Mendocino County Today: Monday, Feb. 19, 2024

Wind/Rain | Bragg Playground | Angel Missing | Floodgate Renaissance | AVUSD News | Housing Fundraiser | Water Future | Estuary Sky | AV Events | Last Whistle | Western Swordfern | Dusty Palace | Forest Talk | Sports Coping | Yesterday's Catch | Bridge Robbery | Groucho Sketch | Measure A | Lucas Museum | Prop 1 | Abe Shreds | Autocratic Empire | Paper Doll | Propaganda World | Daily Specials | Vlad & Tuck | Picasso 1956

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Yorkville 1.72" - Boonville 1.45" - Willits 1.31" - Ukiah 1.18" - Covelo 1.15" - Hopland 1.15" - Laytonville 1.04" - Leggett 1.00"

HIGH WIND WARNING until Feb. 19, 10pm

FLOOD WATCH until Feb. 20, 9am

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS today will bring gusty winds and locally heavy rain to the area through this evening. Showers will continue on Tuesday with lighter winds and lighter rainfall. Wednesday showers are expected to taper off and dry weather is expected Thursday. Occasional light rain is possible Friday and into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It's a mostly cloudy President's Day with 50F & .76" more rain collected. Windy with showers, rain & thunderstorms as today is advertised to be the strongest day of the systems. More showers & thunder for tomorrow then looking at the 10 day chart we see off & on rains for the future.

WHERE’S ANGEL?

The California Highway Patrol has issued a statewide Feather Alert associated with the missing 24-year-old Ukiah man Angel Murguia-Martinez.

California's Feather Alert notification system came into effect in January 2023 and is designed to "provide immediate information to the public to aid in the swift recovery of missing indigenous persons."

Murguia-Martinez's sister-in-law Chelsie Martinez told Angel is a member of the Hopland Band of the Pomo Indians.

Murguia-Martinez went missing around midnight on February 14, 2024, from his home in Ukiah on the 700 block of Village Circle. On a seemingly normal night, he left after dinner, despite her objections. Concern grew when the family found a "suicide note" and discovered a missing firearm. Murguia left with only a 9mm pistol and his phone, turning it off immediately. Described as a "homebody," his destination is unknown, and no one has heard from him since.

A poster published by CHP indicates the Feather Alert was activated by the agency's Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center on behalf of the Ukiah Police Department.

We have reached out to the Ukiah Police Department for the latest developments on their investigation into Murguia-Martinez. Lieutenant Jason Chapman told us he would provide a statement this afternoon after debriefing with patrol staff about the case thus far.

Angel Murguia is 5′ 8″ and 250 pounds. He has long brown hair, green eyes, and always wears black frame glasses. Chelsie said he was last seen wearing a black zip hoodie, black pants, black boots, and a gray hat.

If you know anything about his whereabouts, contact UPD immediately at (707) 463-6262.

MAKING THE FLOODGATE GREAT AGAIN

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

Love and kindness were abundant this week as children celebrated Valentine’s Day. The festivities included a sit down lunch at preschool and elementary celebrations, and hallway deliveries were adding excitement to the day at the high school with students sending flowers and secret teddy bears for class fundraisers.

At the elementary school, don’t miss Posole & Pajamas Family Reading Night this Thursday night at 5:30. This is a great family event and you can sign up by calling the office. Join the evening to talk about reading at home, receive a free book, and enjoy some yummy Posole to boot.

A shout out to the Junior and Senior high school leadership classes led by Beth Swehla and Alexys Bautista. As part of our LCAP engagement, I went into the classes and conducted a listening session where the students generated numerous ideas to improve their school experience, the teachers’ experience, and the parent/guardian experience. Their thoughtful ideas, including items such as teacher housing, citizenship support for their families, and an idea such as a “mat” room for cheer and wrestling were terrific. Whenever I do activities like this, I'm always grateful for the ideas that come up. These are thoughtful kids!  Adults and staff from both sites are invited to an LCAP session on Thursday at 3:30 at the high school. Here are the links to the draft LCAP. We are always grateful for as much input as possible.

