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ATMOSPHERIC RIVER Heading Our Way
SNEAKER WAVE and large surf risk continues Friday and this weekend. A modest Atmospheric River storm is forecast to arrive Friday afternoon, followed by a series of storm systems Saturday and Sunday. Expect periods of moderate to heavy rainfall and strong and gusty southerly winds Friday and Saturday, and likely Sunday over the coastal headlands and exposed ridges. Additional potentially strong storm systems are possible early to late next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 53F this Friday morning on the coast. After a cloudy day rain arrives tonight & thru the weekend. Next week is looking dry.
MULTIPLE FIBER CUTS affecting service to customers in Redwood Valley, Potter Valley, Ukiah, and parts of Hopland
Last night fiber cuts across two providers were experienced that are affecting service to our customers in Redwood Valley, Potter Valley, Ukiah, and parts of Hopland. We have opened tickets with both providers and are awaiting estimated time of repair on them. Service to customers in the areas impacted by these cuts is functional but rather slow. We are working to re-route additional traffic around these cuts as possible while we await their repair.
— Seakay Broadband, Ukiah
SUPERVISORS DELAY VOTE ON POTTER VALLEY PROJECT RESOLUTION
by Justine Frederiksen
After a lengthy public comment session that included dozens of speakers both for and against a resolution that many argued would jeopardize years of painstaking progress made toward continuing water diversions from the Eel River into the Russian River following the removal of the Potter Valley Project dams, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors instead voted to consider an alternative resolution proposed by Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams at its next meeting.
“Of course I support water security, I think it is one of the largest problems the county is facing,” said Williams, explaining that he drafted another resolution because he was concerned about the “unanticipated consequences” of passing the resolution drafted by First District Supervisor Madeline Cline that asks the Pacific Gas and Electric Company to reconsider its decision to decommission the hydroelectric plant known as the Potter Valley Project.
“At the end of the day, it’s our job to represent our constituents and their needs … and ultimately I hope this unites us together to further find solutions for our county,” Cline said, describing the resolution she drafted as “aimed at prompting a board and community level discussion (regarding the Potter Valley Project) that I believe is long overdue. The community wants to have a conversation about what is at stake: The loss of water supply reliability.”
“The greatest point of this forum is that people of this county don’t feel heard, and we want to be heard,” said Randy Dorn, of Redwood Valley, during public comment on the proposed resolution.
“I am here today to express my strong opposition to the removal of the Lake Pillsbury dam,” said Natalie Vau, describing herself as a lifelong Mendocino County resident whose family “has farmed and ranched here in this valley for eight generations, and I plan to continue that tradition.”
Vau pointed to the “the dam and the water it provides as essential to agriculture in our county. Without this water, farmers and ranchers will face devastating challenges that could put many out of business entirely. The solution must be to either keep the dam in place, or to guarantee, in writing and infrastructure, an alternative water source that provides at least the same amount of water, if not more. Anything less could lead to a mass exodus from our county, as people lose the ability to sustain their homes, families and businesses.”
“I agree with everybody so far that we need this water, (because) without it our community will be in bad shape,” Sean White, director of water and sewer for the city of Ukiah, said. “But to get that water, we do not need the facilities we have now, we just need facilities. And the (New Eel-Russian Facility) is the future. That facility will be run by a local agency and bring water to an enlarged Lake Mendocino, all of which will be controlled by this community, not by a for-profit entity that really doesn’t care about our community as much as they care about making money.
“Infrastructure has a lifespan, just like everything else,” White continued. “And the facilities we’re all looking to save are really at the end of their service life. If it was my money, I would much rather invest in a new facility run by this community, to provide the water that we all know we need, in a format that we can actually manage control ourselves, and not as a third person, squeaky-wheel part of a process that we really cannot control.”
“I’m here to implore you not to oppose the decommissioning process with this resolution,” said Ukiah City Council member Mari Rodin. “If you do, you will jeopardize a tenable, legally solid, credible effort … to sustain a reliable water supply for the Upper Russian River Watershed. While some may think the best path forward is to fight to keep Scott Dam, the inconvenient truth is, nothing — not a county resolution, not a lawsuit, not even the Feds — can dictate what PG&E can do with its property. PG&E has the right to dispense with its own property the way it chooses.
“That is why we (the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission) are focused on our current path, the Two-Basin Solution,” said Rodin, who represents the city on that board. “The agreement we have for the water diversion is strong, but it is also delicate. It’s strong because it acknowledges Tribal water rights, environmental concerns on the Eel, and water security concerns on the Russian River side. But it is also delicate, and passing the resolution will undermine the trust that we have built.”
“I’m hearing a common goal from our comments today: We need water security and we need water storage,” Cline said after nearly two hours of public comment and board discussion. “I’m really proud of the conversation that we’ve had today, and it’s a conversation that needs to continue.”
Pointing to language in the original resolution which “calls on PG&E to reevaluate its decision to seek decommissioning of the PVP, and for PG&E to account for and address the severe social and community impacts of water loss as a result of its responsibility to the communities that developed around its operations,” Williams said he agreed there was a serious problem looming for the county, “but PG&E doesn’t have a duty to maintain water supply. I feel like we’re giving people false hope, (because) I don’t think this resolution gets us any closer to water. And, in fact, it may burn bridges with the very people that we need on our side if we’re going to make progress.”
Williams then made a motion for consideration of his resolution, which appeared to have enough support to pass, but Cline objected strongly to voting on a resolution she had not even read yet, as it had only been added to the agenda that morning.
John Haschak, Board Chairman and Third District Supervisor, then suggested taking a brief break to allow Cline time to read the resolution.
When the board reconvened, Haschak said the board decided to consider adding Williams’ resolution to the Consent Calendar for its Nov. 4 meeting. That motion passed with Cline and Fourth District Supervisor Bernie Norvell voting against it.
(Ukiah Daily Journal)
SHERIFF MATT KENDALL’S REMARKS TO THE SUPERVISORS at last Tuesday’s Supervisors discussion of the resolution to (sort of) oppose the decommissioning and removal of the Potter Valley Project dams and diversion infrastructure:
What happened to our small towns in Mendocino County. Most folks don’t realize the number of towns which have disappeared, and all but disappeared.
Places like Longvale, Leggett, Piercy, Hales Grove, Dos Rios, and Rock Port once had thriving industry. Mendocino County had a booming economy. Most folks don’t realize we have had several towns like Irmulco and Sherwood which have completely disappeared. Where did they all go? Many of the small towns we have left are simply a shadow of what they once were. Some still have a small store and a fuel station if they are located on Highway 101, many of them no longer have the economy to support even a grocery store.
Our small towns employed many people who were able to buy or build homes, raise their children and put down roots. Logging, fishing, lumber milling, cattle and agriculture fed our families and kept our homes warm. These people were the backbone of Mendocino County, now many of these blue-collar jobs are considered evil, from the looks of things they are almost extinct.
During my lifetime I have seen most of the jobs in these industries slowly go away. The loss of these industries created a vacuum and sadly much of that vacuum has been filled with criminal activity and illicit markets.
Many of our industries have been destroyed by policies and legislation. We have to face the fact that even the most well-intended legislation and policies can go too far. When a goal is accomplished, all too often the goal posts are moved forward multiple times over decades, and the result is crippling to our economy and our communities. When policies don’t want loggers removing trees from our forests, however millions of acres have now burned, it’s time to ask if the policies were actually good for our forests?
Policy decisions made which negatively affected these industries also negatively affected public safety, while destroying the environment they were hoping to protect. We have known for a long time, poverty often creates crime. People won’t go without their needs being met and many will turn to the only thing left available to them.
I continue to see the environmental degradation left in the wake of the illegal marijuana industry. Trash, blight, water diversions and illegal chemicals in areas which are extremely hard to reach are now common. Now we are all concerned about water storage and with the complex issues of dam removals looming, I pray our county won’t see continued decline in farming.
We are in a time where people don’t seem to be looking for a “win win” situation. Many of these folks people have become polarized and we see the fights between the parties have become more important than the people who are being served. It’s beginning to look like our representatives feel things have to be a “win lose” which often becomes a “lose lose” before the dust settles. LOL
As we move forward in Mendocino County, I am hopeful we can all come together and make our voices heard throughout the state. We should be demanding a balance between the environment and industry. I’m certain there is a balance we can all live with. The experiment we are currently living in isn’t sustainable and hopefully we can turn things around before we lose even more than what we have already.
LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)
MAZIE MALONE on Mendo’s last Point In Time Count report:
Most people won’t read the report and see the discrepancies. There are other issues in this data info but these are the most crucial to provide housing and support!
What’s missing from this report is just as important as what’s in it.
There’s no category for serious mental illness only a vague “mental health disorder” label that hides the real scope of need. You can’t build solutions if you don’t name what’s actually happening.
The report also doesn’t match itself. It talks about progress, but the charts show chronic homelessness rising and housing numbers going down. That’s not improvement, that’s a contradiction.
And buried inside is one of the most telling facts: the number of people receiving disability payments is very low. That’s not because people don’t qualify it’s because the SSI process is almost impossible to navigate without help and takes years. When someone is disabled, unhoused, and cut off from that safety net, that’s not personal failure that’s systemic failure.
This report was produced by a paid outside firm likely costing the county tens of thousands of dollars and yet it still leaves out the most critical truths. That says a lot about where our priorities are.
I’m tired of reports that sound polished but don’t reflect the reality of people’s lives or acknowledge how serious mental illness and homelessness are connected.
And remember, this data came straight from the Continuum of Care the same agencies running the services being measured. That’s not accountability, that’s the system grading itself and giving itself an A+.
A READER WRITES:
Regarding Newsom not jump starting housing: The housing crisis is due in large part to the governor, the legislature and the faceless desk jockey bureaucrats in the various state agencies who have been amending the California Building Standards Codes for years to further their green ideology, social engineering desires and for job security for the faceless state agency bureaucrats who constantly crank out regulation’s and unfunded mandates. All of the foregoing increases the cost of construction.
I am a retired building official with nearly 40 years of experience. When I first started in 1988, the five state mandated code books were each the size of a 300-page paperback novel. Currently there are nearly a dozen state mandated code books that when stacked on a library shelf they are almost 3 ft. wide containing thousands of pages of regulations. The state average cost for a basic, minimum code, 1500 sq. ft. single family dwelling is anywhere from $350 – $500 per sq. ft. The average home price in California (New and used) is $850,000. Over regulatory policies, feel good legislation and the unaccountable bureaucrats has made housing so expensive that “affordable housing” is an oxymoron. When the federal government, the state, cities and counties participate in housing construction or provide funds in the form of grants or loans, the state’s prevailing wage (union scale) law is mandated, further increasing the cost of construction. Add in the exorbitant cost of homeowner’s insurance (if you can get it), the housing crisis will only get worse.
GEORGE HOLLISTER: 1,500 sq. ft. one story house the structural requirements are known to any builder, and should be available at the local building department, no engineer needed. Plans for these structures should also be readily available, no architect needed. Computer programs are available to help with various configurations that a homeowner made choose from, an extension service could provide this service for free. Approval of a plan should be automatic, done on line, for free. Of course every excuse in the book will be provided for why none of this can be done.
A READER REPLIES: I mostly agree with you. Government is a major part of the problem. I am currently the interim building official for a northeast California county. We have pre-approved engineered plans for a 600 sq. ft. and a 1000 sq. ft. residence, free of charge to our customers. These plans can be uploaded off our website and printed by the applicant. There are vendors that sell residential plans online, however, in my experience, none of them meet the California Building Code requirements and are a waste of money. The building permit fees we charge include the state mandated fees and to cover the cost to provide service for record keeping, permit processing and for inspections. It is illegal for government to charge more than what it costs to provide the service.
THE BOOK JUGGLER (Willits): New local history from the fabulous Malcolm Macdonald, author of Mendocino History Exposed. Read all about the longest manhunt in 19th century California and a mythical encounter with the county’s most famous and least seen resident…Bigfoot!
