Lee Heidhues 7.20.2023

A lioness in Berlin has taken it upon herself to take a road trip.

Local authorities are vexed because neither the Berlin Zoo or the Circus have reported an AWOL (absent without leave) feline.

Authorities can only conclude, at this juncture, that the lioness decided to leave her home at a private estate or is, alarmingly, being kept captive by an animal trader.

Let’s hope the wandering lioness is found and safely returned to her native habitat. Which is not in the urban setting of Berlin but in the wilds of Africa.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.20.2023

A “loose, dangerous animal,” suspected to be an escaped big cat, was reportedly sighted in a Potsdam region on the fringes of the German capital on Thursday, police said.

“It’s clear lions can’t drop out of the sky, not in Germany, at least,” said Professor Heribert Hofer, director of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.

Authorities are using helicopters to track what they believe is a female lion and have called on residents to stay indoors, the rbb public broadcaster reported.

According to the German tabloid BILD, security forces were also using an armored vehicle, drones and infrared cameras in the search.

Police said veterinary specialists and hunters were also taking part in the operation to find the animal.

A police spokesman said drones were being employed where possible to avoid the usual search method of combing forest areas on foot.

On Thursday evening, a police spokesperson said that 220 officers were searching near where the animal was last seen in wooded areas near the municipalities of Kleinmachnow, Teltow and Stahnsdorf at the southern edge of Berlin.

The search is expected to continue through the night with the aid of night vision devices, the spokesperson said. 

“We will be on the job until the animal is found ,” the spokesperson added. 

Although it is illegal to keep big cats in Berlin, it is possible in the neighboring state of Brandenburg, Hofer told DW. 

The owner must have an expert certificate, keep and adequate private enclosure, and receive an official veterinarian check from the state.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-suspected-lioness-on-the-loose-outside-berlin/a-66291669

Lee Heidhues 7.17.2023

I am so shocked The New York Times is blowing its sports page to oblivion.

When I first read the news of this inexplicable act by America’s most well known newspaper I didn’t understand. Perhaps, because I did not think such an action was possible.

Sports are integral part of the global landscape. How the Times could do this for what appears financial reasons and nothing else boggles my mind. As a lifelong follower of sports.

I will let the excellent sports journalist Dave Zirin explain it better than I.

Excerpted from The Nation 7.17.2023 – Dave Zirin

I read the New York Post more voraciously, but my dream was to be a good enough journalist to write about sports for The New York Times.

It would have felt like getting a work of art into a museum. Now, that sports section is gone. The New York Times shuttered its sports page, a victim of greed and union busting.

This announcement came hours after a similar one from the Los Angeles Times that it would be closing its doors to sports coverage as well. As Boston Globe senior columnist Bob Ryan wrote, July 10 is “a day that will live in infamy” for anyone who cares about sports writing as a profession. 

The New York Times will replace its sports coverage with the website The Athletic, which it purchased for $550 million 18 months ago in an effort to boost its own subscription base. Now, another side of the attractiveness of The Athletic purchase is revealing itself. The staff there is nonunion.

Mere weeks after a contentious labor battle that put Times management on its heels, a section of the union has been gutted. In a rather nauseating statement on the closure, New York Times Chairman A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said that this was all part of a bigger plan “to become a global leader in sports journalism, which represents a major pillar of our company strategy to be the essential subscription for curious people around the world.”

How one becomes a “global leader in sports journalism” by blithely wrecking your sports page and outsourcing the labor away from deep-dive coverage is a question they should be pressed to answer.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/new-york-times-sports-page/

Top Photo-The New York Times – The Greatest Moments In – New York Giants History

Lee Heidhues 7.16.2023

In the fall of 1969 I spent a month in Amsterdam’s Red Light district at the ‘Student Youth Hotel Schreierstoren (Weeping Tower) just minutes walk from the City’s central train station.

The Schreierstoren, filled with international travelers, had a bar and juke box. One of the most frequently played songs was the smash hit Je’Taime by Jane Birkin and her collaborator, lover Serge Gainsbourg.

Jane Birkin died this past weekend in Paris. The French Culture Ministry said the country had lost a “timeless Francophone icon”.

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

Excerpted from The Independent 7.16.2023 – Helen Brown

Broadcast news of Jane Birkin’s death inevitably came accompanied by clips of her as softcore chanteuse, singing the 1969 single she recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, “Je t’aime… moi non plus”, her breathy, girlish voice wrapping sweet, urgent nothings around an older lover’s weary cynicism.

