Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Spring Mix | Celestial Sunset | LWV Meeting | Truck Search | BOS Weather | Local Author/Chef | RVMAC Meeting | Quail | Covelo Crossroads | Wildflower Show | Ed Notes | My Grandpa | School Fencing | Cuban Music | Pinot Festival | Yesterday's Catch | Kings 2-0 | Lands End | SF Crime | Cable Cars | Breathless Beacon | Web Karate | Fourth Child | Pro-Life | The Morning | Seed Plastic | Boston Marathon | Gunsmoke Avenue | Press Police | Econ Superbowl | Wrapped Up | Tyrant Power | Chaos Investing | Emerging Economy | City Costs | Ukraine | Hopi Girls

SCATTERED SHOWERS linger across Northern California through Wednesday. Slight chance of isolated thunderstorms and small hail will be possible again along the North Coast this afternoon through evening. Additional snowfall expected for elevations above 2500 feet, mainly over Del Norte County this evening. Dry and warm weather will return on Thursday into the weekend as high pressure builds in. (NWS)

LARRY R. WAGNER: Quite an evening - short downpour, then this celestial sunset, then calm, then 26 mph wind gust and downpour, followed by a flash of lightning, and all returned to quiet. Never dull living on the coast!

THE GP MILL SITE PRESENTATION

The League of Women Voters (LWV) of Mendocino County will hold its April meeting on Tuesday, April 18, from 6-7:30pm. The meeting will be held via Zoom.

Four local presenters will give a comprehensive update on the former GP Mill Site; history, ecology, planning rules and legal status will be covered.

There will be time for discussion and questions. The Zoom link for the meeting can be found below and also on the League's website: my.lwv.org/california/mendocino-county; look under the calendar tab.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82319138585...

For more information, call [937-4952] (tel:707-937-4952).

Pat Dunbar, Publicity

TRUCK SEARCH

The City of Fort Bragg Police Department is looking for the public's assistance in identifying the owner or location of the photographed pick-up truck. The vehicle is associated with a felony vandalism currently being investigated by the department. If you have any information please contact Sergeant Welter at the City of Fort Bragg Police Dept (707) 961-2800 Ext 168 or email at awelter@fortbragg.com. You can also speak to any officer on duty utilizing the non-emergency dispatch line at (707) 964-0200. For all emergencies utilize 911.

LINDA BAILEY COMMENTS (Re: County Budget): Watching Williams and McGourty at last week’s BOS discussion of financial and budgetary matters brought to mind Charles Frazier’s line in Cold Mountain: “They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say ‘Shit, it’s raining’."

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE REDWOOD VALLEY MAC MEETING

by Monica Huettl

…Audience member Martha Barra publicly commented that she had attended the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting, and she wanted to let the citizens of Redwood Valley know that the Supervisors had discussed selling the Mariposa Swimming Hole on the Russian River. Mariposa is a small piece of land on the 13000 block of Tomki Road, owned by the County. McGourty confirmed that as part of the budget discussion, the supervisors had discussed possibly selling one or more of the County parks to save money on maintenance and liability insurance. Mariposa isn’t officially a park, but for many years it has been used as a community swimming hole. Barra expressed hope that a nonprofit group could purchase it for public use. Katrina Frey, MAC Treasurer, whose family winery is close to the Mariposa site, also expressed interest in this. Jini Reynolds, MAC Vice Chair, said, “It’s needed now more than ever. It’s one of the very few places to get cool in the summer, and it supports an amazing amount of wildlife.” There was a brief discussion of whether an entity could be formed as a subsidiary of the State Grange, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. The Redwood Valley Grange is a 501(c)(8) “Fraternal Beneficiary Society.” McGourty urged the community to “get creative” with regard to raising funds.…

mendofever.com/2023/04/18/buyer-of-school-property-backs-out-county-considering-selling-mariposa-swimming-hole-highlights-from-the-redwood-valley-mac-meeting/

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Nothing justifies the tragic, brutal and senseless murder of this young lady or the young man who recently suffered an equally tragic, brutal and senseless murder. As painful as it is, it’s time to ask: is this the result of the example we’re setting for our children?

Covelo has a tragic history of genocide, oppression, seven Tribes with different beliefs and practices herded together, exploited and marginalized, inter and intra Tribal rivalries, family vendettas, alcoholism, domestic violence, outlaw dope culture and economic hardship and much more. It’s all too tragically true.

But Covelo is at a crossroads where it’s either going to become completely unlivable with everyone leaving who can – or everyone needs to put aside recriminations for past wrongs and begin building trust and setting an example of how to work together in the here and now. Yes, easier said than done but what’s the alternative?

ED NOTES

“McLaughlin retires as Publisher of Independent Coast Observer,” by J. Stephen McLaughlin. Steve and Co have been at it a long time. He started in the business under his formidable mom, Joanna McLaughlin, who founded the weekly in 1969, which she also printed on the premises, placing the entire operation under one roof. She was kind enough to give me a tour one day when I stopped in without an appointment, explaining how the combined print shop and newspaper operated. I'd always wanted to emulate the ICO operating model but never had the capital for my own printing press.

THE ICO will now operate under the auspices of a non-profit — which newspapers have been for about twenty years now anyway — but this ICO non-profit will be operated by a committee of locals who want the paper to survive. Newspaper by committee? The horror, the horror! But Steve, I'm sure, will still ride herd and, given the soft context of “MendoNoma” journalism, as the South Coast's commercial titans call the Gualala area, a committee of equivalently deluded people who believe “Advertising is oxygen for local journalism” rather than its death will keep the ICO afloat. 

ATTENTION BASEBALL FANS! If you happen to be in Marin or nearby, the college games at the College of Marin stadium in Kentfield are highly recommended. The stadium, and it is a small stadium, is beautiful, as spacious and as comfortable as a well-tended minor league ballpark, and the baseball is pretty good, too. I saw the Mariners, as the home team is called, take on the visiting Mendocino College Eagles, who also have a nice little ballpark on their Ukiah campus. The event was casually hosted. A handcrafted sign at the entrance gate said admission was five dollars, but there was no one to collect it, although a stack of effectively rendered programs was available for the taking. Walking on, I saw a food table with an array of snacks that included “sliders,”' a delicacy new to me but defined by my brother in law as “mini-hamburgers.” The free lunch table was also unattended. Passersby helped themselves.

