CONDITIONS will remain hot and dry inland, while a deepened and a relatively persistent marine layer keeps temperatures cooler along some portions of the immediate coast. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Sure enough, a foggy 53F this Friday morning on the coast. More of the same today & Saturday, then maybe more clear on Sunday & Monday? Then back to usual after that. Or so they say.
REPORTED GUN MISHAP LEAVES MAN INJURED NEAR BOONVILLE
by Matt LaFever
Emergency crews are responding this evening to a remote property near the 12000 block of Boonville Road, close to the Toll House, after a man accidentally shot himself in the foot.
The man was riding a side-by-side utility vehicle when he reportedly lost control of his firearm and it discharged, according to initial emergency dispatch traffic.
The call came in around 8:14 p.m. Medical and fire personnel are en route and are not staging; the reporting party told dispatch the firearm has been secured.
(mendofever.com)
GOOD TROUBLE LIVES ON
by Karen Rifkin
In memory of civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis, the Good Trouble Lives On in Ukiah (and across the nation) demonstration saw 200 people showing up on Thursday afternoon at Alex Thomas Plaza in response to the attacks on our civil and human rights by the Trump administration.
WHY DID UKIAH JUST SPEND $7.6 MILLION ON AN OLD CARPET MILL?
Ukiah has purchased the former Carousel Carpet Mills property for $7.6 million, Deputy City Manager Shannon Reily confirmed in an email with MendoFever.
According to reporting by Jeff Quackenbush in the North Bay Business Journal, the City Council approved the purchase on May 7, and the sale closed on June 30, 2025.
The property at 1 Carousel Lane spans about 7.9 acres and includes a 98,000?square?foot industrial building. FedEx Ground and West Coast Ag Products will remain as tenants for now, Reily said.
The city plans to relocate its corporation yard from the Ukiah Municipal Airport to the Carousel site. Reily said tenant improvements will begin after the city’s design team finishes evaluating the space. It will likely be at least a year before the city can begin moving equipment and staff, and officials haven’t decided whether the move will happen in phases or all at once.
Ukiah pursued the purchase after cost estimates to build a new corporation yard topped $60 million — far beyond the city’s budget — Quackenbush reported. Buying and reusing an existing industrial facility proved a cheaper, faster path, city officials indicated in that reporting.
The current corporation yard footprint at the airport could eventually return to aviation-related use, Reily told the Journal. Those discussions are preliminary.
(Matt LaFever, Mendofever.com)
CLINE TESTIFIES
Yesterday, County of Mendocino Supervisor and #RCRC Board Delegate Supervisor Madeline Cline testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in strong support of RCRC-sponsored #AB632 by Assemblymember Gregg Hart. This bill strengthens local enforcement of serious code violations and provides rural counties with new tools to uphold state housing laws, address fire hazards, and curb unlicensed cannabis operations by expanding mechanisms for collecting administrative fines and penalties.
AB 632’s targeted updates will help local governments hold bad actors accountable and better protect public health, safety, and neighborhoods across rural California.
CORRECTION regarding yesterday’s item about “911 abuse”: The Anderson Valley Ambulance crews do not have to wait for patients to be seen at the Ukiah hospital and they do not bring them back to Boonville. Patients are on their own for that. PS. Also, there were three calls Wednesday evening from the frequent flyer “patient,” not just one. (Mark Scaramella)
The AV Fire Department/Ambulance Service clarifies: “Our ambulances do not wait at the hospital to see if patients need a ride home. Our volunteer EMTs already dedicate approximately 2.5 to 3 hours per EMS call from start to finish. This includes response, on-scene assessment, patient loading, a 45-minute transport from Boonville to Ukiah, patient handoff at the hospital, return travel, and completing medical documentation back at quarters. Our volunteer EMTs truly go above and beyond!”
RESTORING ACCESS TO MATERNITY CARE IN RURAL WILLITS
Adventist health has three sites (Fort Bragg, Ukiah, and Willits) that they support with their services to the community of Mendocino County. As you know, we have the highest heath care costs by almost twice as much. The results are highest infant mortality rate, shortest life-expectancy at birth, and were are 4+% of the world population but 25% of folks incercaratedd are in the USA! Members of society in Willits area and north of us are facing challenges due to limited nearby birthing centers , mirroring a broader trend of declining rural healthcare services.
This situation is forcing families to travel long distances for prenatal care and delivery, potentially increasing risks associated with both emergency room births and preterm births.
The closure of maternity wards and scarcity of specialized care in rural area are creating “maternity care deserts” where access to essential services is severely limited. The lack of local birthing centers forces some women to choose between induction dates or potentially risk giving birth on the side of the road. Extended travel during labor can increase the risk of emergency room births or preterm births.
The logistical challenges of traveling can force families to compromise on their preferred birth plans and potentially impact the overall birthing experience, according to News- Medical.
Then the cost of transportation, potential overnight stays, and potential complications can add financial strain to families. Already facing economic challenges in rural area.
Addressing issues such issues like lack of a birthright center in Adventists Heath Howard Memorial in rural hospitals are barriers that needs our attention to a crucial solution! There is advanced maternity care services in the Ukiah Adventist health center! Only one maternity care services that covers all 101 corridor area of Mendocino County!
CALIFORNIA’S MOST AMBITIOUS TRAIL PROJECT HAS A POLICING PROBLEM
It hired controversial guards to move homeless people. Now it’s making an abrupt about-face.
by Matt LaFever
For the past five years, California officials have inched forward on a bold $5 billion plan to transform over 300 miles of rail line into the Great Redwood Trail — a so-called “world-class” corridor stretching from San Francisco Bay to Humboldt Bay. A 500-page master plan released in April 2024 prepared by the Great Redwood Trail Agency, or GRTA, touts the trail as a “transformational economic engine” that could inject $100 million annually into the Emerald Triangle and bring hikers, cyclists and horseback riders deep into Northern California’s backcountry.
But that same master plan reveals one of locals’ most pressing concerns about the trail: homeless encampments. Across community workshops in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, residents voiced fears about fire danger, trespassing and the possibility that the trail could become a haven for homeless people seeking refuge in the corridor’s remote stretches.
It’s that concern that led GRTA, the authority tasked with building the trail, to quietly enlist the help of Lear Asset Management, a private security contractor with a controversial reputation. Publicly, the trail was being marketed as a tool for recreation and rural revitalization. GRTA officials proposed launching a “Trail Town” program to boost tourism and support local businesses, and it outlined plans for an aesthetically polished campaign — complete with maps, postcards, pop-ups, stickers and social media content — aimed at enticing hikers, cyclists and nature lovers.
But behind the scenes, the agency had contracted with a firm that most recently made headlines for violently removing a protester from an Idaho town hall.
SFGATE has confirmed that during the same months GRTA was drafting its April 2024 Master Plan — which pledged to “build trust” with homeless people and treat them “with respect” — the agency was under contract with Lear Asset Management to have the firm patrol the corridor from Cloverdale to Humboldt Bay.
Under the terms of that contract, Lear was instructed to “prevent trespass,” “remove all unpermitted entrants” and “perform lawful arrests.” While those directives appear to authorize active enforcement, private security guards in California can only perform what’s known as a citizen’s arrest; their legal authority is no greater than that of any private person under Penal Code Section 837. According to state training guidelines, such arrests are limited to offenses committed in the guard’s presence or certain felonies, and the use of force is only permitted if it is “reasonable” and necessary to subdue a resisting subject.
These thresholds are highly situational and can create legal gray areas, especially on public land where guard powers are limited. When asked how Lear was expected to carry out responsibilities like removing individuals without citizen’s arrests or physical engagement, GRTA Executive Director Elaine Hogan told SFGATE via email that the contract “expressly stated no citizen’s arrest, verbal threats, or physical contact with third parties,” but a review of the agreement by SFGATE found no such explicit prohibitions.
Lear’s CEO, Paul Trouette, is a polarizing figure known for clearing protesters from logging sites, busting unlicensed cannabis grows and, most recently, facing criminal charges for his actions at that Idaho Republican Party town hall.
According to Trouette, Lear’s work on the Great Redwood Trail project was significant. He told SFGATE his company was responsible for “security measures, including property patrols, criminal drug trafficking encampment removal, fugitive investigations, private property vandalism, theft, homicide searches, domestic violence, environmental crimes, and much more,” all carried out “with a public safety focus in cooperation with local and state law enforcement and all public agencies.”
Meanwhile, the Great Redwood Trail Master Plan contains no mention of the agency’s decade-long relationship with Lear. When asked why, Hogan said the plan is “a forward-looking document” and omits any mention of private security because “we don’t use private security contractors,” adding that GRTA is shifting “away from security-based property management.” Hogan presented the end of GRTA’s relationship with Lear as a matter of the distant past, saying the agency stopped using Lear in the last fiscal quarter of 2024.
Trouette presented a different timeline. He told SFGATE the contract remained active until July 2, 2025, and said Hogan personally informed him it was being terminated not because the work had stopped but due to “political fallout from the Idaho incident.” When SFGATE asked Hogan directly whether this was the reason GRTA cut ties with Lear, she did not respond.