In 2021 she told me, entirely without self-pity, that her mother “wasn’t one for newborn babies – milk and nappies and all that. I think they were with a lot of nannies who made my parents feel uncomfortable and made my mother feel inadequate. You have to give people confidence that they’re doing it right. You tell people they’re getting it wrong and they’ll step back.”

I asked if that meant that she spent more time on her. “No. Neither of them were like that, and that’s all right. There’s nothing worse than making people do things when they feel uncomfortable.”

Birkin would go on to sing scores of Gainsbourgs’s poetic, playful and provocative songs. Sing? She liked to say she “wore” them. To me, she sounded more like she was smoking them. Inhaling his darker thoughts, holding them in, getting a little sad or high, then breathing them out somehow lighter, more evasive. Teasing both his need to shock and his audience’s need to be shocked.

At her final London show last year, she didn’t give us “Je t’aime” but its B Side, “Jane B”, on which Gainsbourg gave her licence to play with his typecasting of her as a 2D muse. He listed her vital statistics à la CSI: “Yeux bleus/ Cheveux châtains/ Jane B/ Anglaise/ De sexe féminin/ Âge entre 20 et 21…” The song implied she was already dead, a pretty corpse “sleeping” by the side of the road. But, of course, Birkin would outlive her lover by three decades and carry his legacy – with a pallbearer’s tender stoicism – for the rest of her life.

Because – although some critics dismiss her as the original, 1960s edition of the manic pixie dream girl – Birkin was no passive muse. The fashionista fantasy of her was at sharp odds with the earthy woman I interviewed twice in the final decades of her life.

I last spoke to Birkin on the phone in 2021 and her crisp, Mary Poppins accent still took me by surprise. L’amour? Spit Spot! She’d been out in her men’s corduroy trousers (no Birkin or basket bag, key on a ribbon around her neck) walking by the Brittany coast near her home, she told me. She was about to make a hearty hotpot and was looking forward to watching it “bubble down all warm and red on the stove”. She lived alone with her latest bulldog and seemed quite content with the situation.

Birkin is a reminder that the gauziest-seeming human might have sinew they don’t show.

And the woman whose 1969 vocals are often used as a shorthand for physical affection grew up experiencing very little of it. Born in 1946, Jane Birkin is the daughter of (once famous) actor Judy Campbell and ex-spy David Birkin.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/jane-birkin-death-serge-gainsbourg-tribute-b2376232.html

Lee Heidhues 7.15.2023

Lost in the headlines of America where extreme right wing sentiment is increasingly taking hold ahead of the 2024 Presidential election, the rest of the World is reeling in the onslaught of this political pandemic.

Germany is no exception as the following article in Deutsche Welle illustrates.

We will be in Berlin for several weeks later this year and will have an opportunity see for ourselves current state of right wing extremism in Germany. Mingling with the German people will provide us with insights that the media cannot replicate.

During an earlier trip to Germany we saw Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) posters in the town of Lübeck. Currently the right-wing populist AfD has 78 seats in the 736 seat Bundestag and is represented in state legislatures throughout Germany.

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

https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/plenary/distributionofseats

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.15.2023

“There must be no place in Brandenburg where right-wingers want to stir up fears and drive out dissenters,” said Brandenburg State Premier Dietmar Woidke.

Max Teske is barred from providing details about the far-right incidents he reported at his school. The local education authority does not want the teacher and his colleague Laura Nickel talking about it.

What Teske can say, based on conversations he has had with fellow educators across the eastern German state of Brandenburg, is that the incidents he reported are not unique.

“Hitler salutes, graffiti, sexism, homophobia. These are issues that affect all schools,” he told DW.

As a result, Teske and Nickel have announced they are leaving the school, located in Burg, a small town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Berlin.

AfD popularity a growing cause for concern

About three months ago, the two teachers submitted an urgent letter that called out incidents at the school. Although the letter was signed anonymous, Teske said he and Nickel were targeted with threats. These included stickers that appeared near the school featuring their photos, urging them to stay away.

Using a vulgar term, the stickers told them to “go back to Berlin.” That was around the time, Teske said, they got in touch with law enforcement.

