Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 8/6/2024

Cattle | Warming | Crash Site | Gooseneck Loosestrife | Volunteers Needed | Hard Work | Save School | Navarro Redwoods | Bomb Thoughts | Welcome Melissa | Caltrans Projects | SF Bussing | Big Time | Eel Restoration | Train Trestle | Walking Moai | Fox Kill | Royal Extension | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Sick Humor | Cannabis Grant | Hte Ppl | Vote Hopefully | Visual Economy | Perception | Batty Boggs | Balancing Act | Magical Candidate | Rumperstickers | Interesting Times | Homeless Result | AIPAC Hit | After Skool | Miller 2025 | Burned Out | In Beirut | Good Seat | Israeli Soldiers | Roasted Chestnuts

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HOT AND DRY weather is expected in the interior this week. Temperatures are expected to peak Wednesday then slowly diminish later in the week. The coast is expected to see fairly persistent low clouds and fog today with better chances for afternoon clearing Tuesday and Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cooler 50F with less dense fog this Tuesday morning on the coast. The satellite indeed shows a broken up fog bank. Yet our forecast remains the same mix of clouds & fog until further notice.

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A READER WRITES:

I happened to be at the crash site of Randy Bloyd Monday morning where someone had chalked a big message on the pavement reading Randy Bloyd Love You, when a CalTrans crew came along. They had been sent out to paint over the message.

I tried to talk them into leaving it for a couple of days but, as they had been specifically sent to eliminate it, they didn't have any flexibility to work with. Expressions like that are considered potentially hazardous to those driving along. Flowers and whatever that are well off the highway at the back of the right of way will potentially be tolerated, but anything that seems like a sign will not. Peaceful thoughts to all.

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ANDERSON VALLEY ATHLETICS NEEDS VOLUNTEERS!

With the fall season quickly approaching, we need help from our community:

Junior High Volleyball

Nearly 30 students have signed up, and the schedule is being put together, but we need coaches!

We are looking for a head coach to manage the entire program or 2-3 coaches to handle each skill level. This is a huge opportunity to create meaningful and impactful experiences for these students.

Junior High Volleyball Referees

There is a significant shortage of officials in the area. We need volunteers to help referee 5-8 junior high home games.

Junior High Flag Football

Junior high flag football is a new sport and league being developed among nearby schools. We need coaching volunteers to help organize the league structure and rules.

Historically, we have only offered volleyball as a fall sport, leaving many of our junior high boys without a sport to play. This new league will fill that void.

Drivers Needed for All

Managing five sports this fall will be a huge challenge, especially regarding travel logistics.

Volunteering to drive a van is one of the most needed positions we have. Most away games are around an hour one way, and it would be a shame to cancel a learning experience for these students due to a lack of transportation.

If you would like to help our students, please send me a message directly or you can email me here: jtoohey@avpanthers.org

Thank You AV!

— John Toohey, Athletic Director

Anderson Valley Unified School District

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DEBRA PHENICIE:

I would like to make another request to all of the families and community members that live in Redwood Valley. If you live in Redwood Valley, went to Redwood Valley School and believe in honoring the intentions of the original land donors and Woolley family over 100 years ago, please come to the UUSD District Office Board Meeting, 511 Orchard Ave, 6:00 p.m. Thursday August 8th, wearing a white tee shirt to represent the group of people who are working to preserve Redwood Valley School as a Community Center for future families and generations.

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PIPE BOMB INVESTIGATION IN UKIAH

On Saturday, August 3, 2024 at approximately 11:05 A.M., the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office was contacted regarding a suspicious item found inside of a residential, roadside mailbox located in the 4600 block of Burke Hill Drive in Ukiah. The reporting party described the item as a possible bomb.

Sheriff's Office personnel, including Deputy Thong and his K-9 partner, ‘Jet,’ responded to the location. Deputy Thong and Jet are certified in explosives detection. Deputy Thong visually examined the item and believed it was a dangerous explosive, commonly referred to as a pipe bomb. K-9 Jet was deployed and alerted on the item, indicating the presence of explosive materials.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad was requested to assist with safe disposal of the device. Personnel from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad responded and were successful in rendering the device safe. Remnants of the device were collected as evidence for identification via DNA of the person/s responsible for making and placing the device.

MCSO extends a big "Thank You" to SCSO Bomb Squad for the quick response and willingness to assist with keeping our community safe.

At this time, there is no evidence the device was placed with intent to harm a specific person or property for any specific reason. This investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information regarding this incident is requested to call the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086.

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UKIAH'S MAILBOX PIPE BOMB INCIDENT, THREE COMMENTS

“At this time, there is no evidence the device was placed with intent to harm a specific person or property for any specific reason.” (Sheriff’s Presser)

[1] Say what…???

Really?

That’s a cop out if I’ve ever heard one.

The device itself is evidence enough that, “the device was placed to harm a specific person or PROPERTY” regardless of whether or not it “was placed with intent to harm,” “for any specific reason.”

That mailbox was someone’s property.

If the mailbox contained US Mail at the time, I believe it would be, or should be, considered a federal offense.

If that was my mailbox, I would NOT be amused, and I would not appreciate the MCSO just poo-pooing it, to avoid the effort involved in doing a proper investigation.

That pipebomb looks to have sufficient potential to have done unsuspecting somebody some great bodily harm or worse.

Catch and cage the wacko, whoever they may be, before they can pull this kind of stupid stunt again.

First, the MCSO has to catch the suspect, and question them, before the MCSO can decisively determine with certainty the specific reason he planted the pipebomb in someone’s mailbox.

Even if it was done randomly, that doesn’t really make it less of a concern, or less of an imperative to prevent it’s recurrence, does it?

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[2] I just noticed the remnant of lit cigarette fuse delay that had gone out.

It wasn’t just a pipebomb.

It was a lit pipebomb, albeit, thankfully, a pipebomb that was lit unsuccessfully, and went out.

That cigarette fuse delay would have made it very possible for an unsuspecting mail delivery person or a mail recipient to have been injured or worse by this destructive pipebomb.

Find the suspect.

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[3] Local low level law enforcement make a lot of snap judgments, sadly so. They knee jerk react and do not leave the investigating for the investigators. Will tell folks it’s a civil crime and not charge folks. HELLO. That’s for the investigators and judges. They (hopefully) take more time. DNA Labs take more time. Out in the field you really can not say what came down; it takes investigating. That is a major flaw in the equation bias, snap judgment and lacking full non-biased response. First responding deputies are for response.

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LEARN ABOUT THE ALBION RIVER BRIDGE PROJECT

The Albion River Bridge on SR 1, approximately 15 miles south of Fort Bragg, California, has served the Mendocino Coast’s transportation needs since 1944. However, today, the bridge is in poor and deteriorating condition, has a low load rating, and is not appropriate for the harsh marine environment in which it is located. It has multiple functional, safety, and structural deficiencies and is proposed for replacement.

