UPDATE.. Following is a portion of the Mission Local latest reporting on the SFPD shooting.

Adriana Camarena, a police-accountability activist, said that SFPD policies call for de-escalating violent situations, creating time and distance to avoid the use of lethal force.

“They are violating their own policies,” she said at the press conference.

There could be a huge difference between this case and the long list of previous dubious (at best) police shootings.

There’s a new district attorney, Chesa Boudin, and he was elected in part on a promise to investigate and take appropriate action on police shootings.

“We are very glad he made those promises,” Father Rick Smith, a Mission District priest and police accountability activist, said at the event. “Now we are going to hold him to them.”

____________________________________________________________________________________

SFPD has yet to schedule a community meeting to present its version of events which resulted in the cops firing eight shots at 24 year old Jamaica Hampton. He was hit three times and remains hospitalized. 

It’s fair to assume there will be a lot of outraged citizens in attendance pushing back on the official version of events.

San Francisco Examiner 12.10.2019

Mother questions whether police needed to use lethal force against her son

The person who was shot by San Francisco police in the Mission District over the weekend has been identified by his mother as 24-year-old Jamaica Hampton, a formerly homeless man from Sacramento.

Police have yet to announce when they will hold a town hall meeting to release further details about the case to the public. The meetings are typically held within 10 days of a police shooting.

Hampton was shot near 23rd and Capp around 8:34 a.m. Saturday. Police said he matched the description of a suspect in a nearby burglary and attacked two officers with a glass bottle.

His mother, Tana Hampton, told reporters Tuesday evening outside Mission Police Station that she had not spoken to her son in three weeks and questioned why officers had to use lethal force against him.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” his mother said. “He’s not aggressive that way. He has to be provoked. You have to provoke him… He’s not going to put his hands on somebody just because they are standing there.”

Jamaica Hampton remained in critical condition at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital as of Tuesday evening, according to a hospital spokesperson. Advocates say he was shot at eight times and struck three times.

Police have released limited details in the case and have not confirmed the identity of the man who was shot. But the San Francisco Police Officers Association has said the officers were attacked.

One of the officers was hospitalized with injuries and released late Saturday. A witness previously said that one of the officers was bloodied in the confrontation and cut on the face.

Tana Hampton said she has not been allowed to see her son since driving down with family from Sacramento on Tuesday. She questioned why police shot her son when the weapon he allegedly had was a glass bottle.

“Something is very wrong,” she said. “All I know is they did my son wrong and they act like it’s not a crime — it’s a crime.”

A video published online in October by CityTeam San Francisco, a social services organization that offers addiction recovery services, documented Jamaica Hampton’s story.

“Growing up was tough,” Hampton said in the video, dressed in all black with his hair tied into a bun at the crown of his head. “I remember being homeless a lot. It seemed normal at the time, my mom being homeless and dragging us with her.”

Hampton described “growing up in a drug house, all kinds of people in and out of it, and pretty much being raised there.”

Hampton said he entered the foster care system at age 12, where he and his siblings were “split up.”

“It carried over as an adult,” he said, adding that he suffered from anxiety disorder stemming from childhood trauma.

Hampton is candid in the video about struggling with substance use issues, and said he began drinking at age 21 to numb his inner turmoil.

“I was depressed, I tried to kill myself, and I ended up pushing everybody away,” he said. “I ended up becoming homeless, not really knowing how to get out of the situation I was in.”

Not having a father figure in his life, Hampton said there was a void in his life that he tried to fill “with drugs and alcohol.”

But he appeared to have found support to turn his life around with CityTeam and said his goal was to join the organization’s youth mentorship program for foster youth, and eventually become a social worker.

“I want to help the kids that were in my situation, and maybe just try to be a role model for them,” Hampton said. “I could be an example of what not to do — but also an example of how to get back on your feet.”

The incident marked the first on-duty shooting by the San Francisco Police Department since June 2018.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/man-shot-by-police-in-mission-district-struggled-with-homelessness-drug-addiction/

Relations between Germany and Russia have soured after a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent was murdered in broad daylight last August.  

