Mendocino County Today: Monday 12/16/2024

Road Maintenance | Highways Open | Rain Tapers | River Flooding | AVUSD News | Clouds | Empire Builders | Wesley’s Dumps | Ornamented | Deregulation Fiasco | Stoner Claus | Ed Notes | Hey Dude | Reindeer Boogie | Yesterday's Catch | Housing Crisis | NFC West | Family Matters | Weak & Stupid | Healthcare Tragedy | Authoritarian Oligarchs | Alternative Medicine | Michoacan Murders | Chicken Bird | Silenced Night | Dickens Abridged | Loving Trump | My Mommy | Sling Blade | Everything Forgotten | Middle Finger | My Views | Kaczynski Influence | Polly Jackson | Lead Stories | Explosive Mix | Climate Change | Death Throes | Eskimos

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CALTRANS UPDATES

Route 128 is OPEN from the Route 1 junction to just west of Navarro (PM 0-12) in Mendocino County.

Route 175 is OPEN at Hopland (PM 0-1) in Mendocino County due to flooding.

Route 1 at the Garcia River is OPEN north of Point Arena in Mendocino County.

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LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN and gusty south wind will continue through the morning and dissipate through the evening. Calmer and drier weather will build through midweek before another atmospheric river system this weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another .42" with light rain & 45F this Monday morning on the coast. 1 more day of rain then Tuesday thru Friday before more rain returns going into Christmas. My earlier forecast of a dry winter sure isn't happening, maybe a dry spring? We'll see.

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AVUSD NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

We continue to be immersed in holiday cheer and school spirit throughout Anderson Valley Unified School District! Our sporting events, in particular, have brought more families and community members into our schools and we have enjoyed welcoming everyone!  

As we approach our Winter Break, we would like to wish every child and family a wonderful holiday season. We hope each and every one of you has time to connect with loved ones, play, relax, and celebrate the most wonderful time of the year!

We have this one last week before Winter Break and Every School Day Counts! As a reminder, we have continued our three-week winter break this year, allowing ample opportunity for travel without missing valuable instructional time. We appreciate your partnership in prioritizing your child’s education while also nurturing family connections. Winter Break is December 23-January 10.  School will resume January 13, 2025.

AVES

• The Family Art Night / ELAC Classification Ceremony was a hit!!

Well over 100 people attended this fantastic event! Families enjoyed strolling the hallways to view student art, students and parents designed feathers to contribute to the mural in the cafeteria, and students were recognized for their hard work in becoming fluent, English proficient. This was a night of celebration for the hard work of students, staff, and families. Special thanks to Cora Hubbert, Deleh Mayne, and Nat Corey-Moran for their hard work in organizing the event, and to the multiple staff members who contributed to making this event so special.

• Winter Camp  is coming! 

Dates have shifted to : January 7 -11 (Tuesday-Saturday) to allow for the newly scheduled swimming trip to CV Starr on Saturday. Please see the Link to the Winter Camp Flier for more information

AV Jr/Sr High

•  The Sequoia Classic girls’ basketball tournament was a success! These young women can play! Special thanks to Natalie Marcum-Soto, who organized this event as a part of her senior project. She has done a phenomenal job! Thanks, also to coach Justin Rhoads, Assistant Coach Belma Rhoads, and our own fantastic AD, John Toohey. We are also thankful to our many sponsors, including Anderson Valley Lions Club, “AVHS Grandma,” The 2E Family, UPCAL Entertainment, Bill Holcom in Loving Memory of Eva, Philo Saw Works, Arrow Fencing, James & McMullen Law Offices, Rancheria Realty, and Gowan’s Oak Tree. What a fantastic opportunity, not only for our young women, but also for the young women of multiple other districts, including Round Valley, Happy Camp, Laytonville, South Fork, and Pescadero!
• Last week’s spirit rally was so much fun! The leadership class organized a mini-basketball tournament between grade levels, and even Mr. McNerney and Mr. Toohey played. Nice moves, everyone! 
• Our FFA program, as always, has been bringing beauty and spirit to our whole school. We are thankful for the greenery, the wreaths, the yummy treats, and the general cheer consistently brought to us by the FFA!  Extra thanks to Mrs. Swehla and Mr. Bautista for their tireless efforts supporting this amazing group of students!
• Construction is moving right along! Our main wing is nearly ready, with final touches being made on the classrooms and library! The modular buildings will be removed the week of January 13, 2025, and the library and Mrs. Jenderseck’s science classes will move into the main wing that day as well, pending the . Students will be treated to beautiful, new accommodations. We will be doing a ribbon cutting ceremony in the Spring, when the science buildings are ready as well. Stay tuned for details!
• We support all our families! AVUSD Response to Immigration Enforcement Board Policy and Administrative Regulation remain in place to support our students and community. We have had several inquiries about these policies. Please find the policies attached to this communication and feel free to reach out to the superintendent or principal of your child(ren)’s school if you would like to discuss these further. Translation is available. 

Thank you, parents, for your continued engagement in our school programs!  We love to see parents at our events, supporting their kids. If you would like to be more involved, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet.  We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families. 

With respect,

Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Anderson Valley Unified School District
klarson@avpanthers.org

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UKIAH GROWS & GROANS

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Growing up a tadpole in the 1950s, I watched without much interest and zero comprehension as construction boomed and entire neighborhoods and shopping centers popped up around me.

In 1955, the Village of Seven Hills was small and sparsely populated, but in a few years it was neither. How could it not grow? Tucked among lots of trees in a hilly oasis just 12 miles south of Cleveland, Seven Hills could not help but expand.

It was an explosion of construction and population; I attended Parma Senior High among more than 4,000 students between grades 10 and 12. The class of ’65 consisted of me and 1,039 others.

About six weeks ago they bulldozed Parma Senior High, built in 1954, into piles of red brick and dirt. Things go up and things come down. Today Cleveland’s population is one-third what it was.

Come the 1970s I landed in Sonoma County, 20 miles from Santa Rosa, a city of 50,000. Today the population tops 175,000. Do you think Santa Rosa is three times nicer/better/more livable today compared to the 1970s?

Trophy and I moved near Charlotte, North Carolina four years ago to a grungy little town with few amenities, meaning miles to a Starbucks, restaurant or bar.

