Lee Heidhues 1.15.2023

On January 15, 1919 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were assassinated in Berlin.

In America, the assassinations and life histories of these socialists and anti-war activists is totally unknown and unrecognized.

The lives and political activities of Luxemburg and Liebknecht are widely known and remembered in Germany. There are yearly memorial demonstrations.

Books and movies have been made about Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Perhaps the most famous is the 1986 film Rosa Luxemburg is a 1986 West German drama film directed by Margarethe von Trotta. The film received the 1986 German Film Award for Best Feature Film (Bester Spielfilm), and Barbara Sukowa won the Cannes Film Festival‘s Best Actress Award and the German Film Award for Best Actress for her performance as Rosa Luxemburg.

https://mubi.com/films/rosa-luxemburg/trailer

Excerpted from Wikipedia – Last updated 1.3.2023

Rosa Luxemburg  5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalized-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist.

Successively, Luxemburg was a member of the Proletariat party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Born and raised in an assimilated Jewish family in Poland, she became a German citizen in 1897.

After the SPD supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution, Luxemburg co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. Luxemburg considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, but supported the attempted overthrow of the government and rejected any attempt at a negotiated solution.

Friedrich Ebert‘s majority SPD government crushed the revolt and the Spartakusbund by sending in the Freikorps, government-sponsored paramilitary groups consisting mostly of World War I veterans. Freikorps troops captured and assassinated Luxemburg and Liebknecht during the rebellion.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were abducted in Berlin on 15 January 1919 by the Rifle Division of the Cavalry Guards of the Freikorps (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision). 

Its commander Captain Waldemar Pabst, with Lieutenant Horst von Pflugk-Harttung, questioned them under torture and then gave the order to summarily execute them.

Luxemburg was assassinated by being knocked down with a rifle butt by the soldier Otto Runge, then shot in the head, either by Lieutenant Kurt Vogel or by Lieutenant Hermann Souchon. Her body was flung into Berlin’s Landwehr Canal. In the Tiergarten, Liebknecht was shot and his body, without a name, brought to a morgue.

The assassinations of Luxemburg and Liebknecht inspired a new wave of violence in Berlin and across Germany. Thousands of members of the KPD as well as other revolutionaries and civilians were killed. Finally, the People’s Navy Division (Volksmarinedivision) and workers’ and soldiers’ councils which had moved to the political left disbanded. Luxemburg was held in high regard by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, who recognized her revolutionary credentials at the Third International.

In Berlin a Liebknecht-Luxemburg Demonstration, shortened to LL-Demo, is organized annually in the month of January around the date of their death. This demonstration takes place on the second weekend of the month in Berlin-Friedrichshain, starting near the Frankfurter Tor to the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde, also known as the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial). In East Germany, the event was widely considered to be a mere show for Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians and celebrities, which was broadcast live on state television.

In 1919, Bertolt Brecht wrote the poetic memorial Epitaph honouring Luxemburg and Kurt Weill set it to music in The Berlin Requiem in 1928:

Red Rosa now has vanished too,
And where she lies is hid from view.
She told the poor what life’s about,
And so the rich have rubbed her out.
May she rest in peace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg

Lee Heidhues 1.14.2023

Checking out the foreign films available at my neighborhood Library I came upon this French film.

It is riveting and intriguing. It fascinates me to see how film makers and performers in other countries capture the human spirit and the way in which these people deal with life’s unexpected events and resultant crises.

Excerpted from The New York Times – 10.11.2012

Identity theft may be rampant nowadays, but “The Big Picture” explores the other side of the coin — the claustrophobic notion that it is increasingly difficult for a person to disappear.

On the deepest level, Paul Exben’s adopting the identity of a man who pursued the very dream Paul abandoned has paradoxical ramifications. Even after he becomes what he might have been, he can’t follow through.

The adage “It’s never too late to be who you might have been,” ascribed to George Eliot, is given a cruel twist in the terrific French thriller “The Big Picture.”

This loose adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s 1997 novel might be described as “The Talented Mr. Ripley” for the age of Google. Its story of Paul Exben, a successful Parisian lawyer who assumes the identity of a man he accidentally kills, belongs to a select circle of twisty top-notch Gallic suspense movies that include Lucas Belvaux’s “Rapt” and Guillaume Canet’s “Tell No One.”

If some of the plot details defy credibility, Romain Duris’s electrifying performance makes you overlook any inconsistencies, as his likable character becomes a man on the run barely able to stifle his panic.

