Berkeley resident Dmitri Belser wants a curb ramp on every street in the country. That dream may not come true anytime soon, but Belser, who is legally blind, has reason to feel encouraged. -more-

Berkeley is set to lose its public housing, and depending on whom you talk to in the city, that may or may not be such a bad thing. -more-

For thousands of Alameda County residents, New Year’s eve was anything but a party. -more-

Berkeley developer Ali Kashani’s proposed five-story, mixed-use condo project at 1200 Ashby Avenue is up for sale. -more-

A Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School student was sent to Alameda County Juvenile Hall for bringing an unloaded gun to school. -more-

The Bay Area Rapid Transit will be appointing former Berkeley police chief Daschel Butler to lead its police force on a temporary basis. -more-

The families of the three UC Berkeley alums detained in Iran for illegally crossing over the border announced Dec. 27 that they have hired a prominent Iranian lawyer to help bring them home. -more-

Berkeley police arrested 32-year-old Hercules resident Dimitar Popov in connection with a stabbing incident south of the UC Berkeley campus last week. -more-

ACHIEVEMENT GAP -more-

Berkeley Iceland is a landmark, a fact known to almost anyone who has lived in Berkeley or experienced Berkeley Iceland since the doors opened in 1940—a fact made official in the designation by the Berkeley Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) in May 2007 and, at one time, affirmed by the Berkeley City Council. The community worked hard to gain the landmark designation through a process that gave ample opportunity for the current owners to make their case. In the end, a Berkeley gem was deemed worthy of the formal title of “Berkeley Landmark.” As part of a settlement to a lawsuit initiated by the current owners of Berkeley Iceland, the Berkeley City Council will revisit its decision to uphold the LPC’s designation. A public hearing is currently scheduled for the Jan. 19 City Council meeting—a meeting supporters of Berkeley Iceland need to attend. -more-

Imagine a headline “Federal Government Requires People to Buy Ford Pintos”—the ones with the exploding gas tanks. Those Pintos were clearly a defective product. And Ford decided not to make the changes to make it safe since they concluded that it would cost more to do that than the lawsuits to follow. Absolutely no concern for the lives lost in horrible fires when the Pintos were rear ended! -more-

As the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, Berkeley residents have long honored the responsibility of speaking truth to power in the name of advocating social justice and racial equality. After all, the Free Speech Movement (FSM) was born directly from the efforts of civil rights activists to set up an information table on Sproul Plaza promoting CORE (The Congress on Racial Equality). While as a matter of legal technicality, the principles of free speech encompass even the most odious racist hate mongering, the true moral authority of the FSM was born out of the desire to speak out and organize against racial and ethnic bigotry. Thousands of outraged Berkeley students would not have spontaneously surrounded for 32 hours a police car that was attempting to arrest Jack Weinberg on Sproul Plaza on Oct. 1, 1964. It is inconceivable that this would have happened had Weinberg been distributing “literature” claiming that Jews deserved the Holocaust or that some Jewish groups actively aided and abetted the Holocaust to further their own parochial political interests.  -more-

To understand the Palestinian tragedy and how young Israelis are motivated to commit monstrous acts look for the pronouncements of several influential rabbis. -more-

What happened to the “ Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009”? Did it fall through the cracks along with the public option? Because there is unlikely to be a public option in the forthcoming healthcare legislation, Congress must repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act antitrust exemption for the health insurance industry as a first step toward bringing at least some competition in that industry, which in turn will help bring down the cost of health insurance.  -more-

In the face of mounting deficits, KPFA this month began laying off staff. The cuts come as no surprise; in fact, they’re overdue, considering that the station has been running in the red for several years, in defiance of Local Station Board and Pacifica National Board mandates to bring expenses into line with income. Anger and protest were probably inevitable when the cuts finally came. But by implementing them in an abrupt and seemingly insensitive way, ignoring provisions of the paid staff’s union contract, and loading what looks like a disproportionate share of the pain on one program—Flashpoints—management has succeeded in turning a tough situation into yet another full-fledged crisis for the station. -more-

Recently the public housing residents of Berkeley received a shocking notice, dated Oct. 27, announcing that the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) is preparing to convert their public housing units into privately owned housing subsidized by Section 8 voucher rental assistance, and that their housing would be transferred to a local nonprofit housing developer. -more-

One of the more noted Oakland political developments at the turn of the year is the scramble by journalists columnists and political commentators—now that the possibility has arisen in their minds that Ron Dellums might run for re-election as the city’s mayor—to publish election-year assessments of the first three years of the Dellums administration. -more-

The Golden Poodle Award goes to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his decision to join in the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and lying about it. Blair told Parliament in July 2002 that prior to the November 2002 United Nations resolution to disarm Iraq, his government made no preparations for invading Iraq. But according to leaked government documents, plans to attack Baghdad had begun in February 2002. -more-

It’s a good thing there are no dead-animal right’s groups or I’d surely be hiding in my home most of the time, because there’s nothing I enjoy more than beating a dead horse. -more-

If you’ve ever wondered how many shorebirds winter in San Francisco Bay, a report released last fall has the statistics. -more-

“When I was starting the theater company,” Patrick Dooley of Shotgun Players recalled, “My mom asked me why I was doing it. I’d been working as an actor. And I said, I want to see different kinds of plays—and the only way I’m going to see them is to direct them.” -more-