But Charlotte is growing. It has to. It’s big, and about 18 months from huge. Fields and forests all around Charlotte, and thus our town, are being scraped bare for more condos. Go anywhere. By the time you drive back there’s a new development across the street from two other new developments.

No one thinks this construction boom will improve our little town, or Charlotte. But more people and more money is an equation leaders and politicians understand, and lust after. Quality of life is not on their list.

Now, Ukiah. City officials have plans to triple the size of the city limits. Ukiah grew to its present size in about 160 years, and it required lots of hard work from lots of people to do it. In 2024 it takes a few hours around a conference table with some sharp bureaucrats and administrators to make it three times bigger.

Raise your hand if you think the most important consideration is to make Ukiah even better than now. Now close your eyes and happily imagine Ukiah II: Growing three times larger means a big amusement park in the hills west of town, a petting zoo, a funicular carrying laughing families to the “U” where they’ll hop on a mile-long water slide, zoom to the bottom and into the splashy fountain in front of City Hall! Whee!

North of town will expand, and who wouldn’t welcome a minor league baseball stadium, Ferris Wheel, pickleball courts (you’re welcome, Sandy Mac Nab) miniature golf, koi ponds, and a restaurant run by Martha Stewart? (It will still be Ukiah, so we’ll also need an alley of vape shops, tattoo joints, Asian massage parlors, nail salons and a rebuilt Water Trough bar.)

Now open your eyes. Stop dreaming.

Ukiah’s overlords are going to do what they always do: Snatch the filthy lucre no matter what it costs in terms of quality of life.

Doubt it? Drive out to the Land of the Walmartians and gape at the architectural wreckage wrought by the Holiday Inn Maximum Security facility, the nonstop clutter of fast-food restaurants, tire shop, car lot, and one nice restaurant that’s been closed since it opened.

Those in charge of Ukiah are Empire Builders. Growing a city, no matter the cost to that city’s residents, helps a city administrator get another job with higher pay at a bigger city, and after that another, until s/he can retire with millions of dollars yearly from all those government pensions.

The Big Question: Did you move to Ukiah hoping to live in a big apartment building with 120 other units filled with people who also don’t want to live there? Want your kids to attend a high school with 4,000 students and graduating classes of more than a thousand?

Why wait? Fresno is just down the road.

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DUMP RUNS & PROPERTY CLEANUP

Good afternoon,

My name is Wesley and I'm a retired veteran who owns Wesley’s Dumps. You might have heard of me. Doing dump runs, property cleanup, appliance installs, LPG conversions on appliances, you name it. Call or text 707-755-0606 for a quote. wesleymorrill@gmail.com

Have a great day

Wesley Morrill

Fort Bragg

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A COLOSSAL FAILURE BY COLOSSAL IMBECILES

by Jim Shields

I recently saw a post on the Anderson Valley Advertiser’s website where the writer blamed then-Governor Pete Wilson for de-regulating PG&E and the state’s two other major electrical utilities back in the mid-1990s.

That post did not even begin to accurately reflect the actual history of electrical de-regulation in this state. What history tells us is an entirely different story, a tale rooted in the collaborating, scheming, and conspiring of the Democratic and Republican Parties to sell-out electrical consumers by eviscerating their sole regulatory Watchdog and Protector, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

PG&E and the state’s other electrical monopolies are able to operate with a public-be-damned attitude because of this state’s fatal blunder deregulating the electrical industry back in 1996. The real culprits are the politicians who brought us deregulation. The entire state legislature (Republicans and Democrats, the Dems controlled both houses of the state Legislature) voted unanimously to unleash economic havoc on an unsuspecting public. The bi-partisan collaboration between Republicans and Democrats fostered the collapse of electrical regulation that resulted in the CPUC’s neutering from Watchdog to Lapdog.

Those elected leaders, colossal imbeciles each and every one, are responsible for the deregulation fiasco.

Here in Mendocino County back in 1996 most local governments, including the then-Board of Supervisors (John Pinches, Patti Campbell, Mike Delbar, Richard Shoemaker, and Charles Peterson), also went on record unanimously supporting electrical deregulation. The BOS was paid a visit by a PG&E exec who was the monopoly’s point man on the Northcoast. He was also Patti Campbell’s husband, Peter. He was a very amiable, charming Englishman, PBS/BBC-style, and the day he made his deregulation pitch to the Board, he succeeded in gaining their support by charming the monkeys right out of their trees for what turned out to be one of the state’s most prodigious fubars. Yours truly opposed the whole hornswoggle; obviously I charmed no one.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve written probably 80 to 100 pieces on numerous facets of this abysmal story.

Truly great leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, a grand old Republican, figured out a century ago that certain sectors of our economy must be monitored and regulated because the typical forces of the free market could not control the resulting anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior inherent to such economic endeavors. Teddy used his big stick to bust the trusts, which is what folks called monopolies back then. He also brought the monopolies under their first public control.

California Populists, led by Republican Governor Hiram Johnson, in the early 1900s, were rounding up Southern Pacific Railroad and the gas and electric utilities which owned state and local government lock-stock-and-barrel. An aroused citizenry brought the railroad and electrical utility giants to their knees, primarily through the creation of public agencies with broad regulatory authority over those industries. The most important oversight agency created back then was the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

For almost a hundred years, California’s utilities policy was pretty straight-forward. In return for allowing PG&E and Southern California Edison to continue to do business as legal monopolies, their rates and services would be subject to control through the CPUC. That was the basic trade-off. Theoretically, and most of the time in practice, the PUC approved rates charged to the public on a standard of cost-based pricing. Whatever it cost the utilities to actually produce energy was factored into the basic rate, plus a reasonable margin for profit.

A century ago, our political leaders understood that the electric and gas industries were the types of economic endeavors that just didn’t work in the free marketplace. Besides, given the then evolving public investment in critical utility infrastructure, such as dams and related activities for hydroelectric power, it was good public policy to maintain these kinds of private-public partnerships growing out of a regulated environment.

The system was not perfect, but it sure beat the alternative — as we are now learning to our great detriment.