Please watch the Caltrans District 1 video (on our facebook page) to learn about several proposed bridge alternatives, broader lanes for cyclists, and a separated pedestrian walkway that will ensure a safe and reliable alternative to the existing wood truss bridge.

Visit the project's website to take a survey. We welcome your perspective on the proposed designs.

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CALTRANS DISTRICT 1: Our Maintenance crews continue to clear hazardous trees and debris following a wildfire last week along Route 128 near Boonville in Mendocino County. Please drive with caution in the area.

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SHERIFF KENDALL:

“On Thursday, Ms. Breed directed city officials to offer bus tickets to homeless people before providing them a shelter bed or other services” This is what we in the policing business refer to as a “Clue” of things to come.

I had heard this was coming, having serious concerns we were just a couple counties North and an easy drop spot for Greyhound, I attempted to set a meeting with the mayor. After several emails back and forth, and a whole lot of wrangling I was advised she was too busy to meet with anyone, too busy for a simple phone call. Feeling quite frustrated I called it a day and moved on.

Now’s the time we should brace ourselves for an influx of folks whom likely suffer from several problems including addictions and mental health disorders. Also, we will likely see folks who were allowed to engage in some fairly anti-social behaviors arriving in our communities which simply aren’t staffed or funded to handle these issues. The genie has been let out of the bottle under the guise of compassion in San Francisco (which honestly didn’t seem compassionate to me at all). As they begin their “bussing to happiness program”, I am afraid several less affluent counties are going to struggle while attempting to get that genie back into the bottle.

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RESTORING THE EEL MUST BE DONE RIGHT

Friends of the Eel River

Since the beginning, FOER has been focused on Eel River dam removal. We knew our moment would come, and now it’s just around the corner. PG&E is about halfway through their timeline for submitting a final license surrender application. Although they recently extended that timeline by six months, the utility claims the delay will not prolong dam removal. We are wary.

More concerning than this short extension of their timeline is PG&E’s apparent lack of planning for additional studies necessary for dam removal and restoration. A great deal of this work is falling on stakeholders, when it should be PG&E’s responsibility. Dam removal is urgently needed to give the Eel’s native fish their best chance at surviving through rapidly changing conditions, but it needs to be done right. Decisions about releasing sediment, revegetating formerly inundated lands, and protecting habitat need to be based on science and facts, not convenience or cost.

We now expect PG&E’s draft license surrender application to be available for public comment in January 2025. Stay tuned to this newsletter to make your voice heard.

Great Redwood Trail

Speaking of doing things right, our staff have been forming new relationships and strengthening old ones while working toward a plan for the Great Redwood Trail that addresses the diversity of opportunities and community concerns.

This trail is our opportunity to finally see the incredible mess left by the Northwest Pacific Railroad cleaned up. This includes both the hazards we can see on the landscape and in the Eel River — trash, crushed culverts, rail and rail ties, abandoned railcars, oil drums, and more — but also the less visible hazards like toxic pollution associated with the railroad and the timber industry it supported. Opportunities for restoration also include restoring fish passage to small tributaries and off-channel habitat, and fixing sources of sediment pollution.

But just as with dam removal, the Great Redwood Trail must be done right. When the railroad was built there were no considerations for cultural heritage sites destroyed along the way. The Eel River Canyon likely contains dozens of village sites. Native people must have a say in protecting and regaining access to those places. We all must help ensure that enhancing equitable access to the Eel River does not worsen the looting and destruction of cultural heritage sites that has unfortunately already taken place.

Groundwater Management

Finally, I want to share that we are still suing Humboldt County regarding the county’s duty to protect public trust resources like fisheries from excessive groundwater extraction in the lower Eel River. While we hope to never see the lower mainstem run subsurface again, as it did in 2014 and 2021, we know periods of drought will return. So we are working to ensure the County upholds its responsibility under the Public Trust Doctrine to manage groundwater use to prevent such adverse effects to surface flows in future dry years. We expect the case to continue into 2025 and hope for a resolution within a year.

The Eel is a river of incredible opportunity and we remain committed to realizing all opportunities for healing both the watershed and the people it flows through.

For the fish,

Alicia Hamann, Executive Director Friends of the Eel River Protecting Instream Flows in the Eel River

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BLUE ZONES PROJECT MENDOCINO COUNTY JULY 2024

July was the start of the Live Longer, Better Rewards Program Moving Naturally Step Challenge, and across the county we worked with organizations and individuals to get you moving. In Hopland, you can join Moai Lead, Vernon, at the Hopland Research & Extension Center and move with HREC Walking Moai. If you are in the Ukiah area, Moai Lead Paul, encourages locals to join him at the Mendocino Lake Dam Walking Moai. In Willits, you can walk with the Willits Wilderness Wonderers Walking Moai led by Flourish & Flow Mendo. For the coastal community, Andrea is the lead for the Cafe 1 Walking Moai. For those who prefer to get their steps in while moving to the beat, we have Muévete por tu Salud in Ukiah with leads Consuelo and Sara, or Dance Fit in Willits with the talented ladies at Flourish & Flow Mendo.

Public input is requested on the City of Willits’ Land Use Element update draft. Details can be found here: City of Willits — Land Use Element Update (willitslanduseupdate.com).

The City of Willits (CoW) will host a series of public hearings at the Willits Community Center on August 28, September 11, and October 23 to present the updated draft of the Land Use Element of the City’s General Plan and to request public input. Outside those hearings, you may email comments to Dusty Duley, Community Development Director, at dduley@cityofwillits.org. Emailing Mr. Duley is also the best way to join the email list to receive project updates and notices of engagement opportunities. The CoW website also shares project updates and can be found at Willits, CA - Official Website | Official Website (cityofwillits.org).

The Blue Zones Project Mendocino County has been and will continue to support CoW in crafting policy that makes healthy options available to all.

Willits Unified School District (WUSD), DripWorks, and Blue Zones Project Mendocino County are thrilled to announce the successful refurbishment of the Sanhedrin High School's Garden. This collaborative effort brought together the WUSD Maintenance team, Workability program students, and community partners to transform the garden into a fully operational production site.

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DAVE KAUCNIK: Useless, tanked up, drunks, speeding up Highway 1 killed this fox.

If you can’t see something the size of a fox in the road, you don’t belong behind the wheel. Report drunk and impaired drivers! This could have been your pet and the human garbage that drove over it didn’t even care enough to kick its dead body into the ditch.

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CRAIG REMAINS INDOORS

Warmest spiritual greetings,

For the next three weeks I'll be in Ukiah, California USA. The medical-dental work is completed. Paid out of pocket and am at the Royal Motel until September 1st at 11 a.m. Beyond this, I am inviting others to form a group for the purpose of performing spiritual acts which affect the global environment. This is purificatory. This is the only way to counter the extreme negative energy and its concomitant implosive effects on the planet earth. Read the world scriptures for verification of this. It's all spelled out.

Identify with the Absolute, and not the body nor the mind. Do spiritual practices for the purpose of purifying the entire global atmosphere. Intervene in this abominable Kali Yuga. This is the change that is necessary.

