Mendocino County Today: Thursday, March 10, 2022

Warming | 5 New Cases | Kyiv | Struggles | Highest Price | Ford House | Grange Breakfast | Lumber Mill | School Bond | Hazmobile | Nye Ranch | Prices/Housing | Defensible Space | Advisory Board | Wildflower Walk | Half Birthday | Bridge Deck | Ed Notes | Boaters | Mendo Shame | Reckless Biker | Yesterday's Catch | Stormy Horizon | Picture Taking | Broken System | Chinese Bomb | Putin Topic | No Prisoners | Opus Concert | Money Talks | Morality Police | Torch Pass | Billion Units | WWIII | US Grant | Vote Pence | Palestine Too | Bioweapon Labs | Cornfield

TEMPERATURES WILL REBOUND NICELY today after a chilly start for some, while the gusty east-northeast winds ease. High pressure ridging will move in and promote a dry and warming trend through the end of the work week, followed by periods of widespread beneficial rainfall Saturday through Tuesday. (NWS)

5 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County this morning.

IT'S ON: The battle for Kyiv has begun, analysts say, after Russia launched two attacks to the west and east of the Ukrainian capital in an attempt to push into the outskirts - both of which failed. Five Russian battle groups attempted to push in through the city of Irpin, to the west of Kyiv, late Monday - but after a 'difficult night' had stalled with a Ukrainian counter-attack now underway, the interior ministry said. Video also revealed a column of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles which attempted to push in from the east, via Brovary, getting ambushed by artillery and missile strikes - suffering 'heavy' casualties as radio chatter suggested a commander had been killed. Ukrainian troops guarding the capital were warning residents not to stray from the city limits because Russian forces were 'just a few kilometers away', raising fears that terrifying bombing campaigns being waged against the likes of Mariupol and Kharkiv could soon be repeated here. A Russian airstrike in Mariupol yesterday struck a maternity hospital, killing three including a six-year-old girl and wounding 17, while four died in a strike on houses in Kharkiv overnight with several more wounded including a five-year-old girl. (Daily Mail)

MENDOCINO COAST GAS STATION IS THE ‘MOST EXPENSIVE IN AMERICA’

The seaside town of Mendocino has a single gas station called Schlafer’s Auto Body & Repair. Yesterday, coastal resident Galen Bach took a picture of the gas pump and thought it worthy of posting on social media. For a regular price of gasoline, a customer of Schlafer’s would pay $8.45, which is just shy of double the national average of $4.25, and 42% more expensive than the average gallon of gas in California.…

kymkemp.com/2022/03/09/mendocino-coast-gas-station-is-the-most-expensive-in-america-charging-8-45-per-gallon/

IT’S SECOND SUNDAY ALREADY AND TIME FOR THE GRANGE PANCAKE BREAKFAST

Spring forward to start your Sunday March 13th. Get on up and out to the AV Grange 8:30-11:00 for our monthly fast break. Cakes cooked on the griddle and made with attitude, (just ask Amy), from a secret Grange recipe, gluten free on request. Add the Maple syrup or fruit topping, our own special bacon, fresh eggs, juice and coffee.... and you got the best way to start your day. So c'mon down, bring your own plates and silverware or use the disposable gear at the Grange. Whatever the Covid protocols are we will follow them. Adding to the culinary pleasures of pancakes at the Grange there will be some tasty ear candy provided by Franny Leopold and Leslie, and Michael Hubbert.

ANDERSON VALLEY SCHOOL BOND WILL BE ON THE JUNE BALLOT

Measure M will be appearing on the June ballot. There are petitions and ballot support cards throughout the community. If you support the measure for the 13 million dollar Improvement school improvement bond, we invite you to please sign your name. We will be holding tours of the schools in May to highlight the various projects that are needed on the 70-year old buildings. The dates for the walkthroughs are May 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the high school with our district architect and May 19 at 4:30 at the elementary school with me. This is a chance to walk the facilities, and we can share what was done with the past Bond money and describe additional work that needs to occur. Fact sheets will also be available. The Citizen’s Bond Committee is seeking members to help and is meeting on Tuesday, March 22 at 4:30 p.m. at the high school. (AV Unified presser)

HAZMOBILE IN BOONVILLE, Saturday, March 19, 2022, 9am-1pm, Fairgrounds parking lot. 

PRICES/HOUSING (on line comments)

[1] Prices going sky high at drug store, supermarket and gas station. Welcome to 2022 as the world spins faster and faster. Are we having any fun yet?

[2] What is going on? Usually, when I shop at Rite Aid for necessary drug store type supplies; I type in my phone number as a member and get a significant discount. Today: NO discount and the bill was sky high! At the grocery store--my normal 2 week shop for about $200 came to $346!

And at the gas pump today-less than 8 gallons cost $50! At this rate senior retirement is just about unworkable.

[3] Yes---and the housing is another unreachable thing. A young man working in the XRay Department at the Hospital in Fort Bragg told me today he has to commute to work from MANCHESTER every day! He can't find a rental closer to his workplace. Anything that rarely comes up is super expensive. I couldn't commute from that far away to Fort Bragg for a job, but that's what he has to do. And we need skilled young people like him to work in this area at vital jobs such as in healthcare, teaching, etc..

[4] And he is not the only one in the radiology department alone. At the meeting discussing if the hospital had a future they mentioned that housing was needed to recruit and maintain staff. This is crucial in all departments. The pickle is that the available houses are scarce and very expensive. Vacation rentals appear to be more lucrative as well as selling to the highest bidder. People who have the means to own on the coast are in a special position to curate the community here. The community has already changed so much in my lifetime. I'm curious to what the future holds.

[5] Housing for workers on the Coast. These messages are discussion, and I continue the topic, with apologies to those who are offended by discussion. BUT, this is a critical issue for all of us living on the Coast. You can ask Judy Leach who is managing, somehow, the Adventist Mendocino Coast Hospital, about the difficulty of staffing with our housing situation. Think about it: how are we going to be a thriving Blue Zone community supported by the medical services of Mendocino Adventist Health when we have no housing to offer? Ask Mendocino Coast Clinic about their open positions. Etc etc.

As a community, we need to come together with ways to house the people we need to be here - and I look to our non-profit foundations such as the Mendocino Community Health Foundation and the Mendocino Community Foundation, to take lead roles in this.