ELDERLY DRIVER FOUND GUILTY OF CAUSING DAMAGE AND LEAVING THE SCENE.
A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its Fort Bragg deliberations Thursday to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.
Defendant David Koehn, age 71, of Fort Bragg, was found guilty of hit-and-run driving causing property damage, said misdemeanor offense having occurred in July 2024 in the parking lot of Community First Credit Union at North Franklin and East Alder streets.
A restitution hearing has been scheduled for November 12th for the prosecution to present damage information so the correct amount of restitution can be ordered paid by defendant Koehn.
Under the California Constitution, victims of crime are granted the unequivocal right to seek and secure restitution from those convicted of crimes that caused them losses. This constitutional right mandates that restitution should be ordered in every case where a victim suffers a loss, regardless of the sentence imposed on the offender or his or her ability to pay.
The law enforcement agency that investigated and documented the crime was the Fort Bragg Police Department.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey prepared the case for trial and directed the testimony from witnesses for the coastal jury panel.
Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Clayton Brennan presided over the two-day trial. He will also determined at the November hearing how much restitution should be ordered.
JURY CAN’T AGREE ON ANY ONE OF THREE DUI CHARGES.
A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its Ukiah deliberations on Wednesday to announce it was unable to reach verdicts for or against the trial defendant.
Defendant Brian Axel Martinez, age 32, of Ukiah, remains charged with three different theories of misdemeanor driving under the influence –
Driving a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol with a prior DUI conviction,
Driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol .08 or greater with a prior DUI conviction, and
Driving a motor vehicle under the combined influence of both alcohol and drugs with a prior DUI conviction.
After a mistrial was declared and this week’s jury was excused, a retrial of the defendant before a new jury was scheduled for December 8, 2025.
The attorney who presented the People’s evidence to this week's jury was Deputy District Attorney Nathan Mamo.
Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the three-day trial.
ANDERSON VALLEY WINEGROWERS ASSOCIATION:
You may wonder, why is a wine association posting a picture of a bear?
We've talked plenty about the process of harvest, evaluating the brix (sugar content) of the berries, microclimates in the valley affecting harvest timing, and about how crews harvest overnight to keep the grapes cool and preserve their delicate flavors etc.
But there is one factor of harvest in Anderson Valley that makes harvesting at night more challenging - bears! Part of the exceptional beauty of Anderson Valley is that it still has a rugged wildness to it. That is true in both its landscape and wildlife. Fox, Bobcats, mountain lions, owls, wild turkeys, and bears all still inhabit and roam freely in the valley. For the most part, living in a balanced peace with human residents. Just like humans though, Bears really love ripe grapes. Right about the time crews are in the vineyards harvesting, bears are out foraging and doing their own harvest, getting ready for winter.
More than once, in fact, three times in one night in one valley vineyard last year, human crews find themselves harvesting the same row as a bear. While CA black bears are mostly shy and retreating, finding yourself closed in, vines on either side, with a black bear, at night isn't something for the faint of heart.
We hear of bear encounters mostly in the ridge vineyards but bears roam, so no AV tasty grapes are safe from hungry bears. The LA Times even did a feature in Sept. 2019 on Navarro's Pinot Noir snacker.
So next time you're enjoying that glass of Anderson Valley wine, do an extra toast to all the crews brave enough to face down bears to make that wine possible, and to the bears for sharing their grapes with us!
LA Times Navarro story: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-27/watch-this-bear-with-expensive-taste-as-it-munches-on-vineyards-pinot-noir-grapes
ANDERSON VALLEY'S GRAPES ARE IN
The Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association (AVWA) has officially concluded its 2025 harvest and published the “2025 Winemaker’s Vintage Harvest Report”, making the Mendocino County appellation among the first in California to bring in the last of its fruit this season. Despite a cool, slow-moving year that tested patience and timing, growers and winemakers report exceptional balance, vivid acidity, and striking site expression across varieties.
“Every great vintage begins long before the first buds break,” said Jeffrey Jindra, Winemaker Representative for the AVWA. “The 2025 season rewarded those who trusted the rhythm of this valley — cool mornings, long hang time, and steady ripening that allowed flavor and acid to evolve in harmony.”
After abundant winter rains and a mild, frost-free spring, the vines awoke vigorous yet balanced. A lingering marine layer defined summer, with cooler-than-average temperatures and persistent morning fog stretching ripening into late September and early October. Fruit came in clean, with gradual sugar development and full phenolic maturity — a profile many are calling a winemaker’s vintage.
Phil Baxter, winemaker and long-time Anderson Valley producer, described the season succinctly, “The vintage kept us guessing early on — the cool spring and slow start made timing unpredictable. But once flavor and sugar development aligned, the fruit came in beautifully. It’s one of those years where patience truly paid off.”
Pinot Noir and Sparkling Wines Shine
Pinot Noir, the region’s signature grape, is showing hallmark balance and site precision.
“The cool, steady ripening season produced balanced wines with bright natural acidity and refined tannins,” noted Baxter. “Moderate color and excellent flavor development highlight the vintage’s precision and restraint.”
Sparkling base wines also benefited from the slow, even pace of 2025, as Jeffrey Jindra, winemaker for Scharffenberger Cellars, explains.
“The high acids and long hang time yielded fruit with natural tension and freshness ideal for méthode traditionnelle production. Early tastings suggest both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir lots show exceptional structure and energy.”
A Vintage for the Record Books
The 2025 harvest marks the third consecutive year of above-average rainfall and the valley’s latest overall pick in more than a decade. Many producers compare it to the classic 2013 vintage for its purity and longevity — and to a more composed version of 2023, when acids stayed high and sugars developed slowly.
“The first big rain of the season hit the week of September 29, and then again the week of Oct. 13,” said Norman Kobler, grower and vineyard manager. “The rains posed a challenge, raising concerns about botrytis taking hold and forcing careful decisions on when to pick. It was a year that demanded vigilance and judgment.”
Despite the late-season moisture, fruit came in clean and balanced across most sites, aided by quick action in the vineyards and a steady hand in the cellar. Wineries anticipate smaller but highly expressive lots — wines that speak clearly of Anderson Valley’s cool-climate identity.
Across the region, crop loads ranged from average to slightly below, with no major weather disruptions during the extended harvest window. Wineries anticipate smaller but highly expressive lots — wines that speak clearly of Anderson Valley’s cool-climate identity.
THE CIRCUS IS HERE IN BOONVILLE
Shows at AV Brewing in Boonville begin This Weekend and are Selling Out!
Friday, October 24, 2025 @ 7:00 PM (21+)
Saturday, October 25, 2025 @ 4:00 PM
Saturday, October 25, 2025 @ 7:00 PM (21+)
Sunday, October 26, 2025 @ 2:00 PM
The circus has arrived! The big top is up (and so fun to see from 128), the circus folk are here, and we’re all excited for an incredible weekend of shows. Tickets will go fast so, get your tickets now
The Bridge is an original fairytale from Flynn Creek Circus. Inspired by Nordic legend, this year’s show brings a troll, a goat, a wolf, and a cast of mischief-makers to life with breathtaking acrobatics, playful humor, and live music. Kids will fall in love with the characters, while parents get swept up in the artistry and surprise.
Beer, wine, and light concessions will be available at the tent, making it a perfect night out whether you come for the family matinee or the after-hours spectacle.
These shows (especially the adult shows) are already close to selling out, so get your tickets early!
https://www.flynncreekcircus.com/2025-tickets/
FALL AT PENNYROYAL FARM, BOONVILLE
Wines, Cheese, Pumpkins & Beans
What's New at Tasting Room & Online
Sip what's new
Fall Wine Releases
Sparkling, Whites + Reds
Sip what's new this fall!
Details & sign up
https://www.pennyroyalfarm.com/vine-to-table
MENDOLIB SAYS YES ON 50
We’re voting for Proposition 50
We hope you will too.
We didn’t want to redistrict - but we HAVE to…
To stop Trump’s latest power grab and assault on democracy
To offset Texas’s unethical gerrymandering (which Trump engineered) to steal 5 additional Republican seats in Congress
Ted Williams, 5th District County Supervisor
Jason Godeke, Mayor, City of Ft Bragg
Tess Albin-Smith, FB City Council member
Lindy Peters, FB City Council member
Rob Deutsch, Chairman, Meadow Farm Land Trust
Bruce Erickson, Owner, Mendocino Solar
Vanna Freeberg, Owner, Elope Mendocino
Christie and Ryan Olson-Day, Owners, Gallery Bookshop
Taylor Slevin, Owner, Mendocino Sandpiper Jewelry
Samara Smith, Manager, The Woods
Joan and Jeff Stanford, Owners, Stanford Inn
Maggie Watson, Owner, Mendocino Fiduciary
Doug Albin
Dalen Anderson and Paul Schulman
Steve Antler
Ellen Athens
Peter Barg and Frannie Leopold
Ken Baumgartner, DDS and Lynne Ryerson-Baumgartner, RN
John and Barbara Birchard
Jim Blanton
Chet Boddy
Sue and Sandy Brown
Harriet Bye and Larry Sawyer
Rick Childs
David and Tracey Coddington
Rita Crane
Barry Cusick
Brandyn Davis, LCSW
Rev. Matthew and Jennifer Davis
Daney Dawson
Jan De Sipio and Larry Miller
Carrie Durkee
Erica Fielder and Larry Knowles
Bob Fields
Tamara Fites
Margaret Fox
Cynthia Gair
Allison Gardner
Siegmar and Cornelia Gerken
Richard Gibb
Kent Graney
Amanda Gray
Jess Green
Richard Green
Marilyn Hagar
Steve Hansen and Lisa Spradlin
Craig Hathaway
Eric Hillesland
Dawn and Robert Hofberg-Schlosser
Suzanne Jennings
Mary Rose Kaczorowski
Susan Keller
Siri Gian Khalsa
Linda Klee
Rev. Randy and Robin Knutson
Leanne LaDue
Pat LaDue
Cheri Langlois
Ellen McCann
Carol Loomis
Roslyn and Bruce Moore
Jane and Keith Oglesby
Kristin Otwell
Gene Parsons and Star Decker
Kristine Reiber
Arlene Reiss and Warren De Smidt
Janine Rhymes
Linda Rosengarten
George Russell
Pat Scott
Ann Semans
Robin Serrahn
Lari Shea
Ed Shiro
Tanya Smart
Julie Soller
Robert Spies
Tim Stoen
Jean Stubenrauch
Peter Temple
Elizabeth Vrenios
Anne Walker
Rixanne Wehren
Annemarie Weibel
Peter White
Chris Williams and Lorrrie Lagasse,
Merry Winslow,
Ernest Witt and Kom Dixon
Tom Wodetski and Sharon Hansen
Women’s Political Coalition
Steve Worthen
Laurie York and Carmen Goodyear
Wendy Younger
Greg Ziemer
Sue Zipp
Dr. Philip and Clare Zwerling
CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday-Thursday, October 22-23, 2025
COREY ALSON, 47, Ukiah. Shoplifting, petty theft with priors.
SERGIO AMBRIZ, 38, Sacramento/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
HOWARD COATS, 65, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear.
PAYTON DELOSSANTOS, 26, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
DEREK EASTER, 40, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, probation revocation.
VANESSA ELIZABETH, 56, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
CHARLES ENDICH, 51, Eureka/Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.
KATHERINE GONZALEZ, 28, Willits. Domestic battery.
JEREMY HOLZ, 51, Ukiah. Brandishing.
JAVIER MENDEZ, 45, Ukiah. Domestic battery, paraphernalia, probation revocation.
MICHAEL MENKE, 32, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.
JONNIE MIZE, 50, Ukiah. Trespassing, loitering, petty theft, failure to appear.
TYLER MOLINA, 34, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.
