Letters to the Editor

SOFTPOCALYPS NOW

Greetings Editor:

News From An Alien Planet:

Certain signs of the upcoming “soft-pocalypse.” It's sort of like the future “Hard Apocalypse,” but with training wheels.

• Increased energy bills but less energy.

• Massive increase of humans with shaved heads wearing soggish black and/or gray hoodies; people of all ages with bald, skullish heads; grim reaper outfits will abound. Give them all scythes I say!

• Cheap, relentless, pop-oriented proliferation of groovy new-age tattoos on the elderly and wild geriatric body piercings will increase.

• More gangs of every type and even more mass media popularization of wannabe gang member styles.

• Perhaps even fatter parents and grotesquely and unbelievably even fatter kids. Lawsuits filed by out of shape plaintiffs who injure themselves physically with hernias and back injuries from carrying giant tubs of soda will increase.

• More hysterical emphasis on “stress relieving” holi­days, expensive vacations with yoga retreats, Buddhism, rich chocolate desserts, and of course more cheese.

• Elderly activists will expire — a celebrity die off.

• Some people will think I actually make sense.

John ‘The Fifth Horseman of the Softpocalypse” Schultz

AKA Fattish Confusion

Willits

Tucson, AZ 85734

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DEAR MENDONIANS

Dear Editor,

I just wanted to write a short note to let you know I have been moved out of San Quentin and transferred to Jamestown to be trained as a firefighter.

Your paper keeps me connected to Mendocino County and the current events taking place there. I appreciate the AVA and I thank you for sending it to me. You do a great job and I love your style of reporting.

To all my fellow Mendonians: I send mine. And to you Bruce and staff, keep up the good work. Thank you very much.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Patrick Radcliffe

Jamestown

PS. If any of my friends want to get in touch with me, please write to me at SCC Calaveras, 5150 O’Byrnes Ferry Road, Jamestown, CA 95327.

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PARIAH NATION GETS ITS WISH

Dear Sir,

This may seem like ancient history to you in the fast-moving world, but I'm currently being held prisoner and I get your paper very late. Lest anyone think I'm a Republican, let me say that I was working in Bobby Kennedy's headquarters the night he died and I worked for the George McGovern campaign in 1972 and since 1979 I have been a member of the Libertarian Party.

The letter you printed on April 21 from Mr. Ronald Del Raine refers to Texas or “Tex-Ass” aside from being childish and an insult to 2.5 million Texans who voted for Obama, as he did, not to mention all my Libertarian friends back in Austin and Brownsville. Then Mr. Del Raine says they “discarded Thomas Jefferson in favor of Newt Gingrich,” presumably not knowing that Gingrich is an historian who highly praises Jefferson in his books. Then he says Gingrich has a book “straight out of the Taliban textbook,” a grotesque insult to the millions murdered by the Taliban. (And, no, that does not mean I support the Bush/Obama war.)

And the quotations you printed on April 28 from “Counterpuncher” an interview by Joanne Wypijewski’s interview with the South Carolina “anarchist” were truly disgusting. The ravings about the “Jewish media” belong in the camp of Hitler and the Taliban. Hamas (i.e., Tali­ban folks) claim all of Israel and I have nice mellow dope smoking friends in Tel Aviv who prefer not to live under an “Islamic state.” I’d like to see every hypocrite who accuses Israel of “colonialism” give all their money to Native Americans except enough for a ticket to Europe. Israel doesn't need America's money. It needs the same thing Mendocino County needs: to be left the hell alone.

Michael Bear Carson

Mule Creek Prison, Ione

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A MOBILE MEAT AXE

Dear Editor,

Inspired by Mark Scaramella's article “The Meat Axe” in the June 2 AVA, I have just sent you separately a link to a recent article from The New York Times on the Mobile Harvesting System (MHS) which provides on-site, USDA-supervised cattle slaughtering for small farmers. (It is not big enough to serve the needs of large ranchers, which many might consider a plus.)

I have also sent you a link to two pages from the Glynwood Foundation, which is promoting the MHS. One is a general report on the MHS, and the other is a fact sheet. If the links do not work, you may go directly to the Foundation website to view them, at www.glynwood.org. The first MHS unit is already operational in New York State's Hudson Valley.

In regard to Lee Simon's contention in his letter in the June 2 AVA that “This is not a Christian nation because it has never acted in keeping with the teachings of that religion” — I think Mark Twain put it tren­chantly: “If the United States is a Christian nation, then so is Hell.”

Best regards,

Ed Smith

Brooklyn, New York

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HOLD THE THIN BLUE LINE

To: Carre Brown, Chairperson, Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

Dear Ms. Brown and Supervisors:

We wish to make a strong appeal that no cuts are made to the Sheriff's 2010 budget.

Sheriff's office funds are the highest “mandated prior­ity” of the public. We need our security and safety. When you seek a falsely constructed “fair percentage” across the board, you ignore this clear public mandate.

Personnel and the cost of doing public business grew very costly over the years when funds were readily accessible. With the new reality, we cannot afford paperwork empires or self-inflated salaries. Beginning anew, salaries and all perquisites must be radically reduced. Car allowances, expense accounts, etc. must be stopped. The hiring of consultants and outside labor negotiation firms must be totally deleted from the upcoming budget. Administrative and department head salaries and personnel must be reduced in order to meet the requirements for public safety. You should take no action which contributes to a lawless environment.

Implement Jacqueline Carvallo’s proposal regarding voluntary severance, with incentives, of County staff. If proposed layoffs of 50-75 volunteer people result in an $8 million savings, why was this proposal not imple­mented yesterday?

Why do we read about repeated requests from the Auditor or the Chief Executive Office to have the Sheriff use drug forfeiture funds for overtime or operations? Are not those funds restricted? Is the CEO or Auditor not aware of the restrictions or are they being deliberately misleading? Certainly these funds cannot be used to sup­plant local funding. Perhaps the drug-related overtime would work but all police concerns are not drug-related. The Auditor's office should be wary of misleading the public into thinking that these monies can be used to fund any existing or new positions.

We recommend that the Board of Supervisors take a strong leadership position and protect the Sheriff's budget, and hence, public safety. The predatory attacks must cease. The first and highest priority of taxpayers and is an adequate, consistent level of law enforcement.

Yours Truly,

Marvin & Beverly Dutra

Philo

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END ABUSE PROTECTION

To the Editor,

(I know this is long winded and may or may not make any sense but I assure you I am completely sober as I write this and I am under the influence of rage, I have half a mind to state the perpetrators name though I don't want to be associated with him by doing so, I am outraged that the police have done nothing to apprehend this man though several reports have been made against him. There is no justice in the justice system.)

I feel that it is necessary to let my voice be heard though I wish to remain anonymous. I was sexually molested as a baby by my grandfather who still lives in the Coastal community and has for the past 37 years. He is a member of Kingdom Hall and I suppose one could say that he is doing his penance as a religious man. Many children were molested by him and though I cannot speak for them I speak for myself. I live in a world where my family, my community and the justice system has protected him. The scar of sexual molestation cannot be seen on the skin or detected by MRI or removed with a shot of cortisone. I was hurt deeply as a child and betrayed by those closest to me. At 32 I have no legal recourse to press criminal charges against him as there has been a statute set protecting perpetrators who com­mitted the crime so long ago that takes affect after the victim turns 28 years of age. I sat in a counseling office when I was 8 years old with this man begging for my forgiveness and the counselor didn’t press charges, my parents didn’t press charges and he got away with it I tell you. I cringe whenever I drive past his house and I want to ram his car whenever I see it on the road. He still openly approaches me in the grocery store and I bite my tongue and look the other way. Why am I forced to keep the peace? I am outraged that the justice system protects child molesters as the Vatican does the same for its child rapists. The abuse has to stop and the protection of the abuser has to stop. What recourse do I have now that the statute protects this man? I can take civil action but the man has nothing and what value of restitution can be set for my lost innocence my loss of childhood? How much money could it possibly take to cover the damages of a soul that was asked to take on too much? I not only ask this for myself but for Aaron Vargas, he has suffered enough and i pray that he will be granted leniency because he did the community and the world a great deed to take this man off the streets of our youth. I speak for those of my family who were victimized by our grand­father. We have been cast from a broken home and I hope they can find peace and love and healing in their lives. I have to let my voice be heard. It is such a lonely isolating world and I can identify with the feeling of being branded as if I have a disease. But it is this culture that is diseased that allows children to be hurt and vio­lated and I hope that we can come together as a commu­nity and put an end to the sexual assault on children and men and women that has happened to so many innocent people.

