Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing — a clarion call for democracy — now awaits our responses.
After nearly 12 years of the “war on terror,” the revelations of recent days are a tremendous challenge to the established order: nonstop warfare, intensifying secrecy and dominant power that equate safe governance with Orwellian surveillance.
In the highest places, there is more than a wisp of panic in rarefied air. It’s not just the National Security Agency that stands exposed; it’s the repressive arrogance perched on the pyramid of power.
Back here on the ground, so many people — appalled by Uncle Sam’s continual morph into Big Brother — have been pushing against the walls of anti-democratic secrecy. Those walls rarely budge, and at times they seem to be closing in, even literally for some (as in the case of heroic whistleblower Bradley Manning). But all the collective pushing has cumulative effects.
In recent days, as news exploded about NSA surveillance, a breakthrough came into sight. Current history may not be an immovable wall; it may be on a hinge. And if we push hard enough, together, there’s no telling what might be possible or achieved.
The gratitude that so many of us now feel toward Edward Snowden raises the question: How can we truly express our appreciation?
A first step is to thank him — publicly and emphatically. You can do that by clicking here to sign the “Thank NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden” petition, which my colleagues at RootsAction.org will send directly to him, including the individual comments.
But of course saying thank-you is just one small step onto a crucial path. As Snowden faces extradition and vengeful prosecution from the U.S. government, active support will be vital — in the weeks, months and years ahead.
Signing the thank-you petition, I ventured some optimism: “What you’ve done will inspire kindred spirits around the world to take moral action despite the risks.” Bravery for principle can be very contagious.
Edward Snowden has taken nonviolent action to help counter the U.S. government’s one-two punch of extreme secrecy and massive violence. The process has summoned the kind of doublespeak that usually accompanies what cannot stand the light of day.
So, when Snowden’s employer Booz Allen put out a statement Sunday night, it was riddled with official indignation, declaring: “News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm.”
What are the “code of conduct” and “core values” of this huge NSA contractor? The conduct of stealthy assistance to the U.S. national security state as it methodically violates civil liberties, and the values of doing just about anything to amass vast corporate profits.
The corporate-government warfare state is enraged that Edward Snowden has broken through with conduct and values that are 180 degrees in a different direction. “I’m not going to hide,” he told the Washington Post on Sunday. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
When a Post reporter asked whether his revelations would change anything, Snowden replied: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”
And, when the Post asked about threats to “national security,” Snowden offered an assessment light-years ahead of mainline media’s conventional wisdom: “We managed to survive greater threats in our history . . . than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs. It is not that I do not value intelligence, but that I oppose . . . omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance. . . . That seems to me a greater threat to the institutions of free society than missed intelligence reports, and unworthy of the costs.”
Profoundly, in the early summer of 2013, with his actions and words, Edward Snowden has given aid and comfort to grassroots efforts for democracy. What we do with his brave gift will be our choice. Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
(Bruce B. Brugmann, or b3 as he signs his blogs and emails, writes and edits the Bruce blog on the San Francisco Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the editor at large of the Bay Guardian and editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012. He can be reached at bruce@sfbg.com.)
I was actually upset that Bette Midler did not get nominated. What is happening to me? Call out the jazz-hands police, I’m dancing along with Neil Patrick Harris tonight. PS: Mike Tyson.
The Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges has the power to close City College of San Francisco, and students and faculty in line at the San Francisco Airport Marriott June 7 were there to hear about the fate of their school.
But at the only public meeting available to meet with City College’s accreditors in more than seven months, some 30 people were barred from entry.
The doors were were shut, police said, because there were only about 20 seats available.
Even the San Francisco Chronicle’s higher education reporter, Nanette Asimov, was left outside, haggling with officers to get into the meeting — and she called ahead to reserve a seat.
Lalo Gonzalez, a City College student who was recently elected to the Associated Students Senate, was dismayed at not being able to meet with the accreditation agency. “I would’ve assumed they would have reached out to students,” he said.
But they didn’t.
The commission made its decision June 6 on whether City College would keep its accreditation — without which the school would lose state funding and close. But that decision won’t be revealed until early July. The accreditors put the school sanction for a number of reasons, mostly fiscal but also relating to measuring student achievement. The college has 85,000 students and nearly 2,600 faculty.
The meeting was held at the same Marriott used many times in the past for meetings, the commissioners said. But unlike normal meetings, on June 7 there were four police officers, two from Burlingame PD and two from City College, who patrolled more than 60 feet of metal barriers erected around the corner.
Part of that may have been reaction to the 30 demonstrators from the Save CCSF coalition (www.saveccsf.org) that protested outside the accreditor’s closed meeting Wednesday.
“I was shocked that we couldn’t get in,” student Sharon Shatterly said.
No bags, recording devices, or cameras were allowed in the meeting. As a private entity, the accreditation commission does not fall under California open access laws like the Brown Act. Inside, 24 commissioners from the agency were seated, dealing with the day-to-day business of managing matters of California’s 112 community colleges, seemingly unconcerned about the dozens who waited outside wishing to speak. In fact, only two public speakers were allowed to address the accreditors.
One was Teeka James, a San Mateo community college teacher speaking on behalf of the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. She read aloud a litany of complaints about the accreditors, alleging that the teams sent to evaluate community colleges didn’t have enough faculty members, that the policies of the accreditors weren’t values “widely accepted” by educators or other accrediting bodies, and that there was a lack of transparency in how they operate.
She especially bemoaned the agency’s conflict of interest — the commission president is Barbara Beno, and her husband served on the team that visited and evaluated City College a year ago, which resulted in the severe sanction the school is under today.
The president and the reviewing agents are supposed to be independent entities.
“To serve the students and people of California properly, ACCJC has to change or be delisted by the Department of Education,” James said. “The time is now.”
She was basically summarizing an official complaint about the accreditation agency sent to the Department of Education last month. It’s 280 pages long, and the allegations are serious.
After her presentation, the members of the commission started to grill her.
“What qualifications do you have? What is the source of your evidence?” said Steven Kinsella, who was named in the official complaint as someone whose ties to business constituted a conflict of interest to his role as a commissioner on the ACCJC. He is a “public member” of the agency.
The questions kept coming – and some were about James herself.
“I don’t think they took her very seriously,” said Fred Teti, president of the City College Academic Senate.
James also argued that the accreditors needed to be more transparent about their process, which was exemplified by the dozens of people who weren’t let into the meeting. Beno disagreed.
“We’re a private institution,” she said. “You can imagine a college president comes in and they discuss matters that could be embarrassing or challenging. That can’t occur in public.”
Outside, the students who had come to talk to the commission that may potentially close their school sat beside each other in the sun, watching the blue of the bay from the hotel’s patio.
And what would Gonzalez and his fellow students have said to the panel if they had gotten in?
“I would’ve asked about if they knew how this was affecting my people, people of color. I would’ve asked about EOPS,” he said, which is the second chance program at City College for those coming out of prison. “They’ve cut over 30 counselors, they’re dismantling the school in the name of accreditation.”
Gonzalez and all of San Francisco will have to wait until the beginning of July to find out what will happen to City College.
Try though I may, I cannot understand the American right in 2013.
