Amazon.com, Inc., is advertising for an assistant store manager for what the San Francisco Business Times calls a “bricks and mortar” store to be located in Berkeley.

A source within the University of California administration reports that the store will be located in the new ASUC Student Union building on the University of California at Berkeley campus. 

The person hired, according to the advertisement, “will be responsible for the inventory of all packages, end-to-end flow of packages from when it enters the site to when it is placed for customer pickup; and all outbound processes including customer returns and abandoned packages.” He or she will manage one or two full-time and four to eight part-time staffers at the site. 

The main activity will probably be delivery of products of all kinds which have been ordered from Amazon over the internet. 

A similar facility was started at UC Davis in January of 2014. 

The Sacramento Bee reported that Davis signed a five-year agreement with Amazon in October of 2014 for a co-branded website. Amazon pays the university between 0.5 and 2.25 percent of gross sales, and Amazon has a no-rent campus location where students can pick up their purchases. 

The National Association of College Stores Inc. — a nonprofit trade organization representing more than 3,000 campus retail stores worldwide—sued Purdue University, where an Amazon store opened in Febuary of 2015, in an attempt to learn details of the university’s deal with Amazon, which attorneys said had been disclosed regarding the Davis contract. 

Details of Amazon’s contract with UC Berkeley have not been revealed. 

A call to Kelsey Finn, executive director of the ASUC Student Union, has not been returned. 

 

Two people were taken to a hospital as a precaution after they escaped a two-alarm fire in Berkeley this morning, a fire battalion chief said. 

The fire was reported at 10:29 a.m. in the 2900 block of Ellis Street between Ashby and Russell, according to the fire department.  

Six people living in the two-story home got out safely and firefighters went to work putting out the blaze, according to acting Battalion Chief Brian Evans. 

It took about an hour to get the fire fully under control, but firefighters prevented the flames from spreading to surrounding homes, Evans said. The fire was under control by 11:36 a.m. 

Of the six adults who got out, two had suffered some smoke inhalation and were taken to a hospital as a precaution, according to Evans. The residents are displaced for now and receiving assistance from the American Red Cross. 

The cause of the fire is under investigation. 0239p10/13/15 

CONTACT: Berkeley fire station 2 (510) 981-5520 

 

Copyright © 2015 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. 

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A 47-year-old Berkeley man fatally struck by a San Francisco Municipal Railway bus while bicycling on San Francisco's Market Street Sunday afternoon has been identified by the medical examiner's office. 

Mark Heryer died when he apparently lost his balance and fell off a bike while cycling between two westbound Muni buses in the Financial District, according to investigators. 

The first report of the collision came in at 3:23 p.m. Sunday in the 500 block of Market Street, near Sutter Street, according to police.  

Heryer died when he went under one of the bus tires, police spokeswoman Officer Grace Gatpandan said. 

Gatpandan said police will be conducting a thorough investigation and that officers are reviewing surveillance video and witness statements. 

She said police have not yet made an official decision on who was at fault in the death. 

SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose said the bus driver will undergo drug and alcohol testing and SFMTA officials will be working with police to determine how the collision occurred. 

Video surveillance footage from other buses nearby will be reviewed during the investigation, Rose said. 

Later that same day, at about 4 p.m., a woman was injured when a southbound truck struck her as she was riding a bike at the intersection of The Embarcadero and Chestnut Street, Gatpandan said. 

The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries that are not considered life-threatening, Gatpandan said. 

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition released a statement following Sunday's collisions, expressing their condolences to Heryer's family as well as wishing the injured bicyclist a quick and thorough recovery. 

The coalition called on police to thoroughly investigate the incidents and identify the primary contributing factors in both bicycle collisions. 

"(Sunday's) tragedies demonstrate yet again that our city's elected leaders and agencies owe it to the growing number of people here who bike, and to the families of those who can no longer join them, to redouble their efforts and investments to deliver engineering solutions without delay, expand safety education, and ensure that the SFPD's priorities honor yesterday's tragedies and data through smart enforcement tomorrow," the coalition wrote in a statement. 

SFMTA director of transportation Ed Reiskin expressed the condolences of the agency's employees to Heryer's family and said the SFMTA is committed to Vision Zero, the goal of eliminating all traffic deaths in San Francisco by 2024. 

He said the SFMTA "will work closely with SFPD to ascertain all facts of this truly unfortunate event." 

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Demographic data describing the people Berkeley police stop is now on a city online portal, police announced Friday. 

The portal can be found at https://data.cityofberkeley.info/. 

Police began collecting demographic data on the people stopped on Jan. 26 and the portal contains data from then until Aug. 31, according to police. 

The data includes information for stops police made on vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, police said. 

Berkeley police released some demographic stop data earlier this year after a public records request was made, but those data did not include stops of pedestrians, which can include up to five people. 

Police spokesperson Jennifer Coats said omitting the pedestrian data was a mistake. 

Data on each incident includes the demographics, the incident number, incident type, date, time, and location, according to police. 

Police will record a person's race as Asian, black, Hispanic, white or other. Police are also asking how old a person is and their gender, according to police. 

Incidents are broken into four categories: traffic, suspicious vehicles, pedestrian and bicycle. 

Police said making the data available is an effort to be more transparent and accountable to residents, according to police. 

Police said the data can contribute to the discussion on policing in the U.S., make officers aware of implicit bias and improve residents' trust of officers.

I am not a member of any identifiable minority community, nonetheless, on four separate occasions, I have found myself targeted by weapons held in the hands of armed police.

In 1965, during the Vietnam War, a military guard threatened to shoot me if I trespassed onto the Concord Naval Weapons Station. I told him I was an unarmed peace activist. When a truck loaded with napalm bombs approached, I walked through the main gate and stopped in front of the truck, forcing it to a halt. Fortunately, the young soldier decided not to open fire.

One night, working late in my downtown office, I heard a noise in the hallway. When I opened the door, the hallway lights were out. Suddenly, I was surrounded by three strangers shouting, brandishing weapons, and demanding that I put my hands in the air. They turned out to be Berkeley police. After determining that I was unarmed, they explained that they had received a report of a burglary in progress.

One day in downtown Berkeley, I attempted to take a news photograph of a Brinks armored car guard holding a shotgun as he stood next to the Wells Fargo building. As I looked through my viewfinder, I saw the guard shoulder his rifle and point it in my direction. He shouted a blunt warning: "Drop the camera or I'll shoot."

On another occasion, while leaving Berkeley's Ecology Center late one night, I made a perfectly legal U-turn on San Pablo Avenue. When a nearby police car announced its presence with a siren blast and flashing lights, I realized that I had neglected to turn on my headlights.

