Mendocino County Today: Saturday, April 1, 2023

Showers | Blossoms | Philo Felines | Shooting Update | Mushroomer Found | Bridge Upgrade | Randomonium | AVUSD News | Bottled Coca | CSD Agenda | Village Newsletter | Coon Poll | Baird Benefit | MCOE Hacked | Top Mark | Ed Notes | Once Reviewed | Inn Sold | Jarvis & Nichols | Public Transportation | Monetize Me | Yesterday's Catch | Bioneers | Cool Air | Comfy Lives | Thin Skinned | Mad Names | Marco Radio | Headline Candy | Cheating Hubby | Trump Case | Presidential Suite | 2024 Election | Flickering Light | America Saved | Disinfo Complex | Bathroom Key | Pure Apartheid | Trumpgasm | Modern David | Ukraine | Bell Tolls

GUSTY SOUTHERLY WINDS AND LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS will continue across the coast and coastal interior today. A deeper trough will follow on Sunday, bringing higher rain amounts, small hail and lower snow levels. Occasional rain showers, mountain snow showers and colder conditions will persist into early next week. Cold morning lows will also continue into much of next week. Drier and warmer weather looking promising the latter half of next week. (NWS)

JENNIFER BIRD AT AV FARM SUPPLY: 

Please please do not just show up at the AV Farm Supply with cats. The employees cannot take them in and are required to say no. You must call ahead and make arrangements with Felines of Philo first. We can’t always take the kitties but would love to help out with finding them somewhere to go or to at least get them fixed.

And to the gentleman who came into AVFS this morning after being told by his landlord he could drop them off, please contact me! (I wasn’t here and I don’t think you left a name or number!) I’m hoping they didn’t get left somewhere.

707-684-9439

NICK WHIPPLE/COVELO SHOOTING UPDATE

On 03-30-2023 a forensic autopsy determined Nicholas Shehli Whipple had a gunshot wound to his torso and his death is currently being investigated as a homicide.

Further investigations are currently ongoing and no additional information is currently available for public release.

Anyone with information that can assist Sheriff's Detectives with this homicide investigation are urged to contact the Sheriff's Office Tip-Line by calling 707-234-2100 or the WeTip Anonymous Crime Reporting Hotline by calling 800-782-7463.

PICKER PLUCKED

On Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 5:56 PM the Sheriff’s Office received a report of a missing/lost mushroom picker in the 26000 block of Philo-Greenwood Road in Philo (CA).

The Sheriff’s Office requested the assistance from the California Highway Patrol Air Operations Unit who deployed a CHP helicopter to help search for the missing/lost mushroom picker. 

At approximately 9:10 PM the CHP helicopter was able to detect the presence of what appeared to be an active warming fire and obtained GPS coordinates for this fire.

Deputies were unsuccessful in attempts to reach the GPS coordinates during the darkness which resulted in a Sheriff’s Sergeant and Deputy Sheriff (both Search & Rescue Liaisons) to deploy during the morning of Friday, March 31, 2023.

The Liaisons were able to hike into the heavily wooded area and reach the GPS coordinates obtained by the CHP helicopter. The Liaisons found the missing/lost mushroom picker and were able to successfully rescue him to safety.

A big thank you to the California Highway Patrol Air Operations Unit for their help during this search & rescue operation!

PHILO-GREENWOOD ROAD OVER NAVARRO RIVER BRIDGE takes another step forward

Notice Of Intent To Adopt A Mitigated Negative Declaration 

March 6, 2023 

Lead Agency: Mendocino County Department of Transportation 

340 Lake Mendocino Drive 

Ukiah, CA 95482 

Contact Person: Mr. James Linderman, Sr. Environmental Compliance Specialist 

Phone: 707-234-2819 Email: lindermanj@mendocinocounty.org 

Project Title: Philo-Greenwood Road over Navarro River Bridge (10C-0032) Rehabilitation and Widening Project 

Project Location: The Philo-Greenwood Road Bridge over the Navarro River in unincorporated Mendocino County approximately 2.7 air miles northwest of the community of Philo. 

Project Description: 

Mendocino County Department of Transportation (County) is proposing to rehabilitate and widen Bridge No. 10C-0032 on Philo-Greenwood Road over the Navarro River. In 2010, Caltrans determined that the bridge was structurally deficient and functionally obsolete due to a variety of factors, including a narrow bridge deck (i.e. one-lane bridge) and rotting timbers. The rehabilitated bridge would meet current design standards of Mendocino County, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and Caltrans. 

The existing bridge consists of 15 spans for a total length of approximately 350 feet including abutments. Twelve approach spans are composed of timber and are on the northern end of the existing bridge. The remaining three spans are concrete, characterized by open spandrel arch construction. The existing 19-foot-wide bridge deck over the arch spans is bare concrete while the timber approach spans are paved with an asphalt concrete overlay. The project would widen and rehabilitate the existing arch span and replace the timber approach spans with a new concrete approach structure. The bridge deck and arch span would be widened to meet the capacity requirements of the roadway and rehabilitated to meet current design code traffic load requirements. The project is expected to be constructed in two stages to allow Philo-Greenwood Road to remain open to traffic during construction. Stage 1 of the project is expected to occur summer 2025 and Stage 2 is expected to occur summer 2026. The project is not listed on the Hazardous Waste and Substances Sites List as set forth in Government Code Section 65962.5. 

Notice Is Hereby Giventhat the County has scheduled a public hearing to consider the adoption of the Mitigated Negative Declaration, pursuant to the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), for the above-described project. 

Public Review Period: A 30-day public review period for the Mitigated Negative Declaration will commence on March 20, 2023, and end on April 19, 2023, for interested individuals and public agencies to submit written comments. Any written comments on the Mitigated Negative Declaration must be received at the above address within the public review period. Copies of the Mitigated Negative Declaration and Initial Study are available for review at the Mendocino County Office at the above address and online at: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/environmental-documents. 

Public Meeting: A public hearing to consider this matter has been scheduled for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on May 23, 2023, at 9:00 a.m., in the Board of Supervisors Chambers, 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah, California. 

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Unified School District,

Thank you to the community members that joined us for the WASC reception on Sunday. Your participation is very much appreciated. We do have some new areas to focus on related to Standards Based Instruction as identified in the report, but I know that the staff is committed to creating the best educational outcomes possible for kids!

The rain is really hard on our sports schedules, but it makes every game we get to play with a break in the weather a victory whether we win or not!

The Adult School is offering some additional Conversational Spanish Classes:

The adult school is excited to announce this late-start levels 2 and 3 Conversational Spanish class in partnership with Mendocino College. Please consider sharing this information and signing up. The class is a non-credit combined level 2/3 class, meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays will focus on level 2 content and Thursdays will focus on level 3 content. If you're not sure what level is right for you, contact us (contact info below under "to register")

Dates: April 18th-June 8th

Time: 5:30-7:20 p.m. each night.

