San Francisco voters passed the measure to provide tenants with legal counsel.  

Nearly 16 months have passed.  The City has provided only a portion of the necessary funding. A bigger problem, as explained to me by a well known and respected tenants attorney, is a lack of “experienced litigators” versed in housing law who can represent tenants.  

The low starting salary of under 60K per year discourages attorneys from applying for a job which requires both professional legal skills along with political smarts in high action San Francisco and its rent control ordinance.

 Finally, explains the attorney, “There is little in terms of support staff in the funding; paralegal, social workers.”  

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 9.22.2019

A 2018 measure guaranteeing every San Francisco tenant facing an eviction the right to legal representation is not yet living up to its promise due to funding gaps and a shortage of attorneys able to do the work, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

Fully funding the Right to Counsel program as quickly as possible is a matter of priorities, according to Prop. F’s author, Dean Preston, the former executive directors of Tenants Together who is a current candidate in the District 5 race for supervisor.

“What I’m hearing from providers is that there is a funding gap that hasn’t been filled and that prevents the full hiring,” Preston told the Examiner on Friday. “At best it’s a matter of priorities. I hope it’s not a political football. I hope there’s a shared commitment to making sure it’s fully implemented.”

In the June 2018 election, 55 percent of San Francisco voters supported Proposition F, or the Right to Counsel program, making San Francisco the second city nationwide to establish a “universal right to counsel” for tenants. An initial $5.8 million was secured to implement the measure, and a city spokesperson confirmed the program has received a total of $9 million so far.

But the 10 service providers who have received funding to provide the expanded legal services report that they are struggling to hire enough attorneys to meet the current demand.

The budget includes funds for a total of 47 new attorneys to be hired by July 1, but only 37 had been hired by that date, according to Cary Gold, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative. The organization was selected as the lead partner for the program under the supervision of The City’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

“[Tenant litigation] isn’t the most popular area of law for lawyers [and] a lot of the organizations are having to hire new attorneys without experience. So even if they have reached their total hiring goals they may not be at full capacity [because the new attorneys need training],” said Gold. “It’s a shaky start.”

But even if all 47 attorney positions had been filled by July 1, the current funding still wouldn’t be enough to provide every tenant eligible for full scope representation with the service, according to Gold.

According to the new law, full-scope representation — meaning representation throughout the eviction proceedings — is triggered 30 days after an eviction notice is served or once an unlawful detainer lawsuit has been filed. The representation is supposed to continue until the notice is withdrawn or the lawsuit is resolved.

Before Prop. F’s passage, only a handful of nonprofit organizations provided pro-bono attorneys for tenants. Some 80 percent of tenants were undergoing eviction proceedings without representation, according to the law’s proponents.

In an effort to describe the demand for legal representation in eviction proceedings, Gold said that EDC has 15 cases “on the settlement conference calendar” on Wednesday, of which seven have full scope attorneys. On Thursday, clients in only six of 11 cases scheduled for a settlement conference have full-scope representation.

According to the law, “they should all have full scope attorneys,” Gold said.

Dustin Helmer, an attorney with the Aids Legal Referral Panel, which is among the organizations now tasked with providing tenants with representation, said that part of the problem is that “there is not enough attention focused on retention.”

“Everyone acknowledges the housing crisis and knows its a problem. The city and tenants want a solution, and there’s a lot of money put into studies about homelessness and finding additional housing, but the people doing the actual work themselves need a bit more support from The City,” said Helmer.

“I expected things to get worse. I didn’t expect The City to have its act together,” he said. “People passed the measure, but how do we implement it? Where do we get the money from? Housing and everything that goes along with it is such a multifaceted issue,” he said.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/voters-approved-a-measure-guaranteeing-tenants-representation-but-theres-not-enough-money-to-fulfill-its-promises/

Elizabeth Ann Warren will be the 2020 Democrat’s Presidential nominee and she will be elected President in November. I have been writing about the Senator from Massachusetts since the inception of this Blog in late 2018. She is very electable and carries none of the baggage which the White House incumbent shamefully and dishonestly used against Hillary Clinton.  Senator Warren will take Trump to the cleaners.

