Mendocino County Today: Friday 5/24/24

Cooler | Shelly Missing | Flower Moon | Elizabeth Found | Ocean Clouds | Coleman Parole | Film Team | Grief Support | Memorial Day | Ukiah Construction | Ed Notes | Coast View | Strawberry Harvest | Farm Inventory | French Guitarist | Haunted House | First AVA | Painting Sold | Bensky Chronicles | Yesterday's Catch | Eruption Photo | Mattress Mover | Precious Mettle | Sidewalk Ends | Stoners Rule | Green Balls | Wine Shorts | Corpse Flower | California Monarch | Soldaderas | Young Sam | Gaza Famine | App Malfunction | ICC Purpose | Palestine Holdouts

COOLER THAN NORMAL temperatures are forecast through Saturday. Possibility for light coastal drizzle will increase this evening and overnight, followed by a return of modest northwesterly breezes on Saturday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): An overcast 48F on the coast this Friday morning. The NWS says light wind today & Steve Paulson at KTVU says windy. I am going with Steve & windy. Saturday should be the coolest day for the holiday weekend. Not sure about wind yet?

THE FLOWER MOON is set to rise near a red supergiant star Thursday night. The moon will peak 50 minutes after the sun goes down and be visible in the east. Adding more wonder to this event will be the star Antares, which lies about 600 light-years from Earth, as it will appear in close proximity to the Flower Moon.

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FLOWER MOON BLOOMS: Stunning celestial phenomenon that heralds end of spring lights up night skies

Breathtaking images of the Flower Moon have emerged from across the globe as the celestial phenomenon rings in the start of summer. The event is the last full moon of spring, and sees the moon lit up in vibrant orange and red because the sun and the moon are directly opposite each other in the sky. Its name has been attributed to Algonquin peoples and was documented by Henry David Thoreau in his writings about Native American moon names.…

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13454781/Flower-moon-blooms-Stunning-celestial-phenomenon-heralds-end-spring-lights-night-skies.html

MISSING 70-YEAR OAKLAND WOMAN FOUND ALIVE

On Thursday, May 23, 2024 at approximately 4:00 P.M., Search and Rescue volunteers were able to locate and rescue missing person Elizabeth Schenk who was found in a heavily wooded area north of Fort Bragg. Schenk had been missing since approximately 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday 5/21/2024 and had survived two nights and almost three days in the wilderness before being located and rescued by volunteers.

Schenk was transported numerous miles to the incident command post on Bruhel Point Road, where medical personnel were standing by to evaluate Schenk's condition. As of the publishing of this press release, Schenk was being transported to the Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital as a precautionary measure for testing and medical evaluation. Schenk's condition was stable, she was in good spirits, and believed to have only suffered minor scratches and abrasions from her exposure to the wilderness for two days.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and numerous Search and Rescue organizations had searched all night on Tuesday 5/21/2024, conducted additional searches on Wednesday 5/22/2024, and requested mutual-aid resources for another search on Thursday 5/23/2024. The area where Schenk went missing was described by searchers as containing extremely steep topography with overgrown vegetation and forestation, which slowed and hindered search efforts. Due to the treacherous terrain and tough wilderness conditions of the search area, additional Search and Rescue personnel were requested through the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) for the search planned on Thursday 5/23/2024.

During search efforts on Thursday 5/23/2024, there were 73 Search and Rescue volunteers deployed from numerous Northern California Counties. The search efforts on Thursday included 7 canines certified in scent trailing and area detection and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). During the mid-afternoon Thursday 5/23/2024, searchers located a clothing garment believed to be associated with Schenk and assigned additional searchers to saturate the area. Schenk was ultimately located approximately 200 yards from where the clothing garment was located and she was assessed at the scene before being transported to the command post.

Schenk's family was present during search efforts conducted by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and were reunited with Schenk at the command post on Thursday 5/23/2024.

The success of this Search and Rescue mission was made possible by the dedication and efforts of countless Search and Rescue volunteers from numerous Northern California Counties, and many other first responder organizations who selflessly assisted with this operation. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office would like to thank all of the following organizations who assisted with this Search and Rescue operation:

Mendocino County Search and Rescue, Sonoma County Search and Rescue, Marin County Search and Rescue, Napa County Search and Rescue, Lake County Search and Rescue, San Mateo County Search and Rescue, Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit, CALSAR, California National Guard, California Rescue Dog Association, California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, California Highway Patrol, Westport Volunteer Fire Department, and CAL FIRE.

Special thanks to the community members and businesses, specifically Harvest Market in Fort Bragg, CA, for their dedication and support towards feeding the Search and Rescue volunteers during this critical mission.

THAT PAROLE HEARING scheduled for Thursday morning for the convicted murderer Chris Coleman who shot Brooktrails store owner Joan Lefeat back in 2001 when Coleman was 15 turned into a bust. It was effectively canceled before it began when it became clear to everyone, including Mr. Coleman himself, that Coleman’s poor behavior record in prison basically disqualified him right off. Deputy DA Jamie Pearl attended the virtual hearing, but the Parole Board never really considered Coleman’s parole application after his bad prison record was presented to them. Coleman might be eligible for reconsideration in a year or two, but only if he improves his record, which seems unlikely. (Mark Scaramella)

CHEERS to this incredible team that rocked the AV Film Festival of 2024.

Every person in this photo, plus a few who couldn't be here, brought their A-game to make this year's film festival a smashing success. We're so grateful for this amazing team!

GRIEF RECOVERY SUPPORT GROUP

Dealing with grief can be one of life's most difficult challenges. For those who are suffering from the loss of a loved one, a support group is a safe place to learn about the course of grief and to share feelings and insights with others.

This group is a free community service provided by Hospice of Ukiah for residents of Anderson Valley. The group is facilitated by Susan Bridge-Mount, a Licensed and Marriage & Family Therapist, who has had extensive experience guiding people on their grief and loss journey.

For more information please contact Susan at (707) 895-9291

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF MAY 28:

By the end of the day on Friday, May 24th, we expect to have State and Scott Streets fully open for the three-day weekend; one side of State Street will be gravel. There will be no construction on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27th. Then, work will begin on Tuesday to remove the existing street on the east side; work will begin at Henry and progress north to Norton.

For roughly the entire week, only southbound traffic will be allowed on State Street; northbound traffic will be detoured to the east (Perkins to Mason to Clara). Scott Street will be open, though eastbound traffic will only be allowed to go south. As quickly as possible, the street will be backfilled with gravel to maintain access to driveways, but driveways will be obstructed when the work is in front of them. The first layer of pavement is currently forecast for June 10-11, after which disruptions to businesses/residents will be brief and minimal. We’re getting there!