Cost: For the entire cycle is $12

Teacher: Serena Acker (bio below)

Location: Tuesdays: Elementary School room 13, Thursdays: Adult School classroom

To register: This is a Mendocino College class offered in partnership with the Anderson Valley Adult School. You are welcome to register directly with the college, and please confirm your interest and participation with the AV Adult School by emailing adultschool@avpanthers.org, or calling 895-2953.It will be helpful for us to know how many people to expect. If you are not familiar with the Mendocino College registration procedure, the Adult School Staff can help you. Registering online with the college can be tricky!

We have three drug ed and safety presentations being led by various groups at the Junior/Senior High School. An opt-out permission slip will be sent home. No need to return unless YOU DON’T WANT your student to attend. The slip can be returned to the school office.

At the elementary school, the after-school choir has begun! This is amazing for kids and I am so excited that we have a partnership with Gabriella Frank’s organization to bring musical education to the school site.

The dental screening at the elementary is also happening on April 4.

Sign ups for both sites for Summer School are underway. Teacher recommendations were made relating to specific students that would benefit from intervention, although everyone is welcome to attend.

If you have TK or Kinders ready for enrollment, stop by the elementary school for your registration packet! We love welcoming new students to AVUSD.

The high school stage is being refreshed for the graduation ceremony. The repainting and lighting retrofit is underway. We will also be repainting the stage mural next year hopefully as part of a student project.

We have a few positions open in the district. Call Sara Hayward at (707) 895-3774.

Have a wonderful weekend!

REGULAR MEETING OF THE WATER PROJECTS COMMITTEE

Anderson Valley Community Services District

To be held via teleconference Phone # 669 900 6833 Zoom Meeting ID 845 5084 3330 Password 048078

Public comments must be submitted by 10:00am on April 6^th, 2023 electronically to water.avcsd@gmail.com

 Thursday April 6^th, 2023 at 10:30am

• Call To Order And Roll Call:
• Recognition Of Guests And Hearing Of Public:
• Consent Calendar: Minutes From March 2^nd, 2023
• Changes Or Modification To This Agenda: 
• Report On Drinking Water Project:
• Report On Wastewater Project:
• Public Outreach:
• Concerns Of Members:
• Adjournment:

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE Monthly Newsletter April 2023

POLL: ARE YOU COOL WITH HAVING A FAMILY OF RACCOONS LIVING UNDER YOUR HOUSE?

[ ] Yes! How fun! The more the merrier! 

[ ] I would be open to one raccoon who is maybe, like me, somewhat emotionally unavailable and thus has not formed a lasting bond with other raccoons. Perhaps we could learn to better trust others together and then ultimately go our separate ways knowing we'd increased each other's capacity to love.

[ ] Where's my gun?

Poll closed Friday at 5 p.m.

(SFgate.com)

COUNTY OFFICE OF EDUCATION HACKED

Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) announces a data incident that may have impacted individuals’ personal information. On March 6, 2023, MCOE experienced a network disruption that affected its ability to access certain files on its network. MCOE immediately began an investigation, which included working with third-party specialists. The investigation determined that certain portions of its network were accessed by an unauthorized individual. On March 22, 2023, they determined the type of information potentially impacted varied by individual but may have included name and the following: address, phone number, email address, student identification number, date of birth, Social Security number, passport number, driver’s license/state identification number, tax identification number, birth/marriage certificate, financial account information, IRS PIN number, medical information, health insurance information, fingerprint/iris scan, parent/guardian name, place of birth, student class list, course schedule/class list, disciplinary information, grades, class rank, and Individualized Educational Plan information. 

In response to this incident, they changed passwords and are reviewing policies and procedures related to data protection. Additionally, in an abundance of caution, they are offering potentially impacted individuals access to credit monitoring and identity protection services. To obtain more information about this incident or enroll in these services, individuals should contact the dedicated assistance line at 1-833-570-2981, Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. PST. Individuals are encouraged to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud by reviewing credit reports/account statements for suspicious activity and to detect errors. Individuals may also place a fraud alert or credit freeze by contacting the credit reporting agencies: 

Individuals can further educate themselves regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, credit freezes, and steps to protect their personal information by contacting the credit reporting bureaus, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), or their state Attorney General. 

The FTC may be reached at 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20580; www.identitytheft.gov; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY: 1-866-653-4261. 

Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement, your state Attorney General, and the FTC. This notice has not been delayed by law enforcement. 

(MCOE)

ED NOTES

THIS PERFECT DESCRIPTION of March is from Dickens' Great Expectations: “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold, when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

PROFESSOR ZWERLING seems a little testy today.

“That’s right, we’ll just sit here in our little enclave by the sea with the last municipality named for a Confederate and enslaver in the state of California and the only public schools (FBHS and FBMS) in the entire state also named for a Confederate and enslaver and pretend everything is right with our world. And memorializing a ‘Fort' that played its part in the Indigenous genocide is ok too, I guess.”

ED NOTE: Both the prof's logic and history is off today. It's a big leap of bad faith on the prof's part to assume an innocent commenter approves of genocide simply because he thinks Fort Bragg's name change isn't happening, and the prof still doesn't seem to know that Fort Bragg was established to protect Indians, not murder them.

CESAR CHAVEZ'S BIRTHDAY was yesterday, Thursday the 31st. As we remember the crucial movement Chavez launched, we remind persons interested in Chavez and the UFW that the best book on Chavez is Frank Bardacke's Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. A former farmworker himself (and fluently bilingual), Bardacke's fine history is the best-written and the most comprehensive picture of the man and the movement. 

CHAVEZ'S birthday also brings back memories of the Roederer Winery's 1998 labor thuggery here in the Anderson Valley, with Mendocino County's wine industry cheering Roederer on.

France, the country that brought the world the inspirational ideas of liberty and equality for all people has briefly presented Mendocino County farm workers with the long overdue gift of a United Farm Workers Union.

Unintentionally, that is, and out of what was obviously a serious miscalculation at harvest time by Roederer International, the famous champagne makers.

Roederer’s field crews, just as the grapes were ready on the vines, had refused to pick the company’s grapes from its several hundred acres of Anderson Valley vineyards because Roederer had suddenly announced that their harvest crews would be paid less than in previous years. Roederer clearly thought, with the workers assembled at dawn ready to begin the work day, that they could bully harvest workers into accepting less pay for grueling work. 

* * *

HUELGA!

The strike began on that Monday morning but didn’t become public until Wednesday morning when Roederer’s striking 80-man harvest crew dramatically refused to allow replacement workers into the company’s Boonville vineyards. 

Roederer called for the Sheriff's Department to get the striking workers out of the fields, the scabs in. But by the time the Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived the two groups of pickers — workers and scabs — had become one. The Roederer crew had convinced their would-be substitutes to join them on an impromptu picket line, the first and only strike among farmworkers in Mendocino County.

