The westbound direction of University Avenue (at West Frontage Road) is now open. [Editor's Note: Other media report that there was a man brandishing two knives holed up under the bridge to the Berkeley Marina and that many Berkeley Police officers and vehicles were attempting to disarm him. More information will be available if the BPD releases it]

On the night of June 15^th, Seth Smith was found shot to death on the sidewalk of Dwight Way near Valley Street. Since that time, detectives continued to investigate this case leading to the identification of the suspect.

On August 20^th at 1:20 pm, officers arrested the suspect (Tony Walker, Male, 60 years old, Berkeley, CA) at his residence on suspicion of murder.

On August 24^th, the Alameda County District Attorney’s charged Tony Walker with PC 187(a)—Murder as well as a number of criminal enhancements. 

This case remains under investigation and we appreciate the public’s support and patience during this investigation. If anyone has additional information about this case, please contact BPD’s Homicide Unit at (510) 981-5741.

A summary review of: Richard A. Walker, Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area (Oakland, PM Press, 2018.)

M.L. Butler was born to a sharecropper family resident on the J.W. Jones Cotton Farm in St. Francis County, Arkansas. His father, W.M. Butler, "picked cotton by hand... sixty years after the legal end of slavery—and received no wages for his work. Instead, the owner was supposed to give him a percentage of the cotton's market value. First, though, the landowner deducted the cost of his 'tenant' farmers' seeds, fertilizer, clothing, and food. Their take-home pay was usually calculated down to zero." His son M.L. Butler migrated to Los Angeles, settled there, found a job, saved a down-payment, bought a house and spent the rest of his working life paying its mortgage, only, in the end, to lose it, purchased at auction pursuant to foreclosure of a second mortgage which he was persuaded — as a boon to his retirement years — to take out during the housing industry credit bubble that culminated in the financial debacle of 2008-2009. Thanks to the TARP legislation and banker bail-out (the joint work of both parties and two presidents), the buyer was "reimbursed" in full for the difference between the inflated value of the mortgage and the more realistic price at auction, at least doubling his money. Odds are, too, that if Mr. Butler had not been compelled by the bank credit monopoly (W.M. Butler's generation called it the "Money Trust") to pay usury ("interest") to the investors who owned his first mortgage — which over time approximately doubled his cost of shelter — his circumstances later in life would not have made him so easy a mark for the clever fellow who, for a nice percentage, convinced him that a second mortgage was a wise option for his retirement years.

These matters are conveniently shrouded in discreet mystery by California state law but the likelihood is that the buyer of Mr. Butler's foreclosed mortgage worked for a shell company intermediary with headquarters out of state — Phoenix, say — which passed the deed along to a hedge fund in New York, such as the one operated by President Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, where it became one of hundreds of thousands of such properties, newly converted to rentals and thus yielding its absentee investor owners monthly returns two or three times higher than Mr. Butler's mortgage payments. This kept real estate and mortgage investment markets inflated, and Americans' cost of shelter high and rising, while millions lost their jobs as well as their homes and later were able to find employment only for reduced pay in worse conditions, often needing two jobs to get by, or doing "independent" piece work in the so-called "gig economy." Over the decade of purported "recovery" following the 2008 crash most Americans saw their actual livelihood and quality of life seriously deteriorate, while the young had a long, hard, slow start and the disproportionate "share" in the possession of the wealthy few soared to heights unseen in more than a century. 

Today the absentee-owned debtor economy imposed on the South by post Civil War "Reconstruction" has become the condition of our country at large. Over 80% of all bank loans are for real estate; their primary result is asset inflation. Brookings Institution research discloses that in contemporary America "the average middle-class household spends 80% of its income on just five essentials: housing, health care, food, clothing, and transportation." Many do much worse, or do without. The bulk of these payments wind up in the "financial sector," whether as mortgage payments, or rent to investors in apartment-developments and hedge funds, insurance payments, or dividends to stock-holders (oil, automotive, pharmaceutical, food-processing, communications, etc.). The American consumer economy is a debt-cropper plantation with a company store. Housing takes far the largest share of American household incomes, and health care the next largest. Not coincidentally, the housing "industry" is also the largest sector of America's economy and the health care "industry" comes second. They are the metropolitan elite's two fattest cash cows. 

The "value" of the housing sector consists almost entirely of financial paper; in 2018 the total sale price of 617,000 newly built homes represented 0.48% of the value of the entire sector — one two-hundredth. The rest is assets-in-place and, mostly and especially, the financial instruments attached to them which "capitalize" decades of inflation by mortgage usury and interest-leveraged speculation. Above 99% of the sector's "industry" is comprised of writing, shuffling, buying, selling and processing "income streams" attached to these legal papers — entitlements to extract tolls from other people's incomes backed by the force of law, with costs of enforcement paid by the states and counties. A housing tract is a mortgage-serf plantation that bears harvests of usury. An apartment complex is a rent-slave plantation. Student loans give the younger generation a starter course in debt peonage. 

To speak of rent-slave and debt-serf plantations is more than metaphor or sarcasm. The San Francisco Bay region is currently ground zero for the progress of these "developments." Geographer Richard A. Walker details its methods and results.. The so-called "Silicon Valley" boom in computer and internet technology, gathering momentum from the 1960s, reached a climax stage during the 1990s and since then has utterly transformed the region. 

