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Dogs do what dogs do - and in Berkeley, "dog do" is now part of some very public art. Decorative medallions depicting dogs sniffing, dumping and humping each other have recently been added to the base of one of a pair of sculptures commissioned by the city on either end of the pedestrian and bike bridge over Interstate 80. At first glance, one might think the scatological series of bronzes - at the base of the west side sculpture celebrating the waterfront park - is a joke. It's not. "I am showing dogs doing what dogs do at the dog...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

Berkeley -- Berkeley's city council voted early today to let the public library override the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act in order to get its checkout machines serviced.After a heated debate, the council voted 6-2, with one abstention, to grant a waiver for the library to contract with 3M, a multinational technology company, even though the firm refused to sign a form promising it does not engage in nuclear research or development.The library asked permission to sign a 5-year, $63,000 contract with 3M to maintain five self-checkout scanning machines at the main library and four branches. The Peace and Justice Commission...

" Berkeley's public library will face a showdown with the city's Peace and Justice Commission tonight over whether a service contract for the book check-out system violates the city's nuclear-free ordinance......"

Berkeley's public library will face a showdown with the city's Peace and Justice Commission tonight over whether a service contract for the book check-out system violates the city's nuclear-free ordinance. The dispute centers on a five-year, $63,000 contract the library wants to sign with 3M, an international technology company based in Minnesota, to service five scanner machines library patrons use to check out books.But 3M, a company with operations in 60 countries, refused to sign Berkeley's nuclear-free disclosure form as required by the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act passed by voters in 1986.As a result, the library's self-checkout machines have not...

I missed Clintonite moldy oldie-turned-Obama economic adviser Robert Reich’s testimony a few weeks ago on how the government should spend federal stimulus money. The Berkeley professor engaged in academic fantasy land talk about getting all the cash out to workers as quickly as possible — a pipe dream debunked by the CBO report I mentioned in my column yesterday. Even more noteworthy, however, were the comments Reich made about which workers deserve the stimulus bucks most. Reich’s proposal exposes the lie that the Obama administration is actually interested in revitalizing basic infrastructure for the good of the economy. No, what...

Some cities urge residents to go on citywide exercise kicks. Others promote municipal book clubs. Berkeley wants its citizens to go on a collective low-carbon diet. To meet its ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Berkeley is encouraging all 100,000 residents to join support groups to help individuals fight global warming. Like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers, the groups are part social, part confessional and partly about accountability. "It does sound like AA," said Timothy Burroughs, Berkeley's climate action coordinator, who is helping to start the program. "But it's in the context of a policy goal of the city's....

“No prehistoric cultural deposits or materials” were found during an archaeological survey of the site once occupied by an oak grove west of Memorial Stadium. The report, released by UC Berkeley, was prepared by private archaeological consultants in anticipation of construction of a new high-tech gym and office complex at the site. But the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, as the report makes clear, declaring that “the entire project site should be considered an archaeologically sensitive area based on its proximity to Strawberry Creek and the fact that prehistoric archaeological deposits and features have been found along the...

North Berkeley BART Station windows were smashed in the early hours of Thursday morning “in memory of Oscar Grant and all who are murdered at the cold hands of the police,” according to a message posted on www.indybay.org by “anarchists.” The message says in part, “This action was taken out in response to the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police and in solidarity with the riots that have been taking place in Oakland. Our hope is that this action will inspire others to rise up against this atrocious police state in which we live. “This action was very easy...

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended almost before it began when the lone remaining branch-percher descended to earth Tuesday morning, followed by two acacias a few hours later. Campus community relations director Irene Hegarty said that only one of the two tree-sitters who took to the branches was still aloft when community members talked him down. “He walked away, though he was cited and released for trespassing by university police a couple of blocks away,” she said. Arborists made short work of the trees, leaving five or six five-foot logs and a pile of wood chips for use at the park. “They...

The treesitters are back on UC Berkeley’s turf, this time occupying the branches of an acacia at People’s Park. Two protesters declared their occupation Monday morning of one of two People’s Park acacias that the university plans to chop down. Unlike the Memorial Stadium treesit, which ended in September with the demolition of a venerable oak grove, the People’s Park protest wasn’t sparked by construction. While the university wanted to clear the stadium grove to make way for a four-level high tech gym and office complex, UC Berkeley spokesperson Irene Hegarty says safety concerns have prompted plans to remove the...

