Let’s hope that this Con artist who self promoted his way into the White House is FINALLY being given the treatment that egomaniacs and serial liars deserve.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.22.2019

US President Donald Trump has failed in his legal attempt to stop Congress subpoenas to force Deutsche Bank to release his financial details. The German bank reportedly lent Trump over $2 billion in the last 20 years.

US President Donald Trump has lost a legal battle to block Congress from subpoenaing his financial records from two banks. The president also said he would not work with the House unless it stopped investigating him or his finances.

New York District Judge Edgardo Ramos ruled on Wednesday that Trump, his family, and his company were “highly unlikely” to succeed in a lawsuit claiming that the subpoenas by Democratic lawmakers were unconstitutional. Ramos said the subpoenas have “a legitimate legislative purpose.”

The move could mean that Deutsche Bank and Capital One, two banks that Trump has borrowed millions of dollars from, may be forced to release their documents on the president.

A 2017 disclosure form showed that Trump had had at least $130 million (€116 million) of liabilities to Deutsche Bank alone, with the new subpoena seeking more records of accounts, transactions and investments linked to Trump, his immediate family and their various businesses.

The New York Times has reported that Trump owed Deutsche Bank some $300 million when he was inaugurated in 2017. The bank has said it would comply with subpoenas.

The lawyers for the Congress’ House Financial Services and Intelligence committees said they needed access to documents from the banks to investigate possible “foreign influence in the US political process” and possible money laundering from abroad.

https://www.dw.com/en/court-deutsche-bank-may-release-files-on-donald-trump/a-48840492

I have just begun watching the Norwegian political drama on Netflix. In it the Russians have occupied Norway. The story is fascinating, well acted and attention grabbing.

Best quote. “We can’t negotiate if they don’t respect us. ”

Excerpted from Politico Europe

Okkupert (“Occupied”), the most expensive Norwegian television show in history, never mentions the word “quisling.” And yet its premise — a Russian occupation of Norway — evokes Vidkun Quisling’s Nazi collaborationist government and is permeated with the still unshakable trauma of that era.

Between 1942 and 1945, Quisling’s puppet regime revoked the authority of the Norwegian King (exiled to Great Britain after refusing German demands to abdicate), banned the entry of Jews fleeing Nazi terror, and fruitlessly committed Norwegian soldiers to the Eastern Front. At the end of the war, Quisling was executed and his name now dubiously lives on as an eponym for “traitor.”

Predictably, the Russian government is none too pleased with “Occupied.” “Although the creators of the TV series were at pains to stress that the plot is fictitious and allegedly has nothing to do with reality, the film shows quite specific countries, and Russia, unfortunately, was given the role of an aggressor,” read a statement released by the Russian embassy in Oslo.

Okkupert wrestles with a modern version of Quisling’s devastating legacy — and the shameful blot it left on the country’s history. The show is set in the near future, where a Green party government comes to power in Oslo on the heels of a hugely damaging global warming-related hurricane. Promising to unveil a revolutionary new form of nuclear energy powered by the chemical element thorium, Prime Minister Jesper Berg strikes a very Scandinavian pose by announcing that Norway will lead by example and immediately shut down its considerable gas and oil production.

This upsets the European Union, of which Norway is not a member. In cahoots with Moscow, Brussels secretly threatens Berg with a full-scale Russian invasion unless he commits to maintaining Norway’s fossil fuel extraction under Moscow’s supervision. (The United States, having recently achieved energy independence, has withdrawn from NATO and sits disinterestedly aside.) Berg reluctantly agrees to this scheme, promising his people that the insertion of Russian worker crews to restart Norway’s energy industry will be temporary.

When the Russians come to Norway, there are no tanks or fighter jets or “little green men.” The diminution of Norwegian sovereignty and the assertion of Russian control is much more subtle and visible only to those who care to notice. In the absence of a defensive alliance like NATO to deter the Russian threat, the mere mention of war leaves Berg with little choice — at least initially — but to go along with the “temporary” occupation. On the surface, life remains normal for most Norwegians, who go about their daily business as though nothing had changed.