By a unanimous vote in 1996, the entire state legislature voted to kill something that had worked for a century.

By a unanimous vote in 1996, every Republican and every Democrat in Sacramento, decided they knew better than what folks knew — and learned the hard way — a century ago: The utilities have to be controlled by the public because the free market just doesn’t work in certain situations. You might say Californians back in the 1900s “had been there, done that.” They fixed it the first time because it was broke. A hundred years later, an arrogant gang of political hacks broke it because the fix was in.

With the 1996 passage of electrical deregulation, politicians hailed the act as a “historic reform” that would reward consumers with lower prices, reinvigorate California’s then-flagging economy, and provide a model for other states.

By 2001, the “reforms” lay in ruins, overwhelmed by electricity shortages, Enron-type fraud and market manipulation, and skyrocketing prices for wholesale power.

Since then the state has stepped in twice to bail out and shore up this private utility by forcing ratepayers to bear the risks and pay the resulting costs.

The CPUC which is supposed to regulate the utilities for the public good, is instead helping PG&E pay for its wildfire costs by imposing rate hikes on its customers and exposing them to increased risks. Furthermore, Gov. Newsom rammed a massive utility bailout bill through the Legislature four years ago. This bailout re-shaped state law to permanently pass future wildfire liability costs on to ratepayers, transfers the burden of proof regarding utility negligence from the utilities to the people, and suspends public transparency and accountability processes for wildfire bailout decisions.

What this history tells us is that the very people we entrusted to protect us from these types of abuses failed miserably in each and every instance. They’ll keep it up as long as you don’t hold them accountable. They’ll keep it up as long as you keep re-electing them. Keep that in mind when you pay your next electric bill.

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 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org

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ED NOTES

IT WAS ONE of those eerily sun-shiny, globally-warmed, post-storm days when I coasted on my bike all the way down Irving to Ocean Beach where I took a seat on one end of a bench looking out to sea. On the other end sat an elderly, European-looking couple, Mr. and Mrs. Cabbage Patch. Russians, I figured, using an ethnic calculation based on nothing more than the fact that lots of Russian immigrants live at the ocean end of nearby Geary and Clement streets, and the Russians tend to look Old World, the men in suits and ties, the old women in dresses, muted blouses, scarves, and top coats. This couple was the picture of dignity, a picture you don't see much anymore.

USED TO BE you didn't go out in public unless you looked presentable by the standards of the 1950s. In that time it was as if there was a city-wide dress code. The women always looked positively Parisian in their hats and gloves, the men spiffy in their suits and fedoras.

SO WE SAT THERE SILENTLY in the sun, the elderly couple and me, an elderly person of a different era, thinking our thoughts. The city being the city, we didn't speak. If I'd said anything to them they'd have assumed I was a nut or some kind of predator. If they said anything to me, I don't know, I might ask them where I could get a good piroshki, and they'd turn out to be American-born from North Beach.

WE LOOKED OUT at the ocean where a few surfers rode tame waves. It was very warm, and I fell asleep.

SUDDENLY, from behind us, a voice sang out an obscene lyric in a very loud voice, loud enough to wake me up, loud enough to cause me and my ancient benchmates to turn around for the source of the sudden blast of profanities.

THE SINGER was a blonde beast of a surfer dude, the kind of narcissistic sociopath common to the sport, if you'll forgive a totally unfair generalization. (Surfers and skiers, surfers and skiers, I ask you, have you ever met a wholly sensate one?)

THIS PARTICULAR MAN-BOY was about 30, I guessed, old enough not to do what he was doing, which was spraying profane disregard and contempt in all directions. He had that self-satisfied grinning look the bone stupid get when they think they're being amusing. Another blank-faced cretin half out of his wetsuit sat chuckling beside the singer.

HOW ANYBODY but a stone fascist could think there was anything amusing about an oaf singing out obscenities at random old people, well, there they were with their surfboards and their blank blue eyes.

THE TWO ANCIENT Russians glanced over their shoulders then quickly looked straight back to the sea. They knew it was simply one more episode of the boorish public behavior we all swim in these days. I kept on looking back at the guy, and he locked onto me and sang louder.

"WHY are you doing this?" I asked him. "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" came back the witty riposte.

IF I'D had a gun handy, you might have read a blip on page 12 the next day that read, “Murder at Ocean Beach. A perfect afternoon at the beach was shattered Thursday when a man described by one witness as ‘kinda like an old hippie’ suddenly emptied a revolver into John Smith, a Chico State graduate and former student body president at St. Ignatius High School. Mr. Smith was well-known and greatly admired among surfers at Ocean Beach. He is believed to have worked as a bartender in the Marina District. An elderly man who'd been sitting next to the shooter said that while he ‘wholly approved’ of the murder and hoped the gunman ‘gets away with it,’ he said he wished the shooter had shot his district supervisor instead.”

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BRUCE MCEWEN:

Hank Snow, The Reindeer Boogie 1953 Version (Country Christmas Songs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jOyS9pmEVA

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, December 15, 2024

COREY CLAY, 52, Willits, Disorderly conduct-loitering, getting credit using someone else’s ID, use of access card account info without consent, conspiracy.

LESLIE MICHELS, 38, Willits. Paraphernalia, theft by use of access card acount info without consent, obatining personal ID info without authorization.

WILLIAM WOLFE, 31, Redwood Valley. DUI.

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A READER WRITES:

I've never seen a more accurate description of the housing crisis.

They want you to blame the immigrants though.

pic.x.com/ugoAJaq0SY

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FAMILY MATTERS

by Paul Modic

I’ve heard that when the last parent dies, usually the mother, the family can fall apart and the children lose their connection, when the family no longer gathers around the matriarch, visiting with yearly reunions, and the siblings drift further apart.

It’s been nearly four years and at least three out of four siblings might be going through personal crises: One has a chronic illness which started on the day our mother died, lives on a mountain alone twenty miles out of town, and can’t pass her drivers license test.

Another has had multiple unsuccessful operations on her foot, using a walking boot to get around for the last year, admits to putting half a cup of half and half in her coffee, and her cholesterol has shot up to dangerous levels. She hates where she lives and needs to make serious and expensive repairs to her home in order to try to sell it and move away, but to where? There’s no guarantee anyone will want to buy it, as it’s located in a dangerous climate-change-affected flood-prone area.

