Lee Heidhues 7.20.2020

Surveillance is a weapon.

It is used by law enforcement and private citizens. Too often the goal of personal surveillance is damage to and destruction of the other party.

The most egregious type of surveillance is when the party conducting the surveillance loses a sense of objectivity and becomes personally involved.

At that point the neutrality of the party conducting the surveillance is totally compromised

The result can be ruinous for everyone.

The 1974 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola goes deep into this issue.

This is the second of four Posts on Surveillance in cinema.  The next will be the movie Red (1994).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation

Journalists world wide are facing unprecedented harassment. Women in Saudi Arabia are a prime target, being villified on line for their work in criticizing the government.

This treatment of women journalists is an attack on the free press and blatant sexual harassment.

The social media abuse of Saudi women journalists is receiving the attention it needs and deserves.

Deutsche Welle 7.18.2020

Two Al Jazeera journalists have refused to stay silent following a sexual harassment campaign driven by thousands of social media accounts linked to Gulf states. For journalists in the region, it’s a common phenomenon.

Two prominent female Al Jazeera journalists have been targeted in what one researcher described as an “industrial level” misogynistic campaign by Saudi Arabian social media accounts, drawing condemnation from advocacy groups.

News anchor Ghada Oueiss and Ola Al Fares were subjected to a barrage of sexual allegations and innuendos about their successful careers in June after Oueiss said her phone was hacked and images of her in a swimsuit were leaked.

Oueiss and Al Fares had recently covered issues sensitive to Saudi Arabia, such as the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Numerous studies have shown that women are targeted by online harassment significantly more often than men.

Nearly two-thirds of female journalists have experienced online abuse, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

“Another worrying result is that the majority of abused respondents said these attacks had had psychological effects such as anxiety or stress (63%), while 38% admitted to self-censorship and 8% lost their job,” the IFJ said.

In response, Ouiess notified Twitter but said they were slow to act. Last week, she published her reaction in US newspaper The Washington Post, describing an attack of 40,000 tweets in just a few hours that left her shaken. She said she refused to be silenced.

Advocacy groups such as the International Press Institute (IPI) and Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that such campaigns are part of a range of ways powerful state actors target critics and highlighted Twitter’s slow response.

“Political leaders and others who target journalists, including with online harassment campaigns, are essentially allowed to use these platforms to propagate these campaigns,” Courtney Radsch, the Advocacy Director at CPJ, told DW. “While Twitter has acknowledged the problem of online harassment, they haven’t really come up with enough tools to address it.”

Ola Al-Fares was hit by massive online abuse

Read more: Half the world on mute: The fight against online harassment

Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, told DW the campaign was amplified by local news organizations reporting unverified tweets. Such campaigns are extremely common and “systemic,” he said.

“Many of the accounts spreading this disinformation — doctored tweets and false narratives based on misattributed images and slut-shaming — are against Saudi law for example, yet no action is taken,” Owen Jones said.

Oueiss wrote that almost all of the accounts involved displayed Saudi flags and images of Saudi and UAE rulers. Saudi Arabia has cultivated a new hyper-nationalism in recent years, with influential social media accounts pushing government narratives, according to an analysis by Saudi researcher Eman Alhussein, formerly a fellow at the think tank European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR).

One UAE-based Twitter user, responding to Owen Jones’ analysis of the attack, said that journalists who criticize Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and their leaders “should be ready for everything.”

Read more: Journalists under threat: July’s 10 most urgent cases

A report published last year by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) showed that the Middle East was a particularly hostile region for journalists.

Khashoggi is believed to have been murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents

“As a result of wars, persecution by authoritarian regimes, as well as the number of journalists killed, threatened, silenced or forced into exile, most of the region’s countries are ranked low in the World Press Freedom Index,” the report said.

Improving Twitter’s response rate is essential in mitigating attacks but newsrooms are also obliged to protect staff and freelancers, “so the burden of reacting and preventing these attacks should not fall on the target,” Javier Luque Martinez, Head of Digital Communications at the IPI, told DW.

