Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022

Gusty Winds | 40 New Cases | Mendocino Coast Clinics | Tanoak Lichen | Zip Covid | Fort Bragg Grammar | Ed Notes | Pink Slips | Little River Wharf | Thatcher Hotel | Skullduggery | Biographer Talk | Caspar Crew | Public/Private Skunk | Ice Girls | Host Handyman | Yesterday's Catch | Organized Artists | Effectively Evil | Rat Problem | That's Correct | War Reason | Tender Love | Missed Opportunity | London Cobbler

GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS THIS AFTERNOON will be accompanied by mild temperatures. Outside of mountain ridges, winds will calm tonight into Thursday morning, with clear skies and chilly low temperatures. Winds will ease through Friday and Saturday with increased coastal cloudiness. Showers are possible Sunday and Monday, mainly north of Mendocino County. (NWS)

40 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

FORT BRAGG DRIVE-THRU COVID testing and vaccinations, Mendocino Coast Clinics

We are doing free drive-through COVID vaccines for anyone aged 12 and up, first dose, second dose, and boosters, every Tuesday from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at the white tent at 205 South Street in Fort Bragg. No appointment is needed.

We are doing drive through surveillance testing on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. No appointment is needed.

Please call us at 707 964 1251 if you have symptoms and need to be tested.

ACTIVE COVID CASES IN MENDOCINO COUNTY

by ZIP Code (updated weekly, last updated: 2/14/22)

ZIP Code	Community	Active Cases
95415	Boonville	8
95428	Covelo	23
95437	Fort Bragg	24
95449	Hopland	10
95468	Point Arena	6
95470	Redwood Valley	19
95481	Talmage	6
95482	Ukiah	125
95490	Willits	48
All other ZIPs		0-5

ED NOTES

IS EMERALD SUN CLOSING? A couple of licensed Mendo pot growers who were supplying primo bud to Emerald Sun, the newish Ukiah bud wholesaler, tell us that Emerald Sun has fired something like two dozen people and is about to close up. Suppliers remain unpaid for who-knows-how-much cannabis that the suppliers “sold” to Emerald Sun and Emerald Sun isn't returning their product or their calls. Emerald Sun, for those who may not follow the local cannabis biz, is an investment partnership that bought the distinctive old Ukiah Brewing Company building on Airport Road in 2019 (visible from 101). But their timing turned out to be unfortunate as the pot market, legal and illegal, has taken a major downturn. Late last year the partnership got a permit from the City of Ukiah to expand both the size of the facility and the amount of cannabis they processed. But Emerald Sun appears to be caught up in the market squeeze as prices and buyers have fallen off in recent months. The company is owned and operated by the Schlesinger family, brothers Brett (CEO) and Dean (registered agent), and their father along with other local investors. Our sources say the company is on the verge of closing, or at least major downsizing, another casualty of the declining market and Mendo's failed pot permit program.

THE PEACHLAND ROAD REPAIR PROJECT to temporarily repair the washout damage from the December 2016/January 2017 rains was Mendo Transportation department’s highest priority active project in 2018, according to Transportation Director Howard Dashiell’s report to the Supervisors at the time. Dashiell said the project had been suspended as his crews had to attend to a fire emergency, but they were soon back on the interim repair and finished it before winter of 2018 was over. The long-term repair project has now finally been put out to bid some four years later and bids will be reviewed and a contractor selected next month. Work is expected to start later this year.

ENROLLMENT IN THE COUNTY'S SCHOOLS is down. The schools have also faced troubling staff shortages, mostly wrought by covid. Potter Valley is paying substitute teachers $200 a day. All you need is a college diploma and a reasonably wholesome background as verified by your local police agency. Here in Anderson Valley the sub rate was just raised to $180 for certificated people and, reports Superintendent Simson, “We are in need of more. We have a few trusted faithfuls who always come through for us, but never enough. We also will have a couple of full-time general education positions open next year, so we encourage applicants to apply.”

MARK SPRINKLE is finally out of prison for the alleged sexual touching of three underage girls who'd suddenly taken their clothes off in his car. The entire Sprinkle saga can be found at the ava's website, but it was clear from the beginning that Sprinkle was set up by his spurned ex who used her voluptuous daughter to stage the seductive disrobe in his vehicle. When it was sorted out in court testimony, Sprinkle allegedly touched several breasts and affectionately patted a single vulva for roughly a total of 90 seconds of non-violent bliss. The girls were not coerced, assaulted, beaten or raped. However, the event was sordid enough for the authorities and a jury, several of them guilty of far worse, to get Sprinkle arrested and convicted of child molestation. Sprinkle has always denied that he touched any of the girls, refusing the DA's offer of 3-5 years in prison if he would plead guilty. Instead, he went to trial and was found guilty. He has been in state prison for over 25 years because he refused to concede he touched any of them. He is now 62 years old, his adamant Not Guilty having cost him a quarter century of his life.

SPRINKLE is presently assigned to a halfway house in San Bernardino where, he says, he feels like Rip Van Winkle. “Everything is new. A friend here is teaching me how to use a phone.” He may be free of prison but he isn't free of cancer, for which he is undergoing chemotherapy.

A NATIVE of Ukiah, Sprinkle went to prison in 1996 just before techno-world became as primary as it is now. Prior to the Draconian sentence Sprinkle received on the basis of the highly suspicious allegations, he was always in demand and steadily employed as a truck driver and heavy equipment operator. He is today in good spirits despite the quadruple afflictions of being elderly, an ex-con, a cancer patient, and a registered sex offender. “I'll be here for 4-6 months,” he says, “and from here I'm not sure.”

R. D. BEACON: For those of you that are in the old vehicles here's a couple of, pink slips yes they were actually pink in the old days.

These were two vehicles my father's company had for the ranch, the Demartini truck he bought in San Francisco was used to haul produce, I believe, remembering what my father told me. They built them down there. When I was a little kid I took it apart piece by piece, about 12 years old, with a set of tools back of the barn up at the ranch. I had no real understanding about how a vehicle was built, what it was all about, but I was learning fast. It had a big chunk of iron laying out the side of the block which was a connecting rod part of a piston, the vehicle had a wooden cab with one window in front and it would open a hole in the back. It had a canvas top, and the doors were kind of canvas and wood. My father used it to deliver the old sheep down to Petaluma to the feedlot, and he would go down the coast road. I could only imagine with no heater, no radio, no extra units of any kind and barely any gauges to show what was going on. What I did notice was the truck had a four speed transmission, and a two speed auxiliary transmission behind it. Kind of cool. There were many other old trucks and cars back of the Barn, all rusted out, but for several years I amused myself taking them apart. If I'd only known then how valuable it might've been today to a collector. I still kick myself for doing it but it would probably been sold off for scrap anyway by the Greenwood Ranch company.

HOPLAND’S THATCHER HOTEL HAS HAD PLENTY OF UPDATES, BUT OLD BONES PRESERVE HISTORY

by Matt Villano

Old has become new again in downtown Hopland, an unlikely development that is transforming this once-sleepy little town in southern Mendocino County into a budding tourist destination.

At the heart of this change is the Thatcher Hotel, which reopened after a long renovation in late 2019.

The facility dates to 1890 and today exemplifies boutique luxury. It boasts 18 spacious rooms, a lobby with the original bar, a small café and a backyard patio with a small pool and conversation pits large enough to comfortably entertain the entire San Francisco 49ers roster.

The hotel is open from Thursday to Sunday until the end of spring, at which point it will be open to accommodate guests all week.

“We like to think of this place as more than just an inn or hotel — staying here really is a historical experience,” said General Manager Amy Pardini. “You come, you relax, you unwind and you appreciate the little things. For us that’s what being in Mendocino County is all about.”

Long history, bright future

To call the Thatcher an icon would be an understatement — the Victorian-style inn has graced the center of downtown Hopland since the late 1800s.

Back then, the train from San Francisco stopped at the Depot right behind the hotel, which meant the stately building was one of the first things they saw before they disembarked. Thatcher spared no expense in building the original, outfitting the structure with a copper steeple, tin ceilings and other ornate details.

Over the years the hotel changed as Hopland did — popularity ebbing and flowing as visitors came through town. At one point, the name switched from the Thatcher to the Hopland Hotel, which stuck until very recently.

The lobby bar, an inviting space with a hulking wooden façade, remained a popular gathering spot.

Finally, after years of neglect, the hotel shuttered its doors in the early part of last decade. Local entrepreneur Gary Breen teamed with Mark Rogero to purchase the property in 2017 and began renovating it immediately. Almost $5 million and two years later, it reopened in October 2019.

Breen and his team are known in the area for having a sort of Midas touch with the properties they create. Breen himself is a bit of a local mover and shaker. He owns the Stock Farm inn and restaurant to the south, as well as Campovida, a small family farm and winery on the site of the old Valley Oaks property to the east. He is a developer and does most construction work himself.

When he stepped in on the Thatcher, locals were excited about the future.

Built with good bones

The resulting renovations, designed by Oakland-based Medium Plenty, did not disappoint. The current iteration of the hotel is an exhilarating mix of new and old.

Design fans love the color — a deep and slightly purple grey dubbed Kendall Charcoal.

Guest rooms — there are 18 in all — are spacious and decorated with minimalist style. One room has a clawfoot tub, other rooms on the third floor have built-in window seats. Upstairs, the hotel feels much larger than it seems, almost like it is defying the time/space continuum with secret square footage.

The lobby bar has been restored to its original grandeur and remains a hotspot on weekend nights; it is currently the only place in downtown Hopland that serves mixed drinks. The library, just behind the bar, is a throwback, too — the room is ringed with built-in bookcases, and original oil paintings hang on the walls. There’s a small eatery in the front named the Poppy Café that serves coffees, baked goods and sandwiches.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the new Thatcher Hotel is the patio — a tremendous space that is divided into smaller “rooms” by benches and greenery. Two individual conversation areas ring spacious fire pits. A small pool provides relief from the blazing summertime heat.

There’s even a small microbrewery out back, a gravel-lined event space and a bocce court.

“People often joke that they could spend their entire visit back here and never get bored,” Pardini said. “There’s really nothing like it anywhere else here in Hopland.”

Lots of visitors roll through town

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the new-and-improved Thatcher Hotel has had a significant impact on the local economy.

Business owners up and down Highway 101 said they have seen more tourism dollars coming into town, and noted they are expecting a big summer after enduring two years of sagging interest in visitation and travel.

Many noted the Thatcher and other recently opened businesses such as Stock Farm, the Golden Pig, and the MendoCann cannabis dispensary at the center of an ongoing renaissance for the town.

Rebecca Robinson, executive director Zinfandel Advocates & Producers, said there are more than a half-dozen wineries with tasting rooms in downtown Hopland —wineries that are all part of a new “Zinfandel Trail” that encourages visitors to get out and support those who make that variety of wine. She added that many visitors following this trail end up at the Thatcher.

“The California Zinfandel Trail was conceived to encourage wine lovers to fine great Zinfandel and explore California's varied growing regions,” Robinson said. “Mendocino County is a perfect destination for finding delicious Zinfandel and one great launchpad-town is Hopland.”

Jameson McFadden agreed.

McFadden’s family has made wine in the nearby Potter Valley for years, and the family opened a tasting room just down the street from the Thatcher late last year. McFadden said that a decent number of visitors are guests of the Thatcher, and those who aren’t staying overnight at the hotel usually ask about it.

“In Hopland, Highway 101 shrinks to a single lane and traffic slows to 35 mph, allowing drivers to easily pull over and stop into many of the town’s great attractions,” he said.

Always ready for guests

As the weather warms up, Hopland businesses are bracing for busy times. Until then, they’re working together to do what they can to attract visitors and maintain a buzz around town.

This weekend wineries and tasting rooms are hosting Destination Hopland: Barrel Tasting. It’s an annual barrel-tasting event where visitors sample local wines straight from the barrels. The Thatcher Hotel supports this event by offering promotion through which guests who book for one night get the second night at half-price.

Pardini said the thinking behind this promo is to make it easy for guests to come up and stay a while.

“We want people to come and stay with us here at the Thatcher,” she said. “At the same time, we want people to explore town and support all of the local businesses. That way, everybody wins.”

The Thatcher Hotel is also available for large and small private gatherings. According to their website, they offer a range of venues to accommodate celebrations as well as full onsite food and beverage catering services.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

SMILE and the whole world smiles with you (wit, courtesy of Eleanor Cooney).

“WORTHWHILENESS”: Charmian Kittredge London, Grace Hudson's trailblazing friend, featured in talk

by Roberta Werdinger

On Thursday, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum presents a virtual talk by scholar and poet Iris Jamahl Dunkle on the life of Charmian Kittredge London. Charmian was the second wife of famed Northern California author Jack London, and a notable cultural and literary figure in her own right. Dunkle is the author of the 2020 biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, available in the Museum Gift Shop.

Charmian and Jack were a well-matched, adventurous couple whose progressive ideas about politics and lifestyle reflected the momentous changes of the early 20th century. Married in 1905, Charmian and Jack sailed the South Pacific, built a beautiful ranch in the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma County, and collaborated on literary ventures until Jack's death in 1916. In spite of undergoing this loss, the death of a newborn child, and several miscarriages, Charmian lived a long, full, and passionate life. She tended to Jack's literary career and to her own, publishing his biography and three other books about their travels, and traveling abroad, where her talks would draw large crowds. 

“As a writer, I have always been interested in questioning history, especially when so many women were not being represented,” says Iris Jamahl Dunkle. The Sebastopol native and former Sonoma County Poet Laureate remembers being told by a schoolteacher that Coast Miwok and Pomo peoples no longer exist, when in fact members of those groups were sharing her classroom. In sixth grade, she visited Jack London State Park and, noting the Londons' trailblazing lives, thought, “Sign me up! I'll travel the world and write about it.” Later, after finishing her Ph.D. in American literature, she started volunteering in the park. She quickly saw that Charmian's life and work had been misrepresented, that “she was not just Jack London's assistant or secretary; she was a writer in her own right.” Charmian had published articles before she and Jack began dating, and had helped edit and write his work. This included ghostwriting parts of Jack's books, such as the 1913 novel The Valley of the Moon. 

Dunkle thought, “We don't know about looking at Jack through Charmian's life and Charmian through Jack's life.” After this occurred to her, eight years ago, “I have been really busy,” writing the first full biography of Charmian. One of her first research trips was up to the Grace Hudson Museum, where a series of letters between these two remarkable and creative women was housed. Their friendship began in the 1890s when they shared camping trips on the Navarro River, and lasted until Grace's death in 1937. (Charmian died in 1955.)

Dunkle's work to unearth the lives of women and other under-represented people of the American West continues, as she currently researches the life of Sanora Babb, author of a long-ignored Depression-era book about the Dust Bowl, Whose Names Are Unknown. 

“Cheerful, I rise from my bed,” Charmian once wrote, after describing her great love for Jack. “I possess worthwhileness, whether worthwhileness really be or not. I will to create worthwhileness for myself, while I may last in the flesh. I will not die while I am still living.”

A link to the Feb. 17 talk can be found here or at the Museum's website. http://www.gracehudsonmuseum.org/ 

For more information, call the Museum at (707) 467-2836. 

FICTION V FACT - SIERRA RAILROAD (Coast Chatline)

Bruce Broderick: The GP stipulation reads: “Mendocino Railway’s acquisition of the Subject Property is necessary for construction and maintenance of rail facilities related to Mendocino Railway’s ongoing and future freight and passenger rail operations and all uses necessary and convenient thereto (“Project”), a public use.”

Wendy: Hotels, restaurants and other accommodations are absolutely “convenient” and beneficial to the public who will Use and enjoy the railroad. This is consistent with the California Coastal Act and the beneficial to the Fort Bragg economy and community. 

Broderick: I think you have misinterpreted “Public Use.” Public use with a public utility means that it is for public benefit not private enterprise. While hotels and the like might be nice, they are not a public use. A rail station that served public transportation would. An extension of the tracks would, but all this other stuff is just a pipe dream and a distraction.

AL NEEDS A PLACE

I can pay a little rent or do a work trade for my stay.

Hi my name is Alfred Nunez and i'm 62 years old, single, no dog, no cat. I am a handyman caretaker kind of guy looking for another place to live. I have a motorhome i live in, a stepvan that i keep all my tools in, and a little truck and a log splitter. I can do carpentry, mechanic, and gardening work. I have plenty of other skills and the tools to do that work also. I can pay a little rent or we can do a work trade for my stay. I live in Albion and i'm hoping to find a place around the coast here. I have local work and character references. I do not have internet at home, you have to call me to contact me. Thank you... 707-409-4147 

My References:

• Sydelle - sydelle@mcn.org
• Michael - 707-367-0407
• Rob and Justine - 707-937-2585
• Karen-707 - 223-4531
• Kent - 357-1010
• Terry - 707- 984-8782
• Sam - bigbear@mcn.org
• Patricia and Jary - 707-964-4942
• Leslie - 415-686-6361
• Lydia and Dennis - 707-962-9401

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 15, 2022

JOEL ALVAREZ-LOPEZ, Ukiah. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, felon-addict with firearm, controlled substance, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

ANTHONY BERTOZZI, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

FELICIA CHILDERS, Laytonville. Failure to appear.

JESUS NAVA-SANDOVAL, Ukiah. Protective order violation.

JOHN NELSON, Covelo. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

FEDERICO TRUJILLO, Clearlake/Ukiah. County parole violation.

TYLER TRUJILLO, Eureka/Ukiah. Purchase/possession of narcotics, sale of organic drug, evidence destruction, petty theft, stolen property-vehicle, conspiracy.

DESTINY TURNEY, Kelseyville/Ukiah. Domestic battery, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, controlled substance.

DEMOCRATS: THE MORE EFFECTIVE EVIL

by Chris Hedges

When all else fails, when you are clueless about how to halt a 7.5% inflation rate, when your Build Back Better bill is gutted, when you renege on your promise to raise the minimum wage or forgive student debt, when you can’t halt the Republican suppression of voting rights, when you have no idea how to handle the pandemic which has claimed 900,000 lives – 16% of the world’s total deaths although we are less than 5% of the world’s population – when the stock market fluctuates on wild rollercoaster rides of highs and lows, when what little help the government offered to the labor force — half of whom, 80 million, experienced a period of unemployment last year — sees the termination of the extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, forbearance for student loans, emergency checks, the moratorium on evictions and expansion of the child tax credits, when you watch passively as the ecocide gathers momentum, then you must make the public afraid of enemies, foreign and domestic.

You must manufacture an existential threat. Terrorists at home. Russians and Chinese abroad. Expand state power in the name of national security. Beat the drums of war. War is the antidote to divert public attention from government corruption and incompetence. No one plays the game better than the Democratic Party. The Democrats, as journalist and co-founder of Black Agenda Report Glen Ford said, are not the lesser evil, they are the more effective evil.

The US, burdened by de facto tax boycotts by the rich and corporations, is sinking in debt, the highest in our history. The US government budget deficit was $2.77 trillion for the 2021 budget year that ended Sept. 30, the second highest annual deficit on record. It was exceeded only by the $3.13 trillion deficit for 2020. Total US national total debt is over $30 trillion. Household debt grew by $1 trillion last year. The total debt balance in our government Ponzi scheme is now $1.4 trillion higher than it was at the end of 2019. Our wars are waged on borrowed money. The Watson Institute at Brown University estimates that interest payments on the military debt could be over $6.5 trillion by the 2050s. None of this debt is sustainable.

At the same time, the US is facing the ascendency of China, whose economy is projected to overtake the US economy by the end of the decade. Washington’s slew of desperate financial tricks – flooding the global market with new dollars and lowering interest rates to near zero – staved off major depressions after the 2000 dot.com crash, 9/11 and the 2008 global financial meltdown. The cheap interest rates led corporations and banks to borrow massively from the Federal Reserve, often to paper over shortfalls and bad investments. The result is that US businesses are deeper in debt than at any time in US history. Added to this morass is rising inflation, caused by businesses that have increased prices in a desperate effort to make up for lost revenue from supply chain shortages and rising shipping costs, the economic downturn and the slight wage increases triggered by the pandemic. This inflation has forced the Fed to curtail the growth of the money supply and raise interest rates, which then pushes corporations to further raise prices. The desperate measures to stave off an economic crisis are self-defeating. The bag of tricks is empty. Massive defaults on mortgages, student loans, credit cards, household debt, car debt and other loans in the United States is probably inevitable. With no short-term mechanisms left to paper over the disaster, it will usher in a prolonged depression.

An economic crisis means a political crisis. And a political crisis is traditionally solved by war against enemies inside and outside the nation. The Democrats are as guilty of this as the Republicans. Wars can get started by Democrats, such as Harry S. Truman in Korea or John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and perpetuated by Republicans. Or they can get started by Republicans, such as George W. Bush, and perpetuated by Democrats such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Bill Clinton, without declaring war, imposed punishing sanctions on Iraq and authorized the Navy and the Air Force to carry out tens of thousands of sorties against the country, dropping thousands of bombs and launching hundreds of missiles. The war industry, with its $768 billion military budget, along with the expansion of Homeland Security, the FBI, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the National Security Agency, is a bipartisan project. The handful of national political leaders, such as Henry Wallace in 1948 and George McGovern in 1972, who dared to challenge the war machine were ruthlessly hounded into political oblivion by the leaders of both parties.

Biden’s bellicose rhetoric towards China and especially Russia, more strident than that of the Trump administration, has been accompanied by the formation of new security alliances such as those with India, Japan, Australia, and Great Britain in the Indo-Pacific. US aggression has, ironically, pushed China and Russia into a forced marriage, something the architects of the Cold War, including Nixon and Kissinger with their opening to China in 1971, worked very hard to avoid. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, after meeting recently in Beijing, issued a 5,300-word statement that condemned NATO expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia Pacific region, and criticized the AUKUS trilateral security pact between the US, Great Britain and Australia. They also vowed to thwart “color revolutions” and strengthen “back-to-back” strategic coordination.

Warmongering by the Democrats always comes wrapped in the mantle of democracy, freedom and human rights, making Democrats the more effective salespeople for war. Democrats eagerly lined up behind George W. Bush during the calls to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of “humanitarian intervention” and “liberating” the women of Afghanistan, who would spend the next two decades living in terror, burying family members, at times their children. Even when Democrats, including Barack Obama, criticized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while running for office, they steadfastly voted to fund the wars to “support our troops” once elected. Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), says "an assault on Ukraine is an assault on democracy," the same argument Democrats clung to a half-century ago while launching and expanding the disastrous war in Vietnam.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, is currently crafting legislation he proudly calls “the mother of all sanctions bill.” The bill led in the House by Gregory Meeks of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also a Democrat, demands that the administration “not cede to the demands of the Russian Federation regarding NATO membership or expansion.” NATO expansion to Ukraine along Russia’s borders is the central issue for Moscow. Removing this for discussion obliterates a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Sanctions under the legislation can be imposed for any act, no matter how minor, deemed by Ukraine to be hostile. The sanctions cannot be lifted until an agreement is reached between the government of Ukraine and Russia, meaning Ukraine would be granted the authority to determine when the US sanctions will end. The proposed sanctions, which target Russian banks, the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, state-owned enterprises and leading members of the government and military, including President Vladimir Putin, also calls for blocking Russia from SWIFT, the international financial transaction system that uses the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

“The legislation would grant at least $500 million in foreign military assistance to Ukraine, in addition to the $200 million in new assistance sent over the last month,” writes Marcus Stanley. “This makes Ukraine the third leading recipient of US military assistance globally, after Israel, and Egypt. While it wouldn’t come close to giving Ukraine the ability to combat Russia on its own, it may come with US military advisors that would increase the danger the US would be drawn into a conflict. The bill also takes steps to directly involve countries bordering Russia in negotiations to end the crisis, which would make it much more difficult to reach an agreement.”

While cutting Russia off from SWIFT will be catastrophic, at least in the short term, for the Russian economy, pushing Russia into the arms of China to create an alternative global financial system that no longer relies on the US dollar will cripple the American empire. Once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency the dollar will precipitously drop in value, perhaps as much as by two-thirds, as the pound sterling did when the British currency was abandoned as the world’s reserve currency in the 1950s. Treasury bonds, used to finance America’s military-based balance-of-payments deficit and the ballooning government budget deficit, will no longer be attractive investments for countries such as China. The nearly 800 US military outposts abroad, sustained by debt – the Chinese have lent an estimated $1 trillion to the US on which they collect hefty interest – will dramatically shrink in number. Meanwhile, the massive US interest payments, at least in part, will continue to fund the Chinese military.

The US domination of the world economy, after 75 years, is over. It is not coming back. We manufacture little, short of weapons. Our economy is a mirage built on unsustainable levels of debt. The pillage orchestrated by the capitalist elites and corporations has hollowed the country out from the inside, leaving the infrastructure decayed, democratic institutions moribund and at least half the population struggling at subsistence level. The two ruling parties, puppets for the ruling oligarchs, refuse to curb the rapacious appetites of the war industry and the rich, accelerating the crisis. That the rage of the dispossessed is legitimate, even if it is expressed in inappropriate ways, is never acknowledged by the Democrats, who were instrumental in pushing through the trade deals, deindustrialization, tax loopholes for the rich, deficit spending, endless wars and austerity programs that have created crisis. Instead, shooting the messenger, the Biden administration is targeting Trump supporters and winning draconian sentences for those who stormed the capital on January 6. Biden’s Justice Department has formed a domestic terrorism unit to focus on extremists and Democrats have been behind a series of moves to de-platform and censor their right-wing critics.

The belief that the Democratic Party offers an alternative to militarism is, as Samuel Johnson said, the triumph of hope over experience. The disputes with Republicans are largely political theater, often centered around the absurd or the trivial. On the substantive issues there is no difference within the ruling class. The Democrats, like the Republicans, embrace the fantasy that, even as the country stands on the brink of insolvency, a war industry that has orchestrated debacle after debacle, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, is going to restore lost American global hegemony. Empires, as Reinhold Niebuhr observed, eventually “destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible.” The self-delusion of military invincibility is the scourge that brought down the American empire, as it brought down past empires.

We live in a one-party state. The ideology of national security is sacrosanct. The cult of secrecy, justified in the name of protecting us from our enemies, is a smoke screen to hide from the public the inner workings of power and manipulate public perceptions. The Democratic courtiers and advisers that surround any Democratic presidential candidate – the retired generals and diplomats, the former national security advisers, the Wall Street economists, the lobbyists, and the apparatchiks from past administrations – do not want to curb the power of the imperial presidency. They do not want to restore the system of checks and balances. They do not want to challenge the military or the national security state. They are the system. They want to move back into the White House to wield its awful force. And now, with Joe Biden, that is where they are.

(scheerpost.com)

GERMAN SOLDIERS posing in front of a dugout with rats they caught in their trench and with captured French business signs. “Assurance against Thirst”

The rat problem remained for the duration of the war (although many veteran soldiers swore that rats sensed impending heavy enemy shellfire and consequently disappeared from view).

“If you left your food the rats would soon grab it. Those rats were fearless. Sometimes we would shoot the filthy swines. But you would be put on a charge for wasting ammo if the sergeant caught you”.

Disgusted and often feeling a horror of their presence, soldiers would devise various means of dealing with the rat problem. Although shooting at rats was strictly prohibited – being regarded as a pointless waste of ammunition – many soldiers nevertheless took pot shots at nearby rats in this manner. Attacking rats with bayonets was also common.

But efforts to eliminate them proved futile. A single rat couple could produce up to 900 offspring a year. Cats and terriers were kept by soldiers in the frontline trenches to help free them of disease-carrying rats. The terriers were actually very effective in killing rats.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I get the sense that the only reason whoever’s running the Biden administration seems so eager for war that neither Russia nor Ukraine wants, is so that they can make it appear like their diplomatic idiot/savant Joe has swooped in and saved the world from the imminent apocalypse of their own fabrication.

WAS THE SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW A ‘MISSED OPPORTUNITY’?

by Dave Zirin

The game was the game, with the Los Angeles Rams eking out a 23-20 victory over the underdog Cincinnati Bengals and becoming Super Bowl champions at their home stadium in Inglewood, California. Like the last six remarkable NFL playoff games, this one came down to the final minute. The league has had a ridiculous run of good luck in the quality of these nail-biting contests, proving the old axiom that running an NFL franchise is like being a bartender during spring break: You have to be epically incompetent to lose money.

But the halftime show perhaps contained more drama than the game itself. Brought to you by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, it was Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, and Mary J Blige. It was the first time hip hop had taken center stage at the Super Bowl. I am in the age range that the NFL was courting with these older acts, and at times it was majestic. You had to pinch yourself: hip hop produced by Dre brought straight from the Southern California that made him.

And yet it was also, as the philosopher Cornel West noted, a missed opportunity. West wrote on Facebook, “The #SuperBowl halftime performance displayed our great Black musical tradition! But it was also a missed opportunity for truth-telling about Brian Flores’ challenge to the NFL’s plantation system… the political silence of our artists was sad!”

This is the NFL, a league that colluded against and expelled Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee against racist police violence and is now embroiled in a racial discrimination lawsuit brought by the recently fired head football coach of the Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores. It is a league with zero Black ownership and a scant number of Black executives. It is a league that projects Black excellence under the thumb of white authority. But it is also a league that needs hip hop. The future of the league, as Commissioner Roger Goodell well knows, is not among aging white people with a hankering for insurrection. It needs to connect with a young generation of fans who they well know is more demographically diverse and less tolerant of bigotry than any generation in this country’s history. The NFL is so desperate to “move past Kaepernick” and show that they aren’t this lumbering dinosaur of racist energy that they handed over their halftime program to Jay-Z and Dre. Herein lies the missed opportunity that Dr. West referenced.

The stage was theirs. Yet other than Eminem taking a knee, which may or may not have been sanctioned by the NFL, this was a politics free zone. In fact, the entire show, with thumping iconic bass lines and its political emptiness, hit the note that Goodell was aiming for. It upset right wingers whose online fuming then provoked some of the league’s biggest critics to defend hip hop, and defend the choice of Dre to helm the halftime show, and implicitly help make the league look like they had made a brave choice and the NFL was, for once, on the right side of history.

What was needed was some form of recognition that hip hop inherently has a political history: a musical art form that was once something that you didn’t either “like” or “dislike” but something you were either “for” or “against.” This was made all the more frustrating by the fact that there are lyrics in the many of the songs they played that would have pushed boundaries. They just didn’t perform them. Kendrick Lamar did an edited, family-friendly, police-friendly version of the BLM anthem Alright and that’s about as close as it got to anything—other than 50 Cent’s dancers—that would have upset only those to the right of Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer. Hip hop is such a diverse art form that it doesn’t have to be political. But at this moment in the NFL, it could be argued that Dre was fulfilling the dream scenario of the league: He helped project this vital creation of Black culture in a way that obscured anti-Black discrimination. As the saying goes, the league was loving the rhythm but hiding the blues.

I don’t think West or any of the show’s critics are saying they should have cancelled the show to do a sit in at the 50-yard line. But the failure to recognize the gap between what was being celebrated and the realities behind the scenes does feel like a missed opportunity. It was the living example of Jay-Z’s infamous statement in 2019 that the NFL needed to “move past kneeling“ and basically put money in his pocket to produce these halftime shows, while it was keeping Kaepernick from employment. Based upon the Flores lawsuit, this is a league that needs more acts of protest and dissent, not less. This is a league that needs to shine a light on its own leadership and show the practitioners of discrimination the door. Instead, the halftime show, courtesy of Jay-Z, only granted it more time in the shadows.