SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.23.2023

Israel military might has killed 20,000 children, women and men in Gaza since launching its offensive, bordering on war crimes, against the people of Gaza.

In retaliation for the murderous Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7. An attack which took the lives of 1200 people. An attack which the Israelis knew was in the planning and, as has been well documented, did not take adequate security measures to prevent. (Link to New York Times article below).

Now, eleven weeks of barbarity by the Israelis has resulted in barbarity which has appalled the world. In Gaza the people are not only under murderous assault by American supplied weapons.

The people of Gaza are starving. The result of Israeli calculated action to continue to kill and starve the People of Gaza.

Deutsche Welle 12.23.2023

https://www.dw.com/en/un-says-half-a-million-people-starving-in-gaza/video-67803329

[Video transcript]

Signs of starvation are not hard to find in Gaza.

Here in Rafah, crowds jostle for what little food is available. 

The despair is evident.

(Displaced Person)
“This war brought an unbearable level of humiliation. We struggle so much just to provide lunch. Life has become so expensive it’s unbearable. We do not eat, drink or sleep properly. And nothing is available.”

A United-Nations-backed report says more than 90 percent of people in Gaza are facing crisis levels of hunger.

A critical situation amid Israel’s relentless bombardment in response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

UN agencies say Gazans are getting just 10 percent of the food deliveries they would usually receive. 

People struggle to find water, medicine and fuel.

(Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Program)
“What is happening in Gaza is unprecedented. Both in terms of its scale but also how quickly it has happened. You know, in the world right now, there are about 130,000 people who are in catastrophic levels of hunger, meaning they are starving. In Gaza, more than half a million. That is four times more. And that is what makes this totally unprecedented.”

Israel did briefly allow aid through its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza this week.

But an Israeli airstrike that hit the Palestinian side forced UN staff to stop its pick-ups there.

(Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Program)
“We can still avoid this famine. But we need to make sure that people have food, people have water, they have shelter, they have sanitation. And for all of those things to happen, we need border crossings open so these commodities can come in.”

The growing desperation for food also means that the limited supplies that do make it into Gaza are often seized upon before being handed out.

And the UN says it’s not just access to aid that is vital, but also its safe distribution across the strip.

Without it, they warn, the risk of famine in Gaza is increasing every day.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.22.2023

Mine is just a personal story. I only have to look at the local media to read endless stories of the mayhem, violence and state of abhorrent human behavior and societal disrepair with which I am surrounded.

San Francisco is an angry place. Liz and I confronted it this week with two disturbing events. Illustrative of the mood inflicting this city. 

Anger is something notably missing in Berlin where we spent three weeks in November. The people in Germany seem to enjoy life.

We did not notice the obvious systemic unhappiness, hostility and anger which casts a fog like pall over America in general and San Francisco in particular.

On Monday Liz and I had an appearance in San Francisco Superior Court pursuing an elder abuse restraining order against a 34 year old. He appeared via phone. When the Judge put him on speaker phone the respondent, with no preliminary comments, launched into a tirade called us “crazy” and “insane.” Despite being admonished that such personal attacks are inappropriate he continued on, shouting sometimes, this abusive rhetoric. We just sat impassively while this verbal fusillade went on despite efforts by the Judge to maintain order in the court.

That was Monday.

This afternoon, Friday three days before Christmas, I brought back a defective item to our outer Richmond District neighborhood hardware store one hour after purchasing it. The clerk refused to consider a return. I asked to speak with the “boss” who eventually appeared.

The packaging clearly stated my consumer rights. The owner yelled at me. He threw the defective item on the floor. His employees looked on. Mouths agape. “Give him back his money. You’re a fucking asshole. Never set foot in this store again!!” My wife and I are legacy customers. We have done business with previous owners since 1978. Never, again.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.19.2023

Our fraught German excursion whose hi-lights were being laid low by a vicious virus and Liz suffering an ankle fracture riding the dangerous Deutsche Bahn is now officially over.

This rainy morning our faithful USPS postal carrier delivered two parcels totaling 44 pounds. Containing a number of gifts and mementos from what may be our last German experience.

It certainly has been good to return to our quiet San Francisco neighborhood. Drink the quality Hetch Hetchy water. Have our own home brewed coffee and read the newspapers each morning.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.17.2023

One of the most onerous California ballot measures, passed unwittingly by the voters in 2020 as Proposition 19, may be headed for a second vote next November.