All this lends Occupied an authenticity that has struck a chord in Norway. “I think the feeling we are secure and things can’t really change is an illusion,” Jo Nesbø told the Guardian shortly after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. “That is the scary bit, because things can change very fast. The thing about Scandinavia is that we take things for granted.”

Teasing out “the scary bits” of such a frightening scenario is what makes Occupied one of the most rivetingly realistic TV shows about international politics in recent memory. Aside from its opening plot device, there’s little about the show that’s unbelievable. The best aspects aren’t the occasional explosions and shoot-outs, but the human drama. Little by little, viewers come to see how a democratic society becomes morally corroded by the everyday compromises regular people are forced to make.

On opposite ends of this dilemma stand Thomas Eriksen, a crusading journalist who risks his life to expose the truth, and Hans Martin Djupvik, a member of Berg’s security detail who sincerely believes he’s helping his country by working with the Russians to monitor and root out fellow Norwegians who oppose the new dispensation.

There’s the teenage boy Djupvik arrests and interrogates for creating an anti-Russian blog. There’s the apolitical restaurateur who, after converting her struggling eatery into a hangout for big-spending Russian securocrats working at the secretive occupation headquarters across the street, is targeted for intimidation by “Free Norway,” an underground, anti-Russian paramilitary movement.

Occupied also taps into distinctively Scandinavian cultural undertones. The last time fears of Russia kept Norwegians awake at night was during the Cold War, when Finland adopted a foreign policy of neutrality that allowed it to retain its formal independence, thereby escaping the fate of the Baltics (forcefully incorporated in the Soviet Union) or countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia (which became communist satellites). Finland had a democratic political system and free-market economy, but its position popularized the word “Finlandization,” a pejorative term still occasionally used by political scientists to describe the phenomenon whereby a small country living alongside a large and territorially expansionist one accepts a reduction of its sovereignty in exchange for self-rule.

“Finlandized Finland … showed the world that the Soviet Union was able to live in friendship with the neighbor. At the same time, Finland remained on the Soviet Union’s leash. Since this was a successful project, it is no wonder that today’s Russia desires to Finlandize other countries.”

“It is certainly regretful that in the year when the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Second World War is celebrated, the series’s creators decided to scare Norwegian viewers with a non-existing threat from the East in the worst Cold War traditions.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/occupied-norwegian-tv-series-thats-enraged-the-kremlin-norway-russia-occupation/

Portland, Oregon – May 20, 2019

Bleacher Report

The Golden State Warriors completed their sweep of the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2019 Western Conference Finals with a 119-117 overtime victory in Monday’s Game 4 at the Moda Center.

Golden State is headed to the NBA Finals for the fifth straight year and has an opportunity to be the first team to three-peat as champions since the Los Angeles Lakers did so in 2002.

Stephen Curry played the entire second half and overtime with Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala and DeMarcus Cousins all sidelined and led the way with a triple-double of 37 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists. Draymond Green (18 points, 14 rebounds and 11 dimes) also added a triple-double and a monster three in the extra period, while Klay Thompson chipped in 17 points.

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

May 20, 2019

Public transit is for everyone and every dog in San Francisco.

Photos by Lee Heidhues

MONEY LAUNDERING??  Now, this is SERIOUS. Will Congress, in particular the Republicans, finally step up and demand accountability????!!!

Excerpted from New York Times 5.19.2019

This piece by Heather Knight describes so well, in very personal terms, the issues regarding the SFPD Police State like assault on a free press. Heather is quite right.  Nearly every public official in this “progressive” town has looked the other way and condoned the totalitarian action by the cops with the tacit permission of a compliant judiciary. San Francisco in general should be ashamed of itself. Heather is to be commended for speaking truth to power.

San Francisco Chronicle – Heather Knight 5.18.2019

The political spectrum in this country isn’t so much a line from left to right, but a circle. The further left a person goes, the more in common he or she has with somebody on the far right.

