Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 4/17/24

Warming | Glass Beach | Zapata Caught | 100 Women | Print End | Community Meeting | Trevor Cooper | BHAB Meeting | Direct Action | Abandoned Building | Rate Hikes | Summer Gardening | Artificial Thoughts | Dress Codes | Electrician | Fully Updated | Folk Festival | Exceptional Fan | Boonville Distillery | Boonville Lodge | Yesterday's Catch | Has Equipment | Team USA | Google v Journalism | Rustcycle | Aquarium Lesson | Beaver Family | Huge Trout | Super Busted | NPR Flap | Tax Evasion | FISA Surveillance | Hattie McDaniel | Israeli Sadism | Plumber Pete | Gaza Thoughts | Titanic Millionaires | In Berlin | Right Fuel | Kesey Interview | Diebenkorn Woman | Einstein/Spinoza | Billboard Faith

DRY, WARM temperatures are expected to continue for the remainder of the week. Breezy northerly winds are forecast for coastal areas through today as a high pressure builds into the region. Marine stratus is expected to return for the later half of the week as the northerly winds subside. Temperatures will begin a colling trend this weekend as the high pressure shift eastward and a shortwave trough approaches the northern portion of the area. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): High clouds & 48F this Wednesday morning on the coast. Today & tomorrow will be the warmest days this week then some cooling into the weekend. Dry skies are forecast well into next week.

FIREARM BRANDISHING LEADS TO CHASE AND ARREST 

On April 15, 2024 at approximately 11:14 PM, Fort Bragg police officers were dispatched to an escalating verbal disturbance in the 500 block of Kempe Way. 

Officers arrived and saw a male, later identified as Elijah Zapata, 21, of Santa Rosa, immediately run from the area. 

Officers pursued on foot and after a short chase, caught Zapata. The other individuals involved stated Zapata had threatened them with a gun. Officers searched the area Zapata fled and located an unregistered, unloaded revolver. 

No one was injured in the altercation, which was verbal only. After investigation, officers determined the other individuals involved were victims. It was also confirmed Zapata was currently out of custody on his Own Recognizance on an unrelated case with terms to Obey All Laws. 

Captain Thomas O’Neal said, “I’m very proud of our officers. While most of our community slept, these officers chased and arrested an armed suspect. They also recovered an illegal firearm, getting it out of the hands of a criminal. They undoubtedly made our community safer.” 

Zapata was arrested and booked in the Mendocino County Jail for Criminal Threats (Felony), Resist/Obstruct/Delay Arrest (Misd), Disturb the Peace (Misd), Violate Court Order (Misd), Brandish Firearm (Misd), and Carrying a Concealed Firearm (Misd). Officers requested a Bail Enhancement of $50,000, which was authorized by a judge. 

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Frank of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)961-2800 ext 210. 

This information is being released by Chief Neil Cervenka. All media inquiries should contact him at ncervenka@fortbragg.com. 

PRINT EDITION ENDING, Q&A

1. Why are you suspending your print edition? 

The decrepitude that comes with age, and a general inability to do the demanding work of print journalism at the level I think it should be done, all because of the energy deficits that come with the years.

2. What do you mean by "suspending" your print edition? Does that mean you might revive it? 

We're finished. I'm half dead, my principal colleague, Mark Scaramella, is staving off heart problems.

3. How many print subscribers do you have? How many online subscribers do you have? Is there much overlap, or are they completely different animals? 

Not much overlap, is my general impression. Print subs began to plummet when America dove into handheld gizmos. Print interest also declined as the last print generation began to head for the big library in the sky. We have more on-line subscribers these days and, ahem, we seem to have become a daily must read for this county's intelligentsia, deploying intelligentsia in the loosest sense.

4. What do you know about your print subscribers? Who are they, and why do they get the paper copy? 

Not much other than lots of them are/were as attached to print media as we are, and enjoyed the quality of much of the writing. Our weekly product, lo these many years, has always been a lively read.

5. What do you see as the future of print journalism? Does it have one? 

No future. It's over. Few people get their information from print, hence a looming presidential race between senility and depravity, which wouldn't have happened when people could still read and words had specific meanings.

6. What options to print subscribers have?

Print subscribers who want the current on-line edition can send us an email at ava@pacific.net and we will give them a on-line subscription credit for twice the amount of time remaining on their print subscription.

7. Will you continue the weekly collection on line?

Yes. For those who prefer the weekly collection of Off the Record, Valley People, Letters, Features, etc., we will continue them and post them on Wednesdays. 

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JUSTINE FREDERIKSEN: Gulp. I was hoping for a bit more optimism, but thank you for the quick response. Also, I was hoping you might mention your incarcerated subscribers, both locally and elsewhere. Were they a good portion of your print subscribers, or mostly online, as well? And could you please send me a photo related to your last print edition? Or could I possibly observe one of the last deliveries in Ukiah, say maybe to the Mendocino Book Company?

ED REPLY: Our incarcerated readers are all comps, always have been. As a veteran of many arrests myself, I know what it's like to have nothing to read and only Love Boat re-runs on the sole tv set. Inmates are not allowed access to our on-line paper. 

MENDOCINO MARTIAL ARTIST DIED DURING STANDOFF WITH HENDERSON, NEVADA POLICE THIS WEEKEND

Last Friday, April 12th, 2024, a standoff erupted in Henderson, Nevada, involving local police and an armed, suicidal individual barricaded in an apartment. The suspect, wanted for a violent crime, eventually died during the multi-day incident. 

Despite attempts to de-escalate, the situation intensified over the weekend, prompting a SWAT team deployment. The subject opened fire on the entering tactical unit, but no injuries were reported. Authorities resorted to using an excavator to breach the building. 

Approximately thirty hours later, the standoff concluded with the death of the subject, identified as 31-year-old Trevor Cooper.…

mendofever.com/2024/04/16/mendocino-martial-artist-died-during-standoff-with-henderson-nevada-police-this-weekend

DIRECT ACTION, A DISCUSSION

Chuck Dunbar:

The editor asserts that such protest methods are not defensible, and that case can be made for sure. The other side of it is that we Americans, providing the Israelis with the huge bombs and other military means to destroy Gaza, are complicit in the killing of many thousands of women and children, non-combatants it goes without saying. Biden just keeps on going, as Trump would clearly do, too, if he were in office. The U.S. has done terrible damage in the Mid East. God knows how many civilians we killed and maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq —and all for not much good, for overall terrible outcomes, including contributing greatly to the destabilization of that area.

As Americans enjoying our placid, safe lives filled with so many pleasures and distractions, maybe we need to pay attention—or have our attention demanded by unusual,veven disruptive means that rudely interrupt our so-important daily flow. Do we really care what horrors our great military power wreaks, or helps others wreak, in the poor regions of the world? Or shall we just go about our daily tasks, oblivious to it all? It’s all arguable, again, but it’s worth thinking long and hard about it.

Stephen Rosenthal:

“it’s worth thinking long and hard about it.”

I didn’t jump into yesterday’s fray about this, but I will now. Sorry Chuck, I’ve got more important things to think long and hard about, but in my (and others apparently) opinion you’re on the wrong side of this debate.

I abhor the incessant US war machine and, although I’m Jewish and initially supported Israel, am now vehemently opposed to Israel’s continuation of it’s Gaza invasion. But there are other ways to protest than inconveniencing and infuriating hundreds of thousands of people who live 10,000 miles away from the basis of their protest. At the ballot box, e.g. Yes, all too often we have horrible choices, i. e., the upcoming Presidential election, but we can start by voting out the bums in Congress, State and local governments, and rejecting all the usurious tax measures they try to shove up our asses.

