Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Oct 15, 2015

• Historic Ketch Visit
• Searching for Asha
• Dem Debate
• Animal Rights
• Nino Preparations
• Environmental Damages
• Shrimp Boy Trial
• Customer Service
• Yesterday's Catch
• Imperial Failure
• Moeller
• American Kulture
• Cancer Resource
• PA City Council

COME VISIT THE GOLDEN RULE IN NOYO HARBOR

The brave and historic vessel - the Golden Rule - is tied up at slip B-22 on the south side of Noyo Harbor until 3:00 PM tomorrow [today, Thursday, Oct 15]. The captain, four person crew, Vets for Peace organizers welcome visitors to come down and check out the boat and swap stories about the famous 30-foot ketch and it's nearly sixty-year mission to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons from the world.

In 1958 four Quaker activists attempted to sail the Golden Rule into the seas around the Marshall Islands, in order to halt U.S. nuclear atmospheric testing. They were stopped and arrested in Hawaii and spent time in jail, but news of their quest went around the world, inspiring others to act.

The 1958 voyage of the Golden Rule is credited with helping to achieve the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear testing in the air, underwater and outer space.

nti.org/treaties-and-regimes/treaty-banning-nuclear-test-atmosphere-outer-space-and-under-water-partial-test-ban-treaty-ptbt

Five years ago, the famous 30-foot ketch was pulled from the bottom of Humboldt Bay and almost destroyed.

Members of Veterans for Peace learned of its history and launched a campaign to restore the Golden Rule. Scores of volunteers and hundreds of donors made it possible. The Golden Rule is once again sailing for a nuclear free world.

More at this website: vfpgoldenruleproject.org

The Golden Rule is on the last leg of her maiden voyage, heading back home to Eureka from San Diego, fresh from "Fleet Week" with the US Navy in San Francisco. Come down to show your support, hear some great stories, and experience a little Pacific Ocean history here in Noyo Harbor. Or just shoot the breeze about sailing. Look for a large white peace sign on a big red sail, dock B-22.

THE MOTHER OF ASHA KREIMER has set up a gofundme account to raise funds to hire a private investigator to try to find her.

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Our daughter, sister and friend Asha went missing from Rollerville Cafe in Point Arena, CA on September 21, 2015 around 9:30 am.

She was in the middle of a mental health crisis. She did not have ID, money, credit card, phone or any traceable items. She was wearing black skinny jeans and a dark gray hoodie. She was also shoeless.

We are incredibly worried for the safety of Asha. We have been searching non stop in the area where she went missing from and haven't got any new leads. She has been missing for nearly a month.

We are trying to raise money to hire a private investagator. We have ehausted the beneficial assistance of the local authorities and need to expand the search on a national level. This can be a very expensive service but Asha deserves the best.

We miss our daughter, sister and friend more than words can say. We just want to know that Asha is safe and not in any mental turmoil. We miss her loving kindness and quick humor.

There is no shame in mental health issues. We are here with open hearts. Please help us find Asha and bring closure to this nightmare.

https://www.facebook.com/asha.kreimer

https://www.gofundme.com/656da8y4

HILLARY, got to give it to her. She was the most impressive candidate up there last night in a weak field. She wouldn't have looked any more plausible than she usually does if it weren't for Bernie compelling her to move a couple of millimeters to the left. Bern himself made all the correct statements about the true prob — corporate oligarchy set to a comprehensive cultural decay — but he often looked surprised and a little bit too elderly to be prez although his program would be heavenly for a large majority of Americans.

OUR POSITION here at the mighty AVA, and we know you can't wait to hear it, is that the only difference between the two parties — Green Party candidate Jill Stein is effectively non-personed — is that the Republicans will get the many rolling catastrophes we face rolling faster than the Democrats, but neither party, except maybe Sanders, seems to have a clue that the Big Picture is that dire.

HILLARY did well enough, I should think, to permanently shelve the repellant Biden, and she would easily defeat which ever of the lunatics the Republicans put up. Of those nutballs, Rubio might be tough, but only if he manages not to blurt out his cruel and stupid opinions on national television. As an obvious sociopath, Rubio can at least fake normalcy. Of all the Republicans, only he and Bush manage to at least not look and sound clinically deranged.

FORMER MARYLAND GOVERNOR, Martin O'Malley, lied his ass off about what a great job he did in Baltimore and, like Rubio, is so all-round Ken Doll-ish, he ought to be anchoring the evening news, not running for office. Totally superficial-type dude, and hardly the friend of black people he brazenly sells himself as.

