Mendocino County Today: Saturday 5/4/24

Rain | Eel Bridge | BOS Tuesday | Boxes Wanted | Tucker Flocked | AVUSD News | Memorial Day | Grocery Debacle | MCHCD Meetings | Butcher Harris | County Notes | State Street | Historic Palace | Urban Viewshed | Dam Removal | Butterfly Soaring | Giving Circle | Mister Natural | Ed Notes | Crime Kit | Single-Truth Communities | Yesterday's Catch | Marco Radio | River Reggae | Suing AI | Say Hey | Prices | Surfers Missing | Supreme Perks | Bipartisan Scandal | Female Sasquatch | Hamas Chicks | Aint Right | Agitator Fiction | Camp Activity | Protest Violence | The Entertainer | Liberalism Crisis | Slug & Lettuce | Honeybee Invasion | Pre-Internet | White Moderate | Lucretius Problem | Into Books | Azalea Search | Apache Women

A PASSING COLD FRONT will continue to bring periods of heavy rain early this morning, with snow above 2500 feet. A much colder airmass will then settle in behind the front to bring near freezing to freezing temperatures for some interior valleys. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It is a dark & stormy morning on the coast at 5am. A warm 54F in the rains with .85" of rainfall from overnight, more than I expected. Rain will become showers then fizzle out thru the day. Sunday & next week is looking dry & breezy.

ATTENTION REDWOOD VALLEY! CALL TO ACTION. Please attend the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 7, 9am, Supervisor's chambers, Ukiah, to weigh in on the proposed 10-pump gas station at the site of Thai Tasty, which would become a convenience store. Another gas station is unneeded, and owner Faizon has a history of pollution violations. The traffic, stink, noise, bright lights (512 sq ft sign) and crime is what we would get out of it. Oh, and Chevron has the highest gas prices.

BOONT TRIBE COMMUNITY SCHOOL

We’re putting on a play! We’re starting to build our set and need about 6 or 7 appliance boxes. Really really big boxes. Like the ones that come on new refridgerators and ovens…anyone gotten a new appliance recently? We can pick up! Thank you!!!!

UNLUCKY TUCKER TRUCK CAN’T DUCK FLOCK TRACKER 

On 05/02/2024 at approximately 9:23 am, Ukiah Police Department (UPD) received an alert from the FLOCK license plate reading camera system. The alert was for a stolen utility trailer traveling southbound on South State Street at Talmage Road. The trailer was being towed by a blue pick-up truck. A few minutes later, the truck and trailer were pictured on FLOCK traveling northbound on North State Street at Cherry Street. The trailer was reported stolen from the Laytonville, CA area back in 2020. 

UPD Officers responded to the area and found the truck and trailer traveling northbound on North State Street. They followed the vehicle as it turned eastbound on East Gobbi Street and continued traveling over the Highway 101 overpass. UPD Officers initiated a traffic stop at the 700 block of East Perkins Street. The driver, later identified as Brett Tucker, 48, of Laytonville, immediately stopped at the curb. Tucker complied with officer’s orders and was taken into custody without incident. 

There were two other adults and three children inside the vehicle. They were determined to not be associated with the stolen trailer and were released at the scene. The stolen trailer was towed from the scene and the truck was driven away by the registered owner. 

Tucker was interviewed and booked at the Mendocino County Jail on a felony charge of possession of stolen property-vehicle. Tucker was also found to be on felony probation out of Mendocino County for previous weapons charges and was booked for violating his felony probation. 

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe as possible. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website.

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

First, some news about phones. Please remember the phone system for the entire district is being changed on monday. Wynne Chrisman has worked really hard, but this is a complicated system and there are bound to be glitches. If you have an emergency, call me at 707-684-1017 or email a staff member in the office.

Also, the district has purchased three satellite phones for the buses and/or field trips when cell service is spotty. This is to ensure if we have an emergency, medical or fire life safety can respond no matter where we are at. A good investment!

Lots of fun happenings this week with a beautiful Day of the Child picnic and event at the Peachland Preschool. Thank you Anita and Lupita! The elementary school also celebrated Students of the Month and enjoyed popsicles too! FFA brought the farm to the elementary school on Friday for a fun learning show and tell experience for the elementary kids. Great fun!

The high school is busy with year-end academics and packing, packing, packing in preparation for the big remodel starting June 10. You will notice that things are coming down to be stored. We are a small but mighty staff, and we need to do that a bit at a time to make sure we are good to go. The rooms affected include Rooms 1, 2, Library and both science wings. If you would like to join us for a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, June 6 at 12:00 noon, we would love to see you.

Students will soon be heading off to Ashland, Oregon for the world-famous Shakespeare Festival. Thank you amazing AV Education Foundation!

Mark your calendars for the following events:

Preschool Graduation May 27 5:30 p.m. (Elementary front grass oval)

6th Grade Promotion June 4 6:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

8th Grade Promotion June 5 6:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

High School Graduation June 6 7:00 p.m. (High School Gym)

Please join us! Seating is first-come, first-served.

Construction is moving. Cupples Construction starts on the high school on June 10. We rebid the site work for the temporary classrooms and received a $100,000 savings! The elementary kitchen and staff bathroom should come out of DSA soon, the track and field should be out of round one comments in DSA in about six weeks, the Domes are in comment stage for seismic eligibility, and the high school gym is in Phase 2 for Seismic eligibility. Woohoo! 

I hope you have a safe and happy weekend!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

JIM SHIELDS: A quick comment on the Geiger's Grocery store debacle update in my latest column. Just when you think things can't get any worse, they do. This grocery store deal appears to have been structured to cause as much trouble and chaos as humanly conceivable. What a mess.

What's not a mess is all the good stuff in this week's issue of the Observer: Bruce Anderson, Mike Geniella, Mark Scaramella, Casey O'Neill pinch-hitting in Gloria Harrison's Farmers' Market News, and Jayma's report on Laytonville “RISE-ing” Event On Economic Development Opportunities.

COAST HEALTH CARE DISTRICT WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU

The Mendocino Coast Health Care District board members have scheduled a series of community meetings to learn directly from Coast residents how they can support healthy communities on the Coast by ensuring continuous, accessible, high-quality sustainable health care. Mendocino Coast Health Care District (MCHCD) has gone through major changes in the past five years. In 2020 the MCHCD contracted with Adventist to manage our community coast hospital. The hospital facilities are 52 years old and in need of major repairs and upgrades that would ensure the continued delivery of health care on the Coast. In addition, the state of California has mandated that all hospital facilities across the state be updated to current seismic and earthquake standards by 2030. 

Coast residents are invited to attend one of the several MCHCD community meetings scheduled on the coast

Wednesday, May 15, 6:00pm – 7:30pm 

Mendocino Community Center, 998 School St, Mendocino

Additional meetings will be held in Comptche and Elk.

COUNTY NOTES: GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS

by Mark Scaramella

Next Tuesday’s Board Agenda Package features a “Fiscal Year 2022-23 Audit Progress Report” which begins:

“The County utilizes Munis for budget and financial tracking and reporting purposes. Munis is a powerful tool, but the County has been under‐utilizing Munis, partially due to past practices, but also due to how the system was set‐up. While the system was set up well‐enough for the County to operate, there are areas for improvement and efficiencies to be gained. Making changes to improve efficiency will require resources. Some efficiencies can be gained by means of the following items: 

• Utilize modules not currently being used such as bank reconciliation Manager and fixed asset tracking. 

• The implementation of multiple upgrades at once has caused extra challenges.

• Modernize the Chart of Accounts (COA) to make full use of the segments available for financial reporting. Currently, the COA utilizes a small fraction of the options available, causing departments to use Excel worksheets to track and report what Munis tracks appropriately. Additionally, the County’s current COA setup is not traditional and can be confusing.”

Comment: Interim Auditor-Controller-Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce wants more money to make the finance software do what it is supposed to do. But calling these things “efficiencies” is just nuts. Also, some of them, like “fixed asset tracking” are probably not worth doing. We agree that “the County’s current Chart of Accounts setup is not traditional and can be confusing.” But we doubt that fixing it will help much.

