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Terrorism Bumps Climate Change Off the Front Page

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The United Nations climate conference in Paris has been pushed off the top of the news in the US cycle by stories relating to what now appears to have been an act of terrorism in San Bernadino. Various news agencies are reporting that suspect Tashfeen Malik pledged her allegiance to an Islamic State leader on Facebook.

The current consensus is that the couple were inspired by, rather than ordered to action by the terrorist group. The media narrative is befuddled, I think, because the possibility of a woman being the instigator of the act hadn’t been considered.

Despite the media’s propensity for hyperbole (the so-call flak jackets worn during the attack were actually vests with multiple pockets), enough detail has emerged to conclude the San Bernadino shooting was not a singular act. Most damning are the law enforcement sources quoted about hard drives and cell phones being destroyed in the days leading up to the attack.   [Read more…]

San Bernadino Shooting Kicks Off Holiday Gun Sales

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A man and his wife shot up a San Bernadino county employee holiday party yesterday, killing 14 people and wounding 21 more. Police caught up with them a few hours later driving a black SUV. A gunfight ensued. Both the shooters were killed. A police officer suffered a non-life-threatening injury. CNN is reporting this morning the perpetrators may have been ‘radicalized.’

Another day, another mass shooting, defined as four or more victims wounded or killed by gunfire. Earlier in the day, four people were shot in Georgia, one of whom died. In the past week, there have been six mass shootings. There have been twenty days so far in 2015 with four or more mass shootings. The U.S. has seen 355 mass shootings so far in 2015. Like I said, just another day.

Meanwhile, gun sales are going up, according to NBC News. There were more gun background checks on this year’s Black Friday than any other single day on record: 185,345, according to the FBI. That’s up five percent from Black Friday last year, when there were 175,754 background checks. If past shooting events are any indicator, December will be a very profitable month for the arms industry.   [Read more…]

Paris’ Forgotten Massacre of October 1961

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By Nat Krieger

To call the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris the worst mass killing in the City of Lights since World War II is evidence of the mainstream media’s collective and selective amnesia.

On October 17, 1961, at the climax of the Algerian War of Independence against France, tens of thousands of peaceful protesters filled the boulevards of Paris to demand an end to a police ordered curfew that prohibited “Algerian workers…[and] French Algerian Muslims” from being in the streets from 8:30 pm to 5:30 am. The Prefect of the Paris police, the same man who rounded up 1,600 Jews for the Nazis during World War II, was ready for the demonstrators. The police cordoned the Algerians off into small groups, or trapped them on bridges over the Seine, and either opened fire or waded in, batons swinging.

Thousands were arrested and detained in the same velodrome where the Jews of Paris had been held for transport to Auschwitz 19 years earlier. An estimated 200 demonstrators (the exact number will never be known) were shot or beaten to death in the streets of Paris, in prisons across the city, even in the courtyard of Police Headquarters steps from Notre Dame, their mutilated bodies dumped into the Seine for nights afterward.

As with the hundreds of other massacres committed by all sides in the decades of struggle between France and her former colonies there has never been an accounting, a trial, or any kind of process to establish the truth, let alone reconciliation.   [Read more…]

Climate Artists Commit ‘Brandalism’ to Expose Corporate Hijacking of COP21

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‘The multinationals responsible for climate change can keep green-washing their destructive business models, but the communities directly impacted by them are silenced.’

By Sarah Lazare / CommonDreams

As the French state cracks down on public protests, a group of artists has devised a creative—and clandestine—way to illustrate public outrage at what they call the “corporate takeover” of the ongoing COP21 United Nations climate talks in Paris.

Naming their campaign “Brandalism,” over 80 artists from 19 countries have plastered the French capital with 600 unauthorized pieces of art taking the form of spoof advertisements to critique the role of multinationals, from AirFrance to Dow Chemical, in the summit.   [Read more…]

So a Right Wing Nut Job with a Gun Walks into a Planned Parenthood Office…

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Friday’s shootout at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs left three people dead, nine people wounded and right-wingers scrambling to distance themselves from an act of terrorism.

Misogyny, alienation and insanity were likely driving forces behind the actions of the 59-year-old white male who surrendered to police after the five hour seize. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he had no ties to organized hate groups.

As the media and their sources in law enforcement have proclaimed the dozen or so “lone wolf” attacks in recent years to have been inspired by radical Islam,” it would appear what happened in Colorado Springs was a lone wolf attack inspired by radical right-wing righteousness.   [Read more…]

Anti-Muslim Bigotry in San Diego; Trump’s Racist Rampage Continues

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A female Muslim student at San Diego State University was assaulted on campus last week. An unknown male, believed to be a SDSU student, pushed her and pulled her by her hijab while making hate comments and threats based on her religious appearance.

An unidentified pregnant woman, dressed in a traditional Muslim headscarf and pushing her child in a stroller in Mission Valley, was stopped by an unidentified man making racially charged threats. He went so far as to push her stroller back into her.

Those are just the most recent two of the 170 reported threats against Muslims in San Diego this year, according to officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Muslim Student Association organized a rally at SDSU for today, urging the community at large to come make a statement against Islamophobia.   [Read more…]

The Citizens’ Plan Offers San Diegans a Say in Tourism

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Oh, what a tangled web we weave in San Diego. Tourism tax dollars go into private coffers. Hotel owners snap their fingers and elected officials bow down before them. Our local politicians say and the media convey our most pressing needs as a meeting hall and a place to play football. The mayor fills potholes for TV cameras to make citizens feel better about it all.

The spoilers in all this have been lawsuits. The biggest one of them all is likely coming  to trial shortly after the first of the year. San Diego’s hoteliers have spent millions of tourism tax dollars defending the indefensible. Their attempts to shoot the messenger, both in the courts and in the media seem doomed to fail.

It may sound a little complicated, but there is a way to straighten this mess out.  A proposed initiative that would change the current system rolls out today, endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, and a host of others to be made public at an upcoming press conference.   [Read more…]

Dr. Ben Carson Brings (Terrorist Recruiting) Campaign to San Diego

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Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson was in San Diego yesterday, ostensibly appearing at campaign fundraisers in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe.

The big news, however, continues to be Republican cooperation with the idea of spreading fear and loathing outside the Caliphate, as Carson and other candidates have wasted no time in exploiting the Paris attacks as a way to prove who’s “tougher” on terrorism.

In doing so, they’ve fallen right into ISIS’ trap. They might as well open terrorist recruiting offices in major cities.   [Read more…]

Hillary Held Her Own at Dems Debate; Sanders Needs to Step Up His Game

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I guess I have to start out by saying Senator Bernie Sanders is the democratic candidate whose positions align most closely with my own. I will, given the opportunity, cast my vote for him in the California primary.

Having put that disclaimer up first, I’ll go on to say that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won (by not losing) in Saturday’s Democratic Debate. Yes, I know that Sanders won every straw poll out there. I also know that Ron Paul won a lot of straw polls in 2012.

Straw polls don’t replace actual canvassing, social media interest is an unreliable predictor for election results, and the photos of overwhelmingly white male attendees at Sanders watch parties are a big warning flag about vital segments of the electorate that are not engaged with the campaign.   [Read more…]

Wargasms Won’t Stop More Paris Bombings

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As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh… Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

News out of Paris dominated the media over the past few days. Shock and horror turned to anger and disgust.

At least 129 people were killed in a coordinated terrorist attack on Friday evening. At least 350 people were wounded, 99 of them in critical condition.

The terrorist group known as the Islamic State has claimed credit, and law enforcement investigators are inclined to agree these attacks were coordinated out of Syria via Belgium.

Seven people killed themselves in the course of the attacks, an eighth attacker is the subject of a massive manhunt. Scores of arrests have been made as police in France and Belgium have raided homes and picked up some of the usual suspects. Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud –who may have already fled to Syria– has been identified as the leader of the group.

And the French are bombing the sh*t out of Syria.   [Read more…]

Will the City Council Join the Anti-Starbucks Holiday Coffee Cup Crusade?

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The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday opposing the mere thought of a transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

This was an act of political cowardice based on fear-mongering, led by Councilman Chris Cate, seeking to bolster his conservative cred. Now he’s officially a “manly man,” capable of staring down imagined threats no matter where they are imagined.

The fact of San Diego not being under consideration as a detainee destination wasn’t as important as a four-year-old assessment survey that included a look at local facilities. Sites actually under consideration are in Colorado, Kansas, and South Carolina. In addition, Congress has passed a defense spending measure barring the transfer of prisoners to US soil.   [Read more…]

San Diego, We Have a Use of Deadly Force Problem

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It should surprise no one that County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis called a press conference yesterday announcing that charges will not be filed against the San Diego Police officer who shot and killed Fridoon Rawshan Nehad in the Midway District last April.

Her conclusion may or may not be reasonable. The DA said Officer Neal Browder’s fear for his life was reasonable, based on the totality of evidence. She also said the dead man was mentally ill and DRUGS! were found in his system.

So there you have it. A “drug-crazed foreigner” got what was coming to him. Today we’ll look at developments in that case and one Customs and Border Patrol story in the news.   [Read more…]

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