Embarrassed by my lapse, I pulled over, parked the car and emerged laughing. I began to offer an apology. "Sorry!" I told the officer, "I know why you stopped me."

I expected to find the driver of the cop car grinning and sharing my embarrassment. What I saw stopped me in my tracks: The police officer was cowering behind the open door of her squad car with her service revolver aimed directly at my chest.

She subsequently explained something about criminal behavior that I was not aware of. "When a police officer stops you," she said, "you are supposed to remain in your vehicle. Only the bad guys get out of the car."

Well, live and learn. (Or, as sometimes happens in these spooked-cop cases, you learn and die.)

The Mindset of the Modern Cop

All of these incidents have something in common: they were all rooted in the presumption that I posed a threat to these officers—even though they were the ones who were armed. 

Isn't it ironic that the most heavily armed members of society seem to be the most paranoid, the most "in fear of their lives"? (I've always been told that having a gun confers a sense of security.) 

While a police department's motto may be "To Protect and Serve," many modern cops are focused on a narrower obsession: to "Enforce Law and Order." 

Perhaps that should read: enforcing "law and orders." 

Increasingly, modern police are trained to expect that citizens must instantly surrender themselves to the commands of a uniformed officer. Failure to comply (or worse, questioning the reason for the stop) is seen as an act of insubordination, a willful act of defiance that immediately escalates the encounter. 

Failure to comply—promptly and without question—gives license for an officer to seize the individual and to throw him or her to the ground, wrenching their wrists behind their backs so they can be handcuffed. (The approach suggests the Pentagon's goal of "full spectrum dominance.") 

Complaints about being manhandled or reacting to the pain by screaming or twisting can provoke the arresting officer to bark, "Stop resisting!"—all the while increasing the pressure and the pain and quite possibly resorting to an onslaught punitive punches. 

In the US, Policing Is All About Domination 

Police officers are not to be "disrespected." You cannot walk away from a police officer. If you turn your back on a police officer, you can expect to be detained, assaulted, tasered or shot. Not because you pose any immediate physical threat to the officer but simply because your attitude is seen as expressing disrespect. (It's one thing to try and ignore an annoying boozer in a bar; it's quite another to try argue with or turn your back on a cop.) 

That may have been part of the story behind what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Granted, Brown committed criminal acts before his fatal encounter with officer Darren Willson. But when Brown was shot, he was reportedly walking away. In other words, he was not shot for what he was doing in the moment; he was gunned down because he had shown disrespect to the officer. Although unarmed and leaving the scene, Wilson could not "let him get away." Instead of waiting for additional police enforcements or arranging to arrest Brown later, Wilson fired twelve bullets in Brown's direction. 

Because the modern police officer must always be the dominant alpha male (or alpha female) in any encounter, every encounter with the public looms as a potential confrontation. Increasingly, municipal police have come to view civilians as uniformly suspicious and potentially threatening adversaries. 

Some of this paranoia may be traced to the growing availability of handguns. It may also stem from the fact that municipal police are increasingly recruited from the ranks of returning combat veterans. In the streets of Baghdad (as in the rice fields of Vietnam), American soldiers found themselves members of an occupying force, strangers in a foreign land, surrounded by men, women, and children who all seemed to pose a potential threat. In a combat zone where the enemy is not identifiable by virtue of a clearly recognizable uniform, every civilian becomes a suspect—every civilian is seen as a potential enemy. 

The World's Policeman 

The United States revels in its self-appointed role as "the World's Policeman." Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Haiti, El Salvador, or Grenada, the American soldier is conditioned to respond to local populations with the same mindset of a cop in patrolling America's inner cities—with suspicion, distrust and callous disregard. These unfortunate foreigners are expected to comply with whatever command an American soldier throws at them. Frequently, orders shouted in a foreign tongue are not understood and people fail to comply or are not quick enough to signal their submission to authority. 

Whether this happens at a checkpoint or inside a home during a night raid, the consequences are frequently tragic. Entire families have been riddled with bullets while driving in their cars or manhandled, beaten and abused in their homes. 

Around the world, the US has soldiers patrolling streets and peering nervously from fortified bases looking for any suspicious activities on the part of the indigenous populations. This is a reflection of a fundamental problem shared with domestic law enforcement—a growing estrangement between the police and the populations being "policed." 

In many cases, police live far from the communities in which they serve. Like soldiers deployed to an unknown country, these officers are an alien presence on the streets they patrol. They are not accountable to the community. They do their jobs and, at the end of their shifts, they turn their backs on the people they are paid to oversee (and occasionally, discipline) and return to their distant homes. 

In the US and abroad, the pistol-packing American Enforcer is viewed with suspicion, anger and resentment. Increasingly, the role of the cop and work of the grunt is the same: to maintain an imposed status quo; to protect "interests" and "assets" at home and abroad, be they banks, oilfields, shipping lanes or freeway on-ramps. (Can you imagine the Pentagon or the police enforcing "human rights" or "environmental assets"? Imagine the US Army assigning soldiers to restore a forest or a city obliterated by US bombs. Imagine US police being deployed to feed the poor or to protect picket lines of striking workers.) The soldier's assignment in foreign lands is a duplicate of the marching orders handed to an urban cop sent into the ghetto to provide "protection." 

The balladeer Phil Ochs clearly saw what America's "Top Cop" looked like to the rest of the world. The soldier was nothing more than a common bluecoat, albeit tricked out with better weapons, but still driven by intolerance and the arrogance that comes with the promise of impunity: 

Come, get out of the way, boys
Quick, get out of the way
You'd better watch what you say, boys
Better watch what you say
We've rammed in your harbor and tied to your port
And our pistols are hungry and our tempers are short
So bring your daughters around to the port
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World . . . 

We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck
And we'll find you a leader that you can't elect
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World . . . . 

We'll smash down your doors, we don't bother to knock
We've done it before, so why all the shock
We're the biggest and the toughest kids on the block
And we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World . . . . 

We own half the world, oh say can you see
And the name for our profits is democracy
So, like it or not, you will have to be free
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World. 

As America's police have become increasingly militarized, the distinction between the cop-on-the-beat and the soldier-on-the-frontline has become blurred. These two once-distinct versions of policing—domestic versus foreign—have begun to merge. People living in America's cities now speak of the police as an "occupying army." At the same time, the Pentagon attempts to dilute its foreign invasions and occupations by referring to them as "humanitarian" interventions and "policing" operations. 