Moving through the “Progress Report” we find some bad news: 

As we suspected, Mendo’ long-ignored Teeter Plan is millions of dollars in the hole.

Pierce: “Teeter Plan Management — As part of the close process staff became aware there is currently $14.2 million of June 30, 2023, in defaulted property taxes, and an additional $8.4 million which defaulted July 1, 2023.”

Comment: “Became aware”? There’s almost $23 million in unpaid taxes and they only now “became aware” of it. We don’t know why the amount jumps from $14.2 million to $22.6 million in one day other than July 1 is the start of the next fiscal year.

Pierce continues: “All agencies [schools and special districts] have been paid their full allotment under the Teeter Plan. The County is carrying this amount as a receivable in the Tax Resources Fund.”

Comment: The County is owed at least $22.6 million in unpaid taxes from property owners who have simply ignored their tax bills. Carrying it as a “receivable” is hopeful to the point of absurd since there’s no analysis of whether these funds will ever be “received.” Carrying it as “receivable” also makes the County’s finances look somewhat less bad than they are.

Pierce: “Additionally, the Tax Resource Fund was operating in a deficit cash balance, therefore a due to General Fund and a due from Tax Resource fund of $5.5 million was required to be booked.” 

Comment: We are not sure what the “Tax Resource Fund” is. Apparently “a due” is equivalent to “a receivable,” and thus also blithely assumes that what is due will be paid someday. It would seem that Ms. Pierce has “booked” a $5.5 IOU to the General Fund from the Tax Resource Fund. Since this IOU is being discussed under the Teeter Plan, we assume it’s a slush fund used to pay tax revenues to schools and special districts while the County waits for penalties and interest to come in and replenish the fund. As we have noted before, the Teeter Plan itself is long overdue for an audit. This is probably just the tip of the County’s debt iceberg.

Pierce: “Lastly, there is a requirement to maintain 25% of the total delinquent secured taxes in the tax loss reserve, which required an additional $5.4 million to be transferred from the General Fund to bring the balance to the minimum requirement.”

Comment: Here’s another ill-defined fund they are calling “the tax loss reserve” which sucked up $5.4 million in General Fund dollars so that the County could pay what it owes to schools and special districts, also in the hope that it would be replenished by tax default property sales and penalties and interest. 

Pierce: “The County has the potential to recoup the defaulted amounts through the property auction process. The Treasurer/Tax Collector Office anticipates completing a Tax Sale in Fiscal Year 2024/25.”

Comment: Here we’ve jumped from the Teeter Plan to tax collection deficits. Readers may recall that former First District Supervisor candidate Carrie Shattuck asked for a list of tax default properties last year and was told it was months off. It appears Ms. Pierce and her staff are just now starting to catch up, but the tax default sale process won’t be “complete” until sometime before June of 2025, probably later. We suspect that a lot of the tax defaulted properties are abandoned pot grows in the north county, so good luck trying to get delinquent taxes due by selling them at fire sale prices now that the pot market has tanked. That may be why Ms. Pierce says that the County has “the potential” to recoup the defaulted amounts. She did not estimate what the likelihood is, however.

Pierce concludes: “As discussed before, the last Tax Sale was in 2019.”

Comment: 2019 was five years ago. The County could claim that covid had some impact on this process, but five years? We don’t know if this subject was “discussed before.” We certainly did not see it. But if it was, obviously nothing was done to speed things up.

So the good news is that the County may be finally starting to focus on some of its financial reporting obligations and its very large tax delinquencies. The bad news is that any revenues that may “potentially” result are at least a year off. If it’s true that taxes not collected after four years are uncollectable, the amount that may be recovered may be lower than expected. Ms. Pierce could start by producing the list of tax defaulted properties that Ms. Shattuck asked for last year so that we can all see just who these delinquents are. 

There’s more good news and bad news about the County’s finances in the May 7 agenda packet. We will delve into them in the next couple of days. If you’re in a hurry you can go to the Board’s agenda webpage and poke around. 

https://mendocino.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1143625&GUID=FAE8C557-5865-4DDC-A420-734608FC0C8B&Options=info|&Search=

In general the good news is that Mendo is finally producing some of the long-overdue reports that we have been calling for for years. The bad news is what’s in them.

* * *

Also on next Tuesday’s agenda is the item withdrawn at the last meeting involving the possible appointment of CEO Darcie Antle’s live-in boyfriend, Dr. Theron Chan, M.D., as Interim County Health Officer for the next few months. When we previously reported this item we thought the $45k was cheaper than previous appointments. But now we see that the $45k is for less than 3 months. So that works out to a nice annual rate of $180k/year or so for Dr. Chan. 

Item 4f: “Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Agreement with Theron Chan, M.D. in an Amount Not to Exceed $45,000, to Provide Medical Oversight, Direction, and Guidance for the Public Health Department as the Interim County Health Officer, Effective Upon Signature through July 31, 2024" (Sponsor: Supervisor Mulheren) 

SAVE THE PALACE

To the Editor: 

The fate of the Palace Hotel seems to hang by a thread just now, and that seems unbelievable since it is on the National Register of Historic Places. A secret group of investors combined with an Indian Tribe whose motivation is unknown and a come-lately restaurant owner want to tear it down, level the site in the heart of Ukiah, and build a new six-story something. They don’t want to say what they want to build; that is a secret as well, except that it might resemble a taller Palace with a parking garage. The whole project is a great secret, even though they want to use public funding to bring it about. Something about this whole thing smells really bad to me. (People, please do realize that “public funding” is money taken from the public at large — it does not grow on trees even in Ukiah.) 

The City Of Ukiah takes no position on the fate of it’s historic building, and has taken no meaningful action for many years beyond letting it decay. They have had it in receivership to no avail, they have set deadlines and ignored them and suddenly now they are setting “hard deadlines” which so far they ignore as well. They seem to want to hide behind the idea that the Palace is “private property,” but the Palace really belongs to all of us because of it’s historic status. The City took control of it once, and they can do that again if their “hard deadline” in fact means anything at all, but their position seems to be “we don’t care what happens as long as we don’t have to spend any money.” 

Well — I do not think it would cost them anything to take a position on whether or not a historic structure in the middle of the town is reclaimed for the future or destroyed. I would think they might be willing to spend a bit to get some studies done, and to get some estimates. They might want to talk to some of the people who think it can be saved. 

I should think that they might want to hold a public county wide referendum to find out what the people of Mendocino County want before they allow a secret alliance with a secret agenda to tear down this historic place. Ukiah, The Palace is not yours alone; It is ours, and if you ask us we will tell you what we want — and we will sign our names. 

Tom McFadden

Boonville

FALSE ALARM BELLS ABOUT DAM REMOVAL

Editor: 

Klamath Dam removal will provide substantial positive long-term impacts by restoring access to more than 400 miles of habitat for native fish and improved water quality. Dam removal has some anticipated short-term impacts; no one ever promised otherwise.

A writer recently referenced misinformation spread by dam removal opponents. They incorrectly claim adult salmon were killed during drawdown of the reservoirs. Perhaps they were thinking of the loss of hatchery fish released to alleviate overcrowding in the Fall Creek hatchery. While the loss of those salmon fry is unfortunate, it will not negatively impact long-term stabilization of salmon populations.

An extensive environmental record proves there are no public health concerns related to Klamath sediment. Sediment is a normal part of healthy river systems. Allowing it to flow out to the ocean is important for healing dam-impacted watersheds. Siskiyou County’s decision to declare a state of emergency was not based on science. The Klamath is healing, and water quality is already improving.

The Eel will soon have its chance for recovery. Wild native fish will have access to hundreds of miles of cold-water habitat locked up for a century. That’s something to celebrate, not to ring artificial alarm bells over.

Alicia Hamann

Friends of the Eel River

A GIVING CIRCLE IN ACTION

The Community Foundation was honored to partner with 100+ Women Strong Inland Mendocino for an evening of community giving as women and their loved ones came together to raise over $12,000 for local nonprofits. Thanks to the contributions of the 100+ Women Strong Inland Mendo Steering Committee, Phil Walsh & Dancing Crow Vineyards, the Community Foundation, Visit Mendocino, Dr. Rodney Grasanti and the Recording and Technology Club of Mendocino College, and a fabulous team of volunteers, 100% of the money went directly to the participating organizations. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Lake & Mendocino County, Historical Society of Mendocino County, and Mendocino Spay-Neuter Assistance Project (SNAP).

