Category: Uncategorized

Trump says “I don’t care. America comes first.”as Syria implodes

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.7.2024

It’s a scary thought that Donald Trump will hold the fate of the planet in his hands, again.

Donald Trump’s the ultimate transactional guy. His understanding of global events only goes so far as his bank account. If there’s nothing in it for him his attitude is “I don’t care.”

If this were an episode of The Apprentice, Trump would be telling Syrian strongman Bashar Al Assad, “You’re fired!!!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad

I guess Trump never wanted to built a resort or casino in Damascus.

Trump may mouth the words “America First.” The reality In Trump’s world is, “Me, First.”

Excerpted from Associated Press 12.7.2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military should stay out of the fast-escalating conflict in Syria, where a dramatic rebel offensive reached the capital and threatened the rule of Syria’s Russian- and Iranian-allied president. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump declared on social media.

Trump’s comments on the dramatic rebel push were his first since Syrian rebels launched their advance late last month. They came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.

In his post, Trump said Bashar Al Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.

As world leaders watched the stunning rebel advance, with its potential to alter the balance of power in the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser separately stressed that the Biden administration had no intention of intervening.

Trump says US should stay out of fighting in Syria as opposition forces occupy Damascus and Bashar Al Assad flees the country

“The United States is not going to … militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” Jake Sullivan told an audience in California.

Sullivan said the U.S. would keep acting as necessary to keep the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive but with sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting openings presented by the fighting.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-syria-biden-administration-rebels-assad-72015f143aa6b40bb62c09724c71e34f

Iconic singer Umm Kulthum

What’s democracy gotta do with it? Don’t ask SF Sup. Connie Chan

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.4.2024

The arrogance of Connie Chan is breath taking in piously claiming “She will invite proponents of of Prop. K to discuss if there is room for compromise.“

All San Franciscans who care about the environment and people’s democracy need to keep a vigilant eye on Supervisor Connie Chan.

This is the local ambitious politician who drove to victory as an environmentalist four years ago. Then proceeded to stiff the “progressives” who foisted her into office by 125 votes. Becoming the most car-centric and anti-environmental elected official in San Francisco.

Connie Chan’s hypocrisy is mind boggling.

It’s obvious that just reelected Supervisor Connie Chan has forgotten who won the citywide vote creating Great Highway Park by with a 55 percent majority.

Connie’s comment that she “will hold proponents accountable” flies in the face of reality.

Connie should be telling the opponents of Prop. K to stand down and shut up.

The people Connie should hold “accountable” are the screaming cadres of entitled motorists, a main prop in her successful reelection effort. Connie needs to tell these whiners to accept the will of the 55 percent majority. Connie has catered and bowed to the motorists since the day she took office as a Supervisor in January 2021.

Great Highway Park is coming. Soon. The message to Prop K opponents is simple. Deal with It.

Say, what??!! Sup. Chan “will hold proponents of Prop. K accountable the changes they proposed.”

The citizens of San Francisco cannot ever forget that it was Supervisor Connie Chan who has opposed Great Highway Park ever since it was closed to cars in spring 2020.

The citizens of San Francisco cannot ever forget that it was Supervisor Connie Chan who almost single handedly destroy JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park. It’s a documented record that Connie Chan met with the lobbyist for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco numerous times in their nearly million dollar effort to destroy JFK Promenade.

Ethical conflict. Connie Chan anti-Car Free JFK Sup must put the brakes on

Pathetic SF motorists sink to the depths of Recall selfishness

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.3.2024

PATHETIC LOSERS ALL OF YOU.

My message to the group of San Francisco west side spoiled rotten entitled motorists who are starting a Recall petition against Supervisor Joel Engardio.

Sore losers. All of them. Unhappy and refusing to accept the fact that the voters Citywide approved Proposition K on November 5th, 2024 with a 55 percent majority.

The creation of a Great Highway Park along the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco.

“Your involvement means the world to us, and we’re so grateful to have you on board. Together, we can make a real difference for District 4 and all of San Francisco.” The so called “world” is that of the spoiled entitled motorists. A group of sore losers who refuse to accept the 55 percent YES Citywide vote on Prop K..If you are unhappy with Joel Engardio vote him out in 2026. This misguided waste of taxpayer money when the City is staring down an 800M deficit is selfishness personified.

Quoted Language in blue border from the Recall website  recallengardio.com and my response in the email seeking support for the Supervisor Joel Engardio Recall

Excerpted from the San Francisco Standard 12.3.2024

A group of Sunset residents is launching a campaign to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio over his support of Proposition K, the ballot measure to close part of the Great Highway that was successful in the November election but roundly rejected by his district constituents.

A recall petition letter, filed Tuesday morning with the Department of Elections, accuses Engardio of violating his “campaign promises of transparency” and betraying voters in his district. 

Prop. K passed with 55% of the vote. But on the west side, including Engardio’s District 4, which encompasses the stretch of the coastal roadway affected by the measure, 64% voted against it.

About 80 residents signed the initial recall petition. The website recallengardio.com went live Monday night.

Supervisors Joel Engardio and Myrna Melgar at Prop K – Great Highway Park rally – 7.27.2024

Photos – Lee Heidhues

Frank Zappa. The bicycle before it became a political punching bag

SAN FRANCISCO – THANKSGIVING DAY 2024

Lee Heidhues 11.28.2024

The bicycle is now the motorists favorite political punching bag.

There was a time when the bicycle in America was a curiosity piece and the favorite delivery vehicle for another American icon, the morning newspaper.

Back in 1963 Frank Zappa, soon thereafter to become famous with his group The Mothers of Invention, appeared on The Steve Allen Show. His instruments of choice were a pair of bicycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa#

Frank Zappa earned enough money to allow him in 1963 to stage a concert of his orchestral music and to broadcast and record it.[11]: 74  In March of that same year Zappa appeared on Steve Allen‘s syndicated late night show playing a bicycle as a musical instrument[26][27]: 35–36 — using drum sticks and a bow borrowed from the band’s bass player he proceeded to pluck, bang, and bow the spokes of the bike, producing strange, comical sounds from his newfound instrument. – Excerpted from WIkipedia

A couple of years later Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention became musical icons. Their perhaps most famous album was the 1966 Freak Out! Which included the overtly political song “Trouble Everyday.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_Out! Composed after the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.

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

It’s Nuts. No Nutcracker Ballet in San Francisco? Union won’t dance

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 11.27.2024

The arts world in San Francisco has gone nuts. The much beloved Nutcracker Ballet may crack up this year much to the dismay of patrons of all ages.

SF Ballet’s Sensory Friendly Dance Workshop 2019 // © Gulsum N

It comes as a shock when I read the news that The Nutcracker may go a-glimmering this winter. Management and the unions are seemingly unable to reconcile their differences.

I am well familiar with The Nutcracker. It’s been an integral part of my family and cultural life.

Growing up in Pacific Heights, attending Town School.

The Town School annual Fall 2024 – About Town

Later living in Sausalito where I graduated from Tamalpais High in Mill Valley, my entire family was fully immersed in this holiday extravaganza. My mother worked at the San Francisco Ballet School. It seems every child with even a modest interest in dance was given a bit part in the cast. My sisters included.

Every holiday season The Nutcracker Suite by Peter Tchaikovsky blared forth in our home for weeks. It was a tradition that our family would go to the San Francisco Opera House on Christmas Eve morning to watch The Nutcracker Ballet.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 11.27.2024

San Francisco Ballet’s contract for dancers and stage managers expires on Dec. 6 — the same day the company’s highly anticipated “Nutcracker” production is set to open — raising questions about whether the beloved holiday tradition will go ahead as planned.

S.F. Ballet’s “Nutcracker”

After five months of tense negotiations, the American Guild of Musical Artists says it has made limited progress in securing a new collective bargaining agreement for its members that addresses important issues like wages, safety and working conditions.

In an open letter posted on Tuesday, Nov. 26, union members said they were repeatedly told that the company’s budget does not allow for the requested changes.

“Management’s refusal to meaningfully engage with us risks the very foundation of what makes San Francisco Ballet one of the most respected ballet companies in the world,” the letter read.

San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, left, talks with Yurie Pascarella and Dede Wilseyafter arriving at City Hall to attend the San Francisco Ballet 2024 Opening Night Gala on Jan. 24. Laura Morton/Special to the Chronicle

The union argues that current compensation classifies many dancers as low-income, as defined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, in one of the country’s most expensive cities, and that the company’s refusal to meet their demands could threaten the future of the world-renowned institution.

The main points of contention include higher wages, guaranteed dancer positions to match the heavy workload, and protections for stage managers, who are often unpaid for overtime and work under strenuous conditions. The union also criticized the company’s use of unpaid student dancers from the San Francisco Ballet School to fill half the cast, though Ballet management says it has been long-standing practice to enlist students for minor corps roles.

