Mendocino County Today: Friday 9/20/2024

Garden Path | Warming | Thomas English | Mt View Resurfaced | Spider Web | Planting Trees | Local Events | Agenda Highlights | Hopkins Fire | Open Mic | Todd Retrospective | American Pickers | Highway 36 | Ed Notes | Harvest Dance | Mug Shots | Red Sky | Yesterday's Catch | Animation Cells | Burning Man | Pinata | Wine Shorts | Dying River | Edna Purcell | Ken Kesey | Done Gone | Lead Stories | 14 Fans | Israeli Airstrikes | All Wrong | Pager Attack | Homework Eaters | Clintons/Haiti | Devil Marx | American Freedom | Breaker Boys | Advanced Citizenship | Yeti

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KEY MESSAGES include stronger north/northwest wind over the waters today and breezy conditions along the coast. Gradual warming over the weekend and into early next work week, then turning cooler Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 52F on the coast this Friday morning. Our forecast is the familiar "patchy fog" until further notice.

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THOMAS ALLAN ENGLISH

(March 30, 1947-June 29, 2024)

Thomas Allan English was born in Oakland in 1947, the third of four children, to John and Ruth English. He was raised in San Lorenzo Village and graduated from San Lorenzo High School in 1964.

Tom was drafted into the US Army in 1966. In February 1967, Tom arrived in Vietnam, where he earned the Army Commendation Medal of Heroism, among other awards. He returned to the States in February 1968. Soon afterwards, he moved to Anderson Valley. He worked outdoors building fences, planting trees, doing vineyard work, etc. He had many interests including fishing, playing poker, and flying kites. Tom met his wife Claire, the love of his life, in 1979 and they shared 45 years together.

Tom experienced several serious medical issues over the years, including breaking his neck twice. Although cancer left him without a speaking voice for his last couple of years, he always managed to communicate, usually with a smile.

A memorial will be held Saturday, September 28 at the Evergreen Cemetery Veteran's Memorial Wall at 1:00 pm, where people may say a few words. Following will be a gathering at approximately 2:00 pm at the Veteran's Building in Boonville, with additional time for people to speak. Lunch will be served. Please bring your own drinks.

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THE LONG ANTICIPATED (for a few anyway) resurfacing project on Mountain View Road between Boonville and Manchester is complete. Reportedly the project went well. The hope is that the giant trench that the Williams Communications pointlessly dug (before going bankrupt in the early 2000s) will be stabilized by the new surface. A side benefit of the project is that the contractor had more gravel than they needed and discovered that giving most of the excess to local organizations was cheaper than hauling it back over Highway 253 to a gravel yard. As a result the local community park, the ambulance barn, the airport and a few other Boonville areas got some very nice gravel to spread around. (—ms)

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UKIAH AWARDED STATE GRANT TO PLANT HUNDREDS MORE TREES

by Justine Frederiksen

The city of Ukiah is poised to receive more than a million dollars to launch a three-year program focused on planting hundreds of new trees on public and private property.

Blake Adams, the city of Ukiah’s Chief Resilience Officer, told the Ukiah City Council Wednesday that city staff had just received a “Letter of Intent from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to award funding” for its plan to increase the city’s shade canopy by planting a significant number of new trees.

“We do not have final confirmation about the details, such as the amount (of money) and how much of our project scope is intact,” noted Adams, but he described the proposal the city submitted as:

• Using $1.4 million to plant 722 trees, or approximately 4.5 acres of new tree-shade cover,
• 400 of those trees will be planted within government property and along 80 miles of the public right-of-way, while community events will plant another 200 trees in parks, trails and greenways.
• An estimated 2,000 square feet of concrete city-wide would be removed.
• Improvements will be made to four miles of the city’s Rail Trail and Great Redwood Trail corridor, providing much-needed access to the community for green space and natural resources across the city.

Adams said the grant funding would also “provide economic stimulus in the form of two community programs, one we’re calling the “Ditch Your Lawn Community Assistance Program,” which will provide $50,000 to low-income households to plant 120 trees on private property.”

And to “support the small business community, a non-competitive, mini-grant program will be established (grant-funding permitting), providing $75,000 to support small-business efforts to remove concrete and plant trees in its place.”

“Congratulations, and thank you for applying,” said Council member Mari Rodin, who also asked if any of the grant funding would be “going toward staff, because I can see a lot of organization required to make all these things happen?”

“Yes, this program (if funded), will fund three new positions with the city, including one dedicated program manager,” Adams said, noting that another added benefit “will be a tree nursery that will provide sustainable tree planting operations ongoing, beyond the grant period.

“So there is going to be a long-term benefit, and we designed the program for long-term, sustainable growth for the urban tree canopy here in Ukiah,” he said.

“This is really, really good news, because Ukiah needs more shade, since we have this heat-island effect, which is a really big deal,” Rodin said.

“Will there be money for upkeep and maintenance of the trees after they’re planted, such as pruning and watering?” asked Council member Susan Sher, to which Adams said that the planned program is “steeped in climate resiliency, and one aspect is focused on efficient irrigation practices, so the funding will support the growing of the trees from seed to sapling and to maturity.”

However, beyond the three-year scope of the grant being described, Adams said “the city will need to find long-term, sustaining funding to manage those trees. But the initial growth period of about three years will be fully funded.”

“So people who plant trees on their own property, are they responsible for the maintenance, or will the city come back and take care of the trees?” Sher asked, to which Adams said, “The goal is to really equip low-income households that really require shade cover and have established turf lawns to be able to convert their turf lawns (into a more climate-friendly option), and so they will be equipped with all the tools and resources (needed) to get that tree growing, and over the long-term, those households will need to maintain (the trees) beyond the grant period. But I’m sure that this program will catalyze future efforts that we can leverage to support those trees long-term.”

When giving more details about what types of trees would be planted, Adams said the program was “an opportunity to build a climate-resilient urban forest… and we’re going to be building a very connected, distributed forest, and the trees that will be planted will be native and climate-resilient, and many of them will be oaks.”

(ukiahdj.com)

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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COUNTY AGENDA HIGHLIGHTS for Tuesday, September 24, 2024

by Mark Scaramella

MORE MONEY FOR THE SCHRADER SERVICES COMPLEX:

Item 4c on next Tuesday’s agenda:

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Agreements with 1. Anchor Health Management, Inc. [Schraeders] Medication Support Services in the Amount of $1,884,358; 2. Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center [former Schraeder subcontractor] in the Amount of $484,000; 3. Mendocino County Youth Project in the Amount of $566,882; 4. Redwood Community Services [Schraeder] in the Amount of $9,678,321; and 5. Tapestry Family Services [former Schraeder subcontractor] in the Amount of $5,270,136 to Provide Specialty Mental Health Services to Eligible Medi-Cal Beneficiaries of Mendocino County for a Total Combined Amount of $17,883,697, Effective October 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025

(Sponsor: Behavioral Health and Recovery Services)”

The agenda item includes five separate contracts for the above named companies.

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SUPERVISOR MCGOURTY PROPOSES A NOISE ORDINANCE

From McGourty’s presentation to be discussed at next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting::

“Typical Ordinance Guidelines; Quiet hours 10:00 pm to 7:00 am; Maximum noise levels are set based on zoning (commercial, industrial, residential as examples); Noise from any device (TV, radio, live music) or machinery must be below 50 dB at property line in residential areas; No devices or sound sources over 85 dB making continuous sound within 2500 feet of another residence (generators, pumps or other machinery); No loud animal sounds (barking dogs, roosters, etc.) in residential areas; Exemptions and addresses prior uses.”

(The presentation does not itemize the “exemptions.” Hmmm. We wonder what those exemptions could be? Oh, we don’t know… Maybe something near and dear to McGourty’s constituency… The loudest possible all-night, overnight noise Anderson Valley has ever suffered from… WIND FANS!)

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CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION LIMITS?

Supervisor John Haschak proposes that the County set up an ad hoc committee to explore the possibility of “an Ordinance Limiting Campaign Contributions to County Elected Campaigns to $1,000 from an Individual and $2,000 from a Committee, as Well as Overall Spending Limits per Campaign Cycle.”

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OPEN MIC this Friday, Sept. 20 from 6-8 PM at KNYO 325 N. Franklin St.

Tune up your dulcimer and strap on your hurdy-gurdy and come on down to OPEN MIC with host Sean Keppeler from 6-8 tomorrow Friday Sept. 20 at the KNYO Fallout Shelter at 325 N. Franklin! Don't forget your knee-cymbals! Last month was a musical success, with numerous musicians joining Sean and members of Frankie and the Lost Souls. (Catch Frankie and the Lost Souls at the Good Bones Kitchen on Sat. the 21st).

Our small Family style venue is the perfect place to try things out in front of a small welcoming audience. Also a good place to enjoy some great homegrown music, poetry, and whatever from Our Town. Always a fun time.

Sign up from 5-6 or online at knyothirdfridaymusic@gmail.com

Open Mic from 6-8

Bob Young, bobyoung086@gmail.com

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WILLITS CENTER FOR THE ARTS TO FEATURE RENOWNED CARTOONIST LARRY TODD

The Willits Center for the Arts is thrilled to announce an exciting upcoming Retrospect featuring the work of the legendary cartoonist, Larry Todd. The exhibition, which opens September 28 and runs through October 20 will showcase a selection of Todd's dynamic and thought-provoking works that have captivated audiences for decades. Larry Todd, widely known for his vivid imagination and cutting-edge style, has been a significant figure in the world of underground comics since the 1960s. Best known for his collaborations with Philip K. Dick and his work on the popular Dr. Atomic series, Todd’s art blends science fiction, satire, and socio-political commentary. His unique approach to storytelling has earned him a devoted following among both comic book enthusiasts and art lovers alike.

The exhibition at the Willits Center for the Arts will offer a rare opportunity to explore Todd’s career from its beginnings to the present day. Attendees will see a comprehensive collection of his iconic works, ranging from early underground comics to more recent projects. Through his use of vibrant colors, detailed line work, and innovative narratives, Todd's illustrations invite audiences to reflect on technology, the environment, and the human experience.

Larry Todd is a pioneering figure in underground comics, having contributed to the genre for over 50 years. With a body of work that spans the counterculture movement of the 1960s to contemporary explorations of science fiction and speculative art, Todd remains a central figure in the comic world. His work has been published internationally, influencing generations of cartoonists and illustrators. His Retrospect will open on Saturday, September 28, 2024, at the Willits Center for the Arts, 71 E. Commercial St. in Willits and show until October 20. Your galleries will be open on weekends from 11 am - 5 PM.

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AMERICAN PICKERS PICK MENDO

The American Pickers are excited to announce their return to California this November 2024! The team will be filming new episodes of their hit History Channel series throughout the state, and they are on the lookout for unique collections and stories from all corners of California—including Mendocino County and the North Coast.

American Pickers is a documentary series that follows skilled antique hunters as they travel across the country in search of rare, valuable, and historically significant items. The show’s stars are passionate about giving forgotten relics a new life, and they’re always eager to meet collectors with amazing stories to tell.

While the Pickers explore the back roads of California, they are looking for leads from private collectors with hidden treasures. If you have a rare item or an unforgettable collection—especially something that has historical value—they would love to hear from you. However, please note that they do not pick from stores, flea markets, or museums.

This is a great opportunity for residents of Mendocino County and California's North Coast to share their unique finds and history with a national audience. If you or someone you know has a collection to showcase, don’t hesitate to contact the American Pickers team. Simply send your name, phone number, location, and photos of the collection to americanpickers@cineflix.com or call (646) 493-2184.

This could be your chance to share your story and contribute to preserving a piece of America’s past!

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ED NOTES

AWARE that the NYT specializes in received opinion and is a prose arm of the Democrats, and that Maureen Dowd is the paper's only regular who writes with panache, this morning's on-line paper nevertheless irritated hell outta me. It featured the predictable quadrennial whine from a professional Democrat that Jill Stein and Cornel West, and third party candidates generally, undermine the only “sensible” choice in our “inevitable” two-party dictatorship, and that choice is Kamala Harris.

APOLOGIES for re-posting Gail Collins' feeb-a-rama attack on us third party voters, and bearing in mind that we are a sliver of the minority of Americans who bother to vote while half of our citizens eligible to vote don't vote. And of the half that does, half of them are former Republicans who've become Maga cultists. However, and be that as it is in our doomed republic, the NYT drone’s crude assault is a useful exemplar of what we’ve heard for fifty years.

WHICH all translates as a minority of a minority of Americans will decide who’s president of the oligarchical murder machine. (My annotations illuminate Ms. Collins' limping prose):

TAKE IT AWAY, GAIL: (My illuminating annotations are in parens)

Considering a Third-Party Candidate? Get a Life.

by Gail Collins

OK, people, tell me when you last contemplated Jill Stein, perennial Green Party candidate for president.

