LAST MONDAY MORNING'S DEMONSTRATIONS for Palestine snarling the entire Bay Area's traffic don't seem to me a defensible tactic given the likely lethal consequences that could result from blocking people from getting to where they need to go. Yes, yes, it's a lot more lethal for Palestinians, but I'll bet if you polled the thousands of people immobilized on the bridges and freeways only a small percentage would understand, or care to understand the commitment to Palestine that compelled you to snarl the day's human business. Outraging millions of people around the country is unlikely to convince many of the righteousness of the Palestinian cause. In fact, thousands of people have probably emerged from today vowing support for the Israeli criminals who, ultimately, are responsible for shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge and points east.
THE COPS, one would think, would be better prepared for these traffic snarling protests. All morning television showed them just standing around. It's not as if the tactic is new to the Bay Area. Remember Critical Mass, the pro-bike demonstrations in SF that prevented thousands of working people from getting home on a Friday afternoon? The Frisco cops went so far as to give these narcissists police escorts! Seems that hands off still applies.
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, even 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 initially jump into the 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 its 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 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.
NOT PARTICULARLY RELEVANT here, but some of you old timers may recall the days when parking for Niners games at Candlestick was the free-est free enterprise imaginable. You paid cash (!) to park, then, post-game, played Dodge Cars with thousands of other fans plowing through the mud pits to escape the chaotic site. Went on for years. Also, then and now, San Francisco building permit applicants pay “expedite” fees to, well, expedite their project. Rackets galore.
JEFF BLANKFORT:
Gideon Levy last week 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.”
CRAIG JOHNSON, author of the popular Longmire series of mystery novels on which the long-running Longmire A&E series was based, can be counted on to include anecdotes which sound very much like they’re based on real experience in rural Wyoming. This one, below, also sounded like it could have happened in Mendocino County not that long ago. Sheriff Walt Longmire was sitting in a coffeeshop with his old boss, retired sheriff Lucien Connelly, talking about an unsolved apparent suicide of a colleague when they were repeatedly ignored by an overstressed, older Mexican waitress whenever they raised their coffee cups for a refill.
“The waitress passed us again and both of our coffee mugs levitated from the surface like in some magic act. They hovered there for a while before slowly returning in tandem to the counter.... I asked Lucien another question about the case. Instead of answering, he flipped his coat back again and I thought he was going to rub his back some more. But instead he quickly drew his .38 revolver from its holster, extended his arm, took careful aim at the coffee urn and fired! The sound in the enclosed space of the cafe bar was like a falling tree. Lucien’s hand recoiled and the thing bucked against the bar wall like a wounded felon before spouting a single jet of coffee out onto the floor right behind the counter. The old sheriff holstered his Smith & Wesson, hooked the handle of his mug with a forefinger like a talon, leaned forward and held his cup under the stream to fill it. The young waitress appeared at the doorway with both hands covering her mouth. Lucien turned his head, grinned, and threw her a quick wave before she backed through the swinging door and ran away. After filling his mug, he took mine and held it just away from the gushing stream. ‘Cup of coffee?’”
(Mark Scaramella)
FOR THOSE WHO DON'T ALREADY KNOW, this organization is here to help.
Follow, donate, visit, and pick up essential supplies.
MCAVHN will be in Boonville on 4/19/24 to provide overdose prevention - including free Narcan, testing strips and many other services. They will be located at AV Health Center parking lot from 11am-2pm, and across from the Redwood Drive In downtown from 2-4:30pm.
MENDOFEVER.COM: “Body Found in Clear Lake Sparks Death Investigation”
ED NOTE: Dead bodies will do that.
