Mendocino County Today: Friday, March 25, 2022

Fog & Sun | 7 New Cases | BA.2 Arrives | 2 Positives | Logging Camp | Tax Error | War Claims | Spring Garden | Unity Club | Caspar Trestle | Redbeard Sentenced | Ogden Fundraiser | Ukiah Trail | Adult Ballet | Hopland Blues | Wonderland Performance | Ed Notes | Mendo Cornfield | Rubber Dam | Clan McEwan | Seductive Success | Drive-in Movie | Isolated CEO | Breaktime | Exec Pay | Yesterday's Catch | Be Independent | Iraq Flag | Wild Orphan | Hilda Sutherland | Suing Hillary | Big Bust | Redwood Felling | Fentanyl Discussion | Reject Evidence | Wonderfully Done | Cocaine Days | Nursing Career | Welcome Back | Panhandle | Defending Ukraine | Westport Family | Westernmost Bar | Mill Pond | Racist Babies | Clown Congress | Assange Marriage

ABOVE NORMAL AFTERNOON TEMPERATURES will occur across interior valleys today, but will gradually trend toward cooler and more seasonable values by Sunday and Monday. Otherwise, dry weather through Saturday will become showery Sunday and Monday, with a slight chance of thunderstorms existing over Lake and Mendocino Counties Monday afternoon. (NWS)

7 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

PUBLIC HEALTH HAS CONFIRMED A POSITIVE CASE OF THE OMICRON SUBVARIANT BA.2 IN MENDOCINO COUNTY.

The original Omicron Variant is still the most common form of COVID-19 in California, but cases of a sub-variant, BA.2, have been increasing across the state since January 2022. The County has just been notified of the first local case of this variant dated to early March.

This variant can re-infect those who’ve had Omicron, and some people who have been vaccinated. In California and other places with high vaccination rates, BA.2 does not seem to be driving increases in rates of cases, hospitalizations, or deaths. This variant does have the potential to cause severe disease for the vulnerable and unvaccinated individuals, while those who have been vaccinated and boosted are still very well protected against severe disease from BA.2.

So now is a good opportunity for everyone to review the latest guidance around reducing COVID risk:

1) Masks are strongly recommended in public indoor settings.
2) Get vaccinated and get boosted. It is the best protection against severe COVID.
3) Stay home from work and school when sick, get tested early.
4) Increase outdoor activities and ventilation indoors.

Public Health will continue to analyze test results and monitor the number of BA.2 cases carefully. While we remain optimistic due to decreasing case and hospitalization rates in Mendocino, we are concerned that another variant could set us back to surge levels in the future.

Free vaccines and booster shots continue to be available at primary care providers, pharmacies, and at the County’s fixed and pop-up clinics. More information is available at https://www.mendocinocounty.org/covid19

2 TEST POSITIVE THIS WEEK

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

Two positive pool results were received at the elementary school. Nurses will be on-site Friday to test the positive classes for students with permissions on file.  You will be notified if your student is positive.

Take care,

Louise Simson

Superintendent

COUNTY ERROR COMPLICATES LOCAL SCHOOL BOND

Dear Anderson Valley Community, 

Sometimes, it feels like some things in life are never easy. This was one of those weeks…

The District and the Bond Committee are so proud of the effort of staff and community members to place Measure M on the June 7 ballot to fund improvements for the schools. This General Obligation Bond is slated to supply the funding for necessary improvements for our elementary and Jr./Sr. High schools, which are more than 60 years old. Measure M funds will repair classrooms with no water, replace infrastructure so sewage doesn’t back up on the playground, renovate HVAC, roofs, and classrooms, update the gym, install agricultural improvements, and possibly create a meeting room at the elementary site and so much more. The committee has been hard at work to get the message about Measure M out to the community and paint the picture of how much facilities work is needed at the 60+ year old sites.

During the community outreach process, a long-time resident of the community came to me and showed me her tax bill. The billing for the last tax payment generated by the County was artificially low. She asked me why it was so low? I said I didn't know, but I would contact the County Auditor-Controller’s Office to find out why. After several weeks, the Auditor-Controller's Office requested a meeting. During the meeting, it was shared that the County's new software system did not import data that billed our residents correctly. I want to reiterate that there has been no change in the tax due, it simply wasn't invoiced and collected. This was an error at the County related to their new software system, and had nothing to do with the school district. 

The impactful part of this error is that our residents may be receiving a corrected tax bill in May or a retro payment due in the next billing cycle. This is to collect the money that should have been billed originally. I wanted to let you know personally about this situation, before you saw it in your mailbox. I want to be fully transparent with our residents about how this came to pass. Again, this is not a new tax, it was a billing error at the County.

I hope that if you have any questions about the situation, you will reach out to me at (707) 684-1017. 

If you would like to tour the sites and see the infrastructure needs, please join us on the following dates:

High School Tour: May 12 at 4:30 p.m.

Elementary School Tour: May 19 at 4:30 p.m. 

Your taking the time to view our sites and see the District’s significant infrastructure needs will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson

Superintendent

ONE MONTH IN...Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces has released its latest intelligence report as of 10pm local time. [Thursday] Russia’s attempt to encircle the city of Kyiv has not been fulfilled while attempts to block Chernihiv have also been unsuccessful, officials claimed. “[Russia] will try to resume offensive operations in the direction of the cities of Brovary and Boryspil in order to block the capital of Ukraine, the city of Kyiv, from the east,” the report reads. Russian troops are also blocking the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv and striking civilian infrastructure, officials said. The withdrawal of some Russian units is due to “the loss of more than 50% of the personnel” Ukraine’s armed forces claim, adding that Russia continues to replenish losses by training and relocating reserve units. The military confirmed reports that the large landing ship “Saratov’ was destroyed during the attack on the occupied Berdyansk port, adding that large landing ships “Caesar Kunikov’ and “Novocherkassk’ were also damaged. Efforts to capture the cities of Popasna, Rubizhne and Mariupol, are “without success” the report concludes. (Guardian)

UNITY CLUB NEWS

Happy Spring!

Life is moving so fast and the weather is changing faster; it must be spring. The Unity Club is holding its April meeting on Thursday, the 7th in the Home Arts Bldg. Fairgrounds, at 1:30. The guest speaker will be our own Home Town newspaper editor Bruce Anderson. He will regale us with the ministrations necessary to keep a Small Town Newspaper alive. Thanks to Mark and Bruce, the Anderson Valley Advertiser is alive and well. Friends who have left the Valley still read the Advertiser, just to keep up with what we're up to. This meeting is indoors, so please wear a face covering. Bring your own water and a sweater, in case it turns cool. 

Will we bravely go forward with the Wildflower Show? I'm looking forward to seeing all the Wilflowers in bloom. Some ladies are taking part in plant identifi-cation classes, in preparation. The excitement is building. Look for more news about the Wilflower Show in June Hall April 23rd and 24th from 10 to 4. Hopefully, the Library will have special hours that Saturday. Speaking of the Library, did you get your $5 bag of books? March 29th is the last day for the March $5 a bag book sale. 

The AV High School is a buzz with Seniors talking about where they've been accepted, and what scholarships they have applied for. One of my pre-Calculus students has been accepted to my Alma Mater, Cal Poly SLO, with generous scholarships. I couldn't have completed college without multiple scholarships and grants. So, ladies, think about what manner and number of scholarships we want to award this year. We'll be talking about them at the April 7th meeting in the Home Arts Building (Library) at 1:30. Enjoy the weather, especially the rain. 