JAMES NOVAK JR., 41, Potter Valley. DUI-any drug.
DAMON REICHARDT, 50, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear.
EMILIO REYES-OSORIO, 20, Ukiah. DUI.
ALEJANDRA ROJAS, 19, Ukiah. Burglary.
HARLEY SCHROEDER, 43, Antelope/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
ANTHONY TOLBERT, 37, Ukiah. Petty theft with priors, parole violation.
'A GREAT DEAL OF BRAVERY': SON RESCUES FATHER TAKEN BY NORCAL SNEAKER WAVE
by Sam Mauhay-Moore
Rescue personnel assisted a 74-year-old man after a sneaker wave swept him into the ocean from a jetty on Tuesday, Humboldt County officials announced Wednesday afternoon in a news release.
The county’s emergency communications center received a call from the man’s son at about 3:45 p.m., reporting that his father had fallen into the water from the North Jetty at the southern tip of Samoa Dunes Recreation Area, according to the news release. The open space is near the town of Fairhaven and is a popular spot for surfing, fishing and off-highway vehicle use.
When Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies located the man, he was unresponsive, though breathing, and had incurred “major head and facial injuries,” the county wrote. His son reported that the man was swept off the jetty by a wave and carried into the water. The son had pulled his father from the ocean and back onto the rocks.
The man’s injuries were severe enough to warrant an airlift from a Coast Guard helicopter, which used a rescue basket to hoist him into the aircraft before transporting him to a local hospital.
“The conditions for the rescue were extreme, and a great deal of bravery was shown by all personnel involved,” Sgt. Tony Gomes of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s special services unit said in the county’s news release.
The jetty the man was swept off of is known for its dangerous sneaker waves. In 2020, a woman died there after a wave knocked both her and her son over. Her son was able to hold onto the rocks, but she was swept out into the ocean. The previous year, a man died while surfing near the jetty.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is imploring people to adhere to local beach hazard and sneaker wave warnings from the National Weather Service.
HOARDING
by Paul Modic
I was invited to visit a hoarding scene next door to my friend’s house across the bay from College of the Redwoods. His house was formerly a Native American’s house, which he’s been fixing up for twenty years, and the hoard house where Jamie had lived was also originally a native person’s house.
We threaded our way down a winding trail through old cars and random stuff, and when we got to the front door my friend invited me into the house which was jam-packed with truckloads of garbage except for a narrow trail through the rooms. I said I didn’t want to go in and another long-time friend who was with us said, “I went in yesterday for about ten minutes and I wish I hadn’t.”
When the house had gotten full Jamie made a campsite and started living and sleeping outside under a tree, then moved when too much crap forced him to set up a new spot, then another, resulting in abandoned tents littered across the beautiful acre by the bay.
After some driving accidents and health issues Jamie died and my friend plans to buy his land and clean it up. “Ken,” I said, “I know you didn’t ask for my advice but do you really want to take this on? Haul all this crap away?”
He had already taken a few loads to the dump and explained the situation, that the road goes just a few feet from his front door and if someone else buys it there will be lots of traffic. The tribe would like to buy it as well as the adjacent Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Preserve. He plans to leave it to the tribe or give them right of first refusal.
TRUMP CALLS OFF PLANNED FEDERAL ‘SURGE’ IN SAN FRANCISCO, for now.
by Gillian Mohney, Olivia Hebert
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a statement Thursday that President Donald Trump is “calling off” his deployment of federal forces to San Francisco. Lurie said he received a phone call from Trump late Wednesday evening, where he conveyed to the president that San Francisco is “on the rise.”…
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/trump-calls-off-federal-deployment-san-francisco-21116312.php
A READER WRITES: Anent the Vaillancourt Fountain, I volunteer to be cussed and defend it. Sorry, Bruce. I believe it was meant to be site-specific, as the truly abominable Embarcadero Freeway used to run directly behind it. They were meant to be mated for life, so a little chunk of the Freeway should have been saved to provide context. Eh, it’s not so bad. One is supposed to feel free to walk within it as the water splashes nearby, as is the case with the Halprin fountain on Market Street. Perhaps it could be updated: sewer sludge could be pumped through it and young people who don’t know better could be told that it’s a metaphor for the internet.
‘PITY THE NATION’: CITY LIGHTS BOOKS DISPLAYS BANNERS WARNING AGAINST TYRANNY IN SAN FRANCISCO
by Aidin Vaziri
In San Francisco’s North Beach, where the Beat Generation once gave poetry a megaphone, a familiar voice has returned to the facade of City Lights Books.
The storied bookstore has unfurled banners quoting founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Pity the Nation,” a decades-old warning against tyranny that feels newly urgent amid reports that federal agents are being deployed to the Bay Area.
“Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
Whose sages are silenced and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that praises conquerors and acclaims the bully as hero.
Pity the people who allow their freedoms to erode and their rights to be washed away.
My country tears of thee. Sweet land of liberty!”
Ferlinghetti co-founded City Lights in 1953, creating what would become a cornerstone of the Beat Generation. His fearless defense of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” during the 1957 obscenity trial cemented the store’s role as a sanctuary for free expression — and for dissent.
He wrote “Pity the Nation” in 2007, near the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, as a lament for what he saw as America’s moral drift. The poem was inspired by Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran’s 1933 work of the same name, itself a meditation on a nation’s loss of virtue.
Ferlinghetti — a Navy veteran, pacifist and self-described “philosophical anarchist” — used poetry as a form of protest, confronting hypocrisy, bigotry and complacency. His words called out a nation that “praises conquerors,” fears outsiders and allows its freedoms to erode through apathy.
The banners appeared as the Trump administration began dispatching federal immigration agents to the Bay Area, marking the start of a long-threatened crackdown that local officials have denounced as politically driven.
The move has rattled immigrant communities and drawn sharp rebukes from San Francisco leaders, who accused the president of using fear as a pretext for federal intervention.
In that charged atmosphere, City Lights’ display reads as both protest and prophecy — a reminder, in Ferlinghetti’s own words, of what happens when “freedoms erode and rights are washed away.”
For seven decades, City Lights has served as a gathering place for poets, thinkers and dissenters. More than three years after Ferlinghetti died in 2021 at age 101, his defiant spirit still lingers in the city he helped define.
TRUMP PLAN WOULD ALLOW OIL RIGS ALONG ENTIRE CALIFORNIA COAST
by Tara Duggan
If the Trump administration had its way, oil rigs could soon start drilling along the entire California coast, according to documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Drilling could take place in the pristine waters off of Sonoma County and Big Sur, and theoretically even near the Golden Gate, if the administration were to find a way to bypass National Marine Sanctuary protections.
California elected officials, environmental organizations and tourism and fishing industries expressed opposition to the plan, which they’d been expecting and dreading for months. The documents confirmed that the administration plans to open federal waters, which run 3 miles to 200 miles from shore in California, to oil and gas leasing as soon as 2027, according to the Houston Chronicle.
“This means the oil industry gets open season on the entire California coast,” said Richard Charter, who has worked on the issue for decades and directs a program that coordinates local governments concerned about the impact of offshore leasing on their economies.
New leases for oil or gas drilling off the California coast have not been granted since 1984, and previous Republican presidents have joined Democrats in protecting the coast from drilling. But this is the second time Trump has attempted to open most of the nation’s waters, including along the California coast, to oil and gas drilling. He did so in 2018 during his first administration but was met with so much opposition that he abandoned it the following year.
Such a move would override federal protections in place for decades and would have to overcome state and local environmental regulations. Many coastal counties have ordinances restricting or prohibiting onshore infrastructure for oil drilling, which would make it all but impossible to bring oil collected in federal waters to shore, experts say. Oil companies would also have to obtain permission from the state Coastal Commission.
“For decades, California has been unwavering in our opposition to new offshore oil and gas drilling. The risk to our economy, coastal communities and public health from new offshore oil and gas development is simply too high,” said Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of California Natural Resources, in a statement. “If the Trump administration chooses to go down this path and sell out our coastal communities to the highest bidder, we will stand firm in our commitment to protecting our coastline and the people of California.”
Because of the obstacles the plan would face, opponents portrayed the move as mostly a political maneuver by President Donald Trump to rile Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the state as a whole.
“This administration is very punitive and wants to threaten California,” said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins of Sonoma County, where onshore oil drilling infrastructure is prohibited. Because of that, she noted oil companies would have difficulty transporting crude oil to a refinery, which in the Bay Area are located in Richmond and Martinez. However, she said, “Even if this is very difficult to achieve, we have to take this threat seriously.”
The Chronicle reached out to the White House and did not immediately receive a response.
The administration plans to open Southern California, a federally designated area that stretches from San Diego to Big Sur, to leases in 2027, 2029 and 2030; Central California, which runs north to the Sonoma-Mendocino County border and includes the Bay Area, in 2027 and 2029; and Northern California, which stretches to the Oregon border, in 2029, according to a document obtained by the Houston Chronicle and reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Oil rigs could also drill off the East Coast for the first time since the 1980s under Trump’s plan, according to the Houston Chronicle — though Florida would keep its ban.
The leaked documents detail the administration’s national oil and gas plan, which it has said is designed to increase the country’s energy independence. The plan is expected to be made public at the end of the month and once released would likely go into law two months later, said Charter. If granted, the leases would not likely be revoked by later administrations, he said.
Opponents are concerned that Trump will also target the National Marine Sanctuaries that run from Point Arena (Mendocino County) to the Channel Islands, where oil drilling is prohibited. Those established after 2008 could be particularly vulnerable, Charter said.
Newer sanctuaries include one protecting the Davidson Seamount, an underwater volcano off the Big Sur coast, and an extension of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, which protects most of the Bay Area coast along with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The newer extension of the Greater Farallones runs between Bodega Head in Sonoma County and Point Arena in Mendocino County.
“The sanctuaries were developed almost specifically to defend against offshore drilling,” said Dick Ogg, a Bodega Bay fisherman who has chilling memories of the ecological damage caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989. In addition, he’s concerned about the potential ship traffic and losing areas to certain types of fishing, such as long lining.
“There’s a series of layers of protection in the sanctuaries that create additional impediments to offshore drilling,” Charter said. However, he added, “This administration is unpredictable — they’re tearing down the White House,” referring to Trump’s destruction of the East Wing for a new ballroom.
In 2018, Trump called for a “review” of National Marine Sanctuaries.
The areas off the California coast are not very rich in oil resources except for the southern part of the state; farther north, natural gas would be the main objective, Charter said. However, if the leases were first made available in 2027, oil companies could do exploration to see what they find and then take out additional leases in 2029 in Central and Southern California, and again in 2030 in Southern California.
“This plan would put our coasts at risk — we need to protect our coasts from more offshore drilling, not put them up for sale to the oil and gas industry,” said Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the conservation group Oceana, in a statement.
An oil spill near Huntington Beach in 2021 released approximately 25,000 gallons of oil into the ocean. In 2015, 100,000 gallons of crude spilled from a pipeline carrying offshore oil near Refugio State Beach near Santa Barbara. Both spills had major impacts on wildlife and local businesses.
In July, San Mateo County passed an ordinance conveying its “unwavering opposition” to oil and gas development both offshore and on public lands.
“It’s hard to imagine that anyone would want to damage the National Marine Sanctuary,” said Ray Mueller, a San Mateo County Supervisor who co-sponsored the ordinance.
(sfchronicle.com)
KRON BAY AREA NEWS covered the ICE protest on Coast Guard Island in San Francisco Bay Thursday morning. They later apologized for what they called “any vulgar or offensive images or language that may have appeared” on their live coverage. The primary offender was a man in an inflatable penis costume who obviously intentionally wandered around for almost a minute in the reporter’s background as a prank.