That pivot to a “compassionate” model, as GRTA described in a July 3 request for proposals from vendors, may have come under pressure. While Hogan described GRTA’s shift away from private security as already underway — saying the agency was “soliciting proposals to address issues related to trespassing and homelessness consistent with GRTA’s mandate and values” — public records show that the first such request for proposals wasn’t issued until that July 3 document. That’s just four days after SFGATE first contacted Hogan about GRTA’s relationship with Lear.
In a written statement to SFGATE, Hogan said, “Since early 2024, Lear has neither been asked to remove nor taken action to remove any individuals from our property. They have provided limited services like trash and brush removal under short-term, completed contracts.”
Trouette says that up until July 2, when his company received an official letter of termination from GRTA, “Lear was performing security functions removing trespassing and environmental hazards associated with illegal camping as well as homeless encampment, abatement.”
Trouette argued that stripping the trail of a dedicated security presence would be reckless. “There will be no public safety without it,” he told SFGATE, warning that “significant criminal activity … exists on the trail daily.” Removing private enforcement, he said, would be “a bad move” and leave communities and trail users “at great risk every day.” Trouette defended his firm’s work as both “effective and cost-efficient.”
With Lear’s contract terminated, GRTA is now depending on local governments to manage public safety. “Segments of the trail that are open to the public are operated by local jurisdictions, which manage public safety in collaboration with their law enforcement departments,” Hogan wrote.
That means more than 300 miles of trail now fall under the jurisdiction of largely understaffed county sheriffs and city police departments. Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal put it bluntly: “It is virtually impossible for us to be able to patrol the Great Redwood Trail,” he told SFGATE.
Ukiah Police Department Capt. Jason Chapman said his department has responded to calls along the trail since 2020, when the first segment opened. “Proactive patrols are conducted by UPD Officers on the GRT as part of daily and nightly patrol operations,” he said. Because the trail lacks a formal address system, Chapman said it can be challenging at times for officers to locate reported incidents. Civilians often describe locations using general landmarks like “next to Gobbi Street,” which can make responses less precise. The department also coordinates with county behavioral health and city public works to address encampments and mental health-related calls.
Elsewhere, coverage is thinner. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Quincy Cromer said deputies are dispatched only when requested by trail security, cleanup crews or outreach teams. “The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is not currently involved in any proactive outreach efforts on or near the Great Redwood Trail,” he said. Unlike the Ukiah Police Department, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office no longer has any sort of formal authorization from GRTA to police trespassing; the last such agreement, known as a letter of agency, expired in October 2022. The debate over enforcement is unfolding as the region grapples with a mounting homelessness crisis. A 2023 report from the California Budget & Policy Center found that the state’s “Far North” — including Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties — has the highest per-capita homelessness rate in California. Between 2023 and 2024, point-in-time counts showed a 22.3% surge in Mendocino County’s homeless population, while Humboldt’s dropped by 5%.
Still, the question remains: Why did GRTA pursue a private security firm to abate homeless encampments on its property, and why did it choose a company with as speckled a past as Lear?
Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, sees the use of private security on public trails as part of a troubling trend. “There is no oversight body for the private security functioning in public spaces and parks and neighborhoods and sidewalks,” he told SFGATE. “… There is no official process for scrutinizing the activities, taking complaints from the public.”
GRTA’s partnership with Lear isn’t an outlier. It’s part of a growing, largely unchecked industry in California. As CalMatters revealed in a 2024 investigation, the state’s 40% surge in homelessness has fueled a shadow workforce of private guards hired to police encampments. Some have been accused of rape, drug dealing, harassment and fatal negligence. In one case, a woman was stabbed to death in a Los Angeles shelter while a private security guard allegedly ignored her screams, as described in the 2004 CalMatters article. No state agency tracks these contractors or what happens when things go wrong.
Lear CEO Trouette defended his firm’s work on the trail, insisting it was conducted with professionalism and compassion. “We have always treated people with dignity and respect,” he told SFGATE, describing his staff as “polite, professional, and empathetic,” with experience in deescalation and social service referrals.
Now, GRTA appears to be distancing itself from Lear. Trouette told SFGATE that the state hired his firm to do a difficult job. Now, it’s not clear who will do it at all.
(SFGate.com)
ACORNS
I have stopped processing acorns for flour, and I find I have a large quantity of unshelled tan oak acorns. They are not fresh (last Autumn), but may still be viable; I don’t know how long acorns keep in the shell. If anyone would like a whole lot of acorns in shell, please respond. Otherwise, I guess they’ll just go back out into the woods.
Thank you,
Erif Thunen, [email protected]
UPDATE this morning from Erif:
The acorns have been spoken for.
Thank you all for your interest!
MARY O’BRIEN: THE END OF AN ERA
Fifty years ago in June, our family moved from San Francisco to the tiny town of Philo in this 1954 Dodge mail truck. Yesterday, WT Johnson expertly removed it from its parking spot under a redwood to take it off to the wrecking yard in the sky. Safe travels, friend.
R.D. BEACON
The problem with the coast today, people can’t mind their own business, today I had a phone call, from County code enforcement, break me over the coals for ship containers that I have on the property, that I store the fire department’s assets and, like turnout gear spare hose and other items such as all-terrain vehicles for search and rescue, somebody in the neighborhood, is decided his term iPod, and give me a bad time, I call in the county on me, but I know where the skeletons, are in the town of elk, I know where there’s four possibly five underground fuel tanks, that were never dug, and then as far, is the old dumps, right off Greenwood Road, when I close the dumps, because of the hazardous materials, that were in it, the county did not clean it up, and today there is stuff leaching, down the hillside, into the elk water system, but the county has failed, badly, not cleaning up what was dumped their, what a lot of Transformers, and other, as it is material, over Willits, the old County yard, as fuel tanks buried underneath that, there were removed, all over the county we have spots, with the county has moved on and failed badly, and preserving, the environment, they also gave me a hard time, about the elk waterworks or I should say, the elk County water District, and their latest effort to put a tank in, without a legal agreement, they said I violated the grading ordinance, that I am the ultimate responsible person, on the property, but I neither hired the contractor, or authorize the work, even though they place the dirt, and sensitive plant life down in the canyon, somebody stirring the pot, and I will find out who, eventually meanwhile I’ve made the decision, probably can sell off the entire front end of the ranch, to a subdivide or I know, and put a whole bunch of houses where everybody, to move into, there’s an abundance of water available on the front part of the property, and I will probably sell off the beach at elk Creek as well, for the public in my little town does not appreciate, but I’ve tried to do here all my life, keep it looking like keeping from looking like Carmel by the sea, as I get older, I need to enjoy some of my throats of the labor and, I do have current coastal development permit pertaining to the property around the bar, where I could at a motel, or hotel facility, for my neighborhood, does not appreciate the efforts I’ve made, in the past, I’m certainly not to be like my neighbors, no land trust here, subdivide the whole of the property, I’m going to investigate, to see if I can put a gas station and a garage, down on the old mill site, and maybe 711 or something close to it are people can buy hotdogs and food cheap, the other day, and was approached, asking if I would sell my beach, for a campground, I told him to make an offer, I’m still waiting but it would work well nice big campground like anchor Bay, so everybody can enjoy the Creek, and the beach, maybe behind the bar in the plant and nice big golf course, it’s time to think about me and what I want, and my neighbors can all go pound salt.
CHOPPER TRAINING
Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team Conducts Advanced Helicopter Awareness Training
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue (SAR) Team, with the assistance of Napa SAR, CalSAR and Marin SAR, successfully completed a specialized helicopter awareness training exercise designed to enhance emergency response capabilities in challenging terrain.
The joint training operation, conducted in collaboration with regional aviation partners, focused on loading / unloading operations, hoist procedures, and rapid deployment of SAR personnel into remote and rugged areas. The exercise took place at the Lake Mendocino Emergency Spillway, allowing for multiple training areas, simulating real-world scenarios that often require helicopter support during critical rescue missions.
The training included both seasoned volunteers and new recruits, all of whom trained under the guidance of certified flight crews and SAR coordinators. Emphasis was placed on communication, safety protocols, and coordination between ground and air units.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Team would like to thank the Search and Rescue teams from the following counties for their participation and assistance in making this event possible:
- Napa County
- Marin County
- Lake County
- Sonoma County
- Humboldt County
- Alameda County
- Santa Clara County
- Nevada County
- Solano County
- Glenn County
- San Mateo County
- Contra Costa County
- Placer County
- Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit (BAMRU)
- California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA)
- California Search and Rescue Team (CalSAR)
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team extends its sincere gratitude to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for providing access to the training location, and to Silva Septic, The Party Pros, Taqueria Michoacan, My California Food Truck, Ocean Fresh LLC, Slam Dunk Pizza, Starbucks Coffee, and the Ukiah Natural Foods Co-Op for their generous logistical support. These community partnerships were instrumental in the success of the training weekend.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team would additionally like to thank the following agencies for providing their helicopters and helicopter crews for this event:
- CalFire
- REACH Air Medical Services
- Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Henry-1
- United States Coast Guard
THE NOYO BIDA TRUTH PROJECT presents a special program on Saturday, August 2, at 1 p.m. at Mendocino College, Coast Campus, 1211 Del Mar Drive, Fort Bragg, Room 112.
