[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to the KMUD News. I'm your news director, April Lewis, and I'm glad to be with you for this broadcast. On this episode, we have in depth coverage on possible fee changes in Six Rivers National Forest and our interview with local resident Greg Terry after his experience being abducted from the Samud Flotilla by Israeli forces.
But first, a quick rundown of local headlines. This is KMUD News, Starting off with some news in Eureka, the County of Humboldt's Agriculture Commissioner is urging residents to take immediate precautions after the invasive glassy winged sharpshooter was discovered on grape plants sold at Costco stores throughout California. The Costco store in Eureka was among those that received these grape plants from Burchell Nursery, a wholesale nursery located in Fresno County. The issue occurred at the nursery supplier level and the local food supply has not been affected by the discovery of this insect. The glassy winged sharpshooter, a type of leaf hopper, spreads Pierce's disease, which kills grapevines and can also harm almond, citrus and ornamental plants, creating a serious risk for agriculture and home gardens in Humboldt county and across the state. There is currently no known cure for Pierce's disease Due to the clear and present danger the pest and disease pose to local vineyards and backyard growers. It is important that any potentially affected plants are inspected as soon as possible.
Here's what to do.
Early detection is critical.
Anyone who purchased grape plants from the Eureka Costco location on or after Tuesday, April 21 should contact the Humboldt County Agriculture Commissioner's Office to help stop the pest from spreading further.
Please do not plant your recently purchased grapevine from Costco in Eureka if you have not already done so. Residents who purchase grape plants from Costco on or after April 21 should not move or throw away the plants.
Residents should place two garbage bags over the plant, secure them tightly and immediately contact the Humboldt County Agricultural Commissioner's Office for further guidance and to schedule an inspection.
Here's that contact info. You can reach the Agriculture Commissioner's Office on the phone at 707-441-5260.
Again, if you have purchased grapevine plants from the Costco in Eureka on or after April 21, you can get in touch with the Agricultural Commissioner of Humboldt county at 707-441-5260.
Also in Eureka Humboldt Bay Fire responded to a first alarm structure fire near the 3500 block of M Street in Eureka shortly after 5:15am this morning, May 27.
Upon arrival, the first arriving unit encountered heavy fire conditions with approximately 40% of the single family home fully involved crews initiated a quick transitional fire attack, rapidly knocking down the bulk of the fire before transitioning to an interior offensive. Operation Interior crews conducted a primary search of the structure and achieved a primary and secondary all clear, confirming no occupants were inside.
The incident commander confirmed through Eureka police and fire dispatch that the homeowner was safely located elsewhere following the fire. Extinguishment crews faced challenging conditions due to the extensive hoarding inside the residence and conducted a labor intensive overhaul operation.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Humboldt Bay fire reminds residents to maintain clear access for emergency personnel around their homes.
Keeping ornamental vegetation, personal belongings and pathways clear can help prevent delays during emergencies and reduce fire risks in national news with local impacts the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents thousands of workers in the cannabis industry, released a statement in support of a Congressional call to commute the sentences of all people in federal prisons on nonviolent cannabis related charges.
Last week, Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada sent a letter co signed by 26 members of Congress to President Trump and pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson seeking presidential commutations for nonviolent marijuana offenses, citing the DOJ's recent rescheduling of FDA approved marijuana products from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 and the long sentences for thousands of people serving time in federal prison for marijuana associated offenses.
And now to our main stories. This is KMUD News.
Our first story on this broadcast is an in person interview with Samud Flotilla member and local resident Greg Terry. KMUD News reports Greg Terry was one of two Humboldt county residents abducted by the Israeli military in international waters from the Samud Flotilla on May 18.
In total, 428 people were taken and imprisoned by Israel from ships meant to break a naval blockade and deliver sorely needed aid to Gazans. Greg is now back in Humboldt and we were lucky enough to get him to KMUD for an in person interview. We are presenting a lightly edited version of the interview on this newscast and we'll be posting our full interview with Greg Terry online.
What he described are horrible atrocities and terrible treatment of flotilla members by Israeli forces. Here's our interview with Greg Terry, a Humboldt resident who was recently released after being abducted and tortured by Israel.
What is it like on board? What are people looking to do with the flotilla effort?
[00:06:42] Speaker A: We're trying to deliver humanitarian aid, but really on the scale of what's needed in Gaza, what we can carry is pretty small. Really. What we're seeking is a political victory.