Sincerely,

Utterly & Justifiably Outraged.

Fort Bragg

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NICE ABS — TOO NICE

Letter to the Editor:

Memorial Day weekend there were 200 vehicles at glass beach and about 50 at Van Damme Park/Beach each of the three days. Most of these were abalone divers hunting for these rare and delicate of hemapheliac molusks

The State Parks Warden says there has been a decline in the abalone population.

The Film “Rivers of the Lost Coast” revealed what overfishing can do to the once abundant chinook salmon before dams were built on most of the rivers after severe flooding, some of which were due to logging which ruined the spawning grounds and gravel beds covered with silt. The reduced catch from the Smith River which once gave 52 pound salmon to innovative, competetive anglers, who could catch several in a day, was reduced to 20 pounders in maybe five days of fishing. Now there's no salmon to take legally in the Eel, Russian, Gualala, Klamath or Smith Rivers.

I'm afraid abs will be wiped out in a few years like the chinook salmon over a period of 30 years. Dams and logging wiped out their habitat plus the competitive fish­ermen from the world over who came to fish in the Smith after magazine articles publicized the phenomenal sport in rivers of Mendocino County.

We of Mendocino Abalone Watch fear the finite aba­lone will disappear too unless more stringent measures are taken to reduce the yearly take of abs and unless there is more volunteer monitoring of divers, especially in the three mile coastline of the new Fort Bragg coastal park, formerly the GP property.

More volunteers are needed to help Fish and Game with reduced staff and funding cuts. Training sessions with practicing volunteers are available. Binoculars, handbooks and yellow jackets and caps are available to be loaned for the day.

Please go to www.mendoabwatch.com or call Rod Jones at 937-2377.

Sincerely,

Agnes Woolsey

Mendocino

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BURNING UP

Editor,

Fifteen years ago three of us shouldered our packs and began plodding down the beach from the end of Lighthouse Road. It was late in May, a ferocious gale at our backs, a two foot thick haze of stinging grit blasting our legs, and at Windy Point, where the curving cliff funnels the wind suddenly seawards, I could lean acutely into it and be held upright. Towards sunset after we pitched tents behind the lattice of a driftwood corral below the ruined light at Punta Gorda, I wandered along the strand line among the bits of old wrecks and found a battered green 5-gallon drum marked “Oil Spill Disper­sant.” Today, with the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil people are reluctant to reveal the ingredients of their dispersants, claiming proprietary trade secrets and all that usual mendacious business gabble. I opened the drum, dipped a twig in it, sparked it off, and it burned! Oil dispersant, my friends, is oil, light oil. Spray the light oil on the heavy oil that makes for bad television, and zippidydoodah, it's dispersed! Not beamed to Tralfama­dore of course, but out of sight, out of mind, problem solved.

Back on the freezing beach, the northern gale blew all night, all next day and night, and the morning after that. Even turning the corner at Reynolds Rock brought no relief or any shelter until we could get far enough back up Big Creek to a bench that hadn't yet been wrecked by floods. Lots of wind power out here, I thought.

These memories of our hike to Shelter Cove come to mind now, thanks to Alexander Cockburn's contrarian imaginings on the subjects of energy and climate change. Cockburn says the fields of wind turbines, which those pesky Morongo injuns permit to deface our environment, just to make a buck by harvesting kilowatts from the breeze of oily smog blowing through their big Coast Range gap, are more offensive to his refined senses than comparable assemblages of oil derricks. There may be no accounting for taste, or maybe Cockburn is nuts, but you be the judge. Drive through San Gorgonio Pass on I-10 as he suggests and get a good look at the wind tur­bines. Then go to Panorama Drive in northeast Bakersfield and absorb the sight of the Kern River Oil Field. I've heard people call this place “Mordor.” Don't want to go that far? Then spend a day driving from the Pittsburg-Martinez refinery zone to Altamont Pass. Case closed.

