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COLDER AIR aloft will bring the potential for frost and across the interior valleys this weekend. A colder storm system is forecast early next week, and will bring additional rainfall and the potential for some mountain snow. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A partly cloudy 48F this Saturday morning on the coast. I got .32" of rainfall yesterday. Mostly sunny this weekend then more rain Monday into Tuesday morning. Looking clear after that.
JIM SHIELDS MEMORIAL: A PERFECT DAY
Pictured above are Jim’s kids with their spouses and his bike: Roland (holding grand dog Chiquita), Maria, Jim and Jayma.
The Shields and Spence Family would like to thank everyone who came near and far to celebrate Jim’s life and many accomplishments. The weather was a perfect fall day at the Laytonville Rodeo Grounds, which was decorated with local flower arrangements, pictures and mementos of Jim. Many friends gathered to help set up, take down, prepare and serve food and drinks.
We are forever grateful to everyone who came early to set up, those who stayed late to clean up, and came back Monday to haul tables, chairs and a tent.
We recognize many friends and family were unable to attend and your love was felt regardless of your physical presence. We would like to thank all who were able to attend, share stories about Jim and give the family so many hugs and love. With the exception of one Dick, the day was perfect.
(Photo: Wes Lind)
LET’S HONOR JIM SHIELDS
To the Editor of the Mendocino County Observer:
Please accept our deepest condolences to you and all your family regarding the loss of your father. He touched many lives, spoke on behalf of the Redwood Valley community back in 2023, I believe, as we were going through a hearing with the Board of Supervisors regarding our desire to form a Cannabis Prohibition zone in our area. We continue our fight as you can see in the recent letter we have sent to local newspapers. As we mentioned your Dad, we thought you might want to read it. No need to publish in the Observer unless you wish to.
It was a beautiful obituary I read in the AVA this morning and I’m sure you will have a lovely celebration of his life this coming week-end. God Bless!
Sincerely,
Frances Owen
Redwood Valley
PS. In honor of the late Jim Shields, a dedicated community advocate who championed government accountability to public will, we echo both that sentiment and his concerns regarding the ineffective legalization of cannabis cultivation in Mendocino County.
Our recent observations from the September 9, 2025 Board of Supervisors meeting reveal troubling developments. Discussions on increased “Low Intensity Camping” (Hipcamps) in inland areas saw Supervisor Mulheren advocate for lot sizes as small as RR1 acres, potentially impacting more heavily populated residential zones like Redwood Valley and areas near Ukiah. Simultaneously, cannabis industry-benefiting changes to the facilities ordinance were proposed, revealing clear biases among at least two present Supervisors. We from Redwood Valley expressed opposition due to a lack of public understanding and input on these complex proposals, which include potential on-site cannabis sales, removal of dwelling unit requirements, and streamlined security. Mendocino County has the right to be more restrictive than state standards and we have grave concerns over the possibility of combining Hipcamps with cannabis grow sites near residential areas.
Our prior efforts to establish a Cannabis Exclusion Zone in Redwood Valley, denied despite concerns over quality of life and property values, highlight our ongoing concerns. The prospect of on-site sales, especially to minors, and commercial camping near homes raises new safety and enforcement issues, with the County’s lack of budget for enforcement a significant worry. Implementation of these changes may also prompt new lawsuits against the County for abuse of private property easements. Many of our stated concerns appeared to go unheeded.
Supervisor responses following public comment demonstrated perceived favoritism towards the cannabis industry, including a local marijuana alliance president being allowed extra speaking time while a statement from an absent citizen was denied. The meeting concluded bizarrely with admissions of no county funds for implementation, a request for growers to list their priorities, and a suggestion by Supervisor Williams, and then reiterated by Supervisor Haschak, for grower contributions to fund such proposals – leaving us feeling unheard and suspecting undue influence on Supervisors’ votes. Finally, we found Supervisor Haschak’s attempt at humor at Redwood Valley’s expense insensitive, reinforcing a perceived lack of respect for ALL property owners’ rights.
We urge concerned Inland Mendocino County residents to review the meeting video (mendocino.legistar.com, Sept. 9, 2025, items 4h and 4i).
Rest in Peace, Jim Shields; your voice is profoundly missed.
Respectfully,
Frances Owen, Chris Boyd, Pien Ris-Yarbrough, on behalf of Concerned Redwood Valley Citizens (CRVCs)
HOPLAND PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT BOARD LIMITS PUBLIC COMMENT, VOTES TO TRIPLE WATER RATES
Ratepayers express anger over lack of transparency, questionable justification
by Elise Cox
The Hopland Public Utility District board voted Thursday to sharply raise water and wastewater rates over the next decade, triggering confusion and anger among residents who questioned the accuracy of the district’s financial projections and the transparency of its process.
Under the new rates, the cost of water for roughly 330 customers will triple over 10 years, while the cost of sewer service will rise by at least 68 percent. The first round of increases — 40 percent for water and 25 percent for wastewater — will take effect Nov. 1. Additional hikes are scheduled for July 2026.
The board approved the increases after a contentious public hearing at Brutocao Cellars, where dozens of residents crowded into the room to demand explanations for the steep rate hikes. Many said they were frustrated by inconsistent figures, missing documentation and what they described as shifting justifications for the new charges.
Ratepayer Vernon Budinger called the hike “a smokescreen” to hide escalating administrative costs following a consolidation of outlying county water districts and the City of Ukiah. Budinger questioned the absence of standard cost estimates and requested a Class 3 or Class 5 engineering estimate — standardized estimate classifications defined by the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE International).
Board Disputes Level Of Opposition
At least one in three ratepayers submitted letters opposing the increases. Opponents argued they had reached the 50 percent protest threshold needed to block the hike under state law. The board disputed that claim, saying it found more than a score of duplicates.
