Leaders from around the Bay Area and California have condemned President Donald Trump's announcement today that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale. -more-

The conservative leaning Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, in his farewell press conference claimed that postal banking was a bad idea because "We don't know anything about banking". Is historical memory that short? For 55 years, from 1911 to 1966, United States Postal Service (USPS) provided traditional banking services. Ironically, postal banking was initiated and strongly advocated by a conservative Republican, President Taft. But without any public discussion, postal banking was abolished by President Johnson, a Democrat who was liberal on domestic issues. -more-

Climate change is real and will have a real and devastating effect on our local communities. Trump's disastrous decision to back out of the Paris Accord will have devastating impacts to green jobs, climate change, and our country's standing as a world leader. While we had hoped that the federal government would show leadership in the face of this crisis, it now turns to us, local and state governments to take the lead. -more-

Did Trump’s campaign rhetoric of anti-immigrant rantings of Muslims precipitate the recent death of two “good Samaritans,” on a Portland train? Three men tried to rescue two teenage girls by a knife wielding white terrorist who was spewing anti-Muslim racial slurs. The attack came attack came just six days after 23-year-old Richard Collins III, an African-American student at Bowie State University was fatally stabbed by a white supremacist Facebook group called "Alt-Reich: Nation."Heidi Beirich, the Intelligence Project director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, accuses Trump and his supporters of unleashing a barrage of neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hatred during the presidential campaign. This tragic event comes on the heels of discussions by top Republicans who are considering using militia groups as security for public events. Multnomah County GOP Chair, James Buchal, told The Guardian that Republicans would likely make their own security arrangements rather than relying on city or state police, including groups like the “Oath Keepers” and the “Three Percenters”. A video has recently surfaced of Buchal lamenting what he called "open borders." He has expressed his intense hatred of people from Third World countries who “would destroy everything that is special about America.” Clearly he is no shining example of what is so special about America. -more-

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

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

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

This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! -more-

Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, June 3) we're co-hosting a fundraising party from 2-4 for Jon Ossoff, who's running in Georgia for the seat vacated by a Trumpite cabinet appointee. If you want to go, let me know by promptly emailing bomalley@berkeleydailyplanet.com and I'll send you the address and more information. -more-

In my recovery from psychiatric illness, doctors have commented that I responded well to medication. To me, this is an indication that my illness is biologically based. -more-

"Soiled Doves" was the monicker for ladies of the evening during the Gilded Age on the Barbary Coast in old San Francisco--and the name of the "immersive, circus-infused culinary exravaganza" dinner theater The Soiled Dove, put on by the Vau de Vire Society, creators of the Edwardian Ball, returning to the Tortona Big Top at The Point in Alameda Friday and Saturday nights, June 9th through July 1st. -more-

In spite of its many musical virtues, if Antonín Dvorák’s Stabat Mater were just another setting of the grief experienced by Mary, the mother of Christ, as she watched her son die on the cross, I’m not sure this work would be nearly as moving as it is once one is informed about the circumstances in Dvorák’s own life which gave rise to this composition. In 1875, the recently married Dvorák and his wife had a daughter, Josefa, who died at just two days old. Overcome with grief, Dvorák began work on a Stabat Mater. He didn’t get very far, perhaps only eight bars, when he put aside this work to fulfill commissions for other music. Two years later, his 11-month old daughter, Ruenza, died, and less than a month later, his son, Otakar, also died. The Dvorák family was suddenly childless, having experienced the deaths of three children in two years. Dvorák threw himself into composing his Stabat Mater, which he completed in 1877. In this work, one senses that Dvorák took the grief of Mary, mother of Christ, as a paradigm of his wife’s grief as well as his own at the death of their three children. The Dvorák Stabat Mater thus became both an intimately personal work and, at the same time, a universal work embodying the grief of any mother who sees her child die. -more-