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For decades, the U.S. public seemed largely indifferent to most of the horrible suffering of war. The corporate media outlets mostly avoided it, made war look like a video game, occasionally mentioned suffering U.S. troops, and once in a blue moon touched on the deaths of a handful of local civilians as if their killing were some sort of aberration. The U.S. public funded and either cheered for or tolerated years and years of bloody wars, and came out managing to believe falsely that a large percentage of war deaths are of troops, that a large percentage of war deaths in U.S. wars are U.S. troops, that wars happen in a mysterious place called a “battlefield,” and that with rare exceptions the people killed by U.S. troops are people who need killing exactly like those given death sentences in U.S. courts (except for the ones later exonerated).

From the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence

Ohio is on the verge of making marijuana fully legal, but no surprise is the unlucky timing for proponents. Stuck in purgatory in the Ohio Statehouse is a proposed citizen-initiated statute which will make marijuana legal for adults 21 and over.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol (CTRMLA) and its canvassers gathered signatures at shopping plazas late last year gaining 136,729 valid signatures. Their goal is to force the Ohio legislature to consider their legislation for November’s ballot. An answer from the Statehouse is due in May.

CTRMLA’s law would give 36 percent of earned taxes to support social equity and jobs, and it also legalizes home grow with a limit of six plants per person and 12 plants per household. Ohio’s current Medical Marijuana Control Program forbidshome-based cultivation, a point of contention with many of the state’s patients. 

The Ohio State University strikes out again. From evidence-free slogans to an ordered, bought, and delivered “consultant’s report” to Campus unSafety non-Alerts and Campus unSafety Officers, who are inactive and lack direction. Note the repetition of Campus, and not Campus and Off-Campus or university area. Is the confusion ignorance or purposeful?

Shortly following OSU’s release of the Security Risk Management Consultant’s “Off-Campus Safety Assessment Report and Recommendations,” an off-campus student reported a gunshot through the window of his East 12th Avenue rental house. That “report” was commissioned from a New Albany-based, primarily “corporate campus” security evaluation firm that had never before studied an off-campus university area. Not surprisingly, it “praised” the university’s off-campus safety measures, adding a few modest, obvious, and long-overdue recommendations and photos of everyday, illegal trash.

Here’s what happened at the March 2022 Free Press Second Saturday Cyber-Salon, Saturday March 12.

Watch video here.

Facilitated by Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery, the salon addressed “Peace in the World.”

Harvey Wasserman, anti-nuke activist and senior Free Press Editor, spoke first about the nukes in Ukraine. He told us five of the 12 nuclear reactors in Ukraine were built by Soviets and all are over 30 years old. Chernobyl is one of the smallest ones and is now under control of the Russians. The explosion at Chernobyl in April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in the world, overshadowed later by the meltdown at Fukushima, which was the equivalent of 100 times the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Chernobyl disaster, the the Russians seeded the clouds above Ukraine so that it would rain the radioactivity over them instead of Russia. Even a nuclear plant that is shut down is a radioactive threat.

Sunday, March 13, 12noon
Nationwide Plaza One
Join us to support Ukraine and peace. Hosted by Ukranian Cultural Association of Ohio.

Saturday, March 12, 2022, 7:00 PM
Since we aren't getting together in person, we can gather for a couple hours on the second Saturday night of each month.  
Topic: Peace in the World. Join Zoom meeting here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83906590837. Meeting ID: 839 06. 

Last week, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine after a visceral speech laced with lies and threats of nuclear annihilation.Today, Russian nuclear forces are at a level of combat readiness unseen since some of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. Any nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could result in global death and the complete environmental devastation of our planet – a terrifying possibility. 

So far, the Biden administration has thankfully chosen not to respond to Putin’s nuclear threats. While we are encouraged by President Biden’s decision in choosing restraint, this is a moment to draw a clearer line and publicly affirm a policy of no first use. 

President Biden has the power to de-escalate and send a strong signal of leadership and restraint in this moment.