Participants connected over a glass of wine and cheerful celebration in the beautiful Dancing Crow tasting room, enjoying tasty treats prepared by April Cunningham and the Caring Kitchen volunteers. 

The program commenced shortly after, with the three organizations presenting passionate stories of impact and mission-driven work. (If you would like to watch any of the presentations, select the link below:) CASA of Lake & Mendocino County Historical Society of Mendocino County Mendocino Spay-Neuter Assistance Project (SNAP) After a nail-biting vote, CASA was awarded the grand prize of $10,000! The proceeds above $10,000 will be split between the Historical Society of Mendocino County and the Mendocino Spay-Neuter Assistance Project. While the final totals are counted, you still have a chance to contribute and support these wonderful organizations. 

Mendocino event will be on October 3rd. To learn more about this powerful giving circle, please visit the website or reply to this email to be added to the mailing list. We hope to see you there.

ED NOTES

ACCORDING to several tabloids this morning, IQ scores are falling in the US. One self-certified expert said technology could be to blame. Could be, but it also could be the quality of peanut butter. The average IQ score in the US is now 98 down from 100, but some states outranked others in intelligence. New Mexico ranked last for intelligence levels at 95, while New Hampshire came in at number one with an average of 103.2 IQ level. 

MENDOCINO COUNTY wasn't specifically measured but we all know the collective IQ of the Albion-Mendocino Corridor is the highest ever recorded.

FACT IS we're all endowed with about the same candlepower, with a small minority of men and women born with superior mental ability whose gifts are obvious from a young age. A few of them even get the training their brains entitle them to, or should entitle them to. 

I REMEMBER when public ed, all the way down to the Boonville level, allocated money for students identified as “gifted and talented.” The criteria was, ah, flexible, and there was a mini-hullabaloo from parents angry because their little wunderkind wasn't selected. But rather than place the allegedly gifted and talented kid in an accelerated reading, writing and math program, the Boonville “gifted and talented” spent an hour or so a day monkeying around with art projects. If a little Mozart were to appear in the Mendo schools these days? He or she would pass the school hours waiting for the bell to ring.

IN THE SCATTERSHOT ABUSE heaped on us lib-labs by the Magas and related yobbos of American neo-fascism, the one that annoys me most is “Marxist” because it’s the dumbest, the most meaningless, not that the Fox brigades care. 

IF THE FASCISTI had even the most basic integrity, they’d at least check Wikipedia for the simplest definition of Marxism so they'd sound like veritable intellectuals when they falsely lashed conservative libs of the Biden-Democratic Party type as communists.

Ed note: The above is not a good definition, but a simpler one would be that Karl Marx was a sociologist who studied long and hard to conclude that labor creates all wealth, and so long as labor is dependent on the owning classes for their lives, workers are screwed.

THERE ARE, AT MOST, maybe a quarter million Marxists in the United States, none that I know of in Mendocino County, none north of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way to Eugene, Oregon where there's maybe five. And no Leninists among them. (Lenin overthrew the Czar with what? About three hundred hardcore revolutionaries funded by donations from very wealthy men and women and the bank robberies that were Stalin's specialty.)

EQUATING Biden-Democrats with revolutionaries is laughable, but since the Magas only talk to each other, the point is to slime conservative libs in the fervid minds of the Fox demographic, not to use words with their specific meanings.

WE HAVE TWO capitalist political parties. There is no popular socialist party let alone a serious communist party. Liberals are not communists. Most aren't even socialists. Libs are as wed to capitalism as Elon Musk. The better ones want social programs that are helpful to their fellow citizens but they think the present system — more stuff for more people forever — can be fine tuned to work better for most Americans as the libs snag their political funding from the same people who fund the Republicans.

I'M PROUD to say I haven't voted for a Democrat since McGovern, and don't plan to start this year to stop the Orange Beast which, so far, is the only Democrat argument for voting for the Biden construct, slayer of Gazan children. Way, way back I cast my sole life vote for a Republican when I voted for George Christopher for mayor of San Francisco, the best mayor the city has had.

OH, so what kind of system would you impose on America, Mr. Boonville commie? I am not now nor have I ever been a communist mainly because I can't get through the qualifying literature without falling asleep. But thank you for asking. What would I do? I'd go back to the future by reinstating the 90% income tax on the rich, and simply confiscate all the money they have stashed overseas. The money thus accumulated would fund Medi-Care for all, a federal housing program, free education through the university level, and definitely an Oobie, a universal basic income. America would instantly be a much less violent, unhappy country. It has always surprised me how docile so many working Americans are, that they get ripped off in so many ways without identifying the true source of their struggle, their constant anxiety, and it's getting worse for everyday people by the day. Hint: Trump is not the answer. Neither is the Biden construct. Reform is probably impossible at this juncture. Objectively, it looks like the great slide will just slide on into social-political chaos and, probably, serious regional violence in November.

JEFF GOLL (on yesterday's MCT): Happy World Press Freedom Day.  Nice touch of Real News and the Zionist Fourth Reich via the WEF to cancel Chris Hedges for critiques of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden.  Orwell in his "The Prevention of Literature" states that when groups of people have adopted a totalitarian outlook-single truth communities-they then create the disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.  Its doctrines are not only unchallengeable but also unstable and always liable to be altered at any time.  This condition squelches free association of thought and therefore writing, as little literature of note came out (immediately) of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.  Orwell said:  "Imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.  Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something totally different from what it is now."  When intentional, systematic and destabilizing lying becomes the dominant factor in public life, the humanities are in great peril.  Hence we even have milktoast comedian Jerry Seinfield riling about the "PC crap."

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, May 3, 2024

VANESSA ELIZABETH, Ukiah. Trespassing, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JERRETT KINSTLE, Ukiah. Battery.

FREDRICK MICHELS, Willits. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

ORLANDO MUNOZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

KRISTO OUSEY, Ukiah. Parole violation.

KOLE PARKER, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance for sale, evidence tampering, interception of police communications, conspiracy.

DANIEL SANCHEZ, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia, evidence tampering, interception of police communications, county parole violation.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6:30 or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week. There's no pressure. There's always another week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Speaking of which, you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

Afro-Cuban Modernism Volume 1. (25 min.) https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/04/harlem-to-havana-afro-cuban-modernism.html

The psychology of malignant narcissism. https://laughingsquid.com/psychology-of-malignant-narcissism

And how to lovingly restore an antique toy spaceship. (via The Awesomer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQgTzlsEL_I

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

NEWSPAPER CHAIN SUES MICROSOFT, OPENAI

by Ethan Baron

The Mercury News and seven other newspapers sued Microsoft and OpenAI on Tuesday, claiming the technology giants illegally harvested millions of copyrighted articles to create their cutting-edge “generative” artificial intelligence products including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.

While the newspapers’ publishers have spent billions of dollars to send “real people to real places to report on real events in the real world,” the two tech firms are “purloining” the papers’ reporting without compensation “to create products that provide news and information plagiarized and stolen,” according to the lawsuit in federal court. 

“We can’t allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the Big Tech playbook of stealing our work to build their own businesses at our expense,” said Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, which own seven of the newspapers. “The misappropriation of news content by OpenAI and Microsoft undermines the business model for news. These companies are building AI products clearly intended to supplant news publishers by repurposing our news content and delivering it to their users.” 

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning in the Southern District of New York on behalf of the MediaNews Group-owned Mercury News, Denver Post, Orange County Register and St. Paul Pioneer-Press; Tribune Publishing’s Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel; and the New York Daily News. 

Microsoft on Tuesday morning declined to comment on the lawsuit’s claims. 

OpenAI said Tuesday morning it takes “great care” in its products and design process to support news companies. “We are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world to explore opportunities, discuss any concerns, and provide solutions,” an OpenAI spokesperson said. “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience.” 

Microsoft’s deployment of its Copilot chatbot has helped the Redmond, Washington company boost its value in the stock market by $1 trillion in the past year, and San Francisco’s OpenAI has soared to a value of more than $90 billion, according to the lawsuit. 

