Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 12/10/2024

Cold & Clear | Tracking Roy | Attendance Off | Local Events | Audit RCS | AVA Phone | KZYXiles | Tree Trimmers | Sako Back | Community Radio | Elk Ranch | Messiah Rehearsal | Ax Murdered | Ed Notes | Mendosa Billboard | Bah Humbug | Yesterday's Catch | Lake Fog | MacKerricher Mushrooms | Ayers Appearances | Adequate Staffing | Food Joy | Days Like This | NM Gas | My Reward | Nuclear AI | Bookworm Jailbreak | E-Bike Vouchers | Obvious Signs | Sharpton Hustle | Lead Stories | Shooting Suspect | Painting Feller | Penny Verdict | Fruit Salad | Woke Fever | Harlem Day | Race Hustle | 1936 TV | To Damascus | Gashlycrumb Tinies | Great Unpatterning | Comanche Tipi

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It's a "baby it's cold outside" 33F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Dry skies thru most of tomorrow then the rain returns in a big way with what looks like 3 fronts passing thru into Monday. Rainfall totals forecast to be over 4" by Tuesday, we'll see. Meanwhile today we have a sneaker waves warning along the shore.

COLD WEATHER advisory now in effect until 9am this morning.

HIGH PRESSURE continues bring light northerly winds and mostly clear skies. Wednesday afternoon and overnight a weather system is expected to bring rain to much of the area. Periods of light rain are expected Thursday through Friday morning. A stronger storm is expected to bring moderate rain, gusty winds and mountain snow Friday afternoon through Saturday.

COASTAL FLOODING: High astronomical tides are predicted from mid-week through early next week for Northwest California. Southerly winds may increase water levels above already high tides. Depending on the strength and duration of these winds this may cause some minor to moderate coastal flooding in low areas around Humboldt Bay. Elevated surf may exacerbate the coastal flooding on the open coast over the weekend and waves could potentially wash over some of the low lying areas of Hwy 1 in Mendocino county and Hwy 101 near Crescent City. Coastal flood advisories or warning will be issued if flooding is expected. (NWS)

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TRACKING ROY

City of Fort Bragg Police Dept:

Please review your cameras!

The last known sightings of Roy, along with the areas, are marked on the map below. If your video surveillance covers the times listed, kindly check to see if Roy appears in the footage.

He is believed to be wearing clothing similar to what’s shown in the image on the map.

Please upload to the link: https://fortbraggpdca.evidence.com/axon/community-request/public/findroy

If you would like to email a tip or leave a message regarding your upload please send an email to: room-299199@room.veoci.com

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ATTENDANCE OFF?

Margaret Pickens: Does anyone have any idea why the attendance to last Saturday’s Holiday Bazaar at the Apple Hall was so much lower than past years?

So much work goes into this event by the vendors and the Unity Club! I was really disappointed to see such a sparse turn out.

Heather Knight: It was also the same weekend as other Craft Fairs happening. I saw at least two others in Mendocino County. There was also the Redwood Classic going on as well.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

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A READER WRITES: RCS begging for money. WTH. Millions in county contracts is not enough? WTH? Hey County, might be time to audit RCS, where is that money going? What exactly are the tax payers getting for all those millions?

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ATTENTION CALLERS: The AVA's old landline number (895-3016) is kaput. The new mobile number is 707-391-4916.

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A READER WRITES: Isn’t that former KZYX Culbertson guy the same guy who used to drive around Boonville in his beater-pickup with a bumpersticker that bragged: “The AVA: I don’t buy it!” I remember that bumpersticker because it was pointed out to me by former resident Deputy Craig Walker who was non-plussed by it, not being particularly interested in the ongoing KZYX pissing contests. Walker wanted to know what was behind the bumpersticker. I said, I wasn’t sure, but that it probably had to do with Culbertson’s irritation about some criticism of KZYX in the AVA and that meant that he doesn’t buy it, in both oh-so-clever senses of the word. (Obviously, Mr. Culbertson, like a some other AVA critics, is unable to compartmentalize when it comes to himself and his loyalties.) I was also told that although Mr. Culbertson didn’t “buy” the AVA, he must have read it at Boont Berry Store where he could read a copy lying around without “buying” it, and then get all huffy about whatever KZYX complaints he came across while still making good on his “I don’t buy it” claim. Now here he is “explaining” himself in the AVA? Seems like that happens a lot at KZYX. For years, KZYX exiles who have gripes about the station or its management turn to the AVA for recourse, which only makes it less likely that they’ll ever be allowed back in the fold at what the Editor likes to call “Free Speech Radio.” I always wonder why these people even want to return to a station with management they don’t like and who booted them so (allegedly) arbitrarily. Once you complain about KZYX in the AVA, you’re banned and guaranteed to never return. (E.g. poor Sister Yasmin, to name a few.) No one ever gets re-instated. At KZYX, once you’re out, you’re out — forever. I’d certainly be interested to know what caused the competent sounding newsperson Sara Reith to quit, but she does not seem to be complaining type like Culbertson. If I recall correctly, Culbertson ironically arrived at his “I don’t buy it” view because of AVA complaints about KZYX. The trouble with this situation is that we never hear the station management’s side of the argument, right or wrong or in-between. They always circle the wagons and clam up. So there’s not much hope that the situation will change, whether it’s in Philo or Ukiah. I wonder who’ll be next.

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KZYX: TIME TO MOVE ON

To the Editor:

I support KZYX GM and Executive Director Dina Polkinghorne, and her Board of Directors, 100% in firing Rich Culbertson.

With the station moving from Philo to Ukiah, it’s time for change all across the board.

Culbertson, like Alicia Bales who was fired before him, had his own antifa-like, cancel culture agenda, and a toxic personality to go along with it.

For the record, Culbertson had been fired previously by a former GM. It was rumored Culbertson had been living as a homeless person in the old caboose on station property and was addicted to prescription meds. I don’t know if this were true or not, but as a former Board member, Board Treasurer, and popular program host at KZYX, i can say Culbertson was lazy. He was lazy and snarky. I can’t believe he lasted 17 years,

Today, I’m renewing my membership at KZYX.