The German government has already expelled two Russian diplomats.  The Russians will reciprocate in kind while denying any State involvement in this apparent political assassination.

Deutsche Welle 12.10.2019

Vladimir Putin has called a Georgian man murdered in Berlin a “bandit,” saying Moscow’s requests to extradite him weren’t heeded. Berlin says there’s evidence Russia is behind the killing, but Putin denied involvement.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin denied any involvement, he described the murdered man as a “bandit” and killer. He said that Russia’s requests to extradite him had not been heeded.

He added, however, that Moscow was ready to assist in the investigation and “do everything to help our German colleagues.” Putin also denied that there was a diplomatic “crisis” between the two countries.

Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel in happier times

In the diplomatic fallout over the murder of a Georgian man in Berlin,  President  Putin threatened to respond in kind to Germany’s move to expel two Russian diplomats.

“There are unwritten laws in such cases: You expelled our diplomats, we expel yours,” Putin said at a press conference on Monday night following talks on the Ukraine conflict.

Germany expelled the Russian Embassy employees last Wednesday over Moscow’s failure to cooperate in the murder investigation. Federal prosecutors said that evidence indicated Russian or Chechen state involvement in the murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had raised the issue with Putin during their bilateral talks in Paris, urging Moscow to cooperate.

“I expect that the Russian side will provide us with its information,” Merkel said. “In any case, I think that would be good.”

Read more: Did Russian intelligence hire a criminal to execute a Chechen dissident in Berlin?

Political murders ‘cannot be tolerated’

Bijan Djir-Sarai, foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), said he expected further clarification from both Russia and Germany — including the source of Berlin’s “suspicion that ultimately led to the expulsion of the two diplomats.”

“Political murders on EU soil cannot be tolerated under any circumstances,” Djir-Sarai said in an interview with DW. “The Russian government must now back up its words with actions to help the chief prosecutor solve this murder.”

Read more: German defense minister calls out Russia after Berlin murder

Jan Korte of the socialist Left party praised the government’s handling of the case, but stressed that the German-Russian relationship could do with improvement. He told DW there should be “reasonable cooperation,” especially given Germany’s historical responsibility — a reference to Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II and to the Red Army’s role in defeating Nazi forces.

What is the case?

In late August, 40-year-old Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot in an “execution-style” killing in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten. The suspect in the case carried out the shooting on a bicycle in broad daylight — shooting the victim in the head and chest. The suspect cycled to the nearby River Spree and tossed the weapon into the water.

Khangoshvili was an asylum-seeker of Chechen descent from Georgia. He fought against the Russians as a separatist during the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009. After the war, he reportedly worked in both Ukraine and Georgia against Russian interests.

He applied for asylum in Germany in 2016 following multiple attempts on his life in Georgia. However, his asylum application was denied and he was slated for deportation.

On Wednesday, German federal prosecutors said that there was “sufficient evidence” to indicate that the man’s murder may have been carried out on Russia’s behalf. The expulsions of the diplomats were announced the same day.

Russia condemned the move as “unfriendly” and said that suspicions of Russian state involvement were “baseless.”

https://www.dw.com/en/vladimir-putin-calls-georgian-murdered-in-berlin-a-bandit/a-51602615

As America descends on a daily basis into the Dystopian trauma brought upon us by the 63 million voters who put the train wreck of a human into the White House it is worth the time to remember what was before pandemonium became the norm.

Watching the Impeachment hearings and the reprehensible thug like behavior of the Republican enablers is more than depressing. It is a shattering commentary on what has become of America

Washington Post – David Ignatius 11.28.2019

Reading Susan Rice’s new memoir, “Tough Love,” is a reminder of two things: what a remarkably gifted, subtle but maddeningly distant man President Barack Obama was; and how people such as Rice who served him endured ceaseless public attacks in a country that was already on the ragged edge, though we didn’t yet know it.

Washington memoirs are most valuable for the parts that aren’t about what the author did at the office. That’s especially true of this account by the former national security adviser. The riveting passages are where Rice tells the private story that was hidden: her parents’ brutal divorce, her mother’s death, her children’s struggles with their mother’s public vilification.

 

Good memoirs always have a quality the Germans define as a bildungsroman, a novel of the principal character’s education in the world. That’s true with Rice’s tale: She was an African American who triumphed in the elite world of prep schools, Ivy League colleges and Rhodes scholarships. She embodied the intellect and ambition these institutions aspired to produce, even as she masked a shattered family where her parents “fought ugly and often,” she writes, and her home life was “like a civil war battlefield.”

President Obama, Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power

 

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, describes the distinction between “résumé virtues,” the tokens of meritocratic success, and “eulogy virtues” that truly define someone’s character. Rice’s story and, indeed, Obama’s combine both in a compelling but sometimes unstable mix.

 

For all her privilege, Rice was famously pugnacious. In 1999, as a young assistant secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s administration, she gave the finger, literally, to foreign policy mandarin Richard Holbrooke, in a roomful of diplomats. In 2008, campaigning as a surrogate for Obama, she threw roundhouse rhetorical punches at his rival, Sen. John McCain (creating a feud about which she repeatedly expresses regret).

 

But she learned from these mistakes, partly after she began taking some heavy punches herself. She quotes (approvingly) the withering critique offered then by her Clinton administration colleague, Ambassador Howard Wolpe: “You are overly directive and intimidate others so much that you quell dissent and stifle contrary advice.”

People who’ve worked with Rice in recent years would say she had to keep relearning that lesson of humility, and she’s still one of the few senior foreign-policy officials who regularly drops the f-bomb. Obama advised her at one point in the White House that her problem was that she lacked a poker face. That’s a telling criticism from Obama, who could be Mr. Cool to a fault.

 

Rice was battered during what should have been the zenith of her career because of the Benghazi “scandal,” which, as she retells it, seems an even more bizarre piece of Republican character assassination than it did at the time. She went on five network Sunday shows to explain the tragedy that had happened there, using “talking points” that had been prepared by the CIA, and was so intensely demonized that her mother and daughter both were badly traumatized.

 

The Benghazi fallout changed Rice’s life, probably for the better. She withdrew from consideration as secretary of state in Obama’s second term and instead became national security adviser. And she learned to subordinate her own public persona. She describes her role overseeing the National Security Council staff as playing “point guard,” a player that “is rarely the showboat or the high scorer . . . but is essential to the cohesion and efficacy of the team.”

Rice acknowledges that the Obama administration’s foreign policy record was “mixed.” The flaws were perhaps most evident in the inability to find a policy that would avert the slaughter in Syria. “My heart and my conscience will forever ache over Syria,” she writes. The larger problem, she explains, is that “we suffered from a mismatch between our stated objectives and the means we were prepared to employ to achieve them — in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and, arguably, Afghanistan.” She has that right.

 

Behind Rice is the extraordinary figure of Obama, whom she acknowledges was “consistently the smartest guy in the room” whenever the NSC met. It’s impossible not to feel nostalgic for his intelligence and personal reticence these days, as the country is buffeted by a president whose personal qualities are a reverse image of his predecessor.

Obama, lean, austere, almost professorial in his demeanor, was a man who despised flattery and liked to pass the time playing cards, watching sports on television and thinking about how best to make a difference in the world. How far away that moment seems this Thanksgiving week.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/susan-rices-memoir-prompts-nostalgia-for-the-obama-years/2019/11/27/833a2c66-1153-11ea-9cd7-a1becbc82f5e_story.html

The Germans have a good idea on how to save energy during the Holiday season.

Next. Eliminate Christmas tress as an another way to help the environment. Think of all the forests which would beautify the plant.

Deutsche Welle 12.8.2019

As part of efforts to combat climate change, a majority of Germans say they’re in favor of scaling down or completely abandoning their Christmas lights this year, according to a new survey.

A majority of Germans say they would consider scaling down their Christmas lights to protect the climate, a survey released on Sunday said. A total of 57% of those surveyed said they would reduce Christmas lighting or even do without it in the future, according to the survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the German news agency DPA.  

Of the respondents, 11% said they would make do without any lights this year due to climate concerns, while 10% said they would do so in the future. But 35% said turning off the lights was not an option for them.