“Counter speech” and journalists tracing back their own digital footprints to minimize their exposure, especially before publishing on sensitive topics, are among the measures recommended in the IPI’s toolkit, Martinez said.

Oueiss has taken “counter speech” one step further, declaring she will not stop her critical coverage of the region. As she wrote in her op-ed: “I won’t be silenced by online attacks.”

https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-female-journalists-resist-targeted-online-abuse/a-54224906

Here’s hoping it’s true in 109 days…..November 3.

Quora Digest 7.17.2020

What would be the “point of no return” for Trump’s poll numbers?

It has passed.

It was 4th of July, 2020.

On that day, Trump was 8.8 points behind in both national non-partisan polls and RNC internal polling.

No presidential candidate in the history of modern polling has ever won after chalking up a deficit of more than around 4.5 points on Independence Day.

Dat’s all folks!

It’s about time and you can tell all those whiners from the Fine Arts Academy who are concerned about the loss of parking spaces couched under concern for certain segments of the population that all their caterwauling has come to an end.

It’s almost here. Cars no longer rule in San Francisco.

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 7.16.2020

It could soon be possible to travel from Ocean Beach to Market Street on car-free roads due to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s most recent proposed expansion of the Slow Streets program.

The SFMTA will ask its Board of Directors to approve a proposal that would connect Martin Luther King Drive on Golden Gate Park’s west side to John F. Kennedy Drive, which was closed to cars in April to create distance for park users, connecting via Middle Drive West and Overlook Drive in areas already closed to through-traffic.

Though these changes to the park are temporary for the duration of the public health emergency, many advocates have called for them to become permanent once shelter-in-place orders have relaxed.

“What we’re creating here is a true family-focused network for moving within the Sunset, and to and from the Sunset. This network provides better access, options and new and transformational opportunities for thousands of Westside families and residents,” Supervisor Gordon Mar, whose Sunset neighborhood is bordered by both Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park and lost much of its transportation when Muni cut service.

Sections of MLK that would be closed to cars currently offer little to no street parking and don’t provide access to essential services, SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin told the Recreation and Parks Commission Thursday. Some sections wouldn’t be closed entirely, but would require cars travel at much slower speeds.

He added only minor adjustments would need to be made to maintain parking near the Polo Field.

A handful of staff members from the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, both located within Golden Gate Park, called into the meeting’s public comment period to raise concerns about how banning cars along JFK could negatively impact the ability of all people — including tourists, seniors and individuals with disabilities — to reach the facilities once things reopen.

Both rely on the park’s major roadways for access and parking for both visitors and staff.

SFMTA’s third phase of Slow Streets would also add 14 new corridors to the Slow Streets roster.

Kato said the agency based its recommendations on community input and used the same framework as the last two phases to evaluate whether a road would be successful: mostly flat and within a residential area; connections to bike and green networks; stop-controlled intersections, ideally four-way; more than two lanes; and between six and eight blocks long.

“Clearly, as we stick with practices that will keep us safe, being able to get outside with enough space for social distancing is crucial,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, whose district includes many of these areas.

Slow Streets were first introduced in April as a way for people to safely travel by foot or bicycle while still maintaining social distance. The program closes streets to cut-through vehicular traffic, while still allowing access to residents and emergency vehicles.

Many have praised the program for facilitating outdoor recreation and making parks and streets for people rather than private automobiles.

Tumlin said the existing Slow Streets have been so heavily used, in fact, that a third round of expansion is necessary to accommodate the demand.

“Slow Streets are the only infrastructure investment we have ever made that attract users of the full array of neighborhood demographics — including children, older adults, people with disabilities and people of color,” Jeffrey Tumlin said.

