Mendocino County Today: Saturday 1/25/2025

Cold Morning | Daffodils | Moving Water | Music-Fest Jobs | Lake Mendocino | Council Vote | Us Taxpayers | Slow Down | B Missing | Neon Rainbow | Ed Notes | Flowerland | Petit Teton | MendoLatino Stories | Noyo Center | Jonathan Frey | Laundromat Requiem | Local Digs | Charlie & Helen Lelesy | Yesterday's Catch | Fixage | Marco Radio | Community Patch | Saleh Back | Blues Brothers | L.A. Homeless | Clueless Prez | Gorgeous | Forgotten Mutiny | Vote Suppression | Silent Army | Doesn't Erase | Revolution Coming | Kitchen Tables | Cage Fight | Big Hazel | Proud Yanks | Lead Stories | Hitler Salute | Devolution | Great Sorting | Gaza Holocaust

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GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS are expected for coastal areas again today. Stronger northeast winds are forecast over the interior mountain ridges and Lake County today through Sunday. Otherwise, dry weather and cold temperatures are expected for this weekend. Isolated light rain and snow showers will be possible in Lake and southern Mendocino Counties this evening and overnight. Widespread rain with snow in mountains is forecast toward the latter portion of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Our forecast morning lows for this weekend are now less than they were, just a little less. 40F under clear skies at 4:30am this Saturday morning on the coast. Clear & cool this weekend with some wind from the northeast.

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MENDOCINO COAST BOTANICAL GARDENS

In many ways, the theme of 2024 was moving water. The rain in January left us standing up to our ankles (and sometimes our knees) in puddles and small ponds, blocking our movement and setting the course for the year. Climate predictions suggest that we will see storms with more rain in shorter amounts of time and longer periods of drought in between. I have observed the weather shifting in this type of pattern. So in 2024, after the torrential winter rains, we put our efforts into moving water off the property when there is too much and moving water on the property when there is not enough. Our maintenance team, Pete Baker and Kala Radl dug ditches, laid pipes, and resurfaced trails, addressing many of our drainage issues, and making much-needed improvements to our irrigation systems.…

https://mailchi.mp/gardenbythesea.org/bloomblast-1210957

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JOB OPPORTUNITIES at MENDOCINO MUSIC FESTIVAL

Join the merry band of music lovers at the Mendocino Music Festival office! We're looking for kind and enthusiastic team players to join us for the 2025 Festival season. Office positions are available now; see dates, rates, hours, and apply: https://mendocinomusic.org/employment-opportunities/

Questions: jobs@mendocinomusic.org (707) 937-2044

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LINDY PETERS:

The vote for Vice Mayor in Fort Bragg was not 3-2 as mentioned in today’s AVA letter column. The vote for Vice Mayor was 4-1. I should know. Not only did I support the vote for Mayor and Vice-Mayor, I immediately shook both their hands and congratulated them both on their selections when we re-organized and re-seated. You can watch the video.

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CARRIE SHATTUCK:

Everyone should be concerned about the next steps the Board of Supervisors (BOS) is taking to get rid of this office, Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector, that is independently elected and not under control of the BOS to a Finanace Director position directly under the BOS. Although they have already denied us our elected official and have placed these duties under themselves by suspending an elected official and having Sara Pierce from the Clerk of the Board/CEO office as an Interim (we have yet to hear the ramifications/charges of these unlawful actions by the BOS).

Please keep in mind that we, the voters, have to approve this change from a voted/elected position to an appointed one. But currently the BOS is circumventing this process, for the next several years, by this collaboration between the District Attorney and themselves.

Us taxpayers should be very concerned about the types of reimbursements and expenditures that are being paid without the oversight of our independently elected official.

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OLIVIA ALLEN:

Good morning! I just moved back to the Valley after 12 years away, it's been so much fun so far! I have noticed sooo much road kill (not just in the Valley, throughout the County), and been horribly tailgated by presumed locals while going the speed limit in town and on various roads. Has there been an increase in people speeding since I've been gone, or did I just not notice it as much before? I feel so horrible for the wildlife, I hate seeing so much roadkill. Going the speed limit makes it so much easier to safely avoid hitting animals!

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MENDO’S CRAZY APPROACH TO MENTAL HEALTH

by Mark Scaramella

In response to our report on the Board’s two-day self-promoting workshop, Mazie Malone asked: “I would like clarification on the statement about most homeless people not being ‘crazy’ enough to be reimbursable for Mental Health services? I think it is harmful in that it gives the illusion there is nothing to be done to get people on the trajectory of stability and healing. Of course if one is lacking MediCal/Medicare or other health insurance it is hard to get a treatment bed, which are scarce anyways. Most programs and services can assist clients with obtaining their MediCal.”

I disagree that an impression was given that there is nothing to be done to help the mentally ill who are not “severely” mentally ill and therefore denied the County’s gold-plated “specialty mental health services” that taxpayers pay more than $30 million a year to private companies for — for a relatively small clientele in the low hundreds, more than half of whom are not adults.

On Thursday, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren told her facebook fans the following, blithely assuming that the mentally ill and their family members across the County are hanging on her every facebook post for mental health advice:

“Yesterday at the Behavioral Health Advisory Board [meeting] we did a basic conversation, and Dr. [Jenine] Miller [Behavioral Health Director] presented for about two hours on what specialty mental health is, what it does and how you can access services, who the service providers are, services they provide through specialty mental health because I think something that gets lost a lot is that the county literally only provides specialty mental health. So very specific diagnosis. Partnership Health [Obamacare/private insurance if you have it] does provide mild and moderate mental health needs so you can access those services through places like Adventist Health and Hillside health clinic and not through the county. So there’s a lot of information. The way that we talk about mental health sometimes get all lumped in together. Your average person with anxiety is not gonna be seen through the County system of care. That’s gonna be somebody that is schizophrenic or a different type of disorder that’ll be using those services. So I’ll be sharing more information about that and the services that are provided in our community not only through the county though, because I’m in meetings I’m aware of other resource resources that can help our community. One of the conversations that we had yesterday was about the crisis line and generally the way that it works. As far as I know. We tried something and maybe it hasn’t worked for us and it is sort of off the radar, but I have seen our service providers including Tapestry, RCS, Anchor [the Schraeders]. What I’ve seen them doing is evolving their system of care in a way that can better serve our community. So what I did hear yesterday at that meeting was that we can now use that 855 crisis number not only for people that are in danger harming themselves or others which we should definitely… If somebody is in immediate danger or has a physical injury please call 911. But that we can use that number as a way for somebody from the crisis team to be sent out to support somebody that may not need law-enforcement. So you can save in your phone the Mendocino county crisis number 855-838-0404 and use that number to call if you see maybe an individual that is on the street or in a parking lot that seems to be either disoriented or acting out in some type of way that doesn’t seem like they’re doing harm to themselves or others, but may need some type of resource to come out. You can use that number to let them know they’re not an immediate danger but that you want a mobile crisis to be called out to help an individual. Try to get the best description. Certainly I’m born and raised here so I know a lot of individual’s names. If you don’t, try to get height, skin color, hair color, description of what they’re wearing, that type of thing to be able to relay that information. And as we evolve the system of care to match the community’s expectations, I think there’s just a lot of room for improvement. As far as outreach goes, generally we know where people tend to congregate and how can we get to them before they’re experiencing some type of mental health issue. And of course, as we work through care court, as we work through Board changes and work with the courts program with the sheriff’s office, it’s always also really important to remember that we have human beings in our community and they have rights and they get to make choices especially if they’re adults. So we’re gonna have to work on that as a community, thinking about how can we support people that don’t want to get into services. And encourage them to build relationships to help them get into services and just generally help everyone in our community be able to be more successful and I look forward to sharing more information, but for now save that number in your phone and keep it in case you need it.”

