Lee Heidhues 4.29.2023

Russian dictator and warmonger Vladimir Putin may be a pariah in Europe and the United States as he continues his war of aggression against Ukraine.

The former KGB operative and now strongman in Russia can count on at least one set of friends.

The Russian biker community of Night Wolves with their black attire and heavy duty motorcycles.

This group of Putin bikers intends to drive the roads between Moscow and Berlin with a detour through the war torn Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. That’s how Putin waves the Russian flag to his captive audience back home.

Moscow Times 4.29.2023

Hundreds of Kremlin-loyal bikers under the banner of the Night Wolves motorcycle club took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday for a “patriotic” rally across Europe.  

The motorcade headed by club founder and leader Alexander Zaldastanov, known as “The Surgeon,” aims to complete the rally in Berlin by May 9.

Zaldastanov, who has described himself as a “friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is under Western sanctions for his support for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the Russian offensive in Ukraine. 

In May 2015, he was banned from entering Poland, where he wanted to organize “a motorcycle victory rally” across Europe. The ban had provoked the ire of Russian diplomacy

Several participants at the rally waved Russian and Soviet flags. Some had the letter “Z” fixed to their bikes — a symbol of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine launched in February 2022. 

Dubbed “the roads of victory,” the rally adopted the traditional slogan of the Russian offensive in Ukraine: “We do not let down our own.”

According to organizers, the motorcade plans to reach by May 1 the city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, the site of a bloody battle between Soviet and German Nazi troops that marked a turning point in World War II toward victory for the Soviet Union and its allies. 

The bikers will continue their journey to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the scene of heavy fighting, where they will distribute humanitarian aid to civilians and Russian soldiers. 

“The inhabitants of the Donbas and us, we are the same people,” 34-year-old Artyom told AFP before embarking on the race.

Hundreds of Kremlin-loyal bikers under the banner of the Night Wolves motorcycle club took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday for a “patriotic” rally across Europe.  

Several participants at the rally waved Russian and Soviet flags. Some had the letter “Z” fixed to their bikes — a symbol of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine launched in February 2022. 

 

Top Photo – Vladimir Putin and Night Wolves leader Alexander Zaldastanov, known as “The Surgeon”

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/04/29/pro-putin-bikers-launch-rally-bound-for-berlin-a80988

Lee Heidhues 4.28.2023

It was three years ago on April 28, 2020 when Mayor Breed, during the midst of the Pandemic, decreed that a 1.5 mile portion of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park would be a dedicated pedestrian and cyclist oasis.

Three years later JFK Promenade is now a permanent fixture in the San Francisco landscape. It was not an easy victory. Advocates had to wind their way through the City’s byzantine bureaucracy of multiple agencies and different agendas. Finally, the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 to make JFK Promenade permanent.

But that was not the end. Motorists do not shut off their rhetorical engines quietly.

A lawsuit was filed and went all the way to the California Court of Appeal before being dismissed. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco sponsored a ballot measure to bring cars back to JFK Promenade. The Board of Supervisors put a competing measure on the ballot to maintain JFK Promenade. It won a smashing victory with 63 percent of the vote in November 2022.

To celebrate the third anniversary of this car free oasis a large number of people of all ages came out on a foggy afternoon to bask in the well earned and hard fought victory.

https://sfrecpark.org/1538/JFK-Promenade

Lee Heidhues 4.27.2023

Carolyn Bryant, the then 21 year old woman responsible for the gruesome murder of 14 year old Emmet Till in Mississippi nearly 68 years ago, which upended the civil rights debate in America is dead.

Excerpted from The New York Times 4.27.2023

Only two people knew exactly what happened during the minute they were alone together in the general store in Money, Miss., on Aug. 24, 1955.

One, Emmett Till, a Black teenager visiting from Chicago, died four days later, at 14, in a brutal murder that stands out even in America’s long history of racial injustice.

The other was Carolyn Bryant. She was the 21-year-old white proprietress of the store where, according to her testimony in the September 1955 trial of her husband and his half brother for the murder, Emmett made a sexually suggestive remark to her, grabbed her roughly by the waist and let loose a wolf whistle.

