The move to “whitewash” the murals at George Washington High School  in San Francisco is symptomatic of America’s historical amnesia.  Whether it be slavery, genocide against Native Americans and continuing through the Vietnam War, America thinks it can just paint over its violent history.  

In Germany, the Nazi era will never be forgotten.  Museums, memorials, literature can be found throughout the country as a reminder of  the Nazi reign and its genocide against Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Gays and the opposition in general. Liz Heidhues and I spent time at The Topography of Terror in Berlin last September.  It is a graphic and depressing presentation of Hitler’s rise to power.

Photo above – Topography of Terror, Berlin September 2018

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 4.8.2019

It was 1936 when the Works Progress Administration commissioned Victor Arnautoff, a Russian artist, to paint the the Washington mural in the newly built school in the city’s Richmond neighborhood. It was one of many pieces of public art created in San Francisco as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal employment projects.

Arnautoff painted the Washington scenes directly on wet plaster and in the social realist style of his mentor, Mexican artist Diego Rivera. At the time, “Life of Washington” was considered something of a subversive work, illustrating enslavement and slaughter, Golinger said.

Victor Arnautoff would later teach art at Stanford, where he survived calls to fire him in 1955 for a satirical caricature of Vice President Richard Nixon called “Dix McSmear,” which associated Nixon with McCarthyism and prompted Arnautoff’s interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A longtime member of the Communist Party, he returned to the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s and died in Leningrad in 1979.

For 84 years, San Francisco high school students have walked to class past the scenes of black slaves picking cotton and white settlers urged on by George Washington stepping over a dead American Indian.

This true, sad newsworthy story was sent to me by a Lee’s Perspective follower.

Pope Francis blamed Europe and the United States for the deaths of children in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, saying Saturday that wealthy Western countries fuel conflicts by selling weapons in war zones.

Speaking to students and teachers of Milan’s San Carlo Institute, Francis said the reason there are so many wars around the world is “the rich Europe and America sell weapons … used to kill children and kill people.”

Without such firepower, the pope added, there wouldn’t have been war in countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria. .

“A country that produces and sells weapons has on its conscience the death of every child and the destruction of each family,” Francis said.

The Bernistas continue to wage The Battle of 2016. It’s over. Time to move on and do what it takes to oust Trump.  This internecine Bernie bickering helps only one person. Trump.

Excerpted from Talking Points Memo 4.6.2019

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — It was hard to miss Cheri Pichone’s excitement about Bernie Sanders’ second presidential run. She showed up to a recent Iowa rally decked out in Sanders gear, complete with a figurine of the Vermont senator and progressive icon.

But underneath her exuberance, the 36-year-old was still mad about the last Democratic primary, when Sanders’ bid for the presidency fell short to Hillary Clinton.

Pichone voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 and said she may vote for a third party again if Sanders doesn’t clinch the nomination.

She’s emblematic of a persistent group of Sanders supporters who won’t let go of the slights — real and perceived — from the last campaign. The frustration is notable now that Sanders is a 2020 front-runner, raking in $18.2 million in the first quarter, downplaying concerns about DNC bias and highlighting his success in bringing the party around on liberal policies it once resisted.

Some establishment-aligned Democrats worry the party could lose in 2020 if lingering concerns about the last primary aren’t put to bed.

“It has the potential to escalate, and it has the potential to help re-elect Donald Trump,” said Mo Elleithee, a former spokesman for Clinton and the DNC.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/they-cheated-some-bernie-supporters-still-salty-clinton-nomination

The book “Strange Justice” by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson is required reading and is the only exhibit needed to illustrate why Joe Biden should never be President.

To really learn about the disgraceful manner in which Joe Biden treated Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas 1991 confirmation hearing the 1994 book provides in easy to understand language Biden’s role in foisting Clarence Thomas on the American public.

A position from which Clarence Thomas, the successor to iconic Justice Thurgood Marshall, has destroyed Civil Rights and American democracy for nearly 30 years.  

Excerpted from CNN 4.6.2019

American mainstream media is focused towards reporting the Israeli perspective. I will Post news from the Ma’an News Agency (MNA) site to ad some balance.

