Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 6/25/2025

BREEZIER winds possible today through Friday, bringing elevated fire weather concerns. Seasonable temperatures are expected to continue today through Friday, followed by hotter weather this weekend and into early next week. Moderate to locally major HeatRisk this weekend, especially on Sunday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 50F on the coast this Wednesday morning. We might see some clearing later today then increased clearing going into the weekend. Or so they say. There is a lot of fog out there, we'll see?

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR VERY OWN LUKE SCHAT ON BEING NAMED NATIONAL PITCHER OF THE YEAR!

Big 8 pitcher of the year

NorCal Pitcher of the Year

All-American

National Pitcher of the Year

Luke was dominant this year, and the definition of a high leverage arm.

BURN SEASON CLOSED

With wildfire season heating up and thousands of fires already reported across California this year, CAL FIRE’s Mendocino Unit has announced a suspension of all residential outdoor burn permits, effective Monday, June 30 at 8 a.m.

The decision, detailed in a press release issued by CAL FIRE Mendocino, halts the burning of landscape debris such as branches and leaves for residential property owners. As of June, CAL FIRE and local firefighters have responded to more than 2,678 wildfires statewide — a troubling indicator of the season ahead.

“While we understand residents often rely on burn piles to clear vegetation, the risk is simply too high,” CAL FIRE officials wrote. “Now is the time to shift from burning to preparing.”

That preparation includes creating and maintaining at least 100 feet of defensible space around homes and outbuildings — a buffer zone that can slow the spread of fire and give firefighters a chance to protect structures. The agency also emphasized the importance of being evacuation-ready in the event of a fast-moving wildfire.

CAL FIRE recommends alternative debris disposal methods such as chipping or hauling to a biomass or green waste facility. “Residents must find safer ways to manage yard waste,” the press release stated. “We all have a role in protecting our communities.”

The burn suspension does not apply to campfires on private property or in organized campgrounds, though CAL FIRE stressed that such fires must be “maintained in a way that prevents their spread into the wildland.” Campfire permits are still required and available at local fire stations or online at PreventWildfireCA.org.

Exceptions to the burn suspension may be made for agricultural, fire training, and industrial operations — but only if a CAL FIRE official inspects the site and issues a restricted-use permit based on public health or safety needs.

With conditions growing more volatile, CAL FIRE Mendocino’s press release drives home a critical message: prevention starts at home. “Use this time to get your property ready. Fires can ignite fast — and they won’t wait for you to catch up.”

For more wildfire preparation tips and up-to-date restrictions, residents are encouraged to visit CAL FIRE’s website or contact their local fire station.

(Mendofever.com)

ROBERT E. WOLF

Robert E. Wolf August 3, 1939 – April 13, 2025 Robert (Bob) Wolf passed away suddenly on Palm Sunday, April 13, in Napa, CA. He was 85 years old. Bob was born in Downey, CA, growing up in nearby Norwalk. Most of his early years were spent at the local library, where he was allowed to read books in the adult section at age 10 , as he had read everything in the children’s section. Reading became a lifelong passion, particularly biographies and U.S. military history, Graduation from Excelsior High School in 1957 where he had been active in the Cal Cadets, Bob left the next day for the U.S. Army. He served honorably for 3 years, including a year stationed in South Korea. During this time, he married Catherine Vacarella in Norwalk and daughter, Janet, was born in 1960 at Fort Benning, GA. Following Bob’s discharge, the family returned to California, where son, Jeff, was born in 1964. He continued to raise his family, working at Baker Oil Tools, Camarillo State Hospital and Juvenile Hall. Although he never considered himself “college material”, a neighbor talked Bob into signing up for 1 class at Cerritos Community College and he excelled, while working full-time and caring for his family. This was followed by receiving a BA in Social Welfare from Long Beach State, where he taught part-time following graduation. Bob received a stipend to attend the University of Missouri, with a commitment from him to work in this then-undeserved area for 2 years, following graduation. He received a Master of Science in Social Work in 1970. He always said he had more actual money, being a student with a stipend and the GI Bill, than he had working full-time. After completing his commitment, the family again returned to California. In 1977 Bob relocated to Modesto, where he became a program manager for Stanislaus County Mental Health. In 1984, he was appointed the Director of the Mendocino County Department of Mental Health, retiring in December, 1998. Bob Wolf believed in equal opportunity for all, in all aspects of a person’s life. He always hired as many women managers as men, and he belonged to NOW before most women had heard of it. He also believed in giving back to one’s community. Following retirement to Vallejo CA, Bob was an active volunteer. He served in the Board of Directors of the Florence Douglas Senior Center for 6 years, was a docent at the Vallejo Naval/Historical Museum, and a tour guide on Mare Island. Robert Wolf is survived by his wife, Ruth M. Park. The couple was married 40 years. He is also survived by his daughter Janet (Peter) Jones, his son Jeffrey (Michelle Hakala) Wolf, and his stepson, Mark Davis, 2 grandchildren, Max (Jane) Cheney and Jo (Andrew) Childs, as well as 2 great grandsons. Bob requested to have his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean near the Golden Gate Bridge. He wanted no other services.

*Cuffy's Cove, Elk* (2004) woodblock print by Tom Killion

TAX SHARING & ANNEXATION: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD OR RED PENCIL?

by Mark Scaramella

Supervisor Ted Williams’ proposal to rescind Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s Tax Sharing Agreement from last June was considered premature by his colleagues on Tuesday.

Instead, after a couple of hours of discussion and public input the Board decided to proceed with the existing ad hoc committee of Supervisors Madeline Cline and Bernie Norvell and wait until Ukiah submits an official, hopefully scaled-back, annexation proposal.

Supervisor Mulheren opened the discussion by speed reading a long self-serving prepared statement, the gist of which we still don’t understand. But it seemed to have something to do with explaining how she got to the controversial tax sharing agreement that has precipitated the highly unpopular Ukiah proposal to annex an unwieldy 2600 parcels both north and south of Ukiah which everyone now agrees would put a big dent in County finances by turning over an unknown but large amount of tax revenues to Ukiah without any corresponding reduction in services.

Ukiah Mayor Doug Crane told the Supervisors that he didn’t like what Ukiah has put forward so far, calling it “a big fuck up,” which was also “awkwardly” and prematurely proposed. Crane reminded the Supervisors that at this point nothing has been formally approved by the City Council and nothing has been submitted to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo).

City Councilperson Mari Rodin, one of the biggest tax sharing agreement cheerleaders, said the City of Ukiah is already looking at changes to the proposed map, the map that most people don’t like and which has not been approved by the City Council.

In fact, the Monday night press release from Ukiah Assistant City Manager Shannon Riley — which we posted yesterday — had already made that point, although nobody mentioned it during Tuesday’s lengthy discussion.

Supervisor Williams was skeptical of Ukiah’s “this isn’t final” arguments, implying that he thought what Ukiah would re-submit would probably be substantially the same as the current unofficial proposal and will be met with similar public opposition.

Supervisors Norvell and Cline were clear that while they disapproved of Ukiah’s current proposal, they wanted more info and data before they would considering scrapping Mulheren’s tax sharing agreement outright.

A woman commenter (name illegible) said that she had obtained a copy of Ukiah’s current annexation proposal from LAFCo last January, meaning that Ukiah staffers had not only made it kinda official and that Ukiah has been working on their large land grab proposal for months or more and they probably knew that they wanted to annex a large swath of Ukiah Valley while they were negotiating with Mulheren in her secret ad hoc in the year before it was prematurely approved by the supervisors last June.

Councilmember Rodin said the idea for their annexation proposal stemmed from (unspecified) requests from various Ukiah water and sewer districts which, Rodin said, want to dissolve themselves since Ukiah is already operating the water and sewer systems in the Ukiah Valley and the small districts are having trouble financing major system upgrades.

Supervisor Cline wanted to know if annexation was the only way to address that problem, suggesting that district consolidation and coordination could accomplish essentially the same result.

Cline also chided Rodin saying that the Cline-Norvell annexation ad hoc committee had already had one meeting and nobody from the Ukiah City Council showed up.

At the end of the discussion, after more than a dozen Ukiah area residents made many good points, Williams reluctantly agreed with Norvell and Cline that their existing ad hoc committee should proceed to examine both the agreement and whatever annexation proposal Ukiah ends up submitting. The ad hoc committee would then return to the board in the future — at “a date uncertain” in Ukiah’s euphemistic bureaucratese” — after more data about the impact of the annexation on the County is assembled.

Meanwhile, the ad hoc says they’ll report monthly on the progress of their annexation examination. As usual, given Mendo’s historical aversion to monthly reports, we doubt these reports will be anything more than an occasional “we’re working on it.” Everybody is understating the amount of bureaucracy and process steps that are involved here — unless, of course, Ukiah submits a MUCH smaller annexation proposal, perhaps as step one in a long, drawn out but manageable process.

Despite the usual talk about listening to the public and transparency, nobody suggested a standing annexation committee which would follow Brown Act public meeting rules for the next chorus of Tax Sharing Blues and which would dispel the complaints of most of the complainers about the secrecy involved so far. If whatever they (Ukiah and the County’s ad hoc committee) come up with is another pre-cooked proposal cobbled together without public input, we’re likely to see a similar level of opposition to the Ukiah’s next proposal, whatever and whenever that may be.