I’ve had my differences with the station in the past, but Ms. Polkinghorne needs to be supported. She is a strong, capable leader. She has a talented Board. She has a real vision for the station and a strategic plan to execute on the vision. Most importantly, she has real ethics and integrity.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

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LEW CHICHESTER

This day seems to be the one demanding organizing my thoughts and presenting to the rest of us some review and questioning of the intent and success of “Mendocino County Public Radio.” The airwaves lend themselves easily to a local community radio station, not so much so to a widespread territory like Mendocino County, all mountainous and spread out. Question: was the original intent of KZYX to be a county wide NPR outlet? Why have the studios been in Philo all these decades? It is a challenge to site and maintain various transmitters all over the place to broadcast the same signal hither and yon. Why? What’s the point? It’s really not that hard to have a local FM broadcast studio, a moderately powered transmitter, a backup generator, a volunteer staff. There are at least three or four of these local FM stations right now in the north county. I am far away and not at all informed on how KZYX makes decisions or conducts business, but there seems to be, over and over through the years, a similar dynamic of “who’s in charge.” In Round Valley we have a little rinky dink FM station, KYBU, with the FCC license owned by the local library group, managed with a once a week meeting of those participating to determine “what happened this week, what do we need to do next.” Takes about an hour, maybe. We have no board of directors, really, no general manager, an engineer (yes, but extremely part time). It’s not that hard to have a community radio station. Ours has sort of the anarchist collective wanna be organization model. Fort Bragg has something like this. So does Gualala. And Willits. There’s radio people broadcasting in Laytonville. Anderson Valley could have one. Maybe Ukiah could have more than one. Again, it’s not that hard to have a community radio station. I hope KZYX can take this present opportunity to perhaps consider what to do next. It could be something completely different.

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CHUCK ROSS

I am kind of melancholy today. This ranch at Elk just sold.

I don't know who the buyer is yet, but this has been in one family for 166 years. Moreover, this house was the view out my bedroom window in my formative years.

Michael Donohue and Catherine (Donneley) came here in 1858 and built this house not long after.

Their daughter Rosanna (1864-1923) was their third born and the second to be born here. In 1894 she married Charles McMaster (1859-1934) and since the Donohues had only two sons and neither of them produced offspring to carry on the name, the property passed into the McMaster name.

Their son Les (1901-1972) raised sheep and cattle on the ranch. He kept two homes, one on Boonville Avenue and the other about halfway up the hill near the old McMaster homestead. He married Alvine West (1901-1982) Their daughter Sharon married Dick Mitchell (1926-2023) changing the name on the property again but it was still in the same family.

Their son Craig has run the ranch for some time but apparently yielded to the pressure of economic realties. One could make the argument that Elk is hanging on to the Greenwood name by the strength of two or three family names alone.

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COMMUNITY REHEARSAL open to all.

Preston Hall, Wed, December 11, 5-7pm

Guest Conductor Les Phutzenreuter, accompanists Robin Knutson and Jack Leung, will lead a rehearsal for everyone who would like to practice their part in Handel's Messiah together with others. Scores will be provided and avaiable to borrow until the end of Saturday's performance.

Free event to get ready for Saturday, Dec. 14th Sing Along Messiah, 3 PM Mendocino Presbyterian Church.

symphonyoftheredwoods.org

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ED NOTES

THREE REAL SHORT STORIES in ascending order of terror. Short story one: A Chinese foot doctor told me that he used to fish out of Fort Bragg's Noyo Harbor. The foot doctor fisherman said he never fished for salmon “because that’s what everyone else did back then.” He said he fished for rock cod, which he could sell fresh to “San Francisco's better Chinese restaurants” for upwards of five to ten dollars a pound. Cash. He said the other fishermen laughed when he’d tell them he was fishing for rock cod, which was then regarded as a junk fish. The foot doctor said he and his fishing partner built underwater cages in the Noyo near where they berthed their boat to keep the fish alive and fresh until they'd collected thousands of dollars worth of the despised cod. Then they'd take them to the city where they were paid cash for them on the spot. “I fished out of Noyo until my foot practice got going,” the doctor said. “I made a lot of money from rock cod, more money than I could have made salmon fishing, and I still remember how everyone laughed at me. They thought I was crazy.”

SHORT STORY TWO. A Twenty-two year-old woman, engaged to be married, left her cell phone in a city bar popular with young people. She said she was sure it had fallen out of her purse at the bar because it was the only place she'd gone after work. She’d met friends, including her boyfriend, for one drink and then everyone had said good night and gone home because it was a work night. The young woman couldn't find her phone when she got to her apartment. She hurried back to the bar. The bar was still crowded but no one had found her phone, the bartenders said. (It was a busy place with three or four bartenders.) But someone had found it, a malicious someone, and that malicious someone had sent the nude pictures of herself the young woman had earlier transmitted to the man she was about to marry, transmitting them to every person on the young woman's speed dial roster — her parents, her two sets of grandparents, the people she worked with, siblings… The young woman spent a week in the fetal position on her couch, sobbing, but has since recovered, helped along by the knowledge that no one in her family held it against her.

