Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Nov 19, 2014

• Marshall Arrested
• Catch of the Day
• Kestral Trollsplinter
• Ross Arraigned
• Pump Away
• MendoVito Meeting
• Inadequate Plea
• Selling Rhyme
• War Costs
• Hanging Maxine
• Zen Nez
• Fresh Start
• Creative Writing
• Harvest Ball

SEX OFFENDER CHARGED IN CHESSER MURDER

On Saturday, November 1, 2014 at 5:36 AM Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a residence in the 26000 block of Poppy Drive in Willits, California in regards to a suspicious situation. Upon arrival Deputies contacted the homeowner who had been socializing with a group of friends, including Kayla Grace Chesser, 22, of Willits, during the evening of 10-31-2014 as part of Halloween festivities in Willits. During the evening Chesser was dropped off at the homeowner's residence while the group continued to socialize elsewhere.

Several hours later the group returned and found the homeowner's cousin, Terrell James Marshall, 44, of Vacaville, at the residence. Sometime thereafter Chesser was found inside one of the bedrooms and was determined to be absent any signs of life. Marshall left the residence in a pickup truck and medical assistance was summoned for Chesser who was later pronounced deceased at the Howard Memorial Hospital in Willits, California. Sheriff's Detectives were summoned to the residence and continued investigations into the incident. During initial investigations Sheriff's Detectives learned Marshall was a registered sex offender from Vacaville, California.

On 11-01-2014 at approximately 1:00 PM Sheriff's Detectives learned Marshall had driven his pickup truck off a cliff near Mile Post Marker 12 on Highway 162 in Mendocino County. Marshall sustained significant injuries and was transported to an out of county hospital for medical treatment. A forensic autopsy was conducted during the investigation and preliminary findings showed Chesser died as the result of strangulation and signs of sexual assault were also noted on her body.

On 11-06-2014 Sheriff's Detectives submitted their investigative reports to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office for review of potential criminal charges.

On 11-17-2014 a felony arrest warrant was issued for Marshall with charges of murder, rape and sodomy.

On 11-18-2014 at approximately 2:00 PM Marshall was arrested on the felony arrest warrant by Sheriff's Detectives after he was discharged from the out of county hospital. Marshall is set to be booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he will be held on a No Bail status. At this time all media inquires are being directed to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office due to Marshall's custody status.

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 18, 2014

AURELIO ACOSTA, Talmage. Possession of controlled substance for sale, receiving stolen property, resisting arrest, probation revocation.

MATTHEW BREWER, Lakewood, Ohio/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

GABRIEL CAMPOS, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

MICHELL COTTON, Ukiah/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

TATIANA HALL, Ukiah/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

JEAN-ESTELLE LOEGERING, Santa Cruz/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

TERRELL MARSHALL JR., Vacaville/Santa Rosa. Murder.

LATASHA MARTIN, Myers Flat/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

GALE MCQUILLER, Garberville. DUI Drugs & alcohol.

KARL PETERSON, Quilcene, Washington/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

KESTRAL BLASPHEMY TROLLSPLINTER, Seattle/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

KELSEY WOLCOTT, Seattle/Laytonville. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale.

THAT BIG MARIJUANA BUST near Laytonville the other day corralled a group of young people who look like they just stepped off a college campus, one of them with the intriguing name Kestral Blasphemy Trollsplinter.

LACEE ROSS, the suspect in the Willits arson case, was arraigned Tuesday in Mendocino County Superior Court. Ross entered not guilty pleas to attempted murder and aggravated assault.

Public Defender Linda Thompson was appointed Ross' legal counsel. Bail is set at $125,000. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Dec. 3 in Superior Court before Judge John Behnke.