Mr. Duris, 38, has been a major French star since “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” Jacques Audiard’s 2005 French adaptation of James Toback’s “Fingers.” In “The Big Picture” he is as compelling, if not more so.

Mr. Duris’s Paul has the springy agility of the young Mick Jagger and the same crinkly mischievous grin that conveys a Mephistophelean charm; the resemblance is so striking that in many shots he suggests a hairy-chested fraternal twin of that Rolling Stone.

Unlike “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Antonioni’s “Passenger,” “The Big Picture,” directed by Eric Lartigau, doesn’t bear down heavily on its themes of exchanged identities and second chances. Paul is not a sociopath like Tom Ripley, and the movie does not convey the same diabolical Hitchcockian sense of being manipulated by a slightly sadistic master puppeteer. As the story sprawls across the screen, it darts from one incident to the next as though it were inventing itself as it goes along.

Lee Heidhues 1.11.2023

I was saddened to learn of the sudden passing of English musician Jeff Beck at the age of 78.

Beck’s 1968 LP ‘Truth’ is one of my favorites. There are several memorable songs. My favorite is the final piece on the 10 song album, ‘I ain’t Superstitious’.

Excerpted from The Guardian and Variety 1.11.2023

Jeff Beck, the celebrated guitarist who played with the Yardbirds and led the Jeff Beck Group, has died aged 78, his representative has confirmed.

Beck died on Tuesday after “suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis”, the representative confirmed. “His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss,” they added.

Often described as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Beck – whose fingers and thumbs were famously insured for £7m – was known as a keen innovator. He pioneered jazz-rock, experimented with fuzz and distortion effects and paved the way for heavier subgenres such as psych rock and heavy metal over the course of his career.

A fleet, imaginative soloist, Beck brought formidable instrumental firepower to British band the Yardbirds, which he joined in 1965 as a replacement for Eric Clapton. Entirely at home with the group’s blues roots, he burnished their pop hits with an adventurous and virtually unprecedented use of feedback, sustain and fuzz.

After a precipitous exit from the Yardbirds — where he had been joined by another future guitar star, Jimmy Page — he established his own band, the Jeff Beck Group, which was fronted by vocalist Rod Stewart, soon to become a solo star. The unit proved as unstable as it was powerful, and lasted for just two albums.

During the ’70s, Beck assembled a second, more R&B-oriented edition of his group, and briefly formed a short-lived power trio with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge and Cactus.

He reached the probable apex of both his critical and commercial success with a pair of mid-’70s all-instrumental albums, “Blow by Blow” and “Wired,” that found him moving into jazz-fusion terrain. The latter LP was recorded with keyboardist Jan Hammer, formerly of the top fusion act the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

He was an eight-time Grammy winner, recipient of the Ivor Novello for outstanding contribution to British music and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of the Yardbirds.

Musicians and longtime friends began paying tribute minutes after the news broke. On Twitter, Jimmy Page wrote, “The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans.”

“With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitar players in the world,” Mick Jagger wrote. “We will all miss him so much.”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour wrote, “I am devastated to hear the news of the death of my friend and hero Jeff Beck, whose music has thrilled and inspired me and countless others for so many years … He will be forever in our hearts.”

https://www.thaliacapos.com/blogs/blog/jeff-beck-s-truth-an-unsung-rock-classic

Thaliacapos – 12.16.2020

When I chat with friends about all-time great hard rock albums, I’m always surprised by how few of them bring up Jeff Beck’s “Truth.” Beck’s 1968 solo debut is a seminal album in the development of blues-based hard rock, laying down a template that bands like Led Zeppelin would push into the stratosphere in the following years. 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/12/legendary-rock-guitarist-jeff-beck-dies-aged-78

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/jeff-beck-guitarist-dead-dies-1235486491/

Lee Heidhues 1.8.2023

Two years after now infamous January 6, 2021 when American insurrectionists, at the urging of Donald Trump, attempted a Coup d’etat history is repeating itself in Brazil.

The scenes of the violence being caused by supporters of defeated President Jair Bolsonaro are eerily reminiscent of what happened in Washington DC two years ago.

Excerpted from The Guardian 1.8.2023

Hundreds of hardcore supporters of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, have stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court in a stunning security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

Soon after another prominent Lula ally, André Janones, shared footage that showed scores of radicals inside the grounds of the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices where last week’s inauguration ceremony was held.

“Terrorists have invaded the Planalto,” Janones tweeted.

Portugal’s foreign minister, João Gomes Cravinho, told Reuters that he believed “without a doubt” that Bolsonaro was responsible for the scenes, adding: “His voice is heard by these anti-democratic demonstrators.”

World leaders were quick to condemn the upheaval, which Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, denounced as a “disgraceful” and “cowardly and vile attack on democracy”.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, condemned the stormings in a tweet on Sunday night, saying: “I offer my full support to president Lula and to the institutions that were freely and democratically chosen by the Brazilian people. We categorically condemn the assault on the congress of Brazil and call for an immediate return to democratic normality.”

Observers have spent months warning that Bolsonaro hardliners might stage a South American version of the US’s Capitol invasion in the hope of overturning Lula’s win. During his tumultuous four-year administration, Bolsonaro repeatedly hinted that a military takeover might be in the works and battled to undermine Brazil’s internationally respected electronic voting system.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/08/jair-bolsonaro-supporters-storm-brazils-presidential-palace-and-supreme-court

BBC – 1.8.2023

‘This is about more than just the Bolsonaro defeat’

Katy Watson

South America correspondent in São Paulo

It’s important to state that this is not just about Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat – it’s more than that.

Many of the supporters I’ve spoken to in the past couple of months have said he’s less relevant than he was.

What the hardline protestors want more than anything is Lula back in prison, not in the presidential palace.

It’s their fear of communism and incorrect view that Lula is a communist that is fuelling their anger more than anything.

Jair Bolsonaro was the vehicle for that anger – he was the person to displace Lula.

But he has been very quiet since losing (even flying off to Florida to avoid the inauguration) – and even he has not been as hardline as those backing him.

Some people argue Bolsonaro is irrelevant – it’s only the army that can save Brazil.

This a country where military rule is still very acceptable among a sizeable part of the population.

So while it is straight out of the Trump playbook in many ways, there are deep Brazilian roots in all of this and a throw back to the Cold war fear of communism.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-latin-america-64206148

Lee Heidhues 1.6.2023

It’s almost time for Academy Awards season. A film sure to be considered for a number of Oscars is Tar.

Just watching the Trailer is enough to send me to the nearest theater.

Cate Blanchett leaves it all in the orchestra pit in a marvelous, edgy performance.

Excerpted from The New York Times – A.O. Scott 10.7.2022 and Michelle Goldberg 10.21.2022

Midway through the enthralling new film “Tár,” the heroine, a brilliant and imperious classical music conductor named Lydia Tár, is talking about the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer with her elderly former mentor.

“Schopenhauer measured a man’s intelligence against his sensitivity to noise,” her mentor says.

“Didn’t he once also throw a woman down a flight of stairs?” asks Tár.

“Yes,” he responds. “It was unclear that this private and personal failing was at all relevant to his work.”

This question — how to weigh a genius’s private and personal failings against her work — is at the center of “Tár.” It’s a movie about a woman, played by Cate Blanchett, who has built herself in the image of the great, arrogant male cultural titans of the 20th century, only to be undone by the less indulgent mores of the 21st century. In other words, it’s a film about cancel culture, making it the rare piece of art that looks squarely at this social phenomenon that has roiled so many of America’s meaning-making institutions.

We don’t care about Lydia Tár because she’s an artist; we care about her because she’s art.

Early in “Tár” there is a shot of a Wikipedia entry being edited by unseen hands. Whose hands? That question will turn out to be relevant to the plot, but for the moment it is overwhelmed by the mystique of the page’s subject, who is also the protagonist of Todd Field’s cruelly elegant, elegantly cruel new film.

Her name is Lydia Tár, and in the world Field has imagined — one that exists at an oblique angle to our own — it’s a household name. She is introduced to us by the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, humbly playing himself as he interviews Lydia, regally played by Cate Blanchett, on a Manhattan stage. Gopnik’s introductory remarks provide a Wikipedia-style summary with a bit of Talk of the Town filigree, establishing that this is a person who surely needs no introduction.

Field, whose chilly, psychologically charged style evokes Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick — he had a small, memorable role in Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” — records it all with ruthless detachment and fanatical control. He moves smoothly from dry backstage comedy to something like gothic horror. We can’t be sure if Lydia is the monster, the victim, or both.

It invites you to think hard about Lydia, about the meaning of her work and the consequences of her actions, about whether she is someone you should admire or revile, about whether artists should be judged by their work or by how they live their lives. In different contexts, Lydia herself argues both sides of that question, as many of us do, and to search the movie for a consistent argument is to miss the point and fall into a category error, misconstruing the extraordinary coup that Field and Blanchett have pulled off.