Burg is located in the Spreewald, a popular tourist destination known for its natural beauty. The area’s politics, however, are less tranquil. In the 2021 federal election, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won more than 30% of the vote in Burg. The AfD’s popularity at local and regional levels has been a growing cause for concern among federal politicians.

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Brandenburg Education Minister Steffen Freiberg expressed sympathy for the teachers allegedly under threat, but also sounded a note of criticism. He rejected their complaint that their superiors did not give them enough support.

The news has prompted consternation in the mainstream political arena, not only in the state of Brandenburg but also among federal politicians in Berlin. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his concern about the developments at the school in Burg. “We must do everything for those who oppose populism and extremism and stand up for tolerance and democracy in this society,” his spokesperson, Cerstin Gammelin, quoted him as saying on July 13. 

https://www.dw.com/en/teachers-in-eastern-germany-face-far-right-threats/a-66237849

Top photo: Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) supporters at historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

Lee Heidhues 7.12.2023

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin staunch anti-environmentalist, bought and paid for by the fossil fuels industry, must have sprung a leak this past Monday.

The US Fourth Circuit put the brakes, at least temporarily, on Pipeline Joe’s climate killing crusade to construct the Mission Valley Pipeline.

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

Pipeline Joe wants to believe he’s rid himself of those meddling Federal judges and environmentalists after he strong armed Congress to get the judiciary out of his pet project.

A political payoff to his campaign contributors.

https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joe-manchin/industries?cid=N00032838&cycle=2022

Not so fast, Joe.

Excerpted from The New York Times 7.12.2023

A federal court in Richmond has halted construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, setting off a battle with Congress that could end up at the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, released a pair of rulings on Monday and Tuesday to stop work on the project, which is intended to carry natural gas about 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia across nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands before ending in Virginia.

Environmentalists, Democratic members of the Virginia congressional delegation and some constitutional law experts argue that by directing a change in courts, Congress has violated the separation of powers clause in the Constitution.

That was notable because Congress had moved jurisdiction over the pipeline last month from the court in Richmond, where environmentalists have found some success in their decade-long fight, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It was a highly unusual provision that was tucked into legislation that had nothing to do with pipelines — the law to raise the debt ceiling.

Congress also included provisions to expedite construction of the pipeline and insulate it from judicial review. Those elements were added as a concession to Senator Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia Democrat whose vote has been crucial to President Biden’s domestic agenda.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/mountain-valley-pipeline-courts.html

Lee Heidhues 7.10.2023

Nazi Germany had many evil aspects of its persecution and annihilation of its Jewish population.

One which has received scant attention is the ruination of its one time thriving fashion industry.

Deutsche Welle has taken a long look into the fabric of Hitler’s Third Reich and its destruction of yet another Jewish cultural art form.

I have had a long time interest in fashion having worked 11 years in the international division of Levi Strauss & Co. The Haas family, descendants of the founder Levi Strauss, being long time prominent members of San Francisco’s Jewish community.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.10.2023

Even though Berlin Fashion Week  takes place twice every year, in January and from July 10-13, the German city doesn’t exactly hold the title of the capital of fashion. 

“What I find scary is that since 1945, nobody wants to remember this fashion culture. There’s no commemoration of the many Jewish fashion designers. This stands in stark contrast to many German companies that were deeply involved in the Nazi state and have tried to make good since then,” explains Uwe Westphal, a freelance journalist and author of “Fashion Metropolis Berlin 1836 – 1939. The Story of the Rise and Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry.”

In the early 90s, Westphal’s frustration led to campaigning for a memorial at Hausvogteiplatz with the support of the Jewish community in Berlin. In 2000, the memorial was inaugurated with funding by the Berlin government.

That’s why even Berliners are surprised when they find out that their city used to be a thriving fashion hub before World War II. And it was mainly thanks to Jewish entrepreneurs who were pioneers of modern fashion in Berlin.

The clothing industry took off in Berlin in the 1830s. Industrial sewing machines introduced in the 1850s were a game changer: A shirt could be made in one hour instead of eight.

Amid this industrialization process, Germany’s social and political context allowed Jewish entrepreneurs to set the tone. 

For centuries, Jewish people living in Germany had been suffering from legal restrictions that affected their ability to make a livelihood and pushed most of them into poverty. Many were peddlers trading in haberdashery and second-hand clothes, while wealthy Jews traded in fine fabrics, explains Westphal.