Read more: Don’t buy a Christmas tree, plant one

Opinion is split on whether there should be fewer lights on buildings and in the streets in general, with 44% both for and against the idea. Having lights up during the festive season is appreciated by a large majority of 79% in Germany. Almost seven out of 10 people surveyed plan to decorate their homes with electric Christmas lights this year.

Environmental concerns

Christmas lights are a common feature during the festival season every year, with the lights wrapped around homes, streets and trees. But scientists have warned that the lighting does have an environmental cost.

Combating climate change has been high on the global agenda, thanks in part to the activism of Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg.

Read more: ‘Total economic transformation’ — getting from here to there on climate change

Currently, representatives from all over the world are meeting in Madrid for the United Nations COP25 climate conference to discuss measures to decrease carbon emissions as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6% every year, the world will fail to meet the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, a report from the UN Environment Program warned in November.

https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-majority-of-germans-support-ditching-christmas-lights/a-51576565

San Francisco Police shot a civilian in the City’s Mission District on Saturday morning. This is the first SFPD shooting since June 2018.

The District Attorney’s office is currently investigating several shootings by San Francisco officers. To date none have been charged with a crime.

District Attorney elect Chesa Boudin, who has vowed to closely monitor SFPD, will assume responsibility for prosecution of police involved shootings when he takes office next month.

Mission Local 12.7.2019

Mission Local’s Julian Mark is on the scene at 23rd and Mission, where, around 8:30 a.m., police shot a man multiple times — the first police shooting since June of last year.

The man who police shot is in critical condition, according to Brent Andrew, a San Francisco General Hospital spokesman. One San Francisco Police officer, he said, was also present at the hospital, but Andrew could not state his condition.

An eyewitness who said he’s working a construction job not far from the site told Mark he witnessed the entire event. The witness, who declined to be identified, said that he observed a “clearly” intoxicated man from his truck at around 8:30 in the morning. Not long thereafter, a San Francisco Police Department SUV rolled up.

The witness says two officers chased the man about the intersection on foot. He said the officers pepper-sprayed the man and may have applied other less-lethal devices as well.

The man did not appear to be armed; the witness recalled “his arms waving around.” Some manner of physical interaction ensued. During this time, while the man was on the ground, the witness says he was shot by both of the officers. The witness counted eight to 10 shots.

Following the shooting, the witness said an officer pointed a gun in his direction, and he ducked. He described the shooting as “a broad daylight execution.”

Mark is on the scene and will continue reporting; Mission is blocked between 22nd and 24th, and the Mission and 23rd intersection is sealed.

Police spokesman Officer Robert Rueca gave the following synopsis on the scene: At 8:34 a.m. officers responded to a call of a hot prowl burglary in the area of 23rd and Capp Streets. They encountered a suspect who matched the description. When they encountered the suspect, he assaulted an officer with a weapon. An officer-involved-shooting occurred. One suspect and one officer were transported to a hospital and are in unknown medical condition. 

Update 11:29 a.m.

Lisa Ruth, the store manager at Fallas Discount Stores, previously Factory 2-U, said that she was talking with the store’s security guard just before 9 a.m. when they heard “eight pops.”

They turned to look and went to the intersection of 23^rd and Mission streets to see a man lying on the ground. Officers had taken his clothes off and a swarm of officers was trying to resuscitate him. She did not see a weapon nearby.

However, one of the officers nearby appeared to have a broken nose, a bloody face and bruise marks around his neck, she said.

Ruth said she recognized two officers – one a light short Latino and the other an African American – because they had patrolled in the area and had helped her out in the past. They’re “young kids,” she said.

“Honestly it’s the Mission,” she said. “It’s sad this happened but there are people who are on the street who try and hurt me all the time. “

Another source who asked not to be identified and works nearby at Smile BBQ at 22nd and Mission streets said that five minutes before the shooting, a man had come by and smashed their window. It’s unclear if the two incidents are related.

