It’s comforting to read that the American government is cracking down on the invasive Pegasus spyware technology even when the offender is one of the United States close allies. Israel.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.3.2021

US authorities said the NSO Group’s spyware helped authoritarian governments “silence dissent.” The new measures will limit NSO Group’s access to US components and technology.

The technology essentially turned smartphones into spying devices, allowing a user to track a target’s location, read messages, look through photo’s and even secretly turn on the phone’s camera.

“These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression, which is the practice of authoritarian governments targeting dissidents, journalists and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent,” the US Commerce Department said in a statement.

Israel ownedNSO Group told AFP news agency it would seek to reverse the move.

“NSO Group is dismayed by the decision, given that our technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime, and thus we will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”

The technology company has consistently rejected the reporting on its Pegasus software, saying that it has been designed purely for governmental actors to use in the fight against terrorism and crime.

The US Department of Commerce on Wednesday announced export limits on the Israeli software company NSO Group, the developer of infamous Pegasus spyware.

In July 2021, media investigations revealed that Pegasus spyware was used around the world to monitor tens of thousands of human rights activists, journalists, politicians and business executives.

The investigation led by media consortium “Forbidden Stories” found that people in 50 different countries had been targeted by the malware.

https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nso-group-israeli-maker-of-pegasus-spyware/a-59711260

Lee Heidhues 11.2.2021

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is standing by his vow to hold those accountable who break the law.

DA Boudin’s indictment of San Francisco police officer Kenneth Cha for the manslaughter of Sean Moore is an affirmation that he stands by his principles of equal justice under the law. Regardless of job title and the type of uniform the perpetrator wears.

Chesa Boudin is a beacon of justice in a repressive United States of America.

Excerpted from New York Times 11.2.2021

A San Francisco police officer was charged with voluntary manslaughter for shooting an unarmed man who died three years after being wounded at his home in 2017, the San Francisco district attorney’s office announced on Tuesday.

The officer, Kenneth Cha, was charged for shooting Sean Moore after he and his partner, Officer Colin Patino, responded to a call that Mr. Moore was violating a restraining order early on Jan. 6, 2017, according to the district attorney’s office. Mr. Moore died on Jan. 20, 2020, of what the coroner’s report said was “acute intestinal obstruction” because of bullet wounds to his abdomen from the shooting.

In the statement, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said Officer Cha “lacked a lawful basis to even arrest” Mr. Moore and that he was unarmed at his home when he was shot by Officer Cha.

“When officers inflict unwarranted violence in flagrant disregard of their training, it denigrates the hard work of other police officers and shatters the trust our community places in law enforcement,” Mr. Boudin said. “Rebuilding that trust requires us to hold those officers who inflict unlawful violence accountable.”

The charges against Officer Cha include voluntary manslaughter, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, enhancements for personal use of a firearm and infliction of great bodily injury, the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement on Tuesday. It is only the second time an on-duty law enforcement officer has been prosecuted for a homicide in San Francisco, the office said. Officer Patino was not charged.

The statement said that Mr. Moore’s mother, Cleo Moore, said she was “very happy” to learn of the charges against Officer Cha.

The San Francisco Police Officers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. It was unclear on Tuesday night if Officer Cha had a lawyer.

Lee Heidhues 11.2.2021

A long time ago I lived nearly a year in Amsterdam. I found the Dutch city to be tolerant and conservative. I understand why the generally reserved Dutch have become frustrated with the hordes of dope smoking visitors from around the World.

During my months in Amsterdam I found it to be a truly international City, at least in the center of the metropolis. It was lively and vibrant with a flourishing red light district and a robust night life. With the legalization of marijuana another entertainment lure has been added to Amsterdam’s attraction as a tourist mecca.

Banning pot smoking foreigners is the radical but possible solution to resolve the problem.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.2.2021

Authorities in one of Europe’s most visited cities are eyeing a ban on pot for tourists as a way to cut down on rowdy travelers, but critics say such a measure could push the industry underground.

As Amsterdam’s tourism industry slowly begins to recover from the impact of the pandemic, its famous cannabis cafes could be facing a new hurdle, in the form of a ban on foreign tourists.

Earlier this year, the city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, touted a proposal to ban foreign tourists from entering cannabis-serving establishments as a way to reinvent the city’s image. Banning foreigners from cafes, supporters say, would help to stop the influx of rowdy tourists who crowd the city’s streets and annoy some locals.