I’m not sure about the third sibling, she didn’t feel like going to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner, that’s all I know, and I should check in with her.

And me? No one checks in with me. I have my struggles, mostly with insomnia and isolation, but the sibs all have their children, which gives them more to worry about but also a foundation of being, of life, of love.

So what to do or say? When my mother was still alive we were doing better it seems, or maybe that’s not true, and it’s just aging?

I’m really sorry my sibling is suffering every moment with uncomfortable foot pain, with another operation coming up this month, and I can’t do anything about it. (I was feeling moderately depressed, until I talked to her about all her problems a couple weeks ago.)

The sibling on the mountain is mostly uncommunicative, which I hate and wish she would reach out or visit sometime when she comes to town. I don’t think she likes herself very much, or me either, though she’s there for me when I need something major, like the two weeks she spent here as caregiver when I was recovering from an operation in September, though I haven’t seen her since.

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TIME FOR SINGLE PAYER

Editor:

Who should be making decisions about a patient’s health care? A doctor dedicated to the best health outcome — or an anonymous insurance rep dedicated to maximizing profit? What’s wrong with this picture? Tying the U.S. health care delivery system to the corporate profit model has been a tragedy for our society. The most important consideration is the business’ bottom line, not patient care. It feels like the corporate master wields the whip that can control patient outcomes.

The recent murder of United Healthcare’s CEO is the ultimate expression of the rage and despair this system engenders. The profit motive must be removed from health care delivery. A single-payer system (“Medicare for All”) will not cure all ills, but it will put decisions in the hands of doctors, where they belong.

Dejah Bentley

Santa Rosa

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TRUMP’S BILLIONAIRES CLUB

Editor,

US News & World Report reported that the estimated collective worth of appointees to the incoming Trump administration was $382.2 billion as of last week — more than the gross domestic product of 172 different countries.

The appointees include Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in unelected/unvetted roles of streamlining government through the made-up Department of Government Efficiency.

Fox News and 50% of America view it as President Donald Trump shaking up Washington.

No, we are blithely watching billionaires who run companies become the loyal oligarchs running the country. You won’t see a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet among them — no one with philanthropic tendencies.

The oligarchs will cut taxes for the rich with the crumbs trickling to the lower classes. The oligarchs will tailor regulations to benefit their interests and steer large contracts their way.

The oligarchy is being built around the Authoritarian. It’s not a futuristic fear. It’s happening now.

Barry Brynjulson

Pleasanton

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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COUPLE KILLED WHILE ON VACATION IN MEXICO

by Katie Dowd

A Northern California couple in Mexico for the holidays was killed in a violent attack, U.S. Department of State officials said. Rafael Cardona Aguilera, 53, and Gloria Ambriz de Cardona, 50, died on Wednesday after being shot in a vehicle in Angamacutiro, Michoacan state.

The Sacramento couple were in Michoacan visiting family when they were shot and killed, KCRA reported. Investigators have not stated why the couple were singled out, although CNN reported the pair are related to a government official in Angamacutiro who recently took office after his predecessor was kidnapped and killed. Angamacutiro is about 200 miles northwest of Mexico City.

The State Department currently has a “do not travel” advisory in effect for Michoacan state because “crime and violence are widespread” in the region.

“We are aware of reports of the death of two U.S. citizens in Michoacán, Mexico,” the State Department said in a statement to the New York Times. “We are working to gather more information and stand ready to provide consular assistance if needed.”

The couple had three children, two of whom are minors. None were present at the shooting, CNN reported.

(SFgate)

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SILENCED NIGHT: THE UNHEARD LESSON OF LESSONS AND CAROLS

by David Yearsley

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols fills King’s College Chapel at Cambridge University every year on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The service is broadcast by the BBC and heard, according to some estimates, by 400 million worldwide listeners. Expats, Anglophiles, far-flung members of the so-called Commonwealth and countless others tune in to hear Christmasy words and music delivered with superlative English diction, immaculate intonation, seriousness of purpose, and carefully packaged joy and wonder. The sleek, precisely staged solidity of the performance is like a giant log pitched onto the yuletide fire, the heft and crackle of its warming morality stoking belief in a timeless tradition that, in turn, conjures an ordered world.

During the service, favorite Christmas carols are sung by the famous college choir and the packed congregation in arrangements that culminate in ecstatic final-verse descants from the boy choristers, their arcing melodies lofted up towards the exquisite fanned vaulting on harmonic feints undertaken by King’s Chapel organ. The fun for the amateur singers beyond the rood screen comes in cleaving to the beloved melodies against this glorious sonic assault.

The carols alternate with the choir’s motets ranging across the many centuries of Anglican church music. These musical numbers are interleaved with nine readings running from Genesis to the Gospel of John that predict, chronicle and, finally, take metaphysical stock of the Christian Savior’s birth.

Many, perhaps most, of the millions who listen, might well believe that the Festival of Lessons and Carols, at least in some form, is as old as King’s Chapel itself, which, along with the choir, was founded in the 15th century under the aegis of Henry VI. But like so much else in the Olde Country and among its New World epigones, this “ancient” tradition was invented relatively recently. The first Lessons and Carols service was held a few weeks after the armistice that ended the First World War. This year marks the festival’s 105th edition at Kings’ College.

The impetus for the Kings’ College service, as musicologist Jacob Sagrans demonstrates in a chapter entitled “’What England Has Done for a Thousand Years’: Medievalism in Christmas Lessons and Carols Services” in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism, came during World War I. British army chaplain and King’s alumnus, Eric Milner-White, wrote from France to the provost of the college:

“At the present moment of utter chaos … we have a chance which, boldly taken, might make King’s one of the most important churches in the land. … It is my passionate conviction that if we could catch and crystallize the wisest principles of liturgical reform in the worship of our Chapel, we should be doing a great work, not only for the college and university, but also for the Church and the Empire. … Colour, warmth and delight can be added to our yearly round in many ways.”