On the south side of the project, concrete crews are working to complete the formation of new sidewalks and driveways. There will be temporary impacts to some driveways, but crews will provide advance notification and mitigate impacts to the best of our ability. Demolition of this section of the street may begin roughly on June 5th; more details will be provided as soon as possible.

On Main Street, as part of the “Urban Core” project (www.cityofukiah.com/ucrt), replacement of the underground sewer lines continues from the north to the south. Next week, the majority of the work will be roughly between Cleveland Lane and Stephenson Street, working toward Perkins Street. For the duration of the week, Main Street will be closed in the construction section to through traffic.

Work on sidewalks and driveways between Mill and Gobbi continues, along with electric infrastructure and irrigation; on the north side, demolition of the east side of the street will begin at Henry Street.

Construction hours will be Tuesday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m., depending on the weather.

There will be significant noise and dust association with work on the north side.

During the demolition of the street, all on-street parking will be removed. Pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times. Through traffic on State Street will allowed in one direction only on the west side. Traffic signals at Gobbi/State and Mill/State and Scott/State will remain on flash.

Please be safe this holiday weekend!

Thanks,

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager

ED NOTES

COAST HOSPITAL DISTRICT is sitting still for a “seismic compliance” evaluation. Brick and mortar structures, of which there are few anymore, collapsed in the big one of '06, and a lot of tenuous structures will fall down in the next big one, but a lot won't fall down. Seismic upgrades are probably a good idea but, seems from here at the pontificato desk in Boonville, that mega-disasters are mega-disasters no matter how much seismic upgrading is done, as we also note that these upgrades are invariably inflicted on deep-pocketed public entities.

A READER WRITES: “I miss the paper paper, but am enjoying learning to navigate the AVA online. More difficult than our daily East Bay Times, but I’m getting it. What I’m missing is any updates on YOU. How are you now? Things getting easier? We’re as critical as you of the mainstream media, but check out Ayman Mohyeldin Saturdays and Sundays on MSNBC. He’s picked up the slack from Mehdi Hasan’s departure and does a pretty good job covering Gaza and Israel, etc. And you can see Mehdi on his own new site, Zeteonews.com.”

EVEN MSNBC can't miss the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, but it must pain them terribly to be at odds with the Biden Construct.

ME? The irony of my affliction at my age is that if the affliction doesn't kill me my age will, as the two run neck and neck (sic) to put me away. The affliction, the medicos say, is “very slow moving” while the years aren't. I'd say the odds are even.

I DO HAVE a new sympathy for the mute who, in my recent experience as I become part of the furniture while the visitor and the family think to themselves, “Should I ask him a question if I have to wait while he writes his answer?”

ACCORDING to the Marin I.J. the latest biennial tally, which is mandated by the federal government, recorded 1,090 homeless people in the county.

THESE FARCICAL COUNTS, as we know from those in dependably farcical Mendocino County, are conducted by people whose jobs depend on the numbers thus garnered. The more homeless counted the more money kicked down to the county from the feds. In practice, these counts work like this: homeless-dependent people drive around in pairs early in the morning, prowling the areas where the unhoused are assumed to be domiciled. “Look, Debbie, there's two of them!” No effort is made to establish the bona fides of the counted, or can be, due to the volatility of the countees.

A HOMELESS EPISODE recently involved my grandson's Little League team. A couple of homeless guys were living in one-man tents just over the right field fence. A long fly ball hit to right apparently prompted one of the homeless guys to say something “inappropriate” to the outfielder, perhaps a critical comment on how the kid made or didn't make the play. The offending comment itself was never revealed, merely described as “inappropriate,” the lib's catch-all pejorative applied to everything from mass murder to sloppy table manners.

WHATEVER the homeless guy said caused great consternation among Little League officials and parents, so much consternation that a delegation of appropriate monitors went to a meeting of the Fairfax City Council demanding that the bums be removed from right field. Which they duly were. (I expect to see them soon in centerfield.)

KEEPING CHILDREN away from the sight and sound of the inappropriate has got to be a full time job in these times, and a futile job at that given our culture's celebration of the inappropriate, or what used to be considered inappropriate. Check that: What used to be considered unthinkable.

THE CRACKDOWN on "inappropriate" comments on the MCN chat line is described by a couple of the worst offenders as “censorship,” but I daresay for everyone else who finds MCN a useful community billboard, the removal of constant insults from and among the deranged are long overdue.

THE MAGAS seem more and more het up that children are being taught homosexuality. I remember a loud debate locally that instruction in all manifestations of sexuality should be banned from the classroom, some parents holding out for no sanctioned sex talk of any kind while other parents maintained that pertinent instruction in the basics was a good idea. The more hysterical segments of the right-wing, as we know, think that homosexuals represent a sort of gay Taliban that won’t rest until the whole world is paired up in same sex couples. It’s an odd anxiety, especially put up against such far more imminent menaces to the general welfare as Puff Daddy and Joe Biden. Knowledge of homosexuality is hardly the same thing as a how-to class. Jeez. Please, let’s make basic distinctions here.

STRAWBERRY HARVEST is starting soon here at Boonville Barn Collective!

Our Renegade Certified strawberries will be harvested on Monday and Thursday mornings. We don't have a regularly stocked farmstand where we sell our berries. Instead, we send out weekly emails when we have strawberries available where you can reserve a flat ($35) or half flat ($20) for pick up here at our farm. Send an email to Gideon@boonvillebarn.com to get added to the strawberry list and we'll be in touch when we've got strawberries to sell!

PETIT TETON FARM

Petit Teton Farm is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow, we sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, and stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com. Nikki and Steve

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

by Rob Hawthorn

Years ago, I interviewed a couple who lived up Albion Ridge. They wanted to share the story of their home, a small two-story hippy hovel, totally off the grid and self-sufficient, with a big vegetable garden and lots of chickens. The history I was interested in was more supernatural: I always want to know if a house has ghosts. As it happened, this couple’s house was haunted, though they didn’t know why it was—nobody had died there, and it wasn’t a “murder house” or linked to any other traumatic events. One of their stories had to do with the sounds of children crying in the woods. Another was about a helpful spirit who took care of their dogs. There were also the usual eerie tales: doors opening and closing, the sound of footsteps upstairs, and the hair-raising sensation of someone watching them. I loved all the stories and I wanted to see the house.

The couple told me that they were leaving for the weekend and offered to let me stay at their place, if I looked after their two dogs. I jumped at the opportunity and packed a bag. They lived way up the ridge on a road named for a letter of the alphabet. When I pulled into the driveway, it was already getting dark. I looked into the trees for a while and then, sure enough, I heard what sounded like a sobbing child. It started as a low quiet whine and stretched into the long wail of a crying baby who refuses to take a breath. It was chilling, to say the least, but I convinced myself that it could have been a fox.

