Planning commissioners have refused to endorse a staff-prepared set of amendments to the city statutes governing placement of cell phone antennas. -more-

While the City of Berkeley-Verizon Wireless “secret settlement agreement” is hardly likely to reach the notoriety of the infamous City of Berkeley-UC Berkeley “secret deal” of 2006, confusion over the Verizon settlement—if, in fact, it is actually a legal settlement—appears to be causing some momentary embarrassment among Berkeley City officials. -more-

“Bob said that for us, this is like walking into a lion’s den,” said the man who hopes to become the casino czar of Richmond. -more-

Will Richmond allow a sovereign nation to build an enclave in their city, a state-within-a-city that possesses diplomatic immunity from California’s civil courts? -more-

The Berkeley Civic Arts Commission voted last Wednesday to approve new guidelines for the city-owned Addison Street Windows Gallery and introduced changes to the city’s contract with the gallery’s curator, Carol Brighton, following the public outcry that ensued when she rejected four posters from the national Art of Democracy series, citing curatorial judgment. -more-

Thanksgiving can easily be a family’s most expensive meal of the year. -more-

Despite the holiday trouble for emergency food and shelter programs, the Hesperian Foundation, the Berkeley-based non-profit publisher of community-oriented medical books, including the internationally known Where There Is No Doctor, can report an exciting new grant that will carry the organization to many more people in need of its aid. -more-

Berkeley High School’s proposal to develop a new small school, create advisory programs and block schedules following a $1 million federal grant in July received mixed reactions from the community during a public forum on Monday. -more-

The Berkeley Unified School District bade farewell to the longest-serving member on the current Berkeley Board of Education amidst a lot of happy memories, applause and laughter at a public meeting in the City Hall chambers last Wednesday. -more-

As a heart doctor, it’s probably only natural that Jeff Ritterman has his fingers on the pulse of the community. Wherever he goes in Richmond, he’s certain to recognize someone, often eschewing the traditional handshake for the hug, as befits a long-time activist with a pony tail that reaches well down his back. -more-

Two East Bay mayors are among the plaintiffs who filed suit in San Francisco Tuesday, taking the battle over Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) spraying into federal court. -more-

President-elect Barack Obama announced Monday that he had chosen Christina Romer, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and a resident of Oakland, to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers. -more-

Magna Entertainment, the endangered parent of Albany’s Golden Gate Fields, has hired a bankruptcy lawyer and is surviving on week-to-week loans. -more-

The overwhelming defeat of Berkeley Measure KK in the Nov. 4 election has resulted in a dramatic—and completely understandable—reversal of opinion about the meaning of the measure by at least some of its proponents and opponents. -more-

On Nov. 23, an unseasonably sunny Sunday afternoon, over 400 family members, friends, colleagues and occasional opponents packed UC Berkeley’s International House auditorium. They came to remember and celebrate the life of activist, politician, financial manager and family man, Peter Miguel Camejo, a man whom then-Gov. Ronald Reagan called one of the “10 most dangerous men in California.” Camejo died from a recurrence of lymphoma on Sept. 13, at the age of 68. -more-

Rae Imamura passed away on Saturday, Nov. 22 at her Berkeley home. Daughter of Rev. Kanmo and Jane Imamura, Rae is survived by her mother, her siblings, Hiro, Ryo and Mari, and her dog Brandy. Rae graduated from UC Berkeley, and went on to receive her M.F.A. in piano at Mills College, where she found her voice in contemporary music. -more-

Smokin’ -more-

It’s time to submit your essays, poems, stories, artwork and photographs for the Planet’s annual holiday reader contribution issue, which will be published on Dec. 23 (that’s right—a Tuesday!). Send your submissions, no longer than 1,000 words, to holiday@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Deadline is 5 p.m. on Mon., Dec. 15. -more-

On Jan. 20, George W. Bush will leave office and Americans will breathe a sigh of relief. While national policies will change, there will be a dramatic shift in style. Bush and Barack Obama have different views of presidential power: the imperial presidency will be succeeded by an era of democratic leadership. -more-