(Note: Under the posse comitatus act, America's military forces are forbidden to operate inside US borders. Recently, however, this 1878 law has been rendered moot by the Pentagon's strategy of "handing down" a largesse of military-grade vehicles and weaponry that has transformed many domestic police agencies into de facto combat-ready armies.) 

According to the September 30, 2010, Pentagon report, "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," the US has exported its troops to 148 foreign countries. The "Base Structure Report, Fiscal 2010 Baseline" lists 662 overseas bases in 38 foreign countries. Former Senator Ron Paul has claimed the US has as many as 900 bases overseas. 

Wherever the Pentagon deploys its forces, it also projects the paranoid mindset of the alpha-male cop. Like the policeman at home, the "world's policeman" must dominate and control the situation. America must be obeyed. Everyone is suspect. Everyone must submit. 

Buffalo Springfield said it well, way back in 1967: 

There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware. . . . 

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away. 

And, like the chorus says: 

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down 

At a recent Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) session in Berkeley considering a proposal to build an 18 story apartment building in downtown ( Sept. 30, 2015), a claque of people called for “market rate housing” as the only way to resolve the current housing crisis. They prevailed over critics of the project.

Let's get something straight. The term “market rate” with respect to housing is not a "standard" or calibration of anything. It is a result. “Market rate” is the effect of other causes. It cannot be used to standardize a social category in the same way the notion “median income” can calibrate a community’s economic potential. Yet “market rate” appears as a number.

As an effect, and though it appears as a number, “market rate” is not an economic term. It is a political term. It refers to a political environment in which price structure is neither regulated nor controlled. That is a political environment because its opposite, rent control and housing regulation, are themselves political acts that relate housing rents and condo prices to residents rather than to landlords. Rent control, affordable housing, and subsidized rent are all attempts to rescue people from the being victimized by artificially high housing costs. They are all political issues, responding to an economic state. When a community calls for a "moratorium" on market rate housing development, as the San Francisco Mission district community has done, it is demanding a political change in the domain of housing. “Market rate” simply refers to that sector of the housing situation that is not under any control or regulation. It refers to what some people are willing to pay for unregulated and uncontrolled housing.

"Affordable" housing ties rent levels to income. It provides, through a government office or program, that a tenant family will pay only 30% of its income for rent. Thus, it stands opposite market rate housing. In Berkeley, the majority of people pay a lot more for housing than 30%. Indeed, tens of thousands of people pay more than 50% of their income for housing. For them, market rate housing belongs to a market to which they have no access. “Market rate housing” is an exclusionary term. And as such, it becomes a form of victimization insofar as housing is a human right and a necessity. To have a job, to get and education, to make use of social services, one has to have a place to live.

What was really at issue in the Berkeley ZAB meeting was economics. There were actually two different versions of economics presented by the two sides at the meeting. They were not only at loggerheads; they showed that they lived in different worlds. 

One side, proclaiming the advantage of “market rate housing,” said, “build the building, we need the housing, there is a housing shortage in this town.” And the other side said, “there is a critical housing shortage in this town. If you build this building, it will get worse.” The first had faith that if market rate housing is built, there would be housing for everybody. The critical side argued that if this building were permitted, it would set a precedent for similar buildings throughout the city, and property values throughout the city would be warped upward, leading to an elevated “market rate,” a shift in commercial infrastructure to higher priced trade, and a general increase in the cost of living. The effect will be that medium and low income families would be driven out of town. If, for the wealthy (executives and technocrats), this constitutes progress, for those on the low side of the income gap, it will mean massive dislocation. In other words, there is no "everybody." 

The Berkeley ZAB voted in favor of the first group, and rejected the arguments of the second. 

A tale of two economies

In this confrontation at ZAB (it was not a debate; real debate is prohibited by the very structure of these hearings), the first group (let us call them the traditionalists) held that merely building many housing units will bring down rent levels according to the law of supply and demand. As supply goes up, meeting and surpassing demand, prices will go down. In some bland innocent way, this means that providing housing for the top of the price pyramid will open up housing at the bottom. It assumes (in some weird trickle-up process) that people paying medium level rent will leave their housing and move up to the new higher rent housing, thus paying more, while leaving their medium rent housing for those who can afford it. One doubts that would happen. To consider it as a norm is probably to suffer from some condition described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. 

The other side (the critics) contended that if housing is built for people at the bottom of the pyramid, namely affordable housing, it will be quickly filled (by the thousands who now pay more than 50% of their income for housing. And that will open housing units for residency at higher rent levels, namely those looking for housing that fits their higher income, who will thus find vacancies. 

The crux of this matter lies in why it is for the most part possible to find developers who will build high income or market rate housing, but not affordable housing. It is this economic fact that makes the traditionalists argument look realistic. But if we look deep inside that fact, we can see how it becomes a form of victimization, with attendant massive dislocations, increases in the cost of living, and general gentrification of the city. 

There are two economic levels to consider, the street level and the financial level. 

When high income housing is planned, speculators arrive and buy houses at above market rates in the knowledge that real estate prices will rise even further. They thus become an early factor in raising the market rate. When the new housing units are built, and rented or sold to high income people, commercial landlords will raise the rent on stores in that neighborhood, forcing out establishments that catered to low income people, in order to create space for stores catering to higher income people. Landlords do this because they can, and will profit from the higher rents they will collect. As commercial prices and real estate values rise, other property values will rise with them, leading to increased taxes on low income people in the neighborhood. Many will begin to sell their houses and move out. Thus, the specific shift from non-wealthy residents to wealthy residents initiated by market rate development becomes generalized throughout that community. Those who need affordable housing (the "everybody") will find no housing available to them; indeed, what housing had been available will have fallen prey to the general rise in rent levels. 

To see how massive the resulting dislocation can be, we have only to look at San Francisco, across the bay. Having built skyscraper apartment buildings with market rate housing, rent levels in that city are now the highest in the nation, and whole communities are suffering from massive evictions, as landlords seek to change the wealth levels of their tenants. In other words, this process will be felt as a disaster by the majority, though not by the wealthy. 

San Francisco is showing Berkeley what its future will look like. But beyond that, what San Francisco gentrification demonstrates is that every rent increase that landlords impose becomes tantamount to an expulsion order, a condemnation to exile. 

Now, let's look at the financial aspect of this, which is what really drives it. In a corporate economy, the law of supply and demand no longer works. When traditionalists invoke it, it is only as a statement of faith. To give an inkling as why this is so, let us consider an iconic statement so often heard from a corporate spokesperson: “we had to raise our prices in order to remain competitive.” Though this makes no sense in terms of supply and demand, it resides at the heart of corporate operations. 

