As Israel continues to block lifesaving humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, international organizations are describing the siege as “apocalyptic,” warning of mass starvation and death. Rachael Cummings ...

On my kitchen wall there’s a poster with a slogan from World War II Britain: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” In the wake of the recent presidential debate (also known as The Debacle), pundit wannabes could ...

Berkeley City Hall’s efforts to enable the University of California's expansion in Berkeley have taken a new turn. Having already facilitated the school’s colonization of residential areas in ...

It came as a surprise when Essa-Pekka Salonen announced last week that he would not extend his tenure as Music Director at San Francisco Symphony beyond the 2024-25 season. Salonen cited as his reason ...

They don’t all agree, but in a couple of races there’s more than one pretty good candidate. Note I say “pretty” good. We’ve gotten ourselves here in California into being the equivalent of a single ...

After multiple stops and starts, I hope to finally get this off my desk. It has taken nearly three weeks from my first day of COVID episode two (the first was Delta in 2021) to feel normal again. I am ...

Update: Councilmember Harrison has informed the Planet that she is continuing her campaign for Mayor of Berkeley. The election for that office is in November. I have decided to resign from the ...

Two disturbing responses to last night's City Council meeting. The first, Sophie Hahn's shocking statement at Kate Harrison's resignation. Ms Harrison carefully delineated her principled stand in her ...

When Fred and Pat Cody built the former Cody's Bookstore location at the corner of Haste and Telegraph they deliberately built an inset designed as a space for people to congregate so that they could ...

With City Council on winter recess and most of the meetings for the year over, I turned on the audiobook version of McKay Coppins’ book Romney: A Reckoning and finished it in 2 ½ days while I put off ...

There are only three (November 28, December 5, 12) more scheduled City Council meetings before Winter Recess - December 13, 2023 – January 15, 2024. At the bottom of the posting is the draft agenda ...

Once again there is a lot to cover as I pull the last two weeks on the local scene together. To ease the posting and reading here is Part I. Part 2 will follow on what is coming to us in more proposed ...