A gas leak in the area of Panoramic Way and Orchard Lane near the University of California at Berkeley football stadium has caused authorities to shut off gas for residences above nearby Bancroft Way for most of the day today, Berkeley police said. 

Authorities previously announced that there are road closures in the area because of the leak. 

The Berkeley Fire Department and PG&E are on the scene and police are advising people to avoid the area. 

Police said customers who have had their gas shut off should contact PG&E to have their service reconnected.

Three men have been arrested on suspicion of home invasion robbery and other crimes for allegedly taking items from two University of California at Berkeley students at gunpoint on Tuesday afternoon, police said. 

The two students were walking into an apartment building in the 2600 block of Regent Street at 12:32 p.m. Tuesday when two men who had been loitering nearby with a group of men approached them, according to police. 

One of the two suspects took out a handgun and demanded the victims' property, police said. 

The suspects fled south on Regent Street but officers flooded the area and within minutes and stopped three men who matched the descriptions provided by the victims, according to police. 

One of the men was found in possession of a loaded, semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine as well as stolen property belonging to one of the victims, police said. 

The suspects were identified by police as Enkhbilig Tingis, 20, of Berkeley, Purev Narmandakh, 21, of San Francisco, and Purevochir Munkhtur, 21, of Martinez. 

The three men have been booked into the Berkeley City Jail on suspicion of home invasion robbery, conspiracy, possession of stolen property and several firearms-related offenses. 

JeffShuttleworth

On April 3, 2018 at 12:32pm, two Cal Berkeley students were walking into an apartment building on the 2600 block of Regent Street when they were approached by two men who had been loitering nearby with a group of men. One of the two suspects produced a handgun and demanded the victims’ property. Following the robbery the suspects fled southbound on Regent Street.

Officers flooded the area and within minutes stopped three men who matched the descriptions provided by the victims. One of the three was found in possession of a loaded, semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine. He was also found in possession of stolen property belonging to one of the victims.  

Arrested were Enkhbilig Tingis 20, of Berkeley, Purev Narmandakh 21, of San Francisco and Purevochir Munkhtur 21, of Martinez. The trio were booked into the City of Berkeley Jail for Home Invasion Robbery, Conspiracy, Possession of Stolen Property and several firearms related charges.  

The Berkeley Police Department takes great pride in its efforts to keep the community safe from violent crime.  

Trumper Tantrums

Under the March 25 headline "Trump's impulses threaten White House credibility," Pennsylvania Republican Charlie Dent observed how Donald Trump's "lack of impulse control" was proving a problem for politicians "on both sides of the aisle." And then Dent got specific, citing Trump's long history of "disorder, chaos, instability, uncertainty, intemperate statements."

You might say Trump's reputation has been seriously Dented. Which brings us to the appointment of John Bolton. 

Joltin' John Bolton Is Simply Revoltin' 

Trump's nomination of war hawk Mike Pompeo to head the State Department and "Bloody Gina" Haspel to helm the CIA was bad news but at least Pompeo's posting requires Senate confirmation. Not so, John Bolton. 

When former president Jimmy Carter recently warned that Bolton's nomination as National Security Advisor poses "a disaster for our country," he understated the danger. Bolton's installation as Trump's security advisor would risk "a disaster for the world at large." 

A letter to the editor doesn't carry a lot of throw-weight these days. Fortunately, what does carry a wallop is The Colbert Show and the viral impact of Dana Carvey's inspired send-up of NSA-designate John Bolton.
Add this to Alec Baldwin's put-down of Donald Trump and you can wire this message to Wall Street: We've got a rally going in the Laughingstock Market. 

And here (on the rare chance you missed it) are Colbert and Carvey carving up John Bolton—the "madman with the (emphasis) hair-trigger personality." 

 

School of Rock 

The loony concept of arming students instead of disarming mass-murder-minded intruders recently took a bizarre turn in rural Pennsylvania where Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel announced plans to arm every classroom with a bucket of rocks. 

Faced with a gun-wielding psychopath, Helsel's reasoning went, students could defend themselves by tossing rocks. "We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe," Helsel proclaimed. 

But this Stone Age strategy was seriously flawed. If such a plan were employed, the first thing that would happen when a crazed killer burst into the classroom would be that all the kids would rush to the bucket. This would only abet the killer. (The phrase "shooting fish in a barrel" unfortunately comes to mind.) 

If you are going to fight pistols with pebbles, wouldn't it make more sense to invoke a "concealed carry" strategy? Consider: If every student in the classroom was armed with rock-filled pockets, a gunman wouldn't know who was packing a boulder. 

The NRA might even endorse this plan. Instead of "everybody must disarm," the prescription could become "everybody must get stoned." 

Out of Toon 

A few weeks ago in the Chronicle, Andy Lippincott, a controversial gay character in Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip, died of AIDS. But it wasn't the first time. Lippincott's demise originally occurred in May 1990. This provides a reminder that Doonesbury fans are reading a comic strip that is nearly 28 years old! (Also unnerving: recent Doonesbury strips featuring lengthy appearances by a much-younger Donald Trump.) 

