Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022

Chilly | Historic Season | Public Health | Mendo Cafe | Election Update | Nail Trimming | Boonville Field | Drunk Driving | Katherine Gorman | AVUSD Update | No Egg | Mary Korte | Freeze Grant | Huge Arker | Rebuilding MHS | CPUC PPH | Yesterday's Catch | Book Event | Double Rainbow | Dem Advice | Rookie Me | Relentless Nancy | Klamath Dams | Marco Radio | Nettie Sundborg | YouTube Censors | Boxers | Daily Routine | Youngkin History | Judge Speculation | Comrades | America Unwound | Usal Cookhouse | Economic Delusion | Black Women | Ukraine | Super Assassin | Thunderer | Lab Rats | Monument Valley

DRY WEATHER will persist. Overnight temperatures will be chilly the next couple of mornings. Overnight temperatures will moderate early next week before a general warming pattern develops through the end of next week. (NWS)

THE MENDOCINO COLLEGE WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL TEAM is coming off a historic season of success under head coach Kat Escobedo and assistant coach Elena Goss (pictured at far left). 

The 2022 Mendocino Volleyball season will continue into the postseason. As far as records go back, it is thought to be our first ever volleyball playoff team! Mendocino College is celebrating its' 50th anniversary and we are proud of our Lady Eagles on their accomplishments this season. The Eagles finished the regular season with an overall record of 15 wins and 5 losses, and a Bay Valley Conference record of 10 wins and only 2 losses. Mendocino will travel to Taft College for the first round of the Nor Cal regional on Saturday, 11/19.  Game time is at 1pm and it will be streamed here: team1sports.com/TaftCA/

MENDOCINO COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH

Public Notice: Cold and flu season has begun early in Mendocino County and COVID is still a threat as well. These viruses affect everyone including children, and most severely infants and toddlers less than 2 years old. Unfortunately, we are already seeing many more children needing emergency room care here in Mendocino County than the last 2 years. Here are the four best ways to combat the winter viruses:

1. Get vaccinated, boosted (and treated). Get flu and COVID vaccines and boosters for everyone in your house over 6 months old.
2. Stay home if you're sick! You’ll recover faster and spread it to fewer others.
3. Wear a mask. There is no vaccine for RSV, so wearing a mask can significantly slow the spread and protect babies and young children who do not yet have immunity and are too young to wear a mask themselves. Wearing a mask in indoor public places is a good way to limit the spread of germs.
4. Get treatments through your provider if someone is sick with flu or COVID. Use TeleHealth if you cannot get an appointment with your regular health care provider.
5. Test! Take an at-home test before attending a party and before returning to work or school after the holiday.

Vaccines and treatments are available at local pharmacies, through your health provider, and at Public Health offices and clinics throughout the county. Please see the Vaccines webpage for more information. Questions? Contact the Call Center 707-472-2759.

ELECTION UPDATE for the Mendocino County Statewide General Election (November 8, 2022)

Current Election Results as of November 18, 2022: mendocinocounty.org/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/current-election-results

DOG NAIL TRIMMING in Point Arena this Sunday afternoon

Hello! I will be headed south to Point Arena this Sunday Nov 20th and have time for a few nail trims if anyone’s pup is in need. The cost is $25. Please email k9nails@gmail.com to book your spot. Thanks so much for your support!

Alisha Richardson

PLEASE DON'T DD

Editor:

The holiday season comes with family gatherings, social time with friends and office parties. These joyful events can lead to life-altering consequences, like drunken driving.

When I was 16 in 1992, a drunken driver hit me. I had a four-month coma, broken bones, paralysis and brain injuries. My gait and speech are affected, and I lost my driving and hearing abilities. For 30-plus years, I read lips and cannot fully enjoy music. Drunken drivers injure lives many ways.

Planning to take Highway 12 to attend a holiday gathering? Make smart decisions now if you plan to drink: Don’t drive drunk.

Law enforcement and I urge you to have a sober friend, taxi, etc. drive you to and from this location.

My message to drive sober will never get old because it saves lives. Having a sober driver is a superb way to begin 2023.

Lori Martin

Tracy

THANKSGIVING BREAK (AV Unified Update)

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Break with your family. We look forward to welcoming your student back to school on Monday, November 28. Covid test kits were sent home with all students. If your student has symptoms, we would encourage you to test them and keep them home if they are positive or not feeling well. Additional kits are available free of charge upon request.

Grades should be received at your home shortly. We appreciate your taking the time to review with your student. If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out for support.

Our families with students in special education programs are invited to participate in the CAC Council. Please see the attached flyers. The county encourages family participation and welcomes your input.

We are planning summer school at this time. Please stay tuned for more information! A College and Career fair is also planned for our families and students from 6th-12th grade in February.

Have a wonderful and relaxing celebration with your family.

Sincerely yours,

MARY NORBERT KORTE

A former Catholic nun, who had devoted her entire life to God, became a liberated Beat writer. Mary Norbert Korte was born in 1934 to an extremely Catholic family in the Bay Area whom encouraged Mary to join the convent right after high school. While in the convent, she earned a masters degree in a specialized field of Silver Latin. At this point, Sister Mary Norbert was indeed a true nun – devoting her life to God and the convent.

In 1965, Sister Mary Norbert was “called” outside of the convent. She attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference and heard the readings by Robert Creeley, Jack Spicer, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. Hearing their work moved Sister Mary enormously, and she was awakened into a new type of devotion. Sister Mary felt just as comfortable with the Beat community as she did at the convent. This event turned out to be monumental for Sister Mary Norbert and “she found her true calling–poetry–as she experienced an ecstasy in the auditorium she had never experienced in any cathedral.”

In 1968, Korte realized that her religious community did not share her penchant for political activism and writing. She left the convent the same year and moved to Berkeley. Obtaining a job in the psychology department at the University of California, Korte was able to explore herself as a writer and an activist. In the fall of 1972, Korte was nominated for a National Endowment award and later that year moved to her current residence in the redwood forest in Mendocino County, California. Along with her writing and activism she took up a new project, that of being an environmentalist.