Notice anything missing from the Mental Health picture in the Supervisor’s run-down?

Where’s Measure B? Where’s drug abuse? Where’s the new wing of the jail? Where’s the Psychiatric Health Facility?

Mendo has accumulated over $50 million in Measure B funds, and counting. The Measure requires that at least 25% of that money be spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment, which would more than $12 million so far. (The measure was passed in 2017.) Yet, in all those years less than $1 million has been spent on anything remotely like mental health and substance abuse treatment. (Mainly the crisis van which does not count as “treatment.”).

So, getting back to Ms. Malone’s point: We have a County mental health system (as described by Supervisor Mulheren) which only deals with “specialty” mental health cases and everybody else gets sloughed off on Partnership Health and the Adventists or the Ukiah Clinic (both in Ukiah, by the way; what about outside Ukiah?) And then, only if they have insurance, and if those unaccountable agencies choose to do anything by way of “treatment.” The drug-addled mentally ill, many of whom end up in jail because even simple possession of drugs (or “under the influence”) is crime enough to get them into jail where they might get some treatment via the jail’s Naphcare contract — not from the County’s “specialty” mental health providers.

Perhaps my use of the phrase “not crazy enough,” was a bit flippant. But the point is that Mendo can and should — and MUST according to the text of Measure B — use Measure B funds to do a lot more than what they’re doing (or not doing) now.

If the County’s mental health system is so great, why is there no outcry from Mulheren, or the Board, or the Measure B committee, or the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, or former Sheriff Allman, or the family and friends of mentally ill or drug addled people to substantially increase the services for the people Measure B was intended to address and help and which the Measure specifically calls for? Mendo should start by doing what Measure B calls for. After that we can discuss whether a negative impression is given by use of the word “crazy.”

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ED NOTES

WITH EGGS fast becoming as valuable as gold nuggets, local historians will be interested to know that the late Emil Rossi remembered when there were three chicken farms in The Valley just before he went off to fight in World War Two. One of them was a thousand-bird operation that Rossi himself ran at the family's Boonville home, another one near Philo was the largest with some three thousand hens, and a third at the O'Brien property near Navarro. “We all did pretty well, too,” Rossi recalled. “Mendoza's Market in Mendocino drove through every week to pick up the eggs for delivery down south.”

THE COUNTRY may be sliding into permanent poverty and chaos, but Mendocino County’s judges, more numerous in relation to the County’s sparse population than they are in any other county in the state, are going to get themselves a new Courthouse, complete with indoor parking to spare their majesties the indignity of sharing public sidewalks.

THE EXISTING COURTHOUSE works fine. There’s no need for a new one, but lawyers make the rules, and when the lawyers organized as judges go to the lawyers organized as a state legislature the lawyers are going to get their way. Which is why an “estimated $179.9 million” will be invested in a major eyesore off West Perkins Street where the abandoned train depot now rests in open fields of windblown trash opposite the Adventist Hospital complex.

THE NEW COUNTY COURTHOUSE will give us twin eyesores only a couple of long blocks from the present County Courthouse, also an eyesore but one we’re at least used to. And as we all know, whenever a public agency precedes a dollar amount with “estimated” you can double the estimate and still be a hundred mil short. This baby will cost a lot more than $179.9 million and serve only the judges and their gofers. The other county offices, including the DA, will stay in the present county courthouse.

BEFORE IT WAS slathered over with police state stone and one-way Argentine junta glass back in 1950, the year America went blind, the County Courthouse in Ukiah was a kind of architectural wonder, the County' seat's unique Gothic anchor was the largest building in town, but a graceful structure in its way and one everyone could be proud of.

Of course the old Courthouse was built in the 19th century when local moneybags took some pride in what their towns looked like, but it's been structural barbarism ever since. (Most of today's judges and lawyers live on Ukiah's 19th century west side or tucked away in gated aeries high in the hills.)

IF YOU’RE WONDERING what the new County Courthouse is going to look like, tour the nearest bank near you. Imagine that bank quadruple-size, imagine it squatting on West Perkins opposite the jumble of double-wide-like structures assembled by the medical Adventists on the other side of the street. Better yet, you don’t have to imagine it; look at the “bar code” plans.

THE CRUMBLING WILLITS COURTHOUSE still reaches right into your heart and squeezes it dead. When that malignant concrete excrescence was plunked down in central Willits opposite what was once an attractive, gracious little town square erected, of course, in the 19th century, the legal community welcomed it as more evidence of their commitment to public convenience. No consideration was given to what the thing would look like, but North County people wouldn't have to drive all the way to Ukiah for legal business. They could do it in Willits. Not long after it was built the Willits courthouse had to be closed because it was falling apart.

THE ORIGINAL TRIUMPHANT press release announcing the new Ukiah Courthouse was signed by then- “Presiding Judge of the Superior Court Cindee Mayfield,” who I remember her pre-judge flouncing around the Courthouse in a mini-skirt as she and Jared Carter fended off the tree huggers while Louisiana-Pacific completed its Mendo mop-up ops, Carter and Mayfield facilitating the final destruction of the County’s timber industry. (If that won’t earn a girl a promotion what will?)

JUDGE MAYFIELD, with all the County’s boy judges peering expectantly out from behind her solemn robes, announced, “The Mendocino County Courthouse is inefficient, inaccessible and deteriorating. A new courthouse will greatly benefit the people of Mendocino County who come to court to do business or serve on juries.”

NO IT WON'T. The people of Mendocino County haven’ t judicially benefited in the slightest since the County’s far flung justice courts were “reorganized” out of existence beginning back in '75. Mendocino County's legal business used to be resolved where it occurred, not in a central structure presided over by self-selected people who make five times the American average salary.

THERE WERE ONCE murder trials in Boonville! Which is as it should be. The present arrangements are made with one consideration in mind — the comfort and convenience of the apparatus itself. And now the apparat is getting themselves a new courthouse, and Ukiah is getting another very big, very bad building to go with all its other very bad little buildings.

WHEN YOU CONSIDER that medieval Turks could erect the splendors of Istanbul, not to mention the architectural triumphs of the Romans and the Greeks, but the best us moderns can do is Willits and Ukiah? Is this what the professors mean when they talk about devolution? WTF?

NATURALLY, the new courthouse, projected to occupy 4.4 acres formerly owned by the defunct railroad magically become the property of the Northcoast Democratic Party, is touted as a huge economic boost for Ukiah. Back in 2009 Judge Mayfield promised us, “This project is…estimated to create nearly 3,000 direct and indirect jobs…and is scheduled for completion by spring 2015.”

IN FACT, it will be bid out, and some outfit from Sacramento will get the work because the local guys won't be, well, they won't be big enough and connected enough, and even that decision will be sloughed off to Sacramento where it will be designed to fit in with the nearby Holiday Inn and WalMart, and the splendors of the Adventist Hospital complex across the street.

