Mendocino County Today: Saturday 5/10/2025

Warm | Unsafe Driving | Budget Notes | Food Drive | Road Extension | Tambouras Guilty | Noyo Pelagics | Native Plants | Ukiah Library | Union Lumber | Yesterday's Catch | Local Journalism | A Spiller | Hold Time | Marco Radio | New Gardener | Making Salami | Solar Power | General Strike | System Fit | Alcatraz Musings | Grimes Poznikov | Black Man | Marina Safeway | Giants Lose | Farm Lunch | Anna Jarvis | Manly Handshake | Bar Jokes | Edith Wharton | Proposed Changes | Lead Stories | New Order | Congress Silent | Bill Sucks | Collective Punishment | Abu Disney

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DRY WEATHER and above normal temperatures today. Conditions will slowly ease through the weekend as a late season storm approaches the area. Moderate rain and south wind will cross the area late Sunday through Monday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 46F this Saturday morning on the coast. We'll have a mix of fog, high clouds & clearing today & most of tomorrow leading to some rain Sunday night & Monday morning. Clearing skies the rest of the week. Yep.

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AV WATCH (anonymous poster): Yesterday over 253 tailgating until i pulled over, then hand out the window with camera, WTF at 55 mph speeding and tailgating though town, then that bus…. yep he passed it as it pulled over and the car in front of him pull over to the left…no good comes from this shit…4ZYT477 plates! Young guy.

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COUNTY BUDGET NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

Among the Third Quarter Budget Adjustments reported by the CEO’s financial staff for this fiscal year is this one from Human Resources: “862189, Contracts, Adjust Request: $72,902.00, Adopted Budget: $253,515.00, New Total: $326,417.00. Increase due to contracts not anticipated.”

There you go! Perfectly clear. $73k in a Human Resources contract was “not anticipated.” Was it approved? We don’t know. Was it necessary? We don’t know. Why wasn’t it “anticipated”? We don’t know. Who approved it? We don’t know. 

Further down the HR adjustment list we found: 

“826390 Other Charges ($450,583.00) ($299,149.00) ($749,732.00). Increase in revenue due to direct billing calculation changes - charges to Social Service were not originally budgeted.”

Almost half a million magically appears! Apparently it was “not budgeted.” Is Mendo still spending General Fund to cover some overhead costs associated with state and federal grants?

Also among the larger HR adjustments we found:

“862189 Prof & Spec Svcs-Other ($714,713.73) $3,947,018.65 $3,232,304.92. Adjustment For Actual Expenditures.” 

Over $700k of a “CN Grant” for “Prof & Spec Svcs-Other” was not spent. Why not? Did the money go back to the state or something?

This is what passes in Mendo for budget information. While the basic reporting is a step forward, you might think that some of the larger “adjustments” that are not just moving money from one pocket to another would be explained a little better than this. But no. No one seems interested in such trivial reporting basics.

Tuesday’s budget/financial package included a “Year-to-Date Budget Report-General Fund” for the first three quarters of the fiscal year (i.e., July 2024 to March 2025) which is a reasonable and long-overdue attempt to summarize departmental budget status, for the first time in recent memory. In general, most departments appear to be running close to budget for the first three quarters, although expenses for January to March are not yet closed in the County’s financial system. This, despite a net 4% increase in salaries that kicked in this year which are expected to go up almost 10% more next year.

It’s hard to assess the CEO’s office budget because it’s now includes multiple “departments” which are budgeted separately, but are effectively managed as a group out of the CEO’s office: Clerk of the Board, Fleet Management, Central Services, Fiscal Services, Payroll Administration, Economic Development, Retirement Administration, etc. Human Resources is a separate budget, but it is being managed by a CEO staffer.

There’s also an unexplained $1.5 million “miscellaneous budget,” much of which appears to be for employees, “auditing & fiscal services,” and “payments to other government agencies.”

The Sheriff’s department’s patrol division (excluding the jail) representing a large chunk of the General Fund is reported to be running overbudget at about 85%, where it should be under 75% at this point. No explanation is offered. This might be partially explained by one-time expenses, but they are not itemized. Another possible explanation could be a mystery line item at about $2.7 million called “operating transfer in” which is running at only 23% of budget, which may mean that some Sheriff’s department revenue has not yet been put into the Sheriff’s revenue budget, thus skewing the percentage calculation. There are no other Sheriff’s department line items that appear to be significantly overbudget.

A similar, but slightly worse, pattern appears in the jail budget, another large part of the General Fund. While Patrol overtime is running near budget, jail overtime is running about 85%, about 10% over what it was expected for the first nine months of the fiscal year. The Sheriff told the Board of Supervisors recently that a significant factor in jail overtime is the extra time involved in transporting increasing numbers of arrestees and inmates to and from the hospital for various medical or drug-related conditions prior to and after booking and the associated wait times that accompany such travel.

Perhaps the most surprising item in the departmental rundown is the Juvenile Hall budget, now estimated to cost over $4 million per year for a couple dozen delinquents with about $2.2 million spent so far this year. Surely, there must be a cheaper way to do this. A few years ago consideration was given to shutting down the Hall and sending the few delinquents — typically fewer than a couple dozen — to neighboring counties. When a few locals complained that it would move the delinquents farther from their homes and families, that idea was dropped. But $4 million a year for the luxury of keeping a few delinquents in County seems wastefully high. 

