UC Berkeley commits 1st hate crime against WWI Veterans

Real hate crimes are terrible things... people hurting other people just because of who they are. When a gay man is beaten by homophobes, or a black woman raped by racists, that is a hate crime. Cutting down trees to build a building is not a hate crime no mater what significance is attached to the trees.

The oak trees next to California Memorial Stadium are in no way a commemoration of fallen Cal vetereans. The STADIUM is. The trees were planted a few years after the stadium was built, as landscaping.

You're probably just a misinformed outsider who has never lived in the area and don't know its history, but you shouldn't repeat that type of misinformation about Cal's WW1 vets just to bolster your political position, this hypocracy is sickening.

McCain is up 10 freaking points in the latest Gallup poll. What do you think matters more, protecting a couple of random oak trees of no real significance, or stopping McSame from giving Bush an effective 3rd term?

yeah. The economy will continue crashing (after the brief boost provided by nationalizing our mortgage industry, by bailing out Fannie Mae), even if Obama were elected. However, if you read about the emphasis on end-times prophecy in Sarah Palin's church, it's a bit worrisome. It seems like they're almost enthusiastic about setting off the war of gog and magog. They also believe in the regular interdiction of god in day to day affairs, thus a politician who is elected is interpreted to have the blessing of god, to be placed there to do god's work.

The crime perpetrated by UC Regents Chair, Richard Blum, husband of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, along with his fellow UC Regents, in cutting down the beautiful and necessary trees which hold in the hillside so they could grease their palms on another stadium swindle project where 400 gladiator-athletes will play around in a rich folks' academic finishing school of 34,000 students who already have more than enough athletic facilities is a crime against humanity and nature. If you want to stop capitalism, represented by the twin parties of war and fascism, the Democrat-Republicans, you have to stop it LOCALLY as ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL. We can only get rid of the current bankrupt order, capitalism, by organizing around all local issues, building a strong network of millions of people ready to cast the profit motive system of capitalism in the dustbin of history, along with their equally evil parties, the Democrat-Republicans. The only candidates that represent labor and the environment are Cynthia McKinney and Gloria LaRiva as presidential candidates and Cindy Sheehan, running for congress. You wil get war and fascism no matter which Democrat-Republican wins.

Since some here wish to talk Democrat-Republican: Pres. Nixon, the great Hitler, winning in 1968, with election fraud, and again in 1972, with election fraud. He had to sign the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 as the American economy was sinking fast, the draft was ended in 1973, 18 year olds won the right to vote in 1971 and it was a Nixon appointee Supreme Court Justice, Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade guaranteeing women a right to a safe and legal abortion, while a Kennedy appointee, Justice White, dissented. Even Nixon had to respnod to public pressure and economic reality. Democrat Obama denounced a recent supreme court ruling opposing the death penalty for child rapists as Democrat Obama is for the death penalty, for war, for FISA spying, opposes gay marriage while claiming to oppose Prop 8 and being a millionaire, cannot possibly represent the workingclass. This Kenyan native is legally not qualified to be president and he is just as despicable as McCain and Bush and was obviously put up as a candidate to stop the Left (Reds and Greens), the only reason the Democrats exist as there is no other reason for 2 parties, paid for by the same corporations to carry out the same capitalist agenda, to exist. On Obama, see
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9920
and
http://www.obamacrimes.com/attachments/001_ObamaComplaint.pdf

PLEASE POST LOTS OF PICTURES OF THE 42 TREES WHICH WERE CUT DOWN so that they will appear all around UC. Thank you for publicizing the crisis with the trees.

There are articles in the school archives from nearly a hundred years ago about this being a memorial grove (one of several on campus). Thats not disinformation- check it out in th Bancroft Library. (You need to present ID to use the archives, but otherwise, its easy ....)

This article is dangerously loose with the facts. First, the university never agreed to suspend activity until all legal maneuvers were exhausted, just until the case was legally resolved. Waiting for plaintiffs to lose at the trial court level and for the appellate court to deny a stay / injunction fully satisfies their agreement. In short, all plaintiffs have had their day in court and then some. Second, hate crimes are typically committed against living people, not inanimate objects such as CSM or the deceased. If you have some legal citation to support your theory that the dead can be hate crime victims please provide it. Otherwise, kindly be more careful with your language. Finally, the trees were not knocked down with reckless abandon. They were cut down in a systematic and orderly manner by highly skilled professionals.

I can see that we are getting are taxpayer dollars worth of work from the UC Berkeley Public Affairs staff who seem to be busy responding to this item.

Sports brings lots of revenue , publicity and donations to UCB.

Tax the rich. Raise funds for real education to solve the global environmental crisis of global warming and pollution. We don't need sports to survive. We need to redesign transportation and protect the forests from coporate criminals. We don't want to breathe their automobile air pollution or hear their automobile noise pollution. We want to walk and bike safely without fear of being run down by their grossly oversized vehicles and bloated egos.

Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action: http://ClimateCodeRed.net

Plan B 3.0: The Plan to Save Civilization, Lester Brown: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

Wake up.

In fact, they were destroying a sacred burial site to the Ohlone Indigenous People, see: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/06/18533607.php

The oak grove near the stadium was considered by many to be part of the memorial to WW1 veterans, and the most credible person would be Frank Buckles, the last living WW1 veteran who asked that the oaks remain standing in front of the stadium. UC Berkeley administration did not listen to the voice of this living legend, money for the gym was more important than honor of WW1 veterans for the UC administration..

The oaks were part of the memorial stadium's landscaping and now the stadium looks bare and empty. Really should have studied more on erosion and slope stability before taking out those oaks. For the decades since they were planted, those oak roots have helped with slope stability under the stadium. Now the trees are gone and the roots will disintegrate, no longer providing any stability for the slopes. We'll see how the engineers can now make their gym's structure earthquake proof, though i wouldn't count on it. Am willing to wager that in less than ten years there will be a major earthquake in the Berkeley region and the fancy new training gym will be nothing more than an expensive pile of rubble..

Yes, all politics are local, and when the so-called "progressive" UC Berkeley hires and supports professors like John Yoo who advocated the GW Bush regime's use of torture on captives, while simultaneously firing (denied tenure) professor Ignacio
Chapela because he discovered GMO/GE contamination of Oaxaca's maize (corn) crop in Mexico, there is a problem. Then there's the nuclear radiation escaping from Livermore labs nearby. The oak grove debate only increased the already existing animosity many residents of the Bay Area feel towards the UC that makes their home in the Berkeley hills..

Once again i cannot stress how glad i am that i never followed the advice of my community college counselor and attended UC Berkeley, as i only would have experienced disappointment and outrage at the actions of this UC institution. However, i am today very sad because the memorial oak grove is no longer with us in physical reality..

Bring on the rains, as i'll certainly be crying alongside the tears coming from the clouds..