Liz Heidhues 10.16.2022

Purple belt!!

A few weeks ago, I beamed with pride and positivity at Tat Wong Academy when Master Chow verified, I had reached the highest Intermediate level in Kung Fu Martial Arts. In traditional ceremonial flourish, Master Chow presented me with a Certificate of Appointment. He then untied my Green belt from around my waist and replaced it with a bold Purple belt embellished with a Black stripe in its center.

The Black stripe signifies I am a member of the Black Belt Club. Black belt is a rank I promised myself I would earn by the age of 74.

It takes a lot of discipline and practice to attain.

I originally started training in Kung Fu self-defense in 2018, after my first False Citizen’s Arrest and brutal handcuffing.

I shut down after that cruel and unusual experience. My posture was noticeably impacted.

When a colleague exclaimed when I walked by her “Elisabetta! You’re all hunched over!! Like this . .” and proceeded to demonstrate, I realized I was walking around looking like a chewed-up stick of chewing gum.

I had always been interested in self-defense.

Our son earned a Black Belt in Martial Arts when he was a teenager. He was beaten up by sighted kids (he’s Blind) coming home from school one day. He enrolled in a Martial Arts program for the Blind. No one could ever beat up the Blind kid again, even though they threatened to do so many times and once even tried to steal his expensive adaptive equipment off his back. His ferocity scared his attacker off.

Our son was my inspiration to venture into Tat Wong Academy to learn self-defense. If he could overcome his barriers with self-defense training, then I could learn to cope with the debilitating aftermath of a False Citizen’s Arrest in my old age.

Tat Wong Academy was welcoming and compassionate.

Learning how to block attacks and strike back in powerful ways boosted my self-esteem. Mastering the targeted blows and kicks released my anger at the Injustices I had had to swallow.

I advanced from Yellow to Green belts under three kind and highly skilled Masters – stabilizing my posture, improving my physical and inner strengths, growing in self-confidence.

Grandmaster Tat Mau Wong, founder of Tat Wong Academy, shared a few laughs with me whenever he visited the Academy. Age-wise, I placed in a pecking order over Grandmaster Tat Mau Wong, a few years younger than me. He liked to tease me that he was no match for my physical strength and fitness from a lifetime of running, cycling, never owning a car. I admired that his biceps were bigger than mine, and that his agility and adroitness far surpassed me. Grandmaster Wong ardently supported my quest for Black belt.

I felt I was becoming a good fighter. I could successfully punch and kick back at higher level classmates than myself.

But the bottom fell out of my life with a second False Citizen’s Arrest at the age of 70!

Again, I had to process inexplicable police abuse. Again, I had to seek out physical therapy for my back, injured in a second brutal handcuffing. The trauma became too much to deal with.

I totally shut down this time. I stopped doing everything – teaching English, Kung Fu training, relationships, caring about living. I retreated from the world and hid in my kitchen. I didn’t jog, didn’t kick nor hit at imaginary foes, and didn’t practice my religion.

Then the Pandemic hit. The floor dropped out from under me, and my life was forever changed. Tat Wong closed as well as the language school where I had been teaching.

It took 2-1/2 years after my second False Citizen’s Arrest and yet another nightmarish incarceration to return to Kung Fu training.

I am grateful to be back at Tat Wong Academy. I have been working on my self-defense techniques for four months now. I feel safer and more in control with every class I attend. I am making up for lost time.

No longer am I afraid to leave my house. I can hold my head up high and walk again with a straight back, not bent over with the oppressive memories of two False Citizen’s Arrests in my old age.

I’m a survivor. I’m not afraid of anything really, anymore. I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I am a survivor.

My Martial Arts training is honing my body and mind to be a Warrior in my elder years – to fight for “Virtue In Action”. I am looking forward to the day when I will earn appointment to Black belt.

When that day comes, I want our Blind son to be there because I want him to know his mother never gave up.

For now – I am thrilled every time I don my Kung Fu uniform and cinch that hard-earned Purple belt with a Black stripe around my waist. It’s a good feeling to be back with my classmates at Kung Fu classes in Tat Wong Academy!

Lee Heidhues 10.16.2022

Putin’s War of Aggression against Ukraine has upended Germany’s goal to rid itself of nuclear energy and coal.

The German demand for energy has now trumped, at least temporarily, the nation’s long sought goal of having a clean energy society.

The Green Party may be part of Germany’s ruling coalition but the political realities are casting a dark shadow over their plans to radically change how the population gets its energy.

Excerpted from The New York Times 10.16.2022

LÜTZERATH, Germany — For months, die-hard environmental activists have camped in the fields and occupied the trees in this tiny farming village in western Germany, hoping that like-minded people from across the country would arrive and help stop the expansion of a nearby open-pit coal mine that threatened to swallow the village and its farms.

