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YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 100°, Covelo 99°, Yorkville 97°, Laytonville 96°, Boonville 95°, Fort Bragg 68°, Point Arena 61°
ISOLATED DRY THUNDERSTORMS possible in the interior this afternoon and evening. Hot temperatures likely through Wednesday for the interior. Stratus likely for the coastal areas with marginal short-lived clearing in the afternoons for the coming days. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 50F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Clear at the moment but I expect fog shortly as we continue the fog then clearing routine until further notice. Although the fog does appear to have moved away from the coast on the satellite view?
A READER WRITES: Charles Bush, past Fort Bragg Senior Center Director was a very nice person, and it translated to a very warm, welcoming place. A highly successful place. The new Director is different; a very nice, person, too, but very organized. She transformed the SCenter into a more Urban place. A highly successful place.
AV UNIFIED NEWS
The first two weeks of school have been fantastic! There is something so special about these first days of school: the energy, new school clothes and supplies, the fresh start, the fun and opportunities on the horizon. Whether your child is a Senior savoring these final months and thinking about what comes next in life, or a new Kindergartener getting accustomed to the increased structure of school, our kids are learning and growing!
The excited voices in the hallways, as children greet one another and their educators is music to our ears. Thank you for supporting your students in their educational journey. It’s going to be a wonderful school year!
Important Dates
All District Dates:
Sept. 12: Fair Friday (minimum day)
Sept. 15: Professional Development Day (no school for students)
TBD: Track Ribbon Cutting (sometime in October)
Back to School Nights:
AVES: Sept. 18 at 5:50
AV JrSr HS: TBD (We’ll have this date to you next week!)
Our Students are Talking About…
Our students are excited about fall sports, both at the high school and elementary school level. The weather is beautiful and our kids are getting out and getting active. Check in with your school office or the weekly principal update for information about how your child can get involved!
Our students are also talking about Fair Friday! As always, the halls are abuzz with the planning for their involvement in the fair or their plans to visit and enjoy one another. See you site newsletters for more information as we approach this annual tradition!
Our Educators are Talking About…
Multi-Tiered Systems of Support - We are working hard alongside teachers to identify learning needs and get the help to kids who need it early, so they can catch up and succeed.
At AVES, Ali Cook and Charlotte Triplett are reviewing student achievement data and talking with teachers to set up small-group help in the afternoons (and eventually during ASP) for students, with a focus on reading and mathematics. Soon, tutors from AVHS will be heading down to AVES in the afternoons to assist with this endeavor! This is so good for everyone.
At AV Jr Sr HS, multiple courses have been added to support students in the area of mathematics. Students in those courses will receive intensive support, in addition to their regular classes. Additional support in most subjects is available through the Library (Thank you, Mrs. Tere!) and through various Tier I (teacher-led) opportunities.
Student Learning
Mathematics is an area of focus at both sites. Our Professional Development on September 15 will be largely focused on math practices and how to build conceptual understanding. It appears that our math scores are on the upswing already and the added focus this year should bring big learning gains for all students.
Student Engagement We have begun talking about how to ensure students are “with us” throughout the instruction and teachers will be sharing techniques such as think/pair/share, Socratic Seminars, Project Based Learning. When we structure lessons to engage students, they learn more quickly and retain what they have learned better.
Restorative Practices
At AVES, teachers have committed to teaching the Second Step SEL curriculum, and Nat Corey-Moran is beginning to run groups for students needing support with making positive behavioral choices. Also at AVES, students will have the opportunity to work within the Peaceful Warrior Project: a mindful approach to Aikido, led by trained counselors.
At AV Jr Sr HS, teachers are leading students in “circles” at least once per week during advisory time. This is an opportunity for students to share as much or as little about a topic as they choose (Favorite food? Favorite pet? A time you were proud? And other weekly prompts) This practice is proven to increase student connections to each other, to educators, and to school.
Districtwide, we work with several counselors and will now have additional supports through Tapestry (funded by the Community Schools Grant) to provide students with social-emotional, and behavioral help as needed.
Construction Projects
CTEFP Grant Project (Possible New CTE Building)
Mr. McNerney and Mrs. Larson Balliet met with our awesome Agriculture teachers to discuss their hopes and dreams for a building proposal. We would like to get state-of-the art classrooms and workshops in place to support our Farm to Table, Agri-Sciences, and Floral Design courses, as well as space to grow our welding endeavors and possibly room to expand woodworking options. We came up with exciting ideas and will be working closely with our team to try to complete a grant proposal, which is due December 1st.
Elementary School Kitchen
This project is moving along and should be completed by the end of September. Because we are an older campus, various construction challenges emerged as we delved into this work. We are thankful to Cupples Construction for their continued work with us!
High School Track
The track is moving along very quickly and will be ready for ribbon cutting and student use in early October! We are exceedingly grateful to Caltrans for the Clean California grant and to Rege Construction, who is doing a top-notch job!
High School Gym
We have not stopped working on the gym; our state just requires a lot of red tape for school construction. We have qualified for seismic work, submitted plans to DSA (Division State Architect) and are waiting on another estimate before we get final word on funding from OPSC (Office of Public School Construction). Ultimately, we will be refurbishing, rather than replacing the gym. This has been the clear preference of the community and will allow us to keep that iconic gym “feel.”
If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Ms. Jenny Bailey at AVES or Mr. Heath McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Ms. Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.
With respect,
Kristin Larson Balliet, Superintendent, Anderson Valley Unified School District
ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE NEWSLETTER September 2025 [excerpts]
The August Gathering: Anderson Valley came out in droves to celebrate Dean Titus and the Coyote Cowboys’ 50th anniversary as well as the 45th anniversary of the AV Historical Society’s very first event (featuring the Coyote Cowboys).
Continuing on with our Village Writers’ Series:
Did You Know? An Endowment Fund is available to reimburse people that drive seniors that are unable to drive themselves to medical appointments. Forms and more information are available at AVSC!…
https://mailchi.mp/04714b695b0a/anderson-valley-village-newsletter-august-5855000?e=358077c1c9
KZYX & LABOR DAY [Coast Chatline]
Joshua Daniels: “As many of you know, the removal of federal CPB funding has left our local public radio station KZYX with a sizable budget deficit of nearly $200k per year…”
Marco McClean: Josh, hear this in a warm, friendly, amused tone. I’m gonna give this ten minutes of my time: You started out with an obvious lie.
In fact, last year KZYX acquired and somehow disposed of three quarters of a million dollars. $170K of that came as a tax-derived money grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All of KZYX’s real operating expenses put together add up to considerably less than $300K. 740K minus 170K leaves $570K, close to twice the amount needed. That’s a 200K-plus /surplus/, not a 200K deficit. KZYX is and has always been swimming in money, from all the sources you mention later on in your note, but mostly from big-money donations, many of them secret, some of them not so secret, like the $100,000 grant a few years ago from the heirs to a San Francisco law firm fortune. KZYX has never been in trouble for money, and if it were in trouble for money now, that could only be the result of chicanery, shenanigans, and/or laughably bad management. The very well-off donor class who pay the lion’s share for KZYX, however it is managed, are richer than ever.
Josh, you say, “Lots of local programming could be on the chopping block.” That’s another obvious lie. It costs KZYX nothing for local programming. The local airpeople are not paid. And they don’t need management. They show up and do their show and go home. The 4000-watt transmitter costs two dollars an hour to run whether there are shows squirting through it or not. The translator stations cost a nickel or two per hour to run. There are tower fees, and music publisher fees, and there’s rent and internet, and some beloved canned programs from a thousand miles away whose producers are paid pretty darn well from over 1,000 NPR-colonized stations, but there’s no link at all between any rise and fall of funds at KZYX and the fate of local shows. “Your generous donations keep the great shows you love on the air” has always been a big fat lie.
Which reminds me, Monday is Labor Day, really Workers’ Day, in appreciation of the people who keep the wheels of the world turning with our expertise and effort and dedication and hands and feet and brains, such as they are. KZYX has always had plenty of money to pay at least a token of monetary respect to the local airpeople and has never done it. Throughout the decades of gravy train years, whenever I brought it up at a board meeting, the response I got was, There’s no money for that, and besides, they’re all volunteers. The manager/CEO never volunteers his services. Why should he? $5,000 a month, without fail, into his personal bank account, and not a penny for all the local airpeople prepping for and showing up for and doing all their shows, all year long. You’ve seen the books, you already know that, and it boggles the mind that it seems right to you or to anyone.
And, Josh, you say, “I’ve seen some discussions on this ListServ suggesting KZYX is spending too much on transmitters, infrastructure, etc. These people are largely misinformed and have never worked in radio. I’ve reviewed the latest KZYX budget and there really isn’t a lot of fat to cut that isn’t going to negatively affect programming and/or signal transmission.” Wow, who are you talking about? Who are those people and what did they actually say? I’m really curious. Because if you’re talking about me, I never said KZYX is paying too much for real things it needs. It’s disappearing money. And I’ve worked in commercial and noncommercial radio and television and events and music and theater production and publishing in Mendocino County for more than forty years. I’ve built radio stations with my fingers.
Let’s talk about all this on the air.
WHALES AND BIRDS OFFSHORE
Noyo Pelagics has three offshore trips scheduled this coming weekend and spaces are available on each. Sign up for any or all at noyopelagics.org to experience the marvels of the offshore marine environment here.
Friday September 5 will be a half-day (five hour) trip focusing on marine mammals. Humpback Whales have returned and are being seen regularly, a few miles offshore. Pacific White-sided Dolphins are also regularly seen, often in the same area with the whales, and two or three other species of dolphin are also likely to be found at this time of year. Blue Whales have been spotted sometimes and Fin Whales are also possible. We have been seeing Fur seals pretty regularly too. The weather forecast looks good. Cost is $125 per person.
Sunday September 7 will be an all-day offshore birding trip. Many seabirds are moving through the outer shelf waters on migration, and many others are coming here to feed on the abundant baitfish. We can expect to see thousands of shearwaters and will be searching for rarities among them. It looks like good conditions for finding small birds like storm-petrels or murrelets as well. Cost for the all-day trip (ten hours) is $185 per person.
Monday September 8 will be another half-day trip looking at any and all kinds of marine life: whales, dolphins, fur seals, seabirds, ocean sunfish, sharks (three species have been sighted recently, including Great White), etc. Cost is $125 per person.
Trips depart the dock at 7:30 AM aboard the Kraken, a 50-foot charter vessel operated by Anchor Charter Boats. All trips are led by noted ornithologist (and white shark researcher) Peter Pyle. Birders from the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society and marine-mammal experts from the Noyo Center for Marine Science will also be on board. More information can be found at noyopelagics.com where you can also sign up for planned trips in October and November.
“I now belong to a higher cult of mortals for I have seen the albatross.” — Robert Cushman Murphy, 1912
Cheers,
Tim Bray, Mendocino
Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, http://mendocinocoastaudubon.org/
RUSSELL BROOK DAM
by Carol Dominy
Russell Brook Dam, a modest sixteen-foot structure on a tributary of Big River, was completed in 1907 by Alfred R. Johnston, a well-known logging boss and contractor. Built partly as a frame dam using logs, it stood one mile above the main river on Russell Brook. Smaller than many of the other dams on Big River, it was also the last dam Johnston built before his retirement from logging. Evidence of the dam remained visible as late as 1973, when his great-nephew, Francis Jackson, photographed its remains during his hikes to document Big River’s logging past.
Jackson’s explorations along Big River began as a personal project. His goal was simply to create a map marking the locations of old dams to hang in his office. To gather this information, he hiked the riverbanks, taking photographs and recording the remains of dams such as Russell Brook. Along the way, he realized how little of the area’s logging history had been preserved, especially regarding the extensive dam system that once powered the lumber industry. His simple map project grew into a much larger historical study, eventually becoming the book “Big River Was Dammed” (out of print, but can be viewed at the Kelley House Museum Research Office). Through his work, Jackson preserved stories, technical details, and firsthand accounts that might otherwise have been lost with the passing of old-timers who once worked on the river.
The builder of Russell Brook Dam, Alfred Ryeson Johnston (1851–1929), played a central role in the history of logging on Big River. Born in Nova Scotia, he migrated first to Maine and later to California, settling on the Mendocino Coast in the 1880s. Johnston worked briefly for the Caspar Lumber Company before striking out as a logging contractor on Big River. Over the next three decades, he became one of the most enduring figures in the region’s timber industry. He built or oversaw at least seven dams, ran multiple logging camps, and in 1914 was the last man to use a bull team on Big River.
Despite his rugged profession, Johnston was remembered as a generous and hospitable man. In 1886 he married Sena Anderson, and together they raised their nephew, Charlie Buck, who had lost his mother at a young age. At the age of fifteen Charlie stood six feet and five inches tall. He grew up to become a champion log-bucker and was the original portrayer of the legendary Paul Bunyan at the annual Paul Bunyan Days celebration in Fort Bragg.
Johnston himself was respected by the men who worked for him, admired for his fairness, and beloved as a friend. After retiring in 1918, he and his wife settled at the Dunlap Ranch near Willits. Even in retirement, he stayed connected to his old life, riding his horse down to the river in 1923 to watch his old friend John Norberry build the North Fork Dam, the last dam built on Big River. Johnston passed away in 1929 at the age of seventy-eight, leaving behind a legacy woven deeply into the history of Mendocino’s redwood industry.
(KelleyHouseMuseum.org)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, September 1, 2025
BASILIO ANGUIANO, 44, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, under influence, paraphernalia, probation revocation.
JEFF BURGESS, 38, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
KENDALL JENSEN, 39, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
DANIEL KOWALSKY, 55, Ukiah. Under influence, vandalism, probation revocation.
VIKTORIA LADD, 30, Clearlake/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
DANIEL PEREZ, 40, Ukiah. DUI with priors causing bodily injury.
PETER ROSE SR.,57, Point Arena. Controlled substance, failure to appear.
LANDON SANDERS, 20, Ukiah. Loaded handgun-not registered owner.
ELIZABETH SMITH-VALLEY, 40, Hopland. Paraphernalia, resisting.
HONESTY LOST ITS WAY
Life is not about money. Money compounds the trials of living, especially in our current economic system. It makes the players wealthier, and the ignorant investors poorer. We have too many voices hawking can't-miss investments, and fewer watchdogs verify their veracity. Since the Trump Supreme Court made lying protected speech, we cannot trust anyone promoting anything.
Not so long ago, we had conservative mouthpieces were talking about the "Raw Deal." But the New Deal protected us from predatory lenders, corporate owners, and corrupt medical insurers.
Now, money dictates what people say and how they behave. What we achieve only means something if it enriches one's bank account. I hear people promoting news organizations because they are popular. Their ratings are more valuable than the truth. But I wonder, how can we trust our decisions when there is no truth to be found?
Tom Fantulin, Fort Bragg
‘NOT OK BEING COMPLICIT’ NorCal joins nationwide ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protest on Labor Day
Protesters gathered across the country to defend the rights of workers and raise their voice against the Trump administration’s policies.
by Tarini Mehta
Hundreds of protesters gathered at Old Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa on Monday as part of a nationwide “Workers Over Billionaires” rally against President Donald Trump’s policies and the billionaires who, they say, have benefited from them.
On Labor Day, community activists and labor unions across the country took to the streets to defend Medicaid, Social Security and other programs for workers, raise their voice against attacks on immigrants and vulnerable populations and protest funding of wars.
Coordinated by network May Day Strong, more than 1,000 events took place Monday in the latest addition to a series of coordinated efforts to protest the Trump administration’s actions. In addition to Santa Rosa, events took place locally in Jenner, Middletown in Lake County and Point Arena and Ukiah in Mendocino County.
As many as 500 people were at the Santa Rosa protest, according to organizers.
“I am here today because there are so many things happening in our country that I’m not OK with,” said Jenni Anna in Santa Rosa. “The deportation of people to places where they don’t even live, the attack on women’s rights and voting rights, the genocide in Palestine - there’s a lot of reasons why we’re out here today. I’m not OK being complicit in my rights, or anybody’s rights, being taken away.”
The Santa Rosa demonstration was organized by the Sonoma County Democratic Socialists of America, the American Party of Labor, Communist Party USA, Party of Socialism and Liberation and 50501 Santa Rosa.
“We were protesting the rule of billionaires over workers in this country,” said Ruben Ramirez, co-chair of the Sonoma County Democratic Socialists of America. “We want to organize labor power, especially for unions and other organizations on the left, and create a popular front.”
Also Monday, organization Indivisible Sonoma County participated in a “banner drop challenge” to express resistance to the Trump administration’s policies across 20 Highway 101 overpasses from Corte Madera to Cloverdale. It was part of a larger demonstration spanning more than 125 overpasses from Southern California to the Canadian border that began on Friday.
“Groups all over the country are protesting today with a common purpose - the Trump administration is putting the interests of the rich over those of working people,” Cloverdale Indivisible organizer Pam Browning told The Press Democrat.
(pressdemocrat.com)
SUPPORT ELECTED LEADERS WHO SUPPORT LABOR
Editor:
Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894, when Democratic President Grover Cleveland signed it into law after years of worker organizing and sacrifice. Four decades later, in the Great Depression, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt built on that legacy with the New Deal. His administration created Social Security and unemployment insurance, banned child labor, set a federal minimum wage, strengthened unions and laid the foundation for the 40-hour workweek. These reforms gave millions of Americans greater security, dignity and a fairer share of our nation’s prosperity. Since then, Democrats have continued to champion fair pay, affordable health care, safer workplaces and respect for all who labor. These are not just Democratic policies — they are commonsense policies that strengthen families, communities and the nation.
Republicans, by contrast, have opposed nearly every advance worth celebrating on Labor Day. They fought Social Security, Medicare and the minimum wage. They’ve work to weaken workplace safety, undermine unions and side with corporate lobbyists and billionaires over working families.
This Labor Day, let’s remember that honoring workers means more than barbecues. It means supporting leaders and policies that put America’s workers first. History shows clearly which party has done that — and which has not.
Eric Peterson
Santa Rosa
A BIG WEEKEND FOR BOYCOTT CHEVRON CAMPAIGN in Sacramento, on the West Coast
by Dan Bacher
Chevron has refused to respond to growing calls to boycott the company for its operation and co-ownership of Israeli-claimed fossil gas fields in the Mediterranean.
This Labor Day weekend was a big one for Sacramento Area residents supporting the campaign to boycott the Chevron corporation for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza and its role in environmental devastation across the globe, from the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador to Richmond.
On Friday, August 29, 2025, 4-6 pm, on the Sutterville overpass over I-5 in Sacramento, community members in Sacramento joined in a coordinated highway banner action called for by West Coast Boycott Chevron to demand Chevron Corporation cut ties with Israel over its ongoing genocide in Gaza and apartheid in the West Bank.
The campaign calls on Chevron to immediately end its supporting role to the Israeli military. “The West Coast coordinated highway banner action amplifies calls made by local organizers across the country for individuals and institutions––such as universities and churches––to boycott and divest from Chevron because its profits come at the cost of genocide, apartheid, and the climate crisis,” according to a statement from the group.
“Coordinating this action with 23 cities in Washington, Oregon, and California shows the growth and determination of this demand,” explained Christina Pollock with Sacramento Boycott Chevron. “Chevron has been harming communities here in the U.S. and around the world for decades. Now they're complicit in fueling the genocide in Gaza. We won't stop until they do.”…
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/09/01/18879481.php
GREAT EVENT if you like Ragtime. (How can anybody not?) (via Fred Gardner)
LABOR DAY
by Fred Gardner
I’ve sung this song but I’ll sing it again, about George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, accepting Richard Nixon’s invitation to a party at the White House instead of leading a march of union members. It was 1970. Recognition of “Red China” was in the works, and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs would soon follow.
Labor Day is here again
the parade is off, in case you wondered
Union brother, this year we're struttin'
down at number sixteen hundredTo Guy Lombardo's songs of struggle
Dinah Shore's proud ballads of toil
for the boys in the mines and the girls on the lines
and the horny-handed sons of the soilWilliam Haywood vowed this day would come
ain't it a shame Big Bill ain't alive?
to see Richard Nixon drinkin and mixin'
With Tony Giordano from Local FiveAnd Rockefeller tango, ain't he graceful?
Her old man's in the building trades
Look, there's Senators, there's J. Edgar Hoover!
Him and Bill could talk over all them old raidsLabor Day is here again
Mother Earth strains, gnashing her teeth
When's that New World baby due, baby?
Wish I could tell you more than just “Breathe…”
US Communists were delusional about Stalin and the Soviet Union, but their contributions to the labor movement –as union members and leaders– were essential. In 1946, 4.3 million US workers had gone out on strike: auto workers, electrical workers, meatpackers, steel workers, coal miners, railroad engineers… The bosses’ response was the Taft-Hartley Act, passed by Congress in ‘47. It banned every form of solidarity working people had engaged in.
“Among the practices prohibited,” says Wikipedia, were “jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. The amendments also allowed states to enact right-to-work laws banning union shops. Enacted during the early stages of the Cold War, the law required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits.”
LA DOLCE VITA
by Herb Caen (1988)
Although I am not one of the noble ‘born and raised,’ I have lived here, man and boy, for 52-odd years, and I have never seen the city odder or more disturbing. Or perhaps disturbed is the word. At times the old line about San Francisco being the world’s largest outpatient clinic seems to have come true. The nut quotient rises daily, and not only on our streets, which, in the less favored faubourgs, are filthy beyond all understanding. The nuts behind the steering wheel are becoming ever angrier and more frustrated, visibly on the thin edge of violence. You see it in the wild driving, the familiar shouted seven-word curse and the display of what a writer calls ‘digital disdain.’ Violence simmers just below the surface of this city that dances on the edge of the world with gay abandon and abandoned gays. The killing fields are all around us, alive, sick, dying, and the band is playing louder and faster.
San Francisco, being small, is among the most visible of cities. Of course there is wheeling and dealing, not to mention scenes of squalor and degradation, going on constantly behind closed doors and high walls, but for the most part, what you see is what there is. I can’t remember such an obvious and widening gap between rich and poor. ‘In San Francisco,’ a visiting Englishman said years ago, ‘there seem to be fewer people one either pities or envies,’ but I don’t think he’d say that today. On Nob Hill, stretch limos roll and smartly uniformed hotel doormen whistle for cabs. On Stockton, in the heart of ‘one of the world’s most fashionable shopping areas,’ the beggars are three to a block, a gauntlet for the fashionables to run on their way to a $100-lunch-for-two at Campton Place. The fancy cars of elegant customers are parked in front of I. Magnin and never tagged. Around the corner, a drunk is passed out. Two cops take no notice of him, elaborately looking the other way.
Like a great, rudderless ship, San Francisco drifts aimlessly. Nobody is saying ‘Man the lifeboats!’ yet, but the city fathers and mothers are bailing as fast as they can. Despite the best efforts of some of the finest minds ever to grace civic government, graffiti continue to proliferate, a relatively innocent manifestation of the hopelessness that has overtaken what sociologists call the ‘underclass,’ a group this most favored of cities never had before. We had the poor, the middle class and the rich for a century or more, but there was movement up and down the ladder and leadership that kept some kind of order, offering at least a modicum of hope, and selling the idea that we were all San Franciscans, come what may. When come what may turned out to be a killer earthquake, everybody pitched in. The Reagan policy of benign neglect — socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor — has come back to haunt us. Free enterprise is drugs. Membership in Club San Francisco? What does that mean, man?
Dancing on the edge of the world, yes, to the wild dissonances of the final chorus of Ravel’s ‘La Valse.’ The oldest living survivor of this remarkable small town can’t remember when there were so many parties, a new one starting as the old one is barely ending. There is money to burn, and it is going up — yes, Mr. Wolfe — in a bonfire of vanities. The brightly lighted ship spins faster and faster, as though caught in a whirlpool, the upper decks crowded with the swells in their black ties and jewels, the lower decks dark, sad and sullen, jammed with the ill and the alienated, the drunks and the junkies and the crazed. By now, the money should have trickled down from the top decks — wasn’t that the theory? — but it doesn’t seem to work that way. In the old days, the old rich gave parties, too, because they felt they had to, but they were quiet affairs, understated, even a little on the spare side. Now it’s a wild race to see who can make Thorsten Veblen spin even faster in his grave, old Thorsten with his theories of ‘conspicuous consumption.’ We used to glow with foolish pride when people said, ‘San Francisco is a great party town!’ Now the nonstop parties seem like a way of avoiding reality. Keep dancing, baby, and no, I don’t think anybody threw a rock through the window.
Sure it’s a simplistic approach, the party gimmick, and ‘city of contrasts’ business, but an old literary device. Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire, throwing the parties he was never a part of. Fellini’s beautiful, lost, self-destructive souls in his classic ‘La Dolce Vita,’ trooping from their latest all-night orgy to stare glassy-eyed at the monster washed up onto the beach.
Meanwhile, let us consider the miracle that this city hasn’t quite come apart at the seams. There is time for one more dance, and then let’s get serious.
GIANTS RETURN TO .500, rookie Drew Gilbert swings hot bat for offense
by Susan Slusser
DENVER — Drew Gilbert’s hot bat, getting three hits for the San Francisco Giants on Sunday — plus the big outfield at Coors Field earned the rookie a start against the Rockies.
Gilbert blazed right on, crushing a two-run homer his first at-bat and adding singles in his next three to help power the Giants to an 8-2 win, their eighth in nine games. At 69-69, the Giants are back at .500 for the first time since Aug. 10. They’re five games behind the Mets for the final National League wild-card spot, and they’ve scored 69 runs over the past nine games.
“The more quality at-bats we have throughout a game, I think the results are going to be in our favor more often,” Gilbert said. “And we had a lot of guys who contributed a ton today.”
Gilbert is the first Giants position player in the modern era to have back-to-back days with three or more hits from the ninth spot in the order, and the first Giants player in the ninth spot to have a four-hit game.
But, as Gilbert was quick to point out, not to be overlooked in Monday’s holiday day game was Kai-Wei Teng, back up for a spot start with Carson Whisenhunt out with back discomfort. Teng struck out eight and left with two on in the sixth; both scored when reliever Joel Peguero gave up an RBI groundout and Yanquiel Fernández’s double.
Rafael Devers hit San Francisco’s first homer, a 411-foot laser down the right-field line in the first. The ball left his bat at 114.5 mph, the Giants’ hardest-hit homer in the Statcast era, since 2008. Joey Bart had held the mark previously, at 114.3 mph.
Willy Adames added his 26th homer, a two-run shot in the seventh, and appears primed to be the Giants’ first 30-home run hitter since Barry Bonds in 2004. Heck, it’s Coors Field — he could reach that mark over the next two days.
San Francisco has homered in 15 consecutive games, the team’s most since 2001 (July 22-Aug. 7).
The Giants are having a blast in this rare stretch of consistent offense. On Monday, Gilbert, clearly starting to feel comfortable in the big leagues and with his new organization, displayed more of his supercharged personality. After his homer off former Tennessee teammate Chase Dollander, Gilbert whooped and hollered his way through the dugout to the extent Matt Chapman stiff-armed him away as the rest of the players chuckled.
“I’m not really in the state of mind to be able to describe it anymore,” said Gilbert, who was known with the Volunteers for his exuberant extra-base hit celebrations. “I feel it’s just kind of something that turns on once you’re in the heat of competition. I think I’m a little bit different off the field, but when you’re competing to win, emotions come out. It’s fun to get a good group of guys that make it easy to come out of my shell and be who I am.”
Chapman clearly has become Gilbert’s big-brother type on the team; Gilbert said every day, at some point, Chapman fends him off jokingly, a “sheesh, take it easy” motion.
“He’s always exceptionally fired up, so it just comes along with him,” manager Bob Melvin said of Gilbert. “The more he’s here, the more confident he feels in showing his personality, and there’s a lot of it.”
Gilbert’s hot streak — hits in five consecutive at-bats, with five RBIs and five runs in two days — presents something of a conundrum, because Luis Matos is swinging the bat just as well, batting .432 with three homers and eight RBIs in his past 10 games. He looks as if he’s moved beyond being a platoon-type player, but Heliot Ramos is ensconced in left, Jung Hoo Lee is in center, and the team is more than set for designated hitters.
Even with the Giants still in the wild-card race, this final month could give the front office a lot of information about potential offseason moves. If the front office believes Gilbert and Matos both profile as everyday outfielders, perhaps someone in the outfield group becomes a trade piece this winter.
Lee and Gilbert are the best fielders of the bunch; Ramos’ penchant for mistakes in the field and on the bases — he was tagged out when he came off the base going for a double in the third inning Monday — might make leave him slightly vulnerable should the club choose to move someone. But he’s also a 2024 All-Star who has 16 homers, 58 RBIs and 70 runs.
In Teng’s previous start for the Giants, on Aug. 18, he’d thrown 80 pitches, and on Monday he threw 85; Melvin characterized him as having “a rubber arm” and said, “You could see his confidence grow as the game went along.”
That was helped by Teng’s early ability to sidestep trouble. The Rockies had men at the corners with one out in the second, and he struck out the next two batters. They had two on and one out in the third and he struck out the next two — at high-scoring Coors Field, all the more vital.
“That made me more comfortable pitching with runners on base,” Teng said, with Andy Lin interpreting.
Teng got 17 swings and misses in all, often with his tricky sweeping slider.
The one sour note Monday: Casey Schmitt was hit by a pitch in the fifth, taking a 97 mph sinker off the back of his right elbow. After attention from the training staff, he took his base but remained there through one batter before Christian Koss pinch ran for him. The team announced that Schmitt has an elbow contusion but X-rays were negative. He’s not expected to miss more than a game, if that.
(sfchronicle.com)
WHAT’S IN THE SUITCASE? EXTRA-STRENGTH CANNABIS FROM CALIFORNIA TO BRITAIN
Potent California-grown marijuana is so popular in the U.K. that large quantities are being illegally smuggled on passenger flights, officials say.
by Lizzie Dearden
In California, the legalization of recreational marijuana has had many consequences, including the boom in boutique dispensaries, the proliferation of edibles and growing questions around the health effects for some users.
Add to the list a more unexpected effect, far from the industrial greenhouses of Northern California: an illicit export market for so-called Cali weed in Britain, where cannabis remains illegal.
California-grown marijuana, which has developed a reputation for potency and high quality, is so popular that it is being smuggled in suitcases from America with minimal attempts to hide it, according to British law enforcement.
Officials have intercepted a steady flow of cannabis-filled suitcases loaded onto passenger flights from the United States, with an average of five seizures a month in 2025. The drug is often vacuum-packed into plastic bags and crammed inside suitcases taken on commercial flights as checked baggage.
“What we’re seeing is Californian weed, which demands a price premium in the U.K.,” Paul Pantry, a senior officer at the National Crime Agency, where he oversees Britain’s border security issues, told The New York Times. “The different legal position around cannabis has been exploited by criminal gangs who see the dollar signs of the profit margin they can make by bringing that cannabis to the U.K., where there’s a very big market for it.”
Andrew DeAngelo, a dispensary owner in Oakland, Calif., and an industry adviser, said the reason for the demand is obvious: “California cannabis is the best cannabis in the world.”
The plant has been grown for decades in California, and its cultivation accelerated after partial legalization in 1996, Mr. DeAngelo said in a phone interview, with breeders competing to develop new strains.
“Because of the growing climate here and all the other advances we have with talent and technology, we produce the highest-potency cannabis,” he added. “People want things that are high-quality.”
British dealers are advertising Californian marijuana online at prices far above those of cannabis grown elsewhere. One account on the Telegram messaging app advertising Cali weed in Britain offered a “menu” of 32 strains, listing prices from 200 pounds ($270) to £350 ($472) per ounce. “It’s really top-grade,” the account operator wrote. “All our strains are Cali-imported and of very good quality.”
Another Telegram account offered 27 strains of Cali weed for £420 ($566) an ounce, saying they contained a high level of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient of the plant. “It really hits different,” the message said.
The increased presence of THC in a form of cannabis known as skunk in Britain caused the government to move the drug from the lowest level of illegal categorization, Class C, to Class B in 2009, citing concerns over the “onset of psychotic illness and the increased risk to mental health from the use of stronger cannabis.”
The possession of cannabis can be punished with a maximum five-year prison sentence in England, and supplying or importing with up to 14 years of imprisonment.
Rob Ralphs, a criminology professor at Manchester Metropolitan University in northern England, works on a publicly funded drug safety project that has been analyzing samples of Cali weed from volunteers and the police.
He said that the type of cannabis traditionally sold in Britain had THC levels of 3 to 5 percent, while skunk is normally found to have 10 to 20 percent. Cannabis sold as Cali weed has far higher levels of THC, he said, up to 40 percent.
Mr. Ralphs first heard young people in Manchester talking about Cali weed in 2018, but said he did not see it emerge in his own research of drug markets until 2020, by which time it was seen as a “premium product” and was in high demand.
Previously, “most young people would just buy standard weed, bud or skunk from a local dealer,” he said. “There was nothing like the range of strains and the potency that we see now.”
Cali weed is commonly sold in brightly colored packets with cartoonlike designs, Mr. Ralphs said, although he doubts that all sellers are honest about their products’ origins. “If you’re a British dealer and you’re doing a home grow in your bedroom or in a warehouse, you can package it in a bag that’s costing you a few pence and double the profit,” he added.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it was enforcing laws that prohibit the export of marijuana using a combination of intelligence, international cooperation and spot checks on suitcases.
An unknown quantity of cannabis is being successfully smuggled into Britain in “increasingly brazen” ways, Mr. Pantry said. Whereas smugglers would previously try to conceal drugs, National Crime Agency officers are now finding suitcases packed full of cannabis in clear bags, with “no attempts to conceal the drugs” beyond an occasional layer of clothing, he added.
Mr. Pantry said that similarities in the sizes of suitcases, the packaging methods and common U.S. airports of origin suggest that the cannabis is being exported as an “industrial operation” by multiple internationally connected groups.
People may be offered large payments or free vacations to serve as couriers, Mr. Pantry said, and some may be misled about what is inside the suitcases.
“They’re increasingly people from all walks of life — young people, students,” he added. “We do see people with criminal histories doing it, of course, but we see lots of people who’ve never been in trouble in any way before.”
Among the couriers that the National Crime Agency said had been caught smuggling cannabis from the United States to Britain were a construction worker from Pennsylvania and a St. Louis clothing boutique owner who said she had been given the luggage by someone else and believed it contained clothing.
Airport scanners for checked baggage are designed to prioritize physical security threats, like weapons and explosives, and while sniffer dogs and manual searches are effective to detect drugs, such measures cannot be used at scale, Mr. Pantry said.
“These people are getting on a commercial airplane with everyone else at the airport and going through customs like everyone else,” he added. “It’s hidden in plain sight.”
(NY Times)
AND NOTHING IS DONE
To the Editor:
As we awake to another school shooting, the usual voices run on about “thoughts and prayers,” mental illness, the evils of the internet, sexual confusion, personal safety and the wording of the Second Amendment. We will see photos of the victims, hear from eyewitnesses, consult with experts and then do nothing.
Americans, particularly those in power, have decided that dead children are an acceptable price for gun ownership. The rest of the Western world thinks our “need” for guns is crazy. To them it seems that, in America, the lives of children are less important than easy access to guns. Until we change that view, all other discussion is just noise.
Robin Silver
Benicia
ALL IT TOOK IN MINNEAPOLIS
A trigger to squeeze
Transformed rage into carnage.
It's the guns, stupid.
— Jim Luther
AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN
To the Editor:
A fifth-grade boy who survived the attack on his school in Minnesota on Wednesday told a reporter that a classmate had saved him. He said his friend “laid on top of me” as shots were fired, “but got hit.” This child said his friend went to the hospital. “I was super scared for him,” the boy said, “but I think now he’s OK.”
Where adults failed, children protected one another with their bodies.
It is estimated that a majority of Americans have been directly or indirectly affected by gun-related incidents — or other forms of violence. In Boulder, Colo., in March 2021, where my friends and family shopped for groceries, a killer sprayed bullets in the aisles. One family member has been robbed at gunpoint. Three summers ago in Santa Fe, N.M., a young man stood outside my house with an AK-47. He and an accomplice returned moments later and fired on my neighbor, a grandmother asleep in her home. I was the first responder, and after surgeries, she survived.
None of this is remarkable. It is a hell of our own making, and even amid this latest tragedy, elements of the far right were quick to weaponize theories about the shooter, with the White House press secretary ascribing the murders to “demonic forces.”
Despite all of our differences, the vast majority of our fellow citizens agree on common-sense measures to curb this epidemic. Their voices are, alas, unlikely to be heard in this political climate.
Eric Radack
Santa Fe, New Mexico
“WILLIAM TOOK A CIGARETTE. He and Mr. Salter sat opposite one another. Between them, on the desk, lay an open atlas in which Mr. Salter had been vainly trying to find Reykjavik. There was a pause, during which Mr. Salter planned a frank and disarming opening. “How are your roots, Boot?” It came out wrong. “How are your boots, root?” he asked. William, glumly awaiting some fulminating rebuke, started and said, “I beg your pardon?” “I mean brute,” said Mr. Salter. William gave it up. Mr. Salter gave it up. They sat staring at one another, fascinated, hopeless.”
— Evelyn Waugh, ‘Scoop’
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
Putin Finds a Growing Embrace on the Global Stage
After Court Defeat, Trump Warns of Economic Chaos From Loss of Tariffs
Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign
Judge Halts U.S. Effort to Deport Guatemalan Children as Planes Sit on Tarmac
What to Know About the Earthquake in Afghanistan
It’s Usually Puerto Rico’s Slow Season. This Year, Bad Bunny’s in Town
“The power of a country road is different when one is walking along it from when one is flying over it by aeroplane.”
– Walter Benjamin
BACK TO SCHOOL
by James Kunstler
“We are living in what I call the 3rd Arc of American history, a period as consequential as the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War.” —Gen. Michael Flynn
Yellowed leaves were already dropping here in August with the lack of rain and tomatoes won’t turn red when the air hits the mid-forties at dawn. Summer is trying hard to end, though technically there’s almost a month left. This is the real new year, of course, not the noisy one in January with all the drunken commotion and confetti. Tomorrow, it’s back to school, back to the job, the grind, the responsibilities, the worry, the rage, the hope, the yearning, as we gyre toward cold and fire. Enjoy ye burgers and hot dogs while ye can this Labor Day.
Anyway, the geniuses of Silicon Valley are attempting to end labor, at least any labor of the mind. A-I is coming for your job, ye middle managers, ye info manipulators, ye engineers, copy-writers, clerks, and numbers-crunchers, coming for whatever remains of the American bourgeoise. I’m telling you now: A-I will be a huge disappointment. Not only will it wreck the scaffold of our social order but, after it makes everything stupid — even worse than today — it will hallucinate so badly that anything it touches will become crazier than the Democratic Party.
That’s not a hard goal to reach either, with literacy at about what used to be age-eight-level for over half the US population. In such a milieu, gnostic communism is sure to flourish. The immiseration of all becomes the greatest good for the greatest number. We’re already halfway there — though it is a pretty sure thing that the story will turn sharply. It’s not for nothing that we call this moment in history a “fourth turning.”
One turning point might lie directly ahead. You are now in the season of financial fiascos, and boy-oh-boy are we ever set up for a humdinger. Are you following the money-bloggers? Those boys and girls are staring into the abyss staring back at them, with their hair on fire and their eyes bugging out. Just about everything is unreal and out of whack: equity markets, bond rollovers, the fun-house of shadow banking, the value of collateral (if it’s even there), the fate of currencies, perhaps even the fate of nations. France, for instance, is chattering about an imminent IMF bailout. Well, if that one goes, what do you think happens in Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium . . . Western Civ, that is?
The cliché these days is that looming financial chaos and potential economic collapse is what’s driving the EU countries to all their loose war-talk. As if. . . as if they were even marginally capable of prosecuting any sort of war except the war against their own citizens currently underway — which requires only bureaucrats declaring new restrictions on liberty, not missiles, drones, bombs, bullets, and live human troops and, most of all, some comprehensible reason to fight.
Paranoia about Russia seeking to invade Western Europe is not a comprehensible reason to launch a war against Russia — because it’s just paranoia, political crazy, in the absence of any rational aspiration in current European governance. The Germans have tried “green” energy planning, shutting down their nuclear power plant fleet, applauding the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Where did that get them? I will tell you: it got them to a crashing standard-of-living. It got them to their current (maybe not-for-long) chancellor Friedrich Merz telling them last week to wave auf nimmer wiedersehen to their social welfare system, you know: cheap, subsidized medical care, free college, six-week vacations, cushy pensions. (And, meanwhile, do you mind if we spend whatever’s left of your taxes on free stuff for the hordes of third-world savages we stupidly imported into the country?)
But then, we’re not Europe. Mr. Trump has other ideas and is trying to lead a movement for re-ordering the economy back toward the production of real goods. It’s been tough-sledding, with every half-educated federal judge attempting to nix any-and-all executive actions in that direction. Anyway, if Europe’s banking system blows (and the accessories of banking, like markets and currencies, with that), then the damage is sure to spread to America, indeed probably all over the world, and then the fourth turning will rev-up to turning and churning at full speed. What will that mean?
A universal fall in global standards-of-living . . . the collapse of governments and sharp contraction of economies (Europe especially) . . . a period of very uncomfortable flux, how long, no one knows . . . and then the re-ordering of life that anyone with half a brain has expected, though perhaps not the way they expected. Here’s what I expect: the failure of most things organized at the giant scale: global corporations, national chain retail, distant supply-lines, and consequently the laborious, painful reconstruction of far more localized economies. I expect radical simplification of everyday life, including less high-tech, less intrusive government, irregular electric service, falling oil production, and a notable drop in population levels.
I expect a surprising shift in social relations, including a return to divisions of labor based on gender; de-pornified courtship manners and a revival of trad mating behavior, with priorities on motherhood and child-rearing in a crisis of infertility; a revival of religious communion (already underway in America’s youngest generation); a necessary return to the ethic of personal responsibility as government support withers; and a return to swift justice, including execution for significant crimes. I expect some nations to fracture into smaller regional and ethnic units, certainly Canada, possibly even the United States.
That’s a lot of upcoming action and, of course, it won’t all happen right away or at once, but it will get underway in earnest this fall. It’s not exactly Mr. Trump’s “Golden Age,” and surely not what a lot of people had expected in the way of a “Singularity” or a tech utopia or a unicorn nirvana. But it will have its charms and, for a while anyway, we will have to stop being stupid and crazy.
FORMER PRESIDENT OF POLAND LECH WALESA wrote the following letter to Trump in March of 2025, before it got worse.
Your Excellency, Mr. President,
We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against Russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s Russia.
We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.
Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner.
The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich.
We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet Russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.
Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet Russia.
We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction.
Signed,
Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland
THE INTERNATIONAL Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the world’s largest association of genocide scholars, with around 500 experts on the subject including many Holocaust scholars. The consensus was reached by an overwhelming supermajority of the experts — 86 percent, to be exact.
Everyone needs to understand that “there is no genocide in Gaza” is not a claim that can be taken seriously in the year 2025. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, and the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars all agree it’s a genocide. The debate is over. The hasbarists lost.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry is of course claiming that the IAGS assessment is “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” That’s right folks, the genocide scholars are Hamas.
They’re just so unbelievably evil. Nobody who’s not a cartoon or CGI supervillain has any business being this evil. If you’re going to be this insanely evil you should be animated and cackling while twisting your curly mustache all the time.
Possibly the single dumbest thing we are asked to believe about Palestine is that every major human rights institution on earth is part of a secret antisemitic blood libel conspiracy. This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence.
— Caitlin Johnstone
AMERICA
by Walt Whitman
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
“WE ARE MARCHING in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!”
— Vladimir Lenin, ‘What is to be Done?’
Joke Of The Day:
I was playing online Scrabble with a married woman and realized I could spell “vagina.” I wasn’t sure we wanted to stare at vagina all game long, but since she had already spelled “yoni” I figured it was probably alright. Before putting down the word I wrote in the chat box by the game board: “If I spell vagina will you hold it against me?”
(This might be one of those disappearing comments, management might not want to stare at the “V” word all day long, standards of decency, etc, no matter that it’s a true story from my authentically clean mind…)
Yep, the AVA, the glue that bonds us all.
Brick…. 🤪💕
mm💕
Tom Fantulin, lying is legal except when a person is under oath. Politicians have always been known for lying. Government agencies routinely lie, including a would be agency setup to determine who is lying. Be prepared to be skeptical, always, and learn who can be trusted, and who can’t be. This is life.
Love many, trust few and always paddle your own canoe. Words to live by for sure
Beg to differ, George. His major point is about the influence that money makes on truth. I think this just about every day now, that money, more than ever before, drives America, and drives what people think and say. The current administration is the prime example:
“Now, money dictates what people say and how they behave. What we achieve only means something if it enriches one’s bank account. I hear people promoting news organizations because they are popular. Their ratings are more valuable than the truth. But I wonder, how can we trust our decisions when there is no truth to be found?”
Yes, money. But power, faith, allegiance and philosophy have more sway than money. There are lots of reasons and excuses for lying. Does it matter?
Your second sentence is utter nonsense. Look around you, smell the sh_t.
Everything we are discussing here was present before money, and money is only a proxy. Money oriented people won’t ever understand this because to them it is all about the fantasy of money.
Two words: Bull Sh-t. Legal tender, as we now call it, was around in one form or another since the idiot species evolved, just like beliefs in imaginary beings and other hokum.
I think the point in the above comments is lost until the word “money” is replaced with the more appropriate word “profit”.
The root of all evil is greed.
And all successful living organisms are required to make a profit.
Required by whom or what? It’s just the way we are, a pitiful excuse for a “top” species, one whose belief systems are pure hokum, designed only to subjugate others. What kind of stupid “god” would “create” such a thing? I guess the same one who would be stupid enough to “create” a “master” race, or “chosen” ones who feel justified in committing genocide, in front of the rest of the human species. Whadda waste.
The End of WWII
Today marks the 80th anniversary
“Why should we remember what World War II was and what impact it had on our current culture?
The reality is that World Wars I and II completely changed our worldview. In the First, the industrialization of warfare began, but in the Second, that mechanization was used to destroy humanity. How dramatic what happened must have been that the word genocide appeared for the first time in human history after the Nuremberg trials. For the first time, the world had to understand that wars could totally eliminate populations, ethnic groups, religions, and nationalities, and that intolerance had reached its peak. What brought us to that point? Lies, Nazi propaganda, the inability to tell the truth, nationalism, totalitarianism. The war destroyed one of the world’s great utopias: socialism. The dictatorship of Stalinism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, failed. The most dramatic thing was that humanity was reduced to concentration camps, and that’s why what’s truly worthwhile today, to understand the scale of what happened, is to continue reading the books that came out of those camps, those important testimonies about what that human tragedy became.”
Azriel Bibliowicz
And now we read about the horror and destruction of Gaza, and see contemporary photos of it, and reports by medical staff in hospitals of it. Human tragedy on a large scale– bombing, starvation, devastation– of a people, largely innocent women and children– and their homes and infrastructure, caused directly by Israel, by those whose ancestors were the victims in WWII. And aided by our government, to our shame. That’s the new “important testimony”. The same old story. And we thought, or at least hoped, we’d learned something about “never again.”
Here’s a related piece of “important testimony” from today’s news:
“Israel is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Leading Scholars’ Association Says”
“Israel’s nearly two-year military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left swaths of the enclave in rubble, meets “the legal definition of genocide,” the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars said in a resolution passed by the group’s members Sunday.
The resolution, by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, added to a growing chorus from human rights organizations and academics concluding that Israel is committing genocide, a crime outlined in a 1948 convention and defined by acts intended to ‘destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.’
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, in a message posted on X, called the resolution ‘disgraceful,’ and said it was based on an unverified ‘campaign of lies’ by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel’s government has reacted angrily to any suggestion its military campaign amounts to genocide, a crime defined in the aftermath of the Nazis’ systematic murder campaign against Jews during the Holocaust.
The resolution states that the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas against Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and prompted the Israeli military campaign in Gaza ‘constitutes international crimes.’ But it also concludes that Israel’s response violates all five conditions set out in the 1948 convention, including ‘killing members of the group’ and ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,’ according to Emily Sample, a member of the association’s executive board. Any one of the conditions would be sufficient for a finding of genocide…”
WASHINGTON POST, 9/2/25
Wow💥, Mazie.
Thanks Lily…🤪💕
mm💕