San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Trump’s Attack on the Press: 4 Techniques of a Tyrant

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Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques that, worryingly, Donald Trump is already using.

1. Berate the media and turn the public against it. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” When Trump lies – claiming, for example, “massive voter fraud” in the election, and that he “won in a landslide” – and the media call him on those lies, Trump claims the media is lying. Even televised satires he labels “unfunny, one-sided, and pathetic.”   [Read more…]

Historic Marston House Hosts Book Release of Maria Garcia’s ‘La Neighbor’

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Maria Garcia recently release her long awaited book based on the award winning San Diego Free Press series The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. The site of the book release—the historic Marston House—was no accident.

On Saturday December 10 over fifty people gathered at the Marston House garden where decades earlier San Diego businessman and philanthropist George Marston and his daughters Mary and Helen held fundraisers for the settlement house.   [Read more…]

Anti Choice Women’s Clinics Seek to Defy State Law in San Diego County and El Cajon

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Editor Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2016. The effort to erode women’s reproductive rights and access to health services here in San Diego was one of the under-reported stories of 2016.

The County of San Diego and the City of El Cajon are considering a proposed settlement with anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, amounting to a pledge not enforce the Reproductive FACT Act.

In response, local pro-choice activists are presenting El Cajon City Attorney Morgan Foley and San Diego County Counsel Thomas Montgomery with petitions signed by 25,000 Californians urging them to enforce the letter and the spirit of the law.

NARAL Pro-Choice California, UltraViolet and Courage Campaign have been gathering signatures since the anti-choice organizations offered to remove local authorities as named defendants in lawsuits if they agree not to apply the law.   [Read more…]

Let’s Not Forget Our Core Values, Congressman Hunter

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By Shawn VanDiver

“There are some assholes in the world who just need to be shot.”

What a striking sound bite–especially when it is ascribed to President-elect Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense, the beloved and seemingly infallible General “Mad Dog” Mattis. Reality, however, cannot always be summed up through sound bites. And besides, General Mattis surely could not have meant that unarmed civilians or detainees in the custody of the U.S. Military deserve to be killed without trial or imminent threat. Therefore when Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr.–whose father previously held the office for many years–used this quote from General Mattis, my lie detector went off.   [Read more…]

Why We Still Need Feminism

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Until recently, American women didn’t even own their own bodies.

By Jill Richardson / Other Words

From his campaign rhetoric to his transition appointments, our next president has placed himself squarely in a conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right.” That movement, the Los Angeles Times reports, “generally embraces and promotes white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.”

As a privileged, white, and heterosexual woman, I’ve never considered my rights under attack to the same degree as the other groups in that list. But to this incoming bunch, feminism is a dirty word.   [Read more…]

Censored 2016: Underreported Stories of the Year

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In my final column of 2015, I wrote about the most underreported story of the year according to Project Censored’s annual list: “2016 will be the year when half of the world’s wealth will be controlled by the top 1%.” After reporting the dismaying details of that story, I ended with the following analysis:

So putting this all together, we are just about to end a year where we learned that global plutocracy is becoming more and more firmly entrenched and that the beneficiaries of that very system are not just responsible for an immoral level of economic inequality and human suffering but also for speeding us toward an apocalyptic end to the climate crisis.

Why this news appeared as a blip on the radar screen rather than dominating the media landscape is no accident. When the same oligarchy that benefits from our rigged system own the corporations that run our mass media, it is not surprising that bad news for the vast majority of us is not worthy of occupying the heaven of the spectacle for more than a fleeting moment.

  [Read more…]

Movie Review: The Many Resistances of Rogue One

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By Daniel Gutierrez / Medium.com

There’s no doubt that the latest Star Wars film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, provides an uncanny reflection of our own times. The movie was released at the tail-end of a year that saw the death of countless poets, the demise of popular democracy across multiple countries, and the increasingly visible reconfiguration of a nationalist tendency throughout the global north. Looking towards next year, with the coming elections in both Germany and France, it should be clear that 2016 was not just one unjust, anomalous year — rather, its the first bad year in a new cycle defined by injustice.

Likewise, Rogue One allows a preview into a world defined by a long cycle of injustice, where popular forces have been beat back for decades under the iron grip of authoritarianism. This long wave of loss is feelable throughout the film — the dirty surroundings that define the home-bases and the avenues of rebellious factions, the constant necessity to hide oneself and not cause attention, the constant worry of each and every character of having been fed yet another half-truth wrapped in deception.   [Read more…]

Review: Kona Kai Resort & Spa – Vessel Restaurant

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Deb had read about the calamari and how tasty it was, but it was not on the menu. We asked Francisco if it as available and he answered in the affirmative. After a long discussion, we decided to order it and share it also. We had no idea how it would be served nor did we ask the price. (It turned out to be $14.)

When the lobster mac ‘n’ cheese was served, hot and with evidence of large pieces of lobster on the top, Deb looked around for salt and pepper. There was none – on any of the tables. ( Francisco later told us, jokingly, that “it’s better for you without it.” ) The macaroni was cooked well; the sauce was not a cheesy sauce; very light and tasty. I wish that bread had been served with it to sop up the remaining sauce, but it was not a part of the order. It was a nice order to share.

The calamari was excellent. Although fried in strips, it was not greasy; it was hot; not chewy as so many are. I suspect it was dipped in Panko crumbs, but am not sure. The accompanying sauce was also very tasty.   [Read more…]

Homo Obnoxious: Is Toxic Masculinity Really Taking Over the Country?

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Maybe the real problem is a lack of positive paths to manhood

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. We were said to be approaching the demise of a certain type of swaggering, predatory masculinity: let’s call him Homo Obnoxious.

As men like Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, and Billy Bush scrambled unsuccessfully to find cover in the old-boy bastions of privilege, Homo Obnoxious appeared to be lumbering around like a dinosaur under the weight of his own cultural baggage. His habitat was shrinking: it seemed as if men who defined themselves by devaluing women, putting down men who didn’t think like them and treating sexual relations — and most everything else — as power-tripping performances might be ready for mounting in a Museum of Masculinity Past.   [Read more…]

Sanders Says Trump’s “Dangerous” Nuclear Arms Race Talk Must Be Challenged

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‘Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have understood that our goal must be to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not expand them.’

By John Queally / Common Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it known that Donald Trump should not go unchallenged by his congressional colleagues as troubling comments by the President-elect about nuclear weapons this week sparked alarm across the United States and the world.

Following an initial out-of-the-blue tweet Thursday saying the U.S. should “expand” its nuclear arsenal followed by “clarifying” remarks Friday to MSNBC in which Trump said, “Let it be an arms race,” Sanders responded: “It’s a miracle a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in war since 1945. Congress can’t allow the Tweeter in Chief to start a nuclear arms race.”   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: Dec 18-24

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: tamales, a soulless city, Ocean Beach, genuinely Trump, eliminating the Electoral College, Makeda Dread, America in distress, homeless in the cold, Bob’s gran mal, Thanksgiving at Standing Rock, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

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