The County’s revenue report shows an increase in property tax revenues year over year since 2019/2020 which probably reflects routine property sales and associated increasing re-assessments. In 2019/2020  Property tax revenues for the County were almost $36 million. In 2024/2025 the projection is about $46.5 million. However, sales taxes over the same time have only increased from about $6.6 million in 2019/2020 to about $7 million in 2024/2025 which is a significant reduction in buying power due to inflation. A lot of this is likely a reflection of the drop off in the marijuana industry and associated retail activity, especially in fuel and vehicles, historically the biggest contributors to local sales tax receipts.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY AWARDED $39.9 MILLION STATE GRANT FOR REDEMEYER ROAD EXTENTION PROJECT

Ukiah, CA – Mendocino County is proud to announce that its Department of Transportation (MCDoT) has been awarded a $39,930,000 grant through Cycle 2 of the Local Transportation Climate Adaptation Program (LTCAP) to fund right-of-way acquisition and construction for the long-anticipated Redemeyer Road Extension Project. This funding will support a vital new connection across the Russian River to North State Street (County Road 104), enhancing regional safety, climate resilience, and emergency response capability. MCDoT was previously awarded $12,000,000 through LTCAP Cycle 1 to complete the Project Approval and Environmental Documents (PA&ED) and Plans, Specifications, and Estimate (PS&E) phases of the project.

The project includes extending Redemeyer Road (CR 215A) west across the Russian River, constructing a new bridge, and adding an at-grade crossing over the Northwestern Pacific Railroad to connect with North State Street (CR 104). This new route will enhance public safety, reduce emergency response times, and improve regional connectivity.

The LTCAP grant supports climate-resilient infrastructure projects. The Redemeyer Road Extension qualifies for reduced local matching costs—10% instead of 20%—through California’s State Climate Resilience Improvement Plan for Transportation (SCRIPT).

Mendocino County’s local match obligation will total approximately $3,993,000 over four fiscal years (FY 2026–2030), with funding to be considered during annual budget cycles. MCDoT will seek external funding opportunities to meet this local match but may ultimately request up to the full amount from the County.

This major infrastructure investment represents a milestone for regional transportation planning and climate adaptation efforts in Mendocino County.

For more information, contact the Department of Transportation at (707) 463-4363.

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WILLITS DUI DRIVER CONVICTED BY JURY.

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Thursday afternoon to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty of two substantive crimes.

Defendant Nicholas John Tambouras, age 54, of Willits, was found guilty of driving a motor vehicle on Locust Street in Willits on January 3rd of this year while under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor.

He was also found guilty of driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent or greater, also a misdemeanor.

The law enforcement agencies that provided testimonial evidence at the trial were the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Justice forensic crime laboratory.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Sarah Drlik.

Retired Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke, sitting on temporary assignment in his old courtroom, presided over the two-day trial.

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PRESENTING NOYO PELAGICS

Noyo Center is pleased to present Noyo Pelagics, a new partnership with long time friends and colleagues at the Mendocino Coast Audobon Society and Anchor Charter Boats. For more information and schedule of upcoming trips: https://noyopelagics.com/

Dobie Dolphin

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THE SANHEDRIN NATIVE PLANT NURSERY at Observatory is a joint project by the Sanhedrin Chapter of the CA Native Plant Society (CNPS) and the City of Ukiah. CNPS volunteers grow plants from seeds and cuttings until they are ready for planting. These plants will be used in City parks and public spaces. CNPS volunteers also offer classes on native plant identification, propagation, and landscaping. Volunteers are needed for nursery maintenance and plant care. For more information or to volunteer, email wrecodesign@gmail.com. (Martin Bradley)

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UKIAH LIBRARY ACTIVITIES

Farmer’s Market Reading Time 

With the Ukiah Branch Library 

The Ukiah Branch Library invites families and folks of all ages to visit our reading station at the Ukiah Farmer’s Market every Saturday May through October in 2025! This longstanding, volunteer-run program provides an hour of age-appropriate read-alouds to market goers from 10 – 11 a.m., weather permitting. We hope to see you there! 

Please note that rain and/or temperatures exceeding 95 degrees Fahrenheit will cancel that Saturday’s Farmer’s Market Reading Time. 

This program is free for all and is sponsored in part by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library. 

For more information, please contact the library at 707-463-4490. 

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Loba Poetry Series 

Monthly Poet Features & Open Mic 

Join Ukiah Branch Library staff as we host poetry events in-person on the third Saturdays of each month at 3 p.m. This free event is open to both teens and adults. All are invited to share poems in any form or style or just listen to others. On May 17, we welcome fiction writer Felicia Martinez for a special LOBA. 

Felicia Martínez is a writer and artist from Eastern New Mexico and now calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. While an Associate Professor in the Integral Program at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, she had the great pleasure of leading students in discussions across the liberal arts tradition. She now divides her time between the ceramics studio and the word mines, where she can be found writing surreal, experimental, and speculative stories and poetry under the careful watch of a cat named Bat. Find her words at Asimov's, The Razor, The Acentos Review, The Deadlands, Star*Line, and others. She is the author of “The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez,” available now from Querencia Press. 