An on-the-spot count during the meeting yielded 119 valid protest letters, or about 36 percent of ratepayers. But attendees contended that letters were not verified against the district’s official roster, and officials offered conflicting totals for the number of accounts — 330, according to Jared Walker, deputy director for water resources at the Ukiah Valley Water Authority, and 342, according to board members.
Cost Drivers in Dispute
Officials attributed the increases to years of underinvestment in the water system and to an anticipated Caltrans project on Highway 101 that could require the district to assume $5 million in new debt. No documentation for the Caltrans project was provided to the public at the meeting.
Earlier this year, Assemblymember Chris Rogers, who represents Mendocino County, introduced legislation that would have exempted the Hopland district from paying for utility line relocations tied to the project. The bill, AB 830, passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Oct. 3. (Two Democrats voted against the bill: Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen from Elk Grove and Senator Eloise Gomez Reyes from San Bernardino.)
The project’s estimated cost, when discussed in the legislature was just $1 million — versus the $5 million that is being cited as required to relocate the water and sewer lines.
Limits on Public Comment
At the meeting, frustration over the lack of specifics about the CalTrans project and how utility line relocation could be required by the installation of flashing lights and culvert rehabilitation combined questionable limits placed on public comment.
Board member Joan Norry told the audience that the Brown Act — California’s open-meetings law — limited public comment to 10 minutes in total. In fact, the Brown Act imposes no such limit; local agencies may set reasonable time limits but generally must do so through publicly adopted policies versus ad hoc declarations.
Investing in Future Indebtedness
Financial consultant Mark Hildebrand, who was hired by the district to prepare the rate study, said the increases were needed to build a reserve of $100,000 a year for capital improvements and to support future borrowing. Without the Caltrans-related debt, he said, the 10-year compounded increase would have been about 167 percent.
“You have to establish a revenue base that can support the utility into the future,” Hildebrand said.
Consolidation and Administrative Costs
The Hopland district contracts with the Ukiah Valley Water Authority for management and operations. That relationship stems from the 2024 creation of the Ukiah Valley Water Authority, a joint powers authority formed by the consolidation of the Willow County Water District and other county water districts — a move that critics say has inflated administrative overhead.
Ukiah’s public employee salaries are high by Mendocino County standards, with department heads earning between $180,810 and $225,271 annually, according to city records. That’s between five and seven times the median income of Mendocino County.
Walker said the city provided a new service agreement in August 2025 that included an 11 percent increase in costs, after two years without rate adjustments. The agreement also built-in annual 7.5 percent cost escalations for services, effectively tying increases in administrative expenses to rate increases rather than actual inflation, which has risen by 7.5 percent only once in the last ten years (in 2022).
Unanswered Questions About Projects
When pressed for specifics on capital projects, Walker cited several priorities: lining a wastewater pond with concrete, repairing two leaking steel tanks, addressing groundwater intrusion that triples winter wastewater flows, and installing five new monitoring wells required by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“Those are four projects that we absolutely have to get done,” Walker said.
Still, residents said they were unconvinced that the such large increases were justified. “We’re not Sebastopol or Healdsburg,” said ratepayer Tina Moody. “The income isn’t here, the employers aren’t here, the money’s not here. Are you just willing to put everybody in the red?”
Hildebrand acknowledged that the Caltrans project might not proceed, but said the district was planning prudently. He said if the CalTrans project doesn’t happen — or if a new governor supports a bipartisan bill — Hildebrand maintained the rate increase could be reversed. Residents audibly expressed their doubt that would happen.
Budget Breakdown and Inflation Dispute
Administrative costs from Ukiah account for 29 percent of Hopland’s $276,000 water operating budget and 44 percent of its $181,000 wastewater budget. Existing debt service represents another third of the water budget.
Hildebrand told the audience that the Consumer Price Index had risen by 40 percent over the past decade, citing inflation as a key driver of costs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the actual increase for U.S. cities over that period was closer to 37 percent, and averaged about 3 percent a year.
Hildebrand also displayed a chart comparing Hopland’s rates with those in Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Willits — the same presentation he used to justify a 36 percent increase in Ukiah’s rates earlier last month — that time, Ukiah was presented as having the lowest rates. This time Hopland ranked at the bottom.
“The Caltrans project will eventually become a one-time expense that hurt for a second,” Hildebrand said, before correcting himself. “It could hurt for a number of years.”
A Third Option
One resident suggested the district and resident compromise on a smaller rate increase. “I understand the need to raise rates,” said ratepayer Wendy Morelli. “But does it have to be a zero-sum game? Can’t we come up with something reasonable that everybody can live with?”
Walker said the Hopland Public Utility District could contract for a lower level of service with the Ukiah Valley Power Authority, but warned that if Hopland failed to maintain its system, the state could force a consolidation under what he referred to as “SB 88,” apparently alluding to the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization Act of 2000.
“I don’t think the community of Hopland wants to be governed by the state of California,” he said painting a picture of some might view as the worst-case scenario.
(mendolocal.news)
REMEMBERING LOVED ONES LOST IN REDWOOD VALLEY FIRE
Editor,
We are approaching the eighth anniversary of the Redwood Valley Fire — a fire that was devastating to my family. My niece and her husband lost their only two children, Kressa and Kai. Kressa was a beautiful and artistically talented 17-year-old, and Kai was a 13-year-old who loved baseball and wrestling. My sister and her husband lost two of their grandchildren. They will never be forgotten. Be grateful every day for your family. Be thankful this type of tragedy didn’t happen to your family.
