Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022

Cold Front | 25 New Cases | Russia Attacks | Music Festival | Hendy Hiring | Undercover Boss | Cannabis Dispensary | Russian Gulch | Ed Notes | Quanah Parker | Camellias | County Pensions | Littering | Jackson Sentenced | Yesterday's Catch | Pipeline Sabotage | Ruiz Sentenced | Punt Gun | Wood Lifeline | Riflewomen | Ukraine Life | Drug Dog | War Consequences | Garcia Waterwheel | Craig ReVolled | Mendo Oxen | Serious Negotiations | Putin Podium

A COLD AND DRY AIR MASS is expected to affect the region through midday on Saturday. A cold front is forecast to move through the region late on Saturday and into Sunday, bringing some rain and mountain snow back to Northwest California. Additional precipitation will be possible through the middle of next week.

A LONG PERIOD WESTERLY SWELL will produce a high risk of sneaker waves along the Northwest California coast on Saturday. Sneaker waves are larger waves that seem to come out of nowhere and run farther up the beach slope than normal. Sneaker waves can catch you off guard and quickly pull you into the ocean where survival is unlikely because of strong currents, turbulent surf, and very cold water. Do not be fooled by an ocean that looks calm. There can be up to 30 minutes of small waves right before a sneaker wave strikes. Avoid steep beaches, rocks, and jetties. Stay far back from the surf and do not go in after dogs that get pulled into the surf. Dogs almost always get out on their own. (National Weather Service)

THIS MORNING'S LOWS: Boonville 28°, Yorkville 25°

25 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

RUSSIA ATTACKS

The most significant European war in almost 80 years has begun.

Early this morning in Ukraine, Russian troops poured over the border, and Russian planes and missile launchers attacked Ukrainian cities and airports. The attacks spanned much of the country, far beyond the border provinces where there has been sporadic fighting between the nations for years.

Ukraine’s government called it “a full-scale attack from multiple directions.”

Blasts could be heard in Kyiv, the capital, as well as more than a dozen other cities. At an airport outside Kyiv, rocket attacks targeted parked Ukrainian fighter jets. In the southern port city of Odessa, Russian troops arrived from the sea. In Lutsk — in the northwest corner of Ukraine, closer to Poland than Russia — explosions were also reported.

(David Leonhardt, New York Times)

PUTIN: “Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.”

MENDO MUSIC FESTIVAL 2022

We’re very excited and happy to announce that the 2022 Festival will take place July 9–23. The Festival Orchestra, a variety of visiting acts, and the Festival Big Band will once again be heard in the gracious and historic Cotton Auditorium in Fort Bragg. We’re sorry to need to spend one more season away from our home on the Mendocino Headlands, but we’re delighted to return to Preston Hall for the Piano Series, Susan Waterfall’s Debussy chamber music concerts, and visiting acts suitable to a more intimate setting. Because seating in Preston Hall is so limited (both in number and space), this year each Preston concert will be offered twice.

After two stressful months of uncertainty regarding potential concert venues, we’re joyously working towards our 36th season of extraordinary music. The Festival Orchestra concerts include Debussy, Afternoon of a Faun; Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1; and Beethoven Symphony No. 7. Debussy chamber music concerts include Children’s Corner Suite; Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; and Sonata for Violin and Piano. The amazing Kim Nalley will sing with the Big Band. Audience favorite pianist Spencer Myer will return.

https://mendocinomusic.org/

UNDERCOVER BOSS IS HEADING TO FORT BRAGG THIS FRIDAY!

That’s right, the CEO of Round Table Pizza will be going undercover at this local coastal pizza joint. Order some delivery and tune in starting at 8pm this Friday on CBS.

CANNABIS - SEMINARY AVE. DISPENSARY PROPOSED - PLANNING COMMISSION TO CONSIDER THE PERMIT TONIGHT

Ukiah Daily Journal staff

During its virtual meeting tonight, the Ukiah Planning Commission is scheduled to consider an application to operate a cannabis dispensary on Seminary Avenue near City Hall.

According to the staff report prepared for the Feb. 23 meeting, applicant Dylan McGinty of Local Roots LLC requests a Dispensary Use Permit for “a cannabis retail business that would include the delivery of cannabis and/or cannabis products from the property” located at 195 Seminary Ave.

