New York Times 6.20.2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions.

As late as 7 p.m. Thursday, military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations.

Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.

The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.

Top Photo – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

Wall Street Journal 6.20.2019

Team USA is three games into what it hopes will be a seven-game tournament capped by a second consecutive World Cup title on July 7 in Lyon.

It now enters the knockout round, where a loss means going from fresh-baked French bread to french fries.

Interesting perspective on Warriors historic five year run

San Francisco Examiner 6.19.2019

From Klay games to the Death Lineup, one can’t tell the story of the dynasty without these games

By Cyril Penn

Special to S.F. Examiner

The Golden State Warriors journey from lovable afterthought to villainous basketball tyrant may be finished. With the summer of 2019 expected to shake the foundations of the NBA, an exhausted team coming off five consecutive NBA Finals appearances is expected to go through myriad changes.

There’s no avoiding the big questions facing Golden State. How will the move across the Bay Bridge from “Roaracle” to San Francisco’s waterfront Chase Center change the home court dynamic? Who will be back among the Warriors’ bevy of star free agent talent? Can Golden State continue to contend, or will the Warriors fall swiftly from grace like other dynasties before them?

These questions will be asked ad naseum throughout the offseason, but rather than try to answer them now, it’s time to reflect on the games that have defined the Warriors’ dynasty, as the NBA approaches a tipping point, and the balance of power begins to shift for the first time in five years.

No. 5: June 1, 2017 — NBA Finals Game 1 vs Cleveland; 113-91 win

If any game truly exemplifies Golden State in peak “this isn’t fair” mode, it’s Game 1 of the 2017 Finals.

In his first Finals game with the Warriors, Kevin Durant led the way with 38 points as his squad built up an eight-point halftime advantage before their customary third quarter surge saw them open the second half on a 13-0 run.

They forced the Cavaliers into 20 turnovers, with LeBron James committing eight. With only four turnovers throughout the entire game, Golden State tied the record for fewest in a Finals contest.

The Warriors became the first team in NBA history to start the playoffs with 13 consecutive wins after sweeping through the Western Conference, ultimately finishing with the best winning percentage (.941) in NBA playoff history as they finished 16-1. While the team was expected to gel even more after another year of playing together, in hindsight, the 2017 playoff run was perhaps the most dictatorial of all-time.

No. 4: June 10, 2019 — NBA Finals Game 5 at Toronto; 106-105 win

This game will be remembered as the one in which Durant ruptured his Achilles tendon — a moment that may end up changing the course of NBA history as we know it.

Durant’s return to the court after a calf strain in the Western Conference Semifinals silenced his haters once and for all regarding the perception that he is “soft.”

He and Kevon Looney both returned from injuries to help their squad stave off elimination, and both showed how tough they were by gutting out gritty performances.

Without the aforementioned pair for most of the game, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 73 percent of the team’s total points as the Warriors overcame 10 straight fourth quarter points from Kawhi Leonard to narrowly steal a victory, with Draymond Green barely getting his fingers on Kyle Lowry’s potential game-winning shot.

This game had one of the most bizarre endings in recent memory, with the Warriors turning the ball over multiple times and DeMarcus Cousins nearly goaltending the team into elimination, yet they escaped with a win and forced one last game at Oracle Arena.

No. 3: June 19, 2016 — NBA Finals Game 7 vs Cleveland; 93-89 loss

Perhaps the most devastating loss in Golden State history, with Mike Breen shouting, “Blocked by James!” still haunts the nightmares of Bay Area fans who saw their team’s historic 73-9 season end in dramatic fashion.

After building a 3-1 series lead, Green’s Game 5 suspension began to turn the tide for Cleveland. His incredible Game 7 output of 32 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists brought the Warriors close, but with Curry and Thompson combining to go 12-for-36 from the field and Harrison Barnes shooting 3-for-10, Green’s effort was not quite enough.

“The Block” was followed by a dagger three from Kyrie Irving and Cleveland snatched away the championship.

An hour or so after the game, still fuming at his locker, Green sent a text to Durant.