Our special Guest Speaker, will be Tatiana Cantrell, The Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) Director for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation.
Dr. Cantrell has worked with children and families in Lake and Mendocino Counties for the past 25 years. She has spent the past several years working with local indigenous communities to address historical and generational trauma by removing barriers to services, forming collaborative relationships with community agencies, and individualizing family and case plans to meet people where they are at. She is a current faculty member at Mendocino College in the Child Development Department.
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) crisis refers to the disproportionately high rates of violence, including murder and disappearances, experienced by Indigenous people, particularly women and girls, in the United States and Canada. This crisis is a serious issue with deep historical roots in colonization and its ongoing impacts. Locally we can find its roots in the Mendocino Indian Reservation overseen here by soldiers at Fort Bragg (1857-1864) and continuing through the Indian schools in Mendocino County into the 20th Century, like the Round Valley Indian School, 1860-1924.
Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.
For further information: [email protected]
Philip Zwerling, [email protected]
LOOKING BACK
by Andy Johnson
I wanted to finish my rant on baseball and several other things I mentioned earlier. I was always interested in the Editor’s baseball career, mentioned many times, as well as Candlestick Park, etc.
I left off about our high school baseball team traveling to Hawaii and what a great experience that was. There was much more that Coach Berger did for his teams in those days. One of the really memorable things was each year we took the team to the Bay Area on a Friday, stopping first at the Exploritorium so the kids could see all the really neat stuff there. Then it was on to lunch at Pier 39 after which we hopped on a ferry to Alcatraz. It was funny how the kids would say “Wow, I never want to have to be here.”
After that we went to Piedmont in East Oakland to play their high school in a double header on Saturday. Coach Berger had friends in Piedmont, the Humphries, who arranged for the kids to stay at one of their player’s home on Friday night. Mr. Humphries was also the Piedmont baseball coach and housed all of us coaches. So there was always the back and forth of the competition. Bottom line it was fun and a great experience for the kids. For some just seeing and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time was something.
I should add that those ten years I was a part of the baseball program were some of the best ever for me. When I earlier said Coach Berger knew little about baseball, I also need to mention he had a longtime friend Billy Pavioni, then in his 70s, to bring his extensive knowledge to the team. Bill was an old timer who played ball in the 40s and 50s with some very good teams from Fort Bragg. Bill brought with him the “inside” game of small ball — bunting, stealing, etc. Berger picked up on that and came up with a play that worked almost every time it was used.
With a man on second and one or no outs a squeeze play (bunt) was called. When the bunt was down the second base runner never stopped at third but kept right on going and almost always scored. Other teams never picked up on that especially teams we had never played before. Overall that time period with Coach Berger and Mr. Pavioni resulted in nine out of ten years as league champions including three California Interscholastic Federation titles the only ones Fort Bragg High School baseball has! While the field at Fort Bragg is named Patton Field, it should be named Berger Park after the person who built the park and turned out to be Fort Bragg’s best baseball coach ever.
Enough baseball! How did Anderson Valley Way get its name?
I have read where you walked along this roadway on a daily basis. But I bet you never knew how it got named. One of my jobs when I worked at the Department of Transportation (DOT) was to keep track of all the county road mileages. When a road was added or deleted from the system the mileages were changed accordingly. There was no board action, no community participation. When the new alignment bypassing the old Highway 128 in that area was abandoned by the state the county took over that old portion of the highway. I added it to our list, but it had to have a name as a name was needed for obvious reasons. But also to identify it for future matching funds from the state for maintenance. So why not Anderson Valley Way? That was my thought and felt it reflected the area.
Another road change was the abandonment of the Old Highway 1 around Point Cabrillo on the coast. Point Cabrillo Drive seemed appropriate, so there it is!
Finally, I want to mention that I spent a lot of time during summer vacation from high school stomping wool at my uncle’s ranch at the West end of Anderson Valley. It was and still is considered the “Holmes Ranch.” We would get inside the eight-foot long hanging sacks and as the fleeces were cut from the sheep they were thrown into the sacks, and we had to stomp them down until the sack was very tight. A very messy job, hot, greasy, sheep crap — but what an experience. The ranch was subsequently sold to the Bonanza guys who split it up into 20-acre parcels. It’s sad to see what happened to so many farms and ranches in those days.
OCEAN VIEW BOTTLING
In the early 1900s, young James Peirsol and his gang of local boys found a way to turn summer swimming excursions into soda-fueled adventures with a mischievous twist. Their favorite spot was Griffin’s Pond, a high tide pool carved into the rocky cliffs just south of Mendocino. Sheltered from the waves and warmed by the sun, the pool, always at least ten degrees warmer than the open ocean, was a popular place to swim.
About a quarter mile inland from the pool stood the Ocean View Bottling Works, operated by Chester Barry and his half-brother Justin Nelson. Situated on the former site of James Griffin’s old tannery, this bottling plant produced several popular soda flavors like strawberry, lemon, and cream, distributing them in reusable green glass bottles sealed with rubber stoppers and wire clamps. In its early years, the business also bottled beer for distribution along the coast. That operation came to a halt in the summer of 1909, when Mendocino voters approved a local ordinance banning the sale of alcohol - long before national Prohibition took effect.
The boys, eager for refreshment and adventure, discovered a loose window at the bottling works just wide enough for the skinniest among them to slip through. From inside, he would pass out soda bottles one by one to eager hands outside. Adding to their mischief, they returned the empty bottles for a one-cent refund, making a tidy profit from their own stolen goods. For several blissful weeks, their summertime racket went unnoticed - or so they thought. Emboldened by repeated success, they convinced themselves the adults were none the wiser. After all, why else would the soda be so conveniently within reach?
But the bottlers had caught on. Fed up with the mysterious losses, they devised a clever, stomach-turning trap. The boys had no idea that the bottles they swiped on their final raid had been laced with croton oil, a powerful laxative. That day, after downing two bottles apiece while splashing in Griffin’s Pond, they were struck by a swift and dramatic case of gastrointestinal distress. The aftermath rendered the beloved pool unfit for human use until the ocean tides could sweep through and sanitize the scene.
The episode left an unforgettable impression on James and his friends. Their boyish bravado had blinded them to the possibility of retaliation, and they had underestimated the cunning of the adults they had thought so clueless.
James Peirsol would later recount this tale in his 1982 chronicle of growing up in Mendocino, published by the Kelley House Museum, capturing with humor and vivid detail the flavor of life in early 20th-century Mendocino.
(www.kelleyhousemuseum.org)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, July 17, 2025
OLEN BEAM, 22, Mendocino. DUI-any drug, switchblade in vehicle.
HOLLY EVERETT, 36, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, suspended license for DUI.
DANIEL GARCIA III, 28, Covelo. Concentrated cannabis, failure to appear, probation revocation.
ADRIEL HERNANDEZ, 22, Hopland. DUI with priors, suspended license for DUI, no license, probation revocation.
JOHN IMUS JR., 63, Ukiah. Parole violation.
MICHAEL KUBAS, 45, Willits. Controlled substance with two or more priors, under influence, paraphernalia, probation violation.
MICHAEL LANGLEY, 35, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation violation. (Frequent flyer.)
PAUL MEDINAITZA, 58, Fort Bragg. Vandalism.
BRITTANY NELSON, 28, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
TASHA ORNELAS, 39, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
ALDA PETROCCHI, 55, Covelo. Domestic violence court order violation.
BENJAMIN WOOD, 27, Ukiah. DUI.
RACHEL WOODS, 22, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.
WHY DID THIS FARMWORKER DIE IN AN IMMIGRATION RAID?
by David Bacon
Jaime Alanis Garcia died of a broken neck in the Ventura County Medical Center on Saturday. He fell 30 feet from the roof of a Glass House Farms greenhouse, where he'd climbed in a desperate effort to get away from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and National Guard soldiers during an immigration raid on Thursday.
In announcing his death, Alanis' family called him, "not just a farm worker [but] a human being who deserved dignity. His death is not an isolated tragedy." The raid, they said, inspired "chaos and fear" among hundreds of farmworkers in the company's two cannabis farms in Camarillo and Carpenteria, an hour north of Los Angeles.
ICE announced that 319 people had been detained in the raid, and Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin denied responsibility for Alanis' death. "This man was not in and has not been in CBP or ICE custody [and] was not being pursued," she claimed.
Of course, Alanis was being pursued. All the workers were, by dozens of agents in battle gear as they fanned out inside the greenhouse. That pursuit was the reason he climbed to the roof.…
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/07/why-did-this-farmworker-die-in.html
FARM-FOOD PROGRAM CANCELLED WHILE MUSK AND AI CRONIES RAKE IN THE DOUGH
by Jim Shields
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins feeds my inbox on average with two-to-five press releases daily during the workweek.