And speaking of "a wrinkle in comic-strip time," how about Peanuts? 

On March 29, eight-year-old Charlie was explaining to Linus that in "only 13 more years, I'll be 21." When Linus noted, "This is 1971," Good Ol' Charlie Brown glumly realized he would finally become "a man!… a real person!" in . . . "1984." 

So how does it feel reading a comic strip that's 47 years old? 

BTW: Congrats to Charlie Brown who, on March 29, 2018, turned 55. 

War of Words 

The America language's canon of Improvised Expletive Devices is so extensive it could almost be referred to as the Americanon. Even in peacetime, we take pride in "standing our ground" when we "come under fire" and, when challenged to respond to blowbacks from rhetorical "double-edged swords," we are more than willing to "take a stab at it." Even PBS had a long-running broadcast titled "Firing Line." 

Recently KCBS radio aired an ad for Shane Co. ("You have a friend in the jewelry business") that cited a customer's praise as recorded on YELP. The young woman reported that Shane Co's offer "blew everyone else out of the water." 

On March 23, the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle's Business Report carried a positive story headlined: "Citigroup restricts gun sales by business partners." Running alongside this article was another bit of business news. It was headlined: "US, AT&T fire opening salvos in trial." 

Last month, in response to the latest wave of American-bred gun-violence, the Socialist Action website posted an article by Bruce Lesnick that offered a detailed proposal to rid the country of the scourge of gun carnage. The title of the article was: "A Surefire Plan to Address Gun Violence." [Emphasis added.] 

Vermont Stands Up to the Pentagon 

Good news just in from Vermont. The Burlington City Council has voted 9-3 to bar the Air Force from installing a fleet of F-35 fighter jets at the Burlington International Airport. 

The costly, flawed, and long-in-production weapons come with serious drawbacks. The World Health Organization warns that children exposed to high levels (115dB) of F-35 jet-noise can suffer "delayed reading and degraded concentration, memory and attention." The F-35s are so loud that nearby residents would be at risk for hearing loss, stress, and heart attacks. Nearly 3,000 Burlington families would have to abandon homes located in the jets' "noise danger zone." 

Also: The F-35s are crash-prone and, when they crash, their 12,000 pounds of combustible military carbon composites and flammable stealth coatings create infernos that spew highly toxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic chemicals, particles, and fibers. In flight, the F-35s burn 1100-gallons of jet fuel every hour, contributing to climate-change blowbacks like Hurricane Irene, which devastated Vermont in 2011. 

No wonder the city council voted 9-3 to reject the Pentagon's biggest flying boondoggle. 

Maybe Ben & Jerry's will celebrate with a new flavor. 

"Quiet Night Delight"? 

"No-go Nougat"? 

Checking the Record for Pentagon Largesse 

Ironically, the Burlington basing of the F-35s was vigorously supported by Senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy. Following the City Council vote, Sanders and Leahy issued a mild (nearly noncommittal) statement to the effect that they "expect the Air Force to respond and answer any questions the Council puts forth." 

Open Secrets is a terrific website that tracks and posts political contributions. 

A check of Bernie Sanders' campaign donors reveals his fiscal backers (from 1989-2018) have included the US Navy ($103,766), Boeing ($100,591), and the US Air Force ($82,275). Leahy's list (2013-2018) includes $34,100 from Lockheed Martin, the lead manufacturer of the F-35. 

Race and Weapons: When the NRA Backed Gun Control 

How did it come to pass that the National Rifle Association once became a firm advocate of federal gun control regulation? The answer is in the name of the law: "The Gun Control Act of 1968." 

The law was instituted (with remarkable legislative speed) after the launch of the "modern gun-rights movement" on May 2, 1967 when 30 young men and women showed up at California's State Capitol armed with .357 Magnums, .45-caliber pistols and 12-guage shotguns. These activists were not "Dirty Harry" gun-nuts: they were Black Panthers. 

Suddenly, White politicians across the nation became interested in gun control. The Gun Control Act imposed strict licensing and regulation on the firearms industry, defined new categories of offenses, and prohibited the sale of weapons and ammo to felons and "certain other prohibited persons." (The 1968 law followed in the tradition of southern laws passed after the end of the Civil War that specifically banned newly "freed" slaves from owning guns.) 

 

 

"Shock and Awe," Baghdad and the UN's Blue Veil

The 15^th anniversary of the 2003 US attack on Baghdad—a city of 5 million—brought back some memories for me. In the weeks leading up to the 2003 US attack on Baghdad, I wrote an article that was syndicated by AlterNet. It appeared on January 26 and was titled: "Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited."
As bad as the attack on Baghdad was, it could have been much worse. According to government documents I revealed in the AlterNet piece, the Pentagon's planned missile attack was supposed to have been 20 times more destructive and deadly.
My article exposed how the military planned to strike Baghdad with 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the first 48 hours of the "Shock and Awe" attack. (A total of 3,000 precision guided missiles were to be rained on Baghdad and other major cities inside Iraq.) 