Protests at The New School, where a student uprising over the leadership of the university’s president, Bob Kerrey, led to clashes with the police and at least one arrest on Thursday morning, took another wild turn later on Thursday evening. A little after 11:30 p.m., Mr. Kerrey emerged from a university building on Fifth Avenue south of 14th Street to a sea of a few hundred protesters chanting for his resignation. As Mr. Kerrey walked down Fifth Avenue toward 12th Street, about 30 protesters began following him, some of them shouting insults. As the crowd’s pace quickened, so did Mr....

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended the same day it began last week when campus police signed a Christmas truce that spares—for the moment—two acacias in People’s Park. Zachary RunningWolf, the same arboreal ascender who began the lengthy occupation of the oak grove at Memorial Stadium on Dec. 2, 2006, was the lone occupant of one of the People’s Park acacias, which share space with a children’s playground. The grove tree-sit ended Sept. 9, the same day the last of the trees there was leveled by a chainsaw-wielding contract crew. RunningWolf’s ascent at People’s Park on Dec. 18 came after campus officials...

Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink gathered at a Marine recruiting station in Berkeley this morning to show solidarity with an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush on Sunday. Members of the group and others marched around the recruiting station holding shoes in the air to show support for Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who hurled two shoes at Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. In many Arab countries, showing the sole of one's shoes, much less throwing shoes at another person, is considered extremely disrespectful. Organizers said their demonstration was to show support for the...

Berkeley -- After an emotional, fiery debate over academic freedom and torture, Berkeley's city council passed a measure late Monday night imploring the U.S. to prosecute Berkeley resident and former White House official John Yoo for war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the legal memos justifying torture while interrogating terrorism suspects while he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney general for the Bush administration in 2001-03."John Yoo took a material involvement in the deaths and torture of untold numbers of people," said city councilman Max Anderson, choking back tears during the council's...

The Oakland Tribune reports the story of a hipster granny from Berkeley that has decided to sue the U.S. military over a reporter embed she arranged in Iraq that was abruptly canceled by the government. While the Oakland Trib and the hippie granny try their hardest to make the U.S. military the villain, it's a bit hard to feel too sorry for her when the facts are considered. On top of that, the Trib absurdly calls her situation an "ordeal" which, when comparing her situation to what the soldiers have to go through, seems a bit over-the-top and silly, really....

Berkeley's City Council will delve into national policy again next week when it votes whether to demand the United States charge Berkeley resident and former Bush adviser John Yoo with war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the memos offering legal justification for torture while he worked for the White House from 2001 to 2003.The five measures attacking Yoo were drafted by the city's Peace and Justice Commission, the same group that recommended that the city tell the Marines they were "unwelcome intruders." The City Council will vote Monday on the five...

BERKELEY — Berkeley blogger Jane Stillwater is suing the federal government for the cost of an airplane ticket to Kuwait and the cost of 15 mocha lattes from the airport Starbucks, where she spent two sleepless days because her previously approved embed with the U.S. Army suddenly was canceled.Stillwater, a 66-year-old grandmother, embedded with the U.S. military twice last year and has gone to Iraq to hang out with troops and blog twice since her Starbucks layover. But in February she had an experience that prompted her to take the Department of Defense to small claims court.In Alameda County Superior...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

Call it the Anti-Mall. The tree-lined stretch of College Avenue heading south from the Rockridge BART station in Oakland is a shopping mecca for miles around. But no hordes of desperate customers lined up for steep discounts on Friday. In this shrinking economy, the small, independently owned shops that anchor the Rockridge district are pinning their survival not on cost-cutting but on the loyalty of a limited customer base whose lives and values they study closely. Nishan Shepard, the founding owner of the toy and baby supply store Rockridge Kids, can tell you that 740 infants are born at nearby...

Less than two-thirds of Oakland schoolchildren tested in spring had a healthy body composition, according to state fitness measures, and less than half of the city's seventh- and ninth-grade students passed muster on tests of aerobic health, according to results released Tuesday by the California Department of Education. Each spring, public schools measure the strength, flexibility, aerobic capacity and body weight of students in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Children in Alameda schools did significantly better, on average, than children in Berkeley and Oakland. More than 76 percent of the Alameda district's fifth-graders were determined to be in good...

Berkeley’s tree-sitters faced another day in court this week, and UC Regents were plotting the fate of Memorial Stadium and an interim venue for the Cal Bears. UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said Wednesday the work at the stadium will require finding a temporary home for the Cal Bears, with the only question being whether the move will be for one season or two. “Based on current planning, it looks now like no more than one year,” he said. While construction of the new high-tech gym and office complex now under way immediately west of the stadium will provide new...

