In the biggest climate related protest in the Bay Area to date, thousands marched in Downtown Oakland calling for real climate leadership and a ban on fracking. -more-

On Thursday night Berkeley police were searching for a vehicle involved in a drive-by shooting, with a helicopter audible all over the Berkeley flats . Multiple 911 callers reported shots in the area of Bancroft Way and Bonar Street around 9 p.m., according to Officer Jennifer Coats. -more-

There is an old saying: If you want to make a killing in the stock market, hire a financial advisor who is a good Marxian economist. [[[FACT CHECK: There is no such saying.]]]

That "classic" saying is not pithy but it is sound advice. It is the job of Marxian economists to understand capitalism better than capitalists themselves. If anyone can show how to resolve a systemic crisis of capitalism, and rescue capitalism from itself, it is a good Marxian economist.

The large minority of the Greek people have placed SYRIZA in power. With this move they have gotten themselves a Finance Minister who is a very good Marxian economist: Yanis Varoufakis.

Many press accounts of the situation unfolding in Europe are confused and distorted, some out of genuine confusion, others out of an attempt at, let's call it, "bourgeois spin". This article very briefly attempts to paint a clearer picture. (Sources are acknowledged at the end.) -more-

Last week Bay Area stand-up comic W.Kamau Bell created a minor flap by blogging about the way he was dissed by Berkeley’s Elmwood Café. In brief, his wife and some women friends were lunching at a sidewalk table outside the restaurant while he was at the bookstore next door.

He approached them with a book in hand which he’d just bought and wanted to show to his wife. From the inside of the café, an employee tapped on the window and motioned him to go away, twice, accompanied by a scowl and some sort of verbal chastisement.

An odd story, and why should we care? Here’s why: Bell is Black, and everyone else in this story is white. And he’s a good storyteller: here’s the account on his blog. He makes the case, convincingly, that if he were a white husband speaking to his wife the café worker wouldn’t have gone after him as she did. -more-

I agree that both marijuana and tobacco smoke are extremely harmful to lungs, and I am not advocating ingesting either substance through smoking or otherwise.

The mentally ill people I have met who smoke seem to be far more enslaved to this addiction compared to those in the general population, many of whom have quit years ago. Non-smoke ingestion of tobacco such as nicotine patches and gum--none of them are very effective as an alternative to inhaling cigarette smoke when someone is both mentally ill and a nicotine addict.

I tried, at your suggestion, to find studies on the UCSF website that agree with your conclusions, and found that UCSF is strongly opposed to tobacco use, a perfectly valid stance. However, I was unable to locate the actual studies to which you referred. -more-

Putin has become the new whipping boy, the new Saddam Hussein, the piñata beaten by the US media onto the march to a new proxy war with the big bad wolf, Russia.

Gorbachev is right - we have started a new Cold War encircling our old nemesis with military bases and missiles and vilifying Russia for any resistance. We have encouraged a coup in Ukraine, a coup that is wildly anti-Russian, and deeply hostile to the welfare of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who have lived there for centuries.

The separatists are not fighting in Kiev, but the Ukrainian military is fighting and killing ethnic Russians. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the Ukrainian military of committing war crimes. -more-

I am writing to you to proudly announce the opening of a new small size store in Berkeley in a location that brought much trouble and problems to a quiet neighborhood in Berkeley. -more-

Editor's Note: The latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times is now available.

You can view it absolutely free of charge by clicking here . You can print it out to give to your friends.

Grace Underpressure has been producing it for many years now, even before the Berkeley Daily Planet started distributing it, most of the time without being paid, and now we'd like you to show your appreciation by using the button below to send her money. -more-

Many persons with mental illness have more than average difficulty taking care of teeth. Since almost everything in life is harder for a mentally ill person compared to non-afflicted people, it follows that it is harder for us to have good oral hygiene. -more-

If you watched the Super Bowl, you probably noticed a bland McDonald’s commercial. It was part of their campaign to strengthen their brand. Too bad liberals didn’t run a commercial because they need to rebuild their brand. -more-

Health, Housing, and Transportation are three huge concerns in the lives of many old people today… some would say the three, especially so-called low-income seniors. Five years ago, when I began the Senior Power column, I said I would focus on them.

The Berkeley Commission on Aging (a part of city government) held a Special Meeting on Sunday, November 9, 2014 “to seek public comment and broad community input on issues of health, safety, housing, transportation, communication, economic opportunity, ongoing education and community involvement.” The minutes are available online at the City website, or contact Leah Talley, Manager of Aging Services, at 1901 Hearst Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709, phone (510) 981-5178.

The Gray Panthers (not a governmental agency) met on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at the North Berkeley Senior Center. The speakers’ focus was housing. The meeting attracted the largest attendance in a long time. Julia Kato, of the Berkeley Tenants Union, moderated. -more-

I cannot help but reflect on the ongoing ebola epidemic in West Africa when reading about the recent outbreak of measles due in large part to an anti-vaccination sentiment. -more-

The title of Mary Dore's spirited fem-doc throws a nice jab at a bit of chauvinistic jiu-jitsu that still haunts the English-speaking world. Truth to tell, an angry woman is anything but beautiful. In fact, the sight of an angry woman can be terrifying. Any man who has ever hoped to defuse righteous female anger with this tone-deaf compliment deserves every facial bruise that may come his way.

Director/Producer Dore's film comes to the big screen after scoring rave reviews in the festival circuit (including the Audience Award at the Boston Independent Film Fest). The film arrives at a critical time in America, when many of the rights won by women's struggles since the 1960s are either being threatened or reversed by neocon governors and the insurgent extremists in the Halls of Congress.

She's Beautiful focuses on the birth and development of the women's movement between 1966 and 1971 and tells its stories through a feast of interviews with more than 30 members of the long (and still continuing) campaign. Among those interviewed: Fran Beal, Heather Booth, Rita Mae Brown, Susan Brownmiller, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Muriel Fox, Jo Freeman, Kate Millet, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Trina Robbins and three Berkeley luminaries, Alta, Susan Griffin and Ruth Rosen. -more-

Two plays by Catherine Treischmann, a younger American playwright whose work's been staged Off-Broadway, around the US and in London and received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep and the Denver Theatre Center, will have their Bay Area premieres by two separate theater companies in Oakland and San Francisco this month. -more-

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra musical director Nicholas McGegan will conduct the Orchestra, the Philharmonia Chorale (led by Bruce LaMott) and soloists soprano Sherezade Panthaki, countertenor Clifton Massey, tenor Brian Thorsett and baritone Jeffrey Fields in the program The Cousins Bach, with choral works by Johann Sebastian's cousins Johann Ludwig Bach: Trauermusik (Mourning Music), in three parts (funeral music with setting from the Book of Psalms, brisk cadences--an inspiration for J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion), Johann Christoph Bach: cantata: "Herr, wende dich und sei mir gnädig"--and a G. P. Telemann sinfonia from Schwanengesang. -more-

Phillip Greenlief, excellent Oakland saxophonist and woodwinds player, maybe best-known locally for his 20 years and counting with The Lost Trio, who has collaborated with many fine improvisors, will be reunited onstage at 9 p.m. Thursday, February 12 at Berkeley Arts Festival with the brilliant Provençale double bassist Joëlle Léandre, who has played with a great range of international musicians and performing artists, from Pierre Boulez and John Cage to Steve Lacy and Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey, some of whom have written music for her. The duo put out a CD on the Relative Pitch label in 2009, That Obscure Desire of Object. Opening at 8 will be trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj from Beirut. -more-