SAN FRANCISCO – OCEAN BEACH AT THE PACIFIC COAST SHORELINE
Screenshot
Lee Heidhues 6.14.2025
The view from on high along Sutro Heights bluffsOn the march on ‘No King’ Flag Day
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 People show The Flag
To the Ocean marched the protesters.On the way to the No King! rally.
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.
The massive turnout on Market Street – photo SF Standard
Liz Heidhues proudly attired in Old Glory and her “Childless Cat Lady” T-shirt
He’s back, untethered and without restraints with the goal to lay waste to the country.
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.
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 says US will also be responsible for Israel’s ‘adventure’
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 sky over Tehran after the Israeli preemptive strike
“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.”
Mostly women and children among 50 injured in Israeli attack: Report
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.
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 Bailey meeting President Jimmy Carter from an unnamed newspaper clipping. Family photos of Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post who was killed on August 2, 2007, in Oakland, Ca. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/
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
Chauncey Bailey – circa 1970’s
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
Music from the Ex Machina soundtrack. As eerie as the movie itself. Great listening
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”.
Ava and Caleb get acquainted
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.
Ava in cyborg repose
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?”
Kyoko and Ava
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.
DonaldTrump is using his presidential powers to drive America into chaos. It’s going to be a rough ride.
The face of American fascism
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.
Washington Post 6.7.2025
‘Trouble Comin’ Everyday’ Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention (1966) – Video San Francisco protestors physically thrown out by cops after protesting House American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing in City Hall – 1960
“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.’”
Several bloody and bandaged soldiers ride on top of a tank used as a make-shift ambulance after the Battle of Hue in the Vietnam War, Hue, Vietnam, February 15, 1968. (Photo by John Olson/Getty Images)
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.
SAN FRANCISCO – SAINT MONICA’S PARISH HALL – OUTER RICHMOND DISTRICT
6.1.2025 Liz Heidhues
“Who is going to replace Sister Noreen?”
Father Ben asked the approximately one hundred folks at St. Monica’s Parish Hall gathered together to say goodbye to the 90-year-old nun and to thank her for her years of duty and devotion to us – the parishioners of St. Monica-St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, and beyond, the families, the friends, the residents of the Outer Richmond District which the two Catholic churches serve.
Sister Noreen practices her ministry comforting her parishioners.
The answer is – no one! No one will replace Sister Noreen.
She is one-of-a-kind, a feisty Irish nun, who entered the convent as a teen-ager and spent the past 70 years of her life performing small acts of love every day for people of all ages, from all walks of life, caring for them, praying for them, and simply lending them a friendly ear when they needed someone to listen and comfort them.
A family Sister Noreen has taught gather around their teacher.
Sister Noreen helped build up the parish school at St. Thomas the Apostle Church and, when the Archdiocese ordered the two churches near each other to merge due to a shortage of priests and amid dwindling church-goers, she took on the task of the religious education of St. Monica’s Catholic School students as well as of those at St. Thomas, which eventually shuttered its Catholic school.
A ubiquitous cold, foggy and windy backdrop for St. Monica’s Church in the outer Richmond District.
Sister Noreen was there for me when I needed her most.
She helped me defeat an egregious harm, a miscarriage of justice, testifying on my behalf as to my good character and good standing in our Catholic church. Her letter of faith in me countered the harmful lies about me that had portrayed me as a malevolent villainess to a court of law. I placed her letter first in the pile of letters I had to present to the court to fight for the truth to prevail and the law to be upheld. I will be forever indebted to Sister Noreen for doing this good work on my behalf.
Sister Noreen beams before cutting the cake celebrating her 70 plus years as a leader in the Church.
Sister Noreen deserves her retirement.
Her empty pew at St. Thomas the Apostle Church this morning reminded me that nuns get to retire like everyone else, even though nuns continue to work well past the retirement age, entering their religious life as teen-agers and leading long and arduous careers as women devoting themselves fully to spiritual and intellectual pursuits.
Sister Noreen teaches the children about the Christ child.
Sister Noreen told us as we celebrated her retirement potluck luncheon today:
Sister Noreen’s legion of long time parishioners dig into the Pot Luck celebration.
“Thank you very much for being here. We are family and we are community. And that says a lot.”
“The many beautiful days cannot be lived again. But they are compounded in my spirit and flesh and I will take them with me for whatever lies ahead.”
Liz, Sister Noreen and Lee. A stabilizing influence in our lives through both good and difficult times.
Sister Noreen will be moving away to a senior living facility in Daly City. Her convent is now empty, as well as her pew at church. All of the senior citizen nuns living in the convent near us will be going to live in the same community with Sister Noreen. She described her new home as a community moved by a spirit of peacefulness, gentleness, and joy.