It’s a tall order, but it’s got to start somewhere. And that somewhere shouldn’t impact the citizenry; it should directly affect those who are perpetrating and perpetuating the war crimes.

Mark Scaramella:

The best protests are the ones that inconvenience the powerful: academia, politicians, corporate HQ, courtrooms, financial centers, etc. Protesting in the streets (or in the forests as in the the Timber Wars days) without at least an accompanying larger strategy aimed at the top are counterproductive and misdirected, and they have the taint of “look at me”-ism. I agree with the protest sentiments but these tactics miss the point and tend to backfire.

Editor:

Scaramella is right. Traffic shutdowns in the Bay Area ignore the obvious fact that a number of the big shots driving American foreign policy all maintain offices here. So, like, why not occupy their offices and, what the hell, their homes? Shut these bastards down, not some poor guy scheduled for colon surgery at Mission Bay who can't get there because twenty people have snarled traffic for four hours. Politically, the positions of many of the pro-Palestinans are not viable or desirable. Hamas temporarily occupies the moral high ground ceded to them by Netanyahu's slaughter of Gazans, but if they're Gaza's future the situation is beyond grim and, obviously, irresolvable. If anybody is curious, I will elaborate.

ANOTHER RATE HIKE

Editor: 

Recently, our PG&E rates were arbitrarily raised, again. And again our state representatives did nothing to assist us, the general public. The California Public Utilities Commission, a band of bureaucrats appointed by our governor, bought into the specious arguments that the utility needs to improve their safety upgrades to make us all safer.

I don’t feel any safer, but I am offended by the obvious lies and patronizing attitude from elected representatives and a giant utility that has managed to delay and obfuscate any reasonable compensation. It’s past time to start demanding answers from politicians and the robber barons who have adopted the guise of concerned citizens.

Public commissions are often compromised of pols and other slackers who are being rewarded for past and future favors. These entities often offer bloated salaries and nothing resembling real work. The CPUC is just one blatant example of how government at any level rewards incompetence and sloth. PG&E is not on your side, they don’t have to be, just as pols offer little more than lip service in addressing meaningful issues.

Don’t let the pols off the hook. Make your voice heard, and tell your friends we don’t have to take this lying down.

Terry l. Wolfe

Cotati

MARILYN DAVIN: About those hemlines of yore…I, too, once kneeled on the concrete of an outside corridor of my junior high school so that one of my teachers could assess the length of my skirt (I passed). In ensuing years we looked back on this common dress code enforcement as unenlightened, if not out-and-out barbaric. Fast forward to a family gathering last year, where my daughter’s teenaged niece showed up in a see-through gauzy get-up cut low enough to reveal her bra and high enough to not only show her entire thigh but part of her underpants as well. Shocked, I asked her if she went to school dressed like that. She tossed her tresses cavalierly before saying “Yes,” adding that she didn’t care what the dress code was. Allowing girls to dress semi-nudely around the well understood and documented reality of the urgency of the male teenage sex drive is bad for both genders as they navigate the thorny and confusing mores of their budding sexualities.

DATELINE UKIAH...CALIFORNIA DREAMING...THE SOUND OF NO HANDS CLAPPING

Awoke at noon following a restful evening at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center on South State Street in sunny Ukiah, California. Morning ablutions finished, will check LOTTO tix at the Express Mart, and then amble on to the co-op for a nosh and coffee. Later, will drop into The Mendocino Book Company, before visiting the Ukiah Public Library to read the New York Times. This will ensure being fully updated on the implosion of this world, in particular global climate destabilization, the insanity of the American presidential election situation, the screwjob of capitalism in North America, and the condition of social ignorance in which two leggeds have no idea what they are, and behave accordingly. Meanwhile, not the body not the mind, Immortal Self I am! Always remember that the real you is not affected by anything at all. Peaceout.

P.S. Homeless locals have informed me that it is pointless to ask for money, because only the cartels have it nowadays.

POLTERGEIST ACTIVITY?

Dear Editor,

It’s 3:56 am on a quiet Tuesday beginning. My query here is, I’m in new localities which I’m very grateful for. Yet has your feeds or interest been peeked to these subtle shifts? Here in my abode the exhaust fan is exceptional though comes on by itself as does the light. In my own opinion has this time phases begun before onset of (lol) half of us getting the flu? I do admit being distracted which makes it amplified hope yours is great. That Ava has all she wants.

Sincerely yours 

Greg Crawford 

Fort Bragg

BOONVILLE DISTILLERY: If you haven’t been in to visit recently please do stop by this weekend! Open Friday & Saturday 3pm to 9pm & Sunday 3pm to 7pm…we are changing up our menus this week, can’t what to show you all some new things!

JACK CRISPIN CAIN: We are bottling Mendocino Spirits Rye Malt Whiskey Aged 10 Years this week. I distilled this whiskey in December 2013. Aged for 30 months in new charred American white oak, then placed in used Cognac barrels in 2016 for extended ageing. Available now at the distillery, soon to be released into local distribution. Limited to 400 bottles only.

A NIGHT AT THE BOONVILLE LODGE

by Ernie Pardini

I could tell there was quite a crowd that night

As I drove by the Boonville Lodge

I was on my way home from work

In my old beatup half ton Dodge

I drove on home and parked my truck

Took care of a couple chores

I put away a bag of groceries

That I'd picked up at the local store

Then I took a shower and put on some clean clothes

Then headed straight back to town

I'd swallowed a lot of dust that day

And I needed to wash it down

I walked in the Lodge and stepped up to the bar

Ordered a shot and a beer

I threw down the shot and started looking around

To see who all was here

There were always loggers and cowboys

And tonight there were quite a few

There were hillbillys and tourists

A couple hippies and a dog or two

Well I strolled to the end of the bar

And found me an empty stool

I threw a hand full of quarters up on the table

For a game of eight ball pool

You could have heard a pin drop

When he walked through the door

I turned around to look

And it was like nothing I'd seen before

All of his skin that was showing

Was a bright crimson red

He had a funny looking pair of little red horns

Poking up out of his head

Well this had to be the devil

It seemed plain as it could be

He was standing in the doorway smiling

And staring right over at me. 

Standing right behind him

Was a little old ugly troll

Carrying a pad an pencil

To keep track of the devil's souls

The devil walked up to the table

Just as I was chalking my cue

He said, you're the one I've been looking for

I've heard a lot about you

He said I've heard your a sinner

And I've come here to take your soul

I said if that's your plan you should have brought more help 

Than that little old ugly assed troll

He said but I am the devil

It's I who reigns over the night

I said if you plan on taking my soul

You'd better know how to fight

It's true that I am a sinner

But God needs a few of us to

We take care of his light work

Like knocking the hell out of you

Then I hit him with a left to the temple

That knocked him back on the floor

But he bounced up blowing smoke from his ears

And let out a mighty roar

Flames shot out of his fingertips

But I ducked and they bounced off the bar

They burned the hair off off a poor womans head

And she ran screaming out to her car

He was madder than a Mexican fighting bull

And his eyes turned a fiery red

I feigne a big right hook

Then hit him with a left instead

He fell to his knees and held himself

His suit was bloody and torn

I picked up an empty Budweiser bottle

And knocked off both of his horns

When he saw those little red horns hit the floor

He threw his head back and began to wail

I got out my old Case pocket knife

Leaned over and cut off his tail

I said devil, it's time you were leaving

You're not welcome here in our town

I think you're washed up as the devil

But the circus is looking for clowns

What you tried to pull here today

Was surely the act of a fool

Everyone knows you don't come in the Lodge

And interrupt a game of eight ball pool

The last time I saw the devil

Was in an ad for bar-b-cue ribs

His troll was blowing up long balloons to make animals for all the kids

The rest of this story I haven't witnessed myself

So I can't swear that it's true

Wether or not you believe it

Will have to be up to you

But if you go to the Lodge these days

You'll hear a story that they still tell

They say the night that I whipped the devil

The fire burned out in hell.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, April 16, 2024

CHARLES ANDERSON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

LORENZO CRUZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-loitering, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

MICHAEL DONAHE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, failure to appear.

