Category: World News

Editor: This is the second in a two-part series by Jim Bell, one of OB’s itinerant globalists. Here is Part One.

By Jim Bell

Part Two

On the most fundamental level, answering this question comes down to consciousness. If each of us and the human family as a whole, become conscious enough, it will be easy to resolve human differences without violence or its threat and develop economies and ways of life that are beneficial to everyone and are completely life-support sustaining.

It’s true that some people have done and are doing despicable things to other people and to our common life-support system, but on the whole, we are becoming more conscious. The expansion of women’s rights, the general rejection of racism and the fact that governments no longer sanction slavery — are just a few examples of our increasing consciousness and empathy.

My time here is rapidly drawing to a close. Thank God. Don’t get me wrong, the people are nice, the money’s been good, and at 65, hell, it’s just good to work at all. I hope I’ve stayed long enough, but even if I haven’t, I gotta get out of here.

Why do I need to leave?

More than any other reason it is because I’m starting to lose my patience. Things I could shrug off before are becoming too tiresome to let go by. I’m starting to tell administrators things they’re not interested in hearing. In class, I started straying further and further off the prescribed and only acceptable path. My ability to pretend I’m happy as a clam in company and school meetings is deteriorating. I’m just too tired of the bullshit.

Part One

By Jim Bell

Introduction

I believe that when enough of us care about the well being of our descendents and their own, it will be easy to bring everything we do for work or play into life-support system harmony. I believe that doing this correctly is the best way to create a prosperous and completely life-support sustaining future.

Toward the above, I’m personally working on becoming more conscious by getting clearer about my own existence and the existence of others — and the existence of everything else including things like freedom, justice and our connection to our children and future generations. I have found that the more conscious I become, the greater is my desire to leave future generations a peaceful, prosperous and life-support sustaining future.

San Diego In World Spotlight Due to Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations

By Lori Wallach / The Nation (Article appeared in the July 16-23, 2012 edition)

While the Occupy movement has forced a public discussion of extreme corporate influence on every aspect of our lives, behind closed doors corporate America is implementing a stealth strategy to formalize its rule in a truly horrifying manner. The mechanism is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy, so you are in good company if you have never heard of it. But the thirteenth round of negotiations between the United States and eight Pacific Rim nations will be held in San Diego in early July.

The TPP has been cleverly misbranded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate boosters. As a result, since George W. Bush initiated negotiations in 2008, it has cruised along under the radar. The Obama administration initially paused the talks, ostensibly to develop a new approach compatible with candidate Obama’s pledges to replace the old NAFTA-based trade model. But by late 2009, talks restarted just where Bush had left off.

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.