However, following more than a year without much revenue from overseas travelers, cafes fear that such a ban would make recovery even more difficult, driving out legal businesses and creating a platform for street dealers.

In recent pre-pandemic years, the city attracted around 20 million tourists annually. But even after several lockdown measures were lifted, the number of foreign visitors to the city remains well below that previous total.

Eve Mcguire, who works at Coffeeshop Reefer, said that without tourists, a sizable portion of the cafe’s revenue would disappear.

“If they were to ban the tourists, 80% of our customers would be gone,” Mcguire told DW. “And not only this, but Dutch people don’t chill in coffee shops. If you’re Dutch, you buy your weed and you go home. The people that chill in coffee shops are tourists.”

Gary Gallagher, the manager of the Amsterdam Cannabis Museum, told DW that even with newly-eased travel restrictions, the amount of cash flowing in is still only about half of what it was before the pandemic.

He believes that due to the amount of money that the industry brings in, such a ban on foreigners in cafes is unlikely to come into effect. Even if officials manage to push the ban through, he and other critics say it would likely push the cannabis industry underground.

“I think they can change the rules and not the culture. Amsterdam will have this reputation forever,” he said.

“When they closed the coffee shops for [the] corona[virus pandemic], there were drug dealers on every street corner. So a few days later they reversed the move.”

Mcguire agrees that the chances of such a ban are exceptionally slim. “It’s totally a lie,” she said. “They will never ever let that come to pass.”

She is also concerned that enforcing such a law would be difficult, given the number of non-Dutch European Union residents who work in the city.

“People would have to show residency, but you don’t need residency to work here if you’re within the European Union,” said Mcguire.

However, even Mcguire herself found Amsterdam to be more peaceful without the influx of travelers. “It was nice to not hear seven days a week 24/7 people coming in and out. The street never shuts up, I didn’t miss the tourists to be honest,” said Mcguire.

https://www.dw.com/en/amsterdam-cannabis-cafes-fear-foreign-tourist-ban-amid-covid-recovery/a-59638155

Lee Heidhues 11.1.2021

I remember the years Dusty Baker managed the San Francisco Giants. He was  a local favorite.  One time  I was having lunch at Fog City Diner along the Embarcadero, Dusty came in. He’s a very self effacing guy while giving off the aura of royalty.

Patrons in the restaurant greeted Dusty fondly and respectfully.  When he was fired by Giants management after the 2002 season it was a genuine loss. Dusty had guided the Giants to the National League pennant and game seven of the World Series.

That didn’t matter. Baseball is a business and Dusty was found to be expendable.

 Dusty Baker may be managing the Houston Astros in 2021 but he is still a beloved figure in San Francisco.

Excerpted from The Nation –  11.1.2021

You don’t have to care about baseball to care about Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker, whose team is heading to the sixth game in the World Series tomorrow. He is a civil rights hero: a Black Major League Baseball manager who’s taken five teams, in three decades, in both leagues, to the playoffs and/or World Series.

And who, in almost all of those years, didn’t have a contract waiting for him at the end of the season.

In 2002, after Baker had won three Manager of the Year awards, the same magazine hired me to do a 10-year appreciation of his tenure. But what I quickly found out was that management was gearing up to fire him. I’m not a sports reporter, obviously—but I had the local scoop of a lifetime, in sports terms. Baker was recovering from prostate cancer, and I was lame enough to believe that would keep the Giants management from firing him.

Is that, maybe, about race? I think so. It’s complicated—like stories about race always are. It’s been a melange of culture clash and bad professional fit and changing white front-office dudes… and yet, when you see it over the course of almost 30 years, it’s hard not to say race had something, maybe, to do with it.

He talked openly about race and being a Black manager of a multiracial team. It honestly changed my little white life. Though not at first. In person, he was all bravado—race didn’t matter. “I didn’t even think about that. My attitude is, I’ve got a job to do, and it’s not a matter of black and white.” I asked him about how players tended to separate themselves, by race, in the clubhouse.

“That’s in every job. You hang out with people you have the most in common with.” I gave up. Then he called me on the phone a few weeks later. He talked about his struggles going to the South in the minor leagues—and I’m not even going to share that here, because it still hurts me to read—and also about clubhouse racial politics.