Before 1997, Korte had spent most of her life teaching. She was one of the original Poet/Teachers for the California Poets in the Schools program. In 1997 she stopped teaching to be the Environmental Director for Coyote Valley Tribe. To support herself she taught at the Indian reservation, bringing the joys of writing to students. She is now retired from teaching but continues writing and protecting the earth, being arrested over the Caltrans Willits Bypass project this past April.

GRAPE GROWERS (AND OTHERS) ELIGIBLE FOR FREEZE DAMAGE GRANTS

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and SBA provide disaster designations due to agricultural losses caused by the freeze that occurred from April 11, 2022, through April 12, 2022

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and SBA provide disaster designations due to agricultural losses caused by the freeze that occurred from April 11, 2022, through April 12, 2022

On November 4, 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted a Secretarial disaster designation for the primary counties of Butte, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Tehama, Tuolumne, Yolo, and Yuba and the contiguous counties of Alpine, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Lake, Madera, Mariposa, Mendocino, Mono, Napa, Plumas, Sacramento, Shasta, Sierra, Solano, Stanislaus, Sutter, and Trinity.

The designation makes USDA assistance available in the form of emergency farm loans for both physical and crop production losses as a direct result of the disaster, up to a maximum of $500,000. The application deadline is July 5, 2023, and assistance is available to farmers and ranchers who conduct family-sized farming operations.

To apply: Contact the local Farm Service Agency (FSA) office in Ukiah at 707-468-9223. Hearing-impaired individuals should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at 202-720-2600.

Additional information can be found at the USDA website: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-programs/index

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is also making Economic Injury Disaster Loans available pursuant to the USDA disaster designation. The SBA application deadline is also July 5, 2023, and assistance is available to small, non-farm businesses, small agricultural cooperatives, and most private non-profit organizations of any size. Small businesses include those that do business directly with the growers, such as truckers and suppliers of agricultural equipment or services.

To apply: Contact SBA at 1-800-659-2955, or visit SBA’s website at: www.sba.gov/disaster, or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov. Hearing-impaired individuals may call 1-800-877-8339.

*Please note this disaster designation is separate from the previously announced designation for the freeze impacting Mendocino County from February 21-28, 2022, with separate applications and deadlines.

THE HUGE ARKER HAS ARRIVED!

After twelve long and arduous months of bourbon barrel aging, the Huge Arker has been released into the wild. We commemorated the launch with our annual Huge Arker Day at Beer Park on November 5th, and, after much sampling and celebration we’re pleased to announce that this limited edition barrel-aged imperial stout is worth the wait.

Ready for the good news? Our Huge Arker has been loaded onto trucks and is making its way across the country on its way to a shelf near you.

The bad news? If you happen to live in one of the seven of states (Alabama, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia) where our monstrous 15.5% imperial stout is out-of-bounds, you’ll need to start preparing for a road trip or bribe/cajole/flatter your favorite road tripping aunt and uncle to procure some for the holidays. We hear they’re into AVBC Beer Park bumper stickers.

Can’t find the Huge Arker at your favorite store? Thanks to the latest in geolocation and beverage tracking technology we’ve installed a handy Beer Finder on our site that allows you to search by current location and desired beer so you can source what’s in stock at your closest AVBC retailer.

Whether you’re looking for the Huge Arker, our deliciously seasonal Winter Solstice Ale, or your go-to Gose, you can find all of our beer right here: https://avbc.com/find-our-beer/

REBUILDING MENDOCINO HIGH SCHOOL

THE CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) invites your participation in a PPH (Public Participation Hearing) 6pm Dec 6th; 1pm Dec 8th

http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/ 

(phone 1-800-857-1917 - to make a comment, press *1 )

Passcodes

English: 1767567#

Spanish 3799627#

Virtual public hearings have been scheduled to hear your comments, concerns and opinions regarding the quality of your telephone, mobile telephone and Voice over Internet (VoIP) service with a particular emphasis on service outages and service restorations. Your participation by providing comments can help to inform the CPUC on these issues. You can watch a livestream of the hearings or participate via telephone. You can also submit comments by mail or post them on the public comment portal: apps.cpuc.ca.gov/c/R2203016 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, November 18, 2022

VICTORIA BITZ, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

CHARLES BOWEN, Marysville/Ukiah. Under influence.

MIHAI COSMA, Willits. Failure to appear.

CADE DAILEY, Murrieta/Ukiah. DUI.

VINCENT GALVAN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

KODY IDICA, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

NOEY JOHNSON JR., Ukiah. Criminal threats, parole violation.

JESUS LOPEZ, Woodland/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI, no license, probation revocation.

BOBBY MILLER, Failure to appear.

REESE MILLER, Fort Bragg. Criminal threats.

JESSICA WHISMAN-FRIDAY, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

KIM SHUCK: Next Tuesday at Bird and Beckett Bookstore I am having a book publishing event for Noodle, Rant, Tangent. Some things to know about the book. It cannot be purchased from the big, cannibal retail online smirk. It is not eligible to be bought on SPD. It is from a tiny and beautiful local press who would love to sell a few copies. 

I can sign books that have not yet been signed at this event. Also, it's a great time to buy people books for the holidays and support Bird and Beckett. I know that I've been all over the place because it's been Heritage month and all, but this event is for my book. There will be fun stories, there will be lots of books, I hope that there will be many friends. 

Please join us. Bird and Beckett is at 653 Chenery in San Francisco and the celebration will be from 7-8:30.

ADVICE FOR DEMOCRATS

Editor,

Until 1952 I had always supported the socialist candidate for president. In 1952 the Democrats nominated a superior candidate, Adlai Stevenson (probably the last one) but he got beat by a popular war hero. In 1948 it was obvious why Henry Wallace was beaten — too far to the left. I thought the best thing to do was to figure out why Democrats were getting beat. 

In California only the coastal counties with most of the population are voting Democratic. Nine out of 10 letters to the editor of the Press Democrat are from Democrats, for nine different reasons. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Three out of 10 voters in Willits went for Trump in 2016 and 2020. 

Maybe we should accept the fact that we will only have two thirds of the electorate to work with. We have Robert Reich telling us the answers correctly but he is preaching to the choir on Free Speech TV. We have demonstrated on the West Coast that voting by mail eliminates problems and independent commissions solve the problem of gerrymandering. But only a couple of other states would consider doing this because it helps the Republicans. Corporadoes want money and as soon as they get it they want power and they will spend whatever it takes to remain in charge. When their costs go up 5% they raise their prices 8%. 

