U. S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr.,(D-Mich.), known as the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, has served in the U. S. Congress since 1965. This article - the fourth of a 20-part series - is written in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today. For more information, please visit www.lawyerscommittee.org. 


Post Office Problems Afflict Berkeley Too

By Kate O'Connell
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:47:00 PM

Ah, the dear old USPS! As a public entity they are certainly beleaguered and beset on all sides, but the drift towards privatization is not the answer. 

Post offices all over the country are being closed, sold, and 'relocated;' their customers left with inadequate service and confusing contradictions about what will happen, in many cases, to irreplaceable New Deal/WPA art work. Here in Berkeley, we were supposed to receive a date yesterday from the USPS for the public hearing about the possible sale of our main and historic P.O on Allston St. Did we receive a date? Of course not. The USPS will, however, hold us to their legal right to announce a date merely 15 days before any public hearing. They don't know if what they are doing is viable, and don't wish to give the public any time to find out. 

Our letter carriers and postal clerks do a fine job, every single day, and they are caught in the cleft as well: their jobs are on the line, and those who survive the chopping block will be moved to locations they have no desire to work in or out of. They know those locations will not serve the public, and will be a financial burden to themselves and the USPS; we, the public, will pay for that, as the USPS employees well know. 

This issue is receiving a lot of national press, and none too soon: The Washington Post and New York Times both have excellent recent articles, easily found by using search word USPS. Mr. Joe Davidson and Ms. Catherine Ho at the Washington Post, and Mr. David Dunlap at the NY Times have all written pieces well worth reading. 

Join us, in our efforts to preserve the postal service as we know and love it! 


Open Letter to City Attorney McKinney Re West Berkeley Crime

By Jon Alff
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:45:00 PM

Dear Ms. McKinney,

I have lived in West Berkeley for more than 18 years. I am proud of my neighborhood and have been active with my neighbors on many local projects over the years. I write you with deep gratitude for your work regarding the problems originating at 1722 Ninth Street, which is barely a block from my home.

As you know, the area has been subject to disturbing crime for years. Most of the crime originates with or involves several local properties. Everyone - residents and the Police - knows where the crime comes from. Drug houses, such as 1722 Ninth Street, and apartment buildings, such as 1011 Delaware and 1726 Tenth Street (and others), have been the primary sources of our problems. These properties have supported major drug dealing, prostitution and violent domestic situations on an ongoing rotating basis for decades. Each time something horrible happens there is a flurry of 'action'. Then everything quiets down only to return the same horrible problems once again.

Yesterday, people associated with the apartment building at 1011 Delaware Street endangered us for the second time in less than a year. Once again shots were fired. This time someone, highly suspected of drug and gang involvement, died. Thankfully, the bullets did not hit anyone else. Of course, these problems are not limited to West Berkeley - they are all over Berkeley. 

We do not live in a ghetto. We do not want to live with the crime that evermore unfolds in front of our homes. This is too much, we are desperate. We cannot solve these problems by ourselves. Many are afraid to speak up for fear of retribution. Others are willing to step up to the task but are overwhelmed at the bewildering complexity of the problem and the City's tradition of inaction. 

While I am very glad to hear of progress regarding 1722 Ninth Street, mostly at your behest, I remain profoundly alarmed at the ongoing problems that remain. Simply put - we need a broader approach to crime. Putting a finger in the dyke will not work. We need to address each problem property as a group, not piecemeal and partially from time to time. 

It is time to act. Yesterday's death might well have been prevented if we had joined forces to fight crime at these properties months or years ago. What can we do? How can you and the City Attorney's office help us? We are beyond community meetings. We are looking for solutions, solutions that involve real and decisive actions against criminals and the owners of problem properties. Failure to punish those doing or supporting crime has to stop. I and my neighbors wait eagerly for any and all opportunity work with you, the Police and the City to defend our neighborhood.


The Future of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office

By Stephen Statler
Saturday February 23, 2013 - 03:14:00 PM

The USPS plans to sell off the downtown Berkeley facility and have a smaller scale storefront Post Office nearby. I suggest instead that the scope of USPS occupied space in the existing facility be reduced and other Federal agencies move in. 

The first other Federal tenant which comes to mind is the Berkeley Social Security Administration office, presently across the street (2045 Allston Way) and maybe 100 feet closer to Shattuck Ave than the Post Office on the ground floor of a parking garage.  

If that is not enough there is a Marine Corps office with regional responsibilities for recruiting Marine Corps Officers located at 64 Shattuck Ave, also quite nearby. 

The lobby of the current downtown Berkeley Post Office could easily serve as a waiting room for Social Security claimants. The SSA office in SF Chinatown is/was in an old branch bank with similar counters, etc and it looks great.


Columns

AGAINST FORGETTING: Pity the poor CVS workers and the customers and patients who toil there.

By Ruth Rosen
Thursday February 21, 2013 - 06:00:00 AM

Have you noticed that when you go to a CVS store, you find fewer and fewer things you’d written down on your list, that the shelves are emptier, that you can’t get common antibiotics at the pharmacy, and that getting refills, even though you’ve been reassured by phone they're waiting for you, often requires you to return in 20 minutes because of a glitch somewhere in their system? 

It’s time to get serious about CVS and to decide how we should handle this corporate incompetency and lack of sensitivity to different neighborhoods. 

Today, I looked for fertilizers for flowers because global warming has Berkeley’s flowers in bloom several weeks early. The kind worker told me he’s not allowed to order it; CVS just decides when to send it to their store. Instead, they currently have a bunch of ugly kitsch garden sculptures that he would like to throw out and hope they would get stolen. I couldn’t agree more. 

Then I looked for Advil capsules, and once again, the shelf was empty. Then I went to the pharmacy and they had forgotten to refill the one drug I really need to use. Then, I asked the quite lovely pharmacist if they could put in an order for a different drug that I need every 4 weeks, so I wouldn’t have to discover, every month, that they’re out of stock, and have to search every CVS, Walgreens’ and Pharmacaa in the East Bay. This week, for example, they said it would be ready Tuesday, but then I received a call saying it would be ready 3:30 on Wednesday. 

Well, it may surprise them but I’m busy working and can’t visit CVS every day. 

So I decided to go the top and speak with the general manager of the store, who was very decent and received my complaints with a kind of sad resignation that helped me understand the problem. He has no control over what arrives in the store or in the pharmacy. CVS sends the same things to all stores, at their convenience, keeps the inventory low, and serves Berkeley exactly just as it serves CVS stores in areas with different climates and different communities in different parts of the East Bay. So we have no fertilizer because Chicago doesn’t need it yet. 

Why, I asked, don’t they focus on serving each unique community, as Walmart does? Of course, Walmart is hardly the poster child for corporate responsibility, or treating their workers well, but it is a great example of strategic marketing and it does keep the inventory flowing with astonishing efficiency. 

The general manager shook his head, acknowledged my complaints were real and said he would do everything he could, but that the “system” (aka CVA headquarters) won’t let him to do too much. Which, by the way, is just what the lovely pharmacist said. She would love to help me, but the system is set up so that she can’t order a drug for me, unless I use automatic refill, which I once did and regretted it immediately when it didn’t work. 

So what should we do about CVS? I have purposefully not used the names of the people I interviewed because they have to operate within this corporate system and they have very little freedom to act with creativity or initiative. In each case, I identified myself as a journalist and told them I was going to write about the system in which they work. 

They are not the problem. Each one agreed that CVS had deteriorated since it bought Long’s, which is the CVS I’m writing about, the one on the corner of Shattuck and Rose in Berkeley. Perhaps other CVS stores are managed, but that is not what the store manager led me to believe. 

This little bit of reporting is just meant to expose the reality I encounter at CVS. Now it’s up to us to figure out what to do and how to do it in a way that doesn’t harm their workers, but rather gives the corporation the message that we want every community to be served with a plentiful inventory that addresses the unique needs and products usually used by each community, depending on their customer base, their location and their region, and that we don’t blame the workers who labor under these ridiculous inventory restrictions. 

Any Ideas? Sure, we can take our business elsewhere. Sure, we can order our refills by mail. Sure, we can find individual solution, the good old American way. But I’m asking us to consider what kind of collective and communal ways we can force CVS to meet the practical needs of its customers.


New: ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Taking a Pounding

By Jack Bragen
Wednesday February 20, 2013 - 06:39:00 PM

Persons with mental illness need to shoulder some of the responsibility for our actions, but this is not one hundred percent. A psychotic or bipolar illness can at times disconnect us from reality, and this means improper actions that we do not always control. 

 

The behavior of persons with mental illness sometimes needs improvement. This is not usually due to bad intentions. The illnesses create delusions and other problems that often cause behaviors that get interpreted as antisocial. Thus, not only do we suffer from our illnesses, but we also suffer due to being excluded from social and business situations, through a bad standing that is often no fault of our own, in effect created by our illnesses. 

Furthermore, the stigma of having a mental illness is enough by itself, without the presence of inappropriate actions, to get us excluded from many social and business situations. People are ignorant and they behave in a bigoted manner toward us, including in the absence of actual provocation and simply because of the label of mentally ill person. 

When someone as a young adult becomes mentally ill, they often are "dumped" by college and high school friends. A mental illness of a spouse is often a reason why people get divorced. The spouse needs someone who can support and take care of the family, something a disabled person sometimes can't do. Even when not much is expected, a person who becomes mentally ill is often rejected by their spouse. 

Getting hired is yet another arena in which mentally ill people get excluded. Employers may fear excessive baggage or may simply not want to take a perceived risk of hiring someone with a mental illness. There is apparently an entire branch of law practice devoted to defeating ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) lawsuits. A website for large companies commented gleefully that ADA cases for persons with mental illness who seek reasonable accommodation are easily dismissed. 

PERSONS WITH MENTAL ILLNESS MADE SCAPEGOAT IN THE MASS MEDIA 

In the gun control debate currently taking place as conveyed by news media, persons with mental illness as a category are taking quite a pounding. NRA officials falsely assert that more restrictions on people with mental illness will solve the problem of violence in society. Meanwhile, in the fairly progressive news service of CNN, only a small amount of lip service is given to the important fact that persons with mental illness aren't responsible for most gun violence or other violence. 

In numerous venues, persons with mental illness are being blamed for everything that's wrong. People on the other side of the gun debate who want to place more restrictions on the availability of these weapons are vilifying persons with mental illness as well when calling for closure of loopholes that allow people to circumvent background checking. (My wife pointed out to me that we are giving massive publicity to gun violence that happens in predominantly white suburbia, while the gun violence that is almost constant in poor neighborhoods is barely reported.) 

Additionally, there are several movies playing that sensationalize persons with mental illness as extremely violent, sick and demented people. This is not an accurate portrayal. 

The NRA and the mass media are comfortable slamming persons with mental illness because they assume that they will not be held accountable by a minority that for the most part doesn't have a voice-persons with mental illness. 

Persons in society at large continue to discriminate and may have the misconception that we are without feelings. People may have the false impression that they are not harming anyone when they exclude persons with mental illness and behave callously toward us. Persons with mental illness feel pain, just like anyone else. 