One of the perks of being a newspaper columnist—as well as a newspaper reporter—is that from time to time, you get the chance to write your own fantasies. For political columnists and reporters, this often takes the place of handicapping—sometimes years in advance—political races. Like all good fantasies, political race advance handicapping needs to adhere to certain rules, such as the columnist or reporter clearly stating in advance what rules are to be used for including or excluding certain potential candidates. Without that, such political fantasy-writing provides no useful insight, except into the wishful thinking of the person doing the writing. But we’ll get to that, shortly. -more-

I remind myself that the Tarot card with Death on it is supposed to mean “change.” As I get older, though, and see more death than change, it gets to be more of a personal threat, an insult of sorts. -more-

Berkeley is full of storied buildings, but few can boast the sheer historic wealth concealed within the walls of the Neo-Georgian brick mansion overlooking Hamilton Creek at 2425 Hillside Avenue. Since 1971 the home of the Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center (Padma Ling), the building had altogether different beginnings, as well as a different appearance. -more-

Year ago, my friend Stan Millstein, a protohippie from Brooklyn who, like many, moved to L.A. in the 1960s turned on, tuned in and dropped everything. In L.A., Stan joined a C.R. or consciousness-raising group, which was essential a bull session. This group seemed primarily interested in tackling ethical problems. -more-

The traditional Thanksgiving editorial starts off by remembering the Pilgrim Fathers. You never, for some reason, hear about the Pilgrim Mothers. They have been added parenthetically in the lead of the Wikipedia article about the Pilgrims for the sake of political correctness, but there’s no link to any article about them. There must have been Pilgrim Mothers, of course, because otherwise there wouldn’t have been a Society of Mayflower Descendants. -more-

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COMMON DECENCY -more-

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This is in response to the Nov. 20 commentary, “Fairness and Climate Change Demand MTC Attention,” by Richard A. Marcantonio, an attorney with Public Advocates Inc. -more-

In director Sam Peckinpah’s 1962 classic, Ride the High Country, movie legend Randolph Scott yells to a bunch of Southern gunmen, “Hey you red-necked peckerwoods.” This was possibly a first in the history of film when one white character leveled a double-barreled racial epithet to other white characters. -more-

An Israeli infantry unit entered the Gaza Strip early this month, violating a five-month-old truce between Israel and Hamas, the party now ruling Gaza. The Israelis set up camp in a family’s home, and as clashes with Palestinian militants followed, they called for air support. So it was that, on Nov. 4 and 5, while the world’s attention was focused on the U.S. election, Israeli aircraft fired missiles that killed six Palestinian militants. -more-

The more I study Riya Bhattacharjee’s “hate crime” article in the Sept. 25 Daily Planet, the more troubling I find it. -more-

There was much hope when the Oslo Peace accords were signed in 1993. However, the peace process was derailed when Dr. Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarch on Feb. 25, 1994, and the massacre was avenged 40 days later by the first suicide bombing inside Israel in the city of Afula on April 6, 1994. The peace process received further blow when the Prime Minister Isak Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, as he was leaving a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the Oslo process, by Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords. -more-

In the academic world of our forward thinking and innovative universities, why should a broad over-arching societal issue such as climate change be confined to the department of environmental science? The environmental changes will certainly impact us all, therefore our learning institutions are starting to look at ways to bring in a broad spectrum of subjects into the dialogue, hoping to stimulate different ideas and new ways of dealing with the climate crisis. -more-

Barack Obama was elected by people who hope that he will change the political direction which this nation has taken over the last seven years of the Bush regime. When he takes office he will have the power to undo some of the damage of the Bush administration. But he will not do so because he does not owe his political allegiance to the majority of people in this country, but rather to the small class of people who live on the exploitation of the masses here and throughout the world. These are the people he will serve, regardless of the wishes of millions who voted for him. He may tinker with some of the programs of the Bush regime, but he will fail to reverse the fundamentally fascist trajectory. -more-