Meanwhile, out there in the Wild West.  Frontier justice wants to run unchecked.  These Boys (and Girls, too) want their toys.

Excerpted from The Guardian 7.16.2019

Needles city council voted to ask state legislature to allow gun owners from other states to carry registered firearms in town.

The small California city has voted to declare itself a “second amendment sanctuary” city, in a rebuke to the state’s strict policies on gun control.

California does not recognize any concealed carry permits from other states, and it is illegal to bring ammunition that is purchased in another state into California.

The city council of Needles voted unanimously last week to ask the state legislature to allow gun owners from other states to carry registered firearms in the town.

City lawmakers argue that the move will make it easier for residents of nearby states – Needles is located near the Arizona and Nevada borders – to shop and use the town’s services. But with a name echoing the “sanctuary city” designation several progressive California cities have taken on to signal protections for undocumented immigrants, the declaration also takes a stand against lawmakers in the state capital, who Needles officials feel do not always represent their views.

“There are a lot of laws that are written in Sacramento that are focused on San Francisco and Los Angeles and the coastal areas. They don’t think about us out here,” said the Needles mayor, Jeff Williams.

“There are other issues that need to be talked about besides protecting illegal immigrants from being deported,” Williams continued. “We need our constitutional rights protected also.”

“It’s in the federal constitution, and California has for years been slowly chipping away at our second amendment rights. I think communities are tired of it.”

Williams argues that these policies are especially harmful to cities like Needles and Lake Tahoe that border states such as Arizona and Nevada.

“Coming into California they need to stop carrying or unload and disarm, so we’re missing out on some commerce in that direction,” Williams said of Arizona residents who are disenchanted by California’s strict gun laws.

At the July city council meeting, several Arizona residents argued California’s gun laws made visits to Needles cumbersome. One Arizona resident presented his options as being forced to choose between being safe or being labeled a criminal.

“Every weekend I have to make that choice. Do I do something to make myself safe or do I have to make the terrible decision of breaking silly California law and becoming a criminal,” he said.

Now that the Needles city council approved the “second amendment sanctuary” resolution, the city of Tehachapi, over 200 miles away is looking to pass similar legislation.

Williams is hoping that other towns like Eureka and Lake Tahoe will follow suit to create a coalition of “second amendment sanctuary” cities that can take their efforts to California legislators.

“I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere but at a certain point you have to make a stand,” Williams said of the potential to have a “carve-out” of looser gun laws for border towns.

The Killer may have been apprehended but that is small comfort to the grieving family, friends and associates of Dr. Eaton

Excerpted from People and Keep Talking Greece 7.15.2019

The body of scientist Suzanne Eaton, who had been missing in Greece for nearly a week, was found on July 8

A local man has confessed to the murder of Suzanne Eaton a week after the missing U.S. scientist’s body was found by authorities in Crete, Greece.

A 27-year-old suspect has been arrested by police for the murder of the US biologist. According to local media, the father of two has confessed the heinous crime that shocked the communities in Crete, Greece and around the globe.

The farmer is married and a father of two, he is from Maleme and lives in Kissamos area together with his family.

According to local flashnews, despite all his attempts to cover the crime by throwing the body of the 60-year-old scientist in an old German bunker, he made a grave mistake that led police to his detention.

Traces of the car he used to transfer the body were found outside the bunker where the body was found.

The traces the car tires left on the soil, other findings in the crime scene as evaluation of mobile phone signals on the day Eaton went missing helped police make the murderer’s profile and limit the circle of suspects.

The suspect’s grave mistake was that while he was inside the bunker disposing Eaton’s body his mobile was turned on, leaving behind digital footprint that was easy for police to detect during investigation.

The perpetrator’s identity was ultimately revealed, police arrested him early Monday afternoon.

In the hands of police is reportedly also a foreign laborer who was working for the 27-year-old farmer. The laborer allegedly helped the murderer to transfer and hide the body in the bunker.

Local police announced on Monday the suspect is currently being detained and that they expect to have more information in the coming day, according to the outlet.

The shocking news comes nearly one week after a spokesperson for the police in Crete said authorities had discovered Eaton’s body approximately 200 feet inside of a cave — a site that was formerly used as a World War II bunker.

Located underneath an air shaft that had been covered with a large wooden pallet, police said they believe Eaton’s body, which was discovered face-down, was dumped inside of the cave after she had been suffocated to death.

The scientist had also suffered minor stab wounds to her body, though officials said they did not appear to have caused her death.

“The only thing we can say is that the [death] resulted from a criminal act,” Greek state coroner Antonis Papadomanolakis told the Associated Press last week.

Eaton, who worked at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany, disappeared while out for a run on the afternoon of July 2, her family said on Search for Suzanne, a Facebook page they set up to find her.

She was attending a conference at the Orthodox Academy of Crete and was somewhat familiar with the area as she had attended conferences there previously.

The 59-year-old scientist was known to run for 30 minutes every day, and the family said that she had done so the previous day at the same time, though details of where she was going remain unknown. Her cell phone and other belongings were left in her hotel room.

https://people.com/crime/man-confesses-murdering-american-scientist-suzanne-eaton-crete-greece/

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/07/15/suzanne-eaton-man-arrested-farmer/

Talk about Old School!!! What is this?? 1955? We can’t expect anything else but crude stupidity from this worthless moronic Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.  McCarthyism is alive and well in Trump’s America

Excerpted from CNN 7.15.2019

The Warriors superstar just got burned. Obviously Draymond Green failed to take a course in Middle East Politics prior to his trip to Israel.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.14.2019

A Palestinian-Syrian chef in Oakland is discontinuing a popular item at her restaurant that is named after Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors

Reem Assil, who has been praised by publications like The Chronicle and Food and Wine, has played a vital role in sparking Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood as a food destination. One of her signatures at her Arab bakery, Reem’s California, has been the “Draymond Green,” a seasonal vegetable wrap.

 Assil, a lifelong community activist, has also been outspoken concerning social and political issues both inside and outside of the restaurant world. When her bakery opened in Fruitvale in 2018, it drew the ire of members of the Bay Area’s Jewish community, due to a mural of Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian woman convicted of terrorism in Israel.

“I’m a small business and it’s not easy taking these kinds of stances,” Assil said. “But I think it’s important we do the right things with our platforms.”

The chef’s decision to stop selling the dish is linked to Green’s 2018 visit to Israel. While there, Green posed for a photo holding a military rifle as though he were a sniper, during a stop at the base of an Israeli Defense Force counter-terrorism unit, the Yamam.

The 2018 photo, as well as an accompanying video of Green taking target practice, exploded across the internet and proved to be fodder for political debates around Palestine and Israel relations, as well as the power of an athlete’s platform when it comes to political commentary.

“Draymond should have done more homework on where he was going,” Assil told The Chronicle on Thursday, the same day she announced via her website she would be pulling the wrap from her menu. “I think it’s important to let him know how those images impact Palestinians, people that are fans of his that want him to understand where these feelings are coming from.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Oakland-bakery-discontinues-signature-Draymond-14092205.php#photo-17559805

A murder on bucolic Crete in the Greek isles.  Dr. Eaton was from Oakland, yet the local Bay Area media has failed to give this crime story the attention it deserves.

The Daily Beast 7.12.2019

The tortured corpse of a 59-year-old American superstar scientist was found wrapped in burlap inside a secret Nazi bunker on the island of Crete, Greece. Police want to know why.

San Francisco will not be part of the abhorrent Gestapo style activity planned for San Francisco by an Administration  run amok as the Incumbent caters to his Base at the expense of the most vulnerable citizens.

San Francisco Examiner  7.12.2019

Mayor London Breed on Friday said San Francisco police and officials will not cooperate with immigration agents after President Donald Trump confirmed raids are planned this weekend to deport undocumented immigrants in several U.S cities, including San Francisco.

“San Francisco stands behind our sanctuary city policy. We have been and will continue to be a sanctuary city,” said Breed.

“We will support and stand by our immigrant community and continue to invest and provide resources to help address a challenging time,” Breed said, speaking at a press conference at City Hall.

Breed said undocumented immigrants have the right to remain silent and to have an attorney, and encouraged residents to call both the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs and the San Francisco Rapid Response Network hotline in the case of a raid.

The threat of raids has prompted several protests from pro-immigrants organizations in San Francisco and around the Bay Area this week, including one in front of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement headquarters on Sansome Street Friday.

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have conducted campaigns to inform immigrants of their legal rights in advance of the raids. Nonprofits working with the immigrant community said they have received hundreds of frightened phone calls from undocumented immigrants in the past few weeks.

Joining Breed at the press conference, Assemblymember David Chiu said “Donald Trump has decided to continue to wage his war against our immigrant communities, a war that is immoral, unjust, racist and xenophobic.”

“If you have to come after them, you are going to have to come through all of us,” said Chiu.

“We will get through this,” Breed said.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/sf-braces-for-immigration-raids/

The Police State is a reality.

Excerpted from the San Jose Mercury News 7.11.2019

The prospect of nationwide immigration raids starting this weekend has spread fear in the Bay Area’s immigrant communities and added new urgency to local advocates’ efforts to defend undocumented residents across the region.

Activists have set up a network of hotlines to confirm reports about raids and readied a cadre of volunteer lawyers to assist detainees in court, in preparation for what could be the largest coordinated operation to detain immigrants since President Donald Trump took office.

“We want to respond with power, not panic,” said Sandy Valenciano, 26, an immigrant rights activist in Oakland, who is undocumented.

The Trump administration is planning to begin a nationwide immigration enforcement operation, moving forward with plans that had been announced — and subsequently postponed — by Trump late last month amid objections from Congressional leaders and officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

Though plans for the raids appear to still be in flux, multiple news outlets have reported that the operation is set to begin Sunday and will target at least 2,000 immigrants with final deportation orders, as well as any “collateral” individuals without documentation who are found in the process.

At least 10 cities are expected to be targeted, including San Francisco. A spokesperson for ICE’s San Francisco office declined to confirm whether or where any raids would occur, but the office noted that it directs enforcement and removal operations around the Bay Area, not just in the city itself.

Activists monitoring ICE activity said they’d already seen a spike in Bay Area enforcement actions since last weekend, particularly in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties.

“It seems to us that their operation has already begun, in one way or another, here in Northern California,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, an attorney with the San Francisco Bar Association, which is coordinating pro bono legal assistance for immigrants detained locally.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/11/ice-raids-bay-area-immigration-detention/

UPDATE Excerpted from the Missoulian 7.16.2019

There are a lot of sick and demented people in America. It defies any sense of humanity that anyone could engage in such abhorrent behavior.  Sick and twisted people commit these outrages.  No amount of monetary relief will cure the pain inflicted on the subjects of such hate crimes.

Excerpted from The Missoulian 7.11.2019

San Francisco is a tough and unforgiving place.

The visitor from Oregon, visiting the historic Legion of Honor overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was brutally cut down  as he documented the all too typical lawless act in San Francisco, a car break in.

He didn’t realize that this is a mean town. Hopefully, he will recover.

Crimes like this are common everywhere.  This is not the image  outsider visitors carry with them when they arrive in San Francisco to see the sights.

San Francisco Chronicle 7.10.2019

A sightseer was run down by two thieves in a getaway car Tuesday after he spotted them breaking into his vehicle outside San Francisco’s Legion of Honor and began snapping photographs of them, police said Tuesday.

The unidentified victim was rushed to a local hospital with what at first appeared to be life-threatening injuries after he was struck by a silver-colored vehicle, said Officer Joseph Tomlinson, of the San Francisco Police Department.

Tomlinson said officers found the victim at 4:03 p.m. after responding to reports of a vehicle theft in the 100 block of 34th Avenue.

The victim was at the Legion of Honor when he saw a man in a hoodie exit from the passenger side of a silver car driven by an accomplice and break into his parked vehicle, Tomlinson said.

“He came outside and was taking photos of the suspect,” Tomlinson said. “The suspect jumped back in the car. They attempt to flee and they strike the victim with their vehicle. The suspects fled the scene and are still at large at the moment.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the driver of the silver vehicle hit the victim on purpose, Tomlinson said. The victim, who is reportedly from Oregon, was upgraded to stable condition Tuesday night with unspecified injuries.

He said detectives are looking through the victim’s photographs to see if they can identify the culprits or the vehicle they were driving. Investigators are also trying to determine whether other vehicles were broken into, he said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Sightseer-at-SF-s-Legion-of-Honor-run-down-by-14084141.php

We know who runs California. The real estate industry continues to have a strangle hold on the State legislature.  In order to keep their  unfettered power, real estate industry and its lobbyists will spend whatever it takes to stop any pro tenant legislation.

 Big bucks are spent to crush legislation and defeat statewide ballot measures through disinformation and fake news. In 2018 the industry spent tens of millions of dollars to crush a statewide pro tenant ballot measure.

New York and Oregon have instituted strong tenant protections this year.

So much for “Progressive” California

Excepted from the San Francisco Chronicle 7.9.2019

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers and landlords are haggling over how much California housing to carve out of a tenant protection bill that would cap rent increases and require a just cause for evictions.

In a state Senate committee Tuesday, AB1482 faced continued opposition from groups representing apartment owners, developers and real estate agents that could sink the measure in the final weeks of the legislative session.

The proposal has struggled to win support from legislators amid concerns that imposing new restrictions on landlords would discourage housing construction during a historic shortage.

In its current iteration, AB1482 would prohibit landlords from raising rents by more than 7 percent plus the regional cost of living increase, or a maximum of 10 percent, in a year.

The bill exempts owners of housing built in the previous 10 years and landlords who own 10 or fewer single-family homes. The law would expire in 2023, though lawmakers could renew it.

A study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley found that even with the exemptions, the cap would extend rent protections to 2.6 million to 4.6 million more households in California.

Chiu said he would be open to a discussion about exempting owners of few multifamily units. But preempting local ordinances is anathema to the tenants’ rights groups that are sponsoring the bill.

Language from a companion measure requiring landlords to provide a just cause when evicting a renter, which was abandoned in the Assembly, was also recently added to AB1482.

Just causes would include a tenant failing to pay rent, breaching a rental agreement, creating a nuisance or engaging in criminal activity. The protection would not kick in until a tenant has been in a rental for a year. Renters evicted through no fault of their own, such as when a property is taken off the market, would receive relocation assistance from landlords equivalent to one month of rent.

Supporters argue that eviction protections are needed to make the rent cap effective. Otherwise, they say, landlords could just kick out tenants and raise rents by as much as they want. Landlords counter that thousands of available units are sitting idle because the owners would rather withhold them from the market than be stuck with a bad tenant they cannot evict because of local just-cause laws.

“We will be taking a step backwards with a policy that discourages development of new housing and will further worsen the housing crisis for Californians,” Sid Lakireddy, president of the California Rental Housing Association, said in a statement.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Rent-control-bill-struggles-in-California-14083866.php