Apparently, these costumes and others like them have become a popular form of street protest. They are available on the internet at a variety of party and Halloween sites for prices ranging from $30 to $70 (some with free shipping). One costume site’s penis costume listing says: “Do you have the balls to wear this inflatable penis costume? Turn yourself into a giant penis with this full-body inflatable penis suit. Featuring armholes, a sheer face panel, and an internal fan that keeps things erect, this costume is a guaranteed hit.”
MARY L. SILVERBERG: Democrats seem to think the No Kings protests are effective because “millions” of people participated. The most recent effective protests that I can think of were unconventional. Gov. Abbots busing of migrants to sanctuary cities certainly highlighted a problem in need of a solution. And the one women protest by Riley Gaines against biological men competing in women’s sports spread as others joined in her crusade. No violence, deaths or property damage in either of these “protests”. A few people with a good idea or compelling issue are far more effective than five million people with a vague aim and what they think is a catchy phrase.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY (2)
So are any of you assholes complaining that this protest was ‘childish’ going to address Trump’s response OF AI slop, in which he flies a “King Trump” plane wearing a crown and shits on protestors? How is “I go poopy on you!!” Anything but childish? Why do you idiots worship that rotting pumpkin currently soiling — and destroying — the White House?
GAS BLOWOUT SURVIVORS, ADVOCATES CALL FOR SHUTDOWN OF ALISO CANYON ON DISASTER'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY
by Dan Bacher
Los Angeles – While the national mainstream and “alternative” media often portrays California as the nation’s “green” and “progressive” leader, the victims of the largest methane blowout in U.S. history have a much different perspective.
On the 10-year-anniversary of the Aliso Canyon gas storage underground facility disaster, survivors and advocates continue to demand that Governor Gavin Newsom shuts down this dangerous facility that they say still poses a “massive risk to the community.”
The Aliso Canyon gas blowout was a huge methane leak in the Santa Susana Mountains near the community of Porter Ranch in northern Los Angeles. On this day in 2015, SoCal Gas, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy, discovered gas escaping from a well within the Aliso Canyon underground storage facility.
However, it wasn't until February 11 of the following year that the company reported that it had the leak under control. Then on February 18, California officials announced that the leak was permanently plugged. The 112-day blowout released 109,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere.…
HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE GIANTS’ HIRE OF TONY VITELLO
by Scott Ostler
You would expect the San Francisco Giants’ new manager to be a dynamic figure who outwardly exudes more energy and enthusiasm than the guy Buster Posey just fired, but did he have to hire Chuck E. Cheese?
That’s the kind of stuff we’ll be hearing in the wake of Posey tabbing college coach Tony Vitello to manage the Giants. Or should we call the team Giants U.?
You can’t fault the skeptics. This Vitello guy never played pro ball, and he has never coached or managed a professional baseball game. Some might argue he’d have been a reach for the Oakland Ballers job.
Vitello’s up-front calling card, along with winning, is enthusiasm and fire. And if you think he is exuberant and upbeat now, wait until he finds out he doesn’t have to tape ankles and drive the team bus.
Seriously, this is a stroke of genius by Posey. He’s not only thinking outside the box, he’s thinking outside the warehouse where the boxes are stored. That’s not surprising. Posey might look and sound like the guy who does your taxes, but he’s got a bold streak.
I looked it up: In his 12-year playing career, Posey struck out looking only 168 times, and all 168 were bad calls. He believes in taking his cuts.
Posey could have played it safe, hired any of the half-dozen or so other candidates he interviewed, all of whom had considerable experience in professional baseball. Instead, he went with his instinct, and when has that been wrong? It’s early in his front-office career, but who isn’t a Buster truster?
Posey has a quiet confidence, built from experience. He was a member of three World Series-winning teams, and each of them had a lively atmosphere in the clubhouse and dugout, bordering on eccentric. Pablo Sandoval, Timmy Lincecum, Brian Wilson, Aubrey Huff, Tim Flannery, the Right Reverend Hunter Pence.
Manager Bruce Bochy was hardly a one-man party, but he appreciated the value of positive energy and enthusiasm.
The whole business of big-league experience is overrated. If you can manage a bullpen at the collegiate level, you should be able to adjust to the bigs, where you have several pitching coaches and way more analytics.
I couldn’t send in a 3rd-and-long play for the San Francisco 49ers, I couldn’t draw up a last-second play for the Golden State Warriors, but give me all the resources Vitello will have and I could figure out when to bring in Randy Rodriguez.
Vitello might hire an assistant coach or two from his Tennessee team, but the Giants’ coaching staff probably won’t resemble the group of fuzzy-cheeked, new-age nobodies whom Gabe Kapler brought in. That said, even the Kapler Plan had its moments. Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt benefited from, and endorsed, Kapler’s lab experiment. And there was that 107-win season.
Vitello is likely to bring a more traditional approach than did Kapler. The new staff, picked with Posey’s help, will be experienced pro baseball people who can teach and drill. Who knows, maybe Posey will hire himself as bench coach.
Posey’s orders to Vitello will be like the tagline in an old TV commercial: Don’t just set the table, set the mood.
That said, there will be a stress on professionalism, so don’t expect Vitello to be too crazy. One factor in Posey’s decision might have been the youthful exuberance that rookie Drew Gilbert brought to the team last season; Gilbert played under Vitello at Tennessee. But there’s a difference between age 47 and age 25, the difference between vibrant energy and a sugar rush.
Posey wants the Giants to drill down on the basics, and who better to lead that teaching assignment than a college coach?
How will the Giants react to Vitello? The four team leaders — Willy Adames, Logan Webb, Matt Chapman and Rafael Devers — are enthusiastic, outgoing guys who will welcome the new breeze blowing into the clubhouse. By the second week of spring training, Vitello and Adames will have their own 12-part handshake.
Big league experience? Come on, this is the Bay Area. Vitello joins a cool club, the fifth current Bay Area pro coach/manager who came to the job with zero previous experience leading a big-league team. Good group: Steve Kerr, Kyle Shanahan, Natalie Nakase and Ryan Warsofsky (whose San Jose Sharks are 0-4-2, but it’s not like the team is loaded with NHL All-Stars). Throw in Sacramento A’s skipper Mark Kotsay and make it a six-pack.
There will be some adjustment for Vitello. Coaching college students is not the same as managing adult pros. Do you have a college kid? Big leaguers might actually listen, and not threaten to leave for a better NIL offer.
Besides, baseball is a kid’s game. Walking into a major league clubhouse isn’t exactly like stumbling into the break room of the U.S. Supreme Court.
So, welcome to the Bay, new guy. Don’t mind the fans and media offering advice and passing judgment on a daily basis. Brian Sabean once labeled this crew the Lunatic Fringe, but a lot has changed since then. Now they’re the Lunatic Mainstream.
Right now they’re debating you being hired, but soon they’ll be helping you make out your lineup card. Try not to lose any games.
HOW WILLIE MAYS BECAME A GIANT
by Allen Barra
The most exciting possibility of all, the one that would quicken the blood of New York baseball fans for years whenever the subject was mentioned, was that the New York Yankees were interested in Willie Mays in 1949 well before Willie‘s high school graduation. Yankees General Manager George Weiss had sent scout Bill McCorry to give him a report. According to Roger Kahn who would soon be writing about both Mickey Mantle and Mays in New York, McCorry was about the last man who should’ve been sent to watch a black team in Alabama. He was disdainful of the Negro leagues, and regarded their players as not at the level of even the low white minor leagues. His evaluation was that Willie couldn’t hit a curveball, which was pretty much code for young and black. In retrospect one wonders why Weiss, who had no interest in signing black players, and who acquired a few for the Yankees minor league system only to trade them away, bothered to send a scout at all. Nonetheless what might have been is almost too glorious for Yankees fans to contemplate. With Mantle as the driving force the Yankees won the pennant every year from 1951 through 1964 except in 1954. In 1959 the Yankees finished third, 15 games behind the first place Chicago White Sox and that kind of gap was probably beyond even Willie Mays’ talents. But in 1954 Mays was the best player in baseball and would win both the National League batting title and the most valuable player award. And that year the Yankees had their best record under Casey Stengle, winning 103 games but still finished eight games behind the Cleveland Indians. It’s not far from the realm of possibility that if Mays had been in pinstripes that season New York could’ve made up that difference by winning just four more games against Cleveland. If that had happened the Yanks would’ve won 13 pennants in 14 seasons.
Win or no win Mays and Mantle would have been far and away and without question the most spectacular pair of teammates ever to play baseball. Despite many teams’ reluctance to a bid on a black player, Willie Mays would’ve been signed to a major league team before Mickey Mantle if he hadn’t still been in high school. A minor mystery in Willie‘s life is why it took him until 1950 to graduate. He was an average student and his family saw that he went to school. Whatever classes he might’ve missed and for whatever reason, he made the grade in time to graduate on May 31.
It’s also not known why he then went unsigned for nearly three weeks when, as the leading local black paper, the Birmingham World, reported, the Braves, Red Sox, Brooklyn Dodgers, and Cleveland Indians owned by Bill Veeck, who had already signed Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, and Luke Easter, were hot on the trail of star centerfielder Willie Mays. The only wonder is that there weren’t more.
There’s just one reason that seems to make sense. Many major league teams were still skittish about signing black players, and those that weren’t such as the Dodgers, Indians, and Giants, had already signed their “quota.”
The Giants broke ranks first. The day after the World story ran, Giants scout Ed Montague drove to Tuscaloosa to meet the Black Barons’ bus as they arrived for a game. He walked up to Willie and asked if he could speak to him in private. Willie, wide-eyed, said, Sure. Montague then asked him if he would like to play professional baseball, ignoring the obvious fact that Willie was already playing professional baseball. Willie‘s immediate answer was, Yes, sir. Montague told Mays that he would speak to the team owner about his contract. A surprised Willie replied, What contract? Montague, his pulse racing, told Willie he would have an offer to him early the next day. He knew he had to move fast because he had already seen a Dodger scout in Tuscaloosa, obviously there to try to sign Mays for Brooklyn.
The next morning, bright and early, Montague called Mays’ aunt Sarah and asked bluntly how much it would take to get Willie to sign with the Giants? “$5,000, she answered. The scout quickly called his boss Jack Schwartz who told him to go for it. Montague drove like a man possessed to the Mays house where at four in the afternoon Mays father Cat, off work from the mill, was waiting. They negotiated for a few minutes. Montague got Cat and his wife Sarah to agree to $4,000 but with a $250 a month salary. In the course of the conversation, it came out that the Giants were going to pay Black Barons owner Tom Hayes $10,000 for the rights to Willie. Cat was indignant and rightfully so. Why were the Giants paying Hayes, who had no contract with Willie, $6,000 more than they were paying Willie? Montague’s reply was weak: “He might sue us later and we don’t want any trouble.” The truth probably had more to do with wanting to stay on good terms with the Black Barons for future prospects. But whatever the reason it was clear that the Giants were willing to invest a cool $14,000 in the young Willie Mays. That wasn’t much considering what the Giants got. But for Willie it sure beat what Mickey Mantle had signed for almost exactly a year earlier. Willie signed with the Giants on June 21 and Sarah divided the money giving Cat $250, keeping $750 for the household and leaving Willie $3,000.
(‘Mickey & Willie / Mays & Mantle’)
HOW CALIFORNIA WINE HAS CHANGED, ACCORDING TO THE GREATEST LIVING WINE WRITER
by Esther Mobley
Jancis Robinson, arguably the most revered living wine writer, has been on the beat for 50 years. On her eponymous website and in her columns for the U.K.’s Financial Times, she covers the full enological world, from the grand crus of Burgundy to the wilds of Australia to, lately, the formidable vineyards of her native England.
Given that breadth of perspective, I was interested during a recent interview with Robinson to understand how she sees the arc of California wine over the last half-century. She’s proven herself committed to covering the Golden State’s wine scene, and this month she’s in the Bay Area: Next week, she’ll be in Napa to speak at the Old Vine Conference, a multi-day event dedicated to wines from historic vineyards. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of JancisRobinson.com, Robinson will be hosting an extravagant, $1,500-a-head dinner at the Morris in San Francisco, each course paired with a trio of wines from France, England and California.
What struck me most was how pivotal Robinson was to establishing a thirst for California wines in the U.K. in the ’70s and ’80s, convincing the Port- and Bordeaux-loving Brits that American bottles were worthy of connoisseurship too.
When Robinson began her wine writing career in 1975, California “was not thought of as being a source of exciting wine,” she said. The following year, she heard a rumor that one of Champagne’s most famous houses, Moet & Chandon, might be up to something in Napa Valley. She traveled from London to Yountville and filed a story — her first in a national publication — for the Sunday Times about the fledgling Domaine Chandon. “It was a scoop,” Michaela Rodeno, Domaine Chandon’s vice president at the time, wrote in an email. (Robinson made a statement, Rodeno said, when she showed up to the winery “in long blonde curls, a flowy black robe, and … red glasses.”)
Moet & Chandon’s investment in Napa piqued the interest of British wine lovers, Robinson said, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that California wines became “a bit more normalized” there. A weak dollar helped propel an influx of California exports, which suddenly seemed to the Brits like a very good value. And the results of 1976’s Judgment of Paris, the famous competition in which French judges deemed California wines superior to French counterparts, were finally beginning to percolate.
In the ’80s, Robinson became the honorary secretary of the Zinfandel Club, an influential British organization that proselytized for California’s signature red to fellow wine lovers. Early California hits in the London market — Zinfandel and otherwise — included, in Robinson’s recollection, Ridge, Chalone, Trefethen, Spring Mountain Vineyard, Sterling, Schramsberg and Mondavi.
Robinson and her husband, Nick Lander, made quite a statement in 1981 when the opening wine list of their new London restaurant, L’Escargot, consisted entirely of American bottles. (Mostly California, but the odd Washington Merlot and Oregon Pinot Noir made an appearance.) On opening night, Robert Mondavi showed up unexpectedly, joining the table that Lander was hosting for the builders who had worked on the restaurant’s construction. The scandal of the American wine list, coupled with Mondavi’s cameo, was enough to make it into the gossip pages of the paper the next day.
L'Escargot’s unconventional wine list was not universally embraced. “There was one party of six French people who came in, ordered their food, looked at the wine list, got up and walked out,” Robinson said. She subsequently added a few concessions — Sancerre, Muscadet, Chablis and Champagne.
Those French snobs were outliers. For the most part, in the ’80s, “California wine really was the thing” in London, Robinson said. In the ’90s, many California producers began making wines in a fruitier, higher-alcohol style, which didn’t suit the austere English palate, including Robinson’s. California “went through a stage where it was making a lot of wine that was not to my taste — overripe, too similar,” she said.
These days, however, Robinson is heartened by what she tastes from California. “I love the fact that it’s much more experimental now and there are far more wines that are fresher, and genuinely trying to express place,” which the high alcohol levels tended to obscure, Robinson said.
It's a shame, Robinson said, that this period of California winemakers’ creative experimentation is coinciding with a global decline in alcohol consumption. In 50 years on the job, “I’ve never seen a downturn like this,” she said. Her career essentially “coincided with the world falling in love with wine,” and now she’s seeing that interest wane for the first time in her professional life.
What will come out of this complicated moment? As many people cut back on drinking for health reasons, Robinson predicts that the low end of the wine market, which may cater to people just seeking a buzz, will continue to drop. (Already, wines under $10 have been seeing the sharpest sales declines of any category.) “The days of cheap wine are over,” she said. “That’s not a U.S.-specific comment. I’m thinking of elderly Frenchmen who used to unthinkingly drink a liter of ordinary red a day.”
Those who will continue to drink wine will do so thoughtfully, she believes, and they may be willing to spend more on it. She celebrates that idea, though she also laments the notion that wine could become a luxury beverage for special occasions, no longer a simple, quotidian pleasure at the dinner table.
Robinson refuses to believe that wine will become doomed to irrelevance, though. “From where I sit there doesn’t seem to be any falloff in the number of people who want to make wine, take a wine course, go on a wine-focused holiday,” she said. “People still seem to want to learn.”
(SF Chronicle)
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
— Wilfred Owen (1917)
TURNED THE RADIO ON my drive today
Heard a whole lot of songs 'bout a whole bunch of things
I knew all the words but I couldn't relate
'Cause my three chords and the truth is
I ain't no preacher and I ain't no judge
My straight and narrow's been a little bit rough
Ain't tryin' to bible belt kill the buzz
'Cause God loves country music…
— Anne Wilson (2024)
TOUGHEST JOB I ever had? Cuttin' wood. My daddy on one side of the saw, me on the other. Oak trees, mostly. Cross-cut saw. I was eight or nine. No place else to go. No pay. Just something my daddy asked me to do. I was never one to run from work.
He'd let me drive through the woods. He'd shift the gears, I'd turn the wheel. I drove a tractor when I was seven. Yeah, I did it all. I handled manure. It was fertilizer for us. Just as good as anything else on this earth. I'd take it up from the fields, spread it around the crops. Nah, I didn't hate it. It was a job.
Same as working in the slaughterhouse. In '62 I was making $2.40 an hour. Just for utility work. The butchers, they were getting more than $3 an hour. Anything you do, if it's worth it, it's gonna take work. I try and teach my kids that. That way they know what life is all about. My boy, he's got his chores. My girls, they got beds to make up. My kids, that gives me incentive to work a little harder. I'm not workin' for nothin'. I'm workin' for somethin'.'
— Joe Frazier
THE MIRROR STAGE OF US POLITICS
by Jeffrey St. Clair
The US has been transformed into a mirror world, the mirror world of a pathological narcissist, a world of reverse images where victims are flipped into perpetrators, the poor portrayed as exploiters of the super-rich, the weak as persecutors of the strong and where the law is used to perpetuate lawlessness. The police conceal their faces behind the masks of thieves, while thieves loot the public estate unmolested. Public corruption has been legalized and exposing graft made a crime.
The right of free speech has been rendered into an obligation to be obsequious in the face of power. The history of the country is being erased and rewritten to honor some of its most infamous villains and traitors and airbrush out defenders of liberty, diversity and equality. The sins of the past are promoted as virtues. People are judged based on the color of their skin and the size of their portfolios. Domestic tranquillity has been supplanted by an atmosphere of fear and manufactured dread, where everything and everyone is suspect and no one is even sure what a citizen is or whether they are one. Not even the weather is to be believed.
This mirror world’s aesthetic is the grotesque, the bloated, the cannabilistic and the country feeding upon itself is presented as a kind of cage match for the entertainment of the elite. Even the people’s house, built, maintained and served by the enslaved, has been retrofitted into a gilt-fringed Versailles on the Potomac.
This is, of course, the mirror world’s fatal weakness: a hollow hubris. Deep down a secret voice whispers to the narcissist that he’s not worthy of the power he holds. His crippling anxiety is that the people he despises the most will see through him to the fraud within, that his grip on power is maintained by an illusion of force–not real authority–and that once exposed, the mirror will crack and he will crumble by his own accord at the feet of those he tormented.
(CounterPunch.org)
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“DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.
“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
— Raymond Chandler
THE RISE OF THE THIELVERSE and the Construction of the Surveillance State
Whitney Webb traces the Thielverse’s rise and the bipartisan construction of the modern surveillance state that Trump and his benefactors are deploying against dissidents and immigrants today.
with Chris Hedges
The descent into a new, mutated and technology-focused form of American fascism is already here. Those who have kept track of the rise of the Thielverse, which includes figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and JD Vance, have understood that an agenda to usher in a unique form of authoritarianism has been slowly introduced into the mainstream political atmosphere.
Whitney Webb, investigative journalist and author of One Nation Under Blackmail, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to document the rise of this cabal into the most powerful positions of the American government.
“I think now it’s quite clear that this is the PayPal Mafia’s moment. These particular figures have had an extremely significant influence on US government policy since January, including the extreme distribution of AI throughout the US government,” Webb explains.
It’s clear that the architects of mass surveillance and the military industrial complex are beginning to coalesce in unprecedented ways within the Trump administration and Webb emphasizes that now is the time to pay attention and push back against these new forces.
If they have their way, all commercial technology will be completely folded into the national security state — acting blatantly as the new infrastructure for techno-authoritarian rule. The underlying idea behind this new system is “pre-crime,” or the use of mass surveillance to designate people criminals before they’ve committed any crime. Webb warns that the Trump administration and its benefactors will demonize segments of the population to turn civilians against together, all in pursuit of building out this elaborate system of control right under our noses.
Transcript:
Chris Hedges
There were many, including some liberals, who mistakenly believed the Trump administration would dismantle the deep state. In fact, as the investigative reporter Whitney Webb has documented, Trump is closely allied with the most authoritarian figures in Silicon Valley, such as Peter Thiel, who envision a world where our habits, proclivities, opinions and movements are minutely recorded and tracked.
These Trump allies do not intend to free us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or mass surveillance. They will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. Nor will they slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon.
They are rapidly purging the civil service, as well as law enforcement and the military, not to eradicate the deep state, but to ensure that those in charge of state machinery are exclusively loyal to the whims and dictates of the Trump White House. What is being targeted is not the deep state, but the laws, regulations, protocols and rules, and the government civil servants who enforce them, which hinder absolute dictatorial control.
Compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability are slated to be abolished. Those who believe that the government is designed to serve the common good, rather than the dictates of a tiny cabal of billionaires, will be forced out. The deep state will be reconstituted to serve the leadership cult.
Laws and the rights enshrined in the Constitution will become irrelevant. It is a coup d’état by inches, one that will be enforced in crude and brutal fashion by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the streets of our cities and empowered by Thiel’s Palantir and the sophisticated forms of monitoring made possible by artificial intelligence and digital surveillance pioneered by Silicon Valley.
Joining me to discuss our emergent Orwellian state is the investigative journalist and author of One Nation Under Blackmail Whitney Webb. You can find her on her website, Unlimited Hangout.
Whitney, let’s go back to the beginning, [John] Poindexter, Iran-Contra, which I covered actually when I was in Nicaragua, because that’s really the origin of where we are today.
Whitney Webb
Yeah, it’s definitely, I would argue, one of the best starting points and also thanks so much for having me on, Chris. So, John Poindexter, as of course you know, was one of the national security advisors to [Ronald] Reagan and was the highest ranking member of his administration that was indicted as part of Iran-Contra, but he is also remembered as the “godfather of modern surveillance”.
And this is in part because of his efforts in the immediate post-9/11 era pioneering an office within DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] that housed a program called Total Information Awareness. So right after the Reagan administration, Poindexter was sort of in various roles throughout these tech companies that were sort of a prototype to what Palantir and Total Information Awareness (TIA) would later do, like Saffron Technology, Syntech Technologies that were defense contractors and trying to basically create sort of predictive analytics to determine what terrorists would do next, all before 9/11 even happened.
And of course, there was a renewed demand for that type of technology and these sort of innovative solutions in the immediate post-9/11 era. And when this information was reported on, Total Information Awareness, there was a huge outcry throughout US mainstream media.
A lot of organizations, including the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and organizations like that, rightly noted that it would eliminate the constitutional right to privacy and create this very disturbing era of mass surveillance by… I think one of the mainstream media reports on it said that it would fight terrorism by terrifying US citizens basically and making everyone a suspect under this type of paradigm he was seeking to usher in.
And so it was eventually, under pressure, it was I think first announced in February 2003 and by May they attempted to change the name to Terrorism Information Awareness trying to move away from the idea that it would be total, it would surveil absolutely everyone through a name change but obviously it didn’t change how the program actually worked it would still be focused on everyday Americans, a total dragnet, really.
And in that same month where that name change happened, Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir and as Palantir was developing as a company they, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, the Palantir co-founders, reached out to Poindexter directly through Richard Perle, who’s a well-known neoconservative figure and was also one of the architects of the Iraq War at the Bush-era Pentagon.
Basically they hatched this plan to privatize this program, rightly calculating that if they turned it into an entirely private sector enterprise, the outrage would essentially dissipate, which it remarkably did because originally it was a public-private partnership housed within DARPA and then by making it this private sector enterprise a lot of the concerns about it disappeared and this is arguably because, by moving into the private sector, they were able to accomplish a lot more than they could have by being affiliated directly with the public sector even though they contract with the public sector.
And so Palantir funding was set up with money from Peter Thiel himself and that the algorithm for it had originally been developed at PayPal and the other funding source was the CIA’s In-Q-Tel. And one of the figures that helped create that, that helped make that funding decision, was the CIA’s chief information officer at the time named Alan Wade.
And Alan Wade had been one of the top allies of Total Information Awareness with Poindexter in the immediate post-9/11 era and so the CIA was Palantir’s exclusive client for, I believe, the first six years of its existence as a company and its engineers went to Langley, the CIA headquarters in Virginia, every two weeks for several years as well where the CIA was developing their algorithm with them, in a very direct partnership and Alex Karp has even said that the CIA was always the intended client of Palantir. So I guess I’ll pause there and iIm happy to go in other any other direction.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, explain what it does, what Poindexter’s goal was and what they were able to establish, I mean the mechanics of it.
Whitney Webb
So Poindexter’s goal was extremely broad. I mean, it really covered, it’s absolutely staggering when you think about it. The way it was initially sold to the public was this is a way to stop terrorism attacks before they happen by collating so much data from all different sources and then using it in some sort of analytic or AI to determine if certain data points are flagging that a terrorist attack will take place here or there, but there’s various different aspects of this program that didn’t really get enough coverage at the time.
So one is that they attempted to use free market forces to determine if a terrorism attack would happen before it happened. They created basically what’s referred to as a terrorism futures market, which was really like a forerunner to Polymarket and some of these predictive markets where people bet on things online. It was basically that, but about whether a terrorist attack will happen in the Middle East or if there will be turmoil in the Middle East, if someone like Yasser Arafat would be overthrown. These were the kinds of things they were going to have these unnamed investors bet on.
Another one was focused entirely on health under this program called biosurveillance, which actually, a lot of it Palantir helped launch with HHS (US Department of Health and Human Services) during the COVID era. Things like analyzing American wastewater to determine if there is going to be an outbreak of a disease before it happens with, again, an algorithm or basically surveilling Americans’ health data to determine if there will be a pandemic before it happens or if there will be a bioterror attack.
Because, remember, this was also in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks. And so a lot of that, particularly on the health front, has absolutely come under the portfolio of Palantir in the years since. They now control basically all of the health data at HHS and also the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) under the HHS and also the NHS (National Health Service) in Britain as well and have continued to expand on that front.
But Palantir, you know, also works extensively now in the private sector as well. They’re a major AI engine for Wall Street banks, for example, and they have different programs that are sold to different entities, but ultimately, they are a massive contractor to essentially every US intelligence agency, and that includes DHS and ICE which a lot of the reporting, critical reporting on Palantir, focuses on their contracts with ICE specifically, but all of that is intended to also be used against people that are not illegal immigrants.
It’s meant to be an entire dragnet of basically pre-crime, and Palantir, in concordance with Poindexter’s ambitions, has been a major piloter of pre-crime technology in the United States. I think they began doing that in New Orleans initially, they call it predictive policing is the term that they use but a lot of other companies have attempted to also get in on this.
One of the most notorious being PredPol that was a partnership I believe with UCLA and LAPD or something to that effect and they’re notoriously inaccurate and they’re almost always piloted in low-income minority neighborhoods and basically are a way, I mean in essence what happens because the accuracy rate is so low is that you’re creating this pipeline of people basically being sent to prison or being caught up in crimes that are very petty but you’re just sending police to all these areas in a relatively discriminatory way.
I mean the PredPol is really outrageous because it’s accuracy was found to be like insanely low and they didn’t phase it out despite the extreme inaccuracy. It was worse than a coin toss, essentially, and departments around the country continued to use it. And then in some of these areas where Palantir ended up leaving, another Peter Thiel-backed entity called Carbyne also has a predictive policing component, but has been sort of taking over 911 emergency call systems throughout the United States, which is generally at the county level.
But this is a company that wasn’t just funded by Peter Thiel, it was funded by Jeffrey Epstein and was led for a significant amount of time by Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, as well and has sort of expanded outwards. So, yeah, a lot of Poindexter’s ambitions unfortunately have been becoming true at a really rapid pace. And part of this was done under the guise of combating the COVID-19 situation with data, that we needed data to solve those problems.
Chris Hedges
And are you in essence just creating profiles? I mean, these are just creating profiles for every American citizen?
Whitney Webb
Well, ultimately, I mean, that’s been acknowledged now. I think there was a report on that a few months ago. The Trump administration was explicitly using Palantir to make databases on every American. But that has been done in a way that has been more covert through something called the Main Core database. That was, again, something that goes back to Iran-Contra and persists until the present.
But this is sort of a way to make it a more overt program that can be used openly by law enforcement, arguably. And I would say if you look back to how the Trump administration behaved around the end of 2019, there were a spate of mass shootings and basically their response to those was to create the legal infrastructure for pre-crime.
So after the El Paso Walmart shooting and some of these shootings that happened during that time, William Barr, then Attorney General, created this program at the DOJ called DEEP that basically created the legal infrastructure for pre-crime. And you had Trump come out and say that the way to combat these shootings was to have social media develop algorithms that flag posts to predict shooters before they can act, target some of these anonymous online message boards.
And he was also considering this program that he was being pitched creating a DARPA for health, HARPA, which was actually created under Biden under the name ARPA-H. They just moved the H to the back. And the pilot program for that that was being pitched during the Trump era was called SAFE HOME. It’s an acronym.
And basically that was about using AI to scan American social media posts in mass to determine what they called early warning signs of neuropsychiatric violence and that people that were flagged by that algorithm could then be sent to a court-ordered physician or put under house arrest or all sorts of possibilities were fielded.
And it ultimately wasn’t adopted by Trump, but these are the types of things that they were considering. And so now, you know, given the current climate, how extremely entangled Palantir has become with the current administration expanding even into the IRS and Treasury and mortgages in addition to just the national security components and health components.
It is rather unsettling but, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of this profiling of Americans has been going on for a long time under the guise of what was developed by the Iran-Contra crowd covertly. The continuity of government protocols in this effort by parts of the “deep state” or the national security state to basically profile people they deemed unfriendly for whatever reason, people that could be, you know, potentially incarcerated in a time of political upheaval, they said.
But the Reagan administration’s examples of political upheaval in these cases were… one example given was widespread mass protests that were nonviolent against US military intervention in Latin America, like in Nicaragua, for example, was something that could have them use these profiles they had developed on Americans then back in the 1980s and incarcerate them at a time deemed convenient or necessary by the Reagan administration.
And they claimed then, in the 1980s, to be able to locate these so-called dissidents almost immediately based on the data they had compiled on them at that point. So imagine what it’s become over the past 25 years when we’ve seen a lot of these extreme surveillance capabilities and also the development of the associated technology just take off in the aftermath of 9-11-2001.
Chris Hedges
Let me ask about what you call the “PayPal Mafia”. Palmer Luckey, he was a Thiel fellow, founded [Oculus] in 2012 before it was purchased by Meta, [Mark] Zuckerberg. [CEO of OpenAI] Sam Altman, [Vice President] JD Vance, Elon Musk. Talk about that little cabal.
Whitney Webb
Yeah, well they are quite the cabal. First of all, PayPal Mafia, it’s important to point out what PayPal is. So PayPal is most widely known, right, to have been a project of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, but it was originally a combination of Peter Thiel’s Confinity and Elon Musk’s X.com.
And when Peter Thiel was setting up this proto-PayPal, he and his co-founders openly, they’ve admitted this, consulted with every three letter agency in the US government that would talk to them about developing their product before they launched it.
And then they teamed up with Elon Musk and X and created this, I mean, it basically dollarized the internet. It made the dollar the de facto currency of the internet and had very huge reverberations for the early FinTech space. But of course, as I just said, they did this hand in hand with the US government.
And then, it’s really no surprise that you see, when it’s sold, when they sell PayPal to Pierre Omidyar of eBay, Peter Thiel moves into this effort to privatize Total Information Awareness, the algorithm for Palantir having started as PayPal’s anti-fraud algorithm initially and then being developed to become what it is today.
And so since then you have a whole network of people that have either been protege’s of these figures or worked at one point for PayPal. For example the current AI and crypto czar at the White House David Sacks, a former top executive at PayPal with Thiel and all of these other people.
And of course JD Vance, the current vice president, is intimately connected to Peter Thiel. His whole career in VC (venture capital), Peter Thiel’s entirely responsible for that. And also, Thiel was the main donor to a lot of his political campaigns and he would not be the vice president if it wasn’t for Peter Thiel. He wouldn’t even be a politician, probably.
So Thiel’s influence is incredibly significant. It was also arguably significant during the first Trump administration, but I think now it’s quite clear that this is the PayPal Mafia’s moment. These particular figures have an extremely significant influence on US government policy since January, including the extreme distribution of AI throughout the US government.
And this includes not just well-known figures of the PayPal Mafia, but people, a lot of former employees for Palantir have been placed throughout the US government that you don’t think a lot about or most people don’t think a lot about, chief information officers of various departments and things like that.
You know, there’s a considerable, very considerable, amount of influence and what I find particularly troubling about this is that a lot of these PayPal Mafia figures Thiel, Musk and Vance, among others, are extremely close to or acolytes really of the philosophy advocated by a fellow named Curtis Yarvin, whose political philosophy is essentially that the way to solve the problems of our current system and current bureaucracy is to basically completely privatize the state and install a CEO in place of the president, who would rule essentially as a dictator, which is completely bonkers and it’s amazing that people have allowed people like Peter Thiel or even Yarvin himself to masquerade as so-called libertarians when they’re very in favor of the authoritarian abilities of the state.
They just want to sufficiently privatize it before allowing that authoritarianism to continue and expand. And you can also see how a lot of these people are also war profiteers, Palantir, of course, not only is this tool of mass surveillance, it’s a tool of mass murder used by the US Army and also by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] to decide who lives and who dies in Gaza.
And a lot of these other people that have been Thiel protégés, for example, like Palmer Luckey and Anduril, which Luckey co-founded with Trae Stephens, who’s also affiliated with the aforementioned Epstein-funded Carbyne 911.
Anduril is ushering in this era of autonomous warfare, and bankrolled, of course, by Peter Thiel. And they’re also developing the so-called smart wall on the US-Mexico border. And really, you know, these people are developing very Orwellian disturbing systems with not just domestic implications but also very significant implications to how the US military and other militaries operate abroad.
And it’s extremely disturbing to say the very least. And a lot of their branding is, you know, we’re America first and so we should replace the old defense contractor giants like Lockheed Martin, for example, or General Dynamics and these entities and framing that as a good thing, this is how we’re going to defeat the deep state, right?
We’re going to remove these, it’s correct that they’re corrupt and terrible companies that have enabled terrible things, but it’s not like Anduril won’t enable the same sort of thing, it’ll just enable it more efficiently and at greater scale and with less humans involved. And is that necessarily better?
I don’t really think so. And when you consider, too, that you have the current Secretary of War, since it’s been recently renamed, in Pete Hegseth coming out and basically saying, the massacre of Wounded Knee, the soldiers that did that should have their medals restored and all of this, it’s basically trying to be anti-woke by conflating American culture with war crimes at the same time that we’re developing all of this autonomous technology that would allow these people to conduct more war crimes than ever before.
So under the guise of “we’re making the government more efficient”, what aspects of the government are these people in the PayPal Mafia actually making more efficient? Well, one of them is mass murder.
