Heather Knight plugs the Bay Lights

 Heather Knight is trying to sell us the Bay Lights. Perhaps Ms. Knight has become a convert to the cult of Illuminate.  She is fund-raising for Ben Davis on the front page of the Bay Area section of the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle (Knocking 'Lights' out proved arduous, March 19, 2023).  Davis is the self-described Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Illuminate, the private non-profit that pays him a six figure salary to promote himself and Illuminate.  According to Propublica, Davis was paid $169,623 in 2021. Illuminate calls itself an arts organization but Davis is the only person getting paid.

Do we really want a lead reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle boosting this glorified promoter?  In the very first paragraph of her article, Ms. Knight tells two untruths: that the Bay Lights are "stunning" and "famous".  They are neither.  Ms. Knight has featured Davis prominently in her reporting.  In addition to the Sunday Chronicle feature on March 19th, replete with a photo of the dashing Ben Davis in hardhat, there was an article on March 4th, S.F.’s Bay Bridge lights are about to go dark by Ms. Knight, also with a photo of Davis, this time dressed very haute couture and dramatically lit as he poses beneath the Bay Bridge.  Also, an article, on March 13th, Bay Bridge's light display has gone dark again. What happened?  This last, mercifully, without a photo of Davis.

That's not all. The Chronicle can't get enough of Davis and the Bay Lights. Last chance to see: Bay Bridge lights turn off on Sunday by Jordan Parker March 2, 2023.  Here's Heather Knight again: S.F.’s famous Bay Bridge lights will come down soon — unless $11 million is donated for an even better version, Jan. 7, 2023. Was it just that these were slow news days?  Don't we have more important issues in San Francisco than fundraising for the light-polluting, energy-wasting Bay Lights? This is a shameless promotion of a private arts organization, run by one man, who serves as a front for a group of elite businessmen seeking to influence government policy in San Francisco and the Bay Area.  Usurping public space is part of their agenda and, unfortunately, Phil Ginsburg of SF Rec and Park has helped them do it. 

For example, "The city has extended the permits for his Golden Mile on JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park — featuring yellow Adirondack chairs, Doggie Diner heads and a whimsical whale tail — through Leap Day 2024. 'I’ve heard it described as the happiest place in San Francisco,' Davis said" (Knight 3/19/23).  In typical self-congratulatory fashion, I might add.  A "whimsical whale tail."  Isn't that cute?  Something's not right here.  And really, aren't there better uses for the $11 million they're trying to raise?

Ben Davis, in his endless quest for self-aggrandizement, co-opts the very idea of art and of beauty.  The Bay Lights, in his self-serving reality, represent art and beauty,  I'm surprised he didn't add in truth.  In addition to taking over the Bay Bridge, he is trying to take over Golden Gate Park.  It's his special property now; his "happy place."  He has even co-opted the City of San Francisco: "Los Angeles is the City of Angels. San Francisco is the City of Awe." says Davis (Knight 3/19/23)  Illuminate has rebranded San Francisco as the "City of Awe". It's the first thing you see on their website now.  Here's Heather Knight, " But the loss of  'Bay Lights' would be a setback for a city that, more than ever, needs not only beauty and art, but affirmation that it still brings the biggest dreams to life."  Are you kidding me?

Where would Ben Davis and Illuminate be without the dark of the night sky? Without the dark, the Bay Lights and Illuminate's lighting displays would be meaningless, invisible. They depend on the dark, they need the dark, but they have no respect for it. They take it and use it to their advantage, pay nothing for it and do nothing to mitigate the damage they may be causing. They are exploiting a natural resource that belongs to everyone. The Bay Lights are also a waste of energy. Our resources are precious, and we shouldn't be using them in lighting displays that serve no practical purpose.

The lights of Illuminate are like sugary sodas or candy.  They initially provide a rush akin to the sugar rush and a pleasurable sensation but, just like too much sugar degrades the human environment and results in diabetes and illness, too much light degrades the natural environment and also human health. "In ways we have long understood, in others we are just beginning to understand, night's natural darkness has always been invaluable to our health and the health of the natural world, and every living creature suffers from its loss." The End of Night by Paul Bogard

We need to reduce energy use and light pollution. Both can be accomplished by letting the Bay Lights go dark.

 

"U.S. spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project"

"U.S. spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project over the last dozen years now exceeds $104 billion, surpassing the $103.4 billion current-dollar value of Marshall Plan expenditures which helped rebuild European nations after World War II" (U.S. aid to Afghanistan exceeds Marshall Plan in costs, San Francisco Chronicle.) Imagine if that money had been invested in America? Imagine if $104 billion had been invested in pre-schools, education, job training, and social services in the US?  Of course, if we hadn't destroyed Afghanistan in the first place they wouldn't have needed that aid.



The work of HandUp and Rose Broome is laudable ("Providing homeless a HandUp with tech", SF Chronicle, November 2017)  Helping individual homeless people is important but if you really want to change people's lives for the better, I know where I'd start. Take a look at where our tax dollars are going and imagine where they could be going.  I can't help but think sometimes that people might look past their computer screens and see the big picture.

George Shultz

Carl Nolte's profile of J. Michael Myatt, the former CEO of Marines Memorial (Native Son, November 11, 2017) quotes George Shultz, former Secretary of State under Reagan, as saying, “He (Myatt) is a San Francisco phenomenon.”  George Shultz is not your average San Franciscan  He is a fat cat Republican Party oligarch; the kind of person who couldn't get elected dog catcher in this town.

In that same issue of the Chronicle, on page A5, is the headline “Rising hunger tied to endless global warfare”.  In his recent book, Bush and Cheney, How They Ruined America and the World,  David Ray Griffin also quotes Shultz, “ Shultz argued for 'preventive or pre-emptive actions against terrorist groups before they strike.'”  It is exactly the policy of “pre-emptive” wars that has given rise to “endless global warfare” and George Shultz is one of the architects of this policy.   As the head of Bechtel, he also  profited from war.

The rush to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has cost us dearly and we are less, not more, secure.  George Shultz aside, it would be better not to send our young men and women into harm's way without a compelling reason.

Past wars revisited - another letter to the SF Chronicle that wasn't printed.

Carl Nolte's profile of J. Michael Myatt (Native Son, November 11, 2017), the former CEO of Marines Memorial, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam and rose to become a major general during the Gulf War, needs more context, especially in San Francisco, which is, as Nolte observes, “... a city with a reputation as a hotbed of anti-military sentiment.”

One may be justly proud of serving one's country, but America would have been better served if we had never gone to war in Vietnam. America was torn apart by the Vietnam war and we haven't recovered yet. I don't see any recognition of that in Myatt's quoted recollections or any acknowledgment that our government lied to us. No American troops should ever have been sent to Vietnam. Over 58,000 American military and as many as 2 million Vietnamese civilians died. I would be interested to hear if General Myatt thinks it was the right decision to go to war in Vietnam.

In San Francisco, we have a tradition that started with the Vietnam war; resistance to the draft and opposition to war. The Summer of Love was about peace; make love not war. San Francisco is the birthplace of the United Nations, an organization dedicated to international cooperation and the avoidance of war. As a long-time resident of San Francisco these are the traditions I'm proud to be associated with, not the glorification of war.

The first Gulf War was another unnecessary war based on lies and the cynical manipulation of American public opinion by the administration of George Bush, Sr. It would have been nice to hear some reference to this by General Myatt. The Department of Defense reports that US forces suffered 148 battle-related deaths (35 to friendly fire). According to the Project on Defense Alternatives study, between 20,000 and 26,000 Iraqi military personnel were killed in the conflict while 75,000 others were wounded. This grossly one-sided conflict between the the world's military superpower and a mostly conscripted and ill-equipped army of Iraqis, (who had been our allies when it suited us),does our country no credit. We left Saddam Hussein in power. Wasn't he a tyrant then?

Nolte “says Myatt has “important ties to senior members of the Trump Administration as if it's something to his credit. Trump represents all that we in San Francsico and California reject; xenophobia, racism, anti-immigrant regulations and easy, jingoistic rhetoric over thoughtful policy. Everyone in our state government and our city government soundly rejects Trump's policies. If Carl Nolte thinks“important ties to the Trump Administration” are something to boast about. he's not only in the wrong city, he's in the wrong state.

In 2014, among all U.S. adult deaths from suicide, 18% (7,403) were identified as Veterans of U.S. military service, according to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that PTSD afflicts: Almost 31 percent of Vietnam veterans. As many as 10 percent of Gulf War (Desert Storm) veterans. 11 percent of veterans of the war in Afghanistan. Of the 1.7 million veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 (20 percent) suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression (RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research, 2008)

General Myatt mission to honor our veterans rings hollow when so many of our veterans are not getting the services and treatment they need. It looks very pleasant there in the Marines Memorial Club's Library but just down the street in the Tenderloin homeless veterans are injecting drugs. The rush to war in Afghanistan and Iraq has cost us dearly and we are less, not more, secure. It would be better not to send our young man and women into harm's way in the first place, without a compelling reason.

Israel

Israel is no different from South Africa under apartheid. A group of invaders expropriate the land of the local people and then subjugate and dominate them. The Afrikaners actually said, and believed, that the land of southern Africa had been given to them by god. Years ago a writer reported a teenager in the Jewish settlements saying " I'm so glad God has given us this land."

Just like the apartheid government of South Africa forced blacks into townships and required them to use travel passes, Israel has put the Palestinians into ghettos and severely restricted their ability to travel.

The world did not allow apartheid to continue in South Africa; we can't allow it to continue in Israel. We must use sanctions, boycotts, demonstrations and all the different tactics used to end apartheid. No "two state" settlement is possible because Israel won't allow a Palestinian state. Israel has been fundamentally opposed to equal rights for Palestinians and this inequality must end.

All Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem should be made Israeli citizens with voting rights and equal protection under the law. The millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps should be allowed to return home.

All Israeli citizens would have their rights protected under a constitutional democracy. The whites in South Africa have not been deprived of their rights or property since the end of apartheid. If the Palestinians are the majority, so be it. Israel should be a democracy, not a theocracy. We should no more support a Jewish State than a Muslim or Christian state.  Democracy is about freedom of religion; not state imposed religion. 

Without the military and economic aid of the United States, Israel could not continue these policies of apartheid.  We should be fighting for the rights of the Palestinians just as we fought for the rights of black South Africans. It's time for the changes that will make peace possible. Not the continuation of failed policies that make war inevitable.

Let us remember George H. W. Bush

Let us remember George H. W. Bush, a person with a deep distrust of democracy, freedom and the institutions of our government. 

One time head of the CIA,  Vice-President and then President, Bush was instrumental in creating the secret government that, without consultation with the voters and mostly disregarding Congress, invaded countries that posed no threat to the U.S.  The invasion of Iraq, and the invasion of Panama and Granada come most immediately to mind.

He pardoned six men convicted of crimes in the Iran-Contra affair.  The subversion of democracy in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and the murder of Central American human rights activists (by U.S. trained and advised foreign military) happened on his watch.  We are witnessing the consequences of those actions on our southern border today.  Reagan and Bush squandered the peace dividend left by the end of the cold war and the world is now less at peace and a great opportunity lost.

Bush's son, George W. Bush, was his proxy, with a Cabinet composed of the same warmongers that served in his father's Cabinet, and the invasion of Afghanistan and a 2nd invasion of Iraq have been the result.  These wars of choice have cost us dearly and we have gained less than nothing in return.  Why a one-term president who has no significant public accomplishments should get such accolades, as are currently being bestowed, makes me wonder.

The Y Squad, Vanity Fair, November, 2018

Dear Vanity Fair,

Adam Ciralsky's  breathless, Reader's Digest worthy recounting of the exploits of the Israeli security apparatus (The Y Squad, November, 2018) fails to mention one their greatest successes;  their part in the destruction of the WTC Twin Towers, thereby laying the groundwork for the war in Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.  Saddam, as we know, although not a threat to the U.S., was a threat to both Israel and Saudi Arabia, our two most reliable allies in the Middle East.  So it only made sense that the US would work with the Saudi and Israeli intelligence services to create a "new Pearl Harbor" to sway the American people towards going to war.  It worked.

"According to Springmann (Michael Springmann, former head U.S. consular official in Jeddah Saudi Arabia), the Jeddah consulate was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence agents....and 15 of the 19, 9/11 hijackers received their visas through Jeddah." - The Terror Timeline by Paul Thompsom, " September 1987 -March 1989: head  U.S. consular official claims he's told to issue visas to unqualified applicants" 

I'm surprised Adam Ciralsky didn't ask his readers to do an internet search on "Israeli art students"?  A look at of the operations of the Mossad inside the U.S. would have provided a much fuller picture of the reach of Israeli security.

"According to Intelligence Online, more than one-third of the students, who were spread out in 42 cities, lived in Florida, several in Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- one-time home to at least 10 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. In at least one case, the students lived just a stone's throw from homes and apartments where the Sept. 11 terrorists resided: In Hollywood, several students lived at 4220 Sheridan St., just down the block from the 3389 Sheridan St. apartment where terrorist mastermind Mohammed Atta holed up with three other Sept. 11 plotters. Many of the students, the DEA report noted, had backgrounds in Israeli military intelligence and/or electronics surveillance; one was the son of a two-star Israeli general, and another had served as a bodyguard to the head of the Israeli army." - Christopher Ketcham writing in Salon, May 7, 2002.