The building most recently housed the restaurant Mixies, and is located “just outside of the ‘Downtown Zoning District’, but within the ‘Downtown Design District,'” according to planning staff, who also described the site as on “one of the city’s two boulevards. The boulevard’s western terminus concludes at the Ukiah Civic Center, which is adjacent to the Ukiah Memorial Veteran’s Hall,” and the other nearby businesses include “a salon and professional office, gymnasium, and a professional office complex that includes a hair salon, driving school and internet service provider.” Also nearby are “two residential units (and) a vacant multistory motel.”

As to whether city zoning codes would allow a dispensary in that location, planning staff note that a cannabis business: 1. cannot locate within 600 feet of a school, and the closest school is South Valley High at 900 feet; 2. cannot located with 250 feet of a youth-oriented facility (public park, church, museum, library, or licensed daycare facility), and the nearest facility of that type is the Alex R. Thomas Jr. Plaza at 300 feet; 3. cannot locate within any residential zoned parcel or primary land use, or any property with an underlying residential or mobile homes general plan land use designation, and the nearest residential zoned properties are approximately 300 feet to the southeast along South Oak Street; 4. cannot locate on a parcel having a residential unit, or on a parcel directly abutting a residentially zoned property, unless there are intervening nonresidential uses, and this site does not feature a residential unit, and a physical separation exists on all four boundaries; 5. cannot locate within 250 feet of another cannabis dispensary, and the nearest approved cannabis dispensary is approximately 1,700 feet to the northeast, with the nearest operational cannabis dispensary approximately 4,000 feet to the southeast.”

Staff also note that, “presently, there are only two operational cannabis retail facilities within the city of Ukiah.”

Those businesses include the first to obtain a permit, CannaVine, located on Airport Park Boulevard, and Heritage Mendocino, located on Cunningham Street off Talmage Road.

Attached to the staff report is one public comment from resident Janet Freeman, who writes that she “strenuously objects to allowing the sale of pot two blocks from City Hall, and two and a half blocks from a school and a park on the ‘coveted’ West Side. This business would be a black eye on any neighborhood. It is also one block from the seasonal ice rink and the plaza where many of Ukiah’s children congregate. Such a business should be located in an industrial area away from children.”

The Planning Commission meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Feb. 23. To participate or view the virtual meeting, go to the following link: https://zoom.us/j/91264543193

Or you can call in using your telephone only: Dial Toll Free: 1-833-548-0276 or 833-548-0282

Or One tap mobile (for easy connection on smartphones): US: +16699009128,,91264543193# or 13462487799, 91264543193#

You may also view the meeting (without participating) by clicking on the name of the meeting at www.cityofukiah.com/meetings.

ED NOTES

A READER WONDERS: “Mendofever this morning. LaTrail White, part of an armed stick up crew that terrorized a Mendocino family, including a juvenile, had all his charges dismissed locally in a mass plea deal, then he goes on to recently murder a man in Oakland. Does DA Eyster have some explaining to do in this case? After all, he was poised to put a woman away for raising chickens, but this perp got a walk. Plea deals, the easy way out for lazy prosecutors?” 

ANOTHER READER on the same case: “Yes- well, it’s nice to see what sentences these guys actually got. 304 days for 1st degree armed robbery and assault w/ guns?!! Why even catch anybody anymore if we give them such light sentences? No wonder the shitbags are laughing at us all and running wild…indeed. Hog-tie them all, only next time don’t hold them for the police. The police and the courts are not doing their job…””

A YOBBO NAMED EDMONDS was caught and hog-tied by neighbors of the home invasion he and five other Bay Area mopes failed to pull off at the Black Oak Ranch subdivision near Laytonville. These particular career criminals are of the prevalent type who always get caught, but as I understand the case, there were insurmountable probs nailing them with proportionate sentences because invaders and invadees were intertwined in ways that were impossible to rationally de-intertwine. 

OVERALL, I think Eyster is an excellent DA. Mendo, unlike neighboring Humboldt, has a reputation among the Defendant Community that if you commit a serious crime you will be prosecuted. There is somewhat of a revolving door at the County Jail among people so incompetent they should be locked up for their own safety, the walking misdemeanor types. But that revolving door exists everywhere as American society unravels, producing more and more Thanatoids, people unable to cope, people overwhelmed and defeated by life in the rigged capitalist casino.

THE CASE that mystifies me is this one: Angel Guzman of San Jose had been sought on attempted murder charges arising out of Covelo when, about 2am one December morning in Albion not three months ago, he and two other guys pictured below, attempted to murder Chris Brown of Albion as he slept. They mostly missed as Brown returned fire. Guzman's truck was found at the top of Brown's driveway. Guzman managed to escape, but Jose Aguilar and Roberto Chavez-Sousa — were found hiding in the nearby woods and arrested. 

THIS EVENT — a near death experience for Mr. Brown who managed to escape serious injury with only a grazing wound to the back of his head — went from curious to curiouser when Aguilar and Chavez-Sousa went to court on attempted murder charges, bail having been set at $750,000 each. And walked out of court, the free-est attempted killers in the annals of Mendo attempted murder. 

DA EYSTER explained that charges were not filed against the two “pending further investigation. We couldn’t determine which guy did what,” Eyster said. “It’s not clear which guy shot the gun.” 

SO WHAT? If fifty guys had appeared at Brown's house and only one of them fired a shot at him, isn’t normal procedure to arrest all of them and charge all of them for conspiracy to commit a major felony?

BUT THE DA said he couldn't hold someone “until you know who did what and I can’t charge a lesser crime because they might plead to it and get off on the less serious charge.” Eyster said neither of the men had criminal records, and that a third man “might have been involved.” 

HMMM. Jose Aguilar and Roberto Chavez-Sousa show up at Chris Brown's house at 2am, shoot and wound him and are found hiding in a nearby wooded area when the sun comes up. They are booked into the County Jail on attempted murder charges with bail set at $750,000, but when they appear in court they're released without charges while the episode is “investigated.” 

I DON'T GET IT. If two (or three) people show up at two in the morning, shoot and wound a man assumed to be unknown to them as they wake him from his sleep with at least one gunshot aimed at his head, run off when their target returns fire but leave their vehicle in the victim's driveway, how is it possible that both the apprehended Aguilar and Chavez-Sousa aren't held as suspects to determine which of them tried to murder Mr. Brown in his sleep? I thought under state law (and common sense) that whoever is with a shooter during an attempted murder that person is also assumed to be as guilty as the person who did the shooting. 

SOMETHING is very, very off in this one. Oh hell yeah. I'm sure the perps will be available for further questioning, perhaps being kind enough to zoom in from Michoacan to explain, “Guzman’s truck did it.”

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT, in a vain but transparently failed attempt to be woke-cool, published a “think piece” the other day describing white people who complained about the Super Bowl half-time show as racists, the standard indictment these days of any white person who comments negatively on Black affairs. Super Bowl half-time shows have always been celebrations of vulgar idiocy whomever was featured in them, but as popular culture descends to new depths of depravity, celebrating people who've made millions from piping criminal recommendations into the empty heads of young people are directly responsible for the radical increase in a lot of the gun violence in this country. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog are major enemies of their own people. Featuring them is sanctioning violent crime. (Why, thank you, Reverend Anderson, for breaking it down for us.) But double seriously, has anybody polled black people over the age of forty for their opinions of rap “music”? 

TODAY IN OLD-WEST HISTORY -- On today’s date 111 years ago, Thursday, February 23, 1911, famous Comanche/Anglo-American tribal chief, Native American Church leader, rancher, & businessman Quanah Parker (circa-1848 - 1911), the last Comanche war chief, met his earthly demise at around the age of 63 when he died from the effects of “heart failure by rheumatism” at Star House, his home at the town of Cache in Comanche County, Oklahoma.

Quanah was the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona (1820-1864) & Cynthia Ann Parker (1825-1871), the famous Texas-pioneer girl who was captured by Comanches at the age of nine during the May 1836 Fort Parker Massacre -- the event which precipitated the Indian Wars in Texas.

The historical record mentions little of Quanah Parker until his presence during the 1874 Red River War at the June 27 Second Battle of Adobe Walls. During the battle, buffalo hunter & scout William “Billy” Dixon (1850-1913) made his famous rifle shot -- shooting an Indian off his horse at the unheard-of distance of nine-tenths of a mile with a Sharps .45-70 rifle -- which so unnerved the Indians that they decamped & gave up the fight. News of Dixon’s lucky shot resulted in a crushing spiritual defeat for the Indians, leading directly to the conclusion of the Texan-Comanche Wars that had begun 38 years earlier with the Fort Parker Massacre. 

After Quanah led his people onto the reservation, the U.S. government appointed him as principal chief of the entire nation. Quanah later became a leader in the Native American Church, & he eventually became a wealthy rancher who was influential both in Comanche & European-American society

☞After his death, Quanah Parker was interred at Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. In 1957, his remains were moved to Fort Sill Post Cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he now rests in peace along with his mother Cynthia Ann Parker & his sister Topsannah.

The inscription on Quanah Parker’s tombstone reads:

Resting Here Until Day Breaks

And Shadows Fall & Darkness

Disappears is

Quanah Parker Last Chief of the Comanches

Born 1852

Died Feb. 23, 1911

Post Oak Mission Cemetery Comanche County, Oklahoma

ED NOTE: Recommended reading re the remarkable Quanah Parker and the Comanches who, when you saw them massed on a full moon night on the ridge overlooking your homestead, you knew you were about to be dispatched to the other world unless, of course, you were a woman to be carried off and Indianized like Parker's mom. Here in Mendo, the prevalent notion is that Native Americans walked around talking like sages, never lifting a warring finger against neighboring tribes, but in reality, after you'd hunted and gathered enough to last the cold months, for recreation you raided your neighbors. As is often pointed out, no Indian, including Parker's mom, ever ran away to be a white person, but lots of white persons preferred to stay on with their adopted tribes. A fascinating book on Parker and the Comanches who, unlike other tribes made their livings solely by murder and pillage, is “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History” by S. C. Gwynne.

MIKE GENIELLA: It is the time of year for the Swan and the white Camellias to put on their show. 

The swan belonged to Terese Berg's grandmother, Marion F. Sullivan. It is among the family heirlooms we treasure, and that reminds us of the late Marion and Ed Sullivan's gracious ranch home along the Feather River in Sutter County.

MARK HAYDON, former county traffic engineer, commenting on MendocinoNewsPlus facebook page on the CEO’s $170k per year pension:

“For me at the County, they took 7.3% of my Gross for Retirement and matched 24%. That means, out of every $100 I grossed, $7.30 came from me and $24 came from the taxpayer (on top of salary). This, and the fact that County Workers only work about 10.5 months of the year (after taking paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid personal leave, paid Covid leave and approximately 11 paid holidays), is why our County has no money for services. For most County Departments, at least $0.70 from every dollar budgeted goes directly to payroll and employee benefits. Look at what a County Supervisor collects after they are voted out.”

REPEAT MURDERER SENTENCED TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE PLUS 32 YEARS TO LIFE.

After delaying his sentencing for six months, murder defendant Jameson Wolfgang Jackson ran out of excuses late Wednesday morning and was sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) – plus an additional 32 years to life – in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Defendant Jackson, age 36, formerly of Redwood Valley and Talmage, was convicted most recently by jury in August 2021 of murder in the first degree and attempted murder in the first degree.

The jury found true a special circumstance alleging that the defendant committed the murder by firing a handgun from inside a motor vehicle. The jury also found true the special allegations that the defendant personally and intentionally fired a firearm causing the death of the first man, and personally and intentionally fired the same firearm in an attempt to murder a second man.

The law enforcement agencies that developed the evidence used to convict defendant Jackson were the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the California Highway Patrol, the Round Valley Tribal Police Department, the California Department of Justice forensic laboratory, and the District Attorney’s own Bureau of Investigations.

District Attorney Eyster also extends a special thank you again to Pure Gold Forensics for their speedy DNA work on the case.

The attorney who prosecuted the case to verdict and argued for today’s sentencing outcome was Assistant District Attorney Dale P. Trigg.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over Wednesday’s sentencing proceedings. 

Unfortunately, as some may remember, these are not this defendant’s first violent convictions.

In 2001, Jackson was convicted and sentenced as a juvenile for the robbery/murder of Joan LeFeat, a Brooktrails shop owner. 

Jackson’s co-defendant in those violent crimes, Christopher Matthew Coleman (then also 15 years old), was certified to adult court, convicted, and ultimately sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison. 

Coleman, now age 36, remains housed in a CDCR state prison facility in San Diego County serving his life sentence. Online state prison records indicate Coleman will be eligible for parole consideration in December 2023.

While Coleman was certified to adult court, a local judge denied the prosecution’s efforts to also certify Jackson to adult court.

Instead, Jackson was allowed to remain in juvenile court, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to serve his time in the California Youth Authority not to exceed his 25th birthday.

Jackson was paroled by the state authorities just after his 23rd birthday in 2008, having served only 7 years for his involvement in the LeFeat robbery/murder. Jackson then timed out on his parole in August 2010 when he turned 25. 

Jumping forward to 2022, family members of Mrs. LeFeat addressed the court Wednesday morning in support of defendant Jackson being forever ineligible for parole and never again being allowed outside the walls of the California state prison system.

(DA Presser)

---

Previously: https://www.theava.com/archives/1532995@2

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 23, 2022

JUAN GAMEZ-ESTRADA, Willits. Reckless evasion.

ZANDER GARAY, Ukiah. Domestic battery, criminal threats.

DANYALE GRIFFIN, Orlando, Florida/Ukiah. Petty theft.

SHANE JONES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, failure to appear.

JOSEPH MESERVEY, San Francisco/Ukiah. DUI.

DARREN WILLETT, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

AND AWAY WE GO!

Night-Time Attack On Controversial Canadian Gas Pipeline Site

Police in Canada have released footage of axe wielding attackers as they investigate a “calculated and organised” night-time raid on a remote work camp. Up to 20 people are believed to have attacked Coastal GasLink’s pipeline construction camp last week on Marten Forest Service Road in British Columbia. Dressed all in white, the attackers smashed vehicles with axes, including one vehicle with a security guard inside.

theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/night-attack-controversial-canadian-fracked-gas-pipeline-site

HOMICIDE DEFENDANT SENTENCED TO STATE PRISON.

Defendant Oscar Alvarez Ruiz, age 24, of Rohnert Park, was sentenced to 120 months Wednesday morning in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) by the Mendocino County Superior Court.

Defendant Alvarez Ruiz was convicted by plea on January 25, 2022 of voluntary manslaughter, a felony form of homicide, and the personal use of a firearm. 

The defendant shot and killed his brother-in-law after a sudden quarrel in July 2021 at an illegal marijuana grow up Bell Springs Road north of Laytonville where they were both working. 

Because voluntary manslaughter is characterized as a violent felony by the California Penal Code, any early release credits the defendant has earned in the county jail and may attempt to earn while in state prison shall not exceed 15% of the overall sentence.

The law enforcement agency that developed the evidence underlying the defendant’s conviction was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The prosecutor who has been handling this case from report review and charging through sentencing was Assistant District Attorney Dale P. Trigg.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over Wednesday sentencing proceedings.

(DA Presser)

---

Original Sheriff’s Press Release: https://www.theava.com/archives/159927#15

MIGHT BE A LITTLE BIG for your everyday carry weapon but probably good for home defense. 

The punt gun was so powerful that it was outlawed for being too effective. This comically large weapon was first built in the early 1800s as demand for duck skyrocketed. 

Capable of killing 50-100 waterfowl with a single shot, it began to decimate duck populations. Fortunately, regulations instituted in the first two decades of the 20th century brought the reign of the punt gun to an end.

JIM WOOD, AN ABSOLUTE WHIRLWIND OF CRUCIAL LEGISLATION:

Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa) has introduced AB 2691, legislation authorizing the Department of Cannabis Control to issue temporary cultivator event retail licenses that would allow small-scale growers to sell their cannabis products at cannabis events in the state.

“This license will allow so many growers who cultivate cannabis on one acre or less to really showcase their products at these special cannabis events,” said Wood. “The opportunity to share their unique strains directly with consumers and allow them to reach markets previously unattainable.”

Current law allows small-scale growers to participate in cannabis events, such as the Emerald Cup, but does not allow them to sell their product limiting potential buyers’ ability to determine a product’s qualities.

“Assemblymember Wood’s bill is a lifeline for thousands of small family cannabis farms across California struggling to bring their products to market and achieve profitability,” said Genine Coleman, Executive Director of Origins Council. “This legislation will also advance destination tourism for heritage cannabis producing regions and expand consumer access to regulated craft cannabis products.”

This legislation would specify that the temporary cultivator event retail license would be valid only for the specific cannabis event for which it was issued, and would limit the number of temporary cultivator event retail licenses issued to each licensee to 12 per calendar year.

“As a small farmer of both cannabis and vegetables I understand the importance of bringing products directly to customers as a small producer,” said Blaire AuClair, a small cannabis and produce farmer at Radicle Herbs and Folk Life Farm in Mendocino County. “It is imperative that small cannabis producers be able to get our products directly into consumers’ hands, to educate them about our products, to share our story and to learn about the needs of consumers. The survival of our small cannabis farms relies on the passage of this legislation.”

“The Emerald Triangle is located in the district I represent and we need to do what we can to ensure that licensed cultivators, especially small-scale growers that are competing with larger cultivators, have an opportunity to fully participate in marketing their products,” said Wood.

TWO ARMENIAN WOMEN pose with their rifles before going to battle against the Ottomans, 1895.

2/22/22

by James Meek

What is it about the 22nd of the month? Two months ago Vladimir Zhironovsky, the politician who once seemed the most dangerous face of Russian nationalism but is now just another aging Putin fanboy, predicted the world would “feel our new policy” at four a.m. on February 22. It was on June 22 that Hitler began Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In a hit Russian folk song of the time, written a few days later, the date was liltingly linked to Ukraine:

It was June twenty second

Right on the stroke of four

Bombs fell on Kiev, radio news said

That we were having a war.

Every day I ask people in Kyiv, and ask myself, whether the Russian president could seriously intend an assault on the Ukrainian capital. After yesterday’s rant, and his announcement Wednesday that he considers areas of Donbas controlled by Ukrainian forces no longer part of Ukraine, it seems more possible. More young men could be ordered to lay down their lives violently on Ukrainian earth around Kyiv, even as the bodies of Soviet soldiers from the 1940s are still being found. A number of volunteer groups using metal detectors regularly turn up Red Army soldiers; their helmets make the detectors ping easily. I spoke to one volunteer, Pavlo Netyosov, who said his group finds up to fifty sets of human remains a year.

I met Netyosov in his museum, a dark little set of rooms on two storys, festooned with old weapons from the war in Donbas, including the casings of anti-tank missiles. I sat on a sofa of sandbags and faced Netyosov over a desk lit with lamps that had rifle stocks for stands and Nazi helmets for shades. The detectorists find German remains too.

Instead of dogtags, a Soviet soldier carried in his pocket a screw-top ebonite cylinder, about the size of a pen cap, containing a roll of paper with his name, rank, age, family details and blood group.

“In 2013, before the Donbas war, we found the remains of four soldiers, most of them from Stavropol [in southern Russia],” Netyosov said. “We managed to reach the son of one of them. He remembered being four years old, his father very tense, his mother saying goodbye, him going to hug his father, his father putting him to one side and embracing his mother, and his father leaving. He never saw him again.” In those days of relatively warm Russian-Ukrainian relations, a delegation came from Stavropol to collect the remains.

Netyosov ended up on the front in Donbas during the early years of the conflict, not fighting but collecting from no man’s land the bodies of Ukrainians killed. He realized that for all his avid reading of Second World War books he knew nothing of the scale of modern war. He might see eight dead in a blown-up column of vehicles, he said, but in three days of the defense of Kyiv in 1941, in a single area of a few square miles, the Red Army lost 2200 people. “You think: ‘If it takes me a whole truck to take away eight people, how can you take away 2200?’ And then you understand that nobody did take them away.”

I asked Netyosov if he had any guesses about Putin’s timetable. He pointed to the enormous modern building opposite, surrounded by security fencing. It looked quite un-Ukrainian; like a slightly menacing retail warehouse. It was the US Embassy. “When they took the flag down from there and everyone left, I knew things were bad,” he said.

He showed me pictures of the fortifications of Kyiv in 1941. It had been an ukreprayon, a fortified district; an elaborate set of defenses were built on its landward side at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. Citizens were marshalled into digging deep ditches; there were walls of sandbags higher than people; there were hedgehogs, three lengths of steel girder welded together crosswise to create a barrier against armored vehicles. None of these things are to be seen in the city now.

“Kyiv has a very advantageous territorial situation,” Netyosov said. “It’s surrounded by rivers and swamps. All this can be used for defense. Right now it’s not being used. Evidently the powers that be are hoping for the best. There’s a very strong contrast between what people see there [in Donbas] and what it’s been like here, where people have been quietly going about their business for eight years.”

Wednesday afternoon I watched Iryna Tsilyk’s extraordinary documentary The Earth is Blue as an Orange, about a family of five – four children and their mother – living in the “grey zone” of the Donbas conflict, in a town called Krasnohorivka, a couple of miles from territory controlled by the rebels and, now, openly, by their Russian sponsors. In the course of the film, while they deal with shellfire and fear and the breakdown of basic services, the children’s school somehow keeps going and the family makes a short feature of their own. The eldest daughter, Mira, gets into university in Kyiv to study cinematography.

When I’d finished the film, which came out in 2020, I got into a cab and took a short ride to see Iryna. The documentary is to go on tour, starting in the Baltic states, and the family is going too. Since the film was made, the mother, Anna, has had another baby, and Anna’s mother has died of Covid. They were all staying in a sweltering flat, watching cartoons. They offered me tea with lemon and slices of bread and sausage.

In a way Anna is relieved to be away from home with her family. There’s been intensive shelling. The water supply has been cut off to the town of 6,000 people, and won’t be restored for months. She has to go more than a mile to get water from a well. The town used to have gas, but when that was cut off, everyone made their own stoves and burned coal; then electricity came back, and people abandoned their stoves for electric heaters. Now the electricity keeps going off. Sometimes people die of cold. Mobile signals keep cutting out. Movement around town is constrained by minefields and snipers. And yet in spite of everything the house is their home. She wants to be able to go back to it; she hopes it will still be there. But – such is the confusion of the times – she also thinks about the possibility of moving, even though she would be lucky to get $2,000 for the house. She began to weep.

“I took the childhood of my oldest children, and I can’t bring myself to take away the childhood of my youngest,” she said. “Nothing’s keeping us there any more. Why should we put up with that? It’s so hard.” In 2015, a family in town were sitting down to eat; it was quiet outside; they were near the window. A shell went off and a fragment of glass killed their son.

(Besides reporting on Britain and the former Soviet Union, James Meek covered the military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. In 2003 he crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq, following the invading American armies to Baghdad in a small group of journalists that included Dexter Filkins. In 2014 Meek published Private Island, a collection of essays, mainly from the London Review of Books, about the privatization of Britain. (London Review of Books))

PUTIN’S ADVANCE INTO UKRAINE COMPARES WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN’S INVASION OF KUWAIT, A DISASTER FOR RUSSIA

by Patrick Cockburn

On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi army to invade and occupy Kuwait in an operation that led to Iraq’s defeat in war, rebellions crushed in blood, 13 years of UN sanctions, defeat in a second war, foreign occupation, and two decades of civil conflict that is only now drawing to an end.

More than thirty years later, Vladimir Putin sent his tanks and soldiers into the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, enclaves whose independence he recognised, provoking a furious response and threats of retaliation from NATO states.

Putin’s actions may not provoke a wider war in the short term. Most immediately, this will depend on whether or not Russian forces press beyond the present front line and seek to expand the territory controlled by the separatist republics.

“Personally, I think that that is it for the moment,” one expert on Ukraine told me. “Putin already controls everything in Donetsk and Luhansk, and to move further would bring his forces into ‘resistance’ held territory.”

But the Russian advance has a political impact that goes far beyond the Donbas region and affects the future of Ukraine and Europe. By recognising the independence of the two separatist republics Putin has ripped up any prospect of a diplomatic solution with Ukraine. At the heart of the Minsk-2 agreement of 2015 was an unimplemented accord for autonomy for the pro-Russian republics within Ukraine that looked like the only feasible diplomatic road forward – and this is now gone forever.

In his rambling speech on Monday, Putin said that he considered that Minsk-2 had become “a sterile process”.

This raises another important question. How far does Moscow regard the government in Kyiv as legitimate since Putin keeps on saying he regards it as a Western proxy and puppet? This brings us to the question of whether or not Putin intends to launch a full blown invasion of Ukraine.

Television screens are filled with maps showing red arrows where Russian tank columns might sweep out of Belarus heading for Kyiv or advance north from Crimea to seize Ukraine east of the Dnieper River. This may happen one day but I doubt if it will happen quite yet.

For all the furore over the Donbas there has yet been only limited skirmishing and no big military clashes as yet. Likewise, it is still unclear how far Western states will fast forward sanctions designed as a punishment for a full scale Russian invasion of the whole of Ukraine.

Compare the military strength of Saddam Hussein and Iraq three decades ago with that of Putin and Russia today. The Iraqi dictator had a powerful army, which had been fighting Iran for eight years, but nothing that could stand up to the American-led coalition. He also famously had no WMD, something that Putin possesses in profusion.

The US deployed a powerful army to evict the Iraqi army from Kuwait. But in Ukraine, the NATO powers have made it clear that they are not going to send their own troops into combat.

Instead arms and equipment will be sent to the Ukrainian military, but according to a detailed study by the Jamestown Foundation these are unlikely to be put to good use. It says that some $2 billion spent on military modernisation in Ukraine since 2014 has had no effect. “It is remarkable and stretching credibility,” says the report, “that after seven years of war neither the Ukrainian military nor the defence industry has undergone any substantial or lasting reforms.”

Whatever these failings, a prolonged Russian military campaign would probably be a disaster for Moscow but it might go on for a long time and be very destructive.

Putin may be happy with what he has got in the Donbas and will claim that he saved the pro-Russian separatist republics from massacre. It is too early to know how the take-over of Donetsk and Luhansk has impressed Russian public opinion. Putin was never so high in the polls in Russia as when he annexed the Crimea in 2014.

It may make sense for the Kremlin to keep its military forces surrounding Ukraine as an unused threat, their presence all the more menacing because the east Ukraine invasion makes it clear that Russia is prepared to use military force. Much will depend on how adept Putin and his advisers are in political manoeuvring, all the signs so far being that they are not skilful at all.

“The calibre and intelligence of the men around Putin is probably below the level of any group of advisers to a Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas 11 [executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918],” said one expert on Russia.

The invasion of eastern Ukraine makes it more and more difficult to resolve the crisis which may go on for years. This is bad news for Ukraine, Russia and their neighbours because their economies will be strangled by the uncertainties of hot and cold war and economic sanctions. This is what happened in Iraq and Syria. Sanctions, in particular, are a very blunt instrument that cripple whole societies and economies.

The biggest blow for Russia so far has been Germany suspending the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The Russian stock exchange fell 14 per cent in dollars following Putin’s announcement of impending intervention, and Ukraine says it is losing $2-3 billion a month because of the crisis.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraqis believed that he must have thought through the consequences of his actions and waited for him to start substantive negotiations or conduct some diplomatic manoeuvre – until war came.

(Patrick Cockburn is the author of War in the Age of Trump (Verso). Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

CRAIG STEHR IS ALIVE AND INDOORS AS OF FEBRUARY 23RD @ 10AM

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that an emergency fundraising effort yielded sufficient results to enable me to be at the Voll Motel in Ukiah (again in room #11) until the first of March. Also, a social worker has contacted me to offer further help ongoing. 

I cannot even begin to describe how terrifying it is to be homeless and uncertain as to where one is going to be in winter, and if one is going to be properly fed. I spent the whole night praying to God to ease my mind. I prayed to Jesus for everything, and committed to serve Him and give myself completely over if He saves me from death. The yoga practices and OM chanting are always worthwhile, but when you are facing death, you do exactly what you need to do in order to stay alive. I am just telling it like it is. 

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr

February 23, 2022 Anno Domini

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CRAIG STEHR INDOORS AND OUT OF THE COLD, FOR NOW.

The social worker Craig mentions was probably Sharon McCutcheon of Adult and Aging Services Division. It sounds like maybe she can work something out so it doesn't get to the end of the month and this starts all over again. Craig is in his late 70s. When he has a way to communicate he emails daily and sometimes twice-daily diary/journal entries, including links to week-long yammering prayer festivals in India, where people pour melted butter on a giant statue of an erect penis in a cave, and things like that, and spiritual instructions from old white bald Jewish-looking or Scandinavian-looking men who talk very slowly and sweetly and lullingly, from what seem to be pretty nice living arrangements, about how nothing is real so don't sweat it, so it's clearly working well for them.

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

NO, NO, NO TO WAR

President Biden is half right when he refers to “an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces” — unjustified indeed, unprovoked not in the least. Two sides have been escalating this conflict for years, each claiming to be acting defensively, each provoking the other. The NATO nations’ weaponry and forces that are now imagined as a solution are also the original source of the conflict. It is right to grow indignant now about Ukraine’s “sovereignty,” but so would it have been during the U.S.-backed coup eight years ago that has endangered Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

This is no time for anything other than de-escalation by all sides. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court ought to be upholding the rule of law just as if this were in Africa rather than Europe, exactly as ought to have been done with the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, et alia. Criminal sanctions that violate the Geneva Conventions are not a means of holding warmakers to the rule of law. Prosecutions in courts are.

We need nuclear weapons taken out of service by both sides. We need serious negotiations, beginning with the Minsk 2 agreement, not just empty talk. We need nations other than Russia or the United States to step up and insist on de-escalation and de-militarization, before this slowly spiraling madness reaches nuclear apocalypse.

— World Beyond War