Thumbing through the news this morning, I came across two stories that are absolutely mind-boggling. The first is a sad commentary on the kind of mindset that is damaging and pervasive to and among the people that have it. The second is simply incredible.
The first was a study done on the benefits of CFL bulbs–those are the ones that last longer and are cheaper than incandescent ones. When not labeled as per “good for the environment”, conservatives and liberals alike preferred these, but when labeled “green” or environmentally friendly, right wingers were far less likely to want them.
Roll that over in your mind. A cheaper alternative that lasts longer is less desirable because as an added feature, it’s better for the only planet we now inhabit. What next? Right wingers declining cancer meds that are biodegradable? What this says to me is that they’re so vested in their ridiculous ideology, they’re willing to pay more and suffer more to prove a point that even they can’t articulate.
The second is even more astounding. E.W. Jackson is running for Lt. Governor in Virginia (Republican) and even though he has unleashed some whoppers before (yoga is satanic, Planned Parenthood is worse for African Americans than the KKK), apparently in 2008, this minister wrote that birth defects are caused by sin.
Organic and genetic causes, nah. You were nice to a gay guy once. You rubbed one out to nudies. You and your partner rooted around unmarried and on contraceptives–that’s why your baby has Down’s. As even line-toeing hardcore rightists have children with birth defects, this is not a winning electoral strategy.
Virginia is a large state. It is in the US in 2013. That anyone anywhere would espouse these ludicrous ideas and be anywhere near the levers of any power is mind boggling. And yet, the GOP’s candidate for governor hasn’t disavowed Jackson–and why?
Because when you’re marketed to shut in cable and radio junkies, you end up with them. The GOP’s base is now the dregs, the pits, the most pathetic of pathetic–what used to be fringe and laughed off is now what shows up at conventions and nominates idiots.
Until such time as their moneyed elite swallow their pride and heave these half-wits out, this will continue. This is the bed they’ve made, lie in it.
It appears that I have pissed off more than a few people as per my opinions on the issue of “Pride Weekend.” To clarify then: Anyone anywhere that regards gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual people as second class citizens in any way is an idiot than can fuck off this page immediately. I have no use for you–any relationship I can be in legally, so can everyone. That this is even an issue is asinine.
That said “Pride Weekend” is no different to me than St. Paddy’s Day, Memorial Day or any other social event than began as one commemoration (and a gutsy one) and became another one as soon it became fiscally lucrative (and acceptable in the mainstream) to do so. When the HIV virus was destroying gay communities in the 80’s, Pride parades were, no pun intended, ballsy.
Now? Great that it’s a get together for friends and even as a hook up deal–fine. But I know damned well that its present relationship for way too many people is to gay rights as Christmas is to the teachings of Christ–lots of businesses need this weekend to get into the black for the year. And they do.
If that offends you and enrages you, such is life. I’m just glad that the nonsense tends to be in LA’s OTHER gay enclave West Hollywood and not here in the “Swish Alps” of Silver Lake (yes, that’s what it was called back in the 1950’s, when “City of Night” was inspired) . We’re OK with the big bucks bonanza being where it is, bridge and tunnel types are an issue here in Hipsterville every other weekend of the year already. And I am assuming that lots of San Franciscans feel that way as well (think of how the natives feel in New Orleans during Mardi Gras) Have fun!
Arturo Vega, creative designer and lights operator for the de facto inventors of punk rock the Ramones, died this morning. He was 65.
Vega, a Mexican national who emigrated to New York in the ’70s, was the designer of the “Hey Ho Let’s Go” eagle/baseball bat/band member’s name logo that adorned their shirts for 20 plus years. He was also the band’s virtual lifeline in their formative years, providing a home for bassist Dee Dee and singer Joey in his Bowery loft.
He was a gentleman and a warm hearted, soft spoken genial man with a dry wit. He was also a champion of punk rock and its bands–when my first group (Thrills) first started playing CBGB and Hurrah, Arturo would store our gear for us at the Ramones loft and when off the road, always cheer us on–his approval meant a lot, because if Arturo thought you were OK, you were OK.
Later in his life, he became a fitness fanatic and chronicler of all things Ramone. Was always a joy to hear from him.
By Norman Solomon Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
Dear Senator Feinstein:
On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be in the habit of treating the Bill of Rights as merely advisory.
The Constitution doesn’t get any better than this: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The greatness of the Fourth Amendment explains why so many Americans took it to heart in civics class, and why so many of us treasure it today. But along with other high-ranking members of Congress and the president of the United States, you have continued to chip away at this sacred bedrock of civil liberties.
As The Guardian reported the night before your sudden news conference, the leaked secret court order “shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.”
One of the most chilling parts of that just-revealed Surveillance Court order can be found at the bottom of the first page, where it says “Declassify on: 12 April 2038.”
Apparently you thought — or at least hoped — that we, the people of the United States, wouldn’t find out for 25 years. And the fact that we learned about this extreme violation of our rights in 2013 instead of 2038 seems to bother you a lot.
Rather than call for protection of the Fourth Amendment, you want authorities to catch and punish whoever leaked this secret order. You seem to fear that people can actually discover what their own government is doing to them with vast surveillance.
Meanwhile, the Executive Branch is being run by kindred spirits, as hostile to the First Amendment as to the Fourth. On Thursday night, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement saying the “unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.”
That statement from Clapper is utter and complete hogwash. Whoever leaked the four-page Surveillance Court document to Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian deserves a medal and an honorary parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in the Nation’s Capital. The only “threats” assisted by disclosure of that document are the possibilities of meaningful public discourse and informed consent of the governed.
Let’s be candid about the most clear and present danger to our country’s democratic values. The poisonous danger is spewing from arrogance of power in the highest places. The antidotes depend on transparency of sunlight that only whistleblowers, a free press and an engaged citizenry can bring.
As Greenwald tweeted after your news conference: “The reason there are leakers is precisely because the govt is filled with people like Dianne Feinstein who do horrendous things in secret.” And, he pointed out, “The real story isn’t just the spying itself: it’s that we have this massive, ubiquitous Surveillance State, operating in total secrecy.”
Obviously, you like it that way, and so do most other members of the Senate and House. And so does the president. You’re all playing abhorrent roles, maintaining a destructive siege of precious civil liberties. While building a surveillance state, you are patting citizens on the head and telling them not to worry.
Perhaps you should have a conversation with Al Gore and ask about his statement: “Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?” Actually, many millions of Americans understand that the blanket surveillance is obscenely outrageous.
As a constituent, I would like to offer an invitation. A short drive from your mansion overlooking San Francisco Bay, hundreds of us will be meeting June 11 at a public forum on “Disappearing Civil Liberties in the United States.” (You’d be welcome to my time on the panel.) One of the speakers, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, could explain to you how the assaults on civil liberties and the wars you keep supporting go hand in hand, undermining the Constitution and causing untold misery.
Senator Feinstein, your energetic contempt for the Bill of Rights is serving a bipartisan power structure that threatens to crush our democratic possibilities.
A huge number of people in California and around the country will oppose your efforts for the surveillance state at every turn.
