We live and move daily amidst the remains of a lost civilization that we do not see but that we cannot do without. Nor, I suspect, do those who have loathed Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever since he made good on his promise to deliver a New Deal to Americans 75 years ago want you to see them. To do so would shatter myths beloved of free market fundamentalists whose economic flimflam has—at least until they bring on the next bust—triumphed over what Roosevelt and myriads of Americans accomplished and left us. -more-

More questions are swirling around the cleanup efforts at two adjacent contaminated sites in Richmond this week. -more-

BP—the multinational once known as British Petroleum—will be able to move into its new digs in Berkeley in three years, according to plans given to would-be builders. -more-

The president of the School Board for the Oakland Unified School District said late this week that State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell will come to Oakland next Monday to announce his decision to immediately turn over the area of “Community Relations And Governance” from state control to control by the school board. -more-

Alameda County’s first detox center is scheduled to open in November in San Leandro, although Berkeley and UC Berkeley officials had pushed for a center closer to home. -more-

Residents of the Halcyon/Bateman neighborhood are breathing a bit easier since police arrested Marvin M. Johnson last week and charged him with a string of robberies targeting women walking alone during daylight hours in the neighborhood. -more-

Spurred by calls from anxious South Berkeley residents, Police Chief Douglas Hambleton sent a letter to neighborhood associations promising additional patrols in the area. -more-

The Warm Water Pool Task Force will deliver a progress report and hold a public hearing on the the relocation of the Berkeley High School warm water pool to the Berkeley Unified School District Milvia tennis courts at the disability commission meeting Wednesday. -more-

Robbery -more-

CELL PHONE TOWERS -more-

The administration swept aside laws it didn’t like or found inconvenient and ignored citizens’ protests as it catered to the commercial interests of its supporters. Sound familiar? No, we’re not talking about the Bush/Cheney administration but, sadly, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and some members of the City Council. -more-

The writers supporting guns for self-defense don’t seem to be honest, or not very good at numbers. After Richard Hourula questioned the veracity of Michael Hardesty’s claim that guns are used millions of times per year, Hardesty fell back on the claim that there are a great many documented cases of self defense over the years, and it was therefore a reasonable estimate. In short, he made up numbers to make the argument look good. Hawkins adds up violent crimes, property crimes, burglary, larceny and so on to get an estimate of 20 million crimes per year, but according to the FBI website “In the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson,” so he has double counted the property crimes. However what is more important is that “The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims.” There were only about a half million crimes per year where force or a threat of force was involved, and therefore where self-defense may be involved. If there are two million successful cases of self-defense then only 20 percent of the attempted violent acts were successful. It is hard to believe violent crime would be the problem that it is if its success rate was so low. Ms. Cloudwalker claims that 20 percent of homicides are concentrated in four cities with gun control, but provides no evidence that the two facts are related. A strong clue that they are not is that her numbers are old, and that by 2003 the value was about 10 percent. Washington D.C., which is one of the four, has been undergoing gentrification, and its murder rate dropped from first in the nation in 1991 at 81 per 100,000 to a much reduced but still horrible 44 in 2003, with the vast majority of the homicides occurring in those areas which have not yet been gentrified. New York has reduced its murder rate to 7.4, which is substantially below what is expected for a city of its size, its rate of poverty, unemployment, female head of household, and racial makeup. Locally one only need compare Richmond, with a murder rate of 36.7 to Berkeley, with a murder rate of 5.7, to realize that you have to account for all the variables before trying to draw conclusions about gun control and crime rates. -more-

For years my definition of a bore was “Someone, who when you ask how they are, they tell you.” It always got a laugh. However, these days the laugh’s on me. For I myself am now that quintessential Bore. When asked how I feel no longer say “Fine!” Instead, I launch into a recital of my aches and pains, completely disregarding the stifled yawns around me. I cannot believe that I’ve turned into such a person—one I don’t like at all. Never in my wildest nightmares did I think that I could bore anyone—and myself as well! -more-

With the humor, realism, and moving imagery we’ve come to expect from Michael Moore, Sicko is exactly the medicine needed by the public debate around health care. The film has three simple messages: First, the American health care “system” is utterly broken, not just for the 40 million uninsured, but potentially for all of us. Second, this is totally unnecessary; other countries have systems that work quite well. Third, this is far more than an economic issue—the way we treat the sickest among us is a moral disgrace of staggering proportions. -more-

Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on Australia’s west coast, the Bush administration is building a base. When completed, it will control two geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S. military forces in Asia and the Middle East. -more-

Modern-day African-Americans owe an enormous debt to the American labor movement, which helped provided funding, leadership training, and leadership itself for the African-American Freedom cause during key periods of the civil rights era. -more-

THE four-bedroom home at 2828 Hillegass Ave., built in 1909 in what is now Berkeley’s Willard neighborhood, is one of the notable residential works of Clarence Casebolt Dakin a little-remembered, but very intriguing, Berkeley architect. -more-

Who would have known that something as simple and harmless as buying plants for our gardens would turn out to be such a fraught moral choice? Knowledge and scruples can drive you nuts. -more-

Now, this has happened to everybody at some point. You think of this cool thing that would make something work better and then one day, you’re walking (or in my case crawling) along and lo and behold, there it is! Well I have to admit that when I saw the one that Simpson company (of our own beloved San Leandro) had come up with, I realized that the one in my mind wasn’t as good. Nevertheless, It’s still amazing when something institutional, large-scale and corporate turns out to be clever and just the right size and price. -more-