Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/4/2025

Frosty Morning | John Leal | Seeking Suspects | Wednesday's Results | AVBC Firings | James Kester | Guilty Verdict | Thanksgiving Cactus | School Street | Local Events | Barbara Blattner | Zissa & Day | White Albatross | Our Psalm | AI | Hensopper | Willits Hotel | Teng Long | Cancer Drug | Covelo PO | Yesterday's Catch | 1954 Program | Pretty Stupid | Labor Movement | Cockburn Photo | Guest Hoh | Phone Advice | Rosenberg Sentenced | Medicine Robe | Air Travel | Roll On | The Race | McGee Cremation | Dorothea Lange | Start Writing | Sexual Personae | Civilized Thing | Old Harbour | Tarantino Ten | Lonesome Valley | Too Much | Disgraceful President | Reclaim Power | Garbage People | Pardon Hypocrite | Idiotic Thinking | Lead Stories | Rioter Candidate | Young Woman | Dumb Dems | Deep-State Woman | Apocalypse Soon | Coal Town | No Kings | Poppies

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): An overcast (high clouds & fog mix) yet still brisk 40F on the coast this Thursday morning. Our big local (sort of) weather news is King Tides for the next few days. Thankfully there is no enhancement with a large swell or storm conditions. Keep in mind with a large high tide there are also big low tides which could afford some fun exploring. Always be careful near the shore.

HIGH PRESSURE continues to build over the area, bringing offshore flow and generally fair skies through Thursday along with night and morning valley fog. Light rain is possible mainly in Humboldt and Del Norte counties over the weekend. (NWS)

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JOHN LEAL of Boonville has died.

Friends reported Wednesday that he suffered a heart attack while visiting Ukiah on Tuesday, December 2, 2025. Mr. Leal owned a small vineyard on Mountain View Road outside of Boonville and was an active member of the local Airport contingent. He was 76. We hope to have a full obituary soon.

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FORT BRAGG POLICE DEPARTMENT REQUESTING PUBLIC ASSISTANCE IN IDENTIFYING SUSPECTS IN REPORTED HATE CRIME

On December 2, 2025, at approximately 7:09 p.m., Officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department were dispatched to a report of a hate crime occurring in the 600 Block of N Harold Street.

The department is currently investigating this matter as a hate crime, and are actively following any leads as they come in. The department is aware of several social media posts currently being circulated to include photographs. We do not have any named suspects at this time.

The Fort Bragg Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance. If you or anyone you know has digital evidence that may aid our investigation; the department has created a community request portal via evidence.com.

Currently the department is asking for any video of suspicious people or activity between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. around the 500 and 600 blocks of N Harold Street, 500 and 600 blocks of E Fir Street, 500 Block of N Corry Street, 100 Block of Brandon Way, and surrounding alleyways. Evidence can also be submitted anonymously via the portal. You will find a link below to access the portal.

The Fort Bragg Police Department takes all reports of hate crimes seriously. If you or someone you know is a victim so of a hate crime, please call and report it. More information and victim resources can be located on the California Department of Justices’ website at: https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/victims

Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Moore at (707)961-2800 ext.225 or email [email protected]

This information is being released by Commander Jonathan McLaughlin. For media inquiries, please reach out to him directly at [email protected].

Community request link: https://fortbraggpdca.evidence.com/axon/community-request/public/saynotohatecrime

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WEDNESDAY'S RESULTS

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AVBC FIRINGS

I just thought people in the valley would like to know this: since coming under new ownership the Anderson Valley Brewery has fired at least six locals in a short period of time. Four of those coming this month, just before the holiday season. Many of these employees have worked at the AVBC for 10+ years and if I understand correctly, some much longer. It is unfortunate as the brewery in general is a wonderful community center for fundraisers and celebrations. I don’t see any reason to continue going there other than I feel badly for the wonderful bartenders. I know I don’t know the ins and outs of running a major business, but these firings seem unfair and don’t reflect well on the owner’s relationship with our community.

— Keevan Labowitz

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TOM ALLMAN:

James Kester. RIP my friend. You served our county well. At the courthouse, you smiled, you helped people who were upset and you acted as a responsible and compassionate human should act. You helped people who didn’t speak English. I watched you go out of your way to make sure people were helped. You proved yourself as a true public servant.

Your talent as an artist helped forge our county into what we are now. Your insightful “cartoons” were deep, well thought-out and on-point. They weren’t really cartoons, they were strong statements. I examined each one closely, and as such, I learned to admire the manner in which you helped others understand confusing situations. You made our county laugh when needed, and cry when appropriate. You understood the strangeness of Mendocino County’s political diversity.

You made a difference.

The last time you and I made eye contact, we thanked each other. I will never forget that. Your smile was infectious.

You are already missed. Thank you for your friendship.

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NEW FISH, SAME OLD BARREL

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned to the courtroom Tuesday afternoon from a half hour of deliberations to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant Jennyfer Hallmark-Duman, age 37 of Lake County, was found guilty of embezzling a rental vehicle from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, a misdemeanor.

In May 2024, law enforcement was called to Ukiah's Enterprise car rental business after a vehicle rented by the defendant had not been returned as contractually agreed. When efforts by Enterprise to contact the defendant to have her return the vehicle failed, a stolen report was made by Enterprise with the CHP. The vehicle was subsequently located abandoned in Lake County.

The law enforcement agency that investigated the crime and recovered the stolen vehicle was the California Highway Patrol.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney David Moutrie.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the two-day trial.

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SAVE SCHOOL STREET FROM UKIAH

You're invited to provide input regarding the future of School Street! We're hosting another community workshop on Thursday, December 11th at 5:30 at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center. This interactive workshop is designed so that participants can help determine how to best preserve and enhance what we all love about School Street. (Don't worry--Chinese Pistache trees are literally REQUIRED on School Street!

Also, reminder that this is JUST a study and does not include funding for construction or implementation. More info in the full press release:

City Of Ukiah Hosts Community Workshop On December 11, 5:30 Pm To Solicit Input On School Street Improvements

The community is invited to participate in a public forum to provide input regarding an improved corridor plan for School Street. The event will be held on Thursday, December 11th from 5:30 – 7:00 pm at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center, 200 South School Street.

This forum is a continuation of the School Street Multimodal Transportation Corridor Study, started in December of 2024 and funded by a grant from Caltrans. This study will identify, analyze, and propose enhancements to the vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle network along the School Street corridor in downtown Ukiah from Clay Street to Henry Street. The goal is to preserve the character of School Street for future generations by supporting walkability, economic prosperity, and tree coverage, as well as addressing maintenance issues along the corridor.