Jenifer Johnson
Santa Rosa
ROGER EDWARD WHEELER
On the evening of September 28th, 2025, Roger Edward Wheeler of Hopland California, passed away at the age of 76 with his family at his side. He was born on August 30th, 1949, in Camden, Maine, to Leonard Gallop Wheeler and Dorothy “Ducky” Lehnen Wheeler. Roger was the youngest child of Leonard and Ducky, with two older brothers, Russell and Bruce. The three boys grew up together in Massapequa, Long Island, sharing countless adventures on the open ocean, bays, canals, and beaches of Long Island. Roger developed a life-long love of water, and enjoyed boating, water skiing, scuba diving and surfing throughout his life. Whereas most teenage boys in the 1950’s wanted a fast car, Roger wanted, and built, a fast boat. He often boasted he had the fastest boat on Long Island, and never once lost a race – much to the dismay of the local harbor patrol and visiting tourists.
Roger graduated from Massapequa High in 1967, and a year later decided to follow his parents West, to Monte Nido California. He attended Cal Poly for several years where he studied engineering. He also took up took up surfing during this time, which would become another life-long passion. Eventually, Roger became dissatisfied with college and academia and began to realize that a corporate office job was not for him. He became enamored with the growing ‘Back to the Land’ movement and the ideals of working with your hands, living with nature, and becoming self-sufficient.
In 1971, both Roger and his parents moved to Garberville, California to pursue a new life in the remote mountains of Humboldt County. Upon moving North, Roger set to work almost immediately, purchasing a mobile sawmill with his brother Bruce, where they began to harvest and cut their own lumber. He also opened a Real Estate office in Garberville and assisted other people in purchasing and developing properties in the Garberville area. Roger went on to purchase 40 acres in Salmon Creek where he proceeded to build his own ranch and off-grid home over the next few years. During this process, he learned how to operate heavy equipment, which proved to be something he both enjoyed and excelled at.
In 1979, while on vacation in the Caribbean, Roger met his first wife, Chanel Wheeler, on the island of St. Croix. At the end of his 3-month trip, he asked her to move back to California with him and she agreed. They were married in 1980, and had one son, Brandon, in 1983. Roger and Chanel remained married for 18 years until their separation in 1998.
After learning they would be parents in the early part of 1983, Roger and Chanel decided to move south to Hopland, California. They purchased 230 acres of raw land, and Roger began what became his life’s work – the development and construction of Silver Oak Ranch. He would go on to build and develop the ranch over the next 40 years, largely by himself. There was nothing Roger couldn’t make or build on his own. He was skilled in everything from constructing roads, ponds, and water systems to concrete work and carpentry, as well as metal fabrication and welding.
After moving to Hopland, he opened his business, Wheeler Excavation, which would become his life-long career until he retired decades later. During this time, he became well known locally for his expertise, precision, and super-human work ethic in the construction and excavation industry.
In 1996 Roger branched out with his equipment expertise and began working as an independent contractor for Cal Fire as a dozer operator. He would go on to fight numerous fires over the next 25 years, including some of the most destructive in California history, such as the Mendocino Lightning Complex of 2008, the Rocky Fire of 2015, the Thomas Fire of 2017, and the Camp Fire of 2018 which destroyed the town of Paradise.
In 2007 Roger met Christa Valentin, who would become his life-long partner. Christa had two younger children, Leon and Naima, whom Roger took under his wing and raised as his own. Roger was always an excellent father and provider and was much loved by his small family.
Roger was an amazingly capable, talented and intelligent person whose drive and ambition were unmatched. His loss is felt deeply by his family, friends and loved ones. He contained an unparalleled wealth of knowledge and skill, developed from a lifetime of building and working with his hands and his mind. When Roger built something, he built it to last a lifetime and beyond. Though he may no longer be with us, his memory and mark on the world will endure.
Roger is survived by his partner Christa Valentin, son Brandon Wheeler (Julee Wheeler), son Leon Valentin (Else Valentin), daughter Naima Van Gelderen (Casey Van Gelderen), granddaughter Danica Wheeler, grandson Cooper-James Valentin, former wife Chanel Wheeler, brother Russell Wheeler (Peggy Lentz), cousins Lori Harvey (Robert Sagehorn) and Anne Gerdes, nieces Tara Little (Tony Little), Darian Duce (Eva Duce), nephew Ian Gerdes, grand-nephews Wyatt Little and Gauge Little, and grand-niece Zoe Little. Roger was preceded in death by his older brother, Bruce Wheeler, who passed away in June of this year.
CHRISTIE OLSON DAY:
It's me, I'm the bookseller who is suddenly into Pynchon after seeing One Battle After Another. Who's seen it? Did you recognize Eureka / Arcata? Did you know people think the story is based on a fictionalized Mendo? I mean, the pot-growing nuns give it away.
BETSY CAWN:
Dear Mazie and friends,
Human beings are shell-less fragile creatures that need surroundings that are not harmful, at least, and that are nourishing, at best.
We all need food, water, air, and physical comfort in order to live, base line, minimum “sustainability” elements.
Not only are our tender carcasses easily punctured, burned, crystalized, broken and sanguinated, but the lack of protection from injuries puts our brains on hyper-alert, and the body’s natural cycle of sleep is shredded.
Constant shifting of situations, unsteady spurts of digestibles and proximity to chronic lawlessness, social and civic disconnect so profound that your former neighbors won’t even say hello on the street.
People NEED shelter. Apparently, a bunch of people need a different kind of shelter than the Good Germans think they should have, or how they should get it.
Maybe accept the fact that there are people who can’t and won’t “adapt” to this anodyne whitebread “culture” simply because they don’t have the mental wherewithal to “perform” the requisite social tasks that the rest of us have managed, somehow, to deliver on demand — some of us even happily so.