In order to place the measure on the November 2024 ballot, 1.2 million signatures are needed by the deadline on January 16, 2024.

That ballot measure struck down the ability of parents and grand parents to pass on their homes to their offspring and not suffer a huge property tax hit. Prior to passage in 2020 children and grand children could inherit these homes without incurring a potentially huge increase in property taxes.

Under CURRENT law when a property passes onto the children it is reassessed at current market value. For example a family which purchased their home in the mid-1980’s, raised their family and still live in the same property, currently pay approximately $3000.00 in yearly property taxes.

Under CURRENT law the property is reassessed to market value. The revised property tax could increase to at least $12,000 yearly based on current market value. A burden which has forced children and grand children inheriting family property to sell.

Excerpted from The Wind 12.17.2023

(SAN FRANCISCO) In November 2020, Proposition 19 which changed the rules of tax assessment transfers was passed by 51% California voters to become law. Three years later today, people are trying to repeal the law by gathering 1.2M signatures by January 16, 2024 for a petition to put the state measure back on the ballot in the November 2024 election.

Prop. 19 eliminated the parent-to-child and grandparent-to-grandchild exemption in cases where the child or grandchild does not use the inherited property as their principal residence, such as using a property as a rental house or a second home.

Prop. 19 is also called the Death Tax on Property. Its full name is the Property Tax Transfers, Exemptions, and Revenue for Wildfire Agencies and Counties Amendment.

The property tax transfers in Prop. 19 affect properties being handed down by parents or grandparents to their children and grandchildren. This amendment has angered a large number of homeowners and parents including members of the large Chinese community.

Prior to Prop. 19, parents or grandparents could transfer primary residential properties to their children or grandchildren without the property’s tax assessment resetting to market value.

Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association started the petition to repeal Prop. 19 by collecting signatures statewide for a new ballot measure at the November election in 2024.

“As more and more Californians find out what has happened, anger is growing,” Jon Coupal, President of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, wrote on the petition website. “Parents should be able to transfer property to their children without triggering reassessment to current market value and a huge tax increase. For more than 30 years, they could. It was a right enshrined in the California constitution. But now, it’s gone.”

“Under Prop. 19, property transferred from parents to children is reassessed to current market value, with only limited exceptions. Grieving families find out about it in a letter from the assessor’s office that arrives in the mail along with the sympathy cards,” said Coupal.

https://www.windnewspaper.com/article/homeowners-gather-signatures-to-repeal-prop-19-by-january-16-2024

Top photo: Concerned San Franciscans gathered at City Hall on December 8th to push ballot measure repealing Proposition 19.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.15.2023

Never mind that the political animal San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins conned and lied her way into office on the back of her one time boss. Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

Turning her back on the man who promoted her career. Quitting in October 2021. Calling herself a “volunteer” as she campaigned to recall Chesa Boudin. All the while being paid over 150K for her political “volunteer” gig. Then being rewarded handsomely by Mayor London Breed for doing the Mayor’s political chores. Being handed the DA job after Chesa was politically lynched on June 7, 2022. 

A shameful action backed with nearly 9M in right wing money and supported by Mayor Breed.

A DA who has torn to shreds everything put in place by her predecessor. Including dropping charges and refusing to prosecute dirty cops who were under Chesa’s microscope of treating all law breakers equally.

Has the crime situation improved on her watch during the past 18 months? Not in the least. Though DA Jenkins brandishes her few successful prosecutions as evidence of her stalwart performance.

What are the DA’s priorities? Unctuously announcing that she is going to throw the full weight of her office. Prosecuting 80 people who engaged in civil disobedience protesting the Israeli military assault against Gaza during the November APEC conference in San Francisco.

Several weeks earlier Brooke Jenkins, following an uproar in the Arab American community, deleted a tweet in which she characterized a rally in support of Palestinians as a “pro-Hamas” event, saying she only meant to condemn a piece of anti semitic graffiti that appeared downtown.