STORY THREE. PEBBLES TRIPPET, the famous marijuana crusader, told me that she once rented a place in Fort Bragg for her trailer back in the middle 1980s where her landlord was the property owner, Wayne Combash, a young-ish black man who was said to have been affiliated with the Cleaver wing of the Black Panthers. Mendocino County then and now being a kind of rural reinvention center where you can be whatever you say you are no questions asked. Combash had maybe an acre out on Airport Road north of town with a falling down old house on the front part of the acre. His uncle, Louis Webb owned a place nearby. Combash was crazy, Louis Webb was not crazy. I’d seen Combash ranting like a street nut at the No Offshore Oil rallies. He’d stand there and yell that we were all going to hell and communism was evil and so forth, oddly tardy denunciations considering that the No Offshore Oil protests were mainstream preservationist and the last communist Fort Bragg had seen was maybe 1945 in the big mill strike, and the few communists involved in that one were of the unaffiliated type. What I didn’t know was that Combash attacked women, actualized his threats, as the therapists might say. I thought maybe the libs, who all seemed to be on a first name basis with the guy, had brought Wayne up from the city so they could have a multi-cultural prop they could patronize and congratulate themselves for. But Combash had seriously assaulted several Coast women and had gotten away with it each time because Mendocino Coast liberals tended to be suicidally hostile to “the man.” Cops were still blue meanies to be avoided even when crazy people were trying to kill you. So Combash's assaults went unreported. Even his victims would say, “Well, poor Wayne must have been off his meds.” Or, “He’ll be all right if he gets therapy.” One night Wayne went after Pebs. He’d been threatening Pebs all day, and he'd been drinking. Wayne was a lot crazier when he was drinking, though it was often hard to distinguish him drunk from him sober. Pebs had heard of the other attacks on women and had been planning to move off Wayne's property but hadn’t yet. That day Wayne, drunk, had been outside Pebs' trailer shouting that he was going to kill her and burn her house down, that Pebs was putting some bad mojo on him. Wayne's mother told Pebs that when Wayne had acted up as a boy Mom would tie him up in a corner and surround him with lit candles. That discipline strategy just might cause a boy child to grow up with serious mom issues, and a generalized distrust of women. Sure enough, Wayne grew up and went on the attack. That day — Get Pebs Day — Wayne was obviously psyching himself up to do Pebs some serious harm, walking around her trailer yelling that she and the trailer were going to be torched. Pebs went looking for some male muscle to sleep on her couch to fend Wayne off if he came crashing through the door in the middle of the night. She found the muscle, but it was drunk muscle, and feeble muscle when it was sober. Wayne duly crashed through the door about 4am, running through the poor old drunk like he wasn’t there, and began clawing at Pebs’ eye. With blood running down her face, and her eye part way out of its socket, Pebs, literally fighting for her life, was somehow able to free herself and run for her car. She got herself to Coast Hospital where doctors told her she’d arrived just in time to save her vision. Combash had indeed proceeded to torch Pebs' trailer. When the cops arrived, he was dancing around the flames singing out about how he got Pebble's evil eye and how he'd stopped Pebs' “freedom lifestyle.” The drunk bodyguard never touched another drop; he was scared sober. Combash was arrested and, natch, soon released. Trying to pluck someone's eye out and burning her house down was handled as a psychiatric misdemeanor, and that's Mendocino County to this day, folks. Pebs had to hide from Combash because he told everyone he was determined to find her and finish her off. While Wayne looked for her, Pebs was taken in by Nog Johnson out Pudding Creek. But Pebs wasn’t about to let Combash get away with the attack on her. She testified against him and she put a lien on his property. Ha-ha, people said. A lien on a crazy guy’s place. You will get zero damages, Pebs, you're wasting your time. But Pebs persisted, and when Wayne Combash turned up dead at Rainbow Falls near Mendocino with a bullet in his head, Pebs finally got the money, not enough to make up for the scare Combash had put in her or the damage he’d done her, but something, which is a dollar more than anybody thought she'd get. Who shot Combash? The case is still open, but from the day it happened every rumor said that Louis Webb, Uncle Louie, also now deceased, had done it. He’d been heard to say he was tired of bailing his nephew out of trouble, tired of people complaining to him that Wayne had done this, that or the other thing. Louis Webb was a respectable citizen, a Gray Panther not a black one, a veteran, a member of the Fort Bragg VFW. People were happy with his terminal Wayne intervention, and Uncle Louie never argued when people congratulated him for doing it.

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John Mendosa standing in front of his Highway 1 sign advertising Mendosa’s General Merchandise. This charming billboard was painted and signed by Elmer D. Woodworth, a local house, auto, and sign painter by trade, but known to all as “an artist in reality and spirit.”

The sign was located on Highway 1 (Shoreline Highway) at Little River. Billboard copy: "Mendosa's General Merchandise. First Stop Over the Hill. A General Stock of Sporting Goods." (Gift of Jeanette Hansen)

(The above photo is included in the book, ‘A Mendocino Remembrance, c. 1942, published by the Kelley House Museum.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, December 9, 2024

EDWARD ANDERSON, 19, Ukiah. Narcotics for sale, obstruction of justice, armed with firearm in commission of felony, switchblade.

WILLIAM ANDES, 47, Petaluma/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

VANESSA ELIABETH, 55, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JEREMY EUBANKS, 51, Willits. DUI, bringing controlled substance into jail.

VULADIMITZ GALAVEZ-RODRIGUEZ, 48, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

AMANDA MARRUFO, 37, Annapolis. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JEROME MCMURPHY, 54, Ukiah. Trespassing, parole violation.

STEVEN MORGAN, 72, Laytonville. DUI.

TALON TREPPA, 18, Redwood Valley. Narcotics for sale, conspiracy.

MAURICIO VARGAS-CARRASCO, 33, Ukiah. DUI, child endangerment.

CESLEY WILLIAMS, 32, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

KRYSTAL WILLIAMS, 34, Willits. Failure to appear.

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PHOTOS FROM THE EDGE 07 - MUSHROOMS

by David Bacon

I love mushrooms because of their mystery. When you get down on your knees, close to the pine needles where they grow, in the wet spongy earth after the first rains of the fall, the world looks strange and ancient. Their round bulbous and conical flesh pushes through a carpet of thin needles and rough branches, where they seem to come from another hidden world.

These mushrooms appeared in November, in the pine forest of MacKerricher State Park on the coast. As I wandered through the trees, the fog filtered through the branches and the surf pounded and hissed on the sand at the forest's edge. Walking through the trees, trying to avoid stepping on the mushrooms themselves, I was still stepping on a living being under the forest floor.

The mushroom is the fruit or reproductive organ of a much larger living organism that is truly hidden, the mycelium. One mycelium network, Armillaria Solidipes, is 2000 years old and is over three miles across. The first mushrooms appeared on earth 800 million years ago, so as humans, we're just a blip in their history. And since scientists believe that the organism communicates through mycelium, and that it even has learning capacity and memory, perhaps they have some knowledge of that time, when they were alone on the earth.

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2024/12/photos-from-edge-07-mushrooms.html

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BILL AYERS IN THE EAST BAY THIS WEEKEND

(via Skip Taube)

Hello friends —

Just a reminder that you can catch Bill Ayers talking about his new book, When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation. Really it is an invitation to a discussion about the state of the movement today in these most challenging times.

He will be at Hasta Muerte cafe at 2701 Fruitvale Ave in Oakland, at 3:30 on Saturday, December 14th.

Then on the next day, Sunday December 15th, he will be at La Pena in Berkeley, 3105 Shattuck Ave at 6:30. This will be a fundraiser for KPFA ($25 donation requested) as he engages in discussion with Cat Brooks of the Anti-Police Terror Project and with all of you.

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NURSING HOME SQUEEZE

Editor:

I read with increasing horror about how the nursing home industry wants Donald Trump to get rid of a regulation calling for adequate staffing. The corporations that own nursing homes obviously value money over the quality of life of the persons in their care.

The article says quality of care/adequate staffing has been of concern for decades. The one federal mandate that reverses the privilege of corporations over persons is probably not going to go into effect because it would raise expenses 2%.

In a past life, I was a social work educator overseeing interns, and I visited many nursing homes. They ranged from totally caring to warehousing. I watched one student get hired, promoted and change from colleague to cold, distanced and uncaring head administrator. He’d bought into the corporate model to get ahead and left his professional ethics behind. He became a stooge.

Decisions about care don’t take place in the facility. They are made in a corporate headquarters by persons skilled in numbers manipulation. Care of our aged loved ones is literally of little, if any, concern to bean counters.