A century on, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is the foundation of the King’s brand—a sonic equivalent of the Nike Swoosh. It is not just the classy English vibe that appeals, but also the echoes of the geo-political glories of a bygone Britain. The Empire is dead, but Lessons and Carols endure. That the service is especially popular in the USA and Canada speaks to the enduring myths of Anglo-American hegemony. Christmas Eve from King’s marks an especially special moment in the Special Relationship, though you can bet Donald Trump won’t be listening through his earbuds on his mid-morning round of Christmas Eve golf at Mar-a-Lago.

The King’s service has been taken up by many American churches, including those at elite universities and colleges, which have long sought to emulate the rituals practiced back on the Mother Ship. Christian liturgical chronologies have to be shoehorned into the American academic calendar. God goes on holiday over Winter Break; He doesn’t hang around for Christmas on campus.

As a result, these Lessons and Carols typically happen, as at the outpost of the Ivy League where I joined in the service, in the midst of Advent, a season of expectation and penitence, rather than celebration.

The readings mostly follow the order of service laid out by Milner-White a century ago. But some concessions and adjustments have to be made, as in the frequent inclusion of British-American poet Denise Levertov’s “Annunciation,” which extols the courage of Mary’s consent to accept God’s child in her womb. Likewise, the choral offerings proceed from the solemnity of Elizabethan master William Byrd to a potpourri of cosmopolitan styles that this year included a folksy arrangement of “Go Tell It On the Mountain.” This number added requisite American flavoring to complement the traditional English fare.

At the beginning of this year’s service at Cornell University in Upstate New York, the director of what was previously called United Religious Work but a few years ago was repackaged as the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making reads an acknowledgment that we are on the land of the indigenous peoples of the region. He then tells us that the Nativity narrative about to be retailed took place in what were then occupied lands. The statement comes in the past tense and refers to the Roman occupation.

It seems clear that the congregation is being prompted— if gingerly and implicitly—to reflect on the present horrors in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. The sixth, seventh, and eighth readings (the first two of these from Luke, the last from Matthew) take us to Bethlehem in the Occupied Territories. One can’t help but think of the ongoing violence, death, displacement, and destruction. The ninth and last lesson comes from the Gospel of John and echoes the opening of Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.” Of Palestine in our time not a single word is heard.

The indigenous land acknowledgement is delivered from the stone pulpit at which Martin Luther King, Jr. had preached in 1964, as did his father fifteen years later. Would King have been silent on the matter that hung over everything during these Lessons and Carols?

The sixth reading describes Emperor Augustus’s imposition of a tax and his requirement that all the world’s residents be “registered,” as it is put in the New Revised Standard Version used in many American college chapels (in contrast to the King James text heard at King’s). This imperial dictate sends Joseph and the pregnant Mary back to Bethlehem. Listening to that reading, one thinks of safe zones and the modern technologies of the IDF’s “population management” as far more advanced and lethal than the Roman census-taking of yore.

This reading is followed by “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and then “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” in which the choir sings of shepherds who “feared and trembled.” The shepherds of today fear and tremble not because of angels singing above and at the sight of a miraculous star in the night sky, but because of tanks, snipers, bombs, vigilantes, drone strikes, and famine.

The Roman client-king in Judea, Herod, learns of the Savior’s birth in the penultimate lesson and dispatches the Wise Men to Bethlehem to bring back intelligence of this potential threat to his regime. Conscientious objectors, the Wise Men, don’t report back. Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents will come after Christmas. Hear Herod’s name and think of the slaughter of children now.

Cornell’s nineteenth-century chapel could be in England. It draws architectural inspiration from the same Victorian medievalisms cataloged in Sagrans’ essay on Lessons and Carols. Come Christmas, it is far easier to live in the past.

Sagrans begins his article by directing us towards a propaganda film from World War II called Christmas Under Fire. It begins with the sounds of the King’s College choir singing “Ding Dong Merrily on High.” The narrator tells us that he’s bringing the canister of a film chronicling Britain’s Christmas of 1940 back to America. As the German Blitz continues, this Christmas will be celebrated “underground” in subway shelters. The adults do all they can for the kids at Christmas. The British upper lip has never been stiffer. Eager to have America join the war in Europe, FDR must have watched this movie in the White House.

For his part, Biden won’t be viewing Al Jazeera’s new documentary All That Remains this Christmas. The film tells the story of thirteen-year-old Leyan Abu al-Atta, who lost a leg to an Israeli airstrike.

Near the close of Christmas Under Fire, the narrator proclaims the island nation’s Christian resolve: “On Christmas Eve, England does what England has done for a thousand years: she worships the prince of peace.” We see a silhouette of the spires of King’s College Chapel and are ushered inside as a lone chorister intones, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The choir and organ join in, invincible. That Christmas, like this one, was not about peace but about war.

One evergreen carol that isn’t heard at this year’s service at Cornell is “Silent Night.” The omission is unwittingly telling. The hush from the moral vacuum of these Lessons and Carols is louder than the massed forces of organ and choir Hark-ing and Hosanna-ing at full tilt.

This Christmas silence is deafening.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest recording is Handel’s Organ Banquet. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

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BIDEN’S FINAL DAYS IN THE OVAL OFFICE OFFER A PERFECT METAPHOR FOR EVERYTHING THAT WAS WRONG WITH HIS TENURE

by Michael Goodwin

“‘This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot famously wrote.

“Not with a bang but a whimper.”

He might have been talking about Joe Biden’s presidency.

As he prepares to slink out the door, Biden’s final days in the Oval Office offer a perfect metaphor for everything that was wrong with his tenure.

He pardoned his convicted-criminal son after vowing not to and his mass commutations included one for a judge convicted of taking kickbacks to send juveniles to for-profit detention facilities.

The judge was in Scranton, Pa., meaning Biden even betrayed distraught parents in his hometown.

How’s that for a legacy?

His most recent dereliction fits another pattern.

Just as he paid no attention to raging inflation, the open border and the decline of America’s global standing, Biden has gone missing as swarms of drones spark fears among millions of Americans on the East Coast.

Biden has said nothing, Vice President Kamala Harris has disappeared since losing the election and the White House offers only bland assurances that there’s nothing to worry about.

But asked who is behind the noisy, bright and large drone presence expanding night after night, the administration says it doesn’t know.