Forum attendees will have an opportunity to participate in hands-on activities to help determine things like sidewalk width, parking, and traffic circulation. Discussion topics will include streetscape amenities like lighting, public art, furniture, and trees. It is important to note that the current tree species, Chinese Pistache, is the only allowed tree species for School Street (Downtown Zoning Code, Section 9229.7)

Community members are also invited to participate in a “walking audit” prior to the forum between 3:45 and 5:00. The group will meet at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center, and then walk along School Street with engineers and experts to observe existing conditions and learn more about the various facets of the study.

This study does not include funding for any construction or implementation. The City of Ukiah takes a proactive approach to infrastructure improvements, many of which require grant funding to accomplish. This study, along with the community’s input, will help provide the foundation for future grant applications to fund the actual improvements.

During the week of December 1st, utility companies will be locating their facilities and marking them with paint along School Street. This is not an indication that work will be occurring; it is simply to help guide the decision process and avoid future conflicts with those utilities.

Additional information regarding this project can be found at: https://ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/school-street…/home

The forum on December 11th will also be presented virtually on Zoom; the link and dial-in info can be found on the webpage under “Public Workshop #3.”

For additional information, please contact Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley at [email protected].

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LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

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BARBARA LYNN BLATTNER (1947 — 2025)

Barbara Lynn Blattner, 78, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother passed away unexpectedly on November 14, 2025, in Gold River, California.

She was born on August 14, 1947, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the eldest of five daughter's born to Willis Edward Tucker and Bobbie Lee Pennington Tucker. She moved at the age of 6 months old to Boonville, CA, with her parents and attended Anderson Valley schools.

On October 14, 1964, she married Arnold Slotte, and welcomed son Timothy Edward "Eddie" and daughter Kimberly Lee "Kim". They lived in Ukiah, where Barbara worked at Ukiah Hillside Hospital and Irene's Dress Shop as a bookkeeper for many years.

In 1974, Barbara returned to school to obtain her diploma and participated in the graduation commencement, marching with her sister Marti at Anderson Valley High School.

In 1987, Barbara began working with at-risk youth as a site manager for Unicorn Youth Ranch Services, in Philo, California, through 2014.

While retired from Unicorn Youth Ranch Services, she remained in touch with many of the young men she worked with at the Ranch, until her passing. All of them, often expressing, how much their time at Unicorn meant to them and how grateful they were. She was always very touched by their sentiments and loved to hear how they were doing in life.

On May 16th, 1992, Barbara and Jerry Blattner were married. They worked side by side at Unicorn Youth Ranch until his passing on October 28th, 2003. They loved being with each other. Although heart broken, Barbara continued on as best she could. Continuing her work as site manager and being there for family and friends, whom she loved dearly.

In November of 2022, Barbara moved from the Ranch she loved, to be with her daughter and family in Gold River, CA. She built a beautiful life there and continued pursuing past times and hobbies, such as painting, water aerobics, coffee chats, and going out to breakfast with her family (her favorite).

Barbara is survived by her son Eddie and his wife Candy, of Boonville, and her daughter Kim and her husband, Edward Morgan, of Gold River; grandchildren Jessie Slotte, Ryan Slotte, and his wife Connie, Garrett Morgan, Quentin Morgan, and Madeleine Morgan, great-grandchildren Felix, Celisa, Hunter, Amayah, Christian, Jaylene, and Olivia, her sisters Patti Crabb (Rick), Sandra Knight (David) and Marti Titus (Craig), as well as many nieces and nephews. She also leaves her special life-long friends from childhood Shirley Blattner, Brenda Holcomb, Helen Huey, Alice Waggoner, and her beloved cousin Simone Short-Smith. Barbara was preceded in death by her husband Jerry, her parents, Willis and Bobbie, and her sister Judy Ann.

Barbara had an extraordinarily long list of family and friends that she loved and cherished deeply. She prayed for them every evening before bed. Some of this list being people she had never even met. But, most of all she loved Jesus. In her last text message to her sister Patti, she said, “I know we serve a faithful lord & savior”. “Joy is the serious business of Heaven” - C. S. Lewis

Graveside services will be held on Wednesday, December 10, at 11 AM, at Evergreen Cemetery in Boonville, followed by a celebration of life and potluck gathering at 1:00 PM at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville.

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ICE WASTE

Dear Editor:

Once again, the city of Ukiah has erected its holiday ice rink on School Street near Alex Thomas Plaza. But the “magic of winter” cited by the city’s website comes with costs and consequences.

One consequence is that the Saturday Farmers Market — a year-round event that brings customers to downtown — is pushed off to Clay Street where it is left out in the rain for 11 weekends while the covered Pavilion is reserved for setup and then the comfort and partying of the skaters.

Then there are the costs of setting up and running this energy hog. It takes more than five weeks for setup and dismantling the structure, leaving a little more than six weeks for renting and recovering some of the costs with entry fees and sponsors.

It’s time to rethink this 10-year-old “tradition” (first the city rented the equipment, then bought this White Albatross). Patrons should wonder whether skating on slushy artificial ice in our climate is really fun. Parents should also wonder what they are teaching their kids in this age of global warming.

The city — and its partner, the Greater Business and Tourism Alliance — need to reconsider whether the ice skating rink is a cost-effective endeavor to attract visitors to downtown during the holiday season, or whether there are less expensive and less disruptive ways. For example, closing off one or two blocks of School Street for rollerskating could be entry-free, guilt-free fun.

Bruni Kobbe

Ukiah

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RON PARKER:

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IN YOUR BRAVE NEW WORLD

Try to remember
A.I. computes, doesn’t think.
Doesn’t care either.

— Jim Luther

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A READER WRITES:

Anent A.I.: a society in which the citizens have no say in the technologies that are imposed upon them is not a democracy.

Didn’t ask for it, don’t need it, don’t want it. Yet the very people who tell a pollster that they consider A.I. a threat will be ‘talking’ to a chatbot a minute later. They are what the Boers called a “hensopper” — that’s Afrikaans for someone who gives up without a struggle. A hands upper.

“Well, here it is. Don’t need it. Let me start using it.”

It is hard work to learn to write, to draw, to communicate with others ex tempore in three dimensional space, face to face, to conduct one’s own research, to generate autogenous thought. A.I. promises to release us from the burden of being human. Like every other technological advance in the past 30 years or so, while debilitating us it also, just coincidentally, serves to ensnare us ever more tightly in the data net, allowing our actions, our movements, and our thoughts to be monitored and assessed.

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FROM EBAY, A PHOTOGRAPH OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)

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MERRY CHRISTMAS to Bruce and Krue!

I ate from that Chinese place on Clement (Teng Long?) that you might have plugged: Basil eggplant w/ tofu, rice, under $20 to go! A very nice effort.

