Lee Heidhues 5.12.2023

The continued despoliation of historic Golden Gate Park has no end in sight.

The latest turn of the screw in turning this urban sanctuary into a promoter’s fever dream has selected the Polo Fields at the west end of the Park as its chosen bed.

Citing a yawning budget deficit as the excuse to further destroy the Park, Mayor London Breed and Recreation and Parks Director Phil Ginsburg want to piggyback on top of the yearly Outside Lands concert. A yearly environmentally destructive event which has wreaked havoc in the Park since 2007.

The dim bulbs at City Hall are playing a false tune. They now want to follow Outside Lands with another mammoth musical disaster in the week after Outside Lands concludes.

The promoter for this proposed act of greed and environmental degradation is Another Planet Entertainment. http://www.apeconcerts.com The same avaricious promoter which sponsors Outside Lands and many large scale profit generating events.

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, https://sfrecpark.org, followed by the Board of Supervisors, https://sfbos.org/, must approve the proposal. Rest assured it’s a done deal and the public hearings will be no more than perfunctory nonsense. Money talks.

Mayor Breed claims these “events … show off the beauty of our parks.” What the Mayor fails to ad is that these events also destroy and despoil the parks.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.12.2023

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has unveiled a new plan to bring more summer concerts to Golden Gate Park starting next year. 

“Music has been a vital part of the park’s history, from the Summer of Love to the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands festivals of today,” she said in a statement. “These kinds of events bring excitement to our city, show off the beauty of our parks, and help support our local economy.”

The proposal, announced first to The Chronicle on Friday, May 12, calls for two or three days of headliner-driven events on the weekend following the annual Outside Lands music festival.

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission is scheduled to vote on Thursday, May 18, on whether to recommend granting a permit to Another Planet Entertainment to organize ticketed concerts at the Golden Gate Park Polo Field for three years beginning in 2024. APE produces Outside Lands, but these concerts would be separate, smaller events that would utilize a portion of the festival’s existing infrastructure, which would remain in place to minimize the impact on the park.

The permit fees for the city, amounting to $1.4 million for a two-day event and $2.1 million for a three-day event, would help the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department continue offering programming to residents and maintaining park facilities, according to city officials. 

Currently, the city faces a budget deficit of $780 million over the next two years.

“We’ve all been asked to cut back,” Tamara Barak Aparton, deputy director of communications and public affairs for the Recreation and Park Department, told The Chronicle. “We don’t want to cut our recreation programs or park maintenance, so we are looking at ways to supplement them.” 

Exclusive: S.F. plans to expand summer concerts in Golden Gate Park

Top photo – The eerie view of the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park as sun sets on the environmentally destructive Outside Lands concert

Lee Heidhues 5.11.2023

Once again we have the mainstream media carrying the water for the entitled motorists under the guise of giving a sympathetic hearing to small business owners.

To the point of giving credence to the absurd comment the diminution of parking spaces “will put them out of business.” If business owners have a good product to offer, the customers will come.

The latest incarnation of supporting the whiny motorists is giving voice to their displeasure over the fact San Francisco is facilitating public transit. These motorists need to exit their climate killing cars. Walk. Cycle. Take public transit.

The motorists continue to fight the battle to drive and, yes, park anywhere anytime.

Last year the entitled motorists received a long over due smackdown when the voters overwhelmingly approved ballot measures to create a 1.5 mile car free space, now called JFK Promenade, in Golden Gate Park. In the same election the voters turned back an effort to permit cars full time on The Great Walkway at the city’s western edge along the Pacific Ocean.

The entitled motorists obviously haven’t, yet, gotten the message. Sadly, they probably never will.

The mainstream media needs to stop being the handkerchief holder for these whiners and report the story that autos no longer rule the roads in San Francisco.

Excerpted from The Standard 5.4.2023

“Parking loss is a trade-off for better bus service and safer streets for people walking,” SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun said.

A plan to remove parking spaces and add bus-only lanes to a major commercial corridor in San Francisco has enraged multiple mom-and-pop shop owners who worry it will put them out of business.

A total of 70 parking spaces would be removed from Geary Boulevard, while 22 new spaces would be created on nearby streets, resulting in a net loss of 48 spaces, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is behind the plan.

Beyond adding bus-only lanes on Geary Boulevard from Stanyan Street to 34th Avenue, the Geary Bus Rapid Transit plan would also convert angled parking on Geary Boulevard between 15th and 26th avenues to parallel parking. New parallel parking areas would include commercial loading zones where parking is restricted for part of the day.

The plan would also add pedestrian safety improvements such as extending the curb out to the street for easier bus boarding, adding no-parking zones near intersections to improve visibility, and lengthening bus stops for the longer buses that are often used along the boulevard.

https://sfstandard.com/business/business-owners-furious-at-san-francisco-plan-to-rip-out-parking-spaces/

Lee Heidhues 5.9.2023

Liz Heidhues today received her Blue Belt in martial arts. The seventh on her road to Black Belt.

Following the first of her two false Citizen’s Arrests and jailing in April 2018 (the second took place less than two years later in February 2020) Liz Heidhues enrolled in the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy http://www.tatwong.com on Clement Street in San Francisco.

Engagement in this centuries old art has been the vehicle for Liz to maintain her self esteem and self respect.

Having been abused by the San Francisco Police Department and the Superior Court who actively collaborated in the settling of a dispute between neighbors Liz needed a vehicle to move beyond the inexplicable and horrific treatment.

Though Liz has been traumatized and still lives on a daily basis with the knowledge the abuse has never ended, she has achieved the latest accolade as she moves towards the penultimate in martial arts. A Black belt.

Top photo – Liz Heidhues with Blue Belt – May 9, 2023

Lee Heidhues 5.8.2023

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors are weak and worthless in the extreme limiting themselves to a polite unctuous callow call for a Resolution requesting release of the video showing the murder of Banko Brown by a Walgreens rent a cop.

The District Attorney a complete political creature who owes her job to Mayor London Breed, currently off on a junket to Israel, has already decided not to prosecute the perpetrator.

Ethically compromised DA Brooke Jenkins must be loving every minute of it as the Supervisors, who can’t even get a majority to sign on, are set to pass this mindless Resolution. Not even worth the paper it is printed on.

It’s emblematic of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors gutless political dialogue coming from elected officials that Senator Scott Wiener, who at best remained silent during the recall of DA Chesa Boudin and at worst supported it, is at least obliquely criticizing the DA. Even this politician is calling for release of the incriminating video.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 5.8.2023

The Board of Supervisors is expected to pass a resolution urging the public release of all information gathered by police in the Banko Brown killing on Tuesday—but won’t be pursuing an earlier call by Board President Aaron Peskin that would have urged District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to file new charges in the case.

Banko Brown Case

Last week, Peskin said that he would formally ask the board to urge District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to reconsider her decision to not charge Walgreens security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony in the shooting death of activist Banko Brown in an alleged shoplifting incident. 

In a statement last Monday, Jenkins said that “releasing video, or any other evidence at this time could compromise the investigation.”

That ask has now evolved into a resolution urging Jenkins “to release police reports, witness accounts and video” of the incident, “that form the factual basis in the case presented by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) for filing charges by the District Attorney.” 

Once passed, the board will join state Sen. Scott Wiener in calling for the public release of information around the Brown case. But those calls are putting lawmakers at odds with Jenkins, who said on Monday that releasing evidence in the case would compromise the investigation.  

Supervisors Connie Chan, Joel Engardio, Myrna Melgar and Shamann Walton are co-sponsoring the resolution, which is nonbinding. 

“We need to see the video first,” Peskin texted The Standard Monday, explaining the change. 

Co-sponsor Engardio worked with Peskin to amend the resolution. 

“It was premature to call for a different decision when we had not seen all of the evidence,” Engardio told The Standard in a text. “There is also the question of administrative interference, which supervisors are not allowed to do under the city charter. 

“This is an extraordinary case and I believe it is in the public interest for supervisors to call for the release of the video and evidence,” Engardio added. 

https://sfstandard.com/politics/supervisors-wont-urge-new-charges-in-banko-brown-case-but-call-for-release-of-video/

Lee Heidhues 5.7.2023

Sutter Street in San Francisco straddles two diverse neighborhoods in changing San Francisco.