In other words, we don’t know and we don’t really care, but trust us anyway.

Sorry, it’s too late in the game for that, especially when drones forced the White Plains airport to close runways Friday night.

Even the usually somnolent Gov. Hochul stirred to demand answers.

Contrast of Leadership

Only a fool would deny that something unprecedented is happening, and it’s doubly worrisome when the blanket assurances come from Alejandro Mayorkas, head of Homeland Security.

Recall it was Mayorkas who insisted repeatedly, under oath, that “the border is secure” even as more than 10 million unvetted migrants poured across.

So when he says “don’t worry,” we should worry.

The incident also illustrates why there is so much excitement about Donald Trump’s return.

Politics is ultimately about contrasts, and there is an extraordinarily stark contrast between the current and next president.

It goes far beyond the usual changing of the guard.

Although Biden is just four years older than Trump, it feels as if the torch is being passed to a new generation.

And that joy has switched sides.

Action at ‘MAGA Largo’

That’s certainly the vibe at Mar-a-Lago, or, as reader John Peter Zavez calls it, MAGA Largo.

With a steady stream of well-wishers, tech moguls, captains of industry, donors and media arriving daily, the historic estate is living up to its designation as the Winter White House.

The impression of a president ready to hit the ground running is underscored by Trump’s business-like approach to shaping his administration.

His lightning-speed rollout of his Cabinet and other top picks is supplanting the usual thumb-sucking post-mortems about the campaign.

There’s little point in dwelling on the past when the future is taking shape so quickly.

The announcement by FBI chief Christopher Wray that he will resign reflects the momentum.

He could have fought to finish his 10-year term, but it would have been futile.

And for what purpose?

Wray was a deeply flawed leader of the troubled FBI, but he at least got the point — there’s a new sheriff in Washington.

Trump, with a landslide win in the Electoral College and victory in the popular vote, expressed the futility of looking backwards.

In an interview with Time magazine for its issue naming him Person of the Year, he was asked what he thought were Harris’ worst mistakes.

Without hesitation, he answered: “Taking the assignment. Number one, because you have to know what you’re good at.”

Next question!

His answer could be applied to the entire Democratic Party.

It proved to be terrible at governing, with the so-called moderates signing on to the most radical agenda in US history.

The tail wagged the dog right out of power.

And here they go again.

Many congressional Dems are saying they will boycott Trump’s inauguration.

That’s a repeat of 2017, when more than 50 of them failed to show up for the transfer of power.

Some even made threats to impeach him, a promise they kept when they won the House majority two years later.

Axios reports that 13 Dems have pledged to stay away this time, and 20 others are undecided.

My hope is that sanity will prevail and the movement will fizzle.

Again, what’s the argument for staying away?

The public spoke with a clear voice, so those who boycott are proving they haven’t learned their lesson and are giving voters another reason to consign the party to a long sentence on the sidelines.

Dems should take a cue from the foreign leaders who embraced Trump in Paris.

French President Emanuel Macron invited him to the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral while Biden stayed in Washington.

Trump had a friendly chat there with Jill Biden and upbeat meetings with European leaders, especially Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

Newsweek said of Trump’s meeting with Great Britain’s Prince William that the prince “turned into a fanboy.”

All those encounters were a far cry from the cold shoulders Trump often got in his first term, so his domestic critics would be wise to knock off the juvenile antics.

They could also take a lesson from Eric Adams.

The decision by Gotham’s Dem mayor to meet with Tom Homan, the incoming tough-as-nails border czar, about the plan for mass deportations of illegal immigrants was wise and instructive.

Although Adams’ motive is somewhat suspect given that he was indicted by the Department of Justice, the move also reflects his desperation to fix the terrible mess created by the Biden-Harris open border.

New York taxpayers have shelled out billions of dollars for a problem the White House created, and Adams claims he was targeted by prosecutors because he complained the president hadn’t done enough to help pay for an invasion of over 200,000 illegal crossers to New York, not a few of whom committed crimes here.

As Adams put it in a TV interview, “We now have an administration we can work with.”

There is also a political lesson for Dems in J.D. Vance’s invitation for Daniel Penny to join him and Trump at Saturday’s Army-Navy game.

Penny was acquitted after being unfairly prosecuted in the death of Jordan Neely, the psychotic subway rider who threatened to kill other passengers.

A former Marine like Vance, Penny has become a folk hero for his selfless courage in protecting himself and other riders and for prevailing in the disgraceful race-based case.

It’s also not a small point that he and Trump have a common foe in Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted them.

Both cases brought by the Manhattan DA were devoid of fairness and displayed how Bragg corrupts his office to target people who don’t fit his far-left politics.

For now, he’s the face of the Democrats’ brand.

Good luck defending that.

(New York Post)

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BILLY BOB THORNTON:

"I was raised in a place where a guy who was kinda deformed, and couldn't talk plain, was made to live out in back of his parents' house. They fed him like a dog," said Billy Bob Thornton in an interview about Sling Blade with Salon, which he directed, wrote, and starred in.

The film, which earned Thornton the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, was based on his own short story - Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade - which was itself semi-autobiographical.

Thornton remembers part of the inspiration for the story came from his childhood and a boy with polio who was mistreated and labeled as the "devil's child" because of his deformities.

"The mother thought he came out the way he did - and he struggled, just to walk - [because] she was scared by a snake when she was pregnant, and it caused him to come out like that - he was the devil's child. It turned out he had polio. That's all it was. That's where I got the setup for where Karl [Childers] comes from."

"However, Childers was a blend of other people Thornton had known while growing up. "I've told the story a billion times about how I was making faces at myself in the mirror and came up with the character, which is also true, but that's such a surface thing.

"That's not really what it's about. The humble, politically correct thing to say about Sling Blade is that 'oh, I worked in the theater on the character, and developed it over the years,' but the deeper thing is that I'm the kid in Sling Blade.

"Ninety percent of the stuff in Sling Blade really happened. I've seen way more than I want to see in my lifetime, and I think Sling Blade was a way for me to regain some security and some innocence about my past, and the things I've seen. That's what appeals to me about Karl. I feel more comfortable being Karl than I do myself. I like being Karl. I like it a lot."

Thornton wrote the Sling Blade script largely by hand, drawing on the unique blend of humor and tragedy characteristic of Southern writing. Despite Hollywood's general disinterest in such challenging material, Thornton managed to get the film made on a modest $1 million budget, with financing from the independent production company Shooting Gallery."

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Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory, everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.

— Albert Camus

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“I GOTTA HAND IT TO JOE, he don't move as fast as he used to, he don't talk as fast as he used to, but that middle finger still works. Only an animal would not pardon your son. Every parent in the world would pardon their son, except the parents of the Menendez Brothers.”

— Chris Rock

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THE UNABOMBER’S INFLUENCE IS DEEPER AND MORE DANGEROUS THAN WE KNOW

by Maxim Loskutoff

I published a novel about the Unabomber this year, and during a book tour stop in Seattle, a high school teacher raised his hand and asked me what he could tell his students about Ted Kaczynski, because he was a hero to so many of them. The question stopped me cold, reminding me that Mr. Kaczynski’s influence is deeper and more widespread than most people realize.

The same feeling of cold unease returned this week when I read news reports that Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, had posted a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto online. The similarities didn’t end there. The meticulous planning and use of symbolism in the crime reminded me of Mr. Kaczynski, who spent years choosing his targets, designing disguises (even gluing false soles to the bottoms of his shoes) and leaving messages for investigators. The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on the bullet casings found by Mr. Thompson’s body were an eerie echo of the “FC” for Freedom Club that Mr. Kaczynski carved into his bombs. The fact that Mr. Mangione allegedly made his own gun and carried a copy of his own manifesto reinforced the similarities.

There is, of course, still much we don’t know about Mr. Mangione: a full picture of who he is, and what factors shaped him and motivated him. But the teacher’s suggestion that the Unabomber was a hero to some of his students pointed to a larger truth. To many young people living in a system of extreme economic disparity, in a world they believe is on the verge of ecological collapse, the Unabomber represents a dark, growing ideological desperation. To them, his ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence can seem justified.

But what is lost in this lionization of one of the most notorious terrorists in American history is that for Mr. Kaczynski, the desire to kill came first, and the ideological justifications followed. Lonely rage defined him, and he spent far more time tormenting his neighbors than he did on his grandiose plans to bring down industrial society. He killed dogs for their barking, strung razor wire across dirt bike paths and fantasized about murdering a neighboring toddler. The manifesto and its carefully constructed veneer of Luddite and anarchist philosophies were a con to lure others into his world of despair and hatred.

Watching video of Mr. Mangione’s detention, and listening to the words he shouted to the media, I felt a profound sadness. I saw a young man with a promising start in life lost in naïve convictions, and poisoned by his newly formed and corrupt ideology.

Violent men have always gained followers, but Mr. Kaczynski’s continued influence is mostly intellectual. He had a showman’s instinct for manipulating the crowd, and intuited that the advance of technology and collapse of the environment would be the two dominant crises of the 21st century. He callously identified the environmental movement as being the most socially acceptable justification for his crimes, even though he privately denigrated environmentalists in his journals, and proudly littered, poached and illegally logged on national forest land around his cabin.

Decades later, the health insurance industry is now a catalyst for rage in contemporary society — denying people medical care, denying doctors payment and bankrupting patients while making hundreds of billions of dollars in profit. Its avarice affects people of all stripes, and the disturbingly widespread support for Mr. Thompson’s killing online is evidence of the boiling river of resentment running beneath our streets.

In a social media post this year, Mr. Mangione shared a quote attributed to the Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Broadly speaking, this sentiment can be seen as the rallying cry for young people who are drawn to Mr. Kaczynski. They believe that if society is sick, then adjusting to it makes you sick as well. In this context, Mr. Kaczynski becomes a kind of platonic ideal: the maladjusted iconoclast, independent, remorseless in his rebellion. He created his own patchwork ideology from French philosophers, Luddites, environmentalists, even the writings of Joseph Conrad.

Plenty of young people are alienated from both sides of the political spectrum, and trying to create their own patchwork philosophies. They’ve seen little meaningful reform from either political party in their lifetime, get their information from a wide range of sources of varying reliability and take pride in forming their own opinions.

So what do you say to a young person who has come to admire Mr. Kaczynski? I share many of the same frustrations over the state of the world as those of the college students I teach — how we are bound up in and complicit in horrors across the globe without a viable political alternative to chart a new way forward. How do we maintain our humanity in an inhumane system, where people die unnecessarily every hour on the streets of the richest country in the world?

I did give an answer to the teacher’s question, the best one I could. I told him to tell his students that Mr. Kaczynski was cruel, that he tortured dogs and took pleasure in imagining the suffering of others; to read not only his manifesto, which he polished for public consumption, but also his diaries. There they would see what kind of man he was. I told him that the Unabomber’s philosophy was taken from thinkers like Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford, who never killed anyone, and urged him to teach his students about their work.

I hope my words reached them. And I hope they understood that what Mr. Kaczynski represents is not a new way forward or an answer to the injustices of the modern world, but another turn of the wheel of violence that brought us here.

Maxim Loskutoff is the author of, most recently, the novel “Old King,” about the Unabomber and the American West.

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage

How Will the Rebels Rule Syria? Their Past Offers Clues

Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims

An Epidemic of Vicious School Brawls, Fueled by Student Cellphones

How CT Scanners Are Being Used on Trading Cards

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trumpism is capacious. It contains contradictions and absurdities. It borrows from the left and the right. An explosive mix of love and hate propels it. Anyone can afford the price of admission. They only need to embrace Trump, MAGA, and conspiracies.

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HOW HAS THIS YEAR BEEN FOR YOU?

by Selma Dabbagh

“How has this year been for you?” a musician friend from the West Bank asked me when we met for the first time in several years. “For us, we have been through a lot before, but we were never scared,” he said. “Now, we do not know. I could have a chance encounter with an Israeli soldier who does not like the look of my face, or my instrument, and just shoots me. It is like the country is in its death throes.” I didn’t know how to respond. Attempts to reassure or reframe are an insult to the intelligence.

The “only thing” that Israeli forces are asked to do in Northern Gaza, a senior Israeli commander told Haaretz, is “to move the population to the south – and to flatten the buildings.” Nizam Mamode, a retired British surgeon who volunteered in Gaza earlier this year, testified to the House of Commons International Development Committee last month. “When we crossed the border,” he said, “the landscape reminded me of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” He worked at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis:

The drones would come down and pick off civilians – children. We had description after description. This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day of operating on children who would say: “I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.” That is clearly a deliberate and persistent act; there was persistent targeting of civilians day after day.

The most high-tech killing machines our world has ever known are being used against a starving population under siege in a scorched and toxic landscape. Forensic Architecture’s recent report, A Cartography of Genocide, illustrates the compounded nature of the destruction of all forms of life in Gaza. There is destruction on every level: from the drone-filled sky to the toxic contamination seeping into the land and the bodies living on it. The air is filled with particulates, the sea with sewage, the groundwater poisoned by munitions and toxins.

“To my mind, it is over 200,000 now,” Professor Mamode said of the number of Palestinians killed by Israel since October 2023, drawing on the Lancet’s findings in July:

I’ve worked in a number of conflict zones and different parts of the world – I was there at the time of the Rwandan genocide – and I’ve never seen anything on this scale, ever. That was also the view of all the experienced colleagues I worked with. One of the surgeons in my team had been to Ukraine five times and said: “This is ten times worse.”

Mamode described the death of a doctor in his thirties from hepatitis A; the removal of quadcopter bullets from the neck of a three-year-old, who died days later from infection; the lack of swabs for an eight-year-old bleeding to death; the list goes on.

“We won’t stop until they’re all back,” it says on the posters of Israeli hostages plastered across North London.

“This full-fledged Israeli assault against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian land is about everything except the hostages,” the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Majed Bamya, said on 21 November, after the United States had once again vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire:

If the families of the hostages can see that, how can anyone in this room claim otherwise? A ceasefire will allow us to save lives. All lives. This was true a year ago. This is true today. It will not resolve everything, but it is the first step towards resolving anything.

New realities bring new words, stretched words and avoided words. The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, does not believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. He has a problem with numbers. He needs a court judgment. Yet Lammy has, as Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding pointed out at a recent conference at SOAS, visited genocide memorials at Srebrenica (eight thousand killed), and has not had the same need for a court ruling when it came to calling out genocide in other wars and conflicts. More than thirty human rights organizations queried Lammy’s confusing statements, which appeared to show a “dangerously misguided understanding of the crime.”

Politicians complain that the information is not available to them. Only a handful of MPs came to the launch of a British Palestinian Committee policy guide at the Houses of Parliament in November, and there were plenty of empty seats when Professor Mamode was addressing the International Development Committee. The testimony is there. Journalists have been killed for reporting it, but it still exists and is readily available. If there is enough evidence for the International Court of Justice to issue special measures and the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants, then surely there is enough for British politicians to grapple with. What is at stake here, other than their own complicity?

On 4 December, the campaign group Led by Donkeys unfolded a giant banner in Parliament Square stating to the skies: “Yes it’s a genocide.” There is footage of the unfurling on social media with a voiceover by Amos Goldberg, an Israeli historian of the Holocaust, calmly describing why what is happening in Gaza fits Raphael Lemkin’s definition. What will Israel get in return for this genocide: land and real estate? Maybe. Living hostages returned to their families? Unlikely, sadly, as it doesn’t appear to be the Israeli government’s priority. Security? Never. As Jewish groups such as Diaspora Alliance have argued, the instrumentalizing of antisemitism to defend the indefensible actions of the Israeli state does not bode well for anyone.

On 22 November the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese gave a lecture at SOAS on Palestine as a “litmus test” of human rights. Hundreds of people queued patiently outside in the dark, past the banners calling for SOAS to “Ban Fran!” She referred to Primo Levi’s words on cowardice, encouraging us to abandon it:

Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers, and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

The Palestine Book Awards have been held annually for over a decade. Last year the prize ceremony was cancelled. The war on Gaza had just begun. We were in shock or denial. We thought maybe the onslaught would last weeks, months at most. This year, the judges received more books than ever before, and a prize was awarded to a children’s book for the first time: Amanda Najib’s Lana Makes Purple Pizza: A Palestinian Food Tale. Jehan Helou, the president of the Tamer Institute, which built two children’s libraries in Gaza, both of which have been bombed, presented the award. Children’s books have often been the first to be confiscated, she said, or censored by the Israeli army.

The London Palestine Film Festival opened at the Barbican this year with a theatre piece. “There were no films that could respond to the current situation in Gaza in time,” the festival director Khaled Ziada said, “so we commissioned a play.” A play based on the testimony of children. More than 17,000 children in Gaza have no family member to look after them; 13,000 have been killed. The largest cohort of child amputees in history.

“If this is not a genocide, then what is?” Ghassan Ghaben, the founder of the Gaza Families Reunited campaign, asked at the British Palestinian Committee event in Parliament. His family have been displaced six times. The campaign has been calling on the UK government for months to establish a family reunification scheme to allow the relatives of hundreds of British Palestinian families to come from Gaza to the UK. They are still waiting.

On 24 November, I received a voice note from my friend Marwa in the South of Gaza:

One week ago, they entered with a truck of aid, food items to Beit Hanoun [in the North] and they went to the school pretending that they are the people distributing aid and they were asking the people in the school and the children to register their ID number.

Beit Hanoun had a population of around fifty thousand before the war. Most of them were evacuated to Jabalia, but it was so overcrowded that about five thousand returned. Some of them were living in a school. They did not trust the men in the trucks.

They refused to register their IDs and they told the guys who came to distribute this aid or to take it and leave, so they took these items and they left. At four a.m. the next night – four a.m. – they came with a quadcopter asking people to evacuate and they burnt all of their items: the food, the money, everything, the passports, the certificates, everything, and the people they were evacuated during the early morning, without shoes, and my sister, she even forgot her phone, her bags and everything, and most of the people are like this.

The men were taken, the women sent to Gaza City. Marwa continues, her voice heavy against the sound of children all around her: “My seventy-year-old cousin was looking after my mum most of the time, but he went to see his wife and daughter and he was arrested.”

(London Review of Books)

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