BRAIDEN MARSHALL, Ukiah. Weapon at school, brandishing, criminal threats.

KAYA MCCONNELL, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, child endangerment, probation revocation.

TIMOTHY MIDGETT, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

RONDY SMITH, Willits. Failure to appear.

DOUGLAS TAYLOR JR., Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, loaded handgun-not registered owner, felon-addict with firearm.

ERIC WARD, Laytonville. Failure to appear.

ELIJAH ZAPATA, Fort Bragg. Exhibition of concealed firearm in public, concealed firearm, criminal threats, disturbing the peace, contempt of court, resisting.

ONE MORNING a husband returns to the cabin after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out, since it is such a beautiful day. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says," Good morning, Ma'am, what are you doing"?

"Reading a book," she replies, (thinking, "Isn't that obvious"?)

"You're in a Restricted Fishing Area," he informs her.

"I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing, I'm reading."

"Yes, but you have all the equipment. I'll have to write you up a ticket."

"For reading a book"? she replies.

"You're in a Restricted Fishing Area," he informs her again.

"But officer, I'm not fishing, I'm reading."

"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I'll have to write you up a ticket and you'll have to pay a fine."

"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault," says the woman.

"But I haven't even touched you," says the Game Warden.

"That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment."

"Have a nice day ma'am," and he immediately departed.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It's likely she can also think.

A NEW BILL COULD HELP SAVE CALIFORNIA JOURNALISM. GOOGLE WANTS IT DEAD.

AI is poised to finish off local news reporting as we know it unless lawmakers act

by Matt Pearce

Last Friday, Google issued an ultimatum, announcing that it was taking steps to block news stories in California in response to a bill from state Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland. The California Journalism Preservation Act would require tech giants to pay journalists, like me, for profiting from our labor. Google’s move followed a similar threat by Meta last year over the bill.

Big Tech’s threats to ban journalism from its platforms in California are just the beginning. Tomorrow’s artificial intelligence-powered internet is poised to finish off local journalism as we know it — unless lawmakers act.

For much of the past two decades, Google and news publishers have operated on an implicit bargain; outlets like the Chronicle or the Los Angeles Times, where I was a longtime reporter, would allow Google to crawl and feature my stories on its services. In exchange, Google would send these publishers a river of users via hyperlinks.

The understanding was that users who no longer subscribe to print newspapers would look at digital ads on news websites or buy digital subscriptions. In return, those users would presumably continue using Google (itself a profitable seller of digital advertising) as their preferred portal to find high-quality information from a variety of sources.

That arrangement has become increasingly unfair for newsrooms — and the California communities that count on them.

You don’t need an MBA to figure out that commandeering endless free labor from journalists and other content creators has been the deal of the century for Google. The internet giant has cornered 90% of all search engine traffic, collecting $48 billion in digital advertising revenue last quarter alone.

Wicks’ bill would require Google, under threat of arbitration, to return a share of these revenues earned from journalism back to news publishers, which would be required to reinvest 70% of those funds into journalism jobs. Australia and Canada have passed similar laws.

Absent these changes — and more ambitious ideas like them — the economics supporting local journalism in California will continue to collapse. The Los Angeles Times newsroom has roughly 40% fewer journalists than in 2019. Many of the savviest digital newsroom innovators I know have lost or left their journalism jobs.

Wicks’ bill has only become more urgent as Google experiments with generative AI, which also scrapes news sites but this time without any pretense that journalists might benefit. Some Google search responses already compile an AI-generated blurb that summarizes news stories.

Jim Albrecht, senior director of news ecosystem products at Google from 2017 to 2023, recently wrote in the Washington Post that AI-powered chatbots, not human-written articles like the one you’re reading right now, are the future of news.

“Publishers will have to think less about those articles and more about conversations with users,” Albrecht wrote. “The users will interact less and less with the actual articles and instead talk about the articles with what the tech industry used to call ‘intelligent agents.’ ”

Anybody hoping to shore up Google’s still-significant referral traffic to publishers — or anyone who’s propagandizing that the idea of paying journalists is tantamount to a “link tax” (the government never touches Google’s money) — is fighting yesterday’s war. The old internet where users actively hunt for information and prowl from site to site is dying. 

Following hyperlinks in search of accurate information is annoying, inefficient and increasingly filled with scammy clutter. On the fenced-in internet of tomorrow, AI-powered portals controlled by a small handful of powerful international companies will treat us like stationary consumers who passively expect knowledge and content to come to us, not the other way around.

Think of the uncanny algorithms of TikTok’s For You Page, OpenAI’s general purpose GPT chat interfaces or Elon Musk’s (not exactly successful but persistent) quest to transform the once hyperlink-friendly Twitter into X, an “everything app” where users “can do payments, messages, video, calling, whatever you’d like.”

The dream of the open internet is fading and being replaced by a surveillance-driven dystopia powered by free and low-paid labor. The California Journalism Preservation Act is just the first of many bills that will be necessary to point out that this content-creation arrangement is unsustainable for workers — and also everyone else.

With each day that passes, data-devouring AI models like the kind Google is developing, which are prone to inaccurate “hallucinations,” are at greater risk of ingesting and plagiarizing their own low-quality vomit for want of enough original knowledge to consume. It’s in the long-term interest of artificial intelligence developers to help foot the bill for original, human-produced local journalism because AI models will need more material that’s “grounded” in the real world — to borrow an AI term for verification. 

As a journalist, I’m largely indifferent to how the public consumes my reporting. Throughout American history, we have always adapted to changes in the medium; maybe you’d like to get news alerts and investigative reports from me via text message? Journalists will go wherever you want us to be.

But if California and Google still want to have independent journalists around — people who will report what’s going on in our communities, investigate corruption in local government and dig up hidden documents, even if just to feed an AI — somebody is going to have to pay us to do it. The California Journalism Preservation Act reasonably suggests that the people who profit from journalists’ work should help foot the bill.

(Matt Pearce is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and the president of Media Guild of the West, a local union of the NewsGuild-CWA, which supports the California Journalism Preservation Act.)

AN ON-LINE COMMENTER describes in-home fish farming: 

Several months ago, my Wife and Son came home with an aquarium fish they had bought on a whim. I am currently working nights, so I was awakened by my Son crying, holding a broken and quickly leaking out cup containing a Betta fish. They picked it up on the way home from the store and he accidentally dropped it, it broke, and it was now leaking water.

I filled up a 1/2 gallon mason jar I had lying around with tap water and put the fish in there. We then jumped in the car and headed to the pet store. I got a starter tank and all the fixins. We took everything home and set it up. It took a bit of doing, but the Betta and his friends are still alive and thriving!

I started out with 2 species of Aquatic plants (Amazon Sword, and Java fern). I was having trouble keeping the water clean, changing %30 every week, until I found some tutorials by some ol’timer Aquarists. They basically said NEVER change the water.