Corporate economics focuses on financial factors, such as securities prices, debt structures and interest rates. Its actual production (goods, services, information, etc.) is wholly conditioned by these factors. The reason is, for publicly traded corporations, that when they finance on-going operations with debt, they generally use their own stock as collateral for that debt (security that the loan will be repaid). As corporations grow and become more complex, more debt is needed to finance operations. It is like the farmer who must borrow money to get through the growing season (to buy food, clothes, tools, etc.) until the crop is harvested and he can pay it back. But this use of stock as collateral means that the corporation’s principle focus must be on maintaining the value of its stock (and other securities) on the stock market. If that value drops, then the value of its collateral does also, a deficit for which the bank will demand restoration (with cash or other securities), or it will call in the loan. This possibility puts the corporation on the brink of a liquidity crisis (unable to pay its wage and salary bill), or in an extreme case bankruptcy. 

Most of the developers that a city deals with are small non-traded corporations (not traded on the stock market) called LLCs (Limited Liability Companies). The LLC form gives developers advantages over a private investor because it can handle risk better, it shields against liability, and it can call upon a wider range of asset forms – property, promisory notes from others, securities, asset acquisitions, contracts, and even itself – to use as collateral for loans. One incorporates to widen the spectrum of assets available to collateralize debt, and banks find it more desirable to deal with corporations than private individuals. Like a publicly traded corporation, an LLC’s primary interest is not in the product (a building) but in the financial dealings it opens up. 

For LLCs, a threat similar to traded corporations impacts them through their debt structure. The primary concern of a development corporation is its ability to recapitalize the project. That is, if the developer runs out of money, he must be able to organize the debt on the project in such a way that someone else will find it attractive (profitable) to buy the building. Some buildings have been sold a few times even before completion. Insofar as the building itself, before and during completion, is a major part of the collateral for bank loans, that recapitalization potential is critical. 

And this is where including affordable housing becomes a detriment. Affordable units are apartments that are regulated by the government to be rented at 30% of the tenant’s income. They not only cut into the profits from full rental of the eventual building, but sale of the building is more complicated (even during construction) owing to government involvement. It considerably lowers the potential for recapitalization. Thus, such a building has more trouble getting bank loans because it presents higher risk (of non-recapitalization). From a corporate standpoint, it is better to avoid including affordable housing (by paying mitigation or in-lieu fees) than including such units and being unable to recapitalize later. 

Now we can decipher that mysterious corporate statement that jettisons the law of supply and demand. When a corporation raises prices for goods or services in our human (retail) economy, it does so to increase earnings. Increased earnings will generally make its securities (stocks, bonds, etc.) more attractive to speculative money on the securities markets, “out-competing” other corporations for those same moneys. The competition to which it refers is not product competition but that on the securities markets. This also implies that this corporate financial structure is what fuels the unending inflation we experience. As speculative money raises securities price levels, it enables greater corporate debt, which also means higher interest payments. That and a rise in underlying asset value (means of production) is expressed in an increase in the price of goods. In other words, it has not been wage levels or union contracts that have driven prices up. It is the corporate debt structure, producing inflation through its need to increase the price of securities. 

Thus, corporate finance stands in opposition to affordability (rent tied to income percentage). And “market rate” housing reflects this corporate inflationary process, rather than a law of supply and demand. If affordability expresses government regulation, corporate operations require regulation to be minimal or non-existent. It is the absence of regulation that allows landlords to raise their rents to whatever level they can get away with. And low income renters are the victims of non-regulation. Only regulation will produce housing that low income families can afford, not development by corporations. Low income people will be housed only through political action – city council attention, neighborhood organization, or political movements to democratize society’s priorities. And that is because corporate interests are alien to human interests, despite the human need for shelter. 

Today, the city has given corporate developers free reign through its mitigation fees, its mismanagement of the Housing Trust Fund (now depleted and unreplenished), and its pro-development commissions. It even threatens our ability to go shopping – one of the impending casualties of development will be Grocery Outlet, which a lot of low income people depend on for their food. 

Gentrification is a result of market rate housing, its natural outcome. Only political regulation of housing, providing housing for everyone by providing housing for low income families first, will prevent the catastrophe of massive dislocation and the destruction of neighborhoods. Regulation is what stands opposite gentrification. In that context, to believe in the law of supply and demand is like believing in Santa Claus. 

Last Monday, the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations reached an agreement on the largest trade accord in history, - the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Negotiations have been conducted in almost total secrecy, bar a few details released from WikiLeaks. It will encompass a staggering 40 percent of the global economy and is generally regarded, if enacted, to be a huge victory for US corporations, especially pharmaceutical companies who will enjoy extended monopolies on their life saving drugs and an early death for those who can only afford the generic versions. In short, TPP will be price gouging at the cost of lives for companies who already enjoy obscene profits. It may very well be described as a reverse Robin Hood or the anti-Christ bill.  

Predictably, it was couched in the usual spin narrative, promising to “promote economic growth; support higher-paying jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty; and to promote transparency, good governance and strong labor and environmental protections”. TPP is a wish list for large corporations fixated on padding their already obscene profits. If the deal is finalized , enacted and implemented, we’re going to see an expansion of the disastrous NAFTA model - gutting environmental laws and workers’ rights and exporting US jobs overseas to workers willing or coerced to working for slave wages.

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.  

This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! 

The deadly American airstrike on the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, run by Doctors Without Borders (DWB), is an absolute travesty. The initial Pentagon statement - that the airstrike may have caused “collateral damage” was grossly insensitive and dehumanizing. The US military has a long history of obfuscation and damage control to deflect accountability. Truth is usually the first casualty following such incidents. General Campbell tripped over his initial story justifying the bombing as a necessary response to protect American lives. He later tried to pin the blame on Afghan forces claiming that they had come under fire from Taliban forces near the hospital. This claim was hotly disputed by Arjan Hehenkamp, director of DWB, who stated there were no fighters near the hospital.  

DWB is one of the most respected NGO’s in the world and in a war of words their account of what happened will surely prevail. DWB provided the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital to the US military to prevent such mishaps. It is a war crime to target a hospital and this appalling incident screams for an independent enquiry and accountability. President Obama also needs to address the larger question of our continuing mission in the mother of all quagmires. What have the American people gained by donating 53% of all their taxes to a perpetual war machine?

Recently, a friend of mine became a US citizen. Now she wonders what she let herself in for: “I don’t understand US politics. Are Republicans crazy? What candidates like Trump are saying makes no sense.” I said, “Welcome to bipolar America. Democrats and Republicans have radically different visions of the US.”