The Monday morning that Roederer’s annual harvest was to begin, picking crews were told they would not only be paid less per ton but would be expected to share their earnings with two additional persons, the tractor drivers and the sugar testers. They said no, and kept saying no until Friday night when Roederer agreed to return to expected harvest practices and pay.

Harvest crews work in self-selected teams and split their per-ton earnings equally. They sprint up and down the hilly rows of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes in a sun-up to sunset (or longer if lights are brought in) piece-work race to fill ton-sized bins with the raw ingredients of Roederer’s world famous champagne. Workers, at the time (1998) could earn as much as $3,000 a month for the two months of the annual harvest, and they still jealously guard their traditional ways of bringing in the grapes.

After negotiations in the fields all day Monday and Tuesday failed to shake Roederer’s demand that their vineyard workers accept the retro new pay arrangements of the same work for less money, and the workers had quickly convinced the would-be scabs of the benefits of solidarity, the workers called the UFW’s office in Santa Rosa to help with their fight against the French-owned enterprise, so securely prosperous that much of their higher-end wine is pre-sold.

Three UFW union reps were in Boonville by 9am Wednesday morning, signing up workers for the UFW by the side of Highway 128 as passing motorists waved and honked in solidarity, or stared uncomprehendingly at the unprecedented local scene of red and black UFW banners. A worker's strike in Boonville? Who would have thought?

Roederer found its international self with its Boonville grapes ripening on the vine with no Mexicans to pick them, and an unyielding union on the edge of its vineyard signing up its previously quiescent workers for the militant United Farm Workers.

“We didn’t have a leader,” a quietly determined Boonville worker said, "but we were united.”

And were still united a week later for a UFW local, the first (and last) union representation for farm workers in Mendocino County.

Representatives of Anderson Valley’s and Mendocino County’s burgeoning wine industry, lamented the arrival of the formidable UFW as they marveled at what one Philo winery owner described as “Roederer’s stupidity.”

One of Anderson Valley’s many mom and pop vineyard owners shook his head, seemingly stunned at Roederer’s obtuse labor stand. “Lots of us pay an hourly rate during the pick and during pruning because we can’t afford to pay workers year round. Roederer could easily afford to pay a little more to get their own grapes in because they don’t have to buy grapes to make their wine. When the harvest is off, like it is this year, most wineries try to pay a little more because a smaller crop is harder to pick. I don’t understand what Roederer thought they were doing by hardnosing their crews like that.”

There was much local speculation that Roederer’s vineyard managers, Bob Gibson of Ukiah and Pat Rogers of Hopland, caused the strike by telling the workers this year it would be the same work for less money. Others say nothing happens at Roederer without it first being cleared by Michel Salgues, a French national and company vice-president, and the man in charge of Roederer’s huge Mendocino County operation.

One local skeptic summed it up this way: “The French wouldn’t even consider letting an American make a key decision. The French have thought Americans were a bunch of dummies clear back to Thomas Jefferson. You think they’re about to let a couple of non-French vineyard guys call basic shots on labor relations? They’ve got a classic imperial deal going here using Mexican labor on American land to make a lot of money for a family in France. (Roederer is the oldest family-owned winery in the world.) They don’t need people looking at them like this. But they somehow screwed up big time. They thought they could screw the Mexicans and get away with it, but it all blew up in their face.”

Sonia Mendoza, a UFW rep with an office in Ukiah at the time, expressed her surprise. “I was very much in shock that it (the strike) happened at that particular winery; I thought it was one of the better employers in the county.” She also said that the UFW was “here to stay,” adding that although some workers fear they might be fired and expelled from Roederer’s worker housing — the only company housing for single workers in Anderson Valley at the time — she warned that “the UFW has never lost a retaliatory firing case.” (Some workers were fired and expelled from Roederer housing and also blacklisted for work at other vineyards in the county.)

Mendocino County wine people were not only surprised that a wealthy company like Roederer would risk alienating crews who have been with the winery since it began operations in Anderson Valley in the early 1980s, for a few dollars, but fear that the UFW’s Anderson Valley foothold meant that the union might soon be in their vineyards.

Roederer, workers complained that they hadn’t had a raise in five years. A few year-round employees enjoy the company’s health plan but pay mightily for it if they sign their families up for benefits. Workers also express apprehension about the company’s heavy use of ag chemicals. (Vineyards in Mendocino County, with the exception of a few committed organic growers, collectively use literal tons of chemicals annually. Michel Salgues, the Anderson Valley boss at Roederer at the time, holds a PhD in chemistry.)

But Roederer was the first, and is still the only winery in Anderson Valley to erect housing for single workers. The French also include all their employees in annual parties and have promoted a significant number of Spanish-speaking workers to important jobs. Roederer initially invested some $14 million in its Philo winery, bringing in French workers to do much of the construction, and spent several more millions developing new vineyards. They are the largest winery in Anderson Valley, and among the largest in Mendocino County.

The strike was unprecedented in Mendocino County agriculture.

The late John Parducci, then the reigning patriarch of Mendocino County wine, bluntly summed up the county’s traditional approach to worker demands for fair pay and decent job conditions. “Agitators were fired.”

The days when the padrone could simply banish workers who asked for decent pay and work conditions ended in Boonville for that one heady year, but resumed when Roederer quickly went to work weeding out strikers with the help of the professional strike-breaking law firm out of San Francisco, Littler-Mendelsohn.

That dramatic strike day back in '98, a committee consisting of four local farm workers, all of whom are year-round residents of Anderson Valley, as are almost all the workers who struck, and three UFW representatives — Molly Lopez, Greg Kestel and Luis Mendoza — negotiated all day on the Friday after the strike. The locals and the three UFW reps, with the grapes still unpicked, negotiated with Roederer and its suave Mendocino County boss, Michel Salgues and his “union consultants.” Salgues, pleasant but always warily circumspect in his public relations, said years later it was all "a big mistake on our part." 

But at the end of that memorable Friday, Roederer International had backed down. Jubilant workers declared, “We got everything we asked for.”

Saturday morning, Roederer’s crews were back in the vineyards.

Salgues, with a jaunty Gallic shrug, said simply, “As a company we have taken the decision not to make any statement, but everything is back to normal.”

Not exactly.

All was back to normal in that Roederer’s disaffected workers, UFW union cards signed, sealed and delivered, were bringing in Roederer's 1998 grapes.

The UFW’s Sonia Mendoza then announced that the union had requested approval from the Agricultural Relations Board for a vote up or down on union representation for Roederer workers. Within days, in a dramatic vote in Roederer's Boonville vineyard, the first Mendocino County farm workers to successfully fight for a say in the work they do cast affirming votes for the United Farm Workers. For exactly one year Mendocino County farm workers the respect and protections French workers have assumed for two hundred years. And then the union was de-certified, and for farmworkers in Mendocino County it was back to the padrone. 

