Warmer | Lillian Hamada | RVMAC Meeting | Candidate Cupich | AVUSD News | Spotted Leaf | Skyhawk Resigns | Wambold 1897 | Pinches Legacy | Colonel Baynham | Lieutenant Kelly | Pacheco Case | Navarro Bridge | Yesterday's Catch | Playing Cowboy | Veteran Respect | Attitude Blessing | Sacrificed | Free Throw | Body Escort | Conflicted Interests | Rotten Egg | National Debt | GDP Share | Common Room | Neurotic Behavior | Lead Stories | Memorial Speech | Served Myself | Money Physics | Bad Dream | Zionist Kristallnacht | Second Coming | Useful Idiots | Riyadh Meet | Quiet American | Not Anymore | Simple Awareness | Fluke Success
WARMER weather expected today for the interior. Increasing chances for coastal stratus and fog this week. Hot temperatures likely late week into the weekend. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F with clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Patchy morning fog, light winds & clear afternoon highs will rule the week. Some monsoonal moisture later this weekend maybe, we'll see?
A YOUNG LIFE GONE TOO SOON
Our community is mourning the heartbreaking loss of 22-year-old Lillian Hamada, who tragically passed away in a vehicle accident on May 24, 2025.
Lillian was known for her radiant smile, kind heart, and ambitious spirit. She had recently returned home to Mendocino County from San Diego, hoping to be closer to her family. With plans to enroll at Mendocino College and pursue a career as an esthetician, Lillian was taking meaningful steps toward building a bright future.
Friends remember her as a vibrant presence in the local cheerleading scene, having cheered for the Hopland Bears, Ukiah Lions, and Ukiah High School. She graduated with the Class of 2020.
“She was a beautiful, bright, and talented young woman who was tragically taken from us too soon in a horrific car accident,” one friend shared. “My heart is shattered,” wrote another.
Her mother expressed the family’s grief and need in a GoFundMe campaign, writing, “We need your help to raise enough [funds] for her funeral expenses and burial.”
Lillian leaves behind her loving parents, a young brother, and countless friends and extended family members.
(This is not her obituary. This is a post to help raise funds & support for the family’s time of need.)
REDWOOD VALLEY LEADERS face growth, drought, and crime head-on
by Monica Huettl
At the May 14 meeting of the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council, a wide range of county issues were on display—from ambitious annexation plans and water security to public safety staffing and new fire department initiatives.
Supervisor Madeline Cline updated the council on county affairs, including ongoing efforts to ban the sale of nitrous oxide canisters, commonly known as Whip-Its. She recently attended a tobacco coalition meeting and expressed hope that the coalition’s public health expertise could help drive the policy forward.
On the fiscal front, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors continues to grapple with next year’s budget. While a $3 million deficit remains, Cline noted that it’s an improvement over last month’s shortfall.
The proposed annexation of unincorporated county land into the City of Ukiah could triple the city’s size, extending from The Forks in the north to Burke Hill Road in the south, with the Russian River forming the eastern boundary. This would incorporate developed land and some agricultural parcels. The annexation is on the May 20 Board of Supervisors agenda. Although the county previously signed a Master Tax Sharing Agreement with Ukiah, the scope of the proposed expansion was not clearly communicated at the time. The annexation will require LAFCO approval and could head to the ballot box if enough residents in the affected area formally protest.
The Ukiah Planning Commission had included annexation on its May 28 agenda, but that meeting has since been canceled. Community members can still email comments to the city’s planning division.
Cline, who also sits on the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, shared updates on negotiations with PG&E over the future of the Potter Valley Project. A long-dormant feasibility study to raise Coyote Dam has been restarted, with funding support from the Lytton Rancheria and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Cline emphasized the need to pursue raising the dam, regardless of the fate of Lake Pillsbury.…
https://mendofever.com/2025/05/27/redwood-valley-leaders-face-growth-drought-and-crime-head-on/
AVUSD NEWS
Dear Students, Families, and Staff,
As we come to the close of Memorial Day, I want to take a moment to honor and remember the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. Their sacrifice ensures the freedoms we enjoy each day, and their legacy reminds us of the courage and dedication it takes to protect our nation.
To all veterans in our school community and beyond—thank you for your service. Your commitment has made a lasting impact, and we are deeply grateful. Let us use this day to reflect, show appreciation, and teach our students the importance of remembering those who served with honor.
Fondly,
Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Upcoming Events
- May 28, 2025 FFA Drive Through dinner
- May 30, Peachland Graduation
- June 4, 8:00-12:00 6th grade “Orientation” visit to AV Jr/Sr High
- June 5, FFA Awards Night at AVHS
- June 10, 6th Grade Promotion
- June 11, 8th Grade Promotion
- June 12, High School Graduation at AVHS
Friday Incident at AVHS
While many joyous “end of year activities” were happening last week, we unfortunately also had a serious behavioral incident at AHVS. On Friday, during break time, a small number of boys entered the restroom in the main hallway. During this time, a fight ensued and a student was injured. That student walked to the office to seek help. On the student's arrival, office staff called 911 for medical support, then called the sheriff at the direction of administration. The injured student left the school via ambulance and received medical care.
Deputy Avina arrived shortly after the school-based investigation ensued. Students who were in the restroom were quickly identified via video and brought to the office. Statements were taken and parents notified. Some students have been suspended while the investigation continues.
We respectfully request that any person with information about this incident contact Principal Mc Nerney at [email protected] or Superintendent Kristin Larson Balliet at [email protected]. It is important that concerns be reported to a teacher or administrator so that follow-up can happen. We take this very seriously and intend to apply the maximum penalty to any and all students who were involved with this incident. Student identities will be protected.
AV Jr/Sr High staff met Friday afternoon to debrief and are distressed that this has happened on campus and deeply concerned about the wellbeing of the injured student; this should never happen. Effective immediately, increased staff supervision will be enacted, particularly related to restroom use. Additionally, the administration is reviewing anonymous anti-bullying programs and other measures to ensure students have a safe and easy method to report concerns that may arise. We need students to follow the guidelines: If you see something, say something.
Our students deserve a safe campus where they can focus on the exceptional learning experiences we provide. We thank parents for their teamwork in identifying any concerns so that we can address them immediately
Open House at AVES
It was such a pleasure to see the bright and cheerful AVES classrooms and all the student work that was displayed. Students and parents were all smiles. The classrooms looked beautiful and, in 3rd grade, there was even an “Ornithology Museum,” complete with model birds suspended from the ceiling and extensive student-generated reports. (Mrs. Triplett has made this exhibit available to all classes in the coming week!) We are so proud of all the hard work and learning all our AVES students have done this year. They have built the foundation they will need to approach the coming year with confidence and they should be proud of themselves!
Sports Awards Ceremony at AV Jr-Sr High
What a fantastic night! Many wonderful athletes were recognized for their achievements, most of them in more than one sport. The pride of their coaches and families was on full display as students were recognized for athleticism, sportsmanship, and character. We are deeply proud of our athletes and incredibly thankful to our exceptional coaches! We look forward to continued success and to our upgraded facilities in the coming year, including the new track!
Student Trips!
- Senior Trip to Lake Tahoe
We are hearing that our seniors had a wonderful time in Tahoe, after changing hotels. We look forward to all the stories and photos upon their return!
- Ashland Trip
Mr. Folz will be taking students to Ashland Oregon to enjoy several Shakespearean plays, June 6-8. What a fantastic opportunity! Thank you, Mr. Folz, for putting this trip together for your students.
ASB Elections at AVHS - This Week!
Tuesday: Class Officer Speeches
Each class will have a class meeting during Advisory, as multiple students are running for certain positions. Each class will vote following all speeches.
Wednesday: HS Rally & ASB/Class Officer Recognition
We have two students running for ASB President, and therefore, they are both going to conduct a short speech, and ALL students will vote immediately. Then the ASB officers will be recognized with a certificate, and so will each of the class officers.
Join Our Community Engagement Initiative Team!
Dear AVUSD Community: we just found out that we got a 2-year Community Engagement Initiative grant and are looking to build a team. This group would also advise the Community School Partnership work; we're cautiously optimistic that we will receive funding for both sites for the coming 5-years.
We'd like to build a team of 12 people: teachers, staff, parents, students and community members, please read on if you're interested and complete the form to indicate your interest in being involved. Please complete this Google Form if you you are interested, and contact Nat Corey-Moran at [email protected] or (707) 354-3330 with questions.
AV Soccer Teams to Participate in Ukiah Valley Youth Soccer League!
We're organizing co-ed Anderson Valley teams to participate in the Ukiah Valley Youth Soccer League. Practices in Anderson Valley, games in Ukiah on weekends. We're looking for players, coaches and sponsors. Sign up by June 5. More information here.
Fall Sports Registration Now Open – Due by May 31st!
It’s time to register for Fall Sports at Anderson Valley High School! All students interested in playing Volleyball or Soccer this fall must complete and turn in a sports packet by the end of May.
- CIF Girls Volleyball
- CIF Boys Soccer
- CIF Cross country!!! - Boys & Girls
- Football season is still TBD – It will depend on student turnout during spring practice this week.
- Girls soccer is also TBD and will be ran as an independent club team - looking for volunteers to help coach and develop the program.
We are excited to begin our second year of Cross Country at Anderson Valley High School!