Now Mrs. Bryant, more recently known as Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died at 88. On Thursday, Megan LeBoeuf, the chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office in Louisiana, sent a statement confirming the death, on Tuesday, in Westlake, a small city in southern Louisiana. Ms. LeBoeuf did not provide further information.

With Mrs. Bryant’s death, the truth of what happened that August day may now never be clear.

More than half a century after the murder, Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University historian who interviewed her, wrote that she had admitted to him that she had perjured herself on the witness stand to make Emmett’s conduct sound more threatening than it actually was — serving, in Dr. Tyson’s words, as “the mouthpiece of a monstrous lie.”

The murder of Emmett Till was a watershed in United States race relations. Coverage of the killing and its aftermath, including a widely disseminated photograph of Till’s brutalized body at his open-casket funeral, inspired anguish and outrage, helped propel the modern civil rights movement and ultimately contributed to the demise of Jim Crow.

Top photo. Carolyn Bryant in the Mississippi courtroom with her accused husband – September 1955

Lee Heidhues 4.26.2023

There’s a major missing political component to the story regarding the altercation between a former Fire Commissioner and a homeless man in the City’s Marina neighborhood.

Where is the mainstream media scorn and outrage being directed towards Brooke Jenkins, London Breed and the entire City Hall gang which politically lynched Chesa Boudin in June 2022?

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who rode to office as a cheerleader and instigator of the political lynching of her one time boss Progressive DA Chesa Boudin is getting an unjustified pass.

This incident, had it occurred a year ago, would have been grist for the mill for Brooke Jenkins, Mayor London Breed and the entire toxic law and order crowd polluting San Francisco.

It appears likely that the Superior Court judge assigned to this case will soon discharge Garrett Alan Doty. Why? The public defender has presented ample evidence that Don Carmignani instituted the altercation earlier this month.

It will be yet another embarrassment for the Mayor’s hand picked DA.

Legally speaking the Court will be taking the correct action in releasing Mr. Doty.

In addition, if the evidence is correct, obtaining a conviction would be very difficult. It would require a unanimous verdict in a criminal trial.

Were Chesa Boudin District Attorney the mainstream media, Mayor Breed and the paranoid San Francisco public would be piling on. Bloviating endlessly that San Francisco has become a dystopian cesspool of rampant crime and lawlessness. Scapegoating Chesa Boudin relentlessly, viciously and without let up.

Now the mob’s Scapegoat is no longer available to kick around.

Ex-fire commissioner accused of vigilante attacks on homeless

The Mission Local, hardly the MSM, is one outlet reporting the details of the story. But, even this respected journal has not criticized Brooke Jenkins directly.

Top photo – Mayor London Breed and her handpicked DA Brooke Jenkins surround themselves with the Flag at San Francisco City Hall – July 7, 2022

Lee Heidhues 4.24.2023

Make no mistake. The mainstream media is already hard at work undermining Alameda DA Pamela Price all under the rubric of responsible journalism. In reality the MSM is cherry picking the police blotter with a goal to shoot down progressive Justice.

It’s been nearly a year since the 9MM MAGA funded coup d’etat in San Francisco politically lynched and drove from office Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Replacing him with the ethically challenged hand picked by Mayor London Breed photo op opportunist Brooke Jenkins.

Now the same MAGA crowd in Alameda County is stealthily working to undermine and overthrow Progressive DA Pamela Price who was elected in November 2022.

Utilizing a couple of crimes to their full advantage the MAGA, abetted by the MSM crowd, has a public face to this latest attempted political lynching. A small group of disgruntled citizens who don’t respect the will of the majority.

Make no mistake. The same MAGA reactionary millionaires who ousted Chesa Boudin is the same perfidious crew at work again to destroy progressive Justice.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 4.24.2023

Less than a year after San Francisco voters unseated progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a similar dynamic is underway in the East Bay.

“There are people who wanted to recall her before she was elected,” Rivka Polatnick, a criminal justice reform activist who helped organize a rally on April 23. “There’s been efforts to undermine her. They’re following the same playbook.”