According to Citizens United, these corporations are persons. Give me a break.

Jeffrey J. Olson

Clearlake Oaks

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“IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD, there’s always been a certain ambivalence about taking pleasure at the table. There’s been this notion - this puritanical notion - that if you take too much pleasure in your food, then it might somehow lead to bad character… I think the French have always understood … that residual sense of food being good, food being important, food being worth waiting for and food being worth spending time with. Eating is and should be a joyous occasion. As should the use of all your senses.

So, America, perhaps you should try it. Maybe duck out of the office when the boss isn’t looking or call in sick for that boring meeting. Pull up a chair at a local joint, grab a tasty beverage and eat a ham sandwich. Really eat a ham sandwich.

You just may find that you not only love the French again, but you may also love life and ultimately the world.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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DAYS LIKE THIS

by Van Morrison

When it's not always raining there'll be days like this
When there's no one complaining there'll be days like this
When everything falls into place like the flick of a switch
Well, my mama told me, "There'll be days like this"

When you don't need to worry there'll be days like this
When no one's in a hurry there'll be days like this
When you don't get betrayed by that old Judas kiss
Oh, my mama told me, "There'll be days like this"

When you don't need an answer there'll be days like this
When you don't meet a chancer there'll be days like this
When all the parts of the puzzle start to look like they fit
Then I must remember there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this

When everyone is up front and they're not playing tricks
When you don't have no freeloaders out to get their kicks
When it's nobody's business the way that you wanna live
I just have to remember there'll be days like this

When no one steps on my dreams there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there'll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well, my mama told me, "There'll be days like this"

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A GINSENG KINDA DAY

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Stormy Monday was spent at the Smithsonian Mall, enjoying the many museums and countless exhibits, all of which were inspiring and awesome and a great thrill to be at. Took time out at the cafe at the American Indian Museum for a double chocolate muffin and coffee, and sat by the window looking out on the large rocks and waterfall installation. Later, walked all the way to Chinatown to get some ginseng (with the root in the bottle), before dropping into the MLK public library to use a guest computer. Will next get on the Metro and return to the rough 'n tumble homeless shelter, which is free of charge. The social security disbursements continue to come in monthly, and the California EBT as well, plus some small LOTTO winnings. This is my reward after decades of service to America, which includes a hefty amount of spiritual anarchism. I am looking forward to the remainder of this lifetime, before going up forever. Good luck, and may you realize in this lifetime.

Craig Louis Stehr

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AI, NUCLEAR ENERGY & BOB MARLEY

by Paul Modic

Here comes AI, and besides the possibility of singularity, when artificial intelligence becomes more intelligent than humans and possibly destroys the world (a few years away is the latest guess), there are other factors to be aware of and/or fear.

To house the gigantic computers in data centers necessary to generate AI, many large facilities are being built, often behind blind ownership deals with the big tech companies hiding until the land and electrical power is obtained and contracts are signed. This happens often in rural areas, desperate for jobs, where there is cheap land and power. Some communities have embraced them and others are fighting against them, sometimes successfully stopping the projects and the attendant noise and pollution, but most are being approved by local governments and being built.

To power the massive projects companies are planning to revive nuclear power, Microsoft is attempting to invest millions to restart and get all the power from the Three Mile Island reactor which didn’t meltdown in 1979, and nuclear power has been one of the highest growing stocks for investors this year.

(Remember the Bob Marley song “Redemption Song,” (1980) when he sang “Have no fear for atomic energy, ‘cause non of them can stop the time”? Whenever I heard those lyrics I thought, “Really Bob? I don’t think so.”)

So here comes AI. Will it be a plus for humanity, or another money-grab and planetary disaster?

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CALIFORNIA IS OFFERING UP TO $2,000 FOR NEW E-BIKES. HERE’S HOW TO CASH IN

by Nora Mishanec

Starting this month, a state voucher program is offering eligible Californians up to $2,000 toward the purchase of a new electric bike.

The program, launched by the California Air Resources Board, is an effort to expand access to zero-emissions transportation modes, especially in low-income areas most affected by air pollution.

The agency will begin accepting applications through a website beginning on Dec. 18 at 6 p.m. Approved applicants will be notified by email and will receive a voucher up to $2,000 to buy a new e-bike or bicycle accessories from participating retailers.

To qualify, California residents must be at least 18 years old and have a gross annual household income less than 300% of the Federal Poverty Level, meaning $45,000 for individuals and $61,000 for couples.

Unlike tax credits offered for new electric vehicles, participants in the program don’t need to pay upfront to receive reimbursement. Instead, officials said, it was designed to act as a discount at the point-of-sale to help residents who might otherwise not be able to afford an e-bike. The funds can also be used to buy helmets, locks, baskets, mirrors, lights and reflective clothing.

“By using e-bikes, people can get around and meet everyday needs while improving air quality,” said Steven Cliff, the California Air Resources Board’s executive officer.

The first installment will offer $3 million to help fund 1,500 e-bike incentive vouchers to eligible California residents on a first-come, first-served basis. The agency said it plans to give away a total of $7.5 million over the course of the program, with future installments aimed at low-income households.

E-bike use is surging in the Bay Area, with the Bay Wheels regional bike share program noting an uptick in the number of people using its fleet of electric bikes that launched in 2019. Bike-share networks in Boston, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C., have reported higher ridership this year than before the pandemic, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows.

(SF Chronicle)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

No one has achieved the heights of race hustle like Al Sharpton and his lieutenant Alton Maddox, who in 1987 accused the NY attorney general of masturbating to pictures of Tawana Brawley, the 15-year-old black girl who falsely accused four white men of raping her and leaving her in a trash bag with racial slurs written on her in feces. It was a total fraud that Sharpton made a headline case for months. Every word he spoke promoting wretched Tawana's deceit was a lie but it got him fame and fortune.

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LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

Suspect Is Charged in C.E.O.’s Murder After Arrest in Pennsylvania

Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway

The Netanyahu Corruption Trial, Explained

TikTok Asks Court to Temporarily Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough

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LUIGI MANGIONE CHARGED WITH MURDERING HEALTHCARE CEO IN NEW YORK

A 26-year-old man has been charged with murder over last week's fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City.

Luigi Mangione was taken into custody at a McDonald's in the town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 280 miles west of New York City on Monday after a customer at the fast-food outlet recognised him.

An Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland family, he was found in possession of a gun and a handwritten document that indicated "motivation and mindset", according to police.

Mr Mangione then appeared in a Pennsylvania court to be arraigned on five initial counts and was denied bail.

Just hours later, New York investigators charged Mr Mangione with murder and four other counts including firearms charges.

Mr Thompson, 50, was fatally shot in the back last Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan where UnitedHealthcare, the medical insurance giant he led, was holding an investors' meeting.

Police say he was targeted in a pre-planned killing.

Mr Mangione is in jail in Pennsylvania, where he was formally charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police.

He was handcuffed at the wrists and ankles when he appeared in court there earlier on Monday.

Wearing jeans and a dark blue jersey, Mr Mangione seemed calm during the hearing, occasionally looking around at those present, including the media.

Last week's shooting triggered a huge manhunt, with New York City investigators using one of the world's largest digital surveillance systems as well as police dogs, drones and divers in a Central Park lake to search for the attacker.

Investigators revealed that finding Mr Mangione was a complete surprise, as they did not have his name on a list of suspects before Monday.

It was ultimately a McDonald's customer in Altoona that recognised the suspect from media coverage and alerted an employee, who then tipped off the police.

When police arrived, Mr Mangione showed them a fake New Jersey driver's licence with the name Mark Rosario, said court papers.

He "became quiet and started to shake" when an officer asked if he had been to New York recently, the criminal complaint adds.

When he was told he would be arrested if he lied about his name, he gave his real name, according to the court papers.

Asked why he lied, he told officers that "I clearly shouldn't have".

A search of his backpack uncovered what police called a "ghost gun" - which could have been 3D-printed - and a loaded magazine with six rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Prosecutors said he was also carrying a US passport and $10,000 cash, $2,000 of it in foreign currency, though Mr Mangione disputed the amount in court.

A three-page handwritten document found on his possession suggested he harboured "ill will towards corporate America", said officials.

Investigators say the words "deny", "defend" and "depose" were written on shell casings found at the scene of Mr Thompson's murder.

Officials believe this could be a reference to what critics call the "three Ds of insurance" - tactics used by insurance companies to reject payment claims by patients in America's complicated healthcare system.

Earlier in the day, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the weapon and suppressor seized by investigators from the suspect were "both consistent with the weapon used in the murder" of Mr Thompson.

Mr Mangione is now expected to be presented with the option of waiving his extradition to the state of New York, or contesting it.

If he waives it, he will immediately be made available to New York authorities. If he contests it, the process could take between 30 and 45 days.

Mr Mangione's family said they were "shocked and devastated" by his arrest.

"We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved," said their statement, which was posted on social media late on Monday by the defendant's cousin, Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione.

As a teenager, Mr Mangione attended a private all-boys school in Maryland, where he was class valedictorian, a title usually awarded to students with the best grades.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college.

His LinkedIn account says he worked as a data engineer in California. TrueCar, a website for car buyers, confirmed that he had been employed there but left in 2023.

Mr Mangione's last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Several posts to an account on X, formerly Twitter, that appeared to belong to Mr Mangione suggested that friends had been trying to reach him, with one person posting in October that "nobody has heard from you in months".

Social media profiles provide some possible clues about Mr Mangione's thinking. A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – more popularly known as the Unabomber manifesto.

Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996.

In his review, Mr Mangione wrote: "When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution." … ”Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."

Police say a document written by Luigi Mangione include specific threats to other people, "but it does seem he has some ill will towards corporate America".

(BBC)

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LUIGI MANGIONE, SUSPECT IN KILLING OF UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO, HAS BAY AREA TIES

A 26-year-old man now in custody in connection with the murder investigation of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has ties to the Bay Area, officials said.

New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said i that the killing was a “brazen, targeted murder.” NYPD police had circulated a photo of a suspect, offering a $10,000 reward for information about him.

Mangione was arrested after a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania, recognized him and called the police, Tisch said. When he was arrested, police found several items that connected Mangione to the fatal shooting, including a gun, multiple fake ID cards and a firearm suppresser.

Mangione was born in Maryland and his last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said during the press conference. Kenny also noted that Mangione has “ties to San Francisco” but did not mention specifics.

Mangione appears to have participated in a Stanford University pre-collegiate studies program in the summer of 2019, according to his LinkedIn page and a photo on his Facebook profile. Stanford University did not respond to SFGate’s request for information about Mangione’s attendance.

A backpack found in Central Park on Friday that police believe belonged to the suspect was made by Peak Design, a San Francisco-based company. Peter Dering, the company’s founder and chief executive, told the New York Times that he identified the backpack and called the NYPD tip line. Dering told the outlet that the backpack is made for photographers.

Mangione’s most recent employer was a Santa Monica-based automotive pricing company, TrueCar, Inc., where he worked as a data engineer, his LinkedIn page shows. The company told SFGate that Mangione has not been an employee since 2023.

Thompson’s killing has sparked public discussion about the American health insurance market.

Police have not released information about the possible motivation for the killing, but bullet casings found on the scene were inscribed with the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend.”

“It does seem he has some ill will toward corporate America,” Kenny said.

(SF Gate)

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DANIEL PENNY IS A VINDICATED HERO. NOW IT'S UP TO US TO WARN THE VENGEFUL BLM EXTREMISTS THAT IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO HIM, THERE'LL BE ALL HELL TO PAY

by Maureen Callahan

Daniel Penny has been vindicated. So has America.

In finding the 26-year-old not guilty in the death of Jordan Neely, the jury has rejected a racialized criminal justice system that sees white people as inherently evil and black people as perpetual victims.

But we still have a long way to go. After the verdict was announced on Monday, Neely's father erupted in the Manhattan courtroom and had to be escorted out.

'Racist f***ing country,' one Neely supporter yelled.

Another, to Penny: 'You're a racist fking c*.'

Black Lives Matter leader Hawk Newsome, who claims to be Neely's 'uncle', clearly threatened Penny.

'Small f***ing world, buddy,' he said. Later, at a press conference, Newsome went further: 'We need some black vigilantes… people want to jump up and choke us and kill us… How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us?'

He should have been arrested on the spot.

Meanwhile, protestors chanted 'No justice, no peace' and 'f*** the police' — though the police had literally nothing to do with Neely's death. The very lack of police in the subway system caused Penny to intervene and take Neely down.

There was sobbing and wailing and rending of garments, with one person outside the courtroom declaring: 'That is the sound of black pain.'

Please. This has to stop. Jordan Neely was a violent, mentally ill homeless man who was on an internal list of New York City's 'Top 50' most critical cases.

Neely was once arrested — one of his 44 arrests — for attempting to abduct a 7-year-old girl in broad daylight.

In 2021, he randomly punched a 67-year-old woman in the face, breaking her nose and orbital bone. A judge released Neely from Rikers in a plea deal that sent him to inpatient treatment but, 13 days into his 15-month sentence, Neely simply walked out, never to return.

