STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 48F under clear skies this Wednesday morning on the coast. Plenty of fog nearby but our forecast calls for sunny skies. Next week is looking increasingly wet currently. More of the same until then.
SATELLITE imagery shows areas of stratus and fog in many of the coastal and interior valleys late this morning. Low cloud cover will gradually lift and scatter out today, giving way to a fairly pleasant December afternoon. (NWS)
THERESIA KOBLER
February 17, 1933 to December 4, 2025
Burial at Evergreen Cemetery Saturday December 13, 2025 at 11:00a.m. Celebration of Life at Scharffenberger Cellars at 12:00 noon.
HOLIDAY FESTIVITIES ROLL OUT
by Terry Sites
In Anderson Valley the Boonville Hotel struck the first match of the season on Thursday December 4th with their annual Tree Lighting to benefit the AV Food Bank. For a $20 donation attendees are served a series of warming treats off trays circulated by their cheerful young wait staff. First you got your cheese biscuit to ease those early evening hunger pangs. A cup of tomato bisque was followed by a cup of clear pork and veggie broth. This light meal concluded with the universally popular chocolate cookie.
There were lots of people there. Many were standing cocktail party fashion while others were seated both inside and out. At 6:00 Hotel Manager Melissa Ellis warned us to “Keep the little ones close” and the house went dark. Then, “What to my wondering eyes did appear” but a shining Xmas tree: it was a magic moment. The Real Sarahs were on hand singing their hearts out all night without a break. The music added a tremendous amount to the party; so thank you to the Sarahs and their tuneful band. Also special thanks to the Boonville Hotel and staff for throwing open their doors and keeping up with all their voracious visitors. The Hotel is so charming both inside and out that it never fails to cast a spell.
On December 5th Cloverdale gave the holidays their best shot with a downtown Winter Wonderland. This is a town that has a real collective social life focused around their downtown square near the fire station. A handsome Santa was there on his throne with a welcoming knee. The firehouse featured “The Grinch” and there was a long line waiting to get inside to see him. There were tall red draped bistro tables for standing, drinking and chatting with friends. Every tree in sight was lit. They must have kept a cherry picker and crew busy for an entire day putting up so many lights. It really did look like a Winter Wonderland. There were lots of kids from tiny-in-strollers to teens traveling in packs. Cloverdale pulled out all the stops this year including a continuous outdoor showing of the classic holiday film “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart. Hats off to whatever committee planned and implemented this event. It was a real blockbuster.
The Annual Anderson Valley Unity Club Holiday Craft Bazaar opened its doors at 10:00 on Saturday, December 6. Every booth was rented. In recent years there has been a variety of flea market type merchandise offered at bargain basement prices. This is a help to budget shoppers and kids. The Grannies’ Attic and the Historical Society Museum’s white elephant booth were real treasure troves of gently used gifts.
The homemade goody booth is always popular. Christine Clark’s red pepper jelly is a stand out but there are also cakes, pies, cookies and muffins. There were booths with real handcrafted items including wreaths made by high schoolers, sewn fancies by Ellen Fontaine and her granddaughter, ranch crafts by Kelly Hiatt, jewelry by Rainbow Hill and Judy Nelson, plus much more. Ray Langevin was Santa accompanied by an informal appearance by Mary Daniels as Mrs. Claus.
As usual, there was the Club’s silent auction and a raffle for a wreath with $50 cash attached. Ellen’s granddaughter won the wreath. Interestingly another granddaughter had won the cash wreath several years ago; lucky family. The Unity Club Library was open with Liz Dusenberry at the desk and saw a stream of avid customers. Also on December 6 the Fire Department distributed the toys they had collected through their annual Toy Drive at the Boonville Fire House.
On the coast, the Mendocino Music Festival Chorale performed two matinees at 3:00 on Dec. 6th and 7th at the Mendocino Presbyterian Church. I attended with Lauren Keating, a fine chorale singer in her own right, who will also be performing at the church next weekend. Director Matthew Evans is a natty middle-aged man who wears a pork pie hat. He led his chorus through 15 songs in just over an hour so they were really pounding out the tunes. It was all business with this choir and they got right down to it. Lauren rated this group to be excellent, an opinion she is entitled to after many years of her own singing experience. As an uninformed listener I was carried away by the magnificent power of human voices joined together. The female and the male intonations are so different but so complimentary (kind of like real life).
The church building, built in the 1800s, complimented the sound with its soaring ceiling and elegant long windows. The sunlight moved throughout the performance bathing the singers in shifting light patterns. Especially outstanding was soloist Safari Dushime with her crystalline soprano. Accompanist Robin Knutson deftly scurried back and forth between the organ and piano, which were on opposite sides of the room. I was impressed by Rachael Lahn’s startlingly realistic horse whinny during a rousing rendition of Leroy Anderson’s seasonal classic “Sleigh Ride.” Most of the songs were not familiar and I had to stretch a little to appreciate titles like, “The Endris Night” and “Tyrley Tyrlow.” Director Evans reminded us that this was NOT a sing-along before they launched into “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (darn). The audience was predominantly gray haired and nearly all the performers were gray haired. I hate to think that this form of music is going to die out. For the time being I was glad to have the opportunity to be there to listen.
On this same day the Anderson Valley Grange had their Annual Holiday Community Dinner. Eric and Mea Bloyd were at the entry to the Grange Hall to direct us — food in the right door and people in the left. The Grangers really “Decked the Hall” this year with what seemed like miles of colored light strings lining the long walls. These cast a rosy glow over the rows of feasting tables that were strewn with pine boughs, pinecones and candles. Very lovely.
The Grange does a great job of enlisting volunteers for the occasion. Before dinner everywhere you went someone was offering tasty tidbits. Kira Brennan’s Halibut crackers were a standout. The hall was packed shoulder to shoulder. Those who lament the lack of community in contemporary life should move to Anderson Valley. Looking around, you could see how much kids have grown and elders have aged. It was a good chance to catch up with people you only see a few times a year. I thought people looked pretty perky. Captain Rainbow welcomed us. Laura Baynham marshaled the troops. There was plenty of food for everyone. For a golden moment all was right with the world.
In this first week of December alone we were well into this season of celebration. But there is much more to come. The Fire Fighters Awards Dinner, The Village Potluck and Sing-along, The Xmas Trivia Quiz, The Lion’s Club dinner, The Veterans party, and Yorkville’s Solstice and New Years. Enjoy it all because January and February are always pretty tame. You’ll have plenty of time to reflect and keep your own counsel soon enough.
HUNDREDS OF YOUNG COHO salmon were spotted in the East Branch Russian Gulch, which runs through the Jenner Headlands Preserve, the latest success story for the imperiled fish species once found in waterways across Northern California.
LUIS CHAVEZ: If you need help hauling anything away to the dump please reach out. No need to worry about loading it, we can help with that. Give us a call and get a quote! Thanks 707/391-6907. Experienced and insured. Offering several different services so don’t be afraid to ask. Very versatile. Local and have many recommendations. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
SUZI LONG’S BLUE PELICAN GALLERY-ATELIER is now open at 401 N. Harbor Drive in Fort Bragg.
Former travel agent blue building! Stop by to say hi! And have a little holiday cheer! Paintings and other creative things.
Gallery and studio of Suzi Long, watercolors and other mediums. The gallery will showcase work by Suzi Marquess Long until January when other artists will be invited to exhibit; offer drop-in and scheduled classes; offer space for small groups (such as Collage Collective); sponsor occasional contests, etc.
707-779-8713
Regular hours 12-4 Thurs-Mon
“BEFORE I SET OUT to travel this world, 12 years ago, I used to believe that the human race as a whole was basically a few steps above wolves. I have since come to believe – after many meals with many different people in many, many different places – that though there is no shortage of people who would do us harm, we are essentially good. That the world is, in fact, filled with mostly good and decent people who are simply doing the best they can. Everybody, it turns out, is proud of their food (when they have it). They enjoy sharing it with others (if they can). They love their children. They like a good joke. Sitting at the table has allowed me a privileged perspective and access that others, looking principally for ‘the story,’ do not, I believe, always get.”
— Anthony Bourdain
ANNUAL HOLIDAY ELK STREET FAIR THIS FRIDAY
Bundle up and come out and enjoy an evening of shopping, food, drinks, and holiday cheer in downtown Elk. On Friday December 12th from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm, businesses are staying open late for a festive holiday evening.
By popular request, the free raffle raffle will be back! Stop by the Greenwood State Beach Visitor Center/Museum, too! For more information, contact Becky Powers at Matson Mercantile ([email protected]
https://www.elkweb.org/6th-annual-holiday-street-fair/
LOCAL EVENTS (this week)
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
If you’ve encountered, or talked to, or interacted with the homeless population you would know that they don’t want to be managed at all. Many are quite happy in their tents, don’t know how to live in a house, don’t want “help”. Those that do want help, find it, and fix their lives. Forcing them is against the law. It is not a matter of “allowing” at all. It’s their choice to live like feral cats.
LOCAL MUSIC LEGENDS
The Mendocino Theatre Company is hosting two evenings with musical legends Alex de Grassi and David Hayes with special guest Gwyneth Moreland on December 19th and 20th.
OFF SHORE OIL?
Is it a real threat? They can't drill in state waters and are restricted in connecting onshore anything by CA. However, the Trump team thinks they have a loophole for some of California's federal ocean sanctuaries. I have gotten a legal opinon or two and congressional takes on it.
There is a way to follow the application process, but it takes more time than I have and I doubt anybody else is doing it. The Dems are making an issue of the massive map Trump put out (excluding his side of Florida) but they don't really want to be real about the specific threat to California, its a good political issue for Trump to pump up his base who think any polluting oil project means "owning the libs" and for the Dems too to fire everyone up, but neither side is really interested in how real the threat is
— Frank Hartzell
1910’s PHOTO OF LANGLAND HOSPITAL on the corner of Spring and Stephenson Street in Ukiah.
It was owned and operated by Clora Alley Langland. After the death of her husband, Clora dedicated herself to being a nurse and helping others. The hospital had three beds and a modern operating room for local doctors. Langland Hospital was later purchased by Theresa Ray in 1922. Theresa worked out of the hospital for a number of years before building Ukiah General Hospital. The following information I’m still researching and a work in progress; I haven’t been able to prove or disprove it. My cousin was told by her Grandmother Madelyn that this photo has a family secret. In the photo Madelyn is holding her baby cousin Virginia McMath aka the Hollywood actress, Ginger Rogers. If that’s true, it’s possibly one of the times that Ginger’s father had kidnapped her from Missouri. Will follow-up if I’m able to make this story more concrete…
I REALIZED these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, December 9, 2025
MICHAEL ALPERS, 57, Ukiah. Under influence.
FLAVIO AYALA, 46, Ukiah. Narcotics for sale.
ROCKY DUMAN, 34, Ukiah. County parole violation.
DAIQUIRI GORDON, 36, Willits. Domestic abuse.
JAMES GOWAN JR., 53, Ukiah. Transient registration.
RALPH HARDEN, 63, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order, probation revocation.
ERIC KOOYERS, 54, Willits. Shoplifting, concentrated cannabis.
DANIEL PEREZ, 40, Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% causing bodily injury.
PRISCILLA RONCO, 41, Ukiah. Domestic battery, parole violation.
ANTHONY TOLBERT, 37, Ukiah. Arson, parole violation.
IVA ZEIGLER-MANUEL, 39, San Jose/Ukiah. DUI-any drug, resisting.
WHY DRUGS?
Editor:
We are being told that strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific are in the interest of the United States. First of all, no one has confirmed that these strikes are actually hitting drug boats. Second, as long as there is strong demand for drugs in the United States, we can be striking boats until we are blue in the face. Dealers and their mules will find a way to satisfy the demand.
Here is what no one — including the media — is talking about: What is causing the high demand for drugs in this country? That’s what our dear leader ought to be asking himself. Of course, that would require compassion and action on behalf of the working class. Let’s not hold our breath on that one.
Astrid Harper
Santa Rosa
THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON
by Fred Gardner
The Golden State Warriors invited the seven surviving players from the team that won the NBA championship in 1975 — Charles Dudley, Jamaal Wilkes, Clifford Ray, Rick Barry, George Johnson, Butch Beard and Jeff Mullins — to attend a recent game against the Portland Trailblazers at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
During the second quarter, the Warriors radio/TV announcers interviewed Dudley, in counterpoint with their play-by-play. His recollection solved a mystery that has puzzled me all these years! Rick Barry, interviewed during the third quarter, described a mystery that still puzzles him.
In the mid-70s City Magazine paid writers relatively well. Francis Ford Coppola, who moved to SF in 1969, had bought the magazine and was putting money into it. (His American Zoetrope partner, George Lucas, had a studio in Lucas Valley, and Bruce Anderson was a few years away from moving to Anderson Valley. Coincidental coincidences.)
One of the pieces I wrote for ‘City’ was a guide to pick-up basketball games in San Francisco. The editor, John Burks, was 6' 7" and a hoopster himself, having played with Rudy LaRusso at Dartmouth in the 50s. It was easy to sell him on a Warriors-centric preview of the NBA season. Thus credentialed, I arranged to attend the last practice before the October 17 opener.
The practice began in the morning, maybe as early as 10 a.m., with a shoot-around. Rick Barry arrived about 10 minutes late. After taking his first shot, and without consulting Coach Al Attles, he left the floor and found a maintenance man. I watched as Barry pointed up to the top deck, where an electronic blind had not been fully closed, letting in a narrow horizontal band of daylight. The worker nodded, left the floor, and a minute later the blind slid shut, creating a real-game backdrop. Barry returned to the court and began telling his teammates, one-by-one, exactly where his hands would be placed to receive the perfect pass. Keith Wilkes looked unhappy. He would soon change his name legally to Jamaal Abdul-Lateef.
