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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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California MAGA Republican Assemblyman Randy Voepel is the grandfather of Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich, according to media reports.

Colorado Springs police arrested Aldrich, 22, following a mass shooting at the LGBT venue Club Q on Saturday that left five people dead and 25 were injured.

Multiple media reports, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, showed Aldrich's mother is Laura Voepel, daughter of the 72-year-old California state assemblyman.

Newsweek found social media posts made by Laura Voepel where she praises her father's public service.

In an April 14, 2020, Facebook post, Laura Voepel said: "Keep up the work dad. You work hard to improve our lives and a lot of us take notice."

Randy Voepel was previously condemned over comments he made where he compared the January 6 riot at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the American Revolutionary War.

Just three days after the riot, Randy Voepel told the Union-Tribune: "This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny."

"Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the [Joe] Biden swear-in on January 20."

Voepel also showed his support for former President Donald Trump in a January 20, 2017, Twitter post.

It read: "Let us not only #MAGA, but make California Great Again. Grateful to be representing my district in the State Assembly. #InaugurationDay."

According to a biography on his website, Voepel was elected to represent California's 71st Assembly District in 2016.

Prior to being a state assemblyman, Voepel served as Santee City mayor between 2000 and 2016 and was also on the city's council between 1996 and 2000.

In March 2022, Voepel was given the East Californian Silver Star Award for "Best Elected Official."

Before Voepel entered politics, he served two tours with the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

Newsweek has contacted Voepel's office for comment.

In a news briefing on Sunday, Colorado Springs police said the motive for the shooting was not known and that investigations were being carried out to determine if it was a hate crime.

Despite a motive for the shooting having not been confirmed by police, New York Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Republican Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert for her anti-LGBT rhetoric.

On Sunday, Boebert said on Twitter: "The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful. The morning the victims and the families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly."

But Ocasio-Cortez responded: "@laurenbobert you have played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws."

"You don't get to 'thoughts and prayers' your way out of this. Look inward and change."

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krispyweiss · 2 years

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Stills, Nash & Young?

- “I don’t think so,” Graham Nash says

David Crosby is infamously not on speaking - or singing - terms with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young.

So that rules out a CSNY reunion. But what about SNY?

“I don’t think so,” Nash tells the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“I mean, yeah, of course we could, because Stephen, Neil and I are fine musicians. … We could make music together, without David, but it would have nowhere near the power of the four of us together.”

That leaves Nash, 80, to work alone and with others. And that he is doing.

He’s got a solo album slated for spring 2023; Nash features on every song on a forthcoming album by his ex-Hollies bandmate Allan Clarke; and there’s even a joint with Crosby in the can.

The latter is an as-yet-untitled, Nash-curated compilation that finds the former best friends adding harmonies on Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes,” James Taylor’s “Mexico” and features a 1993 recording of Crosby and Nash singing “You’ve Got a Friend” with Carole King.

“That really is a great album, and I hope it comes out soon,” Nash told the newspaper.

10/9/22

#graham nash #david crosby #stephen stills #neil young #crosby stills nash and young #allan clarke #the hollies #jackson browne #james taylor #carole king #the san diego union-tribune

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shefaniquotes · 7 months

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“If Blake Shelton came to me and said, ‘Let’s make an album together,’ and you think I wouldn’t jump on board, you would be insane. He’s my best friend and I always want to do everything with him. Never say never. I’m always trying to get him to write songs with me and if something is meant to be, it will happen.”

The San Diego Union Tribune, November 2022

“We’ve done a lot together and written a little bit together but it’s just not enough for me. I’m always like, ‘Come on, Blake; let’s do more!’ He’s just a magic, magic person so you just want more of him all the time. He’s very generous so he does give a lot but I just can’t get enough.”

People Magazine, September 2023

Gwen on working with Blake, various sources

#gwenonblake #The San Diego Union Tribune #people magazine #2022 #2023 #shefani

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elephantaday · 2 years

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Day 217 of posting pictures of elephants.

#elephants #cute animals #cuteness #elephant #adorable #image of the day #not my image #wildlife #cuteness overload #nature #source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years

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Steve Breen, San Diego Union Tribune :: [Scott Horton]

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“And the third, of course, is climate change, perhaps the greatest of all these challenges, and certainly the one about which we’ve done the least. It may not be quite game-ending, but it seems set, at the very least, to utterly change the board on which the game is played, and in more profound ways than almost anyone now imagines. The habitable planet has literally begun to shrink, a novel development that will be the great story of our century.”

― Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

#climate change #Steve Breen #San Diego Union Tribune #Scott Horton #Bill McKibben #Falter: Has the Human Game Begun To Play Itself Out?#quotes

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subsidystadium · 1 month

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Former San Diego councilman talked to city leaders about a sports arena. Forgot to mention being a paid consultant for the project.

Last night, I saw a very interesting article on a site called LaPresna.org. In it, they discuss a former San Diego Councilman (Byron Wear) going in front of the city four different times to push hard on approving a development project that would involve a new sports arena district. This in itself is not that odd. Except, in this case, it was a bit different since he wasn’t telling anyone that he…

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#Brian Maienschein #Byron Wear #City Council #Dean Spanos #Dick Murphy #Jim Madaffer #LaPresna.org #Midway Rising #NFL #obrag.org #Paid Lobbyist #Ralph Inzunza #San Diego #San Diego Business Journal #San Diego Chargers #San Diego State #San Diego Union Tribune #Toni Atkins #US Attorneys Office

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notokwithclay · 1 month

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#union tribune #san diego #henry clay elementary #san diego unified #henry clay #rename racist monuments #fugitive slave act #missouri compromise

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shel0ves · 6 months

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#news #union tribune #san diego #newspaper #print #california

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules

Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.

Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.

The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.

The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.

The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.

Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.

Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.

Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.

Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.

The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.

This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.

SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."

But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF

Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.

SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/

Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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dduane · 8 months

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The cover for the first book in the Feline Wizards group has just been spiffed up a little (new render, improved magic...). So those of you who've already purchased it through Ebooks Direct are entitled to an upgrade to the version with the new cover, if you want one.

Just email the EBD customer service address quoting your order number, and we'll send you updated download links at no cost.

If you've already got the book as part of the whole-store Give Me Everything You've Got package, TBONWM has been updated there too. The request process to get the package with the re-covered book is the same as above.

And if you've never heard of this Young Wizards-universe book, and want to pick up a copy, you can do that here. The ebook is DRM-free: it can be moved from device to device as you please, and if you ever need a replacement due to file loss or platform change, we'll do that for you for free.

Some cats—the ones who're also wizards—work in the world as the guardians of Gates, maintaining the portals between realities. When an ancient evil threatens to flood through the worldgates hidden in New York's Grand Central Terminal and invade New York with surreal horror from another dimension, four champions—an Upper East Side house pet, a neurotic tortoiseshell, a fearless alley tom, and a feral kitten—are called to defend the Earth. Four small wizards must walk between worlds into the terrible realm of the Children of the Serpent... facing ultimate battle in a war against a Darkness born untold aeons before the creation of mere Man... "Intriguing, with a well-worked backdrop... Fantasy-loving ailurophiles will curl up and purr." -- Kirkus Reviews "Laughter, spellworks, battles, and personal growth all mesh into a Tolkienesque tale." -- San Diego Union-Tribune "Love it? I could not put it down." -- Jane Yolen

#Young Wizards #Feline Wizards #The Book of Night with Moon #Diane Duane

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i-am-aprl · 1 month

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IDF T-shirts depict killing pregnant women and children.

In this photo taken March 16, 2009, an Israeli model poses with a T-shirt with Hebrew that reads “Sniper platoon” in Tel Aviv.

Israel’s military on Monday, March 23, 2009, condemned T-shirts worn by soldiers that depict scenes of violence against Palestinians as the army faces increasing domestic criticism over its conduct during the recent Gaza war.

The T-shirts, ordered by troops to mark the end of basic training and other military courses, were worn by a number of enlisted men in different units, the daily Haaretz newspaper reported. They were not made or sanctioned by the military.