Wall Street Journal 9.21.2019

While candidates have tangled publicly with Joe Biden, they are being more cautious with the Massachusetts Senator.

WASHINGTON— Elizabeth Warren is building a broad coalition of Democratic voters, and her rivals are taking notice. But so far, they are still testing out ways to undercut her appeal.

Ms. Warren’s steady rise has prompted primary opponents such as Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg to search for ways to blunt her momentum at a time when the leading contender, Joe Biden, has weathered a series of stumbles and direct attacks.

While candidates have tangled publicly with the former vice president over everything from his age to his agenda, they are being more cautious with Ms. Warren, often criticizing her indirectly or homing in on her policy proposals rather than her record.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-opponents-search-for-a-plan-against-elizabeth-warren-11569067200?mod=hp_lead_pos7&mod=article_inline

I am watching the six part Netflix series, The Spy.  It is definitely well done, absorbs my attention and tense.  I came upon this article which provides a more sobering spin on the Israeli spy planted in Syria during the 1960’s and his ultimate fate.

Arutz Sheva 7.19.2019

Widow of Eli Cohen (pictured above), Israeli spy executed in Syria, attacks Mossad conduct and Netflix series creators for how character is portrayed.

Nadia Cohen, widow of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, launched a fierce attack on senior Mossad officials whom she says continue to bear responsibility for her husband’s death 54 years ago in Syria.

In an interview with Chanan Greenwood in the Shishabbat supplement of Israel Hayom that will be published this Friday, Cohen claims they gave inaccurate information to the creators of The Spy series that this month went streaming on Netflix.

“A very senior man in the Mossad admitted that Eli was used like they squeeze a lemon. He told me there was no intelligence body in the country – military, civilian, Mossad, GSS, Air Force, Navy – who didn’t want information from him. They exposed him too much.”

She says the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Amit, sent him back to Syria one last time, even though it was real life-threatening danger, and contrary to Cohen’s own judgement.

“They told him he was in no danger, that they were behind him, and Eli went back to Syria certain that they had betrayed him. The Syrians did the work, but Eli was murdered here in Israel; here they sentenced him to death.”

In 2015, then-head of the Mossad Tamir Pardo admitted that it was a mistake to send Cohen to his last assignment, saying: “To this day, officials at the Mossad continue to lead the line that Eli himself was to blame for being caught, not the fact that serious mistakes were made in the organization’s understanding of the realities on the ground. They’ve betrayed us and lied to us.”

Since Cohen’s public hanging, she has been fighting for the return of his body to Israel, when, among other things, last year she addressed Syrian President Assad with a public request for mercy. Asked if she believes they will return him, she says: “I want to believe. I think the State isn’t doing enough to bring him back.”

Asked if they had forgotten the bereaved family, she replied: “We haven’t got blue eyes. We’ve got no elites behind us. We asked dozens of times the defense ministers, prime ministers and presidents to mention Eli when talking about the prisoners and the missing. But we never heard it.”

Cohen is working to perpetuate his legacy, but says the education system could be doing more: “We try to pass on his legacy. Religious Zionists learn about him, but in the general education system it isn’t enough. There are so many figures in the country that you can admire and grow up on, and Eli is among them.”

Cohen also fiercely attacks the new series created by Gidi Raf (“Abducted” and “Homeland”) for Netflix, in which Sasha Baron Cohen plays the character of Eli Cohen. She says they should have acted in a more educational way.

About the “twisted” way in which the character was portrayed in the series, she said “The last two weeks have brought me back decades, to Eli’s capture, to his hanging. It brings me back to the darkness.”

Disgusting rampant Racism. I knew nothing of this horrible, yet typical, 1969  incident of American racism.  The 14 players  wanted to meet with the Coach and discuss wearing black armbands. Why?  The team was scheduled to play Brigham Young University, deep in the heart of Mormon territory.  The players were upset over the racism they experienced during earlier games against BYU. For even bringing up the issue the 14 players were summarily dismissed from the team and lost their scholarships.

Associated Press printed in Chicago Sun Times  9.13.2019

University officials planned to unveil a plaque at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The players were kicked off the Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism.