Well, nobody wants “them” on the streets. Where is the ingenuity and creativity that would craft low-cost, safe, easily maintained, single and double occupancy units, close to practical services, with on-site workplace choices and personalized training? The old Salvation Army farm in Sonoma County comes to mind, and the Sheriff’s highly lauded gardening and cooking inmates could probably help “raise” the consciousness of medically-supported, really RESTED men and women.
The conundrum of which came first — the chicken (homelessness) or the egg (mental illness) — diverts effort from projects to help the helpless, some of whom may never be “productive,” but who at least will not be relegated to the gutters and ditches of civilized communities. Everybody needs what everybody needs, no matter who you are.
THE NOYO BIDA TRUTH PROJECT PRESENTS A SPECIAL PROGRAM
The Noyo Bida Truth Project presents a special program on Sunday, October 26 at 2 p.m. in the Community Room of the Fort Bragg Library at 499 E Laurel St, Fort Bragg
Our Guest Speaker, will be Nikcole Whipple, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and a Board member of The Noyo Bida Truth Project.
Ms. Whipple is a water protector and policy advocate who works with organizations providing professional development in Native Land Stewardship and (TEK) Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Her work experience includes the exercise of Tribal Rights in creating policy initiatives to provide equitable recommendations in the oversight of cultural resources and the collaboration of community partners to provide cultural events for Tribal youth and families.
The Land Back Movement is an Indigenous-led initiative claiming environmental justice in ancestral territories. To this day Indigenous first people suffer from systemic injustices invoked by colonial government systems through forced removal and assimilation. In Fort Bragg Indigenous people were forced off their land and onto the Mendocino Indian Reservation in 1856 and later marched to inland reservations under Army guns. Their land was then sold off to white settlers.
The Land Back Movement promotes Indigenous sovereignty, culture, and historical stewardship practices. Beyond land back, the movement aims to reestablish cultural land management practices uplifting Indigenous governance, revitalizing language, and returning ecological healing and community well-being through traditional connections to the lands and water.
Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.
For further information: thenoyobidatruthproject.org
This program is neither sponsored by nor affiliated with the Fort Bragg Library
FROM EBAY, AN ADVERTISEMENT OF LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, October 10, 2025
KENNETH DEWITT JR., 44, Ukiah. Parole violation.
YEKATERINA DRABKOV, 30, Ukiah. Trespassing-refusing to leave upon peace officer request.
JOSEPH EGERER, 36, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, reckless driving with specific injury.
RODNEY HUBBARD, 56, Ukiah. Controlled usbstance, failure to appear, probation revocation, brining alcohol or drugs into jail.
NICOLAS MORAN-ORTIZ, 42, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse.
TASHA ORNELAS, 39, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
RANDY PIKE JR., 34, Point Arena. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance for sale with two or more priors, suspended license, reckless evasion-wrong way traffic, paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.
NATALIE RODRIGUEZ, 34, Ukiah. Shoplifting, parole violation.
MICHAEL STRAND, 44, Stockton/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
RUSSELL VILLALPANDO, 39, Fort Bragg. Criminal threats.
POPPIES IN OCTOBER
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly—
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
— Sylvia Plath (1965)
COUNTRY LIVING: THE EARLY DAYS, GROWING UP HIPPIE
by Paul Modic
Way back in the day there were few expenses when living in the coastal hills, with the sounds of surf breaking half a mile away. For example, paper towels, dish scrubbers and other household items weren’t necessary or even thought about and housing was free: when we heard about a vacant cabin we asked around and then moved in. (Then when we heard about a bigger or better place to caretake it was upward mobility, baby.)
There was no water bill, it came from a nearby spring, usually gravity to the shack or hand-carried down the dirt road, Mendocino 431, in gallon jugs. There were no car repairs or buying gas, we hitched rides from the more established fellow travelers in their ‘54 Chevy trucks and Valiant station wagons.
There was no electricity bill, a candle would suffice and later kerosene lamps, and no heating bill. If cold we took the bowsaw out and cut up a couple handfuls of old grey greasewood littering the woods, a day’s worth, and burned it in the ubiquitous cast iron box stove or tin wonder found in every cabin. (Want tea? Put the pot on the stove.)
A dirty hippie didn’t need hot water, once-a-week showers were 25¢ at a community-minded neighbor’s house who lived by The Meadow and had a real bathroom. (By the eighties it said 50¢ on the can by Nancy Peregrine’s shower.) For laundry, dirty clothes went into a nearby creek with rocks holding them in place, and hung up the next day. (A wide selection of clothes could be found in the free box in beautiful downtown Whitethorn, and other locales.)
Cheap rice and beans were the basic sustenance and if we could make an extra $20 a month somehow that would get us through. Mendocino County didn’t offer food stamps, just nasty commodities like yellow cheese and powdered milk, so me and my scammer ilk pretended we lived across the county line in Humboldt at friends’ addresses for our home visits, approval, and the 42$ a month back in ‘75. (It seems odd but I’m still good friends with my food stamps worker, who still insists on keeping confidential the names of all her clients she visited out in the hills, from Harris to Whale Gulch. She loved that job and the people, approved every damn hippie, and picked me up at the jail the next year when I was busted with the first pound I ever grew.)
Beer and wine were luxuries, I didn’t have the taste yet at twenty-one, though I later started keeping a few bottles of Budweiser or Miller High Life in the cool spring above my sunny pot patch. I usually walked barefoot a mile down the back trail past The Monastery a couple times a week to water and quaff the suds. (There were joints going around at every gathering but I didn’t have my own stash until I grew a few plants.)
At parties no one turned on the stereo, people brought their guitars and made their own music, jamming after dinner, dessert and some joints of course. At birthday parties the ice cream was always homemade and people took turns cranking that manual contraption. (Some home births turned into parties back then: Hey, Yerba’s in labor, let’s roll a joint, grab a six pack and head over! )
For home entertainment, batteries were necessary for a simple AM-FM radio to pick up KMFB thirty miles down the coast and talk shows on KGO at night, and then cassette tape players became popular.
Newspaper was used as toilet paper, a hole in the ground was easy to dig with a post-hole digger, about two-three feet deep would last a couple months for squatting over, a can of wood ashes or sawdust usually nearby to toss in each time. Then when it was full, move over a little ways and dig another. Getting fancy was digging a huge hole then building a wood platform over it with a nice hole cut out in the middle, unless it was a two-seater. When the hole filled after a year or so the platform could often be moved and put over the next hole. (After that came the actual outhouses, some even with a door and window.)
There was no phone bill, if we wanted to visit a neighbor we’d walk to their cabin or house and knock on the door. The “pop-in” wasn’t even a thing and a visitor was free entertainment, though there usually was a reason to walk a mile and go all the way down someone’s dirt road in those early days, maybe we needed to borrow a tool or something? (I still don’t have many but back then didn’t even have a screwdriver.)
Some connection was usually established first, maybe at a social event someone had casually invited me to drop by some time, or maybe I’d shared a smile with a woman living alone in her cabin and there was that urge to make something happen.
Once I heard about this very loose woman living in a plastic house near mine, I went over and within a minute she turned me away on account of my savoir-faire deficiency: no game, mojo, or confidence.
CB radios and solar panels came in the eighties when the pot boom really took off. People were connected on Channel 20, hydro power was installed, generators were bought and off-grid living got stylee. Phones and the internet came in the 90’s, then satellite internet, and now that Gulch of my foggy dreams is as connected as anywhere.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is five or six. If that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino. I'm live from Albion tonight again.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:
Robert Murray-Smith is dead. Here's his science education YouTube channel. Start anywhere. https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith
Where we got gas. https://www.vintag.es/2025/10/1970s-american-gas-stations.html
And "You literally can join ICE and be God's appointed avenger who seeks to carry out God's vengeance on the evildoer. Immigration is evil. To join the proper mechanism, through ICE, and to become, in that sense, God's appointed deacon to carry out vengeance on the evildoer who is devouring the inheritance of the children, um, that is a righteous thing. You can join ICE today and make Jesus smile, as you, with a gun, pack foreigners into the back of a van to be kicked out of the country." It's at this point in the narrative that I imagine Orson Welles standing up. The artilleryman says, "Where are you going?" Orson Welles says, "Not to your world." https://christiannightmares.substack.com/p/christians-who-support-ice-dont-know
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
A PERSONAL LESSON IN THE COST OF TRUMP’S TARIFFS
Editor:
I now have personal experience with Donald Trump’s dictate to suspend the de minimis exemption for trivial items received by U.S. individuals from overseas shippers. A little background is appropriate: Inspired by the upcoming Rotary Club Veterans Tribute on Nov. 14, my son and I resolved to create a shadow box for my father’s World War II memorabilia and awards. To complete the display of medals and badges we needed his rank insignia: Royal Artillery sergeant’s stripes. Every formation in the British armed forces has a different color, size and pattern for sergeant’s stripes. My veteran friends will know how important it is to get these things right, so we contacted a couple of specialist suppliers in Wales. The first supplier had the product but declined to ship by mail to the U.S. The second supplier said, “OK, but on your own head be it, and we only ship by UPS.” The stripes arrived 36 hours after ordering, and I thought we were home “free.” But wait, I subsequently got an invoice from UPS for 19% U.S. customs duties and a $14 brokerage fee for a $9 piece of embroidered cloth. Dad, you are still worth it! Happy Veterans Day.
Richard L. Gulson
Santa Rosa
THE LEGENDARY WALT STACK would rise each morning at 2:30, swim a few miles in the bay near Aquatic Park and then head out of a 20 mile run over the Golden Gate to Sausalito and back before going to work as a cement contractor.
And regardless of the weather, he never wore a shirt. He had an incredible and fascinating life until his death in 1995 at the age of 87. I can’t tell you how many times I gave him a honk when I was commuting to USF in the early 80s. (Walt was also a communist earlier on.)
THE WEST COAST'S MOST DANGEROUS FAULTS COULD RUPTURE TOGETHER, AFFECTING ENTIRE REGION
by Olivia Hebert
Two of the West Coast’s most dangerous fault lines might be more in sync than scientists have realized. A new study found that the two sleeping giants, the Cascadia subduction zone and the northern San Andreas fault, have been moving in rhythm for millennia, shaking within hours of each other in a geological “dance” that can rattle the coastline from Oregon to California.
A team led by Oregon State University geologist Chris Goldfinger published its findings on Sept. 29 in the scientific journal Geosphere, demonstrating the first evidence that the two faults have interacted repeatedly over thousands of years.
The Cascadia subduction zone runs from Northern California, through Oregon and Washington, up to southern British Columbia. The famous San Andreas fault runs along the California coast straight through San Francisco.
By examining deep-sea sediment cores from the Cascadia megathrust — the deep undersea fault where the oceanic plate dives beneath North America — researchers found signs that major quakes on one fault may have helped trigger ruptures in the other.
This behavior has persisted through at least 10 earthquake cycles over the past 3,100 years, according to the study.
The study identified matching pairs of sediment layers, also known as doublets, in canyons off Northern California near the Mendocino triple junction, where the San Andreas, Cascadia and Gorda faults converge. Each doublet represents underwater landslides caused by intense shaking, one from Cascadia, followed closely by another from the San Andreas fault.
Researchers wrote that this was evidence of “partial synchronization” between the two faults, a phenomenon in which stress released by one rupture triggers shaking on the other fault within “minutes to hours.” The team said the pattern of sediment layers suggests both systems have repeatedly ruptured in close succession, likely starting with Cascadia.
“Northern San Andreas fault events have triggered turbidity currents in the southernmost Cascadia subduction zone, and vice versa,” the study authors stated. They pointed out “even very dissimilar faults” can end up synchronizing.
Goldfinger and his co-authors noted that the similarity in timing of the two systems might be important in maintaining that coupling, meaning that large earthquakes on one fault may alter conditions enough to influence the other.
The Cascadia subduction zone, which stretches from Northern California to British Columbia, is capable of producing magnitude 9 earthquakes like the one that struck in 1700. In April, separate research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that a future Cascadia megathrust quake — where one tectonic plate slides under another, gets stuck against the subducting plate, and then abruptly slips — could instantly sink parts of the coastline by several feet and expand floodplains by more than 100 miles. Meanwhile, the northern San Andreas last unleashed major events in 1906 and in 1989, devastating San Francisco.
While the study doesn’t predict when the next rupture will occur, the findings add new context for how scientists evaluate West Coast earthquake hazards.
(SF Chronicle)
HARWOOD GIABLOMI:
Why do you think that video of Porter is out there today? Just a coincidence you think? Porter is one of the better politicians in California, which is admittedly a low bar. Do you think Pelosi and Newsom and Kamala Harris never had a cross word for anyone? The reason this video is out there is because California elites don't want Porter anywhere near the governor's mansion. They didn't want her or Barbara Lee, another conscientious politician, anywhere near the senate either so they rigged the game for Adam Schiff, who is now a senator. This video is a deliberate attempt to take Porter down. Rather than mocking, maybe a better use of time would be to find out who wanted this video out there, how much they paid to do so, and who made it go viral. Bash Porter all you want, but in doing so you are being a useful tool for the likes of Adam Schiff. And all the "own the libs" types around here really need to get a grip and start thinking before spouting off.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1
All the California Democrats are different now — or they're not Democrats any longer, like me. When I was in my twenties I was friends with Mickey Ziffren whose husband ran the California Democratic Party. Everyone wanted to know what Mickey thought, from Gore Vidal to Nancy Reagan (Mickey considered Nancy a good friend). Mickey wrote a wonderful novel called ‘A Political Affair.’ I once laughed at Nancy Reagan and Mickey let me have it. “She's very intelligent and funny and I don't have lunch only with people I agree with. And you shouldn't either.” Those Democrats are gone.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2
It’s funny to see how many people want to be elected Governor of California, despite the fact that they live in the state and can see what a nightmare job it would be. There is no fixing what is wrong, just application of more patches over the worst parts. Nobody is going to finish a four year term and have the people of California say “Hey, that Governor really knew what they were doing and turned this state around”. It’s all managing the decline from here on out.
TRUMP DROPS THE HAMMER ON FARMWORKERS
by David Bacon
On October 2 Trump finally dropped the hammer on farmworkers. At the end of the season, when most workers who might protest are no longer in the fields, he cut the wages of 400,000 people by as much as a third.
Trump’s order, a federal regulation published in Thursday’s Federal Register and implemented immediately, alters the way wages are set for farmworkers brought to the United States by growers on H-2A visas. These workers are recruited mostly in Mexico, and sign contracts to work for a maximum of 10 months per year. After that, they must return home.
H-2A workers are very vulnerable to pressure from their employers. They can work only for the growers who recruit them, who can legally impose production quotas and fire workers for not meeting them. Recruiters are legally allowed to refuse to hire women, and almost all H-2A workers are young men. They can be fired for protesting, organizing, or simply working too slowly. They then lose their visas and usually find themselves on a blacklist, unable to return to work in subsequent seasons.
Existing federal regulations require growers to provide housing and transportation from the border and to work every day. Every year the Department of Labor sets a minimum wage for each state, called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate. It is usually a little higher than the state minimum wage in those states that have them. The reg’s original intent was to keep H-2A wages high enough that growers wouldn’t use H-2A recruits to displace local farmworkers. The new regulation changes both the wage system and the housing requirement.…
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/trum-rural-voters-workers-bailout
STOP THE INSULTS
Editor,
When I was in high school, one unit of my senior social studies class was on fallacies of argument. The first and most obvious one of these is ad hominem, where a personal insult is used to respond to a point instead of countering that point.
It was so sad to see U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi resort to such juvenile tactics during a Senate oversight committee hearing. Instead of answering questions from the Democratic senators, she looked up stored insults in her binder to use on each of them and never addressed the actual questions.
But then her role model is President Donald Trump, who uses the same tactics. We deserve better.
John Heffernan
Hayward
CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE: “I’d go in Pepper’s (lounge) with Joe and as soon as Muddy (Waters) would see Joe he’d make a big fuss, get him a place to sit, buy him a bottle and have them bring over a setup, which was a bowl with ice and tongs and a couple little red cherries to make it classy. He’d announce from the stage that Big Joe Williams was in the audience and he wrote ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go.’ Muddy would act like a little kid around Joe, and Joe loved to be treated like that.”
THE HOMELESS WE DON’T SEE
by Jay Neugeburen
According to HUD's Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, approximately 770,000 people in the United States were homeless in 2024, an increase of 18% from 2023.' The number of families that were homeless increased by 39%, and the largest increase by age group, 33%, was among children under eighteen. “Among people experiencing homelessness, 64% were staying in sheltered locations,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition noted, “while 36% were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation.”
But “recent research,” Brian Goldstone writes in’ There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,’ “reveals that the actual number of those experiencing homelessness in the United States… is at least six times larger than the official figure.” In his beautifully crafted book, he tells the revelatory and often heartbreaking stories of five families in Atlanta who are “the new face of homelessness in the United States: people whose paychecks are not enough to keep a roof over their heads.”
All five families are Black Americans — as are 93% of homeless families in Atlanta — have two or more children, and, except for one married couple, are supported and cared for by a single mother who holds one full-time job and often works at one or more other jobs. These women and their families, part of America's low-wage labor force, “find themselves trapped in a sort of shadow realm, languishing in their cars, the overcrowded apartments of friends and relatives, and hyperexploitative extended-stay hotels and rooming houses.”
The problem of increasing homelessness is particularly acute in Atlanta — the third-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country as well as in New York, Austin, Phoenix, Denver, Nashville, and Washington, D.C. “Currently, 11.4 million low-income households are classified as ‘severely cost burdened, spending, on average, an astounding 78% of their earnings on rent alone,” Goldstone writes.
Between 2010 and 2023 median rents in Atlanta rose by 76%, the city lost 60,000 apartments that rented for $1,250 or less, and “94% of the tens of thousands of apartments added to the city's rental market have been luxury units.”
Goldstone calls the displaced people he writes about “the working homeless,” who regularly fall prey not only to rapacious developers and landlords but to sheer bad luck. Early in the book we meet Celeste Walker, a single mother of three children who, while at work as a parts inspector in a warehouse, receives a call from a neighbor: the two-bedroom house she's been renting for the past year is on fire. By the time she arrives there, the firefighters are finishing up, and everything in the house has been destroyed. For the next eight months, other than a brief period when her two sons stay with their grandmother in Tampa, she and her children live in her car or in apartments of friends, where they sleep on the floor. After she locates an affordable apartment and pays a fee to a leasing agent, the agent calls and says her application has been rejected because of a recent eviction.
Celeste is puzzled, says she was never evicted, but returns to her burned-out house and finds in the mailbox an eviction notice with a comment from a sheriff stating that it was “served to fire damaged property.” Because Celeste did not file a response within seven days—in Georgia tenants do not have to be notified in person of an eviction — a default judgment has been handed down in favor of the landlord.
When Celeste and her children are not living and sleeping in their car, they stay at Efficiency Lodge, the cheapest extended-stay hotel she can find — $257 a week, payable each Saturday by noon. Extended-stay hotels, which offer “none of the security or clear tenancy rights of formal housing,” Goldstone writes, “were not simply filling a gap in the city's housing landscape. They were actively exploiting that gap. As more and more people found themselves pushed out of the rental market, hotels like Efficiency — where a mold-infested room could devour the entirety of a family's income, making it impossible to save enough money for a security deposit and first month's rent at a real apartment—had grown ubiquitous.”
Suffering pains in her abdomen, pelvis, and lower back and, like many patients on Medicaid, without a primary care physician, Celeste spends the next four months cycling through emergency rooms at three different hospitals before she gets to see a specialist.
He orders a battery of tests and scans that reveal that she has both ovarian and breast cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, Celeste, who had always dreamed of owning her own restaurant, works when she can as a “picker/packer” at a ProLogistix warehouse and supplements that income by turning her family's one room at Efficiency into an eatery where on weekends she cooks and serves twenty meals a day.
She also takes a job cleaning rooms evenings and weekends at Efficiency in advance of a scheduled inspection by the county board of health, which has recently found more than three hundred code violations at the hotel.
Six weeks after she begins her cancer treatment, Celeste finds that her “fear of getting trapped indefinitely at Efficiency now outweighed the embarrassment of pleading for help” and that “pride and dignity were luxuries she could no longer afford,” so she goes to a regional service center run by HUD.
After an interview, to which she has brought police evidence of the arson that caused her to lose her home and medical records testifying to her cancer diagnosis and treatment, a caseworker informs her that she and her children do not fit HUD's criteria.
“In order to get housing aid,” the caseworker says, “you have to be considered literally homeless, which means you're in a shelter or on the street. Unfortunately, other circumstances don’t qualify.”
(New York Review of Books)
KAMALA HARRIS was dealt an enormously difficult hand in the 2024 election. For the most part she played it well, galvanizing much of her party while enduring an immeasurable level of misogyny and racism. And she almost won. Why does her memoir feel like another defeat?
Over the course of the book, Harris complains about or belittles Governor Tim Walz, whom she chose as her running mate; Governors Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and Josh Shapiro, and pretty much every other possible running mate; “nitpicking” journalists; and over and over again, members of her staff. Another target, of course, is Joe Biden, about whom Harris expresses “hurt and disappointment.” And yet, on the subject about which many Democrats have a gripe, she is surprisingly gentle.
“Biden’s insistence on running until Harris had very little time to do so—and until the Party had no time at all for a true primary—is high on the list of reasons that the country now has a horrible President,” Amy Davidson Sorkin writes. “The scale of that tragedy may be what makes Harris’s complaints seem so petty, however well founded many of them may be, and her deflection of responsibility so grating.” Sorkin writes about Harris’s memoir—and why it’s been poorly received by some.
“WHEN, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
WHAT IS POWER FOR?
by James Kunstler
Now, try to imagine Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (Jabba the Pritzker) as a Confederate general, his juddering bulk astride a panting war-horse, as he gallops into battle against federal positions in Millennium Park, Chicago.
Yeah, in the immortal words of Homey D. Clown, I don’t think so. Yet these seem to be the fantasies typically entertained in our times by the Big Dawgs of the Democratic Party: a confederacy of dweebs. While Mr. Trump uses presidential power to bring the Gaza War to resolution, officials in the Party of Chaos, distributed through the federal bureaucracy, and down into the state and city ranks, maneuver to ignite Civil War 2.0 in our country. They seem to be mighty pissed-off about something, but what could it really be? Surely not just the removal by deportation of countless border jumpers they ushered in during the baleful term of “Joe Biden” to beef-up their voter rolls.
No, what galls them is the sheer hemorrhaging of their power. The people of this land increasingly reject them and their insane claims and are walking away from the party, at the same time that Mr. Trump seeks to methodically disassemble the scaffold of all their roguery because it is bent on wrecking the republic.
What was their power for? I will tell you: nothing more than maintaining that scaffold, which was a colossal racketeering operation, a matrix of money-flows at every level from the cash payments to their sniveling nose-ring foot-soldiers marshaled outside the ICE buildings, to the many thousands employed by Woke foundations, think tanks, and NGOs, to the grifters of the teachers’ union, to the mayors, governors, and bureaucratic myrmidons of “sanctuary” cities and states, to the federal agency goldbricks and “Trump resisters,” to the zillion-dollar stock portfolios of their avatars such as Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Adam Schiff, to the accounts receivable of the Lawfare firms run by Norm Eisen and Marc Elias, to the bonuses of worker bees in foundering news orgs such as The New York Times (Michael Schmidt) and MSNBC (Nicolle Wallace).
That is the beginning and end of their power-seeking: one big moneygrubbing racket. The Party existed solely for the sustenance of the Party, a political tautology in living color. Everything else — their idiotic “policies,” their gender madness, their race hustles, even the mutual admiration of Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel — was noise, sturm and drang, gaslight, pretend… finally vectoring toward treason. The sedition it underwrote had a single purpose: to destroy the one figure seeking to end the rackets, the duly-elected Mr. Trump. Their great frustration in failing to accomplish that, and his terrifying return to the Oval Office in 2025 after monumental efforts to banish, ruin, imprison, and kill him, has driven them batshit crazy. So, now they’re all-in for Civil War 2.0.
The Democratic Party grift machine was kind of the modern reincarnation of the old “Spoils System” of government from the late 19th century (“To the victor go the spoils”). But back then, it was strictly government jobs for the connected. There was no giant asteroid belt of subversive service orgs, no NGOs or think tanks that flourish today around Washington. Of course, the Spoils System blossomed after the terrible ordeal of Civil War 1.0, and the last thing the grifters aimed to do was undermine the golden goose of government. They just wanted them golden eggs. Anyway, the whole wicked business got the kibosh when Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.
But as things will in history — which rhymes, as you know — the Spoils System was reincarnated in a new-and-improved guise by the Democratic Party under Barack Obama and finally burgeoned into a gigantic, demonic, criminal enterprise under Mr. Obama’s stand-in, “Joe B,” himself a connoisseur of bribery and money-laundering.
So, the Democratic Party appears now to be moving into overt insurrection, for the very purpose of goading Mr. Trump into declaring insurrection, in order to put down the insurrection they are ginning up around the country. And that way, they get to label him “a tyrant” so as to persuade the voters to keep the party of Chaos in office to “fight for our democracy” — meaning, to keep all their rackets going.
I doubt that Mr. Trump will shrink from the challenge, certainly not because a gang of sycophant federal judges issue injunctions against his exercise of constitutional power — that is, the power to preserve, protect, and defend the reasons for our existence as a nation.
LEO FRANK (next to his wife, Lucille) at his trial in 1913 for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee who worked 55 hours per week at his factory.
This image captures one of the most infamous and tragic trials in early 20th-century American history.
Leo Frank, a factory superintendent in Atlanta, was accused of killing Mary Phagan, a young worker at the National Pencil Company. The case drew intense public attention and quickly became a flashpoint of antisemitism, class tension, and sensational journalism. Despite weak evidence and questionable testimony, Frank was convicted and sentenced to death.
After widespread doubt about the fairness of the trial, Georgia’s governor commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. In 1915, a mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him, a horrific act that exposed deep prejudices within the American South.
The aftermath of this case led to lasting consequences: it fueled the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and inspired the creation of the Anti-Defamation League, which sought to combat antisemitism across the United States.
Added Fact: In 1986, more than 70 years later, Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned by the state of Georgia, acknowledging the state’s failure to protect him and the doubts surrounding his conviction.
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
Aid Groups Prepare to Provide Quick Relief to Gaza Under Cease-Fire
U.S. to Send 200 Troops to Israel in Support Roles
A Closer Look at the Counts in the Letitia James Indictment
María Corina Machado Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Curious Reindeer and Hungry Polar Bears: Warming Is Upending an Arctic Island
LETTER TO CASSANDRA (Nov. 20, 1800)
The General has got the gout, and Mrs. Maitland the jaundice. Miss Debary, Susan, and Sally, all in black, but without any stature, made their appearance, and I was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow me.
(Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition)
TRUMP’S SHAM PEACE PLAN
There will be no peace in Gaza. Only the temporary absence of war.
by Chris Hedges
There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.
It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.
Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.
Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”
Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?
How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?
How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?
Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?
By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?
Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?
How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?
How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?
Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?
What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?
And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?
“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”
Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.
This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.
The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
TRUMP’S SHAM PEACE PLAN
Thanks for including this. It’s about time for some truth about the Israeli savages, to whom we bow…and arm, to our lasting shame.
AVA TODAY
Powerful last words by Betsy Cawn in her short, blunt writing on the homeless:
“Everybody needs what everybody needs, no matter who you are.”
And powerful writing, again on the homeless, and on Gaza:
THE HOMELESS WE DON’T SEE
by Jay Neugeburen
TRUMP’S SHAM PEACE PLAN
by Chris Hedges
Talking about Kamala Harris, Amy Davidson Sorkin says “…the Party had no time at all for a true primary”. I believe the Party could have held an open convention, which may have been chaotic, exciting and resulted in a candidate with a surge of support going into the election. But the party leaders would not know who would win the nomination prior to the convention, which would be unacceptable. The Democrats like to go with the safest plan, which usually results in a narrow loss.