Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, gets it perfectly.

Regrettably and most telling the San Francisco 49ers radio broadcast station has deleted the racially offensive clip by announcer Tim Ryan regarding Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson from its website. Figures. Out of Earshot, out of mind.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.5.2019

The San Francisco 49ers have done the politically correct thing by suspending the announcer who made these on the air comments. What impact, if any, the suspension will have on the entire issue of race relations and cultural sensitivity is another matter entirely.

For sure the story will drive coverage of professional football during the next several days.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.4.2019

The 49ers have suspended Tim Ryan, their radio color analyst, over comments he made on a Bay Area sports talk radio show Monday in which he said Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson (pictured above), who is black, is exceptional at faking handoffs because of his “dark skin color with a dark football.”

Team officials said in a statement to The Chronicle on Wednesday that they are “disappointed” in Ryan’s comments and are suspending him for the upcoming game.

Jackson gained most of his yards running a zone-read type offense, in which he frequently fakes a handoff to a running back before keeping the ball to run himself.

“He’s really good at that fake, Lamar Jackson, but when you consider his dark skin color with a dark football with a dark uniform, you could not see that thing,” Ryan said on air. “I mean you literally could not see when he was in and out of the mesh point and if you’re a half step slow on him in terms of your vision forget about it, he’s out of the gate.”

Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociologist, longtime civil rights activist and 49ers consultant, listened to the radio clip and was particularly troubled that Ryan’s comments perpetuated the bigotry involving black players and particularly the quarterback position.

“I know Tim and he is not of a maleficent mind relative to these types of issues — but of course that does not mean that he gets or should get a ‘pass’ regarding his comments on Lamar Jackson and assigning ANY dimension of Lamar’s undeniable brilliance at QB to his skin color — a raw and sensitive assessment and assertion not only because it is profoundly obtuse and ignorant on its face and carries implications that I’m certain were not intended, but because skin color has been such a factor in rationalizing denial of Black athletes’ opportunities to play the QB position over most of the NFL’s 100 years of existence,” Edwards wrote in an email to The Chronicle before Ryan was suspended.

“But again, no less damaging than the fact of Tim’s sentiments are their implications. In a game that is so competitive and where ‘winning edges and even slight advantages’ tend to be critically important if not determinant, are we really to believe that White QB’s are at a strategic disadvantage? Should the 2020 NFL player draft select for dark-skinned, athletic QB prospects in search of the next Lamar Jackson? Or maybe this puts a premium on QB’s — irrespective of race — who can play well wearing the right color gloves — gloves that will give them the right hand hue to camouflage the football on handoffs.”

Edwards called the incident a “learning moment” and hoped Ryan would apologize and put the comments behind him.

“And then, let’s move on,” Edwards said. “Jimmy (Garoppolo) and LJ could very well lead their teams into the the NFC and AFC playoffs respectively, and perhaps even the Super Bowl — and the color of the hand that handles the football in contrast to who is simply the better QB will be of absolutely no consequence.”

“We hold Tim to a high standard as a representative of our organization and he must be more thoughtful with his words. Tim has expressed remorse in a public statement and has also done so with us privately,” 49ers officials said. “We know Tim as a man of high integrity and are confident he will grow and learn from this experience.”

In a statement to The Chronicle, Ryan said, “I regret my choice of words in trying to describe the conditions of the game. Lamar Jackson is an MVP-caliber player and I respect him greatly. I want to sincerely apologize to him and anyone else I offended.”

The 49ers said they called the Ravens to “extend our apologies and assure them the matter is not being taken lightly.”

Ryan, known for his baritone voice and enthusiastic broadcasting, is a former defensive lineman who played four seasons for the Bears (1990-93). He worked as a Fox TV analyst covering NFL games for 12 seasons before joining the 49ers as a radio color commentator in 2014.

On Monday, he spent most of the 22-minute segment breaking down Sunday’s game and complimenting the Ravens and Jackson’s play. Speaking from Florida, where the 49ers are staying this week ahead of their game in New Orleans on Sunday, he focused on Jackson at the start and end of the segment.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/49ers/article/49ers-suspend-broadcaster-Tim-Ryan-for-saying-14882642.php#photo-18706681

The Russians interfered in the American election in 2016.  