LARAMIE, Wyo. — Fifty years after 14 black football players were kicked off the University of Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism, eight of them returned to the Laramie campus to commemorate the anniversary as the school takes another step toward reconciliation.

University officials unveiled a plaque Friday at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The marker joined an alleyway mural in downtown Laramie that was dedicated last year, and the ceremony capped five days of ceremonies and discussions about the infamous dismissal of all the university’s black players in 1969.

They are now being recognized as leaders in the tradition of protest in sport. It’s a pantheon that includes U.S. track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists on a 1968 Olympics medal podium to protest racism and injustice.

More recently, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick accused the NFL of blackballing him for kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest police violence against African Americans.

Protest is appropriate for athletes who want to use their fame and visibility to be heard, Black 14 member Tony Gibson said.

”You can judge them any way you want. But when they’re saying things that matter or are trying to draw your attention to things that might need addressing, I think it’s very important,” Gibson said.

On Oct. 17, 1969, Wyoming head coach Lloyd Eaton summarily dismissed the players and revoked their scholarships after they met with him to propose wearing black armbands during an upcoming game against Brigham Young University.

Eight of the 14 were starters. Eaton’s legacy isn’t confined to the Black 14 episode, Black 14 member John Griffin said.

”He destroyed the Cowboys football team for a decade or so. He is the one who prevented blue-chip players from coming here,” Griffin said. “That was on him, not us.”

The players wanted to protest racism some of them experienced in previous games against BYU and how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the time barred African Americans from the priesthood. Eaton would have none of the idea — and was backed up by the university’s board of trustees and Gov. Stan Hathaway.

They never got a chance to mention the armbands before Eaton lit into them about coming from fatherless families and saying they would only be accepted by traditionally black colleges if they weren’t at the University of Wyoming, they said.

”Our side is coming out. All these years everybody thought we protested and stuff, and we never did,” said Black 14 member Ted Williams.

The healing and reconciliation is not complete for some of the men who came back to campus this week. Some struggled for years after they were labeled as members of the Black 14.

Lionel Grimes said the episode repeatedly came up during job interviews, and he wondered how many job opportunities he missed because of it. The anger has taken years to overcome, he said.

”I was angry about the fact that I had to pay to go to school. I was angry at how the coach had insulted not only me, my fellow teammates, my ancestry,” Grimes said.

Most of all, not being able to learn why Eaton acted as harshly as he did bothers Black 14 members. Eaton could have defused the situation simply by telling the players they couldn’t wear the armbands, Grimes said.

”We would’ve just played football. He never gave us the opportunity to sit down and talk to him,” Grimes said. “We were very respectful then.”

Wyoming had made it to the Sugar Bowl after the 1967 season, losing to LSU 20-13, and went 7-3 in 1968. They were off to a 4-0 start before that day. The now all-white Cowboys went on to beat BYU and San Jose State but lost their last four games.

After Wyoming finished 1-9 in 1970, Eaton was demoted to assistant athletic director. He died in 2007, leaving the Black 14 without an apology or explanation.

”To me, the disappointment, my greatest disappointment, is I never had a clear understanding of his mindset. I never had a clear understanding of what compelled him to act against, as I understood years later, some of the wishes of his coaches,” Black 14 member Guillermo Hysaw said.

Griffin and some of the others have been back to campus over the decades, including for a 1993 event honoring the best players from each previous decade, but until the past several years reception for the Black 14 was lukewarm, Griffin said.

”Now it’s (a) very sincere welcome back: ‘We’re glad to have you back and we’re sorry,’” Griffin said.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/13/20864376/wyoming-dismissal-of-black-players-anniversary

The Trump lapdog Bibi Netanyahu may be on the way out of office and on his way to criminal prosecution.  The American public should take the action in 2020 and send this Clown packing and into criminal indictment.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.17.2019

Exit polls show Netanyahu’s Likud and the centrist Blue and White in a close tie. Neither party has enough seats with their allies to form a majority, raising the prospect of tough negotiations for a unity government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to suffer a setback in national elections Tuesday, with his religious and nationalist allies failing to secure a parliamentary majority, early exit polls showed.

Exit polls from Israel’s three major television stations showed the centrist Blue and White party of ex-military chief Benny Gantz is projected to win 32 seats, while Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party is on pace for 31 seats.

Arab parties come in third place

The Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties, came in third with 14 seats, according to exit polls. They have suggested they could potentially block Netanyahu from becoming prime minister by recommending Gantz. 

Netanyahu in a late night address to party supporters said that he wanted to assemble a “strong Zionist government and to prevent a dangerous anti-Zionist government” with any Arab parties.

Continuing a campaign theme against Israel’s 20% Arab minority that critics have called racist, he claimed that Arab parties “negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and “glorify bloodthirsty murderers.”

Read more: Will election-weary Israelis end Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule?

Israeli exit polls are often imprecise and unofficial results expected on Wednesday could shift the seat count.

Either way, the results indicate that Netanyahu or Gantz will face tough and protracted negotiations to cobble together a government.

The initial results showed that neither Blue and White nor Likud would be able to form a 61 seat majority in the 120 member Knesset with the support of their allies.

Likud and its religious and nationalist allies with which it hoped to form a majority only have 55 seats, less than in April’s election, according to the average of the three exit polls. Blue and White could enlist support of 59 for a center-left government.

Lieberman as kingmaker

The results put ex-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman in a kingmaker role. His secular, hardline Yisrael Beitenu that receives most of its support from Russian-speakers was on pace to win 9 seats, nearly double its performance in April’s election.

Lieberman, a former Netanyahu protege, refused to join a Likud-led government following April’s election because of what he said was excessive influence ultra-Orthodox religious parties. His move forced Netanyahu to called new elections to avoid giving other parties a chance to form a government.

Late Tuesday, the Moldovan-born Lieberman reiterated that he sought a broad unity government with Likud and Blue and White.

“There is only one option for us,” he said, adding the unity government should exclude the country’s ultra-Orthodox religious parties. 

A complication is that Gantz has ruled out forming a government with a Netanyahu-led Likud at a time when the prime minister is expected to be indicted on corruption charges in the coming weeks. Lawmakers in Gantz’s party have said they are open to a unity government with Likud, but not under Netanyahu’s leadership.

“We will act to form a broad unity government that will express the will of the people,” Gantz said at a post election rally, though he cautioned supporters to wait for final results.

Meanwhile, Lieberman is unlikely to want to sit in a government with left-wing Arab parties or the ultra-Orthodox religious parties. Blue and White is also unlikely to ask Arab parties to join a coalition.

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-election-too-close-to-call-exit-polls/a-50464397

Edward Snowden is off the Radar except for those in law enforcement who seek to imprison him for releasing information which the public has a right to know about, view and debate.

Deutsche Welle 9.16.2019

American whistleblower Edward Snowden has once again expressed interest in seeking political asylum in Germany. He has warned that if he turns up dead, it will not be the result of suicide.

Edward Snowden, a former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview he would still like political asylum in Germany. “If Germany were to grant me asylum, it would not be viewed as a hostile act toward the United States,” Snowden told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

Snowden criticized Germany and France for not doing anything to support his case so far. “The two countries’ governments were looking for reasons to stop me from coming,” he said. Snowden also reiterated that he didn’t reveal anything that put people’s lives at risk.

Read more: Freedom is acting without asking permission, Edward Snowden tells Berlin

Snowden has previously sought asylum from a number of countries, including Germany, though without success.

The former NSA contractor has been living in exile in Russia for the past six years.

Since he leaked details of secret and extensive US government global surveillance programs in 2013, the US has regarded him as an enemy of the state and slapped him with charges of espionage.

In a separate interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel, he said that if he was found dead it would not be the result of suicide.

“This is important for the record. I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. I have a philosophical objection to the idea of suicide, and if I happen to fall out of a window, you can be sure I was pushed.

Until the leaks, the public did not know the extent of the surveillance of the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ. Snowden’s information led to the wider use of encryption technology and an overhaul of data transfer practices from Europe to the US.

Snowden’s actions in 2013 sparked a huge debate about the extent of government surveillance by intelligence agencies. US officials who conduct annual classified assessments of damage from Snowden’s disclosures say the documents will continue trickling out into the public domain for years to come.

Time for a memoir

Snowden has now written a book about his actions and motivations. Titled “Permanent Record,” it’s going to be released worldwide on September 17.

The book offers by far the most expansive and personal account of how Snowden came to reveal secret details about the government’s mass collection of Americans’ emails, phone calls and Internet activity in the name of national security.

The story traces Snowden’s evolution from childhood, from growing up in the 1980s in North Carolina and suburban Washington, where his mother worked as a clerk at the NSA and his father served in the Coast Guard.

Though the book comes six years after the disclosures, Snowden attempts in his memoir to place his concerns in a contemporary context. He sounds the alarm about what he sees as government efforts worldwide to delegitimize journalism, suppress human rights and support authoritarian movements.

“What is real is being purposely conflated with what is fake, through technologies that are capable of scaling that conflation into unprecedented global confusion,” he says.

https://www.dw.com/en/edward-snowden-still-eying-asylum-in-germany/a-50429478

THIS IS A TRUE STORY

September 15, 2019

Our 12 year old lab mix Jack was found by a kindly gentleman at 44th Avenue and Irving in San Francisco around 10 am this morning after 115 hours and many miles traveling along the Pacific Coast shoreline near San Francisco.

A network of volunteers blanketed the area with Posters and contacted a network of dog walkers, professional organizations, volunteer groups and offices in two counties in the effort. In the end it was one Poster seen by a conscientious citizen which resulted in Jack coming home.

In reality Jack knew it was time and ALLOWED himself to be found.

Jack made an amazing journey from the Westmoor area below Daly City (lower circle map) to 44th Ave and Irving (upper circle near GGP map).

Jack was on his way to the Doggie Bath-o-Matt at 41st Avenue and Irving. Jack had turned up from the beach at precisely the spot of this route.

Jack went rogue around 16:00 on 9.10.19, just a day after he arrived at the dog boarder’s home in Daly City where he was to have stayed during our 10 day trip to Montana.

We left Missoula as soon as we could book a flight out.

Jack is 12-years old. The pads of his feet are raw. He is tired, hungry, and thirsty. Otherwise, he seems to be in good shape.

He will be checked by Balboa Pet Hospital

Jack must have encountered many dangers on his 5-day journey home. He evaded the dog catcher’s net. San Mateo County Animal Care and Control chased him and was unable to nab him. He evaded coyotes, traffic, and other people.

Thank goodness Jack is back. I was grief stricken looking at the possibility of losing my dear companion, Jack. The sounds of crashing furniture and shrieks of frustration could be heard heard both at the Inn in Missoula and from my office when we returned to San Francisco.

We adopted him as a rescue dog nearly eight years ago.

We worked indefatigably to find Jack. We connected to an amazing network of women who have dedicated their lives to re-uniting lost dogs with their grieving owners. They continue their efforts in the face of hatred and enmity towards decent people by President Trump.

The women wanted to show others that women care about others in need. One is a retired San Francisco Deputy City Attorney who worked in the Department of Public Health for 10 years. The other is a good samaritan who assisted in the effort and provided a lot of practical advice.

Happily, the resourceful Jack made his way home by himself and the cadre of volunteers could move onto another Dog rescue project.

Truth is stranger than fiction in the legal world.  Then again this is San Francisco.  Anything is possible politically and legally, no matter how outrageous.  Translation.  Money, power and connected attorneys take precedenc over the rules of procedure and legal doctrine. Anything goes if you can get away with it, particularly in the often tawdry world of  housing law.

Mission Local by Joe Eskenazi 9.9.2019

Anne Kihagi, (pictured below) the notorious landlord who has been successfully sued by the city and a bevy of illegally evicted former tenants, can add one more litigant to the battalion of people and entities pursuing her legally: Her own longtime attorney.

Karen Uchiyama, the lawyer who for years defended Kihagi, served as her muscle in attempting to evict or otherwise dislodge tenants — oftentimes elderly and/or disabled — from her many buildings, and chauvinistically advocated for the woman known as “San Francisco’s cruelest landlord” last week turned against her erstwhile client.

On Sept. 4, Uchiyama filed suit against Kihagi — as well as some of her alphabet soup of LLCs, including Zoriall, Xelan Prop 1, Renka Prop, and Nozari 2 — seeking $158,501.66.

“Defendants failed to pay for legal services per contract after benefits from Plaintiff’s services,” sums up Uchiyama’s filing.

Confoundingly, a substitution-of-attorney document dated Sept. 6 — two days after Uchiyama filed suit against  Kihagi and her LLCs — reveals Uchiyama to be the new counsel defending Kihagi’s Xelan Prop 1 LLC against claims by Umpqua Bank.

Uchiyama is, per court documents, simultaneously suing and defending Xelan Prop 1 LLC. Calls and e-mails to her have not been returned.

This setup is, to put it mildly, unconventional. “A red flag would go up for me as a legal ethicist,” says Josh Davis, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and the director of the USF Center for Law and Ethics. “The general rule would be that you can’t simultaneously be adverse to a party and also represent that party.”

Added Davis’ fellow USF law professor and legal ethicist Lara Bazelon, “that seems like a classic conflict of interest. If that’s not a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.”

If Uchiyama’s client doesn’t take action, Davis says, both the state bar and the judge might see fit to do so.

This is the latest bizarre twist in a case replete with them. Kihagi burst onto the San Francisco scene in 2013; over the next two-and-a-half years she, her sisters, and a web of LLCs obtained at least 11 San Francisco buildings for just shy of $30 million. Between 2006 and 2013, she had bought at least 14 properties in Southern California.

There as here, she systematically targeted rent-controlled structures, often inhabited by longtime, elderly and/or disabled tenants. These buildings have an ostensibly limited income stream — but not if you eject the longstanding tenants and bring in new, market-rate renters, as she repeatedly did. She could then borrow against this enhanced revenue stream and leverage that into obtaining a next building and a next building.

And that worked out great. Until it didn’t. In May 2017, Judge Angela Bradstreet sided with the city in its suit vs. Kihagi, hitting her with 1,612 separate violations. In October 2017, a jury awarded illegally evicted tenants Dale Duncan and his wife Marta Muñoz $3.5 million — purportedly the largest award in state history for a single unit.

This year, the Court of Appeal declined to overturn the 2017 ruling against Kihagi, putting her on the spot for millions in fines and setting in motion a series of court orders. All 11 of her known city properties have been placed into receivership and three of those have been sold already. A procession of people and entities are jockeying for their share of that money — and, now, Uchiyama appears to be getting in that line. At the end.

Kihagi currently owes the city some $4.5 million; the city in May collected around $3 million from a bond it insisted she obtain. To get that bond, Kihagi had to put up collateral — possibly some of her Southern California properties but, truly, it’s difficult to know. Kihagi tends to shuffle ownership of buildings among her many family members and her web of LLCs.

While comparisons to Trump are often facile, Kihagi has amassed an impressively Trump-like collection of series of stiffed employees – flooring guys, surveyors, contractors, and, yes, lawyers She paid for their work only when a judge ordered they be paid. Or didn’t.

In a profoundly on-the-nose moment, a PR maven earlier this year hired to soften Kihagi’s image claimed she promptly stiffed him $2,000. 

Another mistreated workman, a surveyor named Richard Langford, sued her in what he calls an “open-and-shut” case of nonpayment. He told San Francisco Magazine that he was mystified when Kihagi appealed the judge’s ruling, and still more mystified when, he said, she threatened to sue him in small-claims court in Los Angeles for the amount she owed him.

“I told her, ‘If I have to show up in Los Angeles, I’m bringing your ex-husband who can’t find you and I’m bringing all the tenants who can’t find you,’” he told the magazine. “I got calls — constantly — from people who saw I had some dealings with her.”

Langford told the magazine that he ended up recovering most of his $6,855 ruling, but it required nearly two years to do so.

Kihagi has both sued and been sued by multiple attorneys. Others, who did not opt to make their case in court, have also claimed she stiffed them. One, Daniel Bornstein, purportedly complained loudly enough in public about Kihagi’s nonpayment that other attorneys overheard him doing so. When queried about this, he told me “I can only say I am relieved to not be representing her anymore.”

The endgame for Kihagi is as difficult to grasp as the property structure of her many buildings. Whether Uchiyama’s suit is the beginning of the end or end of the beginning is hard to say. But this legal move comes not from an aggrieved tenant but the lawyer working to evict those tenants — and a vocal Kihagi defender.

“Kihagi’s attorneys are going to get the receivership withdrawn,” Uchiyama wrote in an e-mail last year.

This year the receivership was, as noted above, extended to all 11 of Kihagi’s known San Francisco properties. As also noted above, three of them have been sold already by the court-appointed receiver.

“Keep believing everything you hear,” Uchiyama continued in that 2018 e-mail. “It creates an illusion that the tenants are winning in court when they are not.”

The millions in fines owed by Kihagi are compounding at an annual rate of 10 percent, which roughly comes out to $850 a day.

When asked his thoughts on the lawyer who cross-examined him in court — and cast him as the villain persecuting Anne Kihagi — joining him in line for compensation from Kihagi, Duncan laughed.

“It just shows how crazy the world is,” he said.

https://missionlocal.org/2019/09/anne-kihagi-san-franciscos-cruelest-landlord-is-sued-by-her-longtime-attorney/

Why it takes a horrific event to move people to radical action is part of human nature. SUV’s are gas guzzling, environmentally disastrous and a clear and present danger to all in their path.  Berlin is a start. Ban them all, worldwide.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.8.2019

Four people were killed in Berlin when a Porsche SUV veered onto a sidewalk. While hundreds of people held a candlelight vigil on Saturday evening, environmental protection organizations called for a ban on SUV vehicles.

A 3-year-old boy, a 64-year-old woman and two men in their late 20s were killed in an apparent road accident in Berlin on Friday evening, Berlin police said Saturday.

A Porsche SUV mounted a footpath full of pedestrians at the corner of Invaliden and Acker streets in central Berlin. The vehicle hit construction fencing and landed in a vacant building plot.

It is “completely irresponsible to produce and drive SUVs,” said Benjamin Stephan, a Greenpeace official, adding that German manufacturers must move away from “climate killers” and produce lighter electronic cars.

“The risk of dying in an accident involving an SUV is much higher than a normal car. Pedestrians have a 50% higher risk of fatal accidents due to the higher bonnet,” according to Greenpeace.

“Given the evidence so far, we assume this was a traffic accident and not a deliberate act,” police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.

The injured driver was taken to hospital for treatment, where he died. Two other people from the vehicle were also hospitalized.

“Initial indications that a medical emergency involving the driver could have been the cause, as well as all other witness statements, information and evidence, are part of the investigation,” the police said.

Authorities are reconstructing the accident to determine the cause of the accident. Police are also investigating whether the SUV hit pedestrians.

Sorrow and anger

Stephan von Dassel, the district mayor of Berlin-Mitte, said “armor-like SUV cars” don’t belong in the city, as every driving error puts the lives of innocent people at risk.

“These care are also climate killers. They are a threat even without an accident,” Von Dassel said.

Protest against SUVs

Environmental activists protested against SUV vehicles on Saturday. A Greenpeace member told AFP news agency that environmentalists blocked a SUV loading dock for about three hours.

https://www.dw.com/en/berliners-call-for-suv-ban-after-fatal-traffic-accident/a-50342322

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

The inhumane policies of the current American Administration, criminalizing and dehumanizing,  has a human face which all the World needs to see.

Deutsche Welle 9.7.2019

The migrant caravans to the US border have generated no shortage of debate among politicians and the public. Take a look at Mexican photojournalist Guillermo Arias award-winning depiction of their perilous journey.

Mexican photojournalist, Guillermo Arias, won the prestigious Visa d’or news photojournalism prize, for his depiction of the Central American migrant caravans.

The AFP photographer won the award on Saturday for his story entitled “the Caravan” at photojournalism’s biggest annual festival. He beat off competition from The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, migrant caravans with thousands of people made the way northwards from Central America. Most were heading to the US border in a bid to escape poverty and violence in their home countries.

In response, the US sent troops to secure the border, as well as setting up controversial camps to detain those who crossed the border illegally, and instigating a draconian policy where children were separated and detained away from their family.

https://www.dw.com/en/in-pictures-photojournalist-wins-top-award-for-portrayal-of-migrant-caravan/g-50341493