If this resonates with you, please contact me.

Craig Louis Stehr
Royal Motel
750 South State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
Telephone: (707) 462-7536, Room 206
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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ED NOTES

THE APOCALYPSE got off to a good start Monday with a widening war in the Middle East, a particularly destructive hurricane in the South, a stock market semi-crash, fires up and down the state, and crucial 49er tackle Trent Williams still unsigned.

RE the stock market — the global Ponzi is collapsing because the American job market figures are down? Please. Here at Boonville's International Desk, it looks to me like the smart money is mass-bailing because there isn't enough real wampum in all the world to pay all the bills coming due.

SPENT THE WEEKEND binge-watching Season 4 of Babylon Berlin, the truly great German television series set in Weimar Germany where, incidentally, fascism seems to be making a comeback, this time with the scapegoating of recent immigrants.

GERMANY'S Weimar period, the cliche goes, parallels current American political realities — the rightwing drift built around Trump, for one similarity, although Hitler and his crew were a lot smarter than the golden idiot child and the moronic crackpots comprising his inner circle. Another similarity is the prevalent corruption of so many American institutions — the two political parties, obviously — which, writ small, kinda resemble what we see here in Liliput with our supervisors, the DA, the cash and carry courts, the way the helping professionals feast on the walking wounded, our degraded national popular entertainment, and social decadence generally. Germany's Weimar was positively wholesome put aside what we have going in this country. (One caveat: the narrative too often drifted into implausibility, but the acting, as with the first three seasons, was beyond excellent, so good even the implausible sections were wonderful to watch.)

A READER ASKS: How are things on your health front? Has the mucus accumulation game gotten any better? Has any decision been made regarding chemotherapy? Are you venturing out more?

APPRECIATE your concern, bro. Basically, I've got a new throat, accessed through a hole south of where the original lay. The old throat, with which I was perfectly happy, had to be removed to get at an iceberg-like cancer pressed up against my lung, a large white thing poised to carry me off instantly if that genius of the scalpel, Dr. Ryan, who looks like a surfer dude high school kid but manages to convey the required gravitas, hadn't removed it in a grueling (to him, I was unconscious) 7-hour excavation.

The trade-in for the new throat cost me my senses of smell and taste but, on balance, it was a good deal because it gave me life, for how long who knows since I'm already in triple overtime given my years. Travel requires that I carry a little machine to vacuum accumulations of phlegm plus a supply of hme's, protective plugs for the hole in my new throat. Gradually, my new throat will handle the phlegm run-off just like the old one had for 84 years, during which I abused it terribly by pouring down through it way too much whiskey. Presently, I'm undergoing heart and eye tests whose outcome will determine the chemo strategy, which won't be chemo but pills and one blast from a chemo-like device. Passed the heart test — “You have the heart of a 16-year-old, Mr. Anderson,” and the mind to go with it. The eye tests I don't quite understand but I gather it is to make sure they can withstand the meds, to prevent my eyeballs from popping out and going blind. I walk three miles in the morning, do a bunch of push-ups at night plus hefting some light weights. Still and all, I'm weakened. Unless the medicos are shining me on, I will be shuffling on for another few years and fully intend to be back in Boonville by the end of September.

COYOTES. A pack of the crafty creatures killed a tiny fluff dog at Frisco's Baker Beach the other day, much to the understandable horror of the dog's owner and onlookers. I've seen more coyotes in SF and here in Marin than I've seen in 50 years in rural Mendocino County, probably because ranchers shot, and maybe still shoot Mendo coyotes on sight. The coyotes you see in Mendo are understandably shy.. But the Frisco-Marin critters have been welcomed into the neighborhoods by the city-prevalent anthromorphs. The city beasts are eating cats like popcorn, and they attack dogs when dogs get too close to coyote pups and their nests. And, of course, the morphs are feeding the coyotes, which means they will only proliferate until… The bears move in.

OUT FOR A LONG WALK one achingly beautiful late Fall afternoon, I finished off an hour's amble by climbing down off the east end of Ornbaun Road where the rains of '64 carried off the bridge that once crossed Anderson Creek to link Ornbaun Road with Anderson Valley Way, footing it up the sprawling streambed to where the creek parallels Anderson Valley Way in the same area as the Stilt House, former home of the Luffs, the last native Pomo speakers in the Anderson Valley if not all of Mendocino County.

THERE'S A HUGE CULVERT carrying winter rains off the east hills at Evergreen Cemetery and beneath the pavement of Anderson Valley Way on into Anderson Creek. This winter stream is called Cemetery Creek, but it's no creek in the winter as it swells to twenty feet across as if the entire winter run-off of Anderson Valley was being fired into Anderson Creek out of the huge water cannon the culvert becomes in big rains.

IN THE DRY MONTHS the culvert is walkable. I can propel my entire upright bundle of crumbling flesh through it without bending my head.

THAT DAY, as I approached the culvert from Anderson Creek, I saw a coyote at the cemetery end of the mammoth pipe, and the coyote saw me. We stood there staring at each other for a ridiculously long time — maybe three minutes — before it occurred to me that the impudent little beast seemed to be playing a sort of stare-down game with me. I resolved to outlast him, so I stayed on without moving at my end of the culvert, perhaps 40 feet from the wise guy creature mocking me at the other end.

I STARED, he stared. We stood there staring at each other for another ten minutes or so. Even my minor twitches and foot-shifts didn't cause the coyote to bolt. I sneezed. The coyote handled my sneeze’s reverberating echoes without flinching. He was laughing at me.

THE COYOTE finally won. It was getting dark and I was hungry. I took a full step up the trail adjacent to the culvert. Looking up toward the roadbed, I watched the coyote turn for a last look at his human foil before sauntering off into the blackberry thicket bordering the graveyard. I understood why Native Americans regarded the coyote as magical.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, August 5, 2024

WILLIAM BRANSCOMB, Redway/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia.

ALLISON FULLBRIGHT, Fort Bragg. Burglary, controlled substance, paraphernalia, conspiracy, unspecified offense.

JOSE GASTELUM-REYES, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

AMY JOHNSTON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

DENA MORRIS, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ELIAS RUTHERFORD, Fort Bragg. Burglary, conspiracy, county parole violation, unspecified offense.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

RYAN WHITMAN JR., Albion. Grand theft, probation revocation.

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ABOVE MY PAY GRADE, AND COMPREHENSION

I have no idea whether you would want to include this in the honorable Anderson Valley Advertiser, but if there was any doubt about the reality of ill-silliness in the population of the county of Lake, this Facebook post should put those doubts to rest.

For anyone who is not familiar with Lake County officials, the sloppily inserted head under the knee of the unknown police officer (emulating the murder of George Floyd, but not the officer who actually committed that act) is that of District 1 Supervisor Moke Simon. The woman/“officer’s” face may be of someone local, but I have no idea who that might be.