 

 

Appalled at the disregard for human life, I drew a comparison with an earlier air attack on another civilian target—the Basque town of Guernica, which was brutally attacked by fascist forces and German bombers during the Spanish Civil War. The subtitle of the AlterNet article was: "If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century's Guernica." 

When the war began, however, the ferocity of "Shock and Awe" was replaced by an attack that that Baltimore Sun referred to as "far less destructive and visually impressive." Instead of 800 missiles targeting Baghdad in the first 48 hours, the assault was dialed back to 40-320 Tomahawk missiles (press reports vary). 

The Oxford Research Group has estimated that the US invasion killed approximately 6,616 civilians. The number of civilians killed by German bombing of Guernica is believed to have been between 400 and 1,654. Fair to say, the "limited" US attack on Iraq may have been equal to between four and16 Guernicas.
Did the AlterNet piece change the course of the Pentagon's war plans? I had one related clue. 

Unknown to me at the time, the United Nations had installed a copy of Picasso's Guernica in the UN's New York headquarters. Because of its prominent placement, the famous painting of civilian suffering would have appeared in the background when Colin Powell showed up to announce the beginning of Washington's attack on Baghdad.
I only learned of the existence of the UN's Guernica when the New York Times reported that, prior to Powell's appearance, someone had mysteriously ordered that the mural be hidden beneath a large blue tarp—a literal cover-up. 

I don't have the evidence, but I like to think that the AlterNet article had something to do with both the UN cover-up and the military wind-down. 

 

The weekly summary is a voluntary civic commitment in the hope that you can be just a little better informed. Local does matter. The summary isn’t just for you, I use it too throughout the week deciding which of the many City meetings need attention. My apologies for the late post. The packets for the coming week are especially thick. 

Worthy of Attention 

• 1900 Fourth Street – the 260 dwelling unit mixed use complex (2 buildings – low income and market rate) at the Shellmound is now submitted under SB35 (50% / 130 units to be for low income affordable housing) on agenda Peace and Justice Commission Monday and Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Thursday. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_ZAB/2018-03-08_APP_%20Applicant%20Statement%20with%20objective%20standards.pdf
• City Council Budget Committee first meeting Tuesday at 11:30 am. This starts a restructuring of the city budget process
• City Council Tuesday evening – public comment on consent items proposed procedure change
• Campanile Way View special 6:30 pm meeting of the LPC on Thursday still needs to be posted
• CA Assembly District 15 candidate forums this week on Thursday and Saturday. The top two will go on the November ballot. With twelve candidates anything can happen – time to pay attention.

 

City Council spring recess is April 4 – April 23. 

 

The meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

http://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html 

 

Sunday, April 1, 2018 

No demonstrations/city meetings found, Easter Sunday, Passover March 30 – April 7 

Monday, April 2, 2018 

4x4 Joint Task Force: Rent Board/City Council, Mon, April 2, 11:00 am, 2180 Milvia, Cyprus Room, 1^st Floor, Agenda: Short Term rental ordinance implementation and enforcement, potential changes Rent Stabilization Ordinance, 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/4x4_Committee_Homepage.aspx 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board – Outreach Subcommittee, Mon, April 2, 5:45 pm, 2001 Center St, Law Library, 2^nd Floor, Agenda: viewing “Invisible Students: Homeless at UCB, Limiting rent increases for long term seniors 

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/rent/ 

Civic Arts Commission – BART Plaza Sound Installation Selection Panel, Mon, April 2, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm 

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ 

Peace and Justice Commission, Mon, April 2, 7:00 pm – 1901 Hearst Ave, North Berkeley Senior Center, Agenda: initiative on Homelessness and Poverty, Police Oversight, Shellmound development – 1900 Fourth Street 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Peace_and_Justice_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Personnel Board, Mon, April 2, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, 1901 Hearst Ave, North Berkeley Senior Center 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Personnel_Board_Homepage.aspx 

Police Review Commission – Commission Reform Subcommittee, Mon, April 2, 10:00 am, 1947 Center St, Civic Center Annex Building, Western Sycamore, First Floor 

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Police_Review_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Tax the Rich rally – Mon, April 2, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, top of Solano in front of closed Oaks Theater,  

Tuesday, April 3, 2018 

Berkeley City Council, Tues, April 3, 6:00 pm – 11:00 pm, 2134 MLK Jr Way, City Council Chambers, Agenda: 10. Land Trust Small Sites, 12. Allow private parking vendors to charge adjustable rates, 14. Prohibiting City Contracts to Vendors Acting as Data Brokers, 15. LPC Appeal: 2516-30 Shattuck Ave – University Laundry Building, 16. Balloting Stormwater Fee, 17. Expansion Bike Share Programs, Electric Motor Scooter, Electric Bike Share Programs,18a.&b. Supplemental Paid Family Leave, 19. Change Council procedure rules on consent items, 20. LPC-NOD Structural Alteration 2740-2744 Telegraph 

email: council@cityofberkeley.info 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2018/04_Apr/City_Council__04-03-2018_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx 

City Council Budget Committee, Tues, April 3, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm, 2180 Milvia, 5^th Floor, Pepperwood Conference Room, members: Arreguin, Harrison, Hahn, Wengraf, Agenda: First meeting of the Budget Committee. Berkeley is changing to Priority-Based Budgeting. 355 page packet includes substantial review of priority-based budgeting process with examples from other cities.  