SF DA Brooke Jenkins at it again. Red Baiting Palestine protesters

Some courageous crime fighter is our political DA.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 12.15.2023

“While we must protect avenues for free speech, the exercise of free speech can not compromise public safety. The demonstration on the Bay Bridge that snarled traffic for hours had a tremendous impact on those who were stuck on the bridge for hours and required tremendous public resources to resolve,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement. “I would like to commend the California Highway Patrol and San Francisco Sheriff’s Department for their work to peacefully resolve this incident.”

Eighty people will be charged with unlawful public assembly, among other misdemeanors, for a November protest that shut down traffic across the Bay Bridge for hours, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.

On the morning of Nov. 16, protesters shut down the westbound lanes of the Bay Bridge, calling for a cease fire in Gaza while world leaders met in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Now, 80 individuals will face five misdemeanor charges each, according to the district attorney’s office. 

Just before 8 a.m., dozens of protesters stopped their cars and began demonstrating in the middle of the bridge, holding up banners and chanting slogans over bullhorns. Many of them chained their arms together inside of tubes to make removing them more difficult. It took law enforcement four hours to arrest the protesters and remove their cars so traffic could resume. In total, 82 people were arrested, according to a spokesperson for California Highway Patrol.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/bay-bridge-protesters-charged-18557387.php

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.14.2023

With each passing day Israel continues to lose credibility in the forum of world public opinion.

The ongoing carnage Israel is inflicting on the people of Gaza has no limits.

Israel is not satisfied with slaughtering nearly 20,000 men, women and children in retribution for the vicious Hamas terror attack of October 7 inside Israel which resulted in the brutal deaths of 1200 people.

The retaliation by Israel, now over two months, has far exceeded the normal boundaries of a measured response. With the tacit approval of, and weapons provided by, the American government the Israeli military is operating with no restraints.

Now, according to the New York Times, a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, the Israeli military has taken to destroying Gazan holy places. The resting place for the dead.

A hideous action which is considered a potential war crime.

Excerpted from The New York Times 12.14.2023

Israeli ground forces have damaged or destroyed at least six cemeteries during their advance into the northern Gaza Strip, most of them in recent weeks, according to an analysis of new satellite imagery and video footage by The New York Times.

The laws of armed conflict consider the intentional destruction of religious sites without military necessity a possible war crime.

In Gaza City’s Shajaiye neighborhood, where heavy combat raged in recent days, Israeli forces razed part of the Tunisian cemetery to set up a temporary military position. A satellite image from Sunday shows armored vehicles and earthen fortifications on what were intact graves days earlier.

The Israeli military did not respond to questions by The Times about its reason for razing the cemetery and whether it has taken any precautions to protect religious sites in Gaza.

Much of the damage was inflicted this month, as Israeli forces advanced toward what Israeli officials believe are remaining Hamas strongholds in densely built-up areas of Gaza City. Israel appears to be using at least one cemetery as a temporary base for military vehicles.

Israeli military vehicles destroyed dozens of graves at a smaller cemetery in early December, next to an existing Israeli position half a mile to the northwest of the Tunisian cemetery. A video published by the Israeli military on Sunday shows soldiers apparently engaged in combat in the area.

On the same day, in the Jabaliya neighborhood of Gaza City, satellite imagery showed new tracks and possible military vehicles at Al-Faluja cemetery. Later video footage shows damage to gravesites but no established military positions.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.12.2023

After nearly a month in Berlin and Frankfurt, where discordant street life is not part of the mosaic, the reality of San Francisco hits home immediately.

It’s hard to put into words the difference between San Francisco and Berlin when it comes to daily life. In Berlin the people seem to be enjoying themselves. In the cafes, the shopping districts and the museums. The edgy tension which is pervasive in San Francisco. Crime. Violence. The unhoused. It is something generally missing in Berlin.

The following photos were taken in the days after our return to America.

These are not the type scenes we witnessed in Germany.

Top photo: One of San Francisco’s thousands of unhoused finds shelter wherever he can.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.10.2023

The San Francisco Chronicle finally published an opinion piece on the insidious Citizen’s Arrest. A legal tool often used by citizen’s wishing to settle disputes by utilizing the police as their enforcer and legal executioner.

I know all too well the malevolent manner in which the citizen’s arrest can be abused. Right here in allegedly “progressive” San Francisco.

My decades long wife a respected educator, parent, grandparent and San Francisco native was two times, at the age of 68 and 70, the subject of citizen’s arrests. Acting as “custodian” (that’s the legal term) the SFPD took my wife into custody.