To the south side of Sutter Street is the Western Addition which formerly was a historically Black neighborhood until Redevelopment and gentrification moved out a sizable number of its earlier homeowners and residents.

On the north side of Sutter Street is the edge of wealthy Pacific Heights from which San Francisco’s power elite have ruled the City since its inception over 150 years ago.

Top photo – Church of God in Christ on Sutter Street, San Francisco

Lee Heidhues 5.6.2023

Buried in the rubble of the News is this disturbing report from The Moscow Times.

There are some in Russia who want to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Interestingly the story doesn’t refer directly to Vladimir Putin Attribution is given to others in the Kremlin hierarchy.

It is logical to presume the itchy fingerprints on the Button are those of Putin.

Excerpted from The Moscow Times 5.6.2023

At least two high-profile Russian officials have called on the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine in retaliation for an alleged drone strike on Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin residence and as the prospect of an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive looms.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on Wednesday called the attempted strike a “terrorist attack” while claiming it had been orchestrated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally. 

“There can be no negotiations … We will be demanding the use of weapons that can stop and destroy the terrorist regime in Kyiv,” Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram, hinting at the use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia. 

Those calls were soon echoed by Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin, who published a video update on Thursday from the frontlines in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhya region, where he is currently working as a military advisor.

“An imminent deadly air fight is anticipated,” Dmitry Rogozin said, noting that Russian forces were actively preparing for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Russia could, however, avoid a significant number of casualties by using tactical nuclear weapons against Kyiv preemptively, he added. 

“According to our [nuclear] doctrine we have the right to use tactical nuclear weapons because that’s what they exist for,” he said, calling them a “great equalizer for the moments when there is a clear discrepancy in the enemy’s favor.” 

However, the leader of the controversial Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, sounded an unexpected note of caution and warned against making casual threats to use nuclear weapons.

“As a radically-minded person I can say that of course there should be no talk of using nuclear weapons in retaliation for a drone,” Prigozhin said on Thursday. 

Advising those responsible to instead find and punish whoever was in charge of preventing aerial drone attacks and to improve Russia’s military capabilities to allow it to retaliate, Prigozhin said that making such disproportionate threats to the West made them “look like clowns.”

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/04/putin-allies-split-on-using-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine-a81038

Lee Heidhues 5.5.2023

One of the most despicable acts of the American government was its instigation and promotion of the September 11, 1973 Coup d’etat which ousted Salvador Allende from power and ushered in the violent, despotic, dictatorial regime of Augusto Pinochet.

An earlier film by Costa Gavras, “Missing,” adapted from the book by Thomas Hauser “Missing. The Execution of Charles Horman-A Scorching Classic of Political Intrigue” 1978 looks at the Coup and its aftermath from an American perspective.

Now we have this horrific event seen up close and personal from the Chilean view in the film “Chile ’76.”

Excerpted from The New York Times 5.4.2023

In 1973, the socialist government of Chile was overthrown by a military junta led by Gen‌‌. Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of the United States. Thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands fled the country under Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted for 17 years and was maintained through violence. ‌

With the new film “Chile ’76,” the director Manuela Martelli joins the company of Chilean filmmakers like Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Leilo, who have made thought-provoking movies reflecting on the Pinochet regime and its impact on the lives of everyday people. Martelli’s initial inspiration for the story came from a source close to home. She imagined the loss felt by her grandmother, who died by suicide in 1976, one of the most violent years of the dictatorship, before Martelli was born.

The protagonist of “Chile ’76” is Carmen (Aline Küppenheim), a regal woman of middle age. She’s a grandmother and a career flight attendant who now lives a comfortably bourgeois lifestyle with her husband in Santiago. When the story begins, she’s in the process of overseeing renovations to her family’s beachside vacation home. Carmen occupies her time alone with charitable work, guided by the sanguine priest of the town, Father Sánchez (Hugo Medina).

Carmen is discomforted by the sanctioned brutality around her — early on, she witnesses distraught neighbors being dragged away in the streets.

But Carmen’s comfortable existence is not directly disrupted until Father Sánchez asks her to care for a fugitive hidden in the church. She acquiesces, nursing Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), a wounded revolutionary, back to health. She transports antibiotics for his injuries, and lies to the suspicious authorities to cover her tracks. Anxiety becomes Carmen’s constant companion as telephones buzz on lines that might be tapped, and neighbors pry, posing inconvenient questions.