Lee Heidhues 1.5.2023

It was a wild New Year’s weekend for San Francisco’s Mayor while the City was submerged in an Atmospheric River.

I am not begrudging Mayor London Breed her party time in Las Vegas. On New Year’s Day The Mayor camped out in a luxury box watching the 49ers battle the Raiders.

However, the optics look bad. Particularly when one watches the video of The Mayor hangin’ with Rapper E-40 shouting “Bang!!! Bang!!!

Meanwhile back in San Francisco, The Mayor’s constituency was recovering from a deluge of 5.46″ of rainfall in 24 hours. The second most recorded rainfall for a day in The City’s history.

What makes The Mayor’s jaunt to Vegas annoying is the fact the Mayor, after her return, blamed The National Weather Service for an alleged failure to warn City Hall about the severity of the storm which hit on New Year’s Eve.

Excerpted from San Francisco Standard 1.5.2023

San Francisco found itself deeply under water on New Year’s Eve to the surprise of Mayor London Breed and other city officials, who said they were expecting less than an inch of rain.

But a day after parts of the Mission, SoMa and other to watch the San Francisco 49ers play the Raiders from a private luxury box with rapper E-40. Two days later, Breed blamed the National Weather Service for the city’s failure to adequately prepare for the storm. 

E-40, the celebrated Bay Area hip-hop entertainer and entrepreneur, posted an Instagram reel Tuesday that shows Breed with him and others in a midfield luxury box at the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada.

Breed’s trip to Vegas took place just hours after she attended a lavish New Year’s Eve party in San Francisco with some of the city’s most powerful elected officials—as well as a convicted felon involved in the corruption scandal that has rocked City Hall for the last three years.

The mayor’s revelry took place less than a day after the city was caught off guard by a historic storm.

Photos posted of the “Glitterati” party on social media by a mayoral staffer show guests drinking champagne, dancing to a live band, watching acrobats take flight and even taking in a burlesque show. The party took place at Saint Joseph’s Arts Society.

As an atmospheric river over the holiday weekend dropped more than 5 inches of rain, New Year’s Eve marked the second-highest recorded day of rainfall in San Francisco history.

City agencies in San Francisco were unprepared for the weekend storm as multiple neighborhoods were flooded, and low-lying parts of the Mission District were hit particularly hard. More storms are expected in the days to come.

https://sfstandard.com/politics/sf-floods-mayor-london-breed-las-vegas-e-40-49ers/

Lee Heidhues 1.1.2023 (Updated 1.2.2023)

The road from 48th Avenue in the northwest corner of San Francisco winding down the hill past the Cliff House is still closed as The City ponders the danger resulting from the New Year’s Eve landslide.

It was an incredible never to be witnessed, again, moment at the San Francisco coastline by the historic Cliff House.

It made me think of the final piece in Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 Pictures at an Exhibition – The Great Gate of Kiev. After all the northwest corner of San Francisco is the Gateway to the Pacific Ocean. The orchestral piece is attached below.

On this morning, because of a landslide across from the Cliff House during New Year’s Eve Atmospheric River, vehicular traffic was banned.

For a brief shining moment on this sunny January 1, 2023 the roadway leading to the car free Great Walkway was devoid of cars.

It was all pedestrians, cyclists and runners as the following photo montage will forever memorialize.

Lee Heidhues 12.31.2022

San Francisco had the best and the worst for Progressives in 2022.

There are two events which hi-lite political life in The City.

Car Free JFK Promenade and The Great Walkway will stand out as the most Progressive accomplishment of the year. On November 8 the voters overwhelmingly cast their votes in favor of more car free spaces in The City.

The June 7 political lynching of Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin. With a nearly 9MM war chest funded by arch conservatives. Appealing to the most base law and order instincts of the voters. Chesa’s ouster is a permanent stain on the reputation of San Francisco.

Prior to the ouster of Chesa there was the February Recall of three Progressive members of the San Francisco School Board. This was the warm up act for the MAGA crowd which, emboldened by their School Board take down, successfully set their sites on the Progressive DA.

The political irony is the undisputable fact that many of the same individuals and organizations which supported Chesa’s Recall were firmly on the side of car free spaces.

On the other hand, a number of Progressives and like minded organizations either remained neutral or flat out opposed car free areas in San Francisco. Falling for the nonsense that somehow car free spaces discriminate against marginalized communities.