BILL KIMBERLIN: I have been clearing some of the ground falls below the trees on my property in Boonville. I have been told this will prevent grass fires from having fuel to climb the trees. They say you want the fire to “laydown.” Chainsaws and I don't get along, but today I won a round.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PUBLIC SAFETY ADVISORY COMMITTEE?

by Mark Scaramella

Remember all the hullabaloo in 2020 and 2021 in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder and the Ukiah PD's awkward encounter with the naked tweaker in the street? Months later, a few Coast people who think they could have handled the naked tweaker better than the police, convinced Supervisor Ted Williams to agendize their mis-aimed call for some kind of audit of the Sheriff’s Department. That went nowhere, of course, because there were no George Floyds or naked tweakers dogging the Mendocino County Sheriff’s office.

But the experts on policing had determined that Mendo needed law enforcement oversight. That idea had some traction, mainly because the state recently authorized counties to cobble together some kind of generic oversight.

Sheriff Kendall had no objection as long as the Board stayed out of his operational hair. So in February of 2021 County Counsel Christian Curtis drafted an ordinance creating a “public safety advisory board” which would: “Outreach to the Mendocino County public, provide options for community input, and receive input from community in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways on matters related to law enforcement and public safety; Examine and report on interdepartmental issues related to law enforcement and public safety; Review public safety concerns by: (1) ensuring that complaints are appropriately dealt with for County employees, (2) receiving resident concerns, suggestions, complaints, and compliments about County employees and forward them to the appropriate department for review, (3) producing a public report about the issues, concerns, complaints and recommendations on a summary level, and (4) considering public safety concerns and promote appropriate communication, interaction, and problem-solving strategies; Review current policies for compliance with applicable law; Review redacted reports presented to the [Sheriff’s] use of force review board [a board we can find no indication of ever having met] and provide objective and independent evaluation of reviews of use of force; Engage in community outreach to better ascertain if additional trainings are required, and educate the public about those trainings that are performed; and nominate a member of the public to the use of force review board.”

Curtis’s draft also recommended that “The Public Safety Advisory Board shall prepare and recommend bylaws governing its operations, which shall become effective upon adoption by the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.”

All of this is exactly the kind of pointlessly complicated, overbroad and vague process beyond the known capacities of present-day Mendocino County.

At the February 2021 Supervisors meeting, the Board voted to turn Curtis’s draft — itself supposedly based on input from a board ad hoc committee of Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Wiliams — back to the ad hoc to work with Curtis to see if there were any conflicts with the newish state law (AB-1185) which authorized the creation of county oversight boards. 

Four months later, in July of 2021, after laborious poring over the question, Curtis finally concluded that, by golly, there were no conflicts. So the Board voted to approve the draft, and within days Chapter 2.39 was added to Mendocino County government Code enacting the Mendocino County Public Safety Advisory Board exactly as drafted four months earlier, to be comprised of seven members: One supervisor (as yet unnamed), five supervisorial civilian appointees, and the Sheriff or his designee.

According to the County’s committee website, there are so far only four appointees with three vacancies remaining, one of which is the Sheriff’s rep, another is the designated Supervisor. 

There is no indication that the Advisory Board has met or even tried to meet. Nobody has taken a stab at bylaws. There have been no press releases requesting membership applications. Last we heard when it was briefly discussed at a Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Williams semi-seriously told his colleagues that he had received several applications from the Fifth District and was willing to offer the non-appointed Fifth District applicants to other Supervisors who had not received any (qualified?) applicants.

It’s now more than a year later since that February meeting which presented the draft and more than nine months since it was approved, and only four of the seven positions have been appointed and nobody has done anything about the stated objectives or anything else related to the original purpose. This despite Supervisor Gjerde’s calls at the February 2021 Board meeting for acting “as promptly as we can.” 

In December of 2021 Supervisor Haschak mentioned in his “Supervisors Report” that “The 3rd District is in need of a representative on the Public Safety Advisory Board.”

And indeed since then we’ve noticed that Haschak has appointed Ms. Laura Betts, a member of the Round Valley Area Municipal Advisory Board, and aunt of Khadijah Britton, the young Round Valley woman who has been missing since 2018 and presumed dead.

Sheriff Kendall and Probation Chief Izen Locatelli are both on record saying they’d like to see the Public Safety Advisory Board modeled after Fort Bragg’s Public Safety Committee.

But that committee is not a good model because it is simply a monthly meeting of a few Fort Bragg officials (Police Chief John Naulty, Fire Chief Steve Orsi, and City Councilmen Lindy Peters and Bernie Norvell) — and no civilians or citizen appointees. We can’t find their bylaws, but their “duties and responsibilities” are “This committee reviews and makes recommendations regarding public safety issues, including: police, fire, building safety, and disaster preparedness. The committee is the liaison with the Rural Fire District, and volunteer fire department.”

Their minutes indicate that they deal mainly with relatively minor traffic problems, local trouble spots, and a routine monthly “oral” report from the police chief.

So, despite the mini-burst of interest in 2021, the Public Safety Advisory Board has yet to be formed, has not met, has not discussed their charter or their bylaws or procedures, has not issued press releases and has returned to its non-existent status quo ante with no indication that it will ever actually get going. 

And nobody seems to care.

Until the next naked tweaker does a rain dance on State Street.

Given Mr. Curtis’s toothless committee charter and vague objectives, that may be for the best. We don’t need more Mendo blatherfrests like the Behavioral Health Advisory Board or the Measure B Advisory Committee. But that would be too bad because, if taken seriously by serious appointees, the Board could serve a useful purpose focusing on such topics as Sheriff’s staffing and budgeting, overtime and overtime budgeting, crime trends, response times, and forecasts by sector (Coast, North, Central), recruiting, clearance rates, jail population and status and expansion, the newly instituted dual response unit (aka “crisis van”), dispatch consolidation, coordination with city law enforcement and probation, resident deputies, and other subjects of public interest. 

It could also be a clearinghouse to build an historical record of local law enforcement activities and be a forum to address real law enforcement issues in the unincorporated areas of the County. 

But this is Mendocino County where good ideas go to die.

Like Measure B (supposedly funding mental health treatment for Mendo’s walking wounded) and Measure V (declaring standing dead tanoaks to be a nuisance) and Measure AG (advising that most pot tax revenues go to mental health services, emergency services, roads and enforceent), and any number of other blips on the electorate’s radar over the years, the Public Safety Advisory Board has become just another pile of paper designed to make the public think the Board is doing something other than what the CEO instructs them to do.

MITCH CLOGG: 

Today is the March seventh. I am exactly 83 1/2 years old. That’s a lot of years, in heaps around my ankles, a lot of time to be walking toward the boneyard. You know you’ll eventually get there. This is no asymptote (if I use that word correctly, the line on the graph of the thing that constantly approaches the axes but never gets there—or gets there at infinity, the advanced mind’s synonym for “never”).