The last police shooting in San Francisco occurred in June,2018 in North Beach. So far, no officers have been charged in police shootings, but District Attorney-elect Chesa Boudin has promised to take a harder look at each case. The DA’s office, which right now is headed up by Interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus, is for the first time ever the lead investigator in five concurrent investigations — also by the SFPD’s homicide detectives, the SFPD’s internal affairs division, the Department of Police Accountability, and the San Francisco Medical Examiner.

As has become standard practice, the SFPD will hold a town hall meeting within 10 days of Saturday’s incident to describe their version of the events and the preliminary results of the investigations. In the past, police have shown officers’ body-worn camera footage at town hall meetings.

https://missionlocal.org/2019/12/eyewitness-describes-troubling-police-shooting-at-23rd-and-mission/

For all the talk about Police reform, there is still a pathetic lack of restraints on behavior by cops.  The Courts, the media and the public at large have bought into the benevolent attitudes toward law enforcement.

 The death  of an innocent man by local Sheriffs in Sonoma County is another horrific example of police abuse and misconduct.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.6.2019

A 52-year-old man who was mistaken for a stolen car suspect and died after a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy used a neck-hold to cut off blood to his brain, had difficulty walking, talking and breathing due to multiple health problems, friends and family told The Chronicle on Tuesday.

David Glen Ward, of Petaluma, died last Wednesday after two sheriff’s deputies and two Sebastopol police officers mistook him for a vehicle thief and chased him in his green Honda Civic, which Ward had reported stolen three days earlier.

Deputies and officers surrounded the car after a seven-minute, 70-mph chase ended on a dead-end road south of Sebastopol and a struggle ensued to get Ward out of the car, according to the Santa Rosa Police Department, which is conducting an investigation into his death.

One deputy deployed a Taser and another used what is known as a carotid restraint or carotid choke-hold on Ward, who was allegedly resisting. Ward became unresponsive as he was removed from the vehicle, officials said. He later died at the hospital.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for Santa Rosa police said officials are investigating the timeline of the struggle, including how close together the Taser and carotid hold were used.

“It’s kind of tough to say,” Lt. Dan Marincik said. “They occurred very close to each other.”

People close to Ward expressed doubts Tuesday that he would have put up much resistance based on his limited physical abilities.

Catherine Aguilera, 63, said her half-brother was disabled from a crash involving a drunk driver roughly 20 years ago. In that accident, Ward was driving a motorcycle in the Petaluma area when he was struck and thrown “quite a distance,” said Aguilera, a resident of Monroe, Wash.

Ward suffered head and back injuries, rendering him dependent on a caretaker. He moved in with his father at a rural property on Mill Street in Bloomfield, an unincorporated area in Sonoma County. After their father’s death four years ago, Aguilera said, Ward became depressed, lonely and isolated.

He welcomed the “down and out” into his home, she said, perhaps to his detriment.

“He had some connections with people in the community that didn’t have his best interest in mind,” Aguilera said.

Rene Gutierrez, who lived in a cottage next to Ward and had been helping him cope with various physical ailments for about a year, said he introduced Ward to a man he identified as “D.” Ward let “D” stay at the house, Gutierrez said.

“He schmoozed his way right in,” he said. “Then he brought his girlfriend. That’s when the trouble started.”

On Nov. 24, Gutierrez said he heard the sounds of a fight coming from Ward’s house. He entered and saw “D” beating Ward with a handgun. The couple fled in Ward’s car, Gutierrez said, and Ward reported it stolen. Authorities confirmed they received a stolen car report regarding the Honda Civic three days before Thanksgiving. The suspect was said to be armed.

Two days after the car was stolen, Gutierrez said, a mutual acquaintance told Ward that the car was in Santa Rosa and drove him there to retrieve it. Ward was driving home when Sebastopol police and sheriff’s deputies initiated the stop on his vehicle, Aguilera said.

Ward was not using an oxygen tank when officers approached him, according to police. It remains unclear whether his oxygen tank was in the car. Authorities said Ward refused to get out of the car and asked deputies why they were “harassing” him and stated he was the “victim” in the situation, Lt. Marincik said.

Beyond that, Marincik said, “communication was very minimal.”

Deputies tried to pull Ward out of the car after he rolled down his window and bit the officers, Marincik said.