BERKELEY — The tree-sit at UC Berkeley has been over for two months. The trees are long gone, and construction of the $125 million sports training center for the Cal Bears will start when the football season ends next month. But the legal troubles for those who sat in trees or aided the tree sitters during the 21-month protest of the sports training center are far from over. On Monday, nine of the 11 people who violated a court order and were cited by police, either on the ground or in the trees, were sentenced by Judge Marshall Whitley in...

(IsraelNN.com) Israel Liberation Week, which was organized last week by the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) at the University of California at Berkeley, ended violently Thursday night in an altercation between ZFA activists and anti-Israel students. The incident took place during a concert featuring Black, Jewish and Mexican hip hop artists promoting, according to the organizers, "freedom for the nation of Israel from Western pressure and influence." As Zionist rapper Kosha Dillz was performing before a crowd of Berkeley students, members of the SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) draped PLO flags from a balcony directly over the stage. When ZFA...

OAKLAND — Convinced Jim Jones was God, Garrett Lambrev was the first person to join Peoples Temple in Ukiah in 1966 after the group moved from Indiana. Ten years later — two years before the Jonestown tragedy — he was part of a wave of defectors, shaken to the core by tales of torture and wanting nothing to do with a god who could sanction such things. He was reviled as a traitor and lived in fear for his life. Yet as Lambrev reflects on the enigma of Peoples Temple, his thoughts settle not just on the horrors of the...

Will racism be a factor in this election? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course racism will be a factor in the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. After all, somewhere in excess of 95 percent of black voters are expected to pull the lever (or fill in the dot) for Obama on November 4. That’s a statistic any dictator would be proud of. And once Acorn gets through fabricating voter registrations, the number will probably rise to 123 percent, give or take a point. So, yes, racism will likely play a role in the election, but it won’t be...

They vowed to kick the Marines out of Berkeley. But they’re the ones cutting and running. I mentioned the Code Pink retreat from the Berkeley Marine recruiting center last month. Now, they’re holding a moving sale to evacuate their Solano Ave. office: “EVERYTHING MUST GO.” Including their sorry, pink-clad backsides.

A Jefferson Elementary School third-grade teacher has resigned following allegations that she might have violated the separation of church and state by teaching creationism to her third-grade class, district officials said Friday. District Superintendent Bill Huyett confirmed that Jefferson teacher Gwen Martin—who joined the school over summer and has been on personal leave since the last week of September—resigned but declined to comment on the outcome of the investigation regarding her alleged conduct in class explaining that it was a personnel matter. “She [Martin] resigned a little bit ago,” he said. “I can’t comment on that [investigation].” Parents of children...

The two opposing mayoral candidates both have had the position of mayor, both with highly marred terms. First, let’s revisit the Shirley Dean administration which started off with Mrs. Dean not giving up her job with the largest employer in the town (UC Berkeley) while mayor. Can you say conflict of interest? One might say that Shirley Dean is the Dick Cheney of Berkeley. Even Dick Cheney quit Halliburton before taking the vice president’s job after awarding most of the post-war contracts to his former employer. It got worse when Mrs. Dean decided to go after our favorite city councilmember...

Berkeley is immortalizing its greatest protests - from People's Park to disability rights to the tree-sitters' standoff at Memorial Stadium - in a towering sculpture of fist-waving demonstrators on a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over busy Interstate 80. The artwork, titled "Berkeley Big People" and to be dedicated Saturday, is already stopping traffic. Visible from about a mile in either direction, the 30-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture is the largest and most expensive piece of public art ever commissioned in the city."It's monumental in scale, in money, in visibility," said Mary Ann Merker, the city's civic arts coordinator and the project manager....

Comcast shows that the program on at 12 MST on Fox News is titled "Presidential Character - Obama" Hope they mention everyone... Ayers, Odinga

Berkeley's tree-sitters may have thought their nearly two-year protest was an act of civil disobedience, but to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau it was actually "racism against our underrepresented minority student athletes." The chancellor's blunt assessment came in a letter he sent to alums Janice and Thomas Boyce at the height of the tree standoff in June. The Boyces had written to Birgeneau to complain about the university's "unscrupulous and perhaps illegal action" of rehiring campus Police Chief Victoria Harrison with a hefty contract - and about what the couple saw as the heavy-handed tactics that the university was using...