Assistant coach Joe Roberts organized a scrimmage. About 15 minutes in, there was an injury to Jeff Mullins, who'd been slated to start at shooting guard. It turned out to be a broken bone in his hand — which would mean a starting role for Charles Johnson, and more playing time for Dudley and a very good rookie from USF, Phil Smith, the son of a Muni driver. It was obvious that the Warriors would be running more.
I spoke briefly with Attles, whose voice was as deep as his Blackness. Somehow the conversation turned to the high level of play in the 'D' league. (It would be decades before the NBA and Gatorade sponsored a minor league that paid a living wage.). “Making it onto an NBA roster,” Attles said, “could be very, very political.”
That afternoon I told John Burks we were picking the Warriors to win it all. He disapproved, saying readers would think it was some kind of spoof. But that's not why I didn't write the story. I didn't write it because Rick Barry, not Al Attles, had run the practice. That was the story, and how could I tell it without disrespecting Attles? I didn't try to convince Burks, just let it slide… But I could never understand why Alvin Attles, who came from Newark and was nicknamed “The Destroyer,” let Rick Barry run the show that morning in Oakland.
Until the other night when Charles Dudley was interviewed. Play-by-play announcer Bob Fitzgerald kept calling him “The Hopper,” which he said was his favorite nickname of all time. Dudley, a serious, dignified man, seemed to wince. First of all, he said, he wanted to honor Joe Roberts, the assistant coach, who hadn't got enough recognition. And then he explained the Warriors' success in three words: “Clifford Ray's leadership.”
To get the unheralded Clifford Ray, the Warriors had traded their aging star center, Nate Thurmond, to the Chicago Bulls. “Rick picked Clifford up at the airport,” Dudley recalled, “and that started a relationship.” (These quotes are imperfect, jotted down as I watched the game.)
“Clifford knew after the first three or four practices that there had been some ill feelings going against Rick, and we needed all the teammates together, bonded. So Clifford asked Al, ‘Can I talk to the players?’ Al said ‘yes’ — which says something about Al's leadership, that he could give power to a player like that.”
Clifford Ray told his new teammates, according to Dudley, “If any of you guys can score 35 points a night, let me know. Nobody said anything. That was a part of everyone finding their role. There were a lot of scorers on that team, a lot of very good players, but for us to win, we needed Rick scoring 30 points a game.”
“Al was a guy that we never wanted to disappoint. We respected him. We knew there was pressure on him to win that championship. For the first time ever we had two black coaches. We wanted the NBA to progress, that was the whole thing. The league is a copycat league. With our success, other African-American coaches got an opportunity at that high level.”
When Rick Barry joined the announcers at the start of the third quarter, Fitzgerald asked him why he had picked Clifford Ray up at the airport back in '74. Barry said, “Because I'm smart. I need a center who is willing to come and put himself in a good position so we could run the two-man game. I said to Clifford, ‘Look you put yourself in a good position. I’ll get you a lot of dunks.’ Cause I know Clifford loved to dunk. There’s nobody in the history of the game — I guarantee, if you look at tape, nobody played the two-man game as well as me and Clifford. I did it with Nate and others, but I guarantee you, Clifford was the best.”
Fitzgerald recalled that Barry had taught the back-up center, George Johnson to shoot foul shots underhand. “Did you go to him and say ‘George you’re a 41% free throw shooter. We gotta do something about this?’”
Barry: “George had the guts to be able to do it. He got himself up to the point where he was an 80% free throw shooter. I don’t understand why general managers and coaches don’t tell players they have to do it. They're employees, they make millions of dollars, and they’re gonna say no? George got it very quickly. His form wasn’t exactly where it needed to be, but we didn’t have a lot of time to work on his technique. His form was terrible, your hands don’t go out like that. It’s been proven scientifically that it’s the most efficient way to shoot a free-throw. And yet people don’t do it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Color commentator Kelenna Azuibuike put in that he could never get the hang of shooting underhand foul shots. “That's because you're not a player,” said Barry. Azuibuke had been a very good player, drafted by the Warriors in 2000 out of Kentucky. In his third season he averaged 14.4 points a game. Then his knee was wrecked. Barry said that if he had been there to teach proper form, Azuibuke would have soon mastered it.
(Released underhand, the ball rises slowly and reaches the rim more softly than when propelled one-handed from the foul line. The arc is less pronounced, the contact softer. Once upon a time at the 92nd St ‘Y’ in Manhattan I used to earn 50 cents rebounding for an overweight middle-aged man who would shoot 50 underhand foul shots and make 48 or 49 of them. All I did was throw the ball back to him after it came through the net. 50 cents was real money when a slice of pizza on 86th St. cost 15 cents.)
Barry said the Warriors championship in 1975 was “the greatest upset in the history of major league sports in this country.” The climactic series was not the last one against the Washington Bullets (!) but the Western Conference finals. The Chicago Bulls with Chet Walker, Norm Van Lear, Bob Love and, of course, Nate Thurmond, had been up three games to two. “That was our championship series right there,” said Barry. “I blew a game in Chicago that was haunting me. In game seven I was 2 for 14 and Al took me out. What coach do you know who would take out his leading scorer, down double figures? And he kept me out till the start of the fourth quarter. It wasn’t until I got into rhythm a few minutes into the fourth quarter…"
The Warriors swept the Bullets in the finals. At the start of the fourth and final game, Mike Riordan tried to get Barry ejected by luring him into a fight. Barry said he said, “Mike, what the hell do you think you’re doing? You think I’m stupid enough to get in a fight with you and get thrown out of the game?” After one especially flagrant foul, Al Attles came tearing off the bench and went for Riordan. It was Attles who got ejected. And it was Attles who was rightfully named Coach of the Year.
RAVENS TOWARD SUNDOWN (KB)
CASCADIA MEGA-FAULT EXPERT SPELLS OUT EARTHQUAKE LINK TO BAY AREA
by Tara Duggan
Scientists recently announced a terrifying find: A megaquake on the fearsome Cascadia fault in the Pacific Northwest could trigger a huge tremor on the San Andreas fault — essentially back-to-back megaquakes that would send destructive seismic waves up and down the West Coast, including the Bay Area.
But one of the key scientists said there’s a surprising upside to knowing about the linkage: “If Cascadia went off, it would serve as a warning system to the Bay Area,” said Chris Goldfinger, lead author of the study and Bay Area native.
An Oregon State University marine geologist, Goldfinger has spent decades studying the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Cape Mendocino in Northern California, where it meets the northern San Andreas fault.
The fault has a 37% chance of producing a quake of around magnitude 7 or higher in the next half-century, Goldfinger and his authors found. It’s also capable of setting off a magnitude 9+ quake — the strength at which it last erupted in 1700.