"The principal effect of the wealth erupting from the new technologies is that the Bay Area has become vastly more unequal." 

"The 1% and their allies in the top 10% [have] effective control over the private economy and the right to hire and fire, direct and supervise, everyone else." 

Big tech "capitalists have engaged in a massive upward redistribution of income while keeping a tight lid on wages. 

" From 1979 to 2013 in California there was an increase in labor productivity of 89% and an increase in real compensation of labor of 3%. In California today "0.5% of the population take home over 20% of state income [that is, 4000% of an equitable share].... Wealth inequality is greater by orders of magnitude than income differences. Among the elite, incomes derive chiefly from property, not from work." 

"One in four households are in poverty; two thirds of the lower group makes minimum wage." 

The inequitable distribution of wealth in "the four counties of the West Bay ... ranks somewhere on a par with Guatamala, putting the heartland of High Tech neck and neck with a nation of latifundia." 

"The global reach of the Bay Area's tech giants is motivated by one thing above all: access to cheap labor." 

This objective is achieved both by exporting ("off-shoring") jobs and by importing skilled labor from countries with lower standards of living and comparatively inexpensive costs of education (thus also importing lowered social expectations). The effects on America's "workforce," schools, society, and culture are discounted or written off — or described as "progress." As a result of this immigration "the state has been utterly transfigured over the last fifty years.... California absorbed millions of immigrants, more than any other state in the country." 

By 2015 "the Bay Area's population was about one-third foreign-born." The impact of this vast influx of new residents — immigrants from other states as well as overseas — has severely impacted transportation and public services and has produced what is described as a "housing crisis" — the result, as Walker shows, of two "critical economic shifts: the rapid growth in inequality, which has put too much money in the hands of the upper classes who are the main buyers [in the present market] of single-family homes ... and the growth of finance in relation to industry and the resulting excesses of credit and free-floating capital" devoted to speculative investment. This wreckage of infra-structure by overstress is a direct result of largely absentee investor funded corporate profit-making "development," but its costs—in suffering, maintenance, and the needs for expansion it causes — are dumped almost entirely on the public and on government. 

In the recession following the 2008 crash the Bay Area lost over 200,000 jobs. In San Joaquin, Modesto and Merced counties foreclosure rates were 30-50% and house price declines reached 40-50%. 

"In Oakland between 2007-2010 some 10% of the city's total stock of owner-occupied housing" was foreclosed. Following the crash speculators moved in, bought up foreclosures and converted "tens of thousands of former working-class homes to rentals." As a consequence, throughout the region, formerly affordable middle-class "starter-homes" [sic] disappeared from the market. An "explosion of real estate investment trusts ... gobbled up apartment buildings all around the Bay Area." In 2014, after the dust of the 2008-2009 mortgage fraud debacle settled, revealing the extent of the ruins, there were 18,600,000 vacant homes in America and, "on any given night over 600,000 people homeless." 

In 2020 there are an estimated 46,000 vacant residences and 28,000 homeless people in the Bay Area — this in the middle of the biggest building boom in the region's history. Clearly the problem is not a shortage of housing but of affordable shelter confronting a vast inflow of cheapened labor. Between 2010 and 2018 Bay Area rents doubled. 

"Working people spend a huge proportion of their income on housing" and commute further and further as "working-class" housing is pushed to the outskirts of the urban area and beyond. 

This expanding "suburban" development (in preference to "in-fill" construction) reflects the fact that "it is in the interest of property capital to stretch suburbia as far as possible because the highest profits come from land value appreciation, not from building houses and the cheapest land is at the periphery." This fully accords with and confirms Henry George's central thesis that speculative inflation of land prices is the fundamental driver of the concentration and mal-distribution of wealth. Similar motives inform "the tendency to build overly large (if cheaply built) homes ["McMansions"] that could only be purchased with huge mortgages." According to Walker's investigation, local regulation of zoning, development planning, and permit approvals, which are regularly advanced by housing industry public relations agents and the media (if there is a difference) as a "cause" of the so-called "housing crisis," have little or nothing to do with the rising cost of shelter or the putative shortage of housing. As one reason why local governments appear so helpless facing the machinations of absentee capital, Walker points to the extreme fragmentation of legal governmental jurisdictions in the Bay Area — over 100 municipal entities, thousands of "boards." With the public interest minutely divided, the dominant forces are investment capital, business and self-styled "development." Efforts at regional planning, such as they are, programmatically channel development into "lower class zones" and away from elite enclaves. 

"Virtually every corner of the Bay Area had high homeownership rates until recently." 

The new industrial and residential landscape is the creation of "anonymous developers and real estate investors." Absentee investment capital dominates this transformation. Its narrow concentration of ballooning industrial development in the region produces the ballooning demand for housing and the appreciation of land values from which it also profits (more handsomely and in perpetuity). Contracting wage income and expanding dependence on credit play a pivotal role. The interests of the region's people, society, culture or ecosystems, or the interests of other regions, which might benefit from dispersal of industrial development, have no significant bearing on the process. Silicon Valley capital is substantially absentee, often foreign: "One of the top five angel investors funding tech start-ups is Japanese; Uber is backed by Saudi Investment Fund; GM has put $1 billion into Lyft.... Chinese investment in the U.S. surged in 2016, with California the biggest recipient at $27 billion (chiefly in internet technology, real estate, and entertainment)." 

