Lee Heidhues 5.4.2023

The heartfelt testimony at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing on the murder of Banko Brown by a hired gun security guard at Walgreens and the despicable refusal of DA Brooke Jenkins to prosecute is beyond shameful.

DA Brooke Jenkins and Mayor London Breed are putting their total hypocrisy on full display for all the world to see. All too ready to scream law and order these two women of color are criminally silent when it comes to the blatant murder of a young black transgender citizen.

A murder committed by a corporate rent a cop. Being excused by DA Brooke Jenkins.

A murder which occurred just footsteps away from the Westfield Center where corporate giant Nordstroms just announced it will be shuttering its mega department store. What is happening in San Francisco is the continuing disintegration of this once proud City.

Tim Redmond put it succinctly in 48 Hills earlier this week.

“Breed, Jenkins, Wiener, and their allies, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, the local TV stations, and a lot of other news media, created the deadly narrative that crime is so out of control in this city that we need more cops, more people in prison, and more crackdowns on small-scale theft. (Walgreens can afford to lose $14).

Now a young Black trans man is dead.

This is what happens when you create a racist, pro-cop, tough-on-crime narrative, and when you, like Jenkins, refuse to hold the shooters, whether they be cops or security guards, accountable.”

Excerpted from SF Standard.5.4.2023

San Francisco police cleared up some of the details surrounding the deadly shooting of a suspected shoplifter by a security guard outside a Walgreens in a case that spurred widespread outrage.

Banko Brown, 24, was unarmed when the security guard shot and killed him outside the drugstore near Market and Fourth streets last Thursday, Police Chief Bill Scott told the Police Commission on Wednesday.

An altercation broke out when the security guard, Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, tried to stop Brown for shoplifting, the chief said. Anthony, 33, was still inside the store when Brown stepped outside and turned toward him. Brown then allegedly spit on the security guard and raised his arm toward him before Anthony drew his gun and fired, Scott said.

The shooting and subsequent decision by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins not to charge Anthony with murder sparked outcry from Brown’s supporters, who said Brown did not deserve to die for allegedly shoplifting. They viewed the killing of Brown, who was Black and transgender, as an extension of the challenges facing those communities in San Francisco.

The shooting is putting police at odds with prosecutors.

While police booked Anthony on suspicion of murder last Friday, prosecutors soon after declined to charge him, and he was released.

Scott told The Standard last Friday that his department decided to arrest Anthony on suspicion of murder because security guards “have to use force appropriately within the law,” even if they have a firearms license.

“If that’s not the case, regardless of whether you are a security guard or police officer or not, you are subject to that,” Scott said.

However, Jenkins said Monday that she would not be able to prove a murder case against Anthony to a jury based on witness statements, statements from Anthony and video footage of the incident.

“The evidence clearly shows that the suspect believed he was in mortal danger and acted in self-defense,” Jenkins said in a statement.

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/walgreens-killing-heres-what-we-know-about-banko-browns-shooting-by-a-security-guard/

Lee Heidhues 5.4.2023

The mystery of which country and who blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea last September 26 continues to go unrsesolved.

Four days earlier, on Sept. 22, a Danish naval patrol vessel, P524 Nymfen, took 112 photographs of several Russian vessels near the blast site, the Danish Defence Command said in a response to a freedom of information request from The Wall Street Journal.

After several weeks of the story disappearing from the headlines it is surfacing, again. Courtesy of Danish authorities who, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, have released photos of Russian naval vessels near the site.

Excerpted from The BBC 5.3.2023

Russian ships able to perform underwater operations were present near to where explosions later took place on the Nord Stream pipelines, according to an investigative documentary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-vessels-photographed-at-nord-stream-site-days-before-blast-9695bc70

The vessels were reportedly located using intercepted Russian navy communications.

Underwater explosions last September knocked the two Nord Stream pipelines – built to carry gas from Russia to Europe – out of action.

The cause of the blasts is unclear.

Formal investigations are still taking place in countries close to the blast site. So far, they have said only that they believe the explosions were the result of sabotage rather than any kind of accident.

