Smoky Breeze | Covelo Cleanup | Assistant Coach | Pomo Family | Candidate Forum | Wheel Soak | Groundwater Regulation | Philo Desert | JDSF Rally | Mail Wait | Adventist Education | Sorting Mail | Ed Notes | Flower Delivery | Bostrodamus | Yesterday's Catch | Tanbark Wagons | Ukraine | Investment Advice | Cemetery Musing | Clement Butler | Unequal Application | Beach House | Corporate State | Cloverdale 1905 | Hair Fire | Broad Street | Bugphobia | Maraca Player | Delta Tunnel | Railroad Tunnel | Lulu LaFrame | Disgusting Man | Marco Radio | 1870 Buggy | September Song | Fishing Minister
LOCALLY BREEZY CONDITIONS will be accompanied by areas of smoke mixed with hazy sunshine this weekend. Coastal clouds and fog will return heading into the work week, while hot and dry conditions continue inland. (NWS)
SUPERVISOR HASCHAK: Free Dumps Days in Covelo has been wildly successful. Volunteers cleaning up creek beds, Round Valley Indian Tribes clearing illegal dump sites, people being very patient and helping others get stuff to the transfer station. Thank you to CalTrans, Solid Waste of Willits, RVIT, RVAMAC, and Mendocino County. Each day has been like this!
AV UNIFIED COACHING OPPORTUNITY
Assistant Football Coach Needed
John Toohey is seeking an Assistant Football Coach! We can get you cleared to volunteer including paying for the fingerprinting clearance. This is an exciting opportunity to help rebuild a program filled with history and pride.
We need you! Contact John Toohey at jtoohey@avpanthers.org
Sincerely yours,
Louise Simson, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District, Cell: 707-684-1017
THE CANDIDATES!
Health District candidates forum September 21
To bring the candidates into focus before the November 7 elections, Mendocinotv.com is hosting a livecast forum with the Mendocino Coast Health Care District citizens who are vying for your votes. September 21 @ 2pm Skip Taube will interview Lee Finley, Paul Katzeff, John Redding, Dawnmarie Risley-Childs, Susan Savage and Jade Tippet.
Plus there will be a select studio audience primed to quiz the candidates and educate the electorate. An online chat connection will allow queries from the broader internet audience. The forum will be posted for free viewing on Mendocinotv.com.
Sponsors are sought to offset the costs of this volunteer citizens journalism and reporting. If you can help with a donation of $100, credit will be gratefully given to your business or cause during the forum.
Thank you and remember: Vote like your life depended on it—because these are our health care, tax funded, representatives who will guide the district for us for many years.
Skip Taube, 937-1437, POB 1833, Mendocino 95460
GROUNDWATER REGULATION
To The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors:
The Board of Supervisors submitted an ordinance to regulate the sale and transport of groundwater from private wells in Mendocino County. The key factor of this ordinance is a hydrologic well test. The key factor of this test is called the THEIS calculation. Using the data collected during the course of the THEIS test and then running it through the THEIS calculation we get very accurate graphs of the radius of influence for the tested well at various pumping rates. This means the county can stop a potential problem of overdrafting! This will protect the county from future litigation like what happened in Sonoma County in 2021.
If the Board of Supervisors allows existing water sellers to continue pumping and selling without having met the same requirements as new permittees, then they will have failed to comply with their duties as ministers of the public trust.
From permitsonoma.org, August 9, 2022:
Sonoma County puts forward an amendment to their well drilling ordinance #25B from July 2015. The new ordinance number 25B-4 titled “To Mitigate Public Trust Resources Liability” will be voted on in 2023. To cover additional costs they will add at-cost fees to well permits deemed to have potential public trust involvement.
Today: We have the science available and must use it to make informed decisions about our groundwater. Every commercial well must have a full hydrologic test!
Robbie Wyre
Round Valley County Water District
Covelo
PS. A brief history of groundwater protection laws in Northern California:
1977. There was a serious drought. Butte, Sierra and Glenn Counties passed groundwater protection ordinances.
1980. Some groundwater ordinances in Inyo and Nevada counties were struck down. This caused other counties which were thinking of passing groundwater protection regulation to hold off!
1994. Baldwin versus Tehama. Tehama Aquifer Protection Chapter 9.40.20. Mining of groundwater prohibited. 9.40.30, permit required for extraction of groundwater for off-parcel use. This ordinance was upheld by the California Supreme Court!
2002. 22 of the 58 California counties passed groundwater protection ordinances!
2014. The state passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. This Act emphasized local groundwater management. It required state agencies to help local entities manage groundwater basins.
2018. An environmental group sued the State Board of Water Resources Control. Third District Appellate Court confirmed the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater if the extraction adversely impacts navigable waterways. The court also ruled that the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act did not excuse the county and the State Water Resources Control Board from their obligation to consider the public trust doctrine.
2021, July 1. California Coastkeepers alliance sues Sonoma County. This lawsuit alleged Sonoma County did not consider public trust resources in issuing 404 well permits between August 2018 and August of 2020. The suit also alleged through public records that Sonoma County knew that wells were overdrafting the Russian River. Records show the county's knowledge of overdraft as early as 2015.
MARSHALL NEWMAN: Laughed at this bit of marketing. This souvenir sticker from Walmart seriously missed the mark portraying Philo.
CAL FIRE RENEGES ON LOGGING PROMISE: Activists Warn Response of Protests, Civil Disobedience
Rally in Jackson Forest Scheduled for Sunday Aug. 28
Contact: Matt Simmons, EPIC, matt@wildcalifornia.org, 310 666 8912
FORT BRAGG, Calif.—CalFire announced today that logging would resume in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Mendocino County, previously put on “pause” while negotiations with local tribal nations were underway. CalFire made this announcement without informing the tribes that they have been at the table with for six months.
Michael Hunter, chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, said he was “shocked” by the news and raised doubts about the whole effort. “The State did not even bother to notify The Tribe beforehand. The State wants to continue logging our Pomo Homeland—the Jackson Demonstration State Forest—while negotiating a co-management agreement with the Coyote Valley Tribe. This makes me question the State’s seriousness about Co-Managing ancestral lands. The State still does not understand that there is a difference between Co-Management and tribal consultation. Tribes must not be relegated to an advisory role in managing their ancestral lands. For co-management to succeed, it must be a government to government relationship that creates equal decision making powers. I worry that the State does not understand the importance of the words they are using. We must ensure that co-management creates an equal relationship between the State and the Tribes with equal decision making authority.”
CalFire plans to resume logging four controversial Timber Harvest Plans (THPs) that were halted by protests last year. These THPs were written without community or tribal involvement and directly threaten large second growth coastal redwoods and tribal Sacred Sites. Instead of listening to the community, CalFire has unilaterally made slight adjustments to the plan and is restarting operations.
“CalFire appears intent on burning bridges,” said Matt Simmons, staff attorney at the Environmental Protection Information Center. “The ‘pause’ in operations made community input and tribal negotiations possible. Now, any progress or goodwill has been shattered. We call on CalFire not to resume logging until they have a new Management Plan.”
“Redwood forests have amazing climate mitigation potential and management needs to maximize that potential.” said Sara Rose, a youth activist with Mendocino County Youth for Climate. “My generation will have to live with what the planet becomes if we don’t save it. We have to face the reality of Climate Change.”
Resuming operations also calls into question the new “vision” outlined by CalFire released on August 19th, which among other things, promised tribal co-management of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest. That CalFire is considering a new vision at all is the direct result of more than two years of tireless advocacy by a broad community that was appalled by the way the State was managing this forest. Until they were stopped by forest defenders, CalFire was authoring timber harvest plans (THPs) that engaged in climate change denial, logged some of the largest trees in the forest, and damaged Native American Sacred Sites. Many of the changes discussed in CalFire’s vision sound good in theory. The Coalition was initially encouraged that CalFire is discussing co-management and the fact that the forest will no longer be funded entirely by timber sales. However, the announced resumption of logging calls into question whether or not these promises can be successfully implemented and whether co-management would be pursued in good faith.
On Sunday August 28th, from 1-4pm the Mendocino County Youth for Climate are holding a rally at the Caspar Scales in JDSF. The Coalition encourages members of the public who support changing the forest’s mandate and want logging to remain paused to make their voices heard there.
Background:
The Jackson Demonstration State Forest has been operating under the same state law since 1947. This law requires Jackson to produce timber and sees the forest as little more than an economic resource. This law was written at a time when the values of thepeople of California were completely different than they are today. In 1947, the State did not recognize tribal sovereignty, was not concerned with biodiversity loss, and did not understand the risks of climate change. These different values have led to the unacceptable practices that sparked the movement to Save Jackson and are on display in CalFire’s decision to resume logging.
To take one shocking example, since at least 1999, CalFire has known that its road management activities were destroying Sacred Sites belonging to Northern Pomo and Coast Yuki Peoples. Cal Fire’s own archeological report stated that because of certain activities within the forest including timber harvest, road maintenance, and recreation “the prehistoric archeological record of JDSF is gradually but inexorably being depleted.”
The report specifically called for road maintenance activities to halt in the vicinity of known sacred sites until a road maintenance/archaeological site protection plan could be implemented.