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Budget_Committee/ 

Police Review Commission – Boards of Inquiry – Closed Session, 6:30 pm, 2939 Ellis St, South Berkeley Senior Center 

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Police_Review_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

 

Wednesday, April 4, 2018 

Board of Library Trustees, Wed, April 4, 6:30 pm, 1901 Russell St, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch Library, Agenda: Internet Use Policy, Harwood Public Innovators Lab Grant 

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/about/board-library-trustees 

Commission on Disability, Wed, April 4, 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm, 1901 Hearst Ave, North Berkeley Senior Center, Agenda: Expansion “scent-free” policy, accessibility needs at Alta Bates, Automatic Doors, Bikes on Sidewalks, Sidewalk repair, 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Commission_on_Disability_Homepage.aspx 

Planning Commission, Wed, April 4, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm, 1901 Hearst Ave, North Berkeley Senior Center, NO AGENDA POSTED – CHECK FOR CANCELLATION BEFORE GOING 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Planning_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

 

 

Thursday, April 5, 2018 

Housing Advisory Commission, Thur, April 5, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, 2939 Ellis St, South Berkeley Senior Center, Agenda: ADU Low Income Pilot Program, Home Share Program, Small Sites Housing Program, Moderate Income Housing, 

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/Housing_Advisory_Commission/ 

Landmarks Preservation Commission, Thur, April 5, 1901 Hearst Ave, North Berkeley Senior Center, 

• 6:30 pm – 7:00 pm, Hearing on whether to Landmark the Campanile Way View was scheduled at the March 1 meeting, but not posted
• 7:00 pm – 11:30 pm, Agenda action items: Grant Application, Consider City Parks subcommittee, Review/Discussion: 2580 Bancroft – Fred Turner Building mixed use project, Live Oak Park, 1200 San Pablo demolition of building, 1900 Fourth Street presented as 50% low income affordable housing,

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/landmarkspreservationcommission/ 

Medical Cannabis Commission, Thur, April 5, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm, 2180 Milvia St, 6^th Floor, Agenda: proposed changes to Cannabis Ordinance 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/MedicalCannabis/ 

Public Works Commission, Thur, April 5, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm, 1326 Allston Way, Willow Room, City of Berkeley Corporation Yard, Agenda: public input process, Undulating Pavement at University and West Frontage Road, T1 Update, packet includes schedule of hearings and projects 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Public_Works_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Assembly District 15 Candidate Forum, Thur, April 5, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, 5714, MLK Jr. Way, OAKLAND, North Oakland Senior Center, Hosted by League of Women Voters Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, there are now 12 candidates vying for Assembly District 15, Top 2 from June Primary will move to Nov. election 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1683616831706664/ 

Friday, April 6, 2018 

Parks and Waterfront Commission Subcommittee on Marina Fiscal Issues, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm, 201 University, Not posted yet – check before going 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Parks_and_Waterfront_Commission.aspx 

Saturday, April 7, 2018 

Assembly District 15 Candidate Forum, Sat, April 7, 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm, UC Berkeley – Genetics & Plant Biology Room 100, Hosted by Empathy Tent & BridgeUSA Berkeley,, WDRC, all 12 candidates for Assembly District 15, Top 2 from June Primary will move to Nov. election 

https://www.facebook.com/events/217324602338605/ 

Sunday, April 8, 2018 

Holocaust Remembrance Day, Sun, April 8, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm, 2121 Allston Way, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Honoring Hana Berger Moran, Distinguished Suvivor with Joel Ben-Izzy 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CalendarEventMain.aspx?calendarEventID=15433 

Indivisible Berkeley General Assembly, Sun, April 8, 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm, 1970 Chestnut St, Finnish Hall, General Assembly meeting, 

https://www.indivisibleberkeley.org/calendar 

 

 

 

A puma (mountain lion) was spotted early Monday morning on the Clark Kerr campus of the University of California at Berkeley, university police said. 

A college employee was walking along Sports Lane near Building 22 at 3:24 a.m. when he encountered the puma. 

Police said the animal was not aggressive and did not move. The employee backed up until the animal was out of view and left the area. Police said the employee did not see the puma again. 

A search was conducted for the puma, but it was not found.

A woman who died after being hit by an Amtrak train in Berkeley last week has been identified.

Brianna Combash, 31, was riding a bike when she was struck and killed by a passenger train on Tuesday night, according to Amtrak and the Alameda County coroner's bureau.  

 

Friends and family of Combash shared memories of her on social media, saying she was a loving mother and daughter. She grew up in Berkeley and attended Berkeley High School and Berkeley City College, according to her Facebook page. 

A donation page for her funeral expenses gathered almost $2,000 in three days and people who knew Combash said she was living on the streets in Berkeley at the time of her death. 