THE MARINER'S BASEBALL FIELD is part of an athletic complex of playing fields; there were a soccer game, a girl's lacrosse contest and volleyball matches also underway. A young woman sang a credible National Anthem, the tattooed home plate umpire, who looked kinda elderly to be all tatted up, yelled, “Play ball” and off we went. (Tat man was very good on balls and strikes. The other ump was also competent, and there were a bunch of really good defensive plays by both teams, with Marin's pitchers shutting out the Mendo boys, 6-0.

THE PA system blasted out, and I mean blasted out, brief cannonades of “music” before each batter, every blast constituting a mercifully short aural assault on the couple of hundred spectators. In another time and far away, I played a lot of baseball, winding up my ball-playing days at Cal Poly SLO with a mediocre record as a disinterested pitcher/outfielder. I was, by then, heavily into the books and had lost interest in sports, but baseball got me a meal ticket and a free room for two years, and that was all I needed then and now.

UKIAH UNIFIED GOES FOR "HIGH END" FENCING

Dear Ukiah Unified Staff:

I am reaching out to talk to you about our plans to add security fencing at several of our schools over the summer. Ukiah High School, Big Picture Ukiah @ South Valley High School, Eagle Peak, Pomolita, Oak Manor, Nokomis, and Yokayo will all get new security fencing this summer. I apologize if some of you haven’t heard about the new fencing. Although we haven’t communicated exclusively about fencing, it has been in my Ukiah Daily Journal columns, parent and staff communications, and board meeting agendas and minutes. Our voters also approved Measure A, our school facilities bond, with the district’s promise of enhancing outdated security and emergency communications systems, including security fencing. As I stated back in my September 30th Parent Communication, I am proud of all the things we are doing and plan to do to increase safety at our schools. Click here to read my 9.30.2022 communication.

In addition to improving safety, new fencing can also help schools to manage student behavior more effectively. Open campuses make it easier for students to leave the school grounds during school hours, which can lead to truancy, tardiness, risky behaviors, and other disciplinary issues. Fencing will help our elementary schools manage runners so they do not run out into busy city streets. By installing new fencing, we can create clear boundaries that students are expected to stay within, making it easier for teachers and administrators to enforce school rules and expectations. 

Click here to see the plans for our fencing projects that are in the process of approval by the State of California. Spend a little time looking them over. You will see emergency exits at various points and ornamental fencing elements, and you can see that a lot of work was put into how the fencing projects will affect our campus's appearance. We care deeply about the aesthetics of our schools, so we have insisted on high-end fencing and not just simple chain link. For an example of what our new fencing will look like and how it will function, please visit Grace Hudson Language Academy; their fencing is very similar to what is planned for our schools.

I share the concerns that some of you have about how this will make our students feel while at school, but our students and all of you are too important not to increase security. Please reach out to me with any concerns. Thank you for all you do for our students!

With Gratitude,

Deb Kubin, Superintendent

40 YEARS OF HISTORY – And Sparkling Wine to Celebrate – At the 24th Annual Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival

Philo, Calif., April 17, 2023 – Now in its 24th year, the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival will celebrate the region’s signature grape on May 19-21, 2023. The festival, which pays homage to Anderson Valley’s 40th anniversary as an AVA, takes place throughout Anderson Valley, with the Grand Tasting hosted on Saturday, May 20th, at Scharffenberger Cellars.

Highlights of the three-day event include a reunion and rare opportunity to hear from the region’s early founders. John Scharffenberger kicks off the Technical Conference on Friday, April 19, 2023, and will be joined by Allan Green, founder of Greenwood Ridge and Deborah Cahn, who with her husband Ted, established Navarro Vineyards. This sure to be memorable discussion will take place at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville.

”It is truly an honor to be a part of this year’s Technical Conference that brings together the founders of the Valley, who were risk takers and explorers, and bravely came to Anderson Valley and made the Valley a destination for winegrowers, winemakers and consumers,” says Darrin Low, winemaker at Domaine Anderson and head of the 2023 planning committee.

Author Rex Pickett, who put Pinot Noir in the American consciousness with his book and film “Sideways,” is also a Pinot specialist and will add some levity to our technical conference by leading the panel on oak treatment of Pinot Noir. Pickett will also be signing books at the Grand Tasting and around all weekend to share a laugh when you see him.
 
Hosting the Grand Tasting at the region’s second largest sparkling wine house, the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association looks to highlight Pinot Noir’s significance and history in the Valley in making both extraordinary still and sparkling wine. The Grand Tasting will feature approximately 50 producers pouring Pinot Noir, ranging in style from sparkling to still to rosé. Wineries pouring include Anderson Valley producers, as well as a few dozen Napa and Sonoma producers that source fruit from the region.

In conjunction with the Grand Tasting, Roederer Estate Family of Wines will be hosting the VIP Bubble Lounge, pouring Champagne from the House of Roederer in France and sparkling wines from Roederer Anderson Valley and their Scharffenberger Cellars.
 
Aside from the Technical Conference and Grand Tasting, other events during the festival include a gourmet sunset BBQ at Lula Cellars and Sunday winery Open Houses throughout the Valley to conclude Pinot Noir Fest weekend. Winery offerings include lamb chops, vineyard tours, library wine, French food, bbq ribs, live music, and more!

Tickets are going quickly but there are still some available. Go to the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association website at www.avwines.com/pinot-noir-festival. More information can be found online, or by contacting the Association via email at info@avwines.com.