FORT BRAGG PLANNING COMMISSION TO CONSIDER 83 UNIT APARTMENTS & FOUR HOTELS ON WEDNESDAY

Planning Commission meeting June 25 at 6pm at Town Hall in Fort Bragg about 83-unit multifamily development, retail space, and 4 hotel units

This Wednesday June 25 at 6pm you have a chance to still have input about an 83-unit multifamily development, a retail space, and 4 hotel units planned for 1151 S. Main Street in Fort Bragg. The applicant at first was happy just with 56 units. The meeting will take place at Town Hall located at 363 N. Main Street and can also be accessed via Video Conference. The item # is 6B. People can also submit written comments until 1pm on Wednesday to < [email protected] > and they will still be posted before the meeting. Write in subject line: Public comment 6-25-25 PC meeting, item # 6B, 1151 S. Main Street. If you join the webinar click this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83156040399 or Telephone Dial: 1 669 444 9171 US (*6 mute/unmute, *9 raise hand) Webinar ID: 831 5604 0399 To speak during public comment portions of the agenda via zoom, join the meeting and use the raise hand feature when the Chair or Acting Chair calls for public comment on the item you wish to address. Link to agenda: https://www.city.fortbragg.com/government/city-council/agendas-minutes

What the Planning Commission intends to do: Receive a Report, Hold a Public Hearing, and Consider Adopting a Resolution Recommending that the City Council Approve Coastal Development Permit Amendment (8-24/A), Use Permit Amendment (UP 9-24/A), Design Review Amendment (DR 11-24/A), for an 83-Unit Multifamily Project with 1,000 SF of Retail Space and 2,450 SF of Visitor Serving Accommodations at 1151 South Main Street (APN 018-440-58) CEQA Exempt per Section 15332 - Class 32 Infill Development Projects and 15195 Infill Housing Development

This development is proposed for the now empty field (former farm) located between the Emerald Dolphin Inn & Mini Golf, and the Fort Bragg Outlet on the west side of Main Street (State Route 1) and south of Noyo Bridge and the Harbor RV Park. The applicant is also the owner of the Emerald Dolphin Inn & Mini Golf. The development would consist of 7 buildings that also would include a retail space and 4 hotel units on 2.7 acres. There would be studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units. This “inclusionary program” partially offsets the cost of providing affordable units (a few units would be low income) by offering a developer one or more incentives such as a tax abatements, parking reductions, or the right to build at higher densities (the density bonus was previously approved without consistently notifying landowners who live within 300 ft. and residents who live within 100 ft. of the project). The building height increased from 28 ft. to either 32 ft. with flat roofs, or 38ft with gabled roofs (3 stories)! This would be precedent setting. Next we might have 3 story buildings on the former GP Mill site. Parking is planned for 107 automobiles, but additional parking is needed. According to the City this development is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per Section 15332 - Class 32 Infill Development Projects and 15195 Infill Housing Development.

The Class 32 Exemption, exempts infill development within urbanized areas if it meets certain criteria. The class consists of environmentally benign infill projects that are consistent with the General Plan and Zoning requirements. This class is not intended for projects that would result in any significant traffic, noise, air quality, or water quality impacts. This exemption is not limited to any use type and may apply to residential, commercial, industrial, public facility, and/or mixed-use projects. As much as people are in favor of more housing for locals many people, especially neighbors, are opposed to this project and have been voicing their opinion during several City Council, and Planning Commission meetings. The City Council in 2019 made it a goal to build 200 more housing units by 2026. Neighbors believing that this project is not “environmentally benign” have appealed the project to the Coastal Commission and hired an attorney, but the developer chose instead to make a few minor changes and bring it back to the Planning Commission.

Many believe that this project should not be exempt from CEQA, that this development is also incompatible with the Coastal Act, as well as inconsistent with the local coastal plan, and the general plan. The cumulative effect of problems with no traffic study, loss of ocean view, location being at the gateway to Fort Bragg, loss of recreational opportunities in the Coastal Zone (it prevents maximum access), and possibly a lack of water to serve the people who would reside there is causing many to question this project at this site. Apparently three new water reservoirs are being built, although environmental and logistical challenges remain. No water study has been done, no geotechnical study either. Apparently a wetland study exists, but the public has not seen it yet. Many issues like access for school busses, and emergency vehicles driving on two dead end roads, or details about the playground have not been worked out. Will there be wash machines in each unit? How will the mail get to people? Why are there no requirements to have area lighting be downcast lighting? Owners only agrees to a one year rental agreement. What happens afterwards? Will these places turn into condos?

Traffic issues have always been hard to solve for that site. That is why a traffic study is a must! A traffic study also needs to look at the future needs. Often in the past studies were done in this vicinity when schools were not in session, and not during holidays, and therefore gave a false impression. Caltrans is still trying to accomplish the ADA program which would narrow the available street space from Highway 20 to Pudding Creek Bridge. The Hare Creek Bridge is narrow, is in bad shape, did not get a seismic retrofit, and is not on Caltrans’ to do list. Caltrans now allows cars who turn from N. Harbor Drive onto Main Street to turn left onto Noyo Bridge further causing traffic problems. As soon as the Grocery Outlet will be built, or even while under construction there will be much more traffic in that general area. With additional building and increased traffic there is also a decrease in air quality as well as noise pollution. The City has a map that shows the Sensitive Noise Receptors. It lists the college and the Mobile Home Park, but not the Pollywog Playschool at the corner of Del Mar Drive and Ocean View Drive licensed for 45 children. They play outside in their big yard as much as they can. If the Planning Commission recommends this development to the City Council and the City Council approves it, then there is a chance to appeal the decision again to the Coastal Commission.

FORT BRAGG PROTESTERS WHO SUFFERED DRIVE-BY PELLET PEPPERING ON SATURDAY ASSURED BY POLICE RESPONSE

Unknown at this point if attack was politically motivated or not

by Frank Hartzell

Protester Wayne Barnes, left,. was one of those hit by pellets fired from a still unidentified car during last Saturday's protests in downtown Fort Bragg

(Hartzell’s note: another witness provided an account of this shooting-splattering-peppering attack. There seems to be no word in the English language to describe such terrifying foolishness)

Vietnam veteran Wayne Barnes said he has been shot at and he’s been arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, but he’d never been shot at a protest.

Until last Saturday in Fort Bragg.

Barnes, 74, was holding a sign that said “Fxxx Trump” at the end of the protest, just before noon when he was hit squarely in the forehead, which stung considerably but didn’t break the skin.

“Something hit me in the head and kind of stunned me,” he said.

Barnes, with his kilt, glower, flanked by Fred, the American Bulldog and Doris, the pit-terrier mix has been a regular Trump protester at the Mendocino Indivisible events in 2025.

“I thought it was maybe a paintball gun or something like that, but after thinking about it later, it must have been more like an airsoft gun, right? And then I looked at the people to the south of me on Main Street, and they had kind of a startled look on their faces too. So I assumed that maybe they had been hit by something too. And I asked them, Did they get hit by something? They said, Yeah, somebody threw something out.”

“I looked down the street, but I really couldn’t see where it came from. I thought it came from a little black Honda, but I couldn’t be sure. “

Mendocinocoast.news talked to about a dozen people who were at the protest, most of whom didn’t hear or see anything, nor did they know someone had fired something at the crowd. But everybody contacted in a twenty-foot stretch on the west side of State Route 1 was aware that something had been thrown or fired. A search by those who were hit found no pellets in the road or any evidence of what hit them.

“We were looking for some sort of shrapnel or pellets or whatnot. And all we could find what was basically pebble, gravel, small, small pieces of gravel, which any street has. So we’re not quite sure what, what exactly the projectile was,” protester Richard Hubacek said.

The consensus seems to be that an Airsoft gun or a similar sports gun was used in the attack. Airsoft guns fire a resin pellet at low speeds are used in shooting sports and designed not to cause injury, if protective gear is worn.

Fort Bragg police are investigating the crime and have promised an increased presence at the protest this coming Saturday. The protesters have been coming out on a weekly basis. More than 1200 appeared two weeks ago at the “No Kings” protest, Locally and nationwide, it was one of the largest protests since the start of the second Gulf War.

While at least three protesters say they were hit and suffered minor injuries, police are also reportedly investigating another report in which someone shot a similar weapon at people who were not involved in any protest. So, until police issue a formal statement, it could have been an act of political violence, or it could have just been jerks driving around shooting an Airsoft gun out the window.

Stay tuned. Mendocinocoast.news expects to get information from the police department or a press release shortly, and we will follow up.

The protest coincided with Fort Bragg’s LGBQT+ Pride parade. That event left State Route 1 and proceeded up to the grounds behind the Larry Spring Museum, located several blocks to the north. Organizer Cynthia Gair had joined the parade and was not at the protest when the attack occurred.

Barnes heard nothing before being hit. He was listening to his earbuds.

“I probably wouldn’t have heard much if it were a machine gun.”

Little River’s Richard Hubacek, 75, heard a popping sound.

“We were out in front of the Guest House on the curb and the whole thing was just about over. All of a sudden i heard a distinct noise. Then it felt like something hit my sign and my wife said ‘something hit me on the wrist.’

A man next to us was hit in the forehead (Barnes) and a woman further down was hit on the chest. Someone said they had seen a flash.”

While the attack wasn’t enough for many not in that one area to even hear, that group got together and decided some sort of projectile had been fired at them. They searched but only found road gravel. Hubacek called 911.

“Nobody needed go go to the hospital, but it was obvious to us that we had been targeted.”

He said six people waited a half hour for the police officer to come and take a statement, as police were involved in traffic control for the Pride March. After telling police the story, the group felt good about the response and saw evidence police were taking the case seriously. They said police have promised an increased presence this Saturday, when the protest will return to the same spot. That was important to the Hubacek’s who wish to continue speaking out, but were concerned that being peppered by pellets might be a sign of future trouble otherwise..

Will new cameras help solve the case?

Police have some sophisticated newer tools that might help crack this case.

The City Council has heard the FBPD has been pleased with the results produced by the Axon and Flock Camera systems it has used in recent years, first worn by officers, then three fixed cameras were set up. When that worked well, the city bought four more fixed cameras, which Police Chief Neil Cervenka told the Fort Bragg City Council in January were about to be set up. The city also has license plate readers on at least eight of its police cars, which can read license plates and search databases.