If only the criminal justice system had been as dogged with Neely as with Daniel Penny.

In 2010, Neely reportedly threatened to murder his own grandfather. And in that subway car last year, he said that he was going to kill someone and was ready to go back to prison. Penny and his fellow passengers had every reason to believe Neely.

Even New York City's Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop, suggested Penny should never have been charged.

'Those passengers were afraid,' Adams said last week. 'I've been on the subway system. I know what it is as a police officer to wrestle or fight with someone… You have someone [Penny] on that subway who was responding, doing what we should have done as a city.'

Yet Neely's family members, who had all but abandoned him, are now playing victim. Last week, as the jury deliberated, Neely's father Andre Zachary filed a civil suit against Penny.

The system, Zachary said after the verdict, is 'rigged'. It sure is, but not the way Zachary claims.

Let's get real: If Penny had been a black man, or Neely white, this case would never have been brought to trial. Daniel Penny wouldn't have lost over a year of his life to this politically, racially motivated case.

It was so paper-thin that even prosecutors said on Friday – in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to sway the jury into delivering a favorable verdict – that there was a chance Penny might not even serve jail time if found guilty. So spare us the racial justice canard.

'My son didn't have to go through this,' Neely's father said Monday.

He sure didn't. If only Neely had a father and family that would have done something.

Instead, Neely was left to flagrantly threaten a subway car of passengers last May, most of whom were daily riders and had never been so terrified.

Caedryn Schrunk, senior brand manager at Nike, in her court testimony: 'I was scared that I was going to die in that moment.'

Ivette Rosario, 19, said that she thought she might 'pass out' from fear.

The defense team did an expert job in medically proving that Penny's chokehold did not cause Neely's death. In fact, police bodycam video shown in court confirmed that Neely still had a pulse when first responders arrived.

It's heartening, really, to see this jury — despite hearing the racially-charged chants of outside protesters — deliver a fair verdict.

'It's a great day for our city and our nation,' said Brooklyn council member Inna Vernikov. 'We all feel the tide turning now. Today the jury decided that the woke mob is no longer the arbiter of right and wrong.'

Yes, yes, yes — a million times yes.

Wokery is done. The pendulum of sanity is swinging rightward, as the election of Trump and the rejection of outré progressivism augurs.

House Speaker Mike Johnson called Marine veteran Penny a hero who 'protected the lives of people on that train. We used to celebrate bravery like this in America, but the left continues their crusade to protect criminals and prosecute heroes.'

Exactly right.

New York City councilman Joe Borelli called for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg— whose only other major case this year was the politically-motivated Trump hush-money trial — to go.

'The verdict in this case underscores nothing other than the perverse sense of justice held by Alvin Bragg,' Borelli said. 'Every New Yorker is fearful on the subway and had no problem understanding the context of Daniel Penny's actions. The district attorney should resign in shame.'

Let me assure my fellow New Yorkers: Alvin Bragg won't resign, because he has no shame. Governor Kathy Hochul should fire him.

Not since Al Sharpton has one figure done so much to wreck race relations in New York, a city notable the world over as a true melting pot. Nowhere else do so many different people get along so easily.

But Bragg and his ilk are doing their best to divide us.

After all, Bragg, whose soft-on-crime policies are destroying New York, refused to bring charges against the other man who helped restrain Neely. Could it be because that man is black?

Anyone with an iota of common sense knows exactly why Penny was tried and charged. Penny should sue the City of New York, because this isn't over for him.

He was just openly threatened in a court of law. Neely's father is now looking for a hefty payday. And Penny and his family will be looking over their shoulders for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, his vindication comes at great personal cost, not just to him but to every American.

Who in their right mind would ever risk standing up for fellow innocents again, only to be branded a racist, face criminal charges, costly legal battles and potential prison time?

Daniel Penny is a hero. It's up to decent people everywhere to cheer him as such — and make it beyond clear that if anything happens to him, there will be all hell to pay.

(Daily Mail UK)

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DANIEL PENNY HAS PROVEN THERE’S NO CASE AGAINST HIM — HE SHOULD BE CLEARED TODAY

by Kirsten Fleming

The negligent homicide charge Daniel Penny faces today as the jury reconvenes is a face-saving measure for a farce, the last-ditch effort for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to please a small number of progressive agitators with a trial that should never have been brought.

On Friday, the jury twice said it could not come to a consensus on the top charge of manslaughter. That should have been the end of it, as the defense called for a mistrial.

But Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran decided they should just simply drop manslaughter, so they can move on to the second, lesser charge.

Judge Maxwell Wiley agreed with prosecutors and, poof, the more serious charge — which came with the possibility of 15 years behind bars — disappeared.

Dropping the manslaughter charge was all the more shocking because Yoran fought in the mud for it. She grossly smeared Penny, saying he lied to police and never showed “any remorse.”

He didn’t “recognize [Neely’s] humanity,” she claimed.

Nonsense. Penny wasn’t some reckless hothead looking for trouble. He stuck around and volunteered to speak to police, telling them he didn’t mean to hurt Neely.

Left’s Deluded Diatribe

Meanwhile, outside the courthouse, BLM leader Hawk Newsome comically declared: “The KKK got another victory.” In Manhattan, no less.

“Racism has its tentacles all over this case and all over the minds of white America” and anyone who thinks Penny is innocent is a racist.

Newsome’s white supremacist fantasy was met with the unbridled enthusiasm of three people clapping.

The dozen or so protesters who stood outside during the grueling, monthlong trial seemed to dwindle each day.

Also gone are the mouthy politicians, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and (D-NY) Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Since the incident, AOC has banged the drum to charge Penny and tweeted that “Jordan Neely was murdered.”

She attended Neely’s funeral, where she shamelessly took selfies with attendees and said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who called Penny a good Samaritan, should “read the Bible.”

Why so quiet now? Because she never saw Neely as a victim but a vehicle to bolster her “Squad” bona fides.

Hochul, back in May 2023, said she was “pleased the DA was looking into it,” adding that there must be “consequences.” She’s quiet now, too.

These opportunists are being smacked with the reality that Penny’s trial has shown, that the left-wing narrative about him was wrong — and damaging.

But it’s clear that woke fever has broken. After a decade of lunacy and race grifting that captured both government institutions and corporate America — common sense is returning.

What was sold by much of the media in May 2023 as a white vigilante killing a homeless black Michael Jackson impersonator is now viewed in late 2024 for what it really is: an act of uncommon selflessness on the part of Penny.

The Marine veteran stood up to protect innocent straphangers from a drug-addled man with a history of random violence on the subway.

