San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Awash in a Sea of Reagan – Issa Wants Coastal Waters Named After Former President

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By Doug Porter

The House Natural Resources Committee approved legislation Wednesday naming 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean and thousands of miles of coastline after the late President Ronald Reagan.  Introduced by San Diego’s own Rep. Darrell Issa, HR 553 would rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) after the GOP icon.

Most people haven’t heard of the EEZ, which became codified via a United Nations convention granting countries special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind in its coastal waters up to 200 miles offshore.

Nations began the ratification process of the international convention generating EEZs during the Reagan administration (1982) and the rules went into force in 1994 following approval by a 60th nation. Although the agreement has been ratified by 162 nations, the United States is notamong the signatories.   [Read more…]

San Diego Progressives Divided on Fate of Mayor Filner

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38% Vote He Should Not Resign

One doesn’t need poll results to know that San Diego progressives, Democrats, and liberals are divided on the fate and future of Mayor Bob Filner. The poll that San Diego Free Press ran for two weeks magnifies and confirms that division.

To the question, “Should Mayor Filner Resign?”, a plurality said “no” – with over a third agreeing to this position – 38%.

In contrast, 33% said ‘yes’, he should resign, and 6% agreed to the statement ‘if he doesn’t resign, he should be recalled’. This leaves a total of 39% voting that Filner should either resign or be recalled.

A fifth of those polled – 20% – stated that needed more information from the women involved. 13% wanted more info from the mayor, and 2% said they wanted more from the original accusers.

A total of 420 respondents took part in the two-week poll, which began on Sunday, July 14 and running through July 28th.   [Read more…]

Sam Woodhouse Talks about “In The Heights” at the San Diego Rep

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A Broadway musical about heart and “familia”

By Alejandra Enciso Guzmán for SDFP

The San Diego Repertory Theater opens its thirty-eighth season with the award winning musical In the Heights. Sam Woodhouse, San Diego Rep co-founder and artistic director, provided insight into the first resident production of the musical in San Diego:

“There are several factors here. One is the partnership with the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA), the ‘fame’ high school of San Diego that allows us to do these big giant musicals in the summer. They bring us an orchestra of thirteen musicians and a bunch of actor/dancers, all terrific.”

“In The Heights is this wonderful collision and marriage of a very 21st century, modern American immigrant story, filled with all those desires and longings and dreams and quests that every immigrant community has, in the cocoon of an old fashioned Broadway musical” added Woodhouse.   [Read more…]

Las Monthly Ondas August Edition: Mesa College to Pay Tribute to Long Time Chicana Activist

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Event to Raise Funds for Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery

By Brent E. Beltrán

In March I wrote about long time San Diego activist/educator Gracia Molina de Pick donating $80,000 to the Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Endowment. This month the San Diego Mesa College Foundation and the Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Department return the favor and will honor Sra. Molina de Pick with a tribute fundraising event.

“The Chicana/o Studies Department is partnering with the San Diego Mesa Foundation to create a tribute event to Gracia Molina de Pick in order to raise funds to commission a series of naming honors that will create the Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery on the San Diego Mesa College campus in the rotunda area of the Languages, Humanities and Multicultural Studies Building,” said Chicana/o Studies chairperson César López in an email.   [Read more…]

NSA collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’ with XKeyscore

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By Glenn Greenwald / theguardian.com / July 31, 2013

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
  [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Could Porn Be Censored in America?

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By David Rosen / Alternet

On July 22, British Prime Minster David Cameron announced a plan by which, at year-end 2014, all UK Internet users would be required to formally register—“opt-in”—for access to porn sites on the web. Those who fail would be blocked from viewing such sites. His first step is to have Internet users install special programming filters to block access to such sites. Further, public venues like libraries, offices and cafes and nonregistered (read underage) users will be blocked from accessing porn sites.

“By the end of this year, when someone sets up a new broadband account the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected,” London’s Daily Mail reported Cameron announcing. “If you just click ‘next’ or ‘enter’, then the filters are automatically on. … Once those filters are installed, it should not be the case that technically literate children can just flick the filters off at the click of a mouse without anyone knowing.” (In the UK, like the U.S., most schools, libraries and businesses employ filters to block porn and other undesired content.)   [Read more…]

How San Diego’s Sexual Harassment Nightmare Could Have Been Prevented

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Longtime Filner staffers had to know, so why was behavior allowed to continue?