The SFMTA Board will vote on the proposal at its meeting on July 21. If approved, implementation would begin in a couple weeks, according to Kato, who said they’ll need to restock materials to repair existing barricades and signage as well as implement new ones.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sfmta-proposes-car-free-golden-gate-park-mileage-14-new-slow-streets/

The inhumane and cruel act by three Mendocino supervisors will result in the murder of animal inhabitants of the county; bobcats, coyotes and mountain lions.

For what?  For profit farmers and ranchers can raise their livestock to put meat on the table for carnivorous American diners.

It’s beyond disgusting that humans can act with such wanton cruelty.

San Francisco Chronicle 7.14.2020

Mendocino County supervisors voted Tuesday to renew the county’s contract with a federal agency that aids ranchers in killing predators that prey on their livestock.

The county had previously contracted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, which has garnered criticism from animal advocates for killing predators such as coyotes, mountain lions and bobcats instead of considering nonlethal ways of curbing attacks on local livestock.

Supervisor Ted Williams told The Chronicle that the Board of Supervisors voted to renew the contract in a 3-2 vote.

Williams said he dissented because, “at a time we cannot afford adequate COVID-19 testing on our coast, I cannot support prioritizing a business handout.”

In a statement by wildlife conservation group Project Coyote, advocates said the majority of supervisors dismissed the “will of the public” and the that the vote authorizes federal officials to “use public dollars to kill thousands of wild animals in the cruelest ways imaginable at the behest of private ranchers.”

Camilla Fox, the executive director of Project Coyote, said the methods and devices that Wildlife Services employ as part of the program are “morally and ethically indefensible, as well as being completely unnecessary when more effective nonlethal methods and models exist.”

Representatives with Project Coyote and the Mendocino Nonlethal Wildlife Alliance “noted their gratitude” for Williams and Supervisors Williams and John Haschak for “their forward-thinking votes to terminate the contract.”

Carol Misseldine, a member of the Wildlife Alliance, said in a statement that despite receiving “peer-reviewed scientific research” that suggests nonlethal techniques of controlling predator attacks are more effective and less expensive, supervisors still “voted to continue the needless and horrific slaughter of Mendocino’s majestic wildlife.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Animal-activists-slam-Mendocino-County-15409094.php#photo-17865206

How come this military disaster isn’t being reported in the American media?

I have not seen one word about this inferno on America’s shoreline.

That’s the trouble when the American public is consumed by Mr. Audience of One and his daily antics.

It’s getting boring. There’s more to life than Trump.

Important stories receive short shrift or no coverage whatsover.

Deutsche Welle 7.13.2020

The USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship docked in San Diego, has been engulfed in flames for two days as authorities scramble to contain the fire. At least 59 people have been injured in the blaze.

First responders were battling a fire on board the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship moored at a San Diego shipyard, for a second day on Monday. At least one large explosion was recorded on the ship, which began listing to its starboard side.

Fifty-nine people, including 36 sailors and 23 civilians have been treated for heat exhaustion, smoke inhalation and other injuries related to the fire. A top navy official said that the ship’s fire suppression system was inoperable when the blaze erupted.

Hundreds of sailors were working to keep the flames away from 3.7 million liters of oil on board the ship. The US Coast Guard hired an oil clean-up crew in case of a spill. Boat traffic within one nautical mile and flights over the vessel were also halted.

Rear Admiral Philip Sobeck said fire temperatures had reached up to 1,000 degrees, causing the mast of the ship to collapse and threatening the central control island where the captain operates the vessel. ”In the last 24 hours, 400 sailors have been on board that ship to make sure that, you know, we make every effort to save that ship,” he said. Sobeck also said it was too soon to give up on saving the ship.

This is one of the US Navy’s worst shipyard fires in recent memory. The fire is said to have originated in a lower cargo area, where cardboard boxes, rags, and other ship supplies were being stored.

Smoke from the fire wafted across the city. The San Diego Air Pollution Control District warned that concentrations of fine particulate matter could reach unhealthy levels, and advised people to avoid exercising outdoors.