Lee Heidhues 5.4.2023

The heartfelt testimony at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing on the murder of Banko Brown by a hired gun security guard at Walgreens and the despicable refusal of DA Brooke Jenkins to prosecute is beyond shameful.

DA Brooke Jenkins and Mayor London Breed are putting their total hypocrisy on full display for all the world to see. All too ready to scream law and order these two women of color are criminally silent when it comes to the blatant murder of a young black transgender citizen.

A murder committed by a corporate rent a cop. Being excused by DA Brooke Jenkins.

A murder which occurred just footsteps away from the Westfield Center where corporate giant Nordstroms just announced it will be shuttering its mega department store. What is happening in San Francisco is the continuing disintegration of this once proud City.

Tim Redmond put it succinctly in 48 Hills earlier this week.

Banko Brown was unarmed when he was shot by a private security guard at Walgreens

“Breed, Jenkins, Wiener, and their allies, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, the local TV stations, and a lot of other news media, created the deadly narrative that crime is so out of control in this city that we need more cops, more people in prison, and more crackdowns on small-scale theft. (Walgreens can afford to lose $14).

Now a young Black trans man is dead.

This is what happens when you create a racist, pro-cop, tough-on-crime narrative, and when you, like Jenkins, refuse to hold the shooters, whether they be cops or security guards, accountable.”

Excerpted from SF Standard.5.4.2023

San Francisco police cleared up some of the details surrounding the deadly shooting of a suspected shoplifter by a security guard outside a Walgreens in a case that spurred widespread outrage.

Banko Brown, 24, was unarmed when the security guard shot and killed him outside the drugstore near Market and Fourth streets last Thursday, Police Chief Bill Scott told the Police Commission on Wednesday.

An altercation broke out when the security guard, Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, tried to stop Brown for shoplifting, the chief said. Anthony, 33, was still inside the store when Brown stepped outside and turned toward him. Brown then allegedly spit on the security guard and raised his arm toward him before Anthony drew his gun and fired, Scott said.

The shooting and subsequent decision by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins not to charge Anthony with murder sparked outcry from Brown’s supporters, who said Brown did not deserve to die for allegedly shoplifting. They viewed the killing of Brown, who was Black and transgender, as an extension of the challenges facing those communities in San Francisco.

The shooting is putting police at odds with prosecutors.

While police booked Anthony on suspicion of murder last Friday, prosecutors soon after declined to charge him, and he was released.

Scott told The Standard last Friday that his department decided to arrest Anthony on suspicion of murder because security guards “have to use force appropriately within the law,” even if they have a firearms license.

“If that’s not the case, regardless of whether you are a security guard or police officer or not, you are subject to that,” Scott said.

However, Jenkins said Monday that she would not be able to prove a murder case against Anthony to a jury based on witness statements, statements from Anthony and video footage of the incident.

“The evidence clearly shows that the suspect believed he was in mortal danger and acted in self-defense,” Jenkins said in a statement.

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/walgreens-killing-heres-what-we-know-about-banko-browns-shooting-by-a-security-guard/

Lee Heidhues 5.4.2023

The mystery of which country and who blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea last September 26 continues to go unrsesolved.

Four days earlier, on Sept. 22, a Danish naval patrol vessel, P524 Nymfen, took 112 photographs of several Russian vessels near the blast site, the Danish Defence Command said in a response to a freedom of information request from The Wall Street Journal.

After several weeks of the story disappearing from the headlines it is surfacing, again. Courtesy of Danish authorities who, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, have released photos of Russian naval vessels near the site.

Excerpted from The BBC 5.3.2023

Russian ships able to perform underwater operations were present near to where explosions later took place on the Nord Stream pipelines, according to an investigative documentary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-vessels-photographed-at-nord-stream-site-days-before-blast-9695bc70

The vessels were reportedly located using intercepted Russian navy communications.

Underwater explosions last September knocked the two Nord Stream pipelines – built to carry gas from Russia to Europe – out of action.

The cause of the blasts is unclear.