* * *

Postscript: After the strike, in 1999, Roederer hired the famous union-busting law firm of Littler-Mendelson out of San Francisco. They also hired an infiltrator to pose as a field worker to live with the workers in Roederer’s farm worker housing and convince as many of them as possible that unionization was a bad idea. Anyone who held out for unionization was later fired. There hasn’t been any open talk of unionization since.

‘ONCE’ AT MENDOCINO COLLEGE

Reviewed by Natasha Yim

“Once,” Mendocino College’s spring production, is a one-of-a-kind musical where the music isn’t just part of the play, it is the play. From the opening chords strummed and sung beautifully by Julian Sterling, who plays Guy, a young Irish musician pouring out his heartbreak into songs he composed for an ex-girlfriend, the audience is pulled into this gentle world of loss, sacrifice, self-doubt, and most of all, love.

If you’ve ever been a creative, be it art, writing or music, you recognize this world. You’ve been there — giving your all for your art, battling the lingering question of “am I good enough?”, and succumbing to the passion that drives you.

But Guy is a man on the verge of giving up his musical aspirations because his songs are a painful reminder of the break-up with the woman he loves who has moved to New York City. Enter Girl, a young Czech piano player, who recognizes the soulful allure of Guy’s music and its potential to speak to lonely hearts all over the world — and get his girlfriend back.

Performed by Heidi Peterman, a music student at Mendocino College, who sings and plays the piano with equal skill, the ever-effervescent and optimistic Girl encourages Guy to continue composing, playing and singing. She is his champion, unwaveringly believing in him when he doesn’t believe in himself, including, she is sure, the inevitability of his reunion with his former flame. Together, they form an eclectic band, and continue to make music together, which leads Guy to realize that the music he has been composing for his ex-girlfriend, he is now performing for Girl.

The actors all play their own instruments and sing, a casting triumph in and of itself, with the music taking center stage or floating into the background as the scene requires. The fact that the main characters are never named — they’re simply known as Guy and Girl — allows the music to be the central character in the story with its blend of folksy tunes, romantic ballads, and a high kicking Slavic number.

The play’s charm is underscored by sweet, tender moments between Guy and Girl, the blossoming of their relationship into admiration and love, and a future that, as Girl says, “cannot be about that.” There are surprising moments of humor, sparked by quirky characters, that prevents the story from falling into purely a musical romance in the vein of “A Star is Born.”

Moments where Girl, drawn to Guy’s music, finds out he fixes vacuum cleaners (or hoovers over in Ireland) and she happens to have a vacuum cleaner that needs fixing, when Girl signs Guy up for open mic night in a bar as “Hoover Man,” or when a meeting with a bank manager for a loan concludes with the bank manager whipping out a guitar from under his desk and announcing that he plays music too. Needless to say, bank manager joins the band and Guy and Girl get the loan.

“Once” is an entertaining, uplifting musical that, under Director Reid Edelman’s deft tutelage, showcases the breadth of the musical and theatrical talent in our small community. It’s a play that reminds us about the importance and joy of finding human connections, even in the least expected of places, and the power of music to bridge cultures, language barriers, genders, and socio-economic divides.

“Once” opened on March 23. Performances continue through April 2. Remaining performances are Friday and Saturday, March 31 and April 1 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 2 at 2 p.m. Tickets ($20 general; $15 students and seniors) are available at the Mendocino Book Company, online at www.ArtsMendocino.org and at the door as available. Audiences are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance. For more information, call (707) 468-3172 or visit http://www.mendocino.edu/the-arts/theatre.

ALBION RIVER INN HAS BEEN SOLD

Dearest Family, Friends and Community,

It is with very heavy hearts and the deepest regret that the Wells Family announces the sale of Albion River Inn. I know a lot of the community has heard rumors and I’m sorry for not being able to be transparent until now. This wasn’t an easy decision nor something we took lightly. In fact, we would have held on forever if we could. 

Unfortunately after the fire in one of our units, covid19 and the passing of my dear father, Peter Wells, it has been difficult to keep it going, and selling became our only option.

* * *

In 1981 Peter leased the restaurant property, The Windjammer, a road-stop dive restaurant from a woman named Florence Scott. Later, Peter brought Flurry Healy in as partner and together they purchased the restaurant land and an additional 10 acres. In January of 1982, Albion River Inn was open for business. I was 3 years old.

I used to refer to Albion River Inn as a family member. In the early years Dad was there more than he was at home, working late nights and long hours to put the Restaurant on the map. The Inn became my playground, from organizing all the office supplies at the Front Desk, to playing “bar” by mixing up a wide variety of disgusting “cocktails” (all non alcoholic, of course!) behind the bar at 7, 8, 9 years old. I’m sure the bartenders loved me! I ran wild there and developed a deep love for the property and for the business. At 14, just as my siblings had done before me, I started working as a busser in the restaurant. That began my 20 years of employment and my deep dive into the business as a whole and the growth of a profound connection with my father. 

I want to acknowledge my absence over the last few years and apologize for it. I’m not going to get into the details, but as things do in business….it got sticky. One of my deepest regrets will always be not fighting harder to be there since my dad passed. I’m forever sorry.

On Monday, myself, some of my siblings and 3 of his beautiful grandchildren brought Peter Wells' ashes back home to the Inn and scattered some on the bluff just outside the Restaurant, where he will now live on forever. 

To the employees, past, present and future, thank you. Thank you for being the beating heart of Albion River Inn, it is you who made it a family, it is you who made it home. It is you who kept it going night after night, day after day, year after year. We acknowledge you, your hard work, your constant dedication and your loyalty over the years. The Inn became a community within a community where relationships were formed, spouses were found, babies were born. You were there for each other through illnesses, divorces and deaths, creating connections with one another that have lasted through the years. It was never just a business to us, it was family. 

To our loyal customers, our deepest gratitude. In the beginning naysayers told my dad that tourists wouldn’t want to come "all the way" down to Albion from Mendocino to dine there. But boy, were they wrong! Dad used to call it a “million dollar view," he said that people would come from all over the world to see it. And you did, you came for the view but you stayed for the experience, the high quality food and the stellar customer service. Please don’t stop. Please keep coming. Please go there and give a toast to Peter and Flurry and the Albion River Inn of late. We ARE still there. We always will be. 

To the Albion River Inn, "where the river meets the sea", you were an incredible, magical journey. 

Juliet Wells

JARVIS & NICHOLS BUILDING: Now and Then Photos

These two images below, taken almost 116 years apart, show the Jarvis & Nichols Building located on the northeast corner of Main and Kasten Streets in Mendocino. Today, this elegant building is home to Gallery Bookshop.

Designed by L. A. Morgan and built in 1874, the building is actually two separate structures that originally shared a common interior wall and are united by an ornate false front with bay windows. Morgan opened a general merchandise store in the western portion of the building, while M. J. C. Galvin held hearings as Justice of the Peace, operated a notary service, and published the West Coast Star, a local newspaper, in the eastern part.