In the lead up to the 2008 credit bubble collapse, mortgage investors "backed by Wall Street ... pumped up California's housing market to absurd heights ... with rampant speculation and financial bloat." Once the bubble collapsed investors swooped in, with the welcome connivance of TARP and the "banker bail-out," bought up foreclosures at drastically shrunken prices, and reinflated the market — a classic Morgan market maneuver, applied now to the shelter business, and with international players invited. "As the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors has observed, 'Without a doubt foreign investors are pushing up the prices in California.'" "A survey of global real estate investors shows San Francisco to be the third most popular target in the world." 

America's plantation economy is designed to see to it that nine tenths of us spend as much at the company store as we receive in monthly income. And it works. Over half of us possess no wealth at all. A fifth of us die in debt. Some of us find roomier niches, some barely find elbow-room, others sink under the weight; overseers and house-slaves do better than most; but the major parameters of the systemic box, its fundamental limits, prescribe the narrowing confines within which nearly all of us dwell. The American economy's world-topping maldistribution of wealth is one parameter or consequence of this situation. 

"The essence of slavery is that it takes from the laborer all he produces save enough to support an animal existence," Henry George wrote in 1880 when the facts of chattel bondage were still fresh in American memory. For most residents of the San Francisco Bay region the parameters of animal existence have not yet reached the degree of constriction prevalent at J.W. Jones Cotton Farm. but hundreds of thousands of farm-workers, contract janitors, maids, dishwashers, Uber drivers, and the like, living three families in one deteriorating tract house or three in a one-bedroom apartment already exceed it. And we are all living on the same plantation, shopping at the same company store. 

Four generations after the end of chattel slavery and Reconstruction, historian Lawrence Goodwyn summarized the results: "The values and the sheer power of corporate America today pinch the horizons of millions of obsequious corporate employees, tower over every American legislature, state and national, determine the modes and style of mass communications and mass education, fashion American foreign policy around the globe, and shape the rules of the American political process itself. The scope of intimidation extends deep into the American academy and into the very core of American intellectual life. Perhaps nothing illustrates the subtle power of the received culture more tellingly than the paucity of serious inquiry — by economists, historians, and political scientists — into the economic and political substance of that central component of American capitalism — commercial banking. Self-evidently, corporate values define modern American culture. It was the corporate state that the People's Party attempted to bring under democratic control."
 

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Quotations (except as noted) are from: 

Richard A. Walker, Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area (Oakland, PM Press, 2018. 

The first three paragraphs refer to:Aaron Glantz, Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream (New York, Harper/Collins, 2019) 

The statistics in the fourth paragraph are from 

worldpropertyjournal.com), statista.com, and daveramsey.com. 

The attributed quotations are from: 

Henry George, Progress and Poverty (New York, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1935, 1st pub. 1880). 

Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York, Oxford, 1976). 

 

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Debbra Wood Schwartz, violinist, teacher, mentor, avid storyteller and Crusader for the Arts, passed away much too soon at the age of 73 on July 31, 2020. After a short illness resulting from an unlucky turn of events, she died at home surrounded by her family. She was comfortable and remained her indomitable self until the end.

A longtime resident of both Oakland and Berkeley, Debbra touched so many lives due to her interests, involvement, and generosity; and was a loving and exceedingly generous friend to many. She would often be seen zipping around in her convertible, equally likely to be en route to a board meeting, to judge a local music competition, or (with her adorable and completely spoiled long-haired Chihuahua, Nico, in tow) to a nearby coffee shop — one of her favorite ways to while away the hours. 

Despite previously being a native of Chicago, she would feel chilled when the temperature dropped below 60, so when the Bay Area fog rolled in, she’d venture to Contra Costa County for a reliable dose of sunshine. She also loved Half Moon Bay and was known to escape there for the weekend at the drop of a hat. In the worst part of the winter, she’d often alight to Mexico, or more recently to Hawaii, where she and Nico would spend hours, in the shade of course, sitting at coffee houses along the beach. 

Debbra (or Deb, but never Debbie!) was born in Toledo, Ohio. She was the oldest of the five children of Ben Fred and Margaret Fern Wood, and she grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. Though small in stature, her presence could never be ignored. She always charted her own path and was fiercely self-reliant. This tenacity is best represented by the genesis of her lifelong dedication to music: after begging her parents for years to start violin lessons, she was finally allowed to do so at the age of 16 (very late to be a beginner). Shortly thereafter, she was admitted to Roosevelt University, where she studied with Morris Gomberg and where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Violin Performance. She played professionally at that time as well — with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the University of Chicago Chamber Players, as well as touring and performing freelance work with Sammy Davis, the Temptations, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Marlene Dietrich, among others. Unsurprisingly, her stories from these years were an endless source of entertainment for anyone who would listen. 

Starting in 1971, Debbra taught violin at the Chicago Musical College at Roosevelt University, first as lecturer but eventually serving as Assistant Professor, Chair of String Instruments Department, Chair of Faculty Council of the Music School, and Head of Tenure Review. She spoke with great fondness of teaching in Chicago, and many of these students remained her lifelong friends. 

