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Thumbnail image for Sex in San Diego: Why Emergency Contraceptive Terrifies Christian Conservatives

Sex in San Diego: Why Emergency Contraceptive Terrifies Christian Conservatives

by Source 05.22.2013 Government

By Valerie Taric / Alternet

You know the 11-year-old down the street who is dividing her after-school time between the park where she gets laid and the drug store where she buys her douches? Yeah, neither do I.

But apparently a number of right-wing commentators live in a different world than we do, because in their world that girl is the reason all of us should have to show ID to get emergency contraception.

In their world, if we can get EC without showing our names and birth dates, so can she. Apparently, this girl’s fear of pregnancy is the only thing keeping her and her peers from even nastier sex lives. Think tweens gone wild. As columnist Kathleen Parker put it, “As long as there’s an exit, whether abortion or Plan B, what’s the incentive to await mere maturity?”

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Spanking in the Name of the Lord

by Source 05.20.2013 Books & Poetry

When Children are Maltreated by Religious Groups

By Dave Rice

Child sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church have repeatedly rocked the nation for more than a decade now, and in 2010 spread locally to reach the San Diego Diocese. The so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early ‘90s brought the prospect of harm to children through mysterious and violent rituals to the forefront of the nation’s attention (though such focus turned out to be largely overblown), while periodically stories reach the news involving the tragic death of a child raised by a family of religious separatists. Incidents such as the aforementioned remind us that institutions of faith are capable of inspiring misplaced trust that can bring harm to the most vulnerable amongst us: our children.

These stories, however, just scratch the surface of a more widespread problem concerning the mistreatment of children in the name of religion, says Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment.

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Thumbnail image for Big Food, Big Heart: The Big Kitchen

Big Food, Big Heart: The Big Kitchen

by Source 05.20.2013 Culture

The Big Kitchen Café
3003 Grape St.
San Diego, CA 92102
(619) 234-5789
Web: http://bigkitchencafe.com/

Review by Emma Goldman

“Kindness Matters.” The sign tacked above the doorframe leading into the kitchen caught my eye as my 9 year-old and I took a seat at the horseshoe shaped counter that hunkers down in the center of the main dining room of the Big Kitchen Café, a Greater Golden Hill/South Park institution.

As we waited for one of the bevy of young servers to come get our order, we couldn’t keep from scanning the heavily festooned walls—customers’ family photos, progressive bumper stickers, band flyers, necklaces, cartoons, feathers, pastel teapots, mandalas, salt and pepper shakers in funny shapes, kids’ art, magazine covers touting the restaurant, plaques of appreciation, etc.

There is no other place in San Diego like the Big Kitchen, a community center and diner that has anchored Greater Golden Hill since the early-‘70s. And at its helm, of course, is its warm and irrepressible owner, Judy “the Beauty on Duty” Forman, who is the very soul of kindness.

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Thumbnail image for Readers Write: We Need Your Support! No-cost Bus Passes Are An Investment in the Future

Readers Write: We Need Your Support! No-cost Bus Passes Are An Investment in the Future

by Source 05.20.2013 Readers Write

By Angeli Hernandez

I decided to embark on this campaign because as a young woman, I have seen first-hand the dangers that shadow City Heights residents.

My name is Angeli Hernandez, and I live in City Heights. The Youth Opportunity Pass is a no-cost bus pass for young people. Just as the name says, this pass is a tool that opens up opportunities for youth. Many young people, including myself, have to go to their jobs or internships and school.

The lack of money in our families leaves us with no other alternative other than walking or biking, instead of taking public transportation. In an ideal world, walking and biking to work and school wouldn’t be an issue, but dangers lurk on those paths and roads.

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Thumbnail image for Those Uninvited Guests at Your Barbecue

Those Uninvited Guests at Your Barbecue

by Source 05.18.2013 Environment

With most samples of several common store-bought meats testing positive for antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” factory farming practices must change.

By  / OtherWords

Planning a Memorial Day barbecue? When you buy meat for that festive meal, watch out for some uninvited guests. An alarming amount of American meat harbors not just pathogens, but “superbugs” — antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

For now, you’d better cook your meat well enough to kill the germs (165F is the magic temperature), but there might be hope for safer alternatives in the future. Consumer advocates and lawmakers are trying to push changes that make these superbugs a thing of the past. That’s never been so important because industrialized agriculture delivers efficiency, productivity, and profit at the expense of food safety.

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Thumbnail image for Heroes and Villains: Does US Foreign Policy Understand the Difference?

Heroes and Villains: Does US Foreign Policy Understand the Difference?

by Source 05.18.2013 Activism

By Joseph Howard Crews

For 60 years the most celebrated and revered African in history was listed as a terrorist threat to the people of the United States. Who decided this? Why did Americans allow this, and what does it say about what we are?