“See what we’re missing,” Green texted his future teammate, according to Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins. “We need you. Make it happen.” Less than a month later, Durant signed with Golden State.

No. 2: May 28, 2016 — Western Conference Finals Game 6 at Oklahoma City; 108-101 win

Often reffered to as “The Klay Game,” pundits consider this as one of the ultimate “What-If” games in recent NBA history.

Thompson set the record for 3-point makes in a playoff game, going 11-of-18 from beyond the arc on the way to a 41-point outing. Down by eight heading into the fourth quarter with a 3-2 series deficit against the last edition of the Durant-and-Russell-Westbrook-led Oklahoma City Thunder, the Warriors got 22 fourth- quarter points from Thompson, including six 3-pointers.

His eleventh three? A go-ahead dagger from 25 feet that gave the Warriors a 104-101 lead with two minutes left.

The win at Cheasepeake Energy Arena gave Golden State the momentum to take Game 7 at home, and ultimately may have been the biggest factor between Durant leaving the Thunder in free agency in the offseason.

Had Thompson not propelled the Warriors to victory, Golden State likely never evolves into a true dynasty.

No. 1: June 11, 2015 — NBA Finals Game 4 at Cleveland; 103-82 win

The highlights of other games during the Warriors’ otherworldly run may stick out more, but no game has defined Golden State — or changed the course of NBA history — as much as Game 4 of the 2015 Finals.

It is known as the birth of the “Death Lineup,” but this contest also changed modern basketball as we know it, marginalizing the center position to make lumbering big men unplayable in certain playoff situations, while empowering skillful players and quick-footed defenders.

Special assistant to the head coach Nick U’Ren theorized that replacing Andrew Bogut with Andre Iguodala in the starting lineup and sliding Draymond Green to a small-ball center position would limit the impact of Cleveland’s Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson.

Trusting his staff like few head coaches, Steve Kerr took U’Ren’s advice, and the fact that U’Ren now serves as Golden State’s Director of Basketball Operations tells you all you need to know about how well the move went.

Trailing 2-1 in the series, the Warriors blasted the Cavaliers in the final three games, and Iguodala was crowned as Finals MVP for his role in the newfound lineup and ability to slow down James at his peak.

The “Death Lineup,” which eventually evolved into the “The Hamptons Five,” turned throwback centers and back-to-the-basket forwards into relics of the past and birthed a new era of spacing and tempo that has overtaken the NBA landscape.

These Warriors have left a lasting legacy in multiple facets of basketball, but the implementation of the “Death Lineup” shows exactly how much a dynastic era can influence the perception of an entire sport.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/five-games-defined-golden-states-dynasty/

I read a Commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle by Art Critic Charles Desmarais in which he scrutinizes the tenure of the soon to depart Chair of the Trustees Dede Wilsey.  In his commentary an upcoming exhibit is discussed as part of Fine Arts Museum managment’s effort to be current with contemporary art, “Soul of a Nation.”

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/with-dede-wilsey-out-whats-next-for-the-fine-arts-museums-of-sf

This November, the de Young Museum welcomes the internationally acclaimed exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 1963–1983, organized by the Tate Modern in London. This powerful and provocative presentation focuses on art made in the pivotal decades between 1963 and 1983, when issues of race and identity dominated and defined both public and private discourse. Rarely has an historical exhibition proved to be so timely—and to provoke so much meaningful discussion among its numerous viewers.

The works in Soul of a Nation were forged in a crucible of institutionalized racism and codified prejudice that had pervaded the entire American nation for centuries. Galvanized to take action, and inspired by the Civil Rights struggle for equality and justice, African American artists determined to use art and culture as catalysts for self-definition, self-empowerment, and self-determination.

