Mendocino County Today: Saturday, March 5, 2022

Blustery Winds | 13 New Cases | Shelling Mariupol | War Casualties | Indoor Masking | Camp Intrigue | Unenforced Edicts | Grazing Sheep | Patricia Marien | Manzanita Blossoms | Docents Needed | GP Tour | AVHC Fundraising | Game Park | Hospital Bed | Caregiver Wanted | Kendall Bro | Railway Application | Hot Rodders | Mendo IT | Exotic Dancer | Ed Notes | McKee Sentenced | Ax Boys | Help Al | Yesterday's Catch | Finland Station | Old Mexico | Refugee Support | Russian Meddling | Baseball Lockout | Putin Popped | Degenerates | Spurfree | Disasters Looming | Odd Fellows | Slave Labor | Factory Pipes | Ukraine Nukes | Young Chaplin | Police State | Clean Hands | Batter Up | Marco Radio | Spent Weapon | Attack Surprise | Shipping Out

BLUSTERY NORTHWEST WINDS continue today, albeit weaker than on Friday. Cooler air with yesterday's system will linger over the area this weekend, bringing colder overnight temperatures. Temps then trend warmer early next week while dry weather persists. (NWS)

13 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

UKRAINE HAS DRAMATICALLY CANCELLED A PLANNED EVACUATION of more than 200,000 civilians from Mariupol after it accused Russian forces of derailing a promised ceasefire by shelling the strategic port city as Vladimir Putin's terrifying war enters its 10th day. Mariupol's city council said the evacuation west to Zaporizhzhia has been postponed due to "the fact that the Russian side does not adhere to the regime of silence and continued shelling of both Mariupol itself" and the surrounding area. Local authorities have asked people to disperse and find places of shelter, adding that talks are underway to establish a ceasefire and ensure the humanitarian corridor originally agreed for five hours between 12pm and 5pm Moscow time. In a defiant address on Saturday morning, Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians to continue fighting Putin's forces. Ukraine's comic-turned-wartime president then thundered "what more is needed" to convince Joe Biden to enforce a no-fly zone, an action which could widen the war, after he accused the West of cowardice in the face of Russian aggression. (Daily Mail)

ENDING MENDO’S UNIVERSAL MASK ORDER

from Mendocino County Health Officer, Andy Coren, MD 

Today, March 4, 2022, Mendocino County Public Health is lifting the universal indoor mask mandate. This is happening now because COVID-19 infections have fallen dramatically in the last 2 months of the Omicron surge, and the stress on our hospitals is coming under control. 

Yet the CDC shows that we are in a HIGH TRANSMISSION community where wearing masks indoors is STILL STONGLY RECOMMENDED at this time. 

So why lift the mask order now? Because our community has learned and continues to learn to cope with the pandemic. 

While we are all happy to have made this progress it is important to know that we are not done with COVID-19. We expect that there will be more surges in the future. Another more contagious variant is already spreading through the world and more are expected. So, it is NOT OK to go without a mask to most indoor public spaces. 

Also important is to acknowledge how much we have learned in such a short time. This has been a very difficult 2 years, with almost a million deaths due to infection in the USA alone, over 120 souls lost in Mendocino County, with many more sickened and some continuing with symptoms of Long Covid. Health systems were overwhelmed, businesses closed, organizations, schools, and recreation were all affected. We do not want to repeat that experience. But we cannot turn back the clocks. 

Our community has learned the advantages of masking, vaccinating, increased ventilation and distancing, which have gotten us to this point. And we must pass this on to our children to learn, just as we teach them other ways to protect themselves, without being ashamed or bullied for doing what is right for themselves and the most vulnerable members of our community. 

So, as we go forward we have to be aware of our health risks and intelligently respond. Public health organizations from CDC to CDPH to our local Mendocino County Department of Public Health exist to investigate and inform us of the risks we face and how best to protect ourselves. Speed limits, seatbelts, avoiding tobacco, testing for cancer, protecting our children with vaccines, and other advisories are researched carefully before making recommendations or laws. And they have saved millions of lives. 

And Public Health is continuing to learn through research in the laboratories and the field. Research takes time. To protect ourselves against COVID, advice has included getting vaccinated, increasing activities outdoors and improving ventilation indoors including distancing when practical. It also includes masking. As uncomfortable as they are, they save lives. The California Department of Public Health has taken the lessons of the past 2 years and created the SMARTER plan (Shots, Masks, Awareness [to protect ourselves], Readiness, Testing, Education [keeping schools open], & Rx [new medications]) to go forward. 

Also, please remember that by federal and California state laws, masks are still required for everyone in some settings such as public transit and health care facilities. Masks are still strongly recommended in indoor settings for all at this time, especially if you are unvaccinated or if you have medical conditions that put you or your household at increased risk. 

Thank you Mendocino County, for your continued hard work in fighting this pandemic. 

DR. COREN SAYS THE MASK MANDATE IS BEING LIFTED at this time (despite a high level of new infections) "because our community has learned and continues to learn to cope with the pandemic." That sounds nice, but the truth is that an unacceptably high proportion of the population refuses to follow the mask mandate. 

Dr. Coren (like Doohan before him) has relied on increasingly questionable declarations of "emergency" to issue orders but makes no attempt to enforce them. Enforcement, if any, is left to individual business owners which places an unfair burden on them. 

The response from Federal, State and Local Health Authorities over the last TWO YEARS has frequently been bungled, contradictory and dishonest. Masking and vaccination have failed, not because they don't work, but because the health authorities have failed to convince people that they work. And they only work if a sufficient proportion of the population follows them. A large book could be written about the many mistakes that have been made which have empowered the anti-vax, anti-science morons. 

Probably the single greatest impact of the Covid response (greater than the number of infections and deaths) has been the massive transference of wealth from the working/entrepreneurial/small business class to the Super Rich. 

The net effect of the failed mandates has been to divide us, not protect us. So, yes, it's time to let the mask mandate go. But if we're standing in line at a store, I expect you to respect social distancing protocols!

— John McCowen

JARY STAVELY'S WIFE PATRICIA MARIEN HAS DIED. 

Patricia Marien died at her home in Fort Bragg on February 27, 2022, at the age of 79. Her body failed as the result of pancreatic cancer. She was born in Detroit, Michigan, and moved to northern California in 1972. She lived and worked in the Bay Area before moving to Arcata in 1991, where she established a community of friends that lasted the rest of her life. She lived in Fort Bragg since 2005. She is survived by her husband Jary Stavely, her sister Nancy Wilber of Michigan Center, Michigan, and her brother Mel Marien of Concord, California, as well as by their spouses, children, and grandchildren.

Upon her arrival in California, Patricia became an outside sales representative for General Mills, with her own company car and the opportunity to travel the state from Fresno to Redding, from Truckee to Eureka. She was proud of being part of the 3% of her firm’s sales rep team at the time who were women, especially because she established her career without the benefit of any college education. Later, while working for a title company, she won a Best Idea of the Year award from the Marin Conservation League for suggesting that her company have a positive effect on the planet by changing from styrofoam to ceramic cups in its offices.

Her creative and adventurous spirit affected everyone around her. Whether rollerskating across the Golden Gate Bridge, or riding across the country on the Green Tortoise, she was always up for meeting new people and finding joy wherever she could. She loved music festivals in which her gift for conversation and her appreciation for the outdoors intersected with her love for physical movement. Healthful cooking and bargain hunting were other passions which she shared by giving food, clothes, and treasures to friends and family members—she made her loved ones feel recognized and valued in passing along her finds and creations.

Patricia was a great believer in community service. She could no longer work full time after her first encounter with breast cancer in 1987 and the radiation that followed, but she devoted herself to community involvement through volunteer work. Her love of public television led her to participate in fundraising auctions for both KQED and KEET. She became a state parks docent at Angel Island and Point Bonita, and served on the Friends of the Arcata Marsh (FOAM) and the MendoParks boards. Her love of music and dance brought her to volunteer with the Humboldt Folklife Society, while her interest in good government led her to support the League of Women Voters. Patricia was devoted to the Fort Bragg Garden Club and its program to promote horticulture through scholarships for high school seniors. She often urged her downhearted relations and friends to go out and get involved with public service groups in which they had an interest. “The biggest joys and best friends in my life came from my volunteer work.”

Her family has deep appreciation for the support Patricia was given in the past two months, both by friends near and far, and by the Cancer Resource Center, and the Home Health Services of Adventist Health Mendocino Coast. With their help, Patricia was able to remain at home, and to have the satisfaction of resolving much “unfinished business” before her death. No public services are planned. Those who knew her may honor her memory with a gift to any organization that touches their heart.

— Marco McClean

BECOME A DOCENT AT THE ANDERSON VALLEY MUSEUM

The Little Red Schoolhouse Museum needs docents! The Anderson Valley History Museum, a.k.a. the Little Red Schoolhouse, is now open following our annual winter hiatus. We are open weekend afternoons from 1:00 to 4:00 pm with three buildings full of photos, artifacts and displays depicting life in our beautiful valley down through the years. 

In order to keep going at full speed, however, the Museum needs new volunteer docents. We’re looking for folks who are interested in local history and enjoy interacting with the public. You’ll find that it’s gratifying and engaging to talk about Anderson Valley with visitors at our charming historical locale. New docents get full (and fun!) training that takes just a few hours. 

After that, you'll only need to commit to spending one weekend afternoon per month greeting visitors and, when they wish, showing them around the exhibitions. Or if you’d rather not commit to a monthly schedule, you can always learn the ropes and then add your name to our substitutes list for when one of our regulars can’t make a shift. 

Don’t worry if your knowledge of Valley history isn’t comprehensive, or even if you’re just starting to learn about it all. Spending time at our gem of a museum and taking in all the great exhibitions is a terrific way to get a handle on the families, locales and events that make up the Anderson Valley story.

For more information or to sign up for training, please contact our docent coordinator, Sandra Nimmons, at 895-9020. 

Jerry Karp

Boonville

AV HEALTH CENTER LAUNCHES PUBLIC FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT EXPANSION 

Supporting its mission to provide excellent and affordable healthcare to area residents and visitors, the Anderson Valley Health Center (AVHC) has unveiled a $1.5 million “Heartbeat of the Valley” campaign to help with construction costs of a much needed building expansion. The unveiling of the campaign marks AVHC’s effort to engage broad community participation as it aims to complete the campaign by July 2022 when the new wing is completed. 

To date, just over $1.3 million has been raised from both individual and institutional donors – funds that will help AVHC provide services to the 75% of Anderson Valley's population who uses AVHC for regular health care. An additional $1,528,000 was secured from two highly competitive federal grants. 

Since its founding in 1976, AVHC has continually expanded services as needs were identified by the community. Since 2007, when the current facility was designed, AVHC added behavioral health services including telepsychiatry and Spanish speaking behavioral health providers; a pre-natal program; substance use treatment programs; diabetic eye exam screenings; and acupuncture. A low-cost dispensary was also opened to provide prescriptions to patients that are under AVHC care. 

The continuing expansion of services strained the clinic’s physical space. Offices originally designed for one are now being shared by multiple service providers, creating scheduling and privacy challenges. Other staff are working from home, or offsite several blocks away at a building originally intended to provide temporary accommodations for AVHC professionals who live out of the area. 

HOSPITAL BED AVAILABLE IN BOONVILLE

Jennifer Mayne has a hospital bed available for free or purchase in Boonville - call her if you are interested - 707-684-6680

LIVE-IN CAREGIVING OPPORTUNITY IN YORKVILLE

An AV Village member in Yorkville is looking for a caregiver in exchange for 2 bedrooms and a bath shared kitchen (part of the member's house) hours to be determined - but caregiver would be able to work their regular job.

The member is suffering from depression and anxiety and needs help with cooking and cleaning.

She has dogs and cats - she will allow another dog but not more cats. call Kristina if you are interested: (415) 342-1540

KENDALL BROTHERS PROTECT MENDO. LUKE KENDALL APPOINTED HEAD OF MENDO CALFIRE.

The CAL FIRE Mendocino Unit is one of the largest in Northern California with six battalions, approximately 125 career firefighters, and another 200 seasonal personnel. These men and women staff ten fire stations tasked with the prevention and suppression of fire throughout all four corners of the county.

Last month, in a quiet swearing-in ceremony, a 31-year veteran of the state firefighting agency Luke Kendall was sworn in as the new Mendocino Unit Chief, taking command of a public safety institution that has proven a mainstay in the county’s firefighting efforts.

mendofever.com/2022/03/04/luke-kendall-takes-command-as-chief-of-cal-fires-mendocino-unit/

JADE TIPPETT:

Skunk Train asks Coastal Commission for permission to lay new track from Laurel Street to Glass Beach along the Glass Beach headland.

On February 28, Mendocino Railway's attorney submitted an application to the California Coastal Commission, demanding a decision within 60 days, on a massive amount of proposed work on the existing Fort Bragg installation and the track and tunnel between Fort Bragg and Willits. 

Inserted in there is a proposal for "Track Construction of 1 mile on 480-acre parcel between the Pacific Ocean and downtown Fort Bragg." (p.7.) 

The application asserts that "that the FRA (Federal Railroad Authority) has determined, [that these actions] typically do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment and ... generally do not require the preparation of either an environment impact statement (EIS) or an environmental assessment (EA)."

All of the environmental impacts of working along side Pudding Creek, where the City of Fort Bragg gets its water, by a company that asserts it is immune to state and local regulation because it is a railroad, and the Federal threshold for reporting oil spills by railroads is 1,320 gallons!

But that is not the only threat to the human environment. Think about train engines belching diesel fumes and soot, blasting their air horns next to tourists and locals seeking a little peace and solitude walking by the ocean. This will kill the attractiveness of the Glass Beach headland for all but paying tourists from out of town.

Contact your Fort Bragg City Councilpeople, Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Williams and ask them for resolutions from the City and County to the Coastal Commission opposing Mendocino Railway's application as written.

savenoyoheadlands.com

NORTHCOAST HOT RODDERS SHOW TBA

MENDOCINO COUNTY GRAND JURY report & response to “Mendocino County’s Trailing Information Technology” from local Attorney Duncan James on behalf of the Mendocino County Sheriff.

The original IT report can be found here: mendocinocounty.org/home/showpublisheddocument/44457/637622856148400000

The Sheriff’s response may be found at: mendocinocounty.org/home/showpublisheddocument/49660/637819937279286800

Katharine (Kathy) Wylie, M.S. Ed. Foreman, 2021-22 Mendocino County Grand Jury

ED NOTES

ANOTHER GIANT STEP forward for truth and justice. An insect formerly known as the gypsy moth has been changed to the “Spongy Moth” because its original name was associated with a derogatory term for Romani people. 

AS A KID and resident of a dive hotel South of Market in San Francisco — bathroom down the hall, clean linen every two weeks — a family of Gypsies occupied the ground floor commercial space. The men called me “boss” and were always trying to sell me stuff. “Boss, you need a transmission?” The women and their girl children sold corsages at night down on Fisherman's Wharf. I don't remember them being offended at being called Gypsies, but I just went with the flow, never having any reason to even wonder about their ethnicity.

AT THE MEREST HINT of compulsion, with mandatory running a close second, the Caring Professionals Industry immediately goes for their big rhetorical guns — “fascist” being the biggest. Mendo's 31-agency “continuum of care” continually convenes meetings to talk about what to do with unhoused, dependent persons and, it's fair to say, they do manage to deliver dubious “services” to the “reimburseables” among the walking wounded. But the people who need locked-door rehab, the unhinged people common on the streets of Ukiah and Fort Bragg, and have destroyed San Francisco's civic center, just try to corral them for their own good and the comfortably compensated helping pros drench everyone in sight with great rivers of croc tears.

SO HERE COMES Governor Newsom with a proposal he calls “Care Court,” which would create a mental-health-focused arm of the civil courts in every county. The state would require counties to provide mandated treatment to the free range junkies, drunks and psychotics to save them from themselves and to spare the rest of us — especially the vulnerable — the anxiety they cause everyone who ventures into public spaces.

* * *

Newsom Unveils ‘Completely New Strategy’ for California’s Mental Health Crisis — The proposal, known as the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (or CARE) Court, would provide a framework for courts to compel people with serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders into treatment, while also providing participants with supportive housing and wrap-around services.

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/mar/4/newsom-unveils-completely-new-strategy-for-califor/

* * *

New State Grant Will Allow Mental Health Professionals to Deploy With Sheriff’s Deputies on Certain Calls, DHHS Announces

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/mar/4/new-state-grant-will-allow-mental-health-professio/

* * *

WHICH MEANS the police would be tasked with rounding them up, and people like Mendo's royal family of privatized mental health services, Mr. and Mrs. Schraeder, would do the rehab, which won't happen here or any other place in the state unless the state provides the funding for psych sites and people to staff them. 

IN HIS PRESSER Wednesday, Newsom referred sarcastically to so-called compassion as people “die on its streets.”

“There’s no compassion with people with their clothes off defecating and urinating in the middle of the streets, screaming and talking to themselves,” Newsom said. “There’s nothing appropriate about a kid and mom going down the street trying to get to the park being accosted by people who clearly need help. I’m increasingly outraged by what’s going on in the streets,” Newsom said. “I’m disgusted with it.”

WE'LL see if the Governor's disgust is backed up with cash, but immediately the Caring Professional Industry said they feared “a return to institutionalization.”

WHY? How else can you care for several million people unable or unwilling to care for themselves? The old state hospital at Talmage was not only a boon to the people sentenced to live there until they got themselves together, it was a great gift to the small population of Mendocino County whose population of dependent people had a humane, even beautiful place to live while they recovered themselves.

CASE IN POINT. Boonville's one homeless guy is presently dying in the center of town. Locals help him with food and small donations of cash. He's a silent sufferer, seen early in the morning, teeth chattering, talking to himself, a cup of coffee courtesy of one of the early risers. I've never seen him worse. Meth-addicted, clothes in tatters, unbathed for years, but somehow gets himself out of the cold at night. He's not obtrusive, not a screamer, not in any way menacing. Would anybody seriously argue that he should not be compelled into treatment?

SEXUAL MISCONDUCT GETS 16 YEARS

Defendant Joseph Paul McKee, age 32, formerly of Ukiah, appeared before the Mendocino County Superior Court Thursday morning to hear his stipulated sentencing fate.

When all was said and done, the defendant was sentenced to 16 years in state prison, the maximum for the crime committed.

What put this defendant in state prison was his sexual misconduct and February 3rd guilty plea to the charged felony offense of his having violated Penal Code section 288.5, a sex offense commonly referred to as continuous sexual abuse of a child.

Generally, to be guilty of this sex crime, a defendant must engage in three or more acts of substantial sexual conduct over a period of no less than three months or more with a child under the age of 14 years.

Because this crime is deemed violent by law, any early release credits the defendant may attempt to earn while housed at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shall be limited to no more than 15% of his overall sentence.

When eventually released on parole, the defendant will be required to register annually for life as a convicted sex offender with local law enforcement wherever he is allowed to live.

The law enforcement agencies that developed the underlying evidence to support the conviction and today’s sentencing outcome were the Ukiah Police Department, the Department of Justice forensic laboratory (DNA), and the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigations.

A special note of appreciation is also extended to the specially-trained local nurses who regularly conduct sexual abuse examinations of victims of sex crimes, as happened in this case, and provide medical testimony regarding their forensic findings when called as witnesses at criminal trials.

The prosecutor who has handled this case from initial charging through the various proceedings and today’s sentencing hearing was Asst. DA Dale P. Trigg.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the Thursday morning sentencing hearing.

Finally, as an aside, in 1947 California became the first state in the nation to enact a sex offender registration law that required offenders convicted of specified offenses to register with their local law enforcement agencies.

This practice is still in place and the California Sex and Arson Registry (CSAR) serves as the statewide repository for information on registered sex offenders.

Today, the California Sex Offender Registry continues to provide a wide range of services that support and assist the law enforcement community with the monitoring and registration of over 120,000 California sex offenders. These services include maintaining and providing information to the general public via the California Megan’s Law Internet Web site.

(DA Presser)

A CRY FOR HELP… 

I'm having to move and I have no where else to go. I have to be off the property I stay on by the end of march. I had not been working since December because my shoulder has been hurting me. The pain wouldn't go away so I started seeing the doctors about it and had a MRI done which found 4 things wrong with my shoulder and one of them is a tear in my rotator cuff, a wide tear. Doctor mentioned possibly a shoulder replacement because of all the damage, when i go back next week i will know more. If I become homeless living out in the streets they may not operate because it will be difficult or almost impossible for me to recover properly which can take up to a year. I have no family or friends that can help me with this. Help... I'm scared what my choices are to be off property, desperately selling of my stepvan and all my tools if I can, maybe my motorhome as well because I don't see living out on the streets in it, having to park here and there always moving it around would burn up all my money because of poor gas mileage and the cost of gasoline, I just won't be able to do that. I will end up homeless with my hurt shoulder living in my little truck until I can't take it anymore and lose my mind to losing it all and homelessness. Help... 

AL Nunez <allymotocat@gmail.com> 

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 4, 2022

MANUEL ARMENDARIZ JR., Bellflower/Ukiah. DUI.

DUSTIN FERGUSON, Willits. DUI.

WILLIAM GOFORTH, Willits. Under influence with firearm, assault weapon, concealed weapon in vehicle with prior, short-barreled rifle, concealed dirk-dagger, firearm in public.

SHANNAH GRIFFITH, Ukiah. Burglary, failure to appear.

MICHAEL LOCKETT SR., Ukiah. Controlled substance, suspended license, county parole violation.

JOSHUA MEDINA, Fort Bragg. Violation of protective order, probation revocation.

JAMES MILLER, Ukiah. County parole violation.

LINDSAY MURPHY, Fort Bragg. Narcotics for sale, controlled substance for sale, probation revocation.

DEMETRIA PIKE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANGEL PINACHO-LOPEZ, Merced/Ukiah. Loaded handgun not registered owner.

RICHARD SMITH JR., San Leandro/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JOHN STOLLER, Pacifica/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MARTY SWAYZE, Ukiah. Tear gas, probation revocation.

DANIEL YEOMANS, Fort Bragg. Concealed dirk-dagger, criminal threats. 

FROM THE FINLAND STATION

by Vadim Nikitin

I spent three days this week trying to get out of Russia with my three-year-old son, who was visiting his grandparents in Murmansk for the first time (in retrospect perhaps not the best time to have made such a trip). There were no flights out, but also no spare tickets on any bus going to Helsinki; the train was still running (for Russian and Finnish citizens only) though everyone expects it to stop any day. At Finland Station payments to Russian Railways with Western cards were not working. I had to beg the lady to hold the tickets in the face of a long angry queue as I ran to a nearby Sberbank to withdraw cash.

We managed to get a train but were forced off in Vyborg because Luca is a British passport holder, and had to find another way to the Finnish border with our suitcases. As we were being led off the train by border guards and police, passengers slipped us their phone numbers. The lieutenant-colonel in charge later came and found us at the railway station, apologised for the ‘situation’ and tried to help by showing us where we might be able to catch a passing bus from St Petersburg with an unadvertised spare seat. The bus station overlooks a peeling art deco building with Finnish lettering, a reminder that Vyborg – now the terminal of the Nord Stream gas pipeline – has been a contested city (Finland gave up its claim in 1947). At last a bus with an empty seat came by.

There were queues of buses at the border, being processed by a skeleton crew clearly unaccustomed to anything more than routine weekend and daytrip traffic. The border guards looked confused and embarrassed, every official we met trying their best to be human – a highly unusual phenomenon. There was plenty of snow all around for Luca to build some impressive snowmen. It took just over twelve hours to cover two hundred kilometres.

Who knows when Luca will see his grandparents again? And this is happening in Russia itself, so far from the actual fighting. My mother’s mother and grandmother were Ukrainians who lived through occupation by the Nazis. The idea that Russians have now taken their place – and adopted their tactics – is unbearable to her. I cannot begin to fathom how the Ukrainians are coping.

ACROSS THE NISTRU

by Paula Erizanu

Over the past week Moldova has received more than 166,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. Helped by thousands of volunteers, the Moldovan authorities turned hospitals, universities and weddings halls into refugee centres. Also this week, Moldova commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of post-Soviet Russia’s first war against one of its former colonies.

On 2 March 1992, soon after Moldova declared independence from the USSR, Russia started an armed conflict against the country, backing separatists in Transnistria. I was born in Chișinău in May that year. My mother could hear the bombing on the river Nistru, seventy kilometres from the maternity ward. Hundreds of people died in the fighting, which ceased on 21 July, but the conflict never really ended. The unrecognised breakaway region of Transnistria is still funded and controlled by Russia.

Russia agreed to withdraw its troops from Transnistria in 1999 but more than twenty years later they are still there. They are protecting Soviet-era weaponry, including twenty thousand tonnes of ammunition at an arms depot in the village of Cobasna. Russia has ignored repeated requests from Moldovan governments to remove its arsenal.

With the invasion of Ukraine, Moldovans are once again being woken in the night by the sound of air strikes. People have opened their homes, providing transport and food to fleeing Ukrainians, yet the country is at capacity and needs more international support. Many of us also fear the Russian aggression could extend to Moldova. Some have already left.

LISTEN TO BERNIE SANDERS AND END THE BOSSES’ BASEBALL LOCKOUT

by Dave Zirin

There is war, disease, and the prospect of a nuclear winter, and yet President Joe Biden still wasted an opportunity to not raise his voice against the Major League Baseball lockout during Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Baseball ranks low on the list of the anxieties that have colonized our minds of late, but the situation cries out for some kind of intervention, because this sporting tragedy reflects so much about the grotesque inequalities that define this country. Baseball is “the national pastime” and that pastime is being held hostage by 30 billionaires and their hand puppet Commissioner Rob Manfred. This is not the wrangling of “billionaires vs. millionaires,” a bosses’ narrative that much of the mainstream media has dutifully parroted, but a lockout—not a strike, a lockout—where the wealthiest parasites in the sport have unilaterally shut down the game. This is so obviously a “bosses’ strike” that it has baseball insiders sounding like Che Guevara. ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote, “If you went and got the next 1,200 best players in the world, the product would suffer greatly. If you handed MLB teams over to any 30 competent businesspeople, the sport would not suffer. Actually, it might improve.”

The billionaires’ justification is that they are “losing money”—a claim that strains credulity, not least of all because they won’t open their books either to the union or an independent arbitrator. They also say that this is about finding “competitive balance” by imposing de facto salary caps on what could be spent, yet nothing on creating a salary floor so franchise owners that have been choosing to pocket public funds and cable network cash while disregarding the product on the field, can either start spending or sell their teams. No, this is about revenge for the years that baseball union kicked the bosses’ collective asses. It’s about rage. It’s about a group of people, fronted by Manfred, who love profits more than they love the game. They have now cancelled the fabled opening day, at a moment when the league could be offering solace and escape during troubled times.

But the owners in their cosseted isolation don’t care how any of this looks. They are banking on the players cracking under the weight of their lost paychecks and short careers. All the players have is their own solidarity, and lord knows we need as many high-profile instances of labor unity in the face of a bosses’ greed as we can get. At a moment when Starbucks workers across the country are trying to unite and hold together in the face of union busting, the players have a chance to show the world that solidarity is the only way to win.

Biden might have chosen not to seize upon this moment and recognize the importance of what is taking place, but Senator Bernie Sanders has taken a different approach. The baseball-adoring Vermont senator has spoken out, tweeting to his millions of followers, “The 30 Major League Baseball owners are worth over $100 billion. The value of their teams increased by more than $41 billion since they bought them. Mr. Manfred: End the lockout. Negotiate in good faith. Don’t let the greed of baseball owners take away our national pastime.

Sanders both loves baseball and has been scarred by baseball. In 1957, when the Dodgers moved from his Brooklyn hometown to Los Angeles, it taught him a lesson about how greed can triumph over love, when plutocrats are given free rein. “I don’t want to tell you that was the sole reason that I’ve developed the politics that I’ve developed,” he said in one interview. “But as a kid, I did see in that case about the greed of one particular company. And that impacted me.” He also once lamented, “It was like they would move the Brooklyn Bridge to California. How can you move the Brooklyn Bridge to California?”

The most prominent democratic socialist in the United States was forever shaped by the removal of his favorite team and the destruction of the holy ground that was Ebbets Field. It makes one wonder just how many hearts are going to be broken—how many perspectives like that of Jeff Passan will be forged—in the spring of 2022 and how many teenage minds will be radicalized from seeing the sport of their dreams turned into a nightmare of shuttered stadiums and the silent sounds of Shohei Otani home run swings that will go untaken. So much of what once passed for community has been torn asunder over the last 50 years. If baseball and a day at the park is going to be added to the list, let it not go down without a fight. The players should not be slandered as co-conspirators in the destruction of the game. End the bosses’ lockout, and stop the corporate greed ruining baseball.

WHO IN THE US GOVERNMENT, from our founding in 1789 to 1991 — while Ukraine was part of Russia in one way or another — gave a passing thought to Ukraine? Answer: nobody. And then, after the crack-up of the USSR, Ukraine was “in play,” culminating in the 2014 CIA-sponsored “color revolution” that ousted then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was inclined to join Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union of trade relations rather than the US wished-for NATO or EU. And ever since then it has been one American intrigue after another — including a brisk trade in grift and bribery by the Biden family, the Clinton syndicate, the next-gen of Kerrys, and other entitled elites from over here selling their influence.

And now the economic sanctions on Russia, which are sure to blow back on the countries issuing them. Europe has to pretend that it doesn’t need Russian oil and gas, that it doesn’t need cheap uranium to run their nuke power plants, that they don’t need the Baikonur Cosmodrome to launch their satellites, and so on. More likely, these moves will accelerate the collapse of Western Civ’s banking system, stock and bond markets, and erode the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency — a longstanding “exorbitant privilege” for getting stuff from all over the world in exchange for promises to pay some Tuesday in the distant future.

The reader may ask: why does this blog appear to take Russia’s side in the current conflict against the US and our supposed allies? Answer: Why would you trust a government (ours) and its captive news media after years of their blatant lying and tyrannical over-reach? These parties appear to be at war against their own people, that is, against us — certainly more than Russia is. Especially in the historic moment when all our mendacious “narratives” are being exposed as false? I won’t bother listing the many transgressions of Wokery against our culture and history. And all of sudden, it appears a lot of American citizens have had enough of being fucked around. I’m with them.

Now consider this: What if it turns out that Russia can complete its Cleanup-in-Aisle-Four operation relatively quickly, with a minimized loss of life and damage to the everyday infrastructure of Ukraine, and arrange things there afterward so that Ukraine is not a menace to anyone, either Russia or the West? I sincerely believe this is their intention — just as I sincerely believe that their leadership is actually sane, and ours appears not to be. Perhaps Russia will even offer Ukraine (or its re-arranged regions) assistance in recovering from the foolishness it played along with to its own sorrow? What if Russia actually has no intention of starting World War Three? Will we keep trying to start it anyway?

Whoever is behind “Joe Biden” has done all they can to derail American Life, and the feckless leadership of Euroland has also seemed avid to trash its future. There is a welling movement, in America, at least, to resist all that, to sweep these degenerates out of power, and make a concerted course correction in the direction of sanity, rectitude, liberty, and generosity of spirit toward each other. An awful lot of trouble has already been set in motion by the idiots running things. There is a difficult slog ahead. Is your head screwed on? Where will you stand? 

— James Kunstler

DISASTER UPON DISASTER LOOMS FOR WEST COAST

It's the elevators that worry earthquake engineering expert Keith Porter the most.

Scientists say a massive quake could strike the San Francisco Bay Area at any moment. And when it does, the city can expect to be slammed with a force equal to hundreds of atomic bombs.

Porter said the shaking will quickly cut off power in many areas. That means unsuspecting people will be trapped between floors in elevators without backup power. At peak commute times, the number of those trapped could be in the thousands.

To escape, the survivors of the initial quake will need the help of firefighters with specialized training and tools.

But their rescuers won't come – at least not right away. Firefighters will be battling infernos that could outnumber the region's fire engines.

Running water will be in short supply. Cellphone service may not work at all. The aftershocks will keep coming.

And the electricity could remain off for weeks.…

yahoo.com/now/could-happen-tomorrow-experts-know-230027986.html

YOU TAKE THE PEOPLE who are in this audience right now. They’re poor. We’re all poor as individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts to hardly anything. But if you take the salary of everyone in here collectively, it’ll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It’s a lot of wealth. If you can collect the wages of just these people right here for a year, you’ll be rich–richer than rich. When you look at it like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with this handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father, who didn’t work an eight-hour shift, but worked from “can’t see” in the morning until “can’t see” at night, and worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our investment. This is our contribution, our blood. And all that, all of that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages alone, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.… If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

— Malcolm X

UKRAINE & NUKES

"There is a real danger to the nation when a free press is replaced with corporate media that stifles and censors dissent. Rather than a free press, we now have a Ministry of Propaganda that acts as an echo chamber for the latest diktats from the White House. The systematic creation of false narratives by corporate media, designed to serve the purposes of the federal government, have so misinformed the American public about world events that we find the nation ready to go to war with Russia. " 

- Steven Starr, former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, and former board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/ukraine-nukes/

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

THE UKRAINIANS ARE NAZIS? That’s rich! It was Putin and his gang of thugs that started this Blitzkrieg against a weaker neighbor. And just like Adolf in the ’30s he governs the same way; with all the trappings of a police state: murders of dissidents and unfriendly journalists, control of key industries, a compliant press and clergy, etc.

IT STRIKES ME that we’ve entered a stage of history where there’s not one figure of international stature with clean hands who won’t be perceived as acting in bad faith to negotiate a peace settlement: no Mandela, no Tutu, no Hammarskjöld, no Pauling, no Ali, no Bertrand Russell. — Jeff St. Clair

MOTA: GOOD NIGHT RADIO live from Franklin St. all night Friday night!

Hi, there. Marco here. Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is about 5:30pm. Or send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week. Text-only, in the body of an email, please; I'm on dialup today. Also I'll try to remember to check email sometime during the show, so if something occurs to you and you wanta squirt it in, that might actually work.

Plus you can call during the show and read your work in your own voice. I'll be in the clean, well-lighted back room of KNYO's storefront studio at 325 N. Franklin, where the number is 1-(707) 962-3022. If you swear like a sailor, please wait until after 10pm, or risk agitating the weasels.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via http://airtime.knyo.org:8040/128

(That's the regular link to listen to KNYO in real time.)

Any day or night you can go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night the recording of tonight's show will also be there.

Besides all that, there you'll find a whole crapload of valuable tips for living life to the full, to mull over until showtime, or any time, such as:

How to play the guitar intro to Crazy On You, with closeup video of the author's fingers.

https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/03/02/hearts-nancy-wilson-and-crazy-on-you-intro/

"A closeup of a clock on the wall. When the fire of the sun, that is like a ghost, falls to strike the heart of the center of the ground..." (A.I. poetically interprets photographs.)

https://rossgoodwin.com/narratedreality/

And an essay on how our inflated monkey brains read words at at all. (17 min.)

https://laughingsquid.com/how-brain-processes-reading/

In Other News: knotsure@gmx.com wrote: "Audacity is spyware now, and all the alternatives I find listed are not available. Darkaudacity, tenacity, sneedacity are all not available. Not in ubuntu repositories and web sites don't work if they are there at all. So what are you using and where do I find it?"

I answered: I use CoolEdit for comprehensive editing and multitracking, CoolEdit Pro for when I need more than four tracks, MP3DirectCut for recording very long audio (it will run trouble-free in the background for days) and for fast simple edits (cut time, fade, all-file gain, auto-find-and-remove-silence; and all without decoding/re-encoding MP3), and I use Audacity when CoolEdit, being 25 years old, won't open a weird file, to open and save a file as something CoolEdit can open. I use Streambox Ripper to fast-convert between MP3 and WAV and change quality/bitrate/streaming-rate. (Streambox Ripper has a batch mode that can do whole folders of files at once and leave the originals unchanged.) And MP3Gain converts/copies whole folders of files to new folders of the same files but compressed upward (with look-ahead) for use at work or in the car, anywhere there's a lot of environment background noise to overcome.

All these things are available dozens of places by lsearching for /Old Versions of Audio Software/ (look for reputable vetting of any source you find), and with a little fiddling they all work well in all versions of Windows back through Win98, so you can use any old computer for your recording studio. (MP3DirectCut and the 1By1 folder player by the same maker (M. Pesch) work in Linux and Android too.)

Also maybe it's not Audacity that's your spyware problem but where you're getting it from.

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

PUTIN MAY HAVE PLAYED HIMSELF. WILL WE?

Reports suggest Putin tried to outsmart even his own troops, and checkmated himself instead. 

by Matt Taibbi

Farida Rustamova of the BBC’s Russian service, in a piece written for Substack, described the demeanor of Putin’s closest advisors days before the invasion: 

As a former security officer, [Putin] always wants to take everyone by surprise… We saw this during an emergency extended meeting of the Security Council three days before the war. The stammering of Foreign Intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin, the disorientation of the deputy head of the Kremlin administration, Dmitry Kozak, and the anxious face of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, were more than eloquent.

The most influential people in Russia sat in front of Putin like schoolchildren before a teacher who suddenly announced a test. And this meeting this meeting after all wasn’t even about the war, they discussed only the recognition of the self-proclaimed DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic].

Rustamova went on to quote a source close to the discussions describing the reaction among the officials: “They carefully pronounced ‘p——ts.” The missing word is pizdets, not an easy word to translate — like a more profane and dire version of clusterfuck. She noted that “according to him, the mood in the corridors of power is altogether not rosy, many are in a state of stupor.” Another source told her, “Nobody is thrilled, many understand that this is a mistake, but out of duty they come up with rationalizations for themselves in order to make it work in their heads.”

Though there’s little meaningful in-country criticism of Putin — “Only those who shout, Hooray! Hooray! have access to public space” is how one former Russian colleague of mine put it this week — there’s a significant bylined Russian diaspora around the world that’s been watching Putin for decades, most operating under the same assumption. Even Putin’s fiercest critics have always seen him as cold, calculating, and pragmatic. That changed after last week. Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky, a former Moscow Times co-worker, tweeted: "If Putin does attack, the presumption of his rationality, which has been part of my analysis of his actions for the last 23 years, not just the past few weeks, will need to be thrown out the window."

Elena Chernenko of Kommersant replied, “Same here.” 

Michael Kofman at the Center for New American Security (CNAS) said, “What I’ve seen so far suggests that Russian troops were unaware they would be ordered to invade, and appear reluctant to prosecute this war.” Bershidsky added to this, saying Western military analysts who correctly predicted an invasion but incorrectly imagined quick results were assuming a rational plan. “As troops are massed on a border for months, they are prepared for an invasion, pepped up, told clearly what their tasks are,” he wrote. “But this clearly didn’t happen.”

The war overall is starting to resemble the first Russian invasion of Chechnya. Once upon a time, Boris Yeltsin’s Defense Minister Pavel Grachev predicted he’d take Grozny in two hours with a single unit, and ended up having to vaporize virtually the whole city after taking heavy losses following a disastrous New Year’s Eve assault. The interviews of the captured Russian soldiers involved with this action eerily recall that war. 

In the first Chechen affair we heard accounts of young Russian boys, fresh out of the army’s sexually abusive dedovschina hazing hell, sent into combat against some of the toughest fighters in the world without either basic information about their mission or proper supplies, to the point where they sold rifles to the enemy for things like socks. Though these Russians are better-equipped (although there are consistent reports even from Russian sources of baffling supply and communications breakdowns), there’s a lot pointing to a similar dynamic. 

In video after video of POWs in Ukraine (YouTube is full of them, but only a few have been proven authentic, so I’m not linking yet), you see Russian soldiers, some too young to shave, insisting they had no idea what the mission was, or that they were expecting a 3-5 day training mission. Obviously some are reading off a script — in some cases their own, in other cases reading words handed by captors — but the consistency of the reactions is striking. Along with bizarre scenes like a widely publicized video of Russian tank operators stopped by the side of the road saying they have no idea where they’re going, it all points to a Russian mission that was poorly planned, if the bulk of the soldiers were trained at all. 

This cluelessness is not necessarily good news for Ukrainians, because there are signs that now that the dream of quick victory is over the Russians are reorganizing, adopting a more brutal strategy, with more air power and missile bombardment. As was the case in Chechnya, more lives will be lost, more critical infrastructure destroyed, more refugees created. ...

taibbi.substack.com/p/putin-may-have-played-himself-will