Last year, a few brave athletes stepped up to try this sport for the first time, and we were proud to see their growth, effort, and perseverance. Cross country is a unique and rewarding challenge that involves running a 3-mile course over varied terrain—far different from a flat track.
Runners will navigate trails that may include sandy stretches, steep hills, forest paths, and areas near lakes or open fields. Each course is a little different, but all test an athlete’s endurance, mental toughness, and determination.
Whether you are a seasoned runner or just looking to try something new and build your fitness, cross country is a welcoming and supportive sport that encourages personal growth and team spirit.
First Day of Practice For All Fall Sports: August 11th
Please make or adjust your family plans now so your student can attend practice starting Day One. Daily attendance is expected from the first day forward. Teams without enough committed players during Week One may be disbanded.
- In the high school office
- Or you can print one at this link: https://4.files.edl.io/423b/05/06/25/224512-83db717f-0bd9-416e-ab51-b21f58dc11c9.pdf
- You must have proof of insurance and a physical performed within the last calendar year to participate.
- Spots on teams will not be held for students delinquent on their paperwork or physicals so make sure it is schedule ahead of time.
Let’s get ready for a great fall season, Panthers! 
Below, you will find important information that has already been shared, but will be kept here for your reference!
Summer School
Summer School will be June 23-July 22
8:30-12:30 / ASP 12:30-5:30 Transportation provided
(bus leaves for the day at 3:00 p.m.)
- AVES will provide activities including sports, crafts, science, art, and field trips. Here is the AVES Summer School flier
- AV Jr High will provide fun learning activities.
We Value ALL Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates
Please find links to additional information for families below:
- Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page
- Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website
- National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages)
If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.
With respect,
SKYHAWK RESIGNS
Hello KZYX members and community,
This is Chris Skyhawk, I am writing to inform you of my decision to resign as a KZYX public affairs programmer, I am very disheartened with the direction the station is currently taking, I refer specifically to the recent unwarranted firing of Operations Director, Rich Culbertson by interim manager Dina Polkinghorne,
Rich was a dedicated and beloved staff member, who had an almost impossible job, with several satellite studios and outdated equipment, keeping the station on air requires a person with skill, and a supreme dedication to community-based radio, Rich fulfilled both of those categories, and he plead several times with the Board of Directors and Dina for various upgrades that would help him keep the station on air, more easily, but he was fired. It is clear that the station would rather have a scapegoat than a fix. Dina is already known for having poor management skills, for other non profits, yet the BOD allows her free rein.
This firing comes on the heals of the firing of Program Director Alicia Littletree, who also had the trust of programmers and the community. In response I organized a programmer petition, calling for remedies. It’s been signed by over two dozen current and former programers, with decades of dedication to the station , and countless thousands of hours of volunteer work for it. The petition has not generated even notice by the Board, thus necessitating my resignation;
I first became a programmer back in the 1990s when Judi Bari asked me to program “truth to power” on the fifth Fridays of months. That evolved into me becoming a monthly “Ecology Hour” host. After several years of that, due to my interest in philosophy, spirituality, and political movements, and a sincere desire to not always do shows that are preaching to the choir, I renamed my show “Universal Perspectives” and did that show up until the 2008 birth of my twins.
Then after my 2018 stroke, I had more time, and started doing UP again.
As a person who has been a community organizer in a variety of areas, being a programmer and being able to platform many people and causes over the years has been a meaningful and empowering experience for me. But the current iteration of the station is not something that I can morally or ethically tolerate. I will continue to work for the reform of KZYX but no longer work to produce content for it. And while I certainly think the station will survive my absence, I certainly hope my absence will help bring notice for the need for change!
Thank you,
Chris Skyhawk
Fort Bragg
Marco here. Not letting good airpeople with interesting projects use KZYX for their show, and ignoring them, and kicking people out, and sabotaging them, and banning them for life simply for not quite being the right sort of people to suit the politburo of decisionmakers there did not start five minute ago, Chris. Everyone, you included, Rich C. included, who’s been there for many years looked the other way whenever it happened, and those I spoke to all nervously said the same thing to explain their lack of solidarity: “I don’t get involved in the office politics. I just want to do my show.” And yez all got to keep doing your shows, because that was the test. Now you’re oldish and tired, and you don’t wanta do your show so much as you used to, you get up on your hind legs and cry /unfair/. I want to say it’s never too late to do the right thing, but that’s not true. Because nobody with any power at KZYX, in front of or behind the curtain, has ever done the right thing, it was too late right off the bat. But go ahead, roll another manager just like all sixteen or twenty previous managers, for something to do with your fingers. Why not?
A real manager would start by paying the airpeople, even if only a pittance, a /token/ of respect. And stop lying that the membership money goes to keep the great shows on the air, when in fact all the membership dollars go directly into the private bank accounts of two people in the office suite who are barely interested in doing radio themselves, and who are so unnecessary to the operation they could just decide not to come in one day and stay home in bed with their phone off for weeks before anybody noticed and asked where they were. That’s one big difference between a worker and a so-called manager. If an airperson misses a single airdate by one minute, that’s it. That shows who’s needed and who’s not, and who should be fricking paid. The atmosphere. The fear and tense palpable angst in that place, whenever I went there. It was like walking into a wall. Can I get an out-loud amen from others who have felt that.
Marco McClean
JOHNNY PINCHES LEAVES A LASTING LEGACY OF MANY LAYTONVILLE INSTITUTIONS
by Jayma Shields Spence
Like many of you who knew him, I was shocked to hear of the passing of John Pinches, and I’m sure for those of you who knew Johnny, memories of your connection to him came flooding in. I feel blessed to be able to call the Pinches my second family. I grew up neighbors to Sully Pinches, father of John, Jim & June. Our family’s ranch/home was down the road, and I have fond memories of walking/riding my Arabian mare Angel down the road to exercise her and I would get caught up in a conversation with Sully. Many stories of the old times of Laytonville, with of course a good horse story thrown in for good measure.
My best friend, Wes Lind, is the step-son to Jimmy Pinches, and I was fortunate to grow up close to Jimmy and Ronda Pinches, who are like a second set of parents to me. Now I have the added bonus of calling Jimmy a neighbor. Jimmy and Ronda would always save a seat at the table for Roland and I, insisting we attend their various family functions. June Sizemore, Jimmy & Johnny’s wonderful sister, has also been a big supporter of our community like her brothers and when my mom Susan passed away, June was one of the first people to spring into action and make our family feel loved and cared for by arranging for food to feed us when eating wasn’t our top priority.
In my 15 years of being the director for Laytonville Healthy Start and working to keep Harwood Memorial Park, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit afloat, I can come up with a few instances where Johnny Pinches called me to offer things that would help improve the park, Healthy Start or the community in general.
The first project I worked with Johnny on was the Harwood Park parking lot lights. Johnny was nominating the park for the County’s Tobacco Settlement money, and his idea was that the parking lot needed lighting. Johnny was one of the founders of the Laytonville Rodeo, and also wanted to be sure that lighting in the parking lot would also benefit rodeo patrons leaving after a long day of rodeo and dancing. After quite a bit of back and forth with county officials, and work on Harwood Park’s part (thank you Albert), the check was in the bank and the plan was in place. Shortly afterwards, lights went up and they successfully come on each night.
The second project, which admittedly was more exciting for me, was Johnny’s second proposal, which was to bring a county Library branch to Laytonville. I’ll never forget his phone call to me, he started by saying he had spoken to the president of the County Advisory Board, Marc Komer and Susan Bradley (my kindergarten teacher and local library advocate) and he wanted to get me/Healthy Start on board, and the rest they say, is history.
Looking back, it was apparent that Johnny cared very deeply for the Laytonville community, and he was utilizing his role as Third District Supervisor to perhaps influence the folks in Ukiah, that we mattered too. In fact, when Johnny and I would casually connect or he’d call me at Healthy Start, it was often a subject of our grumblings. Mental Health services was at the top of the list. Johnny would complain that the majority of the services were located in Ukiah, and how were folks in need supposed to get help if they had to travel over an hour to get there? Johnny inspired me to push for services to travel north. After many years of advocacy, attending a lot of Ukiah-based meetings, and building relationships, I can proudly say we have set up more services and supports in our area than we had 15 + years ago.
Johnny’s no-BS approach to politics, and life in general was inspiring and will be missed. His tireless advocacy for bettering the community (and county) will be missed. Johnny wasn’t like the world’s adults we have now, people who talk and talk and talk and never get anything done ‘cause their too busy talkin’.
If you feel like doing something to make the place you occupy a better place, best get up off your butt and get to work, just like Johnny would have done.
(Mendocino Observer)
MORGAN BAYNHAM: Veterans Day Remembered.
On this day i remember my dad, Col LF Baynham. He retired from the USAF after 40 yrs. This is him standing in front of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest during WW ll. Another pic of him @ the road to Berchtesgaden Germany in the Alps. He was ordered there to gleen any information he could after the alies captured it. Not a war hero just doing his assignment. He got that order because he spoke & could write 4 languages. A British emigrant in 1938. Sometimes people are just so grateful to live here that they give back.
LONG-TIME AVUSD MATH TEACHER KATHY BORST’S UNCLE FINALLY BURIED AT HOME AFTER BEING SHOT DOWN IN THE PACIFIC DURING WORLD WAR II.