The protesters in Lützerath — balaclava-clad environmental activists, middle-class residents from nearby towns and a religious community that recently carried a cross around the village — say they are exhausted by their efforts but plan to keep fighting.

One activist, who refused to take off his white face covering or give his real name out of fear of legal retribution, has lived in a tree house in Lützerath since the spring, and said he was prepared for a showdown with the police when the bulldozers finally come.

They had reason to be optimistic.  Until…….

“Putin’s war of aggression is forcing us to temporarily make greater use of lignite so that we save gas in electricity generation,” said Robert Habeck, the German economy minister and a former leader of the Green party, referring to the low-grade coal under the village. “This is painful but necessary in view of the gas shortage.”

 

In June, Mr. Habeck announced the reopening of some coal plants — a bitter pill after the Greens’ success, just months earlier, at getting the new government to speed up its exit from coal by eight years. When a drought this summer compounded energy jitters by slowing coal transport on rivers, the government gave cargo trains carrying coal and other fuels priority over passenger ones.

Mass protests led the German government to step in and save an old-growth forest from coal expansion just two years ago. And the Green party notched its best showing ever in elections last year, a sign of how fighting climate change had become a winning political issue in Europe’s largest economy.

“If there were 50,000 on the street, politicians would have to do something,” said Eckardt Heukamp, 58, the last farmer remaining in Lützerath, who put up some of the protesters in apartments on his property. Others built tree houses, pitched tents or moved into abandoned houses in the village.

But the hoped-for surge in protesters never materialized. And last week, the government effectively sealed Lützerath’s fate by announcing that RWE, Germany’s largest energy company, needed the coal under the village — to make up for gas that had stopped flowing in from Russia.

The war in Ukraine, and the looming prospect of a winter without cheap Russian fuel, has cooled enthusiasm in Germany for greener policies, at least for now. In a nation that has pledged to wean itself off coal entirely by 2030, it has been an abrupt retreat — and for some, a difficult one.

And yet so far, there has been little public backlash.

A poll taken this summer found that 56 percent of Germans were in favor of turning coal plants back on, with just 36 percent against. That compares to the 73 percent of the population who supported ending coal use “as soon as possible” in a 2019 poll.

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

RWE has long been among the top targets of climate activists, in part as a result of a long-running, high-profile battle to preserve a forest in western Germany that is threatened by the planned expansion of one of the group’s coal mines. RWE also operates some of the largest coal-fired power stations in Europe.^[33]

In 2018, RWE was the largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions in Europe.^[33]

Since 2012, environmentalists have protested against RWE because of the Hambach surface mine situated in the area of Hambach Forest.^[44] In November 2017, in the lawsuit filed by Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), the German arm of Friends of the Earth, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster ruled to end the tree cutting. According to BUND, Hambach Forest is a habitat type 9160 of annex I of the European Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992).^[45]

Opponents also argue that an environmental impact assessment study for the mine was never conducted. The Administrative Court in Cologne denied the necessity of such a study in November 2017, because the permission for the mining operations was given in the 1970s, long before environmental impact assessment studies became mandatory.^[46] In October 2018, an estimated 50,000 protesters turned out against the company’s planned continued forest clear-cutting for its open-pit coal mine expansion while a court order delayed the process until at least late 2020, to explore if it violated EU environmental regulations.^[47][8]

In September 2021, it was revealed that RWE are among a number of fossil fuel companies suing governments for enacting green policies against climate change. RWE are suing the Dutch government for $1.6bn following their move to phase out and shut down coal power plants.^[48]

Top photo – LÜTZERATH, Germany

Lee Heidhues 10.14.2022

The Green Party became part of Germany’s ruling Coalition nearly a year ago. 

One of the Green campaign pledges was its long standing commitment to shut down the three nuclear power plants in Germany.

That commitment has now come up against the reality of Putin’s Ukraine aggression and its impact on Germany’s energy needs.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 10.14.2022

The Green Party supported German Economy Minister Robert Habeck in his plans to operate two nuclear power plants in reserve in southern Germany by spring 2023.

At the delegates’ meeting on Friday evening in Bonn, a motion by grassroots representatives to block an extension of the nuclear power plants’ lifetime altogether failed.

The energy crisis triggered by the Russian attack on Ukraine affects everyone, business as well as people. Habeck has procured gas from many countries to replace the Russian supplies, which has little to do with a sustainable energy supply. And with coal-fired power plants already operating, the minister could use the party’s backing.

Omid Nouripour, one of two party co-leaders of the Greens, was sure at the beginning of the meeting that Habeck would get it. He told DW: “Our people in the Cabinet are taking responsibility. There are no manuals for the current situation, you have to solve problems off-the-cuff. And the party thinks that’s right and proper.”

