From War to Love
Guitarist Ana Vidovic Pays it Forward in Post-Valentine’s Day Performance By Melina Paris, Music Columnist
na Vidovic grew up playing music to the sounds of a civil war outside of her window. She was born in Karlovac near Zagreb, Croatia. Vidovic’s parents gave their children their full support, encouraging them to continue to focus on music, despite growing up in the middle of the SerboCroatian War. Music provided an escape, both spiritually and physically as the country was consumed by bloody conflict between 1991 and 1995. “I was fortunate to have [music] because it is the most beautiful thing,” Vidovic said. “I was grateful to have it and not have to think about all the other problems. Music was everything to me, without it I don’t know what I would have focused on. All the schools were closed. So it was good to have my parent’s support.” She started playing guitar at 5. Vidovic’s touring career has taken her
A
Defender of LA River is honored with a monument created by local sculptor p. 3
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
The planned public presentation of the controversial Ports O’ Call redevelopment project has been postponed from January, as originally promised, to March 20. But on Jan. 25, the Port of Los Angeles devoted two hours of its board meeting to “clarify any confusion that may exist by members of the public” about the process, said Executive Director Gene Seroka, as he opened the discussion. That’s not what happened, from the community’s point of view. Rather, port staff presented — and the board echoed and embellished — a self-serving narrative that starkly illustrated the vast gulf between the port and the community. The port — first Seroka, then Michael Galvin, director of Waterfront and Commercial Real Estate — patiently explained how they’d done everything by the book: they’d never specifically promised anything to anyone. The public, which has been engaged in the development process more than a decade longer,
responded by saying how upset they were at being blindsided, especially by the prospective closing of Ports O’ Call Restaurant. The port wanted to talk about its process, while the public wanted to talk about broken trust — the disconnect between that process and their lives. The port’s narrative jumped right over the most crucial part of the story: how the finalized lease agreement approved on May 19, 2016 differed dramatically from what the public expected based on years of previous promises. This was reiterated just 11 weeks earlier in a March 2 presentation at the Warner Grand Theatre, when the public was promised a phased development allowing minimal interruptions for existing tenants. “Current tenants who will remain in the project will be able to stay open throughout construction,” promised Alan Johnson, who was speaking for the
February 8 - 21, 2018
Finding Cupid on the twin brigantines and other Harbor Area restaurants p. 12
Port ‘Clears the Air’ by Blowing Smoke on Ports O’ Call Redevelopment Process
Port releases Waterfront development plans to RLn p.8
Classical guitarist Ana Vidovic will perform in concert at the Warner Grand Theatre on Feb. 18. Photo by David Roy Duenias.
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
[See Vidovic, p. 16]
[See Ports O’Call, p. 4]
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Non-Corporate Candidates Speak at Forum in South Bay By Christian L. Guzman, Community Reporter
The Shortest Run to Catalina • 698 slips from 28’ to 130’ • 375 dry storage spaces up to 45’ with crane launching • Ample courtesy parking • Water & electricity • Restrooms with showers • Ice machines & laundry • Pumpout—public and slip-in
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
SERVICES & AMENITIES
February 8 - 21, 2018
Providing clean facilities to the boating community and protecting our waterways from pollution
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The 2018 elections won’t just be remembered as a high stakes battle for Democratic or Republican control of Congress. It will be remembered for candidates running for office on platforms opposing corporate control of the electoral process. On Jan. 19, dozens of candidates for elected office in the state legislature and U.S. Congress who have pledged to not take donations from corporations discussed national, state and local issues at the Torrance Civic Center. The forum was organized by the South Bay People’s Alliance. Brian Hitchcock, an alliance member and the forum’s moderator, described his group and the candidates as “people trying to change the balance of power, to put people, planet and peace over profit.” With that goal, the alliance brought together candidates running in the 2018 primary election to discuss education, election reform, the environment, immigration and justice. People running for a range of offices participated including U.S. Senate (Tim Gildersleeve, Pat Harris and David Hildebrand, the House of Representatives (Miguel Zuniga), the California Assembly (Caney Arnold, Rachel Bruhnke and Maria Estrada), governor (Michael Bracamontes and Doug Jones), lieutenant governor (Gayle McLaughlin), and secretary of state (Michael Feinstein and Ruben Major). Each candidate spoke for two minutes on each subject. There was much agreement between the candidates. But some set themselves apart with specific or unique policy ideas.
Harris said that the United States should cut defense spending and use it for education. “The U.S. spends $600 billion dollars per year on defense and $120 billion of that are just on administration costs,” Harris said. Hildebrand said he wanted to see a fractional tax on Wall Street to fund education. “America has an employment gap regarding trades,” he said. “But you can’t ship your house to China for construction … we’ll use what I call the ‘Patriot Tax’ to … expand education.” Bruhnke, a local educator, acknowledged that successfully educating students isn’t just about funding, methodology or charter versus public schools. “I worked in Cuba and that country greatly increased its literacy rate because while the people were educating kids on a Monday, they were uplifting other standards of living on that same Monday,” Bruhnke said. “We need to do the same.” Arnold also encouraged citizens to take a more active role in shaping government policy. During the election reform discussion he encouraged the masses to start independent expenditure committees; such committees would allow progressive candidates to obtain funds without relying on the Democratic or Republican party machines. Feinstein wants to shift the California legislature to proportional representation. “If 20 percent of voters share common values then that should result in 20 percent of [See Candidates, p. 19]
Menudo Record Set in Wilmington
Above, Leo Medina, a plant manager at Juanita’s Foods stirs the giant vat of menudo Jan. 28 at the company headquarters in Wilmington, while Aaron De La Torre CEO of Juanita’s, left, holds the official certificate from Guinness World Records for the largest quantity of menudo soup, set at 2,439 pounds. Right, Aaron De La Torre CEO of Juanita’s, left, gets a high five from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Second from the right is Guinness adjudicator Christina Conlon. Photos by Juanito Holandez Jr.
Committed to Independent Journalism in the Greater LA/LB Harbor Area for More Than 30 Years
Defender of LA River Honored With Monument
[See MacAdams, p. 17]
Harbor Area Central SPNC Committee on Homelessness Meeting
The Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council Committee on Homelessness is hosting a meeting. The group will discuss the recent homeless count, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, homeless car rentals for dwelling, and identification of city- and county-owned property in San Pedro that could be used for permanent supportive housing. Time: 6:30 p.m. Feb. 8 Details: www.centralsanpedro.rog Venue: San Pedro City Hall Building, 638 S. Beacon St., Room 452, San Pedro
By Andrea Serna, Arts and Culture Writer
The Los Angeles River, infamously tamed and confined in concrete is coming back to life, one small step at a time. The improbable revitalization began thanks to poet, artist and crusader Lewis MacAdams. This month MacAdams’ extraordinary accomplishments were recognized with a 7-foot statue created by sculptor Eugene Daub titled, Poetry and Politics. On the monument are MacAdams’ words: “If it’s not impossible, I’m not interested.” The monument was installed in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles, officially known as Elysian Valley. The river runs through the small community bordered by 110 Freeway to the south, the 2 Freeway to the north, Interstate 5 to the west and the Los Angeles River to the east. MacAdams, the founder of the non-profit Friends of the LA River, also known as FoLAR, points to the frog as the symbol of the river. Frogtown’s name comes from the days when red-legged frogs used to climb out of the river to lay their eggs. On warm summer evenings croaking could be heard throughout the river valley. Red crawfish used to live in that river and the last steelhead trout was caught in 1948. MacAdams may never bring back the steelhead, but his goal is to repopulate the river with the sound of frogs. The genesis of MacAdam’s activism dates back to the 1980s when he moved here from San Francisco and stumbled across the concrete ribbon called the LA River. The poet was invited to participate in a performance festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art, called Angels Flight. As part of his performance he and two friends grabbed their wire cutters, cut a hole in the surrounding chain link fence that had defined the river as an inhospitable drainage ditch and performed something of a ceremonial unleashing of the river. He called his piece, Friends
Community Announcements:
Transportation Summit
Community members are invited to the Transportation Summit for Gateway Cities Council of Government Mayors. Topics include updates on Metro and Caltrans transportation projects, Council of Governments priorities, and Metro and Caltrans funding opportunities. RSVP. Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 9 Details: WeissmanS@Metro.net Venue: Long Beach Terrace Theater Lobby, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
LGB Noise Ordinance Meeting
Attend the second of two Airport Noise Ordinance meetings. Time: 10 a.m. Feb. 10 Details: https://tinyurl.com/LGBpresentation Venue: Expo Arts Center, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
Tenants Ready to Fight for Rent Control
San Pedro sculptor, Eugene Daub created the relief of Lewis MacAdams. Photo courtesy of Eugene Daub
The #RentControlNOW Coalition is hosting a campaign kick-off. Tenants are collecting signatures for a proposed rent control ballot measure. The proposed ordinance, if approved by the voters, would establish residential rent [See Announcements, p. 4]
Real News, Real People, Really Effective February 8 - 21, 2018
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[Ports O’Call, from p. 1]
Ports O’Call
February 8 - 21, 2018
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
developers that night. “We expect to complete this first phase by mid 2019. We are fortunate to have existing successful tenants who we are counting on to be the backbone of our pre-leasing
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activities.” June Smith, a long-time parliamentarian and then community co-chairwoman of the disbanded Port Community Advisory Committee, put her finger on crucial problem in a follow-up interview. “They’re not admitting that they changed the phases,” Smith said. “They’re not admitting that what they promised at the Warner Grand [on March 2, 2016] is not what they’re doing. The ports says, ‘Well because ‘we’ve given notice’ and this, that and the other thing, we can do this.’ No, because the community as a whole did not know that. You did not have another follow-up meeting at the Warner Grand to say, ‘You know, we have to change the phasing.’” Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council President Doug Epperhart has a similar sense from his constituents. “The problem is you had this very big transparent meeting at which statements were made and then very quickly backed away from,” Epperhart said. “The backing away from the statements was not done in a transparent way.” This is the source of the port’s problems. “If you say something here, loudly and then you say something different over here, very quietly, then you’re going to pay a price,” Epperhart said. But it’s not just community representatives like Smith and Epperhart who are troubled about the disconnect. “Ports O’ Call Restaurant is one of the few places in San Pedro for us to come together,” County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement read by staffer Erika Velazquez, calling for the restaurant to remain open. “Shuttering this restaurant for two years would mean cutting out part of the soul of San Pedro and cutting the ties and bonds that had been built there. You would lose the goodwill that you worked so hard to build up within the community for this project.” The common sense notion that public upset was prima facie evidence of a breakdown in process, as well as trust, never seemed to dawn on anyone from the port — either staff or commissioners. That’s perhaps the biggest problem of all. You can’t fix a problem you’re
incapable of recognizing. The framework was first set by Seroka, then fleshed out in detail by Galvin. Seroka first referred to “public comments … that the Harbor Department made past commitments … to maintain the Ports O’ Call Restaurant and shops … through the redevelopment process [and that] also alleged a lack of transparency, related to the redevelopment process in and of itself.” “These allegations are not consistent with the public record, which documents no such commitments, as well as a sustained public process about this development,” said Seroka, flatly. There’s a vast chasm between the port’s legalistic view of its past statements and what the overwhelming majority of the public understood of the port’s commitments. “The public record includes the statement by the developer in a highly attended meeting that Ports O’ Call Restaurant would be protected,” homeowner activist Kathleen Woodfield said. “Why has that statement, which is on tape been ignored in this legal presentation?” “It just is beyond me that a place that has been here so long and as such an important part of this community is going to be destroyed,” San Pedro resident Susan Tucker said. “When I have out-oftown guests, I always take them to Ports O’ Call Restaurant.” The Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council’s resolution calls, “ for the immediate halt of [all] Ports O’ Call tenant evictions due to the Port of Los Angeles failing to adequately disclose subsequent amendments to the 2009 approved Environmental Impact Report regarding Ports O’ Call redevelopment and keep[ing] the CeSPNC and the public informed. The POLA has also not revealed in advance how these amendments will fundamentally change the previous plans and commitments made publicly that will substantially alter the waterfront development”. They also called for the historic preservation of some buildings and the transfer of this matter to the board of referred powers of the LA City Council if the POLA doesn’t address these issues. “I felt disappointed and deceived,” said Shannon Ross, secretary of Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, in her public comments. “I attended most of the redevelopment meetings. Just like most of the community members, I was led to believe that Ports O’ Call Restaurant would
be included as an anchor tenant.” When she found out otherwise, she created a Facebook page and an online petition. She brought motions to her neighborhood council and her Democratic club. “Ports O’ Call Restaurant has sentimental value to many members going back [almost] 60 years,” she said. “More than that, Ports O’ Call Restaurant is an amazing community partner, allowing fundraisers at their restaurant, supporting some great organizations like Alex’s Lemonade Stand and … the Boys and Girls Club are just a couple of the organizations that they give their time, resources [and] their employees to support.” At a previous Harbor Commission meeting, on Dec. 14, Carrie Scoville, president of the San Pedro Democratic Club, called the restaurant “our mini-convention center here on the waterfront.” Ironically, one idea repeatedly advanced for redevelopment of the site was the addition of a mini-convention center — the de facto role the restaurant has already been playing for decades. “Ports O’ Call Restaurant is an iconic part of this community and is part of this community’s identity, which was yet another promise given to us in all presentations about the waterfront, which is that this community’s identity would be preserved,” Woodfield said. Indeed, one reason the Waterfront Alliance was so welcome as the development team was that both partners — Jericho Development and the Ratkovich Co. — were known for records of historical preservation. Jericho’s local projects include the Sixth Street Brown Brothers Building, where the majority of public waterfront planning meetings were hosted in 2003 and 2004, leading to the adoption of the original conceptual plan. Ratkovich has been involved in the renovation of eighteen nationally registered historic landmark buildings, including the Wiltern Theater. “Respecting history and having it be a part of our development is something that we attend to very carefully,” Wayne Ratkovitch told POLA’s board during the meeting. When the redevelopment planning process began, words like those were deeply reassuring to the community. Now, in effect, the port and the developers are asking the community: Who do you believe — me or your lying eyes?