Righting A Legal Wrong

In the courtroom, New Yorkers of all races testified that Neely scared them unlike any other subway aggressor. One older black woman told the jury that she said “Thank you” to Penny for his actions, even giving him a slight smile on the stand.

It was very clear that Penny should not have been charged, but Bragg can’t give it up. By including the lesser charge, the DA surely hopes to get his pound of flesh. Maybe the jury will feel more comfortable about convicting Penny on the lesser charge because it carries only probation or up to four years in prison.

But the only true justice will result in Penny walking free.

And our leaders understanding that they must act to restore our city’s safety, which they so stupidly squandered in the name of far-left activism.

(New York Post)

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TWILIGHT OF THE RACE HUSTLE

by James Kunstler

Were you thinking of Daniel Penny this weekend? A year and a half ago, the US marine veteran, age 26, subdued one Jordan Neely, 30, a homeless schizophrenic with a record of 42 arrests who was menacing riders on a New York City subway car. Neely was, at the time, a fugitive on an arrest warrant for felony assault on a sixty-seven-year-old woman. Penny applied a choke hold after Neely declared he was of a mind to kill somebody on the train. Neely was still alive when the cops came, but they declined to give him CPR because he was filthy and an apparent drug-user, and they feared getting AIDS or hepatitis from giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation… so Neely died there in the subway.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted Penny for manslaughter in the second degree and secondarily for criminally negligent homicide. His trial has been going on all month. On Friday, the jury reported its inability to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge. Instead of declaring a mistrial, Judge Maxwell T. Wiley dismissed the primary charge and directed the jury to continue deliberations this week on the secondary negligent homicide charge, a procedurally dubious action.

Everybody knows that the trial is an absurd injustice, but that has been the temper of our society for many years now in the age of the Woke Jacobins. Unlike the original Jacobins of 1794 in Paris, who were ultra-extreme idealists, our Woke Jacobins are extreme cynics, imagining only the worst about the project of civilization. Hence, their alt-project to de-civilize the rest of us.

It has been a long game of pretend. At the center of it is the race hustle — a hustle being the attempt to get something for nothing — in this sense, seeking respect and approbation for people engaged in uncivilized behavior. It kicked off in 2012 when one Trayvon Martin, 17, got shot while bashing the head of a neighborhood watch coordinator, George Zimmerman, against the pavement in Sanford, Florida. The news media dishonestly portrayed Martin as a skittle-munching child when police reported him as six-feet-tall. Zimmerman, five-foot-eight, was eventually acquitted of all charges on grounds of self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was born.

Next up in 2014 was Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri. After robbing a convenience store, Brown was stopped on the street by Police Officer Darren Wilson. According to Wilson’s account, Brown reached into his patrol car trying to seize his gun. Brown’s DNA was later found on Wilson’s gun, and Brown’s blood was detected on the car’s door, suggesting a struggle. Following the incident, riots, arson, and looting broke out in Ferguson for days after. A local grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson, and he was eventually exonerated of civil rights violations when investigated by the US Department of Justice. The case amplified the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Other incidents followed in 2014: one Eric Garner, 43, was stopped in Staten Island for selling individual cigarettes on the street. Garner resisted arrest and was put in a choke hold. He repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe,” before dying of an asthma attack. In November, same year, Tamir Rice, 12, was brandishing a toy gun that looked like a real firearm in a Cleveland, Ohio, park, when police trainee Timothy Loehmann responded to a 911 call and shot the boy. A Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict Loehmann. The city of Cleveland settled $6-million with the Rice family in a wrongful death suit.

In May, 2020, George Floyd, 46, a released felon, resisted arrest after trying to pass a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in Minneapolis. Officer Derek Chauvin eventually subdued Floyd with a restraint, knee-on-back, recommended by the city police department’s training guide. Floyd died at the scene with 11 ng/mL of fentanyl, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine, and cannabinoids detected in his blood at autopsy, plus heart disease and hypertension. Officer Chauvin was convicted on several counts of murder and manslaughter and three other officers at the scene also went to jail on lesser charges. Riots, arson, looting, and murder ensued in Minneapolis and many other American cities. Statues of the George Floyd were erected around the country and the city of Minneapolis settled a wrongful death suit for $27-million with the Floyd family.

There were other incidents around the country in this period involving black suspects killed by police and a narrative spread — with help from the news media — that innocent black citizens were being exterminated in great numbers by police. The truth was a statistically tiny number of black men killed by police, and always either in commission of a crime or violently resisting arrest. The hustle is that they should be excused for all that, even venerated and celebrated with statues, tributes, and payouts. Why everybody else goes along with it has been an abiding cultural mystery of our time. It probably just boils down to cowardice. In fact, cowardice doubled because we are too cowardly to even admit that we are cowards.

One signal result of all this has been the increasing reluctance of police to stop criminal behavior, which, of course, leads to ever more bad behavior. Add to that new modes of law enforcement that make it difficult to hold violent criminals in custody — no cash bail, down-charging, catch-and-release. This has been the mode in New York under state AG Letitia James and Manhattan DA Bragg.

It was the decision out of Bragg’s office to keep Jordan Neely on the street despite the danger he posed to the public, as denoted in his arrest record. Daniel Penny stepped in where law enforcement failed. Jordan Neely was not dehumanized by the system. He dehumanized himself and his death was the result of his own recklessness. He wasn’t anyone else’s victim. He doesn’t deserve a statue. The father who abandoned him does not deserve a multi-million-dollar payout from New York taxpayers.

I’ll be surprised if the jury returns with a guilty verdict against Daniel Penny on the secondary charge of negligent homicide. That charge is just as unreasonable and dishonest as the primary charge was, and, anyway, a conviction will likely get thrown out on appeal due to the procedural mistakes of Judge Wiley. The Penny case, I’m sure you realize, is not the only bit of professional mischief that Alvin Bragg has engaged in. A case might be made that he has systematically tried to deprive non-black citizens of their civil rights. The Department of Justice in a new administration ought to contemplate prosecuting him for it.

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THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

by Tom Stevenson

The Syrian civil war lasted twelve long years, but it ended in twelve days. The speed of the rebel advance that brought down the regime of Bashar al-Assad was remarkable. On 27 November, the coalition of opposition forces based in Idlib province and known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham announced their first major operation for years. Within days they had swept through Aleppo, Hama and Homs. By 8 December they had taken Damascus and sent Assad fleeing for the safety of Moscow.

From a military perspective there was little to analyse. The government forces fled or collapsed. Even in Damascus there was no last stand by the Republican Guard or 4th Armoured Division, the core of the loyalist forces. It is unlikely that HTS itself expected such success. The group is not averse to grandiloquence (the administration it ran in Idlib from 2017 was named the Syrian Salvation Government), but its campaign bore the modest name of Operation Deter Aggression. Perhaps they thought they had a chance at seizing Aleppo. Bringing down the regime must have been well beyond their hopes.

The scenes in Damascus were reminiscent of government collapse elsewhere. Statues were torn down. Militiamen wandered around the presidential palace, gawping at the furniture and going through the fridges. HTS’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, was feted in the Umayyad Mosque. Bashar al-Assad, Julani said, had spread corruption and sectarianism but now Syria was being cleansed. There were signs of looting and disorder. The state immigration building was burned. A twelve-hour curfew has been declared to prevent petty criminality. Meanwhile Saydnaya military prison was stormed and thousands of prisoners released. The relatives of the tens of thousands of disappeared are visiting the prison complex looking for any sign of their family members. Many will have to search for their bodies in the mass graves in Najha, on the edge of the capital.

The horrors of Assad’s Syria were similar in kind, though of a greater magnitude, to those of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s Egypt. Since the uprising in 2011, the government had survived principally by its own brutality. To the extent that it remained a political system, it was one built on mass detention and torture. In Saydnaya there were regular mass hangings in the basement of the prison’s ‘white building’. Political power, which had once been expressed through the Baath Party, was increasingly concentrated in Assad’s immediate circle and once powerful autonomous institutions were hollowed out.

Part of the reason for Assad’s rapid collapse is that his international backers – Russia, Iran, Hizbullah – were all at the same moment distracted or weakened. But that doesn’t explain why the regime had been unable to strengthen itself in the preceding lull. Since 2020, the intensity of the civil war had declined. The half-hearted attempt by the US and its allies to fell Assad was in the past. The armed opposition was for the most part contained in Idlib, and the Syrian Kurdish forces remained in the north-east. Under those conditions the regime might have consolidated its hold over the areas still under its control. It is now evident that it did not. Perhaps US sanctions, which came into effect in 2020 and doubled the number of Syrians without enough to eat, played some part. But clearly the Assad system of minority rule by brutal repression was also exhausted.

The Baath Party of Assad’s early rule, which more or less functioned as a ruling party with a large membership and a limited form of cross-sectarian representation in the state elite, had already ceased to exist. First the ruling party was hollowed out in favour of the army and the air force intelligence service, then the security forces themselves became a shell. Perhaps, ruling Syria required a relatively decentralised authoritiarian system, but fighting the civil war needed a centralisation of power in Assad’s immediate circle that was ultimately the regime’s undoing. In any case, that system is now finished. What will replace it?

HTS is mostly composed of former al-Qaida figures and takfiri-jihadist veterans of the civil war. Julani is from a petit bourgeois Syrian background. Having grown up in Damascus’s wealthy Mazzeh district, he turned to religious fundamentalism in his youth. In 2003 he travelled as a volunteer to fight the Americans in Iraq. There he joined al-Qaida and spent five years detained by the US in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca. In 2011 he was released, in time to travel back to Syria and found an al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, the forerunner to HTS. In 2016 he cut ties with al-Qaida and its transnational vision in favour of focusing on the more immediate problem of keeping the armed opposition going.

In the early years of the war I spent time in the border towns of southern Turkey. Hatay, Urfa and Mardin were regular haunts for both jihadist and religious-conservative militias (Western support for the armed opposition was run from Gaziantep). But HTS’s relationship with Turkey is complex and Turkey is unlikely to have foreseen that the group would bring down the Assad regime. HTS ideologues used to deride Turkey and its ‘infidel army’. But such talk declined over time, since it was Turkey that provided protection for the opposition statelet in Idlib.

HTS has effectively ruled the province since mid-2017 in an uneasy alliance with Turkey’s proxy forces. If it is to play a larger part in a future Syria, the group’s record in Idlib could be an indication of what that might be like. It provided basic services, collected taxes, imposed conservative social rules and made short work of its rivals. Its closest international analogue would probably be the Taliban in Afghanistan. Past iterations of HTS had a record of carrying out massacres in Druze and Alawite villages. There has so far been no repeat of that and the group has shown military discipline.

What comes next may be couched by international observers in the aseptic language of ‘transition’, but is there a state left to takeover? Julani may not be able to control the forces that joined his push from the south, let alone the country as a whole. The predominantly Kurdish Syrian Defence Forces remain in control of large parts of territory in the north-east. The SDF commander Mazloum Abdi called the fall of Damascus a historic moment. But the tacit agreements the SDF had with Damascus are now gone. There are already signs of trouble in SDF-controlled territory in the countryside around Raqqa. At the same time, the Turkish air force has been bombing SDF positions in Manbij, Israel has been bombing Syrian air strips and its forces have crossed Mount Hermon into the demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights. The US has conducted what it described as ‘dozens of precision air strikes’ on 75 alleged Islamic State targets.

The speed of the march on Damascus meant that several wars (ethnic, political, petty material, regional) collapsed into one and were resolved as one. But in that resolution those conflicts will separate out and reassert themselves. Assad’s legacy is the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. It is difficult to imagine how to reconstruct a working Syrian state in these conditions, given the damage that has been done. The greatest risk might be a majoritarian correction to Assad’s sectarian system: that would be to rediscover the underlying forces which produced the Assad state.

(London Review of Books)

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THINGS ARE GETTING SO UNPREDICTABLE. Nobody saw what happened in Syria coming, or October 7 before that. Used to be the imperial drums would start beating for war with Iraq or wherever, and then later on it would happen. That kind of predictable development you see coming far off in advance is happening less and less now.

Now we’re regularly getting blindsided by these rapid explosions of movement. We’ll spend months warning about something ugly brewing on the horizon and then something completely unexpected happens somewhere else. I spent years warning a war with Russia was coming but got surprised when it happened when it did in Ukraine because of my own personal biases and blind spots.

I’m learning to observe without making predictions, whether for good things or bad. Nobody knows what tomorrow might bring. Lenin said “There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen,” and even that’s an understatement nowadays because there aren’t decades where nothing happens anymore. There aren’t even years where nothing happens. Things are getting way more dynamic and unpredictable. Anything can happen.

The good news is that in a completely unpredictable world, hopelessness is irrational. Anything can happen means ANYTHING can happen. The end of war. The end of the western empire. The end of capitalism. The birth of a healthy and harmonious world. Anything. In a sea of increasing unpredictability, there is no rational basis for ruling out any possibility.

The great unpatterning is upon us. It’s a hell of a time to be alive.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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