Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Gradual Clearing | Tomki View | Coast Search | New Firetruck | Council Action | Leaf | Tax Bills | Solstice Celebration | Streetscape 2 | Broom Sweep | Suba Stunned | Chimney Sweeps | Spotted Coralroot | Ed Notes | SNWMF Tribute | New Chiropractor | Old Ukiah | Grace Fisher | Favorite Park | Yesterday's Catch | Boston Trip | Homophobe Month | VA Edible | Flower Porn | Doom Loop | City Poets | Ted Kaczynski | Hunter Swap | Hotel Dystopia | Man Mountain | Russian Setting | Toxic Relief | RFK Podcast | Trump's Day | Not Finished | Propagandists | Ukraine | Library Patrons

THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE of thunderstorms possible this afternoon, but drier weather is expected for the remainder of the week. Breezy north winds are expected especially at the coast. A gradual warming trend is expected across the interior through Saturday. Cooler temperatures expected again for Sunday and into early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Will today be the last day for fog for a while? The NWS is forecasting mostly clear skies into the weekend starting tomorrow, we'll see. On the coast this Tuesday morning I have a foggy 54F, with clearing later in the day.

SWEPT OUT TO SEA IN MENDOCINO

Authorities continued to search Monday for a Mendocino County man who on Saturday reportedly fell off cliffs near Big River Beach and into the Mendocino Bay.

Family members of the man, rangers at Mendocino Headlands State Park and lifeguards combed coves around the beach and searched areas to the north and south due to the rip current, said Loren Rex, California State Parks superintendent of the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast District.

Monday was the third day of the search, which began after a person called 911 about 8:30 p.m. Saturday to report they witnessed a man floating face-down in the water after tripping and falling into the bay.

ANDERSON VALLEY FIRE received our new 2000-gallon tactical water tender just in time for wildland fire season! 

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this happen! A special thanks to Clay Eubank and Hans Hickenlooper for driving the rig all the way back home from Austin, Texas while enduring a tough round of COVID they picked up along the way. 

Feel free to check it out in front of our Boonville firehouse when you pass through. It will respond out of Philo but be available for all of Anderson Valley's fire suppression needs!

LINDY PETERS: The City Council took action last night to renew our current contract with the Mendocino Coast Humane Society. It was set to expire. With the closing of the county Animal Shelter here on the coast, it became imperative that the City step-up for our local pets and strays. The County building sits on City property and negotiations are underway to fold it in to the current Humane Society operation, which is right next door. MCHS also features a Vet clinic for those who did not know. This is increasingly important with dwindling local vet care at a premium.

Additionally, the Council voted to disperse the remaining funds from the City Council travel/training account to MCHS as a one-time cash infusion totaling $18,000. The contract will continue to provide a monthly stipend of $2,625 (through the length of the contract) with wording that will allow for future increases should more funding become necessary. It's important to note that all other funding is through The Ark Thrift Store, adoptions and donations.

I am proud that our City Council recognizes the importance of a vital, independent, no-kill facility to care for our furry little friends. Another effort to improve the quality of life here on the Mendocino Coast.

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN:

There has been a delay [in sending out supplemental tax bills] because of a software program that wasn’t implemented for quite sometime. Now Supplemental bills are going out, though some are from a few years prior so balancing that payment can be a challenge for some homeowners. … If you received a supplemental tax bill you may be able to have your lender use your escrow balance to pay it and spread any future payments across your monthly mortgage amount.

* * *

Porter Dinehart: And you have to pay it all at once? Mendocino Second District Supervisor So if you have paid your taxes up to date through your mortgage payment you may get another bill because of the county not keeping up to date with its own software. That seems more like a County issue. 

Ed Note: Apparently around 7,000 supplemental tax bill notices have been mailed out so far. Some taxpayers can arrange for a five year payment plan with the Tax Collector’s office. Call them if you think you might qualify.

* * *

Mulheren: I get the opportunity to address our new employees and I always start with recognition that the benefits are key when you have a government job (and that the policy work that I do, can’t be implemented without their support!). Get to know your benefits and please use the wellness programs, EAP and leadership programs. Opportunities to step-up your position are more available than one might think. Ask your Supervisor or HR for advice on promotional opportunities 

UKIAH STREETSCAPE PHASE 2 CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

Here we go again--construction of Phase 2 of the Downtown Streetscape Project is underway! This phase extends the downtown improvements north to Norton Street and south to Cherry Street. 

What to expect during the week of June 12^th

This coming week, the construction crews will be committed to “potholing” on State Street on the north side of the project. “Potholing” is the process of drilling holes through the street or sidewalk to locate utilities. It will be intermittently noisy (think jackhammer sounds) and will require that parking is blocked off in the construction area.

Potholing is expected to continue for roughly three weeks. Sewer replacement will begin after that, starting on the north side and progressing to the south as far as Mill Street. No work is expected to occur on the south side for at least a couple of months.

Where will the work occur? Potholing will occur on State Street between Norton and Henry Streets. No work will occur on the south side (Mill to Cherry).

What are the construction days/hours? Construction hours will be Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Will there be dust and noise? Yes. There will be some dust and intermittent disruptive noise.

Will there be any disruptions to parking access or streets? Yes. On-street parking in the construction zone will be closed. Driveways and pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times.

More information can be found online on the City’s website at www.ukiahstreetscape.com; plus, follow our Facebook page for updates and project photos atwww.facebook.com/UkiahStreetscape/

Best wishes,

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager, City of Ukiah

ALBION BROOM SWEEP:

Here is a link to a great broom removal video. It explains much.

For those of you joining us on Sat, June 17th (that’s this coming Sat) at 10:00 on Albion Ridge Road, between F & G Roads.

Please bring: gloves, clippers, loppers, mattocks. I will have additional tools. I am baking cookies. 

Traffic will be diverted from where we are working. I am thinking 2 hours, and we’ll accomplish as much as possible. 

This is a great time to work on this - the seeds have not yet fully formed and the plants can be cut and abandoned. The essential thing is to not spread the seeds. The plant spreads through seed dispersal, not through its roots.

If you can’t join us in Albion, start a small group in your neighborhood. 

The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Put on your walking shoes! We have many miles to go.