While law enforcement has become sophisticated in the use of surveillance, tactics have changed drastically to deeseclate. Police using violence created chaos that ended up bolstering the protesters’ causes, such as voting rights and desegregation. The world watched in horror as thugs like Bull Connor ordered his men to fire tear gas, use fire hoses and nightstick marchers who refused to disperse, knocking elderly black people carrying Bibles and dressed in church clothes.

Barnes said he was arrested during the protests of the Vietnam War in Philadelphia.

Protests have been a feature of American life since the Boston Tea Party. The media has exaggerated and understated protests at different times in history. Police response has changed drastically with officers being better trained on how to remain neutral and de-escalate violence since 1969, when repeated violent police raids on the Stonewall Inn led to a riot that is credited as a key moment in the gay rights and later LGBQT+ movement.

Barnes said those were much rowdier days. He was arrested in Philadelphia in the 1960s, later serving in Vietnam. Vietnam vets often became war protesters after service, but rarely were they doing that before the war.

“We were throwing things and fighting and cops were coming in with horses and just trampling people. They had boots and would walk over you. You didn’t want to get in the way of their boots or their horses.

I was just there I wasn’t doing anything when they came charging in. I tried to run and the first thing I knew I was down on the ground and my face is getting rubbed in the street. “

Barnes said he got his draft notice about a month later and served in Vietnam in the 101st Airborne. He said he has never been one run from anything, even service in a war he opposed.

“I didn’t have much choice,” he said.

He said he served in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. Mendocinocoast.news could not find a record of Barnes in the 101st Airborne’s online database, but that document includes only a portion of those who served in that famed unit.

Historians often say that the worst behavior in U.S police history may have been during the 1968 Democratic convention, where what investigations later called a “police riot”. Police used dump trucks as tanks and fired teargas at protesters who had no escape.

The catastrophe was studied to avoid a repeat.

A key moment that showed police how to handle protests was the failed Albany campaign in 1962, where Martin Luther King’s leadership of the civil rights movement – a broad amalgam of often antagonistic groups – was brought into question.

King found a kindred soul in Albany, George Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, who like King had studied Ghandi and taught his officers they could only prevailed if they “out non-violenced” them.

Throughout the demonstrations, there, his police force was a model of restraint and calm, history shows. Had other police chiefs run their responses like this, some say King might have failed. Instead, most Southern lawmen were intent on imposing violence on non-violent protests and to trumpet support for voting suppression and drastic segregation laws, all of which backfired.

Modern police, especially in Fort Bragg, use tactics like those Prithcett employed. His city suffered no riots or disruptions.

Mendocino Indivisible plans to put out a newsletter this week that will address the incident last week and discuss ongoing safety. Police are also expected to issue a press release.

Many huge protests have been largely forgotten by history, such as those before the second Gulf War. Fort Bragg was filled with protesters in 2004 or 2005 led by the Latino community to protest President George Bush’s immigration crackdown. That crackdown, unlike Trump’s massive deportation effort, focused on both undocumented immigrants AND their employers. Trump has focused entirely on the immigrants, not those who hire them and need them to keep the hospitality and agriculture industries among others

In 1994, thousands of Latino people protested against Proposition 187. Students walked out of schools all over the state. I was a reporter for the Appeal-Democrat in Marysville and walked with the protesters. Our coverage filled the newspaper. Beloved A-D photographer, the late Dave Nielsen, climbed up to the top of the Feather River Bridge to capture a stunning image of the students filling the entire structure. He was mad when I got back to the newsroom because my gigantic self stood out among the Latino high schoolers like “the Great Wall of China”, “ruining his favorite image.

Media coverage is far different. Stories are much shorter and are almost entirely composed of official versions sent out in press releases in 2025. There used to be a team of photographers in small cities like Yuba-Sutter who worked out in the community everyday. Now, on the ground actual reporting is extremely rare by contrast. The Advocate News had a newsroom that included about 10 full and part time workers twenty years ago, but the staff was eliminated and the building sold off. The media now employs few neutral observers, largely comprised of self styled and sponsored “influencers.” News is much, much faster as well as much more official now and involving far less actual reporting.

Barnes will be back this Saturday.

“People like that don’t scare me.”

I got the following follow up from a trusted source:

I was standing next to Wayne. I didn’t get hit, but the people on both sides of me did.
There were at least 5 that were hit, one on the leg, two on the torso,
and one more on the sign. There was clearly a lot of pea
gravel on the sidewalk after the shooting. There was a popping sound
that accompanied it. I was one of the 6 that waited for the police for
about a half hour, and they never came. People left as they needed to.
Finally, the last couple, who called it in, said they’d go over to the
police station and give a report, so I left and went to the Pride event.
I’m glad that the police are taking it seriously, as at the time, it
seemed like they weren’t, but perhaps they were just busy.

From Fort Bragg Police Sgt Jonathan McLaughlin:

On Saturday officers were dispatched to a report of persons being struck by what can best be described as resin pellets as you stated. They made contact with the reporting party who was able to provide the suspect vehicle description, but could not provide any details on the suspect, or other victims. No statements or threats were reportedly made during the incident. The vehicle was described as a black small car which was dirty in appearance. Officers utilized FLOCK cameras and other means to attempt to locate the suspect however at this time they have not been identified. The department will be conducting extra patrol in the areas of upcoming planned peaceful protests and have been in communication with event organizers who have been asked to report any suspicious activity. No injuries were reported from this incident. Anyone wishing to provide further information in relation to this incident can contact Officer Pacheco at [email protected] or contact us at (707) 964-0200.

(Frank Hartzell is a freelancer reporter and an occasional correspondent for The Mendocino Voice. He has published more than 10,000 news articles since his first job in Houston in 1986. He is the recipient of numerous awards for many years as a reporter, editor and publisher mostly and has worked at newspapers including the Appeal-Democrat, Sacramento Bee, Newark Ohio Advocate and as managing editor of the Napa Valley Register. Courtesy mendoinocoast.news)

FORT BRAGG FIREWORKS DISPLAY

The City of Fort Bragg’s 4th of July Celebratory Fireworks Display will be held on Saturday, July 5, 2025 at 9:30 PM. Viewing for the event is best from the areas of the South Coastal Trail at Noyo Headlands or the Pomo Bluffs Park. Anyone within the event area should expect an increase in both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Over the years, this event has dramatically increased in size, requiring changes to manage the event with limited staffing. Please refer to the information below for event details, enforcement plans, and changes.

In past years the Pomo Bluff Parking Lot off Ocean View Drive has been reserved and enforced as handicapped parking only. This year this restriction has been removed, and the parking lot is open to all attendees. Those parking stalls marked for handicapped parking are still reserved for handicapped parkers and will be enforced accordingly.

Public parking along Ocean View Drive and the various north/south roadways off Ocean View Drive as well as the east side of Cliff Way (grass) will be prohibited. Public Parking along the north side of North Harbor Drive extending from the 400 Block of N Harbor to the Jetti Parking Lot will be prohibited. These roadways were not designed for public parking and need to remain open for law enforcement and emergency personnel response. Residents, guests, and business owners along these roadways should ensure that any vehicle is parked entirely on private property. Signage notifying the public of no parking/tow away will be posted on each of these roadways prior to the event. Any vehicle’s found illegally parked in these areas will be subject to parking citations and being towed.

Paid parking will be offered on the South Coastal Trail off Cypress Street ($20). These parking fees will be directly applied to offsetting the costs of the Fireworks Display. All visitors to the event are encouraged to carpool, walk, bike or utilize public transportation to minimize traffic surrounding the event. Pedestrians are reminded to utilize the crossing signals at Cypress Street, and Ocean View Drive to cross SR-1.

Police Officers will be deployed on Noyo Beach and in the surrounding areas in order to enforce local, county, and state laws; specifically, those laws related to fireworks, alcohol, and open fires. As a reminder, the common viewing areas for the Fireworks display including Pomo Bluffs Park, Noyo Beach, and the South Coastal Trail, are city parks. Individuals observed committing criminal acts can be arrested, cited, and ejected from the event.

During the event, the speed limit will be reduced from 40 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour from the 600 Block of SR-1 to the 1100 Block or SR-1. Signage will be present to indicate this change, and the change will remain in effect until the end of the event. The Fort Bragg Police

Department will also be partnering with the California Highway Patrol to conduct traffic enforcement and Driving Under the Influence (DUI) enforcement.

For approximately one hour after the conclusion of the event those within the event area should expect an increase in both pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area. During this time, the following traffic modifications should be expected. The 100 block of South Street will be fenced off and shut down to all traffic. The 100 blocks of Myrtle Street, Woodward, and parallel alleyways will be closed to northbound traffic. Police traffic control will be conducted at the intersection of SR-1 and N. Harbor Drive. The intent of these modifications is to reduce congestion, increase pedestrian safety, and expedite the clearing of vehicular traffic.

NATHANIEL SMITH HEADSTONE INSTALLED AT HILLCREST CEMETERY

We’re honored to share that a headstone has been installed to mark the final resting place of Nathaniel Smith, who arrived in Mendocino County in the 1850s and is believed to be the first African American to settle on the Mendocino Coast. Thank you to everyone who donated to make this possible!

The Kelley House Museum, with support from California Humanities, commissioned research on Smith for an exhibit in 2024. Using historical maps from Hillcrest Cemetery in Mendocino, we were able to locate his previously unmarked grave.

We warmly invite any descendants of Nathaniel Smith who would like to help coordinate a memorial ceremony to contact us at: [email protected]

PERFECT TENANT SEEKS RENTAL

Quiet, responsible senior employed as Registered Nurse, looking for home rental for self and 2 well behaved dogs. Owner of current residence moving home. Great references, excellent credit. Anderson Valley, Philo, Navarro, Yorkville area.