But one possible lead pointing towards Russian involvement has emerged from details of suspicious Russian ship movements in the run-up to the Nord Stream blasts, reported by four Nordic public broadcasters and an accompanying English-language podcast Cold Front.

And Denmark’s Defence Command has confirmed a separate report that a Danish patrol boat called Nymfen took 26 photos of a Russian submarine-rescue ship in the area days before the explosions. The Information website said the SS-750 had sailed from Kaliningrad and was close to Bornholm island on 22 September 2022.

The investigation by Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK, Sweden’s SVT, and Finland’s Yle focuses on the movements and actions of ships between June and September last year which they describe as highly unusual.

The ships are believed to include the Russian naval research vessel Sibiryakov, the tugboat SB-123 (photo shown at top), and a third ship from the Russian naval fleet that the media outlets have not been able to identify by name.

These were so-called “ghost-ships”, which had their transmitters turned off. The broadcasters, however, say they were able to track their movements, using intercepted radio communications the vessels sent to Russian naval bases.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65461401

Lee Heidhues 5.3.2023

The false arrest and imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich going on two months is an international outrage.

The worst part of this inhumane act is the fact a young journalist. Doing his job. Whose parents are Russian emigres. Who speaks fluent Russian. Is being held in the most barbaric of conditions.

The incarceration and isolation of Evan Gershkovich is another crime against humanity perpetrated by Vladimir Putin.

This is a cruel fact which no media report will never accurately convey.

Excerpted from Moscow Times 5.3.2023

“ There is complete isolation: no meetings, no news from the outside world,” said former inmate and chemical weapons program whistleblower Vil Mirzayanov, who was arrested on treason charges in 1992. 

While Mirzayanov said Gershkovich was unlikely to suffer any physical violence from guards, he would have to find ways of dealing with the isolation and squalid conditions. 

“I wish him strength,” he said. 

Since his arrest on charges of espionage just over a month ago, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been held in Russia’s most notorious prison, Lefortovo, located in a leafy residential district of Moscow.  

Its impenetrable walls once muffled the cries of Soviet-era political prisoners tortured and executed by security officers during Stalin’s purges. 

While bullets no longer fly in Lefortovo’s holding cells, the prison’s central role in Russia’s system of political repression has remained unchanged. 

“Lefortovo is famous for putting maximum psychological pressure [on inmates],” said Igor Rudnikov, a journalist and ex-local official who spent 10 months in Lefortovo in 2017 and 2018. 

“The goal is simple: to break the detainee.”

Like other prisoners, Gershkovich, a former journalist for The Moscow Times, is likely experiencing extreme isolation in Lefortovo. According to former inmates and lawyers, he will have had to grow accustomed to unpartitioned toilets, lights that never turned off, visits by prison guards every four minutes and rare glimpses of the sky. 

Used to hold high-profile prisoners, or those accused of the most serious charges, Lefortovo is filled with ex-spies, politicians, murderers and some of those accused under Russia’s widespread crackdown on wartime dissent. 

The prison is de-facto controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), rather than the Federal Penitentiary Service that is in charge of the country’s correctional system. 

Despite its reputation, guards at the modern-day Lefortovo no longer subject inmates to overt physical violence or verbal humiliation. 

In fact, former inmates recalled staff being polite and never failing to wish prisoners a good morning. 

“Investigators there are extremely polite. Everything in Lefortovo is very civilized,” said Mirzayanov.

Extreme isolation was mentioned by all the former Lefortovo detainees who spoke to The Moscow Times about their time at the facility. 

For inmates, their isolation begins immediately upon arrival at Lefortovo when they are placed in a single cell for a two-week quarantine. 

“They sit alone in an information blockade for two weeks. There is a TV in the cell but it usually doesn’t work — I think that is done on purpose,” lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who has worked with dozens of people imprisoned at Lefortovo, told The Moscow Times. 

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/02/the-torture-of-isolation-inside-the-russian-prison-housing-us-journalist-evan-gershkovich-a80952

Top photo – Wall Street Journalist Evan Gershkovich in Russian courtroom

Lee Heidhues 5.1.2023

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently wrote in The Guardian that the Republican treatment of transgender people is akin to what the Nazis did to transgender and gay people in Germany after Hitler assumed power in 1933.

Reich feels this increasing suppression of transgender people and their civil rights is another step on the American road to Fascism.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/30/republican-attacks-trans-people-fascism

One look no further than the American State of Montana where the State legislature banished transgender legislator Zooey Zephyr. Claiming Zephyr was a disruptive force as the excuse for violating the civil rights and human rights of this citizen legislator.

Excerpted from Montana Free Press 5.1.2023

“If you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” Representative Zooey Zephyr said on the Montana House floor April 18.

Missoula Rep. Zooey Zephyr has filed a lawsuit challenging the disciplinary action that banned the Democrat from the House floor, anteroom or gallery, the latest in a standoff between Zephyr and Republican leaders consuming the final days in the 68th Montana Legislature.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Montana American Civil Liberties Union and a pair of private law firms, alleges that the order barring Zephyr from participating in floor debates violates her constitutional rights and deprives her 11,000 constituents from representation. 

“Duly elected representatives to the Montana House have constitutional rights that they do not lose when they walk into the state Capitol,” Alex Rate, the legal director of the ACLU of Montana, told Montana Free Press Monday. “The House is free to pass whatever rules it wants, but those rules have to pass constitutional muster.”

The suit, which names the state, House Speaker Matt Regier and House Sergeant of Arms Brad Murfitt as defendants, specifically contends that the decision to discipline Zephyr violates her rights to free speech and equal protection under the law. It asks a Helena district judge to prevent Regier, R-Kalispell, and the other defendants from enforcing the terms of Zephyr’s censure and to compel them to recognize Zephyr to speak on the House floor. 

The House voted to censure Zephyr last week following a protest in the gallery that challenged Regier’s ongoing decision not to recognize Zephyr to speak on bills up for consideration on the floor.

Regier suggested that he would not recognize Zephyr, a transgender woman, again until she apologized for remarks she made on the floor about Senate Bill 99, legislation that bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the bill last Friday.

Zephyr said she would not apologize, and Regier told her that her comments broke decorum and that he would not recognize her on the floor until he believed she could “maintain decorum” moving forward, according to the lawsuit. 

Attached is a link to a PBS News Hour interview with Zooey Zephyr

https://www.pbs.org/video/trans-in-america-1682544281/

Lee Heidhues 4.30.2023

I was literally speechless watching the Warriors dismantle the Sacramento Kings on the road.

Beyond amazing was the 50 point performance by Steph Curry. The all time scoring record in the seventh game of an NBA playoff game.

Equally impressive and hopefully given prime time exposure was the performance by Warriors journeyman Center Kevon Looney. He snagged 21 rebounds and dominated the Kings.

The Athletic 4.30.2023

The Golden State Warriors defeated the Sacramento Kings 120-100 in Game 7 of their high-octane first-round playoff series on Sunday at the Golden 1 Center, advancing to the second round. Here’s what you need to know:

• Stephen Curry broke out for 50 points, a playoff career high, and set the NBA record for points in a Game 7. Curry went 20-of-38 from the field with seven 3s.
• Kevon Looney continued his stellar rebounding run, grabbing 21 boards for Golden State.
• Domantas Sabonis paced the Kings with 22 points. Sacramento shot 37.5 percent from the field and 25.5 percent from beyond the arc.
• The Warriors will face the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals.

Curry made history — but Golden State needed Looney, too

The two Warriors’ stat lines that matter most in Game 7: Curry’s and Looney’s.

Curry just took a career-high 38 shots. This was as aggressive as he’s ever been. Curry made 20 of those 38 shots and seven 3s. He scored 50 points, the most ever in a Game 7 in league history.

But Looney may have been equally important on this night. He had 21 rebounds, including 10 on the offensive glass. Eight of those came in a dominant third quarter, when the game changed.

https://theathletic.com/4474653/2023/04/30/kings-warriors-game-7-result/

Lee Heidhues 4.30.2023

Cheerleader Michael Rains is the Ultimate Cop Shop Attorney.

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

A guy who probably has never met a cop he thought is guilty.

I would love to see invoices Michael has sent to the various Police Officers Associations and law enforcement groups who have made him the go to guy for the misbehavin’ Boys (and Girls) in Blue.

Excerpted from SF Gate – Bay City News 2.16.2023

Family members of a man fatally shot by a San Leandro police officer in 2020 are prepared to do what’s necessary to get justice for their loved one.

The family of Steven Taylor thinks attorneys for former Police Officer Jason Fletcher are making them jump through hoops and they are prepared to jump through any number of hoops.

Taylor allegedly tried to shoplift a tent and bat from the Walmart at 15555 Hesperian Blvd. in San Leandro on April 18, 2020.

Fewer than 40 seconds passed between when Fletcher entered the store and when he shot Taylor, according to prosecutors.

A trial date for Fletcher is expected to be set on May 19.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/family-of-man-killed-by-police-prepared-to-jump-17789703.php

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/law-firm-seeks-disqualify-da-price-prosecuting-17921616.php

Top photo – Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price

Lee Heidhues 4.29.2023

Russian dictator and warmonger Vladimir Putin may be a pariah in Europe and the United States as he continues his war of aggression against Ukraine.

The former KGB operative and now strongman in Russia can count on at least one set of friends.

The Russian biker community of Night Wolves with their black attire and heavy duty motorcycles.

This group of Putin bikers intends to drive the roads between Moscow and Berlin with a detour through the war torn Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. That’s how Putin waves the Russian flag to his captive audience back home.

Moscow Times 4.29.2023

Hundreds of Kremlin-loyal bikers under the banner of the Night Wolves motorcycle club took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday for a “patriotic” rally across Europe.  

The motorcade headed by club founder and leader Alexander Zaldastanov, known as “The Surgeon,” aims to complete the rally in Berlin by May 9.

Zaldastanov, who has described himself as a “friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is under Western sanctions for his support for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the Russian offensive in Ukraine. 

In May 2015, he was banned from entering Poland, where he wanted to organize “a motorcycle victory rally” across Europe. The ban had provoked the ire of Russian diplomacy

Several participants at the rally waved Russian and Soviet flags. Some had the letter “Z” fixed to their bikes — a symbol of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine launched in February 2022. 

Dubbed “the roads of victory,” the rally adopted the traditional slogan of the Russian offensive in Ukraine: “We do not let down our own.”

According to organizers, the motorcade plans to reach by May 1 the city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, the site of a bloody battle between Soviet and German Nazi troops that marked a turning point in World War II toward victory for the Soviet Union and its allies. 

The bikers will continue their journey to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the scene of heavy fighting, where they will distribute humanitarian aid to civilians and Russian soldiers. 

“The inhabitants of the Donbas and us, we are the same people,” 34-year-old Artyom told AFP before embarking on the race.

Hundreds of Kremlin-loyal bikers under the banner of the Night Wolves motorcycle club took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday for a “patriotic” rally across Europe.  

Several participants at the rally waved Russian and Soviet flags. Some had the letter “Z” fixed to their bikes — a symbol of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine launched in February 2022. 

Top Photo – Vladimir Putin and Night Wolves leader Alexander Zaldastanov, known as “The Surgeon”

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/04/29/pro-putin-bikers-launch-rally-bound-for-berlin-a80988

Lee Heidhues 4.28.2023

It was three years ago on April 28, 2020 when Mayor Breed, during the midst of the Pandemic, decreed that a 1.5 mile portion of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park would be a dedicated pedestrian and cyclist oasis.

Three years later JFK Promenade is now a permanent fixture in the San Francisco landscape. It was not an easy victory. Advocates had to wind their way through the City’s byzantine bureaucracy of multiple agencies and different agendas. Finally, the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 to make JFK Promenade permanent.

But that was not the end. Motorists do not shut off their rhetorical engines quietly.