Professor Robert Reich wrote an insightful essay, The lost Art of Democratic Narrative observing “there are four essential American stories:” two about hope and two about fear. In the 2016-campaign cycle, Republicans have seized hold of the myths about fear: “the mob at the gates” and “rot at the top.”

In the “mob at the gates” narrative, “the United States is a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces.” This is a fearful perspective, one that suggests that if Americans are not continuously vigilant we will be overwhelmed by the forces of evil. 

In contrast there is a positive narrative, “the benevolent community,” where “neighbors and friends who roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good.” There are many American examples of this: the New England town meeting, community barn or school construction, volunteer fire departments, and direct-action campaigns managed by the consensus process. It’s a hopeful perspective, one that suggests that if Americans work together we can accomplish anything. 

Last weekend, I was reminded of these contrasting narratives when I saw “The Martian,” a film in the benevolent community tradition: Americans roll up their sleeves to save an astronaut marooned on Mars. One of the previews was for a horror movie where high-school students go on vacation and are attacked by zombies, “the mob at the gates.” 

Feeding on the “mob at the gates” narrative, Republicans have made immigration a huge issue. Donald Trump promises to deport all undocumented immigrants and “build a wall… to keep illegals out.” Regarding Syrian refugees potentially coming to the US, Trump warned, "This could be one of the great military coups of all time if they send them to our country -- young, strong people and they turn out to be ISIS." Trump and the other candidates have coupled their anti-immigration stances with Islamophobia (and a general disregard for people of color). And, of course, guns; Republicans need their guns for protection from the mob (and zombies). 

In contrast, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders support the pathway to citizenship model of immigration reform. Clinton supports broad aid for the refugees and admitting some to the US. This is consistent with the “benevolent community” narrative. (Both candidates deplore Islamophobia and are supportive of the aspirations of people of color; both are for common-sense gun control.) 

By the way, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll indicates that 68 percent off Americans believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the US. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that the Republicans and Democrats subscribe to different narratives because there is a growing body of research that suggests member of the two parties are psychologically distinct: “political conservatives have a ‘negativity bias,’ meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments” and “conservatism is positively associated with heightened [needs] for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity.” In other words, Republicans are driven by fear. 

Robert Reich’s other negative political narrative is “rot at the top:” “It's a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility in high places--of conspiracy against the common citizen.” In the 2015 Republican presidential campaign, outside candidates (Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Donald Trump) have seized on this to castigate their opponents (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, etc.) as part of the traitorous Washington elite. These outsider candidates are running not only against the Obama administration but also against Washington politicians, in general (and some would say, against government in general). Trump’s theme is “making America great again.” He’s said, “Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories anymore.” He leads the Republican candidates in moaning about the US losing to countries like China, Mexico, and Japan. 

Not surprisingly, Trump has his facts wrong. The latest Global Competitiveness Report says the US has the number 3 world economy behind Switzerland and Singapore. Japan is 6, China is 28, and Mexico is 57. (The latest Time magazine ranking of “best” nations shows Germany number one and the US number two.) 

In contrast with Republicans, Democrats have a positive political narrative, “the triumphant individual.” “The little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually gains wealth, fame, and honor.” Leveling the playing field is one of the classic Democratic themes, making it possible for an individual of modest means (like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, And Elizabeth Warren) to become successful. 

No, Americans are not crazy. But we have radically different visions of our country. Democrats are hopeful; Republicans are fearful. Democrats see the US as a beacon of hope in a difficult world; Republicans think we suck. Welcome to bipolar America. 

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

In spite of a well-financed scare campaign, and a not very subtle effort by the European Union (EU) to load the dice in the Oct. 4 Portuguese elections, the ruling rightwing Forward Portugal coalition lost its majority in the parliament, Left parties garnered more than 50 percent of the vote, and the austerity policies that have paralyzed the country for four years took a major hit.

Along with last month’s Greek election, it was two in a row for the European Left. 

While most the mainstream media touted the election as a victory for Prime Minister Passos Coelho’s Social Democratic Party/Popular Party coalition, the rightist alliance dropped from 50.4 percent in the 2011 election to 38.4 percent, losing 28 seats. In contrast, the center-left Socialist Party picked up 11 seats, the Communist/Green alliance 1 seat, and the Left Bloc 13 seats. All in all, the Left went from 40 percent of the vote in 2011 to a little over 50 percent in 2015. 

There are still four seats to be determined by the votes of expatriates, but even if all four went to Forward Portugal, it would still be short of a majority. And given that a flood of young, mostly professional, Portuguese fled the austerity regime inflicted on the country by the “Troika”—the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission—those votes may well end up in the Left’s column. 

The parliament has 230 seats. The Right now controls 104 and the left 121. A majority is 116 seats. 

The surprise in the election was that the Left Bloc more than doubled its representation in spite of the fact that there were three Left parties vying for voters. 

The Right ran endless images of poor Greek pensioners lining up at banks, and warned voters that voting for the Left could result in the kinds draconian measures the EU took out on Greece, but the scare tactics didn’t work. 

The Troika also eased up on Portugal prior to the election, exactly the opposite approach it took in Greece, even though Portugal’s debt is still high and its growth is anemic—1.6 percent this year. Unemployment has come down from a high of 17 percent, but it is still 12 percent, and over 30 percent among youth—those that haven’t emigrated. Out of a population of 10.4 million, some 485,000 young people emigrated from 2011 to 2014. 

In what one leftwing party member told the Financial Times was an “unseemly interference” in the election, Standard & Poor’s upgraded Portugal’s credit rating just two weeks before the election. S&P has long been accused of politicizing its credit ratings. 

Forward Portugal is already backing away from some of its more bombastic attacks on the Left, and Coelho says his coalition would enter into “necessary agreements” with the Socialists in the future. Most commentators think the new parliamentary alignment is too unstable to last long. 

The question now is, can the Left unite to roll back the four years of austerity that has impoverished the country? One in five Portuguese are below the poverty line of $5,589 income a year, and the minimum wage is $584 a month. Portugal has one of the greatest income disparities in Europe—the top 20 percent earn six times more than the bottom 20 percent—and education levels are among the lowest in the EU. 

But much of the Left is not on the same page. Indeed, it did surprising well in the election considering its message was hardly consistent. 

The Socialist Party is still saddled with the fact that it instituted the austerity policies in 2011 when financial speculators in the rest of Europe drove up interest rates on borrowing. Contrary to the Right’s charge, the debt was due to financial speculation, not spending. The Socialists also had a corruption problem, so voters turned to the Right in the 2011 election. 