Sincerely,
Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
(Bruce B. Brugmann, or b3 as he signs his blogs and emails, writes and edits the Bruce blog on the website of the San Francisco Bay Guardian at sfbg.com. He is the editor at large of the Bay Guardian and former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012. He can be contacted at bruce@sfbg.com.) b3
The huge story of the last week was the UK Guardian’s revelations of massive data mining by the US government of Verizon and the outrage in its wake. Naturally, the paranoia is ramped up, as is the apologist rebuttal. But one thing no one wants to talk about is this: What is to stop a government determined to “get” someone from simply fabricating electronically transmitted data? If someone is perceived as a “threat to national security” (for whatever reason), isn’t it possible to create fake emails and texts?
Not going all “line the walls with tinfoil, here comes the New World Order, Alex Jones is Christ incarnate” on you, but as such a thing is now doable, who’s to stop it? Certainly not a rubber stamp like the FISA courts. Certainly not the “benevolent nature” of politicians.
Something to consider when you are sanguine about “they’re only protecting me”.
(Updated below with a response from Manning supporters, who held a press conference yesterday outside Pride HQ and drew attention to the Pride board’s own violations of its rules.)
At a feisty community meeting last week, the SF Pride board had set June 7 as a deadline for reconsidering its controversial decision to strip Bradley Manning of his grand marshalship. Late in the day today, Pride issued a statement saying that the community proposals to reinstate Manning had failed to garner consensus majority within the board.
The Pride board also announced news in the case that had been filed against it with the city’s Human Rights Commission: the HRC has declined to investigate the charges, based on a precedent set in a 2007 case against the Chinese New Year Parade. In that decision, the HRC determined that the city had not broken any discrimination laws when it funded the Chinese New Year parade after the parade had explicitly barred a group representing Falun Gong from marching.
The full SF Pride boardpress release follows. (The board is really, really concerned with safety!):
For Immediate Release: Pride Responds to May 31 Community Forum
June 7, 2013, 6:28pm
Over the past several weeks, SF Pride has sought to respectfully listen to and consider the various opinions and perspectives on the matter of Pfc. Bradley Manning and related interests in extending representative support for Pfc. Manning. The SF Pride Board of Directors recognizes the divergent opinions regarding the matter of Pfc. Manning, but none of the three main options we received from the community forum on May 31 garnered a consensus majority.
Relatedly, a formal complaint to the City and County of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) was recently filed. The HRC has recently determined that it will not investigate the discrimination claims filed against SF Pride. In its decision, the HRC cited a declaration in a 2007 court case regarding the Chinese New Year Parade that the City’s anti-discrimination laws do not:
“restrict the ability of a grantee that is engaged in a constitutionally protected artistic or cultural expression to select the message that it will express. In the context of inherently expressive artistic and cultural events, such as the Parade and Street Fair,… [T]he selection of the message that those events will express cannot be separated from the selection of the persons who will participate in those events.”
Therefore, SF Pride will continue to produce this year’s Pride Celebration to ensure a safe and joyful time for all attendees as safety and security is our number #1 priority. San Francisco is, and will remain, a beacon of hope for the LGBT liberation movement. We truly appreciate the vibrant diversity of our community, and look forward to advancing efforts to effectively “educate the world, commemorate our heritage, celebrate our culture, and liberate our people.”
In response, Manning for Grand Marshal supporters charged that the Pride board is violating its own policy and procedures by altering the election rules. Here is their statement, and here is the Facebook page for Bradley Manning Pride events.
SF Pride Violates Its Own Community Grand Marshal Policy
The leadership of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade Committee, while stating that their Community Grand Marshal policy prevented them from allowing Bradley Manning to be a Grand Marshal in this years parade, has violated those same policies regarding its own Board’s selection of additional Community Grand Marshals.
The Grand Marshal selection process is clearly spelled out in SF Pride’s official “Policy and Procedures Manual.” Under the chapter of that manual entitled ‘Grand Marshal/Pink Brick Policy,” there is a sub-section numbered “5.2.4” that clearly states:
Up to three of the community grand marshals shall be elected by the Board at its May meeting each year.
In their press release dated May 22, 2013, SF Pride announced and listed five Community Grand Marshals elected by the Board of Directors: Dr. Betty Sullivan, Mario Bemton, Veronika Fimbres, Chill D, Perry Lang & Kenneth Monteiro (as one). This is in clear violation of their stated policies and procedures.
In addition, the same policies governing Grand Marshal selection states under section 5.1.1, “There may by up to six Community Grand Marshals” in total. Because of the Board’s selection of five Marshals, they bumped the total number up to eight, putting themselves in clear violation of that policy as well.
Former SF Pride Board President and former Community Grand Marshal Joey Cain said regarding this violation:
“I think it makes it pretty clear that adherence to policy was never the real issue regarding Bradley Manning’s election by the Electoral Collage. The Pride leadership overturned that election because of the pressure they got from groups outside of San Francisco, period. Are they now going to drop two of the Grand Marshals in order to be in compliance with these other policies? If they are purporting to adhere to their policies, it should be done across the board.”
Cain and others have contended that the Pride Board approved Manning as a Community Grand Marshal at a meeting on April 23, the same meeting where they voted to select Dr. Betty Sullivan as a Grand Marshal. It was only after a campaign organized by an LGBT enlisted service members group in San Diego flooded the Pride office with calls and emails protesting the election of Manning that the Board overturned the vote.
The Fillmore Street Goodwill, I will tell anyone who listens, is the best in the city. I have a theory about this: Pacific Heights ladies-who-laze, on a motivated day when they’re not dressing their doggies in argyle or eating sandwiches with the crusts cut off, pack up their gently-used cardigans, sheath dresses, and colored pumps and bring them to the SF Symphony’s consignment shop. Should the cashier reject their finery, they sniff, and pick their way down the hill to the Goodwill. After dropping off the load they go get their hair blown out at a salon that doesn’t do cuts or colors, as its plate glass window proclaims to the world: only blowouts.
Basically, there are always a ton of really nice, jewel-toned heels at the Fillmore Goodwill. And many more clothing stores with character, right down the block. Here’s some stand-outs.
Though I covet this brand (created in yes, Brooklyn by Bay native Gabe Garcia and Quincy “Ouigi” Theodore) for its current crop of chambray baseball hats, letterman’s jacket-style coats, and sleek leather boots for my own, menswear-loving self, I mainly pass through to check out what my dream boyfriend would be wearing. Urban dandy, grown and sexy — call it what you want to call it, the BKc look is hot. The Fillmore location is about to celebrate its fifth birthday, coinciding as ever with July’s Fillmore Jazz Festival.
Pass by the baubles and grills at Mr. Bling Bling’s and you’ll happen across the phenomenal street art that lines one side of Avery Street. Thank you Richard Coleman for appropriately capturing my feelings behind a challenging day at the office. All photos from this point forward by Caitlin Donohue
Asmbly Hall
Per our effusive writeup accompanying its Best of the Bay award last year, Asmbly Hall stocks San Francisco-style prep chic. Its colorful men’s and women’s fashions are highlighted by local labels — there’s cute-as-a-button Fashion Star alum Ronnie Escalante’s Powell and Mason line of striped scarves, Japanese fabric buttondowns made by Blade + Blue. Owner Tricia Benitez let me know that she’s always on the lookout for more Bay Area producers. I went south for my favorite piece the day I visited, however: a striped velour pullover from LA brand Slvdr’s Spring 2013 collection. Kinda reminded me of the onesies I rocked as a wee one. I had a great chat with Benitez about how the young business owners in the area have really banded together to re-envision the neighborhood — she often coordinates events with Social Study, the adorable wine, beer, and small plates bar that Harmony Fraga (previously bar manager at the TL’s Farmerbrown) opened on Geary and Fillmore.
