The Biden administration can now be compared with Donald Trump.  

Biden’s decision to continue pursuit of Julian Assange for making public 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq is disgraceful.

Biden, who has spent 50 years in Washington is affirming his reputation as just another Washington politician who cares only about keeping America’s dirty war mongering secrets out of the public arena.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.10.2021

The US government has won its appeal against a court decision that halted the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Why is the US seeking extradition?

The Australian is wanted on 18 charges in the United States and faces a maximum 175-year sentence if convicted.

The charges are related to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US government also alleges that he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal the 2010 documents before exposing confidential sources around the world.

Manning was pardoned by former President Barack Obama at the end of his second four-year term. But she remained in jail from May 2019 until December 2020 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

Assange and his lawyers have long argued that the protracted case against him is politically motivated.

His supporters also see him as a journalist who shone the light on possible war crimes.

The case will now go back to the Westminster Magistrates Court where the extradition request would need to be sent to the UK Minister of Interior, Priti Patel for review.
Assange can still request permission for a final ruling on Friday’s verdict from the UK’s Supreme Court. The 50-year-old has been in custody since April 2019, when he was sentenced to 50 weeks behind bars.

He was ordered to remain in custody pending the outcome of the High Court’s decision over concerns he would abscond. He has spent more than two years jailed in Belmarsh maximum security prison.

Before the 2019 sentence, he was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by British authorities after his citizenship was revoked.

 Assange’s fiancee, Stella Moris, said their legal team would appeal “at the earliest possible moment,” while saying it was a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

Before proceedings Moris expressed hope that he would be home for Christmas in a post on Twitter. “I hope the High Court will bring this abusive and vindictive extradition to an end today so that that our children will be able to spend Christmas with their father.”

https://www.dw.com/en/uk-court-rules-in-favor-of-us-in-appeal-to-extradite-julian-assange/a-60077787

The term commuting has been given a new meaning by a Court in Germany.

The definition of the workplace has undergone a drastic change the past two years of The Pandemic.  

The new workplace reality was brought home so to speak when a German Court ruled that a man who fell and broke his back walking to his computer area from bedroom to start his workday was commuting.

The Guardian 12.9.2021

A German court has ruled that a man who slipped while walking a few metres from his bed to his home office can claim on workplace accident insurance as he was technically commuting.

The man was working from home and on his way to his desk one floor below his bedroom, the federal social court, which oversees social security issues, said in its decision.

While walking on the spiral staircase connecting the rooms, the unnamed man slipped and broke his back.

It ruled: “The plaintiff suffered an accident at work when he fell on the way to his home office in the morning.”In many countries, firms have a duty of care to their employees, regardless of where they work.

The German federal court said: “If the insured activity is carried out in the household of the insured person or at another location, insurance cover is provided to the same extent as when the activity is carried out at the company premises.”

It is not clear if the man was working from home due to the pandemic or had done so previously. The ruling said the law applied to “teleworking positions”, which are “computer workstations that are permanently set up by the employer in the private area of ​​the employees”.

The court noted that the employee usually started working in his home office “immediately without having breakfast beforehand”, but did not explain why that was relevant to the case. However, later it said that statutory accident insurance was only afforded to the “first” journey to work, suggesting that a trip on the way to get breakfast after already being in the home office could be rejected.

The employer’s insurance refused to cover the claim. While two lower courts disagreed on whether the short trip was a commute, the higher federal social court said it had found that “the first morning journey from bed to the home office [was] an insured work route”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/fall-on-walk-from-bed-to-desk-is-workplace-accident-german-court-rules

The new German government led by Social Democratic Party leader Olaf Scholz was sworn into office at the Bundestag in Berlin today ending 16 years of leadership by Angela Merkel.

The Greens have five ministers in the 16 member cabinet, including Foreign minister: Annalena Baerbock and Vice-chancellor and minister for economics and climate protection: Robert Habeck.

Foreign Minister Baerbock who led the Greens in the September election which resulted in third place finish and nearly 90 seats in the Bundestag will now be a presence on the world stage.

It was the first time in their 40 year history that the Greens fielded a candidate for Chancellor.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.8.2021
The German Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz as chancellor on Wednesday morning, as Angela Merkel bows out from the political stage.

