- Don’t Dump That Dog
- PG&E's Ignored Mandate
- PG&E's Ongoing Ripoff
- Criticism Is Not Antisemitism
- Heads Up, Vermin
- Make Utilities Public
- Mo Goes Off On Sako
- Cease Fire!
- Blankfort On Israel-Hamas
- Marshall Newman Responds
DON’T DUMP THAT DOG
To the Editor:
I am writing this to bring an awareness to the scores of pets being dumped in our county (as well as across the state and country). We in rescue understand that times are tough right now, and having a pet can get expensive, however, people need to be responsible for their pets! Animal Care Services has been full for months, and has posted when they feel a need to euthanize a dog or dogs for space. Rescues are also full. There should not be so many dogs in need of homes or getting dumped.
With Christmas coming, people are also getting rid of their older dogs in order to get a puppy. This is not what having a pet is about. It should be about having a family member who loves you and you love them, and you care for each other, and are loyal to each other. If people cannot make this commitment, then in my opinion, they should not get a pet.
Also, part of being a responsible pet owner is to get your pet spayed/neutered. Litters of puppies are getting dumped as well, and sadly, momma dogs are getting dumped without their puppies. No pet should be getting dumped — this is such a heartless thing to do. Dogs have feelings, and become sad, lonely and depressed.
The following is a recent Facebook posting from another county:
Things to remember when planning a dump off of your unwanted dogs:
1. They ARE waiting for you to come back for them!
2. Most of the time it takes days to get in contact with the county for search/trap/pick-up. And that’s if they have space and time for them.
3. They ARE waiting for you to come back for them.
4. The neighbors in the area CANNOT rescue your unwanted pet; there are just too many for us to handle.
5. They ARE waiting for you to come back for them, if they survive coyote attacks.
6. It’s freezing!
7. No one feeds them!
8. They ARE waiting for you to come back for them.
9. They miss you!
10. They consider you family!
Please be responsible, loving pet owners. If you need help to keep your pet, reach out to either Animal Care Services, or any of the local rescues. There are always people on Facebook willing to help out in any way they can in order to help you be responsible for your pet.
Laura Mares, Dog Coordinator,
Animal Rescue of Anderson Valley
PG&E'S IGNORED MANDATE
Editor:
Dan Walters writes that one of the California Public Utilities Commission’s mandates is “providing utilities and their shareholders with profits sufficient to borrow money and attract investment capital." This is not explicitly stated in CPUC’s brochure: “California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulates services and utilities, protects consumers, safeguards the environment, and assures Californians’ access to safe and reliable utility infrastructure and services.”
My question regarding the newly approved 13% PG&E rate hike is why aren’t shareholders’ dividends eliminated or at least reduced? And why isn’t the CEO’s salary reduced? Why are just the people who are required to use PG&E electricity obliged to pay for everything? The CEO and shareholders should also be required to bear some of the pain.
Plus, the state’s new mandates phase out use of energy sources other than electricity (contrary to the fact that 48% of that electricity is produced from natural gas, according to a 2022 California Energy Commission Report). What a trap for California consumers at the mercy of PG&E and the CPUC.
Cinde Rubaloff
Petaluma
PG&E'S ONGOING RIPOFF
Editor:
PG&E is a monopoly; no competition to hold the service at an affordable price. PG&E most recently asked for a 26% rate increase, and was given roughly 13%.
A monopoly enterprise is supported by customers needing the utility. Every home, business and government entity needs service and pays the way. Changing the organizational structure includes buying out shareholders and eliminating the need to spend millions of dollars on a flood of advertising. One only has to watch a few minutes of TV or open an email on one’s phone to observe the continuous stream of ads. With a nonprofit, this could be handled with a biannual flyer included with monthly bills.
I would like to know the total amount spent by PG&E on advertising. I could use any help possible with the nearly $700 monthly PG&E bill.
Ronald f. Prushko
Glen Ellen
CRITICISM IS NOT ANTISEMITISM
Editor:
It seems that every opinion against the actions of the Israeli government is labeled antisemitic. This oversimplification allows the Israeli government to act free of criticism no matter how oppressive it is. While the atrocities of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack must be universally condemned, it did not happen in a vacuum.
According to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 10 times as many Palestinians have been injured or killed since 2008, as well as in this present conflict. Approximately 5,500 Palestinian children have died from bombings, diarrhea and hypothermia, 33 in the West Bank and 29 in Israel since this conflict began. There are approximately 2,000 Palestinian being held without charge by the Israeli military.
It is dangerous to label anyone who questions the Israeli government’s military actions as antisemitic. Questioning the actions of a government is the very definition of democracy. A reasonable person might question if this strong response to Hamas may bring more Arab countries into the conflict without being antisemitic.
History teaches us that continual killing is rich fodder for the next generation of militants.
Ron Jenkins
Sebastopol
HEADS UP, VERMIN
Editor:
So Israel knew about the Hamas attack plan a year in advance and did nothing about it. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Be aware friends and neighbors, we have been given advance notice of an attack on our republic. Donald Trump has hinted he will invoke the Insurrection Act allowing him to use our own military to put down “vermin” liberals. That means anyone who shows any opposition to his efforts to thwart the Constitution and set up an autocratic government. MAGA Republicans have created and published Project 2025, a document that affirms the party’s support for Trump’s plans. We have been warned. Please, believe what they say. Our republic depends on all of us being aware and standing up against the threat.
Lew Larson
Sebastopol
MAKE UTILITIES PUBLIC
Editor:
Our utilities are provided by a private corporation to avoid the bureaucracy and cost of a state agency, but we still have one to oversee the private corporation. We’re not allowed to sue the private corporation, the state Supreme Court ruled, because that “would undermine the (state) agency’s regulatory authority.” Utilities are part of the infrastructure that provides the basis for our economic and social lives. Our government, democratically controlled by us, should provide this infrastructure. It should not be provided by a private corporation that is given immunity from our control to ensure their shareholder profit and obscene executive compensation.
Robert Plantz
Santa Rosa
MO GOES OFF ON SAKO
Dear Editor,
I attended today’s BOS meeting, Tuesday, December 5.
Prior to the beginning of the BOS meeting, Supervisor Mulheren left chambers to shout at a member of the public, John Sakowicz, who was set to give public comments.
Supervisor Mulheren was so loud that people waiting for the meeting to begin, as well as the Supervisors, heard the commotion.
Supervisor Mulheren was berating Sakowicz asking, “Why are you doing this? " and “What is your endgame?”
She went on to say, “I am a single mother trying to take care of my family.” She stated she “was unemployed" and she needed “to make money.” In his public comments, Sakowicz pointed out the money Supervisor Mulheren received was AFTER she was sworn in as Supervisor, January 2020.
Ms. Mulheren made the choice to be a single mother. To have two children with two different men while remaining single was and is her choice. Many women are single moms.
When Ms. Mulheren was asked by Sakowicz if she had paid back a federal loan given to her, or even declared it on her Form 700, Mulheren replied “my personal finances are private." During the BOS meeting, Supervisor Mulheren repeated the same comment on the record that her personal finances are private.
My understanding in this matter is that county elected officials are required to be open about personal finances; and, that they are responsible for behavior that is above reproach. I am unclear as to why the County Counsel didn’t offer comment on this fact. Also, Supervisor Mulheren was out of line to attack a member of the public in this forum.
Supervisor Mulheren should welcome an investigation if she has not taken government money illegally.
I look forward to an open investigation into this matter. The public deserves the truth about the leadership in our county.
Respectfully,
Mary Massey
Ukiah
ED NOTE. Ms Massey, I believe, is John Sakowicz's love interest or, perhaps, his 'dog walker,' as she once described herself.
CEASE FIRE!
Editor:
History did not begin Oct. 7 when Israel began its airstrikes on Gaza. This land, under siege for 16 years, and also the West Bank (where settlers have killed hundreds of Palestinians), is occupied by Israel. The word seldom seen in mainstream media is occupation. Israel controls Gaza’s borders and shipments of food and medical supplies, can turn off electricity that runs water pumps, sewage plants, bakeries, life support systems. Without regard for where hostages might be, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, half of them children.
Do Palestinians have an air force, American-made munitions, tanks, bulldozers? Has any Israeli high-rise been reduced to rubble? Even calling this a “war” isn’t quite accurate because in a war one side can negotiate terms for surrender.
Cease fire. Make a hostage deal. And hope the U.S. will stop enabling war crimes, or it (we) too will be complicit and guilty.
Jennie Orvino
Santa Rosa
BLANKFORT ON ISRAEL-HAMAS
Editor,
By coincidence, the day I picked up the Dec. 6 AVA from Mendocino Book Company and found Marshall Newman’s response to Steven Elliot, again defending Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza, Linda Thomas Greenfield, Joe Biden’s ambassador to the UN Security Council, as expected, vetoed a UNSC resolution calling for a “humanitarian cease fire” on the part of Israel in what little remains of that seaside prison ruled over by Israel since 1967.
I was “only following orders” she would likely tell a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, if she and the legion of criminal perpetrators representing the US were ever held to account — which they have never been and, no doubt, never will be.
Earlier in that week there had been an unprecedented House Committee grilling of the presidents of Harvard, Pennsylvania, and MIT, over their apparent tolerance of pro-Palestinian student protests on their campuses allegedly advocating genocide of Jews — which they were not — while the self-proclaimed Jewish state of Israel was not only justifying the genocide of Palestinians but actually carrying it out, apparently with Marshall Newman’s approval.
His arguments brought to mind an exchange I had in these pages with Dr. Michael Harris of Marin County, a year and two months ago, (See AVA Oct. 5, 2022). Harris is the head of the SF Bay Area chapter of StandWithUs, which could best be described as an unregistered agency of the Israeli government’s hasbara (explaining) arm in which I accused him of being a sayan, a word unique to the Hebrew language and added after 1948 which, arguably, anticipates that the primary loyalty of Jews throughout the diaspora will be to the Jewish state.
In short, a sayan (pl. sayanim) is a Jew, living in a country other than Israel, who carries out duties for Israel, for its intelligence and propaganda agencies that would be seen as inappropriate or less effective if done by an Israeli. I expect most American Jews are unaware of the term, but from his fabrication of the history of Israel-Gaza conflicts in this century (Dec. 6), Newman is not one of them as his response to Steven Elliot makes clear.
“Between March of 2018 and December 2019,” Elliot wrote, there were regular, peaceful, Friday marches to the Gaza fence with Palestinians demanding the right to return. Israel’s response? To kill some 223 protesters by sniper fire and to and wound and cripple thousands [many of them children — JB] by shooting them in the legs.” None of this was disputable as videos taken of the Israeli snipers, safely hiding behind berms clearly demonstrated.
Newman would have us believe that these protests were “in part staged to protest Israel’s tight restrictions on the movement of trade across the border,” which may be a sign of his sick humor given that across border trade allowed by Israel is less than minimal as are the numbers of Gazans involved with it.
The restrictions, he says, were caused by “sustained missile attacks against Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 and the consequent Hamas/Israeli battles caused by at least two of these periods of missile attacks.
And make no mistakes, these protests were not peaceful; they frequently included Gazans breaching the border fence, making incursions into Israel and burning tires to obscure their actions, all of which provoked Israel to take the action it did against the protesters.” (A more honest, albeit cynical characterization, expressed in the Israeli media and by Israeli officials, of Israel’s predictable response to those episodes, has been “mowing the grass.”)