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

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dusty-baker-houston-astros/

Lee Heidhues 10.22.2021

Several hundred students at San Francisco’s Riordan High School displayed a lot of moxie when they walked out of a speech by an anti-abortion propagandist.

These right to life people are the most insidious and reactionary know nothings.

Anti-abortion crusaders, backed by powerful Church leaders such as San Francisco’s Archbishop, want to curtail a woman’s right to control their own bodies and spend their lives foisting their abhorrent political views 24/7. 

The pro-Choice movement needs to stand firm and beat down these anti-abortion zealots. It is reassuring that America’s young people appear to be fully aware of what’s at stake and are aggresively making known their point of view. Right here in San Francisco.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 10.22.2021

Hundreds of students at Archbishop Riordan High School staged a walkout Friday during an all-school assembly that featured a prominent antiabortion speaker.

About five minutes into the presentation, during which staff members patrolled the doors, students at the Catholic high school exited the theater and walked into the gym, since school rules don’t permit them to leave campus. A few dozen of the school’s more than 800 students remained in the theater for the entire presentation.

The school’s argument — that the presentation was in line with Catholic teaching — didn’t sit well with students and parents alike — who said that politically, the issue is much larger than abortion.

Parent Judy Walgren said that if the assembly was really about “Catholic themes of the dignity of human life” and not politics, then “where are the speakers about the death penalty? Where are the speakers about how you should go out into the streets in the Tenderloin and wash the feet of the poor and destitute?”

Riordan students take a walk to protest anti-abortion speaker

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-s-Riordan-high-school-students-walkout-16556075.php#photo-21617948

Lee Heidhues 10.22.2021

Liz and I cycled along Car Free JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to the de Young Museum on Member Preview Day to view the stunning Patrick Kelly fashion exhibit titled Runway of Love.

His work is both a fashion statement and a political commentary on the racism felt by black people in America

https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/patrick-kelly

The Velvet Underground is one of the most iconic albums of all time. The LP, released in 1966 long before the days of CD’s and streaming, had a classic banana peel cover. You could peel it off.

The documentary by Todd Haynes takes the viewer on a trip down memory lane of the rock scene in its early tumultuous days. Must viewing.

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

The Guardian 10.16.2021

How do you make a rock doc without any concert footage? In his electric portrait of the Velvet Underground, the film-maker Todd Haynes elegantly sidesteps this conundrum. Unable to rely on archive material of their gigs, he turns instead to the early films of Andy Warhol, their friend, publicist and one-time manager.

The band came out of New York City’s avant-garde art scene in 1964 , so Haynes frames the film like a downtown gallery installation. A slideshow of still photographs runs in split screen alongside new interviews and clips from this period in experimental American cinema (the format is a homage to Warhol’s 1966 film Chelsea Girls). Warhol’s screen tests of founding members Lou Reed and John Cale, staring into the lens, play out in full. His black-and-white chiaroscuro closeups capture the Velvets’ confrontational cool.

In his dramas Velvet Goldmine, I’m Not There and Carol, Haynes imagined the sexual escapades of a Bowie-esque pop star, cast Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, and queered the melodrama genre. He’s the perfect practitioner, then, to tell the story of a band who also defined themselves in opposition to the mainstream. A more conventional director might have chosen to focus on their most famous member, Reed, but Haynes smartly structures the film as a group show, giving space to the women in the ensemble. Singer Nico is thankfully presented as more than a femme fatale, while drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker embodies the band’s no-nonsense, New York attitude with her withering comments about “flower power”.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/16/the-velvet-underground-tood-haynes-documentary-review

Lee Heidhues 10.17.2021

October 17, 1961 was the day French police in Paris massacred hundreds of Algerians during the Algerians struggle for independence from colonial rule.

It was a brutal and violent  war with a take no prisoners attitude on both sides.

The most gripping visualization of the Algerians fight for independence is the 1966 mock documentary film The Battle of Algiers. It is recognized over 50 years later as one of the classic political films of all time.

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

Lee Heidhues 10.16.2021

60 years is a long time to wait for an apology.  It was 60 years ago on October 17 that French police murdered hundreds of Algerians in the heart of Paris. 

The massacre was carried out at the direction of Paris police chief Maurice Papon, himself a collaborator with the Nazis during their occupation of France during World War II.