The report also warned that there were likely many additional undiscovered sites that were threatened by additional timber activities. To date, Calfire has never developed a road maintenance/archeological site protection plan, – rather they continue to propose further road construction that runs straight through ancestral sacred sites. This is completely out of step with Governor Newsom’s September 25, 2020 Statement of Administration policy which states it is the policy of the State to “[f]acilitate the access of California Native Americans to sacred sites and cultural resources” located on State held lands.
CalFire has also regularly logged some of the largest trees in the Jackson forest. If not for the actions of community protestors, CalFire would have allowed a timber company to cut down a nearly 200-year old coast redwood that was 77 inches diameter at breast height. Coast redwoods like those found in Jackson sequester and store more carbon than any other forest type on the planet. When they are logged, the vast majority of their carbon is released to the atmosphere, directly fueling climate change. In timber harvest plans for the Jackson, CalFire has questioned human’s contributions to climate change, writing, “exactly how and to what extent human activity plays a role in global climate change appears to be unknown.”
The Coalition wants to transform Jackson into a Forest for the 21st Century. A place where management is primarily focused on tribal inclusion and co-management, forest and watershed restoration, carbon sequestration and climate resilience, biodiversity conservation and scientific research, all while providing equitable access to nature for the over 10 million Californians who live within 3.5 hours of Jackson. These are all management objectives California desperately needs demonstrated today, not commercial logging. If CalFire and the Jackson Advisory Group are serious about this new vision, then the Coalition encourages them to support legislation that will change Jackson's mandate. In the 21st century, our State Forests should no longer be treated as commercial timberlands with a mandate to maximize production of timber. Instead, we should be prioritizing tribal sovereignty, climate resilience and access to nature.
* * *
Logging To Resume In Jackson
CalFire announced Thursday that logging would resume in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Mendocino County, previously put on “pause” while negotiations with local tribal nations were underway. CalFire made this announcement without informing the tribes that they have been at the table with for six months. Email Action! Use this link to send emails to 7 officials https://epic.salsalabs.org/actionalertshamecalfirestoploggingjdsf/index.html
Read the Coalition press release here: https://tinyurl.com/Aug25SJPR Join us this Sunday 8/28 1-4pm to make your voice heard. We need a big turn out!! Spread the word!! Youth-Led Rally for Forest Protection <https://www.facebook.com/surjmendocoast/posts/pfbid02oNwtynu3caxRwin2B2xcTMuQqUeHqXmmzZK3uAjFrgJLQ2eBFwRWuynfE1dDYnVwl>Sun August 28th 1:00-4:00pm at Caspar Scales Kiosk (from Hwy 1- east on Fern Creek Rd. then right on Caspar Orchard Road, follow to dirt parking lot) Music Speaks and more information. MORE RALLIES! Mon Aug 29th 4pm Fort Bragg Town Hall march to Cal Fire office Tues Aug 30th 11am-1pm 715 P STREET, SACRAMENTO at CA Natural Resources Agency 1:30pm - 4:30pm Legislative Walk at the Capitol
TRUE ZONES, NOT BLUE ZONES
Open Letter to Ukiah Unified Superintendent Deb Kubin sent on 8/11/22
Dear Superintendent Kubin,
I hope you’ve had a pleasant and restful summer and are, like me, excited about starting the new school year. At Scott Paulin’s suggestion I’m writing to express my concern about the new and according to Scott unprecedented partnership between the UUSD and a sectarian religious organization, Adventist Health, whose stated mission is “Living God’s love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope.” I believe this partnership may violate federal law.
As you know, Scott and I had several conversations about this issue at the end of last school year; I’m cc’ing Scott, all my UISA colleagues and Kris Swett, principal of South Valley, on this letter in the hope that we can have an open discussion about this critical issue that affects all of our students, their families and school staff.
Last spring Scott informed me that teachers at UISA and South Valley are entering a new collaboration with Adventist staff on student activities which promote health and fitness. Adventist employees are offering copies of the book The Blue Zones Solution to staff and students involved in this partnership. This book promotes the Seventh Day Adventist Church and no other specific church or religious sect, and for that reason it is not appropriate for use in a public school classroom or instructional setting. The book also rests on claims that have been debunked by reputable scientists.
Here are my main concerns about this book and why I believe disseminating it among public school staff and students in a school setting violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment:
● In the chapter about Okinawa, the author notes briefly that one resident regularly says a Confucian adage, 'Hara hachi bu,' before eating, but he never ascribes Okinawans' health to adherence to Confucian philosophy. Why is a section in the same chapter headed 'Top Longevity Foods from Okinawa' and not ‘Top Confucian Foods,’ as in the chapter on Loma Linda, where the similar section is titled, 'Top Adventist Longevity Foods.' The Loma Linda chapter has a section with the heading 'God's Food Guidelines' and another headed 'Typical Daily Diet of the Seventh-Day Adventists.' Why is the Loma Linda chapter the only one that mentions any specific church and the only chapter that focuses on religion?
● Almost all people who live in Sardinia and Nicoya (locations of two other so-called Blue Zones) identify as Catholic, yet the author doesn't state that Catholicism is a major factor in their health; there are no sections titled 'Top Catholic Longevity Foods' or 'Typical Daily Diet of Catholics.' Interestingly the author says that with the help of researchers and demographers “we concluded that the Nicoyans' secret lies partly in their strong faith community” (73) but the name of their church is never mentioned. Again, why does this author omit all references to specific churches except for the Seventh Day Adventist Church?
● Buettner lists “Community” as one of his Power Nine (p 21), or nine habits and practices common to all five so-called Blue Zones. The word 'Community' is in boldface; the text that follows reveals that by 'community' the author only means “faith-based community,'' strongly implying that faith-based communities are the only genuine ones or at least the only ones that confer health benefits. Not surprisingly, the author provides no evidence to support this specious implied claim.
In addition to these distortions which promote the Seventh Day Adventist Church above all other religious denominations and religious groups over secular ones, the book’s major claims are dubious and have been refuted by medical and science professionals:
● Oxford University demographer and geneticist Saul Newman studied the claims related to so-called Blue Zones and concluded “Blue Zones were rife with fraud, error and logical inconsistency.” Newman’s research notes, for example, that Okinawa “ranks first in the nation for obesity and unemployment, second for beer consumption and number of households living on welfare, and last for consumption per capita of fruit and vegetables.” (https://www.smh.com.au/national/dr-saul-newman-has-a-big-idea-it-might-change-ho w-we-think-about-ageing-20210316-p57b32.html)
● Regarding the longevity claims, Newman states “Blue Zones are full of people either getting their age wrong – or lying about it.” He notes that “when you look at the birthdates of people aged 100 or more, they tend to cluster on the first day of the month – as though someone is simply writing in their age on a form.” Newman suggests early eligibility for a pension as a likely motive for a person to misrepresent their age.
● Physician Harriet Hall writes, “The Blue Zone Diet assumes that common dietary factors have been identified and that following the diet will make us live longer. That appears to be a false assumption based on speculation, misinformation, and wishful thinking, not on science.” (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blue-zones-diet-speculation-based-on-misinformati on/)
● Hall notes, “Loma Linda has a longer-than-average lifespan. This has been attributed to the large population of Seventh Day Adventists with a healthy lifestyle, but it might just be due to the fact that people who are richer tend to live longer. Similar longevity might be found in other well-to-do locations. There have been no good studies to rule out possible confounders.”
● In his 2018 study, Newman notes that “In France, Japan and Britain the best predictor of extreme age records was poverty.” (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2) He argues that attributing longevity in Loma Linda, California, and elsewhere to other factors is misleading at best: “They had the entire US to pick from and they picked one town; if we did the equivalent in London, and went to the rich part of London, I would expect the average life expectancy to be 10 years higher than what it is in Loma Linda.”
● Newman says the problem with claims of longevity arising from a particular region was leading to “wasted research” and “he wonders whether these are just ways to sell diets.” Sardinians themselves understand that claiming special status regarding longevity is a potent “marketing vehicle.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/world/europe/italy-sardinia-perdasdefogu-seulo- longevity.html)
At a time when six members of the U.S. Supreme Court appear determined to impose the Catholic doctrine of their upbringings on a vast, diverse, democratic nation contrary to its wishes, I urge you to stand firmly on the side of our students and their constitutional rights.
Some have claimed that so-called Blue Zones workers are not employed by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. That is obviously false (simply google ‘Who owns Adventist Health, LLC?’). Some have also argued that there is no cause for concern because these workers may not even be members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. That fact is not material. All Blue Zones workers must commit to fulfilling the mission of the Church as is required of all Adventist Health employees. All Adventist Hospital employees, for example, “are expected to be familiar with and to ‘dedicate their service’ to the Hospital’s Mission and conform their conduct to that Mission.” (https://www.sidley.com/~/media/files/experience/in-the-matter-of-ukiah-valley-medical-center-an d__/extensioncerepexperiencedocument1/ukiah_and_cna_before_nlrb.pdf)
According to lawyer and Seventh Day Adventist minister Alan Reinach:
The principal function of any Adventist Hospital [is to] fulfill the Healing Ministry of Jesus Christ, which is very much both a Healing Ministry to the body and to the spirit as well. We have a belief in the holistic nature of man, and you cannot separate the secular and the spiritual. The [UVMC] hospital is absolutely central and essential to the evangelistic work of the Church. ... The Hospital views itself as ‘a continuation of the healing ministry of Christ.” [emphasis mine]
It’s safe to assume that the Seventh Day Adventist Church’s acquisition of Blue Zones, LLC, last year for $78 million was likewise intended to further that mission.
