Mendocino County Today: Thursday 3/20/2025

Clearing | Gualala Point | Science Fair | St Pat's Dinner | Water Concerns | Point Cabrillo | Dissing LakeCo | Reflection | Noyo Bida | Coyote Slim | KZYX Updates | Golfo Gualala | Ed Notes | Pay Phone | Feral Darryl | Charmian 1948 | Burn Workshop | Dick's Place | Yesterday's Catch | Tesla Marketing | SpaceX Splashdown | Political Crisis | Fascism Arrives | Pet Call | Lovely Spring | Sites Reservoir | Dorothy Counts | Inside Job | Moved Things | Wikipedia Omission | ICE Roundup | Lunar Governance | My Device | Talese Writing | Lead Stories | Antisemitism Ruse | POWs 1945 | Bombing Gaza | Oak Arc

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Happy first day of Spring weather fans! Spring was sprung at 2:01am last night. A cloudy 43F with .24" more rainfall this Thursday morning on the coast. Cloudy with a chance of a shower into Saturday then dry & warmer to start the new week. Wet later next week?, we'll see.

WET WEATHER continues for Humboldt and Del Norte counties through Saturday. Drier and warmer weather forecast Sunday into early next week. (NWS)

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STUDENT SCIENTISTS SHINE: Annual Science and Engineering Fair & S.T.E.A.M Expo Ignites Curiosity and Innovation

Future scientists, engineers, and innovators took center stage at the 39th Annual Mendocino County Science and Engineering Fair & S.T.E.A.M. Expo on March 15 at Mendocino College, where students showcased projects highlighting creativity, problem-solving, and sustainability. Alongside the Science and Engineering Fair, the S.T.E.A.M. Expo featured engaging activities provided by educators, students, and community organizations that highlighted science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (S.T.E.A.M.).

The Science and Engineering Fair displayed 156 projects from 207 3rd to 12th-grade Mendocino County students. 20 schools across the county participated in the fair. Ten exceptional projects were selected to advance to the 74th California Science & Engineering Fair, which will be held April 12-13, 2025, on the campus of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The winning entries were carefully evaluated by a panel of 52 local science, engineering, and education professionals who volunteered their time to serve as judges.

Additionally, students received special awards sponsored by community organizations, including Outstanding Young Scientist Award (Baechtel Creek Medical Clinic), Achievement in Scientific Methodology (South Ukiah Rotary), Award for Excellence in Wildlife Biology, Award for Excellence in Animal Behavior Research (Odell Ranch), Out of this World Award (Out of This World Optics), Paul Joens-Poulton Avant-Garde Award (MCOE), Insights & Innovations in Renewable Energy (Sonoma Clean Power), Excellence in Environmental Science/Ecology (UC Hopland Research & Extension Center), and Excellence in Engineering (Professional Engineers in California Government).

The Science and Engineering Fair & S.T.E.A.M. Expo is coordinated by the Mendocino County Office of Education and made possible with support from the Region 1 S.T.E.A.M. Hub, Mendocino College, and more than 100 volunteers from the Mendocino County education community, organizations, and businesses that value promoting science education for students.

2025 Qualifiers for the 74th California State Science & Engineering Fair Representing Mendocino County:

Leo W: In-Silico Structure Analysis on Interactions Between Amyloid-Beta 42 Variants and Lecanemab (Instilling Goodness & Developing Virtue School)

Toshiyoi M: Emulsome Gel-Mediated Enhanced Transdermal Delivery of Anticancer Drug (Instilling Goodness & Developing Virtue School)

Logan D: Can People Really Recognize AI-Generated Text? (Willits Charter School)

Greyson D: Harnessing the power of wind: Testing the efficiency of different windmill designs (Deep Valley Christian School)

Sophia H, Aarya D, Cameron F: Food Waste to Eco-Friendly Plastic (Instilling Goodness & Developing Virtue School)

Jameson M: Some Bacteria Think Plastic Is Fantastic! (Baechtel Grove Middle School)

Frederick M: The AutoChute (Eagle Peak Middle School)

Pele E-M: Riding on Sunshine (Tree of Life Charter School)

Owen N, Jaxon G: Hydrogen Power (Eagle Peak Middle School)

Meredith H: Can Sunlight Purify Water? (Eagle Peak Middle School)

Seona S: Hydrogen: Fuel of the Future (Eagle Peak Middle School -Alt)

The Mendocino County Office of Education provides leadership, resources, services, and programs to improve the educational experience and outcomes for Mendocino County students.

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ST. PAT’S IN BOONVILLE

Tam O Shanters off to Senior Center Executive Director Renee Lee and her crew for pulling off this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Dinner that was as good as they come. The Senior Center was packed, spirits ran high and the food was delicious. Terri and Steve Rhodes assembled a top notch kitchen staff to cook and serve corned beef and cabbage, carrots, mashed potatoes and roll — each plate as pretty as a picture. Unable to locate chocolate chip mint ice cream, Renee had to settle for rainbow sherbet for dessert which, as it turned out, was even more appropriate. Remember the pot of gold at the end of the Irish rainbow? In this case the whole dinner was a treasure. (Terry Sites)

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‘REMARKABLE’ OR DEVASTATING?

Concerns about Russian-Eel River water supply focus of town hall in Cloverdale

Several leaders from Lake and Sonoma counties remain worried about the future of local water supplies as a key PG&E hydropower facility prepares to go offline.

by Amie Windsor

Although stakeholders have approved a closely watched plan to continue diverting some Eel River water into the Russian River when a key hydropower facility goes offline in several years, civic leaders from Lake County, Cloverdale and elsewhere remain concerned about how the move might impact the region’s water supply.

As a result, Cloverdale city leaders will host a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Cloverdale Veterans Memorial Building, 205 West 1st Street.

The meeting, which isn’t slated to be broadcast on Zoom or another video platform, will provide an opportunity for residents to learn more about the decommissioning of PG&E’s 117-year-old Potter Valley power plant. By 2028 at the earliest, PG&E is set to abandon the plant, with related plans to eventually tear down the Scott and Cape Horn dams on the upper Eel River.

The man-made system has supplied, via a tunnel carrying Eel River through the mountains, a crucial portion of the Russian River’s annual flows, supporting agriculture, rural residents and cities along the upper Russian, including Cloverdale and Healdsburg.

PG&E’s decision to not relicense the project ― which is aging and would need costly upgrades, including for fish passage ― led stakeholders in the two river basins to reach a compromise that would continue the supplemental flows, albeit with stronger protections for Eel River interests.

Lake County representatives, however, have never endorsed that deal and continue to oppose it, raising objections over the draining of Lake Pillsbury and the impact on firefighting capabilities.

Other elected officials, including Cloverdale Mayor Todd Lands, have voiced similar concerns, as have local agricultural leaders.

They include Sonoma County Farm Bureau Executive Director Dayna Ghiradelli, who said Monday the current diversion solution “will have tremendously negative effects on farmers and ranchers.

“I know that Sonoma County has had great, brilliant minds working to devise an alternate solution, but when you really lay it out, this will really devastate our county, Mendocino County and Marin County,” Ghiradelli said. “Our hope is there is a better solution.”

But Rep. Jared Huffman, whose North Coast district includes the Potter Valley facility and who helped craft the two-basin compromise, said the solution — one that focuses on the health of both the Eel and Russian rivers — “is nothing less than remarkable.”

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, who represents the north part of the county, echoed Huffman, saying “nobody is 100% happy with it, but this is the best deal the coalition could get.”