You can see I wasn’t good at math, but little Mitch was occasionally fascinated, even as he was repelled, by such a phenomenon: always approaching; going, going, going but never getting there. Seemed to be like something I was too lazy and impatient to identify, an inkling of existentialism, of common fate, the search for excellence—SOMETHING. This is not that. I’ll get there, but “when” is not for me to know. This is no asymptote, if that’s the word.

I know 83.5 is old, but lots of people are older than that. My neighbor is. (Hi, Bruce!) Noam Chomsky is 93-1/6th. Another friend is, I think, 103 or so. Ya never know. Human life—if I’m using the word right—is never asymptotic. In pursuit of excellence, it just seems that way, that you never get there.

Hell, I’ve forgot where I was going with this. Maybe it was worthwhile, ya never know. I’ll post anyway, and leave this damn computer to do real stuff. If it comes back to me, I'll finish this.

Feel free to jump in.

ED NOTES

GASOLINE was $5.09 today (Wednesday) at CostCo in Ukiah. My Ford hybrid, 38 miles to the gallon, cost $47.69 to fill up. These prices are a killer for most people.

AMONG THE MANY good ideas to arise from Mendo's seething, unfocused brain is tiny houses for the houseless. Actually, the idea has been around for a long time, but Mendo being Mendo, and despite hours of public discussion, and the fact that there's county land where a tiny house development could be placed, tiny houses as doable has been forgotten.

FRISCO, where a large number of damaged and self-damaging citizens live in tent clusters on the public walkways, the city is establishing a tiny house village of 70 tiny homes on Gough between Market and Mission at a cost of $15,000 per unit, which seems low but that's what the developers say. The village has central bathrooms and kitchens. A sample unit is pictured below.

“ONE WEEK AGO, Ryan Bauer was living in a tent on the hard pavement. Now he’s living on the same pavement with a dramatic upgrade: He’s moved into his own tiny home, with a mattress, desk, chair and — most luxurious of all — a heater that quickly warms his 64-square-foot abode. That’s almost as crucial as a front door that locks from the inside and by a combination lock on the outside.” (SF Chron)

ARBOR DAY came and went, It was March 7th, instituted originally to coincide with Luther Burbank's birthday. Come, take my hand as we travel back through the mists of time to 1948 (in my case) when the schools devoted an hour or so of the teaching day to trees, importance of, and each of us was given a seedling — redwood, I think — to take home and plant. I planted a few and, last time I walked past the old homestead there was a nice stand of redwoods in one corner of the backyard. I'm probably deluded but I like to think those are the Arbor Day seedlings I planted way back when.

ON THE SUBJECT of education, the County Office of Education used to sponsor a county-wide spelling bee, the winner of which went on to the next rung of the state championship. Now there's a corrupted Science Fair culminating in prizes for all in the contemporary fashion of everyone gets a trophy because the more ambitious parents put most of the entries together. It wouldn't do to confront a third grade entrant, would it? “Look here, you little fraud. You didn't do this, did you?”

I THINK MAY DAY extravaganzas died out in the 1950s, but at my elementary school a lot of time and effort went into erecting the May Pole, decorating its base with flowers and arraying us small boys in white shirts and ties, the girls in their finest Spring dresses for a dance around the pole's perimeter, our beaming mothers looking on. It was, like everything else associated with early education, just something you were required to do, like crouching under our desks for nuke drills. I was mildly surprised when I read later that historically, the May Pole was unashamedly phallic, a symbol of the looming summer's fecundity.

A BILL intended to make it easier to kill feral pigs has been introduced in the State Senate. “We’re a step closer to controlling these destructive, non-native animals which are endangering sensitive habitats, farms and other animals,” state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa said as he introduced SB 856, probably at the behest of the wine industry, one of the old boy's primary backers. 

DODD'S BILL is no big deal, merely expediting hunting by replacing the wild pig tag, which costs $15 per kill, with a season-long validation, also for $15, that allows hunters to mow 'em down. Fortunately for these interesting and adaptive beasts, many land owners keep pig hunters out.

I WONDER, though, if Dodd has his history right. He says that “feral swine descended from pigs set free by Spanish missionaries and other European colonists as far back as 250 years ago.” I thought the pigs we see frequently in the Anderson Valley, for instance, were descended from the herds raised in the late 19th and early 20th century when they were driven like cattle from the Anderson Valley either to Cloverdale or Ukiah to meet the southbound train for Bay Area slaughter houses. Some of those porkers got loose and here their descendants are today, rototilling great swathes of open country. 

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What Mendocino needs is a Therapist, an honest government, decent salaries for County Employees, some cops who are willing to do their jobs, and a central location where all the drug-crazed homeless persons can camp, get fed, get treatment and get rehab…

Mendo needs to clean up its act and look a little more like the modern world…

Mendo should be the Santa Maria Coast of Northern California, and it used to have plenty of tourist action…

Now, tourists are afraid to go North of Healdsburg… And Middletown is the new Leggett…

You are screwing it up, Mendocino County! You embarrass yourself…

‘NO WHERE TO GO’ DRIVER CONVICTED

UKIAH, Tues., March 8. – A Mendocino County Superior Court jury completed its deliberations Tuesday afternoon and returned guilty verdicts across the board against the trial defendant. 

Defendant Michael David Gray, age 50, of Morgan Hill, was convicted of recklessly evading a peace officer, a felony, evading a peace officer by traveling in the opposite lane of traffic, a felony, and possession of methamphetamine, a misdemeanor.

As background, a Ukiah Police officer saw three motorcycles traveling north on S. State Street in the area of the Ukiah Safeway back in October 2020. Defendant Gray was one of the three and was observed pulling a “wheelie” while traveling past Safeway at a high rate of speed. 

Guessing that the motorcycles may eventually turn towards the highway, the officer used Main Street to try and intercept the threesome at the intersection of Main and Perkins. That guess paid off. 

As the three motorcycles headed east on Perkins Street towards the highway, the officer turned and followed, activating his pull-over lights. Two of the motorcycles in the group complied by pulling to the curb, but the third (Gray) took off. 

Continuing east on Perkins and turning north on N. Orchard, Gray accelerated to 70 mph (in a 25 mph zone) on Orchard, passing a truck in his lane on the right. 

Seeing this, the pursuing officer also activated his siren to warn other motorists and to give audible warning to Gray that he needed to stop. That did not work, as Gray also then traveled in the southbound lane while fleeing north. 

After almost crashing on N. Orchard but recovering, Gray ran the stop sign at Brush and Orchard, but, apparently not knowing the town, made the mistake of turning east into the Brush Street dead-end. 

With the pursuing police closing in, Gray tried to continue his evasion by heading cross-country through the agricultural fields on the north side of Brush Street. He made it 100 yards before crashing his 2015 Honda 1000 RR (“race replica”) in the field, with the motorcycle ending up on top of Gray’s legs, pinning him to the ground.

