Lee Heidhues 4.3.2023

Check out the reader comments in The Chronicle Conversation in response to the federal magistrate’s Order protecting the unhoused in San Francisco.

Depressing to read all the MAGA intolerance crowd on full throated arrogance display in The Chronicle Conversation bloviating once, again.

San Francisco has been woefully negligent in taking care of its unhoused.

All Mayor London Breed’s carrying on about the unhoused and crime being the ruination of San Francisco is just so much boilerplate pandering.

Now that Mayor Breed and the MAGA crowd no longer have Chesa Boudin to Scapegoat the Judiciary is a convenient alternative.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 4.3.2023

The federal magistrate who prohibited San Francisco in December from removing homeless people from encampments without providing them immediate shelter refused to suspend her order Monday while the city appeals it.

It means “San Francisco can’t use its ordinances to criminalize homelessness,” said John Do, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer for the Coalition on Homelessness, the plaintiff in the case. 

City officials argued that the Dec. 23 injunction by U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu had put San Francisco in an ”impossible situation,” as City Attorney David Chiu put it in a court filing. He said some people on the streets have refused shelter, others have obtained shelter beds but still choose to live on the streets and Ryu’s order left the city “powerless to do anything in those situations.” 

But Ryu said late Monday that the city had failed to show any improvement in the plight of the homeless in San Francisco, or in the city’s overall treatment of them, since her earlier order.

It is still the case, she said, quoting her previous findings, “that ‘San Francisco does not have enough available shelter beds for all homeless San Franciscans,’ falling short ‘by thousands of beds,’ and that ‘homeless San Franciscans have not been able to voluntarily access shelter beds since April 2020’ because waitlists and same-day lines are closed.”

“Despite the opportunity to finally substantiate (city officials’) position that ‘every homeless person is offered shelter before being displaced by the City,’ none of (their) witnesses stated that San Francisco officials offer shelter to every homeless individual before telling them to vacate public property,” Ryu wrote.

And despite San Francisco’s claim that her order prevented the city from keeping its streets safe and clean, Ryu said, since her December injunction, the city has been able to offer “shelter and services” to some encampment residents and to clean areas where encampments are located. That means officials “have found ways to accomplish their public health and safety goals despite the preliminary injunction order,” she said.

The ruling means Ryu’s order will remain in effect during the city’s appeal to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, unless that court grants the city’s request for a stay. Such appeals ordinarily take many months to resolve.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/san-francisco-homeless-sweeps-stay-denied-17876890.php

Top photo – Homeless sleep in plain sight of City Hall

Lee Heidhues 4.2.2023

This is undoubtedly big news in Russia.

A Russian blogger who monitors Putin’s aggression in Ukraine was killed during an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe, at one time owned by the notorious Wagner Group. The organization which has provided thousands of mercenary conscripts to fight and die in Ukraine.

Predictably the Russian State media is blaming Ukraine for the explosion. An accusation the government in Kyiv emphatically denies.

A detailed New York Times article on the assassination follows the Deutsche Welle report.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 4.2.2023

Vladlen Tatarsky, an influential pro-Russian military blogger, had more than 500,000 followers on Telegram

Well-known Russian military blogger Tatarsky was killed in a blast at a cafe in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Sunday, Russia’s Interior Ministry said.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote in English online that he believed the attack was domestic terrorism in Russia.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar.” It’s a Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time Podolyak wrote.

Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack in a statement, with spokesperson Maria Zakharova saying bloggers like Tatarsky were regularly threatened by Kyiv.

Zakharova said that the lack of a reaction from western governments “speaks for itself given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.” 

This appeared to be a reference to American journalist Evan Gershkovic, who was arrested and accused of spying earlier this week on charges his employer and the US government have rejected as absurd. 

The state Investigative Committee said 19 other people were wounded and that it had opened a murder investigation.

“One person was killed in the incident. He was military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky,” the Interior Ministry said. 

The explosion took place at the Street Food Bar No. 1 cafe that had reportedly at one time belonged to Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group that is fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, had reportedly invited people to a “patriotic evening” event hosted by Cyber Front Z, a group that refers to itself as “Russia’s information troops.”

“There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures, but unfortunately, they were not enough,” the group said on Telegram. 

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted a law enforcement source saying the blast was “caused by an improvised explosive device hidden inside a statue given to Tatarsky as a gift.”

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast. The Interior Ministry said everyone inside the cafe at the time of the incident was being “checked for involvement.”

https://www.dw.com/en/russian-military-blogger-killed-in-st-petersburg-blast/a-65208776

Lee Heidhues 4.1.2023

The following stories will go down in the annals as two of the great miscalls in newspaper history.

That was the mainstream media spin on Thursday morning.