Goldfinger and coauthors found evidence that all nine of the very large earthquakes — around magnitude 9.0 — on the Cascadia in the past 3,000 years preceded quakes on the northern San Andreas — including the one in 1700.
To determine the connection, they analyzed deep-sea sediment cores they collected from the sea floor in both areas, comparing what are called turbidites — layers that are deposited during underwater landslides that are commonly caused by earthquakes. The layers lined up to show similar timing of earthquakes in the two faults.
We spoke with Goldfinger, who is now semiretired, about the connection between the two faults. The answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What is your worst fear about a synchronized earthquake on both the Cascadia and San Andreas faults?
If it actually did happen, the concern is that the whole country would have its emergency system drawn down not by one earthquake but by two. Either one alone would be a national event, but my concern is the ability to respond to either event would be diminished because we would run out of resources.
Airports would be damaged, so aviation would be hindered from both places. Ports may be damaged, so ingress from the sea would be limited.
Q: How much warning could people in the Bay Area get of a potential earthquake after one in the Pacific Northwest?
When you have one fault rupture, it transfers stress to nearby faults, in this case the northern part of the San Andreas fault. The issue is if there were a quake on the Cascadia, you wouldn’t know if San Andreas would go off in 10 minutes or 10 years — even as much as 50 years. But chances are it would be sooner than later.
For the earthquake pairs we studied, only one of them — in 1700 — has relatively good evidence that the timing was short, with a range of 20 minutes to one year.
Q: What would you do if you were visiting the Bay Area and heard about a large quake in the Pacific Northwest?
If Cascadia went off, knowing what we know now, I would consider going somewhere else for a while in case the San Andreas did go. Maybe this is a good time for a vacation in Tahoe.
Considering the inability to pin it down to minutes or hours I don’t see people streaming down the I-80, but it’s good to think about.
Q: Can you talk about the upside of your latest research?
A: Growing up in the Bay Area, when I went to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, you could see the San Andreas fault at the end of her street in Daly City, looking over a cliff near Mussel Rock park. I knew I was living on top of the San Andreas fault and that was kind of a worrying thing.
Earthquake prediction doesn’t exist, but there are some early warnings. In the Pacific Northwest, if you had an earthquake in the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone, if you were sitting in Seattle you might have an extra two minutes of warning. You can do a lot in two minutes.
But in the Bay Area, where you have the Hayward fault right there, the warning time is maybe seconds, which isn’t really that useful. It might be just enough to shut down a BART train before it goes in the tube.
What if you had a warning that it was the Cascadia going off and you knew there was a high likelihood the San Andreas would also go off? I’m starting to see this as more of a positive than a problem.
Q: Could a Cascadia earthquake prompt an early warning like a MyShake alert or tsunami warning?
No one has discussed that. It’s more of a societal decision.
Q: A large Cascadia subduction zone earthquake would also likely produce a huge tsunami that could devastate the coastal Pacific Northwest and Japan. What about the Bay Area?
The tsunami coming from Cascadia would have very limited effect on the Bay Area. If you went to the Berkeley mud flats, it would be measurable but limited. If the San Andreas went with it, it probably would have very limited effects.
Q: You found that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was one of the few major earthquakes on the northern San Andreas fault that was not preceded by one on the Cascadia fault. Any theories why?
The idea is that faults with similar frequencies of earthquakes can synchronize as they influence each others’ timing. But the Cascadia and the northern San Andreas faults are similar, but not exact matches, and not perfectly periodic either; the northern San Andreas fault has a little bit higher average event frequency. So they appear to be partially synchronized, with occasional “extra” events from the San Andreas. It appears that 1906 was one of those.
(SF Chronicle)
D.C. READE:
George Jung was a renowned cocaine smuggler back in the 1980s. He flew tonloads of cocaine in for the Medellin cartel. To this country, not just doing a milk run between Trinidad and Venezuela. George Jung isn't a terrorist, he's a drug dealer. People paid him voluntarily to buy his supply of forbidden drugs. That isn't a terrorist act. It's a market that's now global, and probably in the vicinity of $100 billion in consumer purchase.
How is that the same as a bomb in a baby carriage?
I realize that cocaine is an unsafe product, although it also has to be said that it's considerably less lethally hazardous a drug than fentanyl. Due to crack and needles--no getting around that--in my opinion cocaine is a scary enough drug that it's a good thing that the trade is legally prohibited. But what's up with treating drug dealing--hell, drug transporting--worthy of a penalty more severe than forcible rape and murder?
A movie was made about George Jung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EljkkvGwO0&t=1s
GOD’S GRANDEUR
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)
IT'S A MIRROR
Editor,
NY Times letter-writer Roy Price laments and warns about the consequences of monopolization, the Hollywood enterprise is referred to as a “culture-producing industry.”
I have long believed that Hollywood is culture-reflecting, not culture-producing. Decisions to produce and release a product are made with box office as a key factor. Actual or anticipated box office response depends largely on the prevailing cultural taste of ticket buyers at a given time.
Arthur M. Halpern
Rockville, Maryland
ANYBODY who’s watched anything from Narcos to Breaking Bad, knows that there’s an intersection between this civilian military and other actors in this. I also am of the belief that the fentanyl crisis in particular in the United States is at a dangerous and dastardly and deadly point such that life expectancies are dropping in the United States, partly due to that influence.
I had this very well explained to me by a Florida state prosecutor. It started with OxyContin. We all remember that. The Sackler family, OxyContin. A supposedly neutral or benign, strong opiate that couldn’t be abused and was a wonder drug for pain. Well, it got half of America addicted to it, especially America in certain parts of the country, the mid-south, and other economically challenged parts of the country, that 90% of the prescriptions for some of these drugs were written in 10% of the communities.
Those communities had in common, being deindustrialized, poor, and dependent on Medicaid and so on. When the United States suddenly made a big deal about OxyContin and cranking back on it, it was told to me, some of the same entities that had created it saw a next phase in the life cycle of profit, in which was rehabbing people from what was surely going to be a sudden detox from OxyContin, which was going to be hard to get. Remember how if you had a backache suddenly, you couldn’t, I had kidney stones, get five fucking OxyContins? You know? Because we suddenly had a complete prohibition on the whole thing.
Wait, I have the worst pain in the world and I have to come back every three days, get five more. Is that crazy? Because you’ve gone so crazy. Well, the people who had their supplies cut short had to do something and two things happened. They went to rehab, especially in the south and what I learned about was Florida. Florida had an interesting system where you couldn’t go to rehab and live in a rehab. You had to have the living halfway house separate from the place where you were treated. This allowed vast profits for people who would buy one family house or a single family house and chop it up into 40 bunks for drug addicts.
Each of those was charged to the government at $10,000 a month, and then they charged the government for the rehab too. Many of the entities that had made money off the drug, made it off the rehab. At the same time, funnily enough, fentanyl came flooding into the United States to fill the gap, opened the vacuum, opened by the loss of OxyContin, fentanyl. An equally potent, extremely attractive drug for people who are narcotics addicts. That’s Profit Center three. Well, the fact is that fentanyl thing is out of control. It is a feature of daily life where I live in Las Vegas, in a way I never thought it would be.
I see it all the time. I talk to the guys when they’re able to talk, find out what’s going on, see the guy come by in the van and all these people you never see again. I see it as a chemical weapon. I really do. I see it as similar to the Chinese opium wars, when we used opium to basically destroy Chinese civilization in eighteen…
— Walter Kirn
EXCERPT: WHY I AM NOT A COMMUNIST BY BERTRAND RUSSELL (1936)
“Karl Marx’s doctrine was bad enough, but the developments which it underwent under Lenin and Stalin made it much worse. Marx had taught that there would be a revolutionary transitional period following the victory of the proletariat in a civil war and that during this period the proletariat, in accordance with the usual practice after a civil war, would deprive its vanquished enemies of political power. This period was to be that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It should not be forgotten that in Marx's prophetic vision the victory of the proletariat was to come after it had grown to be the vast majority of the population. The dictatorship of the proletariat therefore as conceived by Marx was not essentially anti-democratic.
In the Russia of 1917, however, the proletariat was a small percentage of the population, the great majority being peasants. It was decreed that the Bolshevik party was the class-conscious part of the proletariat, and that a small committee of its leaders was the class-conscious part of the Bolshevik party. The dictatorship of the proletariat thus came to be the dictatorship of a small committee, and ultimately of one man - Stalin. As the sole class-conscious proletarian, Stalin condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation and millions of others to forced labour in concentration camps. He even went so far as to decree that the laws of heredity are henceforth to be different from what they used to be, and that the germ-plasm is to obey Soviet decrees. I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin."
— Bertrand Russell (1936)
The 1940s brought with them the second World War, and Bourke-White became the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer allowed to work in combat zones during the war. When Germany broke its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer in Moscow during the siege of the city. It was then, in 1941, that she took her famous portrait of Joseph Stalin with a smile on his face, which would be on the cover of Life in ‘43. She remembered the making of the photograph later, in writing:
“I made up my mind that I wouldn't leave without getting a picture of Stalin smiling. When I met him, his face looked as though it were carved out of stone, he wouldn't show any emotion at all. I went virtually berserk trying to make that great stone face come alive.”
“I got down on my hands and knees on the floor and tried out all kinds of crazy postures searching for a good camera angle. Stalin looked down at the way I was squirming and writhing and for the space of a lightning flash he smiled—and I got my picture. Probably, he had never seen a girl photographer before and my weird contortions amused him.”
— Carter Boyd (oursphotomag.com)
THE WEIGHT
I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, "no" was all he said
Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)
I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on let's go downtown."
She said, "I gotta go but my friend can stick around."
Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)
Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
It's just old Luke and Luke's waitin' on the Judgment Day
"Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, won't you stay and keep Anna Lee company?"
Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)
Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog
He said, "I will fix your rack if you take Jack, my dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."
He said, "That's OK, boy, won't you feed him when you can?"
Yeah, take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)
Catch a cannon ball now to take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone
Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)
— Jaime Robbie Robertson (1968)
THE AUTHOR WHO’S TURNED WHISKY TASTING NOTES INTO SHORT FESTIVE STORIES - ALL SET ON CHRISTMAS EVE
by Rosalind Erskine
The warm and heady experience of sipping a dram has inspired a whole new style of storytelling this Christmas.
If, like me, your Christmas is full of traditions - many of them revolving around books (my favourite being Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles) - then this new festive whisky themed release is an ideal gift. Independent publishing imprint Mennie Drinks recently announced the release of The Night Afore, a hand-numbered, limited-edition Christmas chapbook featuring three atmospheric short stories inspired by whisky - each set on Christmas Eve.
Printed in a short run of just 100 copies and bound using traditional Singer-sewn stitching, The Night Afore is the first Glenfiction (the literary storytelling arm of Mennie Drinks – turning whisky tasting notes into short, sensory narratives) short story anthology and continues Mennie Drinks’ commitment to slow publishing: small-batch printed objects, produced with care, designed to be held, read and gifted – in a world of disposable digital content.
Rather than flavour wheels or technical language, Glenfiction brings readers into the world of whisky through atmosphere, character, folklore and place.
At a time when many readers are exploring drink culture through memoir, essay and narrative non-fiction, Glenfiction offers something new: fiction as an entry point into whisky. By reframing flavour as a story, the aim is to to reach readers who love short stories or literary magazines but may never have considered whisky “for them”.
“This is something I’d been thinking about for a long time, and the Glenfiction writing is something I’ve been doing for a couple of years,” said Alex Mennie, founder of Mennie Drinks and author of The Night Afore.
“It started when I did a creative writing course a few years ago and started jotting down snippets of ideas and then I had an idea of basing stories on whisky tasting notes. So you have all these adjectives, and whisky is already rife with stories about people, places and folklore or something a bit mysterious. When you add those together with the adjectives from whisky tasting notes, you’re sort of halfway there to a story.”
What started as a fiction writing exercise for Mr Mennie has turned festive, with the launch of the first chapbook, a small booklet of short stories. “I always liked the idea of putting something together for Christmas, and I had a couple of ideas that made sense for that. I was driven into doing it this year with the rise of AI generated content, social media or influencer content, I was bracing myself for a backlash (against that), so the idea of having something quite tactile and crafted for people to hold and share and keep for future Christmases was quite important as well.”
Books and words were part of Mr Mennie’s past Christmases which is another influence in The Night Afore, which includes three short stories that blend whisky flavour, seasonal folklore and the special quiet of Christmas Eve – that liminal moment when the distance between the ordinary and the magical feels at its thinnest.
The stories are: The Cracked Barrel whose blurb reads: “High above snowy Banffshire, the Scott family are descending on the old manse for Christmas, joined this year by a new recruit.” The second is Loquere Latin: “It’s Christmas Eve on a Glasgow street ‘so posh the postie speaks Latin’” and Spirit Yet to Come: “Loosely inspired by A Christmas Carol – and by a conversation with BenRiach’s brand ambassador Stewart Buchanan, showing a distillery as it never existed.”
Speaking of the influence of his past Christmases, Mr Mennie said: “When I was growing up we always had special Christmas books or books about Christmas, collections of poetry or short stories, which always came out at that time of year. It’s something you could dive into every year and become part of the Christmas tradition.”
The book could also be a way to introduce whisky to a new audience, as Mr Mennie explained: “Whisky brands in particular at the moment are looking for new audiences and new ways to bring people into whisky. I thought if there was any crossover between short fiction and that kind of cosy Christmas storytelling aesthetic, and if that drove people to explore whisky in a different way then it was something to look out for.”
Mr Mennie added: "Christmas Eve is full of anticipation – and has always had a special magic for me. Each story in The Night Afore sits in that liminal space, a time when some say the distance between the real world and a magical world is at its thinnest.