The ship has been docked at San Diego since 2018 for maintenance work. The fire suppression system had been turned off as part of the ongoing maintenance. The system uses halon, a liquefied gas that restricts chances of fire by cutting off oxygen.

Retired navy captain and professor of International Maritime Law at Fordham University, Lawrence B. Brennan, told AP that it was common deactivate the halon system while the ship was being worked on. He also added that the navy had not compensated enough for the deactivation of the suppression system, and had ”poor or no fire boundaries” in place, he said.

https://www.dw.com/en/fire-on-us-navy-ship-rages-for-second-day/a-54166227

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has instituted policy changes during his six months in office to ensure the San Francisco Police Department behaves with integrity.

An initiative announced in June will make cops accountable for their investigative work.  Cops with a record of, amongst several behaviors, dishonesty will be scrutinized and their investigations monitored for bias.

When a cop is found to violate the policy those cases will not be charged or prosecuted.

This is a needed  policy change by DA Boudin.

Top Photo:  Former Mayor Willie Brown with Chesa Boudin 2020

San Francisco Chronicle 6.16.2020

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin issued a new policy directive in June that would prevent cases from being charged or prosecuted based solely on the testimony of officers with a history of “serious misconduct.”

Under the policy, officers with a record of misconduct related to excessive force; racial bias; discrimination based on race, national origin, sexual orientation or gender; or dishonesty about a crime will be identified on a list by the district attorney’s office, officials said in a release.

Charges will not be filed in cases in which such an officer is the only source of a “material” fact necessary to potential charges, without the district attorney’s approval, officials said.

A material fact is one that can’t be proven conclusively without an officer’s testimony.

The list of affected officers will be compiled by the district attorney’s office’s Trial Integrity Unit and updated regularly, officials said.

Officials said the directive is “aimed at ensuring that no one is falsely prosecuted as a result of the word or actions of officers with a known history of excessive force, dishonesty, or racial bias.”

“We have seen across the country repeated instances of police violence inflicted upon people of color and the Black community – often by officers with prior known misconduct, yet whose words prosecutors continued to trust in filing charges,” Boudin said in a statement.

“This directive ensures that members of the public are not wrongly or unfairly accused by officers whom we know have displayed the kind of misconduct that permanently damages their credibility or the trust we place in them.”

Cases that can be charged and prosecuted based on the account of an unaffected officer or by additional evidence that renders an affected officer’s account unnecessary will still be allowed to proceed, officials said.

The directive comes as law enforcement organizations nationwide explore reforms in response to police violence, including the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis that touched off a wave of protests and demonstrations across the country.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Boudin-bans-prosecutions-based-on-sole-testimony-15342242.php

“911” calls which are made with the intent of harming and whose objective is harassment would be made illegal under an Ordinance being proposed by a San Francisco legislator.

Many “911” calls are valid.

Some “911” calls are unnecessary.  Unnecessary “911” calls cause undue harm and stress for the target of these harassing summons to the cops.

This Ordinance would discourage such abuse by penalizing the offender.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.10.2020

Lisa Alexander, the woman who stirred outrage and contempt after she confronted a man for stenciling “Black Lives Matter” in chalk outside his Pacific Heights home last month, wrote to San Francisco city officials Friday lamenting being linked to Supervisor Shamann Walton’s Caren Act, legislation he introduced this week that would make discriminatory 911 calls illegal.

Such events have given rise to the “Karen” moniker, a slang title for entitled white women complaining about people of color, usually to the police.

Walton’s legislation is a wry nod to the term, but the “Caren” in his legislation stands for Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies. The legislation would amend the San Francisco Police Code to make it unlawful for someone to “fabricate false racially biased emergency reports,” according to Walton.

In a letter sent to Mayor London Breed and the entire Board of Supervisors that was reviewed by The Chronicle, Alexander complains that she has become an emblem for precisely the kind of incident the Caren Act is intended to deter — largely because she claims she did not call 911 to report James Juanillo’s alleged vandalism.