Thankful for the years (decades) when the AVA was the leading periodical in the region! Like KUSF was to radio, you were to Literature. If you are dead disregard this message. - David In The City

David Svehla

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ERNIE PARDINI: I just watched a piece on News Nation with Chris Coumo. The piece was about a cancer killing drug that can recognize cancer cells and target and kill them. It has been proven to be effective in almost 100% of cases. It works on all types of cancer. Any physician can legally prescribe the drug, but the insurance companies won't cover it unless it is prescribed for bladder cancer which it was originally designated for. Even though it has since been proven to work on all types of cancer, unless it or until it gets FDA approval for other cancers, the insurance companies won't pay. It is a sad day in hell when our ability to continue living is determined by how much money we have.

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RENEE LEE: I would love to believe this is true given with Kevin’s recent diagnosis. Countries with socialized medicine would be all over this. In my experiences, with myself and family members, insurance companies dictate how doctors practice medicine. A Patient needs a drug or treatment that will be the most effective but insurance will only pay for treatments/drugs that they want to. So sad.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 3, 2025

JORDAN BRIGHT, 35, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ISAIAH BROWN, 30, Covelo. Failure to appear.

SETH COSTA, 22, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BOBBY HENDRY SR., 69, Willits. Battery, controlled substance with two or more priors.

STEVE LANCASTER, 62, Leggett. Burglary, vandalism, conspiracy.

SHEILA LOCKHART, 65, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JOHN MARKS JR., 57, Ukiah. Petty theft, contempt of court.

STEVEN MUNOS, 42, Willits. Domestic violence restraining order violation.

MICHAEL PARKER, 46, Ukiah. Smoking/injecting device, disobeying court order.

MONICA RODRIGUEZ, 56, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ELIZABETH SMITH-VALLEY, 41, Hopland. Battery with serious injury, brandishing, under influence, paraphernalia, appropriation of lost property.

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SMART HAS BEEN A FAILURE, TAX SHOULD NOT BE EXTENDED

Editor,

From my perspective, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train (aka SMART) has been anything but smart from its inception. I think it’s been pretty stupid.

Now SMART officials and their supporters want to continue throwing more money down this hole by continuing the sales tax to support the service. I think the bad consequences will compound over time.

North Bay voters should say no. Instead, I suggest a proposal be looked at for the tracks to be paved over for five years or so. Then, it should be limited to use by buses and trucks.

Jeffory Morshead

Greenbrae

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TODAY'S LABOR MOVEMENT NEEDS A RADICAL VISION

by David Bacon

During the Cold War, many of the people with a radical vision of the world were driven out of our labor movement. Today, as unions search for answers about how to begin growing again, and regain the power workers need to defend themselves, the question of social vision has become very important. What is our vision in labor? What are the issues that we confront today that form a more radical vision for our era?

The labor movement needs a freedom agenda. When Zohran Mamdani spoke after his primary election victory in New York City, he declared, "We can be free and we can be fed." Mamdani is telling our unions and workers that we can reject the old politics of agreeing to war abroad and repression at home, in the hopes that at least some workers will gain.…

https://labornotes.org/2025/12/todays-labor-movement-needs-bigger-vision

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JEFFREY ST. CLAIR: Excavated this photo from the detritus of my desk drawer showing Cockburn–bolo tie, Irish linen shirt, duct-taped eyeglasses – prophesying a plague of boils upon the rich during a talk (never "a reading") on our tour-stop for Whiteout at Powell's old store in one of Thomas "Bucky Beaver" Pynchon's favorite burbs, Beaverton, Oregon.

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"BODYGUARD OF LIES" on KMUD, Thursday, Dec. 4

According to a Paramount+ press release, Bodyguard of Lies is the first “unvarnished documentary of the history of the Afghanistan war, exposing the falsehoods told to Americans and the secrets kept over four administrations.”

The documentary includes “damning testimonies from insiders, confidential documents, never-before-seen footage and private audio recordings of those at the highest levels of government.” Additionally, the film examines failed war policies and strategies and works to figure out why those hefty decisions were made, while revealing the cost of those plans.

Bodyguard of Lies features Matt Hoh, among other primary sources.

Join us on KMUD, Thursday, December 4, at 9 am, Pacific, with guest Matt Hoh.

MATT HOH

Matthew Hoh has been a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy since 2010.

In 2009, Matthew resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan with the State Department over the American escalation of the war. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Matthew took part in the American occupation of Iraq; first in 2004-5 in Salah ad Din Province with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and then in 2006-7 in Anbar Province as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Matthew worked on Afghanistan and Iraq war policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002-8.

Hoh’s writings have appeared in online and print periodicals such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, CounterPunch, CNN, Defense News, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Mother Jones, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He has been a guest on hundreds of news programs on radio and television networks including the BBC, CBS, CNN, CSPAN, Fox, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, Pacifica and PBS. The Council on Foreign Relations has cited Matthew’s resignation letter from his post in Afghanistan as an Essential Document.

KMUD

Our show, "Heroes and Patriots Radio", airs live on KMUD, on the first and fifth Thursdays of every month, at 9 AM, Pacific Time.

We simulcast our programming on two full power FM stations: KMUE 88.1 in Eureka and KLAI 90.3 in Laytonville. It also maintains a translator at 99.5 FM in Shelter Cove, California.

We also stream live from the web at https://kmud.org/

Speak with our guest live and on-the-air at: KMUD Studio (707) 923-3911. Please call in.

We post our shows to our own website and YouTube channels. Shows may be distributed in other media outlets.

Wherever you live, KMUD is your community radio station. We are a true community of informed and progressive people. Please join us by becoming a member or underwriter.

— John Sakowicz and Mary Massey, cohosts and coproducers

VISIT OUR WEBSITE:  WWW.HEROESPATRIOTS.ORG Heroes and Patriots is a program about national security, intelligence operations and foreign policy.

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BERKELEY ACTIVIST ZOE ROSENBERG SENTENCED IN SONOMA COUNTY FARM BREAK-IN CASE

by Colin Atagi

A Sonoma County judge on Wednesday sentenced Berkeley animal rights activist Zoe Rosenberg to 90 days for a felony conspiracy conviction stemming from 2023 entries at Petaluma Poultry.

Rosenberg sat quietly in a courtroom packed with supporters as Judge Kenneth Gnoss announced the punishment in Sonoma County Superior Court, closing out nearly two years of proceedings over whether her actions amounted to a crime or exposed animal cruelty June 13, 2023.

A jury on Oct. 29 found Rosenberg guilty of one count of felony conspiracy and three misdemeanors after a nearly monthlong trial. On Wednesday, Gnoss ordered her to serve 30 days in jail and 60 days through a jail-alternative program — followed by two years of probation. She must turn herself in by Dec. 10.

Jail-alternative programs can include community service, work release or other supervised options that allow defendants to serve part of their sentence outside a jail facility. As part of the terms, Rosenberg was also ordered to stay at least 100 yards from the Perdue-owned Petaluma Poultry facility on Lakeville Highway.

Rosenberg read a brief statement before sentencing, saying she felt remorse — not for the events of June 13 but for not being able to rescue more chickens from poultry facilities. Gnoss said he was unconvinced.