In 1979 Debbra began a new chapter in her already adventurous life. She moved to California, earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Hastings College of the Law, and in 1983 married Robert Alexander David Schwartz (1925-2017) — also from Chicago. She worked as an accountant at Coopers & Lybrand, preparing tax returns for many corporate and partnership clients, including for the Oakland City Center properties. She also performed as a violinist with the Oakland East Bay Symphony and various other Bay Area orchestras. 

Over the next 37 years, Debbra built a flourishing private violin studio. Her son Noah was among these students, and, like so many others before and since, he credits her for instilling in him a lifelong passion for music. With her great friend (and legendary Bay Area cello teacher) the late Milly Rosner, Debbra founded Summer Music Berkeley, a chamber music camp for string players which took place at the Crowden School. She also taught chamber music and violin in San Domenico School’s acclaimed Virtuoso Program. Throughout her life, she performed and taught all over the US and overseas, most notably Costa Rica, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. Debbra also passionately supported and/or served on the boards of many Bay Area musical organizations, including the Crowden School, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Oakland Youth Orchestra, and the Virtuoso Program. 

Debbra always looked forward to the innovative and exciting programs that her dear and longtime friend Michael Morgan would present with the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Her musical tastes weren’t limited to Classical; she was a proud supporter of her late husband’s jazz band The Therapists, even after he passed away, and always enjoyed live music at Yoshi's. 

However, perhaps her favorite musical events were the ones where she was able to see her daughter perform. She would travel as often as she could for these performances, including to Bellingham, Washington, where she became a “regular” for the three weeks of their Music Festival, and where she developed some of her most treasured friendships. 

Debbra particularly relished her trips to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she loved performances of Margot’s piano trio (the Prometheus Trio). Never satisfied being relegated to the role of mere “audience member”, she was invited to perform on Margot’s duo recital in the spring of 2018 — a very special and memorable event for all. 

These regular trips to Wisconsin afforded her the invaluable opportunity to see her son Noah in Chicago. More recently, the added delight of her beloved new grandson Elah was there as well. She always loved Chicago, visiting her old haunts and reminiscing about her many years as a musician there. Of course it was not lost on her that both of her children, exceedingly proud of them though she may have been, ended up in (or near) the very city that she and their father had decided to leave all those years ago. 

Debbra’s interests were certainly not limited to music. She had a love of theater, especially at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (indeed, Ashland was always a favorite vacation spot for the Schwartz family) and the California Shakespeare Festival. As of this writing, we only are aware of one instance of her walking out of a theatrical performance at intermission. Debbra’s love of law was ongoing and true; it was not uncommon for her to spend free time at her local traffic court, just to see how things would shake out. She also intently followed the proceedings of the Supreme Court, eager to hear what kinds of arguments would be pursued in each case. 

Though she was a woman of strong convictions, Debbra was unfailingly open-minded and encouraging of her children’s various interests and endeavors. Likewise, she often claimed she was an introvert but she loved going to events and gatherings, and she inevitably ended up the life of the party. She was so well-read and -informed, she could engage anyone she met in conversation, or, at the very least, regale them with a story or five. 

Debbra firmly believed in the importance of being an engaged American citizen, and participated as a poll watcher in both Florida and Ohio in recent elections where she used her legal knowledge to protect voters from any “funny business”. Additionally, she was a self-avowed political junkie, religiously keeping up with Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace — even in her final days. She followed local politics closely, feeling special pride for Oakland’s current mayor Libby Schaaf. To Debbra, Libby was not just the mayor, but the daughter of an old friend of hers, one with whom Debbra loved to walk around Oakland’s beautiful Lake Merritt on Friday mornings when she was in town. 

Debbra is survived by her father Ben (age 100), sisters Jennifer (Bill Lange) and Wendi (Tim Wilson), brothers Jeffrey and Brandon (Sarah), children Margot (Robert Klieger) and Noah (Erica Bland), grandson Elah (19 months), along with a large and loving extended family. 

Memorial to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Several readers have reported that when they click on Planet links they get some sort of security warning. However some of them say that when they try again there's no problem. If this happens to you, please let us know so we can continue to try to figure it all out. Write to becky@berkeleydailyplanet.com 

 

Leading contender for the worst of the swamp is Attorney General, William Barr, who abandoned his former career as a respectable lawyer and fell into the rabbit hole as Trump’s personal lawyer. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a close second and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo third. DeVos has a reputation of gross mismanagement and smug arrogance. She uses every opportunity to trash public education and direct scarce federal dollars to private and religious schools. 

Pompeo has hollowed out the State Department, weakened our former NATO alliances and embraced the dark side of humanity, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other autocratic regimes selling them $billions in killing machines to slaughter innocent men, women and children. He continues Trump’s policy of imposing crippling sanctions on Iran’s theocracy which the US help create. I urge readers to watch the recently released documentary “COUP53” which describes in graphic detail how the CIA and Britain’s MI6 overthrew the democratically leader of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh in a blatant theft of their oil. Under Tramp and Pompeo‘s watch, the US has become one of the most reviled nations in the world. 