(Last election)

“Y’all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent Instagram post criticizing Stein’s third attempt at running for president.

(We all have noted that Ocasio-Cortez has almost totally sold out but are delighted she still has thoughts.)

Truly, “a little spicy” and “Green Party candidate Jill Stein” do not often come up in the same sentence. Or paragraph. Or train of thought.

(Why would they?)

But this is the season when we start to fret a lot about third-party presidential candidates who could divert enough cranky voters from the real options to change the outcome of the election.

(Salud! my fellow cranks!)

We will stop now for a moment to remember the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader, who drained just enough support from Al Gore in Florida to tip the election to George W. Bush.

(Rigged for Bush but Al rolled over without a fight. Viva, Ralph!)

Or, um, Jill Stein. Whose presence on the ballot in a few swing states was just enough to keep Hillary Clinton from beating Donald Trump in 2016.

(For which I and millions more will be eternally grateful. Why vote for a lesser monster?)

The danger isn’t nearly as great as it was a few months ago, when it looked like the race was going to be Biden-Trump and millions of depressed voters were wondering whether to write in the name of a close friend or, hey, George Clooney.

(Nope, with me and several million other patriots it's always been Stein or West)

But still, you can never tell how things might get screwed up, particularly since any outcome not involving the election of Trump is going to lead to months of legal battles and protests.

(With a real Democrat, the race wouldn't even be close)

So feel free to worry about Stein — or other presidential candidates, like Cornel West, whose only major achievement this time around has been not making the ballot in Pennsylvania.

(Note the witless sarcasm)

They’re not exactly building a movement, and as Ocasio-Cortez said, if “all you do is show up every four years,” you really ought to be doing something else. Maybe running for a less ridiculous office, the way Ocasio-Cortez did when she knocked off an entrenched and deeply unthrilling House veteran in 2018.

(Stein and West have been out there on the left for years as OC used to be before she got used to private jets and the rest of it)

Or sign up for a night-school class. Clean the basement. Reread “War and Peace.” The options are endless. Get a life.

(Says the passive-aggressive as she comes charging out of her closet with one of the most exhausted insults of all time.)

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I'VE VOTED third party since McGovern, the last real Democratic candidate, and I've always admired Ralph Nader's lonely, principled stand against the Democrats.

THE DEMOCRATS are drawing off a lot of Republicans. The Cheney family is quite a catch for them. Can W. Bush be far behind? But why the surprise? The parties are fundamentally interchangeable and funded by the same class of billionaires.

MENDO reliably goes about ten percent third party, as does the rest of the Northcoast, thus drawing off enough votes from the corporate killer party to occasionally knock out a career Democrat. (cf Doug Bosco.) The now defunct Peace and Freedom Party brought off that coup, but that was the last gasp of an organized left in these parts.

THE REPUBLICANS? The Northcoast is so thoroughly gerrymandered for Democrats that an upstart third party candidate is highly unlikely to get beyond the primary, as Norman Solomon, a truly progressive Democrat, found out when he couldn't get the extra five percent he needed to get into a runoff with the soporific automaton from San Rafael, Jared Huffman. The Democrats encouraged a slew of vanity candidates to run in the primary to sab Solomon.

ASSUMING things don't break down entirely in the near future, we're going to be stuck with another round of liberal killers and their laughing hyenas.

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APPEALS COURT BANS POLICE MUG SHOTS

(But Not For Long)

by Jim Shields

Last week the Sheriff’s Office posted this note on the Sheriff’s booking log webpage: “Due to a recent ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case of Houston V. Maricopa, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is not posting photographs of arrestees on the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office booking log website.”

From my union days, I’m familiar with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals from years of rulings on cases of ours that had been appealed. The 9th Circuit ruled in our favor on each and every case. We benefitted from the black robes friendly inclinations to labor unions, or at least our union, the Air Transport Employees. But the 9th Circuit can also issue reality-bending decisions that for the past 40 years have gotten tossed by both “Liberal” and “Conservative” Supreme Courts.

Most recently the 9th Circuit’s ruling that state and local governments had no authority to issue bans on homeless encampments, etc., was overturned three months ago when the Supreme Court ruled that state and local governments do have the authority to enact laws and ordinances that prohibit people from sleeping or camping on sidewalks, shopping malls, residential neighborhoods, and state, city, and county public parks and lands.

I believe the Supremes will make a similar ruling on this mug shot decision by the 9th Circuit.

Here’s some quick comments on mug shots and the 9th Circuit’s ruling

According to court records, Brian Houston was arrested by Phoenix, Arizona police in January 2022 and charged with assault. As part of the booking process, his photo was taken and posted, along with many others, on that county’s publicly accessible website.

Next to his mug shot photo were his full name, date of birth, and the crime he was arrested for. The website site also has a “more details” button revealing his sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and the specific charges on which he was arrested.

What appeared on the website is generally found on all cop booking logs, including ours here in Mendocino County.

It should be pointed out that Mr. Houston was never prosecuted on the charges on the post, which were later dropped.

Houston then sued Maricopa County Maricopa County and Sheriff Paul Penzone, alleging that the County's practice of posting arrestees’ photographs and identifying information on its mug shot website violated his substantive and procedural due process rights and his right to a speedy public trial. He claimed this caused him public humiliation, reputational harm, and emotional distress.

The United States District Court for the District of Arizona dismissed Houston's claims. The court found that the mug shot post was not a condition of pretrial detention and that Houston failed to show a cognizable liberty or property interest under state law for his procedural due process claim. The court also dismissed his Sixth Amendment claim, noting that Houston was not prosecuted and thus had no trial.

Houston appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which reversed the district court's dismissal of Houston's due process claim, and found that he suffered “actionable harm.”

The situation now is that all nine western states under the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction have probably temporarily suspended the public posting of arrestees’ photos. Most likely jailhouse photos are still being taken but are not posted on websites or released to the public and the media pursuant to Public Records Act law.

Here are my thoughts.

• World-wide, the history of police mug shots goes back to the 19th Century.
• The primary purpose of the mug shot is to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification by victims, the public and investigators.
• Presumably, arrests are made with probable cause. For nearly 200 years, arrestees’ photos have been part of the initial investigatory process. This is self-evident but mug shots are an important segment in the probable cause process.
• Since probable cause is necessary to effect an arrest, that threshold should be the benchmark for releasing mug shots as well.
• Chances are these days that an arrestee may not remain in custody for long, and will be out free on their own recognizance or “zero bail.” Chronic offenders will often continue to commit crimes while awaiting adjudication. The mug shot may cause a potential new victim to provide police with information of a new crime.
• Booking photos provide information to both the public and law enforcement in the region of what a recently captured offender looks like who may be “active” in their area.