This is just another reminder that my books are available for purchase on Amazon. I can be reached with your comments at bragenkjack@yahoo.com but can not give advice to individuals.


New: DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE: Israel & Syria: Behind the Bombs

By Conn Hallinan
Tuesday February 19, 2013 - 03:02:00 PM

Now that the dust has settled—literally and figuratively—from Israel’s Jan. 29 air attack on Syria, the question is, why? According to Tel Aviv, the bombing was aimed at preventing the transfer of sophisticated Russian SA-17 anti-craft missiles to Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, which one former Israeli military intelligence officer said would be “a game-changer.” But there are major problems with that story. 

First, it is highly unlikely that Damascus would turn such a system over to Hezbollah, in part because the Russians would almost certainly not have allowed it, and, secondly, because the SA-17 would not be terribly useful to the Lebanese Shiite organization. In fact, we don’t even know if an SA-17 was the target. The Syrians deny it, claiming it was a military research center 15 miles northwest of Damascus that was bombed, killing two and wounding five. The Israelis are refusing to say anything. The story that the anti-aircraft system was the objective comes mainly from unnamed “western officials.” 

The SA-17 is a capable, mid-range, anti-aircraft weapon. Designated “Grizzly” by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it consists of four missiles mounted on a mobile launcher. It has a range of 30 miles, a ceiling of close to 50,000 feet, and can down anything from aircraft to cruise missiles. Introduced in 1998 as a replacement for the SA-11 “Gadfly,” the SA-17 has been sold to Egypt, Syria, Finland, China, Venezuela, India, Cyprus, Belarus, and the Ukraine. 

It has a bite. During the 2008 Russia-Georgian War, the SA-17 apparently downed three Russian SU-25s close support attack planes, and an ancient long-range Tupolev-22 bomber. It appears Georgia acquired the anti-aircraft system from the Ukraine without the Russians knowing about it. 

The SA-17’s manufacturers claim the system is immune to electronic countermeasures, but every arms maker claims their weapons are irresistible or invincible. The SU-25s and the bomber were downed in the first day of the fighting, before the Russians figured out that the Georgians had a trick up their sleeves and instituted countermeasures. Those apparently worked because the four planes were the only ones the Russians lost. Clearly, however, if one gets careless or sloppy around a “Grizzly,” it can make you pretty uncomfortable. 

But “game-changer”? The SA-17 is big and vulnerable, a sitting duck for aircraft armed with long-range bombs and missiles and backed up by electronic warfare capabilities. Israeli counter warfare electronics are very sophisticated, as good—if not better—than the American’s. In 2007 Israeli warplanes slipped through the Syrian radar net without being detected and bombed a suspected nuclear reactor. Damascus acquired the SA-17 following that 2007 attack. 

Given that there is open talk by NATO of establishing a “no-fly zone” over Syria, why would Damascus hand over one of its most modern anti-aircraft systems to Hezbollah? And what would Hezbollah do with it? It is too big to hide and is generally used as one piece of a larger anti-aircraft system, which Hezbollah does not have. In any case, it would have been a provocation, and neither Hezbollah nor Syria wants to give the Israelis an excuse to beat up on them. Both have plenty on their plates without adding war with a vastly superior military foe. 

In brief, there is no evidence that the attack had anything to do with the SA-17, which, in any case, both Tel Aviv and Washington know would not pose any real danger to Israel. According to UPI, the attack was cleared with the U.S. 

So what are some other possible reasons for the attack? 

The most obvious target is the Assad regime in Syria, which at first glance would seem to be a contradiction. Wouldn’t Israel bombing Syria unite the Arab countries behind Damascus? Indeed, there were condemnations from the Arab League, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and even some of Assad’s Syrian opponents—although the Gulf Cooperation Council, the league of oil-rich monarchies bankrolling the Syrian civil war, was notably quiet. 

But the “protests” were mostly pro-forma, and in the case of Turkey, rather bizarre. Ankara has played a major role in supplying the anti-Assad insurgents, deploying Patriot missiles on its border with Syria, and demanding that the president of Syria step down. Yet Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denounced Assad for not “upholding the dignity of his country” and retaliating against Israel. 

According to press reports, Israel is strengthening its forces on the occupied Golan Heights that border Syria and preparing to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side. Israel established a similar “buffer” in Lebanon following its 1982 invasion of that country, a “buffer” that eventually led to the formation of Hezbollah and a humiliating Israeli retreat in 2000. 

Israel claims it has no dog in the Syrian fight and is supposedly worried about Islamic extremists coming out on top in the civil war. But for all the hype about Islamists leading a jihad against Israel, Tel Aviv knows that al-Qaeda and its allies pose no serious threat to Israel. It is good politics (and good theater)—in Washington, as well as Tel Aviv—to cry, “the turbans are coming” (quick, give us lots of money and your constitution), but religious extremism and Sharia law hardly pose an existential danger to nuclear-armed countries with large militaries. Fighters from the salafist Jabhat al-Nusrah will not get far marching on Jerusalem. 

The bombing attack was certainly a slap in the face to Assad, but not the first, and seems less directed at the Damascus regime than adding yet another ingredient to the witch’s brew of chaos that is rapidly engulfing Syria and the surrounding countries. And chaos and division in the region have always been Israel’s allies. Divide and conquer is an old colonial tactic dating back to the Roman Empire. After World War I, the English used Jews and Arabs as pawns in a game to control the British Mandate in Palestine. In short, the Israelis have learned from the best. 

The growing sectarian war between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds stirred up by the Syrian civil war lets Israel stand on the sidelines. Who is going to notice the steady encroachment of settlements on Palestinian lands when the Syria war has killed some 60,000 people, created almost 800,000 refugees, and is destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan? 

Lastly, there is Iran. Getting rid of Assad would remove one of Iran’s major allies in the region, and also weaken Shiite Hezbollah, the organization that fought Israel to a standstill in 2006. Assad, says former Israeli Gen. Michael Herzog, “is a linchpin of the radical Iran-Hezbollah axis…his fall would therefore deal a major blow to Tehran, significantly weaken Hezbollah and dismantle the trilateral axis.” 

Sectarian chaos in Syria is already washing over into Iraq, where a brutal bombing campaign by Sunni extremists is fueling talk about re-establishing Shiite militias to defend their communities. Islamists are also increasingly active in Lebanon and Jordan. 

For several years the U.S. and the Sunni-dominated Middle East monarchies have warned about the dangers of a “Shiite crescent” of Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah. But the idea of a “crescent” was always more hype than reality—Shiites make up about 15 percent of the region, and are majorities only in Iraq, Iran and Bahrain. Lebanese Shiites constitute a plurality. In general, Shiites are the poorest section of the Muslim community and with the exception of Iran and Syria, have long been marginalized politically. Shiite “domination” has always been a bug-a-boo, not very real but useful for stoking the fires of sectarianism. 

And sectarianism is on the march today in the Middle East, financed by the cash-rich Gulf monarchies and the hostility of the U.S. and its allies to authoritarian secular governments. While NATO overthrew the Libyan government and aids the Syrian insurgency in the name of democracy, it has no qualms about supporting the absolute monarchs that rule from Morocco in the west to Saudi Arabia in the east. 

Was the ease with which the Israelis penetrated Syrian air space a message to Teheran as well? Certainly although the odds on Israel attacking Iran sometime this spring are rather low (though hardly non-existent). Israel could do a lot of damage to Iran, but it doesn’t have the weapons or the air power to take out Teheran’s nuclear program. Plus the Iranians, while angry about the onerous sanctions—and cranky as ever about negotiations—are carefully diverting their nuclear stockpiles into civilian use. 

Israel would need the U.S. to really beat up on Iran, and that does not seem to be the direction that the Obama administration is moving. An attack on Iran would isolate Israel and the U.S. diplomatically, and deeply fracture NATO at a time when Washington is desperately trying to keep the alliance together. 

In any case, Tel Aviv and Washington are well aware that Iran does not pose an “existential” threat to Israel. Even if Iran were to build several nuclear weapons—and there is no evidence that they have any intention of doing so—it would face an Israel armed with between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy Iran as a society. Even Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admits Iran does not pose a threat to Israel’s existence. 

If there is one thing that the bombing has accomplished, it is to thicken the walls between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Tel Aviv is deploying anti-missile systems on its northern border and handing out gas masks in the Galilee. It is beefing up its presence in the Golan Heights, and reinforcing its border with Egypt. In the meantime, the Netanyahu administration just announced yet another round of settlement building. 

Whether division and chaos, along with those walls and missiles and gas masks, will keep the surrounding anarchy at bay is altogether another matter. Bricks and bombs never produce real security. 


Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com 


New: ECLECTIC RANT: Obama: End CIA-Directed Drone Strikes Now

By Ralph E. Stone
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 11:10:00 AM

The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on John Brennan's nomination to be CIA director intensified the opposition to CIA-directed drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Drones, by the way, are unmanned aerial vehicles either controlled from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission. Unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours. For example, Zephyr, a British drone under development, broke the world record by flying over 82 hours nonstop. Also, Drones are much cheaper than military aircraft and, because they are flown remotely, there is no danger to a flight crew. 

Drone strikes have dramatically increased during the Obama administration. As of September 2012, Obama had authorized 238 drone strikes in Pakistan, six times more than during President George W. Bush's eight years in office, resulting in between 1,494 and 2,618 estimated deaths with only about 13 percent of them of a militant leader. The remainder of the deaths were "collateral damage," seemingly acceptable to the Obama administration 

In September 2011, a drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric with al-Qaeda, and Samir Khan, an accused al-Qaeda propagandist. Both men were American citizens and had not been indicted or charged with any crime. In October 2011, a drone strike killed al-Awlaki's son Abdulrahman. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes in Yemen have killed between 72 to 178 civilians, including 27 to 37 children. Between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 473 to 893 civilians, including 176 children, and between 2007-2013, drone strikes in Somalia have killed 11 to 57 civilians, including 1 to 3 children. 

In addition to the death and injury caused by drone strikes, a Stanford/NYU Report found that drones hovering twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning, terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Drone strikes then are making the U.S. few friends and provide a recruitment tool for Taliban and al-Qaeda. 

These killings, of course, raises the question of whether the U.S. government has the power to kill Americans who have not been indicted or charged with any crimes. It also raises the larger question as to whether the U.S. has the legal authority to target for assassination any non-American. 

In June 2012, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were given an undated confidential "Department of Justice White Paper entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.” This White Paper was recently obtained by MSNBC. The White Paper is a strained legal justification for targeting for assassination Americans abroad. It sets out a three-prong test: First, the suspect must be an imminent threat. Secondly, capture of the target must be “infeasible." And thirdly, the strike must be conducted according to “law of war principles.” According to the White Paper, U.S. officials may consider whether an attempted capture of a suspect would pose an “undue risk” to U.S. personnel involved in such an operation. If so, U.S. officials could determine that the capture operation of the targeted American would not be feasible, making it lawful for the U.S. government to order a killing instead, the White Paper concludes. 