WILL THE PEOPLE working and being “served” in the new Courthouse walk a quarter mile or more west to eat and shop in what's left of old Ukiah? Doubt it. More likely they'll shuffle across Perkins to sample the culinary delights available at the Pear Tree Shopping Center, or east to the big boxes straddling 101 for Applebee's and Taco Bell. What's left of old Ukiah will suffer another gut shot.

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PETIT TETON FARM, Boonville

Fresh now: Turmeric, chard, kale, broccolini, herbs, mizuna mustard. … All the preserved foods from jams to pickles, soups to hot sauces, made from everything we grow.

We sell frozen USDA beef and pork from perfectly raised pigs and cows.

Squab is also available at times.

Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com.

Open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30.

18601 Hwy 128 - Mile Marker 33.39

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MENDOCINO ART CENTER

Are you interested in local histories that have not been widely shared?

Join the co-directors of MendoLatino, Diana Coryat and Loreto Rojas, who will share the first two audio stories of Nuestro Norte/Our North, a Bilingual community-based oral history and storytelling project that documents the arrival and growth of the Latinx community of the Mendocino Coast.

Todos y todas son bienvenidos!

For more information: www.MendoLatino.org

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CELEBRATING NOYO CENTER'S INTERNS; Kelps of the World; North Coast Brewery Dinner

Visit the Discovery Center this Saturday, January 25, between 12-5 PM for an open house and presentation of some of the work that Marine Mammal Stranding Coordinator, Sarah Grimes, and the Noyo Center’s student interns and volunteers have been working on. We’ve got a partially articulated river otter that we are particularly excited to share with you among other fun projects. Time with Sarah and her team will fill you up with marine science and conservation inspiration. We look forward to celebrating our wonderful interns and their valuable contributions to our ocean and community with you.

One of our most enjoyable events of the year featuring local beer, delicious seafood and proceeds from the meal going directly to support Noyo Center’s marine science, education and conservation work. Five North Coast beers will be paired with five delicious sustainable seafood courses and diners will be guided through each beer tasting by the North Coast Brewery Brewmaster. Ticket sales link coming soon!

www.noyocenter.org

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JONATHAN FREY started Frey Vineyards 45 years ago! Jonathan toured Europe to learn about natural wine-making techniques, and after becoming an avid organic farmer in the Alan Chadwick lineage, he helped create the first organic winery in the USA! He also worked with the CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) Foundation to draft the processing standards that become the NOP (National Organic Project) administered by the USDA. Pioneering organics in the industry, we have Jonathan to thank for bringing organic wine to North American table!

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THAT WAS COOL: REQUIEM FOR A LAUNDROMAT

by Justine Frederiksen

My family didn’t have a washing machine when I was a kid. Well, at least not one you could wash anything in.

See, there was this big white appliance in the kitchen that could wash all sorts of things, but in our house it was only good for putting stuff on, like the soap you didn’t want to forget when you left for the laundromat.

I never did find out exactly why we couldn’t run the washer — one parent blamed the plumbing and the other blamed my father — but I also didn’t really care. Because when we needed clean clothes, my mom took us to the laundromat.

That was cool.

Not because I liked filling a pillowcase with all my dirty clothes and schlepping it to the car, but because I liked going just about anywhere with my mother, and I loved going to the laundromat.

With no television to watch or video games to play, I was usually starved for entertainment. And to me, the laundromat was even better than an arcade: Full of fun machines but none of the jarring noises and flashing neon, it was my version of a “clean, well-lighted place” full of adventure.

Beginning with the change machine that gave out tiny waterfalls of coins. I preferred when it wouldn’t take my dollars at first, making me smooth them again and again, so that finally getting the shower of silver felt that much sweeter.

Once I had the quarters, it was even more fun to put them in the washing mashing, carefully lining up the coins in the narrow holes on the sliding receptacle before pushing them into the washing machine with a satisfying clunk that brought the water rushing onto our clothes. And if my mother wasn’t watching me, I liked to “accidentally” leave the lid up on the washer up so I could watch its tub filling and the soap foam as it began to agitate, but she always got wise before my fun got too dangerous.

With the lids down on our churning washers, my thoughts turned to the store next-door, hoping my mother wanted to check the sale bin for cheap sweatshirts so I could beg for some extra quarters to buy candy with.

That hardly ever happened of course, but hardly ever was better than never.

By far the best part of going to the laundromat, though, was watching the dryers. I coveted the last one by the huge window where the chairs were, because then I could sit right next to the glass and watch our clothes spin. I could have watched any dryer, of course, but it felt wrong to stare at other people’s underwear and socks flopping about.

Watching clothes drying was one of the best forms of relaxation I’ve known, especially since it was the only form of “doing nothing” my mom would allow.

If I tried just lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling like I wanted to when my mother was reading at her desk, she would tell me to go do my homework, or a chore like dusting.

But at the laundromat I was already doing a chore, so watching the dryers was finally mother-approved laziness that I relished. Sometimes I just let all the colors swirl together, sometimes I tried following one piece of clothing around and around and around.

And sometimes, if I watched the colors long enough, they became the cartoons I couldn’t watch at home, the tumbling clothes conjuring Bugs Bunny and The Wonder Twins for me. Those clothes’ cartoons were never quite as entertaining as the ones on TV, of course, but they were never interrupted by annoying commercials, and they always ended with me having piles of warm, clean clothes to carry home.

That was very cool.

I still have such warm feelings for our laundromat that I like to visit it every time I go back to my hometown, peeking inside to watch my mother showing me again how to properly fold a shirt at one of the tables, then go running to the store next-door, quarter clenched in my fist because I finally convinced my mother to “pretty please let me buy some candy!”

So I was quite sad on my last visit to find the laundromat was closed, and that all of the washers and dryers I loved were gone.

As I took pictures through the window, a man walked up with his dog and told me the place had been gutted very recently.

“Fond memories of the laundromat?,” he said when I told him I used to go there as a kid.

“Yes,” I said. “It was concentrated family time.”

“Well, there you have it,” he said, and while it was not cool to find my laundromat empty, it was cool to talk to someone who also missed it, though for much more practical reasons, as he would need to find a new place to wash his clothes!

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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LAYERS OF MEANING

by Katy Tahja

The current exhibit at the Kelley House Museum, “Northern Pomo: Mendocino’s First People,” explores the history and rich culture of the local Indigenous people through the oral traditions passed down through generations and with stories still told by tribal elders. Before they were credible sources of their own history, much that was known about it was pieced together by anthropologists and archaeologists who learned about it by digging at sites known to have been inhabited by the Pomo.

Locally, Thomas N. Layton, a San Jose State University archaeologist, and his students conducted research in the early 1980s on private property on Albion Head about a mile north of the Albion River bridge. In “Western Pomo Prehistory: Excavations at Albion Head, Nightbird’s Retreat, and Three Chop Village, Mendocino County, California” (University of California, Los Angeles Institute of Archaeology, 1990), Layton describes the three sites examined in the Albion dig, and offers insights into what life was like for the Pomo before the arrival of white settlers.

