The easygoing truce that prevailed during much of the debate over downtown land-use policy blew apart Wednesday, fissuring along familiar fault lines. -more-

While Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members have waged prolonged struggles over landmarks and tall buildings, they voted unanimously twice Monday night, approving two more chapters of the new downtown plan. -more-

Berkeley High School has dropped a plan to ask visitors to provide photo identification to enter the campus after some parents complained that it was unwelcoming and discriminatory. -more-

The law governing Berkeley’s condominium conversion, revised multiple times over some three decades, is likely to undergo more changes in the next month or so. -more-

A dozen protesters gathered Tuesday morning outside the building where UC Berkeley was celebrating its embrace of Dow Chemical. -more-

It was just a little rain three weeks ago, but enough to stop up a drain and cause flooding at the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library bookstore in city-owned Sather Gate Mall. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is reprinted with permission from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. -more-

A group of South Berkeley neighbors will picket the Verizon Wireless store on 1109 University Ave. from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday to protest the company’s plans to install cell-phone antennas atop the UC Storage building at 2721 Shattuck Ave. -more-

Formerly incarcerated individuals will have the chance to learn how to clear up their criminal records and “put the past behind them” when Congressmember Barbara Lee and several East Bay officeholders and agencies host the third annual Clean Slate Summit this weekend. -more-

Robbery -more-

CHIANG MAI—The world needs to hear from Aung San Suu Kyi—even if it’s just a three-minute statement. -more-

… poco maestoso -more-

A CHANCE FOR COMPASSION -more-

Thanks to J. Douglas Allen-Taylor for his ongoing coverage of the tensions between Children’s Hospital Oakland and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors over the private hospital’s unilateral—and successful—effort to get a bond measure for their seismic improvements onto the ballot, potentially jeopardizing the Supervisors’ own plans for a bond measure for Highland, the county’s public hospital. If the powerful Board of Supervisors feels blindsided by CHO’s tactics, which deliberately left them out of the loop as CHO quietly wrote a bond measure and hired signature gatherers to qualify for the ballot, imagine how the nearby neighbors of CHO are being treated. We were just as surprised as the supervisors at a recent public meeting called by CHO, where they announced their plans for a 12-story tower in the R-40, single family home area north of the hospital campus, between 52nd and 53rd and the parking garage on MLK and the freeway. -more-

From Oct. 8 through 11, I visited Eugene and rode their BRT. This is a brief summary of the longer trip report on my website, http://berkeleybus.mysite.com. -more-

Exposing people for their true values and politics by showing what they have done versus their rhetoric is fair play in politics. Have you noticed that with all the hyperbole from Hallinan, Gendelman and their anonymous allies, they have not debunked any of the things we put in the campaign booklet. The reason that they are so hot is that they have been exposed for their duplicity. I have offered to debate any and all of them and they have declined because they are afraid of what the listeners will find out if their true positions are exposed. They like to stay with the controlled attack, e-mails behind our and the voters’ backs, and personal attacks with no facts, and the expensive mailer that says nothing in particular. -more-

The Pacifica Bylaws establish a collaborative, democratic process between listeners, staff and management with specified and shared powers and responsibilities, but not everyone gets the concept or wants it to happen. In fact, Concerned Listeners (CL) and their management/staff power allies are committed to the business as usual and status quo imposed by the old regime’s NPR/Healthy Station model and program grid, and are organized and funded to block and dismantle the transition to a democratic KPFA, to control what they can’t disable or destroy, including our elections. -more-

Carol Spooner’s Oct. 30 commentary in the Berkeley Daily Planet states that the “People’s Radio” candidate statements in the KPFA election “. . . are not attacks on anyone’s character. They are factual assertions and strong arguments concerning the positions and actions of other candidates. . .” -more-

First, I’ve been watching the board operate at KPFA for over two years. I’ve gone to almost every board meeting. I started this to try to figure out how much screaming to attend to. That’s not a style I appreciate, but sometimes I understand people express themselves in less-than-optimal ways under pressure. -more-

The situation at KPFA radio, some encouraging signs notwithstanding, remains grim. The idea of participatory democracy was conceived as a response to the crisis of the ‘90s, but has yet to take hold. Many members of the KPFA staff, who embraced the concept when it helped save the station, do not support it now that listener members have been given real governing power. In other words, while the 'savepacifica' era was characterized by solidarity between staff and listeners, the 'save(d)pacifica' era has been characterized by polarization between these two groups. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the original letter referred to by Matthew Hallinan in his Oct. 30 commentary in the Daily Planet. -more-

Welcome to South Berkeley. With its 14 cell phone antenna locations and an unknown number of actual radiation emitters at each location, South Berkeley has become Berkeley’s elektro-smog ghetto. Any Berkeley resident who lives in a neighborhood without antennas is probably using ours! As far back as1996, the Communications Workers of America stated in their pamphlet called Your Community Guide to Cellular Phone Towers, “ In some cases, companies have chosen poorer sections of a town to build towers. Is this part of town being asked to house the eyesore and health hazard so the other side of town can use the phone?” -more-

As we come down to the wire at the Berkeley City Council this coming Tuesday evening, we face a dilemna that one city council after another around the country regularly faces. The telecommunications industry is shoving cell antennas into neighborhood after neighborhood with a very powerful economic and legal fist to back it up. The fist need only be raised when a community dares to seriously question a telecommunications companies’ corporate plan. This plan aimed at profitk results in pollution of our airways with continuous radio frequency radiation. In Berkeley’s case, Verizon threatens to eliminate our entire ordinance governing the siting of cell phone antennas, that is unless we bow down to their current demand for antennas at three separate Berkeley locations. Is this a form of economic blackmail? -more-

A couple of weeks ago, the Metropolitan Greater Oakland (MGO) Democratic Club held a journalists’ forum on the first 200 days of the administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. -more-

On November 14, 1901 an item in the Berkeley Daily Gazette informed: -more-

Mostly Natives is a classic, and worth a jaunt on a nice day. If you’re the sort of traveler who appreciates dramatic and various weather shows, that would include the average rainy spell; the rolling curtains and airborne leviathans of fog and cloud that unroll across the Richmond—San Rafael Bridge and lie in the folds of Marin County, alternately dazzling and shrouding you on the road are one of our particular local pleasures. -more-

This is for my wife. Actually, it’s for wives and girlfriends everywhere. Here it is. I was wrong. Wait, I’ll say it again. I was wrong. How are you feeling? Giddy? Lightheaded? Well, don’t lose control. It’s one of these construction things. Not anything important like bedspreads, hair-do’s or Angelina’s latest fling. -more-