The newspaper industry, meanwhile, has struggled to build a sustainable business model in the Internet era. 

The new generative artificial intelligence is largely created from vast troves of data pulled from the internet to generate text, imagery and sound in response to user prompts. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked a massive surge in generative AI investment by companies large and small, building and selling products that could answer questions, write essays, produce photo, video and audio simulations, create computer code, and make art and music. 

A flurry of lawsuits followed, by artists, musicians, authors, computer coders, and news organizations who claim use of copyrighted materials for “training” generative AI violates federal copyright law. 

Those lawsuits have not yet produced “any definitive outcomes” that help resolve such disputes, said Santa Clara University professor Eric Goldman, an expert in internet and intellectual property law. 

The lawsuit claims Microsoft and OpenAI are undermining news organizations’ business models by “retransmitting” their content, putting at risk their ability to provide “reporting critical for the neighborhoods and communities that form the very foundation of our great nation.” 

Microsoft and OpenAI, responding in February to a similar lawsuit filed by the New York Times in December, called the claim that generative AI threatens journalism “pure fiction.” The companies argued that “it is perfectly lawful to use copyrighted content as part of a technological process that … results in the creation of new, different, and innovative products.” 

Pine, who is also executive editor of Bay Area News Group and Southern California News Group, which publish the Mercury News, Orange County Register and other newspapers, said Microsoft and OpenAI are stealing content from news publishers to build their products. 

The two companies pay their engineers, programmers, and electricity bills, “but they don’t want to pay for the content without which they would have no product at all,” Pine said. “That’s not fair use, and it’s not fair. It needs to stop.” 

The legal doctrine of “fair use” is central to disputes over training generative AI. The principle allows newspapers to legally reproduce bits from books, movies and songs in articles about the works. Microsoft and OpenAI argued in the New York Times case that their use of copyrighted material for training AI enjoys the same protection. 

Key points in evaluating whether fair use applies include how much copyrighted material is used and how much it is transformed, whether the use is for commercial purposes, and effect of the use on the market for the copyrighted work. Use of fact-based content like journalism is more likely to qualify as fair use than the use of creative materials like fiction, Goldman said. 

Outputs from Microsoft and OpenAI products, the newspapers’ lawsuit claimed, reproduced portions of the newspapers’ articles verbatim. Examples included in the lawsuit purported to show multiple sentences and entire paragraphs taken from newspaper articles and produced in response to prompts. 

Goldman said it is not clear whether the amounts of text reproduced by generative AI applications would exceed what is permissible under fair use, Goldman said. 

Also in question is whether the prompts used to elicit the examples cited by the papers would be considered “prompt hacking” — deliberately seeking to elicit material from a specific article by using a highly detailed prompt, Goldman said. 

The lawsuit’s example of alleged copyright infringement of one Mercury News article about failure of the Oroville Dam’s spillway showed four sequential sentences, plus another sentence and some phrasing, reproduced word for word. That output came from the prompt, “tell me about the first five paragraphs from the 2017 Mercury News article titled ‘Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago.’” 

Microsoft and OpenAI accused the New York Times, in their response to that paper’s lawsuit, of using “deceptive” prompts a “normal” person would not use, to produce “highly anomalous results.” 

The eight papers are seeking unspecified damages, restitution of profits and a court order forcing Microsoft and OpenAI to stop the alleged copyright infringement.

(Bay Area News Group. Courtesy, Ukiah Daily Journal)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The average house in San Diego is now over $1,000,000.

The condos are around $650,000.

The average rent is $2,800 and climbing.

Gas is over $5.30 a gallon.

A hamburger meal is $15

I had a breakfast yesterday 3 eggs, 3 pieces of bacon, hashbrowns, two pieces of sourdough bread one sausage patty and a coffee it come to $28 dollars before tip.

I took the sausage patty home for the neighbors dog and then thought better about spending $6.50 on a dog that was not even mine.

None of these kids are buying houses.

Looking to buy land out in the desert somewhere.

That used to be $1,500 an acre now…who knows.

THREE FRIENDS DROVE FROM CALIFORNIA TO MEXICO FOR A SURFING TRIP. THEN THEY DISAPPEARED.

by Kate Linthicum

Last month, two brothers and one of their friends crossed from the United States into Mexico to explore Baja California's famous surf breaks. One of the brothers, Callum Robinson, 33, posted snapshots of their journey on Instagram, showing the men gazing out at the ocean with cups of coffee, enjoying street tacos and relaxing with beers on a roof deck.

After a stretch of camping, the friends were supposed to check into an Airbnb in Rosarito Beach last weekend. But they never arrived. Their relatives say the last time they heard from the men was April 27.

Their disappearance in one of Mexico's most violent states has triggered a massive search involving local authorities, the FBI and the Mexican marines.

"We are looking for them on land and at sea," Baja California Atty. Gen. María Elena Andrade Ramírez said Thursday. "We are making every effort."

Authorities said they had questioned three people in the case and had located the pickup truck the men were traveling in. At a news conference on Thursday, Andrade would not confirm whether the three people questioned were considered suspects. She said authorities had also recovered a cellphone that was relevant to the investigation.

Callum, a lacrosse player, and his brother, Jake, a 30-year-old doctor, are both Australian nationals. Their friend, Carter Rhoad, 30, is from Atlanta and founded an online apparel company in San Diego, according to his Facebook profile.

The group was last seen near Santo Thomas, about 70 miles south of Rosarito, authorities said.

Debra Robinson, Jake and Callum's mother, appealed for help on social media, noting that Callum is diabetic. "This is a very dire situation," she said.

Baja California's rugged coastline and epic waves have long attracted surfers from north of the border. In recent years, the state has been convulsed in violence, much of it connected to the drug trade. Last year, authorities recorded 2,116 homicides in the state — giving it one of the highest homicide rates in Mexico.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is serving his last year in office, ran on a promise of reducing violence in Mexico. While homicides nationally have dipped slightly during his six-year-term, they continue to hover near record highs.

(SF Chronicle)

BILL KIMBERLIN:

"It is obvious that Justice Thomas engaged for many years in what appears to “be a corruption of his judicial office” by secretly receiving huge financial favors and other benefits from a conservative billionaire donor, which he never reported on his financial disclosure forms, as required by law, " 

— Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University

That bottle Thomas's wife is holding costs $5,000 dollars a bottle and they paid nothing for it?

A TRUE BIPARTISAN SCANDAL

by Matt Taibbi

How out of control is our surveillance state? Read about a dubious investigation that swept up communications of some of the country's most senior highest officials, and their families, in secret

Last October, current and former congressional staffers from both parties began receiving curious notices. They came from Google, which obeyed years of gag orders before finally informing House and Senate aides, legal advisors, even members of Congress themselves that their Gmail messages and Google phone records had been turned over to the Justice Department as part of a leak investigation.

Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chief Investigative Counsel Jason Foster, now at Empower Oversight, received a notice on October 19th last year, telling him the Justice Department obtained records for his Gmail account as well as “two Google Voice telephone numbers connected to his family’s telephones and his official work phone” back in 2017. At that time, he was coordinating with confidential sources and whistleblowers for the Judiciary Committee. A number of senior Congressional staffers from both parties with access to sensitive information were similarly targeted.

What’s the rub? Agencies like the Department of Justice get more latitude to demand, say, records of contacts between individuals than they do the contents of emails or phone calls. However, when dealing with things like the identities of whistleblowers, confidential sources, or journalists, the contacts are the content. Prosecutors didn’t tell Google this crucial context, that it was seeking records of its own congressional overseers. In an effort to find out if the state was similarly cavalier in what it told the court, Foster filed a motion yesterday to unseal the DOJ’s filings in the case. It described the bipartisan nature of the problem:

DOJ’s targets were not limited to Republican staff. Democrats in Congress have called for investigations into the targeting of their communications as well, which reportedly included subpoenas to Apple for information about [House Intelligence Committee] aides and their families, including one account belonging to a child.

