Month: November 2015

Report of OB Community Development Corporation Meeting of Thursday, November 12

By Lois Lane

The OB CDC Board Meeting Agenda held at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center promised “Veterans Plaza Committee Report – Closed Session” and it was right. After some usual financial reviews, the President, Tom Perrotti, announced that the Board would take a five minute break and then enter a closed session meeting.

When asked why items related to the Veterans Plaza were not public, he replied “President’s Decision,” and left the room. When he returned after five minutes, he announced,

“We are a 501(c )3 that is not subject to the Brown Act.”

The San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition invites you to join us at Al Gore’s Global Day for Climate Action!

It’s Saturday November 14th at Noon at the Federal Building on Broadway and Front Street, San Diego 92101.

In conjunction with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and leading up to the December Paris talks we will be calling on the U.S. Government to begin the national mobilization to make the transition off fossil fuel and on renewable energy!

We encourage organizations to have a contingent present for the rally. Artistic expression via signs, banners, costumes, street theatre is encouraged.

By Terry Ratner

Photos as memory has a menacing side. Our own appearances and faces are now stored and saved in hundreds, thousands, of photographs: pictures made by ourselves or made by others.

Our faces are becoming not only unforgettable, but inescapable.

Photography is at the nerve center of our paradoxical memorial impulses.

Last Leg of Update Process Took 2 1/2 Years

Timeline of Update Process of the OB Community Plan 2002 – 2015

When the final City Council vote came down last Monday, November 9th, as it approved the OB Community Plan Update, it was a signal to all the OBceans and city planners who have been part of its creation over the last months and years to heave a great collective sigh of relief.

The vote was the final step in a long, long – but glorious – process …

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free future.

Millstone and Me: 2015

This October I returned to the place I come from, southeast Connecticut on Long Island Sound, off the Atlantic Ocean. The region promotes and prides itself as “The Submarine Capital of the World.”

The General Dynamics Electric Boat Company in Groton, CT, has built almost all the nation’s nuclear powered submarines. These include each and every of the Trident subs, which along with nuclear missiles and bombs constitute the US “strategic forces.”

Each Trident carries nuclear missiles, each one consisting of multiple warheads that can be independently targeted.

Thus Tridents are submersible Armageddons.

Price-Gouger Martin Shkreli Becomes Known as ‘Most Hated Man in America’

By John Lawrence

Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli will face new competition for Daraprim, the drug he recently hiked 5,000 percent in price, after competitor Imprimis Pharmaceuticals said it would market a similar drug for just $1 a tablet. Daraprim is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that’s common in AIDS and HIV patients, as well as cancer sufferers.

Greedy buttwipe Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund guy that bought the drug Dariprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill will actually lose his ass on this venture.

By Ernie McCray

One of my most cherished honors is being among some pretty good Wildcat athletes in the “University of Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.”

I’m a member because I could snatch rebounds like a machine and get the ball in the hoop as a routine. But what does it really mean? For me, it hasn’t been something I’ve thought that much about day to day.

But a few months ago I got a little excited seeing a very familiar name on the list of super-jocks who were to join the club this year.

Dave Baldwin is the name. Pitching a baseball was his game. And I’m stoked that he and I are going to be in such a place of esteem together – because we go back before our college days, back to the Class of ’56 at Tucson High. Back to when I was stepping high, doing teenage boy things, testosteroned to the bone.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthdig

A new whistleblower has joined the ranks of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou and other courageous individuals. The unnamed person, who chose to remain anonymous because of the Obama administration’s vigorous prosecution of whistleblowers, is a member of the intelligence community.

In the belief that the American public has the right to know about the “fundamentally” and “morally” flawed U.S. drone program, this source provided The Intercept with a treasure trove of secret military documents and slides that shine a critical light on the country’s killer drone program.

At the well-attended monthly meeting of the OB Planning Board, Wednesday, Nov. 4th, the Board was able to finalize their policy on short-term vacation rentals, as well as approving the ‘condo-ization’ of the 4-unit Quigley building at 5151 Long Branch Avenue.

The “Quigley Building”

The project before the Board was the so-called “Quigley Building” – up for a map waiver to allow for condos. Rob Quigley – San Diego’s famous architect (San Diego Central Library) – designed and built the 4 unit building at 5151 Long Branch Avenue back in the 1970s. Each of the 4 units have one-in-a-kind unique designs, with a couple of them multi-floors.

Dave Summers’ NBC7 report on the new OB group, Citizens Against Privacy Abuse, was the lead story last night – Tuesday – at 11pm. Frank Gormlie, one of the organizers of CAPA was interviewed for it by Summers. Here’s the online version:

Grassroots Ocean Beach Group Fights Public Surveillance

The Citizens Against Privacy Abuse opposes 10 newly installed security cameras

By Dave Summers/ NBC7

An Ocean Beach group wants to block the city’s plan to install 10 surveillance cameras and point them at the public.

Proponents say 24-hour surveillance of the public space between Dog Beach and the Ocean Beach Pier will help solve crimes, protect businesses and visitors. The 10 cameras cost the city $25,000.

By Lois Lane

When I was a child, my father told me about the National Parks; National Geographic was the source of our knowledge. He told me that I could see the Grand Canyon some day because the parks belonged to the people, they were free, and they were protected by the law. Somewhere imprinted in the family gene pool is the idea that parks are to be enjoyed (sometimes as nature, but with conveniences, like bathrooms) by all the people.

Welcome to San Diego and welcome to Ocean Beach Park – our local version of a National Park.

The little flap that we helped uncover recently over Navy waste water being flushed out over Sunset Cliffs and into the ocean seemed to have been the first exposure of this practice by the Navy, the flushing of potable water.

Yet, we have found an article from last April in the San Diego Reader that discussed the very same flushing at the same location.

Look at the photos of the water cascading out from the cliffs. It’s the same location.