The artists represented in Soul of a Nation worked in numerous cities across the United States and in multiple media. The de Young’s presentation of Soul of a Nation will include an expanded group of works by artists who worked in the Bay Area. Their paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, collages, assemblages, and custom clothing contributed to the Black Power movement by promoting personal and cultural pride, collective solidarity and empowerment, political and social activism, and pan-African nationalism. Long marginalized, these revelatory works and the enduring relevance of their messages are now understood to be central to the complex histories of American culture.

https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/soul-of-a-nation

 

Trump bashed his way into the White House by demonizing foreign nationals. The 2015 San Francisco Garcia-Zarate trial enabled the rabble rousing demagogue Trump to feed red meat to his base of xenophobic and fearful Nationalist followers. Now, the Garcia-Zarate case will move from State to Federal Court and provide the Trump megaphone with another excuse to summon the narrow minded racist portion of the American public as he practices the dark political arts to gain another four years in power.

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 6.19.2019

New trial date likely to be set for undocumented man acquitted in killing of Kate Steinle

The long-delayed federal gun case against an undocumented immigrant at the center of a national controversy over the killing of 32-year-old Kate Steinle is expected to move forward on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In a 7-2 decision Monday, the Supreme Court upheld an exception to the U.S. Constitution, which says that no one shall be tried twice for the same crime. The exception allows both the state and the federal government to charge a person over a single incident as “separate sovereigns.”

The decision clears the way for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate on gun charges stemming from the day the 46-year-old Mexican national fired a bullet that ricocheted off a San Francisco pier and killed Steinle nearly four years ago on July 1, 2015.

Jurors in San Francisco Superior Court had already acquitted Garcia-Zarate of murder and manslaughter by the time the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him in December 2017. The jury had also convicted him of illegal gun possession.

Featured photo –  July 7, 2015 file photo, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, right, is led into the courtroom by late San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana Garciaor, center, for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)

https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/u-s-supreme-court-ruling-clears-way-for-feds-to-prosecute-garcia-zarate/

 

The rise of Neo-Nazism is pervasive.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 6.17.2019

A suspected neo-Nazi’s arrest in the Kassel politician’s murder case has focused concerns on far-right terrorism in Germany. The city is home to an extremist scene and was the location of a notorious National Socialist Underground  (NSU) murder in 2006.

The implication of a Sunday arrest, coincidentally made on the third anniversary of the killing of British MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist in the UK, is that the Walter Lübcke case would mark the first time in decades that an active politician was killed by a terrorist in Germany.

The manner of the killing — a close-range shot to the head — also recalled the series of killings by the only neo-Nazi terrorist group that has so far been discovered and investigated by German security forces: the National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Over a seven-year period, the NSU carried out nine murders of people with immigrant backgrounds, using a single Ceska handgun. The last two murders happened over a three-day period in Dortmund and Kassel in April 2006.

Germany’s federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation into the murder of Walter Lübcke, indicating that the killing of the Kassel district president on June 2 is being treated as a politically-motivated terrorist act.

A number of German outlets have reported details of the alleged far-right ties of the suspect arrested in the city of Kassel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Monday that the 45-year-old man, named only as Stephan E., had a long criminal record, had already issued death threats via his YouTube channel, and that weapons were found during the search of his home.

According to the paper, Stephan E. had written a comment on YouTube in 2018 under his alias Game Over that read “Either this government abdicates soon or there will be deaths.”

Citing sources within security forces, the paper, along with public broadcasters NDR and WDR, said the suspect had been active in extreme-right groups, including the domestic neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) and a group known as the Autonomen Nationalisten (Autonomous Nationalists), a pan-European neo-Nazi group that has adopted some Antifa and far-left tactics.

Stephan E. is also believed to have been sentenced to six years in prison for an attempted bomb attack on a refugee home in 1995. He was also reported to have taken part in an attack on a trade union demonstration in 2009.

Officially, however, the federal prosecutors were giving little away about the investigation surrounding the suspect. Press spokesman Markus Schmitt appeared briefly before the cameras in Karlsruhe on Monday afternoon to confirm that the murder was being treated as a far-right extremist crime. He added that there was no indication yet that the suspect indeed belonged to a particular neo-Nazi terrorist cell, but that police were investigating whether others may have been involved.

The neo-Nazis of Kassel and Dortmund

Hendrik Puls, researcher of the far-right scene and an academic advisor to the NSU investigative committee established by the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, sees Lübcke’s murder in the context of the neo-Nazi scene that sprang up in the cities of Dortmund and Kassel in the mid-1990s, inspired by the British neo-Nazi group Combat 18.