VIRGINIA SENATOR JAMES WEBB is a tweener, not dumb or crazy enough to be a Republican candidate but way too conservative to be a more or less progressive Democrat. He hardly got to talk but when he did he was barely coherent.

FORMER Rhode Island governor, Lincoln Chafee, was simply lost. Claiming to be so upset at the death of his father he didn't know he was voting for the repeal of Glass-Steagal, a move led by the Clintons, incidentally, the lame brain excuse he made for his destructive vote was actually quite shocking in its pure childishness. Not that many viewers had any idea that the banking collapse (soon to re-occur with even more disastrous consequences) occurred largely because of that repeal led, natch, by "liberals."

ALL-IN-ALL, not an impressive group of candidates, but ol' Bern clearly the pick of the litter. Forward to the Apocalypse!

ANIMAL RIGHTS PEOPLE have been complaining for years about the County shelter at Ukiah, but it's always a challenge to determine what is really going on there. Sage Mountainfire, shelter boss, was once the darling of the volunteers and rescue people, but some of them say it's past time for Sage to return to her mountain and tend her fire in full time retirement. The Supervisors get heat no matter whether pit bulls are adopted out or euthanized and, thanks primarily to the County's thriving dope trade, pits, deployed as watch dogs and often abandoned, are always in over-supply at the shelter. As one volunteer put it: "We stockpile animals until they go 'kennel crazy' and then we kill them. How compassionate is that? Me? I would let the Sheriff run the shelter, which would allow job training for female inmates but any decision about the future of the shelter is likely to be driven by fear, not logic."

RE: EL NINO ESTIMATES. Caltrans and Fish and Game is not taking any chances, My 63 year old brother Steve is a laborer for Decker Landscaping Company on the Willits bypass. They have to have everything buttoned up around all the creeks by tomorrow, Oct. 15, 2015. For the past month the landscapers have been working from daylight to dark, 7 days a week. They have a massive job going on there due to their mitigation agreements and erosion control requirements. He plans on working all the way into December, rain or shine. (James Marmon)

FROM THE MENDOCINO COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: ILLEGAL POT GROWERS DO JAIL TIME, OWE $30K FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGES

UKIAH, Tues., Sept. 13. — The two men convicted of trespassing on private timber company land in the Branscomb area for the purpose of cultivating 1,995 marijuana plants were back in court last Friday for a hearing to determine what restitution amount, if any, they should pay for the environmental damage done by their activities. The two men, Clemente Flores, age 36, and Refugio Perez Hernandez, age 31, both formerly of Healdsburg, were previously sentenced to 16 months in local prison.

On Friday Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Cindee Mayfield ordered that the two defendants be jointly and severally responsible for $30,009.25 in environmental damages. Despite his expectation that both men will eventually be deported and the timber company will never see a dime of the ordered amount, District Attorney David Eyster said his office will nevertheless continue to seek restitution for environmental damages in these types of cases. "I can't be assured that these men won't be back in this country sometime down the road so I wanted a restitution order in place, one that includes interest at the legal rate of 10 percent per annun, just in case one of them does return and hits Lotto," said Eyster.

THE BELOW LINK TO TODAY'S Chron story of the prosecution of Chinatown gangster, Shrimp Boy Chow, reveals that the Chinese couple found murdered execution-style off Highway 20 near Fort Bragg two years ago may be the work of Shrimp Boy. The feds are alleging that Shrimp Boy wanted to kill Allen Leung and Jim Tat Kong, heads of rival gangs. Leung was shot to death in his Chinatown store, Kong and his wife, for logistical reasons not yet known, were murdered in Fort Bragg. Why were they bumped off a 150 miles north of the Bay Area? Of course the people making the claims against Shrimp Boy are also indicted gangsters. Chow’s high-profile trial is now scheduled to start Nov. 2.

Background:

https://www.theava.com/archives/48455#2

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Today’s Link: New Rap For Chow: Soliciting Murder

Prosecutor: ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow to face murder solicitation charges

sfgate.com/crime/article/Prosecutor-Shrimp-Boy-Chow-to-face-murder-6569049.php

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Editor,

Thank you. Your "Honor" is showing.

I wrote to you yesterday about an AVA account issue. Which was entirely my fault for not keeping track of. You not only took care of my request you also promptly refunded my money. This refund was not part of my request but an honorable business act by you and/or your staff. In today's world this act is unheard of. As a life long resident of Mendocino County I will do my best to recommend your paper if and when the opportunity arises. Good business should be applauded. Thank you again.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Tobin

Willits

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 14, 2015

LINDA ALMOND, Ukiah. Court order violation.