“Just the sort of thing you reach for when you want to read something atmospheric by the fire – dram in hand – before the whole world wakes up again on Christmas morning”
The Night Afore is printed in the UK on uncoated stock with a singer-sewn binding. It is 60 pages and A6 in size and is bound with red thread against a green background for a traditional Christmas look and feel. It’s this care and attention to detail that Mr Mennie hopes will make it something to hand down, and enjoy again and again at Christmas.
It will be available for pre-order from 28 November (shipping early December), priced at £15, exclusively via menniedrinks.com/shop.
It’s the first of what Mr Mennie hopes to be a series of short stories based on whisky tasting notes, produced as part of the Mennie Drinks slow-publishing platform dedicated to the culture of bars, whisky, and cocktails. Find out more of the latest whisky news, interviews, tastings and exclusive discounts via The Scotsman Whisky Club which you can sign up to at Scotsman.com.
HOW CORPORATE DEMOCRATS MADE TRUMP POSSIBLE: A 10-YEAR TIMELINE
Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing—and then overcoming—the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.
by Norman Solomon
Ten years after Donald Trump first ran for president, he stands at the helm of Titanic America. How did this happen?
No factors were more pivotal than the outlooks and actions of the Democratic Party leadership. Scrutinizing them now is vital not only for clarity about the past. It also makes possible a clear focus on ways to prevent further catastrophe.
Here’s the actual history that corporate Democrats pretend didn’t happen:
2016: Hillary Clinton offers more of the status quo. Her allies in the Democratic Party pull out all the stops so she can win the party’s presidential nomination. With a big assist from the Democratic National Committee, she prevails over the strong primary challenge from Bernie Sanders, but her campaign trail goes downhill from there. After rallying behind Sanders’s genuine progressive populism, many young people don’t trust the pseudo-populism of Clinton’s campaign. She has earned a millennial problem, and it prevents her from becoming president.
2017: Democratic Party leaders can hardly blame themselves or their nominee for the virtually unbelievable circumstance of the Trump presidency. A critical focus on Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street won’t do. Neither will critiquing her thinly veiled contempt for the progressive wing of the party. But blaming Trump’s victory on Russia becomes an obsessive theme.
2018: The Democratic leadership is mapping out a battle plan for the midterm elections in November. At the same time, a key priority is to thwart the inside threat posed by progressive forces. Establishment Democrats are keeping a watchful eye and political guns trained on Bernie Sanders.
2019: Democrats take control of the House, and a large cast of political characters is off and running for the party’s presidential nomination. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren are at the left edge, while more than a dozen others jostle for media attention. For elites determined to retain undemocratic power, seeing either Sanders or Warren in the Oval Office would be the worst possible outcome.
2020: Early in the year, the economic populism of the Sanders campaign continues to catch fire, while many forces team up to function as fire extinguishers. The Democratic Party establishment acts to smother the grassroots blaze. After Joe Biden’s fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary puts his campaign on life-support, rescue comes eighteen days later from South Carolina, where Biden wins a landslide primary victory—and then several corporate-friendly contenders quickly drop out of the race and effusively endorse him. When Biden clinches the nomination, progressives largely close ranks behind him to defeat Trump. Biden squeaks through.
2021: President Biden’s first year includes backing and signing legislation with real benefits for tens of millions of Americans. But his resolve dissipates. Before the end of the year, he abandons Build Back Better legislation that would have been transformational. Notably, Biden withdraws all US troops from Afghanistan in late summer—but overall he opts to fuel militarism, with ever-higher Pentagon spending instead of devoting adequate resources to meet human needs and protect nature. The president goes full speed ahead with “modernization” plans for ever more dangerous nuclear weapons that already have a pre-overrun price tag of $1.7 trillion.
2022: Biden relapses into his customary “moderate” political mode, while his capacity to speak coherently weakens. Party discipline, internalized by Democrats in Congress, precludes independent-minded leadership as they begin to proclaim that Biden should run for re-election. Conformity of groupthink and fear of retribution from the White House keep people quiet.
2023: A real-life Shakespearean tragedy unfolds as Biden throws down a gauntlet to run for re-election even while his mental frailty becomes more evident. Enablers ignore the party’s base, with polls continuing to show that most Democrats don’t want him to be the next nominee (including 94 percent of Democrats under 30). A common canard—pushed by Biden’s coterie of sycophants—contends that because he defeated Trump once, he’s the best person to do it again; the claim ignores the fact that Trump 2020 represented an unpopular status quo, and Biden 2024 would represent an even more unpopular status quo, as “right track / wrong track” polling makes crystal clear. Soon after Hamas attacks Israel on October 7 and the Israeli military starts its siege of Gaza, Biden begins to further alienate many of his party’s usual voters by massively boosting US military aid as the slaughter of Palestinian civilians escalates.
2024: Among top Democrats, denial about Biden’s evident cognitive infirmity grows along with the infirmity itself. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June, the political reflex of dissembling prevents him from bowing out for another 28 days. That leaves 107 days for the newly installed nominee Kamala Harris to pick up the pieces before Election Day. At first it seems that she might find ways to depart from coming across as Biden’s yes-woman, but there is no such departure. Nothing epitomizes the Harris campaign’s moral collapse more than her insistence on echoing the Biden line about Gaza while the US continues to arm Israel’s military as it methodically kills Palestinian civilians. In the process, Harris chooses to ignore both human decency and polls showing that far more voters would be likely to cast their ballots for her if she were to come out against sending more armaments to Israel. Electoral disaster ensues.
Last month, two events showed the huge contradiction between the potential for true progressive change and the dire reality of feckless Democratic Party leaders. When socialist Zohran Mamdani won election as mayor of New York after running as a Democrat, he said: “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one.” A week later, eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus surrendered to Trump, betraying efforts to defend Obamacare and a healthcare status quo that still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. The capitulation meant that the nation’s healthcare crisis would get even worse.
Craven and conformist Democratic Party leadership—coloring inside corporate lines while enmeshed with rich backers—hardly offers a plausible way to defeat the Trump forces, much less advance a humane political agenda. Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing and overcoming the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.
The timeline above is drawn from my new book about the 10-year political descent into the current inferno, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, which is free as an e-book or PDF at BlueRoad.info.
(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.)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DALTON TRUMBO
(Dec. 9, 1905 - Sept. 10, 1976).
Novelist. Screenwriter. Member of the Communist Party from 1943 to 1948. In the late 1940s, Dalton was one of the "Hollywood Ten" who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent 10 months in federal prison for contempt of Congress.
Author of the classic anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun" (1939). Wrote the screenplays for "Exodus," "Spartacus" and "Roman Holiday," among many other films.
Born in Montrose, Colorado. Died in Los Angeles, California. Willed his body to the UCLA Medical Center.