I wouldn’t be all that surprised if the next step is a legal challenge to security videos, cell phone videos or even still photos showing crooks committing crimes or fleeing from a crime scene. I suspect it is next on the list for the same reasons raised in the Houston case.

Currently arrest logs are public records. Will there be an attempt to conceal those records from the public as well?

We live in a world now where nearly everything we do is recorded or electronically captured in some fashion or by some technology. Are we going to prohibit all of that?

That genie escaped the bottle a long time ago.

The 9th Circuit’s mug shot decision is an example of a bad case making bad law.

It should, and probably will, be overturned by the Supreme Court.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, September 19, 2024

CHRISTOPHER BECK, 27, Ukiah. Kidnapping, child neglect.

STEVEN BECKWITH-ROBINSON, 28, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, false information to a pawn broker, failure to appear.

EDUARDO GARDEA, JR., 40, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICHAEL GILES, 41, Willits. Controlled substance for sale and transportation.

ERIK MACANA, (age not reported), Ukiah. More than six marijuana plants, diversion of state waters while cultivating marijuana, dumping hazardous material without permission, conspiracy.

DAMON REICHARDT, 49, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

OCTAVIO RIVERA, 55, Ukiah. More than six marijuana plants, diversion of state waters while cultivating marijuana, dumping hazardous material without permission, conspiracy.

CLIFFORD YAPLE, 36, Ukiah. Under influence.

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BILL KIMBERLIN

When I worked on Roger Rabbit I made it a point to try and save a few things that might have otherwise been discarded. These two animation cells are hand painted and are amongst the last classic Disney animation done.

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MEDICAL CARE AT BURNING MAN

by Katy Tahja

At Burning Man sometimes something happens that is so totally unexpected and delightful you shake your head in wonderment. Interviewing the medical director of Emergency Services at Burning Man this year we both got a jolt of “Playa Magic.”

The doctor’s name is Jeff Westin and before we started the interview I had to ask “Are you any relation to Dr. Wilbur Westin?” And then looks at me with amazement and wonder and asks “How do you know my grandfather?”

I explain to him that Dr. Wilbur Westin was my orthopedic surgeon at the Los Angeles unit of Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children from 1955 to 1963. I had met Dr. Westin’s children, including Jeff Westin’s dad, at that time. It seems Jeff Westin’s dad and Jeff’s brothers all became doctors. With this moment of “Playa Magic” over we went on with the interview.

The medical director warned me “some government folks” would be making an unexpected visit and he might have to cut the interview short and sure enough, five minutes into the interview he was called away. I was lucky he left me in the hands of Margy Morris, Medical Branch Chief for Emergency Services and she answered my questions.

Imagine this folks…70,000 people plopping down in a desert dry lake bed, a playa, for two weeks more than 100 miles north of Reno NV. While a Burning Man Principle like Radical Self-Reliance is understood by most Burners when you trip over a tent stake in the dark and you are sure you just broke your ankle your first instinct is to think “Hell, Reno is a long ways away…” and then you remember the phrase “the Playa Provides” and danged if there isn’t a couple of trailers and tents called Ramparts (named after the old “Emergency” TV series) with doctors and medical equipment ready to help you and your aching ankle…for free.

For more than a decade Dr. Westin and his staff have been handling mishaps in Black Rock City and making decisions about who stays and who is sent on to regional hospitals by ground or air ambulances. There have always been first-aid services since Burning Man began in the desert and for many years Humboldt General Hospital in Winnemucca was a partner of the Burning Man organization for many years but now Renown medical system in Reno is the destination for emergency cases from the Playa. Royal Alliance ambulances provides services in Black Rock City. Dr. Westin was quick to point out 97% of all injuries occurring at the event on the Playa are treated by Ramparts.

You’d be amazed at their operations in air conditioned trailer units with x-ray, ultrasound, a lab, pharmacy, and patient beds. Ramparts cares for about 3,000 Burners every year with 40 beds available. I know…I was one of those patients six years ago. I have shoulders that have been dislocated more than once. That year sitting on a pile of pillows I was awkwardly stretching behind me to pick up something and tumbled over…,the wrong way…and knocked my arm out of whack. My fellow campers loaded me into a golf cart and got me to Ramparts. I was examined, x-rayed, and with a traction/contraction procedure with blankets my arm was back in its proper position in a half hour I was back in camp. The doctor directing everything was a visiting Maori man from New Zealand with full facial native tribal tattoos. It was memorable both for the doctor and the speed with which I was taken care of.

Ramparts prides itself in getting patients in and out was quickly as possible, They are there for build week, the actual Burning Man event week, tear down, and provide care in a smaller manner for restoration workers cleaning up the Playa into October. They get daily inspections from the NV Dept. of Public Health.

I won’t bore readers with the myriad of details for providing medical care for a small city. Yes, people die, and perhaps babies are born. (There are rumors of VERY pregnant women arriving with their midwives.) There is a paid medical staff at the top of the Emergency Services structure, but there are also hundreds of volunteers. I heard a long convoluted explanation of medical reciprocity regulations…how some licenses and certifications are recognized by the state of NV while others are not. It would not be surprising to find the helpful volunteer at Ramparts who is bandaging your gash is an ER Room nurse in another state, but volunteering their time in Ramparts because off-duty they get to join the greatest party of earth.

Along with lacerations, bike injuries, and dehydration there are mental health challenges. A camp called Zendo for years had helped campers with mental health challenges and drug complications while working with Ramparts. The Black Rock Rangers, the peace-keeping corps on the Playa, have training to deal with mental health crisis patients. The camp I belong to, Mobility Camp, provides wheelchairs, crutches and knee scooters to injured people and we have done so for 20 years. There are first-aid stations in outlying areas of Black Rock City for minor injuries and “quick recovery vehicles” available to move medical staff around. This year, on a somber note, I’d bet half the camps on the Playa had Narcan kits available.

For 2024 statistics Ramparts noted under 50 people were sent by Royal Ambulance to Reno, of which 18 folks were medi-vac’d out by copter. In the past Ramparts said they offered “dynamic approaches to austere medicine.” While 20% of the combined Ramparts staff is new every year some folks have been returning there for 25 years. They are professional when they need to be and fun-loving Burners there rest of the time.