The morning vote by Germany’s lower legislative chamber — held by secret ballot and without debate — was seen as a formality.
President of the Bundestag Bärbel Bas opened the voting. Members of the parliament voted by 395 of 707 votes cast for Scholz to become Germany’s new head of government.

However, not all members of Scholz’s so-called “traffic light coalition” voted in favor. Had they done so, he would have had received 416 votes.

There were 303 votes against, and 6 abstentions from a total of 736.

For his part, Scholz tweeted that he had accepted the task when called upon to accept by the Bundestag president. “I said ‘yes’,” he wrote.

The new government has said it will place dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and tackling climate change at the heart of its program.

DW’s Nina Haase said that, given that Scholz’s SPD had been part of a grand coalition with Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc, there would be some continuity. However, she added, there would be a marked change.

“The parties are completely different,” said Haase. “The Social Democrats are a center-left party. The conservatives under Anglea Merkel have blocked some of the projects that the Social Democrats had always hoped to push through with the conservatives as their partners.”

“That wasn’t possible so the Social Democrats are now going to try. They say they’re going to make the country fairer, more liberal and more digital.”

Merkel leaves office as Germany’s second-longest serving postwar chancellor, just 10 days short of the 16 years and 26 days that Helmut Kohl spent in office between 1982 and 1998.

DW’s Melinda Crane said Merkel’s departure was “the end of an era.”

“Young Germans aged 16 to 25 really don’t remember any other chancellor but Angela Merkel so this is really momentous for them,” said Crane.

The outgoing chancellor was present for the vote as a guest seated alongside her own predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

Before the September election, Merkel had already said she would not serve another term as chancellor and her conservative Christian Democrats are looking to reshape after suffering their worst-ever election result.

How the new Cabinet breaks down

The new Cabinet is made up of 16 ministers — seven from the SPD, five from the Greens and four from the FDP. There is one portfolio more than in the previous government, due to the creation of a construction ministry.

• Vice-chancellor and minister for economics and climate protection: Robert Habeck (Greens)
• Finance minister: Christian Lindner (FDP)
• Interior minister: Nancy Fäser (SPD)
• Foreign minister: Annalena Baerbock (Greens)
• Health minister: Karl Lauterbach (SPD)
• Justice minister: Marco Buschmann (FDP)
• Labor and social affairs: Hubertus Heil (SPD)
• Defense minister: Christine Lambrecht (SPD)
• Nutrition and Agriculture: Cem Özdemir (Greens)
• Family, senior citizens, women and youth: Anne Spiegel (Greens)
• Transport and digital: Volker Wissing (FDP)
• Environment, nature, conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection: Steffi Lemke (Greens)
• Construction minister: Klara Geywitz (SPD)
• Economic cooperation and development: Svenja Schulze (SPD)
• Education and research: Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP)
• Head of chancellery: Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD)

https://www.dw.com/en/olaf-scholz-formally-sworn-in-as-german-chancellor/a-60052911

Lee Heidhues

Much of the world still remembers the brutal murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi when he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The resolution of this grusome crime against a journalist is still an open case with Crown Prince Mohammedbin Salman and other top Saudi officials being suspected of ordering the killing.

The arrest of a former member of the Saudi Royal Guard as he prepared to board a plane in France and return to Saudi Arabia will hopefully bring those who are seeking Justice closer to those repsonsible for the crime.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.7.2021

A suspect in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was nabbed by French police as he boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia. It is hoped he can identify who was behind the assassination.

The United Nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings found that there was “credible evidence” that Crown Prince Mohammedbin Salman and other top Saudi officials were responsible for the murder.

French police arrested a suspect in the murder of Saudi critic and journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday.

Various news agencies and French media reported, citing police and judicial sources, that the 33-year-old man was a former Royal Guard of Saudi Arabia and was nabbed at Roissy airport as he was about to board a flight to Riyadh.

Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in Turkey in 2018. US and Turkish officials said a Saudi hit squad strangled him and dismembered his body.

Tuesday’s arrest was carried out on a warrant issued by Turkey in 2019. On Wednesday prosecutors will begin a process to determine if the 33-year-old suspect will be extradited to Turkey.

“France should try him for his crime, or extradite him to a country able and willing to genuinely investigate and prosecute him as well as the person who gave the order to murder Jamal,” Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, said on Twitter.

In her 2019-report, Agnès Callamard, who is now secretary-general of Amnesty International, said the suspect arrested on Tuesday was at the Saudi consulate on the night of the assassination.