Last November, civil rights attorney Pamela Price became Alameda County’s first Black district attorney in a closely watched race, in which she successfully campaigned against the status quo and on a reduction in incarceration. Although Price only took office in January, critics are always homing in on what they say is a soft-on-crime approach. 

More than 100 of Price’s supporters rallied in Downtown Oakland on Sunday to emphasize their approval of the new DA and her mandate from voters to instill the reforms she campaigned on. Media criticism, they allege, has been excessively negative—even biased.

“When you show up for freedom and justice, you have to be ready for the backlash,” Price told the crowd outside the Alameda County Courthouse. “I am not fearing the backlash that they call a recall, because I believe in the engagement and the activism of this community.”

Supporters attested to Price’s long history of defending victims of sexual harassment and discrimination. To them, she is the right person for the job that Alameda County voters elected her to do less than six months ago.

Since her election in November, Price has moved to overhaul how her office handles law enforcement, reopening investigations into officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths. It’s also brought high-profile cases to the fore, which has netted frustration with the new DA.

A Change.org petition demanding a recall that misspells Price’s name has over 15,000 signatures. 

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/as-talk-of-a-recall-grows-supporters-of-alameda-da-pamela-price-push-back/

Lee Heidhues 4.23.2023

Here’s today’s “All’s well that ends well” story for the Golden State Warriors.

With 41 seconds remaining, the Warriors up by five points, in possession of the ball against the Sacramento Kings.

Superstar Steph Curry made a mistake which would have haunted him forever had his team lost.

Curry’s miscue resulted in a technical foul and a free throw which the Kings made. The Kings were then awarded the ball and promptly sank a three point shot to close the gap to one point.

The Warriors failed to score on their next possession. Sacramento got the ball with 10 seconds remaining. All Warrior fans exhaled when former Warrior Harrison Barnes missed a three point shot as the final buzzer sounded.

Warriors win 126-125 and tie the series at 2-2. The next game is in Sacramento on Wednesday night.

Stand up guy. Warriors coach Steve Kerr took responsibility for Steph Curry’s gaffe.

Excerpted from SF Gate 4.24.2023

The Golden State Warriors committed a mental error.

Steph Curry was bringing the basketball up the floor when the Kings trapped him behind halfcourt. With 42 seconds left in the game, Curry let his instincts take over and called a timeout to prevent the turnover in the backcourt.

The problem was that the Warriors had no timeouts remaining. This was because Steve Kerr called for a challenge on an illegal screen foul that came against Kevon Looney a couple of possessions earlier. Kerr, who understood this fact, nearly fell to his knees in disbelief at what his star player had just done.

Not only did the Kings get a technical foul free throw, but they also got possession immediately afterward. Sacramento made good on the opportunity, with De’Aaron Fox scoring a 3-point basket to turn what was a 126-121 deficit to a 126-125 deficit.

Though the Kings got the final possession of the game, the attempted game-winner from forward Harrison Barnes clanked off the back of the rim as time expired, allowing Golden State to tie the series at 2-2 with a 126-125 win.

https://www.sfgate.com/warriors/article/warriors-pull-chris-weber-called-late-timeout-17914045.php

Top photo: Warriors fans show varying senses of emotion as Harrison Barnes launches his final second three pointer for the Kings. It missed. Time to exhale – photo. San Francisco Chronicle

Lee Heidhues 4.22.2023

I was going to do a blog post about another of my favorite films. The 1968 filmed in San Francisco. ‘Bullitt’

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

Looking for some interesting items to accompany a post on the original ‘Bullitt’ I came upon the news that Steven Spielberg is directing a remake of the 1968 classic. I don’t know. Everyone loves Spielberg. Not me. This is a director who can take the most serious topic and by the end of the movie turn it into some type of maudlin mush.

With all due respect for one of Hollywood’s favorites, Spielberg is not the Guy to bring this neo noir masterpiece into the 21st century.

In addition to being a great film, the Lalo Schifrin soundtrack in the 1968 release is one of the all time movie musical masterpieces.