In 1878, Henry Jarvis and Thomas Dollard purchased Morgan’s store. Dollard died tragically in 1879, shot by the Mendocino Outlaws while investigating a poaching in the Big River woods, and James Nichols bought Dollard’s share of the business the following year.

The Jarvis and Nichols mercantile store was very successful, and they quickly began enlarging it, first constructing an addition on the rear in 1882 and adding another in 1884. In 1893, the partners purchased the eastern structure, removed the interior partition, and expanded the store to the entire first floor. After 34 lucrative years, Jarvis and Nichols retired in 1914 and sold the business to their clerk, Burtt Elliott.

In this 1907 photograph, the building has been exuberantly draped with bunting and decorated with flags for the July 4th Parade and Celebration. A striped canvas awning is furled over the door on the left side of the building’s façade, while a rigid canopy shades the large windows to the right of the door. The photograph was taken from the second floor of the City Meat Market on the south side of Main Street.

If you would like to learn more about the Jarvis & Nichols Building or research the history of your own home, the Kelley House Archives are open for research appointments Wednesdays 12pm - 3pm, and Fridays & Saturdays 11am - 3pm.

www.kelleyhousemuseum.org

BRUCE BRODERICK: I think beyond the question of whether or not EV's are better or worse for the environment than ICE vehicles lies the bigger problem of the American need for personal luxury transportation. Big, heavy vehicles take a lot of energy to move them down the road. That's just basic physics. Smaller lighter vehicles are a good start but public transportation will ultimately have to fill the void. It basically doesn't matter if the fossil fuels are coming from a gas station pump in the form of gas and Diesel or a natural gas fired turbine generator to charge an EV, it's depleting what's left of our natural resources. Solar could take off in a big way but with the utility companies crippling it at every turn for their own profits, things will stay pretty much the same whether we drive EV's or ICE cars until there is nothing left to feed them.

HANGING OUT IN THE HEART SPACE Online Satsang - March 30, 2023

Monetize My Message, Please

Warmest spiritual greetings, Following a usual morning at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in Ukiah, California, enjoyed a delicious free meal at the Plowshares Peace & Justice Center, then MTA bussed it to the Ukiah Public Library; presently enjoying the Krishna das Thursday online satsang.

Not identified with the body and not identified with the mind, Immortal Self I am! Am available for frontline environmental direct action and anything else which is relevant. Postmodern America, are you there? If my essential networking message doesn't interest you, then just send money to: Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr. No problem, right? So have a nice day if that is what you are after. 😊

Craig Louis Stehr

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, March 31, 2023

KIMBERLY BAKER, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, paraphernalia, resisting.

THIERRY BIANCARD, Ukiah. Pot cultivation, possession for sale, conspiracy.

AUDREY CARD, Covelo. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

LAVETTA FARRELL, Ukiah. Grand theft. 

CHRISTOPHER GOODWIN, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JASON GOWER, Eureka/Willits. Trespassing, cruelty to animals, resisting, conspiracy. 

MICHAEL GRAY, Morgan Hill/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JOSE HERNANDEZ-MEZA, Ukiah. DUI.

BROOKE LEWIS, Willits. Trespassing, failure to appear.

JOHN LOPEZ, Ukiah. Burglary, controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

TABITHA MACDONALD, Fort Bragg. Suspended license for DUI.

BERIAH MARTIN, Ukiah. Pot cultivation, possession for sale, conspiracy.

RICHARD ORTIZ, Ukiah. Vandalism.

TYLER ROW, Willits. Trespassing, disobeying court order, county parole violation.

PATRICK SCHUETZ, Ukiah. Vandalism, county parole violation.

DESMOND SPIKER, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

JOSEPH STARRETT, Kelseyville/Willits. Failure to appear.

HALEY TYRRELL, Willits. Trespassing, cruelty to animals, conspiracy. 

BIONEERS ARE COMING TO BERKELEY

by Jonah Raskin

If you haven’t been to a Bioneers conference (https://conference.bioneers.org/) you’re missing a spectacular spectacle and ought to go if you can afford the price of a ticket. It’s expensive. A ticket for all three days costs $449. The people who might benefit the most from the Bioneers by and large can’t afford to attend. That’s the contradiction at the heart of the Bioneers, which bills itself as a “revolution from the heart of nature.”

Real revolutionaries probably won’t be found at the Bioneers, which has been a going concern since the 1980s, when the organization called itself “Seeds of Change,” and the slogan was “Practical Solutions for Restoring the Environment.” Early conferences took place in Sante Fe, New Mexico, a lovely place to live and to visit, but off the beaten track.

“Bioneers was born in the water. Specifically in a hot tub at Ten Thousand Waves in the mountains above my home of Santa Fe, New Mexico.” So wrote Kenny Ausubel, the Adam and the co-founder of the organization, along with Nina Simons, the Eve of the organization, in a piece called “Bioneers Creation Story.”

Simons has called Bioneers “a whole body experience.”

She and Ausubel take themselves seriously. Perhaps too seriously, but if you’re going to launch and sustain a revolution from the heart of nature you’d better be serious. Subsequent conferences were staged in Marin County and San Francisco. This year’s conference, the 34^th, takes place in Berkeley, a natural home for the Bioneers if ever there was one. Too bad the organizers didn’t settle on Berkeley decades ago. If they had done so they would now have deeper roots in a community of activists and organizers than they do have.

If pioneers have gone about the world unsettling and disrupting landscapes and peoples, the Bioneers are about working with nature to restore and rebuild.

The Bioneers have always been optimists who have embraced hope and who have rallied the faithful. “The unprecedented movements of the past decade for liberation, justice and multicultural democracy are swelling to challenge the right-wing populist and neo-fascist forces underwritten by cynical plutocratic elites.” That’s from this year’s website. “The choice is clear: nihilism or regeneration. Shattering or wholeness.”

I don’t see the word “socialism” anywhere on the website. Maybe it doesn’t go along with hot tubs. If I sound snide it’s because I wonder what the long term good of Bioneers has been, though I do genuinely appreciate the heartfelt efforts. I have attended several times and have often found myself surrounded by the kind of enthusiastic young people who take Greta Thunberg as their hero. She’s also my hero. She doesn’t want people to just hope. She wants them to act.

Bioneers is the place where you hear the voices of indigenous people, learn about indigeneity and have your solar batteries recharged. It’s where you hear inspiring keynote speakers such as: Amara Ifeji, director of policy Maine Environmental Education Association; Shane Gero, National Geographic Explorer and Founder The Dominica Sperm Whale Project; Laura Flanders, host and executive producer the Laura Flanders Show; Jade Begay, Director of Policy and Advocacy DND Collective; and Saru Jayaraman, One Fair Wage.