Sgt. Juan Valencia, of the Sheriff’s Office, said there is body camera video of the chase and struggle, which will be released within 45 days of the incident.

The use of the carotid restraint, in which an officer squeezes a subject’s carotid arteries and cuts off blood to the brain, is controversial and has been banned by some law enforcement agencies. San Francisco prohibited the hold in 2016, but Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies are allowed to use it.

According to the office’s use-of-force policy, the hold “may be effective in restraining a violent or combative individual,” but it cautions that the move can cause injury and should be limited to specific circumstances.

“It’s used — I shouldn’t say commonly,” Valencia said. “It’s one of the tools that we have for taking people safely into custody.”

Aguilera said she has read reports of what happened and puzzled over the fact that four law enforcement officers swarmed the vehicle of her brother, who “wasn’t a big, strong, healthy guy.”

“The whole thing just raises thorny questions, and it just is so very violent what happened,” Aguilera said. “I mean, I would be afraid to get out of the car, too. It sounds frightening, and if he was having problems breathing, I could see where that would contribute to him not complying.”

The two sheriff’s deputies who were at the scene when the pursuit ended were a part of a line-of-duty shooting in 2017, and one of the police officers was a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit, according to court records.

Sonoma County sheriff’s Deputy Charlie Blount, who has been with the force since Feb. 7, 2000, and Deputy Jason Little, who has been with the office since Jan. 28, 2002, were investigated in 2017 for shooting at a man who had reportedly assaulted someone and had an outstanding warrant. The man suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and both deputies were cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

Another officer who was at the scene last Wednesday, Andrew Bauer, of the Sebastopol Police Department, tried to get a 58-year-old man out of his home in November 2014 and “became aggressive” when the man refused, grabbing his right arm and twisting it behind his back, according to a lawsuit.

Bauer allegedly slammed the man’s face into the arm of a recliner, breaking the man’s glasses and slicing the man’s nose. The man was never told why the officers were at his home or that he was under arrest, according to the complaint. A $65,000 settlement with the man was reached in September 2015, according to court records.

All four of the deputies and officers in the incident involving Ward have been placed on administrative leave as Santa Rosa police investigate.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Petaluma-man-who-died-after-sheriff-s-14879676.php#photo-18699803

Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, gets it perfectly.

Regrettably and most telling the San Francisco 49ers radio broadcast station has deleted the racially offensive clip by announcer Tim Ryan regarding Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson from its website. Figures. Out of Earshot, out of mind.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.5.2019

The San Francisco 49ers have done the politically correct thing by suspending the announcer who made these on the air comments. What impact, if any, the suspension will have on the entire issue of race relations and cultural sensitivity is another matter entirely.

For sure the story will drive coverage of professional football during the next several days.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.4.2019

The 49ers have suspended Tim Ryan, their radio color analyst, over comments he made on a Bay Area sports talk radio show Monday in which he said Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson (pictured above), who is black, is exceptional at faking handoffs because of his “dark skin color with a dark football.”

Team officials said in a statement to The Chronicle on Wednesday that they are “disappointed” in Ryan’s comments and are suspending him for the upcoming game.

Jackson gained most of his yards running a zone-read type offense, in which he frequently fakes a handoff to a running back before keeping the ball to run himself.

“He’s really good at that fake, Lamar Jackson, but when you consider his dark skin color with a dark football with a dark uniform, you could not see that thing,” Ryan said on air. “I mean you literally could not see when he was in and out of the mesh point and if you’re a half step slow on him in terms of your vision forget about it, he’s out of the gate.”

Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociologist, longtime civil rights activist and 49ers consultant, listened to the radio clip and was particularly troubled that Ryan’s comments perpetuated the bigotry involving black players and particularly the quarterback position.

“I know Tim and he is not of a maleficent mind relative to these types of issues — but of course that does not mean that he gets or should get a ‘pass’ regarding his comments on Lamar Jackson and assigning ANY dimension of Lamar’s undeniable brilliance at QB to his skin color — a raw and sensitive assessment and assertion not only because it is profoundly obtuse and ignorant on its face and carries implications that I’m certain were not intended, but because skin color has been such a factor in rationalizing denial of Black athletes’ opportunities to play the QB position over most of the NFL’s 100 years of existence,” Edwards wrote in an email to The Chronicle before Ryan was suspended.

