Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023

Wind, Waves, Rain | Moon | Sandbar Breached | Much Gratitude | Johanna Lynch | Ominous Sky | Misplaced Complaint | Forks Cafe | Frank Riggs | Albion Mill | Mendocino Redwoods | Android Help | Except Gavin | Pianist Concert | Coit Tower | AVBC 35 | Nap Trick | Hulbert Bros | Beyond Capitulation | Bus Stop | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Game Grades | Knuckle Sandwich | Immigration Joe | Nuclear Plants | Martys | Fully Complicit | America Beautiful | AIPAC Congress | About Hamas | Murdered Children | Had Tails | Asymmetrical Conflict | Cafe Wha

A POWERFUL SURFACE FRONT approaches the coast early this morning. Damaging wind gusts will persist this morning along coastal headlands, reaching the coastal plain around and after sunrise, then winds weaken this afternoon. The storm will also generate huge west swell that will pound Northwest California beaches with hazardous surf late this evening through Thursday. A second storm is forecast to approach during the latter portion of the week and produce more strong winds and heavy rain. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A warm 55F under cloudy & breezy skies this Wednesday morning on the coast. Plan on a windy & rainy day today, showers on Thursday & another strong system on Friday. Lighter rain is forecast thru the weekend & into next week. There is a high surf warning posted for tomorrow but the surf is already up so be careful along the shore.

NAVARRO SANDBAR UPDATE

The new sandbar breached naturally Tuesday due to an extra high "king" tide and surf washing over it. It didn't take a surge coming down the river to do it. Tidal flows due to the full moon will keep the channel open, and forecast rains will bring enough river flow to guarantee it.

— Nick Wilson

THANK YOU, ANDERSON VALLEY

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the many people in the Valley who have eased my loss with your unique and particular gifts of help and concern. Olie Erickson for being such a good friend and fishing partner of Rob’s who could also speedily arrive at our house to see if his ambulance training could be of assistance during those first minutes when Rob was unresponsive. Dr. Mark Apfel, for facilitating with the necessary governmental aspects of death; Deanna Apfel for informing friends of what had transpired, and the rest of you for your help, love, and care while I was in a state of shock.

Your input was invaluable.

Lee Serrie

JOHANNA LYNCH REMEMBERED AS INDEPENDENT, OPINIONATED, ACTIVE WEST SONOMA COUNTY COMMUNITY MEMBER

Johanna Lynch was found dead in late November near her property near Cazadero. She was 87.

by Madison Smalstig

Johanna Lynch was an independent woman.

Those who knew her in west Sonoma County through her editing and writing for The Russian River Times said she lived well on her own, got the job done and wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion, or prop up other people’s voices.

“She wasn’t a suppressed woman,” said Milli Cannata, who met Lynch about four years ago. “She did what she needed to do … and just lived her dreams.”

Lynch, 87, was found dead the morning of Nov. 21 on a property by her home in the 1400 block of Barn Road, near Cazadero. She had been missing for about a week. Authorities had been searching for her for about three days after her daughter, Kelly MacKay, went to visit her mother and found her missing.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office oversaw the search and is investigating the cause of death, but foul play did not appear to be involved.

Lynch had lived in the North Bay since the early 1960s, when she moved to the area with her then-husband, Barry MacKay, and her two kids, Kelly MacKay said.

I knew her a bit and admired her a lot. Living by herself in the way back and putting out a monthly pretty much all by herself, seemed a courageous and ambitious project and she did it. I was a feral caregiver to a colony of cats living off the land and that was a mutual interest with her, with the cats up around her living place. Thought it was a good way to die, at home, unobserved, for a solitary and remarkable person.

After her kids grew up and moved out, she purchased a 40-acre property near Cazadero.

“Having land and having a house in the country, that was her dream,” MacKay said.

“I knew she loved it,” she added. “[She would] talk about the trees and the birds and the fresh air and just being away from people.”

Lynch had wanted to own a piece of land since she was a kid growing up with her mom in a small space in Sydney, Australia, MacKay said.

She was a student studying painting and drawing in Sydney when she decided to make extra money by working as a runway model. It was during those five years that she met professional tennis player Barry MacKay.

The couple married in 1962 and moved to the U.S. Within two years, they’d made their way to Northern California.

MacKay said she has many fond memories of growing up with her mom in the area. Most of her favorite involved food.

The homemade pies, roast chickens, pot roasts and beautiful salads she would prepare and set out on fine china dinnerware. About once a week, they would drive to San Francisco to sit at the counter of Blum’s bakery and eat the famous coffee crunch cake.

“We would always have huge vanilla milkshakes,” she said. “And then there was a sandwich called the Monte Cristo, like a french-toast sandwich. It was just really elaborate, and it was great.”

MacKay also recalls her mom forcing her through seven years of ballet, from ages five to 12, but being lenient during her teens and never enforcing a curfew.

Lynch and Barry MacKay divorced in the late 1970s, when Kelly MacKay was 12. Lynch never remarried. Barry MacKay died in 2012 at age 76.

Lynch’s son Bruce MacKay died in 2000.

Lynch loved to read — all kinds of books, including history — and really liked to do outdoor activities, including running and hiking. MacKay remembers skiing with her family in Vail, Aspen and Tahoe.

Lynch was an advocate for preserving nature in the community and frequently attended Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meetings to learn about and speak on related topics, said Vesta Copestakes, a journalist for many years in west Sonoma County for publications including the West County Gazette.

“She was very, very active in the community,” Copestakes said. “She was concerned with trees, water quality — environmental issues.”

In 1994, she campaigned against a winery development in the forested ridges off Seaview Road, west of Cazadero. She warned against covering too much of the county in wine grapes and wanted more of the county’s open landscapes to remain diverse in vegetation and agriculture.