(DA Press Release)

DIVERSION ORDER ON RUSSIAN RIVER LIFTED

State gives Grape Growers go-ahead to pump all they want

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3124283-181/diversion-order-lifted-on-the?page=0

MEETING REMINDER

Thursday Evening 7 Pm At Shipley Hall, Hopland Research Station

Water Usage: MendoVito proposes to build 3,000 to 4,000 houses in McDowell Valley, off State Route 175. The limiting factor for this development is likely water. According to information supplied by Mendo Vito and the State of California, Mendo Vito is looking to the reservoir on the Crawford Ranch, which is owned by McDowell Vineyards to supply it with water. The reservoir has a capacity of 340 acre feet. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an acre foot of water supplies enough water for a family of four for one year.  Using the Bureau's figures, 340 houses appear to be a more realistic number for this development. Please come to the meeting on Thursday evening at Shipley Hall to participate in the discussion.

WILLITS PHOTOGRAPHER'S CASE DISMISSED

News Photographer Has Arrest Claims Tossed

by Arvin Temkar

A federal judge has dismissed claims against the California Department of Transportation and two officials filed by a news photographer who was arrested while covering a controversial highway project.
 U.S. District Judge James Donato dismissed three of the 12 counts in Stephen Eberhard's April 2014 lawsuit because they "are inadequately pleaded," according to a Nov. 6 order.
 Eberhard was arrested on July 23, 2013, after a protest on the Willits Bypass Project, a four-lane freeway project near Willits, Calif.
 In a 34-page complaint, Eberhard accused Caltrans, the California Highway Patrol and several individuals of "a pattern of harassment and intimidation" toward journalists.
 Eberhard said that protestors who had illegally chained themselves to construction equipment were cited and released, but that he was put in a patrol car and held in a cell at the Mendocino County Jail for two hours.
 Defendants Caltrans, CHP Chief Bridget Lott and Caltrans District 1 Director Charlie Fielder moved to dismiss Eberhard's claims that Lott and Fielder violated the plaintiff's First Amendment Rights; that Caltrans engaged in false arrest and false imprisonment; and that there should be declaratory relief against all defendants.
 Judge Donato ruled that, with regards to the First Amendment, Eberhard did not show that Lott and Fielder acted with retaliatory motive and that their actions had a chilling effect.
 The judge also dismissed the false arrest and imprisonment count because Eberhard's complaint did not specifically allege that Caltrans was responsible for violating his personal liberty. The allegations only mention the conduct of CHP officers.
 Donato dismissed the declaratory relief claims against Caltrans, Lott and Field because "the Court has already concluded that the underlying claims must be dismissed."
 "The dismissal is without prejudice, so Eberhard is free to replead these counts," the order says. Eberhard has until Nov. 26 to file an amended complaint.

(Courtesy, Courthousenews.com)

I HAD JUST WON $115 from the headshakers and 
was naked upon my bed 
listening to an opera by one of the Italians 
and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady 
when there was a knock upon the wood, 
and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago, 
I screamed out rather on edge — 
who the hell is it? what you want, man?

I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back, 
and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher, 
try the place next door,

and he screamed back, 
you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and 
peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop, 
and I placed a robe upon my nakedness, 
kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter, 
an editor and a poet.

only one would drink a beer (the editor) 
so I drank two for the poet and one for myself 
and they sat there sweating and watching me 
and I sat there trying to explain 
that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,

I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse 
and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,

and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio 
and tossed them in between the beercans 
and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon, 
and what some of the modern poets looked like:

J.B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean fingernails, etc.; 
I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the floor 
and pretty soon everybody was yawning

and the editor suddenly stood up and I said, 
are you leaving?

and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,

and then I thought well hell they might not have liked 
what they saw 
but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and 
torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,

I’m selling rhyme and life and line,

and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer 
and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover 
and wondered what it meant,

wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in 
one big tent 
clasping assholes.

--Charles Bukowski

MAXINE BERNICE HARPE

Died: March 28, 1970

Hung by the neck

Maxine Harpe grew up in the small Northern California town of Willits where she married her high school sweetheart, had three children and settled down to a quiet life in Talmadge, that is until 1969, when Jim Jones targeted her for assassination. In a little more than a year, Jones and his aides would destroy Maxine's marriage, family, career, and love affair. They would steal her children and her life savings and drive her to the brink of suicide.