Members of the San Francisco Ballet dance the role of snowflakes in Act I during a matinee performance of San Francisco Ballet’s “Nutcracker” at War Memorial Opera House on Dec.11, 2022. The company’s contract for dancers and stage managers expires on Dec. 6 — the same day the company’s “Nutcracker” production is set to open — raising questions about whether the holiday tradition will go on as planned.Laura Morton/Special to the Chronicle 2022

“We deserve a workplace that values professional standards — not one that relies on unpaid labor to cut costs,” the union said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/san-francisco-ballet-contract-nutcracker-19946395.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL2VudGVydGFpbm1lbnQvYXJ0aWNsZS9zYW4tZnJhbmNpc2NvLWJhbGxldC1jb250cmFjdC1udXRjcmFja2VyLTE5OTQ2Mzk1LnBocA%3D%3D&time=MTczMjc2MTUzMzc1NA%3D%3D&rid=OTJhM2RhZWItNDMzYy00ZjMxLTgyMTQtZTU2ZjE2NDIzNDRl&sharecount=MA%3D%3D

Will Germany arrest Bibi? Indicted Netanyahu in cross-hairs of ICC.

SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 11.24.2024

Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal. What will Germany do if The Israeli Prime Minister sets foot in Germany?

The German government is one of 124 countries who are members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

Germany was perpetrator of the Holocaust which saw the extermination of six million, mostly Jews, during the Nazi reign of terror (1933-1945), Germany is in a tough position.

Since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel, which resulted in the deaths 1200 people, Netanyahu has led the ferocious reprisal against the people of Gaza. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Supplied with American weapons.

There is no doubt unrepentant and compromising Netanyahu must be held accountable.

What will Germany do to hold the accused leader of the Jewish state liable for his war crimes?

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.22.2024

The German minority government made up of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens would definitely have preferred to avoid the issue, even if officials should have seen it coming a long time ago: The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The court said it had found sufficient evidence that both were complicit in crimes against humanity and war crimes as part of Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza. The military campaign began after Gaza-based group Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. An arrest warrant was also issued for Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif with the same charges, even though Israel says it killed Deif in July.

Germany is regarded as one of the biggest supporters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which began its activities in July 2002 and is supported by 124  states. However, it does not include globally important states such as the US or Russia.

What is important in the current case is that the court has no means of enforcing the arrest warrants itself. Member states — including Germany — are formally obliged to take wanted persons into custody should they cross their borders. 

https://www.dw.com/en/would-benjamin-netanyahu-be-arrested-in-germany/a-70863500

A hike through the Atmospheric River has its reward in the Kitchen

SAN FRANCISCO – RICHMOND DISTRICT

Lee Heidhues 11.22.2024

The Atmospheric River hit San Francisco, again. With a vengeance. After a three year absence.

A stormy fitting deluge on the 61st anniversary of the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas. Perhaps the higher spirits are sending us a reminder on this sad date. One of America’s darkest and most traumatic events in its violent history.

How do we remember the day? Trudging through the storm soaked streets near the Pacific Ocean to pick up our weekly cornucopia of fresh food from the San Francisco Marin Food Bank.

Liz maneuvered our well traveled shopping cart through the avenues and the flooded intersections to the distribution center at George Washington High School, several blocks from our home.

Liz with her heavy load of fruits, vegetables and a roasting chicken for Thanksgiving
Liz, the intrepid photographer, takes video of a flooded intersection

Arriving home we spent a long time discarding our storm soaked garments and unpacking the shopping cart.

What a collection of holiday fresh food
A soggy mass of clothing

Of course there is pleasurable result, courtesy of Liz’s culinary expertise to reward our trek through the Atmospheric River.

Liz home cookin’ delight. Baked potatoes with cottage cheese, cheddar cheese and tomatoes. All baked in the oven
Lee thoroughly enjoys Liz baked potato creation and a bottle of Lagunitas Brewery beer

The Third Reich of Dreams. Coming to our neighborhood

The Third Reich of Dreams. How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism

SAN FRANCISCO RICHMOND DISTRICT

Lee Heidhues 11.20.2024

After 22 percent of my neighbors (179 allegedly intelligent people) in our precinct voted for Trump I have been thinking hard about what the future will bring on January 20, 2025.

Trump was President in 2019 when I posted a story about “The Third Reich of Dreams: How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism.” Well, terrifyingly here we are again. In America and in my very own neighborhood in a City which likes to think itself “Progressive” and “Tolerant.” I have learned it’s not true.

Street camera for surveillance. Omnipresent in San Francisco 2024

I need not look far. I am surrounded by neighbors with surveillance cameras and high intensity security lights. These insidious tools monitor the comings and goings of everyone and at night pollute the sky. What are these people fearful of in our quiet neighborhood? The families of raccoons who forage in their trash cans?

