Category: Military

* OB Pier 50th Anniversary Art Show Reception – June 30th
* Ocean Beach Street Fair and Chili Cook-Off set for June 25
* Point Loma Neighbors See Violation of 30 Foot Height Rule in New Construction
* Recent Research Showing Cabrillo as Spanish Ignites Local Controversy
* It’s Back! Artwork Cleaned-Up and Returned to Newport Ave.
* Is Amazon Taking Over the Old Midway Post Office?
* Pipeline Repair and Rehab Project Public Meeting – June 22nd
* Woman Rescued After Falling From Sunset Cliffs …
* Bicyclist Injured by SUV in Fleetridge Area of Point Loma
* PB Residents Argue Whether Crime Rates Gauged to Lack of Local Control Over Alcohol Licenses
* Imperial Beach Is Worried About Sea-Level Rise – Shouldn’t OB Be?
* Fiesta Island’s full-on dog party over soon?
* Americana group Dewey Paul Band will perform their Garcia Van Dylan tribute at Winston’s
* Thousands of Books Collected for Kids Summer-

COME INSIDE FOR ALL THE REST ….

By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

Here we go again, with yet another “incident” fueling right-wing outrage about black people and symbolism. The latest was over a photograph of 16 black female cadets who had come together to celebrate their upcoming graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The New York Times reported:

The gesture, posted on Facebook and Twitter last week, touched off a barrage of criticism in and out of the armed forces as some commenters accused the women of allying themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement and sowing racial divisions in a military that relies on assimilation.

All this week we will be celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the popular vote that established the Ocean Beach Planning Board and the first OB community plan.

It was on May 4, 1976 that thousands of OB residents, renters, property owners and business-owners voted in the very first panel to sit on the very first Planning Board for the community. It was truly an historic occasion because nothing like that had ever occurred in San Diego before.

So, to highlight this history, all week we will be publishing comments, notes, stories and accounts of the May ’76 vote and memories of those who served on the Board back then as well as over its 40 year history.

“Free universal health care, free university, free day care, taxing and policing hedge fund millionaires—have already happened in nearly every other industrialized country in the world! And I have the evidence—and the film—to prove it!” — Michael Moore

CommonDreams

Filmmaker Michael Moore on Friday is launching the national release of his new documentary Where to Invade Next, which is said to be both his happiest and “most subversive” movie yet.

This is a review of a novel by Elizabeth Marro

The title of this article is truer than the reader knows.

I first met Elizabeth Marro – “Betsy” – while we were walking our dogs down the streets of Ocean Beach. As dog owners are wont to do, we began talking and I found out that she was an author; was aware of some of my articles for the OB Rag.

She told me she was writing a book, and I offered to read it for her when she was finished with it. It wasn’t long after that that she sent me her draft, and I loved it. I told her that when it was ready for publication to let me know and I’d do a review of it for her and was anxious to see if she had made any changes.

(Photo: txindoki/Flickr/cc)

By Ernie McCray

As we opened our hearts, this past Veteran’s Day, to our nation’s warriors with hearty “Thank you for your service” like cliches, alongside heaping praise on them for being strong heroic and brave – I kept thinking of two young men I met a little over a decade ago.

They were among the first to die in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I met them at career fairs at their schools, while I was sitting at a table letting kids know that they …

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.

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.

Back on October 26th, we posted an article about possible Navy waste water flowing down Sunset Cliffs into the ocean – as had been discovered by Andrew, one of our readers, while walking his dog south of the Nazarene college. Andrew took it upon himself to take photos and vid of the possible thousands of gallons of water he witnessed cascading down a gully of the cliffs, also possibly causing erosion of the protected area.

The water appeared to be coming from Navy facilities on Point Loma, directly to the east and up the hill. Andrew and others who surf in that area have concerns about the quality of the water, whether it was toxic or not, or just exactly what was in it.

One of our local readers, Andrew, was visiting the beaches along Sunset Cliffs on Saturday, October 24th. He was walking way south of Ladera Street with his dog.

It was low tide, so he could walk around the point the cliffs make south of the famous surfing spot known as Newbreak. He wanted the beach all to himself and his dog.

Editor: Since this article appeared, the Pentagon has changed its story. Now it says that air-strikes were called in by Afghan government soldiers.

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Sunday called the U.S. military’s Saturday airstrike on its charity hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan a war crime and announced it was withdrawing all staff from the beleaguered area.

MSF said 22 people, including medical workers and patients, were killed in the bombing, which occurred around 2:10 am local time and reportedly lasted for at least half an hour.

Forbidden Waters Include Blue Whale Areas Near San Diego

ByVirginia Morell / Science / September 16, 2015

The U.S. Navy agreed this week to limit its use of sonar and other activities that unintentionally harm cetaceans and other marine mammals.

A federal court on 14 September approved the settlement of two cases brought by environmental groups that challenged the Navy’s training and testing activities off the coasts of southern California and Hawaii.