Temple strongarm man and Mendocino County Welfare worker, Jim Randolph, initiated a love affair with Maxine intended to break up her marriage and bring her into the congregation. Every relationship pursued by Jim Randolph, or any other Temple member, required the prior approval of the Temple's Relationship Committee and Jim Jones, who not only issued binding judgments on proposed relationships, but also proposed many himself. Maxine quickly fell in love with Randolph; attesting to Jones' ability to pair villain with victim. Spurred by Randolph's encouragement, Maxine left her husband and moved into a Temple communal house with her three children and Temple member Mary Candoo. During this difficult transition period, Maxine was counseled and encouraged by her welfare caseworker, Linda Sharon Amos, a high ranking Temple aide who claimed to have once been a member of Charles Manson 's gang. Amos helped Maxine secure a job as a dental assistant at the Mendocino State Mental Hospital in Talmadge.

Linda Amos and Jim Randolph were only two of the estimated fifty Temple members who had infiltrated government agencies in Mendocino County, but their function in the Welfare Department was one of particular importance to Jim Jones. Together with their colleagues, Amos and Randolph were able to license several Temple operated foster care homes and protect several additional homes that were unlicensed and illegal.

Jones convinced his congregation that their children would have a richer life experience living apart from their parents. Families were disbanded and a the children, who were now eligible for welfare assistance, were placed in Temple foster homes. The children's welfare support checks were signed over to the Temple and provided a substantial portion of Jones' government subsidy. The Temple welfare activities were not restricted to simple fraud; many Black children were taken from the ghettos of San Francisco and Oakland using tactics that bordered on kidnapping.

The illegal use of the Mendocino County Welfare Department appeared to escape the attention of the Department director Dennis Denny. Though it was impossible to ignore the Temple foster care homes and to ignore the the Temple welfare case workers, Denny never seemed to make the connection. Carrie Minkler was one of the few case workers in the Welfare Department who was not a member of the Peoples Temple. Ms. Minkler, now retired, recalls working with Amos, Randolph and other Temple members:

"You didn't open your mouth. You didn't mention the Peoples Temple in our department. Even the walls had ears. There wasn't anything that went on in our office that Jim Jones didn't know the next day...Peoples Temple workers went through other workers' case files. The CIA could have used them. The atmosphere was really tense."

It didn't take long to surround Maxine. She had a Temple lover, a Temple house with a Temple roommate, a Temple social worker, a Temple job with Temple co-workers, even the attorney representing her in the divorce case was Temple attorney Tim Stoen. The Temple was also Maxine's religion and recreation. By March of 1970, every aspect of her life depended upon the Peoples Temple as Jim Jones pulled the plug on her life support system.

Three weeks before her death, Maxine received a check for $2,493.81; her share of the divorce settlement. She signed the check over to Randolph, whe deposited $2,000.00 in his personal checking account and $493.81 in his savings account, as per Jones' instructions. Once her life savings were safely in Temple hands, everything bad happened to Maxine at once.

Jones ordered Randolph to end his relationship with Maxine and she was heartbroken. She was fired from her job. She had no means of support; Randolph had all her money and wouldn't give it back. She went to Linda Amos for financial assistance from the Welfare Department, but Amos not only denied her request but, in addition, judged her a "mental depressant" and threatened to place her children in a Temple foster care home as she was unfit to be a parent. Her roommate, Mary Candoo, would certainly parrot Amos' accusations.

Maxine realized she was under siege by a well organized attacker and sought help from her attorney, Tim Stoen, but, of course, her protest fell on deaf ears. She then turned to the one man who seemed to be at the center of her problem. She confronted Jones the day before her death. Jones was furious and thoroughly humiliated Maxine in front of Randolph and other Temple members who remember him saying, "Why don't you just kill yourself? Get it over with!.... At least Judas had the guts to kill himself. Others recall Jones predicting, "That bitch (Maxine) is going to die," just one day before she did.