Unfortunately, you don’t hear enough about this and presumably a lot of people that wanted the destruction of the so-called deep state under Trump didn’t want these things to expand and continue, but they absolutely are.
Chris Hedges
Let’s talk a little bit about, you mentioned privatizations, let’s talk about SpaceX, cryptocurrency, and Musk’s early involvement with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] in the administration. What they were doing, what they’re doing. And explain for people who don’t understand the smart wall, what the smart wall is.
Whitney Webb
So I’ll start with that because you asked a couple different things there. So basically the goal of the smart wall, it’s not a physical wall, it’s meant to be basically an invisible wall that uses a combination of surveillance and drone technology to basically intercept anyone crossing the border in a non-authorized way.
So that presumably includes both people crossing from Mexico into the US and people crossing from the US to Mexico. And again, it’s free in terms of efficiency and all of that. You don’t have to have necessarily border agents there. You can have drones that are currently not lethal but could be made lethal at any point.
And that is basically what they envision as the future of the wall and obviously a lot of Trump supporters, I think, originally had envisioned a physical wall and not this combo of non-lethal-potentially-in-the-future-lethal drone technology and mass surveillance but also as you may be aware, the US government defines the border as going much more inland than a lot of people would imagine.
And I forget exactly how long it is but a significant amount of the country actually lives in what is considered a border zone that have sometimes in the past been referred to as Constitution-free zones where they’re allowed to basically extend this type of technology deep into the U.S. domestically as well as presumably into Mexico to some extent as well, especially now that the military and intelligence agencies say they have to go be more active in Mexico to presumably fight Mexican drug cartels and things of that nature.
So they’ll certainly be taking liberties there as well. I’m not sure exactly what you’d like to talk about as it relates to SpaceX, but it is worth pointing out that they’re a massive military contractor specifically for Space Force created under the first Trump administration. They really are the main contractor for Space Force.
And also, you know, they are directly affiliated with Starlink, the satellite internet company that also arguably has some kind of covert uses with Elon Musk, for example, saying he is going to help sneak Starlinks into Iran, for example, I wonder who that would benefit. And also, it’s used by Ukraine and the Ukrainian military and then them coming back saying, we didn’t know they would use it for offensive purposes.
I think that was them sort of trying to cover their tracks afterwards because it’s obviously affiliated with a major U.S. military contractor. I mean, it can’t be that surprising. And also what’s important in that context as well is that he’s a major military contractor that wants the US government to go in a particular direction, particularly a highly automated future.
And through the Department of Government Deficiency, a government efficiency DOGE, a lot was made to facilitate that by laying off a lot of government workers in their place putting, basically replacing them with, AI algorithms.
And those algorithms are, of course, patented and controlled by Silicon Valley companies. And the vast majority of major Silicon Valley companies double as either intelligence or military contractors or both, or have for a very long time. And a lot of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley arguably started because of national security involvement.
One that’s often overlooked a lot is Oracle, Larry Ellison’s Oracle. And Larry Ellison, before creating Oracle, worked on Project Oracle at the CIA, and then created Oracle, the company, which then took on the CIA as one of its earliest main clients, similar in a way to what happened with Palantir, as I noted a moment ago.
And now, Larry Ellison is becoming, basically taking over a large swath of American media now. So you’re seeing a lot of these Silicon billionaires that contract for the military are also becoming major owners of mass media. So you see that with Ellison, for example, and it’s also true with Elon Musk after his purchase of Twitter.
And his ambition to basically turn what is now X, formerly Twitter, into the “everything app” with a major financial component. So as I noted earlier, there have been these efforts going around previously considered by the Trump administration to have AI algorithms go over social media posts and flag people, but they also are pushing to have you tie your finances to those same apps.
And presumably X will also be using some form of cryptocurrency, most likely a stablecoin, which has been the major focus of the Trump administration being a major pro-crypto administration. A lot of people thought they would be more pro-Bitcoin than anything else.
That’s how they sort of touted themselves on the campaign trail, but they’ve been overtly, most overtly, supportive of stablecoins and stablecoin issuers of course buy lots of treasuries and serve to help service the US debt so it’s a way for them to continue to spend more than they are bringing in and to basically service that debt so they can obviously, I would say, increase the Pentagon budget which is the budget that, in the national security budget, in general DHS and these things that continue to grow and grow and grow and grow at the expense of other departments that actually benefit the American people significantly more.
Chris Hedges
Can you talk about Oracle’s relationship with AI?
Whitney Webb
So I’m not an expert on what Oracle does specifically. As far as I’m aware, they mostly focus on database management. But I do know that they’ve had a significant influence over the Trump administration previously as well. So Safra Catz is a major top executive at Oracle in addition to Larry Ellison.
And she, along with Sheldon Adelson, coordinated the firing of H.R. McMaster, who was previously a Trump national security advisor and had, I believe, John Bolton put in his place. So Oracle has been sort of very influential, particularly on the Trump administration behind the scenes before this administration, but now we’re sort of seeing Larry Ellison come out more into himself.
But my understanding is that they contract widely throughout the national security community and beyond, and that a lot of it is data management and digital infrastructure. Not sure on the specifics there, sorry about that.
Chris Hedges
I want to ask you about Israel because there are many tentacles I guess running each way between the military, the [Unit] 8200, and Silicon Valley. It’s an incestuous relationship which you’ve written about.
Whitney Webb
Yeah, so there’s a couple different things here. So I would say that a major pillar, not just of [Benjamin] Netanyahu, but really going back to the early 90s in Israel has been to empower their venture capital ecosystem. And it began with state backing really significantly in the early 90s. But Netanyahu, throughout his lengthy time as prime minister, has made that a major priority.
And back in 2012, it actually became Israeli policy to have basically some of these startups that are incubated by veterans of Unit 8200 and some of these other Israeli intelligence agencies that involve technology to a significant degree, to have them conduct operations that were previously done in-house by Mossad or Unit 8200. So basically, to use them as fronts is essentially what the policy, admitted policy, began.
And in the Israeli media report that documents this, they note that a firm like Black Cube, for example, which has been called a privatized Mossad, was one of the companies that was developed under this policy. But presumably, there’s a lot of other companies that also operate this way.
It’s important to note that in the same period of time, you had a neoconservative and Zionist mega donor to the GOP, Paul Singer, team up with people from Netanyahu’s office to develop something called Startup Nation Central, which was framed as a way to prevent the United States from ever meaningfully adopting the Boycott Divest Sanctions Movement, or BDS, by basically marketing Israeli startups, particularly in technology to American companies and also to the US government.
And of course, the US government contracts with significant Unit 8200 companies. For example, the NSA in the mid 2000s had an Israeli Unit 8200-linked company develop its back doors and the popular software programs. I mean, Carbyne 911 that I brought up earlier, also Unit 8200 created and now controlling a litany of 911 emergency call centers throughout the US.
There’s a lot of companies that have popped up to do so and also you’ve seen a lot of these Silicon Valley giants — Google, Microsoft, Intel — recruit heavily from Unit 8200 and also open offices in Israel. Of course some of those, in the case of Microsoft significantly, precede this 2012 point.
But basically the goal was to prevent the US from ever allowing boycotts of Israel at any meaningful level by integrating companies at the same time that Netanyahu made it a deliberate policy to use a lot of these companies as fronts for either the Israeli military or for Israeli intelligence.
So, unfortunately, in addition to that, we also have a significant overlap of some of these Silicon Valley billionaires and the IDF rather overtly. So Larry Ellison, who I brought up a moment ago, is, I believe, if not the leading donor, one of the most major private donors to the IDF, and is also, as we noted a moment ago, a major contractor to the US national security state and is building a quite a massive US domestic media empire and I believe he’s going to be one of the figures involved in the takeover of TikTok that was just signed off on by Trump not that long ago.
Chris Hedges
And he’s just taken CBS.
Whitney Webb
Yeah, and I think Paramount and I think a few others are, I think CNN is about to be acquired by them as well, so we’ll see. But it’s definitely a rapid consolidation.
Chris Hedges
I want you to speculate what this world is going to look like, it is the fusion of corporate and governmental power. In some ways, of course, these corporations will have even more power than government institutions. We just had the presidential memo that came out a couple days ago, which essentially criminalizes… It’s quite an amazing memo that criminalizes people who criticize capitalism, support gender equality.
Whitney Webb
Or really anyone who is antifascist in any capacity.
Chris Hedges
Yeah. And of course, all of these tools will be employed against these people who are being targeted, what kind of a world will it create? Will it kind of look like China’s totalitarian capitalism or will it be different?
Whitney Webb
You know, I think it’s really hard to know because of course the future is unwritten and a lot of it depends on us and there’s an unprecedented effort, of course, to propagandize the American people to have us willingly walk in and support and consent to these systems being installed because a lot of people forget but the ban on propaganda being used domestically against Americans was lifted under the Obama administration.
And now with all of this extreme media consolidation by the specific cabal of billionaires and oligarchs, the propaganda is already bad, I would argue, but is going to get even worse to get people to consent to these systems specifically.
And I think a lot of what we’re going to see is going to be sort of a repeated trope of what we saw in the War on Terror. We have to give up all of our, all of these new freedoms and things like that, because we have to go after al-Qaeda and get them at all costs.
But now, you know, 20 plus years later, you have the head of al-Qaeda in Syria being given a diplomat, I don’t even know what to call it, it’s so ridiculous, like a red carpet welcome to shake hands with David Petraeus and all of this.
So we lost all of our freedoms, but now al-Qaeda is just let’s shake hands and let them come to the UN while we don’t let anyone from Palestine come. I mean, it’s totally insane. So I think it’s quite possible that given that we’re seeing this effort to gin up a war on domestic terrorism, yet again, we’re going to be given another invisible enemy and told that we need to give up all of these remaining freedoms and civil liberties to go after the domestic terrorists and that it’s going to be, unfortunately, a lot of the depravity that we witnessed during the War on Terror, but directed domestically, hence the name domestic terrorism.
And I think you can argue that was always the plan post 9/11. A lot of the stuff was focused domestically. Before 9/11, there were efforts to pass DHS as the National Homeland Security Agency. It stalled in Congress. Of course, after 9/11, no longer stalled. And so DHS was created in a lot of these security agencies and the expansion of the national security state in general has also had a lot of tentacles domestically.
And I think Americans have been naive that a lot of the evil that that national security state has done abroad would never be used against them. And I think that we need to be very aware of what is going on here and that the deep state, whatever you want to call it, is expanding and it’s expanding in the hands of private oligarchs that have a very dangerous political vision that is rarely talked about.
And a lot of people on the right, for example, during the COVID era were up in arms about the World Economic Forum and the public-private partnership stakeholder capitalist model. And some of the ideas promoted by its former chairman Klaus Schwab and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and transhumanism, but somehow are lining up behind these figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who are also overtly transhumanist and have backed someone like Curtis Yarvin, who has a very similar political vision in many ways to Klaus Schwab.
And somehow it’s bad when one group does it, but not bad when the other group backs it. And it’s just change a couple terms around and try and make it edgy, but ultimately at the same day, it’s essentially fascism.
And people, but I mean they obviously want to market it under different names to get people to consent to it, which I think efforts are being done to do that now under the guise of fighting the corruption in the national security state. But unfortunately this has always been a cancer on American society that has been distinctly bipartisan. And I think a lot of what’s going to be done here is going to be, if we allow it, political opposition could be labeled “terrorism”.
And to think that this wouldn’t come back on people on the right as well, I think is naive. You know, the definition of domestic terrorist under the Biden administration concluded people that were outraged by perceived government overreach, for example, which could easily include people on the right as well. I mean, a lot of the things in the definitions of these things are incredibly vague and just meant to sort of be a catchall for people who don’t agree with the government for whatever reason and who won’t just put their head down and be obedient when prodded to do so.
