Lee Heidhues 12.16.2021

Congratulations Mayor Breed.

Who would have thought that the Mayor of San Francisco would ever receive prime time law and order love on the editorial page of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal?

I’m sure you’re getting a lot of Red State love tonight

TheWall Street Journal, satellite of the Fox News MAGA machine and publisher of op eds by Michael Shellenberger MD author of the trash talking fake news “San Fransicko” is now one of your biggest cheerleaders.

This may not have been your intention when you lashed out during your presser this week.  Here you are, Madam Mayor. Welcome to the house of Rupert.

Wall Street Journal 12.16.2021

Refunding the San Francisco Police

Mayor London Breed undergoes a law-and-order conversion.

As crime has risen, the defund-the-police movement has become a political liability even for Democrats in progressive cities. Exhibit A is San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed appears to have had a law-and-order conversion for the ages.

“It’s time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city—it is time for it to come to an end,” Ms. Breed said Wednesday in a fiery speech that defied her previous tolerance for growing public disorder in her once charming city. “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies, and less tolerant of all the bull— that has destroyed our city.”

Lee Heidhues 12.15.2021

San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s law and order siren song is a thinly veiled shot at District Attorney Chesa Boudin as she continues to work for his recall from office. Make no mistake the Mayor wants the DA recalled so she can name an ally to the position.

Wrapping herself in the mantle of being a crime fighter the Mayor is really doing the domestic political chores for the San Francisco Police Officers Association and their reactionary allies.

Time for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to show some “Progressive” chops and speak up and speak out against this blatant law and order pandering to the uptight, fearful and paranoid minority in San Francisco 

Mayor London Breed’s proposal is  nothing more than a politician rebranding herself as as a law and order convert tossing raw meat to the Chesa Boudin Recall reactionary mob and their right wing money bags

Excerpted from Mission Local 12.15.2021

Mayor London Breed’s announcement yesterday that she wants to give law enforcement more access to surveillance technology left privacy experts and political figures baffled –  the 2019 surveillance technology law she wants to amend already permits law enforcement to access such data, they said.

A spokesperson for the ACLU of Northern California told Mission Local in a statement that it opposes attempts to undermine the surveillance technology ordinance, adding that “a diverse community coalition supported the ordinance” when it passed in 2019, “putting needed guardrails on police surveillance.” 

“The SFPD has a long record of racial discrimination and abuse and gutting the ordinance to give police unchecked access to real-time surveillance will endanger the people of San Francisco, particularly immigrants, the unhoused, people of color, and religious minorities,” said the statement. “Weakening the ordinance will undermine police accountability and harm people’s rights and safety for years to come.”

Brian Hofer, who co-authored the 2019 legislation which aims to limit access to surveillance technology, agreed: “They’ve either never read the ordinance or they’re being deliberately misleading.”

Lee Hepner, a legislative aide to Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who sponsored the 2019 law, said the law does not prevent the Police Department from using real-time monitoring. He wondered whether the mayor was getting “bad advice.”

Current law also already allows for police to access this type of footage – live feeds of an ongoing looting incident, for example – without Board approval whenever there is “danger of death or serious physical injury. ”

Instances of mass retail theft, like the ones Breed is using as examples of the law’s deficiency, already allow police to bypass the approval process due to “exigent circumstances,” said Hofer. “During a smash-and-grab … there’s obviously a risk to somebody.”

And after any crime event, police routinely pick up street video footage.

Experts say mayor’s drive to override surveillance law misstates law’s restrictions

Lee Heidhues 12.14.2021

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is coming down four square as the law and order Queen and spokesperson for the Police Officers Association with her controversial call to flood the Tenderloin with cops and providing them with more surveillance tools.

The Mayor, who was born and raised in the nearby Western Addition housing projects, is well aware of drugs, crime and their impact on society.

The Mayor must know that arresting street level drug dealers and users is not going to solve the crime problem.

The Mayor is taking this action to score political points with a fearful, uptight and paranoid electorate. The reality is that the crime level has not increased. In fact, the rate of crime in several areas is actually down.