With appreciation,

Sydelle for the Albion Fire Safe Council

THE SUBAS OF BROOKTRAILS

On June 11th, 2023 at about 09:02am, Willits Police Department Officers were requested to assist the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office in responding to a reported possible domestic violence incident involving Kristoff Suba (44, Willits) at a residence in Brooktrails.

WPD Officers contacted Suba, the victim, and Suba’s parents at the residence. The victim alluded to a history of domestic violence by Suba and stated she was attacked this morning by Suba. The victim told WPD Officers she was able to prevent further attacks from Suba by warding him off with a stun gun. Statements from the victim, witnesses, and evidence on scene supported the victim’s account.

The victim also advised WPD Officers she had found a suspected pipe bomb in Suba’s belongings, which was likely still in his father’s vehicle. Officers obtained consent from the owner of the vehicle and located a suspected improvised explosive device (IED) made of PVC pipe. WPD Officers coordinated with MCSO Deputies, who contacted the Humboldt Sheriff’s Office for assistance. The Humboldt Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad responded and determined the IED was operational and in working condition.

Based on statements from the parties, and no evidence of the manufacturing of destructive devices at the residence, there is believed to be no danger to the public.

WPD would like to thank MCSO and Humboldt Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad for their valuable assistance in this case. (Eureka Police Department)

A READER WRITES: I felt bad when the chimney cleaner I used for years retired and sold his business. I’m sure lots of us kept on with that new person who raised prices and seemed to have sewn up the entire coast from Gualala to Westport as the only game in town. I called around to find another company, but no—the new guy was cleaning up for sure, solidly booked months ahead. Even with my two chimneys to service, he was in and out in less than an hour. I called guys in Ukiah who, of course, did not need to take jobs in our area, and knew immediately who I was trying to replace — probably the least pejorative reference to him being “oh, that asshole.” Then while dealing with Ft. Bragg’s Branesky Heating, I discovered they clean chimneys!!!! These guys are professional, knowledgeable, and do the job right. Their detailed attention to the chimneys is impressive. 

ED NOTES

TED KACZYNSKI, aka the Unabomber, can serve as Exhibit A for the psycho-hazards of social isolation. I confess I thought his manifesto was irrefutable but hardly original with Ted. Advanced techno-industrial societies are destructive in unprecedented ways, an opinion millions of us share. And Ted wasn't very nice. Apart from the almost comic futility of attempting to unravel industrial society one bomb at a time, he wrote taunting follow-up notes to several of his victims. What's always puzzled me about the guy was his love for the novels of Charles Dickens. When he was arrested in his remote Montana cabin, Kaczynski had a full set of Dickens. It doesn't compute that a guy can be that deep into a great comic humanist like Dickens and not recognize the cruel folly of his bomb campaign. The FBI, typically, literally didn't have a clue. If Ted's brother hadn't turned him in, Kaczynski would probably still be mailing out bombs. Only the goddess may know what the many Mendo isolates are up to in their remote fastnesses…

SPELL CHECK is plenty annoying by itself, but when one's computer is on auto-check-correct, which mine has been for a week because I'm so learning impaired I don't know how to turn it off. And just now the busy body technology steps in to substitute "off pain" as I begin to type "paen" in a reply to Val Muchowski, fanatical Democrat (with Kathy Wylie running a close second to Val in pure devotion to that perfectly Weimar political party) when Val posted my para-paen to Mosswood Market on Facebook this morning. Paen became pain because the Mormons who write the programs — which I read some undoubtedly unreliable place — are, well, Mormons, whose vocabs tend to be limited, not that paen is all that obscure. I was writing to the old girl to claim credit for the paragraph she re-posted because Val is a little weak on attributions, which I confess is rather petty of me but for some reason that particular unattributed re-post annoyed me.

VAL AND I go way back. I remember the school board meeting when she was first hired as a Boonville teacher. And I remember being a dues-paid-up member of the National Women's Political Caucus, Val being the majordomo of that particular Demo front group, but every time I tried to attend a meeting, the ladies moved to a secret location. One night I stumbled into an extremely hostile address on the Holmes Ranch where a large, angry woman threatened to call the police if I didn't turn around and leave immediately. That turned out to be an all-female collective down to the prohibition of roosters! The Pargas guy had to write the ladies in advance before he appeared to fill up their tank so they wouldn't have to endure the sight of him. Those were the days! Sigh. And that's the way the libs (Mendo branch) roll. But what strikes me as beyond odd is how otherwise intelligent people seem genuinely enthusiastic about Biden, which seems to me intellectually and emotionally impossible. Well, hell, some people like Fruit Loops for breakfast, too. Sometimes there's just no accounting etc.

THE PRELIMINARY REPORTS of the as yet unidentified man washed away at the foot of the Mendocino Village bluffs over the weekend, reminded us of this horrifying event in the same place in November of 2008:

AVA, Dec. 30, 2008): IT APPEARS that the remains of Maurizio Biasini have been found on the beach at Jughandle State Park, about six miles north of the Mendocino Headlands where Biasini was washed out to sea on November 29th, the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. An Italian national working in the United States as a visiting scholar in physics, Biasini, with his horrified family looking on, was overcome by a huge wave when he climbed over the bluffs for a closer look at a rock formation. Waving frantically for help as the powerful surf took him farther and farther offshore, Biasini was visible for some hundred yards until he disappeared forever. His twin sons, 18, were so distraught at what they perceived as the tardy response of rescue teams, they had to be subdued by Sheriff's deputies who feared that the boys, and the police attempting to calm them at the edge of the bluffs, might also fall into the sea. Biasini's remains were found by a hiker at Jughandle on Christmas day at about 1pm. 

* * * 

Sons Arrested In Scuffle With Police

(The Ukiah Daily Journal)

A San Francisco man was swept off the Mendocino Headlands Saturday afternoon during a family outing with his wife and 18-year-old twin sons. A scuffle with police during the rescue efforts resulted in a California Highway Patrol officer using a taser on one of the sons and Sheriff's deputies putting both under arrest.

Presumed lost at sea is 54-year-old Maurizio Biasini, of San Francisco. According to CHP Sgt. Jim Kerr, a 911 call went out after Maurizio Biasini was swept off the Mendocino Headlands by a rogue wave at around 1:45 p.m. Once rescuers from the Mendocino Fire Department, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, the Coast Guard and Cal Fire arrived, it was clear that the only possible search and rescue operation would have to be done from the air, not from shore, explained Kerr.

In the meantime the twin sons, Dario and Andriano Biasini were frantic about their father as some 50 or so onlookers began to gather at the scene. Kerr said the CHP went to the scene after a call for law enforcement assistance because, according to the request, the “lookee-loos are hampering the rescue effort.” At some point around 2:15 p.m., Dario and Andriano apparently began to argue with rescuers, because they believed there wasn't enough being done to find and rescue their father.

Law enforcement stepped in to try to calm the two men but, according to Kerr, the twins got into a pushing match with Sheriff's Deputy Jesse Van Wormer near the cliff's edge and CHP Officer Thad Williams stepped in to try to stop it. A video of the incident shows Dario wrestling with a Sheriff's deputy near the cliff edge and Andriano pushing and waving other rescuers away and appearing to get involved in the struggle. Williams tries to get Dario to stop the fighting and appears to taser Dario in the arm which momentarily immobilizes him after which he was told to stay put on the ground, but Dario began to get up and Officer Williams used his taser on him again. Meanwhile Dep. Van Wormer and one of the emergency medical technicians at the scene were able to get Andriano under control and handcuffed.

Both Dario and Andriano were arrested but cited and released. No prosecution is expected. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said that he can understand that the twins were upset having had their father just swept away to sea.

“Our hearts are very much with the family, we offer our condolences, this is a very unfortunate situation,” Allman said.

TEN THINGS ABOUT THE BEST FEST IN THE WEST

by Steve Heilig

1. The Sierra Nevada World Music Festival is returning to Boonville this weekend of June 16-18 after five years off. It will be a tribute to the festival’s late founder and leader Warren Smith. Therefore it’s gotta be good, and it will be.

2. Warren and his crew at his production company and record label Epiphany Arts started the festival in 1994, holding it in the Sierra foothill town of Marysville on the marshy banks of a slow river. Warren had been a stockbroker in the early 1970s but like many other young music fans was hooked on the Jamaican sound of classic roots reggae. So hooked in fact that he began producing shows in San Francisco by some foundational reggae artists such as Dennis Brown and Toots and the Maytals, and founded his reggae label to issue a few classic albums as well. After helping present a rock festival he decided to stick to his musical strength and love - real reggae music, with healthy doses of great sounds from around the world added each year. Warren often traveled the world looking for new artists to present in the USA for the first time, such as from Korea, New Zealand, Africa and more. 

3. SNWMF was held in Marysville for seven years, until hassles by local thugs and opportunists with no real support from local authorities forced a move further into the foothills to Angel’s Camp for five years, where similar problems developed and resulted in a fortuitous move to Mendocino County fairgrounds in Boonville in 2006. Here the local community was more welcoming, after some initial wariness, and after the first year was dauntingly roasting hot and the next bedeviled by the smoke from hundreds of fires ignited by lightning strikes all over the county. The hosts at the fairgrounds and the festival producers got along well from the start. The festival weekend soon became the biggest of the year for local businesses. Law enforcement representatives, after a couple years, noted that the SNWMF crowd was overwhelmingly friendly, nonviolent, colorful and respectful. Problems such as they might be were minor and smoothed out. And thus the fest thrived for the next dozen years through 2018.

4. Warren’s health declined after the 2018 festival, which was its 25th anniversary event. The details of his latter days need not be related here, but it was a challenging, painful time for him and his family. The 2019 festival had to be cancelled, and then COVID hit too. Warren died in 2021, a huge loss to his family and extended network of friends around the world and really, to thousands of those who loved the festival. When the pandemic eased last year there was thought given to bringing the festival back but it is a massive undertaking and it was just too soon. This year it was deemed time to return.

5. Many music fans have long called SNWMF their favorite such event, “the best fest in the west,” if not anywhere. A loyal cadre attend every year, hooked from their first visit. There are many reasons for this, the music of course being the main draw. Warren knew his stuff. And he loved the sound of classic reggae, with great singing and messages. Added to that, he was widely trusted as a fair and ethical producer - not always common in the music festival business. Thus renowned artists far and wide were eager to perform at SNWMF. Those who were otherwise reluctant to travel far to play would do so for Warren. There have been many such examples, this year being the living legend Burning Spear, who will close out the weekend. Perhaps the most explicit on this count was the uncompromising foundational dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, a London resident who gathered his superb band from all over Europe and the USA to come out of retirement and play one more time at SNWMF in 2015, saying “We’re only back to play as Warren asked me too, I wouldn’t be doing this for anybody else.” 

6. Beyond that trust and respect, the list of the best reggae and other international artists and many others who have played the festival, some repeatedly, is too long to go into here. The posters from most of the years are on the SNWMF.com site and tell the story. Many early reggae, ska, and rocksteady figures, otherwise seemingly forgotten or at least retired, willingly or otherwise, were found by Warren, paired with great backing bands, and presented in rare performances (OK I’ll name one, as many others would - Junior Byles in his only such appearance at SNWMF in 1997 - a landmark event). Likewise some of the biggest African stars have graced SNWMF stages, where reggae fans were exposed to their music for the first time.

7. Beyond the music, SNWMF presents a friendly, family-welcoming setting. Children 12 and under are free with adults. A kids’ zone with fun and games and drumming and dance is very popular. There’s a popular parade. and drink vendors are vetted and line the walkway between the two stages. Clothing and other product booths line the main stage green. A dancehall barn fires up at night, for some diehards the biggest draw of all. The main feeling is of celebration and fun, or what many call the great vibes. “We don’t mess with the vibe, it just happens,” Warren once said. People who have met at SNWMF have even later chosen to be married there, which says a lot.

8. Putting on the festival is a bigger task than many would guess. A cadre of staff and volunteers starts to assemble months beforehand. Booking the artists is a big challenge, always has been, but ever more so as legal hurdles such as visas tighten up, costs escalate, beloved artists age and retire, and so on. Very professional stage, sound, and lighting teams, the best in the bunch, make sure things sound and look good and run on time - not so common! - ending by curfew (midnight Friday and Saturday, 10pm Sunday). This year the CEO is Gretchen Franz Smith, who was always integral in working with her husband Warren but now leads the tight-knit team. The daunting task of booking a roster of musicians worthy of the SNWMF name has been fulfilled, as one young fan already put it, as “the best roots reggae lineup I’ve ever seen!”