With an absolute majority in the parliament, the rightist alliance slashed wages, cut back pensions, privatized public property and raised taxes. One of the few checks on the slash-and-burn assault was the Portuguese Constitutional Court, which blocked some of the more onerous austerity measures. 

In this election the Socialists ran against the austerity policies, but the message voters got was mixed: roll back austerity, but abide by EU rules. However, given that it was the EU rules that brought on the austerity, it was a message that voters found hard to decipher. The Socialists were also silent on the debt, a large part of which is of a questionable nature. 

A study by the Committee for a Citizen’s Audit on the Public Debt found that most debt was not due to government spending, but massive tax cuts and rising interest rates. The Committee concluded that as much as 50 percent to 60 percent of most countries debts were “illegitimate.” 

The Left Bloc—which is close to Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos Party—not only opposed the austerity, it demanded debt reduction. Indeed, without debt reduction—a so-called “haircut”—it is unlikely that small countries, like Greece, Portugal or Ireland, can ever emerge from their current economic crises. After years of austerity, Portugal’s debt is still among the highest in Europe. 

The Communist/Green alliance did marginally better than 2011, although the Left Bloc passed if for the first time. The Communist Party has a strong reservoir of respect in Portugal because of its long resistance to the 48-year military dictatorship. It has been a consistent opponent of the austerity policies, but so far it has shown little interest in working with the Socialists, which its leaders say is Forward Portugal light. The Party calls for an exit from the Eurozone, the 19 countries in the 28-member European Union that use the Euro. While some on the Left also want to leave the Eurozone, the Socialist Party is committed to the common currency. 

However, there is agreement scross the Left around privatizations and cuts, and that the crisis in housing, education, and daily life—including food and medical care—has to be addressed. Without a majority, the Right will have to back away from more austerity and plans to privatize some schools and public pensions. 

Does this election have reverberations outside of Portugal? The Wall Street Journal’s headline on the outcome was that it was “a cause for concern” for Spain’s rightwing government, which goes before the voters in about 10 weeks. 

But if there is one thing that the recent election in Greece made obvious, it is that small countries cannot take on the power of the EU by themselves. The European Union is now the single most powerful alliance of capital on the planet, and it is not a bit shy about crushing anything it sees as a potential threat. However, the Troika’s efforts to scare—and bribe—Portugal failed. 

So, what is to be done? 

In the long run, a common currency was a bad idea for everyone but Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the banks, but a quick exit would be like pulling a spear out of your leg—without careful preparations you are likely to hemorrhage to death. While the ultimate goal should be to move away from the euro, the process may take awhile. 

One thing the European Union is vulnerable on is democracy. Being in the EU essentially means abandoning sovereignty. The recently signed agreement between the Troika and Greece says that the former can veto any policy it does not agree with, including anti-corruption legislation aimed at tax scofflaws. Essentially, democracy has become dispensible. 

Syriza and the Portuguese Left successfully made this an issue in their campaigns, and it has great potential to become a pan-European issue. At the same time, there is potential danger with the issue of sovereignty, and the Left must clearly distinguish itself from the xenophobic European Right’s opportunistic adoption of the issue. 

Ronan Burtenshaw, vice-chair of the Irish Congress of Trade Union Youth Committee and Coordinator of the Greek Solidarity Committee in Ireland, has proposed that the European Left look to Latin America for a model. 

Mercosur, the huge Latin American trading block, is the third largest on the planet, but it doesn’t dictate economic policy to its members. The Bolivarian Alliance, ALBA, draws progressive countries into a political and economic union, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States has replaced the U.S. dominated Organization of American States. The Bank of the South offers development loans without the rigid strictures of the IMF and the World Bank. 

Latin America is a counter to the European mantra that “there is no alternative” to economic crisis and debt but austerity. Each country in the region developed its own way of turning away from the market-driven, austerity laden “Washington consensus” that blitzed economies from Brasilia to Santiago during the 1980s and ‘90s. And the Left played an important role in establishing continent-wide political and economic connections, specifically in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia. 

There are, of course, differences. Many in the European Left contrast Argentina’s successful replacement of the dollar with the peso and its refusal to service its debt with Syriza’s acceptance of the Troika’s demands. 

But Argentina is a big, powerful country, self-sufficient in energy and food. Greece—or Portugal or Ireland—is neither. And while Argentina had support from other countries in the region, Greece stood alone, even from parties like the French Socialists and the German Social Democrats. 

Somehow the Left will have to chart a perilous passage between resisting austerity on one hand, and not committing suicide on the other—or rather, allowing the Troika to impoverish its base even more than it currently has. How that will happen is hardly clear, but solidarity is its essential ingredient, along with a willingness to work with others. 

The Left will have to persuade or pressure center-left forces to abandon their romance with the euro and confront the social crisis created by austerity. Social democratic parties should take note that moving to the right does not translate into political power. Syriza smoked the center forces in Greece, and the Left Bloc made the biggest gains in Portugal. 

To a certain extent, this process is underway with the election of long-time leftist Jeremy Corbyn to head the British Labor Party. 

In his speech at the Fete de la Rose this past summer, former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, told the Socialist Party gathering that what the Left in Greece had done was to give Europeans “a sense that democracy can change things.” Portugal was another step on that path, with Spain due up in December and Ireland in April. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 1, 2015, ten people were killed and another seven injured after Christopher Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old gunman, opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon. Harper-Mercer then took his own life. President Obama vowed to continue pushing new gun policies that he said would prevent further mass shootings. Will this mass killings be a tipping point resulting in passage of reasonable federal gun control legislation? Probably not. 

But in this violent nation of ours, there seems to be a disconnect between our Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms” and the number of mass killings in this country. Americans with guns kill thousands of fellow Americans each year. And remember, the right to bear arms is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices. 

And gun control does work. A recent study found that states with higher rates of firearms in the home have disproportionately big numbers of gun-related homicides. The findings suggest that measures to make guns less available could cut the rate of killings. 

It took the the December 2012 killing of 20 children and seven adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School to reach a tipping point, causing reasonable gun control legislation to be proposed at the federal level. However, Congress failed to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Other legislation failed to pass, including tougher laws on straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking, efforts to increase school safety, keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, universal background checks, and restrictions on the size of magazines so as to reduce the number of bullets that can be fired before reloading is required. 

Two years after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, a study in Preventive Medicine found large majorities of Americans continue to support a range of gun violence prevention policies.  