Miriam L. Martinez

REDBEARD SENTENCED: 25 TO LIFE

by Colin Atagi

“We lived in fear” of Mendocino County’s “Red-Bearded Burglar,’ victim says, as judge hands down sentence.

Three times since April, Helen Duffy returned to her home in the Mendocino County town of Elk to find it had been burglarized and heavily damaged.

Holes filled the walls, personal items were missing and, most importantly, she told a sentencing judge on Thursday, her sense of peace, safety and tranquility along the Mendocino County coast had been shattered.

“In the seven months that followed (April), we lived in fear,” she said as she shared how the actions of William Evers, Mendocino County’s so-called “Red-Bearded Burglar,” affected her.

Evers, an admitted serial burglar who was arrested on Nov. 3 in the town of Albion after nearly a year on the run from authorities, was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Judge Keith Faulder also ordered Evers to pay restitution to his victims. So far, two have already filed requests for reparations totaling nearly $2,500.

Evers, who gained notoriety after authorities dubbed him the “Red-Bearded Burglar” because of his distinct red beard, which differed from the brown hair on his head, appeared on video while in custody at the Mendocino County Jail Thursday.

He said little other than the occasional “yes” whenever Judge Keith Faulder asked if he understood what was happening.

Duffy was the only homeowner to speak during Thursday’s sentencing hearing. A second homeowner was in attendance at the county courthouse in Ukiah, but declined to comment.

Evers’ sentence takes into account his criminal history.

The Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint showing he was convicted of burglary in Humboldt County and making criminal threats in Shasta County in March 2007 and October 2014, respectively.

In Mendocino County, Evers was accused of breaking into homes near Ukiah and the towns of Philo, Albion and Elk dating back to December 2020.

He was charged with 19 counts of criminal activity, including 15 counts of burglary and others related to vandalism and the attempted murder of a Mendocino County sheriff’s deputy investigating an Elk burglary on May 12.

Authorities say Evers had opened fire on the deputy, an allegation he initially denied.

But, after learning that he faced at least 300 years in prison if convicted on all counts, Evers made a deal with prosecutors on Feb. 25. He pleaded guilty to assaulting the sheriff’s deputy, bringing an abrupt end to the case and setting the stage for Thursday’s sentencing.

Mendocino County Public Defender Jeffrey Aaron, whose office represented Evers, declined to comment Thursday.

Although the original charges were dismissed because of the plea deal, there’s no doubt Evers was responsible for the burglaries, Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey said after sentencing.

The 15 burglary charges included the three break-ins at Duffy’s home and 12 others around the region. Kelsey said officials believe Evers may have committed as many as 26 burglaries.

He admitted as much to The Press Democrat during a jailhouse interview in December when he detailed his nearly 12 months on the lam near the coast.

He said he arrived in Mendocino County at the end of 2020 after fleeing Arizona, where he lived near his parents under law enforcement supervision.

Evers said he purchased methamphetamine and left it in a motel room where he had been staying. He returned to a locked room and, fearing the drugs had been discovered, fled to avoid arrest for a parole violation.

A native of Redding, Evers said he caught a Greyhound bus to Ukiah in December 2020 and spent months searching for vacant homes that could provide shelter and supplies.

The search for Evers lasted months, and he mostly appeared in grainy surveillance footage circulated by authorities. He eluded arrest after being confronted by sheriff’s deputies on at least three occasions.

Evers estimated he interacted with five people last year before his arrest and was conflicted over fleeing or staying for conversation. As his notoriety grew, so did the stories people told about him.

Noting Evers’ reputation, prosecutors took exception to any portrayal of Evers as a folk hero and stressed that he was armed and violent.

Faulder agreed that was evident from the damage Duffy found in her home.

In addition to the holes in her walls, she said her stove was damaged and her pots and pans were burned. Little else remained in her home.

“Not a crumb of food or a drop of drink in our house,” Duffy said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

GOOD NEWS FROM UKIAH: Hey, hikers! Ukiah is about to get a new trail! Ukiah City Council has authorized an extension of the favorite City View Trail in Low Gap Park--the "Upper City View Trail" will add a one-mile loop to the upper leg of the existing trail. Who's building it? The Ukiah Valley Trail Group and the CCC--work is beginning immediately, and the trail is expected to be open in May! 

ELIZABETH JENSEN: 

AV ADULT BALLET continues thru MAY 25!

Join me for Adult Ballet @ The Studio Sobo on Wednesdays 5:30pm-7pm, weekly thru May.

This class is geared towards the beginner but all levels can find joy in the movements and certainly benefit from the opportunities to improve their technique as we explore the many aspects of ballet that we love and are fascinated by. 

Each week, we will begin with 45-60min Ballet Barre, followed by 30min Centre with Adage, Pirouettes and Allegro. 

All levels welcome.

$5 Donation suggested. 

Location: Studio SoBo is located at 14275 Hwy 128 in Boonville. Please park on the street. You may enter thru the driveway next to the AV Fire Department building.

Attire: Whatever you can move comfortably in and not be distracted by. 

Shoes: Ballet shoes are helpful but you can also just be barefoot and bring a clean pair of socks (although they are a bit slippery for the studio floor, they can be helpful for certain Barre exercises and Centre turns).

Hair: I recommend securing longer hair out of the face with barettes or elastic bands (not scrunchies or other items that fall out).

Waiver: Studio SoBo will have a waiver for the building and I will have a waiver for the class, so you are welcome to come 5-10min early to settle in and fill out paperwork.

COVID-19: All current Mendocino County Public Health guidelines will be followed.

- Hand sanitizer will be available outside the studio (it damages the studio floors).

- Masks are required indoors. 

If you have any questions/concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d like to make this program work for everyone interested.

…

Elizabeth Jensen began ballet before the early age of 3 with Virginia Stapleton at what is now Stapleton School of the Performing Arts in San Anselmo, CA. Stapleton School has a remarkable program, fostering the love of dance and creative movement in all children, without bias. 

At Stapleton School, Elizabeth performed in numerous ballets over the years including Coppelia, La Fille Mal Garde, Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, and of course, The Nutcracker, in which she danced the familiar roles of Clara, Snow Queen, and Sugar Plum Fairy. With Stapleton School, she also had the opportunity to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, to perform an original ballet of Tom Sawyer at the Fringe Festival. 

In college, Elizabeth continued to dance as a member of the Wellesley College Dancers, a student run company focusing on ballet, jazz, and modern dance. After college, Elizabeth returned to Stapleton School as a teacher before resuming college courses to pursue a career in Physical Therapy. Today, Elizabeth continues to work with the body as a Certified Pilates Trainer and dance instructor in Boonville, CA.

HOPLAND! 

Hopland Taproom picks up where the legendary Hopland Brewery left off, as Mendocino County’s home of the blues. Hosting weekly blues artists from near and far the Wednesday Blues Invitational is serving up just what blues fans are looking for, every Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. with blues music, dancing and dinner on the patio.

Blues Invitational started last June 23 and hosted Chicago guitarist Steve Freund to a crowded room, and Craig Caffall, well-known for his touring with Maria Muldaur, and Takezo, also an alumnus of Maria’s band, followed on the next Wednesdays. Upcoming artists include Blues Music Award nominees, touring artists and the best of Mendocino’s blues family.

