Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022

Showers | Hells Gate | Navarro Mouth | Ed Notes | Adele Pruitt | Next CEO | Police Investigation | Noyo 66 | Foreman Wylie | Gualala Burglar | Residential Solar | Time Served | Price Comparisons | Yesterday's Catch | Donut Pay | Hauling Tanbark | Climate Modeling | Corporate Greed | Detecting Lies | Convoy Mom | Lauding Nature | Original Mice | WWIII | Mendocino Drug | Dem Club | Pine Grove

SHOWERS will continue to spread inland this morning, with a few thunderstorms and small hail possible near the coast, and light snow occurring across the interior mountains. Showers will dissipate this afternoon, with cold, dry, and locally breezy conditions occurring through Friday. Additional precipitation will be possible across northwest California Saturday night into Sunday, as well as early to middle portions of next week. (NWS)

PRECIPITATION (past 24 hours): Yorkville 0.12", Boonville 0.13"

NICHOLAS WILSON: The Navarro River mouth has closed and reopened several times over the past two weeks and was closed again this evening. There hasn't been enough rain in the past month to produce enough river flow to keep the sandbar open. High surf, like the 17 ft. waves we had a few days ago, tends to push sand up on the beach and close the sandbar. It is practically unheard of for the sandbar to close at this time of year, when river flow normally keeps the channel open. These photos were taken on three different dates, two showing new channels and the third date, today showing the channel closed in, but probably not for long, as the biggest waves at high tide wash over the sandbar. The river level in the estuary is rising due to the sandbar, but nowhere near causing any flood problem on Hwy. 128.

ED NOTES

A LOCAL ASKS: What’s the story with the antique business in Boonville across from the parking lot for fairgrounds and real estate place ? I walk my dog by there a lot and they are never open.

THE SHOP is owned by Pearl Thomasson, singular, of Boonville. Pearl has been known to open for business at unpredictable times, but over the past few years, no, and all that intriguing stuff inside remains beyond the ogling public.

IT WOULD be interesting if Pearl posted hours as 3-5am third Sundays of the month to see if anybody showed up.

SUNDAY, this message from “Richard” at <bitcoin.mendocino@icloud.com> appeared on MCN's fervid chatline: “Bébé Lapin is the first retailer in Mendocino to accept bitcoin. As more retailers, pubs, restaurants and B&Bs on the coast join in with accepting bitcoin alongside traditional U.S dollar payments we will continue to put Mendocino on the map.”

ARE THERE that many suckers in Mendo for this guy to gull? David Gurney put it truly: “Bitcoin is a high-tech Ponzi scheme that burns unfathomable amounts of energy. A risky venture to say the least. Stay away from Bitcoin!”

SIGNIFYING NOTHING, but social media is agog as February 22, 2022 approaches, tomorrow's date when all numbers will line up as 2.22.22. A full Twosday isn't in the cards for another two centuries — 2.22.2222.

A READER WRITES: “Do you have any idea of the status of the water/sewer project? I am evidently left out on AV Way and have never received a map or a word from AVCSD about the project. Why are they going down AV Way? I live on AV Way like everyone else.

“I was told the poor AVCSD people who are volunteers and doing this for the community without pay, “sob sob”, work so hard… and it’s all my fault that I don’t know what’s going on. Really? It’s my fault? This is the only administrative group in Boonville who has any authority to do anything for the town and they don’t have the wherewithal or ability to reach out to the community on a regular basis, to put posters around, to send out a mailing every 6 months….SOMETHING! That’s ridiculous. Nor do they seem to have the time to notify people on a street THEY have decided to service outside of the town. Apparently they went door to door to talk to everyone on AV Way. Not me. Are they going too far out of town? Why not focus primarily on the downtown where the septic has all gone bad? Take care of the village first.

“Boonville is the weirdest place.. How could this project be going on for years and to this day no one really gets what is being proposed and what is really going on? Or get updates or mailings? I guess they were pilloried by a woman named Joan who wrote lies in your paper, according to CSD, about the whole project. Everything she said was wrong? Something seems fishy to me when they speak about the costs to homeowners… and how it would allow more building on parcels. It all makes no sense the way this is being managed. They want votes from people who really have no vital information? 