She  welcomed the arrest saying it could lead to a ‘breakthrough” if the suspect “could provide information on the location of the body.”

Tuesday’s arrest was also welcomed by Reporters Without Borders: “Excellent news that the French police did not turn a blind eye,” the media watchdog’s head, Christophe Deloire, said. “Finally a protagonist who can speak.”

https://www.dw.com/en/french-police-arrest-jamal-khashoggi-murder-suspect/a-60050282

I hate to be cynical here but I gotta say it, anyway. Take a win anytime you can.

The Supreme Court is so busy destroying a woman’s right to choose that it is staying away from destroying landmark laws.

This Supreme Court is threatening to damage the environment as much as a woman’s right to have an abortion as it reviews Federal laws and regulations protecting land, water, curbing development, endangered species. Stay tuned.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.6.2021

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by a Bay Area developer who was fined $3.6 million and ordered to clean up landfill he deposited into Suisun Bay to make room for a duck-hunting club and a kite-surfing center on an island he owns.

John Sweeney bought the 39-acre island, Point Buckler, for $150,000 in 2011. The island, on the eastern edge of Grizzly Bay in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, had been a site for duck hunters until the 1990s.

Sweeney rebuilt levees around the island, opened a kite-surfing center and announced plans to re-establish the club for duck hunters, whose prey swim in ponds maintained by the levees and tidal gates. In the process, he deposited 8,500 cubic yards of soil from trenches into the waters.

In 2015, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board said Sweeney had acted without the required permits and damaged marsh and tidal water habitat for waterfowl and fish, including endangered species of salmon and the Delta smelt.

Sweeney won a reprieve in December 2017 when Solano County Superior Court Judge Harry Kinnicutt found that he had actually improved conditions on Point Buckler. In a decision overturning the fines and cleanup order, Kinnicutt said the dirt that Sweeney used to repair the levees and left in the water was not “waste” but actually a valuable building material. He also said the agencies had acted with “an appearance of vindictiveness” against the developer.

But the state’s First District Court of Appeal said in February that there was no evidence to support Kinnicutt’s ruling.

The landfill deposited in state and federal waters has harmed habitat for waterfowl, blocked access to habitat for fish and endangered species, interfered with tidal flows to the interior of the island, killed tidal marsh vegetation, and caused “excessive salinity, turbidity and discoloration of the (island’s) interior waterways,” Justice Peter Siggins wrote in the appeals court’s 3-0 ruling.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Supreme-Court-rejects-Bay-Area-developer-s-16680149.php

Lee Heidhues

I totally commend the restaurant Hilda & Jesse for asking fully loaded and uniformed cops to leave and return in civilian attire.

It is a sad commentary on the state of San Francisco when the owners are being pummeled for taking a principled stand and telling the cops, “Don’t bring your guns into my house.”

San Francisco Chronicle 12.5.2021

San Francisco restaurant Hilda and Jesse is facing criticism from police and online reviewers after it asked three armed, uniformed city officers who were dining there to leave because staffers “felt uncomfortable with the presence of their multiple weapons.”

At the restaurant on Union Street in North Beach, chef and co-owner Rachel Sillcocks said Sunday morning that the staff was busy preparing to open, and she would not be available to provide more information until later.

But after reports of the incident spread on social media Saturday, the restaurant late in the day made a statement on Instagram describing what happened.

Soon after the officers were seated on Friday, restaurant staffers “politely asked them to leave,” according to the Instagram post, because “the presence of their weapons in the restaurant made us uncomfortable.”

“The restaurant is a safe space,” the post said. “This is not a political statement, we did what we thought was best for our staff.”

“We respect the San Francisco police Department and are grateful for the work they do. We welcome them into the restaurant when they are off duty, out of uniform, and without their weapons.”

In response, the Police Department referred The Chronicle to a statement by Chief Bill Scott on Twitter. In it, he said, “The San Francisco Police Department stands for safety with respect, even when it means respecting wishes that our officers and I find discouraging and personally disappointing.”

Rachel Sillcocks and co-owner Kristina Compton opened Hilda and Jesse on Nov. 1 on Union Street after it got its start in 2019 as a popular pop-up in the Richmond District.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-restaurant-faces-backlash-after-asking-16676313.php

Lee Heidhues 12.4.2021

I was a Senior in the Journalism Department at San Francisco State in fall 1968.