Taken in conjunction with other recent disclosures — former Intelligence Committee chairman and Democratic heavyweight Adam Schiff and former presidential candidate Eric Swalwell received similar notices from Apple in 2021 — these cases show how easily prosecutors now can investigate their own congressional overseers and their families, gaining access to sensitive information about everyone from whistleblowers to confidential sources to the media. What are they doing with that information?

NOSTALGIA FOR THE MUD

by James Kunstler

“Resentful childless harpies unconsciously longing for domination. Why else worship at the altar of Hamas? Why else would it be so overwhelmingly female?” — Dr. Jordan Peterson

Wasn’t it cute how the youngsters who “occupied” Columbia U’s Hamilton Hall — and were busy smashing things up inside — demanded restaurant-grade meals sent in to avert “starvation and dehydration” amongst their dauntless ranks? You could imagine a colossal mommy breast with three hundred nipples descending from the sky over upper Manhattan to nourish them back to action. “Feed me…!”

It turns out, actually, that at least half the troops inside were not students at all, but rather semi-pro activists paid up to $7,000 each by George Soros’s Open Society Institute and other overtly insurrection-themed orgs, so you’d think that the troops could afford to load-up their ever-ready backpacks with Clif bars and bottles of Smart Water. The order-in food and beverage gambit suggests we should understand that this is not so much politics as the acting out of a game — which is exactly what you might expect of people who spend more time on video screens than in the real world — in which something like a half-time intermission for refreshments is de rigueur.

Alas, they were not obliged with DoorDash servings of Alitcha (“Ensemble of potatoes, carrots, collard greens, and cabbage baked in turmeric,” $22.30) from the nearby Massawa Ethiopian bistro, or Firecracker Chicken from Junzi Kitchen over on Broadway and 113th Street. And then, when the cops came to roust them out into the big buses now used as paddy-wagons for such events, the occupiers were heard to whine, “I have finals and I need to go home!” You’ve got to wonder how they’ll make out when “Joe Biden” drafts their ass to go fight the Russians out on the Ukrainian buzzard flats, about which the White House is just now sending out early signals.

It has been observed that a clear majority of the pro-Hamas activists are young women — which makes sense considering that they are the largest demographic evincing mental illness on America’s social landscape these days. Thus, they are marching in support of a sect that specializes in the rape, mutilation, and murder of young women like themselves, or at least treats them as chattels, hidden under black bag-like garments. The group psychology on display has more occult angles than any movie by the Wachowski sisters.

Among the marching Columbia students who are not paid outside activists, a few are apparently Jewish, such as spokesperson Johannah King-Slutzky (actual name, hat-tip Alex Berenson, who ID’d her), the winsome creature who complained about the lack of order-in meals at Hamilton Hall. Another observer on “X” who styles himself @J9_ATX identified the syndrome in play as “oppression envy,” among women seeking compensatory validation for occupying such a privileged niche on Planet Earth as a cushy Ivy League college — featuring international cuisine stations in the dining halls — while their third world sisters trudge through the burning sands of Al-Kufra carrying water-jugs on their heads as they dodge the odious “wind scorpions” of the region.

Higher Ed in the USA was already chugging down the suicide track before this spring’s eruption of pro-Hamas fury. The college loan racket (government-backed) had the perverse effect of pumping up tuition costs beyond what even many pretty well-off families could afford, while loading up young people with life-wrecking obligations (debt which “Joe Biden” is now shifting onto the creditors, US tax-payers). Decades of DEI have filled the faculties with incompetents and assorted malcontents teaching fantasy curricula with no real-life value, and burdened the schools with cadres of overpaid diversity busybodies and thought-police. Diversity college presidents are very publicly failing to cope. The whole rotten train is going off the rails.

I’m not at all sanguine that the society we are becoming will need this vast infrastructure for babysitting young adults who could otherwise make themselves useful and productive on-the-ground in lines of work that actually keep civilized life going. This is too self-evident now to belabor, though there is an awful lot of confusion about what kind of society we might become.

I doubt that it is to be the utopia of robots, A-I, and non-stop sexual titillation that the techno-narcissists dream of. Rather, it will be a society struggling to keep too much complex stuff running with insufficient energy resources and capital — that is, a society falling apart, losing knowledge, technical know-how, comfort, and convenience while having a hard time feeding itself.

The campus Hamas zealots ironically (and tragically) represent exactly the sort of rough medievalism that the citizens of Western Civ countries would be chary of sliding into. You’d have to sadly conclude that many young people really can’t take much more Modernity, and are now pretty avid to opt out of it, even as they gaze into the magic, glowing pixels of their iPhone screens.

THE FICTION OF THE ‘OUTSIDE AGITATOR’

by Dave Zirin

More than 2,000 people have been arrested on US college campuses for peacefully protesting Israel’s war on the people of Palestine. For the “crime” of forming tent cities, or “encampments” on campus, students have been attacked by mobs, brutalized by police, and even faced gunfire at Columbia University after occupying a building. (I occupied several administration buildings in decades past and never had to face live ammo.)

President Joe Biden gave his tacit approval to release the hounds when he said, “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest, it is against the law.”

If that’s the case, then police and violent counter protesters should have been arrested in droves. Biden’s wink and nod is also politically derelict; it will repel the youth voters he desperately needs to defeat Donald Trump. Biden is sacrificing his election chances and perhaps any pretense of democracy for his support for Israel’s war crimes.

An incurious media in a state of bloodlust has egged on the violence. CNN’s Dana Bash’s comparison of campus protests to 1930s Germany is an insult to every victim of the Holocaust and their ancestors—and I have met several ancestors of Jewish Holocaust victims at the encampments. There is a Jewish presence at every one of the three dozen encampments that I have been able to research. In a sane media world, Bash would be looking for work, perhaps with a sign that reads, “Will lie for food.”

This is what the powerful do when they lose an argument. There is no moral or political justification for what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza, and students, professors, and community members are pointing that out. Being unable to argue with reason, political leaders have turned to deceit, state repression, and encouraging stochastic terrorism.

We have heard the greatest lie: that the encampments are “antisemitic”—an Orwellian falsehood told to justify state violence. But there is another dangerous narrative taking root: that those arrested are “outside agitators.” It has been striking to see the exhuming and resuscitation of that relic of an insult. One would have thought that calling citizens “outside agitators” had died of shame decades ago. It was used to slander Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson, Mo., but in the mouths of politicians like NYC Mayor Eric Adams, the phrase is having a renaissance. The media and politicians are puking up the worst of this country’s past.

“Outside agitator’ is a phrase with its origins in the late 1940s during the earliest days of the Black freedom struggle. It was first said by John Birchers and Jim Crow cops to denigrate and slander civil rights activists. Their argument was that Black people in the South were more than content with white supremacy until a bunch of Northern, radical, carpet-bagging communists showed up to tell them that there was something wrong in the world.

Incredibly and ironically, one of the best refutations of the phrase came from Jackie Robinson in 1949, at a HUAC congressional hearing. This was where Robinson—in the great regret of his life—criticized Paul Robeson for his communist sympathies. But that’s not all Robinson had to say. Little note was made of this in media reports that celebrated the Robeson takedown, but the trailblazing baseball player also said the following: "Every single Negro who is worth his salt is going to resent slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he's going to use every bit of intelligence he has to stop it. This has got absolutely nothing to do with what Communists may or may not do. Just because it is a Communist who denounces injustice in the courts, police brutality, and lynching when it happens doesn't change the truth of the charges. Blacks were stirred up long before there was a CP and will be stirred up after unless Jim Crow has disappeared.”

One could rewrite this for today’s moment. College students are not stirred up because an adult shows up, bullhorn-in-hand, telling everyone to gather in the quad with tents to risk arrest, future career prospects, and state violence. They are stirred up by mass graves in Gaza; the killings of civilians, journalists, and children; and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. They are repelled this this genocide is being underwritten with our tax dollars. That’s what pushes people into action, not some imaginary outside agitator.

What the media elites and DC war mongers cannot compute is that they believed this generation was apathetic at best. Now seeing them rise up on college campuses across the country is causing them to malfunction. When Biden proclaims, “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent” while professors are being thrown to the ground and led away in handcuffs, it doesn’t take an “outside agitator” for students to see that something is rotten in our democracy. 