Each month Goldman collects donations and puts it in their sack. The money comes from the US Chamber of Commerce, Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, etc. They bring this sack of money over to the men's restroom in the Willard Hotel at 2 AM and meet with Mitch McConnell's representative to be divided up among members of the House and Senate. They also send a message directing them how to vote on every bill. 

Maybe now we are getting close to finding the answer to why Democrats lose elections. As Thom Hartmann reminds us over and over five days a week on Free Speech TV, no progress will be made until you take a hammer and give a few whacks on the skull until they understand that there is too much money in politics. Remember Citizens United? Say bye-bye. 

A committee made up from members of the following countries: Finland, Switzerland, Uruguay, Algeira, and New Zealand will decide how election financing will work on elections from president to city councils. There are two options, public and private. The committee will decide just how much money will be needed to finance a run for public office and if privately funded it may not exceed that amount. A 1/4% tax on the wealthy will be imposed to fund a police force which will oversee compliance. If publicly funded it will be under the jurisdiction of the House of Representatives. 

We have two years to inform the electorate that all of the Democrats in the Senate, the House and those Democrats who are running for public office, support this proposal. West coast states have solved the gerrymandering problem and also have solved the problems associated with voting by independent nonpartisan committees drawing new district lines every 10 years and voting by mail respectfully. More states need to adopt these methods.

The objective is to elect a Democrat president, Senate and House in November 2024. To avoid getting tapped on the skull with a ball peen hammer, please solve the following Democratic Party problems, not yet solved. 

We know that some people are naturally selfish. We know that when some people start to accumulate money they tend to vote for Republicans. We know that as people age they tend to become more conservative. The Democratic Party should not depend on these types of voters nor make special concessions to them. What do we have left? Three groups from age 18 to around 65 with the youngest the most liberal. But the youngest do not vote except in low percentages. 

We have about a third of voters to work with, if we can only get them into the habit of voting. We want them to vote about 75% of the time. How do you attract them (18-30)? Sex? Free passes to NFL games? 

I know that the Editor has known Bernie Sanders for many years but when 99% of adults have never heard of him I wrote to the PD, "Put a dollar bill in an envelope and send it to Senator Sanders, Senate Office Building, Washington DC and ask him to please run for president. You know that the Press Democrat does not print letters like that. So if you have a good idea about how to get people to vote Democratic send it to the DNC. It will go in the round wastebasket. 

The Republicans have pretty successful lately reducing the people who might vote Democratic. I have always wondered why, if you can purchase three houses in Willits for the price of one in the Bay Area why are there houses on the market in Willits? Answer from Anne Fashauer. 

Would you like to hear the names that time invented? Tycoon, kudos, pundit, socialite.

Ralph Bostrom

Willits

THERE’S NO QUESTION NANCY PELOSI will go down as one of the most effective politicians in American history. Effective at what, though, is the question. Like LBJ, the power-dressing Pelosi was a ruthless disciplinarian. In large measure, she succeeded in almost totally squashing any progressive resistance within her own party to the neoliberal agenda she relentlessly advanced. Another measure of Pelosi’s nearly unrivaled expertise at playing the political game on the Hill: Did any Speaker of the House do as well in the stock market as Nancy? Although she’s relinquishing her role as leader, Pelosi says she’s going to stick around for two years to “guide” her replacement, Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries already seems to have absorbed her primary lesson: “I’m a Black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now. … There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.” 

— Jeffrey St. Clair

LARGEST DAM REMOVAL PROJECT IN U.S. HISTORY GETS GO-AHEAD IN CALIFORNIA

by Kurtis Alexander

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted Thursday to allow the license of four dams on the Klamath River to lapse, giving the final major go-ahead to the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the nation’s history.

The vote by federal regulators opens the door for the first of the four hydroelectric dams to come down next year in what has been a two-decade effort to liberate the once mighty river that spans southern Oregon and Northern California.

The goal of the nearly half-billion-dollar project is to restore the health of flora and fauna in the vast Klamath Basin, particularly salmon. The fish once numbered in the hundreds of thousands there and boasted the third largest salmon run in the continental U.S. Removing the dams from the 250-mile waterway will open fish passage, improve river flow and uproot toxic algal blooms.

The dam removal also represents a triumph for conservation groups, outdoorsmen and, perhaps most significantly, tribal groups, which have a long and tangled history tied to the forests and mountains of California’s far north and Oregon’s rural south.

“This isn’t just about the dams getting removed from the river, they’re getting removed from our culture and our way of life,” said Frankie Myers, vice chair of the Yurok Tribe, which has a reservation in Humboldt and Del Norte counties where the Klamath drains to the Pacific. “These dams have been black clouds hanging over our river and our people for 100 years.”

The Yurok Tribe is one of the affiliates of the Klamath River Renewal Corp., a nonprofit cooperative set up to take control of the facilities from power company PacifiCorp and manage the dam demolition. The power company, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, has decided the dams are too costly to operate.

Because dismantling the facilities involves hydroelectric infrastructure, FERC has been at the center of the campaign. Thursday’s move by the agency — approving the license surrender order for the power project — is FERC’s most decisive yet in a string of administrative actions. The approval essentially pulls the plug on energy operations.

“This project doesn’t happen if FERC doesn’t issue a surrender order,” said Mark Bransom, chief executive officer of the Klamath River Renewal Corp., which represents California and Oregon, tribal nations, water users, fishing groups and conservation organizations. “It’s a huge milestone for the project and for the parties that have been working on this for a couple of decades.”

While FERC is normally in the business of promoting power generation, not decommissioning it, the agency’s decision about the Klamath follows a push from an unlikely coalition of groups that advocated for the dam removal and came up with the money to fund it.

PacificCorp is contributing $200 million to the effort, with the agreement that it can unload the aging facilities without liability. Voter-approved water bonds in California are covering the rest.

“We have to understand this doesn’t happen every day,” FERC Chairman Richard Glick said at Thursday’s commission meeting in Washington, D.C. “This has been a long time coming, this order.”

The dams no longer generate electricity. Nor are they, or the reservoirs above them, used for irrigation, municipal water supplies or flood control.

A handful of authorizations and permits still need to be granted before the dam removal can begin, but they’re mostly procedural.

With Thursday’s decision, the project remains on track for taking out the smallest of three California dams — the 33-foot-tall Copco No. 2 dam — as soon as next summer, Bransom said. The 173-foot Iron Gate Dam and 126-foot Copco No. 1 as well as Oregon’s J.C. Boyle dam will be razed the next year.

The dam deconstruction will be followed by a massive seeding and planting effort that involves 97 species of native trees, brush and grasses, all of which once defined the landscape cut out by the river.

“These are the actions we have to take to get us back on track,” said Myers, with the Yurok Tribe. “Undoing those things that we knew were wrong. We can undo them. We can choose a different path.”

(SF Chronicle)

MEMO OF THE AIR, Good Night Radio live from Franklin St. all night Friday night!

Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is about 5:30pm. Or send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via KNYO.org. Also the schedule is there for KNYO's many other even more terrific shows.

Any day or night you can go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. And by Saturday night I'll put the recording of tonight's show there. And besides all that, there you'll find a bulging pinata of educational tidbits of laboratory-grown meat to whack at and chase around the room until showtime, or any time, such as:

Disney voice actors, including Walt Disney himself. 

https://laughingsquid.com/disney-voice-actors-side-by-side/

All the prisons in the U.S., seen from the air. Spread out all over this great land of the free and home of the brave is a giant, expensive, and still growing gulag fungus. 

http://prisonmap.com/

And a relatively local road luge race. Ryan Farmer wins. The others can hock their luges. Or stand on them. When I was in third grade our neighborhood was a long steep hill. There were lots more kids around in those days, traveling in wild packs, and a rite of passage was to stay on a skateboard all the way down that hill, which was hard because the road was bumpy and skateboard wheels were tiny and hard and loud, and the merest pebble would stop the thing and yank it out from under you and your feet with it. I still have marks on my arms and legs from that. No helmets, of course; that was the before-time. Most cars didn't even have seatbelts, or if they did, they lived stuffed in the crack between the couch bottom of the car-wide front seat and the back of it, which came up to just below a grownup's shoulders, so if a car hit you from behind, your entire head was liable to pop right off like a ketchup cork.

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/nov/11/video-ferndales-ryan-farmer-takes-first-place-worl/

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

‘ELECTION DENIAL’ FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: YouTube Censors TK-Produced Videos, Again, Despite Factual Accuracy

by Matt Taibbi

Matt Orfalea didn't lie, alter clips, or remove key context. He made edits faithful to reality and just got a strike for it. Welcome to post-Trump America, where truth is a censorable offense…

In late September videographer Matt Orfalea made a pair of videos for out substack series TK. One, Memory Holed: “The Election Was Hacked,” was a simple montage of Democratic politicians, media officials, and enforcement officials saying the 2016 election was, among other things, “illegitimate,” “rigged,” “hacked,” and a “cyber 9/11.” 

The second, Memory Holed, Part II: The “Rigged” Election,was a similar exercise, with one exception: it compared the post-2020 statements of Donald Trump to the post-2016 statements of Democratic partisans. When Trump tells Chris Wallace, “I have to see,” when asked if he’d concede an election, Orfalea shows Hillary Clinton saying, “No, I would not,” when asked in 2017 — after her loss — if she’d contest the results. He shows Trump later saying he’ll of course respect the results, “if I win,” and Hillary Clinton saying Joe Biden should not concede “under any circumstances,” essentially exact analogs.

Matt Orfalea: “BREAKING: I made a vid showing election fraud claims from both Dems & Repubs. In no way did I advance or endorse any of the claims. For documenting this history, YouTube just deleted it, blocked me, & gave me a strike—a step toward deleting my entire channel.” 

YouTube initially tried to demonetize both videos. After a fuss they reversed the decision about the first. Now they’ve taken a more drastic step, not only deleting the second video but two earlier rough-cut versions that were never even shown to the public but lived on his site. (This is another mad feature of the content moderation era: you can be censored and punished for pre-publication thinking). They also gave Orfalea a strike, leaving him two away from being removed from the site, which would essentially put him out of business. 

YouTube’s decision claims the second video “contains claims that past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen, and our election integrity policy prohibits content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in US presidential elections.” Moreover, “countervailing views, which we refer to as EDSA context, on those remarks are not provided in the video, audio, title, or description.”

We’ll go through this outrageous explanation point-by-point, but first: these videos are factual. There are no statements taken out of context. No editing games were played to make it appear someone is saying something he or she did not. This was the point of the exercise, to show what was actually said, when, and by whom. 

As to YouTube’s letter, if indeed their “election integrity policy” prohibits content that advances falseclaims that “past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen,” then YouTube really should be taking down the first video as well.

This video after all is packed with clips of people like Karine Jean-Pierre saying the 2016 election was “stolen,” Joe Biden saying “I absolutely agree” Trump is an “illegitimate president,” Kamala Harris saying “you’re absolutely right,” Trump didn’t really win in 2016, and even Jimmy Carter saying “Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016.” Old pal Keith Olbermann proclaimed the public wouldn’t stand for this “bloodless coup” called voting, Chris Hayes said Trump “cheated,” and a conga line of officials from Adam Schiff to Elizabeth Warren insisted foreigners had “hacked our elections.”

These videos made what we believe to be a powerful and legitimate point about the framing of the last two presidential elections. The first is that despite Hillary Clinton’s reluctant capitulation on Election Night in 2016, the Democratic Party as a whole as well as key officials in the government never recognized Donald Trump as a legitimate president. Clinton in fact spent four years leading a public relations campaign insisting that a) she actually won in 2016, b) Trump only won because of fraud and actual vote tampering, and c) Democrats going forward should not recognize his victory should he win a second time. 

Our view is that whether it’s Stop the Steal or Russiagate, denying a president’s legitimacy because you believe a conspiracy theory is the same behavior, and should be treated the same way. YouTube by administering a strike to Orfalea is sending a message that you may leave videos of Hillary Clinton saying “we know that they were into voting rolls” (they being the Russians), or Olbermann warning “It will not be a peaceful change of power!” or the current president and vice-president agreeing their predecessor “didn’t really win,” all without YouTube’s required Surgeon General-type warning called “EDSA” (YouTube’s clunky acronym for “Educational, Documentary, Scientific, or Artistic” context). In other words, you may leave up such statements without pointing out they’re unproven, incorrect, or irresponsible. 

This is a de factoendorsement of such behavior when committed by certain people. When others do exactly the same thing, it’s conspiracy theory, incitement, even insurrection. 

Donald Trump of course is running for president again. His behavior after the 2020 vote will become exhibit A in the case against his re-election, perhaps even rightly so. But YouTube is signaling early on that it will not permit press outlets to compare his behavior and his statements to those of his political opponents. 

This isn’t just about statements from individual has-beens like Hillary Clinton, but official bodies like the DHS and the FBI. Just like Trump, those official organizations have repeatedly engaged in a form of “election denial,” warning that upcoming elections will be packed full of efforts by foreign countries to “amplify doubts about the integrity of U.S. elections” and to “hinder candidates perceived to be particularly adversarial” to countries like China and Russia, by “spreading disinformation.”

These official statements are more or less exactly what Donald Trump is up to when he announces before an election that it’s “rigged.” It’s what he was doing weeks before the vote in 2016, when he said “Of course there’s large-scale voting fraud happening on and before election day,” and it’s what he was doing on Election Day, when he said “The machines, you put down a Republican and it registers as a Democrat, and they’ve had a lot of complaints about that today,” before things turned his way. The idea is to prepare audiences to refuse to accept results of a vote should they go the wrong way. 

If you win, it’s “the cleanest election in history.” If you lose, the electorate is already primed to throw a fit. It’s dirty, unpatriotic behavior and it’s now a routine element of all elections, coming from the Trump side and from officialdom. 

Worse, it’s the dirtiest kind of pool to have agencies like the FBI or DHS repeatedly leak that “Russia” or “China” prefers Bernie Sanders or Trump, and is either trying to sabotage or already succeeded in sabotaging elections on their behalf. Ask yourself what purpose public leaks of such “assessments” serve? These have a patina of legitimacy because of the organizations involved, but they’re as bereft of evidence as Trump’s Stop the Steal claims and perhaps more corrupt, because they’re so flagrant a misuse of tax dollars. 

The press has to be allowed to make these points. If it isn’t, Silicon Valley is encouraging one form of unethical behavior while condemning another. Moreover, it’s punishing the media for factually accurate reporting. There is no explicit or implicit message in Orfalea’s videos that either the 2020 or 2016 vote was compromised. His videos are the opposite of election denial. He’s clearly making the point that no matter who does it, denying election results is irresponsible. If YouTube punishes him for that message, it just sends a message that all of these bad actors are right, and the system really is rigged. We’ve asked politely for a reversal of their decision. YouTube must do the right thing here.

MY DAYS WERE ROUTINE. I'd be up at six and run at least five miles before breakfast. Come back, eat a big hunk of cheese, and drink some fruit juice, take a shower and a short nap. Get up and have a big breakfast, oatmeal, half a dozen eggs, ham steaks, bread, and milk. Dinner time, I'd eat a three pound steak and salad. Bill Bottoms would see to it I got a dish of black eyed peas whenever I wanted it. He made sure I had plenty of protein. Loved ice cream, usually ate a quart a night.

— Joe Louis

WILL AARON JUDGE’S TINY NORCAL HAVEN LURE HIM TO GIANTS? It’s complicated.

by Connor Letourneau

Linden, San Joaquin County — Terry Cano, owner and head barber at Majestic Barber Shop in Stockton, paused mid-haircut Tuesday morning when asked the question so many want answered: Where will Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge sign in free agency?

“I’ve kind of got some inside information,” Cano said, stroking his beard as he considered how much to divulge.

If Cano were any other barber, such boasting could be dismissed as meaningless barbershop banter. But this is the man responsible for Judge’s signature fade each MLB offseason. Since he met Judge five years ago, Cano has become friendly with his only famous client, exchanging the occasional text and sometimes even having Judge watch his Instagram story.

Like many others in Judge’s native San Joaquin County, Cano is optimistic that Judge will sign with the San Francisco Giants. The situation just might be too ideal to not happen. As a kid in a tiny farming community called Linden 90 miles east of San Francisco and 13 miles east of Stockton, Judge idolized Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia and stayed up past his bedtime to watch Barry Bonds break MLB’s home-run record.

Now, just five weeks after breaking Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League home-run record, Judge is eligible to negotiate with any team in free agency. Though the asking price will be steep — north of $300 million steep — for a generational slugger in his prime, the Giants should have the money and incentive to make a compelling offer.

Whether it will be enough to pry Judge away from the Yankees and beat out other contenders like the Dodgers and Mets could depend on how much Judge wants to be the face of his favorite childhood team. Given that he is notoriously inscrutable, The Chronicle visited Linden (population: 2,043) multiple times in recent weeks to better understand his priorities.

Twelve years removed from dominating the old Mother Lode League in three sports for the Linden High School Lions, Judge, 30, still considers his rural hometown a core part of his identity.

Almost every November, he returns to sponsor a charity run, work out at Linden High’s gym, eat the ribs and pesto at nearby Waterloo restaurant, and talk with kids about reaching their potential. Without the support of family and friends in this no-stoplight hamlet, Judge might not have reached his.

Linden, with its one main road, two modest food markets, three restaurants, six churches and numerous walnut and cherry orchards, feels straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. As one resident put it, “People don’t just have your back here; they have your whole body.”

Over the past decade-plus, as Judge blossomed from small-town standout to four-time MLB All-Star, folks in Linden were borderline giddy — not just because one of their own had made it big, but because the one who did is the perfect ambassador. Adopted the day after he was born by two Linden teachers, Judge grew up calling adults “Ma’am” and “Sir,” attending the local Methodist church and participating in student government.

When old high school classmates watch video of Judge praising his teammates in news conferences or visiting children’s hospitals in his free time, they’re reminded that fame hasn’t changed him. He is still the same gap-toothed leader who used to sit with kids in the Linden High cafeteria who had no one else at their table.

“You won’t find a person in this town who has a bad word to say about him,” said Reagan Avey, a bartender at Sammy’s, a bar and grill inside Orlando’s Market in Linden. “He’s just a good, humble dude. Always has been.”

Linden is so small and remote that it technically isn’t even a town. Settled in the early 1900s by Italian immigrants who hauled produce in their trucks to sell in San Francisco, it is a census-designated place that takes only about 90 seconds to drive through at the speed limit.

Whether entering from the east or west on the one-lane back road of Highway 26, visitors are greeted by a navy-blue sign proclaiming Linden the “Home of NY Yankees AARON JUDGE.” This is just one of the many ways the community shows its pride. At Pizza Plus, a 7-foot-tall Fathead of Judge stands on a wall next to a Yankees pennant.

The Waterloo — a Giants-themed restaurant just outside of town that Judge’s parents, Patty and Wayne, frequent — showcases an autographed Judge baseball. At Linden High, a huge Pepsi poster with Judge’s likeness sits in a corner of the library. A few feet away, on the wall of the administrative offices, are nearly a dozen newspaper clippings from Judge’s various feats.

“It’s always constant support and love,” Judge told The Chronicle in late August. “We’ve got a couple of more Yankee fans (in Linden) now.”

When Yankees games occur during Linden High’s home football games on fall Friday nights, the PA announcer at Lion Stadium updates fans about each of Judge’s at-bats.

His past exploits on that football field, the adjacent baseball diamond and in the nearby basketball gym have become the stuff of legend in Linden. The 233-yard, four-touchdown masterpiece as a towering wide receiver in a 64-25 lossto rival Argonaut High. The 500-foot grand slam that soared beyond the left-field fence, over Highway 26 and into a cherry orchard. The driving dunk from the top of the key to punctuate a 31-point, 20-rebound performance against Summerville High.

As a 6-foot-7, 235-pound senior with Division I interest in three sports, Judge appeared destined for stages far bigger than anything Linden could offer.But even after he spurned a late-round contract from the Oakland A’s and a football scholarship from Notre Dame to play baseball at Fresno State, no one in San Joaquin County could have predicted all that awaited him.

Hitting more home runs in a season than anyone in MLB history not connected to the steroid era. Flirting with the Triple Crown. Turning quiet Linden into a media attraction.

“Just in the last month alone, I’ve probably gotten 60 interview requests,” Linden High athletic director Robert Posehn said. “And we’re not just talking about reporters from New York, either. We got one from Japan.”

If a Linden resident doesn’t know Judge, he or she probably knows someone who knows him. Patty and Wayne remain active members of the community. The parents of Judge’s high school sweetheart and wife, Samantha, are also still in the area. During the season, Judge keeps in contact with many of his childhood friends in Linden through Instagram and texts.

This only makes residents, even those who never met the hometown hero or aren’t typically sports fans, feel more invested in Judge’s success.

During Game 3 of the ALCS in late October, customers at Rinaldi’s Market watched Judge and the Yankees play the Astros on the TVs hanging above the two checkout lanes. A quick drive down Highway 26, on the outdoor patio at Orlando’s Market, walnut farmers fresh from harvest sipped tall glasses of Coors Light as they cheered Judge on big-screen TVs.

When he struck out swinging in the bottom of the sixth inning, one man in muddy jeans and a Carhartt T-shirt sprang from his chair, shook his head and yelled, “Dang! Down and away!” The Yankees would lose 5-0 on their way to being swept in the series.

Almost immediately after Judge’s season-ending news conference, speculation amplified about his future. One report from a Yankees beat writer suggested that Judge was tired of New York fans’ negativity, annoyed with management for releasing the details of the extension he rejected in spring training, and eager to reunite with family in Northern California.

That story from NJ.com, which included an anonymous source saying that the Giants “won’t be underbid” for Judge, has been a major conversation topic in Linden for more than two weeks. As the orange-and-black memorabilia adorning the walls of the Waterloo reinforces, the Giants are the region’s most popular MLB team. The notion of Judge providing San Francisco much-needed power in the heart of its order feels like a dream to some.

“If he goes to the Giants, it means I could finally cancel my MLB.TVsubscription,” said Eric Hampton, a manager at Rinaldi’s whose younger sister grew up with Judge. “Of course, if he goes to the Dodgers, I’m just not watching baseball anymore.”

There could be at least one significant downside, though, to having Judge so close to home. Since he burst onto the national scene as the 2017 AL Rookie of the Year, he has viewed Linden as a sort of haven: the one place where he can escape the pressures of stardom and just be Aaron again.

By playing only a 1½-hour drive — without traffic — from his parents’ house, he might disrupt his safe space. Linden could become a popular road-trip destination for Giants die-hards. Instead of working out at Linden High’s gym or overseeing the turkey run every Thanksgiving as he pleases, Judge might need to rethink his visits.

“You kind of worry that if Linden gains too much exposure and too many people start coming out here, will Aaron have to move his camps and those things somewhere else in the area?” Posehn said. “Obviously, we can only accommodate so many numbers out here.”

Nearly a dozen Linden residents approached for this story declined to be quoted, all citing Patty’s wishes for locals to avoid media.

That makes it tricky to get a better read on Judge, who has revealed nothing publicly about his approach to free agency. Does he want to live closer to loved ones and be the face of his favorite childhood team like that report indicated? Or, would he rather play elsewhere and preserve Linden as his haven?

Perhaps the best available intel belongs to Cano. Judge started coming to him for haircuts based off a friend’s recommendation after Judge’s breakout rookie season because, well, Linden has no barber shops.

Cano now has two framed photos with Judge on his wall, a bobblehead of Judge in his Linden High baseball uniform on a shelf next to his barber chair, and a near-empty bottle of Don Julio 70 that he and clients took shots from after all 62 of Judge’s home runs this past season. From time to time, Cano even dons a Yankees hat instead of his usual Giants one.

“I’ve kind of been hearing the same thing that everyone’s hoping: that he’s going to come home,” Cano said Tuesday while wearing a black Giants hat with a gold “SF” across the front. “I’m really hoping he can come home. If he does, I’m going to buy season tickets.”

(SF Chronicle)

A SMOLDERING FUSE

by James Kunstler

Thirty-seven billion more dollars for Ukraine? (That’s thirty-seven thousand millions of dollars, by the way.) Bringing the total this year to a click-or-two over ninety billion (ninety-thousand millions), on top of whatever Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX company funneled through that sad-sack international money laundromat — soon to be the darkest backwater of a European failed state since Field Marshal Melchior von Hatzfeldt of Westphalia left Bohemia a corpse-strewn wasteland after the Battle of Jankau (1645).

It really doesn’t matter how much more money we pound down that rat-hole, you understand, because by the time various parties — the weapons-makers, Volodymyr Zelensky, sundry members of the US House of Representatives, The Biden family, the World Economic Forum — are finished creaming off their fair shares, poor Ukraine won’t have enough cash-on-hand to replace six fuse-boxes in Zaporizhzhia.

Against this backdrop, the USA enters a holiday season near-death spiral as unspooling scandals battle a collapsing economy for supremacy of the alt news sites. Case-in-point: the aforementioned FTX monkey business, a metastasizing tumor of the body politic. This complex fraud will smolder for a few weeks before it explodes into an extinction-grade event for the Democratic Party. The usual suspects among the mainstream media are trying to ignore it for the moment, but the shreds of this exploding money-borg are already sticking to guilty parties far and wide across the political landscape.

FTX commander-in-chief Sam Bankman-Fried remains at large after steering the crypto-currency trading platform into a bankruptcy so hideously tangled that the assigned liquidator in court proceedings, one John Ray III, who oversaw the Enron aftermath years ago, was boggled by what he’s found so far (and it’s early in the game): Namely, a company run by a handful of twenty-something drug freaks with no idea what they were doing, no record-keeping, and a slime trail of misappropriated investor’s funds leading to Kiev and Geneva through various crooked American political action committees, and the halls of Congress — with echos in ballot harvesting shenanigans which shaped the outcome of this month’s US elections.

Mr. Bankman-Fried is still scheduled as a main speaker for Accenture’s Nov. 30 DealBook Conference in New York ($2,499 for a ticket), along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Odds on him showing up? Or even being alive elsewhere on this planet then?

The extended family Bankman-Fried is the quintessence of Woke aristocracy. Dad Joe Bankman and mom Barbara Fried are both law professors at Stanford. She also acted as a money-bundler for the Democratic Party and ran two non-profit “voter registration” orgs (against the IRS laws which only permit non-partisan organized voter registration). Brother Gabe Bankman-Fried headed a non-profit named Guarding Against Pandemics (funded by Sam), which lobbies Congress to construct new platforms for medical tyranny. Aunt Linda Fried is Dean of the Columbia U’s Public Health school, and is associated with Johns Hopkins, which ran the October 2019 Event 201 pandemic drill (sponsored by the Gates Foundation) months before the Covid-19 outbreak.

Sam’s girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, ran the Alameda Investments arm of the FTX empire (that is, FTX’s own money laundromat). Her dad, Glenn Ellison is chair of MIT’s Econ School. His former colleague on the MIT Econ faculty, Gary Gensler, who specialized in blockchains there, is now head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that Sam Bankman Fried was attempting to rope into a regulation scheme to eliminate FTX’s crypto-currency competitors. Caroline’s mom, Sara Fisher Ellison is an MIT econ prof specializing in the pharmaceutical industry (fancy that!). Caroline Ellison is currently on-the-run.

The sum total of all this professional and academic accomplishment is also the quintessence of Woke-Jacobin turpitude in service to a political faction that seeks maximum moneygrubbing while acting to overthrow every norm of behavior in the conduct of elections, and perhaps in American life generally. That’s some accomplishment. It’s also a lesson in why the managerial elite of our country are no longer trustworthy. They have gotten away with crimes against the nation for years, which has only made them bolder and more reckless.

Wait for the FTX bankruptcy to unwind, along with all the political ramifications it entails, not to mention the financial afterburn in the whole crypto market, very likely extending into and befouling the rest of the banking system. This is going to be a clusterfuck for the ages, and will propel the USA into a depression with no visible horizon.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

THE DELUSION OF INFINITE ECONOMIC GROWTH

Even “sustainable” technology such as electric vehicles and wind turbines faces physical limits and exacts environmental costs

by Chirag Dhara & Vandana Singh

The electric vehicle (EV) has become one of the great modern symbols of a world awakened to the profound challenges of unsustainability and climate change. So much so that we may well imagine that Deep Thought’s answer today to Life, the Universe and Everything might plausibly be “EV.” But, as Douglas Adams would surely have asked, if electric vehicles are the answer, what is the question?

Let us imagine the “perfect” EV: solar powered, efficient, reliable and affordable. But is it sustainable? EVs powered by renewable energy may help reduce the carbon footprint of transport. Yet, the measure of sustainability is not merely the carbon footprint but the material footprint: the aggregate quantity of biomass, metal ores, construction minerals and fossil fuels used during production and consumption of a product. The approximate metric tonne weight of an EV constitutes materials such as metals (including rare earths), plastics, glass and rubber. Therefore, a global spike in the demand for EVs would drive an increased demand for each of these materials.

Every stage of the life cycle of any manufactured product exacts environmental costs: habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and pollution (including carbon emissions) from extraction of raw materials, manufacturing / construction, through to disposal. Thus, it is the increasing global material footprint that is fundamentally the reason for the twin climate and ecological crises.

The global material footprint has grown in lockstep with the exponentially rising global economy (GDP) since the industrial revolution. This is largely because of egregious consumption by the super-affluent in a socioeconomic system founded on growth without limits. Can we resolve this fundamental conflict between the quest for limitless growth and the consequent environmental destruction?

ENTER TECHNOLOGY

Technological innovation and efficiency improvements are often cited as pathways to decouple growth in material use from economic growth. While technology undoubtedly has a crucial role to play in the transition to a sustainable world, it is constrained by fundamental physical principles and pragmatic economic considerations.

Examples abound. The engine efficiency of airplanes has improved little for decades since they have long been operating close to their theoretical peak efficiency. Likewise, there is a hard limit on the efficiency of photovoltaic cells of about 35 percent because of the physical properties of the semiconductors that constitute them; in practice few exceed 20 percent for economic and pragmatic reasons. The power generation of large wind farms is limited to about one watt per square meter as a simple yet utterly unavoidable physical consequence of wake effects. The awesome exponential increase in computing power of the past five decades will end by about 2025 since it is physically impossible to make the transistors on the computer chip, already roughly 5 percent of the size of the coronavirus, much smaller.

Whether it is principles of classical, quantum or solid state physics or thermodynamics, each places different but inexorable constraints on technological solutions. Basically, physical principles that have allowed incredible technological leaps over the past century also inevitably limit them. We might consider that extensive recycling of materials would offset efficiency limits. Recycling is crucial; however, while glass and metals can be recycled almost indefinitely without loss of quality, materials such as paper and plastic can be recycled only a few times before becoming too degraded.

Additionally, recycling itself may be an energy- and materials-intensive process. Even if physical laws could be broken (they cannot) to achieve recycling with 100 percent efficiency, added demand from the imperative for economic growth would necessarily require virgin materials. The key point is that efficiency is limited by physics, but there is no sufficiency limit on the socioeconomic construct of “demand.”

Unfortunately, the situation is even more dire. Economic growth is required to be exponential; that is, the size of the economy must double in a fixed period. As referenced earlier, this has driven a corresponding increase in the material footprint. To understand the nature of exponential growth, consider the EV. Suppose that we have enough (easily extractable) lithium for the batteries needed to fuel the EV revolution for another 30 years. Now assume that deep-sea mining provides four times the current amount of these materials. Are we covered for 120 years? No, because the current 10 percent rate of growth in demand for lithium is equivalent to doubling of demand every seven years, which means we would only have enough for 44 years. In effect, we would cause untold, perhaps irreversible, devastation of marine ecosystems to buy ourselves a few extra years’ supply of raw materials.

Exponential growth swiftly, inevitably, swamps anything in finite supply. For a virus, that finite resource is the human population and in the context of the planet it is its physical resources.

The inescapable inference is that it is essentially impossible to decouple material use from economic growth. And this is exactly what has transpired. Wiedmann et al., 2015 did a careful accounting of the material footprint, including those embedded in international trade, for several nations. In the 1990–2008 period covered by the study, no country achieved a planned, deliberate economywide decoupling for a sustained length of time. Claims by the Global North to the contrary conceal the substantial offshoring of its production, and the associated ecological devastation, to the Global South.

Recent proposals for ecocidal deep-sea and fantastical exoplanetary mining are an unsurprising consequence of a growth paradigm that refuses to recognize these inconvenient truths.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?

These observations lead us to a natural minimum condition for sustainability: all resource use curves must be simultaneously flatlined and all pollution curves simultaneously extinguished. It is this resource perspective that allows us to see why EVs may help offset carbon emissions yet remain utterly unsustainable under the limitless growth paradigm.

THE REAL QUESTION

We have argued that the inextricable link between material consumption and GDP makes the infinite-growth paradigm incompatible with sustaining ecological integrity. Thus, while EVs constitute a partial answer to the climate question, within the current paradigm they will only exacerbate the larger anthropogenic crises connected to unsustainable resource consumption.

The real question is this: how do we transition to alternative economic paradigms founded on the reconciliation of equitable human well-being with ecological integrity?

scientificamerican.com/article/the-delusion-of-infinite-economic-growth/

UKRAINE, FRIDAY, 18TH NOVEMBER

A day after the American basketball star Brittney Griner was sent to a notoriously tough prison, Moscow raised the possibility of an exchange for a convicted arms dealer, but Washington said it was not a serious proposal.  

• As Russia raises possibility of a deal to free Griner, U.S. officials dismiss it as mere talk.
• Residue of explosives at the Nord Stream site backs European claims of sabotage.
• Nearly half of Ukraine’s energy grid has been disabled by Russian strikes, the prime minister says.
• Ukrainian teen who fled war with a backpack and a bassoon will play at Carnegie Hall.
• Fighting in eastern Ukraine slows as both sides seek to adapt for winter.
• Ukraine starts to build a wall on its border with Belarus, a close Russian ally.
• Zelensky expresses skepticism that a Ukrainian missile hit Poland, putting him at odds with the West.

(The New York Times)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I wish we had a super-international-assassin-vigilante man-hero who would go out and systematically disappear every last one of these evil, psychotic globalists. And then all the corrupt leaders and politicians in the major countries, and then the corporate hierarchies of Big Pharm, Defense Industry, Financial Industry, Health Industry; starting with the USA. It’s kill, or be killed. If we don’t rise up, become proactive, and stop these maniacs the lights are going to go out on Earth. You say you care dearly about your children and grandchildren and their future. Bullshit! Prove it!

US EMPIRE VIEWS UKRAINIANS AND RUSSIANS AS LAB RATS FOR WEAPONS TESTING

by Caitlin Johnstone

A surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” write’s NYT’s Lara Jakes.

Jakes writes that “new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.” These new technological advancements include an information system known as Delta, as well as “remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.”

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

Yeah, no shit.

At some point The New York Times article was re-titled from “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” to the slightly less obvious “For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test.”

News that the west is using Ukraine to test weapons systems for future wars aligns with recent comments by the commander of the US nuclear arsenal that the proxy war is a test run for a much bigger conflict that’s on its way.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said US STRATCOM head Charles Richard at a naval conference earlier this month. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

So in addition to being used to advance longstanding US geostrategic objectives, apparently this war is also being used to sharpen the imperial war machine’s claws for a looming hot war with China and/or Russia. The US would certainly have an advantage in military test runs over the years in such a conflict.

As an aside, it’s probably worth noting that all the testing of new western weapons technology would likely explain reports from Ukrainian astronomers that the skies over Kyiv have been “swarming with unidentified flying objects (UFOs).” The aforementioned New York Times article quotes Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov as saying that the weapons testing he’s seen has convinced him that “the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans.”

One of the many reasons the US and its complex network of allies, partners and assets are always fighting so many wars is because new weapons technology needs to be tested in battle before it can be deemed effective. What this means in practice is using human bodies as test subjects, the way a scientist uses laboratory rats or guinea pigs.

The US-centralized empire pretends to care about Ukrainian lives, but in reality it only cares about them to the extent that a researcher cares about his lab rats. And for exactly the same reason.

What could be more sinister than that? Well, the agendas that they are running those tests in preparation for, I suppose.

(caitlinjohnstone.com)