Will the Oregon killings be another tipping point, providing the impetus for actual passage of reasonable gun control legislation at the federal level? Certainly, there will again be calls for federal gun control legislation, but unfortunately such efforts will probably be doomed because too many members of Congress are overly protective of the Second Amendment or are obligated to the NRA lobby, in tandem with gunmakers and importers, military sympathizers, and far-right organizations. 

And after all the sound and fury is over, the cycle of killings, hand wringing and mourning will likely continue ad infinitum. Or as Presidential candidate Jeb Bush remarked, "Stuff happens" and by implication, will continue to happen, until citizens wrest control of Congress from the National Rifle Association.

This week's column will contain some discussion of intangible things. Consciousness isn't something you can pick up and hold in your hand, look at under a microscope, or poke and prod with physical tools. Yet, physical things affect consciousness. Consciousness also has characteristics and parts to it that people can learn to describe.

What you eat, how much exercise you get, the levels or types of stimuli in your environment, and the biochemical composition of your nerve cells and synapses are some of the physical things that affect consciousness. Around whom you spend your time affects consciousness. Do you live with a "complainer"? Do you live with an abusive individual? Or, do you live with someone more uplifting?  

For people on psychiatric medications, we are more vulnerable to incorporating things people to say directly into our thoughts. Medication makes previously psychotic people malleable. Psychotherapists sometimes make use of this. 

Focusing on your physical surroundings can bring your mind out of the abstract and into a more basic state of mind. This is usually a good thing. Focusing on what needs to be done in the "now" moment and, at least on an emotional, level blocking out worries about the future, as well as blocking out painful memories of the past, are strategies that can bring you away from an abstract and painful reverie and into a more focused mode.  

Being psychotic could mean that our mind is way out on a limb of abstraction. This is to the extent that we mostly disregard the five physical senses. We are less likely to be psychotic if the mind is focused on our immediate surroundings and if our consciousness is focused in the present moment.  

If in treatment, a good movie can be the final straw that brings you out of psychosis, and back into a state of tracking what most people would call reality. If the movie grabs you and brings you into its plot, it substitutes for the internal "movie" of the psychotic world you have been living in. Then when the actual movie is over, you are back into the room, and you might feel good enough and relaxed enough that your mind snaps back into the immediate world as conveyed by the senses.  

On the other hand, if not in treatment, and if very far into psychosis, a movie may not help--one may incorrectly believe the movie is conveying messages. Most people who are severely psychotic (and not yet in a mode of recovery) probably could not sit through a movie. Or, perhaps we would not be in a position of watching one in the first place, because we are too stuck in the problematic circumstances that often accompany being psychotic.  

For a reasonable bystander, it won't help to confront a delusional person concerning his or her illusions, unless he or she is already beginning to return to reality. But it probably doesn't hurt to try, so long as the person with whom you are dealing is not potentially assaultive.  

Medication may partly work by making us more suggestible. It may also work by increasing the neurological priority of one's surroundings and decreasing the neurological priority of internally generated stimuli. Someone with acute symptoms of mental illness isn't good at listening.  

On the other hand, a "mental health consumer," when in treatment, tends to lack defenses. Defenses are fine if you are maintaining an accurate picture of your environment. If the material in your mind is inaccurate, you are better off if people can get through to you. 

Trying to reason with someone presupposes that the individual is listening, that their mind is functioning, and they are willing to listen to reason. (Speaking other than of mentally ill people: If you are dealing with a potential assailant, it is foolish to appeal to their higher sensibilities or their conscience, as they may have none.) 

There is an extraordinary number of states of consciousness the human mind can have. This week's essay scratches the surface of some of the things people's consciousness can do. The mind can be "grounded" in which case the person is aware of his or her surroundings, is engaged in reality, and is practical and mostly accurate in his or her thinking. Or the mind can be unanchored, distant from the senses, and we may not be making sense. Medication may do part of the job of bringing us back to home. However, once medicated, we are only at the beginning of what is potentially a long journey in the quest for mere clarity.  

*** 

Many thanks to those who have bought copies of my self-published books--especially to someone in England who purchased 30 copies of my self-help manual. I expect to release newer, better books within the next year. I might soon discontinue the one titled, "Jack Bragen's Essays on Mental Illness" (which is simply an anthology of the first year of this column). So get your copy while you still can! 

 

 

The California Department of Public Health says bedbugs are parasitic insects that feed on the blood of mammals and birds; they live in mattresses, bed linens and headboards, walls, flooring and other furniture. But they are not considered a public health hazard because they do not spread disease. They are considered a nuisance, however, and should be removed by licensed pest control operators. They feed at night. It is claimed that most people do not feel their bites. They might, however notice itchy welts that appear immediately or a few days later. And they might lose their housing…

The public health community’s laissez-faire attitude is attributable to the experts who say bedbugs are not disease-carrying pests. But the tiny vampires, which feed on human blood, surely cause health-related problems if left unabated — chief among them mental, physical and economic anxiety. 

There is a common misconception that bed bug infestations occur only in poorly constructed and poorly maintained buildings with unsanitary conditions. Not so. Modern construction has aided the spread of infestations by enabling bed bugs to move from room to room via central heating and air conditioning ducts, which in rental facilities may not be regularly and thoroughly cleaned.  

Bedbugs have recently been reported by several area public libraries, and libraries across the country are scrambling to deal with the problem of bedbugs hiding out in their books and then being spread to patrons’ homes, especially when they read in bed. Bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. One Long Island exterminator told the New York Times that he has had hundreds of clients buy a portable heater called PackTite to kill bedbugs, baking any used or borrowed book as a preventive measure before taking it to bed. Libraries are also ordering the devices, as well as a bedbug heat-treatment box called a ThermalStrike.  

The Berkeley Public Library’s North Branch reported that bedbug-sniffing dogs identified the possible presence of bedbugs in the downstairs men’s restroom, underneath the desks of the public computer area, and in a chair in the reading room. No books or library materials appeared infected, according to a BPL press release. The American Library Association considers bedbugs a media problem.  

The Ohio Long Term Care Ombudsman says more than 50 people were forced to move out of their homes due to related health code violations. Residents of an assisted living facility received notice that the owner was closing its doors. The State of New York now has a law requiring landlords to tell prospective tenants about bedbug infestations. 

Stockton, California seniors have complained of bedbug infestation. A California Bedbug Registry is at http://bedbugregistry.com/location/CA/ 

Bedbugs are equal opportunity perpetrators. They go everywhere and attack anyone – college dormitories and apartments, classy and low down hotels, assisted living facilities, senior housing… They want blood. Why now, especially? For one thing, the drought has curtailed their water supply. But their population has jumped by 500% in the United States in just the last few years.  