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On Feb. 6, the Water Replenishment District of Southern California welcomed the expansion of the Robert W. Goldsworthy Groundwater DeSalter with a ribbon cutting ceremony. The expansion doubled the facility’s capacity to filter salt water from 2.5 million gallon per day to 5 million gallons. Torrance city council members and the Water Replenishment District were among the dignitaries celebrating this milestone. Courtesy of the WRD
Community Announcements:
Harbor Area
[Announcements, from p. 3] control and “just cause for eviction” requirements in Long Beach. Time: 12 p.m. Feb. 11 Details: (562) 436-8592. Venue: MacArthur Park, 1321 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach
Dress for Success
Pacific Gateway will be hosting a free two-day Interview Clothing Event. Clothing items will be available on firstcome, first-served basis. People will be allowed to select a maximum of two work outfits. Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 12 and 13 Details: (562) 570-4576; cort.huckabone@pacific-gateway.org Venue: Career Transition Center, 3447 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
Del Mar Community Watch
Del Mar Community Watch group is hosting a meeting. Time: 6 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15 Venue: Long Beach Rod and Gun Club, 3333 Pacific Ave., Long Beach
South Bay Cities Council of Government General Assembly
The South Bay Cities Council of Government General Assembly will meet to discuss the evolution of retail and its challenges for cities. Experts address impacts on the South Bay cities resulting from technological changes, behavioral changes, vacancies, less sales and property tax, online sales and employment decline. RSVP by Feb. 15. Time: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 23 Details: southbaycities.org Venue: Juanita Millender-McDonald, Carson Community Center, 801 E. Carson St., Carson
Who—and What—Will Replace Feinstein? If not now, maybe in 2024
By Lyn Jensen, Carson Reporter For almost a quarter-century, beginning in 1992, California’s two Democratic women senators were unbeatable. Republicans soon gave up trying to unseat them. Neither received much serious primary opposition from within their own party. This election cycle is different. Barbara Boxer is retired and speculation is mounting about how much longer Dianne Feinstein will serve. She’s the oldest member of the Senate and is running for her sixth term. She’s facing a rare primary challenge, from several candidates including another prominent Democratic office holder, California’s District 24 Sen. Kevin De León, who is president pro tempore. On June 5, California voters will select two candidates to advance to the general election on Nov. 6. The filing period for the June ballot opens Feb. 12 but the leading candidates, including Feinstein and De León, declared their intentions and began fundraising months ago. No notable Republican has declared candidacy. Feinstein has enough of a checkered career to be a divisive figure within her party. She may represent its more conservative wing, but she remains a liberal compared to many other senators from both parties. Some progressive Democrats have been critical of her actions and statements. For example, when she recently said that Donald Trump could be a good president. Her vote on Jan. 16 to keep the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act largely unchanged was also one of her more controversial actions. Yet, to criticize her as a conservative is to ignore her longtime stances on many of her party’s core issues and many of her more courageous acts. She’s normally a reliable vote for abortion rights, healthcare,
the environment and gun control. In 2014, against considerable opposition, she made public the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on how the George W. Bush administration committed torture in the name of the war on terror. Just a few weeks ago, over the objections of Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican chairman, she released the closed-door testimony of Glenn Simpson, a key figure in the ongoing Russia-gate scandal. This prevented the Republicans from twisting Simpson’s testimony for their own agenda. The odds of unseating Feinstein may be remote, but Democrat challengers are laying critical groundwork in preparation for upcoming election cycles. De León has spent the past four years as the state senate’s president pro tempore, one of California’s most powerful positions. He’s facing term limits, so he can test his ability to run for higher office. De León is campaigning on a number of urgent progressive issues, including immigration reforms, California’s cap-and-trade environmental policy, renewable energy, combating sexual assault on California campuses and background checks for sales of ammunition. There may be another reason behind De León’s challenge to Feinstein. One of her first acts as a senator was to establish the Mojave National Preserve. She continues to fight to protect the Mojave, including its scarce water resources. She’s been fighting with the Bureau of Land Management and the California legislature for years over a scheme to sell water from under the Mojave. De
Rally, March to Ban Modified Hydrofluoric Acid
West Long Beach Association
The West Long Beach Association is hosting a meeting. Time: 6:30 to 8 p.m. Feb. 22 Venue: Silverado Park, 1545 W. 31st St., Long Beach
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February 8 - 21, 2018
Long Beach Rising! is now recruiting volunteers for direct outreach in neighborhoods around downtown Long Beach for the 2018 People’s State of the City on March 1. The People’s State of the City is one of the largest community-led gatherings in Long Beach that explores the challenges and opportunities for positive social change from the perspective of working people. Details: (562) 436-4800; https://tinyurl.com
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Applications are now open for the Summer High School Internship Program at the Port of Long Beach, as well as the port’s college scholarships. The deadline to apply for both programs is March 1. Applications, eligibility information and detailed instructions for both programs are available on the port’s education portal website. Details: academy.polb.com
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The Torrance Refinery Action Alliance will be hosting a rally and march to ban modified hydrofluoric acid. The call for a ban is a response to the ExxonMobil explosion three years ago. Time: 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Feb. 17 Details: info@TRAASouthBay.com, TRAASouthBay.com Venue: Columbia Park, 4045 W. 190th St., Torrance
León, citing a need to create jobs, has blocked her efforts to persuade the legislature to oppose the water project. Other Democrats in the race offer a look at potential leaders. Justice Democrats, an offshoot of independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, is backing Alison Hartson, a former school teacher from Fountain Valley. Another party outsider is David Hildebrand, a state legislative analyst who, like Sanders, is a self-described Democratic Socialist. Candidates like De León, Hartson and Hildebrand are speaking to Democratic forums and focusing attention on a senate campaign in a way that hasn’t been seen since 1992. They are offering a direction for the party, the state and the country with policies that better reflect the masses.
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AltaSea Names McOsker as CEO
SAN PEDRO — On Jan. 25, AltaSea’s Board of Trustees named Tim McOsker as its chief executive officer. The appointment was effective Feb. 1. McOsker, a life-long San Pedro resident, is chairman of the board of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce and a board member of Harbor Interfaith Services. He also has been heavily involved in development efforts for the University of Notre Dame, his alma mater. McOsker is a lawyer and has served Los Angeles and Southern California in a variety of public leadership roles, including as chief of staff for former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and as Hahn’s chief deputy city attorney. He represented AltaSea in critical 2017 lease renegotiations with the Port of Los Angeles. McOsker continues to serve clients as a partner at Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro LLP, where he is co-chairman of the Government and Regulatory Law Department. His responsibilities include signing additional tenants, finalizing major operating partnerships, taking control of additional parcels, and beginning their development and remediation. As CEO, McOsker oversees contracts, leases, land deals and partnership negotiations. Jenny Krusoe continues as executive director, focusing on fundraising, grants, external communications, special events and long-term vision. She continues to oversee day-to-day operations.
POLA, POLB Touts Cargo Records
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
LONG BEACH — On Jan. 24, the Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero announced that the port moved 7.54 million twenty-foot equivalent units in 2017, during his State of the Port address. By comparison, the Port of Los Angeles boasted that it moved more cargo in 2017 than in any time in the port’s 110-year history, racking up 9,343,192 20-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, a 5.5 percent increase over 2016’s record-breaking year and the most cargo moved annually by a Western Hemisphere port. Executive Director Gene Seroka credited the growth as a direct result of a concerted effort by the Port of Los Angeles and its many partners to maximize efficiency throughout the supply chain. Supply chain efficiencies implemented by the Port in 2017 included technology upgrades, like the new “Port Optimizer” digital information portal developed by the Port in collaboration with GE Transportation, which aggregates key cargo data online to facilitate better cargo tracking, projections and productivity. Infrastructure upgrades completed at TraPac Container Terminal and Yusen Terminals Inc. during 2017. December imports decreased 2.2 percent to 385,492 TEUs. Exports decreased 7.3 percent to 152,865 TEUs. Along with a 1.5 percent rise in empty containers, overall December containers were 779,210 TEUs, an overall decrease of 2.2 percent compared to the previous year. Data container counts for the Port of Los Angeles may be found www. portoflosangeles.org/maritime/stats.asp.
February 8 - 21, 2018
Video Feeds Anit-Homeless Sentiment
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SAN PEDRO — A video published Jan. 30, is sparking discontent and raising questions among community members, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and local politicians. The video, originally published by Mike Olivieri, shows sheriff deputies releasing a disheveled man at about 4:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at W. 25th Street near Mermaid Street in San Pedro. Some residents are calling the incident an example of “homeless dumping.” The man was later identified as 54-year-old [See News Briefs, p. 19]
Polarizing Polar Bears
Unmasking a proxy war strategy by online climate change denialists By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
I
n early December, a video of a dying, emaciated polar bear, foraging for food on an iceless portion of the Arctic, went viral on social media. The video garnered millions of views on Facebook and YouTube. For most, it was a vivid signal of the future in store for us all due to human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming — rising temperatures due to increased carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. For those who deny or minimize the existence of anthropogenic global warming it wasn’t a polar bear, but a red herring (“Propaganda,” one YouTube viewer called it) — no one knows why it was dying, much less if it can be connected to global warming. That’s true, but also a bit beside the point. The problem is that an ever-warmer future means polar bears will have less and less access to their seal prey, so the rate at which bears die from malnutrition/starvation will increase,” said Dr. Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for the nonprofit Polar Bears International. “So, regardless of the proximate cause of this bear’s condition, this heart-wrenching footage provides us with a warning about the future.
Just days before the video went viral, a paper Amstrup co-authored presented the polar bear as something else as well: a “keystone domino,” a proxy used to attack global warming. The paper stated that: Because this evidence [for global warming] is so overwhelming, it would be virtually impossible to debunk; the main strategy of denier blogs is therefore to focus on topics that are showy and in which it is therefore easy to generate public interest. These topics are used as “proxies” for [anthropogenic global warming] in general; in other words, they represent keystone dominoes that are strategically placed in front of many hun dreds of others, each representing a separate line of evidence for anthropogenic global warming. By appearing to knock over the keystone domino, audiences targeted by the communication may assume all other dominoes are toppled in a form of “dismissal by association. The paper, Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy, by Jeffrey Harvey, a senior scientist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, and 13 co-authors, looked at 90 blogs and 92 peer reviewed papers. They analyzed them in terms of what they said about sea ice (declining rapidly or not, or varying unpredictably over the long run) and polar bears (threatened with extinction or not, or capable of adapting to threats). Another co-author, Bart Verheggen, a climate scientists at Amsterdam University College, starkly described their findings:
There is a clear separation amongst blogs, where approximately half of the 90 blogs investigated agree with the majority of the scientific literature, whereas other blogs took a position that is diametrically opposed to the scientific conclusions. Most of the blogs in the latter group [about 80 percent] based their opinions on one and the same source: Susan Crockford.
This emaciated polar bear was spotted by National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen on Somerset Island. The video of the starving bear foraging for food went viral this past December. Captured video image
Crockford is an unpaid adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. There were a few contested papers — ones that drew critical comments after publication — that fell outside the consensus, but they all fell between the two groups of blogs. “Our paper was clearly a direct hit because the response from the denial blogs was immediate,” Harvey told Random Lengths. “As is their modus operandi, they studiously avoid the core messages, which are that they use a tiny set of topics (proxies) to dismiss anthropogenic global warming... in attacking the evidence that [anthropogenic global warming] is driving a rapid reduction in seasonal arctic ice extent, [which] threatens polar bears, they almost completely avoid the published scientific literature.” It’s worth noting that two of Harvey’s coauthors, Amstrup and Ian Stirling, co-authored more than 20 of the 92 papers in that literature, an indication of their depth of knowledge that denialists actually held against them. The paper also concluded with an unusual call to action: We believe that it is imperative for more scientists to venture beyond the confines of their labs and lecture halls to directly engage with the public and policymakers, as well as more strongly confronting and resisting the well-funded and organized network of [anthropogenic global warming] denial.