81 Years After He Died In World War II, A Young Aviator Comes Home
2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly Jr. will be buried beside his parents and sister in the California town he left in 1943.
by Michael E. Ruane
For many years after 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly Jr. was killed in World War II, his parents kept his empty bedroom like a shrine to their only son.
In the local cemetery, they placed a memorial stone etched with his name and an image of his Army Air Forces bomber. His body had been lost when the plane was shot down and sank to the bottom of the ocean.
Kelly was 21. His mother, Theresa, saved his letters, including one that arrived weeks after his death. When his mother, father, Thomas Sr., and sister, Betty, died, they were laid to rest by his stone.
On Memorial Day, 81 years after he was killed off the coast of New Guinea, and two years after his remains were recovered from the underwater crash site, Kelly is to be buried beside his family in Livermore, California.
The burial is the culmination of a 12-year search by his relatives — launched on Memorial Day 2013 — that was joined by the Navy, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and the nonprofit partnership Project Recover.
“The thought of watching his casket go in where my mom and her parents are … it’s going to be something,” Kelly’s niece, Diane Christie, said. “We’re all going to be a big pile of mush.”
“For somebody that none of us knew,” she said.
The wreckage was found in 2017 by a Project Recover team, which used the family’s extensive research to zero in on the site.
In 2023, elite Navy divers descended in a pressurized diving bell and over several weeks recovered Kelly’s remains along with those of three other members of the B-24’s 11-man crew.
The plane was in 225 feet of water, said Lt. Cmdr. Ted Kinney, the Navy’s officer in charge. The men wore dive suits heated with hot water, and breathed air that was a mixture of oxygen and helium.
He said he participated in one of the dives and found a piece of a human skull as he went through the wreckage. “It was the first piece of osseous material that we discovered,” he said.
“So we knew we were on the right spot, and we knew that we were going to be able to find people and bring them home,” he said in telephone interview Tuesday.
“It was incredibly humbling,” he said.
Kelly was the plane’s bombardier. The divers recovered a ring that said “bombardier” on it, and experts are certain it was Kelly’s. Also recovered were his dog tags and the dog tags of two other crewmen.
“I’m just feeling a lot of gratitude right now,” said Scott Althaus, Kelly’s first cousin once removed and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He headed the family’s quest to learn the details of Kelly’s fate and did months of research on the project.
“I’m sure I will be flooded with emotions,” he said of the burial in a recent telephone interview. “How can it be that our family is living what should be an impossible story? What made it possible was many people along the way stopping and remembering.”
Another niece, Kathy Borst, said: “I can’t even begin to believe that it’s truly happening.”
“Only four sets out of 11 of the remains were found,” she said in a recent telephone interview. “What were the odds that we were going to be one of them?”
The project also produced “hard moments,” she said. During a government briefing about the identification, one expert showed the family an image of a crack in Kelly’s skull where his head had struck a part of the plane as it crashed.
“I start visualizing, ‘Oh, this is what happened when my uncle died,’” she said. “It was very, very, very painful.”
“I’m really glad my mom was not alive” she said. (Borst’s mother was Kelly’s sister.) “I don’t think that would have made this a worthwhile thing for her.”
Now they can rest together, she said: “They couldn’t be reconnected ever in life, but they could be lying in the same ground.”
Kelly’s remains arrived Friday at the San Jose Mineta International Airport from the DPAA’s laboratory in Hawaii, where they were officially identified via DNA in November. The plane was greeted by relatives, an honor guard and a water salute from airport fire equipment.
He is to be buried in St. Michael’s cemetery in Livermore, about 40 miles east of San Francisco, after a religious service at St. Michael’s Catholic Church.
It’s the same church where a requiem Mass was said for him after he was declared dead in 1944, according to his family and an old newspaper report.
Kelly’s B-24 was nicknamed “Heaven Can Wait.” (The name probably came from the title of a 1943 movie starring the actor Don Ameche.) Painted on the nose was a racy image of a woman with angel’s wings.
On March 11, 1944, the plane was shot down during a bombing mission off the north coast of the island of New Guinea, just north of Australia.
A crewman on another plane saw “Heaven Can Wait” catch fire. Three men jumped or fell out. The tail section broke off. The bomber plunged into water and sank near a remote bay off the Bismarck Sea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
There were no survivors. The 11 men on board were declared killed in action, and their bodies were ruled unrecoverable.
Four months earlier, Kelly and three of his buddies had attended a Thanksgiving dinner for 23 people at his parents’ home on South L Street in Livermore. On a lighthearted guest register the four signed in as crewmen on a “Big Ass Bird.”
After that Thanksgiving, Kelly’s family never saw him again, his relatives said.
But two weeks after his death, they got a letter addressed “Dearest Mom, Dad & Betty.”
He had written it two days before his final mission. He talked about sleeping late, getting cigarettes and ice cream, and watching movies at his base. There was no word about combat.
“Give my love to everyone & please be happy & take care of yourselves,” he wrote. “All my love always, your loving son, Tom.”
Kelly’s two nieces and nephew, Tom Borst, said they knew little about him while growing up.
Christie said they knew only that he hadn’t come home from the war. She knew that their mother, his sister, hated the song “I’ll be home for Christmas,” because Kelly had hoped to be home by Christmas 1944.
When they visited their grandparents’ house, “we’d go into his bedroom,” she said. “It was a little bit of a shrine. And we all remember it … I can see it vividly. It was always a little bit dark.”
Kathy Borst said she remembered visiting the cemetery “most Memorial Days of my childhood.” She said she was too young to know why.
In one of his final letters home, Kelly told his family: “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I’m just telling you to appreciate what you have. … The men fighting here for everyone, they’re doing it for your freedom.”
(Washington Post)
FROM THE ARCHIVE: CASE CLOSED
by Bruce Anderson (2013)
Accompanied by a DNA analyst from the state’s Department of Justice office in Eureka, Sheriff Tom Allman announced Tuesday that the 1988 rape and murder of Georgina Pacheco had been solved.
Robert James Parks, a Fort Bragg fisherman, and a brother-in-law of the victim, has been identified as the killer. Parks committed suicide in 1999 in Long Beach Harbor by chaining himself to a boat in 30 feet of water and sinking it. Parks was the last person to have been seen with Miss Pacheco. He’d picked her up at her place of work, the Sea Pal Restaurant in Fort Bragg.
The DNA science applied to the case was complicated. The FBI’s samples taken from the murder scene had, over time, become unusable for identification purposes. But the persistence of Sheriff’s detective Andy Porter, and DA’s investigator Tim Kiely, persuaded the state’s Department of Justice laboratory to take another look at the post-mortem rape kit. The lab soon found identifiable DNA on the wooden handles of swabs preserved at the time of the murder, a time when DNA as a forensics tool was in its infancy.
That DNA was matched with that of Parks ex-wife and daughter and, by extension, Parks himself, and 25 years later we have, if not justice, at least some solace for the Pacheco family who now know who murdered their daughter.
Georgina “George” Pacheco, was twenty when she went missing in the first week of September, 1988. She was found dead on September 10th. She’d been raped and murdered. Born in the Azores to a traditional Catholic family, Georgina grew up in unmoored America where even small towns like Fort Bragg are socially fragmented and drug-ridden, where even the most conscientious parents lose their children to influences as destructively incessant as the winds that blow in off the Pacific.
Georgina seems to have gotten lost in the transition from the old world Azores to 1980s Fort Bragg.
An energetic and always chipper young woman who worked mostly as a waitress, broke away from what she seemed to see as the unreasonable strictures of her old world Portuguese home. She began associating with estranged young people deep into the drug life, one of whom murdered her.
At least that was the operating assumption until this week’s dramatic revelations.
Georgina Pacheco was found strangled to death on tranquil Pearl Drive south of Fort Bragg the morning of September 10th, 1988. She hadn’t been seen for a week. A man named Rodney Elam found her. Elam had been walking his dog in the early daylight hours when the animal drew his attention to Miss Pacheco’s nude corpse maybe ten feet off the pavement. She’d been strangled and dragged into the brush. Police said it appeared that Georgina had been killed some other place, that the lonely stretch of Pearl Drive was merely a hurry up hiding place where she wouldn’t be found for awhile.
She’d probably been murdered by a man acting alone. Parks lived only two miles away.
Numerous suspects were interviewed, all of them drawn from the Mendocino Coast’s floating population of drug users and petty criminals, among them at the time, a few transient carnival workers.
The police quickly eliminated Elam as a suspect, homing in on John Annibel, a suspected serial killer, who lived in Fort Bragg from 1984 until he was arrested for the 1998 murder of Debbie Sloan of Laytonville.
Annibel is presently in state prison for the murder of Mrs. Sloan, a divorced mother of two who met Annibel at a Laytonville bar and made the fatally bad decision to spend what turned out to be an eternal night with him. Before Annibel moved to Fort Bragg from his home area of Southern Humboldt County, he was the only suspect in the murders of two women there, one of them his fiancée, the other a teenager he’d known since she was a child. He may also have killed two more women — not known to him — in the Arcata area, but Annibel could never be even tenuously linked to the Arcata killings.
For reasons ranging from official inertia to official incompetence, Annibel was not charged with the murders of the two Humboldt County women, both of whom he is assumed to have strangled to death, both of whom were last seen in his presence.
