Angela Merkel has other interests beyond those political. In her sendoff after 16 years as Germany’s Chancellor the military band trotted out one of the favorite songs of her youth.

“Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen,” or “You Forgot the Color Film,”

Washington Post 12.2.2021

BERLIN — After Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor, Germans are starting to wonder how well they knew her after all.

On Thursday, among the three songs played by a military band at her request was a 1974 hit from East Germany by a singer who fled to the West and went on to become a flamboyantly coifed leader of the punk scene before German reunification.

“Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen,” or “You Forgot the Color Film,” was made famous by Nina Hagen as it recounts her frustration after returning from vacation at Hiddensee — a popular tourist spot in the former East — only to realize that her boyfriend, Michi, had taken black-and-white film for the camera.

Known as much for her eccentric hair and makeup as for her hits, Hagen was already an pop star in the former East Germany before leaving for the West in the mid-1970s. She rose through the pop ranks to become a punk icon in the 1980s.

For decades, the singer also has been part of animal and human rights campaigns. In 2010 she performed at a Christmas dinner for the homeless.

The song has long been interpreted as a criticism of the gray and dreary German Democratic Republic, where color film was hard to come by. Over the years, one line in particular has remained ingrained in the memory of former East Germans: “No one will believe how beautiful it was here.”

That Merkel chose a song from the former East caught many Germans by surprise. Merkel seldom made reference to her East German upbringing.

After 16 years, Germany’s Merkel is stepping down. Here’s how she built her legacy.

“Merkel outs herself in the end as an East German,” said a headline in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper after the announcement of the song choices by Merkel, who formally leaves office next week as her successor, Olaf Scholz, takes over.

The unexpected song choice left some people speculating whether Merkel had interpreted the song’s lament about forgetting color film as a jab at the male-dominated old guard of German politics that still holds sway.

Merkel has said nothing public about the choice. But she is known for getting in some shots of her own, including a reputation for wisecracks and uncanny impersonations of other politicians.

In a Facebook post, Hagen said she was “just as amazed by the surprising music news from the chancellery as probably all other bon vivants in this country.” The singer said she initially thought the reports were fake as the lyrics were written by Kurt Demmler, who was charged with child sexual abuse and hanged himself in prison in 2009 the night before his trial.

Like chancellors before her, she could request three songs to be played by the Bundeswehr marching band. Besides the Hagen tune, her others were an 18th-century Christian hymn and Hildegard Knef’s “Für Mich Soll’s Rote Rosen Regen,” or “It Should Rain Red Roses for Me,” a melancholic song from 1968 about teenage hopes and dreams.

In 1992, Merkel and Hagen famously crossed paths. Merkel — who headed the Women and Youth Ministry at the time — sat next to the singer on a televised talk show about drug addiction. In a heated moment, Hagen shouted at Merkel: “I’m fed up with your lying, with your hypocrisy.”

  

Merkel’s military send-off fell exactly 31 years since the first elections in united Germany on Dec. 2, 1990.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/merkel-military-punk-hagen/2021/12/02/440f64d0-52c3-11ec-83d2-d9dab0e23b7e_story.html

Lee Heidhues 12.1.2021

People who spread the lie about The Pandemic are due for a reckoning.

These ignorant Luddites with a huge audience are able to convince their followers that the Pandemic is all fake news and no precautions are necessary.

Never mind that over 5,000,000 people have perished in the past two years. These dangerous fools keep spewing out their nonsense.

Some  are now paying the ultimate price for their reckless behavior which is puttng their ignorant minions at risk.

The Guardian 12.1.2021

Marcus Lamb, the co-founder of the leading Christian TV network Daystar who railed against Covid-19 vaccines, has died of Covid-19. He was 64 years old.

Lamb, who was the chief executive of the conservative network that reaches an estimated 2 billion viewers worldwide, died on Tuesday, weeks after contracting the coronavirus.

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning,” the network announced in a tweet on Tuesday. “The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”

Under his leadership, Daystar aired repeated baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and claims that vaccines were being used to take freedoms away from Christians. In July 2020, the network spent an hour of air time complaining about “censorship” around the pandemic and also gave an hour’s slot to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spread misinformation about the Covid vaccine.

Covid vaccines have been repeatedly found to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness from the virus. Evangelical Christians have been getting the vaccines at lower rates than the general US population, however, and several prominent Christian broadcasters have died of the virus in recent months.