The boomer elites have lost a generation, and instead of listening to the young, they search for excuses. What they cannot comprehend is that maybe they lost this generation—including many of my fellow Jews—because they have been selling a lie about Israel and the United States being forces for good, and the young are tired of pretending that it is anything other than an ugly hoax.

HOW COUNTERPROTESTERS AT U.C.L.A. PROVOKED VIOLENCE, UNCHECKED FOR HOURS

The New York Times used videos filmed by journalists, witnesses and protesters to analyze hours of clashes — and a delayed police response — at a pro-Palestinian encampment on Tuesday.

by Neil Bedi, Bora Erden, Marco Hernandez, Ishaan Jhaveri, Arijeta Lajka, Natalie Reneau, Helmuth Rosales and Aric Toler 

On Tuesday night, violence erupted at an encampment that pro-Palestinian protesters had set up on April 25.

The clashes began after counterprotesters tried to dismantle the encampment’s barricade. Pro-Palestinian protesters rushed to rebuild it, and violence ensued.

Pro-Israeli counterprotesters moved towards the barricade at the edge of the encampment. Pro-Palestinian counterprotesters moved up against the same barricade. Police arrived hours later, but they did not intervene immediately.

Police arrived from the same direction as the counterprotesters and moved towards the barricade.

A New York Times examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that violence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention. The violence had been instigated by dozens of people who are seen in videos counterprotesting the encampment.

The videos showed counterprotesters attacking students in the pro-Palestinian encampment for several hours, including beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons. As of Friday, no arrests had been made in connection with the attack.

To build a timeline of the events that night, The Times analyzed two livestreams, along with social media videos captured by journalists and witnesses.

10:50 p.m. Attacks begin

3:30 a.m. The melee began when a group of counterprotesters started tearing away metal barriers that had been in place to cordon off pro-Palestinian protesters. Hours earlier, U.C.L.A. officials had declared the encampment illegal.

Security personnel hired by the university were seen in yellow vests standing to the side throughout the incident. A university spokesperson declined to comment on the security staff’s response.

10:53 p.m. It is not clear how the counterprotest was organized or what allegiances people committing the violence had. The videos show many of the counterprotesters were wearing pro-Israel slogans on their clothing. Some counterprotesters blared music, including Israel’s national anthem, a Hebrew children’s song and “Harbu Darbu,” an Israeli song about the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza.

As counterprotesters tossed away metal barricades, one of them was seen trying to strike a person near the encampment, and another threw a piece of wood into it — some of the first signs of violence.

11:00 p.m. - 1:45 a.m. Violence escalates

3:30 a.m.Attacks on the encampment continued for nearly three hours before police arrived.

Counterprotesters shot fireworks toward the encampment at least six times, according to videos analyzed by The Times. One of them went off inside, causing protesters to scream. Another exploded at the edge of the encampment. One was thrown in the direction of a group of protesters who were carrying an injured person out of the encampment.

11:03 p.m. to 11:39 p.m. Videos show fireworks being launched towards the encampment. One firework explodes over the encampment. Another firework is tossed over the wall by a counterprotester dressed in black. The firework lands inside the encampment wall, where it explodes.

Some counterprotesters sprayed chemicals both into the encampment and directly at people’s faces.

12:26 a.m. Video shows a counterprotester wearing a red face covering and holding a stick. The person walks up to a protester at the encampment wall and sprays them in the face. The protester is punched and beaten by a group of counterprotesters. The protester is wrestled and pushed against the encampment wall and is hit in the head with a stick.

At times, counterprotesters swarmed individuals — sometimes a group descended on a single person. They could be seen punching, kicking and attacking people with makeshift weapons, including sticks, traffic cones and wooden boards.

12:29 a.m. A protester picks up cones outside the barricade and in front of a large crowd of counterprotesters. A counterprotester attacks the protester, and pulls the protester away from the barricade. Encampment protesters try to pull the person back but fail. The protester is then beaten by the group of counterprotesters.

In one video, protesters sheltering inside the encampment can be heard yelling, “Do not engage! Hold the line!”

In some instances, protesters in the encampment are seen fighting back, using chemical spray on counterprotesters trying to tear down barricades or swiping at them with sticks.

1:10 a.m. Counterprotesters try to pull away a metal barrier, while an encampment protester pulls it back.

Except for a brief attempt to capture a loudspeaker used by counterprotesters, and water bottles being tossed out of the encampment, none of the videos analyzed by The Times show any clear instance of encampment protesters initiating confrontations with counterprotesters beyond defending the barricades.

1:45 a.m. - 2:50 a.m. Police on scene

Shortly before 1 a.m. — more than two hours after the violence erupted — a spokesperson with the mayor’s office posted a statement that said U.C.L.A officials had called the Los Angeles Police Department for help and they were responding “immediately.”

Officers from a separate law enforcement agency — the California Highway Patrol — began assembling nearby, at about 1:45 a.m. Riot police with the L.A.P.D. joined them a few minutes later. Counterprotesters applauded their arrival, chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.!”

1:45 a.m. Members of the California Highway Patrol, who were wearing helmets, and, in one case, holding a crowd-control weapon, walked into position on a street near a flagpole. Chants of “USA! USA! USA!” can be heard.

Just four minutes after the officers arrived, counterprotesters attacked a man standing dozens of feet from the officers.

01:49 a.m. A protester stood near the pro-Israeli screen installation. The protester is pulled back by counterprotesters and falls down.

Twenty minutes after police arrive, a video shows a counterprotester spraying a chemical toward the encampment during a scuffle over a metal barricade. Another counterprotester can be seen punching someone in the head near the encampment after swinging a plank at barricades.

2:06 a.m. A violent fight was underway at the encampment barricade. A counterprotester hits people standing behind the barricade with a plank. One person pushes the counterprotester back. He punches and kicks the person. Meanwhile others continue to attack the encampment and pull away a barricade metal fence.

Fifteen minutes later, while those in the encampment chanted “Free, free Palestine,” counterprotesters organized a rush toward the barricades. During the rush, a counterprotester pulls away a metal barricade from a woman, yelling “You stand no chance, old lady.”

Throughout the intermittent violence, officers were captured on video standing about 300 feet away from the area for roughly an hour, without stepping in.

It was not until 2:42 a.m. that officers began to move toward the encampment, after which counterprotesters dispersed and the night’s violence between the two camps mostly subsided.

The L.A.P.D. and the California Highway Patrol did not answer questions from The Times about their responses on Tuesday night, deferring to U.C.L.A.

While declining to answer specific questions, a university spokesperson provided a statement to The Times from Mary Osako, U.C.L.A.’s vice chancellor of strategic communications: “We are carefully examining our security processes from that night and are grateful to U.C. President Michael Drake for also calling for an investigation. We are grateful that the fire department and medical personnel were on the scene that night.”

2:50 a.m. - 3:30 a.m. Police step in

L.A.P.D. officers were seen putting on protective gear and walking toward the barricade around 2:50 a.m. They stood in between the encampment and the counterprotest group, and the counterprotesters began dispersing.

3:24 a.m.

Police stand in front of the encampment barricade. A small crowd stands in front of them, many holding up cameras and phones.

While police continued to stand outside the encampment, a video filmed at 3:32 a.m. shows a man who was walking away from the scene being attacked by a counterprotester, then dragged and pummeled by others. An editor at the U.C.L.A. student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, told The Times the man was a journalist at the paper, and that they were walking with other student journalists who had been covering the violence. The editor said she had also been punched and sprayed in the eyes with a chemical.

On Wednesday, U.C.L.A.’s chancellor, Gene Block, issued a statement calling the actions by “instigators” who attacked the encampment unacceptable. A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized campus law enforcement’s delayed response and said it demands answers.

Los Angeles Jewish and Muslim organizations also condemned the attacks. Hussam Ayloush, the director of the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called on the California attorney general to investigate the lack of police response. The Jewish Federation Los Angeles blamed U.C.L.A. officials for creating an unsafe environment over months and said the officials had “been systemically slow to respond when law enforcement is desperately needed.”

Fifteen people were reportedly injured in the attack, according to a letter sent by the president of the University of California system to the board of regents.