This is a shocking event which most Americans have never heard about. It is only because the sad anniversary is receiving media coverage that I myself know of its occurrence.

When this massacre happened the French were struggling to hold onto Algeria, one of their last colonies. A vicious war of independence raged from 1954-1962 when the Algerians achieved their independence from their colonial masters in Paris on July 5, 1962.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(Algeria)

Excerpted from France 24 – 10.16.2021

President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday became the first French head of state to take part in commemorations of the massacre by Paris police of protesters at a rally 60 years ago against France’s rule in its then-colony Algeria. He stopped short of issuing a formal apology but said that the deadly crackdown on that day was “inexcusable”.

The events of October 17, 1961 were covered up for decades and the final death toll remains unclear. But many historians believe it could amount to several hundred.

The rally was called in the final year of France’s increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign targeting mainland France by pro-independence militants.

On Saturday, one day ahead of the formal anniversary, Macron took part in a memorial ceremony for the victims at a park on the Paris outskirts. He acknowledged that several dozen protesters had been killed, “their bodies thrown into the River Seine” and paid tribute to the memory of the victims.

The precise number of victims has never been made clear and some activists fear several hundred could have been killed.

While Macron didn’t issue a formal apology for the actions of the Paris police that day, the French presidential office said in a statement that the deadly crackdown was “inexcusable”.

Macron “recognised the facts: that the crimes committed that night under Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic,” the Elysée statement said.

“This tragedy was long hushed-up, denied or concealed,” it added.

The Paris police chief at the time, Maurice Papon, was in the 1980s revealed to have been a collaborator with the occupying Nazis in World War II and complicit in the deportation of Jews. He was convicted of crimes against humanity but later released.

Historian Emmanuel Blanchard told AFP that Macron’s comments represented “progress” and had gone “much further” than those made by Hollande in 2012.

But he took issue with the decision to pin responsibility on Papon alone, saying that then prime minister Michel Debre and president Charles de Gaulle had not been held to account over the ensuing cover-up or the fact Papon would remain Paris police chief until 1967.

Activists were hoping Macron, the first president born in the post-colonial era, would go further than his predecessor François Hollande, who acknowledged in 2012 that protesting Algerians had been “killed during a bloody repression”.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211016-macron-to-participate-in-commemorations-of-paris-algeria-protest-massacre

Lee Heidhues 10.15.2021

In response to a Public Records Request with Supervisor Connie Chan I received the attached document.  StatementGreatHighway10521.

In early October representatives of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, The Metropolitan Transportation Agency and The Recreation and Park Commission met to discuss the future of The Great Walkway.

The Subject: line in the September 28, 2021 email states Supervisor Chan, the legislator primarily responsible for reopening The Great Walkway to cars in August 2021 after 16 months as a car free zone, and MTA Director Michael Tumlin would be participating.

Supervisor Chan did not attend the meeting. Legislative aide Kelly Groth participated in her place.

StatementGreatHighway10521

San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Provide Update on the Future of the Great Highway.

Please see the attached meeting invite for the list of folks invited to the meeting; which  also included Megan Imperial (BOS) and Sarah Jones. (MTA)

From: Ng, Beverly (REC)
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2021 12:46 PM
To: Groth, Kelly (BOS) ; Yu, Angelina (BOS) ; Madland, Sarah (REC) ; Tumlin, Jeffrey (MTA)
Cc: Chan, Connie (BOS) ; Simpliciano, Sophia (MTA) ; Doherty, Timothy (MTA)

Subject: Briefing update on Great Highway with Sup. Chan & Director Tumlin
When: Friday, October 1, 2021 9:30 AM-10:00 AM.

On Aug. 5, 2021, Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Gordon Mar, with support from Supervisors Connie Chan and Myrna Melgar, modified the emergency order so the Great Highway will be closed to vehicles from each Friday at noon until the following Monday at 6 a.m. and open to pedestrians, cycling and other recreational uses. 

 Throughout this time, Rec and Park and the SFMTA have been focusing on the Great Highway’s long- term future beyond the emergency order. Together, we have been monitoring usage in order to recommend a two-year pilot program to the Board of Supervisors. Our target for presenting the plan, originally set for fall, will now be postponed as we study the impact of the partial opening, which went into effect August 16.   

The abbreviations:

BOS – San Francisco Board of Supervisors Board of Supervisors

MTA – San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency

REC – San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission