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The Columbus International Film & Video Festival (CIF&VF) is bigger and better than ever this year.


Progressive educators at Ohio State University started the longest running film festival in the U.S. back when 16mm film was a new and exciting format. Now in its 62nd year, the Festival kicks off with a series of Early Bird Films in October and early November that lead up to the official start of the now 12 day Festival November 13-25.


This year the Festival teams up with Stonewall Columbus, VSA Ohio – The State Organization on Arts and Disability and the Niagara Foundation to bring films not seen anywhere else in Columbus.


The main Festival in November starts off with a film about sex and disability from Australia. Scarlet Road follows the extraordinary work of Australian sex worker, Rachel Wotton. Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression and the rights of sex workers, she specializes in a long over-looked clientele – people with disability. Director and Star Rachel Wotton will speak about the film and do a Q&A immediately after the film via Skype.


Will precinct-by-precinct, 15 minute-by-15 minute election night results that are available only to the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, compromise the security of the statewide election?

In Ohio’s notorious 2004 presidential election, called by pollster Lou Harris “one of the most corrupt in U.S. history,” one of the signs of election tampering was the impossible results flowing from precincts in Republican rural Ohio. In Cyde, Ohio they initially reported 130 percent voter turnout.

In Perry County, one precinct came in at 120 percent, another at 114 percent. In Miami County, the Concord Southwest precinct claimed 679 out of 689 voters cast ballots overwhelmingly for Bush. They later admitted to The Free Press that only 549 people signed into the polls and that the other votes had been the result of bad computer tallies.

Now with Ohio’s new election night reporting system it is easier than ever to stack the deck and bring in the cybervote at the precinct level.

 

While some attention is focused on the risks inherent in placing untested software patches on county election tabulators, another election technology is being aggressively deployed throughout Ohio. That technology, the e-pollbook, appears to reduce lines at the polls, increase convenience and be a more modern way to verify voter identity and precinct location. The technology as deployed brings with it new possibilities for tampering with elections and whole new vectors for cyber attack.

What is most alarming is the potential for this technology to compromise the secrecy of the ballot. E-pollbooks could allow people with access, from election officials and private contractors to Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, to know how you voted.

 

Everyone has hang-ups - inhibitions, insecurities or situations that prevent one from having sex.


You have a partner, each is in the mood, you move closer in the direction of getting it on, and then everything stops. Someone's hang-up shows up.


Some hang-ups are mental – needing to have things arranged in a particular way - lights off, music on, lingerie or other “costuming,” grooming (brushing teeth, shaving, showered), focusing on having an orgasm in order to have satisfying sex, being over worried about STDs – the list goes on.


Some hang-ups are societal or based on religious beliefs – needing to be married, with a partner of a certain faith, or waiting until the third date. Perhaps you feel like you've had too many partners, and want to keep it below a certain number.

 

The United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, allowed Ohio’s notoriously racist voting laws to remain in place during the 2014 election. Ohio Secretary of State (SoS) Jon Husted has embraced the new Jim Crow policy of limiting access to the polls by poor, elderly and black voters.

Husted, under a twisted version of “equality” has limited Ohio’s nine major urban areas to having only one early voting site each, guaranteed to create long lines as it did in the 2004 and 2012 elections. In 2008, then-SoS Jennifer Brunner allowed the Franklin County Board of Elections to establish five early voting centers in the greater Columbus area.

Last week, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld federal Judge Peter Economus’ historic ruling protecting African American voting rights in Ohio. In a September 4, 2014 opinion, Economus held that the actions of Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted violated both the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by erecting illegal barriers to keep minorities and the poor from voting in the Buckeye State.

 

Striking Reynoldsburg teachers want the public to know one thing: they’re on the picket line because they care about students first.

The strike is more about what the Reynoldsburg school district is forcing on the students and teachers than winning a compensation package that’s on par with neighboring districts, said the Reynoldsburg Education Association (REA), the teachers’ union.

The Reynoldsburg school district, led by Superintendent Tina Thomas-Manning, called an “education ally” of Gov. John Kasich by the REA, has been pushing hard for teachers to accept a merit-based pay system.

Conservatives and Capitalists have long been among supporters of merit-based pay claiming it will help to close “the achievement gap.”

Critics of merit-based pay say it is a veiled effort to privatize education by replacing teachers with technology, increasing class sizes, increasing the number of standardized tests and growing the number of for-profit charter schools.

 

 

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has returned to ABC for a second season, following Agent Phil Coulson and his team as they try to salvage something of their mostly-benevolent government organization from the mess left by the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

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