Antisemitism and envy of the Jews’ success in the industry existed from early on. But with Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Jewish-owned businesses suffered massive blows, starting with the boycott against Jewish stores established on April 1 that same year.

The companies of Jewish fashion manufacturers were then systematically taken over by members of the Nazi party: “Jews were soon forbidden to take out bank loans. For the clothing companies, this was a disaster. You couldn’t have fashion shows without bank guarantees,” explains Westphal, which is why Jews were forced into making Nazi party members partners in their companies to have access to funds, and finally transferring ownership at ridiculously low prices.

 In the Kristillnacht of November 9-10 1938, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht groups of Nazi supporters stormed hundreds of companies on Hausvogteiplatz in the Berlin district of Mitte, which was the city’s center of Jewish fashion. They destroyed everything they could get their hands on: “Of the 2,700 Jewish fashion companies, only 24 were left, and they too were confiscated by 1940 at the latest,” says Westphal.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-nazis-destroyed-berlins-thriving-fashion-industry/a-66172345

Top photo: Seamstresses at the Auschwitz concentration camp working with sewing machines during WWII-
Image: Yad Vashem Archiv

Lee Heidhues 7.9.2023

Did the SFPD military style presence provoke The Saturday Night Riot in the Mission District?

The San Francisco Standard reports what undoubtedly is the SFPD narrative of events. What the Standard needs to do is ask the right questions.

The mainstream media too often takes the easy way out and regurgitates the official version of events. This allows the MSM to maintain its cozy with relationship the cops.

A totally unleashed San Francisco Police Department has taken to terror in the streets of the City’s Mission District.

The premediated assault on the City’s teenagers and young adults who were skateboarding will be another stain on the sordid history of officially sanctioned violence in The City of St. Francis.

Chief of Police Bill Scott, in response to press queries, made a comment which applies to his own police force in what can arguably be called a police riot.

“This behavior will not be tolerated in our city and I thank our officers for taking action to hold those accountable who brazenly engaged in reckless and dangerous behavior and violated the law. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries.” 

Hapless Mayor London Breed with her law and order bloviating has opened the flood gates of this police misconduct by actively and encouraging their abusive behavior.

Pathetically, some elected officials are already making excuses for the cops abhorrent behavior.

The Mayor’s anointed District Attorney Brooke Jenkins will now have to decide if these arrests, acts of harassment by the cops, are worth prosecuting. Or, will she do the right thing and toss them immediately?

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 7.9.2023

San Francisco police arrested more than 100 people—32 adults and 81 juveniles—Saturday night in wake of a skateboarding gathering near Dolores Park. The incident sparked shock, outrage and umbrage Sunday among members of the public and some elected officials.

On Sunday morning, San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston expressed his displeasure at police’s response to the incident, calling it an “abuse of power, waste of money, and trauma inflicted on our young people.”

“I’m ashamed of our City leadership for this type of militarization of our streets and attack on our youth,” Preston said in a tweet. “People deserve answers.”

Thirty-two adults were arrested and booked into San Francisco county jail on suspicion of inciting a riot, remaining present at an unlawful assembly and conspiracy, with one adult cited and released for resisting arrest, remaining present at an unlawful assembly and conspiracy. Eighty-one teens were also arrested on similar charges, with one teen later hospitalized for treatment of intoxication.

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/reports-sf-police-arrest-dozens-in-dolores-park-hill-bomb/

Top photo: The People look Police State Power in the Face and Don’t Like What They See.

Lee Heidhues 7.9.2023

It is reprehensible. San Francisco cops have nothing better to do than harass and traumatize scores of young people engaged in skateboarding.

The bullying fascist tactics displayed by the San Francisco Police Department are actions people have come to expect in Putin’s Russia as he cracks down on anti-war protestors.

Local cops from the City’s Mission District station harassed, bullied, handcuffed and loaded into police vans scores of young skateboarders.

These young adults have been unnecessarily traumatized by the agents of the State. Who knows what impact this fascist type treatment will have on their psyches as they mature into adulthood and form opinions about Authority.

Excerpted from Mission Local 7.8.2023

San Francisco police officers in riot helmets rushed into and blockaded intersections this evening near Dolores Park to shut down the annual “hill bomb” where hundreds of people gather to watch skaters and bikers zoom down Dolores Street.

