Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024

Rain/Wind | Bar Joke | Demolition Unnecessary | Angel Left | PG&E Shock | Not Again | Existential Threat | Waterlogged Chickens | Turkey Vulture | 2023 Crush | New Diet | Accomplishment | Supporting Shattuck | Never Blame | Bad Speller | Mockelvision | Gladiola | Cline Hubris | Dropping | Coddled People | Pet Astro | Broadband Launch | Phone Tower | Formerly Green | Drawn Together | Ed Notes | Sidelong Musk | Philo Commute | Yesterday's Catch | Unidentified Object | Safari Surprise | Marco Radio | Ayn Rand | Disinformation, Inc. | Author Theroux | Assange Appeal | So Mysterious

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Yorkville 1.60" - Boonville 1.59" - Willits 1.47" - Ukiah 1.24" - Laytonville 1.18" - Leggett 1.16" - Hopland 1.01" - Covelo 0.95"

UNSETTLED WEATHER CONDITIONS are expected to continue today through Tuesday with a second strong storm systems moving across Northern California. Periods of moderate to localized heavy rainfall, mountain snow (NE Trinity County), and strong southerly winds are forecast. (NWS)

WIND ADVISORY: February 18, 10am until February 18, 6pm
FLOOD WATCH: February 18, 1pm until February 20, 9am
HIGH WIND WATCH: February 19, 4am until February 20, 4am

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 1.16" in the last 24 hours, 10.81" for this month & 33.82" for the season since October 1, 2023. A cloudy 49F on the coast this Sunday morning. Rain resumes later this morning & continues thru midday Wednesday. Wind advisories & watches are posted so plan accordingly.

STATE OVERSIGHT AGENCY SAYS PALACE DEMOLITION NOT NECESSARY TO DO ITS WORK

by Mike Geniella

Senior staff at a state agency designated to oversee possible contamination studies at the Palace Hotel site are ruling out any need for demolition to do investigative work at the downtown Ukiah site.

The declaration of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board comes at a critical juncture in a public debate over the historic structure’s fate, and it undermines a taxpayer-funded scheme surrounding a proposed sale by current Palace owner Jitu Ishwar to the Guidiville Rancheria and a group of investors.

The Guidiville group is seeking $6.6 million in special funding from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control for demolition of the Palace, and costs for contamination studies, clean-up, and site preparation for a proposed new private development at the Palace’s downtown site. The City of Ukiah has put on hold enforcement action against Ishwar for allowing the Palace to become a “public safety hazard” pending outcome of the Guidiville grant application. 

“We have never required demolition of a building to do any investigation for ground contamination,” said Heidi Bauer, senior engineering geologist in the Regional Water Quality Board office in Santa Rosa.

Under state protocols, the Regional Board will oversee contamination studies at the Palace Hotel’s downtown Ukiah site if a state grant is awarded to Guidiville. The agency does not determine the fate of the grant, or how much is awarded, but its engineering staff in Santa Rosa will decide what work is necessary.

It is clear, however, after interviews with Bauer and Kelsey McLaughlin, an engineering geologist, that demolition of a building listed on the National Register of Historic Places is unnecessary to complete a possible contamination assessment.

“Investigation work can be done without demolishing the building,” said Heidi Bauer, senior engineering geologist for the Regional Water Board.

Bauer added, “We have never required demolition of any building no matter in what condition to determine if there is contamination at a site, and to what extent.”

Bauer said technology allows experts to determine the level of contamination on site and what might be needed for remediation without razing any structure. “Even in worst case scenarios we can make that determination,” said Bauer.

The Guidiville scheme for taxpayer support of demolition emerged soon after current owner Ishwar, a local hotel/motel operator and former president of the Greater Ukiah Chamber of Commerce, walked away from a planned sale to a Ukiah financier last summer. Minal Shankar had developed plans with the aid of noted architects and designers specializing in historic preservation. It was the second offer in three years for purchase of the Palace that Ishwar spurned in what a court-appointed receiver described as a “real estate play.”

It seems Ishwar believes he can be made “whole” for his 2019 investment in the Palace even though he has taken no steps since then to stem the landmark’s decline by protecting it from the elements, including a leaking roof, uncovered windows, and interior mold and rot.

Following his rejection of the Shankar offer, Ishwar quickly made a follow up deal with Guidiville and its partners, who launched a campaign to use public funds to tear down the sprawling structure and clean up the site so they could move ahead with a private development project. They envision erecting a six-story faux Palace, according to their application for state funding.

The original part of the Palace Hotel at the corner of State and Smith streets dates to 1891. Subsequent additions were made in 1914 and 1929. Hotel operations shut down in the 1980s, and little has been done under two ownerships to protect the historic structure from the elements over three decades.

Engineering geologists Bauer and McLaughlin said they were unaware until recently that Guidiville is specifically seeking state money for demolition of the Palace. The tribe is applying for special state funds earmarked exclusively for tribes, nonprofits, and municipalities in poor areas, money unavailable to private developers. Under its proposed deal with investors, Guidiville will have majority interest in a new development company if the purchase from Ishwar is completed.

Bauer and McLaughlin said their agency as is typical agreed at that time to do the needed oversight with expectations of state reimbursement for the costs.

“We thought it was a typical request for our agency to oversee contamination studies. Had we been aware of the demolition element, we could have raised our hands then,” said McLaughlin.

Another odd element in the Guidiville application is the fact that a purported 2023 study supporting the Guidiville group’s claims for demolition based on suspected ground contamination has never been turned over to either state agency. 

“We have never seen that document,” said Bauer.

Devin Hutchings, a state Department of Toxic Substances Control spokesman, said that agency also has not received the document.

Representatives for Ishwar and the Guidiville group did not respond to requests for comment. They include tribal consultant Michael Derry, Ishwar attorney Steve Johnson, and Attila Panczel, lawyer for the group of co-Guidiville investors led by downtown restaurateur Matt Talbert.

Hutchings, the toxic control department spokesman, said grant decisions are still expected to be announced by the end of February.

Talbert has led the public campaign to raze the Palace, contending that it is the only way a determination can be made about possible ground contamination from long ago underground fuel storage tanks. Underground tanks were common in the early 1900s across downtown because they stored oil for heating. The Guidiville group also contends a former Palace garage fronting School Street may have had underground tanks for fuel.

A 2017 study prepared for a court-appointed receiver found no evidence of fuel storage tanks remaining at the Palace site, and that there were no signs of any significant environmental degradation. The Merced firm recommended no further studies were needed.

Talbert and the Guidiville group is now claiming that study was not “accurate,” and that their own consultants last summer supposedly found six suspected sites of possible underground fuel tanks beneath the Palace. 

The current decayed state of the Palace building is not in doubt. It has suffered extensive water damage, collapsed interior support beams, and severe rot.

Whether the three-story brick building can be recycled into new uses, including a boutique hotel, retail shops, a bar and restaurant, and a rooftop event center, as envisioned by local financier Minal Shankar, before Ishwar scuttled a deal with her last summer, is a subject of debate.

Noted historic building architects and designers in San Francisco believe the Palace can be reinforced and transformed into a downtown centerpiece, as does Tom Carter, a recognized North Coast contractor who did the acclaimed Tallman Hotel and Blue Wing Saloon in Lake County among other projects.

Demolition advocates led by the Guidiville group argue the time has come for a community “eyesore” to be razed, and a new building erected in its place. 

Before the City Council officially declared on November 3 that the current Palace building has become a dangerous public nuisance, Guidiville representatives were telling state officials that there was “imminent fear of it collapsing.”

“Soil investigation is directly below the building foundation. Any future investigation will require the building to be demolished and disposed of before it falls and hurts someone,” contended the Guidiville application, dated October 13, three weeks before the official city declaration.

Guidiville claimed then that “agreements will be obtained by our local municipality to demolish the building.”

“Preliminary discussions have already begun, and we do not anticipate any barriers in obtaining these releases and agreements. We are working closely with city officials such as the City Manager, Building & Planning, and the Fire Marshal,” according to the Guidiville application.

Deputy Ukiah City Manager Shannon Riley insists City Hall has not seen the Guidiville application under review by the state and that city officials are unaware of its contents. Riley dismisses as “coincidental” elements that some critics see as the city acting in concert with the Guidiville group.

Members of a citizens group opposed to the demolition of the Palace are wary of the Guidiville group. They cite Guidiville Rancheria’s nearly two-decades long struggle with the city of Point Richmond over a failed billion dollar casino proposal there at Point Molate on San Francisco Bay. Attorney fees ran into the millions of dollars before a settlement was reached, allowing Guidiville to purchase half of the Bay frontage site for $400. A regional parks agency is currently negotiating to purchase and transform the site into a park.

Opponents of the Guidiville group’s plans said they are hopeful the “kibosh” will be put to the scheme to use taxpayer money to tear down the Palace.

“It’s beyond me how anyone can believe – or even hope – that the state would give away $6.6 million in taxpayer money to bail out the Palace’s negligent owner and demolish an historic landmark under the false pretense that it’s a toxic waste site,” said Dennis Crean.

Crean said it’s time for owner Ishwar to negotiate a sale “to real professionals in historic preservation so they can get to work redeveloping the Palace.”

“It’s also time for city officials to put some pressure on Mr. Ishwar to finally do the right thing. He’s been given a free ride for too long,” said Crean.

UKIAH MAN MISSING Amidst Unsettling Circumstances—Family Seeks Public Assistance

by Matt LaFever

24-year-old Ukiah man Angel Murguia is missing under unsettling circumstances and his family is asking for the public’s help in locating him.

Murguia went missing on the evening of February 14, 2024. His sister-in-law Chelsie Martinez said it was a “normal night” at Murguia’s home on the 700 block of Ukiah’s Village Circle. He “ate dinner, played his game, and then logged off and went to his room.”

A while later Murguia’s mother heard “a bump and she came to see what was going on and [Angel] was at the front door zipping up his sweater.” Murguia told his mother he was going out with friends but she objected concerned that “it was too late and he had been drinking too much.”

Despite her pleas, Murguia “left anyway.” Chelsie told us his mother chased after Murguia but “he walked too fast for her to keep up” losing sight of him at the Village Circle entrance.

Back at home, Murguia’s family knew the situation was dire when they located what they described as a “suicide note” and discovered that one of his firearms was missing.…

mendofever.com/2024/02/16/ukiah-man-missing-amidst-unsettling-circumstances-family-seeks-public-assistance/

PG&E DROPS DIVERSION OPTIONS

by Justine Frederiksen

Mendocino County officials said they will continue working on options for maintaining water diversions between the Eel and Russian rivers that were created more than 100 years ago for the Potter Valley Project, despite the announcement by the Pacific Gas and Electric company last week that it will no longer include plans being formulated by a regional group for modification of the hydroelectric plant’s infrastructure in its proposal for decommissioning the facility.

“It’s a shock, and we’re still kind of reeling from it,” 1st District Mendocino County Supervisor Glenn McGourty told the Board of Supervisors during its Feb. 6 meeting, describing the announcement from the utility company as “very much like Lucy (pulling the football out from under) Charlie Brown every time we deal with PG&E.” 

McGourty said the latest sharp turn from PG&E on its long and winding path of decommissioning the Potter Valley Project (which was once an essential provider of electricity to the Ukiah Valley) came the day after the first meeting of the recently formed Eel-Russian River Project Joint Powers Authority, which JPA board member McGourty described as “the group that would be taking over the diversion from PG&E, and designing a new one that would move Eel River water to continue the flow of Eel River water to our region.” 

Fellow JPA board member Janet Pauli, chair of the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, said Wednesday that the group of regional stakeholders (which includes the MCIWPC as well as the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sonoma County Water Agency) would not be giving up on their goal of continuing the water diversions in a manner that supports both the Russian River and Eel River watersheds, but instead will “keep going on the path we are on, (just on a parallel track, not the same track as PG&E). Right now, our plan is to continue with our analysis of the two options for continued diversions.” 

After previously making clear that it did not intend to keep operating the old and mostly superfluous hydroelectric plant tucked away in a remote corner of inland Mendocino County, PG&E announced that its decommissioning plan for the Potter Valley Project included removing both Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam — facilities that created Lake Pillsbury while diverting a portion of the Eel River to the power plant — as well as the water-diverting tunnel itself, unless a viable alternative was submitted before August of 2023, the Eel-Russian Project group did. 

“This is all about achieving a solution that honors the needs of all the ecosystems and communities within the region,” Sonoma County Supervisor and Sonoma Water Director James Gore was quoted as saying in the press release announcing the new JPA’s proposal for modifying the Potter Valley Project’s water diversions, and Bill Whipple, president of the Round Valley Indian Tribes Tribal Council, was quoted as saying: “Our goals are to restore the Eel River watershed from its degraded condition and to restore our salmon fishery to sustainable and harvestable populations.” 

“I urge people not to get overly excited,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D — San Rafael) Wednesday when asked to respond to the decision by PG&E, explaining that “PG&E is trying to get out from under this project as quickly and as cheaply as possible — but it’s not going to be fast, and it’s not going to be cheap.” 

When asked specifically how he intends to “keep his promise to voters of creating a Two-Basin Solution which would protect the water supply that people (a current population described by McGourty as 600,000 residents living between Potter Valley and the Marin County line) have depended upon for more than 100 years, while also supporting the “extreme efforts” of groups like the Eel-Russian Project to improve habitat in the Eel River watershed for analogous fish,” Huffman said that the current water diversions will be sustained in a “fish-friendly” manner. 

“There will be fish-friendly diversions,” said Huffman, noting that he will remain an advocate for a Two-Basin Solution, and was still “intent on getting it across the finish line,” noting that the proposals for continued diversions did not have to be created in partnership with PG&E in order for them to be successful, and that he was “as confident as I have ever been” about the Two-Basin Solution becoming a reality. 

When asked how he intended to support the efforts to modify the current diversions, Huffman pointed to funding he previously secured from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which he described in a press release as a “$2 million grant to Sonoma County Water Agency meant to study a diversion from the Eel River to the Russian River that will have the least possible impact on salmon and steelhead.” 

Huffman noted in the release that he “personally advocated for this grant, which is a part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program to support the study, design and construction of collaboratively developed ecosystem restoration projects that provide widespread regional benefits and improve the health of fisheries, wildlife and aquatic habitat through restoration and improved fish passage.” 

“Now that PG&E has decided to remove (Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam), these federal funds will set us up to develop the Two-Basin Solution I have been encouraging for years,” Huffman is quoted as saying in the release. “In the face of compounding climate change impacts, dam removal and a modern diversion for water will help protect salmon and steelhead while ensuring a dependable water supply.” 

A comment requested from PG&E officials Wednesday was not available as of press time.

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

‘A SIGNIFICANT EXISTENTIAL THREAT to Us and Our Water Supply’: Mendocino County Leaders on the Eel-Russian River Diversion

“…It may include some of the items, if there is no cost to PG&E, or no delay in removing the dams. PG&E is motivated by two things: 1) it wants to minimize the risk of liability as much as possible because of so many lawsuits against the utility, and 2) it prefers to spend money on projects that are recoverable from ratepayers. If PG&E is ordered to do something by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), those costs can be passed on to ratepayers. If PG&E decides on its own to spend money helping ERPA, those costs are not recoverable.”

mendofever.com/2024/02/15/a-significant-existential-threat-to-us-and-our-water-supply-mendocino-county-leaders-on-the-eel-russian-river-diversion/

WATERLOGGED CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST. 

PG&E’s recent decision to basically ignore the Potter Valley diversion in their plans to remove two dams from the Eel River should come as a surprise to no one. Yet the Cheap Water Mafia continues to act as if it’s a surprise and locals must “unite” to ensure the continuation of the diversion of water that mostly goes to vineyards and Sonoma and Marin County water districts. As we have noted before, if the Cheap Water Mafia aka Potter Valley grape growers, had put in place market rate water fees and used them to accumulate a capital/facilities fund to develop various storage, conservation, re-direction, reduction and revision of water diversion volumes and timing, as well as for development of new sources and water rights, they would be in a much better position to survive PG&E’s dam removal plans and the transition to a new water regimen post-dam removal — not to mention the overall trends toward drought-related water reductions. (The dams are said to be structurally unsound and the diversion tunnel itself is held up by old redwood timbers.) Instead, the Cheap Water Mafia has chosen the short-sighted stance of standing by while reaping the economic benefits of their de facto water subsidies without investing in the long-term knowing that the day would come when the dams would have to go and the diversion would have to change and that it would cost money to adjust to it. For example, one relatively simple solution that could have been pursued years ago would have been to revise the diversion timing to high winter flows only (based on a minimum flow rate before diversions were triggered), and pipe/pumping limitations to ensure that diversions do not exceed a specified amount in a short time. So it’s hard to feel sympathy for the Cheap Water Mafia and their alarmist declarations combined with their veiled and vain attempts to portray themselves as victims of PG&E so they can continue the status quo and have the public finance their private water subsidy, masking the fact that they are acting in their own self-interest, not in the interest of Mendocino County and its public water needs. 

(Mark Scaramella)

2023 GRAPE CRUSH - ‘STRONG PRICING, GOOD YIELD’

The value of last year’s grape harvest in Mendocino County reached “near-record crop values,” according to an analysis of state data by Mendocino Winegrowers.

“Strong pricing and good yield both contributed to the surprising value,” the group notes in a press release this week, describing “the average price per ton, which is a blended average across all winegrape varietals, as $1,827 per ton — the highest value on record. 

“Tonnage was also strong from the 2023 crop, coming in at 71,400 tons across all Mendocino vineyards,” the release continues, adding that “the highest tonnage on record is 81,900 from 2018.” 

The numbers being analyzed from the recently completed 2023 harvest were “released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the annual Crush Report, (which has) winegrape growers in Mendocino booking $130 million in crop revenue, a 19-percent increase from the 2022 harvest.” 

As to the “most valuable” grapes in Mendocino County, the release points to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, explaining that “Pinot produced 11,100 tons valued at $38 million, whereas Chardonnay yielded 26,600 tons with a value of $37 million. Most of the county’s Pinot Noir (which saw a large year-over-year increase in tonnage of 45-percent).is grown in the prestigious Anderson Valley, whereas Chardonnay is planted equally in the county’s 12 grape-growing appellations.” 

The group describes “Frey Vineyards, a nationwide leader in organic winemaking,” as reporting yields that “were close to average. Nice acidity in the grapes and the absence of undesirable sugar spikes led to “one of the best vintages we’ve seen in a long time.” 

They also quote winemaker Hoss Milone from Hopland’s Brutocao Cellars as describing 2023 as “a unique harvest: The grapes were delayed by 2-3 weeks due to a slow start and a cooler than usual spring and summer. We saw a mix of reds and whites being harvested simultaneously. Longer hang time was needed, and cooler temperatures produced one of the best vintages seen in the last 20 years. Grape quality was at premium levels.” 

Finally, the release notes that “statewide, the winegrape crop grew to 3.65 million tons, slightly above average. However, the North Coast, which includes Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake grew to 549,000 tons, nearly 25-percent above the average tonnage for this super-region.”

REAL SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

Mowed the hay.  Raked it
To be baled.  Bucked it.  Hauled it.
Stacked it in the barn.

— Jim Luther  

SCOTT WARD (Redwood Valley):

I am supporting Carrie Shattuck for Supervisor in District 1. Carrie has run a small business, made payroll, and hired and fired employees. From what I have observed at the Board of Supervisors meetings, Carrie has no problem speaking her mind with an unvarnished honest opinion. We do not need more “cheerleading” and word salad speeches from the dais. We the citizens of this county need a no nonsense representative who can call bullshit on bullshit and hold county management and staff accountable. The First. District has always been a Farm Bureau seat. We need a change from business as usual and that change is Carrie Shattuck.

NEVER BLAME ON MALICE that which can be fully explained by stupidity.

— Hanlon’s Razor

TREVOR MOCKEL:

Election Ballots Are Being Reprinted and Remailed

As you may have heard, the Mendocino County Elections Department had a troubling error in the mailing of ballots in the 1st District, and countywide. They said through a press release issued last week that all ballots sent to 1st District voters were Republican ballots, regardless of how the voter was registered to vote. The error was on the vendor, whom is paying for the new ballots to be mailed to every voter in Mendocino County. 

I am glad that the Elections Department moved quickly on this, but I’m also cautiously watching how they go about mending the situation, given there will be two complete sets of ballots in every 1st District voters mailbox within a week of each other. 

I am monitoring this situation very closely, and will be communicating out on this issue as the situation evolves. As the only candidate endorsed by the Mendocino County Democratic Party, I will tirelessly work to ensure that all parties, and independent ballots, are delivered properly; and that fairness and access are ensured in the process of voting.

In the meantime, the campaigning goes on! My campaign had a great weekend of canvassing in Redwood Valley, and I’m looking forward to talking to more voters and to getting more yard signs out there.

CLINE’S INEXPERIENCE

Dear Editor,

Voting has already begun, and we all want the most qualified candidates for Supervisor. I am concerned about some red flags I see and would like to share them for others to consider.

I listened to Madeline Cline’s interviews on the radio, was present at the SEIU 1021 interview, and attended the Democratic and Republican meet and greet events. Ms. Cline, who was born in 1998, has been in the work force for a scant 3 or 4 years according to her Linkedin page, (which may have been taken down). She refers to herself as a “public policy expert”, with a “wealth of experience”, and claims she is the best candidate for Supervisor based on the 2-3 jobs she’s had in her short life. There is a term for this: “hu·bris” : a noun, meaning exaggerated pride or self-confidence. 

Ms. Cline is also very glib in using “county-speak” when describing issues. Her comments about the Public Health Department being just fine, also make me concerned. She claims she spoke with staff at Public Health, and no one complained about the county engaging in such poor management practices as to constitute such a toxic work environment that caused over 20 employees to leave, retire, or be fired. 

Did she speak with any of the very senior and experienced staff or former management who left? Or was she hand-fed the information the CEO wanted her to hear and then spout it back to the community? Are the newly hired, inexperienced Public Health staff even aware of what is necessary for a functioning Public Health department? 

Is Ms. Cline mature enough to recognize when people are using her for their own ends? I am glad Ms. Cline is concerned and engaged, but perhaps it would be better for this 26-year-old to gain some real experience before attempting to run the county at a time of dire consequences. 

As I said, I want the best, most qualified candidate for the job of Supervisor. What I want to see in a candidate is maturity, intelligence, and especially humility. Adam Gaska possesses these qualities and has been involved in community service longer than Ms. Cline has been on this earth. Adam is the best candidate for the job, and will make a great supervisor for the 1st district.

Julie Beardsley

Ukiah

A READER WRITES: 

I agree with the sheriff. The arrogance and cluelessness of lawmakers and politicians have led to a steady decline in every facet of life in our state and our country.

I work in the medical field and I am appalled by how pervasive the practice of prescribing opioids for pain has become. I grew up in Northern Europe where doctors refrain from overmedicating their patients. Pain is part of life just like pleasure is. Handing out opioids for every tooth extraction, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, and other common ailments is not a responsible medical practice.

While acknowledging and treating addiction as a disease is necessary, I don’t believe in coddling adults by always excusing their poor choices due to childhood trauma or miserable circumstances. Vast majority of people had traumatic experiences in their youth. 90% of the population struggle with financial, marital, work, health or other problems. We have become a nation of self-centered people. If all you think is your pain and how bad your life is, you’re unlikely to improve your circumstances. This is the best place to live on earth despite all the problems we have. Most Americans don’t realize what life is like in a war zone, a third world county, under a regime without freedom of speech or access to education. Millions die from hunger around the world while we give free food to anyone in need in Mendocino County. We live in a beautiful state with the freedom to work hard, aim higher, live healthy, serve and help others less fortunate than ourselves.

We need to fix our education and healthcare systems, but we also need to restore law and order, and prosecute criminals.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Astro is an action-packed, fun-filled, young dog who will do best in a home with folks familiar with the herding/working breed. Astro knows how to walk on leash and enjoys getting out to explore, meet people and dogs, and discover new and different surroundings. Astro will need introductions to any potential canine housemates, as he can be barky when meeting a new dog. Astro is a Shepherd X—so he’s bound to be a smarty-pants, and might be the star pupil in a canine training class. This handsome guy is 10 months old and a lively 60 pounds.

For more about Astro and all our adoptable dogs and cats, head to mendoanimalshelter.com. 

For information about adoptions, call 707-467-6453. 

Check out our Facebook Page and please share our posts! 

COMPTCHE FIBER INTERNET LAUNCH CEREMONY

This last week AT&T activated phase 1 of the Comptche Fiber Internet upgrade, making it possible for Comptche residents living along the Comptche-Ukiah Road to get internet speeds up to 5Gbps directly to their homes. To celebrate, the Comptche Broadband Committee and AT&T will host a launch ceremony on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, at 10:00 am at the Chapel of the Redwoods. Eligible residents will be able to sign up for fiber internet and have installers activate their service that afternoon.

Come on down to sign up or to discuss the state of internet services with Mendocino and industry representatives, or just to check out the church’s 300Mpbs connection. Refreshments will be available.

Chapel of the Redwoods Baptist Church

31201 Comptche Ukiah Road, Comptche, CA 95427

10am – 2pm

https://comptchebits.org/

Jim Gagnon

NOT EASY BEING GREEN

Editor:

I read your republication “Why there's no Green Party in Mendocino” from Olivia Dugan circa 2000 with great interest. Memories of my own desire to help create a viable Green Party here in Mendo; were scraped out of some dusty backroom memory banks; since the Ten Key Values align quite directly with my personal political philosophy; and we are a rural county with many left-leaning people; I thought we should be able to generate a viable political entity here locally.

So I joined the County Council around late 90s / early 2000s. There are very few political endeavors I completely regret participating in, but this is one! Dugan’s essay is spot on; the wingnuts were in fact in charge of the asylum. I thought a responsible and committed CC might change that. Of course Richard Johnson, the One True Green, aka OTG, was a huge obstacle to forming a coherent, interpersonally respectful organization. But underneath the layers of his obvious toxicity masked a layer of people who would much rather posture than do the hard work of building a political party. 

I gradually began to realize the fruitlessness of my endeavors, which came to a focal point in 2006, when Els Cooperrider ran for Fifth District Supervisor against incumbent David Colfax. I was thrilled and believed we had a viable candidate to organize around when my fellow CC members failed to coalesce around Els for varying reasons that I viewed as lame. I resigned my position and went to work for Els, gradually becoming her informal campaign manager. 

Although we gave Colfax a good push, he won in the primary narrowly avoiding a fall run off. Els eventually rewarded me with a $100 check and a free meal at the Ukiah Brewing Company any time I was in town, which I took her up on many times until some years later when my ethics kicked in and I stopped.

I stayed a registered Green myself, again for the sole reason that its Ten Key Values aligned with my outlook. I stayed a Green until when I declared my own candidacy for the Fifth district. I was advised by Els and others that many Dems would never ever vote for a Green.

Since I saw no reason to lose votes over an issue that I considered insignificant and a label did not change who I was, and the temporary ascendancy of Bernie Sanders (before the corporatists whipped him back into line) gave some moral cover; I became a Dem.

Well that’s all for now. As it’s said to not speak ill of the dead, and some of the still-living who I’ve salvaged affectionate relationships with, so I don’t wish to say more.

But, perhaps someday if the stars align correctly; I might don an infantry helmet and meet you guys in your Boonville Bunker; and share a few more stories that will solicit more eye rolls. 

Until whenever, Cheers! 

Chris Skyhawk

Fort Bragg

PS. About the OTG being dead, I’m sure it’s OK to speak ill of him, as he would wear it as a badge of honor!

PPS. I fully realize this letter may be of no interest to your readership. This is just what happens when you become an OG!

ED NOTES

WE REMEMBER the outrageous story back in 2000 in the wake of the gift of public funds to corporate timber raider Charles Hurwitz and his sweetheart deal selling about 7,500 acres of Pacific Lumber timber to the feds and the state for almost half-a-billion dollars. Not long after the deal engineered by Diane Feinstein and a few high-profile Democrats alond with some complicit enviro groups with backroom assistance from Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum, a friend of Hurwitz, a Republican majority congressional committee convened hearings to determine if Hurwitz was “coerced” into selling Headwaters! That bizarre allegation arose from the Republican-dominated House Resources Committee chaired by Don Young of Alaska, one of Congress's lead errand boys for resource-based corporations. 

THE ALLEGED persecution of poor little Chuck, the billionaire, goes like this: Because the FDIC and the Treasury Department suggested that Hurwitz should at least consider swapping Headwaters for the $1.6 billion he aleady owed the taxpayers when he stripped his federally-guaranteed savings and loans businesses of at least that much in Texas back in 1988, Hurwitz may have been unfairly pressured to sell off the 7,500 aces of Headwaters he finally sold off for about double their true value. The set-aside 7,500-acre Headwaters represented less than 20% of what remained of greater Headwaters Forest's 40,000 acres, as determined by who knows who among professional Humboldt County tree savers.

HURWITZ owned some 200,000 acres of Humboldt County. He had previously split up Pacific Lumber into three entities so that he could saddle Headwater forest land with financial liabilities and separate them from the Pacific Lumber-owned city of Scotia and the company headquarters for stock market benefits. He snagged them originally through a junk bond-financed takeover of the family-owned Pacific Lumber Company, a hundred-year-old Humboldt County institution legendary for its benign and truly sustainable harvest and labor policies. Upon acquisition of PL's under-valued holdings, in 1988, Hurwitz appeared in Scotia, PL's cozy little company town, to laugh in the faces of PL workers declaring, “You know the Golden Rule, don't you? He who has the gold, rules.” Hurwitz twirled his moustache, helped himself to the workers' pension fund — since partially reinstated after a long legal battle — and commenced an alarming blitz on PL's heretofore sustained yield trees. 

BIG CHUCK'S hurry-up logging, with its attendant environmental atrocities, was necessary to pay off his fellow buzzards who held the hurry-up high-interest junk bonds via which Hurwitz had raised the money in a hostile takeover to buy up Pacific Lumber. Hurwitz had arranged the junk bond purchase of PL with other legendary fiscal bunco artists, including the famous Wall Street crook, Michael Milken. Milken plead guilty to securities fraud in 1989 and eventually pardoned by fellow fraudster Donald Trump in February of 2020.

HURWITZ'S STARTLING RAPACITY mobilized the Northcoast's large cadre of resident tree-huggers. Hurwitz eventually socked his old friend, the American taxpayer, for $490 mil for the 7,500 acres of Headwaters Forest in 1998 in a deal that saw the Northcoast resident tree-huggers signed over negotiations for Hurwitz's Headwaters to Clinton Democrats Dianne Feinstein and John Garamendi. Mr. Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blum, and Hurwitz were old biz buds, a fact the Northcoast's star-struck environmentalists didn't let stand in the way of their capitulation to the Clintonoids. 

UNHAPPY with what they had the bare-balled hypocrisy to subsequently denounce as the “sell-out of Headwaters” by the Democrats — the enviros said they wanted 40,000 acres, not a mere 7,500. And they said they didn't like getting so few acres in exchange for so much tax money to Hurwitz — almost a half-billion more dollars flew off to Texas, thanks to Feinstein, the Democrats, and a dozen or so self-important Northcoast enviros who always prefer a switch to a fight. Many of those same environmentalists who gave the Democrats responsibility for Headwaters and Hurwitz went on to derive their livelihoods from “saving” the rest of Headwaters, their original capitulation of a deal having resulted in a jobs program for the same dozen or so under-employed, up-from-hippie college grads who live in the Garberville-Redway area. 

BUT WITH HURWITZ'S old S&L bills from 1988 still due and payable, it seems obvious that Congressman Young's inquiries alleging a government-enviro conspiracy against the poor little Houston rich boy were aimed at getting Hurwitz a no-cost pardon for his '88 S&L heists. 

* * *

WE STILL SEE QUITE A FEW “false ID” bookings in the Sheriff’s log. The problem has been building up for decades. Our law enforcement sources tell us that there are so many people with phony ID's these days cops frequently disregard the names suspects give them, preferring instead to ID people via a federally-maintained fingerprint bank. Often a perp will offer the ID of a relative, in addition to the more familiar purchased fake. To this day, Mendoland has to figure out who's who the old-fashioned way — vehicle registration, in-the-act apprehensions, informed suspicion of known familiar subjects, on-site interrogatories, and luck. Former Anderson Valley resident Deputy keith Squires once nabbed a guy in Boonville for a minor violation of some kind who turned out to be wanted for murder in Los Angeles. When Squires ran a warrant check on the man, dispatch reported back that the deputy was looking at a killer who was assumed to be “armed and dangerous.” Squires asked the man if he'd ever killed anybody in LA. “Yeah, that's me,” the man replied, as casually as if he was identifying himself in a photo of a birthday party. Went along like a lamb, the deputy said.

* * *

THE HISTORY of Mendocino County often ranges from vague to false to self-serving to non-existent, but every once in a while a reference to the very old days pops up to remind us how little we know about the people who came before us. From a recent Mendocino Beacon's Old Time Notes: “November 3, 1900. Capitola, known to every one in the country round about as ‘Old Captain,’ the oldest Indian at the rancheria near Manchester, died on Thursday of last week and was buried on Saturday at the Indian burying ground. Death was caused by extreme old age. The deceased was well known to everyone in and about Point Arena, as he has been there as long as the oldest settler can remember. It is said he was 110 years of age at the time of his death, he himself stating that he had papers to show that he was baptized at the old Catholic Indian mission near San Jose 80 years ago, and was at that time thirty years of age.”

THE MOST ACCESSIBLE mini-history of Capitola's time I've read is Blaise Cendrar's recreated life of John Sutter of Sutter's Mill and the Gold Rush called, “Gold: Being the Marvelous History of General John Augustus Sutter.” The book is sadly (and unaccountably) out of print, but I've seen it in used book stores for less than $10, and worth a hundred times that because it's enthralling front to back with the truth ringing out from every page, not to get too carried away here by a riveting little history. How accurate as history it is is hard to say, but fiction is often more true to the facts than the facts are with the wrong hand on the pen. I also recommend Oakley Hall's wonderful (and still available for sale and in libraries) novel, “Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades,” which is set in the San Francisco of the last part of the last century and the first part of this one. Hall's novel convincingly evokes both the town and the times, and contains some memorable true-to-life portraits of the Robber Barons and their robberies, too. While we're talking books, I've also recently enjoyed “The Nature of Generosity” by William Kittredge, a philosophical travelogue, I suppose it could be characterized without unfairly diminishing what is a unique attempt (in my admittedly limited experience) to tie the meaning of Kittredge's experience as an American to the ongoing assault on our topography. Lots of other people have tried to do what Kittredge does here, but this is the best try I've read. Kittredge is a very good writer, and this is a very good book, which hopefully won't get lost in the annual tonnage of pure prose dreck. Rebecca Solnit's and Susan Schwartzenberg's "Hollow City: The Seige of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism” tracks in Solnit's strong text and Schwartzenberg's vivid photographs the evisceration of San Francisco by people with lots more money than affection for what has been until not so long ago an affordable urban refuge for this country's talented oddballs. (“I wasn't born in SF but I got here as fast as I could,” is a t-shirt inscription which nicely sums up the prevailing sentiment among lots of Frisco refugees. Having arrived in The City from Honolulu in 1941 as a pint-sized oddball, I've seen it change wholesale now three times, and until now, always for the better.) Solnit intelligently laments what she and every other sentient person who thinks of The City as home or as a second home the destruction of the last great place in the country, but she does it systematically without a lot of romantic whining. There it goes, folks, as we meet here today, sailing out to sea beyond the Golden Gate and above the fog, the disproportionate personalities who were once snug in a proportionate city now half way disappeared from an increasingly soul-free City playground as sterile and as stupid as the mindless monied techies and hangers-on who are destroying it. I also liked Ms. Solnit's book called “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” although I thought it got a little too unreadably highbrow in parts.