Cockburn is just another old oil guy like many of us who came of age at 25 cents a gallon, those good ole days of blasting across the country in giant gas hogs with hardly a thought to the cost of fuel. And he still needs more oil than most of us, as he lovingly maintains a fleet of ancient Detroit iron that motors him from one college town speech to another, enthralling the sophomores with his style and erudition. So he prefers derricks to turbines, and now that Governator Meathead has temporarily flopped back on offshore drilling, the money tide may rise onshore for awhile, and what better place to investi­gate more intensely than Petrolia, where California's oil industry began? There could be lakes of good ole patri­otic American crude down there, hidden from the shal­low prickings of the old bullwheel crews. Let a thousand drill rigs stand in mighty spendor! Cockburn will thrill to the pleasant petro-perfume as it blows up the river to his quivering nostrils. How could odorless wind turbines compete with the pungent sex of oil? Maybe the vibra-trucks, the dynamite crews and the 24-hours a day mobile derricks will come clanking and banging up to the very door of his rural Xanadu. But, sorry, Mr. Land­owner, your mineral rights were severed a century ago. So, Al won't make a cent, but the sight of the rigs outside his study window should gladden his heart, much like fake Ponderosa cellphone towers warm mine. At least they aren't those miserable wind turbines.

Cockburn goes on to suggest (if I understand what the “best writer in the language,” as he was editorially lauded in these pages, is actually saying) that “global warming,” more accurately “anthropogenic climate change,” is a fraud. The writing is so good, it's hard to tell what he really thinks. His objection seems to be that because climate modelling is inaccurate, human caused global warming doesn't exist. He expands on this non sequitur by noting that the modellers, running in reverse, failed to predict the past. He clamps paws with intellec­tual luminaries like Senator Inhofe and Lush Limpbone to suggest that the entire contra-carbonista show is more political and economic corruption than it is dispassionate science.

Maybe it's true. Anyone with even an intuitive under­standing of thermo- and fluid dynamics would admit the sheer computational impossibility of assigning a point-value to every quanta of energy in the world, much less predicting the evolution of their collective mutual inter­actions over time. Maybe the darker fantasies of the contrarians are actually true! Maybe masked commandos debark nightly from the black helicopters of ZOG to seize and fly climate scientists to the hidden Temple Tombs of the Illuminati, where they are forced to swear omerta to the Kill Karbon Kreed. That explains every­thing!

But Cockburn has about as much formal training in climate science as I do, zero. What is true is that with maybe 20 years left to live, if he is lucky, the concept of “long term effects” has already set below his mental horizon. His bones, mine, and those of all alive today will be long a-mouldering before the gentle wavelets of the flooding Mattole estuary lap against the wreckage of the custom carpentry of his bucolic pleasure dome. The ice has been melting and the atmosphere has been warming for 15,000 years, centuries-long variances not­withstanding, and if 95% of the world's real climate sci­entists say that human inputs are goosing this trend, professional opinion-mongers notwithstanding, then what special knowledge do I possess, or do Cockburn's informants really understand, that would enable us to rationally doubt them? And all arguments aside, go to the Arctic, and tell it to the natives.

Not that I really think any last ditch green wave will save much of anything. Humans are more likely, long term, to dig up, suck up, and burn every oxidizable com­pound in the planet, because as long as there are people, they will demand heat at all costs, and what could ever be cheaper than burning something that burns? And if all the ice melts and the oceans rise another two or three hundred feet, the survivors will just move uphill and burn what's there. If it gets too hot, they'll move under­ground. So go ahead, Al, burn it up. What difference will it make? We won't be here.

Yrs,

Jay Williamson

Santa Rosa

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ELDERTHANKS

Dear Community Members,

The ElderHome Board would like to thank all of you who supported the Memorial Day Tri Tip Dinner. Our thanks go to the many residents that made it happen, as well as to those who attended. We thought it was fun, and a successful fundraiser.

Special thanks to the Lions, who once again created a delicious meal for all of us to enjoy. A sweet thank you goes to those who brought desserts to share.

Our silent auction would not have happened without the hours spent by Candy Slotte, who put it all together. Thank you Candy! And thanks to the individuals and businesses that so kindly contributed services and goods for the auction. There are too many of you to mention, but you all know who you are, as do the winners!

Gratefully,

The AVEH Board

Boonville

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ARREST THE SUPERVISORS

Hello Anderson Valley Residents!

Once again the safety of our community is in jeaprody as the Board of Supervisors considers cutting the sheriff's budget by $4.5 million. The Sheriff says this will eliminate all of the deputies. We are attaching a let­ter that the Coalition will be sending to the supervisors and we invite you to use this letter or edit it to express in your own words that law enforcement is essential to the health and safety of our community. If you represent an organization, print it on the letterhead and get multiple signatures. This may be more expedient than having everyone write their own letters. Please send this out to other valley residents on your email list.

However you choose to do it, getting these letters in the mail as soon as possible is essential — the BOS will be making decisions next Tuesday, June 8th. Let's flood their office with letters and signatures.

Thanks,

Anderson Valley Community Action Coalition

Boonville

To: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, 501 Low Gap Rd. Ukiah, CA 95482

Dear Board of Supervisors;

Over the past two years, the Anderson Valley commu­nity has been working closely with Sheriff All­man to recruit and keep a second resident deputy sheriff in our valley. \ Anderson Valley recently raised over $14,000 for the deputy K-9 Program. This level of com­munity involvement illustrates our passionate support of our local deputies. We understand that the county faces a serious budget crisis which will require cutbacks, but we urge you to not strip the sheriff’s department of all of its deputies.

The deputy patrol program is essential to the safety of the county’s unincorporated areas. Seven years ago Anderson Valley reached a crisis point in the amount of methamphetamine activity and related crimes that were impacting the safety of our community. In response the Anderson Valley Community Action Coalition was formed and working together with the County Sheriffs’ Office, the Major Crimes and the AODP division of Public Health, we were able to reduce the presence of methamphetamine in our valley. Part of our multi-strat­egy approach was to hire a second resident deputy for the valley and this greatly increased the number of arrests and reduced the problem. Since that time the presence of two deputies has been a very successful deterrent to that level of crime. Our resident deputies know the local peo­ple enabling them to do an impressive amount of highly effective preventive work. We are deeply concerned that reducing the presence of deputies in our community will be a signal to criminals that they can conduct illegal activities in our valley. We don’t want problems with meth and other drugs here.

The impact of losing this program will last well beyond the current economic problems. Deputy positions require specialized training and experience that will be lost and the program will be difficult to reinstate later. Extreme reductions in deputy salaries will drive good officers out of the county. The resulting increase in criminal activity will not only make our communities less safe but will also impact our local businesses who are already struggling.

We realize that the county is in a serious financial situation and that some cuts will have to be made. We urge you to look at every possibility and reduce law enforcement only as a last resort. Please look at offering a voluntary lay off for county employees who are near retirement and other alternatives to reduce the budget deficit.

Sincerely,

The Anderson Valley Community Action Coalition

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JUNE 3

Editor,

From when I danced for bread as a child

In my grandmother's apartment,

Up until today's teleconference call

With our hedge fund's offices in Malta,

It's largely been a comfortable life.

There has always been someplace green.

…Someplace safe, and lush, and green.

I've always been loved and able to love.

At my worst, I was indifferent or bored.

A few times, I got blown off course,

But always, it seemed, there was something

To lead me back home — some sign.

…The signs?

A silvery rain. Clouds shaped like Cadillacs.

Lillacs in bloom. Man-made lakes. Geese.

Always, some sign led me back to the green.

And so, here I sit in my backyard,

Gasping at the first shoots of summer.

Tomorrow, I'll go fishing for steelheads

At the Russian River by the pear orchards

Near the old Talmage Street Bridge,

Where the river reveals its magic secrets.

Maybe I'll help plant a vegetable garden

At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas,

Which is also in Talmage. Their gardener,

A Dharma Master, can cause cloudbursts

In the brown, dry season — August.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

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HIGH ON ART IN THE CELLAR

Editor,

An Appreciation

Anderson Valley Arts extends a belated but not for­gotten thank you to Handley Cellars and all the artists who contributed art to the 6th annual Art In The Cellar event for their wonderful and generous support.

Handley Cellars hosts the annual Art In The Cellar event in part to benefit the Anderson Valley Arts' com­mitment to supporting arts programs in the schools and community. The event raises funding through the gener­ous donations of artwork, the sales of raffle tickets and a percentage of weekend wine sales.

Thank you to all the artists and community members who joined us on that rainy February evening and pur­chased a record number raffle tickets!

Thank you to Milla Handley, Diane Hering and every­one at Handley Cellars who made the evening pos­sible!

With gratitude and appreciation,

Anderson Valley Arts

Boonville

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DA TO SUPES: I NEED MORE MONEY

TO: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

FROM: Meredith Lintott, District Attorney

DATE: June 3, 2010

RE: Mendocino County Budget 2010-11

District Attorney’s Office BU 2070

The recommended budget for the District Attorney’s Office is insufficient for the District Attorney to carry out her mandated duty to conduct all prosecutions of public offenses on behalf of the people. (Government Code Section 26500.)