An Amtrak spokesperson said a northbound San Joaquin train struck Combash at Gilman Street near the Berkeley station underneath University Avenue. 

The spokesperson said 23 passengers were on board at the time of the collision and that no passengers or crewmembers on board were injured.

If you’ve been exposed to the New Testament, either in church or just Bible as Literature class, you might recall that as Jesus was dying on the cross he invited one of the thieves who were being killed at his side to join him in Paradise that day. The lesson we were supposed to learn from that verse (Luke 23:43), at least at my school, is that no one is beyond forgiveness, that it’s never too late to repent. 

Today, when Christians remember the crucifixion story, press reports of the summary execution of Stephon Clark in Sacramento continue to be appalling. The worst part of the story is that the police pursuit which resulted in his death was begun on the flimsiest of excuses. There's no proof that he committed a crime, but in any event he died within seconds of being challenged by the Sacramento police--no time to repent if he'd wanted to. 

The most believable version I’ve been able to find in the press is that someone, “someone”, had been breaking car windows with some sort of tool, maybe a crowbar, and that the sheriff’s department helicopter,hovering over the scene, told the Sacramento police in the neighborhood that they’d spotted this someone. No positive identification of Stephon (whose brother called him a boy, though he was 22 and had two kids) as the culprit has even been reported. 

But what if he was that guy in the black hoodie the sheriffs said they saw? Is there a death penalty for breaking car windows? There’s not even an allegation that “someone” stole anything. No crowbar was found. 

Random vandalism to car windows is unfortunately very common—it happened on my block to a couple of cars just last week, and yes, it’s annoying. But you don’t shoot a kid with 20 bullets for breaking windows. Especially, of course, if he didn’t do it. 

Or you do, perhaps, if he’s black or brown. The standard excuse when police officers shoot to kill is that they were afraid, afraid that the suspect had a weapon and would use it. But they were wrong, fatally wrong, in this case as in all too many others. No gun, just the phone that all kids have in their hands these days. 

There are two problems here. First, you can call it racism, even though one of the cops has been identified as African-American. Race-based fear permeates our culture, and it even affects members of the feared ethnic groups sometimes. It’s irrational, not based on statistics, but it’s there. 

Unfortunately, the other problem is based on statistics. Studies show, or at least as many studies as the U.S. government has allowed, that the more guns a country has the more gun deaths it has from all causes.  

Duh…but NRA types routinely deny it. But what that means is that a police officer’s fear that a subject has a gun is more likely to be correct than it would be in a rational society. I’ve not looked it up, but I’ll bet that in Australia by the population percentages many fewer suspects are killed by police there than in this country, regardless of race, since excess guns have been taken out of the equation in Australia. American police kill people they think just might have one, and too many guns in circulation increases that type of fear.  

That doesn’t mean, however, that police should ever be allowed to get away with shooting to kill on suspicion of vandalism. Also unfortunately, there’s an obvious motivation for pumping a boy’s body full of lead: dead men tell no tales. And just to make sure, don’t rush for medical attention. If the kid were simply wounded, lawsuits leading to lifetime awards could be anticipated. If he’s dead, in most cases life goes on for the killer, as it did in a recently decided Louisiana case and many more. From the Washington Post story on that one: 

“While just under 1,000 people are shot and killed by police annually, just a handful of those cases each year lead to criminal charges, according to The Washington Post’s fatal police shooting database.” 

If police officers make a fatal mistake about how much danger they’re in and kill someone, they should immediately be fired. Such bad judgment, even once, is simply a disqualification for the job.  

The most rational response to Stephon Clark’s killing has been shown by his brother Stevante: pure rage. Just rage, without qualification. No surprise that Black people are enraged time and again by these senseless summary executions, but all of us should be, and should do something about it. What exactly that can be is not clear. 

In Berkeley would-be reformers have been struggling with these questions for years, hoping for action from the city council but not getting it, as of this week's council meeting. Now a pair of ballot measures are being circulated by those hoping to come up with some solutions. We’ll see how well they do.  

 

 

If you’re thirsting to understand our increasingly cold, jaundiced, at times carcinogenic society, James Baldwin’s singular insight about America and his dizzying, divine command of the English language are as refreshing as an icy elixir on the hottest day in hell. 

Moreover, for death penalty abolitionists, Baldwin’s writing is particularly poignant in the wake of: (1) the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty, and, “wipe the stain of capital punishment clean” (In the aftermath, Reuter’s Andrew Chung soberly observed that “[t]he Supreme Court has not seriously debated the constitutionality of the death penalty since the 1970s”); (2) the Trump administration’s doubling down on a harebrained, ass-backward plan to put drug dealers to death; (3) the abominable push by legislators in several states to kill death row inmates by electrocution or even nitrogen gas—an unconscionable, ungodly, untested method (harkening back to atrocities like the gassing of the Jews, including my great-grandmother, during the Holocaust)—a method so gruesome and likely to cause pain and suffering, it’s not even accepted by the World Society for the Protection of Animals as a form of euthanasia; and last, but certainly not least, (4), the ignominious fact that Alabama has been consistently torturing poor death row inmates for a very long time, and currently, is primed to pump its nasty chemical cocktail into a long-incarcerated octogenarian (on April 19th). 