That is not stopping the Mayor from plowing full speed ahead with her lock ’em all up talking points. The kind of law and order rhetoric which was perfected by politicians such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Excerpted from San Francisco Standard 12.14.2021

Mayor London Breed dove head first into some of the biggest debates over policing Tuesday when she seized on the perception that San Francisco is becoming less safe to call for more police and more police surveillance.

Critics, like John Hamasaki, a criminal defense attorney and member of San Francisco’s Police Commission, called the proposals a “backlash to Black Lives Matter” and an example of the “police union seizing power.” He said he does not support officers gaining live access to cameras and questioned the efficacy of putting more police on the street.

“We have been arresting and incarcerating dealers both at the state and the federal level,” he said. “And it hasn’t changed the circumstances on the ground in the Tenderloin.” 

During a fiery press conference at City Hall, the mayor announced a series of crime-fighting initiatives that included more overtime funding for police to crack down on drug dealing in the Tenderloin and giving police access to public security cameras in real time during emergency situations.

While Breed acknowledged that her proposals would make people uncomfortable, she also made it clear that she wasn’t going to get hung up on such criticism. Spurred by viral videos of thieves breaking into cars and ransacking stores in Union Square, Breed said it was time to turn the tide on a public safety problem that has persisted in San Francisco for years and has only gotten worse.

Breed Backs More Cops, More Surveillance as Public Safety Concerns Swamp City Hall

California Governor Gavin Newsom has never been shy about taking a controversial position.

His decision to order San Francisco officials to perform same sex weddings shortly after he became Mayor in 2004 started the political ball rolling on what eventually ended up with the US Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage in America.

Now Governor Newsom has set his sights on the epidemic of assault rifles and ghost guns. Don’t under estimate Newsom’s forward looking political street smarts.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.11.2021

In a new approach to gun control inspired by Texas’s controversial approach to banning most abortions, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced that his administration will work to make it easier for private citizens to sue people who sell assault rifles and parts for untraceable ghost guns.

“If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives,” Newsom said in a press release late Saturday, “then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”

Jessica Levinson, a Supreme Court expert who teaches constitutional law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told The Chronicle that the announcement is another example of Newsom hoping to be a “quarter step ahead of public opinion and one step ahead of where he can go legally,” pointing to his support of same-sex marriage, legalization of marijuana and other laws.

“He is proposing to use a mechanism that many — that he and many others — have vilified. But I think it’s quite smart, right? I think it’s a big ‘Fuck you’ to the Supreme Court,” Levinson said. “If you’re going to allow unconstitutional laws — or I should say in this case, constitutionally questionable laws — that are insulated from judicial review, then we’re going to use that to our advantage.”

“SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!,” Newsom tweeted Saturday. “If that’s the precedent then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets.”

State officials will aim to craft a measure that would allow residents to seek damages of at least $10,000, plus legal fees, against anyone who manufactures, distributes or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit in California.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Newsom-to-use-Texas-abortion-law-tactics-to-go-16694462.php

The Biden administration can now be compared with Donald Trump.  

Biden’s decision to continue pursuit of Julian Assange for making public 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq is disgraceful.

Biden, who has spent 50 years in Washington is affirming his reputation as just another Washington politician who cares only about keeping America’s dirty war mongering secrets out of the public arena.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.10.2021

The US government has won its appeal against a court decision that halted the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Why is the US seeking extradition?

The Australian is wanted on 18 charges in the United States and faces a maximum 175-year sentence if convicted.

The charges are related to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US government also alleges that he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal the 2010 documents before exposing confidential sources around the world.

Manning was pardoned by former President Barack Obama at the end of his second four-year term. But she remained in jail from May 2019 until December 2020 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

Assange and his lawyers have long argued that the protracted case against him is politically motivated.

His supporters also see him as a journalist who shone the light on possible war crimes.

The case will now go back to the Westminster Magistrates Court where the extradition request would need to be sent to the UK Minister of Interior, Priti Patel for review.
Assange can still request permission for a final ruling on Friday’s verdict from the UK’s Supreme Court. The 50-year-old has been in custody since April 2019, when he was sentenced to 50 weeks behind bars.

He was ordered to remain in custody pending the outcome of the High Court’s decision over concerns he would abscond. He has spent more than two years jailed in Belmarsh maximum security prison.

Before the 2019 sentence, he was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by British authorities after his citizenship was revoked.

 Assange’s fiancee, Stella Moris, said their legal team would appeal “at the earliest possible moment,” while saying it was a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

Before proceedings Moris expressed hope that he would be home for Christmas in a post on Twitter. “I hope the High Court will bring this abusive and vindictive extradition to an end today so that that our children will be able to spend Christmas with their father.”

https://www.dw.com/en/uk-court-rules-in-favor-of-us-in-appeal-to-extradite-julian-assange/a-60077787

The term commuting has been given a new meaning by a Court in Germany.

The definition of the workplace has undergone a drastic change the past two years of The Pandemic.  

The new workplace reality was brought home so to speak when a German Court ruled that a man who fell and broke his back walking to his computer area from bedroom to start his workday was commuting.

The Guardian 12.9.2021

A German court has ruled that a man who slipped while walking a few metres from his bed to his home office can claim on workplace accident insurance as he was technically commuting.

The man was working from home and on his way to his desk one floor below his bedroom, the federal social court, which oversees social security issues, said in its decision.

While walking on the spiral staircase connecting the rooms, the unnamed man slipped and broke his back.

It ruled: “The plaintiff suffered an accident at work when he fell on the way to his home office in the morning.”In many countries, firms have a duty of care to their employees, regardless of where they work.

The German federal court said: “If the insured activity is carried out in the household of the insured person or at another location, insurance cover is provided to the same extent as when the activity is carried out at the company premises.”

It is not clear if the man was working from home due to the pandemic or had done so previously. The ruling said the law applied to “teleworking positions”, which are “computer workstations that are permanently set up by the employer in the private area of ​​the employees”.

The court noted that the employee usually started working in his home office “immediately without having breakfast beforehand”, but did not explain why that was relevant to the case. However, later it said that statutory accident insurance was only afforded to the “first” journey to work, suggesting that a trip on the way to get breakfast after already being in the home office could be rejected.

The employer’s insurance refused to cover the claim. While two lower courts disagreed on whether the short trip was a commute, the higher federal social court said it had found that “the first morning journey from bed to the home office [was] an insured work route”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/fall-on-walk-from-bed-to-desk-is-workplace-accident-german-court-rules

The new German government led by Social Democratic Party leader Olaf Scholz was sworn into office at the Bundestag in Berlin today ending 16 years of leadership by Angela Merkel.

The Greens have five ministers in the 16 member cabinet, including Foreign minister: Annalena Baerbock and Vice-chancellor and minister for economics and climate protection: Robert Habeck.

Foreign Minister Baerbock who led the Greens in the September election which resulted in third place finish and nearly 90 seats in the Bundestag will now be a presence on the world stage.

It was the first time in their 40 year history that the Greens fielded a candidate for Chancellor.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.8.2021
The German Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz as chancellor on Wednesday morning, as Angela Merkel bows out from the political stage.

The morning vote by Germany’s lower legislative chamber — held by secret ballot and without debate — was seen as a formality.
President of the Bundestag Bärbel Bas opened the voting. Members of the parliament voted by 395 of 707 votes cast for Scholz to become Germany’s new head of government.

However, not all members of Scholz’s so-called “traffic light coalition” voted in favor. Had they done so, he would have had received 416 votes.

There were 303 votes against, and 6 abstentions from a total of 736.

For his part, Scholz tweeted that he had accepted the task when called upon to accept by the Bundestag president. “I said ‘yes’,” he wrote.

The new government has said it will place dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and tackling climate change at the heart of its program.

DW’s Nina Haase said that, given that Scholz’s SPD had been part of a grand coalition with Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc, there would be some continuity. However, she added, there would be a marked change.