This intrigued me, so I started to do some research. There is a way to balance things in this aquatic microcosm to the point where external interference is minimal. I added Annubis Barteri, Java moss and Duck weed. I added nerite snails and Ghost shrimp as the cleanup crew. I also added infusoria and fresh water copepods to close circuit the food chain.

I have Pothos and Lucky Bamboo growing in the tanks with leaves and stems above water and roots in the water. They absolutley love it and my problem now is what to do with all the voluminous growth!

It is now easy to keep the water clean and I only add distilled water when evaporation takes 10% or so. The Shrimp are mating and having babies! The Neons are mating and having babies! Even my Male Betta is blowing a bubble nest and pining for a mate.

All that to say this: It is possible, and relatively LOW TECH to set up a cottage industry level fish farm. I know how to do it now and it is just a matter of scaling up for production levels. Save a few tweaks for species specifics (Talapia don’t care about water quality too much) it would be just like the above set up just larger and likely with edible plant additions. I want to set this up on a grand scale, just no room! LOL!

HUGE TROUT CAUGHT IN SMUD TROUT DERBY AT RANCHO SECO

by Dan Bacher

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Annual Trout Derby held on April 6 and 7 at the Rancho Seco Recreational Area in South Sacramento County produced lots of trophy-sized trout for the array of anglers fishing.

Anglers catching the heaviest rainbow trout won cash and prizes, including an adult and youth grand prize for the heaviest trout caught each day. The grand prizes — fishing kayaks — were provided by The Fish Sniffer magazine and Angler’s Press Outdoors. Approximately 600 people participated in the event.

Ka Her captured first place in the adult division with a 7.36 lb. rainbow, winning a fishing kayak. He was fishing with PowerBait when the lunker hit. Ka Her won first place in the adult division of the SMUD Rancho Seco Trout Derby on April 6 with this 7.36 pound rainbow trout.

“This was the first derby I have ever entered,” said Her. “The fish fought hard — I thought it was going to break my four-pound test line. Despite having four other lines hooked on my line, we were able to net the fish.” Howard Lee of El Dorado Hills placed second in the adult division with his 6.88 lb. trout. He won $155.

“I was fishing with a Power Worm from a fly rod on my kayak when I hooked the fish,” he stated. “It was the first time that I had ever entered the derby.”

The third through fifth adult division winners were: (3) Dylan Yager, 6.09, $75; (4) Richard Martinez, 5.88, $40, two day passes; and (5) Tim Dean, 5.83, $40, swag bag.

Nine-year-old Moses Andres won the grand prize in the kids division with a 5.79 lb. rainbow while fishing with his father. He won a fishing kayak.

Five-year-old Evan Alvarez placed second in the kids division with a 5.7 lb. trout, winning $30. He was fishing with 7-year-old Darren Alvarez, who placed fourth in the kids division with a 4.79 lb. rainbow, winning $20. He was also fishing with Deslynn Le, who placed fifth with a 4.47 lb. rainbow, winning a swag bag.

“They caught the fish while fishing PowerBait and Kastmasters off the dock,” said Henry Alvarez.

Four-year-old David Sauceda placed third in the kids division with his 5.1 lb. trout, winning $25.

Thirteen-year-old Mateo Pena took the grand prize in the youth division with his 6.16 lb. rainbow, winning a fishing kayak.

The second through fifth place winners were (2) Carlos Eck, 5.24, $55; (3) Joey Hill, 5.2, $35; (4) Christian Moua, 4.57, $25; and (5) Evie Koblemcnutt, 2.13, $15, swag bag.

Patrick Mahone captured the grand prize in the adult division on the second day of the event by successfully battling a 7.94 lb. rainbow trout, winning a fishing kayak.

The second through third place winners were: (2) Joseph Roberts, 7.12, $155; (3) Michael Quesada, 6.35, $75; (4) Jordan Hall, 5.45, $40, two day passes; and (5) Jay Huey, 5.16, $30, swag bag.

Eight-year-old Elijah Song won first place in the kids division on Sunday with a 4.57 lb. trout, winning $35. Nine-year-old Grace Machorro placed second with a 2.42 lb. rainbow, winning $30.

Eleven-year-old Alex Masaki won first place in the youth division with his 4.57 lb. rainbow. He won a fishing kayak. Eleven-year-old Colton Boden placed second with his 1.66 lb. trout, winning $55.

In preparation for the derby, Rancho Seco Lake was recently stocked with thousands of rainbow trout, including the big fish that dominated the derby.

Anglers can fish the 160-acre lake from the shoreline or off one of six fishing piers. Small boats with electric motors are also allowed (no gas motors). In addition to trout, the freshwater lake is home to largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish, crappie and channel catfish.

The 400-acre Rancho Seco Recreational Area offers more than just fishing. The full-service facility offers picnic areas, RV and tent camping sites, a beach and swimming spots. Kayaks, rowboats, paddleboards and fishing boats are available to rent.

Rancho Seco is 25 miles south of Sacramento, approximately 15 minutes east of Highway 99 on Twin Cities Road. It is 24.9 miles from Lodi via Clay Station Road and 38.2 miles from Stockton via Highway 99 N. 

For more information about the derby, camping and safety at the park, visit smud.org/RanchoSeco or call (800) 416-6992.

* * *

Stockton benches and plaques will honor Jay Sorenson, Bill Jennings

The California Striped Bass Association (CSBA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary with the dedication of a bench and plaque in honor of Jay Sorensen of Stockton, founder of the group, at DeCarli Plaza on the Stockton waterfront at 2 p.m. on April 19.

Additionally, a bench and plaque will also be dedicated at the same time for the late Bill Jennings, former executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), who was instrumental in the restoration of the Mokelumne River and its fall-run Chinook salmon and steelhead runs. Both Sorensen and Jennings were active in the fight to stop the Delta Tunnel and its previous incarnations.

Including Restore the Delta, the city of Stockton is the birthplace of three of the most important organizations advocating for the protection of the Delta and its fisheries. Information on CSBA can be located on their website at http://www.striper-csba.org/.

* * * 

Ocean Salmon Fishing Closed Again This Year

On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) voted unanimously for a complete closure of recreational and commercial salmon seasons on the California Coast for the second year in a row, based on a CDFW recommendation.

The closure is due to the collapse of Sacramento River fall-run Chinook and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations for the second year in a row.

“At its March 2024 meeting, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) voted on and approved public review of three alternatives for salmon fisheries along the California coast,” wrote Chuck Bonham, CDFW Director, in a letter to the PFMC. “The first two alternatives offered opportunities for limited commercial and recreational fishing while the third alternative calls for a complete closure of salmon fisheries off California.”

“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recommends the Council to close ocean salmon fisheries along the California coast and otherwise constrain salmon fishing in Council managed areas to minimize impacts to Sacramento and Klamath origin Chinook salmon stocks,” urged Bonham.

The state and federal governments blame the salmon collapse on the drought, while fishing groups, Tribes and environmentalists point to the government’s complicity in the collapse.

“At this point we can’t put the blame solely on drought when Governor Newsom’s water policies are devastating to thousands of families that rely on salmon to pay their rent and mortgages, put food on the table and keep their businesses going,” said Scott Artis, Executive Director of the Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA). “It’s simple: when the state’s water policies kill off all of the baby salmon, 2 to 3 years later you don’t get many returning adults in the rivers. This is Governor Newsom’s legacy.”