Several hours later. Well. The rest is history.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-grand-jury-new-york-investigation-hush-money-5b3739234786a5a660da6cb5b5ed4d60

Excerpted from Associated Press 3.29.2023

NEW YORK (AP) — The Manhattan grand jury investigating hush money paid on Donald Trump’s behalf is scheduled to consider other matters next week before taking a previously scheduled two-week hiatus, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. That means a vote on whether or not to indict the former president likely wouldn’t come until late April at the earliest.

The break, which was scheduled in advance when the panel was convened in January, coincides with Passover, Easter and spring break for the New York City public school system.

The person who confirmed the grand jury’s schedule was not authorized to speak publicly about secretive grand jury proceedings and did so on condition of anonymity. A message left with the district attorney’s office was not immediately returned.

In a statement released through a lawyer, Trump said: “I HAVE GAINED SO MUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY.”

Excerpted from DailyMail.com 3.29.2023 – Headline

‘This case is going nowhere and Bragg knows it’: Trump’s camp says grand jury month-long hiatus is ‘first step’ in Manhattan DA dropping ‘bogus’ prosecution

Donald Trump’s team is growing increasingly confident that Alvin Bragg will drop his case, and think the grand jury’s month-long break in hearing evidence is the ‘first step’ in the process. 

Sources close to Trump told DailyMail.com on Wednesday afternoon that they believe the stall is the first step in a walk-back by Bragg’s office. 

‘The case is going nowhere and Bragg knows it,’ said one.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11916411/Manhattan-Trump-grand-jury-set-break-month.html

Top photo – Donald Trump and his accuser, Stormy Daniels

Lee Heidhues 3.31.2023

The level of cruelty exhibited by the human species boggles my mind.

This story says it all.

When convicted this pair of insensitive and subhuman beings deserve nothing less than the maximum sentence.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.31.2023

A big game hunter allegedly flew from Pakistan to San Francisco International Airport with eight animal carcasses in his luggage, including an endangered Ladakh urial sheep, federal prosecutors said in an indictment that charged the California man and his accused Pakistani conspirator with smuggling and violations of the Endangered Species Act.

Jason Keith Bruce, of Galt (Sacramento County) faces up to 25 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted of crimes stemming from a trip to Pakistan in 2018, during which he shot the sheep known for its large swooping horns. Bruce, 49, allegedly paid $50,000 to a hunting outfitter, Pir Danish Ali, to facilitate the kill, and the two planned to ship the dead sheep back to the U.S. by forging documents they claimed were from Pakistani authorities, labeling the animal a different species.

An investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement later revealed that at least 25 hunters working with Ali’s company used false papers to sneak upwards of 97 trophies into the U.S. between 2013 and 2018.

The Ladakh urial, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urial a regal sheep with sandy fur and a beard-like ruff at its neck beneath a crown of horns, roams the mountains of western central Asia where its population has dwindled dramatically.

Pir told Bruce that a recent survey logged 180 of the sheep in the region around the time of the hunt, according to the indictment. The sheep’s scarcity has evidently made it tantalizing to hunters and poachers: In 2016, two army personnel and a civilian were reportedly arrested for poaching a Ladakh urial in India.

That same year, Bruce and Ali, 43, allegedly began plotting their own hunt and developing a scheme to smuggle the trophy. An investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement later revealed 

A federal grand jury returned the indictment on March 23, paving the way for Bruce’s arrest the following day. Ali could be incarcerated for up to five years and fined $250,000 if convicted of the conspiracy charge.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sfo-arrest-endangered-sheep-17871188.php

Lee Heidhues 3.30.2023

I have only one comment. It’s about time and long overdue.

Along with a sound track from the English rock group Free ‘Mr. Big’.

Roger Ailes must be turning in his grave as the Fox news clip below indicates.

Excerpted from The Guardian 3.20.2023

A grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump in New York, over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

It is unclear whether or not he will be handcuffed, because of his status, but he will be fingerprinted, photographed and processed for a felony arrest. His legal team is expected to vigorously fight the charges, and a timeline for a potential trial remains unclear.

No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.

The indictment has not yet been publicly unsealed, and some reports say Trump will appear in court next week. Trump will be required to appear at an arraignment, where he will enter a plea on the charges.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/30/donald-trump-indicted-stormy-daniels-hush-money

Lee Heidhues 3.30.2023

The brazen arrest of a Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia is yet another assault on free speech by Vladimir Putin. It is an act of intimidation and harassment.

An open media is fundamental.

The arrest of Evan Gershkovich for what it described as espionage is an outrage and another sign that the paranoid Vladimir Putin will do everything in his power to stifle free speech and opposition as he continues his war of aggression against Ukraine.

Excerpted from Wall Street Journal 3.23.2023

Russia’s main security agency said Thursday it had detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for what it described as espionage.  

Mr. Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen and member of the Journal’s Moscow bureau, was detained in the city of Yekaterinburg, around 880 miles east of Moscow, on Wednesday while on a reporting trip.  