Perhaps this is why the classic book “The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation” published in 1966 and long out of print is being republished next April.

A warning shot about the dangers of rampant paranoia. Only this time it’s not Nazi Germany. It’s right here on my block.

Excerpted from The New York Review of Books 12.5.2024

Born in 1907 in Forst, Germany, a town near the Polish border, Charlotte Beradt was a young journalist who reported on women’s issues and other aspects of German social and political life for the weekly journal Die Weltbühne.In 1933 Beradt, a committed communist and a Jew, found herself suddenly unemployed. As the Nazi movement grew, she began having nightmares every night.

She wondered whether other people were having similar dreams. She started to ask people about their dreams, discreetly: “I asked the dressmaker, the neighbor, an aunt, a milkman, a friend, almost always without revealing my purpose.” She did this because “dreams like this should be preserved for posterity,” and she wrote down hundreds before fleeing to New York in 1939. There she worked as a hairdresser for fellow émigrés, sometimes spending time with her friend Hannah Arendt.

In 1966 she finally brought her collection together, arranging the dreams by theme, offering her own light commentary, and bolstering each short chapter with epigraphs from the likes of Kafka and Brecht and Arendt herself. She gave the resulting slim volume a memorable title: The Third Reich of Dreams. The book had some modest success but never penetrated the American consciousness like the work of Arendt, perhaps because Beradt offers us not a complex hermeneutics of totalitarianism but rather a quite straightforward picture of the psychological effects of propaganda and manipulation upon a populace.

The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation

by Charlotte Beradt, translated from the German by Damion Searls, with a foreword by Dunya Mikhail

Princeton University Press, 124 pp., $24.95 (to be published in April 2025)

Politics by the Pacific. Chan win was driven by Car Centric Connie

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 11.20.2024

Chan acknowledged that her vocal opposition to Proposition K, a controversial ballot measure to close the Great Highway, may have helped her win by demonstrating to the district that she’s not an ideologue and will fight for the community. – SF Standard 11.18.2024

There’s no need for Connie “The Car” Chan to be shy. She drove her car to victory on election day.

During the past four years Connie has been the best friend of the entitled motorists in San Francisco.

Her car centric advocacy nearly destroyed JFK Promenade in 2022. Her strident opposition to Proposition K may have played well with her D1 constituents. Fortunately, 54.73 percent of the electorate citywide were having none of Connie’s car love and voted through Great Highway Park by 36,595 votes.

Advocates for the just enacted Great Highway Park need to be vigilant.  It’s safe to assume that Connie “The Car” Chan will do everything she can to ignore the will of San Francisco voters. Supervisor Chan will throw up every administrative roadblock at her disposal to impede the banishment of cars and slowdown implementation of Great Highway Park.

Connie the environmentalist in 2020

Artwork by Liz Heidhues

Reactionaries in Germany, Trump USA and my block in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 11.16.2024

A year ago we were in Berlin. Who would have thought that 12 months later Donald Trump would be preparing to move into the White House?

Liz and Lee in Potsdam, Germany November 2023

Who would have thought that the coalition government in Germany, which included the Green Party, would collapse?

German Green Party members in happier times

Well, it’s all happened. It’s fair to say arch conservative reactionaries are on the rise. It’s not a comforting thought for anyone who believes in personal freedom and the expectation to be free from the oppressors.

The reactionaries are rising in Germany, America and, perhaps, on my block in San Francisco. Where it pains me to write Trump got nearly 22 percent (179 votes) in my precinct.

Nobody is exempt from the rising tide of oppression.

US President Donald Trump holds up a Bible outside of St John’s Episcopal church across Lafayette Park in Washington, DC on June 1, 2020.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.7.2024

What now?

That was the question of the day after the collapse of the so-called traffic-light coalition — named for the colors of the three parties forming it: the center-left Social Democrats (red), the neoliberal Free Democrats (yellow) and the environmentalist Greens.

One day after the dramatic break-up, Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s view was very different from that of the leaders of the center-right opposition, whose cooperation Scholz is seeking.

Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) – far right on the ascendency in Germany

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) are not only the largest opposition bloc in the current parliament, they are also, according to current polls, most likely to emerge from new elections as the strongest force.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor urged swift action. “The government no longer has a majority in the German Bundestag and so we have to call on the Federal Chancellor — with a unanimous decision by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group — to call a vote of confidence immediately, at the beginning of next week at the latest,” he said.

https://www.dw.com/en/political-wrangling-starts-after-german-coalition-collapse/a-70725678