“But again, no less damaging than the fact of Tim’s sentiments are their implications. In a game that is so competitive and where ‘winning edges and even slight advantages’ tend to be critically important if not determinant, are we really to believe that White QB’s are at a strategic disadvantage? Should the 2020 NFL player draft select for dark-skinned, athletic QB prospects in search of the next Lamar Jackson? Or maybe this puts a premium on QB’s — irrespective of race — who can play well wearing the right color gloves — gloves that will give them the right hand hue to camouflage the football on handoffs.”

Edwards called the incident a “learning moment” and hoped Ryan would apologize and put the comments behind him.

“And then, let’s move on,” Edwards said. “Jimmy (Garoppolo) and LJ could very well lead their teams into the the NFC and AFC playoffs respectively, and perhaps even the Super Bowl — and the color of the hand that handles the football in contrast to who is simply the better QB will be of absolutely no consequence.”

“We hold Tim to a high standard as a representative of our organization and he must be more thoughtful with his words. Tim has expressed remorse in a public statement and has also done so with us privately,” 49ers officials said. “We know Tim as a man of high integrity and are confident he will grow and learn from this experience.”

In a statement to The Chronicle, Ryan said, “I regret my choice of words in trying to describe the conditions of the game. Lamar Jackson is an MVP-caliber player and I respect him greatly. I want to sincerely apologize to him and anyone else I offended.”

The 49ers said they called the Ravens to “extend our apologies and assure them the matter is not being taken lightly.”

Ryan, known for his baritone voice and enthusiastic broadcasting, is a former defensive lineman who played four seasons for the Bears (1990-93). He worked as a Fox TV analyst covering NFL games for 12 seasons before joining the 49ers as a radio color commentator in 2014.

On Monday, he spent most of the 22-minute segment breaking down Sunday’s game and complimenting the Ravens and Jackson’s play. Speaking from Florida, where the 49ers are staying this week ahead of their game in New Orleans on Sunday, he focused on Jackson at the start and end of the segment.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/49ers/article/49ers-suspend-broadcaster-Tim-Ryan-for-saying-14882642.php#photo-18706681

The Russians interfered in the American election in 2016.  

In Germany the Russians political activities are more in line with a true gangster mentality.

Eliminate your enemies in any place by any means necessary.

Given the historical enmity between the two countries it comes as no surprise the Russians have no qualms about committing murder in broad daylight in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten.

During our 2017 and 2018 trips to Berlin we stayed across the street and I would run each morning in the Kleiner Tiergarten.

Deutsche Welle 12.3.2019

The strange, August 25, 2019 midday murder in Berlin drew speculation of Russian involvement from the outset. Germany’s chief prosecutor is now reportedly involved, raising the stakes for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

Germany’s attorney general is reportedly taking over investigations into the murder of a Chechen asylum-seeker in Berlin amid suspicion of Russian state involvement.

The attorney general, who handles crimes against the German state, is expected to officially announce its handling of the case in the coming days, magazine Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday.

The move would mean there is legitimate evidence that Russia contracted a murder on German soil, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to take a robust stance against Moscow, observers and lawmakers told DW.

Konstantin von Notz, a lawmaker with Germany’s Green party specializing in intelligence services, told DW that if federal prosecutors collect enough evidence to definitively say that the case is a state-sanctioned killing, it would constitute “a scandal that must have consequences.”

“The Cold War is obviously not over, rather there may be intelligence activities like never before,” he said. Germany, however, must know all the details before taking action, he warned.

“It’s not the first murder of its kind, and if you don’t take a hard-line stance against the Russians, it won’t be the last murder,” Gustav Gressel, senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin, told DW.

The fact that there’s no “smoking gun” in the case makes it trickier to prosecute, ECFR’s Gressel told DW.

Strong connections

The “execution-style” killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, 40, in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten in late August drew suspicion of Russian involvement from the outset.