Everywhere she turned, Maxine felt an ever increasing hostility. After the March 27th confrontation with Jones, she was so afraid the Temple would take a more physical approach to their harassment that she made a special request to bring home a houseful of Temple children, whose presence, she hoped, would discourage a physical assault. She was wrong.

On March 28th at 1:30 AM, one of the children spending the night at Maxine's house wandered into the garage to find Maxine dead; hung by an electrical extension cord from the roof rafters. A hastily scribbled suicide note on a torn grocery bag instructed the children to phone the Temple in Redwood Valley and wait in the house until they arrived.

Jim Jones, Jim Randolph, Patty Cartmell and Jack Beam arrived at Maxine's house sometime before dawn. Jones waited outside in the car while the others put on surgical gloves and entered the house to remove any evidence of Maxine's involvement with the People's Temple. They untied the body, lowered it to the garage floor and disrobed it to remove a red prayer cloth that belted the waist. Temple members often wore these blessed prayer cloths in concealed places on their person.

The body was then redressed and rehung, carefully re-staging the scene for the police investigator. The aides then ransacked the house to locate and remove anything that might associate Maxine with the Temple. They completed their work at approximately 8:30 AM, instructed the children to phone the police, and left.

Jones was safe in his Redwood Valley parsonage at 8:57 AM when Deputy Sheriff-Coroner, Bruce Cochran, arrived at the death scene in Talmadge. Twenty minutes later, Randolph, Cartmell and Beam returned to the house and informed Deputy Cochran that the children had phoned them but that they really didn't know why as they had never met the dead woman. Cartmell convinced Deputy Cochran that she should remove the children from such a gruesome scene, and consequently, he never got the opportunity to question the only eyewitnesses. One of the children, nine year old Tommy Ijames, would later recall the event:

"The children called the church before they called the police, and they came very early in the morning. They came in there and took all the pictures of Jim Jones out. .. (prayer) cloths they took from her, pulled her down off the (rafter) and took them off her waist, anything that had to do with the church... Jim (Jones), he stayed in the car and didn't come out... They pulled her down and they took the clothes off her... They were taking all the... little pamphlets of Jim Jones, and then (after the coroner arrived) they acted like they didn't know her...."

The Temple death squad had left Maxine's house twenty minutes before the coroner arrived and returned just twenty minutes after he arrived. They allowed him enough time to assume that he was the first adult on the scene, but not enough time to question the children, who were quickly transported away. Such impeccable timing was typical of Temple operations. Like the other agencies in Mendocino County, Jones had spies in the Sheriff's office who informed him of their every move.

Deputy Cochran's subsequent investigation proceeded exactly as Jones had planned. It was Cochran's job to be suspicious and he was. There was the unusual placement of a trunk under Maxine's feet and the unexplained presence of children and adults, all of whom were members of the Peoples Temple. But eventually his investigation was to center on Maxine's financial transactions just prior to her death. Cochran contacted Jim Randolph's boss, Welfare Director, Dennis Denny, questioning the legality of a welfare worker depositing a welfare recipient' check in his personal account; especially when that same welfare worker was present at the scene of the recipient's apparent suicide just three weeks later.

Denny defended Randolph's actions and assured Cochran that there was no reason to suspect foul play or improper conduct, but Cochran was not satisfied. He pressured Randolph for a deposition regarding his role in Maxine's finances and reluctantly he complied. In a sworn statement, Randolph told the police that a few weeks after receiving the money, he transferred $2,000.00 from his savings account to Temple treasurer, Eva Pugh, to set up a trust fund for Maxine's children. He held the remaining $493.81 until three days after Maxine's death when he added that to the fund as well.