Formal investigations are still taking place in countries close to the blast site. So far, they have said only that they believe the explosions were the result of sabotage rather than any kind of accident.

But one possible lead pointing towards Russian involvement has emerged from details of suspicious Russian ship movements in the run-up to the Nord Stream blasts, reported by four Nordic public broadcasters and an accompanying English-language podcast Cold Front.

And Denmark’s Defence Command has confirmed a separate report that a Danish patrol boat called Nymfen took 26 photos of a Russian submarine-rescue ship in the area days before the explosions. The Information website said the SS-750 had sailed from Kaliningrad and was close to Bornholm island on 22 September 2022.

The investigation by Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK, Sweden’s SVT, and Finland’s Yle focuses on the movements and actions of ships between June and September last year which they describe as highly unusual.

The ships are believed to include the Russian naval research vessel Sibiryakov, the tugboat SB-123 (photo shown at top), and a third ship from the Russian naval fleet that the media outlets have not been able to identify by name.

These were so-called “ghost-ships”, which had their transmitters turned off. The broadcasters, however, say they were able to track their movements, using intercepted radio communications the vessels sent to Russian naval bases.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65461401

Lee Heidhues 5.3.2023

The false arrest and imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich going on two months is an international outrage.

The worst part of this inhumane act is the fact a young journalist. Doing his job. Whose parents are Russian emigres. Who speaks fluent Russian. Is being held in the most barbaric of conditions.

The incarceration and isolation of Evan Gershkovich is another crime against humanity perpetrated by Vladimir Putin.

This is a cruel fact which no media report will never accurately convey.

Excerpted from Moscow Times 5.3.2023

“ There is complete isolation: no meetings, no news from the outside world,” said former inmate and chemical weapons program whistleblower Vil Mirzayanov, who was arrested on treason charges in 1992. 

While Mirzayanov said Gershkovich was unlikely to suffer any physical violence from guards, he would have to find ways of dealing with the isolation and squalid conditions. 

“I wish him strength,” he said. 

Since his arrest on charges of espionage just over a month ago, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been held in Russia’s most notorious prison, Lefortovo, located in a leafy residential district of Moscow.  

Its impenetrable walls once muffled the cries of Soviet-era political prisoners tortured and executed by security officers during Stalin’s purges. 

While bullets no longer fly in Lefortovo’s holding cells, the prison’s central role in Russia’s system of political repression has remained unchanged. 

“Lefortovo is famous for putting maximum psychological pressure [on inmates],” said Igor Rudnikov, a journalist and ex-local official who spent 10 months in Lefortovo in 2017 and 2018. 

“The goal is simple: to break the detainee.”

Like other prisoners, Gershkovich, a former journalist for The Moscow Times, is likely experiencing extreme isolation in Lefortovo. According to former inmates and lawyers, he will have had to grow accustomed to unpartitioned toilets, lights that never turned off, visits by prison guards every four minutes and rare glimpses of the sky. 

Used to hold high-profile prisoners, or those accused of the most serious charges, Lefortovo is filled with ex-spies, politicians, murderers and some of those accused under Russia’s widespread crackdown on wartime dissent. 

The prison is de-facto controlled by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), rather than the Federal Penitentiary Service that is in charge of the country’s correctional system. 

Despite its reputation, guards at the modern-day Lefortovo no longer subject inmates to overt physical violence or verbal humiliation. 

In fact, former inmates recalled staff being polite and never failing to wish prisoners a good morning. 

“Investigators there are extremely polite. Everything in Lefortovo is very civilized,” said Mirzayanov.

Extreme isolation was mentioned by all the former Lefortovo detainees who spoke to The Moscow Times about their time at the facility. 

For inmates, their isolation begins immediately upon arrival at Lefortovo when they are placed in a single cell for a two-week quarantine. 

“They sit alone in an information blockade for two weeks. There is a TV in the cell but it usually doesn’t work — I think that is done on purpose,” lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who has worked with dozens of people imprisoned at Lefortovo, told The Moscow Times. 

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/02/the-torture-of-isolation-inside-the-russian-prison-housing-us-journalist-evan-gershkovich-a80952

Top photo – Wall Street Journalist Evan Gershkovich in Russian courtroom