“Thoughtfully and with determination,” Habeck said in his fiery speech to the conference, “this is how we lead Germany through the winter, this is how we give Germany security.”

However, he admitted that parts of this path could be painful for the Greens. “But we will never confuse what is the problem and what is the solution. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are the problem,” Habeck said.

Instead, the party congress supported the line of leaving the Isar II and Neckarwestheim II nuclear power plants in operation as emergency reserves until April 15. The Emsland nuclear power plant, on the other hand, should go offline at the end of 2022 — as previously planned for all three sites, the last still in operation in the country.

However, there is still a dispute about this in the federal government. The FDP is calling for the Emsland nuclear plant to continue to operate and even beyond spring 2023.

Habeck’s ministry, with responsibilities including energy and economic affairs, has been trading blame with the FDP-led Finance Ministry this week for the slow progress in bringing the coalition’s current plan for a limited extension through Cabinet and sending it on to parliament to be debated.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-greens-lay-out-nuclear-power-extension-position-amid-coalition-infighting/a-63449846

Top photo. Protesting nuclear energy. “Atomic energy. No thank you!”

Lee Heidhues 10.13.2022

It takes a an outspoken respected retired Judge to blow the whistle on San Francisco’s shameless ethically challenged Puppet District Attorney.

The law and order pandering and photo op operation Brooke Jenkins is engaging in are an insult to law and ethics. Regrettably, it appears that the new Police State of San Francisco lock ’em all up public is smitten with this charlatan masquerading as an upholder of law.

It will take more than one Judge Martha Goldin to blast away the facade disguising the incompetent and unqualified interim District Attorney of San Francisco.

Excerpted from FOX 2 KTVU – 10.13.2022

 A retired judge has filed a State Bar complaint against interim San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

The complaint alleges Jenkins violated State Bar rules and the Business and Professions code through acts of dishonesty. Retired Superior Court Judge Martha Goldin filed the complaint on Thursday. 

Judge Goldin is the author of the opinion in Doris Day v. Rosenthal, 170 CA 3^rd 1125 (1985), a leading opinion on legal ethics and attorney misconduct and Westinghouse Electric Corporation, v. County of Los Angeles, 129 CA3rd 771 (1982), a case of first impression on stop notices.

The misconduct allegations are outlined in the complaint and date as far back as a case Jenkins prosecuted in 2014 as the assistant district attorney. In 2016, a San Francisco appellate court reversed convictions in the case as a result of prosecutorial misconduct by Jenkins.

A press release from The Wren Collective, a research and policy group dedicated to criminal justice reform, said, “the appellate court found that Jenkins was guilty of a form of misconduct known as Griffin error, when a prosecutor violates constitutional protections by improperly commenting to the jury on a defendant’s failure to testify.”

The claim accuses Jenkins of lying last month during a district attorney candidate debate when she said, “I want to make clear first and foremost never have I ever been found to have committed misconduct in a case.”

Aside from allegations of lying, the claim accuses Jenkins of false and misleading representations, criminal conduct, and deceptive claims of attorney-client privilege.  

The basis for some other allegations stem from Jenkins’ work as a consultant for nonprofit groups closely tied to the recall of former D.A. Chesa Boudin, as was first reported in The San Francisco Standard.

The complaint alleges Jenkins’ portrayal of her employment by the nonprofits with connections to what she claimed was a volunteer position has been, “dishonest, deceitful, and either reckless or intentional misrepresentations.”

Part of the complaint states, “If Jenkins was a paid campaign consultant, she did not register as such.” The complaint lists this failure to register as a violation of San Francisco’s Campaign and Conduct Code, further stating it is a criminal misdemeanor.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/state-bar-complaint-filed-against-sf-interim-d-a-jenkins-by-retired-judge

Lee Heidhues 10.12.2022

Long before Progressive San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin was politically lynched by the MAGA crowd and replaced by the Law and Order ethically challenged political animal Brooke Jenkins……

There was Kamala Harris who now sits just a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

To say her views on Marijuana legalization, in a City where Weed was de facto legal decades before it became Legal, are backwards and antiquated is an understatement.  

As the SF Gate notes,  our one time District Attorney, who rode to office on a scorched earth campaign against Progressive DA Terence Hallinan….

Sound familiar (at least she was elected)….

VP Kamala is now spokesperson to carry out President Biden’s recent Order expunging several thousand marijuana possession convictions at the Federal level.

Pass that  Joint to Kamala.

Excerpted from SF Gate 10.12.2022

It seems Vice President Kamala Harris has been tapped by the Biden administration to be its standard-bearer on the issue of marijuana following the president’s executive order last week that pardoned all those convicted of simple possession under federal law, and that choice couldn’t make any less sense.