Please contact the Ukiah Branch Library at 707-463-4490 or carrm@mendocinocounty.gov for more information. 

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OMG! I Need a Job 

How to Interview 

Are you a teenager who wants a job? Are you ready for your job interview? Do you know what to expect and how to present yourself? Join us in the Teen Room of the Ukiah Branch Library on Saturday May 31 from 4 to 5 p.m. for interview tips and tricks. We’ll cover some of the most common interview questions, strategies for answering questions, and interview dress and behavior. You’ll even have a chance to practice interviewing! Snacks will be provided. 

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Friends of the Ukiah Valley Library and the Mendocino County Library. For more information, please visit www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Ukiah Branch at 707-463-4490. 

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FROM E-BAY, A POSTCARD OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST (Marshall Newman)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, May 9, 2025

TINA CORNWALL, 31, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia.

DESTINE DESILETS, 20, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JONATHAN HOUSE, 42, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation violation.

KEEGAN KNIGHT, 34, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, switchblade, metal knuckles, probation revocation.

DAVID MAXWELL, 58, Oceanside/Ukiah. Recklessly causing a fire.

MEGAN PILLOW-MCCUNE, 28, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

CAITLIN PITTS, 23, Fort Bragg. Accessory after the fact.

JOSE PLASCENTIA, 24, Fort Bragg. Burglary.

DESIREA RODARTE, 26, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, burglarly, vandalism, resisting.

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, 35, Ukiah. Under influence. (Frequent flyer.)

JESSICA TOMINIA, 42, Clearlake/Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

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PAUL ANDERSEN: Drove by “the bunker” (Press Democrat) and saw the “Support Local Journalism” banner and had to laugh/cry.

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TODAY

I was a spiller.

I spilled milk at breakfast,

ink at noon.

Getting out of the truck at about three-fifteen p.m.

I spilled the grocery bag

all over the ground.

I spilled the honey jar.

I spilled the cottage cheese & Tofu,

the butter, eggs, white table wine,

scallions & bananas.

It was a mess — broken glass & honey

au vin.

.

At about five p.m. I spilled the tea.

The teapot broke.

Just a minute ago when I spilled

the safflower oil all over the kitchen floor

& decided to run & get my notebook

& spill the beans about the day’s spillings,

I spilled myself on the stairs.

Also,

I spilled my notebook.

.

It is beginning to rain.

— Don Shanley

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

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 5pm or so. If that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday.

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. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:

Kate Kortum and the Benny Benack Band - What A Little Moonlight Can Do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2o_ZUTi9Sk

Weird dystopian-future science-fiction clothes that only last for four hours and cost more than a car. https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/met-gala-2025-red-carpet

And the cult of radical honesty. "I began to wonder what these guys were all doing /before/ I got there. Because the whole time when I /was/ there it was all about me. Everybody was just standing around the whole time watching Brad tell me to fuck off." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf0Tz0B6DC4

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

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SALAMI, an on-line comment: One of the very worst foods one could eat is a mix of puréed animal organs, skin, tongue, flank, sinew and tendons stirred together, mashed into a log, encased in animal sinew and sliced.

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SOLAR POWER ‘COST SHIFT’

Editor:

There is chaos raining down on us from the current federal administration, but we can’t forget the greatest challenge of our time — the increasing threat of climate change. As Pope Francis wrote in Laudate Deum, “The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”
California’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 calls for a 100% clean energy grid. To reach that goal we need all the solar and other clean energy we can muster. It is said that rooftop solar is making electric rates higher due to “cost shift” (“Balancing the costs and benefits of rooftop solar,” Close to Home, April 17) — but there are other cost shifts.

For example, homes with underground distribution lines, and less-dense rural homes, pay the same rates as everyone else even though installation costs are higher for them. The most insidious cost shift is to the communities that bear the burden of pollution from electric power plants. Don’t let our rooftop solar industry be destroyed. Contact your elected California representatives and the California Public Utilities Commission (cpuc.ca.gov) and let them know how you feel about solar.

Kathryn Albury

Forestville

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

If only you would instigate and further the notion of a General Strike in the entire country. If only. Each person doing something for their fun isn't going to cut it, not now, not ever. That is not the way to solidarity. You might feel better but it's fleeting. A General Strike is the only way. Weekly protests on your town's street corners is a frail attempt. The only way is for everyone to get out and blast this impertinence off the face of the earth.

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DONALD TRUMP & AN ISLAND CALLED ALCATRAZ

by Jonah Raskin

The news that Trump ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to reopen Alcatraz reminded me that years ago, after visiting the island soon after it became a national park in the company of two Weather Underground fugitives, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, I wrote a story about our adventure. I was worried about their safety and changed their names. They weren’t worried. Published in Francis Ford Coppola’s magazine, City, the piece was originally titled “Alcatraz Island.” Before sending it to the editor, Ken Kelley, who I knew from underground newspaper days, I gave it to Abbie Hoffman who was also a fugitive and invited him to read it. Abbie changed the title. “An Island called Alcatraz” sounds better than “Alcatraz Island.” He was right. When it came to language as well as the titles of books and articles he was spot on. Revolution for the Hell of It, Woodstock Nation and Steal This Book were some of the titles for his books. Kelley, who interviewed Abbie for Playboy, died in prison in 2008.

In 1975, Abbie was living in San Francisco at the home of Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane and later the Starship. At the same time, Dohrn and Ayres rented an apartment on Fillmore Street in the city. As I recall, their paths didn’t cross. I don’t know how those seventies’ fugitives would respond to Trump’s idea to bring back Alcatraz as a prison, though they had spent time in jails and prisons, denounced the incarceration of political prisoners, and demanded an end to the prison industrial complex.

Not long ago, it seemed possible that Trump might be a felon in prison and at the same time the legally elected president of the US. All attempts to convict him of the crimes he committed have so far failed. We now have a criminal in the White House who has called for the arrest, deportation and incarceration of men who may have had nothing more guilty than their tattoos.

There’s a long list of presidents and prime ministers, including Robert Mugabe and Mohamed Morsi, who have been overthrown and imprisoned. Trump would not be the first head of state to find himself behind bars serving a sentence. He clearly has prisons on his mind. Hence the notion of making Alcatraz a prison again doesn’t seem out of character  “Lock her up,” he once said of Hillary Clinton. Trump has also pardoned a great many individuals convicted of crimes and who were serving prison terms. That’s fairness according to Trump. It would be poetic justice if he were to be incarcerated at a restored Alcatraz.

In recent years I have also visited the island in the company of Native Americans who occupied the island for 19 months in 1969, 1970 and 1971. John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s right hand man for domestic affairs, directed federal marshals to remove the Indians from the island, which had become, in the words of Indian writer, Vine Deloria—the author of Custer Died for Your Sins — as “a spiritual space.” The island was also a sanctuary for birds.

It still is. Back in the 1970s, Deloria observed that the funniest line, uttered by an unidentified White House spokesperson during the 19-month occupation was “Get those Indians out of that prison or we’ll throw them in jail.” Someone not in Washington D.C.‘s corridors of power today might say approps Trump, “Get that criminal out of his bunker or we’ll throw him in jail.”

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

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GRIMES POZNIKOV, the Automatic Human Jukebox, gets temporary memorial

by Carl Nolte

Famous people around these parts get their names on important places. Robin Williams got a tunnel, Willie Brown got a bridge. Grimes Poznikov got a Porta Potti.

Perhaps you don’t know who Poznikov was, but he was famous in his time. He was the Automatic Human Jukebox, among the most celebrated of San Francisco’s street characters in the 1970s and ’80s. He was a free spirit who brought music and a kind of zany zest to life on the street. In time, though, the streets and his demons killed him. It is a sad story.

Now he has a memorial. It is a temporary street toilet, the kind used by construction workers. This one stands on Bay Street near Hyde Street. It is enclosed by an exact replica of the cardboard box that housed the Automatic Human Jukebox, complete with a painting of Poznikov playing his trumpet. It is so real that he almost looks alive.

The box on Bay Street is part memorial, part whimsy, part a tribute to another time in San Francisco. It was the idea of Mike Caruso, who runs Caruso Construction and Design. He likes to decorate the portable street toilets the law requires for construction jobs, particularly in upscale neighborhoods, such as Pacific Heights or Noe Valley. Some of them are decorated with photographs, others with texture, like bamboo, so that the portable toilet doesn’t clash with the neighborhood street scene.

“They are called crapper wrappers,” Caruso said. “Only in San Francisco.”

For a remodeling job at 836 Bay St., he picked the Automatic Human Jukebox as a theme, partly to create a little buzz, partly out of sentiment. Caruso grew up in North Beach, and as a small boy, he’d go for walks with his grandfather, an immigrant from Sicily, who spoke little English.

“We’d walk along, he’d buy me some popcorn, and we’d walk along to Aquatic Park where the Human Jukebox was,” Caruso recalled.

The old man — his name was Giuseppe — would put in some money, the boy would pick a tune, and Grimes, a bearded man in a funky black fedora, would play it on his trumpet. The boy and his grandfather would laugh and laugh. “I was a kid and he was an old man who spoke broken English, and somehow we bonded on those walks.”

That must have been in the early ’70s, not too long after the Summer of Love, when hippies were in flower and Poznikov was in his prime.

He had an old cardboard box, the kind new refrigerators come in. He had it painted white with yellow and red trim. On one side, he had a selection of 23 tunes. On the other, a slot where money could be inserted. A customer put in money, and a window would pop open and Poznikov would play the requested tune.

If you put in a dollar, he’d play for a minute or two on his battered trumpet. If you put in a quarter you’d get only a couple of seconds on a kazoo. If you Google his name, you can see Poznikov in action on YouTube.

Charles Kuralt, who had an “On the Road” show on CBS television, found him fascinating. So did “The Mike Douglas Show,” Newsweek magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Mayor George Moscone used to stop by to listen once in a while.

Poznikov was a free spirit, one of a kind. But he couldn’t last, even in a place like San Francisco.