In his magnificent essay, “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” Baldwin made sense of such dastardly developments, writing: “There is such a thing as integrity. Some people are noble. There is such a thing as courage. The terrible thing is that the reality behind these words depends ultimately on what the human being (meaning every single one of us) believes to be real. The terrible thing is that the reality behind all these words depends on choices one has got to make, for ever and ever and ever, every day.” 

Of course, Baldwin’s right (was he ever wrong?). Noble, courageous people exist in America—people with integrity who know it’s morally wrong to gas or electrocute other human beings to death. Yes, noble, courageous people exist in America, people with integrity, people who're willing to call lethal injection the vile torture it is; good people exist in America, people who know killing is wrong under any circumstance, no matter how it’s done, or, most critically, who’s doing it. 

It is these and all good people whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was addressing in his 1954 sermon on “Rediscovering Lost Values,” when he proclaimed: “The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is.” But almost as if issuing a direct rejoinder to King, here again comes Baldwin with his blistering, bare-knuckled truth, its percipient glare so white-hot that it threatens—if we do not learn from it—to burn down all we claim makes America great, if it has not already. 

In “The Uses of the Blues,” Baldwin explained that “[p]eople who’ve had no experience suppose that if a man is a thief, he is a thief; but . . . . [t]he most important thing about him is that he is a man and . . . if he’s a thief or a murderer or whatever he is, you could also be and you would know this, anyone would know this who had really dared to live.” 

And so, if we who have dared to live—and while less blameworthy, even those who have not—continue to deny this truth, if we continue to deny our collective identity, and that this means that each and every one of us, no matter how damaged, how defective, how depraved, how guilty, are nevertheless human, if we don’t reverse course on this damnable death penalty and fast, not in some meandering, interminably slow, plodding fashion, Baldwin’s diagnosis of America will be as incurable as it is inescapable: “The failure on our part to accept the reality of pain, of anguish, of ambiguity, of death has turned us into a very peculiar and sometimes monstrous people.” 

Reinforcing this sentiment in a brilliant piece included in last year’s blockbuster collection of criminal justice reform essays called “Policing the Black Man,” Marc Mauer, executive director of the sentencing project, wrote: “The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that still maintains the death penalty; this both casts a stain on our moral standing and exerts an upward pressure on the severity of punishment across the board.” Only we, fellow citizens, through our mighty electoral power, can change this. No longer can we rely on our feckless Supreme Court to do it for us. And, as it has from time immemorial, history will judge. 

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Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter @SteveCooperEsq

General H.R. McMaster is resigning as national security adviser to be replaced by the ultra-hawkish, bomb throwing, John Bolton. This spells doom for US foreign policy. Bolton has openly backed war against Iran and North Korea, and was a prominent supporter of the “shock and awe” U.S. invasion of Iraq, to this day – which was the worst foreign policy decision in decades squandering trillions of dollars and sending thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis’ to their early graves. He has openly backed bombing Iran and North Korea which might spell the early demise of the planet. He and his unstable future boss are a clear and present danger. 

For decades, Bolton has been a vehement critic of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council criticized the selection of Bolton stating, “Bolton now represents the greatest threat to the United States. This is a dangerous time for our country and a slap in the face even to Trump’s supporters who thought the US would break from waging disastrous foreign wars and military occupations.”Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International said, “this is a reckless decision. Bolton’s influence over national security policy could result in even more civilian deaths and potentially unlawful killings given his disdain for international law and international institutions.” This war hawk, like his boss, escaped the Vietnam draft claiming he was a consciences objector. What incredible hypocrites! For more, go to http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/

As a former member of the San Francisco Shelter Monitoring Committee and a former Social Worker at the Homeless Advocacy Project, I have seen first hand the need for more supportive housing for those with mental and physical health conditions. Actually, anyone living on the street for any length of time is bound to develop a mental or physical problem. The mentally ill and those with physical conditions should be a priority in any plan to homelessness in San Francisco. 

My husband and I arrived in San Francisco in 1971. Since at least that time, getting the homeless into housing or shelters has been a concern for every administration. Yet, the number of homeless keeps increasing from about 5,376 in 2000 to about 

7,499 in 2017. 

The San Francisco 2017 Homeless Count & Survey showed a homeless count of 7,499. More than two-thirds of this number (68% or 5,099) reported one or more health conditions. Over half of respondents (53% or 3,974) reported their condition limited their ability to take care of personal matters or to get and keep a job. These conditions include a psychiatric or emotional condition, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a chronic health problem, drug or alcohol abuse, a physical disability, a traumatic brain injury, and an AIDS or HIV related illness. 

Because people with chronic mental illness and/or addiction and/or physical health condition are often low income, rent subsidies are necessary to cover operating and maintenance costs of the housing units. Also, some mentally ill people require supportive services to maintain their housing and stabilize their lives. 