Jayaraman is the real deal. The other speakers are probably also the real deal, though I don’t know them or their work. I know Jayaraman and what she has accomplished. The author of Behind the Restaurant Door, which boasts an introduction by Eric Schlosser, she’s a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner, who has targeted what she calls the “low-wage restaurant industrial complex.” When I interviewed not long ago, she said that “we have twenty-first century restaurants and Sixties-era labor practices.” If you eat and drink in a Berkeley café or restaurant during the Bioneers Conference and you want to honor the work that Jayaraman has done for years, you’d better show your appreciation. “Wage and tip theft is outrageous,” Jayaraman told me. They are outrageous in Berkeley.

She urges people to “Picket with your wallet” and use the power of spending and purchasing to express solidarity with restaurant workers at the back and the front of the house. Previous speakers have included Amy Goodman, Arlie Russell Hochschild, and Jeremy Narby. Bioneers is where the present meets the past and the future. A Burning Man for activists and intellectuals, Bioneers 2023 in Berkeley (April 6-8 2023) will warm your soul and rekindle the fire in the belly.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

We don’t know how it will play out because the collapsing economy hasn’t collapsed yet to the point where vast numbers of people are both hungry and homeless. Many of them will be people who have never experienced any sort of real discomfort before. No amount of misinformation, disinformation, or diversion can distract people who are cold and hungry. Until we reach that point, and it affects those who are still comfortable (although pinched) nothing will change.

I know many people who are living very comfy lives right now, lives that appear solid. They have big houses, new cars, they buy new kitchen cabinets every few years, give their last year’s clothes to the Good Will. But none of it is paid for, and their ownership of everything down to their shoes is illusory. They carry a level of debt that would make me sick with terror at every moment of my life, and yet they don’t feel threatened. I don’t know what will become of them, but it won’t be pretty.

"CREATIVES are getting more and more thin-skinned, I'm afraid. Teaching is a danger zone, littered with bruised egos and grievances. Directing requires a helmet and a protective cup and two lawyers. It's even getting tough to level with a friend, and this confuses me terribly, because I want to be told when I'm wrong, when I'm bad, when I'm headed toward a ledge where I and others are likely to be hurt. This is now seen as cruelty or bullying.

"We're in for tough times if we can't push everyone to be their best, and this often requires a brief visit to the duck press that is criticism. I've never abandoned anyone who told me my work was bad, but I've lost a few friends and I've irritated a few creatives when I've made suggestions on how we can make things better.

"I always wanted to get better. I still do. But I think many more people now don't want to get better as much as they want to get noticed."

— Mike Nichols (2011)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Live on KNYO from Franklin St. all night Friday night!

Deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is about 6pm. Or send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

I'll be in the clean, well-lighted back room of KNYO's 325 N. Franklin studio. To call and read your work in your own voice, the number is 707-962-3022. If you want to come in and perform in person, that's okay, I guess, but bring a real mask to put on.

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 terrific shows.

As always, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find items of arguably human interest to peruse until showtime, or any time, such as:

Joan Crawford always makes me think of Elly Cooney, author of /Death in Slow Motion/ and /Court of the Lion/, among others. It's the eyes.

https://www.vintag.es/2023/03/montana-moon.html

The second stargate found on Earth, not counting the one in Siberia that Marina Syrtis went through with Daniel and Major Carter to the zombie water-creatures' sea-floor ruins, was found in the mountains middle-left in the image, because we don't know when that one was found. They used the seismic activity of two gates on the same planet (Earth) arm-wrestling to activate at once, to pinpoint the Antarctic location.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51435/what-antarctica-looks-under-all-ice

And a tiny hand-cranked owl flying over Tim Burton grass.

https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/03/moving-miniatures.html

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

TRUMPED!

by Larry Bensky

If you’re wondering whether a former President of the world’s most powerful country would have to post bail when indicted on criminal charges, would have to pay fines or forfeit property if convicted on those charges. Would be suspended from being an officer of a corporation that was subject to federal or local taxes. Would have to provide truthful, independently audited accounts, of his personal and corporate wealth. Might be forced to sell residential properties, private aircraft, yachts, and car. Could have detailed, responsive answers to allegations of sexual misconduct required as part of a plea deal?

Wonder no more. None of this is very likely, or likely at all, to happen. Because despite all the immediate headline candy in the aftermath of Trump’s 30 count indictment (“No Man is Above the Law,”) many gendered humans are and have always been “above” the law. This true of all nations throughout history. Only a delusional faith rather than fact based zealot would claim otherwise. 

WHY WAS DONALD TRUMP INDICTED?

The charges against Mr. Trump are not yet known, though two people with knowledge of the matter said that there are more than two dozen counts in the indictment.

The charges are expected to stem from a payment that was made to Ms. Daniels, who in October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, was trying to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.

At first, Ms. Daniels’s representatives contacted The National Enquirer to offer exclusive rights to her story. David Pecker, the tabloid’s publisher and a longtime ally of Mr. Trump, had agreed to look out for potentially damaging stories about him during the 2016 campaign, and at one point even agreed to buy the story of another woman’s affair with Mr. Trump and never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

But Mr. Pecker didn’t purchase Ms. Daniels’s story. Instead, he and the tabloid’s top editor, Dylan Howard, helped broker a separate deal between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels’s lawyer.

Mr. Cohen paid $130,000, and Mr. Trump later reimbursed him from the White House.

In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including federal campaign finance crimes involving the hush money. The payment, federal prosecutors concluded, amounted to an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

In the days after Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea, the district attorney’s office opened its own criminal investigation into the matter. While the federal prosecutors were focused on Mr. Cohen, the district attorney’s inquiry would center on Mr. Trump.

So what did Mr. Trump potentially do wrong?

When pleading guilty in federal court, Mr. Cohen pointed the finger at his boss. It was Mr. Trump, he said, who directed him to pay off Ms. Daniels, a contention that prosecutors later corroborated.

The prosecutors also raised questions about Mr. Trump’s monthly reimbursement checks to Mr. Cohen. They said in court papers that Mr. Trump’s company “falsely accounted” for the monthly payments as legal expenses and that company records cited a retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen. Although Mr. Cohen was a lawyer, and became Mr. Trump’s personal attorney after he took office, there was no such retainer agreement and the reimbursement was unrelated to any legal services Mr. Cohen performed.

Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump knew about the phony retainer agreement, an accusation that could form the basis of the case against the former president.

In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

In this case, that second crime could be a violation of election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that it benefited his candidacy because it silenced Ms. Daniels.

Will it be a tough case to prove?

Convicting Mr. Trump or sending him to prison could be challenging. For one thing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are sure to attack Mr. Cohen’s credibility by citing his criminal record. Prosecutors might counter that the former fixer lied years ago on behalf of his boss at the time, and is now in the best position to detail Mr. Trump’s conduct.

The case against Mr. Trump might also hinge on an untested legal theory.