Excerpted from IndieWire 11.17.2022

Steven Spielberg has found his Bullitt. Bradley Cooper has been cast in the director’s upcoming original film about Frank Bullitt, the character made famous from the 1968 Steven McQueen thriller.

Based on the 1963 novel “Mute Witness” by Robert L. Fish, the original “Bullitt” starred the late McQueen as the title character, a San Francisco Police Department lieutenant seeking to take down Chicago mobster Johnny Ross (Pat Renella).

Spielberg will direct the new Warner Bros. film, which will not be a remake of the original movie by Peter Yates, instead telling a completely original story starring Bullitt. Sources close to the project confirmed the news to IndieWire.

Cooper will join Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger as producers on the film — the three also serve as producers on Cooper’s upcoming feature “Maestro,” about the life of Leonard Bernstein. That film, currently in post-production, is set to release on Netflix in 2023. Oscar-winning “Spotlight” screenwriter Josh Singer will pen the screenplay for the new Bullitt film, with McQueen’s son Chad and granddaughter Molly executive producing.

In addition to McQueen and Ross, the original Bullitt also starred Robert Vaughn and Jacqueline Bisset. The film was a critical success, winning a best editing Oscar at the Academy Awards, and grossed $42.3 million on a $4 million budget. The movie is perhaps McQueen’s, who died in 1980, most famous role, and has come to be viewed as a huge influence on action films as a genre. In particular, the film’s car chase scene through San Francisco is widely regarded as iconic and has been the subject of many homages and parodies in the years since.

Lee Heidhues 4.21.2023

Racism in America runs rampant.

There are so many racist stories involving murder of Black people by Whites, whether it be cops or civilians, it’s hard to keep track of the grim news.

So, a story from Oklahoma where violence is only threatened but not actually perpetrated fails to get immediate major coverage. Now, this story is getting the traction it deserves.

First is a clip from the PBS News Hour followed by a report from the New York Times.

PBS News Hour 4.21.2023

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/oklahoma-county-officials-recorded-making-racist-remarks-discussing-killing-reporter

Excerpted from New York Times 4.18.2023

A small newspaper in rural Oklahoma secretly recorded what it said was an illegal public meeting where a county official talked about hanging Black people and several officials spoke of hiring hit men and digging holes for two of the newspaper’s reporters.

Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma said on Monday that four officials in McCurtain County — the sheriff, a jail administrator, a sheriff’s department investigator and a county commissioner — should resign. One of those officials, the county commissioner, Mark Jennings, said he was resigning in a letter released by the governor’s office on Wednesday.

Clips of the recording released on Friday night by the newspaper, The McCurtain Gazette-News, have touched off shock and anger in the county of about 31,000 residents in the southeastern corner of the state, bordering Arkansas and Texas.

According to the transcript released by the newspaper, Mr. Jennings, a county commissioner, talked about hanging Black people by a creek. “But you can’t do that anymore,” he said, according to the transcript. “They got more rights than we got.”

“I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Mr. Jennings said on the recording, according to the transcript.

The sheriff responded: “I’ve got an excavator.”

Mr. Jennings replied: “Well, these are already pre-dug.”

At another point, according to the transcript, Mr. Jennings said, “I’ve known two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys.”

“Yeah?” Ms. Manning responded.

“And would cut no mercy,” Mr. Jennings said, adding an expletive.

Bruce Willingham, who has been publisher and editor of The Gazette-News since 1988, said he made the secret recording on March 6 by leaving his voice-activated recorder in the room where county commissioners were meeting. He said he wanted to prove that officials were discussing county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s open-meeting law.

Bruce Willingham said he had turned over the full audio recording to the police and the F.B.I.

Lee Heidhues 4.20.2023

San Francisco is looking at a yawning budget deficit.

San Francisco’s projected budget deficit for next year has risen to $291 million because of higher costs, lower-than-projected revenue and unexpected expenses for police overtime and street cleaning

Despite this harsh fiscal reality the Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to approve a three year contract with the San Francisco Police Department which will see a massive increase in the SFPD budget.