So I think there’s a potentially dark future but there’s still time for awareness about these agendas and for people to develop parallel systems to escape this. And I think it’s very important too that people start really seriously considering how to wean themselves off of these Silicon Valley giants that are building these systems and contracting with these military and intelligence agencies. You know, getting off of Microsoft or Google products.
I mean, there’s still time to do all of that. You can look up online different guides to use different operating systems, whether it’s on your computer or your phone, or use alternatives to Google or any of these other things. Because, I mean, ultimately, they may try and move to make it illegal to boycott Israel, but we can boycott the other enablers of the system that are based in the United States.
Maybe it’s inconvenient at the time to change these things, but I think it’s much more inconvenient to just walk into this world that they’re trying to usher us into without offering any sort of meaningful pushback. And if they’re going to try and censor speech or criminalize speech, there’s other things we can do to stop this from happening.
Chris Hedges
Great. Thank you, Whitney. I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Victor [Padilla], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges], and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.
Well, well, well. And, here I am, a fool who thought it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime!
Returning native property to the Tribe? Or, did you agree with George on something? ;-)
Nope; the mess this country has gotten itself into, in terms of both foreign and domestic affairs. We’ve become a murderous laughingstock for the rest of the monkeys.
Agreed. Next year’s election will either give us new leaders to turn things around, or seal our fate.
Good Morning, 😘💕
Thank you for including my comment on the PIT Count executive summary that Mo posted. I wasn’t surprised, I kind of figured it might stand out.
The numbers and wording in that report matter, but what really matters is understanding what they mean. Too many people just skim and take it all at face value. I’m not trying to be critical, just honest.
The numbers can look fine on paper and still hide what’s really going on. Even the regional totals don’t match the overall count, and some of the timeframes overlap, which makes it hard to tell what actually changed.
I didn’t even point that out before, I just focused on the main things that really matter for housing, treatment, and support.
mm💕
Blaming Building codes for the cost of housing is ridiculous.
My house cost something like 0.4 percent in fees including $3000 to the local school district.
Cost of plywood and hangers, wiring plumbing has tripled in the 20 years since.
Non code hippie houses have either fallen over, full of mice or have had extensive repairs to keep them.
Those lost communities had mills selling lumber for $400 a unit.
Democracy
David Brooks, a thoughtful guy not given to outrageous statements, writes about the degradation of democracy. Here’s a brief excerpt:
“…We now have a lot of people in this country who do not believe that democracy is about trying to persuade people, it’s about fighting, crushing and destroying people. I don’t agree with the philosopher Michel Foucault on much, but he had a point when he observed that a lot of life is about trying to repress the little fascist in each one of us. When people start describing politics as a fight, they are unleashing their inner fascist. Fighting is for fascists.
Democracy is about persuasion. Our Constitution is a vast machine that is supposed to increase the amount of deliberation, conversation and persuasion in society. Our elections are supposed to be raw, rollicking persuasion contests.
Trump’s idiotic rhetoric is not about persuasion. The Democrats’ mind-numbingly repetitive talking points are not about persuasion. The people who want their leaders to ‘fight’ harder just want them to shout their side’s orthodoxies at higher and higher volume. They just want their leaders to ramp up the bellicosity of their rhetoric so that the extremists on their side feel good…
Yes, Trump is launching an assault on democracy. But what worries me more is what has happened over the last few decades to the rest of us. There has been a slow moral, emotional and intellectual degradation — the loss of the convictions, norms and habits of mind that undergird democracy. What worries me most is the rot creeping into your mind, and into my own.”
“The Rot Creeping Into Our Minds”
NEW YORK TIMES
Oct. 23, 2025
Yes, Foucault was right. The coarsening of public discourse, now filled with violent imagery, bodes ill for us all.
Meanwhile, this just in from the Department of Wanton Destruction: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/satellite-shows-whats-really-happening-at-the-east-wing-of-the-white-house/
People may long for an idealized past where saw logs were infinite and the economy was thriving, but I agree, the resource dried up because it was over exploited. As for the cannabis canard, when the sawmill closed in a small town not mentioned and long gone, the loggers and mill workers turned to the cannabis growers and said, “Show us how! We need to feed our families!” Aggressive enforcement literally took their land and homes out from under small, mindful growers, opening the market to organized crime, cartels and the destruction they brought with them.
The problem is that folks, including electeds, refuse to look at the county and our economy as an integrated system. Folks refuse to step out of their own “camera angle” and look at the big picture from multiple angles and dimensions. Then they come up with their “fix” (which coincidentally is a slang term for a drug dose) to solve what they see as the most important problem, ignoring the collateral changes inflicted on other systems. Until we take a systems approach, we’ll simply be moving problems around, leaving collateral damage in their wake.
What’s needed for people to take a systems approach? The first step is folks need to put their own vested interests, their egos, careers and training aside, and be willing to listen and learn, be willing to step outside their comfort zones. That requires trust, something in short supply and actively being undermined in our current reality.
I’ll leave it at that.
If what Texas did is “unethical gerrymandering “ what does that make the California proposal? Isn’t all gerrymandering always unethical? What would you say to a youth athlete who says the other side cheated so we had to cheat? I think everyone on that list are a bunch of hypocrites!
The California proposal allows voters to decide. Ethics on the situation have already been breached by Texas. Should the first cheaters be allowed to prosper by their cheating?
One is done at the direction of our current president. The other will be decided by the voters of the State of California. Pretty big difference.
Not that big of a difference, it’s Newsom vs Trump.
(Trump getting his way and Newsom getting his way.)
Both sides are doing “unethical gerrymandering” I
freely concur, as i vote Yes on 50…
One is done at the direction of a single person to suppress democracy. The other is being presented to the voters of California to be decided, which is democracy in action. To me, that is a huge and important difference. Because Republicans have been allowed to gerrymander district maps for years while Democrats stood by, watched, and followed the rules, we may be on the verge of losing our democracy. Are you okay with that? If not, do you have a better plan? And where were all the Prop 50 naysayers during years of unethical gerrymandering by Republicans? They let them get away with it, and they are still letting them get away with it. I’m glad you are voting yes on 50, but show a little conviction and pride. Being ashamed of your vote is not a strong position.
And Chuck thought yesterday’s MCT was dark.
A good World Series will help.
I will say the sheriff’s comments in the board of supervisors meeting show more wisdom than I have heard from those chambers in quite a while.
The sheriff does a good job of reminding us in this community what is important and why we should set-aside the tribalism to make our county the best place to live and a place we can be proud of.
His last sentence is very relevant. “The experiment we are currently living in isn’t sustainable and hopefully we can turn things around before we lose even more than what we have already.”
Thank you Ted
I just don’t see how we can continue being divided and expect to get out of this with all of our pieces. This little forum I think is a pretty good example to me. Every day I see so many political views written. Many of them don’t match mine but then I see some names of old friends writing them. People I absolutely trust and have worked with at my work and in the community. These are some good people and it makes me want to listen to what they have to say.
We shouldn’t be more concerned with winning an argument than hearing what is being said.
Agree, but it doesn’t help civic harmony to have a president making vulgar jokes like his flyover gag of last weekend and his constant denunciation of half the people in the country as “Marxist lunatics.” His behavior ignites militant opposition with barrages of insults aimed at him, and here we are with a basic split growing worse by the day. Not to be too pollyanny-ish here, but in Mendo, generally speaking, we still seem able to talk to each other without going for our guns. Our commendable Sheriff is certainly due all praise for the civil example he sets.
I have been thinking about the sheriff’s comments for a week.
No one is going to argue that policies and legislation don’t go too far at times. Bureaucracy has its own machine-like mentality, it’s hard to stop once it starts. But to lay the blame for various problems like the disappearance of “blue collar jobs” and “increasing crime” on policies and policymakers overlooks one very important thing – the business practices that caused the policy interventions in the first place.
The industries that controlled and dominated the north coast – lumber, fishing, logging – did themselves no favors by clearcutting and overfishing. Pacific Lumber was taken over and ruined by a cartoonishly evil character who bankrupted the company, stole pensions and clearcut every tree it was legally allowed to cut. LP and GP overcut and left environmental damage we are still dealing with, fought against every common sense rule to make their industry more sustainable, then walked away and sold their timberlands for profit or tax breaks.
Agriculture in Mendo these days is primarily pot and winegrapes – giant industries dedicated to social vices. Pot had a black market affect on this country for decades, heavy pesticide use with a side of horrible crime. Grapes are a nonfood monoculture using tons of water and thousands of tons of pesticides and herbicides impacting many communities in the county and dependent on imported, often exploited labor. The biggest forces affecting winemaking and cattle ranching are the corporate monopolies (some foreign owned) that have consolidated large parts of these industries for their own profit taking.
The history of this country is little towns springing up when settlers decide some resource can be profitably extracted. After the extraction, those town die. We even have a name for the phenomena – Boomtowns. I read a book a few years ago about the big fire that led to the creation of the US fire service more than a century ago. It recounted how lumber companies came in and wholesale logged wild forests. Part of their business plan was to sell the land afterward to the workers who had cut all the trees down. The point is, businesses extract, then they move along to somewhere else and do it again. Sometimes they move along, because they can simply make MORE profit somewhere else. Masonite was still profitable when they moved their Ukiah mill to Tennessee.
Unless something else comes along to sustain them, the workers and people who made up these small boomtowns struggle along as long as they can until they die, or depart. The whole history of the country can be studied by studying boomtowns of the past that no longer exist.
Certain supervisors love to complain about the high cost of road maintenance. Sheriffs love to talk about how they don’t have the budgets to send officers all over this big county. Imagine if we had more little tiny towns all over that had paved roads and other infrastructure that had to be fixed regularly? More little towns that could not afford their own police force, more places the sheriff would have to respond to. We would be even more bankrupt than we currently seem to be.
There is a logical reason some towns grow and others wither. It used to be that people in small communities came to bigger towns regularly to do their shopping, go to church, see their community. People looked forward to seeing one another. That attitude is gone. I see complaints in Facebook groups all the time about how much people hate to come to town. The new streets are too narrow, infringing on their almighty right to mow down anyone in a crosswalk who dares to impede their errands. They complain that the see too many homeless or crazy people on the street. They can’t wait to get back to their property in the woods where they don’t see anyone for days. Sure their neighbor might be shooting deer out of season, or cooking meth, but they don’t have to interact with them. They have their little buffer of acres to keep the world at bay.
There’s no recognition or pride in our towns and cities, no acknowledgement that we are part of “their” community. These folks might live 15 miles outside Ukiah but they don’t consider themselves from here. They see themselves as country folk, more capable and hardy than soft city dwellers. The reality is cities provide shopping, doctors, healthcare facilities, schools and recreational resources like parks and playgrounds. Towns that don’t have those things nearby will eventually die. Stop being nostalgic for some lost nook of yesteryear and start building community ties where you live now. We will rise or fall together. The guns in your gun safe are of little use if the wider society around you is crumbling from drug use, lack of medical and mental health care, lack of opportunity, lack of housing, good jobs, and leaders who only look backward with nostalgic romantic notions of yesteryear.
I agree with one of Sheriff Kendall’s points – poverty creates crime. So does lackadaisical government regulation. Businesses lobby and pay legislators to get their worst policies approved, until their citizens get so fed up with the results that there is pushback and policy changes. Until we have a political system that values thinking about systems as a whole, we are going to encounter these kinds of problems.
The sheriff is correct that there has to be a better balance and where we are currently at is not sustainable.
Welcome back, k h, person of thoughtful, reasoned comments like this one.
Hi Chuck :) Nice to see you
Speaking of building codes: I came across a post recently about the International Code Council attempting to get Congress to pass a law allowing them to copyright city building codes, which cities then have to license from them
There is an interesting thread if you use the platform formerly known as twitter.
https://x.com/jasonc_nc/status/1981108983113842821
Maybe some of our local people who understand this stuff can weigh in and give us their judgment?