“Anyway, I’m complaining and am told I should not because I never called anyone on the board. I didn’t even know about this project until last year when I was too preoccupied to even think about this phantom water project.. I found out in a casual conversation with my neighbors in the Fall…from a map I guess…that I am excluded. 

“After reading their website, it still seems supremely unclear to me. Water without sewer? In Mendocino years ago they finally put in a sewer system but never managed to put in a water system in that tiny town. Everyone in the town of Mendocino ran out of water last summer. The water table there is extremely low and sparse. Maybe they couldn’t take water from anywhere close enough….Who knows? Did anyone on the CSD talk to the people in Mendocino who managed that project?

“With this drought….where are they going to get a reliable water source if everyone is running out of water? Will they be able to take the water off your property from your well? Do they have a right to take it if a majority votes YES. Where is the information about the proposed water sources? What if those wells they identify dry up if the drought intensifies? Tearing out your septic? Really? $30-50 a month for a water bill… Not possible in this day and age.”

ED REPLY: It's all burbling along, but I agree we haven't been updated in some time. I'll let one of the proponents reply because I'm not fully informed, or even half-informed myself. I think viable buy-in from “the community” is ifffy, water just as iffy, a leach field doubly iffy.

THAT NICE STORY in Forbes about the Disco Ranch and its popular proprietor, Wendy Lamer, listed wineries I've never heard of owned by people I've never heard of, none of whom have checked in with their new community's beloved weekly. As progress marches by I seem to have missed the parades, me the guy who was personal friends with the founders of the Anderson Valley wine business when giants walked The Valley floor — Deron Edmeades; Tony Husch; Jed Steele; Al Green. We shoulda quit while we were ahead, back when Mike Shapiro and Steve Tylicki assured me, “Vineyards in the hills? Never happen.” That was '92, as I recall, when there were a mere 1200 acres planted in grapes, many of those acres site-prepped with methyl bromide to a depth of 12 feet. Today, there are upwards of 2600 acres in this purely extraneous enterprise, many of them in the hills, all them, except for the late, great Milla Handley, planted in chemically-dependent vineyards, the run-off from which has knocked off the frogs and fouled the local streams, many of them diverted to illegally installed vineyard ponds.

FISH AND WILDLIFE? A reader says, “I heard they changed their name because other Law Enforcement types were calling them the FaGs and they didn’t like it. I don’t know. I think they changed their name because they’re now doing more fishing and gaming for pot busts than protecting wildlife.”

HERE WE GO, BRANDON: Putin has ordered a “peacekeeping mission” in Ukraine's eastern breakaway states of Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin says the ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking DPR and LPR are sovereign states who need help fending off independent Ukraine. Biden's handlers immediately applied economic sanctions to the two regions, but not to Putin or Russia, sure to be taken as more evidence he's dealing with wusses. The restrictions on Donetsk and Luhansk will prohibit new investment, trade and financing in the two separatist regions of Ukraine recognized only by Putin, while the EU's top officials said they will also impose sanctions. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki woofed: “We are continuing to closely consult with Allies and partners, including Ukraine, on next steps and on Russia's ongoing escalation along the border with Ukraine.” Putin said the U.S. is “colonizing” Ukraine and using it as a “puppet regime.”

CAROL BRODSKY: Sad news. Adele Pruitt, artist and educator extraordinaire, has passed. 

More info to follow. We are so lucky to have had her in our lives and community. For Jayed, Adele was like the mother he never had. She was his teacher, business partner and dear friend. Here is a treat: one of Adele's last paintings, created for me, so this is its official debut. I was just looking at it last night- how she captured the craziness, cuteness and somewhat sinister aspect of squirrels. May the Great Squirrel guide her to the World Tree and the Land of Plentiful Acorns.

BETH BOSK: I appreciate Mike [Geniella] bringing out the best of Carmel. Appreciate the explanations she offers for the Cannabis reg fiascos. Dan Hamburg campaigned on his cannabis creds and could have easily stayed involved, simply by asking his daughter to move her grow off family land. He didn't because he was lazy. We had a DA with a bad leg who had a substantial medical grow (before that was “legal) on his back 40, and nobody asked him to step aside re. enforcement decisions. . . Hopefully, Dan Gjerde applies for the job of CEO. He's got a disposition most admire, and he'd certainly be the most knowledgeable and adroit candidate. Plus, the 4th would be better served by a Supervisor more involved in the daily life of the District.

A YOUNG MAN FOUND DEAD NORTH OF WILLITS—An Occult Text Nearby—Was Wearing Woman’s Clothing When Located Last Year

Last fall, a dead body was located underneath a Highway 101 bridge near the intersection with State Route 162. To this day, the identity of that body remains unknown, aside from a few facts: the deceased was a male dressed in women’s clothes, and an Alister Crowley book on Tarot was found nearby.

kymkemp.com/2022/02/22/a-young-man-found-dead-north-of-willits-an-occult-text-nearby-was-wearing-womans-clothing-when-located-last-year/

KATHY & CARMEL

To the Editor:

Regarding Jim Shields’ article about how Grand Jury foreman Kathy Wylie calls any criticism of outgoing County CEO Carmel Angelo, “hate speech”…I always thought Wylie was in Angelo’s pocket.

Look at the public record. Wylie always steered grand jury investigations away from Angelo. Nary a single critical grand jury report by Wylie’s coffee klatch of senior citizen grand jurors on the CEO office and the CEO’s years of bullying the Board of Supervisors, the Sheriff, and county department heads.

Nary a single critical grand jury report on the county’s mythical financial reserve. The so-called “reserve” was built on the backs of county workers who suffered high vacancy rates in their departments. It was built on deferred maintenance of county buildings. It was built on a ballooning unfunded county pension liability.

Nary a single critical grand jury report on the county’s RICO investigation by the U.S. Attorney on public corruption in the local cannabis industry, county government, and and local law enforcement.

Nary a single grand jury report on how Angelo privatized mental health services and made Camille Schraeder and her friends at Redwood Community Services stinking rich with almost no accountability.

Nary a single grand jury report on how Measure B funds were hijacked to become Angelo’s private county slush fund.

Nary a single grand jury report on how the carpetbaggers and scallywags at Flow Kana had all their zoning and permits fast-tracked and rubber-stamped to the detriment of local farmers.

Nary a single report on how Angelo consolidated power at the CEO Office…bringing auditor and treasurer functions, budget, emergency services, risk management, IT, and general services into the CEO’s Office along with the existing human resources and county counsel.

Nary a single critical report on how Angelo “disappeared” numerous county employees, including department heads, resulting in numerous expensive wrongful termination lawsuits.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

GUALALA BURGLAR

On Thursday, February 17, 2022, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a reported burglary from a 70 year old woman in the 38100 block of Old Coast Highway in Gualala.

After arriving, Deputies were able to identify a description of the suspect due to the existence of home surveillance video footage.

Deputies checked the Gualala area and contacted a female in the 45000 block of Pacific Woods Road. The female matched the suspect's description from the surveillance video footage and was identified as Colleen Warner, 38, of Gualala.

At the conclusion of their investigation, Deputies placed Warner under arrest for First Degree Burglary.

Warner was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where she was to be held in lieu of $50,000 bail.

SOLAR GUY: I work in the solar industry. Our company has been in business here locally for 20 years. We mainly focus on residential solar, but do install smaller commercial arrays as well. We have been helping people switch from natural gas to all electric in their home. Our company has solar, electrical, hvac & plumbing licenses, so we can do all the work without subcontracting. By supporting residential solar you are supporting local businesses and local families. Big Utilities like PG&E have been lobbying to get rid of residential solar. They want to build huge solar arrays out in the desert then sell you back the power. Why do they want to do this? To keep control of their monopoly. If they get their way they won’t pass along savings to PG&E customers they will charge them more & more & more in the future like they always have. PG&E is ticker symbol PCG on the NYSE. They are publicly traded and really only care about profits and their shareholders. They could care less about you and I. Just look how they’ve handled the fires and now the tree removal this winter. These guys are scumbags and by removing residential solar they would be putting thousands of California residents out of work including many people in our local community. Don’t support Big Utilities and $PCG instead support local businesses and local families. Roof top solar along with a back up battery, electric heat pump instead of a gas heating & air conditioning & electric heat pump water heater instead of gas water heater is the future! Get away from gas and get into all electric homes! Thank you for your continued community support. We look forward to working on your next project!

CVS SAVES THE DAY

Editor: 

The other day I was on a quest for two pints of ice cream. That turned into a crazy insightful day. I thought I would just pick it up at a local convenience store. Big mistake. One store in Cloverdale wanted $6.99 for each pint. I put it back and said sorry. The next store was even more: $7.99 per pint. I said no and walked out. I tried CVS and paid $10 for two pints. Not great, but one was half off. If I’m buying ice cream, I need some change back. Twenty dollars does not go that far in today’s economy. These days you have to watch the ever-changing prices or get stung by inflation.

N.M. Sartain

Ukiah

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 21, 2022

ADAM FULLER, Ukiah. Domestic battery, protective order violation.

JAMES PORTER, Willits. Domestic battery, bringing controlled substance into jail.

RAYMOND RHODES, Fort Bragg. Battery, vandalism, probation revocation.

COLLEEN WARNER, Gualala. Burglary.

DONUTS

by Doug Holland

My odd job for the morning was from a voice mail that came last night, in the early evening. A man said he was calling from a donut shop in the Sunset, and the guy who usually works the clean-up shift had a family emergency, and wasn't coming in. The owner (manager?) didn't have anyone to cover, so he left his sob story and a phone number and said, “Can you do that?”

Clean-up, eh? I'd called back and said yeah, but probably sounded less than enthused about being a janitor and dishwasher, so he sweetened the pot: If I'd come in and do the clean-up in the morning, he said he'd pay my price of $5 an hour, plus breakfast at no charge.

“What's for breakfast?” I'd asked.

“Donuts,” he answered, and then he said something about sandwiches being on the menu, too, but who cares about sandwiches? I can make sandwiches here at home. I can't make donuts.

“How many donuts?” I asked.

He gave me the silent treatment for a few seconds, long enough that I wondered if I'd torpedoed the deal, but then he said, “Half a dozen.” After a moment's pause, he added, “Or as many as you want, if you'll take day-old donuts. Usually we toss what the employees don't take. Tell me you're coming in tomorrow, and I'll save them for you.”

“I'll be there,” I said, and thus ended our negotiations. I was salivating the night before, eager to be a donut shop's clean-up & mop the floor & wash the dishes man this morning, man. Money is nice, but donuts are better.

As instructed, I was on Irving Street this morning, knocking on the donut shop's glass before the sun came up. A balding Asian man unlocked the door, let me in and shook my hand, and re-locked the door. He apologized, telling me he'd hated leaving a mess in the shop overnight, but I said, “Hey, I'm not the Health Department.”

He didn't smile at that — didn't smile all morning, actually. He was no nonsense and very hard-working, a man who takes donuts seriously. He instructed me to wash dishes while he got dough mixing and oil bubbling, but as the sink filled with hot water and suds, I could sense his eyeballs watching me.

That doesn't bother me, honestly. I'm still amazed anyone's willing to hire a stranger from a poster and a phone call, with no job interview, no references, no background check. If I was hiring me for $5 an hour, I'd keep an eye on me too.

After washing the dishes, I wiped tables and the counter, swept the floor, washed the windows (I am not good at washing windows, but I tried), and mopped the floor, first in the dining area, then in the kitchen. That put us within talking distance, so we talked, but only about my cleaning and his donuts. Watching him do his pastry magic, though, I decided he was the owner, not merely the donut dude or morning manager.

Then a second worker came in, a rather pretty Asian woman I'm guessing was his daughter, and he did not introduce me. Oh, well. She helped him with donut dipping and frosting and other sweet sorcery I don't understand, and they'd both done this a thousand mornings, obviously. 

I finished mopping quicker than expected, half an hour before the shop opened, so they had me haul around some boxes and bags, and fill the napkin dispensers. He inspected my moppery and windows and said I'd done a good job, which is one compliment more than I received from my bosses in 2½ years at Macy's. He even said he'd keep my number on file, and maybe call me again.

And I hope he does — for a little less than three hours of work, my pay was $20 cash, plus a big box of 23 donuts of all colors and toppings, some with icing, some with sprinkles, some with powdered sugar, all left over from yesterday, but they weren't stale, and anyway, I'm no gourmet. I am a sucker for a jelly donut, and there were seven of them.

* * *

It should be embarrassing to admit this, but I wrapped my windbreaker around the box before entering the apartment, so's maybe Pike wouldn't see it. The donuts were my best haul in ages, and I didn't want to share.

In my room, door closed, I devoured 17 donuts for lunch, and felt a little sick to my stomach. When the feeling passed, I ate the other six.

* * *

Pike deserves no donuts. The rent is due tomorrow, and he's $55 short. His scheme had been to share his room — the living room of our one-bedroom apartment — with some newcomer he very vaguely knew, who needed a short-term place. But Pike told me that today that our new flatmate won't be coming after all.

So what's to become of the rent, Pike? And the fifty-five bucks? My share of the rent is ready, because I work for a living, but Pike has no job, doesn't seem to be looking, and he hasn't even done any overflow “anything legal” gigs for me in a couple of weeks. All he does is smoke dope and scream at his girlfriend — which is delightful of course, very entertaining, but it doesn't pay the bills.

On the bright side, Terry wasn't there in the afternoon, and even better she wasn't there again in the evening. Between her charming absence and all my donuts, I was in good spirits, and told Pike I'd cover the rent. Again, same as last month, because last month he paid me back. 

Still, this is becoming the rent routine, and I'm not digging it.

THE MOST SOPHISTICATED climate science models describe a range of potential environmental conditions, shaped by a wide array of interconnected but poorly understood threshold effects and feedback loops — and that is just the non-human systems. Such models are rafts of mathematical complexity floating on seas of uncertainty, even about measures as fundamental as the relationship between emissions and global temperature change. State of the art climate-economy IAMs use these outputs as inputs and model economic impacts on the basis of 'damages function,' the predicted degree to which growth is affected by temperature change and attendant biogeophysical shifts (the rise in sea levels and so on). This is not a very precise exercise: damage function parameters are determined no more 'objectively' than growth forecasts. In the days when it seemed to many that climate change would mean gradual planetary warming, the idea of damages function guesstimates might have made some sense. But the truth of what scientists have been saying for a long time — that some of the most devastating effects of climate change will be more like flicking switches than turning dials and that the impact will continue to be extremely volatile and geographically uneven — is now recognized. Anyone who claims they can forecast rates of growth a hundred years from now, on a planet several degrees hotter than it is today, using temperature changes averaged across the entire planet and measures of climate sensitivity based on what we think we currently know, is fooling themselves.

— Geoff Mann reviewing “The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagions in a Crowded World" by William Nordhaus

WHAT IS TRUTH?

by Sadakat Kadri

My friend Nastassia recently returned to London from visiting her parents in Moscow. At a dumpling party, as guests kneaded dough at the table, a recently qualified ornithologist had told a weird story. Her new job involved feeding birds of prey, with mice she’d kill by swinging them against a wall – and that wasn’t the weird bit. Moscow Zoo wouldn’t take her on until she passed a lie detector test to show she wasn’t a thief or drug addict. “Unbelievable!” Nastassia said.

Quite normal too, apparently. Since Russia acknowledged in 1993 that its security agents use polygraphy, the technique has developed into a sprawling industry. A company that claims to be at the cutting-edge promises it can ‘help to achieve a 100 per cent result’ in detecting crimes from corruption to murder. Its website indicates that would-be polygraphologists can almost immediately start to train others. All it takes is a two-week course and a machine of your own: prices start at around £900.

Though polygraphy is only marginally more accurate than guesswork, correctly identifying lies about two-thirds of the time, it’s overvalued and under-regulated everywhere. But the reliance some Russians place on calibrated measurements of perspiration, breathing, pulse rate and blood pressure is excessive, all the same. Polygraph tests have been used to corroborate claims by champion skaters that rivals contaminated their bodily fluids with banned substances, and to bolster a charge that the under-19 handball team had ‘betrayed the motherland’ by throwing matches at the European championships. Lie detection even served to acquit three cosmonauts of drilling a hole in the International Space Station – and to imply that the true driller was a Nasa astronaut with psychological problems.

The widespread use of polygraphy reflects high levels of distrust and corruption that aren’t ignored even by state-owned media. When the Duma proposed in 2009 to subject senior bureaucrats to lie detector tests, Russia Today spoke of ‘a bold mission of sweeping out the halls of power’. And though the mission was aborted – the law didn’t pass – it’s a reminder of polygraphy’s allure. Promises to detect falsehoods are the flipside of cynicism. They reflect a residual hope that honesty is attainable, facts are ascertainable and liars should be held accountable.

Again, such aspirations aren’t confined to Russia. It’s hard everywhere to differentiate honesty and good faith from deception. Western mindsets that have experienced the Iraq War, Brexit, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson certainly have epistemological issues of their own. And now, over Ukraine, the troubled perspectives are colliding.

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth,” Harry Frankfurt wrote in his monograph On Bullshit. “Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.” The editor-in-chief of RT (formerly Russia Today) warns that Ukraine’s government has secretly murdered thousands of children and might be preparing to gas civilians in camps. The UK government fears a “whiff of Munich” and “the biggest war in Europe since 1945.” President Biden is “convinced” that Vladimir Putin will invade “in the coming days.” Where’s the truth? The polygraphs are silent – and they haven’t built a bullshit detector powerful enough.

The arguments are equivocal, for sure. Since his 2008 war with Georgia, Putin has assumed that threatening postures by a restrengthened military will bring political advantage, but half the national army can’t remain poised to invade forever: not even gas exports are valuable enough to support that. Setting plans in motion, on the other hand, would involve wanton destruction or a sustained occupation that could only jeopardize his hold on power. And though Putin has been canny enough in the past to forestall discontent and unpopularity, positioning himself between Russia’s ultra-nationalists and liberals, the balancing act is more precarious now than it’s ever been. The expectations he’s unleashing, fueled by escalating rhetoric, mean that carefully calculated maneuvering could easily end in accidental catastrophe.

Then there’s the Madman Theory: the idea that it sometimes pays dividends in international relations to act bonkers. It’s most closely associated with Richard Nixon, but the strategy has older precedents – and one in particular has been doing the rounds in Russia. According to Nastassia, a lot of Muscovites have been favorably comparing Putin’s stance to the successful US negotiating position during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s certainly contentious. The superpowers came close to a nuclear exchange in 1962, and Russia has no more right to kick neighboring states around than America does. The parallel has long been popular though. Perhaps it’s even true. Whatever that means.

(London Review of Books)

WHO’S BEHIND THE PEOPLE’S CONVOY TO WASHINGTON DC?

by Steve O’Keefe

Thousands of truckers are being hijacked by anti-vax loonies and encouraged to parade through red state America in search of any remaining Covid-19 restrictions to protest. The so-called “People’s Convoy“ is scheduled to leave Barstow, California, on Wednesday, February 23, and meander eastward, picking up truckers as they go for a final jamboree and road-blocking in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 – the day of Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address.

Are these the same organizers that brought us Canada’s “Freedom Convoy,” blocking the streets of the capital, Ottawa, for weeks and blocking border crossings to the U.S.? No, those organizers were arrested. Those trucks were confiscated. Those protesters have been debanked and uninsured. This is a whole new crop of American Made truckers.

Freedom Fighter Nation

The U.S. version is called the People’s Convoy and is being run by Freedom Fighter Nation, a hastily assembled organization headed by Leigh Dundas, “human rights leader and defender of freedom” and seller of vitamins. Dundas came to the right wing’s attention with her unhinged performance at an Orange County, California, school board meeting. Her anti-mask antics earned Dundas an invite to speak at the Insurrectionist Extravaganza on January 6th, 2021, in Washington DC.

Here are the actual words spouted by “human rights leader” Leigh Dundas at the rally:

“You are far better off fighting on your feet – being prepared to die on your feet – than living a life on your damned knees. Fight on! Fight for your country! Fight for your president! Fight for everything that is important to you and never forget that what you are fighting for is freedom, and without it you have nothing. Now let’s get to it!”

Oh yeah, Dundas got to it! She is filmed marching toward the Capitol that day, screaming the word “traitor” at law enforcement officials, even ascending the steps of the Capitol. I could find no images of her inside the Capitol, and to my knowledge, she has not been arrested for her participation that day.

About Human Rights Leader Leigh Dundas, Esq.

Other than her day job selling vitamins, attorney Dundas keeps busy forming one fringe group after another. This is a standard tactic of Dark Money moguls who launder donations through an endless string of LLCs, 501(c)3s and 501(c)4s. Here are some of the generically-named groups started by or associated with Dundas:

• People’s Convoy, donations collected by Advocate’s for Citizen’s Rights

• Advocates for Citizens’ Rights, processes donations for People’s Convoy

• Freedom Fighter Nation, Dundas’ new group pushing the People’s Convoy

• American Foundation for Civil Liberties and Freedom, collects donations for Freedom Fighter Nation

• Advocates for Physicians’ Rights, an anti-vax physician group

• America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vax group in Houston, Texas

• Free Speech Foundation, parent company of America’s Frontline Doctors

Leigh Dundas is President of Advocates for Citizen’s Rights, legal counsel for America’s Frontline Doctors, and the founder of Advocates for Physician’s rights. They all share the same mailing address, which is a box at a UPS Store in Ladera Ranch, California. Getting mail at the same box is an organization called “TRUMP 2020 LLC” and another one called “Promises Made Promises Kept.”

The American Foundation for Civil Liberties and Freedom

Yes, it sounds a lot like the ACLU, but don’t get them confused! The AFCLF is the 501(c)3 nonprofit handling the donations for ThePeoplesConvoy.org. The AFCLF is headquartered in a box at the Mail Chute in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Prior to collecting all the donations for the People’s Convoy, the AFCLF is associated with only one event: a “stop the steal” rally in Topanga, California. For only $100 to $250 per person, you could listen to a “forensic expert” prove fraud in a state Trump lost by five million votes.

The AFCLF is run by New England SuperLawyer Christopher Marston, CEO of The Exemplar Companies. “Exemplar’s focus is on Revolutionaries, Game-Changers, and Impact Businesses worldwide, and its parent company, Exemplar Companies, Inc, is an inaugural Delaware Benefit Corporation operating on a Quad-Bottom-Line.” That’s according to Marston’s LinkedIn bio, which also shows him on the board of the Center for Integral Wisdom, whose mission is “to evolve the source code of culture by evolving the memes and distinctions that are at its core based on ‘The Universe: A Love Story‘ principles,” and the VeraSage Institute, “a think tank dedicated to promulgating and teaching value-based pricing, economics, and human capital development to professionals and businesses around the world.”

The People’s Convoy

Now that we know the starting organizational and financial structure of The People’s Convoy, let’s take a look at some of their plans. The anti-vax group launched a media offensive on Valentine’s Day, February 14. Newsmax’s Eric Bolling told convoy “national organizer,” Maureen Steele, that he hoped to join the convoy as it approaches Washington, DC. Meanwhile, convoy “co-organizer” Brian Brase sat between two Newsmax platinum blonde anchor “ladies” wearing a T-shirt that read, “The Constitution is My Valentine,” a shirt that’s only available from patriot outfitter, American As Fuck Nation.

The People’s Convoy is being intentionally vague about the exact route they plan to take from Barstow, California, to Washington DC. The map shown by Steele on Newsmax was quickly shared around the Internet with the addition of Pepe the Frog wearing a rainbow fright wig (in the lower left-hand corner). Pepe the Frog is a well-documented white supremacist meme.

That completes the starting line-up for the People’s Convoy, but already the event is attracting a rogue’s gallery of anti-vax zealots and stop-the-steal insurrectionists, as documented by the Twitter account, @az_rww. They include such luminaries as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Children’s Health Defense organization, anti-vax Dr. Ryan Cole of Global Covid Summit, and anti-vax pilot Josh Broder of U.S. Freedom Flyers. Thanks to the support of Ted Nugent, the People’s Convoy may soon be getting a theme song. Allow me to suggest his 1975 classic, Stormtroopin’.

(Steve O’Keefe is the author of several books, most recently Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers, from New World Library, based on over 250 interviews. He is the former editorial director for Loompanics Unlimited. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

TO PUT IT MORE PRECISELY, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird's song, a yellow elm tree in October....? There is no doubt many people think so. I know by experience that a favorable reference to “Nature” in one of my articles is liable to bring me abusive letters. — George Orwell

‘JOE BIDEN’ WINS WORLD WAR THREE

by James Kunstler

One surmises that all the meshugas over Ukraine was designed as a distraction from the financial disorders now at hand.

Woo-wee, that was a close call, huh? But remind me: what was the war supposedly about? Protecting Ukraine’s hallowed border? Bwahahahaha…! Borders? We don’t care about no steenkin’ borders (especially our own border). Upholding the sacred honor of NATO? Really? Who exactly would be punished if the US tries to shut down the Nord Stream-2 pipeline that will send much-needed Russian natgas to gasless Germany? (Did you guess our NATO ally, Germany?) Would Germany suddenly discover that the pipeline is none of America’s business? I think so.

Anyway, what’s the beef in Ukraine? Its easternmost Donbas region has rebelled against administration by Kiev. At America’s direction, Kiev harasses the majority ethnic Russian population there with US-made weaponry. Yet Ukraine’s president Zelensky claims he doesn’t want to antagonize Russia, and certainly wants his much-stomped-upon country — the doormat of Europe — to not get stomped-on all over again in any hypothetical war. Ukraine is already an economic basket-case, supported only by CIA-sponsored grifting operations.

Enter Monsieur Macron of France. After two years of antagonizing his countrymen with lockdowns and put-downs, he needs a boost for the national election forthcoming in April. So, he has heroically sued Mr. Putin of Russia for a Ukraine “ceasefire.” Note: the Russians haven’t fired. Anyway, that opened the way for a proposed “summit” meeting between “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin — when the Russians feel like it. They’re playing it a little coy for the moment, letting the West twist slowly, slowly in the wind. If a summit does happen, what will the two summiteers talk about? Mr. Putin will reiterate that the US and NATO made a solemn promise (in writing) to not expand NATO along Russia’s borderland in 1990 when the Soviet Union fell apart, and y’all reneged on that… and now it stops with Ukraine… really… got it?

“Joe Biden” will not have a coherent response. Maybe he’ll want to talk ice cream flavors or dogs. He is, as the Russians say, not negotiation-worthy, though he can be trotted out for photo ops. But “Joe Biden” needs a big win so he can brag on something in his State of the Union address. His Democratic Party is looking everyday more and more like some hell-borne spawn of Satan bent on wrecking what’s left of the old USA. Everything they’ve done since 2016 has degraded the life of the nation — weaponizing the “Intel Community,” queering a national election, and besetting the people with race-and-gender mindfuckery. Never has the country seen a president so obviously incompetent and unpopular. The people backstage running him like an animatronic automaton are in a panic.

By default, then, the summit meeting will be game-set-and-match, Mr. Putin, only both parties will pretend that it’s some kind of moral victory for “JB,” while Russia gets exactly the terms it seeks: Nord Stream-2 will be completed and Germany will get natgas; there will be no additional stupid sanctions and get rid of the old ones; and the US will close up its CIA shop in Kiev and quit all the pointless antagonism. There will be peace in that corner of the world. And then, on cue, the West’s financial system will implode.

Yes, that’s what is actually going on in the background. That roar you hear is bad credit whooshing out of the banks. It looks like we’re going to get both a ripping inflation and a collapse of equities and assets all at once — with a side-dish of disappearing livelihoods, vaporizing pensions, and sinking standards-of-living. One surmises that all the meshugas over Ukraine was designed as a distraction from the financial disorders now at hand. The news media has faithfully played the Ukraine story to the max while ignoring the growing disarray in North America.

The Toronto Star barely even reported today on the weekend dispersion of truckers in Ottawa — like it never happened… a kind of national hallucination. The big rigs are gone from the streets around Parliament Hill, but one suspects the action isn’t over. Nor has the national legislature of Canada voted, as required, in support of the Emergencies Act — meaning that the financial punishments inflicted on the truckers and their supporters was arguably illegal.

Down here in the Land of the Free our truckers are marshaling for the Great US Trucker Convoy of 2022 outside of Barstow, California, to proceed eastward-ho Wednesday morning for our nation’s capital. The notorious fences are back up around the Capitol building. No doubt, the feds will try to shut down the bridges across the Potomac, but there are plenty of back doors into the District. Will “Joe Biden” resort to the same financial intimidation tactics that Mr. Trudeau pulled on his truckers — go after their bank accounts and confiscate assets? Let’s hope the US truckers learned that lesson from the Great White North and have made other arrangements. What if the DC police attempt an Ottawa-style beat-down against our badass truckers? To paraphrase the old American folk song goes: I wouldn’t want to be them on that dreadful day….

FLYING BLIND

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