January 2016

Homelessness on the California Central Coast

A stark indictment of the morals and policies of Silicon Valley yupitos nd their coastal city chambers of commerce about the people that just don't fit the pathological social paradigm of these groups.
Homeless people all over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties -- The horror! The horror!
-blj

1-2-16

2016: Why?

The Badlands Journal editorial board wishes you a Happy New Year.
We believe that the coming year must be the year of the question.
But, where to begin?

Cheaper to retire 300,000 acres of toxic land in Westlands

File this one under "We missed this but better late than never." -- blj
7-22-15
Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood
Retiring Toxic CA Farmland Better Deal Than Tunnels
Submitted by Lloyd Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/150722678_retiring-toxic-ca-farmland...

SPECIAL REPORT:

Toward a canon of effective political insult

An Irish journalist who has covered the Middle East for several decades makes a few observations on an important political topic: the insult. -- blj
12-19-15
The Independent
A short history of the political put-down
A good insult lingers in the memory, a bad one rebounds on its creator - it’s an art, not a science
· Patrick Cockburn
· @indyworld

A world of merciless victims

11-15-15
The Independent
Robert Fisk: 'We remain blindfolded about Isis' says the man who should know
Brian Keenan was held by Shia Muslims loyal to Hezbollah in Lebanon
Robert Fisk
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/robert-fisk-we-remain-blindfolded-ab...
·

US nodding in Afghanistan?

When we come across first-rate journalism, we are always tempted to post it regardless of its topic because the quality is so rare.
Admittedly, this is a prejudice of people who read larger quantities of journalism than most do.
So, why choose to include an article about Afghanistan based on interviews with "a group of Afghan Pashtuns" written by a Brazilian who lives in Hong Kong? Or an article about Afghanistan written by and Englishman who is a longtime resident of Beirut?

Hanson's Obesifornia

Our valley's reigning pundit on an ever widening range of issues is syndicated columnist Victor Hanson, a Stanford trained classicist from a south valley farming family who is also a long-standing Hoover Institution scholar and, if these were not enough credentials to be expert on almost everything, he helped found a program at Fresno State to teach Latin and Greek. He is also author of Mexifornia, which pretends to be a brave moral stand against Mexican immigration.

Miscellaneous current reports of corporate overreach

For Immediate Release, April 29, 2015

Contact:

Adam Keats, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682 x 304, akeats@biologicaldiversity.org
Kim Floyd, Sierra Club, (760) 680-9479
Drew Feldmann, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, (909) 881-6081
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/cadiz-water...

Outbreak of parasites in Yosemite

1-19-16
Los Angeles Times
The corporate grab behind the Yosemite Park trademark clash
Michael Hiltzik
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-corporate-grab-yose...

Bernie in Iowa: socialism, farm subsidies, exported obesity

Socialists in Iowa?

Iowa, the state that receives the second largest amount of farm subsidies in the nation, $24.9 billion between 1995 and 2012, evidently has a large number of self-identified socialists, pollsters find.

Heretics for Trump and Cruz?

"Comandante Cherry Garcia, presente!" and other peculiarities of the season

Coming from the left and the right, critical political thinking and action is in some cases emerging from widespread anger to dominate the debate this year, along with fabulous name-calling, character assassination and all the other elements of what the great United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis referred to as "the paraphernalia of a political campaign."

Hillary and Bernie in perspective

We enjoyed these two lengthy, excellent articles in the New York Review of Books on the top Democratic Party contenders for president because they made some points about both of them in relaxed, accurate language. All we know about the author, Simon Head, is that he holds academic positions at Oxford and NYU, and is a journalist whose latest book is The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age (1996). Unlike so many writers on the contemporary political situation, Head seems to be contemporary.