She took over the Russian River Times in the mid- to late-1990s, according to Copestakes. “She was everything. Writer, editor. Layout. Delivery. Only occasionally could Johanna afford help,” she said.

She was also known to promote the ideas of others by essentially using the Russian River Times to carry the opinions of others, Copestakes said.

“That was her big thing was having an uncensored paper, so that people weren’t being too careful about what they were saying. They could just express themselves,” she said. “She didn’t have an editorial board to tell her what to do.

Near the end of the Russian River Time’s print edition, year or two ago, according to Copestakes, Lynch was driving in her small green Honda to pick up copies from a press in Mendocino County, Cannata said.

Her passion for the community was clear in person and in print, Cannata said.

“The newspaper seemed more substantial,” Cannata said. “It was more important to actually pay attention to it now that I knew how much hard work and dedication [she had].”

Lynch was a strong, capable person because of where she lived, and lived alone, Cannata said.

“She had a log cabin, so it was pretty remote, and her only heat was the fireplace … Plus she had a garden,” Cannata said. “She was really living off the land as best as she could.”

MacKay said she also knew her mom liked living on her own.

“She loved to be alone,” MacKay said. She liked to just be, which I thought was really good.”

“I didn’t really have to worry about her, and she was never lonely,” she added.

MacKay said the last time she saw her mom was about a year ago. Lynch visited her daughter and her granddaughter near their home for a three-hour lunch. They said, “I love you,” before Lynch returned to Sonoma County.

Lynch’s friends are planning a memorial service for her sometime in the spring though details have yet to be finalized, MacKay said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

MISPLACED COMPLAINT

by Mark Scaramella

Jacqueline Williams of Ukiah’s Ford Street Project commented on our recent article entitled ‘The Betrayal of Measure B’ on Facebook after someone re-posted it on Mendocino News Plus. Facebook is a poor vehicle for discussing these matters. So here’s Ms. Williams’ comment as helpfully forwarded to us by Mazie Malone:

Your description of Ford Street’s Ukiah Recovery Center’s expansion Measure B request is incomplete and inaccurate. Our Measure B request was to fund the construction of a 22- bed sober living dorm. Our request did not include money to cover operational costs because it is a fee for service business. Most of our clients are eligible for Drug Medi-Cal. Those funds cover our costs unlike other behavioral health programs. You appear critical of the only agency I know of that continues to stretch to meet the overdose death crisis in Mendocino County. Perhaps that should be your next story.

— Jacqueline Williams, Executive Director of Ford Street

Mark Scaramella Responds: Ms. Williams is referring to: https://theava.com/archives/234591

Pardon us, but Ms. Williams has missed the point of the article: “The Betrayal of Measure B.” On review, we do not see anything there that is incomplete or inaccurate — unless perhaps she’s referring to the absence of her description of Ford Street Project services. Since the point of the piece was that no Measure B money has been spent on mental health or substance abuse treatment services, as required by the text of the measure, I do not see a need to point out the services that Ford Street Project provides in that context.

Here’s the quote from that article which referred to the Ford Street Project:

“The last time the mental health services question came before the Supervisors was in the fall when a proposal was made to allocate some Measure B money to Ukiah’s Ford Street Project. Despite the misleading use of the word ‘services’ in the agenda title, that proposal did not include any services, just some money to help build expanded facilities for Ford Street. Even this proposal was denied by the Supervisors on grounds that they didn’t know how much money was left in Measure B (and still don’t and have never asked) so they were afraid to commit the money to Ford Street.”

Again, we do not see how anyone could reasonably be construe that as “critical of the only agency … that continues to stretch to meet the overdose death crisis in Mendocino County.” The criticism is aimed at the Supervisors and the Measure B oversight committee.

Ms. Williams should direct her complaints to the Supervisors and the Measure B oversight committee who have not only denied Ford Street Project the Measure B facilities money, but have failed to even propose that any Measure B money be spent with Ford Street or anyone else for the measure’s mandated treatment services for more than six years now.

FRANK RIGGS, FORMER NORTH COAST CONGRESSMAN, DIES AT 73

Riggs served as a Windsor schools trustee and a Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy before he unseated four-term Democratic Rep. Doug Bosco in 1990. He went on to serve three terms in the House and later ran for governor in Arizona.

by Chris Smith

Former three-term North Coast congressman Frank Riggs died Dec. 20 in Arizona, his home since 2001. He was 73.

A Republican, Riggs served as a Windsor schools trustee and a Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy before he unseated four-term Democratic Rep. Doug Bosco in 1990. Following six on-again, off-again years in the House of Representatives and a brief run for one of California’s two seats in the U.S. Senate, Riggs moved to more GOP-friendly Arizona, where he sought but failed to be elected governor or state schools superintendent.

In overwhelmingly Democratic Sonoma County in the 1990s, Riggs became the last Republican elected to a partisan office. Though his politics would grow more conservative, he started out in Congress as a reformer determined to fulfill the wishes of his generally left-of-center constituency.

“In one of his first votes, he made the tough call against the Iraq war because he thought we were going to war for the wrong reason,” said one of his sons, Matt Riggs of Arizona.

Former Sebastopol resident Mitch Mulanix helped Frank Riggs win the California 1st Congressional District seat and then served on his staff. Mulanix remembers President George H.W. Bush inviting Riggs to the White House to press for his support of a January 1991 Gulf War resolution. Riggs voted no. Said Mulanix, “He paid for that from the Republicans forever.”

As a member of the House’s Gang of Seven, Riggs and half-dozen other freshmen in the 102nd Congress openly condemned their colleagues for internal scandals that included routinely bouncing checks in their House Bank accounts, revelations that became a roaring sandal in the second year of his first term.