Event Details And Cost:

Tech Conference: Friday, May 19, 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.; Cost: $110

Location: Mendocino Fairgrounds, 14400 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415

Educational panel discussions, focused tastings, and more, with breakfast and lunch provided. Learn from winemakers, vineyard owners, wine educators, and members of the wine media.
BBQ in the Vineyards: Friday, May 19, 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.; Cost: $95

Location: Lula Cellars, 2800 Guntly Road, Philo, CA 95466

This year’s BBQ will feature live music and tons of great Anderson Valley wine! Join us in the Deep End amidst the beautiful vineyard at Lula Cellars for tasty BBQ, live music and Lula’s renowned Pinot Noirs, along with special bottles shared by the valley’s winemakers. It will be a night you won't soon forget!
VIP Bubble Lounge: Saturday, May 20, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.; Cost: $125

Location: Scharffenberger Cellars, 8501 Highway 128, Philo, CA 95466

The Bubble Lounge at the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival is sponsored by the Roederer Estate Family of Wines. Only 75 tickets are available to gain VIP access to this exclusive room on the beautiful grounds of Scharffenberger Cellars in Philo. You can taste wines from Roederer Estate, Scharffenberger Cellars and Champagne Louis Roederer. Snack on caviar and hors d’oeuvres and talk to winemakers and like-minded bubble aficionados while gazing out over the beautiful Scharffenberger Cellars vineyards, just steps from the Grand Tasting event.

Grand Tasting: Saturday, May 20, 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.; Cost: $175; Designated Driver Ticket: $75

Location: Scharffenberger Cellars, 8501 Highway 128, Philo, CA 95466

Taste world-class Anderson Valley Pinot Noirs, approximately 50 producers and savor perfectly paired with some of Mendocino’s best culinary bites, designed to complement exceptional Anderson Valley Pinot wines. Bid on auction lots for charity and enjoy live music while you sip, nibble and taste your way through the day.

Winery Open Houses: Sunday, May 21, 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.; Cost: Varies by winery

Location: Throughout Anderson Valley

Meander along Highway 128 and stop at participating winery tasting rooms with the purple flags for a little extra wine tasting, more music, delicious bites, and special wine discounts.

(AV Winegrowers Association)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, April 16, 2023

BENJAMIN BICKNELL, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JEROME MONTGOMERY, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

MICHELLE PERRY, Lakeport/Ukiah. County parole violation.

BEN RAY, Klamath/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, failure to appear.

ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting, bringing controlled substance into jail.

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

RAMIRO SANTIAGO-GUTIERREZ, Salinas/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

MIRIAM VALLALVA-PANFILO, Ukiah. Domestic battery, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, child neglect.

CHAD ZALUNARDO, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

WARRIORS TRY TO REMAIN CALM IN AN UNPRECEDENTED SITUATION

by Ann Killion

The Golden State Warriors are the experienced team in this compelling series. They’ve seen nearly everything.  Encountered almost every scenario.

But they have never seen this.  The situation they find themselves in is a brand new experience.

For the first time, after playing in 28 playoff series, Stephen Curry is in an 0-2 hole.

For the first time in the Steve Kerr era, the Warriors have lost the first two games of a playoff series.

“A new challenge,” said Draymond Green with a smile. 

“This is one we haven’t seen yet,” added Green, who also had a very familiar playoff experience, getting ejected after a Flagrant 2 foul. “And we’ve conquered all the rest of them, so to conquer this one would be a lot of fun.”

Now the reigning champions will have to draw on every ounce of their experience and talent to try to even the series against the talented young Kings, when they move to Chase Center on Thursday night. 

“Unfamiliar territory,” Klay Thompson said. “But we’ve been through everything, So, you rely on your experience and do what we do, which is play well at home.”

Given the Warriors’ struggles on the road this season, it’s not a total shock to see them lose both road games.  Given the Warriors dominance at home, it won’t be surprising if the series is tied by Sunday evening.

“There’s that old saying that the series doesn’t start until somebody wins on the other team’s home floor,” Curry said.  “We want to get ourselves back into it with a focused effort at game three at home and get our crowd into it early and try to throw the first punch.”

The Warriors had played a tight and focused Game 1 and even though they lost the opener they felt they had found some things. Curry called it their best road game.

But on Monday night at Golden 1 Center, they couldn’t replicate that focus. They came out sloppy with nine first-quarter turnovers. They got in early foul trouble, which haunted them down the stretch.  They played the final seven minutes without their key playmaker Green, after he was ejected for stomping on Domantas Sabonis’ chest, retaliating after Sabonis pulled his leg.

But despite all their problems, the Warriors still trailed by just one point with 3:11 to play.

“It’s a tight game with four minutes left,” Kerr said.  “We know we have to play better, but we will. These guys are champions. You saw what they did in a really difficult situation with a lot of foul trouble.

“Our guys fought. They showed what they’re made of. So now it’s a matter of going home and licking our wounds a little bit and get a little rest. … And we go home and take care of our home court.”

The Kings have been a revelation.  After the emotional high of Game 1, it wasn’t surprising that they came out a bit flat. They missed their first 11 3-point attempts and also had nine first-quarter turnovers. But they ramped up the physical side of things. They are young and athletic and aggressive and well-coached and at times, particularly in the second quarter, the Warriors looked old and rattled.

But there was no sense of despair.

“I don’t feel pressure, “ Thompson said. “We’re not accustomed to hitting the panic button.”

So far, the Kings’ Mike Brown is outcoaching his former boss. The Warriors have lost their past five playoff games when they haven’t had Brown on their bench: three to Cleveland in 2016 before he arrived and the past two.

On Sunday afternoon, Brown gathered his team around him at their practice for some words of wisdom.  “Every step you take on this journey is going to be …. hard.,” Brown told them, adding a profane two-word adjective before the final word. 

And even with a 2-0 lead, Brown and the Kings know it’s only going to get harder, heading to Chase.

“You’ve got to embrace it,” Curry said. “You do this as long as we have, 28 series or whatever, and never been in this situation. We’ve got to stay together, stay locked in on things we need to do better, embrace the challenge of protecting the home court.

“All we’ve got to do is win one game here, somehow, some way, whatever game it is.”