But as the ACLU points out, "This sweeping authority is said to exist even if the threat presented isn't imminent in any ordinary sense of that word, even if the target has never been charged with a crime or informed of the allegations against him, and even if the target is not located anywhere near an actual battlefield. The white paper purports to recognize some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are so vague and elastic that they will be easily manipulated.“ Basically, what the government is saying is that, "it has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. … It recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.” In particular, the ACLU concludes, the White Paper “redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.” 

 

According to the White paper, the government has the authority to carry out targeted killings of U.S. citizens without presenting evidence to a judge before the fact or after, and indeed without even acknowledging to the courts or to the public that the authority has been exercised. Without saying so explicitly, the government claims the authority to kill terrorism suspects, including Americans, in secret. 

At the February 7, 2013, Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, CIA Director-designate John Brennan strongly defended attacks by unmanned drones, claiming that such strikes are used only against targets planning to carry out attacks against the U.S, never in retribution for an earlier one, including Americans. Mr. Brennan is playing fast and loose with the facts. Clearly, if Brennan becomes CIA Director, the drone strikes will continue. And Congress seems unlikely to stop these drone strikes. That puts the ball in Obama's court. 

Obama must stop these extrajudicial targeted assassinations. Obama cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. These assassinations are not only illegal; they create a dangerous precedent, which could be used by others to justify targeted killings of U.S. leaders.  

 


New: THE PUBLIC EYE: Obama 2013: In Your Face

By Bob Burnett
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 11:07:00 AM

There was a lot to like about the President’s State-of-the-Union Address. Obama hit the right topics with passion lacking in many of his previous speeches to Congress. And he displayed an edge not seen in his first term. The President spoke of bipartisanship but his tone was confrontational. 

As expected, the majority of Obama’s remarks concerned jobs and the economy. 

We gather here knowing that there are millions of Americans whose hard work and dedication have not yet been rewarded. Our economy is adding jobs – but too many people still can’t find full-time employment. Corporate profits have rocketed to all-time highs – but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.
Half of his sixty-minute speech focused on this theme. Even when he was discussing sequestration, the President emphasized rebuilding the middle class: 

Most Americans -- Democrats, Republicans and independents -- understand that we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. They know that broad-based economic growth requires a balanced approach to deficit reduction, with spending cuts and revenue, and with everybody doing their fair share.
Ten minutes in, the President struck his first confrontational note: 

the greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next… Let’s agree, right here, right now, to keep the people’s government open and pay our bills on time and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America. The American people have worked too hard, for too long, rebuilding from one crisis to see their elected officials cause another. Now most of us agree that a plan to reduce the deficit must be part of our agenda. But let’s be clear: Deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs, that must be the North Star that guides our efforts.
Obama concluded his economic remarks with an impassioned plea to raise the minimum wage. 

We know our economy’s stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong… Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty -- and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.
Nonetheless, the President reserved his most impassioned comments for global warming and gun control. 

For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change… The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late. Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to get together, pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change… But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
Obama finished with an emotional pitch for gun control. 

Of course, what I’ve said tonight matters little if we don’t come together to protect our most precious resource, our children. It has been two months since Newtown. I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence, but this time is different. Overwhelming majorities of Americans -- Americans who believe in the Second Amendment -- have come together around commonsense reform… Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress… because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun… The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence, they deserve a simple vote.
During the President’s first term, many Democrats were disappointed that he didn’t stand up to Republicans. Time after time he seemed to cave in to their demands. A few weeks into his second term, the Obama many of us expected in 2009 appears to finally have shown up. An assertive President prepared to get in the faces of his Republican opponents and force them to back down so he can move his agenda. 


Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net 


New: AGAINST FORGETTING: Rape: The All American Crime

By Ruth Rosen
Tuesday February 12, 2013 - 08:56:00 AM

The feminist writer Susan Griffin first used the title of this article in Ramparts Magazine in 1971. She was the first feminist to explain that men rape children, elderly and disabled women, not just girls dressed in mini- skirts. In other words, she challenged the belief that that rape was a sexual act, fueled by men’s irrepressible sexual drive. Instead, she argued that it was an assault against a woman, fueled by the desire to control and harm a woman, not a sexual act at all. 

While I was a Professor of History at the University of California a few years later, an elderly woman was raped by a man who stalked the campus looking for prey. He finally found a woman in her 90s and raped her in Davis’ central park. (I can’t find the newspaper story, but I remember the terror he caused among the town’s women.) In 2012, a 43-year-old man raped a 73-year-old woman in New York City’s Central and even boasted about how many elderly women he had raped. 

So Griffin was right. Men don’t need seductive young bodies scantily dressed to incite them to use their overwhelming power over a vulnerable woman. 

And has anything changed? Well, yes, there was a huge outpouring of protest against the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in India in early January 2013. Bu after that atrocity, countless rapes followed in Timbuktu, Mali just days later. 

Today, I received a message from the Berkeley police, notifying me that the number of rapes in Berkeley, California have doubled during the last year. The twenty rapes that occurred in 2011 jumped to 39 in 2012. Many of these crimes took place near campus, where I live, and some, as you would expect, involved alcohol and drugs, according to the local news station, KGO. 

Then I read a story in the New York Times that women are now among the loudest voices against gun control. They are crowding the shooting ranges, learning how to shoot and protect themselves. 

Is this the kind of world we want to live in? When will rape become as unacceptable and as illegal as slavery is in civilized societies? Not in my lifetime. 


Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Davis and a scholar in residence at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent book is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.


AGAINST FORGETTING: What Will It Take to End Violence Against Women?

By Ruth Rosen
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:50:00 PM

Twenty years after the United Nations declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming unacceptable in a society. The outrage in India has ignited a necessary international conversation [16] about rape and violence against women worldwide 

Her father had a dream [17] that his daughter would be educated and, like his sons, enjoy civil rights and liberties. He was one of those unsung fathers who have played an important role in promoting the goals of feminism, yet remain invisible among the many more fathers who cannot embrace change in their societies.  

Millions of women are raped every year. Why this particular gang rape and subsequent death caused an international eruption of anger [18] is not easy to explain. Often, one single act shines a light on injustice: the 'Arab spring' began when a poor vendor [19] set himself on fire; Vietnam anti-war protests grew after monks [20] turned themselves into swirling flames.  

Many who protested in India used the language of human rights to denounce the rape and other forms of violence that keep women off the streets and frightened by the “customs” of rape, wife beating, honor killings, and dowry deaths. In India, authorities responded by created all-female taxi cabs and special victim units within the notoriously corrupt [21] police forces who have been known to rape a woman after she reported the crime. They declared New Delhi as unsafe for women. 

It has taken a very long time for the people of the world to realize that violence against women constitutes a violation against their human rights[22]. Early attempts in the United States during the 1970s to redefine rape [23] as an assault, rather than as an act of lust, ignited an international conversation and debate about the nature of rape.  

But it wasn’t until 1993, at the United Nation’s World Conference on Human Rights [24] held in Vienna, that women around the world testified about how violence—or the threat of violence—kept them off the streets, prevented them from earning a livelihood, and made them fear the “customs” that allowed their relatives to throw acid in their faces or beat them, and even kill them, if they acted in a way that dishonored the men of their family. 

Women rights advocates around the world deployed a brilliant strategy at that conference by using the testimony of ordinary women to influence the United Nation’s conference. The Center for Women's Global Leadership [25] at Rutger's university in the United States played an important role in finding women from all continents who were willing to testify [26] about the violence they had experienced-- domestic abuse, mutilation, burning and rape---when they tried to unionize, when they “dishonored their families” by flirting or engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital sex, or when they simply went out in public alone. These testimonies moved the UN to create a High Commission of Human Rights and more important, to write a resolution [27] that violence against women was a violation of their human rights.  

The General Assembly passed that resolution in March, 1993. Although enforcement was impossible, the resolution created a moral compass by which countries could judge each other.  

Naturally, nations fought fiercely over this resolution. China, Syria, Iran, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam argued that cultural relativism [28] was essential to global peace and mutual respect. The same argument, of course, had been used to defend slavery in the nineteenth century. But other nations stood up for human rights for women and dared to call a custom a crime. The American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, spoke out strongly against accepting gender violence and said, “We cannot let cultural relativism become the last refuge of repression. The conference concluded with the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action [29], which, for the first time, declared that violence against women violated their human rights. 

One year later, in 1994, the American Congress followed by passing legislation called The Violence against Women Act [30] (VAWA). Then, in 1995, First Lady Hillary Clinton made international news when, in a rousing and inspiring speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women, she boldly declared, "It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights," [31] 

In the wake of the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, the media began to report that all sides had built “rape camps” and that rape [32] and other sexual atrocities had become a deliberate and systematic part of the Bosnian and Serb campaigns for victory in the war. Strong and persistent demands for a decisive response to these outrages came from around the globe.  

Still, women remained what they had always been, the “spoils of war.” The countless rapes committed during the Balkan wars revealed to the world, with the help of international media and human rights activists, that the rape of women was deliberately being used to undermine the morale of the enemy. Gradually, advocates of women’s human rights began to challenge another of the world’s longest crimes against women—rape during armed conflict. 

In 2002 human right activists successfully fought for the International Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court [33] to declare rape during war as a crime against humanity or as a war crime. Yet, as the American invasion and occupation of Iraq continued, the sexual terrorism women experienced at the hands of American soldiers and Iraqi thugs was one of the most underreported crimes of a war that been waged for resources, by choice, and fueled by the lies of America’s highest officials, including former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense General Colin Powell, and former National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. 

No, there were no mass weapons of destruction, but countless women died in the frenzy of sexual terrorism [34] that took place, particularly in cities. In 2006, based on human rights documents, I described what Amnesty International and other had witnessed and documented: 

" The invasion and occupation of Iraq [34] has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women -- and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world -- they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes". 

Controlling women’s access to public life, including work, is one of the consequences of rape. That is why women activists created “Take Back the Night” [35] marches in which women and men protested the brutal rapes, including gang rapes, that make women fearful of taking their rightful place in public life. 

No United Nations resolution or action by the International Criminal Court is going stop what is still considered normal all over the world. As nations modernize, and women enter the labor force and enjoy higher education, they pose a threat to some men’s deeply-held belief that women belong in the private world of the home, and that they own the public sphere. Women who trespass risk being stopped, often by rape. 

Yet, it is in precisely such modernizing nations, such as India, that the daytime gang rape of a 23 year-old young woman on a bus created such outrage and protest, by both men and women. UN resolutions and conventions create a moral compass and are necessary, but they do not initiate social change. At best, they alter the zeitgeist. It is incidents of brutality against women, protested by ordinary men and women, as well as by advocates for women’s human rights [36], that can, potentially, change people’s views about violence against women. 