9. “SNWMF 2023 is for Warren,” says Gretchen Smith. "We are following the path he left and remain dedicated to nurturing what he created, as the greatest tribute to him.”

10. I’ll close on a personal note. Warren was my good friend for many years, and Gretchen still is. They are people I’ve always respected immensely. I was surprised and honored a decade ago when they asked if I would take the position of head or festival MC, as I started attending from the festival’s beginning as a journalist and hadn’t done much of that onstage - and scheduling, a real jigsaw puzzle - work before. But I found it fun and sometimes exhilarating. Aware that nobody has paid to see me up there, I strive to be brief and hopefully even entertaining bringing acts on and offstage, while learning from my fellow main MC the great Junor Francis. This weekend, after five years off and especially without Warren around for the first time, I’ve been surprised to be feeling a bit of anticipatory stage anxiety for the first time. I expect I’ll have some mixed emotions up there. Probably many of us will. But we can fairly well promise that once again SNWMF will be a joy and “the best fest in the West” - or anywhere. We’ll do our best, Warren, and make you proud. Thank you.

(Steve Heilig is a longtime master of ceremonies and roving minister performing wedding ceremonies at SNWMF, and a veteran writer for the AVA.)

MCHC WELCOMES CHIROPRACTOR DR. JOSEPH IACCINO

Lakeport, CA - MCHC Health Centers is pleased to announce the arrival of Dr. Joseph Iaccino, a chiropractor who will serve patients primarily at Lakeview Health Center in Lakeport and Hillside Health Center in Ukiah.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Matt Swain said, “Dr. Iaccino is a great addition to our team. Chiropractic care can bring enormous relief to patients experiencing certain types of pain.”

After five years in private practice in Boise, Idaho, Dr. Iaccino moved to Yuba City to join Ampla Health, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) similar to MCHC, where he spent the pandemic serving patients. Now, after a short stint at another local health center, Dr. Iaccino is excited to be working for an FQHC once again, a setting where he feels he can do his best work and also one that allows him to support patients who might not otherwise have access to chiropractic care.

“Chiropractors are usually lone wolves, but the future of medicine is a team-based approach.” Dr. Iaccino said. “There are certain things I can’t address—that are outside my scope of practice. Being able to knock on the door down the hall and talk to a provider who can address a patient’s needs allows me to focus on what I am good at and for the patient to get access to even more of what they need.”

Open communication is key to his practice, Dr. Iaccino explained. The hands-on nature of chiropractic care can make it easier to build trust, and Dr. Iaccino’s patients often share a wide variety health issues with him—some that are not related to chiropractic care. Being able to communicate with other providers who work with his patients means potential problems can be caught and addressed much faster than they might be otherwise.

Not only does MCHC’s team-based model align with Dr. Iaccino’s approach, Its focus on whole-person care is a great fit. Dr. Iaccino explained that he pays attention to the whole body, not just the area in pain. He says he looks to see what is moving well and what needs to move better. Hey then employs a two-step approach that uses chiropractic adjustment tools followed by soft tissue work rather than the jarring manual adjustments popularized by Tik Tok and other social media sites.

Dr. Iaccino said the mellower approach to adjustment paired with changes to a patient's posture and nutrition can create big changes in patients’ lives. For Dr. Iaccino, the most rewarding parts of his job are the everyday wins he sees in his practice.

“When a patient comes in with a headache and leaves without one, that’s a great feeling.” Dr. Iaccino said.

Dr. Iaccino said he hopes to make a positive impact in the communities he will serve in his new position, especially Lake County where he has deep family ties.

His father is the retired superintendent for Upper Lake School District and his sister is currently an elementary school teacher in the county. In fact, Dr. Iaccino substitute taught in the area while getting his master’s degree in human nutrition and functional medicine.

This familial connection paired with his love of the beauty of Lake County made it an easy decision for him to provide care to his community.

When Dr. Iaccino is away from the office, he spends much of his time with his beloved furry companion Ari, an Airedale terrier, exploring California from the coast to Tahoe to Yosemite and everywhere in between. Dr. Iaccino said he loves hiking, backpacking, and camping with his four-legged sidekick.

He also can be found making the commute down to Santa Rosa to play ice hockey, a lifelong passion, or cheering on his niece and nephew at their Little League baseball games.

“I don’t know that I can singlehandedly improve the health of Lake County,” he joked, “but hopefully, I can put more tallies in the win column.”

MCHC Health Centers includes Hillside Health Center and Dora Street Health Center in Ukiah, Little Lake Health Center in Willits, and Lakeview Health Center in Lakeport. It is a community-based and patient-directed organization that provides comprehensive primary healthcare services as well as supportive services such as education and translation that promote access to healthcare.

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

June 12, 1923 - Agnes “Grace” Fisher died at her home in the San Francisco Bay Area from tuberculosis. She had first arrived in Mendocino 15 years earlier, when her husband became the pastor of the Mendocino Presbyterian Church.

Grace was born in Trenton, Illinois in 1878. After spending 10 years teaching grammar school in her hometown, she married her childhood sweetheart, Reverend James Melville Fisher, in 1904. The Fishers moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he began a five-year term as pastor at that city's Fourth Presbyterian Church. However, tragedy struck during the final year of their residency in Louisville, when Grace was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little treatment for tuberculosis, and physicians prescribed rest, healthy eating, and outdoor exercise in fresh, cool air. This advice brought the Fishers to Mendocino in October 1908, where Grace thrived. From her obituary, “In this quiet little village beside the sea was spent among the happiest years of her life. Here [her children] Elizabeth and James were born, and friendships formed which will endure forever. Here, too, she led and trained youth in service and won for herself a place in the affections of the people.”

Originally planning to stay just a year, the Fisher family remained in Mendocino until the summer of 1916. In addition to assisting her husband with his ministerial duties, Grace also led the church’s Ladies Aid Society and helped organize the Mendocino Study Club.

In 1916, Reverend Fisher transferred to Gilroy, then later left the ministry to become a physician in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sadly, a few years after leaving Mendocino, Grace’s tuberculosis aggressively returned, and she was bed-ridden for the last years of her life.

Grace was survived by her husband, her two children Elizabeth and James, and two sisters, Miss Edna Garrigus and Mrs. Harriet Farthing. She was buried at the Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto.

Walking Tours: kelleyhousemuseum.org/walking-tours/

NEW YORK TIMES TRAVEL TIP

Jack London State Historic Park is my favorite park, and I have visited numerous parks all over the state. It combines the natural beauty of Sonoma County with the literary heritage of two giants of California history, Jack London and his wife Charmian. If you are not a hiker or a lover of the outdoors, you can still enjoy the family museums to explore the lives of two pioneers of California agriculture and literature. You can picnic among giant oak trees and hike multiple trails with splendid views of the Sonoma Valley.

(Phyllis James)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, June 12, 2023

CURTIS ADAMS, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

JOSE ENRIQUEZ-PEREZ, Willits. DUI, no license.

ANDRES HERNANDEZ, Willits. DUI, under 21 with blood alcohol over 0.05%, reckless driving.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

BRETT NORGARD, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger.

MONTE SHARP, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

KIRK GOES TO BOSTON

Just returned from a quick anniversary trip to Boston. The highlight of the trip was a comedy performance by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the theater adjacent to Fenway. The other highlights included: kayaking on the Charles River, the North End, lobster rolls, practically zero homeless encampments, and delicious food that was consistently 2/3 of California prices.

Fun trip.

Kirk Vodopals

Navarro

MITCH CLOGG:

“Procedure” is VA-speak for “surgery,” for “operation.” I call the nurses and aides that cycle past my bed, morning, noon and night, "clones." At a casual glance, they are interchangeable. English is their second language. They are Asian and Latin. They chant "good morning" and "thank you" and "you're welcome" through small larynxes and face masks. One cannot read their lips. A deaf person whose hearing aids are stashed somewhere safe must say "huh?" and "I'm a little deaf" and "sorry" over and over and over and over and bloody over.

They have tan skin and black hair. The pageboy cut prevails, but some wear knobby little top knots because they look so dumb. They--each and every one of them--arrive behind wheeled consoles that are loaded with computers, needles, bandages and items particular to their assignments. The casters on which these things roll are the most artful things in the hospital. Hospital casters have become things of perfect silence and perfect motion. En route to some appointment, a tiny person wheels me through the corridors, on a big, clumsy gurney, at speed, weaving among the obstructions on the course, other staffers updating their records on their own consoles, backs to the walls. The consoles are "cows"--computers on wheels, or "wows"--workstations on wheels.

“Your procedure is scheduled for nine tomorrow. Nothing by mouth, not even water after midnight.”

A chance to cut is a chance to heal. GANGWAY!

Two clones come to my bed to wash me. “Roll over on your side—no, just to the side. That’s right.” Lying on my side, peering through the rails of the bed, the two clones wipe me down with warm, moist cloths, my back and shoulders, my buttocks and the gluteal fold between them. Good! I want to be spotless in the O.R.

While I’m in this lateral (on my side) position, the clones can strip the sheets and pads and “blankets” from under me while wiping away the germs and other deplorables from those folds and creases thus afforded.

“Other side.” Now they mop my front parts and stretch the clean bedclothes across the mattress. It feels good, this wipe-down followed by fresh sheets. I feel respectable, no parts of me unwashed. Now just wait. Nine A.M. is three hours away. No food or drink, but there are pills and pins and needles and syringes, thermometers, and fingertip clamps that monitor the oxygen in my blood. The color-coded tubes that sprout from neck and arm, unconnected to anything, dangle in wait. My friend with the handsome shaved head takes another few cc’s of my blood. A different clone—“Hullo, Meester Clug”—the words sung merrily, connects a hypodermic syringe to one of these colored plastic tube-ends and pushes water in. “Just flushing it.”

They take my nice tan pajamas, the WW2 khaki so favored by my wartime generation, and drape me in a colorless hospital gown printed in little abstract figures, with no back-fasteners, my back and butt breathing free. Nothing to do but lay here, as hospital grammar expresses it.

Then: “Meester Clug, there is a policeman here to see you.”

A policeman?! A cop? WTF?

Compose your face. quiet your mind. Whatever this is, it might be interesting. He enters the examining room, somehow bristling.

Him! I’ve seen this man before, virile-looking black guy. He was sitting behind the little barred cop window, shirt sleeves, open collar. Now he’s got his leather jacket on, cap, utility belt—this is not some courtesy call. He's holding a plastic evidence bag. In it is a bright wrapped object, some kind of cannabis goody, a candy or something moist in a packet.

"This was in your backpack."

"I don't know anything about it, officer, I threw together the stuff in my pack for this trip down here. I don't know where that came form. Somebody must've dropped it in there. I don't care about it."

Cop is not overly bright, but he knows the drill: take control. "This is unlawful..."

"Cannabis snacks? They're legal now. You can buy them..."

TAKE CONTROL: "Mr. Clogg, I need to you to keep quiet. You're on federal property. This may be legal across the street there, but it's a violation here."

"I'm sorry, officer. Take it away. I don't know what it is or how it got in my stuff."

This is true. A friend comes by my house in Mendocino and leaves little things behind, among them cannabis goodies of one kind or another, seldom strong enough to be interesting. I've smoked pot since I was eighteen. I don't know who tossed the confection into the pile of Stuff To Take.

The SFVAMC cop still holds the plastic bag with the chiclet-size object like a smoking gun. "I'm not going to charge you this time... MR. CLOGG, IS THIS FUNNY?"

"No, sir! I'm listening!"

"I'm not going to charge you with this, but you better know that cannabis is not tolerated here. It's a federal offense."

Earlier we had been inventorying the contents of my pack so I could go to surgery with the secure knowledge that my street clothes, twenty-eight dollars, wristwatch, billfold, toothbrush, etc., were listed and secured someplace in the hospital. Somebody's hand turned up the cannabis thing and fished it out. I muttered something and went on with tabulating the simple things so an aide could enter them on an exhaustive list. Some jerkoff in that little group called the cops. Jeez chrise! Am I going in for an angioplasty or a sit-down with Ol' Sparky?

‘DOOM LOOP’ IS MAKING EVEN THIS PROUD SAN FRANCISCAN CONSIDER JOINING THE EXODUS

by Carl Nolte

Memorial Day is over and now it’s June, summertime in this part of the world. “Summertime,” the old Sublime song might go this season, “And the living is uneasy.” 

But the weather is glorious, so I snuck out of my San Francisco home office and took the ferry to Sausalito, where the city’s Jazz and Blues by the Bay event is held every summer Friday in a park next to the ferry landing.

The start of the trip came with a bit of a shock: The San Francisco Ferry Building was shrouded in black protective netting. The netting is part of a project to refurbish the Ferry tower, the symbol of San Francisco for 125 years. A new look is a good thing, I suppose, but the black net made the Ferry Building look like a tombstone.

Maybe the symbol is appropriate. San Francisco is having a tough time. It’s not just drugs and homelessness, but the economy seems to be collapsing. The first week of June brought more bad tidings: Owners of 13 major downtown commercial buildings are in dire financial straits, missing loan payments or walking away from downtown properties. A front page Chronicle headline at midweek called the developments “Omens of fiscal ruin.’’

Earlier in the week, Park Hotels and Resorts, which owns the Hilton Union Square and the Park 55 hotel, said it had stopped paying the mortgage on the two properties. The Hilton is the biggest hotel in Northern California and tourism is San Francisco’s largest industry.

“After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest of Park’s stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market,’’ said Park CEO Thomas Baltimore Jr.

But from Sausalito, the San Francisco market glittered just across the bay, the setting sun catching the towers of the skyline. A big sailing schooner cruised by the bayside park. The sky was blue, there was a big crowd, sea lions, tacos and music. A Sausalito friend approached me. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He gestured toward the city. 

“You still live over there?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Of course.’’ 

But these days I’m not so sure.

Like a lot of San Franciscans, I’m starting to hear the call of other places. 

Such thoughts are almost treason for a native son like me. My family goes back four generations in San Francisco, but now they are scattered all over: Brooklyn, N.Y.; Boise, Idaho; San Diego, Contra Costa County, Alameda, Iowa, Oregon — everywhere but San Francisco. I’m the only one left in the city.

Maybe I’m too stubborn to move away, but lots of people like me have left.

I’m not talking about the 70,000 or so people who bailed out last year. A lot of them ended up in places like Miami. Move to Miami? What true San Franciscan would do that? These folks were just temporary residents. Urban drifters, double parked in San Fran.

I’m talking, instead, about the thousands of exiled San Franciscans who moved to other parts of the Bay Area or around California.

You run into them all the time. They seem to have something in common: a nostalgic love for the city they left behind. Whole neighborhoods in Marin and on the Peninsula are full of them. It’s not just the white middle-class people who are fond of talking about the old days in the Sunset.

There has also been a Black exodus from the city to places like eastern Contra Costa County where the houses are newer and more affordable, the schools are better and the city problems are fewer. Today, just over 5% of San Francisco’s residents are Black. There are more Black people in Seattle or San Diego than San Francisco, once dubbed “The Harlem of the West.”

They left the city for perhaps many of the same reasons the others did: it wasn’t the city where they grew up, it wasn’t the place they moved to a few years ago. San Francisco has changed.

And yet in some ways, it hasn’t. San Francisco is still spectacularly beautiful and still has a creative spirit. The city still has neighborhoods that are alive and neighbors who keep up their homes or turn neglected public areas into showplaces, like the Tunnel Tops in the Presidio or the Visitacion Valley Greenway.

But it has a toxic political climate with dozens of special interest groups battling for a piece of the pie. Politics, they say, is a blood sport in San Francisco. It’s a city where politicians are denounced for being moderate. The city drifts. The results are in plain view.

Part of the city’s problem is that San Francisco is a boom-and-bust kind of place. Born in a gold rush, knocked down in a series of fires and earthquakes, revived by a silver boom, building booms, tourist booms and tech booms, economists had voted San Francisco as one of the nation’s “superstar cities” only a few years ago. Now “fiscal ruin” is the word.

San Francisco’s official symbol is the phoenix, a mythical bird that can’t be killed. It rises from its own ashes. But now a more apt symbol might be the driverless car. You see them all around the city: shiny new cars, high tech stuff, electronic devices on the roof, spinning and flashing. Driving up the hills and around the corners, heading into the future with no one at the wheel.

Maybe it’s time to rethink San Francisco. 

(SF Chronicle)

THE UNABOMBER, THE CIA AND LSD

by Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn

(Word came this weekend that Ted Kaczynski was found dead in his cell at the Federal Medical Center Prison in Butner, North Carolina, an apparent suicide. In 1999, Cockburn and I wrote this piece on Ted K.’s experience as a volunteer in CIA-sponsored mind control experiments while at Harvard. – JSC)

It turns out that Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was a volunteer in mind-control experiments sponsored by the CIA at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Michael Mello, author of the recently published book, “The United States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski,” notes that at some point in his Harvard years–1958 to 1962–Kaczynski agreed to be the subject of “a psychological experiment.” Mello identifies the chief researcher for these only as a lieutenant colonel in World War II, working for the CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. In fact, the man experimenting on the young Kaczynski was Dr. Henry Murray, who died in 1988.

Murray became preoccupied by psychoanalysis in the 1920s, drawn to it through a fascination with Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” which he gave to Sigmund Freud, who duly made the excited diagnosis that the whale was a father figure. After spending the 1930s developing personality theory, Murray was recruited to the OSS at the start of the war, applying his theories to the selection of agents and also presumably to interrogation.

As chairman of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, Murray zealously pursued the CIA’s efforts to carry forward experiments in mind control conducted by Nazi doctors in the concentration camps. The overall program was under the control of the late Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA’s technical services division. Just as Harvard students were fed doses of LSD, psilocybin and other potions, so too were prisoners and many unwitting guinea pigs.

Sometimes the results were disastrous. A dram of LSD fed by Gottlieb himself to an unwitting U.S. army officer, Frank Olson, plunged Olson into escalating psychotic episodes, which culminated in Olson’s fatal descent from an upper window in the Statler-Hilton in New York. Gottlieb was the object of a lawsuit not only by Olson’s children but also by the sister of another man, Stanley Milton Glickman, whose life had disintegrated into psychosis after being unwittingly given a dose of LSD by Gottlieb.

What did Murray give Kaczynski? Did the experiment’s long-term effects help tilt him into the Unabomber’s homicidal rampages? The CIA’s mind experiment program was vast. How many other human time bombs were thus primed? How many of them have exploded?

There are other human time bombs, primed in haste, ignorance or indifference to long-term consequences. Amid all the finger-pointing to causes prompting the recent wave of schoolyard killings, not nearly enough clamor has been raised about the fact that many of these teenagers suddenly exploding into mania were on a regimen of antidepressants. Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Columbine, was on Luvox. Kip Kinkel, who killed his parents and two students in Oregon, was on Prozac.

There are a number of other instances. Apropos possible linkage, Dr. Peter Breggin, author of books on Prozac and Ritalin, has said, “I have no doubt that Prozac can contribute to violence and suicide. I’ve seen many cases. In the recent clinical trial, 6% of the children became psychotic on Prozac. And manic psychosis can lead to violence.”

A 15-year-old girl attending a ritzy liberal arts school in the Northeast told us that 80% of the kids in her class were on Prozac, Ritalin or Dexedrine. The pretext used by the school authorities is attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, with a diagnosis made on the basis of questions such as: “Do you find yourself daydreaming or looking out the window?”

Ritalin is being given to about 2 million American schoolchildren. A 1986 article by Richard Scarnati in the International Journal of the Addictions lists more than a hundred adverse reactions to Ritalin, including paranoid delusions, paranoid psychosis, amphetamine-like psychosis and terror.

Meanwhile, uncertainty reigns on the precise nature of the complaint that Ritalin is supposed to be treating. One panel reviewing the proceedings at a conference on ADHD last year even doubted whether the disorder is a “valid” diagnosis of a broad range of children’s behavior, and said there was little evidence Ritalin did any good. In 1996, the Drug Enforcement Administration denounced the use of Ritalin and concluded that “the dramatic increase in the use of [Ritalin] in the 1990s should be viewed as a marker or warning to society.”

Indeed. Land mines now litter the terrain of our society, waiting to explode.

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink co-written with Joshua Frank. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. Alexander Cockburn’s Guillotined! and A Colossal Wreck are available from CounterPunch.)

DYSTOPIA

“Last Wednesday I was in Brooklyn, New York, at about ten am. I had stayed in the borough overnight, as I was preparing to meet a lawyer in Manhattan.

My stay had already become 21st Century-dystopian, as I had foolishly booked myself at the trendy/discounted hotel, Sonder the Industrialist. It turned out that the management has turned physical hotels into a dehumanized data harvesting operation. I arrived at night in an Uber to find myself alone in an industrialized area, with a dying phone, and all the restaurants closing; at which point the app informed me that there was to be no human being to receive me in the lobby, so I had to phone a call center in the Philippines in order to “set up my account,” and then that I must provide an array of invasive private information before I would be granted the code to enter the building.

I followed other exasperated tourists into the lobby, hoping to bypass the data harvesting, but was told by the sweet, sad “security person” at the front desk that he had no powers whatsoever, that there was no key to give me at all, and that I had to finish “completing my account” and “checking in online” before I could hope to get to my longed-for room.

This process included a full-on, turn-your-head-right-and-left, biometric facial scan, which in the Brave New World of digital coercion, it was too late for me to decline, if I was going to get anywhere safe to sleep. The “lockdown” model for forcibly extracting digital information and behavioral compliance before allowing anyone anything decently human had taken over yet another former civilized experience — checking into a hotel after a journey — in yet another formerly human space.

I could not manage to “update the settings on my camera” effectively to allow the app to data-harvest my driver’s license, so a tall, equally exhausted Swedish businessman loomed into my personal space in order to help me, thus inadvertently seeing not only all my biometric information and the purpose of my trip, but also my room entry access code and my room number. The app thus having entirely compromised my security as well as having harvested critical personal information against my will, I fled to my room at last, reminding myself uneasily to bolt the door.” 

— Naomi Wolf

OFF-TOPIC - Man-mountain Vladimir Tkatchenko of the USSR forces his way in against Filipino defenders Padim Israel and Pol Herrera during the '78 World Championships... USSR won, 110-63.

PROFILES IN XENOPHOBIA: The best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert said Monday that she had indefinitely delayed the publication of her upcoming book after she was criticized online for writing a novel set in Russia. (nytimes.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

In an effort to take a stand against my “toxic masculinity”, today I am wearing sandals that show off the “my little pony” band aids on the toes I scraped yesterday.

INTERVIEW: ON THE ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. PODCAST

On censorship, the Twitter Files, Ukraine, the 2024 presidential race, and more

by Matt Taibbi

I’d like to be able to tell readers it was the other way around (and perhaps that will still happen), but I was interviewed recently by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his podcast. The episode just came out today, and those interested can click here. 

When the campaign heats up I’ll go out on the trail (something I wasn’t able to do for the 2020 cycle), at which point I’ll be doing profiles of RFK and other candidates. I know his is a controversial candidacy, but it’s also an extremely interesting one, for a variety of reasons, beginning with the “no, they’re not a mistake” poll numbers that have already significantly heightened Clonazepam consumption in Washington, New York, and a few other places. He talks about his views on a number of subjects in the interview above.

WE’RE NOT FINISHED

by James Kunstler

“You give me a piece of ground and a sword and I am going to take back this country with your help and the help of all the homeless Democrats and Republicans who are Americans first.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

If you’re wondering why our country is lost in lunatic raptures of lawless Lawfare and futile MAGAry, it’s because our economy has already collapsed, and our culture and politics with it downstream have also collapsed into spectacular degeneracy. It has already happened. Maybe you don’t know it.

The business model is broken. We’re a shadow of the industrial economy that won a great war and enjoyed a boisterous peace. You can’t replace ball bearing factories with theme parks and hedge funds. Sorry. The full faith and credit of the USA is not embodied in those frivolities, so our money is losing its mojo fast.

But get this: we will go on. This is not the end of the world or the end of history. It is the end of an era. Believe it or not, the economy will fix itself, it just won’t be what it was in 1957. It won’t be what the techno-supremacists think, either. (You need a dependable electric grid to run all those server farms and the apps they serve, and the AI supposedly looming.) It will fix itself because when things fail, as they are doing now, a lot of opportunities will open up to do things differently, even very differently.

When the chain stores fail along with their twelve-thousand-mile supply lines, Americans will figure out how to find stuff, make stuff, move stuff, and sell stuff at a smaller scale, maybe back on your Main Street (if it’s still there). There will be a lot less stuff, of course. But it may be enough stuff, and some of you will be busy making stuff of some kind. Imagine an economy where practically everybody has a useful role to play. Do you know how much more important it is to lead a purposeful, active life than to be lost in leisure and anomie with more stuff than you know what to do with? Which is where we’re at now, even for many who are statistically “poor.”