A parishioner shows off the beautiful bouquets which adorned the tables at St. Monica’s Church.
Sister Noreen deserves her retirement. But no one can, nor will they ever, replace her friendly ear, her ability to teach children and adults how to love one another, and her vision of a better world that she vibrantly embodies.
Our congratulatory card in which was pasted a photo of Liz in front of Sister Noreen’s Uncle Jack’s house which we have owned and cared for the past 41 years. Sister Noreen told us when she was growing up in San Francisco she spent time in the house.
Sister Noreen will be dancing down the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Daly City
I finished Katie Kitamura’s ‘Audition’. It certainly is a dark story. I am still trying to make sense of it. I can only conclude the unnamed narrator decides at the conclusion of this short 197 page story, “I can’t take it anymore.”
Particularly since the plot line has two distinctive threads. In the first half of the story the narrator, an accomplished stage and screen actress, establishes a relationship with a young man, Xavier. He claims to be the narrator’s son. He most definitely is not as the story unspools.
In the story’s second half Xavier is indeed the narrator’s son in a quick and jarring juxtaposition in the story line. He returns home to live with his mom, the narrator, and his father, Tomas. The entire relationship inevitably collapses. I must read ‘Audition’ a second time. It’s not so much that the story is difficult to follow, particularly in the second half.
What’s challenging is the relationship with her son Xavier, the narrator is dissecting. Why would the narrator know Xavier is not her son in the first half of the story. When in the second half, Xavier is portrayed as the son and proceeds to destroy the entire family relationship.
Xavier’s father Tomas is an integral part of this mind bending story. Initially Tomas is the strong, elusive, silent parent who welcomes Xavier home. But when Xavier precipitates the ruination of the family unit the father Tomas is a willing collaborator. He is both psychologically and physically battered in the end.
Part of which has to do with the eerie demonic Hana who moves into the New York City apartment with Xavier and his parents. The narrator has a very frosty relationship with Hana from the outset. While Tomas is obviously smitten in a way which leads to a very perverse denouement.
This is the kind of dark story which would benefit by Katie Kitamura concluding the novel with an essay about the thought process which went into the creation of this novel. The development of the plot and characters.
Katie Kitamura’s novels, and I have read several, are different in the sense the protagonist is never named. There are never any quotation marks. The sentence construction is often disjointed which ads to the fascination with her writing style. Katie Kitamura’s books are best digested in a quiet contemplative setting, Because the story lines are invariably so deep. ‘Audition’ in particular
The nuts and bolts of ‘Audition’ are straight forward.
It’s the psychological impact which merits a lot of scrutiny. And for the simple literary consumer there’s a lot to digest in ‘Audition’. As there is with the narrator who concludes without saying it, “I can’t take it anymore.”
I can’t believe what I am reading and seeing. I should.
Who said, “It can’t happen here.”?
Well, less than five months into the oligarchy of Felon Donald Trump the feds have been unleashed to terrorize and abuse. Even congressional aides are not exempt from the Police State tentacles of the wannabe American dictator.
Excerpted from The Gothamist and Politico 5.30.2025
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NYC) slammed both DHS and President Donald Trump in a statement Saturday afternoon for demonstrating “aggressive and heavy-handed tactics” and “sowing chaos” not only in his district, but across the country, as the Trump administration escalates its crackdown on immigration.
“President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are sowing chaos in our communities, using intimidation tactics against both citizens and non-citizens in a reckless and dangerous manner. In the most recent and deeply troubling incident, DHS agents forcefully entered my Congressional office and handcuffed a member of my staff,” Nadler said, adding that he was “alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City and across the country.”
The New York representative also cautioned that the incident showed a “deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries,” and warned that “if this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone — and it is happening.”
In a dramatic incident captured on video, U.S. Department of Homeland Security police Wednesday handcuffed one of Rep. Jerry Nadler aides in the congressmember’s Manhattan office, which is in the same federal office building as an immigration courthouse.
In the video, which was shared with Gothamist and filmed by a person who was monitoring activity in immigration court, DHS officers entered Nadler’s district office and accused staff members of “harboring rioters.” A Nadler staffer is seen crying and being handcuffed. Another officer is at a door trying to enter a private area of the office while a staffer asks for a warrant.
DHS later said in a statement that “one individual” — the woman seen being handcuffed — had blocked police from performing a security check they intended to do based on information there were protesters in the lawmaker’s office. Later that day, protesters gathered outside of the federal building, demonstrating against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lee's Perspective 