And it’s not just in developing countries that ending violence against women is tacitly accepted by authorities. As I write, the U.S. Senate will finally introduce legislation which reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act, first enacted in 1994. They have even accepted the compromise of exempting certain immigrant women with particular visas. If it passes, the bill will then go to the House of Representative, where right-wing Republicans are working overtime to prevent the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. They insist on excluding particular categories of immigrant women and even if the Senate passes what they want, they will come up with another reason to oppose it. Last year, Republicans blocked the bill because they refused to include LGBT and Native American women in the legislation. It’s still not clear it will pass in 2013, here in a country that prides itself the great equality women have supposedly achieved.  

In the early nineteenth century, few people in Europe or the United States, would have thought that slavery would one day become unacceptable to the majority of the world’s citizens. Twenty years after the U.N. declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming a relic of the past. But that is our goal. And the only way this change will happen is the same way that abolitionists ended slavery---through decades of social movement action and education that sought to end slavery.  

We are not nearly there. Rape and all kinds of gender violence are still ubiquitous, and a disgrace to our global efforts to expand our ideas about human rights. It will take many more decades before everyone agree that violence at home, at work, and on the battlefield are not customs, but are, in fact, crimes against humanity.  


DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE: Four More Years: Europe’s Meltdown

By Conn Hallinan
Friday February 08, 2013 - 04:36:00 PM

This is the last of five articles analyzing the key issues the Obama administration faces over the next four years. 

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. peace movement came up with a catchy phrase: “What if the schools got all the money they needed and the Navy had to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier?” Well, the Italian Navy has a line of clothing, and is taking a cut from a soft drink called “Forza Blu” in order to make up for budget cuts. It plans to market energy snacks and mineral water. 

Things are a little rocky in Europe these days. 

Unemployment is over 25 percent in Greece, Spain and Portugal—and far higher among young people in those countries—and most economies are dead in the water, if not shrinking. Relentless austerity policies have shredded Europe’s traditional social compact with its citizens, fueled a wave of debt-related suicides in the continent’s hard-hit south—Greek suicide rates jumped 37 percent from 2009 to 2011—and locked much of the continent into a seemingly endless spiral: austerity means layoffs, fewer jobs equal less revenue, lower revenues leads to more austerity=the classic debt trap. 

“The economic situation in Europe is moving from bad to catastrophic,” says Douglas McWilliams, chief executive for the Centre for Economic and Business Research. “There is a danger that economic problems will spill over into social breakdown.” 

So why hasn’t the U.S. Treasury pressured lending agencies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to shift from austerity formulas to stimulation policies? Why is the Obama administration pressing Europeans to increase military spending? And what should it matter to Washington if Britain remains in the European Union (EU)? 

It is not just that Europe is in crisis, it is that, as one Portuguese pensioner told Reuters, “We see no light at the end of the tunnel, just more pain and difficulties.” In November the European Commission reported that unemployment on the continent—now in excess of 25 million people—would continue to rise. “The economic outlook is bleak and has worsened in recent months and is not expected to improve in 2013,” the Commission found. “The EU is currently the only major region in the world where unemployment is still rising.” 

A UN report predicts that Europe will not recover the jobs lost in the 2008 financial crisis until at least 2017. One EU study found that the crisis threatens to turn the 94 million Europeans between ages 15 and 29 into a “lost generation.” 

All this translates into a level of economic misery that Europeans have not seen in more than 80 years. Indeed, Standard & Poor says Greece’s meltdown is worse in “duration and scale” than Germany’s was during the 1930s. The aid agency Oxfam reports that if the Madrid government’s current austerity policies continue, the percentage of people below the poverty line in Spain could rise from 27 percent to 40 percent. United Kingdom Chancellor George Osborne says he expects his country’s austerity program to continue until 2018. 

The pain is so intense that it has helped fuel credible regional succession movements in Spain, Belgium, and Scotland. 

But the push for yet greater austerity has less to do with a deep concern by Europe’s elites over debt—it is high but manageable—than as part of a stealth campaign aimed at dismantling rules and regulations that protect worker rights, unions, and the environment. 

“We are seeing some worrying signs of anti-business rhetoric among some of Europe’s leaders and believe that this is not a productive and collaborate approach to take,” DuPont’s head man for Europe, the Middle East and Africa told the Financial Times. “Business and government need to collaborate to face the challenges of the future.” 

The “anti-business rhetoric” comes mainly from workers—and increasingly members of the middle class—desperate to hold on to jobs and a living wage. Ford, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Citibank and Japan’s Nomura Bank have cut jobs, increasingly moving their operations to “developing countries,” that is, those with weak unions and/or authoritarian governments. While U.S. executives increased their investments in Europe by only 3 percent, they have amped up those in the “developing world” by 25 percent. 

In short, corporations are saying to Europeans, give up your working conditions, wages, and benefits, or we export your jobs. 

Workers have not taken this employer offensive lying down. There have been strikes and walkouts from Spain to the Czech Republic, and austerity adherents have suffered ballot box reversals. Chancellor Angela Merkel—the queen of harsh economic policies—took a beating in the last round of German state elections

The Obama administration could help halt Europe’s plunge from first world to second world status, but is has been largely silent on the austerity/debt formula. For instance, last summer an IMF study indicated that endless austerity would not only tank economies across the continent, but also increase the debt problem. However, that study has yet to be translated into policy, even though the fund’s current managing director, Christine Legarde, was the White House’s candidate for the post. 

Much the same could be said for the World Bank. The U.S. nominated its current American president, Jim Yong Kim of Dartmouth College. Rather than stepping back from austerity programs, however, he recently warned developing nations not to use economic stimulus to improve their economies, because it would raise “indebtedness and inflation.” 

So, while the U.S. Treasury Department has issued a few mild dissents about the efficacy of austerity programs, the two major economic organizations that the U.S. dominates have held the course—straight for the iceberg. 

One thing the White House could do is endorse the call by Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Greek Syriza Party, for a European summit on the debt. Tsipras proposes that such a gathering could do what the 1953 London Debt Agreement did to help post –war Germany recover: cut the debt by 50 percent and spread payments over 30 years. 

A major concern for Washington is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), originally created in 1949 to deal with a supposed threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Recent archive research demonstrates that the Soviets never even had such a plan on paper. The hordes of Red armor pouring through the Fulda Gap was a construct of the Cold War, little more than a rationale for maintaining significant U.S. military forces on the continent. 

But NATO’s role shifted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Violating a pledge not to push NATO eastwards, the alliance vacuumed up former Warsaw Pact members, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (now two countries), and Albania, and added Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. There are currently 28 members of NATO, including the U.S, and Canada. 

While NATO intervened in the 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina war, it was not until the 1999 war with Yugoslavia that the alliance shifted from defense to offense. But the war against Serbia was still “in country,” so to speak, because Yugoslavia is part of Europe. The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed all that. While it was the U.S. and Britain that initially invaded Afghanistan, within two years some 50,000 NATO troops were serving in the war, and NATO graduated from a regional formation to an international military alliance. 

Its most recent “out of area” operation was Libya, where NATO’s airpower, weapons, and Special Forces overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO is currently involved in the Syrian war, but so far only to deploy missiles in Turkey and support the insurgents with money, supplies and intelligence. Direct intervention is a possibility, but the muddled nature of the opposition to the Assad regime apparently gives some in the alliance pause. Libya’s current status as a failed state, and the wash-over of that war into the current crisis in Mali, is on everyone’s mind. 

The U.S. has long pushed for NATO to become a global alliance that could deal with unrest in Africa, instability in the Middle East and tensions in South Asia and the Pacific. But the Afghanistan experience was a wrenching one for NATO. Rather than a quick war and some feel-good nation building, the war has turned into a quagmire. Member by member, NATO has bailed out in the last three years, and the war is extremely unpopular on the European home front. 

But Europeans are not the only people turning away from foreign engagements. The Afghan War is also deeply unpopular in the U.S., which creates a problem, because military power—its actual use or threat of it—has been central to American foreign policy since the 1846 Mexican War. Besides Afghanistan, the U.S. is currently fighting wars in Yemen and Somalia, aiding the French in Mali, chasing after the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, setting up drone bases in North Africa, and increasing its military footprint in Asia and Latin America. The U.S. is also contemplating attacking Iran over its nuclear program. 

But while the U.S. economy is currently stronger than Europe’s, spending vast amounts of money on foreign wars is not popular. Having someone to share the bills with—financial and political—is central to strategy. That, in part, explains why the Obama administration has come down so hard on Britain’s Conservative-Liberal government’s plan for a referendum that could see London exit the EU. Britain is one of NATO’s heavy hitters and anything that might weaken that alliance is frowned upon in Washington. 

The fact is that the U.S. needs NATO, because it no longer has the resources to go it alone. That is why the Obama administration is leaning hard on NATO members to step up their military spending, hardly a popular request when the continent is on the ropes financially. The U.S. currently pays about 75 percent of NATO’s bills and would like to see other countries take on more of that burden. It will be a hard sell. Italy, for instance, is cutting 33,000 troops and 30 percent of its senior staff over the next decade. Britain’s Conservatives are finding their plan to spend $36.3 billion on a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines an uphill battle. 

The current NATO plan to install anti-missile systems in Romania, Poland, and Turkey is ill-considered and unnecessarily annoys Russia. While the Obama administration was initially skeptical of anti-missile systems—they are expensive, don’t work, and accelerate the arms race—the White House now endorses the deployment. As a result, the Russians are modernizing their missile forces and have halted talks over arms control on the continent. Since Iran has neither the warheads nor the missiles to threaten Europe, one can hardly blame the Russians for assuming the NATO ABM system is aimed at them. 

The Obama administration should revitalize the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the Bush Administration dumped and stop the deployment of destabilizing and provocative ABM systems in Europe (and Asia as well). 

NATO is an artifact of the Cold War and long since past retirement. It is also dangerous: if you build an alliance you will eventually use it. The debacle of the Afghan War and the chaos that the Libyan war has unleashed on Africa is a warning that the use of military power is increasingly outdated. It also drains valuable resources better used to confront the economic and environmental challenges the world faces. 

Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com


THE PUBLIC EYE: Obama’s Biggest Challenge: Inequality

By Bob Burnett
Friday February 08, 2013 - 09:16:00 AM

As President Obama begins his second term, he’s not lacking for challenges, such as jobs, immigration and gun control, not to mention Afghanistan and Iran. Meanwhile, recalcitrant Republicans contest very move the President makes. But Obama’s biggest challenge, economic inequality, gets little attention from many politicians. 

To his credit, the President continues to decry inequality. In his second inaugural address, Obama said, “[Americans] understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.” 

The President and most Democrats recognize the gap between the rich and poor is now as large as at any time in the last one hundred years. In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office found that between 1979 and 2007, “After-tax income for the highest-income households grew more than it did for any other group… 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households, 65 percent for the next 19 percent, just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.” 

Remarkably, Republicans don’t seem concerned about the growing economic divide. Many conservatives, such as Arthur Okun, believe inequality is the price America pays for an efficient economy. They argue we shouldn’t worry about inequality so long as there continues to be social mobility and the economy performs well. But the last twenty years has seen a dramatic decrease in mobility and a marked increase in economic instability. 

