UPDATE: A letter by Mrs. De Witt regarding this issue (Via Res Ipsa Loquitur).

Hot on the heels of today’s anti-Israel protest, we’re getting word of a developing controversy.

The city is Berkeley is trying its best to prevent an anti-terrorism rally (props to Clarity & Resolve).

Susanne Kalter De Witt is unable to comprehend the position being taken by Berkeley City Hall officials in California regarding her request to hold a Rally Against Global Terrorism on January 16, 2005. She explains that her permit application went unanswered, prompting her to contact the appropriate city officials.

She explains that she was told her “Rally Against Global Terrorism” might make the Women in Black, MECA (Middle East Childrens’ Alliance), and other anti-Israel groups counter-demonstrate.

City officials add they fear security demands may exceed their abilities, citing a scheduled speaking engagement for then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who was unable to speak in Berkeley because of a near riot a number of years ago. The City of Berkeley’s concern was ‘’security,” they said in an effort to explain their apprehensions.

Kalter, a Holocaust survivor, is accusing city officials of a discriminatory and uneven policy practice, citing examples of other groups that were granted permits to hold rallies in Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

Contrast this with the following event (by way of Wizbang)

Hedy Epstein is an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor who tours the country giving speeches at universities and to nonprofit groups. Her scheduled appearance at UC Berkeley’s Student Union building on October 19, 2004 hardly seemed like the kind of event to stir up controversy.
—
So, was Epstein coming to the Berkeley campus to lecture on the Holocaust — or on her ISM experiences? This is where the controversy comes in: She was to lecture on both topics simultaneously. In fact, according to a flyer advertising her appearance which had been posted around campus, she planned to compare the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians with the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews.
—
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the evening was the silence: despite the audience being evenly divided between Epstein supporters and detractors, with members of Hillel sitting nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with members of the Muslim Students Association, and even ISM activists just a few feet from soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces, no one said a word. Everyone politely clapped when she took the podium, and listened attentively when she spoke. There were no interruptions, no arguments or fights in the audience — an atmosphere of total civility and respect.

I support anyone’s right to speak their mind, no matter how I feel about the issue at hand. Mrs. De Witt should have a chance to hold her rally, and we should expect her to be treated with the same respect shown to Mrs. Epstein. Anything less would expose the leftists of Berkeley for the hypocrites that they are.

If you’d like to show your support for Mrs. De Witt by contacting the city of Berkeley, here is some contact information. This rally must go on, and defenders of free speech from all over the political spectrum should see to it that it does.

UPDATE: CalStuff has some photos of the event here and here.

Looks like there’s going to be another protest on Sproul tomorrow (Monday).

Who? Palestinian student groups and “people of color”
Why?

Demand that the UC Regents to divest from Israel.
Demand that the UC Regents invest in people of color on university campuses.

When? 12 - 2 PM

Now that you know in advance, use this time to come up with an alternate route, if you so desire. Thank me later.

Here’s an excerpt from the email, from my super secret source:

Come out on Monday and show your opposition to the US’s shameful policies and to urge UC Berkeley to divest from Israel and to invest in students of color at Cal. Pro-Palestinian students will be building a bypass road, a road built between Jewish settlements and Israel Proper for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers and Israeli citizens, on Sproul Plaza. Come out on November 29th, the UN-declared International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, and stand in solidarity with a people who are fighting to end the colonization of their homes and their land. Bring signs that say you are in support of divestment or in solidarity with Palestinians. If you’d like, we’ll make a sign for you.

I love how they link two completely different issues together. Are they that desperate for bodies that they need to bring in “students of color” to inflate their numbers? I can only imagine how this all came together. Maybe it went a little like this:

Palestinian Groups: Hey, wanna protest Israel with us?
“Students of color”: Uh, no.
PG: You know, once the school stops funding the Jews, we’ll have much more money for multicultural centers and the like.
SOC: Why didn’t you say so? We’ll be there.