In 2008, former South African President Nelson Mandela was finally removed from the U.S. terrorism watch list. Mandela and other members of the African National Congress had been placed on the list because of their fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime — a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the country’s National Party between 1948 and 1994.

Yet it was just days ago that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt — a man once lauded by President Ronald Reagan — was convicted of genocide after a Guatemalan court found him guilty for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. In fact, a total of 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or “disappeared” during the conflict, making it one of Latin America’s most violent wars in modern history.

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Thumbnail image for The IRS War on Medical Marijuana Providers

The IRS War on Medical Marijuana Providers

by Source 05.18.2013 Business

By Clarence Walker / StoptheDrugWar.org

Dispensaries providing marijuana to doctor-approved patients operate in a number of states, but they are under assault by the federal government. SWAT-style raids by the DEA and finger-wagging press conferences by grim-faced federal prosecutors may garner greater attention, but the assault on medical marijuana providers extends to other branches of the government as well, and moves by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to eliminate dispensaries’ ability to take standard business deduction are another very painful arrow in the federal quiver.

The IRS employs Section 280E, a 1982 addition to the tax code that was a response to a drug dealer’s successful effort to claim his yacht, weapons purchases, and even illicit bribes as business expenses. Under 280E, individuals involved in the illicit sale of controlled substances — including marijuana, even medical marijuana in states where it is legal — cannot claim standard business expenses on their federal taxes.

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Thumbnail image for 4 Inhumane Realities about the Guantanamo Hunger Strike

4 Inhumane Realities about the Guantanamo Hunger Strike

by Source 05.18.2013 Government

By Steven Hsieh / Alternet

Friday [marked] 100 days since the beginning of the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay that has recaptured international attention on the offshore prison President Obama promised to close when seeking office five years ago.

As of Thursday, military officials say that 102 out of 166 detainees are participating in the strike. Lawyers say that number is closer to 130.

Since the hunger strike began 100 days ago, international groups including the European Parliament, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and several nations with detainees at GITMO have stepped up pressure on the Obama administration to release detainees or close the prison altogether.

As the strike continues past its 100th day, here are four of the most disturbing facts about the situation at Guantanamo.

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Thumbnail image for Sex in San Diego: Marriage Is For Losers

Sex in San Diego: Marriage Is For Losers

by Source 05.15.2013 Sex in San Diego

By Dr. Kelly Flanagan / UnTangled

You can be right, or you can be married; take your pick. I can’t remember who told me that, but I do remember that they were only half-joking. The other half, the serious half, is exceedingly important. This is why.

Many therapists aren’t crazy about doing marital therapy. It’s complicated and messy, and it often feels out of control. In the worst case scenario, the therapist has front row seats to a regularly-scheduled prize fight. But I love to do marital therapy. Why? Maybe I enjoy the work because I keep one simple principle in mind: if marriage is going to work, it needs to become a contest to see which spouse is going to lose the most, and it needs to be a race that goes down to the wire.

When it comes to winning and losing, I think there are three kinds of marriages.

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Thumbnail image for Desperate “Times” at Anti-Koch Brothers Rally

Desperate “Times” at Anti-Koch Brothers Rally

by Source 05.15.2013 Business

By Danny Feingold/Frying Pan News

The L.A. Times has not exactly been falling all over itself lately to curry favor with the city’s labor movement, with a seemingly endless stream of news stories, columns and editorials portraying unions in a less than sympathetic light. So the last thing one might have expected to see was a rally of workers and labor leaders coming to the defense of L.A.’s paper of record.

But desperate times call for desperate measures – and with the Koch brothers potentially poised to take over Spring Street, the present moment certainly meets the test.

In case you have tuned out the Times and every other source of local news, Charles and David Koch – patron saints of the Tea Party, best friends to climate change deniers and bankrollers of an endless parade of far-right causes – have set their sights on the Tribune Company’s empire. After emerging from a bankruptcy brought on by the rapacious practices of former owner Sam Zell, Tribune’s far-flung newspaper interests are up for grabs. And while Rupert Murdoch and a local consortium headed by Eli Broad are also in the running, public attention has focused on the Kochs.

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Thumbnail image for Pharmacist Kickbacks Put California Patient Health at Risk

Pharmacist Kickbacks Put California Patient Health at Risk

by Source 05.15.2013 Activism

By Hollaine Hopkins/California Progress Report

Health care cost containment is a critical issue facing every participant in the health care system. Efforts to contain costs, however, appear to have given rise to dangerous financial arrangements between health insurers and pharmacists that may be jeopardizing the health of California patients.