Indeed, a 7-member coalition endorsed the future water diversion plan in early February. Its members include Sonoma Water, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Humboldt County, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Trout Unlimited, California Trout, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Once the dams are torn down, supplemental Eel River flows into the Russian River are expected to be limited, according to the diversion plan. Under the accord, diversions can continue only when the Eel River has enough water to accommodate different life stages of federally protected salmon and steelhead trout.

The plan also would require water customers in the Russian River watershed to develop new water supply and storage solutions.

But Lands, the Cloverdale mayor, said the solution will create a “quality of life issue” for Cloverdale residents. “I don’t want to be fighting this fight, but this is about making sure Cloverdale has an economy and access to basic needs. This is about health and safety,” he said.

With hotter summers, he says access to the river is vital for people who need cost-effective ways to cool down. He’s also concerned about an increased demand for water as its availability dries up.

“The housing mandates we have to hit, combined with the weather changing through climate change. I don’t know how we can do it,” he said.

A lot of his frustration stems from not being able to have a seat at the table when the final decision was made in February, and he says he’s not alone.

“This includes Cloverdale, Potter Valley and Lake County,” he said. “And so it comes down to the health and safety of our community.”

Huffman said he respects concerns about health and safety, but warns against misunderstanding the reality of the situation.

“There is some genuine fear that things have been the same way for the last 100 years and a lifeline of the Russian River is going away,” Huffman said. “I’m not going to let that happen. That’s why it’s a two-basin solution.”

Both Huffman and Gore noted the deal will likely give Sonoma County more water than it is getting today from the Eel River.

“Over the last five years, we’ve been getting a trickle. This is the last best deal we’re going to get,” Huffman said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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LC CAP SUPPORTS LAKE COUNTY BOS ON LAKE PILLSBURY

Letter to the Editor,

Lake County’s Community Action Project (CAP) wholeheartedly supports the Lake County Board of Supervisors’ (BoS) decision to send letters to State and Federal government agencies, urging a halt to PG&E’s attempt to decommission Scott Dam on Lake Pillsbury. This issue is far too significant to be decided without meaningful input from Lake County residents, yet our community has been sidelined from critical discussions about our own future.

This dam’s removal will profoundly and detrimentally affect our local economy, environment, and public safety. Both Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury are completely inside Lake County’s boundaries. Yet for years, PG&E, along with agencies and coalitions from outside of Lake County systematically failed to engage with the people who will bear the greatest burden of such an action and continue to trivialize the negative impact on Lake County. It is unacceptable that such a major action is being pushed forward without ensuring the residents of Lake County—those who live, work, and rely on Lake Pillsbury—have a real seat at the table.

Lake Pillsbury is not just a body of water; it is a vital resource for our region. Economically, the lake supports tourism, recreation, and local businesses, all of which depend on its existence. Without the lake, we risk devastating financial losses for small businesses and property owners who rely on its steady flow of visitors. The dam also plays a crucial role in wildfire mitigation, as it provides an essential water source for firefighting efforts in an area that has been repeatedly ravaged by wildfires.

The potential removal of Scott Dam without a clear plan to protect Lake County’s interests is reckless and irresponsible. That is why the BoS is right to demand that the State and Federal governmentsintervene. PG&E must not be allowed to move forward without a thorough, transparent process that genuinely includes local stakeholders.

Lake County deserves better. We deserve the right to be heard, to have our concerns addressed, and to ensure any decision about Scott Dam prioritizes the well-being of our community. LC CAP urges all residents to stand with the BoS in calling for a fair and inclusive process—one that recognizes the undeniable importance of Lake Pillsbury to our county’s economy and wildfire resilience.

Lake CAP Community Action Project Founding Members:

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FORT BRAGG: Change Our Name Changes its Name and expands goals

Change Our Name Fort Bragg has changed its name to The Noyo Bida Truth Project (TNBTP) to align with its vision in educating the Mendocino Coast of the resilient First Nations of the region. Our name reaffirms the 10,000 year old historical Northern Pomo name for the area, Noyo Bida, The Fishing Place.

Board members of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit voted to change its name in January and completed legal paperwork this month. Website, FaceBook page, YouTube channel titles and logo changes will take place in the coming months.

Rebranding our organization clearly demonstrates our end goal of returning Indigenous languages in identifying locations of cultural significance related to our natural environment. We acknowledge the ecological diversity of our California Coast and encourage our true history to be preserved and acknowledged. To date the city of Fort Bragg is named for a Fort associated with the Mendocino Reservation where acts of genocide were committed against California tribal communities. The Fort was named for a general who had no connection to the Mendocino Coast, we have chosen to cease the glorification of Confederate General Bragg and the erasure of the Tribal communities. Our goals include holding healing ceremonies, supporting Land Back to Indigenous peoples, a memorial to the victims of the Mendocino Indian Reservation, a cultural center, truthful historical signage, and improvements to California history education in our local schools which are also named for this Confederate general.

In an ironic side note, the name change demonstrates how organizational name changes, even those of a city, can be accomplished easily and inexpensively when people come together to do the right thing.

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KZYX: GREENING OUR NEW DIGS

A Greenish Building Becomes Greener

by Victoria Golden

KZYX’s future Ukiah headquarters at 390 West Clay is like the little engine that could. The two relatively small buildings connected by a breezeway may seem unassuming in style and size, but together they were recently designated an historic landmark, as an example of Midcentury Modern architecture. And, without altering that historic designation, the property is slowly gaining 21st-century energy-saving and environmentally green elements.

Project Manager Alexis Vincent is excited about all that has been accomplished so far. “The buildings are being upgraded to comply with Title 24 energy-saving compliance standards throughout. So far, this includes the addition of new insulation in the walls, double-pane windows, on-demand water heaters, energy-efficient appliances, and the purchase of insulating Hunter-Douglas window coverings that will add to the sound barrier and enhance heating and cooling efficiency. Sun tubes introduced above the hallway not only reduce the need for artificial illumination, they provide healthier, more pleasing natural light for the building’s occupants. In fact, unlike the Philo studios, every room in the new headquarters has an exterior window providing views of the outdoors.”

Thanks to Alexis’ determination to buy local materials and labor for the renovation project, most were purchased within Mendocino County, and many are materials manufactured within the U.S. These are both considerations in designing a building that conforms with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the world’s most widely used green building rating system.

What lies ahead? Views outdoors will offer employees and volunteers visual treats as well as the health benefits associated with biophilic design, including improved recovery from stress and increased productivity and creativity. The visual treats, also available to the neighborhood, will include a new rainwater garden in the courtyard and a beautifully landscaped yard fronting on Clay Street, both consisting only of native and drought-resistant plants and designed by landscape architect Andrea Davis of Wild Rose Design.

In fact, Andrea’s plan includes some native species that were not yet included on the City of Ukiah’s approved landscaping list for commercial site development, thereby adding to the City’s body of knowledge. The Ukiah Planning Department was very impressed with KZYX’s landscape plan submission, noting that it was one of the best, most comprehensive plans to ever come through the department.

The patio garden will capture rainwater for irrigation, a way of conserving potable city water for other uses, and will channel leftover rainwater through the lot, thereby filtering it before it reaches storm sewers. Design for the back area of the property conforms to LEED guidelines for conservation and restoration of natural areas as much as possible, to provide native habitat and promote biodiversity.