In October, Berkeley sociologist Jerome Karabel published a paper detailing the decline in US social mobility: “Family origins matter more in the United States in determining where one ends up in life compared to other wealthy democratic countries. This is a recent development. Studies of social mobility as far back as the 1950s and 1960s showed that rates of movement in the United States were generally comparable to other developed countries.” 

An August 16th, 2011, section of the < a href= http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/makingsense_08-16.html >PBS News Hour focused on the lack of public awareness of the growing economic divide. Many Americans cling to the notion that wealth is relatively equally distributed. The reality is that the top 20 percent of Americans have 84 percent of the wealth, the second quintile has eleven percent, the middle quintile has four percent, and the bottom forty percent has but .3 percent. 

Despite these disquieting facts, Americans might tolerate record inequality if it was the price the US paid for a dynamic economy. But Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues the reverse is true: inequality is bad for the economy. Writing in The New York Times Stiglitz observed, 

There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth… Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s… means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses. Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts, especially because those at the top are so adroit in avoiding taxes and in getting Washington to give them tax breaks… Low tax receipts mean that the government cannot make the vital investments in infrastructure, education, research and health that are crucial for restoring long-term economic strength. Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable.
On December 6, 2011, President Obama made his defining speech on economic inequality 

This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, [and] secure their retirement. Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia… they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. I am here to say they are wrong… I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren't Democratic values or Republican values… They're American values.
Obama was correct that the ultimate solution to the problem of inequality requires a shift in values. Nonetheless, in an America that is becoming more unequal every day, addressing inequality requires political will, the moral strength to right a wrong. On February 12th, when the President gives his State of the Union address, he’ll have an opportunity to target inequality, make specific proposals, and build support to fix America’s most challenging problem. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net 

 


New: ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Weathering a Storm

By Jack Bragen
Wednesday February 13, 2013 - 11:31:00 PM

When someone with mental illness goes through a difficult time period, it is important to take steps to take extra care of oneself. Too much of a crisis, if not dealt with well enough, can trigger a return of acute mental illness. The difficult event by itself, in the absence of quitting medications, is sometimes enough to trigger a relapse. On the other hand, such an event can get a person destabilized and upset to the point where we stop taking medication. The return of acute symptoms can happen either way. (And, in fact, sometimes a person with very severe schizophrenia has a relapse with no apparent event as a trigger.) 

Generally, before a relapse takes place, there are early warning signs that can be recognized and heeded. Not eating and sleeping properly can be a sign of impending acute illness and can also create stress that can accelerate progression toward such a relapse. 

A person with mental illness should not attempt an extreme diet. (By the way, diet pills should be avoided, since they are a narcotic and can trigger psychosis or mania.) 

In my case, getting a lot of exercise, such as long walks across town, has been a sign of trouble. When the body gets purified from a lot of exercise and possibly from not eating much, it triggers a part of the nervous system that can make some people more mentally ill. 

When sedentary, I might be less physically healthy, yet I am mentally more stabilized. Perhaps when the body purifies itself, it gets a lot of the medication out of the person's system. Antipsychotic medication seems to work partly through limiting a person's energy. It is a myth and is not correct that enough exercise will cure everything including mental illness. What you end up with is an extremely fit but psychotic person. 

Episodes of extreme anxiety coupled with immobility are sometimes a warning sign. Another might be extreme levels of irritability. A major mental "break" is often preceded by observable lower-level symptoms or other problems. 

Getting through a difficult period of time should include vigilance for all of the early warning signs mentioned above. Sometimes, events that are excessively upsetting can overwhelm someone with mental illness, since we are already predisposed to getting ill. During a difficult time, a person with mental illness should receive as much support as possible from family, treatment practitioners and friends. We should not be afraid to ask for help from the appropriate person. 

During a difficult period, we should not try to make major changes. If a close relative or friend has just passed away, it is not the time to try quitting smoking or to attempt extreme weight loss. In fact, sometimes comfort food can be a calming and stabilizing influence. 

If overwhelmed with a never-ending plate of tasks, a person with mental illness might do well to accept that not everything is going to get done. We should prioritize, and accomplish the very important things, while everything else should be treated as optional. 

Keeping one's time structured and temporarily taking extra medication (according to doctor's orders) are two more measures toward remaining stabilized. 

Too much idle time frees the mind to create more problems, such as negative thoughts or possibly delusions. Doing something interesting, or at least something that fills the time, can improve one's mood and provide a feeling of accomplishment. Temporarily increasing antipsychotic medication can be insulating and can prevent more symptoms from coming up. 

A person with mental illness going through a short-term difficult period should receive praise from oneself for each small or large accomplishment, and should try to steer their thoughts toward hope and optimism. 

When the path of life is a bit rockier, it should not automatically mean that someone with mental illness will become acutely ill again. When more years without relapse are under one's belt, it can be viewed as an accomplishment, since these illnesses can be very insidious in their ability to reverse a person's progress.


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Is Forced Treatment Okay?

By Jack Bragen
Friday February 08, 2013 - 09:04:00 AM

In most scenarios of medical treatment other than for mental illness, the adult patient has the final say concerning accepting treatment or not accepting it. In the case of a DNR for example (it stands for Do Not Resuscitate) the patient's choice is to pass away naturally instead of facing life as a "vegetable" hooked up to life support machines. In most medical scenarios, the exception to someone having a choice concerning treatment is when the patient is in a coma or in shock and can't be consulted. Even if a person is having a heart attack and needs to be treated urgently, it is my understanding that, if the person is still conscious, physicians will try and get a signature. 

In the case of forcing medication on someone with mental illness, the presumption is that the patient has lost the ability to judge, and thus is unable to make a rational decision concerning treatment. It would be nice if a person with mental illness could have more of a choice concerning their treatment options. The problem with us having such a choice is that, when psychotic, a person tends to believe that they don't have a problem and that everyone else is acting crazy. 

The existing laws (and the structure of various agencies) are designed as much to protect society from us as they are to protect us from ourselves. Thus, in the case of persons with mental illness, doctors have an agenda other than just the wellness of the patient. Medication is an expedient way for hospitals to get people under control. Trying to explore other options would be extremely expensive, would be time consuming, and probably would be unworkable in general. 

Had I been given an option to go off of medication when I was younger, I probably would have done so. If so, I might have become increasingly ill and could have reached a point of no return. I would be living in a vegetative state (but in this case due to untreated psychosis) similar to the one that people avoid when signing a DNR order. 

When I attempted to quit medication when younger, I became acutely ill, was hospitalized, and was involuntarily given medication once again. I did not have the opportunity to try to recover without medication in a supervised setting--and this probably wouldn't have worked. 

Do I think it's fair? No. I think that in an ideal society, people could be given more of an opportunity to recover without being forced to take these awful drugs. Do I think it's constitutional to force drugs on a person in the name of treating their mental illness? It might not be. So far as I know, there is no clause in the U.S. Constitution that takes mental illness into account. Rights should not be taken away without due process. 

Psychiatric drugs can deprive a person of their liberty, their self-directed pursuit of happiness, and sometimes their life (when someone has a fatal reaction to these drugs.) And yet, untreated mental illnesses can deprive a person of the very same things. 

When the U.S. Constitution was created, antipsychotic medication, ECT, and psychotherapy did not exist. There was no need at the time to safeguard the rights of persons with mental illness or, on the other hand, to advocate for our treatment, since, at the time, persons with mental illness became the town drunk or the town idiot, or were in shackles at a primitive insane asylum. 

I know that medications seem to work for me. It apparently isn't practicable or practical to give a choice to a delusional person concerning being medicated. This is a complex, thorny issue that doesn't have a simple answer. We have an imperfect system of government and medical treatment. Any attempt at a solution to protect society's orderliness and people's perceived safety or to protect persons with mental illness from ourselves is going to be imperfect. Mental illnesses are complex diseases. 

To the quandary of involuntary treatment or not, a simple answer isn't appropriate. There is naturally a dilemma to this, and any solution will be unacceptable to someone. The compromise that currently exists, in which persons with mental illness still have some rights, is probably the best that can be done under current social circumstances.


SENIOR POWER:Driven in the ‘golden years’

By Helen Rippier Wheeler
Friday February 08, 2013 - 03:45:00 PM

Studies show that elderly drivers can exercise their brains to prevent or delay age-related declines in their driving skills. Now scientists want to figure out how to apply that knowledge to help retirees preserve driving skills into their “golden years.” A University of Alabama, Birmingham researcher has already demonstrated that brain training does reduce the incidence of crashes among older drivers. 

Automobile accidents are a leading cause of injury-related death in people aged 65-74. Fifteen percent of all licensed U.S. drivers were age 65+ in 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In California there are 5.5+ million drivers over age 55; more than 2.5 million of us are 70+ years old. The California Department of Motor Vehicles’ website Seniors section, “California Senior Driver,” is worth reading.  

Some people contend that all drivers should be required to re-take driving tests (road-tests) when they reach age 75 and periodically thereafter, rather than having their licenses automatically renewed, in addition to the written tests and eye exams that are required after age 70.  

A legislative committee in New Hampshire is taking testimony on a bill that would require elderly drivers to take road tests to renew their driver’s licenses. Rep. Tara Sad (D-Walpole) suggests 85 as the age at which to start. The committee heard testimony from the widow of a motorcyclist killed last year when hit by a car driven by an 87-year-old man; the driver also died. WMUR-TV reports that such crashes have renewed the debate over whether older drivers should have to take road tests based on their age.  

Nebraska state lawmakers may require cognitive testing for drivers 80-years-old and older before they can receive a renewed driver's license. Officials with AARP say there are more than 60,000 drivers 80 and older in Nebraska. That number is expected to rise to nearly 130,000 by 2035. Currently, elderly drivers are required to take a vision test. The cognitive test would also make sure they are alert enough and healthy enough to take to the roadways. One eighty-year old, retired Nebraskan says he's fine with being tested on his cognitive skills. However, he is opposed to the state making the test. "The doctor that takes care of that person is a better judge than any test that the state of Nebraska can come up with."  

Since reaching age 70, I’ve several times been summoned to the DMV to re-take written and eye exams, but not the road test. I make an appointment. I get the current DMV manual. I study the online tutorial. So far, I’ve been able to pass both the eye (with glasses) and written tests without resorting to the re-take option. It is nevertheless a stressful experience. I’ve been relying on my aged VW beetle to get food, books, and meds. When I can’t pass one or both of the tests, I wonder how I will get to the supermarket, library, pharmacy, doctors… 

A physician I’ve known for years has also aged-- mainly a vision problem that precludes any driving. Surveys of physicians, published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, reported 87% of the participating physicians saying they always or often inquire about driving ability if a patient does poorly on an eye exam. Other common reasons were if a patient or family member asked about a driving problem. That I have never been asked about my driving, not even by my ophthalmologist, says a lot! Not so much about me as about the doctors. 

An AAA research analyst says older drivers are more likely to wear seat belts, they are less likely to drink and drive, and they drive slower, making older drivers among the safest on the roads. Driving is a function of ability, not necessarily a function of age, although certain conditions do come with age. Night driving, glare and reading signs are common challenges for older drivers. But the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety contends that too many people continue driving when it is no longer safe for them to do so. As a group, seniors age 80+ have the highest rate of fatal crashes per mile driven -- even higher than for teens. Drivers over age 65 perceive 30% less information from a glance at a scene than do younger drivers, on average, according to a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute research scientist. And as age increases, perception decreases even more.  