First of all, the Palestinians have no missiles. What they have, for the most part, are relatively low powered homemade rockets with limited range which cannot be precisely aimed against the costly and effective Iron Dome, provided Israel through the generosity of a Congress and US taxpayers who have no say on the subject. Sure, the rockets scare the nearby Israelis who occupy what was the land of those Gazans and their families until 1967 but the number of Israelis dead or wounded from such attacks had been minimal.
All of Hamas’s responses have been triggered by some Israeli action, underlying which are the prison conditions in which all Gazans have been forced by Israel to live. That would have been impossible to maintain without unconditional US support, thanks to the power of the Jewish political establishment (and the sayanim among us) who arguably control every sector of US society that has anything to do with Israel.
No doubt, that statement will be considered by some, and for sure, Newman, as anti-Semitic, but then so must be the truth for which I am willing to publicly debate. It seems that is becoming increasingly clear to a new generation of Americans and others, around the globe, including young Jews, who can see Israel’s crimes though social media and the internet and have taken to the streets, blocked bridges and in the US, threatens the future of the Democratic Party which is heavily dependent on major donations from socially liberal pro-Israel Jews.
A closing note: This past September marked the 41st anniversary of the Israeli orchestrated massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut in 1982 which resulted in the slaughter of between 2000 and 3000 Palestinians, almost all women and children and aged of both sexes. Those who would have been there to defend them, Palestinian fighters who had earlier withstood a 76 day Israeli siege of Beirut, had accepted a negotiated deal to go to Tunisia after Israel’s defense minister, Ariel Sharon, mastermind of Israel’s unprovoked invasion of Lebanon three months earlier had guaranteed the safety of Palestinian refugee camp residents.
However, when Lebanese Christian leader, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated (apparently by a Lebanese rival) and Gemyael’s followers were looking for someone on whom to wreak their vengeance, Sharon ordered them into Sabra and Shatila to carry it out against the defenseless camp residents (although Palestinians had nothing to do with it.) While the Lebanese went about their bloody business, Israeli soldiers guarded the exits to the camps, preventing residents from leaving, while providing meals for the hungry killers, flares to allow them to keep up the slaughter throughout the night, and bulldozers to bury the bodies the next day.
An estimated 400,000 Israelis, many who had begun to question the war, turned out to protest Sharon in Tel Aviv and demand his resignation when the news of the massacre became known. A commission that was formed, concluded that Sharon was directly responsible and he was forced to resign. But, the Israelis, a forgiving people when it comes to their own, would, 19 years later, elect the man who became known as “The Butcher of Beirut,” to two terms as their prime minister.
Jeff Blankfort
Ukiah
MARSHALL NEWMAN RESPONDS
Lots of semantics in Jeff Blankfort’s response to my comments regarding the current Israeli/Hamas conflict; “sayan” name-calling versus a discussion of our differing opinions, “missiles” versus “rockets,” and “triggered” versus initiated for several reasons, among them Hamas’ need for relevance abroad and its need to distract Gazans from the poor conditions there. Plus a “closing note” which has little to do with the current situation.
In justifying Hamas’ actions, critics of Israel have cited the long history of antagonism between the Palestinians and the Israelis. “What’s past is prologue” (thank you, Shakespeare), but the current conflict is present and that is the situation we should be addressing.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was not directly provoked by Israel; it was initiated – as stated above – by Hamas for several reasons. It resulted in the loss of 1,500 innocent Israeli lives. Israel’s military response was entirely predictable and was desired by Hamas. The scope of the civilian casualties and destruction has been massive, but also was predictable, as Hamas hid – and continues to hide – behind Gazas’ civilian population.
Is the loss of life and destruction in Gaza horrifying? Absolutely. Could it have been mitigated? Again, absolutely. A durable ceasefire might have been fashioned at any point in the past two months if Hamas had promised to release all its hostages at the Rafah crossing in a timely manner and then followed through on that promise. So, where is the public outrage that Hamas has not taken this action? Israel deserves condemnation for excesses in its conduct of this conflict. Hamas deserves equal condemnation for prolonging this conflict.
Marshall Newman
San Francisco
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