The meme portrays the opponents of the effort to change the name of the town of Kelseyville, many members of a group called “Save our Name” as affiliated with the KKK (in the poster’s note preceding the meme). Those opponents contributed testimony on behalf of their opposition during the July 30, 2024, Special Meeting of the Lake County Board of Supervisors and, although much of their testimony was distasteful to this Lake County resident, this twisted portrayal of the group’s intent is clearly “beyond the pale.”

If nothing else, the “message” conveys the convoluted sick “humor” of someone real in this fantasmagoria of local “social media.”

Posted with the following:

And, for a real change, Facebook’s algorithm apparently didn’t register the clearly offensive content. What a wonderful world.

Betsy Cawn

Lake County

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BAY AREA MAN WHO SAID ‘WHITE PEOPLE WILL STAND UP’ RECEIVES SOCIAL EQUITY GRANT

by Lester Black

A California county recently gave nearly $40,000 in social equity grant funding to a local business owner after he publicly attacked the county’s equity grant programs as “racist” and warned officials during a fall meeting that “white people will stand up. You will not intimidate us.”

John Loe, a pot shop owner in Sonoma County, received the grant in May as part of the county’s cannabis social equity program, which aims to help people impacted by marijuana criminalization succeed in the cannabis industry. In an interview Wednesday, Loe said that he was only awarded a grant because he was actively investigating the program.

“It’s a racist program, I called it out for what it was,” Loe told SFGate. “I hovered over it and made sure it wasn’t racist, and because of that they were not able to be as racist as they would have liked to have been.”

Despite Loe’s description of the program, Sonoma County did not ask for applicants’ race or use race as a factor in deciding who received the grants, according to the county’s application website. Instead, eligibility was determined by whether an applicant or their close family member had been arrested for a nonviolent cannabis offense. From there, applicants were evaluated on 11 other factors, including veteran status and whether they had a “small scale” cultivation farm, to determine how much grant money they received.

The county announced in May that it had issued $635,000 in cannabis grants, sending money to all 20 people who applied for the program. County Supervisor David Rabbitt said in a May press release that the program “aims to serve socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals” in the industry, but an investigation by the Sebastopol Times found that a majority of the 20 recipients “are among the most successful and influential people” in the county’s pot industry, including four people associated with SPARC, a cannabis retailer with seven different locations across the Bay Area.

The local grants are part of a statewide initiative that has issued more than $100 million in social equity grants aimed at making it easier for low-income people and people damaged by cannabis criminalization to succeed in the cannabis industry. The local controversy in Sonoma County comes as questions mount over the effectiveness of the various cannabis social equity efforts across the state.

Cannabis social equity programs across the country have been attacked as providing unfair advantages to individual entrepreneurs. MJBizDaily reported earlier this year that these delays have severely damaged the equity programs and delayed their issuance of licenses.

Loe requested $1 million on his application. He was awarded $39,687.50, according to the Sebastopol Times.

When SFGate asked Loe how the program was racist given that it does not use race as a qualifying factor, he said the entire Sonoma County government is racist because it uses a racial equity toolkit when evaluating policy; such toolkits are commonly used by local governments to measure how their public policies affect different communities.

Loe also pointed to a single line in the county’s equity program description that states that “wealthy, white stakeholders increasingly own the County’s licensed cannabis landscape.” A 2021 county analysis estimated Sonoma’s pot stores were owned by 75-78% white males. Loe said the county was engaging in “anti-white tropes” by conducting and stating this analysis.

Loe said that ultimately his grant was a success for white people, who he claimed were the most disadvantaged group in recent history because of affirmative action programs.

“It was a win for me and for white people who feel like these programs were written to exclude them,” Loe said.

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HARRIS GOOD; TRUMP BAD

Dear Editor,

Jusr over two months before we elect a new President; either Donald J. Trump or Kamala Harris. One has been president before. How did he do? Before he promised a lot of things he didn’t deliver: full employment, a wall on the southern border, paid for by the Mexican people (or government-?). Instead of these promises, he divided the nation.

He did not clean up the swamp in Washington, DC, gave a huge tax-breaks to billionaires, and cut taxes while running up the deficit. He authorized funds to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, but failed to implement public health measures while one million Americans died of the pandemic, created a right-wing Supreme Court which reversed Roe v Wade.

Harris promises to continue Pres. Biden’s programs: stronger gun control, continue strong support for Israel and Ukraine, lower inflation, keep up public school funding, Improve the infra-structure and, perhaps, hopefully, provide some consumer protection.

Vote Harris.

Frank H. Baumgardner, III

Santa Rosa

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

And the lines at Disneyland are still long. Flights to Hawaii are still booked. Hotels in Cancun are full. I still get stuck behind brand new Ford F350s pulling fifth wheels and toy haulers equipped with two, not one, TWO side by side UTVs. People are still lining up to buy the latest I-phone version. Porn is still a multi-billion dollar industry. People are still spending thousands to tattoo and pierce themselves into unrecognition. Deadpool and Wolverine have made more than $200 million. Most people I see are fat so they are getting plenty to shove into their pie holes. Restaurant parking lots are always packed. People are still buying $850,000.00 homes at 6% interest rates. I don’t see many old junker cars on the road but I see plenty of new Honda, Lexus, Audi and Infiniti SUVs.

Need I go on?

When these things start to suffer then will I believe all of the “bad economy” hype I keep reading about. Until then, I believe, it’s all political.

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BAT SCARES EGGHEAD COUPLE: TRUMP BLAMED.

by Matt Taibbi

The New York Times ran a guest editorial by Belle Boggs, a North Carolina author who had a bat fly in her house. It didn’t bite her, but she needed a sheriff’s deputy, a county health nurse, state animal control, the CDC, and an E.R. doctor to tell her what to do about that. Naturally, the episode led her to think of Donald Trump:

After our visit from the bat, our sheriff’s department, public health department and university hospital all functioned exactly as designed. The C.D.C., a huge federal agency that works to protect every one of us from infectious disease, food-borne illness and emerging threats like bird flu, pulled through. The C.D.C. is part of what Mr. Trump’s allies would call the administrative state and is in the cross hairs of Project 2025, which proposes breaking up the agency… I want to believe Kamala Harris is right when she says “we are not going back” to a time when every calamity leaves us on our own.

Leaving aside the problem of the ubiquitous personality who answers “Donald Trump” to every stain on the Rorschach test of life, the Boggs essay made me wonder about America’s prognosis. Early citizens packed kids in wagons and rode into forests teeming with human and animal predators. Now people reach middle age needing the federal government to tell them what to do if a bat flies past. It won’t hold.

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ACCIDENTAL RISE OF KAMALA HARRIS IS A SYMPTOM OF AN UNSERIOUS AGE

by Martin Gurri

Help me out here. Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate? How on Earth did that happen?

And what about the other guy? You know, the sitting president — Joe Biden? I realize he withdrew from the race in the constitutionally mandated manner, by posting a sullen document on X, the digital platform formerly known as Twitter. That was well done. Biden managed to make Elon Musk happy after all these years.

But why did Joe go? He never said. Actually, he made it clear that he thought his magnificent record in office “merited a second term.” If that was true, why not put it to the test, allowing those randos we call “the voters” to decide?