Launched in 2005, Ma’an News Agency (MNA) publishes news around the clock in Arabic and English, and is among the most browsed websites in the Palestinian territories, with over 3 million visits per month. Considered the main source of independent news from Palestine, MNA has become the first choice for online information for many Palestinians, and is also attracting a growing international readership and interest from prominent international news organizations and agencies.

Ma’an News Agency 4.5.2019

QALQILIYA (Ma’an) — One Palestinian was injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet as Israeli forces suppressed the weekly Kafr Qaddum march in the northern West Bank district of Qalqiliya, on Friday afternoon.

Coordinator of the local popular committee of Kafr Qaddum, Murad Ishteiwi, said that dozens of Israeli forces raided Kafr Qaddum and went up rooftops of local homes.Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets, tear-gas canisters and stun grenades to suppress protesters.Ishteiwi reported that one Palestinian youth was injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet and transferred to the Rafidiya Governmental Hospital in Nablus for treatment.Clashes erupted between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers, during which Palestinians responded to Israeli bullets with rocks and empty bottles.

No detentions were reported. Residents of Kafr Qaddum began staging weekly protests in 2011 against Israeli land confiscations, as well as the closure of the village’s southern road by Israeli forces. The road, which has been closed for 14 years, is the main route to the nearby city of Nablus, the nearest economic center.The Israeli army blocked off the road after expanding the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim in 2003, forcing village residents to take a bypass road in order to travel to Nablus, which has extended the travel time to Nablus from 15 minutes to 40 minutes, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=783117

BREAKING NEWS

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 4.4.2019

WikiLeaks said its founder will be expelled from Ecuador’s London embassy within “hours to days.” The non-profit said the INA papers scandal, which has implicated Ecuador’s president, was the pretext for the expulsion.

WikiLeaks tweeted late Thursday that its founder, Julian Assange, will be expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London within “hours to days,” citing a “high level source.”

Assange, who faces charges in the United States over leaked government documents, could be arrested by authorities upon leaving the embassy.

ttps://www.dw.com/en/julian-assange-to-be-kicked-out-of-ecuadorian-embassy-wikileaks/a-48212020

“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Henry II speaking of Archbishop Thomas Becket. 1170. Becket was assassinated a short time later.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 4.4.2019

Star of the Sea school, which has served generations of San Franciscans in the Richmond District, abruptly announced Wednesday that it is closing its doors in June amid declining enrollment, just weeks after parents asked the Archdiocese of San Francisco to investigate the pastor of the Catholic grammar school.

Most recently, parents sent a three-page, unsigned complaint to the diocese, alleging that Rev. Joseph Illo “attempted to instigate a fight” at a March 7 “State of the School” meeting after a mother accused him of being “responsible for the decimation of the school.”

The letter says Rev. Illo stood up from his seat, walked toward the woman’s husband and “aggressively stared at him in a manner that can only be described as attempting to challenge the husband to a fight.” He allegedly went on to demand the woman’s husband to “order” his wife to apologize for any disparaging remarks she made about him

The Archdiocese said in a statement Wednesday that the grammar school is being “suspended” so that it could further develop a new teaching program that was supposed to start in the fall. The school’s fully enrolled preschool classes will continue as normal, the archdiocese said. Its statement did not acknowledge the parents’ complaint about school pastor Illo.

The Archdiocese appointed Rev. Illo to the parish in August 2014. In 2015, he was criticized for banning girls from serving at the altar at Mass. That same year,he also denied non-Catholic students from receiving blessings during Communion, and apologized for providing pamphlets to children before confession that included questions about masturbation, sodomy, abortion and vasectomies.

Photo atop. I have owned this RCA Victor album since 1964. It features dialogue from the motion picture Becket starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.

Photo in middle. Star of the Sea Church.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Amid-turmoil-Star-of-the-Sea-grammar-school-in-13740275.php

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Amazing. Ponderous studies are issued to state the obvious.  Poor dietary habits are dangerous to your health.  Then there is Trump. The Fatman wants to eliminate standards encouraging healthy diet in America’s schools. Figures. Trump, obese reality show host masquerading as President, is The Junk Food Afficiando.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 4.4.2019

One in five people across the world dies of causes linked to poor diet, a new study shows. Overconsumption of meat, salt and sugar are the main culprits, the experts behind the study say.

People across the world are eating too much of the wrong food and much too little of the healthy types, a study in the journal “The Lancet” says.

The study, released on Thursday, indicates that poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor, including smoking. The biggest killer in the 11 million global deaths attributed to poor diet every year is cardiovascular disease, which is often caused or made worse by obesity.

What did the study find?

• More than 10 times the recommended amount of sugary drinks were consumed across the world
• People consume 86 percent more salt on average than the levels generally considered safe.
• The global intake of red meat was 18 percent greater than that considered optimal.
• Healthier foods such as whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds do not feature enough in most people’s diets.
• Economic inequality is a big factor, with poor people often struggling to meet the “five a day” fruit and vegetable recommendation.

https://www.dw.com/en/poor-eating-habits-killing-millions-globally-study-says/a-48194150

San Francisco is an American fashion trendsetter for the World. It all started with Levi Strauss & Co. in 1850 right here in the City by the Bay.

Deutsche Welle 4.3.2019

First shown in San Francisco, an exhibition taking a look at Islamic fashion has provoked strong reactions ahead of its opening in Frankfurt. “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” confronts stereotypes on both Islam and style.

Muslim head coverings have always been a controversial topic, as they embody so many issues, whether women’s rights worldwide or Western prejudice and discrimination against Muslims.

Now that the first exhibition dedicated to fashion consciousness of women in Islam is opening at Frankfurt’s Museum Angwandte Kunst, the debate surrounding headscarves has been rekindled in Germany.

Titled “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” and first shown at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, the exhibition, however, does not aim to answer the numerous political and social questions related to hijabs or burkinis.

“The focus of the exhibition is really fashionable modest dress and what we’re trying to show in the exhibition is that there is a lot of choice for the mass of Muslim women,” said Jill D’Alessandro, curator of the “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” exhibition in San Francisco.

The idea for the exhibition came from Austrian museum director Max Hollein, who formerly headed the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art and, before that, served as the director of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Planning began in 2016, shortly before Donald Trump was elected US president. The show was held in the US during a period when anti-Islamic attitudes were becoming increasingly visible and voiced in America.

A similar polarization of attitudes is noticeable in Germany today, and all questions related to the integration of refugees remain a headline-grabbing topic.

But “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” does not want to be seen as a reaction to this. “We don’t want to solve problems, but to offer new perspectives on a very exciting part of the fashion world that has long been ignored by the Western world,” says curator D’Alessandro.

Hate mail leads to tightened security

The coordinators of the German exhibition have already started receiving racist hate mail ahead of the opening of the exhibition on Thursday, which is why the Angwandte Kunst museum is introducing bag checks and body searches for the duration of the show, “for the security of all visitors and employees,” museum director Matthias Wagner K told German press agency DPA.

On the other end of the spectrum, weeks ahead of the show, activists who call themselves “Migrants for secularity and self-determination” have published an open letter in German feminist magazine Emma, in which they state that they are “appalled” by the fact that the exhibition is being shown in Frankfurt.

“This exhibition, which supposedly depicts religious dress requirements as fashion, is a slap in the face of domestic and foreign women’s rights activists,” the letter states. The group, composed of Iranian refugees, also reminds people that “Every year, thousands of women in Iran are punished for violating this dress code.”

https://www.dw.com/en/muslim-fashion-for-women-exhibition-stirs-controversy-in-germany/a-45601007

April 3, 2019

Liz and I are enthusiastically supporting Chesa Boudin in his bid to become San Francisco’s District Attorney in the November 2019 election.  Chesa will bring his experience and intimate knowledge of the criminal justice system into the halls of justice.  We believe Chesa’s goal will be to expend time and resources on pursuing crimes which warrant prosecution. That is why we are amongst the many who support Chesa and his vision. The video herein is a nice introduction to Chesa.

Photo below – Liz at an event for Chesa in March, 2019 fueling up for the campaign.