The hill bomb is an annual event that sees skaters from across the Bay Area come into the Mission to skate down Dolores Street.

As of 8:45 p.m., SFPD had kenneled dozens of skaters and young people, keeping them trapped between two rows of police officers armed with batons and riot helmets.

“Those are just kids!” standers-by shouted.

“We don’t have rights!” said someone else.

A sergeant on the scene said they will arrest between 50 to 60 of the skaters and viewers.

Sabir, a 14-year old who was in the group before it was corralled, said the police trapped the group between Dolores and Guerrero streets.

They were “trying to trap us, I ran away, and someone tried to hit me,” he said. “He swung [the baton] at me and said ‘Move!’ and now all of them are under arrest.”

Sabir said the majority of the group are teenagers.

SFPD shuts down Dolores Park hill bomb, arrests dozens of teenagers

Lee Heidhues 7.8.2023

“In a statement, Jenkins also blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.”

– San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins quoted in San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023

Carefully reading The Standard it’s evident the State of Crime has not changed appreciably since Brooke Jenkins was anointed DA a year ago today.

It’s no surprise that the San Francisco Police Department and their cheerleader DA are unhappy with The San Francisco Standard for calling out their ineptitude.

It is demonstrably pathetic that Brooke Jenkins lashes out at defense attorneys, most of whom are public defenders, for doing their job. Represent their clients.

Brooke Jenkins continues to blame “progressive ideology” embedded in her own office rather than take responsibility for her abject failure.

Now that Chesa Boudin has been gone a year, Brooke Jenkins no longer has her scapegoat to blame. The target of her incompetence are defense attorneys Brooke Jenkins must battle in the court of law. Where bloviating rhetoric is not the coin of the realm.

And the cops. What can I say? The SFPD is still in full Chesa scapegoat mode and refuses to acknowledge their role in the ouster of Chesa Boudin. Having spent over 700K to try and defeat Chesa in 2019, the cops went full throttle to bring him down through proactive sloth and incompetence on the job.

It was common knowledge on the street that the SFPD, egged on by its reactionary Police Officers Association, engaged in the most obvious dereliction of duty. They refused to make arrests because Chesa Boudin was their sworn foe. The job objective was to take him down by ignoring criminal acts. They succeeded.

Even law and order loving Chronicle columnist Heather Knight. Who contributed regularly in her columns to Chesa’s ouster. Felt compelled in a brief moment of journalistic integrity to call out the cops for their dereliction and incompetence while Chesa was DA.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/She-says-officers-let-suspect-go-after-her-S-F-16911968.php

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 7.6.2023

DA Brooke Jenkins quickly adopted a more punitive approach to crime than her progressive predecessor both in tone and substance, homing in on repeat narcotics offenders and drug dealers, whom she targeted with more stringent policies and harsher rhetoric.

She threatened to charge dealers with murder if their drugs lead to overdoses, said she’d add years to sentences for those who deal near schools and revoked what she termed “lenient” plea offers made by Boudin.

But there is little evidence on the streets that these tactics are working, and many say they are merely a return to a failed “war on drugs.” Instead of focusing on diversion and treatment, which were part of Boudin’s approach, Jenkins has put more of her tools toward jailing drug dealers and punishing users. 

Jenkins blamed defense attorneys for her office not having more to show for her prosecutions against drug dealers.

Jenkins said her approach to running the District Attorney’s Office will simply take more time to bear fruit.

Reports of drug offenses have increased 41% since she took office.

Overdose deaths driven by the fentanyl epidemic are on pace to hit a record high, having hit 268 as of the end of April. Things have become so dire that Gov. Gavin Newsom sent in state law enforcement to help patrol the epicenter of the drug crisis in the Tenderloin as numerous local operations have sprouted to tackle the issue.

While data provided by the DA’s Office shows that Jenkins is beginning to differentiate herself from Boudin—she is charging more drug cases and sending far fewer people to diversion programs, which offer alternatives to conviction—her increased caseload has yet to lead to a sizable change in drug convictions.

In fact, in her first 11 months in office, she convicted fewer drug dealers than Boudin over the last 11 months of his time as district attorney. 

Cases can take years to yield convictions, and righting an office that was driven more by a progressive ideology than the law cannot happen overnight, she said in emailed statements.

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/brooke-jenkins-promise-end-drug-dealing/