DOES TRUMP HATE SOMALIS, OR DOES HE FEAR THEM?
by David Bacon
It's clear that Trump hates Somalis. In his first administration he included Somalia as one of his "shithole" countries, and tried to prohibit its people from coming to the U.S. "They come from hell," he said just the other day. "We don't want them in our country."
Trump singled out courageous Congress Member Ilhan Omar (again) and called her "garbage." Omar, with great dignity, responded only to say she thought his attention "creepy," as indeed it is. But his hatred of Somalis is also revealing.
Trump is afraid, and he has reason to be. Since they started coming to the U.S. in the wake of the destabilization of their country in the 1990s, Somalis have become one of the most politically engaged immigrant communities in this country. In Minnesota it's not just Ilhan Omar. The state now has three members of its legislature who were born in Somalia.
Trump accuses them of "taking over" Minnesota, as though they'd somehow managed to produce votes by magic. But anyone can see that what Trump really has is a bad case of fear. Given the state's size (5.8 million) and the community's size (43,000), it's clear that far more votes come from non-Somalis than Somalis.
The other state where Somalis are getting elected is the whitest state in the country - Maine. Deqa Dhalac was elected to the South Portland City Council in 2018, and in 2021 the other councilors chose her as mayor. Now she's in the state legislature, along with two other Somalis. 1.4 million people live in Maine; only 6000 of them were either born in Somalia, or have Somali parents.
What scares Trump is that white people are voting for Somalis in large numbers, because they have good political skills. They speak about the basic class interests that motivate most working class people to the polls. Dhalac's program includes responding to climate change (Portland is on Maine's coast), affordable housing, and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
The experience of Somalis has not been a history of easy acceptance, though. In nearby Lewiston, another Maine city where many have settled, they organized a mosque when they decided to make the city home. But in 2006 someone threw a pig's head into it.
The mayor of Lewiston announced in 2002 that Somalis should stop coming. That made white supremacy an acceptable attitude, and 32 people demonstrated to support the mayor. Another 4000 counter-protested, however, and Dhalac announced to them, "I am a Muslim, Black immigrant woman, and I'm not going anywhere." Fifteen years later she was on the South Portland City Council.
In Rockland, fifty miles from Lewiston, the city council responded to Trump's anti-immigrant insults and threats by adopting, 4-1, an ordinance telling its police not to cooperate with ICE. Immigrant rights activists and immigrant communities are fighting for a similar bill, LD 1971, in the state legislature.
But Trump's "garbage" insult is frightening. During his first term, after he'd demonized and tried to ban immigrants from African and Middle Eastern countries, someone shot into the mosque. Many Somalis are in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status, which Trump ended for other nationalities. They worry they could be next. Still, the local imam Saleh Mahamud says, "This is my country. My children were born here. And we are not going anywhere else."…
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/12/photos-from-edge-24-does-trump-hate.html
“I AM NOT one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.”
— William S. Burroughs
LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT
Australia’s Social Media Ban for Children Takes Effect
Trump Says Americans Are Doing Great, Even as Views on the Economy Sour
Trump Calls Europe ‘Decaying’ and Suggests ‘Size Will Win’ in Ukraine War
Judge Grants Request to Unseal Grand Jury Records in Maxwell Case
Cold Case Inquiries Stall After Ancestry.com Revisits Policy for Users
These Travel Influencers Don’t Want Freebies. They’re A.I.
“I WOKE UP as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
NEW YORK TIMES WANTS THE US MILITARY BUILT UP FOR WAR WITH CHINA
by Caitlin Johnstone
Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.
The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.
The article opens with graphics I saw one commenter describe as “Mussolini-core” because of their conspicuously fascistic aesthetic, accompanied by three lines of text in all-caps which reads as follows:
“AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS DEFENDED THE FREE WORLD FOR 80 YEARS.
OUR DOMINANCE IS FADING.
RIVALS KNOW THIS AND ARE BUILDING TO DEFEAT US.”The narrative that the US war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. Washington has abused, tyrannized and starved the world at levels unrivaled by any other power during that period while spearheading the theft of hundreds of trillions of dollars from the global south via imperialist extraction. The US empire has not been defending any “free world”, it has been actively obstructing its emergence.
The actual text of the article opens with another whopper, with the first sentence reading, “President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.”
This is straight-up state propaganda. The New York Times editorial board is here uncritically parroting a completely unsubstantiated claim the US intelligence cartel has been making for years, which Xi Jinping explicitly denies. While it is Beijing’s official position that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with the mainland, not one shred of evidence has ever been presented to the public for the 2027 timeline. It’s a US government assertion being reported as verified fact by the nation’s “paper of record”.
And it doesn’t get any better from there. The Times cites a Pentagon assessment that the US would lose a hot war with China over Taiwan as evidence of “a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power,” arguing that this is a major problem because “a strong America has been crucial to a world in which freedom and prosperity are far more common than at nearly any other point in human history.”
“This is the first of a series of editorials examining what’s gone wrong with the U.S. military — technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically and strategically — and how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary,” The New York Times tells us.
The Times argues that the US needs to reshape its military to defeat China in a war, or to win a war with Russia if they attack a NATO member, saying “Evidence suggests that Moscow may already be testing ways to do this, including by cutting the undersea cables on which NATO forces depend.”
The “evidence” the Times cites for this claim is a hyperlink to a January article titled “Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable,” completely ignoring the fact that Norway released that ship shortly thereafter when it was unable to find any evidence linking it to the event, and completely ignoring reports that US and European intelligence had concluded that the undersea cable damage was the result of an accident rather than sabotage.
And then, of course, comes the call for more military funding.
“In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base. As a share of the economy, defense spending today — about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. — remains near its lowest level in more than 80 years, even after Mr. Trump’s recent increases,” the Times writes, adding that US allies should also be pressured to ramp up spending on the war machine.
“A more secure world will almost certainly require more military commitment from allies like Canada, Japan and Europe, which have long relied on American taxpayers to bankroll their protection,” the authors write, saying “China’s industrial capacity can only be met by pooling the resources of allies and partners around the world to balance and contain Beijing’s increasing influence.”
Of course the idea that perhaps the United States should avoid fighting a hot war with China right off the coast of its own mainland never enters the discussion. The suggestion that it’s insane to support waging full-scale wars with nuclear-armed great powers to secure US planetary domination never comes up. It’s just taken as a given that pouring wealth and resources into preparations for a nuclear-age world war is the only normal option on the table.
But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.
(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)
DETRIMENTAL OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
by Tom Stevenson
In December 1823, President James Monroe used his annual message to Congress to outline what would later become known as the Monroe Doctrine. “The American continents,” he said, were no longer to be subject to the “interposition” of European powers. Attempts by Europeans to “extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere” would be looked on unkindly by the United States.
For most of the 19th century the US lacked the capacity to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Instead the task fell to Britain and the Royal Navy, which had a complementary interest in keeping out Spain and Portugal. That changed in December 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt — insulted by a Pan-European blockade of Venezuela in 1902-3 — asserted a US right to “international police power” in the Americas. For more than a century the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine has underwritten US-sponsored coups d’état, invasions and stratagems in Latin America.
