Free Mehserle

As you probably heard, a verdict was reached yesterday in the BART shooting case and some folks weren't too happy about the jury's involuntary manslaughter decision.

Given that there has been absolutely no evidence of anything legally wrong with the jury's decision (indeed most rational people saw it as correct) you might expect public officials to either say nothing or reassure constituents that the verdict was in line with the rule of law. Of course, you'd be forgetting that rational politicians don't exist in Oakland.

Predictably, most public officials sided with the mob over the law. Some even joined it. Congresswoman and former black panther Barbara Lee, apparently unfamiliar with the concept of double jeopardy, called the verdict "an outrage" and called for the federal government to retry Mehserle. She didn't mention her reasoning - probably because there is none. She was joined in her irrational pursuit of double jeopardy by Oakland mayor Ron Dellums.

Some have said that anyone not a cop would have been treated differently. I agree on that point. If Mehserle wasn't a police officer, public officials wouldn't be demanding his lynching. There is absolutely no basis for the justice department to intervene. Mehserle has had a fair trial and was convicted. Despite what the mob says, justice has been served.

Don't expect Barbara Lee to understand though.

Paper, Plastic, or Fine?

A law in San Francisco is about take effect that will ban plastic bags in many grocery stores. The plastic bags, deemed a danger to the environment, will in many cases be replaced with paper bags. The San Francisco Chronicle has the explanation:

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi then introduced legislation to ban the bags altogether, which passed the board and was signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom earlier this year.

"It was really the only choice," Mirkarimi said. He said the resistance from grocers resulted from their being "creatures of habit."

"Part of that habit is imposing the cost of convenience on customers and city governments," said Mirkarimi, who added later that he is considering a "menu of possibilities" for further measures. He would not say what those are, though, because of the experience with the bag fee.

I would like to know if Supervisor Mirkarimi thinks this new policy of the city government is imposing any cost upon grocers and customers.

For some comparison, according to an NPR report from March of this year, South Africa, Taiwan, and Bangladesh have already banned the plastic bags, while Ireland has a tax on them.

If the city is going to engage in social engineering, they should at least do it right. If they really wanted to make a statement, they would outlaw all new paper and plastic bags. They would require people to bring their own bags or reuse boxes like they do at Costco. Paper kills trees, and as I have been told by many a person, trees are sacred and have feelings too.

The next time my housemates and I go to the Berkeley Bowl, we will bring some fine California Republican Party canvas bags. As we bag our organic produce, we will be saving the environment one paper or plastic bag at a time.

Website transfer

It is unfortunate I have to give updates here, but that is the way it is.

I am transfering the hosting of the website to another company. After three computer crashes later, I have not uploaded all the files to get the website back up.

The domain is firmly in the hands of the Patiot, so don't remove any links yet.

I hope to have everything back to normal shortly.

Back to the real site

Praise the Lord!

The Patriot site is back up!

Change the links, www.californiapatriot.org is the place to be.

It is just in time to get the December issue online if you did not get it on Sproul today.

Just in time for finals and the two papers and final project I have due in the next 38 hours.

This means the end of this refugee blog.

Yoshua v. Condoms

As I was getting my daily two hour existence on Sproul today, I found some literature attesting today as World AIDS Day. The flyer had general facts about AIDS such as how many people were infected with AIDS worldwide but no information that would be directly useful to me about the disease.

Separate from where I got the above sheet, I was handed a condom and told today was world AIDS day. The interesting thing is the condom had no information about AIDS with it. In fact the package and attached paper were both advertisements for the travel company ironically named Lonely Planet.

The KY jelly man was also out on Sproul, but so was Yoshua. In case you have not personally met Yoshua, he is a man that passes out information sheets he makes himself. He proclaims that we should all be baptized in the name of Yoshua. This character proclaims names like Jesus are corruptions of the name of Yoshua, the one true messiah.


It was a great sight, seeing the KY man and his friends and Yoshua competing by flyering passing students. Yoshua countered his competition by telling students to read the Bible.

The message I took away from World AIDS Day is go out and use the condom I just got. Yoshua said read the Bible, which I would recommend, but I fear his message is lost when he adds his papers were going like hotcakes. Since I did not get any information about stopping the spread of AIDS in my own life I will suggest three steps to avoid infection:

1) Don’t have unprotected sex. Step one is stop hooking up with people on a weekly basis.

2) Don’t use intravenous drugs (unless directed to by a doctor). While people say clean needles save lives, no needles and no heroin save even more lives.

3) Avoid dirty needles. This is the easiest, don’t stick your hand in the boxes in medical centers that say CAUTION: Sharp Needles. In Berkeley this also means don’t walk through People’s Park.

There was no noon rally for the Big Game which was depressing. I had been thinking about Cal songs during my class the hour before. I was told the bonfire rally would be as good as six noon rallies and it was great. My only complaint is it lacked my favorite feature of the noon rally, which is it is at noon.

Burn those trees and

GO BEARS!