Zachary Foreman explains what the real divide is in American politics, and it isn’t between red and blue states.

Kevin Dayaratna analyzes the genocide in Darfur and proposes several courses of action.

Welcome to the Cal Patriot Blog!

Today is the day Al Gore comes to regret he ever invented the internet. It marks a new page in Cal Patriot cyber history. Only five years ago the Patriot made its campus debut to expose the shenanigans of Berkeley’s administrators, government officials, and student groups. Then we took our message online. Today we’re kicking into high-gear to bring you campus news, politial updates, and conservative commentary in real time.

Between monthly issues, put your Airbears to good use and check here for the latest Patriot perspectives on events on campus and around the world.

Update your bookmarks and enjoy!

Your compatriot,

Kelly E. Coyne

I hope everyone is having a satisfactory Thanksgiving weekend. As for me, I’ll have to wait until Saturday before I can chow down on some turkey. But after suffering through day after day of eating ramen, it’ll be worth the wait.

In the mean time, here’s a nice little holiday article:

Zohal Faqeeri has more reason than ever to be thankful this Thanksgiving Day.

The 10-year-old girl from Kabul, Afghanistan, is thankful not only to be living with her family in the United States, but also because she won a contest with her essay on what she is thankful for.
—
Teacher Becky Riveras encouraged Zohal to enter the contest after the girl wrote a similar description of her family’s plight in a persuasive essay assignment on a presidential candidate. Zohal explained why President Bush had benefited her country.

Just a little something to think about. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I came across this interesting LA Times article (by way of the Volokh Conspiracy). I’m no fan of affirmative action, but this is an interesting take on the issue.

“We make a special pitch to them to talk about the benefits of Santa Clara, as we do for other underrepresented groups,” Charles Nolan, Santa Clara’s vice provost for admissions, said of the school’s efforts to boost male applicants.

And here’s our school! Go Bears!

The stronger credentials of the female applicant pool are apparent at California public universities, which are all barred by law from considering sex or race in admissions. Even at the highly sought UC Berkeley, 26% of female freshman applicants were admitted in 2003, compared with 22% of males.

Apparently, Berkeley is split 54/46, female to male. I wouldn’t be able to tell judging from my EECS classes, but I’ll take their word for it. I can’t give any reasons as to why this is, but I can make a few charts, which you can see by expanding this post. I gathered the data from the Office of Student Research site. They had data going back to 1983, so I was able to chart a 20 year period.

I don’t think affirmative action is the solution to whatever it is that we’re seeing here. For almost every year, female acceptance rates have been higher than males. Only during the 90’s was the difference insignificant. The gap now is about what it was during the early 80’s. The only thing that’s changed is that more females are applying in relation to males, as opposed to the other way around in the 80’s and early 90’s.

I leave you with this:

Santa Clara’s female majority “definitely wasn’t discouraging. This is an attractive place,” Semansky said mischievously, glancing at women milling about.

“This is definitely an attractive place,” Bersamina agreed, smiling.

How does this apply to Berkeley? No comment.
(more…)

The new edition of Andrew Quinio’s Daily Cal Counterweight is up. Read it. Comments are open, as always.

After getting a nice beatdown in the Big Game, Stanford can at least sleep well knowing that the next Secretary of State will be one of their own. I’m talking about Condoleezza Rice. I came across a wonderful (and long) article about her in the Sunday Times (London). After having read it, I have even more respect for the woman than I did before. Here are a few interesting excerpts:

By age four Condi had mastered a handful of pieces and given her first recital. She spent more time indoors — practising the piano and French — than most of the other girls on the block. Two who lived across the street remembered “waiting for what seemed like hours for her to finish her latest Beethoven or Mozart and come outside”.

French? Who knew?

The memory of her father out on patrol lies behind Rice’s opposition to gun control today. Had those guns been registered, she argues, Bull Connor would have had a legal right to take them away, thereby removing one of the black community’s only means of defence. “I have a sort of pure second amendment view of the right to bear arms,” she said in 2001.