(AP Photo/ Yanai Yechiel) ( / AP)

Source: San Diego union tribune

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workingclasshistory · 1 year

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On this day, 8 February 1912 the San Diego Free Speech Fight began when a 5,000 strong march against a ban on public meetings was disrupted by police who made 41 arrests. The ban, like many such bans around the country at that time, were to try to stop the growth of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union (content note: sexual violence). The struggle would see one of the earliest recorded uses of fire hoses being turned on protestors, frequent police beatings and shootings, and the use of hundreds of vigilantes who tortured hundreds of members and supporters of the IWW, and "disappeared" an unknown number. One participant, Rickety Stan, recalled that: "they was sure scared of littler agitators like me… a sheriff's man came with a whip and hit me over the face and punched me in the belly and threw me in jail… I couldn't ever have quit. What did beatings or jail matter compared to the class struggle?" One 65-year-old IWW member, Michael Hoey, was beaten to death by police, and another named Joseph Mikolasek, was shot and killed by officers. One local newspaper editor, of the Herald, who tried to support the workers was kidnapped, threatened with lynching and expelled from the town. Whereas the Tribune newspaper endorsed lynching the workers: "Hanging is none to good for them and they would be much better dead". One anarchist, Ben Reitman, who travelled to support the workers, was kidnapped, violently beaten, tortured and and sexually assaulted by vigilantes, after which he was reportedly never the same. A local paper celebrated his sadistic torture and assault, and how it drove him from the city. Despite the intense violence, workers kept defying the law and the vigilantes and eventually succeeded in defeating the ban on public meetings. Similar victories were repeated up and down the country. Learn more about the IWW in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/products/rebel-voices-an-iww-anthology Pictured: An illegal street... https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2205349422983529/?type=3

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topguncortez · 1 year

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The Mighty Have Fallen | Prologue

Masterlist | next part

synopsis: Sports & Boys had been the only thing on your mind until everything changed in an instant.

word count: 900

warnings: cursing, description of gruesome injuries, car crash

The rain seemed to be coming down in sheets, which was a rarity for Los Angeles. Y/N was hardly paying attention, sitting in the back seat of her parents SUV, texting rapidly on her cell phone. She was half pissed that the softball game got canceled because of the rain, but she was more mad that her parents wouldn’t let her ride home with her boyfriend, Jesse.

“Bun, I know you’re-”

“Don’t call me that,” Y/N huffed, cutting her father off. He was going to try and play the good guy, give some justified reason for not letting her go home with Jesse. He would probably even use the rainfall in his favor, since ‘california teens don’t know how to drive in the rain’. But he was wrong, her mother was wrong, they were both wrong. Jesse grew up in Oregon, and certainly knew how to drive in the rain. Y/N had turned 18 two months ago, and was set to graduate high school in less than six weeks. She had already signed to go play division one softball at the University of Texas in the fall. To Y/N, her parents seemed to be struggling with the fact that she was no longer their little girl. She was an adult, and hell she wanted to be treated like one.

“Leave her be, Frank,” Y/N’s mother, Miranda spoke up, “She wants to act like a brat about not leaving with that delinquent.”

“Jesse is a good guy!” Y/N argued.

“Then why have you been skipping practice!?” Miranda turned in her seat to look at her daughter. Y/N narrowed her eyes at her mother, and crossed her arms over her chest, sitting back in her seat. She knew the next words out of Miranda’s mouth was going to be about how hard they both worked to put her through St. Andrew’s, pay for all the softball necessities, and take time off of work to go watch her play. It was the same spiel every time they fought.

Miranda and Frank did work hard to be able to provide the best for their daughter. They came from next to nothing, growing up in a small, desolate town in the midwest. They had met when they were both at CalPoly, Miranda studying nursing and Frank studying journalism. Frank currently worked for the Union Tribune as a sports writer, and Miranda at the local hospital. Frank took Y/N to as many baseball and softball games as he could, making her fall in love with the sport even more.

Their family wasn’t extremely wealthy by any means, but they lived comfortably. Y/N had been lucky to get a scholarship to St. Andrew’s Preparatory School, which had one of the best softball teams in San Diego county. It put her one step closer to achieving her dream of playing D1 softball.

“Miranda, I think she’s allowed to be upset about the game,” Frank spoke and his wife huffed, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. Poor Frank, he had gotten lucky to get a daughter who was almost exactly like her mother, from the looks to the attitude. He sighed, “This dang rain! It just will not let up!”

“Do you think we need to pull over?” Miranda asked. It seemed as though they were the only car on the road at this point in time.

“No! I just want to get home!” Y/N yelled.

“You are not the one driving, young lady, so can it!” Miranda scolded her daughter.