Another candidate is Trump donor, the “fox guarding the hen house”, postmaster general Louis DeJoy, who is getting glowing accolades from anti-democratic groups for undercutting post office efficiency and advancing Trump’s reelection prospects. Destroying the postal service would also advance DeJoy’s business interests having invested $70 million in companies that compete with the United States Postal Service. He has no experience running the USPS but as a Trump toady and donor he must follow the wishes of his master. He is not part of the cabinet but is a fierce contender for toady-in-chief. Perhaps he should receive a special award for driving a stake into our democracy.  

A wonderful sign at the women’s’ 2017 march in Washington, is an apt description of the swamp: “I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea!” 

Mike Pence is a special case. As an avowed Christian he has ignored Trump’s many transgressions, always gazing at him with adoring eyes and showering him with flattery for his “great vision and guidance.” Jesus would be so proud! Another swamp contender is Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin who showed his disdain for the “poor and hungry huddled masses” denying them the $600/week that many need to survive. Mnuchin left Goldman Sachs with a hefty $46 million in stock. 

Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao (Mrs. Mitch McConnell) always maintains a low profile fearful of raising public scrutiny over her conflict of interest actives with her family’s shipping business. Finally, there is the invisible Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who abandoned his brilliant career as a doctor to join the swamp. His whereabouts are unknown. Alas he may have joined the Witness Protection Program.

Open Letter to the Berkeley Parks Commission:

I wish to register concern over the 600 Addison proposal threatening Waterfront Park, a Berkeley gem home to abundant local and migratory wildlife, a valuable resource for our under-served West Berkeley neighborhood which is barely hanging onto its natural character due to overcrowding. 

Berkeley is severely under-parked, a dearth noted by by famed planner Walter Hegemann in his 1915 city plan report: "Oakland owns only about one-tenth of the park area it should have according to good American standards, and Berkeley has only about one-sixth of Oakland park acreage. This backwardness is especially hard to understand because these cities in their early youth have had the great fortune to feel the influence of Frederick Law Olmsted, the elder, the great American genius of park-culture." 

Any plan that removes trees, obscures skyline, or creates shadows for this WPA-born treasure should be soundly rejected. Our 1986 Public Parks and Open Space Protection Ordinance* was a city-wide vote requiring that all open space and parks not only be protected and fully funded and maintained, but also obligating the city to expand opportunities for recreational and open space, a requirement which can only be overturned by another city-wide vote. This was done expressly to counter the pressure from private entities wishing to prioritize profits over the public health, a pressure even more extreme today, 34 years later. 

Please keep me in formed of any actions taken in this matter. The pandemic is no time to radically alter what few parks we have. People are scrambling to hold their lives and families together right now, and, with respect, no one with common sense can argue that the city's pandemic-produced procedures and processes are accessible. 

If 600 Addison is up for sale, the City of Berkeley should, according to our ordinance, be working to acquire it through eminent domain to create a local urban park for severely under-served West Berkeley to reduce the pressure of current overcrowding and, in addition, provide an off-leash area for the dog owners who currently let their dogs run unleashed through Waterfront Park's and Cesar Chavez Park's natural settings. Dogs do need space to play and run, a use that directly threatens our wildlife and public safety if unrestricted. If you as commissioners are not hearing a clear voice from the city's planners about the threat to our storied Waterfront Park, its wildlife, and the current strain upon it from nearby high-rise developments which offer only their roofs as "open space", you are hearing with clarity the erosion of our community's values. 

The Works Progress Administration worked to integrate public works and recreational and open space needs, to enhance and expand cultural opportunities such as our local pageants and festivals which celebrated Aquatic Park Lake and commemorated the victims of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you are not hearing voices that recognize the extreme loss of these cultural resources during the pandemic, please supply that voice yourselves as commissioners. This is part of what the citizens of Berkeley have the right expect from you. Especially if the current crop of city planners has no sense of our community history and the legacy of creating and protecting open, natural settings. Pitting this need against housing is a false choice people with any sense of history know is a fallacy; honest planning for real communities always includes open space and recreational needs. 

Waterfront Park's and Cesar Chavez Park's natural preserves and native plant settings are not just creations which tell Berkeley's user-developed story of celebrating our connection to nature; they are an important part of the flyway for migratory birds and nesting areas for local wildlife. We are down to one burrowing owl which currently does not even use the space the city sought in good faith several years ago to protect with thousands of dollars of public funding by erecting an art fence. The space set aside, with good intentions, is too full of off-leash dogs to be safe - according to the owls. 

Thank you for your service during this difficult moment in time, and please use this moment to make sure proposals that come your way reflect values which include our community's reverence for natural settings, wildlife, and New Deal history.

Recent events in Charlottesville, Lafayette Square, and Portland should be a dire warning that President Donald Trump is prepared to do whatever it takes to subvert the cause of justice and democracy and retain power, including embracing militant white supremacists and using federal troops to tear gas and arrest peaceful protesters. Much like a western movie this will be the “high noon” showdown between democracy activists, the real American heroes, and Donald Trump and his posse of ‘deplorables’. With his approval ratings declining dramatically, a visibly shaken Trump even threatened to postpone the elections. He has openly declared that he may not abide by the election results in a nationally televised interview on Fox News. Unless he loses the election by a thumping majority, Trump will ‘huff and puff’ and question the legitimacy of the election that will rely on mail-in ballots, even though he himself just requested vote-by-mail ballots. What chutzpah! 