In the UK and parts of Europe, but not in the U.S., in order to have a driver’s license, one must be tested for central blind spots. Blind spots at the center of the field of vision, or "central field loss," are usually caused by macular degeneration, damage to the retina that occurs with age. According to a 2004 study, about 1.75 million people in the U.S., most over 65 years old, have this type of vision loss.  

The advanced neovascular, or "wet," form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), left untreated, is the most common cause of vision loss among the elderly and a leading reason for their loss of driving privileges. But results of a new study, published in the online version of the journal Ophthalmology, suggest that monthly injections of ranibizumab (trade name Lucentis) improve eye chart test results required for a driver's license, build driver confidence, and keep those with AMD driving longer.  

“Medical screening of older drivers is misguided because it is not evidence-based,” argues Professor Desmond O’Neill, Consultant Physician in Geriatric and Stroke Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Older drivers raise traffic safety among other generations: the risk of serious injury to children is halved if driven by grandparents rather than parents. Recently, when the Danish government added a cognitive screening test to the medical screening test for older drivers, it did not reduce the rate of older people dying in car crashes but significantly increased the rate of older (but not younger) people killed as unprotected road users – that is, as pedestrians and cyclists!
 

Mercedes-Benz's active lane-keeping assist detects lane markings on the road and warns drivers before they leave their lane unintentionally. Active blind-spot assist uses a radar sensor system to monitor the side areas of vehicles. The Ford Focus park assist can basically park the car itself. New Infinitis can alert drivers to vehicles located in the blind spot area. Such features can be a great albeit costly help for drivers who are physically limited. Lane assist helps if, for example, one has trouble turning one’s head or poor peripheral vision. Wider doors can help with getting in and out of vehicles. One of the simplest of the new features is push-button ignition.  

xxxx  

NEWS  

Concierge medicine is a developing trend in healthcare. It is also known as “boutique medicine,” and some concierge physicians offer their services as “executive health plans” – in other words, health care for the patient who has plenty of money, but not a lot of time to wade through the bureaucracy of the health care system. Market Watch declares that concierge medicine will only get bigger!  

Prosecutors in southern California are going easier on assisted suicide among the elderly. Cases filed under California's assisted suicide law rarely go to trial. Legal experts note that jurors might be torn about convicting elderly defendants they see as legitimately bereaved if not entirely blameless. .  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people age 60+ should be vaccinated against shingles, or herpes zoster, a condition often marked by debilitating chronic pain. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus responsible for causing chicken pox, which stays dormant in the body for 40-60 years, and comes out as a rash. Baby boomers born in the 1950s and 60s are starting to become eligible for the shingles vaccine; many should not skip it, because they probably had chicken pox as children.  

Shingles can lead to permanent pain—post-herpetic neuralgia. Consult your primary care physician about having the shingles immunization shot (which I recommend), regardless of whether they have had chicken pox as a child or herpes zoster as an adult! Chicken pox is more likely to cause complications when contracted in adulthood. While it is typically rare to have chicken pox as an adult, those who do get the disease when they are older account for disproportionately more deaths and hospitalizations from the disease. Adults with chicken pox have an increased chance of such complications as pneumonia, bone infections and even toxic shock syndrome.  

There are currently three main flu strains circulating nationwide. H3N2 is the predominant flu strain. It appears to be especially dangerous for the elderly. Seniors seem to get a weaker boost to their immune system following a flu shot than young people do, a small study shows. Experts say the findings essentially confirm what has been believed: The flu shot does not work as well for older immune systems. But they also caution that the vaccine remains the best defense against flu misery. 

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced three appointments on February 6, 2013 to a newly formed, bi-partisan, long-term care panel that will study the best ways to cover long-term care such as nursing-home stays. Congress created the new board late last year as it formally repealed the CLASS program in President Obama's healthcare law, which was intended to cover long-term care but proved unworkable. Both CLASS repeal and the new panel were part the year-end deal to raise taxes and delay automatic spending cuts. Pelosi chose Bruce Chernof, president and chief executive of the SCAN Foundation; Judith Stein, founder of the Center for Medicare Advocacy; and George Vrandenburg, a philanthropist and former entertainment executive.  

 

 

 


Arts & Events

Updated: Verdi's Il Trovatore at Berkeley's Hillside Club This SUNDAY!! (and Saturday)

Wednesday February 20, 2013 - 06:29:00 PM

Verismo Opera will open its latest production, Verdi’s Il Trovatore,, this weekend at Berkeley’s Hillside Club.

Performances are on Saturday, February 23 at 7:30pm and Sunday, February 24 at 6:30pm . 

The Hillside Club is located at 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley, CA 94709. Tickets will be available at the door for $15-$20, or call (707) 864-5508

CASTS: 

1) Saturday, February 23, 7:30pm 

Conductor: Jonathan Khuner 

Leonora: Vismaya Lhi
Azucena: Liliane Cromer
Inez: Naomi Silva
Manrico: Frederick Winthrop
Count di Luna: Chris Wells
Ferrando: Mark Nelson
Ruiz: Jim Pintner
Old Gypsy: Paul Trombley
Messenger: Cristin Williams
 

2) Saturday, SUNDAY ! February 24, 6:30pm 

Conductor: Jonathan Khuner 

Leonora: Eliza O’Malley
Azucena: Sally Mouzon
Inez: Marsha Sims
Manrico: Frederick Winthrop
Count di Luna: Tristan Robben
Ferrando: Eric Coyne
Ruiz: Andrew Ross
Old Gypsy: Dee Hoover
Messenger: Emma Bo


Around & About Theater: Openings--Inferno Theatre's Premiere of 'My Recollect Time' at South Berkeley Community Church; Central Works' 'The Grand Inquisitor' (from Dostoyevsky')

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday February 19, 2013 - 03:09:00 PM

--Innovative Inferno Theatre will premiere Berkeley playwright Jamie Greenblatt's 'My Recollect Time' in a run overlapping both Black and Women's History Months, with the true story of Mary Fields, a former slave, who after Emancipation journeyed to Montana via the Mississippi River, disguised as a riverman, and of her friendship with Mother Amadeus, a charismatic Ursuline nun. Directed and designed by founder Giulio Cesare Perrone in Inferno's highly visual style of gestural acting, true physical theater. With Nkechi, Valentina Emeri, Jamie Van Camp. Opening Friday at 9 p. m. at historic South Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Southview (just west of Adeline, two blocks south & west from Ashby BART). Thursdays through Sundays at 8 (except Sunday, March 3 at 5), Fridays at 9 through March 9th. $12-$25; two tickets for $20, student tickets for $10 (w/ID) on February 23-25 only. Reservations: infernotheatrecompany@gmail.com; 788-6415 (Jovelyn Richards' KPFA interview with Giulio Perrone: kpfa.org/archive/id/88169 )

 

--Central Works is reviving Gary Graves' unusual adaptation of Dostoyevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor,' the vignette from 'Brothers Karamatzov,' that announces (as per Central Works' release) it's the time of the Spanish Inquisition--& HE has come again ... or has He? Performed by two of the enduring favorites of Bay Area stage, Julian Lopez-Morillas in the title role & Michael Gene Sullivan (of the SF Mime Troupe) as the mysterious stranger who appears on the streets of Seville. Co-founder Jan Zvaifler directs. Opening Saturday; previews Thursday & Friday. Thursday through Saturday at 8, Sunday at 5 through March 31 at Julia Morgan-designed Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant (between Ellsworth & Dana). Reserved seats (online) : $28; $25-$15 at door (sliding scale); previews & Thursdays: Pay What You Can. 558-1381; centralworks.org


Press Release: Seniors Demand: No Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid!

From Margot Smith
Tuesday February 12, 2013 - 10:51:00 AM


Town Hall Meeting - Presidents’ Day

Monday, February 18, 2013 from 1:00 – 4:00 pm

Humanist Hall – 390 27th Street Oakland, CA 94612



On Presidents’ Day local seniors will send a message to Congress -No Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Their Town Hall Meeting will take place Monday, February 18th at 1:00 PM at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland. Norman Solomon, author and, activist will headline the event. Other speakers include Jodi Reid, Northern CA CARA Director; Suzy Young from the California Nurses Association; and Rebecca Griffin of the Peace Action West. The activist singing group Occupella will provide rousing entertainment.
 

The California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) is hosting the Town Hall as Washington gears up for a fight over the federal budget. These local seniors are part of a national drive to prevent cuts to vital programs and provide feasible alternatives.

Donald Goldmacher, producer of the documentary “Heist”, will show a clip from his movie. Goldmacher says: “The budget battle in Congress is the latest installment in the right wing's plan to destroy Social Security and keep wages low. We have documented the attack on Social security as a part of a log-standing strategy to eliminate unions and expand corporate rule of our country."

Social Security adds not one penny to the national deficit. “Scrapping the cap” on annual earnings over $113,700 would make Social Security even stronger. The town hall will also advocate for negotiated Medicare drug prices, a tax on stock and bond trades, and cuts to the military budget. Armed with new information attendees will be calling their representatives and urging friends and family to do the same.

The CARA Town Hall is endorsed by The Alameda County Central Labor Council, Move-On East Bay Council, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, the Gray Panthers, Democratic Socialists of America, East Bay Tax the Rich Group, Bay Area Community Services, Agents for Change, and SEIU 1021 Retirees.


Contact:

Susan Chacin

510 332-8569
schacin@pacbell.net


Parties and Movies Galore:
It's the 15th SF Independent Film Festival
February 7-21
Brava Theatre, Roxie Theatre, Vortex Room in San Francisco

Overview Review by Gar Smith
Tuesday February 12, 2013 - 08:58:00 AM

SF's wonderfully wacky, over-the-top and beyond-the-boundaries IndieFest marks its 15th incarnation with 77 independent films from 17 countries (34 features and 43 shorts). The 15-day-and-night event includes two world premieres, four US premieres and a bucket-list of theme parties, including (appropriately enough) a Quinceañera party replete with DJ Haute Mess (Brass Taxx), live music, an open bar and, of course, a birthday cake. 

 

 

 

 

The Highlights! 

 

 

Opening Night. The festival kicks off February 7th at the Brava Theater (2781 24th St.) with a special screening of The We and the I, the latest feature film from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind). Written in cooperation with a group of real New York high school kids (who play versions of themselves), the film takes place almost entirely inside a bus filled with emotional, angst-ridden students taking the last ride home before summer vacation. One of the wonders is how the filmmakers managed to insert themselves into this moving teen maelstrom without leaving any evidence of the camera crew in the finished product. The US Premiere of Gondry's film will be immediately followed by IndieFest's Quinceañera party. 

 

 

Centerpiece Film. Everado Gout's Dias de Gracis, a big hit at the Cannes Film Festival, is described as "an epic crime drama set in Mexico City against the backdrop of three televised Soccer World Cups." Here's Hugh Jackman's capsule review: "Days of Grace will simultaneously rip your heart out and have your mind reeling long after you have left the theater." 