“Ugh! Does anyone ever listen to me!” Y/N threw her hands up.

“Alright, I have about had it-” Miranda turned in her seat again, as Frank shouted.

“Miranda, turn around, please- Shit!”

Miranda had barely turned in her seat as Frank swerved from hitting something, no, someone, in the middle of the road. Y/N put her hand on the seat in front of her to brace herself from hitting it. The breaks squealed as the car spun out from the rain, and into the lane of oncoming traffic. Miranda let out a scream, as Frank tried to correct the spin and stop the car. Something that sounded like a cry for Jesus Christ filled the car, as Y/N’s eyes locked on the headlights coming towards them.

— — —

Y/N couldn’t remember much as the car finally came to halt after what seemed like forever. Glass covered her body as she blinked her eyes open. Her cheek felt cold and wet, and her hands reached out, feeling hard metal beneath her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but she realized the car was upside down, and she was laying in the spot where the sunroof was once at. Her breath started to pick up, as the sound of a blaring horn filled her ears, and the coppery scent of blood filled her nostrils. It made her nauseous.

“Mom? D-Dad?” She called out to them, seeing two bodies in front of her, neither one moving, “Mom! Dad!” Y/N cried louder, and tried her best to reach for them, but something had her body pinned, “Mom!” Her voice cracked, “Oh my god. . . Oh my god!” Y/N looked around the car, trying to pull herself free from whatever had the left side of her body pinned. She couldn’t feel her left hand, she wasn’t even sure if it was still there, “Help! Help me! Someone!”

The crunch of footsteps on the glass caught her attention. She looked up the best she could as black boots stood in her line of sight. Y/N jumped a bit as the person put his hands on the ground, and then laid himself down on the ground.

“H-help?” Y/N said softly. There was a chuckle, and the last thing Y/N could remember seeing was a pair of red eyes looking right through her.

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mitchipedia · 9 months

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I am in awe of the mental gymnastics required to conclude that there's any solution to homelessness other than finding housing for people. It's like telling a drowning person that their real problem is they eat fatty foods.

“Housing First” policy does what it says—it attempts to address homelessness by finding housing for homeless people before attempting to solve other problems these people might have.

This common-sense solution has come under fire by critics, mostly Republicans, who claim that it fails to address the real causes of homelessness: Mental health and drug abuse. (And then the Republicans don’t want to do anything about mental health or drug abuse either. Well played, Republicans!)

However, numerous studies show Housing First works.

Two examples of Housing First implemented in San Diego “show that formerly homeless people are remaining housed and may be more open to rehab than if they had stayed on the street,” according to a report by Gary Warth in the San Diego Union-Tribune. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/home…

Out of 400+ tenants in two properties purchased for homeless housing in 2020, most original tenants are still there, and of the 15% who have moved away, nearly all are in other permanent housing or temporary housing.

But what about substance abuse? Some 25% of tenants self-identified as having substance abuse disorders. The actual number may well be higher because people are going to lie about that kind of thing.

Of those self-identifying as having substance abuse disorders, few seek treatment: Just 12%. That’s not much, but if you put these people in housing, more of them will live long enough to get into treatment, because the mortality rate of people on the street is four times higher than the general population.

Moreover, treatment is more likely to work if people are housed. Substance abuse treatment is difficult and painful, and even harder to do if you’re also dealing with the daily traumas of homelessness.

Also: the Voice of San Diego’s Will Huntsberry looks at four common beliefs about homelessness. voiceofsandiego.org/2023/07/2…

One myth is that homeless people are coming to California and San Diego to take advantage of the better weather and more generous social programs. But the reality is that most homeless people aren’t coming to San Diego from elsewhere; their last residence was right here, Huntsberry reports.

That makes sense: If you find yourself homeless, that’s a traumatic event, and you’re not likely to leave your support network of friends and family and go somewhere where you don’t know the neighborhoods, you don’t know where it might be safe to sleep, or how to go about finding work or benefits. www.nytimes.com/2023/07/1…

California has a bigger homeless problem than most places. The state is home to 12% of the country’s total population, but 30% of its homeless, Huntsberry reports.

Another belief is that many homeless don’t want to get off the streets. Even San Diego’s Democratic Mayor Todd Gloria supports that idea. But the reality is that shelters in San Diego are functioning at nearly full capacity every day of the week. “Far more people ask for shelter every day than receive it,” Huntsberry says.

The third belief is that mental health problems and substance abuse cause homelessness. It’s true that mental health problems and substance abuse are prevalent among the homeless–but those conditions don’t cause homelessness. We know this because places like West Virginia, which have high rates of drug use and mental illness, have low homeless rates.

Homelessness is caused by housing that is expensive and hard to find, which describes San Diego. timesofsandiego.com/business/…

Huntsberry cites a book, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern.

In their book, the researchers compare finding housing to a distorted game of musical chairs. In this game, some people have broken ankles and other ailments. These people are the most likely to be left standing when the music stops. So it is with housing. People with mental illness and substance abuse problems are the most likely to have problems getting housing in a tight housing market.

But in places where housing is affordable and abundant, people with mental illness and substance use disorders can usually maintain housing.

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 9 months

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by Ben Cohen

A member of San Diego’s Human Relations Commission was forced to step down this week following a furious response to antisemitic comments he proffered at a meeting of the body on July 18, in which he claimed that the Torah instructs Jews to murder Palestinians.

The resignation of the commissioner, Khaliq Raufi, was announced on Wednesday by San Diego County Supervisor Joel Anderson in a scathing statement.

“Commissioner Raufi’s ignorant comments were hurtful and in no way reflect my personal views, but they do highlight the urgent need to focus on education, bridge building, and to advocate for tolerance,” said Anderson, who appointed Raufi to the 31 member commission. “After meeting with Commissioner Raufi, I have received his resignation letter.”

The city’s Human Relations Commission — which answers to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the county’s legislative branch — was established in May 2020 to “promote positive human relations, respect, and the integrity of every individual regardless of gender, religion, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or citizenship status.”

At the July 18 meeting, which was recorded, Raufi told those in attendance that he had read a few verses of the Book of Deuteronomy — the fifth and final book of the Torah — calling it the “Book of Jews.”

“It states, ‘go kill Palestinians — wipe them all out,'” Raufi claimed. “It’s a teaching that they, on a daily basis, teach their followers in their synagogues. So how are we gonna resolve that?”

At this juncture, Raufi was interrupted by an observer, Sara Brown, the San Diego regional director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who pointedly asked him, “are you serious right now?”

Brown later expressed her shock that only one of the assembled commissioners — Kate Clark, who works for Jewish Family Services — took Raufi to task for his remarks. “It was so unbelievably shocking in the moment — and even more shocking was the silence of every single commissioner and county staff,” she told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

An editorial in the same outlet quoted San Diego’s Mayor Todd Gloria’s statement that “hate has no place in San Diego and there will be consequences for those who spread it in our city.” It went on to argue: “The county Human Relations Commission, which needs better vetting and training, must take that to heart. Otherwise, what’s the point of it?”

Raufi delivered his speech during a debate concerning a controversy at the commission the previous month, in which another commissioner — George Khoury, a supporter of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) — denounced Israel as a “racist, fascist state” as he described how his Palestinian family fled from Jerusalem during the 1948 War of Independence.

In a June 20 letter to the commission following Khoury’s speech, local Jewish leaders noted: “Rather than speak about the importance of Arab American Heritage Month, an opportunity to further celebrate diversity in our San Diego community, Commissioner Khoury’s statement negated Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, diminished the historical Jewish connection to the land, and depicted the creation of Israel as a war crime — language that goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies.”

#khaliq raufi #torah #idiot #george khoury #kate clark jewish family services #san diego #human relations commission

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years

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Steve Breen, San Diego Union Tribune :: [Scott Horton]

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I just remembered the stars I love them too whether I'm floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their side I have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much bigger did they look like huge jewels on black velvet or apricots on orange did you feel proud to get closer to the stars I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to say they were terribly figurative and concrete my heart was in my mouth looking at them they are our endless desire to grasp things seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad I never knew I loved the cosmos

[from “Things I Didn't Know I Loved”] Nâzim Hikmet - 1902-1963

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#Scott Horton #Steve Breen #San Diego Union Tribune #Galileo #James Webb Space Telescope #poem #poetry #Nazim Hiknet #Things I Didn't Know I Loved #Alive On All Channels

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