ERIN BLACKWELL, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

PHILIP BORGER, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SHON FOOTE, Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, brandishing deadly weapon not a gun, battery on peace officer, possession of hashish-marijuana, resisting.

JOSEPH GLIDEWELL, Eureka/Albion. Burglary.

CHRISTOPHER JENKINSON, Ukiah. Unspecified misdemeanor.

MITCHELL KNIGHTEN, Ukiah/Boonville. Drunk in public.

GREGORY PILOTO, Denver/Willits. Drunk in public.

THOMAS SANDERS, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

DEREK SILVA, Fort Bragg. Burglary, petty theft.

LONNIE VINCENT, Willits. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

JACOB WHELAN, Fort Bragg. Possession of controlled substance and paraphernalia.

IMPERIAL FAILURE: LESSONS FROM AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ

by Ralph Nader

The photographs in the New York Times told contrasting stories last week. One showed two Taliban soldiers in civilian clothes and sandals, with their rifles, standing in front of a captured U.N. vehicle. The Taliban forces had taken the northern provincial capital of Kunduz. The other photograph showed Afghan army soldiers fully equipped with modern gear, weapons, and vehicles.

Guess who is winning? An estimated 30,000 Taliban soldiers with no air force, navy, or heavy weapons have been holding down ten times more Afghan army and police and over 100,000 U.S. soldiers with the world’s most modern weaponry – for eight years.

ISIS forces from Syria have taken over large areas of northern and western Iraq, including its second largest city, Mosul, and the battered city of Fallujah. ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria are estimated to number no more than 35,000. Like the Taliban, ISIS fighters, who vary in their military training, primarily have light weaponry. That is when they are not taking control of the fleeing, much larger, Iraqi army’s armored vehicles and ammunition from the United States.

Against vastly greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. weapons, U.S. planes bombing daily, 24/7 aerial surveillance, and U.S. military advisors at the ground level, so far ISIS is still holding most of its territory and is still dominant in large parts of Syria.

The American people are entitled to know how all this military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, can produce such negative fallouts.

Certainly these failures have little to do with observing the restraints of international law. Presidents Bush and Obama have sent military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties, in those tragic, blown-apart countries.

The current perception of the U.S. in these countries is that of invaders on a rampage. Recruiting motivated fighters, including a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers, is easier when the invaders come from western countries that for over a century have been known for attacking, carving up boundaries for artificial states, intervening, overthrowing, propping up domestic dictators, and generally siding with oligarchic or colonizing interests that brutalize the mass of the people.

It hasn’t helped for these invasions to be supported by an alien culture rooted in the Christian crusades against Islam centuries ago, whose jingoism in the U.S. continues among some evangelical groups today.

But of course more contemporary situations are, first and foremost, the wanton destruction and violent chaos that comes with such invasions. With the absence of any functioning central governments and the dominance of tribal societies, the sheer complexity of the invaders trying to figure out the intricate “politics” between and within tribes and clans turns into an immense, ongoing trap for the western military forces.

When the U.S. started taking sides with the Shiites against the Sunnis in Iraq, or between different clans and tribes in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, not knowing the language or customs, were left with handing out $100 bills to build alliances. Our government air-shipped and distributed crates of this money. With the local economies at a standstill, public facilities collapsed, fear gripped families from violent streets and roads, and all havoc broke lose in the struggle for safety and survival.

Afghan soldiers, who are paid only $120 a month, will do almost anything to supplement their income, including selling weapons. At higher levels, bribes, payoffs, extortions create an underground economic system. The combination of lack of understanding, the systemic bribes, and the ensuing corruption has produced a climate of chaos.

Then there is the reckless slaughter of civilians – wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside – from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones, or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones.

Our “blowback” policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries. On 9/11, the “threat” was coming from a corner of one country – northeastern Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney prevaricator frenzy led to local bounty hunters taking innocent captives, falsely labeled as “terrorists,” who were sent to the prisons in Guantanamo, Cuba. These actions have damaged our country’s reputation all over the world.

All this could have been avoided had we heeded the advice of retired, high-ranking military, national security, and diplomatic officials not to invade Iraq and their advice not to overreact in Afghanistan. But the supine mass media, and an overall cowardly Congress let the lies, deceptions, and cover-ups by the Bush regime go unchallenged and, as Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) put it, Bush/Cheney “lied us into the Iraq War.”