“Not once did I hear you say you’re sorry for your criminal conduct,” he told her.

Rosenberg’s trial drew national attention because of her ties to Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, an animal rights organization known for confrontational protests. DxE has organized demonstrations at poultry farms and Trader Joe’s stores in Sonoma County and backed a 2024 ballot measure to restrict large-scale poultry and livestock operations. Voters rejected that proposal.

Dayna Ghirardelli, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, said she was “actually disappointed” by the ruling.

“I, along with many people in the community, wish the sentencing was more severe,” she said.

DxE members and supporters frequently filled most of the seats in Gnoss’ courtroom during her hearings. Organizers said “hundreds” attended Wednesday’s sentencing.

Before walking into the courtroom, Rosenberg addressed at least 145 supporters gathered outside and insisted she had done the right thing. She said the four chickens she removed had been spared because of her actions. “They would have died in pain and their stories would have died with them,” she told the crowd.

Rosenberg has said she did nothing wrong and was not sorry for her actions. Prosecutors cited what they described as a lack of remorse in recommending a 180-day jail sentence.

Her attorneys opposed that request, arguing Rosenberg should receive credit for wearing an ankle monitor before trial.

They also said incarceration would disrupt her treatment for type 1 diabetes and gastroparesis, a disorder that affects the stomach muscles and slows digestion. She used a feeding tube during the trial and said on social media that she was hospitalized in September before the case began.

Prosecutors acknowledged her medical conditions in their sentencing brief and said Rosenberg would continue to receive care while in custody.

Advocates — including Rosenberg’s parents — argued she is a good person and that jail time could be dangerous given her medical conditions. Her mother, Sherstin Rosenberg, said her daughter “could end up in an emergency room or worse.”

“I am terrified for my daughter,” she said.

Jurors found Rosenberg unlawfully entered Petaluma Poultry on May 21 and June 13, 2023, searched company files, placed GPS trackers on vehicles and removed four chickens.

Rosenberg admitted taking the birds — later named Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea — but said it was a “rescue,” not theft. Her attorneys argued she acted out of moral duty to save animals she believed were suffering, citing video footage DxE later posted online.

Prosecutors noted the timing of the actions coincided with DxE’s annual liberation conference and Rosenberg’s birthday. They emphasized during trial that no footage was introduced showing injured chickens and that all of the defense witnesses were connected to DxE and shared its views on veganism.

Rosenberg and her supporters have said she is being prosecuted for taking chickens worth about $25. Prosecutors and Petaluma Poultry employees countered that the entry forced a shutdown and staff rescheduling that cost the company more than $100,000.

Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies arrested Rosenberg outside the courthouse in November 2023, shortly after DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung was sentenced to 90 days in jail and two years’ probation in a similar Sonoma County case.

Hsiung and DxE staged a protest at Sunrise Farms on May 29, 2018, and he was convicted of felony conspiracy to commit trespass. On Nov. 21, Sonoma County Judge Laura Passaglia ordered Hsiung to pay about $191,000 in restitution to Sunrise Farms and Weber Family Farms, owned by brothers Mike and Scott Weber.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY’S LAUGHABLE PLAN FOR FLYING

Editor:

After reading Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s comments about bringing civility back to air travel I had to guffaw. Duffy must not realize that the sardine-tin conditions on the planes in which we commoners fly are a major cause of incivility while traveling. If he would like we hoi polloi to be more civil, 1950s style, perhaps he could reverse the miniaturization of seat, aisle and bathroom spaces on planes to pre-1980 deregulation size. I think in the current size bathrooms on airplanes it would be far easier to slide a pajama bottom up than to wrestle my nylon stockings back up under my pencil skirt while juggling my little handbag and matching pill hat.

Martha Johnson

Santa Rosa

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ROLLIN' ON

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Enlightened, Liberated while Living, Constant Bliss Is Our True Nature

Up early at the Adam's Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C., to accommodate the Wednesday Deep Cleaning of the dorm area. Enjoyed a traditional American breakfast at Sbarro's, with the morning Cinnabon coffee, at Union Station. Then took the Metro to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Enjoying being on a public computer this moment, December 3rd, 2025 Anno Domini at 11:26 a.m. EST.

My social situation in postmodern America is most curious. Continuing to stay at a homeless shelter, although this is no longer needed in order for me to be able to support the D.C. Peace Vigil in front of the White House. The Trump administration removed the vigil for being too scruffy looking, (i.e. not in step with the new gentrified look preferred in the District of Columbia). Frankly, I don't have any further reason to be in Washington, D.C. now. Regardless, I have established D.C. residency, which includes the driver's license which is good until 2032, the SSA/SSI is being auto-deposited into my Chase checking account [awoke this morning to find the balance is $5,005.81]. Awaiting new membership cards for D.C. Medicaid and United Health Care-Medicare Advantage, and we'll see what happens in regard to the situation with the D.C. EBT application.

I am free. I can't go home because I don't have a home. So I will just roll on. You are invited to respond with your mind absorbed in the Absolute…no place to go. I wish everyone sahaja samadhi avastha, which is the continuous superconscious state, as we await a brand new civilization based on the Immortal Atman.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

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THE CREMATION OF SAM MCGEE

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; … then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

— Robert Service (1907)

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ADVICE? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

— Alan Wilson Watts

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CAMILLE PAGLIA walked into a packed Bennington College auditorium in 1990, dropped her lecture notes on the floor in front of stunned faculty members, and told the room she would not apologize for offending anyone because the purpose of ideas was collision, not comfort.

She had spent years being sidelined. Departments rejected her dissertation. Committees blocked her hiring. Senior scholars told her to tone herself down and stop challenging the feminist establishment. Paglia refused. She wrote late at night in her small apartment with stacks of books piled on the floor, reading Greek tragedy alongside Madonna lyrics, comparing Emily Dickinson to rock stars, and filling notebooks with arguments no one else dared to say aloud.

When ‘Sexual Personae’ was finally published, everything shifted.

The manuscript had been rejected by seven publishers. Editors told her it was too long, too strange, too aggressive. Paglia kept cutting and sharpening until the structure felt like steel. When Yale University Press took the risk, the reaction was immediate. Critics called the book electrifying. Others called it dangerous. Paglia smiled at both. She believed controversy meant the argument had hit its target.

Her lectures became events. Students packed aisles. She walked onstage with the energy of a performer, speaking faster than professors could take notes. She quoted Freud, Foucault, and pop culture in the same breath. She challenged feminist icons. She challenged conservative icons. She challenged anyone she felt was protecting ideology over truth. She told interviewers she was for free speech, full stop, and if a campus could not survive disagreement, it was not a campus at all.

Opponents tried to shut her out.

They protested her panels.

They shouted through her lectures.

They demanded she soften her tone.