1968 was a violent tumultuous  year in American history. The Vietnam war dragged on with no end in sight. Martin Luther King and Democrat presidential candidate Robert Kennedy were assassinated.

The Democrat convention in Chicago turned into what was later described as  “The Chicago Police Riot” by a Commission appointed to investigate the events of August 1968.

In early November 1968 Republican Richard Nixon was elected President.

The next day the Strike began at San Francisco State. The reasons for the Strike were many but the main goal of the strikers was creation of an Ethnic Studies Department. The Strike was spearheaded by a combination of black and white student activists. 

The Strike turned into the biggest student strike in American history. I was on campus during the entire nearly five month struggle.  Three years ago the Journalism Department at San Francisco State had an event to remember the event. I was the only person from the 1968  Journalism Department who was in attendance.

Given the opportunity to speak I disabused the young attendees who may have thought the Strike some romantic escapade to be viewed through history books.  It was not.

I told them it was very sad and depressing and was not enjoyable for a moment. It brought out the nascent fascism in America as exhibited by the brutal behavior of law enforcement.  It provided the most right wing reactionary politicians a forum to hammer progressives of the day.

The person who most benefited from the Strike was Ronald Reagan. The then Governor of California, former actor and General Electric Co. television pitchman used the Strike at San Francisco State and unrest at UC Berkeley to propel himself onto the National spotlight. The rest is sad history.

Following are a number of pictures taken by various San Francisco Chronicle photographers along with a couple of front pages.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/How-SF-State-s-bloody-strikes-changed-academia-13362709.php#photo-16432727

Lee Heidhues 12.3.2021

I only learned of the TV drama Yellowstone when I read about in New York Magazine – The Vulture. I am totally addicted.

The DVDs of the first three seasons are available at my neighborhood library in patchwork fashion. Meaning I pick them up when they’re available.

I am forced to watch Yellowstone in backwards fashion. Currently I am viewing Season Three with Season Two to follow. When Season One shows up I will watch it, too.

Watching the series in this awkward sequence is fine. The story lines are intriguing, fast paced and have fine acting and a beautiful setting in Montana.

This is the best American television series I have watched since The Wire.

Excerpted from Vanity Fair – Tracy Moore 11.5.2021

There’s a TV show called Yellowstone from Taylor Sheridan that’s so wildly popular, it was last year’s most-watched cable series, beating out The Walking Dead for the distinction.

It’s a sudsy contemporary Western about the Dutton family, the land they stole 150 years ago, their ruthless fight to fend off greedy developers, and the nearby Native Americans who intend to take it back. It stars Kevin Costner as patriarch John Dutton. It combines stunning cinematography with storylines reminiscent of Succession’s power grabs, The Godfather’s mob mentality, and Dallas’s bitchy in-fighting— except with cattle. Its first three seasons are streaming on Peacock; it launched its fourth season with a two-hour premiere last month on the Paramount Network.

It’s also entirely possible you haven’t heard of it.

It’s obvious that the show believes our history’s ideology and laws are deeply encoded with racism; it also thinks things won’t always stay this way. Watching the series, its conservative viewers are forced to face their biggest fears, whether they realize it or not.

As entertaining as it sounds, there’s more going on beneath Yellowstone’s surface. One fascinating through line is the insurmountable struggles of the Native Americans on the rez, who endure poverty, addiction, violence, and suicide, with the elders determined to change that by casino, lawsuit, or land grab. Another involves the hardscrabble existence of the cowboys (and occasional cowgirls) in the bunkhouse: the orphans, drifters and ex-cons Yellowstone Ranch hires, who keep the ranch going with their backbreaking labor and the muscling. In a place that makes its own rules, street justice must be served swiftly with brawn on both sides.

But the Duttons’ wrongheaded white ways are also undercut at every turn, with hypocritical callouts aplenty. “No man should own this much land,” scolds a trespassing Chinese tourist when confronted by Dutton with a shotgun. “This is America,” Dutton grumbles. “We don’t share land.”

The Native American characters are spared caricature (a condition insisted upon by AJ Not Afraid, the Crow Nation chairman whose reservation is featured on the show and who serves as a consultant on the show), but they still take each other to task about what constitutes proper reparations. In one scene, high-powered lawyer Angela Blue Thunder (Q’orianka Kilcher) accuses Rainwater of playing by the master’s rules, dreaming of casinos when he should be making war.