 

Closing Night Film. IndieFest concludes with a special screening of Joe Swanberg's latest directorial effort, All the Light in the Sky. A full weekend of Swanberg's works is scheduled to screen at the Roxie (3117 16th St.) immediately following the festival. 

 

The Parties! 

The 10th annual Big Lebowski Party will be held Saturday, February 9, and will feature costumes, interactive games, and White Russians followed by a midnight screening of the Coen Brothers' classic film at The Roxie. 

 

The festival presents its annual Roller Disco Costume Party at the Women's Building Auditorium (3543 18th St. at Valencia) on Friday, February 15 at 8:00 PM. Skates Rentals and Groovy Disco Tunes provided by Black Rock Roller Disco. Disco Attire Encouraged! 21 and up, $10 (free with an IndieFest ticket stub). 

 

This year, SF IndieFest hosts not one, but two Valentines Day Sing-A-Longs at The Roxie. On St. Valentines Day, February 14, a Super Secret Sing-A-Long at 7:15 PM will be followed by a 9:30 pm "Anti-Valentines Day" Sing-A-Long with a bonanza of breakup-songs and '80s power ballads. 

 

February 8, 9, 15, 16 will also feature IndieFest after-parties at Mission B.A.G. (Bad Art Gallery) at 518 Valencia Gallery. "The events feature fabulous art curated from only the finest thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales, plus game shows, DJ nights and special film screenings." All parties start at 7:00 PM and last until midnight. 

 

 

The Films! 

IndieFest 2013 includes the World Premieres of Blue Dream (the story of an LA news reporter in the dying days of print journalism who "finds himself adrift in a world that is part Kafka, part Bret Easton Ellis, with an echo of Scientology") and Faceless (an investigation of the plight of many undocumented foreign workers injured in the 9/11 attack and then ignored). Other unusual fare includes Inside Lara Roxx (a porn industry, medical-justice docudrama), The Revisionairies (profiling the surprisingly likeable Texas dentist — who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs coexisted with humans — who was responsible for forcing schoolbook publishers to promote creationism), and the poetic and violent Mexican film Days of Grace

 

There are four futuristic offerings in the mix, three of them comic (Manborg, Ghosts with Shit Jobs, It's a Disaster) and one, Antiviral, a wickedly satirical grim-fest (about a doctor who sells "celebrity illnesses" to extreme fans) directed by David Cronenberg's son, Brandon. 

 

The Festival boasts a heap of New Experimental Short Works from "local legend" Lynn Hershman and newcomer Mary Helena Clark. An evening of "Cults, Manholes & Slide Rail Riders" offers a selection of Local Debut Shorts including Slide Rail Superman, The Muppetless Movie, and the futuristic sci-fi Life internal. And what IndieFest would be complete without a roundup of animated shorts from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US? 

 

 

For lovers of the wonderfully weird, there's The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus (the story of a prescient cephalopod who made headlines with his 100% success rate at predicting the winners of soccer's 2010 World Cup playoffs). Paul Bunnell's "1950's throwback," The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, is "a surreal genre of sci-fi B movies complete with musical numbers, over-the-top dialogue, and hilarious special effects" and Ghosts with Shit Jobs delivers a "futuristic, sci-fi comedy…. a hilarious satire about a generation of Torontonians in 2040 who work dead-end jobs in the future." 

 

For much, much more on the festivities (and, for you party hounds, the feastivities), grab a print copy of the IndieFest program or graze through the cinematic fields waiting online at http://sfindie.org 

 

Here's a sampler of some of IndieFest's fare (and a taste of the flavorful blurbs used to describe them): 

 

 

The Last Elvis 

Armando Bo | Argentina 2012 | 90min.  

Armando Bo’s phenomenal debut tells of a divorced singer who lives as if he were the reincarnation of The King. A factory worker by day and small-time star by night, Carlos "Elvis" Gutiérrez has built his entire life around this borrowed identity. In his shabby, barely furnished apartment, his small-screen viewing consists entirely of Presley concerts and interviews. He insists on calling his ex-wife Priscilla, though her name is Alejandra; their young daughter is naturally named Lisa Marie. 

 

Bound by Flesh 

Leslie Zemeckis | US, 2012 | 91 min. 

The Hilton Sisters were once the highest paid act in vaudeville, yet they never saw a dime. Conjoined at the hip, the "Siamese" twins began their career in carnival sideshows, but went on to become stars of stage and screen, featured in Tod Browning’s Freaks. But, show business can prove to be fickle as the twins struggled in their later years to find work. Leslie Zemeckis' compelling documentary chronicles the ups and downs of Violet’s and Daisy’s lives and careers, from their heyday as America’s sweethearts to their final days as grocery store clerks, shedding light on their unusual bond. 

 

Video Diary of a Lost Girl 

Lindsay Denniberg | US, 2012 | 90 min.  

An eye-popping punk rock horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Charlie was her paramour from the 1920s, whom she accidentally killed before realizing she is a descendant of Lilith, the mother of all demons! This race of women must feed on the souls of men once every full moon, or they will menstruate to death. Now a hundred years later, Charlie returns reincarnated, and Louise must struggle with staying away from the love of her life, or risk losing him again! 

 

The Ghastly Love on Johnny X 

Paul Bunnell | USA, 2012 | 106 min. | 35mm 

Will Keenan (Tromeo and Juliet, Chop) is Jonathan Xavier, a bad boy alien who has been exiled to Earth from the far reaches of outer space with his devoted misfit gang. Johnny's former girlfriend, Bliss, has left him and stolen his Resurrection Suit -- a cosmic, mind-bending uniform that gives the owner power over others. Bliss and her new beau, the ice-cream-slinging sensitive Chip are on the run with Johnny and his goons in hot pursuit of the suit! An epic black and white sci-fi musical spectacle! 

 

Manborg 

Steven Kostanski | Canada, 2011 | 60 min. California Premiere! 

The armies of Hell have taken over the Earth, and all that stands in the way of the villainous Count Draculon and his total subjugation of humanity is a motley lot of misfits seemingly torn from the pantheon of schlock genre-cinema circa the 1980s. There’s an Australian punker, a knife wielding anime chick, a kung-fu master (voiced with deliriously pitch-perfect stoicism by Kyle Herbert, the narrator from Dragon Ball Z), and, of course, the titular Manborg, itself a literal kind of cinematic Frankenstein, both emblematic of pulp sci-fi as obscure as Charles Band’s Eliminators and as broad as Robocop and The Terminator

…[A] cacophony of laser-blasts and comic book ultra-violence [with] an extraordinary barrage of elaborate miniatures, iconic costumes and delirious stop-motion creatures that would have Harryhausen and Tippet try to high-five the ghost of David W. Allen out of sheer enthusiasm. -- Peter Kuplowsky 

 

General Information about SF IndieFest 

Regular film tickets are $10 in advance; $12 at the door. Mission BAG events are free. Roller Disco and Big Lebowski parties are $10. Full-pass Festival tickets are $170; $25 if you are under 21; $90 for a 10-Film Pack; $50 for a 5-Film Pack. 


New: Parties and Movies Galore: It's the 15th SF Independent Film Festival
February 7-21
Brava Theatre, Roxie Theatre, Vortex Room in San Francisco

Overview Review by Gar Smith
Monday February 11, 2013 - 10:19:00 PM

SF's wonderfully wacky, over-the-top and beyond-the-boundaries IndieFest marks its 15th incarnation with 77 independent films from 17 countries (34 features and 43 shorts). The 15-day-and-night event includes two world premieres, four US premieres and a bucket-list of theme parties, including (appropriately enough) a Quinceañera party replete with DJ Haute Mess (Brass Taxx), live music, an open bar and, of course, a birthday cake. 

 

 

The Highlights! 

 

Opening Night. The festival kicks off February 7th at the Brava Theater (2781 24th St.) with a special screening of The We and the I, the latest feature film from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind). Written in cooperation with a group of real New York high school kids (who play versions of themselves), the film takes place almost entirely inside a bus filled with emotional, angst-ridden students taking the last ride home before summer vacation. One of the wonders is how the filmmakers managed to insert themselves into this moving teen maelstrom without leaving any evidence of the camera crew in the finished product. The US Premiere of Gondry's film will be immediately followed by IndieFest's Quinceañera party. 

 

Centerpiece Film. Everado Gout's Dias de Gracis, a big hit at the Cannes Film Festival, is described as "an epic crime drama set in Mexico City against the backdrop of three televised Soccer World Cups." Here's Hugh Jackman's capsule review: "Days of Grace will simultaneously rip your heart out and have your mind reeling long after you have left the theater." 

Closing Night Film. IndieFest concludes with a special screening of Joe Swanberg's latest directorial effort, All the Light in the Sky. A full weekend of Swanberg's works is scheduled to screen at the Roxie (3117 16th St.) immediately following the festival. 

The Parties! The 10th annual Big Lebowski Party will be held Saturday, February 9, and will feature costumes, interactive games, and White Russians followed by a midnight screening of the Coen Brothers' classic film at The Roxie. 

The festival presents its annual Roller Disco Costume Party at the Women's Building Auditorium (3543 18th St. at Valencia) on Friday, February 15 at 8:00 PM. Skates Rentals and Groovy Disco Tunes provided by Black Rock Roller Disco. Disco Attire Encouraged! 21 and up, $10 (free with an IndieFest ticket stub). 

This year, SF IndieFest hosts not one, but two Valentines Day Sing-A-Longs at The Roxie. On St. Valentines Day, February 14, a Super Secret Sing-A-Long at 7:15 PM will be followed by a 9:30 pm "Anti-Valentines Day" Sing-A-Long with a bonanza of breakup-songs and '80s power ballads. 

February 8, 9, 15, 16 will also feature IndieFest after-parties at Mission B.A.G. (Bad Art Gallery) at 518 Valencia Gallery. "The events feature fabulous art curated from only the finest thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales, plus game shows, DJ nights and special film screenings." All parties start at 7:00 PM and last until midnight. 

 

The Films! IndieFest 2013 includes the World Premieres of Blue Dream (the story of an LA news reporter in the dying days of print journalism who "finds himself adrift in a world that is part Kafka, part Bret Easton Ellis, with an echo of Scientology") and Faceless (an investigation of the plight of many undocumented foreign workers injured in the 9/11 attack and then ignored). Other unusual fare includes Inside Lara Roxx (a porn industry, medical-justice docudrama), The Revisionairies (profiling the surprisingly likeable Texas dentist — who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs coexisted with humans — who was responsible for forcing schoolbook publishers to promote creationism), and the poetic and violent Mexican film Days of Grace. 

There are four futuristic offerings in the mix, three of them comic (Manborg, Ghosts with Shit Jobs, It's a Disaster) and one, Antiviral, a wickedly satirical grim-fest (about a doctor who sells "celebrity illnesses" to extreme fans) directed by David Cronenberg's son, Brandon. 

The Festival boasts a heap of New Experimental Short Works from "local legend" Lynn Hershman and newcomer Mary Helena Clark. An evening of "Cults, Manholes & Slide Rail Riders" offers a selection of Local Debut Shorts including Slide Rail Superman, The Muppetless Movie, and the futuristic sci-fi Life internal. And what IndieFest would be complete without a roundup of animated shorts from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US? 

 

For lovers of the wonderfully weird, there's The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus (the story of a prescient cephalopod who made headlines with his 100% success rate at predicting the winners of soccer's 2010 World Cup playoffs). Paul Bunnell's "1950's throwback," The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, is "a surreal genre of sci-fi B movies complete with musical numbers, over-the-top dialogue, and hilarious special effects" and Ghosts with Shit Jobs delivers a "futuristic, sci-fi comedy…. a hilarious satire about a generation of Torontonians in 2040 who work dead-end jobs in the future." 

For much, much more on the festivities (and, for you party hounds, the feastivities), grab a print copy of the IndieFest program or graze through the cinematic fields waiting online at http://sfindie.org 

Here's a sampler of some of IndieFest's fare (and a taste of the flavorful blurbs used to describe them): 

 

The Last Elvis Armando Bo | Argentina 2012 | 90min. 

Armando Bo’s phenomenal debut tells of a divorced singer who lives as if he were the reincarnation of The King. A factory worker by day and small-time star by night, Carlos "Elvis" Gutiérrez has built his entire life around this borrowed identity. In his shabby, barely furnished apartment, his small-screen viewing consists entirely of Presley concerts and interviews. He insists on calling his ex-wife Priscilla, though her name is Alejandra; their young daughter is naturally named Lisa Marie. 

Bound by Flesh Leslie Zemeckis | US, 2012 | 91 min. The Hilton Sisters were once the highest paid act in vaudeville, yet they never saw a dime. Conjoined at the hip, the "Siamese" twins began their career in carnival sideshows, but went on to become stars of stage and screen, featured in Tod Browning’s Freaks. But, show business can prove to be fickle as the twins struggled in their later years to find work. Leslie Zemeckis' compelling documentary chronicles the ups and downs of Violet’s and Daisy’s lives and careers, from their heyday as America’s sweethearts to their final days as grocery store clerks, shedding light on their unusual bond. 

Video Diary of a Lost Girl Lindsay Denniberg | US, 2012 | 90 min. An eye-popping punk rock horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Charlie was her paramour from the 1920s, whom she accidentally killed before realizing she is a descendant of Lilith, the mother of all demons! This race of women must feed on the souls of men once every full moon, or they will menstruate to death. Now a hundred years later, Charlie returns reincarnated, and Louise must struggle with staying away from the love of her life, or risk losing him again! 

The Ghastly Love on Johnny X Paul Bunnell | USA, 2012 | 106 min. | 35mm  

Will Keenan (Tromeo and Juliet, Chop) is Jonathan Xavier, a bad boy alien who has been exiled to Earth from the far reaches of outer space with his devoted misfit gang. Johnny's former girlfriend, Bliss, has left him and stolen his Resurrection Suit -- a cosmic, mind-bending uniform that gives the owner power over others. Bliss and her new beau, the ice-cream-slinging sensitive Chip are on the run with Johnny and his goons in hot pursuit of the suit! An epic black and white sci-fi musical spectacle! 

Manborg Steven Kostanski | Canada, 2011 | 60 min. California Premiere! 

The armies of Hell have taken over the Earth, and all that stands in the way of the villainous Count Draculon and his total subjugation of humanity is a motley lot of misfits seemingly torn from the pantheon of schlock genre-cinema circa the 1980s. There’s an Australian punker, a knife wielding anime chick, a kung-fu master (voiced with deliriously pitch-perfect stoicism by Kyle Herbert, the narrator from Dragon Ball Z), and, of course, the titular Manborg, itself a literal kind of cinematic Frankenstein, both emblematic of pulp sci-fi as obscure as Charles Band’s Eliminators and as broad as Robocop and The Terminator. …[A] cacophony of laser-blasts and comic book ultra-violence [with] an extraordinary barrage of elaborate miniatures, iconic costumes and delirious stop-motion creatures that would have Harryhausen and Tippet try to high-five the ghost of David W. Allen out of sheer enthusiasm. -- Peter Kuplowsky 

General Information about SF IndieFest 

Regular film tickets are $10 in advance; $12 at the door. Mission BAG events are free. Roller Disco and Big Lebowski parties are $10. Full-pass Festival tickets are $170; $25 if you are under 21; $90 for a 10-Film Pack; $50 for a 5-Film Pack.


San Francisco Silent Film Festival Presents an Array of Classics from Cinema’s First Golden Age

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday February 11, 2013 - 03:11:00 PM
Snow White
Snow White
My Best Girl
My Best Girl
Thief of Bagdad
Thief of Bagdad
Scarecrow
Scarecrow
Faust
Faust

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival (silentfilm.org) presents its winter event this Saturday, Feb. 16 at the Castro Theater. The program features a sure-to-please lineup of all-American classics—from the inventive comedies of Buster Keaton to the swashbuckling heroics of Douglas Fairbanks to the charm of "America's Sweetheart," Mary Pickford—as well as one of the towering achievements of German silent cinema by the great director F.W. Murnau. 

The festival starts at 10 a.m. with J. Searle Dawley's 1917 version of Snow White. The screening coincides with the Walt Disney Family Museum's celebration of Disney's 1937 version of the German fairy tale, for it was the silent version that inspired the teenage Walt and helped chart his course for decades to come. Featuring live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin, Snow White stars Marguerite Clark in the title role. 

Snow White will be followed at noon by three of Buster Keaton's early short comedies. Keaton had spent several years as a sort of apprentice to Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, at the time the second most popular screen comedian after Charlie Chaplin. Keaton was Arbuckle's co-star and co-director in a dozen or so short films made between 1917 and 1920. But when Arbuckle graduated to making feature-length films for Paramount, the keys to Arbuckle's old studio were passed on to Keaton, who was determined to put his own stamp on the genre. 

Keaton shelved his first attempt, The High Sign, after screening it for Arbuckle, who laughed uproariously throughout the picture. If Arbuckle liked it that much, Keaton reasoned, it must be too similar to Arbucke's brand of comedy. So he pushed himself harder to come up a fresh approach, and the result was One Week (1920), hailed upon its release as a new and unique contribution to screen comedy. The film contains many of the hallmarks that would characterize Keaton's work for years to come: inventive gags, graceful athleticism, daring stunt work, a fascination with machinery, and of course Buster's stoic, unsmiling demeanor. The Scarecrow (1920) follows in this vein, starting off with a celebrated sequence that shows Buster and his roommate having breakfast in their jury-rigged mechanical kitchen. And The Playhouse (1921) takes Keaton's mechanical interests to the extreme with special effects using multiple exposures of Keaton. Set in a vaudeville theater, Keaton not only takes the role of stage performer, but plays every member of the orchestra and much of the audience. The Keaton program will be accompanied by Donald Sosin on the piano. 

Douglas Fairbanks takes to the screen at 2:30 in perhaps his grandest epic. The Thief of Bagdad (1924), directed by Raoul Walsh, is a two-and-a-half-hour romp, special effect-laden adventure adapted from One Thousand and One Nights. Fairbank's favorite among his films, it was the fourth in a series of swashbuckling adventures that made Fairbanks one of the biggest starts of the silent era. 

Fairbanks had first made a name for himself between 1916 and 1920 with a string of breezy, acrobatic comedies. His ebullience, prodigious athletic abilities and considerable charm were on display in a series of brisk films produced at a brisk pace—four or five a year, sometimes more—in which genial, dapper Doug took on the world with gusto and a good-natured smile. He was the can-do, all-American boy, a variation on the same theme adopted by Harold Lloyd in his own screen comedies. 

His first movie roles were under the direction of D.W. Griffith, the foremost filmmaker of his day. But there wasn’t much room for Fairbanks’ acrobatic and comedic talents in Griffith’s vision of cinema, so he soon set out on his own. In just a few short years he found himself at the top, one of the most universally admired screen actors. And when he fell in love with and eventually married Mary Pickford, the first true movie star, and still, at that time, the biggest, they became the world’s first superstar couple, the pair for whom the term “Hollywood royalty” was coined. 

It was around this time, 1920, that Fairbanks took a new tack. His ambition swelled with the creation of United Artists, an independent company he co-founded with Pickford, Griffith and Chaplin, that would give the artists greater control over the creation and distribution of their work. Fairbanks’ notion was to merge his acrobatic brand of comedy with costume drama. He ditched the modern clothes for period attire, donning the garb of musketeers and pirates. Abandoning the casual spontaneity of his rapid-fire comedies, he followed instead in Griffith’s footsteps, producing fewer films—just one or two a year—with greater production values, more complex plots, more costumes, more sets, more drama. Fairbanks had found a new formula, and he would stick with it for the greater part of a decade, enjoying great commercial success. The Thief of Bagdad, which will feature live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, shows presents Fairbanks at the peak of his career. 

His wife enjoyed a somewhat similar career arc. Her fame came early and suddenly as "The Biograph Girl" in an era when actors were not given screen credit. She, and her director, D.W. Griffith, were nameless employees of American Biograph, churning out a string of short films for the studio. But their talents did not go unrecognized for long as the public clamored to learn their names. Griffith would soon become cinema's most revered director, and Pickford soon became the medium's first star actor. Once the public knew her name Pickford's career was transformed as she took hold of the power that fame afforded her. Before long she was calling the shots, selecting her material and handpicking her directors. The artistry of her films steadily increased and her popularity never waned until new technologies and new popular tastes finally brought the curtain down on her career in the early 1930s. 

The warmth and charm that endeared Pickford to millions is on full display in My Best Girl (1927), directed Sam Taylor, best known for his work with Harold Lloyd, and accompanied here by Donald Sosin on the piano at 7 p.m. The film was Pickford's last silent picture before briefly moving into talkies and then soon retiring as an actress (she continued to produce films for many years). The film might also be seen as a transition in her personal life, for her co-star, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, fresh off the success of Wings, the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, would become her husband in ten years' time, once her fabled union with Douglas Fairbanks finally came to an end. 

The festival closes with the artistry of F.W. Murnau, the great German filmmaker responsible for some the most indelible movies of the silent era. Murnau became one of the premier directors in the world on the strength of such films as Nosferatu, The Last Laugh and Faust, presented at 9 p.m. with live accompaniment by Christian Elliot on the Mighty Wurlitzer. These films had a great impact on American producers and director, and Murnau soon joined the ranks of European directors lured to Hollywood by studios eager to harness the vitality of these artists. Murnau's first American film was Sunrise, which won the first (and only) Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Producton. Faust reunited Murnau with actor Emil Jannings, with whom he had made The Last Laugh. Jannings, as Mephisto, turns in another great performance, drenched in the dark imagery of Murnau's expressionist photography. 

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's 2013 Winter Event 

at the Castro Theater, 429 Castro St., San Francisco. 

silentfilm.org.