(sfchronicle.com)

LAW & DISORDER & DISINFORMATION

by Steve Heilig

A violent knife killing of a well-known and well-liked “techie” in San Francisco exploded onto the front pages of papers that still have pages, and all over online: “San Francisco is a terror zone, a dystopian mess, a cesspool of failed liberal anarchy!” And so on ad nauseum. Some, but not all, of them actually believed it.

Then it quickly was revealed that the murder was among “friends,” in a scenario that some wags termed “bro on bro violence.” The doomsayers mysteriously then went quiet. No longtime local with any intelligence and judgment was surprised at either the fact that this incident had nothing to do with local crime rates or that the ignorant outrage turned out to be just plain hypocrisy.

Almost any murder is a tragedy, and when violence happens to you that feels like a 100% crime rate, but the selective “outrage” we feel over Bob Lee’s death has also been disturbing. One of Lee’s friends says he left San Francisco since “It’s just not safe there anymore.” But Lee had moved from bucolic Marin to Miami — a city with some of the highest crime rates, violent and otherwise, in the nation, much higher than San Francisco’s. The irony was thicker than Fisherman’s Wharf clam chowder.

As has been amply demonstrated and disseminated each time the crime scare flares, San Francisco is still much safer than before. Yes your car might well get broken into if you are foolish or uninformed enough to leave anything that might seem valuable inside. Other thievery happens too — just like in most any city, or many suburbs, or the woods of Mendocino County, and so on. It seems to rise and fall like tides. But it’s violent crime that gets the most media attention, and a recent survey indicates that more and more San Franciscans live in varying levels of fear about that. Too often that fear is self-fulfilling, fueled by all the attention, another gift of the unfiltered internet.

Before the internet, one had to get out to see and feel how things were. Forty years back when I moved here, taking risks was part of having fun in the big city. Live music and cool bars were all over but tended to be in sketchier neighborhoods. South of Market, before it was re-branded “SOMA,” was for decades a crime-ridden open-air alcoholic ward — as documented by famed photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression, by Jack Kerouac in the 1950s, and by my own experiences when I moved here in the 1980s. When crack cocaine hit here at that time, violence was rampant. South Park and the area Lee was killed in were often scary at night. The Mission had gang turf wars, Hayes Valley sported gunshot sounds every night, NOPA was still part of the Western Addition and was no place to be out at night, the Haight was a boarded-up post-60s wasteland, and BMW was said to stand for “Break My Window,” and on and on. 

Some of this might be a slight exaggeration, but in any event I feel safer now in all those areas than then, and I’m no longer a tough guy. Yes, the Tenderloin is a mess as has long been the case, and mid-Market indeed looks bleak, but that geographically accounts for about 5% of the city. The rest is often teeming with diners, tourists, shoppers, regulator folks doing what they do, or just quietly residential. Easter Sunday out at the beach looked like a tropical paradise, with hordes enjoying the sunshine; the biggest risk looked to be sunburn on all that exposed flesh. Friends from afar ask if it’s safe to come here and I tell them, Yes, once you’ve gotten past the high-risk driving here part. I’m only slightly joking.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that no amount of factual evidence will convince those who insist violent crime here is worse now, and that their outrage only really arises when they see a victim as one of their own. If Lee had been an unknown, nonwhite, non-affluent victim, let alone a homeless man, would his sad death be big news, and would techies and others be up in arms? Who can name the other dozen murdered victims so far this year? Did the trumped-up misguided recall of former DA Chesa Boudin do anything to help the city’s crime scenario? Unfortunately, the questions answer themselves. 

We could use more good cops, walking strategic street beats, as most agree. We could also use much more residential mental health and drug addiction treatment resources, some of it compulsory, despite what some of my fellow civil rights advocates might say, more to protect those so afflicted from others than because they are criminals (most aren’t). Too many of these ill unfortunates just bounce from street to hospital emergency department and back and need to be coerced into being helped and then helping themselves. It does nobody any good to “die with your rights on,” as the sad slogan goes. But we let them do so. And of course too many of us wouldn’t want to pay what it will cost to improve things.

Still, any number of good policies won’t eliminate crime, and the hypocritical and irrationally scared will always cry “law and order,” whatever that might mean to them, and even though that rarely works much and for long. The intricacies of what causes and reduces crime are just too complex, and too often called “soft on crime,” to satisfy the outrage. In any event, to “politicize” a sad murder dishonors the victim’s memory, and for no good reason, to no good end, and is soon forgotten until the next dead body. Rest in peace. All of them.

RD BEACON:

Over the years as the homeless moved to California for the free ride, that's our governor and all of the politicians giving away food, free medical and all the things they couldn't get another states they moved in by the bushel basket load, every empty building and square foot of land was not inhabited had no fences around, became a target not only in cities but in the countryside as well and it does no good, the board up an old building and think it's good to be safe, and the law won't help you they just laugh at you and tell you to hire a lawyer, homeless people have free law free legal services so that said uphill battle because you have to paper your lawyer, they don't have to so you need taller penses livestock on the road your property that is a little bit left of center, it don't like people, you need to post your property with no trespassing signs in a couple of different languages because they can always say they don't read or write, you notice they're not moving to the Nevada, Texas as many have gotten wise to other states and what they do to the homeless, but it's even larger than all of that because the environmentalists are the ones that put people on the streets by shutting down the steel mills in Pennsylvania by shutting down most of Detroit Michigan in the manufacturing of cars, and even in the great Northwest parts of California is the environmentalists wanted government to turn timberland and parts that put people out of the street, an old saying was of government officials is that nice we can do things without thinking just do it get away with it, although there is some protection for landowners and some remedies, part of it is still against federal law to steal livestock when you're going to eat it or sell it is still wrestling some stated still hanging offense, California will end up talking to a federal judge and end up in a federal prison system, although the bigger timber companies got out and hired security to rein in the problem of Hamas intruding on their land, as to the problem of them that the homeless breaking into graves in cemeteries to hunt as the jewelry of people and been dead for 100 years, it is a despicable thing to do but when you're homeless and you have no money you'll do anything for the next meal, but we need to make an example of these people put them in prison and let the government paid them for a while though no longer be homeless of the jailbirds, in the case of the local cemeteries many of them put gates and unlock the door, others make it difficult for them to get into an area and not just walk off the highway with a small shovel, in cities are putting taller fences around and hiring security to watch the larger cemeteries, it is a felony to break into a grave, but any law enforcement officer dead but to enforce the rules is an uphill battle with the advancement of crime in the country having to do with firearms are government doesn't realize it's people control not begun control, and part of it is a very large part of it is the fact that government started telling parents what they could do in disciplining their children the government can't even discipline itself and end up on top, we need to bring the rules of 1850 back is charged with a crime capital crime no appeal you could hang with news waiting for you that's what you're going to get, our world is out of control not only our politicians but the ones around the world they can't manage their country or their people and governments seem to have an answer take everybody's rights away from the, which didn't work in in 1775 people got their homes and rates and even that's, and anything they can fight with, and declared war against the British and actually want we were successful in freeing our people and our country from an oppressive government but where we going to go from here in 2023 and is our oppressive government on the inside as we are on the outside, what do we take to get to the New World spaceship or do we just go down to South America and steal some more land from the less informed natives just like we did in this country, how many times do we have to run away and fight back to get freedom for everybody.

THE FOURTH CHILD

I am a little girl, my siblings torture me,

Why are they soo mean?

Did they overhear angry words about my arrival?

I cry and cry, they hit and pinch me more.

My father is so angry,

So tired of yapping, crying kids.

He comes in and yells.

My sister pinches me, so hard it leaves a bruise.

She smiles angelicly up at my father.

He fumes and spanks me.

“I’ll give you something to cry about.”

—Emjay Wilson. C. 4/16/23

THE MORNING

by Denis Rouse

Weinstein’s wife is crying. They just made love and she is crying that soft silent way women cry when what is wrong, or what’s right for that matter, is not yet a wordful thing.

Weinstein considers for a moment that she is crying because she is happy, but any such notion dies quickly. He knows her well enough to be quite positive the tears running down her pale morning cheeks are not the good kind. There is no mystery here. Far from it.

He leans over and gently kisses her, tasting her salt, and her sadness too, he thinks.

“What’s up babe? Was I that good?”

“I heard you drive in last night. What took you so long to get out of the garage?”

“Oh, I straightened up a few things. The kids must have been screwing around in my shop. You know how I am about my tools.”

“I know how you are about everything. Your priorities are shit. You’re gone for two weeks, arrive home in the middle of the night and it takes you twenty minutes to come to our bedroom. I’m sick of feeling like this”.

“Feeling like what?”

“Oh, come on, do I have to spell it out for you? We’ve had this conversation before. I’m so lonely I could scream. And I think there’s something terribly wrong with me. The whole right side of my face is numb again.”

It is zero dark thirty and the day is already off to a great start, Weinstein thinks. He envisions his desk stacked high with molten issues that will require his immediate attention, especially the impending loss of a major account. Big money and it’s burning like a trash fire. Weinstein wants to run to the office and call upon everything he must try to douse it. Priorities? He knows what she means, but still.

“Look, hon, can we talk about this tonight? I’ll try to be home early. I understand what you’re saying. We’ll work on it”.

“Yeah, you’ll come home, have a few drinks, smoke a joint, get into bed, turn on the television, close the bedroom door and zombie out while I help the kids with their homework. And God forbid if the house is a mess. I’m telling you I can’t do much more of this”.

“I know, I know. We’ll talk tonight”.

Weinstein pads slowly to the bathroom and closes the door and locks it noiselessly to soften his exit. In the shower with the strong stinging spray of hot water directed straight into his face he thinks, privacy, no matter how goddamn ephemeral, is one of the truly solid gold values in this life.

In the car on his way to the office, Weinstein begins to review the plot, the strategy he plans to employ to try to save the account. It really doesn’t seem salvageable at this point because he knows what he’s up against, a powerfully rooted combination of ignorance and intransigence that’s been well watered by a competitor whose tactics are shameful but effective.

The Ventura Freeway is a mire of stop and go traffic proceeding at a crawl. Weinstein notices the expressions on the faces of his fellow commuters appear sullen and depressed. He glances at his own worried eyes reflected in the rearview mirror and sees he looks like hell too. Legions of the doomed, he whispers to himself, and I’m right there in lock step, going to work with a gut full of anxiety in the early morning gloom of June in L.A., a sunless toxic gray brown shroud of smog and fog that defines a summer morning in this beleaguered bellicose city of my birth.

Suddenly a sea of brake lights. Road construction ahead. Caltrans has coned off two lanes. The grand orange bureaucracy has chosen this most viscous rush hour as the ideal time to patch a few potholes. Weinstein and hundreds of others, thousands of others, brake to a rude halt, a painful squeeze, a trap, a numbing delay from which timely escape is out of the question.

Of all the goddamn mornings, Weinstein thinks, but then he stifles it remembering an ancient prayer that has something to do with the hopelessness of attempting to change what is absolutely the unchangeable, the immutability of fate.

Minutes pass. Way too many of them. Weinstein tries to focus on the problem, the big one, the matter of losing fifty thousand dollars of revenue in what is hardly shaping up as a banner fiscal year in any event. His competitor has clearly outmaneuvered him by getting the client and those frightened men at the ad agency screwed, glued and tattooed while he had a polite hopeless dinner discussing circulation and demographics with two large officious female media clerks who drank like fish and ordered the caviar appetizer. He’s been phoning them, faxing them, emailing them since he became aware of the shipwreck, to no avail. Only a portentous silence suffused with defeat, a silence upon which floats Weinstein’s worst primal fear, the big F, Failure.

Perhaps fifty yards ahead Weinstein can see blinking lights, the flags, the men and the machines of the road crew, and beyond, the lanes of traffic beginning to flow normally again. However agonizing the pace, release from the maddening pinch is at least in sight. As Weinstein inches closer to the work site he can hear the whine of diesel engines and the staccato bursts of jackhammers and then as he is astride it he sees the men themselves in their orange vests and metal helmets, a few doing the real grunt work with picks and shovels. It is these men upon whom Weinstein focuses, these men at their fundamental honest physical toil with their hand tools, their tanned unshaven faces registering only simple exertion, and Weinstein thinks, those lucky sons of bitches, this morning I wish I could trade places with them and then go home to a clean, empty, well lighted little cottage in Canoga Park with an ice cold 12-pack of Budweiser.

Weinstein is lost in fractured nonsensical thought by the time he slides his car into his space in the office parking lot reserved for company executives. His mind has wandered to North Africa and there he sits by a campfire under a vast star-pocked Sahara sky munching roasted goat with a family of Bedouin tribesmen. Then at once he glances at his Rolex. Realizing it’s already past nine, he is jolted back to painful reality, too late to make long distance calls back east he needs to make. The bastards will be on their first martinis by now, and since its Friday, trying to reach anyone who matters after lunch is going to be futile. The weekend looms, two days with the family, two more days to stew.

“Mr. Weinstein”, the receptionist says the second he steps through the door, “Your wife called. She wants you to phone her right away.”

“Ah Karen, you look gorgeous this morning. You know what she wanted?”

“Something about a birthday, oh yes, it’s her mother’s birthday and she wants to remind you about going to the party tomorrow. In Orange County. You must be there by noon and you know how the traffic is”.

“Yes Karen, I know how it is. I know exactly how it is. Do me a favor and call her back for me, will you? Tell her I wouldn’t miss her mother’s birthday party for the world, not for the whole fucking world.”

IN CELEBRATION of today's Boston Marathon, we're sharing the dramatic story of the first woman to officially run in the world's oldest annual marathon. Kathrine Switzer’s experience is a revealing illustration of the barriers that trailblazing women athletes had to overcome and of how far girls and women in sports have come in only a few decades. Switzer was a 20-year-old college student at Syracuse University in 1967 when she registered for the race using her initials, K.V. Switzer. Not realizing that she was a woman, who were barred from participating in the Boston Marathon for over 70 years, race officials issued her an entry number.

During the race, marathon official Jock Semple attempted to physically remove Switzer from the marathon after discovering she was female. Other runners, including Switzer’s boyfriend Tom Miller, blocked Semple and she was able to complete the marathon. Photographs of the incident and the story of Switzer’s participation in the marathon made global headlines. Switzer's record-setting run as the Boston Marathon’s first registered female runner came one year after the historic run of Bobbi Gibb, who disguised herself and snuck in to run the marathon in 1966.

After the marathon, Switzer became deeply engaged in efforts to increase girls’ and women’s access to sports and she and other women runners finally convinced the Boston Athletic Association to drop their discriminatory policies and allow women to participate in 1972. Today, nearly half of Boston Marathon entrants are female. Switzer also helped lead the drive for the inclusion of a women’s marathon in the Olympic Games -- a victory which was achieved at long last with the first women's marathon at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

As for the individuals captured in this dramatic moment, Semple later publicly apologized to Switzer and the two reconciled. After the rule was changed to allow women in the marathon, he became a staunch supporter of women racers. Looking back at what she called the “great shoving incident,” Switzer reflected, “these moments change your life and change the sport. Everybody’s belief in their own capability changed in that one moment, and a negative incident turned into one of the most positive.”

THE PRESS IS NOW ALSO THE POLICE

As fallout from the Discord leak continues, the undisguised partnerships of media, intelligence, and law enforcement come into more painful relief

by Matt Taibbi

Back from vacation I made the mistake of scanning the news and was shocked by the media’s ongoing orgy of self-congratulation and Two-Minutes-Hating, in response to the capture of “Pentagon Leaker” Jack Teixeira. Glenn Greenwald has already covered a lot of this on System Update, but this represents a major new progression in the ongoing mutation of news media, from public advocate to cop.

The New York Times and Washington Post trumpeted roles in helping identify Air National Guardsman Teixiera for the FBI. “We’re delivering him to you with his head on a platter,” is how Glenn put it. 

It’s an awful look for the press. This isn’t tracking down a serial killer or exposing Enron’s fraud. The alleged “crime” here is releasing true information, information that belongs to the American public and is secret only by official designation. At most, a newspaper might decide not to publish such information, but to help jail the leaker? It’s nuts. Reporters are supposed to be interested in everything and listen to information without judgment, like doctors, yet the whole industry is working itself into a moral frenzy because a bunch of overgrown Minecraft enthusiasts were privately passing around a few truths like a joint. 

The papers even made a show of using huge newsroom posses to effect capture. One 1400-word Times piece, “A Quick Guide to what the Leaked U.S. Intelligence Documents Say,” was credited to 13 people: lead writer Eric Nagourney, with contributions from Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Michael Schwirtz, David E. Sanger, Ivan Nechepurenko, Anton Troianovski, Aric Toler, Christiaan Triebert, Malachy Browne and Chris Buckley.

The fascinating name was Toler’s. In “Finding the Pentagon Leaker”, the Times identified the figure who apparently did most of the sleuthing only as “a freelance reporter who works with us,” but provided a hyperlink showing his day job: director of “research and training” for the absurd intel community cutout Bellingcat. 

For the Times, this symbolized a complete turnaround from just 12 years ago, when it partnered with Julian Assange to print “The War Logs,” a far more damaging set of leaks. Just one of those Wikileaks-based stories, “Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert,” was probably more impactful than all the Teixeira docs combined. It described how officials in Pakistan, an ostensible American ally receiving over $1 billion from the U.S. for aid in fighting “militants,” was holding “secret strategy sessions” with the Taliban, to help organize “networks… that fight against American soldiers.” 