In Germany the Russians political activities are more in line with a true gangster mentality.

Eliminate your enemies in any place by any means necessary.

Given the historical enmity between the two countries it comes as no surprise the Russians have no qualms about committing murder in broad daylight in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten.

During our 2017 and 2018 trips to Berlin we stayed across the street and I would run each morning in the Kleiner Tiergarten.

Deutsche Welle 12.3.2019

The strange, August 25, 2019 midday murder in Berlin drew speculation of Russian involvement from the outset. Germany’s chief prosecutor is now reportedly involved, raising the stakes for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

Germany’s attorney general is reportedly taking over investigations into the murder of a Chechen asylum-seeker in Berlin amid suspicion of Russian state involvement.

The attorney general, who handles crimes against the German state, is expected to officially announce its handling of the case in the coming days, magazine Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday.

The move would mean there is legitimate evidence that Russia contracted a murder on German soil, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to take a robust stance against Moscow, observers and lawmakers told DW.

Konstantin von Notz, a lawmaker with Germany’s Green party specializing in intelligence services, told DW that if federal prosecutors collect enough evidence to definitively say that the case is a state-sanctioned killing, it would constitute “a scandal that must have consequences.”

“The Cold War is obviously not over, rather there may be intelligence activities like never before,” he said. Germany, however, must know all the details before taking action, he warned.

“It’s not the first murder of its kind, and if you don’t take a hard-line stance against the Russians, it won’t be the last murder,” Gustav Gressel, senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin, told DW.

The fact that there’s no “smoking gun” in the case makes it trickier to prosecute, ECFR’s Gressel told DW.

Strong connections

The “execution-style” killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, 40, in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten in late August drew suspicion of Russian involvement from the outset.

The suspected perpetrator, a 49-year-old Russian national, is believed to have carried out a drive-by shooting on bicycle in broad daylight. Authorities apprehended him shortly thereafter and later found the bicycle, a wig and the weapon used in the murder ditched in the Spree River.

Independent investigations conducted by the research network Bellingcat and others revealed evidence of a foreign state connection, though Russia denied its involvement. The name given on both the perpetrator’s passport and visa application had never been listed in Russian databases, while supposed coworkers in Germany had no recollection of him having ever worked with them.

Tsatieva believes Moscow is responsible for her ex-husband’s murder

Read more: How Russian media are reporting on the murder of a Chechen man in Berlin

Khangoshvili’s ex-wife, Manana Tsatieva, told DW she believes her late husband’s personal history likely motivated the attack. A Georgian veteran of the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, Khangoshvili fought against the Russians as a separatist and reportedly worked thereafter in both Georgia and Ukraine against Russian interests.

He fled to Germany in 2016 after multiple attempts against his life in Georgia, Tsatieva said, but was denied asylum and was scheduled for deportation. She remains convinced Russia is responsible for her ex-husband’s death but is hopeful that German authorities will bring the perpetrator to justice.

“We were warned that this would happen eventually,” she said.

Cold War ‘not over’

On Tuesday, Stephanie Krüger, a spokesperson for Germany’s Justice Ministry, declined to share more information with reporters about the case, saying only that “the attorney general’s office has been in very close communication with investigative authorities in Berlin since the attack.” The attorney general’s office told DW it could not confirm if and when it would take over the case.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-investigate-russia-ties-to-georgian-murdered-in-berlin/a-51516724

Today it is the German military with officers engaging in extremist activity. Yesterday it was the University of Georgia in America.

Give the Germans some credit.  When these neo-Nazis are found, the government takes quick action to discard them from military service and public life.

Under the umbrella of “free speech” this does not happen in America.

Deutsche Welle 1.1.2019

The Bundeswehr is set to suspend an officer in an elite military unit over suspected ties to right-wing extremism. Two fellow soldiers have also been accused of flashing the Hitler salute.

Two men are accused of flashing the Nazi-era Hitler salute at a private party that was hosted by the suspected KSK officer.

