Category: World News

The following is a report from Doro-Chiba Quake Report about a huge anti-nuke protest rally in Toyko on Friday, the 29th of June. “No more Fukushimas” was their rally cry.

On Friday, June 29, 200 thousand people inundated the streets around the Prime Minister’s Office and Residence, the Parliament Building and other facilities.

Around 5:40 PM, the “protest on the sidewalk” spilled over to the streets. Around 6:50 PM, all the six traffic lanes of the street from the crossing in front of the Prime Minister’s Office through the Ministry of Finance were completely occupied by workers and people, young and old, who held makeshift placards. Other streets nearby were also full of protesters. It was a Tahrir Squar in Tokyo.

The huge crowd of people began to move toward the PM’s Office, chanting “Saikado hantai” (“Stop Restart”). The panic-stricken police moved dozens of armored police vehicles and built a wall with them and stopped the march of protesters at the last minute.

The fight for Women’s Reproductive Freedom has been going on in every country around the world. Jane Cawthorne has been a long-time advocate for women’s rights in Canada. She is the writer of the play “The Abortion Monologues”. The play, according to Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation,“…gives a voice to the perspectives of real women who are all too often missing from the public debate. These powerful monologues have the potential to change the way people talk about abortion.”

In the following article, Jane asks us to take a moment to appreciate what our work can accomplish.

By Jane Cawthorne

Calgary, Alberta – These days with women’s reproductive rights under constant attack, especially in the United States, it’s sometimes hard to remember our true goals are in the reproductive justice movement. While we are busy trying to explain what’s wrong with legislating mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, or explaining why it’s unacceptable and unethical for doctors to be forced to lie to women about their pregnancies so they won’t consider abortion, or fighting to make sure women facing poverty can access contraception, we might need a reminder of what winning really looks like when it comes to reproductive rights.

For the remainder of this article, please go to San Diego Free Press

By Kent Paterson/ Frontera NorteSur / Originally published on June 21, 2012

Almost from nowhere, the 132 Movement not only succeeded in mobilizing thousands of young people in street protests against one Mexican presidential candidate and media monopolization, but recast Mexico’s elections by thrusting questions of money and politics, economic power and corruption and education and citizenship into the center of the political process.

In Aguascalientes, Mexico, a group of young people passed out leaflets to passerby in the city’s busy downtown. A young woman wore a homemade poster that protested the murders of women in the state of Mexico, while her companions distributed leaflets that flashed a satiric image of former Mexico state governor and current presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto.

North African & Mideast Conflict Resolution Delegation visits San Diego; Looks for Answers and finds more Questions

Clearly the vetting process at the State Department needs some updating from the Google dartboard they must be currently using, I thought to myself a little over a week ago, last Friday. After all, the last rumor I heard about the OB Rag / San Diego Free Press staffers was we were all under investigation by Homeland Security for our Occupy Movement support. But unlike some other thoughts I have, at least there was a basis for this one.

Good morning Dudes and Dudettes!

Today, Wednesday, June 20, 2012, is the eighth annual International Surfing Day. Regardless of the June Gloom or lack of bump in the water, Our Mother Ocean is calling us to come and play…especially if you surf.

Now I know most who work in OB most likely will not have a problem getting the time off to commune with our Beautiful Lady to the West. Not all who live in San Diego, however, live west of I-5. I do not understand this, but it is the subject for another time.

So for those of you who work for uptight, tie-wearing, clock-puchin’, worried-about-makin’-a-buck bosses, regardless if it is in a high-rise downtown or changing tires in El Cabong, you need to get in the water. Have no fear, an answer has been provided to your dilemma.

Seems Jim Moriarty, the CEO of the Surfrider Foundation (truly an oxymoron if I ever heard one) has taken time to provide those of us who need to splain’ to their bosses why they need to get off work.

Just cut and past the link below, and Jim has drafted a fill-in-the-blank letter which should, in most reasonable cases, allow you to get off work. It looks official enough that if you worked for me, I’d give you the day off.

Massive protests in Cairo and other citeis against military rule as their candidaten declares himself winner of presidential vote.