So enough about Ramparts-now for the fun stuff. Here, in no particular order, were observations I made looking at the human parade going by my camp. E-bikes over ran the Playa this year. Those batteries make pedaling easier but also make them go WAY too fast. The speed limit of 5 mph in Black Rock City was ignored. Crashes occurred from inattention. I saw more tattoos on men and women than ever before. People bicycled by in business suits (why?), pontifical garb, graduation cap and gowns, dressed like astronauts, in prom dresses and tuxedos, and naked. It’s comical watching someone ride a bike on a bumpy road with one hand on the handle bar and one hand balancing the drink someone just handed them.

Now my 10th yearly report on Burning Man would not be complete without more of a “what I saw, heard, ate, experienced…” contribution. As an old lady I only go to “tame” camps and events and I’m in bed by 10 p.m. and not out carousing. My son Matti took me to a “High Tea” for moms whose kids had brought them to Burning Man. We balanced china tea cups on crystal plates with crustless sandwiches of cream cheese and cucumber as we talked about doing Burning Man with our kids. (Mobility Camp had a family with three generations attending.)

Fun stuff this year? Choose between a Sea Shanties and Maritime sing-along or a drunken Disney movie song fest. Listen to a lecture on the ethnobotany of native plants in the area or a talk about system dynamics. Learn sushi rolling or Dutch Oven cooking and then eat the results. I didn’t hear the Alpine Sunrise Yodeling flash mob but they were out there. I hadn’t played the Asian board game of “Go” in 40 years but found a place to re-learn it on the Playa.

Food is ever abundant and free. Beignets were being passed out fresh out of the fryer every day two camps away from us. There was Turkish coffee, aqua frescas and coconut pancakes, Spam musubi, a Kombucha happy hour, Pakistani BBQ bites, Biscuits and Gravy Brunch, and more, with every kind of intoxicating drink imaginable and ever popular home brew beer camps. The camp next to me serves an excellent Nettle Beer made from stinging nettles, cleavers and burdock.

My son and I attended the Battle of the Marching Bands. They were short a band so threw 50 kazoos into the crowd. If you caught one you were called forward and instantly became part of the Kazoo Marching Band that with 30 seconds of practice played “You Are My Sunshine” as they marched in a circle. They didn’t win but my son can now say he participated in a Black Rock City band concert.

Ever see Sock Wrestling? Four players sitting on big yoga mats put on bright orange socks. The idea of the game is to steal the other players socks while keeping you own socks on. You can rise on your knees but no higher. Lose your socks and you are out of the game and off the mats. Last person with one sock on wins. This game was one step short of vicious and hysterically funny as four men played it. Then it was three men and one woman and she had obviously studied self-defense moves and men were hesitant about what they could grab, but she finally lost her socks. Then it was three men and a 12 year old boy and that kid was fast and there was a well fought battle with the kid winning…of course.

There are camps for every sexual persuasion with a Pussy Day Spa, the Orgy Dome, black light body painting, and a life size animatronic raptor dinosaur you could ride if you were naked. Then there was the naked mile run passing by with lots of folks in hats, shoes, sunscreen, and nothing else.

I spent 13 days on the Playa this year, my longest visit ever. I loved it, even the wasted day hiding in my van for hours while 40 mph winds created white-outs. I want to go back Burning Man again, and again, and again. Little old ladies can wish, can’t they?

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WHAT I'M READING

by Esther Mobley

After 25 years, wine writer Peg Melnik is leaving the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. In a farewell column, she reflects on some of her favorite stories over her long tenure. Good luck, Peg, on your next endeavor!

In July, Pete Wells’ account of why he is leaving his post as the New York Times restaurant critic (TL;DR: “technical obesity”) led a lot of other food and drink writers to consider the health implications of their own work. Now, Oregon wine critic Michael Alberty writes in Wine Enthusiast about the soul-searching journey that Wells’ column kicked off for him. It’s a long but compelling (at least to me, as a fellow wine writer who wonders about these things!) read about health and personal priorities.

Costco’s 49ers-branded wine comes from a winery in Kansas City, Missouri, the hometown of our NFL team’s recent Super Bowl rivals, writes Nico Madrigal-Yankowski in SFgate. (Hearst owns both SFgate and the Chronicle, but the two newsrooms operate separately.) I will note, however, that the four 9ers-branded wines listed on the website of the Kansas City winery, Mano’s Wine, appear to carry California appellations.

(SF Chronicle)

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A DYING NAPA RIVER

by Chris Malan

The Napa River's flows are being heavily diverted at the surface and groundwater for tourism and vineyards. Government fails to protect the Public Trust, to be able to swim, fish, recreate, use potable water and conduct indigenous ceremonies. The River once was home to thousands of Coho, Chinook and steelhead salmonids, California Freshwater Shrimp, yellow legged frog, Western Pond Turtle, a new species of eel, and rare and new species of aquatic insects, and now all are dying due to no flows.…

https://youtu.be/qaX18CF-2gI?si=5_djw4MG4UuAWySF

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REMEMBERING KEN KESEY, the Godfather of the Merry Pranksters, on his Birthday

September 17, 1935 ~ November 10, 2001.

Ken Elton Kesey (/ˈkiːziː/; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in CIA-financed studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income.

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from Stanford, bohemian and literary figures including Neal Cassady and other friends, who became collectively known as the Merry Pranksters. As documented in Tom Wolfe's 1968 New Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, some of the parties were promoted to the public as Acid Tests, and integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead, who were the Acid Tests' house band, and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their career.

Kesey's second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, was a commercial success that polarized some critics and readers upon its release in 1964. An epic account of the vicissitudes of an Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga, Kesey regarded it as his magnum opus.

In 1965, after being arrested for marijuana possession and faking suicide, Kesey was imprisoned for five months. Shortly thereafter, he returned home to the Willamette Valley and settled in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, where he maintained a secluded, family-oriented lifestyle for the rest of his life.

In addition to teaching at the University of Oregon—an experience that culminated in Caverns (1989), a collaborative novel by Kesey and his graduate workshop students under the pseudonym "O.U. Levon"—he continued to regularly contribute fiction and reportage to such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Oui, Running, and The Whole Earth Catalog; various iterations of these pieces were collected in Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1986).

Between 1974 and 1980, Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished novel (Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease) and contributions from writers including Margo St. James, Kate Millett, Stewart Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William S. Burroughs.

After a third novel (Sailor Song) was released to lukewarm reviews in 1992, he reunited with the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works on the Internet until ill health (including a stroke) curtailed his activities.