A lawsuit was filed and went all the way to the California Court of Appeal before being dismissed. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco sponsored a ballot measure to bring cars back to JFK Promenade. The Board of Supervisors put a competing measure on the ballot to maintain JFK Promenade. It won a smashing victory with 63 percent of the vote in November 2022.

To celebrate the third anniversary of this car free oasis a large number of people of all ages came out on a foggy afternoon to bask in the well earned and hard fought victory.

https://sfrecpark.org/1538/JFK-Promenade

Lee Heidhues 4.27.2023

Carolyn Bryant, the then 21 year old woman responsible for the gruesome murder of 14 year old Emmet Till in Mississippi nearly 68 years ago, which upended the civil rights debate in America is dead.

Excerpted from The New York Times 4.27.2023

Only two people knew exactly what happened during the minute they were alone together in the general store in Money, Miss., on Aug. 24, 1955.

One, Emmett Till, a Black teenager visiting from Chicago, died four days later, at 14, in a brutal murder that stands out even in America’s long history of racial injustice.

The other was Carolyn Bryant. She was the 21-year-old white proprietress of the store where, according to her testimony in the September 1955 trial of her husband and his half brother for the murder, Emmett made a sexually suggestive remark to her, grabbed her roughly by the waist and let loose a wolf whistle.

Now Mrs. Bryant, more recently known as Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died at 88. On Thursday, Megan LeBoeuf, the chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office in Louisiana, sent a statement confirming the death, on Tuesday, in Westlake, a small city in southern Louisiana. Ms. LeBoeuf did not provide further information.

With Mrs. Bryant’s death, the truth of what happened that August day may now never be clear.

More than half a century after the murder, Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University historian who interviewed her, wrote that she had admitted to him that she had perjured herself on the witness stand to make Emmett’s conduct sound more threatening than it actually was — serving, in Dr. Tyson’s words, as “the mouthpiece of a monstrous lie.”

The murder of Emmett Till was a watershed in United States race relations. Coverage of the killing and its aftermath, including a widely disseminated photograph of Till’s brutalized body at his open-casket funeral, inspired anguish and outrage, helped propel the modern civil rights movement and ultimately contributed to the demise of Jim Crow.

Top photo. Carolyn Bryant in the Mississippi courtroom with her accused husband – September 1955

Lee Heidhues 4.26.2023

There’s a major missing political component to the story regarding the altercation between a former Fire Commissioner and a homeless man in the City’s Marina neighborhood.

Where is the mainstream media scorn and outrage being directed towards Brooke Jenkins, London Breed and the entire City Hall gang which politically lynched Chesa Boudin in June 2022?

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who rode to office as a cheerleader and instigator of the political lynching of her one time boss Progressive DA Chesa Boudin is getting an unjustified pass.

This incident, had it occurred a year ago, would have been grist for the mill for Brooke Jenkins, Mayor London Breed and the entire toxic law and order crowd polluting San Francisco.

It appears likely that the Superior Court judge assigned to this case will soon discharge Garrett Alan Doty. Why? The public defender has presented ample evidence that Don Carmignani instituted the altercation earlier this month.

It will be yet another embarrassment for the Mayor’s hand picked DA.

Legally speaking the Court will be taking the correct action in releasing Mr. Doty.

In addition, if the evidence is correct, obtaining a conviction would be very difficult. It would require a unanimous verdict in a criminal trial.

Were Chesa Boudin District Attorney the mainstream media, Mayor Breed and the paranoid San Francisco public would be piling on. Bloviating endlessly that San Francisco has become a dystopian cesspool of rampant crime and lawlessness. Scapegoating Chesa Boudin relentlessly, viciously and without let up.

Now the mob’s Scapegoat is no longer available to kick around.

The Mission Local, hardly the MSM, is one outlet reporting the details of the story. But, even this respected journal has not criticized Brooke Jenkins directly.

Top photo – Mayor London Breed and her handpicked DA Brooke Jenkins surround themselves with the Flag at San Francisco City Hall – July 7, 2022