Government

God of monster

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At the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival — blissfully far from any rivers concealing flesh-eating aquatic life forms — I spoke (through a translator) with Bong Joon-ho, director and cowriter of The Host.

SFBG I’ve read that you make films you yourself want to see. Are you a fan of monster movies, and have you always been?

BONG JOON-HO I’m a fan of several monster films, but I was not necessarily fascinated exclusively by them. I admire John Carpenter’s The Thing and Steven Spielberg’s films — Jaws, for example — but they were not my sole interest.

SFBG The Host contextualizes its monster within a framework of social and political commentary. Was that something you planned from the beginning?

BJ I think it’s the tradition of this type of monster film to have political undertones. What’s interesting is that the first thing you see [in The Host] — an American researcher asking his [Korean assistant] to discard toxic chemicals — was based on a real story in [South] Korea. That incident gave me the idea for this film, because it actually happened and it had that political undertone. So it was very practical for me to start with that.

SFBG How do you think American audiences will view the film?

BJ It’s true that there’s a lot of satire against the American government, but I don’t think it’s as heavy as Fahrenheit 9/11! I worked with American artists [from San Francisco effects studio the Orphanage] while making this film, and when they read the script, they enjoyed it.

SFBG Can you talk a bit about the creature design and how it was working with the special-effects houses that contributed to The Host?

BJ The original design for the creature was by me and a Korean artist named Chin Wei-chen. New Zealand’s Weta Workshop made the model of the creature. Based on that model, the Orphanage created the computer graphics. There are 10 shots focusing on the head of the creature, and this head — it’s one-to-one scale — was created by John Cox Creature Workshop, located in Australia. So those 10 shots were the actual head of the creature, not computer graphics.

SFBG Both in close-up and at full-length, the monster’s appearance is impressive. But the ways in which the Korean and American governments react to its sudden appearance are almost more sinister than the creature itself.

BJ Definitely there is some kind of implication there, but the creature doesn’t necessarily represent the government of the United States. It’s everything combined: the social and political and the possible hardships that an ordinary family, like in the film, might suffer in daily life. The fact is, this family tries to save their daughter by fighting really hard against the creature. But society doesn’t support their efforts. What I tried to convey is the reality that in life individuals don’t get support from society.

SFBG For all its monstrous elements, The Host isn’t really a horror movie. There’s quite a bit of dark humor in the script.

BJ I wanted to add humorous elements, but it was not really intentional. It came out naturally. Like in my previous film Memories of Murder — which was based on an actual, really terrible serial-killing story — I managed [to include] some humorous elements. Combining the humor and fear, comedy and tragedy, that’s part of life. For me, that approach is more realistic than just focusing on one aspect.

SFBG What does the title The Host mean to you?

BJ The first meaning is the biological meaning — that the creature may be the host of a virus. If I expand the meaning of The Host, it also represents all of the evils of life — everything that suppresses the daily lives of ordinary people.

SFBG Will there be a sequel?

BJ I would be happy to see the sequels made, not necessarily by me but by other directors.

SFBG But no American remake, right? Promise?

BJ [Laughs.] I’d like to remain the original creator of The Host. (Cheryl Eddy)

Making Lemonade of the Chron’s Lemon

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By Sarah Phelan

It’s hard to stay in the public eye when you’re stuck in jail and denied in-person and on-camera interviews, as freelance journalist Josh Wolf has been for the over six months. So, I have to give it to Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders for reminding everyone of Josh Wolf’s plight, even if what I really have to give Saunders is a Lemon Award.

Saunders tries to spin Wolf’s case with the old smear that Wolf isn’t really a journalist. It’s a spin that began in the SFPD and the US Attorney General’s Office, as the Bay Guardian discovered months ago, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The minute Wolf sold his footage to KRON-TV, his work qualified as news. And journalism is about gathering and spreading the news, not sitting in a corporate headquarters and drawing a pay check to write spin.

Saunders also tries to smear Wolf by belittling his efforts to tell stories compared to those of “real journalists, such as the Chronicle’s Lance Williams and Mark Fairanu-Wada.” If Saunders is going to refer to the whole “confidentiality source agreement” business, then maybe she should remind readers of the whole sordid story behind that affair.

Next, she tries to smears Wolf case by accusing the Board of Supervisors of not having done everything they could to find out who attacked Officer Peter Shields, who was out of work for a year after his skull was fractured during the protest that Wolf filmed. Too bad, she didn’t figure out that
investigators have federalized the case on bogus grounds: there was no arson of a police car, just a broken taillight. But, hey, how else were they gonna get around California’s reporter shield laws. (Other than by claiming that Wolf wasn’t a journalist.)

Finally, Saunders tries to smear Wolf with a bait and switch: apparently, this isn’t about an attack on a cop. It’s about an attack on a gay man. Last time, we checked, Wolf did not attack any cops, straight or gay. Nor did he film the attack in question. What he did film was the other officer beating up an anarchist. But who cares about the truth when you’re busy spinning?

The only thing that seems to concern Saunders about Wolf being caged is that it’s costing tax payers dollars. Yeah. Along with trying to turn Wolf into an investigative tool of the government and chill dissent in the process. But who cares about free speech?

So, thanks, Saunders, for reminding us about Wolf. Enjoy the lemonade.

A little help from their friends

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The San Francisco Chronicle’s intrepid reporters have insisted repeatedly in recent weeks that the Delancey Street Foundation accepts absolutely no government funds. “Instead, it relies on donations and the profits from its commercial enterprises,” San Francisco’s paper of record wrote on Feb. 6.

A simple search of the city’s vendor database, however, confirms that several local agencies in San Francisco paid Delancey Street amounts totaling well over $1 million for the last two fiscal years alone. The Department of Children, Youth & Their Families gave Delancey Street $98,000 in program grants for each of the last two fiscal years and by the end of 2007 will have given the nonprofit more than $300,000.

And the mayor’s office gave Delancey Street $435,000 in fiscal year 2006 and $483,000 in 2005, the records show.

The city has paid the foundation more than $200,000 so far this year, and there’s another $64,000 in outstanding payments. The Guardian obtained copies of the grant agreements through sunshine requests made last week.

Mayor Newsom is receiving “counseling” for a self-diagnosed excessive love of white wine from Delancey Street’s politically well-connected executive director, Mimi Silbert, who has known Newsom and his family for years.

The foundation’s easily accessible federal tax forms reflect the hundreds of thousands in annual government dollars paid to Delancey Street.

After local blogger Michael Petrelis began contesting the claims, a Chronicle reporter clarified for Petrelis following a call to Silbert that grant money from the city supports a charter school on Treasure Island called the Life Learning Academy. The academy is managed by Delancey Street and targets troublesome teens – half of them on probation – who have had problems elsewhere in the school district. Silbert told us that the school was designed in part to emulate Delancey Street by operating businesses like its organic produce subscription service and bike maintenance shop.

She said, as Delancey Street has for years, that program residents living at the nonprofit’s Embarcadero Street headquarters depend on one another to keep the place operating through its variety of undertakings.

“We structured it without a staff and without day-to-day funding so that people could help each other,” Silbert said. “And it’s in the helping of each other that you begin to find your strength. And since they run the organization and go from department to department to department, they eventually find what they are good at.”

But there’s more. According to Delancey Street’s tax forms and deed records maintained by the county recorder, the Mayor’s Office of Housing facilitated a $4 million loan for Delancey Street in 1989 using city money to help with the construction of its sprawling residential and commercial center on the Embarcadero, which cost $20 million to build, not including donated labor. As long as Delancey Street complied with a series of terms, the loan, plus interest, would be forgiven after 20 years. Free government money, in other words.

The city’s mayor at that time was Art Agnos. Delancey Street leveraged $18 million more through the private sector to cover the rest of its construction costs for the Embarcadero Triangle Project, according to its tax forms.

They did so using a cash-generating scheme known as a “leaseback” agreement. A third party purchased the property for $18.7 million paid to Delancey Street and also covered the expense of the $4 million loan made by the city. The whole transaction took place only on paper, and in exchange, the third party got to take advantage of the property’s low-income housing tax credits by technically owning 600 Embarcadero St. while the nonprofit continued to operate Delancey Street at the location.

Silbert wields far-reaching connections inside the Democratic Party and among moneyed philanthropists including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen Dianne Feinstein and even Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair. When Silbert announced plans to expand nationally, Delancey Street’s longtime supporter, Feinstein, vowed to secure a $1 million grant from the U.S. Justice Department to help in the effort, according to a 2002 LA Times profile of the organization.

The foundation is headquartered in a burnt umber stucco building on Embarcadero Street fringed with decorative iron gates and planters beneath French-style windows. Overlaying the property is a grid of sun-baked courtyards. Its design complies neatly with the principles of New Urbanism encouraged in the northeastern neighborhood with a walkable row of ground-floor businesses and densely packed dwellings. According to lore, it was built entirely by residents of Delancey Street.

If you didn’t know it was a treatment center, frankly, you’d mistake it for another of the innumerable yuppie enclaves that have sprouted in the neighborhood over the last two decades.

Five hundred residents live on site and conduct all of the program’s day-to-day operations as part of their commitment to an intensive two-year program. They provide labor for several Delancey Street businesses that buoy the nonprofit, from its famous Delancey Street Restaurant to a national moving and trucking service.

Leaseback agreements, such as the one entered into by Delancey Street to build its hub on the Embarcadero, are a common financing mechanism for low-income housing construction. But the forgivable loan from the city shows that a little sleuthing on the part of reporters would have gone a long way in confirming the extent of the nonprofit’s professed independence

San Francisco’s erupting skyline

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San Francisco has always been a city defined by its hills and the bay. Our city has an image and character in its urban pattern that depend especially on views, topography, streets, building form, and major landscaping.

The bay is a focus of major views. Hills allow the city to be seen and, more than any other feature, produce a variety that is characteristic of San Francisco. This pattern — a visual relationship to hills and the bay — gives the city “an image, a sense of purpose,” according to the 1971 Urban Design Plan.

Since then it has been official city policy to recognize and protect this relationship.

In the last four years, Rincon Hill developers negotiated with two planning directors — Gerald Green and Dean Macris — to allow towers up to 550 feet tall between Folsom Street and the Bay Bridge. Nine have already been approved. Two under construction are already visible on the skyline. More are on their way. The Rincon Hill towers will be higher than the top of the bridge towers. Views of the bridge towers from Dolores Park, upper Market Street, and Twin Peaks are literally being eliminated.

The remnants of the Urban Design Plan are in tatters because developers and planning staff want to eviscerate height limits south of Market to create an artificial hill of residential towers up to 100 stories tall from Market to the bridge approach. Their avowed rationale is to develop a transit terminal at First and Mission streets — a terminal with a multibillion-dollar funding shortfall.

And all of this is happening under the political radar.

When staffers made their one and only presentation to the Planning Commission about this new mega-high-rise district, the meeting was not broadcast or even filmed. And this was for a presentation that depended on visuals.

Who will live in these towers? Empty nesters who can afford multimillion condos and people with multiple homes around the country and world.

The Planning Department claims these will be vital new neighborhoods. But they won’t be for families with children or government employees or hospitality industry workers or artists. They won’t be for people working in San Francisco who are trapped in a daily two-hour commute because housing costs are out of sight. They won’t be for the people working in San Francisco who are most in need of moderately priced housing.

There won’t be a single new housing unit for low- or moderate-income people in the new Rincon Hill. Every single developer opted to not build on-site affordable units.

What happens when people crossing the Bay Bridge can no longer see the hills in the center of the city? When people in the city face a wall of buildings so high even the Bay Bridge towers can’t be seen?

Entrances — such as the Bay Bridge — are important for a sense of orientation to the city. Blocking street views of the bay, distant hills, or other parts of the city can destroy an important characteristic of the unique setting and quality of the city.

Since the Gold Rush, people have come to San Francisco to make their fortunes. There is constant tension between those who want to make money off our city and those who want to live in the city.

San Francisco tore down the Embarcadero because it cut the city off from the bay. Now we are erecting another, much higher barrier. To the barricades!

Sue Hestor

Sue Hestor is a lawyer and activist specializing in land use and environmental issues.

SF Weekly’s bizarre source

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By Tim Redmond

Whoa.
I just read Ron Russell’s big story in the SF Weekly about former Police Chief Earl Sanders, and I’m a bit dumfounded.
The gist of the story is that Sanders – the city’s first black police chief and the author of a a new book on the Zebra killings – trumped up his record as a civil-rights leader in the department and glossed over some real problems in his tenure as a homicide cop. That may be true; I haven’t read the book, although I know that Sanders was involved in a frame-up that sent two innocent young men to prison. (I know that because A.C. Thompson, who now writes for the Weekly, wrote about it for the Guardian – a fact conveniently left out of Russell’s story.)
But what left me reeling was Russell’s use of a source named Louis Calabro.
In the story, Calabro is portrayed as an entirely credible former cop whose comments about Sanders are worth legitimate consideration. He’s quoted numerous times. High up in the piece, he’s described as the emcee of a memorial for victims of the notorious Zebra killings and as “one of Earl Sanders’ staunchest critics [who] heads the European American Issues Forum, a group whose proclaimed mission is to promote the rights of persons of “European American” heritage.”
Actually, there’s a bit more to the story.
It’s not hard to learn about Calabro’s organization and his background. You can Google him and it comes up pretty quickly. This is a guy whose website eaif.org, has headlines like“Why the World Hates Jews Part 1” and “Why Do So Many People Hate Jews? He tried to trademark the term “white pride country wide” (the government demurred).
He has gone off on a tear, over and over again, against groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which provide anti-hate-speech materials to schools.
Calabro came by the Guardian office once to complain that I wouldn’t run his letters, and he tried to convince us that the real story about World War Two was the internment of German-Americans.
Calabro insists that his group is not racist and that it doesn’t condone negative comments about any racial group. And while the white-nationalist people at Stormfront post his stuff, some of the denizens there don’t particularly like him. In fact, he (properly) calls the hard-core white power people out for being racists.
Still, this is not a man who has any credibility whatsoever when it comes to criticizing the conduct of an African American cop in a complex racially charged murder case.
When I asked Russell about it, he emailed me and said: “Of course I know who he is. The story makes it abundantly clear where Mr. Calabro is coming from. I fail to see why you think quoting him was inappropriate.”
Well: I don’t think I’ve ever seen another credible media outlet refer to Calabro as anything other than someone whose opinions on race are well outside the mainstream of acceptability in a multicultural society.
Oops. I suspect that over at the Weekly, they’re having what we call the Big Cringe.

Worth a shot

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Sam Small (Jud Williford) is an unemployed man in a fraying bathrobe with a limp Jimmy Dean sausage in his pocket, living off the bacon brought (literally snuck) home by his wife, Mary (Beth Wilmurt), a waitress. Sam’s situation, aggravated by his well-thumbed copy of Hamlet, has led him to contemplate suicide.

Albert (Marty Pistone) — right across the hall from Sam and Mary’s apartment 86 in number 69 — is sympathetic. He’s on the rebound from a dot-bomb himself (not to mention a dead wife) but is rebuilding his future by recycling the detritus of a lavish consumer society on eBay and shooting Web-ready video with a well-worn vixen named Margaret (Denise Balthrop Cassidy). Joblessness need be no impediment, Albert proclaims. "Nobody has to hire you, Sam. It’s the 21st century!"

And then the brainstorm: Albert’s entrepreneurial instincts latch on to Sam’s suicidal tendencies to conjure a Web-based raffle for the right to Sam’s martyrdom. Soon various people-cum-causes come calling, and Sam and Mary’s fortunes are on the rise. This is the story of American Suicide, presented by Z Plays and the Encore Theatre Company.

It is also the story of American can-do despair in its most contemporary form: breathing the Internet ether of a post-postindustrial economy and the giddy dreams of the self-unemployed. That the play feels so effortlessly precise makes one appreciate even more the achievement of writer-director Mark Jackson, whose brilliantly staged adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide turns the Soviet playwright’s banned 1929 tragifarce into a piercingly funny satire on the American way of death.

For every individual fantasy in this country rests on the bones of some victim or other. In this case, it’s Sam, the classic American little guy, whose iconic aspects Williford expertly underscores to comic but also telling effect with a Depression-era clip to his speech. Sam’s gotta die, or no dice. But the deal is so sweet even he gets caught up in it.

Our hapless hero even finds himself pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming an actor (lifelong — ay, there’s the rub), which pitches him into the middle of another squalid little tale of diminished lives and desperate schemes. This one involves a washed-up film director (Michael Patrick Gaffney) and a 22-year-old Norma Desmond named Chloe Banks (Jody Flader), who’s bent on a comeback via a torrid suicide note from a leading man–slash–lover. Both are played, like all the characters in American Suicide, as delightfully precise caricatures by a very fine cast. This includes Delia MacDougall, whose larger-than-life turn as major thespian Gigi Bolt, a representative of the embattled American theater living down the street from Sam’s apartment building in her car, effortlessly projects to the back rows and back several times over.

The histrionic theme is one of the more self-referential of Jackson’s many original contributions to Erdman’s story line, and he clearly has fun with it. So bright is the suicide scheme’s promise to all involved that not even the scandal-starved Chloe’s willful intrusion into the conjugal poverty of Sam and Mary’s water-stained studio apartment (a principle component of James Faerron’s slick and versatile set design) throws a wrench into the works. Indeed, the hard-bitten note in Mary’s natural sweetness at the outset of the play drops away completely by the time worldly fortune and a life of leisure appear on the horizon. Wilmurt’s excellent and endearing play on the supportive wifey adopts something of the wide-eyed, guileless, endlessly grateful manner of a game show contestant.

Liam Vincent rounds out the terrific cast in the roles of two mysterious men who together push the play’s social critique a notch higher, or lower, into the realm of politics and an ever-encroaching state power.

The issue of martyrdom naturally calls forth from among the other eager suicide opportunists a certain bearded fellow (played with wonderfully dignified comic assurance by Vincent) in Middle Eastern garb. Jackson eschews cheap shots here, instead going for the jugular with some of the play’s funniest dialogue as Sam’s political ignorance (a classic American virtue never too far from an equally classic rapaciousness) before the jihadist prompts the latter to narrate a kind of preschool allegory of anti-imperialism — a story later used for cross-purposes by a shadowy government trench coat (Vincent again) who’d like to use Sam to do something about the dearth of Americans willing to die for ideas. *

AMERICAN SUICIDE

Through March 11

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m.; $25–$30

Thick House

1695 18th St., SF

(415) 437-6775

www.zspace.org

>

As the port turns

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› news@sfbg.com

Another setback to the Port of San Francisco’s plan to allow development of Piers 27–31 has brought about a new round of soul-searching at the beleaguered agency, as well as calls to change what may be allowed along the waterfront.

Last month the port’s latest private development partner, Shorenstein Properties, withdrew its plan for a mixed-use facility that relied on large amounts of office space to recoup the cost of renovating the dilapidated piers. The State Lands Commission, which watchdogs new waterfront construction for adequate maritime and public recreation uses, signaled in November 2006 that it would not support the office-heavy design. The port’s previous development partner, Mills Corp., pulled out last March after half a decade of public Sturm und Drang over its plan for a shoreside mall.

For years the Port Commission has looked to Piers 27–31 as a magic bullet for its financial woes. The port receives relatively little money from actual port operations, and as an enterprise fund department, it receives no subsidies from the city’s General Fund. Moreover, when the state transferred jurisdiction to the agency by way of the 1968 Burton Act, it handed down a good deal of debt and deferred maintenance.

Estimates now put the cost of fixing the port’s crumbling piers and properties at around $1.4 billion, with the vast majority of those costs not yet funded. With construction costs rising between 8 and 10 percent every year, port and city officials are starting to realize that even if Shorenstein’s plan eventually makes it through the gauntlet of government agencies and public oversight, the one-time infusion of cash it would provide would not be enough.

"It is a pretty dire situation," the port’s executive director, Monique Moyer, said at a Feb. 13 commission meeting. "And we do need all hands on deck" to try to solve the problem.

Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, whose district includes Piers 27–31, has answered Moyer’s call. In the last several weeks, he has floated two new ideas that could have a wide-ranging impact on the 7 1/2 miles of shoreline under port control. As reported in the San Francisco Business Times, Peskin told a Hotel Council luncheon on Jan. 17 that he and Moyer have been discussing hotel development on the city’s piers, something Proposition H, passed by voters in 1990, currently prohibits.

Peskin told the Guardian his hotel concept is in the very early stages and stems from the fact that the State Lands Commission considers hotels to be allowable uses of waterfront property. He stressed that the proposal, which would require a new ballot initiative, is "not by any means a wholesale abandonment of Prop. H." It would instead seek to designate certain piers for hotels after consulting with neighborhood groups and other stakeholders.

"The question is are we willing to have a couple [or] three of them in the right places? That’s it," Peskin said, voicing his opinion that the "right places" would probably fit somewhere between South Beach and Pier 27. "Fisherman’s Wharf does not need any new hotels."

Peskin’s second idea involves replacing much of Shorenstein’s proposed office space at Pier 27 with a year-round cruise ship terminal. For years the port had a public-private partnership similar to the one with Shorenstein to build a new terminal at Piers 30 and 32. But its development partner, the Australian firm Lend Lease Corp., backed out of the deal last year. Shorenstein officials did not answer numerous requests for comment, but Peskin told us the company has expressed some interest to him in going forward with a cruise terminal design.

Not surprisingly, hotel industry representatives enthusiastically backed Peskin’s plan to revisit Prop. H. Hotel consultant Rick Swig highlighted the benefits of letting hotel developers rehab the waterfront. Any new hotels would be "built with somebody else’s money," he reasoned, "and generate tax fund money which goes to the General Fund of the city of San Francisco."

Others weren’t so excited. John Rizzo of the Bay Area chapter of the Sierra Club lamented the port’s reliance on private development as a means of solving its problems.

"There’s this massive infrastructure [problem], and the city [is telling] the port that you have to go out and find money with the resources you have, and what can they do? The resource they have is the waterfront, and the only thing they can do is develop it," he told us.

Rizzo called for the port to "be freed from [the] financial restrictions" of its enterprise agency status in order to preserve valuable open space from development. "We’re forcing [the port] to take this waterfront and put big buildings on it, and that’s not really what we want."

Jon Golinger of Citizens to Save the Waterfront, one of the groups that actively opposed the Mills Corp. mall, also cited problems with the port’s reliance on development. The infrastructure crisis, he told us, is "a bigger problem, and we can’t develop our way out of it alone. Certainly one project at a time is not working for the port or the community."

Neither Rizzo nor Golinger will comment on Peskin’s ideas until their groups have studied them. But Golinger did say, "Any big ideas like hotels need to be part of a much bigger solution." For example, he cited the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, which receives funding from a dedicated half-cent city sales tax. He added that other port agencies are partially subsidized by public money, such as the Port of Portland in Oregon.

Port officials seem to be coming to grips with the magnitude of their predicament and the failure of their reliance on private development. The conclusion to the latest update on the port’s 10-Year Capital Plan puts it bluntly: "The Port’s private/public partnership development model is broken."

At the Feb. 13 commission meeting, port staff proposed several new methods for finding cash, including tapping into future city Recreation and Park Department general obligation bonds. Moyer told the commissioners that such an arrangement would be a "paradigm shift" in the way the port funds projects, not only because it would use the city’s bond money, but also because the agency does not want to reimburse the General Fund, as it has been obligated to do since its inception.

One thing all parties agree on is something must be done. As Peskin told us, "The fact of the matter is, if we do nothing, we’re going to lose a lot of these resources." *

Sink or swim

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› sarah@sfbg.com


Click to view the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission subsidence map (PDF)

Will rising seas destroy San Francisco’s sewers? Should condos South of Market be on stilts? Could the huge Coca-Cola bottle at the Giants’ ballpark one day bubble with seawater? Can anyone explain why San Francisco still doesn’t have flood insurance?

As temperatures rise, snow packs vanish, and sea levels surge, San Francisco is waking up to its own inconvenient truth: surrounded on three sides by water, paved with concrete throughout, and erecting condo towers faster than you can say "bamboo," the city by the bay is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

With a recent California Climate Change Center report predicting sea levels will rise between four inches and three feet by 2100, San Francisco can expect increased flooding and damage to vital infrastructure and the destruction of fragile ecosystems and low-lying neighborhoods.

The evidence of impending doom is already there.

Addressing a climate change summit last month, Tom Franza, assistant general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, revealed that seawater already tops the city’s weirs for about an hour during very high tides. Franza expects this salt water intrusion, which threatens to kill helpful microbes that digest our solid waste, to get worse as sea levels continue to rise.

So what steps is the city taking to combat climate change?

The SFPUC is already building safety valves on floodgates and pushing for environmentally friendly development toward a future where green roofs, grassy swales, and permeable sidewalks will help stop rainwater from inundating already stressed sewers. It’s also working with the Departments of Planning and Public Works to map blocks and lots that are already sinking — known officially as subsidence — and therefore especially vulnerable to flooding from rising seas.

It comes as a shock to learn that the Planning Department doesn’t already have maps of areas that are prone to floods, but zoning administrator Larry Badiner told the Guardian, "In the past, floods were related to free-running streams, and since there aren’t any in San Francisco anymore, it wasn’t an issue."

Senior planner Craig Nikitas did confirm for us that city planners are working with the SFPUC and the DPW to flag blocks and lots prone to sinking, a phenomenon associated with rising seas that city officials don’t quite understand.

"If I had to guess, I’d say [they’re sinking] because most are on sandy soils or fill and over time there’s been a settling of sand or because of subterranean flooding," Nikitas said.

As the city’s subsidence map shows, the problem is biggest in SoMa and along the bay — where concrete-intense development is on the rise.

In the future, Nikitas told us, "If a developer comes in to do something in those areas, the system will flag it, and builders should pay extra attention to drainage and elevation, using raised entrances three steps up from the street and trench drains and installing sump pumps if there’s a subterranean garage."

As small a step as subsidence mapping sounds, it’s a sea change for city planners. SFPUC principal engineer Jon Loiacono recalls how in the past he was trained to say, "If flooding happens on your property, it’s your problem."

Loiacono remembers only one instance when the SFPUC built a pump station in response to a developer’s concerns. That was almost a decade ago.

Advising developers about the perils of building in flood-prone areas sounds obvious, but with that step comes responsibility that threatens to drown the city fiscally. Asked who’ll pay for flood damage, Loiacono pointed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"FEMA is currently mapping San Francisco, but the city would have to join FEMA’s flood insurance program to get coverage," Loiacono said.

Surprised that the city doesn’t already belong, the Guardian called FEMA’s Oakland-based spokesperson, Frank Mansell, who revealed San Francisco is the only city in the Bay Area that isn’t part of FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Participating in the FEMA mapping program would allow residents to qualify for federally subsidized flood insurance and get rebuilding grants after a disaster. FEMA’s Henry Chau says San Francisco will have to raise its standards "slightly higher" to join the agency’s flood insurance program.

Noting that FEMA’s San Francisco map is due this summer and includes development that lies in the city’s floodplains — development FEMA strongly discourages — Mansell said he doesn’t know why San Francisco doesn’t belong. But he does know cities that do must build to code and enact ordinances to ensure people aren’t living in flood zones. He said cities that do build in flood zones must take preventive steps such as raising buildings.

"If cities don’t comply with FEMA’s requirements, they’re put on notice and could be removed from the flood insurance program," Mansell said, adding that disasters such as Hurricane Katrina illustrate why private brokers won’t sell flood insurance.

But as FEMA digitizes and puts its maps online and predicts that 92 percent of US residents will belong to the NFIP by 2010, not everyone is singing its praises. San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission executive director Will Travis faults FEMA’s flood maps for not factoring in climate change.

"Instead, FEMA looks to the past to determine floodplains. As a result, their maps are inadequate and show less inundation than is already occurring," Travis told us. The BCDC just released maps that show a two-meter sea level rise in the bay that would put the San Francisco and Oakland airports and the Giants stadium underwater.

"But we won’t allow the Giants’ ballpark to flood, SFO to be underwater, and San Francisco to become Venice," Travis said. "Instead, sea walls and levees will be built. It’ll require more investment in infrastructure and shoreline protections. The point of the maps is to show people what could happen and get them to take action. Sea level rise doesn’t belong in the realms of science fiction. It’s happening now."

With the California Climate Change Center reporting a seven-inch rise in the bay since 1900 — and the feds refusing to address the role of carbon emissions in climate change — Travis predicted that insurance companies will have the biggest impact in land use planning.

"There’s always an effort to shift costs from the private to the public sector, and from there, from the local to the state to the federal government," Travis told us. "But insurance companies are looking at potential huge losses and won’t be offering policies at all, or offering them at very high prices."

Mansell defended FEMA’s flood maps, arguing that they’re used primarily for insurance and so can’t be used for forecasting.

"We look at existing data," Mansell said. "Otherwise everyone’s premiums would be unpredictable and probably high. FEMA does encourage communities to build to the highest standard, which means the 100-year flood event that has a 1 percent chance of occurring. And FEMA doesn’t conduct the studies. The Army Corps of Engineers does."

Army Corps spokesperson Maria Or confirmed that her agency collects data at different times of the year — data showing the climate has been changing and helping forecast what those changes will mean.

"But we can’t base maps on pure speculation," Or told us. "We continuously look at new data and reanalyze the situation based on that new information. The more relevant question is how often a FEMA map is updated."

Mansell said it takes FEMA one to two years to create a flood map, using computer models, precipitation and tidal patterns, rivers and stream flows — and tracking how much concrete is laid down in an area and how much is built in a floodplain.

"Areas are mapped and remapped and show three levels of risk — low, moderate, and high risk," he said. Based on these ratings, FEMA reviews flood insurance premiums once a year.

But with FEMA the main hope of covering sea rise–related flood damage, experts such as Dr. Peter Gleick of the Oakland-based Pacific Research Institute join the BCDC’s Travis in accusing FEMA of having "failed miserably in integrating climate change into its planning."

"BCDC included climate change in their maps. FEMA did not. Why aren’t there flood maps everywhere around the country that integrate climate change?" asked Gleick, who produced a map 17 years ago showing the impact of a one-meter sea level rise on the bay.

"It’s a little depressing to have been working for two decades on this," Gleick conceded. "I’m glad people are starting to pay more attention and accept that sea level is going up, because the impacts will depend on how we react and how quickly, but we’re decades too late to prevent bad things from happening."

Outraged by President George W. Bush’s we-can’t-afford-to-unilaterally-cut-greenhouse-gases argument, Gleick said, "They’re putting short-term economic gain ahead of long-term survival." But he praised California for establishing a cap to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

In light of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that suggests a 10- to 20-foot sea level increase in the next 1,000 years, Gleick observed, "That means hundreds and millions of people will be potential refugees. So we better reduce our greenhouse gases starting now. We can’t prevent some change, but we hope to prevent disastrous sea level change."

Gleick said he’s worried that we won’t protect low-income areas or move fast enough to prevent damage, a shortcoming that will also have devastating environmental impacts.

"Marshes and wetlands have no place to retreat, since the areas around them are already built up," he explained. "Bay Area communities should make parks, bay and coastal trails, and wetlands bigger, so they’ll have greater protection 50 years from now. And if you’re developing a building that’s supposed to last for 50 years, you need to design it now for the changes that are to come." *

Why people get mad at the media (part ll) Why won’t the New York Times/Santa Rosa Press Democrat run the Project Censored stories when it continues to use anonymous sources to push the Bush line that Iran is providing “lethal support:” to Iraq Shiites?

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

As attentive Bruce blog readers recall, I raised the issue in previous blogs why the New York Times and its sister paper in Santa Rosa (the Press Democrat) has for 30 years refused to run the local Project Censored story from the local Sonoma State University.

I pointed out that the issue was particularly timely because on Sept. l0, 2003, while the Times and the PD and affiliated papers were running the disgraced Judith Miller’s stories making the case for the Iraq War and then seeking to justify it, the Guardian published the annual Project Censored list of censored, or underreporterd stories in the mainstream press. I further pointed out that our front page had a caricature of Bush, standing astride the globe holding a U.S. flag with a dollar sign, and a headline that read, “The neocon plan for global domination–and nine other big stories the mainstream press refused to cover in 2002.”

And I noted that our introduction to the timely censored package made the critical point: “If there’s one influence that has shaped world-wide politics over the past year, it’s the extent to which the Bush administration has exploited the events of Sept. ll, 200l, to solidify its military and economic control of the world at the expense of democracy, true justice, and the environment. But President George W. Bush hasn’t simply been responding to world events. The agenda the administration has followed fits perfectly with a clearly defined plan that’s been place for a decade.”

I noted that the neocon story, and the many other such stories that Project Censored put out during the war years and again this year, laying out the dark side of the Bush administration and the drumbeat to war in Iraq, got no play in the Times or the nearby PD and very little play in the rest of the mainstream media that helped Bush march us into war–and now is keeping us there.

Not once, in all of the past three decades, has the Times nor the PD run the Project Censored story nor explained why. And they refused to respond to my repeated questions on this point.

That was the backdrop for the Feb. l0 Times lead story, :”Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says.”
I was astounded when I read the story because it made the most serious and incendiary charges without once naming a source by name. Fair, the media group for fair and accuracy in reporting, said in a Feb. l6 report that
“In the wake of its disastrous pre-war reporting on Iraq, the New York Times implemented new rules governing its use of unnamed sources. Its lead story on Feb. l0, promoting Bush administration charges against Iran, violated those rules.”

Fair said that reporter Michael Gordon cited a “one-sided array of anonymous sources charging the Iranian government with providing a particularly deadly variety of roadside bomb to Shia militias in Iraq: ‘The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.'” Fair goes on, and even quotes Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine, as saying that Gordon “aimed to quiet the skeptics, cited only the following sources: ‘American officials’…’one military official’…military officials’…’American officials’…American military officicials.,'”

FAir also made the critical point about the similarity between current times reporting hyping the Iran threat and the paper’s “credulous” prewar Iran reporting are not coincidental. Gordon, Fair pointed out, was the co-author, along with Miller, of two of six stories singled oiut in the paper’s May 26 2004 apology for faulty Iraq reporting, including the Times story that falsely touted the now-famous “aluminum tubes” as components of an Iraqi nuclar weapons program.

The critical questions: why in the hell, after all that has gone down on Iraq and Times reporting, has the Times violated its own rules on anonymous sources without explanation and without apology?
I have often wondered through the years how Guardian could be right on Vietnam and right on Iraq, without any hotshot sources or intelligence reports, and the New York Times and other mainstream media were so wrong for so long and are still wrong (we can’t pull out now, chaos will occur, Iran is the problem, etc.) Every time I read stories like these, I know why.

For starters, if I were responsible for Times coverage, I would tell my reporters to refuse to attend a “press conference” or “press briefing” mandating anonymity. Instead, I would tell them to stay away and to interview the reporters and principals later and do a full story with full identification and make the critical Project Censored type points. Or do a Fair type critique after the fact. So what if you miss yet another self-immolating Iraq weapons story. If I ran an alternative paper in Washington, D.C., I would cover all those anonymous briefings and press conferences by not going and then reporting on who did go, who wrote what, what it added up to, and then put it in the context of non-embedded and non -mission accomplished reporting. I would concentrate on the stories the Times/PD and other mainstream press censored.

Fair’s concluding point: In his original February l0 report, Gordon wrote, “‘Administration officials said they recognized that intelligence failures related to prewar American claims about Iraq’s weapons arsenal could make critics skeptical about the American claims. While ‘critics’ are surely skeptical, shouldn’t reporters for the New York Times, given their recent record on similar matters, be even more so?”

Further questions: shouldn’t the Times/PD, given its wartime record, publish the Project Censored story and its prescient group of stories that happened to be largely on target year after year? Shouldn’t the Times/PD explain to the Censored director and to the Guardian why it refuses to do so? Repeating: neither the project directors (founder Carl Jensen, current director Peter Phillips) have ever been given a reason and I cannot get one either.

Fair recommends action: contact Times public editor Byron Calame and urge him to look into why the paper’s rules about anonymity are not applied to Michael Gordon–especially considering how Gordon’s pre-Iraq War reporting embarrassed the Times. And: from the Guardian and me: ask Calame, as I have in vain, why the Times/PD won’t run Project Censored and won’t say why?

New York Times: Byron Calame, public editor, public@nytimes.com, phone: (2l2) 556-7652. Good luck, let me know what happens. B3

Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story.

Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times: still no answers on why…

Bruce B3: The new media offensive for the Iraq War. Why the Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times…

The benefits of fiber

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Amsterdam is building a citywide fiber-to-the-premises system. So are Hong Kong, Milan, and Zurich. If San Francisco follows suit, it would be making a far-sighted, multifaceted investment: FTTP would boost our economy, attracting software companies, video production houses, and digital media shops. It would enhance public health, allowing surgeons to review the same materials from different locations. Municipal fiber would improve public safety, facilitating the mirroring and backup of vital data at remote, earthquake-safe locations. It would enable unlimited and open communications — breaking ongoing communication monopolies — and save buckets of cash within a couple of decades.

These futuristic findings are laid out in the fiber feasibility report Sup. Tom Ammiano commissioned two years ago, but the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services didn’t green-light it until last fall. As a result of this delay, the city’s Maryland-based consultant, Columbia Telecommunications Corp. (CTC), couldn’t complete its fiber study until after Mayor Gavin Newsom said he’d struck a wi-fi deal with the Google-EarthLink partnership that still requires the Board of Supervisors’ approval.

Newsom’s plan was threatened even before his recent scandals. City budget analyst Harvey Rose’s report on municipal wi-fi offered a scathing assessment of the Google-EarthLink deal. Board members will now weigh the two new reports — and the opinions of a growing number of critics of the deal — before deciding on the mayor’s wi-fi proposal.

"So far I have more questions than answers," Sup. Aaron Peskin said of trying to digest the budget analyst’s report. "Questions about free service and quality of service. Questions about the environmental and aesthetic impacts of installing antennas citywide. I’ve got questions about Google’s cooperation with a totalitarian government overseas. I’ve got questions reutf8g to the shitty service I’ve personally gotten from EarthLink. Questions about the municipalization of services and questions about other technologies, including fiber."

Peskin admitted he’s yet to read the fiber report, which lauds FTTP as "the holy grail of broadband" while explaining that wi-fi isn’t a competitor but a complement to fiber, since wi-fi’s key advantage is its "mobility and connectivity during movement."

That said, the report recommends building citywide fiber, which it describes as a "fat pipe all the way into the home or business." In the face of the public sector’s lack of interest in building fiber networks that would meet growing demands for bandwidth and speed in an equitable and affordable manner, the CTC report concludes that municipal fiber would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities "by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives."

With fiber allowing numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access, the report recommends a wholesale open-access model to facilitate "democratic and free market values" and enhance the city’s reputation "for visionary and pioneering projects."

The report estimates a citywide open-access wholesale model will cost $563 million but predicts it will spark economic investment and jobs. It recommends building a pilot network in a 12-square-mile economic development area that includes Bayview, Hunters Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, the Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, SoMa, the Tenderloin, and the Western Addition.

The study also observes that aside from supporting safety and communications systems (thereby saving the city huge and unending costs of leasing circuits from telephone companies) and providing higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, securer service, fiber is the best backbone for wi-fi systems.

Or as communications activist Bruce Wolfe recently told the Guardian, "Wi-fi is a parasite looking for a wire."

Speaking to us, along with United Layer’s Tim Pozar, SFLan’s Ralf Muehlen, and Our City’s Eric Brooks, Wolfe stated that far from being "the naysayers, as we were accused after critiquing the Google-EarthLink deal, we’re actually the truthsayers."

The foursome, who are supporters and providers of current wi-fi services in San Francisco, said although wi-fi rocks when you’re at an outdoor café or checking bus schedules with a cell phone, fiber rules when you’re in a basement, on a fourth floor, or in need of reliable and efficient service or massive capacity.

"That’s why it makes more sense to roll out a joint fiber-cable-wi-fi system, because all the interference and bog downs would be solved by hooking antennas into fiber," Pozar says. "Putting a bunch of antennas up as a cloud over the city supposedly gives free users speeds of 300 kbps, but anyone making a phone call or downloading a video will drain everyone else’s speeds, and blanketing the city with transmitters will make the spectrum unusable by others."

Muehlen expects the wi-fi service his business provides to get "blown out of the ether, technically, or be severely compromised," by the proposed Google-EarthLink deal. "But I wouldn’t mind if I got a network that didn’t suck," he says. "I just want something that works."

Brooks said many people who can’t afford the Internet are "compartmentalized in lower-income areas. Why not begin by addressing those areas instead of giving away the whole 49 square miles to Google-EarthLink?"

He noted that it will cost Google-EarthLink an estimated $300,000 to pay into the city-run Digital Inclusionary Fund. "That’s a drop in the bucket in terms of providing residents with gear, training, and support that truly bridge the digital divide." *

SockPuppetGate redux

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By Steven T. Jones
SFist has a nice wrap-up on the fallout from its outing of Newsom flack Peter Ragone as a liar, but the Chron’s Matier & Ross not only buried the story halfway through today’s column, they also missed the point. Ragone didn’t just get his “hand caught in the cookie jar” by pretending to be someone he’s not online — he appeared to have told journalists and the public direct and bald-faced lies to cover up what he did, a sin for which he still hasn’t come clean.
That was the focus of the resolution Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin proposed during yesterday’s meeting, which calls for all public information officers on the city’s payroll to abide by ethical standards accepted by the public relations industry, including honesty. After all, these people work for us. We pay their salaries, not Gavin Newsom, and we don’t pay them to subvert the public interest in honest, open government. Kudos to Peskin for trying to take the high road on this sordid incident.

Why people get mad at the media (part 9). the Chronicle and Associated Press blow the big media story and refuse to make corrections

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

The Bay Guardian, the Media Alliance, and the First Amendment Project won a major victory in federal court last week and succeeded in unsealing about 90 per cent of the previously secret records in the Clint Reilly media consolidation case. It was a clear and decisive win.

Yet the monopoly papers in the case mangled the story, tried to make it appear that the Guardian lost, and the monopolizers won. And then, when we requested they make corrections, they refused and tried to blow us all off.

The Associated Press story was the worst. It was inaccurate, incomplete, and made it look as if the judge had given the Hearst/Singleton forces a major victory, as the two heads on the Examiner website made clear: “Judge: MediaNews, Hearst lawsuit documents remain sealed” and “Judge denies request to unseal MediaNews, Hearst lawsuit documents.” (B3: both inaccurate and incomplete statements, see our online coverage and our link to the judge’s order).

The lead makes the inaccuracy more pronounced: “A media advocacy group and alternative weekly newspaper on Wednesday failed to convince (B3: no) a judge to open key documents in a deal between the San Francisco and the owner of about a dozen Bay Area daily newspapers.” Then the second inaccurate paragraph: “U.S. District Judge Susan Illston denied requests (B3: no, no, no) from the Oakland-based Media Alliance and the San Francisco BayGuardian…” And then a selective quote from Illston that makes it look (wrongly) as if “the bulk of the records contained detailed financial information, including past and present revenue…” and that those were still under seal.
(B3: no again).

Our attorney James Wheaton from FAP emailed the AP and the Chronicle a full and detailed account of what we won: (a) about 90 per cent of the sealed documents; (b) a lot of key documents; (c) the right to stay in the case as an intervenor so that we are in a legal position to challenge any further sealing of documents for the duration of the case; (d) a major precedent that the big guys, especially the monopolizing publishers, cannot seal records in their moves to regional monopoly without public challenge, and (e) a major victory for sunshine, open government, and the free and open press.

More: the AP story was done without the normal calls for comment to our attorney or to the plaintiffs (Media Alliance or us). We had to initiate the calls and emails in an attempt to find out how AP so badly screwed up a simple straightforward ruling by a federal judge. And we are still mystified. The AP story ran in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, both owned by Singleton. Singleton, let us note, is also the incoming chairman of the AP board of directors.

When Wheaton asked for a correction by email, the assistant bureau chief Mark Rochester replied in an email:
“While I understand the subtleties (B3: subtleties?) involved, and have discussed this further with staffers here, I’ve decided not to do anything further. I just don’t believe we could issue a clarification or write-thru of the story that would be useful to member news organizations in terms of trying to explain what was and wasn’t covered in the judge’s order.” (B3: why not? Is AP above correcting demonstrable errors or giving the other independent side a chance to comment? What side is AP on? Darkness? Monopoly? Fair and balanced reporting? And most important:what about the interests of non-members or targets of your stories or people like us doing the public’s business in filing and winning a major sunshine in the courts suit? Do we not count?)

I put the above comments in an email letter to Rochester and AP bureau chief John Raess. I requested an explanation of why AP’s news consideration applies only to AP members (such as Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, McClatchy, Stephens, purported “competitors” who are now partners in the monopolizing
California partnership under attack by Reilly.) I also asked for a copy of the AP’s retraction and correction policy. No answer as yet.

This is the face of the emerging daily newspaper monopoly in 2007 in the Bay Area. And this is yet another reason why people get mad at the media.

P.S. Ah, yes, the Chronicle story by Bob Egelko. His story wasn’t much better and he missed the key point: when we filed the motion in court to unseal the records, the newspaper monopolists, obviously embarrassed, immediately agreed to make the bulk of the material public. There are boxes and boxes, and thousands and thousands of pages of legal material filed in the case so far, and the publishers didn’t even contest our contention that most of it should never have been sealed in the first place. Ah yes, neither the Guardian nor the Media Alliance for the First Amendment Coalition was mentioned by name in the rummy little page 3 story in the business section. We asked Egelko why. He emailed back: the cuts were made for space consideration. B3

***************

AP Letter

Fiber: A big fat pipe all the way into the home

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By Sarah Phelan

If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that landed in the City the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go, and that the city should build a pilot network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone, which is a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

Fiber: A big fat pipe all the way into your home

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By Sarah Phelan
If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that was posted online by he City’s Department of Telecommunications and InformationServices the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go. Oh, and that to really bridge the digital divide, he city should build a pilot fiber network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone–a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

His world or yours?

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Scarface: The World Is Yours

(Vivendi Universal; Windows XP, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Sony PSP)

GAMER One nice thing about Scarface: The World Is Yours is that although it is a first-person shooter–adventure game, there is no sewer level. It doesn’t matter what the story line is: at some point, dude is going into a sewer and tromping through ankle-deep water with rats skittering around.

Scarface doesn’t bother with that. It’s more interested in having you sell cocaine and brutally murder people, like a good game should do. You peddle so much coke that it’s really astonishing the game hasn’t offended nutty Christian groups. Maybe the makers were able to get around objections because your character, Cuban drug lord and world-class cusser Tony Montana, never kills innocent people. If you point your gun at a civilian, you find yourself saying, "Not in my game plan, bro," or the best one, "I kill one and I go straight to hell." In each case, the gun will not fire.

The game is still unspeakably violent. The story picks up right before the part in the movie Scarface when Ángel Salazar’s killer sneaks up behind Montana and airs him out. Instead of this happening, however, you direct Montana through an epic bloodbath in order to survive, so he can regain his spot at the top. Along the way, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’s formula is perfected, the makers take character interaction to a new level, and you end up playing a game that could go on forever.

The scope and game play are very much like those of GTA: San Andreas, but everything’s been streamlined. Montana doesn’t have to fucking work out, eat, and shit, and there is no repetitive dating scheme. Instead, you just sell coke and kill, drive around really fast, spend millions of dollars on useless items, and pick up women.

Interacting with the peripheral people is really fun too. Montana has some standard dialogue, but once in a while an actual unique conversation will occur. When talking to pretty women, he says predictable things, but when he pulls similar pickup moves on elderly women (who give "are you nuts?"–type responses), it’s really funny. He orders his lackeys around like Don Rickles on an f-bomb rampage. When he steals a car, he utters any number of one-liners, from "Um, this is Miami undercover police — I need your car" to "You can keep the puta — I just want the car." And on top of being hilarious, the character is almost perfectly voiced by a guy named Andre Sogliuzzo, reportedly handpicked by Al Pacino for the job. James Woods, Elliot Gould, and many other actors appear.

You have the option to play as three characters other than Montana: the driver, the enforcer, and the assassin. You steal cars, bust heads, or eliminate government officials for big paydays. These missions are inexhaustible. So are Tony’s drug dealing and delivery missions, all of which are chosen from a menu. It’s nuts. This means you are free to select what to do and when you want to do it, but more important, it means there is no real end to the game ever. Even after the extensive story line is completed, there are an endless number of rival gangs for you to tangle with. Once you have defeated all the big bad guys, you sell coke and collect money. It’s like a locked groove.

Sometimes these movie-themed games are really crappy rush jobs. But it is obvious from the very start that the folks behind Scarface not only love the movie — an important factor — but also were interested in making what is potentially the best game of the past year. (Mike McGuirk)

Anti-Christian mythology

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION For several years I’ve heard Philip Pullman’s young-adult fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials called an antireligious response to the mega-Christian Chronicles of Narnia. Progressive fantasy about troubles with an otherworldly version of the Christian right? I’m there. So I snapped up Pullman’s three novels — The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — each named after a magical device that aids our heroes in a quest through parallel universes, including a parallel Oxford, England.

Right away, however, I discovered that these are not antireligious novels. Certainly, there are some bad Christians, but there are also a god and tons of angels. Plus, all the universes are united via a spiritual substance called Dust — or, in our world, dark matter. Turns out dark matter is a kind of psychic life-essence that fuels angels and souls. The Dust thing really bugged me. I expect magic in fantasy worlds, but Pullman turns astrophysics into spiritual goo. It was a rhetorical move right out of Jesusland, where believers have managed to convert science into intelligent design. There’s a difference between creating a magical world with its own rules and claiming that scientifically observable phenomena in our own world can actually be explained with angels.

So why has this trilogy been touted by the London Telegraph and countless grumpy evangelicals as anti-Christian? Probably because Pullman portrays the ruling Christian sects in a parallel England as bloodthirsty and cruel. In this enchanted version of our world, all humans have an animal familiar who represents an aspect of their souls — the emotional part that takes pleasure in worldly things. The government is disturbed by the anti-Christian sensuality represented by the human-familiar bond and gives some Christians money to experiment with separating children from their familiars so that they won’t ever become "fallen." After these operations, the "severed" children are either mentally broken or so overwhelmed with grief that they kill themselves. It’s a pretty nifty little allegory for all the freaky shit Christians have done to kids to crush their sexual urges.

But the problem here isn’t Christianity itself. It’s with a bunch of antipleasure adults who want to torture erotic desire out of kids in the name of God. In addition, as we learn in the later books, a similar social problem has emerged in the world of angels. The Christian God is actually a frail old creature being kept alive by fascistic, high-level angels who are using his reputation to reestablish the authority of the kingdom of heaven throughout all the parallel universes. And somehow, because our heroes are fighting to stop these power-mad angels and bad-actor Christians, we’re supposed to think the book is antireligion?

Perhaps the West is so steeped in Christian mythology that we can’t imagine an outside to Christianity. Pullman gets to be antireligious simply because he criticizes one aspect of Christianity. Instead of pushing hierarchy and sexual repression, he celebrates individualism and sexual expression — as long as everybody is heterosexual, in love, and conforms to appropriate gender roles.

Lyra, an adventurous little girl from parallel Oxford who rescues a bunch of children from the evil Christian sect in The Golden Compass, defies God but remains in thrall to biblical gender roles. The closer to puberty she gets, the more she hands off her power to violent, strong men. Eventually, she reaches puberty and falls in love with Will, whose "subtle knife" can cut doorways between worlds. After the two young teens have sex, they radiate enough Dust to help save the world. This moment of sex-positivity is Pullman’s way of signaling to us that the new "republic of heaven" will be better than the old one.

But many other tenets of Christianity remain intact: the belief that spirituality, rather than science, can explain the world; and the idea that it is natural for women to subordinate themselves to men. When Lyra returns to her Oxford, where only men attend university, she can only hope to be educated at a less-prestigious women’s college. And her attachment to Will has robbed her of her only power: reading the golden compass of truth. If Lyra’s transformation from hero to second-class citizen is what passes for anti-Christian storytelling, maybe we should be looking for a new way out of the religion problem. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who would rather open the doorways between worlds than kill a God who doesn’t exist anyway.

The war on trial

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› news@sfbg.com

It is a sad day in American jurisprudence when a soldier of conscience is court-martialed — not for lying, but for telling the truth; not for breaking a covenant with the military, but for upholding the rule of law in wartime.

The court-martial of First Lt. Ehren Watada is set for Feb. 5 in Fort Lewis, Wash. The 28-year-old soldier from Hawaii is the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. He is charged with "missing movement" and "conduct unbecoming an officer" including the "use of contemptuous words for the President."

The story has received a fair amount of media attention, in part because the Pentagon is trying to force three journalists to testify against Watada (see "A Reporter Stands Up to the Army," 1/10/07).

But the soldier’s story is significant on its own.

A year ago, when Watada was on leave and out of uniform, he delivered a moving address to a Veterans for Peace convention. Watada is not a conscientious objector. He even offered to serve in Afghanistan.

But he questioned the legality of the war in Iraq, and he denounced the known lies of the George W. Bush administration. He said nothing more than what the world already knows, and he did not encourage any other soldiers to follow his example.

All the major issues of the Iraq fiasco — the fraudulent basis for the war, the absence of a formal declaration from Congress (which has no constitutional authority to transfer its war-declaring power to another branch), the war crimes, the flagrant violations of international treaties such as the United Nations Charter — are coming to a head in this historic battle between a junior officer and an army whose Abu Ghraib torture scandals shocked the world.

Ordinarily, the truth of a claim is a strong defense against any charge of defamation. Not in the Army, however. Army prosecutors do not intend to allow Watada any opportunity to prove in court that everything he said about the president is true. Prosecutors told the presiding judge, Lt. Col. John Head, that the truthfulness of Watada’s speech is irrelevant to the case.

THE WAR OF CHOICE


On the charge of refusing deployment, Watada’s case may seem weak — he is, after all, an officer in the military, and he has failed to obey a direct order to go to Iraq. But his defense actually has legal merit: his actions are based on hard evidence about military conduct in Iraq and a clear understanding of the law.

Watada is raising matters of principle that concern the right of all soldiers to full protection of the law. Under the Constitution and the standard enlistment contract, every soldier has a right, even a duty, to disobey illegal orders. The legality of Watada’s orders pursuant to a "war of choice" is the central issue of the trial.

"The war in Iraq is in fact illegal," Watada told TruthOut.org. "It is my obligation and my duty to refuse any orders to participate in this war. An order to take part in an illegal war is unlawful in itself. So my obligation is not to follow the order to go to Iraq."

No American soldier has any obligation to participate in military aggression, "crimes against peace," or any operation that violates the Geneva Conventions. Under constitutional government, the authority of military command derives not from one person alone but from the rule of law itself.

There are only two conditions in which a war is legal under international law: when force is authorized by the United Nations Security Council or when the use of force is an act of national self-defense and survival. The UN Charter, based on the Nuremberg Principles, prohibits war "as an instrument of policy." And the war in Iraq is just that — a war of choice.

There is a common tendency among lawyers and military commanders to sneer at international law. But the Constitution is unambiguous: Article VI states, "All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby."

In a celebrated case in 1900 (United States v. Paquete Habana), the Supreme Court ruled, "International law is part of the law of the United States and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for determination."

There is no exception for the military, no wall between domestic and international law.

In his speech to the veterans Watada noted that the US Army Field Manual states, "Treaties reutf8g to the law of war have a force equal to that of laws enacted by Congress. Their provisions must be observed by both military and civilian personnel with the same strict regard for both the letter and spirit of the law which is required with respect to the Constitution and statutes…."

THE POLITICAL QUESTION


In the end, though, none of that may matter.

The strength of Watada’s legal case will make little difference if Army prosecutors succeed in preventing him from presenting evidence in his own defense in court, especially if judges adhere to the Machiavellian view that "in war, the laws are silent."

The American judiciary has a long, sorry record of ignoring the right of American soldiers to due process and the treaty clause and war-power clause in the Constitution. Too often, judges and prosecutors, both military and civilian, claim war is a political question, a foreign policy matter, something beyond judicial review. Hence, commanders can do as they please, and those who disagree can be imprisoned.

The political question doctrine, as it is known among lawyers, is the primary way by which judges circumvent international law. It is a way by which prowar judges and commanders foreclose any substantive discussion of the legalities of a war.

Few Americans remember the dark days of wartime jurisprudence four decades ago, when US courts refused to hear GI challenges to the Vietnam War. The full implications of the Watada trial can be understood in that context.

In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, American soldiers and marines were imprisoned for refusing to commit war crimes. For example, Dr. Howard Levy, a Green Beret dermatologist, spent two years in prison after he refused to train special forces in dermatology. He argued that to do so would violate the Hippocratic Oath; the Green Berets, he insisted, used medicine as a political tactic in Vietnam, and for him to assist them would cause increased suffering.

In 1965, David Henry Mitchell II, who was eventually convicted of willful failure to report for induction, challenged the legality of Lyndon Johnson’s war. He raised basic constitutional issues: the absence of a formal declaration, broken treaties, a pattern of war crimes on the battlefield. No soldier, Mitchell argued, should be forced to participate in criminal policies, to choose between near-sedition and the commission of war crimes.

Federal Judge William Timbers refused to hear the evidence. When Mitchell’s attorneys argued that under the Nuremberg Principles soldiers have a duty to disassociate themselves from war crimes, the judge freaked out. It is, he said, "a sickening spectacle for a 22-year-old citizen to assert such tommyrot." The judge argued that treaties and conventions are "utterly irrelevant as a defense on the charge of willful refusal to report for induction." The message was clear, and a deadly precedent was set: even if war is manifestly illegal, soldiers are still expected to participate. United States v. Mitchell was the first in a series of infamous cases through which courts placed presidential war beyond the arm of the law.

In a 1966 ruling against Army Private Robert Luftig, Federal Judge Alexander Holtzoff ruled that the war "is obviously a political question that is outside the judicial function." With "no discussion or citation to authority," the Federal Appeals Court concurred. In the most celebrated trial of the period, that of the Fort Hood Three — soldiers who demanded the protection of the Constitution and international law — District Judge Edward Curran refused to hear any evidence of systematic war crimes. He called the war a political issue beyond judicial cognizance.

Taken together, the Vietnam War rulings contradict the landmark precedent Marbury v. Madison. In 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall captured the essence of judicial abdication: "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect…. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?… It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

In this case the argument is particularly clear: Watada is not taking a political position as part of his defense. The United States may be overextended; the invasion may create blowback; unilateral actions may alienate allies; war debts may boomerang on the economy; anarchy in Iraq may be unavoidable. These are political questions, but they aren’t what the first lieutenant is talking about. Watada is challenging the legality, not the political wisdom, of the war.

The president, he argues, is the final arbiter of foreign policy — but only so long as policies are carried out in accordance with the rule of law.

SAME OLD STORY


History has long since vindicated the soldiers of conscience who spoke out against the Vietnam War — soldiers who tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to uphold the Constitution and international law; soldiers who warned their beloved nation long before the My Lai massacre of America’s impending descent into barbarism. How many Vietnamese lives could have been saved? How many American soldiers might be home today with their grandchildren had American judges as well as presiding military commanders confronted the legal monstrosities of the war against Vietnam?

The cost of judicial abdication in the Vietnam War years, when American judges averted their eyes from the emerging holocaust in Indochina, is incalculable. Without judicial immunity, many of the horrendous deeds of the Johnson-Nixon years might never have occurred.

There were more than a dozen opportunities for American judges to confront the constitutional issues evoked by that undeclared war. When Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who publicly acknowledged the illegality of US invasions in Indochina, offered to hear a war-challenge appeal, his colleagues on the court overruled him.

So today we ask: How many more Iraqis and Americans will die before American judges fulfill their current obligation to uphold and enforce the rule of law? How long will it be before the infamous Vietnam War rulings are reversed, before the blood-drenched political question doctrine is buried for good?

Lt. Col. Head, presiding at Watada’s court-martial, is already preparing to repeat the follies of the past. At a pretrial hearing Jan. 17, he denied all defense motions to present hard evidence of systematic war crimes in Iraq. He rejected the Nuremberg defense. He also upheld a pivotal government motion "to prevent the defense from presenting any evidence on the illegality of the war." Like past accomplices, he claimed that Watada’s case is a "political issue" beyond the jurisdiction of the court.

Capt. Daniel Kuecker, the prosecutor in the pretrial hearings, could not be reached for comment, but Watada’s civilian attorney, Eric Seitz, expressed outrage at Head’s judicial abdication. These rulings, he told the press after the hearing, "are extraordinarily broad and subjective, which I find reprehensible. They are essentially saying there is no right to criticize, which we all know is not true." He added, "These rulings are about as horrible and inept as I could have imagined."

The question can no longer be avoided. Do American soldiers have any rights that their commanders and judges are bound to respect? As civilians, do we not have an obligation to provide our troops full protection of the laws for which they risk their lives? *

Paul Rockwell, who taught constitutional law at Midwestern University in Texas, is the author, with Cindy Sheehan, of Ten Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military, published by New Press in 2006.

The Presidio Trust’s mystery millions

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› amanda@sfbg.com

The Presidio Trust just published its annual report for 2006. This slick-looking document is distributed to the national park’s George W. Bush–appointed board of directors — and to the purported shareholders of this quasi corporation, the American taxpayers.

If you just read the executive director’s message, scan the pretty pictures, and glance at the numbers to make sure they’re on the proper side of zero, then this unique endeavor to privatize a national park looks peachy. Revenue is coming in, operating expenses are being covered, projects are getting completed. The goal is to be self-sufficient by 2013 without any federal subsidy; the trust thinks it will meet that goal. Donald Green, a former economist for the Office of Management and Budget and SRI International and now a Sierra Club Presidio committee member, told us he agrees.

"The financial picture, from their point of view and mine, is good," Green said. "They’re already financially viable."

But when the Guardian took a look at the balance sheets, we had a few troubling questions. The investments line in the assets category jumped out at us: it turns out the Presidio Trust has more than $105 million in the bank. Well, not quite in the bank — that money’s actually invested in federal securities. But it’s still a huge pile of cash for a public agency to sit on. The National Park Foundation, another goverment agency chartered by Congress, that collects funding from philanthropists and private corporations to support national parks, had total assets of $81 million for 2005, $58 million of which is invested in marketable securites.

What is all that money for, where did it come from, and why isn’t it being used? And if the trust has so much in the bank already, why did its leaders ask Congress for a $20 million loan for 2008 — on top of $50 million the federal government has already loaned the trust?

The answers — or rather, the lack of answers — demonstrate exactly what’s wrong with Presidio Trust operations.

According to a detail of the assets line item, the trust, which spends about $50 million a year running the park, has $103,031,000 in excess money invested in nonmarketable Treasury securities. About a third of that doesn’t mature until 2029. Another two-thirds — $69,787,000 — has the slightly lower interest rate of 5.02 percent and will drop $2 million of interest into the kitty for 2006, leaving a balance of $105 million.

At the same time the trust is investing in the Treasury, it’s also making interest payments. In 1999 the park borrowed $49,978,000 to jump-start renovations and get some money flowing. So far, the trust has only been paying off the interest on the loan, at 6.12 percent — which translates to a hair less than $3 million per year.

Pause now to consider those numbers: making $2 million in interest, spending $3 million on interest payments. Huh.

According to Dana Polk, the trust’s senior adviser for government and media relations, the $105 million is a combination of money granted by the Department of Defense for environmental remediation, unspent money from the 1999 loan, and money received from various sources and obligated toward various projects.

When we asked for more specifics on how much money came from where and how it’s going to be spent, Polk said there was an itemized detail of that budget line but added, "That’s not a public document."

In other words, the taxpayers don’t get to know what’s happening with their money.

"Often they don’t want to even explain their own numbers," Green said, "which is pretty pathetic for a governmental organization."

What we do know is that when the Army turned over the base to the trust, the Department of Defense cut a $99 million check to pay for the toxic spillage left in 15 areas throughout the park. About half that money has been spent, and places such as Coyote Gulch, Sunset Scrub, and Thompson Reach are now reblossoming into the natural areas they once were.

But in the seven years since these projects began, unknown contaminants and cost overruns for the massive environmental remediation projects have bumped the total price tag from $100 million to $130 million.

A note in the annual report states that $23 million of the overrun is still unfunded and is expected to come from interest earned on investments, "of which $14.9 million has already been earned."

Those of you who are not utterly boggled by these numbers may extrapolate from an above paragraph that the trust is netting about $2 million a year in interest income. It’s going to be a while before the agency has that $23 million to pay for the guys in the Hazmat suits.

Additionally, the report reads, "If cleanup costs for the enumerated sites exceed the $100 million threshold … by $10 million, the Army must seek additional appropriated funds for the enumerated sites."

Polk confirmed the trust is pursuing additional funding from the Department of Defense and from insurance that is carried for the projects.

So why does the trust still need to earn $23 million in interest if it is asking the DOD for the money anyway?

The trust isn’t a bank, so why does it need to sit on so much money rather than spend it on the various projects around the park, many of which are currently funded by tenants or philanthropists? Right now tenants who are leasing space have to pay for their own renovations.

What special projects is the money earmarked for?

There may be a perfectly sound explanation, but we’ve tried mightily to extract it from Presidio officials, and we are, frankly, baffled. Polk refused to answer our questions — and when we pressed her, she said our coverage of the park is too critical. Then she hung up on us.

But $105 million is a lot of money; maybe Polk can explain it to you.

Her direct line at the Presidio Trust is (415) 561-2710. Good luck. *

Make housing, not war!

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OPINION As President George W. Bush requests more money to fight the war overseas, a stealth war is being fought here on domestic soil: the war on housing for the poor. Since the Bush administration took power, the public housing program has suffered $1 billion in cutbacks.

As a result, conditions have rapidly deteriorated in public housing developments throughout the country. Maintenance, security, and services have been slashed annually as budgets are drained with each appropriations bill. A climate of violence, fear, and despair has taken hold in the projects, where years of deferred maintenance, toxic and unsanitary conditions, and government neglect are simmering to a boiling point.

As we fought terror abroad, the Republican-led Congress created a breeding ground for terror here at home. Just ask the desperate, homeless families who refuse offers to move to the city’s public housing developments for fear of their lives. Or ask the mothers of children who have been shot at in their front yards while attempting to escape the leaking sewage and toxic mold in their homes.

Yet rather than fight this terror in our own backyards, lawmakers have attacked the very programs that can provide a solution. Job training, education programs, and social services have all been casualties of the war on public housing. Agencies have been forced to make cuts in security and maintenance staff every year. In the past five years alone, the San Francisco Housing Authority has lost 250 employees, a 50 percent cut.

While military spending has continued to rise, the offensive against housing has also escalated. A full $600 million was cut from the 2006 public housing budget, funding housing authorities at only 85 percent of overall need. Layoffs and cutbacks occurred throughout the country as cities began planning for desperate measures such as disposing of properties, raising tenant fees, and increasing response time for repairs. In San Francisco, 26 housing authority staff lost their union jobs last year. As a result, vulnerable senior and disabled residents in high-crime neighborhoods saw their security services eliminated.

Last year was devastating for public housing residents, and the battle is far from over. The generals of the war on housing are out for blood, and it appears that they will not stop until the last vestiges of federally funded, low-income housing are destroyed. This was made abundantly clear recently when the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that in 2007 housing authorities will be funded at only 76 percent of the actual need. By proposing a budget that is $1 billion short, President Bush has raised the stakes in the fight to preserve our precious remaining federal housing for the poor.

Congress has a chance to increase funding when it passes a spending bill next month. Without an increase, San Francisco will face a $3.5 million shortfall. Our powerful new leadership must take a stand against these unconscionable cuts, which could starve local housing agencies to death.

The only way to avoid increased homelessness; displacement of poor families; loss of union jobs; heightened violence; and turn-of-the-century, tenementlike living conditions for San Francisco’s poorest residents is for our representatives to insist on an increase in funding. Tell Congress to fight the war at home and not the one overseas by sending a letter at www.local-impact.org. *

Sara Shortt

Sara Shortt is the director of subsidized housing programs for the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.

Newsom loves the poor. Huh.

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By Tim Redmond

I’m a little late on this; somehow, I missed it when it came out. But Leftinsf picked it right up: Mayor Newsom is against municipal Wi-Fi because he doesn’t want to hurt the poor:

“I’m not going to take $10 million from poor people to pay for something that a private company has offered to pay for,” [Newsom said], suggesting money for a system owned or part-owned by city government would take money from social programs.

Three things, Mr. Mayor (if you are bothering to read this from Davos, Switzerland, where all those needy poor people hang out):

1. Broadband infrastructure is a public-works project, like streets and sewers. It’s the sort of thing that governments spend tax dollars on.

2. Why do we have to take money from the poor? Are you utterly opposed to taxing the rich?

3. You’ve managed to put money into all sorts of other projects in the city. Sasha at leftinsf nicely notes that the mayor was prepared to put a 50 cent tax on everyone’s monthly phone bill to pay for his 311system. Sasha explains::

Now here’s the thing: Did he send out an RFP for the 311 system asking companies to do it for free? I’m sure that if every 311 call could have a 15 second ad at the beginning he could have gotten some company to pay for it!

If Newsom had proposed to make some private company responsible for the system that is supposed to be the one stop shop for San Franciscans looking for city information, with no standards for service, no guarantee that it would always be available, and allowing people willing to pay extra priority access to the number, San Franciscans would rightly react very badly. Instead, we are paying for it ourselves, because the quality of that information and the idea that everyone should have equal access to our government is a core San Francisco value.

Ayup.

Has Hearst forgotten about Josh Wolf–soon to be the longest jailed journalist in U.S. history?

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I was delighted to read in the Saturday (Jan. 20) San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco “added her voice to a growing list of lawmakers urging Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to drop the prosecution of two Chronicle reporters who face l8 months in prison for refusing to name their sources for stories about steroid use in professional sports.”

I was also delighted to see that she sent a three paragraph letter calling on Gonzales to withdraw the subpoenas of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada asking them to identify their confidential sources.
I was further delighted to see that the letter came after she met in her new Capitol Hill office with Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein and Fainaru-Wada.

And I was delighted to see that the Chronicle, in a story by Zachary Coile of the Chronicle Washington Bureau,
gave it prominent display and a nice head (“Pelosi urges halt to prosecution of Chronicle writers”) and a nice subhead (“Letter to attorney general also calls for federal shield law”) on the upper right corner on page four.

However, I was startled and quite annoyed to find that, suddenly, the Chronicle/Hearst and Pelosi seemed to forget that there is a third journalist involved in a similar government subpoena case, Josh Wolf, who is the only U.S. journalist presently in jail and will soon be the longest jailed journalist in U.S. history.

Pelosi and her office staff have refused to meet with Wolf’s mother or his supporters, saying to her and to the Guardian that she can’t interfere in a judicial matter.
To its credit, the Chronicle up to now has covered the Wolf case thoroughly and supported him editorially.
What happened?

I sent the following questions off by email to Bronstein and
Coile: What happened to the Wolf case? Why wasn’t it mentioned in your story? Did you ask Pelosi or any other congresspeople to support Wolf and ask that he be released from jail on the same basis you are using to keep your reporters out of jail? If not, why not? If they don’t answer me, I hope they explain their apparent double standard to Josh’s mother (see her appeal below, written before the story appeared.) I hope they refresh their editorial judgment that the journalistic principle of resisting government subpoenas applies equally to Hearst reporters and freelance journalists such as Wolf and Sarah Olson. B3

SF Chronicle: Pelosi urges halt to prosecution of Chronicle writers Letter to attorney general also calls for federal shield law

E-mail from Josh Wolf’s mother:

Subject: Please write to congress NOW to support Josh

There is a move in Congress to rescind the subpoena’s which put the two SF Chronicle reporters under grand jury contempt charges, but no mention or attention is being paid to Josh’s case, a similar first amendment issue, where he has already been in jail for 150 days.

Below is a sample letter to use to send to John Conyers and Tom Davis (representing the House Judiciary Committee), Nancy Pelosi (who represents Josh’s district) and California senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. Representative Dennis
Kucinich is also aware of and interested in Josh’s case.

January 19, 2006

To Representative John Conyers

From Liz Wolf-Spada
PO Box 2235
Wrightwood, CA 92397
liz_wolf_spada@yahoo.com
760-964-6101

Dear Representative Conyers,

While I find it commendable that Congress is finally getting involved in the questionable legality of grand jury subpoenas of journalists, I am appalled that no mention has been made of my son’s case. Josh Wolf is not facing a subpoena. HE HAD BEEN
INCARCERATED FOR 150 DAYS ALREADY FOR REFUSING TO COMPLY WITH THAT SUBPOENA.
Josh Wolf is an independent journalist who reports on local San Francisco activities, with a special interest in protests and demonstrations. He has been reporting on these events on his web site for over three years and has a large following. One of his
videotapes from a protest of June 8, 2002, is currently being used to prosecute cases of police brutality against jailed protestors.
Unlike the Chronicle reporters, Josh does not have a large corporate media conglomerate backing him or paying his bills. He was not given a stay, but was immediately put in jail on August 1, 2006, when Judge William Alsup ruled him in contempt for refusing to turn over unpublished video footage and for refusing to testify. Since then, Josh’s lawyer, Martin Garbus, has offered to give the unpublished material to the US Attorney in exchange for them dropping the subpoena to testify. The US Attorney refused this offer. The judge refused to view the tape to see if it had any relevance to the supposed investigation into an alleged attempt to burn a police car. The police car in question suffered only a broken taillight.
Josh cannot get permission from his sources to testify. His sources are the large group of dissidents in San Francisco who are exercising their first amendment rights to free speech and assembly. The attempt to intimidate Josh to name names of people
present at that protest not only goes against our rights to a free press, but it goes against our rights to free speech and assembly.
I urge you to petition Attorney General Gonzales to dismiss this contempt charge against Josh Wolf and release him from prison, where he has been held in coercive custody for 150 days.
Sincerely,

Liz Wolf-Spada
(mother of jailed journalist, Josh Wolf)

The secret spies

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

To view the TALON documents in PDF format (524 pages) click here.


To view the full ACLU report click here.

The Pentagon has released to the Guardian and the American Civil Liberties Union 534 pages of documents reutf8g to domestic surveillance — and we don’t know much of anything new about the notorious Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) program.

The vast majority of the documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, are entirely blacked out or heavily redacted. It’s clear there has been a lot of high-level discussion about policies and procedures related to military spying on civilians — but the government isn’t coming clean about more than a sliver of it.

One thing the records do show is that the Pentagon at one point had between 12,000 and 13,000 files in its TALON database — and 2,821 contained information about "U.S. persons." At least 186 of the reports in the files involved antiwar or antimilitary protests.

The Guardian and the ACLU went to federal court in 2006 to demand access to Pentagon records related to domestic surveillance after Santa Cruz Students Against the War and the Berkeley Anti-War Coalition compiled evidence to suggest that they had been the subject of TALON spying.

TALON was originally designed to monitor threats against military bases, but its mission expanded to encompass, for example, protests against military recruiters on the Santa Cruz campus. Pentagon officials admitted in December 2005 that the Santa Cruz student group was spied on under the TALON program.

In fact, documents we received earlier show that data about the student group were shared with the Department of Homeland Security and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which works with local police agencies (see "No End to Pentagon Spying," 7/5/06).

Initial documents received last year showed that, as of early 2006, there were no clear rules barring the military from conducting surveillance on peaceful protesters. The new documents indicate that in January and February of that year top Pentagon officials ordered a review of procedures and set some restrictions on retaining files on people who were not considered imminent threats.

One document states that information on protesters "has not been provided by recruited sources of information" — in other words, the military wasn’t sending spies to watch protests — but concludes that "this statement is not intended to state that TALON reporting could not result from recruited sources or tasked personnel."

That only confirms what we had learned already: that there is no formal ban on armed forces personnel spying on protesters or planting sources inside peaceful groups or peaceful protests.

However, the operation seems to be winding down a bit. By June 16, 2006, one of the few uncensored documents shows, TALON reports had dropped by 80 percent.

It wasn’t easy to get even these highly censored records. The Guardian-ACLU request was stymied at first, and only after Federal Judge William Alsup on May 25, 2006, ordered an expedited review did the US Army, Navy, and Air Force begin to grudgingly release a few tidbits of information.

It’s astounding how heavily redacted the documents are. Page after page after page shows that high-level policy discussions around TALON and domestic surveillance were taking place at the Department of Defense in January and February 2006 — but military officials won’t reveal a bit about the nature of those talks or the policies that resulted.

"The amount of information that’s redacted is significant," ACLU police practices lawyer Mark Schlosberg noted. "We understand the need for certain information to be kept confidential, but discussion about policies involving domestic surveillance is something the public has a strong interest in." *

The Stop Online Expression Act

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Now that Congress is back in session, I’m bracing myself for the resurrection of the Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act. This is yet another bill, in a long line dating back to the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act, that attempts to curtail free expression online by raising the specter of child abuse. First proposed at the end of last session, the bill is the brainchild of Sens. John McCain and Charles Schumer.

Leaked drafts of the Stop Online Exploitation of Our Children Act read like a speech squasher’s gift list. The bill requires the government to create a list containing the e-mail addresses of known sex offenders — probably compiled from various state databases of sex offenders. All online publishers, including bloggers and blog aggregators like LiveJournal, will be forced to police everything posted on their sites, searching for e-mails from this list. If they find a match, publishers must delete the accounts associated with the offending e-mail address — as well as anything the owner has published on the site. Failure to do so will result in steep fines. Fines will also be imposed if publishers fail to report behavior that might involve child porn or obscene behavior.

Here are four good reasons to oppose this legislation:

1. It imposes an undue burden on small publishers. Under the proposed rule even small bloggers, chat room operators, social networking sites, and webzine publishers will have to comb through the content on their site, looking for things that appear to have been written by people on the list of sex offenders that the government will compile. In practice this will probably mean that sites offering community forums, such as Alternet and even Slashdot, simply have to stop allowing people to post. There will be too great a risk that they’ll be fined if they miss a post by an alleged sex offender.

2. It misses the target. Keeping e-mail lists and deleting things written by "sex offenders" is dangerous because the category is very capacious. In states like Texas, people arrested for streaking or public nudity are classed as sex offenders. In Illinois, convicted skinny-dippers (i.e., people engaging in "public indecency") must register as sex offenders. In addition, many databases of sex offenders have been shown to be full of errors — and it’s possible for two people to have very similar e-mail addresses. Too many innocent people will get caught up in this net and find their words deleted from the Web.

3. It will not stop people who are currently committing crimes. This proposed law focuses on persecuting people who once engaged in criminal acts, rather than people currently engaged in criminal acts. If a former sex offender is posting appropriate messages in a therapy group, or talking with other model-train hobbyists, there is absolutely no reason — other than sheer prejudice — for deleting what he or she has written. In fact, preventing convicted sex offenders from having a social outlet online might lead to more recidivism. Moreover, if publishers are throwing all their energies into hunting down and deleting convicted sex offenders, publishers may not have enough resources to track down nonconvicts who are posting comments that are genuinely harmful to children.

4. It sets a bad precedent by asking untrained citizens to report on one another. Certain groups, such as doctors and therapists, are required by law to report if one of their clients is a danger to him- or herself or others. Schools are required to report suspected child abuse. But these groups are full of professionals who are trained to identify dangerous behavior that may affect children. Publishers are not trained to identify such behavior, nor should they be asked to do so. If we force Web publishers to turn in or silence their fellow citizens, which group will be forced to do it next? Sales clerks? Librarians? Rental car agents? Forcing citizens to turn against one another is not going to prevent crime. It’s only going to spark prejudice and lead to greater social injustice.

Be on the lookout for the next version of the McCain-Schumer "Stop Online Expression" bill — especially as election season draws a bit nearer. Don’t let it fool you. This isn’t about saving the children. It’s about scapegoating and censorship. And it will let the real criminals go free. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who isn’t in your database.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I remember watching Jimmy Carter make a speech on TV back in early 1980, when he was trying to deal with a wrecked economy, a national "malaise" that was only partially a figment of his imagination, and the Iran hostage crisis, and all I remember telling my college roommates was this:

The guy looks like a goddamn ghost.

Carter had aged at least 20 years since his upbeat 1977 inauguration. His face was creased and haggard. His eyes were empty hollows. He appeared to be having trouble focusing on what he was saying. It was pretty clear that Carter was burned toast.

I never got that feeling about Bill Clinton. Through the health care mess, the Newt Gingrich era, Monica Lewinsky, and impeachment, he always seemed to have a grip.

But like Jimmy Carter 27 years ago, George W. Bush is falling apart.

W. was never terribly bright to begin with, but he always had that confident swagger, that tone in his voice that suggested he believed in what he was saying. On the night of Jan. 10 it was all gone.

Even on TV, with all the makeup and careful background and lighting, the president was a wreck. He looked like hell. If the guy weren’t a sober, reformed alcoholic, I’d have sworn he’d been shit-faced for the past three days. He’s just falling apart. If he weren’t such an evil prick, I’d actually feel sorry for him.

The military escalation in Iraq is such a brainless notion that I can’t figure out how Karl Rove and co. ever let it get out of the Oval Office. This is a no-win deal: even the mainstream news media, including the papers and commentators who supported the invasion and stuck with the war for years, are now pointing out that Iraq has no functioning government, that the place is run by sectarian militias and is in a state of civil war. Twenty thousand new American soldiers won’t help a bit — they’ll just be another group of targets for extremists and opportunists. Too many of them will soon be filling body bags, and too many more will be in military hospitals trying to rebuild their lives with missing limbs, near-fatal injuries, and the kind of scarred psyches that can only come from realizing you might very well be John Kerry’s famous last man to die for a mistake.

As we note in an editorial, this is probably the greatest political gift an incumbent Republican president has given the Democratic Party since Richard Nixon had his pals engage in a third-rate burglary in the Watergate office complex. The worst president in modern history is finally on the defensive, way on the defensive, and unless Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid truly bungle things, there’s no way he’s going to recover.

I’m still for impeachment (and the case looks better every day). But right now what I’m for the most is some congressional pluck. The Constitution is pretty clear on the fact that the legislative branch handles the purse strings and has the right to declare war. There’s an easy way to get the troops out of Iraq: stop writing the checks.

The war isn’t even in the Bush budget. He keeps coming back and asking for more off-line money for it. Pelosi can simply say no — not another damn dime. I wish I thought she had the courage and principles to do it. *

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