Good to know.

A few months later she walked into a class that changed everything: Introduction to International Politics. The topic that day was Stalin and the professor was Josef Korbel, a former Czech diplomat whose daughter, Madeleine Albright, would later become America’s first female secretary of state.

This surprised me the most. I wonder who else took that class…

Be sure to read it, as it’s a classic American success story. If I had to guess, I would say that Ms. Rice will be somewhere on the Presidential ticket in 2008. And after reading more about her life, I’d say she more than deserves it. But it’s way too early to be thinking about this.

If you haven’t checked the latest issue out yet, pick it up on Sproul or read it online.

Feel free to use this post to comment on anything related to this issue. How about our football team? Intelligence reform, good or bad? And if you run out of interesting things to discuss, there’s always the ASUC (and here too!).

Go for it.

Updated Fall 2006

So I’m guessing that there are at least a couple of new readers of this blog. Freshmen perhaps. I just wanted to introduce myself to you guys so you can know what to expect from me.

I’m currently a 4th-year EECS major, originally from Orange County. I plan on working for some Silicon Valley/Bay Area tech company, at least until I figure out what to do with life. I enjoy finding about and getting hooked on new television shows, bands, and authors. Hobbies include collecting graphic novels, photography (trying to get into it), surfing Wikipedia aimlessly, and walking around San Francisco aimlessly. I’m an American of Filipino descent. And that’s about all I care to share about my personal life for now.

For the Patriot, I’m in charge of both the print and web design. I don’t know how that happened since I’m as unartistic as it gets. But the blogging is just something that I thought would be fun. I’d probably do it on my own, even if I weren’t affiliated with any publication.

Moving on to the more interesting and relevant stuff: politics. I’m a registered Republican, mainly because I grew up that way (typical O.C. backstory). I’ve leaned libertarian ever since I first started caring about politics (10th grade or so), having read some Ayn Rand and a Goldwater biography. On social policy I think you should be able to do what you want and be who you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone. So I’ve been ideologically tolerant for a while, but after a couple of years in college, I think I’ve grown more personally tolerant. On economic policy, I’m your typical laissez-faire, free-markets kind of guy. And by that measure, I think most Republicans these days don’t qualify.

It’s in the area of foreign policy that my beliefs have evolved the most. I went along with the neocon agenda after 9/11, the Iraq War included. I don’t know why, since I’ve always been somewhat of a pacifist. Moreso than getting revenge, I actually believed that America and its allies could help spread freedom around the world. Well, I was wrong. I actually started to think about it: This is the same government (regardless of administration) that only makes things worse on social and economic matters. Why should it be any different when it comes to foreign policy?

Anyway, that’s who I am. Liberal, socialist, communist, green, moderate, and conservative opinions dominate on this campus. So every now and then, when I can’t take it anymore, expect a libertarian rant to balance things out. But I’ll mostly be blogging about Berkeley and Bay Area topics. Just don’t be surprised about some of the stuff you might read on this blog. Consider this post a warning in advance.

Hope you all have fun reading and commenting on this blog.

In an effort to let our readers get a better idea of who’s writing what they’re reading, here are some profiles of our bloggers. This will be updated as the roster changes.

Kelly Coyne
Kevin D. Dayaratna
Carl Densing
Amaury Gallais
Patrick Rodriguez

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We’re taking a fairly laissez-faire approach toward comment moderation. We’re big fans of free speech, so feel free to express your opinions. We just ask that you stay on topic and try to be civil. If you are just trying to cause trouble and don’t want to discuss issues… don’t even bother. If things do get out of hand, we will take the necessary actions to remedy the situation.

Everyone’s here to have a good time. So sit back, relax, and post a few comments. We’ll be looking forward to seeing them.

This post contains all the important administrative information about this blog. It’ll be updated as we see fit.

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