The Executive Office has assigned a Net County Cost to Budget Unit 2070 of $3,419,765; this amount if $730,002 less than the amount necessary to run the Dis­trict Attorney’s Office. The District Attorney’s Office has, in the past three years, shared a disproportionate amount of the budget cuts in the criminal justice system. The reductions have been disproportionate to the reduc­tions to County Counsel and the Public Defender: a Board of Supervisors action that is arbitrary and capri­cious and could subject the County to a civil suit.

As I am sure you are aware, the Board may have con­trol over the County budget, but may not, by way of failing to appropriate funds, prevent the District Attorney from incurring necessary expenses for crime detection as County charges. (Hicks v. Board of Supervisors (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 228.) While the Board of Supervisors may appropriate funding; the BOS cannot manage the expenditure of appropriated funds or control the actions or assignments of personnel. (Government Code Section 25303.)

“Although the BOS exercises control over the county budget. . . the board may not, by failing to appropriate funds, prevent the DA from incurring necessary expenses for crime detection as county charges.” ((Government Code Section 29601.)

What are the consequences of underfunding the Dis­trict Attorney’s Office?

• Request to Superior Court judges pursuant to Penal Code 1130 to appoint private attorneys to prosecute felony trials, and have the court order the Auditor to pay the bill as county charges under Government Code Sec­tion 29602. This is a real possibility as we are currently short two [senior] Deputy DA IVs and one experienced Deputy DA is out on extended medical leave.

• Petition for Declaratory Relief under Code of Civil Procedure 1060; or a Petition for a Writ of Mandate under Code of Civil Procedure 1085.

• Substantial reduction in the prosecution of misde­meanor cases, perhaps leaving the District Attorney’s Office only prosecuting DUIs and Domestic Violence misdemeanors. While law enforcement officers will continue to arrest and write reports; we will have insuffi­cient staff to prosecute.

• Permanent office closures to the public at least one day per week.

The District Attorney’s Office has worked diligently to stay within budget and has taken cuts greater than other departments. We wish to continue working with the County in these dire budget times. However, the Board of Supervisors needs to know that the proposed recommended budget will jeopardize public safety in Mendocino County.

Meredith Lintott, Mendocino District Attorney

Ukiah

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WIKIPEDIA MAN

Editor,

Why is the Left called “the Left”? Why is the Right called “the Right”?

Pose either of these seemingly simple queries to Goo­gle the all-knowing, and the absence of unequivocal answers about the fundamental underpinnings of our political system is as unnerving for some as it should be revealing for all.

Wikipedia — the online encyclopedia wannabe where almost anyone can post almost anything and have it held out as fact until someone with the right combina­tion of brains and balls openly and “properly” protests otherwise — claims the left/right distinctions originated with the French Revolution of 1789, when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the King seated to the President's right, and supporters of the Revolution seated to his left.

If correct, then knowing their heritage is that of being loyal supporters of the status quo might come as a big surprise for (the non-affluent grassroots level of) the modern “Right,” while questions about which side should be hosting our contemporary Tea Parties would certainly be raised in the minds of (the few not yet sold out in) the modern “Left.”

But be ye Leftist Radical or Rightist Reactionary (to further the obfuscation), have no fear! Wikipedia has no more clue about the differences between “the Left” and “the Right” than they do about the distinctions between “Bikers Rights” and “Motorcycling Advocacy.” So allow me to offer this alternative — albeit none the more palat­able — clarification:

America was never a pure democracy. And although founded as a republic, what few vestiges of the republic that remained after George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law following the 9/11 false flag attacks were vitiated by the Supreme Court's “Citizens United v. FEC” decision last year. So now, as always, but more absolutely than ever before.

AMERICA IS RUN BY “THE MAN.”

“The Man” has two hands: A Left hand, and a Right hand. And so long as we expend all our political energies squabbling over which puppets the Man places on which hand (he doesn't really care, after all ... they're puppets!), so long will we all live under the control and at the pleasure and mercy of “the Man.”

ALL ON THE LEFT. ALL ON THE RIGHT. ALL ON THE GULF. AND ALL COAST TO COAST.