He got busted for selling marijuana to high school kids in 1982. He had repeated trouble with the cops, blocking the sidewalk, making noise, rocking the boat. In 1987, he was kicked out of his favorite spot at Hyde and Beach streets after nearby office workers complained about his loud music. His crime: He played “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” 13 decibels above the sound limit.

Poznikov faded away, quit his act, gave up his apartment, and started staying with friends and then on the streets. He liked the freedom, he said. He did drugs, he slid into mental illness. In 2002 he was found again, living under a rotting baby grand piano in a homeless encampment near the Caltrain tracks in a nowhere part of the city. His hair was gray and matted. He wore a dress. He smoked pot, he said, and drank. Sometimes he gave midnight recitals on his ruined piano at the homeless camp.

That was in early December of that year. The week after Christmas, crews hired by the city broke up the camp. The Chronicle story began: “The bulldozers came at daybreak … ”

Poznikov lost what scraps remained of his life. “You live rent free, you gotta pay a price,” he said. “It’s a hell of a hard life.”

He lived three more years. A passerby found him dead, lying on a sidewalk near Bayshore Freeway in late October 2005. Alcohol poisoning was the official cause of death.

Now he has his memorial, not far from the corner where he performed long ago and not far away. Caruso was glad to honor Grimes Poznikov, but it is only temporary. It will be gone in a few months, like the memory of the Automatic Human Jukebox, who lived and died on the streets of San Francisco.

(sfchronicle.com)

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DRAYMOND GREEN: "I’m not an angry Black man, and I’m tired of the agenda to make me look like an angry Black man. I’m a very successful, highly educated Black man with a great family, and I’m great at basketball, I’m great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I’m sick of it, it’s ridiculous.”

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GIANTS DONE IN BY JORDAN HICKS’ FIRST-INNING WOES and an AWOL offense

by Susan Slusser

MINNEAPOLIS — Jordan Hicks zipped out 100 mph pitches every so often Friday at Target Field, but the San Francisco Giants starter was not the focal point.

Twins starter Chris Paddack, working at a more pedestrian low-to-mid 90s, didn’t allow a baserunner until Christian Koss’s two-out single in the sixth. Paddack, who entered the game with a 5.57 ERA, gave up only two more hits, including Matt Chapman’s solo homer in the seventh, and the suddenly hot Twins took the opener of the three-game series 3-1, their sixth win in a row.

“It wasn’t our best effort today,” San Francisco manager Bob Melvin said. “We just didn’t look crisp today, whether it was at the plate or really anywhere. Jordan pitched well enough to win a game. … I just didn’t feel like we were very good today. The numbers would suggest that.”

Until Koss’ hit, the Giants’ only glimmer of offense was Willy Adames’ blast down the left-field line with one out in the first. Adames trotted all the way around the bases only to find the umpire crew in a replay review. Verdict: foul ball. Adames stepped back in and struck out, one of Paddack’s six in 7 ⅓ innings.

A call reversal shouldn’t have affected the Giants’ hitters momentum or mojo, “shouldn’t turn it at all,” Melvin said. “Granted, you want to score first and you think you got a run up on the board, but that shouldn’t affect us offensively.”

Paddack, the onetime Padres starter, also had a nice outing against San Francisco last year, allowing one run in five innings in the Twins’ eventual 3-2 loss and lifetime he’s 2-1 with a 3.14 ERA in nine appearances against the Giants.

“He’s got a good fastball, he threw a hard cutter that played (well) with his slow curveball, so we had a lot of early weak contact,” Koss said. “That kind of let him settle in a little bit.”

Hicks’ night included his near routine first-inning blip. Byron Buxton tripled on the first pitch Hicks threw and scored on Trevor Larnach’s single two pitches later, but Hicks escaped his usually trouble-inning with no more damage. He’s allowed 11 runs in the first, tied for the most in the league, and 11 combined in innings two through five.

“It started off with a triple, so that’s not ideal, but it taught me that I just need to come out there and don’t have to get slapped in the face first, just come out with my best stuff,” Hicks said. “I had like 99-100 mph today, so the first pitch of the game was 97 — when you know you’ve got more, on an aggressive hitter, just attack a little bit better.”

In the fourth, Ty France led off with a single, stole second and scored on Carlos Correa’s two-out hit, and the fifth had some mess: two singles, a wild pitch, a hit batter and a run-scoring error by Heliot Ramos, so Hicks did well to limit the damage there, too, in putting together his first quality start since March 31, his season debut. It was his first career loss in a quality start.

Hicks lowered his ERA slightly with his five innings of work, but his 5.84 ERA is the highest among Giants starters.

“It seems like there’s an inning that bites him,” Melvin said before the game. “Then (May 3), five really good innings, then all of a sudden it’s hit, hit, got to get somebody up quickly. But we haven’t scored him a ton either. It doesn’t feel like those should be his numbers.”

Hicks’ long tenure as a reliever always will make his time in the rotation something of a question mark any time he’s in a rough patch, and the team has two of its top young starters, Hayden Birdsong and Kyle Harrison, currently toiling in the bullpen.

“Because of what he’s done, I think it’s always potentially there,” Melvin said of Hicks in the bullpen, “but we’re not talking about that at this point.”

Harrison pitched the seventh and eighth for the Giants and walked three and struck out three.

The Giants’ occasionally snoozy offense is likely to get a boost in two weeks: DH Jerar Encarnacion, out with a broken finger, is expected to start a rehab assignment Saturday and he is eligible to return May 23. Melvin said infielder Casey Schmitt (oblique) is getting close to a rehab assignment, too.

(sfchronicle.com)

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"1940 LUNCH ON THE FARM" offers a timeless snapshot of rural life during a pivotal era in American history. Set against the backdrop of the early 1940s—just before the U.S. entered World War II—this scene likely captures a moment of well-earned rest for a farm family or hired hands during a day of hard work in the fields.

During this period, America was still emerging from the Great Depression, and for many rural families, farming was not just a livelihood, but a way of life rooted in self-reliance, resilience, and community. Meals were often taken outdoors during harvests or planting seasons, when work demanded long hours and cooperation from every able hand, young and old.

The food would have been simple but hearty—perhaps biscuits, boiled eggs, pickles, sliced meats, fresh vegetables, and coffee from a thermos—all likely homemade or grown right on the farm. Tin plates and enamel mugs would be spread out on blankets or makeshift tables, with the sound of wind in the trees and livestock in the distance.

Photographs like this one aren’t just quaint—they speak to a specific rhythm of life: seasonal, physical, deeply connected to the land. In a time before fast food and convenience culture, lunch on the farm was a sacred pause, a family ritual, and a moment of dignity in the everyday.

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THE WOMAN WHO CREATED MOTHER’S DAY ALSO HATED IT WITH A PASSION — AND HER FAMILY IS UPHOLDING THAT TRADITION

by Brooke Stenberg

The real history of Mother's Day is fraught with resentment and tragedy as its founder, Anna Jarvis, would eventually come to campaign against the holiday for the rest of her life.

Mother’s Day ain’t what it used to be.

The family of Anna Jarvis, the holiday’s founder, are following in their ancestor’s footsteps — by refusing to recognize the controversial date.

Jarvis, born in 1864, wanted moms to have a deeply personal day to celebrate them. Her vision for the holiday was to be a tribute to “the best mother who ever lived: yours.”

But as the day started to become more commercialized, the woman from Webster, West Virginia, spent her final years, blind and broke, campaigning against the holiday with lawsuits to reclaim what the day initially stood for.

Today, Richard Talbott Miller Jr. and Elizabeth Burr, Jarvis’ first cousins three times removed, are upholding the activist’s stance against Mother’s Day, though they only recently discovered their link to Jarvis thanks to an intrepid geneologist from MyHeritage, who sought to find out if the holiday’s creator had any living kin.

When Burr first received a call from a researcher at MyHeritage, she “thought it was a scam.”

“But once I realized it was real, it was amazing.”

Jarvis set out to establish Mother’s Day after the death of her own mother, whose dream it was to see such a holiday become a reality — so Jarvis honored hers by doing just that.

And in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill making Jarvis’ Mother’s Day a national holiday.
As the date transformed into a so-called “Hallmark holiday,” Jarvis couldn’t stand the monster she created — she hated the flower arrangements, greeting cards and expensive chocolates, CNN reported.

She called those who profited from Mother’s Day “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and termites.”

“This is the wrong spirit,” Jarvis told the Miami Daily News in a heated interview in 1924.

Even though she spent years campaigning Congress to get the holiday national recognition, she started protesting florists for the marked-up and excessive floral arrangements, which eventually led to her arrest for public disturbances.

She then went directly after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for co-opting the holiday to promote the health and welfare of women and children, even though Jarvis’ mother was also a community health advocate.

Jarvis never married or had children before passing away in 1948 — but her only known living relatives have been uncovered by researchers at MyHeritage.

Turns out, they’re not fans of Mother’s Day either.

Anna Jarvis died in 1948, having never married or had children of her own.

It was long believed that her family line had ended, but using census records, family trees and historical documents, a genealogist was able to trace her extended family line through her aunt, Margaret Jane Jarvis Strickler.

This led them to Maryland siblings Miller and Burr.

Burr and her aunt, Jane Unkefer, told the researchers that their family never celebrated Mother’s Day the way the rest of the world does now to honor of their ancestor’s vision.

“We really didn’t like Mother’s Day,” Unkefer said. “We acknowledged it as a nice sentiment, but we didn’t go in for the fancy dinner or bouquets.”

“Our mother always said, ‘Every day is Mother’s Day.’”

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FUNNY STUFF FOR PSEUDO LIBERAL SNOBS

by Stephen Morris

(I think I picked this up from Facebook, but for anyone with literary pretentions -- that would be me -- it's really quite instructive. SB SM]

Consider yourself schooled.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

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Edith Wharton, born in New York City in 1862, was raised in a world of wealth and high society, but it was a world that placed restrictive expectations on women. Despite these societal norms, Wharton defied convention from an early age. She pursued her passions with a fierce independence, embracing her intellectual curiosity and the desire to write, even though it was not considered appropriate for women of her social class to engage in such a profession.

Throughout her childhood, Edith developed a love for languages, becoming fluent in French, German, and Italian while spending many years in Europe. However, it was storytelling that truly captured her imagination. By the age of fifteen, she had completed a novella of thirty thousand words, and by the time she was eighteen, she had multiple poems published in literary magazines, though under a pseudonym due to the social stigma surrounding women writers at the time.

Writing would ultimately define Edith Wharton’s life, and she went on to publish an impressive body of work, including forty-eight books and over eighty-five short stories. Her literary contributions were recognized in 1921 when she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for ‘The Age of Innocence,’ solidifying her place as one of America's greatest writers.

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TRUMP’S PROPOSED SPENDING CHANGES FOR 2026…

Defense: +13.4%

Homeland Security: +64.9%

Transportation: +5.8

Veterans Affairs: +4.1%

State Dept: -83.7%

National Science Foundation: -55.8%

EPA: -54.5%

HUD: -43.6%

Labor: -35%

Small Business Administration: -33.2%

Interior: -30.5%

Health & Human Services: -26%

NASA: -24.3%

Treasury: -19%

Agriculture: -18%

Education: -15.3%

Corps of Engineers: -15.2%

Justice: -7.6%

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LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

U.S. and China Meet for High-Stakes Economic Talks

This Is the Trade Conflict Xi Jinping Has Been Waiting For

Chinese Factories Are Looking for the Next China

With U.S. Trade Deal, British Steel Industry Feels Some Much Needed Relief

India-Pakistan Conflict Escalates Sharply With Attacks on Military Bases

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CONGRESS’S SILENCE ON GAZA

by Bernie Sanders

I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about – are appalled by – but for some strange reason gets very little discussion here in the nation’s capital or in the halls of Congress. And that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.

Today marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel.

Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.

There is no ambiguity here: Netanyahu’s extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said “Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.”

Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death.

What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day.
There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed. And Israel has pushed the population into an ever-smaller area.

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza.

Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down. Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils, shared between a family once a day.

The UN reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages.
The starvation hits children hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition, and dozens have already starved to death.

Malnutrition rates increased 80 percent in March, the last month for which data is available, after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.

UNICEF reported yesterday that “the situation is getting worse every day,” and that they are treating about 10,000 children for severe malnutrition.

Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea.

For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombing, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.

With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those that survive will bear the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives.

And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease can be a death sentence in Gaza.

What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake, it is not a hurricane, it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare. And nothing can justify this.

What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.

There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.

The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.

Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.

But Netanyahu’s extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.

They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.

Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000 – 60 percent of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children have been killed.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92 percent of the housing units. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.

The health care system in Gaza has been essentially destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary health care facilities have been bombed.

Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90 percent of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.

Gaza’s education system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza’s 12 universities.

And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months.

Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.

And now Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan: to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area, where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.

Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries “in line with President Trump’s vision for Gaza,” as one Israeli official said this week.

Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich said this week that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and that its population will “leave in great numbers.”

For many in Netanyahu’s extremist government, this has been the plan all along: it’s called ethnic cleansing.

This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where or why it was happening. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster.

Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons.

And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinians will be pushed out, and that the U.S. will redevelop it into what Trump calls “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a playground for billionaires.

This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.

Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza. You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I’d love to hear it.

But we are not having that debate. And let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate.

That is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows AIPAC to set the agenda here in Washington. In the last election cycle, AIPAC’s PAC and Super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined.

And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.

One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, people are literally afraid to stand up. If they do, suddenly you will have all kinds of ads coming in to your district to defeat you.

Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu’s war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it.

History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine.

We must demand an immediate ceasefire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza – not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there – but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.

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THE OBSCENITY OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT IN GAZA

by John Feffer

Maybe you remember an incident like this from your schooldays. Someone in your class has done something wrong, like pass around a caricature of the principal, and the teacher decides to punish the whole class by taking away your recess. Maybe this is done to force the culprit to confess, or to pressure you and your classmates to point the finger. It's a clever method of drafting students to help police the classroom.

Such tactics of collective punishment have fallen out of favor for obvious reasons. They're unfair. They don't change behavior. They teach all the wrong lessons and make kids hate school.

Oh, and such tactics are also against the Geneva Conventions. According to an article of the Conventions related to the status and treatment of protected persons, "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."

It might seem ridiculous to apply the Geneva Conventions to the classroom, even if some schools resemble warzones. But there has been a recent trend to condemn the tactics of collective punishment at schools and reference the principles designed to safeguard civilians.

Even as the classroom becomes more respectful of children's rights, the world of geopolitics has continued to embrace principles of collective punishment. What is war, ultimately, but the punishment of the entire population for the actions of the few? Economic sanctions, even the supposedly "smart" variety, end up hurting people who have nothing to do with the policies of their leaders. And all those "beautiful" tariffs end up raising prices for millions of consumers who are not connected in the least to the practices of government or corporations.

But there is no more egregious example of collective punishment in the world today than the tragedy currently unfolding in Gaza.

Ongoing violations

On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a horrifying attack on Israel that left over a thousand dead and over 200 in captivity. Israel almost immediately declared war on Hamas. It then set about forcing all the residents of Gaza to pay for the crimes of a few.