INSIDE JOB
This Tuesday the Supervisors are going to vote on Dr. Theron Chan to be the Public Health Officer? Does anyone care that this is CEO Antle’s significant other? Doesn’t this smell of a conflict of interest? Most everyone has a conflict of interest and nepotism policy. I don’t think our amazing and put together county would be any different. I see Supervisor Maureen Mulheren is up to her kiss babies and shake hands proclamations. She seems to have the Dilbert syndrome, look busy and no one asks any questions. Mr. Teddy Williams, I can hear it now, shaking his fist and wagging his finger, I’ve been asking for this report for months and I can’t seem to get it. Well, Mr. Ted, you are the top of the food chain in the county, EVERYTHING starts and stops with the BOS. How about holding people accountable for once? That’s your job as a board, isn’t it? In your words, you are the stewards of the county. All I see and hear EVERY meeting is, it is someone else’s fault. If we are in such dire straits, how about having meetings weekly until this gets cleaned up? If I did my job once every two weeks, I would have been fired a long time ago. I know you can do better. You hold all your employees at a higher standard than you hold yourself. How about leading from the front instead of the rear?
JAYMA SHIELDS WRITES:
Dad is out walking the town on what appears to be his new daily exercise
regimen excellent news! We thank everyone who continues to write/text/call in your well-wishes to him, it's making his recovery go more positively. Enjoy this beautiful weekend. I got my first annual spring sunburn working Laytonville Food Bank today. Yowza!
Take care,
Jayma on behalf of Jim Shields
DOPE DAY, APRIL 20TH: From the AVA of 2013: Biked over to Hippie Hill Sunday afternoon to watch the 4-20 festivities. From what I’ve only recently learned, April 20 at 4:20pm America’s stoners all light up at once in mass celebration of the love drug. I expected something like a few hundred ancient flower children with maybe Wavy Gravy gumming some peace and love platitudes, but what I found was, well, put it this way — the hippies of ‘67 look positively wholesome put alongside this crew. If it had been advertised as Thug Fest 2013 we would have had truth in advertising. Lots of gangsters and very few hippies of the traditional tie-dyed type, only acres of tough guys and aged young women very unlike the ones who married dear old dad. The entire area between Hippie Hill and the Children’s Playground was wall-to-wall criminal intent. A cloud of pot and grill smoke hung over the park. No cops anywhere. Every other person seemed to have an apparatus that boomed out End Times raps heavy on mayhem. “You lost, Pops?” a kid asked me, and it belatedly occurred to me that in my khakis and button down blue shirt I was definitely odd man out. The scene, for me, was kinda nightmarish, truth to tell, and when I saw a large white guy, maybe 40, shirtless, obviously a veteran of many hours on a prison weight pile, his skin festooned with jail tats and a big White Pride announcement across his back, when I saw this guy, a maniacal grin on his face, wade into the multi-ethnic gang-banging mopes I knew bad things were about to happen in Golden Gate Park, the City’s sylvan retreat, its urban respite of forest and meadow, its natural world solace amidst the din and clamor of city life, I made my way to my bike and pedaled home. Two days later, the Chron’s comment line was mostly a lot of huffing and puffing about “hippies” having left The City with a huge clean-up bill for a trashed park, “and it’s just like the hypocrites to talk about how much they love Mother Earth then leave tons of trash in the trampled park.” This thing was not a hippie event, and Marx himself never could have foreseen how many and how fearsome the lumpen have become.
IRONIC that the only interesting Kennedy since JFK and RFK is being shunned by his family in favor of the wholly implausible Biden and shunned by a contemporary Democratic Party that is fundamentally a me-too version of the Republicans. Sure, RFK Jr. has crank tendencies, and he's also in love with the monstrous current iteration of the Israeli government, but when's the last time a Democrat candidate for president talked like this?
RFK JR: “It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, a blue-collar worker with a high school education could support a family, take vacations, and even save for retirement. Technology has made our productivity many times higher — so why is life poorer, not richer, than in the 1960s? Why do people just accept that life will get slowly worse?
“This Kennedy does not accept it. We can restore the American middle class by reversing the missteps of the last 50 years. A massive military machine has nearly bankrupted this country. Rampant corruption in Washington has put corporations in charge, enriching the wealthiest as working people have dropped out of the middle class. Official unemployment is low — but most of the new jobs are in the low-pay service sector. Wealth inequality in the country is at a 100-year high. More than 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, with no savings for an emergency. Take-home pay after inflation and taxes has fallen 9% since Biden took office.”
THE ZIONISTS indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats. — Norman Finkelstein
A READER WONDERS: “Do we really need the new Mendocino County Court Commissioner to be the wife of presiding Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder, no matter her qualifications?”
