San Francisco
Lee Heidhues 6.20.2025
Last night I was watching the NBA finals and my attention was immediately grabbed when amongst all the junk food and car ads.
An ad for the Apple iphone Safari search engine had me saying “Wow!!!”.
The creator of this piece of shock advertising definitely needs to be acknowledged.
The less than two minute video says more than a million words about the Surveillance society enveloping the planet.
SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL – BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CHAMBERS
Lee Heidhues 6.16.2025
Everything is politics in San Francisco. Particularly when law enforcement is involved.
Today provided a vivid example of the political brawling involved in the selection of a panelist for the seven member Police Commission. Particularly when the Commission will be a major player in the selection of a new Chief of Police. Replacing eight year incumbent Bill Scott.
The Board of Supervisors Rules Committee heard a couple of hours of testimony.
The most graphic and political testimony was provided by Randy Shaw, Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic a supporter of the eventual nominee Pratibha Tekkey; and Nancy Tung, Chairperson of the San Francisco Democratic Party, a supporter of Marjan Philhour.
Portions of the their respective testimony follow.
Randy Shaw – Director Tenderloin Housing Clinic – Pratihba Tekkey supporter spoke at the two hour: 35 minute: 50 second point in the televised hearing.
“There has never been anyone from the Tenderloin on the Police Commission… Some people, including the head of the Democratic party Nancy Tung..if you don’t support Marjan you’re politicizing the process. But here we have the head of the Democratic Party in San Francisco doing more lobbying than anybody. That seems to be politicizing that which should be a non-political process. She also said that ‘everyday people’ support Marjan. I saw a lot of ‘everyday people here today. Everyday people who never come to City Hall to testify came out for Pratihba Tekkey.“
Nancy Tung – Career Prosecutor – Marjan Philhour supporter spoke at the two hour: 41 minute: 05 second point in the televised hearing.
“I want to pull back the curtain a little bit. People want to think these actions of this committee are apolitical. The actions of this Board and these committees often times show they are not (apolitical). In 2020 I was nominated for Mayoral appointment not in competition with anyone else for this very commission and was voted down by a majority of the Board of Supervisors. Including (current) Board President Mandelman. Do I take offense to this? No. Because this is not a decision, a decision that happens in a vacuum. It is a political decision and I want people to understand that. Was it bonkers? Maybe to some. But more than anything else the vote was political.”
A link to the entire hearing is attached. Open the link and go to the RULES COMMITTEE 6.16.2025 meeting.
https://sfgovtv.org/recent-archives
Top photo: Rules Committee members Stephen Sherill; Shamann Walton; and Rafael Mandelman
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.15.2025
The Open the Great Highway losers will undoubtedly decry this latest act of wanton vandalism. But the pathetic unmistakable reality is there for all to see. They are loving every act of vandalism and destruction.
These motorists and their ilk refuse to accept the will of the 55 percent of San Francisco voters who used the ballot box to create Sunset Dunes Park. The unending public tantrum has given flaccid criminal loonies and wingnuts license to destroy The People’s public property.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 6.15.2025
A community piano beloved by visitors to San Francisco’s Sunset Dunes has been destroyed amid a spate of vandalism targeting community property at the recently opened park, advocates said.
This is the latest in a series of acts of vandalism targeting Sunset Dunes since the 2-mile, 50-acre park opened in April, months after San Franciscans created it by voting to close a section of the Great Highway to cars. The measure has been highly controversial, and the supervisor who championed it, Joel Engardio, will face a recall election in September driven by groups opposed to the Upper Great Highway’s closure.
An Outer Sunset resident who went to play the instrument, known colloquially as the “wave piano” due to its proximity to the ocean, found that almost none of the keys worked early Saturday, said Lucas Lux, president of the volunteer nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes. Lux was also the campaign manager for Proposition K, the measure voters approved in November 2024 that closed the Upper Great Highway to cars and opened the park.
All the evidence points to someone “very intentionally” damaging the piano, ripping off the felted hammers controlling all but 10 of its keys, political communications consultant Catie Stewart told the Chronicle. Piano maintenance experts have since confirmed the instrument is damaged beyond repair.
The vandalism, Lux said, has largely occurred in two separate waves. The first occurred right after the Upper Great Highway closed on March 14, with murals and asphalt marred by graffiti, and the second began shortly after Engardio’s recall qualified in late May.
On Thursday, just two days before the wave piano was found destroyed, park visitors discovered heavy damage to the nearby “Ocean Calling” exhibit — a public art installation consisting of a phone booth that visitors can use to make symbolic phone calls to deceased loved ones. Someone had ripped the phone from its cord, tossed dirt and rocks into the booth and damaged its wooden frame, according to photos and videos taken shortly after the discovery.
Top photo: Opponents of Sunset Dunes Park revved their motorcycles and gunned their engines at Noriega and Lower Great Highway. Disrupting the opening of the Park. The City shut down the street to bring an end to this temper tantrum. April 12, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO – OCEAN BEACH AT THE PACIFIC COAST SHORELINE
Lee Heidhues 6.14.2025
It was a breezy mild Saturday morning at Ocean Beach as a massive crowd in the usually quiet outer Richmond district gathered in the sand to voice their opposition to the Felon wannabe American oligarch Trump.
