Police in Berkeley are investigating a Monday robbery that occurred on Grizzly Peak.
Officers with the University of California Police Department responded Monday at 10:40 p.m. to Signpost 14 on Grizzly Peak to a report of an armed robbery that had occurred about 30 minutes before.
Police said two victims, a male student and an unaffiliated male friend were standing outside their vehicle when they were approached by two suspects and robbed at gunpoint.
Both suspects were holding handguns and demanded the victims' property, police said.
The suspects then fled, last seen driving south on Grizzly Peak.
Police searched the area but did not locate the suspects or their vehicle.
One of the victims suffered minor injuries during the robbery, police said.
The first suspect is described as a Hispanic man in his early 20s, shorter than 6 feet 1 inch tall, with a goatee and wearing a light gray hooded sweatshirt. He was armed with a handgun.
The second suspect is described as a Hispanic man in his early 20s, shorter than 6 feet 1 inch tall and holding a handgun.
A man was wounded in a shooting in Berkeley's San Pablo Park this morning, a police officer said.
Police received reports of gunshots at the park at 11:08 a.m.
When officers arrived, they found a man, believed to be in his 20s, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds next to the park's restrooms near the basketball courts, police Officer Byron White said.
The victim was taken to a hospital. White did not immediately know his condition.
Witnesses described seeing a light skinned man in his 20s flee after the shooting. The suspect was described as standing about 6 feet tall and wearing a cream-colored shirt and baggy jeans, according to White.
Anyone with information about the shooting has been asked to contact Berkeley police at (510) 981-5900.
On Friday evening, May 13, the locally based Cypress String Quartet performed one of their last Salon Series concerts at Berkeley’s Maybeck Studio. The group will disband later this year after 20 glorious years together. To celebrate their anniversary they put together a program of works each member of the quartet particularly liked. First on the program was violinist Cecily Ward’s choice, Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 20, No. 1. Composed in 1772, this work influenced many later composers, including Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. In the opening movement, marked Allegro moderato, the first violin exchanges phrases with the cello in the opening measures. Then the other instruments chime in, trading phrases among all four members of the group. There is a graceful exuberance to Haydn’s writing in this piece. The minuet that follows is dainty and charming. A beautiful slow movement follows, with the group led by first violinist Cecily Ward’s luscious account of this movement’s glorious melodies. The fourth and final movement begins with great agitation, but in typical Haydn fashion soon transforms itself into an exuberant finale.
Next on the program was cellist Jennifer Kloetzel’s choice, Dan Coleman’s String Quartet No. 3, a work commissioned by the Cypress Quartet. They have commissioned 640 works over 20 years. A few years back, say, around 2012, I was given a sampler CD put out by the Cypress Quartet. Among the works on it was a Lullaby by Dan Coleman, an excerpt from his Second String Quartet, which was also commissioned by the Cypress Quartet. I loved this Lullaby by Dan Coleman and longed to hear more of his music. Thus, I was very happy to have the opportunity to hear the Cypress Quartet perform Coleman’s Third String Quartet. This is a twelve-tone work that immediately reminded me of Alban Berg’s lovely Lyric Suite Quartet. Yet it also reminded me of Bela Bartók’s quartets, which I also love. Dan Coleman structured this 17-minute work around three sets of duets, with tutti ensembles interspersed throughout. It opens with a duet from the first and second violins, Cecily Ward and Tom Stone making wonderful music together. Then Jennifer Kloetzel’s cello joins in. A few measures later, the second violin drops out and a duet ensues between cello and first violin. After a pregnant pause, Ethan Filner’s viola enters, joined by the cello and first violin. Soon a duet ensues between viola and first violin. When Tom Stone’s second violin joins in, Cecily Ward drops out and a duet ensues between second violin and viola. Suddenly, the cello sounds an ominous low note, and thus begins an ensemble finale, which includes, however, one final brief duet between cello and viola. All in all, I found this String Quartet No. 3 by Dan Coleman an exhilarating work, full of imagination, challenge, and angular lyricism. Dan Coleman, it seems to me, is a major voice among contemporary composers.
By the way, Coleman’s String Quartet No. 3 is dedicated to his friend, Jeffery Cotton, also a composer. Cotton, who died an untimely death a few years ago, was given a tribute in the next work played in this concert by the Cypress Quartet. Introduced by violist Ethan Filner, this was a brief excerpt, the second movement, from Cotton’s String Quartet No. 1. Cotton styled this as a Capriccio and paid tribute to cabaret music in writing this movement, which featured some bright phrases from the first violin accompanied by pizzicato plucking from the viola.
After intermission, the group returned to perform Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet of 1903. In introducing this quartet, violinist Tom Stone noted that Ravel was influenced by Javanese gamelan music he heard a few years earlier at the Paris World’s Fair of 1899. Yet in spite of this exoticism, Stone asserted, Ravel’s quartet manages to be quintessentially French in spirit. I quite agree. I recall hearing it on my car radio one beautiful Spring day while driving in France. In a tiny village in a non-touristy corner of the Loire Valley, I stopped and simply sat in my car listening to Ravel’s shimmering music while looking out my open window at Spring flowers in a lovely country garden by a brook. It was a magical moment.
The first movement, marked Allegro moderato, opens with an agitated phrase but the music soon dissolves into shimmering lyricism. A gracious theme is developed in several variations. The second movement, a vibrant Scherzo, opens with pizzicato plucking from all four instruments. Although influenced by Ravel’s hearing of Javanese gamelan music, the recurring pizzicato passages in this movement always strike me as quintessentially French, and I associate them with the bubbling of a brook tumbling over rocks, the water glistening in the sunlight. The third movement is slow and graceful; and the final movement opens with a very agitated phrase, yet, like this work’s first movement, the initial agitation soon subsides as lyrical themes from the first movement are now recalled and given new variations. Throughout this lovely work, the Cypress String Quartet beautifully rendered the rich coloration of Ravel’s musical palette. If the Cypress String Quartet must now disband, after 20 glorious years together, this Ravel Quartet was a wonderful farewell gift to the group’s faithful audience.
However, there are a few more opportunities to hear the Cypress Quartet in concert. They have three more concerts in their ongoing free series of Beethoven quartets played at various outdoor venues throughout San Francisco. On Monday, May 16, they will perform Beethoven’s Op. 131 quartet at 11:00 am at Sutro Baths near the Cliff House. On Tuesday at 1:00 pm they will perform Beethoven’s Op. 59, No. 3 quartet at the Botannical Gardens at Golden Gate Park and 9th Avenue. And last but not least, they will perform Beethoven’s Op. 130 quartet and Die Grosse Fugue at Yerba Buena Gardens at 2:00 pm. In addition, there will be a Farewell Concert by the Cypress Quartet at Taube Theatre in the War Memorial Building on the weekend of the Gay Pride Parade in late June.
Local Director, U.S. Postal service 2000 Allston way, Berkeley, CA 94704-9998
Dear Sir/Madam:
Following this letter are the signatures of people who live at 1909 Cedar Street, a low-income senior-disabled housing operated by SAHA, called Lawrence Moore Manor in Berkeley, California (Alameda County). We are a diverse population ranging upwards of age one hundred whose first languages are for the most part not English.
For some time we have considered how best to express recognition of the consistently great service through the years and through thick and thin provided by our mail carrier.
It is easy to assume that one’s mail carrier can be counted on for reliable and pleasant pick-up and delivery in good and bad weather, but our guy delivers much more than the mail!
We ask that this statement be included in the personnel file of Xuong Nahn.
Very truly yours,
[signatures omitted here]
Cc: Megan J. Brennan, Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer. U.S. P.S., 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20260 Cc: Berkeley Daily Planet
If you think the housing crisis is bad in Berkeley, consider that it could be worse. You might live Vancouver, British Columbia. There, as here, vacancy rates are stubbornly low. Prices are well outside the range of affordability for a majority of working class people.
This year, Vancouver will break ground on a new project to produce 358 units of permanently affordable housing. If all goes as planned, move-ins will start next year. The project will be fully built in 2018. Vancouver will have:
358 new, permanently affordable rental units on multiple sites
on land owned by the City of Vancouver
the buildings also will, in the end, be City-owned
established non-profits will manage the units as landlord rents will range from 23% to 90% of market rate
aggregate rents wil be 76% of market of market rate
the project will not use money from the national or provincial government
the project is privately, not publicly financed - taxpayers are not on the hook
the project will not require external subsidies
the project will produce a modest surplus to repay investors
the project will produce a surplus that will go to the city itself
In a market like Vancouver's, or Berkeley's, permanently affordable social housing can be essentially free to taxpayers.
All it takes is a City government smart enough to organize the projects.
I was tinkering with math for the "Vancouver model" of affordable housing financing, as applied to Berkeley. I considered the case of buying existing apartments in Berkeley, rather than building new ones. I think the numbers are encouraging -- we shouldn't need to raise taxes or depend on large amounts of state and federal money:
To pick a target for revenue goals, I noticed that the Berkeley Tenant Union site says $5M per year could be leveraged to build or buy/rehab at least 40 units per year. What would it take for the City of Berkeley to generate $5M in revenue using something like the Vancouver model?
I used this web site to get a rough-and-ready estimate of the current price of existing apartment buildings, and their expected net income:
Conservatively speaking, the current purchase price is around $250,000 per unit for apartment buildings. The net operating income from them is around 5% of the price (so, $250,000 x 0.05 = $12,500 net income per unit).
Half of the average net income is $6,250.
$5M dollars per year, the goal of the tax, is 800 x $6,250.
That implies that if the city owned 800 apartment units, and (with the help of the housing agencies) rented them out as ordinary rent-stabilized apartments, the city would have at least $5M in "profit" every year to spend on building or buying/fixing additional units.
Example: A current listing for 1132 Parker St says the total price for 6 units is $1,615,000. The price per unit is about $270,000. The alleged cap rate 5.60%
What kind of down-payment might the City make on such a property?
The Berkeley Tenant Union says that it needs $125,000 per unit to kick-start new housing. Let's use that. A down-payment for 6 units, let's assume, would be $750,000. (That is, 6 times $125,000.)
For that building on Parker St., a $750,000 down-payment plus a regular retail mortgage for $865,000 could buy that building with monthly payments low enough that the city could easily claim back 2.5% of net operating income.
In other words, if the deal were run properly, the City would have an operating profit from the first day, given just the outlay of the down-payment. The city would be getting $40,375 per year.
That's about a 5% return on the $750,000 deposit in the first year.
In this same scenario, that Parker St. building, 5 units that are NOT currently rent stabilized would BECOME rent stabilized, assuming the City chose to run its own units as rent stabilized units.
The total purchase price for a full 800 units would be $200,000,000. The money down, assuming $125,000 per unit, would be half that or $100M.
800 units would represent a little over 3% of all apartment unis in Berkeley, at the moment.
If the city were to run 80 out of the 800 units not as rent stabilized, but as market rate units, my back-of-an-envelope says Berkeley could borrow the $100M without needing to raise taxes.
Some links:
"Innovative use of City land to deliver new affordable rental housing" -- Vancouver Mayor's Office
We know the real source of the housing crisis now besetting Berkeley (and the bay area in general). It is not a supply and demand problem. According to census figures, Berkeley has (approx.) 49,000 housing units for around 112,000 people, whereas in 1970, it had 46,000 units for 117,000 people, and there was no crisis. The real source is a plan to change the class nature of the city by building housing for a new population of wealthier people. It is called Plan Bay Area. And the crisis it creates is not that nobody can find housing. The crisis is that low and moderate income people cannot find housing when they are forced out of their homes by landlords seeking to rent to wealthier people at higher rents. The crisis is the flood of dislocations resulting from fraudulent evictions, economic evictions, foreclosures, real estate speculation, ownership changes, etc. With the growing dislocations of low and moderate income families, those with higher income can find plenty of housing in Berkeley. Nevertheless, the plan allots the building of over 3900 new housing units in Berkeley. By the time there is a glut, and rents start to come down, most low and moderate income families will be long gone.
That is why neighborhoods are organizing to demand affordable housing now, to protect their neighbors from becoming commuters or exiles. Only affordable housing will alleviate the housing crisis by absorbing families being forced out of their homes by rent increases. Building market rate housing irrationally assumes people will move into higher rent housing if it becomes available. Building affordable housing allows people to move into units at lower rent than they are paying. That has the added benefit of increasing their disposable income, which benefits small businesses.
Corporate developers, however, insist on building market rate housing – and banks insist on dealing with corporate entities (e.g. LLCs), rather than human investers. The developers do not insist on market rate units just because of profitability. They want all market rate units because of their financing. Developers fund their operations with debt, using the project itself as collateral. If land or property values decline, the resulting decline in collateral value puts the developer in trouble with the bank. When faced with an inability to repay the loans, what becomes important to the bank is the ability to put the project back on the real estate market – that is, to recapitalize it – to transfer the loan to another developer or to recuperate the loan through sale. The presence of affordable units, because the earnings from them are related to tenant income, hinders the ability to recapitalize the project. Thus, the corporate debt structure is a barrier to including affordable units in new development. This is a real conflict of interest between communities and corporations.
The city government debates whether to require 10% or 15% affordable housing units in new housing projects, though the constituency that needs affordability is a much greater percentage of the population than that. At the same time, the city gives a discount on the mitigation fee by which developers can buy their way out of including affordable units. The city’s concern about the problem appears to be a sham.
And that is where the “density bonus” comes in. The density bonus promises a compromise, the inclusion of affordable housing units in new projects, in exchange for which the developers can make their projects bigger (at market rate).
To understand the true nature of this "compromise," we need to understand what "affordable" means, and the nature of the conflict between corporate interests and neighborhood interests.
"Affordable" with respect to housing is a technical term used by HUD. It means that tenants pay no more than 30% of their income for housing. In other words, affordability means the cost of housing is calibrated by income rather than according to a rental market, which charges what people are willing to pay – apples and oranges.
HUD divides family income levels into five categories, using an Area Median Income (AMI) as a standard of calibration. The "median" is what is right in the middle between highest and lowest. Moderate income is from 80% to 120% of AMI (right in the middle); low income is from 50% to 80%, very low income is 20% to 50%, and extremely low income is less than 20%. These are all technical terms. Those earning above 120% of AMI are the high income families. For Alameda County, the AMI is $92,000 a year. For a family whose income is at the AMI, 30% of income rent will be $2300 a month. Already, rents for two bedroom apartments are upwards of $2800 a month.
Most people in Berkeley who earn below the median income pay more than 30% for their income for housing expenses – even those on rent control. Those who earn more than the median income generally pay less than 30% for housing. They pay more in actual money, but less as a percentage of their income. Almost a half of low income families pay more than 50% of their income for housing. [See www.towncharts.com/California/housing by zip code] Without rent control (prohibited by state law – the Costa-Hawkins Act), housing becomes an “impoverishment machine.”
There is a second factor protecting neighborhoods from this housing crisis, and that is its zoning regulations, which put limits on building height and size, and require set-backs, open space, on-site parking, and community benefits. Cities all over the state have passed such zoning ordinances to maintain their community and residential character, and to prevent overcrowding. In most residential areas of Berkeley, the height limit is three floors.
But banks like bigness, and they measure it by whether their investment will gain them greater earnings than securities speculation (now a major source of financial profit across the corporate specturm). Rental income for four floors would be 33% greater than that from three, and higher still from five. Local zoning regulations form a barrier to this project profitability. It is against those regulations that the state’s "density bonus" operates. The “density bonus” law gives the developers the ability to disregard such zoning regulations, and build bigger buildings. The developer simply has to agree to include a certain number of affordable units, and that will authorize the building of more market rate units. It is designed to increase the attractiveness of a project for bank financing.
In that sense, the term "bonus" refers to an imposition by state government, a violation of the democratic aspirations of city residents (expressed through the establishment of zoning regulations). It is thus of a piece with the Costa-Hawkings Act, which prohibits cities from defending their own neighborhoods against rent increases. Hobbled by these state anti-democratic measures, city governments find the housing crisis and its massive dislocations irresolvable. And in the name of resolving the housing crisis, the “density bonus” gives developers the ability to make the crisis worse.
Let us examine this “density bonus” closely. The law sets forth a predetermined schedule of how many more market rate units can be included for each increase in the number of affordable units. It thus refers to the increase in the total number of units. But it is ambiguous. Density in physics refers to a ratio. The density of a gas is measured by the number of molecules per cubic centimeter, for instance. But for housing, it simply refers to size, which in social terms has a perjorative connotation. It suggests that when low income people are included, population density goes up, to compensate for which the developers should get a "bonus." In this ambiguity, the term “density bonus” already reveals a class bias.
The fact that this change in density is given in percentages provides a second ambiguity. Does the percentage increase in overall units pertain to those added, or does it pertain to their percentage of the resulting whole? For example, when added to 8, 4 is a 50% increase; but as a part of the resulting 12, it is 33⅓%. Yet it is the same "4."
The notion of "density" then becomes a "meaning" rather than a measurement. It simply "names" the kind of "bonus" given. It is thus more properly understood as an adjective than a noun (a measurement). Generally, "dense" is the adjective, referring to the character of things like underbrush, fog, or prose styles, etc., while "density" indicates the degree of being dense. But here, "density bonus" refers to a transgression of democratically established social standards. And by expressing itself as percentages, it hides the fact that it primarily provides for bigness and the corporate profits dependent on that.
Here’s how it works [see Cal. Code 65915]. The developer declares that it will put in a certain number of affordable units, for which it can claim a "bonus" consisting of ignoring zoning limits (primarily height and size). And the developer gets a different bonus according to whether the affordable units are moderate income, low income, or very low income. Including very low income units allows much greater disregard of community standards than including moderate income units – another class bias.
Consider a large building with 60 units on 4 floors – that’s 15 units per floor, all market rate. (Though more than 3 floors, we use this example because the numbers are simpler.) If the developer includes 10% moderate income affordable units, the law allows adding 5% more market rate units. If the number of moderate income affordable units included is 40% of the total, then the increase in market rate units can be 35% (the maximum allowable). The developer gets one percent increase in market rate units for each one percent additional affordable unit included (above 10%).
In our example, ten percent moderate rate affordable units would be 6 units (10% of 60), entitling the developer to three more market rate units to the building (5% of 60). An entire (fifth) floor of 15 units (a 25% addition) would require including 30% moderate income units, or 18 units.
If the developer chose to include low income affordable units, there is a different result. A ten percent inclusion of low income affordable units would allow a 20% increase in market rate units. A 20% inclusion of low income units will allow a 35% increase in market rate units (the maximum). The developer gets one and a half percent increase in market rate units for each one percent additional affordable unit. That is, where one moderate income unit is worth one market rate unit (percentagewise), a low income unit is only worth two-thirds of a market rate unit. Adding an additional floor to the building (15 more units) or 25% of the original 60 would only require including 14 low income affordable units. If the developer inverts the calculation (which might be illegal), and considers the fifth floor to be 20% of the total (15 over 75 units), that additional 20% would only require 10% low income affordable units to authorize it – only 6 units (10% of 60). The diminished income loss from 6 affordable units as opposed to 14 affordable units is what the ambiguity is all about.
In the case of very low income affordable units (those most needed to stem the crisis), a developer would need to include only 5% affordable units to allow adding 20% market rate to the building, and 11% affordble to allow 35% additional units. The developer gets two and a half percent increase in market rate units for each one percent additional affordable unit. Very low income units are only worth two-fifths of a market rate unit. That might imply that for the people who made this law, the very low income families are only worth two-fifths of a middle class family. (There’s a Constitutional precedent for that – Article 1, section 3.)
Seven percent very low affordable will allow a 25% addition to the building (filling the fifth floor). Seven percent of 60 is 4.2 units, or 5 (rounding up). Five very low income affordable units thus allow the developer to add an entire floor to the building. For the very low income families, the ones facing the greatest pressures of dislocation, the density bonus cuts their benefit to less than a third of moderate income families, while the developer gets a whole new floor at market rate. With the probability of market rate rents increasing even more, 70 of 75 apartments will soon be bringing in even more money.
The lower the income and standard of living of a tenant, the more s/he will be exploited in the interest of higher corporate earnings. This is the class nature of government policy toward its constituencies. It is this class difference that has resulted in the many struggles over the past decades between social justice movements and corporate institutions (including government).
What the housing crisis (as an “impoverishment machine”) signifies is that the rich do not just get richer; they do so by rendering the poor poorer. In other words, poverty is something that is done to people by policies of impoverishment, and by economic structures and the agents of those structures. In the density bonus, the anti-democratic nature of those policies and the political credo of class bias reveal the housing development projects now unfolding to be a program of wealth, by wealth, and for wealth.
UPDATE: This morning, May 16, at about 6:16 am, the Berkeley Police Department received notice that the missing person, Jimmy Shu, has been located and is now safe at home.
[May 15] Berkeley Police Department seeks your help in locating a missing "at risk" person:
Jimmy Shu, Asian Male, 58 years old
Height: 6'0, Weight: 185 lbs, short black hair and glasses, wearing a black shirt and blue jeans.
Last Seen on the 3100 Block of Sacramento St at 6:45pm
He will be driving a Silver Toyota Sienna Van 5RZR030
If you have information that can assist in helping safely locate Jimmy Shu, please call 911 or contact the police at (510)981-5900
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
Voters of Berkeley, beware. Housing activists/advocates and our City Council have agreed upon a ballot initiative that would generate significantly more revenue for Berkeley's Housing Trust Fund. However, there is a deceptive, cynical petition being circulated right now claiming to be an "affordable housing" initiative that is actually a landlord/property owner funded proposal that would substantially reduce those housing fees and revenues. The Berkeley Property Owners' Association is circulating a petition which purports to raise additional funds for the Housing Trust Fund. The problem with that assertion is that the property owners' proposal would only raise about 20% of the funds raised by the initiative agreed upon by housing advocates and the City Council and would not specifically go toward housing, but merely the general fund. Two ballot measures in competition likely results in neither receiving a majority of votes, which is what BPOA is hoping to accomplish.
There are no authentic pro-housing petitions being circulated in Berkeley right now. Ask petitioners who is sponsoring the one they are carrying, and if they answer BPOA or say they do not know, do not sign it. Furthermore, if you have already signed a petition, and feel you were misinformed or deceived in doing so, you can have your name removed at the Berkeley City Clerk's office. You must do this before the petitions are delivered to the City Clerk, which is likely to be within a few days.
Housing is at a critical and emergency state in Berkeley, and regionally as well. We need to protect, maintain, and add to our low- and moderate-income housing stock, in a variety of ways. Adding essentially needed funds to Berkeley's Housing Trust Fund is one mechanism to do so. The more funds available in the Housing Trust Fund the more other funds can be leveraged, and the more truly affordable housing can be built and maintained. Please, please do not sign ANY so-called "affordable housing" petition in Berkeley, and if you have already done so please contact the Berkeley City Clerk's office, 510-981-6900 or e-mailclerk@cityofberkeley.info to remove your name from the petition.
The link for info on removing your name from a petition is here.
On January 15, the Contra Costa Times reported on a new poll showing that "48 percent of registered voters would support proposals to accelerate" executions in California. One of many reasons these voters may want to reconsider: Cold hard cash starting with the "$718,632 for 18 executions in addition to unspecified fees" the L.A. Times reports (in a May 10, 2016 article) such a move would cost the already financially-burdened state.
Add to this the fact that on its website, the California Travel and Tourism Commission notes that California had 16.5 million "international person-trips" in 2014, and of that number, 686K came from the UK, 445K from France, and 439K from Germany. And so, in addition to the already well-documented costs of capital punishment in California—on our morals, our judicial system and on our taxes—do we as Californians really want to ramp executions up when we risk offending, even alienating, so many potential new and return European tourists (even the Pope)?
If we don't care so much about what they think of our refusal to, as the New York Times Editorial Board wrote, "join the rest of the civilized world and end the death penalty," don't we at least want their dollars?
We already know how much Europeans hate the death penalty by their refusal to ship us lethal injection drugs, but what would happen if the 18 people who have exhausted all their state and federal appeals—out of California's massive death row population of close to 750 souls—started having their execution dates set like wildfire? Are Californians prepared to stomach the steady drumbeat of publicized death that would result, with the possibility, each time, of a gruesome botch, like the infamous Oklahoma execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014. Called "deeply troubling" by President Obama and generating an avalanche of negative press abroad, reporters witnessing the execution said Lockett "writhed, groaned, and convulsed" taking 43 minutes to die. Imagine 18 potential Lockett-like executions lined up like ducks over the course of a fiscal year . . . . How much negative publicity would California see as a result?
How much condemnation from foreign countries would we reap—countries whose tourism dollars our fragile economy depends upon? Just recently, after Saudi Arabia executed 47 prisoners, it was reported on January 15 by Eve Hartley of the Huffington Post that "the brutal Saudi justice system [had] strain[ed] relations between" Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
Before Californians head out to the polls in November, they ought to look real hard—not only at the very many good reasons already advanced to end the death penalty—but also, in our wallets; is there really so much green in there that accelerating—instead of ending the death penalty—is worth it?
Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015 litigating death penalty cases in postconviction. Since then he has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California.
Gulliver Trump can’t seem to be restrained even by the most determined Lilliputian reporters who constantly bombard him with questions and expose his inconsistencies.
He fires back with guns blazing scornful of his party’s elite and determined to ‘shock and awe’ his way to the White House. His cult followers don’t seem to be concerned of his many contradictions in the blissful belief that their Pipe Piper will make ‘America great’ and bring millions of jobs back to American. Always scant on details, he is without doubt a master marketer much like a used-car salesman who is determined to sell you a car without burdening you with details of its many defects.
A few examples: his failure to condemn David Duke and the white robed, anti-Christ Ku Klux Klan who have endorsed him.
After vigorously supporting the invasion of Iraq, the “Johnny come lately”, Trump now claims he opposed the war.
“Mexicans crossing the border are criminals and rapists” has now been supplanted with; “I love Hispanics” accompanied by a picture of him eating a Taco at the Cinco de Mayo festival. His Rambo personality makes him particularly appealing to people who do not wish to be burdened with hard facts. In many ways it appears that he has never really departed from the realty TV persona which catapulted him to fame.
As the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump is now entitled to receive RNC staff and RNC money. He gets control of the Republican Party bureaucracy. He gets CIA briefings. For more, go to http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/
In yet another gesture of capitulation to Israeli demands, the Obama administration has proposed an unprecedented military funding package that could top $40 billion over 10 years. In a stunning admission, the former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Commander-in-Chief, Gabi Ashkenazi stated that “U.S. taxpayers have contributed more to the Israeli defense budget than Israeli taxpayers in the past three years.” According to Rand Paul, “Israel’s per capita income is greater than three-fourths of the rest of the world.” Its economy is booming and is destined for even greater prosperity from its discovery of natural gas. On the home front, there is mounting disillusionment that our country’s domestic and foreign policies have been misguided and trillions squandered with failing alliances and never ending conflicts.
This anger has fueled both the Sanders and Trump campaigns. With trillions of debt accumulating for future generations of Americans, we continue to send billions of our tax money to reward Israel for its decades long occupation, demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of hundreds of illegal settlements. More and more influential voices both in Israel and at home are calling for an end to military aid to Israel. Continuation of such aid will only embolden Israel to continue its current policies of oppression and occupation and doom any hope of a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
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?
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.
Prominent people in the Republican Party aren't backing Donald Trump in his desire to be our President. Recently, the two former Republican Presidents, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush, have indicated that they are not attending the Republican National Convention, also Mitt Romney isn't attending, and also, John McCain. And now, the House Majority Leader, Paul Ryan, has indicated that he can not endorse Donald Trump. Is this a case of Mutiny on the Bounty? What is going on here?
Should we interpret this as a signal that Trump is too progressive? Or that he is too anti-establishment, and the corporate establishment, the corrupt cronies, and the people against change, are against Donald Trump, because Trump is just too revolutionary?
None of the above. Trump isn't liberal. Trump can't even claim to be against the one percent, since, as a billionaire, he is part of the top .001 percent. No, this is something else entirely.
The Republicans have turned their backs on Trump, because they don't want America to be ruined--it would put them out of a job and it would mean that their millions of dollars that they have would not be worth the paper it is printed on. Trump's proposals and his behavior frighten the Republicans, and the Democrats, and, anyone who can think, because it is very clear that there is something wrong with this candidate.
It isn't that Trump is going to redistribute the wealth. It isn't that he is going to make everything better for common citizens and everything worse for the "establishment." It is a case of the U.S. going down in flames. Everyone is on this boat--if this boat gets sunk, every one of us will have to learn to swim. And that's why Trump is so scary.
The Republicans and the Democrats don't have any interest in the U.S. becoming ruined, so both sides are in agreement, at least in this instance, that electing him would be disastrous.
So, what is wrong with Donald Trump, anyway? Well, to put it bluntly, Donald Trump is a crazy person.
Now, the last thing I want to do is to step on the toes of mentally ill people; good people struggling with bad illnesses, most with inherent dignity that goes unrecognized. It would be an insult to mentally ill people to give Trump a standard mental health diagnosis.
Trump in many ways resembles persons with mania or who have a personality disorder. However, most people with mental illness do not have malice toward their fellow human being. Many may have delusions of grandeur--but much of this goes away once medication is introduced.
Trump is definitely a Narcissist. He definitely has malice--toward anyone who isn't Donald Trump. He definitely has a poor connection with reality--as exemplified in his policy ideas, which completely will not work, and which will be a total disaster if put into effect.
Trump promised that if elected, he will prosecute Hillary Clinton for the problem with the emails--this too much resembles politicians' behavior in oppressive countries, in which the persons who lose power are either forced into exile, or executed.
Trump promised to deport all of the illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. In that case, who is going to do all the manual labor? You would need to release the prisoners from all of the jails and prisons, and put them to work. Is that what he plans? He hasn't said so. Who, then, is going to do all the work?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of Trump's proposals, ideas that are nice to think about, but which, realistically, would spell the end of life in the U.S. to which we are accustomed.
Is this candidate mentally ill? Trump in many ways resembles a mentally ill person, but lacks good intentions, lacks the basic dignity that most of us have, and lacks the ability to concede error.
Defeating Donald Trump is no longer a liberal vs. conservative issue. It is an issue of basic sense. Yes, he has millions of voters who adore him, who will vote for him, and who believe everything he says. However, millions of people are mistaken.
On April 1, 2016 President Barack Obama addressed the closing session of the Nuclear Security Summit and praised "the collective efforts that we've made to reduce the amount of nuclear material that might be accessible to terrorists around the world."
"This is also an opportunity for our nations to remain united and focused on the most active terrorist network at the moment, and that is ISIL," Obama said. Many observers would argue that the US represents the world's "most active terrorist network." And, in doing so, they would merely be echoing the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who, on April 4, 1967, railed against "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."
While Obama hyped the fact that "a majority of the nations here are part of the global coalition against ISIL," he also noted that this same coalition was a major recruiting conduit for ISIS militants. "Just about all of our nations have seen citizens join ISIL in Syria and Iraq," Obama admitted, without offering any thoughts as to why this situation exists.
But Obama's most remarkable comment came with his public admission that US foreign policy and military actions were directly linked to the spike in terror attacks against Western targets in Europe and the US. "As ISIL is squeezed in Syria and Iraq," the president explained, "we can anticipate it lashing out elsewhere, as we've seen most recently and tragically in countries from Turkey to Brussels."
US military reveals 8 civilians died in airstrikes against ISIS between April and July 2015 (Daily Mail).
Having established that US-led attacks against ISIS fighters were "squeezing" the jihadists to abandon the besieged cities in Syria and Iraq to wreak havoc inside the cities of NATO's member states, Obama seemed to directly contradict his assessment: "In Syria and Iraq," he declared, "ISIL continues to lose ground. That's the good news."
"Our coalition continues to take out its leaders, including those planning external terrorist attacks. They are losing their oil infrastructure. They are losing their revenues. Morale is suffering. We believe that the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and Iraq has slowed, even as the threat from foreign fighters returning to commit acts of horrific violence remains all too real." [Emphasis added.]
For most Americans, the Pentagon's military assaults on countries thousands of miles from the US border remain a dim and distant distraction -- more like a rumor than a reality. But the international monitoring organization, Airwars.org, provides some missing context.
According to Airwars estimates, as of May 1, 2016 -- over the course of an anti-ISIS campaign that has lasted more than 634 days -- the coalition has mounted 12,039 air strikes (8,163 in Iraq; 3,851 in Syria), dropping a total of 41,607 bombs and missiles.
A Jihadist Links US Killings to
Growing Resentment and Revenge Attacks
Obama's link between attacks on ISIS and the bloody "blowback" on Western streets recently was echoed by British-born Harry Sarfo, a one-time UK postal worker and former ISIS fighter who warned The Independent in an April 29 interview that the US-led bombing campaign against ISIS would only drive more jihadists to launch terror attacks directed at the West.
"The bombing campaign gives them more recruits, more men and children who will be willing to give their lies because they've lost their families in the bombing," Sarfo explained. "For every bomb, there will be someone to bring terror to the West…. They've got plenty of men waiting for Western troops to arrive. For them the promise of paradise is all they want." (The Pentagon has admitted responsibility for several civilian deaths during the period Sarfo says he was in Syria.)
ISIS, for its part, has frequently citied air strikes against its strongholds as the motivation for its attacks on Brussels and Paris -- and for its downing of a Russian passenger plane flying out of Egypt.
In April 2015, a group of militants staged a series of attacks that killed 130 people in Paris. In April 2016, a series of bombings in Brussels left more than 30 dead. Understandably, these attacks receive intense coverage in the Western media. Meanwhile, equally horrendous images of civilian victims of US attacks in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq (and US-backed Saudi airstrikes against civilians in Yemen) are seldom seen on front pages or evening news broadcasts in Europe or the US.
By comparison, Airwar.org reports that, in just the eighth-month period from August 8, 2014 to May 2, 2016, "an overall total of between 2,699 and 3,625 civilian non-combatant fatalities had been alleged from 414 separate reported incidents, in both Iraq and Syria."
"In addition to these confirmed events," Airwars added, "it is our provisional view at Airwars that between 1,113 and 1,691 civilian non-combatants appear likely to have been killed in 172 further incidents where there is fair reporting publicly available of an event -- and where Coalition strikes were confirmed in the near vicinity on that date. At least 878 civilians were also reportedly injured in these events. Some 76 of these incidents were in Iraq (593 to 968 reported deaths) and 96 events in Syria (with a reported fatality range of 520 to 723.)"
'Nuclear Security' = Atomic Bombs for the West
Back in Washington, Obama was wrapping up his formal statement. "Looking around this room," he mused, "I see nations that represent the overwhelming majority of humanity -- from different regions, races, religions, cultures. But our people do share common aspirations to live in security and peace and to be free from fear."
While there are 193 member states in the United Nations, the Nuclear Security Summit was attended by representatives of 52 countries, seven of which possess nuclear weapons arsenals -- in violation of long-standing international treaty agreements calling for nuclear disarmament and abolition. The attendees also included 16 of the 28 members of NATO -- the nuclear-armed military juggernaut that was supposed to have been dismantled after the end of the Cold War.
The purpose of the Nuclear Security Summit was a narrow one, focused on how to prevent "terrorists" from acquiring the "nuclear option." There was no discussion of disarming the world's major existing nuclear arsenals (as required under the Non-proliferation Treaty).
Nor was there any discussion of the risk posed by civilian nuclear power reactors and radioactive waste storage sites, all of which pose tempting targets for anyone with a shoulder-mounted missile capable of turning these facilities into "home-grown dirty bombs." (This is not a hypothetical scenario. On January 18, 1982, five Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG-7s) were fired across France's Rhone River, striking the containment building of the Superphenix nuclear reactor.)
"The fight against ISIL will continue to be difficult, but, together, we are making real progress," Obama continued. "I'm absolutely confident that we will prevail and destroy this vile organization. As compared to ISIL's vision of death and destruction, I believe our nations together offer a hopeful vision focused on what we can build for our people."
That "hopeful vision" is difficult to perceive for residents in the many foreign lands currently under attack by Hellfire missiles launched from US aircraft and drones. While video footage of the carnage in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul and San Bernardino is horrifying to behold, it is painful but necessary to acknowledge that the damage done by a single US missile fired into an urban setting can be even more devastating.
War Crime: The US Bombing of Mosul University
On March 19 and again on March 20, US planes attacked the University of Mosul in ISIS-occupied eastern Iraq. The airstrike came in the early afternoon, at a time when the area was most crowded.
The US bombed the University headquarters, the women's education college, the science college, the publishing center, the girls' dormitories, and a nearby restaurant. The US also bombed the faculty members' residential building. Wives and children of faculty members were among the victims: only one child survived. Professor Dhafer al Badrani, former Dean of the university's Computer Sciences College, was killed in the March 20 attack, along with his wife.
According to Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi, who sent a video of the bombing (above), the initial casualty count was 92 killed and 135 injured. "Killing innocent civilians will not solve the problem of ISIL," Al-Azzawi wrote, instead "it will push more people to join them to be able to revenge for their losses and their beloved ones."
The Anger that Stokes ISIS
In addition to civilian-killing airstrikes, Sarfo provided The Independent with another explanation for why he was driven to join ISIS -- police harassment. Sarfo bitterly recalled how he had been forced to surrender his British passport and report to a police station twice a week and how his home was repeatedly raided. "I wanted to start a new life for me and my wife," he told The Independent. "The police and the authorities destroyed it. They made me become the man they wanted."
Sarfo eventually abandoned ISIS because of the mounting burden of atrocities he was forced to experience. "I witnessed stonings, beheadings, shootings, hands chopped off and many other things," he told the Independent. "I've seen child soldiers -- 13-year-old boys with explosive belts and Kalashnikovs. Some boys even driving cars and involved in executions.
"My worst memory is of the execution of six men shot in the head by Kalashnikovs. The chopping off of a man's hand and making him hold it with the other hand. The Islamic State is not just un-Islamic, it is inhuman. A blood-related brother killed his own brother on suspicion of being a spy. They gave him the order to kill him. It is friends killing friends."
But as bad as ISIS may be, they do not, as yet, girdle the world with more than 1,000 of military garrisons and facilities nor do they threaten the planet with an arsenal of 2,000 nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, half of which remain on "hair-trigger" alert.
Donald Trump’s signature issue is immigration. When asked by the New York Times what he would accomplish during his first 100 days as President, Trump responded: “rescind Obama’s executive orders on immigration,” design the wall with Mexico, and ensure “the immigration ban on Muslims would be in place.” Trump’s immigration policy has five pillars.
Immigrants are dangerous: A January NBC News poll found that 34 percent of Republicans thought “terrorism” was the biggest issue facing the US; another 13 percent said it was “immigration.” Trump has linked these two issues and staked out a position so extreme it outflanked the other GOP contenders, making him the presumptive Republican nominee.
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems… When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.
On July 5th, Trump asserted that Mexicans were responsible for “tremendous infectious disease… pouring across the border.” Trump’s first TV ad implied that ISIS fighters were also “pouring across the border.”
The non-partisan website Politifact judged Trump’s claims to be false. (Politfact reported, “there is no evidence of a massive influx of infections across the border.”)
Immigrants take away jobs: In a July 11th speech, Trump made further claims about immigrants: “They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money.”
According to an August Rasmussen poll 51 percent of Americans “believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from American citizens.”
However, an August Forbes magazine article said this belief is incorrect: “illegal immigrants actually raise wages for documented/native workers.”
Immigration can be stopped by building a wall along the Mexican border:: Trump promises to build a wall along the open border with Mexico. When pressed, Trump said the wall would be 1000 miles long, rise 35-40 feet, and cost $8 billion.
The Washington Post studied Trump’s wall design and estimated that it would cost $25 billion for design and material; in addition, the construction would require “40,000 workers per year for at least four years.”
Trump insists Mexico must pay for this wall. If they do not, he promises Mexican citizens will be subject to penalties on remittance payments, tariffs on temporary visas, and increased fees on border-crossing cards and at ports-of-entry. Legal experts believe that Trump’s reimbursement scheme is illegal.
However, the bigger concern is whether such a wall, if built, would accomplish its objectives. Politifact noted that, in recent years, there has been zero net immigration across the Mexican border – that is, the number of folks going north is matched by the number of people going south. (This was confirmed in a November Pew Research report.)
Pew Research says there are actually 11.3 million illegal immigrants (that comprise about 5.1 percent of the US labor force). The Atlantic estimates it would cost $140 billion to deport them – with additional billions in economic consequences.
Trump blames the existence of illegal immigrants on President Obama’s unwillingness to enforce immigration law. Politifact says this is an incorrect statement.
Ban Muslims from entering the US: On December 7th, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Separate from enforcement expenses, it’s estimated this ban would cost the US $18.4 billion in annual lost tourism.
There are many other problems with banning Muslims. In his recent foreign policy speech Trump promised, “We’re going to be working very closely with our allies in the Muslim world.” He didn’t reconcile with this with his plan to bar Muslims. The countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia, Pakistan, and India; all US allies. All these countries import weapons from the US, as do other Muslim countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
In September, Pew Research observed: “Republicans more likely to say Immigrants have a negative impact on U.S. society, crime and economy.” (53 percent of Republicans say immigrants make U.S. society worse versus 55 percent of Democrats who say immigrants make it better.)
For several years differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives has been a hotly debated topic. A 2013 Mother Jones article observed: “fearful people are more conservative.”
Whether because of fear, or some other reason, Republicans tend to have negative feelings about immigrants. Donald Trump has played to this and his pandering has made him the presumptive Republican nominee.
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net
Acceptance of "what is" constitutes a large part of numerous religious and meditative traditions. Acceptance on an emotional level is very practical, because it allows individuals to work for change from a reality-based and nonviolent place. While certainly, anger has its uses, so does acceptance. I believe it is possible to be angry and in acceptance at the same time. This means that you acknowledge the reality you face, you are angry about it, but you are not creating violence of word or deed in your attempt to make things better.
Acceptance is applicable to the predicament of having a psychiatric difficulty. Accepting that you do have a problem, first acknowledging it and then being okay with this fact, is the beginning of a long road toward recovery. Recovery is continuous. Mental illnesses generally aren’t curable, and therefore, recovery has a different definition than from a flu, or from a broken leg.
Acceptance that the illness exists, acceptance of the need for treatment, all the while continuing to accept one's own validity as a human being, are some of the ways that this attitude can help. Being a little angry can help, too, when expressed in the motivation to do better, and in confronting stinking thinking.
If we are mistreated by the mental health treatment system, using anger effectively, and in combination with acceptance, can mean going through proper channels to resolve the incident(s). In dealing with the mental health system, if we respond to abuse in a way that appears violent, it only escalates the situation and this potentially brings more abuse. If you want to even things up, employ nonviolent resources, such as registering a grievance according to a grievance policy, reporting mistreatment to the appropriate agency (such as your local mental health commission, your state medical board, or a journalist) or you could also contact an attorney.
Therapists are often observing you. You can observe them also. You could figure out what techniques they use to gain psychological advantage. There is nothing wrong with considering yourself an equal of a treatment practitioner. They aren't "better" than we are.
I am fortunate that for the most part, at least in the last twenty years, the mental health treatment system hasn't been abusive toward me. Many of the human rights violations that once existed have been resolved through activism of mental health survivors—people who were grossly mistreated and who forced changes in how mentally ill people are treated. The "abuse" I have experienced has been subtle for the most part, and has not been on a level that required I report anything to an agency, or obtain other help.
Others have not been as fortunate.
Acceptance doesn't have to mean that we become a human doormat. The anger factor can mean that we will stand up for our rights. The acceptance factor can mean that we do so in a manner that doesn’t hurt anyone or get us into more trouble. Regardless of what some people might say about anger being beneath the level of spiritual "enlightenment," sometimes we need our anger.
Since Hugo Chávez's death in 2013, Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's hand-picked successor, is facing economic and political turmoil. To keep fading Chavismo alive, Venezuela has turned to the Castro brothers for help and probably is getting more than it asked for. As Venezuela's former ambassador to the United Nations, Diego Arria, put it: “Venezuela is an occupied country. The Venezuelan regime is a puppet controlled by the Cubans. It is no longer Cuban tutelage; it is control.”
After Chávez's death, he was succeeded by Maduro (initially as interim President, before narrowly winning the Venezuelan presidential election in 2013 by 1.49% of the vote). In the parliamentary elections of 2015, the result was a decisive defeat for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which lost control of the Assembly for the first time since 1999. Maduro and his PSVU party are hanging on to control by their fingertips. However, Maduro did appoint new supreme court justices right before the new Congress took office. Thus, they could overturn the opposition's legislation, creating possible government gridlock.
Venezuela is on the brink of economic default. The country is plagued by electrical blackouts, some neighborhoods go days without water, and protests disrupt the already heavy traffic. Venezuela's economy shrank 7.1% in the third quarter of 2015 and it's been shrinking for seven consecutive quarters going back to the start of 2014. Inflation soared to 141% over the year ending in September 2015 and the International Monetary Fund projects inflation in Venezuela will increase 204% this year.
The reasons for Venezuela's economic meltdown include the crashing oil prices. (Venezuela's economy depends mostly on oil.) The value of the bolivar, Venezuela's currency, has nosedived. And Venezuelans are bearing the brunt of the economy's problems. For example, the government cannot pay to import basic food items, leaving many supermarkets with empty shelves.
Maduro was educated and groomed for for the Venezuelan leadership at Cuba's special school for political leadership, Escuela Ñico López, in the 1980s. That's why Maduro turned to Cuba for help. Actually, since his election in 1999, Chávez had already formed a major alliance with Fidel Castro and developed a significant trade relationship with Cuba, which intensified over the years. For example, In October 2000, Chávez and Castro signed the Convenio Integral de Cooperación under which Venezuela would send oil to Cuba and Venezuela would receive technical support in the fields of education, health care, sports, science, and technology.
According to TheWall Street Journal, "Cuba controls all the levers of state security and intelligence that help chavismo keep a lid on dissent." This means that not only are there Cuban military personnel present in substantial quantities in Venezuela, but there are Cubans holding high-ranking positions in the Venezuelan government.
According to the Washington Times, Maduro and other high-ranking officials travel to Cuba when summoned by the Castro brothers, They have been recorded talking about how they planned on following through with Castro's advice to "get rid of these bourgeois elections because [voters] make mistakes [and] here, with elections the way they are, we could be struck down. They could knock the revolution down."
Gen. Antonio Rivero, a former Chávez ally, was arrested after he publicly denounced the presence of thousands of Cuban military and security personnel assigned to every level of the Venezuelan bureaucracy, up to and including the office of the minister of defense.
What's next for Venezuela if Maduro's PSUV loses the presidency or the country goes into default? Will there be a Cuban-supported military coup? The U.S. has been accused of supporting the Venezuelan opposition parties. What, if anything, is the U.S. doing about the Cubanization of Venezuela? How will the U.S.-Cuban normalization effect future events in Venezuela?
The pundits see all this as a tipping point, but probably not toward a more normal, less polarized political and economic future for Venezuela.
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?
In an eclectic program, cellist Yo Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott gave a concert Thursday evening, May 12, at Davies Hall. Longtime collaborators in both live performances and recordings, Yo Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott have a wonderful feel for each other’s musicianship. They opened this program with five pieces from something they term the “Arc of Life Suite,” which they recorded in 2015. However, as with many of Yo Yo Ma’s themed projects, this grouping seems a bit arbitrary and forced, though he sees it “as an invitation to our audience to remember and imagine what the soundtracks of their lives might be…. Childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, old age: what do they sound like?” Personally, I can’t imagine anyone’s life having this group of works as its soundtrack; but, oh well, there’s beautiful music here, and, anyway, Yo Yo Ma often stretches the point of his themed projects way out of proportion.
The “Arc of Life Suite” opened with a version of Charles Gounod’s Ave Maria for piano and cello, which offers Gounod’s transformation of J.S. Bach’s famous C Major prelude. Ms. Stott and Mr. Ma began this familiar piece softly, then gradually built up the power. Next on the program was a song by Jean Sibelius, “Var det en dröm?” (“Was it a dream?”) This was a passionate love song whose melody throbbed in the cello while the piano offered a syncopated accompaniment. This work was followed by Tango Jalousie, by Danish composer Jacob Gade (1879-1963). This piece, by the way, was the basis of a popular song in America of the 1950s, whose title, if I recall, was simply “Jealousy,” in which a male crooner sang “Jealousy, night and day you torture me,” and in which he closed by singing “It’s only the tango you love.” (The words of this song kept coming back to me as Stott and Ma played Gade’s original work, strongly rooted in Argentine tango.) Next on the program, and for me the highlight of this group, was Claude Debussy’s Beau Soir (Beautiful Evening). This is an early work of Debussy’s from around 1880, and it offers rich harmonies and a wistful, moody evocation of twilight. Unlike the other pieces in this “Arc of Life Suite,” Beau Soir is not in the least showy. Rather, it is understated yet masterful in its coloration, redolent of that mysterious moment when darkness approaches. The final work in this set was another Ave Maria, this one the famous version by Franz Schubert. All the works in this set were beautifully played by Ms. Stott and Mr. Ma, so it was a pleasure to hear them, even if the effort to string them together as an “Arc of Life” seemed far-fetched.
The concert continued with Dimitri Shostakovich’s Sonata in D minor for Cello and Piano, Opus 40. This work, which dates from 1934, had its premiere in the Leningrad Conservatory on Christmas day, 1934. It baffled musicians and audiences alike at its premiere, but soon gained acceptance and recognition. Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich became a leading exponent of this piece, which he recorded with Shostakovich himself on piano. Much of the writing for cello in this sonata falls in the instrument’s high range. The high-pitched buzzing of the cello in the second movement was considered a radical departure at the time, and still sounds radical to us today. The pizzicato plucking of the cello later accompanies the lead taken by the piano. Then a walking motif by the piano introduces a new departure. The slow, leisurely Largo is a lovely lyrical movement. The Allegro finale is both turbulent and bouncy, with frequent sonorous chords sounding in the piano. It was Kathryn Stott’s formidable technique that stood out for me in this sonata, as well as Yo Yo Ma’s ability to move effortlessly back and forth from the extreme high notes of his instrument to its burnished low registers.
After intermission, Ms. Stott and Mr. Ma returned to play Giovanni Sollima’s Il bell’Antonio. Sollima, a Sicilian by birth, composed this music for a 2005 TV miniseries remake of the 1960 film Il bell’Antonio, which featured Marcello Mastroianni as a playboy with sexual hangups. Giovanni Sollima, a cellist himself, has often performed this work with Kathryn Stott. It begins in a minimalist vein, then gradually builds up in intensity in a series lyrical variations. Ultimately, the music becomes quite excited, almost hysterical, one might say. Eventually, however, it calms down for a quietly resigned ending. Yo Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott exerted themselves effectively in conveying the psychosexual drama behind this music.
The final work on the program was César Franck’s well-loved Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano. Playing Franck’s original violin version on cello, Yo Yo Ma gave a richly rewarding performance, but I missed the more brilliant tone of the violin. Meanwhile, Kathryn Stott gave this work an impassioned reading, at times soft and lyrical, at other times, forceful and compelling. When the work was finished, the audience gave the musicians a rousing standing ovation, in which I joined. Having had a long day, I left after Kathryn Stott and Yo Yo Ma had taken their second bow, not waiting to see if they would play an encore.
Voci Women's Vocal Ensemble will appear on May 15 and 21 in two performances of a concert on the theme of Traces of a Vanishing World, featuring Composer Ann Callaway's recently-completed ON MUSIC AND NATURE: Three Hopkins Settings, for SSAA choir and piano.
This 14-minute work treats three amazing poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Henry Purcell," "Moonrise June 19, 1876," and "The Woodlark." The composer says about the piece that “ Hopkins the poet may have vanished, yet his art lives on to celebrate, in turn, the uniqueness of Purcell, the moonrise on a particular ‘midsummer not-to-call night,’ and finally a little puff of feathered joy which is the Woodlark.”
Also on the program are songs about forgotten ways of life, including daily aspects of bygone lives, by Bach, Brahms, Holst, Ligeti, Macha, Morely, Purcell, Takacs, Gwyneth Walker and Alice Parker.
Anne Hege is the music director of Voci, accompanied by Kate Campbell on piano.
Songs of the Bygone: Traces of a Vanishing World
Sunday, May 15 at 7:00 PM, Piedmont Center for the Arts, , 801 Magnolia Avenue , Piedmont
Saturday, May 21 at 2:00 PM, St Perpetua Parish Church, 3454 Hamlin Road, Lafayette