Biden had something like 14 million votes in the Democratic primaries. No one else had any. His obvious dottiness wasn’t the reason, either. He never owned up to it — and if he had, he’d have to explain how a man too mentally enfeebled to be a presidential candidate could continue to serve as president.

In the debate with Donald Trump that began the slide to oblivion, Biden’s empty eyes and zombie-like groaning, we were told, had to be written off as a really bad night.

He said he was quitting the race because saving “our democracy” was more important than “personal ambition.” Now, I happen to agree that Biden retiring permanently to the basement of his Delaware home is a boon to American democracy. But that was true from Inauguration Day — why did he inflict his personal ambition on us for three and a half years?

I’m an analyst. I don’t prophesy the future, but I’m supposed to know why the president of the United States suddenly wakes up one morning and decides to give up his candidacy. So I’m going to run with a conspiracy theory, because why not?

I believe Biden — and his human walker, Dr. Jill, and that Kissingerian strategist, Hunter — all believed he deserved a second term, but were pushed aside by the two kingmakers who secretly run the Democratic Party: George Clooney and The New York Times.

That still doesn’t get us to Harris. She’s the vice president, not the alternate candidate. If Biden faltered, she would automatically inherit the presidency but not his primary votes or delegates. The Democrats could have opted for an open convention.

They have a strong bench, or so we keep hearing. For example, there’s California’s Gavin Newsom, whose hair alone should be declared a national monument. There’s Hillary Clinton, who keeps banging against the glass ceiling like that annoying moth outside your window. And there are others, like Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, who are the best potential candidates of all because no one outside their immediate family has heard of them.

Instead, almost on a dare, the shakers and breakers of the party settled on the one candidate who has consistently polled more poorly than the president, and who, like Biden, has made an eternal enemy of the English language.

Harris sounds like a kindergarten teacher who has forgotten her lesson — her words scatter and float away like helium balloons into the clouds. In a Washington, DC, rife with impostors and empty suits, hers is a truly authentic lightness of being.

Her abrupt elevation has been called “a coup,” but it wasn’t. There were no tanks running over rioting Biden diehards — and the Democrats are entitled to anoint anyone they wish for the candidacy. It’s their party, as they say.

But the rapidity of the swap startled many inside the power structure. We know Biden was surprised because he needed a second tweet after the withdrawal announcement, essentially saying, “Kamala for, you know, that thing.” We know Harris was surprised because that’s her normal state of mind. We know the Democratic presidential campaign, which Harris inherited, was totally befuddled because it set out at once to invent a whole new person to be known, henceforth, as “Kamala Harris.”

This pure abstinent creature had never been named “immigration czar,” had never been ranked “most liberal” in the Senate, had never donated to bail for violent criminals or advocated defunding the police.

It was telling, I should think, that the campaign preferred a Harris who had never done anything — a Harris who resembled a bout of amnesia, liberated from every memory of the past. Even with the assistance of a supine media, this replacement of a replacement is unlikely to catch on. If you want a blank slate, go for Whitmer. Harris, alas, is too memorable, in her own unique way.

Americans are eager to learn the political principles that motivate the new candidate. Her handlers, we have seen, would rather she not have any.

Her detractors seem equally divided between portrayals of Kamala the Airhead and Kamala the Communist. The two are not mutually exclusive, of course, but neither gets to the essence of the matter. The ideology espoused by Harris is technically labeled “California,” which academics define as “extreme performative endorsement of the latest thing.” It’s politics as fashion statement — as might be expected, a pastime of movie stars and the idle rich.

Thus Harris’ habitual attitude toward Israel has been condemnation: She boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress, for example, and has made it plain she blames Israel, not Hamas, for the devastation in Gaza. These gestures have failed to influence the Israelis or change a single fact on the ground in Gaza — but it’s a cool look for the ruling class.

She’s also all in on racial identity, though in her karma chameleon way, she has sometimes chosen to emphasize the Indian ancestry of her mother, sometimes the black roots of her Jamaican father — making her, taken whole, the ideal woman of many colors.

When, in 2020, Joe Biden declared he was looking for someone “of color and/or a different gender” as the chief qualities for his vice president, Harris had all the bases covered.

In the spirit of fashionable segregation, her campaign has organized supporters into groups according to race and sex: “Black Women for Kamala,” “White Women for Kamala,” “Latinas for Kamala,” etc. My favorite category is “White Dudes for Kamala,” which met online under the auspices of that rugged exemplar of Caucasian manhood, Pete Buttigieg. The first speaker, apparently, was a black dude.

But we shouldn’t make too much of this. The latest thing in California is never the latest thing for the United States of America. Harris seems aware of this troubling fact, and has already tiptoed away from previous stands on border funding, a fracking ban and Medicare for All.

I wouldn’t be surprised if her next online support group turned out to be “E Pluribus Unum for Kamala” — she’s a political chameleon on a journey across a treacherous landscape, non-California America, and she will continue to change colors to blend in with the unfamiliar background.

Whatever one thinks of these unusual tactics, they appear to be effective. Relieved to have a candidate who doesn’t drool in front of the cameras, the Democrats feel re-energized. The media, of course, have already crowned Harris Coconut Queen of the Universe.

The pollsters are talking about a significant bump in her favor, regaining much of the ground the doddering Biden had lost. It’s even odds that she will defeat Trump and become our next president. Maybe better, since the power and the glory of American culture, from Harvard to Hollywood, has aimed an immense monophonic Bronx cheer at the heedless Trump.

And here I return to my initial observation: Kamala Harris, president? Evidently, I have slipped into an alternate dimension of time and space, a region where the laws of probability have been abolished.

I offer these facts for your consideration.

Harris has no personal following. Why should she? She wasn’t going anywhere. She has no entourage of trusted experts to enlighten her on the issues — the experts were buzzing around Biden, who was supposed to be the candidate until he wasn’t. Her personality, in public, is comical, and in private it hasn’t exactly been a magnet to party activists or intellectuals.

By all accounts, her staff hate her and go running for the doors at the first opportunity. Her name isn’t closely identified with a particular cause or issue.

She’s a pretty terrible politician. She underperformed as a vote-getter in deep blue California. She self-detonated before the first primary when, in 2020, she sought the presidential candidacy on her own merits.

As might be expected from someone whose words break free of Earthly gravity, she’s a wretched debater. What Tulsi Gabbard did to her in the 2020 Democratic debates was horrifying to watch — the oratorical equivalent of Bambi vs. Godzilla. Her campaign never recovered from the thrashing.

Harris is like that feather in the wind at the end of “Forrest Gump.” She’s a historical accident. That, in less than four months, she could be the most powerful human on Earth, decider between war and peace, her manicured fingers flitting casually over the nuclear button, fills me with awe and astonishment over the inscrutable perversity of our age.

(Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst who writes about the relationship between politics and media. He is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia.)

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AND SUDDENLY THINGS CHANGE

by James Kunstler

“The global economy is becoming unburdened by what has been.” — Jordan Schachtel on “X”

That two-by-four upside our country’s head you’ve been waiting to get whomped with? Looks like it’s landing now. We got a banger in 2008, but it didn’t make a much of an impression. Maybe you don’t even remember these people, but then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke came in like a code blue squad and hooked up the banks to an IV-drip speedball of cocaine and heroin, i.e., “money” that didn’t actually exist (a.k.a. “liquidity,” hallucinated capital), and that crew kept it coming for years.

And then Janet Yellen and her posse kept it coming with never-ending zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) until the national debt canceled America’s future. And that left Jerome Powell pretending there was a way out of this doom-loop. Then came the repo market spasm in September 2019 that freaked out the blob so badly they shut down the whole world with Covid and locked-down economies. And everything since then has been a waiting game. The financial world was in hospice.

The wait is over. Everything that can break is breaking: stock markets, bond markets, the galaxy of derivatives — bets on this and that, which will never be honored. Banks are next. Gold and silver are hanging in there for dear life just now, because they’re actually worth something. (And because they are worth something, they‘ll eventually sell off some too, to cover margin calls on other stuff hemorrhaging value. But they will not go to zero like a lot of other stuff, and they’ll come back stronger.)

You understand this can’t play out like it did in 2008-9. The authorities are out of tricks and out of fake money. They can try the emergency interest rate cut, but it won’t change what is actually happening: the epic revaluation of everything humans make and own — with much of it losing value and quite a bit losing all value because it never really had any. The spooky catch is that there will be an attempt in this wild and terrifying process, for certain devious, unprincipled parties to take possession of many things shaking loose — what remains of collateral… real things…commodities… facilities…properties… chattels… artworks… and, of course, whatever securities still have a relationship to realities of production.

This brings a sharp end to the current political sitcom, especially the situation of the Democratic Party. They will get blamed for the economic carnage left behind by the shattered money system. They lied about everything for years, every number, every index, every supposed “policy”.

Kamala Harris won’t be cackling her way out of this. It’s hard to see how she might remain the party’s nominee. She can’t even speak to the massive catalog of prior failures to govern our country coherently and effectively. And it’s equally hard to figure how “Joe Biden,” still presiding emptily over this fiasco, can get Twenty-fifthed out of the way for his feckless veep. More likely, the coming convention will be a desperate, bloody mass cage fight and somebody else will stagger out of it to go through the motions of campaigning in a hopeless cause. Hillary might even decline the roll in this horror show.

I began writing this post well before dawn on Sunday, eastern time. The action in Asia, across the international date line, was a slaughter. Europe got smacked hard, but not catastrophically. Maybe the Wall Street wonderboys can stop the bleeding here, but the futures numbers sure look grim. I’ll come back later when the US markets have spoken and add a few observations on the situation.

Oh, and you’ve probably noticed that World War Three is shaping up to kick off today.

Interesting times… And I’m supposed to be on vacation this week.

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AIPAC'S FIGHT TO TAKE OUT ANOTHER ‘SQUAD’ MEMBER TURNS BRUTAL

by Andrew Solender

The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC is pouring money into its effort to take out a second member of the progressive “Squad” this cycle, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — and the fight is turning predictably bitter.

Why it matters: Polling suggests Bush, a prominent progressive, is in serious danger of losing her re-election battle to local prosecutor Wesley Bell.

She would be the second Squad member to lose to a well-funded primary challenger backed by pro-Israel groups, following Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.).

State of play: Bush has become a target this cycle due to her strident criticism of Israel, with multiple federal investigations into her campaign finances creating an opening for a credible primary challenge.

Bell, the prosecuting attorney of St. Louis County, has gone after Bush over the investigations, as well as her record of occasionally breaking with her party on key issues from the left, while pitching himself as a progressive reformer.

Bush has tried to tie Bell to Republicans, hammering him for managing a GOP congressional campaign in 2006 and seizing on AIPAC's Republican donors – a common tactic for AIPAC-targeted progressives.

By the numbers: United Democracy Project, AIPAC's political arm, has spent nearly $9 million on ads to boost Bell, according to data from tracking firm AdImpact.

That is on top of nearly $3 million Bell has spent on ads and another $1.5 million spent by Fairshake, a pro-crypto PAC supporting him.

By contrast, Bush's campaign has spent just $1 million on ads, backed up by $2.2 million from the progressive group Justice Democrats.

(NY Times)

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PROJECT 2025 PUT A KEY JAN. 6 FIGURE IN CHARGE OF MILITARY STRATEGY. HIS PLAN IS AS DANGEROUS AS YOU’D IMAGINE

by Brett Wagner

Few Americans in our nation’s history have demonstrated as poor judgment or dereliction of duty as the Pentagon official who, on Jan. 6, 2021, had the authority to send in the National Guard to defend the U.S. Capitol, but chose not to do so: then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.

And yet it was Miller (likely auditioning here for a full-time gig as secretary of defense under a second Trump administration) who was tasked by the Heritage Foundation-backed Project 2025 to draft what could turn out to be the most radical overhaul of U.S. national security and defense policy since the end of the Cold War.

Simply titled “Department of Defense,” Miller’s contribution to Project 2025 envisions a world in which the U.S. slashes its military commitments and related funding to such draconian levels that we would cease to be a global superpower (a term he never uses).

Central to Miller’s vision is the rejection of any notion of America being the leader of the free world in favor of a return to the Great Power Competition in which the U.S. is merely one great power among many. That’s the same chaotic world order that ruled the day — spawning two world wars and helping bring on the Great Depression — before America assumed its leadership role and ushered in an era of unprecedented stability and prosperity.

Never before has someone who served at the top levels of the Defense Department suggested something so clearly antithetical to U.S. interests. So, who is this guy, and what makes him tick?

First and foremost, it was Miller who spearheaded, against the advice of military commanders, the disastrous drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan during the last weeks of the Trump presidency. Miller’s gross miscalculation left fewer boots on the ground than would be required to defend their positions, ignoring the overwhelming threat posed by the Taliban (with whom his boss had just signed a deal) proclaiming instead that we were “on the verge of defeating Al Qaeda and its associates.” Never mind that his strategy was leaving the Taliban in place and that it was the Taliban that had been supporting and offering safe refuge to Al Qaeda all along.

Contrary to Miller’s predictive powers, not only was Al Qaeda not defeated, but under the Taliban’s protection, it’s returning to pre-9/11 levels.

Conveniently, in his Project 2025 writings, Miller fails to acknowledge his role in what he refers to, in his opening paragraphs, as “our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.” He seeks instead to pin the whole thing on the Biden administration, which he had painted into a corner, weakening America’s hand, as if by design, on Donald Trump’s way out of office.

Miller, a retired Army colonel, has long argued that the Pentagon’s budget should be slashed by 40% to 50%, declaring that what our country needs is “someone with the courage and experience to get in there and get it done.”

In his Project 2025 document, he reveals just how he plans to “get it done”: a huge drawdown of U.S. forces overseas, the likes of which we’ve never seen, and for which he’s proven in the past to be such a colossal failure in judgment and leadership. But as is so often the case: The devil is in the details.

Fallacies abound in the colonel’s 40-page meandering diatribe, beginning with his patently and demonstrably false assertion that “China is by any measure the most powerful state in the world other than the United States.”

Any colonel worth his salt, for example, should know that Moscow enjoys more than an 8 to 1 advantage over Beijing in the number of nuclear warheads ready to launch at the U.S.

Is that not a measure?

Miller further asserts that “U.S. access to the world’s most important market,” China, is one of “America’s core interests.”

I respectfully suggest, as someone who served as a graduate professor at the War College where Miller got his master’s degree, that he review his old textbooks on the meaning of “core” interest. Because “access” to a “market” doesn’t even come close. A core interest is something for which, by definition, the U.S. must be prepared to go to war.

Is that what Miller is suggesting? That countless American lives should be spent to keep China’s consumer market open to our companies? Because that would be a hawk of a feather with which I am not familiar.

As for the threat posed by Moscow, Miller seeks to minimize its consideration by simply lumping Russia in with other threats posed by Iran, North Korea and transnational terrorism. Threats one and all, to be sure, but hardly on a par with Russia. In fact, to my eye, Miller’s only real policy recommendation to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive and militaristic regime is maintaining the “nuclear deterrent.”

Meanwhile, Miller would rework entirely America’s security relationship with our longtime European allies. NATO, for example, is given such short shrift that he mentions it only once by name, and then only in the context of “reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe.” In other words, hamstringing U.S. support for NATO at the very moment the Atlantic alliance has expanded under American leadership — and while Europe and our allies are deeply embroiled in Ukraine — the largest ground invasion on the continent since World War II — and a war which, by any measure, is knocking at NATO’s door.

Challenging, and perhaps redrawing, the strategic balance of power on the continent. Remind me — whose interests is this meant to serve?

In stark contrast to Miller’s effort to downplay the threats posed by Russia — and, with it, Putin’s challenge to the global order — is his central premise that “U.S. defense strategy must identify China unequivocally as the top priority for U.S. defense planning.”

In real terms, what he’s advocating for is prioritizing U.S. conventional force planning “to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan” even if that means denying resources “to other missions.”

This is a false either/or choice he never justifies.

What Miller ignores, of course, is what should be obvious to even the most casual observer: that America’s current forward-looking defense strategy based on overwhelming and ever-evolving U.S. military superiority, combined with strong alliances throughout the region, is right now, and every day, deterring such an invasion.

Full stop.

To believe otherwise is to believe China is doing us and the world some kind of favor by not invading Taiwan. That is obviously not the case.

Miller also turns a blind eye toward the former (and perhaps future) president’s gushing admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping, effusive praise for Putin and “love letters” to North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. Perhaps these glaring omissions explain why there is no mention of the growing alliance among these three dictators — as evidenced by their mutual support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Coincidence? I think not.

All of this leads to what I might suggest is really at the heart of Project 2025’s military strategy: A denial that global alliances for peace are worthy of discussing, much less defending.

The global order for the past 75 years has been based on America’s commitment to defend democracy and the international rule of law against the forces of tyranny that would rule by force and force alone. Meanwhile, the open hostility toward democratic norms and the rule of law within the Republican Party — which has reached such a fevered pitch as to full-throatedly embrace bogus claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and the corollary refusal to guarantee that they will accept the 2024 election results should they lose — mirrors the rise of other authoritarian movements such as Trump ally Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

Miller’s contribution toward this goal is a “how-to” for realigning U.S. interests away from supporting democratic, freedom-loving countries toward a New World Order of transient, transactional alliances where we’re just as likely to support Russian aggression toward freedom-loving nations such as Ukraine, as not.

Trump’s recent boast that he told the president of one of our NATO allies, “No, I would not protect you — in fact, I would encourage (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want,” provides all the information one needs to know regarding what Project 2025 envisions for the future of U.S. defense policy and international security.

(Brett Wagner, now retired, served as a professor of national security decision-making at the U.S. Naval War College, and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.)

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IN BEIRUT

by Loubna El Amine

We were at my parents’ house in central Beirut, watching the last minutes of the Olympic football match between Argentina and Ukraine on television, when my aunt, who lives a few hundred meters from the site of the explosion, received a phone call about it. We flipped between the Lebanese channels for more information. They showed the same image of a collapsed façade and repeated the same news: a residential building in Haret Hreiq, in south Beirut, had been hit by an Israeli airstrike.

The details emerged piecemeal. It was a targeted assassination of a Hizbullah commander, whose name kept changing as time passed, until the news anchors settled on Fouad Shukur, also known as Hajj Mohsen, whom the US blames for an attack on its Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. The toll in Beirut rose to four dead, including two children, and 74 wounded. Shukur’s body was found under the rubble the following day.

My aunt’s phone kept ringing; after a few calls, she barely waited to hear from the caller to say that she was at her brother’s house. Some of the calls came from the US and Canada, where her sons live with their families. It is over, it is fine, she eventually said, I am tired of answering the phone.

Another aunt who lives not far from the blast, in an area known as the ‘American neighborhood’ because American embassy employees lived there in the 1950s, said that she had heard two loud explosions. She rushed inside from the balcony. Maybe it will end here, they usually concentrate on that area – Haret Hreiq – may it not happen again, she said in a voice message to the family WhatsApp group.

We had planned an extended family gathering at my parents’ house as my brothers and I were visiting from the US and the UK. My aunt was the only one to show up. The mood in the city had been tense since a rocket strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, 27 July, which Israel blamed on Hizbullah. Haret Hreiq is in the southern suburb of al-Dahiya, where both my parents grew up. Much of my extended family still lives there. In the 1950s, the area was home to leftist, socialist and Arab nationalist parties, giving way in the 1970s and 1980s, especially after the Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982, to Shiite political movements. Hizbullah led the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000.

My father’s sister was married to my mother’s brother, who died a few years ago. My aunt now lives alone in their third-floor apartment on the main street of Haret Hreiq, a wide and busy road. We would have to drive back and forth in search of a parking spot and then squeeze between the cars to make it to their building. We gathered there for parties, bringing together both sides of my extended family. Their small balcony faced many like it, lined up next to another, covered with curtains of different colors and linked to electricity poles by hundreds of intertwined power cables. Some people smoked on their balconies, others hung laundry, fanned themselves in the summer heat, watched television, observed the street below, or sat together talking.

In July 2006, Israel attacked al-Dahiya, dropping bombs from the air that destroyed many residential buildings. It also bombed the airport, which is close by. The attack and its justification by Israeli commanders gave rise to what is known as the ‘Dahiya doctrine’, which involves the destruction of civilian infrastructure as a form of collective punishment. It is the strategy that Israel seems to be deploying in its war on Gaza.

We had resolved, on arriving to Lebanon, to avoid the southern suburbs of Beirut and the south of the country, where we normally go in the summer, entirely. Since the attack on Haret Hreiq and the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, the flow of people arriving in Lebanon for the summer has reversed even as many commercial flights have been cancelled. The governments of the US, the UK, France and other states have advised their citizens to leave immediately ‘on any ticket available to them’. We bought the first available tickets we could afford, leaving in five long days. I remember watching in July 2006 as everyone with a foreign passport was being evacuated. I now find myself on the other side of that dividing line, trying to escape with my family and leaving my parents, relatives and friends behind amid fears of an all-out war.

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ISRAELI SOLDIERS WILL SOON FIND WAYS TO TELL THEIR MEDIA ABOUT THE TERROR INSIDE GAZA

by Ralph Nader

Israeli soldiers, like soldiers in other countries, bask in the self-serving effusive praise showered upon them by politicians, but privately they know BS when they hear it.

Right from the start on October 7th, the soldiers knew that the sudden collapse of Netanyahu’s state-of-the-art multi-tiered border defense system left the door open for the Hamas attack. Still denied an official investigation by Netanyahu, people know that had the border defense been in place, all the terrible consequences never would have occurred. (See, the open letter by six very prominent Israelis in the New York Times on June 26, 2024: “We Are Israelis calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.”)

The soldiers also know that the small Hamas militia of some 25,000 fighters hidden in tunnels, having only small arms with dwindling ammunition, is up against the 465,000–person military armed with 1,500 F-16 fighter pilots and nuclear weapons. The Israeli military is also equipped daily by Biden with the most modern weapons. All this makes Netanyahu’s absurd description of Hamas as an existential threat sheer propaganda designed to protect his job.

The evidence is on the bloody body-strewn ground of tiny Gaza and its crowded 2.3 million people. The Israeli military has dropped over 100,000 precision bombs, countless artillery shells from hundreds of tanks, and even naval missiles to kill over 300,000 innocent Gazan civilians, mostly children, women and elderly, who had nothing to do with October 7th. (See also my March 5, 2024 column “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”). Most of the remaining people in Gaza are sick, injured or both. (See the open letter to President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress titled, “45 American Health Workers’ Letter on Their Experiences in Gaza” dated July 25, 2024.)

How many Israeli soldiers have died? The official figure is 395 IDF soldiers – many from friendly fire in the fog of explosions, accidents such as collapsing buildings, and diseases. The exaggerated “Hamas battalions” send fighters popping up from their underground tunnels to fire rifles or grenade launchers before most are immediately extinguished by overwhelming firepower.

The largest number of Israeli casualties are the soldiers suffering from PTSD, including moral traumas, being treated in the thousands by Israeli psychologists and mental health specialists. These are the soldiers who will tell the stories of who they were ordered to kill and what they were ordered to destroy. The lack of a truthful account of the atrocities in Gaza— because of Netanyahu blocking war correspondents from Israel and other nations from freely reporting there— will be brought to light by the reports of these soldiers.

To be sure, the thirst for vengeance after October 7th animated most of the soldiers at the outset – especially those screened for having no qualms about killing innocent children, women and men and destroying civilian facilities.

But as the weeks became months, the Torah’s instruction of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” to limit escalating cycles of revenge, according to Biblical scholars, became a hundred and then a thousand eyes for an eye and a thousand teeth for a tooth. More soldiers and generals are questioning why they are still there amidst the smoldering ruins and ghastly slaughters.

Netanyahu’s drive to remain in power has stoked the carnage in Gaza. Despised by three out of four Israelis for earlier moving to weaken the judiciary, under indictment for political corruption by Israeli prosecutors, and soundly condemned for his defense failure on October 7th, ending this one-sided annihilation of defenseless people would mean the end of his political career.

Consider what these soldiers have witnessed or done: Powerful precision bombs blowing to bits babies, children, pregnant women, refugee camps, apartments, schools, health clinics, hospitals, ambulances, water mains, and electricity networks; Families starving on genocidal orders from the Israeli military “no food, water, medicine, electricity, fuel”; and Homeless people trapped, unable to escape, surrender or shelter.

The soldiers have seen their bulldozers flatten critical civilian infrastructure, even cemeteries and agricultural crops. F-16s have blown up universities, government buildings and many schools, mosques and historic churches. Snipers, among the most brutal of the army, kill patients in broken hospitals and survivors desperately try to pull their crushed families out from under the rubble.

Already, several reservists have told reporters in Israel that the military has no operating “rules of engagement.” They could blow up or shoot and kill anyone who moves, including UN relief workers, journalists and health workers protected by international law. The laws of war – the duty to disobey illegal orders – don’t exist in Gaza.

Soldiers saw the body parts of little children, heard the screams, the cries and groans of the dying, smelled the stench of rotting corpses being eaten by stray dogs, and saw their victims – mothers and fathers – begging in vain for help to save their dismembered children.

Unlike other wars, Israeli soldiers were not allowed to facilitate the emergency rescue crews that still exist in Gaza such as those with Doctors Without Borders, the Palestinian Red Crescent and several internationally respected providers of food and water – themselves subject to Israeli attacks. (See December 13, 2023, an open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden by 16 Israeli human rights groups which appeared in the New York Times).

Soldiers obeyed their commanders’ orders to repeatedly push hundreds of thousands of desperate Gazans on foot, exposed to the stifling heat and lethally polluted air, from one Israeli-designated area to another. The treachery is unlimited.

Other soldiers were told to block thousands of trucks ready to enter from Egypt, packed with humanitarian aid of food, water, medicine and other critical supplies. Still other soldiers were ordered to kidnap thousands of Gazans, including women and children, and send them without charges to be tortured in Israeli jails, as documented in a just-released UN Human Rights Office report titled, “Detention in the context of the escalation of hostilities in Gaza.”

Of course, there are plenty of soldiers happy to have such sadistic and unlawful commands. How dare the Gazans revolt against the decades of violent Israeli bombing, occupation, invasions and military embargoes? That’s historically been the imperious attitude of cruel, colonizing, land-seizing regimes. The ranks will grow to join past “refuseniks” who in 2002 courageously declared their refusal to go and beat up people, demolish homes and otherwise rampage against defenseless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

[…]

We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty in the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.

[…]

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

[From The Combatants’ Letter, January 2002]

Dozens of Israeli human rights organizations and leading advocates will record these reservists’ recollections, their remorse, and their recurring nightmares. The vicious omnicidal extremists who make up Netanyahu’s ruling coalition will be exposed for their war crimes and destruction of their own country’s freedoms. Returning war veterans have credibility that will fortify the forthcoming entry into Gaza of international commissions of inquiry and scores of investigative journalists. (See the new documentary “The Night Won’t End”).

The violent Netanyahu knows all this, which is why he is now scheming to provoke a wider regional war by dragging spineless Biden and the U.S. military directly into the fighting. Remember Biden’s intense backing of the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion/war in Iraq.

If you don’t care what Netanyahu is doing over there, you’d better care about what he’s doing to America, our Congress, our tax dollars, our freedom of speech and our national security.

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