After Annibel moved to Fort Bragg in 1984 he was not linked to another murder until 1998 when he confessed to the Thanksgiving weekend strangulation of Debbie Sloan in a Laytonville motel room.
Georgina Pacheco was garroted, not strangled. Parks had tied something around her neck, a ligature as it’s called, and pulled it tight. There’s other evidence the police are holding in reserve that would definitively tie the killer to his victim if a suspect more likely than Annibel, a strangler, should be revealed.
A dozen men were interviewed and cleared, but among many locals the consensus killer was a man named Robert Parks, the estranged husband of one of Georgina’s sisters. Parks was known to have been the last man to see Georgina alive.
There are cops who worked in the Fort Bragg area at the time who were convinced Parks was the guy, and there are cops who thought Parks wasn’t the guy.
Parks was the guy.
To say Parks was widely disliked hardly begins to explain just how thoroughly disliked he was. Lots of people wanted him dead, or at least wanted to thump him so bad he’d stop his thieving, lowlife ways. One Fort Bragg man caught Parks in the act of ripping off fishing gear, followed him, confronted him, fought him, and almost died when Parks hit him over the head with a metal pipe. And would have died if a friend hadn’t come along and pulled Parks off him.
An old timer who knew Parks said “Parks was capable of anything, and I mean anything.” The people who always believed Parks killed Georgina think he did it to get back at Georgina’s sister who no longer wanted anything to do with him.
Fort Bragg in 1988 was awash in drugs and bad people, some of them pillars of the community, at least on their treacherous surfaces they looked like pillars of the community. Among the unprosecuted crimes these pillars committed was a series of arson fires that cost Fort Bragg its library, its justice court, the historic Piedmont Hotel. The fires were also heavily drug dependent, you could say, with the arsonists being paid partly in cocaine. In the same period, several members of the Fort Bragg City Council took “loans” from a big boy developer while the credulous chased alleged Satanists out on Airport Road.
It was a good time for bad people in Mendocino County, and murder was inevitable in the context.
Although Georgina was always employed, and always had a solid family backing her up, and probably would have outgrown her desire to walk on the wild side, she’d gotten into speed and bad men, hanging out in the parking lot of the old Sprouse-Reitz on Main Street when she wasn’t working. That’s where the bad boys and the drugs were, and that’s undoubtedly where the killer was, too.
Other suspects included Victor Gray who, as it happens, I’ve known since he was kid. Vic and his brother Chris grew up in Boonville. When their mom, Jeannie, moved to Fort Bragg the boys went with her. Chris was shot point blank one night in the Boonville Lodge by a rotund old hippie named Thaddeus “Thad” Thomas who lived up on Nash Mill Road. At least Thad looked like an old hippie. Or Santa Claus, take your choice, but he didn’t act like either one. He lived at the foot of a dark gulch that matched his personality, and one night Thad turned on his barstool and shot Chris Gray. Chris had a bad headache, and he needed some basic reconstructive surgery, but he survived, and Thad Thomas died in jail while Thad’s family’s lawyers made sure Chris Gray never got the money Chris should have got for the harm done to him by the Troll of Nash Mill.
Victor Gray was Georgina’s last boy friend. He, too, was quickly absolved of any responsibility for her death, which seemed to unhinge him, and Victor, presently confined to state prison, has since had his troubles ever since.
All of the young men said to be close to Georgina at one time or another weren’t exactly the kind of young men a girl would bring home to meet her old world Portuguese parents, and when they were systematically located by the police and asked about Georgina’s murder, and cleared of it, the last suspect standing was John Annibel.
And he didn’t do it either.
In a brilliant series of interrogations by Mendocino County investigators Tim Kiely and Kurt Smallcomb, Annibel confessed to his Laytonville murder of Mrs. Sloan. He came close to telling the truth about his Humboldt County murders, but close was as close as he got.
Annibel told Kiely and Smallcomb he’d moved to Fort Bragg to get away from all the bad people in Southern Humboldt, including a group he placed in Alderpoint that he identified as “the Weather Bureau,” a reference, it seems, to the Weathermen, a small group of uniquely estranged rich kids who became temporary revolutionaries in the 1960s. The Weathermen did spend time on the Northcoast, as did a group called Tribal Thumb, but the Weathermen, from much more privileged backgrounds than the Thumbs, hid out in a posh home on the Mendocino Coast, an ocean view place, while the Thumbs worked out with small arms in the hot summer hills west of Garberville around Honeydew.
There were all manner of organized lunatics roaming the redwoods in those days, and who knows how many freelancers. Annibel certainly wasn’t the only one of those.
“In all honesty,” Annibel told Kiely and Smallcomb, “I go home every night. And up until a couple of weeks ago, my wife worked nights. So I had my daughters every night. And working. I’m gone from my house thirteen hours a day. My day’s pretty well taken care of by the time I get home. And I’d help my youngest one with her school work and cook dinner. Believe me, when I went over there to Boomer’s (the Laytonville bar where he encountered the late Mrs. Sloan) was the first time I’ve been in a bar in a couple of years.”
The killer as homebody isn’t particularly convincing, but in his way, Annibel did seem devoted to his young wife — she’d moved in with him when she was 14, him 24. Last heard from, Mrs. Annibel and her daughters were living in Ukiah. She’s shed her dread married name but is still in the area. The Annibel girls would be young women now, older than the women dad murdered.
Captain Smallcomb commented recently that “unless we get a confession, I don’t think we’ll ever know who killed Georgina.”
But now we do know who murdered Georgina. The technical marvel of DNA science got him.
NAVARRO RIVER at the junction of Highway 1 and Highway 128. Circa 1940s? (via Marshall Newman)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, May 26, 2025
DEYVY ALONZO, 20, Fort Bragg. DUI-any drug, controlled substance, no license.
EMILIO ELLIOTT, 18, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, crimes by juvenile (enhancement).
ALLIYAH FELIZ, 22, Redwood Valley. Reckless driving.
GABRIEL HAILEY-RUIZ, 20, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.
YESENIA HOWE, 31, Willits. DUI, suspended license, probation revocation.
SERGIO MALAGON, 19, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, probation revocation.
JAY MARKERT, 45, Dexter, Oregon/Piercy. DUI.
FRANCISCO MARRON, 20, Potter Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
JULIO RODRIGUEZ-CHAVARIA, 42, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, disorderly conduct-alcohol, unspecified offense.
GERALD SIMPSON, 55, Willits. Parole violation, probation revocation.
ERIK SMITH, 59, Ukiah. Suspended license, registration tampering, probation revocation.
THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Resisting, probation violation.
BRANDON WHITMAN, 25, Ukiah. No license, suspended license, probation revocation.
RESPECT FOR VETERANS
Editor:
The National Cemetery Administration manages 156 cemeteries with 4 million graves. Established during the Civil War, it has 1,400 employees assisted by 78,000 hours of volunteer service each year. Burials are conducted by volunteers in full dress uniforms. They fold and present a large American flag to the next of kin, fire a rifle salute and play taps. It is a dignified, moving and unforgettable experience.
Many Americans have loved ones buried in these cemeteries. I have two relatives from the World War II generation at Arlington, and last year, a friend of 70 years was laid to rest at the national cemetery in Dixon. Like many Vietnam veterans, he had battled cancer from exposure to Agent Orange.
After his service, he used the GI Bill to earn a doctorate in astrophysics and taught at a university for three decades.
I encourage everyone to visit these sacred places and walk among the rows of white marble headstones. Each one tells a story. They reflect a deeply human chapter of our nation’s history. My friend’s headstone reads “Sic itur astra,” Latin for “reach for the stars.”
The cemetery administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs face threatened funding cuts. We owe it to veterans to ensure they receive the respect, care and dignity they have earned.
Eric Peterson
Santa Rosa
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Memorial Day. A lot of Americans died, in my lifetime, and killed a lot more third world natives, some armed, many civilians. For what exactly? What did they accomplish?
Every veteran who died, or was maimed, or wounded during the past century, did they really die for this country? Was America really threatened by faraway forces? Were the Germans going to land on Long Island or Martha’s Vineyard? Even the “Japs”…. it was the US embargoes and bellicose US policy that compelled the Japanese hawks to say “let’s hit them before they hit us”. All the Japanese wanted was to conquer and exploit other Asians the way Europeans and even Americans did. Those dastardly “gooks” from Korea and Vietnam, were they a stone’s throw from Hollywood and the Golden Gate bridge? The Iraqis and Afghans? These were all mortal dangers to the Republic? LOL!
Or did they die for “ideas, policies, world peace, national interests”--all a veneer for the big finance and the US elites, elites who are globalists and money-grubbers FIRST, and Americans where it suites them, to retain control of this country and continue to grow richer and more powerful, at the expense of the other 99% in general, and Middle America (defined as people who actually PAY taxes and work, “work” meaning they trade their time for money, doing something, versus making money with money) in particular.
Of course, I’ll go along with the charade and I fly my flag. I fly it because the people who were SACRIFICED, the vast majority of them gave their lives to try to survive and save their comrades, and that I respect. And until 1973, many of them were drafted and had no choice.
