OB Rag

The arguments against legalization simply don’t hold up.

By Owen Poindexter / AlterNet

For decades, cannabis opponents controlled the messaging around the popular plant and cultivated any number of lies about its effects. This built up a powerful stigma against marijuana, the effects of which have not worn off. The racist, expensive and failed U.S. war on drugs continues to rage on. The criminalization of cannabis users and distributors remains a top priority in that war. The government stubbornly classifies it as a dangerous Schedule I substance with no medical value, despite stacks of evidence to the contrary.

Imagine if the drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen had a human face all the time.

By Pratap Chatterjee / AlterNet – Tom Dispatch

Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their “pilots” remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring “face” of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any “collateral damage” or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus.

Last year an unprecedented number of sea lion pups were admitted to rehabilitation facilities, emaciated, dehydrated and very underweight for their age and NOAA failed to recognize that the sardine fishery had anything to do with the scarcity of sardines, which feed the pups.

From EcoWatch – Nation of Change / May 12, 2014

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just announced a lack of Pacific sardines is a “likely contributor” to the “Unusual Mortality Event” (UME) that occurred last year where more than 1,600 California sea lions were found stranded and malnourished along the Southern California coastline. The big story, however, is the one NOAA is not telling us.

“Everyone who wants to preserve community control over the planning process should be afraid because your community will be next!” —Georgette Gomez, Associate Director of the Environmental Health Coalition

By Jim Miller

As we head toward the June 3rd election, the same corporate interests who spent big money to fund a petition drive based on lies to force a vote on the Barrio Logan Community Plan are now funding an equally dishonest campaign to defeat it.

As the San Diego Reader recently noted, the No on B and C Campaign’s sleazy tactics include teaming former mayor and current corporate front man Jerry Sanders up with a “crooked ex-admiral” to repeat the same bald-faced lies about how the Barrio Logan Community Plan will kill jobs and drive the Navy out of San Diego.

By Good News Network

San Diego International Airport became the first in the world to be awarded LEED Platinum — the highest environmental certification possible — for its new energy-efficient green terminal.

Sustainable features of the new terminal include a 3.3-megawatt solar array, low-flow water fixtures, drought-tolerant landscaping, energy-efficient or natural lighting, reflective roofs, storm drainage management and non-toxic interior construction materials and paints.

Rally along Torrey Pines Road with 50’ Keystone Pipeline Banner, signs, chants

From SanDiego350

On Thursday, May 8, 2014, over 100 San Diegans gathered along Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla to call on President Obama, who was in the neighborhood for a fundraiser, to reject a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. The “KXL”, which would carry dirty tar sands oil from Canada to Texas for refining and export, has been called “game over” for the climate by the nation’s foremost climatologist, Dr. James Hansen.

Participants held large signs, including a 50-foot cardboard depiction of the Keystone Pipeline with the words “Stop the Keystone Pipeline. Fight climate change” in huge letters on it, and a large banner with a quote from the President that participants want to see him keep:

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

Six women have filed a lawsuit against the program director of a Rock Church-affiliated recovery program alleging sexual battery and sexual harassment. The suit states that program director David Powers committed the non-consensual sexual incidents as he owns ABC Sober Living. His wife and the church are also listed as defendants. Five of the women were participants in the drug and alcohol rehab program and one was a former employee.

The women say that Powers – calling himself the director of the Rock Recovery Ministry – groped or sexually assaulted them. His spouse, Tina Powers, also a defendant, is alleged to have intimidated the victims when they complained, and it’s alleged that she was aware of her husband’s misconduct.

From pain and trouble sleeping to cancer and dementia, pot can be a godsend for seniors.

By April M. Short / AlterNet

Sue Taylor, a retired Catholic school principal and grandmother from Oakland, California, was living in Atlanta, Georgia writing a parenting handbook when she got a phone call from her son that would disrupt her life.

“He told me, ‘Mom, I know how you can open up your metaphysical holistic center,’ which had been my goal,” Taylor said. Taylor had earned a degree in divinity in Atlanta and is now a metaphysical minister. “He said, ‘It will be supported by a cannabis dispensary.’”

“Cannabis dispensary?” Taylor asked him. “You talkin’ about that marijuana stuff?”

(Seventh in a series)

By Cara Wilson-Granat

This is the seventh in a series of ten in which we meet one of the San Diego 10 orcas and hear from an advocate who continues to be one of the voices of these imprisoned voiceless orca, never stopping until the whole world listens.

After reading about Prisoner #7, Nakai, please scroll down this article and “meet” one of the top San Diego 10 Prisoner Advocates! This week’s Advocate is Zach Affolter. [Here are the other orca Prisoner profiles – Orca Profile #1 and #2, #3 ,4 #5 and No. #6.]

Prisoner #7: Nakai

Sweet-natured Nakai was born on September 1, 2001. His claim to fame is that he was the very first orca to be conceived through artificial insemination. Not only that. He was born head first, which is extremely rare in most captive orca births. His mother, Kasatka, who lived in California, was impregnated through semen collected from his father, Tilikum, who lives in Florida.

UCSD Students to Honor George Winne’s Self-Immolation and Protests 44 Years Ago

Forty-four years ago exactly, college and university campuses across America exploded in violent and non-violent protests against President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam war. It was May 1970.

Over the course of the month, the nation would witness more than 450 university, college and high school campuses being shut down by student strikes that involved more than 4 million students. It was the largest American student protest before and since.

During protests, National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio, and Jackson city police and Mississippi state troopers killed one student at Jackson State College and a high schooler passerby, in Jackson, Mississippi on May 15.

May is National Bike Month. This will be celebrated in Ocean Beach, as what other community is so stoked on biking?

There are several events around the City throughout the month of May for avid and amateur cyclists alike. (If you know of an event not listed below, please add it in the comment section.)

May 7 (Today): National Bike to School Day

This is pretty self-explanatory. Be on the lookout for kids of all ages riding their bikes in the morning and afternoon, and help by sharing the road.

by Lois Lane

Why do we live here, when the streets are dug up, the sidewalks are dirty, and we are overwhelmed with people some other people don’t want here?

It all turns on the beach, of course.

Our hearts do not belong in Penasquitos. All of Ocean Beach is beautiful, and so is Sunset Cliffs – a designated national and endangered treasure.

If you attend the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council meetings the first Monday of every month, you will hear more about how we keep the cliffs from eroding if we can, and how the trails project will enhance the experience for park-goers.