Host Wendy DeWitt at the piano/organ, kicks off the night with Skip Engle on harmonica, Pierre Archain on bass and Kirk Harwood on drums. Once the audience is in the groove, the week’s guest artist is backed by the house band for a power house set. The evening wraps with area blues artists and visiting performers sitting in, keeping the show moving and the dancing energized.

Wendy DeWitt toured with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and is well-known on the international Boogie Woogie Festival circuit while drummer Kirk Harwood is a veteran of tours with Norton Buffalo. Bassist Pierre Archain is an established name in the Bay Area’s jazz scene.

After two years of planning, Blues Invitational is here to satisfy blues fans near and far, and each week will be different. Last season’s guest artists included Sarah Baker, Matt Silva of Sonoma County’s Blues Defenders, and Bill Noteman of the Rockets fame. Every Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. in downtown Hopland, Blues Invitational at Hopland Tap has the dance floor open and the blues flowing.

CAROLYN WONDERLAND CELEBRATES NEW ALBUM With A Live Performance In Point Arena

Award-winning Texas guitar slinger, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Carolyn Wonderland , currently celebrating the release of her Alligator Records debut album, Tempting Fate, will perform as part of the Blues on the Coast Concert Series at the Arena Theater in Point Arena on Friday, April 15, 2022. The album, her 11th, was produced by famed master roots musician Dave Alvin, and features Wonderland's signature, blistering six-string and lap steel playing, her intense vocals and her original songs melding blues, rock and Americana.

Date: Friday, April 15, 2022

Event: Blues on the Coast Concert Series

Venue: Arena Theater

Address: 214 Main St.

City: Point Arena, CA 

Phone: 707-882-3272

Showtime: 7:30pm

Ticket price: $25

Website: arenatheater.org

ED NOTES

HOW CPS SHAFTED MARMON: In June of 2011, I received a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) from my supervisor Bryan Lowery which stated that I was expected to “participate in Team Decision Making for all significant decisions (eg, detaining children) rather than making decisions on my own.” This was after I refused to commit perjury on court documents which required that I verify that it was “my professional opinion” that the children needed to be detained. Mr. Lowery went on in the CAP to state that I, as an DHSS employee, was expected to represent and support disposition recommendations from my supervisor in the course of my work duties even if it differed from my opinion, as an example he stated “when giving court testimony.” I got fired for this.

DROUGHT. Lake Mendocino is about half full and dropping fast. The Russian River is being fed just enough water to keep it flowing to store as much water in the reservoirs as possible. Optimists say we'll get a half-inch of rain this weekend.

A NAME CHANGE for Kelseyville will appear on the Lake County ballot in 2023. No argument from me. Sam Kelsey was a very bad man, not quite on the scale of Serranus Hastings of Mendocino County but plenty bad. Kelsey's history is well documented. If he hadn't owned most of the area and named it all after himself, it's unlikely anybody else would have so honored him. The prob might be, as it is in Mendo where a group of fey “activists” want to re-name Fort Bragg on confused historical grounds, what to re-name Kelseyville?

SHIG (Shigeyoshi ) MURAO was the only person that actually did any jail time for “Howl & Other Poems:” On June 3, 1957, he was arrested as the main sales clerk at City Lights books for selling copies of Howl to undercover detectives, though he was exonerated when the poem was judged protected under the first amendment three months later. He was one of the store's very first employees starting in 1953 and remained involved in the store until 1975. He passed away in 1999 at the age of 72. Here pictured in June 1988 at Cafe Trieste, where he'd often be found - up the street from City Lights, and down the street from his apartment where Allen would stay on his many visits to San Francisco. (photo and prose by Allen Ginsberg)

Ed note: As almost a daily habitue of City Lights from the time I discovered it as a callow youth, as a callow senior I remember Shig as the imperturbable guy rooted at the cash register as you walked in the door. The shop wasn't as crowded in the late 50's as it is now, and patrons could linger for hours reading without buying anything, as I often did. I was there one night when a blonde beast drunk — I've always thought of him as a “Stanford-looking suit and tie fascist” — deliberately knocked a couple piles of new books off Shig's counter like he was angry at books generally and City Lights specifically. Shig said something like, “Happy now?” as the beast strode triumphantly out the door. Ferlinghetti and City Lights were always good to the AVA, placing us with nice visibility in the magazine rack. Of course Ferlinghetti was a dissident and said he liked the dissidence we aimed at creating.

FROST FANS have disturbed the sleep of a thousand or so Valley people three times so far this grape season, and I'm surprised how many locals still don't know that this annual nuisance has lessened their property values. If you sell you'll have to disclose to the buyer that they can expect to bolt upright out of their 3am bowers at what sounds like a combat helicopter landing on their roofs. Locals can count on at least 15 mornings in late March through early April when their sleep will be destroyed. Of course official Mendo assuming the prone position at the foot of any entity with money, all noise abatement laws are waived for the wine industry.

I'D HOPED the new County Courthouse was on permanent hold. I should have known better. This is the second judicial swindle in my years in Mendocino County, the first being the termination of the county's far flung justice courts, including the one in Boonville. That move came courtesy of the lawyer-dominated state legislature on the false basis that only lawyers were capable of dispensing justice, a proposition the legislature wouldn't dare put to a vote. This move was purely for the convenience of 9 (count 'em) new superior court judges, each of them compensated at levels of pay and emoluments not available to most Americans. We now have more superior court judges per capita than any other county in the state, hell, maybe in the world.

SO WE LOST our justice courts, resulting for many of us in long drives to the County Courthouse in Ukiah to get screwed over, er, get our matters heard.

THE 9 JUDGES have decided, or at least are silent on the subject, they need a new courthouse three long blocks from the old, perfectly serviceable present courthouse. The rub is that the new structure has been designed only for the judges and their gofers. The DA, to name one county official inconvenienced by this move, will remain where he is, meaning he and his lawyers and ancillary staff will be bustling up and down West Perkins in all kinds of weather. What could go wrong?

WORST OF ALL, moving the courthouse will destroy what's left of downtown Ukiah as shoppers and diners disappear from a city center already struggling.

WORST-WORST OF ALL, the new courthouse will be a major eyesore for a town already synonymous with architectural squalor. A re-model of the old courthouse, the traditional courthouse that goes all the way back into the 19th century, if it were a restoration of the beauty of the original, Ukiah and the rest of the county's sorely put upon citizens could point to it with pride.

WHICH is what would have happened in, say, 1920, when civic leaders cared what their towns looked like, understanding that public beauty was good for public morale. Ukiah's civic “leadership,” when the mercenary “liberals” of the Richard Shoemaker-Dan Hamburg variety made their moves on the county in the mid-70s, they wasted no expense on their own comfort and welfare, hence Ukiah's attractive civic headquarters and the big leather chairs and big shot dais in the supervisor's chambers out on Low Gap.

OPEN WIDE, MENDOLAND as the new courthouse gets shoved down your unsuspecting throats. Your 9 fat cat judges are getting themselves a brand new courthouse that nobody except them wants. 

UDJ REPORTER MICHELLE BLACKWELL provided a few details about the recent $4.9 million grant awarded by the state to help with water shortages. “The grant will allow the Mendocino Water District to begin the necessary planning processes that will be required to build a 500,000-gallon storage tank for emergency water supplies. These supplies can be used in times of drought and for fire suppression. … Two new wells will be drilled to fill the larger emergency tank during the rainy season when water is abundant. It would be then be cycled through the school district systems to prevent it from becoming stale. During drought, the 500,000 gallons would be able to mitigate the empty wells and expensive refills district residents faced during the summer and fall of 2021. … Although District Manager Rhodes estimates it will take five years to break ground, it’s a step toward self-sufficiency. The five-year timeline assumes a full CEQA process as well as additional reviews that will likely be required by the Coastal Commission and the State.”

IF STATE SENATOR McGuire really wanted to help with the drought problem he would have written some environmental review waivers into the grant language — can’t we skip the EIR for a tank and some wells to help the drought problem now? — so that the District could begin construction of the tank on an emergency basis. Instead, we get a jubilant but detail free press release from McGuire and a forwarding brag from Supervisor Williams about how wonderful this big grant is. Then we have to wait until a local reporter quietly points out that they don’t even expect to “break ground” on the “emergency” project for at least five years, Thanks a lot, Mike and Ted. No rush; take your time. (Mark Scaramella)

SONOMA WATER INFLATES RUSSIAN RIVER SUPPLY DAM AFTER LACK OF RAIN INCREASES DEMAND

Due to a dry winter and warm temperatures, the Sonoma County Water Agency (Sonoma Water) today began the multi-day process of inflating its rubber dam located in the Russian River near Forestville. The rubber dam is a critical component of the Russian River water supply system that provides naturally filtered drinking water to more than 600,000 residents in portions of Sonoma and Marin counties.…

mendofever.com/2022/03/24/sonoma-water-inflates-russian-river-supply-dam-after-lack-of-rain-increases-demand/

GOT THE HORSE RIGHT HERE

Seductive Success
Out of Miss Bountiful Charms
By Passionate Stud

You’re the horse to beat
With a pedigree like yours
How can you lose Just

Don’t fade in the stretch
Coming up on the outside
Now’s the time to charge

Come on Seductive
Give it everything you’ve got
Smart money’s on you

— Jim Luther

DRIVE IN MOVIE NIGHT at the Community Center of Mendocino

Spring is in the air and we are excited to announce the return of our Drive-In Movie Nights! We're kicking off the season on Saturday, April 23 with The Sandlot.

Tickets will go on sale Monday, March 28 at 10:00 AM and as tickets are limited, we are expecting a quick sell-out.

Admission: $25 per car (up to 4 people / $5 per extra)

Popcorn and Concession Combos Available!

communitycenterofmendocino.org/events

THE ISOLATION CHAMBER

To the Editor:

I read with great concern that the Mendocino County’s CEO Office was cancelling its subscription to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

I would have paid for Office’s subscription. It seems to me that the the Board of Supervisors and the CEO need to get excellence in journalism from all reliable sources.

Transparency in government is one issue addressed by our local journalists. Our county is largely governed by a club of political insiders. They fight transparency. They vigorously fight transparency.

As Exhibit 1, I hold up how our recently departed CEO told us we had a big budget surplus, exceeding, perhaps, $20 million, when, in truth, we have a projected $12 million budget deficit. The shortfall in cannabis taxes is costing at least $3 million. How is it possible we didn’t know these facts until after our CEO left?

The other issue addressed by good journalism is the extent to which our county’s upper management isolate themselves from the realities of their constituents. Good reporters and editors close that gap.

What is that fundamental reality?

Our CEO gets a total compensation package of $308,000. Our Board of Supervisors get total compensation packages of $142,000. For compensation statistics, see: https://publicpay.ca.gov/

Meanwhile, approximately half of all county residents are so poor they are eligible for Food Stamps, and one third meet Medi-Cal eligibility requirements.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

A READER WRITES:

Job Posting For Lake County Interim Chief Administrative Officer

Note the salary! Upwards of $210,492 annually (not including benefits). For benefits, add another 100 grand, more or less. I'd put the total compensation package at about $312,000 annually. 

Note that Lake County is the poorest of California's 58 counties. The average income of a Lake County resident is $21,310 a year...and that's probably skewed upward by the government workers living in Lake County. 

Take government workers out of the statistics pool, and I wouldn't be surprised if the average Lake County resident gets about what someone on public assistance would get.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 24, 2022

CHARLES ANDERSON, Fort Bragg. Battery, probation revocation.

WAYNE BROWN, Fort Bragg. DUI, disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JARED CAPELLO, Stockton. Pot cultivation-more than six plants.

BHAKTI DILLENBECK, Albion. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

RONALD GADDIS, Gresham, Oregon/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, paraphernalia.

JOSE LORETOQUIJAS, Ukiah. DUI, no license, probation revocation.

ZAHIR PECHCERON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation.

SAM ROWE III, Willits. Shopping cart removal, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger.

MATTHEW RUPE, Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

LIAM SMITH, Willits. Controlled substance for sale, false compartment, probation revocation.

KENDRA STEVENSON, Laytonville. DUI-drugs&alcohol, felony hit&run with death or injury.

BOTH PARTIES ARE DISASTERS

Editor,

We have big problems. By sending production to Asia to boost corporate profits, U.S. corporations hollowed out our industrial capacity. These moves pushed the company’s stock price up so the executives can cash in their “no money invested” stock options. Walmart, Amazon and others are using foreign goods to help their company sell at huge stock-price multiples. But it leaves the U.S. with few manufacturing jobs here for our own people.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are disasters as leaders for the country. I ask that readers evaluate my opinion with a non-partisanship perspective. Biden is a puppet for whomever has control of his strings. This economic and global disaster in front of us now is only partly due to one party or the other.

The Middle East wars, which U.S. leaders should never have gone into, are at the fault of former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush and Cheney should be viewed as war criminals just as much as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Right now, he is doing something similar in Ukraine as to what they did in Iraq.

My solution is to register as an independent voter. I will no longer vote blindly for a single party. I hope we increase the numbers of independently thinking people who vote. Hopefully, that will increase the number of independent-thinking and independent-voting politicians.

There should be no more special treatment. All politicians must follow the same rules.

Tom MacAusland

San Anselmo

WILD ORPHAN

Blandly mother 
takes him strolling 
by railroad and by river 
-he's the son of the absconded 
hot rod angel- 
and he imagines cars 
and rides them in his dreams, 

so lonely growing up among 
the imaginary automobiles 
and dead souls of Tarrytown 

to create 
out of his own imagination 
the beauty of his wild 
forebears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will he later hallucinate 
his gods? Waking 
among mysteries with 
an insane gleam 
of recollection? 

The recognition- 
something so rare 
in his soul, 
met only in dreams 
-nostalgias 
of another life. 

A question of the soul. 
And the injured 
losing their injury 
in their innocence 
-a cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a thousand miles 
away, unknowing 
of the unexpected 
youthful stranger 
bumming toward his door.