I SERVED AS A MARINE IN VIETNAM, BUT ONE OF MY TOUGHEST ASSIGNMENTS WAS WHEN I CAME HOME
A first sergeant handed me my orders. I was to escort a Marine killed in Vietnam to his funeral. There was no refusing.
by George Masters
In October 1968, I came home from Vietnam. With six months remaining of my four-year enlistment, I was assigned to the Marine Corps Supply Depot, Philadelphia. In late December, my sergeant told me to report to the first sergeant.
He said, “You got orders.”
“Orders for what?”
“Body escort. The first sergeant will give you the details. Why don’t you get down there and see him.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
Five Marines had been summoned, all of us recently returned from Vietnam. The first sergeant explained the detail, then handed us our orders. Each of us was to escort a Marine killed in Vietnam to his place of burial.
A captain who had never been to Vietnam briefed us on procedure and protocol. He passed out pay vouchers and airplane tickets. Grateful to be finished, he shook our hands and wished us luck.
The next morning, New Year’s Day, a Navy van dropped me off at the airport. As I walked, the cold concrete squeezed up through my shoes.
In a small office, a man in overalls sat at a desk. Telephone wedged between his head and shoulder, he smoked a cigar and shuffled papers. I knocked. He swiveled in his chair, saw me and motioned me in.
I said, “I’m here to pick up …”
“Oh, sure,” he interrupted. “Come on.”
I followed him across the freight warehouse to a coffin zipped in heavy gray plastic. “Paperwork’s there,” he said.
I unzipped the plastic window and took out the manifest. Lance Cpl. John Michaels and I would be flying together.
When the time came, I stood beneath the airplane and waited. I stamped my feet to keep warm, but felt disrespectful. It’s his last ride, I told myself, stand still and take the cold.
Lance Cpl. Michaels came out on the baggage train like cargo. The men handled the coffin carefully. After he was lifted into the plane’s belly, I took my seat. I stared out the window and tried to think what I would say to his family. If our positions were reversed, what might he have said to mine? It could have been me in the coffin. Better him than me. No. Yes. I left it alone.
It was dark when we landed. Outside the terminal, a small crowd waited to greet the passengers on our flight. A pleasant, red-cheeked man in a black hat and overcoat stepped forward. He said, “You’re the escort for the Michaels boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
He introduced himself as the funeral director. We shook hands. He said, “We’ll be taking the car out to the airplane as soon as the passengers are off.”
I nodded. He shivered and rubbed his gloved hands. “Why don’t we wait inside?”
We headed for the terminal. I asked, “Is the family here?”
“No, they decided it would be better if they came in the morning.”
After several minutes, the funeral director said, “I think we can take the car out now.”
Lance Cpl. Michaels was loaded into the hearse, and I helped remove the plastic case. I unfolded the flag and draped it over the steel coffin. I watched the hearse drive across the tarmac until I could no longer see it.
The director and I left the airport in a silver-gray Lincoln Continental. He assured me that Lance Cpl. Michaels would be safe and well taken care of.
I said, “What about the family?”
“They’re good people. The father works for the post office, the mother works in a dress factory. There’s a brother, but he’s too young to understand. … Naturally, they’re very upset; but they’re good people.”
The Lincoln was smooth and quiet, and I treasured the heat. The director said, “The father — he and the boy weren’t getting along. Nothing major, father and son quarrels, that sort of thing, but he blames himself for all this.”
I said nothing.
The next morning, the director picked me up from the local inn and drove me to the funeral home. Alone in a room with the coffin, I met Lance Cpl. Michaels. Viewable from the chest up, he was young and handsome in dress blues.
Later that morning, the Michaels family arrived. Grief played with the introductions. It muted conversations and turned up the crying. I was lost. I wanted to be anywhere else. Vietnam would have been just fine. I assumed the position of parade rest and stood my watch.
The young Marine was viewed and prayed over for three days. Friends and family came and went. They cried, coughed and whispered. They stared at me.
That night, some of Lance Cpl. Michaels’s cousins and his girlfriend took me out for pizza. I listened to boyhood stories about John Michaels as the walls of the pizzeria closed in. I picked at the pizza, had a couple of beers and avoided their eyes. I told them I had to get back to the hotel. They insisted on one more round. They toasted John Michaels, and his girlfriend started to cry. I drank the beer and waited for it to be over.
Lance Cpl. Michaels was buried on a freezing morning with snow on the ground. The Marine honor guard rifle volleys punched holes in the frozen air. The bugler played “Taps,” and it was over. No press, no television coverage, no talk of heroes.
FORBES:
Elon Musk: $170 billion richer since endorsing Trump
On Tuesday, during a virtual interview with the Qatar Economic Forum, Elon Musk said that he plans to scale back his political giving. “I’m going to do a lot less in the future. I think I’ve done enough,” said Musk, who was the largest individual donor in the 2024 election cycle, shelling out $290 million in support of Donald Trump. “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.”
No wonder: in just four months’ time, the Trump administration has already given Musk plenty of return on his investment.
On the regulatory front, his businesses face less scrutiny as some government investigations into them have been closed, stalled or thrown into disarray, thanks in part to Musk’s own efforts with DOGE to defund and gut multiple federal agencies.
His companies, particularly SpaceX, are positioned to receive billions of dollars in fresh government contracts. On the global stage, Musk is striking deals and gaining approval to operate in foreign jurisdictions, often with the tacit or explicit support of the Trump administration.
Then there are the personal benefits. Musk is far richer now than he was before endorsing Trump. His net worth stands at $419 billion—approximately $170 billion more than what it was on July 15, just two days after Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, after which Musk endorsed him.
Tesla’s stock price has fallen by 20% since Trump’s return to the White House in late January, but remains 35% higher than in mid-July 2024. SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion, nearly double what it was around the time of Musk’s endorsement.
And his third largest company, xAI Holdings, which now includes his social media platform X and artificial intelligence startup xAI, was valued at $113 billion in its recent merger, more than triple what the two firms were worth a year ago.
Critics of Trump and Musk say that Musk’s involvement in DOGE and relationship with the president is benefitting him financially.
“The nature of Mr. Musk’s businesses, as well as their substantial earnings from government contracts, mean that he is deeply entangled in the regulatory functions of the government he is now empowered to shape,” concluded an April report authored by the Democratic minority members in the U.S. House of Representatives. “President Trump could not have chosen a person more prone to conflicts of interest”….
I WAS OBAMA’S BUDGET DIRECTOR. IT’S TIME TO WORRY ABOUT THE NATIONAL DEBT.
by Peter R. Orszag
To many global investors, the almighty dollar isn’t looking quite as almighty these days, in part because America’s fiscal situation has deteriorated significantly. This fiscal challenge holds one of the keys to the Trump administration’s goals on trade, as the United States will not succeed in reducing its trade deficits materially unless it also reduces its budget deficit.
For years it was reasonable to tune out the worrywarts carping about deficits. With very low interest rates, a lack of particularly attractive alternatives to U.S. Treasuries for investors and a muted market reaction to serial Capitol Hill dramas over raising the debt limit, those who bemoaned the unsustainability of deficit spending and debt levels seemed to cry wolf — a lot. Even as a former White House budget director, I grew skeptical of their endless warnings.
Not anymore.
Two things have changed: First, the wolf is now lurking much closer to our door. Annual federal budget deficits are running at 6 percent of G.D.P. or higher, compared with well under 3 percent a decade ago. Interest rates on 10-year Treasuries have more than doubled — around 4.5 percent now versus just over 2 percent then — and in the current fiscal year the government is projected to spend more on interest payments than on defense, Medicaid or Medicare. That’s right: Our borrowing now costs us more each year than each of these big, essential budget items.
Meanwhile, federal debt held by the public, excluding Federal Reserve holdings, as a share of G.D.P. has increased by about a third since 2015. The Congressional Budget Office, which I once led, projects that by 2029, our debt as a share of our economy will grow to levels unprecedented since the years after World War II. All of this is occurring against a backdrop of an even more polarized political system, increased tension with foreign debt holders and less confidence in American security protections that promoted the dollar as the world’s safe haven.
The risks posed by our heavily leveraged government are higher today than in the past, but it’s also true that none of the feared adverse effects have happened — yet. It is hard to find any modern economy with a freely floating exchange rate and debt denominated in its own currency, both of which the United States enjoys, that has defaulted on its debt. So why raise alarms now?
Because the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. No other nation has had the combination of factors defining America’s current fiscal position, so precedent is not helpful.
Our ability to sustain large deficits relies on the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. Close to one-third of our debt is foreign owned, totaling nearly $9 trillion. In this context, reduced appetite for U.S. debt among foreign investors can drive interest rates higher and make our fiscal position even more challenging.
Although Moody’s downgrade of U.S. debt to a level below its former triple-A rating generated headlines and temporarily rattled the bond market, the downgrade itself won’t have much lasting impact on investors. For now, as the saying goes, Treasuries remain investors’ cleanest dirty shirt.
This can change, though, both as other countries’ relationships with ours evolve and as other governments, especially in Europe, expand spending and issue more debt to finance it. If Germany borrows more to finance defense and infrastructure spending, for example, its government bonds may become a more viable alternative to Treasuries for some investors.
A second shift relevant to the budget deficit is the administration’s focus on the trade deficit, which, definitionally, occurs when a country consumes more than it produces. That is, when a nation’s savings are relatively low.
Budget deficits subtract from national savings, and regardless of what happens with the current raft of tariffs, America will struggle to reduce its overall trade deficit meaningfully without reducing its budget deficit.