Paglia did not move an inch.

When journalists asked why she operated with such force, she said clarity is a duty and culture becomes stagnant when intellectuals whisper instead of argue. She wrote essays with the same precision she used in the classroom. She carved through hypocrisy. She called out censorship wherever she saw it. She defended artists, outsiders, and unpopular voices because she believed civilization depended on friction, not conformity.

Students who studied with her said she changed how they saw art, politics, gender, and power. Critics who tried to bury her ended up amplifying her influence. Every decade she resurfaced with a new wave of essays that cut through cultural noise with blade sharp sentences and unapologetic conviction.

Camille Paglia never softened her ideas to survive the moment.

She treated intellectual life as a battlefield and proved that a mind unafraid of honesty can shake institutions that prefer the safety of silence.

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“WINE is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”

— Ernest Hemingway

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QUENTIN TARANTINO'S TOP 10 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

1. Black Hawk Down (2001) - Ridley Scott
2. Toy Story 3 (2010) - Lee Unkrich
3. Lost in Translation (2003) - Sofia Coppola
4. Dunkirk (2017) - Christopher Nolan
5. There Will Be Blood (2007) - Paul Thomas Anderson
6. Zodiac (2007) - David Fincher
7. Unstoppable (2010) - Tony Scott
8. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - George Miller
9. Shaun of the Dead (2004) - Edgar Wright
10. Midnight in Paris (2011) - Woody Allen

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LONESOME VALLEY

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,
You gotta walk it by yourself,
Nobody here can walk it for you,
You gotta walk it by yourself.

Some people say that John was a Baptist,
Some folks say he was a Jew,
But your holy scripture tells you
That he was a preacher too.

Daniel was a Bible hero,
Was a prophet brave and true,
In a den of hungry lions
Proved what faith can do for you.

There's a road that leads to glory
Through a valley far away,
Nobody else can walk it for you,
They can only point the way.

Mamma and daddy loves you dearly,
Sister does and brother, too,
They may beg you to go with them,
But they cannot go for you.

I'm gonna walk that lonesome valley,
I'm gonna walk it by myself,
Don't want to nobody to walk it for me,
I'm gonna walk it by myself.

— Woody Guthrie

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PRESIDENT BOOR

To the Editor:

This human being who is our leader calls another country and its inhabitants “garbage.” He calls those who have come to the United States from there “garbage.” Disgraceful.

Here is a man who cannot accept nor understand that Somalis (and many others) are simply human beings, like him. But unlike him, they were not born with the opportunities and wealth that he was. It is impossible for me to believe that Americans who call themselves Christian can keep quiet.

Dee Baer

Wilmington, Delaware

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OUR GREAT CRIME

To the Editor:

What does it say about us as a people that during this time of strife, danger and momentous decisions we have placed our trust and elevated to leadership such a flawed, self-serving, venal, willfully ignorant person?

It appears we have fallen far from our ideals, from what it has meant to be an American.

This does not have to be the end of the American dream, unless we no longer care; we can reclaim our power and our ideals. We may have to fight for them, because evil will not willingly give up its place on the throne. Yet isn’t what we built here worth that effort?

Bruce Higgins

San Diego

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”

“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage."

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JOANNA MILLER:

Anyone intellectually honest who worked with Afghans, in Afghanistan, could have seen this coming a long time ago. My brother was fluent in Pashto and was one of those Americans training them. He went on a colossal rant to me about how pointless the whole thing was shortly before he was killed in action in 2008. Our whole idiom of thinking we can turn every country into the US is idiotic. We absolutely have the right to defend our own borders and make our own rules about who gets to come in and who doesn't. But what goes on everywhere else isn't necessarily our business, and is certainly not worth sending our own people off to get killed over.

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Vaccine Committee May Make Significant Changes to Childhood Schedule

U.S. Military’s Boat Strikes Planning Takes On New Significance

Pentagon Investigator Faults Hegseth for Improper Use of Signal

Trump Returns to Gasoline as Fuel of Choice for Cars, Gutting Biden’s Climate Policy

People Are Uploading Their Medical Records to A.I. Chatbots

The ‘Race Against Time’ to Save Music Legends’ Decaying Tapes

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JAKE MARCHED INTO AMERICA'S 'MUSLIM CAPITAL' ARMED WITH A LIGHTER AND THE QURAN. THEN ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE…

by James Reinl

Dearborn, Michigan, was back in the national spotlight last month after a far-right protest spiraled into street clashes, a near-Quran burning, and the latest debate about religion, identity and political extremism in America's largest Muslim-majority city.

The drama began when Jake Lang – a January 6 rioter, newly pardoned by Donald Trump, and now a long-shot Republican US Senate candidate in Florida – arrived in Dearborn with an entourage, cameras, and a self-styled “anti-Sharia” crusade.

He carried bacon in one hand and a Quran in the other, marching through the city center in combat gear and trolling locals, daring them to confront him.

They did.

A series of scuffles broke out almost immediately. Shouts filled the air. Police monitored from a distance as Lang taunted counter-protesters and threatened to burn the Quran for the cameras.

One counter-protester finally snapped, landing a punch on the side of Lang's face. Lang laughed it off, telling reporters he had been “punched harder by Capitol police officer ladies,” as the assailant darted across a busy street and vanished.

The skirmishes continued as Lang tried several times to light the Quran on fire. Video shared online shows him flicking a lighter beneath the holy book, only for counter-protesters to smack it out of his hands again and again.

At one point, he tapped the Quran with a slab of bacon – a provocative and offensive gesture – until a counter-protester snatched the book entirely and sprinted away.

Lang pressed on with his message. He told reporters and later a Dearborn city council meeting that white Americans were being “outbred” by immigrants, warned that “there can be no room for sharia law” in the US.

The provocateur declared: “Today we mark America a Christian country… a European Western civilization that the Muslims have no part in. This is our country.”

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud condemned the “hate” Lang was trying to spread, while city officials praised residents for responding with relative restraint despite the blatant provocation.

The chaotic scenes capped what has already been a tumultuous year in Dearborn, a city where anger over Israel's war against Hamas has surged into street protests, social media battles, and sharp political divides.

What was once a classic Detroit suburb – the hometown of Henry Ford and a symbol of 20th-century American industry – has become a focal point in national arguments about Islam, immigration, and multiculturalism.

And the tensions are not imaginary. Throughout 2025, mosques in Dearborn have received violent threats, prompting FBI involvement and several arrests.

A GOP gubernatorial candidate claimed “Sharia law” was being implemented in the city.

Non-Muslim residents complained repeatedly about the Islamic call to prayer broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, especially at dawn, and about 40 residents signed a petition saying the noise disrupted their “quality of life and tranquility.”

Then came a political firestorm in September, when local Christian pastor Ted Barham denounced a proposal to name a street after an Arab American activist and journalist with a record of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

Hammoud cut him off at a council meeting, calling him a “racist” and an “Islamophobe” and telling him: “You are not welcome here.”