Imagine that you’re one of the nearly 2,000 people in San Francisco who was convicted of a marijuana charge under Harris. Maybe you’ve had trouble finding and keeping a job, or maybe you’re a student who was denied financial aid for college. Then, you turn on the TV to see Harris laughing alongside Seth Meyers and saying, “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” You probably want to be hearing from someone other than the “fun aunt” version of Harris on this issue.

Harris appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Monday, where she said, “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” It was the exact same line, delivered with the exact same cadence, that she gave when addressing a crowd at an abortion rights rally in Texas on Saturday. It’s clear that she’s been prepped with talking points — perhaps related to accusations that she has trouble articulating thoughts off-the-cuff — but putting the cringey I’m-a-hip-older-person vibe aside for a moment, it must be understood that she has very limited credibility on this issue.

She actively fought a 2010 ballot measure that would have legalized recreational cannabis in the state, going so far as to author an opposing argument in the California voter guide. Then, when she was running for a second term as the state’s attorney general in 2014, she replied to a question about her opponent’s support for legalizing recreational marijuana use by saying, “He’s entitled to his opinion,” and then laughing.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/kamala-harris-stop-talking-marijuana-17504856.php

Lee Heidhues 10.11.2022

San Francisco’s hometown newspaper, the Hearst owned Chronicle, is taking a gratuitous victory lap while taking a shot at the latest political scandal roiling La La Land down south.

In short, three Los Angeles City Council members and a labor leader were taped, during a private meeting discussing the City’s redistricting, disparaging Blacks and Asians.

The recording was a conversation among Nury Martinez, the Council president; Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, council members; and Ron Herrera, the leader of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, that took place in October 2021 during intense negotiations over City Council redistricting.

Ms. Martinez is heard comparing the Black child of Councilman Mike Bonin to a “changuito,” Spanish for little monkey, and joking with Mr. de León that Mr. Bonin carries the child around like a designer handbag. Those were only two of the offensive comments in the 80-minute recording, which included ugly remarks describing recent migrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and disparaging remarks about the trustworthiness of white liberals and a councilwoman who is of South Asian descent. (excerpted from The New York Times 10.11.2022)

While it’s all well and good to splash this scandal across the front page, San Francisco cannot be proud of its own political goings on.

The following paragraph buried in the Chronicle Op Ed succinctly takes down San Francisco.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 10.11.2022

By – Justin Ray a Los Angeles-based journalist who has published works for the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism Review.

If you live in San Francisco, you may believe your political scene is the most volatile in the state and there are understandable reasons why. Mayor London Breed is embroiled in a scandal following the revelation that she has requested her appointees to sign undated letters of resignation.

There have been numerous other incidents among city leadership, including the bitter recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

And the revelation that his successor Brooke Jenkins was paid more than $140,000 by a nonprofit organization linked to his recall. And Breed is no stranger to controversies herself, like her attending a party at upscale restaurant French Laundry in the throes of a pandemic and $23,000 in fines related to her ethics violations.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/los-angeles-california-city-council-17502830.php

Lee Heidhues 10.11.2022

The Power of the Media.

The podcast ‘Serial’ shone a light on the Justice system in America and how one man, then a teenager was arrested, charged and convicted of a murder.

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

Adnan Syed spent 23 years in jail and person for a crime for which there was always a reasonable doubt he did not commit. Now, he is a free man.

Sadly, he can never have back the lost years of his life.

New York Times 10.11.2022

Baltimore prosecutors on Tuesday dropped the charges against Adnan Syed, who was released last month after he spent 23 years in prison fighting a murder conviction that was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” officials said.

Emily Witty, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, said in an email on Tuesday that the case had been dropped.

On Sept. 19, Judge Melissa M. Phinn of Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated Mr. Syed’s conviction on charges that he murdered his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Prosecutors had 30 days from that date to decide if they would proceed with a new trial or drop the charges.

October 9, 2022

Letter to Chronicle Bill Nagel, Publisher and Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Editor

ONGOING ARBITRARY VIOLATION OF LEE HEIDHUES’ RIGHTS AS A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE SUBSCRIBER

Re: Block from @SFChronicle – Twitter site

Sincerely, Liz Heidhues

Lee Heidhues 10.9.2022

I was in High School when the Cuban Missile Crisis totally upended my life. The entire Planet Earth was transfixed with the looming spectre of nuclear war. 

It was genuinely terrifying. 

Years before the Internet people were glued to their television sets, radios and newspapers as the Crisis unfolded.

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

Now we have Vladimir Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons as his war of aggression falters in Ukraine.

We can only watch and wait.

Perhaps the best cinematic take on the Cuban Missile Crisis is the 2000 film “Thirteen Days.” For those of you who want a quick primer on this terrifying period 60 years ago the movie is a good place to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Days_(film)