Where are we as San Francisco turns the clock to 2023?

The ouster of a Progressive DA has done nothing to mitigate the crime problem. Which presumes there was a problem during Chesa’s 30 month tenure. Since Chesa’s Mayoral picked successor Brooke Jenkins became DA crime has not abated. The only substantive change is that the too often shameful mainstream media, which was instrumental in Chesa’s ouster, is no longer beating the law and order drums to stir up the paranoid and fearful people.

On a more favorable side, the car free spaces at JFK Promenade, The Great Walkway and an abbreviated Slow Streets program appear to be a permanent fixture in San Francisco life.

Even though 2023 will not be an election year in San Francisco the close quarters political combat can be expected to continue non-stop.

Lee Heidhues 12.29.2022

This story is not receiving major coverage. Yet.

Deutsche Welle wrote about it a week ago. Since then the mainstream media has been generally quiet.

The article in today’s Wall Street Journal shines more light on the arrest of German intelligence officer Carsten L.

Perhaps the lack of coverage can be explained by the embarrassment the Germans are feeling due to this serious security lapse.

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 12.29.2022

BERLIN—A senior German intelligence officer arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia had access to a trove of top-secret information about the war in Ukraine as well as knowledge of how it was collected by the U.S. and its allies, Western officials say.  

The case could be the worst example of Russian penetration of Germany’s intelligence services since 1961, when a senior BND employee who was spying for the Soviet Union exposed a network of 100 CIA spies, said Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, who has written several books on the BND.

Prosecutors are trying to determine whether the material was shared with Moscow. If so, it could have alerted Russia to its own vulnerabilities and given away Western intelligence-gathering methods and capabilities.

American and British officials said they were trying to determine the scope of potential damage in Ukraine and elsewhere. One U.S. official said there was “grave concern” about the case.

The suspected spy, identified as Carsten L. by German prosecutors, worked for the signals intelligence branch of the country’s Federal Intelligence Service, which conducts electronic surveillance and works with the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.

Prosecutors said the man was being held on suspicion of committing treason as their investigation continues.

The German intelligence service, known as the BND, confirmed the arrest but has declined to comment further, citing national security risks. The NSA and GCHQ declined to comment.

The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, declined to comment.

The Kremlin’s suspected penetration of Germany’s most secretive security agency is the latest evidence of Moscow’s aggressive tactics in Europe, where Russia has been accused of killing political opponents, sabotaging infrastructure and trying to steal industrial secrets.

The BND received a tipoff about the suspected spy from an allied intelligence service earlier this year, German officials said. After an internal investigation, the case was passed to the federal prosecutor, who then ordered the man’s arrest last week.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/suspected-russian-agent-in-germany-had-access-to-western-intelligence-about-ukraine-war-11672255183

Lee Heidhues 12.28.2022

This story gets more bizarre by the day, if not the hour. The blatant lies spewed forth by the New York Congressman-elect started off as local news.

It has quickly spun out of control as the Republicans alternately are appalled yet will do anything to preserve their razor thin margin in the House of Representatives.

Even if it means seating someone who hasn’t even taken office and is already being investigated for his lies, and potentially more serious matters, at both the Federal and local level.

The Democrats only need sit back, smile and watch yet another Republican train wreck candidate crash and burn.

Excerpted from New York Magazine – The Intelligencer – 12.28.2022

George Santos, congressman-elect from the Third District of New York and international man of mystery, has been the feel-bad story of the holiday season.

For all the stuff Santos seems to have made up, there’s also a lot he didn’t disclose in biographical information: multiple evictions and debt defaults in New York, a criminal fraud conviction in Brazil, and a recently dissolved marriage to a woman (he claims to be openly gay and married to a man, though records on that can’t be found either so far).

The (apparently) 34-year-old Long Island Republican won one of the handful of upset races that gave his party a slim margin of control of the U.S. House. But when the New York Times began looking into his background in mid-December, it quickly became clear that the candidate who called himself the “full embodiment of the American Dream” may have been dreaming up an identity for himself.

Santos has now admitted in interviews with various media outlets that he was guilty of “embellishing his résumé.” But he insisted, “I am not a criminal,” and said he still plans to occupy his House seat on January 3, just like his 434 colleagues. With Republicans (and particularly presumptive Speaker Kevin McCarthy) needing every vote they can muster to organize the House and Democrats being reluctant to disenfranchise Santos’s constituents, he will probably get away with his lies for the present.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/12/george-santos-admits-lied.html