— Allen Ginsberg

TRUMP SUES HILLARY CLINTON, Alleging “Plot” To Rig 2016 Election Against Him

Donald Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other people and entities tied to the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, claiming that in a bid to rig the election they orchestrated a conspiracy which made Watergate “pale in comparison”.…

theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/24/trump-hillary-clinton-russia-lawsuit-2016-election

BIG FENTANYL BUST IN HUMCO

Since September of 2021 the Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF) has been investigating a drug trafficking organization (DTO) that was distributing “M30” fentanyl pills in Humboldt County. HCDTF received information that Robert Moorehead (24 years old from Arcata) was the leader of this DTO and was utilizing other co-conspirators to hold onto his pills and firearms in their residences to try and avoid detection. Through their investigation over several months the HCDTF was able to identify James Bingham (59 years old from Eureka) and Richard West (37 years old from Eureka) as the co-conspirators of the DTO.

On Tuesday March 22nd ,2022 the HCDTF with the assistance of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department and Eureka Police Department served a search warrant at three locations for this DTO. 

The first location was in the 1300 block of Vernon St. in Eureka. Agents detained Bingham inside this residence. During a search of this house agents located approx. 12,000 “M30” fentanyl pills as well as 8 firearms. Some of the firearms were fully automatic and had short barrels. Three of the guns were non-registered firearms (ghost guns) and one firearm had the serial number removed.

The second location was in the 2100 block of Frederick Ave. in Arcata. Agents detained Moorehead at this location without incident. Agents located one firearm, a small amount of cocaine, and a large amount of US currency in the residence. 

The third location was a travel trailer in the Redwood Acres RV Park in Eureka. Agents detained West without incident. Inside the trailer agents located a safe that contained approx. 3,000 “M30” fentanyl pills and a large amount of US currency. 

All three suspects were transported to the Humboldt County Jail where they were booked for the following charges:

• Possession of controlled substance for sale
• Possession of controlled substance while armed
• Conspiracy to distribute controlled substances
• Manufacturing an unsafe handgun
• Possession of a short-barreled rifle
• Possession of a machine gun
• Possession of illegal assault rifle
• 11366.5 H&S Maintaining a drug house

The seizure of 15,000 “M30” fentanyl pills is the largest fentanyl bust in Humboldt County history. Electronic evidence located on scene as well as statements of involved suspects confirmed that Moorehead was the leader of this DTO. 

Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes are encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.

FENTANYL, AN ON-LINE DISCUSSION.

1. Stop it at the border.

China is using the poverty south of the border to kill Americans, the cartels are getting rich beyond our imagination.

Enforcing immigration laws won’t stop it, but it would make a big dent in the supply.

Finding a excellent mental health worker is rare and especially true in rural counties.

2. Dude! Nothing is going to change until we raid Mexico and shut down all the fentenayl labs and throw Cartel leaders in jail. There ain’t shit anyone can do to stop the deaths if they continue to allow Mexico to poison and kill our people. If Mexican authorities and Government are unable to stop or at least slow the production in their country then maybe we should start looking at Mexico as a Narco terrorist country. I’m not being racist. The fact is almost all the fentenayl killing US citizens is manufactured in Mexico and smuggled into the US. The sheriff is talking about Band aids with Narcan. We need to cut the head off the snake 

3. I thought it was manufactured in China and brought in through the southern border. Did y’all see the Mexican cartel guy aim an big gun (can’t think of the name of it) at a DEA helicopter. Yeah it’s a problem.

4. “I’m not being racist.” Yes you are. Also illogical.

5. Not what our drug agencies say. They say with the advent of fentanyl, most of it is manufactured in little labs in our back yard. You don’t have to be very smart to make it. As Americans we are trained not to blame ourselves for our problems, the Mexicans and the Chinese are too easy.

6. If you have a Starz subscription checkout the Power series. They’re all really good. 50 cent is the executive producer. The new one is about Tommy leaving NY for Chicago. In this series a new drug is invented called Dalia. It is a game changer for the drug dealers. I just figured out this morning that the drug in Power, Dalia, is actually relating to Fentenayl and shows how fentenayl was a major game changer for the drug Cartels. Almost pure profit. All made in a lab with cheap ingredients. No land needed to grow poppies, coca, or marijuana. Fentenayl is the drug world game changer and unfortunately it is turning into a nightmare.

"AS WE ARE SO WONDERFULLY DONE WITH EACH OTHER"

As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one
Your lips have splashed my dull house with the speech of flowers
My hands are hallowed where they touched over your
       soft curving.

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .
Don’t let anyone in to wake us.

— Kenneth Patchen

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Thankfully I quit doing "cocaina" over 25 years ago. Back then you didn't have fentanyl so the only thing you had to worry about with cocaine was;

1. heart attack

2. speedballs with heroin chasers

3. "recon" coca cut wth baby powder

4. spending every penny to get more

Besides those little things there was no problem.

BACK TO WORK!

by Larry Bensky

MEMO: To All Staff

FROM: Management

RE: Back to Work!

March 21, 2022

Hello, and welcome back to the office! 

(Note: This is being sent to all employees of record. Those employed by MEGA INC. are due on site today. Those employed by MEGA.ORG will be expected on site tomorrow. ) 

On this and other matters, please be assured that our legal team, both those involved with the overall MEGA, and those who work for each branch, ,INC and .ORG, have been fully consulted.

1. Your workplaces have been fully sanitized. Special certificated teams have been employed. Some may still be on the premises from time to time. They are easily identified by their Hazmat white garments. Those in purple Hazmats are team leaders, authorized to communicate and receive information. Note the flags on the upper left hand corners of their uniforms. At this time, Spanish and Tagalog are the most popular languages . Although we are now adding Ukrainian!

2. You will also notice that under the language identification flags the letters “M,” “F” “Bx” “N” and “DS” may appear. These stand for Male, Female, Bi, Neutral, and Decline to State. Those whose appearance is not hidden because of Hazmat precautions may also choose to have these letters on large buttons for identification purposes. Similarly with language buttons. In all cases the company’s Guaranteed Inclusion team will help with difficulties.

3. As you know, both the for profit and non-profit branches of MEGA do work and produce products whose use has been subject to government public disclosure regulation You will be asked to sign a document certifying you understand applicable parameters. Under no circumstances should you ask or describe substantive material about which you have questions or issues! Specialists in discussing these matters are available either via encrypted communication or personal appointments (remember we’re back on site live)! As always written communications may be presented with some words blanked out. In person communications may take place in rooms with generated noise so there is a need to be close when speaking. How close will be monitored by an Inclusion Team member who may suggest, via hand motions, that people get closer or further away.

4. Personnel evaluations will be done more frequently than before we went 100% (or almost!) virtual. A number of new team members are with us. Others have left, for personal or (sadly) biological reasons, death being among these. In referring to such cases it is permissible to say a person “isn’t here.” Or “isn’t here any more.” It is not permissible to say they “died” or “passed away,” which often can induce depression and anxiety.

5. Your family structure may have changed while we were on lockdown. This may mean you can no longer be as available as you used to be. Or you are more available. Your confidential re-entry form is the place to provide up to date information. MEGA will work with you on this. Especially important is incorporating children in the picture. But as our co-founder, Matthew Mega once put it, “Children as a blessing, not an excuse!” We have also long incorporated into our policy our thoughts about parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We now offer Free MEGA T-shirts, made from organic materials and produced by well-paid labor. (S,M,L,XL,DTS – decline to state) are our gift to you at this important time! A color chart is also available, along with instructions on how to make coloring your MEGA T-shirts into an all-inclusive, gender neutral, fun project!)

6. Masks. This has been the most controversial element in our pandemic protocols. Now that we are back live, it is more essential than ever that we reach a balance between health and safety and personal liberty. We will be guided by federal and local government regulations. And our medical team will join our legal team in sorting things out, to everyone’s satisfaction.

7. You’re probably aware that there has been a big increase in what are called “mental health” issues during the time our offices have been closed. Over the years we believe we have offered, through our discounted full medical coverage, as good a treatment as prudent budgeting and scientific advance allow. Now, in this unusual time, we are offering more. Again, we quote our founder, Matthew Mega, “Dental health Is mental health!” There are many more dental professionals available than there are mental professionals, since dental work requires proximity and people have avoided being close to strangers. This provides us with the opportunity to provide you with dental care for mental issues, in line with (yet another) brilliant insight from our founder!

8. Another bit of Mega’s wisdom. “When on the road, trust a toad!” One person who uses “toad therapy” recently told a major publication (NYTimes, 3/20/2022) that he experienced a “full central nervous system reset” after smoking toad skins. Consuming toad venom can cost up to $8,500 and take weeks of dosage. Due to a long-standing agreement between our company and cooperative Mexican government and industrial interests, we will be able to construct a “toad road” of our own, in which all employees can enter a lottery to be included in toad work. There will be costs, much reduced from the commercial level. But, another, final piece of Mega’s wisdom, “The only thing free is pee!”

Looking forward to seeing your smiling faces again!

DIGITAL ARMY

by Hugh Barnes

I encountered Kaisi Berick at the Poland-Ukraine border. He was larger than life but also unreliable in terms of what he said about himself. A music producer born in Los Angeles, he lived in Kyiv with his Ukrainian wife. He’d been in California visiting his family when the war broke out on 24 February and was coming back to Ukraine to rescue his “girl’. But the first time I noticed him, in the queue at the border, he was telling a woman that he was returning to his adopted country to fight as a volunteer. “I have a lot of military training fyi,” he texted me later, offering a lift to Kyiv. “We will come up from the south roads. Everywhere else is compromised.’

Yet he was always getting delayed en route. Soon after I arrived in Lviv by train I got a message from him saying he was still on the road: “See if you can find out where I can get a weapon,” he went on. “I was thinking police command headquarters so I have a hotel near it, see attached map.” I explained that I was to Ukraine to report on the war, not to fight in it.

Also queuing at the border post was Alex Sokol, a 46-year-old human resources manager at a Ukrainian bank. He’d been skiing in the Pyrenees when the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, and he cut short his holiday to return home, even though he had no military background. “I have only seen weapons on TV,” he said. “It’s better to give weapons to people who are experienced. But there’s lots of other things I know how to do. So I will do them, to help my country.” One of the things he knew how to do was bulk purchasing. He’d left his skis in Andorra and flown to Poland with body armor in his luggage.

One evening I met Denis Struk, a 44-year-old painter whose work has been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery. He’d joined up as a reservist in Ukraine’s army as soon as war broke out. “I don’t like to see my country defenseless. It is my duty to enlist. I have no choice. In this situation, it’s better to go and do something rather than just sitting and watching the news. So I will fight and we will win. I am sure of it. And then maybe, in two months, we will have peace again.’

Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the lead singer with BoomBox, one of Ukraine’s biggest rock bands, cancelled a North American tour in order to join the Kyiv police. Somehow I can’t imagine Ed Sheeran doing the same if London were under threat, though who knows. There’s a video of Khlyvnyuk outside St Sophia Cathedral, wearing combat gear and carrying a high-powered assault rifle, belting out a song created by the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen during the First World War.

‘I’m big in Russia,” Khlyvnyuk said. “I’ve had a platinum album over there, and young people sing my songs right across the country, except now Putin says I’m a Nazi!” He had offered to come and talk to me at my hotel, but a 35-hour curfew scuppered that plan. “We are no longer businessmen or nightclub owners or pop stars or whatever for the next I don’t know how long,” he said on a WhatsApp call. “We are soldiers.’

Taras Topolia, the frontman of Antytila, felt the same way. He has joined the army in Kyiv, delivering medical aid to wounded fighters. “I’m still a pop star, just wearing body armor,” Topolia told ITV News. The TV host Serhiy Prytula, the actor Aleksey Tritenko and the comedian Yuriy Tkach are also in uniform. So is the film director Oleg Sentsov, for a second time, having been captured by the Russians in Crimea in 2014 and jailed for twenty years for allegedly setting up a “terrorist group’. He was released in a prisoner swap in 2019. The heavyweight boxer Oleksandr Usyk joined up but has now left Ukraine to train for his rematch with Anthony Joshua. The actor Pasha Li, 33, who dubbed the voice of Bilbo Baggins in the Ukrainian version of The Hobbit, was killed on 6 March during a Russian artillery bombardment of Irpin, his hometown.

In a bomb shelter during an air raid I met the 29-year-old video artist Alexey Smishchenko. He’d worked with Volodymyr Zelensky, then a comedian, at the 1+1 television channel that produced Zelensky’s show State of the Nation about a comedian who becomes president of Ukraine. Now Smishchenko was working on propaganda videos and websites for the government. It was his way of volunteering.

‘At the moment we are all working for our country, for the hearts and minds of the people, doing whatever it is we do best,” he told me. “If you ask me, the best thing anybody can do is to defend your country in armed combat. Unfortunately for me, I’ve only ever held a weapon once in my life. I feel embarrassed about it. Because I have two legs and two arms, and I go to the gym and so on and so on, but I’m not a military man and – you see – that’s embarrassing to me.’

Like many young creatives I’d met in Ukraine, Smishchenko didn’t vote for Zelensky. “When he was running for office I just couldn’t see him as president,” Smishchenko said. “But now I think he’s a great leader, and very brave, and that’s what people like about him. They see a man with principles. They see a man with some dreams for Ukraine, actually. He communicates with people. He’s very kind and tolerant, just as he was at 1+1. He doesn’t have a star complex. He just behaves like an ordinary person doing his job.’

Smishchenko said Ukraine would have to change after the war. “Young people are way more progressive ... The problem lies with our government, not just the president but his ministers and parliament were all formed in the USSR, and that’s what’s interesting because when – not if – we win this war, all that is going to change.’

Now a presenter on 1+1’s Morning Show, Olena Kvitka had once appeared in an episode of State of the Nation, playing herself. She agreed that Zelensky’s superpower was his ability to communicate. “At the studio he was never standoffish. He was always a team player, and he’s transferred that idea to the presidency,” she said. “With Zelensky, unlike with Putin, it’s not all about him. He listens to advice.’

She agreed with Smishchenko about the generation gap. “We stand with Ukraine to the very end, but we won’t stand for a return to the status quo after the war. There’s going to be a revolution in our hearts and minds. We are Ukrainians, that is our superpower – we are a digital army – and now we can feel it like never before.’

(London Review of Books)

HARD TRUTHS: Everyone Please Stop Spreading the Lying Lie That Ferndale’s ‘The Palace Bar’ is the Westernmost Bar in the Continental United States

This morning the San Francisco-based publication 7x7 — once a proud glossy city magazine, now apparently devolved into listicle-slinging — blogged a blog post entitled …

“6 Northern California Towns You Haven’t Heard of but Are Charming AF”

… and the number one most charming AF Northern California town that you’ve never heard of, assuming you’ve never read any of the previous 723 listicles on the same subject, is, of course: Ferndale!