NPR SUSPENDS VETERAN EDITOR URI BERLINER, WHO CALLED OUT LEFT-WING BIAS

by Alexandra Steigrad

NPR suspended Uri Berliner, the senior editor who published a bombshell essay a week ago that claimed that the publicly funded outlet has “lost America’s trust” by reporting the news with a left-wing bias.

NPR media writer David Folkenflik revealed on Tuesday that Berliner was sidelined for five days without pay beginning last Friday. Folkenflik, who reviewed a copy of the letter from NPR brass, said the company told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets — a requirement for NPR journalists.

NPR called the letter a “final warning,” saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR’s policy again.

Neither NPR nor Berliner immediately responded to requests for comment.

Uri Berliner, the NPR journalist who penned an essay criticizing his company’s bias, was suspended and given a “final warning.”

Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR’s newsroom union, but Folkenflik reported that the editor is not appealing the punishment.

Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has worked at NPR for 25 years, called out journalistic blind spots around major news events, including the origins of COVID-19, the war in Gaza and the Hunter Biden laptop, in an essay published Tuesday on Bari Weiss’ online news site the Free Press.

The fallout from the essay sparked outrage from many of his colleagues. Late Monday afternoon, NPR chief news executive Edith Chapin announced to the newsroom that executive editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

The fiasco also ignited a firestorm of criticism from prominent conservatives — with former President Donald Trump demanding NPR’s federal funding be yanked — and has led to internal tumult, the New York Times reported Friday.

Berliner had told The Times he had not been disciplined by managers when interviewed last Thursday, though he received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR required its employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. 

He told The Times he didn’t run his initial remarks or those to the Gray Lady by NPR. 

NPR’s new chief executive Katherine Maher defended NPR’s journalism, calling Berliner’s article “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning,” The 42-year-old exec added that the essay amounted to “a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.”

Folkenflik said Berliner took umbrage at that, saying she had “denigrated him.” Berliner said he supported diversifying NPR’s workforce to look more like the US population at large. Maher did not address that in a subsequent private exchange he shared with Folkenflik for the story.

The fiasco soon put the spotlight on Maher, whose own left-leaning bias came to light in a trove of woke, anti-Trump tweets she penned.

In January, when Maher was announced as NPR’s new leader, The Post revealed her penchant for parroting the progressive line on social media — including bluntly biased Twitter posts like “Donald Trump is a racist,” which she wrote in 2018.

That hyper-partisan message was scrubbed from the platform now known as X, but preserved on the site Archive.Today.

It’s unclear when Maher deleted it, or if its removal was tied to her new gig.

Other woke posts remain on Maher’s X account. In 2020, as the George Floyd riots raged, she attempted to justify the looting epidemic in Los Angeles as payback for the sins of slavery.

“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive,” Maher wrote on May 31, 2020.

“But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.”

The next day, she lectured her 27,000 followers on “white silence.”

“White silence is complicity,” she scolded. “If you are white, today is the day to start a conversation in your community.”

The NPR job is Maher’s first position in journalism or media.

She was previously the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, after holding communications roles for the likes of HSBC, UNICEF and the World Bank.

Maher earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University, according to her LinkedIn account, and grew up in Wilton, Conn. — a town that her mother, Ceci Maher, now represents as a Democratic state senator.

CAN THE ‘EVERYONE IS A SPY’ BILL BE STOPPED?

by Matt Taibbi

Last Friday, after a controversial amendment requiring a warrant to spy on Americans failed when Speaker Mike Johnson cast a rare and dramatic deciding vote, the House of Representatives reauthorized the FISA surveillance program. The bill’s passage garnered headlines and concern among civil liberties advocates, but it turned out something scarier loomed in the text....

racket.news/p/can-the-everyone-is-a-spy-bill-be

HATTIE MCDANIEL: 

"Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Despite the fact Clark Gable played a joke on her during the filming of "Gone with the Wind" (1939) (he put real brandy in the decanter instead of iced tea during the Bonnie Blue birth celebration scene), Hattie McDaniel and Gable were actualy good friends. Gable later threatened to boycott the premiere in Atlanta because McDaniel was not invited, but later relented when she convinced him to go.

McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She won as Best Actress in a Suporting Role for her role of Mammy in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). She became the first African-American to attend the Academy Awards as a guest, not a servant. She willed her Oscar to Howard University, but the Oscar was lost during the race riots at Howard during the 1960s. It has never been found.

Her aceptance speech upon winning the Oscar: "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you."

Happy Birthday, Hattie McDaniel!

JEFF BLANKFORT:

GIDEON LEVY today on Democracy Now! discussing the "treatment" of an Israeli Palestinian writer who recently died after spending 37 years in prison for his participation in the death of an Israeli soldier and emphasizing the sadism toward the dead man and how sadism towards Arabs marks Israeli society, something I witnessed for myself as a constant on my visits there and to Lebanon:

Levy: "But, no, for Israel, no Palestinian is good enough, and here, in the last years, started really a sadistic behavior toward him and his family. No visits. When he started to be ill with cancer, when he got no visits half the year now, they didn’t even inform the family that he’s dying. They didn’t even inform the family he died. And now it’s already 10 days. They don’t even return the body, and don’t let them mourn in their home. I mean, what is more sadistic than this? And what is more the face of this current government of Israel? When it comes to Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians or Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza, sadism is the name of the game."

GAZA, ETC.

by John Arteaga

Boy, it's becoming hard to get a good night’s sleep these days, trying to forget about the million or two of my fellow human beings trying to sleep on the desert sand by the Rafah Crossing to Egypt after being dispossessed of what generations of their families have cobbled together out of nothing, creating some semblance of a civilized modern human habitation, even though they’re living in an open air prison. Likewise, I’m finding it more and more difficult to enjoy a nice meal without thinking about those same millions of Gazan men, women and children, forcibly displaced by their crazed Zionist oppressors, forced to spend their time trying to locate the fundaments of nutrition and hydration after being expelled from their homes.

Let’s look at this October 7 massacre in Israel; I recently heard the passionate and eloquent voice of Palestinians, Ali Abunima, who runs an informative website by the name of Electronic Intifada. He pointed out the fact that in the aftermath of that massacre and war crime, that there were whole blocks of buildings completely destroyed, and that the Hamas invaders, armed with small arms and perhaps a few grenades, could not possibly have perpetrated the enormous destruction in the area around the attack. Going out on a limb here, knowing what I know about past Israeli incursions into their neighbor’s land, it seems more than likely that not that not only did Israel provide (perhaps with a deniable cut out) the equipment used in the October 7 massacre, but that it had the ever-ready IDF intentionally stand down for hours to allow maximum loss of life (hey, those liberals at that music Festival were muy expendable to the ultra-Orthodox nut cases running the country, as well as the criminal Netanyahu, who could use a good war to distract attention from his legal problems).

The most obvious explanation of this shocking level of destruction is that when the cavalry did finally come over the hill, they erred on the side of obliterating any building where hostages may have been taken. They have some biblical name for it in the IDF; killing hostages as well as captors rather than having to negotiate with them.

At this point, clearly Israel has out-Nazied the Nazis as well as the worst war crimes committed by the Allies. While the Warsaw ghetto, the third Reich’s open air prison for Jews, may not have been a very pleasant place to reside, I don’t remember ever hearing about Hitler’s forces dropping thousands of 1 ton dumb bombs on it, destroying its water, sewage and power infrastructure, as Israel seems to have done in Gaza in response to what MUST have been at least a somewhat false flag attack.

Dresden is a synonym for remorseless and over-the-top death and destruction meted upon a defenseless population as kind of a mean-spirited kick in the teeth after one is down; the US, after victory in Europe was already in hand, chose to obliterate this German city just because we could. To punish them. Something like 60% of the habitable structures there were destroyed. Well, the Israeli apartheid regime has done us one better with an absolutely appalling blitzkrieg on the huddled millions of refugees from the first Nakba (catastrophe), where they had been driven out of their age old family homes during the founding of Israel. Apparently, with the sniveling, unconditional acceptance of whatever atrocities Israel commits, along with the uninterrupted pipeline of Weapons of Mass Destruction for their ‘defense’, we US taxpayers have become partners with them in the destruction of fully 80% of the buildings in Gaza, not that the remaining 20% might still have any kind of connection to water, sewer, gas etc. infrastructure to remain viable places to live.

For those of us who live outside of the normal media bubble, listening to the news has become kind of a whiplash experience; while the ‘respectable’ media report whatever nonsensical lies and propaganda put forth by the Israeli lobby about each day’s horrifying genocide, we hear about things like; the intentional murder of hundreds of journalists who are just trying to bring the truth to us, often obliterating their whole families. Or the deliberate and thorough destruction of the hundreds of universities in Gaza (Palestinians, like their Semitic brethren, put a high price on higher education), the almost complete eradication of hospitals and healthcare in Gaza, coupled with an absolute ban on drugs and medical supplies, resulting in the horrifying reality of surgeons having to amputate limbs on children without anesthesia. The thousands of relief trucks that are being held off by the evil Israeli border guards, turning away trucks for having scissors in the first-aid kits they’re attempting to bring in, and just the other day, the horrifying murder of seven volunteer chefs with that Kitchens International, or whatever the charity is called, where these brave and selfless souls cook millions of desperately needed meals for people who would otherwise starve.

This inhuman cruelty, accomplished by cowardly drone warfare, first blew up one car, clearly marked, and in what they thought was cooperation with the IDF, then a second car after the survivors of the first were being rescued, then a third, after survivors of the second car got into another, finally killing all seven of these brave, caring international volunteers. The fact that they even reported Israel’s non-apology, halfhearted excuse for this sickening war crime makes me ill; why do we have to be subjected to whatever lies the Israelis want to spew on their captive benefactors?

Israel has destroyed it’s legitimacy, and threatens to take down Biden’s chances for a second term unless he can somehow muster the gumption to stand up to the Israeli genocide billionaire funding stream, instead of endlessly enabling it. Tell those goddamned Israeli Rafah crossing guards to just let the damn relief trucks through or we’ll drone them! For the sake of the survival of our democracy! People will not vote for this partnership with genocide! 

For this and previous articles; https://inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2024/04/boy-its-becoming-hard-to-get-good.html

* * *

Peter Good:

John, I want to let you know that I do respect your empathy and action toward the support of the Palestine people in Gaza. I share your horror of the Israel/Hamas war. 

I did find your description of the Warsaw ghetto inaccurate and tone deaf. The Warsaw Jewish ghetto was an open air prison to hold Jewish people until concentration camps could be built. After they were built an efficient transport train system carried people to be efficiently gassed. At the very least 250000 people from the Warsaw ghetto were exterminated. The Jewish people never made war on the Nazis. To claim that Israel out nazid the nazi is offensive and inaccurate. 

JA; Hmm, not sure what you found inaccurate in what I said about the Warsaw ghetto; while it, like Gaza, was an open air prison for Jews, rather than Palestinians, am I wrong in stating that the Luftwaffe never dropped hundreds or thousands of 2000 pounds bombs on it, destroying its water, sewage, power etc.? And isn't it also true that, rather than taking the inhabitants by train to gas chambers and ovens, that Israel is instead killing these largely innocent people by mass starvation and thirst, being driven out into the desert to die? It could well be argued that the former method of extermination is more merciful.

As for the Jewish people making war on the Nazis, I have read about certain uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto that resulted in taking the lives of German soldiers, none of which is even relevant considering the fact that the insignificant number of combatants on October 7 compared to the mass death and destruction being wreaked on all the imprisoned denizens of Gaza makes it like carpet bombing the south side of Chicago because one violent gang of a few dozen commits an unusual number of murders that week.

The war between Israel and Hamas has no good guys. Both sides are driven by a religious ideology that poses an existential threat to each side. Read the Hamas charter and Netanyahu public position. The cycle of violence with Iran supporting and arming Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthios of Yemen and the US arming Israel is horrendous. 

The UN and international law says that a people under siege have every right to fight against their oppressors, even lethally. Israel has been illegally imposing an almost starvation blockade on Gaza for decades. The US and Israel define peace as a state where Israel can go and murder as many Palestinians as they like anytime they please without consequences, but should a single Palestinian 'murder' a single Israeli the cries of TERRORISM! Are heard all over the world.

A two state solution is US Longtime policy with only the failure of Oslo agreements as a bitter fruit. Religious extremists on both sides are responsible for the failure. The assassination of Began by orthodox Jewish extremists and the rise of Netanyahu contributed to the failed peace. President Obama rejected Netanyahu’s call for US embassy in Jerusalem. Trump reversed that decision within the first few days of his Presidency. 

And to my great disappointment Biden has not changed anything about our slavish devotion to whatever atrocities Israel decides it needs to 'protect itself'. 

Netanyahu’s attack on the Iranian embassy was an attempt to draw US into the the war. Biden immediately made it clear Israel would not succeed in this effort. Israel has opened a food corridor in Gaza and Democrats in Congress calling for ceasefire now includes Schumer and Pelosi and Huffman.

Too bad it's too late for so many starving Gazans. I can just imagine Israel's wonderful 'food corridor' maybe they'll let 20 trucks through to feed 2 million people, when 500 a day is more like what is needed. Apparently trucks full of food and relief supplies are parked for tens of miles outside of the Rafah crossing. Send in the fucking Marines to just shut those inspection stations down, let them mow down the crazy Orthodox settlers trying to block any aid from coming in.

Looks like KC didn’t agree with me. That’s my two cents. Best to you. Peter. 

John Arteaga: Thanks for your thoughts on the column. I'm sure all the local Zionists agree with you. Many thanks for your thoughtful response to my latest column. I wish that more of the friends to whom I copy my pieces would make some kind of considered response.

WHEN THE TITANIC SANK, it carried millionaire John Jacob Astor IV. The money in his bank account was enough to build 30 Titanics. However, faced with mortal danger, he chose what he deemed morally right and gave up his spot in a lifeboat to save two frightened children.

Millionaire Isidor Straus, co-owner of the largest American chain of department stores, "Macy's," who was also on the Titanic, said: "I will never enter a lifeboat before other men."

His wife, Ida Straus, also refused to board the lifeboat, giving her spot to her newly appointed maid, Ellen Bird. She decided to spend her last moments of life with her husband.

These wealthy individuals preferred to part with their wealth, and even their lives, rather than compromise their moral principles. Their choice in favor of moral values highlighted the brilliance of human civilization and human nature.

IN BERLIN

by Olivia Giovetti

Last Friday afternoon, shortly after the Palestinian writer and researcher Salman Abu Sitta had said that ‘the voice of the victim is silenced, denied, condemned and vilified,’ the German police cut the power to the Palästina-Kongress in Berlin.

The three-day conference, whose organizers included the Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (‘Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East’), had faced opposition since it was announced in February. There were predictable headlines from the pro-Israel media conglomerate Axel Springer, but even leftist outlets used similar rhetoric: taz called the event a gathering for ‘anti-Israel and terror-glorifying groups’, quoting a source who suggested that the conference had links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and was likely to support ‘Islamism and terrorism’; Jungle World billed it as a ‘congress of Israel haters’.

The Berlin Senate tried to find ways to cancel the event. The Berliner Sparkasse bank froze Jüdische Stimme’s account, which had been used to collect the donations and ticket sales for the conference, refusing to release the funds until the group provided a list of its members’ full names and addresses. Organizers quickly put together a fundraising event so the conference could continue. They had to relocate at the last minute after the initial venue, a café in Kreuzberg, received a phone call from the police regarding ‘security concerns’ for the event and felt pressured to cancel.

The conference’s event space in Tempelhof reportedly received similar calls. ‘Are these the methods of the mafia or are these the methods of democracy?’ asked Jüdische Stimme’s chair, the composer Wieland Hoban.

On Friday, the Berlin mayor, Kai Wegner, tweeted that it was ‘intolerable’ that the conference was set to go on as planned. He may have had an inkling, however, that it wouldn’t: an hour earlier, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta – who spent 43 days volunteering at hospitals in Gaza last year – flew into Brandenburg Airport from the UK to give a keynote address at the conference. Instead he was detained, questioned for three and a half hours and ultimately denied entry into Germany. The Greek economist and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, another speaker on the program, was also barred from entering Germany or taking part in any political activity in the country, including by video call. (He has since published the text of his speech.)

There were also delays on the ground at the event space. Organizers had arrived at eight o’clock on Friday morning to begin setting up. Registration was due to take place between eleven and two. Citing vague ‘regulations’, however, the police had prevented almost everyone from entering the building. At half past one, I was among the hundreds of attendees still waiting for registration to start. An hour later, I was pressed between a volunteer who had been meant to start their shift at eleven but couldn’t get across the police line, and a woman who had flown in from Beirut that morning.

Approximately 2500 police were on duty for an event with 800 ticket-holders. The organizers were then told by the authorities that they would only be able to admit 250 ticket-holders: a ratio of ten police officers to every conference goer.

I had a press ticket but was denied entry by the police on the grounds that I was a freelancer and neither a German citizen nor working with a German media outlet. I later learned from Nadija Samour, a German-Palestinian lawyer who was working with the conference, that the police had a separate media list, and let ‘their’ members of the press in through a back door without the organizers’ knowledge.

It was a couple hours later that the video message from Salman Abu Sitta (Ghassan’s father) began. Three minutes into the recording, a group of twenty to thirty police in riot gear stormed the stage. A smaller group of officers broke into the electricity room and cut the power. Most of this – until the power cut – is partially visible and clearly audible on the conference’s livestream. After the power was cut, the room was plunged into darkness.

‘There was no communication, only chaos,’ one of the speakers told me afterwards. A police officer later explained that Salman Abu Sitta was banned from speaking in Germany, which was the reason the police cancelled the entire congress and ordered everyone to leave, making several arrests and removing some people by force. An officer outside shrugged as attendees pressed him with questions about the legality of cancelling the conference: ‘I’m just following orders.’

‘What happened yesterday is not and cannot be an internal German issue,’ the Israeli filmmaker Dror Dayan said at a press conference the following day. ‘What happened yesterday should go around the world; should shame and blame Germany everywhere.’

On Saturday afternoon, a demonstration against the suppression of the conference began outside Berlin’s town hall, the Rotes Rathaus. At least one of the U-bahn entrances along the route, at Unter den Linden, was blocked off, making it difficult for protesters to disperse if things got ugly. Police stormed the march, kettling demonstrators and, according to some social media posts, attempting to arrest children as young as eight or eleven years old. The march turned into a sit-in until those who had been detained were released.

The following day, demonstrators gathered on a sliver of Tiergarten across the street from the Bundestag where, for the previous week, the protest camp Occupy Against Occupation had been running. The police presence was high: at one point they banned the use of Arabic, even for prayers. Police vans lined Scheidemannstraße for most of Sunday. In the early evening, following a performance on the lawn by a Gazan musician whose song lyrics included the legally contested phrase ‘from the river to the sea’, members of the Kriminalpolizei charged the lawn in search of the rapper.

A heavy police presence at pro-Palestinian demonstrations isn’t new in German; nor is police brutality. The weekend’s events, however, represent a sharp uptick in suppression. One video shows several protesters being forced to the ground, some placed in chokeholds. One demonstrator in a kippah is shoved face-first into the dirt as he’s arrested, and later carried to a police van by four members of the Kripo. With the wind knocked out of him, he continues to shout: ‘Free Palestine!’

(London Review of Books)

TERRY GROSS SPOKE WITH KEN KESEY in 1989, and asked him what he thought about Tom Wolfe's book and how accurate it was.

Mr. KEN KESEY (Author): Oh yeah, it's a good book. Yeah, he's a - Wolfes a genius. He did a lot of that stuff, he was only around three weeks. He picked up that amount of dialogue and verisimilitude without a tape recorder, without taking notes to any extent. He just watches very carefully and remembers. But, you know, he's got his own editorial filter there. And so what he's coming up with is part of me, but it's not all of me - any more than Hunter S. Thompson is loaded all the time and shooting machine guns at John Denver. That's the sort of thing - interesting in the media, but he's got a lot more life to him than that.

GROSS: What effect did "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" have on you? For instance, did it make the police feel more determined to try to bust you again?

Mr. KESEY: Yeah. But I haven't been worried about the cops that much. The effect "Kool-Aid Acid Test" has is, they'll say that youre Richard Gere and youve got a great big wart on the side of your nose. And they begin to play it up in the cameras and then pretty soon, it becomes the thing that a lot of teenage girls are in love with, and then pretty soon you're looking at it too, until you're cross-eyed looking at your own wart.

GROSS: Why do you use the wart as an analogy?

Mr. KESEY: Well, because I was a lot more than the Tom Wolfe depiction. And I think this is a problem for a lot of American writers, and has been for a long time. You know, Hemingway - he really doesnt get into trouble until he becomes dazzled by his own image. He sees the rest of the United States looking at him. And he moves over and sits there, and he looks at himself, too. And then when he tries to go back and get inside of his own skin, he can't quite fit into it as well as he used to; he's gained weight.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KESEY: He can't put his own skin back on. And when you're writing, it's not a good idea to be observed too much - unless you want to live in New York and wear white clothes.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KESEY: If you really are interested in being a real, straight, old-fashioned writer, it's better to live down in Mississippi like Faulkner, and work out in the woodshed and not be seen but once every 10 years. I think that being the observed always turns your eye back on yourself, and you become kind of blinded by your own radiance.

GROSS: You started doing LSD through a government experiment - an experimental program in, I think it was in 1959. You were one of the volunteers who, you know, volunteered to take this experimental drug and have it tested on yourself. How did you become a volunteer for these experiments?

Mr. KESEY: One of the guys that was our neighbors, was a - he was a psychologist. And he was supposed to show up one day and just really - he didn't have the common hair to do it and says, Would anybody else like to take my place? And I, at the time, was training for the Olympics. I made it to be an alternate in the 1960 Olympics team and was...

GROSS: As a wrestler?

Mr. KESEY: Yeah, as a wrestler. I'd never been drunk on beer, you know, let alone done any drugs. But this is the American government. They said, come in here. We've just discovered this new spot of space, and we want somebody to go up there and look it over, and we don't want to do it. We want to hire you students. And I was one of 140 or so that eventually turned out. It was CIA-sponsored.

I didn't believe it for a long time. Well, Allen Ginsberg says, you know who was paying for that? It was the CIA. I said aw, no Allen, you're just paranoid. But he finally got all the darn records, and it did turn out the CIA was doing this. And it wasn't being done to try to cure insane people, which is what we thought. It was being done to try to make people insane - to weaken people, and to be able to put them under the control of interrogators.

We didn't find this out for 20 years. And by that time the government had said OK, stop that experiment. All these guinea pigs that we've sent up there into outer space, bring them back down and don't ever let them go back in there again because we don't like the look in their eyes.

GROSS: Do you remember what your very first trip was like when you were a volunteer in this government program? And what kind of preparation were you given for it? Were you given any?

Mr. KESEY: None at all, except I'd read a little piece in Life magazine about how they'd given it to cats, and cats were afraid of mice once they'd had LSD. But I think that we'd been preparing for a long time. You know, I knew the Bible. I knew the Bhagavad Gita. I knew the Daodejing. I had read Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East, which gave us an underpinning spiritually, so that these phenomena that were happening to us had something that we could relate to. We just happened to come at a time when it was not only a lot of stuff happening chemically, there were a lot of new changes in music and in film. Burroughs was just beginning to do his work in literature, and there was a movement afoot that this was just a part of.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KESEY: And it was exciting. It was wonderful.

GROSS: What was the very first trip like, though, under the experimental conditions?

Mr. KESEY: Groovy, man.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KESEY: It was groovy. We suddenly realized that there's a lot more to this world than we previously thought. I think, you know - because I'm asked this question a lot. Its been 20 years or so, and people are always coming back and saying well, what do you think? And I'm - one of the things that I think came out of it is this, is that there's room. We don't all have to be the same. We don't have to have Baptists coast to coast. We can throw in some Buddhists and some Christians, and people who are just thinking these totally strange thoughts about the Irish leprechauns - that there is room, spiritually, for everybody in this universe.

GROSS: You were among the first people to take LSD out of the clinical setting and use it in a social setting. How did you first get it out?

Mr. KESEY: Of the hospital?

GROSS: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KESEY: Ooh, well, after I had gone through these drug experiments and was in this little room in the hospital, looking out through the little window at the people out there who were the regular nuts - they werent students going through experiments - Im looking at them through my crazed eyes. I saw that these people have something going, and there's a truth to it that people are missing. And that's how I came to write Cuckoo's Nest. I got a job at the nut house, and worked from midnight to 8 writing that book and taking care of these patients on this one ward and made a lot of good friends - some that I still have. And I found that my key opened a lot of the doors to the doctors' offices, where these drugs were being kept.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KESEY: That's how.

GROSS: Huh. And then you had friends who were able to make it in their own laboratories.

Mr. KESEY: Yeah, but it never was anywhere as good as that good government stuff. That's the government - the CIA always has the best stuff.

GROSS: Now you brought up "Cuckoo's Nest." And I was wondering, when you were working in the psychiatric ward, which is what "Cuckoo's Nest" is based on, and I think you sometimes went in their high on hallucinogens. Do you think you ended up writing "Cuckoo's Nest," in a way, projecting your experiences as a quote, sane person high on drugs - projecting those experiences on to people who maybe had like, serious problems?

Mr. KESEY: Well, these people had had serious problems. I mean, I saw people hallucinating, and people in bad shape.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KESEY: Make no mistake about it - being crazy is painful. And being crazy is hell, whether you get it from taking a drug or whether it happens because you're just trying to lead the American way of life and it keeps kicking your legs out from under you. One way or another, it's hell on you. And it's nothing that's fun about it, and I am certainly not recommending it. It is a lens through which I looked at stuff, but it's hard on the eyes. But I think I had a very valid viewpoint, and much closer than a lot of the doctors were having.

At that time, you know, everything was Freudian. If you were messed up, it was because of something that had happened to you when you were in the bathroom as a kid. And with these experiences, and I don't just mean drug experiences, there were a lot of other things that were going on that were emphasizing this.

John Coltrane's music was saying the same thing. It was saying, something is wrong and it's making us a little crazy and that is making us crazy enough to hallucinate, whether we were promoting it ourselves or it was being imposed on us - I don't want to argue that now. But when I would - I felt so good after being on there all night, to know that I was wearing a green uniform and - I mean a white uniform instead of a green uniform, so I could leave in the morning and go home. Otherwise, there wasn't that much difference between me and those people they were locking up.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KESEY: It gave me an empathy that I could never have come up with. A better example is, those first three pages of Cuckoos Nest were written on peyote. And I don't know any Indians; I don't know where that Indian came from. I've always felt humbled by that character. Without the character of that Indian, the book is melodrama. You know, it's a straight battle between McMurphy and the big nurse. With that Indian's consciousness to filter that through, that makes it exceptional.

GROSS: Have you given up drugs? Or, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be asking this, but do you...

Mr. KESEY: We're into it now, go ahead.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Do you still do them at all or...

Mr. KESEY: On religious occasions, yeah.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KESEY: I like to walk up on a mountain on Easter and get a sense of rebirth. Some people jog. Some people meditate. You know, there's certain people who whip themselves on the back, there's - everybody has their own way of trying to see past the veil. And this is just the one that I happened to come up with. My metaphor is this, is that you don't need a huge tuning fork. We used to think - we used to have a tuning fork eight-foot long and weighed 2,000 pounds, just to find middle C. But now, all you need is a little, bitty tuning fork once a year, maybe. But no, I don't know anybody who really goes out and gets ripped anymore.

GROSS: At what point did you decide to give up the kind of Pranksters life? The story that I've heard is that the other Pranksters went to Woodstock. You didn't want to go. And when they came back, they came back to a sign hung in your driveway that just said: No.

Mr. KESEY: Well, there were 61 people when they headed out to Woodstock. And after they were gone, I went upstairs - and we live in a barn; we still live in the same barn. We fixed it up, and it's a pretty nice place. But at that time, there was still hay in the loft of the barn. And I found out - one of these little hippie warrens, where they dug in with their ratty, old sleeping bags and their copy of Zap magazine. And stuck right down in a hay bale was a candle, which had burned right down to the hay before it had gone off. And I thought hey, enlightenment is one thing but being this loose is - I mean, my grandpa wouldn't have allowed them up there and my great grandpa wouldn't have, and there's certain things that take precedent over enlightenment.

GROSS: And that's when you sent everybody home, basically.

Mr. KESEY: Yeah.

GROSS: Ken Kesey, I thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. KESEY: OK. Take it easy.

WHEN EINSTEIN GAVE LECTURES AT U.S. UNIVERSITIES, the question students asked him most was: Do you believe in God? And he always answered: I believe in the God of Spinoza.

Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.

According to Spinoza, God would say: “Stop praying. I want you to go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

“Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.

“Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything that others made you believe.

“Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes—you will find me in no book!

“Stop asking me, ‘Will you tell me how to do my job?’ Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry or bothered. I am pure love.

“Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you, I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies, and best of all, free will. Why would I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How could I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?

“Respect your peers, and don't give what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life—alertness is your guide.

“My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, not a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now—and it is all you need.

“I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

You are absolutely free to create in your life. It’s you who creates heaven or hell.

“Live as if there is nothing beyond this life, as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist. Then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is an afterlife, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask, ‘Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?’

“Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

“Stop praising me. What kind of egomaniac God do you think I am? I'm bored with being praised. I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That's the way to praise me.

“Stop complicating things and repeating as a parrot what you've been taught about me. Why do you need more miracles? So many explanations?

“The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.”