In a piece in January 2011, then-editor Bill Keller detailed how the Times made a conscious decision to print material it knew government wanted to keep secret. The government back then was viewed as a potential obstacle to its reporting: “From consultations with our lawyers, we were confident that reporting on the secret documents could be done within the law, but we speculated about what the government — or some other government — might do to impede our work or exact recriminations.”

The Times spent a lot of time in its “War Logs” coverage reassuring readers that it was releasing documents “responsibly,” and not upsetting its pals in the Obama administration too too much, but the fact remained that the 2010 Times emphasized the newsworthiness of the leaks, not the crime of leaking. 

A decade and a half later, Assange is in jail, and the only permitted form of “leaking” in the modern media landscape comes either from the intelligence services themselves, or facsimile organizations like Bellingcat. 

What’s the difference? Wikileaks pumped out unapproved leaks and scoops at an unprecedented rate. Bellingcat, founded by the British journalist Eliot Higgins and backed by groups like the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Foundation, provides “leaks” of facts the state wants to emphasize. It’s also moved aggressively into the anti-disinformation space, cracking down on what it calls “cyber-miserablism” (read: complaining about government policy) and “counter-factual communities.” The latter group turns out to include people like Teixeira, accused of leaking factual information. 

“Wikileaks coined the term, ‘Intelligence agency of the people,’” says Stella Assange, Julian’s wife. “Bellingcat went with for the people.”

The contradiction between the past and present behavior of the Times is so glaring, the paper was forced to address the issue. David Sanger’s article, “How the Latest Leaked Documents are Different From Past Breaches,” argues that the difference between then and now is that the current intelligence breaches are more “timely”, whatever that means. 

Even if Sanger’s piece made sense — it doesn’t — it wouldn’t excuse a newspaper hunting a leak suspect for feds to catch. Future sources who might have very different motives than this one will obviously hesitate to go to the press if they think they might be served up to authorities. Say you’re the next Daniel Ellsberg, thinking of releasing more documents about America spying on allies, or sending American special forces to fight in Ukraine, or worse. Would you even consider going to the New York Times or the Washington Post after this? Would you risk going to MSNBC, with its fleet of ex-prosecutors on staff, to become part of a Hallie Jackson diatribe about the dangers of “these super-secret documents, just hanging out”? Of course not. In the current environment, that would be suicide-by-reporter.

The press loses its institutional power the moment the public ceases to view it as being separate from government. If politicians aren’t worried about taking a beating in the newspapers, they won’t fear newspapers, and if the public sees that news reports are indistinguishable from party press releases, they’ll eventually skip past media and go straight to the source. That was already happening, but this latest caper is even worse. If the public sees journalists as agents of law enforcement, they’ll literally cross the street to avoid us. The media is in an audience crisis as is. This is a remedy? 

The current media sees the old system of serving public curiosity before the needs of law enforcement as dangerous. In a world rife with Russians, anti-vaxxers, and insurrectionists, it’s thought we must dispense with the adversarial idea and present a united front against Threats to Democracy. This started with the mania for attacking “fake news,” blasting even random web posters on Facebook, a Politifact specialty. The next step was hall-monitor media, e.g. Taylor Lorenz trying to catch billionaires saying the “r-word” in Clubhouse, or the Washington Post trying to out donors to Canadian trucker protests. From “misinformation” newspapers moved to malinformation, i.e. news that’s correct but politically wrong. Now we’re at the last step: true but criminal. A profession that once got off on informing the public now seems jazzed by correcting it and punishing its errors of character, like being a “gun enthusiast” or a “gamer,” or trading “offensive” jokes. It’s a short step from playing fact police to appointing oneself the real thing.

People hated reporters when they thought we were just politically biased, power-adoring, elitist scum-liars. How low will our reputations sink when “snitch” is added to the mix? By the time these people are finished, we’ll be looking up even to Congress.

THE GOAL is to keep us fighting with as much hostility as possible over issues which inconvenience our rulers as little as possible. It's really amazing how successful they are at this. The other day I saw a video of a guy angrily running over a case of Budweiser with a monster truck for reasons that made no sense to me, and everyone was excitedly yelling their opinions about it, and I was just like, oh my god we are so fucked. They've got us totally wrapped up.

— Caitlin Johnstone

AS ORWELL WOULD CONVEY more powerfully than almost anyone before or since, one of the powers tyrants hold is to destroy and distort the truth and force others to submit to what they know is untrue.

— Rebecca Solnit, ‘Orwell’s Roses’

THE EMERGING NEW WORLD ECONOMY

by Richard D. Wolfe

The emerging new always both frightens and inspires the fading old. History is that unity of opposites. Sharp-edged rejections of what is new clash with enthusiastic celebrations of it. The old gets pushed away even as bitter denials of that reality surge. The emerging new world economy displays just such contradictions. Four major developments can illustrate them and underscore their interactions.

First, the neoliberal globalizing paradigm is now the old. Economic nationalism is the new. It is another reversal of their previous positions. Driven by its celebrated profit motive, capitalism in its old centers (western Europe, North America, and Japan) invested increasingly elsewhere: where labor power was far cheaper; markets were growing faster; ecological constraints were weak or absent; and governments better facilitated rapid accumulation of capital. Those investments brought big profits back into capitalism’s old centers, whose stock markets boomed and thus their income and wealth inequalities widened (since the richest Americans own the great bulk of securities). Even faster was the economic growth unleashed after the 1960s in what quickly became capitalism’s new centers (China, India, and Brazil). That growth was further enhanced by the arrival of the capital relocated from the old centers. Capitalism’s dynamic had earlier moved its production center from England to the European continent, then on to North America and Japan. That same profit-driven dynamic took it to mainland Asia and beyond during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

Neoliberal globalization in theory and practice both reflected and justified this relocation of capitalism. It celebrated the profits and growth brought to both private and state-owned/operated enterprises around the world. It downplayed or ignored the other sides of globalization: (1) growing income and wealth inequalities inside most countries; (2) the shift of production from old to new centers of capitalism; and (3) faster growth of output and markets in new centers than old centers. These changes shook the old centers’ societies. Middle classes there atrophied and shrank as good jobs moved increasingly to capitalism’s new centers. The old centers’ employer classes used their power and wealth to maintain their social positions. Indeed, they got richer by harvesting the greater profits rolling in from the new centers.