In a further effort to ensure maximum pain on Americans, Trump has threatened to withhold funding from states that are trying to make it easier for people to vote, even undermining the U.S. Postal Service by appointing a fox Trump donor, Louis DeJoy, who issued a ‘fatwa’ to slow down delivery. Trump has openly admitted sabotaging the USPS in order to jeopardize our elections. In an interview with Fox News, Trump openly admitted that he is purposefully withholding money from the U.S. Postal Service because of its crucial role in the 2020 elections, saying "they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots." This is a new low, even for Trump and state Republicans. With their poll numbers collapsing, Trump and his team are willing to stoop to any level to cling to power-- including blatant, calculated sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. His Republican allies around the country have been passing voter ID Laws, purging voter rolls, and cutting the number of polling places in urban areas, forcing people to stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote. I wonder how the nation’s seniors will respond when their social security, MEDICARE, MEDICAID checks are delayed for weeks. How will Trump’s base respond when their ballots are delayed? 

Trump and his Republican supporters should reject their satanic activities and embrace Christ’s teachings, of truth and humility. A NYT letter writer offered a brilliant suggestion to counter Trump’s antidemocratic satanic schemes. Trump has had an angry war of words with the high priest of capitalism, Jeff Bezos for months. Let Amazon offer to process election ballots and deliver them with his cutting edge technology operating at warp speed. If Bezos is falling on hard times let us suggest Mayor Bloomberg fund the USPS to ensure our election integrity. He has promised to use half his wealth of $60B to ensure Trump’s defeat. Mayor Bloomberg it is time to ‘walk the walk.! 

I also urge readers to send tweets to Donald Trump, suggested tweet: @RealDonaldTrump stop defunding the USPS & stop threatening to withhold funding from states that are trying to make it easier to vote; stop purging voter rolls using bogus voter ID laws & cutting the number of polling stations; repent the day of judgment is fast approaching. 

For more go to, http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/ 

Jagjit Singh

I listened to the news item of Kamala Harris speaking about how her passed mother would look down on her from above with pride whereas here we have many people looking down on President Trump but not with such love and respect but scorn. 

President Obama said "I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously. But he never did." 

What the world needs now is a new and better president and the better part will be easy to achieve, surely.

I've recently experienced a set of delusional thoughts that I found compelling and very tough to nullify. I finally stopped my head-on battle with them. Instead I've been able to gently retire the thoughts and put them out to pasture. 

I was sure to maintain the basic insight that the thoughts were questionable. Yet, additionally, I worked to reduce both the frequency and the strength with which the thoughts occurred. This turned out to be as effective as (within my thinking) actively disputing the symptomatic thoughts. Instead of reversing the thoughts, I decided not to think them as much. 

The how-to of this is to have alternate content. I decided to focus more on what needed to be done every day. Some examples: household cleanup, career efforts, spending time with my spouse, watching television, meditating, and running errands. 

The above illustrates how shifting the content of the thinking is often efficacious. The alternative is to fight against oneself. Over time, if the latter method works at all, it will be inefficient and could cause its own set of problems--even if not always in the category of symptoms. 

Finding a distraction from mental material that bugs you or makes you suffer is powerful. It can allow you to recharge your energy supply. This, in turn, can give you more power than you would otherwise have to do battle with external challenges where needed. 

(Battling challenges is good. Battling people is not good.) 

This morning, the kitchen was the challenge to battle. I knew that the garbage needed removal and the dishes had to be washed. I distracted myself from the impulse I had that said I couldn't do it. I told myself to begin with only washing a few dishes and picking up a few pieces of trash. Ninety minutes later (My best guess--I didn't record the time) all dishes had been washed and all trash had been removed. The feeling afterward was fabulous, and I was glad not to be at risk of a vermin infestation. 

The above doesn't refer to anything psychotic. Yet, it is an example of shifting away from mental material that did not serve me. And the "material" consisted of thoughts that caused delaying or not doing necessary tasks. 

Many years ago, I lived in a large housing complex in which residents socialized a lot among themselves. I was returning following a difficult dental surgery in which I'd had all four wisdom teeth removed. The oral surgeons were awful, and they actually gave me some kind of embolism in my cheek due to sticking in the anesthesia needle too far. When I got back home to the housing complex, I was in a great deal of pain. 

A man in his sixties who worked security for the building began to tell me stories of his past security work--he had many things to say. I was completely distracted by his compelling stories, and this eased the pain in my mouth.  

The method of distraction replaces problematic content with useful or at least neutral content. It can be learned with a minimal amount of practice. 

The above method is not a replacement for conventional treatment for a psychiatric condition. 

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Jack Bragen has written this column for nearly ten years. He is author of several self-help and other books, available at Amazon.  

;From 1830 to 1895, the British and Russian empires schemed and plotted over control of Central and South Asia. At the heart of the “Great Game” was England’s certainty that the Russians had designs on India. So wars were fought, borders drawn, and generations of young met death in desolate passes and lonely outposts. 

In the end, it was all illusion. Russia never planned to challenge British rule in India and the bloody wars settled nothing, although the arbitrary borders and ethnic tensions stoked by colonialism’s strategy of divide and conquer live on today. Thus China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal battle over lines drawn in London, while Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul vie for tiny uninhabited islands, remnants of Imperial Japan. 

That history is important to keep in mind when one begins to unpack the rationales behind the increasingly dangerous standoff between China and the United States in the South China Sea. 

To the Americans, China is a fast rising competitor that doesn’t play by the rules and threatens one of the most important trade routes on the globe in a region long dominated by Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has essentially called for regime change. 

According to Ryan Hass, former China director on the National Security Council, the Trump administration is trying to “reorient the U.S.-China relationship toward an all-encompassing systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed” by administrations that follow. In short, a cold war not unlike that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. 

To the Chinese, the last 200 years—China does tend to think in centuries, not decades—has been an anomaly in their long history. Once the richest country on the globe that introduced the world to everything from silk to gunpowder, 19^th Century China became a dumping ground for British opium, incapable of even controlling its own coastlines. 

China has never forgotten those years of humiliation or the damage colonialism helped inflict on its people. Those memories are an ingredient in the current crisis. 

But China is not the only country with memories. 

The U.S. has dominated the Pacific Ocean—sometimes called an “American lake”—since the end of World War II. Suddenly Americans have a competitor, although it is a rivalry that routinely gets overblown. 

An example is conservative New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, who recently warned that China’s Navy has more ships than the US Navy, ignoring the fact that most of China’s ships are small Coast Guard frigates and corvettes. China’s major strategic concern is the defense of its coasts, where several invasions in the 19^th and 20^th centuries have come. 

The Chinese strategy is “area denial”: keeping American aircraft carriers at arm’s length. To this end, Beijing has illegally seized numerous small islands and reefs in the South China Sea to create a barrier to the US Navy. 

But China major thrust is economic through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not military, and is currently targeting South Asia as an area for development. 

South Asia is enormously complex, comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tibet, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Its 1.6 billion people constitute almost a quarter of the world’s population, but it only accounts for 2 percent of the global GDP and 1.3 percent of world trade. 

Those figures translate into a poverty level of 44 percent, just 2 percent higher than the world’s most impoverished region, sub-Saharan Africa. Close to 85 percent of South Asia’s population makes less than $2 a day. 

Much of this is a result of colonialism, which derailed local economies, suppressed manufacturing, and forced countries to adopt monocrop cultures focused on export. The globalization of capital in the 1980s accelerated the economic inequality that colonialism had bequeathed the region. 

Development in South Asia has been beholden to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which require borrowers to open their markets to western capital and reduce debts through severe austerity measures, throttling everything from health care to transportation. 

This economic strategy—sometimes called the “Washington Consensus” –generates “debt traps”: countries cut back on public spending, which depresses their economies and increases debt, which leads to yet more rounds of borrowing and austerity. 

The World Bank and the IMF have been particularly stingy about lending for infrastructure development, an essential part of building a modern economy. It is “the inadequacy and rigidness of the various western monetary institutions that have driven South Asia into the arms of China,” says economist Anthony Howell in the South Asia Journal. 

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) takes a different tack. Through a combination of infrastructure development, trade and financial aid, countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe are linked into what is essentially a new “Silk Road.” Some 138 countries have signed up. 

Using a variety of institutions—the China Development Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank--Beijing has been building roads, rail systems and ports throughout South Asia. 

For decades, western lenders have either ignored South Asia—with the exception of India—or put so many restrictions on development funds that the region has stagnated economically. The Chinese Initiative has the potential to reverse this, al;arming the West and India, the only nation in the region not to join the BRI. 

The European Union has also been resistant to the Initiative, although Italy has signed on. A number of Middle East countries have also joined the BRI and the China-Arab Cooperation Forum. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have signed on to China’s Digital Silk Road, a network of navigation satellites that compete with America’s GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and European Union’s Galileo. China also recently signed a $400 billon, 25-year trade and military partnership with Iran. 

Needless to say, Washington is hardly happy about China elbowing its way into a US-dominated region that contains a significant portion of the world’s energy supplies. 

I a worldwide competition for markets and influence, China is demonstrating considerable strengths. That, of course, creates friction. The US, and to a certain extent the EU, have launched a campaign to freeze China out of markets and restrict its access to advanced technology. The White House successfully lobbied Great Britain and Australia to bar the Chinese company, Huawei, from installing a 5G digital network, and is pressuring Israel and Brazil to do the same. 

Not all of the current tensions are economic. The Trump administration needs a diversion from its massive failure to control the pandemic, and the Republican Party has made China bashing a centerpiece of its election strategy. There is even the possibility that the White House might pull off an “October surprise” and initiate some kind of military clash with China. 

It is unlikely that Trump wants a full-scale war, but an incident in the South China Sea might rally Americans behind the White House. The danger is real, especially since polls in China and the United States show there is growing hostility between both groups of people. 

But the tensions go beyond President Trump’s desperate need to be re-elected. China is re-asserting itself as a regional power and a force to be reckoned with worldwide. That the US and its allies view that with enmity is hardly a surprise. Britain did its best to block the rise of Germany before World War I, and the US did much the same with Japan in the lead up to the Pacific War. 

Germany and Japan were great military powers with a willingness to use violence to get their way. China is not a great military power and is more interested in creating profits than empires. In any case, a war between nuclear-armed powers is almost unimaginable (which is not to say it can’t happen). 