Last week, the US published its new National Security Strategy. (One is produced each presidential term; this is Trump’s second.) “After years of neglect,” the document says, “the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine.” It added a “Trump Corollary”: the US will “deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our hemisphere.”
The text is short and the language blunt. Like past declarative strategic documents, some of it is a collection of du jour foreign policy positions; American national security clerks refer to this as the Christmas ornament problem. But it is brasher in its ornamentation than its predecessors, including the 2017 strategy from Trump’s first term. The formal revival of the Monroe Doctrine is a flourish.
American leaders have for many years used the drug trade as a convenient justification for the exercise of US power in Latin America. The 2025 National Security Strategy goes further. To ensure hemispheric pre-eminence, it says, the US must “enlist” existing allies and, perhaps more ominously, “expand.” The National Security Council is to “identify strategic points and resources in the Western hemisphere with a view to their protection.” There is glaring irony in the idea that the US will protect Latin America from “detrimental outside influence.”
The idea for a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine can be traced to James Holmes, the chair of maritime strategy at the US Naval War College, who used the term in January in the National Interest. Holmes discussed how Latin American governments might seek close relationships with Beijing: “covenants guaranteeing mercantile access could morph into something altogether more sinister.”
Holmes called for a Trump Corollary to head off Chinese influence in the Americas. That is presumably what the new NSS means when it calls for preventing “threatening capabilities” from being installed in the Western hemisphere. Holmes had no direct input to the document and told me he was “a little shocked” that the US government had formally resuscitated the Monroe Doctrine. His vision, he said, was for a strategy based on “consent from fellow American governments.”
Projecting power in Latin America is an established preoccupation of Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio. And it has been on Trump’s mind since his first term, when he talked about the Monroe Doctrine at the UN General Assembly. In December 2024, Trump began agitating about the Panama Canal, and floated the idea of annexing Greenland and Canada. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. In January, the US announced a “naval policing mission” in the Caribbean, codenamed Operation Southern Spear.
In November, the Pentagon recalled a full carrier strike group from the Mediterranean and sent it to the waters off Venezuela. US military forces have conducted airstrikes in the Caribbean on more than twenty boats of unknown character (officials claim they were all the vehicles of drug runners). “The Western hemisphere is America’s neighborhood,” said the soi-disant secretary of war, Peter Hegseth.
Away from Latin America, the language about China is softer than the Biden administration used in 2022. Trump’s text even speaks of “a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.” But it also calls for the US to marshal its allies on the Indo-Pacific “battleground” and demand military commitments from Japan and South Korea. US military forces are to still to be used for “denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”
The new national security strategy follows its predecessors in paying lip service to the declining importance of the Middle East while also listing reasons for its enduring strategic significance. The US, it asserts, “will always have core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable.”
Where Europe is concerned, much of the strategy is consistent with past rhetoric from Trump and Vance. They are tired of using the war in Ukraine to bleed Russia – a policy they associate with the Democrats – and instead demand an “expeditious cessation of hostilities.” European states are prevailed on to build up their military forces (while remaining subservient to the US). To this is added a crude list of complaints about climate policy and “civilizational erasure.” Western Europe is said to be at risk from migration, lack of regard for traditional families and a loss of “civilizational self-confidence.” Parts of the text read like an ethnonationalist phrasebook.
Its authors are keen to present their work as a break with precedent. Past US governments are criticized for seeking “permanent American domination of the entire world” and making “misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade”.” Under Trump’s rectification campaign, foreign policy is to be pragmatic, realistic, principled, muscular and restrained. No more shouldering of “global burdens,” whatever those were, or “propping up the entire world order like Atlas.”
Peter Feaver, who served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told me that the new strategy has the virtue of being a faithful reflection of Trump’s beliefs – more so than the version published in his first term. For better or worse, Feaver said, “it seems to capture how the Trump administration genuinely thinks the world operates.”
But is Donald Trump Thought that much of an innovation? Elsewhere the strategy insists the US must maintain military superiority and energy dominance, and ensure that no potential challengers can “hold America at risk.” It even calls for “unrivalled “soft power”.”
In its open aggression and territoriality, Trump’s second National Security Strategy is less duplicitous about US actions around the world than past official documents. But there is plenty of dissembling. Trump’s government, which has bombed Iran, conducted drone assassinations in northern Syria, bombed Yemen and waged a global trade war is said to have a “predisposition to non-interventionism.”
For Latin America, the official revival of the Monroe Doctrine is an immediate concern. As the NSS was being published, the US government was engaged in an attempt to topple the government of Venezuela. In October, it used its special drawing rights at the IMF to prop up Javier Milei’s government in Argentina. Last week, the US intervened in presidential elections in Honduras by proffering the release of a past Honduran president from jail in West Virginia.
The Trump Corollary is said to be a “potent restoration of American power.” On the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine this year, the White House issued a proclamation celebrating trade deals with El Salvador, Argentina, Ecuador and Guatemala, and the restoration of “privileged access through the Panama Canal.” The US, it said, would always decide destiny in “our hemisphere.”
(London Review of Books)
D.C. READE
I agree. The criminality of the black market has been with us forever and is driven purely by economic profit. The criminality of terrorism is driven purely by faith, and has been with us forever as well. On a side note, faith is more powerful than money, and it isn’t close.
Yo, good morning, ☃️🎄
Wow, that online comment about homeless people is something again just because someone believes something does not make it true.
It’s interesting how people talk about “the homeless” like they’re a single personality type as if everyone on the street is the same.
And then they use that story to justify treating human beings like feral cats.
Calling people “feral” is stigma.
Saying they “don’t want help” is stigma.
Pretending everyone is happy in a tent is stigma.
Acting like people “choose” the street because they like it is stigma.
And believing that those who want help simply “find it and fix their lives” is not experience it’s fantasy.
People don’t refuse help.
If I offered you an enema to help you get over pneumonia would you accept it or decline?
Of course you would decline enema isn’t gonna do anything for pneumonia.
Services and programs are not easily accessible. Especially for those with addiction and serious mental illness..
Here we have a shelter that is too small to assist the amount of homeless people here in Mendocino county.
People cycling through mental illness can’t navigate an obstacle course of requirements that even stable adults struggle with.
And here’s the truth no one saying “they just don’t want help” ever admits:
People ask for help all the time — they just aren’t met with anything meaningful.
It’s easier to say “they like tents” than to ask why our systems offer nothing better.
It’s easier to blame individuals than to acknowledge the barriers, the trauma, the illness, and the lack of actual support.
It’s easier to label people as “feral” than to admit they’ve been failed over and over again.
Stigma keeps the blame on the people who are suffering, instead of the structures that keep them there.
I hate the word stigma with a passion, but nothing will change if we continue to blame and shame people for these conditions
mm💕