Take the shocking story of the San Francisco police bringing a literal sledgehammer to a journalist’s door — and a metaphorical one to the freedom of the press — on the morning of May 10. The officers were brazenly and clumsily trying to find out who among their ranks leaked the police report describing the seedy details of Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s death to freelancer Bryan Carmody, who in turn sold it to television stations.

As if the sledgehammer wasn’t enough, Carmody said the officers drew their guns and handcuffed him — for six hours. Picture that. Being handcuffed in your own home and forced to look on as police seize your laptops, phones and notebooks, the ones containing work from your 29-year career.

Imagine seeing this story pop up on your phone. Must have been in some small town in the South, right? One where everybody voted for Donald Trump and believes the president’s crazy rants about “fake news” and journalists being the “enemy of the people”?

Nope, it happened right here in supposedly progressive San Francisco. You know, the cosmopolitan city where we treasure our freedoms. When it suits us anyway. And the most troubling part? The fact that so many city officials were in on it — and so few have condemned it after the fact.

Two Superior Court judges — Victor Hwang and Gail Dekreon — signed off on the warrants. (Sources say Hwang has been telling people around town there’s “more to the story,” but nobody but Hwang seems to know what that is. A spokeswoman for the Superior Court said judges cannot comment, citing ethical rules.)

Two FBI agents were on hand during the raid, too. And Mayor London Breed, to whom Police Chief Bill Scott reports, issued a milquetoast statement that managed not to say much at all, other than that the Police Department “went through the appropriate legal process to request a search warrant.”

I’ve covered three mayors — four if you count the brief tenure of Mark Farrell last year — and their feelings about the press seemed to range from irritation to anger, depending on the day. But the First Amendment? You’d think they’d appreciate that.

Supervisor Sandra Fewer, who is married to a retired police officer, told the San Francisco Examiner that it’s “illegal to obtain a police report unless it has been officially released.” That’s false. It’s perfectly legal for a journalist to receive a leaked document, and it’s essential to our role of serving as government watchdogs.

Fewer later clarified: “The truth is, I am not a legal expert.” No kidding.

Despite so much support for the Police Department’s actions, I still — perhaps naively — expected some contrition from Scott when he explained the raid to the Police Commission Wednesday night. He’s a genial guy who doesn’t relish the limelight or political fights, and I figured he’d strike a conciliatory tone. Maybe even apologize.

Quite the contrary.

Scott doubled down on the whole sledgehammer-to-the-door operation. Even though the story had gone viral and rightly earned the scorn of First Amendment groups nationwide. Even though the raid pretty clearly violated California’s shield law, which protects journalists from having to give up their sources.

“We have to do our jobs and make sure reports are not released when they are not supposed to be released,” Scott said. “If there’s criminal activity that’s proven, we want to get to the bottom of that.”

And also: “We are committed to maintaining the public’s trust. The leak was a breach of the public trust, and I understand that and we’re investigating that leak fully, including allegations of misconduct, potentially by members of the San Francisco Police Department.”

How does taking a sledgehammer to a journalist’s door maintain the public’s trust? Why can’t Scott use his own detectives — you know, the ones charged with solving crimes — to figure out who on his staff leaked the report?

Asked about the chief’s statements, David Stevenson, a spokesman for the Police Department, sent a statement tripling down on them.

“The citizens and leaders of the city of San Francisco have demanded a complete and thorough investigation into this leak, and this action represents a step in the process of investigating a potential case of obstruction of justice, along with the illegal distribution of confidential police material,” he emailed.

One justification for this bizarre raid seems to be that nobody liked Carmody or the kind of journalism he practiced. I’ve never met him, but he seems either unknown or disliked by everybody I’ve talked to in journalism circles or at City Hall.

But the law protects everybody — that’s the whole point of a law. It doesn’t matter if you’re popular or powerful. If you’re a stringer who sells information to media outlets or a Pulitzer Prize winner. Attorneys say California’s shield law protects all journalists, including freelancers like Carmody.

Note that The Chronicle had the same leaked police report, though we didn’t get it from Carmody and we didn’t pay for it. Why didn’t the Police Department raid one of our homes and handcuff us? Would the police chief, Superior Court and mayor have been OK with that?

Kudos to two supervisors who have been among the few non-journalists to publicly call out the Police Department for its terrible behavior. Supervisor Aaron Peskin released a statement Wednesday slamming both the Police Department and the judges who gave the go-ahead to the raid.

“A free press is a fundamental pillar of our democracy and must be protected,” Peskin said. “The fact that the Superior Court nevertheless signed warrants authorizing police to conduct the raid on a journalist’s home and to confiscate their belongings boggles my mind.”

Supervisor Hillary Ronen said San Francisco progressives relish leaks from the Trump administration, which have been the basis for so many national stories putting the president in a negative light. But she added that means supporting local journalists’ rights to receive leaked information, too, even if it put Adachi, beloved by the city’s progressives, in a negative light.

“We cannot have it both ways,” Ronen said. “I am shocked that the judges in this case, the police chief, the mayor, that so many levels of government aren’t decrying this abuse of power. … Never in my wildest dreams did I think they would sledgehammer a journalist’s door and take all of his equipment. It’s an abuse of power, and I don’t know what’s going on here.”

You and me both, supervisor.

The German Bundestag has passed a resolution describing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against Israel as anti-Semitic. Parliamentarians said some BDS slogans recalled Nazi propaganda.

Excerpted from The New York Times  and Deutsche Welle 5.17.2019

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

The Guardian – May 17, 2019

Kineo Kuwabara captured these rich images of everyday life the city during the buildup to the second world war. The series is on display 18-19 May at the Special Edition of The London Photograph Fair

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2019/may/17/the-lost-metropolis-1930s-tokyo-street-life-kineo-kuwabara-in-pictures

This type of weather is virtually unheard of in San Francisco during the month of May.  It is usually sunny and warm.

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

Photos by Lee Heidhues

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.15.2019

The Bahlsen biscuit empire heiress sparked outrage after claiming forced workers were “well-treated” during World War II. Despite her apologies, the case has reignited debate over Germany’s remembrance culture.

According to Verena Bahlsen, forced laborers were treated “well,” since they were paid the same wages as their German counterparts. The heiress made clear she refused to assume responsibility for something she had not actively taken part in and that happened before her time.

This caused an uproar worldwide, and especially in Germany, where commemorative culture is a highly sensitive issue. General Secretary of the social democrats (SPD) Lars Klingbeil declared:

“Those who inherit such a large fortune also inherit the responsibility that goes with it and shouldn’t appear so detached. It is no wonder that people lose faith in justice, when millionaires talk about yachts and not about responsibility.”

It all started at a business conference earlier this week: Verena Bahlsen, the 25-year-old heiress to the eponymous cookie manufacturer, attended a marketing conference at which she boasted about her riches. All she wanted was “to make money and buy yachts with [her] dividends,” she told the audience.

Little did she know that her unabashed claims to millionaire’s privileges would make her Germany’s most controversial character this week. Her comments came as a slight for dozens of families awaiting compensation after their ancestors were forced to work for the Bahlsen corporation during World War II.

WWII forced labor widespread

Forced labor in Germany, and within the Bahlsen family’s factory in particular, didn’t come as a surprise: During the Nazi era, an estimated 13 million people were coerced to work for the Third Reich. Forced laborers included displaced civilians — men, women and children — from occupied Europe, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners.

Verena Bahlsen, heiress to the Bahlsen factory empire

In 2000, some 60 Eastern European individuals who had performed forced labor for the company filed a lawsuit against Bahlsen. Between 1941 and 1945, it is believed that up to 200 people, mostly Ukrainian women, were forced to work in Bahlsen’s Hannover factory.

Their compensation claims were rejected as the Court dismissed the case, but the cookie manufacturer partly redeemed itself on the public scene by joining a charity aimed at giving reparations to the victims of Nazi-era forced labor. Bahlsen paid more than 1.5 million Deutschmarks (about €767,000, $859,500) to the plaintiffs and the case seemed shelved until Monday, when the heiress sought to justify her stance by downplaying the company’s wartime activities.

https://www.dw.com/en/heiress-downplays-factorys-forced-labor-use-during-holocaust/a-48749795