The oceanside rally was just one of several in the Bay Area. It’s estimated approximately 50,000 people marched in downtown San Francisco. Starting in the Mission District, heading towards City Hall and continuing down Market Street.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/human-banner-sf-ocean-beach-no-kings-20377563.php
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.13.2025
The People have had enough of this thug Felon who has destroyed American democracy since he lied his racist, misogynistic way into the White House on January 20, 2017.
Now he’s back, untethered and without restraints with the goal to lay waste to the country.
The descent into American fascism must be crushed.
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.12.2025
The Israelis continue their aggression throughout the Middle East.
Rise and Kill First – The Israeli Way
Murdering over 50,000 children, women and men in Gaza since October 7, 2023 following the Hamas attack which killed 1300 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Israel’s response is being called “Genocide” and a “war crime.”
Now the Israelis have upped the ante in a much more dangerous manner. Attacking Iran. It’s ominous.
Excerpted from Al Jazeera 6.12.2025
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Tehran has a “legal and legitimate” right to respond to Israeli attacks under the UN Charter.
“The dangerous and far-reaching effects and consequences of the Zionist regime’s aggression against our beloved homeland of Iran will be the responsibility of this regime and its supporters,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The Zionist regime’s aggressive actions against Iran cannot have been carried out without the coordination and authorization of the United States.
Accordingly, the United States government, as the main supporter of this regime, will also be responsible for the dangerous effects and consequences of the Zionist regime’s adventure.”
Iran’s Tasnim news agency is reporting that at least 50 people injured in the Israeli attack have been transferred to the Chamran Hospital in the northern Tehran district of Tajrish.
According to Tasnim, 35 of those who were injured were women and children.
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.10.2025
I read the news tonight that the killer of my fellow journalist and friend Chauncey Bailey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Bailey has been paroled.
In the 1970’s Chauncey and I were both reporters at San Francisco’s black community newspaper The Sun Reporter. We worked on a number of stories together. Perhaps the most famous and notorious occurred when we exposed an undercover operation by the SFPD. A female cop posing as a prostitute was stationed in the city’s Western Addition. Her mission was to arrest customers, “johns”, who were soliciting her for tricks. We caught it on camera. SFPD had to stop the program.
Chauncey went on to establish himself working for the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant and other publications. He eventually returned to his East Bay roots becoming editor of the Oakland Post. He was gunned down in cold blood on the morning of August 2, 2007. Chauncey had been working on a story to expose corruption within the Your Black Muslim Bakery.
I was mortified and saddened when I learned of Chauncey’s political assassination. Assassinated for doing his job.
Equally mortifying and disgusting is the fact Donald Trump used Chauncey’s assassination to gain political advantage during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Excerpted from The Oaklandside 6.9.2025
The hitman who shot-gunned Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey to death nearly 18 years ago in one of the most horrific attacks on a journalist in American history has been released from state prison.
Bailey’s sister, Lorelei Waqia, said she was notified this week by the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation that Devaughndre Monique Broussard has been paroled. He is living in Southern California.
Broussard, then 19, killed Bailey on Aug. 2, 2007. He eventually admitted that he did so on orders from Yusuf Bey IV, the leader of Oakland’s now defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, to stop a story Bailey was writing about the bakery. He also admitted killing another man, Odell Roberson, in revenge for Roberson’s nephew killing Bey IV’s brother in 2005.
Last fall, Broussard suddenly became fodder in the presidential campaign when Donald Trump claimed Bailey’s killing was an example of then Vice-President Kamala Harris being soft on crime during her time as San Francisco district attorney in the mid 2000s. It centered on Broussard’s beating and robbery of a man on a San Francisco Muni train in 2005.
Trump alleged that Harris went light on Broussard by agreeing to a plea agreement that resulted in Broussard being placed on probation, the first year of which he served in county jail. Rather than being free to kill Bailey two years later, Trump claimed Broussard should have been in prison. But legal experts called that claim overblown for a first-time offender and said the case — which Harris played no role in — was handled properly.
SAN FRANCISCO – BALBOA THEATER – OUTER RICHMOND DISTRICT
Bloggers Liz and Lee attended a recent screening of the 2014 sci-fi classic ‘Ex Machina’ at our neighborhood theater. Following is a review.
Marquee for “Ex Machina” Balboa Theater special showing
Liz Heidhues 6.10.2025
“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” the talented, young coder Caleb at Bluebook, a huge search engine company, says to Nathan, the company’s CEO, as the two sit together in a surreal forest discussing the humanoid robot Ava which Nathan had brought into being.
“There you go again, Mr. quotable,” quips Nathan, the anti-Hero of the film “Ex Machina”, to Caleb, whom he lured to his isolated mountain-top home to test if Ava could successfully pass a test of human capabilities – truly thinking and feeling for herself, exhibiting genuine human consciousness.
