Opinion

For decades, the U.S. public seemed largely indifferent to most of the horrible suffering of war. The corporate media outlets mostly avoided it, made war look like a video game, occasionally mentioned suffering U.S. troops, and once in a blue moon touched on the deaths of a handful of local civilians as if their killing were some sort of aberration. The U.S. public funded and either cheered for or tolerated years and years of bloody wars, and came out managing to believe falsely that a large percentage of war deaths are of troops, that a large percentage of war deaths in U.S. wars are U.S. troops, that wars happen in a mysterious place called a “battlefield,” and that with rare exceptions the people killed by U.S. troops are people who need killing exactly like those given death sentences in U.S. courts (except for the ones later exonerated).

The Ohio State University strikes out again. From evidence-free slogans to an ordered, bought, and delivered “consultant’s report” to Campus unSafety non-Alerts and Campus unSafety Officers, who are inactive and lack direction. Note the repetition of Campus, and not Campus and Off-Campus or university area. Is the confusion ignorance or purposeful?

Shortly following OSU’s release of the Security Risk Management Consultant’s “Off-Campus Safety Assessment Report and Recommendations,” an off-campus student reported a gunshot through the window of his East 12th Avenue rental house. That “report” was commissioned from a New Albany-based, primarily “corporate campus” security evaluation firm that had never before studied an off-campus university area. Not surprisingly, it “praised” the university’s off-campus safety measures, adding a few modest, obvious, and long-overdue recommendations and photos of everyday, illegal trash.

Here’s what happened at the March 2022 Free Press Second Saturday Cyber-Salon, Saturday March 12.

Watch video here.

Facilitated by Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery, the salon addressed “Peace in the World.”

Harvey Wasserman, anti-nuke activist and senior Free Press Editor, spoke first about the nukes in Ukraine. He told us five of the 12 nuclear reactors in Ukraine were built by Soviets and all are over 30 years old. Chernobyl is one of the smallest ones and is now under control of the Russians. The explosion at Chernobyl in April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in the world, overshadowed later by the meltdown at Fukushima, which was the equivalent of 100 times the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Chernobyl disaster, the the Russians seeded the clouds above Ukraine so that it would rain the radioactivity over them instead of Russia. Even a nuclear plant that is shut down is a radioactive threat.

Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state itself. 

For Palestinians, sports is a critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet, the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international sports organizations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian sports. 

Policy Matters Ohio, the non-profit lobbying for progressive values at the Ohio Statehouse and across Ohio, is mobilizing against HB 327 and HB 322, two bills that could ban “divisive teaching” such as Critical Race Theory or CRT.

The Ohio legislature has been pushing the whitewashing of American history. Critics of HB 327 say that besides censoring schools and teachers, the bill could result in school districts losing funding, schools losing their AP (Advanced Placement) designation, teachers facing civil litigation from parents and the further degradation and privatization of our public schools, especially those in urban districts.

Policy Matters Ohio is a founding member of Honesty for Ohio Education, a statewide coalition of over 30 organizations,which held a press conference on Wednesday at the Statehouse.

Honesty for Ohio Education has a simple mission: “Defend Ohio students’ freedom to learn and educators’ freedom to teach a full, honest history of our nation.”

As I have written in these and other publications, Columbus is poorly served by its major media, from its no-longer-daily Columbus Dispatch, owned and operated by the USA Today/Gannett chain, to its three network TV affiliates and its NPR affiliate. None actively and reliably serve their publics or fulfill the press’s and media’s historical and democratic mission. (See my columns, “Columbus’ identity crisis and its media”; “Response to Columbus Alive, ‘The list: Reasons that Columbus Underground opinion piece is trash,’ by Andy Downing and Joel Oliphint, Columbus Alive, July 26: A visit to journalism fantasy land”; “The Columbus Dispatch – The decline of a metropolitan daily newspaper”; and “WOSU, the nation’s worst NPR affiliate?

I had a breakthrough yesterday — and I don’t mean metaphorically.

Wars rage, countless humans suffer, the rich get richer, life goes on. I still have my morning coffee. But not yesterday.

What happened — about 5 a.m. — was a fleeting . . . oh so fleeting . . . insight into life beyond its small certainties and routines. When life suddenly spins out of control, the Great Unknown is momentarily present. I have decided to write about it, or try to write about it, to honor the vulnerable everywhere.

That hour of the morning is not my normal get-up time, but as I enter geezerhood (I turned 75 half a year ago) I find myself waking up throughout the night and heading with sudden urgency to the bathroom. No big deal. This is part of the routine.

Six and a half weeks ago I broke humerus bone (upper arm). I had surgery to put a pin put into my arm. This is the 1st bone I’ve broken in my 73 years. It SUCKS!

I’m an alpha female, mother, grandmother and keeper of the casa. It has been quite challenging to “let” my sweet husband do for me the things I’ve always handled. Like undressing myself: I had to ask him to peel my sports bra off over my head! Very humbling, to say the least. Thank God we’ve been married for several decades. This experience is an exercise in patience. I’m having to adjust to my new normal. It’s made me reflect on all of the things I’d taken for granted – like undressing myself.

I have been teaching yoga since the 80s and I miss it terribly. My body misses it. I especially miss doing the yoga pose Down Dog (DD). I think about all of the times in a yoga workshop when the teacher kept us in DD for a long time and I’d think, when will it end. Now, I can’t wait to be able to pop out a Down Dog. Never thought I’d see the day where I was craving a nice long DD!