A case of Stance socks at Asmbly Hall. Love the Mondrian-esque owl design
QUEENS TAKE NOTE SHADE SOLD HERE
Scotch and Soda
I had to check out this Amsterdam brand, a recent arrival to the strip (the company also opened up a Financial District location this year), and even if its entire spendy collection of Spring Breakers neons set off with faux bleach swaths and leather feather accents didn’t set me to “stun”, I did fall in love with a floral-print hoodie with the world’s most complicated wrap neckline. When arranged just… so, the two pull strings protruded out over each other, like some carefully balanced work of modern art, or Sloth’s eyeballs. I found the linen and general color palette of this store to be a younger person’s version of the stock up the street at fancy-pants boutique Erica Tanov. I don’t imagine, however, that Tanov would ever spell out the word “Malibu” on a t-shirt with neon love beads.
Once on a trip to Stockholm, a friend reverently dragged me to an Acne Studios sample sale, where I could do nothing but run my fingers across complicatedly draped tunics and diaphanous silk dresses. The Acne items that this chain store sells are a bit more wallet-friendly (also, f**k the kroner’s enviable stability and impossible exchange rate), and everyday: mainly, tons of colored jeans. Steven Alan is good for basics-with-flair — classic Levi’s styles, and smaller name brands abound at the men’s and women’s store.
Yes, elder richer women shop here — but the eccentric kind, the sort who drop dimes in the museum gift shop so that every outfit they wear is comprised of conversation pieces. I spent a good stoned second staring at a rack of tightly pleated and ruched crepe-y Issey Miyake garments that stood, colorfully, in complete defiance of the laws of physics. And loved the preponderance at Mio of Miyake’s line of geometric Baobao bags (which are without a doubt the kind of gems that I’ll be wearing, once that lottery ticket comes through).
You have to have your head deeper in the sand than the worst Republicans not to have noticed that the federal government has been busted spying on all of us. Pretty much every cell phone call you make, and just about everything you do with social media or email, is being monitored be the National Security Agency to make sure you’re not a terrorist. It’s a pretty alarming violation of the Fourth Amendment, and President Obama’s main response is: Well, it’s secret but we told Congress.
The person who would have been the first to know, and the most fully briefed, is Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Intelligence Committee. That body exists to serve as something of a civilian check on the law-enforcement operations that are the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, HSA, and whatever other acronymed spook agencies are involved. From the committee’s own website:
“The Commitee was created by the Senate in 1976 to … provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
Feinstein’s a former mayor of San Francisco. She represents the state where most of the companies that are allowing the feds to monitor their servers (Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc.) live. It’s her job to keep this stuff in line. And yet: She’s defending the snooping, as if there’s nothing wrong here at all.
I realize that people should understand that email isn’t private, what you put on Facebook might as well be on a billboard on 101 and you have to watch what you tweet. Many lessons have been learnedin that regard. And all of us are so excited about our smart phones that we run around the world with mini-GPS locators in our pockets.
But most people still think they can make phone calls without being monitored. And while my trolls love to say “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” we all know that’s untrue. People are arrested and imprisoned fairly often in this country on suspicion of crimes they didn’t commit; when it comes to terrorism, the situation is even worse. And besides: Do you really trust the government to know everyone you’ve ever called, and from where, and when? I don’t think Obama’s a bad person or has any evil intent — but still. Imagine if it were Cheney.
I’m unhappy with the president, of course, but I think I’m most pissed at my senator. Because presidents always push the limits of their power, and Congress is supposed to be a check on that, and Feinstein is supposed to be perhaps the most important check on potentially the worse expansion of power. And she failed.
Spent part of yesterday doing that peculiarly California-ized ritual, the smogging of the vehicle. As it had a bad v-tec solenoid, it had flunked initially and so the re-test was a little nerve wracking, deadlines and all.
The car passed. But as I watched them slap gizmo and wand about the car, I started to feel the BP rising. What a scam this bullshit is, smogging a car made in the last decade. Another way to wring cash out of the already overtaxed and over regulated public and as always, not squat can be done about it except pony up and pony the hell out of there. Nice racket the state and the smog stations have.
Around four minutes into this silent seethe, I flashed on something from my adolescence. Standing in my dad’s kitchen watching the tiny telly and the news coming in from the distant and exotic promised land of Southern California. Seeing kids filing out of schools or empty schools themselves because of “smog days“, CA’s snowless version of a Boston school day off.
Thing is, snow days in Wellesley were because you couldn’t get to school, not “don’t go outside lest you choke”. We watched in fascination as the announcers intoned whatever the poisonous numerical benchmark was and then in amusement as the cameras would pan to the tobacco-stained skies over the San Fernando Valley. It looked positively awful–the Beach Boys and Mamas and the Papas never sang about this, hell, even the Doors hadn’t! (Love did!).
Fifteen years later, I moved to LA and the “smog day” was somewhat in the past. The skies, in mid-July, did have that same yellow-y hue though. When we’d come back from SF, you’d still puncture the low level grossness descending from the Grapevine. So, it was still there. But now? LA doesn’t have spotless air and the quality is dicey, but even the Spaniards that conquered the place observed that hundreds of years ago–we’re a basin. Now, generally clear, mountains far more visible than they were when I arrived in ’89, sky a bit bluer.
All because of more stringent regs on emissions. Period. The filthy air fouling clunkers of the past rest and rust in junkyards. Our eyes don’t water and our throats are no longer sore. And not–never–because of the deep and abiding concern for our respiratory health among automakers, but because the state forced them to do it. And this is what really separates the adults from the overgrown children that are chronologically grownups but are mentally babes. We know that the purpose of private business is to make money and widen profit margins and if the air and water turn to shit, well, tell it to Wall Street. They aren’t your friends and they don’t care about you except as consumer, if even that. And you need look no further than the world’s new business powerhouse, China, with its skyrocketing cancer rates to know what really matters most.
I used to huff Biotin like Pez when I first moved here, as it was the “natural remedy” for pollution sickness. Not in 15 years though. Smog away!
Controversial condominium conversion lottery bypass legislation is finally headed for a vote by the full Board of Supervisors this Tuesday. Befitting legislation that has stirred strong emotions and traveled a twisting political path over the last six months, there are new dramas and uncertainties cropping up at the last minute, including the lingering unknown of where Mayor Ed Lee stands.
Originally co-sponsored by Sups. Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener, the legislation was intended to allow 2,000-plus tenancy-in-common owners to buy their way past the city’s lottery that allows 200 conversions to condominiums each year. But tenant groups and their progressive allies strenuously opposed the idea, and it was amended by Sups. David Chiu, Jane Kim, and Norman Yee working with tenants to couple the bypass with a 10-year moratorium on new conversions, thus clearing the backlog without opening the door to speculators taking more rent-controlled apartments off the market.
