OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Oakland’s City Council on Monday passed a carefully crafted resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war after hours of hearing impassioned rhetoric about the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza.

The council in the California Bay Area city voted 8-0 in favor of a motion supporting a congressional resolution for a permanent ceasefire, along with the unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and a restoration of basic services, as well as “respect for international law” and the release of all hostages.

Before the vote, the council voted 6-2 to reject proposed amendments by member Dan Kalb that specifically condemned killings and hostage-taking by Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attacks in Israel prompted the war that has devastated Gaza.

The motion was met by boos and angry shouts from the packed chamber.

Kalb later went on to vote with the majority, noting that the unchanged resolution also didn’t mention Israel.

In fact, councilmember Caroll Fife, who brought the resolution, said it went through four drafts and “intentionally attempted to de-politicize” the issue by “lifting up what we support and not what condemn.”

She said the issue of a cease-fire was “deeply, deeply concerning” to Oakland residents and called for a moment of silence for the lives lost on both sides of the conflict.

“I want Jewish children to live as much as I want Palestinian children to live,” she said.

The deaths of thousands of children, most of them in Gaza, weighed heavily on councilmembers.

“The number of children who have been killed just since Oct. 7 surpassed the number of children who have been killed in global conflicts over the past four years,” council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said.

“I was absolutely mortified by seeing dead babies” on social media,” and a ceasfire would be crucial for stopping the killing, councilmember Kevin Jenkins said.

Harsher language was used by most of the dozens of speakers, including Jewish anti-Zionist activists, who argued for passage of the measure. They accused Israel of colonization of Palestine and of apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

“We’ve seen the targeting and massacring of civilians, of health care facilities, of hospitals and ambulances,” said one speaker, who identified herself as a recent medical school graduate. “Silence in the face of oppression and genocide, I don’t think, is an acceptable response.”

Others argued that Oakland taxpayers shouldn’t be funding weapons for Israel when the money could be used for problems within the city, such as housing the homeless.

Similar resolutions have passed in three cities in Michigan, where a large percentage of Arab Americans live, as well as in Atlanta; Akron, Ohio; Wilmington, Delaware; and Providence, Rhode Island.

A temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which Qatar helped broker, is currently in place.

U.S. cities have been adopting resolutions regarding the conflict even though they have no legal role or formal say in the process, said David Glazier, who teaches constitutional law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

“It raises an interesting question on where they are getting this mandate to speak for the people in their city when nobody elected a city council person because of their stance on Middle East peace,” he said.

In the nearby city of Richmond, an approved resolution calling for a cease-fire and accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing prompted more than five hours of heated debate in October. The city of Ypsilanti, near Detroit, approved a peace resolution but rescinded it amid backlash.

Oakland’s resolution demands “an immediate ceasefire; release of all hostages, the unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza; the restoration of food, water, electricity, and medical supplies to Gaza; and the respect for international law; and calls for a resolution that protects the security of all innocent civilians.”

Cities across the United States have increasingly been speaking up on matters that have long been relegated to diplomatic spheres, even working with local elected leaders abroad on what has been coined city-to-city diplomacy to tackle everything from housing refugees and asylum seekers to dealing with climate change.

Now, city councils are just the latest arena where intense debates over the war and the United States’ support for Israel are playing out. Protesters calling for a cease-fire recently shut down traffic on a major bridge into San Francisco during an international economic summit, and the California Democratic Party recently cancelled some events at its fall convention due to demonstrations.

In some cases, the tension has turned violent. A pro-Palestinian protester was charged with involuntary manslaughter this month after a Jewish man died from head injuries following dueling protests in Southern California. He pleaded not guilty. In Vermont, a man has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder in the non-fatal shooting of three Palestinian men studying in the United States.

Oakland’s action comes as Hamas has released some hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack, while Israel has released some imprisoned Palestinians. Israel has said it would extend the cease-fire by one day for every 10 additional hostages released, but that it remains committed to crushing Hamas’ military capabilities and ending the group’s 16-year rule over Gaza, which would likely mean expanding the Israeli military’s ground offensive.

The war started after Hamas broke through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” on Oct. 7 and launched an attack that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead. Hamas also took nearly 240 Israelis hostage.

More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza.

Jablon reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalist Julie Watson in San Diego contributed.

The post California metropolis requires everlasting cease-fire in Israel-Hamas struggle, pressing humanitarian assist to Gaza | California Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A San Francisco vigilante who brands himself as the “Chinatown Cowboy” on the internet is rallying for a boycott of a Downtown diner, contending he chased down a thief who held up the restaurant and the ungrateful staff denied him even a cheeseburger as a reward. 

The diner’s owner, meanwhile, says the theft amounted to $2, and calls the ensuing social media firestorm—which is harming her business—“insane.”

The self-proclaimed cowboy, Darren Stallcup, who’s known for posting videos of the drug and homelessness crises and using GoFundMe donations to move out of the Tenderloin and take a vacation to Brazil, said he chased the thief for a mile from the Pinecrest Diner. The thief, Stallcup added, threw hundreds of dollars stolen from the diner at him during the chase.

Though he did not recover the thrown money, Stallcup said he caught the thief in front of the Powell Street BART Station on Oct. 15 and returned to the Pinecrest Diner the following day to ask for a reward in the form of a cheeseburger. He said his request for the burger was denied.

Darren Stallcup is a self-proclaimed vigilante who goes by the nickname “Chinatown Cowboy.” | Source: Courtesy Darren Stallcup

However, the restaurant’s owner, Sylvia Foundas, says Stallcup’s recollection of the events is distorted and his Twitter/X campaign against the local, family-owned restaurant is now inciting harassment and unwarranted negative reviews. 

“My employees are getting harassed because of him,” Foundas said. “He’s putting false information out there, and it really makes me question his motives and his agenda.”

Stallcup did, in fact, stop somebody from stealing money from the business, she said. But the “robber,” was a homeless person, who stole $2 in tip money from a table. She said when Stallcup returned to the restaurant, he asked an employee—who wasn’t aware of the incident and speaks very little English—for a cheeseburger. The employee reportedly told Stallcup to return another time to speak with a manager. 

When Stallcup returned for the second time, again demanding a cheeseburger and a “thank you,” he started yelling at the restaurant’s workers and threatened to destroy the business on social media, Foundas said.

‘He Came in Like a Lunatic’

“He came in like a lunatic and wanted to talk to a manager,” Foundas said. “It’s one thing to be a hero in your mind. … But it was only $2.”

Foundas said she’s considering legal action against Stallcup to prevent him from spreading more misinformation about her business.

Stallcup accused the business of trying to sweep the incident under the rug and said he stands by his recollection that the thief ran out of the diner with a “fist full” of cash. 

Pinecrest Diner Manager trying to sweep everything under the rug like there isn’t a security problem talking about “The Robber Only Took Two Dollars” trying to save her position.

No. Sorry. That robber had a fist full of dollars and was throwing cash at me while I was chasing…

— World Peace Movement (@darren_stallcup) October 27, 2023

“Everyone and their moms know I stopped the robbery at the Pinecrest Diner, and I’m out here starving,” Stallcup told The Standard near the diner on Friday.

San Francisco police confirmed a man was arrested on suspicion of petty theft on Oct. 15 near Powell Street Station and said he was detained by BART Police after boarding a train in connection with stealing cash from a restaurant’s table. Police said multiple witnesses at the scene identified the suspect.

Stallcup, who has around 15,600 followers on X, drew criticism online in June after he used part of the over $7,000 in GoFundMe donations he raised to move out of the troubled Tenderloin neighborhood to go on vacation in Rio de Janeiro. He now lives in the Sunset. 

In an interview with The Standard, Stallcup defended the decision to go on the vacation, arguing that his mental health had suffered from living in the Tenderloin. Stallcup previously lived in Chinatown before moving to the Tenderloin.

As a reporter uncovering grift for a living — for free — I feel obligated to let people know a grift when I see one. And this is a grift. Sorry Darren, but you are deceiving your donors. Move out of the TL — you went to Hawaii. Sick father — you went to Paris. Now you’re in Rio. https://t.co/ijOIrNLo9c pic.twitter.com/DXZDo3lbvx

— The Marina Times (@TheMarinaTimes) June 21, 2023

Stallcup has appeared on Fox News and in other outlets to blame progressive values for the city’s humanitarian crises. He has described himself as a conservative. 

Stallcup said his followers bought him a cheeseburger after he took to social media about the Pinecrest Diner incident. Nevertheless, he is now calling for a boycott of the restaurant. 

Stallcup said he would rescind his call for the boycott if the manager who failed to give him a cheeseburger is fired and if the owner thanked him for stopping the robbery. He later said on X, formerly known as Twitter, he would drop his call for the boycott when the manager thanks him.

YOU THINK I DON’T I LOVE THE PINECREST DINER?

I LITERALLY ATE THERE FOR MY BIRTHDAY.

I WILL LIFT THE BOYCOTT OF THE PINECREST DINER WHEN THE PINECREST DINER OWNER SAYS THANK YOU.

UNTIL THEN. NOT ANOTHER DOLLAR.

— World Peace Movement (@darren_stallcup) October 27, 2023

“I’m supposed to fire my manager who has worked for me for decades?” Foundas said. “We have dealt with real problems. … Everyone thinks this is insane.”

The post San Francisco Vigilante, Diner at Battle Over a Heist, Burger appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

German submarines began showing up in the waters along the East Coast of the United States in 1942, a pressing threat from a war taking place an ocean away.

Coastal towns and cities that had not yet started consistently blacking out lights were easy targets for enemy attacks. Tankers and cargo ships were sitting ducks, but the Navy and Coast Guard didn’t have the resources to protect them all.

Then civilians stepped up to form the Civil Air Patrol.

Oscar Shevenell, of Portland, served as an observer with the Civil Air Patrol from 1942-43. Photo courtesy of Maine Wing Civil Air Patrol

Among them was 2nd Lt. Oscar Shevenell, an unassuming Portland man who worked at a car dealership and had a wife and small children at home. More than 80 years later, he was honored this month for the role he played in protecting the coast of Maine.

The patrol established 21 bases along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S. In 1942 and 1943, they patrolled the waters from Maine to the Mexican border with armed aircraft, thwarting submarine attacks and guarding shipping lanes. The air crews are credited with escorting more than 5,600 convoys, reporting 173 U-boats and attacking 57, flying 86,685 total missions, logging 244,600 total flight hours, and flying more than 24 million miles in all.

In Maine, more than 100 men and women volunteered as pilots, observers and in support roles from bases in Portland and Bar Harbor.

Shevenell’s family accepted his Congressional Gold Medal – the nation’s highest civilian honor along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom – during a ceremony Sept. 2 at the Maine Wing Civil Air Patrol annual banquet. Shevenell died in 1987.

In 2014, Congress awarded the medal collectively to the 200,000 World War II air patrol members for their “extraordinary humanitarian, combat, and national services during a critical time of need for the nation.” Since then, only 185 medals have been presented to patrol members or their families.

Shevenell’s sons said they were honored to accept the medal on his behalf, but were quick to point out that many others deserve the same recognition.

Joe Shevenell said he would like to see others involved with the wartime air patrol in Maine honored for their service.

“This is a big deal for our little family and for our father,” he said. “But there were a lot of other heavy hitters. Our dad was just one of many who served their country during World War II.”

Oscar Shevenell was born in 1911 in Dover, New Hampshire. He discovered his love of aviation by the early 1920s when barnstormers – pilots who landed their light planes in fields and staged impromptu airshows – began visiting the area to wow locals with their rollovers, twists and turns. It inspired him to learn to fly.

“The whole idea of getting off the ground, he loved it,” Ray Shevenell said.

Civil Air Patrol National Commander Major General Edward Phelka, right, presents the Congressional Gold Medal to the family of 2nd Lt. Oscar Shevenell for his service during World War II. Photo courtesy of Maine Wing Civil Air Patrol

When he was courting Kathleen, the woman he would later marry, Oscar Shevenell buzzed over the house where she was staying in Eliot with his plane, nearly knocking the chimney off. He didn’t hesitate when she told him he had to give up flying to marry her. They got married in 1940 and moved to Portland, where he worked in the parts and supply department at Forest City Motors.

When the Civil Air Patrol became active in Maine under the command of newspaper entrepreneur Guy P. Gannett, Shevenell was eager to join. As an observer, he sat in the front of the two-seat propeller planes when they flew patrols to spot German U-boats. The submarines were usually spotted when they surfaced to recharge batteries.

“They saw a lot of submarines,” said Ray Shevenell, the oldest of Oscar Shevenell’s five children. “They would report them to the officials on the ground and describe where they were on the ocean.”

“He really enjoyed it because he was serving his country,” Joe Shevenell said.

After a year with the air patrol, Shevenell enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, where he was a drill instructor for sailors being sent to the Pacific Theater.

When he returned to Maine after the war, Shevenell worked in construction, then later trained as a screenprinter. He opened Allen Screen Printing in the Old Port in the 1960s and ran it until his retirement. He didn’t talk much about his time with the Civil Air Patrol, his sons said, but his love of aviation was always evident. They remember going with him to watch planes coming and going from the Portland Municipal Airport, now the Portland International Jetport.

Shevenell’s involvement with the Civil Air Patrol in the 1940s went largely unnoticed until a chance encounter Joe Shevenell had while vacationing in North Carolina. During a conversation with a man he met who is involved with the air patrol, Joe Shevenell mentioned that his father had been an observer during the war.

He showed the man a photo of his father taken during his service, and soon arrangements were made to present the Shevenells with their father’s medal.

Invalid username/password.

Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you’ve submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.

Related Stories

The post Portland man who flew air patrols alongside Maine coast honored 80 years after World Struggle II appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The kids apparently went to bed, because Garry Tan is back to war. It’s nearly midnight, and he’s been firing off tweets with the precision of a sawed-off shotgun. Hot takes and ragetweets may be the coin of the realm in Elon Musk’s new world order, but even by social media standards, Tan’s metabolism for vitriol and the breadth of his disdain for what ails San Francisco is staggering.

Over the course of two hours, the CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator personally attacks or retweets criticism of “extremist judges,” whom he accuses of emboldening criminals with the help of local media; any supervisor who dares to oppose bonuses to hire more cops; Nancy Pelosi and lawmakers concerned about the safety of autonomous vehicles; education activists who want to change math curriculum in public schools; venture capitalists who are “evil” to startup founders; “decels” who want to pump the brakes on technological progress; Apple’s monopoly on apps; YouTube censors; and last, but certainly not least, NIMBYs.

This behavior would be less remarkable if Tan, 42, weren’t a centimillionaire and one of the most influential people in tech. He boasts 362,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter) and a quarter-million subscribers to his YouTube channel. He has also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into local elections since 2021. 

Tan’s critics have attempted to brand him as a toxic tech bro who lacks empathy and political chops, but he’s more than a malcontent with a big microphone. In just a few years, Tan, a registered Democrat, has fashioned himself into San Francisco’s preeminent political pitbull, an attack dog with a taste for progressives.

Trump pushed SF to the hard left and with it came the grift: ideological purity enforced by the most extreme viewpoints that must be adhered to with perfection

— Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 — e/acc (@garrytan) September 20, 2023

“One thing that I’m starting to realize about myself is I always look for chaos,” Tan said in an interview this month at Y Combinator’s cavernous headquarters, a former power station in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood. “Most people want certainty. They want to feel comfortable. And then the true founders, they want to find chaos, and they want to turn chaos into order.”

Tan, who lives with his wife and two young sons in Noe Valley, also wants San Franciscans to join him in picking up their pitchforks come election time in November 2024. The city is on pace to smash its own record for drug overdose deaths, more than 4,000 people are sleeping on the streets every night, and property crime and quality-of-life issues have made San Francisco a national punchline. With businesses fleeing and vacant Downtown towers collecting dust, the city could be creeping toward a fiscal crisis.

Regardless of whether people like or loathe Tan, both his supporters and detractors acknowledge that few people—perhaps only Mayor London Breed—have greater influence at this moment over the city’s political discourse.

Mayor London Breed speaks at a press conference at City Hall in June concerning San Francisco’s many unapproved housing projects. | Jeremy Chen/The Standard

“Where does this guy have his pull? It isn’t in banking votes in San Francisco politics. It’s in that broader, end-around messaging: the negative light that has been cast on the city,” said David Latterman, a longtime political analyst in San Francisco. “Locally, people might just roll their eyes. But you can’t deny that the national spotlight through these means—and it’s a negative spotlight—has been enough to get Breed to react. And so, in effect, it does work.”

In turn, online attacks against Tan are becoming increasingly aggressive, which may be why his list of accounts he’s blocked on X numbers in the tens of thousands. 

I’ll have you know I block people by hand.

— Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 — e/acc (@garrytan) April 20, 2022

A website called Techbro SF has been trolling Tan and his political allies, circulating an image that shows Tan’s visage on a squid, suggesting his tentacles control political groups and the media—including, incorrectly, this publication. The graphic harkens back to a racist “Mongolian Octopus” illustration circulated in the late 1800s to bolster arguments against Asian immigration. Tan’s attacks on progressive supervisors who are Jewish, such as Dean Preston and Hillary Ronen, have led to accusations of antisemitism. One progressive commenter called Tan a “lil Nazi snake.” Tan responded by calling the posts smears and saying he is “a big fan of Jewish people.”

The smears are truly absurd at this point

This is a lie about me and my videos. There is literally no basis for a tweet like this.

I am in fact a big fan of Jewish people pic.twitter.com/3rI77eF3YT

— Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 — e/acc (@garrytan) August 28, 2023

The political maneuverings of wealthy power brokers in San Francisco have always been met with deep suspicion and pushback. Tan saw firsthand how progressives blamed people like his mentor Ron Conway, a billionaire venture capitalist, and the tech industry at large for driving up the cost of rent and gentrifying neighborhoods. Conway receded from the spotlight after dramatically shaping city politics during Mayor Ed Lee’s administration, but it appears there will be no such backing down with Tan.

“Every way they come after me,” he said, “I’m going to go after them 10x.”

‘Prototypical, Testosterone, Poison Tech Bro’

Tan’s massive social media following—and real-world clout as leader of what some consider the top startup incubator in the world—gives every acerbic tweet about housing, the drug crisis and public safety a special weight among the city’s tech and political classes. Over the summer, he and Musk started replying to each other’s posts, giving Tan an even larger reach thanks to the budding digital bromance.

Elon Musk and Garry Tan tweeted support for a boycott of global law firm Latham & Watkins for providing legal support to a San Francisco nonprofit that’s suing the city over homelessness issues. | Chesnot/Getty Images | Source: Getty Images

In direct broadsides on X, Tan has drop-kicked state Assemblymember Matt Haney for “virtue signaling” on the drug crisis, tagged Supervisors Connie Chan and Aaron Peskin as part of the “corrupt political machine,” suggested Ronen has the IQ of a borderline intellectually disabled person and declared all-out war on Preston, a Democratic Socialist. Tan has also called for abolishing citizen oversight groups like the Police Commission, a proposal political insiders have scoffed at as an example of naivete.

Peskin said he has never met Tan but sees him as a “prototypical, testosterone, poison tech bro.” The supervisor questioned Tan’s goals beyond “throwing bombs.”

“He definitely donates money to campaigns,” Peskin said. “But he doesn’t seem to be a [political] player that is actually looking for solutions or sitting down and trying to have mature conversations about how to make the city a better place.”

Tan has contributed more than $278,000 to political campaigns since early 2021, putting him in the top tier of individual spenders in San Francisco. While Tan has made it abundantly clear whom he doesn’t support, he’s more evasive about whom he plans to back in next year’s elections.

Tech entrepreneur and CEO of Y Combinator Garry Tan smiles during an interview at his Y Combinator offices in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco on Sept. 14. | Source: Noah Berger for The Standard

This summer, Tan held a fundraiser for Breed at a condo he owns near Dolores Park in the Mission. Breed’s approval ratings have plummeted since the start of the pandemic, and the private event offered the beleaguered mayor a chance to rekindle support from her frustrated base.

Tan, who supported Breed’s appointments of District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and Supervisor Matt Dorsey, considers the mayor to be a “friend” and said the two text each other. But even after giving money to her campaign last year and throwing her a fundraiser, he won’t commit to officially backing Breed in the November 2024 election.

“No,” Tan said. “I’m a big fan, and honestly, we don’t even know who the field [of candidates] is yet. So, it’d be way premature to say either way. I can say I’m a fan and supporter. Like, she’s definitely going to be on my ranked-choice vote.”

A day prior to his interview with The Standard, Tan met Daniel Lurie, an anti-poverty nonprofit founder and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who is running for mayor. Tan said he walked away from their conversation impressed.

Daniel Lurie shakes hands at a press conference at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House after filing paperwork officially announcing his candidacy for mayor of San Francisco with the Department of Elections. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy for The Standard

Tan’s support is likely to carry enormous sway in the city’s growing collection of moderate-leaning political groups, some of which Tan is advising. Tan sits on the board of GrowSF, a moderate group launched by two former tech workers, and is part of the “donor table” for Abundant SF, a coalition of upper-crust tech entrepreneurs who plan to pool millions of dollars to spend on city elections each year starting in 2024.

Tan’s chaotic foray into politics appears to mark a new era from the high-society, ball gown and bowtie power brokers of the past.

“The old guard of people in politics, kind of like the Downtown developers and the Shorensteins and the Fishers, that’s a different class,” said Todd David, political director of Abundant SF. “When I think of the new generation of business leaders, especially the young ones, it’s hard for me to think of anyone who is more important than Garry.”

‘People Just Read It and Engage’

Tan’s origin story is far from glamorous, and the trauma he endured as a child, along with the training he received, seems to have made him uniquely suited for the stress of startup culture and San Francisco politics. He was born in 1981 in Winnipeg, Canada. His ethnically Chinese parents—his father was from Singapore and his mother was from Burma—met at an A&W Root Beer restaurant and struggled to make ends meet. 

The family moved around—once to California, then back to Canada—before settling in Fremont in 1991. His dad, a mechanical engineer, drank too much and changed jobs often. His mother’s limited English skills prevented her from trading in her two jobs, including work at a convalescent home, to pursue her dream of becoming a registered nurse. 

Garry Tan displays his TI-99 Texas Instruments calculator and handbook while sitting next to his computers at his home in Fremont in 1999. | Source: Courtesy Garry Tan

Tan’s father would come home and pass off machinist paperwork to Garry, the eldest of two sons, so he could relax and drink beer. Food was often in short supply—in interviews, Tan has recalled meals of sliced bread dipped in milk—and his father’s discipline could be severe. The tension of home life was paired with mundane family outings in which his father would take him to technical bookstores, preparing Tan for a life of building and breaking things.

“It’s hyper common for founders to basically have limbic systems that are tuned up in a way where if it’s, like, too calm or too safe, they start looking for things to find stimulation,” Tan said.

At age 14, Tan started cold-calling companies in the Yellow Pages to land a $7-an-hour job building city websites, a grind that eventually paid off with Tan helping his parents make a down payment on a house. In middle school, Tan and a friend created a website that became an “underground newspaper” tackling thorny issues like California’s three-strikes law. 

An American High School yearbook photo shows sophomore Garry Tan, center, during class in 1997.

“I just got addicted to this idea that media was a way that you could actually have an influence on the world around us,” Tan said. “And on the internet, it sort of didn’t matter who you were. People just read it and engage with it.”

Obviously, the difference now is what Tan says matters.

After graduating from American High School in Fremont and receiving a computer engineering degree from Stanford in 2003, Tan worked at Microsoft and became an early employee at Peter Thiel’s Palantir. He joined the Y Combinator program as a partner in 2011, and a year later, he sold his first startup, a blogging and sharing platform called Posterous, for $20 million. He created another company similar to his first before launching Initialized Capital, a venture capital firm that hit big with Instacart and Coinbase.

Tan has voted in all but one San Francisco election since 2014 after moving to the city about two years earlier. Tan contributed $5,139 to various campaigns in 2015 and 2016 and supported Sonja Trauss and other YIMBY housing activists. But it wasn’t until the 2022 district attorney and school board recalls that Tan—infuriated by the city’s public school system and a spike in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI)—began more aggressively speaking out and pouring money into campaigns.

“You see this in Garry and, just in general, in how the AAPI community is voting right now,” said Lee Edwards, a friend of Tan’s and a fellow venture capitalist.  “When you look at safety and you look at public schools, these are things that the community cares a lot about, particularly if they’re first-, second- or third-generation immigrants.”

A volunteer campaigning to recall the SF School Board reminds passersby of the election that was held on Feb. 14, 2022. | Camille Cohen/The Standard

Kim-Mai Cutler, a close friend of Tan’s who worked as a tech journalist before joining his former investment firm, Initialized Capital, suggested the departure of Donald Trump from the White House has made San Franciscans like Tan less concerned with assaults on democracy, LGBTQ+ rights and immigrants; instead, they are taking a harder look at the conditions here at home.

“That [wave of electing progressives] was very much fueled by the Trump presidency and people wanting to make a clear statement that they were as far away from that as possible,” Cutler said. “In some ways, maybe Garry’s trajectory mirrors that shift in the tone of city politics.”

‘The More I Find Out About Him, the More Angry I Get’

It isn’t difficult to see how Tan and Supervisor Dean Preston see the world in different colors. 

In contrast to Tan’s hardscrabble beginnings, the 53-year-old Preston grew up in Greenwich Village with the safety net of generational wealth before coming to San Francisco to work as a tenants rights attorney. Eight years after Tan and his family arrived in Fremont, Preston and his wife were buying a 2,400-square-foot home overlooking the Painted Ladies and Alamo Square. 

Supervisor Dean Preston speaks at a rally to protest illegal evictions in San Francisco on Aug. 5, 2022. | Juliana Yamada/The Standard

“We’re, like, exactly the polar opposite,” Tan said. “I don’t think I’ve found a single thing I agree with him on. … What’s funny is I don’t think it’s personal. It was the policies that made me angry first. And the more I find out about him, the more angry I get.”

GrowSF launched a campaign committee this summer colloquially called the “Dump Dean PAC,” with Tan contributing $50,000 to the effort. The group’s website ticks off 31 reasons why voters should not reelect Preston, whose supervisorial district includes the Haight and the Tenderloin. The arguments against Preston range from his opposition to numerous housing projects and calls to defund police to his stances against last year’s recall elections. Tan has recited many of these points in dozens of social media posts, accusing Preston of “ruining” San Francisco.

As if on cue, my car got bipped this morning https://t.co/NTnHco58zf pic.twitter.com/LR6SPg7wdq

— Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 — e/acc (@garrytan) September 21, 2023

The contempt appears to be mutual.

In an appearance this month at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, Preston—who joined the Board of Supervisors in 2019—blamed the city’s ills on wealthy elites and a “billionaire backlash” that he said has rolled back progressive reforms.

“Even worse than the billionaires like Musk are the wannabe billionaires. Like, they only have hundreds of millions,” Preston said. “Guys like Garry Tan and others, they’re very angry that they’re not yet billionaires, so they’re even more toxic.”

Tan laughed when he heard about Preston’s speech being posted to YouTube, which also features a channel Tan has fine-tuned with advice from social media star Mr. Beast to share life lessons and business strategies.

“Like, they’re anti-capitalists,” Tan said. “I’m a capitalist! Basically, I feel like I have to [fight back]. It feels like a little bit of a duty.”

Garry Tan, then the co-founder and managing partner of Initialized Capital, talks with Tim Draper during the opening day of Web Summit 2018 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. | Source: Seb Daly/Web Summit/Getty Images

The war between Preston and Tan is clearly personal. But a recent exchange shows how Tan’s social media tactics can act as a double-edged sword. The same day Musk pledged to double Tan’s $50,000 donation to GrowSF, Preston sent out a call for donations saying that he is running against the “billionaire class.”

Bilal Mahmood, a tech entrepreneur who is expected to challenge Preston in next year’s election, attempted to distance himself from Musk in a post on X. While he has little in common with Preston, Mahmood’s reaction could have just as easily come from one of the supervisor’s supporters—a seeming acknowledgment that, in Preston’s progressive district, any association with the divisive billionaire would be a political non-starter. 

“San Francisco is a city of progressive values,” Mahmood tweeted. “Elon should keep his fucking money out of our politics.”

Elon Musk is many things.

He is Anti-Trans.
He is Anti-Semitic.
He is Anti-Choice.
He is Anti-Worker.

San Francisco is a city of progressive values. Elon should keep his fucking money out of our politics.

— Bilal Mahmood 馬百樂 (@bilalmahmood) September 23, 2023

‘What Happens in San Francisco …’

Last summer, Tan was lured back to Y Combinator as CEO to carry the baton previously held by tech whisperer and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham as well as Sam Altman, who is now the CEO of OpenAI.

Tan has been bullish in defending the work of Y Combinator founders and calling out “greedy” investors. But unlike his predecessors, he’s also more politically outspoken and believes an alignment between San Francisco tech founders and policymakers could spark a global movement for the betterment of humanity.

Also, it’s a big deal imo that YC will have a president so active in local politics! I think YC can make a real difference here…

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 29, 2022

“I never want to run for office. Like, it’s not for me to figure out,” Tan said. “I really think that we can find people who have our values, who believe in the acceleration of human abundance. And those are the people I want in power. If we align ideologically, this is the city to do it. And what happens in San Francisco will not just be for the people who grow up in San Francisco. It’ll be for the Bay Area. It’ll be for California. It’ll be for America. It’ll be for the world.” 

The handle of Tan’s X bio includes the acronym “e/acc,” which stands for effective accelerationism. The ideology du jour in Silicon Valley—endorsed by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and convicted pharma bro Martin Shkreli—suggests rapidly scaled innovation and capitalism can create social change bordering on a utopia. There will be collateral damage, the theory goes, but this should not be seen as a reason to “kill the golden goose,” as Tan put it in a defiant YouTube video defending robotaxis in San Francisco.

The ideology has fringes that border on cultish—such as those who believe in a “thermodynamic god”—but Tan sees e/acc as a motivating force in bringing more tech people into San Francisco’s political fold.

“We’re trying to get tech people to realize: ‘You may not be interested in government, but government is absolutely interested in you,’” he said. “And you know what? I’m not asking for more than a vote. I just want our vote. That’s it.”

Tan’s influence in this regard appears to be bearing fruit. In just the last two weeks, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has come out hard on public safety after largely sitting on the sidelines since 2018 when he backed Proposition C. The controversial ballot measure taxed companies making over $50 million in annual gross receipts to help fund homelessness services, but conditions on San Francisco’s streets are no better, and critics say the tax played a role in driving businesses out of the city.

“I think he’s coming over,” Tan said of Benioff. “I think that he understands the unintended consequence [of Prop. C]. And he’s pro-police, he’s pro-public safety and I’m excited about that.”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff answers questions from the press at the Dreamforce conference on Sept. 13. | Source: Justin Katigbak/The Standard

There is a question as to how long Tan can keep up the pace of raising a family, serving as CEO of Y Combinator and acting as San Francisco’s chief political antagonist. Blocking tens of thousands of people on X can silence some of the noise—and conversely, create a dangerous echo chamber of thought—but one meltdown or poorly worded tweet can lead to becoming persona non grata in this city.

“Folks burn out or wear out their welcome pretty quickly,” Latterman said. “[Tan] takes one issue that’s really unpopular—you know, some kid gets killed by an automated vehicle—and then suddenly he’s out defending it? Then his cred is done.”

Some of Tan’s supporters and friends have expressed concern about the toll of his social media brawls: “I can’t see that level of Twitter fighting is great for anyone’s psyche long-term,” Cutler said. But Tan said he rarely suffers a moment of doubt in his mission.

“Not really,” he said. “I mean, yes, but I care about this, and it’s worth it. Like, what other game of FarmVille am I supposed to be playing?”

A composite image shows tech entrepreneur and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan reacting during an interview with The Standard on Sept. 14. | Source: Noah Berger for The Standard

Tan used to play video games on his family computer as a kid, trading floppy disks with his friends. When asked what he does for fun now outside of picking political fights, he smiled, almost confused by the question.

“Oh, my God,” Tan said. “This is fun.”

The post Y Combinator’s Garry Tan Declares Conflict on San Francisco Politics appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The world is transfixed by the spectacle of Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine. More than any previous war, this one is unfolding in full view, and as it happens. Thanks to cell phones, news photographers and the internet, the destruction of large cities and the slaughter of civilians are taking place in front of humanity’s eyes. This real-time horror show leads to a haunting question: What if this was happening to my city?

The horrors of war, because they are inflicted by humans on each other, are even more dreadful than natural disasters. Collapsing buildings do not intentionally torture, rape and execute innocent people. But with that caveat, 116 years ago San Francisco experienced something closer to what Mariupol, Kherson, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities and towns are undergoing than any American city ever has. The terrible blow that smashed into this city was inflicted by nature, not man, but the results were the same: devastation, terror and death.

More than 3,000 people died as a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire; 28,188 buildings were destroyed; nearly 500 blocks were leveled.

Just as rockets and artillery fire destroy buildings and kill people, so did the temblor that struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906, leaving a random trail of destruction. The difference between being killed and walking away unscratched was often a matter of inches or seconds.

Previous question: What did the 19th century term “parlor house” denote?

Answer: An upscale brothel.

This week’s question: What is “Hangtown Fry”?

See MoreCollapse

When the tectonic plates under the ocean off Daly City slipped at 5:12 a.m., they released energy equal to almost half a million tons of TNT. The shock waves created raced at 7,000 miles an hour toward San Francisco, furrowing the earth as they came. They arrived four seconds later.

Police Officer Jesse Cook was on duty at the old Columbo produce market at Washington and Davis streets. He noticed that the horses all around him were panicking. An instant later, he heard a “deep rumbling, deep and terrible, and then I could actually see it coming up Washington Street. The whole street was undulating. It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, billowing as they came.”

Cook ran for safety toward a building on Davis Street. Suddenly, he later recalled, “a gaping trench that I think was about six feet deep and half full of water” opened in the street. All across the city, especially atop filled marshes, old branches of creeks or other “made land,” streets were literally ripping apart and cracking open.

The Columbo market stood on what had once been shallow Yerba Buena Cove. As Cook leaped across the trench, he saw the brick Ivanovich Building on the opposite corner crumble “like a house of sand.” Two men running out of the building were crushed to death under 6 feet of bricks, oranges and produce.

Across the city, untold numbers of buildings simply collapsed when the quake hit. More structures fell down in the crowded working-class South of Market area, most of which stood on marshy soil from reclaimed Mission Bay, than anywhere else in the city. In the worst single disaster of the entire earthquake, three large wood-framed rooming houses on the west side of Sixth Street between Howard and Natoma collapsed when the soil under them liquefied. At least 300 people were killed. “The cries of the people who were being killed, especially the women, were dreadful to hear,” a survivor recalled.

Across town in the Mission District, another horror unfolded at the Valencia Hotel at 19th Street and Valencia. The hotel had been built atop a buried branch of a creek that once ran down from Twin Peaks, near the site of the Willows, a 19th century pleasure garden renowned for its water-fed willow trees.

At 5:12 a.m., Henry Powell, a policeman working the Valencia Street beat, was looking in on the building. A few men were playing cards in the hotel lobby. Powell had just walked out of the hotel when “Valencia Street … began to dance and rear and roll in waves like a rough sea in a squall … it sank in places and then vomited up its car tracks and the tunnels that carried the cables.” The night clerk and one of the card players managed to make it out of the hotel.

“As we ran we heard the hotel creak and roar and crash,” Powell recalled. “I turned to look at it. … The hotel lurched forward as if the foundation were dragged backward from under it, and crumpled down over Valencia Street. It did not fall to pieces and spray itself all over the place, but telescoped down on itself like a concertina. This all took only a few seconds.”

The five-story Valencia Hotel had become a two-story building in just seconds. In those seconds, most people on the three bottom floors were crushed to death. Those who weren’t killed were drowned when a burst water main flooded the wreckage. Those who survived that were burned to death by the fire that soon consumed Valencia Street. More than 100 people died.

All across town, the facades of buildings broke off and fell into the street. The hail of falling masonry and timbers during those first few seconds killed or maimed anyone walking below.

Many of the people killed in the moments after the earthquake hit, including the majority who were inside and in bed, were crushed by falling chimneys. A 16-year-old boy named Charles O’Day, who was living with his family at 324 McAllister St. between Hyde and Larkin, survived such a collapse by seconds. He was sleeping on a cot in a little room off the kitchen when the house shook violently. He jumped up and got to the door that led to the kitchen. “I stepped through, I turned around, and that little room was full of brick, right to the ceiling, from a brick chimney at the front door,” he recalled.

Others were killed by falling cupolas, spires and cornices. San Francisco’s fire chief, Dennis Sullivan, was asleep in his third-floor apartment above a fire station at 410 Bush St. When the quake hit, he rushed into the adjoining bedroom where his wife, Margaret, was sleeping. The room was filled with a cloud of dust, created when the thin cupola of the California Hotel next door fell through the roof of the firehouse and tore through the floors below. Margaret, tightly wrapped in her sheets, fell in her bed more than 40 feet to the basement. She survived, but Chief Sullivan was not so lucky. He didn’t see the gaping hole in the floor and fell into it, plunging to the basement floor. His skull was fractured, his ribs broken, and he was scalded by steam from a broken boiler. He died four days later. His death deprived the city of the one man whose skill and knowledge might have saved it from the fires that were about to complete its destruction.

Tectonic plates have no intentions, but many San Franciscans felt strangely betrayed. Call reporter James Hopper walked down Post Street among other survivors. He wrote: “All of them … had a singular hurt expression, not one of physical pain, but rather one of injured sensibilities, as if some trusted friend, say, had wronged them, or as if someone had said something rude to them.”

Those were some of the scenes in San Francisco, in those terrible moments when nature turned on it with the ruthless savagery of an invading army.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco.” His most recent book is “Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City.” All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals.

The post Like Ukrainian cities shattered by struggle right now, S.F. was lowered to rubble in 1906 earthquake appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Daniel Ellsberg speaking at a press conference in 1972. Photo by Gernard Gotfryd, public domain

Daniel Ellsberg, a senior military analyst who courageously exposed four governments’ criminal war against Vietnam and later became a leading activist for peace and civil rights, died June 16 at the age of 92.

Ellsberg is best known for releasing 7,000-page copies of classified documents in 1971 that became known as the “Pentagon Papers.”

The incriminating documents, reprinted in leading newspapers in the US and around the world, showed that US political and military leaders were willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of US soldiers rather than admit defeat, many of which were defeated of them knew it was inevitable. Ellsberg, who worked for the Rand Corporation and the State Department, had spent time in Vietnam and seen firsthand the discrepancy between government reports and the reality on the ground.

As early as July 23, 1965, when the massive buildup of US troops had just begun, Clark Clifford, a close adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, wrote:

“I don’t think we can win in South Vietnam. . . If we lose 50,000 men there, it would be catastrophic for that country. Five years, billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of men. . . All I can think of in this area is catastrophe for our country.”

But when Pentagon generals assured him that given sufficient troops and bombs, a US victory was certain, Johnson launched a massive deployment that would see more than 550,000 troops deployed into Vietnam by 1968. Though he inflicted unimaginable death and destruction on the country, victory was no nearer the height of the boom than it had been when it began, and Johnson was forced out of office.

His successor, Richard Nixon, was elected and promised to end the war but had no intention of doing so. While US troop levels in Vietnam were being reduced by the time the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, Nixon was escalating genocidal air warfare against the country and contemplating the use of nuclear weapons.

The release of the Pentagon Papers, entitled “History of US Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945-68,” hit the country like a bomb, documenting a quarter-century of lies and deception. Its publication enraged Nixon. One of his advisors, Egil Krough Jr., later said, “We had a strong feeling that we were dealing with a national security crisis.” Henry Kissinger [then National Security Adviser] said that dr. Daniel Ellsberg is “the most dangerous man in America” ​​and he must be stopped.”

A film entitled The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, voiced by Ellsberg himself, was released in 2009.

“Let’s get this son of a bitch in jail,” Nixon told his attorney, John Ehrlichman. “We want to destroy him in the press. Is that clear?”

After The New York Times began printing the papers on June 13, 1971, Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell obtained an injunction blocking further publication. But then the Washington Post began publishing the documents. Later that year, the injunction was overturned by the Supreme Court, a major victory for press freedom.

Meanwhile, a two-week nationwide search for Ellsberg and an associate, Anthony Russo, which one media report described as “the biggest manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping” in the 1930s, ended in self-reporting. Both were charged with espionage and other crimes, Ellsberg faces 105 years in prison and Russo faces 35 years.

Ellsberg was the first target of the White House “Plumbers Unit,” secretly formed in August 1971 under the leadership of G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt to pursue Ellsberg. The Plumbers became notorious for the 1972 break-ins at the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, DC – the Watergate scandal that played a key role in Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

But as early as September 3, 1971, the “Plumbers” had broken into the office of Ellsberg’s psychologist in Santa Monica, California, looking for information that Nixon hoped would discredit Ellsberg. When this break-in was exposed during the May 1973 trial of Ellsberg and Russo, it prompted the judge to dismiss the charges against both defendants.

Daniel Ellsberg and the anti-war movement

As he pointed out, Ellsberg’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers did not come in a vacuum, but was significantly influenced by the growing anti-Vietnam movement. He attended his first anti-war rally in 1965, while still working as a fringe analyst, at the invitation of his future wife, Patricia Marx.

An anti-war conference at Haverford College was a turning point for Ellsberg. At the conference, Randy Kehler, a draft evader, proudly declared that he was about to go to prison. “I didn’t know he was going to be convicted of conscientious objection,” Ellsberg said in an interview many years later. “It wasn’t exactly what he said that changed my worldview. It was the example he set with his life. . . I had no doubt that my government was engaged in an unjust war that would continue and only get worse. . . If I hadn’t met Randy Kehler, I wouldn’t have thought of copying [the Pentagon Papers]. His actions spoke to me in ways that mere words could not. He put the right question in my mind at the right time.” (Greenfield Recorder, 12/31/2021)

On May 1, 1971, just weeks before the release of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was part of an affinity group with Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and others at a mass anti-war demonstration in Washington DC. He remained an anti-war activist for the rest of his life, opposing US wars from Latin America to the Middle East. He has been arrested more than 90 times in civil disobedience activities.

In a 2018 interview, Ellsberg said, “I think America in Iraq has never looked at the number of people who have died over the last 30 years from our invasion, our aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.”

When the ANSWER coalition initiated a mass march and demonstration in Washington DC in 2019 against Trump’s attempt to impose regime change in Venezuela, Ellsberg was the keynote speaker.

Among his many books was The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. According to Ellsberg, planning for nuclear war was his main work as a military analyst. In May 2021, Ellsberg posted online a classified 1958 document in which he sought another legal battle over press freedom and detailed a Pentagon plan to launch nuclear war if the People’s Republic of China attempted to gain control over Taiwan province had seceded from the mainland after the 1949 revolution. The planners assumed that such a course of action by the USA would result in a reaction from the Soviet Union and thus in World War III.

Ellsberg was a staunch supporter of other “whistleblowers” ​​who exposed the criminality of Pentagon/CIA wars and interventions, including Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden. He wore a pink feather boa to represent Chelsea Manning at the LGBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco in 2013 and carried a sign that read “I Was Manning: The Pentagon Papers, 1971.” In 2020, Ellsberg testified against the extradition of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange to the US.

In a 2018 interview, he appealed to other members of the national security apparatus who are aware of criminal acts being planned or carried out:

“My message to them is: don’t do what I did. Don’t wait until the bombs actually fall or thousands more die before you do what I would have done years earlier, in 1964 or even 1961, on the nuclear issue. And that means exposing the truth you know, the dangerous truths that the government is keeping from you, at whatever cost, whatever the risk. Consider doing this because in a war, lives could be at stake. Or in the case of the two existential crises I am talking about, the future of humanity is at stake.”

The post How Daniel Ellsberg uncovered the U.S. conflict machine and have become a high enemy of empire – Liberation Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The San Francisco Bay Area has banned gas stoves and some other gas-powered appliances. George Frey—Bloomberg/Getty Images

San Francisco Bay Area regulators on Wednesday approved a de facto ban on new residential furnaces and water heaters that run on natural gas — but not gas-fired stoves — as states, cities and political parties debate the future of the fuel fight.

The region’s air pollution authorities overwhelmingly approved the ban, which would come into effect in stages from 2027 to 2031, depending on the size and type of equipment. Notably, the measure does not target gas stoves, which have emerged as a cultural hotspot in the debate about phasing out fossil fuels at home.

The gas industry and many Republicans say gas bans increase costs for homeowners while violating their right to heat their homes and cook as they please. Climate activists believe replacing gas appliances with electric ones is a necessary step in the fight against climate change, and see the Bay Area’s new rules as a way to do it.

Bay Area Air Quality Management District regulations focus on stoves and water heaters and the air pollution they produce, particularly nitrogen oxides (NOx). NOx, produced when gas is burned, is part of smog and can aggravate asthma and cardiovascular problems. The district estimates that gas stoves and water heaters generate more NOx than all the cars in the region each year. Water heaters and furnaces sold in the Bay Area are not required to emit NOx by the implementation date, effectively forcing homeowners to purchase electric heaters or heat pumps.

The requirement has raised concerns among some residents that in the event of a sudden failure of their water heaters or furnaces, they will be forced to pay more for an electrical replacement – as long as they can find one readily available. District Executive Ray Mueller said that while he supports the idea, the requirement could put a strain on homeowners, especially if the switch to electrical appliances is forcing them to upgrade their home’s electrical panel and wiring.

“Frankly, what I think is missing from this discussion is that there’s a middle class out there that’s really doing badly,” said Mueller, a San Mateo borough chairperson who is involved in voting on the measure voice contained.

However, most board members said that by setting the requirement years in the future, the district would send a clear signal to the market to offer more models with heat pumps and electric water heaters, thereby lowering the price. The measure also provides that two years before the first implementation deadline, the members of the Management Board can take another look at the market conditions and adjust them if necessary.

“Necessity breeds invention, so we create necessity and the market will respond to that,” said Board Member Juan Gonzalez, Mayor of the City of San Leandro.

Even if the measure is implemented, many gas furnaces and water heaters in the Bay Area will remain operational for decades to come, said Leah Louis-Prescott of RMI’s climate and energy think tank. Homeowners will still be able to fix their old gas appliances after 2031.

“It ensures the consumer is buying a cleaner device and avoids decades of pollution,” said Louis-Prescott, who is part of RMI’s zero-carbon building team. “It’s not so much a ban as it is a phasing out if your devices break.”

The gas debate has raged for years in the Bay Area, home to more than 7 million people. Berkeley officials in 2019 passed the country’s first regulation banning gas hookups in new buildings. San Francisco and other cities across the country followed suit, with New York City enacting its own ban in 2021 and Gov. Kathy Hochul calling for a statewide version this year. The gas industry and its political allies have pushed back: At least 20 states have enacted laws preventing their cities from blocking use of the fuel.

The post San Francisco Bay Space declares struggle on fuel home equipment appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem continues to send a powerful message long after it was first performed in 1961. The modernist masterpiece presents enormous challenges of scale, challenges embraced and conveyed by the San Francisco Symphony with guest conductor Philippe Jordan, the Silicon Valley-based Ragazzi Boys Chorus, soprano Jennifer Holloway, tenor Ian Bostridge and baritone Brian Mulligan, a Last minute replacement for Iain Paterson who was kept away due to visa issues.

The Requiem was commissioned to mark the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral in England, which was destroyed along with the rest of the city in a bombing raid in 1940. Britten’s music, performed in the new cathedral next to the ruins of the old church, was then as now a bitter cry about what the text calls “the pity of war” – the terrible effects of aggression on human lives.

The Requiem sets the Latin text of the Catholic funeral mass to music, using a large orchestra with a correspondingly large choir and a soprano soloist. Far from the stage, a children’s choir echoes from the Latin Mass (in this case, from the corridor behind the second floor of Davies Hall). In Britten’s hands, the liturgy offers some moments of comfort, such as at a funeral, but moments of peace are often drowned out in horrifying apocalyptic scenarios.

Benjamin Britten rehearses his War Requiem in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral

Britten’s masterpiece in crafting a requiem for the war-torn 20th century was to contrast the liturgical with a more personal, secular perspective. He drew on the poems of Wilfred Owen, who died in World War I just a week before the armistice. Britten, a master at setting English poetry to music, brings out the painful range of emotions of a soldier in the trenches – fear, sadness, longing and tenderness. Owen’s lyrics are performed by a smaller chamber orchestra playing in intimate counterpoint with the tenor and baritone soloists.

The Requiem was the only piece on the program that was performed without an intermission. Jordan directed these many forces with alert precision and control, keeping steady beat where needed, as in the wild fugue Britten wrote for the Latin text “Quam olim Abrahae promisti” (Which thou [God] once promised to Abraham). The orchestra was full of lively percussion – bells, drums and all sorts of clacks and gongs. The brass made a tremendous contribution with bugle calls and ominous trumpets. As the choir sang Judgment Day, the orchestra murmured and swayed in powerful counterpoint to the terrified voices. The chorus skillfully handled Britten’s extraordinarily wide dynamic range – from the softest whisper to the loudest screech. Guest choir director Joshua Habermann prepared the symphony choir.

Britten counterpoints God’s promise of protection at the hour of death and on the day of judgment with Owen’s poem about Abraham and Isaac, sung by the baritone and tenor soloists. Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac, and he dutifully prepares. In the biblical account, the command is revoked by an angel who offers a ram in place of the boy. In a tender duet, the two soloists expressed the angel’s intervention in a moving way. But Owen writes: “The old man would not do that, but killed his son. . .” and the music follows with a relentless reiteration of the gruesome consequences: “. . . and half the seed of Europe, one at a time.”

Ian Bostridge | Photo credit: Kalpesh Lathigra

Brian Mulligan’s confident, full baritone accentuated Owen’s tone of hopelessness and regret, particularly in the work’s moving final episode, in which a dead German soldier meets his English enemy and greets him as ‘my friend’. By contrast, Ian Bostridge tended to emphasize the irony of war, his notes devoid of sentimentality and seeming suffused with pain, swaying up and down the scale with manic glissandi. I will not soon forget Bostridge’s powerful rendition of ‘Move him into the sun’, Owen’s Pietà for a Dead Friend. The chamber orchestra contributed lively soundscapes of trench warfare – the howling of shells and the anxious drama of life in the trenches.

The powerful clarity of soprano Jennifer Mulligan brought a soulful tension to the Latin liturgy – there is no superficial religiosity here! Her proclamation of Sanctus – “Holy” – pierced the din of drums and bells like a beam of light across a dark battlefield.

The guys from the Ragazzi Chorus were excellently prepared by their artistic director Kent Jue and sang beautifully, spatially and musically far removed from the dark imaginations and struggles of the people in the war.

On opening night, when I heard the Requiem, there were a few glitches in the early sections – the orchestra was not as rhythmically tight as it could have been, the choir trembled at the Kyrie’s very difficult intonations. It took some time for Mulligan to find his consonants and for Bostridge to stop singing into his score. But as soon as the play really got going, the insecurities of the first evening disappeared.

The rest was magnificent, a complex and deeply human indictment of aggression and military force that is still—or perhaps increasingly—needed in these times.

The post San Francisco Symphony Delivers The Antiwar Message Of Britten’s Struggle Requiem appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

shark tank STar Kevin O’Leary announced Friday that he will be relocating his businesses out of a crime-ridden New York City ravaged by “Mr. Wonderful” is described as a “war zone”.

“It’s not about politics at all,” O’Leary said while discussing the move on Fox News. “It’s about politics. After the pandemic, most investors, including myself, realized that we can have our businesses anywhere because 40% of our employees are no longer based at headquarters. So I could get a company out of New York that looks promising, move it to Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Tennessee.”

MEET DYLAN MULVANEY, THE MAN WHO BECAME A MILLIONAIRE BY IDENTIFYING HIMSELF AS A WOMAN

States like these have pro-business tax policies, strong schools, and people want to live in those places, O’Leary said.

Places like New York City and Los Angeles are “war zones” by comparison, according to O’Leary.

“I wouldn’t ask anyone to live or work there,” he said. “It’s because of the incredibly poor governance of these cities and states.”

“Well, I can say that because it’s a fact. … They have never invested a penny in New York. It’s a terrible place for politics, terrible. Across the state, unstable politics.”

Massachusetts is another example because of its “penalty taxes on success,” O’Leary added.

“Why put one of your CEOs in a place where they will be punished for their success?” he has asked. “It’s so un-American. I don’t even understand it.”

Voters have to go to government officials in Democratic-run cities like Los Angeles and New York City because, according to O’Leary, just walking downtown can result in a person being “executed.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“If you’re trying to buy toothpaste in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or here in New York, everything is under lock and key. toothpaste,” he said. “The only reason a drugstore would do that is because they lose so much shrink.”

“These are pragmatic problems. They are not really political in nature. They are political in nature and people see that every day. They live with it and say to themselves, ‘What do I have to do? to fix that?’ Think about it next time you vote.”

The post WATCH: Kevin O’Leary transferring corporations out of ‘battle zone’ New York Metropolis appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

shark tank STar Kevin O’Leary announced Friday that he will be relocating his businesses out of a crime-ridden New York City ravaged by “Mr. Wonderful” is described as a “war zone”.

“It’s not about politics at all,” O’Leary said while discussing the move on Fox News. “It’s about politics. After the pandemic, most investors, including myself, realized that we can have our businesses anywhere because 40% of our employees are no longer based at headquarters. So I could get a company out of New York that looks promising, move it to Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Tennessee.”

MEET DYLAN MULVANEY, THE MAN WHO BECAME A MILLIONAIRE BY IDENTIFYING HIMSELF AS A WOMAN

States like these have pro-business tax policies, strong schools, and people want to live in those places, O’Leary said.

Places like New York City and Los Angeles are “war zones” by comparison, according to O’Leary.

“I wouldn’t ask anyone to live or work there,” he said. “It’s because of the incredibly poor governance of these cities and states.”

“Well, I can say that because it’s a fact. … They have never invested a penny in New York. It’s a terrible place for politics, terrible. Across the state, unstable politics.”

Massachusetts is another example because of its “penalty taxes on success,” O’Leary added.

“Why put one of your CEOs in a place where they will be punished for their success?” he has asked. “It’s so un-American. I don’t even understand it.”

Voters have to go to government officials in Democratic-run cities like Los Angeles and New York City because, according to O’Leary, just walking downtown can result in a person being “executed.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“If you’re trying to buy toothpaste in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or here in New York, everything is under lock and key. toothpaste,” he said. “The only reason a drugstore would do that is because they lose so much shrink.”

“These are pragmatic problems. They are not really political in nature. They are political in nature and people see that every day. They live with it and say to themselves, ‘What do I have to do? to fix that?’ Think about it next time you vote.”

Original location: WATCH: Kevin O’Leary moves businesses out of ‘war zone’ New York City

Washington Examiner Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

The post WATCH: Kevin O’Leary transferring firms out of ‘battle zone’ New York Metropolis | U.S. & World appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.