This is a story that could only happen in Berkeley---militant tree sitters accused of racism. And the funniest part is that the Berkeley Daily Planet reported this story with a completely straight face as if tree sitters are some sort of a legitimate group like Teamsters or Ruthenian-Americans (Tom Selleck is one). It seems that the tree sitters (union or non-union?) have been living up in the Berkeley trees for almost two years protesting the construction of a high-tech gym at the UC Berkeley campus. You can see a video of the "wonderful" life of these tree sitters in the...

“[R]acism against our minority student athletes ... underlies much of the opposition to our student athlete high performance center,” declared UC Berkeley Chancel-lor Robert Birgeneau in a letter sent to two major donors to the school. That allegation in a June 27 letter stunned the recipients, Berke-ley residents and long-time university donors and supporters Thomas and Janice Boyce. The appearance of the letter, given to this newspaper by a third party, comes as the campus is launching the public phase of a $3 billion endowment fund-raiser, with Birgeneau in the lead. The chancellor’s letter followed earlier letters from the couple...

A poster promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace at an AC Transit bus stop in front of UC Berkeley’s Eshelman Hall has been repeatedly vandalized with anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas, authorities said. The poster—part of the “Only in Israel” public awareness campaign launched by San Francisco-based BlueStarPR and sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation and Foundation of the Greater East Bay—has a picture of Israeli Arab soccer star Sowan Abbas calling for coexistence among communities. The poster also gives an example of a soccer team consisting of Jews and Arabs training together in the Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin. Gabe Weiner, a campus coordinator...

BERKELEY - -- A woman was arrested today after she ran over a Berkeley police officer's foot when she tried to leave while being cited for a parking violation, authorities said. . . . Berkeley police Officer Griselda Ferrera stopped the motorist near the corner and told her to wait while the ticket was being written, authorities said. Instead, Markeysha Bilal-Fields, 47, of Richmond tried to leave the scene in her black Mazda, police said. The car ran over Ferrera's foot, authorities said.

At Berkeley Bowl, the nuts are off the shelf Brothers Juno, 20 months, left, and Cyrus Soltani, 5, sample fruit at the Berkeley Bowl market, famous for its exotic produce. For those caught tasting food or beverages without paying, the penalty is severe: a lifetime ban. By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 22, 2008 BERKELEY -- As most veteran customers know, it takes a pretty thick skin to successfully navigate the Berkeley Bowl, this strident city's most popular grocery store. Outside, petitioners seeking signatures for ballot measures have come to blows with opinionated residents. In the...

Berkeley's infamous tree-sitters have been hit with a rude surprise since they came down to earth: Judges are socking them with thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees.Ironically, much of the money - which could total more than $10,000 per sitter - is going straight to the University of California, the very institution the tree-sitters were protesting as they tried to save a grove of trees outside Memorial Stadium."It's really vindictive," said an attorney for some the sitters, Dennis Cunningham. "They don't have this kind of money."Maybe, but university lawyer Michael Goldstein isn't making any apologies."We've asked the judge...

It's Groundhog Day in Berkeley: Tom Bates and Shirley Dean, battle-scarred veterans of East Bay politics, are in another slugfest for mayor. The longtime rivals - both now in their 70s - are squaring off for the second time to lead the Bay Area's most progressive, eccentric city. It's Dean's fifth run for mayor and Bates' third, and their second race against each other."If there's any place that's inbred, it's Berkeley," said City Councilwoman Betty Olds, who's preparing to leave office in November. "But I'm endorsing them both because I think they've both been fine mayors."Kriss Worthington, who's served on...

BERKELEY (CBS 5 / BCN) ― Three tree-sitters said Wednesday they don't regret trying to stop the University of California, Berkeley from building a sports training facility next to its football stadium. Eight days after the last tree-sitter came down from a 90-foot-tall redwood tree, ending a 21-month protest at a grove of trees next to the stadium, tree-sitter Raul Colocho said, "On one level it was a wonderful experience to be up there.'' But Colocho, also known as "Huck,'' said "it's a shame'' that the university cut down more than 40 trees after it won court approval to go...

Sather Gate, University of California - BerkeleyHe looked at the flier and froze like a statue for a few long seconds. "Are you sure you know where you are?" asked the student. "Yes, of course," I answered as I passed out more fliers defending traditional marriage near Sather Gate. But he insisted: "No. You don't understand... Do you really, really know where you are? This is Berkeley! You are at UC Berkeley! I can't believe it." Many other students repeated the same line in utter disbelief: "Do you really know where you are right now?" So there we were on...