Please contact Jeanne Harris @ 404.402.7523

[email protected]

BECOME ONE OF THE BIG 36

Mendocino County - The Mendocino County Homeless Services Continuum of Care (MCHSCoC) invites residents with lived expertise of homelessness, members of the public, and other stakeholders to join us in making a difference in the lives of our unhoused neighbors in Mendocino County. MCHSCoC is a collaboration of individuals and agencies committed to the goal of ending homelessness in our community. This group is instrumental in bringing Federal and State funding into our community to assist families and individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness to gain access to stable housing. MCHSCoC focuses on developing solutions to homelessness that also have a positive impact on the larger community.

The next meeting of the MCHSCoC will provide an overview of what it means to be an MCHSCoC Member. This meeting will be held on Monday, July 21st, 2025, at 1:30 pm at Adult and Aging Services’ Big Sur Conference Room at 747 S. State Street in Ukiah. For additional meeting details, please visit https://mendocinococ.org/meetings/2025/02/24/board-meeting-m54p6. To join the MCHSCoC, please complete a membership application form accessible at https://mendocinococ.org/s/General-Member-Welcome-Letter-and-Application-Fill-In-4-23-2024.pdf, and return it to [email protected] or 747 S. State St, Ukiah, CA 95482, ATTN: Housing Coordination Unit.

The MCHSCoC will also be electing six (6) new Governing Board Members at this meeting for the following seats: one (1) dedicated Board Seat for an Individual with Lived Experience of Homelessness, one (1) dedicated Board Seat for a Housing Developer or Property Manager, and four (4) Representative Group Seats. MCHSCoC is accepting nominations for available Governing Board Seats now through Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 5:00 pm PST. To submit a nomination, please complete the MCHSCoC Governing Board Seat Nomination Form available at https://forms.gle/hyWFoZsnHjzttzbq8.To be eligible for MCHSCoC Board Seat nomination, organizations or individuals must operate or reside within Mendocino County and be a General Member of the MCHSCoC. For questions or to request additional information, contact Veronica Wilson at [email protected] or (707) 468-7071.

PRIZED PUBLIC LANDS ON CALIFORNIA’S NORTH COAST AT RISK UNDER SENATE PROPOSAL TO SELL OFF UP TO 3 MILLION PUBLIC ACRES

by Austin Murphy

Cow Mountain Recreation Area, 52,000 acres of oak and pine forest straddling Mendocino and Lake counties, has something for everyone: fishing, target shooting, 120 miles of trails for ATVs and four-wheeling, and a separate, nonmotorized area for hikers and mountain bikers.

This rugged refuge of federal land in the Mayacamas range, east of Ukiah, was officially conserved as a recreation area in a 2006 wilderness bill whose chief sponsor was Rep. Mike Thompson.

So it’s not surprising that the Democrat from St. Helena is livid and “disgusted” over a budget proposal from Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee that would force the sale of 2 to 3 million acres of federal lands, located in 11 western states, over the next five years.

The proposal has drawn opposition from a wide coalition of conservation, hunting and fishing groups, plus companies that power the nation’s $1.2 trillion outdoor industry.

In California alone, nearly 17 million acres of national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands — including the Cow Mountain Rec Area — would be eligible for sale if the current bill passes, according to The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit conservation group.

“Like it says in the song,” said Thompson, “‘This land is your land, this land is my land.’ These are not the lands of a wannabe dictator.

“For (President Trump) to think he can reverse that — it’s beyond arrogant, and the fact that the American people are upset about it is more than understandable.”

Lee, who has long championed off-loading many federal lands to states and private buyers, chairs the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees those vast public lands.

He has tried and failed before to pass narrower standalone legislation through Congress. His latest move, bundled into Trump’s tax and spending legislation, the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” seeks to privatize a swath of that land about the size of Yellowstone National Park.

Keep ‘Public Lands In Public Hands’

The blowback, even in rural areas of the nation where voters lean more heavily Republican, has been fierce.

On the interior North Coast, the federal land serves as a still-wild retreat for local visitors and travelers from far and wide, said John Haschak, chair of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.

Cow Mountain, he said, “is a really popular destination for Ukiah people, and people from all over Northern California.”

Selling the nation’s public lands, he added, “is really detrimental to society as a whole.”

Mendocino County Supervisor Madeline Cline, whose district also borders Cow Mountain, said she “strongly supports “keeping public lands in public hands” — echoing a slogan wielded by past and current efforts to defeat such large sell-offs.

Cline has heard from some constituents that privatization might result in “improved vegetation management and reduced fire risk,” but she said, “a majority of folks want to protect our public lands.

“I hope Cow Mountain is not sold,” she said.

Language now included in the Senate’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would require the BLM and Forest Service to identify, then sell “a minimum of 0.5% and a maximum of 0.75% of their estates,” according to a fact sheet from Lee’s committee.

That sell-off, it added, “will increase the supply of housing and decrease housing costs for millions of American families.”

Critics have pointed out the vast majority of the more than 250 million acres that would be eligible for sale under the terms of Lee’s amendment is far removed from the infrastructure required to build housing.

“Rather than targeting the root causes of America’s housing affordability crisis,” noted the Center for American Progress, a self-described independent, nonpartisan policy institute, “the Senate is advancing a reckless anti-public lands proposal masquerading as a housing solution.”

‘It’ll Stink To High Heaven’

Rep. Jared Huffman, an ardent foe of the Trump administration, elaborated on that criticism.

“The idea that this is somehow an answer to our shortage of affordable housing — I just hope no one is stupid enough to buy that,” said Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat who leads his party on the House Natural Resources Committee.

Huffman described Lee’s amendment to the budget bill as a “breathtaking scheme” that’s very much in keeping what he called the administration’s “vulture capitalist approach — this idea that we look through government for everything that can be spun off and privatized and monetized and liquidated.

“And now we seem to have a Secretary of the Interior” — ex-North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — “who thinks he’s Carl Icahn, or Charles Hurwitz, instead of Teddy Roosevelt,” he said, contrasting two notorious business tycoons with the late president most often credited with establishing the nation’s network of protected public lands.

Huffman, who has for years sought to bolster protections for some of the same North Coast lands that would be eligible for sale in his sprawling district, said he wasn’t clear exactly how such a liquidation would happen.

He was certain, however, that “it’ll stink to high heaven. There will be corruption, there will be favoritism, there will be insider, sweetheart deals.”

Lands At Risk Throughout North Coast

In addition to the Cow Mountain Recreational Area, numerous parcels adjacent to King Range National Conservation Area — Humboldt County’s Lost Coast — would be eligible for sale. So would thousands of acres of forest just south of the primeval groves in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Sonoma County has little federal public land, but The Wilderness Society’s interactive map of lands eligible for sale shows around 10 remote parcels, including one on the southern flank of Geysers Peak, and several others in the coastal mountains just west of Healdsburg.

Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, excoriated Lee’s proposal as “classic corporate welfare, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.”

Public lands are “a natural resource bank for future generations,” said Hopkins.

“Apparently Senator Lee cares more about pleasing his donor base than he does about the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren.”

In Napa County, BLM lands on the western and southern flank of Lake Berryessa would also be eligible for sale.

Across his district, Huffman noted, the affected lands include parts of the headwaters of the Eel and Russian rivers, “and significant parts of three national forests” — the Klamath, Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers.

While national parks, wilderness areas and national monuments were excluded from Lee’s proposal, federal lands eyed for future wilderness, inventoried roadless areas and critical wildlife habitat would be eligible for sale, according to The Wilderness Society.

And that process for selling off land, the group said in its analysis of Lee’s proposal, would run “at breakneck speed” and “without hearings, debate or public input.”

Tribal nations would not be given right of first refusal to bid on lands, the group added, “even for areas that are a part of their traditional homelands or contain sacred sites.”

Bipartisan Backlash

Backlash has been swift, as public lands supporters reignited a campaign they’d launched eight years ago to defeat another ambitious sell-off bill carried by a different Utah Republican.

In May, at what turned out to be just the beginning of a torrent social media posts, calls and emails to Congress, a narrower Republican proposal to sell or transfer 460,000 acres in Nevada and Utah died in the House.

By this past weekend, opposition in the Senate was growing along bipartisan lines: At least four Republicans, Montana’s Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, along with their Idaho counterparts Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, are on the record opposing the sell-off.

That tally spells trouble for Lee’s proposal as part of Trump’s budget bill. The slim Republican caucus in the Senate only has three votes to lose if that legislation is to pass amid unified opposition from Democrats and independents.

The campaign includes well-known brands such as clothing maker Patagonia, which clashed with Trump during his previous term in the White House, along with hundreds of other wilderness and wildlife organizations, hunting and fishing groups and business coalitions.

“This is a line in the sand for us,” said Devin O’Dea, western policy and conservation manager for Montana-based Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, whose 40,000 members are “united by the notion that we’re all public landowners, and that this is our shared inheritance, something we want to pass on to future generations.”

The idea that the government would sell these lands “in an expedited process, bypassing existing guidelines established by Congress, without input from the public — it’s shortsighted and something we strongly oppose.”

While the BHA’s members have sent nearly 100,000 emails to public officials, the organization announced Monday that 21 “sportsmen’s organizations and over 50 Utah-based businesses” in the hunting and fishing industries, from small fly-fishing guide operations to major equipment manufacturers, have signed a letter, addressed to Lee and his Utah counterpart Sen. John Curtis, opposing the sale of public lands.

Lee Backpedals?

On the defensive, Lee signaled a potential retreat Sunday, when he posted on X: “Hunter Nation: You spoke, and I’m listening. I’ll be making changes in the coming days.”

Neither he nor his office elaborated on Monday.

Asked if he was hopeful that enough Republicans would join Democrats to tank Lee’s proposal, Huffman said “Hope is never a strategy with this cast of characters. There seems to be no bottom.”

Selling the nation’s public lands, he said, “is an extreme betrayal of everything that has come before, in this country, and of what I consider the birthright of future Americans.

“I’m going to fight this with everything I’ve got.”

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

SHARON DOUBIAGO

While this works, as it hasn’t for a long time, let me tell you of the poets in picture, all very important, basic poets for me. The 2 men, Bill Bradd, on my right, and Gordon Black on my left. died last February and March, 3 weeks from each other. They had been active Mendocino poets before I gave my first reading Oct 17, 1974 at the monthly Open Reading in Elk, California. The other poet is Devreaux Baker who entered my life and the Mendocino poetry scene a couple of years later. These 3 have been been enormously important to me. They are all fantastic poets. I urge you to read them! We are sitting on the mythical Mendocino bench over looking the mouth of Big River entering the Pacific Ocean. The photographer is also mythical, having documented the Mendo history of the past 50=60 years.

SKYHAWK: DOING WELL

Editor,

I am doing well, if someone has told me years ago where my life was headed, I would not have wanted to hear it! But, here I am, the most important thing are my teen twin daughters Inyo and Kiara, they are both doing well, , they are good students, and absolute aerial artist rock stars with Circus Mecca, and Flynn Creek circus, heading into their senior year, and considering what their adult lives might be !

I have several projects I’m excited about, I started a children’s youtube channel called “Mr.Skyhawks Nest”, its intended to be a safe educational online space for kids, although we only have a few episodes up so far more are coming, and county people are likely aware that until recently I was a 30-plus year Public Affairs programer with KZYX, most recently doing “Universal Perspectives”, but I recently resigned, My ethics could not tolerate the current regime, in which a passive BOD allows an unqualified and tyrannical Station Manager, to run roughshod over the station so I’m thinking of going podcast, if anyone would like to support me in these or other projects, I’ve set up a Patreon page, click this link: https://www.patreon.com/chrisskyhawk?fan_landing=true and click membership options.

And my life has become very mystical and contemplative, people who monitor local affairs are quite familiar that i will often raise my voice about things that bother me, but this quote has become my guiding principle:”Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,

Love is knowing I am everything,

and between the two my life moves. :

Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Thank you, everybody;

Chris Skyhawk,

Fort Bragg

NEW MOON IN ARDRA | BREATH, SOUND & HEALING CIRCLE AT THE SHALA

Join us Wednesday, June 26 at 6PM at The Shala for a potent New Moon in Ardra Nakshatra Circle—a sacred evening of breathwork, gentle yoga, and sound healing with Justine Lemos, PhD.

Ardra is the storm-bringer, ruled by Rudra—the fierce aspect of Shiva. This nakshatra reveals what must be felt, grieved, released. But beyond the tears, Ardra promises renewal, brilliance, and crystal clarity.

Gentle movement to anchor the nervous system Breathwork to process intense energies Sound Bath to restore harmony and insight Ayurvedic & Vedic insight to guide the lunar portal

Space is limited. Reserve your spot: Click to Register Now: https://app.arketa.co/theshala/checkout/AI302FwAQPzBR5Bg75fD

Justine Lemos, [email protected]

WHAT, EXACTLY, IS THIS CRIME?

A reader inquires:

From today’s Catch of the Day: HAROLD CASEBOLT III, 63, Ukiah. Failure to register as transient.

I am always bemused by this charge. A person drives down to Ukiah from Garberville, checks into a motel, and stays a few days for no particular reason. Or more likely, a person drives or hitchhikes down to Ukiah and sleeps on some side street or under a bridge. Were they supposed to “register” somewhere?

According to Oxford Languages online, “transient” used as a noun means, “a person who is staying or working in a place for only a short time.”

Where is such a person supposed to register? Does registering at a motel count? Is there some time span that triggers the requirement?

Or is this what it looks like? A random requirement that close to no one knows is a crime, but can be used to arrest an otherwise non-criminal person to get them off the street?

I’m with the Editor that some people need to be gotten off the street. But I am, nevertheless, curious about how this particular mechanism is used. Seems like it would require a whole lot of trust in local law enforcement to make it feel OK.

Name Withheld

Ukiah

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, June 24, 2025

JOSE BARRIGA-BARRERA, 31, Ukiah. Suspended license, parole violation, probation revocation.

SETH COSTA, 22, Ukiah. No license, more than an ounce of pot, resisting.

BRITTANY DAVIS, 35, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

TIANA GARCIA, 31, Sacramento/Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, probation revocation.

SADIE GRAVLEE, 27, Elk. More than an ounce of pot, controlled substance, probation revocation.

SANTIAGO HERNANDEZ, 72, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MERCEDEZ HOAGLEN-LOCKART, 28, Covelo. Domestic battery.

RAMON NUNEZ-RODRIGUEZ, 55, Boonville. Assault with intent to rape, attempted anal or genital penetration by foreign object, sexual battery by restraint.

KYLEE PETERSEN, 36, Ukiah. Under influence.

CHRISTINA PURTHEL, 34, Willits. DUI, suspended license.

LENOX REYES II, 44, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOSE REYES-SALGUERO, 36, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear.

BILLY RICKMAN, 52, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, controlled substance with two or more priors, county parole violation.

THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Probation violation, resisting.

JUSTIN WILLIAMSON, 43, Ukiah. Under influence.

BOB ABELES. WHITE COURTESY TELEPHONE, PLEASE.

Is this AI-generated? It doesn’t seem likely that mom…

HERE WE GO AGAIN

To the Editor:

Once again our government has launched a war against a nation that has not attacked the United States.

Nowadays we use the euphemism “war of choice” for this kind of attack to obscure the fact that under international law, when one nation attacks another except in self-defense it constitutes the crime of aggression.

How will this latest war of aggression end? Our feckless president evidently envisions a quick victory and perhaps even the collapse of the Iranian regime, weakened as it is by decades of sanctions.

President George W. Bush indulged the same fantasies when he decided to invade Iraq in 2003 on the basis of falsehoods. President Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” weeks later was only a precursor to a decade of chaos and death for American soldiers as well as Iraqi civilians.

How many America soldiers and civilians may die as a result of President Trump’s desire to become a war president? No one knows. But only a fool would believe this can have a happy ending for America, the people of Iran or the larger Middle East.

Mitchell Zimmerman

Palo Alto

PREDICTING TRUMP AS MORON

1920

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

[HL Mencken, The Baltimore Sun, 26 July 1920]

2017

On July 20, 2017, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, attended a Pentagon briefing with Donald Trump and the nation’s top generals. Things soon went sour:

“[Trump] demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, … Trump by now was in one of his rages. … ‘I wouldn’t go to war with you people,’ Trump told the assembled brass. Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, ‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.’

“The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, … Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let his guard down. ‘He’s a fucking moron,’ the secretary of state said of the president.”

(Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J Trump’s Testing of America, pp. 136-138. New York: Penguin Press, 2020, emphasis added.)

(via Tim Stoen)

ATTAINING SWAMI SUPREME FELICITY, BUY ONE GET ONE FREE, ONE TIME ONLY

Swami Chidananda: Applying Spiritual Truths in Daily Life

Click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euLuDvGG2e8

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that I am sending this to you for your enjoyment. Otherwise, I am continuing to be at the homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., and participating at the Peace Vigil across the street from the White House.

It is disturbing to find that there are many psychotics in the District of Columbia, who routinely terrorize others at bus station shelters as well as on board. This is crazy! It is further proof that spiritual sadhana is more necessary now than ever before for everyone. It is not realistic that we are all going to carry concealed weapons for our protection. Additionally, the idea that we are all one under the American flag is total nonsense. Racial hatred is alive and well in America. Unity with the Holy Spirit is conspicuous by its absence. We all might be united on a deeper spiritual level. but it is an insane hell ordinarily. Just tellin’ it like it is.

I am more than ready to move out of the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. I have $1695.84 in the bank and $10.53 in the wallet. The SSI disappeared, so am now receiving $488 monthly from the SSA only. Food stamps come in but the card is not working; awaiting word from the EBT offices in California and in D.C. Meanwhile, physical and mental health is very good at 75!

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

WEST COAST WHALE POPULATION PLUNGES TO LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1970s

by Tara Duggan

A key population of whales that migrate along the California coast dropped this year to its smallest size since the 1970s. The decrease in population happened as a high number of the whales died in San Francisco Bay, and both may be tied to the impact of climate change on food supplies in the Arctic.

There are likely fewer than 13,000 gray whales on the West Coast, according to a new estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service, which conducts surveys of the cetaceans as they pass Central California. That’s compared to a high of 27,000 in 2016, reached decades after federal protections for marine mammals helped boost their population.

The survey counted only 85 gray whale calves traveling with their mothers along the coast, the smallest number since the 1990s. Earlier this year, scientists in Baja, Mexico, also reported seeing many dead whales in lagoons where the whales give birth and nurse their young each January to March, NOAA Fisheries said.

Gray whales are not on the federal endangered species list, and their population has rebounded in the past. But the calf count has been too low since 2019 for the population to bounce back any time soon, according to NOAA Fisheries. That may be the most disturbing sign, said Aimée Lang, research biologist for the agency.

“We’re just going to have fewer gray whales into the future because the environment can’t support as many,” said Lang, though she does not believe they will become extinct.

Researchers believe the decline in whale numbers is tied to the declining amount of food in the Arctic around Alaska, where the whales go to feed each May to November. The base of the food chain there is a type of algae that grows underneath sea ice, which is retreating with climate change.

Large numbers of gray whales died and washed ashore in the Bay Area during their migration north to the Arctic this spring, mostly within San Francisco Bay. Between late March and mid-June, 19 gray whales were found dead in the Bay Area, compared to only two last year, according to the Marine Mammal Center, a veterinary hospital in Sausalito. Previously, the highest number of such deaths in the Bay Area was 15 in 2021 and 14 in 2019, the Center reported, but more of those whales showed up on coastal beaches.

The Center counted a record number of whales visiting the bay this year, which puts them in harm’s way of a collision with passing ships and boats. One theory for why they’re coming into the bay more often is that they’re not getting enough food in the Arctic and then are starved and tired toward the end of their 10,000-mile annual journey.

“We’re all speculating that when the whales are hungry they do things like come into bays and look for food sources,” said Lang. “It fits with the broader behavior.”

There’s not much to do other than to try to limit global warming and to keep putting money toward science, Lang said.

“We need to continue monitoring to keep track of what’s going on, and we hope to be able to in the future,” she said.

(SF Chronicle)

SAN FRANCISCO’S FOUR KINGS IS A PERFECT RESTAURANT

by Drew Magary

By its very nature, a restaurant is a fleeting enterprise. You’ve probably heard the legendary panic stat that 90% of restaurants fail within their first year of operation. That figure is a lie, but eventually you live long enough to understand why people take it as gospel. Restaurants die all the time, all around you. They close because the rent gets too high, or because there’s a pandemic, or because a delivery app sucked away their profit margins. Every restaurant, especially if it’s not a chain restaurant, lives on borrowed time. So you never know when your last bite at your favorite restaurant will be your last bite there.

Four Kings in Chinatown is the hottest new restaurant in San Francisco, and perhaps in the entire country right now. There will inevitably come a time when that’s not the case. Future newcomers will snatch its crown, owners Franky Ho and Michael Long will be offered the inevitable Vegas outpost, or nuclear war will break out. But those potential unpleasantries are for later. For this night, however, I have been gifted a reservation. So I’m gonna enjoy this restaurant while I’ve got it.

If you’ve ever eaten at a super trendy joint, you know that these places don’t always make that enjoyment easy to come by. Sometimes you get extended guest lectures disguised as meals, or a table the size of a barstool. I’m primed for this kinda bulls—t when I arrive on Kearny Street at the front of Four Kings. It’s easy to miss the restaurant off hours because its storefront is dominated by the logo for a Kumon center located on the floor above it. But it’s there, with “Four Kings” painted on the front window and a line of yuppies (that’s me) loitering outside of it come service time. I join the line, uncertain of what will come next.

I won’t have to wait around for very long. The host calls me and my dining companion (SFGATE food editor Jessica Yadegaran) inside. Once through the door, we’re greeted by a narrow, L-shaped dining room that looks more cramped than it actually is. We take our seats and there’s honest to God room for me to sit without knocking noggins with the woman sitting behind me. A miracle, I tell you. I’m seated on time and I’m comfortable, which already puts Four Kings miles ahead of any David Chang restaurant I’ve been to.

But now it’s time to eat. A lot. Our waiter comes over and refers us to the specials board hanging on the wall. “Spicy Singapore Dungeness crab with milk bread?” Yes we’ll have that, even if I don’t know what milk bread is. “Mouthwatering tomato?” This isn’t a night for vegetables, but with “mouthwatering” right there in the name, who am I to argue? As soon as we start asking about the specials, our waiter tells us that they just ran out of the tomato. He’s not snooty about it. He genuinely wanted us to have that tomato. So we don’t even bother ordering drinks first, opting instead to call dibs on everything we want to eat. I highly recommend you do the same, because Four Kings will do its best to help you in the effort.

Time for our first small plate, and it’s a masterpiece. This is chile crisp pig head, and no, it’s not a whole head on a plate. This isn’t an episode of “Hannibal.” The offal has been made into a sausage that’s thinly sliced, drenched in Sichuan peppercorn oil, and then topped with small mushrooms, crushed peanuts, and a tasteful adornment of fresh greens to cut through the fat. As with Bolton’s hot chicken in Nashville, the dish hurts so good. I’m tearing up and getting all snotty from the peppercorns, and yet I cannot stop eating it. I’ve never tasted anything like this pig head. Won’t be the first time that happens this evening.

Next up comes mapo spaghetti, or the Sichuan equivalent of spaghetti Bolognese. It arrives at our table in a perfect little mound, studded with bits of stir-fried beef and more peppercorns. There’s also cheddar cheese sneaked in here, but it doesn’t stand out the way you think it might. In fact, you probably won’t know it’s part of the dish unless you’re told. For my part, I don’t care if they mixed Vegemite into this s—t; all I see is a kickass mound of noodles I wanna eat.

Oh, but wait! The crab is here already, and it’s an event. Four Kings bills itself as a small plates establishment, but it does NOT serve small portions. This crustacean, served whole, is ample proof of that. Ho and Long have removed the crab’s innards and detached all of its claws to place underneath the body for the presentation. A ring of deep fried milk bread rolls surrounds the whole thing, like edible throw pillows. I don’t even know where to begin, I just know I want everything on this plate inside of my body as fast as possible.

Four Kings helps me out with the usual seafood accessories: crackers, an empty shell bowl, extra napkins that will never be extra enough. But I also get a pair of black latex gloves to break down the claws with, and these prove invaluable. I’ve been to 100 lobster pounds and crab shacks in my life, and none of them have ever offered me pitmaster gloves. Why?! How did they fail to see the utility of these bad boys when looting a crustacean for every last scrap of meat?

I don’t know the answer but again, that’s not a question for tonight. Tonight I’m here, and tonight I have these gloves. Geared up properly, I get on a roll and crack all of the crab before even tasting it. I now have crab juice all over all over me, even on my shoe. No matter, I have defeated the crab in short order. Now that I’ve finished the prep job, there’s nothing but tender pieces of crab swimming in chile-infused crab broth. Bouillabaisse from a superior dimension. Now we can eat this f—ker.

And eat it we do. The accompanying milk bread is so, so fried. It’s the most deep fried thing I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve been to state fairs. But pair it with the crab and it’s like eating a spicy, briny, otherworldly doughnut. The bread also softens the edge of the peppercorns, which is good because I am but a mere white man. My tongue and bowels can only accommodate so much heat.

More dishes arrive: clay pot fried rice with bacon and Chinese sausage, fish-fragrant eggplant (I can’t smell so I can’t verify how fragrantly fishy it is), and fried squab. Now this is a proper Hong Kong-style American joint. The only thing missing is a lazy Susan for me and Jessica to maneuver all of the food around on. I freelance from dish to dish, but I keep one eye on the squab, a baby pigeon, at all times. It’s served head and all, and it’s looking right at me. I better eat it now so that it doesn’t remember any of this.

When I take a bite of the squab, something remarkable occurs. When I was a tween, my parents took us all to Hong Kong, which was still under formal British control at the time. My mom had gotten wind of a legendary fried pigeon dish you could only find in Kowloon, over on the mainland, so she carved out a day for us to take a ferry there from Hong Kong Island. I was at a young enough age to be like, “You want me to eat a pigeon? Ew.” Then the bird arrived at our little outdoor table, served only with a wedge of lime and some dipping salt, and I came correct. I had never tasted anything like that pigeon, and figured I never would again.

I was wrong. Decades later, I’m in San Francisco and sitting eye to eye — quite literally — with a bird that’s a near-perfect match. The squab’s flesh is deep red, its taut skin deep brown. I dunk a quarter of it in the accompanying dipping salt and HEY PRESTO! There’s Kowloon again, the memory not only revived but enhanced. I’m astounded. A dish like this, in my experience, can never truly be replicated on another continent, because location imparts flavor. A pigeon raised in Hong Kong will not taste the same as one raised in America. The dirt, the air, the water … all of those things are different in their respective locations, and all of them affect the makeup of both flora and fauna in ways you can discern on your palate. Kowloon pigeon cannot simply be frozen and airlifted. But f—k me, Four Kings did it. Many foods feel transportive. This one feels transported. I don’t wanna know how the chefs pulled it off; that would just ruin the magic. Also, I don’t wanna stop eating.

Speaking of magic, it’s dessert time, and I still have room for it. Here comes our order of red bean shaved ice, with the ice shaved fine as snow and arranged in a perfect frustum, topped with a jam-like spoonful of bean paste. I have a lifelong grudge against red bean desserts thanks to a food poisoning episode best not detailed here. Suffice to say, I’ve only ordered this dish tonight because it felt like a signature item. I also have a quiet feeling that the chefs will be able to surprise me.

Holy s—t, do they ever. Hidden inside the snow is more of the paste, and then some boba pearls, and then some house-made dulce de leche ice cream. Every time I excavate a new layer inside of the ice, I let out a whoop that has Jessica laughing her ass off on the other side of the table. Meanwhile, we also ordered a mango pudding dessert that is less jaw-dropping to the eye but a revelation on the taste buds. The pudding is paired with house-made strawberry sorbet and then topped with crushed peanuts and house-made apricot kernel milk, drizzled with shiso leaf oil. Sounds precious, tastes like god. One bite and I go bug-eyed. That rarely happens when I eat out. It’s now happened four separate times tonight.

I’ve been here for a while now and realize something ever more incredible, which is that I still feel comfortable. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel my back ache in the chair. I feel welcome at Four Kings, not like I’m some Charlie Bucket who should consider himself lucky to merely score a table.

Not everything at Four Kings hits the mark. The mapo spaghetti oddly failed to satisfy my noodle cravings, the fried rice is there mostly as respite from the spice onslaught, and the nonalcoholic drink list is limited to just Coke and mineral water. But this is not the kind of expensive dinner (our bill with tip came out to $300, without ordering any booze) where I have to convince myself it was worth it. I knew that Four Kings was worth it the second they seated us, and every minute we spent inside thereafter only bolstered my confidence. I may never be able to eat here again, or I may come again only to have a completely different experience. That’s the nature of the business, and of life itself. But in this patch of borrowed time, and on this night, Four Kings is a perfect restaurant.

JUSTIN VERLANDER’S WINLESS STREAK makes Giants history; Marlins top SF

by Susan Slusser

San Francisco Giants’ starting pitcher Justin Verlander heads to the dugout after giving up third run of the game to Miami Marlins in 3rd inning during MLB game at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)

Justin Verlander has a new baby boy at home after he and wife Kate Upton welcomed Bellamy Brooks Verlander last week.

Verlander still doesn’t have a win with the San Francisco Giants, though, after the Marlins’ 4-2 victory at Oracle Park on Tuesday. Verlander, who hasn’t allowed more than three runs in a start since April, has made 12 starts without a victory, the longest winless streak to start the season in franchise history.

Verlander had just returned from paternity leave but he didn’t miss a start while away for the birth of his second child. He is only recently removed from IL, missing a month with a pectoral strain, so here we are in late June and he has yet to record a W. He’s received only 24 runs of support in his 12 starts.

“He’s certainly not happy about it, but he doesn’t show any frustration when he goes out there and he does what he can control,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Unfortunately, we have not supported him well offensively.”

Verlander, a projected first-ballot Hall of Famer, blames no one but himself, saying of the offense, “It’s not on them, it’s on me. I haven’t put us in a good position. You can’t expect too many wins when you go out there every time and give up three, three-plus runs and don’t go deep in the game, That’s where I need to do better for sure.”

Tuesday, the oldest player in U.S. pro sports faced the youngest team in the majors, and Miami picked up two runs off him in the second, on Eric Wagaman’s double and Connor Norby’s single. In the third, Jesús Sánchez doubled and went to third on Mike Yastrzemski’s error in right, then scored on a hit by Otto Lopez. Verlander, 42, went five, allowed five hits and a walk and struck out five.

The Giants hitters, desperate to get Verlander a win, managed only five hits Tuesday. “I don’t know if we’re just kind of pressing because we want to get him a win. We talk about it a little bit in the hitters meetings, but for whatever reason, we have not supported him,” Melvin said.

“We’ve been feeling it for a while now, even before he got hurt,” said infielder Christian Koss, who provided all the scoring with a fifth-inning homer. “Eventually he’s going to get a win — he is who he is and he’s been throwing well. One day the offense will click for him.”

The Giants had a chance to add on in the fifth after Koss’ two-run shot, when, with two outs, third-base coach Matt Williams sent Rafael Devers home on Heliot Ramos’ double down the left-field line. Devers, who’d just busted it to first to prevent a double play, has been dealing with a slight groin strain, and he looked uncomfortable on the dash home and was out by six or seven steps, ending the inning.

“We’ve got to try to score when we can,” Williams said. “I made the decision, if it’s the wrong decision, it’s the wrong decision, but I made it.”

Had Devers been held, the Giants would have men at second and third and RBI aficionado Wilmer Flores up with San Francisco down a run, but Melvin did not take issue with the inning ending with Devers getting nailed.

“You’ve got to make two perfect throws,” he said. “We’re not swinging the bats. Sometimes you’ve got to take some risks as far as sending guys. When the ball was down in the corner, I was going, ‘Send him!’ We’re trying to tie a game right there.”

Melvin said that Devers was OK after all the sprinting; he had remained in the game.

Miami went back up by two in the seventh when Ryan Walker gave up a single by Norby and a two-out double by Xavier Edwards.

Koss, at second base after Tyler Fitzgerald was demoted one day earlier, had a nice night. Along with his line-drive homer to left off Cal Quantrill, he made a terrific play in the first, sprinting into shallow center for a back-to-the-plate grab of Otto Lopez’s flare. In the sixth, he made a tricky play on the other side of the second-base bag to retire Rookie of the Year candidate Agustín Ramírez. He made yet another nice play on a sharp chopper by Liam Hicks in the seventh.

“I thought the one ball was down, the pop up,” Melvin said of Lopez’s ball to center, adding of Koss, “He gets really good reads. He plays great defense and hits a home run tonight. So maybe with a little bit of an opportunity to play some more, we might see some more consistent at-bats, which is tough to do when you’re not playing.”

Quantrill didn’t allow a hit out of the infield until Casey Schmitt’s leadoff single in the fifth, which set up Koss’ homer. San Francisco went 0-for-4 with men in scoring position and the team is batting .120 with runners in scoring position in seven games on the homestand.

(sfchronicle.com)

TEXAS QUOTE OF THE DAY, written in 1885, offers tactical advice on how to fight Comanches. Any mistakes in the transcription are mine, of course:

“In the event of being pursued, immediately after the preparation of depredations; the Comanches move day and night, very often not breaking gallop except to exchange horses (which they do several times) and water the caballada, until they deem themselves safe. Under these circumstances they will travel at least 70 miles a day, which is a long distance with the encumbrance of loose animals.

A party of warriors dressed in their trappings - embellished shields, fancy moccasins, long pig tails bedecked with silver, shoulder belts worked with beads and adorned with shells, fine leggings, ornamented cases for bows and arrows - mounted upon spirited horses, singing a war song, and sweeping over a prairie is a beautiful spectacle to a man with plenty of brave fellows to back him.

Their motions are easy and graceful. They sit a horse admirably, and manage one with a master hand. Charge them and they will retreat from you with double your numbers. But beware when pursuing them; keep your men together, well in hand, with at least half their arms loaded, else you will find when it is too late, the flying Comanches will turn on you and charge you to the very teeth.

A Comanche can draw a bow when on horseback, standing or running, with remarkable strength and accuracy. They have been known to kill horses running at full speed over one hundred yards away.

In the commencement of a fight, the yell of defiance is borne to you loud, long, and startling. The war whoop has no romance in it. It thrills even a stout heart with an indescribable sensation. The excitement of battle is quite as evident among these people as among others. Let the tide turn against them, send lead messengers through some of their warriors, and then the mournful wail is heard; its lubricous notes are borne back to you with uncouth cadence, betokening sorrow, anger, and a determination to revenge.

Never ride upon a bowman’s left; if you do, ten to one he will pop an arrow through you. When mounted, an Indian cannot use his bow against an object behind and to his right.

The dead are usually borne from the field. Nothing but the most imminent danger prevents them from performing the incumbent duty of not leaving the body of a comrade in the hands of an enemy. Over a fallen chief they will make a desperate stand. Their caution seems merged in the determination to risk everything to bear him from the field. To attain this object they will fight furiously, bravely, and often.

If they abandon him, it is usually in despair. Flight is no longer methodical and menacing to the pursuer. Retreat degenerates into route. After this they have seldom if ever been known to resume the offensive. They will hide themselves in the first chaparral affording security against discovery, remain during the day, and visit the dead at night, and if not able to remove them will spread blankets or some covering over them.

The bow is placed horizontally in shooting; a number of arrows are held in the left hand; the bow operates as a rest for the arrows. The distance - the curve the missile has to describe in reaching the object - is determined by the eye without taking aim. At the distance of 60 yards and over, arrows can be dodged, if but one Indian shoots at you at a time. Under forty yards the six-shooter has little advantage over the bow.

At long distances the angle of elevation is considerable. It requires a quick eye to see the arrow and judge the whereabouts of its descent, a good dodger to move out of the way, and a good rider to keep in the saddle. A man is required to keep both eyes engaged in an Indian fight.”

— John Salmon “Rip” Ford, shown in the photo below, gives tactical advice for fighting Indians in “Rip Ford’s Texas,” 1885

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’m an 80 year old American Jew for better or worse. Despite my age, I don’t have a good idea of the nature of reality. Is there a God or not? I don’t know, and I probably won’t know unless either he announces himself openly and directly to the world while I’m still alive, or there’s consciousness somehow after death. I’m not in a hurry to find out about the after-death part. So I just want to live peacefully, healthily and learn as long as I can. But no - pesky humans try to tell me how I should behave and what I should believe in.

BIG WIN FOR THE GOOD GUYS IN NEW YORK

Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary, as Ex-Governor Concedes

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, built a significant lead over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who conceded the race. Mr. Cuomo left the door open to running in the general election as an independent.

Zohran Mamdani, a little-known state lawmaker whose progressive economic platform electrified younger voters, surged into the lead in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, putting him on the verge of a stunning upset.

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had led the race for months, conceded the primary and congratulated Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, in remarks after 10 p.m. He notably did not promise to continue his campaign in November, despite securing a third-party ballot line.

The election results watch party for former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo got off to a fairly subdued start on Tuesday evening. Guests mingled as music played at a low volume over muted televisions displaying the results, and only a few “Cuomo for Mayor” signs decorated the event space.

As the night progressed and results rolled in, the crowd found no reason to become more energized.

(NY Times)

LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NEW YORK TIMES

‘We Have Won,’ Mamdani Says, as Cuomo Concedes N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary

Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says

White House Postpones Briefing Congress on Iran Strikes

Intel Report on Iran Upends Victory Lap Trump Was Hoping for at NATO

FICO Scores to Include a Shopper’s ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Loan History

The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

TRUMP’S MIDNIGHT HAMMER

by Tom Stevenson

The US has declared an uncertain and messy end to its attack on Iran. Trump announced a ceasefire some hours before it was acknowledged by Israel and Iran, and later said both sides had violated it (“they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump complained). Overall it seems likely to hold, for a while at least.

On June 22, the US moved from aiding and abetting Israel’s reckless attack on Iran to joining it directly. Seven B-2 stealth bombers took off from Whiteman [sic] Air Force Base in Missouri, on the edge of the Great Plains, and flew seven thousand miles before dropping their payloads on Iran. According to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, the B-2s dropped twelve GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on the nuclear facility at Fordow and two on the facility at Natanz. Simultaneously, American Ohio-class submarines fired 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles on the nuclear research facility at Isfahan.

Moving heavy bombers over such distances is a major endeavor. The Pentagon claims the raid, codenamed Midnight Hammer, involved 125 aircraft including fighter jets and aerial refuelling tankers in support of the B-2s. While the strike team was flying east across the Atlantic and Mediterranean, a second set of B-2s was sent west towards Guam as a diversion.

For the US military this was an exuberant celebration of American power. The B-2, originally designed to penetrate the Soviet Union’s radar network, is the pride of US strategic bombing. As the house journal of the USAF put it a few years ago, the main utility of the B-2s was to “display national intent and resolve” and represent America’s “overwhelming strength.” What could be better than using them to attack Iran with bombs larger than any other state has ever built?

Exuberance aside, what were the practical effects of American aggression? Trump immediately claimed that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated.” But the level of damage is uncertain. In a briefing on June 23, General Caine said the initial assessment was that “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage.” The centrifuges at Fordow may well be damaged or destroyed. But at Natanz large parts of the underground facility were not even targeted. Nor were the tunnels at Isfahan. Iran has another enrichment facility at an unknown location, which the International Atomic Energy Agency was scheduled to inspect before the US-Israeli attack. That will not happen now.

As for the 400 kg (over 900 pounds) of highly enriched uranium that was supposedly the reason for the US joining the attack, neither Israel nor the US knows where it is, and they don’t much care. Since Israel’s attack on June 13 it has been obvious that Iran’s nuclear program – which in the assessment of both Israeli and US intelligence is not an active weapons program – was a diversionary justification rather than an actual motive. Both the US and Israel have wanted to strike at Iran for a long time for quite other reasons. In Israeli security circles an attack was pushed for even more strongly after October 7, 2023. Yet the US isn’t only fighting Israel’s war: decades of American policy have also helped lead to this moment.

On June 23, Israel continued to target what the defense minister, Israel Katz, called “governmental repressive bodies.” The IDF claimed it had struck “command centers” of Iran’s internal security apparatus and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including the headquarters of the Basij paramilitary force and Evin prison.

Israel also continued to strike IRGC missile facilities – including the Imam Hussein Strategic Missile Command Centre in Yazd, which is thought to house Khorramshahr long-range ballistic missiles – as well as civilian sites in Tehran, including the state broadcasting building and a power station. The civilian casualties caused by these strikes appear not to have been recorded, let alone announced. What are they compared with the daily slaughter in Gaza?

The air campaign against Iran, in other words, was not focused on nuclear targets but involved a broader targeting of the Iranian state. Iran has no weapons-grade uranium (over 85 per cent U-235) and no weaponization program. American, Israeli or European politicians say there is no civilian use for Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to 60 per cent U-235. That is inaccurate. It has no use in civilian power stations, but it has an obvious strategic use in being tradeable for relief from years of brutal US sanctions.

Had the US cared about Iran’s uranium enrichment program, it could have returned to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal signed by Iran in 2015, which reduced enrichment almost to zero. The JCPOA was itself an instrument of American power, but Iran observed its stipulations even after Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Biden declined to reinstitute the deal, choosing instead to persist with a blockade of the Iranian economy.

Before this morning’s ceasefire, Iran conducted its official response to the US bombing raids. It fired nineteen missiles at al-Udeid base in Qatar, the most important US airbase outside America. Seven of them were easily shot down over the Gulf. Another eleven were shot down by air defenses at the base and one landed harmlessly in the desert. Zero casualties. Al-Udeid had been partly evacuated. Trump thanked Iran for giving notice.

This was not the smallest possible response from Iran (that would have been to strike empty and irrelevant US forts in rural Syria or Iraq), but it was close to it. Al-Udeid is enormously important but Qatar is also the most flexible US protectorate in the Gulf. If Iran had chosen a more desperate option, it could have fired its short-range missiles, without informing the US, at the major Gulf bases or even at regional oil installations. Fortunately, Iran decided it was in no position to fight the empire.

For Iran this war is certainly an inflection point. It has proved itself vulnerable to attack from the air. Even if it was able to strike back at Israel, and cause some damage, it was unable to prevent Israel from taking control of the skies. The prestige of the Iranian system has taken a serious blow. Even before the war, Iran was more isolated than it had been for a long time. Yet the Islamic Republic has survived decades of external pressure; it is not the kind of state that can be wished away.

The focus remains on decisions taken in Washington. In January, Russia and Iran signed a comprehensive strategic partnership, and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, travelled to Moscow on June 22. But Russia has played no real part in the conflict. China, despite briefly showing interest in a settlement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023, was absent.

The UK, France and Germany essentially supported the attack, and remain in denial of the open criminality of their greatest ally and its well-protected regional arsonist.

In a joint statement following a meeting with their Iranian counterpart in Geneva on June 20, the foreign ministers of the UK, France and Germany spoke of the need for negotiations and de-escalation, with the mandatory expression of their “firm commitment to Israel’s security.” But Iran was already negotiating. On June 23, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, apparently quite happy for his foreign minister to have been used as a decoy in Geneva, said there was “no reason to criticize what Israel began a week ago” and ‘no reason to criticize what America did.”

What is remarkable is the carelessness of all this. Official discussion of the war is completely incommensurate with the gravity of the moment. For a number of commentators this war has been another opportunity to declare the end of the US-led global order – which had already been pronounced dead with the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and again with Gaza in 2023.

But the American empire is still here, and still very dangerous. The shifts in the international system have not altered these facts. The illusion of order was always an illusion. And Trump’s aggressive policy towards Iran is another respect in which he stands in the tradition of his predecessors. The US is still a unipole, behaving as a rogue superpower, swinging a wrecking ball from an unstable structure it constructed for itself.

21 Comments

Lily Bay June 25, 2025

STEPHEN DUNLAP

‘There is a lot of fog out there, we’ll see?’ 😉😁 say the emojis.

- Stephen Dunlap June 25, 2025
  
  clear skies at 10am, forecasting the fog is an exercise in futility ?
  
  - Chuck Dunbar June 25, 2025
    
    We loved the sunny day, with little wind, this last Sunday. That was just right. Dear weatherman, Stephen, please send more days like that if you can….
    
    - Bob Abeles June 25, 2025
      
      Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
      Remember how she said that we would meet again some sunny day?
      Vera, Vera, what has become of you?
      Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
      
      — Roger Waters
      
      - Chuck Dunbar June 25, 2025
        
        That’s a fine one, Bob. What better case for sunny days than Vera Lynn’s promise that “we would meet again some sunny day.” I imagine a few of us have such hopes, with ladies or gents of differing names. Bring on those sunny days! Stephen, hope you’re there, our weatherman friend.
        
        
        Lazarus June 25, 2025
        
        Never knew a Vera Lynn. However, I was a friend to Rena Lynn, who took on the infamous Jim Jones…
        Ask around,
        Laz
        
Bob Abeles June 25, 2025

It’s called a “magic square”. Look it up, its story is fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_square

For Our Esteemed Editor: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/12/dubious-quote-attributed-to-trumps-mother/

Chuck Artigues June 25, 2025

I don’t live in the City of Fort Bragg, so maybe my opinion doesn’t matter, but I think the proposed housing project on South Main Street is a great and needed thing. People who would live there could actually walk to a grocery store. There is a traffic light on the corner. There is no ocean view to block. We need housing, approve it!

Mike Jamieson June 25, 2025

It’s a 15 sort of day.

Mazie Malone June 25, 2025

Good morning AVA ers, ⭐️🌷💕

Do you suppose I would be welcome on the Coc? 🤣

I would love the answer to registering as a transient?

Uggghh!!! …. onward and upward Happy Wednesday!!

mm 💕

- Mark Donegan June 25, 2025
  
  Best wishes. Got my vote.
  
- Eli Maddock June 25, 2025
  
  Get sworn in as a deputy for Doc and work at the jail. That’s where your valued advocacy is needed the most, so it seems. You could be a direct conduit to get help to those in need who are circulating the system that is currently in place. Break the cycle so to speak.
  
  - Mazie Malone June 25, 2025
    
    Haha thank you, Eli, I just don’t think I’m a jail type of girl. …I actually applied for a job at the jail working for Naphcare, did not make the cut. Could be there was a better candidate could be someone saw me there and said oh hell no… either way I am not going anywhere. lol 🤣🌷
    
    mm 💕
    
David Stanford June 25, 2025

TRUMP’S MIDNIGHT HAMMER
by Tom Stevenson

Is Tom a Trump Hater or Iranian sympathizer hard to tell from this article????

Norm Thurston June 25, 2025

Thanks to The Major for keeping us informed on the latest annexation discussions.

- Brian Wood June 25, 2025
  
  Agreed. What I have missed is what the mechanism is that would pass such a proposal. Do the county and city both vote? Do voters get a say?
  
  - Norm Thurston June 25, 2025
    
    That’s my question, too. No voting is planned at this time. Some posters have indicated that the tax-sharing agreement gave the cities the right to unilaterally annex what ever they want, subject to LAFCO approval. I skimmed that agreement, but did not see anything that seems supports that. Here’s the website for the opposition, incase you don’t have it. https://www.noukiahannexation.com
    
Matt Kendall June 25, 2025

After a discussion with the Major, his point listed below makes a hell of a lot of sense.

“nobody suggested a standing annexation committee which would follow Brown Act public meeting rules for the next chorus of Tax Sharing Blues and which would dispel the complaints of most of the complainers about the secrecy involved so far”.

If the city is going to step back and work on the annexation(s) in small steps, as most agree they should, a standing committee is the only thing that will work. The committee can retain historical knowledge on a multi-faceted process, allow the public to be a part of the discussion and allow the information to be passed down to whomever is next on the committee. These processes could take years, and possibly longer than many of our supervisors will be in office. Retention of the knowledge moving forward with a standing committee would keep us from repeating work and re-inventing the wheel.

Kathy Janes June 25, 2025

I’m enjoying the Tom Killion prints. More please. Today’s Cuffey’s Cove one is especially enjoyable because he hasn’t done many of Mendocino’s coast and forests. The cards for sale in shops are mostly of Muir Woods.

- Lily Bay June 25, 2025
  
  +1
  
Kimberlin June 25, 2025

PERFECT TENANT SEEKS RENTAL (Bill Kimberlin? Got something?) I have trailer space for rent here in Anderson Valley, see local ad. I will have a house for rent in Sacramento in a month or so.

21 Comments

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