Category: History

Editor: Every now and then a bizarre story crosses our desk that deserves exposure. And here is one, about how the recent Pentagon shooter was into exposing the mysterious murder and subsequent cover-up of an El Toro Marine colonel who, just before his death – which was ruled a “suicide” -, was about to expose major illicit drug movements and dealings from Central America at the air base.

(SALEM, Ore.) – John Patrick Bedell must have had a lot on his mind as he went through the motions of a dead man walking. He knew this would be it; nobody opens fire near the Pentagon without falling in a hail of bullets.

It must be brutal in the last seconds, to enter the very last stage of life. Surely that is what he thought, and that had to be what Marine Colonel Jim Sabow thought, as he took his last breath in 1991.

NEW UPDATE:
1200 Demonstrate at Governor’s San Diego Office

By Hoa Quach / SDNN

A daylong effort against budget cuts led by student organizers throughout the San Diego region concluded with about 1,200 protesters gathering outside Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s San Diego office late Thursday afternoon.

UPDATE:
Californians Protest Education Cut-backs – UC Davis students try to block highway

Trying to keep on top of the March 4 Day of Action? Here are a few resources that you’ll definitely find useful.

Student Sources

* UC Regent Live(blog) will have a team of writers covering national events throughout the day.
* The blog Occupy CA has been breaking stories about radical protest actions all year.
* This site will of course be passing on everything we get.
* Our national March 4 map includes links and contact information for many local actions.
(SEE INSIDE FOR LINKS AND MORE …)

Originally posted March 3, 2010 – reposted by popular demand

Carlos Dominguez and Antonio Santillano came to Ocean Beach Tuesday morning to replace a damaged fence. The fence, which surrounds the now-defunct saltwater pool, was knocked down last month during a day of large waves and high tides. Carlos and Antonio work for South Bay Fence of Chula Vista, the company in charge of the project.

The saltwater pool is also known as ‘the Sandbox’ (because it’s currently filled with sand) or ‘the Plunge’ (as it was originally dubbed in 1917). What remains of this once-glamorous attraction appears to have been hit by a bomb. Concrete rubble coexists with splintered wood and public supervision is sparse at best: it’s the kind of place you might witness a fistfight or step on a shard of glass. But I love the pool, despite the fact that the fences are washed-out regularly. The Plunge is a treasure, a relic of bygone era when Ocean Beach yearned to become a ritzy waterfront wonderland.

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.

1. President Obama Cut Your Taxes

As in April, the Tea Baggers continued to display their fundamental misunderstanding of U.S. history and the American Revolution. Apparently, the right-wing zealots are outraged by no taxation with representation.

As promised, Barack Obama in the stimulus package delivered on his pledge of tax relief for 95% of American households. Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn’t only jump start gross domestic product and refill empty state coffers in the second quarter of 2009. As Nate Silver thoroughly documented, “Obama has cut taxes for 98.6% of working households.”

Nevertheless, raging Tea Baggers spouting Republican Tax Day lies took to the streets not to thank the President, but to blame him for the tax cuts they received.

Editors Note: And now for some real nostalgia. The following article appeared in the Sept-Oct 1953 issue of San Diego Magazine. Thanks go to Larry OB for retyping it and sending it to the OB Rag. Larry kept in the original typos.

by Lois Schustra

Hundreds of cars go roaring down West Point Loma Boulevard everyday, blissfully unaware that behind a certain high hedge, there nestles a little spot of historical interest, a vestige of the “Ocean Beach” of yesterday. To the tenants that live there, it is a bit of Shangra La.

by Mary E Mann

Let’s not mince words, I am willing to admit that I love the shit out of books. Much more than is probably healthy or even altogether sane. I love how they smell, how they look on my bedside table or on used bookstore shelves. I love the quiet contemplation they induce in people, the gentle low murmur of contentment that fills bookstores and libraries thick as a cat’s purr beneath its ribs. I love watching a friend or lover read, their eyes intent, their bodies in the same room as mine but their neurons a world away.

Most of all, I love reading, curled in my bed before sleep, on the couch with a cup of tea on a rainy day, stretched flat and gently roasting on the beach. I love unfurling my mind into a new, uncharted landscape, inhabited by Zorba’s and Mrs. Dalloway’s, and seeing how it fares. I am an entirely impartial defender of books.

by Dave Zirin / Huffington Post / January 28, 2010

Howard Zinn, my hero, teacher, and friend died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history.

Anyone who believes that the United States is immune to radical politics never attended a lecture by Howard Zinn. The rooms would be packed to the rafters, as entire families, black, white and brown, would arrive to hear their own history made humorous as well as heroic. “What matters is not who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s sitting in!” he would say with a mischievous grin. After this casual suggestion of civil disobedience, the crowd would burst into laughter and applause.

Yesterday, January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court dealt potentially a lethal blow to what’s left of American democracy. The slim majority of right-wing radical activists on the highest court in the land decided that corporations are people and that there should be no limitations on the amount of money they can spend on elections and candidates.

This means that corporations can now spend unlimited monies on any candidate and on any election they want. The 5 to 4 decision overturned decades of corporate restrictions and overturned a century’s-old limit on the role of corporate money in federal elections, on the books since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

* OB Pier Closed Due to High Surf and Damage

* Circle of Life Comes to the OB Rag

* Local Coastal Commission Manager Insists on Public Hearing Before Removal of Fire Pits by City

* Contest to Find Missing 9th OB Fire Pit

* OB Cottage Becomes Home Design Classroom

* Don’t Crap On Us

* Volunteers Needed for Dog Beach Dune Habitat Restoration Project – January 23rd

* OB Poet Hosts Poetry Reading at Jungle Java

My mother (Midge) had always told us that her grandfather, Cornelius Donahue, had come to this country from Ireland, but exactly where in Ireland was murky. Maybe County Cork, maybe not.

At a certain point, my brother (Lou) and I became interested in obtaining dual US/Irish citizenship for ourselves and for our mother. But in order to do this, first of all we had to document where in Ireland Cornelius came from.

So began my quest, “In Search of Cornelius.”

By Mike Lee / Union-Tribune / Originally published January 6, 2010

Nearly five years after regional water-pollution cops announced a landmark order to clean toxic muck in San Diego Bay, they’re back with a plan that would remove just 16 percent of the sediment targeted initially.

The latest strategy was crafted during months of confidential talks with groups on the hook for the work. It’s expected to cost about half of the $96 million price tag from the original cleanup order, which the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board spent years developing so it could withstand courtroom challenges.