Why? vindictive neighbors twice in less than two years completed and signed a Citizen’s Arrest. The SFPD witnessed neither offense. Both citizen’s arrests were woven out of whole cloth with no legal basis or evidentiary basis whatsoever.

I had twice to post $20,000 cash bail to have my wife released from San Francisco County Jail. The Superior Court made quick work of both False Citizen’s Arrests. Dismissing one “In the Interest of Justice (PC 1385) and discharging the other.

We sued the neighbors in San Francisco Superior Court for both False Citizen’s Arrests. The neighbors who consummated both False Citizen’s Arrests moved to have the false arrest allegations quashed. The Court denied the Motion. The neighbors agreed to a settlement shortly thereafter and eventually signed the Agreement in our favor.

Still, the psychological and financial damage was done. It is long lasting and will stay with us, particularly my wife, forever.

Justice in America is elusive and expensive.

Citizen’s Arrest. Misused by sociopaths to abuse, intimidate and harass

Top photo: Liz. Subject of two False Citizen’s Arrests (circa 2019) and author of the attached blog post.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues – December 9, 2023

The American ‘veto’ at the United Nations Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Palestine is reprehensible. The scorn being heaped on America for this ‘veto’ it totally justified.

Palestinian men, women and children continue to be slaughtered from the air by the Israeli military. Whose scorched earth campaign against the Palestinian people continues with the political blessing and weapons provided by the Biden Administration.

The reaction of the Israeli government in response to the horrific terror attack by Hamas on October 7 has now gone far beyond the point of a measured response.

It is now obvious that the military carnage unleashed on the people of Palestine has only one goal. Destroy Palestine as a viable territory fit for human habitation.

One day Israel will pay a price for the murder and mayhem it continues to inflict on Palestine.

Deutsche Welle 12.9.2023

Netanyahu: Israel will continue our ‘just war’ against Hamas

The Israeli military said there were signs Hamas was “falling apart” in Gaza, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the war.

In a video statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the US for its veto on the Gaza cease-fire resolution in the UN Security Council. 

“I very much appreciate the correct stance the US took at the United Nations Security Council,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, Israel will continue our just war to eliminate Hamas and achieve the rest of the war’s goals.”  

Israel launched its current military operation against Hamas in Gaza after the militant-Islamist group carried out terror attacks on Israel on October 7.   

 Netanyahu said “other countries must also understand that they cannot support the elimination of Hamas on one side, and on the other to call for the end of the war, which will prevent the elimination of Hamas.” 

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-pounds-gaza-targets-after-us-vetos-rare-un-ceasefire-bid/video-67678827

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 12.8.2023

I cannot believe how Kaiser has dropped the ball in treating Liz’ ankle injury.

Liz will not be seen by a Kaiser specialist in treating injuries until later today, December 8. Ten days after she was injured.

Liz injured her ankle in Frankfurt, Germany on November 28. She was examined by a doctor in Frankfurt. He told her to see her doctor immediately upon her return to San Francisco. While still in Germany Liz contacted Kaiser immediately.

Following a painful 17 hour journey from Frankfurt to San Francisco we arrived home late Sunday.

Liz saw her general practitioner late Monday afternoon. X-rays were taken. The prognosis is that Liz has a fractured ankle. Since then Kaiser has done nothing except talk.

Kaiser has turned what should be a basic treatment, if that can be said about a fractured ankle, into what could become a full blown crisis. This should have been treated three days ago. Instead, Kaiser negligently dawdles. Liz, an athletic runner and cyclist for over 50 years, is forced to suffer unnecessary painful and unconscionable suffering.

The worst part of this failure to provide immediate service is the fact the Kaiser practitioner assigned to handle Liz injury has done nothing. Not even a phone call to discuss with Liz the extent of her injury and recommend treatment.

When I phoned Thursday afternoon I was told this Doctor, who was to have called Liz on Wednesday, was not in the office.

We called the Kaiser injury clinic. We called the office of Liz’s general practitioner. Thursday night we both got on the phone with Kaiser and filed a formal complaint.

We don’t know what else to do. Liz’s knee is swelling up and she is suffering ongoing pain and discomfit. This is an unconscionable medical professional failure.