Stop the sprawl – save Darby Creek!

Thousands of Columbus voters signed petitions in 2001 demanding a vote on the issue of sprawl in the Darby Watershed. In October 2001 Columbus City Council said we would get to vote on this issue on May 7. In February, Columbus City Clerk Timothy McSweeney refused to certify PEER’s petitions to the ballot, despite an earlier certification in October. The vote was 6-1 to leave it up to the Franklin County Board of Elections.

This speech was delivered by Paul Dumouchelle, Spokesperson for the Stop the Sprawl Campaign, to a rally on Friday, 3-1-02, at the southern entrance to Columbus City Hall – off Broad Street.

“I want to thank everyone attending this rally, who has come here to express their concern over our quality of life here in Central Ohio. I want to thank the Board of Trustees of PEER (Progress with Economic and Environmental Responsibility, Inc.) for their support. We have two trustees here with us, Greg Richey and Phil Harmon.

“I want to thank all the petitioners who helped get the 12,000+ signatures last year. Who here carried a petition? I want to thank the 12,000+ people who took a minute to sign the petition.

Citizens Grassroots Congress: Consulting on the future

I once met Joseph Sheppherd, an anthropologist, who as a university student had gone for a year of field research with a tribe in West Africa but ended up staying to live with the people for six years. The tribe led a peaceful existence on the banks of a river and it soon dawned on the young anthropologist turned member of the community that, unlike the culture that he had left behind in North America, the tribe lived without violence and inter-personal conflict. When queried about this, the people told him that they avoided such things by consulting about the future.

Feeble head reactors

Dick Cheney has a swell idea: build a whole new generation of atomic power plants based on the request of a single utility and a dying industry that each gives big bucks to the Republican Party.

Never mind that no such reactors of this design exist. Never mind that the only test of such a reactor was a miserable failure. Never mind that the design has few backers outside the wildest fanatics backing the nuke power industry. And never mind that the industry itself is a complete failure.

Nonetheless, bowing to the demands of a single donor utility and the well-heeled but cancerous industry behind it, the Bush Administration has earmarked billions of dollars for at least three of these plants to go on line by 2010. All are to be built on federal land, no doubt to avoid incursions by pesky protestors. One is slated for construction at the Portsmouth uranium enrichment facility in southern Ohio.

Chemtrails and military weather modification

The “chemtrails” debate is heating up in Ohio, just like the planet. The Akron Beacon Journal became the first large mainstream daily newspaper to cave in and cover the issue in a front page story entitled, “Conspiracy theorists look up.” (March 16, 2002) The Free Press received numerous photos and a sworn affidavit from Michel Massullo of Akron documenting extensive aerial activity over that city on February 18, 2002.

Massullo wrote “I took a lot of photographs on February 18. While some of these may seem redundant I wanted to verify that it was actually happening and that it wasn’t a fault in the camera.”

Last year, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Lakewood) introduced a bill that specifically banned chemtrails as weapons. The U.S. Air Force has officially denied any involvement in “any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plan to do so in the future.” Earlier this year, Rep. Kucinich told the Columbus Alive that they should speak to the Pentagon regarding an “‘ongoing program’ called ‘Vision for 2020.’”

The Afghan pipeline revived: The new agenda behind the War Against Terrorism?

Greens warn that renewed plans for the Trans-Afghan oil pipeline may threaten hopes for peace in Afghanistan and the region, and that the U.S. must reduce reliance on oil

Green Party activists and candidates have begun to express alarm that the focus of the War Against Terrorism is entering a new phase, shifting from an effort to ensure international security and bringing those behind the September 11 attacks to justice into military protection for U.S.-based corporations — especially the fossil fuel industry - seeking control over foreign resources and markets.

After Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, met with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last week, they announced their endorsement of the construction of the trans-Afghanistan pipeline to transport oil from deposits in Turkmenistan with processing centers in Pakistan.

Green Lifestyle 2002

A newsletter from the Central Ohio Green Education Fund

Greens have a passion about certain local issues. What do we want? Clean air, clean water (rivers, lakes, streams, tributaries) and unpolluted land (read: no toxic waste stored in barrels, left on some army base, which are now leaking any number of chemical pollutants into the soil). We don’t see ourselves as being “different,” we simply don’t want to get poisoned, and we feel that a majority of the people share our beliefs. That’s why we educate and serve the central Ohio community.

Freep Heroes - Spring 2002

Michael Moore

The ex-editor of the Flint Voice – the equivalent of the Free Press in Flint, Michigan without the glamour – is at it again. We’re sure that Mike, a good blue collar democrat, chose the Rolling Stones over the Beatles in the 1960’s and ripped the “frat loops” off preppy-boy dress shirts. He’s become the bane of the Bush bunch (or klan) by writing a best-selling book that reveals how the former director of the CIA’s family essentially staged a coup in the United States. It’s called a “demonstration election,” stupids, I mean, Bush supporters. Moore’s brilliant popularization of populist discontent against America’s inbred and verbally-challenged self-proclaimed artistocracy is must reading. Despite the media blackout and Marxist-Leninist-style cult of personality propaganda promoting GW Bush by the mainstream media, Moore’s Stupid White Men book tour draws thousands even at the smallest sites in the smallest cities across the country. Many Americans are coming to the realization that the Bush family stands for war, debt and corporate oppression.



Kent Beittel and the Open Shelter

Black Hog Down

BWar is hard on animals too. Animal People newspaper and other mainstream news sources wrote about Marjan, the famous elderly lion, blinded by a grenade in 1995, who died in the Afghanistan zoo. Only in Animal People do we also learn about a little black bear whose nose “was painfully infected by Taliban soldiers who tortured him with a pointed stick.” I’m sure all my brothers and sisters in the Afghan zoo and other zoos around the world are suffering merely because they are cooped up in unnatural surroundings. But the violence and neglect caused by humans and their persistent fighting amongst themselves only makes life worse for all living things on the planet.

There is a World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and its director John Walsh, who go around the world trying to help the animals in Afghanistan and other countries at war. Animal People reports that the best use of WPSA in that country was that they paid off back wages of the zoo employees so they would stay on the job.

Justice or Revenge?

To the editor-

I am merely wondering why it is that we have confused the ideal of justice, with this immoral and detrimental notion of revenge. With the recent execution of John Byrd, the lines have become blurred, as they often are.

The concept of taking people out of society who cannot conform to the laws of society is necessary for the greater good, and that is what prisons are for. Once we have given ourselves power to take a person’s life, we have attempted to take a position in which we have no right to, a position of God-like authority. In cases of self-defense, where it is inevitably one person’s life or the other, there is justification in obtaining that authority, but once a person is imprisoned, there is no longer the threat that makes justification possible.

It is the fact that John Byrd no longer posed a threat to society that renders his execution unjustifiable, which only leads me to believe that someone has failed to differentiate between a desire for revenge, and the humane principle of justice.

In defense of the Open Shelter

Dear Editor:

The Community Shelter Board is finally getting its way in its mission to finally close down the Open Shelter. The Executive Director, Barbara Poppe, representing only the interests of the downtown elites and power-brokers has convinced City Council that the Open Shelter is not deserving of further funding. The Open Shelter was denied their request for $450,000 from the Shelter Board to keep its operation open. All this in spite of the fact that the Open Shelter continues to run at capacity providing safe over night stays to over a hundred men a night.

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