The biggest political victory we could achieve would be breaking through the blockade and establishing a political precedent for the delivery of more meaningful amounts of aid and for the free navigation of Palestinians in Gaza on the sea, to use the sea for trade and for fishing, and to bring the power of the governments that are currently complicit or assisting with the genocide, bring that power around to force open. The political victory we ended up achieving was getting our butts kicked on camera by the Zionists for the whole world to see. Myself and a lot of the other European comrades who sailed have a certain amount of political protection on our bodies from the passports we're carrying, from our nationalities.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Can you tell us a little bit more just what happened when Israeli forces intercepted the flotilla being abducted off the ship? And this is a radio audience, of course, so just any descriptors you have of just the experience, how you're treated, how you were possibly touched, what was said to you, and just the experience of being transferred by the Israelis.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: They attacked us twice, actually. Once off Crete, like 650 miles from Palestine. And they got maybe 20 boats in the cruise then and then dropped them off in Crete after roughing them up a little bit. My boat managed to not get caught that time, but we did get caught off the coast of Cyprus. We were kidnapped. The Zionists brought basically their SAR missile corvette as well as an improvised prison ship, and then launched like, fast attack boats to come over and board our sailboats. Then they had us go and wait, kneeling on the bow of the ship until they could maneuver closer to the prison ship. We were transferred onto their fast boats and then brought onto the prison ship. There were two prison ships because the fleet was spread out, so they needed two prison ships to get us all. And the prison ship I was on was relatively mild, right? We were basically given just frozen bread and water for food.
And there was insufficient room for people to sleep in the shipping containers that made up the walls of the prison.
There no mattresses, you're just sleeping on hard, hard plywood. Our clothes were taken, so I was just in thin pants and shirt, as was everyone else. So those of us for whom there wasn't room in the containers, we just had to, like, walk in circles all night to stay warm outside. And then every once in a while, they'd shoot at us with beanbag rounds from their shotguns. The other boat friends who were on that boat described a situation that was pretty hellish. They were all really severely beaten. On their way into the prison, I saw one person who had been pinned to the ground and then tased 20 or 30 times. His whole back is covered with taser burns. I know on that. On that boat, I think there were more than a dozen sexual assaults, including a couple rapes. They also would be woken randomly throughout the day with flashbang grenades being thrown into their prison space, as well as being periodically shot with the beanbag rounds as well. After we were on the prison boat for three nights. No, two nights. Three days. Two nights. And when they brought us to Ashdot in occupied Palestine and drug us out of there, and this is where they picked me up and threw me into a little tent.
Looked up in this tent, and one of my comrades was on the ground being kicked by four soldiers. And then they saw me and they threw him out the other side of the tent and they beat me up for a while. And then someone else got brought in and they threw me out now with my hands zip tied behind my back. And then we were all dragged into one big tent where we all had to kneel on the ground with our hands tied behind our back and our face in the ground for a few hours. And while we were in there, the soldiers distributed quite a few more beatings. People would sometimes call out to have their cuffs loosened. Right. Because people were losing feeling in their hands. A lot of people couldn't move their hands or feel their hands at all. One woman in particular was calling out for that, and they kept coming after her. And I couldn't see her because I was down in the ground. She was a few people away from me, but I could see the guards coming over to her. And I don't know what they were doing to her, but she was just screaming and screaming until she was hoarse over and over and over again.
They were laughing in the background while they did this.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: The guards were so just completely unprovoked. People already have their hands tied behind their back and they're just beating people.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Oh, man.
How long was.
So you talked about a couple nights with the transfer on the prison ship and then the prison in occupied Palestine.
How long were folks there? How long were you there?