The Land Use Committee voted June 3 (2-1, with Chiu and Kim voting yes and Wiener opposed) to send the tenant-supported legislation to the full board and keep a Wiener-backed rival measure stuck in committee. But since then, Wiener invoked a board rule allowing four supervisors to pull the stalled legislation out of committee, getting Farrell and Sups. Katy Teng and London Breed to place that rival measure on Tuesday’s agenda as well.
Tenant groups decried the move and have put out the call for supporters to flood City Hall for the 2pm meeting, but Wiener told us that the differences in the two pieces of legislation are minor. One difference deals with whether transfers of ownership interest will affect an applicant’s spot in the queue and the other involves the so-called poison pill inserted by tenant groups, which would freeze the conversion process if anyone challenges the legislation in court, as real estate interests have threatened to do.
Wiener said the tenant-backed legislation’s changes to condo conversion eligibility, such as a 10-year wait period and banning future conversions of buildings with more than five units, that would remain in place after a successful legal challenge is an unfair overreach. But Chiu said tenant groups have already compromised as much as they can and they need this protection: “This is a carefully constructed compromise, and for the first time tenants groups are supporting thousands of condo conversions.”
Breed’s concerns about the poison pill provision — which was why she said she went along with Wiener’s play to bring up the rival measure — go even beyond Wiener’s. While most concerns involved a lawsuit from real estate interests, Breed worries about a pro-tenant litigant who wants to stop all condo conversions.
“If anyone chose to sue, it would help renters by shutting down everything completely. Where is the incentive not to sue?” Breed told us, noting that she still doesn’t have a solution to the problem, but she wanted the leverage of rival measures in order to address the issue. “I’m hoping it’s a win-win for renters and TIC owners,” she said. “Everyone else is not my concern right now.”
But the real estate interests will almost certainly try to preserve an ability for speculators to continue funneling more rent-controlled apartments into the real estate market, and just yesterday, the San Francisco Association of Realtors announced the hiring of an influential new point person on lobbying and housing issues: Mary Jung, a former spokesperson for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom before moving over to represent PG&E, and who was last year elected chair of the Democratic County Central Committee.
That could make a difference when it comes to Mayor Lee, who has resisted efforts by both sides to weigh in on the issue, saying only that he supports both tenants and TIC owners and that he understands the concerns about opening the door to a flood of new conversion requests.
“The one wild card here is no one know where the mayor is,” Wiener told us, noting that neither side is likely to get the eight votes that would be needed to override a veto. “The mayor, if he wanted to, could have significant leverage in crafting a compromise.” Chiu said that he’s confident that his version of the legislation has the six votes needed to pass, but that it is still unclear what Mayor Lee will support, despite Chiu asking Lee to weigh in publicly in February and privately during a meeting yesterday. As Chiu told us, “We’ll see.”
Good clean, squeaky, fresh, wholesome fun. That’s what you’ll be having this weekend, courtesy this rundown of (all totally family-friendly) (unless your children don’t like zombies) daytime events.
FRI/7
Corazon Under the Dome
Head from work to the mall where, after sifting through the pink and plastic fineries at Claire’s Accesories, you can sit back, relax, and take in a show projected on the Westfield’s glorious dome. Today’s offering is an animated 3D art show, showcasing an iconic medley of photography and images of San Francisco that celebrate the city’s incomparable saga. The show is set against the backdrop of classic San Francisco songs, bound to get those TGIF toes tapping.
Part citywide block party, part scavenger hunt, part flea market, enjoy this beautiful day of shopping for bargains and searching for treasure. This South Bay yard sale promotes buying, selling, and donating used items to keep them out of the landfill, conserving natural resources.
How well would you fare during a zombie apocalypse? Plan your Muni routes accordingly – an entire city neighborhood has been taken over by zombies. The human team must complete missions and defend themselves against the team of zombies, who are trying to infect the humans before they’re rescued. This is the perfect storm for Nerf gun, multiplayer game, and horror movie lovers alike.
Make merry with the happiest sounding instrument ever made. Ukulele fans will gather for a concert, sing-a-long, and lessons today. You don’t have to be a ukulele player or enthusiast to come, but you may be one when you leave.
Men with sabers alert! Civil War reenacters take over the island today. Dodge their blades until you’re hungry, then check out the bread-making, butter-churning activities. Meet camp cooks and soldiers, and get a taste of life on an old-school military camp.
This one-day annual street fair features live music, a variety of foods, dancing, and a festive assemblage of tie-dye. From street vendors to the Children’s Alley, everyone will have something to do here.
Come out and enjoy free sailboat rides with the Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit volunteer-run club on the Berkeley Marina. Get an introductory sail, a fun first-hand experience on the San Francisco Bay, and discover the joy of sailing.
Week three is in the books for JAW at the SFBG. Almost a month here and while I’d like to say this is a fresh and brand new situation, Internet-speaking, it really isn’t.
Like a fair amount of the world’s presently upright population, I have a Facebook page, a couple of them, really. As I have been a peripatetic person in lots of different circles, I’ve made lots of friends and acquaintances. A truly diverse group. Which means agreement is rare, issue to issue. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with and what I insist upon (on my personal networking service) is one easy to follow rule: If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it here. Not exactly a difficult demand, right?
It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of self-awareness to follow probably should be the “Internet Golden Rule”, but it does take a little self-discipline. Which seems to be a lot more that some people are willing to employ. More accurately, I think that the “internet troll” doesn’t want to abide by that rule because it removes their greatest thrill, which is being an asshole without any tangible consequences.
When I see the responses that the blogs get here–mine and everyone else’s–I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone saying some of the empty-headed and smugly belligerent remarks made here in real life. Simply would never happen. Not because of the fear of actual physical retribution or a verbal smackdown, but because however badly the internet troll was raised, even they know that putting a face to asinine commentary looks bad and is not likely to be as easily forgotten. Anonymous behind a monitor, it is safe to indulge in the worst kind of puerile posturing, because nothing can happen to you–hence “Internet Bravery”. It is the natural counterpart to “Internet braggadocio”, where life’s losers morph into Zuckerberg Jr by tapping on a bunch of keys.
The cloddish putdowns, the refusal to provide any verifiable evidence to wildly offbeat exigesis that are thrown out like playing cards at a bridge tourney–none of this would ever pass muster in a coffee house or bar or bus-stop or any other place living, breathing humans congregate. But on the Net, cozy in the online cocoon, the swaggering would be Patton’s bust out the bullshit with bluster and bravado.
So, this medal (lovingly crafted by Brooke Robertson) is for you. Defying carpal tunnel and hangnail, tapping away valiantly as you defend whatever or whomever is 100 rungs above you on the social ladder, print this baby out and pin it on with pride. Just not anywhere that anyone here might actually see you–of course.
The 12th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival kicked off last night with a screening of Spark: A Burning Man Story (even if you missed the opening event, you can check out Steven T. Jones’ story about the film and changes underway at the Burning Man organization here). It continues through June 23 at venues in San Francisco (mostly the Roxie), Palo Alto, and Oakland; check out my article on the fest here and DocFest’s official website for a full slate of films and ticket information.
Also in this week’s paper: Dennis Harvey’s round-up of “The Vortex Phenomena,” the SOMA venue‘s monthlong series of conspiracy-theory films of the 1970s (Bermuda Triangle! Fog monsters! Yeti!)