But global warming denialism is so pervasive it can now be considered a contributing factor to global warming itself — something to be studied and mitigated. This paper is just the latest in the growing field of scientific studies of global warming science and denialist response that’s increasingly causing denialists to squirm.
Studying Climate Denialism: A Growing Subfield
This began in 2004, when science historian Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, produced the first of several studies establishing the existence of a solid 97 percent consensus of scientists that humans are responsible for ongoing global warming. It’s also been shown that increasing awareness of this consensus increases public acceptance. In 2015, Norwegian climate scientist
Rasmus Benestad pioneered the study of patterns of mistakes across dissenting papers in the remaining 3 percent. These were discovered by trying to replicate their results. In 2012, Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, another of Harvey’s coauthors, initiated another line of research. He explored patterns of reasoning in the public at large. He first discovered that belief in a cluster of conspiracy theories was associated with global warming denial. Then he studied the online response of denialists to that study in a paper called “Recursive Fury,” in which he reported that many denialists exhibited at least one of six previously identified characteristics of conspiracist ideation. The denialists reacted furiously again and the journal that published the paper withdrew it, not because there was anything scientifically wrong with it, but for fear of being sued. This was widely condemned for encouraging scientifically unfounded attacks. Crockford also tried to get Harvey’s paper withdrawn and others tried to get Harvey condemned by his employer, but both were firmly rebuffed. Finally, in 2016, Yale sociologist Justin Farrell initiated another line of research, using network science and text analysis to investigate the overall structure and organizational power of the contrarian network, including the role of elite corporate benefactors. Thus, the first two lines of research establish why there’s no credible scientific support for rejecting global warming, while the next two broadly explain the consensus gap between scientists and the public in terms of a combination of individual psychology and socio-political influence, with a strong financial component. Harvey’s paper provides a much sharper focus for that broad explanation, leaving little wiggle room for a denialist response short of throwing up their hands in surrender. “They clearly did not want to respond through the peer reviewed literature, but instead resorted to three main tactics,” Harvey said. “The first was to accuse us of ganging up on Susan Crockford, even though she does not appear until page three of the article and is not the primary focus.” Indeed, Crockford is not even indirectly [See Polarizing, p. 7]
Steven Amstrup, co-author of 21 papers in the 92-paper database, stands next to polar bear cubs. File photo
[Polarizing, from p. 6]
A New Proxy Fight: Crockford Cries ‘Rape!’
Other denialist blogs echoed her theme, characterizing the paper’s authors as “climate
There’s a second element in Crockford’s [See Deniers, p. 10]
February 8 - 21, 2018
Bioscience article is academic rape: an assertion of power and intimidation.... Characterizing a professional, respected scientist as an unqualified vengeful opinion writer is the same kind of power attack as rape. It’s meant to humiliate and intimidate.
Competing Conspiracy Theories
But what they lacked in substance, they made up for in sound and fury, with Crockford herself leading the way. After pointing out the denier blogs’ heavy reliance on her, the paper read: “Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.” Crockford, a zoologist who’s been secretly paid by the denialist Heartland Institute, seemingly proved their point by responding with a series of heated blog posts, rather than a comment letter to the journal. One post claimed the paper was a conspiratorial response getting back at her for a non-peer-reviewed paper she’d published on the web. On one blog post, she stated that:
bullies” and harassers. “Crockford’s claim of academic rape is, in my opinion, really appalling,” Harvey said. “Four of my co-authors are women, including two in their 20s.” So, was Crockford accusing them of rape, too? Or simply erasing their existence? “Our team has no agenda against a specific blogger,” said Meena Balgopal, associate professor of biology at Colorado State University — another co-author. “We simply found that the majority (80 percent) of the blogs that were identified as ‘climate denying’ referenced Crockford’s blog. Our goal was to use objective methods to better understand how blogs that describe climate change and polar bears present and frame information. Discussions of ‘#MeToo’ or ‘rape’ are, therefore, irrelevant to our study.”
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mentioned in the paper’s abstract. “They also launched all out attacks on the two most prominent authors, Mike Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky, finally coming around to me after some days,” Harvey said. Mann was principally responsible for the “hockey stick” graph, the first widely-accepted reconstruction of the past 1,000 years of northern hemisphere temperatures, showing dramatic temperature increases in the past few decades, which has made him a prime target for denialist attacks. “Recursive Fury” in particular made Lewandowsky a prime target. Finally, “They have tried to discredit the paper by criticizing the statistical analyses,” Harvey concluded. This was an effort spearheaded by economist Richard Tol, who floundered badly in a similar 2014 attempt to discredit the existence of the 97 percent consensus on global warming. On the last point, Lewandowsky, highlighted what he called, The “Monty-Pythonesque” angle of them trying frantically to invalidate their data. “The only way to achieve that would be if their blogs didn’t make the claims they clearly insist on making — namely that the Arctic isn’t melting and polar bears are just fine,” Lewandowsky said.
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Whose City Is This? LA’s economy is booming but will the Harbor Area benefit before the next bust? POLA releases new waterfront plan By James Preston Allen, Publisher
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
At a Jan. 10 news conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city’s economy is “a beast,” but some residents wonder if it isn’t a monster. “We are powering Los Angeles’ economy to new heights every year, because we know that lasting prosperity means investing boldly in jobs, opportunity and growth,” Garcetti said. “The expansion of our travel and tourism sector, and the success of our port, tell the story of a city whose moment has arrived — and we will continue pushing forward as we expand our role on the world stage, and prepare to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028.” The problem is that most of the citizens of this great metropolis are being edged out of the promise of prosperity by risings rents, stagnant job growth in poor neighborhoods and the emphasis on development along the west side to central city axis. This leaves everything below the 405 freeway, except the beach cities, out of the loop. San Pedro remains the last bastion of affordable seaside living in most of the county. The last 10 new arrivals that I’ve met fled from Venice, Echo Park or East Los Angeles. Without prompting, they told me that they’d been “gentrified out.” “ I moved here from the community that useto be called Venice,” one of them told me. I have been here in the town still called “Pedro” by locals for some 45 years and I still vividly remember the destruction of old Beacon Street with the civic promise of “redevelopment.” This took about 30 years to complete. That and the new Vincent Thomas Bridge to Terminal Island and the extension of the Harbor Freeway into town were all heralded as economic improvements benefiting the Harbor Area. Yet by the end of the 1980s, with the closing of the shipyard, the offshoring of the tuna canneries, the demise of the fishing fleet and the rise of container shipping, the end result was the loss of some 30,000 blue-collar jobs. That was half of the workforce at that time and the economic cost to the San Pedro Harbor Area was devastating. Those jobs have never been replaced substantially. During the same time period as the destruction of historic Beacon Street, the Port of Los Angeles proposed the development of a new marina in the outer harbor, with much of the same economic prosperity claims
touted today for the Ports O’ Call waterfront. The big plan of that day was to take the outer beach at Cabrillo, on the south side, for a new marina. This would have eliminated San Pedro’s only ocean facing sand beach. The Point Fermin homeowners weren’t having it. At a critical juncture a group of these radical homeowners actually chained themselves to the majestic pine trees to stop the port from bulldozing them — saving the beach and the old Cabrillo bathhouse. And, it took the POLA 10 years of negotiations with the community to decide to build the new Cabrillo Marina back where it is today in the West Channel. It then took another couple decades to finish building out the Cabrillo Way Marina. What the port and city leadership don’t understand is that there are still people engaged in San Pedro’s civic life who actually remember this history and much, much more of the disputes between port bureaucracy and the community of Pedro. There is a latent distrust from years of false promises, broken treaties and lost opportunities that the current leadership fails to comprehend. The odd saying that confuses the issue goes that, “Pedro wants progress but it doesn’t want to change.” Another way of saying this more understandably is — we want to bring back those lost job opportunities from the 1980s without having to give up either our history or our culture. None of the plans presented in the last decade even come close to significantly addressing the 30,000 job deficit, not AltaSea, not the San Pedro Public Market and not automating the cargo movement in the ports.
Port releases New Design in Response to RLn’s Public Records Act
As reported in this newspaper on previous occasions we reported that the Los Angeles Waterfront Alliance, LAWA, of Jerico/Ratkovich developers, had privately presented the new design plans for the Ports O’ Call project area. Those plans were not presented by the port at its Feb. 1 commission meeting which agendized a waterfront development update. As explained in Paul Rosenberg’s article in this issue the port presented it’s defense of its actions to evict certain tenants while claiming it was the sole discretion of the developers to choose who to invite back. This statement clearly confuses the issue of whether Ports O’ Call restaurant, with
February 8 - 21, 2018
Publisher/Executive Editor James Preston Allen james@randomlengthsnews.com
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Assoc. Publisher/Production Coordinator Suzanne Matsumiya Managing Editor
“A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it Terelle Jerricks is, but to make people mad enough to do someeditor@randomlengthsnews.com thing about it.” —Mark Twain Senior Editor Vol. XXXIX : No. 3 Published every two weeks for the Harbor Area communities of San Pedro, RPV, Lomita, Harbor City, Wilmington, Carson and Long Beach. Distributed at more than 350 locations throughout the Harbor Area.
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its 100 employees, will be evicted come March 1 or whether there’s some “ongoing negotiations” taking place and just who decides if these jobs will be lost to the promise of “future prosperity.” The port has also promised for several months to give the San Pedro community a public report on the waterfront development plans and has now committed to a March 20 presentation at the Warner Grand Theatre where all of the people, and not just some, can see for themselves the “new plans.” While we have just recently viewed these plans, I am not going to make any judgment on what the developer’s architects have imagined, but we have posted those plans on our website for all to review prior to the public forum. What I can say from just a brief review is that
College President Engages in the Politics of Distraction By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
In the Jan. 11 edition of Random Lengths News we ran an op-ed by Carson Mayor Albert Robles regarding the development plans of California State University of Dominguez Hills and a recalibration of the relationship between the university and the city of Carson. That same op-ed was also published on our website, but with an in-house illustration. Random Lengths News was surprised to learn that a graphic intended to illustrate the relationship between the city and the university overshadowed the worthy conversation about how to improve that relationship during the Jan. 23 council meeting.
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these plans appear to be significantly different from the concepts previously presented with a shifting of where the San Pedro Fish Market is placed, with the added component of moving the USS Iowa to the south end of the SP Slip, where the fishing fleet docks. Anyone interested in commenting on this project should review these just released documents before coming to the meeting. In the end, whatever your assessment of the new project may be the ultimate discussion is whether or not the promise of prosperity will actually come to pass without forfeiting both the history and culture of this town that now seems to be the last best place to live next to the coast in all of Los Angeles — it’s a dubious distinction.
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Through phone calls from concerned Carson stakeholders about a week after, Random Lengths News found that the image was interpreted as racist. Soon after, Random Lengths News received an email from the president of Cal State University Dominguez Hills Willie Hagan, which featured an eight point rebuttal to the mayor’s op-ed, including a response to Robles’ assertions: That CSUDH and the CSU system ignored requests by the city to discuss the master plan update; CSUDH initiated environmental review [See Distraction, p. 9] Random Lengths News editorial office is located at 1300 S. Pacific Ave., San Pedro, CA 90731. Address correspondence regarding news items and tips to Random Lengths News, P.O. Box 731, San Pedro, CA 90733-0731, or email: editor@randomlengthsnews. com. Send Letters to the Editor to james@randomlengthsnews.com. To be considered for publication, letters must be signed with address and phone number (for verification purposes) and be about 250 words. For advertising inquiries or to submit advertising copy, email: rlnsales@randomlengthsnews.com. Annual subscription is $36 for 27 issues. Back issues are available for $3/copy while supplies last. Random Lengths News presents issues from an alternative perspective. We welcome articles and opinions from all people in the Harbor Area. While we may not agree with the opinions of contributing writers, we respect and support their 1st Amendment right. Random Lengths News is a member of Standard Rates and Data Services and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. (ISN #0891-6627). All contents Copyright 2018 Random Lengths News. All rights reserved.
RANDOMLetters Destroying the Village, Ports O’ Call
(Re: At Lengths, RLn, Jan. 25, 2018) [You wrote a] good article on destroying the village. Truth be told, you hit it on the stick with your statement at what cost and to whose benefit. You know the benefit is to the Ratkovich group and in the initial bid the contractor was supposed to pay for all and now the Port is taking care of everything for them. Pockets were filled to the politicians, as we all know. If you want more information, ask us. Hope the Central SP [Neighborhood Council] group can do something. [It is a] total sham and shame what the port and the developer has done. Joyce Hall San Pedro Joyce, Actually, from the beginning the port was on the hook for an estimated $50 million in infrastructure. From what I understand, the developers get five years rent free once they take possession — just to clarify. James Preston Allen Publisher
Senate: Do Your Job!
The Trump administration has chosen to ignore strict CAATSA sanctions to punish Russian interference in our 2016 [Distraction, from p. 8]
Distraction
Where there’s smoke.... Congressman Speaks up According to recent news reports, last June President Trump ordered the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The top White House lawyer threatened
insensitive at best. Others may consider it racist.
What Really Caused the Shutdown?
(Re: What Really Caused the Shutdown? RLn, Jan. 25, 2018) The Democrats! Even Democrats here in the South Bay agreed that the Democratic minority had no right to hold our government hostage. The leftwing retort suggests that because Republicans have majorities in both chamber of Congress, they own the shutdown. Democrats
once again show how bad they are at math. For the Senate to invoke cloture, the motion requires 60 votes. There are 51 Republicans, which means 9 Democrats must join them. The House passed legislation which included nothing offensive to the Democratic Party, including delay of Obamacare taxes, hated by members of both parties. Cryin’ Chuck Schumer and his desperate, left-wing colleagues chose to shutdown the government for three days. It was a massive PR failure, and they quickly acquiesced to all of the GOP’s
[See Letters, p. 10]
February 8 - 21, 2018
Read President Hagan’s full response to Mayor Albert Robles’ op-ed at www.randomlengthsnews. com.
did nothing wrong in this case. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-33rd) Torrance
It was through the frank phone conversations with Carson constituents that Random Lengths News learned that copies of the op-ed posted on our website was printed in color and passed around during the council session and that constituents quizzed the mayor about the graphic and what role he played in choosing it. But it was Hagan’s letter that gave us a clue to how the conversation about recalibrating the relationship between the City of Carson and university got overshadowed by a false allegation of racism in the first place. This graphic was an unconsummated handshake superimposed over a rendering of the StubHub Center in Carson The graphic featured two opposing hands poised to form a handshake. One hand was a cast iron statue representing the university as an institution, the other flesh and blood represented the citizens of Carson. The cast iron arm did not have the appearance of flesh nor did it have a sleeve from a shirt or suit jacket. The fingers on the hand didn’t even have cuticles or fingernails that were distinguishable from the arm and hand. There is even a
line, similar to a cut made by the sculptor, at the edge of the arm that should have been a clue that it wasn’t an arm of a person. There have been similar and legitimate controversies about racial imagery in the media such as the H&M ad campaign in which an African American child was featured wearing a shirt that read, “The coolest monkey in the jungle” and Dove ad campaign that ran months earlier, in which a black woman takes off a brown shirt to reveal a white woman as if to communicate the idea that white femininity is the most desirable standard of beauty. Dove has repeatedly denied that was the case but ad campaign rode on that legacy of racist imagery that goes back 200 years. The graphic that Random Lengths ran cannot credibly be tied to that legacy. Instead, what we see here is a cynical attempt by Hagan to distract Carson citizens with a false accusation of racism so that Carson residents don’t actively engage in a conversation about what the university owes Carson.
desperation, a boldfaced attempt to obstruct the Special Counsel’s investigation. But President Trump apparently didn’t read the Nunes memo, because it is a nothing burger. The Democratic memo is most certainly not a nothing burger. I have read it multiple times. Anyone who has read it will come away with three conclusions: The President and Chairman Nunes are misleading the American people, there was overwhelming evidence to support a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign official Carter Page, and the FBI and DOJ
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
process required for the university master plan despite City objection; The CSUDH master plan includes a for-profit development that is not for exclusively educational purposes. At the end of his rebuttal, Haggan wrote: Let me conclude by saying I found the recent online article written by you in Random Lengths News and accompanying illustration, enclosed as Attachment A, more than a little troubling. The article uses provocative language to convey all of the above inaccurate assertions, along with several others, and defames CSUDH and the CSU. The illustration features an unclothed Black arm and hand representing CSUDH and a suited, White arm and hand representing the City of Carson. What message is this illustration intended to convey? I am not sure why such an illustration was even necessary. This was an illustration, which quite frankly, whether chosen by you or the newspaper, I found
presidential election. The sanctions passed with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress with a collective vote of 517-5. The administration has distracted the American public with the bogus Nunes memo and refuses to punish Russia. Republican Senator John McCain accused Trump and members of Congress of “doing Putin’s job for him” by undermining the public’s faith in the US democratic process and repeatedly attacking the unity of the nation with divisive rhetoric. The Senate must do its job and impose the recommended sanctions. Perhaps it is time for the legislature to exclude Russia from the SWIFT banking system. I am angered by US elected representatives who voted to punish a known foreign adversary, and then ignore Trump’s refusal to act. They are protecting an increasingly corrupt administration, weakening American security instead of defending the American people and our democratic principles. Caryl Schwartz Rancho Palos Verdes
to quit over this decision and eventually the President’s staff convinced him not to cross this red line. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire— and where there is an effort to obstruct an investigation there is usually some bad stuff waiting to be discovered. We don’t have the full story yet of what happened during the 2016 election. But every day Robert Mueller and his team are getting closer to the truth. What makes America great is that Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide if there was collusion or obstruction of justice — the Special Counsel, his team, and our judicial branch will determine that. We must remain vigilant. We cannot let Republicans interfere with Robert Mueller’s investigation. But there’s only one way to truly protect Robert Mueller’s team — elect more Democrats to take back the House this November and ensure a fair and independent investigation continues. Against the advice of the FBI and the Department of Justice, Trump and congressional Republicans released the misleading Nunes memo. President Trump says he released this memo for the sake of transparency, but we know that’s a lie. Trump has never believed in transparency — he still refuses to release his taxes and he won’t explain why Jared Kushner still has a security clearance. Releasing the memo wasn’t an act of transparency, it was an act of
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[Deniers, from p. 7]
Labor, Community, Environmentalists Unite for Health and Safety in Torrance By Mark Friedman
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
Across the country for years, the issue of health and safety versus jobs has been one that has unnecessarily divided labor organizations from their natural allies in the community and environmental movements — whether it be the chemical leaks at Love Canal, the nuclear meltdown at 3-Mile Island and marine protected areas versus commercial fishing, water contamination in Flint, Mich., or now the Torrance refinery explosion and potential toxic gas leaks. Regardless of whether we work for a refinery, on the docks, in an office, school, small business or are a community resident, we must take the moral high ground for health and safety. We cannot counterpose jobs to health and safety nor maintaining a healthy environment for humanity. We must join together to force the refineries to institute whatever safety measures the community and union health and safety committees collectively decide are necessary to protect us all. We as workers, with or without a union, need safety committees to protect us on the job from the bosses’ shortcuts, which over the past several decades have significantly worsened conditions on the job, resulting in the spike of deaths and injuries. No worker must die on the job! Unions must take the lead in joining with community residents and environmental organizations such as the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance to ensure that no worker or community resident gets sick or dies from an explosion or accident at any of the refineries. Management will try to coopt labor, saying that it is too costly for them to provide the necessary safety measures demanded by the community and environmentalists or that they will lose their job and livelihood. This is a lie. Oil refineries and the corporations earn billions annually. They pay refinery workers higher wages due to union strength making them aristocrats within the labor movement. Safety committees on the job in refineries and other industries have been eliminated and weakened and often unable to institute protective measures for their own members. We working people recently won a victory in stopping the frame up of ranchers in Oregon and Nevada orchestrated by Democratic and Republican state and national politicians
Mark Friedman, a veteran trade union and environmental activist is organizer of a Cuban marine science educators’ delegation coming to California.
RANDOMLetters [Letters, from p. 9]
acceptable demands. Following this disaster and their disgraceful behavior during President Trump’s First State of the Union address, Democrats are going to have a really rough election cycle this year. Democrats have become the party which: 1. Puts illegal aliens ahead of American citizens, especially our military. 2. Blocked health insurance funding for 9,000,00 children (CHIP) 3. Defends hateful, unpopular Obamacare 10 4. Sits during praise for our
February 8 - 21, 2018
and the FBI. However, we lost the battle over stopping the Dakota pipeline when victory was within reach. Big money won out over the interests of indigenous peoples, residents, labor and environmentalists. A broad coalition had been constructed, but was disbanded by the anti-Dakota pipeline “leaders” to pursue legal action instead. The lesson of history is that the courts will never defend our rights without massive pressure on them. This is the history of the labor, civil rights, women’s, environmental, immigrants’ and gay rights movements. Time after time at the Torrance Air Quality Management District hearings, representatives of labor said that the companies could not pay for safety systems and the plant would be shut down or there would be job loss. That argument, however, is the bosses’ argument and we cannot fall into their trap of thinking of ourselves as part of their “family.” They do have the money to ensure safety of workers on the job. That is why we have union safety committees. The community must actively demand that. And it will be up to us, workers and safety committees to form an alliance with the community to enforce safety measures necessary to protect us all. Management will always cut back on safety and seek shortcuts only we know the results. The massive oil leak called New Horizon, the Exxon Valdez accident, etc. or they will consciously denigrate the environment such as what happened with the Montrose chemical plant and resulting cleanup settlement. Our demands need to be clear. Safety on the job and safety for the community; no job loss, no layoffs; full pay for all workers at union wages during shutdown and conversion to the safest refining processes. Unionize all refinery subcontractors to ensure compliance. Health and jobs are not counterposed but are part of the fight to unify us, organize the unorganized and rebuild the labor movement. I urge all Random Lengths readers to join the rally and march to ban toxic modified hydrofluoric acid at 10 a.m. Feb. 17, at Columbia Park, 4045 190th St. (190th St. and Prairie), Torrance. Details: TRAASouthBay.com.
country’s national anthem 5. Ignores the plight of families who have lost loved ones to illegal aliens 6. Disdains the epic drop in black and Hispanic unemployment Keep it up, liberals! More of this kind of bad PR, and the GOP will be the only viable political party in the country. Arthur Christopher Schaper Torrance Arthur Schaper, You once again couldn’t be more wrong on your delusional accusations as to who was responsible for the government shut down. The Children’s Health Insurance Program issue is just
the most compelling example. CHIP funding expired on Sept. 30, 2017, and House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to schedule a vote to reauthorize it. Instead, he took 9 million children hostage to use in negotiations with Democrats. He ignored months of pleading for a vote from Democrats and children’s health advocates. Pitting the health of 9 million children against the freedom of 800,000 Dreamers is standard operating procedure for Republicans these days. You can’t hold someone hostage for more than three months and then pretend to be the hero rescuing them. Correction: You can pretend, obviously. Ryan proves that. But don’t expect anyone to believe you. Paul Rosenberg Senior Editor
Deniers
persecution narrative: Her entry into the halfbaked conspiracy theories about the origins of Harvey’s story. “It’s interesting to see the different conspiracy theories being touted about our paper [on different denialist blogs],” Verheggen said. Verheggen said that all of them are wildly wrong. The following are a few of the claims he refutes: Mann and Lewandowsky are behind it all, and they dragged others in with them (WUWT [a blog], others) Amstrup and Stirling wanted to get back at Crockford who criticized them and got others to help them (Tom Fuller at cliscep and elsewhere) A clique around Bart Verheggen and Amsterdam Academia got others to join them in their crusade against “skeptics,” (the Dutch deniosphere at climategate.nl) WUWT — What’s Up With That? — is the most viewed denialist website worldwide. It actually promoted both of the first two conspiracies. Conspiracy theorists often embrace multiple, different and even contradictory conspiracy narratives. This is one of the six characteristics of conspiracist thought mentioned above, known as “must be wrong,” a pervasive belief that a conspiracy exists despite specific disproofs. Another corollary of this conspiracy thought characteristic is the belief in mutuallycontradictory theories. The conspiracies listed above aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do illustrate another characteristic of conspiracist thought, “persecution-victimization,” the tendency to see themselves as persecuted victims of the conspiracy, as well as potential heroes. Thus, Crockford and her fans prefer the conspiracy theory revolving around her and the Dutch denialists prefer the conspiracy centered on Dutch soil.
A Peek Into Peer Review Confusions
“Amstrup is pissed off because I criticized his work,” Crockford wrote in a comment on WUWT. “He and Stirling are not used to being challenged.” She touted her theory of the paper’s origins and purpose, based on a paper she published online at PeerJ, which is not in a peer-reviewed journal. Ignoring that fact, she wrote, “Colleagues have read my paper and found it to be fully acceptable as a piece of academic scientific work. If that were not true, this desperately ridiculous Bioscience paper would never have been published.” But that’s not how science works. A paper generally has to be peer reviewed and published, before other scientists feel a need to respond. “It was peer-reviewed by several wellqualified colleagues before publication (and revised accordingly) [which is not what ‘peerreviewed’ means] but was not peer-reviewed again by the PeerJ organization, as is their policy,” Crockford wrote. So, she knows full well it wasn’t peer reviewed, but wants to confuse her nonscientist readers. That was from a blog post containing her “letter to the editors of the journal Bioscience requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey, et al.” The editors surely saw through this amateurish deception. Just like Donald Trump, she was
Susan Crockford is an unpaid adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. File photo
playing to her base. That’s hardly her only deception. Elsewhere on her blog, Crockford let her real feelings about Bioscience show—feelings so strong they seemed to impair her basic math: BioScience is an interesting choice for this ‘Forum’ paper: I counted only 4 polar bear research papers in this journal since 2004 but 11 papers on “climate change denial” since 2010 (not including this one). In other words, few polar bear scientists would usually read this journal but many people interested in the “problem” of “climate change denial” would seek it out. Yet, it only takes a moment, clicking on the links Crockford provides in the text, to discover she’s totally wrong. There are actually 88 journal articles listed on polar bears, 72 classified as research articles. For ‘climate change denial’ the numbers are 19 and 16, respectively. So, she’s wrong both about the journal’s content, as well as what people read it for. It is not, as she pretends, a comfy conspiratorial den for her enemies, but a well-respected journal of bioscience. “This kind of harassment, intimidation and threats are typical in my opinion of climate change deniers when they are criticized,” Harvey concluded. “They rarely pursue the normal professional response of writing a rebuttal to a journal until all other options have been exhausted.”