Following his arrest, it was also discovered that the defendant was in possession of 35 grams net weight of methamphetamine, which likely may explain his unwillingness to stop.

After the jury was excused, the defendant’s case was referred to the Adult Probation Department as required by law for a background study and sentencing recommendation. The two evading crimes carry a mandatory minimum of 180 days in the county jail, even if probation is granted.

The defendant will be sentenced at a hearing now calendared for April 7th at 9 o'clock in the morning in Department B of the Ukiah courthouse.

The law enforcement agency that developed the evidence used to convict the defendant was, again, the Ukiah Police Department, assisted by drug analysis and testimony from the Department of Justice forensic laboratory in Eureka.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury and argued for the verdicts ultimately returned was Deputy District Attorney Jamie Pearl. 

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan presided over the two-day trial. Judge Shanahan will also be the sentencing judge in April.

(DA Presser)

Background/Original Presser: https://theava.com/archives/137674#20

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 8, 2022

BRANDI JO ADKINS-CASEY, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

LUIS BAROCIO, Modesto/Ukiah. Marijuana transportation over 18, marijuana for sale, conspiracy.

WARREN BECK, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

WENDY DUERNER, Willits. Grand theft.

LUIS FLORES, Rockland, Washington/Ukiah. Marijuana transportation over 18, marijuana for sale, conspiracy.

JACK FULLER, Willits. DUI, no license, probation revocation.

KEVIN GRAVIER, Willits. DUI, battery on peace officer with injury, resisting.

WHITNEY HUGHES, Ukiah. Battery on peace officer, failure to appear.

HARVEY MCCARTY, Ukiah. Camping in Ukiah, county parole violation.

JACOB PETERSON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MAYA WINEBRENNER, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

IN ZAPORIZHZHIA

by Hugh Barnes

On Saturday, 5 March, I was arrested in Zaporizhzhia, in south-east Ukraine, for trying to get close to a nuclear power plant that had just been shelled by Vladimir Putin’s invading army.

Until 1921 Zaporizhzhia was called Alexandrovsk, after a fortress built by Catherine the Great to defend the Russian Empire against Crimean Tatar invasions. Now it’s the Russians who are invading. I arrived in the city on Friday evening, hours after the unprecedented bombing of the atomic station thirty miles outside the city – the largest in Europe, it produces 20 per cent of Ukraine’s electricity. As Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has pointed out, it’s a fundamental principle of the Geneva Conventions that the physical integrity of nuclear facilities must be maintained and kept safe even in wartime.

The center of town was emptied out. Many of the inhabitants had packed up and headed west. Most of the shops were shuttered and the entrance of the Intourist Hotel on Sobornyi Prospekt was padlocked. As snow and dusk fell on the banks of the Dnieper, the streets were deserted apart from a few figures hurrying to get home before curfew. The Ukrainian military says it will shoot on sight anyone outside between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., on the grounds that people with nowhere to go must be Russian diversanti or special ops. I ended up at a hostel that had just become emergency accommodation for refugees fleeing the destruction of Mariupol.

Over supper I asked one of them, a merchant seaman called Igor Kolobny, whose family had escaped from their ruined home that morning, if he was nervous about resettling in what was potentially a nuclear fall-out zone. He said he’d been driving for ten hours and didn’t have much information. Nobody did: the details of what had happened at the power station in the early hours of Friday morning were vague.

I spoke the following day to Petro Kotin, the head of Energoatom, the state-controlled company that operates all six of Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. He told me that about a hundred Russian units with heavy weapons broke through a checkpoint at 1:42 a.m. In the face of resistance from Ukraine’s National Guard and local residents, the Russian convoy began to shell the nuclear plant until about 4:30 a.m. when the Russians finally took control of it. Three people were killed and several dozen wounded. The plant’s night shift were taken prisoner and a five-story training center next to the six reactors was ablaze.

President Zelensky denounced the attack, the first time that an active atomic facility has been targeted. He evoked the Chernobyl disaster. The previous week, radiation levels rose at Chernobyl as Russian forces took over the site. Their vehicles churned up radioactive dust around the remains of the stricken reactor.

The bombardment at Zaporizhzhia poses a different threat. The reactor design is relatively modern – built in 1984, twelve years after Chernobyl – with six VVER-1000 pressurized water reactor units housed inside a steel-reinforced concrete containment building that can withstand such extreme external events as being hit by an aircraft, an earthquake or an explosion. In any case, unlike Chernobyl, pressurized water reactors don’t have graphite cores that can catch fire. By the time I arrived in Zaporizhzhia, the Russian occupiers had reported that there was no damage to any of the six reactors, cooling equipment or spent nuclear fuel, and radiation levels were normal.

The bad news, Kotin told me, was that we had only the Russians’ word for that. ‘We cannot say that everything is under control. We cannot say that the threat of a nuclear disaster does not exist. We have no way of knowing because we no longer control the safety systems at the plant. Our systems of control have been switched off by the Russians so we simply do not know what the radiation levels are. All the information we are getting is from non-official sources.’ On 8 March, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that the Russians had cut off electricity and data transmission from Chernobyl after seizing the plant on the first day of the invasion.

The Energoatom boss, who used to be the general manager at Zaporizhzhia, described the attack as ‘an act of nuclear terrorism. It’s the first time in the whole world, in the whole history of mankind, that somebody has shelled a nuclear power plant. So Putin, who likes to talk about history, is already a part of history now himself, as a result of committing this huge crime.’

The pianist and composer Alexander Tsfasman was born in Alexandrovsk in 1906. I was listening to his Fantasy on Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ when I went to the headquarters of the Zaporizhzhia regional police to get permission to visit the nuclear plant, and by the time I met Oleh, who’d offered to drive me there, my playlist had got to Tsfasman’s ‘Evening on the River’. Over coffee, Oleh pulled out a tourist map and a red pen and showed me the various checkpoints on the road south towards Vasilivka. He circled one particular hazard and marked it with a red arrow. My first big mistake was to ask Oleh to take a picture of the annotated map and WhatsApp it to me. My second mistake, later in the day, was to take photographs of my own of some Ukrainian soldiers at the frontline near the power station. Behind them the charred walls of the training center were dimly visible.

Back in the center of Zaporizhzhia, taking more photographs, I had jumped onto a low wall to get a better view when three police officers in blue uniforms came round the corner brandishing their guns. ‘Hands up,’ one of them said. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Taking a photograph of this wall,’ I replied. He asked to see my ID and phone. He took my phone while the other two put my hands behind my back and bundled me into a waiting police car that took us to the Bazanas Street police station, heavily fortified with sandbags and concrete slabs, in downtown Zaporizhzhia.