However, neoliberal globalization proved disastrous for most employees in capitalism’s old centers. In the latter, the employer class not only grabbed rising profits, but also offloaded the costs of the decline of capitalism’s old centers onto employees. Tax cuts for business and the wealthy, stagnant or declining real wages (abetted by immigration), “austerity” reductions of public services, and neglect of infrastructure produced widening inequality. Working classes across the capitalist West were shocked out of the delusion that neoliberal globalization was the best policy for them too. Rising labor militancy across the U.S., like mass uprisings in France and Greece and left political shifts across the Global South, entail rejections of neoliberal globalization and its political and ideological leaders. Beyond that, capitalism itself is being shaken, questioned, and challenged. In new ways, projects for going beyond capitalism are again on the historical agenda despite the status quo’s efforts to pretend otherwise.

Second, over recent decades, the intensifying problems of neoliberal globalization forced capitalism to make adjustments. As neoliberal globalization lost mass support in capitalism’s old centers, governments took on powers and made more economic interventions to sustain the capitalist system. In short, economic nationalism rose to replace neoliberalism. Instead of the old laissez-faire ideology and policies, nationalist capitalism rationalized the state’s expanding power. In capitalism’s new centers, enhanced state power produced economic development that markedly outgrew the old centers. The new centers’ recipe was to create a system in which a large sector of private enterprises (owned and operated by private individuals) coexisted with a large sector of state enterprises owned by the state and operated by its officials. Instead of a mostly private capitalist system (like that of the U.S. or UK) or a mostly state capitalist system (like that of the USSR), places like China and India produced hybrids. Strong national governments presided over coexisting large private and state sectors to maximize economic growth.

Both private and state enterprises and their coexistence deserve the label “capitalist.” That is because both organize around the relationship of employers and employees. In both private and state enterprises/systems, a small employer minority dominates and controls a large employee majority. After all, slavery also often displayed coexisting private and state enterprises that shared the defining master-slave relationship. Likewise, feudalism had private and state enterprises with the same lord-serf relationship. Capitalism does not disappear when it displays coexisting private and state enterprises organized around the same employer-employee relationship. Thus we do not conflate state capitalism with socialism. In the latter, a different, noncapitalist economic system displaces the employer-employee organization of workplaces in favor of a democratic workplace community organization as in worker cooperatives. The transition to socialism in that sense is also a possible outcome of the turmoil today surrounding the formation of a new world economy.

The state-private hybrid in China achieves remarkably high and enduring GDP and real-wage growth rates that have continued now over the last 30 years. That success deeply influences economic nationalisms everywhere to move toward that hybrid as a model. Even in the U.S., competition with China becomes the go-to excuse for massive governmental interventions. Tariff wars—that raised domestic taxes—could be enthusiastically endorsed by politicians who otherwise preached laissez-faire ideology. The same applied to government-run trade wars, government targeting of specific corporations for punishment or bans, government subsidies to whole industries as so many anti-China economic ploys.

Third, over recent decades, the U.S. empire peaked and began its decline. It thus follows every other empire’s (Greek, Roman, Persian, and British) classic pattern of birth, evolution, decline, and death. The U.S. empire emerged from and replaced the British Empire over the last century and especially after World War II. Earlier, in 1776 and again in 1812, the British Empire tried and failed militarily to prevent or stop an independent U.S. capitalism from developing. After those failures, Britain took a different path in its relations with the U.S. After many more wars in its colonies and with competing colonialisms across the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain’s empire is now gone.

The question is whether the U.S. has learned or even can learn the key lesson of Britain’s imperial decline. Or will it keep trying military means, ever more desperately and dangerously, to hold on to a global hegemonic position that relentlessly declines? After all, the U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were all lost. China has now replaced the U.S. as the major peacemaker in the Middle East. The days of the U.S. dollar as the supreme global currency are numbered. U.S. supremacy in high-tech industries must already be shared with China’s high-tech industries. Even major U.S. corporate CEOs such as Apple’s Tim Cook and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce want the profits of more trade and investment flows between the U.S. and China. They look with dismay at the Biden administration’s rising politically driven hostilities directed at China.

Fourth, the U.S. empire’s decline raises the question of what comes next as the decline deepens. Is China the emerging new hegemon? Will it inherit the empire mantle from the U.S. as the U.S. took it from Britain? Or will some multinational new world order emerge and shape a new world economy? The most interesting possibility and perhaps the likeliest is that China and the entire BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of nations will undertake the construction and maintenance of a new world economy. The war in Ukraine has already enhanced the prospects of such an outcome by strengthening the BRICS alliance. Many other countries have applied or will soon apply for entry into the BRICS framework. Together, they have the population, resources, productive capacity, connections, and accumulated solidarity to be a new pole for world economic development. Were they to play that role, the remaining parts of the world from Australia and New Zealand to Africa, Europe, and South America would have to rethink their foreign economic and political policies. Their economic futures depend in part on how they navigate the contest between old and new world economic organizations. Those futures likewise depend on how critics and victims of both neoliberal/globalizing capitalism and nationalist capitalism interact inside all nations.

(This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work. CounterPunch.org)

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 17 APRIL

Russian forces have launched what the Ukrainian military said were “unsuccessful attacks” against the Bakhmut suburbs, as heavy fighting continues inside the embattled eastern city. 

Western allies have condemned the sentencing of British-Russian Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison after he publicly criticized the Ukraine war.

Slovakia joined Poland and Hungary in banning imports of grain and other agricultural products from Ukraine. A glut of cheap imports has hurt local farmers and sparked protests.

Slovakia has completed the transfer of 13 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.

G7 foreign ministers “remain committed” to sanctioning Russia and providing support for Ukraine, Japan's foreign ministry said as the leaders gathered Monday.