Back to the Science
If the point of such proxy controversies is to distract, it’s good to refocus on what it’s being distracted from. “In addition to the badgering and nitpicking, we’ve been getting more conflation of the present and the future, more about how it has been warm in the past, and more suggestion polar bears will be fine on land,” Amstrup said. These are all topics well-settled in the scientific literature that are ripe for confusion in the context of a heated proxy fight. The paper explains these confusions, but denier blogs don’t pay attention to scientific literature. That’s the study’s main finding, remember? So Amstrup ticked off what was being obscured. “Deniers have criticized polar bear scientists because things we projected for later this century have not yet happened,” he said. That’s the main point of Crockford’s non-peer-reviewed paper. So, “there are no future threats.” This ignores the known long-term trends and the point Amstrup made about the dying bear video.
[See Deniers, p. 17]
Relational Undercurrents:
Dispels Current Political Overtones in the Caribbean By Melina Paris, Contributing Writer
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA has come to a close with its more than 70 exhibitions throughout Los Angeles County, but one of the initiatives major exhibitions, Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago remains on view through March 4, at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. PST: LA/LA, the far reaching and ambitious Getty-led project explores the intersection of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Relational Undercurrents, curated by Tatiana Flores, is one of the largest museum surveys of contemporary art from the Caribbean to date. It is presented in four thematic sections: Conceptual Mappings, Perpetual Horizons, Landscape Ecologies and Representational Acts, featuring more than 80 artists. The exhibition includes painting, installation art, sculpture, photography, video and performance. Flores recently spoke about Relational Undercurrents and her approach in curating the exhibition. She noted the Caribbean has always been written and studied about from the approach of different linguistic traditions or colonial traditions.
“I wanted to try to find the relationships between the different islands, even when artists and cultural producers weren’t aware that they existed,” Flores said. “That’s where this idea of the undercurrents comes in.” There is an expectation that Latin America is made up of the Spanish speaking countries of the region. However, Flores advocates for the stories of the Caribbean to be told within a Latin American framework because the (Caribbean) exclusion doesn’t sit right. Her intent is to tell a story of the Caribbean that feels unified, but also to question the conceptual boundaries of Latin America as being very much about continents. She wanted to point out the particularities of island experience that don’t fit into a continental narrative. Flores said that something else she reacted to is that the Caribbean is often positioned as an African diaspora narrative, which is very much the case for the islands, but in the continental countries there are still huge indigenous communities. “When you position the Caribbean almost as a diasporas base, as a blank slate, as this place where they brought the African [See Undercurrents, p.14]
Happy Valentine’s Day
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February 8 - 21, 2018
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No Future by Nadia Huggins is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’s Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago exhibit curated by Tatiana Flores. The exhibit is on view through March 4 at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. Photo courtesy of MOLAA
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Experience Love on a Brigantine By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
Celebrate Valentine’s Day aboard a tall ship. Photo courtesy of LAMI
BIG NICK’S PIZZA
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Tradition, variety and fast delivery—you get it all at Big Nick’s Pizza. The best selection of Italian specialties include hearty calzones, an array of pastas and our amazing selection of signature pizzas. We offer a wide selection of appetizers, salads, beer and wine. Call for fast delivery. Hours: 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sun.-Thurs.; 1o a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Big Nicks’ Pizza, 1110 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro • (310) 7325800 • www. bignickspizzasp.com
BRITE SPOT MEXICAN RESTAURANT
No matter when your day begins, you can always get a hearty breakfast at a great price at Brite Spot.
Breakfast is served all day long. We serve freshly prepared, authentic Mexican food. We offer all the family favorites, from tacos to tamales, from caldo to chile, fresh seafood and much more. Brite Spot Mexican Restaurant is your late-night spot for when you want a night out on the town. Hours: 7 a.m. to midnight, daily. Brite Spot, 615 S. Pacific Ave., San Pedro • (310)833-2599 • www.britespotsanpedro com
BUONO’S AUTHENTIC PIZZERIA
A San Pedro landmark for over 44 years, famous for exceptional award-winning pizza baked in brick ovens. Buono’s also offers classic Italian dishes and sauces based on tried-and-true family recipes and handselected ingredients that are prepared fresh. Dine-in, take-out and catering. There are two locations in Long Beach. Hours: Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Buono’s Pizzeria, 1432 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro • (310) 5470655 • www.buonospizza.com
THE CHORI-MAN
Fourth-generation artisanal chorizo and meats. Purchase chorizo by the pound or try our burritos and tacos! Menu specials change weekly. Open Thurs,, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Fri. - Sun., 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. For catering email: info@ thechoriman.com for catering and special orders. The Chori-Man, 2309 S. Alma St., San Pedro • (424) 287-2414
February 8 - 21, 2018
HAPPY DINER AND HAPPY DELI
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The Happy Diner isn’t your average diner. It’s the idea of fresh creative dishes in tow San Pedro locations, and now a third— the Happy Deli. The selections range from Italian- and Mexicaninfluenced entrées to American continental. Happy Diner chefs are always creating something new—take your pick of grilled salmon over pasta or tilapia and vegetables prepared any way you like. Open for breakfast, lunch and
Witnessing a sunset with your significant other before a gourmet meal aboard a tall ship is not an everyday occurrence. The Los Angeles Maritime Institute will be offering that experience aboard the twin brigantines, the Exy and Irving Johnson. It’s part of its efforts to raise funds for the TopSail Youth program. The goal is to help at-risk and educationally-disadvantaged youth develop the problem-solving skills and attitudes difficult to teach in a classroom, yet necessary to stay in school and become healthy, productive adults. The Exy and Irving Johnson were designed by renowned German yacht designer Henry Gruberin the 1930s, but were not built until long after his death. Passengers who manage to snag a reservation will get to experience the twin brigantines rare elegance, nostalgic of an earlier era. Passengers will get to board the Exy Johnson on Feb. 10 and the Irving Johnson on Feb. 11 for two sails around the harbor. The evening’s menu includes braised short ribs, baked potato and a side of broccoli. There’s
also vegetarian option that substitutes the short ribs with vegetarian chili. Dinner will be topped off with a Prosecco sparkling wine toast and a special Valentine dessert. You may bring your own food and beverages on board (wine permitted), but pack light and be as environmentally friendly as possible. The tall ships are docked at Berth 78 in Ports O’ Call Village, next to the San Pedro Fish Market. Take the walkway that runs along Candy Town at Ports O’ Call Village. Wait outside our dock gate. It is recommended that you wear closedtoe, soft-soled shoes as well as layered clothing given that the wind tends to kick up on the water. Tickets are non-refundable and in the event you are unable to sail, your ticket will be considered a tax-deductible donation to the TopSail Youth Program. The Exy and Irving Johnson are nonsmoking vessels.
dinner: Happy Diner #1, 617 S. Centre St., San Pedro • (310) 241-0917 • Happy Diner #2, 1931 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro • (310) 935-2933 • Open for breakfast and lunch: Happy Deli, 530 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro (424) 364-0319
THE WHALE & ALE ENGLISH RESTAURANT & PUB
JACKSON’S PLACE
Jackson’s Place is the area’s newest Cajun eatery featuring Louisiana classics such as gumbo, jambalaya, po’boy sandwiches and grits. Recent menu additions include potato andouille croquettes, entrée salads and fresh seafood dishes. Live music five nights a week, Wine Wednesdays (half-off bottles after 6 p.m.), happy hour and a First Thursday after party makes Jackson’s Place an evening hotspot. Open for lunch and dinner Tues. - Sun. Jackson’s Place, 335 W. 7th St., San Pedro • (424) 477-5220
TAXCO MEXICAN RESTAUNT
We are proud to serve our community for almost 3 decades. Generous plates of traditional Mexican fare are the draw at this homey, family-friendly restaurant. For a limited time: Combos #1-12—buy one, get the second for half off (of equal or lesser value. Exp. 2/25/18). Catering for every occasion, beer, wine and margaritas to your taste. Tony and Vini Moreno welcome you. Open Sun. and Mon. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Tues.-Sat., 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Taxco Mexican Restaurant, 29050 S. Western Ave., Rancho Palos Verdes • (310) 547-4554, www.taxcorestaurantpv.com
SAN PEDRO BREWING COMPANY
A microbrewery and American grill, SPBC features handcrafted awardwinning ales and lagers served with creative pastas, bbq, sandwiches, salads and burgers. A full bar with made-from-scratch margaritas and a martini menu all add fun to the warm and friendly atmosphere. Live music. Open from 11:30 a.m., daily. San Pedro Brewing Company, 331 W. 6th St., San Pedro • (310) 831-5663 • www.sanpedrobrewing.com
[See Dining, p. 13]
The Victorian oak panels & elegant brass fittings will make you feel like you crossed the Atlantic. Featuring popular pub fare such as Fish & Chips, Shepherd’s Pie, & entrées of Choice Steaks, Roast Prime Rib, Beef Wellington & Roast Rack of Lamb. Seafood selections include Chilean Sea Bass, Atlantic Salmon, Jumbo Tiger Shrimp & Sand Dabs. International draft beers & ales, as well as domestic craft beers on tap. Full bar; free, gated parking lot. Open daily for dinner and lunch Tues.-Sun. The Whale & Ale, 327 W. 7th St., San Pedro • (310) 8320363 • www.whaleandale.com
Waterfront Dining
PORTS O’ CALL RESTAURANT
Since 1961 this landmark restaurant has extended a hearty welcome to visitors from around the globe. Delight in an aweinspiring view of the LA Harbor while enjoying fresh California cuisine and varietals. Relax in the bar or patio for the best happy hour on the waterfront. With each purchase of the award-winning Sunday Champagne Brunch, receive the first Spirit Cruises harbor cruise of the day free. Open 7 days, lunch and dinner. Free parking. Ports O’Call Waterfront Dining, 1199 Nagoya Way, LA Harbor, Berth 76, San Pedro • (310) 833-3553 • www.portsocalldining.com
SPIRIT CRUISES
An instant party— complete with all you need to relax and enjoy while the majesty of the harbor slips by. Dinner cruise features a 3-course meal, full bar, unlimited cocktails and starlight dancing—the ultimate excursion for any occasion. Free parking. Spirit Cruises, 1199 Nagoya Way, LA Harbor - Berth 77, San Pedro • (310) 5488080, (562) 495-5884, www.spiritmarine.com
[Dining, from p. 12]
More Harbor Area Restaurants to Celebrate Love: Blu Restaurant and Lounge
Upscale, yet casual, Blu Restaurant and Lounge at San Pedro’s Crowne Plaza Hotel is the spot for great food and live jazz. Dress up, or not, a romantic moment is impossible to miss. Details: (310) 521-8080 Venue: Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel, 601 S. Palos Verdes St., San Pedro
The Whale & Ale
The Whale & Ale offers a choice of entrées from sautéed Alaskan sand dabs to prime rib and British specialties. Live entertainment is also part the experience at this venerated pub. Reservations a must. Details: (310) 832-0363 Venue: Whale and Ale, 327 W. 7th St., San Pedro
Jackson’s Place
has great food at an affordable price. RSVP early. It’s a popular spot. Details: (310) 521-9400; www.barameethairestaurant.com Venue: Baramee Thai Restaurant, 354 W. 6th St., San Pedro
Ports O’ Call Restaurant
Dining on the waterfront at sunset is a special way to have a romantic four-course meal. Valentines specials will be served Feb. 14. There is a full bar and extensive wine list. Make reservations. Details: (310) 833-3553 Venue: Ports O’ Call Restaurant, Berth 76 1200 Nagoya Way, San Pedro
Think Prime
Venue: Think Prime Steakhouse, 29601 Western Ave., Rancho Palos Verdes
Terranea Resort
Terranea offers many opportunities for intimate moments with your Valentine. Celebrate and reconnect with the romance package. Enjoy spacious, oceanfront guest rooms overlooking the Pacific Ocean for a romantic local getaway. This romantic vacation package includes: • Overnight accommodations • Sparkling wine and strawberries • Rose petal bath • Breakfast for two (up to a $60 value) at Details: https://www.terranea.com/packages/ romance-package
Think Prime is the last great steakhouse in San Pedro. It’s the place to be — offering a traditional steakhouse menu — from every cut of beef you could want to seafood. Think Prime also has a piano bar. Details: (310) 221-0415; http://thinkprimesteakhouse.com
Jackson’s Place serves Southern classics and Louisiana favorites in a contemporary wine bar setting. For Valentine’s Day, Jackson’s Place is hosting a swing dance party with menu and drink specials, plus swing dance lessons. Before Valentine’s Day, Jackson’s Place is hosting a Mardi Gras party on Feb. 10. Details: (424) 477-5220 Venue: Jackson’s Place, 335 W. 7th St., San Pedro
Babouch Moroccan Restaurant
Now under new ownership, dining at Babouch still creates an unforgettable romantic experience that transports you to Morocco for the evening. Belly dancing and tarot card readings complete the experience. Details: (310) 831-0246 Venue: Babouch, 810 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro
Baramee Thai Restaurant
This quiet romantic gem of a restaurant in downtown San Pedro is cozy and intimate. It
The Whale & Ale’s award-winning fish and chips served fireside in the oak-paneled dining room. File photo.
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Beef • Pork • Lamb • Chicken
Fresh seasonal seafood
February 8 - 21, 2018
Darko and Mark
We are a Family Team of Croatian butchers who, for over 50 years, have served the South Bay with the finest cuts of meat, sausages, fresh seafood and a full-fledged delicatessen
Handmade daily sarma, dolma, cevapcici Meats cut-to-order
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[Undercurrents, from p. 11]
Undercurrents
February 8 - 21, 2018
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
slaves, you also ignore a huge population,” Flores said. “So, Suriname, Amazon, Panama, all the Caribbean coasts that are continental have indigenous peoples.” Flores wrote a book about 1920s Mexican ar, Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes. Because of her extensive knowledge about indigenous cultures and how they are represented in art she is sensitive to the representation of indigenous peoples and was troubled by their exclusion from a Caribbean narrative. Flores chose to delineate a map of the Caribbean based on an island experience because of the near-extinction of the indigenous peoples and their cultures on the islands. She recalled a famous quote from Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, about how on the islands the black slaves became the natives. Fanon was also a writer whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. This is one of the main themes of connection between the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Another theme Flores worked with is that the islands are in themselves a diaspora space where people from many different regions of the world came together, whether by choice or involuntarily. Flores mentioned Andil Gosine’s performance in Representational Acts. It makes reference to the settlers from the Indian subcontinent who came as indentured servants, which was in itself almost a kind of slavery. In Trinidad, where Gosine is originally from, a little more than half the population is South Asian Indian. That is why Flores did not only focus on the artists who inhabit the islands, but also looks at artists from diaspora spaces. She wants to make clear that the issue of migration is both a historical condition and an ongoing phenomenon. The overshadowing of indigenous people both through colonialism and exploitation
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of the people, land and the resources they provide compares to colonialism in the United States with the first nation’s people. But the nationalism we see today in the United States and in some European countries is completely different from the narrative of nationalism and colonialism in the historical dialogue of the Caribbean. Flores describes Caribbean nationalism as an act of emancipation and an assertion of the right to exist whereas European and U.S. nationalism is inherently xenophobic and imagines a community with no diversity and no history. With the attack and restriction to access on knowledge in this Trump era, Flores hopes that people come away from the exhibition with a greater sense of the complexity of hemispheric geographies and relations and of how the histories of these places are intertwined. Trump famously referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country, but the roots of Haitian poverty and the conditions, which afflict it are born of colonialism and later U.S. intervention. While Trump demands that people take responsibility for the conditions of their economic and infrastructural hardship (also in the case of Puerto Rico, whose inhabitants are U.S. citizens and were insulted by his comments post-hurricane Maria), the situation is far more complicated given the history of colonialism and ongoing colonial relations that exist among practically all the islands and their colonizers/ neo-colonizers. Flores noted this exhibition was a deliberate choice around PST. Having the generous funding and research that the Getty provided made it possible to do an exhibition that she believes would have been very difficult to pull off or might have taken 10 years in fundraising. “Because these countries that are very difficult to find financial support and philanthropy, nothing could ever equal from a single source what the Getty gave, Flores said. “I don’t think you could even have that kind of ambition starting out if it hadn’t been for something like PST.” Details: www.molaa.org
FEB 8 - 21 • 2018 ENTERTAINMENT Feb. 9
Hugh von Kleist Duo Enjoy live traditional hard swingin’ jazz styled after Zoot Sims and Lester Young. Time: 6 p.m. Feb. 9 Cost: Free Details: www.blowingold.com Venue: 28th St. Bar & Grill Lounge Doubletree by Hilton, 2800 Via Cabrillo Marina, San Pedro
Feb. 10
Rob Garland’s Eclectic Trio This high energy jazzrock fusion trio will perform instrumental and vocal selection, plus a few eclectic covers with elements of jazz, rock, blues and funk. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: $20 Details: (310) 833-7538; https://alvasshowroom.com Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
Feb. 11
Agent 22, Special Guest Emmett Chapman Witness Stick inventor Emmett Chapman plays his 12-string guitar-bass hybrid in his original “free hands” style. Chapman will be accompanied by stick player Tom Griesgraber and Ryan Moran on percussion and didgeridoo. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 11 Cost: $20 Details: (310) 833-7538; jacqulyn@alvas.com Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
Feb. 14
Feb. 17
The Red Guitar & Junkyard Duo Bruce Forman and Jake Reed will bring in their combo of jazz and music from the edge of sound Time: 4 to 6 p.m. Feb. 18 Cost: $20 Details: (310) 833-7538; https://alvasshowroom.com Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
Feb. 18
Alex Ridio, Ronnie Blanchet Join in for a night of classic country and rockabilly music. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 18 Cost: $15 Details: (310) 547-2348 Venue: People’s Place & Palace, 365 W. 6th St., San Pedro
THEATER Feb. 9
LYMAN LYMAN is a 2-act play set in a multi-universe. It centers on the life of Lyman Liri, a piano prodigy and Vietnam veteran who becomes homeless in our current universe. Each scene is a different destiny of Lyman based on the choices he makes at universal points in his life. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 9 and 10, and 2 p.m. Feb. 11 Cost: $20 Details: (562) 494-1014 Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach
Feb. 10
Sleeping Beauty Get swept away into a sublime world of kings, queens, fairy godmothers and storybook creatures as the treasured tale of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty comes alive in the most majestic classical ballet of all time. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 10 and 2 p.m. Feb. 11 Cost: $45 to $60 Details: http:// palosverdesperformingarts.com Venue: Palos Verdes Performing Arts, Norris Theatre, 27570 Norris Center Drive, Rolling Hills Estates
Feb. 11
Louisiana Purchase The Reiner Staged Reading Series’ performances bring to the stage some of Broadway’s classics and forgotten gems. Louisiana Purchase is not about Thomas Jefferson’s gargantuan land acquisition from France in 1803. It’s about the naive and unworldly Sen. Oliver P. Loganberry, who is sent to New Orleans to investigate the questionable tactics of the Louisiana Purchasing Co. Time: 7 p.m. Feb. 11 Cost: $24 Details: www.musical.org Venue: Beverly O’Neill Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
Michael Stearns Gallery hosts an artist talk with Jon Ng on Feb. 17, 3 p.m. Ng paints a certain reality, yet his works evoke a sense of solitude, displacement and transformation. 347 W. 7th St., San Pedro, (562) 400-0544.
Feb. 16
Guys and Dolls Gangsters and gamblers, missionary dolls, and showgirls turn the gamble of love into a highenergy musical. Rolling the dice is the vice of choice for Nathan Detroit (Matthew Henerson). He has big spenders ready to join his latest illegal crap game, but he needs some serious dough to keep the game afloat. Time: 8 p.m. Feb. 16, 17, 23, 24 and March 1, 2 and 3, 1 p.m. Feb. 18, 25 and March 4, 2 p.m. Feb. 24 and March 2, and 6 p.m. Feb. 25. Cost: $20 Details: (562) 856-1999; www.musical.org. Venue: Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach
Ongoing
Black Coffee In this seldom seen and intricately crafted mystery, Agatha Christie weaves scientific discoveries, international espionage and unimaginable murder together to give the audience a night of unraveling the knots of danger and suspense. Time: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 10 Cost: $20 Details: www.lbplayhouse.org Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach Pick of the Vine An exciting night of entertainment awaits you in these 7- to 15-minute short plays hand-picked by Little Fish Theatre from authors across the country. Time: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 17 Cost: $25 to 27 Details: (310) 512-6030; Littlefishtheatre.org, Venue: Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St., San Pedro
ARTS
Feb. 10
Long Beach Art Walk The new Long Beach Art Walk offers galleries and other businesses displaying art work, musicians, a maker’s
mart, activated green space, and food trucks, every second Saturday. Artists have a chance to display and sell their art while patrons enjoy strolling from one establishment to the next. Time: 4 to 10 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: Free Details: http://lbartwalk.org Venue: East Village, from 4th Street and Linden Avenue to 1st and Elm streets, Long Beach
Ongoing
Minoru Ohira: Memory & Nature Palos Verdes Art Center presents Memory & Nature, recent sculpture by Minoru Ohira. Composed of wood, granite, graphite, and resin, his forms are abstracted from the human body as well as vegetal shapes, filtered by the traces of memory in a process of meditative carving. Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays, through March 4 Cost: Free Details: pvartcenter.org; memoryandnature.com Venue: Palos Verdes Art Center, 5504 W. Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes 7 Painters TransVagrant + Gallery 478 present 7 Painters including the works by Katy Crowe, Ron Linden, William Mahan, Jay McCafferty, Marie Thibeault, Ted Twine, and HK Zamani. Time: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, through March 11 Details: (310) 732-2150 Venue: Gallery 478, 478 W. 7th St., San Pedro The Rebel Body Angels Gate Cultural Center is pleased to present The Rebel Body, a solo show by Johanna Breiding. Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m Mondays through Fridays, and 12 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through March 17 Cost: Free Details: angelsgateart.org Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro Making Social Making Social is an exhibition based on a pedagogic approach
Robert Irwin: Site Determined This exhibition traces Robert Irwin’s process development as he embraced the ambient environment itself as his medium in his outdoor site-responsive projects. Time: 12 to 5 p.m. Sundays through Thursday, and 12 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, through April 15 Cost: Free Details: www.csulb.edu/ university-art-museum Venue: University Art Museum, CSULB, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach
COMMUNITY Feb. 10
13th Annual Tea & Tunes Luncheon Join in the celebration of Valentine’s Day at the Banning Mansion stagecoach barn. This year’s theme is “Love.” Enjoy an elegant luncheon and a special selection of teas along with live musical entertainment, complimentary tours of the museum and a special exhibit of Victorian souvenirs at the visitor’s center. Time: 1 to 3 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: $65 to $75 Details: (310) 548-2005; www.thebanningmuseum.org Venue: The Banning Museum, 401 E. M St,, Wilmington Cupid Shuffle Silent Dance Party Everyone is invited to celebrate South Bay Pavillion’s 45th anniversary. With admission, you get a reserved headphones, free giveaways and raffle tickets.You must bring a pack of baby diapers for our baby2baby.org collection. Headphones are available while supplies last. Time: 6 to 9 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: $15 Details: www.southbaypavilion. com Venue: South Bay Pavilion, 20700 S. Avalon Blvd., Carson Unleashing our CAPEabilities Four speakers will share their stories, what has worked for them to unleash their capabilities and how this has helped them evolve in their current life both personally and professionally. Time: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: $20 Details: https://tinyurl.com/girlpower-within Venue: CJMM Community Center, 801 E. Carson St., Suite 107, Carson
Feb. 10
2018 Lunar New Year Festival Join the Port of Los Angeles for the fourth annual Lunar New Year Festival on the LA Waterfront, held indoors at CRAFTED at the Port of Los Angeles. 2018 is the year of the dog. This FREE community event features a petting zoo, traditional dancers, Taiko drummers, lion dancers,
Feb. 15
San Pedro Small Business Expo, Mixer Make new moves for your business in the New Year. Learn how to grow your business, explore contracting opportunities with Los Angeles County and network. Time: 3:30 to 6 p.m. Feb. 15 Cost: Free Venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel, 601 S. Palos Verdes St., San Pedro 5th Annual Gravely Celebration Experience This event is part of “Iowa Remembers,” the annual series of tributes and ceremonies presented by Pacific Battleship Center aboard Battleship IOWA. The series advances its mission to “Celebrate the American Spirit” by marking national, military and naval dates of importance. Limited seating Time: 6 p.m. Feb. 15 Cost: Free Details: https://tickets. labattleship.com, gravelyexperience.org, Venue: USS Iowa Pacific Battleship Center, 250 S. Harbor Blvd., Berth 87, San Pedro
Feb. 16
Fabulous Friday Join in on the first Fabulous Friday mixer of 2018. This event along with a comedy show is a great way to meet new people. Time: 6 p.m. Feb. 16 Cost: $5 Details: https://tinyurl.com/ sp-art-asoc Venue: Machine Studio, 446 W. 6th St., San Pedro
Feb. 17
HIN San Pedro Modified cars, entertainment stage and lunar New Yearthemed car show festival filling up eight city blocks of downtown San Pedro. Time: 4 to 10 p.m., Feb. 17 Cost: Free Details: hin.webconnex.com Venue: San Pedro Historic Downtown Waterfront, 390 W. 7th St., San Pedro
February 8 - 21, 2018
Feb. 17
Richie Goods & Nuclear Fusion A dynamic band with a very
Feb. 18
One Love Cali Reggae Fest It’s all Cali Love on the Queen Mary with reggae, ska and rock bands entertaining fans on multiple stages. Headliners include Rebelution, Atmostphere, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals and Iration. Time: 12 p.m. Feb. 11 Cost: $70 to $300 Details: www. onelovecalifest.com Venue: Queen Mary, 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach
Tamir Hendelman, Morgan Jones Award-winning jazz pianistcomposer Tamir Hendelman is known for his imaginative and sensitive playing and arranging on recordings by Natalie Cole, Barbra Streisand and Roberta Gambarini as well as Graham Dechter, Richard Galliano and Claudio Roditi. Morgan Jones is a Los Angeles-based pianist, saxophonist and educator. Time: 4 to 6 p.m. Feb. 17 Cost: $30 Details: (310) 833-7538; https://alvasshowroom.com Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
Above, Below and Away— Sky Paintings by Jon Ng
face painting, arts and crafts, calligraphy and brush artistry. Time: 3 to 7 p.m. Feb. 10 Cost: Free Details: www. portoflosangeles.com Venue: Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles, 112 E. 22nd St., Warehouse No 10, San Pedro
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Sylvia Rodriguez Trio Grab your dancing shoes and head down memory lane and enjoy a 20th century jazz sound. The trio performs every Wednesday Time: 5:30 to 9 p.m. Feb. 14 Cost: Free Details: www. sylviarodriguezmusic.com Venue: Blu Lounge at The Crowne Plaza Los Angeles, 601 S. Palos Verdes St., San Pedro
unique sound. Goods combines jazz, funk, gospel and rock resulting in an electrifying musical experience. Time: 8 to 10 p.m. Feb. 17 Cost: $25 Details: (310) 833-7538; https://alvasshowroom.com Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
to social experience and art. The show is based on a course taught by Matt Rich over the past decade about social experience as a medium in art. Time: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and 12 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through March 17 Cost: Free Details: http://angelsgateart.org Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro
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How to Make Love the Bonobo Way
[Vidovic, from p. 1]
Ana Vidovic
By Lyn Jensen, Contributing Writer
Real News, Real People, Totally Relevant
Couples should make love like apes — or more specifically, like bonobos. That’s what Los Angeles sex therapist Susan Block suggests in her latest book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. Her thesis maintains that the way to improve human sexual relationships is to seek peace through pleasure, what she calls “the bonobo way.” She suggests we need to become more like sensitive bonobos and less like aggressive common chimps, our other close cousins in the tree of evolution. Think of The Bonobo Way as similar to the work of pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall but “after dark,” suggests Discovery TV producer Thomas Quinn, who is quoted on the book jacket. Block’s book is part scholarly evidence of
ape behavior, sexual and otherwise and part sex manual. She discusses the physical and mental differences between bonobos and common chimps that began more than one million years ago, about the time humans were evolving, when the Congo River divided the great apes’ habitat. Today’s chimps were confined to the savannah, where food is scarce and there are many predators. Presentday bonobos were free to evolve in the rainforest, where life’s a peaceful endless salad bar. “Some primatologists place the bonobo IQ at the level of the average seven-year-old,” Block says. “But their EQ or EI (Emotional Intelligence) is much higher.” She discusses at length the considerable scientific evidence that bonobos show a higher degree of both sensitivity and intelligence than any of the other great apes, sometimes to a degree unexpected even in the average human. These sensitive and intelligent bonobos very often use sexual activity as a form of conflict resolution, in ways that might get humans arrested if we went ape and behaved similarly. Block describes a comparatively G-rated example: “Ouch! Time out! Let’s turn around and rub butts—quick before someone really gets hurt! … Do you remember why we were so mad at each other before? Because I don’t! Now how about a kiss?” “Does this mean that when apes like us feel safe and have enough to eat, we’re not as apt to kill each other and more inclined to make love?” Block asks, rhetorically. “Yes.” When she turns to sex therapy, what she calls “The 12 Steps to Releasing Your Inner Bonobo,” her thesis rests on shakier ground. She delves into bisexuality, polyamory (emotionally non-monogamy) and group sex, all of which have long been fairly common in human sexual behavior, but don’t necessarily lead to peace through pleasure. At a time when non-consensual sexual activity is in the news cycle, and a world leader is bragging about the size of his nuclear button, Block’s book serves as a reminder of how far we humans have to evolve before we find peace through pleasure. Block’s 12-step “Bonobo Way” program is much more helpful on a very intimate, personal, individual level. Couples experiencing difficulty in the bedroom, or who’ve hit a rough crossroads in their relationship, may well find mutual peace and pleasure by going bonobo.
February 8 - 21, 2018
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around the world since she first stepped on stage at age 7 in 1988. She performed internationally when she was 11 years old. At the age of 13, she became the youngest student to attend the National Musical Academy in Zagreb. Vidovic’s reputation in Europe led to an invitation to study with Manuel Barrueco at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., where she graduated in 2005. Her dedication afforded her the opportunity to study abroad. At 21, she came to the United States. She is the winner of numerous international competitions and
has performed across the United States, Europe, Israel, Canada and Japan. She has recorded six CDs and released a DVD titled, Guitar Artistry in Concert. When travelling for performances, the musician makes time to teach master classes, as well as private lessons. Now, at age 37, Vidovic has earned prominence for her tone, precise technique and well-defined phrasing. She has an impeccable, yet relaxed style. With her ease and agility performing advanced tremolos, for example, her skills emerge with a quiet escalating effect, offering room for the mind to roam. Vidovic is multi-faceted and receptive to diversity. She arranges music for guitar and she explores other genres personally, playing rock, jazz and pop. People like to hear popular songs on guitar, it brings the guitar closer to them. “I will play some Sting or The Police for example, for fun and do some arrangements for guitar,” Vidovic said.
To keep things fresh she performs different musical styles, including baroque, Spanish and Italian. Bach is her favorite composer, which she will perform, including others such as Mauro Giuliani, Astor Piazzolla and modern compositions by Agustin Barrios Mangore. She also features an especially sweet version of the Beatles’, Yesterday. In celebration of the love and the inspiration that follows Valentines Day, the Warner Grand Theatre is presenting classical guitar virtuosa Ana Vidovic in a solo recital. The Feb. 18 San Pedro event marks her return to Los Angeles for a second benefit concert. The entire performance proceeds will provide scholarships for students pursuing
classical guitar. “It was a pleasure to work with the fabulous teacher James Hunley who initially invited me to perform for his guitar studio last year,” Vidovic said in an email. “I also had the opportunity to meet his very talented students and hear them play…. I’m particularly happy that all the proceeds from the concert will fund the scholarships for James Hunley’s guitar studio and his wonderful students. They work very hard and deserve the funds that will help them achieve their goals…. That, to me personally, is the most rewarding gift.” Two of the scholarship winners, David Torres and Stevielyn Munoz, attend California State University Los Angeles and the third Austin Brill, attends the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Hunley’s investment is especially important because it is so difficult to get started in classical music. Scholarship recipients are scheduled for a special performance before Vidovic’s concert. We live in a culture of constant stimulation and distraction. Finding an antidote, a respite to settle the mind, is necessary to allow thoughts to roam beyond conflict. Quite often, music is the muse. And that’s where this classical guitar virtuosa Ana Vidovic enters. Vidovic’s hope is that everyone will find something they enjoy listening to. Details: anavinla.com, grandvision.org
Deniers
[Deniers, from p. 10]
“Lowered polar bear survival means more bears are starving to death, so regardless of what happened to cause this particular bear’s problems, we know a future with less ice means higher rates of this kind of event in the future — a future we can avoid by mitigating greenhouse gas rise,” Amstrup said. He also commented on past warm periods. “The best evidence suggests we will be far warmer by mid-century than any time in the polar bear’s evolutionary history,” Amstrup said. “The current warming is occurring over the top of gradually declining insolation is caused by humans and is not at all analogous to past warming events.” As for polar bears surviving on land, studies show there just isn’t enough nutritious food for them to survive on without access to sea ice where they can hunt seals. Sure, bears have been known to catch geese, for example, but, “there simply are not enough geese to feed all the polar bears if we ultimately let the ice disappear,” Amstrup said. Of course, the point of the paper is that all the above is well-known to scientists and is deliberately obscured on the denier blogs. The response to the paper helps to prove its point.
A Last Hurrah — Or Harrumph
One last response deserves special attention: that of economist Richard Tol, who has made slipshod scientific-sounding arguments before. In a 2014 paper he criticized one of several studies showing a 97 percent consensus on global warming, arguing it was “only” 91 percent instead. His paper was was rejected twice by one journal for flawed methodology, before it was published by another, still with some of the [MacAdams, from p. 3]
MacAdams
problems reviewers had flagged. A debunking of his claims, 24 Critical Errors in Tol (2014), written by 10 co-authors was published at skepticalscience.com, which noted that in his most glaring mistake: “Tol effectively conjured approximately 300 papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming out of thin air, with no evidence that those papers exist in reality.” This time outlooks strikingly similar. The data issues, once again, are illusory. “Simply put, there are no issues with the data and Tol doesn’t report any,” Lewandowsky said. “What Tol is doing instead is to throw various innuendos at our particular form of the data and
listing the limitations of it. This is a never-ending game of ‘gotcha’ because every type of data has specific limitations, which are taken into account by the appropriate statistical analysis.” His conclusions are chimeral, too. “Harvey et al. (2017) thus really show that there are people who worry about sea-ice and polar bears, and those who do not and cite Dr. Crockford,” Tol wrote. “Tol’s description of ‘what we really show’ is a bit tricky,” Varteban said. “It’s written in a way that attempts to ridicule and downplay what we did, without being outright wrong.” “We do not only show there are people who worry and people [who] do not,” added Peter
City Sues Fossil Fuel Companies for Global Warming Damage
and severe drought. These changes have led to increased water shortages, impacts to biodiversity, impacts to public health, and economic injuries. The City must expend substantial funds to plan for and respond to these phenomena, and to mitigate their secondary and tertiary impacts. Los Angeles is considering filing a lawsuit as well, pushed forward by a motion submitted by council members Joe Bonin and Paul Koretz on Jan. 12. “By knowing that their business practice was contributing to climate change and doing nothing to stop their destructive ways, the oil and gas industry should be held liable for the current and future damage climate change is causing our city,” the motion stated. “Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for infrastructure repairs that likely wouldn’t have been necessary had it not been for the willful neglect of the fossil fuel industry.” The motion was seconded by council members Jose Huizar and Marqueece HarrisDawson. It also was referred to the Budget and Finance Committee. —Paul Rosenberg
February 8 - 21, 2018
intentionally deceive the public, as specifically detailed in the complaint. Specific corporate responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions has also been established. Richmond’s complaint alleges and presents evidence that: Defendants have known for nearly 50 years that greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and sea levels…. Defendants concealed the dangers, sought to undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation, and engaged in massive campaigns to promote the ever-increasing use of their products at ever greater volumes…. As for damages, the complaint asserts: Sea level rise endangers City property and infrastructure, causing coastal flooding of low-lying areas, erosion, salinity intrusion, higher risk of liquefaction during seismic events, and storm surges. Several critical City facilities, existing roadways, wastewater treatment facilities, residential neighborhoods, industrial areas including the Port of Richmond and the Chevron Refinery, highways, rail lines, emergency response facilities, and parks have suffered and/or will suffer injuries due to sea level rise expected by the end of this century…. It also states:
On Jan. 22, the city council of Richmond, Calif., home to the Chevron Richmond Refinery, filed suit against 29 oil, gas and coal companies for damages due to global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution. “With 32 miles of shoreline, more than any other city on [the] San Francisco Bay, Richmond is at extreme risk from sea level rise,” Richmond Mayor Tom Butts said. The Richmond suit also cited changes to the hydrologic cycle including more frequent and severe heat waves, drought and extreme precipitation events. It was the ninth global warming lawsuit filed by California cities and counties since this past July, but only the city and county of Santa Cruz, which filed suit in December, had previously cited damages aside from sea level rise. All made public nuisance claims, similar to claims against tobacco companies in the mid-1990s, eventually resulting in a $365.5 billion settlement to recoup Medicaid costs associated with treating smokers. Global warming damages could easily dwarf that figure. In 2008, a similar lawsuit was dismissed. Since then, substantial new evidence, originally uncovered by Inside Climate News, has established a half-century history of industry awareness of global warming damage and subsequent efforts to
The City is already experiencing a climatic and meteorological shift toward hotter, dryer, and longer summers, with more extreme precipitation events; increased ambient temperature; and increasingly frequent
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of the LA River, and a movement was born. The impossible task was to return one of the world’s most heavily industrialized rivers to nature. Honoring the campaign to free the river, Daub moved away from his traditional bronze medium and created a statue from concrete. This is the first time he worked with that material. The statue depicts MacAdams over a relief of river flora and fauna including frogs, herons and fish. Marsh Park, the location for the installation, was renamed MacAdams Park in his honor. The park itself is a triumph. The goal was always to ‘crack the concrete’ and return the river to the people, for recreation, environmental education and as a community space. In 2014, FoLAR built the first visitor center for the river. Affectionately referred to as the Frog Spot, it sits on the bank of the river overlooking heron’s resting on rocks and trees growing on the banks. Now, the park provides a verdant location for newlyweds to exchange vows, hipsters to knock back a beer while enjoying live music, as well as for families to take pleasure in a simple picnic. Each Saturday they host live music and recruit volunteers for their grassroots advocacy. In April 2018, FoLAR will organize the 29th annual Great LA River Cleanup/La Gran Limpieza. In 2017, 10,000 volunteers removed 100 tons of trash from the river banks. To be part of MacAdams visionary project and have an up-close experience with the river, volunteer at folar.org.
Bart Verheggen is an atmospheric scientist who has worked in the Netherlands. File photo
Roessingh, another co-author, an ecologist at the University of Amsterdam. “We show that all scientist are in one camp, with half of the blogs, and all other blogs are in the other camp. It is not a random mixture. By omitting the science position he distorts our conclusion.” Tol also complained that some of the paper’s co-authors had co-authored a good number of the papers on sea ice and polar bears, which made them biased. He layered multiple misleading arguments to make it seem quite underhanded and nefarious — questioning why only a small subset of papers on polar bears (in the Scopus database) were used, for example. “There may well be 278 papers on polar bears in Scopus,” Lewandowsky responded. “In fact, there are probably 10,000 papers in Scopus on bears. And a million on mammals. Holy cow, does this mean we ignored nearly a million relevant papers? Of course not! ... He’d get the same number of papers [we did] if he actually used our search terms..... Tol is complaining that the Bioscience paper is co-authored by scientists with a high level of relevant expertise. I would call that a strong asset of our paper!” In short, Tol’s response comes off as the final flourish in a flood of responses, all of which add up to a resounding underscoring of Harvey’s results. As Lewandowsky said, it’s MontyPython-esque. “Our paper is hardly surprising, but deniers are angry simply because they have been formally exposed,” Harvey summed up. “It is patently obvious that denier blogs are master cherry pickers of quite dubious sources. They know it too, but they just don’t want to admit it.” Which is why the paper’s call for scientists to become more engaged on social media is so crucial. The more of them there are, the harder it will be for the cherry pickers to win when the next viral video comes around.
17
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[continued on p. 19]
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ACROSS
1 Candy brand that comes in twos 5 One of Australia’s six 10 “The King and I” character 14 Planetarium roof 15 Hardwood playing surface 16 Ending for concert or movie 17 Banana peel, in British English 18 Image transmitter to the brain 20 Early Doritos flavor 22 Cuatro doubled 23 Charles played by Jamie Foxx 24 Bitter beer variety, for short 26 It spits out bills 28 Cassis-and-wine cocktail 29 Altar-ed statement? 30 Flowers related to tobacco, tomatoes, and deadly nightshade 33 The Bahamas’ capital 35 Dress rehearsal follower 37 Ricky’s portrayer on 1950s TV 38 Bread in an Indian restaurant 39 Doesn’t feel so great 43 Potential award winner usually announced in January 48 2016 Lady Gaga album 51 TNT drama whose 77th and final episode aired on Christmas 2012 52 Abbr. on food labels 53 Certain Wall Street trader,
slangily 55 In medias ___ 56 Voting yes 57 Bread for a Reuben 58 “Afternoon of a ___” (Debussy work) 60 Train travel 62 2019 and 2021, e.g. 65 House, in Havana 68 “Switched-On Bach” synthesizer 69 “This one goes out to the one ___ ...” 70 “Monday Night Football” network 71 Muppet with a goldfish 72 Burn perfume, in religious ceremonies 73 “Take ___! (And ___!)”
DOWN
1 6-pt. plays 2 Panda Express vessel 3 Knocks off 4 Lucy Lawless title role 5 Make more room at a booth, perhaps 6 Highest-ranked 7 Car, alternately 8 End-of-October option 9 Art done with acid 10 Candle count 11 Actor Chuck with a “Facts” meme 12 McCarran International Airport’s home 13 Words before ready or serious 19 “Come Away With Me” singer Jones
21 “What ___ do?” 24 The Touch is the only one still produced 25 “Muppets Tonight” prawn 27 ___ cum laude 31 Group with dues 32 Hair tangle 34 Flight component? 36 Word before child or peace 40 Very quickly 41 Brick that hurts when stepped on 42 Fortune teller 44 Screw-up 45 Like some tiles 46 Direct 47 Tableland 48 Former halfback Bettis 49 Detergent that debuted in 1914 50 The world of simians 54 “Haven’t Met You Yet” crooner Michael 59 Element #10 (Really, it’s that early in the sequence? Wow.) 61 “Law & Order: SVU” costar 63 The Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, e.g. 64 Homes parked in parks 66 Tranquil destination 67 Colony insect
©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers go to: www.randomlengthsnews.com
Robert Parry, Investigative Reporter June 24, 1949 to Jan. 27, 2018
Robert Parry, noted investigative reporter in the tradition of George Seldes and I.F. Stone, died peacefully on Jan. 27. Parry had suffered a series of strokes as a result of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer. Parry’s career-defining work, breaking the first stories about the Iran-Contra scandal, ironically led to his exit from professional employment and the subsequent pioneering of internet publication in 1995. As a reporter for the Associated Press, together with Bob Barger, Parry wrote the first stories about the Ronald Reagan administration’s illegal efforts to circumvent congressional bans on funding the Nicaraguan contras. That led to a congressional investigation by Sen. John Kerry, documenting links to drug-running into the United States. However, the rest of the Washington press corps at the time relied on National Security staffer Oliver North as an unnamed source for countless stories. They took his denials at face value, leading the AP to curtail its investigations, until two headline-grabbing events vindicated Parry and Barger’s earlier work. First, a plane with CIA arms shipments was shot down in Nicaragua on Oct. 5, 1986. The sole survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, confessed to what was going on. Then, on Nov. 3, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the Iranian side of the arrangement, where the funding came from. Barger quit in discouragement, but Parry continued to dig deeper into the wider story, even after the corporate media moved on. Conservatives poured enormous resources. Parry uncovered evidence pushing back the origins of Iranian arms dealing to the 1980 election. As described in his 1993 book, Trick or Treason: The 1980 October Surprise Mystery, the ReaganBush election team struck a deal with Iran to not release the 52 American hostages held at the U.S. embassy until after the election. In 1995, Parry established the first online investigative newsite (now Consortiumnews. com). Its first major story combined a stunning
[Candidates, from p. 2]
additional source of confirming evidence— from Russian intelligence—with the revelation that House Democrats, lead by Intelligence Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton, had intentionally buried that evidence, which conflicted with their predetermined finding of insufficient evidence. October Surprise X-Files became a booklet, self-published in January 1996. Later that year, Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series at the San Jose Mercury-News reopened the contra-cocaine offshoot of the Iran-Contra scandal, but the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post combined to attack Webb’s work, forcing him out of journalism, despite the fact that a CIA inspector general’s report confirmed the story’s essential elements: that contras were involved in drug-smuggling and that drugs ended up on America’s streets as crack. Parry’s book, Lost History corrects the false record those newspapers created. Parry was similarly dogged in pursuing the truth of the 2000 election, ultimately concluding that Al Gore would have won, if all the legally cast ballots were counted. Following 9/11, it became even more challenging to report the truth about George Bush’s administration than it had been during the Reagan-Bush years. Together
Editor’s Note: Christian Guzman, a regular contributor to Random Lengths News, also is working with the campaign to elect Rachel Bruhnke to the state Assembly.
[News Briefs, from p. 6]
John Thomas Bryan, who witnesses later said they saw him collapsed near where he was dropped off. Los Angeles Police Department officers arrested him for an outstanding warrant, thereafter. Court records show that Bryan had a 1994 drunk driving conviction and 1995 robbery charge. Lomita Sheriff Station officials said they are conducting an investigation about the incident. At a recent Los Angeles City Council meeting, Councilman Joe Buscaino, who represents District 15, said that Bryan had an arrest warrant and was now jailed, and accused the LASD of jeopardizing “the safety of Los Angeles residents and resulted in additional cost to Los Angeles taxpayers.” Others in the community point to the example of the encampment at 8th and Palos Verdes streets as the failure of the councilman’s office to do more than harass the homeless while providing no viable options. John Papadakis wrote in a widely distributed email, “Here is a revealing case, where the sheriffs were giving an aimless one a charitable ride to San Pedro (at his request). So, what ensues? Our FALSE LEADERS, politically and opportunistically, characterized the Sheriff’s humanitarian act, as deliberate dumping. And they hastily do this only for a chance to speak out in the Local and National media and pretend that they are defending the community. They should personally pay for the needless investigation that they called for.” To see the video visit: https://youtu.be/ a4QHAoDPrm4 19 February 8 - 21, 2018
02/08/2018, 02/22/2018
elected officials in the legislature sharing those values,” Feinstein said. Estrada would improve the California electoral system by establishing holidays during election days and implementing uniform training for poll workers. She said she is also in favor of lowering the voting age to 16. McLaughlin used the environmental portion of the forum to describe her home town’s triumphs. She was the mayor and a city councilwoman in Richmond, Calif. “Chevron used to own the Richmond City Council,” McLaughlin said. “I led a movement to elect progressives in favor of more renewable energy.” As lieutenant governor, she said she would oppose new oil drilling operations; she would support a tax on existing operations that would fund renewable energy technologies. Bracamontes believes more people will want a sustainable civilization if government and society put urgency on improving public health and building the green economy rather than restoring the environment. “The state [government] should divest from the fossil fuel industry, do away with cap and trade and promote community choice energy programs.” Community choice energy programs are public agencies that aggregate individual household’s purchasing powers to secure customized and (usually) renewable sources of energy for electricity generation. To increase justice in the United States, Zuniga supports a universal basic income. A universal basic income would give a certain amount of money to each American citizen per month regardless of whether they work or how much they earn. This kind of program would largely replace government assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. All of the candidates rejected Donald Trump’s immigration policy. They were in favor of California being a sanctuary state and a pathway to citizenship for people brought here as minors from other countries. They also opposed Trump’s ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries. The candidates at the forum have far more in common with the Bernie Sanders 2016 platform than its corporate competition. The incumbents in the assembly that Arnold, Bruhnke and Estrada are running against did not fight for Senate Bill 562 — a single payer health care bill — to make it to the floor for a vote. The noncorporate candidates would all vote for it. California Secretary of State Alejandro
Padilla endorsed Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016; many at the forum thought that should be illegal since his position is responsible for ensuring a functional election system. The non-corporate candidates will also face an uphill battle making it past California’s top two primary system, which takes the top two vote recipients from the primary and places them on the general election ballot, regardless of party. This has resulted in two Democrats being up for election, all but forcing non-Democrats to vote for one. Candidates like McLaughlin have beaten the machine. McLaughlin and her progressive slate in Richmond won races despite Chevron putting millions of dollars into their opponents’ campaigns. “Corporate money is nothing compared to the power of people,” she said, proudly.
couple. The date registrant started to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above: 1996. I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. (A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime.) S/.Willie Cameron, Owner. This statement was filed with the County Clerk of Los Angeles on Dec. 29, 2017. Notice--In accordance with subdivision (a) of section 17920. A fictitious name statement generally expires at the end of five years from the date on which it was filed in the office of the county clerk, except as provided in subdivision (b) of section 17920 where it expire 40 days after any change in the facts set forth in the statement pursuant to section 17913 other than a change in the residence address of a registered owner. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before the expiration. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see section 1411 ET SEQ., Business and Professions code). Original filing:01/11/2018, 01/25/2018,
Candidates
narratives, Parry found himself out of step with the overwhelming rush to accept anti-Trump allegations in the wake of the 2016 election. December 2016 brought yet another head-tohead confrontation with the Washington Post, which included Consortiumnews.com on a McCarthyite blacklist of about 200 websites alleged to be spreading “Russian propaganda” by an anonymous accusatory organization. Other quality progressive newsites targeted included Robert Sheer’s TruthDig, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, and TruthOut. “My dad’s untimely passing has come as a shock to us all,” his son Nat wrote on the site. “His brand of journalism is needed today more than ever.”
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DBA FILINGS [from p. 18]
with his sons Sam and Nat, Parry summed up his research of that period in the 2007 book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, juxtaposing that research against the whitewashing mainstream media coverage of the era. During the Barack Obama era, Consortiumnews.com gained a much wider array of contributors, but continued to explore the theme that unchallenged narratives hide real choices and unconsciously shape national politics and policy. An outgrowth of this was Parry’s sixth and final book, America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama, published in 2012. Because of his long history penetrating intelligence community collusion and false
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February 8 - 21, 2018
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