“I agree with Supervisor Walton’s position that people should not make unfounded or racially motivated 911 calls or reports that divert police resources from real emergencies. However, I never called 911,”

That appears to be technically true: According to Walton, who reviewed the call, her husband did. “He was the main speaker. She had plenty to say in the background,” Walton said. A spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department confirmed police were called to Juanillo’s home, but that there “was no merit” to claims of a crime taking place.

“We did not call 911. There is a big difference,” Alexander told The Chronicle in an email. “We called the nonemergency, local precinct SFPD number we have been given for local neighborhood issues, we never considered this an emergency situation at all.”

Alexander’s encounter with Juanillo reached a national audience after the video Juanillo captured of the incident ricocheted across the internet. It has been viewed 23.5 million times on Juanillo’s Twitter page alone.

It shows Alexander and her husband, Robert Larkin, approaching Juanillo as he finishes stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on the retaining wall outside his home. Alexander and Larkin insist that Juanillo, who is Filipino, does not own the home and was therefore vandalizing it. Juanillo refuses to answer their questions and invites them to call the police. The video ends as Alexander and Larkin walk away.

Both Alexander and Larkin have apologized publicly for their response to Juanillo and pledged to use it as an opportunity to learn about racism. Larkin was subsequently fired from his job at the Raymond James financial services firm. Alexander’s skin care company, LaFace, was removed from the beauty subscription service Birchbox because of the encounter.

The episode echos a string of similar, widely seen confrontations captured on cell phone videos in which white people accuse or accost Black people and other persons of color without provocation. The subtext of the incident with Juanillo, as with many similar encounters, is often that a person of color is reflexively deemed by a white person to be somehow out of place — even in a place they’ve lived for years, as Juanillo has.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Woman-in-video-of-Pacific-Heights-Black-Lives-15400609.php#photo-19556383

Spoken by Madonna Thunder Hawk – Lakota Peoples’ Law Project Organizer.

Lost in the tumult in Mr. Audience of One’s tax issues at the Supreme Court was another momentous and far reaching decision.

The Supreme Court ruled that the American government must abide by treaties it signed with the Native American population in the 19th century. Nearly half the State of Oklahoma will now be controlled, in large part, by descendents of its original inhabitants and rightful owners.

The Court has sent a strong message.  Treaties, agreements and boundary lines are important and have the force of law.

Excerpted from Washington Post 7.9.2020

The Pandemic has allowed the Crazies free reign to climb out of the toxic swamp and spew forth their poisonous nonsense.

Most often it has been anti-Asian rants encouraged by the soon to be ex-President.

The bizarre behavior apparently has no bounds as the action of a Kansas Republican sadly proves true.  This reprobate may have withdrawn his Facebook post but his real feelings remain the same.

New York Times 7.4.2020

The cartoon, which showed Gov. Laura Kelly wearing a Star of David mask as people are loaded into a cattle car, was posted Friday on the Facebook page of a newspaper owned by a Republican county chairman.

“Political editorial cartoons are gross over-caricatures designed to provoke debate and response — that’s why newspapers publish them — fodder for the marketplace of ideas,” he wrote in an email. “The topic here is the governmental overreach which has been the hallmark of Governor Kelly’s administration.”

He scoffed at the idea of an apology.

“Apologies: To whom exactly?” he wrote. “The critics on the Facebook page? Facebook is a cesspool and I only participate to develop readership.” He added that he “intended no slight” to Jews or Holocaust survivors.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, however, Mr. Hicks said he had removed the cartoon and offered an apology.

“After some heartfelt and educational conversations with Jewish leaders in the U.S. and abroad,” Mr. Hicks wrote, “I can acknowledge the imagery in my recent editorial cartoon describing state government overreach in Kansas with images of the Holocaust was deeply hurtful to members of a culture who’ve been dealt plenty of hurt throughout history — people to whom I never desired to be hurtful in the illustration of my point.”