When the Happy Motoring colossus tweaks out, we’ll spend less time moving around and more time doing useful things, staying put around the places where we live. We’d be lucky if we could keep some railroads going, but the prospects are not great for that now. Sorry, we blew it. Should have re-started that project in 1970 when the handwriting was on the wall. (We made a lot of bad choices.) Cars and trains require elaborate networks of many interdependent technologies all integrated smoothly at the giant scale — oil, steel, plastics, electronics — and all of that is disintegrating. Pretty soon, you can forget about airplanes, too. That leaves… what? Yes, boats and horses. I know… it sounds inconceivable. Wait for it.

When our grotesque medical racketeering matrix fails, doctors will practice medicine at smaller scale, probably without advanced pharmaceuticals and techno-diagnostics. They’ll open small local clinics while zombies squat in the broken mega-hospitals. You’ll have to pay in cash, whatever form that comes in. You’ll have to take care of yourself, too, but there will be a whole lot less enticing, engineered, toxic crap available to stuff into your body — Froot Loops, Hot Pockets — and the food markets won’t be all that super. There will certainly be less food altogether, but there will be fewer of us to feed, and more of that fewer-of-us will be busy producing that food, one way or another.

That’s the reality I see coming. As you’ve seen vividly, the journey from where we were in, say, the year 2000, to where we’re going has been psychologically disordering at the mass scale. These days, people who ought to know better express ideas that would have gotten them laughed out the room in 1999. The catch is that few of you know that this mass disordering grew out of fear of the journey. It was a phenomenon of infectious mass anxiety over something only dimly apprehended. You just thought it was about bad people.

You’re now faced with the question: how to avoid committing suicide, directly or inadvertently, personally or as a whole society, slowly or quickly? — and its corollary, how to get through the madness in the meantime? Politics happen whether you pay attention to it or not. Politics is concerned with how a society navigates through history. Today, it seems that either A) somebody is steering badly; B) Nobody is steering; or C) some outside force has commandeered the ship’s wheel and is steering for us.

Any way you look at that, we need somebody to steer. Mr. Trump has volunteered to try doing it again. The first time, forces in every quarter of American power set out to bushwhack, sandbag, harass, hector, and hound him. In the process, they just about destroyed the rule of law. Then they simply dis-elected him surreptitiously, something you’re not supposed to say, but there it is, like so much meat on the table. Now they’re trying to hoo-rah him into jail. Whatever you think of his, er, complex personality, you must admire his perseverance through adversity. If he somehow manages to wriggle through the present obstacle course of Lawfare chicanery, his next term would be an extravaganza of retribution. The spectacle would provide much satisfaction but, in the end, it would just be a sideshow, and it is not the same thing as taking care of business.

“Joe Biden,” of course, the man who is not really even there, is only pretending to run for reelection, or at least a coterie around the Oval Office is pretending for him while they try to figure out what to do. They’re in an awful quandary. They hold all the levers of power and they have no other credible candidate, not a living soul, in their own official hatchery.

Outside of that ghastly edifice, Robert F. Kennedy is making a determined flanking move, an end-run near the sidelines. The Democratic Party in all its florid and mendacious lunacy is pretending to not notice him, especially their praetorian news media that is the vector for America’s mass mental illness. Mr. Kennedy put it so simply in April when he announced a run to preside over the stupendous mess that is our government. He said his mission is an experiment to see what happens when you tell Americans the truth. Hold that thought. How long has it been since you thought anything like that was possible?

There’s a broad-based assumption across the land, derived from our fading prime artform, the movies, that Americans can’t handle the truth. Like so much else in our national life, that is probably erroneous… fake truth. And what is so striking in Mr. Kennedy’s performance so far is an absence of fakery. It’s more than refreshing, it’s… startling. Makes you blink, a little bit. Makes you remember what it’s like to not be lied-to incessantly. Makes you want to see more of it because it gives you strength when you thought you were finished. Get this now: our world is changing, and deeply, but we’re not finished.

In April, 2023, Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) Kathie Breault was indicted in the Eastern States District Federal Court for “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” for giving vaccination cards to people who did not receive Covid-19 vaccinations. Her defense is that the vaccinations were ineffective and harmful, and to administer them would violate the Hippocratic oath of health professionals (First do no harm). Her legal battle against a dishonest and vindictive federal government will require lawyer’s fees that exceed her ability to pay — a reminder that “the process is the punishment.”

Kathie has also been accused of “professional misconduct” by the New York State Licensing Board for prescribing Ivermectin via telehealth visits in July 2021. Many other medical practitioners across the United States have been similarly persecuted and some have lost their licenses to practice. Kathie has been under investigation by New York’s Office of Professional Discipline since March 2022. No decision has been reached as of May 2023.

(kunstler.com)

‘COVER THOSE NAZI SYMBOLS, PLEASE?’

by Matt Taibbi

The New York Times just released a story called “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,” about whether or not it means anything that some Ukrainian soldiers have been photographed wearing Nazi Death’s Head or “Totenkopf” symbols. 

One passage stands out:

In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.

The institutional obstacles to getting clear information about the war in Ukraine are formidable, from embedding rules barring journalists from entering “red zones” (and requiring escorts in “yellow” areas), to casualties undercounted by officials on both sides, to open use of planted stories, to harassment of voices who go against official messaging. Journalists asking soldiers to remove Nazi patches is a new level of insanity. With the line between propagandist and reporter all but dissolved, how long before embeds are offered NATO uniforms? Who thinks this is a good idea?

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 12TH JUNE

Fierce clashes have been reported in the south and east of Ukraine, where Kyiv has made incremental gains in its offensive operations. 

Ukrainian forces have recaptured three front-line villages — Blahodatne, Makarivka and Neskuchne — according to defense and military officials. Separately, a Russian official claims the military has launched a counterattack in the same region. 

As the conflict intensifies, analysis shows Ukraine has lost 16 US-supplied armored vehicles in the past few days, according to an open-source intelligence website.

Meanwhile, floodwaters are receding near the Dnipro River as rescue operations continue after last week's deadly collapse of a major dam, Ukrainian officials said.