For the most part, extreme environmentalists are Godless. They often claim to be atheists or at least agnostics on the subject of religion. Many even ridicule religion, especially Christianity, calling it "superstition," "backwards," or "archaic." They often blame for what they claim is the destruction of the world's ecology on people who are religious and then use that as a basis to call hypocrisy on those same religious people. We've all seen it. But, in general they also claim that their beliefs in humanism and nature are superior. However, they'd scoff at claims that they have merely replaced traditional religion...

Becky O’Malley’s editorial “Sarah Palin Fails Her Most Important Job” is unfortunate and misguided. O’Malley suggests “If the Palins … really want to support these pregnant children, they would put their own professional ambitions on hold…” Criticism of Palin’s family life and the number of children she has is at best a distraction—at worst, the grounds the GOP needs to claim sexism and double standards to generate sympathy for her. Obama believes in the constitution and keeping the government in check. He believes each person must be protected from the powers of big government. This should be the Democrat’s litany....

Four tree-sitters began climbing down from an 80-foot-tall redwood tree near Memorial Stadium this afternoon after UC Berkeley officials agreed to create a committee that will oversee future campus development, a spokesman for the protesters said. UC officials declined to comment on the reported deal, saying they will speak after the nearly 2-year-long standoff ends. But protesters atop the tree pumped their fists in a show of victory. Before climbing down, one of the protesters, nicknamed Huck, shouted, "We love you" to cheering supporters below. The protesters' deal with the university does not include amnesty from criminal charges, said their...

BERKELEY, CA (KGO) -- The final showdown is unfolding at UC Berkeley. As campus police move in on the tree sitters occupying the last of the remaining trees. There have been many violent confrontations between police and protestors. Objects thrown, weapons drawn, people arrested - it's all going down right now at UC Berkeley. Campus police in a cherry-picker are actively trying to get the tree sitters down from their perch in a redwood tree. A dramatic ending to the nearly two-year protest over the removal of trees to build a new university sports complex.

The standoff between UC Berkeley and four tree-sitters outside Memorial Stadium intensified Monday as work crews prepared to remove the protesters from a stripped-down redwood. Workers used bulldozers to clear and level the ground surrounding the redwood, one of two trees standing in the center of the grove after crews cut down 40 other trees over the weekend to make way for a $124 million sports training center. "The university is preparing for what will we hope be a quick and safe extraction in the coming days," campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said. "We had hoped it wouldn't come to this....

UC Berkeley officials warned today that "the clock is ticking" for four tree-sitters perched in a redwood tree outside Memorial Stadium. University police and other campus leaders spent much of the day talking with the remaining members of a 21-month protest over plans to cut down a grove of trees to make way for a $124 million athletic training center. The talks went on as logging crews worked with chainsaws and heavy machinery to clear the trees that were cut down Friday, Saturday and today, after a state appeals court rejected requests to delay construction. By this evening, 40 of...

Berkeley's latest political battle may be coming to an end: the UC has won a series of decisions in cases brought by local activist groups seeking to prevent the destruction of grove of trees right next to the law school. UC wants to build a sports facility there for our athletes. The battle over this grove of trees has created a real circus on campus. At one point, perhaps two dozen people were living in the trees. Some came down voluntarily, and when the UC started plucking them from the trees, one protester known as Dumpster Muffin climbed to the...

BERKELEY -- Except for a lone redwood holding four tree-sitters, UC Berkeley today finished cutting down the long-embattled Memorial Stadium trees that protesters had been fighting to preserve for 21 months. Arborists removed 42 oaks, redwoods, laurels, and other trees from the grove, leaving 28 around the perimeter. Several others, including a mature redwood, are slated to be transplanted to make way for a $124-million student athlete training center. The university has no immediate plans to forcibly extricate the tree-sitters, but hopes they'll come down voluntarily now that the grove has been removed, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. The campus...

BERKELEY - Crews began cutting down trees next to Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley late Friday, 21 months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them to build a $140 million sports training center center. Work crews with chainsaws and bulldozers arrived at the university grove Friday and by 4 p.m. six trees had been chopped down. Clad in black ski masks, the four remaining tree protesters who were driven into a single redwood several months ago, remained in the tree Friday and at times sparred with arborists, tossing a bottle and branches toward...