I opened the unlocked door to the cabin and let the two dogs out. They ran around the front of the house sniffing rocks, looking in bushes, investigating my car, and quickly wanted back inside so they could show me where the dog treats were kept. I built a fire in the wood-burning stove and made a bowl of soup. I was sitting down with my notebook when I heard a door close upstairs. I walked up the steps into the bedroom and saw the door in the east wall that led to a landing outside on a staircase down to the back patio. Needless to say, the door was closed.

I jotted this down in my book and reclined on the couch beneath a blanket. There was a scratch at the sliding glass door. One of the dogs had been outside and wanted in, but before I could get up and open the door, she looked away and darted off. Moments later, I heard what sounded like an adult wearing boots stomping around upstairs and the door opening and closing, which was followed by the dog trotting down the stairs into the living room. I got up and went to the bottom of the stairs, but it was dark in the stairwell and that unnerved me. I looked into that chilling black space for a few seconds and decided that I’d be sleeping on the couch, nice and warm with my blanket and the stove. I stayed in my daytime clothes and kept my shoes on. Once the fire went out, I froze in my blanket for the rest of the night.

There were no other strange happenings, but I was so happy to see the owners when they returned. They asked if I had heard the baby crying. I said I had, though it wasn’t the spookiest encounter I had there. When I described what I’d heard upstairs, they did what I had done: both stood at the bottom of the dark stairwell looking up, staring into nothing. Notwithstanding my night on the couch, it was an exhilarating experience for me. Collecting stories about haunts and specters is a good way to uncover bits of local history. I’m going to do some research on that house and the area around it in hopes that I can flesh out (as it were) this ghost story.

For other local ghost stories, join me for a Haunted Mendocino Walking Tour on May 25th at 7 pm. Tickets are $25.00 and can be purchased at kelleyhousemuseum.org/event/haunted-mendocino-walking-tour/

The Kelley House Museum is open from 11am-3pm Thursday through Monday. Visit the Kelley House event calendar to schedule a walking tour of the Historic District.

SOLD!

by Paul Modic

We did it, sold our painting at auction! After having it for sixty-five years we finally cashed in on generational wealth (sorry black and other poor people) and now each of the four siblings will get twenty-five grand, whoopie.

Should there be a guilt tax, should we each give up five grand to a random black or poor person, donate it to an existing charity? Well two of us are struggling as it is, though both own their own homes, so should the well-off siblings donate their share to the others? It would mean a lot more to them than us, maybe put it in a trust for them, and keep the wealth for the whites?

Fuck it, it’s a windfall, a tax-free inheritance, some sucker just paid 139K for a work by a famous artist before he became famous, a painting which was the backdrop of our lives through the years and now, because my father worked on the same college faculty and befriended the artist all those years ago, I will have this unholy pile of cash and can do whatever I want with it.

We treated that big painting shabbily over the years and just tacked it up on the wall as my father followed the teaching jobs. When we moved we rolled it up, put it in the back of a variety of used station wagons, and it went with us to the next landing spot of the itinerant English professor desperately seeking his PhD. (For years, decades really, that was the refrain heard in the house at Dysfunction Junction, my mother typing up the drafts, intense stress permeating the atmosphere, and it was finally finished in 1970.)

In 1989, after some big family fights, I convinced him to have it restored and framed, rented a van, laid the canvas down in the back, and drove it across state lines to Oberlin College to get the work done.

And now it’s gone, someone else can deal with the insurance companies and the alarm system they are demanding to insure the painting, which was the main reason we chose to put it up for auction, though it was uninsured for sixty years.

Although the painting is gone the saga will continue: we have another of his paintings which he called “permanent loan” when he gave them to us, but we conveniently sublimated, ignored, and forgot about that designation over the decades and considered them ours. I always worried the family, estate, or foundation could take them back at any time, and what could we say, possession is 90% of the law?

Treehouse, With Gravity-Flow Water:

Another dirty hippie arrives in Whitethorn, April 13th 1975. The Sunday softball game is going on at the school and everyone is on acid. Easy-out Steve is welcoming with his big smile while Richard Enright runs the bases backward. Dale and Buffalo offer to rent the treehouse on their back forty for $25 a month. It seems pretty cool at first but gets a little old going up and down the stairs for every little thing. (The treehouse was featured in the book Hand Made Houses that came out in 1973)

Dale and Buffalo have all kinds of scams going on. Dale is on ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled, later SSI) for diarrhea and when their rent is due Buffalo goes over to the Four Corners house, steals some two by fours, hammers them onto the wall of their rental, and tells the landlord (the Adairs) that the improvement is good for the month rent. The dirty hippie declines to go along on that board-harvesting venture and after a month can't afford the rent for the treehouse and moves out. Free lodging is found for the summer squatting in Elaine's old plastic house back in Thompson Creek.

LARRY BENSKY, RADIO NEWSMAN AND RABBLE-ROUSER FOR 50 YEARS AT KPFA IN BERKELEY, DIES AT 87

by Sam Whiting

As a newsman and commentator, Larry Bensky was drawn to stories of political upheaval, particularly the upheaval at his own station, listener-supported radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

The Brooklynite Bensky had already been there for 30 years when he was taken off the air in 1999 for criticizing station ownership during his show, an act of professional suicide that was entirely within character.

This led to a staff lockout that put Bensky on the street, which is where he always felt he belonged, anyway. An encampment was set up in front of the station that included a 50-watt pirate radio station powered by a van battery. There, standing on Martin Luther King Jr. Way and seemingly broadcasting for the entire 30-day lockout, was the martyr Bensky.

“Larry was brilliant. He had a giant brain and was an authority on many things, including KPFA itself,” recalled Sherry Gendelman, a criminal defense attorney who was involved in the lockout and now serves on the board of the station. “He delivered so much talent and facts and information from this giant brain.”

When the lockout of 1999 finally ended, Bensky got his show back and was on the air covering national and international events for the Pacifica Radio Network, which has five affiliates nationwide, including KPFA. He had a talk show called “Sunday Salon,” a classical music show called “Piano,” and a call-in show called “Ideas and Ideals” at various times in a career that spanned 50 years at a station so close to his Berkeley home that he could ride his bike to work.

As a newsman and commentator, Larry Bensky was drawn to stories of political upheaval, particularly the upheaval at his own station, listener-supported radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

But that giant brain suddenly failed Bensky in March when he was diagnosed with senile degeneration, said his wife of 34 years, Susie Bluestone.