“The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

— Ken Kesey

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IT’S ALL DONE GONE…

Title: An "Arkansas Hoosier" born in 1855. Conway, Arkansas. "My father was a Confederate soldier. He give his age a year older than it was to get into the army. After the war he bought 280 acres from the railroad and cleared it. We never had a mortgage on it. In 1920 the land was sold, the money divided. Now, none of my children own their land. It's all done gone, but it raised my family. I've done my duty--I feel like I have. I've raised twelve children".

Creator(s): Lange, Dorothea, photographer

Date Created/Published: 1938 June.

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LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Tupperware (the Brand) May Fail. Tupperware (the Word) Will Survive

Harris, With an Online Avalanche, Outspends Trump by Tens of Millions

North Carolina Governor Race Jolted by Report That G.O.P. Nominee Called Himself a ‘Black Nazi’ 

At Funerals and in Hospitals, Talk of Revenge for Pager Attacks

Stocks Hit Record High a Day After Fed’s Big Interest Rate Cut

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ISRAEL STRIKES LEBANON IN WAKE OF HEZBOLLAH THREAT TO RETALIATE

The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Thursday, as both countries anxiously faced the prospect of a rapidly escalating conflict. It was one of the largest bombardments in a year of heightened fighting, according to Lebanese officials.

The airstrikes came soon after the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based militant group, vowed that “retribution will come” to Israel for the wireless device explosions that targeted his fighters and led to two days of panic in Lebanon this week.

But even as the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, was promising his followers in a speech that Israel would pay, Israeli jet fighters screamed overhead, setting off sonic booms in what seemed a clear show of might.

Not long after, the skies over southern Lebanon filled with jets, and the booms that followed were from bombs. The Israeli military carried out more than 70 airstrikes across southern Lebanon, according to three senior Lebanese security officials, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Israeli bombardment was a marked uptick from the daily tit-for-tat attacks that has characterized the cross-border fighting for the past 11 months. But it appeared to fall short of a major escalation: there were no immediate reports of casualties and the strikes appeared to have avoided both major population centers and the country’s heartland.

Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, an Israeli nemesis, have long been at odds, but tensions have ratcheted up since Israel’s war with another Iranian-backed group, Hamas, began in October. A day after Hamas attacked Israel, setting off the war, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in a show of support.

Earlier this week, pagers and walkie-talkies widely used by Hezbollah operatives began exploding all at once across Lebanon, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. The operation has been tied to Israel, though the Israelis have not claimed responsibility for it.

Here is what else to know:

Making his first public remarks since the device explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. Nasrallah acknowledged that his group had “endured a severe and cruel blow.” But he said Israel would “face just retribution and a bitter reckoning,” accusing the country of breaking “all conventions and laws.” He left his threat vague. “I will not discuss time, nor manner, nor place,” Mr. Nasrallah said. He also promised that the exploding-device attacks would not deter Hezbollah from continuing to launch rockets and drones at Israel in support of Hamas.


The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck at least 100 rocket launchers belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, along with other infrastructure sites and weapon storage facilities. For its part, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for 17 attacks in northern Israel on Thursday. It targeted barracks and military bases with rockets, missiles and drones. The Israeli military said two soldiers had been killed in combat in northern Israel but did not provide details.


Walkie-talkies: The Japanese company whose name was on the two-way radios that exploded said Thursday that it had discontinued that model a decade ago and had warned of fake versions.


The exploding wireless devices that targeted members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah this week have set off a debate among experts in international law: Are such attacks legal? Specifically, legal scholars and advocates are asking whether it violates the laws of war to detonate secretly installed explosives in thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies when it is virtually impossible to know who else might be in the vicinity.

(NYT)

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THE PAGER ATTACK

by Adam Shatz

Since October 7, the Biden administration has given Israel virtually everything it has asked for, from F-15 fighter aircraft and white phosphorous bombs to diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Joe Biden and Antony Blinken have underwritten the destruction of Gaza, and the “Gazafication” of the West Bank, where Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than six hundred people in the last year, including a 26-year-old American citizen, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead at a peaceful protest near Nablus. (Eygi’s parents have yet to receive a phone call from the Biden administration, which claims to be “gathering the facts.”) With apparent carte blanche from Washington, the Netanyahu government has also escalated its long-running shadow war with Iran, carrying out assassinations of Iranian officials in Damascus and of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

The Americans did, however, have one red line, and that was an Israeli war against Lebanon, for which the Netanyahu government reportedly sought approval within days of October 7. Netanyahu wanted to open a second front in the hope of destroying the Lebanese Shia organization Hizbullah, an ally of Hamas, but the Americans were opposed, so the Israelis shelved their plans. The low-intensity border war with Hizbullah continued, but within limits largely respected by both parties. Hizbullah launched rockets against border towns in the north of Israel, killing scores of civilians, and forcing nearly a hundred thousand to evacuate their homes. Israel killed hundreds of people in southern Lebanon, many of them civilians, and displaced more than a hundred thousand. But, until this week, both Hizbullah and Israel appeared to calibrate their responses to each other’s attacks to avoid full-scale war. As Israel’s assault on Gaza dragged on, its enthusiasm for a second front seemed to wane: how could its army confront Hizbullah if it couldn’t even defeat Hamas?

Hizbullah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, too, has had good reason to avoid escalation. He does not want a repetition of the 2006 war, which led to the devastation of parts of Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, and the killing of well over a thousand Lebanese civilians; after the war Nasrallah made an extraordinary apology for having provoked Israel’s offensive. He also knows that Iran, his major patron and ally, does not want Hizbullah’s missiles, which are intended as a shield against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program, to be wasted on Gaza: solidarity with Palestine has its limits, even for the leader of the “axis of resistance.”

Why, then, has Hizbullah stepped up its rocket attacks on northern Israel since October 7? Israeli commentators have argued that Hizbullah bears responsibility for this conflict because it has failed to withdraw to the Litani river, and because Gaza is supposedly not its war. But Nasrallah insists that he is holding up his end of Hizbullah’s alliance with Hamas, Iran and the Houthis (the so-called “unity of arenas” strategy), and offering a modicum of support for the besieged people of Gaza, who have been all but abandoned by other Arab regimes. He has also made plain that the rockets will stop as soon as a ceasefire is reached.

As Amos Harel, Haaretz’s military correspondent, has noted, Nasrallah has exhibited considerable restraint in the face of repeated Israeli provocations, notably the assassination of Fuad Shukr, one of Hizbullah’s senior leaders, in Beirut.