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So after the processing in Ashdod, there's like this absurd bureaucratic process of like 100. I went through, like 12 different totally interchangeable bureaucrats, were actually taken to the Kitiat Prison. And we were there for one night, in my experience. And what other people I talked to said is that the whole thing was awful, like, pretty hellish and, you know, like, relentlessly painful and humiliating, but you could hold on to this little thought, like, oh, okay, this is gonna be over in a few days. We'll be deported in a few days. Like I can just find a little quiet place down inside and stay there for a while. But there are Palestinians who have been in Kityat Prison for decades with no trial, no charge, no representation at all. Just like an unending hell that the Zionists have created for Palestinians there. And they don't get to hang on to that little thought that they're going to get out someday. I've talked to some people, heard about cells at Kitsia that are pitch black, no lights and like too small to lay down full length in or stand up in. So you can never stret out, you can never stand up. What we experienced was sort of just like a, a little sample of the kind of relentless violence that the State of Israel is capable of.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Well, it seems interesting too that, you know, the ceasefire and just how it's or so called ceasefire would be the right way to put it. You know, it's basically turned Gaza into completely what Israel was always accused of turning it into, which is a true open air prison with just rubble and desolation and bombings and people can't get out.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think even, even prison is like too generous of a word because prison implies like due process and law. Right. But there's no, that does not exist for Palestinians. It's a concentration camp that, you know, a captive population that they're massacring and you know, so that the, the whole time we're going through this and getting our butts kicked and being forced to kneel and everything, the soldiers and the guards are always taunting everyone and they would kind of vacillate wildly between saying like, oh, like we know you have a good heart, your heart's in the right place. But you're misinformed. Right. The reality is not that bad. But then the next person to taunt you would be like, like there's nothing left in Gaza. You know, we will take you to Gaza and leave you there to die. You know, like we've destroyed Gaza and we're proud. It was like this bizarre flip flopping. The whole, the whole three days was like that. In Kitia Prison, the walls of the cells are covered in Arabic writing. A lot of it looks like poetry the way it's laid out. And like my, my only regret about this whole thing is that I don't speak or read Arabic and I can't, I can't bring back those words of the people who are trapped there, who've been trapped there for years.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: I guess the question then is, you know, what can we do from here? And particularly for elected reps here in Humboldt county and surrounding regions. And I know Congressman Huffman put out a statement, but it was, you know, a fairly benign statement. But what should these folks, what should Adam Schiff, what should the Jared Huffmans of the world be doing right now
[00:14:53] Speaker A: that they're not doing the Jared Huffman's, the Schiffs, first of all, are all taking money from the Israel lobby. I think that's probably a big reason of why they're not doing very much. Even, you know, of our representatives, Huffman was the most active, and all he did was send a tweet.
My friends and family who were advocating for me by talking to our representatives basically only had totally dismal things to say. They were pretty useless and unhelpful. I think politics is about leverage. You want to influence your representatives, you want to influence fascist ethnostate on the other side of the world, right? You got to have leverage. And we can do that by threatening the electoral success of our representatives. We can threaten the profits of companies that partner with Israel, work hand in hand with the genocide in Palestine, and we can continue to do nonviolent direct actions like the globe, assuming fetilla. And I would really encourage anyone who's listening, who wants to make an impact, sign up for the next one or sign up for whatever comes next in these internationalist actions against genocide in Palestine.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: For folks especially in the counties we serve here at Kemah, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte, it's a good idea to maybe put pressure on some of these politicians, possibly to get some more done. Essentially.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
I've been talking. I think that that might be kind of what's next on my schedule is trying to get some face to face time with our representatives and put the pressure on there.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: When we were kind of leading up to this interview, you didn't have your phone anymore. When folks from the flotilla are taken and their belongings are taken, is there any hope of retrieval or do they just steal everything?
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, it's so weird because most of our stuff I think, is trashed. But someone I know just randomly got their headphones back. It's like kind of bizarre.
They have this huge apparatus of paperwork that you go through where they like put your possessions in your pockets in like this evidence bag and seal it. And as you go through this long line of processing, you're accumulating like this stack of paperwork at every step. And at every step, the next official, like, takes all Your paperwork out, looks at it, creates his own form, stuffs it all back in the envelope, and you go on to the next person.
And, I mean, we were in there for a couple of days. I don't know what all this was about, but I think there's sort of a. It's important for this government that's committing crimes against humanity, committing atrocities, to create, like, a legal facade, a bureaucratic facade that somehow justifies all this, that, like, oh, yes, all of these activists were beaten and assaulted and illegally kidnapped. But look, we did the paperwork, so it's fine, right?
I think there's probably the same sort of thing going on for the destruction of Gaza and the murder of Palestinians. There is that.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: I mean, it seems like just giving back random items and doing all this paperwork is just. They just are, as you're saying, paying lip service to the idea of doing things under international law or under policy or in a way that, you know, because, you know, Israel does try to represent itself as a democracy, which is, of course, just completely untrue, you know, and it's just at some point, when does anyone stop believing it?
[00:18:27] Speaker A: While we were in that big tent, we were all forced to kneel. They were playing the national anthem of Israel over and over on repeat. It was a children's choir version, just endlessly for hours. When we would be, like, yelling too loud for a doctor, for someone who had passed out or to get cuffs loosen, right? All the soldiers would all start singing along as loud as they could over the sound of our cries and our voices. And I think they really all believe. I remember from earlier on, in this phase of the genocide, when the bombing of Gaza was really, really intense, there was some surveys done of Israeli citizens asking if you thought the IOF was using the appropriate amount of force in Gaza. And 94% of respondents in Israel said that they thought the IOF was using the right amount or not enough force in the bombing of Gaza, which has killed 80,000 people directly from bombs and bullets and countless more from starvation and disease caused by the IOF's targeting of civilian infrastructure like hospitals and water treatment plants and housing.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: And then kind of the last thing I want to ask, is there anything we missed? Anything else we should get out there? Information? Just things the public doesn't know yet or that needs to be reinforced to our listeners.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: I don't see anything at all redeemable about Zionism or the Israeli project. Right. There's just nowhere to go. I think the ideology is inherently genocidal, right? There's no Reforming it to be somehow collaborative with the Palestinians. Right. What we've seen in the last few years, we've seen Israel escalate the bombing in Gaza to devastating proportions. We've seen them attack Iran, we've seen them seize more land in Syria, we've seen them invade Lebanon again and they're still bombing Lebanon.