It isn’t as if the Taliban and ISIS are winning the “hearts and minds” of the local people. On the contrary, while promising law and order, they treat local populations quite brutally, with few exceptions. But the locals have long been treated brutally by the police, army, and militias jockeying for the spoils of conflict. Unfortunately, there is still no semblance of ground-level security.

All Empires fail and eventually devour themselves. The U.S. Empire is no different. Look at the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services.

Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power – well received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.

What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

This https://www.theava.com/archives/48710#4 is classic Kunstler. Hitting all the big points he created a vocabulary for way back in the 90s. This is why I read him every week and look forward to his podcasts. Every now and then you get a real gem like today’s posting.

What Americans avoid talking about is the elephant in the room, another one of the great taboos; the failure of American kulture.
 The fact that the cause of American gun violence is the “American” portion of that phrase.

Nobody really believes that short of firearm, and the even more effective, ammunition prohibition and confiscation will we ever put a scratch on the surface of gun violence. Perhaps holding the ammunition and firearms manufactures liable is the only way to throw a wrench in the system. But that will never happen, and is only masking the symptom… Americans wanting to kill innocent Americans.

We have people who grew up in depressingly barren suburbs watching staggeringly violent films and games (this is a nation that freaks out at Janet Jackson’s pasty covered tit - the human body - but doesn’t bat a lash at some sociopathic Saw movie or crime scene TV show and its 7 spin-offs or points for body count video games) that don’t learn to socialize or adapt to the civic collective save the checkout at Target or Chick-fil-a… (buying shit)… Today’s ‘merica is an empty existence built completely upon buying stuff you don’t need with money you don’t have without a care to the repercussions on the environment, your personal debt, or society. There is no unifying ethno-history between us, we look and do not see a brother related through distant generations like the Catalans, Scots, Turks, or Somalis do… we see strangers… competitors in the way of our nut, the American dream. Jefferson has been stuffed in the closet of history and Washington can’t be too far behind. Howard Zinn is clapping in his casket… the old WASPs are finally exterminated. What’s killing Americans is this depressingly shitty American existence. We used to build great places, where people still want to visit and will overpay to reside; Charleston, Baltimore’s inner harbor, Savannah, Alexandria, Georgetown, Portland, Wilmington NC… but now we build empty characterless places to sleep in between the places we slave and shop. Forced interaction happens at schools… no wonder why so many get murdered there.

CANCER AWARENESS AND PREVENTION EDUCATION SERIES

Over the years, studies have repeatedly shown many benefits of staying healthy during cancer treatment. In their new cookbook and nutritional guide, Certified Nutritionist, Susan Antler Gins and Naturopathic Doctor, Lisa A. Price have turned that research into an essential resource for cancer patients to use food to decrease most of the side effects of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, hormone treatment, remission, and beyond. 98% of the recipes have only 4 steps to reduce side effects, promote healing and improve quality of life. The Cancer Awareness and Prevention Education Series is presented by the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County in collaboration with the Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency. Founded in 1995, the Cancer Resource Centers (CRC) is a nationally recognized grassroots organization that holds steadfast to it s vision that no one will face cancer alone in Mendocino County. The first freestanding cancer resource center from Marin County to the CA-Oregon border, CRC provides services free of charge to Mendocino County residents who visit the non-profit organization's two offices, located in Mendocino and Ukiah. 2015 marks CRC's 20th Anniversary. A “Cooking Through Cancer Treatment To Recovery” presentation, based on the cookbook of the same name, is scheduled for Monday, November 2 at the Mendocino Hotel Conference Room, Albion St, Mendocino. Hours are from 1-2PM. Some tasty samplings from the cookbook will be served by author Certified Nutritionist Susan Antler Gins. Admission is free. Call Cancer Resource Center at 707-937-3833 with questions. Preregister by emailing register@crcmendocino.org

THE POINT ARENA CITY COUNCIL will meet in Special Session on Thursday, October 15, 2015 4 P.M. in Council Chambers. The Agenda is attached below. Please spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested in attending this meeting and/or serving on the City Council soon. Thank you, Jane Jarlsberg, Interim Administrative Assistant File "2015-10-15 Agenda special meeting (1).pdf" Click on the link below to view and download the file:

https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/2ee1e84b-4e4a-465e-aeca-c5260ee15db2

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Point Arena City Council will conduct a public hearing at City Hall, 451 School Street, Point Arena, CA, on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 6:00 p.m. File "CPA White et al CDP 2015-02 Notice of Public Hearing 2015 10 08.pdf" Click on the link below to view and download the file:

https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/f3f3ee8b-d3d4-48d3-959e-52cfa344d351