A new neo-Nazi scandal has erupted in the German military, this time in its Special Forces Command (KSK), according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

An officer in the elite military unit is strongly suspected of involvement in the right-wing extremist scene, the paper reported on Sunday.

Read more: Europe’s right-wing extremists try recruiting from police, army

Suspicions arose following a monthslong intelligence operation by the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). The officer, who has served several tours of duty in Afghanistan, was being covertly investigated by the service after an informant tipped them off to the man’s activities.

MAD recommended that the officer be removed from the Special Forces Command immediately and barred from serving in the Bundeswehr. He is due to leave his post this week.

Two other soldiers in the Special Forces Command are also on the radar of Bundeswehr investigators for right-wing extremist activities.

One of the soldiers was suspended from duty a few weeks ago and is no longer allowed to wear a uniform, Bild am Sonntag reported. The other soldier is still under investigation.

Military has ‘responsibility’ to remove radicals

Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the military is taking the cases “very, very seriously” and vowed tough action against extremists found in its ranks.

“Anyone in the Bundeswehr who appears to be a radical has no place in the Bundeswehr,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said Sunday during a visit to Kosovo.

She added that the Special Forces Command in particular has a “special responsibility to counter any tendency toward radicalism.”

KSK is particularly responsible for rescuing people who have been kidnapped, taken hostage or are facing terrorist threats abroad.

Pressure is mounting on the German military, with numerous soldiers in its ranks accused of right-wing extremism in recent months.

Christof Gramm, the head of MAD, recently reported that they are currently investigating 20 soldiers in the elite unit over suspected links to right-wing extremists.

Concerns over right-wing extremists or neo-Nazis within the ranks of the Bundeswehr heightened after an officer was accused in April 2017 of planning a far-right terror attack that he hoped would be mistaken for Islamist extremism.

https://www.dw.com/en/neo-nazi-scandal-hits-german-elite-military-unit/a-51490089

Welcome to America 2019 where expressions Nazi type extremism  are frightening, a sad commentary and a commonplace occurence.

The Guardian 11.30.2019

Symbols at University of Georgia and Georgia College & State University fuel renewed calls for hate crimes law

Swastika symbols on two Georgia university campuses have students and parents on edge.

Swastikas were drawn on message boards recently in Creswell and Russell halls at the University of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“This shouldn’t be in your mind, concerns if you are going to be safe,” said Brett Feldman, 21, a UGA senior who met with the university’s dean of students to discuss student concerns.

Two students at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville also reported to campus officials that a swastika was drawn on the doors of their residence hall recently.

Administrators at both schools asked students to share any information with campus authorities that may help the investigation. They’re also offering counseling services.

The presidents of both schools also wrote messages to students, but some are critical of the response.

Dov Wilker, regional director of the American Jewish Committee Atlanta, was glad the UGA president, Jere Morehead, described the incidents as “displays of hate” but believed he should have also called them antisemitic.

Federal officials in October found that religious-based hate crime on college campuses has increased significantly nationwide over the past decade.

Georgia is one of a handful of states that does not have a hate crimes law. Some say the recent crimes show that one is needed.

“I feel like it’s a deterrent that would prevent a student from acting that way,” said Feldman, who is president of the Georgia Israel Public Affairs Committee, a student group.

The Georgia house of representatives passed a bill earlier this year that would have created stiffer penalties for people who commit crimes based on hate. However, the bill stalled in the senate after some lawmakers questioned its effectiveness.

San Francisco State has always been a tough place to attend college.

It is certainly not an Ivy Legaue campus. It is today and always has been a working class people’s university. One unmistakable change is the higher tuition and cost of housing.

It was a fiery time on campus when the longest student strike, four months, shut down the campus in late 1968 and into 1969.

Even though nothing like that depressing event has recurred, San Francisco State has always been in the forefront of political and cultural movements.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle – 11.29.2019

Morale at San Francisco State University has at times been as gray as the fog rolling in off the ocean. Strained relations between students and the administration. Tension among ethnic groups. Resentment within faculty.

Racial and ethnic issues have ripped through the campus that recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the country’s only College of Ethnic Studies, born of student demands for diversity.

