Mendocino County Today: Saturday 7/13/2024

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 111°, Yorkville 109°, Laytonville 107°, Covelo 107°, Boonville 102°, Fort Bragg 59°, Mendocino 58°, Point Arena 55°

VERY HOT AND DRY weather will continue in the interior through today. An offshore low will bring a chance of dry thunderstorms to the interior this afternoon and especially Sunday. Interior heat is forecast to moderate slightly Sunday and early next week. Coastal areas will remain cool with occasional fog and low clouds through the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): How about a 20% chance of a shower tomorrow? Moisture will be flowing up from the south, we'll see. A foggy 52F this Saturday morning on the coast. Patchy remains our dominant weather forecast for now. A lot of of fog out there.

HIGH FIRE RISK SUNDAY: Mendocino County Under Red Flag Warning

by Matt LaFever

The National Weather Service in Eureka has issued a Red Flag Warning for Mendocino County, effective from 2 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday, July 14, 2024, as an approaching upper low brings in a plume of monsoonal moisture.

Thunderstorm chances will begin to develop this afternoon across portions of Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity counties, with an increase in activity expected late tonight through Sunday. The dry surface environment will favor dry showers and likely dry thunderstorms, capable of producing gusty, erratic winds.

The warning affects fire weather zones 277 and 283, particularly northeast Mendocino County, including Round Valley, Laytonville, and the vast expanse of the Mendocino National Forest.

The dry thunderstorms are anticipated to bring gusty and erratic outflow winds, which, combined with the low relative humidity and warm temperatures, can lead to extreme fire behavior.

“Any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly,” the NWS stated. “Outdoor burning is not recommended.”

Residents of Mendocino and Lake counties are urged to take precautionary measures to prepare for potential fire hazards. The combination of strong winds, low humidity, and warm temperatures contributes to critical fire weather conditions that are either occurring now or will shortly.…

mendofever.com/2024/07/13/high-fire-risk-sunday-mendocino-county-under-red-flag-warning

CALTRANS TO THE RESCUE

Caltrans District 1 employees assisted a stranded motorist on Route 253 in Mendocino County, enduring triple-digit temperatures.

A Fort Bragg man was driving home from Ukiah when his car broke down on Wednesday afternoon. Boonville Maintenance Supervisor Derek Wyant noticed the man and pulled off the roadway to help, giving him water and taking him to his work vehicle to cool off. Along with the California Highway Patrol, Maintenance worker Rhett Pardini also assisted and made sure the vehicle was towed and the man got home safe.

The man contacted Caltrans and wanted Wyant and Pardini to know how much he appreciated their help and said he doesn’t know what he would have done in the warm temperatures had they not stopped to help him.

Caltrans reminds motorists when traveling, carry water, snacks, a first aid kit, and a charged cell phone.

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

AND a small town’s biggest yard sale of the year: Comptche Community Yard Sale, Saturday July 13, 11a.m. to 3 p.m., Comptche Community Hall, 30672 Comptche-Ukiah Rd., (no early birds please).

ANNAPOLIS MAN FATALLY SHOT NEAR POINT ARENA, suspect arrested

The suspect was arrested after he called authorities Thursday night. He’s identified as a 47-year-old Point Arena resident.

by Colin Atagi

A suspect turned himself into authorities Thursday night after fatally shooting an Annapolis man during an argument near Point Arena, officials said.

Pan Jasper Brady, 47, of Point Arena was arrested on suspicion of murder and using a gun in a death or injury, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The victim is described as a 54-year-old and his name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The shooting occurred about 8 p.m. Thursday in the 38500 Block Eureka Hill Road, just east of Point Arena, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators say the men were having an argument when Brady retrieved a handgun and shot the victim.

The suspect called authorities and put the gun away while waiting for them to arrive.

Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies and California State Parks Peace Officers responded.

The victim was pronounced dead and Brady was arrested at the scene, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

He’s being held at the Mendocino County jail in lieu of $1 million bail.

(The Press Democrat)

COMING SOON TO PHILO

AV UNIFIED NEWS

I wanted to send you a brief update about the construction at AVUSD. I am getting familiar with the myriad projects, as well as the funding process for each. (I'm also having fun getting to know each employee through individual meetings, which has been fun but takes a lot of time.)

I am working with our lead architect, Don Alameida, to revamp the drop-off area at the elementary school to make it compliant with ADA requirements. Additionally, the parking lot has been resurfaced and looks fantastic!

At the Jr-Sr High School last week, the construction crew took down an old awning and dilapidated trellis in the front of the school. This gives the school a cleaner look and also allows for the smooth installation of new windows, which are due to arrive on Monday.

Additionally, the crew has prepared the ground outside the science buildings to be paved. This will provide an outdoor learning area that will be accessible from those classrooms.

Electrical is being put in and the main building is almost ready for the installation of the new lighting, which recently arrived. The administrative conference and staff lounge are also being updated, with new plumbing and electrical.

We have had some challenges with false fire alarms in the wee hours of the morning and Chief Avila has suggested it is time to replace our control panel, which is old. Our architect is working directly with the fire department and drawing up plans for a new system.

We continue to meet with OPSC [the California Office of Public School Construction] regarding potential funding to replace the domes, which are very old and not in good condition. We also continue to work toward state funding for updating or replacement our gym which is also very old; our architect is working on plans and estimates that will inform that process.

It has been a whirlwind so far and I am so thankful to Louise Simson for her continued guidance with regard to the construction process. She is amazing!

With new principals coming soon and school beginning in August, there is a lot going on in the instructional arena too!

I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

With respect,

Kristin Larson Balliet

Superintendent , Anderson Valley Unified School District

SUPERVISOR HASCHAK’S JULY REPORT

Hot weather and hot issues are here. The Office of Emergency Services has been dealing with the extreme heat and advising people on how to stay safe. Please take care of yourself and others who might be vulnerable to the heat. Check on your elderly and at-risk neighbors. Since not everyone has air conditioning, consider libraries and stores as places to get a break from the heat. Mendoready.org has additional preparedness tips. Watch Duty is an app that is very useful in tracking fires and emergencies in your area.

Brooktrails Special Assessment vote is ongoing. The public hearing will be on July 23 during the Board of Supervisors meeting. This assessment, if approved, will provide maintenance and fuel reduction for the Willits Creek and Firco roads as emergency access routes. This is a pilot program using assessments for a special benefit. Appreciation to the property owners along the emergency access routes, Sherwood Firewise Council, and the Brooktrails Board.

The State Controller’s office conducted an audit of the County’s fiscal operations. The three main findings were: 1. the Board (with me as the lone dissenting vote) consolidated the Auditor/Controller and Treasurer/Tax Collector positions without doing a risk assessment which resulted in loss of staffing and institutional knowledge 2. Payroll did not have sufficient checks and balances (the payroll has been taken into the Executive Office with checks and balances in place) and 3. 14 financial accounts were not in the software system (they are now). More work needs to be done on the fiscal department’s processes and procedures so that everything is consistent and transparent.

There has been controversy about the number of licenses allowable in the cannabis ordinance. To be clear, staff did not usurp Board power but rather read the exact language of the ordinance. It states that a person may obtain two cannabis cultivation business licenses on a parcel. This allows for up to 22,000 sq. ft. Previously, this allowed cultivation and a nursery. County Counsel says that the language allows for two different types of cultivation such as mixed light and outdoor. Only four people have applied in the last two months (while 135 have been denied or withdrawn in 2024 so far). Applying for a second license applies to non-resource land since these applications are under Phase 3 rules. This is all consistent with the CEQA review and the Mitigated Negative Declaration which considered parcels having up to 22,000 sq. ft of cultivation. Many feel that the intent of the ordinance was to limit cultivation to 10,000 sq. ft. Since there are two very different views on this issue, I will be bringing it as an agenda item for the Board to resolve.

There will be a Talk with the Supervisor Thursday, July 11 at 10:00 at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or phone 707-972-4214.