Reporters and even researchers declare bedbugs are not dangerous and not a particular problem for senior citizens. Nay nay, say I! Contrary to popular perception, bedbugs do pose a public health issue for senior citizens, especially those renting in low-income housing. 

Recommended current reading 

“Flu shots for adults under 65 may boost protection for seniors,” by Joan Stephenson (Reuters, Sept.17, 2015). 

“Five wildfire deaths highlight vulnerability of isolated seniors in disasters,” by Lee Romney (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 19, 2015). 

“Berkeley community members, government officials talk affordable housing for elderly,” by Alok Narahari (Daily Cal, Sept. 23, 2015) . 

“End of Life Option Act opens important conversations about dying,” by Bill Monning (San Jose 

Mercury News, Sept. 25, 2015). This is an Opinion piece. 

"California wildfires left the disabled in peril," by Lee Romney (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28, 2015).  

"Longtime teachers' pensions are well earned," by Michael Hiltzik (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 26, 2015). 

"Elderly drivers: Should they undergo road tests to keep licenses?" by Matthias Gafni (Daily Democrat_ [Woodland], Oct. 4, 2015). 

"Gov(ernor). (Jerry) Brown signs controversial assisted-suicide bill," by Patrick McGreevy (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 5, 2015).  

"(Governor) Jerry Brown signs end-of-life bill," by Nanette Asimov (San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 5, 2015). 

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Correction: The August 19, 2015 Senior Power column stated “Eleven states have adopted constitutions or constitutional amendments providing that equal rights under the law shall not be denied because of sex.” It should read twenty-three states. Only a federal Equal Rights Amendment can provide U.S. citizens with the highest and broadest level of legal protection against sex discrimination. However, the constitutions of 23 states – Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming – provide either inclusive or partial guarantees of equal rights on the basis of sex. For more in depth information about State ERAs go to: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/faq.htm#q7 

 

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The NEBA Board invites you to participate in a conversation with Dee Williams-Ridley who was recently appointed as Interim City Manager following the sudden and unexpected departure of Christine Daniels to the City of Oakland. 

Ms. Ridley had been a Deputy City Manager in Berkeley for seven months since leaving that position in Modesto. 

She steps in at a particularly turbulent time in our City, with the departure of numerous department heads and a dramatic 40% decrease in infrastructure spending. Ms. Ridley has a lot on her plate, including: a boom in controversial new buildings in Berkeley without the community benefits many anticipated; demands for an increased minimum wage in Berkeley to $19/hour and for more affordable housing; an increase in the homeless population with no effective mitigation plans; and a demand by the NAACP to set up an entirely new City department to address racial issues. In addition, many city employees recently received substantial salary increases (up to 7%), and it is unclear how this will impact overall City spending and budget choices. Are we to expect more cuts to city services and increased taxes? 

Please join us for this important meeting. THURSDAY, October 22, 2015, 7PM PARLOR, Northbrae Community Church 941 The Alameda (at Los Angeles) 

(Come early, mingle with your neighbors 6:30-7:00 p.m.)

--Berkeley Symphony will play its first concert after Summer break this Wednesday, October 14, instead of the usual Thursday evening time, with Joana Carneiro conducting Berlioz's Les Nuits d'ete (in remembrance of summer nights gone by ... sung by soprano Simone Osbourne), Laterna Magica by Kaija Saariaho and Ravel's flamboyant Bolero. all at Zellerbach Hall, on campus near Telegraph and Bancroft.

(Saariaho and her French composer husband Jean-Baptiste Barriere are in residence at UC Berkeley, and will attend the concert. This month, a parade of Saariaho's music will be presented in concert around the Bay Area. Details at: berkeleysymphony.org )

And the Symphony is offering a special two-fer ticket deal for this program--buy one full-price ticket, enter (or say) the code MAGIC15, get one for free. Tickets: $15-$74. 841-2800x1 or berkeleysymphony.org

--The Philharmonia Baroque struck up the opening of Scarlatti's rare Glory of Spring serenata The Glory of Spring in the First Congregational Church last Sunday, dedicated to a new heir to the Imperial throne in Vienna, hopefully bringing peace to Europe after years of warfare over succession--and the seasons themselves decried the violence and praised the newborn who'd hopefully keep the peace ... "May we never again hear the martial trumpets sound ... War no longer batters the land ... Our heroes wear the olive leaves of peace." 

For the orchestra, it was the first occasion of celebrating music director and conductor Nicholas McGegan's 30th anniversary season with Philharmonia--and it was typical enough of McGegan's longtime, often audacious programming, a little-known work by a great master, unperformed for three centuries. The guest vocalists--soprano Suzana Ograjensek, mezzo Diana Moore, countertenor Clint van der Linde, tenor Nicholas Phan and baritone Douglas Williams--brought much vocal power and finesse to this long (over two hours) and expansive work, accompanied at times by members of the Philharmonia Chorale, constantly reaching for more, while the orchestra played its sometimes unusual and innovative passages, its twists and turns, with brilliance. 

In the Chronicle, Joshua Kosman praised the orchestra and the ladies, especially Moore, but was more conservative about the men, remarking that van der Linde seemed to have problems with the score and praising Phan's singing more in the (admittedly finer) second half, hinting that he'd bordered on bathos in the first. 

In many ways enthusiastic about the work, Kosman criticized it for being egregiously unctuous in its praise for contemporary tastes, touching here on similar ground, perhaps, as an old complaint of Orson Welles about playing Shakespeare: "Americans think a king is a gentleman with a crown instead of a hat," regretting its lack of dramatic quality (though praising Williams' spirited, head-tossing entrance as Jove, gussied up in tux, black tie and pink breast pocket hankie) and that Scarlatti had never reworked the piece--especially after its dedicatee died just months later, eventually setting another war of succession into motion. 

In any case, the Berkeley audience last Sunday gave the performance a long ovation. There was something ravishing about a sumptuous Spring serenade of such proportions performed after three centuries in beautiful Fall weather, also expressive of a deep clarity of intention ... 

There's another chance to hear it: tonight, at 8, back at First Congregational, on Dana between Durant and Channing, near the UC campus, after making the rounds of Stanford and Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. It's something very much worth the time--and a good harbinger, if not of peace in the wars of its own period, of a fine season of celebration for the Philharmonia and Nic McGegan. 

Tickets: $25-$105. philharmonia.org

Join us at 7:30 Sunday evening, Oct. 18 at Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley for the latest crop of new music from the East Bay. Visit http://sonicharvest.org for details.