If Randolph's statement is to be believed it would seem that he helped establish a fund for Maxine's children before her death. Randolph completed the deposition but refused to sign it until Assistant District Attorney and Peoples Temple attorney Tim Stoen had the opportunity to review the statement. Randolph stalled, Stoen stalled, and the statement was never signed.

It was Tim Stoen who finally convinced Cochran to drop the investigation when he informed him that he (Stoen) was co-trustee of the children's fund, along with, of all people, Cochran's boss, Sheriff Reno Bartolmei. Also, to disguise their true involvement, the Peoples Temple had contributed an additional $470.00 to the fund, that together with the initial money and the accumulated bank interest, totaled $3,000.00 for the three children. Linda Amos, Maxine's welfare case worker, buttressed Stoen's statements with her volunteered testimony as to Maxine's depressed state of mind just prior to what certainly must have been her suicide. Cochran's investigation quickly lost momentum. Maxine's death was declared a suicide. The case was closed and, despite future pleas from ex-Temple members and the press, it was never reopened.

Richard Taylor, a local Baptist minister who knew Maxine Harpe, was not satisfied with the superficial investigation into what he believed as murder. Aware that the Temple controlled most of Mendocino County, Taylor presented his arguments in a long letter he sent to the state attorney general's office in which he asked the state to investigate Jim Jones' role in Maxine Harpe's death. Taylor was invited to present his evidence to a deputy in the attorney general's office but when he appeared to testify in Sacramento, his notes on Jones were confiscated and he was told that there would be no investigation due to "insufficient evidence."

Immediately upon his return to Ukiah, Taylor and his wife were deluged with threatening phone calls that they believed "originated from the People's Temple." Intimidated and frightened, the minister dropped all attempts to prove that Jim Jones had ordered Maxine Harpe's death.

Randolph may have avoided signing a statement for the police but he did not avoid signing a blank statement for Jim Jones. It wasn't long before he realized his mistake when Jones presented him with a copy of his previously signed blank statement which was now a typed confession to the murder of Maxine Harpe. Only then did he understand why Jones had instructed him to deposit Maxine's money in his personal bank account and why he insisted Randolph be present at the scene of the crime.

The police already suspected him, and their suspicion, along with the signed confession, would certainly convict him of murder; especially since the foreman of the Mendocino Grand Jury, who would bring down the indictment, was none other than Jim Jones. Randolph was promoted to the Angels and his only way out was a lifetime sentence in prison. To further implicate him in Maxine's death, Jones called him in front of a closed meeting of the Temple's Planning Commission and, with a dozen witnesses present, he accused Randolph of killing Maxine. He shouted, "You know you did it (killed Maxine)!" But for all of Jones's badgering, Randolph said nothing in his own defense.

Rumors of the Temple's involvement in the death of Maxine Harpe continued to circulate in the press. Two and a half years later, Lester Kinsolving penned a series of articles in the San Francisco Examiner, in which he accused Temple attorney Tim Stoen of wrongdoing in his counseling of Maxine just prior to her alleged suicide. Stoen refuted the charges in a statement that appeared in the Ukiah Daily Journal, dated September 21, 1972, in which he said:

"The woman referred to (who was not, incidentally, a member of my church) was somebody I did not know, had never talked with, and certainly had never counseled."

Stoen could not have forgotten that he represented Maxine in her divorce or that he was a custodian of the fund for her children or was instrumental in suppressing the coroner's investigation into her death. He must have felt extremely threatened to publicly report such a blatant, bold-faced lie.

Jones profited from Maxine's death in several ways. He gained a new Angel; a competent, intelligent slave, Jim Randolph. He received the $3,000.00 trust fund and the three children who, following their mother's funeral, were placed in Temple foster homes and enrolled in the welfare system. Their welfare support checks were signed over to the Temple that profited at least $10,000.00 from overcharging the welfare system and under-caring for the children.

In 1977, a special prosecution unit of the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, looking into allegations of illegal activities in the Peoples Temple, cited what their subsequent report termed "Welfare Diversion," but rather than pursue the investigation, the DA's office referred the matter to the city's Department of Social Services and the City Comptroller's Office with the recommendation that any evidence that surfaced should be submitted to the DA's welfare fraud expert, Don Didler. Didler, following the lead of Mendocino County's Welfare Director, Dennis Denny, did absolutely nothing. Together, Didler and Denny were very effective in protecting the Temple's federal welfare subsidy.

In retrospect, Maxine Harpe's story was a study in microcosm of the events that would occur some eight years later in Jonestown, Guyana.

In both cases, the victims were systematically stripped of all self-esteem and lured into a total dependence on Jim Jones, who, at the proper time, denied them everything. Suicide appeared to be the best, if not the only, alternative. It will never be known whether Maxine's death was a suicide or a murder. She may or may not have actually wrapped the wire around her neck, just as the residents of Jonestown may or may not have voluntarily taken poison; regardless, there is no doubt that Jim Jones killed them all.

ZEN SPELLED BACKWARDS

Nez Spelled Backwards

Street car broke down, ensuing

visit to West Portal Library

branch reveals there's only this:

nothing to do, and nowhere to go.

Everywhere is here. We're free.

— Craig Louis Stehr

RICK GOES DEEP

Uno vez mas

Responding to the growing number and urgency of calls, both here and globally, to take action to end the manifest lawlessness in 'our' highest offices, and to avoid the mortal consequences of that ubiquitous official criminality; Taking quite seriously the American revolutionary principles of 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' on distinctly Human and international terms; Remaining committed to our constant oaths of allegiance to '...Liberty and Justice for all;' Taking as our nearest, most available, and famously Lawful models, the American Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, imperfect yet flexible to our wishes as they are in theory, we act here of, by, and for ourselves and moving forward to assert the following, to put those dear principles and those Lawful models back into practice. We, the People of the United States and elsewhere declare the following:

American Revolutionary Reset Energy Supplement Taskforce ('ARREST') Declaration

The mere presence in our midst of Nuclear Weapons is terroristic threatening, and is therefore manifestly unlawful; The advocacy, manufacture, promotion, transportation, and deployment of these weapons is sponsoring and perpetrating terrorism, and is therefore manifestly unlawful; The making of war (while being greatly profitable to a tiny few) makes nothing whatever but death, destruction, economic devastation, and more war, as highly organized crime, looting, and yes, terrorism on regional and global scales, and is therefore manifestly unlawful;

The making of war without any formal Declaration of War by a majority of Congress as required by Law (specifying upon whom the war is made and why, and the objectives of the conflict for resolution to regain our Rights to Peace), constitutes war crimes in both common parlance and by legal definition, and is therefore manifestly unlawful;

The perpetration of 'extra-judicial killings' by anyone, anywhere (by individual citizen or sworn 'public servant') is by definition, in fact, drive-by murder, and is therefore manifestly unlawful; The entire record of Congressional votes, of Executive 'policies,' and of Court decisions enabling these crimes is contrary to the letter and intent of our Founding Documents, to the barest requirements of Human decency and of our very survival, and is therefore manifestly unlawful; The recent Congressional habit of voting to allow the Executive to '...do whatever is necessary...' in policy, spuriously permitting Presidents to make illegal wars while giving those Aye-voters equally spurious immunity from the consequences of those war crimes, in fact makes them complicit, NOT plausibly deniable of responsibility, and is therefore manifestly unlawful; Welcoming the paper artifact, the Corpiration (with not so much as a pulse or any other Vital Sign to call its own), into our Human community as a 'person,' and as a 'citizen,' then allowing this insensate newcomer a place at our political table...continuing granting it full rights and freedom of operation in our midst, in our economies, in our governments, even after it's overpowered us, disenfranchised us by the sheer weight it throws about, buying, rigging and stealing our very elections...and further, after it's assumed its traditional, false camouflage as 'American interests,' wreaking Hell across the world in our name, under our flag, and on our dime, and with lots of our Blood and that of millions of others, giving us a Bad Name most everywhere behind our backs,... is clearly insensible behavior, both beyond and beneath our Human reach.

This massive travesty could not have been accomplished in the permanent Corpiration's 150 years of existence without the eager and highly rewarded compliance of 'our' own public servants at many levels, particularly the uppermost, in stark violation of all our Laws, and of all our guidelines of morality, sensibility, and in ferocious opposition to our very survival as a functional Biosphere, and is therefore manifestly and massively unlawful; The dividing and conquering of Humans and our Biosphere for cash and prizes by the Corpiration, designating which Human group is to kill and which other Human group is to be killed (or disenfranchised, economically crippled, arrested, renditioned, tortured, etc., etc.), is manifestly unlawful; War being the tool of Profit and Diversion, wielded for unlawful gain and unlawful dominion by the Corpiration and its beneficiaries and others of the sort, it is manifestly unlawful;

These crimes and predations, perpetrated largely by the Corpiration and its minions, are too numerous, in too many places to fully catalog here...so much so, the far shorter list would be the times and places where this has NOT been inflicted on us, we Humans and our World. This is unacceptable. We reject the Dominion of the Corpiration. We reject the use of violence in our lives, from the individual scale to the global; Who wants it, who needs it, who benefits from it? Not us, not us, NOT US.

We reject all divisions among us, we the People of Planet Earth and our Life Supporting Biosphere. No longer will we be separated by Race, by Culture, by Sex, by Ethnicity, by Age, by Religion, by Nationality, by Political preference, by Social or Economic strata, by eye color or choice of radio station, or by any other useless and disconcerting partition, for the duration of our common Human struggles in these multiple crises, and then some. If you have a pulse and a personal temperature of near 98 degrees F., you are one of us. No member of the currently Dominant and Artificial Species, Corpiration need apply (nor their officers, staff, major stockholders, lawyers, lobbyists, agents, proxies, operatives, advocates, 'official' champions, or other goons).

The above-listed, clearly manifest wrongdoings of 'our' supposed public servants renders their offices, now and in the near past, derelict and vacant and devoid of Lawful Authority, by their own various outlaw performances. This unprecedented circumstance leaves us -- our People and our World -- bereft of the Lawful mechanisms of government, at the same time that we are saddled with mounting numbers and increasing seriousness of crises, notably the accelerating lawlessness of those very offices of government. In the self-evident absence of said functional, Lawful mechanisms of government, at the uppermost levels and others, and in view of these Vacancies being precipitated by the present and historic wrongdoings of those same offices, we hereby retain and exercise the following Rights, in accordance with and under the Lawful Authority of Amendment IX, United States Constitution: Amendment IX "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain Rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People." We retain and exercise the following Rights, to compose among ourselves, and to issue, a Public Writ of Mandamus ('We Command...') to:

1. Issue a Public Notice to All Officers of the Court (Law enforcement; Members of the various Bars; Occupants of the Bench), locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, including the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, and like judicial organs, that we invoke the U.S. Constitution and other pertinent Laws, written and unwritten, in taking these actions, requiring their full and willing witness, participation and cooperation in this Lawful Action, with full emphasis on Due Process, for a radical change; stressing that these actions have been precipitated by the very unlawful performances of the Offices specified, themselves, in their both falling short of, and far exceeding the bounds of their Powers as Constitutionaly defined; this to simply reclaim the Lawful Sovereignty of People - as specifically distinct from the Corpiration and all other synthetic 'beings' of the sort 2. Select from our Human population, and convene, a Public Grand Jury with full subpoena powers 3. Issue indictments, listing names of individuals, groups, and organizations (as outlined above) in pursuit of prosecutions 4. Appoint and authorize (an) Extra-Special Prosecutor(s) to bring appropriate charges, issue arrest warrants, set trial dates, and commence administering the long-overdue (and unaccustomed) Justice in these many great cases, always honoring Human Rights and full Due Process 5. Seize-and-freeze all the assets (liquid; rolling stock, including marine and air assets; real estate; patents, trademarks, mineral rights, and copyrights; all financial and legal instruments), under eminent domain, for the duration of the trials, of the said Corpirations and like organizations 6. Dissolve and rescind the general recognition and legal classification of the Corpiration as a 'person' and as a 'citizen,' ending all its massively abused rights, privileges, and unlawfull power whatever in OUR Human affairs 7. Redesign and reinstall proper, Lawful elections, with secret, numbered paper ballots with like-numbered paper receipts for full, secure accountability 8. Dissolve and disband the electoral college as archaic and disruptive to Lawful democratic republican processes 9. Audit and redesign the Internal Revenue Service, establishing an apportioned, simple tax structure, specifically to prohibit the monopoly of wealth and resources...pursuing prosecutions as appropriate 10. Audit and restructure the Federal Reserve, pursuing prosecutions as appropriate 11. Reconstruct, from scratch, our Three Branches of Lawful Government in proper balance as originally Constituted, being FREE to make appropriate adjustments as we roll... Advocating and acting for a Fresh Start, from the ground on up.

Sign on and pass it on. And, Aloha!

Rick Weddle, Hawaii

HARVEST BALL ROCKS HARWOOD

Money needed for a 2015 Mendocino cannabis initiative

by Jane Futcher

More than 250 packed into Laytonville’s Harwood Hall Saturday night, Nov. 15, for rollicking evening featuring local organic food and wines, a photo booth and dance music by Petaluma’s The Pulsators, a spicy blend of driving blues, New Orleans-funky R&B, reggae and rock-and-roll.

The Mendocino Cannabis Policy Council presented the Harvest Celebration Ball to raise money for the creation of a countywide cannabis initiative slated to go before the Mendocino Board of Supervisors in 2015.

“The initiative will protect the environment, patients, consumers and our rural way of life,” said MCPC member Jude Nagle after the ball. “The point of the event was to bring community people and business people together with farmers in the creation of our sustainable family farm’s economic future.”

The initiative, still being drafted, will be based on the community rights model, following on the heels of Measure S, the anti-fracking initiative Mendocino voters passed earlier this month.

“The initiative we are writing would protect the environment, patients, consumers and our rural way of life, “ Nagle said.

The tight, percussive beat of the Pulsators rocked toddlers and old-timers and was occasionally interrupted by requests for financial support from MCPC board members, including Casey O’Neill, co-owner of HappyDay Farms in Laytonville.

“We were just absolutely thrilled to be able to bring so many people together to celebrate together and create the opportunity to have a conversation about cannabis,” O’Neill said this week. “It’s part of the fabric of our reality, but it’s the elephant in the living room. Up until now we’ve had two communities -- the accepted legitimate community and the shadow cannabis community that funds the economy. Cannabis is the economic engine of our region and it has not received its due attention other than a negative perspective. It’s high time we starting including the positive.”

O’Neill said that regulating cannabis under the Department of Agriculture would resolve many of the cannabis-related environmental degradation issues the county is dealing with and would also create a pathway to a farm-support homestead.

“Cannabis is a homestead and farm-support system,” O’Neill said.

Cannabis legalization activist Pebbles Trippet, who is spearheading the writing of the MCPC cannabis initiative, distributed a summary of the legislation’s goals at the harvest ball.

“Voters are being asked to approve a new cannabis paradigm,” states the summary. “from defendants to farmers, from punishments to protections, from victims with loss of rights to equal citizens, from public nuisances to productive families, and collectives.”

The initiative would encourage farming the land with respect for the environment, resource limitations, carrying capacity and accountability, on a multi-tier system for regulatory purposes.

(Jane Futcher is the author of Women Gone Wild, a memoir about moving to Northern Mendocino County.)