Last month Lamb’s son Jonathan said that his father’s illness was due to sinister outside forces.“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” he said, adding that Lamb has pushed alternative therapies and that “there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that. And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”

Daystar was founded in 1998 and has more than 100 TV stations around the world. Lamb’s wife Joni, appearing on the daily Ministry Show on Tuesday, said that he had “got the Covid pneumonia”.

“He 100% believed in everything we talk about here on Daystar, things that help so many people around the world with early protocol treatments for Covid,” she said. “We still stand by those obviously.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/marcus-lamb-covid-19-daystar-christian-tv-network-dies

San Francisco has been a world leader in keeping track of the Covid-19 and keeping its nearly 900,000 citizens safe and healthy.

Unfortunate as it is the first U.S. Omicron case was found here, the City’s residents can be assured that local government authorities are zealous, vigilant and unrelenting in their actions to protect the public from the ravages of the Pandemic.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.1.2021

A case of the omicron coronavirus variant has been identified in a San Francisco resident — the first in the country, officials said Wednesday.

The case was detected in someone who traveled to the U.S. from South Africa the week of Thanksgiving and tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, according to San Francisco public health director Grant Colfax.

“They did the right thing and got tested,” Colfax said at a chaotic press briefing on Wednesday outside San Francisco’s City Hall.

That person, who had been healthy, was fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine — but not a booster — and developed mild symptoms upon their return, he said.

The person quarantined and close contacts — people who were within 6 feet of the individual for more than 15 minutes — are being contacted and tested.

The variant was discovered through genomic sequencing at UCSF.

“This is not a surprise. We knew that omicron was going to be here,” Colfax said. “We thought it was already here. This is cause for concern. It’s not cause for us to panic. We are prepared in the city for this.”

Colfax said he does not anticipate changing public health orders at this time or implementing new restrictions.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-U-S-omicron-case-found-in-San-Francisco-16666493.php#photo-21775752

Lee Heidhues 11.30.2021

Unlike the United States where the judicial system is consistently turning away attempts to mandate compliance with strict Covid-19 regulatons, the German high court is taking the only correct stand.

Strict laws mandating compliance with Covid-19 rules are the only way to fight the Pandemic.

Regrettably the Courts in the United States have many willing handmaidens in the media. Most prominent amongst the Covid-19 deniers are the Wall Street Journal and Fox News whose editorial stances can be described in one word.

LUDDITE. a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.30.2021

The German government’s “emergency brake” measures have been deemed constitutional by a top court. The restrictions, imposed automatically if infection rates passed certain levels, included school closures and curfews.

While conceding that the measures did infringe on some fundamental rights, they were in line with the constitution “amid the extremely dangerous situation of the pandemic,” the court said.

The “emergency brake” agreed by the federal government in April proved controversial, as under the current version of the Infection Protection Act, Germany’s 16 states usually enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy with regard to enacting and enforcing pandemic protection measures.

The Constitutional Court is to hand down a ruling at a later date on some 100 individual complaints regarding restrictions on the retail sector, cultural events and hotel industry, among other things.

Restrictions imposed by the German government on the populations of individual federal states to curb the spread of the coronavirus were fundamentally in line with the constitution, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday.

The so-called emergency brake, which was in force in Germany from April to the end of June, obliged states or districts to put in place curfews and other restrictive measures if the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 people rose above 100 on three consecutive days. The measures included school closures if the rate surpassed 165 on three consecutive days.

The court handed down two rulings on Tuesday, one regarding curfews and contact restrictions, the other regarding school closures. Both rulings dismissed complaints against the measures that had been lodged with the court.

Several of the complaints were made by parliamentarians from the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), one of the three parties in the incoming coalition government. FDP leader Christian Lindner was among the complainants.

In its ruling, the court said the restrictions on the number of people allowed to meet up and the curfews from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. were proportionate to the situation.

It said the ban on in-person school attendance did not violate the right to schooling enshrined in the German constitution, with schools implementing online lessons when school closures were ordered. It also cited the fact that the closures were temporary in nature as being conducive to their compatibility with the constitution.

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-german-constitutional-court-rules-emergency-brake-measures-were-legal/a-59975212

Lee Heidhues 11.29.2021

California and San Francisco politicians, planners, developers and housing advocates have it all wrong. To continue going in this reckless manner will bring ultimate human disaster. San Francisco needs to abort this reckless and unnecessary growth.

