Category: History

By Marjorie Cohn / truthout

Just as Bradley Manning’s court-martial was getting underway, another brave whistleblower dropped a bombshell into the media: The Obama administration is collecting data on every telephone call we make. Nearly 64 years to the day after George Orwell published his prescient book 1984, we have learned that the “Thought Police” are indeed watching every one of us. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” Edward Snowden told the Washington Post.

A former undercover CIA employee who has worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) for four years, Snowden provided a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to the Guardian. The order requires Verizon on an “ongoing daily basis” to provide the NSA information about all phone calls in its system both in the United States and other countries.

Editor: The following “Reader Rant” is written by Geoff Page, a former chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board, as a response to presentations by City planners of the new Draft OB Community Plan Update. Geoff is responding to a report in the OB Rag of Maxx Stalheim’s presentation to the OB Planning Board on June 5th, plus to other sources as well. Maxx Stalheim is the senior planner involved in the 11 year process of rewriting OB’s Precise Plan, and he did announce he was retiring next month at the OB Planning Board meeting on June 5. The OB Rag has invited Mr Stalheim to write a statement about the new Draft Update.

By Geoff Page

I am really happy Maxx Stalheim is retiring, we all should be.

Let’s look at the “highlights” Stalheim described. The first one was :

Southern California Edison Announces It’s Over for the Local Nuke

Southern California Edison has just declared today that the San Onofre Nuclear power plant is to be shut down for good. It’s over.

Citing “continuing uncertainty about when or if it might return to service”, the company concluded that questions over when or if the plant might return to service was not good for customers or investors. Concerns about the environment or planet earth were not mentioned.

Since the shutdown of the nuclear power generating station in January of 2012, there has been an epic struggle over whether the plant could safely be returned to operating status.

City planning staff last night presented the Ocean Beach Planning Board with copies of the brand new Draft Ocean Beach Community Plan Update. Maxx Stalheim, senior planner, handed out the update to members of the Board only, saying that the public will have access to it by July 20th and possibly earlier.

From The Daily Transcript, June 4, 1913, issue – one hundred years ago today: A very large number of delegates…

Hey, it’s true. If you like what THE online website for Ocean Beach is doing, please help us out. Show us some love, baby!

• Join our team. We’re always looking for writers, bloggers, poets, photographers, artists …. contact us at our email – obragblog@gmail.com

• Get a T-shirt. For $20 plus postage, we’ll send you our brand new T-shirt, designed and produced by OBceans.

The OB Rag Is Your History and Your Culture

Justin Brooks of Ocean Beach leads march to Sacramento for “California Twelve”

The California Innocence Project is currently sponsoring an OB-to- Sacramento march – 600 miles – to present Gov. Brown with petitions for the “California Twelve” – a group of inmates who all have been imprisoned under false pretenses, according to the evidence presented by the CIP.

The march – being led by local lawyers – was organized by Justin Brooks – an OB resident, law school professor, and founder of CIP – and includes family members of the twelve inmates along the way. Here’s our report from May 2.

The march began on April 27th with an initial walk from downtown to Ocean Beach by Brooks and the other lawyers and dozens of law students.

By Jim Miller

In the first part of my interview [at the San Diego Free Press] with Peter Zschiesche, he discussed Golden Hill past and present and described what he calls “the Golden Hill vibe.” Much of that feeling came out the politics and culture of the late sixties and early seventies. In this second and final installment of our interview, Peter talks about that time period and outlines some of the key places and players that made Golden Hill a vital, progressive community.

By Chad Peace / IVN San Diego

Former congressman and Democratic Mayor of San Diego Bob Filner took the unusual step of publicly calling for jury nullification in the prosecution of Ronnie Chang, who faces 60 felony charges for violations related to his ownership of marijuana dispensaries in San Diego and Riverside Counties.

“This is way overdoing it when local laws, state laws allow compassionate use of medical marijuana,” Filner told reporters at the downtown U.S. District Court complex Monday. “Someone should not be going through this stage of prosecution for trying to help people to have access to medical marijuana.”

Northeast Section of Robb Field Fenced Off Till Labor Day

A huge section of Robb Field has been fenced off for re-seeding, the OB Rag found out, and will be closed off to the public until Labor Day. We spoke with several San Diego Park & Rec guys to get the low-down. Beginning on May 6th, the section had fences go up for the renovation of the grounds – some of which look fairly soddy and shoddy. Seeds will be spread, new dirt, rollers will smooth out the dirt – and this application happens three times. And not for three months will these lands be free … unless …

The Weeds Are Back at OB’s Gateway Corner

The Hack Job at the Apple Tree Lot – Speaking about Weeds and Fences

By Joseph Howard Crews / San Diego Free Press

For 60 years the most celebrated and revered African in history was listed as a terrorist threat to the people of the United States. Who decided this? Why did Americans allow this, and what does it say about what we are?

SOHO Awards to Be Presented May 23rd at Point Loma Assembly

Every year the Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO) runs their “People in Preservation” program to salute individuals and groups who have helped preserve important aspects of San Diego’s heritage, building by building, site by site.

This year the program winners include an Ocean Beach cottage built in 1922 and located at 1975 Bacon Street, and owned by the Wilson family who found an infestation of cockroaches, a falling wall and rotted flooring. Here is what SOHO says about the cottage and family: