Month: December 2015

Because we’re drunk?

Dan Fallon / diggs

Let’s be honest, most of us don’t actually know the words to Auld Lang Syne. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from drunkenly slurring along to the instantly-recognizable tune at our annual New Year’s Eve parties.

It’s a song that elicits feelings of goodwill towards man, a song that moves. While Auld Lang Syne is an integral part of the New Year’s Eve ritual, most of us probably still have a few questions about the song. Namely:

What are the lyrics?

Where did this song come from?

And why the heck do we spend the first few minutes of each year singing it?

Is Bono right? Is it true that “nothing ever changes on New Year’s Day!”?

Without tangling up on that concept, we now post below articles we have published over the months of 2015 that have some interest for us today as we review the past year and anticipate the new one.

Check these out – perhaps you, dear reader, missed some in the Hurley-burley of modern SoCal life.

Petition to be delivered to Loretta Lynch, US Attorney General

It is simple. Tamir Rice deserves a new grand jury. A Department of Justice investigation of the prosecutor’s conduct with the grand jury. And the immediate removal and firing of the police officer

On December 28th, a grand jury decided not to charge the police officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy who was playing with a toy gun at a Cleveland park.1 Will you join me in demanding justice for Tamir? Come inside to sign the petition to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Common Dreams

After decades of insisting on using “our art to reflect human values,” incomparable cinematographer and tireless activist Haskell Wexler died this weekend at 93. Wexler helped create some of the best films of our time –– while unceasingly “giving his gifts to the revolution” by highlighting issues of war, racism, poverty and torture – and accumulating a 500-page FBI file for his trouble.

The Poster Boy for Corporate Greed

By John Lawrence

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who bought the drug, Daraprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill was arrested on December 17 by the FBI on fraud charges having nothing to do with his price gouging with Daraprim.

Shkreli seemed to back off on his 5000% increase for a life-saving drug after he received a lot of negative publicity but later said that he wished that he had raised the price of the drug even more. A silent chorus went up all over America, “He’s getting what he so richly deserves!” It does seem like Karma, doesn’t it?

(Photo: MADHippieLife/Flickr/CC)

By Ernie McCray

I sat around last night trying to think of something to write and decided to click onto a page of prompts which gave me a choice of numbers between one and three-hundred-forty-six.

Sometimes just closing my eyes and moving the little arrow around on my Mac Os X and clicking randomly does the trick but I went, this time, with selecting number fifty-six.

Fifty-six is kind of a big number in my life. I had just turned 56 when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa. A Highway 56 is named after Ted Williams, one of my favorite baseball players. I was in the Tucson High Class of ’56 and my life changed massively that year, in the time it takes to flip a light switch.

Back in mid-October we published a chronicle of deaths and serious injuries that have occurred at or around Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach and Point Loma over the last 10 to 11 years, from 2005 through 2015.

Now with this most recent death of a man visiting from the Mid-West who fell off the cliffs while viewing his mobile device, this year – 2015 – looks to be the worst in terms of deaths and injuries.

This tragic death made national and even international news. What didn’t make the news was how dangerous and deadly our beautiful cliffs can be.

Back in mid-October, we summarized the incidents and came up with an average of 3 deaths and serious injuries per year, from 2005 to the present. We found that 2015 was already one of the worst years of these incidents.

The following is from a Press Release from Save San Diego Neighborhoods:

City Attorney clarifies position on vacation rentals: Uses providing lodging primarily to visitors/tourists are prohibited in San Diego’s residential zones

SAN DIEGO, December 26, 2015 – Spurred by concerns from citizens over the proliferation of commercial mini-hotels in San Diego residential zones, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith has released a new memorandum on short-term vacation rentals that says providing lodging primarily to visitors and tourists in San Diego’s residential zones is unlawful and violates the city’s Municipal Code.

Goldsmith’s memo, released on December 22 in response to requests by citizens’ group Save San Diego Neighborhoods (SSDN), comes as the San Diego City Council prepares to consider a draft ordinance on the contentious issue, perhaps as early as January. Directed to the mayor and city council, Goldsmith’s release updates a 2007 memo on the same subject by then City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

By Jim Miller

As I wrote back in mid-October, Project Censored recently released their list of the most underreported stories of 2015. The number one story on their list features the news that 2016 will be the year when half of the world’s wealth will be controlled by the top 1%. More specifically, they document how:

According to the Oxfam report, the proportion of global wealth owned by the 1 percent has increased from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 and is projected to reach 50 percent in 2016.

In October 2014, a prior Oxfam report, “Even It Up: Time to End Extreme Poverty,” revealed that the number of billionaires worldwide had more than doubled since the 2009 financial crisis, showing that, although those at the top have recovered quickly, the vast majority of the world’s population are far from reaping the benefits of any recent economic recovery.

Even more staggering, the world’s richest eighty-five people now hold the same amount of wealth as half the world’s poorest population. “Failure to tackle inequality will leave hundreds of millions trapped in poverty unnecessarily,” the report’s authors warned.

Yeah, we know. The OB Rag has been down a number of days just recently.

And it’s all because Editordude took off for Sedona, Arizona last week – where his daughter, Michelle, is about to give birth.

December 28th is her “due date” but as anybody whose ever been a mother knows, the due date is a statistical figure and not every baby is big on statistics.

So, editordude is hanging out in Sedona – along with some other relatives – waiting for the birth.

NBCSanDiego

See the last few moments of Nehad’s life. Video inside (warning: very angering).

Surveillance video capturing a fatal shooting in which a veteran San Diego police officer shot and killed an unarmed, mentally ill man was made public Tuesday, six days after a federal judge ruled it would no longer be under a protective order.

Fridoon Rawshan Nehad, 42, was shot and killed April 30 in a confrontation with San Diego Police Department Officer Neal Browder in San Diego’s Midway District. The officer-involved shooting was captured on surveillance video from a nearby business but investigators would not release it to the public while an investigation was underway.

Browder will not face criminal charges in the incident. Nehad’s family filed a multimillion-dollar claim against the city of San Diego. The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have launched an investigation into the shooting.

All these photos were taken by well-known local, Albert C Elliott, photographer and surfboard maker. They were taken on Monday, December 21, 2015 at OB.

ACE told me it was “just a typical, cold, freezing, windy morning in OB.”