All residential and commercial construction needs to be aborted.

As the Chronicle analysis shows San Francisco is the second most densely populated City in the United States. Nearly 900,000 people are crammed into 49 square miles in a City surrounded on three sides by water. San Francisco is not Texas where cities can expand amoeba like into the countryside.

Complicating the problem is that San Francisco does not have the infrastructure; i.e. public transit, health care and other services to support a cramped over populated City.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 11.29.2021

Over the past decade, San Francisco’s population grew by 8.5%, or nearly 70,000 residents. Yet despite this increase, the city’s population remains tiny compared with giants such as New York and Los Angeles, which have nearly 9 million and 4 million people, respectively. With roughly 900,000 residents, San Francisco is only the 17th most populous city in America.

When it comes to density, New York is in a league of its own, with nearly 30,000 residents per square mile. That’s more than 50% higher than the density of No. 2-ranked San Francisco, which comes in at just under 19,000 per square mile.

It’s a different story when you take geographical size into account. In addition to its modest population, San Francisco is also physically small. So when you look at residents per square mile, it’s the second-most densely populated major city in the country after New York.

While some major cities can grow outward by expanding their boundaries, that’s impossible in San Francisco, since it’s bounded on three sides by water. To accommodate more people, the population density will likely have to be more equally distributed across the city.

Earlier this month, the San Francisco Planning Commission approved a plan to allow the construction of fourplexes on more than 110,000 parcels currently zoned for single-family homes or two-unit buildings. According to Commissioner Frank Fung, a plan like this that spreads medium density throughout the city is quite rare — many proposals are for tall buildings near downtowns. But an approach that parcels out population more evenly could lead to faster and cheaper construction, said Fung, not to mention more gradual and manageable growth

That’s according to a Chronicle analysis of 2020 decennial census data on cities with at least 300,000 residents. We looked at which are the most dense and which have gotten more or less so since 2010, when the previous census was conducted.

In general, the most dense sections are located near downtown, in the Tenderloin, Chinatown and Financial District/South Beach neighborhoods. The tract with the highest density is a three-block area of the Tenderloin, north of Market Street and between Leavenworth and Jones streets. It has roughly 2,300 residents in a 0.01-square-mile area, equivalent to about 224,000 people per square mile. That’s nearly 12 times more than the city average.

By contrast, neighborhoods such as Bayview-Hunters Point, Lakeshore and the Sunset tend to be the least dense. The lowest density tract is a 1.4-square-mile area in Bayview-Hunters Point, adjacent to Potrero Hill and Dogpatch. Roughly 1,250 people live there, which comes out to roughly 900 residents per square mile — about 20 times less dense than the city average and 250 times less dense than the most crowded part of the Tenderloin.

Even so, this area has more than tripled in population in the last decade; back in 2010, it had only 350 residents. Yet it still remains the least dense part of the city by quite a bit: the next least is about 1.5 times more densely populated.

On a national scale, the Tenderloin ranks up with the giants. The two most-crowded tracts there are the sixth and seventh most densely populated in the country, exceeded only by four tracts in New York and one in Chicago. All of them are in roughly the same size range: The five outside San Francisco average 250,000 people per square mile, versus 220,000 for the two Tenderloin tracts.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-may-be-small-but-it-s-among-16650575.php

Lee Heidhues 11.28.2021

I stand corrected and give credit where due.

The Wall Street Journal, after deliberating, published my Comment in response to Michael Shellenberger MD,  author of the incendiary hit piece  posing as non-fiction “San Fransicko”,  proud Climate Change denier and author of the scurrilous Op Ed in The 11.27.2021 print edition  of the WSJ attacking San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

@ShellenbergerMD

https://environmentalprogress.org/about

“Scion”. Who cooked that up? The WSJ @FoxNews Nightcrawler headline writer or  Michael Shellenberger?  Doesn’t matter. Your Op Ed is propaganda masquerading as intelligence from a Trump MAGA camp follower. Insurrectionists in the failed January 6 Coup. You are aligned with America’s reactionary cadres who hope to take down the San Francisco fairly elected District Attorney. What this MAGA propaganda piece does not not say is that the DA Recall campaign spent 1.4MM using paid mercenaries from around the country to gather signatures at an average $17.08 each. The Recall will meet the same fate as did the DA Losers in Los Angeles who couldn’t gather sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot. More apt is Philadelphia where Larry Krasner, a “Progressive”,  re elected with 70 percent of the vote. Intelligent voters can see through these Right Wing extremists and their collaborators who, unhappy with an election subvert the will of the electorate. It won’t work.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-crime-chesa-boudin-progressive-prosecutor-11637961667?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Top photo – San Francisco District Attorney on inaugural night 1.8.2020