To reduce the number of parking spaces required by the City based on the building’s projected occupancy, a bicycle rack will be available, encouraging visitors and employees to ride not drive. Encouraging the use of bicycles brings up another LEED-type green aspect of the new headquarters. Merely by re-locating to Ukiah, KZYX has considerably reduced the commute time of most of its employees.

Parking will consist of four permeable, gravel-covered spaces plus one ADA concrete space connected by paved walkway to the building. The City allowed the use of gravel for the four spaces when the plan was revised to ensure that gravel will not spill onto the nearby public sidewalk, thanks to the addition of a 20-foot concrete driveway apron.

In the near future, electric mini-splits will replace the property’s old fuel-guzzling central heating and air system to further reduce the property’s energy consumption. The mini-splits’ outdoor compressor/condenser units will sit on the back half of the building to keep their operating sounds as distant as possible from the studios. These outdoor units will connect via conduits to each room’s indoor evaporator unit. Special, sensitive microphones will be used to avoid picking up white noise from the indoor units.

With the aim of protecting the air that employees breathe, Alexis purchased indoor materials with low VOC (volatile organic compounds). At the outset of the project, she arranged for carefully controlled asbestos abatement rather than simply covering over the asbestos found onsite. She plans to purchase new floor coverings made from recycled materials, especially those with low VOC, including linoleum made from linseed oil.

For the more distant future, KZYX board members are exploring other means of reducing the station’s environmental impact, including the possibility of Zero Waste Certification and the use of buried fiber to produce improved bandwidth for programming.

Chug a chug a chug. KZYX is movin’ along, up the track.

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Meet New Board Member David Strock

The KZYX board of directors is pleased to welcome Willits resident David Strock as the new District 3 Representative to the board. He was appointed in February to complete the term of David Hulse-Stephens, who resigned to free up more time for his family.

David Hulse-Stephens served the KZYX community as a valued board member for many years, and we are enormously grateful to him. First elected in 2018, he was in his second 4-year term and served as both Board Secretary and Chair of the Building Advisory Group.

The “new David,” David Strock, told The KZYX Connector that he has been a KZYX listener for many years. “I’ve been wanting to get involved,” he said, “and when [Supervisor] John Haschak told me about the open seat, I saw it as a great opportunity—especially given the scarcity of dependable local news sources. I want to help make sure we can get reliable, trustworthy news in this county. KZYX is an invaluable community asset, and I’m looking forward to helping the station in any way I can.”

After growing up in Willits and earning an Associate degree in math at Mendocino College, David went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree in theater at U.C. Santa Cruz. He was recently promoted to the position of Lead Planner for the Mendocino County Cannabis Department. He has long been active in theater around the county as an actor and director; and currently, both he and KZYX’s own Eddie Haehl are in the cast of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Company” at the Ukiah Players Theatre. (Catch it if you can; it’s excellent.)

David and his wife, Abigail, a professional musician and music teacher, met when they were playing Cinderella and the Prince in a production of “Into the Woods” on the Coast. Their baby Henry is 9 months old.

David says his other major goal as a KZYX board member is “to do whatever I can to make sure that the move to Ukiah happens in a timely way.” He is a welcome and enthusiastic new member of the Building Fund Committee who brings fundraising experience and training in the theater arena and reports that he enjoys fundraising. Welcome to the KZYX team, David!

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ED NOTES

FROM THE LATEST KZYX news letter….. “The 'new David,' David Strock, told The KZYX Connector that he has been a KZYX listener for many years. 'I’ve been wanting to get involved,' he said, 'and when [Supervisor] John Haschak told me about the open seat, I saw it as a great opportunity—especially given the scarcity of dependable local news sources. I want to help make sure we can get reliable, trustworthy news in this county. KZYX is an invaluable community asset, and I’m looking forward to helping the station in any way I can.'”

IN FACT, Mendocino County has an abundance of news sources, all of them, IMO, ‘reliable’ in the flexible sense of the term but not, I daresay, in the KZYX-NPR sense. This Strock character is, by his own implication, ultra-discerning, and certainly ultra-reliable otherwise he couldn’t possibly have been appointed to the station’s board of directors.

AN ELDERLY MAN was walking home one night around 2am when a police officer stopped him and inquired where he was going. “I’m on my way to a lecture on alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the body and soul, plus some additional information about smoking and staying out late,” he said. The cop was skeptical. “And just who might be giving such a lecture at this hour?” the cop asked. The man replied, “That would be my wife.”

AWESOME. Time to retire this tiresome superlative. Way overused, as our language drifts farther and farther from meaning, a fact of American life that results in, to name one obvious example, the collection of nuts and clowns presently running our fast fading United States.

A LESS awesome example of worn out awesomeness occurred one afternoon when I was walking my bicycle up the steepest block of San Francisco’s 17th Street when a youngish woman with a car full of dogs pulled over, rolled her window down, beckoned my sweat-soaked, trudging bulk over to her vehicle to tell me, “Awesome bike!”

AS AN OLD SCHOOL dude from a time when a dude was a fancy dressing man, and bros were the Hill’s Bros Coffee Company, I resisted the impulse to reply, “Will you please fuck ALL the way off?” I’d thought maybe she’d needed directions, or her dogs were threatening to eat her, but no, she’d accosted me simply to congratulate me on my bicycle.

SO I SAID thank you, and trudged on, wondering why anybody would even notice, let alone go out of their way to comment on a hundred dollar bike built out of spare parts.

LATER the same day I left a phone message for a guy whose answering machine wished me, an imperfect stranger, an “awesome day.”

MOST of us will settle for any kind of day, and every day that we survive is, strictly speaking, awesome, but this constant drip drip drip of false feeling is, like our shrinking vocabularies, adding considerably to the prevailing insanity.

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BILL KIMBERLIN: I was sitting outside one of my favorite restaurants, “Plow” on Portrero Hill in San Francisco. We were all waiting for a table.

The somewhat elegant lady on the left is what I call, a real San Franciscan. Sometimes you see them at the Zuni Cafe on Market Street. Yet, you also see younger folk here and that makes it a nice mix.

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Is this the last working pay phone in Anderson Valley? I think it may be.

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A READER WRITES

Feral Darryl Cherney, among others, always had an eye out for the unattached young women defending the forests when they should have been a little more wary of the two-footed creatures stalking them.

Spring is springing and unspringing down here.

I hope to make another trip to your community before I turn up my toes, if for no other reason than to pay homage to my old friend, Alex.

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I love coming across old AVAs as I mentioned in a former email. This time there was one in a bunch of papers and you had an article on Clint (Smith?) on the front page. A teacher who had a long and lascivious love affair with a 15 year-old.

We have a friend, a forest defender (he was with Gypsy when he was killed, only 16 at the time). He’s being grilled by the Earthfirst Forest Defense Star Chamber right now for relationships with younger women. Not statutory rape, just younger women. I’m going to give him your article to document the range of opinions about that behavior.

The scene of the packed courtroom standing in unison to protect the school teacher. Amazing, because the forest defender in question is broken-hearted over this raking over the coals his comrades are giving him, and feeling worthless.

Someone should write a book about forest defenders 20 years later. We had house finches at the bird feeder today! And lambs jumpng around.

Spring comes…

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BURN WORKSHOP SUNDAY MARCH 30TH ON LOWER TENMILE CREEK NEAR LAYTONVILLE

by Alicia Bales

Community Invited to Field Day as Part of ERRP’s Forest Health Extravaganza March 29 and 30th

Contact: Alicia Bales abaleslittletree@gmail.com

Patrick Higgins phiggin@sonic.net

Mendocino County, CA— The Eel River Recovery Project, in collaboration with Torchbearr, local landowners, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), will host a prescribed burn workshop on Sunday, March 30th, 2025. The workshop will treat approximately 13-acres of slash piles on Vassar Ranch, part of an ambitious multi-year watershed-wide forest health project.