Here’s a few recent examples:
- “USDA Freezes Funding, Promises Further Action If Maine Continues Violating Federal Law”
- “Science for Productive Forests”
- “Secretary Rollins Announces New Plan to Bolster Meat and Poultry Safety”
- “What They Are Saying: Strong Support for Secretary Rollins’ Rescission of Roadless Rule, Eliminating Impediment to Responsible Forest Management”
- “Secretary Rollins Supports EPA’s Record Setting Biofuels Blending Requirements”
- “Secretary Rollins, Secretary Wright, and Administrator Zeldin Visit Oklahoma to Highlight Trump Administration Efforts to Unleash American Energy”
Although I’m not recommending it, but if you were to read the PRs, you’ll find them liberally peppered with unctuous praise for The Greatest President Ever contrasted with Democratic Malfeasance, Anti-American Treacheries, and Ongoing High Crimes and Misdemeanors. You know the story by chapter and verse without me telling you.
Anyway, Secretary Rollins announced on July 15, 2025 she’s cancelling a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program that runs the country’s Regional Food Business Centers, which support small farms and food businesses around the country.
Organizations operating the 12 business centers have had their funding frozen since January and have been struggling to function as they sought answers from the USDA.
“The Biden Administration created multiple, massive programs without any long-term way to finance them. This is not sustainable for farmers who rely on these programs, and it flies in the face of Congressional intent,” Secretary Rollins said in an emailed statement sent to Congressional offices. “USDA will honor existing commitments for over 450 grants to farmers and food businesses to ensure planning decisions on the farm can continue as normal, however stakeholders should not plan on this program continuing.”
The small Regional Food Business Centers program was one of a suite of initiatives created by the Biden administration that were focused on rebuilding regional supply chains in the wake of the COVID national shutdown. The repaired infrastructure was intended to serve small family farms and push back on the increasing consolidation in the food system that has hollowed out rural communities.
The centers were designed to be hubs of business development activity, including the issuing of small “Business Builder Grants” to farms and food entrepreneurs in their areas. In an October 2024 progress report, Biden’s USDA reported that 2,800 individuals had received technical assistance, recipients had formed 1,500 new partnerships, and 287 businesses reported increased revenue as a result of the program. Overall, The 12 Regional Food Business Centers provided market and business development assistance to over 5,000 farms and businesses nationwide. The Centers reach touched millions of Americans. It wasn’t a huge program but by most reckoning it was successful, stimulated local economies and paid its own way.
But because the five-year grants were awarded in 2023, some centers are still in the process of getting up and running and allocating their funding. The USDA said that those centers that have not yet awarded grants—Great Lakes Midwest RFBC, Southeast RFBC, Delta RFBC, and Islands and Remote Areas RFBC—will see their contracts immediately terminated. However, a source within the USDA who asked for anonymity due to the risk of retaliation said that those centers would have already awarded grants but were unable to do so due to the funding freeze. For those that have awarded grants, USDA said they would honor the contracts and allow the centers to manage them through May 2026.
In a Civil Eats story on the freeze in funding published in April, individuals running the centers said the program was especially impactful because it was designed to link farms, businesses, and others in the local supply chain together to improve economic viability.
“If there ever is a program that really deserves bipartisan support across the spectrum, it’s this program,” Paul Freedman, the director of the Appalachia Regional Food Business Center said. “Our middle name is business. Our goal here is to help businesses bring food to market so that it’s available at a fair price and so that producers, processors, and farmers can actually make a living doing this.
Meanwhile, just a day before Secretary of Agriculture Rollins announced the programs demise, Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot landed a $200 million contract with the United States Department of Defense (DOD) just a few days after it made a series of high-profile antisemitic outbursts. On July 14th, the U.S. Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) announced it had awarded contracts to several leading U.S. artificial intelligence companies.
First of all, where the hell did this U.S. Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office come from?
Is it some entity Musk created while he was “DOGING” around D.C. earlier in the year creating mischief and mayhem?
Anyway, the contracts, which are intended to “accelerate Department of Defense (DOD) adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges,” were awarded to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Musk’s xAI. Each of the contracts has a $200 million ceiling.
The contracts, according to a CDAO news release, “will enable the Department to leverage the technology and talent of U.S. frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.”
The inclusion of Musk’s xAI in the contract comes in the aftermath of the Tesla hotshot’s very public falling out with BFF D.J. Trump over the recent Republican-backed make-the-already-rich-richer tax bill. On July 14th, xAI announced “Grok for Government,” calling it “a suite of frontier AI products available first to United States Government customers.”
In addition to the DOD contract, Grok for Government will also include “custom models for national security and critical science applications,” according to a news release.
The DOD’s contract with Grok comes just a week after the chatbot made a series of antisemitic comments on X and at one point, proclaimed itself “MechaHitler.”
I swear to the Great Spirit In The Sky you can’t make this stuff up.
Here’s the deal. Our government cancelled a farm-food program that benefitted millions of Americans — farmers, small business owners, and people who needed nourishing food options — but found hundreds of millions of dollars to fork over to the world’s richest man and his global market cronies?
If you were to conclude all of this is crazy stuff, you’d be dead on right: Crazy is as crazy does.
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, [email protected], the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
WHY I VOTED NO
Editor:
Thank you to the community member who wrote this paper asking why I opposed the president and congressional Republicans’ bill (“Lot to like in Trump’s bill,” Letters, July 10). I opposed it for a number of reasons. At the top of my list:
The tax breaks are skewed to the ultra-wealthy and leave pennies for everyone else. Nonpartisan experts found that people making over $1 million every year will get $264 per day in tax breaks and those making under $50,000 get only $0.68 per day.
The bill takes away health coverage from upward of 17 million Americans, including kicking 3.4 million Californians off Medi-Cal.
Hospitals and clinics lose revenue and will have to lay off staff or close altogether. This especially impacts rural areas, like Cloverdale. Everybody in our community will have reduced access to care.
The bill cuts wildfire prevention programs, cuts forest management services and eliminates personnel hired to fight wildfires.
The tax provisions add between $4.4 trillion and $5 trillion to our national debt, burdening our kids and grandkids.
Rep. Mike Thompson
St. Helena
PRESIDENT HATER
Editor:
On July 3, Donald Trump gave a speech at a celebration of our country in Des Moines, Iowa. The event was supposed to be nonpolitical and unifying. Instead, during his talk, he actually said he hates Democrats; he said Democrats hate our country, so he hates them. He’s referring to almost half the people in our country. This type of rhetoric is unacceptable for the leader of any country. Is he trying to foment a civil war? How much worse is this administration going to get? It’s terrifying to think of 3 and a half more years of this caustic disregard for the American people he is supposed to represent.
Holly Orlando
Sonoma
TRUTH SOCIAL USER ‘NAPOLEON’ PLEADS FOR UNITY:
What’s going on with my “barrows” and, in some cases, “gilts”? They’re all going after Whymper, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAFGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish animals” are trying to hurt it, all over a pig who never dies, Snowball. For years, it’s Snowball, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Mr. Jones, who conned the World with the Pinchfield, Pinchfield, Pinchfield Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Animals, “THE LAP DOG FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Snowball Files, just like they created the FAKE Pilkington Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Loons– who are NOT EVEN FARM ANIMALS!-- release the Snowball Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAFGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t even given up on the Old Major Files. No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where human beings will not have Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some beasts. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other animal team has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our homeland and, MAKING ANIMAL FARM GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The enemy is imploding! Squealer must be focused on investigating Goatherd Fraud, Political Corruption, ActShrew, The Rigged and Stolen Battle of Cowshed, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Snowball. LET WHYMPER DO HIS JOB — HE’S GREAT! The Battle of Cowshed was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in the Battle of the Windmill— That’s what he is looking into, and much more. One year ago our farm was DEAD, now it’s the “HOTTEST” pasture anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Snowball, a pig nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
(Andrew Lutsky)
JEFF BLANKFORT:
I had my own experience with it in Israel Occupied Lebanon in 1983 when with two European journalists I went down to the Awali Bridge crossing on the main north-south road where for the previous few days the Israelis had blocked ALL traffic as collective punishment for all of Lebanon after Hezbollah, a real people’s army, then in its early stages, had blown up the IDF intel HQ in Sour (to the applause of the Euro reporters!).
Consequently, all the lanes of traffic heading south had been blocked for miles with no way of turning around, by a huge role of concertina barbed wire at the end of which was a large Israeli tank. Consequently, trucks, loaded with fruits and vegetables rotting in the sun and people were forced to sleep in their cars. (In using collective punishment, Israel had already become the all time master!).
I wanted to take a photo of the bridge’s toll entrances which featured Israeli and Lebanese flags and a Mobil Oil sign so I walked around the barbed wire and past the barrel of the tank to do so. After taking one or two photos I suddenly felt, before I heard, a bullet creasing my ear, and looked up to see two Israeli soldiers with US M 16s heading my way. I took one poorly aimed pic of them before I discreetly scampered back behind the wire. Another inch or so and I would have been another dead Arab journalist (which was what many there took me for). Even as Americans we have seen that their lives don’t count.
More than 1200 Israelis refused to serve in Lebanon in 1982, some of whom I interviewed who became friends of mine and whom I was able to get interviewed on KGO in SF when they visited the city and it was still possible. Those in Lebanon then like Gaza now were there because they chose to go when they could have refused with minor penalties or left the country as many have since 2023. Young Germans nor their parents under Hitler were given no choice and most were engaged in fighting Allied armies, not killing children.
THE MOODS
by William Butler Yeats (1893)
Time drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and the woods
Have their day, have their day;
What one in the rout
Of the fire-born moods
Has fallen away?