He no longer had his encyclopedic grasp of current events, the Spanish and French languages, classical music, the writings of Marcel Proust, the Supreme Court, the history of organized labor, and an international conspiracy behind the JFK assassination the late Warren Hinckle had labeled “the Bensky Theory.”

“Once he realized that he had lost his intellectual capacity, he was ready to go on his own terms,’’ Bluestone said.

Those terms included a last meal of chocolate ice cream, before he stopped eating. Stubborn to the end, it took him 10 days to go.

Bensky died May 19 at home in South Berkeley. He was 87.

As an on-air voice, Bensky was best known as the national news anchor for Pacifica Radio during hearings for nominees to the Supreme Court. He also covered the Senate’s Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, for which he was given the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting, to recognize intrepid bold and influential work in investigative reporting.

“Larry could be prickly as a porcupine, but I never saw anyone have such a command of history and news, the facts and the stats,” said Bonnie Simmons, a freeform music DJ who worked with Bensky at both KSAN and KPFA.

One thing Bensky was prickly about was never having been elected to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. When he was passed over in 2016, he vented to Chronicle “Radio Waves” columnist Ben Fong-Torres.

“How proud I am to now be left as the one and (I believe) only member of our radio generation NOT to have been tapped for the Hall of Fame! It takes a very special ingenuity to avoid me, after my 47 (!) years on the air, numerous awards local and national,” he said.

In addition to the Polk Award for his Iran-contra coverage, Bensky was a five-time recipient of the Gold Reel Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and a career achievement award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

“Bensky absolutely deserved induction,” said Fong-Torres, a member of Broadcast Legends, who recalled voting for Bensky. “If there was anything he loved more than news and commentary, it was radio itself, especially live coverage of news and political events.”

According to his sister, Joyce Silverman, that love of radio began with broadcasts of the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose ballpark, Ebbets Field, was close enough to the family home in Flatbush that he could ride his bicycle to the ballpark, always carrying his scorebook in the basket.

It was a habit he never dropped. A few years ago, he was visiting Silverman at her home in Philadelphia and they attended a Phillies game. “There he was,” she said, “the only person in the stands keeping score.”

Listening to ballgames and keeping score developed into a love of journalism nurtured at the elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, where he worked on the school paper. After graduating, in 1954, he attended Yale where he rose to the position of managing editor for the Yale Daily News, oldest college paper in the country.

He graduated with a degree in American Studies in 1958, and a few years later landed his first job in print journalism as an editor at the Paris Review, a literary quarterly. Within four years he had mastered the language and returned to a similar job as an editor and book reviewer at the New York Times.

By then the Vietnam War was raging and he’d become active in the anti-war movement. This got him recruited by Hinckle, editor of Ramparts, a San Francisco-based radical glossy monthly that was at the vanguard of opposition to the war.

Bensky had already been at KPFA for 30 years when he was taken off the air in 1999 for criticizing station ownership during his show, an act of professional suicide that was entirely within character. After a 30-day staff lockout, he was returned to the air.

He arrived in 1968 just as KSAN was being launched as an underground FM station by Tom Donahue, and Bensky moved into radio reporting, soon crossing the Bay to KPFA, where he established his voice and the undying trust of his listeners.

“Larry could instantaneously pick up and cover anything because he had all of that history in his head,” said Simmons. “It was unbelievable to me to hear him cover election night or a hearing. His show was not prepared ahead of time. It couldn’t be. He had extraordinary command.”

There was enough of it captured on air to make for a two-hour radio documentary titled “A Larry Bensky Retrospective” which was hosted by former KPFA news co-director Aileen Alfandary, and is linked on the KPFA website.

“Larry was a giant in the world of progressive broadcasting,” said Alfandary.

As such, he had a low opinion of the profit motive in commercial news, which he conveyed during 30 years as an adjunct professor in both the Department of Communications and the Department of Political Science at Cal State University East Bay.

He lectured at Stanford and Berkeley City College, and was a volunteer writing coach in the Berkeley Unified School District.

“Larry was someone who would pour endless intellectual attention and nurturing into me and countless other young people,” said Julia Kim, a neighbor.

In 2023, Bensky and Bluestone boxed up 14 boxes of books on Proust to donate to ultra progressive Bard College in New York to form a collection he named “Radio Proust.” He also donated to separate institutions his collection of Jewish books and his media books.

“I thought bringing information to people would stir things up,” he told the Berkeley Planet at the time of his retirement in 2007. “Without that information, nothing would get stirred up.”

In 1990, Bensky met Bluestone, who ran the nonprofit Oakland Recycling Association. They immediately moved in together and were married in 1997 in a living room ceremony at their home in South Berkeley. Their daughter Lila was adopted at birth a few weeks after their marriage.

He was 70 when he retired from KPFA but he didn’t stay retired and he didn’t stop stirring it up. He was regularly brought in as an election expert and on-air host until “Ideas and Ideals” ended in 2019. After that he was involved mainly as a listener. He would email Simmons recommendations for her freeform music program “The Bonnie Simmons Show,” which airs at 8 p.m. Thursdays.

“It could be Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger but it also could be something surprisingly contemporary,” Simmons said. “He sent me a Paul Simon song I had never heard, ‘Senorita With a Necklace of Tears.’ I’m going to play it Thursday night in honor of him.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, May 23, 2024

RYEN DELGADO, Ukiah. Mandatory supervision violation.

VANESSA ELIZABETH, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

CASANDRA GUERRA, Ukiah. False ID, failure to appear.

ANTHONY KROPACZEWSKI, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, criminal threats, resisting.

EZEQUIEL LIMAS-ESQUIVEL, Clearlake. DUI, resisting.

DUSTIN MARKS, Willits. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

EWIK MORINDA, Lakeport/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia.

CHERICE NOVO, Ukiah. Harboring wanted felon.

JUAN NUNEZ-CHAVEZ, Potter Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

STEFANI SMITH, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

THIS GUY WENT UP to get some pics and came close to dying.

An excerpt from an account of his trip to Mt Saint Helens: “Dick Lasher pulled over and attempted to turn around seeing the ash cloud was heading his way fast. He jumped out of the car and ran up the hillside to get some pics, thinking he might just die for it and hoping someone would find the camera at least as it was a phenomenal sight that filled the sky. The first picture he took was the one with the Pinto in the road and the motorcycle still in the back with the cloud going up in the sky in the background. He made his way back down the mountain after being quickly overtaken by the ash cloud. He was almost completely blinded and drove by steering along the opposite side of the road heading into oncoming traffic but encountered none. The car choked out after a while and he rode his motorcycle out the rest of the way.”