To register for the burn workshop, please click here: Tenmile Burn Workshop Sign Up Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScINV91s4slEYVVZpbkBA2TOp8bVmePUQ0sne7Z1vU5UIm8gw/viewform

The burn workshop field day is being organized in conjunction with ERRP’s Forest Health Extravaganza at Harwood Hall in Laytonville on Saturday, March 29th from 10am-5pm, to give event participants and community members the opportunity to experience an example of forest health thinning and prescribed fire. Both days’ events are free and open to everyone.

The Lower Tenmile Creek project area is located near Hwy 101 approximately 5 miles north of Laytonville. Burning will begin as soon as favorable weather and humidity conditions allow for safe and effective operations. During the burn, smoke may be visible in the area. The burn will be assisted by qualified Burn Boss Scot Steinbring of Torchbearr with permission from CAL FIRE.

Funding for the Tenmile Creek Watershed Forest Health Project is provided by CAL FIRE’s Forest Health Program as part of California Climate Investments (CCI), a state-wide program that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly disadvantaged communities. The cap-and-trade program also creates financial incentives for industries to invest in clean technologies and develop innovative ways to reduce pollution. CCI investment projects include affordable housing, renewable energy, public transportation, zero-emission vehicles, environmental restoration, more sustainable agriculture, recycling, and much more. At least 35% of these investments are located within and benefitting residents of disadvantaged communities, and low income households across California. For more information, visit the California Climate Investment website at: www.calclimateinvestments.ca.gov.

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AFTER 91 YEARS, LAST CALL LOOMS AT A HISTORIC NORTHERN CALIFORNIA DIVE BAR BY THE SEA

‘It was here long before us, and it’ll hopefully be here long after us’

by Matt LaFever

On the edge of the Mendocino bluffs, where the Pacific Ocean crashes against rugged cliffs, sits Dick’s Place, a bar that has withstood the test of time. For nearly a century, this unassuming dive has been more than a watering hole; it has been a living piece of history, a keeper of stories and a cornerstone of the Mendocino community. Now, as its owners prepare to move on, Dick’s has been listed for $3.5 million, and its future remains uncertain.

A Legacy That Began In 1934

Dick’s Place traces its origins to the tail end of Prohibition, when Dick Cecchi opened the establishment in 1934, shortly after the repeal of the 18th Amendment, per the Mendocino Beacon. Alongside his wife, Dora, he operated the bar until his death in 1967. Their son, Pete, a World War II veteran, took over and ran the bar until 1983. As Mendocino evolved from a sleepy logging and fishing town into an enclave for artists, hippies and tourists, Pete remained a staunch traditionalist, sometimes refusing to serve those he deemed unfit for the bar.

“Pete was not a fan of the hippies,” said Eula Lenihan, who, alongside her husband Mike, has owned Dick’s Place since 2013. “He would take a look at you, and if he didn’t like what you looked like, he would just refuse to serve you.”

Pete eventually sold the bar to the Mendocino Hotel, where he continued to work for a few more years. It changed hands again in 2005 following a split in ownership, at which point Eula, who had been bartending there since the mid-1990s, became its manager.

The Lenihan Era And A Changing Landscape

Mike and Eula Lenihan met at Dick’s Place in 2003. “He was drinking a Budweiser and a shot of whiskey,” Eula recalled with a laugh. By 2013, they had managed to scrape together the funds to purchase the bar, officially becoming its stewards. “We sort of see ourselves as caretakers rather than owners,” Eula said. “It was here long before us, and it’ll hopefully be here long after us.”

For over a decade, the Lenihans have maintained the soul of the bar while keeping up with the necessary renovations. One of the most striking features of Dick’s Place is its neon sign — the only one allowed in town due to strict historical preservation rules. “It was grandfathered in when Mendocino banned neon signage,” Mike said. “We’ve had to replace it a couple of times, but we always make sure it stays true to the original.”

Pete Cecchi, the second owner of Dick’s Place, was “not a fan of the hippies,” according to current co-owner Eula Lenihan.

Photograph contributed by Robert Dominy

Inside, the walls are lined with relics and memorabilia, including a set of bull horns mounted above the bar — a gift from the Oppenlander Ranch in Comptche. “The story goes that Dick got knocked down by a bull, and when the rancher eventually put the bull down, he gave Dick the horns,” Eula said.

One of the wildest moments in Dick’s Place history? The time a horse walked into the bar on Halloween. “Some guy showed up in full costume — on horseback,” says Eula Lenihan. “He just strolled right through the door like it was no big deal.” With the floor still in rough shape, Eula couldn’t help but worry. “We were all holding our breath, hoping the horse didn’t fall through.” Somehow, it didn’t. It’s one of the dozens of unforgettable moments at the beloved almost century-old watering hole.

A Bar That Defied The Dive Bar Trend

At a time when many dive bars are closing due to gentrification, rising rents and shifting drinking habits, Dick’s Place has endured, thanks in part to its unparalleled location. Perched directly above the ocean on Main Street, the bar offers sweeping views that can never be obstructed due to the surrounding land being protected state parkland. Tourists passing through Mendocino provide a steady stream of patrons, while a loyal group of locals keep the bar’s character intact.

“Mendocino being a tourist town, I think there’s always going to be that traffic,” Eula said. “We’ve never really experienced that downturn like neighborhood bars in cities have.”

Additionally, the Lenihans own the building, which insulates them from the pressures of rising commercial rents. The property also includes a bead shop, once home to Dick and Dora Cecchi, and a recently renovated one-bedroom.

The Future Of Dick’s Place

After three decades of working in the bar, the Lenihans are ready to move on. “It’s not that the bar is struggling. We’re just done,” Eula said. “Our kids are in college, and we have other things we want to do.”

Dick’s Place is for sale for $3,495,000, its fate resting in the hands of whoever takes the helm next. The Lenihans hope that whoever buys it will preserve its legacy rather than transform it into something unrecognizable.

“We still have Pete’s ashes above the bar,” Eula said. “It would be nice to know that the next owners will keep his spirit — and the spirit of Dick’s Place — alive.”

For now, the neon sign still flickers in the foggy Mendocino night, a beacon for those looking to share a drink, a story and a piece of California history.

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MIKE GENIELLA NOTES:

My kind of bar - I have not had a drink in years, but I love Dick’s and bars like it. My hometown had a few classics, so my attraction is lifelong. What I didn’t learn was when to stop, but that is another story. The price tag obviously underscores the value of Mendocino Village property. However, a buyer would have to move a lot of whisky shots and beer across the bar to take on that debt. Maybe the romance of Dick’s is enough to keep it going. Thanks to Matt LeFever for writing about a classic.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, March 19, 2025

CHRISTOPHER COWAN, 38, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia.

JERED EAGLLESMITH, 28, Willits. Concealed dirk-dagger, paraphernalia.

JIM HAYES, 64, Willits. DUI.

ALBERT HINKLE, 39, Willits. Domestic battery.

SEAN LOGAN, 50, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

EDWINA NIDEROST, 63, Ukiah. Elder abuse resulting in great bodily harm or death, domestic violence court order violation, resisting.

SEBASTIAN RABANO, 45, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

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

DANIEL YEOMANS, 54, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation.

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BRUCE MCEWEN: You can see the way Tesla was marketed as a greenie virtue way to sell a car that burns coal by the trainload… Not to mention the lucrative rebate.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What a splashdown, chutes blooming and billowing, the SpaceX Dragon capsule and its crew gently gliding towards that beautiful blue ocean with blue skies above, along with dolphins cavorting about as if to welcome the ‘right stuff’ home.

It was all so beautiful, watching the guys board the bobbing capsule on the outside before it was craned up onto the retrieving vessel, then watching the crew emerge! Bravo, I say, Bravo!

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UNPRECEDENTED

Dear Editor,

I am 73 years old. I’ve lived through many political crises in this country, but I have never seen an attack on our democracy like this. In the past, there was bipartisan opposition to lawlessness. We cannot allow this to continue. Trump and Musk must be removed along with Vance and others. These people are making Nixon look like a saint.

Sincerely,

Donald Ownsbey

Ukiah

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FRED GARDNER:

"This is Fascism" is the title of a Counterpunch Radio show featuring Ralph Nader that aired March 18. Those same words had crossed my mind two days before. The thought must be occurring to millions of US Americans these days. It's one thing to see fascism coming (this cartoon from a recent AVA says it all), and another thing to realize it has arrived. 

The F-word hit home when I decided not to post a very informative interview I'd just conducted with a federal employee. My source, an officer and a veteran, still has their job, but in recent weeks they've "had to walk very good people to the door." Funding has been cut for their unit, which has a truly righteous mission. I'm reluctant to even disclose their location.

One grotesque tactic of the Project 25 gang can be reported because they must be using it everywhere. Because only "probationary" workers were being fired – "probationary" meaning less than a year on the job – several workers with years of experience were given sudden promotions. Then they were defined as "probationary" in their new positions, and fired.

Chris Hedges tells it like it is, too: it will take a general strike to turn things around. "The mafia state cannot be reformed. We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a radical militancy, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.

"The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the bloodiest labor wars in the industrialized world. Hundreds of American workers were killed, tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. Unions were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed. We cannot be naïve. It will be difficult, costly and painful. But this confrontation is our only hope. Otherwise, we, and the planet that sustains us, are doomed."

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“I COULD HARDLY RECOGNIZE the country as the same. I knew in the summer and when I got off the train at night in Madrid snow was blowing outside the station. I had no overcoat and stayed in my room writing in bed or in the nearest cafe drinking coffee and Domccq brandy. It was too cold to go out for three days and then came the lovely spring weather…The heat and the cold come and go quickly here… I have watched on a July night, when I could not sleep , the beggars burning newspaper in the street and crouching around the fire to keep warm. Two nights later it was too hot to sleep until the coolness that comes just before dawn.”

— Ernest Hemingway, ‘Death in the Afternoon’

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SITES RESERVOIR ALLOCATED AN ADDITIONAL $134 MILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING

by Dan Bacher

Last week, the Sites Reservoir Project (Project) received $134 million in federal funding from the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act), which provides funding to improve water infrastructure throughout the United States.

“The continued bipartisan support for Sites Reservoir shows we all agree—we desperately need more water storage in California to prepare for the future,” said Fritz Durst, Chair of the Sites Project Authority Board of Directors. “This announcement brings the WIIN Act funding designated to Sites Reservoir closer to the level the Authority and Reclamation have been working to secure and we’re grateful to our federal partners for helping to advance this critical project closer to construction.”

With this investment, the Project has been designated a total of $780.15 million in federal contributions to date. The Sites Project Authority will continue to work with the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) on achieving their 16% participation goal as space in the reservoir becomes available and sufficient funds are appropriated to the Project. Reclamation recently signed off on its basis of negotiations for a Partnership Agreement where this participation will be formalized.

Sites Reservoir will increase water supply throughout California and provide, for the first time, environmental benefits by storing water specifically to support native wildlife and their habitat during drought periods. The Project will provide an additional 1.5 million acre-feet of storage capacity, substantially improving the state’s water flexibility, reliability, and resiliency in drier years.

The Project is backed by a broad coalition of cities, counties, water agencies, and irrigation districts across California, including the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, Bay Area, and Southern California. The Project also includes significant participation by the State of California through the 2014 Proposition 1 Water Storage Investment Program, in addition to the federal government under the 2016 WIIN Act.

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THE HIDDEN BOMBSHELL IN THE JFK FILES THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

by Maureen Callahan

The JFK files, apparently, say nothing. And that says everything.

No mystery in American history compares to what really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963 – the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The release of 80,000 “unredacted” documents on Tuesday evening — ostensibly every remaining piece of paper relating to the investigation, though that now seems doubtful — promised to give the world the unfiltered, true story.

Following his executive order in January demanding their publication, President Donald Trump surely hoped he had made good on his campaign pledge of “transparency.”

Instead, we got the mother of all document dumps – uncategorized, unprioritized, countless pages unreadable with fading type, many containing interviews with people who seem, at best, tangential to the only question at hand: Did the CIA, the FBI, or the Mafia have anything to do with it?

The ghost of J. Edgar Hoover – the cross-dressing FBI director who despised JFK – laughs.

Here’s what we do know: by many accounts, Jackie Kennedy never totally bought the findings of the Warren Commission – established by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination – which determined that a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald had killed her husband.

We also know that Texas governor John Connally and his wife Nellie, seated in the presidential limousine in front of JFK when he was shot, never believed the commission’s finding – later dubbed the “magic bullet theory” – that the first shot to hit JFK in the neck from behind was the very same bullet that struck Connally in his upper back, wrist and thigh.

Connally testified before the Warren Commission — whose findings he publicly supported, despite his personal disbelief — that he heard three separate shots, and that after the first he said, “My God, they’re going to kill us all.”

The third and final shot, Connally said, left the presidential limousine covered in blood, tissue and brain matter.

Where are the transcripts of John and Nellie Connally’s private interviews with investigators? Where is any record of Jackie’s apparent concerns?

After all, one can safely assume that everyone involved was interrogated by the FBI, the CIA, state and local authorities.

Recall that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, when Lyndon Johnson wanted Jackie to change out of her blood-spattered pink Chanel suit for his swearing in on Air Force One, she refused.

“Let them see what they have done,” she said.

What they have done.

She had been right beside her husband when he was killed. She held pieces of his skull in her hands.

An hour after receiving word that his brother had been shot, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy told his aide Edwin Guthman: “I knew they’d get one of us. I thought it would be me.”

Bobby, Jackie, Connally: All used “they” and “them” right away.

For his part, Bobby suspected that the Mafia, an active target of his Department of Justice, might have been responsible and sent Walter Sheridan, his aide-de-camp, to Dallas to investigate.

Sheridan found nothing. But Bobby, like Connally, never believed the Warren Commission, despite publicly backing the final report.

The pressure was immense: If JFK’s widow and brother were to express doubt — during a decade that would also see the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and, eventually, Bobby himself — there would have been riots in the streets.

Bobby’s son, RFK Jr., now serving as President Trump’s health secretary, said last year that he — like so many Americans — believes the JFK assassination was an inside job.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” he said, “that the CIA was involved in the murder and the cover-up.”

It’s hardly far-fetched. Why else would these files have been withheld all this time?

Why else would President Trump, who vowed to release the remaining documents during his first term, walk back on that promise by saying the danger to national security “is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure”?

To be clear: There’s been nothing immediate about this release.

These files have been locked away for decades, and during that time any smoking gun has surely been destroyed — if the truth was ever put down in writing, which is highly doubtful.

If America’s top spies had been involved, they would have known not to memorialize plans to assassinate a sitting U.S. president. Nor would they have written of their success.

That their one and only suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot dead days later — on live TV and in police custody — only ratified a growing suspicion that dark forces in the deep state were involved.

That shooter, nightclub-owner Jack Ruby, had ties to organized crime. His stated motive — to prevent Jackie Kennedy from having to testify at Oswald’s trial — was hardly convincing.

She got the nation through the trauma of the assassination. She could have handled a courtroom.

And what about the other footage of the assassination?

The world only got a look at the infamous Zapruder film for the first time in 1975 — 12 years later.

But there’s at least one other home movie, taken by a Dallas maintenance man named Orville Nix, showing the JFK assassination from a different angle — capturing the so-called “grassy knoll” along the presidential procession route, where many believe a second shooter hid.

The federal government, despite promises to the Nix family, has never returned that footage. The public has never seen it.

Why?

And what of JFK’s rushed and botched autopsy? Why are key portions of the final postmortem report still missing? Why did the Navy pathologist in charge of the examination take his original notes and burn them in his fireplace the night after JFK was killed?

Why would FBI agents take another note, handwritten by Oswald and delivered to their Dallas offices, and flush it down a toilet?

This pathetic document dump answers none of the questions. It’s an insult to the intelligence of Americans, who have waited patiently for the truth.

But one thing’s for certain: this new release — which feels like a “screw you” from our secret agencies and faceless bureaucrats — confirms the only logical answer: It was an inside job, and they got away with it.

(DailyMail.uk)

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A STORY LOST TO HISTORY — OR AT LEAST TO WIKIPEDIA

by Dalton Delan

WESTPORT, Conn. — I had high hopes for Wikipedia. Having grown up with the Encyclopedia Britannica, I knew that its articles combined a fulsome array of factoids — at least, those accepted in the historical moment in which its entries were written — with a literary flair that gave the reader a three-dimensional sense of the subject. If you can find it on the internet, I recommend as a quintessential example of both best and worst — high literature and low accuracy — the extraordinary appreciation of Charles Dickens by G. K. Chesterton in the 1929 Fourteenth Edition of the Britannica. It is one of the most insightful biographical essays on an author’s life.

The central problem with Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopedia intended by its very inclusivity — anyone can generally offer edits — to correct for editorial bias, is that those with the time and incentive to lean in with spin end up controlling history. I am reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s adage that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

Case in point. Back in 1981, I set out with a team at ABC News to investigate allegations of “yellow rain” being dropped on Hmong villages in Laos. The Hmong had assisted the U.S. in its “secret war” in Laos, and it made horrific sense that this hill tribe might be targeted all these years later for biochemical experimentation and annihilation. Look for the Hmong now, and you will find more than 65,000 living in Minneapolis/St. Paul, a long way from home but a safer zone.

I had experienced dreadful delay in getting to Southeast Asia to investigate the story. Not because we had to travel first to Canada to find an antimalarial for the strain of illness prevalent where we were going — the pills themselves could kill you, so they weren’t legal here — but because the higher-ups at the network didn’t want to buck the prevailing theory being propounded in The New York Times by an esteemed and insistent Harvard professor.

The twist was that the professor believed Secretary of State Alexander Haig was using the allegations to shake up the unratified SALT II treaty with the Soviets. Thus, not without some weird science you can read about in the current Wikipedia entry on “yellow rain,” this academic advanced the so-crazy-it-must-be-true theory that swarms of bees dropping feces explained the deadly mycotoxin falling like pollen on the Laotian hilltops. For The New York Times then, and today’s Wikipedia guided by unseen hands, case closed.

‘Rain Of Terror’

The problem is that the science our team brought back and subjected to rigorous testing told a different story — one you won’t find in Wikipedia, even though we broadcast it in December of 1981 in a report, “Rain of Terror,” read into the Congressional record. Our report advanced hard science: an editorial in The Wall Street Journal termed it “Quite simply the single best piece of television journalism we’ve ever witnessed.” We had chosen fact over politics.

From an obliterated village in Laos, we brought back — in a vial smothered in duct tape and taped to a passenger’s leg on a commercial flight — a sample scraped from leaftops in Laos. For chain of custody, I watched the sample opened and separated at the Arthur D. Little Labs in Cambridge, with half sent to Rutgers. The revelation was not in a finding of the disputed T-2 mycotoxin — bees might theoretically spawn it — but in the dispersal agent present in both samples: polyethylene glycol. Today you’d call it a “weaponizing agent.” Back then, it helped your deodorant spray spread across your armpit. Or poison in the air. Bees couldn’t manufacture polyethylene glycol, and they sure didn’t excrete it.

Hard on the heels of our broadcast, reports of “yellow rain” abruptly ceased. Investigative journalism had cast reasonable doubt on the bee feces theory. You’d hardly know that today. In fact, though no-one ever managed to disprove our findings, Wikipedia makes no mention of them. As they say, history is written by the victors — a truism oft attributed to Winston Churchill but, ironically, nowhere to be found in his writings and speeches. Harvard stoops to conquer Wikipedia.

We didn’t tape the “yellow rain” vial under an armpit, but let’s give Wikipedia the benefit of the doubt: the forces of open-source editing are not without their pollenated view and strange stuff can pollute scientific samples. I only know what we saw, carried and tested. And an encyclopedia that leaves out any mention of what we found shows that it is by definition incomplete and easy prey for partisan revisionist history and fractured science.

Chesterton, in his day, also trimmed facts to fit, so we cannot simply hail Britannica. Pick your poison. The rain it raineth every day, from Twelfth Night to Laos. Caveat emptor. Float like a butterfly, stink like a bee.

(Dalton Delan, a regular Berkshire Eagle contributor, has won Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a television producer.)

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ATLAC AND THE EARLY EMERGENCE OF LUNAR GOVERNANCE

by Dennis O’Brien

At its February meeting, the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) formally created ATLAC, the Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation. In doing so, it may have provided the missing piece in the evolving framework of governance for the Moon, and perhaps beyond. ATLAC’s mandate, along with the efforts of the Working Group on Legal Aspects of Outer Space Resources, gives us an early glimpse into how the international community will govern activity on the Moon.

The first attempt to govern such activity was the Moon Treaty of 1979. That treaty tried to fill in the gaps left by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (OST), but it had a major flaw. Article 11 called for the adoption of an international agreement on outer space resource activity, but it did not provide any specifics. Many countries feared that the result would be a new supra-national authority whose advance approval would be required before any such activity, much like the Seabed Authority in the Convention on the Law of the Seas. As a result, most countries rejected it, including all of the space-faring countries.

At the time there was no compelling need for such governance, as the United States and other countries suspended their efforts to utilize or even explore the Moon, focusing instead on scientific missions to other celestial bodies and establishing a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit. It was not until the development of reusable launch vehicles in 2015, which greatly reduced the cost of getting into space, that a return to the Moon seemed economically sustainable. By 2018, water ice had been discovered in the eternally dark craters at the Moon’s poles, raising the possibility that lunar operations might even become self-sustaining. The race back to the Moon has since accelerated; just this month, Firefly Aerospace achieved the first fully successful private landing on the Moon.

In the 2010’s, there was also increased activity within civil society concerning such activity, as non-governmental entities around the world felt compelled to help move humanity forward. In 2010, Space Resource International was incorporated. In 2016 the Hague International Space Resources Working Group began work on their Building Blocks for space resource utilization. In 2017 The Moon Village Association, Open Lunar, For All Moonkind, and the Space Treaty Project were all created. They have provided fresh input and energy for COPUOS, which responded in 2022 by creating the Working Group on the Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities (SRWG) under its Legal Subcommittee. That Working Group was given a five-year mandate, which included consideration of possible new “international governance instruments”.

Since then, there has been an evolving realization that an additional entity would need to be created to help facilitate any new governance, even if it was not a new CLOS-type authority. At last year’s general COPUOS meeting, a consensus was reached that such an entity could be considered without interfering with the work of the SRWG on substantive rules/principles. Romania formally proposed the creation of an Action Team on Lunar Activity Consultation – ATLAC – though it took till this February to choose its co-chairs and begin its work.

According to the Mandate, Terms of Reference, and Methods of Work adopted by COPUOS, ATLAC will consider “the establishment of an international mechanism” (agency) for “improving consultations related to lunar activities” (as distinguished from the “instrument” (agreement) being considered by the SRWG). It will recommend “priority topics relevant to its mandate that could subsequently be addressed under its proposed international mechanism.” ATLAC participation “is to be open to all States members of the Committee [COPUOS].” ATLAC will work within the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA): “The Office for Outer Space Affairs will facilitate the work of the Action Team, including by providing substantive secretariat services.”

The mandate/terms/methods suggest two areas of analysis. The first is the structure of ATLAC and, by extension, any “international mechanism” it recommends. The second is the topics that will be considered by ATLAC and, again by extension, the topics that it will recommend be included within the purview of any future mechanism/agency.

Recently, several COPUOS member states submitted comments on both structure and topics, with substantive recommendations from Algeria, Armenia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India Poland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their recommendations for structure included:

• Broad participation by both established and emerging countries. One reason is practical: even emerging countries are now involved in the production and operation of spacecraft and will likely participate in future outer space activities. Another is legal/ethical/political: Article IX of the OST allows any State Party to request consultation if it “has reason to believe that an activity or experiment planned by another State Party in outer space . . . would cause potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space.”

• Representation and leadership must be balanced. This refers to the emerging division of lunar activities between the Artemis Program and the International Lunar Research Station. To this end, the recently-named co-chairs are from Romania and Pakistan (rather than Korea, as initially proposed).

• Stakeholder participation, including experts. This is mainly a call for private sector membership/involvement, even if final decisions are made by the sovereign states. Co-chairs are also expected to be experts.

The comments also included recommended topics, initially for ATLAC but also for any resulting mechanism/agency:

• Notice of activities, avoidance of harmful interference. Article XI of the OST – consultation – requires countries to report the “nature, conduct, locations and results of such [outer space] activities.” Article IX requires “due regard” for the activities of others. The Artemis Accords also address this issue. Such notice/avoidance will be the primary mission of any mechanism/agency that is recommended by the Action Team for Lunar Activity Consultation.

• Sharing information. In addition to overall transparency, countries recommended scientific cooperation, open-source lunar data, and even technology transfers, all of which could be facilitated by any adopted mechanism/agency.

• Protecting sites of special interest. Countries spoke of preserving the lunar heritage in the broadest terms, suggesting this would apply to cultural/historical sites in addition to scientific. Any mechanism/agency would need a process for designating and cataloguing such sites.

• Standards and practices, protection of environment. Countries listed operational safety, debris mitigation, sustainability, and environmental safeguards as important topics, along with a structured consultative process for addressing them. Again, a new mechanism/agency would be needed.

ATLAC and its recommended mechanism/agency is itself part of a two-pronged emergence of lunar governance. The other is the above-mentioned instrument/agreement that is being considered by the COPUOS Space Resources Working Group. Last year the SRWG held a two-part conference of international non-governmental experts. Their work was summarized in a previous article, Space Resources 2024: In Search of the Grand Bargain. Although The SRWG will not issue its final recommendations until 2027, we know that it is considering the same topics listed above that were recommended by the new state members of ATLAC, along with others that would be beyond ATLAC’s purview, such as private ownership of resources removed from in place.

A new international agreement will be needed to address such issues, while at the same time creating an agency for ongoing consultations and to act as a repository for information. It now appears that the best vehicle/context for any new agreement will be as a Consultation Agreement under Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty, initially drafted by COPUOS, then offered for adoption by the States Parties of the OST. The Space Treaty Project has been working on a model international agreement for several years, first as an implementation agreement for the Moon Treaty, then as a resource utilization agreement, constantly evolving to incorporate peer review and new proposals. It now offers the following comprehensive Model Consultation Agreement, which is based on three organizational principles:

1. It must be comprehensive in scope and support all private activity.
2. It must protect essential public policies.
3. It must build upon and integrate current institutions and processes, creating new ones if necessary.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/03/13/atlac-and-the-early-emergence-of-lunar-governance/

(Dennis O’Brien is a member of the International Institute of Space Law and founder of The Space Treaty Project (www.spacetreaty.org). The Project is a member of the Moon Village Association; Mr. O’Brien sits on their Coordination & Cooperation workgroup.)

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VERY YOUNG REPORTERS think you need to take notes on a tape recorder, but you can’t. You might get something on a tape recorder but that’s not what I wanted. Essentially, I don’t want what comes out of [the subject’s] mouth the first time any more than I want the editor to read what I write the first time. I might rewrite a sentence twenty times, or a lede fifty times. The reader doesn’t know that, but I know that. My prose might read as if it had been easily written but it isn’t anything at all like that.”

— Gay Talese

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Musk Donates to G.O.P. Members of Congress Who Support Impeaching Judges

Judges Fear for Their Safety Amid a Wave of Threats

Trump Is Said to Sign Order Aimed at Dismantling Education Department

White House Plans to Pause $175 Million for Penn Over Transgender Policy

Fed Holds Rates Steady and Predicts Higher Inflation, Slower Growth Ahead

Jury Orders Greenpeace to Pay Pipeline Company More Than $660 Million

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I WRITE SO MUCH about the fake “antisemitism crisis” not only because it’s being used to destroy civil rights throughout the western world, but because it’s one of the most dark and disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.

It’s been so intensely creepy watching all of western society mobilize around a complete and utter fiction in order to stomp out all criticism of a foreign state. It’s about as dystopian a thing as you can possibly imagine, all these pundits and politicians pretending to believe that Jewish safety is seriously being threatened by an epidemic of antisemitism which must be aggressively silenced by any means necessary. All to shut down opposition to the worst inclinations of a genocidal apartheid state and the complicity of our own western governments with its crimes.

And we’re all expected to treat this scam seriously. Anyone who says the emperor has no clothes and calls this mass deception what it is gets tarred with the “antisemite” label and treated as further evidence that we’re all a hair’s breadth from seeing Jews rounded up onto trains again if we don’t all hurry up and shut down anti-genocide protests on university campuses. They’re not just acting out a fraudulent melodrama staged to rob us of our rights, they’re demanding that we participate in it by pretending it’s not what it plainly is.

It’s not just tyranny, it’s tyranny that orders people to clap along with it. It’s such a disgusting, evil thing to do to people. Such psychologically dominating abusive behavior. The more you look at it, the creepier it gets.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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THEY’VE STARTED AGAIN

by Selma Dabbagh

I woke up yesterday morning to a message from a friend in Pakistan. It just said: ‘They’ve started again.’ I did not wonder who ‘they’ were. He could only have been referring to Israel. And I knew what they must have started again: mass killing in Gaza. The fact that he had sent me a message meant the bombing had to be much heavier than it had been for the weeks since the 20 January ceasefire. I sent an expletive back.