Laura’s Law allows counties to seek court-ordered patient help for those with serious mental disorders. It enables law enforcement, mental health officials or family members to bring an individual with serious mental illness before a judge, where the individual would have the opportunity to voluntarily accept an outpatient treatment program, working with caseworkers. If the individual then quits the program, a judge can order more structured treatment, including conservatorship. However, conservatorships require rooms and beds.  

In the March 2017 Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) Program Report, the Program received 268 calls, 135 for referral and 60 were considered eligible for AOT participation. Clearly this is but a drop in the bucket for the number of homeless mentally ill in the City. Presently, there is a 54-locked psychiatric beds at St. Mary’s Medical Center and 47 at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Again, this is hardly enough to meet expected needs. 

While, each mayoral candidate, except London Breed, has listed homelessness a priority, the new mayor should begin by getting those homeless with mental and health conditions off the streets. But it will take time and money.

Most persons who've been hit with a psychiatric diagnosis aren't in a position to dictate the conditions under which we live. This is a hardship, because many environments we may live in aren't favorable to recovery. 

Most inpatient psychiatric wards aren't peaceful places with caring and kind treatment professionals; they may be noisy, crowded places often with treatment professionals who are mean, forceful, and nasty. We may have to attempt our recovery under conditions that are far from ideal, and this requires some resolve. 

I was fortunate in my most recent recovery, which was nearly 22 years ago. I left the psych ward in a condition of still being delusional and psychotic, but back on medication and behaving myself. My then fiancé (now wife, 21 years) took care of me. I spent numerous hours every day, for about six months, trying to figure out my mind. I was at liberty to do this because my living situation, at the time, was undemanding and permitted this. 

Environment matters. For example, based on what I've gathered from news reports, conditions in the Contra Costa jail system are extremely stressful, due to overcrowding, and doubtless because, in general, jails are harsh environments. Yet, mentally ill people comprise a large portion of the population there. 

Environment matters--and you cannot simply give someone a mouthful of pills every day and assume this will make the person better. If you are incarcerated or homeless, or if you live in an institutional setting that has harsh conditions, getting your mind back together could be a very tall order, one that is out of reach for many persons afflicted with mental illness. 

At least for those who are not incarcerated or homeless, but who still live in a less than ideal situation, I suggest an adjustment to your environment--one that most people can make. This is to set aside two hours a day in which to do journaling. Ideally, your journaling time slot does not have interruptions. 

You can set up your journaling sessions any way you'd like. There isn't a problem if you sit in a comfortable chair, or if you lean back and stretch periodically. In addition, you can have refreshments by your side. There is no rule for what you'd like to write and think about, so long as the writing doesn't include a threat to anyone. This is the ideal time and place in which, if you choose to do so, you can learn more things about your mind, and about the world in which you live. 

This is a change to environment, which you have initiated. As a human being with the ability to schedule your time, you have a choice, to an extent, about what your environment looks like. We may not have a choice about our basic living situation. However, almost inevitably, we have some free time. We can use that time to do exercises in which the "internal environment" becomes better. 

Internal environment is as important as external environment. To an extent, we can change how we process the sensory data. We can change our thoughts for the better. 

If the mind is in the habit of churning out negative and depressing thoughts, or if the mind is stuck on semi psychosis, it may require some effort to get the mind off of those tracks and onto something better. 

To accomplish this, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of what people have already done, for many years (in some instances thousands of years), to improve their minds. Some reading on the subject is a must. If you don't like the idea of studying Buddhism or an Americanized spinoff of it, such as the writings of Ken Keyes Jr., you may want to investigate DBT, short for "Dialectical Behavior Therapy." (I am halfway through reading a short manual on that system. It seems good.) 

If the external environment in which you live isn't to your liking, and/or is caustic, you can learn to create a better internal environment that gives you some insulation from the external. 

However, environment matters, no matter how much we may teach ourselves to reinterpret it. When someone speaks and you hear it, the words go into your mind and affect your brain, to some extent--maybe a little, maybe a lot. When someone plays loud obnoxious music, it affects us. When someone threatens us, it affects us. 

This is why monasticism, whether you're talking of Buddhist-type, Christian, or other, necessarily involves a great deal of quiet. You can not get your mind to go to high and lofty places if you live under demanding and overstimulating conditions. There are meditation practitioners who have taken a vow of never speaking. Their verbal communication apparently is limited to writing on a chalkboard or on paper. 

Personally, I've obtained my peacefulness wherever and whenever I could find it. I have limited choices, but I am at liberty most days to spend some time thinking and/or writing. When I give that to myself as a gift, it brings a better mood, and it releases tension. 

If you decide to do journaling, you do not need to share what you write with anyone; the material may be none of anyone else's business. 

After about fifteen years of journaling, I got much of the garbage thinking out of my head and onto paper. This freed my mind so that I could begin to write for publication. 