The Albion sites yielded diverse artifacts: flaked stone tools (projectile points and flaking tools); stone hammers and net weights; the bones of elk, deer, and harbor seals; the bones and shells of marine creatures; bone and shell beads; and hazelnuts. The researchers inferred that the site was occupied at times by people from the south coast because some of the arrowheads were made from Monterey chert found only near Point Arena. Other occupants of the site used Franciscan chert and Clear Lake obsidian from inland sources.

The artifacts suggested that native peoples visited the sites seasonally to eat and gather mussels, chitons, limpets, turban snails, and hazelnuts. The abundance of projectile points pointed to much mammal hunting. Bones found were consistent with wildlife available in late spring and summer. Besides the bones of the larger mammals mentioned earlier, there were raccoon, mole, gopher, and mouse bones. There was also evidence of the butchering of large game. The people who stayed there brought from their permanent villages the rock and tools to make more projectile points. The seasonal camps at the Albion sites were occupied, then abandoned, repeatedly during roughly 5,000 years.

The Layton monograph also documents his investigations at two other sites—Nightbird’s Retreat west of Calpella near Eagle Peak, and Three Chop Village northwest of Willits. Franciscan chert was found, as well as obsidian from inland places such as Mount Konocti, and Lake County “diamonds” (quartz). Along with the rock tools were coastal chiton, mussel, and abalone shells. There was significant evidence of acorn harvesting at the inland sites, not unexpected since acorns were important in the Pomo diet and oak trees are far more abundant inland than on the coast. In the late summer of 1984, the researchers at Three Chop Village were very surprised to find Chinese ceramic pieces drilled into beads and pieces of green glass flaked into arrow points. Where had the Pomo who lived there gotten Chinese pottery and beer bottles?

It took over a decade to solve the mystery, but Layton eventually documented that the source of the exotic artifacts was the clipper Frolic which had foundered on rocks in July of 1850 near where Point Cabrillo Lighthouse now stands. The ship was carrying goods from China and bottled ale from India to sell to eager buyers in Gold Rush San Francisco. The Pomo from Three Chop Village were camping in the coastal cove at the time, as they were on Albion Head and other nearby spots, and they had salvaged some of the cargo. The discovery was further evidence that the inland Pomo spent summers on the coast hunting and gathering before returning to their more permanent settlements for the winter.

The artifacts uncovered at all three sites were turned over to the Mendocino County Museum in Willits. A few of the Pomo pieces and Frolic items are on loan to the Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association, where they can be viewed today in the history exhibit at the lighthouse. Digs like Layton’s would now be conducted in consultation or collaboration with local tribes like the Sherwood Valley Band, the Coyote Valley Band, or the Manchester Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians. Historic Preservation Officers in each organization work to blend scientific research findings with the tribe’s oral traditions, and to promote the integration of the special knowledge of tribal elders and spiritual leaders into scientific studies.

(Reprinted and expanded from the Kelley House Museum’s “Making History Blog,” April 29, 2021)

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COYOTE VALLEY: Charlie and Helen Lelesy. At home in Coyote Valley 1934 Chevy in the driveway. This was taken at the home at the North end of the valley that was a stage stop in the early days. (Donated by Mack Ford)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, January 24, 2025

JESSICA BAUER, 37, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

EMERSON CALDERON, 24, Fort Bragg. Paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.

JONA CHAPMAN, 44, Gualala. County parole violation.

LATICIA ELLIOTT, 19, Covelo. Paraphernalia, resisting.

JUAN GARCIA-RAMIREZ, 23, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ERIK HILEMAN, 44, Ukiah. DUI.

CHRISTOPHER KEYES, 40, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ERIN KOSSOL, 36, Eugene, Oregon/Ukiah. Petty theft with priors.

CHRISTOPHER LOPEZ, 35, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

BRADLEY LUCIDO, 33, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

BRIAN MOODY, 36, Redwood Valley. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

ODESSA ONEIL, 50, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

RYAN PRATER, 43, Fortuna/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SEBASTIAN RABANO, 44, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

ABIMAEL SERNA-CASTILLO, 27, Ukiah. Unspecified offense, probation revocation.

MEGAN SPAIN, 32, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

MYCHELL VEGA-AYALA, 30, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. Or if that's too soon, send it later or any time during the week and I'll read it on the radio next time. That's what I'm here for.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

Life on Earth. https://tackyraccoons.com/2025/01/21/saiga-antelope/

The lawnmower of the future. Also a kind of battlecraft, or exoplanet or sea-floor explorer vehicle/habitat. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2025/01/diy-lawn-mower-looks-like-classic-car.html

And The Kinks - All day. And all of the night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4DV-5d6a5g

P.S. My landline phone service in Albion completely sucks right now. Is anybody else experiencing this?

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

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GOOD TIMES IN THE 80s: THE COMMUNITY POT PATCH

by Paul Modic

What do you do during the pot boom when you're in love/infatuated with an amazing woman but are too socially inept, or afraid, to actually man up and ask her out? (I know, I know, some things never change.) You buy yourself some time by saying, “Hey, you wanna grow a pot patch together?”

I found a little spring above a sunny clearing back in Thompson Creek, enough room for ten plants, five each. It surprised me when she sexed her five by depping them (light deprivation) before we hauled them out, they looked stunted and starting to bud but ended up being nice bushy plants. On our work day, Nancy V.A. and I would hike a mile on the back trail accompanied by her dog Gravy with her fat sheep named China following along.

The next year Heinz and Hoy moved in and wanted me out. I extended my stay as “King of Thompson Creek” (a king without a crown) for another year by proposing to Nancy that we grow it again as a “community patch,” the proceeds of which we would donate for land on which to build a community center. She instantly agreed, we had a successful harvest with our ten plants, and a sunny spot nearby came up for sale: twenty-four acres, including a mostly flat building site and a good spring above, for fourteen grand. (Nancy and I were a good team there for a while.)

A year or so later I discovered a bunch of five gallon buckets full of weed I had forgotten about under my bed. It was a year or so old but that didn’t matter, it was in the middle of the booming eighties, a group of us got together and trimmed it up, and then someone sold it.

We had the land, some money to start building and the movers and shakers, about six of us, drove out to China Creek to see the big dance barn that Big Don Walker had built. We knew the architect who gave us the plans, and though it was too tall for normal purposes the group went along with my request that it be high enough for basketball. (Yeah, I'm from freaking Indiana.)

The first summer we built the foundation and floor, under the direction of professional carpenter Peter Weissman, and I rode my four-wheeler up there every day to see how it was going. I thought about lending the money for the building project and then thought what the fuck and went up there every Friday and paid the carpenters. This arrangement continued the next year when the huge edifice (dubbed “The Plywood Albatross” by the skeptical Charlie Wilson) was roughed in and ready for basketball.

There followed a period of little community use for a few years, besides the occasional basketball games, until it caught on with the school and was used for activities like dance, sports, and hemp paper-making.

Just as people were becoming more interested and a kitchen was being planned, the caretaker left the building with a too-hot fire in the wood stove, the place burned down, and my generous and altruistic contribution and accomplishment went up in smoke.

(It was the perfect crime: Weed-financed, no permits or insurance, and the evidence burned. For years after the fire there were meetings and plans to rebuild in a sunnier location by The Meadow, but then the pot boom fizzled out and it hasn’t happened.)

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49ERS BRING BACK ROBERT SALEH AS DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR

by Gabe Fernandez

The San Francisco 49ers have brought back Robert Saleh to once again be the team’s defensive coordinator, according to multiple reports.

This news, as first reported by Mike Silver of the Athletic, comes amid a bit of a farce surrounding the Jacksonville Jaguars’ hunt for a new head coach. The Jags had targeted Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen, but he was offered a three-year, $4.5 million deal to remain in the NFC South on Wednesday morning. Saleh was scheduled to fly to Jacksonville on Thursday for a Friday interview with the Jaguars, but then on Wednesday afternoon, Jacksonville fired their general manager Trevor Baalke, whom Niners fans might be familiar with. Coen is now expected to sign with the Jaguars, much to the surprise of the Bucs.

But back to Saleh: the 45-year-old coach returns to Santa Clara after three seasons and some change as the head coach of the New York Jets. After multiple lackluster seasons — thanks to a combination of incompetent ownership, mediocre talent and an attention-hungry quarterback — and a 2-3 start to this last season, Saleh was fired. The Jets finished the season with a worse winning percentage than they had when they fired Saleh. Saleh said he had no interest in returning to coach for the rest of the season, but joined the Packers as a consultant.

Saleh was the Niners’ defensive coordinator for four seasons, from 2017 to 2020. During that time, he developed a stout defensive core that eventually took San Francisco to the Super Bowl in 2019, where they fell to the Chiefs.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan and the team likely hope this return will also include a return to form defensively. The past two seasons, the Niners have struggled on that side of the ball, with external (Steve Wilks) and internal (Nick Sorensen) hires failing to maintain the standard that Saleh and DeMeco Ryans had previously set. Last season alone, only three teams allowed more points per game than the Niners, and they had the sixth-worst turnover differential in the league.

(SF Chronicle)

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B. B. KING SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT:

“When Elvis appeared he was already a big, big star. Remember this was the fifties so for a young white boy to show up in an all-black function took guts. I believe he was showing his roots and he seemed proud of those roots. After the show he made a point of posing for pictures with me treating me like royalty. He’d tell people I was one of his influences. I doubt whether that’s true but I like hearing Elvis give Memphis credit for his musical upbringing.

Back in 1972, Elvis helped me get a good gig at the Hilton Hotel while he was playing in the big theater. He put in a call for me and I worked in the lounge to a standing room only crowd. Elvis fans came in different colors but their love for good music was all the same. They were always a good audience.

Many nights I’d go upstairs after we finished our sets and go up to his suite. I’d play Lucille [King’s guitar] and sing with Elvis, or we’d take turns. It was his way of relaxing.

I’ll tell you a secret. We were the original Blues Brothers because that man knew more blues songs than most in the business - and after some nights it felt like we sang every one of them. But my point is, that when we were hanging out in the Hilton in the 70s, Elvis had not lost his respect, his ‘yes sir’, his love for all fields of music. And I liked that.”

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BRUCE MCEWEN:

With so many displaced by fires, Los Angeles County can’t accurately measure homelessness - High Country News

https://www.hcn.org/issues/57-2/with-so-many-displaced-by-fires-los-angeles-county-cant-accurately-measure-homelessness/

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TRUMP EXPECTED TO VISIT LA - AFTER THREATENING TO CUT OFF AID UNLESS DELTA EXPORTS INCREASE

by Dan Bacher

President Donald Trump is expected to visit the areas ravaged by the ongoing climate change-induced wildfires plaguing Los Angeles County today, but he has threatened to withhold aid for California wildfires if state officials don’t increase water exports to agribusiness and oil corporations in the San Joaquin Valley from already over allocated public water resources.

"I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down," he told Sean Hannity on Fox News, repeating agribusiness talking points — and showing his complete lack of the slightest knowledge about California water resources.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/23/2298715/-Trump-Expected-to-Visit-LA-After-Threatening-to-Cut-Off-Aid-Unless-Delta-Exports-Increase

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FORGOTTEN MUTINY

by Randy Rowland

As stressful as driving on the wrong side of the road (to us) is here in Dominica, riding shotgun is worse. I first noticed something like this oddity back in the late 1960s, when I was involved in a prison jail break. The guy sawing at the bars with a hacksaw blade had it rough but the guy watching for the turnkey had it worse. We traded positions back and forth partly to relieve aching fingers from using the blade without a handle, but just as much to relieve the tension of being the lookout. Later, in the 1970s, I noticed the same thing while surreptitiously putting up political posters late at night. The person applying the wheat paste didn’t experience nearly the stress as the lookout. Well, as it turns out, the same principle applies to back seat driving. The roads here are narrow and often have old stone walls or cliff-like ditches menacing the rental car on one side while oncoming traffic approaches at suicidal speed from what all our instincts say is your lane. The driver wants to hug the side of the road but those walls and ditches terrify the passenger riding shotgun. So, more for the passenger’s sake than the driver’s, we take turns. One day Joyce drives and I try not to scream in panic, and the next day we reverse roles. I think I’m better at panicking, because I don’t grab her arm while she’s driving.

Braving these hazards, we drove to the north end of the island to visit the remains of Fort Shirley. We had been searching for Dr. Honychurch and had heard that he was born near there, still lives in the vicinity, and had participated in the partial renovation of the historic fort grounds. Additionally, having been convicted of mutiny myself, I wanted to make pilgrimage to the site of the 1802 mutiny of the 8th West Indies Regiment. These were “slaves in redcoats” under the command of white officers, stationed at Fort Shirley.

The notion of using the enslaved as soldiers for the Crown came from the Black Carolina Corps, African Americans who fought on the side of Britain during the American war of independence. After Britain lost, these soldiers—freed from slavery as a condition of their service—were reassigned to the British West Indies, where they proved to be a successful addition to the British troops stationed there. Africans were considered to be more resistant to tropical diseases, and also, the home office grew tired of supplying soldiers to protect the plantation owners, so they more or less insisted on forming a Black regiment in Dominica. The idea of arming slaves didn’t settle well with the plantation owners, but in the early 1790s 40 members of the Black Carolina Corps arrived in Dominica to help protect the island from the French. That went well enough, so in 1795 the Brits on Dominica reluctantly agreed to create a unit of African soldiers to be used against the Maroons and in general defense of the island.

African slaves were brought in for this purpose, to make up the 8th West Indies Regiment. Though they continued to be enslaved, they were given uniforms, training, better food than field hands, and pay at the regular rate of a British soldier. And, of course, they were stuck on an island a hell of a long way from home. I can only speculate what the process of training was and how tense the moment must have been when these new “recruits” were first issued their weapons, but generally speaking, the plan worked. I know there’s an immense difference in circumstance, but there’s a bit of a parallel to be made between a Black draftee in the US Army fighting against his will in Viet Nam, for instance, and these Black Rangers, as the Dominican unit was called. Honychurch writes that “the drill sergeants found the African names too confusing so they put large cardboard labels around the men’s necks bearing such names as Congo Jack, Lightly, and Cyrus. By repeatedly calling the men by the names labeled on them, the troops in training were forced to accept new self-identities.”

And so it went, much to the detriment of the Maroons, who now faced a much more formidable enemy than they ever had before. By 1801 the Black Rangers numbered 500 men, and had served with valor against the French on St. Martin.

Then a new governor, who turned out to be a slimeball, was appointed to the island. He diverted the Rangers’ pay, and forced them to work without wages clearing his private plantation. The word on the island was that now that the Maroons had suffered some setbacks, and the French were held at bay, that the 8th Regiment might be disbanded and the soldiers sold off for plantation slavery. Conditions continued to deteriorate until finally on the 9th of April, 1802, after having worked two days clearing swamp land using tools normally reserved for field slaves, the soldiers revolted. Late that night they surrounded the Officers’ Quarters in the center of Fort Shirley and using the code word “Black Man,” seized the officers, three of whom were killed in the scuffle. The other officers were locked up. The mutineers, all of whom were Africans, took over the entire fort, but the Creole slaves would have nothing to do with the uprising and beat feet out of there, along with the enlisted men of the Royal Artillery, who escaped before they could be seized, and who alerted the authorities. Troops were sent overland to put down the rebellion.

By shear coincidence, the next day four men-of-war and a sloop-of-war, all with marines aboard, anchored in the harbor. It was the dry season, and the ships had come from Antigua to replenish their water. The mutineers thought the ships were there to take them to plantation slavery and fired on the ships, causing no harm, but alerting the ships that things were amiss ashore.

Finally, a few days later, the crooked Governor, in his role as commander-in-chief of the island’s military, arrived with troops from the Capital. A truce was arranged and he entered the garrison with two regiments, some militia, and marines off the ships. The mutineers had drawn themselves up in formation on the parade ground, and had freed one of their commanders and asked him to stand at their head, which he agreed to do for the negotiations. As an English newspaper at the time reported, the mutineers declared their readiness to fight for King George even though they had rebelled against their conditions in the colony. “The King’s Colours were flying in Fort Shirley with the flag of truce over them.”

Mounted on his horse, the Governor approached and admonished the troops. He then ordered the mutineers to shoulder, order, and ground their arms. They obeyed. But when he then ordered them to take three paces forward, the response was “NO!” The mutineers hastily picked up their guns and a wild gun and bayonet battle broke out. The mutineers scattered in several directions, and some of them were cut down by grapeshot from the ships. Over 100 mutineers perished. Some survived and managed to make it up into the mountains to join the Maroons, others were taken prisoner. The prisoners were transported to British-occupied Martinique, court martialed and 34 were hung.

The word locally was that the governor had really brought this on himself, and he subsequently was tried in London. The charges didn’t stick, but none-the-less he was made to resign his commission. The 8th West Indian Regiment was broken up and some of the men not implicated in the revolt were placed in other regiments.

Though the mutiny was put down, the whole affair was a wake-up call. About five years later, in 1807, the British Parliament abolished the use of slaves in the armed forces. All members of the West Indies Regiments were freed. In commemoration of this, a plaque on the wall of the Officers’ Quarters at Fort Shirley was unveiled in 2007 by the Prime Minister of Dominica. It reads “On this spot, the mutiny of the 8th West Indies Regiment broke out on 9th April 1802 and lasted for three days. This plaque is in memory of those members of the regiment who were killed or executed in their fight for freedom. As a result of their action here, some 10,000 slave soldiers in the British Army were freed in 1807. It was the first act of mass emancipation in the British Empire.”

Though forest has reclaimed much of the old fort, the legacy of those who rebelled lives on.

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TRUMP LOST. VOTE SUPPRESSION WON

by Greg Palast

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.

https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trump’s pardons clearly send the message that (in his mind) violently assaulting and injuring police officers is perfectly acceptable — provided that violence is for the purpose of keeping Trump in power.

Gee What could possibly go wrong with that message? Especially when you also release people like Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio — yes, the dude convicted of seditious conspiracy — back into general circulation to pick up on spreading mayhem where he left off?

I’m old enough to remember when the GOP was a passionate believer in law and order. Boy, that seems quaint now. GOP interest in upholding the law is now totally contingent on the little detail of who is breaking it.

Trump is creating a silent army of Brownshirt shock troops ready to be deployed to support his authoritarianism. Meanwhile, the world’s richest man funnels money into the maw of the authoritarian machine while practicing his fascist salute at home in front of the mirror. What a world.

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BENJAMIN WITTES

…the president might accomplish a short-term goal. He has rewarded his friends. And he has thus shown others that he will protect them if they commit crimes or take risks for him.

He has put the power of the United States federal government behind the patent lie that the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters was an injustice requiring remedy, which is all part of the larger lie that the prosecution of Trump himself was political.

And that in turn is all part of the still-larger lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. So sure, he has thrown some dust in the air.

But if the long-term goal is to erase the ugly history of what happened in 2020 and 2021, to change Trump from the perpetrator into the victim of the crime, it won’t work.

Pardoning those convicted, after all, doesn’t erase the records of what they pled to. It doesn’t erase the evidence presented to juries about what they did. It doesn’t erase their own copious social media boasting about it all.

Just as Trump can’t change the truth about his own conduct by getting elected and getting the cases against himself dropped and projecting his own goals for weaponization of the Justice Department onto the prior administration, he cannot change either the truth about what his followers did, though he can wipe out the consequences for them…

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A READER WRITES:

Revolution Is Coming: CNN Guest Delivers dire warning. The Kyle Kulinski Show.

The Rational National https://www.youtube.com/c/Therationalnational and a guy who is usually out in the woods in N.H. talking into the camera about how stupid Americans are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywjdKGjPQBw

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CAGE FIGHT IN THE CAPITOL

by David Yearsley

It was the perfect setting for a cage fight. The circular perimeter and dome soaring above were not enclosed with chain-link fencing coated in vinyl. The floor was not covered with a foam mat. No, this cage was made of bone crushing-marble. Padding to absorb brutal takedowns and the onslaught of hammerfists and guillotine chokes was neither necessary nor desirable.

Commensurate to the occasion, the Capitol Rotunda was far bigger than the usual format—three times broader than the thirty-foot diameter of the standard Ultimate Fighting Championship ring. The CEO of the UFC had been at a pre-fight rally the night before at another arena in the imperial capital bragging about the tale of the tape. Her man had scored a staggering victory at the ballot box a few months earlier, winning by “86 points” and bagging the vote of the nationwide audience to boot. Joining the CEO was the celebrity announcer of these Gladiator Games, eager to call the next day’s bout in his newly acquired tuxedo.

Also in the entourage of the man soon to buckle the championship belt around his suddenly slimmer, fighting-weight midsection was the last Village Person. Clad in police riot gear, he gasped his way through their fighter’s psych-up song, “YMCA.” Even though the Champ was far from being the “Young Man” who picks himself up off the ground in the song’s lyrics, he weaved and punched the air to the disco beat, limbering up for the morrow’s mayhem. He’d plastered a crooked grin across his jaw, which many had long claimed, or at least hoped, was made of glass, while others had been sure it was of American iron.

One of the VIPs slated to be present at, and perhaps even participate in, the next day’s fight had long ago claimed that “It takes a village.” This Wild West Village Show featured a Cowboy and Indian, a Leather Man, a Sailor on shore leave, and a lead-singing Cop—not the kind of villagers she’d been thinking of and not the kind she was eager to let into her gated community. But these elements were pouring in whether she liked it or not.

The next day’s stone venue was vast enough not just for a mano-a-mano clash, but for a right and proper team grudge match, a partisan rumpus. A year earlier, the Rotunda had hosted a live-telecast donnybrook that pitted a Spartan band of police (real ones) against a rabid throng of marauders led by a fabulously unhinged barbarian—Bison Man, in his Germanic tribal skins and horned headgear, wielding a bullhorn and waving a flag on a pole that was a gleaming spear.

For the follow-up of January 2025, cries of agony and the sound of dislocating joints and breaking teeth would again echo off the resonant dome above.

The architecture of this two-hundred-year-old indoor arena was based directly on that of Rome’s Pantheon, erected two millennia earlier during the reign of Hadrian, who, not coincidentally, also had a thing for border walls.

When the Scottish surgeon-turned-novelist Tobias Smollett arrived at that required stop on the Grand Tour for the first and only time in 1765, he was, as so often on his continental travels, underwhelmed: “I was much disappointed at the sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit.” Smollett’s was a prescient description of the opening bout on Monday’s fight card. This was to be a cockfight between two aged roosters. They had clucked and crowed back in June in a trench war of words during which they’d each boasted about the length of their drives and challenged each other to a golf match. Now they could follow words with deeds, opening the brutal festivities with a wheeze and a bang, lurching right into a clinch, then toppling over for some slo-mo ground-and-pound.

The Capitol Cage was the ideal setting to welcome a self-styled Caesar and a still-more ancient Consul soon heading off to claim his spoils in Delaware after this, his last bout. He must remain mindful (if he could remember to be) to tell the cameras on his way to the locker room after a victory certain only to him that he was “going to Disneyland!” Or was it Disney World? Or … what’s the name of that diner I love to eat at in Dover? Or is it in DC? That’s it: “I’m going to Scranton!”

In a more lucid moment, Scrappin’ Scranton Joe had thundered thusly during his own pre-fight hype (in another richly remunerated plug, this one for Gladiator II): “Donnybrook Don, I knew Emperor Marcus Aurelius. You’re no Marcus Aurelius.” Even Joltin’ Joe’s smack-talk had been plagiarized, though he’d been inadvertently honest about his age which was lied about in the fight program: he really was so old that he had known the second-century author of the Meditations, a Stoic also credited with inventing the Peruvian Necktie, defined in the UFC glossary as “a choke hold in which a fighter uses arms and legs, as well as the opponent’s own arm and positioning, to apply pressure to the neck.”

Respectively even redder and paler in their faces than usual after grappling on the ground for a few minutes, these doddering fighters could tag-team tap in their somewhat younger fellow fighters: ex-champs, Bashing Bill and Gorgeous George, or the more youthful contenders, Mark the Murderer and Elon the Electric Eel also nearby. These last two had already hyped their own mega cage fight in the Roman Colosseum, which, to the enduring disappointment of the global masses, had never happened.

With these individual duels raging on, all would stand as one and then lock horns. Only the cameramen wouldn’t enter the fray; at least, they hoped not.

The call to battle came from uniformed legionnaires blowing through long, straight ersatz-Roman trumpets, the blood-curdling strains of their Imperial fanfare amplified and elongated by the rotunda’s cavernous acoustic. I repeat: Give the People what they want!

But the battle never came. Instead, a church service broke out.

The Presidents’ Own Marine Corps Band played light military marches distractingly inoffensive enough to pacify. These jaunty tunes conjured the unbroken succession of American victories that all can take pride in. The armed services choir was vague and calming, the righteous fury of the Battle Hymn of the Republic diluted by their tepid arrangement.

Trump team crooner Chris Macchio tried to inject some heroic grandeur into the ludicrous national anthem. If Macchio is to remain “America’s Tenor,” his presidential patron is going to have to immediately impose 10,000% tariffs on all operatic klaxons, bel canto belt sanders, and refurbished auto-tune Carusos.

Between the numbers of the band’s light parade-ground hit parade and these patriotic anthems, an unseen piano vamped on a medley of Victorian hymns like “For the Beauty for the Earth.” Those congregants on the losing side let their gazes drift towards the dome, painted portal of trumpet-playing angels ushering thoughts still farther up to heaven.

The Champ had just won in a walkover and now it was his time to bluster through a rambling victory sermon of acid boasts and body-blow insults. Unbloodied and sweat-free, the cage fighter turned Prophet of the Angry God, excoriating the Democratic sinner just over his left shoulder, a vacant smile pasted across the face of his defeat.

But what should not be forgotten is that many people sitting piously in church hate each other, having fallen out over reasons as diverse as the morning’s flower arrangements, the furnishing committee’s choice of color for the pew cushions, or that scratch inflicted on the Senior Warden’s Mercedes in the church parking lot and never admitted by the perp.

Instead of fisticuffs, the Capitol Cage seethed with impotent rage. Some sought solace in singing along in their heads as the piano played on:

Notwithstanding the Champ’s fighting words, the peaceful transfer of power was by now well underway.

Across the country and the globe, Jilted Joe’s fans had long since tuned out, bored and beleaguered. Their erstwhile hero and his grin stayed the course.

When a string of monotheistic benedictions threatened to conclude the ritual without a tussle, though much violence was implied by these prayers, the nonplussed Plebes and Plutocrats were still waiting for what they’d been promised: Instead of Christians being fed to the lions, blue donkeys and their fallen riders would be fed to the Christians.

(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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ALL OF OUR AMERICA

Lots of us proud Yanks
Have migrant ancestors. Let's
Stop bashing migrants.

— Jim Luther

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LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

Hegseth Confirmed as Pentagon Chief After Vance Breaks Senate Tie

Trump Fires 17 Inspectors General in Late-Night Purge

Trump’s Crypto Venture Divides the Industry He Aims to Support

Here’s How Trump Shifted U.S. Policy in His First Week

Trump Visits North Carolina and California, Alternately Soothing and Sparring

Hamas Releases Four Israeli Soldiers Who Were Taken Hostage on Oct. 7

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THE GERMAN NEWSPAPER Die Zeit covered Musk’s upraised arm for its article titled: “A Hitler Salute is a Hitler Salute is a Hitler Salute.” (Musk has endorsed the far-right German Party, AfD.)

— Jeffrey St. Clair

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THE GREAT SORTING OUT BEGINS

by James Kunstler

“The purpose of a pardon is to correct a miscarriage of justice, not to prevent future judicial action.” — Dr. Joseph Sansone

This, as they say, is one of those weeks when decades happen. You realize that under the fiends fronted by “Joe Biden,” the US government became a demon-driven machine for wrecking lives, perverting the law, and demolishing all scaffolds of decent behavior. And now, it all has to be fixed, cleaned up, fumigated, rectified, rehabilitated.

Scores of executive orders flew out of the Oval Office, rescinding four years of “Biden” regime lunacy in every direction: Censorship, dead…Gain of function research, killed…CBDCs banned…CBP-app for aiding illegal migrants, discontinued…border fortified…homicidal alien mutts deported…World Health Organization, no thanks…Paris Climate Accords, fuggeddabowdit…DEI, vacated through all of government…Green New Deal, scrapped…“pride” in mental illness, cancelled…Ukraine War, headed for the negotiating table…all in four days and so much more coming.

The DEI flimflam is particularly illustrative of the hazards still lurking. The DC blob is desperate to hide its chaos agents by switching their job titles and shuffling them around to hidey-holes in obscure precincts of this-or-that bureaucracy. Being federal employees, of course, they all have searchable names and payroll accounts, so you may be sure they’ll be discovered wherever they’re hiding-out and placed, as ordered, on “administrative leave.” Since DEI was essentially a program to promote incompetence, these employees represent a monumental cargo of dead-weight. So, the next task will be finding a way under the civil service codes to cashier them for good. For instance, reclassifying their job status to render them fire-able.

This is sure to be a major friction-point for the so-called “resistance,” the huge cadre of “activist” Wokesters embedded in the agencies. Cue the army of Democratic Party lawyers who will be filing suits to prevent the chief executive from coherently managing the departments of the executive branch. But there’s a catch: this time, the White House will not be funneling scads of money directly to the NGOs that pay for these blob-adjacent lawyers, nor will they be able to redirect money out of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA for that purpose. The president may also find a way to interrupt the flow of money from foundations financed by malign freelancers such as George Soros and Linked-in founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman (who financed the E. Jean Carroll “rape” trial hoax and many more Democratic Party pranks ).

Another friction point: release of the pardoned J-6 prisoners is being loudly opposed by DC District federal judges such as Tanya Chutkan and Amy Berman Jackson. They don’t enjoy any privilege or prerogative for voicing prejudicial opinions about vacated cases, nor for failing to comply with paperwork needed to discharge them. They can be impeached for that in the House of Representatives. Or, if they actively obstruct releases, the new-and-improved Department of Justice might consider 18 U.S.C. § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law.

Meanwhile, goons at the DC jail detained pardoned prisoners unlawfully this week after years of the grossest mistreatment, including solitary confinement in basement “holes” without beds, blankets, or water, and direct physical assault that could be described as “torture.” All of this was countenanced by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, despite plentiful public reports of abuse over the past four years. That is, she knew all about it. This is an argument for finally rescinding Washington DC’s “home rule” status and placing the city and all its departments back under federal management.

Last night, Mr. Trump signed an order to declassify government files relating to the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Of course, the intel agencies holding these files have had a half-century to expunge anything in the files that might reflect poorly on the intel agencies — such as, the long-trafficked rumor that the CIA was behind the killing of all three. Why would you expect to get anything like that? How could the remaining material be anything but a cover-your-ass file? Well, now we shall see. At some point in his first term, Mr. Trump allegedly saw what was in the files and demurred from his promise then to release them. Was it too shocking? Or was it the well-groomed nothingburger described above.

That’s not to say that there’s any shortage of weird, tantalizing documentation around all those cases, inexplicable doings…sketchy characters like Oswald, Jack Ruby, Howard Hunt, Clay Shaw, Sirhan Sirhan, Thane Eugene Cesar, James Earl Ray, “Raul” (Ray’s alleged “handler”), Frank Liberto, Loyd Jowers…. and curious circumstances like the so-called “magic bullet” that supposedly exited JFK and wounded Texas Governor Connolly, and was later found oddly intact on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. I guess we’ll found out shortly.

Now, we await the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Pam Bondi’s USAG nomination was held up for a week by peevish freshman Senator Adam Schiff, after she called him out for being censured last year in the House for “reckless” statements — that is, she reminded the committee and the public that Mr. Schiff is a chronic liar. There are rumblings that he will be kicked off the Senate Judiciary Committee (maybe not such a good fit for someone incapable of telling the truth). The preemptive pardon he received last week from “Joe B” might be tested through the courts in the years just ahead. The Judiciary Committee announced that it will convene an inquiry into the whole J-6 fiasco. Do you sense that there is much to discover in that hairball of enigmatic events, hidden actions, concealed motives, and buried evidence?

All this (plus a lot I left out) and the first week isn’t even over yet!

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THE WORST THING ABOUT THE GAZA HOLOCAUST Is Knowing It Will Happen Again

Even if this ceasefire somehow manages to hold, some other nightmare will be unleashed by the US-centralized empire somewhere else in the world in the coming years.

by Caitlin Johnstone

The official death toll from the Israeli assault on Gaza has continued to climb at about the same rate it was climbing before the ceasefire went into effect, despite the ceasefire more or less holding. This is because the pause in the slaughter has given Palestinians the opportunity to dig up the remains of those who’ve been buried under the rubble all this time, allowing some to be added to the Gaza Health Ministry’s count.

Even if the ceasefire continues to hold, we can expect the death toll from violent trauma to keep climbing for a very long time. The footage we are seeing from places like Rafah and Jabalia are completely apocalyptic, with hardly any visible structures remaining even partially vertical in some areas. Many of the dead have been lying there for over a year. Many would have died slow, agonizing deaths over hours or days trapped beneath the wreckage without the possibility of rescue.

“Contrary to western propaganda, Gaza health authorities took a conservative approach to casualty figures, listing only recovered identified bodies,” journalist Craig Murray wrote on Twitter. “Now hundreds of unaccounted bodies are being dug from the rubble daily. Mothers are digging for the skeletons of their children.”

I remember back in the early days of the Gaza holocaust you’d get mobbed by Israel apologists on social media if you described what you were seeing as carpet bombing. They’d show photos of Dresden or Hamburg and say “THIS is what REAL carpet bombing looks like!”, and those photos looked exactly like the footage we are seeing of the wreckage of Gaza today.

This was a deliberate and methodical demolition of a civilization. An entirely intentional operation to turn a densely populated area into an uninhabitable wasteland, with the goal of eliminating and displacing a population who were deemed undesirable because of their ethnicity.

And it’s very possible that operation will resume in a few weeks’ time. President Trump is now on record saying he is “not confident” that the ceasefire will continue through all three phases, dishonestly claiming “It’s not our war. It is their war.”

To whatever extent you can call the methodical carpet bombing of a defenseless population a “war”, the US government has been equally as responsible for waging it as Israel. Insiders from the Israeli military and government have stated over and over and over again that the assault on Gaza would not have been possible without US assistance, which the US could at any point have chosen to withhold this entire time. Israel depends on the US about as much as any foreign US military base does, so the White House has always had more than enough leverage to force it to stop its ethnic cleansing campaign.

And this is to say nothing of the assault on the West Bank being waged by Israeli forces and extremist settlers, with no apparent pushback from the Trump administration. This comes as Israel’s Shin Bet agency declares that its “multi-front war” is now focused on the West Bank. Trump has appointed virulent Zionists to his cabinet like Mike Huckabee and Elise Stefanik, who are highly supportive of Israel annexing the West Bank in its entirety.

The most horrific thing about the Gaza holocaust is knowing that it’s going to happen again. Even if this ceasefire somehow manages to hold, some other nightmare will be unleashed by the US-centralized empire somewhere else in the world in the coming years.

We can be absolutely certain that it will happen again because nothing has been done to ensure that it doesn’t. No major policy changes have been put in place. Nobody has been punished — not the government officials responsible, nor the media who ran cover for their criminality this entire time. They torched the place and then walked away scot-free, just like they did with Iraq.

The reason nothing has been done to prevent other Gazas from happening again is because they want other Gazas to happen again. The US empire depends on nonstop violence and abuse to maintain its planetary domination; it’s not going to intentionally hamstring itself from using those tools wherever it needs to.

The US empire will continue terrorizing and abusing the world until it is brought to an end, as surely as an object will continue falling until it hits something.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)