I was led into a first-floor room where a more senior officer, sitting behind a large desk, went through my phone. ‘Where are you from?’ he kept asking. ‘England,’ I kept saying. He shook his head. ‘You are not English. You are a Russian spy.’

‘Do I look like a Russian spy?’

He grimaced slightly and said: ‘James Bond Scotland Yard.’

After a while another policeman came in and demanded to see my passport, press card and driving license. ‘You are not a journalist, you are a Russian spy,’ he said after a cursory inspection.

The other man looked up. ‘Do you want some vodka?’ he asked with a smile.

I said I didn’t, in part because it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and in part because I suspected it might be a trap, as if no Russian, not even a diversant, could resist a swig at any time of the day.

By now there were half a dozen uniformed police in the room, all of them with rifles strapped to their chests, one waving a revolver in my face whenever he asked a question. He asked me what I thought of Putin. My honest reply seemed to go down well. He also checked my knowledge of British history, though even a Russian spy might have got some of the answers right: ‘Who was the prime minister before Jones?’ he asked, waving the revolver above his head to mime Boris Johnson’s hair.

Eventually two SBU officers came in. They were professional and courteous, and even had some conversational English. The senior SBU officer, whom the others called Sasha, asked me to go over my story again while he went through my phone, zooming in on some of the photos. Every now and then he would pick up his own phone to make a call, and there would be a brief conversation in which the phrase ‘Russky diversant’ could always be heard.

The photographs of soldiers and the Vasilivka map seemed to worry the SBU officer most. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing at the red arrow. ‘A mistake,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a BIG mistake.’

‘If you are a journalist,’ he asked, putting the phone down, ‘where are your articles?’

‘Well, I don’t carry them around in a suitcase.’ He didn’t laugh. They were brave men doing a difficult job, I told myself, and not wrong to be so vigilant in hunting down Russian spies. ‘I also write books,’ I volunteered.

‘Ah, pisatel.’ He made the Russian word sound like ‘piss-artist’ in English. A Google search turned up a Wikipedia page. Sasha rang the boss. ‘Da, da,’ he said. ‘On journalistom, yest Vikipidia.’

On the way back to the hostel, I walked past the wall I had been photographing when I was taken into custody. It faces a courtyard on Sobornyi Prospekt, on the side of the house where Tsfasman was born, on which the street artist Olexander Korban recently painted a mural of the composer.

(London Review of Books)

MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN S.F. are cycling in and out of emergency rooms. One doctor shares stories about our broken system

by Heather Knight

Dr. Scott Tcheng will never forget some of the people who come to his San Francisco emergency room in desperate need of help.

One man who arrived by ambulance looked like the Joker, his face and hands covered in animal blood. A 911 caller had spotted him eating a raccoon crushed by a car on a city street.

Tcheng has treated patients high on methamphetamines who are convinced a mouse is crawling inside their body or that someone has cut off their genitals with a sword.

One person on meth was treated after trying to steal a parked ambulance — with a patient inside. Another tried to captain the Pampanito, the floating submarine museum at Fisherman’s Wharf, but fell into the bay. He had hypothermia by the time a rescue team fished him out.

Just the other day, Tcheng treated a 31-year-old woman who is homeless, suffers from schizophrenia and has come to the ER about 150 times — usually to request pregnancy tests, but sometimes just for food and a place to sleep. This time, the pregnancy test came back positive, but the woman refused offers of hotel vouchers or a shelter bed. So the hospital released her back to the streets.

Other patients suffering from severe, untreated mental illness or meth-fueled psychosis have become violent toward hospital staffers, wrecked medical equipment, brandished knives and hurled their own feces. Some return to the ER shockingly often. Tcheng said one of his patients has visited emergency rooms around San Francisco hundreds of times in the past year.

What unites these patients, beyond their struggles, is their clear need for long-term care. But they’re usually not getting it. Not even in a rich city and a rich state that claim to be compassionate and caring.

The patients are often too sick to accept care. And frequently, there isn’t enough care, or adequate services, to meet their needs. Tcheng must send them back into the world, untethered, until the next ER visit.

“It’s so important that the people of San Francisco know about this,” Tcheng said, explaining his decision to go public about his patients. “They walk by it every day on Market Street and in SoMa, but the average San Franciscan doesn’t realize how deep it goes.”

TRY HARDER

I would encourage many online “leftists” to try a lot harder not to come off as Vladimir Putin bootlickers indifferent to the plight of ordinary Ukrainians (and for that matter of everyday Russians who are losing access to non-state media and who face 15 years in prison for even calling Putin’s war of invasion a war or an invasion) when you bring up the undeniably horrible role of the imperialist United States and the imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russian people are captive to an imperialist capitalist gangster state understood as such by many Russian Marxists, who oppose Putin’s war of invasion. F*ck Putin and his oligarchic regime. 

— Paul Street

IN MARCH 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte’s French expeditionary force captured the port city of Jaffa in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The city was sacked and plundered. 

Napoleon then ordered the execution of around 3,000 Ottoman prisoners, some of whom had broken an oath not to fight the French, though others had only surrendered after being promised their lives. 

Probably the decisive factor was that Napoleon was unwilling to spare the troops and supplies needed to feed and guard so many prisoners. But nor would he have ordered a similar atrocity against troops of a European army.

OPUS IS BACK!

Opus Chamber Music Concert Sunday March 20th!

Opus is back at Mendocino Presbyterian Church but this time in the sanctuary. It is a wonderful large space with great ventilation and fantastic acoustics. Mezzo-soprano Melinda Martinez Becker will present a program of regional folk songs from Greece, Argentina, France, Mexico, and Spain, together with pianist Margaret Halbig. The duo will also perform a unique collection of art songs and piano works by Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, Maria Grever, and others. Coffee and cookies will be available in the courtyard before the concert and at the intermission! 

March 20th at Mendocino Presbyterian Church, 3 PM. Tickets at brownpapertickets.com, Out of this World in Mendocino, and at Harvest Market in Fort Bragg. Covid-19 vaccination cards will be required.

Tickets at brownpapertickets.com, Out of this World in Mendocino and at Harvest Market in Fort Bragg.

More info and a link to tickets at symphonyoftheredwoods.org

SOCIALISM RUSSIAN STYLE?

MEET THE CENSORED: CHERIE DEVILLE

by Matt Taibbi

Long before controversies in Canada and Russia saw financial services politicized, porn star Cheri Deville warned about payment processors having too much power over speech.

Over the last few years, you may have read stories explaining that Visa and Mastercard were imposing new rules to “stamp out illegal activity” in pornography sites. In these pieces, company spokespeople are often heard evincing concern about human trafficking or “missing or exploited children,” which sounds more than reasonable. Who doesn’t want to stop trafficking and child abuse? 

As porn star Cherie DeVille explains, the story is, and has been, a lot weirder than that. Because Visa and Mastercard hold effective duopoly status all over the world — controlling 98% of credit transactions in the U.K., 80% in the E.U., and over 70% in the U.S. — no porn performer can afford to cross the rules for acceptable content the two companies have laid down. And those rules are beyond strange. 

“Women are allowed to squirt, but we’re not allowed to urinate,” DeVille says. “We can’t insert our panties into our vaginas anymore, because that’s an object. I tried to use a carrot-shaped dildo. That’s a problem because that’s an object, too, but a phallic-shaped dildo is apparently okay.” She shakes her head in amazement. “The rules are completely nonsensical.”

Officially, terms of service use vague language like, “Mastercard prohibits merchants from processing any transaction that… may damage the goodwill of the corporation” or “reflect negatively on the marks,” or is “patently offensive and lacks seriously artistic value.” 

But porn performers have found that charges for whole ranges of activities are routinely declined under those general terms, leading sites to bypass content containing keywords ranging from sleepingto vampire fantasyto aliensto toilet to fistingto a whole list of other stuff someone in the credit industry apparently spent a humorously enormous amount of time pondering.

Somewhere in the world’s biggest financial companies sit offices where human beings, likely dressed in ties and loafers and dress suits, decide how many fingers may be shoved up a human rectum (less than five, currently). DeVille imagines a board room full of old white guys waving thumbs up or down to an endless series of acts — yay to inserting identifiably phallic objects, nay to spilling red corn syrup on boobs, etc. “That’s just me using my comical mind to make myself sane,” she says. But the story actually isn’t all that funny, because the issue goes beyond the lunatic mass refereeing of sexual behavior, which is already bad enough. 

DeVille, who also writes for the Daily Beast, has been warning for years that the power private monopolies and duopolies like Visa and Mastercard have accrued in the digital economy should worry everyone, not just porn performers, that this problem would soon pop up in other arenas.

“The general public should freak out that Mastercard now controls what they can and cannot watch,” she wrote last year, in a piece called Why Mastercard’s New Porn Rules Should Scare Everyone. “Today, they’re regulating porn, but what if they start deciding what cinema and books we consume?” 

After a slew of recent international controversies that have seen banks, credit companies, and payment processors deployed as levers over speech or political activity in previously unimaginable ways — from the freezing of donations to trucker protests in Canada to cutoff of Visa and Mastercard services in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine — DeVille suddenly sounds like a Cassandra. 

For years, as documented in this space, platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been imposing more and more aggressive content prohibitions, eating away at the First Amendment as the speech landscape has increasingly become a single privatized space.

DeVille has also dealt with these speech bans, on various platforms. Her experience of having accounts frozen for uploading photos that would fly if a “mainstream” figure like Britney Spears appeared in the same pose should sound familiar to news videographers like Ford Fischer or Jordan Chariton, who’ve had controversial news footage zapped while CNN or the New York Timeshave been permitted to use the exact same film. The same double-standard exists with porn and “mainstream” entertainment.

“All of us sex workers trying to advertise on these platforms would abide by whatever rules they decide to put on us, but they don’t apply those rules evenly,” DeVille says. “We’re specifically targeted, removed, and/or shadow-banned from these platforms where our mainstream counterparts are also selling sex on the same platforms.” DeVille for instance is opposed to even simulated underage content, but finds it odd that companies like HBO and Netflix regularly get away with airing shows that sexualize children in ways that freak out even porn stars.

Those contradictions are bad enough, but DeVille’s experience also represents the next, more frightening level of speech enforcement, in which financial firms — perhaps at the behest of governments — act as de factobehavioral regulators. Visa and Mastercard, as well as services like PayPal or ApplePay or GooglePay, have enormous theoretical power not just over the boundaries of erotica but over ideological preference and political behavior. 

The outlines of a carrot-stick social credit system built around such companies were visible long before it became financially unsafe to be, say, a protesting Canadian trucker, or an unvaccinated New York City welfare mom, or a donor to various Palestinian sites “linked” to terrorism (as determined in cooperation with UK Lawyers for Israel), or a contributor (until he was acquitted) to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense fund, or any resident of Russia now. DeVille takes no position on any of these issues, but implores people to think about who ultimately gets hurt most by the broad use of financial penalties. 

“I’m not even going to talk about politics, I’m just thinking about human beings that have nothing to do with the bullshit that their government are doing,” she says. “So, we’re going to take stuff away from their kids’ mouths? We’re going to remove their food? You think their governments give a shit? No. You’re just hurting people. People, people. Nice, regular, human beings.” She pauses. “How about remembering we’re all just human beings and our governments do some dumb shit?”

We saw where this might be headed as far back as December 7, 2010, when Visa and Mastercard cut off services to the whistleblower site Wikileaks, reportedly under pressure from the U.S. government. Seemingly, this was in retaliation for the site’s release of a quarter million American diplomatic cables. A series of other private companies immediately joined in, with PayPal and Western Union stopping payments to the site, Amazon removing WikiLeaks content from its EC2 cloud, and the finance arm of the Swiss post office freezing the bank accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Even when the specter of a possible arrest of Assange on sex crime charges was raised, Forbeswrote then that this seemed “like a trivial problem compared to the starvation diet that financial industry has implemented.” These moves received some backlash, and Wikileaks did at one point win a victory when an Icelandic court in 2012 ruled the two credit card companies violated contract law by cutting off donations. For the most part, however, the public shrugged at the idea of private companies working with governments to seize funds or deny services to groups or individuals who hadn’t even been charged with a crime. 

Wikileaks seemed an isolated case, but the War on Porn hasn’t been. The same concept of financial firms imposing restrictions that are much tighter than existing law has been going on for ages in this industry. Most Americans have consistently shrugged at this, too, which to DeVille always seemed crazy. “The precedent should scare Americans,” she says. “These companies are not only dictating what you get to watch, but dictating what you can consume. How is everyone okay with that?”

After a few hundred years in which safeguarding the freedom to make unpopular or unconventional decisions was considered a core American value — particularly on the liberal left, keeping an eye on these issues was until recently considered crucial to the success of the democratic experiment — a huge chunk of our population has lost all appetite for defending the right to disagree, get consentingly kinky, or even think bad thoughts. Instead, there’s new vigilance in the other direction. 

“There’s this whole culture of putting your moral choices on everybody else and being intolerant of discussion or choices that other people might make,” DeVille says. “If you limit yourself to a box of people all saying the shit you already agree with, you don’t live in the real world.”

In the wake of Canada’s invocation of its Emergencies Act, and Visa and Mastercard ending services in Russia, DeVille talked about her absurd and frightening experiences, the bizarre rules about what can be inserted where, and what she thinks the regulatory precedent credit cards set in her world might portend for everyone else:

MT: Financial companies are suddenly in the news all over the world, but you’ve been warning about this for a while. Why?

DeVille: Visa and MasterCard have been the bane of the industry even before I started talking about it. For us, this is incredibly old news, but now it seems like it’s just starting to affect industries other than porn. Of course very few people, if anyone, will stand up for porn. They’re going to say: “Oh, we don’t worry about what Visa, MasterCard, or the legal system, or the government is doing to sex workers. That’ll never happen to us.” 

It seems like that’s changing now. Still, just because something’s happening to a group of people that you don’t agree with, it’s like I’ve been saying, the precedent is what should be important to people. Whether or not you agree with sex work as a profession, the precedent of our financial institutions having any control over freedom of speech, or becoming more important than laws and government, I think is a red flag in a variety of ways across the board that really have nothing to do with porn or adult content.

MT: Aren’t credit card companies just making sure no laws are broken? That’s the argument.

DeVille: I’ve only been in porn 11 years, but for the entirety of that 11 years, the conversation of what we can and can’t do on set has really had nothing to do with what’s legal. No one’s going to do anything illegal and try and sellthat. No legitimate company would ever do that. It’s crazy. The rules instead have everything to do with billing.

Maybe, for example, you enjoy using the platform OnlyFans and one of your favorite kinks is urination. That’s obviously legal. No one is getting hurt. Everyone is consenting. We’ve always had age verification. 

But in one of their new regulations, Visa and MasterCard, among a variety of other absolutely nonsensical things, have decided that women are allowed to squirt, but not allowed to urinate. Now, spoiler alert: squirt, while very real, comes from something called the Skene’s gland in women. Even if you have an amazingly hypertrophied Skene’s gland, you’re only going to get a tablespoon or two out of your Skene’s gland. The only real reservoir for a large volume of fluid that a woman has is the bladder. So if you’re squirting with any volume of any kind, it’s urine. Basically, I’m allowed to pee on my bed, but I’m not allowed to pee in the toilet and show you. 

All of these things are crazy. How many fingers you’re allowed to insert, what types of things… We can’t insert our panties into our vaginas anymore because that’s an object. I tried to use a carrot-shaped dildo. That’s a problem because that’s an object, but a phallic-shaped dildo is apparently okay... The rules are nonsensical and we have to follow all of them, or our content will get removed.

MT: Are there privacy or confidentiality issues to worry about? 

DeVille: Yes. We do age verification. As a business owner and the manager of my production company, legally, I’m responsible for having age verification and model release paperwork, and for storing said paperwork for the entirety of the time that I own the content, and for being able to provide that paperwork during any auditing situation. 

Now, the fact that a credit card company is pushing mandates onto other platforms that don’t own our content to have this paperwork, that isn’t safe. If I work for a company, yes, that company is going to have my paperwork, but OnlyFans and other places like YouTube are distribution platforms. They have no ownership over my content, but now they have the IDs and personal information of all of my coworkers stored in their database. Are they even keeping that safe? And in what way? They don’t legally need that information. I legally need it. The only reason they need that is because of the financial institutions.

MT: Who’s deciding these rules? Does Visa have a fingers-and-carrots committee?

DeVille: The mere fact that we as an American society are okay with saying a non-government entity can completely have control over our freedom of speech is fucking nuts. Just wait until some white guy at MasterCard is sitting around his table with his bros. This is what I imagined. I’m sure this is not the truth, but in my mind’s eye, he’s like, “Yeah, man. It just seems reallyinappropriate to put the whole hand in a butthole. Four fingers is totally cool, but once you get that hand in there, man, that’s fucking inappropriate, and my wife says she won’t take it. So that’s out.” That’s what I imagine because the rules are stupid and have nothing to do with legal regulations.

MT: You’ve said the rules are inconsistent. How?

DeVille: For example, I’m not allowed to put red corn syrup on my body, lest it look like blood. We can’t do fantasies that HBO does on every episode of some of their most popular shows… Look, I would never want to be raped. That’s obviously not a fantasy. Non-consensual sex does nothing for me. However, I do enjoy the non-consensual fantasy within the safe environment of pornographic content. But I can’t do that anymore. I can’t even pretend, like they do in mainstream, to have a non-consensual video made, even if all the paperwork is in order legally.

Look at what HBO is producing. These are rules that only affect us. Can you imagine if, in mainstream, they weren’t allowed to combine sexual content with blood, or sexual content with non-consent? Take Euphoria even. I understand that none of those actors are under 18, but they’re basically showing pretend underage sex. Not that that’s something I would want to do in adult content. To me, that absolutely crosses a moral barrier, but mainstream is doing it.

MT: Do the rules effectively curtail the supposedly bad activity, or does it just move somewhere else?

DeVille: I love having a legal profession. I love having a profession that is protected because that gives me agency. That means that if something bad happens on set, I have legal recourse. When you push people’s careers underground because Visa and MasterCard have decided that you can’t put a whole hand in an ass, you’re creating an illegal environment for content and that’s just more unsafe. 

One of their favorite things to do is say that all or most women in the sex industry are trafficked. I’m sure there’s trafficking of human beings. There are all kinds of horrible, violent things that go on. But I’ve been doing this 11 years and I’ve seen nothing that approaches that. They’re taking something that’s mostly a non-issue and because nobody knows anything about the industry, they’re like, “Oh my God, these poor women. We need to save them. And we’ll do that by shutting down the ways that they communicate with other performers, and cut off their sources of income. That’ll help. That’ll be safer for everyone.”

MT: When was the first time you worried about the precedent of giving these companies so much control?

DeVille: To me it was always like, how can you not have that thought? If you made bagels, and Visa and MasterCard suddenly decided bagels are fucking disgusting and inappropriate, and we will never process a credit card payment for a bagel again, you fucking monsters — people might be like, excuse me? The bagel people for sure would be up in arms. Then, I’m sure the next thing people would think of is, “Well, what about toast? What about muffins?” 

No one thinks that way with sex work, because no one wants to admit they think about sex work, talk about sex work, consume pornography, look at pornography. It’s so taboo in our society that even conversations about serious things like capitalism or controlling freedom of speech — when it happens to us, they’re going to sweep it under the rug because, well, we deserve it. Bagels, of course. But us? Bye.

Still, how is everybody not on our side? How is the nation not outraged for us, even if they never want to buy pornographic content? So we’re all cool now with letting Visa and MasterCard say what they will and won’t pay for within the legal realm? If they weren’t a duopoly, maybe it might be appropriate. They’re independent businesses, they have freedom of speech. But historically in the United States, we’ve crushed monopolies for a reason. 

