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Heidi Detty in front of No DAPL banner

Standing Rock is the focal point of a struggle between the indigenous people of the United States and the big oil industry. Energy Transfer Partnership is building the Dakota Access Pipeline that will transport Bakken fracked oil to the Gulf of Mexico and then likely sold outside this country. The pipeline is planned to go right under the Missouri River just one half mile upstream of the Sioux Reservation. The Missouri is the main source of water for the people on the reservation, as well as approximately 13 million people downstream.

Via social media, I was shocked to see video footage of natives being attacked by guards with pepper spray and vicious dogs as they tried to peacefully defend their sacred burial grounds from bulldozers. I became resolute that I wanted to go to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

On September 8th I arrived in North Dakota. As I drove down route 6 into the reservation, I started to see small camps along the road next to areas that had been disturbed by bulldozers. A little farther and I saw hundreds of flags lining a long road into the camp. The land was covered in tepees and bright colored tents.

Woman holding sign against Jon Husted

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted may have stepped out of bounds by keeping “community bill of rights” proposals off the ballot in Ohio. Residents of Medina, Athens and Fulton counties gathered required signatures to place proposed county charters on their respective ballots in 2015. Medina County Board of Elections (BOE) disallowed their residents’ proposal, and all of the proposed charters were kept off the ballots by Husted.

Husted interjected his interpretation of what “should” go on the ballot, as citizens came forth and asserted their constitutional right to create local laws when our higher-level government is not working for us. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld Husted’s decision. The primary legislative issue is that the 2004 ‘Niehaus Bill’ (HB 278) gave Ohio state regulators full control of oil/gas production, usurping home rule from communities.

Building made to look like a monster

Attack of the Mixed-Use Monsters

Across Columbus and its suburbs mixed-use developments, which often include high-end condos, parking garages, office space, retail and entertainment, are either up-and-running, under construction or being proposed with each new week.

Some of these developments work for certain neighborhoods, especially if the development utilized a property that was either vacated or in need of investment, developments in Grandview and Franklinton, for example.

But cramming a mixed-use development into an already established and historically unique neighborhood is a different beast altogether. A recent case-in-point is the development that replaced Clintonville’s Olympic Pool, a summer hangout cherished by several generations of kids and parents alike.

Even in Upper Arlington there are some residents who see the coming invasion of high-density, mixed-use development as a gamble that not only could cause too much commercialism and increased density, but worse, demolish a community’s soul and character.

Wrecked car under a tree

Three-C Body Shops is a lot like The Columbus Free Press. Both are fiercely independent and locally owned. And if you haven’t noticed, both are outspoken and unafraid to take on corporate bullies. Three-C and the Free Press are driven to help consumers understand how the corporatization and the consolidation of their respected industries is marginalizing not only them, but also their community.   

Three-C owner Bob Juniper, the second-generation patriarch of the company, says the collision repair industry is under attack and being devoured. Four to five companies, he says, are making a serious attempt to monopolize the industry he’s worked for since he was a teenager. One of these companies is Service King Collision Repair, which is majority owned by the Carlyle Group.

 

I am writing to inform you of an amazing Filed Memo Opposing Edison Research Motion to Dismiss.PDF available to you to possibly effect a major change in our system of reporting vote counts in the United States. For years, as we have reported to you. Edison Media Research has refused to release the raw data they gather during their exit polls. Raw data from exit polls is adjusted to fit the vote totals that come in from our vote tabulators across the country. The Media Consortium which hires Edison Media Research (EMR) uses the vote totals coming in from the tabulators as the real vote count. Normally, in other countries, exit poll data is supposed to show you what the real vote totals are. If the exit polls differ significantly from the computerized vote totals, the winning politician may be winning from electronic vote manipulation as opposed to the vote of the people.

My remarks are related to the problem of media as a factor in the war system but not focused primarily on that. I have experienced first hand as a journalist and as an author how the corporate news media hews to a set of well-delineated lines in the coverage of issues of war and peace that systematically block out all data that conflict with those lines. I’d be glad to talk about my experiences especially in covering ran and Syria in Q and A.

But I am here to talk about the larger problem of the war system and what is to be done about it.

I want to present a vision of something that has not been discussed seriously in many, many years: a national strategy to mobilize a very large segment of the population of this country to participate in a movement to force the retreat of the permanent war state.

I know that many of you must be thinking: that is a great idea for 1970 or even 1975 but its no longer relevant to the conditions we face in this society today.

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