Unless there is an underlying change in national savings patterns, tariff increases will be offset by exchange rate changes that discourage exports and encourage imports, with little or no net effect on the overall trade balance. Indeed, the most fundamental shift required to alter global trade patterns is for China to reduce its savings rate by running larger budget deficits (which would reduce its trade surpluses) and for the United States to do the opposite by reducing its budget deficit (which would reduce our trade deficit). We clearly cannot pin our hopes on China running larger deficits, though.
To manage the risks associated with our fiscal situation and achieve the administration’s trade goals, what should we do?
First, we should embrace being the world’s reserve currency and appreciate the exorbitant privilege associated with that status. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has recently said that this is the administration’s position.
Second, we should eliminate the debt limit. Its existence does nothing significant to impose fiscal discipline and only creates unnecessary distractions.
Third, when we had the chance to lock in low long-term rates, we should have extended the maturity of Treasury debt, as Robert Rubin, Joseph Stiglitz and I recommended more than four years ago: “Given deep uncertainty over the future of interest rates and the current slope of the yield curve,” we advised, extending debt maturities would “mitigate the consequences of a relatively sudden change in interest rates.”
Unfortunately, our fears have since materialized. Despite the rise in rates since then, we should still attempt to extend some of our maturities now, both to reduce the risk of having to refinance so much debt each year and to hedge against further rate increases from this point forward. The basic idea is to borrow over 30-year periods or even longer, rather than borrowing over a short period and then having to refinance every few years.
Fourth, higher growth would help. It’s possible that, as the economist Nouriel Roubini has put it, “tech trumps tariffs“ and growth will be higher in the future because of the artificial intelligence revolution. But we don’t know much about how to meaningfully affect growth through policy changes, so put this in the hope rather than the strategy category.
Finally, there is plenty we could do — but probably won’t — to generate fiscal savings in our large entitlement programs and raise revenue. We could, for example, move more aggressively to pay for quality rather than volume in health care and promote A.I.-driven support for physician decision making that would narrow the wide and mostly unwarranted variation in how health care is practiced across the nation. The result would lower cost growth in health care without harming health outcomes.
In its current form, the budget legislation moving through Congress would only exacerbate the challenges we face by further expanding the deficit. But the first step toward fiscal health is not any specific bill or policy proposal. It is to recognize that our fiscal risks are alarmingly elevated and that we won’t make much progress on the trade deficit unless we reduce its twin, the budget deficit.
(Peter R. Orszag is the chief executive and chairman of Lazard. He is a former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office.)
INSIDE MY HEAD
IInside my head a common room,
a common place, a common tune,
a common wealth, a common doom
inside my head. I close my eyes.
The horses run. Vast are the skies,
and blue my passing thoughts’ surprise
inside my head. What is this space
here found to be, what is this place
if only me? Inside my head, whose face?
— Robert Creeley
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
Fiscal Hawks in Senate Balk at House’s Bill to Deliver Trump’s Agenda
Republican Crackdown on Aid to Immigrants Would Hit U.S. Citizens
Russia Intensifies Attacks on Ukraine as U.S. Steps Back
Trump Condemns Putin’s Killings in Ukraine, but Doesn’t Make Him Pay a Price
Head of New Gaza Aid System Resigns Over Lack of Autonomy
At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work
‘Lilo & Stitch’ and Tom Cruise Add to a Box Office Boomlet
‘Lilo & Stitch’: How a Fuzzy Blue Alien Became a Disney Cash Cow
MEMORIAL DAY SPEECH: President Trump highlighted the sacrifices of military veterans during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. But he also used his remarks to valorize himself, taking credit for bringing the Summer Olympics and soccer’s World Cup to the United States during his second term and boasting about his plans for a military parade next month in Washington. (NYT)
THE WAR ON US
by James Kunstler
“Is the Blue Party really only the customer service desk for the administrative state?” —Jeff Childers
It’s pretty universally acknowledged that America’s recent wars — say, starting with Vietnam — have been stupid, pointless, and fake in instigation. And yet the soldiers we sent into these fiascos acted bravely and honorably for the most part. So, it has felt a little weird to celebrate their sacrifices minus any sense of political justice, victory, or meaning in the endeavors they sacrificed for. Ergo, the holiday is lately reduced to a celebration of grilled meat.
This Memorial Day, for a change, the USA is not actively at war in some distant land, only against ourselves. One faction in this as yet cold civil war seeks to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and the other side seeks what…? To do the opposite of that? Make America Disintegrate (MAD). It’s hard to come to another conclusion.
MAGA is led, of course, by Mr. Trump, president again after the strangest executive interregnum in our history. At its plainest, MAGA means returning to an economy based on producing things of value. To many, this might conjure up the image of humming factories, good pay for honest work, and a well-ordered, content, patriotic populace grateful for their prosperity, in other words, something like the America of 1958, when Mr. Trump was entering puberty.
It’s a comforting vision. Parts of it seem possible to achieve. Maybe we can rebuild an industrial infrastructure of up-to-date factories. Didn’t we voluntarily deep-six all the old ones only a few decades ago? And for what reason? So that faraway nations rising out of darkness could make all the stuff we wanted at a fraction of the cost? Turned out to be a bad bargain based on supremely foolish short-term thinking.
It also came with a set of very corrosive financial arrangements based on the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These are pretty abstruse, but suffice it to say they enabled us to rack up phenomenal debt that we will never be able to pay off. We even fooled ourselves into thinking that we could replace that old economy of factory production with financial games based on jiggering interest rates and innovating ever more complex swindles. That merely produced a fantastic divide between the financial gamesters raking in billions while the former factory workers were left broke, demoralized, sick, and strung-out on drugs.
As a basic proposition, it’s doubtful that we can return to anything like a 1958 disposition of things based on rising continental-scale enterprise, as in the Big Three automakers and General Foods. It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and the zeitgeist pushed it, but we can see where it landed us: in the ghastly suburban sprawl clusterfuck and the overall ill health of the people. Also the scale of things is done rising; is, in fact, contracting.
And yet we are surely lurching into a new disposition of things, probably featuring a reduced population (disease and infertility induced by the Covid vaccine op), falling energy production (despite the whoop to drill-baby-drill), and much smaller-scaled, re-localized production of goods and food — if we’re lucky. (Events are in the driver’s seat, not personalities, even gigantic ones like Mr. Trump’s.) If we’re not lucky, the disorders of change itself may overwhelm our ability to remain civilized.
The MAD faction is led by the Democratic Party, the party of Hoaxes, Hustles, and Hatred. Being more a religious cult (of envy, grievance, and revenge) than a political faction, this Memorial Day they celebrate their patron saint George Floyd, a fake martyr whose death by fentanyl overdose sparked a summer of looting, arson, and homicide followed by a fraud-saturated election.
The Black Lives Matter operation proved to be hustle, that is, an effort to extract money dishonestly. But it morphed into the even more pervasive DEI op, seeping into every institution of American life and contaminating each of them with incompetence and grift, larded with sanctimony. That’s over now, but what is the MAD Democratic Party left with? It has put itself at the service of the depraved Deep State, the rogue permanent bureaucracy that has developed a malevolent hive-mind dedicated to maintaining its perquisites at all costs. In other words, it is vested solely in power. . . power over the people of this land. . . to dominate, regulate, asset-strip, and punish for the crime of wishing to be civilized.
The MAD party is on the wane now. Its insanity has become so exorbitant that no one of healthy sensibility can bear to be associated with it. Those who remain involved in Democratic Party politics are largely those liable to prosecution for manifold crimes against the country, now using the most unprincipled dregs of the legal system to keep them out of prison. The party will be defeated utterly.
The Deep State it served is getting disassembled systematically by MAGA, deprived of funding, de-staffed, shut down. It has nothing left but lawfare and a claque of judges who will lose their battle with legitimate law and the Constitution. If it attempts to revive its street-fighting proxies this summer, that too will get shut down swiftly and harshly. Lessons will be learned. All of which is to say that the Deep State’s war against the American people could be drawing to a close. That is something to be grateful for this Memorial Day.
MAGA will then be left to battle with the forces of nature, which basically means physics, especially as applied to the mechanisms of money. MAGA could easily founder if it fails to face the current deformities of finance, namely the gross, untenable debt hanging over the country. I’m not so optimistic about how that might work out.
(kunstler.com)
TWO MURDEROUS REGIMES, THREE MURDERED EMBASSY EMPLOYEES
by Ron Jacobs
In November 1938, a seventeen year old refugee without papers named Herschel Grynzspan from Poland walked into the Nazi Embassy in Paris, France, asked to see a member of the diplomatic staff, and when Nazi diplomat Ernst von Rath appeared, shot him. Von Rath died not long afterwards, despite the efforts of Hitler’s doctors who were sent to Paris by Hitler. According to most sources, Grynzspan was angry at the Nazi regime for taking away his parents German citizenship and employment. They were then sent to a concentration camp in Poland not long before his action. Some historians have hinted that Grynzspan was gay, that von Rath was one of his associates and that Grynzspan was blackmailing him. Grynzspan was arrested in France, where he was imprisoned until the collaborator Vichy regime came to power; the Gestapo then transferred him to a concentration camp in Germany. No matter what the rationale was, the essential fact is that a few days later, the Nazi regime used the assassination as an excuse to attack Jewish people, their shops and their homes in what became known as Kristallnacht. While the Kristallnacht pogroms were not officially carried out by uniformed Nazis in the government or the Party, they were encouraged and supported by officials in the party including Joseph Goebbels, who made a speech essentially giving the Nazi rank and file the go ahead.
On May 22, 2025, most US residents woke up to the news that a thirty-year-old man named Elias Rodriguez had been arrested for killing two employees of the Israeli Embassy outside a benefit at the Jewish museum. Within hours of the shooting, members of the Trump administration, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump himself, linked the accused gunman to the movement against the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza — a movement they label as anti-Semitic — and vowed to step up the attacks on, the persecution and prosecution of anti-occupation protesters in the United States. The Israeli government used the murders as an excuse to kill more Palestinians.
I’m hesitant to predict how the fallout from this action will unwind. I hope it doesn’t precipitate a Zionist version of Kristallnacht with fanatics who want all Palestinians killed or exiled and then take it upon themselves to precipitate exactly that. We saw suggestions of this possibility in spring 2024 when US Zionist fanatics joined with reserve IDF troops and violently attacked encampments on college campuses around the United States. Some of these attacks were funded by wealthy Zionists of both the Christian and Jewish faiths.
Given the pro-Israel nature of the US establishment, I will phrase these next couple of sentences carefully. Also, as a student of movements the rulers call terrorist, I think I understand the anger and frustration that motivated the alleged killer to commit these murders. This doesn’t mean I support the act. Indeed, I can honestly state that I oppose the murders of the Israeli embassy employees just like I oppose the genocidal slaughter and starvation of tens of thousands of Palestinians by the Israeli military and its henchmen in the so-called settler movement. I doubt very much that most (or any) supporters of Israel and its occupation can honestly say the same thing.
There are at least two questions involved when considering the murders Rodriguez is accused of. One is moral and the other is political. They exist separately, complementary and as one. I know there are supporters of the Palestinian people who believe these killings to be morally justified. Their argument includes these essential facts: the dead were supporters of the occupation and its military aspects. Their employer was the government of Israel—a government accused of genocide by millions around the world, including the International Court of Justice. These facts made them complicit in the slaughter. I don’t believe I can do their argument justice since I oppose the murders, so I will move on.
I find murder morally reprehensible. As a general rule, I oppose killing. I have been fortunate, in large part because of the circumstances of my birth, and have never had to put my moral repulsion at killing to the test. In other words, I might very well be a member of an armed resistance force if I lived in Palestine. That being said, I have supported armed anti-imperialist and anti-colonial resistance in US colonies and neocolonies around the world, including the Black colony in the United States and continue to do so. I base this support on the idea that, as residents of the imperial power, it is not up to us to tell those fighting for their liberation how to fight for it. Instead, it is up to us to limit the damage the invader can do by opposing its political and military regime at home. I believe this can best occur by organizing massive civil disobedience and direct actions in solidarity with those resisting the US empire around the world. If the US did not have its economic and military talons skewering people around the world, there would be little to no need for armed resistance movements to oppose those oppressing and exploiting them.
The political element is a bit trickier to discuss. However, given recent history, it seems quite likely that the murders will be used to further crack down on the movement in support of the Palestinians. Protesters could see more federal and state felony charges for speaking out without permission, protests might be banned and those considered leaders will be silenced. The Zionists will be emboldened further, with the most hateful and fascist elements taking even more of a lead than they already have, while Jewish opposition to the occupation and the genocide will face greater repression and isolation. The template being used against the supporters of the Palestinians and anti-genocide protesters will become more repressive and potentially be applied to other anti-trumpist protests and protesters. In short, the ever-less-nascent fascism of the Trump administration will be given a much longer leash.
Given this possibility, it becomes more important than ever that the movement against the genocide broaden its base and deepen its solidarity and commitment to end US participation in and support for the Israeli occupation. The hunger strike begun by a few students is expanding into many other parts of US society, including veterans. This is one example of what this intensified opposition can look like. So are the massive protests in London, Amsterdam and Yemen, and many other places around the globe. So, too, are the blockades and occupations of corporations and financial institutions involved in providing Israel with the machinery of death, the weapons of mass destruction, the software and the technology to commit genocide.
The obvious intent of the regime in Israel (together with the United States and other collaborators) is to destroy the people and the concept of Palestine. That intent is as obvious as the cruelty undertaken by the Israeli military and many of its civilian supporters. Starving people to death reminds this human of the Nazi death camps. The antiwar priest Daniel Berrigan wrote in a letter to the Weather Underground in 1970, “Do only that which one cannot not do.”
(Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: [email protected]. CounterPunch.org)
TRUMP’S USEFUL IDIOTS
A bankrupt liberal class, by signing on for the Zionist witch hunt against supposed antisemites and refusing to condemn Israel for its genocide, provided the bullets to its executioners.
by Chris Hedges
The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.
The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.
Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.
In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.
When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.
The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.
“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.
NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.
Shafik volunteered that Franke, who is Jewish and whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suing Columbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.
The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:
In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position after an esteemed 25-year career. The move — “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” according to Franke’s statement — stems from her advocacy for students who speak out in support of Palestinian rights. Her ostensible offense was a comment expressing concern about Columbia’s failure to address harassment of Palestinians and their allies by Israeli students who come to campus straight from military service — after Israeli students sprayed Palestinian rights protestors with a toxic chemical. For this, she was investigated for harassment and found to be in violation of Columbia’s policies. The actual cause of her forced departure is the crackdown on dissent at Columbia resulting from historic protests opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Franke’s fate was sealed when former Columbia president Minouche Shafik threw her under the bus during her cowardly appearance before Congress.
You can see my interview with Franke here.
Despite her capitulation to the Zionist lobby, Shafik resigned a little more than a year after assuming her position as head of the university.
The crackdown at Columbia continues, with an estimated 80 people arrested and over 65 students suspended following a protest in the library in the first week of May. Former television journalist and Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, stating,“Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies…Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”
Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.
Watching these liberal institutions, who are hostile to the left, be smeared by Trump for harboring “Marxist lunatics,” “radical leftists,” and “communists,” exposes another failing of the liberal class. It was the left that could have saved these institutions or at least given them the fortitude, not to mention analysis, to take a principled stand. The left at least calls apartheid apartheid and genocide genocide.
Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.
Examples include, The New York Times: “Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling,” “I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,” and “Universities Face an Urgent Question: What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?”; The Washington Post: “Call the campus protests what they are” “At Columbia, excuse the students, but not the faculty”; The Atlantic: “Campus Protest Encampments Are Unethical” and “Columbia University’s anti-Semitism Problem”; Slate: “When Pro-Palestine Protests Cross Into Antisemitism”; Vox: The Rising Tide of Antisemitism on College Campuses Amid Gaza Protests”; Mother Jones: “How Pro-Palestine Protests Spark Antisemitism on Campus”; The Cut (New York Magazine): “The Problem With Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus”; and The Daily Beast: “Antisemitism Surges Amid Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Universities.”
The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.
In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.
Hochul made clear in October 2024 that she considered pro-Palestine slogans to be explicit calls for genocide of Jews.
“There are laws on the books – human rights laws, state and federal laws – that I will enforce if you allow for the discrimination of our students on campus, even calling for the genocide of the Jewish people which is what is meant by ‘From the river to the sea,’ by the way,” she said at a memorial event at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains. “Those are not innocent sounding words. They're filled with hate.”
The Governor successfully pressured City University of New York (CUNY) to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies professorship at Hunter College which referenced “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his new book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” leads efforts by the Democratic Party — which has a dismal 27 percent approval rating in a recent NBC News poll — to denounce those protesting the genocide as carrying out a “blood libel” against Jews.
“Whatever one’s view of how the war in Gaza was conducted, it is not and has never been the policy of the Israeli government to exterminate the Palestinian people,” he writes, ignoring hundreds of calls by Israeli officials to wipe Palestinians from the face of the earth during 19 months of saturation bombing and enforced starvation.
The grisly truth, openly acknowledged by Israeli officials, is far different.
“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.
The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.
Trump surrounds himself with neo-Nazi sympathizers such as Elon Musk, and Christian fascists who condemn Jews for crucifying Christ. But antisemitism by the right gets a free pass since these “good” antisemites cheer on Israel’s settler colonial project of extermination, one these neo-Nazis and Christian fascists would like to replicate on Brown and Black in the name of the great replacement theory. Trump trumpets the fiction of “white genocide” in South Africa. He signed an executive order in February that fast-tracked immigration to the U.S. for Afrikaners — white South Africans.
Harvard, which is attempting to save itself from the wrecking ball of the Trump administration, was as complicit in this witch hunt as everyone else, flagellating itself for not being more repressive towards campus critics of the genocide.
The university’s former president Claudine Gay condemned the pro-Palestine slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which demands the right of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, as bearing “specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”
Harvard substantially tightened its regulations regarding student protests, in January 2024, and increased the police presence on its campus. It barred 13 students from graduating, citing alleged policy violations linked to their participation in a protest encampment, despite an earlier agreement to avoid punitive measures. It placed more than 20 students on “involuntary leave” and in some cases evicted students from their housing.
Such policies were replicated across the country.