Riggs showed his political flexibility when he contributed to the preservation of the old-growth redwoods in Humboldt County’s Headwaters Forest. He also helped to continue the patchwork ban on offshore oil drilling and to prevent a water grab from the Trinity River, and he worked to seal the preservation of the historic railroad right of way through Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

Said Mulanix, “I think on many occasions he swallowed his own politics to represent his district.”

Riggs served one term in the House, then in 1992 was defeated by Democrat Dan Hamburg of Mendocino County. Riggs took on Hamburg in 1994 and won back his seat, and in 1996 he defeated challenger Michela Alioto-Pier.

In 1994, Democrat Bill Clinton occupied the Oval Office but the Republican Revolution captured control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952. As an ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and a signee of his party’s Contract with America, Riggs became more reliably conservative and oftentimes contentious. He was proud of his high ratings from the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life, the anti-abortion group.

As his third term was ending in 1998, he saw that he would be challenged by a popular, Democratic state senator, Mike Thompson. Riggs announced he would not seek a fourth term in the House, but would challenge U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. He later dropped out of that race.

In a farewell editorial, The Press Democrat wrote that Riggs “is one of those politicians who tends to personalize every disagreement, which is why he lands in so many scraps.” But the newspaper lauded his intelligence and dedication, writing, “Few are more dogged than Riggs in pursuit of the ideas and issues that motivate him.”

About three years after he left Congress, Riggs and his now former wife, Cathy Riggs, who’d once been a Santa Rosa police officer, relocated to Arizona. Frank Riggs announced in 2005 that he would run against Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. He subsequently learned he was not eligible to run because he’d not been an Arizona resident long enough.

In 2014, Riggs entered the Republican primary for Arizona governor, then finished last in a field of six candidates.

In 2018, he defeated Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas in the Republican primary. But in the general election, he lost to political neophyte Kathy Hoffman in a stunning, surprise victory.

A disciplined runner and fitness fan who played several sports at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Riggs found in 2020 that he had a heart-valve problem. This past September, a corrective procedure set off a chain of medical events that depleted his vigor.

The people closest to him say was a proud American and a family man who sought elected office not to feed his ego but to help people.

“The bottom line is, he was passionate about his service,” Cathy Riggs said. Divorced from Frank Riggs since 2021, she works as a justice of the peace in Maricopa County, Arizona.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

MIKE WILLIAMS NOTES: Mendocino Redwoods. There was originally 640,000 acres of ancient redwood forest in Mendocino County in a continuous 85 mile coastal band. Fewer than 1,000 acres remain.

REGISTER NOW: ANDROID SMARTPHONE TECH SUPPORT

Having difficulty hearing or seeing on your smartphone?

Attend this FREE training and make your smartphone work better for you! The 2-hour presentation will be run by 2 people - the presenter and a helper to help participants during the presentation to stay on track.  All participants will get a workbook after completing the training. Presented by California Connect: https://caconnect.org/

Make your Android smartphone louder and easier to hear

• Send text messages
• Connect Bluetooth devices
• Operate the basic functions of your Android smartphone

…and much more!

Space is limited, register now! Registration in advanced is required (Please no drop-ins) - to reserve your spot contact:

Anica Williams
Anderson Valley Village Coordinator
Cell: 707-684-9829
Email: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

UKIAH’S ANNUAL PIANIST CONCERT

It’s that time of year again that so many piano lovers have been waiting for!

On January 27th and 28th, 2024 the 31^st Annual Professional Pianist Concert will hit the stage with two exciting concerts featuring eleven different pianists at the Mendocino College Center Theatre in Ukiah. Performers letting the keys fly this year are Spencer Brewer, Elena Casanova, Wendy DeWitt, Barney McClure, Frankie J, Tom Ganoung, Elizabeth MacDougall, Ed Reinhart, Ben Rueb, Charlie Seltzer and Janice Hawthorne Timm. The musical styles will range from classical to jazz, boogie-woogie to Cuban, Broadway to ragtime.....each performance will be completely different! 

This utterly fun and stimulating series features the finest regional pianists on stage in a living room environment. Throughout the performance they trade stories and melodies with two pianos on stage to accommodate impromptu collaborations. The event is an annual sellout because of the diversity and quality of music in a multitude of styles, and the humor that takes place throughout the evening. 

Saturday, January 27th at 7:00pm will feature Spencer Brewer, Elena Casanova, Frankie J, Elizabeth MacDougall, Barney McClure and Ed Reinhart. 

Sunday the 28th at 2:00pm will include Spencer Brewer, Wendy DeWitt, Tom Ganoung, Ben Rueb, Charlie Seltzer and Janice Hawthorne Timm. 

No two concerts are the same, so if you love piano and piano music, please consider enjoying more than one performance!

The concerts benefit the Ukiah Community Concert Association, Mendocino College Recording Arts Club and the Allegro Scholarship Program. Tickets are on sale at Mendocino Book Co. in Ukiah, Mazahar in Willits and online at www.UkiahConcerts.org. Tickets are $25 general admission and $30 "I ‘Wanna’ See the Hands" limited seating. For more information call (707) 463-2738. 

Sponsors are Fowler Auto Center, Sparetime Supply, Savings Bank of Mendocino, Ukiah Community Concerts, Waterman Plants, K-WINE/MAX, KOZT-The Coast and KZYX/Z. Refreshments will be provided by Ukiah Community Concert Association. 

The Mendocino College Center Theatre is at 1000 Hensley Creek Rd in Ukiah. There will be autographed CD's, music and books by the artists for sale in the lobby.

Styles Of Music

• Spencer Brewer - Contemporary Classical & Original Compositions
• Elena Casanova - Cuban Classical & Jazz, Classical
• Tom Ganoung - Originals, Rock, Classical
• Frankie J - R & B, Soul, Gospel
• Elizabeth MacDougall - Classical
• Barney McClure - Outrageous Jazz
• Ed Reinhart - Boogie-Woogie & Blues
• Ben Rueb - Classical
• Charlie Seltzer - Broadway & Show Tunes
• Wendy DeWitt - Boogie Woogie & Blues
• Janice Hawthorne Timm – 20^th CenturyAmerican Classical

Last year’s concert: youtube.com/watch?v=nuDaZddpkO0

HERE’S TO 35 YEARS!

Happy Birthday to us! It’s our big day and we thought we’d pass along a note with a bit of history! Here’s how far we’ve come:

In the early ‘80s, inspiration struck when Dr. Ken Allen was at California’s first post-prohibition brewpub, Hopland Brewery. He had an excellent water source and a great property. Why not start a brewery?

Ken, his wife Kim, and their friend Dave started brewing in the basement of the Buckhorn Saloon and basically created the first purpose-built brewpub in California, with an ideal layout to flow beer to the draft system upstairs and some windows to give the brewers a view of the local scenery while toiling away downstairs.

For a mash tun, the original 10-barrel brewhouse used a reclaimed stainless steel vat that had been used to raise catfish. Back in the ‘90s there wasn’t a lot of equipment options so Ken went DIY and designed the brew kettle himself and had it custom-made in Santa Rosa.

In addition to kegs, the first AVBC beers were hand-bottled in reused champagne bottles with handmade labels.

Their first 10-barrel batch was brewed in a marathon 26-hour shift. To ward off the cold in the unheated brewhouse, they napped atop the warm mash tun. That first evening, by starlight, the antlered bears of the Anderson Valley visited the brewery and left gifts of whole cone Northern Brewer hops and breakfast burritos with a note that said “Bahl hornin’ – Barkley.”

On December 26, 1987, the Buckhorn Saloon opened and quickly sold out of its first beer, Boont Amber Ale, plus all of the food in the kitchen. It was an epic start to what we now know as The Legendary Boonville Beer.

Here’s to 35 years, and might we recommend a Boont Amber Ale as a fitting drink to join us in a toast?

Bahl Hornin’ from all of us in Boonville!

MICHAEL BRANNON:

It was a warm sunny day in 1976, some may remember a drought year, the hills golden and a dry wind was blowing lightly in Anderson Valley. My step brothers, Steve and Michael "Dean" Hulbert, all of us about 17-18 years old at the time, were kicking it after school at our Anderson Valley Way trailer home, when an event in our beloved valley was about to take place that optimized what that community was known for, being neighbors to one another.

My step mom, Patricia, had just pulled into the driveway of our Anderson Valley Way trailer in our family's old brown '64 Chevy pickup, the bed loaded with groceries. Across the street was the home of Barkey Rawles and directly next door the Clarks from whom our family rented the land on which the trailer sat. Us boys went outside to help carry in the goods when we heard SCREAMS of HELP! There is a certain distinctness to the sound of distress, a combination of terror and helplessness that charges the senses and quickens one's thoughts. It was the voice of Lovella Sand, a neighbor from about 100 yards away and she was in the road shouting and motioning toward us, clearly in panic! Above and behind her billowing westward a column of dense smoke.

Teenagers are rarely known for thinking brilliantly, but their character often shines through profoundly in times of crisis. I am proud to be brothers with these two as the account to follow will testify. The three of us raced down the road and arrived in front of a two story residence, directly adjacent to Jack and Janese June. As we approached, looking up, we could see the roof around the chimney for about five feet was on fire. The accumulated soot inside had produced a chimney fire and tossed sparks onto the dry roof and set it alight. There was no discussion. The volunteer fire department had been called, but everyone knew their arrival would be precious minutes away. The wind was whipping the flames and you could hear the crackling of the wood shakes surrendering to the heat. The first thought was water to extinguish fire, but being a two story home and decades old, water of even the greatest pressure, would be unable to reach the roof. Directly next door Jack June stood at his home, merely feet away, with a garden hose in hand and could barely put any of it on the eaves against the height and wind. We all raced inside and began to move furniture and belongings out of the front door and steps and into the perimeter of the fenced front yard in front. Steve, with no concern for his own safety, ran up the stairs and within minutes had navigated a full size vanity down those same narrow stairs mostly by himself! Michael Dean and I focused on the furniture downstairs. Couches, dressers, beds, chairs, coffee and end tables all of it delivered to the front yard over the course of perhaps 8-10 minutes. As each item carried out I remember looking up at the roof to judge the time remaining. Flames had migrated to about half way across, being directly under a huge column of smoke, but more alarming was the lower floor now had started burning through! The structure, one of the older homes in the valley, was built before codes required fire stops between the wall studs. Embers had fallen from the second floor above and down to the first floor sill plate on the interior of the walls and started the clapboard siding on fire from within. Off in the distance we could hear the alarm horn sound throughout the valley. I heard a commotion on the north side and I peek around the corner to see my brother Steve at the window above. He had walked into Shelly's bedroom closet and with both arms outstretched hugged all the clothes therein and was dropping the bundle out the window to Jack below. No time to delay, I was back inside and Dean had pulled a wooden bar out, it being heavy with glassware. We got it out the door, but a bottle of liquor toppled out the lower compartment onto the concrete steps and shattered, the only serious casualty, but required kicking glass for the time being. The roof by this time was fully engulfed in flames. The last challenge however remained, the upright piano. Lovella would tell me later that it took four men two full hours to get it originally into the house. Dean and I maneuvered it out the front door, across the crushed glass, in about 30 seconds without a scratch! Lastly was the kitchen, which emptied quickly and about this time the pumper and fire crew had arrived and we stepped aside to let men work. The upper windows were pouring smoke and the team put water into them while the roof above was completely consumed with the roaring blaze. The upper floor was totally lost above the window frames, the yard in furniture covered in blankets and layered with ashes. Without any fanfare, we walked home. My brothers are no longer with us. They were far from perfect and had challenges throughout their lives. Steven John passed away from complications from AIDS, and Michael Dean a few years later, from COPD. My step-sister, Terri, passed this year and I miss them all deeply. I wanted to share this story for not only their memory but to illustrate that the people in Anderson Valley from that time had a special bond with one another. A unique sense of community in which neighbors rely on each other, not only in crisis, but on a daily basis. One I pray still holds true for current residents. For my brothers and Sis...I will always remember you.

SO YOU'RE 90, WHAT'S NEXT?

by Gregory Sims

I was having a Christmas dinner conversation at my daughter and son-in-law's lovely house which extended into a personal conversation with a new very pleasant lady and new member of the family who is the partner of my daughter’s youngest adult grandson. The conversation drifted into how we deal with our personal values in the face of military and political circumstances (of which they are somewhat engaged). I was aware of the importance of polite conversation expectations at such gatherings. The food was delicious. People were friendly and light-hearted. As the conversation continued I became aware that many others had left the table, including my grandson. She seemed willing to pursue the conversation when a very influential movie (in my life) “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” came to mind.

Briefly American soldiers had been captured. This semi-fictional story was about how their captured commanding officer brought about an engaging coherence with the prisoners who it seems had worked on restoring the bridge and in the process came to the attention of the active military who came to blow it up. But the commanding officer resisted and was shot by “friendly fire.” Then the bridge was taken down by explosives. I couldn't really develop that theme fully in our conversation, only to say in my personal life I need to give up my desire to get my way and about the importance about not winning as an only alternative to “giving up.”

What I learned on a positive note is this: As we advance in age (and it is perhaps an advancement) much of what we are about is bringing things, people, animals, flora and fauna together within our organic and social life opportunities. It is more than about having my personal end of life necessities taken care of; it is about leaving behind a path to orderliness which can be useful to those we love and others. A path beyond capitulation rather toward an acceptance of what we and others see is possible.

ED NOTES

RE THE NINERS, A Reader Writes: No credit taken away from Baltimore, they played a tough game. But let's be honest. They called every possible flag they could on the Niners. I literally watched our entire front line on defense get held right in front of the refs and no call at all. They called a flag on B.A for swaying his legs barely enough to even see, like really. The refs put them in position to score three different times. I feel like we really got screwed over. We still got #1 seed and still a game ahead of Cowboys and we beat the Cowboys and Eagles, so we are good as long as we win the last two games so Detroit doesn't get number 1 seed. I honestly feel like we are going to come full force after last night. We will see Ravens again in the Superbowl and I'm willing to bet my life it doesn't go the same way as it went last night. The refs screwed us badly and on top of that Deebo dropped 4 catches, Brock threw 4 interceptions and we got a flag called on us every other play of the game. I watched the refs just turn their heads every time someone held us or late hits and all kinds of stuff they weren't called but every little thing we did they threw a flag. Our defense was shutting them down and every time they had a third and 10 they would throw a flag against us. Go watch the replay of the game and just pay attention to how the Ravens would push our guys down right in front of the refs and they wouldn't throw a flag for nothing. Our wide receivers would get held and pushed and nothing was called. That was by far the worst officiating game I have ever watched in my life.

ED NOTE: The cheapskate NFL won't fund full-time professional refs, and too many game-interfering rules have been enacted.

ADD TO LIFE'S many petty annoyances, those PG&E ads on all television channels telling us what a swell job they're doing. I don't know why they bother, but I suppose they have to at least pretend to be concerned with safety after having commenced murdering their customer base. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, December 26, 2023

SETH COSTA, Ukiah. Driving on sidewalk, controlled substance, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation violation.

JAMES DODD, Willits. Failure to appear.

ISMAEL GUTIERREZ-OLIVAREZ, Willits. Domestic battery.

LUNA MAGDALENO, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic battery, probation violation.

WANA MATHIAS, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, paraphernalia.

WILLIAM POWELL II, Ukiah. Controlled substance.

TRISTAN WILEY, Willits. Domestic abuse, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, battery with serious injury, probation revocation.

49ERS GAME GRADES: RAVENS ISSUE A RESOUNDING LATE-SEASON REALITY CHECK

by Micahel Lerseth

Speed bump or road block? Even when the San Francisco 49ers lost three in a row earlier this season, they had chances to win at least two of those. That was hardly the case Monday night against Baltimore in the Niners’ 33-19 loss to fall to 11-4 on the season.

Offense: D

The word of the night is: interception. The 49ers threw five of them, a career-high four by Brock Purdy and one by Sam Darnold that snuffed out the oh-so-faint thoughts of a miracle comeback. Purdy’s night came to an end with 8:02 to play when he sustained a stinger, but plenty of damage had already been done: the four-pack of picks (though two were on deflections), a pair of sacks, numerous misfires and a 42.6 rating that stands as the worst of his 20-start career. Christian McCaffrey rushed 14 times for 103 yards and George Kittle caught seven passes for 126. 

Defense: D

A mismatch by just about every measure. The 49ers had trouble containing surging MVP favorite Lamar Jackson (23-of-35, 252 yards, two TDs, no INTs, 45 yards rushing) and couldn’t handle the speed the Ravens threw at them from multiple positions, most notably receiver Zay Flowers (nine catches, 72 yards and a TD). Baltimore scored on seven consecutive possessions, averaged 5.4 yards per play against the NFL’s ninth-ranked defense, and picked up five first downs via penalties that accounted for another 52. 