(via Everett Liljeberg)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Sometimes people abandon themselves, like an old, depleted mine. It is my hope that your precious mettle is still abundant and intact and that it is not lost to claim jumpers and swindlers of thought.

Tonight, there is a full moon and soon it will wane and become new, seem to disappear, but it will never abandon me, it will always return kissed by starlight, howled at by jackals and wolves.

CANNABIS TOPS ALCOHOL AS AMERICANS’ DAILY DRUG OF CHOICE

New study shows a growing number of people are regularly using cannabis, while frequent alcohol consumption has remained stable.

by Christina Caron

For the first time on record, cannabis has outpaced alcohol as the daily drug of choice for Americans.

In 2022 there were 17.7 million people who reported using cannabis either every day or nearly every day, compared with 14.7 million who reported using alcohol with the same frequency, according to a study, published on Wednesday in the journal Addiction that analyzed data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

While far more people drink than use cannabis, drinking frequently has become slightly less common than it was around 15 years ago, the study found. But the proportion of people in the U.S. who use cannabis frequently has increased 15-fold in the three decades since 1992, when daily cannabis use hit a low point.

Cannabis legalization has also rapidly accelerated since the ’90s. The drug is now legal for recreational use in 24 states and Washington, D.C., and for medical use in 38 states and D.C.

The sharp increase in the prevalence of high-frequency cannabis use over the last three decades might partly be attributed to a growing acceptance of the drug, said Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. And because the survey data was self-reported, people may now feel more comfortable disclosing how often they use it.

Even so, “I don’t think that for most daily or near-daily users it is a health-promoting activity,” he added. “For some, it’s truly harmful.”

Several experts who were not involved in the research said the study’s findings were concerning. Those in favor of legalizing cannabis have argued that making the drug widely available would draw people away from the harms of alcohol, said Beatriz Carlini, a research associate professor in the psychiatry department of the University of Washington in Seattle.

But the study’s data, which shows only a slight decline in frequent alcohol use, suggests this has not been the case.

“It is disheartening,” she said.

Dr. Carlini and others noted that the concentrations of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, have increased dramatically over the years.

In 1995, the concentration of THC in cannabis samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was about 4 percent. By 2021, it was about 15 percent. And now cannabis manufacturers are extracting THC to make oils, edibles, wax, sugar-size crystals and glass-like products called shatter with THC levels that can exceed 95 percent.

In the last decade, research has shown that frequent cannabis use — and particularly the use of high-potency products with levels of THC greater than 10 percent — is a risk factor for the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

“But that isn’t to say that use less frequent — monthly or yearly — is necessarily safe,” said Dr. Michael Murphy, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

“As we see higher rates of cannabis use in young people, I expect to see higher rates of psychotic disorders,” he said.

The risks of developing psychotic symptoms are higher for those who use cannabis before age 25, people who use it frequently, those with a genetic predisposition (for example, a parent or sibling with a psychotic disorder) or individuals who experienced stressful events like abuse, poverty or neglect during childhood.

In states that have legalized cannabis for recreational use, anyone 21 and over can purchase it.

Those who use cannabis frequently are also at risk of developing cannabis addiction as well as cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition that causes recurrent vomiting, the experts said.

This latest study arrives on the heels of the Biden administration’s move last week to downgrade marijuana from the most restrictive category of drugs, known as Schedule I, to Schedule III, which includes drugs thought to have a low-to-moderate risk of abuse.

The survey did not collect information about the concentrations of THC in the products purchased by frequent users or note how often the respondents used cannabis each day.

“A lot of people go home and have a vape after work or take a gummy to go to sleep at night,” said Aaron Smith, the co-founder and chief executive of the National Cannabis Industry Association. He didn’t see that kind of casual daily use as a problem, he added.

At the same time, there may be young people who are using throughout the day “and are exposing themselves to a lot more THC than those people who are just taking a puff a day,” said Ziva D. Cooper, the director of the Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The mental health and the physical health outcomes are probably going to vary drastically when you look at those different groups of people.”

WHAT MS. MOBLEY'S READING

• Wine industry firebrand Tom Wark writes that the federal government’s dietary guidelines may be updated with a statement that no amount of alcohol is healthy, “according to a well-placed source located in Washington, DC and who has seen it with their own eyes.” Our own sources say this is extremely premature, but we’re watching it.
• Farmworkers protested in Sonoma County last weekend during the Healdsburg Wine & Food Experience, demanding wages of $25 an hour and hazard pay during wildfires, reports Jeremy Hay in the Press Democrat.
• The former president of ABC Entertainment, who is also apparently the owner of a Napa Valley winery called Promise, is dealing with an alleged squatter in his Los Angeles home, reports Michele McPhee in Los Angeles Magazine. The tenant originally agreed to pay $55,000 a month in rent, then refused to move out when the lease was up.

AMORPHOPHALLUS TITANUM BLOOMS!

At 3pm today, the Amorphophallus titanum at San Diego Botanic Garden opened its bloom!! The biggest flower in the world! (Named the corpse flower because of the rancid smell of the flowers that attracts the carcass-eating insects that pollinate it.)

Most of these plants take 7-10 years to first bloom, Then after the 1st bloom every 4-5 years thereafter. The fully opened bloom lasts around 48 hours. This one is 14 yrs old & last bloomed in 2018. Native to Sumatra.

DID A FAMOUS S.F. BEAR INSPIRE THE CALIFORNIA FLAG?

by Peter Hartlaub

On July 1, 1953, the San Francisco Chronicle published its first column linking Monarch the bear, a longtime Golden Gate Park resident and history’s most famous grizzly, to the California flag. It quoted no sources, and was crafted like a fairy tale.

“Once upon a time,” columnist Marjorie Trumbell wrote, a San Francisco artist named Donald Graeme Kelley was inspired by a famous grizzly bear named Monarch, and used his taxidermied body as a model for the state’s new flag. “And there, the grizzly will live, we hope … happily ever after.”

Since 1953, Monarch’s supposed link to the flag has been repeated by countless historians, scientists and journalists. In 2017 alone, the Chronicle had two separate columns that used Monarch’s ties to the flag as a trivia answer. I promoted the legend just last year in a project about the Cal Academy archive, stating Monarch was “believed to have inspired the California flag.”

So it was a bit humbling for me to sit with California Academy of Sciences head librarian Rebekah Kim earlier this year, and travel down a grizzly-sized rabbit hole into a much more complicated story.

While researching for the museum’s new California: State of Nature exhibition, which features Monarch and opens this Friday, Kim tracked down typewritten letters between flag designer Kelley, a zoologist and state officials. What she found seriously questions the oft-repeated legend.

“You can see the back and forth,” Kim says. “There is no mention of Monarch in that correspondence.”

San Francisco is full of myths. But the fabrications and exaggerations surrounding Monarch, and California grizzlies as a whole, deserve their own special category.

Even U.C. Santa Barbara professor Peter Alagona, an environmental historian who founded the California Grizzly Research Network, says he’s spent a career unlearning his own media-influenced beliefs about the California grizzly.

More from the archives: Join Total SF’s Peter Hartlaub and Cal Academy’s Rebekah Kim at 6 p.m. June 6 at the San Francisco Public Library for a night of stories about sharks, earthquakes and grizzly bears. The event is free, but tickets are limited. Reserve yours here.

That they threatened livestock. That they were primarily carnivores. That they weighed 1,200 pounds. That they were apex predators incapable of coexisting with the state’s rapidly growing population. California grizzlies in the wild weighed closer to 500 pounds (not much larger than American black bears), were mostly vegan and — like grizzlies currently living in Europe — capable of co-existing with man.

“These weren’t these giant meat-eating monsters,” Alagona says. “They were just regular old bears.”

That wasn’t the narrative in the 1800s, when bear trapper and trainer John “Grizzly” Adams was a celebrity and newsmen including San Francisco Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst shaped how Californians felt about the rise of industry and the fall of ecological balance and indigenous populations.

Monarch was part of that sham. With most of the state’s estimated 10,000-plus grizzly population already slaughtered or poisoned, Hearst in 1889 tasked reporter Allen Kelley — no relation to the flag artist — with finding “the last live grizzly bear in California.” (California grizzlies actually went extinct in the 1920s, with the final sighting in 1924.)

Allen Kelley acquired Monarch in Los Angeles from trappers and hauled the grizzly to San Francisco, where the bear reportedly grew to over 1,000 pounds, was paired with a mate and lived another 22 years in captivity — mostly in a sad concrete cage in Golden Gate Park.

By 1889, the state already had a flag with a bear, but it looked like a pig.

In 1952, Donald Kelley, art director for Cal Academy’s Pacific Discovery magazine, was commissioned by the California legislature to create a new flag, and his correspondence with U.C. Davis zoologist Tracey Storer and state finance official Fred Links exists in the California Historical Society digital archive.

The letters include what Kelley definitely did use as inspiration for his design, including four photos of grizzly bears from Yellowstone park and a grizzly wood carving and painting, as well as specific alterations that couldn’t have been inspired by Monarch. Example: Storer and Kelley exhaustively discussed teeth placement for the bear on the flag, ending with visible canine teeth and a gap behind them. The Monarch taxidermy is not only toothless, by 1953 his entire skull was missing and presumed lost.

However, it’s possible, even probable, that Kelley had seen the celebrity grizzly. The bear’s remains were the only example of a California grizzly left in the state, on display about 100 yards away from where Kelley worked.

But in more than 20 pages of available correspondence, from conception to talk of payment, Monarch isn’t mentioned once.

(Another stunning revelation in the letters: Kelley charged just $500 for his historic work, and finance official Links argued to cut his fee in half.)

Preparators Liza Yee, left, and Pete Gibbons and exhibit technician Alejandro Valenzuela, front right, move Monarch to a new exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. The California grizzly, captured in 1889, was one of the last of his species.

For decades the Cal Academy repeated the Monarch/flag myth. At one point in the 1980s, Monarch’s taxidermied pelt was mounted in the museum on a pedestal with the flag as a massive backdrop.

But the museum has evolved. In its new exhibit, “California: State of Nature,” Monarch is on display for the first time in more than a decade to show the parallels between California grizzly extinction and the deplorable impact of colonization on indigenous people.

“Monarch’s story was not unique,” Alagona said. “He was representative of the (tragedies) going on at that time.”

Alagona’s group is making a strong case that California grizzlies, last seen in the early 1920s, should be reestablished in the state.

While my generation may be mostly lost to this cause — I expect I’ll be correcting peers about the Monarch/flag myth for the rest of my life — children walking through the museum this weekend are more sponge-like and more empathetic. They can use Monarch as a symbol, and write their own grizzly story.

And that’s a better kind of happily ever after.

California State of Nature: The California Academy of Science’s new permanent exhibition features Monarch the grizzly bear, an updated “Shake House” earthquake simulator and other immersive experiences exploring the state’s biodiversity. More information at www.calacademy.org

ADELITA OF THE DAY:

These Soldaderas (woman soldiers) did not grin much. Theirs was a life and death struggle in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Only in her late teens, the grind of war is etched on her face. Many women from the Yaqui tribe joined them in the bid for Mexican Independence. They did a lot of heavy lifting, serving shoulder to shoulder in the trenches with men in addition to doing all the things women do. Their role in the formation of modern Mexico is forever etched in stone and sewn into the fabric of Mexican society.

AS RAFAH OFFENSIVE GRINDS ON, HUNGER IN GAZA SPIRALS

Aid officials and health experts expect famine this month unless Israel lifts barriers to aid, the fighting stops and vital services are restored.

By Vivian Yee, Bilal Shbair and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

For weeks, the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city, Rafah, was one of the few places where desperate Gazans could find some aid and food. Bakeries sold bread; fuel powered generators; markets were open, if expensive.

But since Israeli forces began an incursion in the city this month — effectively closing the two main crossings where aid enters — Rafah has become a place of fear and dwindling supplies. Bakeries have shuttered. So have malnutrition treatment centers. The price of the firewood that many people now use to cook has doubled. Tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers have grown so expensive that they are sold by the piece, not by the kilogram.

Families hide what canned goods they still have. They eye their emptying sacks of flour, calculating how long they will last.

“There’s always something missing in the tent,” said Ahmed Abu al-Kas, 51, who is sheltering in Rafah with his family. “If we have bread, we don’t have water. If we have firewood, we don’t have some basic vegetables.”

For months, international aid officials and health experts have warned that famine will come for Gaza unless Israel lifts barriers keeping most humanitarian aid out, the fighting stops and vital services such as health care and clean water, which must be in place to fend off malnutrition, are restored.

None of those conditions have been met.

If anything, circumstances have become worse in some places. Little fuel is entering to power the aid operations, hospitals or municipal services. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Rafah for burned-out buildings and fields farther north, where they have little water or medical care. Buckets serve as latrines. Trash piles up, and families burn it to cook.

Though international aid agencies cannot officially declare whether Gaza meets the technical threshold for famine until more data is collected, the head of the U.N. World Food Program has already said famine has arrived. Even if the floodgates open to aid tomorrow, malnutrition experts say many more people will die — from starvation, or from diseases as simple as diarrhea because their bodies are so weak and medical care is so scant.

“We have never ever seen anything like this anywhere in the planet,” said Janti Soeripto, the president and chief executive of Save the Children U.S.

(nytimes.com)

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT IS DOING ITS JOB

by Bernie Sanders

There has been a lot of attention and controversy attached to a recent action by the international criminal court, the ICC.

The core purpose of the ICC is to prosecute the most serious international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. I believe it is very important that all of us support accountability for these crimes and the important mission of the ICC.

Last year the ICC declared that President Vladimir Putin of Russia was in violation of international law and that he was a war criminal.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and one of his senior officials saying there are reasonable grounds to believe that they had committed the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of population for their systematic kidnapping of thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children.

I supported the ICC decision, and, in fact, that is the tip of the iceberg of what Putin has done in Ukraine. Putin started the mostly destructive war in Europe since World War II. He has bombed civilians and devastated civilian infrastructure, killing at least 30,000 civilians and displacing millions more. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded as a result of Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine.

On that occasion, when the ICC declared Putin a war criminal, the United States government welcomed the ICC decision. A White House spokesperson said “there is no doubt that Russia is committing war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, and we have been clear that those responsible must be held accountable. The ICC prosecutor is an independent actor and makes his own prosecutorial decisions based on the evidence before him. We support accountability for perpetrators of war crimes.” That is what a U.S. government spokesperson said in March 2023, and I agree. In my view, Mr. Putin is in fact a war criminal.

We live in a world of increasing division, tension, and hostility. Around the globe, countries are dramatically increasing their military budgets. More countries are attempting to gain nuclear weapons and other dangerous weapons systems. It is in times like these that we most need international law. Without it, we will have an even more violent world where might makes right and where war criminals can act with impunity.

In recent years, the ICC has attempted to hold governments and political leaders accountable for crimes against humanity. That is what they do, and that is what they are supposed to do. All wars are terrible, and very often civilian casualties are unavoidable. But after the horrors of the second World War, countries throughout the world came together to try to establish rules to govern the conduct of war and to limit civilian casualties. The ICC’s role is to enforce these limits.

On Tuesday, the ICC prosecutor announced that he was requesting arrest warrants for three top Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza.

To my mind, Sinwar and his Hamas accomplices are clearly war criminals. The horrific October 7th terrorist attack on Israel began this war and included the mass murder of 1,200 innocent men, women, and children, the taking of hundreds of hostages, and sexual violence against captives. These war crimes are well documented, and very few people would dispute the merits of those charges.

The ICC prosecutor also asked for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant. The ICC charges focus on the use of starvation of civilians as a method of war as well as intentional attacks against the civilian population. Those are the charges. The use of starvation of civilians as a method of war – clearly a war crime – as well as intentional attacks against the civilian population.

Specifically, the prosecutor says that Netanyahu is responsible for “depriving [civilians] of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions.”

Now, many people here in the Beltway, in Washington, have responded negatively to this decision from the ICC prosecutor. It seems that some folks here were comfortable with what the ICC did in terms of Putin and in terms of Sinwar, but not with Netanyahu. Some have argued that it is unfair to compare the democratically elected head of the Israeli government to Putin, who runs an authoritarian system, or Sinwar, the head of a terrorist organization.

But that is not what the ICC has done. In fact, the ICC prosecutor has looked at what each of these leaders has done – looked at their actions – and then compared those actions to established standards of international law. In other words, the ICC is not making some claim of equivalence, as some have charged, but is in fact holding both sides in this current war to the same standard.

Yes, democratically elected officials can commit war crimes. Let me repeat: democratically elected officials can commit war crimes.

The ICC is doing its job. It’s doing what it is supposed to do. We cannot only apply international law when it is convenient. And the independent panel of international legal experts the ICC appointed to help with this case unanimously – unanimously – agreed with the charges.

People may be uncomfortable to see the Prime Minister of Israel charged with war crimes, but let us take a hard look at what he has actually done. And we must determine whether his actions meet the standards of being a war crime.

In seven and a half months, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and almost 80,000 injured. Thousands more are still under the rubble, but their bodies have not been fully identified. Some 60% of the victims are women, children, or the elderly. More than 250 aid workers have been killed, including 193 U.N. staff, more than any previous conflict.

There are 2.2 million people living in Gaza, and more than 1.7 million of them have been forced from their homes – 75% of the population. I’m trying to think of my own state, what it would be like if three-quarters of the people were driven out of their homes. These are by and large poor people. In the last few weeks, more than 900,000 have been displaced – many of them chased out of one place, chased to another place, gone to another place. Many of these people are children, Gaza has a young population. Many of them are elderly. Many of them are sick. These are people who have been forced out of their homes and moved, and moved again, often without adequate food, without adequate water supplies, and certainly without adequate health care.

When we talk about war crimes, talk about attacks on civilians, let’s understand: Gaza’s housing stock has been demolished. Again, I try to think of my own state, what it would mean if 60% of the housing was destroyed. Now, if these people who have been chased their homes, displaced from their homes, are ever able to return to their communities, where are they going to live? Over 60% of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including 221,000 housing units that have been completely destroyed, leaving more than a million people homeless. Entire neighborhoods have been wiped out both by bombing and planned detonations of explosive charges.

Looking at the war, we understand that Hamas is a difficult enemy that often uses civilians to protect their own people. But what we’re talking about over 60% of the housing units in Gaza have been destroyed. It’s hard to believe that there was a terrorist in every one of those buildings.

Israel has destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. You know, wiped out their ability to have electricity. Virtually no electricity in Gaza right now, virtually no clean water, and raw sewage is running through the streets, spreading disease. Now, if that’s not an attack on civilians, I don’t know what is.

The healthcare system in Gaza has been systematically annihilated, 21 hospitals have been made inoperable. In fact, of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, only four have not been damaged by bombardment, raided by the Israeli military, or closed. More than 400 healthcare workers have been killed.

Well, what do we say when we have a war in which the healthcare system is annihilated at a time when you have tens and tens of thousands of people who are wounded, many of them seriously?

The education system in Gaza has been virtually destroyed. Every one of Gaza’s 12 universities has been bombed. Got that? Every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed. More than 400 schools have suffered direct hits and 56 schools have been totally destroyed. Today, 625,000 children in Gaza have no access to education at all.

And I’ll tell you something else. When you talk about what’s going on in Gaza, what is not talked about almost at all – I think I read one article on it – I want you to think about the psychic damage being done to children. The children who see housing being destroyed, their parents or relatives being killed, who see drones flying around them, some of which have guns, being pushed out of their homes, deafening noise, inadequate food, inadequate water, pushed, shoved into any place, everyplace. If there is one child in Gaza that does not suffer psychic damage from this horror, I will be very surprised.