The punishment has been appalling. More than 52,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces, according to the Gaza health ministry. But this number is probably an under-count by 40 percent, according to an article in The Lancet, if all war-related deaths like those from a ravaged health system are included. The vast majority of these tens of thousands of deaths—around 70 percent—are women and children.

These casualty numbers must now reflect deaths by starvation, as Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza for the last two months. Israel has deployed this tactic to pressure the Palestinian population to force Hamas to capitulate and release the couple dozen Israeli hostages it continues to hold. No food, no medicine, and no fuel has made it into the enclave. In addition to starvation, people are dying because they don't have access to common life-saving drugs.

The New York Times reports that the "only food available to many Gazans—particularly those among the 90 percent of the population that is displaced and mostly living in tents—comes from local charity kitchens, some of which have been looted as the hunger crisis deepens." Compounding the tragedy is the fact that food and medicine is readily available nearby, but Israel is blocking its delivery.

The Israeli government claims that it is only targeting Hamas. But it continues to kill civilians indiscriminately in air strikes, including this week at a crowded restaurant and a school. It claims that Hamas fighters are hiding in hospitals, which justifies the destruction of the entire medical infrastructure of the area. Even if this assertion were true, and Israel has provided little in the way of proof, all of the civilian deaths would still qualify as collective punishment. It would still be a war crime.

Clayton Dalton was part of a medical mission that visited Gaza during the two-month ceasefire that began in January. In The New Yorker, he described this scene at a ruined hospital in northern Gaza.

We entered a large storage room in the corner of the I.C.U. which was crammed with medical devices: ultrasound machines, I.V. pumps, dialysis machines, blood-pressure monitors. Each had apparently been destroyed by a bullet—not in a pattern one would expect from random shooting but, rather, methodically. I was stunned. I couldn't think of any possible military justification for destroying lifesaving equipment.

Visiting doctors also started documenting another horrifying statistic: the number of children shot in the head, as if deliberately executed. There have been dozens of such casualties, some of the children just a few years old. Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon from New Jersey, told This American Life:

These are little children that are being shot, and these aren't stray bullets. These are aimed. They're precise. So a stray bullet will explain one or two of them. It's not going to explain the string of precise, targeted shootings that are being done on children since October.

The Geneva Conventions do not seem to apply to school-age children in Gaza. They, along with so many other Palestinians, are the victims of collective punishment.

Naming and not shaming

Israel has been cited numerous times for war crimes in Gaza. Human rights organizations—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International—have published periodic reports on Israeli violations. The United Nations has condemned Israel for crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

If anything, the Netanyahu government has only increased its violations in the face of these condemnations. This week, it announced an escalation in its post-ceasefire campaign to defeat Hamas. Israel has called up more soldiers to invade Gaza, push inhabitants to a small enclave in the south, and occupy most of the strip. More extremist members of Netanyahu's cabinet call for the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, and it's beginning to look as if this is the unstated goal of the Israel government.

Although Netanyahu faces increased protests from its own citizenry—including thousands of reservists and the former head of the Mossad spy agency—several powerful countries are standing with the Israeli leader. Even as it has axed a huge amount of U.S. foreign aid, the Trump administration has used executive powers to skirt Congress and transfer billions of dollars of military assistance to Israel. India, too, has ignored global public opinion to continue to send weapons and technology to Israel. Other far-right wing leaders—Javier Milei in Argentina, Viktor Orban in Hungary—have also maintained good relations with Netanyahu.

Which means that Israel continues to act with impunity in its punishment of Palestinians.

Much has been written about the proper terms to describe Israeli actions in Gaza. The Israeli government defends its campaign as a "just war" against Hamas. Critics have accused the government of committing genocide.

The actual conditions on the ground—the starvation, the toddlers shot in the head, the widespread displacement and destruction of communities—stand by themselves. Lawyers and politicians can throw terms at each other, "just war" versus "genocide," but there is no getting around the plain, brutal facts. Even the term "collective punishment," in its abstraction, fails to capture the horror.

In J.M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous character must give a paper at a conference on evil. She's been reading a work of fiction about the failed effort to assassinate Hitler and the cold-blooded execution of the plotters. She is taken aback by the details in the book about the manner of the execution. Why is it necessary to read these horrible details, she wonders? There is no good reason for the novelist to imagine this manifestation of evil for it is, in a word, "obscene."

Obscene because such things ought not to take place, and then obscene again because having taken place they ought not to be brought into the light but covered up and hidden for ever in the bowels of the earth, like what goes on in the slaughterhouses of the world, if one wishes to save one's sanity.

The details of what's happening in Gaza are similarly obscene. But, like the facts of the Nazi atrocities, they must not be ignored. The Israeli government has banned journalists from visiting Gaza. The Trump administration is helping out by penalizing the airing of these details and the campus protests against the U.S. facilitation of these crimes, all under the guise of preventing "anti-Semitism." These are outrages.

In this age of "alt news" and rampant disinformation, presidential fabrications and threats to defund public media, facts still matter. The world must face the facts of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, not despite but because they are obscene.

(Foreign Policy in Focus)

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