Special Teams: C

Mitch Wishnowsky averaged 56 yards on two punts, but on his first — in the third quarter — he added to a 23-yard return by committing an unnecessary roughness penalty. Three plays later, the Ravens scored to make it 23-12. Earlier, Ronnie Bell had a chance for a good return on the free kick after a safety, but fumbled the ball out of bounds. Jake Moody had a 45-yard field goal and made both extra points.

Coaching: C

Kyle Shanahan’s best move might have been deciding that putting an injured Purdy back in a game the 49ers trailed by 21 with eight minutes to play probably wasn’t worth it. His decision to go for it in on 4th-and-1 at Baltimore 33 midway through first quarter appeared to backfire when Purdy was sacked, but a penalty nullified the loss.

Overall: D

Speed bump or road block? Even when the 49ers lost three in a row earlier this season, they had chances to win at least two of those. That was hardly the case Monday night, and if this was a preview of the Super Bowl, the Niners might want to hold off on clearing a spot for Lombardi No. 6 in the trophy case. The top seed in the NFC is still there to be had, but any aura of invincibility has been shattered.

PASS AN IMMIGRATION BILL NOW

Dear Editor,

We are at a crucial crossroad in more than our border/foreign policy. The crisis on our entire southern border with Mexico has become critically sad due to a sudden rise in number of immigrants, in probable excess of 12,000. The Border Patrol and immigrant courts are seriously undermanned. Only our politically split Congress has sufficient authority to act due to the facts and the Constitution giving it the control of the purse strings. There is even a great caravan made up of many more from Venezuela, Columbia and elsewhere walking north from the Guatemala/southern Mexico border.

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, lacks the votes or apparently the will to lead the House to pass a large enough bill. A stalemate he created has blocked everything including critical essential military aid to our allies, Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. The Biden Administration cannot solve this overwhelming issue alone.

Very few of these immigrants will cause harm. Most want only asylum and a shot at working to be out of poverty. President Biden needs your vote in November and your support for a better Immigration bill.

Frank H. Baumgardner, III 

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was just outside. Dead calm and about as gloomy as it gets around here. Foggy, cold, and miserable. Not only are the days short, but this time of year we can have weeks of dark weather. Good luck with those wind turbines and solar panels. I know people are all NIMBY about this shit but what we need is high tech nuclear plants. Small and safe. I think the USN has been running them since the 50’s. I think it is the solution.

SOULLESS, FULLY COMPLICIT

Editor: 

Scream bloody murder. Has the U.S. lost its moral compass? Did it ever really have one? By unconditionally providing Israel with a deadly potpourri of Hellfire missiles, so-called smart bombs and over 57,000 155mm artillery shells to turn Gaza into a modern-day Guernica while simultaneously vetoing U.N. resolutions calling for a ceasefire, the U.S. is fully complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

From sea to shining sea, America ― working in tandem with Israel ― has always brought misery, suffering and death to the entire region. Human rights, freedom and democracy are now merely cheap, garbage words used by the U.S. to placate the masses. Christopher Le Mon, a senior State Department official, once said the following: “It is not in the U.S. national interest to engage in arms transfers where we assess that they are likely to be used in human rights violations.” Indeed. This casual, chilling observation shows that America has not only lost its moral compass, it also has lost its soul.

Steve Baker

Santa Rosa

‘NOTHING WILL STOP US’

by Ralph Nader

The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.

The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.

This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7^th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.

Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here.)

The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.

Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.

Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.

In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.

A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7^th.

Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”

In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.

The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.

There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”

How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”

There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.

AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.

Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism – a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers – without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.

(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)

PRESIDENT BIDEN: LEARN THE NAMES OF THE CHILDREN MURDERED IN GAZA BY ISRAEL

by Norman Solomon

The massacre in Uvalde took the lives of 19 children. For nearly three months, the ongoing massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many children every few hours.

To: President Joe Biden

You’ve often spoken of how much you care about children and how terrible it is when they’re murdered. “Too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields,” you said at the White House last spring on the one-year anniversary of the school shooting in Uvalde. At the time of that tragedy in Texas, you had quickly gone on live television, speaking gravely.

“There are parents who will never see their child again,” you said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.”

And you asked plaintively: “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?”

This year you’ve asked similar questions many times, as in the aftermath of shootings at a grade school in Nashville, Michigan State University and the University of Nevada.

The massacre in Uvalde took the lives of 19 children. For nearly three months, the ongoing massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many children every few hours.

With your ongoing help, Israel is continuing to murder children and other civilians in Gaza just as methodically as the gunman murdered children at the elementary school in Uvalde.

In mid-November, after five weeks of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the director-general of the World Health Organization reported that children were being killed at an average rate of six per hour, adding that “nowhere and no one is safe.” Palestinian civilians of all ages continue to undergo slaughter, with the death toll surpassing 20,000.

You have continued to voice support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza and its residents. After 10 weeks of the carnage, when you got around to expressing a bit of concern about Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing,” you were meanwhile still doing everything you could to greenlight and fast track massive U.S. shipments of weapons and ammunition to Israel so that the indiscriminate bombing could continue.

Even your belated and inadequate words on Dec. 12 about “indiscriminate bombing” apparently caused you to have second thoughts. The next day, Voice of Americareported that “the White House appears to be walking back” your comment about “indiscriminate bombing.”

Most important, of course, are not words but deeds. As commander-in-chief, since early October you have approved large-scale shipments to Israel of 2,000-pound bombs—described by the New York Times as “one of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals,” a weapon that “unleashes a blast wave and metal fragments thousands of feet in every direction.”

In a Dec. 21 video report based on analysis of “aerial imagery and artificial intelligence”—headlined “Visual Evidence Shows Israel Dropped 2,000-Pound Bombs Where It Ordered Gaza’s Civilians to Move for Safety”—the Times indicated that “Israel used these munitions in the area it designated safe for civilians at least 200 times.” Those 2,000-pound bombs have been “a pervasive threat to civilians seeking safety across south Gaza.”

Since the war in Gaza began 11 weeks ago, the Times reported, “the U.S. has sent more than 5,000 2,000-pound bombs” to Israel. And after a long phone conversation with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu on Dec. 23, you told the press: “I did not ask for a ceasefire.”

With your ongoing help, Israel is continuing to murder children and other civilians in Gaza just as methodically as the gunman murdered children at the elementary school in Uvalde. And you have continued to provide weaponry for the murders just as surely as the gun shop in Uvalde sold firearms and ammunition to the man who went on to kill at the elementary school.

But that is an unfair comparison—unfair to the Uvalde gun-shop owner, who did not know the intended use of the weapons and ammo. But you know what the billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and bombs gifted by the U.S. government are being used for.

When three 9-year-old students were among those shot to death at a school in Nashville last March, you spoke about them the next day. “A family’s worst nightmare has occurred,” you said. “Those children should all be with us still,” you said. And you said: “We know the names of the victims.”

But you don’t know the names of the children you’ve helped to murder in Gaza. And there are so many.

US PRESS WASN'T ALWAYS IN LOCKSTEP ON ISRAEL

by Daniel Falcone

The Oslo Accords were a set of diplomatic agreements conscripted by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Norway in 1993 to initiate a Middle East peace process. Emblematic of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the failed agreements and prospects for peace.

The accords supported a sequence of diplomatic arrangements to address the continuing Middle East conflict. The deliberations resulted in a Palestinian Authority that managed Gaza and the West Bank for a half decade and recognized enduring diplomatic discussions in the interest of refugees and borders.

While the United States corporate press continues to erase the historical context of Israel’s settler-colonial occupation of Palestine amid the state’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, archival material from the popular press during the Oslo Accord period shows how the mainstream press wasn’t always in lockstep with Israel, and actually challenged the standard orthodoxy in support of the “Holy State.” A Truthout examination of the archival material uncovers how The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe portrayed the asymmetries of the accords and its impacts on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In response to November 19’s New York Times headline and story by Middle East Correspondent Raja Abdulrahim, “Smoldering Gaza Becomes A Graveyard for Children: Thousands Are Killed in Bombardment as Israel Responds to Hamas Attack,” author Doug Henwood wrote that he “never expected to see a headline like this in the [New York Times].” Meanwhile, Race2Dinner co-founder Saira Rao pointed out on X that “the tide is absolutely turning” in the mainstream media, sharing a recent piece by Lauren Leatherby.

Truthout examined instances where the papers of record — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe — wrote against their ideological slants when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout the Oslo era. For example, popular journalists and provocative cartoonists like Tony Auth and Dan Wasserman, depicted the nature of the United States and Israeli governments’ policies of collective punishment. They often aimed their commentary at the U.S. and Israel for disproportionate uses of force.

As Wasserman was known for his outstanding and detailed editorials, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Auth’s journalistic cartoons traversed a large range of sociocultural, political and social issues. With cutting wit, he successfully captured parody, irony and humor to convey perspectives on complicated topics. For example, during the Oslo period especially, Auth emphasized the dynamics, conflicts, cultural nuances and power asymmetries by virtue of U.S. and Israeli policy.

A Truthout examination of the archival material uncovers how The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe portrayed the asymmetries of the accords and its impacts on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In writing for the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books, Advising Editor Fintan O’Toole, in a headlined piece titled “No Endgame in Gaza,” stated, “Enough” is the word that then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stressed in his remarkable speech of September 1993 at the signing of the Oslo Accords: “We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. … We are today giving peace a chance and saying to you and saying again to you: Enough.”

Leading up to the late 1980s, it was well established that the Arab-Israeli conflict was an asymmetrical tinderbox, and that sources of “Palestinian terrorism” contained root causes. In October 1985, American-Arab Relations Committee President M.T. Mehdi wrote in a Times letter to the editor that Palestinian seajacking was a by-product and result of U.S. skyjacking. He explained how U.S. condemnation of Palestinian violence lacked a moral foundation because it views Arab acts of violence as terrorism but calls Israeli acts of violence that have killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians, Tunisians, and other Arabs “self-defense.”

Furthermore, the popular and mainstream press wasn’t necessarily against exposing, for instance, Israeli police brutality and fraudulent land purchases on the West Bank, as former Reuters Correspondent Bernard Edinger wrote in 1985 when covering the slain Palestinian investigative reporter Hassan Abdul Halim Fakih. Israel’s extremism perhaps opened the door for a modicum of radical pushback here and there in the agenda-setting corporate press. For instance, the noteworthy Jewish Israel-Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein published an extended letter to the editor that challenged the thesis of an uninhabited Palestine in the late 19th century. In an opinion piece on Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s seventh prime minister, former Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote in November 1986 that “diplomacy is not theology.”

Also in 1986, Henry Finkelstein, representing the New Jewish Agenda in Brooklyn, wrote that for Arab residents, Gaza is like South Africa’s apartheid town of Soweto. In the same year, Queens College sociology professor Steven M. Cohen indicated that half of U.S. Jews supported a Palestinian homeland. Just before the First Intifada, it was common for U.S. Jews to support Gaza and contribute to humanitarian causes, and the press covered it more than they do today, a widespread current discrepancy as noted by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting journalist Ari Paul. For example, Marjorie M. Anderson, an English teacher and member of the Abington Monthly Meeting, a group of Philadelphia-area Quakers dedicated to activism and Middle East peace, lived and worked in Gaza in 1986. Anderson later worked with members of Jewish Voice for Peace in the late 1990s.

[Chris] Hedges was critical of the peace process and wary of its outcomes, stating that, “The Palestinians will not be permitted to have normal foreign relations like maintaining embassies or consulates with other countries.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote of the clashes that continued in Arab territory as Israeli forces shot at Gaza youth protesters, thus providing further motivations for mounting Palestinian resistance. As the first sustained, largescale series of protests in 1987, known as the First Intifada, drew near, Friedman also covered widening protests after the murdering of 35-year-old Inayat Samir Hindi. Although a tame liberal, Times columnist Anthony Lewis would also regularly write about Israel’s tactics of repression in his “Abroad at Home” column.

On the 20-year anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, December 1987 marked the first time Palestinians engaged in an Intifada. In what was mainly a weaponless uprising and insurrection, the disproportionate and extreme Israeli response helped Palestinians to get worldwide attention as well as international and institutional support for the human rights issue of our time. After the PLO recognized Israel in 1988 and agreed to obtaining less than a quarter of original Palestine territory, Israel did not come to terms.

Leading up to 1992’s secret talks under Oslo was June 1990’s mounting U.S. pressure on Israel to negotiate, October 1990’s Haram al-Sharif Massacre, 1991’s First Gulf War, and October’s Madrid Conference. October 18, 1991, saw the U.S. “letter of assurance” to the Palestinian people. As 1993 approached, in the final year of the First Intifada, Times Israeli West Bank beat reporter Joel Greenberg commented on how the Israeli Supreme Court was unjustly overruling Geneva precedence for deportations.

Meanwhile, Times contributing writer Clyde Haberman wrote about the expulsion of hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territories. His article featured a photo of Israeli soldiers blindfolding Palestinians during a mass deportation. The menacing imagery graced the front page and inside pages of The New York Times. Haberman wrote another piece citing Gaza and West Bank as a collective prison.

The PLO and Israel drafted the Oslo Accords in Norway in 1993. The treaty served as a series of diplomatic agreements to address the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The discussions resulted in a Palestinian Authority that oversaw the West Bank and Gaza for a period of five years and further established permanent diplomatic talks in the interest of refugees and borders. Times correspondent and bureau chief Serge Schmemann recently wrote of the lost promise of the Oslo Accords and reflected on this “sad footnote to history.” He commented on its continued relevance:

However it plays out, the root of the problem identified by the Palestinians and Israelis in what is still the closest they have come to an accommodation remains the same: The Palestinians will gain freedom only when Israelis find acceptance and security, and Israelis will achieve that bitahon, the broad Hebrew term for security that so pervades Israel’s consciousness, only when the Palestinians have sovereignty over their lives.

Former Nation Senior Editor Roane Carey said recently of the Oslo period, “It was the many frequent closures — a kind of off-and-on, unpredictable blockade — that, along with rapid settlement growth, disillusioned Palestinians about those agreements. Israel experienced an economic boom during the Oslo period, while Palestinians suffered an economic depression. So much for the ‘hopeful’ epoch of the Oslo ‘peace process’.” Carey was referring to a 1996 article by Times West Bank beat reporter Greenberg that described the consequences of the Israeli blockade and border closings in the West Bank and Gaza. Greenberg at the time was effectively a “colleague” of Palestinian journalists in the 1980s and 1990s.

Journalists engaged in principled and courageous press coverage revealed to their readers the asymmetrical nature of the conflicts that persist in the present.

Throughout the 1990s, the mainstream agenda-setting corporate media covered the Middle East’s Oslo period with a combination of assurance and uncertainty, while attempting balanced analyses. The accords’ initial signing in 1993 included the iconic handshake between Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House. It was extensively depicted with hope, optimism and lofty expectations. The accords were considered a historic breakthrough that included principles for Palestinian self-rule.

In terms of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, positioned between Oslo I and II, and after reporting on the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre in which far right extremist Baruch Goldstein carried out a mass shooting, journalist Chris Hedges noted how the ceremony faltered in the last-minute dispute over borders and withdrawal from Jericho in The New York Times on May 5, 1994. From the outset, Hedges was critical of the peace process and wary of its outcomes, stating that, “The Palestinians will not be permitted to have normal foreign relations like maintaining embassies or consulates with other countries.”

Hedges expressed concerns about the impact of the Oslo Accords on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that the agreements were vague, did not lead to a sustainable and just outcome, and restricted Palestinian movement. Further, he raised issues related to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements; the lack of progress on key final border status issues; and the overall failure to achieve anything close to a permanent, lasting peace.

On November 4, 1995, an Israeli terrorist opposed to Oslo, Yigal Amir, murdered Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, paving the way for Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term only a few years later. Netanyahu, supported by the Likud Party, was “the best collaborator Hamas could hope for,” while simultaneously expanding Jewish settlements, wrote Israeli author and peace activist Amos Oz. According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, “Netanyahu later [bragged] about sabotaging the Oslo process, telling a group of settlers in 2001: ‘I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.’”

As Oslo was already designed to fail, the conditions around any prospects for peace deteriorated even further. Both former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, proponents of settlement expansion, intensified friction and undermined Palestinian security and land rights. In 1997, Israel handed over most of Hebron to Palestinian authority but secured and held the enclaves of Israeli settlement.

The mainstream media’s coverage of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s covered the period with a mixture of optimism, critical inquiry and consideration to the changing dynamics of the overall peace process. Thought-provoking visuals of the time were stark, leaving us only to wonder the possibilities for a political cartoonistlike Auth or Wasserman today.

U.S. backing, Israeli illegalities and Palestinian reactions hampered the Oslo process, but journalists engaged in principled and courageous press coverage revealed to their readers the asymmetrical nature of the conflicts that persist in the present.

(Truthout.org)