It’s hard to see how Nasrallah’s prudence will survive the pager and short-wave radio attacks of this week, which have killed at least 37 people, including four children, and injured thousands. With this operation – which has been in the works since 2022, according to the New York Times; long before October 7 – Israel has succeeded, if nothing else, in carrying out one of the most spectacular simultaneous attacks in recent history. Israel struck twice, in consecutive days; it did not lose any of its own men; and it forced its enemies to surrender what no one in the modern world wants to give up: their electronic devices. (There were scenes in Lebanon of people crushing their own phones.) The short-term psychological blow is incalculable.

Let’s imagine a militant organization, such as Hizbullah, had carried out a similar attack in Israel, detonating explosives in the phones of soldiers and reservists, and murdering Israeli children. The Americans would not have waited to “gather the facts” before denouncing the attack. The response of much of the Western press has been striking, too, full of fascination for Mossad’s cloak-and-dagger ingenuity. What you won’t see in these accounts is the word “terrorism,” which is as taboo as the word “genocide” when the perpetrator is Israel.

Terrorism, the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political aims, is a form of propaganda, a message both to the enemy and to one’s own constituency.

What, then, is the message of the pager attacks? To the Israeli Jewish public, still traumatized by October 7, and particularly to Israelis who’ve fled their homes in the north, the message is that Israel is restoring “deterrence,” the third pillar of the ruling ideology (the others are instrumentalized remembrance of the Holocaust and consolidation of the settlements).

To Hizbullah and the people of Lebanon, the message is that Israel can hit you anywhere, at any time, and that it cares little about civilian casualties. (That message is redundant, since Israel is already notorious in Lebanon for its indifference to Lebanese lives.)

Some Lebanese citizens hostile to Hizbullah at first took vicarious pleasure in the attacks: Hizbullah effectively controls much of Lebanon, notably Beirut airport, and its influence is often resented. But once it became clear that this was an attack on Lebanon, and that it could be the prelude to an Israeli invasion – like the destruction of the Egyptian air force on June 5, 1967, which preceded the Six-Day War – people stopped laughing at Hizbullah’s expense. Still reeling from its financial collapse and the 2020 port explosion, Lebanon is less likely to survive an Israeli invasion than Hizbullah is.

Nasrallah is in a bind. Hizbullah’s communications system has been badly damaged and there may be leaks within the organization. Building back that system and rooting out spies will be his priorities. But he cannot respond with the patience of the Iranians, whose style is to promise retaliation and then wait years to deliver, because Hizbullah is in the front lines of the battle with Israel. If Nasrallah fails to respond, his restraint will look like cowardice –hardly the message he wants to send to his supporters. But if he miscalculates, or responds in a way that offers the Israelis a pretext for invasion, he could have a war on his hands that far eclipses the catastrophe of 2006, imperiling Hizbullah’s position in Lebanon.

Israel hasn’t taken official responsibility for the attacks, but it is gloating. The short-term success can hardly be denied. The pager attacks have put Hizbullah and Iran on the defensive. They have distracted attention from the horrors Israel continues to visit on Gaza and the West Bank, from the obscenity of Sde Teiman, a torture and rape center in the Negev where dozens of prisoners from Gaza have been murdered, and from the hostage ordeal, the biggest threat to Netanyahu’s premiership.

But what next? Is Netanyahu betting on a Hizbullah overreaction? Is he trying to open a second front and to drag the Iranians – and the Americans – into war? Are the attacks part of his effort to return Donald Trump to the White House, or is he simply trying to stay in power with a show of military force? The war in Gaza has made him more popular than ever, in spite of mass protests in favor of a ceasefire.

Whatever his motivations may be, Netanyahu has made war much likelier, and it would be a much harder war than Gaza has been for Israel’s already exhausted and demoralized troops. Hizbullah, which emerged in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, is a formidable antagonist, probably the most effective Arab fighting force the Jewish state has confronted since its founding. Its fighting force of roughly 45,000 may be outnumbered and outgunned, but, unlike the Israelis, they would have the advantage of fighting on their own land. Israeli soldiers spent two decades under fire in southern Lebanon before Hizbullah forced them to withdraw unilaterally in 2000.

The pager attack, a tactical success by any measure, appears at first glance to be a reckless escalation, without a strategic horizon.

But the line between tactics and strategy may not be so useful in the case of Israel, a state that has been at war since its creation. The identity of the enemies changes – the Arab armies, Nasser, the PLO, Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas – but the war never ends, because Israel’s entire existence, its search for what it now brazenly calls “living space,” is based on a forever war with the Palestinians, and with whoever happens to support Palestinian resistance. Escalation may be precisely what Israel seeks, or what it is prepared to risk, since it views war as its destiny, if not its raison d’être.

Randolph Bourne once remarked that “war is the health of the state,” and that is certainly the view of Israel’s leaders. But it is civilians, Arab and Jewish, who end up paying the price for the state’s addiction to force. The region will continue to be engulfed in flames so long as Israel’s intelligence and creativity are dedicated to the pursuit of war rather than peace.

(London Review of Books)

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WHEN THE CLINTONS DID HAITI: KEEP THE NATIVES FROM BREEDING

by Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn

(It’s been nauseating to listen to Hillary Clinton moralizing to the likes of Rachel Maddow about Trump and Vance’s racist fear-mongering about Haitians, given the vicious treatment of Haitians by Bill’s administration and the Clinton Foundation. This piece from September 1994 was one of the first “Nature and Politics” columns Cockburn and I wrote together. — JSC)

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Cut through all of Hillary Clinton’s reassuring lingo about “empowering women” and consider the realities of Clintonian population policy in Haiti.

As revealed in an internal U.S. Agency for International Development report, the fundamental goal of the American government is to keep the natives from breeding.

The June 1993, document (unearthed by Ken Silverstein in CounterPunch) states policy “targets” for Haiti baldly: to obtain 200,000 new “acceptors” of contraception; a “social marketing component” target of “6,000 cycles of pills/month,” and the establishment of 23 facilities to provide sterilizations–soothingly referred to as “voluntary surgical contraception,” a goal that has been exceeded.

There is no mention of any “targets” with regard to women’s health.

The cynicism of the “empowerment” rhetoric is also apparent in the memo’s main recommendation, the “demedicalization or liberalization of service delivery.” The agency suggests “elimination of the practice of requiring physician visits” before doling out hormonal methods.

In plainer English, this means that USAID feels that doctors in Haiti need not waste time with pelvic exams or pap smears; just get the “acceptors” on stream with the hormonal method of choice.

A Brooklyn-based Haitian women’s group, Women of Koalisyon, published a pamphlet detailing abuses at clinics in Haiti funded by USAID.

Local clinics offered food and money to encourage sterilization. “Acceptors” were promised that vasectomies were not only reversible but would help prevent AIDS. Women were offered clothing in exchange for agreeing to use Norplant (the five-year contraceptive implant), which led to a host of problems, including constant bleeding, headaches, dizziness, nausea, radical weight loss, depression, and fatigue. Demands that the Norplant rods be taken out were obstructed.

Such brute realities of population control are rarely mentioned in the United States, where reports from the U.N. population conference in Cairo have depicted a clash between libertarian respect for individual choice and the medieval tyranny of the Catholic or Muslim clergy. The Clinton Administration is not the first to flaunt its concern for individual rights where such issues are concerned. Back in 1974, in Nixon’s White House, Henry Kissinger commissioned National Security Study Memorandum 200, which addressed population issues.

Prefiguring the current “empowerment” shoe polish, Kissinger stressed that the United States should “help minimize charges of imperialist motivation behind its support of population activities by repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a concern with the right of the individual to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of children.”

But the true concern of Kissinger’s analysts was the maintenance of U.S. access to Third World resources. They worried that the “political consequences” of population growth could produce internal instability in nations “in whose advancement the United States is interested.” With famine and food riots and the breakdown of social order in such countries, “the smooth flow of needed materials will be jeopardized.

The authors of the report noted laconically that the United States, with 6% of the world’s population, used about a third of its resources. Curbs on the Third World population would ensure that local consumption would not increase and possibly affect the availability of Third World resources. As a natural extension of this logic, the report favored sterilization over food aid.

By 1977, Reimert Ravenholt, the director of USAID’s population program, was saying that his agency’s goal was to sterilize one-quarter of the world’s women. The gearing between Third World fecundity and First World prosperity is still a core policy theme. The immensely wealthy Pew Charitable Trusts–a cluster of foundations with an abiding interest in population control, recently issued a report that stated frankly: “The average American’s interest in maintaining high standards of living has been a prime motivator for U.S. population policy from its earliest formation and it is likely that this will continue for the foreseeable future.”

In other words, the issue is distribution. But distribution raises uncomfortable questions of social justice. Sterilization, along with less drastic inhibitors, is far easier, particularly when it is made palatable to the liberal conscience by being tricked out in the verbal bunting of “empowerment” and “respect for the rights of women.”

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink co-written with Joshua Frank. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. Alexander Cockburn’s Guillotined! and A Colossal Wreck are available from CounterPunch.)

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FREEDOM IS GOOD. Americans from all walks of life and all parts of the political spectrum agreed on that. It was why our ancestors came here. From the gas stations to the airfields and rock concert arenas to the Western ranges, freedom was the rubric under which people naturally aspired to live their lives without thinking too deeply about it. Freedom, baby. Dig it. Hippies were free. Cowboys were free. Greasers were free. Walt Whitman wrote and thought freely. Descendants of slaves with wild Afros played free jazz. Rock and roll music became the sound of freedom across the generations, from Bill Haley's ‘Rock Around the Clock’ to Woodstock. Astronauts floated freely in space, proving that mankind was still bigger than the machines. Even when American lives fell short of ideal, there was always a taste or memory of freedom in there somewhere.

The shitheads who are afraid of freedom don’t give a crap about any of that. Freedom complicates the clean functioning of their algorithms. Their dream is to turn the living, breathing, yearning thing that was America into a two-dimensional video game like Pong! In the dark of their Steve Jobs-curated stainless-steel offices and bedrooms, they fantasize about a digital reward-and-punishment machine that they can control from their keyboards in between workouts while drinking bottled water brimming with unhealthy plastic particles that are messing with their testes, which makes sense, reproduction being our only real promise of freedom from death. They're playing a different game, though. They want to build a world that is void of transcendence, in which the spark of divinity inside every human being is no more inherently significant than a pixel. To achieve that dream, they need to occupy the inside of your skull, in order to manipulate us all into whatever forms they find most pleasing, while importing millions of migrants who will work for $15 an hour — all of which more or less describes the system that the oligarchs and the party bosses installed in New York and Chicago back in the 1880s. Only now, it's gone national. The point of the new system is the same now as it was back then: The Robber Barons keep their wealth, while the Party maintains control.

Who will ultimately win the coming showdown between the oligarchs and the Party to have final say over the machine is a question for another day. Or maybe it will be settled in the coming election, with Elon Musk and his posse of red-pilled Founders standing by the side of Donald Trump, the Demon Emperor who would gladly trample our beloved democracy, if only such a thing existed. That's because, in the space of a decade or so, the Democrats have transformed themselves from the Party of FDR and the middle class to the Party of Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffet and J.P. Morgan, along with their various retainers and foot-soldiers and NGOs. There is nothing surprising about any of this. Just ask J.P. Morgan himself, who oversaw the transformation of the Party of Lincoln into the party of the Robber Barons.

— David Samuels, ‘County Highway’

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AT THE MOVIES

by Tom Fantulin

Of all the political philosophies, democracy is the only one with the flexibility to accept opposing opinions. The Bill of Rights does not mandate a specific religion or political leaning. Therefore, I agree with Andrew Sheppard in the movie The American President, who proclaimed, America is not easy; America is a lesson in advanced citizenship. Michael Douglas, portraying President Andrew Sheppard, also pitched the ACLU, an institution whose sole purpose is to uphold the Bill of Rights.

If you are a citizen and or aspiring to be a legal resident and accept all people are created equal and that religions should stay out of politics and the classrooms, that alone does not make you a liberal. It illustrates that you believe in the Constitution and the American cause.

The insanity of the current campaign is an illustration of how words lose meaning. Trump supporters call themselves conservatives, but they do not demonstrate traditional values. Instead of promoting love for thy neighbor, they espouse harming them. Instead of relying on honesty, they employ lies to sway opinions. While curiosity enhances a person’s well-being, the so-called conservatives want to suppress studies that would pique curiosity. Their campaign slogan, make America Great Again, is not their goal. Their goal is to force everyone to abide by their beliefs.

An honest discussion of opposing ideas gives proponents and dissenters a comprehensive understanding of a controversy. If both parties are working on a solution, facts should matter more than a point of view. In a sense, politics is a social science. Proposals are hypotheses, and the resulting bill is an experiment. Even though they are considered laws, politicians can review the quality of their performance and amend them accordingly.

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