The Boston bombing

OSP Prisoners Join Hunger Strike in Solidarity

Tues April 16th, 2013, Youngstown, OH - At least twenty one prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) refused all three meals on Monday, April 15th in solidarity with the four Lucasville Uprising prisoners who've been on hunger strike since April 11th.

Warden David Bobby says no additional prisoners are officially hunger-striking, because none have refused nine consecutive meals, but he said numerous prisoners have refused meals off and on during the hunger strike.

The four prisoners who are on hunger strike are Greg Curry, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Bomani Shakur. All have been held in solitary confinement since receiving convictions after the Lucasville Uprising in 1993. They are demanding media be granted access to sit-down interviews with them.

The warden also met with the prisoners on Monday to hear their demands, but has not begun negotiations with them. When asked, Warden Bobby said that he does not have final say regarding media access. The decision is made by Director Gary Mohr and the Office of Communications at ODRC Central Office.

Reparations in order for 1963 bombing

It was terror that shook the nation. On Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Four little girls, all dressed in white — 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair — died in the explosion, and are remembered in history.

Congress now is considering offering them posthumously a Congressional Gold Medal.

But there was a fifth little girl caught in the blast — 10-year-old Sarah Collins Rudolph — the younger sister of Addie Mae. Partly blinded, she staggered from the basement bleeding from the nose and ears from a concussion. She spent two months in the hospital, but she survived. To this day, she bears her injuries, and the traumatic stress that does not go away. She doesn’t want a medal; she wants justice.

Now she is speaking out, witness to that horrible crime in those mean days. She’s angry because her sister’s body has been lost. When they went to exhume the body, the grave contained someone else’s remains. She wonders why there was no compensation for her injuries, no help for the families.

The Orwellian warfare state of carnage and doublethink

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion -- and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”

Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of “combined effects munitions” when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.

The path to citizenship

Consequences of the socialization into the great distraction (an African American case study)

African American Ramification of Belief in the Great Distraction of Christianity (The backlash of self hate via assimilation)
”Think of the tragedy of teaching our children not to doubt.” ~Clarence Darrow
African Americans have been trying to prove their moral equivalence to euro America for so long they have forgotten their actual and natural human equivalence. Once America agreed African Americans would be better off led by preachers the damage had begun. African American thinker and author J.A.

Rogers, speaks to this brilliantly in his From Superman to Man. When the Pullman porter is asked by the white politician if Christianity has brought solace to Blacks, he poignantly with honest precision retorts the following: "To enslave a man, then dope him to make him content! Do you call THAT a solace?...The honest fact is that the greatest hindrance to the

Thousands support Medicaid expansion in Ohio!

An emotional crowd, estimated at over 2,500, packed the statehouse grounds on Friday in Columbus, Ohio, calling on legislators to support the expansion of Medicaid proposed under "ObamaCare," (Affordable Care Act). The expansion has been supported by Ohio’s conservative Republican Governor John Kasich, but it is now being blocked by legislators from his own party.

Enduring a cold, constant rain, the large crowd roared after each speaker; "Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, health care works!"

Buddhists irked by Buddha on toilets and as Disney's dog

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Buddhist group says it successfully convinced a French factory to stop printing Buddha's face on toilets, but failed in a lengthy campaign to censor a Walt Disney movie series featuring a dog named Buddha.

The Bangkok-based group, Knowing Buddha (Knowing Buddha), also targets the "disrespectful" use of Buddha's face or iconic appearance on dildos and other sex toys, clothing, tattoos, furniture, statues and souvenirs.

"No progress on Disney, they have not responded at all," said Acharavadee Wongsakon, the Thai founder of Knowing Buddha, referring to the "Buddies" movies.

"Also, the U.S. Embassy has not been helpful," she said in an interview on March 20.

"It is pathetic. We have been trying to push the [Thai] government to arrange a seminar for government bureaus, including tourism and hotels, to show the serious problem that is happening, and to address a solution. Our effort is fruitless."

Mrs. Acharavadee launched the anti-Disney campaign in June when she led 200 supporters on a "Stop Disrespecting Buddha" protest march

Four Lucasville uprising prisoners on hunger strike

April 11th, 2013, Youngstown, OH- Four prisoners housed at Ohio State Penitentiary began refusing food today. Greg Curry, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Bomani Shakur, who have been housed at OSP since it opened, are demanding that media outlets be allowed to come for sit-down on-camera interviews with them. In a recorded announcement, Bomani Shakur described the hunger strike as a "protest [of] the state's unfair and unreasonable refusal to grant us access to the media... I am an innocent man. This is injustice, the state of Ohio is trying to kill me."

Numerous news sources have recently contacted the prisoners because of their involvement in the Lucasville Uprising twenty years ago. The hunger strike was timed with the anniversary of the uprising, along with a conference focused on taking another look at what happened in 1993.

People and peace over plutocracy

Remarks for conference on Building Bridges and Creating the Beloved Community, April 13, 2013
Sponsored by Maryland United for Peace and Justice, Maryland United for Peace and Justice

Several years ago a bunch of peace activists were eating in a restaurant in Crawford, Texas, and we noticed George W. Bush. He was actually a cardboard version of George W. Bush like you might get your photo with in front of the White House, but he was almost as lifelike as the real thing. We picked him up and stood him in the corner of the restaurant, facing the corner. We asked him to stay there until he understood what he'd done wrong. For all I know he's still standing there.

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