I sent a message to my friend Marwa in Gaza to see if she was OK. ‘Hamdulillah we are fine.’ Only then did I check the news. I used to think the Israeli government’s publicity machinery was disingenuous, but slick. During the 2008-9 bombardments of Gaza which killed 1383 Palestinians, including 333 children, many of the army spokespeople were women with blonde highlights, often filmed with potted plants behind them. They would talk of ‘collateral damage’, of roofs being ‘knocked’ by warning bombs, of (unsuccessful) efforts to avoid medical facilities. We are in a different era. In less than 24 hours, 404 Palestinians were killed and 562 wounded. In this attack Israel killed ‘81 children in 50 minutes’, according to Dr Ghassan Abu Sita, ‘174 children in 24 hours’.

Last night’s attacks on Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah came when most of the population was sleeping. Footage from Khan Younis hospital shows women and children wrapped in blankets, floppy dead babies smeared with blood. On social media there are pictures of young families, like the Garghoun family of Rafah, who have been ‘erased from the civil record’ with the killing of seventeen family members. Israeli spokespeople do not say that these pictures are distorting their intent or giving rise to misunderstanding. The threat that this is ‘only the beginning’ is broadcast loud and clear, together with the desire for ‘total victory’, which they appear happy to equate with the annihilation of Gaza’s population. The US has green lit the killing and supplied most of the fighter jets. Lawyers seeking arrest warrants for American politicians’ complicity in war crimes have just had their cases strengthened.

‘The willingness of Israelis to join in their hundreds of thousands and enter Gaza on the ground is much less resilient than it was on 8 October 2023,’ Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator, told al-Jazeera. ‘Israel is bombing because that is the only thing Israel can do to demonstrate its quote unquote “strength”.’ Goldberg listed the allegations being levelled against Netanyahu, the demonstrations planned against him, the resignations at the security services and Shin Bet. ‘Hamas is right in its claims that Israel has been violating the ceasefire,’ Goldberg said, ‘not just tonight but throughout its duration.’

Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian writer, argued on X that Netanyahu’s motives are ‘to pass a budget widely seen as problematic, bring back Ben Gvir to salvage his fragile coalition and distract the Israeli public from serious accusations of corruption and wartime misconduct.’

Hamas announced that Israeli prisoners in Gaza are being ‘left to an unknown fate’ by Netanyahu’s actions. The Israeli Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that ‘the Israeli government chose to give up the hostages.’

A key term of the ceasefire deal, one of many that Israel has failed to comply with, is the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. ‘Rather than abide by the second phase of the ceasefire & prepare to withdraw from Gaza,’ the British Palestinian Committee said yesterday, ‘Israel’s leaders are once again demonstrating to the world the decades-old intent of this settler colonial project: the most Palestinian land possible with the fewest Palestinians possible.’ The Associated Press meanwhile reported on a Israeli-US plan to deport Palestinians from Gaza to Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland.

There is a risk that each new horror eradicates previous ones, diminishing the viciousness of Israel’s deliberate strangulation of human life. On Sunday, Israel cut off electricity supplies to Gaza and said it would not rule out cutting off water. Gaza is a terrain of broken grey cement, the skeletal remains of burnt buildings. In one of most densely populated areas on earth, there is hardly a building left standing. By 11 February, three weeks into the ceasefire, only one-tenth of 200,000 agreed-on tents had been allowed into Gaza. The average temperature drops to 9°C at night in February. Few people returning to the north had more than a rucksack on their back. Most went home to rubble.

‘In the past,’ Leila Molana-Allen said at the Frontline Club earlier this month, ‘the Israeli government would say things like there are security issues with some of the aid they’re trying to send through’ but ‘now they freely admit that they’re just blocking it and they’re not going to let it in.’

When pushed, Western diplomats point to humanitarian aid as the fig leaf for their political inaction or complicity with the genocide, but few of them seem prepared to protest when a UN member state prevents it from reaching a population of whom 876,000 are facing emergency levels of food insecurity and 345,000 catastrophic levels, in a place where 92 per cent of housing has been destroyed, 81 per cent of the road network and 88 per cent of commerce and industry. Last year, the UN found Israel to be using starvation as a weapon of war.

Anyone who has worked at the United Nations can attest to its fastidious editorial and fact-checking processes. This has often led to what Palestinians consider conservative underreporting of the conditions they endure under Israeli occupation. On 13 March, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel presented a fifty-page report on ‘Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023’ to the Human Rights Council (the US and Israel have consistently sought to discredit, defund and dismantle both UN bodies). The report finds a ‘sharp increase’ in such violence by Israeli security forces and settlers:

Entire families in Gaza have been killed together in their homes in unprecedented numbers; experts have found that, during the first month of the war, more than nine out of ten women and children killed were in residential buildings, and 95 per cent of women were killed together with at least one child.

On 16 December 2023, at a Catholic church in Gaza City:

Israeli soldiers were deployed in the street behind the church complex and shouted in Arabic that it was forbidden to move outside. The two women left the building to go to the bathroom inside the church complex when they were shot.

According to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, seven other people were shot and wounded in the same incident, when they ran to the courtyard to help the women. The Latin Patriarchate stated that there were no militants inside the Parish at the time of the shooting and no warning was given prior to the attack.

The report includes testimony describing women bleeding to death in hospital for lack of adequate equipment; of a hospital filled with rubbish as it wasn’t safe to leave the building to get rid of it; of a woman dying of septicaemia following a Caesarean section; of a woman and her newborn twins being killed in an airstrike on their apartment while the father was out registering the birth; of 99 per cent of ‘households with lactating mothers’ reporting ‘difficulties developing enough breastmilk’; of ‘limited access to water’ leading to an increase in vaginal and urinary tract infections, among other diseases.

The Commission also documented a deliberate attack in mid-November 2023 on a women’s rights centre working with survivors of gender-based violence in Gaza City. The attack against the centre appeared to have a clear gendered dimension, with soldiers leaving gendered and sexualised insults directed against the Palestinian women in graffiti in Hebrew on the walls of the centre, for example: ‘You sons of bitches, we came here to fuck you, you and your mothers, you bitches’ and ‘The dirty pussies of your prostitutes, you ugly Arab you ugly, you sons of bitches, we will burn you alive you dogs.’

Based on photographic evidence, the Commission assessed that the fifth floor of the building, which sheltered abused women and families, was directly targeted and completely destroyed. The rest of the five-floor building remained intact. The Commission found the damage to be consistent with firing from a tank.

Men, too, are subjected to sexual violence. Speaking of his abuse at the Sde Teiman detention centre, one victim told the Commission:

They took me into an interrogation room and suspended me by my arms behind my back. My toes barely touched the floor. A male guard inserted a metal stick in my penis on several occasions, about twenty times in total. I started bleeding. The pain was excruciating but the humiliation was worse.

The report also documents the depravity to which settlers and soldiers will sink to threaten Palestinians into leaving their land in the West Bank. The rape culture of Sde Teiman is directly cited by settlers and soldiers as a form of intimidation.

The complicity between settlers and soldiers in the West Bank is evident in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, which documents the steadfast resistance of the Palestinians of Musafar Yatta to the systematic attempts to destroy their community. In the film, Basel Adra, one of the filmmakers, emphasises to his dispirited colleague, Yuval Abraham, after yet another house demolition, that the need is to focus on the long game.

(London Review of Books)

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