This caving in to the cops comes just weeks after the Supervisors voted to give the cops a $25 million ‘supplemental’ for overtime pay.

Despite the lack of police accountability, the well documented instances of police abuse, and the fact the SFPD has done a questionable job of clearing cases only one Supervisor, Dean Preston, voted NO.

Most shameful is the fact that three Supervisors, who think of themselves as Progressives, succumbed to the law and order rhetoric of the Mayor and voted for a massive three year contract for SFPD.

Connie Chan

Hillary Ronen

Shamann Walton

The current budget grew the police department budget by more than $50 million, to about $714 million in fiscal year 2023, according to the mayor’s office.

What is San Francisco’s total budget?

On July 29, 2022 Mayor London Breed signed into law a $13.1 billion City budget for Fiscal Year 2022.

The Police Department currently receives over half San Francisco’s budget.

The new contract will see San Francisco will raise pay and add retention bonuses to lure and keep police officers at a cost of $166.5 million over three years under a new contract approved earlier this week.

The new contract between the city and the San Francisco Police Officers Association is trying to boost staffing by giving cops a 10.75% raise over three years and raising starting pay for recruits to the highest among large cities in the Bay Area. 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfpd-police-raise-approved-crime-in-sf-17897716.php

Lee Heidhues 4.19.2023

The San Francisco Standard has a thorough analytical piece dissecting the fervent opposition to legal marijuana in the predominantly Asian neighborhoods.

Marijuana has been legal in California for several years. How this opposition is tolerated is illustrative of the fact that people can blithely choose to ignore the law when it suits their political and/or cultural agenda.

In my Richmond District neighborhood which is very expansive geographically there is only one cannabis store.

Two other neighborhoods, Chinatown and The Sunset have been able to harass City officials to the point where cannabis shops are totally banned.

People who oppose these cannabis dispensaries are effectively ignoring and breaking the law. A law which was passed by a heavy majority of California voters in 2016.

Excerpted from The Standard 4.19.2023

“Pasta, not pot!” a cluster of protesters shouted outside of Gold Mirror, a decades-old Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s Sunset District during one of many demonstrations in April. The Gold Mirror owners and a local dispensary had announced plans to open a cannabis shop on the restaurant’s upper level, prompting outcry from concerned community members. 

With a bullhorn and signs in tow, the protesters demanded the neighborhood institution stick to serving pasta and cannoli. 

Even by this city’s standards, the idea of a restaurant famous for its cannelloni installing a dispensary on its mezzanine level may be new—but the outpouring of community opposition is not.

After more than two hours of heated debate, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 9 to 2 on Tuesday to approve the Gold Mirror expansion plan, a major defeat to San Francisco’s anti-cannabis contingent.

Californians have been legally allowed to consume medicinal cannabis since 1996 and, after voters passed 2016’s Proposition 64, adult recreational use has been legal statewide since 2018. Nearly three-fourths of San Francisco residents voted in support of that measure. 

San Francisco may be America’s most proudly stoned city, known all over the world for its counterculture and for its psychedelic- and weed-friendly residents. But its embrace of commercial marijuana faces staunch opposition from a relatively small but increasingly outspoken group of locals—especially in the Sunset, with its large Asian American population.

Fervent Chinese American opposition primarily explains why Chinatown and much of the Sunset became weed deserts. Over the years, proposed dispensaries in these neighborhoods consistently faced protests from members of the Chinese community, who voiced concerns about crime, gentrification and the proximity of the stores to young children.

Asian community is very active in black market cannabis in the Bay Area

“It’s an open secret that the Asian community is very active in black market cannabis in the Bay Area,” said David Ho, a Chinese American immigrant and progressive champion of cannabis. “Socially and recreationally, the Chinese government banned the use of it—but they’re one of the most active cultivators in the world.” 

Indeed, states across the West Coast report a growing Chinese involvement in illegal weed operations, where the number of Chinese-linked marijuana farms has skyrocketed. State officials said in March that investors and organized crime groups from China are fixtures in Northern California. 

https://sfstandard.com/community/the-big-numb-cannabis-divides-sfs-chinese-american-community-along-generational-lines/