A clip of the exchange was viewed millions of times online, sparking both praise and outrage. A petition calling for the mayor's resignation now has more than 9,300 signatures.

Even more alarming were the events of Halloween morning.

On October 31, FBI agents raided at least two homes in Dearborn and a storage unit in nearby Inkster, arresting three adults and two teenagers and seizing firearms and tactical gear.

The suspects were accused of plotting a potential ISIS-inspired attack over the holiday weekend. FBI Director Kash Patel said they were linked to Islamic State extremism.

The arrests sent shockwaves through the city and beyond, reinforcing long-standing fears about radicalization in a community repeatedly singled out by political commentators.

Asma Uddin, a Michigan State University law professor, said Dearborn has become a “theater for interreligious tensions” where national anxieties play out at the local level.

“The Dearborn incidents show how national anxieties about religion and global conflicts are seeping into local life and turning everyday community debates into symbolic battlegrounds,” she told the Daily Mail.

But she argued that relationships within the city remain stronger than outsiders assume.

“They reveal that people's relationships across faith lines are still much stronger than the divisive narratives being projected onto them.”

Uddin said residents had shown resilience in resisting efforts by “'outsiders” like Lang who were 'trying to import a culture-war narrative into Dearborn, using false claims about “Sharia law” to stir fear and attention.'

The attempted Quran burning, she said, was “a deliberate act of provocation meant to humiliate and dehumanize the community.”

Barham, who watched Lang and his associates address the council, said he was shocked by the “comments of these racist false Christians.”

“Just as I didn't like experiencing abuse that day in September, I also don't like how the mayor and city council and people of Dearborn experienced abuse from these racists,” he told the Daily Mail.

Lang's protest took place on the same day Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson hosted a “unity rally” aimed at cooling tensions.

Hudson, 48, had previously accused Dearborn of falling under “Sharia law” and vowed to “expose Dearborn for what it is.”

But after touring several local mosques, he reversed course, saying he found “good people” and “hospitality.”

The overlapping events highlighted the competing forces shaping Dearborn's national image: local officials trying to stabilize the city, activists seeking attention, and political figures recalibrating their message in real time.

Still, the city's challenges are undeniable. Dearborn has been rocked by large protests over Israel's prosecution of the war in Gaza, with major demonstrations taking place in May, July, September, and October.

Local discontent with President Joe Biden's support for Israel is widely viewed as helping Donald Trump carry the city in the 2024 election.

Trump received 42.5% of the vote to Kamala Harris's 36.3 percent – a major shift in a city long aligned with Democrats.

Beyond Michigan, similar disputes have flared across the country.

Plans for a “Muslim city” in eastern Texas were revised after public backlash, and Minneapolis has experienced its own controversy over mosque loudspeakers.

And in 2024, then-Senator J.D. Vance sparked criticism after telling podcaster Joe Rogan he worried about 'religious tyranny' by immigrants who he said resisted Western values – comments widely interpreted as referencing communities like Dearborn.

For many Americans, Dearborn now stands as a symbol of the country's religious and cultural crossroads.

To some, it is a model of pluralism. To others, proof of cultural conflict. To still others, an opportunity to score political points.

And into that combustible mix walked Jake Lang – with bacon, a Quran, cameras, and an eagerness for confrontation.

Tuesday's clashes were brief, chaotic, and unsettling. But they were also unsurprising in a city that has spent the past year grappling with global conflict, domestic political pressure, and recurring security threats.

Whether Dearborn can ease these pressures in 2026 remains unclear. What is certain is that it will continue to be a place where America's deepest debates about faith, identity, and belonging play out in real time.

(DailyMail.uk)

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DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH CONSTITUENTS ON ISRAELI GENOCIDE

by Norman Solomon

Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.

And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.

Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.

In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters. “I agree with the UN commission’s heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.” Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.

In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath – and the electoral muscle – of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.

“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”

Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him. On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”

AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”

Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.

The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.

Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.

Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.)

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APOCALYSE SOON?

by William Astore

It’s been 20 years since I retired from the Air Force and 40 years since I first entered Cheyenne Mountain, America’s nuclear redoubt at the southern end of the Front Range that includes Pikes Peak in Colorado. So it was with some nostalgia that I read a recent memo from General Kenneth Wilsbach, the new Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF). Along with the usual warrior talk, the CSAF vowed to “relentlessly advocate” for the new Sentinel ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber. While the Air Force often speaks of “investing” in new nukes, this time the CSAF opted for “recapitalization,” a remarkably bloodless term for the creation of a whole new generation of genocidal thermonuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

(Take a moment to think about that word, “creation,” applied to weapons of mass destruction. Raised Catholic, I learned that God created the universe out of nothing. By comparison, nuclear creators aren’t gods, they’re devils, for their “creation” may end with the destruction of everything. Small wonder J. Robert Oppenheimer mused that he’d become death, the destroyer of worlds, after the first successful atomic blast in 1945.)

In my Cheyenne Mountain days, circa 1985, the new “must have” bomber was the B-1 Lancer and the new “must have” ICBM was the MX Peacekeeper. If you go back 20 to 30 years earlier than that, it was the B-52 and the Minuteman. And mind you, my old service “owns” two legs of America’s nuclear triad. (The Navy has the third with its nuclear submarines armed with Trident II missiles.) And count on one thing: it will never willingly give them up. It will always “relentlessly advocate” for the latest ICBM and nuclear-capable bomber, irrespective of need, price, strategy, or above all else their murderous, indeed apocalyptic, capabilities.

At this moment, Donald Trump’s America has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and bombs of various sorts, while Vladimir Putin’s Russia has roughly 5,500 of the same. Together, they represent overkill of an enormity that should be considered essentially unfathomable. Any sane person would minimally argue for serious reductions in nuclear weaponry on this planet. The literal salvation of humanity may depend on it. But don’t tell that to the generals and admirals, or to the weapons-producing corporations that get rich building such weaponry, or to members of Congress who have factories producing such weaponry and bases housing them in their districts.

So, here we are in a world in which the Pentagon plans to spend another $1.7 trillion (and no, that is not a typo!) “recapitalizing” its nuclear triad, and so in a world that is guaranteed to remain haunted forever by a possible future doomsday, the specter of nuclear mushroom clouds, and a true “end-times” catastrophe.

I Join AF Space Command Only to Find Myself Under 2,000 Feet of Granite

My first military assignment in 1985 was at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado with Air Force Space Command. That put me in America’s nuclear command post during the last few years of the Cold War. I also worked in the Space Surveillance Center and on a battle staff that brought me into the Missile Warning Center. So, I was exposed, in a relatively modest way (if anything having to do with nuclear weapons can ever be considered “modest”), to what nuclear war would actually be like and forced to think about it in a way most Americans don’t.

Each time I journeyed into Cheyenne Mountain, I walked or rode through a long tunnel carved out of granite. The buildings inside were mounted on gigantic springs (yes, springs!) that were supposed to absorb the shock of any nearby hydrogen bomb blast in a future war with the Soviet Union. Massive blast doors that looked like they belonged on the largest bank vault in the universe were supposed to keep us safe, though in a nuclear war they might only have ensured our entombment. They were mostly kept open, but every now and then they were closed for a military exercise.

I was a “space systems test analyst.” The Space Surveillance Center ran on a certain software program that needed periodic testing and evaluation and I helped test the computer software that kept track of all objects orbiting the Earth. Back then, there were just over 5,000 of them. (Now, that number’s more like 45,000 and space is a lot more crowded — perhaps too crowded.)

Anyhow, what I remember most vividly were military exercises where we’d run through different potentially world-ending scenarios. (Think of the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick.) One exercise simulated a nuclear attack on the United States. No, it wasn’t like some Hollywood production. We just had monochrome computer displays with primitive graphics, but you could certainly see missile tracks emerging from the Soviet Union, crossing the North Pole, and ending at American cities.

Even though there were no fancy (fake) explosions and no other special effects, simply realizing what was possible and how we would visualize it if it were actually to happen was, as I’m sure you can imagine, a distinctly sobering experience and not one I’ve ever forgotten.

That “war game” should have shaken me up more than it did, however. At the time, we had a certain amount of fatalism about the possibility of nuclear war, something captured in the posters of the era that told you what to do in case of a nuclear attack. The final step was basically to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. That was indeed my attitude.

Rather than obsess about Armageddon, I submerged myself in routine. There was a certain job to be done, procedures to be carried out, discipline to adhere to. Remember, of course, that this was also the era of the rise of the nuclear freeze protest movement that was demanding the U.S. and the Soviet Union reach an agreement to halt further testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. (If only, of course!) In addition, this was the time of the hit film The Day After, which tried to portray the aftermath of a nuclear war in the United States. In fact, on a midnight shift in Cheyenne Mountain, I even read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, which envisioned the Cold War gone hot, a Third World War gone nuclear.

Of course, if we had thought about nuclear war every minute of every day, we might indeed have been cowering under our sheets. Unfortunately, as a society, except in rare moments like the nuclear freeze movement one, we neither considered nor generally grasped what nuclear war was all about (even though nine countries now possess such weaponry and the likelihood of such a war only grows). Unfortunately, that lack of comprehension (and so protest) is one big reason why nuclear war remains so chillingly possible.

If anything, such a war has been eerily normalized in our collective consciousness and we’ve become remarkably numb to and fatalistic about it. One characteristic of that reality was the anesthetizing language that we used then (and still use) when it came to nuclear matters. We in the military spoke in acronyms or jargon about “flexible response,” “deterrence,” and what was then known as “mutually assured destruction” (or the wiping out of everything). In fact, we had a whole vocabulary of different words and euphemisms we could use so as not to think too deeply about the unthinkable or our possible role in making it happen.

My Date With Trinity

After leaving Cheyenne Mountain and getting a master’s degree, I co-taught a course on the making and use of the atomic bomb at the Air Force Academy. That was in 1992, and we actually took the cadets on a field trip to Los Alamos where the first nuclear weapon had largely been developed. Then we went on to the Trinity test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where, of course, that first atomic device was tested and that, believe me, was an unforgettable experience. We walked around and saw what was left of the tower where Robert Oppenheimer and crew suspended the “gadget” (nice euphemism!) for testing that bomb on July 16, 1945, less than a month before two atomic bombs would be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroying both of them and killing perhaps 200,000 people. Basically (I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn), nothing’s left of that tower except for its concrete base and a couple of twisted pieces of metal. It certainly does make you reflect on the sheer power of such weaponry. It was then and remains a distinctly haunted landscape and walking around it a truly sobering experience.

And when I toured the Los Alamos lab right after the collapse of the other great superpower of that moment, the Soviet Union, it was curious how glum the people I met there were. The mood of the scientists was like: hey, maybe I’m going to have to find another job because we’re not going to be building all these nuclear weapons anymore, not with the Soviet Union gone. It was so obviously time for America to cash in its “peace dividends” and the scientists’ mood reflected that.

Now, just imagine that 33 years after I took those cadets there, Los Alamos is once again going gangbusters, as our nation plans to “invest” another $1.7 trillion in a “modernized” nuclear triad (imagine what that means in terms of ultimate destruction!) that we (and the rest of the world) absolutely don’t need. To be blunt, today that outrages me. It angers me that all of us, whether those like me who served in uniform or your average American taxpayer, have sacrificed so much to create genocidal weaponry and a distinctly world-ending arsenal. Worse yet, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we didn’t even try to change course. And now the message is: Let’s spend staggering amounts of our tax dollars on even more apocalyptic weaponry. It’s insanity and, no question about it, it’s also morally obscene.

The Glitter of Nuclear Weapons

That ongoing obsession with total destruction, ultimate annihilation, reflects the fact that the United States is led by moral midgets. During the Vietnam War years, the infamous phrase of the time was that the U.S. military had to “destroy the town to save it” (from communism, of course). And for 70 years now, America’s leaders have tacitly threatened to order the destruction of the world to save it from a rival power like Russia or China. Indeed, nuclear war plans in the early 1960s already envisioned a massive strike against Russia and China, with estimates of the dead put at 600 million, or “100 Holocausts,” as Daniel Ellsberg of Vietnam War fame so memorably put it.

Take it from this retired officer: you simply can’t trust the U.S. military with that sort of destructive power. Indeed, you can’t trust anyone with that much power at their fingertips. Consider nuclear weapons akin to the One Ring of Power in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Anyone who puts that ring on is inevitably twisted and corrupted.

Freeman Dyson, a physicist of considerable probity, put it well to documentarian Jon Else in his film The Day After Trinity. Dyson confessed to his own “ring of power” moment:

“I felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

I’ve felt something akin to that as well. When I wore a military uniform, I was in some sense a captive to power. The military both captures and captivates. There’s an allure of power in the military, since you have a lot of destructive power at your disposal.

Of course, I wasn’t a B-1 bomber pilot or a missile-launch officer for ICBMs, but even so, when you’re part of something that’s so immensely, even world-destructively powerful, believe me, it does have an allure to it. And I don’t think we’re usually fully aware of how captivating that can be and how much you can want to be a part of that.

Even after their service, many veterans still want to go up in a warplane again or take a tour of a submarine, a battleship, or an aircraft carrier for nostalgic reasons, of course, but also because you want to regain that captivating feeling of being so close to immense — even world-ending — power.

The saying that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” may never be truer than when it comes to nuclear war. We even have expressions like “use them or lose them” to express how ICBMs should be “launched on warning” of a nuclear attack before they can be destroyed by an incoming enemy strike. So many years later, in other words, the world remains on even more of a nuclear hair-trigger, the pistol loaded and cocked to our collective heads, just waiting for news that will push us over the edge, that will make those trigger fingers of ours too itchy to resist the urge to put too much pressure on that nuclear trigger.

No matter how many bunkers we build, no matter that the world’s biggest bunker tunneled out of a mountain, the one I was once in, still exists, nothing will save us if we allow the glitter of nuclear weapons to flash into preternatural thermonuclear brightness.

(This piece first appeared on TomDispatch. William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history. His personal blog is Bracing Views. CounterPunch.org)

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NO KINGS

by Neal Ascherson

“If George comes to Chicago,” the mayor said, “I’ll bust him in the snoot!” The “George” was King George V. The mayor in 1927 was Big Bill Thompson, who ran the city in cahoots with Al Capone. He was politically smart as well as corrupt and physically massive, and he knew how well the line would go down with the city’s working class, especially its Irish-Americans. Most Americans then still fancied they had opened the way to their shining independence by punching King George III in the snoot. Many still do. “No Kings,” said the anti-Trump placards carried by five or six million Americans in more than 2500 towns and cities during protests in June and October this year. Those two words go straight to America’s innermost myth, bypassing worthy appeals to the rule of law or human rights. “No Kings”: no unbridled executive power, no immunity to law, no entitlement by wealth or birth, no servile court of flatterers. But here comes a homegrown George III, with an orange snoot and a golf club for a sceptre.

“No Kings” is a public memory, the accessible myth of an achievement. Eric Hobsbawm used to define a special category among nations, those whose peoples had risen to overthrow a hated order and who remembered doing so. They had inherited the power to say to their rulers and to themselves: “We did it once. So beware – we can do it again.”

Two examples of this surly self-confidence, this myth of sovereign rebellion, come to mind. One is No Kings America, the republic that never learned European docility. The second is France. The legends of 1789, of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 are dimmed but still alive. It’s the ultimate popular sanction: violent revolution, “descendre dans la rue,” to take to the streets and raise the barricades. It remains an option, as French political leaders are uneasily aware.

But there is a third nation with a ghostly presence in this company. Europe’s first modern revolution broke out in England in 1640: a king was beheaded, there was a surge towards social equality and challenges to the sanctity of rank, privilege and property. Nobody would dream of invoking that revolution as a living tradition today. (A handful of left-wing historians in the 1960s were the last to do so.) Civil war and Cromwell’s dictatorship broke its force. The so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 obliterated its traces. Here’s a snide way of summarizing modern British history: a 400-year campaign by the propertied classes to make the English forget about the 1640s. A highly successful campaign that counts the invention of a supranational “Britishness” and a post-imperial “Yookay” among its victories.

England doesn’t know how to say: “No Kings.” Instead, it says: “Not this one, but perhaps his brother or his son.” All Windsor crises, from the Abdication through Diana to this Andrew disaster, have been about personal morality – ironically revealing how much faith remains in the monarch as an ethical role model. But it isn’t the monarchs who are the British problem. It’s monarchism: the archaic top-down power structure of the Anglo-British state.

In 1689, absolutism was stripped from the crown and transferred to Parliament, which today means the cabinet. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty is monarchism thinly disguised: government by supreme authority, with certain liberties allowed to trickle downwards.

Constitutionally, England has vanished. But it still has a flag. And there are moments, beyond sport, when English people forget the Union Jack and raise that English banner, the red-on-white cross of St. George which flew at Agincourt and Blenheim. It’s a flag that makes British governments twitchy. They know it appears when there is real anger and grief, when there’s an overflowing sense that “those in charge” have lost touch with the deep feelings of the people. This year, St. George’s crosses dominated the early, often spontaneous demonstrations against immigrants and asylum seekers.

I found myself remembering “Diana Week” in 1997, those immense mourning crowds camping around the palaces. All over England, families had sent a member down to London, bearing flowers, stuffed toys, handwritten poems and – everywhere – the flag of St. George. It was an ocean of red and white. Walking through the parks I occasionally spotted a Union Jack, only to find a tearful Australian or Canadian visitor sitting underneath it on the grass. There was anger at me with my notebook: “You bloody journalists, you killed her!” But unprecedented anger, too, at the royals, at the bare flagstaff on Buckingham Palace, at the queen herself staying away at far Balmoral. “They don’t have any feelings!” I heard. “She was our princess but look how they treated her.” And I began to understand something unspoken but obvious. The Union Jack was Trafalgar, D-Day, coronation ribbons, British Airways. It was loyalty: the flag of the state. But the St. George’s cross was England’s flag of the heart.

Hardly a commentator who saw the flags, in 1997 or in 2025, asked if they had anything to do with English nationalism. That remains an almost taboo subject. The left hangs onto the useless old syllogism: nationalism equals racism equals fascism equals war. The right usually dismisses English nationalism as lower-class football hooliganism, threatening extensive damage to property. But there’s a frustrated identity here, soured by being so long ignored. The English are not significantly more xenophobic than other Northern European societies; in the 19th century, all classes seemed to feel proudly “English” as they welcomed streams of foreign refugees and revolutionaries fleeing repression. But today the fear of “uncontrolled immigration” has somehow become heartfelt, a wrong target for real rage flowing from a sense of abandonment, falling living standards, impotence under a professionalized political class that doesn’t listen.

“The English, the English, the English are best,/I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest.” In 1963, Flanders and Swann could still count on a self-confidence that allowed the English to laugh at themselves and their own complacency.

Not today. Especially since devolution for Wales and Scotland in 1999, England has become an unrecognized nation. What sort of partnership, what sort of union is it when one partner out of four holds 85% of the population and almost all the wealth – but is gagged? Ultimately, the Scots and the Welsh can look after themselves. But how can England be liberated? How can its national feelings be saved from an increasingly reckless populism, in which liberal Brits react to the St. George’s flag as if it carried a swastika?

England, like Scotland, missed out on the 19th-century European revolutions in which middle-class leaders tamed nationalist fury into struggles for democratic reform in independent republics. One rescue strategy would be to break up the UK into a confederation of independent states, forcing England to confront itself as a nation. That break-up would at least clear the way to a truly improbable upheaval: England turning monarchism inside out and introducing republican institutions based on popular sovereignty. The crown? Stripped of power and privilege, it scarcely matters. In these islands, it’s assumed that if you kick out a king, what you have left is a republic. But a real republic, under the supreme law of a constitution and the subsidiarity principle – the people’s power leased upwards by communities – takes some building. Grand visions. Time may be short. Demagogues and fanatics are rousing a stunted English nationalism to carry them into power, a government of stupid resentments and patriotic authoritarianism. This time, it isn’t the king whose snoot is asking for treatment.

(London Review of Books)

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