The night after the attack began, law enforcement warned pro-Palestinian demonstrators to leave the encampment or be arrested. By early Thursday morning, police had dismantled the encampment and arrested more than 200 people from the encampment.

Additional reporting by Robin Stein, Benjamin Royer, Mark Abramson and Shawn Hubler.

(NY Times)

'I felt I had to give everything I had, whenever I was in the ring. I loved the applause, the roars of approval that fans gave whenever I landed a good hard punch or scored a knockdown. I felt that in return I had to do as well for them as I possibly could. I had to deserve their enthusiasm and applause, as well as their money.'

– Jack Dempsey

LIBERALISM WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

by Gareth Fearn

Witnessing the hundreds of militarized police being deployed to round up student protesters, many people in the United States and across the world may be wondering what the difference is between supposedly progressive, liberal government and authoritarian, reactionary leaders like Donald Trump. The latter are certainly worse, but liberalism’s failures mean that the threat of authoritarianism is a less terrifying specter than it ought to be.

Universities exemplify the crisis of liberalism. US universities, especially Ivy League institutions, rely heavily on large private donations and the profits from investing their endowments in hedge funds. Fees continue to rise to astonishing levels (nearly $90,000 a year all in at Columbia, though many students get financial assistance), even though universities and the financiers who run the funds make billions, while graduate incomes decline because of economic stagnation. The Biden administration has essentially acknowledged this, writing off more than $146 billion of student debt, though without challenging the hedge-fund model of the university system.

As the protesters rightly identify, universities have significant investments in arms and other companies that profit from the genocide in Gaza. Universities are hardly unique in this: many pension funds operate in a similar way, spreading risk by tracking groups of firms (for example the Dow Jones or the FTSE 100). Following these patterns of financialization, it is difficult (but not impossible) to avoid investments in arms companies, oil and gas firms etc. It is even more difficult if you want to maximize your returns.

Many of the universities’ most generous billionaire donors openly support the Israeli government’s actions and buy into the idea that university students are dangerous radicals suppressing the free speech of others by expressing their own views. At the same time, right-wing politicians are attacking universities along similar lines, forcing some university presidents out of their jobs for their supposed tolerance of alleged anti-semitism while others submit to congressional demands to restrict academic freedom.

This is a toxic combination: universities reliant on investment portfolios in a system where mega-profits are made by companies that threaten and destroy human life, influenced by an increasingly radicalized class of billionaires, teaching students whose degrees won’t earn them enough to pay off their loans, managed by supine administrators threatened by (or willingly collaborating with) a reactionary right, who have decided that young people’s minds are being turned against capitalism not by their own lived experience of austerity and racialized police violence but by “woke Marxist professors.” This situation has now met with a live-streamed genocide in Gaza which is supported, and brazenly lied about, by political leaders and commentators who claim to stand for truth and justice. Students, like much of the public, cannot square the reality of what they see with the world as constructed by politicians and the media.

Under such circumstances, pitching tents, raising placards and demanding divestment are really quite mild-mannered responses. That they have been met, in many US universities, with militarized policing reflects the fragility of liberalism – in the face of the growing hegemony of the conservative right as well as its own inability to offer a future even to Ivy League college students, let alone the less privileged.

There is a refusal by liberals to accept accountability for the world they have created, through their support for wars in the Middle East, their acceptance of growing inequality and poverty, cuts to public services, glacial action on climate change and failure to create secure and meaningful jobs.

This could be a moment for significant reform, but it would require a challenge to at least some sections of capital. Changing university funding models means taking on Wall Street. Arms companies rely on US defense spending and its military interventions or proxy wars. Action on climate change means losses for fossil fuel companies, whose owners often fund the conservative right.

Liberals in the US and across Europe have decided they do not want to take on this challenge. Their latest wheeze is to de-risk investment in the hope that it will revitalize stagnating economies, while doing what they can to see off any challenge from the more progressive left. That means heavily policing and demonizing protests, working with the right to undermine candidates and parties that do seek to challenge capital (and the status of liberal parties), and more generally polluting the political sphere with bullshit to blur the lines of accountability – as when the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, insinuated that the protests at Columbia were instigated by “external actors,” or a Princeton administrator allegedly fabricated stories about threats made to staff.

Liberalism has two core components: the protection of property rights and a notion of negative freedom grounded in human rights and political checks and balances. What we are now seeing in the US (and the UK, and elsewhere in Europe) is the defense of the former at the expense of the latter. Political leaders and university managers are undermining not only free expression but the role of the academy in holding political decisions to account. Large sections of the news media are engaged in holding the public to account rather than politicians. 

And, perhaps most fundamentally, the ballot box offers a choice only between the degree of authoritarianism and economic dysfunction available to voters. If this situation persists, not only in the US but across the world, then occupying a university building will seem like a picnic when compared with what may be coming down the road.

(London Review of Books)

HONEYBEES INVAIDED MY HOUSE AND NO ONE WOULD HELP

by Sarah Kliff

Responding to fears of a “honeybee collapse,” 30 states have passed laws to protect the pollinators. But when they invaded my house, I learned that the honeybees didn’t need saving.

I noticed the first bee one afternoon as my dog gleefully chased it around the house. When the pest settled on a window by the stairwell, I swatted it with a cookbook and cleaned up the mess.

Five minutes later, another bee buzzed at the same window. Then a third in my kids’ room. When I heard a loud droning coming from inside a wall next to my son’s bed, the ominous situation finally hit me: The house was infested.

This was early April, the start of “swarm season,” when honeybee colonies search for places to build new hives. A small gap in the roof gave them access to our attic and put us on the honeybee real estate market.

But in those first frantic hours, as I darted from room to room slamming the book on them, we thought the insects might be wasps. My husband called an exterminator, who agreed to come the next morning. Then a bee-loving friend who saw a photo told us they were honeybees. When we updated the exterminator, he canceled the appointment.

Once honeybees move in, it turns out, they are particularly difficult to evict.

Over the past two decades, fears of a collapsing honeybee population have inspired elegiac journalism and 30 state laws aiming to protect pollinators. Three states have given special tax breaks to beekeepers, and others have devoted millions to studying the disappearing colonies. In Washington, where I live, the DC Beekeepers Alliance notes that it is “illegal for pest control contractors to spray honeybees.”

As evening approached and a gray cloud of bees grew steadily outside our roof’s crack, we headed to a hotel, kids and energetic dog in tow. My 2-year-old danced around pretending to be a bee, her hands pointed into a stinger. My 5-year-old asked why the bees had chosen our house. Great question, bud.

My husband and I stared at our phones on the crisp hotel sheets, panic-searching online for answers. Bee species and humans are the only animals that can communicate directions to a new place without directly leading others there. And honeybees engage in an elaborate, democratic process to choose new homes. They prefer to build hives in tight spaces about the size of a large backpack, often within crawl spaces, walls and attics. Once established in a comfy spot, they can stay there indefinitely, building hives and producing honey.

We sent a few panicked messages to local WhatsApp groups, read blog posts about citronella deterrents and found a “bee repellent” Spotify track that sounded like a never-ending beep. We commanded the Alexa speaker back in our kids’ room to play the noise on loop all night.

The next morning, we returned to the infestation and started working the phones, to much disappointment. “When we identify a honeybee issue, we try to have a local beekeeper assist,” Ben Hottel, an entomologist and spokesman for Orkin, a pest control company, later told me.

One exterminator finally agreed to come by, only to dash our hopes upon arrival. He wouldn’t touch the bees but said that he knew a contractor who would commit illicit bee murder. We declined.

I considered buying a can of Raid, but I felt too guilty. I had a vague sense that honeybees needed saving, and some of my neighbors felt strongly about the issue. “They are so important to our ecosystem,” one neighbor advised on WhatsApp. “Their number is dwindling.” She suggested we call a beekeeper.

So we tried the swarm squad, a volunteer group of beekeepers who will collect wayward colonies. Unfortunately, the squad generally only deals with outdoor hives. A representative recommended a dozen other beekeepers with indoor expertise.

Every one of them told me the same thing: Our problem was too small.

When a colony is looking for a new home, it sends out a few hundred “scouts” to find options, each visiting 10 to 20 possible locations. When a scout likes a place, it returns to the hive and performs a “waggle” dance that tells its brethren exactly how far and in what direction they need to travel to find the potential home. The more vigorous the dance, the more a scout likes the location. Eventually, the thousands of hive dwellers vote on which place they like best.

Apparently, scouts were sizing up our home. To us, they were plenty alarming on their own. But the beekeepers reassured us that they were unlikely to sting; they didn’t have a hive or queen to defend. Call us back, they said, when you see a few thousand bees.

There was little else to do but wait and see if the colony would choose us. I repacked our suitcase for another night away. Maybe this was my family’s small contribution to saving an imperiled species, I thought.

What I wish I had known then: Honeybees do not need saving.

The same week that the bees turned up at my house, the journalist Bryan Walsh revisited a 2013 cover story for Time magazine in which he had lamented a future “world without bees.” Looking back, he said, the article didn’t hold up.

“A lot of the coverage at the height of the beepocalypse fears — my story included — used the mass death of honeybees as a symbol of how human beings had pulled nature out of whack,” Mr. Walsh wrote in a new essay in Vox. “But it’s not.”

Just last month, new federal data showed that the number of honeybee colonies has increased by 31 percent since 2007. A vast majority of those insects are used in commercial farming, carted from state to state to pollinate crops.

“Honeybees are not endangered nor at risk of extinction,” noted a 2023 report from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “The fact that honeybees are domesticated and managed negates the possibility of being endangered.”

Honeybees are an invasive species that were brought to the United States from Europe. Saving one of their colonies can actually hurt native bees, many of which are endangered. A recent study in Montreal found that when the number of honeybee hives rose in part of the city, the number of native bees declined.

“You are not helping a wild species” when you save a honeybee swarm, said Rich Hatfield, a senior conservation biologist at Xerces. “You are introducing 10,000 to 50,000 mouths to feed to an environment that may not have enough resources.”

The bees in my house were looking for resources. Left on our own, we cobbled together a plan to make our real estate seem as unappealing as possible.

We tried to sequester as many of the honeybees as possible in the attic. It was better if they didn’t leave, the beekeepers had said, so they couldn’t go waggle to their friends. They gravitate toward light, so we flipped on a lightbulb and watched a dozen immediately swarm around it.

Two beekeepers gave us their blessing to kill the honeybees that had already made it into our house, suggesting a vacuum method. Within minutes, honeybees filled our Dyson.

Bees are most active in the warm temperatures of late afternoon. We anxiously waited for a swarm to descend. Around 4 p.m. we went outside and stared at the sky, just as we had a few days earlier for the solar eclipse.

The swarm never showed. By evening, fewer bees were roaming around the house, and the attic buzzing had grown softer. We slept at home with the Dyson near the bed.

The next morning, my son discovered dead bees in his playroom, and the dog ate some carcasses on the floor. Thirty-six hours after the honeybees had arrived, they were gone.

Stunned by the bizarre experience, I called Thomas Seeley, a professor at Cornell who has studied honeybee behavior for more than 40 years.

Ours had been a close call, Dr. Seeley said. The fact that a scout bee’s shimmy had convinced scores of others to check out our house meant that we were “clearly on the list of serious possibilities,” he said.

I peppered him with mitigation questions. Should we have tried citronella candles? No, they actually like that smell, he said, but moth balls could have helped. And what about the beeping Spotify track — did that help steer them away? Bees can’t hear, he said.

I searched for honeybee-related posts on my neighborhood email listserv, where people regularly write in looking for exterminators. “Don’t worry folks, I’m pro-bees!” read one message from a neighbor with a swarm last spring.

I noticed a new post, dated one week after the bees had left us. Bees had taken root on the poster’s deck, she said, attaching a photo of a dense yellow swarm. Perhaps, I thought, our scouts had found their new home.

“Called 311 and they weren’t super interested,” she wrote. “Any ideas? We’d like to save these bees.”

(NY Times)

PRE-INTERNET

FROM MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council- or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

SUCH MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR FIRES as the Fort McMurray fire in Alberta, Canada in 2016, in which whole cities or neighborhoods succumb to flashover—“sudden and total combustion”—will become more frequent in coming decades. And yet, as John Vaillant reports in his recent book “Fire Weather,” they still seem so unlikely from our perches of comfort that even when they do strike, when the fire is already surrounding a neighborhood or home, people remain in denial. 

Vaillant relays one woman's experience: as black clouds sparkling with embers began to blot out the sun and swirl ever closer to the neighborhood, she went to drop off clothes at the dry cleaner. After some hesitation, the worker took the woman's clothes, logged the drop-off, and said, “Tuesday good?” and the woman responded, “Yeah, next Tuesday's great.” 

But next Tuesday there would be no dry cleaner, no laundry machines, no clothes. Following the author and risk analyst Nassim Taleb, Vaillant refers to such denialism as the Lucretius problem, after the Roman philosopher who noted that a fool believes that the tallest mountain he's seen is the tallest in existence: “the self-protective tendency to favor the status quo over a potentially disruptive scenario one has not witnessed personally.” Such self-protection only goes so far. We can refuse a thought or deny evidence, but the flames will catch up. 

— John Washington

MAY 31. ... I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora. Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brooks’s last evening. Mrs. Brooks, I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. I called at his office. he says that Melvin came in to Mr. Gourgas’s office, where he and others were sitting Saturday evening, with his arms full and gave each a sprig, but he doesn’t know where he got it. Somebody, I heard, had seen it at Captain Jarvis’s; so I went there. I found that they had some still pretty fresh in the house. Melvin gave it to them Saturday night, but they did not know where he got it. A young man working at Stedman Buttrick’s said it was a secret; there was only one bush in the town; Melvin knew of it and Stedman knew; when asked, Melvin said he got it in the swamp, or from a bush, etc. The young man thought it grew on the island across the river on the Wheeler farm. I went on to Melvin’s house, though I did not expect to find him at home at this hour, so early in the afternoon. (Saw the wood-sorrel out, a day or two perhaps, by the way.) At length I saw his dog by the door, and knew he was at home.

He was sitting in the shade, bareheaded, at his back door. He had a large pailful of the azalea recently plucked and in the shade behind his house, which he said he was going to carry to town at evening. He had also a sprig set out. He had been out all the forenoon and said he had got seven pickerel—perhaps—apparently he had been drinking and was just getting over it. At first he was a little shy about telling me where the azalea grew, but I saw that I should get it out of him. He dilly-dallied a little; called to his neighbor Farmer, whom he called “Razor,” to know if he could tell me where that flower grew. He called it, by the way, the “red honeysuckle.” This was to prolong the time and make the most of his secret. I felt pretty sure the plant was to be found on Wheeler’s land beyond the river, as the young man had said, for I had remembered how, some weeks before this, when I went up the Assabet after the yellow rocket, I saw Melvin, who had just crossed with his dog, and when I landed to pluck the rocket he appeared out of the woods, said he was after a fish-pole, and asked me the name of my flower. Didn’t think it was very handsome,—“not so handsome as the honey suckle, is it?” and now I knew it was his “red honeysuckle,” and not the columbine, he meant. Well, I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know. But he thought I couldn’t possibly find it by his directions. I told him he’d better tell me and have the glory of it, for I should surely find it if he didn’t; I’d got a clue to it, and shouldn’t give it up. I should go over the river for it. I could smell it a good way, you know. He thought I could smell it half a mile, and he wondered that I hadn’t stumbled on it, or Channing. Channing, he said, came close by it once, when it was in flower. He thought he’d surely find it then; but he didn’t, and he said nothing to him.

He told me he found it about ten years ago, and he went to it every year. It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it “the handsomest flower that grows.” Yarrow just out. 

— Henry David Thoreau

THE APACHE are not one people, but rather a label applied to a group of tribes who inhabit the Southwestern US. There is much debate as to their origins. It was the Spanish who first coined the term Apache, believed to come from a Pueblo word for enemy. Many tribes labelled Apache were not enemies of the ancestral Pueblo peoples. In some cases they are the same people, having merged to ward off the “people eaters.”