According to legal experts, New York prosecutors have never before combined the falsifying business records charge with a violation of state election law in a case involving a presidential election, or any federal campaign. Because this is uncharted territory, it is possible that a judge could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.

Even if the charge is allowed to stand, it amounts to a low-level felony. If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

How did Mr. Trump react to having been indicted?

Mr. Trump responded in a statement, calling the Manhattan grand jury vote “political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

Mr. Trump’s statement echoed what has been an extraordinary and blistering effort to try to prevent the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, from indicting him.

Still, the statement was remarkable for its aggressive tone against the prosecution, and a signal of what else may come.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable,” he wrote. “Indicting a completely innocent person.”

Mr. Trump framed the investigation that resulted in the indictment as the latest in the long line of criminal inquiries he has faced, none of which have resulted in charges.

What happens next?

Mr. Trump will be fingerprinted and photographed, and will walk through the other routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York.

While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.

Mr. Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in Lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.

Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesman for the federal agency, Anthony J. Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Mr. Trump.

(New York Times)

ANDREW NEIL: Donald Trump got his way after all. For much of March he was claiming he was about to be arrested for allegedly paying hush money to a former adult-film star to keep her quiet in the last stages of his successful 2016 presidential election campaign. Days came and went. Nothing happened. But Trump still used the prospect of arrest to rally support and raise funds for his 2024 presidential election bid, urging his fans to 'protest' and 'take our nation back', in echoes of his inflammatory rhetoric in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021 riots on Capitol Hill. Some of his legal team advised him an indictment was unlikely. No matter. Just the possibility propelled Trump back to where he loves to be - in the headlines. Once again he was at the centre of a feeding frenzy across every conceivable news outlet in the American media. But the 2024 presidential election looks like offering the same unappetising choice as 2020 between Joe Biden, who will be 82 come polling day in November 2024 (and 86 by the end of a second term), and an unhinged, know-nothing narcissist who threatens to take a wrecking ball to Western foreign policy when the stakes couldn't be higher.

THE LIGHT

Editor,

The “light upon the hill,” which we love to think shines for the world from our capital, referring to American progress as an example of freedom and democratic hopes and values to oppressed countries has begun to flicker out. It is hard to tell if it exists anymore. Since January 1, 2023 guns have killed 404 American children. More are dying from gun violence than from highway accidents. So far this year alone, 303 have fallen from mass shootings, including on Monday 3 nine-year-olds in Nashville, TN.

None of these facts make any difference to those in Congress with bloodied hands who serve the gunmakers, the NRA, and themselves. Just tiny steps forward are possible. Better mental healthcare. Every day somewhere in “the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave” gun shops. gun shows, or, through online patterns, deadly assault guns are produced in massive aggregate numbers. Buying guns, like the ones used Monday at the Covenant School, come readymade to murder.

The light may be replenished first by state actions-not by this frozen Congress-and from sources not yet evident.

Frank H. Baumgardner, III

Santa Rosa

TABLET'S GRAND OPUS ON THE ANTI-DISINFORMATION COMPLEX

by Matt Taibbi

Years ago, when I first began to have doubts about the Trump-Russia story, I struggled to come up with a word to articulate my suspicions. If the story was wrong, and Trump wasn’t a Russian spy, there wasn’t a word for what was being perpetrated. This was a system-wide effort to re-frame reality itself, which was both too intellectually ambitious to fit in a word like “hoax,” but also probably not against any one law, either. New language would have to be invented just to define the wrongdoing, which not only meant whatever this was would likely go unpunished, but that it could be years before the public was ready to talk about it.

Around that same time, writer Jacob Siegel, a former army infantry and intelligence officer who edits Tablet’s afternoon digest, The Scroll, was beginning the job of putting key concepts on paper. As far back as 2019, he sketched out the core ideas for a sprawling, illuminating 13,000-word piece that just came out this week. Called “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.

Siegel’s Tablet article is the enterprise effort at describing the whole anti-disinformation elephant I’ve been hoping for years someone in journalism would take on.

It will escape no one’s notice that Siegel’s lede recounts the Hamilton 68 story from the Twitter Files. Siegel says the internal dialogues of Twitter executives about the infamous Russia-tracking “dashboard” helped him frame the piece he’d been working on for so long. Which is great, I’m glad about that, but he goes far deeper into the topic than I have, and in a way that has a real chance to be accessible to all political audiences. Siegel threads together all the disparate strands of a very complex story, in which the sheer quantity of themes is daunting: the roots in counter-terrorism strategy, Russiagate as a first great test case, the rise of a public-private “counter-disinformation complex” nurturing an “NGO Borg,” the importance of Trump and “domestic extremism” as organizing targets, the development of a new uniparty politics anointing itself “protector” of things like elections, amid many other things. He concludes with an escalating string of anxiety-provoking propositions. One is that our first windows into this new censorship system, like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, might also be our last, as AI and machine learning appear ready to step in to do the job at scale. 

The National Science Foundation just announced it was “building a set of use cases to enable ChatGPT to “further automate” the propaganda mechanism, as Siegel puts it. The messy process people like me got to see, just barely, in the outlines of Twitter emails made public by a one-in-a-million lucky strike, may not appear in recorded human conversations going forward. “Future battles fought through AI technologies,” says Siegel, “will be harder to see.”

More unnerving is the portion near the end describing how seemingly smart people are fast constructing an ideology of mass surrender. Siegel recounts the horrible New York Times Magazine article (how did I forget it?) written by Yale law graduate Emily Bazelon just before the 2020 election, whose URL is titled “The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation.

Shorter Bazelon could have been Fox Nazis Censorship Derp: the article the Times really ran was insanely long and ended with flourishes like, “It’s time to ask whether the American way of protecting free speech is actually keeping us free.”

Both the actors in the Twitter Files and the multitudinous papers produced by groups like the Aspen Institute and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center are perpetually concerned with re-thinking the “problem” of the First Amendment, which of course is not popularly thought of as a problem. It’s notable that the Anti-Disinformation machine, a clear sequel to the Military-Industrial Complex, doesn’t trumpet the virtues of the “free world” but rather the “rules-based international order,” within which (as Siegel points out) people like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich talk about digital deletion as “necessary to protect American democracy.” 

This idea of pruning fingers off democracy to save it is increasingly popular; we await the arrival of the Jerzy Kozinski character who’ll propound this political gardening metaphor to the smart set. I asked Siegel a few questions about his mammoth publication, which happily he plans to expand to a book. The following is edited for length:...

“THERE IS NOTHING quite like the feeling of sorrowful helplessness that one feels listening to a 35-year-old man who has spent 15 years working as an illegal day-laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a little house for his family, only to discover one day upon returning from work that the house had been reduced to a pile of rubble, flattened by an Israeli bulldozer with everything still inside the house. When you ask why this was done — the land, after all, was his — you are told that there was no warning, only a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stating that he had built the structure without a license. Where in the world, except under Israeli authority, are people required to have a license (which is always denied them) before they can build on their own property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is pure apartheid.”