MT: Has all of this become more relevant with the Canada story, the Russia business, and so on?

DeVille: Yeah, the Canada thing. And now they’re involved with the war a little bit. You know what I mean? All these things that you might say is the best shit, the most positive shit. Sure, it’s great and it’s positive when we’re all digging it, but what about when it’s something we’re not digging? Who makes the rules and how do we decide? Is financial pressure even more powerful than military pressure? Who gets to make those choices for countries? It’s a new technological age. 

I’m not saying I know the answers to any of these questions. I do think, as a society, we need to make some choices before we’re in a pickle where we’re like, “Oh, I don’t like what’s happening here.” It’ll be too late by then. The consequences are dire, man.

MT: Porn today, ideas or political associations tomorrow?

DeVille: Anything. Candidates, say. I’m just making shit up, but maybe some country has a political candidate everybody hates, right? Now Visa and MasterCard are like, “We’re shutting off billing to that country until you guys get your shit straight.” That’s what we’re doing now? Did the president check off on this? Because that is a powerful fucking move. You know what I mean? Again, not pretending to have the answers, but we live in a digital world and these huge companies have power akin to the governments of some countries. Are we going to control this power? 

Whatever the United States decides, we decide, but I think we need to be aware of what we’re deciding on, and not just say, “Oh, well, I don’t know,” until something really crazy happens. Because look, they’re chipping away. You see they’re doing more and more and more. At some point, it’s going to really rub people the wrong way. What about the precedent set by all of these choices that they’re making now? Just because you like it now isn’t the point. What about when they do something you don’t like? You can’t just be on this bandwagon because you agree with it at the moment. 

MT: There seems to have been a sea change in attitudes about these issues. Once, a movie like The People vs. Larry Flynt was popular with liberals because the principle of standing up for free expression was understood as a core American idea, even when the target was someone like a porn-mag publisher like Larry Flynt. 

DeVille: A core American ideal, yes. But even Larry Flynt had a shit ton of money, enough capital to fight that fight on his own. The days of having three people in charge of most of the money in the adult world are definitely gone, which is better for the performer, but that does leave us with a vacuum on defense. I feel like this is just as big as what he was fighting for, but there’s no multi-multi-multi-multi-millionaire willing to throw millions of dollars at a project that helps all of us.

Instead, there’s a lot more support for what I call the morality police. There’s a whole culture of putting your moral choices on everybody else and being intolerant of discussion or choices that other people might make. I’m 43. Growing up, I voted on both sides of the aisle. I’ve talked openly with friends and family about politics with no consequences. But the past four or five years, that has not been the situation. You can lose friends over political beliefs! Like, come on. 

Not many people can say, “Oh, I’m independent, I’m undecided.” Everyone says, “I’m this and it means a lot about my personality,” instead of, “I just made this financial choice,” or “This guy believes in something I also believe in so I’m going to go with him, this year.” Now, your political party affiliation seems to have a 10-point list of character traits associated with it, and it’s all very important. 

It’s odd, and I don’t know what the source of it is, but it’s not beneficial, especially to the United States. It’s really polarizing. It’s pitting certain parts of the country against other parts of the country. I just don’t feel like that’s a good vibe. I feel like we should all be able to talk about politics and religion without losing friends and family members over it, or getting into real fights, or calling people racist monsters. Let’s have open dialogues with people we disagree with, and be okay with that, and think about things and have conversations that make us uncomfortable. When did that become not okay?

OLD JOKE

A Russian Scientist arrives at a conference on miniaturization…With a screw designed to join two single molecules together, with a lot of oohs and aahs from colleagues, an American Engineer asks, Do you have a sample for electron micrograph? The scientist nods, and gives the American a small vial containing the sample. At lunch, the American Engineer returns the vial to the Russian, with another vial that contains a screw with a hex head of the same dimensions, a fitted bolt and a tiny wrench to turn it. A Japanese businessman asks if he can see the American's novelty, and the American hands him his vial. Dinner that night the Japanese businessman returns the vial and tells the Russian and the American, I can produce these in lots of 1 billion, and have them for you by Tuesday. 

IT’S ON!

Editor: 

Joe Biden, the U.S. and NATO will regret standing by and watching the destruction of Ukraine. Once Vladimir Putin digests this large country without consequences, he will turn his attention to the surrounding smaller countries with the very result Biden claims to be avoiding with his appeasement strategy of no boots on the ground and no air support for Ukraine. 

As Fiona Hill asserts, World War III has already started and we are sitting it out, waiting for the obliteration of Ukraine, followed by attacks on NATO allies. Our response then will be too little, too late, especially for Ukraine and our reputation as a champion of freedom. 

The time to stop Putin is now. Don’t tell us we didn’t warn you.

B.J. Cates

Healdsburg

“PUTIN’S REPUBLICAN APOLOGISTS”

“There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.” — Mike Pence, the defeated former vice president and assassination target of the Donald Trump Death Cult on January 6, 2021

Pumpkin-headed former president and Putin puppet-for-life Donald Trump is a political dead man walking in 2024, just like in 2020.

Now excuse me if you will for my momentary urge to smash pumpkins with a wooden baseball bat, just like Eli Roth bashed in Nazi noggins as Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz “The Bear Jew” in Quentin Tarantino’s World War II era cinematic masterpiece Inglourious Basterds, but traitor Trump and his non-stop neo-Nazi nonsense calls for a response.

No matter how late Mike Pence is to the democracy party, I suppose it’s better late than never that deranged Donald’s former lap dog Pence is showing some patriotism these days, as opposed to the pro-Putin propaganda pushed by the GOP during the four years of the failed, far right fascist Trump regime.

Just another reason why I (as an unapologetically partisan Democrat and enthusiastic participant in Operation Good Trouble) will be voting for Mike Pence for president in the 2024 California presidential primary. I’ll be voting to re-elect President Joe Biden in the 2024 general election of course. https://afro.com/opinion-operation-good-trouble/

Sincerely,

Jake Pickering

Arcata

VICTORIA NULAND: UKRAINE HAS "BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH FACILITIES," Worried Russia May Seize Them

The neocon's confession sheds critical light on the U.S. role in Ukraine, and raises vital questions about these labs that deserve answers.

by Glenn Greenwald

Self-anointed "fact-checkers” in the U.S. corporate press have spent two weeks mocking as disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth and label such claims false.

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.” The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted that “Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.” Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims "disinformation” and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?” 

Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further "proof” that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.S. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign by telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be “100% sure” that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.

But Rubio's clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons,” Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.” Any hope to depict such "facilities” as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: “we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach” …

greenwald.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological