Category: American Empire

Accused Whistle-blower Now Charged With Capital Offense

By Kathleen Gilberd

Think of yourself as a soldier. Working at a desk job, you see shocking messages, reports and pictures about military activity that seems wrong and sometimes horrifying. And then, one day, you see a video recording of US soldiers laughing as they shoot unarmed civilians from a helicopter.

by Jeoffry Gordon, MD, MPH

Our country is at the edge of a precarious cliff that presents the biggest danger to the survival of our democracy than anything since the Civil War…….Or like Wiley Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons – we may have run off the precipice already – but it just has not yet sunk in. The problem is one of domestic social justice and economics.

By John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / March 22, 2011

In an article March 18, 2011 in the San Diego Union Tribune, Qualcomm said “it would spend $975 million to build a factory in Taiwan to manufacture low-power Mirasol display screens for e-readers and smart phones.”

However, there is a caveat. Qualcomm would like to imply that, if it could repatriate the $9.8 billion in cash it is holding offshore without paying taxes or at a sufficiently reduced tax rate, it would build the factory in the US instead thus creating jobs.

“Why do you people hide in the park?” one person asked me.

“Do you think that you are going to change a damn thing?” another asked. “Obama promised to end the wars if we elected him and he lied, just like Bush” she continued.

While most residents of Southern California tried to figure out if the day was going to bring rain, three hundred San Diegans spent a few hours in Balboa Park rallying against two wars our government is waging – Iraq and Afghanistan.

Starting at noon, the protest included speakers, singers, poets, and the Puppet Insurgency, and at a little after 2 pm, the crowd formed up onto the sidewalk and marched south towards the freeway.

At Elm Street, the crowd broke up, with a group moving to each of the six overpasses on I-5 – 1st Avenue through 6th Avenue -, lining the bridges holding banners, flags, while attaching larger banners to the wires on the overpasses. Many supportive honks could be heard from the passing traffic below.

END THE WARS!

6th Ave. & Grape St, Balboa Park, San Diego

San Diegans again rallied yesterday, Tuesday March 15th, in support of the working folks in Wisconsin, and other people under attack in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio by their Republican governors with their extremist agendas.

Called by the local MoveOn.org group as part of a national call to action, the rally in front of the County Admin Building was attended by over 200 community and labor activists.

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Donna Cooper | February 22, 2011

House leaders are unfortunately restricting their proposed budget cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 to nonsecurity discretionary spending in an attempt to tame a $1.3 trillion deficit. This approach is especially shortsighted since the Federal Treasury loses twice as much revenue due to tax breaks than Congress appropriates on all nonsecurity discretionary spending.

(All details and links inside)
* NEW UPDATE: Special Meeting on Proposed Medical Marijuana Ordinance – March 16th
*Arrest of Second Suspect in OB Business Window Vandalism Imminent
*OB Planning Board Election – March 15th
*OB Rag Letter-Writing Campaign Over Lack of U-T Coverage of Large San Diego Labor Rally Gets “Apology”
*U-T Cartoonist Snags OB in Weekly Caption Contest
*OB Historical Society’s Annual Wisteria Tea Party – March 19th
*Ex-Robb Field City Worker Accused of Stealing From City
*END THE WARS! Rally – March 19th
*40th Anniversary of the Collier Park Riot Coming Up

A few weeks before he died, Howard Zinn had lunch at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan with New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Their topic of conversation was, of course, social justice.

“If there is going to be change, real change,” Zinn told Herbert, “it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That’s how change happens.”

By Van Jones / HuffPost / Feb. 22, 2011

In the past 24 months, those of us who longed for positive change have gone from hope to heartbreak. But hope is returning to America — at last — thanks largely to the courageous stand of the heroes and heroines of Wisconsin.

Reinvigorated by the idealism and fighting spirit on display right now in America’s heartland, the movement for “hope and change” has a rare, second chance. It can renew itself and become again a national force with which to be reckoned.

A Fictional Oddity

Heaven and earth are threads from one loom. -Shaker proverb

by A.W. Maris

“Are you an ocean lover?” she asked. “Is that why you’re in Ocean Beach?”

You stood still, anticipating reaction. Instead his gaze remained fixed on the muted stone of the Veterans Memorial at the foot of Newport Avenue. Allison thinks, ‘WE LIVE HERE, YOU TWIT!’ but having observed ‘little miss perky blonde’ asking the same question of another couple, strikes back with, “What’s your game?”.