What I have suggested in the above paragraphs, in part, is studying yourself. Secondly, you are setting aside time to pay attention to yourself. Many people do not have this--it might have never occurred to most people to try such a thing. You ought not have any guilt over setting aside time for something that critical people would consider useless, or an activity that even your own self-criticism could stop you from doing. 

If people think it is okay to sit like a vegetable in front of a television, then certainly it is okay to spend time actively paying attention to yourself and studying yourself. 

The above worked well for me, yet may not work for everyone. Some mental health professionals or family may feel that you should be focusing on things outside of yourself to get better. This is also valid. Maybe you can have both. These are only suggestions. 

As the Mueller probe continues, there's new evidence about the interaction between the Trump campaign, a sinister British political consulting firm -- Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. They collaborated to steal the 2016 election. By the way, there's a Russia connection. 

To understand the role of Facebook we recall the period after the 2016 candidate debates. The last debate occurred in Las Vegas, on October 19th; Hillary Clinton won that debate, as she had the previous two debates. At the time, most Americans thought Clinton would win the presidential election as polls showed ahead and it was widely believed that the Democrats had a superior "ground game;" that is, Dems were assumed to have a much more muscular ability to get-out-the-vote on November 8th. 

The influential website, 538, believes that a single event cost Clinton the election: the October 28, 2016, letter that FBI Director James Comey wrote to Congress (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/ ) reopening the investigation into the Clinton emails. It's probably more accurate to say that Clinton lost for multiple reasons. One was a massive shift towards Trump on election day; the Trump campaign managed to get out their vote. 

Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. Nonetheless, she lost the presidency because she lost the electoral college; specifically, she lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a combined total of 79,646 votes. That's where the influence of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook (and Russia) mattered. The Trump campaign developed their own electronic get-out-the-vote effort, targeted to swing states. 

In the traditional people-powered get-out-the-vote effort, volunteers go door to door to first register voters and then, later, to encourage registered voters to vote for specific candidates. The volunteers are aided by current precinct lists that show the residences of interest -- for example, where Democrats live, who the residents are, and their recent voting behavior; that is, did they vote in the most recent election (the lists don't show how they voted in the latest election because that information is confidential). In more sophisticated voter outreach, basic information is amplified by relevant consumer data; for example does a specific voter belong to the Sierra Club or is there someone in the house that does not speak English. 

The more sophisticated the voter data base, the more effective the get-out-the-vote effort is. In 2016 the Trump campaign, with the help of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, developed a remarkable swing-state voter data base. They did not hand data base printouts to volunteers to guide their door-to-door interaction; instead the data base information drove electronic interaction using social media, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. 

Unlike previous get-out-the-vote efforts, the Trump campaign strove to both get out Trump voters and inhibit possible Clinton voters. 

Typically, in the last few days of the election cycle, the get-out-the-vote efforts focuses on "persuadable" voters. That is, no special effort is spent on reliable voters, those who have voted in the last few elections. The volunteers focus on intermittent Democratic voters and Independent voters who they believe might vote for their candidate. The volunteers repeatedly knock on doors with the intent of convincing persuadable voters to vote on election day. 

In 2016, the Trump campaign bypassed the traditional door-to-door get-out-the-vote approach and, instead, contacted persuadable voters electronically. For a voter deemed likely to vote for Trump, the campaign sent them email, twitter, or Facebook messages. In addition they sent them news briefs -- primarily via Facebook -- that would likely convince the persuadable voter to vote for Trump. 

The genius of the Trump-Cambridge Analytica-Facebook approach is that it, to a degree never seen before, personalized the messages to persuadable voters. They used the Facebook data to develop a voter profile and then sent voters messages based upon this profile. (This worked both to motivate voters to vote for Trump and to dissuade potential Clinton voters for voting for her.) 

Writing in The New Yorker, Sue Halpern (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cambridge-analytica-facebook-and-the-revelations-of-open-secrets ) observed: "Cambridge Analytica contractors worked with Trump’s digital team, headed by Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner. Alongside all of them were Facebook employees who were embedded with the Trump campaign to help them use Facebook’s various tools most effectively—including the so-called “dark posts,” used to dissuade African-Americans from showing up to vote." 

The most informative investigative journalism is in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/23/leaked-cambridge-analyticas-blueprint-for-trump-victory ): "The blueprint for how Cambridge Analytica claimed to have won the White House for Donald Trump by using Google, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is revealed for the first time in an internal company document obtained by the Guardian... it details the techniques used by the Trump campaign to micro-target US voters with carefully tailored messages about the Republican nominee across digital channels. Intensive survey research, data modeling and performance-optimizing algorithms were used to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election." 

And the Russians were involved. Writing in Slate (https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/did-cambridge-analytica-leverage-russian-disinformation-for-trump.html ), Justin Hendrix reported "Cambridge Analytica also enlisted Russian-American academic Aleksandr Kogan to mine the private Facebook user data that is the subject of the ongoing scandal. While an associate professor at St. Petersburg State University in Russia, Kogan received grants from the Russian government to research 'stress, health and psychological wellbeing in social networks.'" 

The Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook collaborated to steal the 2016 election. With help from the Russians. 

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lBob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net