MS. SAXBY is a lawyer and the wife of Judge Faulder. As Court Commissioner she will make $187,500 a year. Her duties include judicial housekeeping of the traffic, small claims, restraining order type. Ms. Saxby's husband makes more as a Superior Court Judge.
MAYBE it's Nepotism Week in Ukiah, or is it simply Spring and love is in the air? First, County CEO Antle appoints her love interest to the easy-over sinecure of County Health Director, and now Judge Faulder appoints his love interest to the easy-over sinecure of Court Commissioner. (It's Mendo, Jake.)
JUDGE FAULDER: “32 years ago we shared a small office with our desks facing each other as defense attorneys in San Diego. Over the years we have worked together in the Public Defender’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office and in private practice. Now, we share two daughters, one granddaughter, three dogs, one cat, four granddogs and - once again - a courthouse! Congratulations Jona! I’m super proud of you!”
FROM BOONVILLE'S International Affairs desk far, far from the bombs, we can still hear a lot of dangerously stupid slogans being chanted on allegedly elite college campuses, slogans like “from the river to the sea,” (the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) implying that Israel will be disappeared. Is the slogan anti-Semitic? Obviously.
HOW ABOUT, “Death to America”? Now there's one likely to garner mass support in favor of Palestinians. With friends like these, Palestine is even more screwed than it is.
AND “FRIENDS” like the A.N.S.W.E. R. Coalition? Which is not a “coalition” but a Stalinist cult led by a Frisco character called Richard Becker who thinks North Korea is the kind of society we ought to be aiming for. I wonder if the college kid demonstrators, genuinely shocked, as we all are or should be, by the Israeli assault on Gaza, understand where all the ANSWER placards come from that are most visible in their otherwise honest protests?
IT'S HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC to hold out for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, but it's the only humane option in what is clearly now an intractable struggle between two fanatic entities, the Likud government of Netanyahu and the Islamic fanatics fighting as Hamas.
NOT THAT THE BIDEN government will ever muster the courage to pull the plug on Netanyahu, but so long as the U.S.'s bipartisan support for Israel continues, the wholesale murders of Gazans will continue, and Hamas's murderous grip on Gaza will tighten. As the whole show threatens to devolve into a wider war in the Middle East and perhaps nuclear fallout on the rest of us.
HERE'S how ANSWER falsely bills itself: “Founded just three days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) initiated the massive U.S. antiwar movement opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the months prior to March 19, 2003.”
HARDLY. ANSWER pre-dates 2003 and was only one small presence in the antiwar movement.
I'M A LITTLE WORRIED about Ukiah's wandering Hindu mystic, Craig Stehr, a man well into his golden years. Craig is a resident of the South State homeless shelter called Building Bridges. His fellow residents include several standard issue unsavory characters, one of whom seems to be harassing Craig by watering down his bed and loading it with trash. Craig returns to the shelter from his usual leisurely day spreading good vibes around downtown to find his berth literally trashed, unsleepable. The guy's too old for this, too old for a homeless shelter. He needs a secure place of his own, although he has turned down one which he claimed was too far from town, an indication that he can be something of an ingrate. Craig has a social security income. He could pay a small amount in rent. I've met him casually over the years. I wouldn't figure him as a burden for anybody out there who might have a place for him. If you have something, call or write the AVA.
ORDINARILY a fast man with a press release, MendoFever did not post the Ukiah Police Department's presser describing an ominous armed gang confrontation in Ukiah High School's parking lot. No reply when I asked Matt LeFever, a teacher at the school and proprietor of the MendoFever website, why he ignored it.
FORT BRAGG keeps a close watch on the gang yobbos. When John Naulty was chief a self-certified tough guy threatened me. Me, a senior citizen and thereby threat proof. I happened to mention the threat in passing to Naulty, and darned if the chief didn't immediately phone the guy to remind him he was on parole, and…
AND THE UKIAH PD used to have a kind of gang war room, a whole wall of photos of gang bangers and their female auxiliaries complete with home addresses. It's not like the gangs don't have a foothold here, but it's not that they're anonymous either.