China recently softened its language toward the US, stressing peaceful co-existence. “We should not let nationalism and hotheadness somehow kidnap our foreign policy,” says Xu Quinduo of the state-run China Radio. “Tough rhetoric should not replace rational diplomacy.” 

The new tone suggests that China has no enthusiasm for competing with the US military, but would rather take the long view and let initiatives like the Belt and Road work for it. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese don’t want to see Trump re-elected and they clearly have decided not to give him any excuse to ratchet up the tensions as an election year ploy. 

China’s recent clash with India, and its bullying of countries in the South China Sea, including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei, have isolated Beijing, and the Chinese leadership may be waking to the fact that they need allies, not adversaries.And patience. 

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Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com 

 

 

 

 

The 2020 Democratic convention is over. Given the difficult circumstances, it might have been a disaster. Instead it was very successful. Here are 10 takeaways:

10. Better than expected. Political conventions are typically overrated. Too many speeches. Manufactured controversy. Too many talking heads.

This year's Democratic convention was all "virtual" and, therefore, more immediate. Overall, it had a better flow than any convention I've watched. Each of the four nights worked. There were many interesting cameos and powerful songs. Kudos to the organizers. Let's make this the model for all Democratic conventions. 

9. Compelling themes. Throughout the four nights there was a coordinated emphasis on several meta-themes: Family: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spoke of their families and emphasized the importance of protecting American families. Dignity: each person has worth and deserves a shot at the American dream; everyone needs access to healthcare, housing, education, and a decent job. Overcoming adversity: Biden has overcome the death of his first wife and their little daughter and, later the death of his son. Harris has overcome the burden of being a black woman, born of immigrant parents, in America. Unity/Working together/E Pluribus Unum: Biden and Harris and most speakers spoke of the importance of recreating a culture where Americans work together to overcome these tough times: pandemic, recession, and systemic racism. Love: Biden's personal story emphasized his deep faith and his capacity to reach out with love to everyday people (as well as political adversaries). 

8. Diversity: Harris said that she and Biden want to rebuild the "beloved community." The dominant theme was: "Democrats are the Party of diversity. (Republicans are the Party of rich white men.)" More than any previous Democratic convention the speakers were diverse by color, gender, age, and physical condition (ALS activist, Ady Barkin, spoke from his wheelchair). 

7. Powerful women. On the first three nights of the convention, women got the most airtime (Michelle Obama, Jill Biden, Kamala Harris). It wasn't tokenism. It's clear that women have a lot of power in the Democratic Party. (By the way: each night's program was narrated by a woman.) 

6. Joe Biden is a nice guy. The convention organizers went out of their way to tell Biden's story. To emphasize his working-class roots. To portray his faith. To depict how he overcame adversity. And, to illustrate his capacity for empathy; his ability to get-along with people from the elevator-operator who nominated him to the late Senator John McCain (and many other Republicans). [There was a clear contrast: Donald Trump is not a nice guy and he does not get along with folks, particularly anyone who is not a Trump supporter.) 

Best Biden supporter cameo: Fifteen-year-old Brayden Harrington who spoke about Joe Biden helping Brayden to overcome his stutter. 

5.The Roll Call. In a typical convention, one of the most boring segments is the delegation roll call. "The great state of Wisconsin, the cheese state, cast 26 ballots for Governor Al Smith..." This year, due to the pandemic, each delegation filmed a video to cast their votes for president. So there were 57 brief videos from every part of the country including American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Washington DC, and Rhode Island (the "calamari state"). Again, this emphasized the diversity of the Party. It was heartwarming. 

4. Kamala Harris: No pressure, but in her acceptance speech, Kamala Harris had to introduce herself to a large segment of American voters, illustrate that she is moderate Democrat -- and not some radical firebrand, and demonstrate that she is capable of running the big show if something happens to Biden. She did this. 

Kamala Harris was articulate and compelling. Her speech had many memorable lines but two that stuck out: "I know a predator when I see one." [A not so subtle reference to Donald Trump - who describes her as "a nasty woman."] And, "There is no vaccine for racism. We have got to do the work" 

3. Michelle Obama: Michelle is the most beloved woman in America but she's not a politician. (Doesn't want to be a politician.) So, she doesn't give that many political speeches. Nonetheless, Her keynote address on the convention's opening night was a "wowser". 

Most memorable line: “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.” [Emphasis added] 

2.Barack Obama. Barack Obama is the best political orator of our era. Normally, on a list like this, he would be number one. Nonetheless, his somber convention address was a classic: “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office. ... But he never did...
Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe.” [Emphasis added] 

1. Joe Biden: Over the years, I've seen Joe Biden give many speeches. His 2020 acceptance speech was his best. It wasn't just the best speech in terms of the content, it was the best speech in terms of delivery. It showed us his program, his values, and his heart. It was a fitting end to a strong convention. (By the way: Biden's speech should nullify the Republican claim that Biden is not mentally up to the job of President.) 

Best lines: "The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division. Here and now, I give you my word — if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness. . . . We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.” “You know, I’ve always believed you can define America in one word: possibilities. The defining feature of America: Everything is possible.” 

Strong speech. Strong convention. I feel hopeful. 

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Bob Burnett is a Bay Area writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net