Youngstown OH- Prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) continue the hunger strike they started on Monday April 30th, in solidarity with May Day.
The number of prisoners refusing food has fluctuated from 24 to 48 over the last week, as some prisoners joined late. Communication with the super max prisoners has been limited since the beginning of the strike, but a clear list of grievances and demands has emerged from at least two sources.

The two primary demands are:

1. Improved commissary practices and increased state pay. The prison commissary can set prices at up to 35% mark-up on basic necessities like shampoo, food, and soap. These prices fluctuate unexpectedly, and are often prohibitive to prisoners without outside support, as state pay is only $9 a month.

There are zero commercial reactors operating in Japan today. On March 10, 2011, there were 54 licensed to operate, well over 10% percent of the global fleet.

But for the first time in 42 years, a country at the core of global reactor electricity is producing none of its own.

Worldwide, there are fewer than 400 operating reactors for the first time since Chernobyl, a quarter-century ago.

And France has replaced a vehemently pro-nuclear premier with the Socialist Francois Hollande, who will almost certainly build no new reactors. For decades France has been the "poster child" of atomic power. But Hollande is likely to follow the major shift in French national opinion away from nuclear power and toward the kind of green-powered transition now redefining German energy supply.

In the United States, a national grassroots movement to stop federal loan guarantees could end new nuclear construction altogether.

Japan's one remaining operating reactor (of 54) may go dark tomorrow.  Japan would be nuke-free for the first time in a half-century.  

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is desperately trying to get Osaka's Mayor to allow the Ohi nuke to stay open.  But Japanese law gives local officials far more power over the reactor industry than in the US or China.  And the 42-year-old Toru Hashimoto, the son of a Yakuza gangster, is holding firm.  Now probably Japan's most popular politician, Hoshimoto has harshly criticized its nuclear industry for lying to the public and for causing the Fukushima catastrophe and then covering up its true impacts.

Japan has long been at the core of the global reactor business.  It manufactures pressure vessels, steam generators and much more of the serious hardware that comprises the world's atomic infrastructure.  Should it go totally post-nuclear, the symbolic as well as tangible impact would be huge.  Even Germany, which has announced its intent to go green, has a number of nukes still going.

Japan's top brass are desperately trying to persuade Hashimoto to give in.  We'll know tomorrow.

"We did not choose this war. This war came to us on 9/11. We don't go looking for a fight. But when we see our homeland violated, when we see our fellow citizens killed, then we understand what we have to do."

These are the words that President Obama used on Tuesday to describe the Afghanistan war, but they would have been more appropriately said by any Afghan citizen.

Coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States, these words are nothing more than nationalistic propaganda — designed to justify an aggressive war of choice launched against a sovereign nation. Somebody chose this war, and it certainly wasn't the Afghan people — 92% of whom have never even heard of the events of 9/11.