The suspected perpetrator, a 49-year-old Russian national, is believed to have carried out a drive-by shooting on bicycle in broad daylight. Authorities apprehended him shortly thereafter and later found the bicycle, a wig and the weapon used in the murder ditched in the Spree River.

Independent investigations conducted by the research network Bellingcat and others revealed evidence of a foreign state connection, though Russia denied its involvement. The name given on both the perpetrator’s passport and visa application had never been listed in Russian databases, while supposed coworkers in Germany had no recollection of him having ever worked with them.

Tsatieva believes Moscow is responsible for her ex-husband’s murder

Read more: How Russian media are reporting on the murder of a Chechen man in Berlin

Khangoshvili’s ex-wife, Manana Tsatieva, told DW she believes her late husband’s personal history likely motivated the attack. A Georgian veteran of the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, Khangoshvili fought against the Russians as a separatist and reportedly worked thereafter in both Georgia and Ukraine against Russian interests.

He fled to Germany in 2016 after multiple attempts against his life in Georgia, Tsatieva said, but was denied asylum and was scheduled for deportation. She remains convinced Russia is responsible for her ex-husband’s death but is hopeful that German authorities will bring the perpetrator to justice.

“We were warned that this would happen eventually,” she said.

Cold War ‘not over’

On Tuesday, Stephanie Krüger, a spokesperson for Germany’s Justice Ministry, declined to share more information with reporters about the case, saying only that “the attorney general’s office has been in very close communication with investigative authorities in Berlin since the attack.” The attorney general’s office told DW it could not confirm if and when it would take over the case.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-investigate-russia-ties-to-georgian-murdered-in-berlin/a-51516724

Today it is the German military with officers engaging in extremist activity. Yesterday it was the University of Georgia in America.

Give the Germans some credit.  When these neo-Nazis are found, the government takes quick action to discard them from military service and public life.

Under the umbrella of “free speech” this does not happen in America.

Deutsche Welle 1.1.2019

The Bundeswehr is set to suspend an officer in an elite military unit over suspected ties to right-wing extremism. Two fellow soldiers have also been accused of flashing the Hitler salute.

Two men are accused of flashing the Nazi-era Hitler salute at a private party that was hosted by the suspected KSK officer.

A new neo-Nazi scandal has erupted in the German military, this time in its Special Forces Command (KSK), according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

An officer in the elite military unit is strongly suspected of involvement in the right-wing extremist scene, the paper reported on Sunday.

Read more: Europe’s right-wing extremists try recruiting from police, army

Suspicions arose following a monthslong intelligence operation by the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). The officer, who has served several tours of duty in Afghanistan, was being covertly investigated by the service after an informant tipped them off to the man’s activities.

MAD recommended that the officer be removed from the Special Forces Command immediately and barred from serving in the Bundeswehr. He is due to leave his post this week.

Two other soldiers in the Special Forces Command are also on the radar of Bundeswehr investigators for right-wing extremist activities.

One of the soldiers was suspended from duty a few weeks ago and is no longer allowed to wear a uniform, Bild am Sonntag reported. The other soldier is still under investigation.

Military has ‘responsibility’ to remove radicals

Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the military is taking the cases “very, very seriously” and vowed tough action against extremists found in its ranks.

“Anyone in the Bundeswehr who appears to be a radical has no place in the Bundeswehr,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said Sunday during a visit to Kosovo.

She added that the Special Forces Command in particular has a “special responsibility to counter any tendency toward radicalism.”

KSK is particularly responsible for rescuing people who have been kidnapped, taken hostage or are facing terrorist threats abroad.

Pressure is mounting on the German military, with numerous soldiers in its ranks accused of right-wing extremism in recent months.

Christof Gramm, the head of MAD, recently reported that they are currently investigating 20 soldiers in the elite unit over suspected links to right-wing extremists.

Concerns over right-wing extremists or neo-Nazis within the ranks of the Bundeswehr heightened after an officer was accused in April 2017 of planning a far-right terror attack that he hoped would be mistaken for Islamist extremism.

https://www.dw.com/en/neo-nazi-scandal-hits-german-elite-military-unit/a-51490089