The home of “storybook vibes and an old saloon,” Ferndale, we are told, is “dripping in [?] storybook homes and bay window–fronted shops.” Make sure you visit the “creepy yet beautiful” cemetery. Maybe you want to stay the night? Well, check out the Gingerbread Mansion!

But it’s 7x7’s kicker, here, that prompts this particular reply track to our colleagues on the wrong side of the Golden Gate.

“Either way, don’t forget …” writes associate editor Shoshi Parks from what I imagine to be a bunker 50 feet beneath the Transamerica Pyramid, where she is chained to her cubicle tapping out content at 80 words a minute while leaky pipes hiss steam around her. “Either way, don’t forget to stop in for a cocktail and a game of shuffleboard at The Palace Saloon, the westernmost bar in the continental U.S.”

Now, look. We know this is Humboldt County legend of longstanding, and there’s even a plaque outside the bar trumpeting this obvious falsehood to everyone who strolls past — or even, God forbid, into — The Palace.

But no one who is not drunk actually believes this, right? Look. I made you a map.

Go ahead and zoom in, there. You may confirm the black line of longitude I’ve added to this map — 124.264505371 degrees West — passes right through The Palace.

Now scroll north.

Uh huh.

What do you see?

You see that The Palace is only the westernmost bar in the continental United States if the entire southern Oregon Coast and the town of Forks, Washington suddenly reinstated Prohibition without telling anyone.

Trust me, they have not. Bandon, Brookings, Port Orford — not only do they possess bars, they possess some of the hard-drinkingest bar patrons you’ll find anywhere. Show them some respect.

(Hank Sims, LostCoastOutpost.com)

TED CRUZ WAS RIGHT: Babies are super racist. A Supreme Court nominee should know that. 

by Rex Huppke

During the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, one senator had the guts to ask the question on every American’s mind.

While grilling Jackson on critical race theory Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz described a children’s book called "Antiracist Baby." He turned his steely gaze to Jackson and asked the Harvard-educated veteran jurist if she believes "that babies are racist."

Some viewers wondered why a man who looks like he rubbed honey on his face then rolled on the floor of a barbershop would pose such a question. In fact, the collective eye roll was so intense the Earth briefly tilted off its axis.

But I stood and cheered the bold senator from Texas/Cancun. He was speaking truth to power and addressing an issue few Americans have ever been willing to face: Babies are incredibly racist. 

Extreme infant racism is common

I don’t mean just a little racist. I’m talking full-on, fontanel-having, seething bundles of hatred and racial animus. Swaddled little monsters is what they are.

I can already hear the cries of the baby apologists.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous. They’re so cute!” 

“Not possible, they’ve only been alive a few months!”

Let me ask you this. When is the last time you heard a baby denounce racism? Hmmm?

Never. They’re silent on the issue.

If babies aren’t racist, and if a clearly intelligent and serious U.S. senator is out there floating a possible epidemic of infant racism, don’t you think babies themselves would stand up, immediately fall down and then assure everyone they don’t have a racist bone in their soft and pliable bodies?

That’s Crisis Management 101, folks.

Babies hate everyone

No, these suckers are coming out of the womb hating everyone who doesn’t look like them.

Think about it. You often find them wrapped in white sheets. (Coo Cluck Klan?) And if you introduce a white baby to a person of color and then that person leaves the room, the baby acts as though that person no longer exists. Same happens if it’s a Black baby meeting a white person.

Some say: “Well, that’s called object permanence, or the idea that people continue to exist when you don’t see or hear them. Babies don’t develop that until they’re around eight months old.”

To which I say: “That’s called a lame attempt to use science to excuse blatant baby racism, and you should be ashamed of your adult self.”

The undeniable reality of widespread, virulent racism among recently born humans is why it was so important that Cruz took precious moments of his and our lives and devoted that time – time none of us will ever get back – to ask a brilliant and widely respected judge about a 24-page, brightly colored children’s book.

Are kid books denying baby racism?

The existence of a book called “Antiracist Baby” suggests it’s possible for a baby to not be racist. But as I’ve proved so eloquently here, all babies are definitely racist. So how can we allow someone on the Supreme Court if she doesn’t recognize “Antiracist Baby” as insidious baby-washing propaganda?

As this confirmation hearing continues, I hope Cruz and other sharp Republican senators will continue this important line of questioning.

Are babies also racist against Whos, and does the book “Horton Hears a Who!” attempt to gloss over hostile infant Who hatred? Is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” an allegory for the supremacy of one particular race over all others?

Yes on both counts, probably.

It’s high time someone in this country had the courage to call out the vile, Machiavellian babies who have transformed our day cares into playpens of hate.

Before Judge Jackson is confirmed, she must meet what I’ll call “the Cruz requirement.” She must stand up, face the American people and honestly declare: “YES! All babies are racist! Thank you for asking such an important question. Did you all arrive in the same clown car or drive separately?” 

(USAtoday.com)

THE MARRIAGE OF JULIAN ASSANGE

I was in London as a guest of Julian Assange and Stella Moris for their wedding, but even on that day the authorities continued their relentless campaign of cruelty against Julian.

by Chris Hedges

LONDON — I am standing at the gates of HM Prison Belmarsh, a high security penitentiary in southeast London, with Craig Murray, who was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was fired for exposing the CIA black sites and torture centers in that country. Inside the prison, Julian Assange and Stella Moris are being married. Craig and I were on the list of the six guests invited to the wedding, but the prison authorities, in an example of the institutional sadism that characterizes all prisons, denied us entry. Craig, who was to have been one of two witnesses, was informed that he could not enter because he would “endanger the security of the prison.”

Craig came down from Edinburgh by train. I flew over from New York. We would at least be at the entrance of the prison with the some 150 Assange supporters. Craig, dressed in full Scottish regalia —and a kilt he admitted he had to have to expanded every few years with to accommodate his broadening girth — made a fashion statement and perhaps a point about Scottish independence. He was outdone by Stella, who wore a flowing ice lilac A-line bridal gown, corset with plastic stays so she could pass through the four metal detectors, and veil designed and donated by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler.

“It’s a part of the ongoing mental torture that even on his happiest day they will at the last moment strike off guests on his guest list just to mess him about, just to try and make things as unpleasant as they can possibly make them,” Craig laments. “We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a piece of the unnecessary cruelty with which he has been kept from the start. Why on earth is he even in a maximum security prison built to house terrorists? I’m quite amused by the explanation that I endanger the security of the prison. I feel quite flattered by this. I couldn’t understand it all until today when, of course, it occurred to me that I look incredibly sexy in my kilt and they thought a prison riot might ensue.”

The day is bittersweet. Julian may never be able to live with his wife and family. Yet it is an affirmation of love and commitment and hope carried out in a small side room with folding chairs and a laminate table. The prison authorities denied Julian and Stella the use of the chapel. The ceremony was witnessed by six family members, including Julian and Stella’s two young sons, one of whom fell asleep and the other of whom was preoccupied with a paper plane and tried to turn on one of the alarms. Two guards were stationed in the room.

There was no reception. There was no cake. The prison denied Julian and Stella’s request for a photographer. A guard took a few pictures, but prison authorities told Julian and Stella they could not be posted on social media or shared with the public. They were allowed to kiss. This prompted the older boy, Gabriel, to say, the family told me, “Oh, that’s a sloppy one.” Afterwards, the Catholic chaplain, who had the foresight to bring a white tablecloth and candles, gave them his blessing. Julian and Stella were given half an hour together in a crowded visitors hall. And then Julian, prisoner A 9379AY, was escorted back to his cell to the applause of the prisoners on his tier.

“It was an act of defiance,” Stella tells me later of the wedding. “You can tell by how much they fear it.”

The campaign to dehumanize Julian, who honored his Scottish roots wearing a purple and beige kilt, along with a purple tie and waistcoat, also donated and designed by Westwood and Kronthaler, extends to his wedding day. No doubt one of the reasons Craig, whose coverage of the court proceedings for Julian have been dogged and brilliant, and I were not at the wedding is because the prison authorities did not want us to write about the wedding, which they should have known we would do whether we were in the prison or not.

“They have viciousness,” Craig says. “They have the ability to employ the violence of the state. They have arbitrary power they can use to take cruel and nasty decisions for the sake of it, just to show that they can, but we, on our side, have peace and love and truth. Those values, at the end of the day, are far more important.”

Julian is targeted because his organization WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes—including images seen in the Collateral Murder video of the gunning down two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians. He is targeted because he exposed the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to USU.S. checkpoints.

He is targeted because he made public the hacking tools used by the CIA known as Vault 7. Vault 7 exposed that the CIA is able to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.

He is targeted because he documented the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 to and 89, at Guantánamo.

He is targeted because he showed us that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK, spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal US surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He is targeted because he exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime.

He is targeted because he released documents that revealed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb, and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians.

He is targeted because he made public the $ 657,000 paid to Hillary Clinton by Goldman Sachs to give talks and her private assurances to corporate leaders that she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform.

He is targeted because he revealed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party.

For these truths alone he is guilty.

The Biden administration is determined to extradite Julian and charge him with 17 counts of the Espionage Act and one count of hacking into a government computer, which would send him to prison for 175 years.

I sat through some of the court proceedings in London. It was a judicial farce, especially since the Spanish security firm UC Global at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian had taken refuge for seven years, recorded all of Julian’s conversations with his attorneys and turned them over to the CIA. That fact alone should invalidate the trial. But there is also the bald fact that Julian never committed a crime.

Julian is not a US citizen. WikiLeaks is not a US-based publication. And yet he is charged, under the US Espionage Act, with treason. It is judicial pantomime, a show trial where the rule of law is sabotaged by barristers in horsehair wigs and grand inquisitors such as Gordon Kromberg, the Assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who handles high profile terrorism and national security cases. Kromberg has open contempt for Muslims, Islam and anyone who defies the state. He has denounced what he calls "the Islamization of the American justice system.”

Kromberg oversaw the nine year persecution of the Palestinian activist and academic Dr. Sami Al-Arian and at one point refused his request to postpone a court date during the religious holiday of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can't do is eat before sunset," Kromberg said in a 2006 conversation, according to an affidavit filed by one of Arian's attorneys, Jack Fernandez. Kromberg criticized Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst who was sentenced to 45 months in prison for leaking information about the indiscriminate killings of civilians by drones, saying Hale had not contributed to public debate, but had “endanger[ed] the people doing the fight.” He ordered Chelsea Manning jailed after she refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning attempted to commit suicide in March 2020 while being held in a Virginia jail.

The perversion of the law for all of us who follow Julian’s case is chilling. It presages the rise of a global corporate totalitarianism, one where the law is a tool not of justice but oppression.

The US successfully won an appeal of a lower British court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange because his psychological fragility makes him a suicide risk and the conditions under which he would be held in the American prison system awaiting trial are inhumane.

Julian appealed in an effort to reinstate the original ruling. His appeal was denied. The British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, will rule soon on whether he will be extradited. If she decides to extradite Julian, he can go back to the lower court to appeal the points on which he was found guilty. If the High Court rules in his favor, the US can appeal that decision to the Supreme Court. This legal dance will probably take a year. If the High Court rejects Julian’s appeal he could be extradited within weeks.

Julian’s has been observed pacing his cell obsessively, punching himself in the face, banging his head against the wall, repeatedly calling the Samaritan hotline because he was thinking about committing suicide “hundreds of times a day” and hallucinating. A razor was found under his socks. He told Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, who brought in UN doctors to examine Julian, that if he was extradited, he would kill himself. He suffered a stroke during his trial last October. He is on antidepressants, anti-stroke medication and the antipsychotic Quetiapine. He is gaunt, his posture is poor and his color ashen. He has spent months in the prison’s medical wing. Julian, as Melzer concluded in his UN report, is being methodically and systematically tortured. The goal of the US and UK governments is to turn Julian’s psychological and perhaps physical obliteration into a chilling warning to anyone who might also attempt to shine a light on the inner workings of power.

I like and admire Julian. He is intellectually curious, incredibly courageous, funny and, at least when I was with him in the Ecuadorian Embassy, charmingly boyish. He could have easily used his precocious computer skills to make a very comfortable life for himself working for high finance or national security agencies. He chose instead to use those skills for the public in the service of the truth. He provided the most important body of information of our generation about the war crimes, lies, corruption and cynicism that defines the ruling elites. This information ripped back the veil on the centers of power around the globe, sparking movements and popular protests from Tunisia to Haiti.

If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information, under the Espionage Act. The inner workings of power will be shrouded in darkness, with very ominous consequences for press freedom and democracy.

It is night. I am in Stella’s house with the wedding party, her mother, her brother, Julian’s father and Julian’s brother, as well as Julian and Stella’s two young boys.

“He has been disappeared,” Stella says softly. “The only pictures that have emerged of him since 2019 have been illegally taken in the courtroom, everything else has been court illustrations and pictures from the prison van from 2019.”

“Walking out was really jarring,” she adds.

Stella and Julian spent years trying to get married. They first asked the Ecuadorian Ambassador to marry them, but Julian was not an Ecuadorian citizen. Once Julian was granted Ecuadorian citizenship the new government in Quito had become hostile. Stella and Julian began to lobby the prison for the right to marry in 2020, but the prison authorities did not respond to their requests until they threatened a lawsuit.

Stella brings down her satin wedding dress with its three-quarter sleeves and her veil to let us examine it. On the inside flap of the dress Vivienne Westwood has written: “To me, Vivienne, Julian is a pure soul and a freedom fighter. All my love to the family, Julian, Stella, Max and Gabriel. May the holy life force bless your marriage.” The veil has embroidered into it words from family and friends. Julian chose “Enduring Love.” Ardent. Boundless. Joyous. Resilient. Incandescent. Wild. Valiant. Resolute. Tender. Stubborn. Tumultuous. Patient. Yearning. Fearless. Eternal.

“For their love to have grown and flourished in these dire circumstances of ceaseless persecution and psychological torture,” John Shipton, Julian’s father tells me. “Love transcends the circumstances.”

He turns towards his two young grandchildren.

“You can see it produced two lovely, joyful children,” he says.

It is late. Stella cuts her wedding cake on the wooden kitchen table. The top tier is lemon. The bottom is raspberry. We eat silently.

Pray for Julian. Pray for Stella. Pray for their children. Pray for us all.

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