The Zoning Adjustments Board meets on Thursday May 12 for a public hearing on a controversial 170 unit apartment building at 1500 San Pablo Avenue between Cedar and Jones. The meeting starts at 7 PM at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way; impacted neighbors as well as West Berkeley residents should attend this important meeting, as the project could set a precedent for San Pablo Avenue development. 

Last year, the permit application for the massive five story building with adjoining town houses elicited a protest petition by Move-on which stated the project was “highly incompatible and would adversely affect the surrounding area” and garnered 87 signatures to date. However, nothing happened until an architect living and working in the neighborhood attended the project’s second design review in December and began to consider ways to lower the top-heavy mass while retaining the number of units, the density bonus calculation, and the developer’s rights to a fair return on investment. The project will provide 15 units available to very low income residents. 

His efforts resulted in the creation of a committee involving other architects and neighborhood activists, who met with City staff and began direct communication with the developer and project architect, which are ongoing. Although the staff report recommends approval, the committee is hopeful that the complexity of the original and alternative plans will result in ZAB voting to continue the public hearing, which would allow for further discussions regarding the proposed modifications. 

Dig It!

The alternative literally rests on a different foundation that increases the excavation and allows for a full floor of residential underground parking and another subgrade floor that includes the commercial parking. The resulting residential garage is easier to navigate and provides more parking spaces than the original proposal. With parking rents “unbundled” from unit rents, any unused parking area could be devoted to other purposes in a flexible arrangement. 

The entire 5th floor residential area would be moved down to the ground levels to become desirable garden apartments, adjoining a courtyard with trees that can be planted in the ground, not in pots. This new garden courtyard would be shared with the townhouses, creating a family friendly space. A reduced fifth floor would be devoted to attractive and shared amenities including a gym and outdoor roof garden and lounges, no longer be squeezed between air conditioning units. 

Lowering and reducing the top floors would create more natural light for the wider central courtyard and the apartments at the bottom of the well, which would be deprived of direct sunlight in the current layout. 

The cost of the additional excavation of 5000 cf. - estimated between $200 to $450K, less than 2% of the total project expenses - would be offset by the simplification of the overall layout and related construction efficiencies. All utilities would be accessible under the commercial spaces. Another cost saving would be reduction of the 5th floor and elimination of construction at the west courtyard. The architects believe that the reduced building volume in their alternative is a better utilization of enclosed space and that their concept would not cost more to build. 

In addition to the architects’ alternative plan, the neighborhood supports the placement of traffic bollards on Jones Street that would direct traffic exiting the project away from adjacent neighborhoods and onto San Pablo Ave. 

We urge you to support the proposed modifications by attending the ZAB meeting. 

 

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Toni Toni Mester is a resident of West Berkeley. 

Northern and southern Europe come together in a not totally comfortable way in the design of the newly expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which will open on May 14 after a three-year closure. The new addition designed by Snøhetta, a firm which originated in Norway but now operates out of New York, is attached to and behind the original building designed by the Italian Swiss architect Mario Botta. 

Botta established his reputation through the designs of elegant country villas in the pre-Alpine Swiss canton of Ticino. His buildings are characterized by their carefully detailed red brick exteriors and frequent use of bilateral symmetry. Snøhetta is perhaps best known in the United States for their National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the edge of the World Trade Center. Like their earlier Oslo Opera House, this museum is the antithesis of symmetry or for that matter right angles. Everything but the floor planes seems to be leaning. At the opera house even the roof plane becomes a great sloping and accessible plaza. One wonders what SFMOMA was trying to do when they invited these Nordic designers to add to their original museum in such a different idiom. Botta’s villas seem to come directly from a classic Palladian tradition. Snøhetta’s designs are steeped in irregular natural forms (see their website, snohetta.com, or think of an Alvar Aalto vase). 

The original Botta building, on Third Street facing the open space of Yerba Buena Gardens, is a rigorously symmetrical ziggurat of red brick surmounted by a truncated cylindrical skylight, which, despite San Francisco’s skyscraper boom, can still be spotted from parts of the elevated freeway to the south of downtown. The street entry leads into a multi-story atrium under the skylight. 

The new addition is behind the existing museum on an interior parcel which has a small frontage on Howard Street. It consists of a series of stacked rectangular galleries big enough to more than double the museum exhibit areas and to show off the recently acquired Fisher Collection, which is so large that entire galleries are named for one artist (Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Ellsworth Kelly). Above these public galleries are several floors for museum administration.  

On the exterior of the addition Snøhetta has clad what is basically a stack of boxes in a curvy wall of panels made of pale gray fiber-reinforced plastic. The walls are said to be inspired by San Francisco’s fogs and the bay area’s rolling hills. The cladding gives no clues as to what is going on inside, but then, it is hard to see the new building from street level; the best view is probably on the museum’s website. Nonetheless, comparison with the exterior appearance of two recent New York City museums with similar high-rise programs is inevitable. The New Museum in the Bowery piles its windowless galleries one above the other and slightly out of alignment, like a giant stack of boxes as you might carry them from the attic. The new building for the Whitney Museum of American Art on the lower Westside is a gutsy nautically inspired structural exercise, which clearly tells the outside viewer what is inside. No one complains that the shiny steel exterior of Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall in LA has no relationship to the rectangular concrete box which actually houses the concert hall, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain that Snøhetta’s walls have nothing to do with what’s inside. 

The best parts of Snøhetta’s design relate to interior circulation. The new galleries are linked by a series of elegant oak staircases which are subtly narrowed as they ascend and dramatically illuminated by strip lighting hidden under the steps. (Curiously the layout of these staircases is incorrectly shown in the museum visitor’s guide.) These staircases are the best part of the new building, better by far than the fractal-like irregular bleachers at the Howard Street entrance, which--again an inevitable comparison—contrast poorly to the rugged but evenly spaced bleachers in the entry of the new Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive. The Howard Street entrance is almost as big as the Third Street entrance in the original building but seems cold and lifeless, despite being filled with an enormous Richard Serra sculpture.  

Snøhetta also succeeded in the difficult job of relating the five story elevators of the old building to the seven story elevators of the new. Both elevator banks are distinguished by a different color (red, silver) and both banks open to the same large lobby on each floor. Where the Snøhetta circulation scheme fails is in the remodel of the old staircase in the atrium at the Third Street entry. Botta’s grand stone staircase perfectly on axis with the entry doors has been replaced with a zigzag oak staircase that fights with its setting and seems to suggest nothing more than architectural one-upmanship.  

One might ask finally why Snøhetta or anyone from out of town was invited to do an addition which, while huge, is really almost invisible behind the façade of the original building. San Francisco and the Bay Area don’t lack for talented architects. In fact EHDD, the local partner for BAMPFA, has been awarded the American Institute of Architects award for best firm. Did the cultural mandarins of the city feel that they had to find a European “starchitect” to compete with the new DeYoung (designed by a Swiss firm), the expanded California Academy of Sciences, and the Asian Art Museum (both designed by Italians)? San Francisco exports a lot of architectural skill (the local branch of Skidmore Owings and Merrill has planned entire cities in China). Why don’t local cultural institutions recognize their local talent?

A social media storm has broken out since Facebook and Twitter posted a photo of 16 young black women about to graduate from the US Military Academy posed on the steps of a West Point barracks, arms raised with clenched fists.  

More than 50 years have passed since I was an army officer. I got in and got out of the army before a woman of any race had been admitted to West Point. Most officers, like me, got their commissions through ROTC, but I knew a few West Point graduates. (Perhaps needless to say, they were white as well as male.) The post’s officer corps included a few old colonels from West Point who lent me and some fellow lieutenants their ceremonial swords so we could form an “arch of sabers” when one of our number was married in the post chapel. I remember the scowl on the priest’s face when we got up before the benediction, unable to keep our swords from clanking, as we moved outside the chapel door.  

A much more vivid and still painful army memory is from the time I commanded a convoy of artillery weapons across Arizona, five big army trucks towing five big howitzers. Half way across we pulled into a dusty truck stop and gassed up. We were hungry and thirsty and went into the cafe, but the owners wouldn’t serve us because two of my sergeants and one of my privates were African-American. We were, of course, in uniform; I had just paid more than $100 to fill up our gas guzzling army trucks. But this was 1961, and Arizona was still under Jim Crow.  

Well, things are better now. Aren’t they? Those 16 about to graduate cadets will go into a very different army and a different world. But the same social media that disseminated the picture of their salutes has also disseminated stories from Florida, Staten Island, Ferguson, and Cleveland that are much worse than getting rebuffed at a truck stop. A clenched black fist, even from an army officer, seems like a pretty mild gesture.

More human remains have been discovered in Berkeley's Fourth Street area. They are assumed to date from the period when Ohlone Native Americans occupied the site, which includes a shell mound and other evidence of Native habitation. The Jamestown corporation, current owners of Spenger's restaurant who are engaged in developing additional shopping spaces at 1919 Fourth Street, issued the following statement:

“A second set of partial remains was found under the 4th Street sidewalk during excavation work. Upon identification, construction was stopped and the remains were removed by the archeological team under the supervision of the Ohlone Indian Tribe’s appointed representative, Andrew Galvan. Mr. Galvan is storing the remains and preparing them for reburial based on his own recommendations. Construction work continues in accordance with the recommendations of Mr. Galvan and with onsite monitoring by a professional archaeologist and Mr. Galvan’s team. We will continue to keep the community informed of any further developments.”

This discovery could also affect the development proposed across the street at 1900 Fourth Street by a corporation represented by former Berkeley Planning Director Mark Rhoades. Environmental review of that site in accordance with California Environmental Quality Act requirements is currently underway. No EIR was required by Berkeley's Planning Department for the work at 1919 Fourth, which some observers who have asked to remain anonymous now believe to have been an error.

Roughly 50 students and workers rallied this afternoon at the University of California at Berkeley against planned layoffs and possible cuts to student services.

The protest started at noon at the Valley Life Sciences Building in the middle of the UC Berkeley campus and the group also protested outside of the Life Sciences Addition building. Other protesters handed out information to students on campus.

At the Life Sciences Addition Building, protesters rallied against the layoff of clerical worker Janette Reid, who has been with the university for nearly 33 years, Teamsters union representative Elise Magno-Jardinico said.

Reid is reportedly being let go because of a lack of money and a lack of work.  

University spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university could not comment on the layoff because they don't comment on personnel issues to protect the privacy of employees.  

The protesters called attention to the possible cuts to the Bear Walk program. The program pairs students with escorts who will walk them home to protect their safety.  

"That's on the chopping block," Magno-Jardinico said.  

Mogulof said no decision has been made about the Bear Walk program, but "everything is under consideration."  

"Every part of the organization is under scrutiny," he said.  

UC Berkeley employee Joseph Meyer said a friend of his came to the protest and told him she uses the service once or twice a week because of the numerous sexual assaults and other offenses that have occurred on or near campus.  

"One of the things you do not want to put on the chopping block is student safety," Meyer said. 

Magno-Jardinico said poor management of money by university officials is responsible for the planned layoffs and students and workers are not responsible for poor management. But students and workers are losing their jobs because of the poor money decisions.  

"Leadership put us in this position," Magno-Jardinico said.  

"We're facing a very large budget deficit," Mogulof said.  

He said revenue and money from the state has been steady while costs have gone up for things such as pensions and health care.  

The university will be cutting about 500 jobs, though a significant amount will be through attrition and retirement, Mogulof said. But he could not say how many jobs will be cut through attrition and retirement.  

At least six union workers have lost their jobs or have been given notice, Magno-Jardinico said. She did not know whether any workers who are not represented by a union have been let go.  

No faculty will lose their jobs, Mogulof said. 

Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington, who spoke at the protest, said he highly recommends campus officials talk with students and workers about the layoffs to build a consensus to eliminate the deficit.  

He said if students and workers see a logical plan is in place, they will be more likely to support it.  

Currently, "the top down decision seems to place most of the cuts on the lowest paid employees," Worthington said.  

The goal of university officials is to balance the budget by the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

On April 25, 2016, President Barack Obama announced that he would be dispatching 250 additional special operations troops to Syria—a six-fold increase in the US Special Forces on the ground inside Syria. When White House reporters asked State Department spokesperson John Kirby if this wasn't a breach of the president's promise not to put "boots on the ground" in the Middle East, Kirby denied that Obama had ever taken the "no boots" pledge.

"There was never this 'no boots on the ground,'" said Kirby. "I don't know where this keeps coming from."

Reporters were quick to remind Kirby that Obama had made the promise at least 16 times since 2013. Three examples:

August 30, 2013: "We're not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach."

September 10, 2013: "I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria."

September 7, 2014: "In Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian." 

 

It was not Kirby's best day, as the following video clip demonstrates. 

 

Caught red-handed—and red-faced—, Kirby tried to have it both ways. 

"When we talk about boots on the ground," he pivoted, this only refers to "conventional, large-scale ground troops," not to soldiers who are merely serving in an "advise and assist" role. "I'm not disputing the fact that we have troops on the ground, and they're wearing boots." 

The White House insists that the 4,000 US troops currently in Iraq "do not have a combat mission." So, when two of these soldiers were killed—one during an ISIS raid and another from a rocket attack—the White House did not call these "combat" deaths: they were, instead, attributed to "enemy actions." 

This distinction did not sit well with many veterans. 

"It is a grossly silly assertion that American men and women who are participating in the killing and dying in Iraq and Syria, whether it be directly or indirectly, do not count as boots on the ground," Matthew Hoh, a former Marine "https://theintercept.com/2016/04/29/as-more-american-boots-hit-the-ground-in-syria-u-s-parses-boots-and-ground/">told The Intercept 

This highly politicized parsing-of-terms will only intensify given that Pentagon officials have revealed the US has engaged in "high-level" talks with Iraqi leaders to send "hundreds of additional troops" to the country. 

So how does the president avoid the charge that he's broken his "no boots on the ground" promise? Here are a few suggestions that could make life easier for State Department stand-ins like John Kirby. 

When the troops arrive, just make sure they won't be wearing military-issued "combat" boots. Perhaps our "non-combat" troops could be issued some kind of alternative footwear—like iron-plated sandals or up-armored crocs. 

Or, to really instill fear in the hearts of the enemy, perhaps future deployments of US troops could charge into battle bare-footed. A less rigorous option? Reinforced Kevlar socks. 

Clearly, the president needs some help to honor his boots-free vow (while reserving the right to send US troops to attack an "enemy" that poses an "existential threat" to us—6,000 miles from America's borders). 

Herewith, a short list of possible "non-combat boots"—Obamawear, if you will, for the well-heeled soldier: 

Waders: Perfect if we are going to plunge into another military quagmire. 

Clogs: If we're prepared to get inextricably stuck in another endless war. 

Sneakers: For those dicey, behind-the-lines Delta Force missions. 

Slippers: For negotiating those "slippery slopes" that lead to bigger wars. 

Elevator shoes: Suitable for missions that involve escalating the conflict. 

Galoshes: For the Navy's Seal Team Six. (Option footwear choice: scuba fins.) 

Pumps: (Now that women have been cleared for combat.) Suitable for missions that involve seizing foreign oil fields. 

Saddle shoes: Because we'll be saddled with the burden of another endless war. 

And for the Iraqi forces we've spent millions to train and equip (and who have a history of dropping their weapons and fleeing), the shoe of choice could be Loafers. 

Finally, we can send the president a message by mailing gift boxes to the Oval Office. The perfect present for a president who breaks his promises? Flip-flops. 

In the meantime, I suspect most Americans are growing weary of the Pentagon's needless, heedless, endless, winless conflicts and would be ready to simply say: "War is a croc: give it the boot." 

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Gar Smith is the co-founder of Environmentalists Against War and author of Nuclear Roulette.

The May Issue of Street Spirit comes with an Award-winning Feature-length Film

Forget streaming and virtual reality. A new pilot project between Dogtown Redemption, a documentary about Oakland's shopping cart recyclers, and Street Spirit , the East Bay's homeless newspaper, promises to redefine the interactive media landscape. 

 

Starting in May, DVDs of Dogtown Redemption will be available through Street Spirit 's network of over 100 homeless street vendors in the East Bay.

Street Spirit vendors will sell a DVD and an issue of the paper for $10.00. All proceeds go directly to the vendors. The pilot project is intended to make the life and work of the poor visible through their own voices and media. 

In conjunction with the DVD sales, Street Spirit is devoting its entire May issue to Dogtown Redemption, focusing on the film and the homeless recyclers it documents. Coverage also includes articles about the City of Oakland's plans to shut down Alliance Metals, the West Oakland recycling center, in August 2016—and the consequences for hundreds of recyclers for whom Alliance Metals has been a lifeline. 

"The recyclers in our film taught us to look at poverty through the prism of potential, agency, and creativity, not prejudice and pity," said filmmaker Amir Soltani. "We wanted to have our work aligned with media that is serving the people we were filming. Street Spirit is not just a newspaper. It is where our subjects are heard and seen—and we hope this will mobilize the community to connect with and support their local vendors," said Soltani. 

Street Spirit Editor Terry Messman said the poor and homeless are too often treated as discarded waste products swept out of their own neighborhoods. "Poor people in West Oakland have lives that are as meaningful and as important as any lives in America. We have covered Dogtown Redemption in Street Spirit for a couple of years. This film is fighting to restore their dignity and humanity on the national stage and we want to support that with every bit of energy we can give." 

"It has been said that a film isn't really finished until it is shared with its audience," said Rahdi Taylor, Film Fund Director for the Sundance Film Institute Documentary Program. "The collaboration between Dogtown Redemption and Street Spirit strikes a landmark strategy for bringing this timely film to the audience it was made for. In the process, Street Spirit is extending its micro-economic opportunities for its sellers." 

"If this pilot project works in the Bay area, we will distribute our DVD through other street sheets across the country," said Soltani. 

The collaboration comes just two weeks ahead of Dogtown Redemption's national broadcast on the critically acclaimed PBS series Independent Lens on Monday, May 16th at 10 PM. 

About Street Spirit 

Street Spirit i s a publication of the American Friends Service Committee that has reported extensively on homelessness, poverty, economic inequality, welfare issues, human rights issues, and the struggle for social justice i n the Bay Area for 21 years. Street Spirit provides homeless people with a voice which cannot be found in the mainstream media. TheStreetSpirit.org 

About the film: 

Shot over seven years, Dogtown Redemption , takes us on a journey through a landscape of love and loss, devotion and addiction, prejudice and poverty. The story of the three recyclers—Jason, Landon, and Hayok--provides a rare glimpse into the conflicts over race, class, and space shaping Oakland and other American cities. DogtownRedemption.com 

About the filmmakers:
Amir Soltani is the Producer and Co-Director of Dogtown Redemption . Amir is an Iranian-American human rights activist. He has worked in journalism, philanthropy, and business. Before moving to West Oakland, Amir worked on civil society projects and micro-enterprise in Afghanistan. He is the author of Zahra's Paradise, a New York Times bestselling graphic novel on Iran's 2009 protests. 

Chihiro Wimbush is a hapa, Oakland-based filmmaker. Most recently he served as editor of the award- winning film Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm . With his wife Meena Srinivasan, he creates mindful media and education content via their nonprofit organization, A Lens Inside. 

For more information and screeners of the film, please contact: 

Denise Zmekhol • (415) 378-7436 • denise@zdfilms.com 

Lauren Kawana • (808) 386-2565 • lauren.akie@gmail.com 

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Editor's Note: The film is available now for a ten dollar bill at Berkeley's Saturday Civic Center Farmer's Market from Van, the tall, energetic African-American woman with the grey dreads who regularly sells Street Spirit there.  

Alameda County Democratic Central Commitee: Brett Badelle, Floyd Huen, Kate Harrison, Vince Casalaina—and none of the incumbents, who will be identified as such on the Democratic ballot

State Senate: Sandré Swanson

U.S. Senate: Kamala Harris 

The sample ballots for the June primary have arrived, and with them this request from a reader:

“I wanted to ask you to consider maintaining a sidebar on the online Planet site with such things as your endorsements for the county central committee. I just received my sample ballot and was looking over it and realized that I can’t remember who are the right people.”

He’s not alone. But it's not as easy a task as you might think given our balky legacy software. And in one case we haven't quite decided.

The delegate endorsements are easy, discussed in full here. But in case that link doesn’t work for you, these are the reform candidates, people I know and like: Brett Badelle, Floyd Huen, Kate Harrison, Vince Casalaina—and none of the incumbents, who will be identified as such on the Democratic ballot.

It’s complicated, because you have to ask for the Democratic ballot in the first place to find them, and then you have to look way down at the bottom.

Other choices on that ballot that I recommend: Sandré Swanson for State Senator. He’s independent-minded, not beholden to any special interests, has an illustrious record in the state assembly. 

I am not pleased with the press releases the campaign for his opponent, Nancy Skinner, has been sending out, boasting about how much money she’s raised. Way too much of it is corporate, or from the more unattractive branches of big labor, especially the correctional officers. She’s endorsed by the Chron, no surprise there and not a plus. 

I know little about Katherine Welch, who’s been endorsed by the Bay Area News Group organs, whatever they’re called these days, except that she’s from Over the Hill and is rumored to be the daughter of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. She has a Harvard MBA, according to the Head-Royce school website, where she's a board member. Not a plus in my book—so did George W, Bush., 

The state senator from this district, which includes major parts of Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond, should represent our substantial communities of color, and a couple of nice upper middle class white ladies (though who am I to talk?) just don’t do that. 

For the U.S. Senate, Kamala Harris is our Local Woman Made Good—how could we not support her? She grew up around here for much of her childhood, went to elementary school in Berkeley if memory serves, is smart and PC. Her Southern California opponent made some unfortunate comments about Muslims that she’s tried to walk back—there’s no reason to support Loretta Sanchez. 

For President, you’re on your own. Anyone who’s not delusional realizes that Hillary Clinton has the nomination sewed up, so—realistically—it makes little difference who you choose. Voting for Bernie Sanders might be construed as endorsing his policy goals, a Good Thing, but if he can’t shed his current dog-in-the-manger posture I might have trouble doing that myself. 

At one point I even thought about changing my registration in order to firmly stick the Republicans with Trump, but they seem to have done that on their own. As a member of a family with a number of respectable anti-slavery Republican antecedents in the 19^th century, I’m kind of sorry to see the Grand Old Party (that’s why old-timers call it the GOP) collapse, but it’s all over but the decent burial. 

Besides voting on June 7, what can we do to make sure that the November election turns out well? In case you’ve missed the memo, taking back the Senate and even the House are crucial, and that means turnout in swing states is the name of the game. More later on this, when I connect with my well-placed informants in the Berkeley Diaspora, aka Rest of World. 

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P.S. After I wrote this I got an email inviting me to go to meet Hillary Clinton at a school in Oakland this afternoon, so I went. Well, it turns out that some thousands of others had also been invited to the event, in a hall that held only 2,000, but we waited in line for two hours to confirm that we would not get in. I've seen Hillary before, so I was not deeply disappointed, particularly because it was what Oakland does best, a cheerily diverse crowd.  

Anyone who tells you that young people don't support her doesn't get to Oakland much, because despite the timing (2-5 on a Friday) at least half the crowd was folks in their teens and twenties, of every colorful ethnicity and several interesting shades of hair, both male and female. Also, 30ish mothers and fathers with babies, and of course women of a certain age, mostly despite their seniority dressed in non-suburban get-ups which betrayed their ageing hippiedom. And even some older men: One I overheard saying somewhat apologetically that his younger friends supported Bernie Sanders. His elegant clothes, polished diction and discussion of "productions" suggested that he might be an actor, perhaps even a gay actor.  

In front me in line were four girls of about 17 or 18 who told me they were from a high school in Moraga, and that they were there with their "Feminist Club". Unlike their surly 70s foremothers, they exuded unforced charm, amplified unashamedly by the usual teenage quota of red nail polish, skinny jeans and eyeliner. When an old guy who identified himself as a retired union member and a Socialist started haranguing the line with crazy objections to Hillary's politics ("she's in favor of starving the people of Haiti") they gave him as good as they got.

NOTE: This is my understanding of the facts in this situation. I called the City of Berkeley to verify this, but they refused to talk to me about it. If anyone at the City wants to dispute anything I have said here, I encourage them to discuss it with me.

The traffic signal at Durant Avenue and Bowditch Street was "upgraded" recently as part of the City of Berkeley's plan to "Work with AC Transit to upgrade the City’s traffic signal system to provide transit-priority operation". At the request of AC Transit, the Berkeley Transportation Division changed a safe intersection into a very dangerous place for pedestrians.

RUN FOR IT!

I tried to cross Durant at Bowditch around midnight a few days ago. Cars on Durant had a flashing yellow light, essentially a green light telling them to drive through the intersection without stopping.

Not wanting to be killed by a speeding car, I pushed the WALK button and waited for the WALK light, but it never came.

Someone at the Transportation Division seems to have programmed the signal to not give pedestrians the WALK light, and not give cars on Durant the red light, late at night.

In supposedly walkable Berkeley, the government chose to prioritize cars over people. And not just in a minor way, where we have to wait for a while for the WALK light. Instead, the Transportation Division now forces us to run across 3 lanes of speeding traffic in the dark every time we want to cross the street.  

 

This reminds me of the Terminator movies, where the machines tried to kill off the humans. Except this is the City government, collaborating with AC Transit against the people who live here. 

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE IN BERKELEY 

We have seen these kinds of problems with AC Transit and the Transportation Division before. Their failed attempt to force a greenwashed bus lane onto Telegraph. Their admitted environmental fraud in relocating the bus stop at College and Parker. And just the generally lousy bus service and lack of consideration they give us in return for the high taxes and high bus fares we all pay. 

It is a classic case of non-responsive government. Literally, the traffic signal does not respond to a pedestrian's very reasonable request to cross the street safely. 

Three lanes of traffic is a long way to cross in the dark, when cars, trucks and buses all have the light. Especially for anyone who is vision-, hearing- or mobility-impaired, like my friend who recently broke her ankle and is on crutches. This kind of anti-pedestrian behavior by the City could easily get an innocent person killed. 

WE SHOULDN"T HAVE TO FIGHT OUR OWN GOVERNMENT 

This is a major problem, when Transportation Division employees, some of whom do not even live in Berkeley, try to tell us how to live our lives. Or in the case of this traffic signal, risk getting us killed in their delusional attempt to fix global warming and save the polar bears by giving AC Transit every misguided and dangerous thing they ask for. 

I contacted Kriss Worthington, the District 7 Council member, about this issue and he got back to me within a few minutes and said he will look into solving this problem. And hopefully it will get solved. But it should never have been allowed to get this far. It is the job of the Transportation Division to make responsible decisions and protect the lives of Berkeley residents. 

If the people working in the Transporation Division can't or won't do their jobs responsibly, maybe we need to get rid of them and hire some competent people who can and will do their jobs.

The Berkeley Public Library, well-funded by book-loving Berkeley and staffed by outstanding experienced librarians, is not a luxury: it is as vital to the community as police and fire stations and public schools.

Why, then, are management and the Board of Library Trustees trying to fix what is not broken?

Library management and the Board of Library Trustees have recently—by fiat and on the sly—transformed a previously successful workplace of collegiality and professionalism into a hierarchical and centralized “command and control.” The result? Grievous harm to both the collections and the staff. It has also given birth of a group of Berkeley citizens called Library Advocate of Berkeley (savethebplbooks.org).

In 2015 two managers replaced the entire team of 28 professional librarians and performed a massive weeding of the library collection: 39,500 books were removed, 13,000 of which were irreplaceable last copies of books. The public was told that the criterion for discarding a book was that it had not been taken out for three years! With this as a criterion we are in danger of being left with a library of only current best-sellers.

The professional librarians who work directly with the public and the collections on a daily basis were locked out of the room and continue to be locked out of any collection responsibilities. The Library director, Jeff Scott, was blamed for the debacle and resigned. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. It seems he was just a convenient fall guy. 

Weeding is a fundamental requirement of a healthy library collection. A great library collection is crafted by a team of specialists who read many reviews in both their subject areas and a great variety of library sources. We don’t think that Berkeley wants a collection that is the reflection of two people’s judgement without requisite expertise using only check out statistics. We think Berkeley assumes and approves of teams of professionals with current in-depth knowledge of what the public is asking for and expertise in the subject area. 

Teams of professionals built our collection over the years and it has served us well. What happens when two people in a back-room make these incredibly important decisions: the two managers against the express objections of the library staff decided to drop Tutor.com (live homework help from graduates for those of us who can’t afford a private tutor) and Opposing Viewpoints (a nationally recognized database used to sharpen critical thinking skills on current events). See the entire list of 39,500 deleted books at www.savethebplbooks.org and look for the gold tossed with the chaff. 

We can only guess at the reasons for the changes in practice at Berkeley Public Library. We have attended every Board of Library Trustees meeting for over a year and asked for answers. Not a single response from the Trustees! Not once since the weeding debacle has the Library Board even agreed to put the librarians’ issues on their meeting agendas. Some of us have met with library managers and the interim director, who is a gifted administrator, but not a librarian. 

At present there is a search for a new library director. Can we trust this Board of Library Trustees and these Managers to chose a trained and experienced librarian who recognizes the vast reservoir of talent and expertise in our well educated staff and enable them to do the job they were trained for? 

Library management and the Trustees should take a moment to remember what Gloria Steinem said recently to Michael Krazny on Forum: “I was rescued by librarians everywhere I went. Librarians saved my internal life...Your profession is the greatest profession. You democratize knowledge. Nothing on earth is more important.” She emphasized how important the role of librarians is in protecting unpopular opinions and history that can’t be found elsewhere. This type of library isn’t possible when the life of a book is defined by last checkout rather than its role in a well rounded collection of viewpoints. 

The public must weigh in on this issue. It affects our entire population. In the words of Andrew Carnegie, a founder of America’s library system, “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” 

Come to the next Board of Trustees Meeting at 6:15pm on May 11 (call the library 510-981-6195 on May 10 for location), write to the interim director, Beth Pollard and the Board of Library Trustees. Send questions to LibraryAdvocateOfBerkeley@gmail.com 

 

 

The evening of May 11, the agenda of the Board of Library Trustees included a period of public commentary in which speakers were allotted a mere one minute each. This period was followed by commentaries by two union members, representing SEIU Local 1021 Maintenance Clerical Units; and Community Service and PTRLA Units, and opposing commentary by two members representing Public Employees Local #1. At issue was a vote of no confidence in the current collections manager signed by 56 library employees representing every library department. Although library employees represent 1% of SEIU membership, the library is responsible for 90% of SEIU complaints. Lawyers are now involved to the tune of $375.00 an hour. 

At issue here is a serious labor dispute which in its severity has caused a collapse of employee morale. The library staff has multiple years of experience informed by professional knowhow and a strong commitment to good library practice. Its expertise is being challenged by management in a number of essential ways, chief among them that weeding and selection is still being conducted by only two librarians whereas in the past, it has been customary to assign specialist librarians in each field to oversee these activities, a policy shift that has resulted so far in the pulping of 39,000 books. Another case in point is the re-assignment of new books on the same subject to a different decimal classification in another section of the library, two floors apart, impacting library users ability to browse a shelf for related titles.  

Throughout the meeting, the trustees appeared to receive all remarks with an air of satisfaction and complacency. Could their attitude suggest, that, far from being dismayed at the current state of employee dissatisfaction, on the contrary they are quite gratified? Could this suggest that in fact, retaliation against library whistleblowers who have courageously come forth to voice complaints—a prerogative well within their rights—is exactly what the Board intends? Could it be that their agenda is focused on making conditions for long-standing library employees so disheartening that they are being encouraged to quit, creating vacancies that can be filled by new employees at far lower salaries? Recent union negotiations revolving around pay cuts would seem to indicate that in fact that is exactly what is happening. 

Not only does the Board appear to be indifferent to employee intimidation so severe that it kept a number of librarians away from last night’s meeting, it also displays the same stonewalling indifference to the public and accommodation of the public comfort. Last evening’s meeting suffered from lack of sound amplification. The names and comments of speakers as well as those of the Board secretary were at times hard to impossible to hear. The speaker’s podium had been placed in such a way that speakers’ backs were to other audience members. Only one speaker had the sensitivity to ignore the podium—absent sound amplification—and to face both the Board and the audience. 

But most tellingly, the Board continues to choose the Pittman branch to stage these encounters with the public when it could very well use Central branch’s much larger venue to accommodate the overflow crowd. This writer counted 34 occupied chairs, and 34 people forced to stand through the nearly two-hour-long meeting, some of them senior citizens. Apparently the Fire Department had paid an earlier visit to determine that room capacity only allowed that limited number of chairs. But who called the Fire Department? 

Which raises the question: does the disposition of space indicate the sad degree to which this board is motivated to dialogue with the public? Repeatedly, when the public has posed a question to this Board in good faith, it has been met with the assertion that the Board cannot answer questions. If in fact the Board is gagged, then it follows that the question-asking public is gagged as well, yet many questions were asked of this board in what appears to be an ongoing and futile exercise by a public making comments that run off the trustees like water off a duck’s back. If the trustees are responsible neither to the employees nor the public, to whom are they responsible? 

Is this the kind of library that we Berkeley citizens are paying our tax dollars to support? 

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Cecile Pineda is a prize-winning Berkeley writer recently honored by the City of Berkeley for some 50 years of cultural work,; she is the author of nine works of fiction and non-fiction published by WingsPress.com. Visit her at cecilepineda.com. 

One of the complaints about Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy is that he doesn’t present detailed plans. On April 27th, he presented his foreign policy “plan” at Washington DC’s “Center for the National Interest.” It was standard conservative rhetoric. Fleshed out with “Trumpisms.” And lies. 

In January, Pew Research reported that Americans’ top concerns are terrorism and the economy. 

On April 27th, Trump presented a three-part plan to deal with terrorism. He addressed ISIS: “Their days are numbered. I won’t tell them where and I won’t tell them how.” When pressed for more details, Trump declined, “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.” 

Secondly, Trump promised, “We’re going to be working very closely with our allies in the Muslim world.” He didn’t explain how he would accomplish this when he plans to bar Muslims from travel to the US. 

Finally, he promised to “stop importing extremism through senseless immigration policies,” alleging that, “There are scores of recent migrants inside our borders charged with terrorism.” That’s a substantial exaggeration; a February New York Times article reported: “Federal court documents show that at least 14 people who came to the United States as refugees have been arrested on terrorism charges in the last two years.” 

Trump grossly underestimated the ongoing US effort against ISIS: “We don’t blockade, we don’t bomb, we don’t do anything about it.” The Pentagon reported 11,876 strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (16 Americans have died in this effort.) 

Finally, he quipped: “ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libya oil.” This isn’t true. The non-partisan website Fact Check reported: “a senior analyst for Libya with the International Crisis Group, told us that the Islamic State’s strategy thus far has largely been to disrupt oil operations in Libya rather than to try and make a profit off of them.” 

The Economy Trump blamed President Obama for “weakening our economy.” However, during this year’s State-of-the-Union address, Obama claimed the US, “has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” The non-partisan website Politifact rated Obama’s assertion “Mostly True.” 

Trump blames our supposed economic decline on bad trade deals. “NAFTA, as an example, has been a total disaster for the United States and has… literally emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs.” Fact Check reported there are contradictory studies about the effects of NAFTA on employment. In 2015, the Congressional Research Service noted, “NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by its supporters.” They described the impact as “relatively modest.” 

Trump also claimed the President “crippled us” with “a huge trade deficit.” However, Fact Check reported the trade deficit has gone down under Obama. 

Trump not only wants to “rebuild” the economy, he also wants to “rebuild our military.” But it’s well established that the US spends more on defense ($596 billion) than the next seven countries combined: China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, England, India, France, and Japan. 

Multinational agreements Trump promised, “Under my administration, we will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs… no American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of a foreign country.” Trump used NAFTA as an example of an agreement that worked against US citizens. 

In previous speeches, Trump had characterized NATO as obsolete. Here, he said, “I will also call for a summit with our NATO allies… we will… discuss a rebalancing of financial commitments.” In fact, President Obama has called on NATO partners to “ramp up their military and financial support for the NATO alliance.” 

Key Relationships Trump called for “improved relations with Russia from a position of strength.” He wanted “an easing of tensions” and boasted he could make a deal with Russia. Trump ignores the fact that, in 2014, the US, and our allies, imposed in sanctions on Russia after they invaded Ukraine. The sanctions are working; the Russian economy is staggering. As a result, Russia is cutting its defense budget. 

Trump also called for “fixing our relations with China.” He noted that the US has “a massive trade deficit with China.” Trump failed to acknowledge that the trade deficit has diminished under President Obama. 

Trump claimed, “President Obama has not been a friend to Israel.” However, in November Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Obama and said he welcomed the, “opportunity to strengthen our friendship, which is strong, and strengthen our alliance, which is strong." 

Donald Trump’s April 27th foreign policy speech received mixed reviews. Many observers noted the bizarre mixture of jingoism and isolationism. Others commented on Trump’s misstatements and distortions. What’s most disturbing is that Trump acts as if he does not understand the role the US plays as leader of the free world and, therefore, understates our strengths. 

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

Aggressive,” “revanchist,” “swaggering”: These are just some of the adjectives the mainstream press and leading U.S. and European political figures are routinely inserting before the words “Russia,” or “Vladimir Putin.” It is a vocabulary most Americans have not seen or heard since the height of the Cold War. 

The question is, why? 

Is Russia really a military threat to the United States and its neighbors? Is it seriously trying to “revenge” itself for the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union? Is it actively trying to rebuild the old Soviet empire? The answers to these questions are critical, because, for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, several nuclear-armed powers are on the edge of a military conflict with fewer safeguards than existed 50 years ago. 

Consider the following events: 

• NATO member Turkey shoots down a Russian warplane.
• Russian fighter-bombers come within 30 feet of a U.S. guided missile destroyer, and a Russian fighter does a barrel roll over a U.S. surveillance plane. Several U.S. Senators call for a military response to such encounters in the future.
• NATO and the U.S. begin deploying three combat brigades—about 14,000 troops and their equipment—in several countries that border Russia, and Washington has more than quadrupled its military spending in the region.
• U.S. State Department officials accuse Russia of “dismantling” arms control agreements, while Moscow charges that Washington is pursuing several destabilizing weapons programs.
• Both NATO and the Russians have carried out large war games on one another’s borders and plan more in the future, in spite of the fact that the highly respected European Leadership Network (ELN) warns that the maneuvers are creating “mistrust.”

In the scary aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the major nuclear powers established some ground rules to avoid the possibility of nuclear war, including the so-called “hot line” between Washington and Moscow. But, as the threat of a nuclear holocaust faded, many of those safeguards have been allowed to lapse, creating what the ELN calls a “dangerous situation.” 

According to a recent report by the ELN, since March of last year there have been over 60 incidents that had “the potential to trigger a major crisis between a nuclear armed state and a nuclear armed alliance.” The report warns that, “There is today no agreement between NATO and Russia on how to manage close military encounters.” 

Such agreements do exist, but they are bilateral and don’t include most alliance members. Out of 28 NATO members, 11 have memorandums on how to avoid military escalation at sea, but only the U.S., Canada and Greece have what is called “Preventing Dangerous Military Activities” (DMA) agreements that cover land and air as well. In any case, there are no such agreements with the NATO alliance as a whole. 

The lack of such agreements was starkly demonstrated in the encounter between Russian aircraft and the U.S. The incident took place less than 70 miles off Baltiysk, home of Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet, and led to an alarming exchange in the Senate Armed Services Committee among Republican John McCain, Democrat Joe Donnelly, and U.S. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, soon to assume command of U.S. forces in Europe. 

McCain: ”This may sound a little tough, but should we make an announcement to the Russians that if they place the men and women on board Navy ships in danger, that we will take appropriate action?” 

Scaparrotti: “That should be known, yes.” 

Donnelly: “Is there a point…where we tell them in advance enough, the next time it doesn’t end well for you?” 

Scaparrotti: “We should engage them and make clear what is acceptable. Once we make that known we have to enforce it.” 

For the Americans, the Russian flyby was “aggressive.” For the Russians, U.S. military forces getting within spitting range of their Baltic Fleet is the very definition of “aggressive.” What if someone on the destroyer panicked and shot down the plane? Would the Russians have responded with an anti-ship missile? Would the U.S. have retaliated and invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, bringing the other 27 members into the fray? Faced by the combined power of NATO, would the Russians—feeling their survival at stake—consider using a short-range nuclear weapon? Would the U.S. then attempt to take out Moscow’s nuclear missiles with its new hypersonic glide vehicle? Would that, in turn, kick in the chilling logic of thermonuclear war: use your nukes or lose them? 

Far-fetched? Unfortunately, not at all. The world came within minutes of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis and, as researcher Eric Schlosser demonstrated in his book “Command and Control,” the U.S. came distressingly close at least twice more by accident. 

One of the problems about nuclear war is that it is almost impossible to envision. The destructive powers of today’s weapons have nothing in common with the tiny bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so experience is not much of a guide. Suffice it to say that just a small portion of world’s nukes would end civilization as we know it, and a general exchange could possibly extinguish human life. 

With such an outcome at least in the realm of possibility, it becomes essential to step back and try to see the world through another’s eyes. 

Is Russia really a danger to the U.S. and its neighbors? NATO points to Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia and its 2014 intervention in eastern Ukraine as examples of “Russian aggression.” 

But from Moscow, the view is very different. 

In 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and German Chancellor Helmet Kohl pledged to then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move eastward, nor recruit former members of the East bloc military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. By 1995 NATO had enlisted Pact members Romania, Hungry, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and signed on Montenegro this year. Georgia is currently being considered, and there is a push to bring Ukraine aboard. From Moscow’s perspective NATO is not only moving east, but encircling Russia. 

“I don’t think many people understand the visceral way Russia views NATO and the European Union as an existential threat,” says U.S. Admiral Mark Ferguson, commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe. 

Most NATO members have no interest in starting a fight with Russia, but others sound like they think it wouldn’t be a bad idea. On April 15, Witold Waszczykowski, the foreign minister of Poland’s rightwing government, told reporters that Russia is “more dangerous than the Islamic State,” because Moscow is an “existential threat to Europe.” The minister made his comments at a NATO conference discussing the deployment of a U.S. armored brigade on Poland’s eastern border. 

Is Russia reneging on arms control agreements? The charge springs from the fact that Moscow has refused to consider cutting more of its nuclear weapons, is boycotting nuclear talks, deploying intermediate range nuclear missiles, and backing off a conventional weapons agreement. But again, Moscow sees all that very differently. 

From Moscow’s point of view, the U.S. is continuing to spread its network of anti-missile systems in Europe and Asia, which the Russians see as a threat to their nuclear force (as does China). And as far as “reneging” goes, it was the U.S. that dumped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, not Russia, 

The U.S. is also pouring billions of dollars into “modernizing” its nuclear weapons. It also proposes using ICBMs to carry conventional warheads (if you see one coming, how do you know it’s not a nuke?), and is planning to deploy high velocity glide vehicles that will allow the U.S. to strike targets worldwide with devastating accuracy. And since NATO is beefing up its forces and marching east, why should the Russians tie themselves to a conventional weapons treaty? 

What about Russia’s seizure of the Crimea? According to the U.S. State Department, redrawing European boundaries is not acceptable in the 21^st century—unless you are Kosovo breaking away from Serbia under an umbrella of NATO air power, in which case it’s fine. Residents of both regions voted overwhelmingly to secede. 

Georgia? The Georgians stupidly started it. 

But if Russia is not a threat, then why the campaign of vilification, the damaging economic sanctions, and the provocative military actions? 

First, it is the silly season—American elections—and bear baiting is an easy way to look “tough.” It is also a tried and true tactic of the U.S. armaments industry to keep their production lines humming and their bottom lines rising. The Islamic State is scary but you don’t need big-ticket weapons systems to fight it. The $1.5 trillion F-35s are for the Russkies, not terrorists.  

There are also those who still dream of regime change in Russia. Certainly that was in the minds of the neo-cons when they used The National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House to engineer—at the cost of $5 billion—the coup that toppled Ukraine into NATO’s camp. The New American Century gang and their think tanks—who brought you Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria—would to leverage Russia out of Central Asia. 

The most frightening aspect of current East-West tension is that there is virtually no discussion of the subject, and when there is it consists largely of distorted history and gratuitous insults. Vladimir Putin might not be a nice guy, but the evidence he is trying to re-establish some Russian empire, and is a threat to his neighbors or the U.S., is thin to non-existent. His 2014 speech at the Valdai International Discussion Club is more common sense than bombast. 

Expansionist? Russia has two bases in the Middle East and a handful in Central Asia. The U.S. has 662 bases around the world and Special Forces (SOF) deployed in between 70 and 90 countries at any moment. Last year SOFs were active in 147 countries. The U.S. is actively engaged in five wars and is considering a sixth in Libya. Russian military spending will fall next year, and the U.S. will out-spend Moscow by a factor of 10. Who in this comparison looks threatening? 

There are a number of areas where cooperation with Russia could pay dividends. Without Moscow there would be no nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Russians can play a valuable role in resolving the Syrian civil war. That, in turn, would have a dramatic effect on the numbers of migrants trying to crowd into Europe. 

Instead, an April 20 meeting between NATO ministers and Russia ended in “profound disagreements” according to alliance head Jens Stoltenberg. Russian ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko said that the continued deployment of armed forces on its borders makes it impossible to have a “meaningful dialogue.” 

We are baiting the bear, not a sport that ever ends well. 

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

May is Older Americans Month. This year’s theme is Blaze a Trail. The National Council on Aging’s Administration for Community Living is collecting stories of older trailblazers. Which reminds me: On Wednesday, May 11 the Berkeley Library Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet at 6:15 PM, location unknown at this time (check www.savethebplbooks.org on May 10.) 

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Bernie, Hillary, Ted, and The Donald … Who is the oldest? The youngest? 

Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz 46 years 

Hillary Rodham Clinton 68 years 

Donald John Trump 69 years 

Bernard “Bernie” Sanders 74 years 

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Is your doctor board certified? Do you care? You should. As one ages chronologically, so does one’s primary care physician. At some point, you will both part company. Mine retired about a year ago, and I have yet to identify a “replacement,” i.e. someone with her credentials – maturity, board certifications in both internal and geriatric medicine – who is accepting new patients, Medicare and Medi-Cal. 

Wikipedia describes board certification as the process by which a physician or other professional in the United States demonstrates mastery of basic knowledge and skills through written, practical, or simulator-based testing. 

There are approximately 24 boards that certify physician specialists. There is no legal requirement to attain board certification, but some hospitals demand that physicians are board certified in order to get privileges. Board certification is so desirable that doctors who are not (yet) certified, but presumably could be, sometimes describe (advertise) themselves as “board eligible” to practice medicine in a particular field.  

Physicians seeking board certification in a given area of specialty must successfully complete and pass an examination process designed to test their mastery of the minimum knowledge and skills contained in the core competency document. Prior to taking the examination, a physician must graduate with an MD or DO (doctor of osteopathy) degree and meet all other prerequisites to certification as set out by the certifying agency or "board." 

Renewal every ten years or so of a doctor’s board certification is believed to help keep knowledge and skills up to date. Many boards of certification now require that physicians demonstrate, by examination, continuing mastery of the core knowledge and skills for their chosen specialty. Recertification varies by specialty. 

The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is a professional exam sponsored by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the National Board of Medical Examiners(NBME). Physicians with an M.D. degree are required to pass this examination before being permitted to practice medicine in the United States. 

Doctors are licensed by their states to practice medicine, but they are also expected to be “board-certified” in their particular field — surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, etc. This certification comes from the professional organization of each field. Geriatric medicine is a sub-specialization, usually of internal medicine.  

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1. The state of _______ posted the United States’ highest rate of Medicare being overbilled for services in 2015. Providers charged an estimated $1.25 billion more than they should have. The state’s Medicare bills were too high an estimated 19.4% of the time, according to the report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As of February, health care providers had filed appeals on more than 800,000 claim denials, a number it will take roughly 10 years to work through. Congress placed a moratorium on the audits.
2. The debate over divesting coal and oil from the pension portfolio of the state of ______ appears to have smoked out an uncomfortable truth: Nearly 20 years after the state proclaimed its pension funds tobacco-free, they continue to contain tobacco investments.
3. Americans won't be able to travel to _______ in order to die. Its new assisted suicide law will apply only to that nation’s permanent residents. A senior government official told the Associated Press that visitors will be excluded under the new law, precluding the prospect of suicide tourism.
4. In the United States, assisted suicide for mentally competent, terminally ill patients is legal in five states-- Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and Washington. ________ recently became the fifth state to legalize aid in dying. The law will take effect later this year.
5. The nursing home industry has steadfastly opposed granny cams, installed to monitor nursing homes and assisted living facilities (they’re different.) Under a bill proposed by lawmakers in the state of _________, families seeking to protect their loved ones from maltreatment in nursing homes would have the right to monitor their care with electronic recording devices without fear of retaliation. The volume of maltreatment complaints in the state’s nursing homes more than doubled since 2012. The proposal would make it the sixth state explicitly to permit residents of long-term care facilities to install surveillance equipment in their private rooms. (Ask: How many nursing homes provide private rooms?) Modeled after a bill signed last year in Illinois, this legislation would require a nursing home resident to consent to the use of a camera before it can be installed and to notify the facility of intent to use electronic monitoring. In addition, signs must be clearly posted notifying visitors of the devices. Allegations of abuse in senior homes are notoriously difficult to prove, and hidden cameras are considered one of the few ways that families can corroborate claims by elderly relatives. (Ask: How many nursing home patients have families?)
6. According to a report from the government of _______ , the elderly (age 60+) population in that nation of 1.252 billion (2013) has increased substantially. 71% of the elderly reside in villages, 29% in cities. Prevalence of heart diseases among the elderly is much higher in urban areas than in rural. Urinary problems are more common among aged men; aged women suffer joints problems. The literacy rates among elderly females (28%) is less than half of the literacy rate among elderly males (59%).
7. The gender pay gap in ___________ is at a record-high 18.8%. But perhaps an even more insidious disparity is the superannuation gender gap in this nation, wherein women retire with just over half the amount of super as men, and one in three women retire with no pension at all. (Superannuation refers to the arrangements people make to accrue funds to replace their income in retirement. It is government-supported and encouraged, and minimum provisions are compulsory for employees.)

xxxx 

Recommended reading: “Hearing aid use is associated with improved cognitive function in hearing-impaired elderly; A study suggests hearing loss contributes to sensory-specific cognitive decline.” Public Release: 25 April, 2016. Online via eurekalert. Source: Columbia University Medical Center. This study was published online in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. A shorter version, in English and in Spanish, is available at HealthDay News for Healthier Living. 

A hearing aid may do more than help you hear better. New research suggests that the devices might also help prevent mental decline in elderly people with hearing loss. Cognition is the mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment.  

While Medicare does not fund hearing aids, Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid) pays for "medically necessary" health care such as hearing aids for persons with Medicare. In Alameda County, contact one of several hearing aids facilities for information about this. As a nonveteran, I tried numerous other sources of alleged assistance, all unsuccessful. I understand that any honorably discharged veteran is eligible for free hearing aids from the VA. Contact your VA hospital or clinic for an appointment. Be sure to have your DD 214 when you apply. 

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1. Louisiana 2. Vermont 3. Canada 4. California 5. Minnesota 6. India 7. Australia 

 

 

 

The dislike of, or prejudice against, Islam or Muslims (Islamophobia) is alive and well in the United States. The aftermath of September 11, 2001 terrorist attack and the ISIS directed and inspired attacks around the world, have given rise to a growing Islamophobia in this country fueled by the hate rhetoric by the GOP presidential candidates. 

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S., especially among African-Americans. Nearly 80 percent of the more than 1,200 mosques have been built in the past 12 years. Not all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are not Muslims. Thus, it is important for Americans to try to understand this religion and countries with a Muslim majority, especially since this is the world’s current hotspot. Fear oftentimes follows lack of understanding or misunderstanding, which can lead to prejudice, which in turn can lead to violence. As FDR said in his first inaugural address while the U.S. was deep in the depression, "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' 

We have visited Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Zanzibar, and Iran. When asked why we have traveled to these predominately Muslim countries, our reply is that as the fastest growing religion in this country, it behooves us to learn more about this religion. 

Hate crimes targeting Muslims, their mosques and businesses, tripled in 2015. For example, as of December 2015, there have been 38 anti-Muslim attacks in the U.S. since the deadly Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. Since 9/11, the annual rate of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. has been five times higher than it was before. Muslims are the only target group that experienced an increase in hate crimes. The most recent tally was 154 incidents: far fewer than the number of hate crimes against Jews, but more than 70 percent higher than the number of hate crimes against Christians. 

Remember, the phrase "driving while Black, a phrase that refers to the racial profiling of black drivers. The phrase implies that a motorist might be pulled over by a police officer simply because he or she is black, and then questioned, searched, and/or charged with a trivial offense. Now we have a new phrase -- "flying while Muslim" -- that refers to the problems those with Muslim-sounding names or speaking Arabic or even looking Middle Eastern have on airlines since 9/11. 

The anti-Muslim rhetoric from our leaders or would-be leaders encourages hate crimes in the U.S.; it is like throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. Consider that Donald Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate, said, "I think Islam hates us" and added "And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States." Trump's solution is to bar all Muslims from entering the U.S. 

Ted Cruz, another GOP presidential candidate, called for law enforcement to step up their policing of Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. in the wake of terrorist attacks in Brussels, comparing it to police boosting their presence in areas with known gang activity. He had previously argued that the U.S. should shut its doors to Muslim refugees from Syria, only allowing Christian refugees to seek asylum in the U.S. 

At least John Kasich has criticized Trump and Cruz on their anti-Muslim rhetoric. 

In his first visit to a U.S. Mosque President Obama summed up nicely why Islamophobia must stop, "We can't be bystanders to bigotry," Obama said. "Together, we've got to show that America truly protects all faiths. As we protect our country from terrorism, we should not reinforce the ideas and the rhetoric of the terrorists themselves."

It is now four years since the death of my father, Martin Richard Bragen.  

I recall when I was about twenty and in the early stages of recovery from a psychotic relapse, I was in tears because I was in a new environment, I felt overwhelmed, and medication side effects were making me suffer a great deal. I called him and he drove right over to where I then lived, a halfway house in Hayward, and he told me he was proud of me for the fact that I was able to cry. He said something to the effect that he had seen me a lot of different ways, full of craziness or in other states, but he had not seen me cry. He hugged me and said I should "get it all out."  

That lesson somehow stayed with me, and when he passed away at about this time of year, four years ago, I cried profusely, and grieving wasn't as bad as some of the other things I had been through.  

My father was an imperfect example of how to be a good person. He provided for his family, tried his best to teach us right from wrong, and helped us whenever he could, to the extent that he could. The last time I saw him, his words to me were, "Keep out of trouble." 

Now my brother David L. Bragen (not to be confused with David A. Bragen, another author) has produced an e-book, called "Letters to my Late Father." This book is a memoir, and it is in the format of a monologue in which David is speaking to his [our] father.  

David is also mentally ill, but his history is completely different from mine, and his literary style is completely different from mine. His book is available on Amazon Kindle, and if you do not own a Kindle device, Amazon offers "Kindle for PC" which can be downloaded and installed at no cost.  

 

Inferno Theatre and their multidisciplinary collaborators from all over are staging the third annual Diasporas Festival all three evenings this weekend (8 p. m. Friday, 7 on Saturday and Sunday) at the South Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview (entrance around the corner on Ellis), two blocks off Adeline/MLK, a few minutes' walk from Ashby BART. 

The events on the program--which changes in part, partly overlaps, day to day--much of it new work or work-in-progress, include excerpts from Giulio Perrone's (Inferno's founder/designer/artistic director) 'Quantum Love;" from 'Female, Ashkenazi, with Sewing Machine' by Inferno's managing director, playwright Jamie Greenblatt; 'My Outcast State,' a theater/dance/music piece on Shakespeare's Sonnets by Berkeley's Anton's Well Theatre, directed by Robert Estes, with actors Stanley Spenger and Matthew Surrance, musician Hal Hughes and dancer/choreographer Fiona Melia; Simone Bloch's 'Portrait Between Two Chairs;' Blue Monkey Works' 'Dash,' by Steve Morgan; 'Love Monster' by Courtney Russell; Chabot College Theatre Arts performing an excerpt from 'I' by Rachel Le Pell (and Le Pell's 'Truing the Wheel'); Polyhedron Company's 'Algor Mortis;' Back à Dos Theatre Company of the French International School in 'Hamlet Mash-Up;' Conmigo Connect with 'Y Dance; Sharmon Hilfigér's 'What Makes an Italian?;' Wei-Shan Lai & Dancers; Ann Seitz's 'Nick's Diner' (winner of Inferno's short play competition; Robert Fields in excerpts from his 'AJ;' Koy with Sophia Craven in 'Lost & Found;' --and short films by C. B. Smith-Dah, Andrej Diamantstein and Darryl Jones. 

Tickets are available online for $20, students $5 with ID & at the door on a sliding scale: infernotheatre.org

In mid-May the Pierre Bonnard exhibit “Painting Arcadia” closes at the Legion of Honor and the newly expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA) opens to the public. Having just taken in both, I highly recommend the first show which closes Sunday May 15. But don’t rush to see the renovated MOMA; the crowds will be huge for a while, and the museum isn’t going anywhere. 

The theme of these two art hikes was intimacy or lack thereof, intimacy measured by human scale. Bonnard is all about the enclosed private life: the love of women and their bodies, an exultation of the home: the table, books and food, the garden, and family. Bonnard’s canvases have a flat, decorative quality, often eschewing classical perspective for color and composition. Many employ a disconcerting aerial perspective, suggesting that the artist and his easel stood on a ladder. These are works that deserve some contemplation, and I went through the exhibit three times to ensure that I saw them all with the concentration they deserve. 

The first was a casual walk through, made easy by the few who also arrived at opening time. I had seen many of these paintings for the first time in 1966 in Paris but not all because the works in “Painting Arcadia” have been assembled from many museums and private collections. It’s a show not to be missed. 

On my second perambulation, the crowd had thickened, and I used the audio tour, brought out some details that I had missed. After that I had a restful sit-down in the Bowles Porcelain Gallery, and then a final wander through the exhibit, this time at a leisurely pace because I knew that I am unlikely to see these paintings again. 

In the twenty years when I led theater tours to London, I would take Mondays off to visit the impressionists at The Courtauld Gallery until the paintings became good friends, but as much as I like Renoir, I love Bonnard more: the personal intrigue, the heightened relationships to people, places, objects, and his luminous purplish blues that suggest a palette inclusive of ultraviolet light. 

These blues are echoed in the majestic vistas of Lands End, which make a visit to the Legion of Honor a double pleasure, as a continuation of the art walk outside presents some of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands. This is enduring San Francisco, the same enchantment experienced when I first moved here in the 1960’s. It’s a wonderful museum, wonderfully situated like no other, and I can forgive Dede Wilsey all her machinations as President of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums for the privilege of such visits. 

By sheer coincidence, my member’s preview at the new MOMA was scheduled for the next day, so I again donned my trainers and got ready for another long art walk because Chronicle critic Charles Desmarais wrote that he clocked 4.3 miles on his initial visit. I chose to start on the seventh floor and work my way down. Whereas the Legion of Honor is all about intimacy and tradition, the new SFMOMA is startling, huge and uncomfortable. In the three hours I traipsed through its glacial halls and galleries, the only chair with a back to be found was in the white box where pop-up lunches were served and where I happened upon some former SFCC colleagues. 

There is much to admire about the new MOMA, especially the second floor exhibit of old favorites that will be free to the public. With the addition come two sets of elevators, the old (red) and the new (silver). The living garden wall on the third floor, the sculpture terraces and galleries that include the wonderful works of Alexander Calder, and the expanded access to impressive photography archives are all inviting. The video installations welcome viewers to an intimate space, none more intriguing than a black box theatre featuring excerpts from Mozart’s The Magic Flute directed and designed by William Kentridge, an animator long championed by SFMOMA and an influence on Berkeley artist Lisa Esherick and others. 

MOMA was enlarged to include the impressive Fisher collection, rich in monumental works by Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud and more, much more from the kitsch to the confrontational. Whatever the subject, style, treatment or medium, the irrefutable statement of the new museum and its works of art is simply size. Everything is so BIG. Walking through the spacious halls and down the majestic staircases, I was overwhelmed by the hugeness of it all. Interiors are no longer made like this, except for the lobbies of great hotels. 

We crave public grandeur, which is the main attraction of the new and improved SFMOMA, the Grand Central Station of art museums. One can leave a compact apartment and experience outsized, shouting works of abstraction on huge white walls, expansive visions that obliterate detail and subtlety. Even the portraits are supersized. What animates such enlargement in an alienating urban environment that already dominates and discomfits: is it courage or simply ego? What drives an interior designer to paint a ladies room fire engine red, floor to ceiling? I don’t know, but the subject that most arrested me in my peregrinations was the surrounding cityscape - framed in large windows to imitate paintings or viewed from the upper terraces - the steel, stone and glass canyons of downtown San Francisco. 

No two art trips could exhibit greater extremes of surroundings, tradition, comfort and intimacy. Each has its worth, but see the Bonnard in the few days left, and if and when you go to SFMOMA, be prepared for a trek. I saw members with hiking boots and walking poles. Dress for comfort and bring an energy bar or enjoy the tasty treats at The Sight Glass Café on the third floor for a sugar and caffeine boost. And even though its main staircase is worthy of a Vogue photo shoot or a well -aimed selfie, leave the heels at home. 

---

Toni Mester is a resident of West Berkeley. 

 

On Sunday, May 1, I attended the Opera Parallèle production of The Lighthouse, a 1979 opera by Peter Maxwell Davies. Based on a true story about lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared in 1900, leaving no trace, from a lighthouse on Flannan Island in the Outer Hebrides, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies is heavy on atmosphere but somewhat spare and chilling in musical terms. The orchestra offers an unusual mix of jangly out of tune piano, guitar, banjo, flexatone keyboard, blaring brass, strings, and exotic percussion. The music is jagged, often piercing, and the singing is largely declamatory. Three singers play the three lighthouse keepers. They seem to switch back and forth between the keepers who mysteriously disappeared, on one hand, and those who discovered that the original keepers had disappeared into thin air, or, possibly, into the sea.  

Nicole Paiement conducted, and her husband Brian Staufenbiel directed this austere production, which was offered both Friday, April 29, and Sunday, May 1, at San Francisco’s Z Space on Florida Street in SOMA. Featured in the cast were tenor Thomas Glenn as Sandy, baritone Robert Orth as Blazes, and bass David Cushing as Arthur. In a lengthy Prologue, A Court of Inquiry in Edinburgh examines the three men who discovered the mysteriously empty lighthouse. They recount what they saw, contradicting one another on this or that detail. The Court reaches an open verdict, unable to determine what happened to the keepers who disappeared. 

After this Prologue, the scene shifts to the lighthouse. The same three men who testified at the Inquiry are now the lighthouse keepers, though whether they are the original keepers who disappeared or their replacements is not entirely clear. Presumably, they are now portraying the original keepers, because it has already been established that the lighthouse has now been automated and no longer needs human keepers. Nonetheless, ambiguity remains. What is important is that these three men, cooped up for months on end, often beyond their appointed duty-time, begin to get on one another’s nerves. Arthur is an evangelical Christian who’s always exhorting his comrades to atone for their sins. This holier-than-thou attitude enrages Blazes, who accuses Arthur of blatant hypocrisy, for he too is a sinner. Sandy tries to keep the other two men separated.  

Sandy suggests they each sing a song to lighten the mood and relieve tension. Blazes, robustly sung here by baritone Robert Orth, sings of a troubled childhood, gang violence, a robbery and murder of an old woman, and the death of his parents. Sandy, ably sung here by tenor Thomas Glenn, sings of an erotic dream; but there are undercurrents of incest and homosexuality in his song, as we later see more clearly when each man has to deal with his own ghosts. Arthur, the evangelical, sung here by the stentorian bass David Cushing, sings of (what else?) salvation in the Lord, his deep voice suddenly rising to a piercing falsetto on the name of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, a storm brews, and the lighthouse is engulfed in a dense, murky fog. Arthur activates the foghorn, which blares forth from the French horn. Suddenly, four dancers who wrap themselves in fabric appear, representing ghosts that confront each man with his past sins. Here we learn that Sandy’s erotic dream may have been about his sister; and we learn as well that he was caught by a prying priest and officious schoolteacher in some sort of homosexual act with a young boy. As for Arthur, he believes that the ghosts have been sent by the Beast, and he exhorts his comrades to take up arms against this Satanic Beast. At its frenzied climax, the fog is lifted, the ghosts disappear, and suddenly the three men seem to become the relief crew who discovered that the original keepers were missing. The orchestra has the last word in this macabre mystery, screeching out one final burst of jagged, angular sound that is reminiscent of fingernails scraping on a blackboard. As I said at the outset of this review, The Lighthouse is heavy on atmosphere but spare and chilling as music. 

In a season-ending series of concerts honoring the 30^th anniversary of Nicholas McGegan’s tenure as Music Director, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performed works of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. I attended the Saturday evening concert, April 30, at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. While I don’t like to make a point of disagreeing with San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic, Joshua Kosman, I must say that I found an extreme lack of balance in Kosman’s review of this program, for he so over-weighted his praise for the Mendelssohn 2^nd Symphony, or Hymn of Praise, Op. 52, that he relegated the Beethoven works performed on this program to a mere afterthought at the end of his review. To my mind, Mendelssohn doesn’t deserve all that much praise for this uneven though impressive work, nor, to put it mildly, does Beethoven deserve to be so cavalierly treated, even for works that are relatively unfamiliar to us. 

Let’s start with Beethoven, for that’s where the program began. First we heard Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b. This, of course, is perhaps the best known of the four overtures Beethoven wrote for his only opera, Fidelio. Beethoven worked incessantly to revise this opera, and the Leonore Overture No. 3 is perhaps the best of his efforts at an overture. However, it is often played, in a tradition begun in the 19^th century and continuing today, not at the outset of the opera but, rather, between Acts II and III. Performed in this position, it offers a musical shorthand version of actions we have just seen and heard in Act II and prefigures the action we are about to see and hear in Act III. Its music begins in the deep, dark prison cell where Florestan is a political prisoner held by his bitter rival Pizarro, and it evokes the entry of Florestan’s wife, Leonore, disguised as a boy named Fidelio, to help her husband in any way she can. A trumpet call heralds a deus ex machina in the arrival of a beneficent ruler who will free Florestan, punish Pizarro, and reward Leonore for her efforts on behalf of her husband. Under the baton of Nicholas McGegan, who led his period-instrument orchestra in a rendition devoid of vibrato, this was as clean and crisp an interpretation of this fine overture as you will find anywhere. 

Next on the program was a Beethoven rarity – Elegaischer Gesang (Elegiac Song), Op. 118. Beethoven wrote this short piece in commemoration of the third anniversary of the death of the second wife of a friend, who was also Beethoven’s patron and landlord during some of the happiest years of Beethoven’s life. If the song itself is too brief and too straightforwardly serene to garner much attention, it is still noteworthy as a token of Beethoven’s tender side, especially in an age when we seem to think of Beethoven only, or at least mainly, as a composer of difficult and thundering works of strorm and stress. The third and final Beethoven work in this program was a setting of Goethe’s poem, Meersstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). Here Beethoven paints a splendid musical and psychological picture of what it meant for sailors at that time to be becalmed without even a breeze. There is an ominous tint to the opening verses, and this quality is only overcome when, in the second set of verses, the wind suddenly picks up and the sailors happily glimpse a port of call. Beethoven, who had been introduced to Goethe, sent him a copy of the score which he dedicated to the poet; but Goethe, who appreciated Beethoven as a composer yet found his character overly rude and brusque, declined to respond to Beethoven’s letter and dedication. Nor did Goethe respond when Beethoven inquired whether the great poet had in fact received his initial letter. In any case, this work is a fine piece of scene painting and psychological penetration, rendered in musical terms.  

Now that we have at least given Beethoven his due, we can turn to the Mendelssohn work that, after intermission, caused Joshua Kosman to wax rhap-sodic in excessive praise. This was my first live hearing of Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, or 2nd Symphony; and I must say I was not impressed with the way it began. Most of the orchestral Sinfonia that opens this work was far too bombastic for my taste. There were no changes in dynamics for many long minutes, where everything was played fortissimo. When a lonely, plaintive bassoon solo occurs, we almost sigh with relief; but the orchestra immediately ramps up full blast once again. I was getting quite dismayed at this onslaught of bombast; but, suddenly, with an oboe solo, a swirling waltz rhythm began in the strings and continued for quite a few measures, sometimes with graceful horns, offering a welcome respite from the otherwise overwrought material of this Sinfonia. 

Taking his inspiration from Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in the 9^th Symphony, as well as from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions, Mendelssohn coined this work a Symphoniekantate (Symphony-Cantata). Indeed, with three singers as soloists and, in these performances, three joined choirs – Philharmonia Chorale, and members of Stanford Chamber Chorale and U.C. Berkeley Chamber Chorus – this Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) approaches the form, if not the emotional intensity and musical density, of Bach’s great Passions. However, for the Saturday performance I attended, soprano Dominique Labelle was unfortunately indisposed; and young Ashley Valentine, who sang the second soprano role in the first two concerts in this series, quickly learned the first soprano part, while Tonia D’Amelio stepped in to sing the second soprano. Thomas Cooley sang the tenor part in all performances.  

I had heard Ashley Valentine earlier this spring at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen; and I wrote very appreciatively of Ashley Valentine’s superb vocal technique in handling Purcell’s difficult coloratura passages. However, here, in Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, Valentine’s voice at times failed to project against the composer’s heavy orchestration or, in a duet, against the powerful singing of tenor Thomas Cooley. Nonetheless, in her duet with second soprano Tonia D’Amelio, “I waited for the Lord,” Ashley Valentine gave a beautiful rendition of this “greatest hit” of the whole work. For her part, Tonia D’Amelio was especially effective when, in a solo with interjecting chorus, “The night is departing,” her voice was suddenly heard from the balcony, projecting out over the entire hall and adding a spatial dimension to the music. Meanwhile, tenor Thomas Cooley was superb throughout, perhaps especially in his turbulent solo aria, “The sorrows of death had closed all around me.” 

The huge chorus, led by Bruce Lamott, was especially eloquent in its a capella singing of the first stanzas of the 17^th century Lutheran hymn, “Now thank we all our God.” Likewise, the chorus sang effectively the closing biblical passage, “All that has life and breath, Sing to the Lord.” However, unfortunately, Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise does not quite end on this choral passage. Instead, it ramps up the orchestral forces in one long final outburst of bombast, as if to remind me, at least, and perhaps others, that in spite of Joshua Kosman’s excessive praise for it, this Hymn of Praise by Mendelssohn, for all its ambitions, has its share of flaws as well.  

 

As usual, the April 29 gathering at Berkeley's historic Fellowship Hall (at Cedar and Bonita) was an energizing experience for the activist community. Dozens of local action groups were represented at the "Active Hope: Going Forward" event but the main draws were Joanna Macy and Ray McGovern.

Among those assembled for an evening of music, potluck dining and discussion were members of Codepink, Berkeley Progressive Alliance, Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, Sunflower Alliance, No Fracking/No Nukes, Black Lives Matter, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, End Mass Incarceration, Sustainable Berkeley, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Occupy the Farm, Postal Banking, Move to Amend, Divestment from Fossil Fuels, Save the East Bay Forest, and Stop Destruction of Ace Hardware.  

 

Joanna Macy began things by leading a circle of participants in a healing ritual. Mellowness established, the activists got down to business by sharing a flurry of updates about recent and imminent actions. 

Cynthia Papermaster introduced her pet pup, Jimminywinks, the anti-nuclear mascot of BARC (Barkers Agitating for Reactor Closures) and gave a shout-out to Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington who successfully introduced a city resolution calling for the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Worthington raised his hand to show that he was present and was showered with a round of enthusiastic applause. Papermaster noted the resolution passed "almost unanimously." There was only one holdout who voted against it—councilmember Laurie Capitelli. Papermaster made a point of mentioning that Capitelli is "currently a candidate for mayor." 

Carl Anthony, co-founder of the Breakthrough Communities Project, spoke about the Resilient Communities Initiative. Just as climate change is driving sea-level rises that are devastating low-lying island nations in the Pacific Ocean, the first effects of climate change in the US will be felt by the poorest Americans living in the urban flatlands of coastal cities. Because low-lying parts of the Bay Area will be the first to experience flooding, Anthony and other activists are helping these communities to take the lead in defending their homes and lives against flooding by addressing climate-change solutions. (Anthony also has a new book coming out. With some gentle prodding about how long it has taken to write it, Anthony replied: "It's been 55 years in the making.") 

Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg brought the crowd up to date on the work of the Oakland Privacy Working Group. OPWG played a key role in defeating Oakland's plan to create a Domain Awareness Center. Also known as the "Fusion Center," the DAC would have installed surveillance software all over the city, feeding personal data and TV images of residents into a centralized police database. Rosenburg mentioned that OPWG recently got wind of BART's new plan to install license-plate scanners at the MacArthur Station. OPWG intervened and stopped it. (OWEG meets once a month, generally the first Monday, at 4799 Shattuck Avenue in North Oakland.) 

Ray McGovern: From CIA Analyst to Peace Activist 

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, once chaired the National Intelligence Estimates team and prepared the President's Daily Brief. Today he teaches at an inner city school in Washington DC and frequently gets busted for protesting government policies. 

McGovern is a rare bird, a CIA intelligence-analyst-turned-antiwar- activist. On May 4, 2006, McGovern earned "nine minutes of fame" by publicly challenging Donald Rumsfeld over his false claims about Iraq's WMDs. To Rumsfeld's growing discomfort, McGovern read Rumsfeld's own words back to him and called the Defense Secretary a liar. It was a slow news day, so McGovern wound up being interviewed by just about every major news organization. The confrontation can be seen on YouTube. 

In a telling moment during an off-air chat with CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, the reporter (clearly impressed with McGovern's bravado) wanted to know, confidentially, "Weren't you afraid?" McGovern was shocked. His take-away from journalist's question was profoundly disturbing: Anderson Cooper was basically admitting that he—despite being a prominent mainstream journalist—would not have had the cojones to ask such a question of such a man. He would have been too afraid. 

"We no longer have a free media," McGovern said. Most of what passes for "news" these days passes through the filter of "media self-censorship." The exceptions are found in the noncommercial realm, where it is still possible to listen to journalists with integrity, people like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. 

Recommended Reading 

McGovern had a couple of books to recommend. The first was James Douglas' JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, which exposes the unknown background of the Kennedy assassination—how it was planned and why it was executed. The second book was The Untold History of the United States, a book by Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone. McGovern said the chapter on Hiroshima is particularly revealing. 

According to the authors' research, 80% of the US scientists involved in the secret Manhattan Project to build an A-bomb pleaded with Truman not to use the nuclear weapon against Japanese cities. "But Truman was a racist," McGovern pointed out. "He used the N-word profligately." South Carolina Senator Jimmy Byrnes, Truman's closest foreign policy advisor (and a Southern racist), urged Truman to drop the bomb. McGovern argues that the bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nakasaki was just another one of "America's many racist wars," using superior force against a far-off population of other-skinned people. 

Jails and Politicians 

McGovern recalled a night he spent inside New York's notorious city jail (aka "The Tombs") and ranked it as his worst jail experience to date. It brought to mind Mahatma Gandhi's advice that if you really want to know the nature of a country, check out the condition of its prisons. That will tell you what a nation thinks of liberty and human dignity. 

Surprisingly, McGovern faulted Bernie Sanders for granting Hillary Clinton a pass during an early presidential debate when he declared: "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails." As an intelligence officer, McGovern remains deeply concerned about the information that might have been at risk. It still strikes him as suspicious that the Benghazi Consulate was chosen for an attack. It almost seemed as though someone had inside information that the facility was poorly defended—and that kind of information could have been gleaned by someone reading Clinton's emails. 

McGovern cited another case of a US State Department official whose private communications were compromised. In 2014, the Russian government (it is presumed) released a recording of secret conversations between State Department Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and other members of the team that orchestrated the US-backed coup in Ukraine. The audiotape, which is now posted on YouTube, captured Nuland announcing who had been chosen by the US to become the new leader in Kiev. 

"I think Yats is the guy," Nuland states (referring to Arseniy "Yats" Yatseniuk). Nuland declared that Yat's was the best choice to become Washington's prefered Prime Minister because he was the guy with "the economic experience, the governing experience." (Nuland's assessment was flawed. On April 10, 2016, Yats was forced to resign in the face of growing political chaos and economic problems.) 

When a colleague referenced the EU's attempts to woo the Ukraine away from its Russian past, Nuland mocked the EU's "slow" approach. Her exact response (also available on YouTube) was brusque and memorable: "Fuck the EU," she barked. Regime change was so much more expedient. 

Beaten Bloody for Disrepecting Hillary Clinton 

McGovern recalled a rather famous moment when he rose to his feet to challenge Hillary Clinton at a public event. This time, however, McGovern didn't raise his voice to ask a question. He simply turned his back. For this active display of disrespect, McGovern was manhandled, roughed up, beaten, arrested, jailed and placed on a government watch-list. 

McGovern confided that he had learned a valuable lesson from the experience—not about the limits of proper political behavior, but something useful to the future of political protest. "People don't like seeing old people get beat up," McGovern discovered. It's not so much a problem seeing young folks being blocked by cops, but the public really doesn't like watching people with gray hair getting clobbered. The lesson was clear: "We older people have an advantage as activists. So use it!" 

McGovern quoted Berkeley food activist and restaurant pioneer Alice Waters who once shared space with him aboard a "peace flotilla" ship that attempted to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. Waters' quote has stayed with him. "Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet," she said. 

In June, McGovern is planning a trip to Germany to present a petition protesting the presence of the US military base at Ramstein. He will then travel to Russia on a citizen-to-citizen mission to collaborate with Russian peace groups. 

In response to an audience question about the work of the CIA, McGovern replied: "There are two CIA's." The agency created by Harry Truman to produce intelligence has become debased by political influence. Instead of producing independent assessments, the Agency has all too often produced politically usable (read: "intentionally fraudulent") findings that have been "fixed around policy." The good news is that there is a "second CIA." "There are still some good people left inside," McGovern said, and he gave a case-in-point. The Agency is charged with developing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) to inform White House decision-making. But, under the George W. Bush White House, the CIA knew that Iran has stopped working on the pursuit of a nuclear bomb in 2003. In George W. Bush's autobiography, Decision Points, Bush actually admits reading the CIA National Intelligence Estimate informing him that Iran had abandoned its nuclear program. Bush called the NIE "an eye-popper"—but he kept his mouth shut. Since the truth wasn't convenient for "W" and the political cabal set on demonizing Tehran, that NIE was replaced by a paper that concluded Iran did pose an imminent nuclear threat. 

McGovern also pointed out that since the controversial shoot-down of the MH17 passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014, the US government has still not issued an NIE to establish definitively who was responsible for the tragic loss of lives. Instead, the government came up with "a new genre" of Intel called a "Government Intelligence Estimate." Secretary of State John Kerry then proclaimed that the evidence in the GIE showed Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels were responsible. But there was no such conclusive evidence. Instead, McGovern said: "Kerry lied." (McGovern believes the best evidence points to Kiev-backed Ukrainian forces.) 

McGovern revealed that, in the run-up to the US attack on Baghdad, both he and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter personally attempted to inform then-Senator Hillary Clinton that there was no evidence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Their council was rejected and Clinton knowingly proceeded to vote for a US attack on Iraq, complete with a "shock and awe" attack on the capital and the overthrow of the elected government. 

As the evening ended, Ray McGovern made it quite clear that he will not be voting for another Clinton White House. 

Postscript: Several times during the evening, McGovern paused to mention his "good friend" Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest, poet, pacifist and anti-war protester who faced arrest, served time and went underground for a spell for his anti-war actions. 

McGovern finished his comments by reciting a special poem, written by Berrigan. 

Unknown to McGovern and his audience that night, Rev. Daniel Berrigan's death, at the age of 94, would be announced the next day. 

Here, then, is the poem than Berrigan and McGovern chose to share with us: 

Some 

(to the Plowshares 8, with love) 

by Daniel Berrigan 

Some stood up once, and sat down. 

Some walked a mile, and walked away. 

Some stood up twice, then sat down. 

"It's too much," they cried. 

Some walked two miles, then walked away. 

"I've had it," they cried, 

Some stood and stood and stood. 

They were taken for fools, 

they were taken for being taken in. 

Some walked and walked and walked— 

they walked the earth, 

they walked the waters, 

they walked the air. 

"Why do you stand?" they were asked, and 

"Why do you walk?" 

"Because of the children," they said, and 

"Because of the heart, and 

"Because of the bread," 

"Because the cause is 

the heart's beat, and 

the children born, and 

the risen bread."