Mendocino County Today: Thursday 3/14/24

Sunny | Rainbow | Loose Dogs | Fort Bragg Bulb-Outs | P Money | Northern Migration | Mo Better Communication | Yorkville Oak | James Ranch | 18' Diameter | Palace Thoughts | Dinette Set | 1955 Actress | Goodman Appearance | Community Walk | Lighthouse Tours | Noyo Mouth | Sand Casting | Yesterday's Catch | The Sandbox | Gas Price | Pi Day | Prism Blues | Narco Dictators | Texas 1958 | Radio Wasteland | Tanager

DRY WEATHER will continue at least into early next week. Breezy, easterly to northeasterly winds will continue through Friday. A warming trend will bring widespread highs in the 60s and 70s through the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Thursday morning I have 42F under clear skies. Less windy today & continued lovely weather is forecast thru most of next week.

LOOSE DOGS KILL TWO DEER AT HIGH SCHOOL

Hey Boonville!

Are your dogs running loose?

Were they loose this weekend?

Did you see dogs running around the high school this weekend?

A dog or dogs got onto the high school farm and killed two young deer. We found them today. Pictures in the comments. We found paw prints in the mud. We saw the skid marks from the deer running scared. You can bet I have called animal control.

The gates that many people use to walk through to the farm down to Estate Drive are going to be locked. I can't have gates left open so dogs can get inside the farm. We have livestock that are sometimes out of their usual area. 

I am sorry the deer were killed. I am very glad none of the expensive student livestock projects were harmed. Dogs are not allowed on the high school campus. 

(Beth Swehla, AV High School Ag Director)

* * *

Adrian Maldonado: I have posted several times about loose dogs and dog poop all over the soccer field and school in the past. Dogs on or off leashes should be banned from the park and anywhere on campus. This should become an ordinance and fines must be imposed. It’s irresponsible on many levels. There isn’t a place in town to get away from this poop literally and metaphorically.

FORT BRAGG’S NEW BULBOUTS

To whom it may concern, 

The city of Fort Bragg is in the process of installing four new water features at every intersection, throughout town.

Rob Somerton

Fort Bragg

ALTHOUGH SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS told listeners on KZYX Wednesday morning that the Measure P fire services sales tax increment money is “flowing” to fire districts, it still hadn’t arrived at the Anderson Valley Fire Department as of Wednesday afternoon. Williams implied that the hold up was the districts themselves who he said were pressing the County for some kind of umbrella contract for distribution of Proposition 172, campground Transient Occupancy, and Measure P taxes. Then he pivoted and said it had to do with former Auditor-Controller Chamise Cubbison (his catch-all scape-goat). AV Fire Chief Andres Avila said he thought the hold up was at the County Counsel’s office which was taking forever to “review” the Evergreen arrangement before the Supervisors finally gave up on it and reverted back to indivudal contracts for each funding source. The latest preposterious wrinkle is that the County is now requiring a separate “contract” in advance with each fire district for each quarter’s worth of sales tax distribution, and that apparently stems from the County Counsel’s office as well. The tax kicked in on January 1, 2023 and has been accumulating at least a million dollars a quarter ever since, about $43k per quarter of which is supposed should have been sent to the Anderson Valley Fire Department last summer at the latest. So now the AVFD is already due at least $250k just for its share of the revenue so far. The other 19 or 20 Fire Districts are also being shorted for comparable amounts. Now that two of the individual fiscal quarter-sized contracts are finally approved for the AVFD, the money is supposed to be “flowing” soon. This ridiculous blockage may constitute “flowing” to Supervisor Williams. But the County’s far-flung small, underfunded fire departments are still in a drought.

(Mark Scaramella)

MULHEREN TO HOST VETERANS TOWN HALL - ‘IMPROVED COMMUNICATIONS’ THE FOCUS

by Justine Frederiksen

In the wake of a controversial decision by Mendocino County officials to move its Ukiah Veterans Services Office from its longtime home on Observatory Avenue — a plan that the Board of Supervisors has since pledged to reverse — 2nd District Supervisor Maureen Mulheren is hosting a Town Hall meeting to discuss “improved communications with veterans.”

“There are many ways in which county services affect local veterans,” Mulheren writes in the description of the meeting, which has been scheduled as a “Hybrid Town Hall” on Thursday, March 14, at 6 p.m., and will be held both on Zoom and in person at the county administration building at 501 Low Gap Road in Ukiah. 

“While the Board has voted (and staff is actively working on) moving the Veterans Services Ukiah Office back to the house on Observatory, there are other programs and county-owned facilities that can support those that have served our community in the Armed Services,” Mulheren continues. “We will discuss the most inclusive paths forward, (and) the format of this meeting will allow for feedback to be received by Supervisor Mulheren on how to improve the communication.” 

When the relocation was placed on the Feb. 27 board meeting agenda as part of the “Budget Deficit Plan” presentation nearly two months after the VSO was moved, local Vietnam War veteran Don Shanley described the “burying of this agenda item with no timely dissemination to the veteran community (as) an ambush — an ambush to add further injury to the veterans’ January eviction” from the office on Observatory Avenue, which he described as “the critical tool for the success the veterans of Mendocino County who have paid their dues and are seeking care and benefits,” urging county officials to “act like caring adults, not like children with their hands caught in the cookie jar.” 

“What was used to make this decision?” Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams asked after Shanley and others expressed dismay with the VSO relocation. “Frankly, I find this distressing. I’m not throwing staff under the bus, we need to fix the budget — but there’s hundreds of cost-cutting measures and I don’t know if this was one of them.” 

Later when the Budget Deficit Plan was being discussed by the board, Williams asked if it was possible “for us to apologize and commit to restoring (the former VSO) location? Can we give them some assurance as to that’s where we’re going?” 

“I’ve heard from every single board member and they agree that that’s where we’re going to go,” Board Chairwoman Mulheren said. “I know that the CEO has committed to making that happen if you all agree to that, so yes, I do believe that they have our commitment at this point that we are going to find a new location for (The Mendocino) Air Quality (Management District) and move the Veterans Services Office back to Observatory.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

JAMES RANCH ON THE ENTERS LAND TRUST ARRANGEMENT

Mendocino Land Trust (MLT) and a local landowner have taken another step to protect the future!

In partnership with the landowners of the James Ranch, MLT received a Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC) grant. The grant will make it possible to acquire a conservation easement (CE) that will protect almost 1,300 acres of working ranch land west of Willits. CE’s are a voluntary tool used to conserve land. MLT and the landowners of the James Ranch were fortunate to be awarded this SALC grant.

MLT Executive Director Conrad Kramer says that both he and the landowners are “overjoyed” with the grant and “extremely grateful” to the California’s Strategic Growth Council (SGC) and the SALC team.

In December 2023, the SGC approved more than $116 million in grants to protect 50,500 acres of agricultural land through its SALC program. The investments are part of the ninth round of the SALC program’s efforts to protect agricultural lands, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen rural economies.

Included in this grant are the funds to conserve the unique and picturesque James Ranch through acquisition of a conservation easement which allows the landowners to continue to own and manage the ranch.

“This is MLT’s first SALC acquisition grant,” Kramer said, “and we look forward to working with the landowners and the SALC team to protect this important and historic ranch.”

The conservation easement will protect the working agricultural lands in perpetuity and help accelerate progress towards California’s Natural and Working Lands goal to conserve 30 percent of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030.

The Strategic Growth Council’s SALC Program is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment – particularly in disadvantaged communities. SALC complements investments made in urban areas with the purchase of agricultural conservation easements, development of agricultural land strategy plans, and other mechanisms that result in GHG reductions and a more resilient agricultural sector. The Department of Conservation works in cooperation with the Natural Resources Agency and the SGC to implement the program. 

MLT believes it is fitting that the James Ranch was selected for protection. The ranch has been in commercial agricultural production since the 1800s. The ranch is comprised of mixed Douglas fir and redwood forests, oak woodlands, annual grassland, and mixed chaparral. The ranch was also once the location of Sherwood, a small town along the railway. Sherwood boasted a hardware store and general store.

Much of the history of this ranch is known through the stories told by the late Stella (Steen) James, an independent frontier-woman who owned and worked the ranch for decades alongside her husband, Edgar. This SALC grant is an opportunity for Stella’s great nephew Kevin and his wife Judy to realize Stella’s goal of conserving the ranch.

(Mendocino Land Trust)

SOME PEOPLE IN UKIAH think that the Palace Hotel should just be demolished and get it over with, even if it means trying to get the state to pay for it under dubious circumstances and capitulating to the owner’s shady tactics. Ukiah had what everybody said was a workable proposal from Ms. Minal Shankar which would have salvaged whatever could be salvaged from the delapidated structure — without any taxpayer money. If Mr. Ishwar’s idea (basically demolition by neglect) is pursued all that Ukiah would be left with is a vacant lot (at best). If anyone thinks that some “new business” will magically emerge at the vacant lot, they haven’t looked at the Ukiah downtown commercial real estate market lately. We’re not sure of the finances, of course, but it seems like Mr. Ishwar is banking on having the state pay the demolition cost (through a fishy Guidiville Native American backdoor deal that misrepresents the possible “pollution” under the old hotel as described in detail by our ace reporter Mike Geniella) and then try to make his “investment” back by selling the vacant downtown lot, and then leaving it like that. If Ms. Shankar’s proposal and offer had been taken, Ukiah had a chance of reviving the downtown area, especially since the Courthouse next door will probably be vacated in favor of the new Courthouse over by the tracks. (Another fiasco, but one which AVA readers are probably already familiar with.) It may sound impractical, but the City should have bought the property out of receivership itself years ago and then they would have had direct control over what happened to that primo piece of downtown real estate, and made a few bucks on it in the bargain by selling it to someone like Ms. Shankar. But that kind of thinking is beyond the “planners” in Ukiah these days.

(Mark Scaramella)

THAT VINTAGE 1955 dinette set we talked about a couple of days ago was still available a couple of weeks later, still at the bargain price of $25. We thought we had it sold, but it's still here, menacingly still here, in fact. The lady who'd said she wanted to buy the dinette, fetchingly covered in a fake naugahyde with the imitation naugas floating in the faded yellows and browns of what seems to be a color scheme derived from pineapple pizza vomit, may have appeared last Sunday afternoon to buy it. I'm not sure. I heard a scream, the sound of a car door slamming, and the roar of an SUV engine, but by the time I got out to my driveway, all that remained was a cloud of dust and one of the chairs askew beside a flower box. The poor thing couldn't bear to bring the dinette home. I don't blame her. Unless you have a blind old man and masks for the kids, this particular table, six chairs and table leaf pose a clear mental health risk. But look at it this way. For a mere $25, some lucky son or daughter of that memorably wacky decade can teach the grandkids some real history — history at a glance, one might say. Buy the dinette, array the kids around it and begin: "See this stuff? That's why your grandmother and I became hippies. We grew up eating margarine on Wonder Bread in your great grandma's 'breakfast nook' on furniture just like the dinette set you see here. Damn near killed the both of us. But when we got a little older we knew we'd been the victims of what is now called "Aesthetic Trauma Syndrome." Millions of us got it, and it's been psychologically uphill for us ever since. Look at that thing, kids. Now you know what we suffered. It was our Iwo Jima. I don't want any of you to ever suffer the kind of furniture-inspired forms of mental illness we did." At $25, the dinette set is a bargain.

NAME THIS 1955 ACTRESS

KZYX BUILDING FUND UPDATE

Amy Goodman to speak on April 5th in a benefit for the KZYX Building Fund

Amy Goodman, investigative journalist, executive producer and host of Democracy Now, will speak on behalf of KZYX on Friday, April 5th at 7 pm at SPACE Theater in Ukiah.

Tickets go on sale this week at eventbrite.com, Harvest in Fort Bragg, and The Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah. There will be a special VIP reception at 6 pm for a ticket price of $100, including a visit with Amy, food, drink, and front row seats.

A longtime supporter of KZYX and community radio stations around the country, Amy is making her first foray to the West Coast since early 2020. Besides her KZYX appearance, she will celebrate KPFA’s 75th anniversary in Berkeley the following evening.

Democracy Now, also a daily television show, airs Monday-Friday on KZYX-Z from 4-5pm. 

Among her many recognitions and honors, Amy is the recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award, the George Polk Award, and the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. 

All proceeds from this event will go to the KZYX Building Fund.

Tour the Future!

Starting this month, the KZYX Building Advisory Group (BAG) will host tours of the station’s building site on every third Monday of the month. This month’s tour is Monday, March 18th at noon.

The BAG includes local builders as well as members of the Board and Staff, and its mission is to support and guide the project ongoing at 390 West Clay Street in Ukiah. 

Tour participants can view architectural and site plans and ask questions of knowledgeable BAG members, including Project Manager Alexis Vincent. Upcoming projects include the City of Ukiah’s installation of new electrical service; and painting the outside of the smaller building by KZYX DJ (and professional painter) Troy Mallott. 

Meanwhile, on the fund-raising front…

KZYX has raised $700,000 in the past two years, including a large federal grant, individual gifts of $10-50K, contributions of smaller amounts, and proceeds from special events. We need to raise at least $1 million more to complete the project. 

Two federal grants are pending, a proposal to the USDA for $50K, and a long-shot FEMA grant administered by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, for $750K. Both grants are for equipment.

Only last month KZYX cleared a hurdle in moving forward on the NEH matching grant of $148K, stalled for nearly a year as we proved that our renovation would not harm the property’s historical significance. Constructed in 1949 and regarded as “historic” because of its age, the building is an example of mid-century modern architecture in Ukiah.

We hope you and someone you know will contribute to the KZYX Building Fund this Spring as we ramp up to meet an anticipated $100K matching gift. In taking this action, you will help to secure a future for KZYX. You will help ensure that connections built over the past 35 years will endure, and that future generations will benefit from emergency information, NPR news, and the hyper-local news and information, rich art scene, music and entertainment that are unique to Mendocino County.

And we hope to see you at the Amy Goodman event on Friday, April 5th at 7 pm!

Marty Durlin,
General Manager, KZYX

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN: We have a community walk coming up. Dressing up is encouraged! We start at the Commerce Drive entrance of the Great Redwood Trail and go North. Usually if there’s little kids we turn around at Gobbi (it’s just under a mile). If you go all the way to Brush it’s 1.7 miles one way so you’re getting a good stretch with an out and back.

POINT CABRILLO LIGHTHOUSE LENS TOURS ON APRIL 6 & 7 

Climb to the top of Mendocino’s historic lighthouse: Saturday, April 6, 2024 & Sunday, April 7, 2024

Join volunteer docents at Point Cabrillo Light Station State Historic Park for the unique opportunity to climb to the top of the lighthouse tower and stand next to the historic 1909 Fresnel Lens. These tours happen only a few times a year, and are always a delight! All the funds raised from these tours go right back into taking care of this park. Thank you!

Tours are first-come, first-serve, no reservations

First tour of the day goes up at 11am, last tour of the day goes up at 2pm

$10 per adult, $5 per child (under 18)

All children must be over 42″ tall to climb the stairs

There are no babies or animals allowed on this tour

Tour guests must be able to climb three sets of steep ladders Don’t forget about the half mile walk from the parking lot to the lighthouse! Give yourself plenty of time to arrive before our last tours of the day head up the stairs.

Tours last between 15 - 20 minutes, and are led by the experienced volunteer docents of the Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association. For more information, you can call the office at 707-937-6123 or email us at info@pointcabrillo.org.

Point Cabrillo Lighthouse is located between the towns of Fort Bragg and Mendocino on the Northern California coast, about three hours north of the San Francisco Bay Area.

More info: www.pointcabrillo.org/events

SAND CASTING WITH DELFT CLAY FOR JEWELERS

I will be teaching a Sand Casting with Delft Clay workshop at the Mendocino Art Center on May 4th & 5th. This is a great class for beginners, for more experienced jewelers looking to learn more or if you have some sand casting experience but would like to hone your skills!

For more information go to: https://shrinejewelry.com/pages/workshops

waterwitchesofmendo@gmail.com

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, March 13, 2024

TYLER CALES, Willits. County parole violation.

JOSEPH COLLETON, Willits. Battery.

JAMIE COLLINS, Lakeport/Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation.

JUAN CONDE-DIAZ, Ukiah. Criminal threats.

MONIKA GONZALES, Citrus Heights/Ukiah. Vandalism, paraphernalia, false ID.

TRISTIN HARDINGER, Arcata/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

SAUL JIMENEZ-HERNANDEZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ELIZABETH JOHNSON-COSGROVE, Ukiah. Refuse disposal in state waters, false ID.

ANTHONY LOPES SR., Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DAVID MORA JR., Kelseyville/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

CORINA O’KEEFFE, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

KEVIN WORLEY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, suspended license for DUI, no license, probation violation.

THE SANDBOX

by Paul Modic

When a friend recently told me she was depressed again I offered some suggestions: Time to get distracted by something fun? Like a funny show or comedian on Youtube? Try to figure out how to be less self-obsessed? Then I apologized for giving advice without first asking, something she often did which I found annoying.

“I’d rather have sympathy,” she said.

I don’t like sympathy, it makes me feel uncomfortable, that I may have manipulated it. Praise and sympathy often don’t feel sincere, as if someone is just robotically saying what is expected, or maybe it’s feelings of unworthiness incubated long ago, a symptom of a dysfunctional family? It reminds me of when my therapist suggested I “go into the sand box,” which I presumed was a euphemism meaning delving very deep, and I was resistant to going so deep that I might never get back out?

Maybe I should have gone into the sandbox, maybe I should still go into the sandbox, the scary thing being she actually has a sandbox in the corner of her office, within which her presumably troubled toddler clients (or big sad confused adults?) get to play, or get therapy?

I haven’t seen Carmela in at least eight years (maybe I got tired of whining about loneliness), she’s in her seventies by now, and I recommend her to everyone. A girlfriend, to whom I referred her once, said she was kind of old-fashioned, though she does have a lot of common sense. It seemed like almost any issue, for any client, was resolved, or at least made clearer, by asking yourself one question: “Which decision should I make, what path should I take, to have the least amount of pain?”

I have learned that to handle anxiety (the word Carmela wrote on the bottom of every bill) you need to know yourself, accept yourself, and maybe even like yourself. (My emotionally disturbed friend, in her thirties, reminds me of me in my thirties: insecure, can’t handle criticism, a hopeless pothead, and often depressed.)

PI DAY: HOW ONE IRRATIONAL NUMBER MADE US MODERN

The famous mathematical ratio, estimated to more than 22 trillion digits (and counting), is the perfect symbol for our species’ long effort to tame infinity.

by Steven Strogatz

When my children were young, they liked to stare at a pie plate hanging in our kitchen, with the digits of pi running around the rim and spiraling in toward the center, shrinking in size as the numbers swirled into the abyss.

Pi, as we all learned in school (and are reminded every March 14, on Pi Day), is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Denoted by the Greek letter π, this curious little number is approximately 3.14, although computers have calculated it out past 22 trillion digits and counting: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502…, a sequence never repeating, never betraying any pattern, going on forever, infinity on a platter.

For some people, Pi Day is an occasion to marvel at circles, long revered as symbols of perfection, reincarnation and the cycles of nature. But it is the domestication of infinity that we really should be celebrating. Mathematically, pi is less a child of geometry than an early ancestor of calculus, the branch of mathematics, devised in the 17th century, that deals with anything that curves, moves or changes continuously.

As a ratio, pi has been around since Babylonian times, but it was the Greek geometer Archimedes, some 2,300 years ago, who first showed how to rigorously estimate the value of pi. Among mathematicians of his time, the concept of infinity was taboo; Aristotle had tried to banish it for being too paradoxical and logically treacherous. In Archimedes’s hands, however, infinity became a mathematical workhorse.

He used it to discover the area of a circle, the volume of a sphere and many other properties of curved shapes that had stumped the finest mathematicians before him. In each case, he approximated a curved shape by using a large number of tiny straight lines or flat polygons. The resulting approximations were gemlike, faceted objects that yielded fantastic insights into the original shapes, especially when he imagined using infinitely many, infinitesimally small facets in the process.

To get a feeling for this world-changing idea, imagine measuring the distance around a circular track near your house. To obtain an estimate, you could walk one lap and then consult a pedometer app on your phone to see how far you traveled. A pedometer computes the distance straightforwardly: It estimates the length of your stride based on your height (which you typed into the app), and it counts how many steps you’ve taken. Then it multiplies stride length times the number of steps to calculate how far you walked.

Archimedes used a similar method to estimate the circumference of a circle, and so to estimate pi. Again, imagine walking around a circular track. The resulting path would look something like this, with each step represented by a tiny straight line.

Multiply the number of lines by the length of each one to estimate the circumference of the circle. It’s only an approximation, of course: Each straight segment is a shortcut in place of what really is a curved arc. So the approximation is sure to underestimate the true length of the circle.

But by taking enough steps, and making them small enough, you could approximate the length of the track as accurately as you wanted. For example, paths with six, 12 and 24 steps would do an increasingly good job of hugging the circle.

Archimedes performed a similar series of calculations, starting with a hexagonal path made up of six straight steps. The advantage of a hexagon was that he could calculate both the length of its perimeter (which approximates the circle’s circumference) and its diameter (which coincides with the circle’s diameter).

The perimeter is exactly six times the radius r of the circle, or 6r. That’s because the hexagon contains six equilateral triangles, each side of which equals the circle’s radius. The diameter of the hexagon, for its part, is two times the circle’s radius, or 2r.

Now recall that the perimeter of the hexagon underestimates the true circumference of the circle. So the ratio of these two hexagonal distances — 6r/2r = 3 — must represent an underestimate of pi. Therefore, the unknown value of pi, whatever it equals, must be greater than 3.

Of course, six is a ridiculously small number of steps, and the resulting hexagon is a crude caricature of a circle, but Archimedes was just getting started. Once he figured out what the hexagon was telling him, he shortened the steps and took twice as many of them. Then he kept doing that, over and over again.

A man obsessed, he went from 6 steps to 12, then 24, 48 and ultimately 96 steps, using standard geometry to work out the ever-shrinking lengths of the steps to migraine-inducing precision. By using a 96-sided polygon inside the circle, and also a 96-sided polygon outside the circle, he ultimately proved that pi is greater than 3 + 10/71 and less than 3 + 10/70.

Take a moment to savor the result visually:

3 + 10/71 < π < 3 + 10/70.

The unknown value of pi is being trapped in a numerical vise, squeezed between two numbers that look almost identical, except the first has a denominator of 71 and the last has a denominator of 70. By considering polygons with even more sides, later mathematicians tightened the vise even further. Around 1,600 years ago, the Chinese geometer Zu Chongzhi pondered polygons having an incredible 24,576 sides to squeeze pi out to eight digits:

3.1415926 < π < 3.1415927.

By allowing the number of sides in the polygons to increase indefinitely, all the way out to infinity, we can generate as many digits of pi as we like, at least in principle.

In taming infinity, Archimedes paved the way for the invention of calculus 2,000 years later. And calculus, in turn, helped make the world modern. Archimedes’s mathematical strategy is used in computer-generated movies, approximating Shrek’s smooth belly and trumpet-like ears with millions of tiny polygons. The smooth glide of an Ella Fitzgerald song is digitally represented in streaming audio by an enormous number of bits.

In every field of human endeavor, from reconstructive facial surgery to the simulation of air flowing past a jet’s wing, billions of tiny, discrete elements stand in for an inherently smooth and analog reality. It all began with the computation of pi. Pi represents a mathematical limit: an aspiration toward the perfect curve, steady progress toward the unreachable star. It exists, clear as night, with no end in sight.

(nytimes.com)

THE NARCODICTATOR IN HIS LABYRINTH

by John Perry

Prosecutors in New York this month claimed they had cracked “the largest drug trafficking conspiracy in the world.” While it lasted, more than 400 tons of cocaine were shipped to the United States from clandestine airstrips in Honduras by characters with aliases such as “The Tiger” and “El Porky.” Million-dollar bribes were paid to government officials. A drug payment of $4 million was handed over in a duffel bag at a gas station.

Other payments – more than $100 million over three years – were allegedly carried from Honduras to Colombia by an Israeli diplomat who received a 3 per cent commission. An anti-narcotics czar was murdered and a plot to assassinate a sitting president was thwarted. Some prosecution witnesses had carried out dozens of killings. One, asked if he regretted the murders, said: “Not at the time.” Facing life imprisonment themselves, they hoped to earn leniency in exchange for their co-operation.

The accused was Juan Orlando Hernández (“JOH”), the president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022. Arrested and extradited soon after he left office, he spent almost two years in a New York prison awaiting trial. He had risen to political prominence after the 2009 coup in Honduras, which Washington tacitly supported. Fraudulent elections, also endorsed by the US, brought him to power and kept him there until the overwhelming unpopularity of his National Party eventually led to its defeat by the leftist Libre party, led by Xiomara Castro.

Despite bringing his country to a state of near collapse, driving one in ten Hondurans to migrate, JOH was favored by Obama, Trump and, at first, Biden. Drug money, including a million-dollar bribe given to him personally by the then capo of the Sinaloa cartel, “El Chapo” Guzman, bolstered his election campaigns as well as sustaining a luxurious lifestyle. Prosecutors showed a photo of him at the 2010 World Cup being embraced by the leader of a Honduran cartel.

Once JOH lost power (and with it, immunity from prosecution) he might have been put on trial in Honduras, where his close ties to US presidents could have been aired publicly. Dana Frank has argued that New York prosecutors acted against the wishes of the White House in pushing for JOH’s extradition. Even so, it was less embarrassing politically than a lengthy trial in Tegucigalpa would have been.

The prosecutors in New York didn’t pay much attention to Washington’s support for JOH. Instead, Honduras was portrayed as a dysfunctional state, unable to bring its own worst criminals to justice, even when they “committed crimes against the United States.” The New York Times described the trial as a rare “chance for national justice” for Honduras. The implication, as Frank put it, was that the Honduran people can’t govern themselves and the US has “heroically imposed the rule of law.”

History shows that the opposite is true. To give only one example, the corrupt security forces that protected JOH’s cocaine shipments were trained and armed by the US. When JOH claimed to be applying la mano dura to control the country’s escalating violence, everyone knew this meant clamping down on JOH’s political opponents and minor criminals, not the cartel leaders. At his trial, three of the defense witnesses were serving officers in the Honduran military.

If allowing the trial to go ahead was a gamble by the US authorities, it paid off. Washington could be seen taking a hard line on drugs and tackling the corruption and violence that fueled migration, while avoiding any embarrassment about its own role in Honduras’s descent into narcodictatorship.

The interference continues. Castro’s election was welcomed by the US, and Kamala Harris attended her inauguration in 2022, but since then the US ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, hasn’t hesitated to criticize Libre’s reformist agenda and has openly sided with Castro’s opponents, even those as corrupt as JOH. Dogu has spoken out against increases in the minimum wage, tax reforms and a key government appointment. She has also challenged the outlawing of the libertarian model cities introduced by JOH. One frustrated investor, Próspera, is suing Honduras for $10 billion – close to the government’s entire annual expenditure.

Last Friday, JOH became the third ex-president from Central America in three decades to be found guilty of serious offenses in a US court. But the careers of those in Washington who aided or tolerated their crimes have continued unaffected. And their role in fueling the border crisis goes unmentioned in the national press.

(London Review of Books)

THE NOISE ON I-40

by Alexander Cockburn

Gallup, N.M. April, 2001 — Drive across the United States, mostly on Interstate 40, and you have plenty of time to listen to the radio. Even more time than usual if, to take my own situation, you’re in a 1976 Ford 350 one-ton, plowing along at 50mph. By day I listen to FM.

Bunked down at night, there’s some choice on the motels’ cable systems, all the way from C-SPAN to pay-as-you-snooze filth, though there’s much less of that than there used to be, or maybe you have to go to a Marriott or kindred high end place to get that. By contrast the choice on daytime radio, FM or AM, is indeed a vast wasteland, far more bleak than the high plains of Texas and New Mexico I’ve been looking at for the past couple of days. It’s awful. Even the religious stuff has gone to the dogs. I remember twenty years ago making the same drive through the bible belt and you’d hear crazed preachers raving in tongues. These days hell has gone to love. Christian radio is so warm and fuzzy you’d think you were listening to Terry Gross.

By any measure, and you don’t need to drive along I-40 to find this out, radio in this country is in ghastly shape. Since the 1996 Telecommunications “Reform” Act, conceived in darkness and signed in stealth, the situation has got even worse. Twenty, thirty years ago broadcasters could own only a dozen stations nationwide and no more than two in any single market. The company Clear Channel alone owns more than 800 stations pumping out identical muck in all states. Since 1996 there’s been a colossal shake-out. Small broadcasters can no longer hack it. Two or three stations with eight satellite stations each, control each market. Bob McChesney cites an industry publication as saying that the amount of advertising is up to 18 minutes per hour, with these commercials separated by the same endless, golden oldies. On I-40 in Tennessee alone I listened to “Help!” at least sixteen times.

The new chairman of the FCC, Colin Powell’s son Michael, has just made life even easier for Clear Channel and the other big groups. On March 12 he okayed 32 mergers and kindred transactions in 26 markets. Three days later, at the instigation of the FCC, cops burst into Free Radio Cascadia in Eugene, Oregon, siezed broadcasting equipment and shut FRC down.

Michael Powell is clearly aiming for higher things than the FCC, and he’s certainly increased his own family’s resources. His refusal to recuse himself from the FCC board's vote, and that same board's approval of the AOL-Time merger stands to net his father Colin, a man freighted with AOL stock options derived from his recent service on that company’s board, many millions of dollars. Michael insists there was a Chinese wall across the family dining table and he and Dad never chatted about AOL. Why would they need to? If there’s a hippo on the hearth rug, you don’t need to put a sign on it.

Low-power radio? The commercial broadcasters fought savagely all last year to beat back the FCC’s admittedly flawed plan to license over 1000 low power stations. In the end the radio lobby attached a rider to an appropriations bill signed by Clinton late last year, with regs ensuring low power would never gain a foothold in cities, also ensuring that the pirate broadcasters of yesteryear who created the momentum for low power, could never get licences. But make no mistake who the real villain was. Listen to Peter Franck of the National Lawyers’ Guild in San Francisco who has been a leading force in the push for low power fm. “From talking to people in DC it is absolutely clear that if NPR had not vigorously joined the NAB in its attempt to kill microradio the legislation would have gone through.”

But all would-be low power broadcasters should know that right now there’s opportunity. The FCC has been considering applications for licenses (in some regions the window has already closed) and mostly it’s been conservatives (churches included) jumping in. In many states you can still make applications to the FCC. Jump in! Contact the Lawyers’ Guild’s Center of Democratic Communications at 415-522-9814 or Aakorn@igc.org, though first take a look at their webpage www.nlgcdc.org to save time.

The purpose of the First Amendment is democracy. Democracy requires broad range of opinion. After 75 years of a commercially-based media system we have a narrow range of debate, and this abuse of the airwaves is therefore unconstitutional. That’s a big fight, but it must be fought.