AlJazeera/ June 20 , 2012

Thousands of Egyptians have packed into Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the ruling military council’s decision to claim new powers, amid contesting claims by both presidential candidates of victory in the weekend’s election.

In the hub of the uprising that deposed president Hosni Mubarak, protesters chanted against his military successors, with a steady trickle of people joining the demonstration after sunset.

The demonstration on Tuesday comes against a backdrop of uncertainty over the winner of the presidential vote, with the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi and his rival, former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, both claiming victory.

By Peter Bohmer / Special to the OB Rag

Here is Part One.

The 2012 Election

It is very important that Hugo Chávez get reelected President in the upcoming October, 2012 election for the revolution to move forward. I am quite certain that Chávez will be reelected as he continues to be very popular and deservedly so with the large majority of Venezuelans from the popular classes.

The popular classes comprise as much as 80% of the people of Venezuela. President Chávez has dealt with two serious bouts of cancer in the last year, yet he continues to be an active and involved president. If at some time during his next term in office because of health reasons, Chávez cannot continue as president, there does not seem to be another person that has both the vision of Chávez and also the strong support of the people.

Editor: Here is a two-part series about what is going on in Venezuela by Peter Bohmer – a former OBcean, who now teaches at Evergreen College in Washington state. Bohmer just recently returned from a ten week visit to Venezuela, and filed this report.

by Peter Bohmer / Special to the OB Rag / June 7, 2012

I spent 10 weeks in Venezuela in early 2012, two months with a group of 30 students from the Evergreen State College and then two weeks continuing my travels with a good friend. I had a similar 10 week experience in early 2009 and also spent three weeks in Venezuela in 2011. Based on my 2009 study and travel in Venezuela, I wrote an article that can be found here. This article here is a continuation of that one. It focuses primarily on the changes in Venezuela since 2009. Most of my time on this trip was spent in Caracas, Mérida, and Barquisimeto.

by Doug Porter / San Diego Free Press / May 29, 2012

I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to…

Filner’s Kenyan connection?… Absent a potential birth certificate scandal, reporter/columnist Matt Hall has decided to make the Mayoral candidates cough up their college transcripts in hopes that something, anything will make for a story. And at least one of the SDUT’s reliably right wing commenters is having a cow because candidate Bob Filner apparently ignored the request. The lone democrat in the race has been known to not suffer foolish requests lightly, as he did earlier this year when the Voice of San Diego wanted him to give up political positions in three sentences or less. Our sources say that Filner’s crew is, in fact, trying to get the stone tablets from Cornell shipped off to Hall; they’re just having problems finding a shipper.

China cited the treatment of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, stating that their arrests can provide a “glimpse of the truth regarding the United States’ so-called freedom and democracy”.

China Daily/ May 26, 2012

Beijing on Friday swiftly hit back at Washington’s annual report on China’s human rights, saying in a report that the US government’s crackdown on protesters in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration is the real illustration of American democracy.

In the report, Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011, the State Council Information Office demanded the US stop its double standards.

Beijing issued the report less than 24 hours after the release of the Washington report, which Chinese experts said used harsher wording than previous editions and reflected US double standards that meet political needs in an election year.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / May 20, 2012

Traveling is a great occupation — for so many reasons, not the least of which is the differences between home and “there,” wherever there might be. In this case, it’s Spain.

In Spain, my normal breakfast of Weetabix with raisins and organic milk is replaced with hearty ham and goat cheese, fresh fruit and coffee with hot milk.

In Spain, our rampant consumerism is replaced with a two-hour midday siesta, when shops are shuttered and families and friends leisurely dine together.

In Spain, my country’s clenched sphincter is replaced with a mobile prophylactic dispensary.

Protest Roars to Life at Chicago NATO Summit in Face of Violent Police Crackdowns

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Veteran Scott Olsen returns his medal, nurses fight for their rights, and police crack skulls in the latest demonstration of 99% outrage.

By Matt Reichel / AlterNet / May 21, 2012 |

For weeks, people have speculated over the potential for a blooming “American Spring” this weekend in Chicago, when thousands were expected to come protest the meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the end, it might be more appropriate to speak of a newly born American Summer, as demonstrators were dosed with unseasonably warm 80- and 90-degree weather in a weekend that felt more like July than May.