HIGHWAY 101 IN THE 1950s

by Marshall Newman

The mind can flash back from the present to the past in the blink of an eye. That happened to me recently on a trip to Geyserville to lunch with old friends. As I drove north on Highway 101, I suddenly could see in my mind’s eye how the highway looked in 1957 and 1958, the years we “commuted” to my parent’s summer camp near Philo. 

We did not make the trip every weekend, but we made it frequently in autumn, winter and spring during those two years. If the trip to Anderson Valley from the Bay Area seems long – timewise - today, it was definitely longer back then. The Highway 101 of that era was one reason the trip took a while: the other was the fact that we were a family of six – including four children under 14 - crammed into a 1952 DeSoto station wagon. 

Highway 101 north of San Francisco was known as the Redwood Highway even then. The name was coined in 1921 to promote road trips to the region. Tourism in redwood country was modest until the 1930s, when the Golden Gate Bridge opened; but even through the 1950s, it was a stretch to call Highway 101 a true highway. 

San Rafael was the starting point for our trips on Highway 101, since we lived nearby. The elevated portion of Highway 101 there was already in place and it was a four-lane highway through Marin and the southernmost portion of Sonoma County, but with a very narrow divider. In early 1957, the highway still went through downtown Petaluma. Later that year, a four-lane extension to the east – with an elevated bridge over the Petaluma River – bypassed the town.

North of Petaluma, my brother remembers Highway 101 as a two-lane road that passed through Penngrove and Cotati in 1957. I remember it being four lanes: essentially the current highway. A photograph from 1958 shows Highway 101 as four lanes going over the hill near Cotati and another shows it as four lanes passing Rohnert Park, a former pear orchard in the first stage of suburban development.

Whichever is true, Highway 101 was already a four lane freeway through Santa Rosa, paralleling Santa Rosa Avenue to the south of downtown and Mendocino Avenue to the north. One landmark for us was a sign facing the highway that advertised a secondhand store on Santa Rosa Avenue, “We buy junk but sell antiques.” We often pulled off the freeway to refuel at a gas station on Third Street. The owner, a Mr. Smith, restored vintage cars in his spare time and kept one in the service bay. During those early trips, the car was a 1912 Elmore. 

Highway 101 as a four-lane freeway ended just north of Santa Rosa near the red Fountaingrove Round Barn, which burned in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. From there, Highway 101 was two lanes, essentially following same route as the current Old Redwood Highway. My memories of the drive between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg include a gun smith shop on the left near where downtown Windsor is now, Kleist’s Heidelberg, a roadside restaurant on the right featuring German food and weekend polka dancing, and a metal railway overpass that spanned the road diagonally. Approaching Healdsburg, there was a prune dryer, the steel truss Healdsburg Memorial Bridge and – as we made the turn into town – a large produce stand on the right. Prune plum orchards, pastures and a few vineyards flanked the highway almost the entire way. 

Once the highway passed the lumber mill on the left just north of Healdsburg, roadside vineyards became more prevalent. The Salvation Army’s Lytton Springs thrift store complex beckoned every time we drove by, but we rarely stopped. In downtown Geyserville there was Catelli’s the Rex, with Italian food, Bosworth & Son Mercantile and Lampson Tractor, which became our “go to” for tractor parts. 

One place we almost always stopped was Italian Swiss Colony Winery near Asti. Back then the Italian Swiss Colony Tasting Room was Sonoma County’s biggest tourist attraction. My parents often enjoyed a taste of wine, while we Newman kids would head for the bathrooms and the tub of free cookies.

Near the southern edge of Cloverdale, Highway 101 went under the massive wooden Kelly Road overpass, which enabled logs to be transported from the forests to the west – Kelly Road ran all the way to the coast near Annapolis – directly to the mill just north of Asti. In Cloverdale, we would occasionally stop at the Owl Café near the south end of town or the drive-in (the Hi-Fi?) near the north end. I don’t recall ever stopping at Pick’s Drive-In, though it certainly was in business back then. The Cloverdale Citrus Fair grounds looked impressive back then, at least to these young eyes. Now hemmed in by development, it looks a bit less impressive. 

From Cloverdale, it was a short uphill to the intersection of Highway 101 and Highway 128. For us Newmans, it was a welcome sight, for it meant we were only an hour away from our journey’s end. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, February 17, 2024

THAYNE ABRAHAM, White City, Oregon/Ukiah. DUI.

LETICIA ARMENDARIZ, Covelo. DUI, leaving scene of accident resulting in property damage.

DIEGO MARTINEZ-CRUZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI, no license.

DEREK PEHRSON, Redding/Ukiah. Grand theft, duplication of keys to public building.

JOSE RAMIREZ, Ukiah. Parole violation.

GABRIEL RAY JR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. 

NOT IDENTIFIED AS JIVANMUKTA’S PANINI

Warmest spiritual greetings, 

Following Friday's Lunar New Year celebration at the Ukiah library, featuring performances by students from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, ambled up the block to the Ukiah Brewing Company for a couple of microbrews during the Happy Hour, plus a shot o' Laphroaig, and the prime rib dinner. Fully satisfied, dropped by Safeway for nosh items for late night, and then slept soundly until the 8 AM lights went on at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center. After morning ablutions, walked over to the Express Mart (which is managed by a family of Nepalese Saivites), and reinvested the $2 won by picking new MegaMillions numbers. Then off to the Ukiah Food Co-op in a light rain for the Italian panini breakfast sandwich and a cup of Songbird Guatemalan coffee. Sat in the co-op cafe sipping coffee and watching the rain until it let up, then strode on to the library. Presently sitting in front of public computer #2. Not identified with the body. Not identified with the mind. Am available for frontline peace&justice and radical environmental direct action. Feel free to make contact if you are seriously interested in doing anything. Jivanmuktas might as well help, because there is nothing else to do here! Peaceout. 

Craig Louis Stehr

MEMO OF THE AIR: Abaddon's bolero.

“The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard, each in its ordered place.”

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-02-16) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): http://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0580

This show began with the murderously arch Iron Empress Blog of Eleanor Cooney (look her up on Amazon), then there’s a chapter or so each from half a dozen other local writer’s books. There are announcements and conflicts and notices of events and sales, and stories and poems and art and science, history and pornography, quips and queefs and wanton wiles, etc., in short, a feast, all night long, like they used to do in the booths of my grandparents’ Italian restaurant in L.A. when I was little. That’s what I guess I’ve been attempting to recreate: the grownups’ voices in the other room while I sat on the floor in the kitchen making cities and dinosaurs and rocketships out of old pizza dough. And after that the grownups’ voices from the kitchen of the house, rising and falling and laughing and smoking cigarets and drinking coffee like waves on a beach while I fell asleep on a book in my little bed.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Trio Mandili – Kakhuri. (via b3ta) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDK9KOfknTw

Harpist uses odd electronics to make music for video games. They ship her random gizmos and she uses them with guitar pedals and other things she’s collected. She reminds me, in looks and voice and manner, of the young space-techie character Five, in the teevee show Dark Matter, actress Jodelle Ferland who, years before that, played Jeliza-Rose in Terry Gilliam’s Tideland, a dark, weird film about a little girl taken by her heroin junkie washed-up rock-and-roller father (Jeff Bridges) to his bleak childhood Texas prairie home in the middle of nowhere when her mother ODs. Whereupon /he/ ODs and gradually mummifies in a chair, leaving Rose to go quietly increasingly mad. That was what Terry Gilliam, of quirky comic Brazil and Time Bandits and Adventures of Baron Munchausen fame, made when they gave him the money and let him work without interference for a change. It didn’t do well, critics savaged it, but I was rapt from aborted Viking funeral in hotel room to explosive midnight passenger train wreck; I think Tideland is a work of genius. https://theawesomer.com/ridiculous-music-tech/730313/

The all-new cutting-edge-tech rotary-dial telephone that will soon come to your town and put Edna out of work. The phone switchboard is all she has, now that Josiah is gone and her poor son Tom was killed overseas. Can’t they wait just two years? Just a year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p45T7U5oi9Q

And, “Speed, the life’s blood of the newspaper! Speed, speed, speed! Get the news to the newspaper, get the papers on the street!” How wire-photos work. Also, count all those great jobs, that you could support a family and buy a house working at. https://laughingsquid.com/1930s-wirephoto-technology/

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

STATE DEPARTMENT THREATENS CONGRESS OVER CENSORSHIP PROGRAMS

by Matt Taibbi

A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it's spending taxpayer money.

“You can look, but don’t touch!”

The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:

The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”

A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”

The culprit was the Global Engagement Center, a little-known State Department entity created in Barack Obama’s last year in office and a surprise focus of Twitter Files reporting. The GEC grew out of a counter-terrorism agency called the CSCC and has a mission to “counter” any messaging, foreign or domestic as it turns out, that they see as “undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States.” The GEC-funded GDI rated ten conservative sites as most “risky” and put the Examiner on its “exclusion” list, while its ten sites rated at the “lowest level of disinformation” included Buzzfeed, which famously published the Steele Dossier knowing it contained errors and is now out of business.

In an effort to find out what other ventures GEC was funding — an absurd 36 of 39 2018 contractors were redacted even in an Inspector General’s report — the House Small Business Committee wrote the State Department last June asking for basic information about where the public’s money was being spent. State and GEC stalled until December 3 of last year, when it finally produced a partial list of recipients. Although House Republicans asked for an “unredacted list of all GEC grant recipients and associated award numbers” from 2019 through the current year, the list the Committee received was missing “dozens” of contractors, including some listed on USASpending.com.

The Examiner and Kaminsky subsequently wrote an article slamming GEC for sending “incomplete” records of the censorship investigation, in the process including links to a “snippet” of the GEC’s contractors:

In response to the outrage of this disclosure, the State Department sent its letter threatening in camera sessions until it gets a better “understanding” of how the Committee will use its “sensitive” information. That’s Beltway-ese for “We wouldn’t mind knowing the Examiner’s sources.”

About that: the State letter wrote that the Examiner’s records were “reportedly obtained from the Committee,” and included a footnote and a link to a Kaminsky story, implying that the Examiner reported that it got the records from the Committee. But the paper said nothing about the source of the documents, which as anyone who’s ever covered these types of stories knows, could have come from any number of places. It’s a small but revealing detail about current petulance levels at State.

“Anti-disinformation” work is not exactly hypersonic missile construction. There’s no legitimate reason for it to be kept from the public, especially since it’s increasingly clear its programs target American media companies and American media consumers, seemingly in violation of the State Department’s mission. The requested information is also not classified, making the delays and tantrums more ridiculous.

There are simply too many agencies that have adopted the attitude that the entire federal government is one giant intelligence service, entitled to secret budgeting and an oversight-free existence. They need pushback on this score and have at last started to get it. Thanks in significant part to the Examiner as well as lawsuits by The Federalist, Daily Wire, and Consortium News, the latest National Defense Authorization Act included for the first time a provision banning the Pentagon from using “any advertiser for recruitment that uses biased censorship entities like NewsGuard and GDI,” as a congressional spokesperson put it in December. We’ll see how it pans out, but congress withholding money for domestic spy programs is at least a possible solution, now in play.

Perhaps it’s time for the State Department to receive a similar wake-up call. If GEC wants to put conditions on disclosure, can we put conditions on paying taxes? 

JULIAN ASSANGE’S FINAL APPEAL

Julian Assange will make his final appeal this week to the British courts to avoid extradition. If he is extradited it is the death of investigations into the inner workings of power by the press.

by Chris Hedges

LONDON — If Julian Assange is denied permission to appeal his extradition to the United States before a panel of two judges at the High Court in London this week, he will have no recourse left within the British legal system. His lawyers can ask the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is far from certain that the British court will agree. It may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.

The nearly 15-year-long persecution of Julian, which has taken a heavy toll on his physical and psychological health, is done in the name of extradition to the U.S. where he would stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a potential sentence of 170 years.

Julian’s “crime” is that he published classified documents, internal messages, reports and videos from the U.S. government and U.S. military in 2010, which were provided by U.S. army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. This vast trove of material revealed massacres of civilians, torture, assassinations, the list of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the conditions they were subjected to, as well as the Rules of Engagement in Iraq. Those who perpetrated these crimes — including the U.S. helicopter pilots who gunned down two Reuters journalists and 10 other civilians and severely injured two children, all captured in the Collateral Murder video — have never been prosecuted.

Julian exposed what the U.S. empire seeks to airbrush out of history.

Julian’s persecution is an ominous message to the rest of us. Defy the U.S. imperium, expose its crimes, and no matter who you are, no matter what country you come from, no matter where you live, you will be hunted down and brought to the U.S. to spend the rest of your life in one of the harshest prison systems on earth. If Julian is found guilty it will mean the death of investigative journalism into the inner workings of state power. To possess, much less publish, classified material — as I did when I was a reporter for The New York Times — will be criminalized. And that is the point, one understood by The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País and The Guardian, who issued a joint letter calling on the U.S. to drop the charges against him.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other federal lawmakers voted on Thursday for the United States and Britain to end Julian’s incarceration, noting that it stemmed from him “doing his job as a journalist” to reveal “evidence of misconduct by the U.S.”

The legal case against Julian, which I have covered from the beginning and will cover again in London this week, has a bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland quality, where judges and lawyers speak in solemn tones about law and justice while making a mockery of the most basic tenants of civil liberties and jurisprudence.

How can hearings go forward when the Spanish security firm at the Ecuadorian Embassy, UC Global, where Julian sought refuge for seven years, provided videotaped surveillance of meetings between Julian and his lawyers to the CIA, eviscerating attorney-client privilege? This alone should have seen the case thrown out of court.

How can the Ecuadorian government led by Lenin Moreno violate international law by rescinding Julian’s asylum status and permit London Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian Embassy — sovereign territory of Ecuador — to carry Julian to a waiting police van?

Why did the courts accept the prosecution’s charge that Julian is not a legitimate journalist?

Why did the United States and Britain ignore Article 4 of their Extradition Treaty that prohibits extradition for political offenses?

How is the case against Julian allowed to go ahead after the key witness for the United States, Sigurdur Thordarson - a convicted fraudster and pedophile - admitted to fabricating the accusations he made against Julian?

How can Julian, an Australian citizen, be charged under the U.S. Espionage Act when he did not engage in espionage and wasn’t based in the U.S when he received the leaked documents?

Why are the British courts permitting Julian to be extradited to the U.S. when the CIA — in addition to putting Julian under 24-hour video and digital surveillance while in the Ecuadorian Embassy — considered kidnapping and assassinating him, plans that included a potential shoot-out on the streets of London with involvement by the Metropolitan Police?

How can Julian be condemned as a publisher when he did not, as Daniel Ellsberg did, obtain and leak the classified documents he published?

Why is the U.S. government not charging the publisher of The New York Times or The Guardian with espionage for publishing the same leaked material in partnership with WikiLeaks?

Why is Julian being held in isolation in a high-security prison without trial for nearly five years when his only technical violation of the law is breaching bail conditions when he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy? Normally this would entail a fine.

Why was he denied bail after he was sent to HM Prison Belmarsh?

If Julian is extradited, his judicial lynching will get worse. His defense will be stymied by U.S. anti-terrorism laws, including the Espionage Act and Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). He will continue being blocked from speaking to the public — except on a rare occasion — and being released on bail. He will be tried in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia where most espionage cases have been won by the U.S. government. That the jury pool is largely drawn from those who work for or have friends and relatives who work for the CIA, and other national security agencies that are headquartered not far from the court, no doubt contributes to this string of court decisions.

The British courts, from the inception, have made the case notoriously difficult to cover, severely limiting seats in the courtroom, providing video links that have been faulty, and in the case of the hearing this week, prohibiting anyone outside of England and Wales, including journalists who had previously covered the hearings, from accessing a link to what are supposed to be public proceedings.

As usual, we are not informed about schedules or timetables. Will the court render a decision at the end of the two-day hearing on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21? Or will it wait weeks, even months, to render a ruling as it has previously? Will it permit the ECtHR to hear the case or immediately railroad Julian to the U.S.? I have my doubts about the High Court passing the case to the ECtHR, given that the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, which created the ECtHR, along with their Commissioner for Human Rights, oppose Julian’s “detention, extradition and prosecution” because it represents “a dangerous precedent for journalists.” Will the court honor Julian’s request to be present in the hearing, or will he be forced to remain in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh in Thamesmead, south east London, as has also happened before? No one is able to tell us.

Julian was saved from extradition in January 2021 when District Judge Vanessa Baraitser at Westminster Magistrates’ Court refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she found that there was a “substantial risk” Julian would commit suicide due to the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system. But this was a slim thread. The judge accepted all the charges leveled by the U.S. against Julian as being filed in good faith. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the freedom of the press.

Baraitser’s decision was overturned after the U.S. government appealed to the High Court in London. Although the High Court accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial risk” of suicide if he was subjected to certain conditions within a U.S. prison, it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Julian would be treated well.

The U.S. government claimed in the diplomatic note that its assurances “entirely answer the concerns which caused the judge [in the lower court] to discharge Mr. Assange.” The “assurances” state that Julian will not be subject to SAMs. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition. They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.

It sounds reassuring. But it is part of the cynical judicial pantomime that characterizes Julian’s persecution.

No one is held pre-trial in ADX Florence. ADX Florence is also not the only supermax prison in the U.S. where Julian can be imprisoned. He could be placed in one of our other Guantanamo-like facilities in a Communications Management Unit (CMU). CMUs are highly restrictive units that replicate the near total isolation imposed by SAMs. The “assurances” are not legally binding. All come with escape clauses.

Should Julian do “something subsequent to the offering of these assurances that meets the tests for the imposition of SAMs or designation to ADX” he will, the court conceded, be subject to these harsher forms of control. If Australia does not request a transfer it “cannot be a cause for criticism of the USA, or a reason for regarding the assurances as inadequate to meet the judge’s concerns,” the ruling reads. And even if that were not the case, it would take Julian 10 to 15 years to appeal his sentence up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would be more than enough time to destroy him psychologically and physically. Amnesty International said the “assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.”

Julian’s lawyers will attempt to convince two High Court judges to grant him permission to appeal a number of the arguments against extradition which Judge Baraitser dismissed in January 2021. His lawyers, if the appeal is granted, will argue that prosecuting Julian for his journalistic activity represents a “grave violation” of his right to free speech; that Julian is being prosecuted for his political opinions, something which the U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty does not allow; that Julian is charged with “pure political offenses” and the U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty prohibits extradition under such circumstances; that Julian should not be extradited to face prosecution where the Espionage Act “is being extended in an unprecedented and unforeseeable way”; that the charges could be amended resulting in Julian facing the death penalty; and that Julian will not receive a fair trial in the U.S. They are also asking for the right to introduce new evidence about CIA plans to kidnap and assassinate Julian.

If the High Court grants Julian permission to appeal, a further hearing will be scheduled during which time he will argue his appeal grounds. If the High Court refuses to grant Julian permission to appeal, the only option left is to appeal to the ECtHR. If he is unable to take his case to the ECtHR he will be extradiated to the U.S.

The decision to seek Julian’s extradition, contemplated by Barack Obama’s administration, was pursued by Donald Trump’s administration following WikiLeaks’ publication of the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the CIA’s cyberwarfare programs, including those designed to monitor and take control of cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones.

The Democratic Party leadership became as bloodthirsty as the Republicans following WikiLeaks’ publishing of tens of thousands of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials, including those of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman during the 2016 presidential election.

The Podesta emails exposed that Clinton and other members of Obama’s administration knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar — which had both donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation — were major funders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They revealed transcripts of three private talks Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs — for which she was paid $675,000 — a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe. Clinton was seen in the emails telling the financial elites that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best positioned to manage the economy, a statement that contradicted her campaign promises of financial reform. They exposed the Clinton campaign’s self-described “Pied Piper” strategy which used their press contacts to influence Republican primaries by “elevating” what they called “more extreme candidates,” to ensure Trump or Ted Cruz won their party’s nomination. They exposed Clinton’s advance knowledge of questions in a primary debate. The emails also exposed Clinton as one of the architects of the war and destruction of Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.

Journalists can argue that this information, like the war logs, should have remained secret. But if they do, they can’t call themselves journalists.

The Democratic leadership, which attempted to blame Russia for its election loss to Trump — in what became known as Russiagate — charged that the Podesta emails and the DNC leaks were obtained by Russian government hackers, although an investigation headed by Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, “did not develop sufficient admissible evidence that WikiLeaks knew of — or even was willfully blind to” any alleged hacking by the Russian state.

Julian is persecuted because he provided the public with the most important information about U.S. government crimes and mendacity since the release of the Pentagon Papers. Like all great journalists, he was nonpartisan. His target was power.

He made public the killing of nearly 700 civilians who had approached too closely to U.S. convoys and checkpoints, including pregnant women, the blind and deaf, and at least 30 children.

He made public the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians and the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 to 89, at Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

He showed us that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the U.K., spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords.

He exposed that Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA backed the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing him with a murderous and corrupt military regime.

He revealed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians.

No other contemporary journalist has come close to matching his revelations.

Julian is the first. We are next.

(chrishedges.substack.com)