MIKE GENIELLA:
Dinosaurs in the local print news business face extinction, no doubt. Some of us keep plodding, hoping our contributions to online versions will keep information flowing to the public. There was a time when salaried reporters were covering cops, city hall, the courts, and the county Board of Supervisors. If you were lucky in the business, and I was, you could make a living, support a family, and have decent medical care and a pension, thanks, in my case, to the San Francisco Newspaper Guild. The Press Democrat, my employer for nearly three decades, operated the News Bureau in Ukiah and had paid correspondents in Fort Bragg and Lake County. What happened? First, the advertising dollars vanished, gobbled up by online sites. Subscribers fled to free or low-cost online news sites. The Press Democrat once had 100,000 daily subscribers on Sunday. Today, the paid circulation is about 20,000. Those numbers tell the story.
I applaud Bruce Anderson, Mark Scaramella, and everyone connected to the AVA and its readers. The AVA’s online presence is strong and likely to become even stronger. Yet, holding that weekly print newspaper in hand, turning the pages, and either laughing out loud or grimacing with raised eyebrows will be seriously missed.
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] 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 absolutely 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!
[2] As far as the Stormy Daniel’s thing, I think this one, as opposed to the other cases, will hurt Trump with the electorate. A President previously cavorting with prostitutes is unseemly at best. Having that thrown in people’s faces can’t be helpful to Trump.
[3] Humans, despite their self-vaunted abilities and ‘reliance’ on reason, and after millions of years of brain growth and adaptations, are still largely dominated by a dysfunctional autonomic nervous system.
In a highly stressful political situation, this tends (no surprise) to get ramped up more than what is usual. All it takes is one overreaction somewhere down the line for turbo-shit hitting the fan. One time.
Do you trust those in charge, in Israel and elsewhere, from what you can presently glean, to act coolly, with dispassion and sanity?
The situation is unresolvable, at least if you think the answer is diplomatic sense.
[4] Israel’s population is less than 10 million, Iran’s stand at 90 million. Obviously with these odds Israel couldn’t wage a sustained war with Iran Most of the Islamic World, Shia & Sunni, cannot abide 8 million Jews living on a little strip of land barely the size of New Jersey on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. Nor is it only Jews. Christians have largely been driven out of Lebanon & Jordan, and are routinely murdered in Pakistan & Afghanistan. How many Catholic churches are being established in Islamabad or Riyadh? The answer is 0; Muzzies want it all from the River to the Sea. So let the black hearted f#kkrs try to push Israel off its historic Jewish Homeland. I for one am glad they have the Samson Option. This is a guarantee what happened 1939-1945 won’t happen again. Its reminiscent of a scene in the film about the Bielski Brothers, Jewish partisans hiding out deep in a Polish forest in 1943. One woman lifts her Mauser rifle and exclaims “One way or the other, this rifle guarantees I’m not going into the camps. Israel’s nukes guarantees the same thing.
[5] My best days are when I accidentally “forget” my phone. I’m free. Nobody can contact me and if they really need to reach me they have to work hard at it to do so. No texts. No pings. No notifications. If it weren’t for my job and my children I’d never carry the cursed thing around. I, after all, was one of the lucky ones who grew up without a cell phone. I said good bye to my mother in the morning, went out and raised hell, and came home for dinner before going out again to raise more hell. I had a great childhood. I wish my children experienced youth the way that I did.
[6] A bunch of Climate Crazies tried to shut down the airport in Boston this morning. Cops cleared them out and arrested some of them. One was shouting about the seas are boiling when she was being dragged away. So I decided to check it out on a site that I found that had weather data going back to 1880, including coastal water temps. Today April 20 the water at the Coast Guard Station on Cape Cod is 46°F. In 1950, on this date, it was 47°F. In 1922 it was 48°F, in 1900 46°F. Back in 1880 the water was a balmy 46°F. See any pattern here? No you don’t. The water was pretty goddam cold in 1880 and it’s cold now. My conclusion is that the seas are not boiling, and people who go into airports and raise hell over this stupid sh#t are delusional and perhaps mentally ill.
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