The capitulations and crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism, academic freedom, freedom of speech, suspensions, expulsions and firings, since Oct. 7, 2023, have not spared U.S. colleges and universities from further attacks.
Since Trump took office, at least $11 billion in federal research grants and contracts have been cut or frozen nationwide according to NPR. This includes Harvard ($3 billion), Columbia ($400 million), University of Pennsylvania ($175 million) and Brandeis ($6-7.5 million annually).
On May 22, the Trump administration intensified its attacks on Harvard by terminating its ability to enroll international students that make up around 27 percent of the student body.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Kristi Noem, DHS Secretary wrote on X, when posting screenshots of the letter she sent to Harvard revoking foreign student enrollment. “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.
They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
‘THE QUIET AMERICAN’ HAS NEVER BEEN MORE RELEVANT
by Matt Taibbi
In Chapter Two of ‘The Quiet American,’ narrator Thomas Fowler, like author Graham Greene a war-weary British journalist, watches in horror as young CIA agent Thomas Pyle orchestrates a disaster. Pyle has just arrived in Vietnam from Harvard and follows an anticommunist playbook in backing the dubious General Thé, who blows up a street full of women and children instead of soldiers:
“He said, ‘Thé wouldn’t have done this. I’m sure he wouldn’t. Somebody deceived him. The Communists’…”
He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance. I left him standing in the square and went on up the rue Catinat to where the hideous pink Cathedral blocked the way.
‘The Quiet American,’ Graham Greene’s fifteenth novel, was published in 1955. The novel is equal parts epitaph for Britain’s empire, love story, battlefield diary, and spy thriller (a real-life MI6 agent, Greene wrote four or five of the best spy novels ever). What makes it so uncannily relevant to the present is his merciless dissection of Pyle and his “good intentions.” Perhaps without even intending it, Greene with his seething description of the meddling American “Economic Aid Mission” adviser published one of the first portraits of a figure destined to rule the world, the managerial expert.
A brilliant prose stylist whose extensive travels gave us exotic locales for novels set everywhere from the Caribbean to Africa to Asia to Central and South America, Greene in the first part of ‘The Quiet American’ spends more time on sour grapes than politics. Fowler, Greene’s aging, opium-smoking English narrator, is in love with a 20-year-old Vietnamese beauty named Phuong (which, he says, “means Phoenix, but nothing nowadays… rises from its ashes”). With the prescience of all inadequate lovers, Fowler knew the virile-if-moronic, sober, hygiene-obsessed Pyle would spot Phuong and take Fowler’s place with her the way America was then taking Britain’s place everywhere. True, Pyle had no game at all, romancing Phuong with lectures on America and the promise of Democracy while his ideas about sex seemed to come from a book called The Physiology of Marriage. Still, Pyle had the one thing Fowler never would again: power, of both the political and sexual kind.
Fowler urges Phuong to get Pyle on the opium pipe to help even the odds, but probably knowing that will fail, tries to console himself with a truism. “A man’s sexual capacity might be injured by smoking,” Fowler writes, “but [the Vietnamese] would always prefer a faithful to a potent lover.” Of course it doesn’t turn out that way, especially once Pyle promises to marry Phuong, elevating Fowler’s resentment and desperation to new levels. Will he have to kill for love in the end?
Fowler’s portrait of Pyle starts out as a humdrum compound of jealousy and Oxonian snobbery — he hates Pyle because he’s a winner and his idea of a good book is The Advance of Red China — but in his callow Euro resentment discovers the real danger of America. Pyle is an overgrown schoolboy whose belief in American know-how and can-do spirit runs deeper and is more full of absurd religious certitude than the British royalists who circled the world murdering for King and country. Greene knew the executors of European colonialism were raised from university age to be rakes and buggerers who knew more poetry than policy, which created its own set of problems but at least immunized them from the most dangerous disease of all: moral confidence. “God save us always,” Fowler says, “from the innocent and good.”
Greene reportedly spent two years in Vietnam beginning in 1951 and parts of several others before publishing in the mid-fifties. The Quiet American predicted twenty years of mayhem, death, and cultural upheaval and in 1975, when it was “all over but the writing,” American Herbert Mitgang went looking for Greene’s inspiration in what was still Saigon. He spoke to retired General Edward Lansdale, a longtime intelligence presence and “adviser on matters of pacification” who was rumored to be Greene’s model for Pyle. “I used to see Greene sitting around the Rue Catinat,” Lansdale said. “I had the feeling that Greene was anti-American.”
He was right about that. Americans in Greene’s novels are universally savaged as blundering nitwits, from The Presidential Candidate in The Comedians who thinks he can end Haitian violence through vegetarianism to the CIA man in Travels With My Aunt who records how much time he spends urinating per day in a journal. Greene served in MI6 as a deputy under infamous double-agent Kim Philby, and like Philby, flirted with Communism in youth, and repeatedly rationalized Philby’s treason late in life.
“Who among us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country?” he wrote, in an introduction to Philby’s memoir. Greene even wrote an unnervingly convincing novel (The Human Factor) about a British official so repulsed by America’s alliance with South African apartheid that he spied for the Russians.
In hindsight, even if Greene hated Americans for other reasons, he may have been giving the USAID-style managerial expert too much credit for “good intentions.” Nonetheless, The Quiet American nailed a new kind of world conqueror, one bursting with what Iggy Pop called “plans for everyone,” while simultaneously being too ignorant of everything outside of his American head — language, customs, local personalities — to competently run anything. Because this new character also lacked any capacity for self-doubt, he never knew when to withdraw and doubled down until he found himself blowing up women and children for the “greater good.” Maybe it’s coincidence, but we’ve never had more to fear from the Pyles of the world.
(racket.news)
THIS IS WATER
by David Foster Wallace
(Best Graduation Address Ever)
Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think.” If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here’s another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education–least in my own case–is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.
By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] — this is an example of how NOT to think, though — most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to.
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
“This is water.”
“This is water.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
I WAS OBAMA’S BUDGET DIRECTOR. IT’S TIME TO WORRY ABOUT THE NATIONAL DEBT
Whadda pile of poop. Tax income, from ALL sources, in excess of $200,000 annually, at 90 percent. Let the rich swine howl if they don’t like it. They accumulated it as a result of OUR labor. Peddle your whining to someone else.
Chillin’ out on a guest computer at the Drop In Center (located behind the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter) because it is necessary to do the laundry. Found out that the hours have changed, and that the women are no longer using the space as a shelter, having been moved elsewhere in the District of Columbia. The place is nearly empty as a result. Two out of three washing machines are working. The 12:30 p.m. lunch will continue to be served. And the SYFY big screen is still on all of the time, with the other screen featuring NBC Channel 4 news, particularly the storm watch. All things change. All things remain the same. Not identified with the body nor the mind. That which is “prior to consciousness” is our true nature. Contact me at any time at: [email protected]. I could return to Mendocino County, having no further reason to be in Washington, D.C. Got housing? Where’s my disappeared SSI monthly disbursement? Solidarity? Postmodern America, are you there? ;-))
THIS IS WATER
Makes me glad that I opted out of the commencement ceremony and had the college send my diploma by mail…
I would like to add some thoughts to yesterday’s very cogent discussion of how the current environment at the County is hurting not just employees, but the public the County is supposed to serve. During the 8 1/2 years I was the Senior Public Health Analyst, responsible for providing data about the well-being of our residents, I saw the kinds of questionable things the Executive Office did to try and balance the budget. For example, the CEO often creatively assigned members of the Executive Office to other departments, and used grant funding that was specifically for certain programs to pay their salaries, thus saving General Fund dollars. In every case where I saw this happen, the Executive Office employee assigned to another department, lacked the subject matter expertise required, according to the grant stipulations. While this was technically defensible, and could be argued to be within the wording of a grant, it was not what the grant funding was intended for and took resources away from the public the grant was intended to serve
The combining and un-combining departments, against the advice of the employees, has resulted in thousands and thousands of wasted tax dollars.
The cronyism at the top has resulted in a lack of confidence by the hard working boots on the ground.
The millions of dollars spent on litigation due to unlawful firings, is a huge drain on the County’s limited budget. . I suspect the cost of the Cubbison affair is now reaching something well over $2 million of your money. The County needs to pull in their horns and settle this.
Now I understand that the County is mandated to provide certain services, such as public safety, child welfare and protecting the public health, with a shrinking tax base. (And the City’s proposed annexation will make matters worse). But the Executive Office has historically been at odds with the very dedicated employees who provide the services. Despite repeated requests to listen to the employees, the EO tends to ignore the very people who can provide insight about organizational structure and real cost-cutting ideas.
Ultimately it is the members of the Board of Supervisors who are responsible for running the County. I am impressed by both Ms.Cline and Mr.Norvell – please keep up the good work. We elect the members of the BOS, not the CEO. I suggest it’s time for a change of CEO to restore public confidence, and improve the work environment overall.
To be more specific about Peter R. Orszag’s comments: To what extent has a federal budget deficit economy allowed us to export jobs, and put our workers out of a job? And to what extent have our federal budget deficits allowed the USA to provide the self defense for the West making social welfare programs popular, and affordable for our Western beneficiaries? A collapse of the value of the USD, which excess government debt could create, would certainly reverse these two trends. The USA would not be importing much of anything, and would not be providing much in the way of defense for anyone, either.