In March, after three years of acrimony and court fights, Jewish students reached a legal settlement with administrators, whom they had accused of tolerating anti-Semitism. The students sued the university and Associate Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, in 2017 after pro-Palestinian classmates shouted down Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat in 2016. In turn, Abdulhadi sued the university in state and federal court this year, claiming discrimination. The university denied the allegations, and a trial in the federal case has been set for 2021.

There are other sources of tension. When then President Leslie Wong announced cuts to the College of Ethnic Studies in 2016 because of a shortfall, angry students staged a hunger strike. Hundreds more confronted the administration and booed the president even as he vowed to find the money elsewhere. The college’s former dean, Kenneth Monteiro, has pursued legal actions against the university since 2017, saying administrators wrongly blamed him for the troubles.

Meanwhile, complaints by black instructors about racial bullying from white instructors are a perennial problem, said the union’s Martel.

Since arriving, new President Lynn Mahoney has met with the Muslim Students Association, the General Union of Palestinian Students, and with Jewish students from Hillel. She had lunch with La Raza students and sat down with the Black Student Union, among others.

“We have to make all students feel welcome and safe,” she said.

But a warming trend is taking hold on the campus of nearly 29,000 students — and many credit their new president, Lynn Mahoney, a former provost of Cal State Los Angeles and now San Francisco State’s 14th president. She arrived this semester — the university’s first permanent female president — and replaced Leslie Wong, who retired after seven years.

“Hi, I’m Lynn Mahoney, university president. Nice to meet you!” the slender woman with short, dark hair said the other day as she approached a woman in the student services center and stuck out her hand.

Colette Cowan, an outreach specialist preparing to retire after 36 years of helping applicants, wasn’t about to waste the opportunity when Mahoney asked how many campus tours students lead each year.

“Not enough,” Cowan told the president. “If we had more resources, they could do more. Students need employment. We really need to give them hours so they can survive in the city.”

Mahoney, 55, listened and nodded. She likes to wander around campus each week with different guides, getting to know people. On this warm fall morning, she greeted students on Malcolm X Plaza before entering the Student Union.

“She seems interested in listening to us and working with us,” said James Martel, who often sees a dispirited side of campus as head of the faculty union that helps aggrieved instructors. “Even if it’s just a honeymoon period, I’ll happily take it.”

Student leaders say they’ve met with Mahoney three times already — at her request.

“She said, ‘I need students’ voices all around,’” said student body President Preyansh Kotecha, a computer science major. “That was a big eye-opener.”

Nancy Gerber is also pleased. As president of the Academic Senate and chair of the chemistry and biochemistry department, Gerber has the ear of professors. She’s impressed by Mahoney’s ability to join in academic discussions — not always an administrator’s forte. “She knows data and research around student success. That’s really, really welcome,” Gerber said.

A New Yorker, Mahoney is the daughter of a salesman and a mom who returned to college in her 40s to earn a computer science degree. As a child, Mahoney sometimes joined her mother in class — but never expected to go to college because the professors spoke too quickly.

But she did go, earning a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Stanford and a doctorate in history from Rutgers.

Great Thanksgiving commentary

The Guardian. Joshua David Stein – Originally published 11.19.2015

Thanksgiving celebrates all that our country holds dear: gluttony, sloth and avarice

Already the belts across America are being loosened, and the turkeys brought to slaughter. In anticipation of upcoming familial discord, the Ativan is flowing and the couches of therapists – whose uncomfortable throw pillows one wants to cast aside but which one worries are actually subtle psychological experiments – are occupied.

Thanksgiving is in the offing and it’s the closest thing the US has to an annual collective freak-out.

Yet of all the holidays we’ve turned into festooned tent-poles that hold up the flaccid fabric of our lives, Thanksgiving seems to offer the most promise. Christmas is pure tinsel cupidity. Valentine’s Day is a pinko infantilizing conspiracy. Halloween is heaven for candy companies, hell for everyone else. Memorial Day utterly fails to strum any mystic chords of memory, and Labor Day is simply the end of summer. Neither the fallen nor workers are a match for barbecue.

Only Thanksgiving – which has no baked-in retail component, brooks no costumes, and hardly requires historical recall – has the potential to be great.

But is it? Not even close.

Historically, Thanksgiving celebrated the friendship between the Wampanoag of what is now Massachusetts, and the Puritans of Plymouth who came together for a three-day harvest feast in the autumn of 1621. Setting aside the fact that that friendship was repaid in genocide, the impulse to take a moment to give thanks is still a lovely one.

Thanksgiving has become a parodic feast, a celebration of gluttony and discord. As much as turkey has become an integral part of the holiday – a historically inaccurate menu choice, by the way – so too has the eating of it until one is so full one collapses into a deep slumber.

The New York Times estimated average caloric intake to be around 2,500 calories though also admitted it could actually reach up to the oft-bandied about and grossly prodigal 4,500 figure. Thanksgiving is an amateur eating contest, where wannabe Joey Chestnuts and Kobayashi’s make like living taxidermy and turn their bodies into ballotines.

It’s not simply the shocking volume of what is consumed, but the corporate nature of the menu as well. The table is set with the bounty powered by Big Food: Stove Top stuffing, Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, Butterball turkey. The national recipes are written with trademarks appended. Our culinary constitution is now trademarked.

Far from the white-on-white purity of Norman Rockwell’s famous painting, Freedom from Want, today’s classics are the culmination of furious lobbying. Each dish from the cranberry sauce to the mashed potatoes to that golden bird comes with its own well-heeled advocacy group, from the National Turkey Federation to the US Potato Board.

And much of what we’ll eat is produced by a handful of Big Food corporations like Sysco, Hormel and the latest behemoth, the Kraft Heinz Company, a company with $28bn of yearly revenue. It’s a long way from Plymouth.

After the gorging, racked by indigestion and heartburn, we find places to be horizontal: shelves, sofas, the floor. We leave it to whomever is the weakest among us to slowly gather the soiled dishes, while some trundle to the bedroom and others to the den. The television is turned on and football begins. Aggressive graphics. Loud print pocket squares. Shouting. And thus another sordid tradition kicks off: vegging out.

This is, in fact, the closest many of us will get to vegetables on Thanksgiving: sitting in front of the television to watch football for hours. Though there is only 11 minutes of playing time per game, the broadcasts begin at 12.30pm and end well past 11pm. We who are food-stuffed unto coma watch as men hurl themselves at each other until they, too, end up comatose.

By now it has become clear that the tackles we cheer rend not just ligaments but brain cells from brain cells, causing life-long damage. By now it has become clear that the football culture we applaud overlooks and enables terrific abuse. That so many Americans let Roger Goodell, that bumbling ass, into their homes augurs poorly for our national security.

And as the last game winds down – the Bears beating the Packers or vice versa – and the clock strikes midnight, we rouse ourselves and lumber to our cars. Is it to home we go? No. This is Black Friday, the biggest sales day in America. So we line up, wild-eyed and bloodshot, in the parking lots of Walmart and Best Buy and Target to wait for dawn.

And when dawn comes, we push each other with tidal ferocity. We clamor and scrum. We kill each other for a discount. Literally, we do.

According to Black Friday Death Count, there have been seven deaths and 98 injuries in the last decade. This year will be no different.

On Friday morning, we’ll awake to headlines of riots at big box stores, of an increase in traffic accidents, and with a hangover. Padding around in our socks and sweatpants, gassy, we’ll peer into the cold, bright fridge at the vast expanse of tinfoil and Saran wrap. And maybe then, in the dawn, we’ll take a moment to consider what a travesty Thanksgiving has become.

And we’ll say, simply, no thanks.

Does this protest in favor of the disgraced and indicted Prime Minister seem familiar?

Trump and Netanyahu are both shameless, selfish and corrupt men who will hang onto power by any means necessary.

TImes of Israel 11.27.2019

Much-hyped rally to back Netanyahu against state legal system draws relatively small crowd, and very few lawmakers; starts on a conciliatory note but quickly turns dark

Walking into the square alongside this reporter, Ari Vaknin, a smiling “pro-Bibi, pro-Likud, pro-right” father of four from Beit Shemesh, who came to the rally with his whole family, said he saw the event as something of a civics lesson for his 11- to 19-year-old children.