It was nearly 50 years ago on September 11, 1973 that America’s man in Chile Augusto Pincochet overthrew the democratically elected Socialist Salvador Allende (pictured above voting) ushering in a 17 year regime of oppression and terror.

Next month the Chilean people will select a new President to serve a four year term.  One of the candidates José Antonio Kast, an admirer of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and especially of Pinochet— could be elected.

It is a disconcerting prospect for all who remember the promise of the Allende presidency and the terror which followed his overthrow and death.

Excerpted from The Nation – Ariel Dorfman 11.22.2021

It is hard to believe that half a century has passed since Para Leer al Pato Donald (How to Read Donald Duck), a book I wrote with the Belgian sociologist, Armand Mattelart, was published in Chile in November 1971.

We never anticipated that our essay would become an international best seller, translated into dozens of languages. It had been born, quite modestly, as a way of participating in the unique Chilean experiment of building socialism, for the first time in history, through electoral and nonviolent methods, without eliminating our adversaries. This meant that the government of Salvador Allende, which had captured the presidency in September 1970, would have to win the battle for public opinion in a situation of considerable inequality, since most of the media was in the hands of the enemies of the revolution.

The tract—conceived in 10 feverish days—caused furor and fury when it appeared. A second massive printing was soon published the next year, and a third one was ready to go on sale when General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende in September 1973, and all those copies were cast into the bay of Valparaíso. First water, then fire. Forty years after the Nazis had incinerated so many “degenerate” volumes, it was Chile’s turn. Days after the coup, in a safe house where I was hiding, I saw, on television, no less, a group of soldiers throwing hundreds of subversive texts into a bonfire. Among them was Para Leer al Pato Donald.

Exactly 50 years after of our book appeared, the first round of the presidential elections has just been held.

Of the seven contenders who were in the race, the one who garnered the most votes ( 27.89 percent) is José Antonio Kast, an admirer of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and especially of Pinochet—an ultra-conservative who personifies the traditional ideas about work, family, sex, competition and fear of change which we criticized in our book. I don’t know if Kast, who was seven years old during the 1973 coup, saw the burning of our helpless duck on television. It is probable that his father, a Nazi officer who sought refuge in Chile after the fall of the Third Reich, celebrated those inquisitorial pyres that reminded him of Hitler’s good times. 

On the other hand Gabriel Boric, the second candidate in the runoff, with 25.83 percent of the vote, represents a Chile that seeks to free itself from the past and create a different future of justice for all, embodying the vast contingents of protestors who— brazenly indeed—took to the streets of Chile over the last two years with such ardor and audaciousness that they imposed the need to write a new, fully democratic Constitution.

There is a chance, of course, that the cryptofascist Kast will manage to sow so much fear that he will become President. But Boric has a better chance, I think, to appeal to a wider coalition of dignity and courage, and lead the country to a rebirth on December 19th. If that is the case, I can only hope that How to Read Donald Duck—drowned and burned, seized and left for dead a thousand times—will itself be reborn as well in the streets of the prophetic cities of the Chile where it first saw the light five decades ago.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/donald-duck-chile-president/

Lee Heidhues 11.27.2021

The Wall Street Journal, the written news satellite of the Fox News empire (see top photo), published a Michael Shellenberger MD blatant hit piece on San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin carrying the headline –

The Weather Underground scion isn’t the first district attorney they’ve elected on a soft-on-crime platform.

I responded on Twitter to his Account @ShellenbergerMD.

For telling Michael Shellenberger MD my opinion of his writing (see below) in a public forum he blocked me from accessing his Twitter account.  Furthermore, The WSJ rejected my opinion in its Comments section.