“That’s the first thing I thought of [when I heard of Lübcke’s case],” Puls told DW. “This is a region that is tightly connected to the activities of Combat 18, both currently and historically.”

In the mid- to late 1990s, Puls explained, Combat 18 and its associated groups began “propagating armed struggle,” for instance by publishing magazines that included bomb-making instructions as well as sharing strategies for armed struggle.

https://www.dw.com/en/walter-l%C3%BCbcke-murder-raises-specter-of-neo-nazi-terrorism/a-49238157

 

This Swastika is totally gross, disgusting and should be taken out immediately. In Germany a citizen who displays such a symbol could face criminal charges. In Germany the Swastika is outlawed if used in a context of völkisch ideology. It is reassuring the local citzenry is taking up this issue and demanding that this symbol of hate and genocide be removed immediately. It is despicable.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 6.12.2019

An online petition calling on an El Sobrante man to remove a giant concrete swastika from his front lawn has gathered more than 3,000 signatures, but the homeowner sounded unmoved Wednesday.

The petition was posted Monday on the Care2 website by a group calling itself “Not in Our Town El Sobrante.” As of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, the petition had digital signatures from 3,207 supporters.

The petition’s goal is to persuade Steve Johnson (pictured below), a 67-year-old retired welder, to rip out a swastika he put in his front yard as part of a driveway he said he is building. Johnson told The Chronicle he understood the historical significance of the Nazi symbol, but he decided to install it anyway because he liked the design.

Since news stories about the swastika appeared, Johnson’s car and two pickup trucks have been egged, he said. He suspects neighbors. The answering machine on his phone has been filled with insults and threats, he added, and lots of people have driven past and taken photographs.

Johnson covered the swastika with “blankets and stuff to calm things down,” but he hasn’t removed the offending symbol — though he held out the possibility.

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot more (reaction) than I expected. Everybody’s on my butt about this.”

The petition’s author — identified as Sarah Dunham by a Care2 spokeswoman — did not, and she notes that the swastika has become an international symbol of hatred.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Petition-calls-for-removal-of-giant-swastika-from-13974235.php

The American women played a solid game against Chile, a tougher foe than hapless Thailand.  The Chilean goalkeeper, Christiane Endler, was spectacular in the net and was named Player of the Match despite being on the losing team.

The Guardian 6.19.2019

Carli Lloyd had been blunt leading up to the group match against Thailand: she thought she should be starting for the USA in this Women’s World Cup and disagreed with the coach Jill Ellis’s decision over several months to use her as a substitute.

“There’s nothing there that’s holding me back except for the coach’s decision,” Lloyd said on Friday. But against Chile Lloyd got her chance as Ellis heavily rotated her starting lineup to give preferred players a rest – and Lloyd backed her case with a double, leading the US to a resounding 3-0 winwhich should have been a hat-trick as she missed a penalty.

The score would have become greater but for the Chile goalkeeper, Christiane Endler, (pictured below) who had a sensational second half, making nine savesincluding several impressive ones, to stem the bleeding. The Paris Saint-Germain No 1, playing in her home club stadium, made a couple of difficult diving parries to deny Christen Press in the 58th and 66th minutes.

“She made four or five saves that were in-the-goal saves,” Lloyd said. “Just incredible.” Ellis added: “As a fan of this sport, they were some spectacular saves. In a game where you feel like you’re going to get the result, there’s less anxiety in terms of her pulling out such worldie saves. She got player of the match in a game they lost 3-0 and I’m good with that.”

For the Americans, fresh off their 13-0 demolition of Thailand, a similar if less spectacular dismantling of Chile was all part of the plan for the world’s No 1-ranked team. The Americans secured their spot in the knockout stages regardless of how their final group game goes and they have put the rest of the World Cup field on notice.

Ellis, seemingly confident about getting past Chile, made a surprise seven changes to her lineup that shellacked Thailand five days earlier. But it was not actually a new tactic; she did the same thing during World Cup qualifying in October, when she made wholesale changes for the USA’s second match in the knockout round of that tournament, only to start her first-choice starting XI through the rest of the games.

Another slap in the face to the people of the Middle East. The disgraced Israeli Prime Minister once again bows down before Trump

Deutsche Welle 6.16.2019

Israel’s cabinet has visited the Golan Heights to inaugurate the country’s controversial new settlement. In March, Trump recognized the territory that Israel seized from Syria in 1967 as belonging to the Jewish state.

Israel’s cabinet convened in Golan on Sunday for the naming of the neighborhood currently occupied by four settler families.

Addressing the ceremony, Netanyahu called Trump a “great friend” of Israel and described the Golan, which overlooks northern Israel, as an important strategic asset.

“The Golan Heights was and will always be an inseparable part of our country and homeland,” Netanyahu said.

Opposition MPs quickly denounced the naming ceremony as a “cheap PR stunt” by Netanyahu’s interim government, which failed to form a coalition following an April election victory and now awaits a new September vote.

“It’s a non-binding, fake policy,” lawmaker Zvi Hauser was quoted by the Times of Israel as saying. “There is no budgeting, no planning, no location for a settlement, and there is no binding decision to implement the project. But at least they insisted on a name,” he said.

Some 23,000 Druze — an Arab Muslim minority also present in Syria and Lebanon — live in the occupied and annexed portion of the Golan Heights, while 25,000 Israeli settlers have arrived there since 1967.

Trump’s recognition of the area as Israeli followed last year’s relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which sparked anger in the Muslim world.

Developing Ramat Trump will not be easy. Ringed by high yellow grass and landmines, it is roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Syrian border and a half hour drive from the nearest Israeli town, Kiryat Shmona, a community of about 20,000 people near the Lebanese border.

https://www.dw.com/en/israels-netanyahu-names-new-golan-settlement-trump-heights/a-49228074

I paid  scant attention to the lurid tale of Amanda Knox until I read the 2013 novel by Jennifer DuBois, “Cartwheel,” a fictionalized account of the saga which gripped the media for years. Read the book. Fascinating.

Deutsche Welle 6.15.2019

Once accused of brutally murdering her roommate, the exonerated journalist has called for an end to “irresponsible media.” Her case gained widespread notoriety, partly due to the media frenzy surrounding her trial.

Amanda Knox, an American journalist who was exonerated of her roommate’s 2007 murder, criticized media coverage of her case at a conference in Modena on Saturday, marking the first time she has returned to Italy since she was acquitted.

Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were charged with the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in the Italian city of Perugia. Her case gained widespread notoriety with lurid headlines that included such phrases as “Foxy Knoxy.”

“In the court of public opinion, you are not a person, you are an object to consume,” Knox said during a panel entitled “Trial by Media.” “I had no doubt my innocence would save me. But my innocence didn’t save me, because the media created a version of me that did not fit with that story. And people loved their story.”

Knox’s trial was widely reported on in Italy and the UK, often with sensational angles

Throughout Knox’s trial, defense lawyers argued that she could not receive a fair trial due to the media frenzy surrounding the case.

In an article published on online publishing platform Medium, Knox described being depicted as a “sex-crazed femme fatale” by Italian prosecutors and fleeing Italy “in a high-speed chase, paparazzi literally ramming the back of my stepdad’s rental car.”

“While on trial for a murder I didn’t commit, my prosecutor painted me as a sex-crazed femme fatale, and the media profited for years by sensationalizing an already sensational and utterly unjustified story,” Knox wrote.  “It’s on us to stop making and stop consuming such irresponsible media.”

Knox was found guilty and acquitted several times before Italy’s highest court definitively acquitted her in 2015. She spent four years in prison before leaving Italy in 2011.

An Ivorian man who long resided in Perugia was found guilty of the murder in 2008. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison after exhausting the appeals process.

In the run-up to Knox’s participation at the Criminal Justice Festival in Modena, a lawyer representing Kercher’s family told The Associated Press that “inviting her to a technical panel on justice was a mistake.”

https://www.dw.com/en/amanda-knox-returns-to-italy-for-first-time-since-acquittal/a-49218894