Conservatives Rally Behind Exxon-Mobil’s ‘Right to Lie’
By Doug Porter
Twin tales of scheming and misleading by Exxon-Mobil executives seeking to suppress evidence of climate change for decades have emerged in recent weeks. Drawing on completely separate archives, Pulitzer-prize winning reporters at Inside Climate News and another team with the Los Angeles Times have reached the same conclusion: that the company ignored and suppressed data at odds with the continued expansion of the fossil fuel business.
In September, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, along with 20 climate scientists, called for an investigation of fossil fuel companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Last week, members of the House Oversight And Government Reform Committee sent their own letter asking the Department of Justice to “investigate ExxonMobil for organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information to investors and the public.”
Media Matters for America is reporting on what appears to be a concerted campaign in the right wing media to defend the “right” of fossil fuel companies to lie to the public. Assorted conservatives on Fox News, The Hill, The Blaze, Breitbart News, the Wall Street Journal and other media are claiming these calls for investigations amount to criminalization of policy differences. [Read more…]
Thinking of Josephine and James and Langston and Other Gay Icons
By Ernie McCray
After writing recently about a five-year-old girl being kicked out of a Christian Academy, in what seemed to me to be an example of rampant homophobia in the black community, I began thinking “Is it just me?”
Then a childhood friend commented on what I had written with these words: “This is all new to me in the black churches… many gay persons played the music, sang in the choir, helped get those fashion shows together and no one said a mumbling word or they never appeared to out loud.”
What a relief to discover it just wasn’t me who feels the way I do because what my homey had to say is so how I remember things back in the day – so how I happened to live all these years thinking that black folks were okay with folks who are gay. [Read more…]
Guns, Angry People and Mass Murders: The Cycle Continues Until We Stop It
By John Lawrence
We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can’t flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals. It’s a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.
It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It’s ubiquitous. It’s celebrated and it’s done in order to make money from “entertainment.”
That’s right. We’re entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don’t think so. How many video games don’t involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason. [Read more…]
Finally, Democratic Presidential Candidates Say Good Things about Marijuana Legalization
In years past, candidates totally ignored the failed war on drugs and the harms of marijuana prohibition
By Tony Newman / AlterNet
During the first Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) became the first major presidential candidate to say that he would support legalizing marijuana if given the chance. Asked whether he would support an upcoming ballot measure on legalization in Nevada, Sanders said:
“I suspect I would vote yes. And I would vote yes because I am seeing in this country too many lives being destroyed for non-violent offenses. We have a criminal justice system that lets CEOs on Wall Street walk away and yet we are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana. I think we have to think through this war on drugs, which has done an enormous amount of damage. We need to rethink our criminal justice system and we’ve got a lot of work to do in that area.” [Read more…]
Lt. Gov. Newsom’s Gun Violence Initiative Draws Predictable Fire
By Doug Porter
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference yesterday, rolling out details of a proposed ballot initiative aimed at reducing gun violence in California. The setting for the announcement was San Francisco’s 101 California St. office building, site of a 1993 mass shooting.
The measure, co-authored by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, includes provisions of bills that have stalled at the state Capitol or were vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years.
Owners would be required to dispose of weapons with high capacity magazines grandfathered in after the 1999 ban. Ammunition sellers would be licensed and required to do point-of-sale background checks on every purchase of ammunition. A process would be established to seize guns from people prohibited from owning them because of their criminal records and federal authorities would be automatically notified of each addition to the state’s databased on prohibited firearms owners.
Needless to say, gun groups are locking and loading. [Read more…]
Turista Libre Teams Up With Tijuana Photography Festival
Turista Libre tour of Tijuana Photo Festival captures border town’s moment of change
By George Howell
What better way to get to a photography festival than to sit in an old school bus with the artist-organizers and a handful of curious Americans, listening to booming dance music while the eastern hinterlands of Tijuana whiz past your window?
On Saturday, October 3rd, I hopped on board the bus tour co-sponsored by Turista Libre, the Tijuana-based tour operator, and the coordinating team of the modest, but highly ambitious First International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT). As artist Rebecca Goldschmidt told me, “We don’t just want to take people to the sites where the festival events are taking place. We want a dialogue.” [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Bodysurfing
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Skimming glassy waves
Beaded strands of water fly
From crests, closing lips
The nosediving sun ascends
Into heaven once again [Read more…]
A Dark and Dirty Shadow Falls Over California Plastic Bag Ban
By Doug Porter
Efforts to eliminate the use of plastic grocery bags in California face all-out opposition via two well-funded industry campaigns in 2016. Hilex Poly, Superbag Corp, Advance Polybag and Formosa Plastics Corporation are expected to cough up most of the probable $55.3 million price tag for the efforts.
An estimated $38.1 million war chest will back a November referendum aimed at SB270, State Senator Alex Padilla’s bill banning the use of plastic bags. The measure was suspended following a $3.2 million signature-gathering campaign funded by the American Progressive Bag Alliance.
And just to make sure they get their way, industry proponents are spending an estimated $4 million qualifying a second ballot measure innocuously titled the Environmental Fee Protection Act. It’s likely they’ll spend $17.2 million selling this bit of misdirection, according to Forward Observer.com. [Read more…]
Race to the Bottom
By Jeeni Criscenzo
Driving back to San Diego from a conference in Fresno
down 99 through the San Joaquin Valley,
you’d have to be sleep-driving not to see it – the Death Valley of California.
Miles after miles,
acres after acres,
east and west,
abandoned farmland as far as the mountain edged horizon,
not so long from being lush that you couldn’t identify what once was,
or dread what isn’t yet – that rugged desert
that comes next, after the tiniest bit of rain. [Read more…]
‘Sunshine/Noir II’ is for Bibliophiles
San Diego City Works Press’ distinctive approach to book as object
By Anna Daniels
While mass market publishing continues to flourish and self-publishing has increased, small independent presses have declined over the past decades. Those of us who can’t imagine a trip to San Francisco without a visit to the City Lights bookstore are an indication of the limited but passionate support that still remains for independent publishing.
Small presses release limited runs of titles and address a specific niche and readership which mass marketing publishers largely ignore. They seek out emerging talent, provide a platform for out of the mainstream views and take risks that go far beyond the financial– City Light’s publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1955 resulted in an obscenity trial.
Another small press hallmark is the attention to how the book as an object feels and looks. That means high quality paper and unique cover art and illustrations. San Diego City Works Press’ release of Sunshine/ Noir II is a reminder of what small independent publishers can do better and differently than the big guys. [Read more…]
Buena Vista Social Club in the (White) House!
By Staff
Here’s something to celebrate–the Cuban musicians who compromise the Buena Vista Social Club will be performing at the White House on October 15. They have been touring the United States for almost twenty years. They got their start in 1997 when Ry Cooder searched out a number of aging and forgotten singers and musicians from Cuba’s rich musical past, brought them together and cut the album Buena Vista Social Club. Wim Wenders documented the process and outcome in his popular film of the same name.
It’s worth remembering that while the group was well received here, there was bitter and loud push back from the most anti-Castro segments of the Cuban exile community in Miami. [Read more…]
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