Weather Underground Scion. Who dredged up that canard? The WSJ @FoxNews

Nightcrawler headline writer or YOU? Doesn’t matter. Your Op Ed is trash talk masquerading as intelligence from a Trump MAGA camp follower. Insurrectionists of the failed January 6 Coup. You are aligned with America’s reactionary cadres

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-crime-chesa-boudin-progressive-prosecutor-11637961667?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

This self proclaimed intellectual spokesman for the Law and Order and a vigorous climate denier is receiving a lot of buzz for his latest broadside “San Fransicko”

A book length disingenuous diatribe casting blame on all the problems impacting San Francisco at the doorstep of Progressive policies. DA Chesa Boudin is his current Progressive out of flavor of the month.

Further information about Michael Shellenberger MD Environmental Progress foundation  based in Albany, California can be found by accessing the attached link.

https://environmentalprogress.org/about

Prosecutor Dunikoski made the controversial decision to down play the obvious racial aspects of Ahmaud Arbery’s February 23, 2020 shotgun murder by three white men who alleged they were making a Citizen’s Arrest.  Her strategy before a Jury of 11 whites and one black was the right call.

Excellent feature on  a veteran brought in from the Atlanta area  to handle the Ahmaud Arbery trial. Must read for those who follow the law and want a perspective on a prosecutor who knows her job and does it well.

Ahmaud Arbery

Excerpted from The New York Times 11.26.2021

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The lawyer was from out of town, a prosecutor who had spent the bulk of her career in a large, liberal city, and she had been brought in to try the biggest case of her career: the murder of a Black man on a sunny afternoon by three white men just outside a small city pinned to the South Georgia coastline.

Despite the evidence of racism she had at her disposal, Linda Dunikoski, the prosecutor, stunned some legal observers by largely avoiding race during the trial, choosing instead to hew closely to the details of how the three men had chased the Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, through their neighborhood.

The risks went beyond her career and a single trial. Failure to convict in a case that many saw as an obvious act of racial violence would reverberate well outside Glynn County, Ga. For some, it would be a referendum on a country that appeared to have made tentative steps last summer toward confronting racism, only to devolve into deeper divisions.

On Wednesday, Ms. Dunikoski’s strategy was vindicated when the jury found the three men guilty of murder and other charges after deliberating for roughly a day. The convicted men — Gregory McMichael, 65; his son Travis McMichael, 35; and their neighbor William Bryan, 52 — are now facing life sentences in prison. They are also facing trial in February on separate federal hate-crime charges.

Kevin Gough, the lawyer who represented Mr. Bryan, credited Ms. Dunikoski with threading the most difficult of needles. She mentioned a racial motive just once during the three-week trial, in her closing argument: The men, she said, had attacked Mr. Arbery “because he was a Black man running down the street.”

“She found a clever way of bringing the issue up that wouldn’t be offensive to the right-leaning members of the jury,” he said. “I think you can see from the verdict that Dunikoski made the right call.”

Top photo – Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski meets the Press and public after the verdict.

The American stock market took a deep dive on Friday as the new B.1.1.529 variant raises alarm bells around the globe.

That is always a reaction to bad news and a potential harbinger of things to come.

Excerpted from The Guardian 11.26.2021

Top US infectious disease official Dr Anthony Fauci said on Friday that a ban on flights from southern Africa was a possibility and the United States was rushing to gather data on the new Covid-19 variant.

No decision to halt flights had yet been made, he said.

Global authorities have reacted with alarm to the new B.1.1.529 variant detected in South Africa, with the European Union and UK among those tightening border controls as scientists seek to find out if the mutation was vaccine-resistant.

The World Health Organization (WHO), however, has cautioned against hasty measures [see 1.49pm.] and South Africa said a British ban on flights seemed rushed.

“There is always the possibility of doing what the UK has done, namely block travel from South Africa and related countries,” Fauci said in an interview on CNN.

“That’s certainly something you think about and get prepared to do. You’re prepared to do everything you need to protect the American public. But you want to make sure there’s a basis for doing that,” he said.

“Obviously as soon as we find out more information we’ll make a decision as quickly as we possibly can.”

Fauci said US scientists would speak with South African counterparts on Friday about the new variant, called B.1.1.529, which has raised concern about its transmissibility and whether it might evade immune responses.

He added that there was no indication that the new variant was already in the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/nov/26/covid-news-live-new-variant-sparks-tougher-restrictions-in-india-and-singapore-ahead-of-who-meeting