And of course, we got all your first-run intel right here. This week’s feast includes the reteaming of tight bros from way back Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, playing Google noobs in The Internship; Joss Whedon’s detour from superheroes to Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing; and Wish You Were Here, an Aussie thriller about a vacation gone awry starring a very good (and very freaked-out) Joel Edgerton. Plus more, all after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJaeMEHVbYE
The East In Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s powerful second film collaboration (Batmanglij directs, and the pair co-wrote the screenplay, as in 2011’s Sound of My Voice), Marling plays Sarah, an intelligence agent working for a private firm whose client list consists mainly of havoc-wreaking multinationals. Sarah, presented as quietly ambitious and conservative, is tasked by the firm’s director (Patricia Clarkson) with infiltrating the East, an off-the-grid activist collective whose members, including Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), Izzy (Ellen Page), and Doc (Toby Kebbell), bring an eye-for-an-eye sensibility to their YouTube-publicized “jams.” Targeting an oil company responsible for a BP-style catastrophe, they engineer their own spill in the gated-community habitat of the company’s CEO, posting a video that juxtaposes grisly images of oil-coated shorebirds and the unsettling sight of gallons of crude seeping through the air-conditioning vents of a tidy McMansion. A newspaper headline offers a facile framework for understanding their activities, posing the alternatives as “Pranksters or Eco-Terrorists?” But as Sarah examines the gut-wrenching consequences of so-called white-collar crime and immerses herself in the day-to-day practices of the group, drawn in particular to the charismatic Benji, the film raises more complex questions. Much of its rhetorical force flows from Izzy, whom Page invests with a raw, anguished outrage, drawing our sympathies toward the group and its mission of laying bare what should be unbearable. (1:56) (Lynn Rapoport)
Fill the Void Respectfully rendered and beautifully shot in warm hues, Fill the Void admirably fills the absence on many screens of stories from what might be considered a closed world: the Orthodox Hasidic community in Israel, where a complex web of family ties, duty, and obligation entangles pretty, accordion-playing Shira (Hada Yaron). An obedient daughter, she’s about to agree to an arranged marriage to a young suitor when her much-loved sister (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth. When Shira’s mother (Irit Sheleg) learns the widower Yochay (Yiftach Klein) might marry a woman abroad and take her only grandchild far away, she starts to make noises about fixing Shira up with her son-in-law. The journey the two must take, in possibly going from in-laws to newlyweds, is one that’s simultaneously infuriating, understandable, and touching, made all the more intimate given director Rama Burshtein’s preference for searching close-ups. Her affinity for the Orthodox world is obvious with each loving shot, ultimately infusing her debut feature with a beating heart of humanity. (1:30) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVIipDZCPCU
The Internship The dirty little secret of the new economy continues to be the gerbil cycle of free/cheap labor labeled “internships” that propels so many companies — be they corporate or indie, digital or print media. But gee, who’s going to see an intern comedy titled The Exploitation, besides me and my local union rep? Instead, spinning off a Vince Vaughn story idea and a co-writing credit, The Internship looks at that now-mandatory time-suck for so many college students through the filter of two older, not-quite-wiser salesmen Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) hoping to make that working guy’s quantum leap from watch sales to Google’s Mountain View campus, which director Shawn Levy casts as a bright and shiny workers wonderland with its free spring rolls and lattes, bikes, and napping pods. Departing from reality: the debugging/coding/game-playing/app-making competition that forces Billy and Nick to bond with their team of castoffs (Dylan O’Brien, Tiya Sircar, Tobit Raphael), led by noob manager Lyle (Josh Brener), in order to win a full-time job. Part of the key, naturally, turns out to be a Swingers-like visit to a strip club, to release those deeply repressed nerd sexualities — nothing like a little retrograde sexism to bring a group together. Still, the moment is offset by the generally genial, upbeat attitude brought to The Internship by its lead actors: Nick and Billy may be flubs at physics and clueless when it comes to geek culture, but most working stiffs who have suffered the slings and arrows of layoffs and dream of stable employment can probably get behind the all-American ideals of self-reinvention and optimism about the future peddled in The Internship, which easily slips in alongside The Great Gatsby among this year’s Great Recession narratives. Blink too fast and you might miss the microcameo by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. (1:59) (Kimberly Chun)
The Kings of Summer Ah, the easy-to-pluck, easy-to-love low-hanging fruit of summer — and a coming of age. Who can blame director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, both TV vets, for thinking that a juicy, molasses-thick application of hee-hee-larious TV comedy actors to a Stand by Me-like boyish bildungsroman could only make matters that much more fun? When it comes to this wannabe-feral Frankenteen love child of Terrence Malick and Parks and Recreation, you certainly don’t want to fault them for original thinking, though you can understand why they keep lurching back to familiar, reliably entertaining turf, especially when it comes in the form of Nick Offerman of the aforementioned P&R, who gets to twist his Victorian doll features into new frustrated shapes alongside real-life spouse Megan Mullally. Joe (Nick Robinson) is tired of his single dad (Offerman) stepping on his emerging game, so he runs off with neurotic wrestling pal Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and stereotypically “weirdo foreign” kid Biaggio (Moises Arias) to a patch of woods. There, from scrap, they build a cool-looking house that resembles a Carmel boho shack and attempt to live off the land, which means mostly buying chicken from a Boston Market across a freeway. Pipes are pummeled, swimming holes are swum, a pathetically wispy mustachio is cultivated — read: real burly stuff, until the rising tide of testosterone threatens to poison the woodland well. Vogt-Roberts certainly captures the humid sensuality and ripe potential of a Midwestern summer — though some of the details, like the supposedly wild rabbit that looks like it came straight from Petco, look a bit canned — and who can gripe when, say, Portlandia’s Kumail Nanjiani materializes to deliver monster wontons? You just accept it, though the effect of bouncing back and forth between the somewhat serious world of young men and the surprisingly playful world of adults, both equally unreal, grows jarring. The Kings of Summer isn’t quite the stuff of genius that marketing would have you believe, but it might give the “weirdo foreign” art house crowd and TV comedy addicts something they can both stand by. (1:33) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk5kkLNPg8g
Much Ado About Nothing Joss Whedon (last year’s The Avengers) shifts focus for a minute to stage an adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy, drawing his players from 15 years’ worth of awesome fantasy/horror/sci-fi TV and film projects. When the Spanish prince Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) pays a post-battle visit to the home of Leonato (Clark Gregg) with his officers Claudio (Fran Kranz) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof), Claudio falls for Leonato’s daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese), while Benedick falls to verbal blows with Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker). Preserving the original language of the play while setting his production in the age of the iPhone and the random hookup, Whedon makes clever, inventive use of the juxtaposition, teasing out fresh sources of visual comedy as well as bringing forward the play’s oddities and darker elements. These shadows fall on Beatrice and Benedick, whose sparring — before they succumb to a playfully devious setup at the hands of their friends — has an ugly, resentful heat to it, as well as on Hero and Claudio, whose filmy romance is unsettlingly easy for their enemies, the malevolent Don John (Sean Maher) and his cohorts, to sabotage. Some of Acker and Denisof’s broader clowning doesn’t offer enough comic payoff for the hammy energy expenditure, but Nathan Fillion, heading up local law enforcement as the constable Dogberry, delivers a gleeful depiction of blundering idiocy, and the film as a whole has a warm, approachable humor while lightly exposing “all’s well that ends well”’s wacky, dysfunctional side. (1:49) (Lynn Rapoport)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUyg78gSZ_A
1 Mile Above When his brother dies suddenly, sheltered Taiwanese student Shuhao takes possession of the older boy’s “riding diaries,” determined to complete his sibling’s dream of biking to the highest point in Tibet. It’d be a perilous journey even for an experienced cyclist — but Shuhao’s got gutsy determination that (almost) makes up for his wobbly wheels. Fortunately, nearly everyone he meets en route to Lhasa is a kind-hearted soul, including a food-obsessed fellow traveler who doles out advice on how to avoid government checkpoints, prevent “crotch trouble” (from all that riding), and woo women, among other topics. (The cruel weather, steep inclines, and hostile wild dogs he faces, however, aren’t as welcoming.) Jiayi Du’s based-on-true-events drama doesn’t innovate much on similar adventure tales — spoiler alert: it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts — but it admirably avoids melodrama for the most part, and the gorgeous location photography is something to behold. (1:29) Metreon. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2bVeqhzuSs
The Purge Writer-director James DeMonaco founds his dystopian-near-future tale on the possibly suspect premise that the United States could achieve one percent unemployment, heavily reduced crime rates, and a virtually carb-free society if only it were to sanction an annual night of national mayhem unconstrained by statutory law — up to and including those discouraging the act of homicide. Set in 2022, The Purge visits the household of home security salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), wife Mary (Lena Headey), and their children, Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane), as the annual festivities are about to begin, and the film keeps us trapped in the house with them for the next 12 hours of bloodletting sans emergency services. While they show zero interest in adding to the carnage, James and Mary seem to be largely on board with what a news commentator describes as “a lawful outlet for American rage,” not giving too much credence to detractors’ observations that the purge is a de facto culling of the underclass. Clearly, though, the whole family is about to learn a valuable lesson. It comes when Charlie, in an act of baseline humanity, draws the ire of a gang of purgers running around in bathrobes, prep school jackets, and creepy masks, led by a gleaming-eyed alpha-sociopath whom DeMonaco (whose other screenplay credits include 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13 remake) tasks with wielding the film’s blunt-object message alongside his semi-automatic weaponry. (1:25) Shattuck. (Lynn Rapoport)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMsH4kLoWCg
Shadow Dancer Watching the emotions flicker across the exquisitely smooth, pale plane of Andrea Riseborough’s face is one of the central pleasures of Shadow Dancer. Likely the surest step Madonna made in making 2011’s W.E. was choosing the actress as her Wallis Simpson — her features fall together with the sweet symmetry of a, well, Madonna, and even when words, or the script, fail her, the play of thoughts and feelings rippling across her brow can fill out a movie’s, or a character’s, failings admirably. The otherwise graceful, good-looking Shadow Dancer fumbles over a few in the course of resurrecting the Troubles tearing apart Belfast in the 1990s. After feeling responsible for the death of a younger brother who got caught in the crossfire, Collette (Riseborough) finds herself a single mom in league with the IRA. Caught after a scuttled bombing, the petite would-be terrorist is turned by Mac (Clive Owen) to become an informant for the MI5, though after getting quickly dragged into an attempted assassination, Collette appears to be way over her head and must be pulled out — something Mac’s boss (Gillian Anderson) won’t allow. Director James Marsh (2008’s Man on Wire) brings a keen attention to the machinations and tested loyalties among both the MI5 and IRA, an interest evident in his Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980 (2009), and even imbues otherwise blanked-out, non-picturesque sites like hotel suites and gray coastal walks with a stark beauty. Unfortunately the funereal pacing and gaps in plotting, however eased by the focus on Riseborough’s responses, send the mind into the shadows. (1:44) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zdQ_UL5vwg
Violet and Daisy The 1990s revival has already infiltrated fashion and music; Violet and Daisy, the directorial debut of Oscar-winning Precious (2009) screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, suggests that cinema may be next. Unfortunately, not enough time has passed since the first wave of Pulp Fiction (1994) knockoffs to make the genre feel particularly interesting again. And yet here comes a pair of assassins dressed as nuns, cracking long-winded jokes before unloading on their targets with guns they’ve concealed in pizza boxes … as an AM radio hit (“Angel of the Morning”) swells in the background, and Danny Trejo stops by for a cameo. At least this Tarantino-lite exploration of crime and daddy issues has an appealing cast; besides Trejo, Alexis Bledel (sporting Mia Wallace bangs) and Saoirse Ronan play the jailbait titular killers, and James Gandolfini pops in as a sad-sack who manages to evade their bullets because, like, he’s nice and stuff. Despite their efforts, the over-stylized Violet and Daisy comes off like a plate of leftovers reheated too long after the fact. (1:28) (Cheryl Eddy)
Wish You Were Here One of few bright spots in The Great Gatsby, Joel Edgerton returns in this Aussie import that doesn’t need to set off 3D glitter bombs to win over its audience — that’s the power of a well-acted, well-written thriller. Under the opening credits we witness married Sydney couple Dave and Alice (Edgerton and Felicity Price, who co-wrote the script with her husband, director Kieran Darcy-Smith), along with Alice’s sister Steph (Warm Bodies’ Teresa Palmer) and new beau Jeremy (Antony Starr), having a blast on their Southeast Asian escape: sampling exotic food, dancing all night, spotting an elephant wandering the streets … oh, and guzzling drinks and gobbling drugs. Next scene: Dave and Alice returning home to their two young children, tension in the air, vacation bliss completely erased. It seems Jeremy is missing, somewhere in remote Cambodia — and that’s not the only lingering fallout from this journey gone terribly awry. Flashbacks mix with present-day scenes, including the police inquiry into Jeremy’s disappearance, to flesh out what happened; the end result is a suspenseful, surprising, precisely-assembled tale that only reveals what it needs to as the minutes tick by. (1:33) (Cheryl Eddy)
As the story of the government data mining Verizon’s customers gains (and loses) momentum, the various responses (all predictable) are rolling out. “It’s Obama’s fault”, “Bush did it, too”, “I don’t care as long as it keeps me safe”, “they’re going after patriotic Americans”, blah. blah, blah. My favorite take on this is “well, I’ve done nothing wrong, so I don’t worry–if you haven’t done anything wrong, what are you worried about?”
If you haven’t broken the law or done anything to raise suspicion, then it’s Bobby McFerrin serenade time, right?
No shit?
See “Internment camps, Japanese-Americans, 1942”. Or perhaps “Screenwriters, Ball, Lucille, 1952”. Or “King, Martin Luther, 1962”. Or “National Committee, Democratic, 1972”.
Property seized, livelihood destroyed, assassination, election-rigging. And you’ll note that of the above, none of the subjects were “doing anything wrong”.
Don’t your ears get grimy with your head in the sand all damned day?
“Let’s see. I was a reporter for the AP in Washington. I’m a Verizon customer in America. Way to go, govt. You have my phone records covered.”
Ben Feller, writer, today.
“For an unpopular guy on his way out of his office, President Bush still has some juice.
When Bush signed a law Thursday to broaden the government’s eavesdropping power, he served notice of how much sway he still holds on matters of national security.
Why the difference on security?
Because protecting the country is, in fact, a different matter. The president commands the military in a time of war. He leads a nation that was infamously attacked — and no one has forgotten 9/11.
So going against him can mean being labeled as soft on terrorism or unsupportive of the troops. In an election year, try going to the voters with that around your neck”.
Ben Feller, same person, same subject, 2008.
Let me see if I fully get it: When it is we the peon public being eavesdropped upon, it is to “protect the country”. When it’s the press, it’s an outrage.
Right.
>>Read SFBG writer Rebecca Bowe’s coverage of the NSA scandal here and here.
After a contested organizing effort that raised questions about the tactics and resources being used by management at Larkin Street Youth Services, a nonprofit social service provider funded with government grants, the National Labor Relations Board today tallied the votes, which union sources say was 67-17 in favor of organizing.
That means the LSYS’s 92 employees will be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021. LSYS management was not immediately available for comment, but we’ll update this post when we hear back. SEIU Organizing Director Timothy Gonzales sent the following email to union members:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I am proud to announce another victory for workers: SEIU Local 1021 today welcomes 92 new members from Larkin Street Youth Services, a nonprofit that provides a variety of services to homeless youth in San Francisco, who won their Union today by an 80% margin in an NLRB election!
This was the third organizing attempt at LSYS, though staff turnover there is so high due to low pay and poor working conditions that few employees from the last effort in 2010 are still there. Our organizers did an excellent job at building and training a strong, empowered organizing committee that was able to reach out to their coworkers and build the majority support needed to win their Union. Despite considerable community and political pressure from our allies, the employer put up a fight and did not hesitate to attack SEIU, but these workers understood their conditions would not change until they had a Union and stayed united.
I would like to personally thank everyone who helped out on this campaign. Thanks especially to the Larkin Street team: coordinator Mila Thomas; lead organizer Peter Masiak; organizer Jonathan Nunez-Babb; lost-time member organizer Lacey Johnson from Progress Foundation; researcher Caitlin Prendiville; and communicator Jennifer Smith-Camejo. As always, we were helped out by the ROC and member activists under the leadership of Ramsés Téon Nichols, and by the political support of Alysabeth Alexander and Chris Daly. My sincere apologies to anyone whose name might have been left out here—your assistance was appreciated nonetheless!
This campaign is a testament to how strong workers can be, even in the face of intense employer opposition, when given the proper tools, training and motivation. I am sure you will join me in welcoming our 92 newest members to SEIU Local 1021!
As if a top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand telephone records over to the National Security Agency weren’t enough, the UK Guardian is now reporting that the federal government’s spying program extends to online communications, through a program granting the NSA “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants.” The program is called PRISM, and details about it were provided in yet another top secret document leaked to the British newspaper.
PRISM “allows them to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats,” according to the article.
According to an article in The Washington Post: “The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: ‘Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.'”
Interestingly enough, these new revelations are coming to light the same week that whistleblower Bradley Manning is standing trial for disclosing U.S. diplomatic cables and other classified government documents.
Admit it, there was a time when a Nine Inch Nails album was the hardest music in your CD collection. You slipped your Downward Spiral disc in to drown out — or perhaps embolden — the bitter angst seething within. That was likely in the 1990s and you got way more hardcore following elementary school.
More recent decades have not been as kind to Trent Reznor and Company, as a unit. (Although, Rezner has achieved solo success elsewhere, scoring little films like The Social Network and so forth.) But the band? It seemed to have lost its way. NIN’s most recent album was ’08 misfire, The Slip, appropriately titled.
But the band will tour this fall with Explosions in the Sky, and before that plays Outside Lands in SF; and now it all makes sense: NIN will release metal-grinding new full-length Hesitation Marks on Sept. 3.
As Stereogum precisely points out, the first single – “Came Back Haunted” – is “a ferocious return to the ‘classic’ NIN style.” Perhaps this ‘90s nostalgia thing will indeed play out a little longer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgwrxcO48N8
Reminder: Outside Lands is Aug. 9-11 in Golden Gate Park. Tickets are available here. Regular three-day passes are $249.
It’s always fun when things are so screwy in town that the leading conservative writer at the Chron starts to agree (even just a little) with the crazy commie at this blog.
Debra Saunders is unhappy with the way the Apple store is moving into Union Square. Not because she hates Apple; she’s a Republican who loves all business. Not because she wants to save the fountain or thinks the urban design is ugly; she’s all for new development.
The problem she has is the same problem so many of us have with Sean Parker’s wedding: The technoriche don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else:
But I think some locals object to the plan because Apple gets kid-glove treatment. Small business owners have to jump through many hoops to accommodate the Special City’s sensibilities – or else. There’s an ordinance, for example, that prohibits chain stores in certain neighborhoods. Yet when the high-tech money knocks, the door is wide open.
Yep. Small businesses don’t get special tax breaks out of the Mayor’s Office. Local merchants don’t get these kinds of special exemptions when they want to open or build something. (Try to open a nightclub in this town.)
When hi-tech money knocks, the door is wide open. And even the conservatives are getting sick of it.
Not even sure if “amazing” is a strong enough word, but the Castro Theatre is screening a pair of cool-ass movies on 35mm tonight. Frankly, I don’t think you have anything better to do, because there isn’t anything better than a WARREN OATES movie except maybe a WARREN OATES DOUBLE FEATURE.
Kicking things off at 7pm, it’s Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Oates plays a perpetually rumpled bartender whose determination to collect a huge bounty (the prize: see title) leads him into some mighty surreal adventures in Mexico’s sinister outback. Co-stars include Kris Kristofferson (in particularly kreepy mode).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPaUPU9xdgM
Next up, at 9:05pm, is the greatest road movie ever made, Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Oates plays G.T.O., which is what I’ll be naming my hypothetical third child. (My first kid, of course, would be called Warren Oates; the second would be Harry Dean Stanton. Obvi.) The Red Vic (RIP) used to show Two-Lane Blacktop all the time, so head out tonight, first to see a wonderful movie, but also to thank the Castro for filling the two-lane void.
Happy 80th birthday to the drive-in movie theater! We <3 you as much as Danny Zuko. And now that we’re on the subject — and not to be a total commercial or anything — but this promo deal from ZipCar hyping Dexter via drive-in actually looks like fair compensation for becoming part of a network television hype machine if you have a gore-oriented date on your hands.
The upshot: ZipCar will pay $50 worth of car credit for members to rent an auto, drive to a secret location, eat free snacks (if you’re there early), check out the season premiere of Dexter‘s last go-round, and Liev Schreiber’s new vehicle Ray Donovan, and try not to get bodily fluids all over your rental car. I’m sorry, but come on it’s a drive-in theater — what do they think people do there, watch the screen?
Of course, this isn’t the only chance you have to fog up the windows. WestWind Drive-Ins operates two drive-in theaters in the Bay Area, one in Concord and one in San Jose that has a thriving screening schedule of double features. They’ll run you a reasonable $7.25 per person in your ride, plus $1 for individuals under the age of 11 (free entry for the sub five-year-olds).
The San Jose Westwind. Photo by Yelp user Keith K.
Anyway, since the rental car company is pretty much paying for the June 26, we recommend reserving the ride with the largest back seat now.