Bruce Arnold

Florida City, Florida

(www.ldrlongdistancerider.com)

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TOXIC TRESPASS

Editor,

Perhaps you or your readers caught my last radio show regarding multiple chemically sensitive victims or Canaries. My guest was Susie Collins founder of The Canary report, (The Canary Report.org) so named because some 10% of our population succumbs to the nasty overexposure of toxics and becomes ultra sensitive to minor exposures, like canaries in a coal mine. They are deeply impacted and they show us that ultimately we are all vulnerable. Once impacted, a MCS canary has to find a safe place to live, minimize or eliminate expo­sures, develop an occupation that keeps them away from those exposures and then avoid generous folks wearing too much perfume or carry too much technology. This is all done not knowing what is going, totally challenged by the trauma to try and think clearly and with almost everyone around them thinking they are just crazy. These are the folks that most folks avoid wearing perfume for, because the petroleum based perfumes caused them brain dysfunction, seizures, speech problems etc. A subset of MCS is Electro hypersensitivity. The latter is hardly defined here in the US because the media seems to be avoiding it. It is very prevalent in Sweden because they had wireless technology first and they confront all dis­abilities. What does it mean to be EHS? First it means you can not live amongst our current technology. A leaky microwave oven will send a person into great pain, seizures and more. They can not live around compact lights and their dirty energy, near cell and wireless devices etc. In 1990 Pers Sederback, infamous commu­nication physicist at Emlen Labs in Sweden, was seen wearing a special Electro magnetic and radio field pro­tection suit. He had to move into a house that ran on battery power and work in a specially shield room. Since then 10% of Sweden has developed this malady. The sad part of these hypersensitivities is that do not seem to go away, victims learn to adapt by avoidance. Sederback has seizures if a cell phone operates near him and can lose consciousness. His company identified this new problem and worried that a genie had gotten out of a bottle. A similar disease occurred in WWII with radar operators who used microwave transmissions in there communication. The genie already out.

In my show a second woman joined us, talking about toxic molds and the importance of an exposed person leaving a place that they are sensitive in. Why wait? She said think of as if it was a fire. You wouldn’t wait for someone to tell you there was a fire if you smelled smoke. You would just get out. She repeated it several times: “just get out, just get out!” The intensity of her warning underscored her level of MCS from these toxic molds. Finally as my show came to a close a caller rang up. She was calling from her car. Her current home, where she feels the least MCS related pain, but she fret­ted as she talked to us. She said she was growing sensi­tive to the car. A final caller told her to tear out the insu­lation in her car and stop using her cell phone. Susie Collins my guest, said that she can help her, but it will not be easy. The new canary has to find a safe home, a new way to make money and avoid everything from out­gassing formaldehyde in cheaper furniture to the exhaust from a gas stove. Susie Collin did it, she works from home, publishes, edits and meets new guest in a less screened part of her house. If they are perfume laden, she quickly excuses herself telling her guest why. She func­tions at a high order with these sorts of precautions, but she knows that her caring husband, fortune in living in a low toxic place (Hawaii) and diverse skills allows her to fit her life around this nasty disorder. When the volcano goes off she closes the window and runs her HEPA filter nonstop.

Why am I telling you this? There are two reasons: 1) so you can understand why some folks are supersensitive and 2) so you can avoid becoming a canary yourself. The Canaries are proud. Some that have adapted, feel that their disability has made them stronger but all wish they didn’t have it and that others wouldn’t get it. Susie ran a book store with newly painted walls, carpet, shelves made of pressed wood and lots of outgassing ink. It got to her. She made the website to allow canaries to support one another and to reach out with solutions. She is effec­tive.

This topic underscores the reason I got politically involved and started my radio show, Toxic Trespass radio. A good friend and client lived on a hilltop in Comptche surrounded by logging land. He and his fam­ily had a hard time living there. They keep getting flu symptoms. One day they decided to take a break and go to the Jackson forest for a picnic and walked directly into a forestry spraying operation. Their flu symptoms maxi­mized and they went to a motel very sick. They soon moved out of the area.

Pesticides or in this case herbicides can re-volatilize in foggy weather. The moisture recaptures the herbicides and it wafts up the hills to mountain top homes like my friend’s.

My friend got out. He smelled the smoke so to speak. He has yet to become a canary.

The Canaries have something to tell us. In the mine, it is get out! In this life, it is to pay attention.

Greg Krouse

Philo