Presentation on LCAP

LCAP details

If the meeting is not convenient, here is a link to the Healthy Kids Parent/Guardian Survey. This is an important five minute survey that we use to gauge school climate. You can change it to Spanish on the second window of the survey.

Elementary Parent/Guardian Survey

Anderson Valley Junior Senior High School Parent Survey

A second shout out this week to Gabriela Frank and her academy musicians, Shane Cook, and Dustin Carlson for the music program that is happening at both sites. We are really enjoying their energy and enthusiasm to teach students music fundamentals and engage them in the joy of musicianship. I hear happy rumors that some of them may be performing soon.

I am grateful to the Board for approving  the new flooring for the elementary hallways, the new fence, and the parking lot resurfacing at the elementary.  These improvements will be scheduled for June. We are awaiting receipt of plan comments for the kitchen remodel at the elementary school.  Staging meetings for the June remodel at the high school are underway this week.  Transformation is underway!

Looking forward to PLP week March 4-8.  Please remember no school on Monday in honor of Presidents’ Day. 

Stay safe and enjoy your holiday!

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

AV HOUSING ASSOCIATION WINTER FUNDRAISER for their Tiny Home Project will be Saturday February 24, 6-9pm at Weatherborne Winery, 8750 Philo School Rd., Philo, CA 95466. 

RSVP on-line at: https://www.andersonvalleyhousing.org/events/winter-fundraiser or by Phone: 707 895-3525.

ADAM GASKA:

RE: PG&E Drops Diversion Options And Waterlogged Chickens Coming Home To Roost

I agree that it was poor planning to not budget in more money for infrastructure improvements that would be funded through increased water rates these last few decades. The water was cheap and ratepayers could have shouldered slightly higher rates so we could invest in infrastructure. Could’ve, should’ve — but didn’t.

The idea was that the transition from decommissioning to new infrastructure would be smooth and FERC would remain the lead regulatory agency. That is the biggest change, that FERC will not be the lead agency. Decommissioning will continue as was planned.

Now we need a different lead agency to handle the water right and appropriation. That likely will be the SWRCB. Huffman says not to worry but neither he nor the governor has put forward a clear plan on how we will get to that outcome, who is responsible for what, and a timeline.

That has me worried. I don’t like getting piecemeal funding for studies or other pieces of the puzzle that need to fall into place for us to move forward. Looking at how slow government generally moves, this will not be a smooth process transitioning from dam decommissioning to installation of new infrastructure. This means there will be an interruption in diversions which will affect water supplies. If this coincides with drought, it could be bad. There is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put in place that will also take time and money. We need stronger leadership to make sure everything falls into place.

ANDERSON VALLEY EVENTS

Tai Chi Class
Mon 02 / 19 / 2024 at 10:00 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415

AV Village Walking Group - all welcome
Tue 02 / 20 / 2024 at 9:00 AM
Where: Meet at the Community Park (near the AV Health Center)

Senior Center Lunch
Tue 02 / 20 / 2024 at 12:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415

AV Library Open
Tue 02 / 20 / 2024 at 1:00 PM
Where: Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, 14400 Highway 128, Boonville, CA 95415

Moving to the Groove
Tue 02 / 20 / 2024 at 1:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville

More here: https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/index_list

JAY MCMARTIN-ROSENQUIST:

I want to bring Ken Newman’s Sculpture of The Last Whistle to Fort Bragg this summer and have it dedicated during the All School Alumni Reunion this August but even more importantly our Class of 1974’s 50 year Reunion the third weekend in August. I need a little financial help to make that happen. Please share the names of all the old logging companies and what were called gyppos

• AJ Gray Logging
• Philbrick Logging
• Anderson Logging
• Colombi Logging
• Union Lumber Company
• Boise Cascade 
• Eastman Logging 
• Roach Brothers 
• Jacobzoon
• Georgia Pacific 
• Please share any others or correct my list.