By Andy Cohen

LA Times columnist George Skelton recently wrote about the similarities between sports and politics, about how the most successful players in both professions possess similar qualities, similar competitiveness.  “Arrogance and egos afflict both, for example,” he wrote, “although politicians tend to be more charming.”

In a way, politics should be viewed as a team sport, and every politician is only as good and as competent as the staff he hires to work for him.   [Read more…]

The Due Process of Getting Back to Business as Usual in San Diego

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By Doug Porter

 Now that proving Mayor Bob Filner’s is guilty as charged as a masher is just about finished in the San Diego media, the real business at hand is getting underway. I’m talking about a frenzied effort to roll back, eliminate or air brush out any vestiges of the Mayor’s actions in the first seven month of his administration.

Yesterday the case against Filner was bolstered with yet another victim’s testimonial about unwanted advances via KBPS (Ever wonder how they’re always first with all these revelations?) and a story in the Los Angeles Times revealing the woes of Voice of San Diego reporter Liam Dillon, who apparently decided that now was a good time to reveal his own Filner Horror Story.

The UT-San Diego went for a trifecta, leading with the City Attorney’s latest publicity stunt, a lawsuit seeking repayment of any costs incurred in defending the City against lawsuits, along with reporter Trent Siebert’s continuing efforts to hype up any possible charge against Filner. So many words, so little substance, so much innuendo.   [Read more…]

FICTION: My San Diego Nightmare – a Visit by the Ghost of Scandals Past

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By Sherly U. Jehest

Not accustomed to nightmares – as I am usually a good sleeper – I had a horrible one last night and just have to share it with you – my San Diego nightmare.

I had gone to sleep at my usual time, falling into slumber some time between Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show with John Oliver and its first commercial – a truly deadly time for me. I was dreaming of rolling sheets of ocean waves, so pretty … when I noticed a pale figure emerge out of the surf and begin to walk towards me.

The figure got closer and I noticed it was a tall woman wearing long, thin robes. She approached me and got closer – when all of a sudden she was sitting at the foot of my bed.

“What the …” I started to say, partially sitting up, when she shushed me with a long bony finger to her pale lips, glancing over at my sleeping mate.

“Who are you?” I managed to squeak out.

“I’m the Ghost of Scandals Past,” she said softly. She looked sad.   [Read more…]

Local Citizens Working to Combat Climate Change with SanDiego350

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By Angela Deegan

SanDiego350.org (SD350) is a local, all-volunteer, citizens’ group set up in 2011 with the goal of combatting climate change.  It is one of 142 local groups in 61 countries that are part of 350.org’s global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis.

It evolved from a Balboa Park rally demanding a clean energy future, in support of 350.org’s international day of action.  The organizers of that September 2011 rally found they had such good synergy it made sense to continue to work together on climate change.

Co-founder Simon Mayeski, an activist, organizer and native San Diegan living in Tierrasanta “saw the smarts, the dedication and the excitement” of those who organized that rally and found he just had to put himself in with them.   [Read more…]

Henry Ford’s Car Made From Hemp – and those Responsible for the Prohibition of Hemp and Marijuana

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I must admit, when I first read about Henry Ford’s automobile made solely from hemp products the first image that popped into my head was of Cheech & Chong’s van made of marijuana (complete with Thai sticks for bumpers) from the 1978 movie titled “Up in Smoke.”

Strangely, my life was never quite the same after that movie came out. But that’s a whole ‘nuther story. lol (more about Henry Ford’s hemp car later)

A new theory has been posited about the origin of the prohibition of hemp in America. Like many other people, I had always subscribed to the conventional theory that it was the dirty deeds of turn of the [20th] century oligarchs like William Randolf Hearst and the DuPont family who were mainly (or at least financially) responsible for the demise of the hemp industry — due to the threat hemp posed to their respective commodity empires — i.e., lumber and paper, and textiles and chemicals. (link to DuPont company history here)

Turns out, that accepted theory may no longer be acceptable.   [Read more…]

ObamaCare May Cure One of the Nation’s Greatest Ills: Congress

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How can they possibly ‘govern’ without staffing?

 

By Doug Porter

As the clock counts down towards full implementation of the Affordable Care Act Republicans and their allies are mounting a full court press designed to disable, deceive and defund the law.

Marching to the tune of “Backward Christian Soldiers:, the House of Representatives voted for the 40th time yesterday to in some manner or fashion to repeal the President’s health care law. (h/t Jules Witcover)

Republicans Mike Lee (Senate-Utah) and Mark Meadows (House-North Carolina) are leading an effort to shut down the federal government this fall rather than let the law take effect.   [Read more…]

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