A loophole in California law allows your health insurer to give a financial kickback to your pharmacist every time the pharmacist switches your medication to older, cheaper, non-chemically equivalent drugs from those originally prescribed by your doctor, even without your knowledge.

Switching patients to non-chemically equivalent drugs is a potentially dangerous practice known as “therapeutic substitution.” Unlike switching patients to identical generic drugs – which simply function as a cheaper alternative – pharmacists who make therapeutic substitutions are subjecting patients to drugs with different ingredients and dosages, different release mechanisms, and different side effects and complications.

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Thumbnail image for Eating 25th Street in Golden Hill

Eating 25th Street in Golden Hill

by Source 05.13.2013 Culture

Part I: Breakfast

By Emma Goldman

“MOM! I’m hungryyyyy!”

It was 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning. I was still in my Wonder Woman jammies finishing my coffee.

I looked at my nine year-old who was lounging on our couch watching cartoons, clutching his belly, and said: “Golden Hill Café or Los Reyes?

Eggs, bacon, and hash browns? Or a breakfast burrito? Or donuts and pastries at Panchitas? A Wonchi with bacon at Krakatoa? Or we could wait for lunch and get a slice of pizza at Luigi’s or a falafel wrap at the Kabob House….”

You see, we are surrounded by food places where we live in Golden Hill. And more places have been opening up to keep things interesting. Later on, as my son was devouring his massive egg, bacon, potato, and cheese burrito from one of our taco stands, I decided to do a three part series on eating in Golden Hill with a special focus on 25th Street, as that has the greatest concentration of places to go in this historic neighborhood.

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Thumbnail image for Working Mother’s Day

Working Mother’s Day

by Source 05.12.2013 Culture

By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

My mother went into paid work soon after my father’s clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money.

This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work.

For the few with four-year college degrees the transformation was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But for the vast majority it was because male wages were dropping, and wives and mothers had to get paid jobs in order to prop up family incomes.

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Thumbnail image for Free Barrier-Breaking College Prep Program in Barrio Logan to Expand

Free Barrier-Breaking College Prep Program in Barrio Logan to Expand

by Source 05.09.2013 Activism

The Barrio Logan College Institute Moves in with Monarch School

By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

From late afternoon to early evening daily, a bilingual team of eight devoted staffers works throughout the week with 200 committed barrio kids — some as young as Grade 3 — establishing curriculum, coordinating tutors, arranging for in-house speakers and field trips, setting up collaborative learning experiences, conferring with parents, interfacing with students whose names and histories they know well.

This is Barrio Logan College Institute (BLCI) where students absorb what an old teacher friend of mine used to call “the culture of school.” Learning how to study. How to shake hands in greeting and goodbye, with an abrazo here and there. Tutorials in language arts and math. Goal-setting. Learning about self-organization, follow-through, discipline, promptness. How to be resilient when there’s disappointment.

BLCI students will be the first in their families to go to university, knowing they are following patterns set by these mentors on the staff. Development director Luis Murillo, 30, has for now set aside an earlier interest in law school, saying, “I love what we do here.”

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Thumbnail image for Sex in San Diego: Pentagon Study Finds 26,000 Military Sexual Assaults Last Year, Over 70 Sex Crimes Per Day

Sex in San Diego: Pentagon Study Finds 26,000 Military Sexual Assaults Last Year, Over 70 Sex Crimes Per Day

by Source 05.08.2013 Activism

Editor: The following is a transcript of Amy Goodman’s program on Democracy Now from yesterday, May 8, that aired highlights from Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on military sexual assaults . We also include the video – see below.

Democracy Now!

Anu Bhagwati, executive director and co-founder of Service Women’s Action Network, says this about the Pentagon report:

“The numbers are outrageous, and I think we’ve reached a tipping point. The American public is furious.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A shocking new report by the Pentagon has found that 70 sexual assaults may be taking place within the U.S. military every day. The report estimated there were 26,000 sex crimes committed in 2012, a jump of 37 percent since 2010. Most of the incidents were never reported.

The Pentagon study was published just two days after the head of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was arrested for sexual assault for allegedly groping a woman in a Virginia parking lot on Sunday. The Air Force has removed Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Krusinski from his post.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York questioned Air Force Secretary Michael Donley about sexual assault in the military.

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Thumbnail image for Rep. Peters ‘Sequesters’ His Own Pay; Donates it to Feed Seniors In Need

Rep. Peters ‘Sequesters’ His Own Pay; Donates it to Feed Seniors In Need

by Source 05.08.2013 Government

“The rules Congress imposes on others should apply to us too”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today (Tuesday) Congressman Scott Peters (CA-52) applied the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration to his own paycheck, stating that “any rules Congress imposes on federal employees and all Americans ought to apply to us, too.” He will take eight percent of his monthly salary, which equates to about $1,300 per month, and donate it to the Senior Community Center of San Diego to supplement meals for at-risk seniors. The Senior Community Centers has had to cut services to seniors, many of whom are veterans, due to funding losses from the sequester.

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Thumbnail image for Joint-use Fields and the Sidewalks Where Sexy Streets End

Joint-use Fields and the Sidewalks Where Sexy Streets End

by Source 05.08.2013 Activism

By Beryl Forman

Where there is a lack of public park space in a neighborhood, as is the case in San Diego, often a solution is to convert a school field into a joint-use field. This allows a park to remain open to the public after school hours. In the City of San Diego, the our Park & Recreation Department and the San Diego Unified School District have created legal agreements to establish joint-use fields.

Unfortunately, that is only half the solution. What is lacking from many of these joint-use parks is the ability to function as a public park. Take for example Wilson Middle School in City Heights. The entrance to the school is in on Orange Ave, at the corner of 38th Street. It once faced El Cajon Boulevard, but the structure was reversed during a period of re-developing buildings to become earthquake proof. This left El Cajon Boulevard with an expansive fence line and no available access (because the door remains locked) to the school and the park. In fact, there is only one entrance on Orange Ave, which is difficult to find and limits access to residents living north of El Cajon Boulevard.

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Thumbnail image for Readers Write: My Take on the Gun Debate

Readers Write: My Take on the Gun Debate

by Source 05.07.2013 Readers Write

Eds Note: This was sent to us as a comment on John Lawrence’s piece Two Year Old Girl Shot and Killed by Five Year Old Brother Wielding ‘My First Gun’.  It was on the long side for a comment, so, with the author’s permission, we are publishing it here.

By Paul Broadway

I know that a young child was killed. I hold the parents accountable, that being said, I know the gun control issue is a divisive and polarizing issue in America. I believe that this divisiveness and polarity is due to the fact that our country has a “Gun Culture” that is based in our laws and traditions. I also believe that the gun violence in America is directly associated with our business, media, and political system and not the product of the actual guns that are available to the American people.

The reason that I believe this?

Let’s take a look at the National Rifle Association. The NRA was once an honorable organization that trained youth organizations and police departments in firearm safety, marksmanship, and responsible gun use.

Today, the NRA is a political shill for any private interest that contributes to their organization. I go to the San Diego Police Range on a regular basis to practice my pistol and revolver skills. I don’t see much good the NRA is doing for the citizens of San Diego at the San Diego Police Range.

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Thumbnail image for BLOG UGLY: SD Rostra’s Nostrums

BLOG UGLY: SD Rostra’s Nostrums

by Source 05.06.2013 BLOG UGLY

By Bob Dorn

In modern times nothing has been more effective in bringing down the Republicans than the Republicans.

Hubris it might be called. From Richard Nixon’s embarrassing proposal for a White House ceremonial guard dressed in musical comedy uniforms to Ronald Reagan’s naked affection for ranchero machismo to George Dubya’s endorsement of even faker ranchero machismo (he didn’t like horses and went awol from his national guard post); professed Republicans have tended to talk tough. And done poof.

They’re fantasists, of a particular variety.

Locally, there’s no better example of this commitment to the wet dreams of destiny than the website, San Diego Rostra.

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Thumbnail image for San Ysidro: From Bi-National Lifestyle to Bi-National Border Region Center?

San Ysidro: From Bi-National Lifestyle to Bi-National Border Region Center?

by Source 05.05.2013 Activism

By Beryl Forman

Growing up in the 1970’s in Tijuana, Linda Caballero Sotelo explained that “our mind set was that we had the best of both worlds.” Almost everyone moved freely through the border to accomplish their daily activities. For groceries, people from Tijuana preferred to shop locally for their meat, produce, cheese, and tortillas, but would cross regularly for bread, canned items, ice cream, novelty goods, and to do large loads of laundry. She recalls a childhood activity of going to Bonita on Tuesday nights for $1 movies. This bi-national lifestyle is inherent to many who grew up close to the border.

While it is evident that this way of life is no longer as flexible, Linda believes that San Ysidro, adjacent to the Mexican border, has never greatly benefited from this cross border lifestyle. Linda consults and works for Casa Familiar, a neighborhood based community development, social service agency in San Ysidro. From the perspective of someone who grew up in Tijuana, Linda describes San Ysidro as a pass through area, a place to exchange money, run last minute errands, fill up the car with gasoline, but not a place to spend leisure or otherwise valuable time.

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