As a result of the destruction and Israeli policies restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, more than a million people today face catastrophic levels of hunger and Gaza remains on the brink of famine. Hundreds of thousands of children face starvation. Even now, more than seven months into this war, Israel’s invasion of Rafah has severely disrupted the humanitarian relief operation, closing the two main border crossings and making it almost impossible for the U.N. to access warehouses or distribute aid.

Very little aid has gotten in for more than two weeks, bakeries have had to shut down, and hospitals are running low on fuel. Just today, the U.N. announced that it had been forced to halt all food distribution in Rafah after running out of supplies. The World Food Programme said “humanitarian operations in Gaza are near collapse,” saying that if food and other supplies don’t resume entering Gaza “in massive quantities, famine-like conditions will spread.”

Now, Mr. Netanyahu’s been on TV today, and elsewhere. He denies it all. Ain’t true, says Mr. Netanyahu. He claims that Israel is deeply worried about the civilian population, worried about the children, and that Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid at all. Not at all. Well, it turns out that the United Nations and virtually every other humanitarian group involved in the humanitarian disaster in Gaza strongly disagrees with Mr. Netanyahu.

Now, we can trust the words of a Prime Minister under criminal indictment in Israel, or we can trust the people whose function in life is to provide humanitarian aid.

The U.N. Secretary General says that much more aid is urgently needed to “avert an entirely preventable human-made famine” and that “there is no alternative to the massive use of land routes.”

Cindy McCain, the wife of our former Republican colleague John McCain, who is now the head of the World Food Programme, said of Gaza, “there is famine, full-blown famine in the north and it is moving south.”

A month ago, more than 50 humanitarian organizations called on Israel to allow greater humanitarian access and stop unnecessarily restricting aid. That’s 50 humanitarian organizations. Mr. Netanyahu says one thing, but 50 organizations who are desperately trying to the get food to hungry people say something else. Let the world decide who is telling the truth. And this group of humanitarian organizations included Catholic Relief Services, CARE, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Save The Children, Refugees International, and scores of other well-respected humanitarian organizations – they say that Netanyahu and his team have blocked humanitarian aid.

Two of our colleagues, Senator Van Hollen and Senator Merkley, visited Rafah in January, and I heard their presentation to the Democratic caucus. Upset by the unreasonable Israeli restrictions on aid, they talked about trucks being inspected and inspected, sent back, that things that should have been allowed to get through were not allowed to get through. They said afterward that the U.S. must, “demand that the Netanyahu government lift the impediments for delivery of basic goods needed to sustain life in Gaza.” Netanyahu denies it, two of our colleagues who were there say that Israel has blocking aid.

The United States government also disagrees with Netanyahu. USAID Administrator Samantha Power said, “food has not flowed in sufficient quantities to avoid this infinite famine in the south and it is giving rise to child deaths in the north.” In March, Secretary of State Blinken said, “the bottom line is food is getting in, but it is insufficient.” In April he said, “there has been progress, but it is not enough. We still need to get more aid in and around Gaza.” In a formal report this month, the State Department said, “Israel did not fully cooperate with the United States government efforts and the United States government-supported international efforts to maximize humanitarian assistance flow to and distribution within Gaza.”

I got a kick out of hearing Mr. Netanyahu this afternoon. He talked about airlifts. My god, they’re supporting air drops, they’re supporting food coming in from the sea. The reason the United States is spending millions of dollars getting food in from the sea is precisely because Israel is blocking the ability to get trucks in! And the reason that Jordan and the other countries and the United States are doing air drops is once again because trucks cannot get through. Netanyahu is taking credit, and yet the reason we’re having to do those things is precisely because of the policies of his government.

President Biden himself has said, “a the major reason that distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult [is] because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians… Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians,” President Joe Biden.

So, it is fair to say that most of the world disagrees with Mr. Netanyahu.

Think about all of that destruction. Think about the tens of thousands of civilians killed, the schools and hospitals blown up. Take a look at the pictures of emaciated children starving to death while food sits miles away.

One of the interesting things to my mind is that we don’t see enough of those pictures. And maybe that has something to do with the fact that the Israeli military has killed dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists. I just met with some journalists last week, including a young man who happens to come from my home state of Vermont who had no doubt he was targeted, along with other press people. Big press symbols on their coats, and they were attacked. He was slightly injured, one of his colleagues was killed, and another one was severely injured.

Now, if you add all that stuff up, are these actions war crimes?

Yeah. I believe that they are. I believe that there is substantial evidence that the extreme right-wing Israeli government led by Netanyahu has used starvation as a weapon of war and has clearly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.

As I think we all agree, I certainly do, Israel had the right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th. But it did not – and this is where we get into the issue of war crimes – yes, you have the right to defend yourselves. Yes, Israel has the right to go after Hamas, very few people doubt that. But Netanyahu and his government do not have the right to wage an all-out war against the children, against the women, against the innocent people of Gaza. And for that, there must be consequences.

What the ICC has done is important for the global community, in the sense that we cannot allow the human race to descend to barbarity. Somebody has got to say: look, war is terrible, and it’s a little bit embarrassing as a human being that we’ve been at war for thousands of years and have not seemed to make much progress at eliminating war. But if there is war, let us learn from what happened in the past and do our best to protect the women, the children, the innocent people. So, Israel had a right to defend itself against a terrible enemy in Hamas, but it does not have the right to wage an all-out war against the people of Gaza.

Now, what the ICC is doing is important for the world. It’s [a message] to leaders all over the world – dictators, people in democratic countries – that if you go to war you cannot wage all-out war against civilians. That’s what the ICC is doing, that’s important. But it is also important, Mr. President, for those of us in the United States. Our nation claims to be the leader of the free world, and at our best we try to mobilize countries to uphold international war and prevent crimes against humanity. That is what we try to do and have done.

But how can or how will the United States be able to criticize any country in the world, whether it is Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, or anyone else – any other country in the world – if we actually believe what Netanyahu is saying?

If we turn our backs and ignore the crimes against humanity that are being committed in Gaza right now, what credibility will we ever have in criticizing the actions of any country, no matter how terrible those actions may be? Because people will say, oh, really? You’re attacking China, Turkey, anybody else, really? You’re really deeply concerned? But apparently for Netanyahu, it’s allowed. We don’t believe you.

And I don’t want to see this great country of ours be in that position. I want to see this country respected all over the world as a country that does believe in human rights, that does believe in international law.

The ICC as I see it is trying to uphold international law and minimum standards of decency. Our government should do no less.