And now we've seen them reach out 650 miles into the Mediterranean to attack a fleet of civilians carrying humanitarian aid, kidnap them on international waters.
At every stage of its growth, Israel has claimed that that was enough, that they would stop there. Right.
And immediately. They always continue to expand, continue to push more Palestinians off their land, continue to seize more land from the countries around them.
The imperial appetite of Israel is totally boundless.
If the international community, if the governments that really have the power to stop this don't stop Israel right now, they're just going to keep going around the world calling everything and everyone they don't like Hamas and just trampling human life underfoot with every step.
We cannot allow that to happen. Right. Palestine must be free. And Palestine will be free.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: We thank Greg Terry and all Samud Flotilla members for their immense bravery and strength.
If you want to learn more about the Global Sumit Flotilla, you can check out their
[email protected] an extended length version of our interview with Humboldt resident Greg Terry, who was abducted by Israeli forces last week in international waters, will be posted online via our social media channels.
Reporting for kmud, I'm April Lewis.
Six Rivers National Forest is proposing fee increases at campsites to help maintain their current experiences. KMUD news reports Six Rivers National Forest is proposing slightly increased fees for their campground and cabin sites. We spoke with public affairs officer for Six Rivers National Forest, Betsy Totten to gain more insight into the proposed fee changes.
Starting off here, would just love some background info on the proposed fee increases for Six Rivers National Forest and a little bit of information also on why these fee increases are necessary moving forward.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, the rising costs have made it harder to keep our sites in good shape.
So updating our recreation fees help us maintain the sites we already have and give the public the experiences that they already love on the Six or Seven Rivers National Forest.
Now just these fee increase proposal, it's a few dollars, it's really not that much. But what can come out of it is so much more for not only right now, but for the future as well. So we're really excited about this and
[00:23:17] Speaker B: can you talk about that a little bit? What, what might be in Store for the future. And what could folks see on these sites that could be improved with the fee increase?
[00:23:27] Speaker C: So we're really excited to add a new rental cabin, among many other upgrades. And those upgrades are going to be seen by the folks who recreate on our forest. And that's what's so exciting about it all, is the folks that are going to be giving us insight and giving us comments back, they are going to be the ones that are going to be able to enjoy all the experiences they always have.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: And in terms of that public feedback period, could you let us know a little bit more about that process and just what folks should be presenting in terms of constructive feedback, whether positive or negative, for the fee proposal?
[00:24:09] Speaker C: Well, you know, we just want to know the truth from people. We think because these rates, this rate increase is so minimal, we think most people will be in favor of it. We also believe that most people understand that costs of doing business and cost of everything is just higher nowadays. So the fact that we're only asking to raise it a few dollars a year for just a couple years is actually phenomenal. Our fees currently are lower than a lot of other, most other places across the country for national forests. So us being able to do this and asking for this, we just want to know the truth from people, the public, and we want to hear if they're in favor, if they're not in fav. Give us your ideas, give us what you think, give us what you'd like to see. This is your chance to just let us know how you feel about it and how we can help and best take care of the public we serve. Do want to add that once the public involvement is complete, these recreation fee changes will be reviewed by an advisory committee.
And that committee is a broad array of. Of recreational interest groups. So we want to make sure that we're doing this responsibly and over a wide variety of different folks.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: In terms of any of our listeners who may not have visited Six Rivers National Forest before, or maybe it's been a long time, what are some of the things they should go see or even some of the facilities that you offer, especially for the summer recreation season.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: If you are in the KMUD listening area and you have not explored Six Rivers National Forest, it needs to be top on your list for this spring and summer months especially.
You can go to our website and click on the recreation tab and you can find everything we have to offer here on the forest.
If you want to just go on a hike one day, you can just go out and go on a hike. If you want to just sit somewhere next to to a beautiful place and have a cup of tea and not do anything else, we have places for that too.
Anything on the spectrum of recreating, and I do consider just sitting in nature recreating anything you can possibly want we have here on Six Rivers National Forest.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: If you would like to comment, learn more about the proposed fee increases for campers in Six Rivers National Forest.
You can direct questions to 707-441-3543.
Reporting for KMUD, I'm April Lewis.
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