When the UUSD promotes ‘Blue Zones’ in any way with posters and other advertisements, it is prima facie engaging in promoting a particular religion.
It will be difficult, for example, to defend the idea that a school district which distributes literature describing the five healthiest places in the world but credits only one church by name– which happens to be the church that owns Adventist Health, the provider of the literature– is not promoting that religion in violation of the establishment clause.
So many Ukiah educators care deeply about health and fitness and devote our passion and energy to helping our students learn about these important topics. Our efforts should not be directed at improving the reputation of a controversial church-owned healthcare corporation.
I would like to know what steps you and school site administrators are taking to ensure that our school district is not sanctioning the promotion of a particular religion in violation of the First Amendment. I hope you will share this information with us and join us in this important conversation.
Sincerely,
Andrew Lutsky
Ukiah
PS. Superintendent Kubin sent a short reply on 8/17/22 in which she stated “this program does not promote any religion nor does it act to coerce children into the practice of any religion.”
I sent the following response to her on 8/19/22:
Deb, thank you for the reply. Since you did not address any of my specific concerns I will continue to voice those concerns to UUSD stakeholders until it is clear to me that you are not sanctioning a partnership that violates the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Some immediate questions are:
● Will Adventist Health employees (aka ‘Blue Zone workers’) and/or UUSD staff be distributing the book Blue Zones Solutions to UUSD students or families?
● Will Adventist Health employees or UUSD staff be distributing any other literature related to so-called Blue Zones or Adventist Health or the Seventh Day Adventist Church to UUSD students or families?
● Will the UUSD administration notify Adventist Health employees that, contrary to the commitment they have made to their employer, they are not permitted to mention, discuss, or promote in any way Adventist Health’s mission with UUSD students and families before they have any contact with those students and families?
● Will the UUSD administration notify all relevant UUSD staff that, while the administration has chosen to partner with a church-owned organization, that decision does not change the fact that UUSD staff may not promote a particular religion, the practice of a particular religion or religion in general because doing so violates federal law?
● How will the UUSD administration verify that Adventist Health employees and/or UUSD staff are not promoting a particular religion, the practice of a particular religion or religion in general in violation of federal law?
I hope you will share the answers to these questions with our community right away. UISA and South Valley staff in particular have a right to know whether their efforts to promote health and wellness through this partnership may implicate them in civil rights violations.
I have received many positive responses to my open letter from my UISA colleagues and from concerned community members, and I am grateful for those supportive comments. I pledge to continue voicing my concerns at every opportunity until it is clear that UUSD teachers and school staff are not spreading Seventh Day Adventist church propaganda or are in any way involved in violating the First Amendment rights of our students. Most of us do not believe that those rights ought to be jeopardized in exchange for the opportunity to receive free water bottles or similar items.
I hope you will share with us the specific measures the UUSD administration intends to take to safeguard our students’ First Amendment rights as you embark on this unprecedented and controversial new program. If you cannot do so I hope you will reconsider your approval of this potentially illegal partnership.
In solidarity, Andrew Lutsky
ED NOTES
THE NATIONAL DESK, and who could be less qualified than me to intelligently comment on Trump subjects? But gol durn it, I'm a citizen and have every right etc and etc. From here, I'd say the obvious, that The Libs can't sic the federal apparatus — 13 “intelligence” agencies? — on the orange whale, thus compromising for the million-ith time their purely self-alleged neutrality, while simultaneously ignoring Hillary's e-mails and Hunter's laptop. The FBI was formed as a political police force and has always operated as one, and all these police bureaucracies consider Trump beyond acceptable, way, way, way outside the American consensus as determined by Lib, Lab and Westside Ukiah.
LOCALLY, the FBI was here during the 1990s to monitor Earth First!, operating out of 106 W. Standley in Ukiah in a decrepit building owned by former supervisor John McCowen. Do you have proof of that? Not without pounding you into begging me to stop me as I launch into my 5000-word circumstantial case, but given that the Hoovers were caught in the act trying to frame Dave Foreman of EF! down in Arizona in the same late 80's early 90's period, and given that Earth First! was a major presence in Mendo at the same time while recommending industrial sabotage, a federal crime, of course the FBI was here, as were its local snitches.
And given that the FBI claimed they were baffled by the car bombing of Earth First!’s Judi Bari, even going so far as to claim “Case closed because no one will talk to us” when they clearly knew who was involved, and given that both Bari and her ex-husband maintained their offices at 106 Standley, I'd have to suppose the feds didn't arrest Mike Sweeney because he was one of theirs all the way back to his youth as a Stanford Maoist. “Arrest me?” I can just hear the little psycho indignantly daring the feds. “Arrest me and I'll tell the world everything you were doing up here in our rural paradise.” And so he gets a free pass to blow up his ex-wife.
ANYWAY, for the five of you who keep track of these futile things, Sweeney easily reinvented himself as a solid citizen of the Westside liberal type and, fully vetted as a Shoemaker-Mastin sanctioned Mendo Democrat, was soon in a cush public job as head of Mendocino County's trash bureaucracy. Sweeney has since emigrated to New Zealand where he's freshly married, having abandoned Glenda Anderson, reporter, whom he'd used for years as his chief local propagandist. Oddest guy ever in Mendo, which is a mouthful given Jim Jones, the Manson Family, Leonard Lake, Kenneth Parnell, and a platoon of lesser known maniacs, all of them, including Sweeney, a perfect fit in a county where you are whatever you say you are, and history starts all over again every day.
PS. Prior to the FBI doing their thing with Earth First!, they were caught doing a number on the Black Panthers, MLK, any number of anti-Vietnam War opponents, then Sandinista supporters, CISPES — anybody effectively critical of official American policy. Now the FBI is busily going after fat Trumper camo guys who beer-bullshit about taking down the government.
THE MORE CREDULOUS libs think the federal police apparatus is a network of conservatives unto fascist, but it's a liberal network in the Democratic Party sense of “liberal,” hence its relentless dirty tricks in pursuit of Trump, which continues to work to Trump's political advantage.
BILL MAHER HAS IT RIGHT: he, a liberal of the better type, said the other night that there was a “conspiracy” to get rid of' ex-president Donald Trump that involved suppressing the New York Post's infamous Hunter Biden laptop story. In October 2020, the New York Post published a highly scrutinized article alleging that Hunter's laptop had been recovered by the FBI. The contents of the computer apparently contains information showing that President Joe Biden's son was attempting to sell the influence of his father. “My friend Sam Harris was on a podcast…they were talking about Hunter Biden's laptop, which was a story and now all the mainstream press has finally admitted it was a real story, it was a real laptop — now look, let's not pussyfoot around this, he was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden. I mean, most political sons do. … Hunter Biden's laptop was buried by the press, even the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said that was a mistake. They buried the story because they remembered what happened with James Comey and the letter eleven days before the 2016 election. Sam Harris says it was appropriate for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the heads of journalistic organizations to feel that they were in the presence of something that is a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency, meaning Trump. So, he's saying it's okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of somebody as bad as Trump.”
ABAJO, ABAJO!
Editor,
Elizabeth Kohlbert writes for the New Yorker that the reason for unanimous voting by Republicans is money. Caused by the Citizens United decision. Are there any old codgers around who remember Stanton Delaplane in Mexico talking about holding two fingers close together which indicates the “little now,” or Art Hoppe and his “Ayatollah U” t-shirts, or “our famous correspondent,” Charles McCabe in “QED.” When Falk, Anderson and Bosco drop to their knees in prayer at bed time they always give a shout out to A.J. Liebling — “Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.” Would anyone on the AVA list of contributors like to write a letter to the editor of the Press Democrat, Richard Green, and ask them Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson thought about the Pelosi trip to Taiwan? That is #12 on my list of this poor decisions he has made since he started as editor. He should be sent to Hales Grove to learn which news stories to run. You pick up the phone and asked Hoffman and Thompson directly. If they don't have an answer for the question, that's the story. Seeing the story about the Gualala library in the Press Democrat reminded me that that's where I started my trip to try to collect enough money to buy Charles Peterson's subscription to the Advertiser. He claimed that he never read the AVA. I made about five stops until I got to Elk. I collected zero money. Bruce Anderson wasn't as popular then as he is now. He has cooled down his Marxist rhetoric somewhat.
Ralph Bostrom
Willits
PS. When I write to the AVA I often wondered if anyone is interested? One? Three? Nine? Marques does correct my spelling errors for free. I wrote about listening to classical music on Google streaming. There may not be an AVA reader who listens to that style of music. But anyhow I've found that switching from WQXR New York to do WRTI to KQAC Portland to classic KING in Seattle when I hear something I don't want to listen to it only takes a minute.
Every time a deputy sheriff or cop kills an unnamed Hispanic or negro the Press Democrat buys five extra barrels of black printing ink and a rail car of number one grade newsprint. The Andy Logan story has gone on for long enough so it is now found in schoolbooks. Recently we have experienced the death of an Hispanic man who lost his life simply because he didn't understand what the police were shouting at him. It should have been “Los Manos Arriba!,” (raise your hands) instead they were shouting “Abajo, abajol.” (Down). Now when something like this happens large gatherings of “people of color” rise up from nowhere and demand that “something” be done, usually at a cost of thousands, at least hundreds.
Needless to say as usual I have found the answer. Each deputy in and cop in Willits will be ordered to learn in 100 words in Spanish. This may include five commonly used words that are not in the dictionary because they would burn a hole in the paper within two months. What's happening in Willits when all the police are in the classroom? Nightly lectures series would be sold out, especially those featuring Tommy Wayne Kramer, Thom Hartmann and Scott Simon.
I've been reading 'Following the Equator' by Mark Twain. He has a lot of information but it is not well presented. He could have skipped every other chapter but he had debts to pay and needed “volume.” I like the part of “Roughing It” where Mark told us how much he doesn't like the Mormons, particularly the women. What I like about the Spanish language is that a question mark is placed at the beginning of a sentence upside down to warn the reader that a question is on the way.
Another narrative-free letter you seldom see anymore. Katie Tahja and I both read but never the same books. She likes cowboy stories. She likes pieces in the New Yorker that I don't bother with. I've noticed that when MSNBC has a particularly knotty problem to deal with they call in David Remnick. Trump was elected in some places by huge margins. Main reason: racism. I wrote that in a letter to Bruce Anderson on the second week of January 2001. He did not print that letter. I sent exactly the same letter to him in the second week of November 2001 in 2016. He did not print that letter either. I think today he would print it.
Ed note: Mr. Bostrom probably has his dates confused. We did not get those letters. We have printed all of Mr. Bostrom's letters we have received, letters which would never be printed anywhere else. Sometimes Mr. Bostrom sends us packages of clippings from other papers which we do not feel like re-typing; maybe that's what he's referring to.
CATCH OF THE DAY, August 27, 2022
NATALI CARRASCO-SANTANA, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
THOMAS COOK, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
ALEXANDER CROSSMAN, Monte Rio/Ukiah. Burglary.
CLAYTON FIGUEROA JR., Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.
MOIRA JORDAN, Potter Valley. DUI.
VICTOR LUCAS, Ukiah. Under influence.
RICARDO MEDINA, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, Ukiah. Protective order violation, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)
CHRISTINA TORRES, Hopland. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
RUSTI VASSAR, Ukiah. Controlled substance.
UKRAINE, SATURDAY, AUGUST, 27, 2022
Key Developments
Zelenskiy Reinforces Nuclear Warning After Disruption
Britain Hasn’t Quite Managed to Kick Its Russian Diesel Habit
Price of Power Spirals Out of Control in Europe’s Key Markets
European Gas Posts Sixth Weekly Gain as Supply Woes Intensify
Why Ukraine Debt Relief Isn’t Matching Funding Needs: QuickTake
A Corner of Europe Leans to Live With Power Blackouts Again
WHAT A SATIRICAL PLACE is the old-style cemetery, a veritable play by Gogol! Here, a cracked marble representation of a crow's nest, bent in the middle, leans nearer a green sea of the earth than ever did the mast of any but a foundering ship. There, a scroll of verse, bought by the yard, proclaims the immortal memory of the great one whose name has been long erased by moss. Golden letters on a toppled urn promise that the deceased will be missed forever by mourners who have not visited the spot in a generation. All around, symbols of a pathetic, infantile yearning for immortality: vacuous girlish angels with clipped wings and busted lyres; imposing, classic, dowager muses with one eye and a missing nose; antique warriors in battle pose despite lopped off spears, swords, arms, legs, even heads. Presiding over each estate in the country of death (as in life) stands a manorial mausoleum, rising amid this junkyard of statuary in forlorn assertion of superior status. I have to admit — cemeteries do energize me. They even cheer me. I look at these relics of the famous, the great, the rich, the powerful and I can assure myself — no one lasts forever. They will all go some day. Why not hurry their class into its grave, even if the burial is a trifle premature?
— Lenin, as channeled by Alan Brian
POLITICAL POLICING
Editor:
Whether people wish to notice or are comfortably blinded by hate, I’m pointing out how various government agencies use the law as a weapon. A large percentage of Donald Trump’s legal problems have nothing to do with politics, government or his presidency. They are tax issues, real estate issues, etc. These investigations have been pushed because many don’t care for his behavior as a president. However, these investigations have, or so we are led to believe, nothing to do with politics.
I question why no other similarly situated billionaires have been subjected to the same scrutiny. Unless all billionaires in this country, Democrats and Republicans alike, undergo the same in-depth investigations, it becomes obvious that the law is not being applied evenly and fairly. Many wonder why voters are disenchanted by our government and legal system. Maybe it’s because they feel like they might be the next target of an inequitably applied/weaponized legal system.
Today’s favorite hue and cry is that no one is above the law. It appears that the various governments, state and federal, feel they are above the law and can use their position to use the law as a weapon against anyone they don’t like and turn a blind eye to those in favor.
Bob Proctor
Rohnert Park
WHEN BILLIONAIRES AND THE GOVERNMENT Work Together To Control Information
by Caitlin Johnstone
Facebook restricted visibility of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“So we took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said during a Thursday appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.'”
Zuckerberg said a decision was made to restrict that information on Facebook's multibillion-user platform. He said that unlike Twitter, which banned the sharing of the article entirely, Facebook opted for the somewhat subtler option of censorship by algorithm.
"The distribution on Facebook was decreased," he said, adding when pressed by Rogan that the decreased visibility of the article happened to a "meaningful" extent.
As we've discussed previously, censorship by algorithm is becoming the preferred censorship method on large Silicon Valley platforms because it can be done to far more people with far less objection than outright de-platforming and bans.
In addition to being censored across social media platforms, the Hunter Biden laptop story was first ignored and dismissed by the mainstream news media, then spun as a Russian disinfo operation. Those media outlets eventually came around to admitting that the leaked emails were probably authentic, and Hunter Biden tacitly authenticated them himself when he acknowledged that the information "could" have come from his laptop. Nothing that came from that laptop was anywhere near as scandalous as the unified front presented by the news media and Silicon Valley in reducing the political impact of an October surprise before a presidential election.
And now we know that the reason the world's largest social media platform censored that particular story was because they were cautioned by the FBI against allowing such information to circulate. How many of those other institutions suppressed that news story because they were told to by the FBI or other government agencies? How often are US government agencies involving themselves in the act of censorship? What other information is being suppressed in this or similar ways? What other information will be suppressed in the future?
Because of the veils of government and corporate secrecy which obscure our view of the behaviors of power, we don't get to have answers to these questions. All we get to have is what oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg choose to tell us, in whatever way and to whatever extent they choose to tell us about them.
But even what we've been told is pretty ugly. A government agency and a social media platform of unprecedented influence teaming up together to silence impactful political speech is censorship by any sane definition. Mainstream liberals can come up with all kinds of arguments for why the continually expanding justifications for online censorship are fine and normal and not really censorship, but are they able to maintain those justifications when government agencies are actively involved? Is it really better when political speech is being censored by a collaboration of government operatives and billionaires than censored directly by the government alone?
Alan MacLeod has been putting out a number of reports with Mintpress News documenting the way many veterans from the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have been recruited to work for tech companies like Google/YouTube, Facebook/Meta, and Twitter. The intimacy with which these government and corporate entities are working together is growing closer and closer, and they're making less and less effort to conceal it.
In a power structure without clear boundaries separating corporations from the government, corporate censorship is state censorship. The mightiest power structure on earth is growing more and more brazen and shameless about this reality.
You know you are living in an oligarchy when Mark Zuckerberg has more political influence over your country than any elected official. Democracy is an illusion. Those who live under the US empire are a propagandized and politically impotent population who only think they are free because they've been given the illusion of freedom, and less and less effort is being made to sustain that illusion.
We are ruled by unelected sociopaths who have no wisdom, no compassion, and no intention of ever relinquishing their rule. This will continue unless and until enough of us wake up to what's going on to stop them.
(caitlinjohnstone.com)
ADULTS ARE RUINING YOUTH SPORTS — Phony Cries Of ‘Racism’ At Little League World Series Are Only The Latest Offense
by Kirsten Fleming
Watching this week as the internet tried to brand the Davenport, Iowa, Little League team as a bunch of racists, during what should have been one of the happiest times of their lives, I was reminded of something my late father used to say about youth sports, “It’s the adults who ruin it all.”
My dad pretty much had a Ph.D. on the subject, coaching basketball at our Catholic grammar school, and officiating football from the Pop Warner level to Division II college. He ran the local program to teach football officials, and for more than 20 years, he stood on the sideline, watching his own three children play basketball, baseball, soccer and football.
Of course, my father was talking about a small percentage of the grown-ups, but when they do it, they do it up big. Poor behavior on the playing field by people who are old enough to know better has become a national epidemic. We’ve seen so many videos of parents brawling at their kids’ games that it should be its own sanctioned sport.
Back in the spring, there was a rash of violence against youth referees, with one Mississippi softball ump getting punched in the eye by a player’s parent wearing a “mother of the year” T-shirt. There are tales of parents pushing their children to the point of burnout and more extreme, horrific cases like Aqib Talib’s brother murdering the youth football coach in Texas.
Many of these shameful incidents occur from the sideline — presumably done by people who have a stake in that child’s life. However, the most recent example of adults ruining youth sports came in the most 2022 way possible: from absolute strangers on Twitter.
Caption: What the internet saw: The Davenport boys giving their teammate Jeremiah Grise a makeover. The use of cotton stuffing triggered a strong reaction online.
What actually happened: Grise was just one team member with the eyebrow-raising hairstyle, which the children said was in tribute to Honolulu player Jeron Lancaster, whose sensational white mohawk had been the talk of the Series.
Last Sunday, ESPN was broadcasting their MLB Little League Classic at Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where the Orioles were playing the Red Sox and the Little League teams participating in the tournament of champions attended.
Earlier in the day, these 12-year-olds were able to interact with their MLB heroes, get autographs and slide with them, down the iconic hill near Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport.
It was boyhood joy in action.
By that evening, however, the Davenport team of 12-year-olds — Midwest champs for 2022 — would be unwittingly cast as racial oppressors in a saga that went far beyond baseball.
During the game, the ESPN cameras showed a few white kids from the Iowa squad putting stuffing from a plush animal in the hair of their teammate, Jeremiah Grise, who is black.
With little-to-no context, social media erupted, essentially accusing the boys of being baby Grand Wizards and subjecting their black teammate to racial humiliation, using cotton as their weapon.
“History is literally repeating itself, and not the good kind, either,” said one Twitter user. Op-eds followed and some mused that this is why black kids don’t want to play baseball. Little League was forced to make a statement.
“We have spoken with the player’s mother and the coaches, who have assured us that there was no ill-intent behind the action shown during the broadcast,” it said.
That wasn’t enough to put out the fire. In its coverage, the Washington Post spoke to — surprise! — a total stranger, named Carolyn Hinds, who is a film critic in Toronto, Canada. The interview was about how the footage made her feel, as she also questioned the Iowa team’s parenting.
Did anyone, at any time, consider Grise’s actual feelings in the matter?
I had been in South Williamsport covering Massapequa Coast’s Little League run, so when someone brought it up to me on Tuesday morning, I had no clue what had occurred. On the ground, it was all baseball, team bonding, pin trading and dance-offs with Dugout, the mascot.
iPhones miles away and exported through social media to many willing consumers.
Later, more footage emerged, revealing the incident as innocent as kids tossing a ball around the sandlot. Both black and white teammates used the plush stuffing on their heads to imitate Jaron Lancaster, the dominant pitcher from Honolulu who has a very striking white-dyed mohawk. Lancaster with his bat, arm and hairstyle had emerged as the big man on campus and the Iowa boys had just gotten his autograph. Davenport Little League posted its own explanation, showing Grise reveling in the moment.
I understand race is a third rail that will get someone like me zapped on impact. But it felt pretty gross for strangers to tell a 12-year-old boy, that they don’t know, to feel bad about something because of the color of his skin. In doing so, they projected their own cynicism onto him unfairly, making him bear the weight of their personal grievances.
And they cast an ugly, divisive narrative on what was supposed to be a beautiful experience on the national stage.
After a fuller picture crystalized, there was nary a peep from the foaming mouths. Likely, some didn’t want to admit they had jumped to the worst possible conclusion.
While most, who had no skin in the game, had already moved on to the next event in their oppression olympics with little regard for the boys or the innocence they trounced over.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I have always been told that cobwebs are the work of “cob spiders,” I googled this, and it turns out they are indeed the work of certain kinds of spiders–”Cobweb spiders (Family: Theridiidae) make cobwebs.”
Perhaps the creepiest spiders are wolf spiders. Those suckers can grow as big as dinner plates. You normally only see the really big ones in houses that have been sitting empty for a long time. When I first moved into my old house in late winter, it had been sitting empty for a long time. In early spring, we got ducks, which were able to get into the crawl space. Within a very short time, we had NO bugs or spiders of any kind. Ducks eat everything that moves and have insatiable appetites.
As for women being afraid of mice, spiders, and bugs, I always assumed that the ladies were pretending to fear them to make their husbands feel useful. I’ve never had any particular fear of any such creatures. When I was married, it was my husband who was afraid of bees and wasps, so I was always the one who dealt with them. So I think there is wisdom in the ladies pretending to be afraid of the critters. If the men have to deal with the problem, they will have learned to do SOMETHING, which will build their confidence and perhaps cause the to attempt to do other things successfully.
But first you have to decide which is more irritating: watching hubby duck into the remotest corner of the room in fear while you remove the wasp, or letting him do it and watching him strut around for the next hour as if he’d killed a mountain lion.
STATE UNVEILS LATEST ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTS MEANT TO PUSH CONTROVERSIAL DELTA TUNNEL AHEAD
by Dan Bacher
The California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, has released the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the embattled Delta Tunnel, beginning the 90-day public comment period from July 27 to October 27 for what conservationists describe as an “environmentally destructive project.”
According to project opponents, different versions of this same gigantic and wasteful public works project — the Peripheral Canal, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the California Water Fix and now the single Delta Conveyance — have cast a dark, toxic shadow over California water policy since it was first decisively rejected by California voters in November 1982 as the Peripheral Canal.
While tunnel advocates claim the tunnel will protect the reliability of water transport infrastructure, address the impacts of sea level rise, and improve the Delta’s aquatic conditions, critics say the project will do none of these things, instead hastening the extinction of Sacramento River winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, the Central Valley steelhead, the Delta and longfin smelt, and the green sturgeon. It’s feared these fish species will die off as the multi-billion tunnel keeps indebting Californians for generations to come.
Those fighting the tunnel, including indigenous tribes, environmental justice advocates, anglers and Delta farmers, have also expressed little faith that the Draft EIR will address any of the questions and concerns they raised repeatedly during their work with the Stakeholder Engagement Committee for the Design Construction Authority during that two-year tunnel planning process.
The Draft EIR was prepared by DWR as the lead agency to comply with the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, which is supposed to involve evaluating a range of alternatives to the proposed project. The process should also include disclosing potential environmental effects, as well as associated mitigation measures, according to an announcement from DWR.
The agency claimed that “no decisions will be made” until the conclusion of the environmental review process, after consideration of public comments submitted on the draft. At that point, DWR will determine whether to approve the proposed project, an alternative or no project.
“The purpose of the proposed Delta Conveyance Project is to upgrade the aging State Water Project water transport infrastructure in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,” the agency said in a statement, adding that it wanted to “minimize water supply disruption caused by an earthquake and provide operational flexibility to improve aquatic conditions in the Delta.”
“Two out of three Californians rely on the State Water Project for all or part of their water supply,” DWR Director Karla Nemeth mentioned in her own release. “Modernizing this infrastructure is essential to adapting to a future that includes more frequent extremes of drought and flood, and greater water instability.”
Additionally, Nemeth claimed, “If the project had been operational during the big storms in October and December of 2021, DWR could have captured and moved about 236,000 acre-feet of water. That is enough for about 2.5 million people for a year. If approved after completion of the environmental review process, the project will also help California manage through periods of severe drought like the one the state is experiencing now.”
Nemeth summarized DWR’s work in the last three years as attempting to “refined, redesigned and rerouted” the project under the Governor’s 2019 direction.
“We took a fresh look at everything,” she asserted. “Changing from two tunnels to one opened the door to many creative design and engineering innovations.” Brannan Island in the Delta. Photo by Scott Thomas Anderson.
In response to the draft being released, the Sierra Club said that it is “working hard to review the document and begin the process of commenting.” The nonprofit will host a workshop in the next couple of weeks to assist Californians and answer any questions about the comment process.
The Sierra Club continues to stress that the tunnel’s construction would “significantly harm the important biodiversity of the Bay-Delta region,” and cost California taxpayers between $16-40 billion.
“Sierra Club California strongly believes this flawed project is incredibly wasteful,” said Brandon Dawson, director of the statewide club. “Climate change continues to impact the state’s hydrology, and there is no certainty as to the amount of water that will be available for the project when it’s completed. We will be closely examining the draft EIR alongside our environmental partners for new information on the anticipated impacts of the project for frontline communities, Tribes, and the vital ecosystem of the Bay-Delta.”
Dawson also noted, “We encourage the Newsom administration to fully shift the DWR’s attention to sustainable water management efforts that are environmentally beneficial and will work to build regional resilience, including conservation, efficiency, recycling, and stormwater capture.”
Restore the Delta’s executive director, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, also criticized the release of the Delta Tunnel draft EIR.
“This plan is so massive, it will be delivered to us on thumb-drive: A full review of this mountain of paper is simply not possible for Delta communities, environmental justice groups, or Northern California tribes in just 90-days,” Barrigan-Parrilla observed. “As we read, we will be looking for answers to the questions we raised during our work with the Stakeholder Engagement Committee ⦠Delta communities raised concerns about water quality, salinity intrusion, pollution mitigation, and significant air pollution impacts resulting from construction and operation of the project. DWR needs to speak frankly about the sacrifices expected of the people of the Delta for this project to advance.”
Restore the Delta went on to point out that the State has only recently begun to hold workshops on salinity intrusion into the estuary, which is also part of climate change planning, and that there is “no framework for what a just transition for the Delta would entail.”.
Scientist Deirdre Des Jardins, of California Water Research, views the impact of climate change as a huge issue regarding the draft EIR for the Delta Tunnel.
“I included the NOAA 2022 estimates of probabilities of high sea level rise, which are less than 1 meter by 2100, except for scenarios with high or very high GHG emissions,” Deirdre Des Jardins explained in a recent analysis. “These could lead to warming of up to 5 degrees C by 2100. Many scientists think that level of warming would be catastrophic for the planet and human civilization. I cited the August 1, 2022 letter in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences which points out that 5 degrees C of warming which calls for study of catastrophic scenarios.”
Des Jardins went on to detail that the more catastrophic scenarios would imply that the State Water Project needs to reduce its GHG emissions footprint as soon as possible.
In this reporter’s analysis, the Delta Tunnel is a project based on the illogical concept that diverting more water out of the Sacramento River and Delta estuary will somehow provide for the “coequal goals” of water supply and ecosystem restoration — being promoted during a time of increasingly dramatic impacts of climate change upon the state’s water supplies.
In fact, the best available science reveals that the Delta Tunnel will in fact hasten the extinction of several fish species. I don’t know of any water diversion project in world or U.S. history where taking more water out of a river or estuary has restored that river or estuary. The Delta Tunnel project, if ever constructed, would be no different. BE HEARD
What: Public comment period for the Delta Conveyance Project Draft EIR
When: Comment period: July 27, 2022 — October 27, 2022, by 5:00 p.m.
LULU LAFRAME (formerly Steve Schwartz) Why i am proud to have been a Republican:
20 things I have done my enemies could not do:
Refuted the Butterfly Problem in linguistics, 1958-.
Joined the Paris Surrealist Group, 1967.
Represented Eden Pastora, 1980s.
Love Rebecca, 1984-
Published Chomsky, 1985.
Published POUM history, 1988.
Busted Moscow infiltration of the Freud circle, 1988.
Helped elect Violeta Chamorro, 1990.
Helped defend Giovanni Toracca, 1991.
Helped lead a victorious strike at SF CHRONICLE, 1994.
Represented the Kosova Liberation Army, 1998-.
Supported the Muslim Brotherhood, 1999-. See #2 attached.
Busted Saudi Wahhabism, 2001-.
Helped liberate Iraq, 2001-.
Published #3 attached.
Came out as a gorge, glam transwoman, 2017.
Sang and danced on stage in bars and restaurants with a bad right leg, in a “suggestive” outfit, 2018-
My hits:
Cofounded Sexworkers Resistance Movement, aka Straight Razor Mamas, aka Sindicato Revolucionario de Mujeres, 2019-.
Ran for SF Board of Supervisor as a Social Democrat, 2020.
33 books in 10 languages.
And so, i...
Better: https://youtu.be/wp_FlThJBSE
Lulu the Luscious Leninist
Soon to be 500 cc! Rhyme!
KEATING TO LAFLAMME
I heard a rumor that SF is soon going to be the site of a convention of Alice Cooper impersonators -- is this true?
Kevin Keating, San Francisco
RAINBIRD.
Here's the recording of last night's (2022-08-26) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA):https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0503
Thanks to Hank Sims for all kinds of tech help over the years, as well as for his fine news site: https://LostCoastOutpost.com
Thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which provided well over an hour of the above 8-hour show's most locally relevant material, as usual, without asking for anything in return. Just $25 a year for full access to all articles and features (TheAVA.com). And consider helping out KNYO. Go here, find the big red heart, poke it and mull over the possibilities: https://KNYO.org
The first part of this particular show is the responses to my asking for recollections of Rainbird, who we all just found out died three weeks ago of pneumonia. There are some later in the show, too, from when I checked my email around midnight. Here's one of those, from Peter Lit:
"Sometimes in the '80's, she would show up at Caspar Inn for entertainment that she was drawn to. We would go down to the sidewalk, pick up her chair, carry it and her up the stairs and into the Inn. I never heard her complain about the lack of a wheelchair ramp; in fact, I never heard her complain. I did see her rocking out on the dancefloor, conscious and respectful of others and I am grateful to learn some of her backstory. Her strength and courage were inspiring, an example for us all."
Here's one from Tom Tetzlaff:
"Rainbird was awesome! She will really be missed. She was a wonderful friend to me and helped me a lot. I will always be grateful to her for her forthrightness, and mutual appreciation for an entire host of things. She had a wonderful grasp of science. And what a gardener she was! She was growing all kinds of flowers and food and her place looked fabulous. She had a great eye for that.
"Then there was that time I was married to Rainbird. Yep. Well, not officially or anything and only for about an hour. Here is that story.
"One day some years back Rainbird gave me a call. I could tell immediately from the tone of her voice that something was wrong. That dude from China had just showed up in Albion out of nowhere and was trying find her. Rainbird wanted nothing to do with him. He somehow found out that Rainbird lived in Albion and started snooping around downtown Albion asking people where he could find her. Stalking her all the way from China apparently. Yeah, that scores high on the creepy scale. If I remember right, someone down at the store knew Rainbird and gave her a call. Rainbird wanted nothing to do with that guy at all! He refused to take no for an answer, continuing to pester everyone, so something different was going to have to happen.
"Using colorful language that was a little out of character for Rainbird, she told me that he is a full-on jackass and that relationship was long done and over. She asked if I would come over and take her down to the store, pretend to be her husband, and make it crystal clear to this guy that he is not welcome around here.
"So that's what we did. I got there as soon as I could. We loaded up and went down to that area next to the Post Office. Damn, she was pissed. I mean, really pissed off at this guy.
"She wanted to get out of the truck and confront this guy face to face. There was a serious exchange of words in Chinese. I do not know what was said exactly. The emotion was raw and the message was being sent in clear terms. One didn't have to speak Chinese to generally understand what she was saying. I made a few hand gestures indicating that he should get the fuck out of here and tossed in a "You go away!" and a couple other simple phrases that I meant for him to understand. Our body language was plenty good enough to make the point.
"A few more words were exchanged in Chinese and he finally relented. After a final cool but direct exchange, Rainbird turned to me and said that we were done. Let's go home. To the best of my knowledge, he never tried to contact her again. Damn, she was so pissed off that day.
"Now I will listen to this song again, have another good cry, while remembering the good times and what a wonderful woman and good friend Rainbird was.
"Rest in loving peace, Rainbird!"
(And then Tom posted the lyrics of a song called Ripples, by Genesis.)
You can always email me your work on any subject and I'll read it on the radio the upcoming Friday night. And at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.comyou'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:
Feelings. How articulate these perfectly ordinary boys in 1967 seem. And how polite the other kids are, doing their schoolwork while all this is going on. (via Everlasting Blort) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1357380397047316487
Andre Antunes finally got around to metal-scoring the Why Are You Closed guy. (I had forgotten about the teenage boys behind the man, making fun. At first you're afraid he'll go off on /them/, but his brain can only process one unconstitutional insult at a time. A guy like this, it's easy to imagine he's this mad about something at least once a day. Imagine what that must be like for him. His guts must be constantly in a knot. Imagine what he smells like.)
https://www.fark.com/vidplayer/12525780
"So, whatta they call you. Wheels?" -Wolverine, on being introduced to Professor X.
And insouciant expertise. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rg85i9vcl31zzhrjm.mp4
— Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
SEPTEMBER SONG
When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came
When you meet with the young girls early in the spring
You court them in song and rhyme
They answer with words and a clover ring
But if you could examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And a plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time
Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September
When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I'll spend with you
These precious days
I'll spend with you
— Kurt Weill
Live recording from 1999, John Lewis - piano: https://youtu.be/7E-FESqeN98
RE: LOCALLY, the FBI was here during the 1990s to monitor Earth First!, operating out of 106 W. Standley in Ukiah in a decrepit building owned by former supervisor John McCowen. Do you have proof of that? Not without pounding you into begging me to stop me as I launch into my 5000-word circumstantial case…
->. I substantially agree with this allegation. During this time frame I had one opportunity to FAX from the Mendocino Environmental Center, MEC location at 106 W. Standley, to the state of California Integrated Waste Management Board, CIWMB on a monthly Regular Business agenda item having to do with unreliable contractors, and asking that the proposed action apply to Board members, specifically one. Mike Sweeney received grants thru this Board indirectly.
Subsequently at the following monthly Regular Business meeting of the CIWMB, Environmental/ Marketing chair Paul Relis, founding board member of the CIWMB who had been re-appointed a few months earlier to another $90K per year plus benefits, six year term by then governor Pete Wilson, decided to resign his seat.
As an aside, half year later Paul Relis asked to be reinstated, but request was declined. Wesley Chesbro has also served.
Just before the Relis resignation occurred, the MEC asked me to write an explanation why I needed to use their FAX machine. I declined and never faxed from there again, beyond this one time.
Later I pieced together that a family that hosted foster children in Ukiah, who I would visit as I had a secluded life in the wilderness, and whose phone number frequently appeared on my pager, had a suspicious client who lived in the house for months, brought in by allegedly normal agency arrangement.
This supposed child was supposedly underage, but was big framed with a southern drawl. His alleged father had him caretake a rifle at the house, which concerned foster home Mom but needed the money. He would claim that he would go to see a movie at the Ukiah Theatre at a set time to meet his girlfriend.
Allegedly he could not read, but attempted to peer over my shoulder to see what I was writing or typing. I told this family to say nothing about me to him, and I stopped visiting.
Some time later I heard from this foster family, that seemingly all the law enforcement agencies swarmed the house in Ukiah to move him out. That he was transported to the Ukiah Adventist Hospital helipad and helicoptered out, without known injuries. Details have not been verified.
I continue to associate with the family that hosted foster children, although they have moved to Santa Rosa, and I maintain monthly text messages with one younger family member.
CUT TO THE CHASE
Thank you, Bernie:
“Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday lamented conservative criticism of President Joe Biden’s plan for student debt forgiveness.
‘I know it is shocking, George, to some Republicans that the government actually, on occasion, do something to benefit working families and low-income people,’ Sanders said to host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” ‘I don’t hear any of these Republicans squawking when we give massive tax breaks to billionaires.’ “
Re Adults ruining the Little League experience:
Yep, did it for me. I played pickup baseball almost every day at the nearby park during the summer. There were always enough kids to form 2 teams of 6-9 players. I played third base and was considered pretty good. My parents even bought me a Brooks Robinson mitt. Also switch hit (power from the right side, line drives from the left), which very few kids did. It was a blast.
So my parents enrolled me in the park-sponsored little leagues. The “coach” decided I should pitch and play first base and hit only right-handed. I was a terrible pitcher and hated playing first base and my hitting grew increasingly worse. When I told the “coach” that I wasn’t having any fun, the jerk told me that little league was a competition meant to develop players and fun wasn’t part of the deal. I told my parents I wasn’t going to play little league anymore and never again participated in officially organized sports. But I did play a lot of pick-up baseball and basketball after that and once again had a blast doing so.
Andrew Lutsky and I are not reading the same Blue Zone books. In my reading I have not recognized the promotion of any religion at any place in the books. A little background will validate this perception. They are called Blue Zones because someone involved drew a blue circle on a map around one of the towns. It was Dan Buetner, a world traveler, who encountered several of these locations and observed that the citizens not only were living longer, but were much more active and healthier in there old age. Dan took his discoveries to National Geographic and convinced them to do more research on people who were benefiting from this lifestyle. They hired a team of researchers to look for more long living groups of people and study their lifestyle. They found five communities around the world, called them the Blue Zones, and did cross-cultural comparisons. The team of scientists isolated nine different components that these communities shared in common and therefore were factors in the people living longer, healthier, and more active lives. Dan Buetner has written several books detailing the different lifestyles and cultures in the Blue Zones. (This is the information that Lutsky wants to deny to public school students.) Please note that none of this was directed by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They only came into the picture because the Blu Zone in this country happened to be in Loma Linda, California where the Adventist church is centered. In recent years Buetner has put together a package he sells that provides guidelines for how communities can implement the nine components into there communities. I think Ukiah has wisely bought into this package. It in no way promotes one religion over another. The people I know who are working in this program have no connection to this Adventist church.
I could argue with Lutsky on nearly every point he makes but I will focus on some of the more flagrant falsehoods. He cites a physician named Hall who says “It is false to assume that diet is a factor in making us live longer”. Give me a break! The statistical facts on the Blue Zones is that they live about 12 years longer then other Americans. However, they die differently: Instead of a slow long decline into decrepitude they stay fully active into old age and then die quickly. They are getting about 25 more years of quality life. Hall needs to run down to the shopping mall, have a seat, and watch the people walk (I should say waddle) by. A few minutes observation will confirm that over 40% of them are obese and becoming diabetic. According to Hall diet has nothing to do with this.
Lutsky’s expert Hall also says that the Blue Zoners could be living longer just because they are wealthier and that there has been little research on this factor. Wrong! Hall,s head is in the sand. Loma Linda is the only well off Blue Zone. The other four communities live an old fashioned subsistence lifestyle where they herd goats and grow a lot of their own food. One of the nine components is that exercise is built into the lifestyle. This is why I have my wife carry in the firewood. I cut and stacked it. Hall is also unaware of the largest nutritional study ever conducted on thousands of Chinese people. It is detailed in a book called “The China Study” by an American professor named T. Collin Campbell. With help from the Chinese government Campbell analyzed the diets of peasants living on the land eating rice and beans and compared their health to the newly wealthy Chinese who were eating high on the hog. Campbell refers to the big killers of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease as”diseases of affluence”.
Some years ago I went to Kenya. In my three weeks while traveling from Nairobi to Mombassa to Malindi, I encountered 3 people who were over weight. As a tall slim person it was nice to be among people of my body type who were nimble on their feet. It could have been a factor in crossing streets in the traffic. The everyday staple in these Kenyans is a whiter corn polenta served with steamed collard greens. This is the food that fuels the world’s greatest distance runners. They even insist on eating it in the olympic village. It is also worth noting that Cubans on the island have an unusually long life expectancy. So much for the rich living longer and Lutsky’s science.
There also seems to be a concern about the Adventist work in healing the sick being part of their religious mission. I guess Lutsky has never heard of Mother Teresa. I think it is a noble purpose and I am not bothered by it at all. Moreover, I prefer it to the motives of those whe go into medicine to get rich. This is the mode of operation for many of the players in our profit driven healthcare system. We all know about the outrages of the drug companies where Americans are paying 4-500% more for drugs than Canadians. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 75% of medicare funds are spent on people in the last month of their lives. A lot of our hospitals are gouging medicare (US). Considering all this I find it refreshing to hope that our hospitals and staff are providing medical care on the basis of a sense of moral purpose in the service of our residents. I also like the Adventists because of their dedication to preventive healthcare. Teaching people how to maintain their health makes the hospital less money. This is more evidence of their dedication to their ethical purpose. Please note that you don’t have to be an Adventist to get this service.
I am a retired teacher, have read about education in other countries, have lived and went to school in Sweden, and am married to a German immigrant. Fundamental to a good educational system is that it allows for a free exchange of ideas and information. This is also fundamental to a functioning democracy. The real issue here is not one of religious indoctrination but rather, is it a good idea to teach young people how to live a healthier, improved quality of life. One of the nine components is to incorporate into your life a mechanism for dealing with stress. I have been reading a lot about the uncertainties and concerns young people are dealing with coming out of this pandemic. Teaching them some methods for dealing with stress should take precedence over unfounded claims that the Adventists are trying to recruit lost souls.
As for this censorship that Lutsky is engaging in. Perhaps he should join forces with those who fear Critical Race Theory and have a book burning. i will stick to the principle of allowing a free exchange of ideas. Thanks to the AVA for this opportunity to do that.
Readers gained some valuable insights from Bluzonian theocrat Don Cruser, also known as MCOE Board Member for District 5.
For example, we learned that Cruser admires his own physique. He states he enjoyed traveling in Kenya because “As a tall slim person it was nice to be among people of my body type who were nimble on their feet.”
We learned Cruser happily participates in fat shaming. Displeased with Harriet Hall, a retired U.S. Air Force physician and writer who had the temerity to question one of Buettner’s claims, Cruser recommends she “run down to the shopping mall, have a seat, and watch the people walk (I should say waddle) by.” I must have missed ‘Ridiculing and belittling people for struggling with weight control and body image’ among Buettner’s ‘Power Nine.’ Sounds to me like Cruser owes the families in his district who are struggling with those serious issues an apology at the very least.
We learned Cruser likes to assert control over his wife’s fitness regimen. Referring to the idea that it’s desirable to build exercise into your daily routine, Cruser says, “This is why I have my wife carry in the firewood. I cut and stacked it.”
As we read on we learn of Cruser’s apparent distaste for relying on and citing sources. The source Cruser most often refers to is … Cruser. Maybe somewhere in the unhinged rant he will inevitably send in response to this letter he will include what must be his very impressive bona fides to support his implied claims of authority.
Aside from regurgitating the unsupported claims of journalist Buettner, Cruser cites exactly one other source: The China Study, a pseudo-scientific study written by nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell, PhD, with his non-scientist son Thomas M. Campbell II and the support of the famously reliable Chinese government. Among the dubious claims of this study: “Heart disease can be prevented and even reversed by a healthy diet.” (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/) Regarding the claim that vegetarianism alone confers health advantages, other major studies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16441942/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10479225/) contradict that claim.
Hall (the Air Force physician whom Cruser urges to spend more time watching mall-goers “waddle”) notes:
Observations from other countries tend to contradict the correlations found in China. The African Maasai eat a diet high in animal protein (meat, milk and blood from their cows) – yet they have low blood cholesterol levels and low rates of heart disease. Among the Eskimos (who ate an animal-based, very high protein, high fat diet) heart disease was practically unknown.
Along the way Cruser seems to enjoy personally insulting strangers who have expressed a point of view that differs from his own. Apparently frustrated at the suggestion that professing a ‘healing ministry’ does not somehow exempt a religious group from federal law, Cruser declares, “I guess Lutsky has never heard of Mother Teresa.” I must have also missed ‘Make vapid remarks in an attempt to disparage those with opposing views’ among the Bluzonian Power Nine.
Sorry Don, I didn’t know we were playing the ‘Choose your favorite Catholic from history to distract from the real argument’ game. Okay, I’m in. I see your Mother Teresa and raise you a Father Philip Berrigan. His ‘healing ministry’– his anti-war activism opposing war profiteering, war-promotion and the wars of choice the U.S. entered into, especially in Vietnam and Iraq, activism which earned him eleven years in prison– arguably helped more people and saved more lives than the actions of the Saint of Calcutta, about whom Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard and Carole Sénéchal, note “her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce.” (https://web.archive.org/web/20160401151627/http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html)
Those researchers quote Mother Teresa saying “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”
Christopher Hitchens describes her as “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud”:
She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
(https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/10/the-fanatic-fraudulent-mother-teresa.html)
It seems suggesting that money is connected to health outcomes can be controversial. At the suggestion made by Hall, Oxford University demographer and geneticist Saul Newman and other scientists that wealth, not lifestyle/diet/fitness, is likely a more important factor in health and longevity, Cruser again employs ridicule: “Wrong! Hall,s [sic] head is in the sand.” And the evidence to support his confident claim? None.
Maybe most importantly we learned that Cruser enjoys masquerading as a free speech absolutist. If we are to take his claim seriously that I’m engaging in censorship we must assume he means that a book that promotes a particular religious sect is in fact appropriate for public school classroom use. That’s a radical view which suggests he would have sided with the ALA in U.S. v ALA (2003), meaning he wishes to live in a world where patrons of the Mendocino County Library on Main Street in Ukiah would have no choice but to encounter graphic pornography and violence on the computer screens of patrons who, exercising their free speech rights, browse the unfiltered internet … And that would be okay.
And to be consistent we must presume Cruser cheered recently when a public school football coach won the right to lead an “optional” prayer on the 50-yard line at the end of games. I’ll wear Cruser’s charge of ‘censorship’ as a badge of honor as I stand with Rev. Rudy Pulido, a church leader from St. Louis, who put it this way: “Government has no place supporting an employee’s religious practice on government property. … Jesus indicated prayer was best practiced in a closet, not in public venues like a 50-yard line.” (https://www.stlau.org/board-member-p-d-letter-to-the-editor-7-5-22/)
What we don’t glean from Cruser’s note is any response to my specific charge that Buettner’s book The Blue Zones Solution is biased in favor of a particular religious sect because the author does not adequately clarify or support his claims.
Neither Dan Buettner nor the Seventh Day Adventists nor the hospital corporation they own invented the Mediterranean diet. No one is credibly disputing the health benefits– which are very distinct from claims of longevity– of that diet/lifestyle, and thankfully in this country the Adventists are free to practice and promote that lifestyle however they choose. What is not lawful is for them to do an end-run around the establishment clause by obscuring their sectarian nature behind a nonprofit (Blue Zones LLC, purchased in 2020 for $78 million) owned by their healthcare corporation (Adventist Health) that’s owned by the church.
If the essence of their mission is to help people live healthier and more productive lives I’d recommend that the Adventists, instead of promoting and profiting from a book filled with unsupported claims, take another approach:
Follow the radical advice recommended by Catholic social justice fighter and candidate for canonisation Dorothy Day: Provide better wages and working conditions to their employees. My sources tell me the salaries offered by Adventist for highly trained medical professionals in Ukiah are so much lower than those offered by competing hospitals outside the area that the best physicians and specialists tend to take jobs and settle elsewhere. That cannot possibly lead to better health outcomes for Ukiah residents.
Stop opposing unions, the organizations which defend the rights of the workers the Adventists say they care about and from whose labor the Adventists benefit: (https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/NLRB-Sides-With-Nurses-At-Adventist-Hospital-2974410.php).
Stop restricting women’s access to legal and beneficial reproductive health services (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-11-01/religious-issues-block-hospital-merger).
In my open letter to Superintendent Kubin I ask several specific questions about Buettner’s book which Cruser ignores. In my follow-up letter I ask a series of practical questions about how this new church-owned-corporation/public-school partnership was going to work, and Cruser ignores those questions, too. I’m still waiting to learn the answers to those questions and am eager to hear from anyone who wishes to discuss the issue … without resorting to personal (even if feeble) attacks.
Unfortunately I don’t have the time or the interest to respond to all of Lutsky’s misinformation. Most of his energy went into personal attacks on me and I am not the issue here. The basic facts are the information in the Blue Zone books was developed by a team of researchers hired by National Graphic magazine to do a cross-cultural analysis of these communities. Therefore, the information is science based and the only connection to the Adventists is their community down in Loma Linda which happened to be one of the Blue Zones studied. The Loma Linda community is quite different from the other Blue Zones. It is nestled in heavily populated Southern California, the citizens have a higher standard of living, and they are managing to live the healthy lifestyle in a quagmire of commercialism and fast food. The unifying force is the church with its emphasis on eating a plant based diet. The church is a bigger factor in making Loma Linda a Blue Zone and this is why it is mentioned more than other religions in other Blue Zones. These books, and the Blue Zones Project in Ukiah have absolutely nothing to do with evangelizing for the Adventist church. I am in support of providing this information to public school students and think they should get it from the best possible source: The people directly involved in one of the Blue Zones who also happen to provide the lion’s share of medical care in the county. They may not be perfect, but I like their commitment to preventive healthcare which is the primary lesson in the Blue Zone books. My issue with Lursky is he wants to deny all of this to students.
I didn’t know that much about Mother Teresa and brought up her to point out that there are religious people in the world who do good things. However, I agree that Daniel Berrigan would have been a much better example . i read his book many years ago and greatly admired his willingness to take ant-war actions and go to prison for them. I actually had his nephew as a student early in my career and he was a brilliant young man. It is also obvious that the fact that Daniel was a priest, a man who had committed his life to moral and ethical principles, gave his actions against the Vietnam war much more weight with the American public. However, I am wondering if Ludsky would object to public school students reading any of Berrigan’s writings on the war just because he was a Catholic priest. He would have to to object in order to be consistent with his logic on the Adventists being involved in educating young people about the Blue Zones. My position is having healthcare professionals involved will add weight to the valuable information in studying the Blue Zones and it has nothing to do with promoting the church just like Berrigan’s writings on war have nothing to do with promoting the church. The real distinction here is that I want students to get the information from the best possible sources and Lutsky doesn’t want them to get the information.
Lutsky’s rational for opposing the Blue Zone project are as illogical as his arguments with me. He is preoccupied with the separation of church and state and I am all in favor of that split. The law is focused on preventing evangelizing in the public schools and teaching about the healthy components of the Blue Zones has nothing to do with promoting one religion over another. His arguments with me involve things like me controlling my wife, discrediting Mother Teresa, accusing me of shaming fat people, pulling the issue of pornography out of the air, football coaches praying at halftime, etc. At the same time he still supports his source, a doctor who states that there is no evidence that what a person eats has an impact on their health. Clearly, there is a serious problem with a lack of focus and logic in these incoherent ramblings.
Lutsky asked for more sources so here are a few of the places I go for good scientific information: “The Adventist health study” For 30 years the Adventists have been keeping records on diet and illness. Doctors and nurses provide some of the best data around and the statistics from this study will convince you that there is a definite connection between what you eat and your health. Dr. Neal Banard is the head of the “Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine”, an organization of 12,000 doctors that are dedicated to preventive medicine. Dr. Esylstine, author of “How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease”. Remember Bill Clinton, our president who liked to jog down to McDonalds for a Big Mac. After quadruple bypass surgery Clinton did Esylstine’s program and that is why he is alive today. I like Dr. Milton Mills of the Physician’s Committee who has a fascinating video on youtube in which he compares human anatomy to carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. There are also some good videos available: “Forks over knives”, “King Corn”, “Cowspiracy”. and “What the Health” are a few.
I am not familiar with the heart health of the Eskimo, or Inuit people. I do know that colon cancer is the #2 killer among the Inuit and norther latitude First Americans. It is #4 in the lower 48 and is linked to a lack of fiber in the diet. Milton Mills will tell you that we have a long lower intestinal tract like herbivores and Michael Pollun author of “The Omnivore’s Dilema” will tell you that “fiber is your friend”. Animal products have no fiber.
I encountered the Masai in my trip to Kenya and am intrigued with their diet. They are a very good looking people, look healthy in every way and the men have a reputation as fierce warriors. The old English walled estates all had a Masai at the gate with his spear standing guard. Their traditional diet is fresh cow blood mixed in a gourd with cultured milk. The big question is while that is the staple, is that all they eat? Along the roads we encountered many baboons eating the plums off the trees. We stopped on a cliff and got out to look across rhe big game preserve. On our return to the car we found one of these big baboons sitting in the back seat helping himself to our bag of plums. I jerked the door open thinking he would exit the opposite side. instead he showed me those big, long canines. He was clearly better suited for killing animals with his jaws and ripping out chunks of meat then we are. My friend opened the other door and he exited, taking our bag of plums with him. I can’t help but think the Masai are also eating those plums along with the mango, pineapple, oranges, and coconuts that were so readily available. The liquids in that heat would be essential.
This is it for me Lutsky. I have had my say. I should make it clear that I only speak for myself and not for anyone else on the county board of education. For the board to make a statement an issue must be placed on the agenda, announced to the public, discussed and get a majority in a public vote. I wish you luck in your quest to keep religious evangelizing out of the public schools. When you have a valid concern I will support you. You should also know that the local Ukiah Unified School Board plays a much bigger role in approving curriculum for a school district. They also have access to lawyers who are better qualified than me to offer an opinion on legal issues. You can bring it up during the public comment item on the agenda or contact individual members of the board ahead of time and try to get it on the agenda. My advice is to just let the kids have the information.