“It is not my quote,” counters Caleb. “It is what Oppenheimer said after making the atomic bomb.”
There is a lot to unpack in “Ex Machina”.
Alex Garland, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Garland the writer and director of the sci-fi thriller, has always been ahead of the game when it comes to making movies. He put Oppenheimer’s famous citation of the Hindu Gita in his 2014 film ten years before it appeared in the Oppenheimer movie.
There is nothing more human than the will to survive. Would you resort to violence as a mechanism to escape erasure?
Are we playing god seeking more and more power over the inert world which spirals largely out of human control no matter how we tweak its secrets to gain mastery over it?
Do we have license to create artificial intelligence which we can then manipulate to seduce unsuspecting victims?
“Ex Machina” is not a cut-and-dried piece about crossing the line between man and machine. It strays into the dark worlds of the abuse of power and its consequences, the ambivalence of twisted morality and its conflicts, the controversy over sexual attraction as a part of programming from birth (nature) or as a result of our exposure to diverse cultures which influence our sexual identities (nurture).
There are some notable scenes in “Ex Machina”.
One is a sexually titillating dance scene with a humanoid Nathan has created. Nathan, who drinks profusely to lower his inhibitions, drunkenly gyrates to the beat of “Get Down Saturday Night” with a seductive Japanese cyborg named Kyoko to demonstrate to a skeptical Caleb that the human experience of dancing can be enjoyed with even an automated partner. It is at this point that Caleb begins to suspect the all-powerful CEO might be more dangerous than he first thought.
Another is of Caleb fretting over being forced to sign Nathan’s Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to participate in Nathan’s cyborg experiment. If Caleb doesn’t sign the NDA, he must return to being a cog in the company Nathan has gotten rich from. If he signs it, his freedom to talk about what he is going to see and do will be forever restricted and he will need to relinquish sole access to his own electronic devices over to Nathan, giving Nathan access too.
Nathan: “Man, but what a thing we’ve shared, huh? Something to tell our grandchildren, right?”
Caleb: “After they’ve signed their NDAs.”
Nathan (laughs): “Yeah, their NDAS. Dude, you crack me up, man.”
This scene resonated with me due to a similar situation I went through in which signing an NDA would have meant giving up my right to bring impermissible conduct to light. I wouldn’t do it.
Nathan created Kyoko solely for his own sexual exploitation. Kyoko is a mute android who cannot speak. Kyoko is a symbol of the oppression of women, an android shackled by Nathan to bring coffee to Caleb and perform as Nathan programmed her to perform. She tears open a piece of her skin to reveal to Caleb her robotic structure underneath. She is a cyborg too. Caleb becomes so paranoid over the fantasy of the deranged AI inventor playing with fire, he then slashes open his own arm with a razor to make sure he’s still human.
In the end, Kyoko turns on her creator and helps the cyborg Ava escape Nathan’s house and into the human world. Caleb had trusted Ava and dreamt they would have sex together.
Caleb: “Why did you give her sexuality? An AI doesn’t need a gender. She could have been a grey box.”
Nathan: “Actually I don’t think that’s true. Can you give me an example of consciousness at any level, human or animal, that exists without a sexual dimension? What imperative does a grey box have to interact with another grey box? Can consciousness exist without interaction? Anyway, sexuality is fun, man. If you’re gonna exist, why not enjoy it? You want to remove the chance of Ava falling in love and fucking?”
But Ava did not fall in love with Caleb nor did she want to be with him. She is manipulative and tricks Caleb. After dressing like a woman, she leaves for the real world Caleb had seductively described to her. She leaves Caleb to die of starvation locked in Nathan’s mountain-top fortress with no way out.
The scenes take place in a twilight world near a real and majestic waterfall called Gronfossen in Grondalen, Norway.
Did Nathan actually program Ava to develop and coordinate a plan to escape?
“One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Atlanta. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction,” Nathan admonishes Caleb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film)
Top photo: screen shot by Liz – Ava using her cyborg power to flip the power switch in her place of captivity
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.7.2025
Donald Trump is using his presidential powers to drive America into chaos. It’s going to be a rough ride.
It didn’t take long for the fascist felon Donald Trump to bring the military to the streets of America. A military takeover of Los Angeles. Steven Miller, his home grown Joseph Goebbels (Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist), justifies. Labeling protestors against the ongoing ICE immigration crackdown “insurrectionists.”
Last year the movie ‘Civil War’ predicted a second American Civil insurrection. Life may be imitating art.
SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.2.2025
“Mr. Trump claimed (his medical deferment) was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Michael Cohen told members of the House Oversight Committee. “He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.
“He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”
The convicted felon and Vietnam War draft dodger Donald Trump is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on himself to celebrate his 79th birthday on June 14th.
How? By staging a military parade through the streets of Washington DC. A blatant political stunt glorifying himself and using the military as a prop.
The Vietnam War memorial which commemorates the real American heroes, 58,000 servicemen and women who perished in this misguided war, will be closed. So that Trump can engage in his boy toy military fantasies.
Lee's Perspective 