“The parties are completely different,” said Haase. “The Social Democrats are a center-left party. The conservatives under Anglea Merkel have blocked some of the projects that the Social Democrats had always hoped to push through with the conservatives as their partners.”

“That wasn’t possible so the Social Democrats are now going to try. They say they’re going to make the country fairer, more liberal and more digital.”

Merkel leaves office as Germany’s second-longest serving postwar chancellor, just 10 days short of the 16 years and 26 days that Helmut Kohl spent in office between 1982 and 1998.

DW’s Melinda Crane said Merkel’s departure was “the end of an era.”

“Young Germans aged 16 to 25 really don’t remember any other chancellor but Angela Merkel so this is really momentous for them,” said Crane.

The outgoing chancellor was present for the vote as a guest seated alongside her own predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

Before the September election, Merkel had already said she would not serve another term as chancellor and her conservative Christian Democrats are looking to reshape after suffering their worst-ever election result.

How the new Cabinet breaks down

The new Cabinet is made up of 16 ministers — seven from the SPD, five from the Greens and four from the FDP. There is one portfolio more than in the previous government, due to the creation of a construction ministry.

• Vice-chancellor and minister for economics and climate protection: Robert Habeck (Greens)
• Finance minister: Christian Lindner (FDP)
• Interior minister: Nancy Fäser (SPD)
• Foreign minister: Annalena Baerbock (Greens)
• Health minister: Karl Lauterbach (SPD)
• Justice minister: Marco Buschmann (FDP)
• Labor and social affairs: Hubertus Heil (SPD)
• Defense minister: Christine Lambrecht (SPD)
• Nutrition and Agriculture: Cem Özdemir (Greens)
• Family, senior citizens, women and youth: Anne Spiegel (Greens)
• Transport and digital: Volker Wissing (FDP)
• Environment, nature, conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection: Steffi Lemke (Greens)
• Construction minister: Klara Geywitz (SPD)
• Economic cooperation and development: Svenja Schulze (SPD)
• Education and research: Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP)
• Head of chancellery: Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD)

https://www.dw.com/en/olaf-scholz-formally-sworn-in-as-german-chancellor/a-60052911

Lee Heidhues

Much of the world still remembers the brutal murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi when he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The resolution of this grusome crime against a journalist is still an open case with Crown Prince Mohammedbin Salman and other top Saudi officials being suspected of ordering the killing.

The arrest of a former member of the Saudi Royal Guard as he prepared to board a plane in France and return to Saudi Arabia will hopefully bring those who are seeking Justice closer to those repsonsible for the crime.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.7.2021

A suspect in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was nabbed by French police as he boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia. It is hoped he can identify who was behind the assassination.

The United Nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings found that there was “credible evidence” that Crown Prince Mohammedbin Salman and other top Saudi officials were responsible for the murder.

French police arrested a suspect in the murder of Saudi critic and journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday.

Various news agencies and French media reported, citing police and judicial sources, that the 33-year-old man was a former Royal Guard of Saudi Arabia and was nabbed at Roissy airport as he was about to board a flight to Riyadh.

Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in Turkey in 2018. US and Turkish officials said a Saudi hit squad strangled him and dismembered his body.

Tuesday’s arrest was carried out on a warrant issued by Turkey in 2019. On Wednesday prosecutors will begin a process to determine if the 33-year-old suspect will be extradited to Turkey.

“France should try him for his crime, or extradite him to a country able and willing to genuinely investigate and prosecute him as well as the person who gave the order to murder Jamal,” Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, said on Twitter.

In her 2019-report, Agnès Callamard, who is now secretary-general of Amnesty International, said the suspect arrested on Tuesday was at the Saudi consulate on the night of the assassination.

She  welcomed the arrest saying it could lead to a ‘breakthrough” if the suspect “could provide information on the location of the body.”

Tuesday’s arrest was also welcomed by Reporters Without Borders: “Excellent news that the French police did not turn a blind eye,” the media watchdog’s head, Christophe Deloire, said. “Finally a protagonist who can speak.”

https://www.dw.com/en/french-police-arrest-jamal-khashoggi-murder-suspect/a-60050282