August 15, 2021

Liz and Lee Heidhues

Open message to San Francisco Supervisors Connie Chan and Gordon Mar

Connie and Gordon 

We didn’t see you at The Great Walkway rally today.

That’s regrettable  and predictable and sad.

It’s an example of elected officials avoiding The People.

 

The disappearing act won’t work.

We will prevail.

Photos –  SF Bicycle Coalition, Walk San Francisco and Liz Heidhues

 

This is an unfolding humanitarian and human disaster.

Excerpted from New York Times 8.15.2021

The U.S. military raced to evacuate diplomats and civilians as the insurgents stood poised to retake complete control of the country 20 years after being toppled by American forces.

Afghanistan’s government collapsed on Sunday with President Ashraf Ghani’s flight from the country and the Taliban’s entry into the capital, effectively sealing the insurgents’ control of the country after dozens of cities fell to their lightning advance.

On Sunday evening, former President Hamid Karzai announced on Twitter that he was forming a coordinating council together with Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan delegation to peace talks, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hesb-i-Islami party, to manage a peaceful transfer of power. Mr. Karzai called on both government and Taliban forces to act with restraint.

As it became clear that members of the Taliban had entered Kabul, the capital, thousands of Afghans who had sought refuge there after fleeing the insurgents’ brutal military offensive watched with growing alarm as the local police seemed to fade from their usual checkpoints. The U.S. Embassy warned Americans to not head to the airport in Kabul after reports that the facility was taking fire, and said that the situation was “changing quickly.”

At 6:30 p.m. local time, the Taliban issued a statement that their forces were moving into police districts in order to maintain security in areas that had been abandoned by the government security forces. Taliban fighters, meeting no resistance, took up positions in parts of the city, after Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, posted the statement on Twitter.

“The Islamic Emirates ordered its forces to enter the areas of Kabul city from which the enemy has left because there is risk of theft and robbery,” the statement said. The Taliban had been ordered not to harm civilians and not to enter individual homes, it added. “Our forces are entering Kabul city with all caution.”

Top photo – Chinook helicopter hovers over American Embassy

The parallels between the American exodus from Vietnam on April 30, 1975 and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 are uncanny.

America was in Vietnam for 20 years, fought a long war which resulted in the deaths of nearly 60,000 American soldiers, cost the country billions and disrupted the social and political fabric of both nations.

America has been in Afghanistan for 20 years fought a so called War on Terror which resulted in the deaths of over 2300 American soldiers, cost the country billions and disrupted the social and political fabric of both nations.

America, thus far, is not leaving Afghanistan from the roof of the Embassy by helicopter as occurred in Vietnam in 1975. It could happen as Afghanistan falls to the brutal Taliban.

The Guardian 8.14.2021

A summary of the situation in Kabul as this story unfolds:

• Kabul’s population of 5 million people has been swollen with thousands fleeing other parts of the country. Thousands of troops from the United States and Britain are flying in to secure the airport.
• The Afghan army has vowed to defend the capital.
• Kabul covers an area of about 1,000 square km (400 sq miles) and is ringed by mountains. There are four main roads into the city: from Maidan Shahr in the southwest, Pul-e-Alam in the south, Surobi in the east and Bagram in the north.
• The Taliban took Pul-e-Alam on Saturday without much resistance, a local provincial council member said.
• The Taliban say they are close to capturing Maidan Shahr. They have already taken Ghazni, down the road from Maidan Shahr, and have a strong presence in surrounding areas.
• On Sunday, the Taliban took the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight. The main highway from there to Kabul passes through Surobi.
• The US has started evacuating diplomats from its Kabul embassy, according to two US officials.
• US Embassy personnel were destroying sensitive documents, according to two US military officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
• Arrangements are being made to airlift the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow our of Kabul by Monday evening.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/aug/15/afghanistan-taliban-close-in-on-kabul-as-last-government-stronghold-in-north-falls

Liz and Lee Heidhues 8.13.2021

As Easy as Stealing Candy from A Baby.

The voters of District 1 have been played and betrayed by a “Progressive” Supervisor who campaigned on the vow: “I pledge not to take ANY contributions from oil, gas, and coal industry executives, lobbyists, and PACs and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate, and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits” #NoFossilFuelMoney. 

Supervisor Connie Chan, the faux progressive,  must walk away from her backroom deal with Mayor London Breed to steal The Great Walkway from the People of San Francisco.

It was as easy for Ms. Chan to steal the possibilities for a green and safe transportation corridor as it is for an unscrupulous person to steal candy from a baby. Stealing candy from  the proverbial baby .. in this instance thousands of adults and children.. is what Supervisor Connie Chan did by acting as a co-conspirator to secretly reopen The Great Walkway to cars.

In her zeal to allow cars onto The Great Walkway Supervisor Chan sabotaged the negotiation process, in which she was a participant, between advocates of The Great Walkway and City officials. Ms. Chan secretly met with Mayor Breed to trash the Mayor’s own pandemic emergency order and return The Great Walkway to its pre-pandemic status of an auto freeway.

Ms. Chan knew the decision does not have to gain approval before the full Board of Supervisors. The unilateral decision was permitted under the vast emergency powers The Mayor granted herself during the pandemic.

Ms. Chan’s backroom deal to reopen The Great Walkway to cars was announced while the Board of Supervisors was on summer recess.  Ms. Chan knew this unilateral decision would be controversial. It would have generated fierce debate. A debate Ms. Chan wanted to avoid.

Supervisor Chan’s move to reopen The Great Walkway to cars is redolent of autocracy, special interests, and complete disregard for the needs and rights of her diverse constituents – Many of her constituents feel motorists do not have the presumptive right to inhabit every street in San Francisco.

Her decision invalidates the needs of her constituents. She has a responsibility to meet Vision Zero goals by creating safe environments for children and adults to pursue recreational and social goals.

Supervisor Chan misrepresents the reasons for reopening The Great Walkway to cars. She argues this strip is essential for parents to take their kids to school by car. Families in District 1 do not have a practical way to take their kids to school by car using the roadway. There are no exits between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard where Sunset District schools are located. Only 6.4% of Richmond District students go to school in the Sunset district.

Furthermore, Supervisor Chan’s argument that closing the roadway to cars pushes cars into the critical green space of Golden Gate Park is specious and misleading.

We have been running, bicycling, or walking through Golden Gate Park to shop in the Sunset District since 1972. We have witnessed cars violating the sanctuary of the Park for nearly 50 years. Motorists drive around barriers, speed on JFK Drive, kill bicyclists in accidents (such as Heather Miller), and park freely on trails meant only for pedestrians.

This photo montage takes you on a trip down The Great Walkway to illustrate how the roadway is used and enjoyed in a sustainable way.

Photos and adapted Brian O’Meara Cartoon – Liz Heidhues

The United States isn’t the only nation withdrawing its military from Afghanistan. The Germans were part of the NATO force which has been involved in the so called War on Terror the past 20 years

The situation is horrific. Germany and America can’t acts as the world’s self appointed policeman. The British and Russians occupied Afghanistan. Both nations eventually withdrew after years of struggle, loss of life, domestic political turmoil and money spent to no good end.

Now the citizens of Afghanistan are facing the return of the brutal and misogynistic Taliban rule. It is an unfolding humane crisis and horror story.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 8.10.2021

The sight of Taliban fighters overrunning Kunduz in Afghanistan has triggered anger, grief and helplessness among German veterans who fought to free the Afghan city. Many now fear for the Afghans who helped them.

The fall of Kunduz to the Taliban is a devastating psychological blow to many German Bundeswehr soldiers, according to veterans of Germany’s two-decade mission in Afghanistan.

“It triggered an earthquake in the emotions of veterans,” said Wolf Gregis, a former soldier and now an author and professor of pedagogy at the University of Rostock. “No other place is associated so much with the death toll that the German military suffered than Kunduz itself.”

“It feels extremely shitty,” said Johannes Clair, a former Bundeswehr corporal who published a book about his seven-month mission in Kunduz from 2010 to 2011. “We left blood, sweat and tears there,´; our comrades were killed there. And it was predictable. In 2014, when the combat troops were withdrawn, it was clear that the Afghan forces were not going to be able to control the situation on their own.”

“The second thing is that, while we’re all back home, the Afghans over there are in mortal danger, especially those that cooperated with the West — that makes it even worse,” he added. “Now I’m sitting here and I can’t do anything about it.”

At the same time, Clair thinks the final withdrawal of Western troops this year was inevitable and logical because the whole mission had simply become what he called an “alibi mission — half-hearted. That’s why I’m angry, because even though the fundamental problems in Afghanistan have long been known, even in 2010 when I was there, they were never addressed properly,” he told DW. 

For years, he said, NATO and the German government stumbled from one strategy to the next, hoping that it would work out, but largely because the mission was unpopular back home, the government never properly committed to its mission. That all culminated in the withdrawal of combat troops in 2014. “It was completely clear then that the positive effects that we had caused were not sustainable,” he said. “We betrayed all the work we did there, but more than anything we betrayed the Afghans.”

It was in the Kunduz province that the Bundeswehr suffered the most casualties and where the events that shaped the German public’s abiding images of the Afghanistan war took place. “This is the place where German soldiers first learned on a large-scale what fighting and dying in an asymmetric war meant and how ugly that is,” said Gregis, (the name is a pseudonym, which he prefers to go by).

Several horrific incidents happened in the province: In September 2009, a German officer ordered a US airstrike on an oil truck that left over a hundred civilians dead, causing a scandal back home that eventually cost then-Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung his Cabinet office. A year later, German soldiers were increasingly finding themselves in firefights with the Taliban, especially when a patrol was ambushed and pinned down in the nine-hour “Good Friday battle” of April 2010. Three soldiers were killed and eight more injured, their lives saved by a US helicopter.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-army-veterans-feel-anger-and-grief-at-fall-of-kunduz/a-58820552

San Francisco is going to mandate a logical step in the face of the resurgent Pandemic.

All City employees must be vaccinated.

Reading the overwrought statements by some  employees one could draw the conclusion that a portion of San Francisco’s workforce has been infected by a hungry bug-catcher from an off world colony.

‘hungry bug-catcher’  – Liz Heidhues 2020

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 8.9.2021

Nearly 200 San Francisco employees are attempting to rebuff the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and other protocols like testing and mask wearing for city workers, submitting identical, conspiracy-tinged letters suggesting the city is infringing upon their “God-given and constitutionally secured” rights.

“Almost all of the statements are either absurd, misleading, meaningless, and are written not to solicit any serious response but to be deliberately hostile for political purposes,” said Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley.

Concerns raised in the letter about the contents of vaccines or other products, or their safety and efficacy, are baseless, said Dr. Robert Siegel, an infectious disease expert at Stanford.

“This came from some kind of conspiracy factory,” Siegel said.

Many of the products the letter suggests as potentially dangerous vaccine additives — including lipids (fat), sodium chloride (salt) and sucrose (sugar) — are consumed by people daily, Siegel said. Other products mentioned in the letter include chemicals commonly found in the environment.

“The whole thing is just garbage,” he said.

Siegel said the contents of the letter raised concerns about the judgment of those who signed it.

The letters, which began streaming into San Francisco’s HR department in late June, came after city officials announced they would require city employees — with certain exceptions — to get inoculated or risk losing their jobs.

 

Dr. Joan Ullyot was an inspiration, women’s running pioneer and trailblazer who Liz and I ran with in several Dolphin South End Club (DSE) races in San Francisco. 

When Dr. Ullyot ran in a DSE race it was always a topic of conversation. She was bound to finish amongst the top runners.

Liz and I have been running for 50 years. We started this effort in Germany in 1971.

We say with pride that at one time each one of us finished ahead of Dr. Ullyot. Liz finished ahead of the Doctor in an arduous race whose course traversed the steep hills adjacent to the Legion of Honor and ended at the ss San Francisco memorial at Lands End. I will always remember the shock I experienced passing Dr. Ullyot as we ran by Spreckels Lake towards the finish line at the Windmills by Ocean Beach.  It was a once in a lifetime experience.

Excerpted from The New York Times. 8.5.2021

When Joan Ullyot, a physician and an accomplished runner, published her book “Women’s Running” in 1976, she took on a daunting set of traditional ideas that boiled down to one admonition: Women should not run long distances.

Dr. Ullyot ran her last marathon, the Boston, at 56. But she never lost her competitive spirit. When her son Theodore ran a marathon in two hours and 50 minutes, beating Dr. Ullyot’s personal record, she resolved to outdo him. After intense training, she beat his time by a full two minutes.

Mr. Ullyot recalled his mother saying, “You boys can have all the records in this family short of a marathon, but you’re not taking the marathon record from me.”

“I’ve had a motto since turning 40,” Dr. Ullyot told The Times in 1989, when she was 48. “Age, experience and cunning can overcome youth and ability.”

They were not physiologically built for it, women were told. Compared with men, they typically had higher body fat, less muscle bulk and lighter bone structure, factors that should discourage them from engaging in long-distance running — or so it was believed. Moreover, many authorities in the field warned that extended running might harm women’s reproductive organs.

But Dr. Ullyot (pronounced UH-lee-yet) methodically debunked those assertions in her book, one of the first to examine the sport from a female perspective, and one of the first books on the subject by a female author.

“You just have no idea how many myths and superstitions there were around vigorous activity for women then,” the marathoner Kathrine Switzer said, “so we needed this a lot.”

Dr. Ullyot ran more than 75 marathons and numerous other races while working as a medical researcher in cellular pathology at facilities like the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.

She was a single mother of two sons for much of her life: Her marriage ended in divorce in 1976.

Her son Theodore Ullyot recalled that she had mandated that he and his brother, John, run three miles to middle school with her a few days a week, backpacks and all.

“It was extremely embarrassing for a couple of teenagers,” Mr. Ullyot said. Nevertheless, both sons took up running as well.

Dr. Ullyot, one of six runners from the United States, attended the first international women’s marathon, in Waldniel, Germany, in 1974. Having learned German in college, she served as the team’s interpreter.

During the event she met Ernst van Aaken, a German doctor who was an early proponent of women’s running. He pioneered the “long slow distance” method of training, which emphasizes running long distances at a slow speed, rather than the shorter-distance and more intense interval training that was standard at the time. The two became friends and collaborators.

Together they developed training programs, for both men and women, to maximize endurance and minimize damage to the body. (She told Gary Cohen, the running blogger, that Dr. van Aaken, who died in 1984, had introduced her to one of her favorite non-running activities: drinking wine.)

Dr. Ullyot was a fixture in the starting blocks of the Boston Marathon, running nine of the races and winning the Masters division for runners over the age of 40 in 1984.

 

It’s a sad moment for the San Francisco culture scene with the announcement that Michael Tilson Thomas is recovering from brain surgery.

Liz and I have attended the San Francisco Symphony for years sitting in the seats directly behind the orchestra. It was always a special event when MTT was the conductor.

We will always remember attending the Summer Series when vocalist Natalie Merchant was the featured performer. She reminisced about first meeting MTT when she was a young woman and waited for him outside the Buffalo, New York Symphony building. Ms. Merchant said it was a hi-lite of her career and she always thought of Michael Tilson Thomas as a mentor.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 8.6.2021

The musical world in San Francisco and beyond reacted with concern and optimism on Friday to the news that Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony’s longtime former music director and now music director laureate, was recovering from surgery for a brain tumor.

“I’m heartbroken but incredibly grateful that we have UCSF and other amazing medical centers here in the city,” said former Symphony board President Sakurako Fisher. “And with a brain as prodigious as Michael’s, I’m sure this won’t slow him down for a nanosecond.”

Yet friends and artistic partners who have spoken with him in recent days reported that Thomas was in generally high spirits — cracking jokes, making music and adjusting to the news.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, a frequent musical collaborator, said that Thomas had sounded “good and positive” when she spoke with him by phone.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s handling this with such grace, as he always does,” she said. “I’m sending him all my love and feel glad that he’s healing.”

There were also statements of support from musical organizations with which Thomas has had a close association, including the New World Symphony and the London Symphony Orchestra.

But response was keenest in the Bay Area.

“He’s been so much a part of San Francisco life for 25 years,” said Symphony President Priscilla B. Geeslin. “So many of our memories of the San Francisco Symphony are tied up with Michael and watching him conduct.”

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/michael-tilson-thomas-brain-surgery-announcement-draws-outpouring-of-love-and-support

Liz and Lee Heidhues 8.5.2021

It is a shameful and sad time for San Francisco, a so called “Progressive” bastion in America, when duplicitous members in the Democratic party are lining up to support the attempted ouster of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Mayor London Breed is a behind-the-scenes advocate in the attempted Recall of democratically elected “progressive” District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Mayor Breed, a political moderate herself and soulmate of the traditional Democratic party establishment, is tacitly by her silence supporting the Recall attempt.

The attempted Recall, circulating by a group of “moderate Democrats”, is being led by Mary Jung, former head of the local Democratic County Central Committee. Ms. Jung has plenty of well connected fellow enablers.

One person leading the campaign is Andrea Shorter who actively worked on Ms. Breed’s candidacy for Mayor in 2018.

Nancy Tung is a Recall supporter. She ran for DA against Chesa Boudin and finished third in a field of four candidates in 2019. In 2020, Mayor Breed attempted to appoint Ms. Tung to the San Francisco Police Commission. The Board of Supervisors rejected her appointment.

Tim Redmond is one of San Francisco’s most renowned political reporters. He publishes 48 Hills. In the latest edition Tim takes a critical look at Mayor Breed’s recent ethical problems and how they play into the Recall Chesa Boudin campaign.

Tim has reported extensively on the dark Right Wing Republican money which is supporting the Moderate Democrats attempt to overturn the election of a fairly elected public official.

https://48hills.org/2021/08/irony-and-casual-corruption-in-the-latest-on-the-city-hall-scandals/

There’s a move in the American Congress to hold multi-national polluters financially liable for  environmental catastrophes.  

The chances of such legislation ever becoming law are virtually nil given the power of corporate energy companies.

Still it will engender a spirited debate about making those responsible for  these environmental disasters pay a price.

Oil & Gas Newswire (article in New York Times) 8.4.2021

Democrats in Congress want to tax Exxon, Chevron and a handful of other major oil and gas companies, saying the biggest climate polluters should pay for the floods, wildfires and other disasters that scientists have linked to the burning of fossil fuels.

The draft legislation from Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, directs the Treasury Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to identify the companies that released the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2019 and assess a fee based on the amounts they emitted.

That could generate an estimated $500 billion over the next decade, according to Mr. Van Hollen. The money would pay for clean energy research and development as well as help communities face the flooding, fires and other disasters that scientists say are growing more destructive and frequent because of a warming planet.

The bill for the largest polluters could be as much as $6 billion annually spread over 10 years, according to a draft of the plan.

The proposal comes as the Senate prepares to vote on a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package that includes billions of dollars to help communities prepare for and recover from extreme weather driven by climate change. Democrats hope to later pass a separate $3.5 trillion budget package that will include measures to cut carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.