All this is why, by season three’s end, Yellowstone began to feel more like a trick than a fantasy: Give conservatives a pretty package that mirrors their dream, then spend the entirety of the series unraveling it. Sheridan claims to be apolitical, but the show feels built for a political fight.

That makes me wish more critics would take note of what Yellowstone is doing. Shows shouldn’t need to achieve attention from legacy media and awards when they can offer something arguably just as valid: captivating entertainment that provokes its own base. Although maybe the lack of coverage also serves a purpose. If Yellowstone’s biggest fans figure out the show’s true message, they might stop watching it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/11/yellowstone-season-4-paramount-plus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series)

Racism is insidious and comes in many forms.

People must be willing to stand up for their rights whether it be police abuse, employment discrimination and bias in the cloistered real estate industry.

The couple, property owners, in Marin City in super wealthy Marin County, California are taking a strong stand to protect themselves and their land.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.3.2021

When Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin set out to refinance their Marin City home last January, they were shocked when an appraiser said their house was worth $995,000 — nearly half-a-million dollars less than another appraisal less than a year earlier.

Marin City, an unincorporated area wedged between affluent Sausalito and Mill Valley, grew out of the pre-World War II migration of tens of thousands of Black workers seeking employment around the local shipyard. While Marin City has become more diverse, surrounding areas, some of which remain over 90% white, often employed exclusionary policies like racially restrictive covenants to keep Black residents out prior to the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Attorneys for the couple argue in the lawsuit that “Marin City has a long history of undervaluation based on stereotypes, redlining, discriminatory appraisal standards, and actual or perceived racial demographics.”

By focusing only on the small number of homes sold in the immediate Marin City area, they wrote in the lawsuit, appraisers are overly reliant on past sale prices, “which were the direct product of racial discrimination.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial, financial damages and a court order directing the appraisers to take action to ensure the issues in the complaint are not repeated.

The couple, who is Black, set out to get a second opinion last February. This time, they “white-washed” their home by hiding away family photos and asking a white friend to stand in for them. That appraiser valued their home at $1,482,500.

The $487,500 discrepancy between the two 2020 appraisals pushed the couple to filed a fair housing lawsuit in federal district court this week against appraiser Janette Miller, her appraisal firm Miller and Perotti Real Estate Appraisers, Inc. and national appraisal company AMC Links, LLC. It’s the latest escalation in a series of similar cases of alleged racial bias in the home appraisal process as California property owners move to reap financial gains from record home prices.

“We believe that Ms. Miller valued our house at a lower rate because of our race and because of the current and historical racial demographics of where our house is located,” Austin said in a press release. “The sales comps that the appraiser chose to use were unsuitable and were guaranteed to lower the value of our house.”

Miller’s firm and AMC Links, LLC could not be reached for comment.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Black-Marin-City-couple-sues-appraiser-for-16672840.php

Here is a more detailed look at Angela Merkel’s musical selections for her Berlin farewell event.  Deutsche Welle included graphics, magazine covers and videos in its presentation.

Deutsche Welle 12.2.2021

Angela Merkel is finally bidding farewell to the office of German chancellor after 16 years in the top job.

Although she will remain in office on an interim basis until the next chancellor is confirmed, Thursday evening will see her attend a military tattoo in her honour.

The so-called “Großer Zapfenstreich” is the highest military ceremony in Germany and comes complete with a torchlight procession, soldiers performing music and marching with clockwork precision.

Like her predecessors, Merkel was allowed to request three songs for the military marching band to play.

Two are unlikely to raise eyebrows: The 18th-century Christian hymn “Großer Gott, wir loben dich” (“Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”) — likely a nod to her political party’s Christian roots and her upbringing with a Protestant pastor for a father.

The other is the popular song by German singer Hildegard Knef “Für mich, soll’s rote Rosen regnen” (“It should rain red roses for me”). It’s a wistful tune about teenage dreams and ambition, with lyrics such as “I want all or nothing.”

Anthem by punk legend Nina Hagen

Yet one song chosen by the chancellor may come as a surprise to many — the 1974 East German hit sung by punk rocker Nina Hagen, “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” (“You forgot the color film”).

An iconoclastic pop star back in the German Democratic Republic, Nina Hagen became the punk icon of West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkels-surprising-choice-of-farewell-music/a-59980297