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the arrest. “CPJ is deeply concerned by the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. This is the latest in a long line of attempts by Russia to use national security laws to silence reporting. We urge his immediate release,” said CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg.

The Federal Security Bureau said Mr. Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

Mr. Gershkovich is accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s Foreign Ministry.

“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”

Authorities took Mr. Gershkovich to Moscow, where he appeared in court with a state-appointed defense attorney and was ordered held in custody until May 29, said the press service of the court, according to state news agency TASS.

Mr. Gershkovich dropped out of contact with his editors while working in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday afternoon. 

A post later appeared on Telegram describing a man with his face hidden being bundled from a restaurant in the city and put into a waiting van. It couldn’t be determined whether the person was Mr. Gershkovich.

A lawyer hired by the Journal attempted to find Mr. Gershkovich at the FSB building in Yekaterinburg, but was told authorities had no information about him. 

Mr. Gershkovich later appeared in Moscow, where he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer.

According to TASS, which cited unnamed sources, Mr. Gershkovich pleaded not guilty at the closed hearing. His case, according to TASS, is considered top secret. 

Mr. Gershkovich, 31 years old, joined the Journal in January 2022. He has worked as a reporter in Russia since 2017, first for the Moscow Times and then for Agence France-Presse. Earlier, he was a news assistant in New York for the New York Times. A graduate of Bowdoin College, he most recently wrote about the impact of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy. 

Mr. Gershkovich since joining the Journal has covered a variety of Russia-related topics, including the recent visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow, close associates of Mr. Putin and tensions between Kremlin officials and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russian paramilitary group Wagner. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-security-service-detains-wall-street-journal-reporter-cbfbd505?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Top photo – Detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich

Lee Heidhues 3.28.2023

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) just announced she is running for reelection in 2024.

The Senator is one of the few people in Congress who relentlessly goes after the Federal Reserve Board and its chairman Jerome Powell. Her continued presence in the Senate is crucial. The American working public needs an intelligent advocate who will look after the interests of The People and is not intimidated by bankers, financiers, hedge fund managers and Wall Street.

The video is illustrative of how the Senator deals with the Federal Reserve. Take note this exchange occurred shortly before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Excerpted from The Nation 3.21.2023 John Nichols

The fallout from the collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank continues to rock financial and political circles. There is plenty of finger-pointing and blame-laying going on. But Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren reminds us that a lot more attention needs to be paid to the role that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell played in the collapse that continues to shake confidence in the banking system.

Warren has been the loudest critic, and since the SVB collapse, she has made it particularly clear that she thinks Powell should step down. “Look,” she said Sunday. “I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve.”

Warren has also asked that Powell recuse himself from internal probes by the Fed into the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, writing in a March 18 letter to the inspectors general and the Fed board, “It is also critical that your investigation be completely independent and free of influence from the bank executives or regulators that were responsible for action that led to these bank failures.

I am particularly concerned that you avoid any interference from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who bears direct responsibility for—and has a long record of failure involving—regulatory and supervisory matters involving these two banks.”

But Warren has been the loudest critic, and since the SVB collapse, she has made it particularly clear that she thinks Powell should step down. “Look,” she said Sunday. “I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve.”

Warren is right: Powell should go. Unfortunately, he’s unlikely to step down and equally unlikely to be removed. His term as chair is not due to end until 2026, and his term as a Federal Reserve Board member is set to last until January 31, 2028. But his tenure can and should face more serious scrutiny.

In a blistering letter to Powell last week, Warren put things in perspective, arguing with regard to the second-largest bank failure in US history:

Warren’s complaints come as news reports suggest that the Fed knew of problems at SVB and other banks, with The New York Times explaining, “Silicon Valley Bank’s risky practices were on the Federal Reserve’s radar for more than a year—an awareness that proved insufficient to stop the bank’s demise.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-fed/

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

Lee Heidhues 3.25.2023

The American public may not, yet, be paying attention. It should.

Vladimir Putin will be placing tactical nukes in Belarus. A large country which borders on Ukraine.

The Ukrainians may be fighting Russia to a standstill on the battlefield but Putin shows no intention of negotiating a settlement. He intends to continue his aggression no matter what the cost.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 3.25.2023

Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, according to TASS state news agency.

Putin said he reached an agreement with Belarusian president — and his closest regional ally — Alexander Lukashenko.

“We agreed with Lukashenko that we could place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime,” Putin said, according to the TASS report.

“There is nothing unusual here either: The United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies,” Putin added.

Tactical nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains in the battlefield and the transfer of the weapons would mark the first time Russia will have based them outside the country since the mid-1990s.

The announcement comes as the battle for Bakhmut rages on, with Ukraine’s top military chiefs claiming that the Kremlin’s forces are depleted on the ground.

https://www.dw.com/en/putin-says-russia-will-station-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus/a-65121918

Top photo – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko observe training launches of ballistic missiles as part of the exercise of the strategic deterrence force, in Moscow, Russia February 19, 2022. Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS

Lee Heidhues 3.25.2023

Donald Trump wants to be President, again.

It’s worthwhile to look back at his ascension to the White House in 2016.

The Israelis played a pivotal role in Trump’s victory. A political story which has been ignored by the mainstream media.

Only now is it seeing some light. The Nation and Democracy Now are reporting details of the sordid tale.

The mainstream media needs to get involved.

Excerpted from The Nation 3.25.2023 – James Bamford

Roger, hello from Jerusalem,” read the message from an Israeli secret agent. Dated August 12, 2016, it was addressed to Roger Stone—at the time a key player in Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. “Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intel. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week.” Later, the agent promised, “October Surprise coming!”

While the American media and political system fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his armies of cyber warriors, trolls, and bots, what was completely missed in the Russiagate investigation of 2016 was the Israeli connection.

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/24/james_bamford_2016_israel_netanyahu_trump?jwsource=cl

No details of it were ever revealed in the heavily redacted Mueller Report.

Nor was there any mention of an Israeli plot in the similarly redacted Senate Intelligence Committee Report on collusion charges in the 2016 election, or in any of the indictments or trials stemming from the Russia charges. Nor did any mention of Israeli involvement ever leak into the press.

Yet I can reveal here the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.

In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of Palestine. But November was months away, and there was no guarantee Trump would win. 

Netanyahu appears to have made a drastic decision. He would dispatch a discreet, highly trusted aide, armed with critical intelligence, to covertly “intervene” in the US election to help put his man Trump in the White House.

Based on the FBI documents, the intelligence appears to have consisted of advance knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and it may have included confidential details from the stolen e-mails. It was likely obtained by Israeli eavesdropping operations that were targeting secret Russian communications, as well as those of WikiLeaks.

The prospect of an October Surprise, along with the offer of critical intelligence, apparently got Trump’s attention.

On September 25, Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met privately with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in his Trump Tower penthouse. Later that day, he publicly announced that if he was elected, his administration would finally “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.” Since 1947, there has been virtual unanimity within the international community—and among US presidents—that the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump was vowing to trash that consensus, along with the Palestinians, and support Netanyahu’s agenda. Whether Trump and the Israeli agent ever met in person is unclear. By late summer, Roger Stone and his associate Jerome Corsi were becoming increasingly concerned about potential charges, and to eliminate a paper trail they began meeting only in private with the Israeli agent. What is very clear, however, is that in the end Netanyahu got what he wanted—and so did Trump

A Trump aide heavily involved in the conspiracy, according to the FBI documents, was Stone’s associate Corsi, who appears to have been the original contact who connected the Israelis to Stone. An ultraconservative journalist with a doctorate in political science from Harvard and the author of a shelf of books harshly critical of liberals and Democrats, Corsi was a leading literary light of the extreme right. He gained fame in 2004 for his “swiftboating” attacks on the military record of then–presidential candidate John Kerry. The secret agent was particularly drawn to Corsi’s adulation of Israel and support for its belligerence toward Iran.

Although the secret agent’s name was redacted from the FBI’s search warrant, his profile is strikingly similar to that of Isaac Molho.

Like Molho, who was described by Haaretz as a “discreet man for sensitive missions,” the secret agent is described as highly trusted and very close to Netanyahu. Most important, at one point, according to an affidavit, the agent was summoned from the US to Rome at a moment’s notice to be by Netanyahu’s side on a date the Israeli prime minister was conducting negotiations with John Kerry in the Italian capital over Palestine. This critical role was for many years played exclusively by Molho. In addition, the agent referred to in the warrant had enough clout and authority to direct the actions of two other high-ranking Israeli officials involved in the clandestine operation to influence the results of the US election. Molho did not respond to The Nation’s request for comment.

This report has been adapted from portions of James Bamford’s book Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence, published by Twelve Books.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-israel-collusion/

Lee Heidhues 3.23.2023

The entire exhibit is very disconcerting. I continuously shook my head as I spent the afternoon in a generally quiet exhibit hall at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

https://www.thecjm.org/exhibitions/161

I come from a family where athleticism, dance, opera and the symphony was an integral everyday part of my life. I don’t see much of that here. I see a tight knit clan cocooned in their bubble as the world goes round and round around them.

The lifestyle portrayed in this extended family seems totally Removed from my youthful experience…

I think of the young people and wonder how they will follow in the footsteps of their elders.

Most disturbing politically are those who became Trump supporters.

On the other hand the three minute Video of people attending Trump’s 2017 Inaugural is Revolting .. I was transfixed and watched it several times.

In retrospect I’m glad the older generation portrayed here (my peers age wise) was not the political, cultural environment in which I was raised …