I/we need to raise a minimum of $110,000 to bring The Last Whistle and probably just a slight bit more. If we could raise the money as a group and then donate the Sculpture to the City of Fort Bragg and have it permanently placed at the Guest House Museum privately via private donations might be better than trying to get a nonprofit to partner with us. I think this is the perfect time to move this forward. Any questions or thoughts please message me.

YET ANOTHER PALACE HOTEL MEMORY

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

The Palace Hotel is in the news, but when isn’t it? The proud old gal was built in the 1880s and for 100 years was the cornerstone, landmark and the rock solid core of downtown Ukiah.

And for another 50 years it’s been a collapsing blight, an eyesore, perpetual victim of abuse from indifference, vandals, harsh weather and more neglect, with an “inspection” thrown in every decade or so to mark its decline. 

More recently a front page series (soon to be a New York Times bestseller!) (Soon to be a major motion picture!) by Karen Rifkin has documented the hotel’s livelier past. I have my own small story, picked from several worthy candidates, of Palace Hotel lore.

Around 1983 the Ukiah Fairgrounds hosted a “Back to the ‘60s” show that brought out customers still holding benign views and opinions of hippie culture, lured by The Shirelles and Dusty Springfield.

It was a warm and sweaty night at Carol Purdy Hall. The Shirelles, a female quartet, opened the show; whether any or all the ladies on stage had actually done time as a genuine Shirelle for Motown’s music machine in the 1960s is as unanswerable now as then. 

On they came, off they went, and then the headliner.

Dusty Springfield was a major, slightly faded, ‘60s pop star by the 1980s. How she got duped into appearing in a warehouse of a venue in a town she never heard of and backed by a band that didn’t exist remains a mystery.

NOTE: the phrase “backed by a band that didn’t exist” only became evident when the show began and she stood alone on stage. If there had been a band, believe me, we would have seen it.

But no one was playing drums or guitars or saxophones. It was Dusty and a microphone on a stage assembled from folding tables. Loud recorded horns and keyboards washed over the crowd. No band.

The music: a series of Dusty Springfield’s finest moments in recording studios and a fair sampling of her Top 40 radio hits. But all the songs were recordings, as were her vocals.

On that night in Ukiah California stood a pop star on equal footing with Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones or Petula Clark holding a dead microphone, lip synching “Son of a Preacher Man” and maybe wondering where things had gone wrong.

I stood front and center. At some point Ms Springfield was “singing” some Top 40 hit or other and the cord connecting her microphone came undone. The cord fell to the floor. Plainly embarrassed, she bent to pick it up and screw it back into the bottom of the mic while powerful strains of music and her mighty recorded vocals carried on, oblivious. 

If she had left the stage, got in her car and driven off the music would have continued to tumble on.

After the disaster a small batch of us went to the Palace Hotel bar to dissect what we thought we had just experienced. Or had not experienced. We laughed. We called for another round. I think George Mayers, Tom Liberatore and Ron Gluckman may have been there. 

At the end of the bar, someone looked over the assembled derelicts and said that Ms. Springfield was in the Presidential Suite, and would we care to join her?

The Palace Hotel Presidential Suite occupied the third floor, southwest corner. Dusty sat crosslegged on the floor and at some point she was shaking her head and muttering “It has to get better than this.” I had always thought she meant her onstage disaster, but perhaps she was referring to her late night companions in Ukiah, California. 

Dusty called room service and was told the kitchen was closed, so a young man stood and volunteered to fetch her some grub. He returned half an hour later with burgers in a bag, and she kissed him on the cheek. Wish I could recall his name

My memory is that UDJ reporter Charlie Rappleye and Steve Caravello, photographer with the Mendocino Grapevine were among the last to depart, probably around 1 a.m. 

That left me the last man standing, until I wasn’t. An hour later I walked the few blocks home.

Don’t recall ever reading anything about Dusty Springfield’s career after that, and writing this made me wonder if she ever toured or “sang” onstage again. She died in 1999.

But I do hope things got better for her in the years following the night she came to Ukiah, alone.

SO YOU'RE 90: What's next?

Forget about First: Whose on Second?

by Gregory Sims 

Some weeks ago I mentioned “I cared too much…” about the fortunes of my favorite teams and thus went about attending to various internal stabilizing resources to keep myself from falling over the edge and keep from biting my finger nails until they bled. In an earlier article I noted the importance of tuning into the echo of one’s heartbeat, living the breath of life and following one’s compass of compassion. So here is a continuation of that article. 

Once you have the sources well managed (and even if you don’t) I have some further steps if not to help fans live the serenity of an actualized sports fan- but at least to protect your fingernails…particularly if you’re dealing with a Super Bowl game, the seventh game of a World Series or a Basketball final in the opposing team’s city.  There are other approaches which I’ll mention at the end of the article- This approach appears to be working for me. That said, in the sixties the world seemed to be turning itself upside down and various sporting events didn’t have as much power over me.  But when we came back from where ever it was we had  been “it was a new ball game,” so they say.

1a. Realize you did not choose to live episodic nonsensical anguish. Many of us inadvertently picked it up in pre or actual adolescence when decision making didn’t include (for many) actual long term consequences. Moreover other activities and events such as your wife is delivering your daughter/son at the wrong time you want to be there with them sans cell phone.

1b. As something of an aside here, we lived for five seasons with no electricity, no phone, wood heat. When we arrived at Rainbow, our son was but 9 months of age…just taking his first steps. Everything was so difficult but I find it even more difficult to imagine how we would have ever arrived and found a home in the woods would we have had cell phones. Some people do. But everything with the cell phone seems to be something of an extension of the electronic agency that we had sought to leave behind.  And now the cell phone is both a necessity and an encumbrance which I find difficult to manage. That said, let’s go back to my/our chosen path to recovery.   

2. If possible join family or friends at the pre-game gathering and tell them you aren’t staying because of another commitment so they  know you aren’t ill but don’t give them an organ recital about managing your emotions…you simply have another appointment. Those close to you may know what you’re up to. Chat for a while  then leave. Once you are at home, the office or in a quiet spot do some work, writing, gardening, etc. or sleeping if you can, (Mercifully I went to sleep for several hours, a blessing afforded 90year olds- I also had suffered through two nail biting scary 49er finishes to get to the SB and I wasn’t about to do it again.

3. Unfortunately if your team wins you might be tempted to make up for lost time garnering recaps of every delicious detail and much of your potential gains in personal management might be lessened. But with a loss you have a better chance of maintaining a view to getting this weird thing out of your system. With the loss you can adopt a theme song like “Second Hand Rose” (which Both Fanny Brice and Barbara Streisand popularized). The lyrics don’t say anything about second place…but you can stretch it a bit by having a conversation with yourself and/or others extoling the greater virtues mentioned in “Second Hand Rose.”  Quietly appreciating second place, second owner clothing (even as a meditation) has the  potential to transpose full throated cheering to a broader appreciation of the game, quite beyond acceptance:  Which may seem impossible at first glance.

4. Even though the song “Second Hand Rose” is about clothing and Jake the Plumber-“who had the nerve to tell me he’d been married before” you can use it to extoll the virtues and the quietude of appreciating our “National League Champions” seeing that second place, because it is less popular engenders its own quality of appreciation. It is its own thing and I think a bit easier for some of us to internalize (more about this later) so to speak.

5. San Francisco won the first five Super Bowls they played in and were going for a three-peat after winning two in a row. But it never got easier. I was still the 15 year old discovering the minor league Angels 1-0 victory over the Hollywood Stars thus  relieved for a time of some internal garbage still not knowing how to engage in other ways to put the pieces of life together. If spectators and players alike utilize the energy of engagement as uplifting, the sporting paradigm adds to the quality of social life and thusly demonstrates its value.

I should say in conclusion that there are various ways of handling victory without hurting the fans of the victorious. Regarding the various types of celebration, whatever we are celebrating; it is essential they remain reasonable.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, February 18, 2024

GABRIEL AGUILAR, Ukiah. Fugitive from justice.

JACOB BOGGS, Covelo. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

WESLEY DICKSON, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, registration tampering, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOSE DURAN, North Hollywood/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

ASHLEIGH ESTES, Garberville/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ERIC GARCIA, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, failure to appear, probation revocation.

FERNANDO GARCIA, Little River. DUI, resisting.

CHADLEY GOTTSIMMONS, Redwood Valley. Disobeying court order.

MANDY KAY, Laytonville. Cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

TYLER KELLER, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MONROE LUCAS, Laytonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DYLAN RUMBLE, Willits. Domestic battery.

JASON SIKES, Laytonville. Carjacking, leaving scene of accident with property damage, resisting.

MIKAYLA THRILKILL, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

FRANK HARTZELL: So the only way to go over bridges in the Bay now is have Fast Trak.  Now when you do they dont just send you a bill, which was fine they tack on a $10 toll evasion fee. You cant stop and pay toll. You can only buy a fast trak, which ill likely never use more than 1-2 times in a year and it expires, another crock.  If toll is $17.50 they ought to just say that, not rob me like this. No choice, no option to pay means I was robbed to me.

HUMBOLDT COUNTY MEASURE A

by Paul Modic

The way the hysterically freaking-out opponents of Humboldt County’s Measure A describe it, this is a big moment, and a turning point for the county, but maybe it’s just a “nothing burger,” and in two to five years we won’t even remember it, whether it passes or not, and it won’t matter to anyone? There’s a lot of opinions and spin but why hasn’t anyone put together an unbiased fact sheet listing the pros and cons of this ballet measure? (Probably because the only ones who want to spend that kind of time and energy are motivated by self-interest, ie money, the rest of us think weed is pretty much over, and won’t waste our time studying the issue.)

Why should I vote for Measure A?

Why should I vote against Measure A?

(I’d like to see the organizations on each side put out a pro/con fact sheet, and I’d vote for whomever submits an honest appraisal, even if they list just one good point for the other side. Otherwise they’re just a bunch of lying politicians, business as usual, take no prisoners, and won’t give an inch.)

How did we get here?

When county government got into the drug-dealing business by setting up legal marijuana operations, it looked like they based their program on the “greenrush model”: huge greenhouses, large plantations of row crops, and light deprivation. (Instead of creating a system which would encourage hippies, rednecks, hip-necks, and all the other small-scale farmers to continue to make a living, as they had for decades, allowing fifty to a hundred legal plants, for example. But alas, it was a good run...)  

The system created was so complicated and expensive that many, if not most, of the permitted went under, and Supervisor Estelle Fennell was blamed as part of the problem, fairly or unfairly. We had to send her home with her million dollars from eight years on the job, as a reliable vote for the board’s conservative coalition, never to be heard from again. (Now the Second District has Michell Bushnell running for re-election and it’s probably time to send her home, with her half a million bucks, and let someone else have a shot at the job. Bushnell, famously, doesn’t even vote on cannabis issues.)

The Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission, most of which have come out against Measure A, also created and implemented the satellite spy program invading the privacy of the citizens of Humboldt in order to wipe out small outlaw growers. This lead to millions in unaccountable abatement fines, as well as stressing out many non-growing folks misidentified in erroneous satellite images, in the county’s revenge quest to wipe out all the small farmers who were too smart to, or couldn’t afford to, sign up for the new legal system. (To be fair, John Ford did put out the greenrush fire, albeit leaving behind many acres of abandoned hoop houses moldering on the hillsides.)

I get the general sense that the goal of Measure A is to decrease opportunities to grow huge amounts of weed in the hills of Humboldt County, whereas those against it want to increase production, using the greenrush model of more and bigger. (Does it come down to Money vs Nature?)

It’s an interesting special interest measure because Humboldt voters will decide whether to support either the less-than-one percent who are legally growing, or the other less-than-one percent who have to put up with legal grows on their roads, or near their houses, which is negatively impacting their bucolic rural lifestyles. The growers just want to grow more, while the NIMBYS object to the industrialization of their country roads, including having to listen to fans and generators, blighted view sheds full of hoop houses, with grow lights shining at night, increased water consumption and traffic, and other factors which make up these “mega-farms.” 

(Numbers are a matter of perception, as 10,000 square feet is now considered a small grow by some, or many, but think about it: that’s a ten by a hundred foot greenhouse, multiplied by ten. Looks like “greenrush revisited,” to me, but this time with the county’s seal of approval, and raking their cut off the top, if they can still get any cash in this depressed climate.)

How do you decide how to vote, and who is winning? Normally you count the signs, which currently show a lot of “No on A” down here in Southern Humboldt, but I don’t know what’s on the lawns (and business windows?) in Northern Humboldt.

If you think that 10,000 square feet of greenhouse is not enough for you then you’ll probably be voting against Measure A.

If you think 10,000 square feet is already too much, then you might be voting yes.

(Ten or more giant greenhouses in a row sounds shocking to me, though a 10,000 square foot area of budding outdoor plants would look beautiful, I’d like to see that.)

Really? We’ve come to this? Ten huge greenhouses aren’t enough? If that’s true then maybe the regulated industry should just fade away: people can continue to grow their own, and maybe try some small-scale outlaw production again some day if the price comes back, but it’s heading in the opposite direction, the last out-of-state connections fizzling out.)

the good old days done and gone

yet here’s these fools hangin’ on…

In conclusion, I didn’t like the greenrush, the county set up a pricy and complex system based on the greenrush model, and the Measure A group came in to try to reduce the amount and size of pot plantations by changing all the rules, ie, throwing a monkey wrench into the works. The last of the compliant growers are finally getting used to the county’s and state’s rules and want those to continue, while most people don’t care one way or another. Meanwhile the establishment, the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission, is against it, as they don’t like the idea of a citizens’ ballet measure taking their power away.

Can a supporter of Measure A tell the undecided, with facts not opinions, why they should vote for this, and can someone opposed say why an undecided should vote no? (Talking about what might happen in the future is bullshit, as no one knows what’s going to happen, right?)

The process of writing this didn’t change my mind, I’m still not going to vote because to be fully informed I’d have to read the ballot measure, interview people on both sides, and learn enough to intelligently cast a vote. (Let the principals fight it out.)

BILL KIMBERLIN: A rendering of what the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles will look like when finished.

NO ON PROP. 1 

To the Editor: 

I’m urging everyone to vote “No” on Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion bond issue that will be on the March 2024 ballot in California. This proposition would dramatically change the Mental Health Services Act, a 20-year-old program that pays for California’s mental health services. This terrible bond issue would take money away from counties trying to provide outpatient mental health services and use the money for rent subsidies, which is why it is opposed by disability organizations. 

According to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, if voters approve, “Counties would provide more housing and personalized support services, but would have less MHSA money for other mental health services. This means counties may need to use other county, state, or federal money to keep current service levels.” Hear that, county officials? Just use some of that “other money” you have laying around. 

The bond is being pitched as a way of fixing homelessness, but it doesn’t do that. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office says: “The number of housing units built by the bond would reduce statewide homelessness by only a small amount.” 

Luke Bergmann, director of behavioral health services for San Diego County, told the Los Angeles Times that the changes proposed by Proposition 1 seem to be “coming all at once from multiple directions but not always coordinated.” He continued: “What we’re facing now are many simultaneous efforts, which may work together or against one another.” 

In a statement in the voter information guide for the March election, Heidi Strunk, CEO of Mental Health America of California; Andrea Wagner, Executive Director of the California Association of Mental Health Peer-Run Organizations; and Paul Simmons, Executive Director of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of California; say this: “Prop. 1 doesn’t “fix” a broken system, it BREAKS something that’s WORKING: the MHSA. DON’T RAID current mental health programs to pay for Prop. 1. Please vote NO!” 

Proposition 1 is a rushed, chaotic, expensive effort to shift money around in the hope that voters will be tricked into thinking this is effective policy. Don’t be fooled. Vote “No” on Proposition 1. 

— Tief Gibbs is a District 2 congressional candidate who will be on the ballot in the March 5 primary running against Jared Huffman. Her website is https://www.tief4congress.com/

THIS IS DEMOCRACY?

Dear Editor,

Many Americans have never quite grasped the facts of life about politics. We think we are part of a great democracy where everyone has a voice. After all, there are two very different political parties, and we can vote for the very different candidate of our choice.

However, that is not much of a choice, especially when the two parties are like concrete blocks in the inflexibility of their platforms. Those platforms are dictated by individual party leaders who stamp their own specific wishes on the platform, like Trump and Biden both do.

Every four years, one of those platforms gets empowered. What happens then is seen in policies like America’s participation in the war in Gaza.

President Biden, America’s one and only power broker at the moment, says the U.S. will block another ceasefire resolution in the U.N. (AP, 2-18-24) Relations between America and Israel involve “wink-wink” deals between autocrats that are completely divorced from the concerns of their “constituents,” who do not love this war nearly as much as their leaders do.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO to ensure that the so-called “free press” function as propaganda services for the western empire is make sure the mass media elevate people who are loyal to the empire while denying a voice to those who oppose it. That’s all it takes.

And that’s exactly what happens. You can’t get a prominent job in the mass media if you oppose the profound evils the US and its allies are inflicting upon our species around the world, if you seek the dismantling of the empire, if you endorse the end of capitalism. You’ll never get a notice saying “you are barred from all mainstream platforms on orders of the empire” — you’ll just find yourself unable to get work. You’ll encounter locked door after locked door while watching your peers who toe the imperial line shoot to the top.

This doesn’t happen as part of any monolithic grand conspiracy for the most part; it primarily happens because those who are wealthy enough to control a media platform of major influence are also wealthy enough to have a vested interest in maintaining the political status quo upon which their wealth is premised.

In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays began his work showing that the public can be made docile and compliant via mass-scale psychological manipulation. Flash forward a century and we’re in a mind-controlled dystopia that is saturated to the gills with a constant deluge of propaganda, and we’re allowing those who rule over us to inflict unfathomable horrors on our fellow humans in our name.

If we were living in a truth-based society instead of one where our understanding of the world is obfuscated by propaganda, government secrecy, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the exclusion of dissident voices from all major platforms, none of this would be happening. The powerful wouldn’t be able to manipulate us into sitting idly by while they commit a genocide in Gaza, or while they prepare to extradite Julian Assange to a US prison for the crime of good journalism. There are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and if we didn’t consent to their actions they’d never dare stand against us. Our consent for this has been carefully engineered by those who have a vested interest in maintaining it.

— Caitlin Johnstone

TAIBBI & KIRN

Matt Taibbi: So busy week. I mean I guess we should, last week much of the show was about, we did the show early in advance of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin. What’d you think of the interview, by the way?

Walter Kirn: Well, so at the time we talked about it, I had seen two thirds of it and then read to the end of it. And I don’t know that you had seen it yet.

Matt Taibbi: I’d seen a little bit of it. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. You were kind of taking my word for it, but here are my top three takeaways. Number one, it was not a Russian propaganda coup. It was a coup for meme makers. The meme being a simple question is asked of Putin and he responds with a thousand-year saga of Russian history.

Matt Taibbi: The Earth was a primordial soup.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the firmament was divided from the ocean. And I thought, by the way, that that was just kind of an assertion of Russian cultural dominance over narrative saying, you guys think you’re storytellers in the West, but let me tell you what a real story is. And the guy who’s Homeric on Tucker, soundbite man gets Homered by Putin. For that reason, I don’t think Putin was able to seduce or hypnotize a Western audience.

I also felt that his antagonism toward Carlson was evident, and in retrospect, maybe even stronger than I perceived at the moment because I was listening for information the first time I went through it, but when I went back and did my body language scan and so on, there was no love lost. In fact, I kind of saw the former communist in Putin coming out and going like, “Who is this rich person from America? I’m going to crush them in some fashion.” It was almost more important that he didn’t let Tucker run his modern media game than he won the hearts and minds. Putin was odd. He would’ve known what red meat or whose sort of Putin questioning, Putin curious people were in the West and he didn’t give them much.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I mean, look, he’s a scary person. I think of the average Russian, if they get a chance to interview Putin, they’re thinking ahead to the moment when he is displeased with the results and you’re in the well in Silence of the Lambs and he’s up at the top saying, “It puts the lotion on its skin.” You know what I mean? He’s a scary character and he’s probably not used to having to deal with conventions of Western media and do anything but be whatever his whimsical self is. But I don’t think it was effective. I mean he was trying to propagandize.

Walter Kirn: Yes, he was, but he wasn’t trying to propagandize us in a sort of sugary, poppy way. It was through a kind of storytelling and reasoning and argumentation that the West is largely immune to because of our short attention span. But also, you remember how when people used to go interview Castro and he would spend six hours overwhelming them in some interviews, smoking a cigar, there seems to be, for authoritarian leaders, a real attraction to the monologue and maybe no ability to check themselves because no one in real life checks them. I mean Putin probably, can you imagine the people who ooh and ah over every story he tells? So it’s been a long time since he’s been interrupted, I’d say.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, it’s true. And we can’t forget that these sort of ex-communist leaders, they were raised on the worst television in the history of television. I mean stuff like Conversations with Paustovsky, which is just hours and hours and hours of an elderly person mumbling into bad audio and not saying anything that could possibly offend anybody in any direction. So they’re used to this sort of rambling thing, that was a convention, I guess, of his youth. But I’ve seen him be good at the other thing. So it’s mystifying what happened, but we certainly heard afterwards that there was displeasure in the Russian world about the outcome of that interview.

Walter Kirn: Yes, that they had not optimized propaganda opportunity. But even in the case of little revelations, like who did Nord Stream and Putin said very succinctly, for once, “You did.”

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, we talked about it. That was really funny.

Walter Kirn: And then Tucker makes a joke saying that he had an alibi, which I found an odd joke, not one I would’ve made. I would’ve said, “Who do you mean by you? What entity?” And so on. In any case, not to second guess the whole thing, I felt that if Putin had sort of bombs to drop, he was probably signaling all the intelligence services and State Department and so on who were watching this interview that he wasn’t doing it yet. In other words, it was the spectacle of a guy who probably had a lot of ammo he wasn’t using showing off the fact that he wasn’t using it.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Well, this is the difference between somebody who has to secure widespread popular support in someone whose real audience is always officials in intelligence agencies and other bureaucracies. Putin definitely thinks like that. I mean he’s never really had to campaign. He was essentially handed the presidency of Russia and the only competitive election that he ever held, the competitiveness of that is always dubious. So who knows? But it’s interesting, I think you predicted that it would complicate the passage of the Russia aid package, which it may very well have. As of this broadcast, it’s not through, is it? I don’t believe.