GO WEST, MY SON
No Self / Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh
Warmest spiritual greetings,
Please take to heart this crucial teaching by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. It makes clear that nobody is a “person”, and that there is nothing to defend. No reason for conflict. No reason for war. No reason to do anything but flow effortlessly. This is enlightenment. This is freedom.
I am available on the planet earth. It is time to leave the Catholic Charities homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. because there is no reason to be there any further. Support for the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil in front of the White House for the sixteenth time has been fully done! I am seeking cooperation to relocate in order to do that which is in unity with the Spiritual Absolute. Simple as that. At present, I’ve got $1,117.59 in the bank checking account, and $108.51 in the wallet. Health is excellent at age 75. Please contact me.
Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]
“THREE O’CLOCK BLUES,”
by Lowell Fulson (1946)
Well now it's three o'clock in the morning
And I can't even close my eyes
Three o'clock in the morning baby
And I can't even close my eyes
Can't find my baby
And I can't be satisfied
I've looked around me
And my baby she can't be found
I've looked all around me, people
And my baby she can't be found
You know if I don't find my baby
I'm going down to the Golden Ground
That's where the men hang out
Goodbye, everybody
I believe this is the end
Oh goodbye everybody
I believe this is the end
I want you to tell my baby
Tell her please please forgive me
Forgive me for my sins
WINERIES KEEP BLOWING UP MY PHONE.
by Esther Mobley
Wineries won’t stop texting me.
“Celebrate the warm days ahead with new vintages of our most sought-after wines (sunglasses emoji),” read a recent SMS.
From another: “We’re here to help you choose wines that pair best with all of your summer plans with highly-discounted overnight shipping through Sunday!”
One winery let me know that I could text them at any time, while a winery I used to be a club member of attempted to woo me back with a free wine shipment (up to a $995 value, but I’d have to pay for four shipments first). Most recently, a winery invited me to “an unforgettable summertime in Napa event.” A few even texted me on my birthday.
I first noticed this was happening more frequently around the winter holidays. I received reminders about shipping timelines and promotional offers, like a Thanksgiving wine bundle and $1 shipping for Small Business Saturday. I’d only had a few weeks of peace since the unrelenting onslaught of election texts had finally ceased, and if I’m being honest, I was a little annoyed at the sudden intrusion. I wasn’t even sure that I opted in to receive all of these texts; some of the wineries I hadn’t purchased from or visited in years.
One of my editors, upon learning the topic of this newsletter, called it “an epidemic.” He planned visits to two wineries this year — one of which he had to cancel — and said “they will not stop” texting him.
Still, I haven’t unsubscribed from any of them, mostly out of laziness but also because I am sympathetic to the wine industry’s struggles. Wineries, especially small operations, are hurting: visitation and sales are down while wine club attrition rates and production costs are on the rise. Many tasting rooms have closed this year, and wineries are desperate for new ways to engage consumers, especially younger ones. Texting is an obvious marketing strategy.
I haven’t clicked on or responded to any of the texts I’ve received, but they do seem to be effective. Kendall Busby, the director of marketing and communications at Jordan Vineyard & Winery, said the winery’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions resulted in a 23% increase in sales revenue from the previous year. The only major difference? In 2024, they used text messaging. “Email has continued to get more and more saturated and texting seems to really capture people,” she said. “There’s a sense of urgency. They feel like they need to make a decision right away.”
At Reeve Wines in Healdsburg, the staff texts customers every single day, said co-founder Noah Dorrance, but rarely for promotional purposes. “One of the totally unexpected uses for it has been customer service. A lot of the time, it’s easier to text someone than it is to call them,” he said.
“People are constantly texting, like, ‘Hey, I’m running 10 minutes late.’ Or, ‘I just got the email and I’m not at my computer, but will you ship me six bottles of rosé?’ I think the key is to use it more as a conversation and not spam people.”
Jordan and Reeve text customers via a software application called RedChirp. The company wasn’t built to serve the wine industry but has become its go-to since working with its first winery in 2021. “There was almost no texting going on in the wine industry (in 2021),” said RedChirp co-founder Jennie Gilbert. “As with many things in the wine industry, there are a lot more compliance hurdles to texting about alcohol.”
Gilbert said most software platforms, such as email marketing application MailChimp, don’t allow clients to use texting features to communicate about alcohol due to industry regulations. Major phone carriers track business text communications and perform random audits; misuse of age-gated content over text is considered as severe an infraction as child pornography, said Gilbert.
RedChirp customized its platform to address these industry challenges and now works with roughly 850 wineries across the U.S. and Canada. A 2024 RedChirp study that analyzed data from 474 wineries showed that the average order per text recipient was $10.57. By contrast, the average order from an email is typically “so much smaller,” Gilbert said.
The strategy isn’t only effective with younger generations. Winery text orders were a near-even split between Baby Boomers, Millennials and Generation Z, according to the study, with Baby Boomers taking the slight majority. “It’s super rare to cut across the generations,” Gilbert said.
(SF Chronicle)
WHY WE WON
by Zohran Mamdani
(Speech to supporters, June 25, 2025)
Tonight we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.
An hour ago, I spoke with Andrew Cuomo about the need to bring this city together, as he called me to concede the race. And I want to thank Brad Lander. Together we have shown the power of the politics of the future. One of partnership and of sincerity.
Today, eight months after launching this campaign with the vision of a city that every New Yorker could afford, we have won.
We have won from Harlem to Bay Ridge. We have won from Jackson Heights to Port Richmond. We have won from Maspeth to Chinatown.
We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle. One where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day. Where hard work is repaid with a stable life. Where eight hours on the factory floor or behind the wheel of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage. It is enough to keep the lights on. It is enough to send your kid to school. Where rent-stabilized apartments are actually stabilized. Where buses are fast and free. Where childcare doesn’t cost more than CUNY. And where public safety keeps us truly safe.
And it’s where the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism. To stop ICE agents from deporting our neighbors. And to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party. A party where we fight for working people with no apology.
A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few. It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker.
If this campaign has demonstrated anything to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality. Dreaming demands hope. And when I think of hope, I think of the unprecedented coalition of New Yorkers that we have built. For this is not my victory. This is ours.
It is the victory of the Bangladeshi aunty who knocked on door after door until her feet throbbed and her knuckles ached. It is the victory of the eighteen-year-old who voted in their first-ever election. And it is the victory of the Gambian uncle who finally saw himself and his struggle in a campaign for the city that he calls home.
Dreaming demands solidarity. And when I look out at this room and out onto the midnight skyline, that is what I see.
Canvas launches that continued in the pouring rain. Children who called parents. Strangers who care about those they will never meet. A New York that believes in each other and in itself. This is solidarity, and it defines our victory.
And above all, dreaming demands work. Last Friday night, as the sun began to drop in the sky, I set off on a 13-mile walk from the northernmost tip of Manhattan to the base of the island. We began in Inwood, where music played and neighbors set out dominoes on the sidewalk. It was 7 p.m. The weekend had arrived. For most people, the time for work was over.
But this is New York, where the work never ends. Waiters carried plates on 181st Street. Conductors drove the subways that rattled high above 125th. And world-class musicians tuned instruments as we passed Lincoln Square.
By the time we made it downtown, a crowd marched behind us, a living embodiment of the energy and purpose that defines this campaign. Still, long past midnight, New York worked. Garbage trucks weaved through empty streets. Fishmongers carried in tomorrow’s wares. And when we finally arrived at the Battery at 2:20 a.m. in the morning, the workers who run the Staten Island Ferry were on the job, too. Just as they are every hour of the day, every day of the week.
Each of these New Yorkers carried a dream with them that night as they labored, just as each of us dreams of a New York that is more hopeful and affordable for all, and we have worked hard for our dream. This has been a historically contentious race, one that has filled our airwaves with millions in smears and slander.
I hope now that this primary has come to an end. I can introduce myself once more. Not as you’ve seen me in a thirty-second ad or in a mailer in your mailbox. But as how I will lead as your mayor.
I will be the mayor for every New Yorker. Whether you voted for me for Governor Cuomo or felt too disillusioned by a long-broken political system to vote at all, I will fight for a city that works for you, that is affordable for you, that is safe for you. I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own. I cannot promise that you will always agree with me, but I will never hide from you.
If you are hurting, I will try to heal you. If you feel misunderstood, I will strive to understand. Your concerns will always be mine. And I will put your hopes before my own.
And I know that those hopes extend beyond our five boroughs. There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. I am one of them. And while I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.
Let me close with this. In these dark times, I know that it is harder than ever to keep faith in our democracy. It has been attacked by billionaires and their big spending, by elected officials who care more about self-enrichment than the public trust, and by authoritarian leaders who rule through fear.
But above all, our democracy has been attacked from within. For too long, New Yorkers have strained to find a leader who represents us, who puts us first. And we have been betrayed, time and again.
After so many disappointments, the heart hardens, belief becomes elusive. And when we no longer believe in our democracy, it only becomes easier for people like Donald Trump to convince us of his worth. For billionaires to convince us that they must always lead.
As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations. Not because the people dislike democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness. In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.” New York, if we have made one thing clear over these past months, it is that we need not choose between the two.