— Edward Said

DID THEY LIGHT UP A CIGARETTE AFTERWARD?

by James Kunstler

“Reading all the 2016 warnings from the Normalcy Guardians and self-professed Democracy Protectors about how there’s literally nothing more corrupt or dangerous than craving the prosecution of your political opponent — especially for trivial crimes — is really quite something.” — Glenn Greenwald

The New York Times enjoyed its long-delayed tantric Trumpgasm so much today that it rolled out the full-page banner headline format usually reserved for the commencement of world wars. (They took the banner down before seven o’clock this morning.) For many of the cat-ladies employed as “reporters” at the once-august paper, it was the first Trumpgasm they’ve ever experienced in a lifetime of emotional displacement, over-eating, and furious knitting of pink polyester hats for the crusade to root out patriarchal wickedness.

This fulfillment of a years-long psychodrama, starring the feared and loathed occult persona of a gold-coiffed “Daddy” figure who once presided in the political household, came at the hands of dragon-slayer Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, archetype of the many long-oppressed victims worked to death in the bilges of our slave ship of state — now turned righteous Woke deliverer of cosmic vengeance!

This, of course, is brought to you by the party of hoaxes, flimflams, and mandated death shots, so it’s amusing here on the sidelines to see The Times’s op-ed writers squirm with post-coital pleasure underneath the full-page Trumpgasmic headline. The lead editorial declares: “Even Donald Trump Should Be Held Accountable”— overlooking the utter absence of accountability that has been the norm in every recent insult to the nation’s dignity from wholesale and repeat election fraud, to six years of lawless depravity in the FBI, to overt support of Antifa and BLM street havoc, to the forced, deceitful administration of deadly “vaccines.”

 “How a President’s Arrest Can Strengthen a Democracy,” honorary cat-lady Nicholas Kristoff opined, repeating the bad-faith trope that his legions of Wokery have an interest in political rectitude — when, in fact, they are solely preoccupied with coercing, censoring, cancelling, persecuting, punishing, and defenestrating anyone who objects to their grifts and hustles. “Only love and a leap of faith can break through distrust. That is why a credible form of patriotism is so important right now,” explained The Times’s official Superintendent of Platitudes, David Brooks, to soothe consciences grated by this loutish gambit to shove a political adversary off the game board in advance of an election. “Joe Biden may not be your cup of tea,” Mr. Brooks summed up his civics lesson, “but he’s restored sanity, effectiveness and decency to the White House.”

Oh, really? That will surely come as news to casual observers who are watching the “Joe Biden” wrecking crew in wonder and nausea as they dismantle every institution and undermine every norm in American life. A more credible form of patriotism would be, say, a general strike against this cabal of degenerates, serving to remind them that at least half of the public still cares about the Constitution, the rule of law, and actual decency (not a depraved simulacrum of it). Otherwise, why would “Joe Biden’s” DOJ lock-up scores of Jan 6 protesters in the DC Jail for years on misdemeanor charges without taking them to law? Why does the “Joe Biden” State Department persist in destroying Ukraine and pounding billions in taxpayer money into the place to accomplish it? Why has the “Joe Biden” regime adopted the drag queen as its mascot? What part of all that evinces “sanity, effectiveness and decency?”

It’s a little early to assess the knock-on effects of the Left’s ecstatic Trumpgasm. A common theme flying across the Web is that Alvin Bragg’s jerry-rigged case will only make a martyr of Mr. Trump, neatly illustrating and personifying the government’s apparent war against its own citizens — making it clear that they will stop at nothing and no one to enforce the corrupt bureaucracy’s will against the public — and that the net result will be to ensure Mr. Trump’s reelection in 2024.

This comes at a time when that government — the “Joe Biden” regime — presides over the collapse of what’s left of America’s economy, the crack-up of the banking system, and the shocking loss of our country’s influence in the geo-political arena. All of that is manifesting as increased general hardship across the US population: a whole lot of citizens going broke, going hungry, losing their property and chattels to bankruptcy, losing their children to Woke-induced psychopathology, and — the final insult — being subjected to a medical racketeering operation that ruins and murders them when they get sick.

The Party of Chaos looks pretty smugly secure for the moment. If Alvin Bragg’s flimsy case in New York falls apart, as many expect, they have grand juries lined up against Mr. Trump in other jurisdictions, waiting patiently to take their turns at the political assassination of this supposed “threat to our democracy.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared yesterday that Mr. Trump “has the right to prove his innocence.” She apparently forgot how our legal system works, which is that defendants are presumed innocent and it’s the government’s task to prove someone guilty.

As to qualifications to be president, the Constitution simply states: a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older. There is no language in Article II that might legally prevent someone convicted of a petty crime, fairly or otherwise, from running for the job.

* * *

Google Blacklisted Me

Readers may have noticed my brief experiment with third-party advertisements on this blog. Although I was working with an independent ad management company, the ads ultimately originated from Google’s AdSense program.

It wasn’t long before Google shut down ads on my site and permanently blacklisted my domain from their program.

According to Google, Clusterfuck Nation violates their AdSense rules by publishing what they deem to be “Unreliable and harmful claims.”

The verboten content of my blog, in Google’s opinion, includes “claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process,” statements that promote “harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus,” and content that “contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change.”

The good news is the DOJ is suing Google’s ass with an anti trust suit over its ad market monopoly and is calling for a corporate breakup. We’ll see if Google follows the Get-Woke-Go-Broke trend.

In the meantime, the cost of everything—including running this website—is going up. The number of tech support and tech feature requests has increased drastically over the last few months. I have to pay a small team to manage these requests.

Your support via Patreon is critical to help cover those costs. I don’t want to do it, but I might have to limit personalized tech support to patrons only.

I remain committed to keeping the content of this site free to anyone. However, without that extra ad revenue, I need to ask you to consider supporting the website by making a contribution via Patreon at patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler

UKRAINE, FRIDAY, 31 MARCH

Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Bucha, the Ukrainian town that has become synonymous with Russia's brutal occupation and alleged war crimes.

US President Joe Biden urged Russia Friday to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Moscow on suspicion of "espionage." The WSJ has “vehemently"denied the Kremlin's allegations and is seeking his release. 

Finland cleared its final hurdle for joining NATO, as Turkey's parliament approved its accession. The Nordic country abandoned its long-held non-aligned status in response to Russia's invasion.

The leaders of more than 30 news organizations around the world signed a letter Thursday to the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, demanding the release of imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

"Gershkovich is a journalist, not a spy, and should be released immediately and without conditions," said the letter, spearheaded by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which was made public Friday.

The letter was signed by the leaders of the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, TIME, Euronews, Bloomberg News, Sky News, The New Yorker, and The Economist, among many others.

"Gershkovich’s unwarranted and unjust arrest is a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions," the letter said. "Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalized and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law." 

— CNN