MARK SCARAMELLA: In his monthly report for July, Supervisor John Haschak commented on the State Controller’s finding that “Payroll did not have sufficient checks and balances.” Haschak claimed that “the payroll has been taken into the Executive Office with checks and balances in place.” Haschak based this comment on a passing remark by Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce at Tuesday’s Board meeting who made a similar claim. Ms. Pierce, at least theoretically, no longer works in the Executive Office, so how would she know? Further, Ms. Pierce reported that “another set of eyes” now looks at payroll, whatever that means, and that “another set of eyes” is “checks and balances.” Sorry, but nice as another set of eyes may be, it hardly amounts to “checks and balances.” This kind of casual dismissal of a formal complaint from the State Controller is typical of Mendo officialdom. If Haschak were serious, he’d ask the CEO’s office to provide a copy of the written procedure that they consider to be “checks and balances.” Then he’d ask for a checklist or record showing that those checks and balances were complied with. If this is an example of the way the County is going to respond to the State Controller’s office report, then that will prove again that the Board and its casual lack of oversight is indeed responsible for the County’s messy and loosey-goosey finances that the State Controller’s office reported.

FORT BRAGG FOOD BANK

Look at all those pallets! Here's Lisi Horstman, our Supply Chain Manager, after receiving a HUGE delivery of bread, which is being distributed throughout the county, including our pop-up in Covelo yesterday afternoon! Lisi is always overjoyed when we get our deliveries, and she's a huge MVP for getting YOU the food you deserve.

JIM SHIELDS:

Hello Everybody,

Today marks the 11th straight day where temps exceeded 100 degrees. Tomorrow, July 13, it's supposed to hit 101, if it does that will make an even dozen days of above 100 days. That's a record-setting heat wave. On Sunday, it's expected to dip down to a relatively cool 90 degrees. I'm ready for it.

        July    High    Low     Rain    Sky & Conditions
Tue.    2       103     57              sunny
Wed.    3       108     55              sunny
Thu.    4       107     55              sunny
Fri.    5       110     57              sunny
Sat.    6       114     59              sunny
Sun.    7       111     59              sunny
Mon.    8       109     59              sunny
Tue.    9       103     58              sunny
Wed.    10      107     58              sunny
Thu.    11      109     60              sunny
Fri.    12      107     55              sunny

rainfall for week: none
rainfall for season: none
—Weather data recorded by Mendocino County Observer

Be sure and check out Mike Geniellas's front-page story on the state Controller's report and findings on the County's deficient and/or lack of internal financial controls. It's a problem I've written about quite a bit in the past few years. Here's some excerpts from a piece I wrote last year:

So what appears to be high on the County’s lists of concerns? One item for sure is the creation of a Department of Finance. Everyone is familiar with the background on this non-issue, issue, so I’m not going to re-flog it. A year ago, by a 4-1 vote (Haschak no), the BOS consolidated the previously independent elected offices of Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector, thus structurally weakening essential internal financial controls. There’s two bottom lines to this “concern”:

There’s no indication that this idea has any traction at all with the public. It’s been cut out of whole cloth by the BOS (Haschak excepted).
There’s every indication to believe that the overwhelming majority of citizens would never entrust the responsibility of financial control to the Board of Supervisors, or any creature office or department under its influence. If this proposal would ever go to the ballot, it would a wipeout.

Just goes to show, there’s priorities and then there’s priorities.

What you’ve just read elicited this response from 5th District Supe Ted Williams: “Jim, What’s your proposed solution to (Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller) Chamise Cubbison’s inability or unwillingness to perform the statutory duties of her elected position?”

Williams’ assertion prompted this comment from Bruce Anderson, of the AVA: “Ms. Cubbison obviously has the ability to do her job, and she has explained, on the record, the reasons for delays. Why would you even suggest she might be unwilling to perform her duties? You have been unfair to her from the beginning of all this.”

And I added: “I agree with Bruce A. on the Cubbison issue, there’s no evidence of her inability or unwillingness to perform the statutory duties of her office. There is evidence, however, that the shotgun marriage arranged when the BOS consolidated the Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller offices, was anything but a smooth transition. All the more reason for a public inquiry of former financial officials and the former CEO about how they conducted the public’s business in previous years, as it’s unlikely this mess started last night.”

And the beat goes on.

Lots of other good stuff in this week's Observer.

Hasta Luego, Jim

Editor & Publisher
The Mendocino County Observer
PO Box 490
Laytonville, CA 95454
(707) 984-6223- Phone

ED NOTES

SURE THERE ARE LARGER MENACES, but what about Star Thistle? Tom Wodetski of Albion valiantly organizes eradication teams to beat back this most persistent invader on the Coast but it marches on. Star Thistle seemed to be closing in on Boonville from three directions when I called the County Ag office some 25 years ago to ask what was being done to defeat the plant pest.

DAVE BENGSTON was Ag Commissioner back then, and he was always generous with his time, lucid in his explanations. He said that he defined eradication as “permanent removal,” and that Mendocino County had so far managed to confine the rampaging thistle to a mere 10,000 acres of its vastness, which was pretty impressive statistic. territory.

THE COMMISSIONER AGREED that Star Thistle had to somehow be stopped from spreading, then rolled back to non-existence because it refuses to co-exist, or co-exists in a way that leaves it so dominant it can't really be said to be co-existing. The Star Thistle, then, is the biological equivalent of Trump.

BENGSTON was a member of the state's “Bio-control Commission,” had been its chairman, in fact. “We've got several experiments going,” Bengston said, “and there have been promising uses in other countries of certain insects that eat the plant. Star Thistle seed is viable for 15 years, making it very difficult to permanently eradicate. There's a chemical spray called Transline that's about 96% effective, but it costs $60 an acre. And it's got to be applied for years. For the thousands of acres we're talking about in Mendocino County, bio-control is the only practical hope we have for stopping it.”

“STAR THISTLE,” the Commissioner continued, “is often introduced to an un-invaded pasture via hay. But once you've got it, you've got to be careful about hand eradication because it spreads horizontally. You might think you're getting it out but you're probably multiplying its root stock. If you disk, you can wind up chopping one root into ten, and even if you spray for ten or twelve years, then skip or miss a year, it'll come right back. The plant explodes into thousands of seeds when it's mature and can lie dormant for many years. Star thistle is still spreading, although some southern counties don’t yet have it. It hasn’t reached San Pedro.”

THE COMMISSIONER remarked that “in wet years competing grasses can ‘shade it out,’ but in dry years there's not enough shade from competing grasses and star thistle can really take off.” “But,” Bengston chuckled, “it's not all bad; star thistle does make the best honey in the world — clove-orange. It's ten times better than Tupelo honey. Back in the 60s and 70s beekeepers liked it because it was good for honey production.” Bengston mentioned a local beekeeper who still specializes in star thistle honey. “Still if you took a vote star thistle would be the number one pest of most ranchers and farmers. Although cows, sheep and goats will eat it, it’s poison to horses.”

A READER WRITES: “I've been reading your paper for a while now, and generally speaking it's been a pleasure. There's so little out there with an independent perspective that you are sadly almost without competition — the couple other locals news outlets are indeed “rags” — but even if there was some competition I suspect you'd still come out on top.

On the poetry front, the AVA is a mixed bag. Some of the local writings are good and interesting, but others are almost embarrassing to read and truly seem to be filler. I've definitely liked your inclusion lately of well-known poets: Auden, Sandburg, and more recently Elisabeth Bishop, etc.

One poet you might like is an old man now, living somewhere up in Vermont I believe, by the name of Hayden Carruth. His most recent book of poems is Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, which I think won the National Book Award, for what that's worth. Many of his poems are short enough that they'd do well in your paper's format…"

I LIKE POETRY, always have, ever since I figured out I had no gift for writing it. Believe it or not, I know the diff between good and bad verse. I also know that I've invented a new literary genre — charity poetry, which accounts for the, ahem, uneven quality of some of the verse that appears on the cyber-pages of this fine publication. I've also recast some pretty good poetry as prose and run it as fillers just to see if anybody noticed; if they did, nobody troubled to complain.

HAVING ESTABLISHED my credentials to the satisfaction of local standards, of which there are none that I know of, I'll say there are very few big shot poets I really like. You can have Hass, Pinsky, most of Milosz, most of Merrill. Of the ones I do like there's Sharon Olds and some of your man Carruth. I like Taslima Nasreen best of all the contemporary poets I've read over the past ten years, but she seems to have disappeared in a blizzard of fatwas. (She's so strong a writer she seems just as strong in translation, although I'm sure she's even more powerful in Bengali.) I like an academic poet named Hirsch, and I like Ferlinghetti very much and am always irritated when he's patronized and dismissed merely as a “beatnik poet.” I've always liked William Carlos Williams. Of the furriners, I like Lawrence and a lot of Robert Graves. Mostly though, as an insular kinda dude, I go back to American poets when I need poetry — Whitman, Dickinson, and to the later American poets like Hart Crane and Robert Frost. Unpopular as he is with lefties, I think Tom Wolfe is right about the nugatory effect Seminar Land has had on American lit, prose and poetry, not that Wolfe's novels approach Balzac as he suggested in his famous essay complaining that modern novels weren't about anything but their authors' interior lives. The only novelists I rush to read are Richard Price and Robert Stone, and Stone is gone now. I like Annie Proulx. The best novel I've read lately is Paul Theroux's ‘Burma Sahib,’ a reimagining of George Orwell's days as an imperial policeman in Burma. All this hurry-up lit chat isn’t to say I don't often see random stories and poems I like very much.

ANOTHER LIFE

by Taslima Nasrin

Women spend the afternoon squatting on the porch,
picking lice from each other's hair.
They spend the evening feeding the little ones,
lulling them to sleep in the glow of the bottle lamp.
The rest of the night
they offer their back to be slapped and kicked by the men of the house
or sprawl half-naked on the hard wooden cot.
Crows and women greet the dawn together,
the women blowing into the oven to start the fire,
tapping on the back of the winnowing tray with five fingers
and, with two, picking out the stones.
Half their lives women pick stones from the rice.
All their lives stones pile up in their hearts,
no one there to touch them even with two fingers.

NOT KEEPING UP

Dear Editor,

Imagine a cat lassoed then hoisted by the neck to dangle kicking and gasping until it is strangled to death. Imagine a dog caught by the leg in a trap, stuck twisting and turning for days while the jaws of the trap dig into its leg until it dies of dehydration and shock while trying to free itself by gnawing off its paw.

Even those of us who don’t keep pets have, I hope, sufficient empathy to shudder at dogs and cats being treated that way by someone who finds their straying into his yard annoying. There has to be a kinder, more humane way of removing unwanted pets from one’s yard, right? And of course there is: we call animal control to come and humanely remove the offending animal.

Now, extend your empathy a bit further to include other critters, like raccoons and skunks. They, too, can be annoying when under your house or in your shed. So, you want them removed humanely, right? Unfortunately, in Mendocino the County will send out a Wildlife Services trapper to kill the offending animal instead of removing it and sealing off its entryway.

That doesn’t have to happen. There are well-tested alternatives and people ready to bring them to our county. To accomplish that, all you need do is tell your Supervisor to vote against renewing the county’s contract with USDA Wildlife Services and in favor of working with Mendocino Non-Lethal Wildlife Alliance to implement a proven humane wildlife management program.

Sincerely,

Steve F. Sapontzis

Cleone

ms notes: The Supervisors voted to end the USDA Wildlife Services Contract a few years ago in favor of no system at all. We don’t know why Mr. Sapontzis is unaware of that.

LITTLE RIVER MUSEUM is open weekends all summer from 11-4. Come see our antique train exhibit, our hand cut antique jigsaw puzzle and jigsaw puzzles for sale in the gift area, free Pomo Native American local trail maps, guide to the Pioneer Little River Cemetery and Civil War gravesites, wildlife exhibit, local genealogy and library of books by local historians, and our architectural surprise. All for free. Located in the little white cottage just above Van Damme Beach--8185 Highway One.

(Ronnie James)

SATURDAY, AT THE MANCHESTER GRANGE!

ALBION-LITTLE RIVER BBQ TODAY SATURDAY, July 13th, benefit for the volunteer A-LR Fire Protection District firefighters

Barbeque is about as red, white and blue as American cuisine gets, and the only real question when it comes to barbeque is, how to save room for seconds. And let's get one thing straight - really good barbeque is more than just food; it's a celebration of flavors, a community experience, and as it happens, a fantastic way to support the Albion-Little River Fire Protection District firefighters and their dedication and service to our community.

So gather up your family and friends and come join us at our 61st annual Fundraising Barbeque sponsored by the Albion-Little River Fire Auxiliary on Saturday, July 13 at Albion-Little River Fire Station 812, 43100 Little River Airport Rd., Little River, CA from noon to 5PM. This year's barbecue will feature a mouth-watering selection of grilled favorites, including tri-tip, chicken, and a variety of sides (salad, garlic bread, beans and corn), all prepared by our skilled volunteer chefs. Vegetarian and vegan options will also be available to ensure there is something for everyone to enjoy. Wine, beer and soft drinks will be available for purchase.

Along with silent and wine auctions, there will be ALRFPD t-shirts and ALRFPD Three Ridge Blend coffee and mugs for sale, firefighter demonstrations and of course music provided by Keeter Stuart & Dan Crary and Latchkey.

Tickets are available at the gate day of the event at $25 per adult; $12 for children 7-12; and FREE for those under 7. Proceeds from the event will go towards purchasing new equipment, funding training programs and supporting fire prevention within the community.

EVERETT LILJEBERG CONFIRMS that this photo is Al Dompeling's log truck when it went off the albion bridge in August of 2002. Dompeling had swerved to avoid an oncoming drunk driver and over the side Dompeling went, 90 feet down, conscious the whole way. Although badly injured, Al recovered and went back to work.

MENDO WANTS A CONSTRUCTION MANAGER

Construction Project Management Services

This Request for Qualifications (RFQ) announces the intent of the County of Mendocino to seek services from qualified Construction Management firms and professionals for the purpose of providing Construction Management Services for Mendocino County construction and development projects. This Request for Qualifications (RFQ) is extended to any construction management firms (hereinafter ‘CM Firm’) that meets the minimum qualifications and has the required experience as described below. In the interest of streamlining the procurement process and reducing the burden on CM Firms making proposals on individual projects, the County of Mendocino is soliciting proposals to provide evidence of qualification as described within this Request for Qualifications (RFQ), which will be used to assess a firm’s skills, knowledge, and abilities to provide services over the next three years.

Please see Request for Proposal for more information.

All qualified CM Firms will be included in the County’s Prequalified List of CM Firms to be used in future solicitations of specific projects for a period of three (3) years; no further qualification documentation will be required during the three-year period. CM Firms will be requested to prepare and submit project-specific work plans and cost proposals to be considered for future individual projects.

Prequalified CM firms and professionals will be required to submit copies of Certificates of Insurance (General Liability and Automobile naming the County of Mendocino as an “Also Insured”) within 14 days of their notification of qualification. Qualified firms must maintain these policies or equivalent replacements in force through the end of the three-year period unless they remove themselves from the “Prequalified list”.

Based on criteria included herein, one or more CM Firms may be selected as an “ON CALL” CM Firm for small and rapid response projects. This contract will be for a term of two year with a renewal option for one additional year.

The County of Mendocino is soliciting Letters of Qualifications (proposals) from Construction Management firms or professionals. This Request for Qualifications (RFQ) is extended to any Construction Management firm (hereinafter ‘Firm’) that meets the minimum qualifications and has the required experience as described below.

Pre-submittal procedural or technical inquiries may be directed to:

Doug Anderson

Facilities & Fleet Division

Mendocino County

Phone:707-234-6054

Email: andersond@mendocinocounty.gov

All questions regarding this RFQ shall be submitted in writing (email is acceptable).

The questions and answers will be provided by the County in writing, in the form of an addendum to all known interested consultant(s) after the inquiry deadline. If any addenda are issued by the County, they shall be sent via e-mail and/ or first-class U.S. mail to the last known business address of each entity known to have received a copy of this RFQ.

The deadline for submitting written inquiries regarding this RFQ is July 30, 2024.

Questions submitted after the inquiry deadline will not be answered. Only answers to questions communicated by formal written addenda will be binding.

Mendocino County requires that other Mendocino County management and employees not be contacted by proposers during the RFQ process. Failure to comply with this requirement may disqualify those Statements of Qualification from further consideration.

Contact is limited to the Mendocino County RFQ Representative listed above for any and all technical and procedural inquiries.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, July 12, 2024

LINDA ALMOND, Ukiah. Camping on Ukiah, paraphernalia.

JORGE ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Registration tampering, suspended license, probation revocation.

KATHERINE CLARK, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, elder abuse.

CECIL DIXON JR., Fort Bragg. Narcotics for sale, controlled substance, more than an ounce of pot, suspended license for refusing chemical DUI test.

EMILY FENTON, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

RACHEL HUNT, Fort Bragg. paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation.

ANGEL MILLER, Ukiah. Trespassing-injuring property, parole violation.

JOSE PLASCENCIA, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

DANIEL WYSE, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, controlled substance.

REGARDING FRIDAY NIGHT'S MEMO OF THE AIR RADIO SHOW

The recording of Friday night's MOTA: Good Night Radio show is up and available via https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress com

And you're getting it a day early because this time it won't be there. Because of incapacitating back pain I haven't been able to prep for the show and can't even get to where I can do the show from, nor would I be able to sit up in the chair long enough to do it. This is to let you know that, and also to explain why, if you listen live tonight (Friday night, 2024-07-12) via 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (or, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino), or via KNYO.org, you'll hear a rerun of last week's show, which Bob Young was kind and clever enough to set up to play. And if you're one of the show's regular writers ready to listen for your story, that should clear up any confusion.

I have food and water, Ibuprofen, Aleve, Flexeril, plenty of books, and a heating pad. After almost a week of this down-time I feel like it's turned the corner, to where I'm a little bit better today than yesterday, and if things go the way they did the last time this happened, three or four years ago, by next week I'll be up to do the show as usual. And if they don't, I'll write and say sorry again.

Speaking of /as usual/, if you're not a regular writer and don't yet know, coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air as soon as that's possible again. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find 17,000-and-counting somewhat entertaining, arguably educational links, links up the wazoo, as they say, going back twelve years. Go there and look around if you feel like it and have some time on your hands.

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

Picasso at Villa La Californie, Cannes, France, 1960. Image: David Douglas Duncan

WANTED, HINDU WARRIORS

No Compromise Activity Defines the Finer Points of Our Philosophy

I am available after July 19th to destroy the demonic and return this world to righteousness. Seeking others, necessary basics, and spiritually directed collective direct action. A nomadic action group would be the perfect response to the entire samsaric quagmire on planet earth. Requesting the favor of your reply.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

KATE MCIVER:

“Twelve rebels were sentenced to be hanged. But only six were hung, while the others were pardoned.”

Are these the correct uses of “hanged” and “hung?”

ADRIAN HOWELL:

Common usage—the past participle of hang is hung EXCEPT when used to describe a person “expiring” by capital punishment or self harm.

So no. “Only six were hanged” would be correct.

FRIDAY FUN FACT

by William Sawyer

Fact: “Some experts have calculated that there may be more biomass (weight) of ants on the earth than of humans.”

Ants are colonial insects which evolved from small wasps about 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous. There are about 14,000 species which live in colonies consisting of only a few up to millions of individuals. Colonial locations can be subterrain or clear to the top of the highest tropical forest canopy (even in the walls of our homes or the confines of our potted plants) to the army ants who wander as a colony daily throughout the forest. Ants range in size from .03" to ~2.0". The majority of ants live 1 to 3 years while some queens may live up to 30 years. For protection and predation ants can bite and sting but only one Australian species is lethal to humans though many can be quite painful. Some are strict carnivores while most are omnivores and a few vegetarians even raise their own fungus crop. Ants are one of the most extensively studied insects.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I have a son who currently lives in Mexico, on the Yucatan peninsula. As we all know the Mexican Peso is worth far less than the US dollar, currently. A Snicker’s candy bar in Mexico costs 25 pesos. Mexicans live in smaller homes. Drive one car or get around on bikes. And, get this, for the most part, my son finds the average Mexican to be a delightful person. They are usually very family oriented, hard working, religious, somewhat moral and happy. They know how to have conversations with each other.

I don’t see a collapse in the USA as a bad thing. Forcing a people to go back to what matters in this world is not a bad thing. Wealth and materialism has brought us nothing but misery and death.

Part of me admires how the Mexicans live. They live a simpler, happier lifestyle because they don’t have nearly as much crap as we Americans do. They make do with what they have.

IT’S OK TO HATE HIPPIES?’: RAINBOW FAMILY IRKED BY CALIFORNIA RECEPTION

by Kurtis Alexander

It’s not easy being a hippie in California these days.

Slipping into the woods to spend time with nature and friends, maybe beat a drum, pray for peace, or smoke a little something, can come with all sorts of obstacles: environmental restrictions, rural residents wary of outsiders, high fire danger, tribes protective of sacred land, misinformed critics on Facebook.

These are a few of the issues encountered by the Rainbow Family when it tried to hold its national counterculture gathering this month in Northern California’s Plumas National Forest. Of course, inviting thousands of people to a weeklong camping event on public lands, and not getting a permit, complicates matters.

The Rainbows, a loosely affiliated group of drifters, dreamers and pacifists that meets up somewhere each Fourth of July, were ousted from their gathering site this year by federal authorities just as it was getting started, amid numerous concerns about their presence. Many regrouped about an hour and a half away, but the ensuing event was smaller than expected and heavy on law enforcement. There were five arrests and 115 citations, authorities said.

While several of the nearly 1,800 attendees praised the experience as “epic” and “healing,” others said the scrutiny cast a shadow over the gathering. Some felt misunderstood, unable to share their message of peace and love, and ultimately victimized by a world that may have passed them by.

“We represent something that doesn’t align with most people,” said Fern Rose, who attended the gathering with her husband and kids from Cave Junction, Ore. “It’s not OK to be racist. It’s not OK to hate brown, Black and yellow people. But it’s OK to hate hippies?”

Rose said she enjoyed her time at the event, spending most of it walking, cooking and attending children’s programs. She, like others, despises stereotypes of the Rainbows as doped-up hooligans and said they’re a judgment-free community offering hope and happiness. Still, she said her family felt the heavy hand of law enforcement at this year’s gathering, specifically with threats to tow their truck, which she attributes to pressure from a broader community that just doesn’t grasp the Rainbow Family.

“There was no goodwill,” she said. “No one wanted to work with us. They just wanted to call us drug addicts and get us out of the woods.”

The irony wasn’t lost that California is proudly viewed by many as the birthplace of the counterculture movement.

The crackdown on the gathering began on June 26, when National Forest Service officials issued a closure order for part of the Plumas National Forest near the Lassen County community of Janesville, about five hours from San Francisco, where the Rainbow event was initially planned. The agency deemed the assembly “unauthorized.”

But things were getting weird long before this.

In the weeks leading up to the gathering, reports of early attendees running pipelines to carry water from creeks to campers — a potential violation of state and federal laws — prompted a few local residents to take matters into their own hands and remove the makeshift infrastructure. Tensions began to build.

Soon after, a local group went to the area with the intention of blocking cars headed to the gathering site. Ultimately, it stood down but not without crystallizing the opposition.

“We’re going to have to clean up this mess,” Aaron Albaugh, chair of the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, told the Chronicle at the time. “It’s going to come out of our county coffers. It’s terrible that rural counties are getting (burdened) and the federal government doesn’t do anything.”

Meanwhile, news of the event was fanning already sky-high fears about wildfires in Northern California. Memories of the devastating Dixie, Camp and North Complex fires are fresh, and the prospect of more people meant more chance of another catastrophic spark.

There were also the tribes. Representatives of the Maidu, Paiute, Pit River and Washoe asked the Rainbow Family, earlier in June, to stay out of the area, worried about disruption to ancestral sites.

To top things off, social media was stirring things up. Steady streams of posts chronicled what the gatherers were doing and, from the posters’ perspectives, why they needed to be stopped.

By the end of June, when larger crowds began pouring in to the event ahead of the Fourth of July, public sentiment about the Rainbow Family was firmly against them. The forest service’s eventual decision to push out the congregants was widely supported, and some who planned to attend just stayed home.

“People were just out there acting stupid. There were threats of violence from the locals. That’s not what we represent,” said David Smith of Burney (Shasta County), who has been attending Rainbow gatherings since 1997 for the sense of belonging he found after growing up in group homes and completing his military service. However, this year, Smith made the last-minute decision to sit out. “I didn’t want the harassment.”

Lafayette resident Chris Bair wasn’t deterred. He drove from the Bay Area to the second gathering site, which was near the community of Beckwourth (Plumas County) in Plumas National Forest. He immediately had second thoughts, however.

“Honestly, I’ve never seen so many law enforcement officers in a single location in my entire life,” Bair said.

Bair was pulled over, he said, for going 21 mph in a 15 mph zone, then he had his car searched. The self-described “boring dad from the suburbs” who went to gatherings as a younger man and hadn’t been to one since 2007, called the reaction to the assembly “absolutely egregious and uncalled for.”

“When I left, I was the most paranoid I’ve ever been, and I’ve got nothing to be paranoid about,” he said.

Bair and others acknowledge that the Rainbow Family might have made some missteps in planning this year’s gathering, such as underestimating the region’s fire risk. Still, they say the response was overblown. In the end, the site they convened at was an area that had recently burned, which likely presented less fire danger.

Forest service officials said the group simply posed too many potential problems for the agency to ignore. They cited the need to maintain public health and safety as well as ensure adequate stewardship of public lands and natural resources.

In advance of the event, the agency assigned a 65-person “national incident management team,” consisting of 36 federal law enforcement officers from outside the area, to help manage the situation. The team is regularly activated for the national Rainbow gathering, which has been held on forest service lands since 1972 and can draw upward of 10,000 people. Local police and sheriff’s deputies also assisted.

Hilary Markin, spokesperson for the forest service, said concerns about the event could have been sorted out in advance if the Rainbow Family had gone through proper channels and obtained a group permit. A permit is required for events with 75 or more people and allows for conditions to be imposed to limit impacts, such as requiring portable toilets.

The gatherers, though, have long asserted that they have no leadership and no one who represents them, meaning they’re not a group. (Those who spoke to the Chronicle for this story made clear they’re not speaking for everyone, and the Chronicle couldn’t find anyone to speak for the Rainbows.)

“Even though we declared it an unauthorized gathering, they claim to be individuals camping in the woods,” Markin said.

The forest service reported 384 law enforcement contacts over the course of the event, which was still going on at the start of this week, with a few hundred attendees at the site. The arrests and citations were for several alleged wrongdoings, including damage to natural resources, violations of fire restrictions, traffic infractions and narcotics possession.

Many of the gatherers were adamant that, while they felt bullied, they wouldn’t be intimidated.

“We’re moving on now,” said Rose, from Oregon. “But I will show up to every single gathering for the rest of my life until the day I die. We need to keep up our numbers.”

Bair, from Lafayette, said, “We really are all in this together. With all that’s going on in the world, if you break down the divisions and pray for peace, you’re certainly not going to make things worse, and hopefully we can make a meaningful difference for the better.”

(SF Chronicle)

The Original Members of the Harlem Globetrotters: The Beginnings of a Basketball Legend

On January 7, 1927, a basketball team known as the Harlem Globetrotters, then called the Savoy Big Five, embarked on a journey from Chicago to Hinckley, Illinois, marking the start of an incredible legacy. This team, composed of talented African-American players, was founded and coached by Abe Saperstein, a visionary who sought to break racial barriers in the sport.

Abe Saperstein, the son of a tailor, had a keen eye for talent and an entrepreneurial spirit. In an era when professional basketball was predominantly white, Saperstein saw an opportunity to showcase the skills of African-American players. Taking over coaching duties for the Savoy Big Five, he renamed the team to highlight their cultural roots, despite their origins in Chicago. The name "Harlem Globetrotters" was chosen to associate the team with the renowned African-American neighborhood in New York City, even though the team had never played there at that time.

Saperstein's dedication went beyond coaching. He was the owner, manager, publicist, and occasionally even a substitute player. He also sewed the team's distinctive red, white, and blue uniforms himself, emblazoned with the words “New York” to enhance their appeal and identity.

The original lineup for the Globetrotters' first game in Hinckley included Walter “Toots” Wright, Byron “Fat” Long, Willis “Kid” Oliver, Andy Washington, and Al “Runt” Pullins. The team was paid $75 for this inaugural match. Their skills on the court quickly set them apart, as they won 101 out of 117 games in their first season, captivating audiences across the Midwest with a style of play that many had never seen before.

Saperstein tirelessly booked games for his team, ensuring that the Globetrotters reached as many audiences as possible. By 1936, they had played over 1,000 games, touring extensively through Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Washington, and the Dakotas. Despite their name, the Globetrotters did not play a game in Harlem until the late 1960s.

The team's first appearance in a national championship came in 1939, where they faced off against the New York Renaissance, unfortunately losing the match. That same year marked the beginning of a new era for the Globetrotters as they started incorporating comedic routines and ball-handling tricks into their gameplay. These antics, initially introduced to entertain and engage the crowd, became a hallmark of the team's identity. Saperstein encouraged these performances, but only when the team had secured a comfortable lead in the game.

The original Harlem Globetrotters, under the guidance of Abe Saperstein, laid the foundation for what would become one of the most famous basketball teams in history. Their journey from the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago to becoming international icons is a testament to their talent, resilience, and the visionary leadership of Saperstein. The team's success and innovative style brought attention to African-American players and helped to break down racial barriers in professional sports, making the Harlem Globetrotters a significant part of basketball history.

BIDEN HIS TIME

Dear Editor,

There are times when there is a kind of novel impulse to make a quick, apparently easy political move. What we see today is just such a time. Television can accentuate something like this, making it seem more important than it really is.

Three weeks ago there was a matchup between the contending presidential candidates. President Biden apparently stumbled; at an early moment he lost his train of thought. In spite of doing well the rest of the debate where his opponent, D.J. Trump, refused to give clear answers to simple questions and told several bold-faced lies.

Afterward the cable news analysts fell all over themselves to criticize the president. There have been three recent letters in the last week calling for Biden to step aside, despite the fact that he has more than enough delegates to be the Democratic candidate. Beware of those calling for changing horses in midstream. Joe Biden today secured a cease fire with return of hostages in the Israel vs Hamas War. The Democratic Party is lucky to have Joe Biden as its candidate. He has superior skills, intelligence, heart, courage, and faith.

Frank H. Baumgardner III,

Santa Rosa

POLLS SAID NO

Editor:

Thou shall reap what you sow. The Democratic Party should never have put President Joe Biden up for reelection. The polls were very clear. Seventy percent or more of respondents did not want a candidate so old. That was stated many times. The people knew what they wanted, and they were right. But, oddly, the leaders of the Democratic Party would not listen. Obama and Clinton, full of smiles and good humor, forgot their roots and with so many others took the easiest path, ignoring the cry from the populace. And now, here we are. It’s not a question of whether Biden can do the job. They don’t want him to do the job. God bless us in this Atomic Age, when such stupid mistakes can be made by our leaders.

Art Kopecky

Sebastopol

SATURDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

KAMALA HARRIS WOULD BE AMONG THE MOST QUALIFIED PRESIDENTS IN RECENT U.S. HISTORY. WHY IS SHE UNLIKED?

by Larry N. Gerston

The other day a friend phoned me in a panic concerning the possible decision by President Joe Biden not to seek a second term because of growing criticisms of his mental acuity brought about by aging. Biden is 81 years old.

“If he decides not to run, would (Vice President Kamala) Harris become the nominee?” he asked.

“I assume she’d run for the nomination at the Democratic convention,” I answered nonchalantly.

“But can’t she just remain vice president for someone else instead of running for president?” he asked, with rising urgency in his voice.

“Why should she?” I responded. “After all, she is the vice president.”

And then came the familiar refrain.

“It’s not because she’s Black, South Asian or a woman. It’s just that there’s something about her … ”

“What?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it … ”

Of course, he had put his finger on it!

Sometimes what people feel and what they say are very different, and nowhere has that been more the case than with some conversations about Vice President Harris.

For many Harris opponents who desperately want Biden to remain in office, their concern is more about her race and gender than Biden’s health. They don’t like it but they won’t say it. After all, it wouldn’t be politically correct.

Many of us think of racism as occurring when someone says a slur or physically attacks a person of color as a hate crime. They point to sexism when someone says a woman just can’t do a man’s job. Of course, these are overt racist and sexist statements and acts, which are easily spotted.

But the real problems with discrimination against people of color and women are far more subtle and incredibly more prominent in America than we might acknowledge. These instances are known as covert racism and sexism. They’re much more difficult to quantify because they are so easily deniable.

Consider a situation where a white person boards a crowded train and comes across an open seat next to a Black person but instead walks far down the car in search of a seat next to a white person. Or the common circumstance where women with the same education and experience as a man earn 84% of the man’s salary. These are everyday conditions in which Americans practice discrimination without even thinking about it. They occur far more often than blatant discrimination and they are part of American society.

For Harris, we often hear that she’s not really qualified for the presidency. Not qualified compared to what?

Before her selection as Biden’s vice presidential candidate, Harris was the San Francisco district attorney, the California attorney general and a U.S. senator. All of these were elected positions. In the Senate, Harris was a member of the judiciary, intelligence and homeland security committees, hardly lightweight assignments. There, she was a consistent and powerful voice for equality and justice. During the Democratic presidential debates in 2020, you might remember the way then-candidate Harris took on her opponents, including Biden, with vigor, intelligence and logic. She was a force, no doubt that was part of the reason that Biden chose her as his running mate.

Compare Harris’s qualifications with recent vice presidents and she holds her own. Dan Quayle (under George H.W. Bush, 1989-1993) was a little-known congressman from Indiana; Al Gore (under Bill Clinton, 1993-2001) was a respected member of the House and then the Senate from Tennessee; and Dick Cheney (under George W. Bush, 2001-2009) served in the House between 1979-1989. Oddly enough, the most distinguished vice president during this period was … Joe Biden, who had a storied career lasting 36 years in the Senate. Matched against these names, Harris does just fine.

Then there’s the refrain, “But what has she done as vice president?”

The biggest job for the vice president is being prepared to assume the presidency if the need occurs. There is no transition period. They are not decision-makers nor leaders of much of anything. They do what the president asks them to do, which is often highly symbolic. They often represent the president or sometimes speak for the president, but they aren’t the president. On this front, Harris the experienced leader, is ready.

As vice president, Harris has had her ups and downs. There’s no doubt in the first year or so, she had problems finding her voice. But in the past two years, especially since the Dobbs decision, Harris has been a powerful proponent for reproductive freedom. She’s also spoken firmly on health care and climate change.

No matter what anyone thinks of Harris’ race or gender, she is clearly qualified to be president. She’s experienced and seasoned. You may disagree with her political positions, which is reason enough to reject her as a candidate. But to view her as unqualified for the presidency is to deny reality. And that reality is the one that some Americans with racist and sexist attitudes refuse to accept.

(Larry N. Gerston is a political science professor emeritus at San Jose State University. His most recent book is “Trumpism, Bigotry, and the Threat to American Democracy.”)

RUNNING ON EMPTY

by Jeffrey St. Clair

At the Houses of Parliament
Everybody’s talking about the President
We all chipped in for a bag of cement

***

I took my bag into a grocer’s store
The price is higher than my time before
Old man asked me why is it more?
– Paul McCartney, Junior’s Farm

+ MSDNC’s Chris Hayes: “Biden is a decent man who has done nothing wrong. He has not got caught in a scandal—he’s just aging. And that reality, I think, makes him increasingly likely to lose re-election to a Republican candidate…”

+ The real scandal is that liberals don’t see arming a genocide as a scandal.

+ When people say, “Joe Biden’s a decent man,” what Biden are they talking about? The man who befriended Strom Thurmond, the man who treated Anita Hill dismissively, the man who plagiarized Neil Kinnock’s speeches, the man who crafted the most punitive and racist crime laws of the 20th Century, the man who voted for the Iraq war and armed a genocide?

+ You’ll notice no stammering or stuttering in this blatantly racist Biden rant from 1996 on the floor of the Senate, defending mandatory minimum sentences and an expansion of the federal prison system:

We must take back our neighborhoods. Somewhere on the order of 70 percent of one population group in America [he’s talking about Blacks] will have children born out of wedlock. And another population group is 40 percent and the largest population group, racial group, in America it’s something like 25 percent. The reason why these folks are convicted felons ain’t because they have high IQs. They’re stupid. Most of them. They’re not only predators. They’re stupid. The real smart ones don’t get caught. We don’t know how to rehabilitate. We have no idea how to rehabilitate. A noble urging and instinct on our part, but the truth is when a criminal is rehabilitated, we don’t know whether it’s real or not to recognize it. And secondly, if we’re convinced it’s real we don’t know why he got rehabilitated. He literally, and I’m not being facetious, seen God. He may have come to religion. He may have decided that his son or daughter’s future was hanging in the balance. He may, whatever. We don’t know what happened. It may have been through the program he was in in prison. But we have no notion why. We used to have indeterminate sentences. We used to say that we would allow a parole board to decide when or when not someone was rehabilitated. So they’d march for a certain period of time before a parole board, usually good actors or actresses got parole and the ones who didn’t act so good didn’t get parole. So the law we wrote says, hey, if you got sentenced and convicted the federal judge has to give you an eleven-year sentence. He or she can’t say, I kind of like you and I understand that your background is such that your mother may not have loved you when you were seven and your father left you when you were one and by the way when you got to school you sat next to someone who was anti-social and that rubbed off on you and therefore we realize you had it tough. Can’t do that. They go to jail for eleven years. Flat. A friend said but what this is going to do Joe is fill up more prisons now that judges can’t put people on probation. He’s right. So I, along with others, sponsored a bill to spend more money to build federal prisons.

+ Even if Biden can somehow prove he’s competent (he can’t), what is his own campaign’s rationale for his reelection? That he will continue the same policies that have left him with a 35% approval rating?

+ It’s a strange victory for Biden that the key question about his presidency is over his demyelinating brain and not the 186,000 Palestinians (according to Lancet) he’s helped the Israelis kill.

+ According to Biden intimate Joe Scarborough, Biden believes Obama is behind the plot to oust him. “The Biden campaign and many Democratic officials do believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this. Joe Biden is deeply resentful of his treatment under not only the Obama staff but also the way he was pushed aside for Hillary Clinton.”

+ On the day Biden announced his abortive presidential campaign in 2008, he said this about Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Maybe Biden had decided to steal lines from his old pal Strom Thurmond instead of Neil Kinnock in this campaign.

+ Biden’s phone-in conversations on Morning Joe resemble Nixon’s with Kissinger during the Final Days, where his paranoia, petty grievances, aphasia and megalomania are on full display.

+ Obama enjoyed an approval rating of 60% when he left office (unjustifiably robust to my mind). That’s 25 percent higher than either Biden or Trump at the end of their terms. Blaming Obama for his misfortune is a losing game. But Biden’s a loser and a sore one at that. He owes his presidency to Obama, who cleared the field for him in the Democratic primaries in 2020.…

(CounterPunch.org)

THE COVER YOUR ASS OLYMPICS

by James Kunstler

“If the entire political and media elite can manufacture the lie for 4+ years that candidate now-President Biden isn’t cognitively impaired, what else might they have lied about and are lying about now?” — Stephen Miller

You can’t deny that “Joe Biden” did his goodest last night facing down a half-dozen pre-selected reporters representing blob-adjacent news orgs such as Reuters and NPR at the post-NATO meetup damage-control event billed as a “news conference.” Only a week after he declared himself to be the “first black woman vice-president,” he pivoted to correct the record, telling the DC press corps that he’d “picked Vice-president Trump to be vice-president. . .” and everyone in the room saw that they were back in that mortifying scene in The Caine Mutiny when the confused and incompetent Captain Queeg reaches for the ball bearings in his pocket.

At the end of the harrowing hour, he minced his way offstage, leaving his Party of Chaos evermore sore perplexed as to how they might lever this burnt-out old hack out of the nomination they foolishly secured for him months ago. It ain’t gonna be easy, as “JB” repeatedly insisted he had no intention of stepping aside, despite the forces mustering against him in Congress, the media, and Hollywood. Even CNN is turning on him. Meanwhile, the #VeepTrump clip went viral on social media. So much for damage control.

You understand, don’t you, what a fiasco the 75th Anniversary DC NATO meetup itself was? Everyone in the room, including the key prime ministers and presidents, could sense how flimsy the alliance now appears, as led by our maundering near-zombie president. Like “Joe Biden,” NATO’s raison d’être has been exposed as badly out-of-date and dangerously unhinged. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kicked things off declaring that “Ukraine is on an ‘irreversible’ path to NATO.” This controverts what everybody in NATO knows is Mr. Putin’s clearest red line, and is therefore either a jape or a bit of recklessly provocative idiocy.

The truth of the matter is this: following its transition out of the failed Soviet experiment thirty years ago, Russia was never a threat to its European neighbors. All the talk of Vladimir Putin seeking to reassemble the old USSR empire was knowingly false, as is the chatter now about Russia looking to invade Europe. What Russia actually sought was to be regarded, once again, as a normal European nation able to conduct normal business with the rest of Europe. The USA wouldn’t allow it.

Exactly why remains partially mysterious. Surely, post-1991, it was in the interest of US military contractors to maintain their Cold War revenue streams. To do that, a foreign hobgoblin had to be invoked — and perhaps China was not the best candidate, since it had begun manufacturing everything on sale in the Walmart — so Russia, with practically no export economy, was cast in that role. And the politicians, too, surely liked creaming off their share of that military-industrial revenue stream, so they went along policy-wise, with figures like John McCain and Lindsay Graham leading the charge. But the US intel blob and State Department had darker motives, driven by an animus that has slowly revealed itself to be insane — just as the Democratic Party has turned obviously insane, adopting a playbook that could have been written by Franz Kafka.

Being likewise insane, the intel blob and the neocons at State harbored an unappeasable hatred toward Russia that, since the Soviet collapse, allowed no accommodation and gelled into a naked avarice for seizing the resources of Russia with a long-term plan to subvert the Russian state, break it up the way they broke up Serbia in the 1990s, and direct a corporate looting operation of Russia’s oil and mineral riches. Ukraine was the doorway they had to go through to get that done.

And so, the blob and State neocons overthrew democratically-elected Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and installed Poroshenko followed by Zelensky. Veep “Joe Biden” was given the Ukraine “portfolio,” making him a sort of viceroy, and he took full advantage, plopping his son Hunter on the board of Burisma, the huge Ukrainian natgas company that American oil and gas companies drooled over. Hunter managed to milk the Ukrainian government for tribute to the Biden Family bank accounts far above the roughly million-dollar-a-year salary he grifted from his no-show job on the Burisma board. (Hunter also apparently dabbled in a set of bioweapons labs set up in Ukraine by the CIA.) Thus, along with the sheer insanity of the CIA and State Department, the Biden family had a deep and criminal involvement in Ukraine that had to be concealed.

That degenerate relationship has been revealed since the discovery of the laptop that Hunter stupidly left in a Wilmington computer repair shop, and all the disclosures that have followed — including the sedulous recovery of bank records for the many shell companies the Bidens used to conceal their moneygrubbing in Ukraine and other foreign lands. When Mr. Trump first scented it in the fall of 2019, they impeached him for it. But now that he threatens to return to the White House, the blobists and the Bidens are running out of options to evade an accounting for all this mischief. That desperation is what drives disintegrating “Joe Biden” to remain president and to continue pressing the malevolent and foolish proxy war against hobgoblin Russia and its vilified president, Mr. Putin. So, now you know.

(kunstler.com)

Claude Monet at his home in Giverny, 1921

THE OLD EVIL

I returned to occupied Palestine, from where I had reported for The New York Times, after two decades. I experienced once more the visceral evil of Israel’s occupation.

by Chris Hedges

RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine: It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain. Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements — illegal under international law — dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have grown in number and expanded in size. But they remain protected by blast barriers, concertina wire and watchtowers surrounded by the obscenity of lawns and gardens. The colonists have access to bountiful sources of water in this arid landscape that the Palestinians are denied.

The winding 26-foot high concrete wall that runs the 440 mile length of occupied Palestine, with its graffiti calling for liberation, murals with the Al-Aqsa mosque, faces of martyrs and the grinning and bearded mug of Yasser Arafat — whose concessions to Israel in the Oslo agreement made him, in the words of Edward Said, “the Pétain of the Palestinians” — give the West Bank the feel of an open air prison. The wall lacerates the landscape. It twists and turns like some huge, fossilized antediluvian snake severing Palestinians from their families, slicing Palestinian villages in half, cutting communities off from their orchards, olive trees and fields, dipping and rising out of wadis, trapping Palestinians in the Jewish state’s updated version of a Bantustan.

It has been over two decades since I reported from the West Bank. Time collapses. The smells, sensations, emotions and images, the lilting cadence of Arabic and the miasma of sudden and violent death that lurks in the air, evokes the old evil. It is as if I never left.

I am in a battered black Mercedes driven by a friend in his thirties who I will not name to protect him. He worked construction in Israel but lost his job — like nearly all Palestinians employed in Israel — on Oct. 7. He has four children. He is struggling. His savings have dwindled. It is getting hard to buy food, pay for electricity, water and petrol. He feels under siege. He is under siege. He has little use for the quisling Palestinian Authority. He dislikes Hamas. He has Jewish friends. He speaks Hebrew. The siege is grinding him, and everyone around him, down.

“A few more months like this and we’re finished,” he says puffing nervously on a cigarette. “People are desperate. More and more are going hungry.”

We are driving the winding road that hugs the barren sand and scrub hillsides snaking up from Jericho, rising from the salt-rich Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the earth, to Ramallah. I will meet my friend, the novelist Atef Abu Saif, who was in Gaza on Oct. 7 with his 15-year-old son, Yasser. They were visiting family when Israel began its scorched earth campaign. He spent 85 days enduring and writing daily about the nightmare of the genocide. His collection of haunting diary entries have been published in his book “Don’t Look Left.” He escaped the carnage though the border with Egypt at Rafah, traveled to Jordan and returned home to Ramallah. But the scars of the genocide remain. Yasser rarely leaves his room. He does not engage with his friends. Fear, trauma and hatred are the primary commodities imparted by the colonizers to the colonized.

“I still live in Gaza,” Atef tells me later. “I am not out. Yasser still hears bombing. He still sees corpses. He does not eat meat. Red meat reminds him of the flesh he picked up when he joined the rescue parties during the massacre in Jabalia, and the flesh of his cousins. I sleep on a mattress on the floor as I did in Gaza when we lived in a tent. I lie awake. I think of those we left behind waiting for sudden death.”

We turn a corner on a hillside. Cars and trucks are veering spasmodically to the right and left. Several in front of us are in reverse. Ahead is an Israeli checkpoint with thick boxy blocks of dun colored concrete. Soldiers are stopping vehicles and checking papers. Palestinians can wait hours to get past. They can be hauled from their vehicles and detained. Anything is possible at an Israeli checkpoint, often erected with no advance warning. Most of it is not good.

We back up. We descend a narrow, dusty road that veers off from the main highway. We travel on bumpy, uneven tracks through impoverished villages.

It was like this for Blacks in the segregated south and Indigenous Americans. It was like this for Algerians under the French. It was like this in India, Ireland and Kenya under the British. The death mask — too often of European extraction — of colonialism does not change. Nor does the God-like authority of colonists who look at the colonized as vermin, who take a perverse delight in their humiliation and suffering and who kill them with impunity.

The Israeli customs official asked me two questions when I crossed into occupied Palestine from Jordan on the King Hussein Bridge.

“Do you hold a Palestinian passport?”

“Are either of your parents Palestinian?”

In short, are you contaminated?

This is how apartheid works.

The Palestinians want their land back. Then they will talk of peace. The Israelis want peace, but demand Palestinian land. And that, in three short sentences, is the intractable nature of this conflict.

I see Jerusalem in the distance. Or rather, I see the Jewish colony that lines the hills above Jerusalem. The villas, built in an arc on the hilltop, have windows intentionally narrowed into upright rectangles to double as gun slits.

We reach the outskirts of Ramallah. We are held up in the snarl of traffic in front of the sprawling Israeli military base that oversees the Qalandia checkpoint, the primary checkpoint between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It is the scene of frequent demonstrations against the occupation that can end in gunfire.

I meet Atef. We walk to a kebab shop and sit at a small outdoor table. The scars of the latest incursion by the Israeli army are around the corner. At night, a few days ago, Israeli soldiers torched the shops that handle money transfers from abroad. They are charred ruins. Money from abroad will now be harder to get, which I suspect was the point.

Israel has dramatically tightened its stranglehold on the more than 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, who are surrounded by more than 700,000 Jewish colonists housed in some 150 strategically placed developments with their own shopping malls, schools and medical centers. These colonial developments along with special roads that can only be used by the colonists and the military, checkpoints, tracts of land that are off limits to Palestinians, closed military zones, Israeli-declared “nature preserves” and military outposts form concentric circles. They can instantly sever the flow of traffic to isolate Palestinians cities and towns into a series of ringed ghettos.

“Since Oct. 7 it is hard to travel anywhere in the West Bank,” Atef says. “There are checkpoints at the entrances of every city, town and village. Imagine you want to see your mother or your fiancée. You want to drive from Ramallah to Nablus. It can take seven hours because the main roads are blocked. You are forced to drive through back roads in the mountains.”

The trip should take 90 minutes.

Israeli soldiers and colonists have killed 528 Palestinian civilians, including 133 children, and injured more than 5,350 others in the West Bank, since Oct. 7, according to the UN human rights chief. Israel has also detained over 9,700 Palestinians — or should I say hostages? — including hundreds of children and pregnant women. Many have been severely tortured, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli dungeons and aid workers killed upon their release. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to free up space for more.

Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, was in the past spared the worst of Israeli violence. Since Oct. 7, this has changed. Raids and arrests take place almost daily in and around the city, sometimes accompanied by lethal gunfire and aerial bombardments. Israel has bulldozed or confiscated more than 990 Palestinian dwellings and homes in the West Bank since Oct. 7, at times forcing owners to demolish their own buildings or pay exorbitant fines.

Heavily armed Israeli colonists have carried out murderous rampages on villages east of Ramallah, including attacks following the murder of a 14-year-old colonist on April 12 near the village of al Mughayyir. The colonists, in retaliation, burned and destroyed Palestinian homes and vehicles across 11 villages, ripped up roads, killed one Palestinian and wounded more than two dozen others.

Israel has ordered the largest West Bank land seizure in more than three decades, confiscating vast tracts of land northeast of Ramallah. The extreme rightwing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a Jewish colony and is in charge of colonial expansion, has promised to flood the West Bank with a million new colonists.

Smotrich has vowed to obliterate the distinct areas in the West Bank created by the Oslo accords. Area A, which comprises 18 percent of the West Bank, is under exclusive Palestinian control. Area B, nearly 22 percent of the West Bank, is under Israeli military occupation, in collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank, is under total Israeli occupation.

“Israel realizes that the world is blind, that no one will force it to end the genocide in Gaza, and no one will pay attention to the war in the West Bank,” Atef says. “The word war is not even used. This is called a normal Israeli military operation, as if what is happening to us is normal. There is no distinction now between the status of the occupied territories, classified as A, B and C. The settlers are confiscating more land. They are carrying out more attacks. They do not need the army. They have become a shadow army, supported and armed by Israel’s rightwing government. We have lived in a continuous war since 1948. This is simply the newest phase.”

Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp are assaulted daily by Israeli armed units, undercover commando teams, snipers and bulldozers, which level entire neighborhoods. Drones equipped with machine guns and missiles, as well as warplanes and Apache attack helicopters, circle overhead and obliterate dwellings. Medics and doctors, as in Gaza, are assassinated. Usaid Kamal Jabarin, a 50-year-old surgeon, was killed on May 21 by an Israel sniper as he arrived for work at the Jenin Governmental Hospital. Hunger is endemic.

“The Israeli military carries out raids that kill Palestinians and then departs,” Atef says. “But it returns a few days later. It is not enough for the Israelis to steal our land. They seek to kill as many of the original inhabitants as possible. This is why it carries out constant operations. This is why there are constant armed clashes. But these clashes are provoked by Israel. They are the pretext used to continually attack us. We live under constant pressure. We face death daily.”

The dramatic escalation of violence in the West Bank is overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. But it has become a second front. If Israel can empty Gaza, the West Bank will be next.

“Israel’s objective has not changed,” he says. “It seeks to shrink the Palestinian population, confiscate larger and larger tracts of Palestinian land and build more and more colonies. It seeks to Judaize Palestine and strip the Palestinians of all the means to sustain themselves. The ultimate goal is the annexation of the West Bank.”

“Even at the height of the peace process, when everyone was mesmerized by peace, Israel was turning this peace proposal into a nightmare,” he goes on. “Most Palestinians were opposed to the peace accords Arafat signed in 1993, but still they welcomed him when he returned. They did not kill him. They wanted to give peace a chance. In Israel, the prime minister who signed the Oslo accords was assassinated.”

“A few years ago, someone daubed a strange slogan on the wall of the U.N. school east of Jabaliya,” Atef wrote from the hell of Gaza. “‘We progress backwards.’ It has a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and our churches. It razes our gardens and parks. Every war takes years to recover from, and before we’ve recovered, a new war arrives. There are no warning sirens, no messages sent to our phones. War just arrives.”

The Jewish settler colonial project is protean. It changes its shape but not its essence. Its tactics vary. Its intensity comes in waves of severe repression and less repression. Its rhetoric about peace masks its intent. It grinds forward with its deadly, perverted, racist logic. And yet, the Palestinians endure, refusing to submit, resisting despite the overwhelming odds, grasping at tiny kernels of hope from bottomless wells of despair. There is a word for this. Heroic.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

22 Comments

Bob A. July 13, 2024

The photograph of Claude Monet was taken in 1921 at his home in Giverny. It is a genuine color photograph made with the Autochrome process. The version that appears in the AVA is cropped and reversed left/right from the original. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/claude-monet-devant-sa-maison-giverny-144309

Harvey Reading July 13, 2024

KAMALA HARRIS WOULD BE AMONG THE MOST QUALIFIED PRESIDENTS IN RECENT U.S. HISTORY. WHY IS SHE UNLIKED?

Well stated. I agree wholeheartedly…and would vote for her in a second.

Chuck Dunbar July 13, 2024

Taslima Nasrin and Wendell Berry–two fine poems.

Inside Job July 13, 2024

Regarding the County’s fiscal checks and balances, since the Executive Office has “taken over” payroll, there have been too MANY mistakes. They have overpaid some county employees in overtime, in some instances by a couple thousand dollars, then they wanted the employees to repay the overpayment at an incorrect amount. There have been cases of Social Workers not being paid the proper on call pay. And at least twice now the County has miscalculated sick rate accruals, with the last one happening just this week. As for the request of policies and procedures in writing, it won’t happen without some type of order. If there is something in writing, then the Executive Office can’t change the rules as they go. How convenient that they have strategically positioned themselves in “temporary” department head positions throughout the County, yet want to blame everyone else for the problems that are currently happening.

M. Heller July 13, 2024

ETERNITY

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

- M. Heller July 13, 2024
  
  My how time flies.
  
  Two days ago, the AVA published a Missing Notice for beloved cockatiel.
  
  I know the pain, and I’m sorry I’m not much help, but maybe the poem which came within my purview yesterday can help.
  
Cotdbigun July 13, 2024

Frank Baumgardner is absolutely correct in keeping Biden in the presidential race. Now that President Biden announced President Trump as his VP , he will be unbeatable. Ending the Ukraine war by installing President Putin as Ukrains President, only adds to his popularity. Having located our Commander in Chief , is another feather in Bidens cap.

- MAGA Marmon July 13, 2024
  
  Let Joe be Joe.
  
  MAGA Marmon
  
Jim Armstrong July 13, 2024

Logging

Food for thought if you are thinking about logging: Drive along State Street north of Ukiah and look at Mendocino Redwoods (aka Forest Products) log stack.
Holy shit! More dead trees than I can remember in 50 years. Already barked, too.
Are there any trees left standing on their 200,000+ acres?

- Mike Kalantarian July 13, 2024
  
  Only the dead poisoned ones.
  
Craig Stehr July 13, 2024

Sitting in an air conditioned room at the Royal Motel, listening to the hum of the refrigerator. ~The End~
Send money here: Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr

Lazarus July 13, 2024

Shots fired at Trump Rally. Trump rushed off the stage! But seems okay…
Laz

- MAGA Marmon July 13, 2024
  
  PRAY FOR DOANLD TRUMP HE WAS JUST SHOT IN THE NECK
  
  MAGA Marmon.
  
  - Lazarus July 13, 2024
    
    Secret Service is reporting Trump is injured but okay…
    Laz
    
- peter boudoures July 13, 2024
  
  Crazy part is 99% of the readers of this paper are happy about it. That’s why i always watch my back and never trust anyone.
  
  - Bruce Anderson July 13, 2024
    
    AP is reporting shooter has been killed, Trump is fine only grazed. I’m not happy about it, and I doubt many people of the liberal persuasion are happy about, let alone ava readers.
    
    - peter boudoures July 13, 2024
      
      yesterday chuck and Harvey joked about it, I’m sure they’re more scared than anything now that it’s very serious.
      
      - Lazarus July 13, 2024
        
        In my youth, there was a saying, “They kill our leaders.” I had lamely hoped we as a nation were past that…but obviously, not.
        Laz
        
    - Lazarus July 13, 2024
      
      Now reports say shrapnel from the teleprompter caused Trump’s injury…The shooter is dead, one attendee is dead, and another was seriously injured. Sources say a Secret Service team killed the shooter.
      Laz
      
      - peter boudoures July 13, 2024
        
        Rfkjr denied secret service. Disgusting
        
        
        Lazarus July 13, 2024
        
        I wonder how “THEY” would try to spin that?
        Laz
        
Jim Armstrong July 13, 2024

No cigar

22 Comments

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