We can be free and we can be fed. We can demand what we deserve. And together, we have built a movement where every day, New Yorkers recognize themselves in our vision of democracy. Every new voter registered. That is faith renewed.
Every voter who traveled through withering heat to the polls — that is faith renewed. And every New Yorker who sees solutions to the daily challenges they face in this campaign — that is faith renewed. Together, New York, we have renewed our democracy. We have given our city permission to believe again.
And I pledge to you that we will remake this great city not in my image but in the image of every New Yorker who has only known struggle. In our New York, the power belongs to the people.
And as I thank the people that are here with me today, and as I thank the incredible leaders who have long fought for those people who are here across this crowd and across these five boroughs, and standing next to me is the attorney general of this state, is the public advocate of this city, our congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, and our comptroller, Brad Lander, and is every single person who believed in this campaign long before it was easy to do so. And you believed when it was difficult.
We dreamt in the night. And we are now building in the dawn. That new day, the one that we have yearned for, the one that we have struggled for. The one that we have knocked for, have texted for, have called for. The one that we have obsessed over. That new day is finally here. And it is here because you have delivered it.
COVID, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:
You had to be listening to Fox News to understand why Republicans have turned against public health. Before Biden was elected Fox New was all gung-ho about the Covid vaccine calling it proudly “Operation Warpspeed.” After Trump lost they turned on a dime criticizing Biden’s vaccine roll-out and mask and vaccine mandates. They interviewed Dr Redfield about the virus might have come from a Chinese lab, but when he tried to say, “But regardless of where the vaccine came from everyone should get vac…” they literally cut him off. As a result several hundred thousand Americans died needlessly and Republicans died at a 43% higher rate. And Covid was only 2-3 times as deadly as the flu. What will happen when a pandemic comes along with a higher death rate? By the way, it was Republican anti-vaccine attitudes that caused Kern County to reject $5 million to shore up their emergency services. You better get Rupert Murdoch on the phone if you want to fix this because otherwise we are all sitting ducks.
LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT
Trump Tells Bondi to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony
Congress Agrees to Claw Back Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds
Crypto Industry Reaches Milestone With Passage of First Major Bill
CBS Canceling ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ After Next Season
The U.K. Plans to Lower the Voting Age to 16. Here’s What to Know
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Well, it’s been two thousand years since the prophet claiming to be God appeared, and yet the cycles of war, evil, violence and “humans being animals” continues to go on, with no relief in sight. I’m always amazed at how Believers will quickly give credit to the Big Shifter for those who survive a tragedy (like a plane crash), and yet are not so fast to give credit to the Big Shifter for those who perished in the crash other than “nobody knows God’s plan….”
It seems we have a Laissez-faire approach to things from the Big Shifter, which is why I try to stay on the material plane - which is the only location where agreement between all faiths can occur. Trusting in “trusting God” to work things out seems a bit of cop out, but everyone is entitled to their own belief system.
“Trump” is an actor, and my focus is on interpreting his actions as the result of directions from those hidden behind the curtain. They are the same group of sociopaths that directed “Joe Biden”, and until the system of this hidden control is removed, rule of law restored, and the Constitution followed and enforced, we’ll continue down the path of misery and transfer of wealth to the top 1%.
TRUMP TELLS BONDI TO SEEK RELEASE OF SOME EPSTEIN MATERIAL AS FUROR GROWS
President Trump announced on social media that he was authorizing Attorney General Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, a sudden turn that falls far short of demands from within the MAGA movement for the release of all F.B.I. files on Mr. Epstein. Earlier, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump would not recommend a special prosecutor to look into the case, and repeated the president’s claim that the backlash was a distraction.
Ms. Leavitt said in an afternoon news briefing that President Trump sought medical care for swelling in his legs and bruising on his hand but remained in good health. Mr. Trump, 79, has a benign condition called chronic venous insufficiency that is common in people over 70, Ms. Leavitt said. The bruising was attributed to “frequent handshaking,” she said.
Congress on Thursday passed the first federal rules for the digital currency known as stablecoins and sent the measure, the Genius Act, to the White House for President Trump’s signature. But the future of a more consequential bill, to establish cryptocurrency market regulations that industry executives have championed, remained in doubt.
House Republicans, under pressure from Democrats and their own angry constituents, agreed on Thursday night to lay the groundwork for a potential vote calling on the Justice Department to release material from its investigation of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, breaking with President Trump’s demand that supporters accept his administration’s handling of the case and move on.
The measure, a nonbinding resolution, has not been scheduled for a vote. It is unclear whether Republicans will ever bring it up, or whether it could muster the support to pass in the face of a deep G.O.P. divide over the Trump administration’s handling of the case of Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in federal custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
(Michael Gold, NY Times)
JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S FRIENDS Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.
The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing.’
by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo
It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.
Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.
The president’s past relationship with Epstein is at a sensitive moment. The Justice Department documents, the so-called Epstein files, and who or what is in them are at the center of a storm consuming the Trump administration. On Wednesday, after angry comments about how the files are a hoax created by Democrats, President Trump lashed out at his own supporters for refusing to let the matter go.
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.
Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006 and he was arrested that year. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy.
Justice Department officials didn’t respond to requests for comment or address questions about whether the Trump page and other pages of the birthday album were part of the agency’s recent documents review. The FBI declined to comment.
The existence of the album and the contents of the birthday letters haven’t previously been reported.
The album had poems, photos and greetings from businesspeople, academics, Epstein’s former girlfriends and childhood pals, according to the documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with them.
Among those who submitted letters were billionaire Leslie Wexner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein’s report cards from Mark Twain junior high school in Brooklyn and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein’s name: “Jeffrey, oh Jeffrey!/ Everyone loves you!/ Fun in the sun!/ Fun just for fun!/ Remember…don’t forget me soon!/ Epstein…you rock!/ You are the best!”
Epstein was Wexner’s money manager at the time. The longtime leader of Victoria’s Secret wrote a short message that said: “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is….”
After the text was a line drawing of what appeared to be a woman’s breasts.
Wexner declined to comment through a spokesman. Wexner’s spokesman previously told the Journal that the retail mogul “severed all ties with Epstein in 2007 and never spoke with him again.”
Dershowitz’s letter included a mock-up of a “Vanity Unfair” magazine cover with mock headlines such as “Who was Jack the Ripper? Was it Jeffrey Epstein?” He joked that he had convinced the magazine to change the focus of an article from Epstein to Bill Clinton.
Dershowitz, who represented Epstein after his first arrest, said, “It’s been a long time and I don’t recall the content of what I may have written.”
The book was put together by a New York City bookbinder, Herbert Weitz, according to people who were involved in the process. Weitz, who died in 2020, listed Epstein as a client on his website in 2003.
It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
‘JEFFREY ENJOYS HIS SOCIAL LIFE’
When he turned 50, Epstein was already wealthy from managing Wexner’s fortune and was socializing with Trump, Clinton and other powerful people at his Manhattan townhouse, Palm Beach, Fla., home and private Caribbean island.
A spokesman for Clinton referred to a 2019 statement that former President Clinton had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s second arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.
Epstein and Trump spent time together in the 1990s and early 2000s and were photographed at social events, including with Maxwell and Melania Trump. A 1992 tape from the NBC archives shows Trump partying with Epstein at his Mar-a-Lago estate; Trump is seen pulling a woman toward him and patting her behind.
Trump, along with others including Clinton, also appeared several times on flight logs for Epstein’s private jet.
A 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein quoted Trump. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,”
Trump said. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Both men said that they subsequently had a falling-out. Trump has said their friendship ended before Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008, served time in a Florida jail and registered as a sex offender.
When Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t talked to Epstein for about 15 years. “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said in the Oval Office at that time. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Trump’s spokeswoman told the Journal in 2023 that Trump had banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club at some point in the past, without elaborating.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein’s sex-trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview sent to her in prison. Arthur Aidala, an attorney representing Maxwell in her appeal, said, “At this point, she is focused on her case before the Supreme Court of the United States.”
THE FBI’S EPSTEIN FILES
Epstein’s associations with Trump and many powerful people have been well documented. There remain questions about what the FBI possesses about Epstein and his well-connected friends. In 2019, the FBI confiscated evidence from Epstein’s properties in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York.
Earlier Tuesday, after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were “made up” by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey.
He said that releasing any more Epstein files would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release,” Trump said.
Allegations that bureaucrats covered up Epstein’s connections with participants in his trafficking scheme were fanned by people now in top roles in the Trump administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.
In June 2024, Trump was asked in a Fox News interview whether he would release the Epstein case files. The Republican presidential candidate initially responded, “Yeah, I would.” But he also expressed some reservations. “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
Soon after she was confirmed as attorney general, Bondi said she was preparing to release new Epstein files. In late February, Bondi announced the release of “Phase 1” of the documents. But the material contained few new revelations, drawing criticism from right-wing influencers.
ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI RELEASED DOCUMENTS ON THE EPSTEIN CASE IN FEBRUARY. ABOVE, CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCERS AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE DOCUMENTS.
Bondi initially blamed the FBI’s New York office for withholding information and promised to release the remaining documents after redacting the victim’s names. Patel also said, “There will be no coverups, no missing documents and no stone left unturned.” They tasked hundreds of FBI employees to review the materials and prepare them for release.
The issue took on new life in June when Elon Musk, amid a public feud with Trump, alleged that the FBI was withholding documents from the Epstein case because Trump was in the files.
“The truth will come out,” Musk wrote on X on June 5. He later deleted the message and said he regretted some of his comments.
On July 7, the Justice Department backtracked on Bondi’s pledge to release more Epstein files. The Justice Department said that after an “exhaustive review” it had found no “incriminating client list” or additional documents that warrant public disclosure.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded this week that Republican Chairman Jim Jordan hold hearings on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and, if necessary, subpoena Bondi, Patel and Bongino.
At a cabinet meeting on July 8, Trump criticized a reporter for asking about Epstein. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” Trump said. “That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”
That same day, Musk wrote on X: “How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?”
(Wall Street Journal)
I’M A GENOCIDE SCHOLAR. I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT.
by Omar Bartov
A month after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, I believed there was evidence that the Israeli military had committed war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity in its counterattack on Gaza. But contrary to the cries of Israel’s fiercest critics, the evidence did not seem to me to rise to the crime of genocide.
By May 2024, the Israel Defense Forces had ordered about one million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah — the southernmost and last remaining relatively undamaged city of the Gaza Strip — to move to the beach area of the Mawasi, where there was little to no shelter. The army then proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, a feat mostly accomplished by August.
At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of I.D.F. operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised that the enemy would pay a “huge price“ for the attack and that the I.D.F. would turn parts of Gaza, where Hamas was operating, “into rubble,” and he called on “the residents of Gaza” to “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”
Mr. Netanyahu had urged his citizens to remember “what Amalek did to you,“ a quote many interpreted as a reference to the demand in a biblical passage calling for the Israelites to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings” of their ancient enemy. Government and military officials said they were fighting “human animals” and, later, called for “total annihilation.” Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Parliament, said on X that Israel’s task must be “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population. I believe the goal was — and remains today — to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group.
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The continued denial of this designation by states, international organizations and legal and scholarly experts will cause unmitigated damage not just to the people of Gaza and Israel but also to the system of international law established in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, designed to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again. It is a threat to the very foundations of the moral order on which we all depend.
The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” In determining what constitutes genocide, therefore, we must both establish intent and show that it is being carried out. In Israel’s case, that intent has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders. But intent can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground, and this pattern became clear by May 2024 — and has since become ever clearer — as the I.D.F. has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip.
Most genocide scholars are cautious about applying this term to contemporary events, precisely because of the tendency, since it was coined by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, to attribute it to any case of massacre or inhumanity. Indeed, some argue that the categorization should be entirely discarded, because it often serves more to express outrage than to identify a particular crime.
Yet as Mr. Lemkin recognized, and as the United Nations later agreed, it is crucial to be able to distinguish the attempt to destroy a particular group of people from other crimes under international law, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is because, while other crimes entail indiscriminate or deliberate killing of civilians as individuals, genocide denotes the killing of people as members of a group, geared at irreparably destroying the group itself so that it would never be able to reconstitute itself as a political, social or cultural entity. And, as the international community signaled by adopting the convention, it is incumbent upon all signatory states to prevent such an attempt, to do all they can to stop it while it is occurring and to subsequently punish those who were engaged in this crime of crimes — even if it occurred within the borders of a sovereign state.
The designation has major political, legal and moral ramifications. Nations, politicians and military personnel suspected of, indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide are seen as beyond the pale of humanity and may compromise or lose their right to remain members of the international community. A finding by the International Court of Justice that a particular state is engaged in genocide, especially if enforced by the U.N. Security Council, can lead to severe sanctions.
Politicians or generals indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide or other breaches of international humanitarian law by the International Criminal Court can face arrest outside of their country. And a society that condones and is complicit in genocide, whatever the stand of its individual citizens may be, will carry this mark of Cain long after the fires of hatred and violence are put out.
Israel has denied all allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The I.D.F. says it investigates reports of crimes, although it has rarely made its findings public, and when breaches of discipline or protocol are acknowledged, it has generally meted out light reprimands to its personnel. Israeli military and political leaders repeatedly describe the I.D.F. as acting lawfully, say they issue warnings to civilian populations to evacuate sites about to be attacked and blame Hamas for using civilians as human shields.
In fact, the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure — government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks — reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the territory highly unlikely.
According to a recent investigation by Haaretz, an estimated 174,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged, accounting for up to 70 percent of all structures in the Strip. So far, more than 58,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan health authorities, including more than 17,000 children, who make up nearly a third of the total fatality count. More than 870 of those children were less than a year old.
More than 2,000 families have been wiped out, the health authorities said. In addition, 5,600 families now count only one survivor. At least 10,000 people are believed to still be buried under the ruins of their homes. More than 138,000 have been wounded and maimed.
Gaza now has the grim distinction of having the highest number of amputee children per capita in the world. An entire generation of children subjected to ongoing military attacks, loss of parents and long-term malnutrition will suffer severe physical and mental repercussions for the rest of their lives. Untold additional thousands of chronically ill persons have had little access to hospital care.
The horror of what has been happening in Gaza is still described by most observers as war. But this is a misnomer. For the last year, the I.D.F. has not been fighting an organized military body. The version of Hamas that planned and carried out the attacks on Oct. 7 has been destroyed, though the weakened group continues to fight Israeli forces and retains control over the population in areas not held by the Israeli Army.
Today the I.D.F. is primarily engaged in an operation of demolition and ethnic cleansing. That’s how Mr. Netanyahu’s own former chief of staff and minister of defense, the hard-liner Moshe Yaalon, in November described on Israel’s Democrat TV and in subsequent articles and interviews the attempt to clear northern Gaza of its population.
On Jan. 19, under pressure from Donald Trump, who was a day away from resuming the presidency, a cease-fire went into effect, facilitating the exchange of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But after Israel’s breaking of the cease-fire on March 18, the I.D.F. has been executing a well-publicized plan to concentrate the entire Gazan population in a quarter of the territory in three zones: Gaza City, the central refugee camps and the Mawasi coastline in the Strip’s southwestern edge.
Using large numbers of bulldozers and huge aerial bombs supplied by the United States, the military appears to be trying to demolish every remaining structure and establish control over the other three-quarters of the territory.
This is also being facilitated by a plan that provides — intermittently — limited aid supplies at a few distribution points guarded by the Israeli military, drawing people to the south. Many Gazans are killed in a desperate attempt to obtain food, and the starvation crisis deepens. On July 7, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the I.D.F. would build a “humanitarian city” over the ruins of Rafah to initially accommodate 600,000 Palestinians from the Mawasi area, who would be provisioned by international bodies and not allowed to leave.
Some might describe this campaign as ethnic cleansing, not genocide. But there is a link between the crimes. When an ethnic group has nowhere to go and is constantly displaced from one so-called safe zone to another, relentlessly bombed and starved, ethnic cleansing can morph into genocide.
This was the case in several well-known genocides of the 20th century, such as that of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa, now Namibia, that began in 1904; the Armenians in World War I; and, indeed, even in the Holocaust, which began with the German attempt to expel the Jews and ended up with their murder.
To this day, only a few scholars of the Holocaust — and no institutions dedicated to researching and commemorating it — have issued warnings that Israel could be accused of carrying out war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide. This silence has made a mockery of the slogan “Never again,” transforming its meaning from an assertion of resistance to inhumanity wherever it is perpetrated to an excuse, an apology, indeed, even a carte blanche for destroying others by invoking one’s own past victimhood.
This is another of the many incalculable costs of the current catastrophe. As Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza and is exercising increasing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the moral and historical credit that the Jewish state has drawn on until now is running out.
Israel, created in the wake of the Holocaust as the answer to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, has always insisted that any threat to its security must be seen as potentially leading to another Auschwitz. This provides Israel with license to portray those it perceives as its enemies as Nazis — a term used repeatedly by Israeli media figures to depict Hamas and, by extension, all Gazans, based on the popular assertion that none of them are “uninvolved,” not even the infants, who would grow up to be militants.
This is not a new phenomenon. As early as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin compared Yasir Arafat, then hunkered down in Beirut, to Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker. This time, the analogy is being used in connection with a policy aimed at uprooting and removing the entire population of Gaza.
The daily scenes of horror in Gaza, from which the Israeli public is shielded by its own media’s self-censorship, expose the lies of Israeli propaganda that this is a war of defense against a Nazi-like enemy. One shudders when Israeli spokespeople shamelessly utter the hollow slogan of the I.D.F. being the “most moral army in the world.”
Some European nations, such as France, Britain and Germany, as well as Canada, have feebly protested Israeli actions, especially since it breached the cease-fire in March. But they have neither suspended arms shipments nor taken many concrete and meaningful economic or political steps that might deter Mr. Netanyahu’s government.
For a while, the United States government seemed to have lost interest in Gaza, with President Trump initially announcing in February that the United States would take over Gaza, promising to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” and then letting Israel get on with the Strip’s destruction and turning his attention to Iran. At the moment, one can only hope that Mr. Trump will again pressure a reluctant Mr. Netanyahu to at least reach a new cease-fire and put an end to the relentless killing.
How will Israel’s future be affected by the inevitable demolition of its incontestable morality, derived from its birth in the ashes of the Holocaust?
Israel’s political leadership and its citizenry will have to decide. There seems to be little domestic pressure for the urgently needed change of paradigm: the recognition that there is no solution to this conflict other than an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to share the land under whatever parameters the two sides agree on, be it two states, one state or a confederation. Robust external pressure from the country’s allies also appears unlikely. I am deeply worried that Israel will persist on its disastrous course, remaking itself, perhaps irreversibly, into a full-blown authoritarian apartheid state. Such states, as history has taught us, do not last.
Another question arises: What consequences will Israel’s moral reversal have for the culture of Holocaust commemoration, and the politics of memory, education and scholarship, when so many of its intellectual and administrative leaders have up to now refused to face up to their responsibility to denounce inhumanity and genocide wherever they occur?
Those engaged in the worldwide culture of commemoration and remembrance built around the Holocaust will have to confront a moral reckoning. The wider community of genocide scholars — those engaged in the study of comparative genocide or of any one of the many other genocides that have marred human history — is now edging ever closer toward a consensus over describing events in Gaza as a genocide.
In November, a little more than a year into the war, the Israeli genocide scholar Shmuel Lederman joined the growing chorus of opinion that Israel was engaged in genocidal actions. The Canadian international lawyer William Schabas came to the same conclusion last year and has recently described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “absolutely” a genocide.
Other genocide experts, such as Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the British specialist Martin Shaw (who has also said that the Hamas attack was genocidal), have reached the same conclusion, while the Australian scholar A. Dirk Moses of the City University of New York described these events in the Dutch publication NRC as a “mix of genocidal and military logic.” In the same article, Uğur Ümit Üngör, a professor at the Amsterdam-based NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said there are probably scholars who still do not think it’s genocide, but “I don’t know them.”
Most Holocaust scholars I know don’t hold, or at least publicly express, this view. With a few notable exceptions, such as the Israeli Raz Segal, program director of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem historians Amos Goldberg and Daniel Blatman, the majority of academics engaged with the history of the Nazi genocide of the Jews have stayed remarkably silent, while some have openly denied Israel’s crimes in Gaza, or accused their more critical colleagues of incendiary speech, wild exaggeration, well poisoning and antisemitism.
In December the Holocaust scholar Norman J.W. Goda opined that “genocide charges like this have long been used as a fig leaf for broader challenges to Israel’s legitimacy,” expressing his worry that “they have cheapened the gravity of the word genocide itself.” This “genocide libel,” as Dr. Goda referred to it in an essay, “deploys a range of antisemitic tropes,” including “the coupling of the genocide charge with the deliberate killing of children, images of whom are ubiquitous on NGO, social media, and other platforms that charge Israel with genocide.”
In other words, showing images of Palestinian children ripped apart by U.S.-made bombs launched by Israeli pilots is, in this view, an antisemitic act.
Most recently, Dr. Goda and a respected historian of Europe, Jeffrey Herf, wrote in The Washington Post that “the genocide accusation hurled against Israel draws on deep wells of fear and hatred” found in “radical interpretations of both Christianity and Islam.” It “has shifted opprobrium from Jews as a religious/ethnic group to the state of Israel, which it depicts as inherently evil.”
What are the ramifications of this rift between genocide scholars and Holocaust historians? This is not merely a squabble within academe. The memory culture created in recent decades around the Holocaust encompasses much more than the genocide of the Jews. It has come to play a crucial role in politics, education and identity.
Museums dedicated to the Holocaust have served as models for representations of other genocides around the world. Insistence that the lessons of the Holocaust demand the promotion of tolerance, diversity, antiracism and support for migrants and refugees, not to mention human rights and international humanitarian law, is rooted in an understanding of the universal implications of this crime in the heart of Western civilization at the peak of modernity.
Discrediting genocide scholars who call out Israel’s genocide in Gaza as antisemitic threatens to erode the foundation of genocide studies: the ongoing need to define, prevent, punish and reconstruct the history of genocide. Suggesting that this endeavor is motivated instead by malign interests and sentiments — that it is driven by the very hatred and prejudice that was at the root of the Holocaust — is not only morally scandalous, it provides an opening for a politics of denialism and impunity as well.
By the same token, when those who have dedicated their careers to teaching and commemorating the Holocaust insist on ignoring or denying Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, they threaten to undermine everything that Holocaust scholarship and commemoration have stood for in the past several decades. That is, the dignity of every human being, respect for the rule of law and the urgent need never to let inhumanity take over the hearts of people and steer the actions of nations in the name of security, national interest and sheer vengeance.
What I fear is that in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide, it will no longer be possible to continue teaching and researching the Holocaust in the same manner we did before. Because the Holocaust has been so relentlessly invoked by the state of Israel and its defenders as a cover-up for the crimes of the I.D.F., the study and remembrance of the Holocaust could lose its claim to be concerned with universal justice and retreat into the same ethnic ghetto in which it began its life at the end of World War II — as a marginalized preoccupation by the remnants of a marginalized people, an ethnically specific event, before it succeeded, decades later, to find its rightful place as a lesson and a warning for humanity as a whole.
Just as worrisome is the prospect that the study of genocide as a whole will not survive the accusations of antisemitism, leaving us without the crucial community of scholars and international jurists to stand in the breach at a time when the rise of intolerance, racial hatred, populism and authoritarianism is threatening the values that were at the core of these scholarly, cultural and political endeavors of the 20th century.
Perhaps the only light at the end of this very dark tunnel is the possibility that a new generation of Israelis will face their future without sheltering in the shadow of the Holocaust, even as they will have to bear the stain of the genocide in Gaza perpetrated in their name. Israel will have to learn to live without falling back on the Holocaust as justification for inhumanity. That, despite all the horrific suffering we are currently watching, is a valuable thing, and may, in the long run, help Israel face the future in a healthier, more rational and less fearful and violent manner.
This will do nothing to compensate for the staggering amount of death and suffering of Palestinians. But an Israel liberated from the overwhelming burden of the Holocaust may finally come to terms with the inescapable need for its seven million Jewish citizens to share the land with the seven million Palestinians living in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in peace, equality and dignity. That will be the only just reckoning.
(Omer Bartov is a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University.)
If you care to actually understand the difficulties of Birthing Centers (hint: it’s a National problem… not an Adventist Health issue):
https://www.mendocinochcd.gov/health-care-websites
https://www.mendocinochcd.gov/files/ee5cd921d/WhatIsABirthCenter.pdf
It is good to see Supervisor Cline representing the interests of Mendocino and other rural counties, in Sacramento.
Warmest spiritual greetings from Washington, D.C.,
As you know, I have finished being supportive of the Peace Vigil in front of the White House (for the sixteenth time since June of 1991). I would like to return to California. I’ve got $1,117.59 in the Chase checking account, $108.51 in the wallet, and general health is excellent at age 75. I assure you that I will receive all that is materially required for the rest of my earthly life. This is a spiritually guaranteed certainty. I need a place to go to initially upon my return. I am happy that postmodern America is benefitted from my over 50 year contribution in the service of peace and justice and radical ecological activism. Please contact me as soon as possible. Thank you!
Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317
Email: [email protected]
July 18th, 2025 Anno Domini
Palestine
Thank you for the thorough, convincing piece by Omar Botov on the Israeli genocide being waged in Palestine. I heard him speak on NPR yesterday–there is so much I can’t bear to read or listen to, but this one got me and I forced myself. Our complicity in this genocide is shocking. I have many Jewish friends and know they struggle terribly with this truth. But all of us here have to struggle with it also. How many other newspapers in the U.S. will print this piece? The answer–not many.
Buckle up, Buttercup things are getting weirder.
De-funding public radio and television is another brick in the authoritarian wall Trump et al is building. CBS is canceling Stephen Cobert, one of the most outspoken critics of Trump, because their parent company, Paramount wants a merger that must be approved by the Trump administration.
Professor Kim Scheppele from Princeton University, suggests there are 10 steps to destroying Democracy:
1. Winning an election
2. Expansion of executive power where she says “the president decides he wants more than he’s supposed to have.”
3. Making Congress complicit, you weakened them, and you neutralize or neuter the judiciary.
4. Firing all the people who know how to make government work like civil service in effort to break democracy.
5. Putting loyalists in places like the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense
6. Breaking communication – de-funding public media, promoting misinformation on social media
7. Blaming someone for the broken government, for the broken promises, the attack on DEI, or in 1939, blaming the Jews.
8. Eliminate anyone who can help these communities by suing law firms that do pro bono cases, going after philanthropies, accusing them of giving money, and going after colleges and universities that teach people what they should know.
9. Encourage and incentivize private violence by sending Marines, the National Guard, and ICE into the streets
10. Deciding there is no new election, which is not hard because by that time, because everyone is either afraid, poor, broken, or complicit.
I hope there will be a huge blue wave in the mid-terms to stop this take-over of our American government.
This funny little newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, may be one of the few places left to get news. Stay strong and independent.
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Host and Producer, “The Truth About Money”, KMEC-LP (2014-2019)
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