Month: July 2012

Regulators Cover for Edison: “No One at Fault”

The announcement on July 19th by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stating that Southern California Edison (SCE) – the owner of the San Onofre Nuclear Power station – had complied will all regulations is yet another dangerous case of regulators looking the other way coupled with gutted unsafe regulations, according to local anti-nuke activist groups. The groups include Residents Organized for a Safe Environment (ROSE), Citizens’ Oversight, and the Peace Resource Center of San Diego.

Listen to the activists:

Carol Jahnkow of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego:

“It’s a very sad commentary when regulatory agencies will allow transgressions to occur and will not speak out about them, to avoid scrutiny themselves.”

Combination of Public and Private Funds Fueling Construction Boom in East County City

You can’t go from one end of Lemon Grove to another without seeing the telltale signs of a virtual construction boom. There are so many construction projects going on right now in this East County city of 25,000, just 10 miles east of downtown San Diego, that you’d think the recession was over and things were … well, rosier than they are.

Yet in Lemon Grove, there are half a dozen construction projects in process, exhibiting the fact that both public and private money are at work here. And on top of that, city officials broke ground yesterday at a ceremony welcoming yet another project – the promenade and park centered around the city’s primary trolley station, just next to Main Street and Broadway.

Let’s take a quick look at all these projects.

The following is based on a talk I gave at the Green Store’s Open House on Saturday, July 14th.

This is an outline of the history – the modern history – of OB grassroots activism – which began in the late Sixties with the development and growth of the hippie sub-culture, the counter-culture.

By 1967, Ocean Beach had become the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego. OB was the San Diego equivalent of that fabled and iconic San Francisco neighborhood that had become synonymous with “hippie-ism”. If you were a hippie or a hippie-wannabe during this time somewhere in San Diego, you ended up in OB.

Of course, other factors contributed to the incubation in Ocean Beach of a community sympathetic and supportive of the new emerging counter-counter: before there were long-haired hippies in OB, there were long-haired surfers – as this community had been a center of surf-culture for years by time OB had morphed into a hippie haven.

July 1970: construction begins on the jetty at north beach in OB.Editor: We originally posted this article about the movement to stop the jetty that the City of San Diego and the Army Corps of Engineers had designed for north OB as part of our series on the early history of the original OB Rag in November 2007. We re-post it now for its historic significance.

The Jetty is Stopped

There was definitely turmoil in OB the summer of 1970. For a number of weeks during those hot days, OB residents used a combination of direct action and legal moves to battle efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers and the City to construct a jetty parallel to the southern edge of the San Diego River channel — next to what is now Dog Beach.

Many locals viewed the jetty as a prelude to an attempt by the City and developer interests to create a marina and resort district at Ocean Beach’s waterfront.

Editor: This is the second in a two-part series by Jim Bell, one of OB’s itinerant globalists. Here is Part One.

By Jim Bell

Part Two

On the most fundamental level, answering this question comes down to consciousness. If each of us and the human family as a whole, become conscious enough, it will be easy to resolve human differences without violence or its threat and develop economies and ways of life that are beneficial to everyone and are completely life-support sustaining.

It’s true that some people have done and are doing despicable things to other people and to our common life-support system, but on the whole, we are becoming more conscious. The expansion of women’s rights, the general rejection of racism and the fact that governments no longer sanction slavery — are just a few examples of our increasing consciousness and empathy.

My time here is rapidly drawing to a close. Thank God. Don’t get me wrong, the people are nice, the money’s been good, and at 65, hell, it’s just good to work at all. I hope I’ve stayed long enough, but even if I haven’t, I gotta get out of here.

Why do I need to leave?

More than any other reason it is because I’m starting to lose my patience. Things I could shrug off before are becoming too tiresome to let go by. I’m starting to tell administrators things they’re not interested in hearing. In class, I started straying further and further off the prescribed and only acceptable path. My ability to pretend I’m happy as a clam in company and school meetings is deteriorating. I’m just too tired of the bullshit.

UPDATE: Kreighton Kilgore was convicted ONLY for resisting arrest, a violation of Penal Code sec 69. All other charges were apparently dismissed, during February 2013.

Making phony bomb threats and real threats against a woman at Robb Field lead to the arrest by police of one Kreighton John Kilgore on Friday, July 20th.

Kilgore is reportedly to have first told a woman that he had just placed a bomb inside a mailbox on Ebers Street near West Point Loma. She called police around 9:50 a.m. to report this. Law enforcement responded and shut down traffic lanes in the area to allow a bomb squad to investigate the mail receptacle. No bomb was found but a note referring to bombs was found.

By A feleségül

Here’s the scenario:

Horny person; No lover; Playboy or Playgirl magazines; Sex talk on line; Porn available on paid television; Libido going wild.

What’s a nice person to do? (Or…what’s a “not- so-nice” person to do?) What is acceptable in today’s society? How does one relieve the tensions building up in the body? What “aids” are available for the average person? How would you feel if you went into an adult store and saw your neighbor there? Would it matter if your neighbor was a woman or a man? Would you be embarrassed?

by Dave Patterson

I think the Boy Scouts just set in place the demise of the organization. I say that because the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) just declared that gays are officially not welcome, and I know that some scout leaders and or parents will take it upon themselves to make sure that “Morally Straight” means no gays in attendance.

The official Boy Scout policy, as I understand it, states that the BSA does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers or members.
For the remainder of this article, please go to San Diego Free Press.

Part One

By Jim Bell

Introduction

I believe that when enough of us care about the well being of our descendents and their own, it will be easy to bring everything we do for work or play into life-support system harmony. I believe that doing this correctly is the best way to create a prosperous and completely life-support sustaining future.

Toward the above, I’m personally working on becoming more conscious by getting clearer about my own existence and the existence of others — and the existence of everything else including things like freedom, justice and our connection to our children and future generations. I have found that the more conscious I become, the greater is my desire to leave future generations a peaceful, prosperous and life-support sustaining future.

by Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

At 8:30 p.m. yesterday, July 18, a lot of people milled around the illuminated American flag on the eastern side of the small federally-owned Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in La Jolla, as City Parks and Recreation Department tested a new idea to keep Old Glory flying 24/7 up there year-round.

Members of the La Jolla Parks and Beaches advisory committee had been notified to witness this run-through. I too was invited at mid-afternoon yesterday, as I was one of several who testified at that group’s last meeting against electrification and in favor of keeping the greater Mount Soledad Natural Park a dark park for viewing the night sky and the spectacular 360-degree panorama of the city below. Parks and Beaches chairman Patrick Ahern put off voting on this matter in both May and June, though it was heatedly discussed.

For the remainder of this article, please go to San Diego Free Press.

We have just heard that the San Diego Planning Commission this morning voted 4 to 1 against authorizing the so-called Quail Brush Power Plant, planned next to the Mission Trails Regional Park.

For now the power plant is dead. The plant applicant will most likely appeal to the San Diego City Council. The actual vote was to deny an application to order staff to conduct a full study on rezoning the area near Santee. The gas-fired plant application was to initiate a review of the East Elliott Community Plan by Charlotte, N.C.-based Cogentrix.